Gen 4 DPP OU Defensive Gravity

[poshnobbins]

"I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation"- Sigma
Toxic + Gravity Stall Team

First time posting... I've been having some success with this team, but am sure it could be improved. My strategy is to use toxic and entry hazards to rack up damage while my opponent struggles to damage my mons.

Skarmory @ Shed Shell
Ability: Keen Eye
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Spikes
- Whirlwind
- Roost
- Toxic

Skarm lead. Naturally, I try to get spikes out ASAP, but quite often I use toxic first if the opponent's lead is a sweeper that can't touch skarm. Taunt is annoying, forcing me to switch in anticipation of it. My team's lack of offensive moves, other than eq means a switch to tentacruel happens on turn one quite a lot, for surf. Toxic is really useful late game as well though, so I think it's superior to brave bird on this team. Can be a surprise for setup sweepers as well. I run max special defence for more overall bulk, which I preferred. Rest of the moves are standard. Roost for longevity and stall, whirlwind for set up mons and to rack up entry hazard dmg.

Dusknoir @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Gravity
- Dynamic Punch
- Will-O-Wisp
- Rest

Dusknoir serves as a spinblocker and general physical wall. Often I switch him in from blissey predicting a fighting move. If possible I use gravity first to give WoW perfect accuracy. Dynamic punch also hits nearly 90% of the time with it up, which is helpful in clutch situations to get off rest while the opponent's mon hurts itself. WoW cripples physical sweepers, but also chips away at health. Often sand is up so this adds up, especially with confusion dmg as well. I chose rest over pain split for reliability and because blissey holds aromatherapy. Late game I have secured KOs with Dusknoir asleep because my opponent cannot finish him off before dying from status and sand.

Registeel @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- Rest
- Gravity
- Toxic
- Earthquake

Registeel is another physical wall and gravity user, but has a lot of special bulk as well. He is useful for spreading toxic around and, once gravity has been used, can deal some damage with EQ. Rest again for the same reason as Dusknoir. Not much more to say about this one. A reliable team member despite being UU. I have considered bulky jirachi carrying wish and u-turn instead of rest and earthquake, but haven't tested this idea.

Hippowdon @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Slack Off
- Earthquake
- Roar

Hippodown sets sand to add to stall dmg and carries stealth rock for. No surprises on the move list. He works similarly to Skarm, acting as a phazer and a recovery move for longevity. When gravity is up he can be difficult to switch into with earthquake and his high base Atk. I prefer a specially bulky EV spread for overall bulk once again. Often, my opponent targets Hippo with special attacks so this works quite well. Pretty essential to this team. Only switch to consider would be Ttar.

Blissey @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe
Bold Nature
- Aromatherapy
- Soft-Boiled
- Gravity
- Thunder

Blissey is an invaluable special sponge and sets up gravity more than any other team member. This ensures that switches into spikes hit flying and levitating mons and allows EQ to connect for my other mons. Thunder gains perfect accuracy from this also, but Blissey only usually shines with this against Gyara or if I need to bring him in on a taunting crobat. Aromatherapy is key to this set, waking my three rest users. I considered using heal bell so I could provide wish support over softboiled, but without a slot for protect this was too risky.

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 252 HP / 240 SpD / 16 Spe
Calm Nature
- Toxic Spikes
- Surf
- Rest
- Rapid Spin

Tentacruel used to be bulky starmie, but I found him too frail. His role is to check infernape and wall special attackers. Surf is a reliable attack for hitting flying/ levitate mons when gravity is not up. He can set up toxic spikes, but these tend to get absorbed quite quickly in gravity by gengar, crobat. Might switch in toxic instead. Rapid spin is self-explanatory. Rest is useful in some situations but I might switch it out for ice beam for greater reliable coverage. 16 speed EVs because it was reccommended, not actually sure how it helps.

I'm new to team building, so would really appreciate any constructive criticism and suggestions for changes. Thanks for taking the time to read my team, I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to import and play with if you so desire...

