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@drdray I think ur post falls more or less under this category, so you would be better off making a new RMT under competitive assistance

To maybe conclude things here, I used this team in the latest Community Combat #122. First round is a nice replay how to win against rain, while the third round nicely showcases all the flaws of the team. I misplayed like a uguu but whatever, it still showcases all the teams weakness: spike stacking + water sweeper, in this case, DD Gyarados which I had no safe switch in to due to spikes and got swept clean. Thus, I have introduced one of the changes proposed by Aard and put ferrothorn over breloom. So far the new team went 12/1 in normal mm and 3/0 in ranked putting me at #58. I am glad I shared the team, although in retrospective the change from Aard seems obvious, I did not think of it. Thanks to you guys it is probably better now than it was before! I use the following Ferrothorn set: Ferrothorn @ shed shell Relaxed 252HP 48Def 208SpDef spikes leech seed gyro ball powerwhip I went with shed shell, since I simply dont want to predict magnezones all the time. Thanks to everyone so far, if you have any other ideas just let me now :)

Let me add something to this: Let`s propose I follow Aard advice and include a bulky water resist, milotic or mantine for example. And I swap out one of my sand setters. I think, since both milotic and mantine are defensive pokemon, I might wanna switch out ttar. The team is now shifting towards balance, its a lot slower and packs less offensive pressure. In turn, sigilyph also becomes more or less obsolete. It cannot really switch into anything but fighting and ground attacks, so it has to be replaced with something more defensive as well. Reuniculus for example, or even more defensively: Cofagrigus. The team we are looking at now looks something like this: Something like this or similar teams are quite a common sight, and that is for a reason because they are solid and work well. It is totally possible, that such a balanced team will perform even better. However, it requires a completely different play style. Suddenly you might wanna use tspikes on cofa to beat stall, as u dont have enough pressure anymore. You probably also want to run hazard removal for the same reason. I am sure it is effective, but my teams weaknesses are not all patched up by adding a water resist to the team. Such a change will introduce other changes as well.

Thanks for all your comments, appreciate it. Aard you are of course right. I have no single reliable switch- in to choice specs kingdra. However, it is oftentimes possible to win against rain anyway, even if they pack kabutops and Kingdra. Rain teams rely on weather just as much as I do. So if I am able to kill pelipper/ pressure it with rocks/ change the weather repeatedly, I can win the match-up most of the time. And whenever kingdra comes in, I oftentimes have to sack one of my setters (mostly hippo) just to change the weather and continue to pressure him on my own. To give an example: Its rain on the field, he just switched his kingdra into, lets say my magnezone. I have to switch to hippo to change weather, his surf/hydro kills. I now switch into either ttar or exca, depending on his remaining mons and the remaining hp of Kingdra. If I switch to ttar, i can threaten his kingdra out, and he is still not able to safely switch into pelipper, as i can kill it as well. Furthermore, I see some ppl use surf over hydro/ lifeorb over specs or even focus energy critdra (the latter actually being a greater threat than specs imo). And since there is no team preview, the opponent often doesnt know, how weak I am to water and therefore plays suboptimally, making sacrifices he doesnt have to make ( I ofc do the same thing in certain games, however I have been much more succesful in realizing what win conditions I have and what win cons my opponents have after I started using a team I build on my own). To sum up, against rain, the sweepers are only of secondary importance, the key for success ( in my experience at least ) is to win the weather war. I decided to try win weather by using both ttar and hippowdon, but i agree that a bulky water type or even a water immunity might serve the same purpose and the team might be better. However, it will be a lot less offensive and will play very differently. A sacked mon is ofc a big loss; but it is NOT a loss of momentum. And this team cares about momentum!

