*insert witty title* OU RMT

Toxic Torture

Ok, not too great at intros but I will give it my best shot. This is a recently made team of mine. I had to get my computer wiped because of viruses so I have had to completely start over and lost quite a few very good teams. This current team has won 77% of its matches, but it still has quite a few glaring weaknesses, that I would like to have some help from all of you in fixing. Without recent additions that I am currently testing, it is pretty weak to stall teams and set-up pokemon. A couple I have had the most trouble with are Stockpile versions of Hippowon and Cradily. Overall, this team is probably in my top 5 favorites that I have made and it has moved me up the latter a decent amount. I am going to the post the version of this team that I have used the most, but I am currently testing different pokemon in a few slots and I will mention that in the descriptions. Anyway, onto the team.


Changes in Red


mamoswine.png

Nature: Jolly
Ability: Snow Cloak
Hold Item: Focus Sash
EVs:24 HP, 252 Atk, 232 Spe
-Earthquake
-Ice Shard
-Stealth Rock
-Endeavor

Ok, I will admit that when I first saw this lead I did not think it was very good, but I decided to test it out as I had never used it before. It is EVd to outspeed +Speed nature 252 Speed EVd Heatran and hit it hard with a STAB EQ, with the rest thrown into health for a little bit more bulk. The moveset is fairly standard, but it does it's job well. Depending on the lead, I can almost always get SR up without a problem. EQ is for STAB power and
Ice shard is a nice STAB priority move. Endeavor, if used correctly, can absolutely devastate at least one pokemon on the opposing team. Although it is an effective lead for me, I am very open to better suggestions to fit my team. I have used many leads at least as good as this one, but for now I think he is working pretty well at doing his job. If their is even a better moveset/EV spread I could use it would be helpful.

Against top 20 leads as of July 2009 (in no order):

Azelf-I usually Endeavor expecting a Fire Blast/Flamethrower, then kill with Ice shard and try and set-up SR after that.

Swampert-SR, then EQ, then endeavor. After that I can bring in something else to get the kill.

Jirachi-I always EQ first expecting trick versions then either EQ if needed or finish with ice shard and proceed to set-up SR.

Metagross-SR then ice shard as meteor mash+BP kills me most of the time.

Aerodactyl-either SR or ice shard depending on my mood. ice shard is a reliable 2HKO on Aerodactyl.

Infernape-SR then EQ, followed by ice shard if I am still alive to net the kill.
Ninjask-SR, then Ice shard.

Bronzong-SR, then EQ to test if it levitates or is heatproof. If heatproof I can kill it with EQ+Ice shard most of the time. If levitate, I take the gyro ball/EQ and then endeavor to take it down to low health.

Roserade-Ice shard for 2HKO if it misses with sleep powder.

Tyranitar-My favorite lead to face, SR then EQ/Endeavor if I am low on health.

Smeargle-EQ/SR depending on my mood, then ice shard.

Heatran-EQ it to death.

Gliscor-Ice shard/SR

Abomasnow-SR then Endeavor/switch out

Crobat-Ice shard it to death

Mamoswine-SR then EQ

Forretress-SR then switch out to something better suited to killing it, unless it gyro balls then I Endeavor it

Ambipom-SR then attack if I can

Weavile-EQ to death

So as you can see, it is a decent lead to say the least. I love having it whenever the opponent has a hail/sandstorm lead as he can almost always beat Tyranitar, Hippowdon, and Abomasnow thanks to Endeavor.


lucario.png

Nature:Adamant
Ability: Inner Focus
Hold Item: Life Orb
EVs: 252 Atk, 252 Spe, 4 Def
-Close Combat
-Ice Punch
-Swords Dance
-Bullet Punch

Ok, this spot was first taken up by ScarfNape, but that was not able to do sufficient damage to Latias. So, I switched to ScarfLuc, but that was not able to take out +1DDMence, which is a major threat. So my final solution (at least for now) is giving Latias the scarf and turning Lucario into a late-game sweeper. As everyone knows, Lucario is a very formidable late-game sweeper. Even coming in mid-game and getting 1 SD up is scary for the opponent, especially if they have no reliable answer to him. The set...well I am not very sure about it at all. I like having Bullet Punch to hit ghosts and Ice Punch for Gliscor, but I feel like I really need Crunch in here somewhere to deal with the Rotom Appliance problem this guy can have as BP only does around 35% to most. To Gengar, it can hit for upwards of 50% but it still is not enough to net much needed KOs for his final sweep. Overall, I do not think this guy fits into my team particularly well, so I would love suggestions on his replacement. EVs are a smogon standard and are very effective for his purposes.


