VGC 18 July Team Report

Hi guys today I am back with another team analysis this time I will be talking about the team that I used throughout the month of july.

The Teambuilding process:

I was trying to start out with using a mega gengar team this tie around knowing that it had an amazing supportive as well as an offensive presence on the field. Soon I decided to go with a semi trick room mode on this team with a marowak and slowbro combination that I thought was going to be very much useful in this meta but slowbro kinda seemed rather lackluster on this team overall, marowak has been a VGC favorite of mine and looking at its capabilities I felt like it could be given some fair share of display in this format too. Then I scraped the old version of the team and then startd out with another version that had the starting core of cresselia, tapu fini and ofcourse the main focus of the team in marowak. Then came in a mega gengar as I felt like cresselia could support it well, I knew from my earlier tests that a move like helping hand and ground immunity from the partner can really help out my gengar, to cover up the huge ghost weakness on this team a snorlax was added which could take advantage of the trick room as well ad then to round the team off, and me being recently kinda very impressed by the combination of clefairy + gengar a clefairy was added which then again could support the team really well. First version of the team is as follows:

Gengar-Mega @ Gengarite  Ability: Shadow Tag  Level: 50  EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  Timid Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Sludge Bomb  - Shadow Ball  - Protect  - Substitute	Marowak-Alola @ Thick Club  Ability: Lightning Rod  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Flare Blitz  - Bonemerang  - Shadow Bone  - Protect	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 @ Waterium Z  Ability: Misty Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 236 HP / 92 Def / 132 SpA / 20 SpD / 28 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Muddy Water  - Moonblast  - Protect  - Haze	Snorlax @ Iapapa Berry  Ability: Gluttony  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD  Careful Nature  - Return   - High Horsepower  - Belly Drum  - Protect	Clefairy @ Eviolite  Ability: Friend Guard  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA  Bold Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Follow Me  - Heal Pulse  - Encore  - Icy Wind

The team did lack a lot of effective presence. I did use it a bit but it lacked much enough synergy. Then having thoughts about the new team I;m going to buil I felt like focusing on two of my favorites as in emboar and marowak. Putting them in combination I came up with the following six members.

Marowak-Alola @ Thick Club  Ability: Lightning Rod  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Flare Blitz  - Rock Slide  - Shadow Bone  - Protect	Emboar @ Life Orb  Ability: Reckless  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Flare Blitz  - Wild Charge  - Superpower  - Protect	Tapu Bulu @ Assault Vest  Ability: Grassy Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 28 Atk / 228 SpD  Careful Nature  - Wood Hammer  - Stone Edge  - Superpower  - Horn Leech
Milotic @ Wiki Berry  Ability: Competitive  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Scald  - Icy Wind  - Protect  - Recover	Cresselia @ Psychium Z  Ability: Levitate  Level: 50  Shiny: Yes  EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Psychic  - Ice Beam  - Trick Room  - Helping Hand	Salamence-Mega @ Salamencite  Ability: Intimidate  Level: 50  EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe  Naive Nature  - Hyper Voice  - Flamethrower  - Protect  - Double-Edge

For what I thought of it as being a really bad idea the two could be somewhat and somewhere usable in the game. Most of my early tests went successful based on the tactic that I set up trick room, deal as much damage as possible and as fast as possible. Also milotic and tapu bulu helped as effective members metagross came in handy rarely but did seem to atleast pull it’s own weight when brought into the game. I felt like giving this team’s concept a serious shot.

The Team:

Emboar worked far far better than I hoped it to work in this format. The combination of a really strong fire, electric and fighting type attack with the reckless ability and life orb further giving an immense boost to it’s offensive presence emboar was sure to pick up a whole lot of ohko’s in this format once the trick room was set-up a lot of people didn’t expect emboar to pack much of a punch at all that became the reason emboar aced through a whole lot of pokemon especially with it’s wild charge. Emboar proved to be the pokemon  wanted it to be on this team since the entire concept of the team is usually to set up trick room and start doing damage.

Cresselia is the pokemon that connects almost everything on this team, whether its to cover up a ground immunity and hit back landorus r to set up trick room. I didn’t had confidence in this spread and item choice when I put it on this team however it ended up working out pretty well. The reason was simple cresselia could do a whole lot of damage as well. It can also now one shot amoonguss which could be a serious threat for this team. Helping hand was yet again a good move ofcourse to add a bit more offense to this team. Cresselia has to be the most used member of this team.

Milotic is one of those pokemon that I’ll always be guilty of saying that I can’t use it at all before this team that was, but now I feel like, yep milotic definitely has a place in this game for me. The main reason was super obvious, though strangely milotic + cresselia made it as a main lead combination for me on this team. Usually the teams that’d carry a intimidate user like landorus or incineroar threatened my two main trick room attackers as in emboar and marowak as a lead milotic was pretty fun to be able to ward these two pokemons off the field or atleast prevent them from pivoting around in circles to weaken my team’s offensive presence. Milotic did prove to live up to it’s potential in this team.

Marowak was the base layer or this team alongside emboar it did found good synergy with milotic in terms of scaring away any strong electric type attacks. Rock slide is something I just put on this marowak for some testing and it really did not disappoint, after all it does provide marowak a strong stab attack which does ohko charizard outright from the field something that a lot of people did not expect me to carry on my marowak, marowak mostly does the same with a wide variety of attacks for coverage and offense to pressure under trick room marowak can pull out big wins for this team.

Tapu bulu had to be a standard pick here, covering up the double ground weakness as well as the completion of a F/W/G core sounds rather somewhat ideal on this end. This was quite a threatening member of this team as it did took out a whole lot of water types that my team had trouble with, adding to the coverage and defense with an assault vest worked on a somewhat hyper offensive team like mine.

Mega salamence has always been one of those pokemon that I felt like my teams didn’t have much room for but I felt ike this one it took up this slot quite well. After a noticed that my team didn’t have an out for the incineroar + kartana lead this was the idealpick in addition to which it can support this team a whole lot being a fast attacker for most of the mons being slow, adding to it’s defenses with intimidate as well as covering for the water and once again, the ground weaknesses, mega salamence provided what it felt like promising, though not one of the most used pokemons on this team however it worked really well.

Conclusion: I know it gets late and no excuses but there goes hope you liked it first time I built using my favorites in this format, upnext? Maybe a venusaur and torkoal team. Venusaur indeed being a very memorable pokemon for me.