this is meant to be a balenced team that intends to eventually get SD infernape in to sweep. here goes.
TEAM BUILDING
well, i started off with my infernape. i wanted to use the sword dance varient with a moveset of sword dance/fire punch/ mach punch/ close combat.
next i thought of common counters to SD infernape. bulky waters, such as starmie and vaporeon, as well as physical walls, such as gliscor and hippodon, stop this infernape in its tracks. as such, i eventually brought in celebi, who could decimate the aforementioned pokemon with grass knot or leaf storm, whichever i eventually choose.
next, i realized choice scarfers mean trouble for my infernape sweep. most oof them can outspeed my infernape and kill it with any unresisted stab attack, due to infernapes fraility. however, pursuit tends to put the frailer scarfers in their place, namely scarfgar and scarf starmie. furthermore, priority attacks bypass the opponents speed and kills or drives out the opponent effectlively. to pokemon sprang to mind, that had both priority and pursuit. weavile and scizor. weavile had ice shard, which can kill the dragons that the ou is teaming with with ease, but then again, scizor can easily revenge the ever so popular ssalamence just as effectively. however, weavile has more speed than scizor and is not trapped by magnezone, so i ultimately chose weavile.
next i needed a way to bait all the physical walls and the bulky waters ofthe world. after surfing through ou pokemon, i eventually settled on the new mixmence. it helped me against stall, baited physical walls due to the prominance of mixmence, and practically invites all the starmie of the world to get pursuit trapped. it also is very efficient at dealing with bulky waters thanks to its two powerful STAB options.
since i wasn't going to be using roost on salamence, it would die quickly due to repeated stealth rock damage. i had two options to prevent this. i could either have wish support or rapid spin support. wish support looked far more appealling to me, and of the users of wish, vaporeon is easily the most reliable. it fit really well with my team synergy wise and was an all around reliable pokemon.
finally for the lead. i wanted something that fairs decently against opposing leads and can put them up several times if needed. at first i thought of glliscor since it had great synergy with vaporeon, but later, i switched to a hipppowdon lead since it had more bulk behind it. the sandstorm is somewhat of a double edged sword but it helps greatly against light offensive teams.
Thanks to the smogon community, i realized that gliscor made for a much better lead than hippowdon for my team, as hippowdon's low speed slowed down the team too much, which gliscor remedied while keeping reasonable bulk and good synergy with its team. Plus no sand storm!
Snorlaxe helped me realize how dragon weak my team was. to remedy this, he reccomended changing weavile to scizor, as scizor is more versatile and still destroys dragons, and switching my gliscor lead to leadgross, who has the bulk to take on salamence's stab draco meteor. after making the change, my team has had even more success, and the changes did nothing but help.
later i replaced scizor with tyranitar to deal with zapdos and rotom, neither of which i could effectively handle.
IN DEPTH
Metagross
adamant/occa berry
252HP/236ATK/12DEF/8SPE
meteor mash
bullet punch
stealth rock
explosion
my lead. metagross is able to deal with the common suicide leads very well with the combination of meteor mash and bullet punch. stealth rock is to set up stealth rock and explosion is there to crush a counter later on in the game. one of the main reasons i've chosen metagross as my lead is because it is durable. it will almost always be able to set up stealth rocks, survive, and return to help me counter dragons and explode on troublesome physical walls that will ultimately stop my infernape sweep. as far as synergy goes, it has great synergy with salamence, and a well predicted fire blast or earthquake means a safe switch to the brute. in return, it can take the ice beams and stone edges aimed at mence with ease. its durability is greatly increased with wish support from vaporeon, who is also able to take fire blasts off metagross's hands. furthermore, metagross is my most reliable switch into dragon hits that plague the ou and with bullet punch and meteor mash at its disposal, it is perfectly able to bring salamence to its knees. overall metagross is simply a huge asset for my team.
