Cheese Storm Final!

Macc

I have posted many versions of this team over the last year and I feel that I can finally say that I am ready to try and make it on my copy of Pearl. However, I want to have it seen with a pair of fresh eyes... That's where you come in! :D So, without further dooshbaggary from me, here is my team.

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Togera (Tyranitar) (F) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 240 HP/36 Atk/48 Def/184 SDef
Impish nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
- Counter
- Taunt
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This is my Lead Tyranitar. Lum Berry will come into play for leads like Breloom that think they can spore me. :D Little do they know... Earthquake is to hit some steels as well as almost anything else that is grounded. Stone Edge is for the obvious Rock Ground combination of attacks for great coverage and it is STABed! The reason I chose those first two moves over Crunch and Fire Punch is because I wanted some surprise factor for my Tyranitar and I have found it to be even more effective against a wider range of teams. After all, who leads with Brongzong or Azelf anymore? Counter comes into play when my opponents think they can one shot my Tyranitar with an Earthquake or Meteor Mash leading to Tyranitar KOing them instead. Lastly, Taunt is for prevention of stealth rock or anything else on slower leads as well as Pokemon who are attempting to set up on Tyranitar. I decided to switch his Careful Nature to an Impish Nature for the boost to Def to help with Counter.

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Zero (Scizor) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 HP/136 Atk/120 SDef
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Bullet Punch
- U-turn
- Pursuit
- Brick Break
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This is my Physical Sweeper / Revenge Scizor. I chose not to use Life Orb, because the dmg it gave was annoying. Bullet Punch is an obvious STAB priority move that seems essential to every Scizor set. U-turn is another STAB move, but U-turn will allow me to deal dmg and switch. Pursuit is to punish pokemon like Alakazam or Azelf. Brick Break felt necessary for more coverage and the ability to break down Light Screen or Reflect barriers. This set used to have Roost in place of Brick Break, but since Scizor isn't using Life Orb there wasn't nearly as much of a need for it.

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Adramelech (Dragonite) (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 112 Atk/240 Spd/156 SAtk
Lonely nature (+Atk, -Def)
- Outrage
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Fire Blast
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This is my Mixed Sweper / Revenge Dragonite. Choice Scarf is what makes him so useful and surprising! No one expects their fast sweeper to go slower than a Dragonite after all... Outrage is STAB and a wonderful finishing move once I have cleared out my opponent's Steel Types / anything else that could prevent an Outrage Sweep. Thunderbolt will take out a Gyarados in one-shot going first even if they had a Dragon Dance boost *most of the time*. Fire Blast was chosen over Earthquake to hit steels who think they can come in on my Dragonite. With proper prediction I find it more useful than Earthquake was, eventhough this set is walled by Heatran without it... I am considering dropping Outrage for Earthquake since it would better Dragonite's coverage, but his ridiculous STAB power of Outage seems too good to give up. Lastly, Ice Beam is for fellow Dragons, Ground Types and some Flyers.

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Ness (Gengar) (M) @ Expert Belt
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def/252 Spd/252 SAtk
Timid nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Destiny Bond
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This is my Special Sweeper/ Revenge Gengar. Shadow Ball and Thunderbolt seem almost obligatory for a Gengar set, but despite how standard it seemed I find them to be extremely useful. Hidden Power Ice is there as a surprise. I found that people expected my Tentacruel to have Ice Beam and I needed a back up Ice attacker so I decided to give it to my Gengar since it allowed him to have the max speed stat I wanted. Destiny Bond is for revenge or to take out something I may not have an answer to with the rest of my team.

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Calamari (Tentacruel) (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 252 HP/120 Def/136 SDef
Calm nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Giga Drain
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Rapid Spin
- Toxic Spikes
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This is my special Defending Tentacruel. The first move slot is currently being taken up by Hidden Power Fire for a dreadful little surprise for Steel type Pokemon and for the fact that my Gengar doesn't have Hidden Power Fire. Mainly Hidden Power Fire is for Forretress and Scizor, However, it needs proper prediction to be useful at all... Giga Drain is a surprise for the ever so common Swampert and it's Tentacruel's only form of recovery on this set. Rapid Spin helps my Dragonite come in and last longer. Toxic Spikes will help to cripple my opponent's team along with Sandstorm. Leftovers is used to counteract the negative effect of sandstorm on my Tentacruel.

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Bottomless (Hippowdon) (F) @ Rindo Berry
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP/168 Def/88 SDef
Impish nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Slack Off
- Roar
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Last on the team is my Physical Defending Hippowdon. It uses Rindo Berry to get the jump on a Mixed Infernape attempting to Grass Knot only to get KOed by Earthquake! :D Stealth Rock is obvious yet very helpful move for my team and its dmg dealing abilities. Roar was is there for its phazing ability. Slack Off is for health recovery.

