tl;dr I make a shitty team and still try to make it sound like I'm hot shit
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Ever wondered how teams work in GSC? Well, here's a little example of a teambuilding exercise I went through. This particular example is of a team that DOESN'T work, but there's plenty to be learned from counter-examples. I also go through an exercise to try to "fix" the team, which still feels kinda sub-par, but still forces more wins than the original version.
My main idea going into team-building went something like this:
-Steelix is a pretty nasty wallbreaker because he can force his walls to eat Explosion thanks to Curse.
-However, one thing that Steelix doesn't want to Explode on, and that simultaneously steals a lot of momentum in the Spikes game, is Cloyster.
-If I can support this with a mon that can get quick Cloyster kills, Steelix gets really dangerous.
-Tbolt Ttar can get quick Cloy kills. Also backs up Steelix as a Phazer to free him up to Explode.
So here, my team looked like this:
Steelix @ Leftovers
-Earthquake
-Explosion
-Curse
-Roar
Tyranitar @ Leftovers
-Crunch
-Pursuit
-Thunderbolt
-Roar
I use Crunch because it lets Ttar do all the other Pursuit jobs it could ever want. From there, I filled in the rest of the team. Obviously, Snorlax needs to be on here somewhere, and with all these Ground weaknesses piling up, it seemed natural to toss Zapdos on the team to avoid that being a huge issue.
Snorlax @ Leftovers
(Set TBD)
Zapdos @ Leftovers
-Thunder
-HP Ice
-Rest
-Sleep Talk
From here, I still wanted other Ground counters. I also notice I don't yet have anything to play the Spikes game. I also have 3 Fighting weaknesses and only Zapdos to address Machamp so far. It seems increasingly obvious that Starmie is the only thing able to plug all the holes I'd need to with this slot:
Starmie @ Leftovers
-Surf
-Psychic
-Recover
-Rapid Spin
Starmie also helps deal with stuff like Tentacruel and Charizard that could otherwise be a royal pain and limit my options for the last slot. With my options sufficiently opened up, I figured I'd want another Explosion to synergize with Steelix's, possibly allowing double-pronged targeting of possible lynchpins of the opponent's defenses. Having only 1 Explosion is rarely useful offensively. Zapdos is often a pretty annoying mon to deal with, not to mention CharmBreon can also cramp Steelix's style. One dude who does a good job of countering both, all while shoring up possible Vap problems and giving me yet another look against Grounds (Starmie is really not something you want to be your primary answer there), I have Exeggutor:
Exeggutor @ Leftovers
-Psychic
-Giga Drain
-Sleep Powder
-Explosion
I had toyed with the Thief idea to ensure relevant sleep, but in the end I chickened out against the PursuitTar menace. Giga is more useful for limiting Vap and Suicune, and its healing is actually a lot more relevant than you'd think in terms of letting Egg stick around to get the boom off.
From here, I finally decided to settle on a Lax set. I noticed Ttar could take out Ghosts and make life hard for Miltank, whereas you can't necessarily rely on Steelix to Explode on Skarm. And if Steelix did Explode on Skarm, that'd open up Exeggutor, so I already had a plan to capitalize on that. And then there's the Umbreon double-team. Seems like plenty of ways to get FB Curselax rolling:
Snorlax @ Leftovers
-Double-Edge
-Fire Blast
-Curse
-Rest
The overall theme with this team was to have stall-like defensive coverage against key threats while also having offensive strength. Borat-esque Explosion teams tend to run into problems against Ttar and Tenta and Charizard, which this team avoids by emphasizing the defensive more and packing Starmie. They can also struggle to have sufficient coverage against all forms of Curselax, whereas this team has Steelix and Ttar to give a solid answer to FB Lax while having 2 high-defense Phazers that an EQ Lax would need to muscle through. Of course, this all comes at the cost of offensive pressure: I lack Spikes and some Explosions, with only Pursuit to really show for it. My idea, though, was that I'd have still enough Explosions to get rolling with just a little bit of Pursuit support, all while avoiding those annoying team matchup problems.
