Prosperous Bloom
Introduction
I've played Pokemon since the late 90's on my beat-up original Gameboy, and have spent thousands of hours breeding eggs and beating the elite four. But I have never really played competitively due to the crappy internet available to me here in New Zealand. Once a year there is a pokemon tournament in a city 2 hours drive away, I have attended every time it has been held since the days of gold/silver. When I found Smogon a few years ago I thought it was amazing, and I was very glad to find that there were so many other Pokemon geeks out there.
My knowledge of the OU metagame comes just from what I have read, and from playing myself on my two DS's, and from spending hours doing damage calcs on simulators. I generally just steal other people's teams and tweak them a bit, this is the first OU team I've put together myself.
I wanted to make a sun team - coz I like a lot of the Pokemon that frequently appear on them and because aesthetically I just think sun is better. My first team had a Rapidash and a Ninetales (Yeah I know Rapidash sux, but it looks beautiful), but eventually I replaced them both because I felt that their mono fire-typing wasn't adding much (weak to rocks, and not covering any additional threats/weaknesses for the team), and I thought that sunny day could always be set up by another pokemon on my team, making the team more of an anti-weather team than sunlight abusing. In this gen, weather is everywhere, so a gen4 style sunny day team is more viable as a way to nullify the opponents weather plans than it was in gen4. I think a lot of the problems sun-teams have with countering most standard threats is because they are running Ninetales and it can't really switch in to anything - even Scizor still u-turns out and Ferrothorn gets up hazards/paralysis. To me Ninetales is dead weight.
Now you may be thinking that this is a huge and somewhat pointless introduction, but I'm sick of moderators telling me off, so I've decided to make this RMT as extensive as I possibly can :)
The basic concept of the team is to nullify the opponents weather (especially sandstorm and hail because they break mulitscale and volcaronas' sash) and to prepare the opponents team to be swept by either Dragonite or Volcarona.
So heres the team:
Rotom-W @ Heat Rock
Levitate
Bold
252 Hp / 128 Def / 128 Spd
Sunny Day
Volt Switch
Hydro Pump
Pain Split
Rotom-W is on almost every team in Gen5, and its easy to see why. It is my main switch in to a lot of pokemon like Landorus, Politoed, Gliscor, Tyranitar and Is great at switching into the opponents weather starter and setting up sunny day to nullify their weather.
I felt i needed a bulky water on my team to help against rain, and Rotom-W's immunity to ground moves and toxic spikes, along with a single weakness to grass (which every other member of this team covers with at least a 1x resistance to grass) made it the ideal candidate.
I chose heat rock as the item to prolong the weather for as long as possible for Liligant, Volcarona and in certain situations even Dragonite to make use of.
I made the ev spread as physically defensive as possible, with 128 speed evs to outrun modest specs Politoed and everything slower.
I find it a lot easier to keeep sun up with this guy than with ninetales.
Pain split is a must without leftovers for recovery.
Scizor @ Choice Band
Technician
Adamant
244 Hp / 252 Atk / 12 Spd
Bullet Punch
Super Power
U-Turn
Pursuit
I first thought of running this guy on the team when I still thought I'd be running Ninetales. A fire move is going to F this guy up regardless of the weather, and scizor is just such a good pokemon. Priority in the form of bullet punch helps the team against fast and frail sweepers, and pursuit is good against the latis.
I basically decided to run this guy because everyone is, and it forms the volt/turn combo with rotom.
Liligant @ Life orb
Chlorophyll
Modest
252 SpAtk / 64 SpDef / 192 Spd
Leaf Storm
Healing Wish
Hidden Power (ice)
Sleep Powder
Ok I saw this mon on another guys RMT and thought it would fit my team well. Under the sun it is turned into a great revenge killer with Leaf Storm or Hidden power ice (Outspeeds most dragonite even at +2) and I find that grass moves do well against a lot of top pokemon in the metagame right now. Leaf Storm does significant damage to/or in most cases OHKO's: Tyranitar, Gliscor, Landorus, Politoed and Rotom-W. Anything else has to deal with sleep powder or Hp ice.
Healing wish is an awesome move for this team - if Volcarona has been damaged, healing wish can restore it to full health, thus making its focus sash useable. Healing wish also restores Dragonites multilscale, giving it another chance to try pull off a sweep. Maybe my team has an extra important member in my current match-up, I can Healing wish it back to full health to tank more hits. Who wants to deal with dragonite twice in one match?
Max SpAtk and life orb to almost reliably OHKO most TTar, and the SpDef Evs to maybe tank a scald if needed.
