Gen 2 Rate My OU Team?

[Bedschibaer]

That's the thing with the Steelix/Exeggutor core. If it's HP Water Zapdos/Rakiou Exeggutor can just come in, sleep it, hit it with psychics or even explode on it, if it's HP Ice Steelix can come in. The Problem is tho that Steelix has subpar special defense and Rock Slide is not really reliable because of the kinda shacky accuracy. I don't know the exact calcs, but like magic9mushroom said the matchup can go either way, depending on how you play it, depending on damage rolls and most importantly depending on what Zapdos' Sleep Talk picks. Just in case you can alyways go to Snorlax or your own Zapdos on weakened Zap/kou.

 

[Jorgen]

Getting Snorlax in on a Hidden Power is the main idea of Steelix or Exeggutor into Zapdos, though, because realistically neither is "winning" that matchup without going kamikaze.

 

[GregoryPippenbottom]

Maybe swap Steelix for Haze Quagsire? As far as I know, Quag counters the birds, and I could use Haze to Phaze. I mean those were the two reasons I was using Steelix anyways

 

[magic9mushroom]

Maybe swap Steelix for Haze Quagsire? As far as I know, Quag counters the birds, and I could use Haze to Phaze. I mean those were the two reasons I was using Steelix anyways

Haze doesn't help against the main reasons all teams require a phazer; Perish Trap Misdreavus and Trap-Pass Umbreon.

 

[Jorgen]

Quag also gets smashed by Snorlax Double-Edges, and Lax is the other main reason to run a Phazer, particularly one with a Normal resistance like Steelix.

 

[jaQ]

This is pretty solid. Good coverage to a lot of threats. RMT's are always hard to analyze because what looks good on paper may not always battle well and vice versa.

Since nobody mentioned it, I'll bring up marowak as a threat. With good prediction and offensive pressure you'd be alright, but if you have issues with him try bringing in skarm for steelix (and maybe raikou for zap for better lightning cover and speed boost). From there you would have better drumzard/cruel coverage and could go a step further and ditch gengar for cloy, but this is heavily biased from my perspective. I've never found gengar that threatening and cloy with boom just adds even more pressure to the opponent. If you're keeping him because you fear drum curselax or drumkiss homo fatboy then forget my suggestion.

Still a good looking team, not trying to bash you I'm just looking for any kind of criticism to help.

 

[Jorgen]

While he is a bit weak to Marowak, I don't see how Skarm would help him against Charizard (maybe if he ran Raikou instead of Zapdos, he could desperately try to chain switch Skarm into an EQ then the faster Raikou into a Fire Blast, but that's not the case here), and it isn't exactly something you want to depend on to stop Druidcruel, either.

 

[jaQ]

I meant that if he does pick both skarm and raikou instead of lix and zapdos, he could switch in raikou to hard counter charizard instead of flipping with zapdos, assuming they aren't paralyzed. Consider this a bonus to the better marowak cover attained in switching to skarm. If he sticks with his gengar he wouldn't have to worry about zard as much and could keep zapdos if he prefers. Raikou + skarm vs lix zapdos is an interesting debate in itself, on this team I'd prefer the former.

I realized after I wrote this that hp legends are very common now and I'm probably exaggerating the marowak weakness.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Skarm's a lot more passive than Lix, which is a pain.

 

[Jorgen]

Oh it appears the Steelix set is now Rock Slide + Explosion with no Curse. Don't do that, Rock Slide should only ever be used with Curse, mostly for Skarmory but also because Zapdos is not scared by nonboosted Rock Slide either. You catch Charizard, kinda, but that's it.

If you really don't want to use Curse > Rock Slide for some reason, use Body Slam instead. At least then you paralyze stuff.

 

[jaQ]

Agreed, body slam over RS all day. Fatman will love all the parasupport he can get. Curse works alright but much better with spikes, I'd do b-slam.

I noticed from a few posts that misdreavus is used a lot. Before I go looking like a noob and making a topic (I want to since there's not much to talk about and I've got a few discussion ideas), is hypnomissy still banned? I always found it the most broken pokemon in gsc.

 

[Jorgen]

Yes, hypnomissy is banned

 

[Mr.E]

Hypnomissy isn't specifically banned, the rule is typically sleep trapping or even sleep perish trapping (leaving Nightmare sets open for use).

