Latias | Celestia @ Cheri Berry
Levitate
252 HP / 64 Def / 16 Sp. Def / 176 Speed
Calm
- Psychic
- Reflect
- Light Screen
- Toxic
Absurdly tanky. Only Heracross’ Megahorn cleanly ohko’s as far as I’m aware, and with light screen up many Dragon Claws do as little as 30%. Psychic is the first mono attack I tried and it worked so I didn’t question it much. Dragon Claw was the other option I considered for a bit, but there are a lot of annoying poison threats like Gengar, Crobat, or exploding Weezing who are taken care of (plus Heracross). 176 Speed EV’s gets to 300 total, outspeeding all neutral max base 100’s. Things above that I didn’t consider very threatening. Cheri Berry since Latios needs Lum more, and there aren’t really any other good options, maybe Twistedspoon.
To be honest if the team began initially with Latias I probably would’ve tried Thunder Wave over Toxic, but since I started with Articuno who doesn’t learn T-wave I discovered how valuable Toxic is. There are a number of double team sets that don’t jump out on paper as being obvious threats (Miltank 4, Umbreon 2/4, Ludicolo 3/4, etc) that if you ignore can turn into surprise losses. A lot of the time normally you’re faced with the tough decision to either aim attacks at the Pokemon starting to DT, knowing that you might be wasting your turns while the teammate beats you up, or ignore the DTer in favor of taking care of teammates first and coming back to 2v1 it later, but giving it more time to setup. With Toxic the issue becomes almost non-existent: tag them once and you can safely ignore them for the rest of the fight, except for the few rest+dt sets that eq tends to take care of.
Swampert | Slaps @ Choice Band
Torrent
168 HP / 252 Att / 88 Speed
IVs: 30 Def / 30 Sp. Def / 30 Speed
Adamant
- Earthquake
- HP Rock
- Brick Break
- Ice Beam
Scored around 60% of the teams KO’s. 525 Attack Earthquake takes care of so many threats it’s absurd, 2HK0’ing almost every single neutral opponent in the game, even at 75%. HP Rock is better than Rock Slide, and was the next most used move. Ice Beam is mostly filler but has some uses against the 4x weak dragons. I’d generally only switch out Swampert first turn against certain Grass types. Care has to be taken when Swampert’s locked into EQ and Latias faints, as you really don’t want to get into a scenario where he’s stuck on EQ and unable to switch out before knowing all the opponent’s pokemon and/or only Snorlax is left. The set hits 177 speed to beat a crucial speed tier of all base 70’s with no speed investment, including the terrible trio of sheer cold users. His immunity to all the Thunder Waves in the tower is another incredibly useful advantage over Metagross.
Snorlax | Plush @ Leftovers
Thick Fat
144 HP / 96 Att / 136 Def / 128 Sp. Def / 4 Speed
Adamant
- Return
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Protect
My favorite ice resist in this generation. Set is fairly standard, although it can’t be understated how difficult Snorlax is to take out with screens. Definitely the team member that fainted the least. Protect is essential for the set, especially since my team has no explosion resist/immunity. The streak would’ve ended prematurely a number of times from an explosion tie if I didn’t use a timely protect with Lax or Latios. I felt comfortable throwing out lax in most situations except when they had a fighting type or potential fissure user. Great end game pokemon too, won a number of games where it ended up 2v1 against the lax.
Latios | Celestio @ Lum Berry
Levitate
4 Hp / 252 Sp. Att / 252 Speed
Modest
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunderbolt
- Protect
Best pokemon overall in emerald frontier. Protect is mandatory, Psychic and Thunderbolt also don’t need explanation, Surf is too weak to consider in doubles, and Dragon Claw over Ice Beam as I prefer to hit opposing Lati@s harder and it ohko’s Salamence and Flygon w/o defense investment anyway. Not much else to say here, we've all used Latios