Ok, I did 2 nights worth of battling. All I can say is that Stone Edge continues to cost me games against baddies.
I had decided to go with
Buzzwole because I didn't like Mega Venu, and I had used Nihilego maybe once before. I decided to run a Life-Orb 4 Attack set after looking at its stats and movepool. I decided with the four moves of Earthquake, Leech Life, Ice Punch, and Poison Jab. I ran a Jolly 252 Atk 252 Speed set mainly because I thought that was the set to run. Apparently the actual common set is EQ/LL/Sub/Focus Punch with max Atk max HP, but I just ran my set anyway. Its physical bulk is extremely strong and can switch in on a lot of physical attackers (Lando, Excadrill, Bulu, to name some that it can OHKO back). It can also take a Zen-Headbutt from Mega Metagross and do a significant amount of damage back.
To compliment its lack of ability to deal with certain Steel-types (Celesteela, Skarmory, Ferrothorn) and also make up for Buzzwole's awful special bulk, I decided to go with an Assault Vest
Magnezone. It can take a lot of hits from some of the strong special attackers and can deal with the Pokémon that wall my Buzzwole set. Being able to switch up moves is really nice.
The last Pokémon I chose was
Tapu Fini. Buzzwole and Magnezone were both weak to Fire and Water type attacks, so I ran a Tapu Fini to deal with those. Fini is weak to Bulu and Koko, which are countered by Buzzwole and Magnezone respectively. My Fini set is Defog/Taunt/Surf/Moonblast, which doesn't deal with stall as well as the Nature's Madness set, but I really wanted some Water-type coverage.
Here is my team:
I hit 1481 Elo, which isn't very high, but I was getting haxed a lot (Stone Edge missing cost me a lot of my games) and didn't really want to keep climbing. I choked a lot of games away too, but that's more my own fault than anything.
What are my thoughts after this experience? My core isn't actually that strong, I knew that when building. It's weak to a lot of stuff like VoltTurn and also Dugtrio + fast special attacker that Fini can't beat. The latter half of my team that I didn't include with my core do a lot of work as well, so I think the team I built functions much better as a team than the core I built functioning as a core. Landorus is literally half the team, as it's my only fast 'mon outside of Mega Pinsir (which isn't that fast, but it has Quick Attack). But the one positive thing about my core is that those three Pokémon are my primary safe switches into opposing Pokémon, so I can at least have some feeling of success.
If I had to change something about the
team, I'd probably switch Heatran out for Marowak (SR/Flare Blitz/Shadow Bone/Bonemerang) because my only Electric immunity being my only fast 'mon limits me a lot. Following that change, I would probably give Buzzwole a Z-Crystal (maybe the Poison-type one) for more wall-breaking potential - with Poisonium Z to beat Fini (assuming no SR are up and I predict the switch). I think Buzzwole being Jolly doesn't actually help with much, so changing it to Adamant and taking some of the Speed investment and putting it in HP would also be a good idea.
Overall, I think that this was a good experience for me. It got me back into playing for the small amount of time that I did, and I learned a bit about what the new meta was like.
