Battle Spot Singles Team. Need some advice for improvements.

[Beer]

Hi guys,
My first battle spot singles team.
I tried to develop this team as best as I could. But since I am still a beginner i reckon there are still many ways to improve it. And I hope you guys can help me with that.
So, let's get to it.

Blaziken-Mega @ Blazikenite
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
IVs: 0 SpA
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- High Jump Kick
- Stone Edge
- Protect

Mega-Blaziken uses the mega slot of this team. With max attack and max speed, and with protect and speedboost it is an amazing physical sweeper. Flare blitz and high jump kick as strong STAB moves and stone edge for rock coverage as flying types would otherwise be a problem for Blaziken. Stone edge can even deal with talonflame if the prediction is on point. Furthermore is serves as a great check for ferrothorn and greninja to name a few.

Cresselia @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Moonlight
- Psychic
- Toxic

Cresselia is the defensive wall of this team. With full investment in Def using a bold nature and a max HP, max Def spread. Together with rocky helmet she serves as a great check against Kankgaskgan, Garchomp, talonflame, blaziken and salamence.
As for moves, toxic and moonlight to ensure longlivity while also doing damage. Psychic as STAB, primarily against venusaur and blaziken. Ice beam for coverage against Dragon/flying/ground types.

Bisharp @ Black Glasses
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 0 SpA
- Knock Off
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch

Bisharps typing makes him a great addition to Cresselia. As a physical sweeper with an adamant nature, max Attack and max speed it offers great power. Defiant is a great ability since intimidate is all around. For moves: Knock off for STAB, Sword dance only if an opportunity arises. Iron Head as secondary STAB and sucker punch as STAB priority. Bisharp serves a fantastic check for aegislash and gengar.

Dragonite @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 0 SpA
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Extreme Speed
- Earthquake

Dragonite is the wallbreaker of this team. As it is amazing in setting-up real quick. With a free dragon dance due to multiscale. And also due to multiscale quite often a guaranteed survival of a super-effective hit to trigger weakness policy. With all these boosts up it pretty much one shots everything. For the moves: Outrage is insanely powerful STAB. But beware of fairies. extremespeed to counter priority users. EQ for ground coverage and mawile.

Sylveon @ Leftovers
Ability: Pixilate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Hyper Voice
- Rest
- Snore

Sylveon is the special wall of this team. With a calm nature, full investment in HP and special defense. I gave it leftovers for more longlivity. Together with the ability pixilate it can still deal quite some damage with hyper voice. Rest for recovery and a boosted fairy-type Snore work well together. Calm mind to boost its already good special defense and special attack. It checks various dragons and special attackers such as thunderus and rotom.

Gengar @ Focus Sash
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sludge Bomb
- Energy Ball
- Destiny Bond
- Focus Blast

Finally, the special sweeper of the team. Naturally max special attack and max speed with a timid nature to fully make use of its potential. A focus sash because of its lacking bulk. For moves: sludge bomb for fairies. Energy ball instead of shadow ball as I missed grass coverage on this team. So this helps against bulky water types. I also already have coverage against ghost and psychic with Bisharp. Destiny bond goes great with focus sash. And focus blast because people often switch in Dark types against gengar.


So, that wraps it up. The things I paid attention to while making this team were: type cores, to always maintain switching possibilities, a 3/3 physical/special split and checks for common pokemon.

I hope you guys can give me some advice on how to improve this team.

 

[Solerme]

Hi dude, your team already has some good synergy. I'll try to go a little further and help :)

First of all you seem lacking a real answer to the Scald spam, especially from CMrest-Cune. Sylveon can work there, but that's really all you've got.
I'll start changing weakness policy with Lum Berry on Dnite, so you can eat a burn from Scald (or even T-Waves/Glare) while attacking or setting up.

