Well, this is my first RMT, with a team I have been using for the last 6 months. I was hesitant to post this team because then other people would be able to reference it when battling me in tournaments and such. Then 3 things happened which changed my perspective greatly.
Strike #1- my team lost in the 1st round of secret santa, meaning its not as easy to understand as I assumed it would be
Strike #2-I lost in the 1st round of the smogon tournament, meaning the team is not as flawless as I believed it was.
Strike #3-Justinawe posted a warstory when he used my team. At first I was annoyed, but when he admitted that he used my team and liked my team design it made me feel proud that I had created a team that other great players are willing to use. It also showed that my team was more popular than I expected, and that I might as well take advantage of the popularity and try to correct the flaws of this team.
Just for reference, the theme is a balanced team that relies on immunities/resistances to allow for easy switches. Its also 5/6 immune to toxic spikes, which is one less annoyance to deal with. Anyways, onto the team!
The lead
@lum berry
Clear body
252/236/20/0/0/0
adamant nature
-meteor mash
-bullet punch
-stealth rock
-explosion
Metagross starts this team off by doing what every lead should try to do-put down entry hazards while countering certain other leads. In this case, lum berry allows him to use meteor mash to KO breloom, roserade, and smeargle leads while the attack evs allow it to take on aerodactyl and azelf. Should azelf have reflect, meteor mash will still 3HKO, although an attack boost allows bullet punch to finish the job. Bullet punch also helps to finish off weakened sweepers. Explosion works nicely to ruin the pace for duel screen-based teams, as well as to finish things off when metagross is at the end of his run.
Naturally, this lead will never defeat bulky ground or fire type leads. If the lead is hippowdon or swampert, i will usually stay in to take the EQ just to lay down rocks, since its very important for the team to have rocks down. If the lead is heatran or infernape, then i switch to...
The tank
@leftovers
intimidate
156/108/100/144/0/0
adamant nature
-taunt
-waterfall
-stone edge
-dragon dance
My answer to every fire and fighting type is the ever popular bulkydos. Gyarados is my primary counter to anything physically offensive, including salamence, machamp, scizor, and even other gyarados. The defensive evs with intimidate usually allow me to survive a stone edge in order to retaliate with a KO from my stone edge on gyarados and salamence. This is where moving 36 speed evs to attack really helps. Taunt is also incredibly useful in this metagame, as stopping skarmory, DD kingdra, and agility empoleon from setting up is quite useful to help the rest of my team. Dragon dance is there for a late game clean-up if I see the opportunity to do so.
Naturally, gyarados attracts electric attacks, which allows a free switch to...
The core
@leftovers
volt absorb
252/0/0/232/0/24
timid nature
-thunderbolt
-wish
-substitute
-baton pass
This set looks absurd, but theres a good reason why it made it onto the analysis page. With these evs, jolteon's sub can block and counter quite a few pokemon, including porygon2, togekiss, cresselia, defensive celebi, and blissey without seismic toss. Zapdos and magnezone also have trouble fighting jolteon, but they can actually break the sub using heat wave/hidden power respectively. This is where wish comes in and makes jolteon incredibly tough to break. Not only does wish help greatly to revitalize the rest of the team, but it can allow jolteon to become a difficult wall to break. baton pass is naturally used to pass subs, but it also helps against pursuit ttar and dugtrio.
Since tyranitar and swampert are the primary switch-ins to jolteon, its only natural that my #1 baton pass recipient is...
The stall-breaker
@toxic orb
poison heal
44/252/0/212/0/0
adamant nature
-spore
-focus punch
-seed bomb
-mach punch
My new favorite physical sweeper, breloom is quite a monster to behold. I usually get breloom in on EQs aimed for jolteon/metagross, and then breloom can really tear into the opponents team. I have lost count of how many swampert breloom has taken out with seed bomb, mainly because everyone expects spore to be the first attack. That said, seed bomb also allows breloom to be a makeshift gyarados counter, as without bounce or ice fang gyarados cant really do much to breloom. Breloom is also my primary stall-breaker, as not even skarmory enjoys taking a focus punch followed by a spore. Sleep-talkers arent really a problem because seed bomb does alot of damage to them. Mach punch is primarily for clean-up, as most pokemon under 20% health are doomed to the priority attack. Thanks to focus punch, this happens quite often. Additionally, mach punch 1HKOs DD ttar with SR support and is also my main answer to sub/agility empoleon.
Breloom is vulnerable to flying, ice, psychic, and fire type attacks. This allows me to rely on...