vaporeon
bold/leftovers
188HP/252DEF/68SPE
wish
protect
surf
HP electric
my team's wish passer. vaporeons overall bulk ensures that it is perfectly able to pass wishes successfully. all of my pokemon, barring celebi, have no form of recovery. wish helps them last longer and since every pokemon on my team resists either grass or electric attacks, i generally find it relatively easy to pass wishes to my teammates. beyond the obvious wish support, vaporeon functions as my primary counter to heatran, who is taken out by surf, gyarados, who is beaten by hp electric, and mixape, who is also delt with by surf. synergy wise, vaporeon, as aforementioned, works really well with the rest of my team. everything other than else resists grass hits and celebi can take care of thunderbolts. physical attackers who often try to counter vappy are dealt with by salamence, who also appreciates wish support to deal with stealth rock damage, which tends to add up.
salamence
naive/life orb
16ATK/ 240SPA/252SPe
draco meteor
outrage
fire blast
earthquake
this is the new mix mence set, and is meant to weaken/ eliminate infernapes counters. my infernape has a problem with three things: salamence and dragonite (since i don't have stone edge), physical walls like hippowdon and gliscor which can take repeated physical attacks, and bulky waters. mixmence is able to bait physical walls like hippowdon and gliscor and hit them with fire blast or draco meteor to weaken or ko the walls. it is also able to hit bulky waters hard with its double stab option along with earthquake for massive damage. in fact. the only problem mence can't remedy for infernape are the dragons, who celebi and gliscor together do a fine job of handling. as an individual pokemon, salamence has trouble with priority attacks and stealth rock. both put the wear and tear on salamence, greatly hampering its durability. vaporeon helps salamence stay alive longer thanks to wish, and since salamence has inntimidate and immunity to ground and resistance to fighting hits, both of which vaporeon seems to attract, salamence finds it fairly easy to switch in and take wish. so that remedies the stealth rock. now onto the priority problems. the priority hits that seem to be fired at salamence the most are ice shard, bullet punch, and extremespeed. all of these are handled by metagross, who resists all of these attacks and also resists all of salamence's weaknesses. scizor is able to handle salamence's weaknesses well too, and salamence resists the only weakness scizor has: fire. it can often find oppurtunities to switch in on a resisted move and continue to decimate pokes the rest of my team has a problem with. all in all salamence fits perfectly with the rest of my team.
tyranitar
jolly/choice scarf
252ATK/252SPE/4HP
stone edge
earthquake
crunch
pursuit
tyranitar is my trick absorber and my pursuit user. stone edge is a good stab move and helps cover the troublesome zapdos and non dragon dancing salamence. crunch is for secondary stab and hits ghost pokes who dont flee pursuit pretty hard. earthquake is primarily for coverage but also hits most steel types for massive damage. tyranitar is great at countering trick users since most trick users are psychic or gost and will be crushed by pursuit. sandstorm provides tyranitar with a lot of special bulk allowing it to counter a bunch of special sweepers ( like zapdos and rotom) with relative safety, but the sandstorm wears down my team quickly making vaporeon all the more important. tyranitar is weak to fighting, ground, water, grass, steel, and bug attacks, making salamence a great partner as it resists all of these types except steel, which is covered by vaporeon. there isn't much elso to say. it gets the job done.
celebi
bold/leftovers
252HP/220DEF/36SPE
thunder wave
grass knot
hp ice
recover
defensive celebi. i have been reccommended to run tinkerbell instead, but the bulk this set provides is more appealing to me. thunder wave lets me slow down pokemon like salamence, dragonite and gengar, all of whom threaten my infernape sweep. grass knot is a reliable stab, and allows celebi to hit hippowdon hard, who also disturbs my infernape sweep. it also hits tyranitar which is always nice. originally i ran hp fire over hp ice but once i got rid of weavile, i felt that the risk of scizor coming to kill celebi was not as bad as having no ice type attack at all. besides, scizor tend not to try to come in on celebi until they know the hidden power so it works. hp ice can bring salamence to its knees, especially if i paralyze it first. recover increases celebi's overall durability and lets it spread paralysis more. as far as team synergy goes, celebi helps deal with earthquakes effectively and can scare off a fair share of its users with grass knot and hp ice. it is also the only one of my pokemon that can take thunderbolts aimed at my team effectively, which is very useful. it can also take water and grass hits, but vaporeon would generally prefer to switch into water attacks and 5/6 of my team resists grass hits so thats not a big deal. it also takes fighting strikes if salamence is not in a good position to do so, which is always nice. however celebi also helps the team in death. most pokes that are a threat to celebi carry pursuit, like tyranitar, scizor, and metagross, all of whom are generally choiced. if any one of these guys ko celebi with pursuit, then i am free to bring out infernape in almost complete safety, use sword dance, and then sweep which is just great.
