Mega-Salamence: considering a quick ban (Don't ask for the thread to be closed!)

[PDC]

120+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 74-88 (18.7 - 22.3%) -- possible 5HKO


you literally faked a calc in order to prove your point?

 

[heritage]

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 81-96 (20.5 - 24.3%) -- guaranteed 5HKO

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 93-109 (46 - 53.9%) -- 96.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Yummy

 

[Alfalfa]

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 93-109 (46 - 53.9%) -- 96.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Yummy

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 175-207 (44.4 - 52.5%) -- 80.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

120+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 74-88 (18.7 - 22.3%) -- possible 5HKO

you literally faked a calc in order to prove your point?

The funny thing is:

120+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Mega Slowbro: 111-132 (28.1 - 33.5%) -- 96% chance to 3HKO after Stealth Rock

 

[Karxrida]

Isn't Mega Slowbro's Defense stat 180 and Mega Mence's Attack stat 145?

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 121-144 (30.7 - 36.5%) -- 62.7% chance to 3HKO
0 Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 93-111 (23.6 - 28.1%) -- 89.4% chance to 4HKO

Dude's calc is still wrong, but just wanted to point that out.

 

[zachmac]

Generally, my first reaction when preparing for a dragon dancer is to smack a choice scarf on Latios or Landorous or something. With this thing, you can't even do that. It has a 120 speed, for crying out loud. And with that base 130 defense, priority isn't going to work all that great either. It's near impossible to deal with offensively, unless you want to run a Choice Scarf Noivern or Weavile or some other silly set like that.

This thing is just ridiculous.

 

[Imperator Romanum]

My mistake. When I calced the attacks I had put Salamence typing as Dragon Electric to conpensate for Salamence using Roost. So that's on me, but I didn't try to fake calcs :/

But I'm not going to partake in this discussion no more, mainly because of Salamence not being a threat to my team and for you guys verbally castrating me

 

[branflakes]

wait guys i found a counter

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Avalugg: 40-48 (10.1 - 12.1%) -- possible 9HKO
252+ SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Avalugg: 66-79 (16.7 - 20%) -- possible 5HKO
252+ SpA Salamence Fire Blast vs. Flash Fire Avalugg: 0-0 (0 - 0%) -- aim for the horn next time

naturally table/counter-table counters table


what is a slowbro

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

If you're against banning Mega Salamence, at least spell "against" correctly.

Okay, seriously though, just because something has counters (which Mence doesn't) doesn't make it not broken. Excadrill had counters and still got banned in BW, Hydreigon didn't have counters and still wasn't broken. I'm pretty sure that was in the guidelines for posting in suspect threads or whatever

 

[heritage]

Ok, this thread has just turned to complete garbage. Conversations have just turned into use arguing with each other and everything else is just unreasonable, with people making fake Pokémon and Abilities to try and counter Mence.
What's the point of even talking anymore? At least 95% of the people want an immediate ban and I don't see any good reason for it to stay in OU.

 

[Force Majeure]

So we aren't talking about how M-mence looks like a croissant, which is nice.

A removed post brought up something that I found telling, and that is the fact that people haven't been mindlessly kvetching about how silly M-mence is; posters of all skill levels have been trying to come up with something, anything that can take a hit from M-Mence and retaliate sufficiently to remove it. I tried SashZam, with the goal of switching it in, Tracing Intimidate, and hitting with HP Ice, which OHKOs after SR IIRC. The problem is the speed tie post M-Evo and the proba/possibility that it's SubDD, in which case you rely on winning a speed tie, which is neither feasible nor desirable, and SashZam is pretty feh regardless.

I saw Scarf Noivern as a possible counter for SubDD a few pages back, but this is very obviously a suboptimal set, to put it mildly. Likewise, Rotom-W requires an hilariously unorthodox EV spread to do anything to M-Mence which renders Rotom-W unable to maintain its mixed defensive capabilities.

Porygon 2 is not completely ass in OU, but it requires a Balanced/Stall team to work effectively, which is undesirable because we really want to keep Offense, Balanced, and Stall at least somewhat viable. Regardless, P2 doesn't work vs. M-Mence unless it can Trace base Mence's Intimidate, so you have to preserve P2 (at full health!) until your opponent chooses to use M-Mence.

I'd talk about Scarf Greninja, but I'd gently remind everyone that this set was considered warm, dirty, stinky stanky tootie before M-Mence.

