Multi Type Take Down!!! My first ever competitive team

[Bokusachi]

Multi Type Take Down!!! My first ever (somewhat) competitive team. [UPDATE: 4/19/11]

Hello Pokemon Community, this is my first thread (besides my intro) and this is also the very reason I joined this community, to get help refining my competitive team. This is my first time entering the competitive Pokemon battling scene and most of what I know I've learned within the passed day, so yes I am a complete Noob. Please try not to use so many competitive battling terms as I might not understand what you're saying.

So a couple of my friends and I have decided to start having competitive Pokemon Battles thanks to all the features introduced in Black and White. To start off, we're going to have a little mini tournament amongst ourselves and the major rule to keep things interesting is NO LEGENDARIES. So no Mew, Heatran, Latios and Latias, Rayquaza, Giratina, Zekrom, etc. We're fairly new to what "Tiers" are and so on, so we just decided to leave out all legendary Pokemon to keep this fair and even.

Since this is my first time at attempting to make a competitive team I decided to go with a little gimmick that all my Pokemon would be of 2 types and I tried not to repeat types. I also enjoy Pokemon with as little weaknesses as possible, so I tried to choose type combinations that cancel out obvious weaknesses and so on.

I've only had Pokemon White Version for about a month now so I'm still learning about all the new species and because of that, my team looks a bit outdated. Anyways, enough back story, lets get down to business!

IMPORTANT NOTE: This IS a team of 6, NOT 8. The Pokemon side by side one another are not back-ups or replacements, they are choices I'm still trying to decide on. The order in which the Pokemon appear from left to right does not mean I favor one over the other, in fact the very reason they are next to each other is because I'm having a hard time favoring one and I would really like all of your help on deciding. Also, all Held Items, Natures, EVs, and movesets are not final, while helping me decide on which Pokemon to join onto my team I'm asking for the knowledge of all those who know a lot more than me from experience in competitive battling, so please base your opinion on the potential of what you know a Pokemon choice can become and not on what I've laid out. You are completely able to suggest Items, Nature choices, EV distribution, moves, and even Pokemon I have not mentioned. Before we begin redistributing EVs and suggesting new movesets, I would like to first have a true team in order. This means it is best to first decide whether my team will have Metagross or Bronzong, and Infernape or Breloom.

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Slot #1

Mamoswine @Choice Band/Expert Belt
Type:*image removed**image removed*
Trait: Snow Cloak/Thick Fat
Nature: Adamant [+Atk/-Sp.Atk]
EVs: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Speed
- Avalanche/Icicle crash
- Earthquake
- Bulldoze
- Stone Edge/Rock Slide

Description: How a little pig mole from Gurren Lagann grew up to become a giant mammoth wearing a Ninja Turtle's mask?...I will never know. XD
Anyways, with good speed, amazing attack and wide type coverage I've decided to make Mamoswine my lead for now. My only worry with him is that he is the Pokemon with the most number of weaknesses on my team...but for a part Ground type without an Ice weakness nor a x4 weakness, he is pretty okay in my book...plus with Thick Fat (which I hope to get in the Dream World) the Fire weakness is nullified.

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Slot #2

............................... OR ............

Metagross @Leftovers/Choice Band ..............._......._... Bronzong @leftovers
Type:*image removed**image removed* ....................................................... Type:*image removed**image removed*
Trait: Clear Body ....................................................... Trait: Levitate
Nature: Adamant [+Atk/-Sp.Atk] ............................_....Nature: Relaxed [+Def/-Speed]
EVs: 152 HP/252 Atk/104 Speed .............._..._.._..._.... EVs: 252 HP/108/20 Def/130 Sp.Def
- Meter Mash ........................-..-....-.................._.... - Gyro Ball
- Earthquake ............................................_............... - Earthquake
- Explosion .........-....-.._.............._......_................._.. - Hypnosis/Reflect
- Bulldoze/Agility ........-.......-....................._............... - Trick Room/Payback

Description: To my untrained eye I'm guessing Metagross is the favorable choice, but while finding out about ways to use Metagross competitively I came across Bronzong (who I thought was no big deal when I first played D/P and Pt) and it's Traits. As mentioned before, I like having the least amount of weaknesses possible and being able to eliminate the Earthquake threat with Levitate, leaving only a Fire weakness, is hard to turn down for me...so that's where I'm split with these two. Should I go with Metagross for his massive attack and sweeping potential or go with Bronzong and have a good wall?

