Monotype Ghost Balance

[aeth]

Hey, I haven't really built ghost ever and am looking to sharpen up some stuff. Open to any changes and all feedback.

Now for the team.

https://pokepast.es/02dc3fbf3710f861


Because it can't be a ghost team without it. It has specs for damage with mystical fire for steel types like treads, with shadow ball and moonblast for STAB. Thunderbolt is also here for any defensive water types like empoleon and primarina with an AV, with it being EV'd to guaranteed 2HKO without a 252+.

Hazard control had to be here somehow. It contains rapid spin as usual with spikes, but I've also given it beat up and sticky barb for it to be on the more the defensive side, while also having the chance to potentially cripple. And in case it can't get the barb off, it has strength sap.

He was gonna be here, might as well be now. With 2 ground weaknesses, we'll need an answer to mons like tusk and hands, and any fighting types that learn earthquake really. This is where he comes in with an air balloon and psychic to shut down those types, alongside focus blast for the dark matchup, and nasty plot to boost up and steal the game.

I've run out of interesting sentences for introductions. The pult is carrying the usual will-o-hex combination with dragon darts, but in case gholdengo can't win the game, I've also given it DDance so that even with 1 boost, it can win the game if it needs to. While the EVs are in favor of SpA, the attacking stat has enough investment to also be beneficial.

Hi babyberry, when did you get here? (I don't call it that often.) Anyways, I've given it max defense & max HP with parting shot, recover, and shadow ball, but to guarantee momentum and status, I've replaced malignant chain with toxic.

Bet you didn't expect this one. It's one of the few ghost types that can set-up rocks, so having it is a good asset. And with a sash, it can either be used as a lead, or as a safe switch-in to OHKO mons like roaring moon with it's sash. Our team doesn't exactly like flying types, so to counter them, I've given it stone edge.

I know this team has a few counters (i.e. priority), but I'm trying to figure out what I want to iron out exactly.

 

[Pengairxan]

Hey, I haven't really built ghost ever and am looking to sharpen up some stuff. Open to any changes and all feedback.

Now for the team.

https://pokepast.es/02dc3fbf3710f861


Because it can't be a ghost team without it. It has specs for damage with mystical fire for steel types like treads, with shadow ball and moonblast for STAB. Thunderbolt is also here for any defensive water types like empoleon and primarina with an AV, with it being EV'd to guaranteed 2HKO without a 252+.

Hazard control had to be here somehow. It contains rapid spin as usual with spikes, but I've also given it beat up and sticky barb for it to be on the more the defensive side, while also having the chance to potentially cripple. And in case it can't get the barb off, it has strength sap.

He was gonna be here, might as well be now. With 2 ground weaknesses, we'll need an answer to mons like tusk and hands, and any fighting types that learn earthquake really. This is where he comes in with an air balloon and psychic to shut down those types, alongside focus blast for the dark matchup, and nasty plot to boost up and steal the game.

I've run out of interesting sentences for introductions. The pult is carrying the usual will-o-hex combination with dragon darts, but in case gholdengo can't win the game, I've also given it DDance so that even with 1 boost, it can win the game if it needs to. While the EVs are in favor of SpA, the attacking stat has enough investment to also be beneficial.

Hi babyberry, when did you get here? (I don't call it that often.) Anyways, I've given it max defense & max HP with parting shot, recover, and shadow ball, but to guarantee momentum and status, I've replaced malignant chain with toxic.

Bet you didn't expect this one. It's one of the few ghost types that can set-up rocks, so having it is a good asset. And with a sash, it can either be used as a lead, or as a safe switch-in to OHKO mons like roaring moon with it's sash. Our team doesn't exactly like flying types, so to counter them, I've given it stone edge.

I know this team has a few counters (i.e. priority), but I'm trying to figure out what I want to iron out exactly.

