Oh, last I checked Low Kick was the norm n__n. I guess it could be rephrased to "non-HJK Mega Blaziken's are beaten by Gastrodon 1v1".Hjk > low kick
And most of the mega-blaziken are using hjk these days anyway.
Oh, last I checked Low Kick was the norm n__n. I guess it could be rephrased to "non-HJK Mega Blaziken's are beaten by Gastrodon 1v1".Hjk > low kick
And most of the mega-blaziken are using hjk these days anyway.
I totally agree with what you said.It hits Diancie/Quagsire/Now Gastrodon (and Manaphy :]) as well as being better at ghetto stomping hippodown
I have seen Quagsire run Protect instead of one of its STAB moves just to avoid the High Jump Kick 2HKO and to troll Mega Blaziken in general (Quaggy still soft checks Blaze). malefic also uses Protect on his Diancie. Although I don't know why this is, I am sure he has his reasons.It hits Diancie/Quagsire/Now Gastrodon (and Manaphy :]) as well as being better at ghetto stomping hippodown
I agree with WreckDra on this one. Those points are definitely valid, and I definitely know that Quagsire will run Protect, if not solely to buy time for lefties as a lot of moves tend to be very close 2HKOs (such as Zekrom's Outrage) as well as stall out toxic turns.I have seen Quagsire run Protect instead of one of its STAB moves just to avoid the High Jump Kick 2HKO and to troll Mega Blaziken in general (Quaggy still soft checks Blaze). malefic also uses Protect on his Diancie. Although I don't know why this is, I am sure he has his reasons.
Hippowdon is a case of "It's not worth it" in my opinion, since +2 High Jump Kick only has a 5/16 chance to OHKO Hippo after Stealth Rock, not including HJK's accuracy. On the flip side, Hippo has a meaty 5/8 chance to OHKO Blaze from full and will have a guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock or any prior damage Blaze has taken from setting up, or In Flare Blitz recoil. The match up is still in Hippo's favor no matter what move you choose and considering 2 of Mega Blaziken's common checks are Ghost-types (Ghost Arceus and Giratina-O), High Jump Kick just isn't worth running. What makes this worse is that it allows Gengar and Aegislash to cause a 50:50 should they be on your opponents team. Aegislash can force even more mind games with Blaziken with Kings Shield assuming it comes in on HJK. Other common checks are birds that do not care at all which Fighting-type STAB you run, Landorus-T who doesn't care which Kick you run, Gyarados who beats you anyways and a few other obscure checks. All in all, you are putting Blaze at greater risk versus Ghost-types, Protect users, and HJK,'s own accuracy flaw just for a 5/16 chance to OHKO Hippo after Stealth Rock (not including accuracy), a 49/50 chance to OHKO Gastrodon (including accuracy).
TL;DR: High Jump Kick is not worth running over Low Kick imo.
I mean I am for the drop but the arguements are severely flawed, Aegislash takes 57.4 % max from a +2 Xerneas meaning it's not OHKOd, and not even 2HKOd if you go for an in between KS to accumulate leftovers recovery. All your statements somehow contain a blade forme aegislash as the hit taker, which is plain unrealistic.aegislash should drop to B- or even C+.
this thing needs to rely on gyro ball to break through xerneas, one pokemon it's supposed to counter... until you realize gyro ball fails to OHKO +2 xerneas even after stealth rock damage, before aegislash gets OHKOed back by HP Fire / Thunder. same with mega gengar, it dies to Shadow Ball as it exposes its blade forme or gets perish trapped. mega mewtwo Y ohkoes its blade forme with Fire Blast and usually avoids the 2hko from gyro ball. aegislash is not a reliable counter to the biggest ubers threats at all. then you add the fact that its slow as shit, weak, not that bulky on the physical side and has severe 4mss, and you get a pokemon which in my eyes just does not fit B rank.
????aegislash should drop to B- or even C+.
this thing needs to rely on gyro ball to break through xerneas, one pokemon it's supposed to counter... until you realize gyro ball fails to OHKO +2 xerneas even after stealth rock damage, before aegislash gets OHKOed back by HP Fire / Thunder. same with mega gengar, it dies to Shadow Ball as it exposes its blade forme or gets perish trapped. mega mewtwo Y ohkoes its blade forme with Fire Blast and usually avoids the 2hko from gyro ball. aegislash is not a reliable counter to the biggest ubers threats at all. then you add the fact that its slow as shit, weak, not that bulky on the physical side and has severe 4mss, and you get a pokemon which in my eyes just does not fit B rank.
