GETTIN' PHYSICAL
Hey guys, this will be my third RMT, and the first one not based on Scrafty (my favourite poke). With the prevalence of weather teams (still), I've gone from using weatherless teams, to sand teams, to rain teams and back to weatherless. I attempted using a sun team at one point, but that failed miserably. Anyways. I'm back to using weatherless, concentrating on a team rhythm of sorts and trying to get my resistances and physical/special pokes to match up in pairs.
What I have here, is a deliberate split between the team with 3 physical pokemon and 3 special pokemon. Each of the special pokemon pairs up with all three of the physical pokemon perfectly fine to produce a well articulated flow throughout the battle, in which the pattern just coincidentally happens to go physical-special-physical-special. Screens, another favourite feature of mine, is once again on my team. As demonstrated by the title though, my main sweepers are physical set-up sweepers, with 2/3 having a status immunity or status boost. Anyways, enough of the bullsh*t, lets take a look at this team.
TEAM BUILDING
So, I started with the one pokemon from my last team that was proving to be extremely useful: BU Breloom. This Breloom does extremely well in the rain, handling anything from jirachi, rotom, scizor even heatran. Although he is less durable outside of rain, his usefulness remains.
Hey guys, this will be my third RMT, and the first one not based on Scrafty (my favourite poke). With the prevalence of weather teams (still), I've gone from using weatherless teams, to sand teams, to rain teams and back to weatherless. I attempted using a sun team at one point, but that failed miserably. Anyways. I'm back to using weatherless, concentrating on a team rhythm of sorts and trying to get my resistances and physical/special pokes to match up in pairs.
What I have here, is a deliberate split between the team with 3 physical pokemon and 3 special pokemon. Each of the special pokemon pairs up with all three of the physical pokemon perfectly fine to produce a well articulated flow throughout the battle, in which the pattern just coincidentally happens to go physical-special-physical-special. Screens, another favourite feature of mine, is once again on my team. As demonstrated by the title though, my main sweepers are physical set-up sweepers, with 2/3 having a status immunity or status boost. Anyways, enough of the bullsh*t, lets take a look at this team.
TEAM BUILDING
So, I started with the one pokemon from my last team that was proving to be extremely useful: BU Breloom. This Breloom does extremely well in the rain, handling anything from jirachi, rotom, scizor even heatran. Although he is less durable outside of rain, his usefulness remains.
Next up, I added my favourite Dual Screener so far, something that nobody expects: Rotom-W
After Rotom was added, I went looking for something that had some more surprise factor: SD scizor
A 4x weakness to fire is never good, and having a 4x on top of a 2x weakness is even worse, so what better than a fire immunity, and all around good poke, than heatran?
So now I have a team with nothing to combat the ever-present fighting type...i needed something that could hit fast and hard, and KO pretty much every fighting type in the tier. Magic Guard Alakazam is one of my favourite psychic types so i figured why not.
Almost done, but I'd like at least one more thing to handle fighting types...I chose a bulk up/acrobatics/substitute tornadus.
Tornadus was working well for awhile...but not great. I wanted something that was faster, possibly a scarfer since I lacked one of those. I tried out hydreigon for a bit.
But the additional fighting weakness wasnt great, and i always lost to mach punches. What if, instead of having a fighting counter, I just have a fighting type myself? So finally I brought in conkeldurr who has been working amazingly ever since!
THE SETS
Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Poison Heal
Careful
236 HP / 216 SpDef / 56 Spd
Bulk Up
Seed Bomb
Drain Punch
Spore
So this is the current on-site Bulk Up set, not hard to use, and very bulky behind screens. Spore is standard fare, with Drain Punch for healing, Bulk Up for boosting and Seed Bomb for coverage. I like this thing because it can take hits and dish em out too, although it seems to have lost the surprise factor it had about two months ago, this thing can still win against the common banded scizor, jirachi, subpunch breloom, landorus, SD scizor and even defensive heatrans.
Rotom-W @ Light Clay
Levitate
Bold
252 Def / 252 SpDef / 4 Spd
Reflect
Light Screen
Volt Switch
Pain Split (Testing Hydro Pump)
So most of you guys are probably thinking that this is a really strange Rotom st to run, and a lot of you will want to suggest another set but honestly, I'm quite satisfied with this set. Rotom's single weakness and relatively good bulk along with screens allow it to tank a lot of hits without reliable recovery. The lack of HP investment is obviously to abuse Pain Split to the max, although I often find that Hydro Pump is more useful against threats like Gliscor and Landorus.
Scizor @ Leftovers
Technician
Adamant
252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spd
Sword Dance
Roost
Bug Bite
Bullet Punch
So I decided to use a scizor concentrated on attack, hence the positive attack nature and full ev investment, but I didnt want to sacrifice bulk, so I opted to keep its HP fully invested. The amount of teams that this scizor pushes through is amazing, handling both rain and sand teams extremely well. Most people expect a banded scizor, switching out to a counter while I SD. After they see the SD they attempt to batter me to pieces, but usually I'm behind screens so I take very little from their attacks. After I reach about 25%, I roost up just to show them that the game is over, and proceed to bullet punch sweep the whole team at +4 or +6.