 

[Imperator Romanum]

So we aren't talking about how M-mence looks like a croissant, which is nice.

A removed post brought up something that I found telling, and that is the fact that people haven't been mindlessly kvetching about how silly M-mence is; posters of all skill levels have been trying to come up with something, anything that can take a hit from M-Mence and retaliate sufficiently to remove it. I tried SashZam, with the goal of switching it in, Tracing Intimidate, and hitting with HP Ice, which OHKOs after SR IIRC. The problem is the speed tie post M-Evo and the proba/possibility that it's SubDD, in which case you rely on winning a speed tie, which is neither feasible nor desirable, and SashZam is pretty feh regardless.

I saw Scarf Noivern as a possible counter for SubDD a few pages back, but this is very obviously a suboptimal set, to put it mildly. Likewise, Rotom-W requires an hilariously unorthodox EV spread to do anything to M-Mence which renders Rotom-W unable to maintain its mixed defensive capabilities.

Porygon 2 is not completely ass in OU, but it requires a Balanced/Stall team to work effectively, which is undesirable because we really want to keep Offense, Balanced, and Stall at least somewhat viable. Regardless, P2 doesn't work vs. M-Mence unless it can Trace base Mence's Intimidate, so you have to preserve P2 (at full health!) until your opponent chooses to use M-Mence.

I'd talk about Scarf Greninja, but I'd gently remind everyone that this set was considered warm, dirty, stinky stanky tootie before M-Mence.

Correction. PT works on killing Salamence, but it will also kill it's self

 

[PokemonTrainerLink]

I think it should definitely be quick banned. I have only played against it a few times but when I do fight it, the fight is HORRIBLE when salamence comes out. TO kill you you have to have a super effective move meaning a fairy, ice, or dragon type. For ice type, it can learn coverage moves like fire fang, fire blast, brick break ect. Or ,especially if it has dragon dances up, it could just straight up use return or some other normal move to kill the ice type which is now a stab flying type move because Aerilate, which I will cover more later. For those you say use ice shard, with the base 130 defense (It's 2nd highest stat by the way) it should take at least one. For fairy types again you could just a straight up return, or it can learn steel wing or iron tail. Also there aren't many fairy type options for OU. Also just like ice types with that powerful base 120 speed it out speeds any fairy, ice, or even dragon types in OU. IN fact there are only 2 dragons in the game that have a higher base speed stat. That is noivern which is in UU and mega sceptile which gets rid of your spot for a different mega. Even with those it can easily get a dragon dance up to increase speed and attack if you kill something with a pokemon that can't kill mega salamence. And once it has a dragon dance there is almost nothing that can stop it. I only found one working counter which is dragon pulse heatran, but that involves using heatran instead of another pokemona and getting dragon pulse on it instead of another move. But to get rid of heatran you could earthquake which is easy considering they will probably switch into the move to tank it getting rid of the ballon if they have one, it taking 2 dragon pulses to kill it meaning another turn to break the baloon, and if there is no baloon or it's popped you are free to earthquake the hell out of it. Also it can learn brick break to take out heatran. There is more stuff I can talk about but they all lead to one main point. QUICK BAN MEGA SALAMENCE FOR THE GODS SAKE.

 

[trillyntruly]

Could be wrong but, perhaps the best argument for quickbanning salamenceite, is that it's clear to everybody that it's pretty much unanimous. Sure, we don't technically have knowledge of future events, but we all know it's getting banned. There's not a doubt in anybody's mind, including those who are against the ban/quickban. So at that point, why not just get to the known conclusion quicker so that we can move on to balancing the tier. No need to dillydally around. Let's play some ORAS.

 

[Firebird101]

Could be wrong but, perhaps the best argument for quickbanning salamenceite, is that it's clear to everybody that it's pretty much unanimous. Sure, we don't technically have knowledge of future events, but we all know it's getting banned. There's not a doubt in anybody's mind, including those who are against the ban/quickban. So at that point, why not just get to the known conclusion quicker so that we can move on to balancing the tier. No need to dillydally around. Let's play some ORAS.

Sorry if I'm misinterpreting you but we should never ban something just because everyone want to, everyone should want to ban something because it is bad for a balanced and skill-relied metagame. Hence why democracy shouldn't have the final say but rather the best arguments.

