
I have heavily revised this team. Please skip down to the updates.
No, I'm not asking gamefreak to rebalance the game or anything. I'm sharing my intent in making this team, and I am imploring you all to help me. Long story short I'm a "competitive gamer" by interest like I'm sure all of you are and I've recently gotten into PO and showdown. I've had a few teams that actually did really well, gotten to like 1450 points on the ladder in PO (thought not with this team), and I've kinda lurked on youtube wifi narrations for a year or so, so I'm not completely new to the scene.






Toxicroak is one of my favorite pokemon and seeing him still lumped with the OU crowd I've done my best to try and figure out how to really make him shine, not to mention build a strong team in general. Every set and every pokemon save croak I will gladly replace so don't be afraid to suggest something completely different. I've played with this team about a hundred matches and I've had a decent success rate. This is about the eighth version of it. So, without further ado...

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Scald
- Toxic
- Perish Song
- Protect
Completely self explanatory. Standard toed, built with survivability in mind, rain is croak's best friend. No ice beam though, considering that. I don't like hypnosis, even considering I don't have something to put people to sleep. He already has double status anyway.

EVs: 244 HP / 248 Atk / 16 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Substitute
- Focus Punch
- Ice Punch
- Sucker Punch
I tried every toxicroak set on smogon and several of my own, including a work-up set with vacuum wave and sucker punch. I feel like this best captures the niche toxicroak has. Substitute, leftovers, and dry skin work wonderfully together, especially with croak's useful slew of resistances and low speed. Sucker punch remedies said speed and also works wonderfully with sub, the threat of sucker punch allowing you to get a sub up as they switch out. It also lets you underspeed, get up a sub, then outspeed with sucker punch as they're forced to attack so you retain sub for their next mon. Focus punch hits like a train, ice punch is a more reliable way of hitting the things that resist or are immune to fighting. This set hates physical walls that can phase though, especially since in the rain skarm has no fire weakness.

EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Draco Meteor
- Dark Pulse
- Earth Power
- Surf
Hydreigon has excellent defensive synergy with toxicroak I noticed, being immune to ground and psychic while croak covers its fighting and bug weaknesses. I do dislike its poor speed however, and lati@s provide much of the same synergy while also being faster. It's especially wasteful since I'm not using hydreigon's main niche, his fire type attacks, because I'm in the rain. This set is my own and I think earth power is an excellent addition to hydreigon's arsenal, which is my primary way of powering through steel types as I lack flamethrower and focus blast. Surf is to abuse the rain and water has nearly unresisted coverage with dragon moves anyway. Now that I think about it earth power is mostly useful for jirachi and heatran and I already murder heatran with surf. I have a rain team so heatran isn't really a threat anyway. I still like earth power though, I'd like to keep that. I wouldn't mind using a scarf or an entirely different set or even one of the lati@s considering I think they tend to be better overall.

EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Rock Polish
- Thunder
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power [Ground]
Hidden power ground is kinda redundant with earth power too, now that I look at it. This guy is the closest thing I have to a sweeper and actually the only booster I have. Thunder and ice beam have nearly unresisted coverage, and hidden power ground will murder the magnezones and lanturns that slip through, and also stomps all over specially defensive heatran who is normally a good switch in, and the electric types who resist the stronger of my two moves. I have no STAB, which is a bit of a problem.
Once ground types or removed or really whenever he gets the chance this guy can grab a boost and start tearing it up, and until then he can fake a choice set I guess (though he lacks u-turn). This guy functions pretty well early or late game but he works pretty independently of Toxicroak so that's not good.

EVs: 252 HP / 220 SDef / 36 Spd
Careful Nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Stealth Rock
- Wish
- Iron Head
- Thunder Wave
I do not like this pokemon. I just think it's one of the only things that can actually wall Tornadus-T which I consider one of the biggest threats to rain. Stealth rocks are useful but I almost never find a time to wish pass, and my other pokemon aren't terribly bulky so they have a rough time taking the incoming wish anyway. Thunder wave looking back I'd definitely swap for body slam, since I'm already very weak to ground types. Paralysis is useful but body slam is somewhat unreliable (as much so as hypnosis anyway) and iron head is just weak as hell with no investment, plus I don't like it anyway. I would swap this out in a heartbeat, perhaps for another steel type as I like the resistances he brings if nothing else.

EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Volt Switch
- Thunder
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Focus Blast
Standard scarf set. Nice and fast, outspeed +1 mence and kill it and all that. More thunder. This guy is pretty good I guess and I want at least one scarfed pokemon on my team. More electric+ice though, another redundancy. I'd rather drop genesect than this guy though, this guy is strong as hell and actually has stab thunders, not to mention he's a hair faster. Focus miss is the worst move in the game though, fortunately I rarely have to use it.
Team problems:
Reliance on thunder/electric attacks in general. I've noticed every single battle seems to be me looking for electric immunities and resistances so I can figure out when I can start spamming thunder. This also suggests team redundancy. I don't even have a great answer to most ground pokemon, just toed, hydreigon, and ice beam on the roach.
No stallbreaker. I feel like that would benefit this team a lot since I don't have a boosting sweeper (genesect only boosts speed) and sometimes defensive cores get the better of me. Something that can really work taunt would be great, or of course just something that can DD/SD/CM/NP/quiver. Trapping would also help, so wobb or dugtrio or magnezone would probably work well. Thought I'd probably add a bit more u-turn if I were to add a trapper.
No physical wall. I rely on revenge killing most physical threats. That is not good.
No phazing. Just perish song. Not good. Especially if the threat can 1hKO toed.
Toxicroak is shoehorned onto this team. I don't necessarily want croak and 5 guys who support specifically him, but half the time I don't use him.
The order of team importance to me, and value of each mon:
10/10 Toxicroak (undroppable, team's purpose is to make toxicroak shine)
9/10 Politoed (you'll have a hard time convincing me toed wasn't the best thing to happen to croak this gen)
7/10 Hydreigon/Thundurus-T (These guys are cool and I like them. If I'm going to drop them, it's at least going to be for pokemon that fill similar roles. Don't mind changing their sets though)
4/10 Genesect (I feel like this isn't his best set even for my team, he's redundant as hell, and I don't really like him too much anyway)
2/10 Jirachi (I don't like jirachi.)
This is my second ever rate-my-team, so please ask me to change anything formatting-wise if there's a problem, or to provide any more information.
inb4 10 people telling me I need skarmory. Even as I was writing this I was realizing that over and over. I will put skarmory over someone. I want to make this team a bit more "standard" anyway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edit: Changes, Mk. II.

EVs: 244 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Bulk Up
- Drain Punch
- Substitute
- Sucker Punch
I like the idea suggested for a swords dance toxicroak and I still need to test both extensively but his poor speed makes him more of an early game stallbreaker rather than a late game cleaner (also I don't like the bisharp formula, as in, SD then complete reliance on sucker punch). Also I'm pretty sure drain punch is legal on SD sets now so I'd probably use that over cross chop, regardless of the loss in power. Also I'm strongly considering running SD/Sub/Drain Punch/Sucker Punch. Please give me your input on the Sub SD set, since it seems to combine early/late game relevance. :( I miss focus punch a little though, it was really fun.

EVs: 252 HP / 220 SDef / 36 Spd
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Stealth Rock
- Wish
- Thunder
- U-turn
I will put up with this guy. He glues my team together and provides a valuable wall vs torn-t.

Trait: Download
EVs: 64 Atk / 252 SAtk / 192 Spd
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- U-turn
- Bug Buzz
- Ice Beam
- Thunder
I've still been doing a lot better with this guy than rock polish, though I have to admit rock polish gives me a few problems to face.

Trait: Volt Absorb
EVs:
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Nasty Plot
- Thunder
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Focus Blast
Need to test

Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Draco Meteor
- Surf
- Psyshock
- Roost
Haven't tried this yet. Looks strong enough.
The team as it stands:





