It's Boiling Hot ★

Orb

Hello, once again. I find myself still trying to find what's best for my sun team. About a few weeks ago, I posted a similar thread regarding my sun team, and I got some awesome feedback from you guys. However, I've been losing a lot of battles lately, and there must be something that can be improved regarding my team. I understand sun isn't used much as sand, and rain is. That's what makes using sun so special, knowing I'm using a team that's not as popular. Well, that's about it. ☪

Ninetales @ Leftovers

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Ability: Drought
EVs: 136 HP / 252 SpA / 120 Spe
Nature: Modest (+SpA, -Atk)
Name: Sunny Day
Move-set: Sunny Day, Solar Beam, Will-O-Wisp, Flamethrower
Additional Information:
This set focuses on keeping the sun up as much as possible, while also good against weather wars. Will-O-Wisp also burns incoming physical attackers, thus crippling them.


Chansey @ Eviolite

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Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe
Nature: Bold (+Def, -Atk)
Name: Wish Support
Move-set: Wish, Protect, Toxic, Seismic Toss
Additional information: Plain and simple, providing wish support benefits any team, and a sun team is no exception. Aside from wish support, walling special attackers as well as physical attackers is another aspect that's focused on this particular set. The combination of Toxic/Protect is also very helpful in terms of wearing down opposing bulky Pokemon.


Forretress @ Leftovers

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Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD | IVs: 0 Spe
Nature: Sassy (+SpD, -Spe)
Name: Specially Defensive
Move-set: Gyro Ball, Stealth Rock, Volt Switch, Rapid Spin
Additional information: If you saw my last rating thread, you'll see I've always had Forretress on my team. However, instead of running the physically defensive set this time, I've decided to try out the specially defensive set. Reason being, I don't have much of a counter for opposing Pokemon such as Gengar. Specially defensive Forretress is more capable of facing Gengar, as well as providing massive damage with Gyro Ball.


Cresselia @ Leftovers

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Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Nature: Bold (+Def, -Atk)
Name: Support
Move-set: Reflect, Psychic, Ice Beam, Moonlight
Additional Information: Seeing as how Mamoswine was a huge threat to my sun team, based off your feedback, I've decided Cresselia would be a good counter for Mamoswine. Not only that, Moonlight in the sun heals 66% of Cresseli's HP which can also provide a bit of stalling as well. Not to mention, Ice Beam and Psychic provides more coverage.


Venusaur @ Life Orb


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Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Nature: Modest (+SpA, -Atk)
Name: Special Growth
Move-set: Growth, Giga Drain, HP Fire (70), Sludge Bomb
Additional information: You didn't think I was running an offensive OU sun team without a sweeper did you? Well, feast your eyes on my special growth sun sweeper. After a growth in the sun, Venusaur is basically unstoppable, and has very few counters. With Duel Screen support, my Venusaur's defensive capabilities exceed further. In the end, this dinosaurs wrath combined with its immense bulk, will always trouble opposing teams.


Terrakion @ Choice Scarf

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Ability: Justified
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Nature: Jolly (+Atk, -SpA)
Name: Choice Scarf
Move-set: X-Scissor, Earthquake, Stone Edge, Close Combat
Additional Information: Not only is this my revenge killer, but Terrakion is also a good counter for Chansey, Tyranitar, Latios, etc. Stab Stone Edge, and Close Combat coming off such a threatening Pokemon with 392 attack, does about 50% damage to almost any Pokemon that doesn't resist this deadly combo. I chose Earthquake in the last slot, because of Heatran.​
 
Hi. Quick rate since I'm tired and don't have much time. Your team is nice, although it's swept clean by opposing Timid Venusaur, which doesn't care about yours, and OHKOs everything* except for Ninetales and Cresselia with Giga Drain / HP Fire after a boost. Ninetales is taken care of with EQ, Sleep Powder or Sludge Bomb regardless, so it's not that threatening, and Cresselia can't 2HKO if Venusaur spams +2 Giga Drains, while being 2HKOd itself, and obviously spamming Moonlight is a losing strategy cause of low PP. There are two things that, while not resolutive, can indeed let you fight back somehow. The first is to run a Timid nature yourself on Venusaur; doing so will allow to at worst speed tie with all opposing Venusaurs and threaten with HP Fire, while also allowing to outspeed and OHKO at +2 all those Scarfer that can threaten you otherwise, Latios, Terrakion, heck even Starmie if someone's running that. The second suggestion is to substitute Chansey with Blissey. The two are basically equivalent, Chansey is slightly bulkier but Blissey can actually use Flamethrower, since its SpA is not complete trash. You can either run it over Seismic Toss (riskier since things like Gyarados can set up a Sub they couldn't otherwise, but allows to keep Wish + Protect) or switch to a Softboiled | Seismic Toss | Flamethrower | status moveset (less easy to abuse for your opponent's Sub users, but you lose Wish). Also I recommend an EV spread of 4 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD Calm on Blissey, that loses a negligible amount of physical bulk to take special hits WAY better, which is indeed very useful in a metagame plagued by Specs Hydro Pumps and similar attacks. Another alternative is to keep Chansey, but use Thunder Wave instead of Toxic: you lose a bit of stalling power, but you can easily cripple opposing Special attackers, that will be easily dealth with later, for example by Ninetales.

