hey im not ~experienced ive been playing with this team a lot for a month on showdown ish mostly w success but im not a good player and im more interested in the ~teambuilding anyway. so any feedback would be appreciated (whenever, i realize this forum is not very active)
the starting point / “concept” for the team was to pass calm mind(s) to gengar. the sp atk boost obv makes it even more dangerous but the sp def boost is very helpful also since the only physical attacks that arent 4x resisted or worse are ghost (super effective but basically only ever used on lax so idont rly mind that), and flying, rock and steel. try to build movepool around that ie so a +1/+1 gengar has best chances of sweeping. celebi is the only usable cm passer. to be able to get past sp walls (esp cm blissey) i thought the best choice for the team was a metagross, mainly standard mm/eq/expl, but also with psychic so if passed calm minds it can be a mixed sweeper (sp def boosts giving it amazing mixed bulk too).
team
Celebi (lead, bold)
Calm mind
Baton pass
Giga drain
Hp fire
252 hp, 252+ def
cm/bp is given. max def works well for this team for many reasons, but the biggest is avoiding dugtrio trap at full health (hp bug does 70-75%, and giga drain recovers 20% back). this means celebi can almost always click calm mind on the first turn and threaten to pass it and generally can spam cm throughout the match. grass stab is preferred bc of ttar (esp dd). the team is pretty offensive so i dont mind giga drains low pp, and the recovery is often useful (again esp vs dugtrio). hp fire is for skarmory. fire and grass together hit most phazers enough that they cant phaze a +1 celebi multiple times, so clicking cm doesnt let phazers in for free losing momentum. the only exception ive found is cm/roar raikou tho maybe there are others i j havent seen.
Vaporeon (modest)
Surf
Baton pass
Wish
Acid armor
252+ spa, 252 def
I originally chose vap as my bulky water bc of baton pass, but its also the best water recipient of calm mind due to its great sp attack (esp compared to suicine) and solid sp bulk. wish is mostly to be able to stall against blissey and to ease prediction against other pokes that cant get past wish. acid armor or ice beam both work in the last slot, main purpose is to deal with dd salamence which is a problem for the rest of the team esp since it takes nothing from this celebi. aa/wish is to stall ddmence or to pass the def boosts to another “counter” (prob flygon), and also has the advantage of countering dd gyarados too and passing aa might have some general utility, theres not usually time for that but maybe against curselax. alternatively ice beam makes switching in on ddmence easier. also, water absorb checks suicine which otherwise this team would struggle with.
i think different evs are possible here but def investment is important for ddmence (less so if using ice beam) and max spa puts a lot of pressure at +1/+1.
Gengar (timid)
Thunderbolt/Ice Punch
Fire Punch
Giga Drain
Hypnosis
252+ spe, 252 spa
despite it being the original concept for the team, im rly unsure of gengars moveset and maybe evs too. hypnosis is important for blissey (to force it out and hit the switch in) and snorlax, against everything else gengar should be attacking. giga drain is actually not primarily for swampert but for the recovery, which can be signifcant at +1/+1, and esp against blissey which otherwise comes in for free. fire punch is crucial for metagross, which otherwise stops a gengar sweep i think even at +2/+2. thunderbolt is the strongest neutral attack and for gyarados, ice punch for mence and flygon. honestly the main reason i run thunderbolt is for a neutral attack against fire types, which i think are very rare (ive seen 0) but if you do run into a houndoom while running fire/grass/ice you cant beat it no matter how many cm boosts. and this team doesnt handle fire types that well in general. +1 thunderbolt does more than enough to mence that it cant switch in, and if ddmence comes in on celebi you cant pass to gengar anyway, so for this team i think ice punch is the least useful of the four moves.
ive been using the standard 252+ spe and 252 spa, but 252+ spa 252 spd is an interesting idea? to not care about speed and make gengar very hard to break through except with flying rock or steel attacks. since steel is just metagross which you outspeed regardless and flying and rock attacks are mostly from dragon dancers which might assume they are outsped and click dragon dance instead of attacking. but evs should be some combination of spe, spa, spd.
