Rate my first competitive team. (An OU RMT)

AfroThunderRule

AfroThunderRule

*yawn* ez
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
Hello there I'm new to smogon and to competitive battling, I'm hoping to make this team the best it can be. :)

Here's my team at a glance:
dpffb068.png
dpffb130.png




Swampert (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Torrent
EVs: 240 HP / 216 Def / 52 SAtk
Relaxed Nature (+Def, -Spd)
- Earthquake
- Ice Beam
- Stealth Rock
- Surf

What can I say, he's a beast. He can set up rocks, take a hit, and dish out pain he's incredible. He can beat out popular leads such as Azelf, Metagross, Infernape, Hippowdon, Aerodactyl, etc with this moveset. He also can survive an explosion from Azelf, just epic.


Scizor (M) @ Choice Band
Trait: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Bullet Punch
- Pursuit
- Superpower
- U-turn

A great scout/revenge killer, I'll switch to anything that Scizor can resist and U-turn to scout what my opponent does and switch to a appropriate counter, this lets me to easily figure out what Pokemon my opponent has so I'll have a easier time predicting. Pursuit lets me trap Pokemon like Gengar/Latias (Without HP fire) and get a free kill. Superpower lets me kill pokemon like Heatran/Lucario on the switch who expect a Bullet Punch. Bullet Punch to finish off weak pokes or to revenge Pokemon like Weavile/Latias.


machamp.png

Machamp (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: No Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Dynamicpunch
- Payback
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Thanks to Tab for this, he adsorbs sleep from Pokemon like Breloom/Bronzong so the other Pokemon wouldn't have to worry about it. Dynamicpunch for his STAB and with his ability No Guard he'll never miss and cause confusion., with Payback even bulky Ghost fear this. He also take statuses from the rest of the team and can heal himself with Rest. The 252 HP EV ensure maximum durability as well as Leftovers recovery, the 252 Atk for maximum power, the 4 Speed allows it to outspeed minimum speed Blissey.


Heatran (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Spd / 252 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Earth Power
- Flamethrower
- Substitute
- Toxic

A gimmick, a pretty good one at that. Everyone expect ScarfTran so most of the time they’ll switch to their Heatran counter then they’ll get a nasty surprise to figure out that their Heatran counter has been poison. Earth Power and Flamethrower pretty much hits anything hard that resist Poison like Steel and Poison types. Though lately he has been lacking, should I make him into a ScarfTran?


Latias (F) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 76 HP / 180 Spd / 252 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Draco Meteor
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Trick

Latias, pretty much the star of this team. She makes a great revenge killer outspeeding any Gyarados and Salamence after a Dragon Dance and OHKO them with Thunderbolt/Ice Beam, she also attracts alots of Blissey/Snorlax so Latias can ruin them with by tricking them a useless Choice Scarf to ruin their day. The EV spread is so Latias can outspeed positive nature Base 100 Pokemon after a speed boost or choiced, 252 SAtk EVs to insure that Latias hit has hard as possible, the rest in HP for survivability.

gyarados.png

Gyarados (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 156 HP / 108 Atk / 100 Def / 144 Spe
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Dragon Dance
- Stone Edge
- Taunt
- Waterfall

My team needed a Lucario check after getting destroyed by them countless of times so I figured Gyarados could fit in with this team nicely. Also, my team lacked a sweeper so Gyarados is the perfect remedy for that. EVs are simple, 144 Speed EVs is to outspeed positive natured Base 110 pokemon like Gengar, 108 Atk is so Gyarados will 2HKO the Standard Blissey with Stealth Rocks and Leftovers factored in. 156 HP / 100 so he can take Physical hits better.

Please help my team out. Appreciated. :)

Sorry for any grammar errors as English isn't my first language. :(
 
Hi, welcome to Smogon!

Before I start, you need to put your pictures inside [ IMG ] [ /IMG ] tags in order for them to show up (remove the spaces inside the tags).

This is a pretty good team, I've only really got a few small nitpicks to offer in order to improve it.

