Banded Boulder Balance
Pokepaste:
Introduction:
A bit about myself, this is my attempt at serious team building and first RMT post to set your expectations. I'm fairly new to competative pokemon generally and am aiming to improve my teambuilding and playing. In that vein, I'm very interested in any criticism and feedback about this team and how I could improve it.
Anyway, on to the team. I built this team around iron boulder and was hoping to use it in a way that I hadn't seen done effectively before. Since boulder tends to be run on more offensive teams, I decided to try a balance team to see if I could make the necessary support to run boulder as a banded sweeper. Heatran makes up the second half of the offensive core as my special attacker. Hydrapple and Araquanid fill out the back half of the fire/water/grass core and give phyical and special bulk respectively. Finally, kingambit and gliscor fill out some much needed resists and immunities as bulky glue. Araquanid does have webs, but I have often found that they aren't necessary to get up as boulder naturally outspeeds a good portion of the unboosted metagame, a big reason I decided to try to build around it, however webs can still be useful to lower the speed of faster threats like dragapult or darkrai and forcing mons like valiant lose the speed boost from their booster energy. The other big detail is that other than choice band on boulder, this team runs heavy duty boots on every mon. This helps me win the hazard metagame by circumventing it and turns my opponents hazard setting turns into free turns for me.
Roles:
Iron Boulder - The main physical breaker. With choice band, boulder provides a much more immediate threat to whatever it is in front of than the booster energy set. It also can prove to be a menace more often, sometimes coming in two or three times a battle (though this can be limited with no hazard control on the team). Mighty cleave is the obvious stab move since it hits through protect, often hitting gliscor for more than it wants to be hit by and being a generally strong move otherwise. Earthquake is almost never a bad move to be locked into once ground resists have been dealt with. Close combat hits hard even without tera, but with the fighting tera boost it can often be used to sweep. Finally, iron head to 2hko fairies like hatt, though I clicked this move far less than the other 3 and could probably be switched out the easiest. As mentioned before, tera fighting helps boost close combat which can be very useful in a pinch, while also providing a defensive option to avoid opposing kingambit's suckerpunch or other dark moves often used to threaten it.
Araquanid - This is the second pokemon I really settled on in the building process. I knew I needed a pokemon that had bulk on the special side and a water type to complete the fire/water/grass core I was going for. I tried primarina but it often felt like it was sponging too many hits while not dealing enough damage in return. When I looked through the builder and saw araquanid, I decided to give it a try and was quite happy. It definitely also didn't like taking too many hits like primarina did, but with webs support, boulder could come in and be a lot more threatening. The bug typing also helps with ground and fighting resistances which makes the great tusk matchup fairly positive. Tera ghost is a late edition to help keep webs up when an opposing spinner tries remove the webs. Water bubble is also a fantastic ability, allowing the water spider to do huge damage with uninvested liquidations, preventing burns, and generally making it a volcarona counter. Sticky webs has already been mentioned and is the teams main source of speed control. Liquidation is the obvious stab move hitting all those pesky ground types for lots of damage. I used leech life the most when I led araquanid into mons like deoxys-speedl samurott-hisui, and darkrai, usually soaking a taunt and doing big damage back while staying healthy. The current iteration has crunch in the fourth slot though I experimented with poison jab as well. I landed on crunch to hit ghost types like dragapult since araquanid can usually take a big special move or two.
Hydrapple - Not going to lie, if I had made this post a few days earlier, amoongus would have takin this spot. I opted for hydrapple after the great reckoning on sleep moves (not to get too involved but I think the sleep ban is good) because it has a very similar profile to amoongus. It serves as a solid physical grass wall and regenerator+boots really makes it sticky, allowing it to come in again and again on plenty of phsyical threats. Giga drain helps hydrapple stay healthy and is hydrapples grass stab, letting it sit on mons like great tusk (though dodging ice spinners when possible). Body press lets it hit iron treads and other steel types who might wall the little apple. Earth power is solid earth coverage, hitting fire types for plenty of damage. Finally, dragon tail is the main draw, letting hydrapple phase threats that tend to sit in front of it. Steel tera lets it dodge toxic and other poison moves which could hurt hydrapple's longevity.
Heatran - The last of the fire/water/grass core and one of the latest editions to the team. Heatran serves as the teams main special attacking threat. Its natural bulk and typing lets heatran take hits while dishing out major damage in return. Flame body is a fantastic way to punish the new triple axel users in meowscarada and weavile, the pivot king corviknight, and even draining kiss hatterene. Magma storm is almost always a good move to click since hitting means an extra 12% chip no matter what and does a great job killing skarmory through sturdy. Earth power again is good coverage, it's always good to have a ground move. Taunt does well on this team since heatran, despite not being terribly fast, often outspeeds mons when they get -1 speed from webs and keeps opponents from getting up rocks or getting a speed boost back to their normal speed from dragon dance or quiver dance. Flash canon is another fantastic move to click since it gives heatran a 100% accurate stab move to click and heavily threaten the fairies it often can switch in on without issue. Originally, heatran had tera grass, however I realized that tera ghost helps heatran beat i-def zamazenta in a 1v1 which was very needed on this team.
