Quote:
Originally Posted by Fat Agent Dell
Now, to Swamp-Rocket. The thing that you, and many other people out there, all misunderstand is Ninjask's value. Ninjask is a Pokemon whose success depends on the quality of the team building, rather than the Pokemon itself. First of all, you mention that Rock Blast can easily take out Ninjask itself, but you don't mention what specifically counters it. There is where people often go wrong in that regard, and your point is no different here. Ninjask has no technical "counters", because it is almost guaranteed to perform its job successfully. So you switch into a Rock Blast user like Cincinno or Golem as it goes for a Substitute or whatever. You think you're going to stop it from performing it's job, well, lets see. Ninjask can simply Protect next turn, scouting what move that you will go for, and Baton Pass out to a proper recipient the very next turn. This is exactly part of what makes Ninjask capable of performing its job nigh perfectly. While you fail to "counter" it because you didn't stop its job, you have also made yourself vulnerable to the fact that it has the ability to let its teammates perform sweeps with just a single successful pass, not even mentioning the fact that a chain of boosts can make a near invincible monster. Speed Boosting can benefit just about everything, and the terms of reliability of performing such a task for its proper teammates is skewed heavily into Ninjask's favor, because of the fact that it's nearly impossible to prevent it from performing its job.
|
Thoe are the advantages of Ninjask as a Pokemon. But what makes it broken in NU and yet
managable in other tiers? That is what I see as the issue at hand when it comes to wanting to ban a Pokemon such as Ninjask. If Ninjask was broken in that regard, it would theoretically be impossible to stop in not only NU but also any tier above this one. It isn't even a real deterrent in NU - when I am teambuilding I rarely think "those Baton Pass chain teams are really hard to stop - I have to prepare for them!" I think of Ninjask somewhat, but not really the rest of the chain. Even then, it isn't hard to prepare for them - running a hazer or a phazer is usually enough to stop the accumulation of boosts. As I mentioned, this isn't a tier where Magic Bounce Pokemon and Smeargle are ready to stop Whirlwinds.
Ninjask is a Pokemon that is a make-or-break, and when I face off against Ninjask, that is what happens - it either performs its function very well or goes down too fast thanks to Stealth Rock, Substitutes, and switching. Ninjask can usually bring a Pokemon into the battle very easily, but if that Pokemon faints, with Stealth Rock on the field it is hard to set up all the Speed Boosts again.