Gen 6 The XY Ubers Viability Ranking Thread [Read Post #1000]

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wow, blaziken at A+? can someone say which set it uses and show me replays of it wrecking? i never had much trouble facing it, and it's higher than arceus-ghost, zekrom, and etc...
Blaziken is A+ because a set of SD/Knock Off/Flare Blitz/Low Kick crushes balanced and stallish teams, while a set of Protect/Knock Off/Flare Blitz/Low Kick is really tough to beat for fast/fragile teams. There's also the rare baton pass variant that poses it's own problems to common "checks" like Lando T. It's Mega Evolution is a vast improvement over the gen 5 life orb variant, because it's improved bulk and less recoil makes it much tougher to revenge with priority (Ekiller only does 65-77 with Adamant+Silk Scarf extremespeed, while mega blaze OHKO's in return with low kick) and it's base 100 speed means it often only needs to get to +1 to outspeed key scarfers.

I don't have replays on hand, but I suggest you try some of those sets for yourself.
 

Blue Jay

The notorious Good Wife
is a Contributor Alumnus
Let's briefly examine the proposed Yveltal sets in closer detail then.

Life Orb Yveltal
An excellent set and easily its best. The offensive presence is immense and the sustain is unusually good for something so offensive. I'm not sure what these "All Out" and "Mixed" variants are supposed to be; Dark Pulse, Oblivion Wing and Sucker Punch are all staples simply by virtue of being too good not to have, and then Taunt is usually preferred to shut down various defensive/support Pokemon, although U-turn works beautifully with Shadow Tag. Other options such as Foul Play or Focus Blast are mostly niche and only advantageous against very specific Pokemon or in very specific situations.

Fat Yveltal
A pretty solid set, defensive Yveltal is a solid answer to a lot of physical threats. It performs remarkably against Extremekiller Arceus, and does quite well against Ground-types, while being reasonably effective against the likes of Dragon Dance Rayquaza, Mega Kangaskhan and Mega Mewtwo X. Its main limitations are its difficulty checking Ho-Oh (which can cripple Yveltal's damage output with a burn, so that Yveltal no longer outdamages what Roost heals) and complete inability to check Zekrom, combined with its Stealth Rock weakness (which turns many 3HKOs into 2HKOs so that it cannot check many faster threats with Stealth Rock on the field). It's also technically possible to use the exact same set with Specially Defensive investment, but Yveltal is an ineffective special wall due to struggling to check many prominent special attackers effectively (Kyogre, Xerneas, Palkia, Electric Arceus and even opposing Life Orb Yveltal all being examples of major threats which it cannot check reliably or at all). Even if one does opt for such a set, it is a matter of reallocating EVs, rather than being a new set.

Scarf Yveltal
Not the strongest Scarf Pokemon, but quite a usable one nonetheless. The power is moderate compared to Kyogre and Zekrom, but excellent offensive typing allows it to revenge kill various key threats, U-turn to provide weak but helpful momentum, and it has surprise value on its side. A Stealth Rock weakness and dependence on inaccurate moves (such as Hurricane) to revenge kill certain targets hold it back somewhat, but it has its niche.

Specs Yveltal
No Taunt, no Sucker Punch, and instead two largely redundant coverage moves (the coverage between Dark Pulse and Oblivion Wing is so good that Focus Blast only adds a few realistic targets, and after that you're really strapped for sensible moves to add). Moreover, it still lacks the power and coverage to overcome its solid checks such as Fairy Arceus, Specially Defensive Xerneas and Sylveon, while also becoming easier to check in a sense due to being locked into one move.

Band Yveltal
An awful gimmick. Its movepool is simply poor for this, with almost nothing but low Base Power moves and a Sucker Punch which is unreliable, often predictable and a major liability to be locked into. As soon as the set is revealed almost every support Arceus forme easily walls it and cripples it with a burn (or outright KOs it, as with Fairy and Rock Arceus). This set also has no form of recovery whatsoever, which is typically one of Yveltal's main advantages and the way other offensive sets can mitigate the Stealth Rock weakness.

So, all in all there are three distinct, easily justified sets, as well as a few that are far less useful. Of the truly viable sets, the first is excellent, while the other two have some more significant limitations. Yveltal is an excellent Pokemon and quite versatile, but it is not S-rank material.
 
It's really versatile, doesn't really need a lot of support, you an fit him on a lot of teams without any problems, it can be threatening or an annoying stall, a pivot or a swepper, got a good typing, great stats, nice movepool, awesome abtility, what do you need seriously? Yveltal is S rank for sure.

I was JOKING about the banded one, damn smogon come on.
 