Except from this, team looks solid overall. Somehow weak to Heatran, but I guess it's almost unavoidable with such a team. Good luck and I hope my rate helped somewhat.

*yeah it doesn't OHKO Chansey too, but the argument remains valid since Chansey can't do anything back while Venusaur reaches +6 and proceeds to Giga Drain to full while killing Chansey.
 
Adding onto the switch to Blissey, Blissey gets leftovers recovery which makes it a lot more worth it when running protect. With Chansey, you lose a little momentum with protect especially if you decide to ditch toxic.

Also, Mew, Slowbro, and Deo-D could all probably do Cresselia's job while offering even more utility to the team. I personally like Slowbro on sun teams to help during the weather war with rain teams. It can switch in a lot due to all its resists and regenerator. It also has a usable special attack stat unlike Cresselia and Fire Blast.
 
Cool team man!

I second Gangj4lf's suggestion of Timid on Venusaur.

My first recommendation is to change up Ninetales' spread to a more Specially Defensive one. Ninetales makes an extraordinarily lackluster special attacker and combined with your teams more defensive, or balanced, take I really think it will do you more good. The set I recommend is:

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Ninetales @ Leftovers
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 184 HP / 108 Spd / 216 SDef
Calm Nature
- Flamethrower
- Will-O-Wisp
- Roar
- Sunny Day

With this set Ninetales will bring a lot more utility to your team, while also being able to stick around much longer. This also gives you a reliable check to SubCM Latias who can set up on many of your 'mons and give your team significant problems. This Ninetales still keeps the Sunny Day element of yours, forcing Weather users back out if they want to set their own weather. Will-o-Wisp handles many common Ninetales switch-ins, and finally Roar helps spread hazards damage and forces out the aforementioned Latias.

My next suggestion is to exchange Wish for Softboiled and Protect for Stealth Rock on Chansey. While Wish support is quite awesome, in this super fast paced metagame having to take two turns to heal can quickly become a problem, as many sweepers will use that free turn to set up. Chansey will also have numerous free turns to set up Stealth Rock, which leads me to my next suggestion.

Replace Stealth Rock with Spikes on Forrestress. You're team is more defensive, four of the six members of your team are not going to be doing high amounts of damage to the opposing team; your team has reliable switch-ins to many of the metagames sweepers. Because of these facts your opponent will have to switch around a lot to handle your defensive threats, if you are forcing a lot of switches you want to be taking advantage of them by forcing more and more passive damage. Spikes will aid in this effort immensely.

My last suggestion is to give this more defensive team better synergy. In the sun, Sableye becomes an extremely potent spinblocker, I'd even say the best one in the OU metagame. With my suggestions your team will be more focused on getting up entry hazards to wear down opposing teams, with that you need a spinblocker to keep your hard won hazards up. So, I'd like to recommend replacing Terrakion with Sableye. The set I suggest is:

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Sableye @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 120 Def / 252 HP / 136 SDef
Calm Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Recover
- Taunt
- Night Shade

Terrakion really wasn't doing too much for your team, Venusaur already functions as a pretty reliable revenge killer, especially as the opposing team will have taken plenty of passive damage. Sableye will ensure your hazards are up for the entirety of the game. With this change you do become more weak to ChestoRest Volcarona but it is so uncommon and you still check it fairly well that I don't foresee it has too big of a problem.

I hope I haven't changed your team too much, I want to reiterate that I believe with these changes your team will operate similarly while having a more focused goal in mind. Plus Growth Venusaur will wreck face once rival teams have been whittled down by your defensive team.

Good Luck!
 
Hey, very interesting team here!
First, I wouldn't name all your pokes after their set names (unless you don't do that, in which case ignore this). It really takes away the surprise factor.
I second what most other people have said here; replace Chansey with Blissey. Blissey has leftovers going for it, and while it might not have the eviolite going for it, sometimes the little recovery is what saves it.
I also believe that you should replace Toxic with Thunder wave. The toxic damage really isn't worth it as much as a (usually) permanent speed cut is in the long run.
Finally, I would run Light screen over Ice beam on cress, and give it light clay. If you're gonna give it one screen, might as well give it two and support your team defensively even farther.
Good luck, and happy battling!
 