I realize that most RMT`s are made to improve an already working team. While this is definitely true for this team as well, I am hoping that it can serve as a guideline for newer players or players who struggle to build powerful cores to understand the basics of team building a little bit better. This team allowed me to climb from 477 mmr to 666 in just one week, which I find quite pleasing as I just came back to the game. Here is proof of my current ladder rank https://gyazo.com/6df2de82435c57a2e10b1560a9dbdf4f. Without a doubt, I have not been playing against the best players and my win rate has already been dropping after I got to 630mmr ( I was 20/2 at some point), but I think it is quite apparent that I did not get on the leaderboard because of my skills as a player, but rather due to a powerful team. Team building process: The entire idea was to build an offensive team and to abuse Excadrill. Exca has great offensive stats and an amazing ability, which lets it outspeed any scarfer in the game. Further, it has excess to swords dance and decent coverage, as well as a 4x resistance to stealth rock. It cannot be toxic`d, nor can it be paralyzed. Thus, the first member of the team is already found: To make full use of excadrill, I of course need sand setters. There are two options: Hippowdon and Tyranitar, as Gigalith is simply outclassed by Tyranitars stats. Hippowdon usually runs only one set, which is a physically defensive one. It is a reliable SR setter, has excess to recovery and can serve as a dedicated lead. The last move differs, some use toxic, others yawn, roar or ice fang. Tyranitar can make effective use of many different sets. It can serve as a dedicated lead and special wall, luring in physical walls and OHKOing with special attacks such as fireblast or ice beam. It can run coice band to serve as a wall breaker or scarf to trap ghost and psychic types. As the entire purpose of my team is to enable an excadrill sweep, I decided to put both Hippowdon and Tyranitar on my team to reliably win the weather war and enable Excadrills sandrush. However, I had not decided on ttars set yet. Now that I had decided on the basic strategy of my team, it was time to look at mons that can prevent excadrill from sweeping. The most noteworthy are: ferrothorn, skarmory, gliscor, gyarados, and any fighting priority attack. The hardest counter is by far skarmory, as it can switch into any attack, even after a SD and roost the damage off. Luckily, there is a mon that feeds on steel types: Magnezone. At first I was running a setup set with substitute, HP Ice and charge beam. However, after the third ferrothorn in a row that ran curse, i decided to opt for the classic scarf variant. I do not really understand why u would put curse on a ferro and i dont think many players actually use it, so the setup variant might be better. As I just said, fighting types with priority moves are a thread to excadrill. If u look at my team now, 3 out of 4 mons are weak to fighting. The biggest problem is by far Conkeldurr, but lucario can also pose a threat occasionally ( It is just less common; threat level is the same). In the first variant of the team, I opted for reuniculus to fix my fighting weakness. It is very sturdy and able to set up and sweep, overall a very desirable feat to an offensive team like this. However, it is extremely slow and I got outmaneuvered from time to time as its moveset is so predictable. That is why I decided to go with sigilyph as my final choice. Sigilyph takes around 18% from a guts boosted drainpunch from conkeldurr, without any defensive investment. It is fairly fast and has an amazing movepool. And just like reuniculus it has access to magic guard. Its flying type also allows me to switch into ground attack. As you can see above, 3 out of 4 mons are also hit super effectively by ground. For the last mon, I honestly do not really have a nice explanation. Right now I am incredibly weak to water types, but regardless I simply wanted to use it: Breloom. I am currently using the subPunch set and I love it. Sometimes it wins games on its own. Spore is so disruptive, although its usage was definitely more powerful in lower mmr. Some ppl switch ferro into spore, but if it doesnt carry gyroball it cant even beat loom. And if they do, I can switch to magnezone and trap it. so here is the final team: As you can see, I followed a clear strategy and build the team simply around excadrill. Another nice feature of this composition is that hazard removal is not really necessary. Stealth rock: exca 4x resist, hippo 2x resist, ttar normal, magnezone 2x resist, sigylph Immune, breloom 2x resist Spikes: all normal damage except sygilph toxic spikes: exca Immune, hippo not immune, ttar not immune, sygilph immune, magnezone immune, breloom immune Individual Sets: @ Chople Berry Sand rush Jolly 4HP, 252 Atk, 252 Speed Earthquake Swordsdance Rockslide Ironhead I went with Jolly because it allows me to outspeed most other excas, which are adamant. I