Metagross (brave)
Meteor Mash
Earthquake
Psychic
Explosion
252+ atk, 252 hp
early game metagross provides its usual good bulk, stellar def typing, chance for an attack boost, and option to explode on a wall. the only real difference in how its played here is that you dont want to explode as much bc this metagross is also a sweeper. the most threatening situation is if celebi gets in a calm mind war, esp with blissey but any special wall without a phazing move, after several boosts by each player celebi passes to metagross. since stab fire attacks are nowhere to be found in the metagame metagross is unlikely to be even 2hkoed by the special wall while the special wall is almost certainly threatened by metagrosses physical attacks. after the wall is koed or switches out the opponent now faces say a +3/+3 metagross, which isnt going to be broken by special attacks (again the absence of fire types) and with metagross’s excellent physical bulk it will take several earthquakes to break through. eg metagrosses best common counter swampert cannot take +3 stab psychics well lol. ttar is the only common dark type which cannot come in on metagross at all, and neither can jirachi the best other psychic resist. (houndoom falls to eq anyway tho metagross will take a lot from stab fire blast even at +3 spd.) at st like +3/+3 this mixed metagross can break through anything and is extremely bulky on both sides, at worst it will take out two pokemon more likely it will sweep. if the opponent realizes this danger they wont get into the calm mind war, but that gives celebi a big advantage / momentum. esp since celebi is bold making beating it with physical attacks hard.
Flygon (naive)
Earthquake
Rock Slide
Fire Blast
Dragon Claw / Dragon Breath
252+ speed, 252 attack, -spdef
Flygon provides important defensive utility as the only rock resist not weak to ground, while still having an offensive presence. offensively it is an alternative physical attacker to metagross that can also become a mixed sweeper with cm boosts. metagross is almost always the better recipient of multiple cm boosts bc of its higher attack power, particularly that it can’t be walled by blissey. flygon is much faster and also has a very different typing (offensively and defensively) so it could be a better recipient than metagross in some situations, and it doesnt need as many boosts to threaten a sweep bc of its speed. as with metagross the standard physical attacker evs are used and one special move is added to the three standard moves (idk if fire blast is “standard” but i mean that a lot of physical flygon run it, to hit skarmory). dragon claw is the main fourth move, giving flygon great dual stab even at +1 as well as perfect neutral special coverage. dragon breath has more utility early game bc of the paralysis chance but its much weaker and flygon will mainly use its physical moves early game regardless. either dragon move does enable flygon to beat ddmence (which standard physical flygon cannot) which is very useful for this team. probably dragon breaths biggest advantage is for dd gyarados, which otherwise easily switches in and sets up on flygon but would have to take two dragon breaths before being able to ko which comes to a 51% chance of being crippled by paralysis.
252+ speed is given for a sweeper. 252 attack is important to hit hard early game, to get past special walls when boosted, and also to conceal that it is mixed until it uses its dragon move. spdef reducing nature is used since flygons main defensive purposes are on the physical side (esp as this teams only true rock resist) and decreasing either attacking stat doesnt make sense.
Jolteon (timid)
Thunder/Thunderbolt
Baton pass
Wish/ hp ice
Substitute/ hp ice
252+ spe, 252 hp
this slot on the team ive changed several times and feel is pretty flexible. i chose an electric mainly to deal with roar cm raikou and to a lesser extent roar cm suicine. i think ddmence is probably a bigger threat to the team but i already have a bulky water and on an offensive team id rather just attack mence whenever possible than try to “counter” it. but roar cm raikou is a problem esp with hp ice since the best chance against it is switching in metagross... not a good option lol (celebi is obv fine against subcm raikou). jolteon cant counter cm raikou but its a soft check. a fast baton passer is useful for momentum, eg if +1 celebi passes and you dont want to pass to a sweeper (gengar) jolteon can be an in-between. and its typing complements celebi and vap well. passing substitutes isnt the most important for this team but it always helps and at minimum it eases prediction. wish works well with substitute allowing jolteon to heal itself (as long as it has enough hp to make a substitute) and also can work with baton pass. jolteon is frail so wish should only be used in clear situations, mostly when you have a substitute up but you want to pass wish not substitute (or click substitute again to heal yourself). hp ice is possible but jolteon can switch in on ddmence regardless and the synergy of wish substitute and baton pass is too valuable. thunder is a good option over thunderbolt, paralysis helps this team a lot and jolteon will usually click either baton pass or substitute when it comes in, but if jolteon ever is attacking without a substitute a miss probably loses jolteon due to its frailty. the paralysis chance esp helps against roar cm raikou.
also want to note that while the team wants to use baton pass a lot, it isnt dependent on it at all its not like a full bp team where you lose if the chain is broken. except for maybe vaporeon every pokemon can fulfill its primary functions without any calm mind boosts. metagross, flygon, gengar are standards, their moveset and nature changes are rly minimal. at the same time every pokemon benefits from a calm mind pass which makes +1 celebi immediately threatening.
