Hey everyone! A few months back, for whatever reason, I told myself I would "stop being bad at Pokemon". So I've been playing a ton of SSOU and collecting viable teams from the forums, the ladder, and youtubers. I ended up building this Electric Terrain team I think is pretty good, but could probably use another pass.
The Team at a Glance
PokePaste
The main idea behind the squad is to use Melmetal and Blacephalon to weaken stuff on the opposing team that Hawlucha doesn't OHKO after a swords dance. You use Landorus and Rotom to pivot around offensive threats and keep momentum on your side. Then when the time is right, use Tapu Koko to set up terrain and bring in Lucha. It's... I mean it's nothing special. I guess the one thing about this team is, despite Lucha being a staple on Hyper Offense (?) this team is more balanced, which is more my style of play.
Teambuilding Process
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I started with these three because I identified them as a fairly reliable core in this metagame. Obviously the synergy of Koko setting up electric terrain so that Hawlucha can proc Unburden is huge, but Koko threatens Corviknight and Skarmory (only relevant on stall). Electric Terrain also powers up Thunder Punch from Melmetal. Crucially, Thunder Punch 2HKOs Toxapex from full after rocks in Electric Terrain, even with not much attack investment
Which matters a lot, because it means this core doesn't get hard stopped by stall on team preview and I don't have to run something like Choice Band, which on Melmetal I feel makes predictions difficult. I've won a few games against stall team comps because the opponent wrongly assumed they had answers for Melmetal but did not.
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I need a stealth rocker so I picked the best stealth rocker in the tier. Sometimes we keep things simple.
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Usually when I'm stuck team building, I fall back on trying to build fire-water-grass synergy. So I figured I could add heavy-duty-boots Volcanion and a grass type. But I didn't like this. First of all I personally feel like I've used too much Volcanion and Kart in my teams, and I'd like to use new things. The other problem is that the team feels too frail to be balance, but too slow to be hyper offense. I feel like if I want to do Volcanion + Kart I'd have to drop Melmetal for something faster, but I wanted to build around this core specifically. So I dropped these two. Finally, a second physical steel type on a team with Melmetal felt redundant. I also don't feel like it's enough to reliably win against stall.
Still, I liked the idea of a special fire type because it allowed me to break through Corvikight et al without risking damage Tapu Koko. Hawlucha is a little useful without his best friend Koko by his side, so Koko doesn't like coming in as much if it's risky.
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We can actually add Blacephalon instead. Shadow Ball is an incredibly spammable move in this generation. It's a powerful fire type that can steal games in its own right. And it has the option of crippling would-be specially defensive walls like Blissey with Trick.
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And then to round out the squad, we can add a Rotom-Wash. Volt-Switch being powered up by Electric Terrain is nice, but it mainly just pairs well with the two U-turn users in Landorus and Tapu Koko. It also gives Defog support which, to be honest, only really needed by Blacephalon. It's not the entire fire-water-grass trio but it's still a nice bit of synergy.
EVs and Such
Tapu Koko @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Dazzling Gleam
- U-turn
- Roost
Electric Terrain setter. U-Turn abuser. Rain terrorizer. Thunderbolt spammer in a pinch. Most will be familiar with what this Pokemon does. But this team especially appreciates Tapu Koko here because otherwise, a lot of Tapu Fini variants come in for free on this team and start disrupting things. It can Trick. It can Calm Mind. So as long as Tapu Koko is alive he can scare his evil sister away.
Hawlucha @ Electric Seed
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Substitute
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Acrobatics
Primary win con for the team. After being on the receiving end of quite a number of Hawlucha sweeps, it's nice to pull it off every once in a while on the ladder. We're running a 252/252/4 set here over the more common bulky variants because our team is a little starved for speed control at the moment. Losing to something like Scarf or DD Dragapult is actually pretty realistic for us, so in my mind we can't afford anything less than max speed. If Hawlucha was not so weak I'd run Jolly. In fact, I did run Jolly. And then I lost a lot. So we don't that, Jolly sucks.
