Other Metagames AG team tips

[Lord_gothmog]

This is my first post here on Smogon, and Im just looking for a few tips on my AG team that I use for casual play. Without further ado...

General Annoyance

Zygarde-C Leftovers
Ability: Power Construct
EVs: 252 HP, 252 SpD
Careful Nature
-Toxic
-Protect
-Thousand Arrows
-Rest
I mainly run this guy because the group I play with gets really peeved at toxic-protect stallers. He turns out to be fairly effective, and sometimes takes out most of a team if they cant hit hard enough. His biggest issue is running into HP-ice users. Its admittedly a predictable set once you have seen it, but it works.

The Muscle

Groudon-P @ Red Orb
Ability: Desolate Land
EVs: 252 Atk, 252 HP
Adamant Nature
-Precipice Blades
-Stone Edge
-Fire Punch
-Swords Dance
Generally great at smashing things, this Groudon-P can power through just about anything and take some hits in return. Precipice Blades is the main STAB move, Stone Edge hits Flying types, and Fire Puch is nice under heavy sun. No real finesse here.

The Brains

Mewtwo @ Life Orb
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 SpAtk, 252 Sp
Modest Nature
-Psystrike
-Fire Blast
-Ice beam
-Aura Sphere
An all out attacker, he has nice coverage and can hit specially defensive types hard with Psystrike; the other moves provide excellent coverage. I feel tempted to replace Fire Blast with Psychic, but I have not yet had a situation where I really need Psychic.

Bambi Of Death

Xerneas @ Power Herb
Ability: Fairy Aura
EVs: 252 SpAtk, 252 Sp
Geomancy
Moonblast
Psychic
Thunderbolt
Traditional Geomancy Xerneas. Close to the smogon-reccomended set, but I swapped Thunder and Focus Blast for Thunderbolt and Psychic. (Any move with low accuracy is a guaranteed miss for me when using Xerneas, IDK why.)

The Dragon

Rayquaza-M @ Lum berry
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Delta Stream
EVs: 252 Atk, 252 Sp
Dragon Ascent
Earthquake
Outrage
Extremespeed
Having a lum berry on this guy may seem odd, but I have been swept by Darkrai and his damn sleep too many times. This berry lets Mega Ray get a hit in; even if the Darkrai has Focus Sash, he can KO him with Extremespeed the next turn. Earthquake is not all that useful, and I was thinking of replacing it with Dragon Dance.

The Metal Lion Thingy

Necrozma-DM @ Solgalium-Z
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Prism Armor
EVs: 252 Atk, 252 HP
-Sunsteel Strike
-Photon Geyser
-Swords Dance
-Power Gem
A powerful physical attacker, especially when boosted by Swords Dance. I plan to replace Power Gem with Rock Polish: thoughts on this?



Please feel free to give all kinds of criticism, anything but "Your zygarde needs to be more offensive." It actually works the way it is, sort of.













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[IronedSandwich]

Xerneas should either run Hidden Power Ground or Focus Blast to hit Groudon-Primal and steel types. You said you don't like using low-accuracy moves but the problem is that if you're running weaker moves you can be even less likely to get the KOs you want (or it could be impossible). It should also have a nature.

Mewtwo is a weak attacker unable to break common walls and tanks (especially support Arceus) as it is, giving it no boosting moves will make it worse.

Power Gem on Necrozma is outclassed for Swords Dance sets since it can run Rock Slide or Stone Edge and take advantage of the attack boost. But like you said, Rock Polish is a good option since Necrozma-DM is naturally slow.

although the move has its downsides, V-Create is an incredibly strong move on Mega Rayquaza which allows you to break past Celesteela (which would otherwise counter you) and hit other Steel-types generally harder than Earthquake. It's also hard to switch into, having the same damage as Dragon Ascent after STAB. Having said that Earthquake is not completely useless since it can hit Arceus-Rock and Tyranitar, which otherwise do well vs Mega Ray.

that Zygod also looks kind of out-of-place (especially because most of your mons are too frail and offensive to benefit from toxic stalling as much as balance/stall members do) and hyperoffensive teams like this usually have leads to set Stealth Rock.