Looking at the team, to me, it even looks a bit weak to Greninja, that with a mixed set can basically take out every mon on your team. Even Blazi loses to it if it's sashed, and it's never a good idea to roll the dice.
This being said, i would add something that can handle your Greninja and Scald-spam problems, such as Thundurus-i.

This is an example:
Thundurus-I @ Sitrus Berry / Salac Berry / Jaboca Berry
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 236 Hp / 86 Def / 20 SpA / 140 SpD / 28 Spe
Calm Nature
- Thunderbolt / Discharge
- Hidden Power Ice
- Thunder Wave / Focus Blast
- Nasty Plot / Focus Blast / Taunt / Toxic / Substitute / Swagger / Filler

With this you'd have a way to answer to Water-types and more speed control. The EVs are to survive an Ice Beam or a Rock Slide from Greninja (it has even good chances to survive those attacks from Life Orb variants), to outspeed Jolly Breloom by 1 and to have some bulk in def.
With Sitrus you'd have +%25 HP, that is always good for bulky variants of thundurus. Salac Berry let you outspeed Mega Gengar by 1, hitting 202 speed, while Jaboca Berry would be to surprice sashed mons.

A second change i would do is to remove Bisharp and something else. Maybe another Mega? Mega Kangaskhan works pretty fine with either Cresselia, Sylveon, Gengar and Thundurus. Or even something like Azumarill , that would complete the Blaziken/Dnite core.

Here another example:
Azumarill @ Assault Vest / Choice Band / Sitrus Berry (if not using on thundi) / Lum Berry (if you want to keep WP on Dnite)
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 228 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def / 12 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Waterfall / Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Knock Off / Belly Drum


If you decide to use the Azumarill/Dnite, you could add a Gengarite on Gengar, since Mega Gengar synergyze pretty well with Azumarill and could clear the way for a Dnite sweep.

>So, long story short, imo you should go with Thundurus-I over Bisharp and Azumarill over Sylveon, putting a Gengarite on Gengar.

Well for now it's all :]

 

[Beer]

Hi dude, your team already has some good synergy. I'll try to go a little further and help :)

First of all you seem lacking a real answer to the Scald spam, especially from CMrest-Cune. Sylveon can work there, but that's really all you've got.
I'll start changing weakness policy with Lum Berry on Dnite, so you can eat a burn from Scald (or even T-Waves/Glare) while attacking or setting up.

Looking at the team, to me, it even looks a bit weak to Greninja, that with a mixed set can basically take out every mon on your team. Even Blazi loses to it if it's sashed, and it's never a good idea to roll the dice.
This being said, i would add something that can handle your Greninja and Scald-spam problems, such as Thundurus-i.

This is an example:
Thundurus-I @ Sitrus Berry / Salac Berry / Jaboca Berry
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 236 Hp / 86 Def / 20 SpA / 140 SpD / 28 Spe
Calm Nature
- Thunderbolt / Discharge
- Hidden Power Ice
- Thunder Wave / Focus Blast
- Nasty Plot / Focus Blast / Taunt / Toxic / Substitute / Swagger / Filler

With this you'd have a way to answer to Water-types and more speed control. The EVs are to survive an Ice Beam or a Rock Slide from Greninja (it has even good chances to survive those attacks from Life Orb variants), to outspeed Jolly Breloom by 1 and to have some bulk in def.
With Sitrus you'd have +%25 HP, that is always good for bulky variants of thundurus. Salac Berry let you outspeed Mega Gengar by 1, hitting 202 speed, while Jaboca Berry would be to surprice sashed mons.

A second change i would do is to remove Bisharp and something else. Maybe another Mega? Mega Kangaskhan works pretty fine with either Cresselia, Sylveon, Gengar and Thundurus. Or even something like Azumarill , that would complete the Blaziken/Dnite core.

Here another example:
Azumarill @ Assault Vest / Choice Band / Sitrus Berry (if not using on thundi) / Lum Berry (if you want to keep WP on Dnite)
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 228 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def / 12 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Waterfall / Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Knock Off / Belly Drum


If you decide to use the Azumarill/Dnite, you could add a Gengarite on Gengar, since Mega Gengar synergyze pretty well with Azumarill and could clear the way for a Dnite sweep.