Anyways it is blatantly obvious Mega Salamence is a league above every other mon. It only got a small buff to it's offenses stat-wise but it's Aerilate ability expands it's movepool tremendously and gives it great spammable moves without any immunities or side-effects in Return and Hyper voice. Most of it's stats went into it's physical defenses which lets it to take many hits and even let it set up on super-effective hits, particular rocks as it roosts the damage off. All of that however would perhaps be manageable if it wasn't for the third factor; it's great speed. Thanks to it most revenge-killers fail to out-speed it and most walls get 2hko'd before they manage to stop it and that isn't even factoring in it may have coverage to simply take them out right off the bat.

In short, no mon has that combination of power, bulk and speed which lets it dominate the tier and come up with sets that should frankly only pass as gimmicks but it manages to pull it all off due to it's sheer dominance and unless the half of the other guy's team is a Mega Mence check s/he's at immediate disadvantage just by it's mere presence. No pokemon should have that much influence and it needs to go asap.

 

[Kairyu_Gen1]

Sorry if I'm misinterpreting you but we should never ban something just because everyone want to, everyone should want to ban something because it is bad for a balanced and skill-relied metagame. Hence why democracy shouldn't have the final say but rather the best arguments.

I'm going to be nick picky here, but I will point out that we do vote after suspect tests, and one of the reasons we quickban things is because they have a 0% chance of passing a suspect test, so not only should we ban something if everyone wants to, but we kinda already do.

 

[ginganinja]

Keep it to a competitive discussion ladies and gentlemen, discussions as to how pretty Mega Salamence looks can move to pretty much any other forum I don't moderate.

 

[zachmac]

I rlly don't see why people can just modify a bit to their cores and find feasible methods to deal with mega mence instead of raging about it over chatrooms

The problem here is that there aren't enough options to use to modify your team with. Most options are either not viable or very niche, and team building options would open up so much if that thing just got banned. A healthy metagame will encourage the use of a wide variety of Pokemon, not just a specific few to deal with just one threat.

Even Mewtwo has pokemon it struggles to take down. That doesn't mean it isn't broken.

 

[New Light]

Ice beam Porygon2 is standar

Ice Beam may be standard on Porygon2 but P2 itself is not OU standard, nor should it have to be just to check one stupidly broken mon. It can check Salamence but it's so easily dealt with by many OU mons that it's often removed or crippled before Mence makes a serious attempt at sweeping. It's also borderline dead weight on most teams, outside of dealing with Mence.

 

[MilkyWay]

Guys I think I finally found a Mega Mence counter, although it is a shaky one at best.

Regirock Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 248 HP / 196 Def / 64 SpD
Impish Nature
- Ice Punch
- Protect
- Fire Punch
- Stone Edge Toxic

With a base 200 def and respectable base 80 hp and 100 sp def, Regirock can stomach anything Mega Salamence can throw at it and fire back for a guaranteed 2hko with Ice Punch. Leftovers + Protect are clutch in getting Regirock out of 2hko range, however, once you pull this off once you gotta be careful that your opponent doesnt pick up on this trick and try and set up as you attack. Anyways, Stone Edge is for STAB, Fire Punch for Ferro and Scizor, Protect for added recovery, and Ice Punch is obvious. Note that the nature boosts defense but the evs are mostly in special defense. This is because the 10% boost from a boosting nature helps put a lot more the higher the base stat is, which is why Regirock's monstrous defense is boosted.

Calcs

*All calcs are done with Mega Salamence's base stats (145 Atk, 120 Sp Atk, 130 Def) and Aerilate

+1 252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Double-Edge vs. 248 HP / 196+ Def Regirock: 101-119 (27.8 - 32.7%) -- 81.1% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Double-Edge vs. 248 HP / 196+ Def Regirock: 67-79 (18.4 - 21.7%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery

+1 252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 248 HP / 196+ Def Regirock: 86-102 (23.6 - 28%) -- possible 5HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 248 HP / 196+ Def Regirock: 57-68 (15.7 - 18.7%) -- possible 8HKO after Leftovers recovery

+1 252+ Atk Salamence Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 196+ Def Regirock: 172-204 (47.3 - 56.1%) -- 22.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Mega Salamence has a max roll of 204 damage. 363hp - 204dmg+23hp leftovers recovery + 23hp leftovers recovery - 204dmg = 1hp. 0% chance to 2HKO

