Other Metagames BALANCED HACKMONS RMT

[Balanced Freakmons]

Introduction:​

Hello everyone, it's Balanced Freakmons with another Rate my Team post! This time I bring you a Balanced Hackmons Team. I wanted to build a team around of the biggest monster we can find in BH: Choice Specs Mega Rayquaza and a funny core of Magnet Pull Groudon+Volt Switch Registeel that traps Imposter Chansey and almost brings victory. Hope you guys enjoy it :)

Team preview:

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Team Analysis:​

Gravity Destroyer (Rayquaza-Mega) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Aerilate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Boomburst
- Techno Blast
- Secret Sword
- Volt Switch

The main sweeper of the team. Behold the true power under the form of a pokémon! Choice Specs Mega Ray is one of the most threatning sets in the Balanced Hackmons tier. This thing hits 756 points of Special Attack. It is able to 2HKO almost every Pokemon in the game including regular Chansey or Specially defensive Aegislash. That's the main reason i chose it to be the star of my team. Its STAB Boomburst boosted by Specs OHKO's walls like Mega Audino and Ferrothorn, sweeping threats like Shift Gear Primal Groudon(OHKO) and hits really hard pokemons like Imposter Chansey and Kyogre. Techno Blast makes sure that Soundproof Mega Slowbro don't wall you and it is OHKO for sure. Secret Sword can do around 80% on registeel and regular Chansey and OHKO's Mega Tyranitar. Volt Switch is here for pivoting when you predict a Shedinja switch, just use it and bring Mold Breaker to eliminate it, however it can heavilly damage Kyogre. The EV spread is easy, max Sp.Attack for max destruction!

Hexcalibur (Aegislash) @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Prankster
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Defog
- Recover
- Destiny Bond
- U-turn

I realised that imposterproofing that monster was a must so I end up choosing Aegislash because of it's bulk and typing that resists both Boomburst and Techno Blast and it is immune to Secret Sword, forcing the opponent to switch most of the times. Aegislash typing brings other advantages like covering Rayquaza's Fairy and Ice Weaknesses, so he can switch into Diancie and Kyurem safely. Aegislash acts as the Deffoger of the team and as a Suicide mon in front of Primal Groudon and Tyranitar. Recover is obvious choice for durability and U-turn for pivoting. The EV spread makes you bulky and makes your switches from U-Turn safe with Sassy nature. Safety googles stops Spore Spam.

Xcellent (Mewtwo-Mega-X) @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Teravolt
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Pursuit
- Low Kick
- V-create
- Stealth Rock

I needed a pokémon to clean opposing Shedinjas in order to make easier the Rayquaza's sweeping job. So I ended up with Teravolt Mega Mewtwo X. He is fast and benefits from the pivoting moves that Rayquaza, Aegislash, Giratina and Registeel have making the switch in front of shed very easy. Low Kick wrecks Normal and Steel Arceus, Regigigas, Ferrothorn, Registeel and Tyranitar (all heavy targets, so even more power) and does good against Groudon and Kyogre. V-create OHKO's annoying Aegislash. Mewtwo acts as the Stealth Rock setter in order to make opposing Shedinjas switches even more difficult when Ray is on the stage. Classic EV spread of 252 Attack and Speed makes you fast and strong in order to do some damage when needed. Safety googles stops Spore Spam.

Something 2 fear (Groudon) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 240 HP / 252 Atk / 16 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Substitute
- Shift Gear
- Thousand Arrows
- Infestation

Now starts the fun part of the team! Magnet Pull Groudon is here to trap any Steel Type that has no pivoting moves or Volt Switch has pivoting move. You sent it when the Steel type is on the field and basically the victory is yours. First comes Substitute, then you spam Shift Gear until you reach the maxium and then is Thousand Arrows for the win! Thousand Arrows is STAB, has no contact, hits flying types, hits through Levitate and this makes the perfect move for sweep making Groudon almost unstoppable. Infestation is here to stop Shedinja blocking this Groudon. The EV spread is mostly Sp.Defense because of Groudon weakness: Boomburst that hits through Substitute. Leftovers for recovering HP used for Substitute.

