Team Building Lesson 3- The Lead

Introduction
This may be the most important lessons I will teach so it is vital you read it in it's entirty, and if you don't quite understand something I explain then please ask about it, I will respond. Choosing the right lead for your team is the deciding factor to any battle, and knowing what to expect from your opponent's lead is equally important. How well your lead proforms may determine how the rest of the battle goes. In this lesson I will give two examples, normal lead and anti-lead.

Jirachi (I had that once, burned like a mother F*&^%)

Ability: Serene Grace
Nature: Careful
Item: Focus sash
EV's: 252 SpA/ 252 SpD/ 6 Spe
Moveset: U-turn
Stealth Rock
Healing Wish
Doom Desire

This is something you will very rarely see me put up in one of these, one of my own personal sets. I can tell you from experience this build works great. Havign the serene grace ability (loses any status issues, I.E. burn/poison, upon leaving the battle.) you don't have to worry about paralys teams or accidentally attacking into a flame body. Now the only thing you may notice about this set is that it is a mostly support set. Having stealth rock is geat for any game, cause that starting damage will break focus sashes and sturdy pokemon, and if the wrong pokemon comes out, (Any pokemon flying and fire) they will lose half their hp right off the bat. Healing wish is something really speacial. There is only one other move like it (Lunar dance) and very few pokemon can learn it, like 2 or 3. What it will do is by sacaficing it's self, Jirachi will completely heal the next pokemon of all status conditions and bring it back up to full health before anything is able to touch it, and if healing wish goes first, the attacking pokemon's attack won't hit anything. It's perfect for when your sweeper has taken a beating or you need a wall to be healed up. U-turn, for you noobies out there, is a decently powerful bug type attack that will switchout your pokemon for another of your choice, but keep in mind that if you go first, the pokemon you bring in will be hit by the opponent's attacking pokemon. And finally... the sexiest move in all of pokemon. Doom Desire, Jirachi's signature move. After 2 turns, as long as jirachi is still concious, will hit whatever enemy pokemon out at that time. Now here is the kicker. This move is steel type, has a power 140, and will hit any pokemon, regardless of type (Excluding pokemon weak to steel) for a normal hit. Meaning they take the full foce of this wickedly powerful move no matte what they send out, even another steel type. Now, hee is typically what you want to do fo the start of a battle. Stealth rock, doom desire, u-turn. That way, you set up the rocks, have a huge chunk of damage coming, do some damage, and switchout into a sweeper or whatever you need. Now since Jirachi isn't the fastest (Grant it she is fast) she may be outspeeded by other leads, and if she starts taking too much damage, switch out after the stealth rocks. You need to save her for the healing wish and doom desie won't work if you retreat so thee is no point in using it.

Mienshao (Where the hell do they come up with these names?)

Ability: Regenorator
Nature: Naive
Item: Focus Sash
EV's: 252 Att/ 6 HP/ 252 Spe
Moveset: Fake-Out
U-Turn
Hi-Jump Kick
Ice Punch

First off, I don't use anti-leads very often. So this isn;t exactly my feild of expertise. But I do know what they ae and how they work. Before I begin, this specific anti lead also has the ability to sweep, which is an advantage to all anti leads, but they don't have the support characteristics as othe leads do. What Mienshao will do is lead in with Fake-out, which will always hit first, and will always cause a flinch, but only at the start of the battle. It's fairly weak and after that becomes useless. What this will do is break the focus sash or sturdy ability, since if the pokemon isn't at 100% hp they won't work. Once that's broken, you go in for the kill using your attacking moves. All these moves ae self explainitory or I explained it already. Just one you've got to watch out for, if you miss with Hi-jump kick, which happen's maybe once out of every 5 times, it will deal signifigant damage to yourself.

Conclusion
I wasn't kidding when I said this is the most important pat of any team. Do you want to get set up for the rest of you team to sweep? Or do you want to prevent your opponent from setting up for the sweep? Just some exta little tid bits of knowledge, other good set-up lead moves ae Spikes and Toxic spikes. Spikes is the ground version of stealth rock, except in order to get the full damage from it you need to lay down a total of 3 layers. Toxic spikes poiso and enemy pokemon on contact, and if you can get a second layer down the poison will start off more severe. Now the disadvantage to using toxic spikes is that if a poison type that doesn;t have levitate comes out the toxic spikes will go away. Another thing to watch out for is rapid spin, which as I have explained before, will clea out all entry hazards. And as long as I'm at it, another good anti-lead move is Taunt. When taunt is used, the opposing pokemon can only use attacking moves. A few good leads are Shuckle, Aerodactyl, Skamory, Forretress, or Weavile. But you are in no way limited to this.

Next Lesson: Revenge Killer

I'm so proud of you guys. So smart already. By no means is a a lead as we have explained required on a team. They have their advantages to them and that's why they are important but I've seen people do good without one, being able to take out my lead before I could get my full set up done. But not any pokemon can lead. Leads equire a specific set of skills or attacks, and it is tough to really explain everything you can do with a lead. I've explained most of this but thee is still a lot I haven't included in this lesson.