ORAS OU First Competitive Team. Breloom+Volt-Turn!

[Krusiv]

Typing this on mobile so sorry for mistakes. Here is my first team. The idea of it was to make a balanced team with Breloom and Mega Scizor as the focal point.

One big weakneses to my team through testing is bulky grass types. A lack of offensive pressure was mentioned by a few opponents on Showdown.

Team At A Glance

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Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 12 HP / 244 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Focus Punch
- Seed Bomb
- Spore

Jolly Nature for maximum speed Spores. The idea of using Breloom with volt-turn is so that I can get it in safer to Spore targets and safer Poison Heal setups. Focus Punch and Seed Bomb as STABs. Set is good surprise factor but I switch to the Technician set?

Scizor @ Scizorite
Ability: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 44 Atk / 16 Def / 200 SpD
Impish Nature
- Bullet Punch
- U-turn
- Roost
- Swords Dance

Scizor was picked to resist/take down the fairy and psychic types that give Breloom trouble. Also acts as half of my Volt-Turn core. Roost along with M-Scizor bulk makes it a reliable and safe 'mon to use.

Volcarona @ Lum Berry
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Quiver Dance
- Fire Blast
- Giga Drain
- Bug Buzz

With Breloom and Scizor on the team I have a big weakness to fire, so i decided to use Volcarona. Volcarona also helps against bulky grass types that give my team problems. Quiver Dance + 3 attacks seems to be the best combo of coverage and power. Lum Berry over lefties to ignore one instance of status in hopes of scratching out a KO or Quiver Dance.

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split

Not entirely confident with Volcarona patching up my fire weakness and in need of a Volt Switcher, I picked Rotom-W. Also checks Talonflame and a few others that give my offense core trouble. Burn helps wear down walls and cripple offensive threats.

Tyranitar @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 248 HP / 80 Def / 180 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Stone Edge
- Pursuit
- Crunch

I decided to have a Pursuit trapper to make further use of VoltTurn. Sporting Stealth Rock plus being another check to Talonflame and psychics makes Tyranitar even more useful in the team. Being able to set hazards and KO common defoggers (lati twins) with the same 'mon is convenient.

Latias @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 72 HP / 184 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Psyshock
- Healing Wish
- Defog

My Mega Venusaur, Amoongus, and Keldeo check. Helps Volcarona do its job by getting rid of rocks. Otherwise fires off Draco Meteors to put dents into teams. Healing Wish for after Latias has done it's job. Thinking about replacing it for more coverage though.

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So there you have it. Not the most insightful RMT but hopefully it's good enough to not get locked. Thanks for reading!

 

[Krusiv]

Bump. Any feedback at all would be appreciated.

 

[Uberkong]

Hey man I like the team.

For starters, I'd like to talk about breloom, as it seems to be one of the key components of your team. This is a relatively passive breloom set, as it relies on putting a foe to sleep in order to set up a substitute or use focus punch. Just as you mentioned, I think that technician breloom is slightly more viable as well as more of an offensive threat, considering life orb + mach punch threatens faster pokemon such as heatran, manectric, excadrill and lopunny, while bullet seed severely weakens defensive pokemon such as clefable if you get more than 2 hits. While poison heal may be nice for longevity, breloom is still quite frail so the extra life orb damage is much appreciated, especially considering most experienced players will choose a sleep fodder and then send in a counter to breloom. One way you could implement this change is by keeping focus punch and dropping substitute for mach punch and seed bomb for bullet seed. This is an extremely effective lead set with a focus sash, really only having a bad matchup versus pokemon with both taunt and a way to bring breloom down to its focus sash. Nonetheless, I love breloom and I am always happy to see folks using fun sets with it.

On another note, I think that it is worth noting that your team is very weak to Weavile. Weavile is quite common, and with only scizor and rotom checking life orb low kick variants (probably the most popular set), it will terrorize your team if scizor is sufficiently weakened. One possibility would be running a chople berry on tyranitar, as leftovers recovery is usually not enough patch up tyranitars weaknesses anyways, and most low kick weaviles will stay only to be ko'd be stone edge.

Speaking of weavile, your team lacks any kind of ice coverage, which is a fairly significant issue for an offensive/balanced team considering the popularity of pokemon such as landorus, garchomp, and gliscor. Ice is not always easy to fit on a team, but you should have at least one solid check to Choice Scarf Landorus-T, and right now your main hope of beating scarf lando is getting a quiver dance up with volcorona or setting up with scizor before they can do anything (since nobody will keep a scarf landorus in on your rotom to take a hydro pump anyways). You could put Ice Beam on Tyranitar as a way to lure in and eliminate landorus, garchomp, or gliscor, although this really only works early on in the game before ttar has taken much damage because it will need to survive an earthquake, althought prediction skills can allow you to nab one of these pokemon on the switch into a what the opponent might think to be a crunch or stone edge.

