Hi guys today I am back with a different kind of post,
nowadays in the 2017 season, in the previous season I have posted teams in the
form of individual reports however not much in this season however now they are
back! This time I will be putting forward a really interesting team that I
built in this season, it is around z-rain dance, and without further ado lets
get started:
Teambuilding Process:
So I have been doing this for the past two months that
whenever the month starts I retire my older teams and settle onwards a new
team. This time I started to build off of nihilego as seeing the official
statistics of battle spot, arcanine, garchomp as well as tapu koko were 1st,
2nd and 3rd respectively, that is why I started to tend
towards building a team around nihilego which could also be able to handle
other pokemons in this format really well, its rock type further adds a bonus
for it to counter all those flying types. Then my mind thought that why
shouldn’t I just build a double ducks team. Then I thought that I was getting
quite interested in using a z-weather team mostly z-rain dance which could help
me also beat those top three pokemons if used correctly. That is why I started
off with politoed, which had water absorb I wasn’t going to put it alone and needed
to support it, for it to be the center of my team, I thought of fake out as a
good support that is why I put Togedemaru with it which was going to be a
better option in its support especially in the popularity of tapu koko, then I
thought of the world championship 2016
winning team and previously read about Persian, so I added it, it added
an amazing direction to the double fake out support which could help me further
cycle these fake out and keep it up. Since seeing the threat of tapu lele, I
needed to add tapu fini, especially seeing then I have to add water absorb to
rain dance using politoed for it to be efficient then the idea of fast scarf
tapu fini with surf came to my head, further seeing that it could support my
politoed and take advantage from the rain + give a lot of cover against
terrains and status it seemed like the best option to add to the team, with
which I completely my core of four.
Then I added celesteela as well as nihilego at first, this
was done to add coverage options also I have heard really good things about
nihilego + celesteela,I needed to support nihilego with a bulldoze user so that
I can lower the speed of scarfed garchomp in case of my own life orb nihilego.
From this point on I worked on the spreads, I choose my old celesteela spread
and added vest on it which made it survive both tapu koko’s thunderbolt as well
as arcanine’s flare blitz, Persian spread was chosen from a team report and fit
in the team well, tapu fini had enough speed to outspeed a pheromosa under
scarf, that is why its offensive power was a big compromise in my opinion.
Politoed’s spread was almost 252/252/4 whereas togedemaru and nihilego had
252/252/4 spreads on them.
I did test the team and was quite surprised by the fact that
the concept seemed to work, even though my rating was low a this point, I was
happy to see the concept work and wanted to build it with a more solid approach
to make it into a much better team. However soon started to see some big
faults, I could dominate some matchups but then I was terrible against the
others. That is when I decided to put muk and kartana duo in replacement for my
double ub combination, both these pokemons were techs, muk could do a lot
singlehandedly it could beat all the tapus, beat porygon 2 be a source of bulk,
beat kartana, inhibit any opposing muk as well as prevent celesteela from using
flamethrower on my kartana, if the situation ever was to occur. Kartana I first
tried with sash but lost that 1v1 against arcanines, and needed more power so I
tried a fightinium z set to whatever advantage that could give me over a
porygon 2 in a matchup. After a whole lot of testing I started noticing having
trouble against garchomp, it could easily turn a 4-2 situation into a 0-2
situation fast, especially my pokemon choice against its teams was such that if
I didn’t had the right placement, I could easily lose the game, it needed to be
adjusted, also the lack of bulk on Politoed was quite bothering. The jobs I
chose kartana to do were being handled by muk already and ony needed grass
coverage from it for gastrodon, on other points I felt like I was weak to
opposing tailwind as well as garchomp matchups, that is why added a z-move
whimsicott to this team to further form a terrain abusing lead and help me
cover up other problems as well, did
exactly one bo3 with someone who plays well on showdown, after I felt like
making suitable adjustments into the matchup I felt like this team wasn’t maybe
only for a bo1 setting as I had been thinking about it like that before. Lets
get into the individual pokemon analyses:
The Team:
Politoed @ Waterium Z
Ability: Water Absorb
Level: 50
EVs: 84 HP / 4 Def / 164 SpA / 28 SpD / 228 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Ice Beam
- Rain Dance
- Protect
Politoed + togedemaru was my favorite lead, Politoed was the
start of this team and overall became to be the MVP of many matches and I just
loved it! The utility it enables to unlock from itself by togedemaru’s support
and using z-rain dance allows it to add more offense to its water type attacks,
outspeed arcanines, outspeed garchomps as well as the biggest point it gives
you over choice scarf is to switch between moves was just amazing. Up at this
point in the format at multiple times I have felt like ‘oh! Manual weather
seems very good theoretically’ how ever this was the first time I got to test
it in a team and exactly worked as it seemed to, with weather wars being all
out in this season, and all four weather conditions being very viable +
switching in be free your weather can easily be somewhat combated in a matchup.
