Pokemon

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Thought I should share this.

 

http://i640.photobucket.com/albums/uu125/Enganacious/1280382223529.jpg

 

~

 

I am currently 10-1 w/ this team, so I'm really happy with how it's turned out.

 

Azelf

Gengar

Blissey

Kingdra

Breloom

Zapdos

Edited July 29, 2010 by Enganacious

[Ataraxis]

I wouldn't be able to say no to that. Even if it was to a dude.

[Lenin]

That's just the greatest invitation to a date, ever.

[LS]

Kingdra sweeps are sooooo easy, I was using Dnite lead, Inner Focus/Lum Berry w/ Rain Dance, switch to Kingdra, pop sub if they going to switch, Dragon Dance if not, then start sweeping Waterfall/Outrage with this setup is sick, Rain makes Waterfall stronger, which keeps it on par with Outrage which is bone up because Kingdra has Lum Berry so after the first round it'll pop out confuse free, then can do it again or continue with Waterfall, if you get a sub out, game over, you can engage a hit or two against a tank and rip it to pieces, etc.. etc..

 

Kingdra is such an awesome poke.

 

Mostly because Sub/Dance Kingdra doesn't need Rain but it makes for an epic counter if your opponent pops Rain Dance teamage on you, switch to Kingdra and Outrage his poop out.

Kingdra is indeed an awesome poke, but that's one of the worst utilizations of it I've seen since my own early teams. Dragonite is a terrible setup poke for Kingdra. It's one of the two pokes in the metagame which share Kingdra's single weakness and strongest STAB; too many effective responses to Dragonite are also effective responses to Kingdra. Almost anything would be a better setup poke.

 

But when considering your setup poke. . .which I'm going to assume you want to be your lead; you can also do it with a 'secondary lead' after some form of suicide lead, be it either the standard SR/explode@sash or a 'leading sweeper', whose function isn't really to sweep but to attack in the fashion of a sweeper with the intent of weakening your opponent's counter to that kind of sweeper to make your eventual sweep with another poke more effective. (However, doing setup with a secondary lead makes your team extremely specialized; it basically won't be able to function at all if anything goes wrong, so you have to plan very well.)

 

Anyway. When considering your setup poke, you have to not only consider its synergy with Kingdra, but with your other sweeper(s). I realize you didn't post the rest of your team, and I don't know your general strategy, but I'm going to say this anyway. As you'll discover if you keep doing this strategy of opening with Kingdra offense, most teams at high level will still be ahead of you by the time Kingdra dies, because most teams at high level have effective responses to Kingdra. You can't open with Kingdra offense, especially not having a separate setup poke, and then play a standard game of semistall offense. Or at least you shouldn't, because you'll almost always be worse off than if you'd just started with the standard game. What you have to do is use the initial Kingdra offense to accomplish something more specific than merely taking out a poke or two, since you yourself lose a poke or two to accomplish that. It has to do something to specifically help the rest of your team. One thing Kingdra is very good at is damaging its own counters; even Empoleon takes a lot of damage in a flat-out slugfest. So the simplest and best way to make use of initial Kingdra offense is by having another poke on your team, RD-based or otherwise, who benefits greatly from Kingdra's counters being weakened. Pay attention to battles in which you fail to do damage with Kingdra: see what stopped you, and what else that thing stops. It's best to have the positions reversible too, so that if your enemy predicts your switch to Kingdra by switching in a dragon or something, you can send out the other thing first and not instantly die to Draco Meteor.

 

Some people like Electrode, but he's too predictable IMO: the moment you see him, you know RD is coming, and high-level teams will respond accordingly. Only recommended on very hardcore RD teams, where 5 or 6 pokes are directly involved with the rain. Bronzong is a very good RD setup poke, since things that switch into him tend to have trouble with RD sweepers and he has no problem living long enough to RD and possibly screen too, but he's not the best choice as a lead; taunt will ruin your whole day, since he's so slow and people always, always taunt him if they can.

 

My personal favorite RD setup lead is Jirachi. It baits fire attacks, giving Kingdra a possible free switch in, and can actually make use of the rain it sets up with Thunder (which has a 60% para rate with serene grace, and 100% accuracy in the rain) or Water Pulse (40% confusion rate with serene grace). The really beautiful part, though, is that it looks like the standard scarfchi lead, even if they use Fake Out, so people usually switch to something that resists Iron Head or doesn't mind being tricked a scarf, which is generally NOT their answer to Kingdra. Unless it's Empoleon or hyper-defensive Gyarados, in which case just use Thunder and remove their answer to Kingdra. People also never taunt it first turn. Like, ever.