the starting point / “concept” for the team was to pass calm mind(s) to gengar. the sp atk boost obv makes it even more dangerous but the sp def boost is very helpful also since the only physical attacks that arent 4x resisted or worse are ghost (super effective but basically only ever used on lax so idont rly mind that), and flying, rock and steel. try to build movepool around that ie so a +1/+1 gengar has best chances of sweeping. celebi is the only usable cm passer. to be able to get past sp walls (esp cm blissey) i thought the best choice for the team was a metagross, mainly standard mm/eq/expl, but also with psychic so if passed calm minds it can be a mixed sweeper (sp def boosts giving it amazing mixed bulk too).
team
Celebi (lead, bold)
Calm mind
Baton pass
Giga drain
Hp fire
252 hp, 252+ def
cm/bp is given. max def works well for this team for many reasons, but the biggest is avoiding dugtrio trap at full health (hp bug does 70-75%, and giga drain recovers 20% back). this means celebi can almost always click calm mind on the first turn and threaten to pass it and generally can spam cm throughout the match. grass stab is preferred bc of ttar (esp dd). the team is pretty offensive so i dont mind giga drains low pp, and the recovery is often useful (again esp vs dugtrio). hp fire is for skarmory. fire and grass together hit most phazers enough that they cant phaze a +1 celebi multiple times, so clicking cm doesnt let phazers in for free losing momentum. the only exception ive found is cm/roar raikou tho maybe there are others i j havent seen.
Vaporeon (modest)
Surf
Baton pass
Wish
Acid armor
252+ spa, 252 def
I originally chose vap as my bulky water bc of baton pass, but its also the best water recipient of calm mind due to its great sp attack (esp compared to suicine) and solid sp bulk. wish is mostly to be able to stall against blissey and to ease prediction against other pokes that cant get past wish. acid armor or ice beam both work in the last slot, main purpose is to deal with dd salamence which is a problem for the rest of the team esp since it takes nothing from this celebi. aa/wish is to stall ddmence or to pass the def boosts to another “counter” (prob flygon), and also has the advantage of countering dd gyarados too and passing aa might have some general utility, theres not usually time for that but maybe against curselax. alternatively ice beam makes switching in on ddmence easier. also, water absorb checks suicine which otherwise this team would struggle with.
i think different evs are possible here but def investment is important for ddmence (less so if using ice beam) and max spa puts a lot of pressure at +1/+1.
Gengar (timid)
Thunderbolt/Ice Punch
Fire Punch
Giga Drain
Hypnosis
252+ spe, 252 spa
despite it being the original concept for the team, im rly unsure of gengars moveset and maybe evs too. hypnosis is important for blissey (to force it out and hit the switch in) and snorlax, against everything else gengar should be attacking. giga drain is actually not primarily for swampert but for the recovery, which can be signifcant at +1/+1, and esp against blissey which otherwise comes in for free. fire punch is crucial for metagross, which otherwise stops a gengar sweep i think even at +2/+2. thunderbolt is the strongest neutral attack and for gyarados, ice punch for mence and flygon. honestly the main reason i run thunderbolt is for a neutral attack against fire types, which i think are very rare (ive seen 0) but if you do run into a houndoom while running fire/grass/ice you cant beat it no matter how many cm boosts. and this team doesnt handle fire types that well in general. +1 thunderbolt does more than enough to mence that it cant switch in, and if ddmence comes in on celebi you cant pass to gengar anyway, so for this team i think ice punch is the least useful of the four moves.
ive been using the standard 252+ spe and 252 spa, but 252+ spa 252 spd is an interesting idea? to not care about speed and make gengar very hard to break through except with flying rock or steel attacks. since steel is just metagross which you outspeed regardless and flying and rock attacks are mostly from dragon dancers which might assume they are outsped and click dragon dance instead of attacking. but evs should be some combination of spe, spa, spd.