I'm not sure how this hasn't been pointed out yet but your team is completely weak to other sun teams. They can just get their Victini / Darmanitan / any powerful physical fire attacker in on Chansey, Forretress, or Ninetails and get a free kill. Sun balance will never work, it'll always end up with more weaknesses than it can possibly handle. Random Wish support or a small touch of stalling on a pivot pokemon is actually very detrimental to your team. Balance is every other weather's thing, I'm not sure if you'd like to go with full stall or offense here but you will have to pick one with sun.

If you want to go with stall you can go with Joeyboy's rate and attempt to patch up the fire weakness by running Heatran as your special wall over Chansey and from there just attempt to tweak the individual sets, you'll eventually get the team working at full efficiency this way. However, it'll be horribly weak to Tornadus-T and / or fire attackers no matter what you do. This would mean you could expect a loss when facing standard rain or sun.

If you want to go offensive, you have to throw the clunkers out the window. Chansey and Cresselia are just chances for Fire-types and other horrors like Tyranitar to come in and get a kill. You would also need to replace Terrakion with something that actively abuses sun, that's a general rule of any sun team bar support mons like Forry. To keep the team similar to it's current form I recommend Scarf Infernape over Terrakion. This is basically the same thing offensively except with a double STAB bonus and U-Turn, this will be your MVP against sun teams and incredibly valuable in general with Genesect literally being on more than half of the suspect ladder teams.

From here to replace the clunkers it's kind of an open-ended question, the obvious required roles of sun offense you have filled are anti Stealth Rock + your Stealth Rock, Venusaur (this was any chlorophyll sweeper before Venu got Giga Drain), and a powerful Fire-type attacker. The next big thing you need is to weave in a strategy to beat Hippowdon / Tyranitar / Politoed so you can abuse sun. Beating Hippo and Toed completely would have to be done by running both Wobbuffet and Dugtrio which you do have room for and was proven workable in BW1 but only you know if it's something you would like to use. You could just use Dugtrio to pressure TTar (Dug is also immensely useful for aiding the sweeps of Venusaur and Infernape by taking out Heatran and Tentacruel so you want to use it anyway), rely on your team to get Hippo / Toed and throw a 2nd power piece in the final slot. I would recommend another Fire attacker like Scarf Darmanitan or Scarf Chandelure, if you choose to run SR on Dugtrio which is popular these days you could run Spikes on Forry and block it all with Chandelure, if you choose to use something different on Dugtrio Darmanitan is probably the scarier pokemon. Throwing on a second scarfer is what I immediately like because the metagame is pure offense at this point and for good reason, everything is too powerful so by having a speed advantage at your disposal you have a pretty big one.

Mix and match with what you like, but keep the 4 man building block. You'll probably end up getting the best results with Dugtrio occupying one of the final two slots, the fact that it can trap and kill those overly threatening fire types, open up sweeps for Venu and Ape, AND trap Tyranitar makes it incredibly valuable. Good luck.
 
cool sun team. I don't see it standing up to another sun team pretty much ever. Or any team prepared for a sun team. Outside of terrakion, heatran runs through this team, and a team with a core of Scizor and Heatran I really dont see you beating. Volcarona after a quiver dance also runs over this team. I like how you are trying to be a bit more stall oriented with a sun team, which can be a pretty hard feat as most pokes that benefit from sun are pretty frail.
I also see you struggling to win a weather war, as your Ninetales doesn't stack up very well against Politoed, or T-Tar. I suggest running a calm nature and maxing Ninetales HP.
I also suggest dropping Forretress for a Heatran maybe this set.

(Heatran) (M) @ Leftovers Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Magma Storm
- Sunny Day
- SolarBeam
- Stealth Rock

You can trap Poli on switches and cast sunny day and kill with solar beam. Scald and Hydro pump out of rain only do around 20% leftovers heals that easily. Also with the trap you can lay rocks easily, which is all forretress was really doing for your team.


In todays meta game I dont see the point of running Cresselia, unless you have Toxic Spikes up, which you don't. As Genesects prevalance really rocks Cresselia.

If Gengar is giving you grief, I suggest this guy here, he wins the weather war, and is the best revenge killer for you I can think of.
Dugtrio (F) @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Veil
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Beat Up
- Sucker Punch
- Stone Edge
I band him as it can ohko sub/disable gengar with a 5 hit beat up, while gengar has a sub. He also 2hko Deoxys-d allowing him only to get rocks up. He also ohko T-Tar.

Sucker Punch makes him worth saving for late game antics as well, and ohko's starmie nicely who can really hurt this team outside of the sun.
 
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