never really missed the damage to be honest. For the same reason I dont use Life Orb. I am simple no fan of killing my win condition through recoil, making it more susceptible to entry hazard damage and priority attacks. For a while I ran Air balloon, which allowed me to safely switch into opposing excas, but after conkeldurr and its machpunch has been so frustrating to deal with, I decided to use Chople Berry. Chople Berry also allows exca to tank a +2 focus blast from bold reuniculus, quite astonishing isnt it? @ Leftovers Sand stream Relaxed 252HP, 252 Def, 4 SPdef Earthquake Slack Off Stealth Rock Ice Fang Relaxed is probably sub optimal, impish would be preferred. Apart from that quite standard, I choose ice fang over phasing as the team is fast enough to deal with set ups differently. Ice fang is nice against gliscor and dragon types. This is also my dedicated lead. @ Choice Scarf Sand stream Jolly 4Hp 252Atk 252Speed Cruch Pursuit Superpower Stone edge This is the basic trapping set. Again, keep in mind that this is an offensive team and the sole purpose of each member is to let exca sweep. After I decided to use Magnezone, I decided that another trapper wouldnt hurt and so far it works quite well. Some players are also surprised by the scarf which allows me to surprise kill Hydreigon, although that happened mostly in lower mmr. @ choice Scarf Magnetpull timid 4HP 252SPatk 252 Speed hp fire volt switch thudnerbolt flash cannon As basic as it gets, but it does its job perfectly. I never really understood why one would choose specs over scarf. Sure additional damage is always nice, but it can perfectly trap pokemon with a scarf and be of use in the later stages of the game as a powerful revenge killer. Magnezone is also quite useful in breaking bulky watertypes, even though its scarfed. @ Life Orb Magic Guard Timid 4HP 252Spatk 252 Speed Ice beam air slash psychic heat wave I decided to go full offense with this one. I abuse its ability to its fullest extend using a life orb and receiving no recoil. Many ppl underestimate its speed which allows for some surprise kills. Ice beam is for gliscor and dragons, air slash powerful stab to punish the conkeldurrs of this world, heat wave for anything thats steel and wasnt killed by magnezone. Psychic is quite useless honestly, it just offers some additional neutral damage, but it can probably be switched for roost. I personally just never find the time to roost up anyway, so I went for psychic. @ toxic orb Toxic heal Jolly 184Hp 74 Atk 252Speed substitute seed bomb focus punch spore I really really like this set. I went for Jolly and full speed to outspeed as much as I can and spore it. Sometimes I do think that adamant and full atk investment would be better though, as milotic with icebeam can not always be defeated reliably with this set. The HP investment is mainly there to survive powerful priority attacks. I used a swordsdance variant before, but after I switched to subpunch I never looked back. I think this team also highlights how item choices can negate a pokemons weakness quite effectively. Sometimes the team itself is not broken, just the items or spreads that are used are not leading to the imagined success. So hopefully u made it to the end and enjoyed it. I personally think that breloom (although i love it) and sigilyph are the weak point of the team and maybe someone can find a more solid combination of mons. Conkeldurr + Reuniculus seems to be a go to, more standart choice and I might try it out sometimes. The sets and Spreads might also not be optimal. Maybe this showcase helps some ppl who want to get started with competitive play or are stuck at a certain mmr, to build a proper team. In my opinion, any team that does not abuse weather in any way is probably suboptimal and can be optimized. Although I have played some strong players such as abstractt which defeated me using weatherless teams, I still think that weather should be superior to no weather. Following this guideline you can also build a rain team. Weather teams are especially interesting for beginners, as certain pokemons are set in stone from the very beginning.

Milotic, calm, 252,0,0,0,252,0, marvel scale 31,x,31,30,31,31 surf, toxin, hp electric, recover Houndoom, hasty, 0,142,0,120,0,248, flash fire 29,31,16,31,20,30 flamethrower, destinybond,crunch, pursuit Arcanine, relaxed, 252,0,252,0,0,0, intimidate 25,27,24,23,31,26 flamthrower, extreme speed, morningsun, toxin Ludicolo, calm, 252,0,0,0,252,0, NO SWIFT SWIM BUT RAIN DISH 30,x,27,29,29,31 surf, giga drain, leech seed, knock off Gardevoir, calm, 247,0,0,0,252,0, synchronize 31,x,31,10,31,31 Psychic, thunderbolt, wish, healbell Weezing, relaxed,252,0,200,0,58,0, levitate 31,x,29,21,25,29 fireblast, thunderbolt, sludge bomb, pain split electrode, hasty, 0,100,0,217,0,192, static 12,29,10,27,25,31 thunderbolt, hp ice, substitue, explosion lanturn, calm,110,0,0,0,252,148, volt absorb 30,24,28,18,23,24 thunderbolt, healbell, surf, toxic you can pm me ingame: bloou