Metagross (brave)
Meteor Mash
Earthquake
Psychic
Explosion
252+ atk, 252 hp
early game metagross provides its usual good bulk, stellar def typing, chance for an attack boost, and option to explode on a wall. the only real difference in how its played here is that you dont want to explode as much bc this metagross is also a sweeper. the most threatening situation is if celebi gets in a calm mind war, esp with blissey but any special wall without a phazing move, after several boosts by each player celebi passes to metagross. since stab fire attacks are nowhere to be found in the metagame metagross is unlikely to be even 2hkoed by the special wall while the special wall is almost certainly threatened by metagrosses physical attacks. after the wall is koed or switches out the opponent now faces say a +3/+3 metagross, which isnt going to be broken by special attacks (again the absence of fire types) and with metagross’s excellent physical bulk it will take several earthquakes to break through. eg metagrosses best common counter swampert cannot take +3 stab psychics well lol. ttar is the only common dark type which cannot come in on metagross at all, and neither can jirachi the best other psychic resist. (houndoom falls to eq anyway tho metagross will take a lot from stab fire blast even at +3 spd.) at st like +3/+3 this mixed metagross can break through anything and is extremely bulky on both sides, at worst it will take out two pokemon more likely it will sweep. if the opponent realizes this danger they wont get into the calm mind war, but that gives celebi a big advantage / momentum. esp since celebi is bold making beating it with physical attacks hard.
Flygon (naive)
Earthquake
Rock Slide
Fire Blast
Dragon Claw / Dragon Breath
252+ speed, 252 attack, -spdef
Flygon provides important defensive utility as the only rock resist not weak to ground, while still having an offensive presence. offensively it is an alternative physical attacker to metagross that can also become a mixed sweeper with cm boosts. metagross is almost always the better recipient of multiple cm boosts bc of its higher attack power, particularly that it can’t be walled by blissey. flygon is much faster and also has a very different typing (offensively and defensively) so it could be a better recipient than metagross in some situations, and it doesnt need as many boosts to threaten a sweep bc of its speed. as with metagross the standard physical attacker evs are used and one special move is added to the three standard moves (idk if fire blast is “standard” but i mean that a lot of physical flygon run it, to hit skarmory). dragon claw is the main fourth move, giving flygon great dual stab even at +1 as well as perfect neutral special coverage. dragon breath has more utility early game bc of the paralysis chance but its much weaker and flygon will mainly use its physical moves early game regardless. either dragon move does enable flygon to beat ddmence (which standard physical flygon cannot) which is very useful for this team. probably dragon breaths biggest advantage is for dd gyarados, which otherwise easily switches in and sets up on flygon but would have to take two dragon breaths before being able to ko which comes to a 51% chance of being crippled by paralysis.
252+ speed is given for a sweeper. 252 attack is important to hit hard early game, to get past special walls when boosted, and also to conceal that it is mixed until it uses its dragon move. spdef reducing nature is used since flygons main defensive purposes are on the physical side (esp as this teams only true rock resist) and decreasing either attacking stat doesnt make sense.
Jolteon (timid)
Thunder/Thunderbolt
Baton pass
Wish/ hp ice
Substitute/ hp ice
252+ spe, 252 hp
this slot on the team ive changed several times and feel is pretty flexible. i chose an electric mainly to deal with roar cm raikou and to a lesser extent roar cm suicine. i think ddmence is probably a bigger threat to the team but i already have a bulky water and on an offensive team id rather just attack mence whenever possible than try to “counter” it. but roar cm raikou is a problem esp with hp ice since the best chance against it is switching in metagross... not a good option lol (celebi is obv fine against subcm raikou). jolteon cant counter cm raikou but its a soft check. a fast baton passer is useful for momentum, eg if +1 celebi passes and you dont want to pass to a sweeper (gengar) jolteon can be an in-between. and its typing complements celebi and vap well. passing substitutes isnt the most important for this team but it always helps and at minimum it eases prediction. wish works well with substitute allowing jolteon to heal itself (as long as it has enough hp to make a substitute) and also can work with baton pass. jolteon is frail so wish should only be used in clear situations, mostly when you have a substitute up but you want to pass wish not substitute (or click substitute again to heal yourself). hp ice is possible but jolteon can switch in on ddmence regardless and the synergy of wish substitute and baton pass is too valuable. thunder is a good option over thunderbolt, paralysis helps this team a lot and jolteon will usually click either baton pass or substitute when it comes in, but if jolteon ever is attacking without a substitute a miss probably loses jolteon due to its frailty. the paralysis chance esp helps against roar cm raikou.
also want to note that while the team wants to use baton pass a lot, it isnt dependent on it at all its not like a full bp team where you lose if the chain is broken. except for maybe vaporeon every pokemon can fulfill its primary functions without any calm mind boosts. metagross, flygon, gengar are standards, their moveset and nature changes are rly minimal. at the same time every pokemon benefits from a calm mind pass which makes +1 celebi immediately threatening.
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