Finally! Soloed machamp
I am so excited because I thought it was an impossible task for my current pokemons. I specially registered an account here to share my feelings and experiences. Here is my lineup:
Espeon C/FS 15/9/12 Slowking C/P 14/15/11
Zam PC/FS 12/15/13 Ex C/P 12/15/10
Gengar 15/9/8 SC/Sludge Bomb Dr DB/H 15/13/11
Actually I just wanna have a try with little confidence at the beginning since I thought my lineup lacked enough DPS and I have failed (with other lineups) many times before. To my surprise, however, I finally did it at this time! The weather is sunny. The charge move is Heavy Slam. Here are some of my experience:
1. Order matters. I got two attempts. At the first, I put three glass cannons in the front then all my pokemons faint. In my second attempt I changed the order as the picture below. My strategy is a glass cannon followed by a bulky one to avoid the next glass cannon being quickly wiped out. Then I thought this change worked.
2. Try to dodge charge move for glass cannons. You could even stop your fast move to prepare dodging. Don't be afraid of wasting time for dodging since two FS from per glass cannons are quite crucial.
3. Do not underestimate Slowking! I got this tip from a Youtube raid video. Since I missed Lugia last year I choose slowking as an alternative. Actually it is not bad.
Later this day I tried another Machamp with Dynamic Punch. And I made it again! Both battles had around 10s left. Although it is tough for me I believe that now I could finally solo Machamp!
Answers
Machamp can be soloed even by very suboptimal lineups. For me, i had the following:
Gardevoir C/DG
Espeon ZH/FS
Gengar H/SB
Gardevoir C/SB
Dragonite DT/H
Ho-Oh EX/SB
Most of them aren't level 30 and i wasn't prepared to do it, but i still made it with 5 seconds left. Be noted the weather was cloudy and it had counter/close combat.
But there is nothing really suboptimal about this setup!
I just failed 3 attempts with my suboptimal setups:
2600 Espeon C/PB (bad charge move)
2450 Alakazam PC/SB
2100 Espeon C/P
1906 Slowbro C/P (best!)
3205 Dragonite DT/O
and dodging the Heavy Slams a lot. Maybe 8% of Machamp stamina left.
Also thrown in:
2298 Exeggutor E/SB
1775 Banette SC/SB
1867 Clefable ZH/DG
Your real problem is not enough DPS, but if you are dodging a lot of heavy slams, you are destined to fail even with a stronger lineup. Dodging greatly reduces DPS.
Your C/PB Espeon is fine. That PC/SB Alakazam, on the other hand, is terrible for this application. PC does very little damage, and SB is considerably worse against Machamp than PB (which gets STAB and 1.4x super effective damage). I can just imagine you pinging the Machamp boss with PC, and then dodging a ton so that you can launch SB, which does only neutral damage. I'm sure it seems like you are getting a lot of damage out of that Zam, but you are just wasting time; you would be better off with a C/FS Zam that dies after launching a singe FS with no dodging.
When you have a team like this that doesn't do enough DPS, dodging won't help you, and it only reduces your DPS further. You need to assemble a high-DPS team that will allow you to do minimal dodging (preferably none) and win with 30+ seconds remaining. That means confusion plus a psychic charge move on Alakazam/Espeon to get ahead of the clock, and a few bulky but effective counters at the end to ensure survivability until the Machamp is dead. The DT/O Dragonite is probably good enough as a bulky anchor (DT/H would be better), but the Slowbro and Clefable just don't do enough DPS (the Exeggutor and Banette are worthless against Machamp). And when lack of DPS is your problem, dodging a lot just exacerbates that problem.
