My first team ever - Scouting in the Toxic Rain

Solth

This is my first team ever since I have never Battled competitively. I wanted to get some insight from some more experienced players. I really like scout moves because they keep the matchups in your favor. I also enjoy drizzle because using rain to your teams strengths is a huge advantage.

Politoed@Leftovers
Ability: Drizzle
EVs: 252 HP/ 252 Def/ 4 SpD
Nature: Bold
Moves:
-Toxic
-Protect
-Scald
-Encore

This is my bulky guy who keeps the rain up and can do a bit of toxic stalling. I feel he does well in a lot of lead situations. A lot of people expect a specs set so I tend to lead with toxic typically it safely allows me to hit a switch in or the lead with some damage if they stick around. If i can toxic stall whoever is in front of me i do so. Otherwise I can hopefully switch to forretress to set up hazards. otherwise i switch to one of my scouters.

Rotom-W@Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA/ 252 Spe/ 4 SpD
Nature: Modest
Moves:
-Thunder
-Volt Switch
-Hydro Pump
-Trick

This guy with scizor can do a lot of hit and running to provide some favorable matchups. Trick can really maim a pokemon of my choosing locking them into a single move. Rotoms hydro pump really hits like a truck in the rain and the 100% accuracy on thunder is nice as well. Volt switch is my typical move of choice so I can scout any switches as i tend to bring rotom in on pokemon he counters.

Scizor@Choice Band
Ability: Technitian
EVs: 252 HP/ 252 Attack/ 4 SpD
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-U- Turn
-Bullet Punch
-Superpower
-Pursuit

This is the other side of my scouting strategy. Scizor likes to rid himself of a 4x fire weakness but boosted water moves do become an issue. I love the ability to hit very hard and scout with u turn. Scizor also is great at trapping pokemon weak to pursuit. Superpower is there to take out pokemon who otherwise would wall my team such as ferrothorn or blissy. I can also predict a magnezone switch in with superpower. I will tend to just spam u-turn just to be safe though and keep matchups in my favor.

Vaporeon@Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP/ 252 Def/ 4 SpD
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Wish
-Heal Bell
-Protect
-Toxic

I love this set because I do not have to fear status effects such as toxic or burn. Vaporeon also passes some much appreciated wishes to pokemon who may have taken a bit of damage. I do understand that I do not have the typical scald build but i feel my other pokemon bring water moves to the table and I am a sucker for toxic stall because you can really rack up the damage with a tanky pokemon.

Salamence@Life Orb
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Att/ 252 Spe/ 4 hp
Nature: Adamant
Moves:
-Dragon dance
-Earthquake
-Dragon Claw
-Brick Break

I feel my team does a great job of softening teams up between hard hitting u-turns and volt switches and toxic stalling. With the scouting of Rotom-w and Scizor there will be many opportunities to bring this monster out to set up a dragon dance and wreak some havoc. I don't know if this guy is the best physical sweeper for a rain team but i feel i needed a physical monster to pick apart the opponents team.

Forretress@Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP/ 252 SpD/ 4 Att
Nature: Careful
Moves:
-Stealth rock
-Spikes
-Rapid Spin
-Earthquake

With this teams scouting ability, I force many switches by the opposing team. entry hazards benefit me greatly. Rapid spin support also helps my team stay healthy while scouting. I chose earthquake as the attack move because this would allow me to predict magnezone switch ins and really turn the tide of a game.

Thanks for checking my team out. If my descriptions of the members of my team are still not good enough let me know. I did try to improve them. Thanks for the comments so far and I hope this team is to the point where people can make suggestions and not be overwhelmed by too many issues.
 
Not one bit of advice all day, I know my team isn't that great. Any input would be greatly appreciated!
 
Okay, you have one Swift Swim abuser. I would recommend before I even begin cracking down on this team that you either add more or switch to a simpler Drizzle Politoed at the cost of no Swift Swimmers.
 
Looking through the team quickly I saw a lot of things to change. But, here are a few ones to consider. I'd honestly go with politoed drizzle... It will cost you your swift swimmers, but you only have one. I would probably use the standard Specs set, seeing as your team already has tentacruel and vaporeon as walls.

But beware, that if you do end up replacing machamp for Politoed, you'll probably have to switch your kingdra out for conkeldurr or some other fighting pokemon, just so your not completely shit on by Blissey.
 
Thank you a lot for the suggestions. So i decided to nix the rain dance swift swim idea completely. I opted for drizzle politoed and I wanted to use pokemon that would benefit from the rain. Rotom loves the rain for some extra power, while forretress and scizor love losing their 4x fire weakness. I dont know if salamence is out of place but i felt i needed someone who could set up and finish a team off at the right time. I also considered lucario, gyarados, or dragonite. Any firsther suggests would help me a lot thanks again.
 