Dialga: Raised to A+

Dialga is a hugely versatile pokemon and it is one of the most underestimated pokemons, and it is better than it's current ranking suggests: it deserves a higher rank, A+ if not S.
It has an excellent typing: Steel/Dragon gives it resistances to many prominent offensive types such as electric, water, flying, psychic, and it is neutral to dragon, ice, fairy. even though it has lost its resistance to ghost types and dark types, it still has an excellent defensive typing, and the stats to back it. 100/120/100 are solid defensive stats, especially being backed by its typing. It might be weak to ground and fighting, but they are becoming rare. Fewer people are using groudon because of the drought nerf, kyogre factor and xerneas. Fighting types like blaziken and mewtwo-x can be checked by dialga in other manners. Offensively also its typing gives it STAB to dragon type moves which are very important considering ubers are riddled with dragon types, and the steel type, which can help defeat fairy types like sylveon, xerneas and arceus-fairy. In addition it has base 120 attack and base 150 special attack, which gives it the necessary raw power to defeat these pokemons.

It has an excellent movepool even by uber standards. It can learn support moves such as thunder wave, stealth rock, roar, toxic, which allow it to proficiently support its team by providing status, hazards and phazing support. It has an arsenal of attacking moves, with special attacks like dragon pulse, draco meteor, aura sphere, flash cannon, earth power, ice beam, thunder, fire blast, whereas it also learns physical moves such as dragon claw, iron head, earthquake, brick break, shadow claw, stone edge, dragon tail, allowing it to take the physical route too. It also learns moves like bulk up and can use it in conjunction with rest and sleep talk.

The amount of sets Dialga can run is innumerable. It can run a lead and support set with SR and Twave, it can phaze with roar or dragon tail, it can run a specs set to break walls with draco meteor and thunder, it can be a late game sweeper with a scarf set, it can go mixed, it can run a restalk bulk up set and slowly kill the opponent, and it can make use of a huge number of newly introduced items like assault vest and weakness policy.

Dialga is also very good at countering prominent threats in the uber tier. it can check xerneas with its steel type stab and an assault vest, it can counter kyogre as it resists its stab and can hit back with a thunder. it can beat mewtwo by spamming draco meteor and crippling it with a thunder wave. It serves as a good mega gengar counter because it can survive its attacks with its bulk and OHKO it with its own attacks. It resists extreme killer arceus' extremepeed and can spam draco meteor or aura sphere on it. It can break walls like lugia and giratina down with a thunder and dragon type STAB moves respectively, and defeat yveltal with ice beam or thunder. Also, it is neutral to dragon type moves, so it is capable of defeating a huge number of dragon types which includes rayquaza, palkia, giratina, reshiram, zekrom, lati@s, etc.

I have always been a huge fan of Dialga and I believe it is without a doubt the best dragon type pokemon and I hope other people realize why too. TO conclude, it has a great defensive typing, it has incredible versatility, capable of running support sets, defensive sets, special attacking sets, mixed sets, and it has very good stats, with defenses of 100/120/100 and base 150 special attack. It has a huge movepool, which also gives it so many options and it is excellent at checking dragon types and flying types of the uber tier in addition to newer threats such as xerneas. It requires little to no support because of its excellent defensive typing, vast movepool and stats. I hope the tiering council moves Dialga to a higher rank, because it is just that good.
 
A+ for Dialga seems really fine, it's a great SR user, good semi-check to Zekrom, Palkia, Kyogre as well as it straight up owns common support Arceus. Good Eleceus check with Toxic too.

It isn't as versatile as last generation, where scarf, specs, LO SR, BU, Lum+Twave SR were much more viable. Dialga kinda needs to run Lefties with Toxic and a very specially defensive spread this generation to beat down what it should and keep SR up properly. However, that set itself is so fucking good so it should mandate A+ rank easily.

To above poster: most of your arguments aren't exactly relevant (lol assault vest) but the placement of Dialga in A+ is correct nevertheless
 

Blue Jay

The notorious Good Wife
is a Contributor Alumnus
In light of various recent posts I would like to clarify a few concepts that seem to be misconstrued a lot.

Set
While we discuss the versatility of a Pokemon, its sets are defined by their function. The item can often be a defining characteristic, or it might be a certain move within the set. Changing a secondary aspect of the Pokemon (tweaks in EVs and/or Nature, using an item that does not change how it functions much, or changing an auxiliary move) typically does not create a different set. Geomancy Xerneas with various coverage moves or Substitute is still effectively the same set, while Tyranitar can use Chople Berry, Leftovers or Lum Berry and still function as a Special tank that sets Stealth Rock. Having more options within a set does add a little versatility, but for most part within this thread sets need to be quite distinct to be acknowledged as separate sets.

