Alright, I'm coming off a really disappointing loss from this strategy used against me, and I thought we might discuss it and the various ways to make it less effective from a team-building perspective. Given the number of people using this strategy lately, including, as many on here know personally, at least one person using the strategy exclusively with all six pokemon, I figured it might be interesting to bring it into the limelight. I'll go through the basics for those who are perhaps not as familiar with the strategy, and then cover some ideas I had for making it less effective, in the hopes that other people can come up with even more.
Also, please, let's not talk about "ban this strategy" or "ban confusion" or things like that (or, I guess, the opposite, i.e. "stop being a baby and play the game"). I'd just like to talk about team building ideas. Obviously nobody is going to build a team around combatting this strategy, but the idea is that perhaps one of your pokemon slots is chosen with a thought to this strategy.
Basics: I'm not sure that this is an "official name," but I call it T-Swag because at it's core, the strategy comes down to pokemon with the moves thunder wave and swagger, almost always on a pokemon with prankster so both moves are generally guaranteed to move first. It's essentially a more dangerous parafusion: thunder wave to paralyze the opponent, swagger to confuse and boost attack making confusion more dangerous. Combined, you end up with a 37.5% chance of actually doing something--but failing to do something is more painful than standard parafusion thanks to the increased attack.
Additional moves: Outside of the core thunder wave and swagger, the stereotypical companion moves are substitute and foul play. Substitute makes it so that if the target does not move, they have to move twice afterward to do any actual damage, and foul play because after a swagger, the target's attack stat is doubled, in turn doubling foul play's power. So once you're safely behind a sub, you're guaranteed a likely-painful foul play hit.
List of common pokemon to use the strategy:
(I haven't actually seen M-Banette do it, likely because it doesn't get prankster until turn 2, but it's got the movepool to do so. I also didn't list Purrloin despite that I have seen it in a team, but it's basically a worse Liepard as anyone might have guessed.)
Potential monkey-wrenches: Ways to make the strategy less effective include:
Own Tempo: This ability blocks confusion. However, it's poor distribution means it will never realistically be seen.
Safeguard: Protects against both thunder wave AND confusion. But, unless you have prankster yourself and are faster than the opponent, they'll get one of the two and possibly both if you hit yourself/get fully paralyzed.
Multi-hit moves: If you can hit through the confusion and paralysis, you can potentially KO the opponent even if it has a substitute up. Unfortunately this gen's premier multi-hit move user is 3HKOd by its own confusion hit after swagger, and 2HKOd by foul play. Cloyster may work okay due to its great defense, but it can't break through Klefki and won't fare that well against defensive sableye.
Ground and electric types: Obviously, thunder wave won't work, increasing the chance of moving. I'm not aware of anyone using body slam for paralysis in this strategy like they do for paraflinch, but if they did an electric type would still block it.
Reducing foul play's power: Fairy, Dark, or Fighting types. Also, a 0 Attack IV and -Attack nature on anything that doesn't use its attack stat.
Volt-turn: Especially between Pokemon immune to t-wave, e.g. Rotom-W and Landorus. Only a 50% chance each time, and you get to have the repeated 10% chance that swagger will miss since switching out will force them to re-swagger. Also, they can't predict and re-swagger like they can with just switching out directly. The downside is that you can't get a non-confused hit in by waiting for the confusion to end naturally.
Lum berry: Absorbs one status, but won't work for teams with more than one t-swag user or against a pokemon that you can't OHKO. If the opponent goes swagger first, though, and you're a physical attacker, you might be able to take advantage of that and OHKO something you wouldn't be able to OHKO otherwise.
Taunt: An outspeeding prankster taunt can shut down the whole strategy. Unfortunately, Liepard and Thundy have very high speed stats (base 106 and 111, respectively), making the "outspeeding" part much harder.
Magic Guard status absorber: E.g., Clefable with a toxic orb. Can't be paralyzed, but can be confused. In Clefable's case though, it probably won't hurt much, and Clefable resists foul play.
Priority: Obviously, faster priority could help to hit before being statused, except that Thundy resists all common priority moves, Sableye is immune to some and probably takes little damage from the others, Klefki doesn't mind bullet punch or extreme speed and probably takes little in general from the fighting priority or shadow sneak. This is all assuming they're unboosted by swagger, since the idea of priority is to outspeed the opponent's prankster.