>So, long story short, imo you should go with Thundurus-I over Bisharp and Azumarill over Sylveon, putting a Gengarite on Gengar.

Well for now it's all :]

Hi thanks for the respons. Really appreciate it. I do have some questions however.

As I am trying to keep my type resistances synergetic I checked the changes you recommended in the magma team builder. And with thundurus and azumarill instead of bisharp and sylveon I found the team gets weak to rock, ghost, electric and psychic.
Do you think resistances across the board are important or trivial? Because up until now I always made sure my team was solid on that part. (I can imagine it is less important in battlespot singles as you only pick 3 pokemon anyways)

Furthermore, I used bisharp as my main aegislash and gengar check. Without it, how would I be able to check them with the suggested team? (mainly aegislash, as i can imagine azumarril and thundurus can help against gengar.)

Also, I used to check thundurus and rotom-w with sylveon. If I replace sylveon with azumarill, it will not be able to replace that task. (electric weakness) So how would you suggest I check thundurus and rotom-w without sylveon?

You talked about the blaziken/dnite/azumarill core. I dont quite understand yet how these form a core. Could you elaborate on how these have synergy?

And finally, I do liked the suggestion you made about mega kangaskhan, as I never used it before and would like to try it out. How would you implement it? Still add thundurus? Considering kangaskhan can check greninja itself.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Solerme]

The problem with the Magma teambuilder is that it indeed calculates the type-coverage, but it ignores the fact that certain mons can fire two or even three types of moves. Let's take for example your original Blaziken/Bisharp/Dnite core. It is good on paper, since everyone covers eachother weakness, but let's assume you are facing a Garchomp (the most popular mon in the tier): it can fire Eqs, taking out either Blaziken and Bisharp; Outrages, damaging Blaziken and Dnite hardly, and Rock Tomb/Slide, dealing damage to everything bar Bisharp. So what for the magma teambuilder was a perfect core, it is infact weak to the most popular and spammed mon in the tier. This is why usually you will of course add something that makes a good type-core, but it's also a "it beats that threat" factor. This is the reason why i've suggested you those mons :D (and yes, like you already said the 3vs3 it's different from the 6vs6, so the magma teambuilder is not that good tool that it is for OU, imo)

Speaking about Bisharp being an Aegislash/Gengar check, to be fair it isn't that great vs those two, since both can fire off a Fighting-type move, both have sets with focus sash, and gengar even has Hypnosis or Wisp. It can definitely beat them, but it's often risky. Instead the AV Azu/Mega Gengar/Lum Dnite can handle those two mons decently, while also covering your team from common threats.

Going into the Sylveon thing, that was the reason why i've suggest an SpD oriented Thundurus, so that it can somehow handle other thund-i and Rotom-W decently, while also solving your Suicune/Greninja problem (Greninja is usually able to handle pretty well Sylveon thanks to Protean Gunk Shot, that is a common move on it, and can pretty much threaten everything else in your team), since it can mostly survives any attack from those two and answer back with an attack or a Thunder Wave. It even adds some speed control, helping Dragonite's sweeps and gives another decent answer to Mega Salamence, that checks your mega pretty hardly (we should think about adding HP Ice on blaziken and make it mixed, since a -1 rock slide does little to Mence, but mixed Blazi are usually non-mega Life Orb varians, so that would be a big change).

