Speedy Death

[Nosadjay]

Hello people. This is the first team I have truly felt confident with playing and having fun with. That being said, let's look at the team.

Basic premise of the team is to hit hard and fast. Nothing can truly sweep, but everything can put holes into the opponent to give the next pokemon a chance to sweep. This unfortunately leads to me having a difficult problem switching out and sending in pokemon, leaving me to figure out what I can sack and still win the game. Which is why i named this team speedy death; usually the game is won by my opponent or me within 20 turns. I will say this though, prediction is extremely important with this team, since I can't sack pokemon wastefully or let me oppenent set up for free against me. That being said, lets get into the individual team members.

Garchomp @ Focus Sash
Trait: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Swords Dance

My lead/stealth rock setter and the only pokemon with a boosting move on my team. I've switched between this and terrakion for this spot for a while, and I always feel garchomp works better. Outrage and earthquake cover most of the tier bar Skarmory and Bronzong, swords dancing when my opponent switches allows me to outrage or earthquake KO other steel types, and rough skin allows be to break sashes and sturdy. Focus sash stops me from being KO'ed off the back and guarantees stealth rock/swords dance/an attack going off before it dies and can also allow it to act like a revenge killer if rocks or spikes aren't up

Latios (M) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Psychic
- Draco Meteor
- Ice Beam

I had tried keldeo and terrakion before latios, but keldeo lacked a good movepool and terrakion had a hard time killing other choice scarfers. Latios does everything I need it to, Psychic to OHKO keldeo and terrakion after rocks, Draco Meteor to OHKO opposing latios, and Ice beam landorus and thundurus-t and dragons if I don't want to lose SpA. Thunderbolt to hit water types? Really thunderbolt is a placeholder and I sometimes replace it with hidden power fire if I know I'm against scizor, ferrothorn, etc. I don't really mind, since it can KO all other choice scarfers without getting hit.

Thundurus-Therian (M) @ Expert Belt
Trait: Volt Absorb
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Focus Blast
- Hidden Power [Ice]

Rain was giving me trouble with earlier versions of this team, which led me to choose between jolteon and this. Jolteon had to run Thunder to nab some KO's and the extra speed was kinda useless. Thundurus-T runs thunderbolt so it doesn't get screwed over by a miss outside of rain. Volt switch gives me a good way to switch out if I feel the enemy will, while HP ice allows me to kill nasty ground types or opposing Thund-T's that might try to stop me. Focus blast to hit things like tyranitar and ferrothorn. Like with latios, I run Thunder over thunderbolt if I know I'm against rain.

Alakazam @ Focus Sash
Trait: Magic Guard
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Signal Beam

My backup plan in any game. Focus sash alakazam allows it to always get an attack off unless the opponent is running something like choice scarf garchomp with dual chop (I lost to it once). I run psychic of psyshock just for some extra power since the only thing I've run into where psyshock is 100% better is jellicent. Hidden power ice to revenge dragons and signal beam for physics, darks, and celebi. I was using modest before, but i realized that i need to atleast speed tie with other alakazams. I believe this is the one pokemon that has been apart of every single version of this team since its so handy.

Volcarona @ Expert Belt
Trait: Flame Body
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature
- Bug Buzz
- Fire Blast
- Giga Drain
- Hidden Power [Rock]

I wanted a fire stab on my team, so steel types under rain wouldn't be to bad. The only one I used that proved useful was volcarona. Fire blast dents anything that doesn't resist it, hidden power rock was originally put on just to fight other volcaronas, but I found it useful against random flying and fire types. I originally had quiver dance instead of giga drain, but I can't name a single time it was useful, where giga drain allows me to hit a few more things super effectively.

I use modest 99% of the time, only switching to timid if I know i'm against a volcarona in a rain team. The extra power puts me over the edge in kills I wouldn't other wise have gotten and there is very few things I have a need to speed creep over. I have used life orb before, but it ending up killing volcarona in a couple important situations where the extra life mattered.

Breloom @ Fighting Gem
Trait: Technician
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Mach Punch
- Spore
- Bullet Seed
- Focus Punch

My original priority user was scizor, who acted like a tank that threw bullet punches. I switched since bullet punch is resisted by many pokemon and it couldn't kill more than 2 pokemon before it died. I switched to breloom just to test it out with a life orb set and didn't like it at first. Then I saw this set from another RMT (believe it was Remedy's) and I instantly loved it. Fighting gem plus adament plus focus punch plus spore means something dies or atleast has a huge dent put into it.

For example, the onsite defensive skarmory switch in vs focus punch: 252+ Atk Fighting Gem Breloom Focus Punch vs. 224 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 229-271 (70.03 - 82.87%) -- guaranteed 2HKO.

The two ghost types in OU are Jellicent and Gengar, and you can kill jellicent with bullet seed. Mach punch also allows it to finish off anything that gets low enough and doesn't resist it. Jolly could be useful, especially against other brelooms, but as I said earlier, this things is made to put dents into other things and to finish whatever is left with mach punch.

