Teambuilding in the 5th Gen

DISCLAIMER: This is not a guide to Teambuilding. I am not and do not claim to be an expert on teambuilding (quite the opposite in fact). The opinions expressed in this OP are the opinions of the writer and are not factual in any way (although they may be based on facts).

Teambuilding for me has always been very murky and difficult. Most of my pokemon experience before I joined Smogon was in-game play, battling with my friends, and trying to find that one pokemon that could beat my friend's level 90 Infernape. In that kind of metagame, the winner was always whoever could pack more sweepers onto their team and get the most hits with Fire Blast/Thunder/Blizzard. No other strategies were even considered; it was "the way pokemon was meant to be played".

I only talk about this to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. TBH teambuilding is much more difficult than in any previous gen, not just because of the new pokemon but also because of the new playstyles that have either been created or suddenly became viable. With the advent of instant weather for sun and rain, suddenly Swift Swim became so broken it had to be banned with rain. Sand Rush and Sand Strength arrived to take advantage of the most dominant weather of the previous generation, which basically created the 6 pokemon strategy of today's metagame. Trick Room also became very viable with the introduction of the first pokemon who could set up trick room and then abuse it itself, Reuniclus.

Offense wasn't the only strategy that drastically changed. Stall gained a massive buff IMO with the introduction of Ferrothorn and Jellicent, this gen's SkarmBliss equivalent. With Jellicent's Water Absorb and Cursed Body and Ferrothorn's laundry bag of powerful attacks it could take easily in the rain,
stall, while not being as effective as in previous gens, is still alive and well. They even got, thanks to prankster, something that could only be theorymoned up to this point: Quickstall. Murkrow may not be particularly threatening before Gen 5 in OU, but when it gets free priority on Taunt, Roost, Substitute, and Toxic, plus double its original defenses, and you've got possibly the most annoying thing ever.

My question is, what goes into a winning team in 5th gen? Is it the player controlling the team? The strategy behind the team? The synergy between the team members? Whether a team carries a counter to Excadrill, Scizor, and Dragonite?

What makes a team?

 

verbatim

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What makes a team is an interesting question, and one with multiple answers varying based upon your playstyle.

Hyper offense is composed upon outspeeding and outright demolishing the opponent.

Stall is basic, wall everything, poison stall/spike shuffle.

Sand generally involves using a wallbreaker to open up a hole for Exadrill/Landarus to sweep.

Sun involves outright sweeping with Venasaur/Swasbuck/Darmatian.

Rain (on Smogon) is varied between rain stall, hydro pump/thunder/hurricane sweeping/wallbreaking, and rain dance plus swift swim. On P.O. drizzle swift swim replaces rain dance swift swim.

Hail varies between Walrein/Regice stall and Blizzard sweeping, mainly in the form of Kyruem.

Balanced is more opinion, I tend to run an anti-lead, a scarf sweeper, a set up sweeper, a specialized counter to whatever wrecks my team, and two walls.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
What makes a team? That's easy, it's the synergy between members, but more than that, it's the focus on doing your own thing. Too many people get hung up on having counters to everything, but if you're always on the defensive, you can't win a battle (stall obviously excluded, but even then it controls the momentum.)
 
The player, it's all about him (her). You might give me your 'perfect team' with the 'top' mons in the metagame, but I'd still choose to run my Choice Band Ferrothorn because it suits me.

Building a team is associating team members to form a synergy. Just don't forget that you're a team member too.
 
I believe team building got a change from gen 4 with Team Preview. Now, with it is much easier to take out a pokemon that your team is weak too. Gimmick Teams are useless, because you're able to see what they are going to plan.

Stall is much easier to pull off because, in general, stallers don't like to predict. With team preview, they can make long term plans at the beginning of a match on how to play the battle.
 
for me the key to team building to go through the various type streangths and weaknesses and use the types that can beat the most number of types, but to keep in mind that each pokemon should complement another; if you us the incredible ground type, wich is weak to grass, ice and water, use a fire type with at least one electric type move to complement it.
 
For me its all about the synergy between pokemon AND how you raise them ev's etc.
for example almost every pokemon in my trick room team musharna,gigalith,eelektross,amoonguss,cofagrigus and jellicent work nicely with each other in any combination (cept cofag and jelly) this IS due to synergy but also due to the movesets and ev's (and by chance) IV's that they have.
i try not to worry about countering EVERY threat out there. if you do you will end up with a team that hates itself.
 