Melmetal @ Assault Vest
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 120 HP / 116 Atk / 252 SpD / 20 Spe
Careful Nature
- Double Iron Bash
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Thunder Punch
Probably my favorite Melmetal set. I mean, don't get me wrong, pads is good too, but there is something about being able to come on almost any special attack in the meta game, take negligable damage, and then click Bash or something and heavily weaken it. This Pokemon is a little insane, really. Assault Vest actually helps with this team's weaknesses which I'll discuss in the next section. Also, Weavile eats shit as long as he's alive, which is good for Hawlucha.
Landorus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 176 HP / 100 Def / 128 SpD / 104 Spe
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Toxic
Standard moveset, I feel, but unstandard spread. I felt it would be beneficial for this Landorus to be more specially defensive. So it actually has enough speed EVs to outspeed non-scarf Tyranitar, just enough Special Defense and HP investment to take 3 specs Shadow Balls from Dragapult at full, and the rest went into Defense. It's a little bit strange but I haven't had issues with it.
Blacephalon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Flamethrower
- Overheat
- Trick
Weird little clown guy makes matchup against stall a lot more manageable. The potential to immediately lose to an out of control, Beast Boosted Blaceph kind of forces a lot of playstyles to bring in mons that hate a Choice Scarf. And take a Choice Scarf is exactly what they do. Shadow Ball is spammable. Flamethrower is Spammable. Overheat I put for some Landorus variants that feel too comfortable switching into Blacephalon instead, because Landorus actually quite likes having a Choice Scarf. But I swear to God I have never once actually hit Overheat when it mattered.
Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
Here we run Defense over Special Defense. In an ideal world, we can simply Volt Turn between this guy and Landorus until we have the momentum we need for Hawlucha to sweep. Of course, pesky Ground types tend to crush our Volt Turning dreams, which is why they get smashed by Hydro Pump. Will-O-Wisp feels really important, because otherwise our Rain Match-up (read: our Barraskewda match-up) is really difficult. Defog is nice, but honestly I have half a mind to run Pain Split over it. The lack of recovery beyond lefties sorta sucks here.
Threat List
1.
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I was actually going to list these as three separate threats, but after thinking about it, I realized the problem is any special wallbreaker with fire and ground coverage. The fact that 252+ Attack Hawlucha doesn't even KO 0 HP/0 Def Volcanion from full does not help in the slightest. Rotom can sort of deal with Volcanion and Heatran, but without recovery it gets easily worn down. Landorus can also kind of deal with Heatran, except offensive Heatran runs Air Balloon exactly for Landorus, so I need to pop the balloon first, and take massive damage from Eruption or Magama Storm trying. Meanwhile, PhysDef Rotom is just straight up not a check to Nidoking. Case in point:
The general plan is to sack something or otherwise plan a free switch to Melmetal, live one hit, and kill the thing. Which has actually worked, so it's not an auto-lose on team preview situation. But it is still a "shit I always have to sack something against this" situation.
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Rain Zapdos is a problem. The defensive set, like Roost + Defog +Toxic is sorta whatever, it's fairly easy to overwhelm (Blaceph 2HKOs, Koko 2HKOs). But Offensive Zapdos in rain sucks because Landorus no longer walls it
And the Pokemon that's supposed to wall it, Melmetal, doesn't do a ton back and can't hit it without paralyzing itself (NOTE: with my luck, 30% static proc = 100% static proc this is simply how mathematics works). So again, not another auto-lose situation, but given that a Zapdos Static is an easy way to end a Hawlucha sweep, I feel like the team needs a better way of removing it than what it has.