Counter
Perhaps the most misused word. Countering is being able to switch in against a Pokemon in virtually any scenario and either KO it before being KOed, or shutting down its utility. Gastrodon is a good example of a counter for Kyogre, being able to wall it indefinitely unless it is using some very obscure, suboptimal set. Quagsire similarly counters Extremekiller Arceus. Heatran counters Ferrothorn. Notably, walling is not necessarily countering a Pokemon, but its utility must be negated. Offensive Pokemon have no utility when they are completely walled, while support Pokemon must often be Taunted as well as walled to be countered, as otherwise they can still have significant utility such as setting entry hazards, removing opposing entry hazards, inflicting status, healing teammates, etc. True counters are rare, and beyond full stall teams any given team will only be able to counter a few, if any threats.

Check
Far more common than countering, checking means something along the lines of being able to render an opposing threat non-threatening to your team, albeit often being unable to switch in immediately against the threat or check it repeatedly. Klefki checks a lot of threats by paralyzing them, making them vulnerable to slower, powerful attackers. Klefki may be lost in the process, and may not be able to switch in (eg against Blaziken), but it has still crippled the threat. Mega Scizor can check Geomancy Xerneas by revenge killing it when weakened in the set up process, or also by surviving a hit from sets lacking Hidden Power Fire. Dialga can check Palkia by being able to switch in against most its moves, and still surviving a subsequent attack while threatening to OHKO with Draco Meteor (although Dialga can be worn down to the point where Palkia can break through quite easily). Ho-Oh can check Calm Mind Ghost Arceus, as it counters it in the absence of Stealth Rock, but not otherwise.


As for Dialga, I'm not entirely convinced. It does make a great SR user with defensive typing that's really annoying to try to deal with, especially since Ground- and Fighting-types mostly cannot switch in against Draco Meteor at all, and Toxic and good coverage deal with a lot of other things that might bother it. My main issue is how little it checks well; it excels against Electric Arceus, but that aside it really only ever soft checks big offensive threat, often being outsped and 2HKOed if it switches into a certain coverage move.
 

Fireburn

BARN ALL
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I have a couple propositions for changes:

Skarmory B -> C+: Skarmory, to be blunt, sucks in this metagame. Its niche of checking EKiller has been dwindling since more and more of them are running Overheat/Fire Blast, gets Taunted by M2X, gets completely owned by Zekrom and Ho-Oh...all its really good for nowadays is switching on Grounds/Mega Kangaskhan to Defog, which is an appreciable niche but not really worthy of B-rank. Its Spiking niche is mostly gone too with Deoxys formes, Klefki, or Ferrothorn beating it out in most teams.

Arceus-Poison B -> A-: Arceus forme that checks Xerneas well and is immune to Toxic, which is absolutely glorious in this metagame. Calm Mind sets are hard to check without Mewtwo/Heatran/Ho-Oh and the support set is good at spreading status and Defogging against things that beat most other Defoggers like Toxic Dialga and Klefki. It's main cons are Ground weakness and Mewtwo but the former can be mitigated with Will-O-Wisp at least. Gengar also has problems trapping it if it takes WoW on the switch since its own x4 Poison resistance can potentially screw it out of Destiny Bond (and Poisonceus resists Sludge Wave/Focus Blast).

Gyarados B- -> C+: I just think it fits the description of C-Rank better since you mostly use it to check Blaziken.

I also think Dialga and Ghostceus are fine at A, will post reasoning later.
 
I fully agree with A- for Arceus-Poison, if Mewtwo isn't on your team Poisonceus gives it hell and can give many mons a good run for their money. What it doesn't kill with Judgment, it stalls out with Will-O-Wisp and Recover. Only Deoxys and Mewtwo can really take this thing down reliably. And then there's the valuable utility of absorbing Toxic Spikes (which are somewhat common in the current meta), being immune to Toxic (which is everywhere), and checking Geomancy Xerneas, all in one.
A- is the perfect rank for Poison Arceus imo.
 

Disaster Area

formerly Piexplode
Nayrz you run poison jab>judgement. Does more to kyogre/xerneas/ho-oh/gothitelle. I haven't seen toxic spikes AT ALL this gen outside of scolipede leads (super rare) and edgar's awesome team. Being immune to toxic is amazing. I agree with A- rank but Nayrz's reasoning is flawed :)

It does its role really well and has lots of additional niches.
 
Not all sets run Poison Jab, and when used as the Calm Mind set (which is the most effective imo) Judgment is obviously the superior option. My post was aimed at the Calm Mind set. Toxic Spikes are somewhat common in higher level play from what I've seen, Scolipede leads are not exactly common but they are growing in use.
 