Regitroll (Registeel) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 84 Def / 176 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Volt Switch
- Heal Order
- Topsy-Turvy
- Gyro Ball

Ok...second part of the fun core. Flash Fire Registeel with Volt Switch as pivoting move. Now you can guess the role of this pokémon. Yes, it's imposter Chansey bait. Most of the imposter Chansey they switch into a wall of yours, maybe in order to see what moves you have and get advantage of your pivoting move. So, when i predict a switch to imposter Chansey i switch into this Registeel, and next comes Groudon and destruction! I usually use Registeel as my lead because some people like to lead with Imposter, so the game is already mine from the beginning. Volt Switch doesn't affect Groudon, Heal Order and Topsy Turvy dont go through his Substitute and Gyro Ball just breaks it at the 2nd or 3rd time at +0 speed. So you wait until the 5pp of Gyro Ball runs out and you can start the Shift Gear Spam. Gyro Ball just OHKO's Diancie (used much as lead) that will try their Fire type move such as Magma Storm, V-Create or Searing Shot, you troll them with Flash Fire and strike back with Gyro Ball! :D Registeel acts as my backup against -ates if my Aegislash dies. The item is Rocky Helmet to damage FakeSpeed -ates and Shedinjas.

Lord of Phantasms (Giratina) @ Griseous Orb
Ability: Fur Coat
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 140 Def / 120 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Metal Burst
- Whirlwind
- Milk Drink
- U-turn

Last pokémon of my team, Fur Coat Giratina acts as my Primal Groudon check/counter since Groudon can't beat it with its physical moves and I can Whirlwind it away. The same goes for Shift Gear Regigigas and Tyranitar because with Griseous Orb I don't fear Knock Off, and Poison Heal Kyogre. Metal Burst beats Contrary abusers like Rayquaza and Latios and -ates like Diancie. U-turn is for pivoting. Milk Drink is for durability. The EV spread makes you bulky enough to survive hard attacks and retaliate with Metal Burst and Sassy nature makes your switches safe with U-turn.

Known Threats:​

-Unaware walls: Rayquaza's power is enough to OHKO them. But if Ray dies stalling is my only way to deal with them, or hoping for a critical hit.
-Shift Gear Primal Groudon: If Giratina and Rayquaza are dead, it can be hard to beat. Well, Shift Gear Don is a threat to 99% of the teams, so i'm fine with that.
-Mega Audino: If Ray is dead, I have no pokémon that beat it easilly.
-Contrary abusers: I have hard times with them, specially if they are mixed. But Giratina can handle them.
-Mega Ray dependency for offensive destruction power.
-Normalize Mega Gengar: This team lacks -ate FakeSpeed to kill it and my fastest mon is MMX which has 394 speed, precisely the same of Gengar and hoping for a speed tie win is too risky.

Conclusion:​

I hope everyone enjoyed reading my RMT, I think i made a quite nice balanced team that provides nice teamwork and where all pokémon cover each other weaknesses.
I have nice times playing with this team and I hope it can be useful for you too. :D
Any suggestions to make it better, just reply, they are always welcome :)
Thanks for reading ;)

 

[motherlove]

Hi, cool team, always liked chansey trapping strategies so it's cool to see people using them, and Rayquaza is broken as fuck so there's no reason why it shouldn't work there, lol.

Anyway, not trying to be rude but how do you make your EV spreads? Do you just throw EVs at random or is there a deeper, unexplained meaning behind it? Registeel and Giratina already confuse me but that Groudon spread just makes no sense.

I have a couple of suggestions, for a start I recommend switching abilities between Registeel and Aegislash. Flash Fire Aegislash is hands down the best user of the ability as it can handle most contrary mons like mixed mmx while Registeel dies to superpower. I don't think you lose anything by replacing their abilities and moveset (bar volt switch and u-turn) and it kinda helps against Gengar since regi can actually switch on it. It also allows you to use destiny bond without fearing a Chansey countersweep if it copies Ray.

Run Close Combat instead of low Kick on MMX, you hit both Chansey and Audino way harder and you don't really need the extra PP for anything.