The other tank
@leftovers
flash fire
248/0/0/0/56/204
modest nature
-lava plume
-earth power
-rest
-sleep talk
It may look redundant having a sleep-talker when i already have lum berry metagross and breloom for status blocking, but heatran is invaluable in his own way. This is my main answer to jirachi and rotom-A, as well as a backup counter to scizor and zapdos. This heatran can also beat blissey, thanks to lava plume's burn rate and earth power's sp def drop. Lava plume is also incredibly useful for causing random burns to ttar and gyarados that switch in on heatran, as it makes countering them much easier to accomplish. Heatran has great symmetry with breloom, as breloom can absorb water and ground attacks while heatran can come in on fire and ice attacks. The rest/sleep talk combo on heatran has two purposes. the first purpose is to absorb sleep should metagross fail to KO the sleep-inducing opponent (usually due to meteor mash's miss rate X( ) the second purpose is to increase his longevity to absorb dragon attacks for the rest of the team.
Heatran is also weak to fighting attacks, which allows for a switch to...
The Cleanup
@life orb
levitate
4/0/0/252/252/0
timid nature
-shadow ball
-focus blast
-protect
-hidden power fire
When I first saw scofield's unusual set, I thought it looked ridiculous. Now after using it, i can say that it is simply incredible. Gengar works wonders as a sweeper regardless of whether its late game or not. Hidden power fire is a guaranteed KO on scizor and forretress, and will usually KO lucario as well. Protect not only scouts CB scizor's attack, but other locked attacks as well, primarily flygon and latias. The other two attacks have perfect coverage, and with life orb's power can 2HKO all sorts of opponents, including swampert, sleep talk gyarados, and snorlax. gengar also loves receiving sub/wish support from jolteon, as it increases his sweeping time and negates life orb damage.
So there's my team. After extensive testing, I have found that there are really only 3 pokemon that I have trouble countering.
#3-latias- Since gengar is slower thanks to the one speed point from hidden power fire, latias can run my team over if I'm not careful. I have metagross/heatran to absorb dragon attacks and breloom/gyarados to absorb surf, but one misprediction and I'm down own team member. Having thunderbolt, hidden power fire, and recover just makes things harder.
#2-agility metagross- A metagross with meteor mash, EQ, Thunderpunch and agility runs all over this team. my only hope is for life orb variants to burn themselves out by using the wrong attacks (i.e.-switching breloom in on a EQ and gyarados in on a meteor mash) and then finishing him off with mach punch.
#1-starmie- An all out offensive starmie tears this team to pieces. Jolteon is the only one who can switch in, and he loses about 70% from a life orb hydro pump. My only means of countering is to either get lucky with jolteon, explode with metagross, or getting a mispredict from my opponent and scoring a KO with seed bomb breloom
This is my first RMT, so let me know if I forgot to include something. If necessary, I'm willing to post a threat list if I have to.
Strike #1- my team lost in the 1st round of secret santa, meaning its not as easy to understand as I assumed it would be
Strike #2-I lost in the 1st round of the smogon tournament, meaning the team is not as flawless as I believed it was.
Strike #3-Justinawe posted a warstory when he used my team. At first I was annoyed, but when he admitted that he used my team and liked my team design it made me feel proud that I had created a team that other great players are willing to use. It also showed that my team was more popular than I expected, and that I might as well take advantage of the popularity and try to correct the flaws of this team.
Just for reference, the theme is a balanced team that relies on immunities/resistances to allow for easy switches. Its also 5/6 immune to toxic spikes, which is one less annoyance to deal with. Anyways, onto the team!
The lead
@lum berry
Clear body
252/236/20/0/0/0
adamant nature
-meteor mash
-bullet punch
-stealth rock
-explosion
Metagross starts this team off by doing what every lead should try to do-put down entry hazards while countering certain other leads. In this case, lum berry allows him to use meteor mash to KO breloom, roserade, and smeargle leads while the attack evs allow it to take on aerodactyl and azelf. Should azelf have reflect, meteor mash will still 3HKO, although an attack boost allows bullet punch to finish the job. Bullet punch also helps to finish off weakened sweepers. Explosion works nicely to ruin the pace for duel screen-based teams, as well as to finish things off when metagross is at the end of his run.
Naturally, this lead will never defeat bulky ground or fire type leads. If the lead is hippowdon or swampert, i will usually stay in to take the EQ just to lay down rocks, since its very important for the team to have rocks down. If the lead is heatran or infernape, then i switch to...
The tank
@leftovers
intimidate
156/108/100/144/0/0
adamant nature
-taunt
-waterfall
-stone edge
-dragon dance
My answer to every fire and fighting type is the ever popular bulkydos. Gyarados is my primary counter to anything physically offensive, including salamence, machamp, scizor, and even other gyarados. The defensive evs with intimidate usually allow me to survive a stone edge in order to retaliate with a KO from my stone edge on gyarados and salamence. This is where moving 36 speed evs to attack really helps. Taunt is also incredibly useful in this metagame, as stopping skarmory, DD kingdra, and agility empoleon from setting up is quite useful to help the rest of my team. Dragon dance is there for a late game clean-up if I see the opportunity to do so.