Kingambit - A fairly standard bulky gambit, this mon serves as the ghost and dark resist the rest of the team doesn't give. In a pinch, it can serve as a sweeper with sucker punch and kowtow cleave and can easily beat opposing gambits with low kick. I opted to skip iron head since I already was running steel coverage on both boulder and heatran and figured they tended to be better matchups into the tiers main fairy threats. Tera fairy helps with the 4x fighting resist and often gives a free turn or two.
Gliscor - Another mon that fills a ton of holes. A ground immunity and electric immunity in one is always fantastic. Gliscor also serves as my main progress maker with knock off, often coming in to knock items many times due to how sticky it is. Poison heal, toxic orb, and protect keep it around forever and help it absorb status. U-turn helps with momentum since my team doesn't have another pivot move. Fairly standard phsyically defensive gliscor.
Threatlist and Matchups:
Once I learned how to use some of these mons, I often felt like I had a half decent answer to most situations. Araquanid and Heatran both do very well into Volcarona. Kingambit shuts down pecharunt. After I got bodied by an i-def zamazenta, I tecked tera ghost onto heatran and that matchup felt way more solid. Weather teams could be difficult to play against, but I found that leading boulder into pelipper and clicking mighty cleave was often an effective strategy and leading gliscor into torkoal could help keep sun to a minimum by knocking off its heat rock. Heatran threatens corviknight and skarmory superbly and has tera ghost as a panic button if they want to click body press.
As webs are on the team, Serperior could be a tricky matchup since it gets the speed boost from the webs rather than the drop. Kingambit with sucker punch or heatran with 4x resist was usually a good answer. Kyurem also hits just about everything and I have found the most effective strategy to dealing with it is to predict earth power or freeze dry and switch into gliscor or heatran accordingly, though it always feels like a gamble lol.
Final Thoughts:
Reading through some other RMTs, I definitely don't have as much detail though I hope that will come with experience. The team was a ton of fun to build and play with and I hope some other folks can find inspiration. I'm definitely open to feedback and criticism as I want to improve my team building skills, so please if you see any way to improve the team let me know.
Pokepaste:
Introduction:
A bit about myself, this is my attempt at serious team building and first RMT post to set your expectations. I'm fairly new to competative pokemon generally and am aiming to improve my teambuilding and playing. In that vein, I'm very interested in any criticism and feedback about this team and how I could improve it.
Anyway, on to the team. I built this team around iron boulder and was hoping to use it in a way that I hadn't seen done effectively before. Since boulder tends to be run on more offensive teams, I decided to try a balance team to see if I could make the necessary support to run boulder as a banded sweeper. Heatran makes up the second half of the offensive core as my special attacker. Hydrapple and Araquanid fill out the back half of the fire/water/grass core and give phyical and special bulk respectively. Finally, kingambit and gliscor fill out some much needed resists and immunities as bulky glue. Araquanid does have webs, but I have often found that they aren't necessary to get up as boulder naturally outspeeds a good portion of the unboosted metagame, a big reason I decided to try to build around it, however webs can still be useful to lower the speed of faster threats like dragapult or darkrai and forcing mons like valiant lose the speed boost from their booster energy. The other big detail is that other than choice band on boulder, this team runs heavy duty boots on every mon. This helps me win the hazard metagame by circumventing it and turns my opponents hazard setting turns into free turns for me.
