Personally, I don't like dealing with Focus Miss unless I absolutely need to. Trying to fish for a 2HKO seems a bit much
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Other ORAS Metagame Discussion
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We're also forgetting that gatr doesn't have to worry about a stealth rock weakness and is pure water type, giving him more setup opportunities. Comparing gyara to gatr is like comparing Volcarona to venomoth.
Feraligatr has enough advantages over Gyarados to give it a decent niche as a Dragon Dancer. No Stealth Rock weakness, solid overall bulk (even better physical bulk once Intimidate is no longer a factor), and no Life Orb recoil give it some defensive perks over similar Gyarados sets. Additionally, as we all know by now, Feraligatr's power advantage is pretty significant. Gyarados's extra resistances, greater special bulk, greater initial physical bulk while Intimidate is in play, and access to key moves like Taunt and a strong secondary STAB give it significant advantages of its own, but I don't think it'll be too hard to find a place for Feraligatr as a Dragon Dance sweeper.
Would it be redundant to run both gatr and dos? Theoretically speaking gatr could wear down and bait all of Gyara's checks to ease Gyara's sweep later on. It's redundant typing wise but water is good defensively anyway, and most people don't like to bring Gyara in until they aim to close the game so defensively it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
I'd be very wary of doing that as it'd make you very Raikou/Manectric/Mag weak, but I suppose the chance to now try out dual Water Dance is pretty nice. Just run it with... I dunno, SpD Hippo or something?
Yeah I figure you'd need a lot of patching with the rest of the team to make it viable but I like the sound of that. Rotom-H may even be of use with hazard support, but I'm theorymoning a whole team now. Gonna be fun to test when gatr arrives. :)
SketchUp
Don't let your memes be dreams
I've played a lot with Mega Aerodactyl in the past few days and it is really good at the moment. I use it as a late game cleaner once all the threats like Metagross and Slowbro are gone or weakened and it does work every game. In only the A and S ranks it beats Keldeo, Mega Altaria, Charizard-X, Clefable, Mega Diancie, Gengar, Heatran, Landorus, Landorus-T (except Scarf), Mega Lopunny, Talonflame, Thundurus, Celebi, Charizard-Y, Excadrill (except Sand Rush) Mega Gallade, Garchomp, Mega Gardevoir, Mega Pinsir, Mega Venusaur, Diggersby, Heracross, Magnezone and Tornadus-T 1v1. It also wins against stuff like Lati@s, Jirachi, Mega Metagross and Manaphy once they are weakened.
I use a spread of 40 HP / 252 Atk / 216 Spe. With this spread you outspeed Mega Beedrill, Jolly +1 Mega Altaria and Scarfers below 81 speed. Aerial Ace / Stone Edge / Ice Fang / Earthquake is the coverage I run. Fire Fang and Aqua Tail are also options for the All-Out Attacker set but I prefer these moves because they give the most coverage for OU.
i hate the fact taht they did not fix the HA of meganium and samurott. they changed the abilities of zapdos, scolipede and chandelure (GF I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU THAT THREE CRIMES), couldn't at least give them something like magic guard (on a decent wall this is awesome, shitty pure grass type or not) and serene grace (if you wonder why, four words: Swords Dance Razor Shell. 100% chance to drop defense? yes please)? those two abilities would at least make them usable
EDIT: oh sorry kurona, i forgot the most important thing.
about the newly released mons, i don't see they will get really up. maybe the gator will get to UU with a bit of luck but nothing else.
and the berries? i think salamory outclasses custapmory. +1 speed suicide skarm is really fast.
guaranteeing you attack first once (unless the oponent is not naive and uses a priority move) vs giving you enough speed to attack first anyway? i see no diference if you get KOed instantly, and if you don't, you keep the boost to continue laying hazards. PE against a faster suicide lead who you can keep taunting with the help of salac berry while you lay down hazards and more hazards. honestly i don't see the interest on custap berry skarmory anymore. maybe for wobba it will do the trick, but not for the metal bird, who shouldn't use and in fact it should never have used the custap berry. it's just not worth it
and in another thing: gothitelle
for gothitelle, if he is a problem we should ban anything similar to Tricklatios or Knock off landorus I:
let's consider you have a stall team and i have a choice specs latios (and i consider it a nice set, luring any anti defogger to get smashed by Psyshock, Surf or Draco Meteor) and you have a previously damaged quagsire. let's say i sent it on an EQ directed to my bisharp
the latios can abuse Unaware to spam DM until it dies. you have the fat blob and mega eye.
what you do?