 

Ludicolo makes a fantastic RD-exploiter alongside Kingdra with a Jirachi lead, because it resists ground, Jirachi's other weakness, and can be either specially or physically-based, just like Kingdra can, in addition to non-offensive builds like subseed (can be stacked with Rain Dish for Breloom recovery with decent defense, or use Swift Swim to outspeed everything and set up the subseed). It's also UU, which I know is a plus for you.

 

Whatever setup guy you chose, put Damp Rock on it, not Lum Berry. It doesn't really matter if your setup guy is para'd. It's much, much better to have the extra turns of rain.

Edited July 30, 2010 by LS

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

Ludicolo makes a fantastic RD-exploiter

 

So much so that I made a team specifically with your RD team in mind. It still got trashed but whatevs.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I think Smogon needs to start listing Pokes and their setups by purpose (Lead, Entry Haz, Spinner, Phys Sweep, Spec Sweep, Baton Pass, Support, Stall, Revenge Killer, etc..) that way you can take a look at pokes and setups for specific purposes.

 

Realistically a team has a Lead (alot of Leads are SR's and Spiker's; some teams have specific pokes for that).

 

You then have some combination of Offensive, Defensive, and/or Support pokes.

 

You don't have a team of all Revenge Killers, that would be silly.

Edited July 30, 2010 by Enganacious

[Neko Arc Chaos]

I think Smogon needs to start listing Pokes and their setups by purpose (Lead, Entry Haz, Spinner, Phys Sweep, Spec Sweep, Baton Pass, Support, Stall, Revenge Killer, etc..) that way you can take a look at pokes and setups for specific purposes.

 

Realistically a team has a Lead (alot of Leads are SR's and Spiker's; some teams have specific pokes for that).

 

You then have some combination of Offensive, Defensive, and/or Support pokes.

 

You don't have a team of all Revenge Killers, that would be silly.

So I can't use midgamemence anymore so what's a good dragon lead to replace him with?

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

In OU? You have 3 to choose from: Flygon, Dragonite, and Kingdra. Add UU? Altaria. There you go. Every other dragon is uber or NFE. Edited July 30, 2010 by Gary the Tennis Coach

[LS]

In OU? You have 3 to choose from: Flygon, Dragonite, and Kingdra. Add UU? Altaria. There you go. Every other dragon is uber or NFE.

Which is utterly disgusting IMO. In fact, let me state for the record that I'll gladly play teams with Mence or Latias, or even Chomp, if people still want to have somewhere to use those. The banning of Mence is actually rather upsetting to me, even though I didn't have any teams with it at the time of banning; out of those three the only one I've ever used with any degree of success or consistency is Latias.

 

Chomp probably deserves to be banned, and I really don't care either way about Latias since both its presence and absence have interesting effects on the OU metagame, although I'm leaning towards being glad that it's banned, even if it is the only banned dragon I used in OU; Scarftar usage was getting absolutely ridiculous near the end of its tenure. However, now that I think of it, Scarfchi use will probably go down now that Mence is banned, and Scarfchi makes me even more angry than Scarftar. Jirachi has SO MANY good sets, and the only one people ever use is the scarf set. That's been getting a bit better recently with the advent of this new-and-improved sub/para set, but there are still so many possibilities which aren't taken proper advantage of. Cosmic Power, for instance. And people don't even use the one-standard subCM set enough IMO; as Raor will tell you, it beats Blissey one-on-one, which is pretty impressive for a special sweeper. Hopefully the lack of mence will lead more people to use other Jirachi sets, if nothing else.

[SUMERIAN BLOOD GOD]

I loved CM Latias with LO. Dragon pulse, CM, Recover, Refresh. I still haven't reworked my teams that had Latias on it. It had great synergy with a lot of other pokes. Sure, Dnite and Mence could go mixed but none of them had access to CM and Latias outshined them on the SpD side. Actually Latias's only drawbacks were her HP and her attack. 110 speed is pretty dope. I just feel like the dragons (minus the oddballs Kingdra and Flygon) were all really similar to each other but different enough that they each had something they could hold over the other. Mence has superiority over Dnite in attack and speed while Latias beat Mence in speed and defense. Dnite was a middle ground that had access to extremespeed and superpower. Everyone complained that Mence's biggest asset was the number of sets he could run but I think that's just something you have to prepare for like you would with any other poke. Gengar can run a lot of sets. Jirachi can run a lot of sets. If you don't guess right with those you can get fucked just as easily as you could if you were going against mence. But meh, I never used mence for some reason or another. But I never went up against him and thought "gah, this thing is just too hard to fight" either.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

I also suck rancid canned meat when it comes to Blissey, I've been getting better; fuck the whole stall setup; run Flamethrower/Ice Beam gives you some offensive ass on the end of being a use pain to most things.