This idea is, however, flawed. Let me pose a not-at-all-ridiculous (in fact, a pretty good) stall team that would completely wall me and ultimately just wear me down:
-Suicune
-Skarmory
-Tyranitar
-Raikou
-Snorlax
-Forretress
This team puts up basically every stop my offenses fail to break through, all while having a pretty good Spikes game, especially when you look over at my own comparatively underdeveloped Spikes game. You'd think I'd be able to generate something with Explosions, right? Well, here's the thing: Steelix's most natural Explosion in this scenario is catching Suicune, who... isn't really needed to wall anything else. Exeggutor is kind of inconvenienced by it, but really, with Giga Drain being a small chance at a 3HKO, and with this stall strugging against Steelix without Suicune, and with three other great answers to Egg, it's unlikely that Egg ever sees Cune. Of those three answers to Egg, Skarm is the best. Egg could even put it to sleep, Skarm doesn't care. Psychic is only a slight chance at 6HKO even with full sleep turns, and Skarm isn't really needed against anything else on the team. It's an annoying case of divide-and-conquer, and it's hard to see a good continuation from there. You'll notice I have a Snorlax who's unable to muscle past Ttar because of my lack of Spikes (Starmie's passiveness really shining through), a Zapdos that doesn't get any help at all (there's no reason for Egg to get a chance to Explode on Raikou with Skarm around, let alone Ttar and Forretress to back it up just in case), and a Ttar who's basically dead weight with nothing to Pursuit.
Against this sort of team, I'd need to rely on dumb luck and surprises. Opponent gets careless and lets Forry die to Lax FB. Opponent brings Ttar in on Egg after letting Skarm take sleep, scouting out HP Fire but instead getting (sort of) crippled by GD. Then Lax critting its way past the Ttar. All in time to not succumb to Spikes, which WILL be down with Forry laying them (thus keeping Starmie from immediately coming in). Perhaps the Forry isn't an HP Bug variant, though, in which case Ttar might carelessly come in to try to Pursuit me, thus letting me cripple him back. Speaking of Starmie and carelessness, maybe Zapdos para's that Raikou and gives Starmie a chance to KO on FPs and shit. Maybe, just maybe, Suicune gets crippled by Ttar Tbolt para and lets me KO that way, thereby opening Steelix up to Explode more usefully on Skarm and maybe giving Egg ideas of nabbing that Raikou. Perhaps my only legit chance of winning comes from a concerted effort of Ttar Tbolt and Steelix EQs on the switch, coupled with hoping the Suicune is not a STer (it SHOULD be a STer, but Vap fears might prompt Roar). Then Steelix might be able to get past a sleeping Cune with +1 EQs rather than boom, which in turn would draw Skarm in at some point and allow an actually-useful Explosion. Still, you note a lot of conditionals and ifs that I have no control over, no ability to enforce - this is a sign of a bad offense.
The fact that he can basically guarantee Spikes cannot be understated. Starmie is rarely a full stop to Spikes on its own, but in this particular case I'd have plenty of recourse against a Cloy team due to Starmie's natural advantage and my Tbolt Ttar, which can also handle spinblockers. Forry, however, just kinda manhandles me with HP Bug threats and inability to be Pursuited by Ttar. I'd need him to take Sleep or a careless FB with it, neither of which I can reliably force. All the while, I can't force a break through his defenses, so he holds strong and watches me wither and die, likely ultimately breaking through my Spikes-worn team with his Snorlax or Raikou.
How could we fix such a team?
(warning: this is where I begin to lose focus and kinda take the shotgun approach to presenting ideas)
As we can see, Starmie and Ttar are the weak links here. Ttar at least has utility against a possible FB Lax in this scenario, and is kind of driving my team concept, so he's not the weakest link. If we try to go MixTar, too, we lose the ability to back up Steelix with another Phazer and therefore the ability to freely use it to wallbreak, which also kinda flagrantly breaks the concept of the team (not to mention paradoxically reduces its own effectiveness, as a Steelix unable to Explode freely can't necessarily get Suicune out of the way for mixed Ttar to be useful). You'd also need all 4 attacks for MixTar to really be scary, even without Suicune, which means no Pursuit and, consequently, all the benefits you kinda rely on with that. The theme of this team seems to be insufficient wallbreaking and poor synergy with sweepers, so what we probably don't need is another attacker that tends to function more as a matchup-dependent sweeper than a wallbreaker.
