Team Volcano Bakemeat

Building Progression

According to my intro, I took yet another approach to creating a team around Scrafty. However this time, I went for my personally less used option of the Dragon Dance set.

Next I spent quite a bit of time looking for the perfect pokemon that would complement a DD Scrafty sweep. I took into account which pokemon both pose a threat to Scrafty himself, as well as have the potential to wall him. This lead me to the conclusion that Calm Mind Slowbro would be the most beneficial teammate to the sweep. He resists the oh so common Mach Punch, he can knock around both Hippowdon and Skarmory which would otherwise hinder the sweep. He also stops Gyarados as well which would simply intimidate Scrafty, eliminating the +1 I would get after a Dragon Dance. Seems like the perfect partner to Scrafty if you ask me. Also Gliscor loses to Scald.

Now that I have a single pokemon that can quite literally support Scrafty in almost every way imaginable, I figured I should start focusing on general threats in the metagame. The first opponents that came to mind were Scizor and the plethora of dragons that run rampant. My choice to counter all of this was Balloon Heatran. He has the ability to switch in and resist dragon moves, and possibly avoid earthquakes assuming his balloon is still intact. He proceeds to hit back with Hidden Power Ice to knock all those dragons around. Fire Blast takes care of Scizor, although I need to be careful of superpowers and the whole "hit and run" tactic that Scizor will pull off with an EQ'er.

Because of the uncertainty of how well Heatran would be able to handle both Scizor and dragons, I went ahead and added Zapdos. He can maul Scizor with Heat Wave if the event ever rises, and demolish dragons with HP Ice. He also offers fantastic synergy with Scrafty as well, and he was a nominee for the place of Slowbro. My only disappointment with Zapdos is the lack of a reliable flying STAB to hit Conkeldurr (or other Mach Punchers) with. He's still a great asset to the team nonetheless.

After that, I noticed I had no real answer to Latios. Sure Heatran could come in on a Draco Meteor, but he'll also lose his balloon and won't be able to do too terribly much back. That's where the specially defensive Jirachi comes into play. Not only does he handle Latios, but he also takes the place of a reliable rock resist, which if I had not chosen Jirachi, Scrafty would be the designated rock resist, and that would wreck his survivability. He also makes a good Wish support pokemon and can help keep Scrafty and Heatran alive.

Finally I needed a lead. A couple of things I noticed that my team was lacking in. One of the major ones was the lack of Stealth Rock. I did a quick search on pokemon who could use stealth rock, as well as use rapid spin (as Zapdos may not like switching in and out with the Life Orb recoil taking some of his precious health). Not many options came up because Rapid Spin is a somewhat rare move. I discarded the idea of rapid spin and went for just stealth rock. I then went for a ground type that could prevent opponent Ferrothorn from flinging around annoying thunder waves, which my team would lose to otherwise. Two options seemed viable in this situation: Mamoswine and Gliscor. I went with Mamo as my team also lack any form of priority (and Mamo has Ice Shard), and he's been a decent lead in the past. As Snow Cloak is banned on the PC PO server, I avoided using such an ability (as it's useless anyway to be honest, as who runs hail?) and went with the newly released Thick Fat which offers some lovely resistances that Mamo wouldn't have otherwise.

After playing around with Mamoswine, I noticed that all he did was add another fighting weak pokemon to my team as he loses to anything named Conkeldurr. So that left one option left: Gliscor. He added the nice fighting resist that I needed, however his now standard set that utilizes his awesome Dream World ability Poison Heal was impossible to have in conjunction with Stealth Rock. I had to make a sacrifice here and I went with Hyper Cutter, as Sand Veil is also banned on the PC PO server. After toying around and realizing that my Gliscor lead really sucked, I threw SR on Heatran over Flame Charge instead and changed Gliscor to the standard Fling/Poison Heal version. At this point, I feel that the team looks good enough, and has performed well enough to be worthy of a Rate My Team. I only have a few problems still, and I will mention those later (as they revolve around stall and I already have an idea as to how to fix that), but for now, here is the final lineup of the team.