Inspirited

There is usually higher ground.
is a Contributor Alumnus
With all due respect Blue Jay, being able to set rocks while simotaniously destroying common support Arceus, Spinners ( except Tenta) and Skarmory is honestly enough to mandate it A+ imo, since it means it sets rocks sooooo much better than everything else with just these qualities. It does more than this also is the thing. Even if it only soft checks big threats, it still has another quality over setting Stealth Rock almost flawlessly and it already fully checks a big threat in Eleceus. It's annoying combination typing, bulk, coverage, and power also force trades that opponent doesn't want to make if it gets in for free after setting up rocks since, like you said, the pokemon that can take it down dislike switching in. The only pokemon that I can think of off the top of my head that can say they safely switch in to Dialga are Specially Defensive Kyogre (since thunder is a rarity these days), Blissey, Chansey, Defensive Xerneas and Heatran since just about everything else dislikes Draco, Fire Blast, or Toxic or hate taking a combination of the two since OHKOing Dialga is not easy at all. It can also carry Earth Power to take on Heatran so the only safe switch ins are the two blobs. So it already sets rocks flawlessly but it is also a major pain because of what kind of trade your opponent needs to make bring it down so long as Blissey isn't involved. As far as team archetypes go, this thing absolutely owns Hyper Offense with Roar, is one of the most annoying things to fight with Balance if it carries Toxic, and annoys Stall with its constant ability to get up rocks.

Rock solid pokemon

Backing Dialga for A+
 

Disaster Area

formerly Piexplode
Spinners?
[lol the only viable ones are forre/exca anyway and other mons can threaten them too]
I must admit it's never felt threatening when I've run support arceuses (the best ones don't mind it - rock (ok flash cannon hurts but not despreate), fairy (same, but immune to ur strongest attack), water (better have thunder), poison (nothing even SE vs this), grass (fire blast only hurts in sun really))
 

Inspirited

There is usually higher ground.
is a Contributor Alumnus
Spinners?
[lol the only viable ones are forre/exca anyway and other mons can threaten them too]
I must admit it's never felt threatening when I've run support arceuses (the best ones don't mind it - rock (ok flash cannon hurts but not despreate), fairy (same, but immune to ur strongest attack), water (better have thunder), poison (nothing even SE vs this), grass (fire blast only hurts in sun really))
Toxic is the bane of all the common Supportceus that you specified other than Poison and why have another mon keep spinners away when your Rocker already does this with Fire Blast.

Edit: see post #592
 
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Disaster Area

formerly Piexplode
Well when it's defog arceus stall rather than balance they'll be paired with a cleric,NONE of which dialga really threatens, except I guess physically defensive cleric xern (which is a rare variant as it is)
 

Inspirited

There is usually higher ground.
is a Contributor Alumnus
The idea is that Dialga sets Stealth Rock more reliably than any other pokemon which in of itself is an impressive feat for it added to the fact that its typing, movepool, and stat distribution make it a very frustrating pokemon to deal with. Its not like Dialga has to carry the team on its back either and clerics aren't hard to prepare for **cough Gengar cough**. Once they're gone, all of a sudden Dialga threatens your support Arceus, that isn't poison or steel, and proceeds to get up rocks to stay without much effort.
The fact that it sets rocks best is honestly reason enough to give it A+
 

Inspirited

There is usually higher ground.
is a Contributor Alumnus
I saw that Deo-N has been demoted to D rank. Does that mean that Deo-N is unbanned?
No, it doesn't matter how badly a pokemon does (or how badly outclassed it is in Deo-N's case) in Ubers, if it is too powerful for OU (which Deo-N is by far), then it will remain banned.
 
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Disaster Area

formerly Piexplode
Who runs a cleric and isn't prepared for gengar (I mean people who know what they're doing not ladderers such as chubby penguins with his chansey at the top of the ladder)?

Also gotta love how Shuckle, a mon with massive offensive capabilities, is ranked higher than some forms of arceus, with their terrible stats across the board.
 
Dialga should stay A rank. Honestly, it's one of the easier Pokemon to defog / spin against, thanks to its low speed and average special defense. It also suffers from losing its resistances to Ghost and Dark, meaning it's vulnerable to Knock Off and Mega Gengar, who can revenge kill weakened variants without having to rely on Focus Miss.
 
How is it easy to Defog against Dialga? It resists common support Arceus STAB attacks (water/grass/rock) and cripples them with Toxic, winning in the war of attrition if the Defog Arceus isn't paired with a cleric.

Knock Off is irrelevant to what Dialga can do as an SR user (only relelvant user being Blaziken so lol), and Gengar can pick off literally and weakened mon in the game with the proper coverage move.

Toxic owns all of them
No, Toxic definitely doesn't own any spinner.
 
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