Pokémon Rate My Team
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Alright, a more "conventional" team, and in a much more inviting bracket, RU. Time to ask for the rates. Again, I'm just reposting this from Showdown, so don't mind the nicknames.

Amandibuzz (Mandibuzz) @ Leftovers
Ability: Overcoat
EVs: 252 HP / 136 Def / 116 SpD / 4 Spe
Careful Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Taunt
- Roost
- Tailwind
- Foul Play

Amandibuzz is back, and since I have a tank already, we have Tailwind and Taunt support with Foul Play as an insurance policy of sorts. Love this thing. It's so bulky and with a Tailwind, it can outspeed a lot. Say goodbye to a set-up sweeper

EyeOfTheSpider (Galvantula) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Energy Ball
- Sticky Web
- Thunder
- Bug Buzz

Suicide lead, gets up a Sticky Web and then lands some big hits. I considered having Volt Switch so I could save it for some clean-up (and for a z-memento I'm hiding that would let it live the majority of priority moves), but on second thought, I didn't, instead opting for something that lets me hit Rock and Ground types who may decide to switch in.

MyPores (Porygon2) @ Eviolite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 252 HP / 136 Def / 120 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Recover
- Ice Beam / Tri-Attack
- Protect

Toxic Staller inbound. Evo Proy2 is a tank and can take a lot of punishment. Recover and Protect to stall out with Toxic, and Ice Beam covers a lot of things, although Tri-Attack gets STAB and possible statuses outside of Toxic

Skumtank (Skuntank) @ Darkinium Z
Ability: Aftermath
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Memento
- Pursuit
- Poison Jab
- Defog

A funky set brings me LIFE. Here we have a Pursuit trapper who can hit with STAB poison jab and get those hazards off the field. Darkinium Z lets you hit hard with a ZMove, or support with ZMemento, to heal up a tank or sweeper. It can take /some/ hits and hit /pretty/ hard and heal a fellow team member up to full
(TWO Donphan gimmick KO's? Yes please.)

Donnie (Donphan) (M) @ Red Card
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Endeavor

So this one kinda serves 2 functions. First, a Sturdy set, that lives a special hit on Sturdy, switches the attacker out with Red Card, hits the incoming poke with Endeavor, before finishing the job with an Ice Shard for an (almost) guaranteed Free K-O.
ORRRR.... if the attacker switches, you set up Stealth Rocks and then hit hard with EQ and the aforementioned Ice Shard.

MaiQueen (Kingler) (F) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Sheer Force
Shiny: Yes
Happiness: 0
EVs: 8 HP / 252 Atk / 248 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Liquidation
- Knock Off
- Stomping Tantrum
- Toxic

Kingler gets 75 speed, which, with a Scarf, can be pretty fast. That coupled with an okay Defense, and an absolutely INSANE 140 base ATK AND Sheer Force, this thing looks... pretty nutty. Moveset's kinda... not the best, but REGARDLESS, I've got something that can hit hard, with a lotta things, or use Toxic when you're ready to sack the thing.

Better attacks to pair with abilities, or preferred movesets, even whole new pokes to serve the job better, what's ya take on this team?

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1 Answer

2 votes

Hey there! I'd be more than happy to give this team a proper rate; however, in my opinion, the team would need massive changes to the point where it would be better for you to rebuild the team entirely. The main reason for this is that your team has a lot of pokemon that aren't very viable in the RU tier, such as Kingler, Skuntank, and Donphan (bear in mind though that I'm not familiar with the RU metagame so this is purely going off of the RU viability ranking on Smogon's RU forum and not off of personal experience).

I saw your last OU team on here where there was a similar problem, so I'm sorry you have to hear about this problem again for your new team, but that's what it's looking like. If I recall correctly from your OU thread, you did want to keep your Mandibuzz on the team so I'd like to stick to the RU tier where Mandibuzz is in for the team if at all possible. I'll start off by mentioning why some of the pokemon on your team aren't viable in OU and some suggestions for replacements. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not experienced with RU so a lot of my reasoning for why the pokemon I mention aren't viable is gonna be a bit of an educated guess based on what I know about competitive Pokemon in general.

Kingler looks like it would have a hard time in the tier as an offensive physically attacking Water type because it's in a low speed tier without a good priority move or a stat boosting move that can boost both its Attack and Speed at the same time. This likely causes it to face competition from the likes of Feraligatr and Bruxish, both of which have Aqua Jet while the former has access to Dragon Dance as well. In addition, pokemon like Cloyster and Barbaracle have access to Shell Smash which boosts both their Attack and Speed stats by +2, making them potent threats in both speed and power.

