[Ray Jay]

Originally Posted by Fat Methmite

Pawniard cannot take on mixed crow - It barely 2hko's it through krow's LO recoil where as crow *will* ohko with heat wave. It makes for a great FeatherDance counter cause it allows it to set up in its face (especially since it cant be toxic'd) but It also just doesnt do enough damage to deal with other defensiveKrows. Substitue beats out Sucker punch; and allows for a free roost. While yeah; decent prediction can let you brick break a subless roost, any half way decent krow user wouldnt let you do that.

Pawniard's niche is not against MixKrow. Pawniard's niche is being able to break FD CM Krow, something only Gligar and Toxic users can claim to do. Since a lot of Toxic users actually fall to repeated Drill Pecks and every user of FD CM Krow uses a cleric alongside it, that leaves us with Gligar and Bronzor as legitimate answers to it, both of which are already extremely common in the metagame. It really doesn't matter how it fares against MixKrow; that's actually what the other two Pokemon being researched are for. If you have Pawniard, something else on your team should be able to handle MixKrow. Murkrow can't be treated as one Pokemon due to its diversity. In fact, I'd go as far to say as no Pokemon perfectly counters all Murkrow sets at once.

As for Tirtuoga; some one will have to explain to me what its doing there. *Anything* that can shell smash and then hit krow with priority can be krow (hell anything that can shell smash and some how survive the sucker punch can OHKO krow). I dont really think we need a whole week to test that.

Tirtouga merits usage outside of Shell Smash. Actually in the OP it stated it could run a mixed defensive set, especially with sand on the rise... I remember kd24 using defensive Tirtouga and sand in the last meta, and it's ridiculous (not 2HKOed by Chinchou in sand...). In other words, there is legitimate surprise value here that could be merited (especially when one considers most Croagunk nowadays op for mixed sets without Drain Punch). In other words, Tirtouga's there for more than just Shell Smash.