Need help with a Serperior-Contrary and Zapdos based team.

[seola]

I think in a Rain team with Serperior, Zapdos and Pelipper or Politoed (idk which one) but idk which others complete the team. Its my firts team building so i idk much about anything either if you want to help with that too.

[TohnR]

The easiest way to complement your core would be using : 

- Kindra because it is likely the strongest Swift Swim user available and gives your team a great wincondition against balanced/offensive teams

- Scizor because it also is a widely used Rain abuser that covers your lack of Dragon/Ice & Dark resistances. Scizor benefits from the damage reduction of fire type attacks from rain and his weaknesses are also well covered by the team's water types !

- Gliscor, Garchomp, Dugtrio or Excadrill, last slot or more generally a ground type with access to Stealth Rocks because you want to use at least 1 hazard in this type of team and you also don't want to let your opponent use Electric moves for free when using Rain

 

Of course there are many ways to build a team so you're free to take another angle with your rain team. I was just trying to provide one of the logical solutions for finishing that Rain team 🙂 

Edited January 10 by TohnR

[caioxlive13]

1 hour ago, TohnR said:

The easiest way to complement your core would be using : 

- Kindra because it is likely the strongest Swift Swim user available and gives your team a great wincondition against balanced/offensive teams

- Scizor because it also is a widely used Rain abuser that covers your lack of Dragon/Ice & Dark resistances. Scizor benefits from the damage reduction of fire type attacks from rain and his weaknesses are also well covered by the team's water types !

- Dugtrio/Garchomp/Excadrill, last slot or more generally a ground type with access to Stealth Rocks because you want to use at least 1 hazard in this type of team and you also don't want to let your opponent use Electric moves for free when using Rain 

Dugtrio i don't think that can be great. Sure, you trap a mon and kill, then what? He dies in the process and for the rest of the game you enable him for using electric moves and based on your explanation that is the last thing you want. Garchomp is usually best in this case, but Excadrill can be good, running either Mold Breaker, or he can go with an Sand Rush and if your opponents use sand to stop the rain , this backfires and you use their own sand against him. This was an common strategy in Black and White OU, but it was too good that ended up switching the Complex ban of Sand stream + Sand Rush, in a Straight ban for Sand Rush. and i don't think there is reasons to it not being great there given the abundance of Tyranitars out in the meta.

Edited January 9 by caioxlive13

[Doctor]

9 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

Dugtrio i don't think that can be great. Sure, you trap a mon and kill, then what? He dies in the process and for the rest of the game you enable him for using electric moves and based on your explanation that is the last thing you want. Garchomp is usually best in this case, but Excadrill can be good, running either Mold Breaker, or he can go with an Sand Rush and if your opponents use sand to stop the rain , this backfires and you use their own sand against him. This was an common strategy in Black and White OU, but it was too good that ended up switching the Complex ban of Sand stream + Sand Rush, in a Straight ban for Sand Rush. and i don't think there is reasons to it not being great there given the abundance of Tyranitars out in the meta.

How can you point out how common Tyranitar is in the meta then go on and say Dugtrio is going to be bad in a weather based team caio please play the game for once

[caioxlive13]

8 minutes ago, Doctor said:

How can you point out how common Tyranitar is in the meta then go on and say Dugtrio is going to be bad in a weather based team caio please play the game for once

Based on Tohn's explanation, you want a ground to stop opponent spamming electric attacks. If that's the case, out of those 3 Dugtrio is the worse because it kills only one mon and then dies, and how you're going to stop electric moves from now on? You need a ground that last longer in game, a thing that dugtrio won't do for obvious reasons, and the other 2 are perfect for that. And no, excadrill won't die instant, you can make it last longer if you wish. It doesn't last longer usually because most of the excadrill in other teams are Suicide Leads. 

Edited January 9 by caioxlive13

[YourAngst]

Dug can be a great pokemon for rain teams however it requires a diffrent approach , don t think of dug as dug the ground type or dug the electric immunity , think of dug as dug the trapper its main purpose being to trap and take out key targets  idealy you would use dug to trap other weather setters thus allowing you to win the weather  war , now it is true that dug may not OHKO ttar or torkoal if you are running focus shas on it but even so it will leave them low enough to where it got the job done and they can no longer reset the weather

Dug can also run memento and even if you find you re self in a game where there is nothing to trap it can still work as a disruptor

 

Regarding what you said ciao that it traps a mon and then dug dies in the procces , thats the point , since rain teams like to play ofensive and with high tempo there is no downside of dug dieing , in fact if dug dies it mostly means it got the job done and if it survives to be used for later then thats a net +

While a pokemon like dug can be great for rain teams is not manadotary since its a lot less versatile then a chomp or an excadrill would be , dug offering only damage and the ability to trap  as powerful traping may be it does require careful maneuvering.

