Trickscarf Taunt Rest Gothitelle is worthless. Complete garbage. A pathetic attempt at making a "stallbreaker" that, in all honesty, shouldn't even exist, regardless of whether this is in a ladder or tournament environment. It's literally the biggest waste of a teamslot in 95% of all games while you get the occassional "good matchup" 5% of the time. That is not smart teambuilding or Pokemon'ing or playing or whatever. It is a shitty ladder gimmick innovated by people such as
this guy who define the ladder and make me wonder whether the ladder is worth anything at all or just inherently doomed to be worthless. If those kind of players are "top of the ladder" (and apparently this guy was) and are considered "the most skilled players of the game" then I'm glad to outline why this set is as awful as it is.
First of all, when looking at this set in a ladder environment, it might make sense. The higher-up ladder is dominated by Stall and for good reason: A bad player using Stall will pretty much always beat a bad player using Offense; the Stall player can just keep making systematic A-B switches while the Offense player will be unable to make the "plays", or double switches and right long term decisions needed to break that cycle of switches. By that logic you also don't need your whole team of 6 to handle all offensive threats since you're never really "threatened" by most players, which in turn means that you can devote that spot to a stallbreaker of your own. This means that, on the ladder side of things which is filled with mediocre and awful players, Stall will always dominate, so a Stall team that is able to beat other Stall teams will obviously do well. (Note that this only applies to "bad" players or "ladder" players; note that I might use the two synonymous at times when they obviously aren't always to be used in such a fashion but that's just how I see it when stuff like this awful Gothitelle set runs rampant. Furthermore, on a higher level of play, most of the stuff I outlined above obviously doesn't apply anymore as many more opportunities to outplay your opponent get used by "high level players". That is the reason why Stall as a whole is a lot more common on ladder than in tournaments: it's a lot easier and affordable to "play well" or "make plays" with Offense against Stall or even Offense against Offense than Stall against Offense as the stall players risks losing a crucial part of their team by going for double switches or by trying to deny double switches against an offensive player and thus can't risk it most of the time.)
However, that is inherently flawed thinking. By adding this set we are basically telling players "here, instead of actually thinking or improving your game just add this Pokemon which leaves you down 5-6 against offense but kind of wrecks some stall teams, especially on ladder". That is not the kind of thinking we should advocate or even promote. That is not to say that every player should run offense or "try to make plays" or whatever; Stall is obviously still a very valid option but when you use a Pokemon that literally only beats some sort of stall and is complete deadweight against other forms of stall while pretty much always being deadweight against offense, balance and other such things (I'll get to this later) then something is wrong; we should not offer shitty "ladder techs" as part of our analyses which will basically just make every single team ever worse but instead aim to actually make people better players and, in turn, teambuilders, especially when way better alternatives exist that won't make you a sitting duck against everything other than the one form of Stall you try to beat with that Gothitelle set such as Mega Mawile, Mega Medicham, Landorus-I, some Thundurus-I sets, Gengar, Taunt Heatran and, amusingly enough, regular Gothitelle sets. Obviously not all of these can singlehandedly beat every stall team, but they sure as hell can do it more effectively than TrickScarf Taunt Gothitelle. Except for the regular Gothitelle maybe, but at least that has other uses. Even stall can add win conditions against other stall teams that also have other uses such as Calm Mind Clefable or Stallbreaker Mew. There's always a different way than this pitiful Gothitelle set and, as I said before, we shouldn't promote the use of niche sets without an actual niche to our readers.
As for why this set sucks as much as it does, look at common battle situations. I'll always take a look at a more offensive inclined team and a more defensive inclined team using the Gothitelle in question facing off against Stall/Balance/Offense. While this obviously won't apply to all of the teams in any given category, it should give a pretty adequate estimate.
Goth Offense vs Stall: You don't even need Gothitelle in this matchup and it's pretty much a dead slot. Other Pokemon would be more useful to have in this scenario but I guess it's a "guaranteed" way to cripple a Pokemon thats troublesome to one of your sweepers. No idea why you would have this over a Gothitelle that can harm Pokemon instead of just PP Stalling most of them in vain though.