Forretress @ Leftovers
Sturdy
Relaxed
O Spe IV
252 Hp / 188 Def / 68 SpDef
Rapid spin
Stealth Rock
Volt Switch
Gyro Ball
Forry is here to spin away hazards to help my two sweepers and to provide another useful dragon resist to the team. Most sun teams can't afford to give up a slot for a spinner, so see ya later Ninetales.
Forry is great if ferrothorn decides to switch in to my Rotom-w - Forry can just switch in to Ferrothorn and spin away hazards/leech seed and proceed to set up its own hazards.
Gyro ball is great against fast threats like Gengar and Terrakion, and I run volt switch to keep momentum and can form a volt switching core with rotom like scizor can.
Volcarona @ Focus sash
Flame Body
Modest
4 Hp / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spd
Bugg Buzz
Hidden Power (ground)
Fiery Dance
Quiver Dance
Volcarona with sash? Before you criticise the hell out of it, this is the teams MVP. After a single boost most teams are in deep trouble. I saw another RMT where the team had cloyster, dragonite and volcarona, and both cloyster and volcarona were sashed, and starmie was used to spin and set up rain. He got a lot of criticism but peaked at no.1. The focus sash guarantees me a turn of set-up, and a lot of the time that is all volcarona needs.
I chose modest nature as there are no real threats it needs to outspeed, and with max speed modest it still outspeeds haxorus. The bump in power modest brings allows it to OHKO many more threats after one boost.
I chose hidden power ground to have a way to hit heatran, but that makes dragonite more of a problem. I'm not sure if I prefer ground or rock, the choice can win and lose matches.
Dragonite @ Lum berry
Multiscale
Adamant
4 Hp / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Outrage
Fire Punch
Extreme Speed
Dragon Dance
Max speed/max attack for maximum sweeping potential. This Dragonite has a move for everything and with lum berry and multiscale, it is guaranteed a turn of set-up. Dragonite brings useful resistances to water, fire, grass and fighting to the team as well as an immunity to ground. With multiscale intact it can tank almost any hit and so is good insurance against a lot of threats. If the sun is up it helps Dragonite muscle its way past skarmory and ferrothorn with firepunch, and earthquake nails heatran that thinks it may have a chance of walling it.
Dragonite isn't the no.2 used poke at the moment for nothing and is the best dragon in OU and pretty much the best sweeper. Dragonite fares well against tyranitar and rain and is just too good to leave out.
Conclusion
This team doesn't have every prominent threat in gen5 covered, but the main goal is to facilitate a volcarona/dragonite sweep, and a lot of teams will have trouble dealing with this.
Introduction
I've played Pokemon since the late 90's on my beat-up original Gameboy, and have spent thousands of hours breeding eggs and beating the elite four. But I have never really played competitively due to the crappy internet available to me here in New Zealand. Once a year there is a pokemon tournament in a city 2 hours drive away, I have attended every time it has been held since the days of gold/silver. When I found Smogon a few years ago I thought it was amazing, and I was very glad to find that there were so many other Pokemon geeks out there.
My knowledge of the OU metagame comes just from what I have read, and from playing myself on my two DS's, and from spending hours doing damage calcs on simulators. I generally just steal other people's teams and tweak them a bit, this is the first OU team I've put together myself.
I wanted to make a sun team - coz I like a lot of the Pokemon that frequently appear on them and because aesthetically I just think sun is better. My first team had a Rapidash and a Ninetales (Yeah I know Rapidash sux, but it looks beautiful), but eventually I replaced them both because I felt that their mono fire-typing wasn't adding much (weak to rocks, and not covering any additional threats/weaknesses for the team), and I thought that sunny day could always be set up by another pokemon on my team, making the team more of an anti-weather team than sunlight abusing. In this gen, weather is everywhere, so a gen4 style sunny day team is more viable as a way to nullify the opponents weather plans than it was in gen4. I think a lot of the problems sun-teams have with countering most standard threats is because they are running Ninetales and it can't really switch in to anything - even Scizor still u-turns out and Ferrothorn gets up hazards/paralysis. To me Ninetales is dead weight.
Now you may be thinking that this is a huge and somewhat pointless introduction, but I'm sick of moderators telling me off, so I've decided to make this RMT as extensive as I possibly can :)
The basic concept of the team is to nullify the opponents weather (especially sandstorm and hail because they break mulitscale and volcaronas' sash) and to prepare the opponents team to be swept by either Dragonite or Volcarona.
So heres the team:
Levitate
Bold
252 Hp / 128 Def / 128 Spd
Sunny Day
Volt Switch
Hydro Pump
Pain Split
Rotom-W is on almost every team in Gen5, and its easy to see why. It is my main switch in to a lot of pokemon like Landorus, Politoed, Gliscor, Tyranitar and Is great at switching into the opponents weather starter and setting up sunny day to nullify their weather.
