Volcarona Stats: 85/60/65/135/105/100 (Tier: OU)
Volcarona is a potent sweeper that I don't doubt we are all familiar with. Characterized by low physical bulk and bad defensive typing, a 4x Stealth Rock weakness, and having a massive Special Attack statistic coupled with excellent coverage in Fire Blast, Giga Drain, and Hidden Power Ground/Bug Buzz. Volcarona also doesn't have a notable competitive ability. This sweeper has four notable weaknesses:
- A weakness to the common priority move Aqua Jet, and a low Physical defense in general rendering it weak to many physical attackers that can survive Volcarona's coverage moves, such as Gyarados.
- A typing that provides three common weaknesses and few particularly useful resistances. (Weak to: Flying, Rock (4x), Water. Resists: Bug, Fairy, Fighting, Grass (4x), Ice, Steel)
- Difficulty in setting up due to losing 50% of its health upon field entry if Stealth Rock is active on the field, and a weakness to Spikes.
- Extremely predictable movesets, even if it's powerful. For example, Gyarados will always beat Volcarona unless it's running say, HP Electric, which is just dumb coverage lol.
Aurumoth Stats: 110/120/99/117/60/94 (Tier: CAP)
Aurumoth is notorious in CAP for being an overall powerhouse, and backing competitive coverage of approximately half the types in the game. This is coupled with excellent mixed attacking stat, a weak defensive typing, a 2x Stealth Rock weakness, and three setup moves that are commonly considered among the best setup moves in the game. This CAP then has the excellent ability in No Guard, allowing it to abuse coverage of Hydro Pump, Overheat, Focus Blast, Blizzard, and Thunder. According to most players, Aurumoth has several weaknesses that mitigate this:
- Aurumoth has a weakness to common priority moves in Sucker Punch, while being neutral to most other relevant priority moves. Note that physical attackers are forced to break through a 110/99 Defense statistic (significantly more physical bulk than Rotom-W, a renowned Defensive pivot).
- A typing that provides many common weaknesses and few particularly useful resistances. (Weak to: Bug, Dark, Fire, Flying, Ghost, Rock. Resists: Fighting (4x), Ground, Psychic.
- Difficulty in setting up due to losing 25% of its health upon entering the field, and a weakness to Spikes.
Now here's the interesting part, where we compare Volcarona and Aurumoth's Quiver Dance sets.
- Weakness 1: Priority moves
Volcarona is weak to Aqua Jet, while being neutral to Sucker Punch. It resists Bullet Punch and Ice Shard, the other two potentially relevant priority. 85/65 defense.
Aurumoth is weak to Sucker Punch (which can be played around if you're luck), while being neutral to Ice Shard, Bullet Punch, and Aqua Jet. 110/99 defense.
Volcarona is weak to one reliable priority, neutral to the moderately reliable priority, and resisting two others. It is extremely vulnerable to physical attacks in general thanks to having frail physical bulk, meaning Aqua Jet is extremely likely to destroy the standard Firium-Z set. Aurumoth is weak to the one moderately reliable priority, while being neutral to the other relevant priority moves. This is all received on an excellent defense stat. These two Pokemon balanced out to have a similar weakness to priority as Volcarona suffers more, but has several resistances to priority, while Aurumoth is neutral to more but has a higher defense to combat the lack of resistance. Essentially, Volcarona is better against specific kinds of priority, while Aurumoth is in-general better against the average priority move.
This is another interesting aspect of both these bugs. Volcarona has three weaknesses, each to a relevant competitive typing (Flying, Rock, Water) and Rock being a quadruple weakness. Note that Volcarona loses 50% of its health from Stealth Rock because of this, and essentially cannot enter the field when Stealth Rock is active. On the other hand, it resists Bug, Fairy, Fighting, Steel, Grass, Ice, and Steel. Aurumoth has more total weaknesses (Bug, Dark, Fire, Flying, Ghost, Rock), but lacks a 4x weakness. The weakness to rock forces Aurumoth to lose 25% of its health if Stealth Rock is active, but this doesn't completely prevent Aurumoth from being usable when Stealth Rock is active. The resistances are Fighting, Ground, and Psychic.
Volcarona has better defensive typing technically, but can't enter the field if there are Stealth Rocks. Aurumoth has somewhat weaker defensive typing, but has equal or better resistances in terms of how useful they are, coupled with an annoying but not crippling Stealth Rock weakness. Both Pokemon have excellent offensive typing (Volcarona because Fire is great coverage, Aurumoth because Psychic is barely resisted with Bug coverage).
- Weakness 3: Coverage/Setting Up
Volcarona is the only one of these two that has an issue with coverage moves. Both have about equal odds of setting up if played correctly, and both use Quiver Dance most commonly. However, Aurumoth is significantly less predictable because it can run two other setup moves extremely well, and has many powerful coverage moves with no drawbacks thanks to No Guard. It can provide a coverage move to work around essentially anything that might counter it. Focus Blast hits Dark, Rock, and Steel types, Thunder hits Flying types, Blizzard hits Flying and Ground types, Overheat (especially with Firium-Z) hits Steel types, and Hydro Pump hits Ground and Rock types. Psyshock hits the normal go-to counter for special attackers, aka Chansey. Volcarona only has approximately four different moves that it chooses to run. Both Volcarona and Aurumoth cannot be easily revenge killed when at +1 Speed thanks to Quiver Dance. It is worth noting that Volcarona has a significantly better Speed Tier, and therefore a massive advantage in a lot of areas.