Just Another Rain Team

[nanook2264]

Hi everybody, I'm relatively new to competitive battling (and completely new to smogon forums) and wanted to try out a stall rain team. I'm looking forward to your constructive criticism.

Politoed (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 252 HP / 196 Def / 60 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Scald
- Toxic
- Perish Song
- Protect

Usually my starter for lack of a better one, the EV spread gives it balanced balanced defenses. Scald is there for a STAB attack that can burn, while toxic is included for walls and special attackers, and also used on physical attackers if I can't gamble on that 30% burn. Perish song is there to stop baton passers or just boosting sweepers, and protect stalls out a turn for perish song, burn, or toxic.

Celebi @ Leftovers
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 220 SDef / 36 Spd
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Giga Drain
- Psychic (psyshock?)
- Recover
- Stealth Rock

I replaced my Vaporeon with this Celebi. Giga Drain provides a stab healing, while psychic provides a secondary powerful stab. Recover heals Celebi, and Stealth Rocks was chosen on this set so Ferrothorn could use spikes. I'm thinking about replacing psychic with psyshock, because two moves on the special side seems a little worse than one on each, but I'm not sure. Also, I could put heal bell somewhere on this set, but I would probably have to replace recover, and rely on giga drain and non-existent wish support.

Quagsire (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SDef
Careful Nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Curse
- Recover
- Earthquake
- Waterfall

Quagsire is a pokemon that is useful in many situations. Once a pokemon manages to get boosts, it can usually sweep teams with ease. However, with unaware, Quagsire becomes the counter to many boosting sweepers, especially Toxicroak, a threat to all rain teams that absorbs scald and is immune to toxic. Quagsire can usually scare him away with a super effective earthquake, and curse on the switch, boosting its defense and attack to high levels. If Toxicroak decides to stay in, Quagsire can curse all day and recover off Toxicroak's futile attempts to dent Quagsire.

Tentacruel (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Rain Dish
EVs: 240 HP / 120 Def / 132 SDef / 16 Spd
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Rapid Spin
- Toxic Spikes
- Scald
- Protect

Tentacruel is a pokemon seen on many rain teams, and for a good reason. It spins away hazards and absorbs toxic spikes, while setting up its own. Scald is a stab move, and protect can stall for rain dish, burn, or toxic from one of my teammates.

Ferrothorn (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 88 Def / 168 SDef
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Spikes
- Leech Seed
- Protect
- Gyro Ball

Ferrothorn is a very, very common pokemon seen in and out of rain teams. With the rain lessening its 4x weakness to fire, he can take some weaker fire attacks with ease. He sets up my spikes and can threaten many pokemon with gyro ball. Leech seed for recovery and damage, and protect for more stalling, damage, and recovery. His great typing gives many important resistances to the team.

Dragonite (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Multiscale
EVs: 252 HP / 60 Atk / 12 Def / 108 SAtk / 40 SDef / 36 Spd
Quiet Nature (+SAtk, -Spd)
- Dragon Tail
- Thunder Wave
- Hurricane
- Roost

Dragonite is a pokemon that has amazing versatility. I never thought of using it on a rain stall team, until I found out about its dream world ability, multiscale. This turns him into a wall that can either roost-toxic stall or thunderwave then roost until the opposing pokemon gets parahaxed. From there, Dragonite can either parashuffle with dragon tail while getting entry hazard damage off, or attack with a stab hurricane that can confuse. He also serves as a good breloom counter, which would otherwise sweep my slow team with bullet seed/seed bomb and focus punch/drain punch/mach punch.


Considerations:
Rotom-W: He could serve as a nice lead to scout with choice scarf and volt switch.
Bronzong: He could use stealth rocks and let Ferrothorn use spikes, but two steel types aren't a good idea, especially with the abundance of Magnezone.
Parasect: With spore, he could have a free turn to set up leech seed and substitute, and have X-scissor to beat Celebi, a threat to rain teams, and also other grass types that resist leech seed.

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on my team.

 

[Jirachee]

Hi

This is quite a nice team actually, it deals with a lot of threats in the current metagame and Rain Stall always interests me. One thing that could be quite problematic to it though is that Rotom-W can really be a threat to it. Rotom-W can severly damage or cripples pretty much every member of this team, as it can take the Water attacks from Politoed, Vaporeon, Quagsire and Tentacruel and pummel them with its powerful Electric STAB (or Hydro Pump in Quagsire's case, which isn't immune to it because it runs Unaware instead of Water Absorb) while also burning Dragonite and Ferrothorn with Will-O-Wisp, something that can really reduce their effectiveness especially in Ferrothorn's case. While you are able to heal it with Vaporeon, be aware that it means you're giving a free switch in to Rotom-W, which isn't a great idea since you're weak to it. Another thing is that Stall teams like yours really appreciate Spikes support. You currently have one Pokemon capable of learning Spikes, which is Ferrothorn, but does not use it because it has to use Stealth Rock, an arguably better hazard. You would still benefit from running Spikes a lot, since it punishes switches a lot more than simply Stealth Rock+ Toxic Spikes which is excellent, considering the extremely low firepower this team has. I think that Celebi could be a great fit on this team over Vaporeon. Celebi is able to set up Stealth Rock, letting you use Spikes on Ferrothorn instead. Celebi can simply shrug off any attacks Rotom-W lauches at it since it doesn't really mind Will-O-Wisp, and can strike it with Giga Drain. I think that Vaporeon is quite redundant with other Pokemon on your team such as Politoed, which is why I recommend Celebi instead. What you lose there is Heal Bell support but, Celebi is able to absorb status moves itself most of the times thanks to Natural Cure, which is nice. Alternatively you could run Heal Bell on Celebi but I don't really recommend using a single attacking move on it since it really likes having access to a lot of coverage to not become set up fodder for half the metagame.

I think that you could be running Dragon Tail on Dragonite. Dragon Tail is a very useful move, especially on Stall teams, because it forces the opponent to switch out and take more entry hazard damage, as well as hurting since it's a STAB move coming off base 134 Attack. It also gives you a phazing option which means that Dragonite is not set up fodder, and can nullify threats that would like to set up on some of your other members. Waterfall is great and all but I think that for these reasons, Dragonite would become much more effective and can give you something to clean up foes easier when they are weakened late game.

Otherwise that's a pretty cool team, good job on that. Here's the set you should use:

Celebi

Celebi @ Leftovers
Natural Cure
Calm
EVs: 252 HP / 220 SpD / 36 Spe
~Giga Drain
~Psychic
~Recover
~Stealth Rock

Good luck!