gen 5 OU RMT:

[blue cheez]

My college's anime convention is having a "gym leader challenge," meaning that during the anime con., certain staff members will have ds's with B&W. Con-goers can challenge the gym-leaders, and get a badge for defeating them. Anyone who collects 8 gym badges gets a special prize and moves on to a tournament to decide who's the Champion (for a grand prize).


So I've been selected as the grass gymleader. Yes, I understand grass is one of the worst monotypes. But I'm going to do my best with what's given to me. All advice is greatly appreciated!


Team Building Process:

Originally, I was going to make a sub-seed stall team with lots of entry hazards to force a lot of switches. But after finding out that I'm not allowed a "wild card," I don't have a spin-blocker nor a good defensive core with ferrothorn.

So I figured since it's pretty much impossible for me to cover myself with some defensive core (being unable to have fire/bug/fly/poison/ice resists), I figured my best strategy would be some all-in'ish hyperoffense. My glaring weaknesses are slightly less problematic if I'm sweeping.

I needed to decide what pokemon to center this around; It was between sunnyday executtor, raindance ludicolo, and breloom. (oh, i probably should have mentioned that I can't use dreamworld pokemon, so perversity serperior is out)

Sunny day's probably a bad idea considering it magnifies my glaring fire weakness (pun intended). And while breloom is certainly strong, I couldn't think of a good way of sweeping with his low speed. Ludicolo seemed like the best choice because raindance both helps my fire weakness while giving ludicolo the speed to sweep, and a boosted stab surf with unique coverage (as a grass type).

So for a while I tried a gimmiky ludicolo raindance sweep, where virizion sets up screens so, celebi can set up raindance and batonpasses nasty plot to ludicolo. It was really too frail to be consistent, and I had to use too many resources to set up the sweep.

But after a lot of testing/tweaking...my team is more "balanced" than it once was. While there's no core strategy or pokemon I'm centering my team around anymore, I guess you could say my core strategy is to not die so badly, lol.


So onto the specifics:

Whimsicott (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 168 Def / 88 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Encore
- Substitute
- Taunt
- Leech Seed

I'm not sure if we're playing with/without team preview, so Whimsicott is my psuedo-lead.

Originally I had uturn instead of substitute. Substitute can let me sacrifice my health as a waiting tool to make things a bit easier to predict, also it turns whimsicott into a much better subseeder, which can work wonders if I'm in a bind.

The main reason why I have him on my team is to prevent offensive/defensive set-ups. It's really nice predicting the dragon dance for an encore.

Ferrothorn (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Iron Barbs
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Def / 252 SDef
Sassy Nature (+SDef, -Spd)
- Stealth Rock
- Leech Seed
- Thunder Wave
- Power Whip

Eventually I want to find an opportunity to set up stealth rock, which isn't too hard to squeeze in. As stealth rock hits flying, bug, and fire hard, it's really important to get it up. Because I will never be able to provide perfect counters to certain pokemon (because of my terrible weaknesses), I figure my best strategy is to cripple with t. wave and go for a revenge kill with something slower like breloom.

Breloom (M) @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 12 HP / 252 Atk / 244 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Spore
- Stone Edge
- Focus Punch
- Substitute

Originally, I had scarf on breloom. But over time I noticed that having the surprise of a choice scarf Breloom isn't worth sacrificing the spore+focuspunch combo. I decided to give the revenge-killing position to someone else, and switch to what makes Breloom OU. I've noticed that the longer I hold out using breloom the better my team performs. Typically if he sends out the biggest threats first, I can make some sacrifices and get some revenge kills and be in the clear for a sweep.
So breloom is, I feel, the strongest memeber of my team, but I'm not really sure what I should be doing to help him. I guess I should be trying to bait his counters with my other pokes?
Also, I'm not positive I have the EVs right; should I be investing speed? It hardly seems like my speed matters if I want to exchange hits with a sub up.


