rate my team please (ou)

[kd24]

i have to get back into the ou "swing of things" again since i have been very focused on uu lately so i made this team yesterday and had some moderate success on ladder playtesting. this team has trouble with some common threats such as gyarados and mence though, if they successfully get a dragon dance in. i havent been able to find a pokemon yet that fits into the team and stops them so i usually resort to just quickly sending in scarfers and attacking, one for before they get a dd, and the other scarfer for after.


team:

so here is an in-depth look:

Metagross @ Choice Band
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 252 Atk/4 Def/252 Spd
Jolly nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Bullet Punch
- Earthquake
- Trick
- Explosion

i chose metagross as my lead for a couple of reasons: 1.) he has the ability to pretty much at least ko all the sr leads before they do anything other than Stealth Rock, or even kill some before they do SR and 2.) Trick isn't that common of a lead strategy and its nice to screw with stuff like trick jirachi or slower stuff like bronzong and swampert (this lets me avoid the hassle of predicting the protect so i dont waste an explosion (and a pokemon in the process).

Jolly Metagross hits 262 Speed or so, which is enough to outspeed and ohko modest heatran stealth rock leads. this obviously is a risky idea because some choose timid but for those that do choose timid, they usually stealth rock first. jolly metagross also allows me to get the jumpstart on slower adamant gross so i can trick them the choice band as they SR which allows me to get a free attack in. this also has backfires if they get smart and try to sweep me with it, which is why keeping infernape, forry, and my meta alive are very vital to success.

against common leads such as Azelf, Jirachi, Aerodactyl, and Infernape, I can actually come out on top against pretty much all of them. infernape is the only one who should win but most people automatically assume occa metagross and decide stealth rocking is more important that fire blast after fake out. For slow stuff, I will usually trick and then attack from there, either exploding their switch-in or attacking and then exploding.

if i dont get the trick off, cb bullet punch is needed for lategame as it can really hurt salamence and opposing flygon.
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Infernape (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 32 Atk/252 Spd/224 SAtk
Naive nature (+Spd, -SDef)
- Close Combat
- Fire Blast
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Grass Knot / Thunderpunch

this is just your common Life Orb Infernape which sweeps unprepared teams. obviously lo infernape has many ways it can go on its moveset, including timid nasty plot, mixed nasty plot, mixed swords dance, and jolly swords dance. i chose mixed all out attacker. i absolutely needed a blissey killer who also could beat skarmory since my team has trouble dealing with both (if they only have 1 of this combo, the rest of the team can pretty much always win). this also seems to be forgotten as a threat and can sweep other offensive teams.

the moves may be somewhat obvious but ill go through them to show the importance of each one. fire blast is great for killing stuff like zapdos and magnezone, both of whom give togekiss (who this team ultimately revolves around) trouble. close combat is for blissey and probably more important, tyranitar, both of whom once again give me trouble (although they are handled somewhat easier, i absolutely hate sandstorm.) Hidden Power Ice is great for salamence since its essential i had a way to kill him and it also deals with a few other things such as gliscor (because i dont trust fire blast in most cases and will avoid using it unless its needed). grass knot or thunderpunch are still up in the air, im considering thunderpunch as a gyarados and tentacruel killer, however grass knot is great for hippowdon and swampert that survive metagross. the more i consider it, the more i want thunderpunch, but this is in need of help.

infernape resists bullet punch from scizor which is more than enough to make me consider it on my team but realizing that infernape pretty much beats everything togekiss has trouble with, i just had to use it.
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Togekiss (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 8 HP/244 Spd/252 SAtk
Modest nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Air Slash
- Aura Sphere
- Flamethrower
- Tri Attack

star of the team, Togekiss will pretty much flinch hax you to death. i became interested in this because of my own tournament where i learned choice scarf togekiss was one of the favorite strategies. realizing it could work as well in 6 vs 6 play as it does in 1 vs 1, i made my team from there. togekiss hits 385 speed with this and since more isnt needed, i dumped it into hp. i think it helps a bit, because it allows togekiss to avoid a sr number (313 hp i believe).

air slash is such a great move but all the others are equally important. aura sphere makes sure stuff like ddtar and hail mamoswine run rampant (mamoswine will try to ice fang as ice shard wont even 2hko a defensive full health togekiss). flamethrower lets me just make fun of scizor and lucario. tri attack is just more stab (cant have enough of the s-t-a-b) and has a good chance of dealing status which is even more annoying.
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Forretress (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP/8 Def/252 SDef
Careful nature (+SDef, -SAtk)
- Rapid Spin
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes / Payback
- Explosion

the only real reason i have this thing is to rapid spin so togekiss and weavile can sweep. i usually avoid rapid spinners but i realized i needed one and i decided to pick one that can actually do other stuff while still keeping this an offensive team. stealth rock is so important in giving some kos to infernape, weavile, and togekiss.