This is a decent first draft mons wise, but lacks a lot of what makes ghost so powerful in terms of speed/offensive pressure.
Right now a majority of the tiers Dark's are going to be able to come in and easily outpace your team such as Choice Band Meowscarada and Greninja with little to no resistance as the only mon faster is Dragapult and with how its currently built, it won't be able to revenge them at all. Ghost is not a type capable of playing second fiddle and needs to be playing aggressively. The team also lacks any good physical breaker, only having pult and mixed pult plays more of a utility role on teams than being the main shining star while Golurk greatly struggles to stick around long term.


A few notable things that come to mind are the following:
Mystical Fire isn't really needed for most Steels in the tier, a majority of them are already scared relentlessly of Shadow Ball like Gholdengo, Iron Treads, and Scizor after very minor chip damage along with it just being bad into Steel itself due to dedicated special walls like Heatran and Goodra-H easily tanking it. Power Gem would be vastly preferred to better handle Fire-types like Volcarona and Ogerpon-H. Modest also makes Flutter Mane too slow, notably now being slower than Meowscarada, Greninja, and Darkrai which will rip this team apart otherwise as mentioned earlier making it need timid. I'm also not sure what the Special Defense is for.

Sticky Barb isn't all that helpful in getting bramble onto the field to spin nor and with your only knock off threat being Golurk, its likely not going to get passed onto the contact attackers you would wish. You would much prefer Heavy-Duty Boots. Power Whip is also preferred over Beat Up to better handle Water- and Ground-types such as Barraskewda, Swampert and Offensive Great Tusk.

Psychic isn't really nessicary on for Fighting or Poison. Most Fighting teams can generally check Ghold more through Night Slash Gallade or Specs Shadow Ball Iron Valiant which you would rather click Shadow Ball or Make It rain into respectivelly while the lone Poison either loses to Ghold naturally like Clodsire, Pex, and Sneasler or is on Poison and hardballs to the hard check of Alolan Muk. Which without Make it Rain, Gholdengo is going to greatly struggle to break. Therefore, you should opt for Make It Rain > Psychic.

If you want to run Hex Dragapult, I would highly recommend dropping Dragon Dance and instead running U-turn. Along with this as your EV Spread: 100 Atk / 184 SpA / 224 Spe Naive 184 SpA gets the OHKO on Flutter Mane after it has been statused. However, I would switch to running a Scarf Set to give the team some vital speed control giving you a threat faster than opposing scarfers like Urshifu-R, Roaring Moon, and Spectrier.

Toxic is too slow for Ghost, you get a lot more out of Maligcant Chain to immeditlly check threats like Azumarill and Iron Valiant. I would also run Itemless > Black Sludge giving you a switch into Knock Off users like Meowscarada and Roaring Moon alongside a mon that can comfortable check Ceruledge. I'm also personally a big fan of Foul Play > Shadow Ball on Ghost as it OHKOs DDance Dragapult, SD Ceruledge and SD Zoro-H, and is better into Scizor (both SD and CB variants)

This is probably about as good as Golurk can get, however, Golurk isn't great. Ghost doesn't care much for Stealth Rock overall and would vastly prefer here a good physical breaker. With Brambleghast on the team, I would say run Swords Dance Ceruledge instead as it gives speed control with Shadow Sneak alongside being able to break through a ton of special walls like Blissey and Alolan Muk for you.

With the suggested changes, the team will probably end up looking like this: https://pokepast.es/d38f9976a421d4e6
If you want to keep running Hex Pult, I would then say make Gholdengo a Scarfer like so: https://pokepast.es/7352ce86eba8f802 Granted Scarf Dengo is slower than a majority of Scarfers in the tier which isn't great.

I would also maybe experiment with dropping Gholdengo or Pecharunt for Nasty Plot Hex Spectrier for the added Speed + it being an insanely strong win condition into flying. If you do decide to go this route and drop Pecharunt for Spectrier, I would run a bulkier Gholdengo spread then of 252 HP / 152 Def / 104 Spe Bold Nature with Recover, Hex, Make it Rain, Thunder Wave.