 

Also two other ground types i would like to add to the mix are Seismitoad and gliscor .

Seismitoad being another swift swim user can also take advantage of  rain being up on top of being able to be either a physical attacker only or a special attacker only thanks to its stats and movepool as well as some utility moves such as toxic  and stelth rocks, only weak to grass looks like a good fit since you have so many mons that resist grass

 

Gliscor also provides some unique attributes think of it as being a combination of chomp and excadrill , it has the deffensive backbone chomp has as well and the hazzard control excadrill provides , gliscor being able to learn all the hazzards and being able to remove them . Another thing gliscor has over the other ground types is acces to u-turn , if you were to use the team of peliper , kingdra , serp , zap, scizr and gliscor you would now have 3 u-turn users those being peliper , scizor and gliscor allowing for a lot of opportunities to get in you re sweepers

[TohnR]

4 hours ago, YourAngst said:

Gliscor also provides some unique attributes think of it as being a combination of chomp and excadrill , it has the deffensive backbone chomp has as well and the hazzard control excadrill provides , gliscor being able to learn all the hazzards and being able to remove them . Another thing gliscor has over the other ground types is acces to u-turn , if you were to use the team of peliper , kingdra , serp , zap, scizr and gliscor you would now have 3 u-turn users those being peliper , scizor and gliscor allowing for a lot of opportunities to get in you re sweepers

Good suggestion ! I edited mine regarding this 🙂

Edited January 10 by TohnR

[caioxlive13]

5 hours ago, YourAngst said:

Dug can be a great pokemon for rain teams however it requires a diffrent approach , don t think of dug as dug the ground type or dug the electric immunity , think of dug as dug the trapper its main purpose being to trap and take out key targets  idealy you would use dug to trap other weather setters thus allowing you to win the weather  war , now it is true that dug may not OHKO ttar or torkoal if you are running focus shas on it but even so it will leave them low enough to where it got the job done and they can no longer reset the weather

Dug can also run memento and even if you find you re self in a game where there is nothing to trap it can still work as a disruptor

 

Regarding what you said ciao that it traps a mon and then dug dies in the procces , thats the point , since rain teams like to play ofensive and with high tempo there is no downside of dug dieing , in fact if dug dies it mostly means it got the job done and if it survives to be used for later then thats a net +

While a pokemon like dug can be great for rain teams is not manadotary since its a lot less versatile then a chomp or an excadrill would be , dug offering only damage and the ability to trap  as powerful traping may be it does require careful maneuvering.

 

Also two other ground types i would like to add to the mix are Seismitoad and gliscor .

Seismitoad being another swift swim user can also take advantage of  rain being up on top of being able to be either a physical attacker only or a special attacker only thanks to its stats and movepool as well as some utility moves such as toxic  and stelth rocks, only weak to grass looks like a good fit since you have so many mons that resist grass

 

Gliscor also provides some unique attributes think of it as being a combination of chomp and excadrill , it has the deffensive backbone chomp has as well and the hazzard control excadrill provides , gliscor being able to learn all the hazzards and being able to remove them . Another thing gliscor has over the other ground types is acces to u-turn , if you were to use the team of peliper , kingdra , serp , zap, scizr and gliscor you would now have 3 u-turn users those being peliper , scizor and gliscor allowing for a lot of opportunities to get in you re sweepers

About the part of trapping and faint, it may be good for trapping key mons, but for people that don't want to suffer in the long-term vs Electrics spamming Volt Switch, primarly Zapdos and Rotom-Wash, you may need a more durable ground-type, that can switch multiple times against volt switch and eat them, and Dugtrio can't do because he eats the volt, then what? Both can't be trapped.  Gliscor is good too, can be a good way to set hazards up and you can run defog so other mon than pelliper have it. Letting defog only in pelliper's hands is bad because if below 25% , a rocks negates rain for the rest of match.