Rotom-C @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 112 HP / 252 SAtk / 144 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Shadow Ball
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Rock]

Broccoli Rab (Roserade) (M) @ Choice Specs
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Leaf Storm
- Hidden Power [Rock]
- Shadow Ball/Trick
- Sludge Bomb

I spent a lot of time on damage calculators trying to find out what was necessary to OHKO chandelure and darmanitan. Honestly I gave up, lol. If I invest in speed, I lose the power necessary for the ohko even with stealth rocks. Investing in power makes it so that I can't outspeed them. So idk, I figured I'd give this guy a choice specs, invest my nature and Evs in speed, and just hope that I can bruteforce my way through.

There honestly isn't too much thought into this pokemon. I wanted the most raw power that grass has to offer and found roserade. It was tempting to add LO mixed-sceptile, but while his coverage is better, I'm not as worried about wall breaking as I am just about getting slaughtered by my weaknesses before I can fight back.

Poison rock is 80bp so is 120bp with stab, while HP rock is 140 when super effective. so it seems like a good choice if you ask me. Also note that I'm not using toxic spikes because of the status-conflictions. (I won't be able to use breloom's spore)

Also! Garchomp and Salamence are BANNED in this tournament, so out-speeding/using HP ice are significantly less important!


Is specs+timid worth not being scarfed? I'm honestly not sure..
Also, should I have trick on her? I know trick is great for scarfed pokemon, but I'm not sure how great it would work on her.
Also, Shadow Ball is pretty much exclusively for chanelure, lol, so I'd probabally switch it for trick.

Celebi @ LifeOrb
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 132 HP / 252 SAtk / 124 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Nasty Plot
- Psychic
- Earth Power
- Giga Drain

Psychic and Earth Power seemed like some necessary coverage that my team is missing otherwise, and I can typically get one nasty plot up if I switch on a fighting move aimed at ferrothorn (yeah I know their synergy isn't really that good considering fire wrecks both of them, but this is what I get for picking grass. And at least ferrothorn can take some dark/ice/bug moves for celebi).
I have a lot of grass attacks. But the stab+nasty plot+gigadrain can really help counter my lifeorb damage, so I think I'm going to keep it.

Ludicolo (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Swift Swim
EVs: 60 HP / 252 SAtk / 196 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Giga Drain
- Rain Dance

After taking raindance off celebi, I'm leaving Ludicolo to his own "setting up." Typically when a firetype/something-with-a-firemove revenge kills one of my pokemon, I send out ludicolo and pray I can take a hit. Typically I come out with the skin of my teeth, setup raindance and begin the counter-attack. STAB+raindance+hydropump is worth the accuracy hit.



General ideas:
Someone suggested adding roserade for toxic spikes. That way I can stall out with whimsicott more efficiently. But without a spinblocker, relying too much on stall doesn't seem like the best idea. And if I were to switch someone out, I'd probabally switch roserade for Rotom, and would be losing some important speed.



Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this. I know it's kind of gimmiky, but I want this grass monotype team to be as best as possible. Please feel free to comment even if you don't have anything positive to say about it. Thanks!



[THREATLIST COMING SOON]

 

[Tenodera]

Never seen a Grass monotype before... Anyway, it seems like you'd benefit a lot from Toxic Spikes.Although this leaves you with even more statuses that could conflict; if something's paralyzed or poisoned Breloom can't Spore it!

On Rotom, what do the HP EVs do? Putting more into speed might be worthwhile so you can outspeed and kill before you take a hit. Unless they're for priority, in which case it's more complicated.

Finally, a more general question: Doesn't maxing HP on Ferrothorn give more bulk than completely filling out the defenses? I think full defense investment is only better with Eviolite?

 

[Pogogo]

You should really not have hp rock on rotom. If you think about it, even if its super effective it will only be 140 power, which is worse than thunderbolt plus stab. Ice is infinitley times better. "Good" coverage is ****ty when ur actual dmg output is bad. I would also highly recommend trick as most people like to try to wall rotom and it is a great weapon against stallier teams. Plus, by tricking you guarentee urself leftovers. If you don't get leftovers, just trick again to remove from other poke. This is more significant than u might think.

