Pokémon Landorus-Incarnate

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Sheer force nullifies secondary effects from happening, so Sludge Bomb and Sludge Wave both have a 0% chance to poison. Thus, there's no reason to use Sludge Bomb.

The only way to handle the blobs is if you run a physical Sand Force set with sand support, which certainly is less reliable than the goto Sheer Force + Life Orb set. If using the special set, there really is no way around them.
252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blissey: 343-406 (48 - 56.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
That's how powerful this thing is. Of course you're not getting past Chansey, and you still have to worry about Focus Miss accuracy, but 2HKOing Blissey with a non-stab special move is pretty damn impressive.
 

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252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blissey: 343-406 (48 - 56.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
That's how powerful this thing is. Of course you're not getting past Chansey, and you still have to worry about Focus Miss accuracy, but 2HKOing Blissey with a non-stab special move is pretty damn impressive.
Of course, it is known as Focus Miss for a reason. Due to accuracy, you only have a 49% chance to 2HKO Blissey (and a 0% one on Chansey). But you're right, there's no denying this thing is a Special monster!
 
Of course, it is known as Focus Miss for a reason. Due to accuracy, you only have a 49% chance to 2HKO Blissey (and a 0% one on Chansey). But you're right, there's no denying this thing is a Special monster!
*Landrous used gravity*

Focus what now?
 
Not at all man. Gravity isn't like trick room where it gimps anything that doesn't benefit from it. Anything that has less than perfect accuracy moves benefits from it. It only actually hurts flying types in taking away their ground immunity, and everything else just does not care,
If you want to use gravity, especially on Landorus-I, you really do have to provide a lot of support. Because Landorus-I is pretty slow for a sweeper, you really have to provide sticky web support if you want it to be able to do anything with that gravity without it immediatly being forced out. Its mediocre bulk, in conjuncture with its speed problem, makes it very difficult to find a time to safely use gravity, and if you don't have another gravity setter on your team, you'll probably just miss the coverage spot on Landorus. While Gravities not a gimmick, it requires a lot more support and is generally worse than if its standard set if this support isn't there.

If you just want to hit hard, and use Landorus as a wall breaker, just use its regular coverage moves.
 
If you want to use gravity, especially on Landorus-I, you really do have to provide a lot of support. Because Landorus-I is pretty slow for a sweeper, you really have to provide sticky web support if you want it to be able to do anything with that gravity without it immediatly being forced out. Its mediocre bulk, in conjuncture with its speed problem, makes it very difficult to find a time to safely use gravity, and if you don't have another gravity setter on your team, you'll probably just miss the coverage spot on Landorus. While Gravities not a gimmick, it requires a lot more support and is generally worse than if its standard set if this support isn't there.

If you just want to hit hard, and use Landorus as a wall breaker, just use its regular coverage moves.
Here's the thing, gravity is usually unexpected. Here's a relatively common situation.

Enemy has his ferrothorn in on lame pokemon that cannot to anything to it.

*lamo, come back!*

*Go, Landorous!*

The opponent has a couple of options, stay in and risk taking a focus miss to do not much of anything (twave does not affect lando-i, lol leech seed, rocks are a little irrelevant since you are already out, gyro ball and power whip might hurt a little, but it won't kill), swap to a ground immunity like rotom-w, or swap in a fast water move user like keldeo.

Here's what the opponent is probably expecting

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Focus Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Keldeo: 221-260 (68.4 - 80.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Keldeo: 250-294 (77.3 - 91%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

which is a lot to take for a force out, so he will probably go for a tanky ground immune pokemon, like rotom-w or air balloon aegislash. Since rotom-w doesn't really appreciate the focus blast on switch in either, lets assume the opponent is running air balloon aegislash.

In two of the three options the opponent has, gravity is an optimal choice. If ferrothorn stays in, you get a free turn to set up gravity, and either ferrothorn or the swap in is going to eat a 100% accuracy focus blast. If he swaps out to bulky ground immune, you have a free turn to set up gravity, you probably outspeed whatever it is, and easily ohko with EP. If he does the ballzy move and swap in keldeo predicting your gravity, you got outpredicted and should have nailed him, but no biggie, giving keldeo a single free turn isn't what it used to be tbh. Regardless, 2/3 is not bad especially since standard lando-I does not have a particularly good option against one of the three situations.
 
Well, as Gravity and Sticky Web go hand in hand, Gravity Special Landorus seems to be a fine choice. With Earthpower, Focusblast and Gravity you can easily deal with most pokemon and can't miss. Another IMPORTANT aspect is that Gravity+Earthpower provides you a SPAMMABLE move which can't miss and is incredible strong.

It seems making an offensive duo of the best OU sticky web setter and best Gravity Abuser is worth a shot
 
Well, as Gravity and Sticky Web go hand in hand, Gravity Special Landorus seems to be a fine choice. With Earthpower, Focusblast and Gravity you can easily deal with most pokemon and can't miss. Another IMPORTANT aspect is that Gravity+Earthpower provides you a SPAMMABLE move which can't miss and is incredible strong.

It seems making an offensive duo of the best OU sticky web setter and best Gravity Abuser is worth a shot
Gravity's really a good tactic for Landorus but, it needs at least 1 turn to set this up also, Landorus can also be easily sweep by an ice attack. but on the other hand, Earth Power can hit any Flying/Levitate pokemons and adds an additional accuracy for Focus Blast and other 100< accuracy attacks.
 