- send mega sableye for if he uses psyshock to take a good chunk of chansey (but never coming close to a 2HKO on the stantard set) while still smacking quagsire?
- or send chansey on DM who will OHKO both?
obviously the safest choice is send the pink blob, except that if latios uses Trick intead of an attacking move your cleric just got screwed for the rest of the game and latios still can do some damage, and even pass away the eviolite to something else, and recover his specs so he can keep killing stuff later.
same scenario for knock off Landorus I gives the same guessing game.
on shorts, trick+choice item is the traditional bane of stall, and knock off gets the same merit due to crippling the sturdiest walls, and those metods are second only to Taunt, who screws stall even more at the cost of magic bounce trolling you (but who cares, m-sableye is immune to both knock off and trick anyway so it's not a big deal). this has always been this way and it will always be, shadow tag securing the target gets screwed 100% the time or not (and any skilled player using either wallbreaker mentioned above will win the scenario 2 times of every 3 thanks to the fact that even if the stall team goes whith a god-predictor-player, all it does is delay things as you can just switch out and try again later)
EDIT: oh sorry kurona, i forgot the most important thing.
about the newly released mons, i don't see they will get really up. maybe the gator will get to UU with a bit of luck but nothing else.
and the berries? i think salamory outclasses custapmory. +1 speed suicide skarm is really fast.
guaranteeing you attack first once (unless the oponent is not naive and uses a priority move) vs giving you enough speed to attack first anyway? i see no diference if you get KOed instantly, and if you don't, you keep the boost to continue laying hazards. PE against a faster suicide lead who you can keep taunting with the help of salac berry while you lay down hazards and more hazards. honestly i don't see the interest on custap berry skarmory anymore. maybe for wobba it will do the trick, but not for the metal bird, who shouldn't use and in fact it should never have used the custap berry. it's just not worth it
and in another thing: gothitelle
for gothitelle, if he is a problem we should ban anything similar to Tricklatios or Knock off landorus I:
let's consider you have a stall team and i have a choice specs latios (and i consider it a nice set, luring any anti defogger to get smashed by Psyshock, Surf or Draco Meteor) and you have a previously damaged quagsire. let's say i sent it on an EQ directed to my bisharp
the latios can abuse Unaware to spam DM until it dies. you have the fat blob and mega eye.
what you do?
- send mega sableye for if he uses psyshock to take a good chunk of chansey (but never coming close to a 2HKO on the stantard set) while still smacking quagsire?
- or send chansey on DM who will OHKO both?
obviously the safest choice is send the pink blob, except that if latios uses Trick intead of an attacking move your cleric just got screwed for the rest of the game and latios still can do some damage, and even pass away the eviolite to something else, and recover his specs so he can keep killing stuff later.
same scenario for knock off Landorus I gives the same guessing game.
on shorts, trick+choice item is the traditional bane of stall, and knock off gets the same merit due to crippling the sturdiest walls, and those metods are second only to Taunt, who screws stall even more at the cost of magic bounce trolling you (but who cares, m-sableye is immune to both knock off and trick anyway so it's not a big deal). this has always been this way and it will always be, shadow tag securing the target gets screwed 100% the time or not (and any skilled player using either wallbreaker mentioned above will win the scenario 2 times of every 3 thanks to the fact that even if the stall team goes whith a god-predictor-player, all it does is delay things as you can just switch out and try again later)
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It means that's how many EVs you allocate to the Poemon, in that stat. A Pokémon can only have a total of 510 EVs, and a single stat can only have a Max of 252; this means the most EVs you can give a Pokémon by maxing out its stats are 252 + 252 + 6 left over (but the last two don't change it's stats, so that's 252 + 252 + 4. In breloom's case it means it has a very high Atk stat and a defense stat that is exactly one point higher than an untrained breloom. If you didn't have that 4 points in defense, you'd be wasting them!