4 SpA Salamence Hydro Pump vs. 248 HP / 64 SpD Regirock: 174-206 (47.9 - 56.7%) -- 31.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
In order for Mega Salamence to successfully 2HKO after two turns of recovery, it needs two max rolls in a row, so a 1 in 256 chance, or 0.004% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers + Protect

4 SpA Salamence Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 64 SpD Regirock: 43-51 (11.8 - 14%) -- possibly the worst move ever

4 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 64 SpD Regirock: 154-183 (42.4 - 50.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

0 Atk Regirock Ice Punch vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Salamence: 176-208 (53 - 62.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
(Regirock's ability, Clear Body, stops Intimidate from ever coming into play for those wondering)

Regirock will lose to dedicated special sets but it can almost always beat variants of Dragon Dance and MixMence, which is why I would call it a shaky counter. Considering it can only lose to a Mega Salamence set with Hydro Pump and that Hydro Pump is often pushed aside in favor of Fire Blast, Regirock will counter most Mega Salamence sets.

With this in mind, everyone can stop bitching about Mega Salamence and we can keep it in OU since anyone can run Regirock + a wish passer + a hazard remover on their team and never get swept by Mega Salamence.

But seriously, don't use Regirock in OU and quickban this overpowered piece of shit

Edit: As Doughboy pointed out, the dd roost set could roost to remove the 4x ice weakness and setup on Regirock. So, I replaced Stone Edge with Toxic. Ice Punch is always the preferred way to deal with Mega Mence in case of a sub, but if it tries to keep roosting on Regirock to set up, go for a Toxic. Toxic + Protect is also nice to use against other pokemon as well. This set would still lose to dd + roost + refresh, don't use Regirock, Mega Mence is op garbage

 

[trillyntruly]

While I admit mega mence is powerful and if you allow him to set up you lose, I don't think it should be banned. First of all there will always be a best pokemon no matter how many bans the tier does so no matter what, centralization will always be a thing. That aside, physical bulk does nothing against special attack, substitute does nothing against infiltrator and 1 dragon dance can't out speed a fast scarfer. Honestly there is such a thing as building a pokemon to withstand a hit from a threat and 1hko if you utilize the damage calculator and your imagination. As for his diverse move pool, yea that's powerful, but honestly special attacking mence doesn't have the sweeping capabilities of the sub DD set so i personally think it's way easier to counter and use against your opponent. I wouldn't be opposed to a suspect test even though I'm 100% sure it would be banned, but i wish the community wouldn't jump the gun so quickly on banning megas because if anyone just sits and thinks there are multiple pokemon that are viable in the meta and can act as counters to mega mence.

give me 3. if you succeed, give me 5 more because i'm hard-pressed to think of a given OU threat that doesn't get stopped by a multitude of mons, barring broken ones obvi.

edit: honestly at this point, i'd be satisfied with one (not enough to call it balanced of course)

 

[zachmac]

While I admit mega mence is powerful and if you allow him to set up you lose, I don't think it should be banned.

1) Centralization will always be a thing, that's why tiers exist. However, sometimes it just becomes too much, and your team building options become too restricted.
2) Too bad it's special bulk isn't actually all that bad or abusable. Ice Beam stings, but nothing else will really be able to KO it before its too late.
3) Most faster scarfers actually can't keep up with a Jolly or Naive Mence. They'd have to be really fast. I carry a choice scarf Noivern in my team just for that, but its not really doing much else for my team, and so many other options would open up if this thing just got banned already.

 

[trillyntruly]

noivern isn't a counter. this is just objectively the case. noivern is not a counter. far from it.

edit: first of all, i highly doubt there's a noivern set that hard-counters mence, especially considering it can run any set it wants, probably one to stop your noivern set. secondly, noivern isn't even ou. and thirdly, there is no worse argument than "this mystery set that i refuse to share with the thread beats mence, so just trust me guys lol"

 

[Sanger Zonvolt]

While I admit mega mence is powerful and if you allow him to set up you lose, I don't think it should be banned. First of all there will always be a best pokemon no matter how many bans the tier does so no matter what, centralization will always be a thing.

