Gen 2 Expired Lidocane

[rowrowie]

https://pokepast.es/f77df9c90d27c5dc



Zapdos is the lead for this team. The worst lead matchups for ww zapdos are other electrics and sleep leads. Zapdos can switch to piloswine to deal with electrics and some sleep leads while moltres can switch on some other sleep leads. I used ww zapdos over restTalk zapdos because I was going to have moltres as my primary sleep talker. I am running toxic in my last slot so I can spread more chip damage on pokemon that switch on zapdos such as blissey, snorlax, and raikou. I am running hp ice over hp water so it isn't weakened in sun.



Moltres is my thief absorber, my primary sleep absorber and the sweeper for this team. Due to its nature as a sleep absorber and low pp of fire blast and sunny day RestTalk is required. Sunny day gives fire blast a 50% damage increase which gives it a 92.2% chance to 2hko snolax with spikes and a guaranteed 2hko on zapdos and raikou, but this damage isn't always enough and targets will need to be chipped which zapdos and cloyster will help with. If Moltres isn't able to sweep it can still make use its defensive profile on pokemon like nidoking, exeggutor and jynx to contribute to a team.



Cloyster is on this team because it's cloyster. Spikes do even more work with zapdos using whirlwind. Surf is still good even under sun as a 2hko on golem means it can't keep spikes off. Explosion is explosion. Cloyster and zapdos both use toxic in order to weaken threats into moltres fire blast. Cloyster can struggle keeping spikes up against starmie and tentacruel but then it can explode.


Gengar is an offensive that spinblocks, walls
monolax, can switch into toxic along with many more things. Thunderbolt is used over thunder over its higher accuracy especially in sun. Ice punch is great coverage which also gives it a chance to freeze which my team also has due to piloswine ice beam. Explosion can be used to take out a piece of the opponents team. While explosion is great at taking away a pokemon such a suicune or raikou, destiny bond can take out a +1 curse eq lax, pursuittar or a machamp. Since gengar deals with monolax and can cheese out curse eq lax every other lax set is tried to be forced to rest then phazed with zapdos.



Piloswine was added to the team due to its ability to beat hp ice electrics. It can also beat many gengar sets not carrying fire punch or dynamic punch and it threatens many more pokemon with its stab combination. RestTalk allows piloswine to absorb sleep and remain threatening throughout the game. Ice beam is not only great for dealing with flying types, exeggutor switching in, and many more ground types, but it is also can freeze pokemon which it has many opportunities to do so along with ice punch from gengar.


My team has too much of a toxic focus to use body slam and double edges recoil isn't the most favorable as I am not using sleep talk. I chose lovely kiss as my second move to disable one the opponents snorlax switch-ins. Curse allows snorlax to boost its attack so it can either acts as a wall breaker or a sweeper depending on if moltres can sweep the enemy team. I chose not to use sleep talk and just use rest due to already having to sleep talkers, and checks to many other special or mixed attackers. For example, nidoking can be checked by moltres and piloswine, lovely kiss and thief from jynx should be absorbed by moltres, same for exeggutor etc for every non water. Rest is still important for the things that snorlax needs to switch in on such as hp water electrics, wasting some of gengars DP PP and starmie.

 

[Siatam]

This team doesn't have any glaring defensive weaknesses, but I think its offensive strategies are very one dimensional. Defensively these team has the prerequisite Sleep Talk mons needed to check the common OU sleep users, and while the team lacks a true normal resist I think the combination of Toxics, Explosions, WW Zap, and Moltres' fire power is enough to keep the opponent's Snorlax in check. Admittedly Tyranitar is difficult to deal with, your only reliable switch in is the less than ideal Piloswine. However, I think the Tyranitar vulnerability is due to the team's offensive gameplan rather than its defensive one.

Your two self-proclaimed sweepers/breakers are Moltres and Snorlax. Both are mono-attacking sets and neither is difficult to wall. Zapdos can be an offensive tool with Spike shuffling but that strategy places high importance on keeping Spikes up, which means you need to keep Cloy, Gar, and Zap healthy. To improve this team I think you should focus on either Snorlax or Moltres. These are my suggestions:

->
- Fire Blast -> Earthquake
- Sunny Day -> Curse
- Rest -> Roar
- Sleep Talk ->Explosion

My choice for this team is to drop Moltres and focus on Lovely Kiss MonoLax. I chose Steelix to provide the team with a more reliable Snorlax check as well as another Explosion user to force progress. In some stall matchups it can also be used as anti-Skarmory tech. Typically I would've suggested Tyranitar here to give Snorlax Pursuit support, but I wanted to stay true to the original. Instead of using Pursuit to remove Ghost types, this team can instead use Piloswine and Steelix to switch into the ghosts and pressure the opponent with Pilo fishing for a freeze or Lix with phazing/Explosion.
I think forgoing Pursuit for Gengar-punishing switch-ins (Alakazam + MonoLax is another interesting example of this) is a novel strategy worth exploring on this team.


- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Whirlwind -> Rest
- Toxic -> Sleep Talk

Without Sleep Talk Moltres, the team needs to pick up the defensive slack somewhere else. The simplest solution for this is to use Zapdos. ST Zap is most important on the team to check Exeggutor, but I chose to use Thunderbolt over Thunder to improve the matchup against Nightmare Starmie. Starmie can easily switch in on Piloswine and could be very dangerous against a sleeping Thunder Zapdos.


- Thunderbolt
- Ice Punch
- Explosion
- Destiny Bond -> Dynamic Punch

With Steelix as a Snorlax check, I think it is less important for Gengar to have Destiny Bond to emergency trade with Eq Lax. In its place I chose Dynamic Punch as a high threat option vs Tyranitar and Snorlax. Machamp is still threatening for this team, but I think Dynamic Punch will provide more utility overall.

https://pokepast.es/d5c5b8d4a080986c