Reports

Published on July 12th, 2015 | by lucariojr

6

A Sight for Venusaur Eyes: A Georgia Top 8 Team Report

Howdy folks, my name is Joseph “lucariojr” Brummett (often misspelled at events as ‘Burmett’ or worse), and in this report, I’ll be going through my team. I don’t remember most of my matches at this point and I don’t see much reason to go into too much detail about my weekend.

Team Preview

charizard-mega-yvenusaur-megaheatrancresseliascraftyrhyperior

I’ll say upfront that this team was heavily inspired by someone else’s team that I saw on another regionals stream. In fact, it’s the same six Pokémon as the guy used, but whose name I can’t remember at the time of writing. I didn’t have anything better to run to be quite honest, and the team looked really solid, especially since I was hearing some good things about Rhyperior and Cresselia at the time. It also catered to my play-style of having two separate modes to one team and it fulfilled my somewhat misguided desire to use Mega Charizard Y (who doesn’t love the fact that Charizard is top tier now?), so I decided to run with it after looking at it in a teambuilder. I happened to have 4 out of the 6 Pokémon already as well, so that definitely helped things since I was planning the team the Wednesday before the regional.

While I did use a team preview screen as a reference, I didn’t have any prior knowledge of any sets because the stream quality at home is lousy apparently. I did see Super Fang Scrafty for a brief second, so that’s pretty much the extent of how hard I netdecked it. Going into making the sets, I knew:

  1. Heatran’s damage output is dumb even with the sun, without a Life Orb, in my opinion. So it gets the Life Orb. This is the logic some Aegislash run on nowadays as well.
  2. Expert Belt Venusaur is kind of poor as well, so Venusaurite is the next best thing. I don’t think highly of double Mega Venusaur & Charizard otherwise.

With these two decisions, it pretty much cemented every other set.

The Team

charizard-mega-y

Charizard “Gertha” @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 164 HP / 4 Def / 136 SpA / 204 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 30 SpA / 30 SpD
– Heat Wave
– Solar Beam
– Hidden Power Ground
– Protect

I wanted this Charizard to have a bit more Special Attack than I usually use. Normally I run Modest with no investment, but since it’s not using Overheat, it needs the investment to work. With Terrakion going out of style, all I really need to watch out for is Rock Slide from Landorus, and after it has been intimidated it allows Charizard to survive. I don’t recall going too in-depth with these EVs, honestly, but it did what it needed to do. The Hidden Power Ground here was a requirement to avoid my Sun lead being completely walled by opposing Heatran. The nickname comes from a character created by Jim Henson, often described as “an ugly battle-axe” and “a bitterly sarcastic dragon”.

venusaur-mega

Venusaur “EarlSinclair” @ Venusaurite
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 188 HP / 252 SpA / 68 Spe
IVs: 30 Def, even SpA
Modest Nature
– Giga Drain
– Sludge Bomb
– Hidden Power Ice
– Protect

The Speed investment allows it to outspeed Scarf Landorus-T in sunlight and has respectable bulk in Mega form. Using an offensive Mega Venusaur definitely caught some people off guard throughout the day and is probably my favorite way to use it. Ultra-defensive Venusaur has a tendency to just kind of sit there, do nothing and die in vain if it happens to take a little too much damage. In comparison, offensive Mega Venusaur is much more efficient at killing the various Fairy and Water-types that are around, as well as Landorus-T. The nickname is that of the dumb father figure of the sitcom Dinosaurs.

heatran

Heatran “MiamiHeatran” @ Life Orb
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 44 Def / 212 SpA
Modest Nature
– Heat Wave
– Earth Power
– Substitute
– Protect

The defensive EVs allow Heatran to survive Mega Salamence’s Earthquake the majority of the time, but it isn’t the Heatran I was planning on bringing anyway. The Life Orb definitely allowed Heatran to pull its weight as well, but by round 2 I discovered I was using the wrong Heatran. I had wanted Timid and a faster spread, but as you can see, I actually ended up using Modest with no investment. This almost cost me in a round where I had to face a Bisharp, because contrary to what you might think of a team with two Fire-types, a Ground-type and a Fighting-type, this team doesn’t really like Bisharp. Or maybe I just don’t like Bisharp personally. It owes me money.

Thinking back on it, I actually had a chance to correct this since a judge said something about my itemless Heatran before registering, so I had a chance to correct it, but didn’t. Oh well. Otherwise, there wasn’t much difference since it had the right moves anyway, though in hindsight Substitute probably wasn’t the best move on a hyper offense Heatran. The nickname comes from that one basketball team in Florida.

cresselia

Cresselia “☆Estelle☆” @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Def / 132 SpA
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 4 Spe
– Ice Beam
– Psychic
– Trick Room
– Helping Hand

The EV investment allows Cresselia to survive Bisharp’s Knock Off and helps KO Landorus-T and Mega Salamence. Cresselia’s Special Attack investment hits some decent benchmarks, but it’s usually helped by any Fake Out damage Scrafty provides, allowing it to pick up knock-outs it otherwise wouldn’t be able to. I didn’t use Helping Hand much if at all, so maybe that slot could’ve been put to better use. The 4 IVs in the Speed stat weren’t ideal, but I remember it helping me outspeed and KO something before a Modest Aegislash could intervene. The nickname comes from a British actress/rapper.

