Ninetales (Roar)

I believe this set has the potential to rack up tons of residual damage by throwing your opponent off-guard. If anyone can think of a better name for this set, please do so, I think the name is really crappy. Or a better EV spread? Because I don't think this is potentially the best one.

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

[SET]
name: Roar
move 1: Hypnosis
move 2: Roar
move 3: Overheat/Fire Blast/Flamethrower
move 4: Grudge/Will-o-Wisp
Ability: Flash Fire
Item: Wide Lens/Leftovers
Nature: Timid
EVs: 4 HP/252 Sp Atk/252 Spe

Why this set deserves to be on-site:
- When opponents first see Ninetales use Hypnosis they will think it is the standard Nasty Plot set.
- Only to be surprised and be taken off-guard.
- Can rack up tons of residual damage if you can predict correctly, making it much easier for sweepers to rampage through a team.

Additional comments
- Just switch this fox into something slower than her, she shall be able to send them to lala land with Hypnosis, and Roar them away safely, if they switch out, TWO Pokemon have taken residual damage, and if you are lucky, you have Roared something like a Venusaur into the battlefield, who wouldn't want to face you, creating more switches and racking up more residual damage.
- Wide Lens is to boost the accuracy of Hypnosis, as well as Overheat or Fire Blast. Overheat is recommended because you'll be switching out pretty often.
- Once the opposing team has been sufficiently weakened by the residual damage, or Ninetales is on the brink of death, she can Grudge away moves like Stone Edge, Earthquake or Surf as a last revenge. Will-o-Wisp can be used to cripple Physical attackers.
- Arcanine may be able to perform the same set with more bulk and Morning Sun, but since Ninetales has Hypnosis, she can Roar away safely without risk, and she also has Grudge as a last resort if she is on the brink of death, unlike Arcanine.

Teammates and counters
- Teammates: MUST have teammates that can set up entry hazards like Omastar, Qwilfish etc.
- A sweeper that can take advantage of walls weakened by residual damage, Mismagius is ideal since she can 2KO Registeel with a Nasty Plotted HP Fighting with 3 layers of Spikes and a layer of Stealth Rock, and Chansey isn't going to pose a problem at all, provided you have a Substitute up. For physical sweepers, get something like a Scyther or Torterra, since the mentioned Pokemon who set up entry hazards are weak to Earthquake and so is Ninetales, and those two are immune/resistant to Earthquake.
- Or if you have Grudged away all the PP of lets say, Surf from a Milotic, Pokemon that can take advantage of their absence such as Moltres can do.
- Spin-blockers are a must. Mismagius does well because she can also simultaneously attempt a sweep.
- Rapid Spin also can help because Ninetales will often be switching in and out and she hates Stealth Rock, and so does Moltres that was mentioned as a teammate up there.
- Counters: This set doesn't technically have a "Counter" since Ninetales will often just Roar away her standard counters such as Milotic, and often, it takes a bit of luck and hope Ninetales Roars in one of her counters. But there are other aways to deal with her, such as a Foresight + Rapid Spin Hitmontop who can completely screw Ninetales' intentions.

I don't really see the point of this set to be honest. Fire-types will have no problems at all just outright KOing you with no def investments, the SpA EVs seem to be wasted with a mono Fire attacker, Water-types have the hell of an easy time as well. Finally, this set is as good as useless if you have no entry hazards, loses its effectiveness as soon as you click Roar for the first time and Arcanine just does that better with more bulk, Intimidate and Extremespeed; not to mention Morning Sun. Hypnosis is cool, of course, but it's still unreliable and restricts the use of Sleep Powder on one of its best partners, Venusaur.

you mention Grudge twice in additonal comments and teammates and counters yet it's not slashed anywhere on the set as an alternative.

Fire types do have problems outright KOing you...
2 Wide Lens Hypnosises have a 11.56% chance to both miss. Those are pretty good odds...
Houndoom is slept and you have two chances at it really (because it either NPs or attacks, neither kills... unless it's gimmicky specs); if you want to be ballsy roar on the first turn
Arcanine has to E-Speed... not a KO unless it's banded; roared out
Moltres is sleplt; if it sets up a sub you roar (and get toxiced, but beside the point); scarf is problematic though

Physical water types with AJ pose a problem, but Bulky waters are slept (beware of restalk milo though) and roared out.

Seems like it could work decently well; could you please provide some logs?

Oh and when you mention Omastar, mention lead omastar specifically; it matches up great against most leads due to its high defense and low weight (I.E. Mesprit grass knot leaves you at app. 88% most of the time)

Of course you don't mention that set has problems coming in with no defensive investment and few immunities, the SR weakness, the must of entry hazards, the fact it can roar as much as it wishes to, but if there are no hazards down, it'll be doing nothing, the fact Arcanine does that better except for the sleep and so on.