First of all, on Heatran I'd run Fire Blast over Flamethrower. The lower power is somewhat offputting, but Fire Blast gets a lot of notable OHKOs and 2HKOs on pokemon that could potentially give you problems otherwise.
I wouldn't drop Heatran, it's really invaluable in the current OU metagame, its typing means that it can switch into a huge number of threats, and the resistences it brings are going to be incredibly useful in holding the team together.

On Latias, I'm not really seeing what Ice Beam does for you. Salamence isn't going to be taking a Draco Meteor anyway, and while Ice Beam is useful for hitting a few pokemon such as Celebi, not only does Draco Meteor hit them extremely hard, but the rest of the team should be able to deal with them anyway. I'd run Surf in place of Ice Beam.

Breloom is pretty good, but I'm not sure whether it's optimal here. I'd recommend atleast trying out a Machamp in its place. While with Machamp you lose Spore and Leech Seed, Dynamicpunch's 100% confusion rate in combination with Payback (and Stone Edge depending on the set) is amazing at tearing through the defensive pokemon that are commonly used.

Other than this, this is a well made team, good luck with it.
 
Your team uses many of my favourite tricks (max Speed Breloom, Scarf Latias, SubTran) so I really like it already. I've used many teams like this one and all I can tell you is you are missing a sweeper. Breloom can do a lot of work to KO opponents but your only other physical pro is Scizor who happens to also be weak to Fire so things like Rotom-H will mess you up.

If you absolutely want a Ghost, make Gengar a ScarfGar (same speed as Latias, give it HP Ice for fun times) and turn latias is DD Mence.

Might just work but test first!

Good luck! I have a team with 5/6 of the same pokemon (Rotom over Gengar) so I wish you the best.
 
I definately wouldn't make Gengar a ScarfGar. Without that set, he's going to have huge problems against stall with Scizor and Breloom being the things that come close to breaking it, which they aren't really the greatest against (RestTalk Gyara deals with both easily).
 
So Standard but never the less a well constructed team. 3 Sp atkers? Hmm your team late in game could well be walled by a good player with bliss. Predicting could be your only way around bliss.

Latias I like the set with the Scarf but to be honest after you trick uru gonna be getting outsped by a lot of things and with no recover that Extra "survivabillity" is gonna be useless.

I've personally used a subtoxicran and it didnt work out for me. It couldnt outstall Bliss or any other common switch ins to heatran for that matter. Your Team could have problems with Stall teams. Maybe a Devoted Mence to Wall Breaking or a spinner in this place. Here are 2 sets I recommend.

Terror (Salamence) (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 16 Atk/252 Spd/240 SAtk
Naive nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Draco Meteor
- Outrage
- Flamethrower
- Earthquake
---
Shadow (Tentacruel) (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 252 HP/136 Def/120 SDef
Bold nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Surf
- Toxic Spikes
- Rapid Spin
- Ice Beam
---

These two pokemon are very viable options over heatran.

Good first Team

SF
 
You noticed that Gengar has Focus Punch, not Blast right? That's about as good a way of dealing with Blissey as you could ask for. I wouldn't recommend either of those over Heatran, he already has Latias for Draco Meteor, which may be a bit more predictable than Salamence, but it's still enough, and Heatran really is much more useful than Tentacruel here. SubTran isn't about beating Blissey, it's about having a solid member of the team that can both take a lot of hits for the other members and do a lot of damage. You seriously can't expect every special attacker to have a way of taking out Blissey, there's five other pokemon on the team for a reason.
 
Ok. I know Im new to the whole competitive play but, I just gotta question. Why is it that Legends are allowed? Isnt that an unfair advantage? Like for instance, Heatran and Latias in this respective team. They are very strong because they are legendary. I was just wondering. Im still a noob towards competitive gameplay. Im still working on my team, but I wont be using any legendaries. Kinda anti-legendary.
 
