Other [SMPU Beta] If Ya Ain't First Ya Last, Peaked #1 at 1680!

[Liquidocelot]

Proof

http://i.imgur.com/UyzIKKv.png

Introduction​

**Hello everyone and thanks for joining me on my first RMT in years. Today we'll talk about the team that I've been playing around with since beta came out and am proud to announce it is finally done and I peaked number 1 and am happy to be retiring this team to the forums so you can all play around with it too. Heads up though this isn't a team you can really just sit there and spam moves with, you have to play very smart with it as there are a few pokemon that will singlehandedly destroy you if you misplay.

Teambuilding Process​

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**I started off with a question I normally start my teambuilding process with,who the hell is gonna be my rocker? Well I played a bit in Alpha and hands down my favourite rocker at the time was Piloswine, so I slapped him on the team and he stayed there as a solid glue.**

**After Pilo I knew I wanted a spinner as entry hazards can very easily be the difference between winning and losing. I also wanted a special wall to tank attacks that Pilo has troubles with, this all lead to Hitmonchan who is in my opinion the best spinner in the tier.**

**Next up I wanted a spinblocker and offensive pokemon, so that easily led to Golurk or Haunter, I liked Golurks better buk and great stab and pseudo stab in Iron fist. With rocks already covered I could give Golurk another role so he also became my primary scarfer so he could also pseudo-block Skuntank. **

**Next I needed a win con and well more priority doesn't ever hurt so I went with Gurdurr, Great set up sweeper, says fuck you to status which this team struggles with and is just a tank, also pairs well with Chan to just break through anything.

**This pokemon changed a bit, at first it was Absol and then Lycanrock and then I looked at them and my team and just decided to say fuck it and went full priority spam and go with Kanga. I also struggled with Sableye a lot and realized Scrappy Facade destroys him. Thus Kanga was born.**

**This pokemon went through so many changes. I knew i needed a specially offensive pokemon or I would be completely walled by everything. I also knew I needed another win con. At first it was Vivillion but it got banned, went to Butterfree but Free sucks unfortunately, tried Liligant but didn't mesh well with the team, tried Turtonator and while decent the defense drops just didn't help it at all and it's walled way to easily. Finally took a look at Ludicolo and realized it could tear things apart on it's own with little set up and support and clean lategame easily. Aso changed Piloswine to Oblivious over Thick Fat to be a better lead.**

The Team​

Piloswine @ Eviolite
Ability: Oblivious
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock

**Alright so here is one of the most essential parts of the entire team, Swine. His job is to gets rocks up, this team lives and dies on rocks and he is a great lead. Due to Oblivious he isn't blocked by taunt and can get them up against Sableye and like. After that if they don't have a spinner you can either sack him or save him later to pick off weakened foes witch Ice shard and Iccicle crash. if you see a Scyther in there line up or any other offensive bird keep him around, this team is flying weak and he's pretty much your best chance of beating them. Other than that he's just Standard TankSwine.**

Hitmonchan @ Assault Vest
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Ice Punch
- Mach Punch
- Rapid Spin

**Hitmonchan may be the most important member of the entire team, he is the spinner. This team does not like entry hazards, actually no this team hates entry hazards with a passion. The chip damage turns a lot of 2hko's into 1 hko's and 3hko's into 2hko's, poison sucks a lot and makes any sort of tanking very hard and everything on a timer and sticky web cripples the team heavily. Keep chan alive until all entry hazards are gone, also Chan is your only pokemon that can act as a special tank and is you're only way of combatting things like Turtonator, Specs Washi, Specs Exegutor-A and more. Chan can also act as a pseudo lead and should lead if you see a sticky webs user on there team like Leavanny or Masquerain or if you see a Crustle on the team as he can beat them all in a one on one and spin there hazards while they set up. DP is nice recovery and powerful with Iron fist, Ice punch is coverage against flying types and allows you to beat Masquerain and Exeguttor-A along with denting Golurk's comin in on the spin. Rapid sin is obvious and Iron Fist Mach punch is just strong priority that can pick off weakened mons. **

Golurk @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Drain Punch
- Shadow Punch
- Ice Punch

**I chose Golurk to be a spin blocker and great offensive pokemon, with Pilo taking care of rocks I decided to make Golurk Scarfed, something I have been told multiple times by people on the ladder is idiotic... yup number one is me being idiotic eh? Sorry I get a little salty sometimes. Anyways ScarfLurk is something on paper that is just terrible but in practice is amazing, it hits an amazing speed tier, being able to outspeed +Speed base 106's which include threats like non scarf Scyther, Pyroar, Modest Raichu-A, non scarf Primeape, Jynx, Haunter and more. It also allows me to pseudo-Spinblock Skuntank by outspeeding the dark pulse/Defog and ohko with an Earthquake. Earthquake is the stab move numero une, being powerful and easy to spam with Golurks high attack stat, if there's no flying types just go nuts as not much even resisted mons like to take one. Drain punch is for the ghost/fighting combo along with providing some recovery and having pseudo-stab with Iron fist. Shadow punch just becomes a strong ghost type stab move due to Iron fist and allows you to hit pokes like Kadabra, Jynx and Haunter a lot harder for the ohko. Ice punch is coverage and allowsn you to check SD Scyther along with hitting pretty much everything immune to EQ hard.**