This team takes advantage of Sand Storm for residual dmg and excellent synergy to whittle away my opponent's team. It also seems to deal with most if not all of the OU threats in one way or another. Now what I need is your opinions and advice so I can make it as best as it can be. I have been trying to learn how to competitively battle for a couple years now and despite my slow catching on and failure to follow forum rules I think I have finally finished something that is solid. Although, this is just the beginning and I am hoping that I can learn from this thread to make my team even better.

Thank you for your time!
 
Um, I don't wifi or anything but I thought scizor got bullet punch in plat. Correct me if I'm wrong. The thing I don't like is the two stall pokemon. Having sandstream in this team won't help. When building a team you can't just do something like-lead,physical sweeper, sp.sweeper, mix.sweeper, wall, and sp.wall. You have to focus on each pokemons weakness and have other members that can patch those weakness. Your Tyranitar lead isn't really going to be able to do much against the common leads. Lum berry on a lead is usually only acceptable in ubers as brellom is no where near being a common lead and most brellom will just sub up and fire off focus punch for the OHKO anyway. Azelf is one of the most common lead out their so yeah, crunch would be nice. Counter Ttar was good before but it's just too predictable nowadays. Next we have Scizor. NEVER, NEVER put 252 EVs into HP for scizor. You always want a number that isn't divisible by 8 in order to ensure you will get an extra switch in when rocks are down. Superpower is better on choice sets and max attack is usually needed unless if your going with a trap set which you aren't. Dragonite just isn't as good as guys like mence. I would run mixmence but you can use scarfmence if you'd like. HP Ice is usally only used on scarfgar so you can replace that for something like HP Fire and give him sub instead of the random destiny bond. Now tentacruel and Hippowdon don't really have a place on this team. Try testing what works in their slots and what doesn't.
 
So you are suggesting that Sandstorm is only good for stall? My team is functional with Sandstorm since half of my team is immune to it and the other half can take it. I helps me get KOs especially against Focus Sash abusers. Also, please put my team through Marriland's team builder to see the synergy it has. I designed it so I can take a wide variety of hits as well as be immune to a few as well. I have played a lot of battles on Shoddy and I rarely encounter an Azelf lead. I know it is common according to the graphs, but not as common as Metagross. I feel that my Tyranitar creates an amazing surprise for most of my opponents since it isn't using the Fire Punch, Crunch combo. I don't think Breloom couldn't keep a sub up against my Tyranitar especially since I will most likely attack it the turn it tries to sub up. As far as Scizor goes, I use 252 HP, because putting his HP at 248 would only prevent one more stealth rock point of dmg. Unless I am mistaken it doesn't round off 1 each time I take stealth rock dmg, only the first. So, in theory 248 would be wise, but I would be able to slightly take dmg better should there not be stealth rock up when I first switch into my Scizor. Also, I playtested Superpower and I found Brick Break to be more useful since I came across reflect/lightscreen teams and it was useful to remove their bonuses. After all, isn't Superpower only useful for oneshotting Heatran? I actually am using my Scizor as a variation of the trap set that I find to work better. Sure there is no roost involved, but I have better coverage and more power. I chose Dragonite over Mence mostly because of the surprise factor it carries. I've got to be honest in the fact that I feel the clicheness of Salamence would be detrimental. Its abilities are good and all, but it can't do everything Dragonite can do. As far as Gengar goes. I guess I could go for Hidden Power Fire. I know that would ruin the chance of outspeeding other gengar, but what else would it do? Substitute obviously wouldn't be good since the point of this team was to have sandstorm out. It would be wiser than relying on my opponent to go balls out and get koed by destiny bond though. What I don't understand though is why you want me to drop Hippowdon and Tentacruel. They set up hazards and take hits for my team. It hasn't hindered my team in any way that I have noticed. I actually think they make it better. Isn't the point of a balanced team to have both elements of defense and offense? Or are you trying to suggest that I should pick one or the other when forming my team? It sucks that I felt so confident about this and when I finally get to re-post it I feel like I am no further along then when I started. I guess I'll have to try and apply to the tutoring program, because no matter what I read and research I don't seem to be getting it. Anyway, thanks for your analysis and advice. I'll definitely consider it and probably play test it over Shoddy sometime soon.
 