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Slot #3

Tyranitar @Leftovers
Type:*image removed**image removed*
Trait: Sand Stream
Nature: Adamant [+Atk/-Sp.Atk]
EVs: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Speed
-Stone Edge/Rock Slide
-Crunch
-Earthquake
-Dragon Dance

Description: So I found out that all 3 of my previous Rock type choices were no good so I went with Tyranitar. To be honest Tyranitar was the first Pokemon that came to mind when I was thinking about Rock types since I remembered how awesome he was in the 3rd generation games, but then while doing some research on him I found out he had lots of weaknesses (and a x4 Fighting type weakness which a hate hate hated!) and I really didn't like that so I quickly discarded him as an option, but now apparently I'm finding out just how good he is based on what web sites and people say so I guess in the end his weaknesses are overlooked and I'm willing to give him a shot...that and after my first 3 previous choices he was the only Rock type that fit the gimmick of my team. XD

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Slot #4

......................_............. OR .............

Infernape @Wide lens/Wise Glasses ...............-........... Breloom @Toxic Orb
Type:*image removed**image removed* ....................................................... Type:*image removed**image removed*
Trait: Blaze ......................................................._...... Trait: Poison Heal
Nature: Modest [+Sp.Atk/-Atk] ............................-...... Nature: Adamant [+Atk/-Sp.Atk]
EVs: 4 HP/252 Sp.Atk/252 Speed ...................._.......... EVs: 252 HP/252 Atk/4 Speed
- Focus Blast ..............................................._.......... - Seed Bomb
- Flamethrower ......................................._....._....... - Drain Punch
- Grass Knot .................................................._._....... - Sword Dance
- Nasty Plot ......................................................_....... - Spore

Description: So Gallade was eliminated since I found out that Infernape was the slightly better choice...but then I came across Breloom and his ability that when combined with Toxic Orb is just plain awesome! Since Breloom will be poisoned all the time, I'm guessing he can't be paralyzed or burned (but he can still be put to sleep) so that gives him a great advantage over Infernape and even though he is slower than Infernape, Spore is able to put my opponent to sleep (with 100% accuracy which is awesome!) so that I can set up Sword Dance. Sadly Breloom suffers from the same problem as the Tyranitar that I've now allowed on my team, and that is that Breloom has way too many weaknesses for my taste and I hate x4 weaknesses with a passion!...but Flying type attacks don't seem as popular as Fighting type attacks so I guess I'll let that slide and Breloom isn't weak against the popular Earthquake like Infernape and one of Breloom's weaknesses is Poison which is hardly ever used it seems. Infernape still isn't counted out though, with his ability to be either a physical, special, or mixed sweeper and his amazing speed over Brelooms, it still makes this I really hard choice to make.

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Slot #5

Kingdra @Leftovers/Wise Glasses
Type:*image removed**image removed*
Trait: Swift Swim
Nature: Modest [+Sp.Atk/-Atk]
EVs:192 HP/252 Sp.Atk/64 Speed
- Dragon Pulse
- Scald
- Ice Beam
- Rain Dance

Description: Kingdra is just plain cool to me. His name is a wordplay on "king" and "dragon", suggesting that he is the king of all dragons (don't let the weak seahorse look fool you). Even saying his type sounds cool, "Water Dragon". Anyways, coolness alone doesn't win battles, but good stats straight through the board, only 1 weakness, and the ability to have one of your moves increase the damage of your Water attacks AND double your speed does. Scald is one of my favorite moves this gen, its a Water move that inflicts burn! For a person that have been playing Pokemon since the beginning to see a Water Pokemon inflict burn is just unreal! Ice Beam is there to counter Dragons and other types. Dragon Pulse for STAB.