The other option is to trade out this weaksauce Starmie, but there's not a lot of great options that can still play the Spikes game. Perhaps a Forretress of my own, with HP Fire + Toxic to ensure I can keep Spikes against another Forry, then use Tbolt Ttar to help out against Starmie and Cloy. Problem is, this makes me mad weak to some of the stuff Starmie was supposed to help with: Ttar, Tentacruel, Charizard, Grounds, and Machamp all have much easier lives now. I guess Explosion > Toxic would be an option to mitigate this somewhat, but then there's no reliable way to weaken Starmie so that Ttar may one day force it into a dilemma. I guess there's some give-or-take here: after all, Starmie being dead weight and therefore forcing you to play 5-on-6 in common matchups is probably worse than being swept by the odd Charizard, even if the latter is a much more obvious cause of your loss. So Forr may actually be closer to a (local) maximum, but it does kind of go against the philosophy of the team and is still riddled with obvious weaknesses, so let's try to find another fix.
Okay, so what of other possible changes? Egg running HP Fire over Giga Drain might work, as it allows Egg to circumvent Steels and possibly get at something good. The problem with this plan, however, is that Ttar still can't be broken easily. Maybe you can Sleep it and then pound on it with +1 Lax DEs, which actually isn't a terrible plan. However, if you don't get the Sleep, or Ttar starts rolling (you struggle to switch in on it, and with no GD deterrent a mixed Ttar is a lot more likely to find opportunities to get good hits in), there's not a great way to follow up. So it's basically live or die by the accurate sleep, which is a dicey plan, but probably better than the futility of the above scenario. Running Vap > Starmie is a possibility in this situation; Starmie's hardly a sure bet to keep Spikes off, we've already seen how useless it can be, and Vap might actually make use of some Explosion holes or even break that pesky Raikou. Not to mention it shores up the Ttar weakness. Of course, then we run into Tentacruel issues, but that's a rare enough matchup to tolerate (although it should be getting more common imo). Perhaps AA Vap, but then you struggle to keep Vap active and may as well just run Suicune.
There's also another potential fix: run a fourth attack on Lax! If you can add, say, EQ to that last slot, you can smash right through the Rocks while not needing to rely on the Skarm Explosion kill from Steelix, and problem should be solved, right? Plus the surprise KO will be a lot more likely, perhaps likely enough to mitigate the fact you can't force it per se. There's other options like LK and Toxic, too. I wouldn't do a SD set here because that makes all three of your Raikou answers Exploders, which means you have three wallbreakers that do not target Raikou. They all go boom, Raikou sweeps you. Not a fun way to end a match. So Lax needs to sweep. I also wouldn't use a Rest set either because mixed Resting Lax tends to underwhelm; he'll probably get more health back from free lefties due to Curse anyway, all while staying active (something I find a Rest mixlax struggles to accomplish).
Even without blowing up a multi-attack non-Rest Lax, though, you'd probably want another Raikou answer with both of your other main ones being Exploders (which you intend to use to wallbreak). Raikou is the bigger deal here because when push comes to shove, you can always go for Zapdos dittos, not to mention that Zapdos gets targeted by Explosions. Anyway, a possible response to this is a Raikou of your own, which would go over Zapdos. This would also help against the Tenta and Charizard threats that might otherwise prompt you to keep Starmie over a Spiker like Forry, and any weakness that emerges against Nidoking could be answered by an Exploding Forry (which we established wouldn't be best last paragraph, but let's roll as though it were just to make the following point hit that much harder). However, you'd be even weaker against Machamp, EQ Ttar (don't sleep on it!), and Grounds like Marowak, so to preserve the "don't lose obviously to shit" principle, Starmie will need to be kept should Zapdos be replaced by Raikou. Grounds, particularly Nidoking, get pretty rough to handle, but it's not an insurmountable challenge, and now you've semi-safely inserted a Lax that's much more capable of breaking teams open without Spikes support.
