RayOgre 1000

Hi guys today I am back with somewhat of a second installment to my series in which I take in everyday meta archetypes and make quite some interesting teams on them that differ from the others, last time I happened to do a xerneas groudon team, up next would be a double primal team but for today we will be discussing a rayogre team that I made a interesting one. Without further info let’s jump into the teambuilding process and then the report of the actual team:

Teambuilding process:

Quite a painful one, a lot harder than what I expected… observe the following image:

Yes these are all the different rayogre teams I have tried out, each one related or learned from the mistakes of the others and got further improvised, after so many attempts I set myself into the right direction with the desired criteria, since the final team came after so many, I happened to name it rayogre one-thousand. The correct direction I needed was actually a shedinja; I’ll explain it further in the actual team, first lets get into what teams I had earlier on and what I learned from every mistake I made in the teambuilding process.

First came the just make em work concept, just put on a golbat, registeel I believe had a red card, and a few more supports, it won me only a few matches after which I was quite forced to discard it; mistake : too much support, use your brain.

Then the somewhat more interesting concept of making a trick room bulky rayquaza work, this is a concept I have tried out with charizard in the past season, this time I tried pairing it up with a malamar, to use it’s topsy turvey to increase rayquaza’s defense drops from the dragon ascents into it’s defense increases; making it a pokemon tough to take down, however this team fell short to being a bit to on the gimmicky end of the plays, if malamar went down nothing could work; I never even made a complete team with these pokemons.

Next up was my first actual thought out rayogre team, to which I did different and added the gravity mode to function, knowing that gengar goes well with it and learns hypnosis, also kyogre using 100% accurate origin pulses was also a blessing, the most enjoyable concept of this team was meowstic having psychic which helped greatly against any gengars out there as well as those hitmontops, the team was again way too one direction with the gravity mode.

Then I decided to do a balanced team, then this came up with a dragon dance rayquaza I loved the set up on rayquaza as it outsped a lot and ko’d a lot, then I realized also that rayquazas setup was being way to passive and rayquaza was lost somewhere in the battle, the team members relied on each other way to much so that they could not work as separate independent units, the team overall was way to passive, one good thing it did to me was giving me the idea of a swagplay partner with rayquaza.

This team was going to be based on the concept of offensive support options as well as swagplay, as it came with the arcanine, I was pretty happy with this team, the concerning things was that it didn’t had sufficient answers to a dialga, xerneas’ answers were not promising either in sashed endeavor raichu and a frail arcanine. Also I was losing three members of team as in weavile, raichu and arcanine, salamence wasn’t the bulkiest of pokemons either; by this time I was running a assault vest rayquaza which really satisfied me, now I felt like the team again failed leaving me with the concepts of assault vest rayquaza with icy wind and a swagplay partner as an effective tactic. I also felt it was quite a complex task to fit in counters to all the meta members with having these criteria.

Then some days later I was asking for a counter to xerneas randomly in a chatroom, someone non-seriously suggested shedinja, I always had wanted a shedinja and felt like it could cover a big spectrum of my worries especially as the rayogre beats groudon really well, who is a great counter against shedinja; shedinja on it’s very own can cover a huge spectrum of pokemons in a one on one condition in matches; shedinja gave me the direction of where the team should be taken to be made effective, then came the rest of the members.

The Team:

Rayquaza @ Assault Vest  

Ability: Air Lock  

Level: 50  

EVs: 20 HP / 132 Atk / 4 Def / 156 SpD / 196 Spe  

Adamant Nature  

- Dragon Ascent  

- Extreme Speed  

- Icy Wind  

- Draco Meteor

I have to discuss the main core first as this is after all a rayquaza and kyogre team. Rayquaza is one the the main members of the team and quite a favorite one of mine. I always was interested in trying out an assault vest rayquaza ever since I saw a few at the world championships, also Jamie boyt’s spread and team inspired this one (he has been one of the most inspiring people for my concepts in this season) I tweaked the spread a little bit as I dropped the numbers in speed and added a bit more of offense, I took the defenses a bit down however it already does survive a xerneas’ dazzling gleam as a spread move, this was quite a lovely spread and I really enjoyed playing rayquaza. It’s moves have an importance of their own, first up has to be dragon ascent which really does not need any introduction extreme speed is often on a big source of priority based damage which really helps out in a lot of matches. One of the biggest highlights of this spread has to be me keeping the move draco meteor, it is in my opinion an amazing move, it gets me unexpected ohko’s on salamences, rayquazas as well as it an allow a physically offensive rayquaza to do atleast over 50% damage to primal groudons, this also does a bit of damage to dialgas which are a bit of a threat to my team.  Icy wind as I said before helps my rayogre to counter all mirror matchups, it also allows to provide a general form of speed control, one needed by a team such as this, it also covers u for the lack of speed investment in my rayquaza. Overall this rayquaza is such an amazing pokemon I never regret using it.