infernape
jolly/life orb
4SPD/252ATK/252SPE
sword dance
fire punch
close combat
mach punch
the star of the show. after a sword dance, infernape can sweep through anything that isn't a bulky water or a physical wall, and even these take heavy damage from close combat, thanks to its massive 120 base power. fire punch helps against steel types while mach punch stops a lucario sweep, kills frail pokes like jolteon, anddestroys most choise scarfers, which is great. i generally bring it in once something dies. preferbly celebi for the reasons listed above. however. i can generally come in on weaker dark, ice, fire and grass hits. i believe that i did a good job in ensuring infernape can get in to sweep effectively.
Well, thats my team. tell me what you think and dont be afraid to be brutal. Thank you. Special thanks to Snorlaxe for helping my team out so much. a threat list will be coming shortly
LOST COMRADES
Hippowdon
impish/leftovers
252HP/88SPD/168DEF
stealth rock
earthquake
stone edge
slack off
eventually replaced in favor of gliscor as it was largely agreed hippodon slowed me down way to much
gliscor
jolly/leftovers(sand veil)
252HP/252SPE/4DEF
stealth rock
earthquake
u-turn
roost
Eventually replaced by metagross to provide some dragon resistance
weavile
jolly/choice band
4HP/252SPE/252ATK
ice punch
brick break
ice shard
pursuit
Replaced by scizor for more bulk and dragon resistance.
scizor
adamant/choice band
248HP/252ATK/4SPD/4SPE
bullet punch
u- turn
pursuit
brick break
replaced by tyranitar to help against rotom and zapdos
TEAM BUILDING
well, i started off with my infernape. i wanted to use the sword dance varient with a moveset of sword dance/fire punch/ mach punch/ close combat.
next i thought of common counters to SD infernape. bulky waters, such as starmie and vaporeon, as well as physical walls, such as gliscor and hippodon, stop this infernape in its tracks. as such, i eventually brought in celebi, who could decimate the aforementioned pokemon with grass knot or leaf storm, whichever i eventually choose.
next, i realized choice scarfers mean trouble for my infernape sweep. most oof them can outspeed my infernape and kill it with any unresisted stab attack, due to infernapes fraility. however, pursuit tends to put the frailer scarfers in their place, namely scarfgar and scarf starmie. furthermore, priority attacks bypass the opponents speed and kills or drives out the opponent effectlively. to pokemon sprang to mind, that had both priority and pursuit. weavile and scizor. weavile had ice shard, which can kill the dragons that the ou is teaming with with ease, but then again, scizor can easily revenge the ever so popular ssalamence just as effectively. however, weavile has more speed than scizor and is not trapped by magnezone, so i ultimately chose weavile.
next i needed a way to bait all the physical walls and the bulky waters ofthe world. after surfing through ou pokemon, i eventually settled on the new mixmence. it helped me against stall, baited physical walls due to the prominance of mixmence, and practically invites all the starmie of the world to get pursuit trapped. it also is very efficient at dealing with bulky waters thanks to its two powerful STAB options.
since i wasn't going to be using roost on salamence, it would die quickly due to repeated stealth rock damage. i had two options to prevent this. i could either have wish support or rapid spin support. wish support looked far more appealling to me, and of the users of wish, vaporeon is easily the most reliable. it fit really well with my team synergy wise and was an all around reliable pokemon.
finally for the lead. i wanted something that fairs decently against opposing leads and can put them up several times if needed. at first i thought of glliscor since it had great synergy with vaporeon, but later, i switched to a hipppowdon lead since it had more bulk behind it. the sandstorm is somewhat of a double edged sword but it helps greatly against light offensive teams.