If push comes to shove, you might be able to try a ST Suicune here to mitigate Ground problems a bit here (or even Vap to potentially blast through opposing Raikous and make use of holes opened by your Exploders, although being slower than Nidoking is not great), but I feel like not being able to do ANYTHING about Spikes without a flier and with so many non-Rest mons can be pretty brutal. ALTERNATIVELY, I could keep Zapdos and run EQ > Tbolt on Ttar. Is it janky? Yes. But it would give a semi-decent answer to Raikou that the team would appreciate (remember, Zapdos isn't as big a deal because I can force plays against it).
Overall, the original team was flawed, and attempts to address its shortcomings revealed other shortcomings. The main takeaways, imo, are:
1 - Don't sleep on Suicune! Offenses need a way to not only wallbreak it, but capitalize off that. Having no sweepers ready to capitalize off the lack of Suicune kind of doomed the central concept from the start, considering that's one of Steelix's wallbreaking possibilities (the original Steelix wallbreak, actually, before Suicune dipped in popularity, Zapdos got Hidden Power, and Steelix consequently decided to start Exploding on Zapdos instead). You can generalize this to "you should ensure your team has offensive synergy" instead, as we found some lame ducks and a Zapdos that couldn't get free in the example above.
2 - Don't be too passive! Especially on teams that rely on attacking, rather than Spikes, for offense. Needing to rely on Starmie put the nail in the coffin for this team, as it did NOTHING to help my offenses and only very weakly addressed my Spikes game. You could make this more specific by changing it to "Starmie sucks" instead, because it really, really does.
3 - No team is perfect. Just make sure you have SOME play against your weaknesses, rather than trying to ensure your answers are air-tight. (One way to have play is to be FASTER, by the way, so Speed really matters when teambuilding, and it's better to be "weak" to slower threats like Marowak than faster threats like Nidoking). If you try to do the air-tight strategy, you'll run into problems that go a little deeper than the surface level. This example team's philosophy of trying to do offense while having "perfect" defenses for any matchup revealed that its offense was not actually sufficient!
My main idea going into team-building went something like this:
-Steelix is a pretty nasty wallbreaker because he can force his walls to eat Explosion thanks to Curse.
-However, one thing that Steelix doesn't want to Explode on, and that simultaneously steals a lot of momentum in the Spikes game, is Cloyster.
-If I can support this with a mon that can get quick Cloyster kills, Steelix gets really dangerous.
-Tbolt Ttar can get quick Cloy kills. Also backs up Steelix as a Phazer to free him up to Explode.
So here, my team looked like this:
Steelix @ Leftovers
-Earthquake
-Explosion
-Curse
-Roar
Tyranitar @ Leftovers
-Crunch
-Pursuit
-Thunderbolt
-Roar
I use Crunch because it lets Ttar do all the other Pursuit jobs it could ever want. From there, I filled in the rest of the team. Obviously, Snorlax needs to be on here somewhere, and with all these Ground weaknesses piling up, it seemed natural to toss Zapdos on the team to avoid that being a huge issue.
Snorlax @ Leftovers
(Set TBD)
Zapdos @ Leftovers
-Thunder
-HP Ice
-Rest
-Sleep Talk
From here, I still wanted other Ground counters. I also notice I don't yet have anything to play the Spikes game. I also have 3 Fighting weaknesses and only Zapdos to address Machamp so far. It seems increasingly obvious that Starmie is the only thing able to plug all the holes I'd need to with this slot:
Starmie @ Leftovers
-Surf
-Psychic
-Recover
-Rapid Spin
Starmie also helps deal with stuff like Tentacruel and Charizard that could otherwise be a royal pain and limit my options for the last slot. With my options sufficiently opened up, I figured I'd want another Explosion to synergize with Steelix's, possibly allowing double-pronged targeting of possible lynchpins of the opponent's defenses. Having only 1 Explosion is rarely useful offensively. Zapdos is often a pretty annoying mon to deal with, not to mention CharmBreon can also cramp Steelix's style. One dude who does a good job of countering both, all while shoring up possible Vap problems and giving me yet another look against Grounds (Starmie is really not something you want to be your primary answer there), I have Exeggutor:
Exeggutor @ Leftovers
-Psychic
-Giga Drain
-Sleep Powder
-Explosion
I had toyed with the Thief idea to ensure relevant sleep, but in the end I chickened out against the PursuitTar menace. Giga is more useful for limiting Vap and Suicune, and its healing is actually a lot more relevant than you'd think in terms of letting Egg stick around to get the boom off.