Kyogre-Primal @ Blue Orb  

Ability: Primordial Sea  

Level: 50  

EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe  

Modest Nature  

IVs: 0 Atk  

- Water Spout  

- Ice Beam  

- Scald  

- Protect

Kyogre is rayquaza’s partner in crime, it can surely OHKO any primal groudon tactics when paired up with a rayquaza. This was extremely helpful, it’s ability allowed shedinja to stay immune to even fire type attacks, cutting down another weakness found in it. Kyogre is simple for them OHKO’s on the pokemons, rayquaza makes this much more flexible and easier, especially the icy wind support really helps out kyogre a lot. Kyogre can also take down pokemons like salamence, yveltals and rayquazas which are major threats to the presence of shedinja. At first I was trying out all kinds of bulkier kyogres, the wolfe glick spread but their speed stat was quite not good for my style of play. In the end I put on the same kyogre I have used very early this season, the timid natured one, I felt like that my kyogre already had enough barriers from physical attackers through mawile and shedinja. So I didn’t needed to invest in some bulk. The speed really helped me get 1v1 against groudons. One important thing to notice about my primal kyogre is that it keeps the move scald, other than the widely popular origin pulses, the thing was that I really wanted to make my groudon matchup better with surety with this pokemon. Origin pulse had a chance to miss, scald didn’t whenever it was used, also it could get me lucky burns which does add to the defensive aspect of these kyogres.

Shedinja @ Focus Sash  

Ability: Wonder Guard  

Level: 50  

EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  

Jolly Nature  

- Shadow Claw  

- Protect  

- Will-O-Wisp  

- Swagger

Shedinja is the main focus of this team, shedinja alone has the ability to stall out the biggest monsters in VGC like kangaskhan, kyogre, xerneas, etc… shedinja seems really passive but as you will learn with/from another member of this team that it had come as a correct decision in the team, which those improvements in the team I didn’t had to worry about the stall aspect being very passive with shedinja. Shedija does not get a lot of discussion points of view however a few things i would consider. It’s fast speed stat allows it to outspeed pokemons like scrafty, hitmontop and mega mawile and burn them with will-o-wisp before they attack, this comes in really handy to help support my partners. In the beginning I was using confuse ray on my bug, but then later on I adjusted that slot to having a swagger shedinja as it helps out better in 1v1 situations making shedinja stall a bit less passive. Shadow claw is also an important move as it can hit cresselias as well as gengars and bronzongs for super effective damage, overall I loved this shedinja spread.

Mawile-Mega @ Mawilite  

Ability: Intimidate  

Level: 50  

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  

Adamant Nature  

- Play Rough  

- Iron Head  

- Sucker Punch  

- Protect

Mega mawile as I have talked about it numerous times, has to be my favorite mega pokemon in this entire season, it’s pair up synergy with kyogre and rayquaza combination is quite amazing. Also the sole reason for why I put this pokemon on the team here is that I wanted it to counter all of those yveltals with surety. Mawile also makes an offensive as well as a defensive counter to that ever popular xerneas, sucker punch allows it to overcome its low speed and then deal big damage too to many pokemons. There is not much to talk about this mawile, this is indeed one of the simplest mawile spreads out there and fits greatly in this team.

Talonflame @ Chesto Berry  

Ability: Gale Wings  

Level: 50  

EVs: 228 HP / 4 Atk / 180 Def / 12 SpD / 84 Spe  

Careful Nature  

- Brave Bird  

- Taunt  

- Tailwind  

- Flare Blitz

TalonBulk, yes one of the first expressions of this pokemon I that it is extremely bulky. This spread allows my talonflame to live kangaskhan attacks, outspeed primal as well as I think live up to a water spout from kyogre after a BB with a 50% chance, I would have put more into the attack stat, but it wouldn’t get me much a bit of bulk would’ve been nice. Talonflame on this slot was put on for one and only one sole reason, to counter smeargles, this talonflame moveset was inspired from a few ran at the world championships that had the chesto berry with taunt to counter smeargle. Talonflame truly did that job up to great success, it also was able to stand against xerneas and set up a tailwind for the partners in the back. Talonflame’s other extremely important role is to tackle steel types like ferrothron and scizor if any, this role is made much easier thanks to the ability of rayquaza.

Terrakion @ Lum Berry  

Ability: Justified  

Level: 50  

Shiny: Yes  

EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe  

Jolly Nature  

- Rock Slide  

- Close Combat  

- Swagger  

- Safeguard

Last but not the least is a very important pokemon, this is quite a weird one for the 2016 season, terrakion, I put this pokemo to counter two pokemons that are really rising in popularity, one being thundurus and the other being yveltal, the both in pairs are even more dangerous, upon putting on terrakon I realized that now I could do a lot more to fulfill my desires with this pokemon, yes indeedthe swagplay tactic and oh it came perfect, the only options I had considered in the past were arcanine and volcarona etc, this was much much better, having safeguard + lum berry allows it to further counter smeargles and also provide a very offensive counter to kangaskhan, talonflame and other flying types as well. One more thing related to safeguard was it where I can use terrakion to power up my pokemons, I can then also use my shedinja’s swagger to power up my mawile after safeguard has been set-up. Terrakion’s swagplay tactic makes the passive aspect which is usually thought of shedinja into a very offensive one this sets you off the worry of losing to timer. Hence terrakion really did came for the best. On aside note on the talonflame + terrakion combination on not any one of them having quick guard is that I do have certain pokemons that can handle yveltal and even terrakion was put on to counter thundurus, hence I don’t need it to counter them.

Conclusion:

So guys this is for my different rayogre team hopefully you really liked my team and inspired a few ideas of your own from it. Bye for now!