How do u get a pikachu onto a train?

[PerfectBlue]

U Pokemon! (poke-m-on)

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Ok, bear with me, I am running a pretty basic sandstorm spikes setup. Originally had more recovery and bulky pokemon, but found that it just didn't work as well as I wanted it to, and it was often hard to keep pace with stronger pokes. I ended up w/ like no left overs, yet it still does surprisingly well.

Tyranitar @ Focus Sash
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 Atk/4 Spd/252 SAtk
Brave nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Crunch
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Ice Beam

My lead TTar. Gets down rocks and SS fast, and can threaten a lot of pokes with Maxed atk and satk. Fairly simple setup. I am thinking of changing to hippo though.

Skarmory @ Leftovers
Ability: Keen Eye
EVs: 252 HP/36 Atk/200 Def/20 Spd
Impish nature (+Def, -SAtk)
- Whirlwind
- Spikes
- Brave Bird
- Roost

skarm...pretty standard. I am using 20 speed to beat out other skarms to ww, and also to outspeed all the pokes that try to outspeed standard skarm. Only really defensive pokemon on the team, much needed for many physical threats, and it is able to setup spikes on walled pokemon surprisngly well in the current metagame. Most teams have at least 1 pokemon that is walled hard by skarm right now, and no one bothers w/ rapid spin.

Gyarados @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP/236 Def/20 SpD
Impish (+Def, -SpA)
- Waterfall
- Stone Edge
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Status absorber, counters some important stuff like scizor, infernape, heatran, etc. Using this over milotic for now.

Rotom-h @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP/252 Spd/252 SAtk
Timid nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Overheat
- Shadow Ball
- Trick
- Thunderbolt

Spin blocker, revenge killer, etc. Trick on opps walls, or just against pokes that pose a problem.

Flygon @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 Atk/252 Spd/4 SDef
Hasty nature (+Spd, -Def)
- Fire Blast
- Roost
- Outrage
- Earthquake

Just replaced salamence for this, sala just died too fast in the sand, so using this instead to do some damage, and still be able to recover if needed.

Lucario @ Life Orb
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 252 Atk/4 Def/252 Spd
Adamant nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Close Combat
- Swords Dance
- Extremespeed
- Ice Punch

Cleanup, and sweeper. Ok, now I know it's really weird that I'm doing adamant and ice punch. The power is just really nice, and Lucario can ohko a lot w/ CC/extreme speed w/ spikes/sr damaging repeated switches. Ice punch can still hit predicted mence/gliscor switches, and hurts celebi and zapdos and stuff nicely. Too many ppl do +speed on mence/gliscor now to counter jolly cario. Edit: idk wtf I was saying here, few besides me do jolly gliscors, and it can't ne ways.

Major Threats:
Status
Gyarados w/ a dd is a pain to stop, skarmory or milotic usually has to die to keep it from sweeping, rapes the rest of my team
Infernape the all out attacking versions w/ hp ice and grass knot are almost an auto loss, I need something to fix this. Starmie over milotic is the easy answer, but I don't feel like it stops heatran as well, and my ttar usually doesn't last long.
Kingdra Another hard hitting pokemon that's hard to stop
Gengar mainly the sub versions, I don't like hypnosis either though, am glad this isn't used as much as before o_0
Zapdos mainly the defensive roost versions, as I said ttar doesn't end up lasting too long in matches usually, mainly have to use speed, but thats when the really bulky zapdos are a problem.
Skymin the all out attacking ones w/ hp fire once again rape, but have been able to deal w/ these well oddly.
Celebi I don't have really good switchins, and ttar doesn't use pursuit, grasses in general are troublesome. Usually rely on rotom here.

Anyways, I have been doing well so far, but as u can see there are some threats that really hurt. I wanna drop salamence for something, as it doesn't work well in the sand right now.
Edit: are latias/latios allowed yet, they seem like they'd fit well over mence

Old member:

Milotic @ Life Orb
Ability: Marvel Scale
EVs: 100 Def/248 Spd/160 SAtk
Timid nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power [Electric]
- Recover

ok, I have just been using this recently after I saw it, and I really love it. It has pretty good power, while still be decently defensive, decent check on some pokes. Still, I'm thinking of replacing this w/ a bulky cune.

 

[PerfectBlue]

OK, thx for reply, pretty nice ideas if I might say. The one major problem I see is that waters will own me more, if I don't use milotic. Imo, Rotom can't really switch in much safely w/o taking dmg, and I use him to counter other threats usually. Notably life orb starmie sweeps, have to let something die for rotom to come in.

Still, I like ur gyarados dude, gonna try it, but probably with stone edge or avalanche over DD, don't plan on sweeping w/ it. Can still really hurt mence/gyara/zapdos this way. Not sure how it'll work out though, as it leaves me a bit weak to waters now like I said before, but definitely Feels like it'd help cover the 4 first problems I mentioned better than before, and help w/ status which my team isn't good against...only flygon to resists twave.

