Death Valley (Balanced Hackmons)

[asterat]

Death Valley​

(wrong sprite I know)​

Introduction:
So I recently realized that this forum has literally one real balanced hackmons team, which was posted 8 months ago and is pretty outdated now. X and Y is also approaching extremely fast (it seemed like yesterday when it was first announced) and I would like to post a final sort of RMT before the metagame is turned upside down. 5th generation balanced hackmons will still exist, but the playerbase will be even smaller than it is now, if that is possible. Recently though balanced hackmons has become my favorite tier because of how it plays out and how the better player with the better team wins almost every time. A lot less of the matchup crap than in OU. Also, my friends in the community also play balanced hackmons, so it would be weird if everybody played the same tier except for me. We recently publicized an in depth guide to the tier and if you haven't seen it yet, go check it out in the OM forum.

This team is reincarnation of a balanced hackmons team I made before I really knew what I was doing. The old team was nowhere as good as this one which I actually consider to be solid. It has beaten a few solid players and will most likely beat a few more before XY. More importantly this team uses some of my favorite pokemon, which is my first concern when building a new team nowadays. Rhydon is one of the most chill pokemon ever and tyranitar and landorus-t are pretty boos too. I would do anything to have a pet landorus-t in real life, it's a freaking flying tiger. The basic idea of this team is bulky offensive sand, having only one member that even takes damage from sand (kyogre's main purpose is to help against rain and sun anways though.) I have pretty much all the standard components of a defensive team while also having a little bit of offense to serve as a win condition. I really like how the synergy of this team works, how the mons fit together. I honestly put a lot of thought into it and work into this RMT, so I hope you enjoy it!

In Depth:

Rhydon @ Eviolite
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Head Smash / Rock Blast
- Stealth Rock
- Roost

Rhydon is a seriously amazing pokemon in bh that needs way more usage. Last I checked it was at like 40 in usage stats but I honestly think it deserves top 10. First off, the physical bulk is unmatched. Nothing takes physical hits like rhydon does. Next, it has an excellent attack stat and the STAB combination to abuse it. While it might have a lot of weaknesses, they are easy types to get around most of the time. This Rhydon set probably looks a little weird because it doesn't have magic coat, meaning a mold breaker lead could seriously mess me up. However wait on that until you get to Tyranitar in the RMT because the set I am using hard counters mold breaker deoxys-s (and teravolt too!) Rhydon is slow which is actually a good thing for a sand setter, so it never loses weather wars to dialgas and blissey. The only things that are slower are escavalier and ferrothorn and chances are pretty good that they are setting up sand anyways. My moveset allows Rhydon to be a powerful but still incredibly bulky tank that can switch into almost anything with the SpD boost. Earthquake and head smash are the standard STAB which are quite amazing. Rock blast is an alternative to handle sub Ho-oh and such better, it also doesn't miss quite as often. However the nuclear power behind a STAB adamant head smash off base 130 attack is usually too good to give up for a little bit of a safety net. Stealth rock is an important hazard for wearing down things that switch in, especially flying types like lugia and Ho-oh. Roost rounds off the moveset giving Rhydon reliable recovery and enough sand to bury any rain teams that try to wash it away.

Tyranitar @ Rocky Helmet
Trait: Vital Spirit
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Crunch
- Aromatherapy / Low Kick
- Rapid Spin
- Heal Order

Tyranitar is a very key pokemon to this team, and he allows lead rhydon to be as offensive as it is. Vital spirit is like a different form of magic bounce, while it doesn't block hazards or taunt, it blocks spore even from mold breakers which is usually a trade worth making. Tyranitar has other functions besides handling mold breaker though. He counters virtually every lugia, cresselia, and giratina-a set. It's pretty cool. Rocky helmet racks up damage on dragon tailers and other physical attackers, very useful against poison heal. I have to give credit for this set to my bro Keep it Playful, as rapid spinning vital spirit Tyranitar was his genius. The only difference between his set and mine is that I run aromatherapy over his spikes because is can essentially bring back a rhydon or ferrothorn from the dead. Low kick is also slashed because it seriously hurts regigigas and slaking in a way that crunch does not and it can also pick off things like weakened ferrothorn on the switch. Most things are pretty heavy in balanced hackmons, so I only rarely want close combat there. I also run heal order while Playful chooses the much less classy softboiled. Last but not least, Tyranitar gets a massive SpD boost just like in OU except he doesn't bring the sandstorm personally like he does in OU.

Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Destiny Bond
- Leech Seed

Ferrothorn is renowned for its annoying typing in standard metagames, but in balanced hackmons where it acquires abilities like flash fire and drizzle it becomes even more annoying. This team utilizes prankster ferrothorn, who uses a unique typing and excellent bulk to pass substitutes to my other substitutes, giving them a free turn to do whatever necessary. Ferrothorn has uses as well. Destiny bond is good at stopping a sweep that gets through my other mons. Leech seed wears things down, only failing to beat magic guard/bounce and grass types. As you can imagine, priority subseed is extremely annoying and hard to beat at times. Leech seed is specifically good on ferrothorn because compared to other pokemon in BH he has relatively low defenses, meaning he recovers a ton of health with leech seed against many targets. Also because ferrothorn is a grass type even if leech seed is magic bounced/coated he can't be seeded himself. And if ferrothorn is against an opponent he doesn't want to be against he can baton pass out and the opponent can't predict because if they switch I will to BP to something else. Prankster ferrothorn finds its way onto a lot of my BH teams, and with good reason: it's amazing. The only change I am considering is running spore and recover over destiny bond and leech seed, but I kind of like it how it is now.

Giratina @ Flame Orb
Trait: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Impish Nature
- Psycho Shift
- Whirlwind
- Knock Off
- Slack Off

Ladies and gentlemen, the undisputed king of balanced hackmons. If you have a giratina on your team you will almost automatically do better, regardless of what set you are using. I choose to run magic guard because it gives me an extremely bulky immunity to status, making things like sacred fire and no guard much less threatening overall. It also grants an immunity to sandstorm, which will usually be up thanks to swagdon. Giratina serves as my primary switch in to crap from Ho-oh to registeel to terrakion. I have psycho shift because it sends my burn to my opponent which cripples most pokes until my opponent gets an aromatherapy off. Slack off is because I'm really lazy by using Giratina, slacking on being original and making an innovative team. Knock off cripples literally everything in balanced hackmons except for mail holders (my team has no switcheroo) and arceus rock/ghost. Anyways I can burn those guys. Whirlwind allows me to phaze reliably, it's picked over dragon tail because I'm often burned. (Gastro acid is a really cool second option, but whirlwind is generally more reliable.) Sure, knock off is a physical move but it isn't really used to do damage to things (excpet deoxys-a lol.) I run impish over the more common careful to better take on archeops and the like. Special attackers will send Giratina packing with draco meteor and judgment ghost anyways.

Kyogre @ Leftovers
Trait: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Dragon Pulse
- Quiver Dance
- Roost

Kyogre is my unaware user of choice, and I love it for that. Many would just pick shuckle and call it a day because it is a sand team, but kyogre is way better in my opinion. It doesn't die to stealth rock or completely suck against other weathers. In fact kyogre can switch into serious threats like rain Palkia or even sun reshiram. Shuckle... will be drowned instantly or burnt to ashes. Without the sandstorm boost shuckle is kind of terrible, but kyogre is not. Kyogre also has usable offensive stats and a speed stat. Calm nature is chosen to take draco meteors better before I set up boosts. I am considering bold, but I can still take extremespeeds and such pretty well. Scald is amazing and burns lots of things (30% = 100% unless chansey is using it.) Dragon pulse was chosen over ice beam for the ability to hit kyurem-b/w, reshiram, and palkia harder right off the bat. Quiver dance allows me to handle special attackers better by setting up my special defense as I go. It also allows to Kyogre function as something of a sweeper if necessary. Roost is chosen because Kyogre actually has wings of sort, even if they are more of flippers. He's a swimming bird, OK?

Landorus-Therian (M) @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Shift Gear
- Dragon Tail
- Earthquake
- Spore

Landorus-Therian is my poison healer of choice, a role which in my opinion should be on every team. Poison heal is incredibly hard to stop because it can spore unawares and such without fear of it being bounced back and the sporer being put to sleep. It also grants an immunity to status, and excellent passive recovery. While most opt for a regigigas as a poison healer, experimenting with other pokemon usually yields good results. I decided to try landorus-t because it is completely anti-imposter, helps to wall nature power users, and has an excellent 145 base attack. I would have used groudon, but landorus is immune to its own and earthquake (anti imposter!) and earthquake of other grounds. Shift gear allows me to outspeed everything except swift swim palkia. Some people use landorus-i for a similar role with shell smash or swords dance, but I prefer the bulk and much more powerful earthquake presented by landorus-t. Landorus-i is kind of forced to run jolly so it can outspeed base 100s like Palkia. One could make the argument that after a shell smash it doesn't matter because you're faster than everything anyways, but in that case use landorus-t. If you are using swords dance you are slow and jolly so +1 landorus-t hits almost as hard anyways. Dragon tail rounds out the moveset phazing things like giratina and skarm before they phaze me.