I feel the only couple things keeping Normal Arceus out of S are opportunity cost, the Defog buff, and the rise of status now that it almost needs a Life Orb to function correctly on Hyper Offense. There is new opportunity for it in Support Arceus formes with Defog providing crucial synergy and support for most teams. Wallceus can provide the support sure, but its defensive synergy is relatively bad and its typing leaves it with very little defensive niches when compared to other support Arceus formes like Grass, Water, Ghost, Rock and Fairy. The bottom line is, when using Arceus-Normal, you cannot use another Arceus forme which constricts it to Hyper Offense builds usually although there are a few successful defensive builds that use Wallceus (and I mean very few). The Defog buff constricts Extreme-killer sets even further by almost forcing them to be run on Hyper Offense builds that can keep up enough pressure to prevent Defog / Rapid Spin from ruining Arceus-Normal's hazard support that it so greatly appreciates to help it weaken other Arceus-formes, Groudon, Scizor (if not running a fire move) ect. with Extreme Speed not being a very strong STAB and Base 120 Atk not being the best by Uber standards. Life Orb is still the Item of choice on Extreme-Killer since it is almost forced to run a Jolly nature now. This makes it much more venerable to Burns and Toxic. This sucks when considering the generation shift made Toxic one of the best moves in Ubers and Will-O-Wisp usage has risen considerably due to the rise of improved support Arceus formes and just how dangerous some physical attackers like Zekrom are this gen.S Rank
The titans of the game. They bear massive offensive and defensive capabilities. Pokemon in this tier are extremely diverse, capable of fulfilling multiple roles on both defensive and offensive ends. There is virtually zero opportunity cost in using these Pokemon. They barely require support, if any, from the team and have immense utility to offer.
excuse me if i'm wrong, but I'm seeing a slight double standard here. Arceus-Normal was rejected from S-Rank because all it really does is set up and sweep, and sometimes revenge kill (although it does it damn well). Hack He Must made a very very strong argument that this should not deter it from being S-Rank due to its one set being the best in the entire game.
However, Mega Gengar could be said to fulfill the same kind of role. Mega Gengar is used to trap defensive threats so that ABC can sweep, e.g. remove Kia so Kyogre can rampage, remove Sylveon so Yveltal can rampage etc etc. Defensive teams don't use Gengar to remove Extremekiller so that Lugia/Quagsire/Wisp Arceus/whatever has an easier time, stall teams don't use Gengar to Destiny Bond away CM Refresh Arceus, etc etc, Gengar doesn't sweep, it traps something and gets rid of it, then (I tend to see this against balanced teams the most) sometimes gets a second kill with Destiny Bond if it didn't have to sacrifice itself vs opponent no. 1. Mega Gengar only really traps (i'm not downplaying it at all, it's damn good at what it does), but why exactly did you reject Arceus-Normal for S-Rank due to its lack of versatility when Gengar is there for its lack of versatility (not counting moves of course, e.g. Gengar runs HP Fire for Scizor, cause Ekiller can do the same to break any one of its checks and counters, e.g. LO Stone Edge for defensive Yveltal, even Giga Drain (!!!!) for Quagsire).
If someone can explain to me why this double standard is justified it'd be great, Arceus-Normal has gotten a lot lot better this generation as a huge portion of its checks are now complete garbage (e.g. Skarmory, Giratina) and the fact that it has several new offensive partners to play with in Xerneas and Blaziken. I'm not saying Arceus-Normal should be S per se, but there needs to be a better reason why it isn't S.
Basically yeah what WreckDra said. Also, I don't think Gengar is quite the best example, since supposedly all it does is trap and kill stuff. Well, that's not wrong but it horribly understates the effectiveness of that- Shadow Tag is so OP in general, and its utility is unrivaled.S Rank
The titans of the game. They bear massive offensive and defensive capabilities. Pokemon in this tier are extremely diverse, capable of fulfilling multiple roles on both defensive and offensive ends. There is virtually zero opportunity cost in using these Pokemon. They barely require support, if any, from the team and have immense utility to offer.
excuse me if i'm wrong, but I'm seeing a slight double standard here. Arceus-Normal was rejected from S-Rank because all it really does is set up and sweep, and sometimes revenge kill (although it does it damn well). Hack He Must made a very very strong argument that this should not deter it from being S-Rank due to its one set being the best in the entire game.
However, Mega Gengar could be said to fulfill the same kind of role. Mega Gengar is used to trap defensive threats so that ABC can sweep, e.g. remove Kia so Kyogre can rampage, remove Sylveon so Yveltal can rampage etc etc. Defensive teams don't use Gengar to remove Extremekiller so that Lugia/Quagsire/Wisp Arceus/whatever has an easier time, stall teams don't use Gengar to Destiny Bond away CM Refresh Arceus, etc etc, Gengar doesn't sweep, it traps something and gets rid of it, then (I tend to see this against balanced teams the most) sometimes gets a second kill with Destiny Bond if it didn't have to sacrifice itself vs opponent no. 1. Mega Gengar only really traps (i'm not downplaying it at all, it's damn good at what it does), but why exactly did you reject Arceus-Normal for S-Rank due to its lack of versatility when Gengar is there for its lack of versatility (not counting moves of course, e.g. Gengar runs HP Fire for Scizor, cause Ekiller can do the same to break any one of its checks and counters, e.g. LO Stone Edge for defensive Yveltal, even Giga Drain (!!!!) for Quagsire).