heatran.png


Nature: Timid
Ability: Flash Fire
Hold Item: Leftovers
EVs: 252 Spe, 252 SpA, 4 SpD
-Fire Blast
-Earth Power
-HP Grass
-Substitute

Ok, this pokemon works very well with the 2 before him, as they are both weak to fire attacks and he absorbs them like candy. The thing I love about SubTran is his ability to scare away pokemon, take the free sub, then fire off an attack and either go again for a kill, or switch out. His moveset really needs tweaking though, as Fliers like Mence, Latias, Gyarados, and Flygon laugh at this set. Fire Blast is there as his obvious STAB and loves to get a Flash Fire boost to make it hurt even more. Earth power is for other Heatran, and things like Tyranitar that really like switching in. HP grass is great for dealing with Swampert that switch in and think they can beat me, netting me the easy kill. I am really considering a status move as my team currently has no status affecting move, which can cause me to lose stall battles or be easily set-up on rather frequently. If I do add a status move, I just need some input on whether to use toxic or WoW, opinions would be grateful. If anyone suggest a replacement for Heatran, I would like it to be another steel as I like giving him the Dragon type attacks that are so frequent in today's metagame.


gyarados.png



Nature: Jolly
Ability: Intimidate
Hold Item: Leftovers
EVs: 90 HP, 252 Atk, 168 Spe
-Dragon Dance
-Bounce
-Waterfall
-EQ

Ok, this is one of my favorite pokemon on this team. The power of DDGyara is widely known to all OU players. He functions very similarly to DD Kingdra/Mence, without the need to get locked into Outrage to net a lot of kills and slightly slower. The set that is dominating right now is BulkyDos w/ Taunt, but this can be just as effective if not more. The only reason Taunt can be better is to prevent roaring/whirlwinding which is pretty annoying after a DD or 2, whereas Bounce can take out pokemon like Celebi, and help me to beat Vaporeon as well as giving me extra leftovers recovery. He is EVd to outspeed timid 252 Spe Jolteon after 1 DD so that he can kill it with EQ, which is something standard BulkyDos cannot do. 252 in Atk for maximum power, and the rest thrown into health for a little bit of bulk, though I am considering throwing it into one of the defensive stats, any suggestions? With the EVs I am running, I like to put EQ their to kill Jolteon, but Stone Edge is nice for other Gyarados and Bounce is an awesome STAB alongside Waterfall to create a low chance of ParaFlinch hax. So, suggestions for a slightly better spread (I really like mine) and suggestions on the moveset would be much appreciated. If you think another DDer would fit better in my team, please tell me! Also, I am testing a Roaring Swampert because without him my team is pretty weak to set-up so please tell me if you have opinions on that as well.


rotomheat.png


Nature: Modest
Ability: Levitate
Hold Item: Leftovers
EVs: 248 HP, 196 Spe, 64 SpA
-Substitute
-Charge Beam
-HP Fighting
-Shadow Ball

When I first started my team, this was Rotom-S and I got the "Annoyer" set straight off of Smogon and really liked it quite a bit. However, when I dropped Special ScarfNape for ScarfLuc I needed another way to deal with Swampert, so I had to go to Rotom-C for Leaf Storm. The only change I made in the set was changing Air Slash to Leaf Storm though, so it did not affect me too much. However, I then took ScarfLati over ScarfLuc and gave Heatran HP Grass, so I no longer needed Rotom-C. I then tried the set I currently have, SubCharge. While this set works very well on my team in theory, it has not been used effectively in battle to set up a sweep once, so I am really questioning its value. I still feel like I have yet to find the perfect Rotom Appliance/Set for my team, so help would be greatly appreciated on figuring out what direction to take. I am most leaning towards a set that inflicts my opponent with status, as I greatly need that right now.

latias.png

Nature: Timid
Ability: Levitate
Hold Item: Choice Scarf
EVs: 252 SpA, 252 Spe, 4 Def
-Draco Meteor
Thunderbolt
-Surf
-Trick (sometimes I use Dragon Pulse here, but that is rare)

Ok, at first this was a SpecsLati, but because of other changes in my team I quickly realized that Latias had to take the placed of Revenge Killer on my team. Because of this, I had to give Latias a Scarf so it can outspeed all Mence and Gyara, 2 of the most formidable DDers in today's metagame. I feel like Latias does it's job very well, and it is much more reliable than Infernape for dealing with other Latias and Salamence (though I hate the Draco Meteor miss). I am considering changing this to a ScarfMence set, as it can revenge kill both Mence (though I have to pray to win speed ties occasionally) and Gyara. It also has the ability to rip through anything in the game, while Latias is walled by things like Blissey and very easily predicted. Suggestions on a ScarfMence set would be much appreciated!