Manual weather allows you to reset your weather even when you expect them to
switch and completely turns around the concepts of using weather counters,
especially it feels amazing when it is able to outspeed ninetales at +1 speed
and then stops it from setting up a threatening aurora veil whenever it
switches in into Politoed.
The main thought was that ofcourse I wouldn’t want to keep
the ability drizzle if I was going for the idea of a z-rain dance to start off
with this pokemon in the beginning and from looking at other abilities, I gave
it water absorb, this may seem underwhelming but proved an advantage in many
and many ways. Especially switching into walled water types was quite amazing
for me, blocking off offensive options like gyarados and araquanid was quite
big for me, that is the sole reason why I later added on a tapu fini with surf
which could keep this offensive water duo up for a long time. The offensive
water duo may not seem like much however with things rising in popularity like
ninetales, arcanine as well as gigalith and nihilego it seems really good to be
brought into usage.
The ev spread allows it to outspeed pokemons like kartana
and ninetales after the + 1 in its speed stat. at first I started off with a
offensive spread and to be honest when I started writing about this report I
felt like that it was quite a bad one, especially as it loses all the good
natural politoed bulk, I would have loved to make a bulkier spread from it that
is why I switched to a somewhat more convenient bulkier spread; 164 special
attack stat allows it to ohko a bulky arcanine with scald in rain whereas the
garchomp which are standard are most of the times ohko’d by its ice beam. The
leftover bulk allows it to almost never survive discharge from timid orb tapu
koko which seems very bad however can work if I hang onto the roll
Togedemaru @ Focus Sash
Ability: Lightning Rod
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Zing Zap
- Spiky Shield
- Encore
Moving on definitely have to discuss its partner in crime
togedemaru, a tough name to type again and again indeed. Togedemaru is
something that rose significantly in usage especially after winning the
regionals and I thought it was quite an annoying pokemon but how good can it
only be? I struggled a lot with this spread and item choice after switching
between weird items like eject button and shuca berry I finally came back to
the almost most standard item of focus sash, simply as I don’t understand from any theory needed that air balloon.
Togedemaru was quite amazing to use for more than one reason, it can be divided
into the heading of a disruptive role as well as some might think a stranger
aspect but a great utility in an offensive role.
Togedemaru was always supposed to be disruptive to its core.
All moves it gets have one thing in common they are annoying and disruptive;
you surely have to play very carefully around this pokemon when against it. It
can most basically use a fake out mainly what was the thought of supporting
politoed, in combination with its lightning rod ability to provides great
support to my water types as well as almost nullify a tapu koko or whatever
electric move users that this format may carry in it. Other than that spikey
shield didn’t overall got much usage but was good to preserve togedemaru for
its ability. In the end encore got amazing usage as well! Encore is something
people don’t expect on togedemaru especially since togedemaru has always been a
more popular pokemon for its nuzzle + zing zap paraflinch tactics. Using that
mindset to my advantage I really was able to get my opponents all the time with
it and it was a complete shutdown for my opponents.
Now with all the juiciness of the supportive or more
disruptive role the time todiscuss its offensive role has come! Yay! I also
this this was quite an amazing thing, firstly and it might surprise that it
OHKO’d most of the drifblim that I faced, moreover on that role, it was able to
do a lot of damage to pokemons like tapu lele, a celesteela and well as help
its partners by ohko’ing gyarados and pelliper which are 4x effective to
electric type attacks. Tapu fini isn’t safe either. The main reason I think why
this was good is that my team already has two water types and oppositions can
give a whole lot of trouble as they can wall or take advantage from my rain
mode, that is why togedemaru was very much even more satisfying.
