Immunity/Resistance Team, My First RMT

[Ramhere]

So hey all, this is my first RMT. I've been playing Shoddybattle for quite some time now and I built this team recently. I built this after a lot of fail teams. I have had decent results uptill now. But as is said, there is always scope for improvement. :) This team relies A LOT on prediction and that is precisely why I like it so much. It is certainly one of my better efforts at team building. :)

Ok, enough about all that, so here's a look at the team -

And now in-depth on each pkmn........ order as shown here of course......
Also please pardon my originality. I think some or almost all of these sets may have been taken from Smogon's website. They seem to be working well for me, though all advice is appreciated. :)

Celebi @ Occa Berry
Nature: Modest
Ability: Natural Cure
EV's: 76 HP / 252 SpA / 180 Spe
- Leaf Storm
- Earth Power
- Stealth Rock
- U-Turn

My lead Celebi. It has decent overall bulk, and acceptable speed. Stealth Rock is obvious, Leaf Storm is a strong STAB which deals decent damage to neutral pokemon. U-turn is to scout for switch in's and moves. I normally manage to lay down Stealth Rock and then U-turn out as the opponent responds. It also has good synergy with the rest of the team, another reason why I like it.

Against common leads:

Aerodactyl - Normally always taunt and I 2HKO with Leaf Storm.

Azelf - I U-turn and see how he moved. Normally on taunt I go to Donphan who KO's with Assurance.

Swampert - I SR as he switches out, then act accordingly.

Hippodown - From what I have seen, people normally do not switch out, so recently I have started OHKOing with Leaf Storm. Earlier I used to SR, expecting them to switch.

Roserade - Against this guy (or girl, whatever) I have not set plan. Usually I SR to see what they do, then U-turn to Heatran to break sash (if I am not sleep powdered). Or I sometimes even U-turn straight away.

Heatran - I always defeat Heatran thanks to Occa berry. 2HKO on Shuca berry versions, and OHKO on Scarf or Specs versions, while Occa Berry saves me.

Metagross - Earth Power 2HKO's. Or I sometimes SR.

Jirachi - I SR as he gives me his scarf. Then switch out to Donphan and act accordingly.

Infernape - I normally Earth power once after his Fake Out, then switch to Gyarados.

Machamp - I normally Leaf Storm once and switch to Gyarados.

Smeargle - This guy gives me problems. Normally, he is the start of a Baton Passing team, and leads with spore. So I am in a fix. Once pkmn on my team, I must allowed to be put to sleep. Normally I SR as he spores, and switch to Donphan as he spores again.

I really want to get around this spore problem, so opinions are welcome.

Gyarados @ Leftovers
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Intimidate
EV's: 156 HP / 72 Atk / 96 Def / 184 Spe
- Dragon Dance
- Taunt
- Waterfall
- Stone Edge

Bulky Taunt Gyarados is an excellent stall breaker in my opinion. He manages to set up on a large number of pokemon who are busy setting up their entry hazards. He has often swept entire teams by himself. Dragon Dance and Waterfall are standard fare for any Gyarados. The given EV's give him decent bulk and allow him to survive 2 Quick Attacks from CB Scizor. Gyarados also acts as a lure for electric and rock attacks, and Will-O-Wisp's to which I can switch to Jolteon and Donphan, and Heatran respectively.

Jolteon @ Choice Specs
Nature: Timid
Ability: Volt Absorb
EV's: 4 Def / 252 Spe / 252 SpA
- Thunderbolt
- Shadow Ball
- HP Grass
- Baton Pass

Jolteon pairs up very nicely with Gyarados and the rest of my team. This is a standard Choice Specs set with HP Grass to kill Swampert as he switches in. EV's are simple with max SpA and Spe. This set has quite a bit of raw power as Thunderbolt can rip through unprepared teams. Normally I switch him in from Gyarados or Skrmory and then Baton Pass to scout my opponent's switch in and go to an appropriate counter. He also acts as my Ghost check as his Shadow Ball 2HKO's (if not OHKO's) almost all common ghosts like Rotom, Gengar, and Dusknoir.

Heatran @ Choice Scarf
Nature: Naive
Ability: Flash Fire
EV's: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Fire Blast
- Earth Power
- Dragon Pulse
- Explosion

Heatran is mainly a Fire immunity and acts as a kind of revenge killer for my team. Dragon Pulse allows me to switch into outrage locked dragons and OHKO them with Dragon Pulse. Heatran has good synergy with my team, and is also very usefull for switching in from Celebi and Skarmory who attract Fire-type attacks, and get a Flash Fire boost to power up Fire Blast even more. He can also kill Blissey who switch-in with Explosion.