Tyranitar - Your lead is destroyed by 3 leads in particular. Swampert, Azelf, Metagross. All three are common. Swampert pulls the OHKO with EQuake, Azelf sets up SR and then switches out and Metagross also OHKOs with EQuake. You can't do anything against those 3 leads except maybe Gross, but it's faster than you anyway. Status leads are rare, so there is no reason to have Lum Berry. Shuca berry would be better, and honestly, Tyranitar shouldn't be leading anything but a SS team, and Hippowdon does it better anyway.

Scizor - Needs 252 ATK. Without it, there really is no reason to use it. Superpower is better than BB because since it's Choiced anyway, you'll be probably using it to revenge kill, then they'll bring in something that walls fighting like Latias. Stick the SDef EVs into Atk, take out 4 HP EVs for the reasons in the second post and put 8 EVs back into SDef.

Dragonite - Salamence completely outclasses this unless you really think the speed drop is worth the extra defenses. ScarfMence does the job of ScarfNite much better. It's balanced between SAtk and Atk, Has better HP and has MUCH higher Speed, making it a much better choice to have a scarf.

Gengar - Focus Blast is a much better choice than Destiny Bond, allowing you to OHKO TTar and Heatran. HP Fire would give better coverage, at the cost of losing the speed tie. Not much to say, pretty standard Gengar.

Tentacruel - You don't need HP Fire to take out Forretress/Scizor because no one is going to switch them in on a Tentacruel. Slap HP Electric on there so Gyarados doesn't setup on you and replace Giga Drain with Surf for a STAB move.

Hippowdon - Standard, nothing to say.
 
Neither Swampert or Metagross's Earthquake OHKOs my Tyranitar. At least none of the versions I have seen and really, I play on Shoddy battle a lot... Where exactly are you getting your math from? I always counter back and they lose their lead. I know that I am one of the only people who uses a Tyranitar lead, but its not as bad as you think. I honestly have yet to see it be one shotted by anything that isn't a fighting type move. Also, Lum Berry helps him out when he comes back switching into status. I tend to play this team with the item claus for varriety and the fact that it will allow me to use it almost anywhere...

I have tested and used to use Hippowdon as my lead, but there are quite a few problems with this... The first is the fact that the set I use wouldn't allow me to do anything but Earthquake should I be taunted and that is so easy to deal with. Why would I let my opponent get a turn free turn to setup their teams whether, stealth rock, or something else... At least with Tyranitar I know I can stop some leads from setting up stealth rock and I can KO those that I can't stop, or at least deal a significant amount of dmg. Azelf doesn't take a Stone Edge too well afterall. Also, having Hippowdon and Tyranitar is extremely useful for the fact that I can switch between the two of them and force my opponent's weather effects away.

Scizors EVs aren't Smogons, but that doesn't mean that they are worthless... Scizor is not the normal Choice Band set! He plays with the intent of trapping in addition to dealing a lot of dmg. I have yet to see this guy needing 252 atk to KO stuff. What does 252 atk help KO? I know it would obviously help deal more dmg. The evs you suggested are interesting, but I don't think it will help trap a Latias or Azelf.

My only answer of why I picked Dragonite over Salamance is the surprise factor. Yes Salamance is faster and all of that, but they don't learn the same moves and they don't have the same abilities. Namely the no flinch ability that my Dragonite has, which has saved me from being swept before when the speed from the scarf wasn't enough.

Focus Blast feels really lame and when I play tested it I never really had a chance to use it let alone the 10 lower accuracy is suprisingly more annoying than that of Stone Edge's... The problem with standard move sets like Shadow Ball, Thunder Bolt, Hidden Power Fire and Focus blast is that everyone knows them and knows not to switch in against those attack... If I can trick my opponent into thinking I have those moves and I use something else then it is instantly more effective since it will actually work. At least, I have noticed that it has worked for me...

You would actually be surprised, because people do switch in Forretress and Scizor on my Tentacruel. Mainly Forretress to get rid of my Toxic Spikes. Although, Hidden Power electric would be useful even against Scizor / Fortress... I honestly haven't considered it though. Surf is kind of worthless... Yes it will be effective since it is STAB, but who in their right mind stays in on a pokemon that can one shot them with a STAB attack? Giga Drain has been infinitely more useful and it is the only way Tentacruel can deal with Swampert, who is a problem for my team.

So yeah the choices I made for my team make sense because going straight up standard for everything is detrimental. The only things that I find Standard movesets useful on are tanks since there isn't much you can do against them anyway.

Sorry to seem like I am neglecting your advice, but I do have to make an argument for why I chose the things I did. Even if some of them are weak arguments... I have been working at this team for quite awhile afterall and I have beaten quite a few people on Shoddy Battle during that time. Regardless though, I really do enjoy the fact that you took the time to rate my team.

Thank you for your rate!
 
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