The Wild Wild Wet: Top 8 Seattle Regionals Team Report
This team actually began with an attempt to use Shedinja. A common Shedinja strategy is to have a partner use Soak on it, turning it into a Water type and leaving it vulnerable to only Electric and Grass attacks thanks to its Wonder Guard ability. Taking a look at the available Soak users in this metagame, I noticed that Lanturn had picked up Soak as a new egg move in X/Y. Lanturn’s Water/Electric typing and Volt Absorb ability are interesting, and it wasn’t long before I ditched Shedinja and fell in love with this pairing of Lanturn and Mega Manectric.
Lanturn @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 12 HP / 252 SAtk / 244 Spd
Modest Nature
– Volt Switch
– Hydro Pump
– Ice Beam
– Soak
Choice Scarf allows Lanturn to do several important things:
- Move before my Mega Manectric, allowing for a Soak + Thunderbolt or Soak + Discharge offensive
- Surprise Garchomp with an Ice Beam OHKO before it can move
- Surprise Mega Charizard Y with a fast Volt Switch, taking over half of its health while evading the incoming Solar Beam
- Surprise Rotom-H with a fast Hydro Pump (sometimes a OHKO depending on the Rotom-H stat spread)
Lanturn did all of this and more in Seattle. It was quite the versatile little beast, with all four of its attacks being crucial to its role. Rotom-W is generally a far better choice for teams that want a Water/Electric type, but only Lanturn can execute this silly Soak strategy. If Lanturn and Mega Manectric get onto the field at the right time, they are an absolute terror. Defensive type synergy won’t help you when Lanturn changes your type to Water, causing you to take super effective damage from Mega Manectric’s Electric attacks. Mega Manectric can either Discharge for spread damage (and 25% health recovery to Lanturn with Volt Absorb), or Thunderbolt to focus on knocking out a single target.
I went with Modest Lanturn because it has a 94% chance of OHKOing standard Garchomp with Ice Beam, as opposed to Timid Lanturn which only has a 56% chance of getting that OHKO.
Manectric @ Manectite
Ability: Lightningrod -> Intimidate
EVs: 100 HP / 252 SAtk / 156 Spd
Modest Nature
– Thunderbolt
– Discharge
– Hidden Power Ice
– Protect
I actually had Electric Terrain over Hidden Power Ice on this thing until the night before the tournament, when I decided that even I have my limits about how bad of a Pokemon I can let myself use (and I didn’t run into Dark Void anyway, so the change worked out).
In order for the Soak strategy to work, Mega Manectric needs to be slower than Lanturn, so I was able to forgo some speed EVs to maximize special attack and even have some bulk with 100 HP EVs. It’s a shame to not have a Fire move on Mega Manectric, but I really needed both Thunderbolt and Discharge for different situations, so I made sure to have a couple of other Pokemon with Fire moves to compensate.
With Lanturn’s natural bulk and Mega Manectric’s HP EVs and Intimidate support, the pair can survive some surprising hits (especially if the opponent’s STAB is nullified with Soak), but they still really rely on their speed. Outspeeding Garchomp and the entire base 100 speed tier puts them above most of the metagame. I knew that faster Pokemon and priority attacks would be a threat to them, which guided my decisions when filling out the rest of the team.
Ferrothorn @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 244 Atk / 12 Spd
Adamant Nature
– Iron Head
– Power Whip
– Thunder Wave
– Protect
The idea with Ferrothorn was to provide another Pokemon besides Mega Manectric who could take advantage of a Lanturn partner who is locked into Soak. While not used as frequently as Mega Manectric in this way, Ferrothorn was able to KO a Soaked Talonflame and Soaked Amoonguss with Power Whip. Thunder Wave was a measure to help bring the enemy’s faster Pokemon to a speed where the Lanturn and Mega Manectric combo can go to work on them, but in practice it was not very effective at this because the ever present Fire type attacks made Ferrothorn difficult to use in the early game. Thunder Wave could also be used to target my own Volt Absorb Lanturn or Lightninrod Manectric in a pinch, but that isn’t something I ever actually did.
In hindsight, I think trying to use Ferrothorn in more of an offensive role wasn’t the best idea. But Rocky Helmet was still effective in dealing with contact-attacking threats like Mega Kangaskhan.
Azumarill @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spd
Careful Nature
– Play Rough
– Waterfall
– Aqua Jet
– Protect
I didn’t go with Belly Drum because I wanted to be able to do a lot of switching with this team. The Careful nature allows Azumarill to survive Timid Mega Charizard Y’s Solarbeam, and the Safety Goggles allow Azumarill to effectively counter all forms of Tyranitar without having to worry about Amoonguss supporters. Tyranitar is unpredictable and can be a big problem for the rest of the team, so I thought this was important, even though I ended up forgoing the more generally valuable Sitrus Berry. I didn’t end up battling any Tyranitars, though.