Roles:
Iron Boulder
- The main physical breaker. With choice band, boulder provides a much more immediate threat to whatever it is in front of than the booster energy set. It also can prove to be a menace more often, sometimes coming in two or three times a battle (though this can be limited with no hazard control on the team). Mighty cleave is the obvious stab move since it hits through protect, often hitting gliscor for more than it wants to be hit by and being a generally strong move otherwise. Earthquake is almost never a bad move to be locked into once ground resists have been dealt with. Close combat hits hard even without tera, but with the fighting tera boost it can often be used to sweep. Finally, iron head to 2hko fairies like hatt, though I clicked this move far less than the other 3 and could probably be switched out the easiest. As mentioned before, tera fighting helps boost close combat which can be very useful in a pinch, while also providing a defensive option to avoid opposing kingambit's suckerpunch or other dark moves often used to threaten it.Araquanid
- This is the second pokemon I really settled on in the building process. I knew I needed a pokemon that had bulk on the special side and a water type to complete the fire/water/grass core I was going for. I tried primarina but it often felt like it was sponging too many hits while not dealing enough damage in return. When I looked through the builder and saw araquanid, I decided to give it a try and was quite happy. It definitely also didn't like taking too many hits like primarina did, but with webs support, boulder could come in and be a lot more threatening. The bug typing also helps with ground and fighting resistances which makes the great tusk matchup fairly positive. Tera ghost is a late edition to help keep webs up when an opposing spinner tries remove the webs. Water bubble is also a fantastic ability, allowing the water spider to do huge damage with uninvested liquidations, preventing burns, and generally making it a volcarona counter. Sticky webs has already been mentioned and is the teams main source of speed control. Liquidation is the obvious stab move hitting all those pesky ground types for lots of damage. I used leech life the most when I led araquanid into mons like deoxys-speedl samurott-hisui, and darkrai, usually soaking a taunt and doing big damage back while staying healthy. The current iteration has crunch in the fourth slot though I experimented with poison jab as well. I landed on crunch to hit ghost types like dragapult since araquanid can usually take a big special move or two. Hydrapple
- Not going to lie, if I had made this post a few days earlier, amoongus would have takin this spot. I opted for hydrapple after the great reckoning on sleep moves (not to get too involved but I think the sleep ban is good) because it has a very similar profile to amoongus. It serves as a solid physical grass wall and regenerator+boots really makes it sticky, allowing it to come in again and again on plenty of phsyical threats. Giga drain helps hydrapple stay healthy and is hydrapples grass stab, letting it sit on mons like great tusk (though dodging ice spinners when possible). Body press lets it hit iron treads and other steel types who might wall the little apple. Earth power is solid earth coverage, hitting fire types for plenty of damage. Finally, dragon tail is the main draw, letting hydrapple phase threats that tend to sit in front of it. Steel tera lets it dodge toxic and other poison moves which could hurt hydrapple's longevity.Heatran
- The last of the fire/water/grass core and one of the latest editions to the team. Heatran serves as the teams main special attacking threat. Its natural bulk and typing lets heatran take hits while dishing out major damage in return. Flame body is a fantastic way to punish the new triple axel users in meowscarada and weavile, the pivot king corviknight, and even draining kiss hatterene. Magma storm is almost always a good move to click since hitting means an extra 12% chip no matter what and does a great job killing skarmory through sturdy. Earth power again is good coverage, it's always good to have a ground move. Taunt does well on this team since heatran, despite not being terribly fast, often outspeeds mons when they get -1 speed from webs and keeps opponents from getting up rocks or getting a speed boost back to their normal speed from dragon dance or quiver dance. Flash canon is another fantastic move to click since it gives heatran a 100% accurate stab move to click and heavily threaten the fairies it often can switch in on without issue. Originally, heatran had tera grass, however I realized that tera ghost helps heatran beat i-def zamazenta in a 1v1 which was very needed on this team.Kingambit
- A fairly standard bulky gambit, this mon serves as the ghost and dark resist the rest of the team doesn't give. In a pinch, it can serve as a sweeper with sucker punch and kowtow cleave and can easily beat opposing gambits with low kick. I opted to skip iron head since I already was running steel coverage on both boulder and heatran and figured they tended to be better matchups into the tiers main fairy threats. Tera fairy helps with the 4x fighting resist and often gives a free turn or two.Gliscor
- Another mon that fills a ton of holes. A ground immunity and electric immunity in one is always fantastic. Gliscor also serves as my main progress maker with knock off, often coming in to knock items many times due to how sticky it is. Poison heal, toxic orb, and protect keep it around forever and help it absorb status. U-turn helps with momentum since my team doesn't have another pivot move. Fairly standard phsyically defensive gliscor.Threatlist and Matchups:
Once I learned how to use some of these mons, I often felt like I had a half decent answer to most situations. Araquanid and Heatran both do very well into Volcarona. Kingambit shuts down pecharunt. After I got bodied by an i-def zamazenta, I tecked tera ghost onto heatran and that matchup felt way more solid. Weather teams could be difficult to play against, but I found that leading boulder into pelipper and clicking mighty cleave was often an effective strategy and leading gliscor into torkoal could help keep sun to a minimum by knocking off its heat rock. Heatran threatens corviknight and skarmory superbly and has tera ghost as a panic button if they want to click body press.
As webs are on the team, Serperior could be a tricky matchup since it gets the speed boost from the webs rather than the drop. Kingambit with sucker punch or heatran with 4x resist was usually a good answer. Kyurem also hits just about everything and I have found the most effective strategy to dealing with it is to predict earth power or freeze dry and switch into gliscor or heatran accordingly, though it always feels like a gamble lol.
Final Thoughts:
Reading through some other RMTs, I definitely don't have as much detail though I hope that will come with experience. The team was a ton of fun to build and play with and I hope some other folks can find inspiration. I'm definitely open to feedback and criticism as I want to improve my team building skills, so please if you see any way to improve the team let me know.
