Today I’m back with a team I’m very proud of, this team got
me my highest rating in this season or really any season yet, I did refined
this team a lot, some of the sets may seem a bit off, but for this team they
all do work together, as guessed by title, this team I am using a mon I wanted
to use from the beginning of the season and finally got to do it in the best
way, hopefully you all like it, let’s get started with this team :
Teambuilding process:
So I wanted to use lugia really bad, the thing as I had
tested it before and liked it’s pairing quite much with primal groudon and
stated with this combination to form a base for the team, around it a weavile
was put to form a trio core, which worked well. Next came some steps to counter
xerneas, kyogre in the most offensive of all ways. I needed a mega pokemon, and
some jobs left to fulfill, instead of a standard mega slot, I have quite a
twist on my very mega gyarados.
The Team:
Lugia @ Kee Berry
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50
EVs: 244 HP / 68 Def / 4 SpA / 12 SpD / 180 Spe
Timid Nature
- Aeroblast
- Icy Wind
- Calm Mind
- Recover
Lugia is such a fun pokemon, but I felt like that it couldn’t
work in such a hyper offensive format, yet I was wrong. I really tried using
lugia to support the team with skill swap and speed control and also be a calm
mind set-up sweeper just like a cresselia back in the season, I intended to run
leftovers to pair well with bulky set up but the item was taken by ferrothorn,
so I ran a sitrus berry variant instead of it. Soon i started realizing that
the very base of my team was the factor that tore it apart, lugia couldn’t
function to it’s fullest when stuck between the jobs of set-up as well as
support, I often lost lugia quickly in a battle and lost almost all the bulk on
my side, which was often costly. I was confident in running skill swap as it
went really well with my team, like resetting my own intimidate, getting
ferro’s iron barbs, resetting primal weather, also acquiring the use of my
thundurus’ prankster which I had no use of, but all this on-paper stuff seemed
as tempting didn’t worked in my very favor at all instead of tearing the team
apart completely.
I needed to back up my lugia and do it fast, I had heard
good things about the kee berry variant and calm mind set-up lugia, also from
all the practice with my failed lugia variant figured that using recover might
be the very useful resource to keep lugia up for the stall, which I tested
exactly, and that set transformed lugia into the unbeatable monster that it
becomes in a battle. Now for the importance of speed control in the form of icy
wind, especially when using primal in the past this season the biggest thing
that bothered me were their weird speed tie shenanigans, to avoid such
confusion especially on a pokemon like groudon which very much becomes
threatened in their presence, this form of speed control was perfect to support
my team. The spread I chose may seem weird at first, this was designed for fast
skill swap on kang, but now it works for recovery that is fast, the speed
allows it to do the job, nothing can get close to KO lugia from full health at
252 hp at all, so a lot of bulk wasn’t needed as I also had tons of set-up o
the defensive end.
Groudon-Primal @ Red Orb
Ability: Desolate Land
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dragon Pulse
- Eruption
- Earth Power
- Protect
Primal groudon is my second restricted slot, all good and
simple, but one thing that comes to your mind, and I feel like explaining It
first, the choice of dragon pulse is the unusual part about my primal groudon
here, so why? I could also have used things like hp-ice to counter salamence
and landorus both of which are good counters to it, but the issue weren’t they,
I already was aware of the fact that hp-ice works much better but weavile
answers them both extremely well, the main cause of chosing to go for dragon
pulse was mega rayquaza, which could easily hunt down my team in strong winds,
and groudon is always an easy target for it even if not running water moves or
earth power, I counter this threat basically with my dragon pulse, this tactic
was found overwhelmingly effective and so I loved it. Other than that groudon
was kept a fully special variant, point to be noted is that it is usually ran
as a physical variant nowadays, but it does get some good properties in the
special offensive mode as well, most importantly being able to KO other pdons
with ease. The reason that I went with 252 speed however modest nature, was
that without modest nature and such investment it can miss OHKO’s on some low
rolls, and as far as faster oppositions go I did mentioned icy wind for
countering it.
Weavile @ Focus Sash
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Icicle Crash
- Feint
- Knock Off
Weavile as I said before forms a core around my lugia and
pdon duo, how? Weavile is able to use it’s fake out to support lugia set up as
well as help pdon to get the strongest eruption off at full health, also it can
aid in taking dark or ghost type hits for lugia on my team. Now to discuss the
specifics of weavile, first of all I have to say that it is an information
revealer, that is done through scouting out landorus’ item whether scarf or
not, by using it’s pressure ability, which greatly helps in making future
predictions in the match, it can also OHKO both lando and salamence after an
intimidate by icicle crash, to add to what is it good in I’d say that it is the
fastest fake out user in this metagame, next to choice scarf smeargle. The item
choice of focus sash explains my comfortability with vgc, I never like playing
frail mons like weavile with life orb, similar to infernape, I felt much better
playing under the safety net of a focus sash. I changed my moveset, when I
changed the protect slot with feint, which works better for me and the team,
under the sash I never really felt like needing to use protect and also it felt
dead weight on the field when it couldn’t get useful form of offense. Feint was
such a comfortable option, whenever you need that sash breaker, or really need
to break though things like protect or quick guard and wide guard.
Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 116 Atk / 36 Def / 100 SpD
Adamant Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Power Whip
- Gyro Ball
- Protect
- Leech Seed
Ferrothorn is amazing, let me just say that! I feel like in
this season ferrothorn is the most stable pokemon to play under good support,
thanks to it’s great offensive stats and also good defenses and defensive
typing, when paired with leftovers and leech seed, it is the best pokemon when
playing a defensive late game in vgc. Ferrothorn is able to easily wall out big
mons like kyogre and xerneas and even ko them back, that is two of the biggest
power houses of the format out of the field, the support of leech lefties is
phenomenal in getting tons of health back which all adds up to big numbers. Now
for me spread: the offensive evs allow my ferrothron to OHKO +2 speed timid
xerneas 100% of the time, I invested more in special defense to make it survive
more kyogre ice beams in a 1v1 situation. It is such a fun a amazing pokemon
and I’ve loved using it!
Thundurus @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Wild Charge
- Sky Drop
- Superpower
- Protect
Next is thundurus, easily my most used pokemon in this
season, there is just so many jobs it can do in this format, similarly in this
team it plays an unusual role of a all out physical attacker holding a life
orb. Here is it’s importance: thundurus can be really useful in a offensive
manner, especially because of the presence of kyogre in such big numbers, it
OHKO’s this mon. kyogre has a tendency to match up well with most useful
restricted slot mons like pdon, ho-oh, rayquaza even xerneas and etc… it’s sure
to be seen a lot; also quite honestly if I found my answers to kyogre AND kang
in ferrothron it would be quite crude though, thundurus acts as the back up
plan. Now for the move that we have not discussed, sky drop, why is this move
kept over something much useful like taunt or t-wave, originally it was taunt
in this place, however I changed it as so to keep a picture perfect matchup against
smeargle + xerneas lead, which surelyis the most deadly this season. I counter
it by keeping ferrothron and thundy on the lead, seeing this sashed smeargle or
even scarfed ones like going for follow me + geomancy, taunt and gyro ball
fails on both targets in an effective way, however my thundy goes for the sky
drop turn one, as the xern sets up a geomancy; my gyro ball launches into
xerneas and picks up the KO. The spread shows the adamant nature which insures
to pickup OHKO’s on standard kyogre and kangaskhan sets, jolly wouldn’t do so,
the speed stat it reaches allows it to outspeed max speed smeargle as well as
max speed kyurem- white which is growing more and more in popularity.
Gyarados-Mega @ Gyaradosite
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 228 HP / 124 Atk / 100 Def / 52 SpD / 4 Spe
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Crunch
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Protect
Last up on my team is te pokemon which was started as a joke
but soon became one of the best decisions I have ever made to keep a pokemon on
m team, the spread makes the choice ofmega gyarados look more and more strange,
and I should say that amoonguss could also have done the job, but mega gaarados
was my tempt to keep something new, offensive and something intimidating to
provide my bulky side of the tem some support, so at first talking about
offensive megas with intimidate, salamence came in mind, mawile was boring and
also unfit for a team with already a ferrothron behind harsh sun to aid it’s
own fainting. Gyarados was the perfect answer, also it was an amazingly safe
switch in to groudon, mega gyarados also unintentionally formed a solid core
around lugia and ferrohtorn so I could run a defensive mode too. Now for the
spread: gyarados’ natural speed in this format is pathetic especially when
considering outspeeding stuff without a dragon dance, I didn’t wanted more
set-up to do, however I could use the defensive gyarados with minimal speed
investment, but that variant didn’t worked either for me as the speed wasn’t
doing anything at all. So I decided to give it 0 speed ivs which will allow it
to outspeed primal as well as cresselia under trick room 100% of the time,
especially becausethese three are the most common in trick room modes and after
cybertron double primal is rising in popularity, a lot of people like to put
themselves into a double primal situation where they set up their primordial
sea and then their pdon uses p-blades effectively, this is when waterfall comes
into the play. My spread allows my gyarados to liv a mega mawile’s play rough
after an intimidate and finish it off with earth quake or maybe a 2hko.now I would
say that on every team mega gyarados may not work it was the roles that it
provided in the last slot made it work with excellence.
Conclusion:
So guys this was it for my big team, I feel like this team
looks a little bit interesting than all the other teams around, and hopefully you
guys also will like to try it out, thanks for reading this post. Bye for now.
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