Tab, I am new to competative battling, but I think you may be assuming a bit too much. Blissey can be a horrid wall to have to take down. Running a special set such as Gengar along with focus punch could be a decent idea, but even with expert belt, all Blissey has to do is run an Ice Beam along with her stalling moves. Say the opposing team had Blissey, Skarmory, Toxicroak left and this set holding Gengar, Scizor, Heatran.

Gengar is the lead against the opposing Blissey.
Gengar might try to use focus punch while Blissey tries and IB to test the waters. Gengar loses focus and loses some health (I'm new so I don't know the amount a Gengar would lose)

Seeing IB, Gengar would switch to the obvious Heatran, resisting IB
IB will deal very little to Heatran. Next turn Heatran will try subbing, blocking a Twave from Bliss. Fearing a toxic, bliss will switch for Skarmory to take the toxic.

Heatran will now attempt a flamethrower to take out the Skarmory with below-par sDef who would switch for a Garchomp.

This whole deal could go on for a long time because this team's lack of a decent Physical sweeper (assuming the swampert has been taken out by a latter grass move)

two walls in endgame could cost or win a match. i have had a Skarmory in the end (1v1) against a Physical Metagross and won using Aerial Ace due to the lack of damage a physical attack could deal
 
You have Substitute for a reason, you scout around with Gengar a bit at the start of the match, and then once your opponent is happy that Gengar can't harm Blissey, you Sub on the switch, and proceed to 2HKO with Focus Punch.
It's not really like Gengar is the only way of dealing with Blissey, Scizor can come in easily agaisnt anything but a Flamethrower and U-turn out, either doing 70% or so to Blissey or dealing a good amount of damage in addition to that from Stealth Rocks to the incoming physical wall, and once the physical walls have been weakened or taken out, Breloom is going to absolutely murder stall.
If any of those fail, the standard stall teams only method of dealing with Latias is through Blissey, who suddenly becomes much less effective at walling when it's been Tricked a Choice Scarf.

I wouldn't worry about offensive teams with SkarmBliss to hold them together, SkarmBliss is no longer the powerful walling combination it once was, it needs support in order to effectively wall teams now. This team in particular should find it easy enough, as Breloom and SubPunch Gengar are both fantastic at defeating SkarmBliss (that Gengar set was actually invented to do it).

Long story short: you're assuming too much. Of course you're going to lose to a well build team that not only happens to have the perfect switch in to every move you carry, but predicts perfectly. The fact is that the scenario you described really shouldn't be happening, as not only do you never switch Gengar into Blissey, but let Blissey switch into Gengar while you set up, but you should be predicting too.

And to Mattattack - to start with, legends are allowed on both teams, so neither team is at an advantage or a disadvantage. It's not like you're using a team with Heatran, Suicune, Celebi, Latias, Zapdos and Jirachi (or whatever), while the opponent is using a team of Pidgey, Rattata, Bidoof, Starly, Magikarp and Unknown. Infact, there's a lot of non-legendary pokemon (Metagross, Salamence, Garchomp etc) who are more powerful than most of the allowed legendaries, so it's not really the best way to determine what is banned and what isn't. Our philosophy when it comes to banning is only ban something if its broken, so any pokemon, legendary or not, that doesn't break the metagame is allowed. You might want to read the thread about ubers in the Policy Review forum to get a better idea of it.
 
all right thanks. I guess that Gengar would be a problem since i run a Skarmory on my team. I do run a Skarmory with Psychic though. My set is a Modest nature with Max Speed IV/Ev so whether or not i can outrun a gengar is questionable, but it could cause problems to this setup. ice beam would take on Latias, surf for Heatran, while Psychic will take Gengar/Breloom.

essentially a Starmie could sweep 2/3 of this team
The set this Gengar runs, his speed would be around 161 while my Starmie's is 167, therefore be able to take out gengar, and through that, his Skarmory killer
 
Tab said:
Hi, welcome to Smogon!

Before I start, you need to put your pictures inside [ IMG ] [ /IMG ] tags in order for them to show up (remove the spaces inside the tags).