Goth Defense vs Stall: Depends a lot on the teams, but generally you'll cripple one of their walls which gives you an advantage, although that's kinda offset by the fact that the "modern" kind of Stall teams usually only have one of their Pokemon crippled by Gothitelle as Pokemon such as Charizard X are way more common and abuse the heck out of the free turns given my pathetically weak Psyshocks. That is, if you can even manage to successfully trap one of their Pokemon. Generally, though, Gothitelle should do well if you play smart.
Goth Offense vs Balance: Depending on the trappable Pokemon you might be in a pretty good position. However, as this is probably one of the best matchups for regular/Specs/whatever Gothitelle your Taunt Gothitelle probably feels rather useless and "dead weight". I would call this a good matchup for Gothitelle but that makes me question why the fuck you wouldn't use a normal set so I won't.
Goth Defense vs Balance: You can probably eliminate a key threat, but again, if you had a different win condition over this garbage you could probably do just as well. Depending on the offense the balanced team mounts crippling one of their mons with a Scarf can be helpful. Would be more helpful to actually kill something, though, and if there's a Mega Mawile you're kinda boned.
Goth Offense vs Offense: This is where Gothitelle just shows off its supreme shittiness. You will be down 5-6 pretty much all game because you will NOT be able to sufficiently trap something with just Psyshock and Trick. And even if you could, it's not like Gothitelle can really come in against anything (Keldeo just 2HKOs you while you don't OHKO back, etc) so if you really want to trap something you'd have to go 2 for 1 unless your opponent is a goober. Not to mention that the last thing an offensive teams wants to do is having a +2 full health Life Orb Bisharp on their ass. Or a full health +1 +1 Zard X. Or one of many other threats. Probably worse than useless actually.
Goth Defense vs Offense: Again, you "potentially" "cripple" one of their mons but then what? You don't have a 6th Pokemon with actual defensive utility you might need and will just get beaten down. Case in point being the replay posted at the start; if he had a Dragonite or something with actual utility it would have been much harder for me to just steamroll him, but as it stands he just got demolished.
That's the main problem with this Gothitelle set: In the matchups where it actually does well a regular Gothitelle would probably serve you just as well, or a different Pokemon altogether. In the matchups where it just gets destroyed, anything would be better, whether thats a different Gothitelle set, a Pokemon that is better suited to do anything at all but give out free turns like candy or even not having a 6th Pokemon at all. Outclassed doesn't even begin to describe this Gothitelle set: in some cases it even leaves you at a severe disadvantage. And with the decline of Mega Venusaur on stall, even that "niche" of destroying one of the old archetypes of stall is gone. Modern stall focuses more on Pokemon such as Scizor and Charizard whom you don't stand a chance against. It is a horrible ladder gimmick that was invented to reduce the thinking needed (on par with stuff such as Haze Quagsire; I hope I don't have to write up a post as to why that set is also flawed in many ways) but, in an actual "high level playing circuit", just falls flat on his face and leaves you at a severe disadvantage. There is almost nothing to gain from using this set and a lot to lose. There are so many Pokemon that do a role similar to it and, in many cases, even better. It's completely and absolutely terrible and I hope I outlined why that is the case. This is not getting an analysis, period. I don't even want a mention of it just because I honestly believe this is nothing any team in high level play (which is what we should prepare our readers for, as "ladder" or "lower level play" is a lot easier to adapt to once you actually know what you're doing) should ever utilize and I hope I made clear why.
Disclaimer: Obviously, not all ladder players are terrible and it would be dumb to think that. However, unless something drastic happens, I will always view the general population of the ladder as terrible because of sets like this existing. This post is in no way meant as an insult to any players in particular, but if it got interpreted that way then I'm sorry; maybe you shouldn't use TrickScarf Taunt Rest Gothitelle. And I'm sorry that this kinda ended up also touching upon the ladder and its players rather than just Gothitelle but I really felt like I had to explain why this even became common when it shouldn't have.