You're actually really weak to Tail Glow Ray since your way of dealing with it is, uh... destiny bond... and that's it. Which really isn't reliable at all, Ray at +6 can't kill you on Owing so essentially a Ray vs Aegi situation should go like this:
Ray is at +6 and behind a Sub, it clicks Owing and you take ~90%, you use destiny bond, and then Ray can just do nothing until you click another move after which is can kill you. So destiny bond actually doesn't deal with ray at all, lol. The only solution I can see rn without major changes to the team would be to run Encore > Destiny Bond on you Prankster mons as you can lock Ray on Sub / Tail glow and pivot to you own Rayquaza, or lock it on Owing in which case you can pivot on Gira and click metal Burst.

This last one is a bit weirder, I know you probably love that Groudon, but aside from trapping Chansey it really doesn't do much for the team and is probably fodder to any Chansey-less team, there's also the fact that you're quite weak to ground coverage Diancie (a team with Diancie + Ho-Oh will run Precipice Blades on Diancie). There's legitimately no way you can actually pressure it bar destiny bond and it can just pick up your mons one by one. A potential change would be to replace Groudon with Steelix-Mega thought I don't know how you'd feel about that (and magpull steelix is actually a lot more predictable). You will have to play more carefully tho as if you try to set up on something that isn't Chansey, Chansey can actually trap you.

If you feel like you're somewhat too weak to faster mons, you can drop Volt switch on Ray and run Extremespeed with a Rash nature. Espeed still hits really hard uninvested and a good double switch would get you shed anyway. You can even run attack investment since there's really not much reason to run all that speed on Rayquaza.

Anyway, good team, nice work, bye.

 

[Balanced Freakmons]

Hi motherlove, thanks for your comment and making suggestions on my post xD

First, i don't make my EV spreads randomly, that's for sure and I think it's obvious a player like me don't make them that way lol

The EV spread on Registeel and Tina make them more versatile resisting both physical and special attacks, making tina resisting boombursts for instance. In case of Groudon, I tried to make him more special defensive in order to resist some special moves, but without losing attack presence. But i haven´t seen you suggest a better spread xD

I will consider the change of ability between Registeel and Aegislash and test how it works, but i prefer to keep Destiny Bond on my prankster mon. Idk, i feel safer that way against contrary xD

I'm not worried about Ground coverage Diancie, because i have Gyro Ball Regi. He can handle quite good ground moves thanks to my EV spread. And most of them run fire moves. But i will try a few changes in order to cover that topic.

I will consider some topics and test some variants of this team. Once more, thanks for your suggestions and helping me making this team better :)

 

[motherlove]

Balanced Freakmons
Usually EV spreads are made to tank specific moves / combination of moves or outspeed specific threats or OHKO / 2HKO specific defensive walls rather. I don't want to sound rude here but with your answer and peculiar spread it really seems like you just tossed EVs where it seemed right without thinking about what they would accomplish.

For example on that Groudon set. You currently have 8 HP / 100+ Atk / 100 Def / 200 Spd / 100 Spe, which gives you 343 HP / 397 / 341 / 212 / 266 / 241.

So here's a couple of calcs to give you a rough estimate of the bulk:
4 SpA Sky Plate Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 8 HP / 200 SpD Groudon: 349-412 (101.7 - 120.1%)
252 Atk Sky Plate Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 8 HP / 100 Def Groudon: 181-214 (52.7 - 62.3%)

Running no HP on a Pokemon with fairly balanced stats is almost never optimal. If you invest a bit in HP with a 120 HP / 0 Def / 124 Spd, you can get:
4 SpA Sky Plate Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 120 HP / 124 SpD Groudon: 376-444 (101.3 - 119.6%)
252 Atk Sky Plate Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 120 HP / 0 Def Groudon: 195-231 (52.5 - 62.2%)

So here you have pretty much the same bulk yet invested 64 less EVs in total which can be redirected in another stat like attack, or in more bulk.