Celibi is really bad in general. Her typing is so awful, weak to ice dark fire and bug resisting nothing useful and her mp is awful. Giga drain is good but kind of weak. I would highly advise switching this poke for venisaur (a total baus). NP is never as good as it sounds and without max speed you will find yourself frequently outsped and killed. If you really want to keep this poke making him a defensive tank with leech seed, giga drain and wish/recover and hp fire is generally the best set. You shouldn't rely to heavily on nat for your tanking anyways

Whimsicott is bad too unless it has stun spore and even then its only ok. What people will do is they will switch around to tanks that can heal or are grass type not letting your leech seed take effect and just stall u until you run out of pp. Stun spore is a slight counter cause it paras everything and the switch around strat doesnt work as perfectly.

I would highly recommend seed bomb instead of se on breloom. The stab makes it stronger and the greatly improved accuracy will make you wish you had done it in the first place.

I would attack train your nat. What good is being that slightly extra tank when your pw can do massive dmg. It is better to commit to either special def or def because very few guys are mixed and you know ahead of time what they specialize in.

I like ur ludicolo. You might consider leftovers with a bit more hp as the speed boost is significant and lo ruins a pokemons ability to tank at all. His typing is good and you dont want to waste it. Giga drain is so much more annoying with leftovers rather than life orb.

Suggestions for alternate pokes

Use the fighting grass guy that looks like a deer. That guy is legit with high jump kick.

Theres a normal grass guy whos also ok but not as good

Roserade is kinda boss too. A much better lead than whimsicott. Sleep powder is too good and leaf storm plus hp fire is great type coverage. You need to get spikes/ts of course. I wouldnt worry about rsers. Most people do not pack them as rsers are really bad pokemon. Just use the fact tat the op is going to use rs to switch to use ludicolo and rain dance.

Venusaur is good with sleep powder plus swords dance. He is surprisingly fast and strong with decent mp.

Grass just sucks though. Its kinda dumb that you need to be monotype without imposing any restrictions on the challenging team

 

[Gates]

You know that Giga Drain has 75 BP now right? It's almost as powerful as Energy Ball but it restores HP.

 

[Hydro_Smasher]

give breloom

mach punch and technicion, change the item to maybe a berry that resists fire or left overs

 

[blue cheez]

You should really not have hp rock on rotom. If you think about it, even if its super effective it will only be 140 power, which is worse than thunderbolt plus stab. Ice is infinitley times better. "Good" coverage is ****ty when ur actual dmg output is bad. I would also highly recommend trick as most people like to try to wall rotom and it is a great weapon against stallier teams. Plus, by tricking you guarentee urself leftovers. If you don't get leftovers, just trick again to remove from other poke. This is more significant than u might think.

I think you're right on this one. I switched Rotom for a choice specs Roserade for more power, and gave her 252 speed evs and a timid nature so that I can outspeed a pretty decent amount of stuff. While the lack-of-speed is a bit of a problem, it at least gives me a reason why I should keep t-wave on ferrothorn (so that she can revenge kill safely).
So should I keep HP rock on her though? I'm afraid of locking-in on a poison jab.

Celibi is really bad in general. Her typing is so awful, weak to ice dark fire and bug resisting nothing useful and her mp is awful. Giga drain is good but kind of weak. I would highly advise switching this poke for venisaur (a total baus). NP is never as good as it sounds and without max speed you will find yourself frequently outsped and killed. If you really want to keep this poke making him a defensive tank with leech seed, giga drain and wish/recover and hp fire is generally the best set. You shouldn't rely to heavily on nat for your tanking anyways

The 4x bug weakness is incredibly annoying. But I really, really like her fighting resist. And +2 gigadrain is pretty good for keeping celebi alive. Idk, I'm not yet sold that I should get rid of this set because I kinda like using it with ferrothorns fighting weakness. Also, with so many fighting types out this generation, it's nice to have something that can handle them.

Whimsicott is bad too unless it has stun spore and even then its only ok. What people will do is they will switch around to tanks that can heal or are grass type not letting your leech seed take effect and just stall u until you run out of pp. Stun spore is a slight counter cause it paras everything and the switch around strat doesnt work as perfectly.

The switching around strategy is annoying, but not unstoppable. Honestly, I've tried taking whimsicott off the team, but have wayyy too much trouble with opponents setting up on me. And stunspore really conflicts with the lategame sweep I attempt on breloom.