This is a pretty good team, I've only really got a few small nitpicks to offer in order to improve it.

First of all, on Heatran I'd run Fire Blast over Flamethrower. The lower power is somewhat offputting, but Fire Blast gets a lot of notable OHKOs and 2HKOs on pokemon that could potentially give you problems otherwise.
I wouldn't drop Heatran, it's really invaluable in the current OU metagame, its typing means that it can switch into a huge number of threats, and the resistences it brings are going to be incredibly useful in holding the team together.

On Latias, I'm not really seeing what Ice Beam does for you. Salamence isn't going to be taking a Draco Meteor anyway, and while Ice Beam is useful for hitting a few pokemon such as Celebi, not only does Draco Meteor hit them extremely hard, but the rest of the team should be able to deal with them anyway. I'd run Surf in place of Ice Beam.

Breloom is pretty good, but I'm not sure whether it's optimal here. I'd recommend atleast trying out a Machamp in its place. While with Machamp you lose Spore and Leech Seed, Dynamicpunch's 100% confusion rate in combination with Payback (and Stone Edge depending on the set) is amazing at tearing through the defensive pokemon that are commonly used.

Other than this, this is a well made team, good luck with it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips. :)

Fire Blast accuracy really bugs me, alot so I chose Flamethrower over Fire Blast because of that. Would you mind to list the Pokemon that Heatran would 1HKO/2HKO that Flamethrower wouldn't?

Yea, Ice beam is there solely for Salamence because of the accuracy. >_< I'll put Surf over Ice Beam next time.

Hmm, Machamp would sound sexy. He could absorb any Spores/Hypnosis etc and he's pretty bulky something Breloom isn't. What set would you recommand? The standard?:

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
~ DynamicPunch
~ Payback
~ Rest
~ Sleep Talk
 
This is a very nice team, even more so with Tab's suggestions incorporated. Your description of the sets, particulary Scizor, show that you know what you're doing, too. You don't seem new at all! The only real flaw is a lack of stat-boosting sweepers, but that's not a big deal. I've seen archived teams without them. There's quite a bit of synergy here: Your Pokemon really help eliminate each other's counters without overspecializing, and check pretty much every sweeping threat. Thumbs up from me!

...That being said, if you DO want a sweeper, you can use Breloom's slot; You already have 2 big bad fighting attacks on your team and shouldn't miss it too much, other than its Sporing talents. Or, you could keep Breloom and try a Swords Dance + Spore set, which could work decently with Stealth Rock and Latias (and possibly a well predicted Spore) dealing with most Flying types.

Again, good team. I think I'll stea... uh, copy it.

Edit: OK, one thing I missed: Heatran shouldn't be holding Leftovers if you want to bluff Choice Scarf. Use something not immediately noticeable like Charcoal, Shuca/Passho Berry, Wide Lens, etc.
 
On Machamp, I'd run either that RestTalk set or Dynamicpunch/Stone Edge/Payback/Substitute. RestTalk sticks around longer and is obviously much stronger defensively, which Substitute is better at breaking through teams, as the handful of pokemon that can happily switch into a Dynamicpunch (Ghosts pretty much) are destroyed by a Payback when they can't use Will-o-Wisp due to Substitute.
 
Mattattack!!! said:
Ok. I know Im new to the whole competitive play but, I just gotta question. Why is it that Legends are allowed? Isnt that an unfair advantage? Like for instance, Heatran and Latias in this respective team. They are very strong because they are legendary. I was just wondering. Im still a noob towards competitive gameplay. Im still working on my team, but I wont be using any legendaries. Kinda anti-legendary.
Click to expand...
Playing competively and playing without legendaries are 2 completely different things, yes, they are strong, but thats not because they are legendaries, that because they have good typing, good offensive AND defensive stats and a good movepool, if all legendaries were too strong, they would be Uber. Anti-Legendary clause doesnt exist, because not every legendary is great (Articuno/Moltres/Regigigas/Entei)
 
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