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Threats: I'm having an extremely hard time naming any actual threats since I have good coverage overall and I just have to make sure I keep my checks and counters alive. Other choice scarfers were a problem, but latios fixes that. That being said, there have been two things that have caused me problems, boosters and stall. I can't let anything set up for free against my team since it makes my counters job that much harder. Baton pass is extremely annoying if the pokemon I currently have out can't kill the passer or receiver.

Stall on other hand ruins one of the points with my team, and that is making sacrificing pokemon to make dents for other pokemon. They protect, subsitute, recover, roost, slack off, and leftover any damage I can do all while throwing thunderwave and willow wisp my way. I have less problems dealing with stall that I do with boosters since all I usually have to do is make sure I do at least 60% hp against opposing pokemon.

While i do enjoy using this team and have a good amount of success with it, I feel that certain aspects could be better. The two pokemon I am mainly looking at are garchomp, who I feel could probably get replaced by a better terrakion set I never thought of and volcarona, who I feel can be replaced by something fast, powerful, and has a fire move. Any feedback would be appreciated :).

 

[dinodino56]

From Looking at your team i see one major threat and that would be Focus Sash Weavile.
It can take out everyone on your team ,but Volcarona and even then he get wore down by hazards since you have no Spinner.Though Weavile is not that common there are other Ice types in Ou and Hp Ice.I recommend Replacing Alakazam or to a Lesser extent Volcarona for Scizor.Scizor easily KO Weavile with bullet punch and even if Weavile runs Sash Weavile cannot hurt it.It Also kills celebi with U-Turn and Pursuit.It even have Superpower for Steels.I think your team will appreciate it because you have 4 ice weaknesses and 1 resist.Now you have 2 or 1 depending on what you are going to remove.It also help beat Choice Dragons resist their STAB.

Summary:
Scizor----->Alakazam

 

[Nosadjay]

I can't actually think of any situations where weavile was overly annoying since while I have no counter to it, I have many ways to check it. Weavile does have the potential to beat my entire team, but that is under worst case scenarios (I don't have stealth rock up, opponent has stealth rock up, and weavile has night slash) in which case volcarona and garchomp no longer work as checks. Breloom, latios, and alakazam can all get attacks off before they die to focus sash weavile.

The real threat I've seen are hail teams with mamoswine and weavile, since getting rid of terrakion got rid of one my ways to go through them. I need to play smart against them, with garchomp getting rocks up if weavile isn't out, or outraging to break sash and even kill if it uses ice punch. The rest of my team out speeds the rest of hail teams for the most part unless the opponent is a froslass or scarfed.

I tried your scizor over alakazam and it came with it's own pros and cons. It gives me a switchin now and creates a voltturn core with thundurus-t. Hail got alot easier to beat and weavile and mamoswine are easy to handle. The problem though is that its weaker against the other weathers, from what i've played, and puts pressure on the rest of my team to live longer to kill other threats. Alakazam played the role of a backup plan if 1 of my Pokemon failed, alakazam could always come in to clean up or at least put a dent in it.

Thanks for the suggestion, I really got to see scizors potential as a physical powerhouse, but I'll stick with alakazam for now since I feel it works better on this team.

 

[Lady Alex]

Hi, This is a pretty cool team. My biggest recommendation would be to use Starmie over Thundurus-T. You'll lose a bit of power and ability to gain momentum through volt-switch, but you get similar super effective coverage and a rapid spinner, which will make Volcarona's life much easier. My other suggestion is to use Quiver dance over HP rock and Life orb or Leftovers on Volcarona. The things you hit super effectively are mostly going to be 1hko'd anyway after a quiver dance, so Expert Belt is probably unnecessary. Your team doesn't particularly struggle with Heatran, so I think you can forgo hp rock for quiver dance and let the rest of your team deal with Heatran.

 

[Nosadjay]

I don't think starmie would work over Thundurus-T in this team simply because they do 2 completely different things. If my Volcarona ran quiver dance I would probably run starmie since I would want my Volcarona to set up dances easily, but since it doesn't, I would rather have thundurus-T destroy rain teams. Onto quiver dance on Volc, I've tried it out before and from my experience it doesn't help to much for this team since certain switchins can really punish the turn i try to set up (choice scarf terrakion particulary). I have started using Life Orb again because of your suggestion and I am loving it. Volc hurts more in general and the health doesn't matter to much since it is pretty easy to OHKO Volc back for many teams. Will use life orb a little more just to see if it has other problems, but thank you for reminding me to use lifeorb again .

I think you got hp rock and ground confused, since hp ground is what most volcaronas run to deal with heatran. Hp rock is there mainly for fire types, which I have no coverage on with my team besides garchomp, and it also gives me coverage of a couple flying types and if i want accuracy against ice. In particular i run hp rock to OHKO enemy volcaronas back at +1 if they try to set up.