I would highly recommend seed bomb instead of se on breloom. The stab makes it stronger and the greatly improved accuracy will make you wish you had done it in the first place.

Yeah, the frustrating thing about this is that I have stab grass moves on pretty much everything. I'm going to try out seed bomb, but having rock moves help tremendously.

I would attack train your nat. What good is being that slightly extra tank when your pw can do massive dmg. It is better to commit to either special def or def because very few guys are mixed and you know ahead of time what they specialize in.

What would you suggest? If I focus in def, who should I use as my special wall? Celebi?




Also, THANK YOU for the RMT!

It's getting very close to the actual gym leader challenge (it's this sunday). So any changes have to be pretty important if I'm going to rush to fix my team.

 

[Enzo]

"After taking raindance off celebi, I'm leaving Ludicolo to his own "setting up." Typically when a firetype/something-with-a-firemove revenge kills one of my pokemon, I send out ludicolo and pray I can take a hit. Typically I come out with the skin of my teeth, setup raindance and begin the counter-attack. STAB+raindance+hydropump is worth the accuracy hit. " quote from ludicolo


then why do u have LO, he wont be living long since ludicolo is far from bulky and fire types will hit him hard. imo lum berry or leftovers

 

[Gates]

give breloom

mach punch and technicion, change the item to maybe a berry that resists fire or left overs

He's playing on the NTCS DS version. He can't get DW moves/abilities.

 

[blue cheez]

Okay, so I updated the main post a little bit, (I now have roserade as a revenge killer for more power).

Um, you know, I never seriously thought about having leftovers on my ludicolo.
To me it always seemed like it'd be a better idea guaranteeing the KO with rain/STAB/lifeorb'd hydropump rather than sacrificing the damage output for leftovers.

Also, lifeorb+ gigadrain does more damage, right? So while I'm losing 10% health, is it possible that it neutralizes with the bonus I get from life-orb. (this is assuming I'm using exclusively gigadrain).

Mainly though, ludicolo has a LOT of power, and is usually the main poke to turn the game around. I get a little bit of a mini-sweep when I set up raindance. But yeah, I know what you mean; having ludicolo around longer would certainly help overall. So I think I'll tryout leftovers for a bit. Thanks!

 

[blue cheez]

When first making a grass monotype team, I was advised to invest everything in offense because of grass's ****ty typing.
Lifeorb celebi/ lifeorb ludicolo is exactly that. Me attempting to cover my weaknesses just simply by hitting harder.


Also, I like the idea of making celebi my (special?) tank, but I'm not sure putting leech seed is a good idea. Should I really have THREE leechseeders on my team? Isn't that a bit much?

 

[Pogogo]

Use shaymin for dmg. Better than roserade. 100 in all.

I still hate that freakin whimsicott. It just isn't good. Why not use Roserade @focus sash Leaf Storm, Hidden Power Fire, Sleep powder, Toxic Spikes lead. It was pretty standard ou last gen. If you use tosic spikes tankier guys become better

 

[Wave⁂]

Shaymin is ****, use Roserade with Technician HP Rock 60

 

[xxmoosexx]

Whimsicott@Leftovers
Blahblahblah
Prankster
-Cotton Guard
-Taunt
-Leech Seed
-(filler attack that hits grass types)

If you really like Whimsicott that is.

I remember someone saying this guy was taking Flare Blitzes like a monkey throws poo. 252HP/252Def ofcourse.

LILLIGANT(Doredia) NEEDS TO BE ON HERE. Infinitely better than anything Ludicolo can do. That thing is like the ultimate grass sweeper. I forget who hyped it and created the Doredia Resistance but you should definitely consider it.

Something like...
-Butterfly Dance
-Sleep Powder
-(grass attack)
-(coverage)

And You should definitely be abusing someone with a speedy U-Turn to Nattorei...that should make alot of people rage. Taking not only U-Turn damage but the dmg from Nattorei's Iron Barbs is pretty vicious.

Tropius for the lulz.

Ludicolo doesn't seem to great to me.

What would be really lulz would be Grass Type Arceus LMAO.