 

I'm really bad at stalling or any sort of non-offensive play, so I guess that's my Achilles heal; that and I make random mistakes when I'm drunk/high and play (ask LS, I gave him a match like 2-3 times, and vice versa).

 

~

 

Chomp really wasn't that bad, because anybody with Ice Shard takes him out, and there's a ton of those out there. But I could play the game without Steel or Dragon types, they really clot everything up (Dragons = "uber" offense, Steel = "uber" defense) it's just stall play leads to Steel Trapping, whereas Dragons lead to Dragons and Ice priority (Weavile was the best Revenge Killer because it snubbed Garchomp).

 

But whatever, I think that's the idea behind Bacardi; is playing with a more simplistic poke-pool.

 

~

 

I need a round-out 3 for a team with an Azelf lead (which I like), and a Kingdra/Breloom sweeper set.

 

Who could fill out tank/stall and revenge killer for these three?

Edited August 1, 2010 by Enganacious

[Chexos]

An unrelated question, is Honchkrow any good? I have been wanting a new flying type and the type combo seems interesting.

[Ethos]

Chomp really wasn't that bad, because anybody with Ice Shard takes him out, and there's a ton of those out there.

 

Up until you run into one that runs SD with yache berry. Meet one of those in a sandstorm, and let me know if you still think that chomp isn't all that bad.

[Gay Uncle]

An unrelated question, is Honchkrow any good? I have been wanting a new flying type and the type combo seems interesting.

Honch is okay, but I don't think it's all that great in OU. I played UU in the period before it got banned, and I didn't find it all that threatening then either. Probably one of the better switches in to Breloom though, which is something. Seventy-one base speed and poor defenses make it fairly handicapped though.

[Gay Uncle]

Heracross is UU.

[Ataraxis]

B&W to contain 12 legendary pokes.

 

I'm not sure what to think. My first reaction is "Shit, not another game with a retarded amount of legendaries," but then I get to thinking how much they could expand the ubers metagame and get me to actually play it. There's also some really interesting type combos there.

 

It's all in the latest update at http://www.serebii.net/index2.shtml

Which I can't copypasta, so yeah. It's got their types listed and some other things too.

[LS]

B&W to contain 12 legendary pokes.

 

I'm not sure what to think. My first reaction is "Shit, not another game with a retarded amount of legendaries," but then I get to thinking how much they could expand the ubers metagame and get me to actually play it. There's also some really interesting type combos there.

 

It's all in the latest update at http://www.serebii.net/index2.shtml

Which I can't copypasta, so yeah. It's got their types listed and some other things too.

What's wrong with legendaries? They're just pokes that don't have to evolve to be good, and which are even more of a pain than usual to get good IVs and natures with. You say the Ubers metagame will expand, which it probably will, but remember that most legendaries aren't actually banned in OU; some, like Articuno, Moltres, and Entei, aren't even banned in UU. The Ubers metagame will expand primarily not because they're adding 12 legendaries, but because 144 other bloody pokemon; that's going to expand every metagame.

 

I expect the Ubers metagame to become more akin to the current OU metagame in terms of variety, and the OU metagame to the UU metagame, with the addition of 156 pokes. DPP OU is already absolute chaos compared to that of previous generations, and I'm sure they're going to add new items and moves as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the game is actually less fun in sims, with it being more impossible than ever to have an answer for everything your enemy could be packing. I could be wrong, but DPPHGSS feels a bit like the AC3 and SL generation of AC to me; it's on the verge of going to shit.

 

Heracross is UU.

I'm probably showing my ignorance of the current state of UU play, but is that really that significant? I mean, obviously it's going to change some things, but it doesn't seem as earth-shattering as Shaymin, hail teams, or a bunch of other things that have infected UU over the years. There are still ghosts in UU, and more defensive poisons than in OU. I'd think it would be a bit harder to sweep with Heracross in UU as well, since the metagame is (correct me if I'm wrong) generally less bulky than the OU metagame. Of course, it's true that there is no Gliscor, but who uses Gliscor anyway?

