It's pretty good as long as you get a proper set up going, but technically I could have just set up stealth rocks and used whirlwind with skarmory over and over. I did forget to give him leftovers as his items so he didn't get his 3rd layer down of spikes.

Whereas Riolu is the troll pokemon, you always want to use him as the second. I learned this after my battle with Talon, that you need to keep a backup pokemon just in case Xatu comes out or Riolu faints for some reason.

Mine is a tentacruel who is buffed up in defense and HP. I like tentaruel because he provides me with options, he knows toxic spikes, toxic, poison jab and supersonic. If his scraggy didn't have shed skin, the poison and confusion would have killed him faster :p