hi guys!! i'm gonna pick out a few points from everyone's posts and stuff and give a few general thoughts on each pokemon. sorry for late responses though. i'll be talking about everything so this might seem intimidating - if you just want to read about one pokemon or w/e, pick it out from the bolded part and then scroll down to the bottom because i'll have a few more questions for you guys. :o
also the obama avatars are dumb and i confused several people's posts multiple times so sorry if i messed up :( and no "zeb is a loser y/n" poll sry
rhydon: one thing that several people talked about was the competition with the other sr setters. i really like the points that ium and FLCL brought up - rather than trying to be physically dominant, NU rhydon should probably just stick to the cool coverage options that it has over golem and regirock, which means we would probably be seeing it on more bulky offense-esque teams that would love a lure for exeggutor or something of the sort. DTC - i don't think i could agree that rhyhorn would purely outclass golem. sturdy is a godsend and definitely factors into golem's playstyle. even if you weren't to lead with golem, sturdy and priority are still both its largest advantages over its competition. i was explaining to someone else earlier what the difference between regirock and golem was; while regirock generally performs all of the duties that you'd expect from a bulky rock-type much better than golem, golem still performs much better in disadvantageous matchups. for example, golem has an easier time dealing with stuff like gorebyss, since it doesn't have to worry so much about being straight-up ohkoed or set up on as it switches out. golem brings something to the table that rhydon (nor any other rock-type) does.
at the same time though, rhydon is physically unrivaled by even regirock. if what you need is a 100% counter to something like zangoose, physically defensive rhydon is your man. zangoose's guts-boosted cc does 37.19 - 43.96%, which is far and above just about anything else available in NU and it actually has offensive presence, unlike the punchless metang. i could see a few players being able to work rhydon into stallish teams, where it seems like it could be a neat fit.
more than anything, i think rhydon would just add yet another potential rock-type to our stable of normal- and bird-type checks, and would probably be tops in that group along with regirock, golem, carracosta, and potentially lairon.
hitmonchan: one of the reasons why i wanted to discuss hitmonchan was to see
just how bad our spinners were in comparison to some of the ones from other tiers. hitmonchan brings a lot to the table that our current spinners don't have (notably an SR resistance), but at the same time, it does carry its own flaws. what i think that it will bring to NU is more variety, at least on the spinning end - and with the likely dominance of scolipede, having a reliable, not-hazard-weak spinner seems like one of the best things to happen for NU. Ewil's mention of a 'balanced trade' is something that i think is rather interesting, even though imo scolipede has the upper hand. i'd agree with amarillo - i think one thing that we can expect from these changes is a big influx in spinners and ghost-types, and hitmonchan would probably become our most common one alongside smashkoal. at the very worst, it resists scolipede's primary stab (as well as rock slide) and can reliably switch into scolipede and spin, or nail the incoming ghost-type with ice punch. the only one that isn't crushed by ice punch is misdreavus, which also loses to foresight should hitmonchan choose to pack that.
as far as other sets, hitmonchan has a plethora of options (subbu strikes me the most, maybe subpunch or even just lo + 3 attacks) but will still struggle mostly against musharna. musharna's usage is something that i think will fluctuate but more than likely settle a little bit lower than it is now. it lost a counter in absol and gained a free switch-in with hitmonchan, but most of the shifts are pretty iffy for it at best. for one, it's going to have to stare down what will probably be the #1 pokemon in NU in scolipede. i mean, scoli can't switch in on musharna at all, but mushy also doesn't dare switch into scolipoop. okay i'm starting to talk more about other things but i think hitmonchan would definitely see plenty of usage in a newly hazards-based metagame, imo.
whimsicott: i get the feeling that whimsicott would be underused and underestimated at the beginning of its stint in nu, then get picked up by a few good players using it well and quietly be one of the better mons in the tier. you guys didn't talk too much about it (aside from tennisace) or kind of brushed it off as useless in comparison to the other drops, so i'd like to see a little bit more of what you guys think about it. i think that weather-based teams might look a lot more favorable to people given that there's a new setter and that it deals with just about every drop rather well. also, the loss of absol would cut out one of the most important offensive tools that people would normally utilize to handle these kinds of teams.
scolipede: maybe i'd be proven wrong, but i cannot imagine this guy being anything but the next king of NU (and the rest of you seem to think so, too). there's really nothing that compares to it, in both spiking abilities and sweeping capacity. i mean honestly, i was somewhat surprised at golurk's huge usage in NU these past shifts, given that i don't think it's really head and shoulders above the rest of NU... scolipede would be metagame-defining, whether it's stacking spikes or whatever. like i pointed out earlier, i think that NU would quickly become a metagame of ghosts and spinners, just because scolipede is so good at being able to stack spikes. i really don't have too much to say directly about it since you guys generally described its presence in NU really well imo (props to EBeast, especially).
regirock would probably see an extended role purely as a counter to sd scolipede, as well as maybe bulky hitmonchan (man if that thing had intimidate...) and various scarf users, like gardevoir and braviary. we might even see a resurgence of stuff like stone edge gurdurr if scolipede becomes a big issue, which would bring the popularity of golurk back up again...
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a few shoutouts to two posts i liked in particular: ThePhalanx, i enjoyed your thoughts on physically defensive amoonguss. i am not quite sure i would agree with it actually increasing in usage, but moreso that it still retains its high usage that it always had in NU. i also am a really big fan of Annoyer's post, which kind of captured exactly what i wanted to see out of this thread. keep it up, please! :)
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so, a few questions;
1. If you had the opportunity, would you be willing to build a team for this supposed meta and play in a mini-tournament? I think it'd be really awesome to be able to put our theorymonning to use, and if you guys are interested I'd love to host a mini-tour for it.
2. What style of team do you think would work best in this metagame? Is stall unviable? How about bulky offense? Would weather teams finally fulfill their expectations from like five rounds ago?
3. Outside of the new drops, do you think any of the current NU Pokemon would excel in this new metagame (don't forget about those three that left NU, too)? What would be 'antimeta', akin to things like Articuno, Arbok, and Rotom-F in the current metagame?
4. If you could predict the usage stats, what would be your top 15, and why (I'd at least like some explanation for the placement of most of them)? Feel free to compare yours to the thoughts of others, too!
5. One thing we didn't really delve into too much was the potential teammates for the dropdowns. What Pokemon would benefit most from what each drop would bring to a team? Are there any 'top' partners for any Pokemon that just work incredibly well together?
6. I have some ideas already for future 'mons, but what do you think would provoke some good discussion? Don't worry too much about realism, but I would like things to be at least plausible. For example: don't say something about Kyogre dropping to NU. Instead, you could think of something like "What if Poliwhirl's DW ability was also Drizzle?" except I probably won't talk about that since we all know that it would be stupendously hard to do anything but rain in NU. Just don't limit yourself to RU dropdowns or DW releases - anything, even potential moveset or ability changes are within are realm of discussion itt. i'm probably gonna switch up the topic sometime soon, so get your thoughts in while you can!
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discuss away!