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Slot #6

Togekiss @Leftovers
Type: *image removed**image removed*
Trait: Serene Grace
Nature: Modest [+Sp.Atk/-Atk]
EVs: 252 HP/192 Sp.Def/64 Speed
- Air Slash
- Aura Sphere
- Morning Sun/Magical Leaf/Shadow ball
- Thunder Wave

Description: Togekiss was the first Pokemon I selected for my team and quite frankly my favorite. I really like his unique (and very irritating for my opponent) style of fighting. Paralyze the opponent to halve their speed and keep them from making a move with constant flinching is just plain dirty for a Pokemon as sweet looking as this. I know Roost is preferred, but in this gen I can't teach a Togekiss that move, so Morning Star is an option, but it is weakened with Kindra's Rain Dance or the potential use of Sandstorm from my Rock choices. If not Morning Star then maybe Magical Leaf for added type coverage or Shadow Ball to help lower opponent's special defenses.

Why did I leave my favorite Pokemon in this team for last you ask? Well it's quite simple really, it was to seal this "letter" to all the online members willing to help me refine my team...with a kiss! XD​

 

[Vrai]

Hi Bokusachi! I'm glad you spent so long researching, and for something simple like competitive battling with some friends it's not so hard to be successful. But I'm going to try to take this in the frame of mind that you want to be successful all of the time, and some of the movesets and Pokemon you've chosen don't exactly "spark" success because they're generally poor when performing in the metagame. I dunno if you know what I mean by "metagame", either - the metagame is like the summary of the competitive battling scene at this point in time. It's always changing, thanks to people inventing new sets that counter/set up on certain Pokemon, and then other people inventing new sets that counter/set up on those Pokemon, and so on and so forth. It's constantly evolving, and some of those Pokemon you chose... just aren't up to speed with it. But anyway, I'll try my best to help you out and at least attempt to keep most of your Pokemon similar. :c

Also as far as competitive battling terms - I'm not going out of my way to not use them because you won't learn anything that way. I'd rather explain them, ok?

So a couple of my friends and I have decided to start having competitive Pokemon Battles thanks to all the features introduced in Black and White. To start off, we're going to have a little mini tournament amongst ourselves and the major rule to keep things interesting is NO LEGENDARIES. So no Mew, Heatran, Latios and Latias, Rayquaza, Giratina, Zekrom, etc. We're fairly new to what "Tiers" are and so on, so we just decided to leave out all legendary Pokemon to keep this fair and even.

Tiers are actually really easy as of right now, because we only have two of them - OU and things banned from OU, which are in Ubers. Everything that's not in Ubers is perfectly legal to use - "legendaries" aren't really the best terms to describe them as, because Mew, Heatran, and Latias are legal to use because they aren't considered broken but Rayquaza, Giratina, Zekrom, and Reshiram are considered too strong and aren't allowed to be used. You can find the ban list here; it's generally the same banlist anywhere because we follow Smogon's tiers. That's what we follow, anyway. With your friends you can make up whatever banlists you want, I guess, and I'll try to respect that you don't want legendaries for now. Just know that not all of them are unusable or too powerful.

Mamoswine @ Focus Sash
Type:*image removed**image removed*
Trait: Snow Cloak/Thick Fat
Nature: Adamant [+Atk/-Sp.Atk]
EVs: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Speed
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Endeavor
- Stealth Rock / Stone Edge

This is the only really good lead set imo. One of the biggest reasons to use Mamoswine as a lead is its ability to set up SR while also doing heavy damage and finishing things off with Ice Shard. Basically, if you're faster, set up SR and take a hit with your Focus Sash, and then Endeavor their health down to 1 making that Pokemon essentially useless. If you're slower, Endeavor first turn to bring them down to 1hp, and then Ice Shard to kill off their lead. Earthquake is for other STAB and Stone Edge I suppose is a viable replacement for Stealth Rock if you cannot get it.