Besides countering Tyranitars, Azumarill was chosen for its strong Water/Fairy typing, which synergizes well defensively with Ferrothorn and Salamence.
Salamence @ Lum Berry
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
– Draco Meteor
– Fire Blast
– Rain Dance
– Protect
This Salamence is just a general attacker with Intimidate support and an anti-sun bent. In hindsight, I don’t think it was a very effective use of Salamence. Choice Scarf Salamence is amazing, but I needed Choice Scarf for my Lanturn. A power boosting item might have been helpful as well as I found my team didn’t have a great way to threaten OHKOs off the bat and ended up quite susceptible to Perish Trapping Mega Gengar. At least in theory, Lum Berry was mainly to take Sleep Powders from Chlorophyll Venusaur and hit back with Fire Blast in the sun. I also figured Lum Berry + Intimidate would be a favourable lead against Kangaskhan / Smeargle combos.
If you look around at the other Salamence sets that people have run, the choice of Fire Blast vs Flamethrower seems to come down to what is needed to OHKO Ferrothorn. With Timid and without a power boosting item, Fire Blast is the better bet.
Rain Dance boosts Azumarill’s and Lanturn’s Water attacks while making it safer for Ferrothorn to come out and play. But really I just packed this move because sun is terrifying.
Talonflame @ Life Orb
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
– Brave Bird
– Flare Blitz
– U-turn
– Quick Guard
Sorry Ray, I know Talonflame is awful. But I really wanted a fast Quick Guard to protect Mega Manectric from Fake Out and other priority attacks (especially +1 Atk Bisharp Sucker Punch, which I faced in the top 16 and successfully Quick Guarded against). Other than that, Talonflame’s priority Brave Bird helps me against some of the fast Pokemon that outspeed Lanturn and Mega Manectric. I probably should’ve gone with Adamant, but I went with Jolly so that I could confidently U-turn in front of Greninja and potentially Choice Scarfed Tyranitar.
Talonflame can also help to check Gardevoir, who is a big threat to my Electric types if it manages to Trace Volt Absorb or Lightningrod (alas, a Gardevoir did Trace Volt Absorb in my final round of swiss, which was a big factor in me losing that match). Other than that, Talonflame just has good type synergy with the rest of the team and fits nicely as the last member.
Overall, I was more than happy with my top 8 finish in Seattle. I got to use something weird and fun that actually sort of worked and, combined with my top 8 finish in Oregon, earned me a travel stipend to Nationals in Indianapolis. With the experience I gained from this tournament, I’ve already made a revamped team around the Lanturn and Mega Manectric combo, and unless I think of something more fun before then, I’ll be using it at Nationals. So if you’ll be in Indy, bring a towel! 😉
About the Author
Arti has been playing VGC since 2010. When he's not overachieving with awful Pokemon teams, he enjoys long walks on the beach and failed attempts to create Pokemon simulators.
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14 Responses to The Wild Wild Wet: Top 8 Seattle Regionals Team Report
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Been weeks and I’m still awestruck at losing to Choice Scarf Lanturn with Soak.
you used to have numbers in your username… now you’ve top cut two regionals in a row
does anyone else see the connection
One of my Japanese friends was using Scarf Soak Golduck back in BW2 days, and tried making that strategy work in X/Y. He also used Mega Manectric, but stuck to Golduck.
The concept is a very interesting one, and it’s nice to see it doing so well at a Regional. Definitely very creative, I imagine it to be amazing during Swiss, but probably tricky to utilize well in Bo3.
I wish you good luck for Nationals, it would be great to see SoakV2.0
That’s so cool.
The numbers, feathers. What do the numbers mean feathers?
And here we have a shining example of what she meant.
There’s something about Lanturn in the Northwest. Perhaps it’s all the rain in the area. It’s awesome getting to see it do well, though, and that combo was extremely imaginative. Great job on the team!
really interesting team indeed
I’ve always wondered how a Soak-based strategy would work, though like others I just stuck with lameo Golduck and never got past the conceptual PS testing phase. Definitely a nice team and grats on the T8!
I was thinking that with this strategy you have to double target on one opponent’s Pokemon on the combo soak + thunderbolt, did you have trouble with this? or you were able outpredict your opponent?
Discharge would be a better option, since Lanturn is immune to Discharge.
Interesting. I’ve also used a team with Soak (Golduck) + Manectric. I also used a grass type to take advantage of Soak and I too was forced to use Talonflame, even though I hate it. Nice.
I like it!
I love your team! Very innovative…wish we could have seen more of Lanturn in action on the battle videos saved on the stream though…did Lanturn really work as well as planned?
Everyone stay off of PS! For a few days unless you want to only face soak lanterns.