i currently use spikes as the third slot but with the increase of rotom-gAys everywhere, payback looks nice for eliminating them on switch-ins. payback would also give me one more form of offense. spikes is nice though for weakening cune and everything.

explosion goes boom, but in all seriousness, this is a pure offensive team and i needed it to keep the upbeat tempo.
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Weavile (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Atk/4 Def/252 Spd
Jolly nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Ice Punch
- Swords Dance
- Night Slash
- Brick Break

oh im sorry, you forgot this existed? yeah swords dance weavile baby, the most deadly sweeper in the game ... well not quite. this guy is really good for sweeping up stuff like latias and infernape later in the game but obviously, he needs the support which is what forry and kiss give him. however, swords dance ice punch is scary strong and im glad most people dont really run weavile as much of a threat anymore.

brick break is just another way to kill steel-types since weavile is lacking in that department. also helps eliminate the vicious screen zongs and whatnot, and then allows me to really just do away with the strategy as ice punch should ohko gliscor (sd ice punch should if it has yache berry). havent run into this yet but i feel im ready for it.
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Flygon (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 Atk/4 Def/252 Spd
Jolly nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- U-turn
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Dragon Claw / Thunderpunch

flygon! yeah, cant have a good offensive team without this, jolteon, or electivire. i needed an electric immunity because otherwise, stuff like thunder wave porygon 2 and blissey could cause me some trouble. this is a scarf flygon meant to take out stuff after 1 dd / agility (heres looking at you empoleon)

uturn is for quick scouting obviously but it also deals some nice damage to latias and celebi in the earlygame, and outrage / dragon claw can finish them off for later. earthquake is for stuff like ddtar and more important agility empoleon (sweeps my team). obviously outrage and dragon claw are just power moves for some lategame sweeping (makes a nice cleaner near the end)

thunderpunch would be so awesome at it completely eliminates my ddgyara problems (most people wouldnt switch a ddgyara out of flygon if they have 1 dd up because most flygon run outrage as their most powerful gyara attack), unfortunately, its coverage is fucking terrible lol. im still considering this.
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how i decided on team (apparently we should do this in rmts now?_)

started:

togekiss was what i wanted to base the team around, specifically scarfkiss so i put this as the centerpeice. togekiss is really good but sadly the ice, rock, and sr weaknesses hinder him alot. realizing this, i needed to add something to eliminate sr and resist ice and not be weak to rock. i decided on:

so now i had, 2 members and realized i still had a weakness to fire and cb stone edge from tar. nape and tar are really annoying as it twave blissey so i figured a revenge killer who resisted all of their attacks would be best:

i already had been considering weavile for a while since i thought it would really shined and i still lacked a good ghost counter, making it hard for forry to spin. weaviles "pursuit" will make most ghosts stay in which just allows me to hit them with night slash. weavile though is weak to sr and rock and fire and fighting which didnt bode well for my team so i made sure i put infernape in there as well who could ko most users of those attacks and finish off blissey for good:

I liked how this team looked but i obviously had troubles with common leads. funnily enough i found all 5 of my pokemon could be pretty good leads but none of them should be. they all had qualities i needed. i decided that fire was somewhat rare in ou and that with 2 fire resists i shouldnt worry as much as i was. with this in mind, i wanted something to trick and hit hard. at first i considered scarf jirachi but cb metagross and his prioity + explosion just really was meant to be used on an offensive team:

Threat List: *


Defensive:

Blissey - to test out its set, i will usually bring in forretress or metagross, depending on whos on low health. usually it will probably toxic if its togekiss thats switching out (hes the only one who would be switching out of blissey) but if its the odd thunder wave i will try to blow up blissey right there so it can paralyze one of my main 3 sweepers. if the situation occurs again, i simply bring in flygon instead since i know twave is coming. i can then uturn out from the expected ice beam or scout the switch and bring in infernape / appropiate counter.

Bronzong -


*this is still a WIP, im getting tired and want to be bright eyed and bushy to make sure it looks ok

 

[Stallion]

A KD24 team without rates :O.

Lol this team is decent obv, you're a good battler and you know what you're doing.