I dunno how to figure out your Metagross vs Bronzong mess with formatting but tbh all I wanted to say was that Bronzong is probably better in this metagame, as it gives you QuakeEdge resistance (resists Ground/Rock; not many Pokemon do and a lot of Pokemon use that for coverage) and helps you stop stuff like Landorus and Excadrill. You probably also want Trick Room & Hypnosis, with an EV set like 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 Def @ Brave (+Atk, -Spe) and as little speed as you can get on it.

This is what I was talking about earlier with some of your team not exactly looking up to pace. None of these Pokemon are very viable at all. Cradily and Armaldo especially are NU (Neverused - that's another tier, but it hasn't yet been set. Obviously it's where the never used and not very good at all Pokemon go) material. Crustle is slightly better, but it wants the move Shell Smash. TBH if you really wanted to abuse Sandstorm you should run Tyranitar - it auto-sets Sandstorm with its ability, meaning you don't have to waste a moveslot with it. Copied & pasted from our threat list since I haven't used Tyranitar in a while and don't remember the exact specifications of it:

Tyranitar @ Leftovers
Trait: Sandstream
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
Evs: 252 HP / 88 SpA / 168 SpD
- Stealth Rock
- Crunch
- Fire Blast
- SuperPower / Stone Edge

Fire Blast helps you roast stuff like Skarmory that want to come in and pretend to wall Tyranitar.

TBH I also wouldn't run either Gallade or Infernape. Infernape is decent, but neither are particularly good. If you want something that's really effective (and you're using Tyranitar - don't use this if you aren't!) you should try Sand Rush Excadrill. Its speed doubles in Sandstorm, which Tyranitar auto-starts and makes it an awesome revenge-killer/clean-up sweeper. Again, C/P'd from the threat list...

Excadrill @ Air Balloon / Life Orb
Trait: Sand Rush
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SAtk)
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Return / X-Scissor

Air Balloon lets you beat other Excadrills, but since this is vs friends I'd imagine you're not going to be facing many, so Life Orb is perfectly viable. X-Scissor lets you hit stuff like Bronzong and bulky Grass-types hard, where Return lets you hit things like Rotom-W harder. It's preference, though you gotta remember you need max happiness for Return to be effective.

Kingdra @ Leftovers
Type:*image removed**image removed*
Trait: Swift Swim
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe / 4 HP
- Dragon Dance
- Waterfall
- Outrage
- Substitute

Let's be frank, Kingdra isn't very effective setting up his own rain - plus, he has Dragon Dance which boosts his attack & speed regardless. Also, running Rain Dance + Tyranitar/Excadrill is a no-no. Kingdra will let you take advantage of your opponent's rain if they have any, anyway. Substitute protects you from annoying status moves like Will-o-Wisp and Toxic, and makes it easier for you to predict. Waterfall/Outrage provide very good two-move coverage and they're both STABbed and physical moves, meaning they're boosted by Dragon Dance which is nice.

Togekiss... looks okay, I think. I haven't used one in a while but just make sure you're running 252 SpA / 252 Spe @ Modest or Timid (dunno which is better).

Good luck with your team!

 

[Bokusachi]

Thanks for all your suggestions! I do agree with you on Tyranitar so I put him in and Excadrill sounds good too, but for now since this isn't a 100% competitive team I won't put him in this one, but for the next real competitive team I make I'll defiantly consider him as my team gets planned out. I also like the suggestions you made on my Pokemon's movesets, but I haven't changed them yet as I'm still working on getting a true team in order and I plan to redistribute EVs, change movesets, and stuff all at once. ^_^