scrafty

Scrafty “Dr. Teeth” @ Assault Vest
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
– Fake Out
– Drain Punch
– Knock Off
– Super Fang

A very basic set and spread that does exactly what it aims to do. I usually used Fake Out on key targets like Landorus-T and Mega Salamence to get them into range for both Cresselia and regular Venusaur to pick up the necessary knock-outs. Super Fang was useful to get loads of damage off and weaken stuff like Mega Venusaur. In tandem with Knock Off, it meant that Scrafty had a lot of utility even when it got burned, which is a problem I had with Scrafty last season, though I didn’t find myself using it as often as I thought I would. The nickname comes from the Muppet of the same name.

rhyperior

Rhyperior “Vinny” @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Solid Rock
EVs: 244 HP / 158 Atk / 108 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
– Rock Slide
– Earthquake
– Drill Run
– Protect

I think Rhyperior is overhyped. Do I like it? Yeah, it’s got great dual STABs for the metagame and it’s a beefy monster; the defensive EVs here helping Rhyperior survive Amoonguss’s Giga Drain and bulkier Water-types’ STAB moves in sunlight. But it’s either carrying the team or being complete dead weight, with the option to leave it on the bench often a favorable one against some teams. It seems like there’s absolutely no in-between. I tried to conserve it in some games, which was probably a mistake given the nature of the Weakness Policy, so maybe I’m just playing it wrong. It was definitely fun to use though and it definitely did pick up some hype knock-outs on Milotic’s after a Weakness Policy boost, so maybe Rhyperior is like Captain Falcon in Smash Bros? Anyway, I think I’d rather give it another item if I were to use it again, but oh yeah we don’t have any Gems to slap on it, do we? Forget I said anything, then. The nickname comes from a character in the animated movie Atlantis.

Overall

With respect to the team as a whole… I think it has a pretty bad match-up with the sand and Mega Salamence core that’s going around on Battle Spot right now and was the team that Angel Miranda used to beat me in both round 2 and top cut. I also don’t particularly care for the Kangaskhan matchup since nothing really OHKOs it, though it’s most certainly playable. I think my Salamence and sand match-up is playable as well, since my round 2 game was incredibly close and my first game of my set with Angel went smoothly more or less, so I think I can attribute my loss to me losing my nerve in the second game of our set. After the first round of Top Cut I knew I would have to fight him again, so I went over my notes and formulated a little game plan to follow, which I promptly abandoned after getting flinched with Scrafty and failing to pick up a critical knockout.

It’s really easy to get out-led with this team and things can go downhill very fast, as is the case with teams with more than one ‘mode’, I think. I think the attitude I went into regionals with helped a lot as well, as a lot of my opponents that had nice teams simply second guessed themselves one turn and kind of went on tilt because of that, sometimes visibly. A prime example of this is one of my opponents with a solid Gothitelle and Mawile team, switched in their Mawile turn two into a very dangerous position and was promptly roasted by Heatran. I’m not going to dismiss my opponents (you guys had cool teams!!) but staying calm and taking time to make smart moves really helps. Hmm, maybe I should take my own advice when I’m in top cut…

Anyway, I can’t really go into detail about my matches at this point because I didn’t record them and I only have team preview notes. Sorry if anyone wanted to read my disjointed play-by-plays. However, I do want to give shout-outs to Toler Webb, Caleb Ryor, Bryce Stewart, Roarke Tholen (you’re a horrible smash teacher, by the way), and Nicholas Peckman. It was great meeting you guys there!

Thanks for reading this report! Hopefully you enjoyed reading about the team and my thoughts on it.


About the Author



6 Responses to A Sight for Venusaur Eyes: A Georgia Top 8 Team Report

  1. croconaw says:

    Nice report. I like to see people use Rhyperior. U definitely deserved it.

  2. NEDF the dragon says:

    Nice nicknames.

  3. A good read while I am on my way to the bus. I have not seen a Charizard Y and Mega Venusaur team for a while. So it was nice to see as well as this :)

  4. Masakado says:

    Nice report and grats on also making top 8 in Georgia! I was that guy with Mawile/Gothitelle that switched in my Mawile against you Heatran in BO1 swiss hoping to survive a heat wave (I can’t remember if I already mega’d or not though since it was EV’ed to survive heatwave/non-stab fire moves, but not against life orb Heatran). In any case I led super horribly that game hoping you’d lead differently and played horribly with not much of an answer to sub heatran at the time.

    That game did help me play much better in the rest of my matches realizing how much of a presence Gothitelle has in team preview so thanks for that : D.

  5. Galvatron says:

    Love the report,thanks LucarioJr.!

  6. Andykins says:

    Here’s the stream in question, I also forgot who used the team though
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=146F8gBed0g

    HP ice Venu seems really cool though, I’ll try that out sometime

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