I really don't like Swords Dance Weavile though. Most of the top 10 commonly used pokemon trample it (Scizor, Heatran etc) so if you want to use it, I suggest basing your team around setting up a SD Weavile sweep or removing it cause it seems its just there for the hell of it. If you wanted to run Swords Dance Weavile, its most common counter is Scizor with a Scarfed Heatran not far behind, so you'd want to eliminate them pretty quickly. Bulky waters are also dangerous too, and come to think of it, pretty much rape your team hardcore. To deal with Heatran and Scizor at once, I actually have a pretty gimmicky idea that served me really well on one of my ladder teams, Occa Berry Celebi with HP Fire and Earth Power (usually Leaf Storm and recover too). Worked wonders in removing shit that annoyed me straight away and allowed me to get a solid earlygame advantage. The only problem is that Togekiss would probably have to go for it, and it seems as you wanted to base the team around it. This will make it much easier to nab a Weavile sweep for you lategame though. Now with only 1 SR weak, you don't really need a spinner as such - A Gyarados/Salamence counter is much more important to your team. Right now, nothing barring Choice locked Flygon/Metagross allows Mence to set up (although your new Celebi unfortunately will), which is good, and you have double priority. MixApe seems like it could be a problem too, which is quite worrying. Porygon2 obviously counters them both, but gives Lucario a free set up (which your team really can't deal with). I have two solutions for this - one is to run a Bulky Gyarados (resttalk or not) in Forry's slot, sure it has a SR weak but it patches up your weaknesses beautifully. The other is to run a Scarfed Jirachi with Fire Punch for Luke and Ice Punch for Mence. Zen Headbutt *can* be ran for Ape too as well as Tpunch for Gyara, its really up to you. But yeah for this team I prefer Gyarados if you're not afraid of 2 SR weaks without a spinner.

If SR does bug you too much, you can always change your lead to a Trick/Spore Choice Scarf Smeargle. It pretty much always cripples the opposing lead unless they switch out, so it nets you a good early game advantage regardless.

Hope I helped.

 

[ToF]

Just glancing at the team real quickly, I see a massive SD Lucario weakness. After a Swords Dance, Close Combat and Extremespeed rip through your team quite easily.

The most simple fix to this issue is to run Mach Punch on Infernape, though this probably means losing Hidden Power Ice or Grass Knot. The DPP variant of Infernape that I use is Overheat / Close Combat / Mach Punch / Filler, with the filler obviously supporting the rest of your team. Swampert seems the most annoying to this team, so I'd consider Grass Knot. For all the dragons, you have Weavile anyway.

Speaking of Weavile, why not just run Ice Shard over Ice Punch? I feel like the priority would really help you against stuff like Dragon Dance Gyarados; rather than forcing you to Explode with Forretress and essentially lose a mon for nothing, perhaps you could revenge-kill with Ice Shard. Besides, Ice Shard will always beat Gliscor and the baton-passing strategy that you outlined in the opening post. Priority never hurts on an offensive team if you let something stat-up and have trouble handling it.

Flygon looks like it wants Thunderpunch because of your glaring Gyarados issue, so definitely run that over Dragon Claw.

Glancing over the team again, something that could be a real pain to take down is Zapdos. Because your team is primarily physical, and your only real special sweeper is walled by said Zapdos, it could be a nuisance to your team, constantly Roosting off damage. With Heat Wave, Weavile also won't have enough time to set-up and deal enough damage to it for your other sweepers to finish it off (maybe Infernape can deal with it if it take SR + Ice Shard damage). Fire attacks in general are a pretty big issue for you. I feel like a Shuca Heatran lead would really help out your team as a whole, providing the Fire resist, lead Stealth Rocker to set the tempo of the match in your favor, and a nice mon with great typing overall. Heatran beats most of the common leads anyway!

Overall, I feel like this team can work, though its gonna have a lot of trouble against opposing hyperoffensive teams. Any fighting type is gonna kill something because of your lack of resists, and I can't really come of with viable options since your concept centers around Togekiss. Hope some of this helped anyway.

 

[paramylodon]

MS, weavile is sr weak (as is togekiss) so that makes 2.

Also, I was under the impression most leadtran have a + speed nature.
-I just checked the analysis and saw that it recommended timid/naive, so + speed would presumably be the most common.

I used to run a flygon with t-punch, and I remember countless times people kept their gyara in (I don't think I've ever had more then a couple people switch).
Generally, with a choice user, your only really supposed to have two main attacks for coverage (plus of course the excellent u-turn); t-punch works fine as a niche filler.
Electric also isn't very easy to set up on. However, the low damage output might let a luke sd and sweep if the opponent brings one in after a t-punch (getting locked into stone edge/dragon claw would be even worse for this, however).