Skarmory @ Shed Shell
Nature: Impish
Ability: Keen Eye
EV's: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
- Brave Bird
- Roost
- Spikes
- Whirlwind

I have always liked specially defensive Skarmory as they can decently take weak special hits for the rest of the team and Roost them off. Anyway, this guy is my pseudo-hazer, and Spiker. It's a standard set to lay even more entry hazards to aid my sweepers. He also attracts Fire and Electric-type attacks which I can redirect to Heatran and Jolteon.

Donphan @ Leftovers
Nature: Adamant
Ability: Sturdy
EV's: 252 HP / 188 Atk / 68 Def
- Earthquake
- Rapid Spin
- Assurance
- Ice shard

My Spinner to rid the field of entry hazards which is very crucial since this team depends a lot on switching and it would not be very nice to lose health every time I switch pkmn. He also acts as a ground immunity and physical tank and can safely switch-in to pkmn like Tyranitar and Metagross, provided they are not running mixed sets of course. Earthquake helps to scare them away. Assurance is to hit the the ghosts who come in to block my Rapid Spin. Ice Shard rounds off the set with a nice priority move to hit dragons.


Notes: So thats all about the team. Currently, I am having serious problems with SubPunching Breloom. None of my pkmn can properly handle it. And I always have to allow one pkmn to be put to sleep by that guy. Also, Donphan is not proving a very good spinner, as bulky defensive SleepTalk Rotom manage to wall Donphan endlessly and thus, I am also having problems with Stall teams in a way. I think I need a SleepTalker myself to absorb status for the rest of team, and a Spinner.

So any help regarding my vulnerability to Breloom and Rapid Spinning problems would be welcome. Any other comments or opinions are welcome regarding any of the team.

Well I guess thats it, thanks for reading. :)

 

[Ramhere]

Bump..... I could do with some ratings guys.....

I also wanted to say that this team is having some problems against Rain Dance teams (specifically, Mixed Kingdra). So I would also appreciate help on how to get around that problem...

 

[Starbuck]

This Celebi will fix the Breloom problem, and help with opposing Bulky Gyarados who seems to give this team some trouble. It does something for Kingdra too.

Celebi, @Leftovers
Bold; 252 HP, 242 Def, 16 Spd
-Psychic
-Recover
-Grass Knot/Reflect/Thunder Wave/Stealth Rock
-Grass Knot/Reflect/Thunder Wave/Stealth Rock

With 16 Speed EVs you're outspeeding Adamant Breloom, and Psychic will OHKO it while Focus Punch does around 110. Grass Knot is always preferred when dealing with Gyarados and Kingdra, but the combination of Reflect and Thunder Wave will cripple them both, since Gyarados rarely Taunts Celebi, and Reflect helps a lot with the Pursuit weakness. I'm not a big fan of Stealth Rock on Celebi; I'd probably make the Heatran bulky and give Stealth Rock to him, and maybe even lead with Heatran.

Another thing I noticed was that you have Spikes and Stealth Rock but no Ghost. I'd definitely recommend finding a spot for a Ghost somewhere because most teams pack a Spinner nowadays. Maybe remove Jolteon for Choice Scarf Rotom-H to block Rapid and provide extra insurance against Gyarados, Scizor and Lucario.

As for a Spinner of your own, you might want to remove Skarmory and Donphan and put in Forretress and something that can Wish. Forretress is pretty talented as the only Spiker/Spinner in the game, and his only major flaw is the lack of recovery, which is where the Wisher comes in.

Jirachi, @Leftovers
Impish; 160 HP, 96 Atk, 252 Def
-Iron Head/Zen Headbutt
-U-Turn
-Wish
-Ice Punch

Now without Donphan you're weak to DD Mence, but this little guy fixes that. Play around with the EVs a little, but with those you should survive a +1 Jolly Life Orb Earthquake, and Ice Punch should OHKO after Life Orb recoil. Sally usually comes out late anyway, so odds are it takes Stealth Rock damage anyway. Iron Head or Zen Headbutt for STAB and U-turn to get the hell away from Magnezone, as well as scouting and increasing Spikes/Stealth Rock damage.

 

[c.falcon-arrgh]

Commenting about your celebi vs other leads:

Azelf: Turning to donphan may be risky because azelf's fire blast/psychic can hit donphan pretty hard. I suggest you turn to heatran instead because heatran resist all of azelf's common moveset, and it outspeeds azelf, KOing it with fire blast. *since i suggested removing u-turn, you'll just have to switch to heatran and hope that both fire blast connects. In most cases it will just explode anyway.

Roserade: Maybe you should give your celebi 176 speed EVs with timid nature, so that you can outspeed roserade. Earth power to break its sash while it either sleep powders or toxic spike. If he sleep powders, just go to heatran while he set up toxic spike(if he sleep powder again then that's bad, but normally people won't do that, and even if they do one of the sleep powders may miss, increasing your chance of defeating roserade without any drawback). If he toxic spike, just finish it off with another earth power or set up your own SR.

