OU Anti Lead (Moltres)

Hey everyone, this is my first C&C, so I hope you guys enjoy.
Current Status; Awaiting Approval. (0/3 approved) (2/3 rejected)

Current Analysis
Topic Title: OU Anti Lead (Moltres)

http://www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/moltres

[SET]
name: OU Anti Lead
move 1: Overheat
move 2: Air Slash
move 3: U-turn
move 4: Hidden Power Grass / Will-o-wisp
item: Choice Scarf
nature: Modest
evs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe

Why this set deserves to be on-site:
-Beats most common leads (Basically all but Aerodactyl)
-Works well lategame
-Can do even better without Mence

Additional Comments:
-Hidden Power Ice

Teammates and Counters:
-Works well with Scizor, (u-turn + Bullet Punch)
-Works well with Swampert, who can get up rocks, and counter Heatran who walls you.
-A rapid spinner works great if you want to use Moltres lategame, Starmie is prefered, as they have good Syenergy.

Scratch out Mence and Latias mentions because they are banned.

Aside from that, it looks ok.

I can attest to this set's effectiveness due to the affect that I use it. U-turn is more helpful than you think to break sashes and gain lots of momentum.

Also, it is not the only Ou set for Moltres (toxic stall is in the works already).

Last thing, those 4 EVs need to be in Defense, not HP. This allows Moltres to switch in 3 times when taking into account Stealth Rock damage.

Out of curiosity: what this has over Scarf Zapdos as a lead? (i used it once).

Mostly all the leads are beaten just as good by Zapdos, and Zapdos has the advantage against many others as well (Starmie, Rock Slide Aerodactyl between others i'm lazy to remember).
Could you name what leads Moltres could beat that Zapdos can't?

M BLADE said:

Out of curiosity: what this has over Scarf Zapdos as a lead? (i used it once).

Mostly all the leads are beaten just as good by Zapdos, and Zapdos has the advantage against many others as well (Starmie, Rock Slide Aerodactyl between others i'm lazy to remember).
Could you name what leads Moltres could beat that Zapdos can't?

Click to expand...

I've been using this on a team along with a Agility Sweeper Zapdos, so I couldn't use a Zapdos lead.
It works if you either already have a Zapdos in a different slot, of if you need this syenergy for your team. (Zapdos actually makes a good teammate, as they have the same counters, you can scout Zapdos's potential problems.)

M BLADE said:

Out of curiosity: what this has over Scarf Zapdos as a lead? (i used it once).

Mostly all the leads are beaten just as good by Zapdos, and Zapdos has the advantage against many others as well (Starmie, Rock Slide Aerodactyl between others i'm lazy to remember).
Could you name what leads Moltres could beat that Zapdos can't?

Click to expand...

Well, Moltress has access to fire blast and air slash...

Moltres hits Metagross, Jirachi, Infernape, Machamp, etc. harder with the correct STAB. Also, dual STABs, while I presume Zapdos is stuck using Tbolt+HPIce+Heat Wave+UTurn

I dont know, even something like a Lead ScarfTogekiss probably outclasses this. I would suggest Timid over Modest, since you can outrun ScarfRotom and 1HKO with overheat. Something with a 4x weak to SR that is choiced is really unappealing, especially when its much harder to spin in OU than UU.

So this is... a bad Heatran?

Not only does it not stop any rocks, but it then sucks a LOT later on due to its 4x SR weakness.

Oh, it's also Tyranitar bait midgame. And it's badly outclassed as a scarf lead by Jirachi.

QC REJECTED (1/3)

This is not an effective lead. You can argue that Moltress will OHKO several common leads, but he´s entirely dependent on the surprise factor in order to make these KOs possible. Every smart player will switch out his Swampert fearing the HP Grass; Machamp leads will also switch out because most of the time they don´t run Stone Edge and they know what taking an Air Slash means; Starmie, Roserade, and Smeargle leads can either switch out or risk to stay in and kill / sleep Moltress respectively; Moltres needs to get a flinch on Focus Sash Azelf in order to impede him to set up SR; and so on. I´m sorry but I can´t allow this set having its own place on-site.

QC REJECTED (2/3)

Have used this quite a lot, it's actually a fairly solid lead and I'd like QC to test it or at least provide slightly better reasoning before rejecting it. Heatran is entirely different, it lacks U-turn is vastly slower (which means that it can't 2HKO sash leads as they set up just one layer, and tends to get taunted), is beaten soundly by Machamp, functions very differently late game (the team I used it best on had a spinner, so the SR weakness was pretty much irrelevant since their SR lead lasted all of one turn), and so on. Scarf Jirachi is again an entirely different lead, it's fast but lacks the kind of power Moltres has. And can you really compare Steel's coverage to Fire's?

Setsuna's reasoning is better, but if you force the foe's lead out then that is a win, no? And though it does not stop many SRs going up, it does almost guarantee that their SRer will be KOed in exchange, which means they have no way to get SR back up later and you still have a full HP Scarf Moltres. Starmie, Roserade, and Smeargle are leads that you have trouble with, but all leads have bad matchups.