From here, I finally decided to settle on a Lax set. I noticed Ttar could take out Ghosts and make life hard for Miltank, whereas you can't necessarily rely on Steelix to Explode on Skarm. And if Steelix did Explode on Skarm, that'd open up Exeggutor, so I already had a plan to capitalize on that. And then there's the Umbreon double-team. Seems like plenty of ways to get FB Curselax rolling:
Snorlax @ Leftovers
-Double-Edge
-Fire Blast
-Curse
-Rest
The overall theme with this team was to have stall-like defensive coverage against key threats while also having offensive strength. Borat-esque Explosion teams tend to run into problems against Ttar and Tenta and Charizard, which this team avoids by emphasizing the defensive more and packing Starmie. They can also struggle to have sufficient coverage against all forms of Curselax, whereas this team has Steelix and Ttar to give a solid answer to FB Lax while having 2 high-defense Phazers that an EQ Lax would need to muscle through. Of course, this all comes at the cost of offensive pressure: I lack Spikes and some Explosions, with only Pursuit to really show for it. My idea, though, was that I'd have still enough Explosions to get rolling with just a little bit of Pursuit support, all while avoiding those annoying team matchup problems.
This idea is, however, flawed. Let me pose a not-at-all-ridiculous (in fact, a pretty good) stall team that would completely wall me and ultimately just wear me down:
-Suicune
-Skarmory
-Tyranitar
-Raikou
-Snorlax
-Forretress
This team puts up basically every stop my offenses fail to break through, all while having a pretty good Spikes game, especially when you look over at my own comparatively underdeveloped Spikes game. You'd think I'd be able to generate something with Explosions, right? Well, here's the thing: Steelix's most natural Explosion in this scenario is catching Suicune, who... isn't really needed to wall anything else. Exeggutor is kind of inconvenienced by it, but really, with Giga Drain being a small chance at a 3HKO, and with this stall strugging against Steelix without Suicune, and with three other great answers to Egg, it's unlikely that Egg ever sees Cune. Of those three answers to Egg, Skarm is the best. Egg could even put it to sleep, Skarm doesn't care. Psychic is only a slight chance at 6HKO even with full sleep turns, and Skarm isn't really needed against anything else on the team. It's an annoying case of divide-and-conquer, and it's hard to see a good continuation from there. You'll notice I have a Snorlax who's unable to muscle past Ttar because of my lack of Spikes (Starmie's passiveness really shining through), a Zapdos that doesn't get any help at all (there's no reason for Egg to get a chance to Explode on Raikou with Skarm around, let alone Ttar and Forretress to back it up just in case), and a Ttar who's basically dead weight with nothing to Pursuit.
Against this sort of team, I'd need to rely on dumb luck and surprises. Opponent gets careless and lets Forry die to Lax FB. Opponent brings Ttar in on Egg after letting Skarm take sleep, scouting out HP Fire but instead getting (sort of) crippled by GD. Then Lax critting its way past the Ttar. All in time to not succumb to Spikes, which WILL be down with Forry laying them (thus keeping Starmie from immediately coming in). Perhaps the Forry isn't an HP Bug variant, though, in which case Ttar might carelessly come in to try to Pursuit me, thus letting me cripple him back. Speaking of Starmie and carelessness, maybe Zapdos para's that Raikou and gives Starmie a chance to KO on FPs and shit. Maybe, just maybe, Suicune gets crippled by Ttar Tbolt para and lets me KO that way, thereby opening Steelix up to Explode more usefully on Skarm and maybe giving Egg ideas of nabbing that Raikou. Perhaps my only legit chance of winning comes from a concerted effort of Ttar Tbolt and Steelix EQs on the switch, coupled with hoping the Suicune is not a STer (it SHOULD be a STer, but Vap fears might prompt Roar). Then Steelix might be able to get past a sleeping Cune with +1 EQs rather than boom, which in turn would draw Skarm in at some point and allow an actually-useful Explosion. Still, you note a lot of conditionals and ifs that I have no control over, no ability to enforce - this is a sign of a bad offense.