Conclusion
Overall, I really like how this team plays. My worst match-up as a player is stall, so I think it's a good sign that I've navigated a stall game here and there with this team. The tempo the team plays at is my style. I feel like Hyper Offense forces you to make really consistent reads and predictions. I like being able to make a defensive switch into Rotom or Landorus, and then pick things back up again by Volt Turning into Koko, Blaceph, or Melmetal. But I feel like the mons this team is weak too, while not a ton, are common enough that there's good room for improvement.
The Team at a Glance
PokePaste
The main idea behind the squad is to use Melmetal and Blacephalon to weaken stuff on the opposing team that Hawlucha doesn't OHKO after a swords dance. You use Landorus and Rotom to pivot around offensive threats and keep momentum on your side. Then when the time is right, use Tapu Koko to set up terrain and bring in Lucha. It's... I mean it's nothing special. I guess the one thing about this team is, despite Lucha being a staple on Hyper Offense (?) this team is more balanced, which is more my style of play.
Teambuilding Process
I started with these three because I identified them as a fairly reliable core in this metagame. Obviously the synergy of Koko setting up electric terrain so that Hawlucha can proc Unburden is huge, but Koko threatens Corviknight and Skarmory (only relevant on stall). Electric Terrain also powers up Thunder Punch from Melmetal. Crucially, Thunder Punch 2HKOs Toxapex from full after rocks in Electric Terrain, even with not much attack investment
Code:
116 Atk Iron Fist Melmetal Thunder Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex in Electric Terrain: 134-158 (44 - 51.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth RockWhich matters a lot, because it means this core doesn't get hard stopped by stall on team preview and I don't have to run something like Choice Band, which on Melmetal I feel makes predictions difficult. I've won a few games against stall team comps because the opponent wrongly assumed they had answers for Melmetal but did not.
I need a stealth rocker so I picked the best stealth rocker in the tier. Sometimes we keep things simple.
Usually when I'm stuck team building, I fall back on trying to build fire-water-grass synergy. So I figured I could add heavy-duty-boots Volcanion and a grass type. But I didn't like this. First of all I personally feel like I've used too much Volcanion and Kart in my teams, and I'd like to use new things. The other problem is that the team feels too frail to be balance, but too slow to be hyper offense. I feel like if I want to do Volcanion + Kart I'd have to drop Melmetal for something faster, but I wanted to build around this core specifically. So I dropped these two. Finally, a second physical steel type on a team with Melmetal felt redundant. I also don't feel like it's enough to reliably win against stall.
Still, I liked the idea of a special fire type because it allowed me to break through Corvikight et al without risking damage Tapu Koko. Hawlucha is a little useful without his best friend Koko by his side, so Koko doesn't like coming in as much if it's risky.
We can actually add Blacephalon instead. Shadow Ball is an incredibly spammable move in this generation. It's a powerful fire type that can steal games in its own right. And it has the option of crippling would-be specially defensive walls like Blissey with Trick.
And then to round out the squad, we can add a Rotom-Wash. Volt-Switch being powered up by Electric Terrain is nice, but it mainly just pairs well with the two U-turn users in Landorus and Tapu Koko. It also gives Defog support which, to be honest, only really needed by Blacephalon. It's not the entire fire-water-grass trio but it's still a nice bit of synergy.
EVs and Such
Tapu Koko @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Dazzling Gleam
- U-turn
- Roost
Electric Terrain setter. U-Turn abuser. Rain terrorizer. Thunderbolt spammer in a pinch. Most will be familiar with what this Pokemon does. But this team especially appreciates Tapu Koko here because otherwise, a lot of Tapu Fini variants come in for free on this team and start disrupting things. It can Trick. It can Calm Mind. So as long as Tapu Koko is alive he can scare his evil sister away.