Lastly let's talk about the cores i've suggested and the Mega Kang thing. You are right saying that Blaziken/Azu/Dnite is not that good as a core, since it is weak to a lot of things. So you will mostly use it using Blaziken to clear the way for Azu and Dnite, that instead form a great duo. My Azumarill suggestion was mostly to add the Azu/Dnite/Mega Gengar core, that is pretty strong almost for the same reason as written before: mega gengar is pretty good at clearing one, or even two mons, leaving your duo free to shine.
About Mega Kangaskan, it can check Greninja, but you have to be careful to Low Kick, since it has almost the 100% chances to OHKO it if you don't have more than 4HP EVs invested in bulk. It also has, like i said in the first post, a very good synergy with your other mons (everyone of them, even with Azumarill and Thundurus if you are going to add them).
A good core with it could be Life Orb mixed Blaziken / Cresselia / Mega Kanga, with Blazi clearling Steel types (even Aegislash) from the field and Cresselia for support and to check Mence (even tho LO Blazi can handle it, but it's kind of 50/50 without the focush sash); or Thundurus-I/Azumarill/Kanga, Dnite/Azumarill/Mega Kanga, Cresselia/Kanga/Dnite, and so on...

So, in the end, i would see your team like this:

>Blaziken/Cresselia/Kanga/Thundurus or Dnite/Gengar/Azumarill or Sylveon with a dual mega in Kanga and Gengar, making Blaziken mixed LO or Sash;
>Blaziken/Cresselia/Kanga/Dnite/Gengar/Azu even here with the dual Kanga/Gengar mega;
>Blaziken/Cresselia/Kanga/Dnite/Thundurus/Sylveon Using Mega Blaziken and a Mixed Mega Kanga, keeping the 3/3 physical and special attackers as it was in the beginning.

here are the sets:
Blaziken @ Blazikenite
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Superpower / HJK
- Sword Dance / Knock Off
- Protect
or
Blaziken @ Life Orb / Focus Sash
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 52 Atk / 244 SpA / 212 Spe
Naive Nature
- Overheat
- Hidden Power Ice
- Superpower
- Protect

Cresselia @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Moonlight
- Psychic
- Toxic

Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly/Adamant Nature
- Double-Edge
- Sucker Punch
- Earthquake
- Fake Out
or
Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 4 HP / 156 Atk / 4 Def / 92 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Double-Edge
- Ice Beam
- Earthquake / Fire Blast
- Fake Out

Thundurus-I @ Sitrus Berry / Salac Berry / Jaboca Berry
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 236 Hp / 86 Def / 20 SpA / 140 SpD / 28 Spe
Calm Nature
- Thunderbolt / Discharge
- Hidden Power Ice
- Thunder Wave / Focus Blast
- Nasty Plot / Focus Blast / Taunt / Toxic / Substitute / Swagger / Filler

Dragonite @ Lum Berry
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Extreme Speed
- Earthquake

Azumarill @ Assault Vest
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 228 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def / 12 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Waterfall / Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Knock Off / Belly Drum

Gengar @ Gengarite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe (you can also run 196 Speed to outspeed Greninja when mega evolving and add some bulk or special attack)
Timid Nature
- Hex / Shadow Ball
- Sludge Bomb / Icy Wind / Focus Blast
- Will-o-Wisp / Hypnosis
- Destiny Bond

wow, that was long :D
Please go over my terrible english ^^'

 

[cant say]

Solerme's post above is really good and answers your questions very well.

A common mistake newer players make is trying to make a super synergistic team that looks good on paper. The reason these teams usually aren't so good is because they aim to cover all the various types instead of specific metagame threats. Obviously this is a forgivable mistake as a new player is never going to have the metagame knowledge required for making a better team, so that's where we come in to help.

When you make a team you need a central Pokemon / core / strategy to build around and then patch up its weaknesses by adding teammates. For your team, it looks like Mega Blaziken is that starting point, so the rest of the team should be built around the idea of unsuring its success.

The most threatening Pokemon to Blaziken's sweep is Talonflame, and at the moment the specially-defensive Stallbreaker set completely shuts down your whole team, and the only switch-in for the offensive (banded / life orb) set is Cresselia. Any good Blaziken team has something that man-handles all Talonflame builds so you don't get bopped by a Brave Bird. Blaziken also does basically nothing to Suicune or Azumarill since pretty much all Suicune are physically-defensive and love using a Rocky Helmet, and Azumarill resists your STAB moves and sets up Belly Drums for free. This is why the most popular Blaziken core uses both Zapdos and Ferrothorn, but Solerme's suggestion of Thundurus also works.