And what does 100 Speed EVs let you outspeed? I have no idea. Funnily enough it lets you speed tie with max speed Adamant Mega Ttar... which is completely useless anyway because Ttar doesn't run max Speed. You reach 482 after a shift gear which outspeeds base 150 like Deoxys-A by way too much, but doesn't outspeed Deoxys-S...
The fastest you would want to go with Groudon is 220 to outspeed base 150 after a Shift Gear, that's 16 EVs in speed. Unless you want to creep on Groudons that run 16 already, but Primadon usually runs 0-8.

So Combine the EVs you can save in speed and bulk and you have 148 free, useless EVs.

Now there's also the fact that you say "The EV spread is mostly Spd because of Groudon weakness: Boomburst that hits through Substitute.", yet you can't take uninvested Boomburst from the most common Boomburst user when at full HP, so yeah taking a Boomburst after the sub damage is out of the question.
If you want to always live a Boomburst from physically based Mega Ray you need to run minimum investment of 252 HP / 224 Spd.
4 SpA Sky Plate Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 224 SpD Groudon: 342-403 (84.6 - 99.7%)

So you can run a spread of 252 HP / 16+ Atk / 224 Spd / 16 Spe. But really, there's no reason why Don should ever have to take a Boomburst so I think it would just be better to run a bit of speed and the rest in HP and Atk, so 240 HP / 252+ Atk / 16 Spe.

The standard spread for Registeel is 252 HP / 4 Def / 252+ Spd, thought it's so bulky you can run a bit of defence if it helps you it won't matter for the most part. But I definitely recommend running 252 HP / 4 Def / 252+ Spd on Aegislash because it struggles a bit to take Boombursts or Consecutive Dracos and max Spd makes it a bit safer.

Current spread:
252+ SpA Life Orb Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 248 HP / 200+ SpD Aegislash-Shield: 151-178 (46.7 - 55.1%) -- 68.4% chance to 2HKO

Standard spread:
252+ SpA Life Orb Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Aegislash-Shield: 146-172 (45 - 53%) -- 30.5% chance to 2HKO

I don't think the defence EVs help Aegislash in any kind of significant way anyway, or less than more Spd at least.

For Rayquaza, always keep in mind that a pokemon that doesn't resist rock should always, if possible, have its HP stat reach an Uneven number, because you take 1 HP less damage on Stealth Rocks. Which is why people often run 248 HP on walls instead of 252.
For example Rayquaza with 0 HP can switch 4 times on Stealth Rocks while Rayquaza with 4 HP can only switch on Stealth Rocks 3 times and will die on entry the 4th time. So move the last 4 EVs in either of its defence stats.

For Giratina I would invest a tiny bit more defence in order to avoid the 2HKO from Mega-Blaziken (something that fur coat Tina should wall). So instead of 100 Defence EVs, either 140 or 156 would be a bit better. Giratina still has enough Special Defence to take on Kyogre easily.

252+ Atk Choice Band Tinted Lens Mega Blaziken V-create vs. 248 HP / 100 Def Fur Coat Giratina: 222-262 (44.1 - 52%) -- 14.5% chance to 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Tinted Lens Mega Blaziken V-create vs. 248 HP / 140 Def Fur Coat Giratina: 214-252 (42.5 - 50%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Tinted Lens Mega Blaziken V-create vs. 248 HP / 156 Def Fur Coat Giratina: 210-250 (41.7 - 49.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

That's it for the EV spreads.

TL DR:

• Rayquaza: 4 HP / 252+ Spa / 252 Spe --> 4 Def / 252+ Spa / 252 Spe.
• Aegislash: 248 HP / 60 Def / 200+ SpD --> 252 HP / 4 Def / 252+ Spd.
  
• Groudon: 8 HP / 100+ Atk / 100 Def / 200 SpD / 100 Spe --> 240 HP / 252+ Atk / 16 Spe.
• Giratina: 248 HP / 100 Def / 160+ SpD --> 248 HP / 140 Def / 120+ Spd.
• Make sure to run 0 IV speed in mons with pivoting moves.

 

[Balanced Freakmons]

Hi motherlove thanks for the EV spread suggestions :) i already edited my post with them since they are more viable than my previous ones. (and sorry for the late reply :P )