Worlds is Next Weekend, Help me Finish my Team!

[AmbipomMaster]

Let me start off by saying that I am not competing in Day 1 of Worlds, but I will be competing in the Nashville Open on Day 2 to start off my 2019 season, and I need help in solidifying ideas for my team. Earlier this season, I utilized a Lele/Mega-gross core that I want to optimize for this tournament. I partnered it with Politoed/Ludicolo rain and it didn't quite work like I wanted to, so I've been tweaking the team here and there, and I could definitely use some help. So without further ado, here's my team!

Tapu-Lele@Psychium Z
Ability: Psychic Surge
EVs: 204 HP, 44 Def, 252 SpA, 8 SpD
Nature: Modest (+SpAtk, -Atk)
-Psychic
-Moonblast
-Protect
-Taunt

Fun fact: this Tapu Lele is the same one that I've used for 2017 and 2018 NAIC and I absolutely love it. I am a big fan of bulky Lele with Life Orb, but this would be the first time I've used a Z-Crystal on it. For obvious reasons, Psychic is chosen to get a very powerful Shattered Psyche in psychic terrain (although I suppose I could run Psyshock as well?), and Moonblast is another STAB option for Dark types and Cresselia. Protect is a general staple on any Pokemon in Doubles, and I like to use Taunt as a nice way to stop Trick Room users. Some things that Lele runs into trouble with include Kartana, Incineroar, Nihilego, Cresselia, and Calm Mind Fini, but overall, it's been a very reliable team member that's put in a lot of work.

Metagross@Metagrossite
Ability: Clear Body -> Tough Claws
EVs: 4 HP, 252 Atk, 252 Spe
Nature: Jolly (+Spe, -SpAtk)
-Protect
-Iron Head
-Stomping Tantrum
-Zen Headbutt

Metagross is a very synergistic partner with Lele, and I've been very happy with this team core. Clear Body is really nice as it protects from any Intimidate drops, and Tough Claws/psychic terrain-boosted Zen Headbutts are no laughing matter. I've maximized the Attack and Speed to get the most out of said Zen Headbutts, with the remaining EVs going into general bulk. If terrain is not in my favor, or I'm going up against an Incineroar or Metagross mirror match, then Stomping Tantrum is used to get super-effective damage, especially if my double Protect fails or my Zen Headbutt lands on a Dark type. Iron Head is another good STAB move to include, especially if I want the 100% accuracy and the possible flinch. Overall, this thing struggles with Charizard-Y and Landorus-T, so the rest of the team is tailored to help Lele and Metagross reach their full sweeping potential.

Landorus-Therian@Assault Vest
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 124 HP, 252 Atk, 132 Spe
Nature: Adamant (+Atk, -SpAtk)
-Earthquake
-Rock Slide
-Superpower
-U-Turn

I had been toying around with a Choice Band variant of this set for a little while, but I've found that the 50% Speed increase was much needed when I want to run a bulkier Landorus. I've put 132 Speed EVs so that it can still outspeed 252 speed Timid Tyranitar by 1 point and knock it out with a Superpower. Because of this, I wanted to put the extra EVs into HP to help his longevity, but I don't know if I should focus on investing them into Defense or Special Defense instead. 252 Attack and Adamant Nature maximize the attacking power of this beast, and I need it to destroy Charizards and Salamences. Rock Slide and Earthquake provide very good coverage in and of itself, and Superpower was added as an answer for Kartana and Ferrothorn, as they tend to be a large threats to my team as well. U-Turn was thrown in in case I want to spam Intimidates during the match.

Milotic@Wiki Berry
Ability: Competitive
EVs: 252 HP, 232 Def, 4 SpAtk, 20 SpDef
Nature: Calm (+SpDef, -Atk)
-Scald
-Protect
-Icy Wind
-Mirror Coat

I have always been a big fan of Milotic, and with two Intimidating tigers having a large presence in the 2018 VGC format, I figured it was time to bring her onto my team. Competitive boosted Milotic can be a scary thing to go up against if you're a Landorus or Incineroar. The EVs have been chosen so she can survive Charizard-Y's Solar Beam in the sun, Adamant Kartana's Leaf Blade (after a burn or an Intimidate), and Tapu Koko's Thunderbolt in Electric Terrain about 2/3 of the time. Scald is a great reliable STAB move and the burn chance can really cripple physical mons, and Protect is never a bad option. Icy Wind is a good way to maintain Speed control during the game, which I'm a big fan of. The last slot is for a gimmicky Mirror Coat in case I want to get a cheeky KO on a unsuspecting Charizard-Y or Tapu Koko that think they want to knock me out.

