Battle Spot Rate My BS Singles Team!

[theduck7]

Hi there, I'm fairly new to competitive battling as a whole, especially the team-building aspect of it, so please feel free to comment critically and offer advice.

Azumarill @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Play Rough
- Superpower

So I decided to base my team around the formidable Belly Drum Azumarill. A fairly standard set, in which the general strategy is to set up a belly drum, hopefully heal with the sitrus berry, tank the next attack with 252 HP investment, then priority Aqua Jet to freedom. It also runs superpower and play rough for coverage. The best time to send in azumarill is as an unexpected lead or perhaps to tank a water type move, or really any scenario that will force a switch, and thus allow a safe setup of belly drum.


Manectric @ Manectite
Ability: Lightning Rod
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
- Hidden Power (Ice)
- Signal Beam

Next up in my team is Mega Manectric. Manectric performs excellent as a special sweeper due to its great combination of high special attack and speed, but has another excellent use on this team, which is to protect azumarill by switching in whenever I predict an electric type move is to be used, and manectric's lightning rod ability (when not mega-evolved) gives him a SpAtk buff, allowing him to be even more dangerous as a sweeper.


Porygon2 @ Eviolite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Toxic
- Recover

Porygon2 acts as my main defensive wall, sporting a bold nature combined with a full investment in defense EVs. It also runs Toxic to quickly cripple opponents and allow them to be finished off quickly, and recover as a means of regaining HP.

Goodra @ Assault Vest
Ability: Gooey
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dragon Pulse
- Thunderbolt
- Flamethrower
- Ice Beam

Goodra is my main specially-defensive wall, boosted by its assault vest. Its moves give great coverage, and combined with the full EV investment in spAtk, Goodra can stand as a very offensive threat to many teams.

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 126 Def / 130 SpD
Careful Nature
- Protect
- Earthquake
- Substitute
- Guillotine

Gliscor is almost like a random addition to the team and is seldom ever used in battle, although it does do well as a stall pokemon, and guillotine does allow some OHKOs which can always speed up the battle and give me the advantage.

Greninja @ Life Orb
Ability: Protean
Level: 50
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Dark Pulse
- Grass Knot
- Ice Beam

Greninja is my final sweeper and often used as a revenge killer due to its spAtk and speed, combined with the life orb and protean to seriously power up its attacks. Its moves also offer great coverage.


Please do comment on my team and give advice as to how I should improve in team-building as a whole. Any help would be appreciated :)

 

[Omastar68]

This is mostly good.

On Azu the only change would be an ev spreadof 228 HP/ 252 atk/ 12 Def/ 12 SpD/ 4 Spe. Not much difference, but gives a bit more bulk and some Spe.

Manectric I like Overheat way more than Flamethrower, and Volt Switch over Signal Beam. Bug is awful coverage in this meta, and Volt Switch is a great move that gives you momentum, chipping w/e and then letting u switch. Great wen they might switch out of a t-bolt but not to an electric immune.

Goodra isn't really viable because of how bad it does against many common mons, i.e. pretty much all the physical ones and a handful of special ones like Sylveon and Gardevoir. Gooey is also not that good of an ability really, if I had o use oodra i'd definitely go mixed and Sap Sipper.

Gliscor is nice, moves look good. Not liking the evs and nature tho. Pretty much sure Impish is bettr. If you were to use Careful you wouldn't want so much Def investment-otherwise Impish is definitely better cuz you'd be boosting a higher base stat and have more evs free.

Greninja is another good mon. Don't really like Surf tho. If you wnt water coverage I think Scald might be bettr, fer that burn chance. I can see why you'd want Surf since Gren isn't a bulky water, but if it is just 10 BP. You may also want to try Hydro Pump instead. 20% to miss but also 20 more power. Gren will often need to roll the dice and hope since it's too squishy to hang around for long and 2hko with Surf-sometimes needs Hydro's power to ohko. Your team is actually pretty good against Suicune, so you cood run Low Kick and a Naïve nature on Gren to hit Kang pretty hard.

Not completely sure what's good to replace Goodra. Without it you heavily favor physical Def, so the replacement should at least not be physically frail. It'd be good if it can handle Sylveon, that can be a problem. Hyper Voice breaks sub, and your Gren isn't Gunk Shot. P2 loses to Rest and CM, while Manectric also hates CM. Azu is an answer to it fer the most part, but I think you want something else.

 

[cant say]

The biggest reason for using the EV spread that Omastar68 suggested for Azumarill (apart from better bulk) is that it gives Azu an even HP number, so that if you use Belly Drum from full health you drop down to exactly 50% and therefor activate your Sitrus Berry!

Signal Beam is useless on Manectric, Volt Switch is much better.

You definitely want Sap Sipper on Goodra so you can use it more reliably with Azumarill for soaking up Grass-type moves. Being immune to Spore / Sleep Powder is the best part, even if you don't have any physical moves to take advantage of the boost. Ice Beam does literally nothing, Sludge Wave is a much better option.

Porygon2 looks fine but Discharge over Thunderbolt is an option since the damage drop isn't too noticeable and the extra chance for paralysis is nice.

Gliscor definitely wants to be more physically defensive so it pairs better with Goodra. However, I don't think it's a good fit for your team at all. The SubProtect set is designed for more defensive / stall teams and doesn't really do anything here. Those stall teams aim to just get a 1-Pokemon advantage and then spam SubProtect until the timer runs out to win. You also have no Ice resists (Azu doesn't really count since you don't like switching into attacks if you want to set up a Belly Drum) so you can't switch around very freely which is what Gliscor loves to do. I think the best course of action for you is to find a replacement for it.

Surf is pretty mediocre on Greninja, you can drop some power for a burn chance with Scald, or go for max power with Hydro Pump if you can live with missing every now and then. For grinding the ladder you're going to get way more out of Hydro Pump than anything else. You could drop a Water-type move entirely, since you already have Azumarill, and use something like Extrasensory or a Hidden Power type like Fire.

You don't have anything for Mega Kangaskhan at the moment, as well as a few other things, but Kang's the most important thing to have an answer to if you want to win consistently. You could replace Gliscor with Landorus-T, either a Scarf or Defensive set would work and forms a great Volt-Turn core with Mega Manectric which spams Intimidate and helps Azumarill set up. You still don't have any Ice resists, so be careful of Mamoswine (p2 and Azu are good though).