Thanks to the smogon community, i realized that gliscor made for a much better lead than hippowdon for my team, as hippowdon's low speed slowed down the team too much, which gliscor remedied while keeping reasonable bulk and good synergy with its team. Plus no sand storm!
Snorlaxe helped me realize how dragon weak my team was. to remedy this, he reccomended changing weavile to scizor, as scizor is more versatile and still destroys dragons, and switching my gliscor lead to leadgross, who has the bulk to take on salamence's stab draco meteor. after making the change, my team has had even more success, and the changes did nothing but help.
later i replaced scizor with tyranitar to deal with zapdos and rotom, neither of which i could effectively handle.
IN DEPTH
Metagross
adamant/occa berry
252HP/236ATK/12DEF/8SPE
meteor mash
bullet punch
stealth rock
explosion
my lead. metagross is able to deal with the common suicide leads very well with the combination of meteor mash and bullet punch. stealth rock is to set up stealth rock and explosion is there to crush a counter later on in the game. one of the main reasons i've chosen metagross as my lead is because it is durable. it will almost always be able to set up stealth rocks, survive, and return to help me counter dragons and explode on troublesome physical walls that will ultimately stop my infernape sweep. as far as synergy goes, it has great synergy with salamence, and a well predicted fire blast or earthquake means a safe switch to the brute. in return, it can take the ice beams and stone edges aimed at mence with ease. its durability is greatly increased with wish support from vaporeon, who is also able to take fire blasts off metagross's hands. furthermore, metagross is my most reliable switch into dragon hits that plague the ou and with bullet punch and meteor mash at its disposal, it is perfectly able to bring salamence to its knees. overall metagross is simply a huge asset for my team.
vaporeon
bold/leftovers
188HP/252DEF/68SPE
wish
protect
surf
HP electric
my team's wish passer. vaporeons overall bulk ensures that it is perfectly able to pass wishes successfully. all of my pokemon, barring celebi, have no form of recovery. wish helps them last longer and since every pokemon on my team resists either grass or electric attacks, i generally find it relatively easy to pass wishes to my teammates. beyond the obvious wish support, vaporeon functions as my primary counter to heatran, who is taken out by surf, gyarados, who is beaten by hp electric, and mixape, who is also delt with by surf. synergy wise, vaporeon, as aforementioned, works really well with the rest of my team. everything other than else resists grass hits and celebi can take care of thunderbolts. physical attackers who often try to counter vappy are dealt with by salamence, who also appreciates wish support to deal with stealth rock damage, which tends to add up.
salamence
naive/life orb
16ATK/ 240SPA/252SPe
draco meteor
outrage
fire blast
earthquake
this is the new mix mence set, and is meant to weaken/ eliminate infernapes counters. my infernape has a problem with three things: salamence and dragonite (since i don't have stone edge), physical walls like hippowdon and gliscor which can take repeated physical attacks, and bulky waters. mixmence is able to bait physical walls like hippowdon and gliscor and hit them with fire blast or draco meteor to weaken or ko the walls. it is also able to hit bulky waters hard with its double stab option along with earthquake for massive damage. in fact. the only problem mence can't remedy for infernape are the dragons, who celebi and gliscor together do a fine job of handling. as an individual pokemon, salamence has trouble with priority attacks and stealth rock. both put the wear and tear on salamence, greatly hampering its durability. vaporeon helps salamence stay alive longer thanks to wish, and since salamence has inntimidate and immunity to ground and resistance to fighting hits, both of which vaporeon seems to attract, salamence finds it fairly easy to switch in and take wish. so that remedies the stealth rock. now onto the priority problems. the priority hits that seem to be fired at salamence the most are ice shard, bullet punch, and extremespeed. all of these are handled by metagross, who resists all of these attacks and also resists all of salamence's weaknesses. scizor is able to handle salamence's weaknesses well too, and salamence resists the only weakness scizor has: fire. it can often find oppurtunities to switch in on a resisted move and continue to decimate pokes the rest of my team has a problem with. all in all salamence fits perfectly with the rest of my team.
