- Stealth Rock is THE staple move of the metagame. It should be present on every team. It is the easiest hazard to setup, and affect any pokémon bar the obvious exception of Magic Guard users. The extra damage may look minuscule to you but can really make a difference many times, making 3HKOs and 2HKOs become 2HKOs and OHKOs, respectively. Not to mention those revenge killers that hate having to take residual damage every time that they enter on battle. Even if you aren't looking for this, there is another reason to use Stealth Rock: being able to break Focus Sash, Multiscale and Sturdy. This can sometimes mean a difference when trying to battle against enemy Dragonites, also you should be prepared to gimmicky but annonying strategies such as F.E.A.R and Copycat Riolu.
- Spikes is another great entry hazard, unfortunately not as great as Stealth Rock. With too many flying/levitating things on the metagame, this entry hazard should only be used as an auxiliary hazard with Stealth Rock. Being able to do more damage to grounded things that resist Stealth Rock is a plus, but getting three layers of Spikes is very hard, if not impossible. When you get one layer of this and of Stealth Rock, however, you are certain that your opponent will be sad. This entry hazard is still amazing and should be used if you can afford to.
- Toxic Spikes however is awful. There are too many things immune to this hazard on the metagame, many things that aren't immune generally don't stay enough on the battle to care about it, and with grounded Poison-types being more common on the metagame (read: Venusaur, Ammoongus, Tentacruel) Toxic Spikes may prove to be a waste of moveslot on some situations. Not to mention that the residual damage from poison adds too slowy in comparison with Spikes and Stealth Rock, to be useful for offensive teams. Also, as the user above said, if you can't get two layers, your opponent can take advantage of the normal poison to become immune to toxic poison, burn, paralysis, sleep! Don't bother using this except on stall teams, but who uses stall these days?
As for the questions:
- What Pokemon have you found are successful at laying down entry hazards?
Forretress. It's a staple on most of my teams because not only it lay down hazards, but it can also get rid of them with Rapid Spin. However, if you aren't looking to use and get rid of hazards in one pokémon, you are better off using Ferrothorn. It's better than Forretress because it has much more utility (can paralyze the opponent, annoy him with Leech Seed, and defeat Water-types with Power Whip) has better Special Defense and a better tipying (both defensively AND offensively). The only reason why I don't use it is because I really need Rapid Spin from Forretress, but I am willing to always use Ferrothorn if Game Freak gives Rapid Spin to it on the next game or generation. Still, I've used it on the past and is extremely good on what it does, and unlike Forretress it's not setup bait for most Pokémon.
Apart from the two, I've managed to setup Stealth Rock using Tyranitar, but it's a bit harder for him to use hazards because of its common weakness.
I can' say anything about Deoxys-D because I didn't yet tried to use him. Also, as a last not; I've tried to use Stealth Rock on offensive sets of Heatran, and failed miserably, because Heatran rarely gets a chance to use it. Don't use Heatran to setup hazards, never, unless it's defensive.
- What Pokemon are good at removing or preventing the use of entry hazards?
Forretress, as I said above, but I'm also using Xatu to great sucess. Xatu is great because the entry hazards will be on my opponent's side. Their spinner is forced to take residual damage to get rid of it. Ah if I had a ghost to abuse this fact... I've tried to use Starmie, but it's only useful on rain teams. I've tried to use it on a sandstorm team, and it's not good. It's either weak offensively because it's forced to use Leftovers to mitigate the sandstorm damage, or it dies too quickly because of the residual damage from both Sandstorm and Life Orb recoil. If you plan to use both Recover and Rapid Spin to mitigate this, be prepared to deal with the fact that now you have worse coverage. Unfortunately Starmie suffers from four-moveslot syndrome and thus I recommend it only for rain teams. However, at those teams, Starmie is definitively the best spinner. I've also used Starmie on sun teams! However Starmie definitively works best on rain, as boosted Hydro Pump and acess to Thunder more than compensates for the lack of Life Orb if you decides to use Rapid Spin.
- What Pokemon or strategies can be used to prevent the spinning of entry hazards?
Unfortunately it's hard to prevent hazards from being spinned. Most Ghost-types nowadays have flaws that prevent them from being staples on most teams. Jellicent is only useful on defensive teams or if you are looking for a stallbreaker (and there are faster stallbreakers). Gengar is too frail and has only one good STAB, and is forced to rely on a innacurate move for coverage. Cofagrigus is too slow, Mismagius is frail on the physical side, and Golurk is not only slow, but is half Ground-type, making him weak to attacks that many spinners commonly use, such as Hydro Pump. Other spinblockers like Dusclops, Dusknoir and (lol) Banette are just bad. Unfortunately the best spinblockers are on the Uber tier, Arceus-Ghost and Giratina to name them. They are good on just about any team, but as I said they are Ubers. OU lacks a spinblocker that can be used on every team, I think that changing Rotom-A's types was a bad idea in the end; it was the best spinblocker that ever existed on OU.