If someone can explain to me why this double standard is justified it'd be great, Arceus-Normal has gotten a lot lot better this generation as a huge portion of its checks are now complete garbage (e.g. Skarmory, Giratina) and the fact that it has several new offensive partners to play with in Xerneas and Blaziken. I'm not saying Arceus-Normal should be S per se, but there needs to be a better reason why it isn't S.
I think it's time to have an honest debate about it, as for me I feel more strongly convinced that anything but S-rank for this mon is total bullshit. However, I have already made my nice stances on this )my posts can be found early in this thread if anyone is interested) and I don't really feel like re-using the same argumentswhy is arceus normal anything but S rank.. you can theorymon this on paper for as long as you like but honestly its still the most deadly sweeper in the game
If you let your aegi stay in blade form against a xerneas you're using it wrong. You king's shield to get back to shield form to avoid the KO. Being perish trapped is a strike against every defensive pokemon. Aegislash is a good Xern check with a lot of bulk that doesn't take up a mega slot, unlike ma wile or scizor, or an Arceus slot like Arceus poison or steel (I guess). That's why it's B rank, because it's the best option without high opportunity cost, and therefore has a very solid niche in ubers.aegislash should drop to B- or even C+.
this thing needs to rely on gyro ball to break through xerneas, one pokemon it's supposed to counter... until you realize gyro ball fails to OHKO +2 xerneas even after stealth rock damage, before aegislash gets OHKOed back by HP Fire / Thunder. same with mega gengar, it dies to Shadow Ball as it exposes its blade forme or gets perish trapped. mega mewtwo Y ohkoes its blade forme with Fire Blast and usually avoids the 2hko from gyro ball. aegislash is not a reliable counter to the biggest ubers threats at all. then you add the fact that its slow as shit, weak, not that bulky on the physical side and has severe 4mss, and you get a pokemon which in my eyes just does not fit B rank.
I suppose I should reply to this. I've obviously done a few battles before with this team, and unless Klefki gets trapped I actually don't have too much trouble with Xerneas. If Xerneas is statused, Blissey beats it 1-on-1 (with the example of Psyshock, where I have to get a bit lucky to do so. Sub doesn't really matter though since with Klefki I can still status him regardless). Moonblast / Focus Blast do about 50% so depending if I used Toxic or Thunder Wave I can just Softboiled until Xerneas dies from Toxic damage, or Softboiled until a full paralysis, Seismic Toss and repeat.I disagree with putting Klefki in A+, it's simply not that good, albeit it's still a very useful mon. First off, to handle Xerneas Klefki needs large physical presence in form of its partners as just Thunder Waving while suiciding only stops Xerneas, without strong enough partners to pick it off you might have sacrifice 2-3 mons to check Xerneas. This means Klefki has trouble finding its ways into bulkier teams, especially stall and needs a bit more team support than you might think. Even though it can punish Defog Arceus via Toxic, not much can be done if said Defog Arceus is paired with a cleric unless you have Shadow Tag. Speaking of Shadow Tag, Klefki is Gothitelle prone unlike some other Xerneas checks (Scizor, Aegi, sdef Ferro+sdef Ogre etc). The best way to utilize Klefki is on quite offensive archetypes, it's simply not a mon you can slap on any team. Shadow Tag support+high physical presence somewhere on the build is almost mandatory so it kinda has its share of flaws.
To demonstrate my point, here is a replay from Harunos tour final- Kebabe vs Tomahawk: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ubers-15137
Tomahawk tries bringing a stall build that lacks pursuit and has Klefki as the Xerneas check. What we can initially spot is that even after Klefki manages to Thunder Wave a Geomancy Xerneas, 2-3 mons will still go down for his team as he lacks any way whatsover of scratching the +2 sdef. Blissey is not a reasonable answer, Psyshock has been proven to be the most useful coverage move with HP Fire and sub is as always something prevalent. Second thing is, Gothitelle traps the shit out of Klefki anyway so Kebabe doesn't even have to worry about paralysis. I have heard some weird arguements, especially when Magnezone was rejected, about how Klefki can still set 3 layers of spikes against the trapper and then it should be possible to handle Xerneas anyway. Assuming Xerneas is used on a team without Defog, then of course that is true but many successful teams I have seen this generation still has Defog support with their Geomancy Xerneas, it's just a far fetched argument that 3 layers of spikes will always be there.
I agree with Forry and Bronzong to lower ranks, Bronzong C and Forry C- seems fair.