You can spend a few moveslots on Blaziken teammates, but dedicating en entire team to one Pokemon is usually ill-advised. There are some teams that you flat out cannot use your main core / Pokemon. This is where the "bring 6 but pick 3" design of Battle Spot Singles allows for you to build a team with two Mega Evolutions or cores, so I would advise building a backup core for those times you can't use Blaziken. Popular backup megas / cores on Blaziken teams include Mega Gengar + Azumarill, Mega Salamence + Mamoswine, Mega Kangaskhan + Garchomp, and even Mega Scizor + Latios.

As for your team, I have some critiques on your individual sets:

Consider dropping Stone Edge on Blaziken. It's cool for catching Talonflame switches I guess, but if you want it for that then Rock Slide is better since it has better accuracy. A mixed set with Hidden Power Ice is better for Mega Salamence. However, both of these threats are better off left to a teammate so that Stone Edge slot could be used on something like Baton Pass or Swords Dance.

Cresselia looks fine. Two attacks works pretty well, it's more common to instead chose one of Ice Beam or Psychic and then use Lunar Dance but if you don't want that then that's fine.

Bisharp is super underwhelming in Battle Spot Singles. There are better Steel types and better Dark types available to you, it's cool that Bisharp compacts that into one Pokemon but it desist actually do it that well. It's awkwardly slow and frail, and a 4x weakness to Fighting in a tier where Mega Kangaskhan checks are plentiful does not help unless your name's Tyranitar.

Dragonite's great but Weakness Policy is a gimmick and pales in comparison to a Choice Band or Lum Berry set. You also want to make sure you have an answer to Mamoswine and Cloyster if using it, Cresselia is ok but it puts a lot of pressure on it.

Sylveon looks fine however a fully specially-defensive spread is rare to see. It already has great special bulk and Calm Mind patches that up, so using a more physically bulky build is usually better. A Chesto Berry is probably better than Leftovers though.

Finally, Gengar. Just because you don't have Grass coverage on the team doesn't mean Gengar has to use it. Energy Ball doesn't hit anything relevant, Swampert / Gastrodon aren't really common and it's best to just have a Grass-type instead. Icy Wind in that slot is great when paired with a Focus Sash.

That's about it from me. Make sure you check out our Battle Spot forum here and Battle Spot room on Pokemon Showdown!

 

[Beer]

Thanks to both of you.
After some thinking, team forming and testing, I decided to not use kangaskhan for now.
The team I came up with for battlespot is:

Blaziken-Mega @ Blazikenite
Ability: Speed Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- High Jump Kick
- Baton Pass
- Protect

Cresselia @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Moonlight
- Lunar Dance
- Toxic

Thundurus @ Salac Berry
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 86 Def / 20 SpA / 140 SpD / 28 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 1 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Thunder Wave
- Substitute

Gengar @ Gengarite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Destiny Bond
- Will-O-Wisp
- Shadow Ball
- Sludge Bomb

Azumarill @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 228 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def / 12 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Knock Off

Dragonite @ Lum Berry
Ability: Multiscale
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Extreme Speed
- Earthquake

So that would incorporate the new blaziken-core with thundurus for watertypes/greninja, and cresselia for a variety of checks of which the most important one is talonflame.
And as a backup core the mega-gengar, azu, dnite. (I did play around with the mixed blaziken and liked it alot. So even though this team doesnt use it thanks for the tip because i will definitely use it in the future.)

So, what would your opinion on this new team be? And furthermore, on what kind of opposing pokemon would you advise to switch to the gengar core?

(As i also want to use this team against friends, I thought to just switch mega-blaziken to the mixed variant when I play 6v6.)