Gurdurr @ Eviolite
Ability: Guts
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Knock Off
- Bulk Up
- Drain Punch
- Mach Punch

**Gurdurr is your wincon for most matched, he sts up and he punched walls, and he's good at it too. Most of the time you can come in easily set up a bulk up or two and then go to town, he's only really blocked by Sableye and Weezing, though if you get two bulks up up and get lucky enough to be burned then you win against them, simple as that. he's also besides Pilo your best answer to physical threats as he can easily come in tank a hit and ehal off with DP or set up on them. Knock off is to take on ghost types like Dusclops, Haunter and Golurk who try and switch in on a Fighting move and Ko you. Drain punch is your stab move and allows you too keep Gurdurr nice and healthy, Bulk up is your set up move and Mach punch is to pick off frailer, faster foes like Lycanrock-Day and Pyroar along with to clean up late game or revenge kill.**

Kangaskhan @ Silk Scarf
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Facade
- Sucker Punch
- Earthquake

**Kang is the ultimate Revenge Killer, seriously 10/10 mon, can come in with Dual priority and revenge kill nearly anything and due to scrappy can even take on ghosts. If you see a Sableye or Weezing in the opponents team, do not Sack this thing as it's your only real answer to them due to Silk Scarf boosted stab Facade it can deal over 50 to both after being burned or after T-spikes. Fake out is priority move number one and after stab and silk scarf it hits hard and is free chip damage, combine that with rocks and you can weaken most teams very easily, just be wary of Ferroseed. Facade is stab move of choice as with scrappy it allows you to take on any ghost type in the tier especially Sableye also after being burned, Silk scarf and stab it hits a staggering 252 power which combined with Kangs attack stat allows it to wallbreak almost anything in the tier. Sucker punch is second priority which with fake out allows you to come in and revenge most weakened threats.**

Ludicolo @ Waterium Z
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Rain Dance
- Giga Drain
- Surf
- Ice Beam

**Ludicolo is your late game cleaner and special wall breaker. Rain boosted Hydro Vortex will put a sizable dent in anything in the tier that doesn't resist it and due to swift swim it can easily outspeed basically any team and sweep through it, this thing is busted as fuck. Rain dance is your set up move and if webs are on the ground you can Z-rain dance to get back to normal speed and sweep through the opposing team. Surf is stab move of choice, used to be Hydro Pump but ost too many games due to accuracy so went back to Surf. After Rain and stab it can break through most things in the tier and with Waterium-Z it becomes a powerful base 175 stab attack. Giga drain is other choice of stab and acts as recovery for the sweep and Ice beam is coverage to nail any grass types comin in to try and wall you.**

Threats

There are some major threats ya gotta play well against or else you will lose. Here are how to deal with them.

Sableye is part one of the big three threats. He can come in burn your team, prevent set up, chip damage with knock off, Spin block and tank most of the teams hits with Recover. The best way to deal with Bleye is if it's specially defensive get Kang in and Fake out hit then facade on the burn for the KO. if Physically defensive get Ludicolo in and Hydro Vortex, if both them are dead you flat out lose and might as well forfeit the match there barring some act of stupidity.

Gurdurr will wreck your shit that is just a flat our fact. Best case of action is to get Golurk in on the bulk up/sack somethin to get Golurk in, Eq one or twice and then bring in Ludicolo to Hydro vortex and KO him, that or bring in your own Gurdurr and try and win the duel against him, as long as you play smart you can win though.

Weezing can come in tank everything but statused, Kang or Ludicolo, set up T-Spikes, block Gurdurr from settin up and more, it's a huge Nuisance but if you play good with Ludi/Kang you can win it, still sucks.

As long as you have Chan/Pilo still alive you can easily revenge Liligant and keep it in check but still a decent threat and can kill/cripple a poke.

This team ates webs, that's it.

Much like it's great on my team, it can be great when used against you, play smart around it and you're good but watch out.

Tauros is a great mon and can break through this team like butter if you are not smart, however Gurdurr can easily take a zen headbutt and beat him through Drain Punch/Mach Punch and if non Scarf, Golurk can come in and revenge with the DP.

Though rare, if you face a Sand team with Soutland on it you can be stroyed pretty easily but you can also revenge with Gurdurr/Chan/Kang/Pilo.

These two together as they do the same thing, get in with there status and start wrecking shit, both can be revenged by either Chan/Gurdurr or by Golurk with DP. Still be very wary as they can dismantle the team pretty easily.

With it's Rockium-Z sets it can break this team pretty hard, in rain Ludicolo can't outspeed and kill and in webs it'll just wreck shit, however can be revenged by Chan/Gurdurr and even Khan.