Conclusion:
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read this, I really appreciate it. If you really enjoyed it, please like the post. If your newer to the tier I hope you learned something. The importable is below, feel free to use it! Also I'm not doing shoutouts b/c you know who you are ;)

Importable:

Hide

Rhydon @ Eviolite
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Head Smash
- Stealth Rock
- Roost

Tyranitar @ Rocky Helmet
Trait: Insomnia
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Crunch
- Aromatherapy
- Rapid Spin
- Heal Order

Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Destiny Bond
- Leech Seed

Giratina @ Flame Orb
Trait: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Impish Nature
- Psycho Shift
- Whirlwind
- Knock Off
- Slack Off

Kyogre @ Leftovers
Trait: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Dragon Pulse
- Quiver Dance
- Roost

Landorus-T (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 SDef / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Shift Gear
- Dragon Tail
- Earthquake
- Spore

 

[asterat]

Thanks for the likes, but I'm open to new ideas for the team if anybody has any. Especially after the metagame turned upside down.

Bump.

 

[Redless]

Looking at your team, it seems fairly good in the metagame and having seen it play, I would say that generally, this is true.

A big flaw that I see with your team is its ability to handle sweepers. It isn't straight hyper offense, so more than likely at least some sweepers will have a chance to set up. You have as I see it three dedicated checks to common sweepers: Kyogre, Ferrothorn, and Giratina. Ferrothorn's largest flaw is its lack of reliable recovery and offensive presence, especially when the Mon it is trying to check is behind a sub. It will typically lose the war with spore sweepers, for that reason, as if ferro is the only check to it, it can't really do much once you have predicted spore and set up a sub. For that reason, I recommend a different ferro set, most likely one with taunt/whirlwind so that you can screw up spore sweepers when you both have up a sub. Try these moves or reliable recovery over leech seed.
Looking at gira, it seems to me that it also has trouble with the spore sweepers. It can knock off their item, but if they are a gigas and can dragon tail you before you whirlwind, you aren't checking them as efficiently as you could, since you have to pp stall dragon tail and predict their boosting move to get around it. It's lack of offensive presence is the biggest flaw. I don't have much experience with using the magic guard mons like this one, so I can't really help you with improving its set if you opt to keep it, but it seems to me like its biggest flaw is lack of offense that gets around things that whirlwind can't. I think that many of the Pokemon that it serves as a switch in to could better be handled by another Pokemon, specifically a different unaware, which brings me to Kyogre.
To my mind, Kyogre seems like a sub par unaware user. It does have some notable advantages over Shuckle, but overall, I don't think it is ideal. It can't take physical hits as nicely as it would like to, and more to the point, it can't easily retaliate against many physical attackers, whereas the attackers can punch through it after it switches in. It also can't sweep very easily because Chansey screws it, as well as other unawares. It isn't conclusive as for what you should replace it with, but I would recommend either a steel type, a Giratina, or a Cresselia. Giratina seems like an odd choice, but it stops many of the things that the other Giratina stops, and at the same time it can tank hits that Kyogre could. You can free up the other gira slot for a better check to spore sweepers, maybe.

Thank you for posting this team, and I hope I helped improve it!

 

[asterat]

On changing ferrothorn's moveset, it is definitely something worth a try. I have seen spore/heal order work extremely well, especially now that mold breaker is what it is. Substitute and baton pass aren't really debatable, but the last two slots have some options. Destiny bond is not always the most reliable, and can land me in very bad situations. Additionally, it tends to work good against newer players, but experienced ones rarely fall for the trap. So I guess I could try spore or taunt over destiny bond. I will test both a little bit and report back in maybe like a week.

I used gastro acid a while ago, and I will try it again. It was pretty good especially against poison heal. When most mons lose their important ability, they tend to lose a lot of momentum, so they usually switch out. In this way it effectively phazes. Knock off on chansey can be a bitch but I just sacrifice ttar's hat. It's kind of too good to give up imo though, knocking off the right leftovers or plate is gg when it strips the opponent of their win condition. Additionally if you can catch chanseys on the switch in, they are much easier to handle.

Chansey and other kyogres do not screw unawares. It burns them. Take cresselia for instance. It gets burned, switches into hazards, and I have hard counters to it. It is forced to recover all the time, and gets PP stalled easily if necessary.

 

[Redless]

I also note no hard counter to roarcat. While almost no one good uses it, it is still something to prepare for.