Amoonguss@Aguav Berry
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 244 HP, 76 Def, 188 SpDef
Nature: Sassy (+SpD, -Spe)
-Rage Powder
-Spore
-Protect
-Giga Drain

Amoonguss was added as a really good support Pokemon to aid my team. A specially bulky set was chosen from Smogon to survive not only a lot of boosted special moves but some physical moves as well, and Regenerator and Aguav Berry should provide Amoonguss with enough recovery. Rage Powder and Spore are really good ways to ensure that I can get Zen Headbutts/Shattered Psyches/Scalds off without fear of losing my mons before they can attack. Giga Drain was chosen over my original idea of Clear Smog because Clear Smog can reset all the Icy Winds that Milotic sets up, and Giga Drain gives me more damage output on Fini as well as some additional recovery. For the most part, I really like this Amoonguss and there isn't much that I think needs changed.

Drifblim@Psychic Seed
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 16 HP, 120 Def, 120 SpD, 252 Spe
Nature: Timid (+Spe, -Atk)
-Shadow Ball
-Tailwind
-Will-o-Wisp
-Disable

The Psychic Ter-Rain team I brought to the 2018 NAIC originally had Zapdos as my Tailwind user, but seeing how successful Drifblim has been in these kinds of teams, I figured I better give it a shot. Unburden doubles my speed and Psychic Seed boosts my Special Defense, so it's already getting so many boosts just by entering the field. The EVs and Nature were chosen to help make sure I can set up before losing Drifblim and survive Adamant 252 Atk Kartana's Night Slash (which is CRAZY to me). Tailwind is a staple move, giving me total speed control of the field (except for Trick Room teams, I really don't like going up against those). Shadow Ball is there in case he gets Taunted, or I could get a quick KO if it came down to it. Will-o-Wisp is there to help with a lot of damage calcs against things like Milotic and Amoonguss, and it in tandem with Landorus-T makes my opponents' physical hitters extremely crippled.


And that's what I've got for my team so far! I've been working really hard on my teambuilding skills, and I would really appreciate any kind of feedback anybody would be willing to offer. Thank you guys so much in advance!

 

[EKZ1505]

Great team report, and good luck in your tourney!

Lele’s moveset is good (keep Psychic), but what does the spread do? Looks like a spread that was common in VGC 2017, so it may be built for Garchomp or something like that and may be able to be optimized more.

Slower (Adamant), bulkier Mega Metagross have become the more popular way to go, so that can be something to try out since you have Tailwind, Icy Wind, and Intimidate support, but I still like your basic spread and knowing you can always outspeed things like (non-Scarf) Nihilego, Charizard-Y, etc.

Lando may need some work. I don’t think outspeeding Greninja is an important benchmark since that is so uncommon in VGC. If you want to be that fast, outspeeding Tapu Koko (who may have HP Ice, or simply be able to do a lot to Lando’s teammate) and Mega Gengar (who can be a threat with Icy Wind or other strong attacks against your team) should be your goal (and personally I would even aim for speed-creeping things built to just outspeed those). If your Lando is Intimidated, you can’t OHKO those two due to the spread damage, so attacking after them would be a very big problem.

Having Milotic built to survive Kartana’s Leaf Blade half of the time would be too big of a roll in my view…I would probably build it to survive a -1 Leaf Blade. You’re currently wasting 4 Def EVs as well, so throw those in speed. I would have recommended Recover in the last slot, but out of the other options I think I like Mirror Coat since you’re built to live Charizard’s Solarbeam and are able to live some Koko attacks. Ice Beam wouldn’t be bad either, but Hydro Pump (ignoring the accuracy issues) I really only like on Scarf sets.