Ok, that is my team. I did my best to make it easy on the eyes and not too boring to read, so sorry if it is boring. I would LOVE suggestions on ways in which I can make this team better. Sorry if there is incorrect grammar because I had to write this very quickly. Credit for the images goes to Arkeis.com! If you have read everything, thank you for your time.

Ok, Rate/Hate/Steal!
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K first off, change back to scarf ape and put the physical moveset(with Stone Edge) with U-turn somewhere in it. Keep Rotom-C for Swampert. That will make for a much better answer to latias and it will be able to scout better than luke.
 
I have some suggestions

Mamoswine: Nothing really to fix here

Heatran: I would go with hp grass over explosion but thats just me

Gyarados: Change nature to adamant and run this moveset Waterfall, bounce, Dragon Dance, stone edge. It is much more effective, trust me.

Lucario: I dont see why you need bullet punch, you could replace it with thunderpunch to hit gyrados hard

Rotom-C: If you choose to put hp grass on heatran replace with rotom-h to help against your somewhat big lucario weakness

Latias: You could run Mixmence or Mixape in her place if you want

Well i hope i helped Good Luck :)
 
sora13-I have also tried a physical ScarfNape and it did not pack as much of a punch as Luc did for Latias, so I do not want to change to that.

ThePatriot-I am currently testing the team with all of your changes to see how it works.
 
hey, this is a cool team. i like the use of scarfluke, it is an underrated pokemon that deserves more usage! this team is good, but its not great. it has some glaring weaknesses that i would like to see if i can help cover, and some movesets do look like they could use some tweaking. hopefully, this team will become much better once i have finished making changes to it! the first thing i notice with your team is the rather large dragon dance salamence weakness. he has quite a few opportunities to set up, and once he does the only thing he needs to sweep you is that your heatran is at around 50%, not a hard feat as substitute and explosion both wear him down / kill him. my suggestion is to switch the roles of latias and lucario. latias is a much better scarfed revenge killer than lucario, while lucario does the job of sweeper better than latias does. not to say latias isnt a good sweeper, specs is probably her best set, but a scarfed version fits your team better. in the same vein, scarf lucario is ok, but swords dance lucario is much better. scarf latias pretty much ensures that no boosting sweeper can sweep you unless you allow it two boosts, and provides pursuit bait that can allow lucario to get in a free swords dance, often meaning gg for the opponent right then and there.

my next suggestion is that you should change rotom's moveset. confuse ray is just not a very good move. it does no damage, and the opponent will still attack you half the time. rotom has better things to do with its time as well. you shouldnt have much trouble with swampert, between lucario dealing 50% unboosted, latias' draco meteor dealing quite a bit of damage, as well as gyarados getting a few dd's on it, then finishing with waterfall. thus, i feel a different rotom is in order. firstly, i think changing it to rotom-h to bluff overheat is a good idea. you send scizor and magnezone packing. sub charge beam is an amazingly anti metagame set, and gives you some power to break stall. a simple spread that outspeeds adamant lucario, uses max hp to take hits from the likes of scizor and co as well, and the remaining evs into special attack to pack more of a punch. this also means blissey shouldnt break your sub with ice beam and flamethrower, but if you find it breaking your sub every time, move the special attack evs into special defense.

Rotom-h @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP/192 Spd/64 SAtk
Timid nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Charge Beam
- Shadow Ball
- Substitute
---

hope i helped
 
Ok, I really like your suggestions, mainly because scarf Latias is one of my favorite pokemon. I am testing them out now, and ThePatriot your version of the team had a 81% win, so thank you for the 4% increase ^_^
 
You have a nice team here, so I'll gladly give you my suggestions on how you can improve the team.

First of all, I'd like to point out some glaring team weaknesses that I spot in the team. I can see Life Orb Gengar giving out a lot of trouble, as it outpaces 4 out of 6 Pokémon on your team, and is capable of hitting all team members for super effective damage. Currently, you can only switch in Lucario on a Shadow Ball and hope to kill it with Ice Punch, but any smart player knows that a Lucario switching into Gengar means that it probably has something to take it out, and even then, a Life Orb Shadow Ball can probably 2HKO Lucario with its pathetic defenses. In return, Gengar can freely switch out without risk and just plow through the rest of your team once Lucario is weakened, with your best bet after that is winning the speed tie with Latias.