The fact that he can basically guarantee Spikes cannot be understated. Starmie is rarely a full stop to Spikes on its own, but in this particular case I'd have plenty of recourse against a Cloy team due to Starmie's natural advantage and my Tbolt Ttar, which can also handle spinblockers. Forry, however, just kinda manhandles me with HP Bug threats and inability to be Pursuited by Ttar. I'd need him to take Sleep or a careless FB with it, neither of which I can reliably force. All the while, I can't force a break through his defenses, so he holds strong and watches me wither and die, likely ultimately breaking through my Spikes-worn team with his Snorlax or Raikou.
How could we fix such a team?
(warning: this is where I begin to lose focus and kinda take the shotgun approach to presenting ideas)
As we can see, Starmie and Ttar are the weak links here. Ttar at least has utility against a possible FB Lax in this scenario, and is kind of driving my team concept, so he's not the weakest link. If we try to go MixTar, too, we lose the ability to back up Steelix with another Phazer and therefore the ability to freely use it to wallbreak, which also kinda flagrantly breaks the concept of the team (not to mention paradoxically reduces its own effectiveness, as a Steelix unable to Explode freely can't necessarily get Suicune out of the way for mixed Ttar to be useful). You'd also need all 4 attacks for MixTar to really be scary, even without Suicune, which means no Pursuit and, consequently, all the benefits you kinda rely on with that. The theme of this team seems to be insufficient wallbreaking and poor synergy with sweepers, so what we probably don't need is another attacker that tends to function more as a matchup-dependent sweeper than a wallbreaker.
The other option is to trade out this weaksauce Starmie, but there's not a lot of great options that can still play the Spikes game. Perhaps a Forretress of my own, with HP Fire + Toxic to ensure I can keep Spikes against another Forry, then use Tbolt Ttar to help out against Starmie and Cloy. Problem is, this makes me mad weak to some of the stuff Starmie was supposed to help with: Ttar, Tentacruel, Charizard, Grounds, and Machamp all have much easier lives now. I guess Explosion > Toxic would be an option to mitigate this somewhat, but then there's no reliable way to weaken Starmie so that Ttar may one day force it into a dilemma. I guess there's some give-or-take here: after all, Starmie being dead weight and therefore forcing you to play 5-on-6 in common matchups is probably worse than being swept by the odd Charizard, even if the latter is a much more obvious cause of your loss. So Forr may actually be closer to a (local) maximum, but it does kind of go against the philosophy of the team and is still riddled with obvious weaknesses, so let's try to find another fix.
Okay, so what of other possible changes? Egg running HP Fire over Giga Drain might work, as it allows Egg to circumvent Steels and possibly get at something good. The problem with this plan, however, is that Ttar still can't be broken easily. Maybe you can Sleep it and then pound on it with +1 Lax DEs, which actually isn't a terrible plan. However, if you don't get the Sleep, or Ttar starts rolling (you struggle to switch in on it, and with no GD deterrent a mixed Ttar is a lot more likely to find opportunities to get good hits in), there's not a great way to follow up. So it's basically live or die by the accurate sleep, which is a dicey plan, but probably better than the futility of the above scenario. Running Vap > Starmie is a possibility in this situation; Starmie's hardly a sure bet to keep Spikes off, we've already seen how useless it can be, and Vap might actually make use of some Explosion holes or even break that pesky Raikou. Not to mention it shores up the Ttar weakness. Of course, then we run into Tentacruel issues, but that's a rare enough matchup to tolerate (although it should be getting more common imo). Perhaps AA Vap, but then you struggle to keep Vap active and may as well just run Suicune.