I felt i needed a bulky water on my team to help against rain, and Rotom-W's immunity to ground moves and toxic spikes, along with a single weakness to grass (which every other member of this team covers with at least a 1x resistance to grass) made it the ideal candidate.
I chose heat rock as the item to prolong the weather for as long as possible for Liligant, Volcarona and in certain situations even Dragonite to make use of.
I made the ev spread as physically defensive as possible, with 128 speed evs to outrun modest specs Politoed and everything slower.
I find it a lot easier to keeep sun up with this guy than with ninetales.
Pain split is a must without leftovers for recovery.
Technician
Adamant
244 Hp / 252 Atk / 12 Spd
Bullet Punch
Super Power
U-Turn
Pursuit
I first thought of running this guy on the team when I still thought I'd be running Ninetales. A fire move is going to F this guy up regardless of the weather, and scizor is just such a good pokemon. Priority in the form of bullet punch helps the team against fast and frail sweepers, and pursuit is good against the latis.
I basically decided to run this guy because everyone is, and it forms the volt/turn combo with rotom.
Chlorophyll
Modest
252 SpAtk / 64 SpDef / 192 Spd
Leaf Storm
Healing Wish
Hidden Power (ice)
Sleep Powder
Ok I saw this mon on another guys RMT and thought it would fit my team well. Under the sun it is turned into a great revenge killer with Leaf Storm or Hidden power ice (Outspeeds most dragonite even at +2) and I find that grass moves do well against a lot of top pokemon in the metagame right now. Leaf Storm does significant damage to/or in most cases OHKO's: Tyranitar, Gliscor, Landorus, Politoed and Rotom-W. Anything else has to deal with sleep powder or Hp ice.
Healing wish is an awesome move for this team - if Volcarona has been damaged, healing wish can restore it to full health, thus making its focus sash useable. Healing wish also restores Dragonites multilscale, giving it another chance to try pull off a sweep. Maybe my team has an extra important member in my current match-up, I can Healing wish it back to full health to tank more hits. Who wants to deal with dragonite twice in one match?
Max SpAtk and life orb to almost reliably OHKO most TTar, and the SpDef Evs to maybe tank a scald if needed.
Sturdy
Relaxed
O Spe IV
252 Hp / 188 Def / 68 SpDef
Rapid spin
Stealth Rock
Volt Switch
Gyro Ball
Forry is here to spin away hazards to help my two sweepers and to provide another useful dragon resist to the team. Most sun teams can't afford to give up a slot for a spinner, so see ya later Ninetales.
Forry is great if ferrothorn decides to switch in to my Rotom-w - Forry can just switch in to Ferrothorn and spin away hazards/leech seed and proceed to set up its own hazards.
Gyro ball is great against fast threats like Gengar and Terrakion, and I run volt switch to keep momentum and can form a volt switching core with rotom like scizor can.
Flame Body
Modest
4 Hp / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spd
Bugg Buzz
Hidden Power (ground)
Fiery Dance
Quiver Dance
Volcarona with sash? Before you criticise the hell out of it, this is the teams MVP. After a single boost most teams are in deep trouble. I saw another RMT where the team had cloyster, dragonite and volcarona, and both cloyster and volcarona were sashed, and starmie was used to spin and set up rain. He got a lot of criticism but peaked at no.1. The focus sash guarantees me a turn of set-up, and a lot of the time that is all volcarona needs.
I chose modest nature as there are no real threats it needs to outspeed, and with max speed modest it still outspeeds haxorus. The bump in power modest brings allows it to OHKO many more threats after one boost.
I chose hidden power ground to have a way to hit heatran, but that makes dragonite more of a problem. I'm not sure if I prefer ground or rock, the choice can win and lose matches.
Multiscale
Adamant
4 Hp / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Outrage
Fire Punch
Extreme Speed
Dragon Dance
Max speed/max attack for maximum sweeping potential. This Dragonite has a move for everything and with lum berry and multiscale, it is guaranteed a turn of set-up. Dragonite brings useful resistances to water, fire, grass and fighting to the team as well as an immunity to ground. With multiscale intact it can tank almost any hit and so is good insurance against a lot of threats. If the sun is up it helps Dragonite muscle its way past skarmory and ferrothorn with firepunch, and earthquake nails heatran that thinks it may have a chance of walling it.
Dragonite isn't the no.2 used poke at the moment for nothing and is the best dragon in OU and pretty much the best sweeper. Dragonite fares well against tyranitar and rain and is just too good to leave out.
Conclusion
This team doesn't have every prominent threat in gen5 covered, but the main goal is to facilitate a volcarona/dragonite sweep, and a lot of teams will have trouble dealing with this.