3. Have some actual words in your post beyond your six Pokemon and their moves. Not following this makes your post quite boring to read and rate. All Pokemon should have a good reason for being in your team anyway, so why not post that reason? If you are having trouble with this one, start by giving an explanation for each team member. Why are they there? What role do they serve? How do you get them in? Then, give an explanation of how you would open with the team and how you would go about using it. All of these things help people rate your team and allow us to offer more helpful advice.
Click to expand...
 
Good team overall I have to say, but there are something that was screaming out to me. When I saw Salamence on this team, I instantly thought mixed DD with Hydro Pump would destroy anything that doesn't resist it, you might want to swap Brick Break for it because Mence is a late game sweeper all Ferrothorns should be off the field so BB has no point. Even though Hydro Pump is gimmicky, it works nicely.
Anyways that's all I have to say, so good luck
 
I though about the mix mence set as well because it would be very scary but the more i look at my team the more i fear ferrothorn. Do you think my team can handle him without brick break on mence? I guess i do have trick from rotom and superpower from scizor. depending on other feedback I may switch to a mix mence. thanksfor the suggestion.
 
Here goes a rate!


Politoed - Looks extremely good overall but my only concern is Scald. I see that you might be trying to go for the burn hax on your opponent, but you already have a Status condition move with Toxic so the burn really isn't that necessary and it is only a 30% chance of landing a burn. I would recommend changing Scald to Surf as it still is a STAB move but with an increase of power with 95. Other than that suggestion, your Toed looks good overall.

Rotom-W - Looks good as is!

Scizor - Looks good.

Vaporeon - Your Vaporeon has just one issue. You have an Adamant Nature, but with no attacking moves. I would recommend, judging by your EV spread, giving it a Calm nature which boosts SDef while lowers Atk which really isn't useful on a Vaporeon. This gives you a more Special Defensive edge because you have invested 252 EVs into Def.

Salamence - Looks good as is, but I want to know your reasoning behind Brick Break. My guess says that it could be used to take care of common Steel types like Ferrothorn but you have a Scizor with Superpower in the back. Mix Mence is also a great idea.

Salamence (F) @ Life Orb
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 176 Spd / 216 SAtk / 166 Atk
Naive Nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake
- Draco Meteor / Dragon Pulse
- Flamethrower

This set lets you take full advantage of your Dragon Dance and gives you also a Special Attack edge. You have the option of either Dragon Pulse or Draco Meteor but both are very good in my opinion. The only thing about Draco, though, is the 90 Accuracy which could fail you in critical conditions, and the SAtk drop. Dragon Pulse is considerably weaker than Draco Meteor though so it is your opinion and testing out of each set that deteremines the move.

Forretress - I like your Forretress set but I have one suggestion. Forretresses are really only used to set up Spikes, Stealth Rock, etc. and Rapid Spin opposing Spikes, etc. but when is all said and done, it really cannot do much else. My opinion would to give Explosion instead of Earthquake on him because first of all, Salamence already has a much power EQ, and second of all, an EQ from Forretress really is not that powerful compared to Mence's. I would say just replace EQ with Explosion to put some finishing damage on and maybe get a KO here and there.


Nice team and try some of those suggestions!
 
Vaporeon has adamant listed as its nature but I think you meant bold instead. As a wish passer, it faces great competition with blissey, who is arguably the best, with the ability to wall a large portion of the metagame. As such, I think it would make a better fit for your team. It doesn’t leave you vulnerable to thundurus once rotom-w has tricked away its scarf nor does it share the same weaknesses as politoed. For toxic stalling, you may want to consider using toxic spikes instead since it gives you more freedom in move choices. Conveniently, forretress can set up toxic spikes without having to alter the makeup of the team. I suggest replacing it over spikes if you decide to take this route. Here’s the standard blissey set:

name: Wish Support
move 1: Wish
move 2: Protect
move 3: Seismic Toss
move 4: Toxic
item: Leftovers
ability: Natural Cure
nature: Bold
evs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD

I suggest using ice beam over seismic toss in order to better handle thundurus. It should be noted that thudurus deals 71.4% - 84% at +2 with focus blast and life orb whilst blissey does 43.5% - 51.5% in return with ice beam. I think you can get away with replacing toxic with heal bell if using toxic spikes though.

Also, scizor should use 248 hp evs instead; this gives you an extra switch in to stealth rock.

That’s all for now, have a nice day :)
 
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