 

[oiponabys]

Hi,
Gravity teams are fairly unexplored and difficult to build so I'll try my best to correct your team while keeping its identity.
Truth be told, defensive gravity teams aren't very effective. They tend to struggle because:

1. Giving up a useful move for gravity is difficult
2. The list of gravity setters is rather short

If I had to rank the gravity setters it would be something like this:

• S Rank: Metagross, Jirachi
• A: Rank: Starmie, Bronzong, Clefable
• B Rank: Magnezone, Blissey, Registeel
• C Rank: Dusknoir, Cresselia, Forretress

Now, your team has a lot of issues (Breloom and bulky setup mons notably), which is why I will suggest a few pokemon and set changes.

To make breloom easier to deal with I suggest Tentacruel -> Latias . Latias works well on gravity teams because he adds an earthquake immunity alswell as tons of resistances to compensate for the weaknesses to heatran/infernape gravity setters tend to stack. Since you use a defensive team, a calm mind roar set can give you a win condition and a way to rack up hazard damage with roar.
Skarmory and latias should be enough phazing, so you can now change roar-> ice fang on hippodown. This will help against taunt gliscor, who was a huge threat to your team.

Without a spinner, the current team would be too weak to hazards. Toxic spikes cant be removed anymore and opposing Skarmory is free to spam whirlwind since we don't use magnezone. For these reasons I think Blissey -> Clefable is preferable. Clefable not only learns gravity, but also has knock off, making residual damage from hazards and status more effective.
Rest + Aromatherapy has not aged very well in gen 4 and this is why I think you can consider swapping rest for pain split on Dusknoir.

Now that we got rid of aromatherapy, we can't really use rest Registeel anymore. As you said, Registeel -> Defensive Jirachi would be a great change, even if that means losing a gravity setter. To avoid having 2 magnezone food pokemon, we can try fire punch on it.


Finally, we put hippodown as the lead because setting up stealth rocks and sand turn 1 is more valuable than spikes.

With the changes, the team should give you better results.
You can get the team here.

Also don't hesitate to look at the viability rankings. I hope this helped !

 

[100 Hoes Kaido]

Haha, that move, the move that Gengar desperately wanted in order to spam Focus Blast.
But, let's get to the team, shall we?
This is an interesting take, what with Gravity being a very rare move used competitively, however, while most of the time gravity is used on later gens on offensive 'mons like Landorus-Therian to beat stuff like Skarmory and make their EQ more spammable, your DPPt team is too much passive, I'm afraid, the problem is also exacerbated by the fact that you have three Rest users, who, while you have Aromatherapy Blissey on the team, still give your opponent more free turns to act as they please, lead Skarmory is also very easily shutdown on the lead matchup, I can only think of Metagross who loses to it, and sure, you want to get Spikes out as soon as possible, problem is, the premier spinner, Starmie, you don't have any ways to target it, your spinblocker is also powerless to do anything against it, and, as i stated earlier, you don't have a good recovery move on it, while Spikes can be useful, the problem is that you require too much stuff on the field in order to function properly, something that never bodes well for your team, I think Toxic Spikes can work wonder in this instance, as it allows you to poison dangerous stuff like Rotom-A, Zapdos, Gliscor, Flygon, Dragonite, Latias and you get the gist.
First thing first, I would advise you to use Serene Grace on Blissey, normally, natural Cure is the superior choice, but you're using Gravity here, so your Thunder has 100% accuracy, and, thanks to Serene, a 70% chance to paralyze incoming threats and discourage your opponent in seeing Blissey as fodder for any kind of sweepers, especially if you haven't set up the toxic spikes yet, or the opponent is something like Gengar who absorbs tspikes, or a steel type, Gengar, the bane of many stall teams, either by taunt or subsplit, is completely fucked by the paralysis.

