Dark Nation
I'm a big fan of mono-teams, and since my favorite is Absol, I thought why not make a Dark team? I love that type. That it's not very versatile usually doesn't bother me too much as I can cover most situations. It certainly is more dangerous than it looks, and I've had some pretty good success with it in OU. It's also created by me, meaning I haven't looked on any pre-made sets... which is a point of pride :)
The plan is mostly to catch my opponent off-guard, force some good prediction and surprises with a little guessing as well. In short, trickery. There's little raw power (by that I mean Salamence, Lucario, Gengar and so on) in this team. It's also made in mind with Pokemon that are UU or might be moved down to UU (because yes - I'm eventually intending to use this in UU), so no suggestions like ''add Weavile'' please.
Adamant Crawdaunt @ Choice Scarf
252 Attack/252 Speed
Hyper Cutter
Aerial Ace
Crabhammer
Crunch
Superpower
Trainer's Comments: Crawdaunt's role in the team is to act as a sort of initiator, and he's the bulwark when it comes to dealing out some general damage. He can hit pretty much anything for super-effective damage, and there's nothing which doesn't get hit for at least neutral damage. 372 Attack is nothing to be sneezed at when he's doing super-effective damage to what he's hitting. Many underestimate Crawdaunt and pay the price. He's also a quite effective revenge-killer.
Hasty Houndoom @ Focus Sash
252 Speed/252 Sp. Attack
Flash Fire
Counter
Dark Pulse
Reversal
Overheat
Trainer's Comments: Making short work of anything that threatens to sweep my team with a physical attack that Sableye can't handle, Houndoom has been a life-saver. I changed HP Ground/Modest for Reversal/Hasty thanks to a suggestion. When you see a Houndoom, you probably think something like ''Timid Specs... I'll stay in and Brick Break with my Weavile'', leading to their demise. I can also harass things with Overheat. Overall, a very solid team member who never fails to take at least 1 opponent with him.
Careful Umbreon @ Life Orb
252 HP/252 Sp. Defense
Synchronize
Baton Pass
Payback
Curse
Wish
Trainer's Comments: Umbreon is, as you might have guessed, my team's anchor. Whether it's passing Curses to Absol, attacking with its own boosted Paybacks with Life Orb helping and Wish recovering the damage or Wish supporting the team, Umbreon is always helpful. He hits pretty hard after some Curses with Life Orb and is hard to take down as well, even being able to pass the boosts should he be in danger (or I simply want to pass them on). I figured that Leftovers was quite useless while having Wish and excellent defenses, so I dropped it for Life Orb.
Naive Honchkrow @ Choice Scarf
252 Attack/224 Speed/34 Sp. Attack
Insomnia
Drill Peck
Night Slash
Hidden Power (Fighting)
Sucker Punch
Trainer's Comments: Honchkrow loves playing with Gengar, which it will conveniently outspeed unless Gengar is scarfed. It hits hard and is capable of fighting Tyranitar and doing something to other targets that commonly resist its moves. It even outspeeds a max speed Weavile. This also makes it an okay switch-in for Weavile as my opponents won't suspect that Honchkrow is actually faster and get OHKO'd by HP Fighting. Overall, Honchkrow is pretty damn neat and capable of beating the crap out of a wide variety of targets.
Impish Sableye @ Leftovers
252 HP/252 Defense
Keen Eye
Knock Off
Night Shade
Recover
Will-o-Wisp
Trainer's Comments: Ahh, Sableye. What Lucario user, happily using CC thinking they'll take out my entire team with it, suspects Sableye to stop them? Knock Off and Will-o-Wisp combine to cripple any physical attackers that stay in against it, possibly hoping to wear it down with repeated attacks. Unfortunately for them, Recover makes Sableye excellent against such attempts. Sableye is potent against anything that isn't a normal-type, isn't immune to Burn or benefits from it and uses physical attacks, and trying to wear it down enough for it to switch just doesn't work. A single Curse from Umbreon and its defense hits a little over 400. Not bad I'd say.
Adamant Absol @ Scope Lens
252 HP/252 Attack
Super Luck
Magic Coat
Psycho Cut
Sucker Punch
X-Scissor
Trainer's Comments: Absol's attack is skyrocketed by Curse, and it gets rather resistant against physical attacks as well. I intend to Curse-boost it with Umbreon of course, which is one of the reasons I haven't put any speed into it. The second reason is that there is little that outruns me which I can't Sucker Punch or Magic Coat. Exceptions are Lucario, Weavile, Heatran etc. and against these, HP is a lot better. So Speed is pretty much useless on Absol, unless you're boosting that Speed in one way or another. Magic Coat is a big surprise and allows me to laugh in the face of Gengars thinking they can easily stop me with a Hypnosis. Alternatively, if I think they'll use Focus Blast, I can use Sucker Punch. Substitute Gengars are a pain in the ass but those are thankfully quite rare. Overall, Absol is a good Pokemon when used by the right hands, but lacks the raw power of other more common sweepers. Unfortunately, Steels pretty much ruin Absol's day no matter what, unless they also have a partial weakness to one of Absol's moves.