 

That being said, I hate that this is even possible, that this is how they manage UU; it's one of the reasons I don't play the tier. What is banned in one tier should not be based on its usage in the next one up; Forretress is 13th in Ubers for crying out loud, and Kabutops is 32nd. Hell, Heracross is 38th.

 

 

Everyone should play more 151.

[Ataraxis]

What's wrong with legendaries? They're just pokes that don't have to evolve to be good, and which are even more of a pain than usual to get good IVs and natures with.

 

You say the Ubers metagame will expand, which it probably will, but remember that most legendaries aren't actually banned in OU; some...aren't even banned in UU.

 

Point one:

- I like pokes that evolve.

- Legendary pokes are always caught later in the game (I like to catch neat things early).

- Having so many cheapens the taste. Nom nom nom.

 

Aside from that, I don't have a problem with them. Though, whether I'll even get one of B&W is yet to be seen. So the impact here is minimal.

 

Point two:

- Keen observation, Sherlock. The truth is, based on the types many of them have, I entirely expect many of them will get into ubers.

- There are others aside from the legendaries that will probably get uber status as well (since, remember, not all ubers are legendaries!).

 

Derp.

[Gay Uncle]

I'm probably showing my ignorance of the current state of UU play, but is that really that significant? I mean, obviously it's going to change some things, but it doesn't seem as earth-shattering as Shaymin, hail teams, or a bunch of other things that have infected UU over the years. There are still ghosts in UU, and more defensive poisons than in OU. I'd think it would be a bit harder to sweep with Heracross in UU as well, since the metagame is (correct me if I'm wrong) generally less bulky than the OU metagame. Of course, it's true that there is no Gliscor, but who uses Gliscor anyway?

 

That being said, I hate that this is even possible, that this is how they manage UU; it's one of the reasons I don't play the tier. What is banned in one tier should not be based on its usage in the next one up; Forretress is 13th in Ubers for crying out loud, and Kabutops is 32nd. Hell, Heracross is 38th.

 

 

Everyone should play more 151.

There just aren't that many Pokemon available in the tier to safely switch into Heracross. Substitute with 3 attacks will be common, as pretty much any ghost-type in the tier gets destroyed by Stone Edge, which it likely carries for coverage.

 

I do however share the opinion that it's not going to shatter the tier, and in fact will bring a welcome change to it. I just hope that it's not going to end up on every team and completely centralise the tier. I mean, Rock Polish Rhyperior has more power and potential speed on tap and yet remains UU with no question of its power. The only difference is that the things that it typically does not KO (such as the number one Pokemon in the tier) can easily threaten it due to its weak typing, and is also scared of status.

 

Time will tell, as Black and White are less than a week away anyway.

[Lenin]

You know, against all odds, these B&W are really growing on me. Especially this floaty thing: http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y351/L514914/rankurusu.png

 

But it still looks like the world's most retarded acid trip was this generation's main inspiration.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

You don't have a team of all Revenge Killers, that would be silly.

 

i do!!

it is fun

[Shirtless Crackhead]

Then post it dick-fag.

[Bakuhatsu Pengin]

ambipom

252atk/252spe/4spd

jolly/technician/life orb

fake-out/pursuit/taunt/u-turn

prevent focus sashers and spike/rock setters

 

metagross

252atk/252spe/4spd

adamant/clear body/Cspecs

EQ/explison/ice punch/meteor mash

 

gengar

252spe/252spa/4atk

timid/levitate/life orb

tbolt/focus blast/explosion/shadow ball

poke holes in opponent's team and bait blisseys to kill with explosion

 

starmie

252spe/252spa/4hp

timid/nat cure/Cspecs

hydropump/ice beam/trick/rapid spin

specs hydro pump and ice beam for damage, trick to stop walls and things that like to set up, and rapid spin in case another poke decides to set up entry hazards (spin after trick)

 

snorlax

252atk/252spe/4hp

adamant/thick fat/CB

body slam/EQ/crunch/selfdestruct

body slam over return for parahax, selfdestruct at low hp

 

togekiss

252spe/252spa/4def

timid/serene grace/Cscarf

air slash/aura sphere/flamethrower/trick

STAB air slash for serious gayness

Edited September 12, 2010 by noob

[Lenin]

D/P/P has officially lost it's flavor to me now with B/W so close. Shoddy is officially boring.

 

Speaking of which, I just recently discovered Shoddy. How long can we expect it to be before the B/W content gets added after it's release?

[Gay Uncle]

It won't happen until Shoddy 2 is finished and released.

 

http://www.pokemon-online.eu/ will likely be updated before then.