Amoongus is fine – is the spread built for something specific? What is your speed IV? (just curious for how it relates to Snorlax)

LOVE Drifblim on Lele teams, though the moveset can be tough to figure out since it really wants to run about a dozen moves instead of just 4. For your team, after the 2 obvious ones, Rain Dance is nice to help the Charizard issue and the other reasons you mentioned. Protect would be nice for certain situations, but it’s just so tough to fit on. Destiny Bond is really cool to help set up Tailwind on the following turn or surprise your opponent, so I would give that a good look. Ally Switch is worth testing due to the surprise factor and to play mind games with your opponent, but not sure how effective it will ultimately be. Will-O-Wisp is a move I’ve grown to really like on the Lele-Drif team I made, and it allowed me to run a faster Lele since the burn helped it survive so many attacks that threaten it. Your basic spread isn’t bad but can definitely be optimized more. I don’t have the spread I ran in front of me, but you can definitely afford to run a little less speed if you want. More importantly though, its HP stat is so massive that it’s actually much more efficient to invest mostly in the other defensive stats than putting so much in HP.

Does anything else specifically give you trouble?

 

[AmbipomMaster]

Great team report, and good luck in your tourney!

Lele’s moveset is good (keep Psychic), but what does the spread do? Looks like a spread that was common in VGC 2017, so it may be built for Garchomp or something like that and may be able to be optimized more.

Slower (Adamant), bulkier Mega Metagross have become the more popular way to go, so that can be something to try out since you have Tailwind, Icy Wind, and Intimidate support, but I still like your basic spread and knowing you can always outspeed things like (non-Scarf) Nihilego, Charizard-Y, etc.

Lando may need some work. I don’t think outspeeding Greninja is an important benchmark since that is so uncommon in VGC. If you want to be that fast, outspeeding Tapu Koko (who may have HP Ice, or simply be able to do a lot to Lando’s teammate) and Mega Gengar (who can be a threat with Icy Wind or other strong attacks against your team) should be your goal (and personally I would even aim for speed-creeping things built to just outspeed those). If your Lando is Intimidated, you can’t OHKO those two due to the spread damage, so attacking after them would be a very big problem.

Having Milotic built to survive Kartana’s Leaf Blade half of the time would be too big of a roll in my view…I would probably build it to survive a -1 Leaf Blade. You’re currently wasting 4 Def EVs as well, so throw those in speed. I would have recommended Recover in the last slot, but out of the other options I think I like Mirror Coat since you’re built to live Charizard’s Solarbeam and are able to live some Koko attacks. Ice Beam wouldn’t be bad either, but Hydro Pump (ignoring the accuracy issues) I really only like on Scarf sets.

Amoongus is fine – is the spread built for something specific? What is your speed IV? (just curious for how it relates to Snorlax)

LOVE Drifblim on Lele teams, though the moveset can be tough to figure out since it really wants to run about a dozen moves instead of just 4. For your team, after the 2 obvious ones, Rain Dance is nice to help the Charizard issue and the other reasons you mentioned. Protect would be nice for certain situations, but it’s just so tough to fit on. Destiny Bond is really cool to help set up Tailwind on the following turn or surprise your opponent, so I would give that a good look. Ally Switch is worth testing due to the surprise factor and to play mind games with your opponent, but not sure how effective it will ultimately be. Will-O-Wisp is a move I’ve grown to really like on the Lele-Drif team I made, and it allowed me to run a faster Lele since the burn helped it survive so many attacks that threaten it. Your basic spread isn’t bad but can definitely be optimized more. I don’t have the spread I ran in front of me, but you can definitely afford to run a little less speed if you want. More importantly though, its HP stat is so massive that it’s actually much more efficient to invest mostly in the other defensive stats than putting so much in HP.

Does anything else specifically give you trouble?

Thank you so much! I've been working on my teambuilding skills, and where I typically lack is creating EV spreads for my Pokemon. What I typically do is just find the most common spread that's available on Pikalytics (which is where I got my Lele and Amoonguss spreads lol). I've also done a bit of playtesting and there's a couple of issues that my original team had.

I've decided to keep Metagross the way he is, as I haven't found much wrong with him.

From the battles I went through, I did awful with Choice Scarf Landorus. To be fair, I've never been a fan of Choice items in Doubles, so I've opted to use Assault Vest instead, and I've really liked the results. With the EVs still the same, I can still outspeed Timid max speed Tyranitar by 1 point, and I run a lot of speed control that can help me outspeed most of my other threats (like the Tapu Koko and Mega Gengar you had mentioned). This also works well because those two's HP Ice and Icy Wind (as well as Cress's Ice Beam) can 2HKO me at most, and Earthquake can knock out both Koko and M-Gengar no problem.