I have used that exact ttar before on this team, didn't find it working so well. Ice beam takes care of zapdos decently though, along w/ the flygon that I added, haven't found zapdos to be as threatening as before. Milotic could also outspeed and 2hko, which I wasn't aware of, even though I'm probably changing milotic, bleh. Spikes are also kinda important to me, don't want to remove it.

I am not against changing ttar, but it has been doing well so far, and I don't want a CB ttar. Am thinking of changing to pure physical and doing stone edge or ice punch over icebeam. Other option is pure special and doing dark pulse/earthpower. Speed is a problem right now, and could also make it more bulky...

Ne ways, Been using team over 2 days, and went from around 1300 to 1500 in conservative rating :O, which made me happy, not that I even know wut that means really. Definitely my best team so far.

 

[Imran]

I worry a little that the new Gyarados might have opened the door to other gyarados, I mean all it does is sit there and tank, whilst other Gyarados hit it hard with Stone Edge. If this continues to be a problem you could convert back to Milotic but run a more defensive set, something like:

Milotic @ Leftovers
Bold Nature / Marvel Scale
EVs: 124 HP / 252 Def / 132 SpA
~ Surf
~ Hidden Power Electric
~ Recover
~ Ice Beam / Hypnosis

Hypnosis is unreliable due to the drop in accuracy and Ice Beam will allow you to hit things like the Dragons Harder, without Hypnosis you will fare worse against special tanks. Tars EVs are weird, you don't need that many SpA EVs, so I reccomend shifting most of them into HP to add more bulk to your Tar. With Brave and 152 SpA EVs you will OHKO most Physical Gliscor which is really what you want to be hitting with it along with Dragons so shift the other 104 EVs into HP to make the most of that nice Sandstorm SpD boost.

Don't worry about infernape too much, from what I have seen you can play around it well enough, simple fun switches racking up SS Damage and Life Orb Damage and then finally switch to Lucario to finish it off with ExtremeSpeed or Rotom to finish it off with whatever, The new Gyarados will also help if you choose to continue using that. Bulky Cune (as you mentioned) could also go over the gyarados that will help you against Kingdra (at worst baiting it into Outrage for Skarmory to WW away, at best youll be whittling it down and finishing it off that way with Ice Beams. This will also Lure out Zapdos, hopefully with a bit of luck you can get a CM in and KO it with Ice Beam, which would be nice and solve as a "sort of" solution to ZApdos, once you get a couple in Zappy will be dead meat. If you are running Adamant Lucario why not run Crunch, you are already Luring things out with TTar and you aren't going to hit the things you want to with Ice Punch anyway as they are too slow, this will help you out greatly against Celebi and co, who may think they can stop your sweep. If you want to hit Celebi and Zapdos you could always try Stone Edge, which has the advantage of hitting a lot of different things neutrally.

Well hopefully that may be a few patchups of the problems you have been having and a discussion as to how to make it better. Try my ideas out and see if they work, if they don't then come back and we'll start again from square one, but like you said this team seems to be doing pretty well, so dont do anything too drastic lol. Good Luck =D

 

[PerfectBlue]

Thx man, a lot to take in, nice post, will get around to trying some stuff out :)

 

[Orion]

I don't see Gyaradoses as a problem. You can easily send in Rotom on any opposing Gyarados, scaring it away or killing it with Thunderbolt. With a Scarf, you are still faster after it has Danced. Also, if Gyara doesn't carry Taunt, Skarmory can Whirlwind away pretty safely.
Also, without that Gyarados, Lucario, Scizor and SubHeatran with Toxic has a blast with this team.

So I say; don't remove Gyarados in favor of Milotic. You might consider Dragon Dance over Stone Edge, tho. You won't hit opposing Gyaradoses very hard, but that Gyarados is extremely hard to take down!

 

[Venom]

I don't see Gyaradoses as a problem. You can easily send in Rotom on any opposing Gyarados, scaring it away or killing it with Thunderbolt. With a Scarf, you are still faster after it has Danced. Also, if Gyara doesn't carry Taunt, Skarmory can Whirlwind away pretty safely.
Also, without that Gyarados, Lucario, Scizor and SubHeatran with Toxic has a blast with this team.

You can beat any team using the logic of "x pokemon goes down, so y pokemon fucks you", and you can't say "SubHeatran is a problem", thats like saying "SubLucario is a problem"

If you want a safe way of keeping Gyarados and Infernape, possibly Kingdra too, I would suggest trying out Vaporeon, which will replace Gyarados, you already have enough physical power, so losing Gyarados isnt really bad. On the other hand, losing Gyarados will cost you a viable SleepTalker, a pretty effective one too, so its pretty much your choice here, both Pokemon will do a good job though. Its more of a Zapdos problem here, as Tyranitar is Stone Edge-less, you have Zapdos problems that are pretty bad. If you don't want to get rid of your Tyranitar set, you can remove Roost from Flygon and replace it with Stone Edge, as Flygon is a nice check for Hidden Power Ice-less Zapdos, and you can hit them back with Stone Edge, though for more damage you might want to go all physical, which a Choice Band set can work.