So that's the team... Don't really know what else too say but it's pretty solid as long as you play smart, happy laddering everyone!​

Importable

Piloswine @ Eviolite
Ability: Oblivious
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock

Hitmonchan @ Assault Vest
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Ice Punch
- Mach Punch
- Rapid Spin

Golurk @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Drain Punch
- Shadow Punch
- Ice Punch

Gurdurr @ Eviolite
Ability: Guts
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Knock Off
- Bulk Up
- Drain Punch
- Mach Punch

Kangaskhan @ Silk Scarf
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Facade
- Sucker Punch
- Earthquake

Ludicolo @ Waterium Z
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Rain Dance
- Giga Drain
- Surf
- Ice Beam

 

[MZ]

This has been one of my most difficult rates in a long time. Not gonna lie, my first impression was... not good. This team is missing a significant amount of anything resists. As it currently stands, incredibly relevant and fairly common (well idk about ladder but w/e) threats like SD Scyther or boosting Zard or Musharna essentially just 6-0 this from preview. I've got no issue with Scarf Golurk or AV Hitmonchan in general, but I think you may have confused other people's negative remarks for hating on the sets rather than their failure to patch up weaknesses (or they were just being negative idk). You've got a bunch of mons with passable bulk and the ability to take on an attacker at random, but the team's simply going to get worn out due to being slow and having fairly nonexistent Fire/Water (despite ludi)/Grass/Fairy/Flying (especially this)/Psychic resists. Anyway, for reasons that'll be more obvious later, the first thing I want to do is run through some set improvements.

Piloswine- I'd run at least a little Speed creep. Nothing major, but there are quite a few 0 Speed base 50s in the tier. You may already do this and simply not have wanted to share in a public rmt, but just in case.
Hitmonchan- Similarly, 0 Speed is a big waste. 48 is what I've most commonly seen to hit the 200 Speed benchmark and only die to 2 AV Magmortar Fire Blasts after rocks less than 5% of the time, but you could fiddle. 0 is just slow as hell though, Hitmonchan should never Speed tie with Turtonator.
Golurk- Iron Fist is just worse than No Guard, almost every Dark/Psychic/Ghost can be KOd with non-Ghost moves and Musharna still usually avoids the 2hko from Shadow Punch without Rocks. No Guard Stone Edge gives you a check to Scyther where the team has none, while Dynamic Punch is a direct upgrade of Drain Punch. Edgequake+Fighting is really all this mon needs so you could keep one of Shadow/Ice Punch, the next best thing is just Zen Headbutt I guess which only does relevant stuff on CB afaik.
Gurdurr- http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...and-tauros-banned.3611417/page-5#post-7490188 read this for 2xthetap's 100% better Gurdurr EV spread.
Kangaskhan- Look if Facade is your best Weezing/Sableye answer, you're doing it wrong. Running Double Edge to have any kind of power when not statused and fixing the team is just a better move.
And then there's Ludicolo, I'd advise for Hydro cuz non-LO Surf was occasionally disappointing when I tried it out, but really not the worst.

Frankly I just really don't like the way the mons fit together. Fightspam is workable but dual slow bulky Fighting is asking for trouble, two Ground types isn't disqualifying but when the rest of your team does a poor job of checking Water and Grasses it's awkward, and neither Kangaskhan nor Ludicolo tend to switch into anything more than once. Then offensively the team just doesn't do a whole lot to weaken checks or anything. There's like 1.5 mons that can break Weezing and Sableye and a big Tspikes vulnerability and literally nothing for Musharna once it gets a single boost. Weirdly enough, Togetic also kinda walls 5/6 members. I'm only going so negative to try to justify the call for really extreme changes changes here, because the team did have some ladder success and that generally makes people more resistant to serious change.
Anyway, what I'd do is start from 1-2 mons again, 3 tops. These three can be up to you, taken on their own you could probably make a decent team out of any combo (except perhaps gurdurr/hitmonchan, i really heavily dislike that core in this meta). Unfortunately I just couldn't find any good way to reconcile how little anything fits together here. All of my attempts inevitably ended with a team completely different from the original, in a way that doesn't entirely help to improve what you have here. I don't believe that's what you want for this team, nor do I think it'd be beneficial for me to share a completely new team and call it a rate here, but it's the best I felt I could do with the given parameters. In any case, I hope at least the set fixes help you improve what you've got. Sorry about this more or less ending in a cop-out, and congratulations for at least managing to peak with this team.

 

[Liquidocelot]

The weird thing is I completely agree with everything you say, this team on paper shoukd not work at all, it has weird team synergy that doesn't know what it wants to do, is it bulky offense? Is it just offense? Balance? No clue it's a whole bunch of top toer pokes slapped together with glue and masking tape and yet somehow in practice it completely works despite all odds and against some of the top ranked players in the tier it works.

I feel its a team that you have to play with to experience and as hard as I try I can't explain why its so great of that makes sense?

Thanks for the congrats though :)