Naturally, gyarados attracts electric attacks, which allows a free switch to...
The core
@leftovers
volt absorb
252/0/0/232/0/24
timid nature
-thunderbolt
-wish
-substitute
-baton pass
This set looks absurd, but theres a good reason why it made it onto the analysis page. With these evs, jolteon's sub can block and counter quite a few pokemon, including porygon2, togekiss, cresselia, defensive celebi, and blissey without seismic toss. Zapdos and magnezone also have trouble fighting jolteon, but they can actually break the sub using heat wave/hidden power respectively. This is where wish comes in and makes jolteon incredibly tough to break. Not only does wish help greatly to revitalize the rest of the team, but it can allow jolteon to become a difficult wall to break. baton pass is naturally used to pass subs, but it also helps against pursuit ttar and dugtrio.
Since tyranitar and swampert are the primary switch-ins to jolteon, its only natural that my #1 baton pass recipient is...
The stall-breaker
@toxic orb
poison heal
44/252/0/212/0/0
adamant nature
-spore
-focus punch
-seed bomb
-mach punch
My new favorite physical sweeper, breloom is quite a monster to behold. I usually get breloom in on EQs aimed for jolteon/metagross, and then breloom can really tear into the opponents team. I have lost count of how many swampert breloom has taken out with seed bomb, mainly because everyone expects spore to be the first attack. That said, seed bomb also allows breloom to be a makeshift gyarados counter, as without bounce or ice fang gyarados cant really do much to breloom. Breloom is also my primary stall-breaker, as not even skarmory enjoys taking a focus punch followed by a spore. Sleep-talkers arent really a problem because seed bomb does alot of damage to them. Mach punch is primarily for clean-up, as most pokemon under 20% health are doomed to the priority attack. Thanks to focus punch, this happens quite often. Additionally, mach punch 1HKOs DD ttar with SR support and is also my main answer to sub/agility empoleon.
Breloom is vulnerable to flying, ice, psychic, and fire type attacks. This allows me to rely on...
The other tank
@leftovers
flash fire
248/0/0/0/56/204
modest nature
-lava plume
-earth power
-rest
-sleep talk
It may look redundant having a sleep-talker when i already have lum berry metagross and breloom for status blocking, but heatran is invaluable in his own way. This is my main answer to jirachi and rotom-A, as well as a backup counter to scizor and zapdos. This heatran can also beat blissey, thanks to lava plume's burn rate and earth power's sp def drop. Lava plume is also incredibly useful for causing random burns to ttar and gyarados that switch in on heatran, as it makes countering them much easier to accomplish. Heatran has great symmetry with breloom, as breloom can absorb water and ground attacks while heatran can come in on fire and ice attacks. The rest/sleep talk combo on heatran has two purposes. the first purpose is to absorb sleep should metagross fail to KO the sleep-inducing opponent (usually due to meteor mash's miss rate X( ) the second purpose is to increase his longevity to absorb dragon attacks for the rest of the team.
Heatran is also weak to fighting attacks, which allows for a switch to...
The Cleanup
@life orb
levitate
4/0/0/252/252/0
timid nature
-shadow ball
-focus blast
-protect
-hidden power fire
When I first saw scofield's unusual set, I thought it looked ridiculous. Now after using it, i can say that it is simply incredible. Gengar works wonders as a sweeper regardless of whether its late game or not. Hidden power fire is a guaranteed KO on scizor and forretress, and will usually KO lucario as well. Protect not only scouts CB scizor's attack, but other locked attacks as well, primarily flygon and latias. The other two attacks have perfect coverage, and with life orb's power can 2HKO all sorts of opponents, including swampert, sleep talk gyarados, and snorlax. gengar also loves receiving sub/wish support from jolteon, as it increases his sweeping time and negates life orb damage.
So there's my team. After extensive testing, I have found that there are really only 3 pokemon that I have trouble countering.
#3-latias- Since gengar is slower thanks to the one speed point from hidden power fire, latias can run my team over if I'm not careful. I have metagross/heatran to absorb dragon attacks and breloom/gyarados to absorb surf, but one misprediction and I'm down own team member. Having thunderbolt, hidden power fire, and recover just makes things harder.
#2-agility metagross- A metagross with meteor mash, EQ, Thunderpunch and agility runs all over this team. my only hope is for life orb variants to burn themselves out by using the wrong attacks (i.e.-switching breloom in on a EQ and gyarados in on a meteor mash) and then finishing him off with mach punch.
#1-starmie- An all out offensive starmie tears this team to pieces. Jolteon is the only one who can switch in, and he loses about 70% from a life orb hydro pump. My only means of countering is to either get lucky with jolteon, explode with metagross, or getting a mispredict from my opponent and scoring a KO with seed bomb breloom
This is my first RMT, so let me know if I forgot to include something. If necessary, I'm willing to post a threat list if I have to.