tyranitar
jolly/choice scarf
252ATK/252SPE/4HP
stone edge
earthquake
crunch
pursuit
tyranitar is my trick absorber and my pursuit user. stone edge is a good stab move and helps cover the troublesome zapdos and non dragon dancing salamence. crunch is for secondary stab and hits ghost pokes who dont flee pursuit pretty hard. earthquake is primarily for coverage but also hits most steel types for massive damage. tyranitar is great at countering trick users since most trick users are psychic or gost and will be crushed by pursuit. sandstorm provides tyranitar with a lot of special bulk allowing it to counter a bunch of special sweepers ( like zapdos and rotom) with relative safety, but the sandstorm wears down my team quickly making vaporeon all the more important. tyranitar is weak to fighting, ground, water, grass, steel, and bug attacks, making salamence a great partner as it resists all of these types except steel, which is covered by vaporeon. there isn't much elso to say. it gets the job done.
celebi
bold/leftovers
252HP/220DEF/36SPE
thunder wave
grass knot
hp ice
recover
defensive celebi. i have been reccommended to run tinkerbell instead, but the bulk this set provides is more appealing to me. thunder wave lets me slow down pokemon like salamence, dragonite and gengar, all of whom threaten my infernape sweep. grass knot is a reliable stab, and allows celebi to hit hippowdon hard, who also disturbs my infernape sweep. it also hits tyranitar which is always nice. originally i ran hp fire over hp ice but once i got rid of weavile, i felt that the risk of scizor coming to kill celebi was not as bad as having no ice type attack at all. besides, scizor tend not to try to come in on celebi until they know the hidden power so it works. hp ice can bring salamence to its knees, especially if i paralyze it first. recover increases celebi's overall durability and lets it spread paralysis more. as far as team synergy goes, celebi helps deal with earthquakes effectively and can scare off a fair share of its users with grass knot and hp ice. it is also the only one of my pokemon that can take thunderbolts aimed at my team effectively, which is very useful. it can also take water and grass hits, but vaporeon would generally prefer to switch into water attacks and 5/6 of my team resists grass hits so thats not a big deal. it also takes fighting strikes if salamence is not in a good position to do so, which is always nice. however celebi also helps the team in death. most pokes that are a threat to celebi carry pursuit, like tyranitar, scizor, and metagross, all of whom are generally choiced. if any one of these guys ko celebi with pursuit, then i am free to bring out infernape in almost complete safety, use sword dance, and then sweep which is just great.
infernape
jolly/life orb
4SPD/252ATK/252SPE
sword dance
fire punch
close combat
mach punch
the star of the show. after a sword dance, infernape can sweep through anything that isn't a bulky water or a physical wall, and even these take heavy damage from close combat, thanks to its massive 120 base power. fire punch helps against steel types while mach punch stops a lucario sweep, kills frail pokes like jolteon, anddestroys most choise scarfers, which is great. i generally bring it in once something dies. preferbly celebi for the reasons listed above. however. i can generally come in on weaker dark, ice, fire and grass hits. i believe that i did a good job in ensuring infernape can get in to sweep effectively.
Well, thats my team. tell me what you think and dont be afraid to be brutal. Thank you. Special thanks to Snorlaxe for helping my team out so much. a threat list will be coming shortly
LOST COMRADES
Hippowdon
impish/leftovers
252HP/88SPD/168DEF
stealth rock
earthquake
stone edge
slack off
eventually replaced in favor of gliscor as it was largely agreed hippodon slowed me down way to much
gliscor
jolly/leftovers(sand veil)
252HP/252SPE/4DEF
stealth rock
earthquake
u-turn
roost
Eventually replaced by metagross to provide some dragon resistance
weavile
jolly/choice band
4HP/252SPE/252ATK
ice punch
brick break
ice shard
pursuit
Replaced by scizor for more bulk and dragon resistance.
scizor
adamant/choice band
248HP/252ATK/4SPD/4SPE
bullet punch
u- turn
pursuit
brick break
replaced by tyranitar to help against rotom and zapdos