New World Order

Licks Toads
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I think with teambuilding, its important to have 3-5 pokemon with good synergy, then have 1-3 "glue" pokemon that allow you to check as many threats as possible. If your hyper offensive team has no Excadrill answer, no matter how great the synergy is, its going to fail whenever the mole makes an entrance. You absolutely have to use that Air Balloon Terrakion or Lucario.
 

Molk

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You have to remember these things when making a team

1) Synergy: Having six ice weak pokes is BAADDDDDDD!!!!!!!

2) offensive core: You need to have offensive pokemon that complement each other
coverage wise.

3) Defensive core: Defensive pokemon can range from anything to dedicated walls to Curse/calm mind sweepers. Make sure your core can handle as many threats as possible.

4) Support: Related to defensive core and lead, can range from hazards to weather. Usually hazards are REQUIRED.

5) lead: Even with team preview, A dedicated lead can be very useful. this is optional

6) Emergency stops: make sure that there is a way to stop sweepers that you have let set up. Pokemon like shedinja and moves like sucker punch are examples of this.

If you keep these in mind, you should be fine.
 
I feel like teambuilding depends on alot of things, but if we wanted to break it down to the simplest terms, the formula for the team goes something like

Abuser.
Makes the Abuser Abusable.
Deals with anything the current pokes don't deal with.
It's a trick of having as many abusers as you can without not dealing with other things.

Also, Verbatim's post made me wonder. Would it be possible to break down literally every team/archetype into a formula? It's something that's really going through my head now.
 

New World Order

Licks Toads
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@ cco. There's no rigid formula for each team archetype. However, there are suggested templates that you can build off of. For example, with a rain team, you can choose either rain offense, balance, or stall. Each which have mini-formulas of their own.

Rain Offense: Politoed, 2/3 abusers, 1/2 pokemon to check pokemon who check the abusers, 1 pokemon to check what the rest of the team cannot. If the abusers is Starmie, it is advisable to have electric resists supporting. If the abuser is Thundurus, its advisable to have a grass type supporting.

Rain Balance: pretty similar to rain offense except abusers are more Rotom-W esque than Tornadus esque, and supporters are more Gastrodon esque than Jolteon esque.

Rain Stall: Politoed, 1/2 fire weakness abusers, 1/2 ability abusers, 1/2 "glue pokemon. Among them, Tentacruel and Jellicent/ Dusclops are locks.
 

verbatim

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You can't break down everything into formulas and be 100% correct. There are always outliers, i.e., Armaldo kills Tyranitar with Low Kick because Tyranitar doesn't know what the hell an Armaldo does, Blissey turns out to be focus sash counter, Deoxys S sweeper, etc. You can however mold the basic teams composition accurate to 3-5 members (most sandstorm teams run Tyranitar, Exadrill, Latios, Ferrothorn, and Rotom-W for some reason or other).
 
For me, I usually start with two or three pokemon that work well together, usually an offensive core, then two or three walls that have good synergy, with the remainder being over all team support.
 
For me, I usually start with two or three pokemon that work well together, usually an offensive core, then two or three walls that have good synergy, with the remainder being over all team support.
This. I usually start with an offensive core of 3, add 2 defensive Pokemon, then toss in a glue Pokemon to cover any weaknesses.
 
You can't break down everything into formulas and be 100% correct. There are always outliers, i.e., Armaldo kills Tyranitar with Low Kick because Tyranitar doesn't know what the hell an Armaldo does, Blissey turns out to be focus sash counter, Deoxys S sweeper, etc. You can however mold the basic teams composition accurate to 3-5 members (most sandstorm teams run Tyranitar, Exadrill, Latios, Ferrothorn, and Rotom-W for some reason or other).
I'm pretty sure Armaldo is a digimon dude. Still it's just something that really crossed my mind. It was kind of there since franky's RMT. I'm really going to start this.

To add more to the conversation itself, it looks like making the team is about covered, what's the thought process that ya'll go through when you're picking the "glue" for your team, it's gotta expand beyond weaknesses that you already have. For me, the glue of my team is something that can still be useful against stuff I'm not weak to (Scarf Rotom-W) but what do you all call the "glue"

(Not threadjacking, just really thinking)
 
Well, the "glue" could be considered your counters for the stuff your team can't beat already. If you're running Tyranitar-Excadrill-Latios-Ferrothorn-RotomW (which is pretty much THE sandstorm team), your glue could be Reuniclus to beat the fighting types that plague the team, Scizor to scout and revenge kill, or Jellicent to tank special hits and dish out status. You can see why people like these strategies; they don't force you to do anything that hasn't already been proven to work.