Now, do you really need another physical wall in Registeel? Yes, it can hit with EQ after Gravity, even set it up, but you already have 2 members using that move, and its attack is extremely lackluster, what if you can use a real sweeper, something that can use the Gravity to spam Earthquake, but also, Stone Edge, without a care in the world? Something along the lines of Choice Band Tyranitar, who will up the ante against opposing stall teams, and greatly help you against threats like the Starmie I mentioned earlier, but also more annoying stuff, like paralyzed Gengar, Latias, Rotom-A, Heatran (which also happens to be an headache for you, with Blissey scared of taunt and/or Explosion, and Tentacruel not really being the best tank for it), Zapdos and so on.
Another user mentioned Breloom being problematic, and yeah, you can easily change that by simply giving Dusknoir some coverage moves, Fire Punch for example, is looking tempting, it allows you to dispatch breloom, but also Swords Dance+Roost Scizor, who your team has no real way to deal with other than praying you get lucky, Wow is also in conflict with the paralysis and Toxic Spikes under Gravity, you can also use Earthquake over Dynamicpunch yeha, the confuse may seem enticing, but, truth is, you don't have the attacking power of machamp with Dusknoir, so if the opponent switches out, you don't have many ways to punish it, worst even, Gravity turns will run out, oh, and don't forget, 28 atk evs on Dusknoir, so that you can ohko 100% of times offensive Heatran after rocks.
Which leaves us, with the last change, your lead matchup, and your lack of speed, in case things go out of control, and for that, I say, simply run Choice Scarf Jirachi over Skarmory in the lead slot as I stated earlier, Spikes may seem helpful, but you're focusing on so much stuff for your plan to work, that in a battle with any competent opponent, you won't be able to get everything done, we need to trim the fat a bit here, and Skarmory with that set loses momentum horribly against almost every single leads, Jirachi though, has a great customable moveset, why yes, it can run Thunderpunch to make sure Dragon Dance Gyarados doesn't have any funny idea, it can run U-turn, to keep up momentum, Iron Head, especially with either paralysis giving you more chances of the opponent not having their turn, or more quickyl draining their hp bars in case of poison, hell, with this setup, it isn't even impossible to imagine flinching to death something like Suicune, but of course, we cannot gamble everything on luck, so as the fourth final moveslot, I'd go entirely with Trick, in case you REALLY need to get rid of a defensive threat, or a sturdy setup sweeper, like the Suicune I mentioned.





Now, here's the thing, I'm on the cell, so i have no fucking idea how to post you the importables, but to make this as concise as possible:
Blissey only Serene grace>Natural Cure,
Dusknoir, remove evs from pdef to give it 28 PAtk and you're done, you don't even need to change nature, after that, Earthquake>Dpunch and Fire Punch>Wow
Jirachi max atk max speed 6 sdef (as a general rule, if you don't run leftovers use uneven numbers, it's a bit more complex than that, but this should give you the rundown that will be useful to you 99% of occasions regarding residuals) Iron head U-turn Trick ThunderPunch over Skarmory as the lead
CBTTar over Registeel, I tend to just run it Adamant max atk max speed to outspeed Defensive Rotom, Defensive 'Cune, other CBTTars, Nidoqueen defensive Heatran and so on, but it's not required, you can scale off some speed evs to give it to its hp, but you must be ABSOLUTELY sure that it has more speed than defensive Skarmory, or it will Roost your Stone Edges, something like 92+ should set you on the right road, moves Pursuit Stone Edge and Crunch are required, the fourth slot can be customized to your team's needs, Earthquake too, if you want, but again, don't depend too much on Gravity being present during both your theorybuilding and actual play phases, or you'll risk getting washed.
Finally, be careful of Clefable, Magic Guard works differently in DPPt, regarding paralisys, but with Jirachi and Tyranitar, you should be able to have the tools at least to stop it (do consider also Superpower on TTar, if you're struggling with the Knock Off variant)
That's all, it's surprising to see new blood starting with DPPt, a pleasant surprise, that is, have an enjoyable stay.