Hawlucha @ Electric Seed
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Substitute
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Acrobatics
Primary win con for the team. After being on the receiving end of quite a number of Hawlucha sweeps, it's nice to pull it off every once in a while on the ladder. We're running a 252/252/4 set here over the more common bulky variants because our team is a little starved for speed control at the moment. Losing to something like Scarf or DD Dragapult is actually pretty realistic for us, so in my mind we can't afford anything less than max speed. If Hawlucha was not so weak I'd run Jolly. In fact, I did run Jolly. And then I lost a lot. So we don't that, Jolly sucks.
Melmetal @ Assault Vest
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 120 HP / 116 Atk / 252 SpD / 20 Spe
Careful Nature
- Double Iron Bash
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Thunder Punch
Probably my favorite Melmetal set. I mean, don't get me wrong, pads is good too, but there is something about being able to come on almost any special attack in the meta game, take negligable damage, and then click Bash or something and heavily weaken it. This Pokemon is a little insane, really. Assault Vest actually helps with this team's weaknesses which I'll discuss in the next section. Also, Weavile eats shit as long as he's alive, which is good for Hawlucha.
Landorus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 176 HP / 100 Def / 128 SpD / 104 Spe
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Toxic
Standard moveset, I feel, but unstandard spread. I felt it would be beneficial for this Landorus to be more specially defensive. So it actually has enough speed EVs to outspeed non-scarf Tyranitar, just enough Special Defense and HP investment to take 3 specs Shadow Balls from Dragapult at full, and the rest went into Defense. It's a little bit strange but I haven't had issues with it.
Blacephalon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Flamethrower
- Overheat
- Trick
Weird little clown guy makes matchup against stall a lot more manageable. The potential to immediately lose to an out of control, Beast Boosted Blaceph kind of forces a lot of playstyles to bring in mons that hate a Choice Scarf. And take a Choice Scarf is exactly what they do. Shadow Ball is spammable. Flamethrower is Spammable. Overheat I put for some Landorus variants that feel too comfortable switching into Blacephalon instead, because Landorus actually quite likes having a Choice Scarf. But I swear to God I have never once actually hit Overheat when it mattered.
Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
Here we run Defense over Special Defense. In an ideal world, we can simply Volt Turn between this guy and Landorus until we have the momentum we need for Hawlucha to sweep. Of course, pesky Ground types tend to crush our Volt Turning dreams, which is why they get smashed by Hydro Pump. Will-O-Wisp feels really important, because otherwise our Rain Match-up (read: our Barraskewda match-up) is really difficult. Defog is nice, but honestly I have half a mind to run Pain Split over it. The lack of recovery beyond lefties sorta sucks here.
Threat List
1.
Code:
252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Nidoking Sludge Wave vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Rotom-Wash: 204-242 (67.1 - 79.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Nidoking Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Rotom-Wash: 129-152 (42.4 - 50%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recoveryThe general plan is to sack something or otherwise plan a free switch to Melmetal, live one hit, and kill the thing. Which has actually worked, so it's not an auto-lose on team preview situation. But it is still a "shit I always have to sack something against this" situation.
2.
Code:
252 SpA Zapdos Weather Ball (100 BP Water) vs. 176 HP / 128+ SpD Landorus-Therian in Rain: 302-356 (83.1 - 98%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recoveryAnd the Pokemon that's supposed to wall it, Melmetal, doesn't do a ton back and can't hit it without paralyzing itself (NOTE: with my luck, 30% static proc = 100% static proc this is simply how mathematics works). So again, not another auto-lose situation, but given that a Zapdos Static is an easy way to end a Hawlucha sweep, I feel like the team needs a better way of removing it than what it has.
Conclusion
Overall, I really like how this team plays. My worst match-up as a player is stall, so I think it's a good sign that I've navigated a stall game here and there with this team. The tempo the team plays at is my style. I feel like Hyper Offense forces you to make really consistent reads and predictions. I like being able to make a defensive switch into Rotom or Landorus, and then pick things back up again by Volt Turning into Koko, Blaceph, or Melmetal. But I feel like the mons this team is weak too, while not a ton, are common enough that there's good room for improvement.