There's also another potential fix: run a fourth attack on Lax! If you can add, say, EQ to that last slot, you can smash right through the Rocks while not needing to rely on the Skarm Explosion kill from Steelix, and problem should be solved, right? Plus the surprise KO will be a lot more likely, perhaps likely enough to mitigate the fact you can't force it per se. There's other options like LK and Toxic, too. I wouldn't do a SD set here because that makes all three of your Raikou answers Exploders, which means you have three wallbreakers that do not target Raikou. They all go boom, Raikou sweeps you. Not a fun way to end a match. So Lax needs to sweep. I also wouldn't use a Rest set either because mixed Resting Lax tends to underwhelm; he'll probably get more health back from free lefties due to Curse anyway, all while staying active (something I find a Rest mixlax struggles to accomplish).
Even without blowing up a multi-attack non-Rest Lax, though, you'd probably want another Raikou answer with both of your other main ones being Exploders (which you intend to use to wallbreak). Raikou is the bigger deal here because when push comes to shove, you can always go for Zapdos dittos, not to mention that Zapdos gets targeted by Explosions. Anyway, a possible response to this is a Raikou of your own, which would go over Zapdos. This would also help against the Tenta and Charizard threats that might otherwise prompt you to keep Starmie over a Spiker like Forry, and any weakness that emerges against Nidoking could be answered by an Exploding Forry (which we established wouldn't be best last paragraph, but let's roll as though it were just to make the following point hit that much harder). However, you'd be even weaker against Machamp, EQ Ttar (don't sleep on it!), and Grounds like Marowak, so to preserve the "don't lose obviously to shit" principle, Starmie will need to be kept should Zapdos be replaced by Raikou. Grounds, particularly Nidoking, get pretty rough to handle, but it's not an insurmountable challenge, and now you've semi-safely inserted a Lax that's much more capable of breaking teams open without Spikes support.
If push comes to shove, you might be able to try a ST Suicune here to mitigate Ground problems a bit here (or even Vap to potentially blast through opposing Raikous and make use of holes opened by your Exploders, although being slower than Nidoking is not great), but I feel like not being able to do ANYTHING about Spikes without a flier and with so many non-Rest mons can be pretty brutal. ALTERNATIVELY, I could keep Zapdos and run EQ > Tbolt on Ttar. Is it janky? Yes. But it would give a semi-decent answer to Raikou that the team would appreciate (remember, Zapdos isn't as big a deal because I can force plays against it).
Overall, the original team was flawed, and attempts to address its shortcomings revealed other shortcomings. The main takeaways, imo, are:
1 - Don't sleep on Suicune! Offenses need a way to not only wallbreak it, but capitalize off that. Having no sweepers ready to capitalize off the lack of Suicune kind of doomed the central concept from the start, considering that's one of Steelix's wallbreaking possibilities (the original Steelix wallbreak, actually, before Suicune dipped in popularity, Zapdos got Hidden Power, and Steelix consequently decided to start Exploding on Zapdos instead). You can generalize this to "you should ensure your team has offensive synergy" instead, as we found some lame ducks and a Zapdos that couldn't get free in the example above.
2 - Don't be too passive! Especially on teams that rely on attacking, rather than Spikes, for offense. Needing to rely on Starmie put the nail in the coffin for this team, as it did NOTHING to help my offenses and only very weakly addressed my Spikes game. You could make this more specific by changing it to "Starmie sucks" instead, because it really, really does.
3 - No team is perfect. Just make sure you have SOME play against your weaknesses, rather than trying to ensure your answers are air-tight. (One way to have play is to be FASTER, by the way, so Speed really matters when teambuilding, and it's better to be "weak" to slower threats like Marowak than faster threats like Nidoking). If you try to do the air-tight strategy, you'll run into problems that go a little deeper than the surface level. This example team's philosophy of trying to do offense while having "perfect" defenses for any matchup revealed that its offense was not actually sufficient!