Bluewind said:

Of course you don't mention that set has problems coming in with no defensive investment and few immunities, the SR weakness, the must of entry hazards, the fact it can roar as much as it wishes to, but if there are no hazards down, it'll be doing nothing, the fact Arcanine does that better except for the sleep and so on.

Click to expand...

Ah, but the sleep ensures Ninetales can Roar away safely, and I did mention the need for entry hazards in the Teammates section.

In all honesty i dont see why i would run this set in a stall team over something useful like Arcanine, Subroostmoltres, Roarblastoise, etc. pp.
In Stallteams you need every slot deeply and even then you will have problems countering anything.
You just have not the place for this Set in a Stall team exspecially since this set didnt accomplish much on the defensive side (takes chunks of damage each time it comes in and has no reliable recovery).

Offense has no point in using this too.

Only in a balanced team you may use this but even then it is outclassed by Arcanine for example who posseses much more utility outside of roaring.

To sum my thoughts up: This set is entirely useless from my point of view.

I think the point that the author is trying to make is that it is fast (outspeeding common 80 and 90 base speed pokemon with its 100 base) and has a sleep move; sleep in itself causes switches.

I'll list the pokemon here that have the ability to learn roar and a sleep move.

Venusaur
Butterfree
Altaria
Noctowl
Flareon
Glaceon
Lapras
Purugly
Persian

I'm sure there are a few I missed, but for the most part, all of these pokemon are hindered by poor typing, poor bulk, a poor accuracy sleep move, or just poor stats in general. Venusaur is the only one that really stands out of these pokemon, but is not nearly as fast as Ninetales and is unable to outspeed virtually every Fire-type.. not something that can be said about Ninetales and its water type counters (or its fire type counters, for that matter).

Basically, my point is that Ninetales relies not on bulk but on speed and a relatively accurate sleep move.

Finally, it's pretty easy to get spikes and rocks up and keep them down... Spinblocking is not hard to do and Omastar is an excellent lead (as is Qwilfish)

What is with the sudden upsurge of defensive sets on frail Fire Pokemon??

- Only to be surprised and be taken off-guard.

Click to expand...

This is pretty much the ONLY reason you would ever use this. Like I said before, there are so many better defensive Fire types out there, Moltres, Arcanine, hell even Magcargo does this job better due to his unusual resistances. Again, I'll come back to my Gengar analogy. You're basically giving him 252 HP/128 Def/128 SpD with Taunt/Destiny Bond/Pain Split and telling him to Spin-block. It might work once, but never again.

I'll list the pokemon here that have the ability to learn roar and a sleep move.

Venusaur
Butterfree
Altaria
Noctowl
Flareon
Glaceon
Lapras
Purugly
Persian

I'm sure there are a few I missed, but for the most part, all of these pokemon are hindered by poor typing, poor bulk, a poor accuracy sleep move, or just poor stats in general. Venusaur is the only one that really stands out of these pokemon, but is not nearly as fast as Ninetales and is unable to outspeed virtually every Fire-type.. not something that can be said about Ninetales' water type counters.

Click to expand...

The bold part describes Ninetales perfectly. She's not better than any of them. Yes, Ninetales has pretty good speed, but you also need to remember that Roar has negative priority, so you're going to die in 2 hits at most.

I did not test this set but maybe a bulkier EV Spread of like 252 hp 80 Def 176 Spe timid (just throwing that there is surely a better one) could be conidered. I know this Ninetails is not supposed to tank hits, but i could handle weak attacks from walls better such as Venusaur's Sludge Bomb and Altaria's DClaw (etc). Its not going to sweep anytime soon anyways.

But sincerely i think this set is outclassed badly by Arcanine and friends, and is situational at best.

By creating sets like this, Smogon reminds me of how badly we are impatient about the upcoming generation.

shrang said:

What is with the sudden upsurge of defensive sets on frail Fire Pokemon??



This is pretty much the ONLY reason you would ever use this. Like I said before, there are so many better defensive Fire types out there, Moltres, Arcanine, hell even Magcargo does this job better due to his unusual resistances. Again, I'll come back to my Gengar analogy. You're basically giving him 252 HP/128 Def/128 SpD with Taunt/Destiny Bond/Pain Split and telling him to Spin-block. It might work once, but never again.



The bold part describes Ninetales perfectly. She's not better than any of them. Yes, Ninetales has pretty good speed, but you also need to remember that Roar has negative priority, so you're going to die in 2 hits at most.