well, it's not like a single point on anything bar HP (to make you loose a bit more or less on residual damage) or speed allowing you outspeed the non-trained equivalent or the ones with forced 30 speed IVs (especially the ones forced to run the s***** HP fire for coverage)
There is a small benefit; Download. If you have identical defences and don't invest in them like, say, Serperior, you can run 4 EVs in Special Defence. This means users of Download, i.e. Porygon2, will get a useless attack boost instead of special attack.
makes sense, alright thanks! so i love poison types, i understand they have good defense, but they lack in a lot of offensive moves, say i have a tentacle and a dragalge, what would be good EVs to make sure they have?
SketchUp
Don't let your memes be dreams
I think you don't understand what a Gothitelle does. Gothitelle traps a pokemon like Chansey, trick him a choice item and kill it (last turn it can just trick his choice scarf/specs back to repeat this on Quagsire/Heatran/Anything it wants to kill) A Latios with Trick is a lure, as it lures in Chansey (or whatever the stall team has for the Latios) and tricks his Eviolite, Chansey can just switch out, he is still alive. Against Gothitelle it would be already dead. How is Trick Latios not competitive? Not even talking about Knock Off Landorus-I because that is just one of the most stupid things I have ever read here.
specs chansey is dead weight, and is a perfect setup bait. actually, it is WORSE than having him dead.
also, choiced or not, without his eviolite, the next time chansey goes in, it will get one shoted. thats why you should try to give away the eviolite and recover the choice specs.
I comented those two because they are the most reliable chansey lures around, mainly because nobody will send chansey on something physical (almost all knock off users are full physical, landorus I is trully the only special wallbreaker with access to knock off and enough coverage to open space for it) and because chansey is literally the only thing than can switch in on any offensive move of latios. on shorts, those two were the two better examples to defend my argument
i know exactly what does the trick+CM set because i have tried it and honestly, it's underwhelming. gothitelle is frail even with max sdef and HP. unless your oponent is dumb, gothitelle will never sweep with that, not to mention this set uses mono psychic coverage who makes you PERFECT Pursuit bait. you know the meaning of the term "fighting fire with fire"? if the trapper gives you problems, just make it taste a dose of its own medicine with a tyranitar
also, choiced or not, without his eviolite, the next time chansey goes in, it will get one shoted. thats why you should try to give away the eviolite and recover the choice specs.
I comented those two because they are the most reliable chansey lures around, mainly because nobody will send chansey on something physical (almost all knock off users are full physical, landorus I is trully the only special wallbreaker with access to knock off and enough coverage to open space for it) and because chansey is literally the only thing than can switch in on any offensive move of latios. on shorts, those two were the two better examples to defend my argument
i know exactly what does the trick+CM set because i have tried it and honestly, it's underwhelming. gothitelle is frail even with max sdef and HP. unless your oponent is dumb, gothitelle will never sweep with that, not to mention this set uses mono psychic coverage who makes you PERFECT Pursuit bait. you know the meaning of the term "fighting fire with fire"? if the trapper gives you problems, just make it taste a dose of its own medicine with a tyranitar
You're missing the point here -- Chansey can switch out before Latios tricks the choice item. It can't do that against Gothitelle.
This discussion should be taken to the other thread describing unhealthy meta-game trends cause I already know this is going to be a long drawn out argument and it's not going to end well. Also you're missing the point that Gothitelle's job is to trap and eliminate that one check or support utility for the team to sweep or wall-break. Gothitelle teams take Pursuit trappers into account and as such they'll utilize megas and set up sweepers that aren't pursuit susceptible to net a sweep or win. You can't say "fight fire with fire" when the situation goes both ways. That's just silly.
not really, the idea of latios/landorus is trick him on the switch when she goes in to tank (what she thinks is) an offensive move. if you send latios on chansey THEN use trick, it's obvious the player will suspect a thing and switch out.