Jirachi: Staying in is very risky because if they choose to u-turn instead of giving you scarf it is going to hit pretty hard. I suggest you just switch to heatran right away. If he tricks, it doesn't matter cos heatran is scarfed anyway.

smeargle: Same as roserade. earth power/leaf storm, and see what it does. Usually it will spore, and if it does that just go to heatran and kill it if it attempts to setup.

For your breloom problem, just get rid of u-turn on celebi and put either psychic or hp fire. Also, the only thing that breloom can get a sub up is against heatran locked into earth power, so its not really that much of a threat. Your gyarados can take on breloom too, because it can just switch into breloom before it subs, intimidate it to make seed bomb become shit, and dragon dance>waterfall to break its sub and stuff.

The best spinner that i have ever used is starmie. It outspeeds every single ghost type in the game, and its also able to 2HKO most of them. This means that ghost type will think twice about switching in, as you can either rapid spin or just hydro pump for the 2HKO. If you dislike starmie's weakness to pursuit, blastoise can be another alternative. Blastoise (especially scarf) outspeeds most spin blockers in OU, and it can choose to either use rapid spin or go ahead and use water spout. Choice scarf water spout blastoise is actually freaking good, because nobody expects it, and i've enjoyed using it.

Scarf makes you outspeed a lot of things, and lets blastoise attempt to sweep with water spout. leftovers allows you to rapid spin after you have water spoutted the spin blocker and you're predicting him to switch out. Loss of speed isn't really so crucial, because faster ghost types like gengar gets OHKO'ed by water spout, while pokemon that survives a water spout is usually slower than blastoise.

 

[Doctor Who?]

I think that you don't really need Celebi because you can set up on Swampert with Gyarados and other bulky waters get absolutely smashed by Jolteon. Instead you could run something that stops Stealth Rock as your lead, like Azelf maybe.

Then you don't need to run Donphan as that lacks SO much power. You could use some sort of Scarf Starmie as a failsafe to make sure that you don't lose to Gyarados and Salamence after a DD.

 

[Ramhere]

Thanks for all the replies, guys.

@ Starbuck - Yeah, I have thinking of doing that to celebi too. That does indeed make a good counter to breloom. Though, I dont know much about Heatran leads. I think I would prefer to lead with celebi, because if i lead with heatran, I lose the ability to revenge kill dragons, and lose most notably the only Kingdra counter I have right now. Overall, I think I will take your celebi with Thunder wave and grass knot.

As for Rotom-H and Jirachi, I would rather not have them both, as you are asking me to remove *BOTH* of my electric immunities. If I remove both, then I am left with only 1 electric resistance, which rather nullifies the point of this team, which is working with every pokemon's weakness and immunity to get free switch in's and boosts for my other pokemon.

Also, I have a choice between either Scarf Rotom and SleepTalk Rotom. I mention the latter because I have been thinking of him myself. He gives considerable bulk to my team and a valuable status absorbing property. With the Scarf version however, I can revenge kill the ever so common Gyarados and Lucario and of course Trick my Scarf onto Blissey. So any opinions which type of Rotom I should keep? I feel slightly inclined to the SleepTalk version as I think it can still handle Gyara and Lucario to the same extent, can it not? Also, I really don't want to remove Skarmory because he is the only phazer of this team (unless of course you can suggest one as good as he). Anyway, thanks a lot for your help! :)

@ C.Falcon - I am already getting psychic onto celebi. And yes I also agree with you that Starmie is the best spinner. Indeed, he is one of my most favourite pokemon. But its difficult to find a spot for him on this team and I cannot possibly put it in place of Donphan because actually you are asking me to remove an electric immunity and add an electric weakness! However I like your idea about Blastoise, I didnt know that he learnt Water Spout. Still, even he is water type and its not possible to let him onto the team right now.... of course, if you could suggest me another replacement alongside him, it would be excellent. :)

As for your lead analysis, I'm completely open to that. Since I am keeping psychic onto celebi, probably now I would always go to Heatran in case of Azelf leads. And if I do keep SleepTalk Rotom of which I am thinking, it would also solve my sleep problem allowing me to freely take the spore and sleep powder. So thats another problem solved! :)

@ Doctor Who - Celebi is doing a decent enough job for me right now and it has excellent synergy with the rest of the team. Also, as I said above, I am putting psychic and recover onto it to help it take on Breloom. And again as mentioned above, I possibly cannot remove Donphan for Starmie as you are asking me to remove an electric immunity and put a weakness in place of it.

Again, thanks for all the replies, guys. All your help is much appreciated! :) If anyone else wants to have a say, please feel free to do so!