Rated team: http://pokepast.es/6d63665bb300680c. Deoxys-Speed sets rocks and helps vs otherwise dangerous Baton Pass teams with Taunt. Necrozma-DM now has speed investment to outspeed Scarf Yveltal after Rock Polish. Personally I'd go Earthquake so Primal Groudon doesn't stop you after using both setup moves but Photon Geyser is useful neutral coverage with more power thanks to STAB. Xerneas now has its EVs moved into HP since it's so fast anyway and now has speed and a way of hitting Groudon/Magearna/Ferrothorn/etc. If you feel absolutely compelled to keep Thunderbolt do, if you want a psychic move I'd recommend considering Psyshock to hit Ho-Oh harder. Extreme Killer Arceus is a useful pokemon on hyperoffense to beat opposing Mega Rayquazas and other sweepers. Lastly, Zygarde-C was changed to a boosting set in order to break through bulkier teams which was sort of Primal Groudon's job but this set is very strong because nothing can freely switch into Thousand Arrows and you can nullify passive toxic/seismic toss/etc damage with Rest.

 

[MZ]

Oops, kinda missed this thread, should've rated by now. Anyway, the above rate does a generally good job of changing the sets to be standard ones since the ones you have are, quite frankly, not very good. It's not perfect though, 132 Speed Dusk Mane is a lil odd for AG (at the very least run 148 to outspeed uninvested non-complete Zygarde), Sitrus Berry is really just garbage on Arceus, and Geoxern should never, ever be running 0 Speed. At the moment my preferred Geoxern spread is 200 HP / 252 SpA / 52 Spe, which outspeeds Choice Scarf Mega Rayquaza after Geomancy. Also some of the stuff said above simply isn't true which I'm only going to bother to correct so you don't get some false meta info here. Mewtwo absolutely doesn't need a boosting move to be strong, HP Ground is a fairly niche and unusual choice for Xerneas which I wouldn't recommend for most teams and Rock Slide is never run on Necrozma or otherwise. As for the Pokemon changes made, like I really don't know. Why put a super bulky defensive Zygarde on a team that's otherwise hyper offense with a suicide lead? Zygarde is total Defog fodder. Xerneas also isn't supported terribly well here. While the original team lacked any kind of planning or synergy (it basically looks like 6 random Pokemon were chosen to go together rather than a real intent being behind the choices), this new version isn't much better in terms of synergy.
As far as what I would do outside of cleaning up all the poor sets, I think you just need to decide what kind of team you want. This looks like it could be leading towards balance or offense, but at the moment it's stuck between the two since the sets and mon choices are fairly random and fail to commit to a single playstyle. The above rate just suggests totally transforming the team into hyper offense which is a bit assumption seeing as the current team doesn't fit that trend at all (although to be fair it's HO with defensive Zygarde which is a separate issue). If you're looking to make a fairly offensive team, Geoxern and a fully defensive Zygarde are quite out of place. Xern needs more support than you're giving it and Zygarde saps too much momentum, you'd more likely be better off with a couple of Arceus formes to strengthen the defensive synergy. If the intent was to stay more balanced, I'd be dropping Mewtwo and at least one other mon but the second could really be whichever one you felt like removing in order to get some more defensive support for Zygarde. Either option is fine and I could help with both, but committing to one should help a lot in the long run. I hope some of this was useful for your team. Welcome to Smogon!

 

[Lord_gothmog]

^ Thanks guys! Ill try out your tips. One question: is there a viable Pokemon that can both set up and get rid of Stealth Rocks?

 

[MZ]

In theory any Arceus form can run both rocks and defog, in practice it's better to simply run one rocker and one defogger so as to not overload a Pokemon's roles. There is also suicide lead Excadrill, but that only fits hyper offense teams and would be fairly out of place