Nice thread. It's pretty cool seeing everyone's ideas on team building, here's my prespective:
I hate the simplicity of hyper offense teams (be the first to set up Rocks/Screens, then sweep before getting swept) so I usually stick to building semi-stall/balanced teams. Although semi-stall teams tend to be defensively oriented, ironically, the first thing I focus on is offense. Bubbly touched on the reasoning for this in an early post:
bubbly said:
Threat coverage should always always be a secondary consideration, even on stall. That's something even the best teambuilders often get wrong. Always make sure you can execute a fundamental strategy against the vast majority of teams.
To sum up that quote: It's kind of pointless to make a team that counters everything but has no goals of it's own and just runs around in circles until it's completely worn down. So with that in mind, my first order of business is always finding two BULKY wall-breakers that synergize almost perfectly OFFENSIVELY (by tearing down each other's walls) while also supporting the team defensively (by countering opposing threats.)
Mixed Salamence is a great example of a bulky wall-breaker because it puts a lot of pressure on opposing teams while also checking threats like Lucario, Gliscor, and Conkeldurr thanks to its movepool, speed, special attack, and Intimidate. On my sun team, for example, I paired Mixed Mence with another bulky wall-breaker in a Magma Storm + Taunt Heatran to tear down walls that give Salamence trouble such as Chansey, Jellicent, and Gastrodon (and as a bonus, the Salamence + Heatran combo synergizes pretty well defensively.)
Some other quick examples of bulky wall-breakers that I like to build a team around are Bulky Volcarona (counters Scizor, Lucario, and Toxicroak), Sub Jirachi (counters Special Dragons, Tyranitar, and even certain Rain teams), Taunt Gliscor (counters Breloom and Terrakion), Stall Breaker Mew (counters Reuniclus and Conkeldurr), and any Pokemon that learns Toxic Spikes. Once I decide on one of those, I try to find the things that wall it, then pair it with another bulky wall-breaker that can tear down those walls. Glass cannon, Life Orb sweepers such as Lucario, Infernape, and Latios rarely find a place on my teams (unless they are the team's revenge killer), because they usually get worn down by residual damage from LO, hazards, and/or weather before they flat out sweep opposing teams.
Once I have my two bulky offensive pokemon in place, I can start to focus on the defensive end. Any defensive core with Blissey/Chansey or a Steel+Water(+Grass/Dragon) combo (I wish people would stop calling this a FWG core because the Fire Pokemon is ALWAYS Heatran) usually holds up pretty well for me against common OU threats. The Pink Blob is self-explanatory and the Steel+Water combo is the core of many successful teams: Skarmory+Gastrodon (Tabloo), Scizor+Rotom (Volt-Turn), and Ferrothorn+Tentacruel (Rain Stall).
Lastly, when picking out the defensive core, I always make sure certain roles are filled (if they arent already filled by my wall breakers):
- Spinner (if I can't squeeze a spinner on the roster then I make my 2 bulky wall-breakers are immune to hazards. Tabloo is a good example of this since it relies on Reuniclus and Gengar+ToxicSpikes for wall breaking.)
- Speed/Scarf/Priority (very important, because it's impossible to hard counter every threat this generation, so sometimes I have to revenge kill a threat to keep it from sweeping my team.)
- Steel type (the stats and attacks of Dragons are just too powerful, so something has to tank hits from these overpowered threats.)
That's about it. Didn't mean to post a damn novel. Got a little carried away...