By that logic nothing should ever be banned. This can't be stressed enough: there is a HUGE difference between healthy centralization and OVERcentralization. In any meta, yes, there will be top threats that need to be accounted for, but in a healthy meta, you will have a number of good checks to these threats that will also serve to check other things. In an unhealthy overcentralized meta, there is some dominating threat with a small number of useful checks, which leads to everyone running 2 of the same 5 mons as checks because they're the only ones that aren't completely dead against other teams. Can Mega Mence be beaten in this kind of meta? Of course, but it'll be stale and void of diversity, something we are trying to avoid.

That aside, physical bulk does nothing against special attack, substitute does nothing against infiltrator and 1 dragon dance can't out speed a fast scarfer. Honestly there is such a thing as building a pokemon to withstand a hit from a threat and 1hko if you utilize the damage calculator and your imagination.

1. Dead special attackers that are outpaced and killed do nothing against said special bulk
2. The only viable users of Infiltrator are Chandelure and Noivern, both of which are pretty niche. Chandelure in particular just dies to EQ
3. After 1 Dragon Dance, the only scarfers faster than it are Greninja and Noivern.
4. We've had about a month to theorymon good answers to this guy and another month to go up against it in practice. Please, if the tier's best players (obviously not including me) have missed something, please enlighten us, because the current consensus is that this guy has a stupidly small pool of good checks, some flat-out die to other sets.

As for his diverse move pool, yea that's powerful, but honestly special attacking mence doesn't have the sweeping capabilities of the sub DD set so i personally think it's way easier to counter and use against your opponent. I wouldn't be opposed to a suspect test even though I'm 100% sure it would be banned, but i wish the community wouldn't jump the gun so quickly on banning megas because if anyone just sits and thinks there are multiple pokemon that are viable in the meta and can act as counters to mega mence.

Last I checked, 3 attacks + DD is a perfectly viable set that lets it muscle through some of its more common checks, so to just brush it off as unviable is just asking for trouble in the long run. Lastly, no one jumps the gun on these bans. We haven't been twiddling our thumbs saying, "It's coming, it's coming, we're all going to die!" We've been formulating theories. We've been out there battling it face to face. This potential quickban is the result of the number of good answers to this thing being abysmally small despite months of effort to find solutions. Frankly, it's insulting when people come in and tell us "Why don't you just look for solutions instead of crying out for a ban?" or "Just use two of these 5 mons and you'll be fine" as though players here just sit there and cry when broken mons are released.

noivern is a good counter in my opinion considering it has slaughtered many a mega mence in its time, but of course I won't tell you the EV spread which is a pretty weird set, but it works. The misconception i see the most is that people use their pokemon, they don't make them. In general 252/252 spreads kind of suck especially in a meta where you have to counter certain threats. There are multiple counters but they have to be made, in my case its typically noivern for mega mence.

252+ Atk Aerilate Salamence Return vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Noivern: 312-367 (100.3 - 118%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Not a counter. Get your terminology straight. Unless your mysterious "magic counter" Noivern has something I'm missing in the calculation.

 

[doughboy]

MilkyWay01 too bad the max HP set can still set up on you thanks to removing its flying typing with Roost. So even a DD set could beat you lol
0 Atk Regirock Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Roosting Mega Salamence: 88-104 (22.3 - 26.3%) -- 10.1% chance to 4HKO

0 Atk Regirock Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Salamence: 176-208 (44.6 - 52.7%) -- 17.2% chance to 2HKO

Mega Salamence could take one Ice Punch, DD, Roost to full, repeat until +6. FFS it could DD twice on you unless you get a high roll since you have only a small chance to 2HKO.
_______________________

I think its pretty clear that Mega Salamence can't be in a competitive OU environment. Its crazy high stats and defense+power-boosting ability make it excel at any of its versatile roles. It has a movepool to allow it to really do whatever the hell it wants, so it runs circles around the entire tier. XY was getting close to becoming a balanced metagame before ORAS threw everything for a loop. So let's save a month of time for something everyone knows is breaking the meta, so we can get to a state of an actually balanced meta for the first time since the release of BW.

 

[zachmac]

unfortunatly i'm not going to share my noivern spread with you, but there is a way for noivern to counter it 100% of the time. Also noivern does a great job against mega sceptile which is a decent threat to my teams and he can, under most circumstances, counter any dragon sweeper.

252/252 works just fine to check Mence. And handful of Pokemon can check it alright.

But the point is that not pokemon enough can, and that just limits team building options to much. Not every team will work well with a Noivern or Porygon2 on it.