While Skuntank has access to Defog and your Z-Memento idea is interesting, it looks like it would be outclassed by Drapion as an offensive Pursuit trapper due to having a poorer move-pool and lower speed. Skuntank does not get very many useful coverage moves on the physical side, whereas Drapion has access to Earthquake and Aqua Tail, which can hit Toxicroak and bulky Ground types, respectively. Drapion also gets Swords Dance, which Skuntank does not, allowing for it to be a powerful set-up sweeper and increasing its wallbreaking potential.

According to the Smogon RU analysis on Donphan, Donphan struggles as a hazard remover due to other hazard removers being able to perform better against common hazard setters in the tier as well as Donphan's poor offensive capability versus common defensive pokemon in the tier. From what I see, it faces a lot of competition from hazard removers like Mega Blastoise, Flygon, and the Rotom forms, who all carry more offensive pressure compared to Donphan; as well as Gligar and Mandibuzz who have access to Roost to improve their longevity, which Donphan cannot do. Your Donphan doesn't have Rapid Spin to remove hazards, but that leaves you without a hazard remover on your team. As the Smogon analysis notes, the strategy of using Donphan's Sturdy ability to get some surprise KO's with Endeavor falls apart if Donphan gets hurt by hazards at any point. Even with another pokemon to remove hazards, I feel like the strategy is a bit of a one-time use since you can't take anymore hits after being brought down to 1 HP from Sturdy and even if you get the full recovery with Skuntank's Z-Memento, a smart opponent will play around Endeavor after it's been revealed by finding a way to break Donphan's Sturdy without getting hit hard by Endeavor before trying to KO it.

In addition to issues regarding viability, I'd also like to bring up an issue regarding your team composition. Your team utilizes a suicide lead to get up Sticky Web with Galvantula; however, Sticky Web is best used on hyper offense teams that use only offensive pokemon in tandem with Sticky Web to outspeed and KO threats that would normally be faster than them as well as breaking through defensive cores. This team, on the other hand, uses some bulky defensive threats like Porygon2 and Mandibuzz, which don't really fit on a team that would benefit from having a Sticky Web user. I recommend not using Sticky Web on this team and instead stick with a Stealth Rock setter and possibly a Spikes or Toxic Spikes setter as well if it can fit on the team. Also, your team doesn't look like it has a win condition on paper. Having a win condition is important for a team because it allows you to form a general game plan for how you're going to win in the late game and what you need to do throughout a match in order to do that. An easy way to do that is by using a fast set-up sweeper that can clean up teams in the late game when all of its checks and counters have been weakened enough or removed. Since I mentioned replacing Kingler with a better water type, you could use something like Dragon Dance Feraligatr as your win condition and replacement for Kingler. For a list of set-up sweepers in general for RU, you could take a look at the RU Role Compendium thread on Smogon's RU forum. I'll link that at the end of this rate.

Finally I'm gonna suggest a couple general moveset changes. This is just to better optimize the sets. For similar reasons to why I don't think Sticky Web is best on this team, I don't believe that Tailwind is best on Mandibuzz for this team either. Since we're going to be changing Donphan for something else, you could opt to use Defog over Tailwind to make Mandibuzz the new hazard remover. If you decide on picking a different pokemon to be your hazard remover, you could also use Toxic over Tailwind and replace Porygon2's Toxic with Thunder Wave. Also, I suggest replacing Porygon2's Protect with Foul Play since Protect isn't really necessary on Porygon2 because it can stomach a lot of hits from pokemon in the tier while having access to Recover to heal off the damage, so Protect doesn't really benefit it much. Foul Play, on the other hand, can hit physical attackers for more damage than Ice Beam can. I'd also like to ask about the EV spreads you used for Mandibuzz and Porygon2. Did you use those spreads for any specific purpose? If not, I think it would be better to use the standard spreads listed on Smogon as they provide certain defensive benchmarks for the two pokemon.

Apologies if this rate was too lengthy, but hopefully this helped you figure out some good ways to rebuild the team to make it better! Feel free to make another RMT once you've made a new version of this team and hopefully, I'll be able to give you a proper rate. I'm also gonna leave you a couple resources to check out for making the team more viable.

RU Viability Ranking
RU Role Compendium

Summary of Changes
Replace with more viable pokemon (possibly --> )
Change Sticky Web setter for something else
Tailwind --> Defog/Toxic
Protect --> Foul Play | Toxic --> Thunder Wave if running Toxic on Mandibuzz
Add a win condition to the team

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Don't use Porygon2 with thunder wave. Porygon2 does fine when the opponent is faster.