On the other hand, what is the formula for building a successful team that isn't just based on the Ttar-Rotom W-Ferro or SkarmBliss cores?
 
It seems that everyone can identify all the basic "formulas" and ideas that make "good" teams, but what about going beyond the common sense stuff? After all, how many of you have been really successful with your formulaic teams? Do all of your basic teams do well? What separates the great teams from the good ones and the mediocre ones?

For example, why is a team structure like 4drag2mag successful? It doesn't follow the conventions of a "good" team; there's very little in the way of what you'd typically consider "synergy", the formula doesn't identify "glue" Pokemon or "walls", etc. Sure, you could pawn it off as "Hyper Offense", but that begs the question, "Why does hyper offense work? What makes a successful hyper offense team?"

The above is just a simple example. I think a thread like this would benefit far more from digging deeper than just "formulas" and common "glue" Pokemon. What thought processes go into a truly great team, like Obistall from gen 4? How do you modify a team that's already good, in order to make it great? How do you create, identify, or test unconventional strategies and ideas?

One particular idea that is rarely explored in depth is synergy. And I mean going further than just "x covers y and z's weaknesses". Why does a team like 4drag2mag have good synergy, despite shared weaknesses? What makes two Pokemon have synergy other than typing? The term synergy is thrown around a lot, but who can really define it?

These are just a few of my ideas, stemming from a desire to see some real, interesting, in depth, and useful discussion.
 
How do you modify a team that's already good, in order to make it great? How do you create, identify, or test unconventional strategies and ideas?
This is HUGE; look at most, if not all of the featured RMT's out there and see how many sets don't actually match this site's analyses. This is because these people took the time to edit their team multiple times after several battles to help them against other teams/Pokemon that prove to be problematic for them.

For example, I am currently looking at:The Smog #16's "Featured OU RMT." Bloo's team has a specially defensive Heatran lead, which is not something you'd expect. Why is he using it? He explains that he uses it to counter things that gives his team trouble and it's his best answer to Ferrothorn and Forretress. I'm sure, given how good Bloo is, that he found this after several trial-and-error periods when building his team. The fact that he uses Gastrodon in OU is another good example of this; he found that he has great synergy with the rest of his team, even if he isn't up to the standards of your typical OU bulky waters...yet. Obi's stall team made everyone realize how amazing Tentacruel was in OU. He was UU, if not NU, before that in Gen IV.

For me, I like to look at what top 20 Pokemon I should be looking out for (using the usage list) and try to counter from there. For example, among the top 10 are several Sandstorm abusers like Tyranitar, Ferrothorn and Gliscor. Virizion counters all 3 of them, baring the Thunder-Wave Ferrothorn or Acrobatics Gliscor, very well and is able to 1-2hko all three of them back with a great offensive move-pool. Virizion also is a good answer to Politoed, who I believe was #4 in June. From there, I would build counters to Virizion's counters while continuing to ensure I can keep the most used Pokemon in check. That, and I really like Virizion anyway. You shouldn't build a team if you can't have fun with it!
 
To be honest I always want to use one Dark, Fighting and Psychic Poké as a core then have my Lead, Anti Lead and a Pokémon I like.
 
It seems that everyone can identify all the basic "formulas" and ideas that make "good" teams, but what about going beyond the common sense stuff? After all, how many of you have been really successful with your formulaic teams? Do all of your basic teams do well? What separates the great teams from the good ones and the mediocre ones?

For example, why is a team structure like 4drag2mag successful? It doesn't follow the conventions of a "good" team; there's very little in the way of what you'd typically consider "synergy", the formula doesn't identify "glue" Pokemon or "walls", etc. Sure, you could pawn it off as "Hyper Offense", but that begs the question, "Why does hyper offense work? What makes a successful hyper offense team?"

The above is just a simple example. I think a thread like this would benefit far more from digging deeper than just "formulas" and common "glue" Pokemon. What thought processes go into a truly great team, like Obistall from gen 4? How do you modify a team that's already good, in order to make it great? How do you create, identify, or test unconventional strategies and ideas?

One particular idea that is rarely explored in depth is synergy. And I mean going further than just "x covers y and z's weaknesses". Why does a team like 4drag2mag have good synergy, despite shared weaknesses? What makes two Pokemon have synergy other than typing? The term synergy is thrown around a lot, but who can really define it?