Persian-Alola @ Mago Berry
Ability: Fur Coat
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 84 Def / 4 SpA / 204 SpD / 212 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fake Out
- Foul Play
- Taunt
- Parting Shot
The next pokemon came upon the idea of plotting a team which
was going to be like wolfe glick’s worlds team core of raichu + hitmontop, I
also read good things about Persian so it came naturally to the team, in
addition onto that the dynamism that they share allows Persian to take onto the
attacks of a garchomp whereas togedemaru can take up many fairy type attacks
from a tapu koko. This Persian spread was chosen from a report and fit well
into this team as it allowed my Persian to survive one dazzling gleam from
opposing tapu koko, heal and then switch out to a better option. Persian was
also mu amazing like togedemaru in terms of its supportive or disruptive
importance, cycling of fake out usage was the main job of this ‘cat and mouse’
core, in addition to that persian’s rather unexpected taunt was able to shut
down many opponents relying on set-up or supportive status moves. Parting shot
was even more useful acted as a move such as u-turn or volt switch but instead
of damaging allowed me to cut down the offense of my opponents. And allow me to
make better switches. Persian’s foul play allowed it to do more useful things,
especially with things like kartana and snorlax posing a threat to this team,
Persian was able to handle them nicely with its foul play, it also came in
handy against many other physical attackers as a form of utility offense.
Switching into the all popular tapu lele + drifblim core was a favorite move of
mine when keeping Persian as a part of the gameplan.
Tapu Fini @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Misty Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 244 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Moonblast
- Surf
- Heal Pulse
Moving onto the next pokemon I have a tapu fini which is
very strange, that is why firstly I’ll not jump write into the variant and
would like to explain the importance of its terrain, its terrain can do a whole
lot of things for this team, firstly it can stop drifblim or any other pokemons
from inflicting my team with status moves, its importance increases especially
as I do sometimes rely on togedemaru’s offense, and politoed or fini getting
paralyzed can be very troublesome for this team of mine. Now that we are done
with this ore talk, I should move into the rest of this tapu fini set.
The most surprising thing about this pokemon happens to be
its item choice of choice scarf, it sounds very strange but believe me that it
gave me all the essential utility that I needed, ofocurse no one in the world
expects a scarfed tapu fini and I surprised all of my opponents by showing them
and catching them off guard by the fact that how fast tapu fini was, this speed
allowed tapu fini to comfortable ko any koko or kartana switch in’s as it
2hko’s them if I catch them onto any switching which usually becomes very
predictable with a tapu fini on the field, this also allowed me to ohko most
standard garchomp on the field with its moonblast as well as more offensive
versions of arcanine. Overall I didn’t had a feeling that thi variant was a bad
choice in some case, other than the few late game decisive choice locks that I
have again my opponents.
Scald and moonblast are predictable and obvious single
target stab attacks whereas surf has the importance of going very well once
politoed sets up a rain dance, as politoed recovers its hp tapu fini adds onto
the offensive pressure as well as help in defense of politoed at the same time,
however this was somewhat concerning on those few times I had to surf into my
own pokemons but didn’t bother me all to much. Heal pulse seems like a
discussable option the thing with this team was, that with other teams usually
u get to keep multiple counters to the same pokemon but so wasn’t the case for
this team of mine, so therefore to preserve my win con in a bad spot or in
other words keep up a pokemon essential to the matchup I felt like heal pulse
was good, especially given that muk doesn’t have protect to not take damage and
Persian and togedemaru can enjoy longer trips on the battle field.
Its ev spread is also very strange, firstly I was using a bulkier
spread with a lot less special attack which made tapu fini a very bad pokemon
to use as it gave me very less offensive pressure and was often inefficient,
since I figure that tapu koko is already handled well by muk and whimsicott and
togedemaru, I really didn’t needed that bulk and my strategy around kartana was
always going for the muk switch in or be fast to attack it and I figured soon
that I didn’t needed bulk on this spread of mine the offense works very well,
the speed that this tapu fini reaches allows it to outspeed a
pheromosa.
Muk-Alola @ Figy Berry
Ability: Gluttony
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 44 Atk / 108 Def / 84 SpD / 20 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Poison Jab
- Knock Off
- Flamethrower
- Imprison
Muk is one of the MVP pokemons of this team especially due
to te fact that how much work it can put into a whole lot of matchups, normally
you would most likely expect a muk to counter all the tapus heas well as
porygon 2 this one exactly does that, however some more to as instead of going
for the protect + support move slot I went ahead and gave it the move
flamethrower which helps it counter kartana and the move imprison that
completely shuts down any muk, imprison was also a tech to stop celesteela from
using late game fire moves on pokemons like togedemaru which perform really
well against it.