Physically defensive special-attacking tanks: Something like bold Sylveon/Clefable or bold Rotom-W. Takes little from confusion damage and foul play. Rotom has the advantage of being immune to paralysis, while Sylveon/Clefable have the advantage of taking even less damage from foul play.
Any other ideas to make this less effective? Any other variants of this? Perhaps in-battle strategies I missed?
Also, please, let's not talk about "ban this strategy" or "ban confusion" or things like that (or, I guess, the opposite, i.e. "stop being a baby and play the game"). I'd just like to talk about team building ideas. Obviously nobody is going to build a team around combatting this strategy, but the idea is that perhaps one of your pokemon slots is chosen with a thought to this strategy.
Basics: I'm not sure that this is an "official name," but I call it T-Swag because at it's core, the strategy comes down to pokemon with the moves thunder wave and swagger, almost always on a pokemon with prankster so both moves are generally guaranteed to move first. It's essentially a more dangerous parafusion: thunder wave to paralyze the opponent, swagger to confuse and boost attack making confusion more dangerous. Combined, you end up with a 37.5% chance of actually doing something--but failing to do something is more painful than standard parafusion thanks to the increased attack.
Additional moves: Outside of the core thunder wave and swagger, the stereotypical companion moves are substitute and foul play. Substitute makes it so that if the target does not move, they have to move twice afterward to do any actual damage, and foul play because after a swagger, the target's attack stat is doubled, in turn doubling foul play's power. So once you're safely behind a sub, you're guaranteed a likely-painful foul play hit.
List of common pokemon to use the strategy:
(I haven't actually seen M-Banette do it, likely because it doesn't get prankster until turn 2, but it's got the movepool to do so. I also didn't list Purrloin despite that I have seen it in a team, but it's basically a worse Liepard as anyone might have guessed.)
Potential monkey-wrenches: Ways to make the strategy less effective include:
Own Tempo: This ability blocks confusion. However, it's poor distribution means it will never realistically be seen.
Safeguard: Protects against both thunder wave AND confusion. But, unless you have prankster yourself and are faster than the opponent, they'll get one of the two and possibly both if you hit yourself/get fully paralyzed.
Multi-hit moves: If you can hit through the confusion and paralysis, you can potentially KO the opponent even if it has a substitute up. Unfortunately this gen's premier multi-hit move user is 3HKOd by its own confusion hit after swagger, and 2HKOd by foul play. Cloyster may work okay due to its great defense, but it can't break through Klefki and won't fare that well against defensive sableye.
Ground and electric types: Obviously, thunder wave won't work, increasing the chance of moving. I'm not aware of anyone using body slam for paralysis in this strategy like they do for paraflinch, but if they did an electric type would still block it.
Reducing foul play's power: Fairy, Dark, or Fighting types. Also, a 0 Attack IV and -Attack nature on anything that doesn't use its attack stat.
Volt-turn: Especially between Pokemon immune to t-wave, e.g. Rotom-W and Landorus. Only a 50% chance each time, and you get to have the repeated 10% chance that swagger will miss since switching out will force them to re-swagger. Also, they can't predict and re-swagger like they can with just switching out directly. The downside is that you can't get a non-confused hit in by waiting for the confusion to end naturally.
Lum berry: Absorbs one status, but won't work for teams with more than one t-swag user or against a pokemon that you can't OHKO. If the opponent goes swagger first, though, and you're a physical attacker, you might be able to take advantage of that and OHKO something you wouldn't be able to OHKO otherwise.
Taunt: An outspeeding prankster taunt can shut down the whole strategy. Unfortunately, Liepard and Thundy have very high speed stats (base 106 and 111, respectively), making the "outspeeding" part much harder.
Magic Guard status absorber: E.g., Clefable with a toxic orb. Can't be paralyzed, but can be confused. In Clefable's case though, it probably won't hurt much, and Clefable resists foul play.
Priority: Obviously, faster priority could help to hit before being statused, except that Thundy resists all common priority moves, Sableye is immune to some and probably takes little damage from the others, Klefki doesn't mind bullet punch or extreme speed and probably takes little in general from the fighting priority or shadow sneak. This is all assuming they're unboosted by swagger, since the idea of priority is to outspeed the opponent's prankster.
Physically defensive special-attacking tanks: Something like bold Sylveon/Clefable or bold Rotom-W. Takes little from confusion damage and foul play. Rotom has the advantage of being immune to paralysis, while Sylveon/Clefable have the advantage of taking even less damage from foul play.
Any other ideas to make this less effective? Any other variants of this? Perhaps in-battle strategies I missed?
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