These are just a few of my ideas, stemming from a desire to see some real, interesting, in depth, and useful discussion.
I'd like to see the conversation move more in this direction. 4drag2mag (which I've used before) is based around the idea that with enough Outrages you can beat any team. Synergy isn't really required on the team, since you'll almost never be on the defensive.

To be honest, the standard teams that 70% of the ladder uses are boring to play, not very good now that there are counters out there everywhere, and not inventive. How can we make a team that is inventive and still successful? Very few teams that break the mold are successful, but we hear about it whenever it happens.

Let's move beyond Scizor, Tyranitar, and Latios. Originality FTW!
 

Pocket

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OK, so here's my thought process in constructing this new weatherless / hazard-free team for dream world challenge.

Volcarona's the main player in this team. What usually halts Volcarona's sweep? Chansey / Blissey, Toxic Jellicent, Heatran, Dragonite, Gyarados. I look at the list of these mons and thought of a good complementary offense with Volcarona. I came up with Swords Dance Terrakion. STAB Rock + Fighting will pierce holes through all of them.

Jellicent is still a problematic mon for the duo, and I need Rapid Spin support for Volcarona. I settled with Starmie. With Expert Belt, it will 2HKO Jellicent with Grass Knot. Provides a great revenge killer, too. Hydro Pump for STAB and Ice Beam for well-rounded coverage.

After I formed my offensive core, I decided on the defensive core.

Heatran is almost obligatory for Sun teams. Heatran + bulky Gyarados can help check Sun threats and dragons. Heatran + Starmie + Gyarados also helps me deal with opposing Heatrans that plagues my Volcarona. Heatran has Lava Plume + Roar to disguise itself as a specially defensive Heatran, but it has enough speed to move before Gliscor and OHKO with HP Ice. This will facilitate Terrakion's sweep. Specially-defensive Heatran also lures in opposing Heatran who would then be taken out by Earth Power.

Gyarados has Dragon Tail + Taunt. Combined with Heatran's Roar, I have plenty of options to disrupt the opponent's set up. I have Avalanche to finish off Haxorus and Dragonites if I have to.

Celebi + Starmie deals with Rain threats. Celebi can easily switch into boosted Water and Electric moves, and retaliate with Leaf Storm. Celebi + Gyarados checks sand abusers and fighting types. Celebi has Psychic to take out Conkeldurr and Toxicroak. Thunder Wave for paralysis support.

The team:


A 2nd look-over brought my attention to potential problems
1) Thundurus - Rotom-W - Jolteon
- Celebi alone is poor coverage for the powerful electric mons. Rotom-W can merely Volt Switch out, or worse, Trick a scarf to cripple Celebi. Jolteon can also Volt Switch out or punch hard with a well-timed Shadow Ball. Thundurus with Substitute or Lum can prevent T-Wave from Celebi, but I do have Starmie that can switch into HP Ice.
2) Tornadus
- Only Heatran resists Hurricane, and it wont stomach a Focus Blast. Starmie can switch into a Focus Blast, but it wouldn't enjoy it either.
3) Latios
- CM + LO Latios with Surf can most likely rip through Heatran. Celebi can T-Wave, but it may not be able to take a +1 LO Draco Meteor.
4) Gengar + Reuniclus
- Without Jirachi / Scizor / Chople-berry Ttar, these threats would be hard to deal with.

Also my defensive core can be battered easily, with no reliable recovery except for Celebi.

I decided to extend the defensive core further by replacing Terrakion for Wish Jirachi. This will provide me further coverage to dragons, Specs Jolteon, Thundurus, Tornadus, Gengar, and Reuniclus. It also provides valuable Wish support to sustain my defensive core, and may perhaps let me play Volcarona more recklessly. I combined Starmie + Terrakion's role into one with LO Jolly Excadrill. Although not as ideal, it still threatens all of Volcarona's counters and Rapid Spins. LO Excadrill will certainly appreciate Jirachi's Wish. Jolly Excadrill provides me a check to Excadrill, just like the previous Terrakion.

With these changes, I adjusted my Celebi and Heatran's set. Since I lost Starmie, I made Heatran a Scarfer, so it can revenge kill in place of Starmie. Since I have Jirachi's special defense, Celebi can take a more offensive route with Nasty Plot. With HP Ice, it can lure and damage Dragonite; with Earth Power, it can lure and kill Heatran. Thus, Celebi lures and bang up checks to Volcarona and scarfed Heatran. Earth Power also lets it check Rain Jirachi.

I also replaced Avalanche on Gyarados for Stone Edge to better check Volcarona and Gyarados.

2nd Version:
 

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