February VGC Report

Hey guys today I am back with another team report, this time covering my February team that I built, right from the onset of the season I was interested in doing a HTR Hard Trick Room team in this format and soon after seeing a few successful ones and especially noticing that this time the ground for the usage of mega camerupt was much bigger, I was determined to build this team:

Cresselia @ Wiki Berry  Ability: Levitate  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD  Sassy Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Ice Beam  - Trick Room  - Helping Hand  - Skill Swap	Tapu Fini @ Choice Specs  Ability: Misty Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Muddy Water  - Moonblast  - Dazzling Gleam  - Hydro Pump	Scrafty @ Leftovers  Ability: Intimidate  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Fake Out  - Drain Punch  - Knock Off  - Detect
Tapu Bulu @ Grassium Z  Ability: Grassy Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Wood Hammer  - Horn Leech  - Protect  - Taunt	Stakataka @ Life Orb  Ability: Beast Boost  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Brave Nature  IVs: 0 Spe  - Rock Slide  - Gyro Ball  - Trick Room  - Protect	Camerupt @ Cameruptite  Ability: Solid Rock  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD  Quiet Nature  IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe  - Heat Wave  - Earth Power  - Nature Power  - Protect

Teambuilding Process:

This team was something that was to be based around a heatran, a pokemon I felt like had a lot of potential especially for the purpose of taking out most of the metamons and having great resistances. Then it got a lapras to cover heatran’s weaknesses and then cresselia on it and then there was an incineroar the last two members were originally stakataka and tapu fini, but then I changed up incineroar scrafty, since lapras was not providing much against the water types of the format, tapu bulu was added and what was heatran became a mega camerupt realizing it’d be more dominant as well as that I didn’t add a mega yet.

The Team:

The Trick room setters:

I feel like it would have to be somewhat necessary to chose two trick room setters on a hard trick room team and in my opinion stakataka and cresseia are the best for the purpose because they are extremely dynamic to cover different situations.

Cresselia is the bulkier one of the two, can take more hits and guaranteeing trick room setup against offense based teams combined with scrafty’s fake out. Cresselia is also the member which can provide the support to this team’s members.

Stakataka is the one which is more preferably to be chosen against the defensive teams 1) it can survive hits before setting up a trick room 2) it also is able to provide instant offense against these teams unlike cresselia.

Overall the dynamism is amazing between these two as cresselia covers up for the major weaknesses of stakataka as in ground and fighting types as well.

Levelers:

Both the tapus as well as scrafty work as levelers in the format for this team, scrafty can provide its fake out support as well as intimidate support to cut out offense, whereas tapu fini’s terrain cuts out status conditions against your pokemons whereas tapu bulu helps in bits of recovery, both these terrains help to lower the damage output being done from tapu lele’s or koko’s side of the field. All these factors help to get the trick room set up before my mons can sweep.

The Sweepers:

Mega camerupt is something that screams to be a sweeper especially under trick room for this team. Sheer force further increases its damage output being done through heat wave and earthpower. Nature power is amazing in accordance with the tapus terrains which allow mega camerupt to handle those dragons and water types which it wouldn’t be able to without this move.

The tapus are built to do damage as well on this team, especially the choice specs hydro pump as well as the z-move on tapu bulu are the big hitters for OHKO’ing other pokemons unsuspectingly even at times.

Stakataka is amazing, its gyro ball does crazy amounts of damage to almost anything in the format which is often times surprising even for me.

To start off with the team let us discuss the ever reliable trick room setter + general support of cresselia, this year with the added effects of ally switch to come in cresselia had the new defensive tactics in the pack but mainly for this team I chose to go for support other than that the more old school ways of a cresselia, firstly the helping hand I chose to go for this move as inside trick room cresselia can’t do much damage while helping out partners like camerupt stakataka tapu fini or scrafty to boost their damage output even further seemed to be helpful in matches right after setter up a trick room. Skill swap is another rather very interesting choice here for my team really does help to single handedly take out all perish trap teams by taking their shadow tag, whether its shuffling levitate to its partners or even when applied to stealing abilities like flash fire and aerialte, cresselia is there to play its part. Ice beam is the choice of offense to take care of any landorus t which stakataka and camerupt seemed to be very threatened by. Overall cresselia was as it is supposed to be a very reliable trick room setter.

Scrafty is the leveler for this team overall. It can support this team on its leads. Provide general offense or other support with intimidate, their isn’t a whole lot to say about this mon but yeah I guess its fairly decent there in its job its coverage of knock off especially does provide big for in matches to limit its opponents, not the most offensive member of this team but sure does play a big part in its success. Fakeout helps to set up even two trick rooms in a single game which surely does help it win a lot.

Stakataka is a member I really did want to use on a team of mine and got to study its glorious damage output from gyro ball only recently apart from adding a second trick room setter to this team of mine stakataka brings it the fastest and probably the hardest form of offense in this team of mine. Whether it’s the flincing rock slides or the damaging gyro ball stakataka forms a big part on the offensive side once it hits the field.

Camerupt is another favorite member on this team. Not only for its mega’s cool design but for the ‘sheer’ offensive pressure that it brings to the field, fire and ground type moves cover up a big span of types for big damage however now with the addition of nature power alongside two tapus give it the addition of fairy and grass coverage further helping it deal with those dragon and grass types it would lack offensive pressure against. At first this was an eruption set however I felt as if that lost its potential if not played well especially with some of the leads started of with scrafty and cresselia the team couldn’t afford to get up camerupt in good timing, heat wave provided further spread damage however things really did hurt much when it missed on important turns but hey mega camerupt you do just fine around here J

Now to discuss the guardians of the team tapu bulu is as real as a guardian gets. It can help against those really big ground weaknesses on my team furthermore helps out scrafty in healing, sheer offense and the holder of the z crystal do make it a strong option for offense but taunt turned out to be somewhat of a secret weapon here it greatly did help against a lot of people who didn’t expect me to use this move couldnt’ve been a more amazing move here on the slot. Overall tapu bulu solidly helped to support this team and keep it together.

Tapu fini is a pokemon that doesn’t happen to fill a big particular role in the overall composition of this team however fini can be very much useful in this team especially on leads it can exert a big amount of offensive pressure on a wide variety of opponents from single or double target attacks. Tapu fini is also very bulky and can fit into a whole lot of situations whether used to level the terrains take a bit of damage or do much more in return tap fini really does help out the team a lot.

(against apologies for not posting the calcs here hopefully from the next month I’ll be posting them with my teams.)

Conclusion: probably a long time in which I’ve kept a team and have loved playing with it as well, overall I think this was a very solid and balanced team to play with despite being the a bit inder the use concept of hard trick room teams. Hopefully you guys liked it as well and are going to try this team out for yourselves as well. Bye for now!