Muk is simply a muk and doesn’t really require much
explanation to it however as you can notice this one isn’t the most standard
thingie you would see, first this in the ev spread of this pokemon is the large
amount of bulk, I took this spread from Wolfe Glick’s guide of muk’s
competitive usage it makes t survive garchomp’s earthquake which a good amount
of health, wolfe showed this spread with those sitrus berry calcs, however figy
berry should help this pokemon even more in the bulk regard, 44+ attack allows
it to pick up OHKO’s and 2HKO’s on most pokemons on my opponents that I want to
target it with. It also enables muk to survive tapu koko’s thunderbolt as a
3hko.
Overall thinking about muk it was almost always brought and
kept in the back, the main reason for why I did this so was that I usually
planned to use this pokemon as a pivotal or defensive switch in for my other
members mainly tau fini and politoed, other times when I brought it on leads I
played conservatively with it because it usually had a big importance in the
overall matchup. Switching into tapu lele is a fun and satisfying thing to
watch.
Whimsicott @ Normalium Z
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nature Power
- Energy Ball
- Helping Hand
- Tailwind
Last but not the least whimsicott, I honestly felt lie I had
a lot of things to patch up for this team but pokemons like muk and tapu fini
with the choice scarf seemed to make things even more easy, as aforementioned
having three main things to accomplish with the last slot on this team were
tailwind counter, garchomp counter as well as a grass type move user. The main
tailwind + garchomp thing was mostly those drifblim + tapu lele teams which
turned really threatening, as I kept up disruption and a defensive stance in
the opponents tailwind, but this stall style of play often set be back a whole
lot also if garchomp got in and set up a swords dance, it was as expected no
good for me. Gastrodon would easily become a mostly and swallow my team whole
if it gets those boosts and also is immune to 3x of my pokemons’ attacks and
doesn’t care much about two others. As first I tried an assault vest seed bomb
celesteela, kartana and then the answer lied within a whimsicott, whimsicott
was a very good fit into this team as it was able to sync well with its
partners and without destroying any type of disruptive as well as it did
exactly the job I was given.
Another thing that comes to my mind while practicing with
this team was that I would also need a helping hand user, the main reason for
this was when I was reliant on a emergent situation and needed that extra but
of an offensive push to take me out of that situation, also in the matchups
that whimsicott was brought protect was used very less, that is why I opted to
give it helping hand.
Whimsicott can do quite some offensive jobs, it seems like
an all out priority pokemon for this team of mine which is why I decided to
give it 252 hp instead of speed for whatever bit of bulk it gives it to
accomplish, furthermore the offensive priority especially combined with tapu
fini’s terrain and boosted by stab + z-move twinkle tackles were really pulling
out some damage, it especially helped in the garchomp matchups as well as those
trick room situations. Whimsicott I also used a bit for defensive switching
such as in cases or ground, water or electric moves. I had whimsicott only for
some matchups but in general it added the idea of a double fairy offensive lead
where they can put in some work from their offensive potentials.
Modes and Leads:
Leads:
Togedemaru + Politoed:
It was the main lead of this team of mine and allowed me to
counter those garchomp + tapu koko lead with a lot of ease. In addition to that
it allowed me to easily set up a z-rain dance and help politoed take out any
fire types in togedemaru’s way, with togedemaru’s support on the side poitoed
was able to keep itself up for a long time on the field, and use its attacks to
take out a big number of opponents.
Double Fairies:
Double fairies wasn’t a part of a lead when I starting
building it but came to me after I added on a whimsicott, due to large number
of teams carrying opposing terrains I wasn’t able to lead my tapu fini however
it often became into a mid game on field mode which helped me really well.
Grass + water coverage with speed control and fast hyper offense with boosted
offense with helping hand is not a joke and that is why I liked it on field as
a mode.
Modes:
Core of four:
The first four pokemons of this team, which are Persian,
togedemaru with politoed and tapu fini are the special core of four, this core
does offer a lot first of all offers strategy and then gives a lot of
disruption and surprise offense which is why really liked playing it, when I
started to use this team, I used these four a lot and they were helpful atleast
in those tests. The core covers a lot which is pivotal switching, terrains, as
well as weather.
Conclusion:
Hopefully you really liked this post and liked going through
this team of mine, make sure to give it a try, main accomplishments of this team were winning somehow strangely a BSD tournamnet of ps as well as reaching the semi finals of a VGC tournament on ps . I’ll be back with more content
to cover and post, Bye for now!
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