Another thing worth considering is roost/recover on latias over healing wish, and possibly replacing it with the more offensive latios. This is due to the fact that latias will need to switch into hazards and attacks, and latias cannot repeatedly check threats such as mega charizard y without recovery. Having recover also allows for multiple defog opportunities in any game, since latias will not be whittled down as fast. This change would complete a nice recovery defensive core where latias can switch into fire-type attacks for scizor, and recover the damage off and then weaken the threat with draco meteor, while scizor can also eliminate or weaken threats to latias while recovering off the damage taken from ice, dragon, and fairy type attacks. In my own experience, clefable, scizor, and latios compliment each other extremely well as a steel-dragon-fairy balanced core, which is something you may want to try yourself.

One final thing that I would consider on this team is running some speed investment on rotom-w, as with 56 evs you can outspeed 8 speed EV invested landorus-t (a common variant) before it can u-turn, and deal around 80% of its health with hydro pump, as well as outspeeding max speed adamant tyranitar. Slightly more speed investment can be used to outspeed jolly crawdaunt, although you already outspeed many pokemon that are slower but still invest heavily in speed. 128 speed ev's allow you to better handle adamant bisharp by outspeeding it and hitting it with will-o-wisp, but the loss of bulk is significant at that point. Some speed investment is always useful with popular defensive pokemon such as rotom, due to the fact that many slow wallbreakers will look to outspeed rotom as a benchmark to improving their matchup against balanced teams.

I don't see any particular problems with your Scizor or Volcarona sets, although it is worth noting that your only rock-type attack resistance is breloom, which is really only a viable switch-in to a powerful stone edge because you have poison heal. Your team has significant problems dealing with mega Diancie + magnezone, and while diancie isn't as common as lopunny or medicham (which you also struggle to handle because scizor cannot switch into high jump kick) it is common enough to warrant concern when teambuilding.

I think that if I could make one team member change to the team, it would be to replace tyranitar stealth rocks gliscor. Tyranitar is heavily damaged by steel, ground, and fairy moves, while being OHKO'd by most strong fighting type attacks. Gliscor on the other hand, can stop opposing setup sweepers and break down stall teams with a set of Stealth Rocks / Taunt / Knock Off / Earthquake. Specially Defensive invested Gliscor would also serve the important role of countering Heatran, which can freely come in on any member of your team (except for rotom), OHKOing breloom and scizor as well as fully walling volcarona.


Just to recap some things I think you struggle against (with a few others I haven't mentioned):
Weavile: OHKO's 4/6 members of your team after stealth rocks damage, and is only countered by scizor, while being checked by rotom.
Mega Diancie: OHKO's Breloom and Volcorona, and severely cripples every member of your team except for Scizor (which is scary because diancie is frequently paired with magnezone).
Mega Charizard Y: OHKO's 3/6 members of your team, and can focus blast a weakened TTar away. Does not feel threatened by latias or unboosted volcorona.
Heatran: OHKO's 2/6 members of your team, completely walls Volcarona and Latias, and only feels threatened by your Rotom-w.
Mega Gyrados: Earthquake + Ice Fang variants sweep through your team after a dragon dance, and force you to u-turn with scizor only to sacrafice another pokemon. This is another case where mach punch would be immensely helpful.
Clefable: While scizor hard counters many clefable sets, after an opponent realizes you are defensive, they are free to set up with clefable. This is really only threatening if you have already put a member of the opposing team to sleep and clefable is carrying flamethrower (which is a surprisingly common moveset). Volcorona will lose 1v1 to a clefable that has already gotten a couple of calm minds up, thanks to the limited PP of fire blast and the special attack drops of moonblast.
Landorus-T: Your only check to landorus is rotom, which can cost you significant momentum if your opponent simply clicks u-turn.

Overall I think your team is pretty cool, but my main advice is to keep the team style in mind when trying to polish it. If you are looking to have a balanced team, you should aim to increase the longevity of latias by adding recover over healing wish, and swapping out tyranitar for a hazard setter that has recovery and more manageable weaknesses. A more offensive team would lean towards having latios over latias, with technician breloom over poison heal, with the consideration of changing tyranitar to a choice band or choice scarf variant as well.