Heatran @ Air Balloon
Flash Fire
Modest
248 HP / 100 SpDef / 160 Spd
Lava Plume
Roar
Stealth Rock
Earth Power
So this is essentially the on site specially defensive heatran, with two minor mods that i made: its modest, and it has earth power. Now, I'm not sure what difference a modest nature would make over a calm nature, i may run some calcs on that later, but right now im not too concerned. I run earth power though, to catch switch ins such as infernape, darmanitan and chandelure. Thoughts or suggestions to keep the fire immunity and the stealth rocker would be great though, since heatran is often the weak link unless facing sun teams (although conkeldurr now handles sun teams like no other).
Alakazam @ Focus Sash
Magic Guard
Timid
4 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 SPd
Focus Blast
Psychic
Shadow Ball
Hidden Power Ice
I use this poke as my main revenge killer and one of my best answers to landorus, gliscor, dragonite and salamence. After nite's multiscale has been broken, hp ice rapes it. Besides that, zam has had amazing use throughout my experience with it, being able to remove threats like gengar, starmie and toxicroak with ease. Magic Guard actually makes this poke, and I could not imagine using it without that.
Conkeldurr @ Leftovers
Guts
Adamant
120 HP / 252 Atk / 136 SpDef
Bulk Up
Drain Punch
Payback
Mach Punch
Another on-site set, bulk up conkeldurr definitely saves my ass against almost any kind of weather, taking down things like ferrothorn, all three weather inducers, scizor, terrakion, sawsbuck etc. You name it, and this guy can handle almost all of them. Biggest threats are reuniclus, slowbro, tornadus and acrobatics gliscor, but besides supereffective hits, this guy can tanks everything from behind screens and retaliate with an extremely powerful drain punch or payback. Not much else to explain, besides bringing this guy in after screens are set and taking down 3-4 pokes on a regular basis.
Breloom @ Toxic Orb
Poison Heal
Careful
236 HP / 216 SpDef / 56 Spd
Bulk Up
Seed Bomb
Drain Punch
Spore
So this is the current on-site Bulk Up set, not hard to use, and very bulky behind screens. Spore is standard fare, with Drain Punch for healing, Bulk Up for boosting and Seed Bomb for coverage. I like this thing because it can take hits and dish em out too, although it seems to have lost the surprise factor it had about two months ago, this thing can still win against the common banded scizor, jirachi, subpunch breloom, landorus, SD scizor and even defensive heatrans.
Rotom-W @ Light Clay
Levitate
Bold
252 Def / 252 SpDef / 4 Spd
Reflect
Light Screen
Volt Switch
Pain Split (Testing Hydro Pump)
So most of you guys are probably thinking that this is a really strange Rotom st to run, and a lot of you will want to suggest another set but honestly, I'm quite satisfied with this set. Rotom's single weakness and relatively good bulk along with screens allow it to tank a lot of hits without reliable recovery. The lack of HP investment is obviously to abuse Pain Split to the max, although I often find that Hydro Pump is more useful against threats like Gliscor and Landorus.
Scizor @ Leftovers
Technician
Adamant
252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spd
Sword Dance
Roost
Bug Bite
Bullet Punch
So I decided to use a scizor concentrated on attack, hence the positive attack nature and full ev investment, but I didnt want to sacrifice bulk, so I opted to keep its HP fully invested. The amount of teams that this scizor pushes through is amazing, handling both rain and sand teams extremely well. Most people expect a banded scizor, switching out to a counter while I SD. After they see the SD they attempt to batter me to pieces, but usually I'm behind screens so I take very little from their attacks. After I reach about 25%, I roost up just to show them that the game is over, and proceed to bullet punch sweep the whole team at +4 or +6.
Heatran @ Air Balloon
Flash Fire
Modest
248 HP / 100 SpDef / 160 Spd
Lava Plume
Roar
Stealth Rock
Earth Power
So this is essentially the on site specially defensive heatran, with two minor mods that i made: its modest, and it has earth power. Now, I'm not sure what difference a modest nature would make over a calm nature, i may run some calcs on that later, but right now im not too concerned. I run earth power though, to catch switch ins such as infernape, darmanitan and chandelure. Thoughts or suggestions to keep the fire immunity and the stealth rocker would be great though, since heatran is often the weak link unless facing sun teams (although conkeldurr now handles sun teams like no other).
Alakazam @ Focus Sash
Magic Guard
Timid
4 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 SPd
Focus Blast
Psychic
Shadow Ball
Hidden Power Ice
I use this poke as my main revenge killer and one of my best answers to landorus, gliscor, dragonite and salamence. After nite's multiscale has been broken, hp ice rapes it. Besides that, zam has had amazing use throughout my experience with it, being able to remove threats like gengar, starmie and toxicroak with ease. Magic Guard actually makes this poke, and I could not imagine using it without that.
Conkeldurr @ Leftovers
Guts
Adamant
120 HP / 252 Atk / 136 SpDef
Bulk Up
Drain Punch
Payback
Mach Punch
Another on-site set, bulk up conkeldurr definitely saves my ass against almost any kind of weather, taking down things like ferrothorn, all three weather inducers, scizor, terrakion, sawsbuck etc. You name it, and this guy can handle almost all of them. Biggest threats are reuniclus, slowbro, tornadus and acrobatics gliscor, but besides supereffective hits, this guy can tanks everything from behind screens and retaliate with an extremely powerful drain punch or payback. Not much else to explain, besides bringing this guy in after screens are set and taking down 3-4 pokes on a regular basis.