but we are getting off the main point. gothitelle is not as dangerous, most teams already carry secondary responses to the main sweepers, because it's incredibly easy to loose the main response against a well played counter-counter (magnezone+(insert dragon-type here)) or lure(the mentioned tricklatios taking out the blob+CM sableye), or just to plain bad luck (let's say my mamoswine ends flinching your skarmory and KOes it, if you don't have another way to stop him, you will loose). pursuit (or simply offensive pressure or status, Rest is nor very reliable even with shadow tag) limiting gothi to KO a maximum of 1 of the responses should do the trick already if you are carefull enough.
and that's not even considering there are some mons who are ghost types or that already carry shed shell for magnet or dugtrio (in BW shed shell heatran and ninetales, and even tyranitars for the latter were not too uncommon). gothitelle cannot trap ANYTHING. you can select playing smart, like volt switch forretress was used to prevent HP fire from any traper roasting it, or use something that can afford get trapped and cares little of CM (ej unaware clefable) as a backup cleric. after all, 8 more PPs of Aromaterapy/Heal Bell never hurt when facing a team full of slude bombs, discharges, scalds and lava plumes
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Ask this question in the Simple Q&A thread and we'll get you sorted out there :) This thread's for OU Metagame discussion!
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/xy-simple-questions-simple-answers-read-the-op-first.3489309/
Just going to say, the idea of a "counter-counter" goes both ways, but doesn't necessarily always penalize the Stall player to such a degree that they need to intentionally prepare a secondary check (most times that just happens by nature of prepping for something else). The main thing a Stall Team needs more than anything is consistency, the ability for a Pokemon to be able to check/counter what it was included for even if they might try lure tactics or have certain support.
Regardless of whether you think it should be Gothitelle or Shadow Tag, you're underselling the kind of impact losing just 1 member can have not just for Stall, but for any team. Stall depends very heavily on making sure it has core to handle Pokemon. Losing one member of that core severely reduces the effectiveness of the team, since it now means the other members of it are inherently weak to that threat. Losing my Ferrothorn to Slowbro or Latios can be pinned on poor playing (whether it's not reading a lure or just being outpredicted in what I do): losing it to Gothitelle is something I can do very little about. The inherent problem is the fact that even if stall can prepare secondary answers to threats, Shadow Tag is inherently impossible to prepare for, which is why the ability is such a shit for Stall teams, who's biggest priority is preparation to minimize the effect of being outplayed. Heck, an offensive or balance team is actively hurt if they lose an offensive mon who was their answer to something like Clefable or Mega Sableye, or their cleric/hazard setter for a team depending on those to keep their status weak or less durable mons healthy.
The thing that makes Goth (arguably) uncompetitive is that the lack of switching means you can't play around it, period. Even in the Trick Latios lure example you gave, Chansey getting Tricked was the result of the misplay, which simply falls on one player making a better decision of their options. If my Chansey gets trapped, I HAVE no options. I can't even switch out to that "secondary" answer until Chansey's crippled or fainted.
Shed Shell, U-turn, Volt Switch, and Baton Pass.
Not saying I am for or against a test for Shadow Tag, but it is possible to prepare for by replacing Chansey with Blissey holding Shed Shell or giving it to other things you don't want trapped.
Okay, probably exaggerated a bit. I guess the better wording is it's almost impossible to prepare for without compromising the effectiveness. Blissey can work if you're that worried, but consider that it's noticeably worse than Chansey in virtually every situation, all to avoid getting shit on by Gothitelle (not even to beat it like lures).
Ferrothorn and Skarmory run Shed Shell because of Magnezone sometimes, but the gap between the effectiveness of Leftovers vs Shed Shell on them is much wider than on something like Blissey vs Eviolite Chansey (most only argue preference because of Lefties for passive recovery) or on something like Heatran.
It's already hard enough to make a consistent stall team without having half of it running Shed Shell. It's like having to run scarf greninja to beat Megamence, I have to run a inferior version of certain mon so I can have a chance against a threat. The only difference is that thankfully Goth is not everywhere.
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