In order to fix this problem, I recommend that you change Heatran to a Choice Scarf variant, noting that this will necessitate changes to other Pokemon on your team. The set should be familiar to you, so I won't post it here. However, I will recommend that you run Dragon Pulse instead of Hidden Power [Type] and a Timid nature. By changing to a Scarfed Heatran, you can switch in on Gengar's Shadow Ball and KO with Fire Blast since you outspeed. Changing Heatran to a Scarfed variant also alleviates some of the pressure that Dragon Dance Salamence and Swords Dance Lucario currently maintain on your team, but the former will require you to sacrifice something to Outrage and revenge kill with Dragon Pulse, but then again, that is how most offensive teams handle DDMence anyways.

Now that I've provided some suggestions in patching up current team weaknesses, I'm going to recommend that you change around some of your Pokémon's sets to increase the efficiency of this team...

First, I'd like you to replace the Focus Sash on Mamoswine with a Life Orb, and replace Endeavor with Stone Edge. Currently, Metagross is able to survive an Earthquake and KO you with the steps you described. However, when running a Life Orb, an OHKO on Metagross (and even Shuca Berry Heatran) is guaranteed with Earthquake. Endeavor is largely useless when running Life Orb, so by running Stone Edge for the 4th slot, you can also damage Gyarados and Rotom-A switch-ins among other things, and you can 2HKO Azelf leads with a combination of Stone Edge + Ice Shard as well. However, my main concern here is that setting up Stealth Rock will be a bit more difficult, but that is your decision in using Mamoswine to begin with.

Next, running Choice Scarf Lucario is largely useless when the Swords Dance set is so much better. Go ahead and use that set, as it also capitalizes on Latias's weakness to Pursuit and you need a good late game sweeper anyways.

Definitely go on an all-attacking set with Gyarados. Substitute is largely useless, as when combined with Stealth Rock damage, you'll be losing more health than you can regain. Specifically, I recommend a Jolly nature with max Attack and max Speed (with the rest in HP), with the moveset Dragon Dance / Waterfall / Stone Edge / Earthquake (or Bounce), as this will allow you to outspeed Jolteon and all variants of Heatran after a Dragon Dance.

For Rotom-C, I recommend changing to a RestSTalk set. Currently, Gyarados is going to give your team a lot of trouble, and by changing to that set, it provides your team with a reliable Gyarados counter as well as giving your team a nice defensive buffer. Mainly, Gyarados will attempt to set up on Choice Scarf Heatran, so the opportunity Gyarados can get to set-up is quite high on this team.

For Latias, definitely go with the 3 Attack set. By going this route, you have a more reliable answer to Heatran (Gyarados gets worn down by Stealth Rock) and you still pack a good amount of offense.

Hopefully, I managed to provide some suggestions that will help this team ladder better than it currently is, although I am currently unable to provide suggestions on how to deal with your weakness to stall (you can't really fix it without changing your team a lot), so I wish you the best of luck.
 
You have a pretty solid team here Toxic. When looking at the team I did notice 3/6 of your pokes where weak to Jolly Luke. I know you planned on using WoW on Rotom but a smart player (who has a scarf tran) on their team can easily switch in and gain the boost from flashfire. Now, Rotom can't really do much to tran so odds are the person would know you will switch and use a move like earth power to kill the opposing poke. To have an easier time I suggest turning specs latias into the scarf variant that way it can kill other latias with STAB draco meteor and kill Gyarados who manage to get a +2 with DD from tbolt......Other then that your team seems pretty solid and it has really good synergy.
 
Thank you for the comments Rasp, but I had already gone with the change to ScarfLati as my updates will show. I am updating as I speak if you want to see the current version, it will be ready shortly.
 
Problems:

SD Lucario (Stone Edge)

how to fix:

hey, I'll do this quickly. It seems yo got great rates already but now you've opened up your weakness to SD Lucario with Stone Edge. A simple tweak would be going for the standard 64 HP / 232 SpA / 212 Spe at a Timid Nature to outrun Lucario and smash it with hidden power fighting. Also fi your going Ice Punch on Lucario defenitly go for Jolly, as you can outpace Impish Gliscor and KO it with Ice Punch, other than that, go for Crunch if your running Adamant. Bullet Punch is iffy, def. try Extremespeed as it hits Infernape and Starmie harder. gl wtih this
 
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