You would be correct that Lele's EVs are my recycled VGC17 set, so I've decided to revamp them as well. I'm having a hard time settling on a spread, but the one I'm currently on is 204 HP/44 Def/252 SpA/ 8 SpD, and I'm not sure how I feel about it as of yet (side note: I'll be going through the OP and changing the sets and explaining them as I go ).

Using Milotic's current EV spread, -1 Adamant Kartana's Leaf Blade will 2HKO, so I've opted to keep its set the same. I've also taken the liberty to use Mirror Coat as the 4th move over Ice Beam or Hydro Pump.

Unfortunately, I don't have any way to get a 0 Speed IV to my Amoonguss, so it'll have to be a 31 Speed IV :/ but I have updated its EVs to be 244 HP/ 76 Def/ 188 SpD which lets it live sun-boosted Heat Wave from Charizard-Y and take half from Landorus-T's Earthquake (also, I was having a hard time coming up with a spread for him, so I looked on Smogon and found this spread that seems to work well). I've also taken off Clear Smog (because it has such poor synergy with Milotic's Icy Wind) and decided to use Giga Drain instead.

For Drifblim, I decided that since I've decided to play gimmicks on Milotic with Mirror Coat, I'm going more consistent with Drifblim, so its last two moves are Will-o-Wisp and Disable. It's current EV spread rn is 16 HP/ 120 Def/ 120 SpD/ 252 Spe

Also, if anyone has some really great tips as to how to go about coming up with EV spreads, this ignorant fool would love some advice, because I haven't found many resources online to help me!

 

[EKZ1505]

With your Lando-T in Tailwind you’re fine, but you still won’t outspeed Koko/M-Gengar after one Icy Wind, so keep that in mind during testing in case you decide to run more speed.

If the Lele spread works for you, then definitely stick with it (just remember to take 4EVs out of special defense and put them in speed so you aren’t wasting them. Anything divisible by 8 (like your Milotic’s 232 Def EVs) at lvl 50 is wasting 4 EVs). One quick calc against Lando-T shows that spread -1 EQ is a 3HKO, and you survive a -1 Tectonic Rage 15/16 times, so the spread works nicely defensively as long as you are ok with the speed.

Milotic survives -1 Kartana’s Leaf Blade with room to spare, and with the berry for immediate recovery, I think you can afford to actually invest in some special attack so you actually have a bit of offensive presence (or, you can invest more in special defense to improve your odds of surviving attacks from Koko).

I think your Amoongus calcs are off on Charizard though, as Modest max special attack sun boosted-Heat Waves have a high chance to OHKO you, but many are bulkier without max special attack so see how it works for you! Unless Gastrodon is a massive issue for your team, Sludge Bomb is absolutely the better option due to all the Tapus.

Does that Drifblim spread do anything in particular? I think mine outsped any Swift Swim Pokemon in rain (Ludicolo is the one to worry about right now) and lived both a Thunderbolt from a Timid Life Orb Koko in electric terrain and a Gigavolt Havoc from a Timid Koko outside of electric terrain. I was weak to rain and ran Sunny Day on mine, so you may feel comfortable running even less speed if you have a better rain matchup, but I think the calcs against Koko are important.

As for EV spreads…the simplest and most important answer is experience, mostly testing your team and adjusting to problems that arise and changes in the meta. To start though, you’re looking in good places. Smogon tends to be a little outdated in their VGC pages, but places like that are good to just get sample sets for somewhere to start if you know what they do and will be relevant for your team. Building on your own is a bit tougher if you’re new to the format and don’t know the important speed benchmarks or most powerful/important attacks to survive. One resource that is specific for VGC is the Trainer Tower website (formerly Nugget Bridge, which had more info and more active forums before the Pokemon-site hackers (that also hit serebii) shut them down a few years ago). There’s a variety of team reports from the actual trainers who have top cut (or even won) various events, and there’s pages for relevant speed tiers, a damage calculator for VGC, a survival calculator, example sets, etc.

Edit: Drifblim is wasting EVs as well. Move 4HP into SpAtk if you keep this spread