Getting Snorlax in on a Hidden Power is the main idea of Steelix or Exeggutor into Zapdos, though, because realistically neither is "winning" that matchup without going kamikaze.

Eggy doesn't exactly want to switch into Zapdos but it beats Zapdos switching into its Leech Seed.

 

[jaQ]

I think you misinterpreted him. He may be referring to when steelix or eggy are currently fighting zapdos, and switching snorlax in to eat a weak hidden power and not a mean thunder.

One last question please, why can't I make threads? I'd like to discuss hp legends with reference to that old snorlax debate on over centralization.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Eggy doesn't exactly want to switch into Zapdos but it beats Zapdos switching into its Leech Seed.

Can beat. Drill Peck Zapdos wins, and HP Ice Zapdos can win if it gets lucky with Sleep Talk.

 

[Jorgen]

Yeah Egg is more to complement Steelix against the odd HP Water Zapdos (and Raikou). So it can switch in, sort of, in very specific cases, but you're right, it's not often you'd want to do that.

 

[Mr.E]

gooby pls nobody has used three-attack Drill Peck Zapdos since I tweaked my main team and stopped using it

Zapdos can't switch into Leech Seed Eggy and win short of luck, regardless of its moveset. Zapdos can switch into everything else and scare Eggy away because Psychic doesn't 3HKO. Leech Seed turns it into a 3HKO, stops Hidden Power from being a 3HKO even if Zapdos always chooses it during Sleep Talk. Defensively, yeah Eggy is still best as a pivot to avoid something else eating Thunder but Leech Seed does give it a chance to fight directly if you're in a bind. Eggy survives Thunder + 2x HP on average, so if it hits the Sleep Powder on the first HP (and doesn't miss LS next turn) it's actually in good shape.

tl;dr Leech Seed is God.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Psychic 3HKOs with Leech Seed, but it can't 2HKO. As such, a Sleep Talk Zapdos that lucks you and Rests while already asleep can win, unless Egg is also running Rest. It's the same problem Curse+RockSlide Steelix has - +1 Rock Slide's 3HKO won't guarantee that Zapdos actually goes down, so Zapdos's 6HKO with HP Ice can actually end up outpacing it.

Drill Peck Zapdos is rare, yes, but T(bolt)/DP/RestTalk isn't completely terrible as an anti-meta set since Rhydon's barely seen these days.

 

[Ranger21]

Snorlax seems to be the main problem.... maybe a curse- lax, instead of belly drum. A Curse Snorelax with leftovers can tank out many teams who are not prepared. When ev trained Sp. Def, (depending on opponet) can handle a focus blast, and retaliate hard with cursed up attack. And i have to agree with others when it comes to taking out fire blast.

 

[Bedschibaer]

Snorlax seems to be the main problem.... maybe a curse- lax, instead of belly drum. A Curse Snorelax with leftovers can tank out many teams who are not prepared. When ev trained Sp. Def, (depending on opponet) can handle a focus blast, and retaliate hard with cursed up attack. And i have to agree with others when it comes to taking out fire blast.

It's Gen 2, so there is no EV training (all "EVs" are maxed out by default in GSC), no Focus Blast, no Retaliate.
Retaliate is a pretty bad idea in GSC anyways, since nothing ever faints, or at least takes long to faint so you can't really abuse the Retaliate boost and are way better off with Body Slam/Return/Double Edge anyways. Focus Blast would be physical in GSC, because the real physical/special Split happened in Dpp.
The thing with Fire Blast is that you can get past the physical walls Skarmory and Steelix without setting up, and a Belly Drum lax can't just set up whenever it wants. If he changes it to the casual Curse EQ Lax Skarmory will wall it all day, and without any mixed attackers Skarmory will be a bitch to take down. A mixed Belly Drum set will let him bluff quite alot, your opponent can assume a mixed Curselax and try to growl it, he can assume a fully physical EQ Drumlax and switch in Skarmory in everytime until it gets caught off guard by Fire Blast, etc.

 

[magic9mushroom]

A Curse Snorelax with leftovers can tank out many teams who are not prepared.

Bedschibaer did a good job of shredding the rest of your post, but even this is wrong. This being GSC, every serious team will be prepared for CurseLax. No exceptions.