It's not for every team ans won't jump into the top 10, but it forces out or KOs a very large number of common leads (solid chance to OHKO Colbur Azelf for example) and can be extremely useful late game. Leads don't have to beat everything to be good, they just have to beat a fair number and not be outclassed.

At Seven Deadly Sins; as Eric the Espeon pointed out, it's entirely different from Heatran,
one of the major difference's is u-turn, which is seriously useful when scouting your opponents team, (which works if you think the opponent will switch).
I think this lead may look like a worse Heatran or Setup Bait on paper, but if you actually test him, we works very well.

Um. How does Machamp soundly beat Heatran? A lot of people these days use Life Orb or Choice Specs with Overheat. Specs Overheat always OHKOs Machamp and Life Orb usually does. And uh, sds and setsuna pretty much summed it up.

Unfortunately the stats can't show details about exactly which items are most common on leads, but the standard lead Heatran does lose to Machamp. There is a grand total of one sentence about using the LO set as a lead in the analysis, and nothing about Specs (this does not mean they don't exist, but it does have a significant impact on how common they are). Moltres has the advantage against Ice Punch Machamp.

I haven't played on Shoddy for a few months, and I'll say I know not much at all about competitive Pokemon, nor am I a QC dude lol, but Shoddy was that internet game that I was playing a bit then, and a Moltres that was pretty much this is all that I was using.. (Moltres is cool) And it was funny because it was really effective against anyone rated less than something like 1300.. and against anyone else all it would do is either nothing or some damage before that person proceeded to completely own me. =P

I'm assuming that these Pokemon articles that get QC Approved are aimed for any battler's use, but at the same time they are movesets that should be viable for use against people of any skill.. or something like that.

Anyways there's my scrubby input lol. Still <3 Moltres.

Well, just because you couldn't do much to anyone with above that CRE doesn't mean no one can. With prediction it can work very well.

This set has its uses, but it's fatally flawed that beyond keeping SR off the field for a few turns in the case of certain leads, it can't function elsewhere in battle. Look at Machamp; if you pull him out of battle after kills the opposing lead or member that was pulled up to take the hits, he can enter without much difficulty due to his SR resistance and very nice bulk. Moltres however has some glaring weaknesses, due to that SR weakness (50% off per switchin? Not my cup of tea) weakness to Water, Electricity, and... Scarftar's Stone Edge. Moltres isn't doing much at all to even a Scarftar when the Sandstorm is up. HP Grass? Does 40%. Ish.

So yeah, I'm not in favor of this getting an analysis.

I know it looks bad on paper, but anyone who's tested it see's it's effective. Ot may require RS support to do well late game, but it can. Please test this before posting.

I'm going to reject this based on the fact that the things this moltres can force out can quite possibly see it coming as setsuna said before, however this alone does not necessarily mean a "win", Machamp is commonly paired with Shuca heatran in the back, and what are you going to do to that? A good Swampert player would scout the HP Grass with Protect and proceed to switch out, and what next? Said player would bring in something to take the HP Grass and force you out in the process. It does not matter if you get rocks down turn one as long as you actually get the rocks up. And unless your team is specifically tailored to not let leads get any openings whatsoever, you can be assured that any lead with SR will get their rocks up in a certain scenario once you bring in something that said SR lead can exploit.

So long as an opponent can find one oppurtunity to get rocks up on your team (which is stupidly easy unless you are packing 6 checks to one lead), then Moltres's effectiveness goes down substantially. It won't be easy to switch Moltres in at all unless you have a spinner, which limits the types of teams you can use this lead on. "Use a spinner", like what? Forretress or Starmie, take your pick. If you honestly need a rapid spinner on every team you use this set on to prevent a scenario in which your opponent will get rocks up any turn in the game, then I'm not buying this set. Apart from that, Moltres's only benefit as a lead comes from the surprise factor of actually using scarf moltres to OHKO leads. Sure, all leads may have bad matchups, but the main selling point of many leads is their ability to d o what they do best later on in the game when an undesired matchup occurs turn 1. With the SR weakness you got going around, Moltres's effectiveness goes down after SR goes up, which can be anytime in the battle.

Rejecting.
QC REJECTED (3/3)

I´ve actually tried out this lead in the past, and I based my conclusions on what I got to see back then during said tests. Apart from this, I believe Plus added several interesting and relevant points to the table that shouldn´t go by unnoticed. It´s not like CS Moltres in the lead position is a terrible Pokemon, but it´s not accomplishing too many things barring the switch ins it can cause, nor proving to have so many occasions to come in later on due to his lack of longevity; I believe all of this is enough reasons not to grant a Pokemon to have its personal spot on-site.

With that being said, I´m proceeding to lock this topic. Despotar, thanks for proposing this. I look forward to seeing contributions from you in the near future.