The luke issue recomended earlier really seems like it could be quite bad. 'Gross bullet punch and a few of flygon's attacks could offer opurtunity, but other then that there aren't to many oppurtunities, although it is immune to flinch hax (inner focus).

A hyper offensive team of the sort Stathakis advocates, with duel screens, would likely be able to find luke the oppurunity, or otherwise take advantage of your choice items to set up and sweep.
You appear to be lacking in checks to such speed boosters (and luke).
Agilligross/ddmence and gyara all look like they'd give you plenty of trouble. Flygon would be your only method of beating them (other then taking a hit with gross).
Your jolly flygon outspeeds agilligross and gyara, and speed ties at worse with ddmence. If you lose flygon, then you're screwed against any of these if metagross and forretress have some damage on them. A very offensive team with multiple of these, if you lose flygon, would have extremely little problem softening and then sweeping your team.
4 of your 6 pokemon go down in one hit after set up against gyara/mence/gross. The remaining two pokes may have to blow up to stop a sweep.
Luke is worse, as it OHKOs togekiss 87.18% of the time with sr after an sd, and flygon is OHKOed 58.97% of the time (in both cases, if at full health after stealth rock). The rest are OHKOed 100% of the time.

This sounds like a big problem to me: in such a matchup so much rests on flygon's shoulders thanks to the fact that it looks like all these threats can find oppurtunity to set up after you get locked into a move. Because of that, I'd definitely recommend keeping jolly even at the cost of adamants power (and why I said t-punch may be preferable, to have the guarantee of eliminating such a problem pokemon).


Finally, I admit to not having experience with weavile, but based off the sound of it I really don't think it seems like it would be that effective.
Scizor/heatran win easily, one v. one against gyara you lose (it dds while you sd, so it is then faster while you both have +1, and it should be able to ohko), infernape is the fifth most used...
It seems simply to fragile/easy to revenge kill and in possession of moves with to low a base power to be an effective sweeper.

 

[Stallion]

Paramylodon, if you actually took the time to read my post properly, it clearly states that after Togekiss is removed he has two SR weaks, no point in nitpicking over something that minor mate.

 

[animenagai]

The problem I see with this team is that the main counters to kiss are rotom and zapdos, and you struggle with both of them. When rotom switches in on forry, you have an automatic guessing game with WOW or discharge. Forry is not safe and everything on this team hates either status. WOW hurts everything but ape, and ape wouldn't like to be paralysed or even to be hit with a solid stab very much. Same with weavile actually which is apparently your answer to ghosts.

Kiss is special so WOW won't drop it's damage output, but 1. if rotom is played well, SR will be on the field which hurts kiss big time, 2. burn damage still hurts and 3. kiss doesn't do anything to rotom, rotom destroys it.

Just with this, I can easily see this team losing to stall.

So, we need a better switch into zapdos and rotom. I think a modest latias with LO will work well here over weavile, especially if it has surf, draco meteor, recover and psycho shift. Surf and draco meteor will 2hko rotom and zapdos as well as scizor and t-tars who like to trap kill it.

You can run a faster set if you like to still deal with salamence. You do have flygon though for revenge kills as well as a CB bullet punch (though metagross may very well be dead). I personally hate getting my latias trapped, but you can play mind games with forry if you want to. Talking about forry, I think payback should be there over explosion. It'll help deal with latias as well as any rotoms on the switch.

Hope I helped man. Good luck.

 

[paramylodon]

Paramylodon, if you actually took the time to read my post properly, it clearly states that after Togekiss is removed he has two SR weaks, no point in nitpicking over something that minor mate.

Sorry; I should read more carefully.
I quickly read through both your and legacy raider's posts, so I got all the main ideas. I should really double check before saying anything.
I get your point now that still 2 sr weeks isn't really that big of a deal, so that he can go without the spinner.

 

[Revolution.Z]

Not much wrong breif overview below:

Nape and Weavile: Two promising sweeper but both fragile. Don't think your gonna get your SD up with scizor lurking and you having no sash. 2 Life orbs are so risky especially as both are so fragile. Sash on your Weavile could help ensure your SD up. Ice Shard is definitely a good choice over ice punch. The mixnape looks OK but honestly if you really wanna sweep convincingly try the NP set with vacuum wave.
Good job on the whole and it should bring many wins to come

SF (StrategyFocus)