 

[GregoryPippenbottom]

This being GSC, every serious team will be prepared for CurseLax. No exceptions.

Not in UU ;)

Jokes aside, I updated the post with Steelix by going with Body Slam over Rock Slide. One of my bigger reasons for picking Steelix over Skarmory was the fact I could use him as a Zapdos counter, and I took out curse for Explosion because I /thought/ an unboosted Rock Slide could do the job, and I only had curse there because it was included in the Smogon guide. I didn't really get to try it too much is because college doesn't mix well with a meta game that requires luck to find someone else.

However, the more I look at my team, the more I find Gengar redundant. He was for coverage when I was running Heracross, but I feel like Zapdos fills his role now. I'm pretty sure the STAB Thunder hits harder than Gengar's Tbolt, and I could run HP Ice if the lack of Gengar's Ice Punch comes back to bite me in the ass. Gengar does has Explosion and Hypnosis, but wouldn't there be better alternatives? I'm sure there's something that explodes with a higher attack stat than 65, and I already have Exeggutor as a sleeper. A lot of this is just Theorymon, and I feel like that if I say something wrong, I'll be corrected and that's good. If I say something right, that's good too.

 

[magic9mushroom]

One of my bigger reasons for picking Steelix over Skarmory was the fact I could use him as a Zapdos counter, and I took out curse for Explosion because I /thought/ an unboosted Rock Slide could do the job, and I only had curse there because it was included in the Smogon guide. I didn't really get to try it too much is because college doesn't mix well with a meta game that requires luck to find someone else.

Steelix works wonders against Raikou. Not so much against Zapdos, even WITH Rock Slide.

I'd suggest making use of Isa's GSC calc spreadsheet to check things like this (in this case, it shows that Steelix's Rock Slide is only a possible 4HKO unboosted - not enough to worry Zapdos).

However, the more I look at my team, the more I find Gengar redundant. He was for coverage when I was running Heracross, but I feel like Zapdos fills his role now. I'm pretty sure the STAB Thunder hits harder than Gengar's Tbolt, and I could run HP Ice if the lack of Gengar's Ice Punch comes back to bite me in the ass. Gengar does has Explosion and Hypnosis, but wouldn't there be better alternatives? I'm sure there's something that explodes with a higher attack stat than 65, and I already have Exeggutor as a sleeper. A lot of this is just Theorymon, and I feel like that if I say something wrong, I'll be corrected and that's good. If I say something right, that's good too.

Gengar's Ghost typing is nice. FireLax, MonoLax, ToxicLax, and MonoChamp are all very sad when Gengar comes out. Miltank makes that somewhat redundant, but not totally.

Explosion is 500 base power; while Gengar's Explosion is weak, it's often strong enough anyway. What's relevant is that it's a fast Exploder; it checks a lot of things that other Exploders can have issues with (Jolteon + DrumLax in particular; Gengar outspeeds +2 Speed Snorlax). Destiny Bond can be used as an alternative if you want; the issue is that Destiny Bond won't achieve anything against Raikou.

 

[Bedschibaer]

Gengar is one of the exploders that Skarmory is very afraid to come in on. The only normal resist that wants to switch into Gengar without knowing the full set yet is Tyranitar. You can always try a set with Mean Look on Gengar, it's unexpected and can help taking out walls. You can either run the Perish Song set or just go with 2 attacks and a support move of choice. It makes use of Gengars unpredictability and effectively takes out walls.

I feel like that if I say something wrong, I'll be corrected and that's good. If I say something right, that's good too.

It's RoA, you will even be corrected if you say something right, hue.

 

[Jorgen]

Gengar works very well with Zapdos to Explode on Raikou. That being said, Steelix also tends to switch in pretty nonchalantly on Gengar, however it does fear the odd Fire Punch. Tyranitar isn't totally free to switch in either, it fears the odd DynamicPunch. And of course, Hypnosis tends to keep both these Normal resists from switching in. Gengar also gets opportunities to Explode on Umbreon, Blissey, Snorlax, and even the odd Quagsire. All of these things can tank Zapdos (well, Umbreon isn't really the best Zapdos counter, but it isn't 3HKOed), so Exploding on them helps it out a lot.

TL;DR: Gengar + Zapdos = really good combo.