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She doesn't exactly have poor stats... her BST is 505, it is higher than Scizor who has 500. It's just the problem that Nintendo is trolling her and gives her base 76 attack and base 75 defense, like that is going to help her, she would much rather have base 60 on both and add the points into speed and special attack. Not to mention that she should be part Ghost considering her ability to curse people for 1000 years and ability to learn Grudge, Hypnosis, Confuse Ray, Imprsion and whatnot... but that's not the point. Yes, Roar has negative priority, but when your opponent is fast asleep you can just Roar him away safely without much risk. She also has Grudge as a last resort to strip away all the PP of a move that will KO her, like Earthquake, Surf or Stone Edge.

I honestly think that this set should focus more on the move Grudge. As I see it, Ninetales is one of the very few Pokemon with access to the move, and the Speed to effectively use it. The idea would be to Sleep whatever Ninetales can, forcing a switch. Ninetales Roars the switch-in causing entry hazard damage and you hopefully reveal more of the opponents team. I realize that that has been covered in the OP, however, here's where the strategy involving Grudge comes in. After Ninetales has jumbled around the team, the user of Ninetales tries to sacrifice Ninetales to one of its counters while using Grudge, stripping whatever killed Ninetales of hopefully their main STAB move.

This could potentially allow one of Ninetales' teammates to come in and finish the job with one of their biggest counters unable to hit them with a Super Effective move. Imagine Milotic without Surf trying to kill SD Blaziken, or Subperior trying to hit Steelix without Earthquake.

So in short, imo, the set should be called either Roar + Grudge, or just Grudge, not Roar.

Yes, Roar has negative priority, but when your opponent is fast asleep you can just Roar him away safely without much risk.

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And the next Pokemon that comes in is probably going to hurt you, quite a bit. So even IF you have SR and 3 layers of Spikes up, Ninetales managed to do 37%. Woopdie doo.

About Grudge, if you want me to be nice, it is mediocre. If you want me to be honest, it is almost completely useless. You do realise that Ninetales has to die for Grudge to work, and die as in get killed, not Toxic'd to death or what have you?? And this is a trade of 1/6 of your team for a move to be depleted of PP?? Is that really worth it?? You're sacrificing Ninetales to deplete a move's PP?? It's like Memento but without the "My next Pokemon is going to completely dominate you" feel. Yes, it may be cool to deplete a Choiced Pokemon all the PP of an attack so he has to switch, but you pretty much just wasted your Ninetales.

This could potentially allow one of Ninetales' teammates to come in and finish the job with one of their biggest counters unable to hit them with a Super Effective move. Imagine Milotic without Surf trying to kill SD Blaziken, or Subperior trying to hit Steelix without Earthquake.

Click to expand...

Potentially. Are you really going to carry both Blaziken and Ninetales on the same team without compensating a whole lot to support them?? Oh, and why would I want Milotic to not be able to Surf my Blaziken to death when I can just kill it with +2 LO Energy Ball instead?? It seems like a very elaborate way of doing very little.


Long story short, this is a pretty ordinary set (I'm being soft). I'm sorry if I sound harsh, but I am beyond "very skeptical" of this set, and I tend to be quite cynical when I'm skeptical.

You do allow the support you've mentioned so far for this thing is: A ghost, an Omastar/Qwilfish/Cloyster, a sweeper that can abuse the Roaring done by Ninetales. That means you're dedicating 4 team slots to a strategy that can be single handely screwed by a Hitmontop. You can run 2 Ghosts, but unless it is Mismagius and falls into the category of sweeper, that means you'd have one single slot left to cover the rest of the metagame. Finally, stop assuming Spikes are "that" easy to get down, if the ladder leaves Registeel on Omastar and tries to Earthquake it to death when they have a Venusaur in the wings, that shouldn't have an influence on analysis.

I'm not feeling this set. Surprise factor is completely irrelevant when all phazers operate in the exact same way. You switch in your phazer into a Pokemon it threatens and then Roar/Whirlwind on the anticipated switch, which is what this Ninetales is doing here.

That aside, Ninetales isn't really suited for phazing, and the only appeal I can see about this set is Grudge, but there are a lot more reliable ways to disable a Pokemon, and with much less a cost.

QC Rejected 1/2

Arcanine is much better at doing everything this does. The only advantages this has are Hypnosis and Grudge.

Anyone who knows me knows I hate hypnosis with a burning passion. Grudge...why? I realize Ninetales has low survivability and that Grudge is really the only thing it can do for team support, but that just points to how bad it is in a defensive role...

Arcanine on the other hand has intimidate, much better physical bulk, around the same special bulk, and Flare Blitz/Extremespeed. I'm not feeling this, sorry.

[Grimer Stamp]