Gravity's really a good tactic for Landorus but, it needs at least 1 turn to set this up also, Landorus can also be easily sweep by an ice attack. but on the other hand, Earth Power can hit any Flying/Levitate pokemons and adds an additional accuracy for Focus Blast and other 100< accuracy attacks.
Given that most flying pokes besides the lati twins that would swap in on lando-I are slower then it (rotom-W, skarm, air balloon darn-near-anything-that-would-ever-use-it), it's pretty easy to set up gravity on a predicted switch, which allows you to immediately threaten the thing that your opponent thought was a check, giving you a net two free turns. It's kind of like sending in pinsir on a predicted conkeldurr drain punch, you can set up SD pretty much for free on the durr switch, which then allows you to threaten most of your switch ins (except in mega pinsir it's with his sky high attack as opposed to new-found coverage).
 
I've been thinking about a core with Gravity Landorus-I in combination with Mega-Pinsir, since most of the stuff that walls Pinsir (Skarmory, Rotom-W) cannot do so at all under gravity. Landorus also lures Rotom-W in and forces it back out with Gravity, helping wear it down for Pinsir even if it can't consistently keep Gravity up. I think the biggest perk to having Gravity on Landorus is that it frees you to spam Earth Power as much as you want - there's barely any need for other moves. Ground resists are actually very rare once everything is grounded - the only ones with OU usage are Pinsir, Breloom and Trevenant. Obviously this model is more useful against defensive teams that won't be able to outspeed and kill Landorus, but I suspect that it could put enough pressure on offensive teams to pull its weight.
 
There are a few caveats to lando setting up in the face of defensive mons. While his defenses are not paper thin, they are by no means strong. Let us look at pokemon that an inexperienced player such as myself may consider to be setup fodder only to find that they are sorely mistaken.

0 Atk Skarmory Brave Bird vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Landorus: 118-139 (36.8 - 43.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Sure lando wins in a 1v1 situation, but 40% is a lot to take from "setup bait", especially if you accidentally swap into it.

252+ SpA Mega Venusaur Giga Drain vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Landorus: 156-184 (48.7 - 57.5%) -- 94.5% chance to 2HKO

Lando-I can barely 1v1 this monster, let alone counter it. Megasaur is definitely NOT SETUP BAIT.

4 Atk Mandibuzz Foul Play vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Landorus: 121-144 (37.8 - 45%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Ignoring the completely pointless 4 attack EVs on mandibuzz, this actually does more then skarms brave bird. That's timid landorous btw, yes the calc accounts for that.

4 Atk Ferrothorn Power Whip vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Landorus: 135-160 (42.1 - 50%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO

Remember that situation I gave a few posts back? Well, apparently this is what happens if the opponent feels like sacing ferrothorn to damage landrous. While losing ferrothorn is a thorn in any opponents side, landrous is a premier wall breaker, so stall teams may find this a good idea if they are playing an opponent who heavily relies on lando to break certain walls that are otherwise nigh indomitable.

So moral of the story is, don't be too predictable with deh gravity, cuz pretty much every OU wall has a way to punish lando pretty hard for doing so.
 
Is Superpower viable on this thing? I'm thinking of running a set of Earth Power/Sludge Wave/Superpower/Stealth Rock to make it a wallbreaker. Stealth Rock is lacking elsewhere, and Psychic is already covered by two other mons in my team, so this set would cover my needs. The reason is mainly to make my team better against stall teams, and with superpower I wouldn't be walled by Chansey. Is that a good idea?
 
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You would have to change Landorus' nature and EVs to ensure a 2HKO on Chansey who can stall you out from your Attack drops. You might want to consider Knock Off instead, making her much easier to deal with in general.
 
I run into this pokemon a lot and I was wondering what sorts of pokemon can switch into the special sets, set up once, say curse or DD or CM, in front of it meanwhile eating the earth powers psychics etc for manageable damage? (taking into account the possibility of gravity on the switch)

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Manaphy: (40.84 - 48.26%) -- 12.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Kinda baselines things imo, if you want Lando-I to be set-up-fodder for your pokemon you need something seriously grade A bulky like latias
 
Expecting Lando-I to be setup bait is like trying to setup in megamaw or azumarill's face, if you do so, you deserve taking an extremely powerful STAB move to the face. Lando-I is NOT SET UP BAIT. In fact, very few good mons are setup bait anymore, even defensive mons like skarm and ferro aren't really setup bait.
 
The OP's Choice Scarf analysis needs an edit; the phrase "EdgeSlide coverage" is used, which is quite odd, since both moves described therein (Stone Edge and Rock Slide) are of the same type (Rock). I believe you meant either EdgeQuake or QuakeSlide.
 
Expecting Lando-I to be setup bait is like trying to setup in megamaw or azumarill's face, if you do so, you deserve taking an extremely powerful STAB move to the face. Lando-I is NOT SET UP BAIT. In fact, very few good mons are setup bait anymore, even defensive mons like skarm and ferro aren't really setup bait.
Latias, Deoxys-D, Cresselia, Mismagius are 4 pokemon that can always switch in at 100% and squeeze in a CM (or a heal or whatever) against the standard special Lando sets. Claydol can set up a sub or happily spin, Mantine could set up Amnesia. Milotic can set up screens.

The problem is that of those listed above only Latias could seemingly be viable in OU, with some arbitrary CM set, but I'd like to see some more pokemon ideas that can use Lando as an opportunity. Other great pokemon such as Garchomp and Talonflame are often set up bait for other great pokemon in the tier (clefable and ttar respectively), there's no reason to discount Landorus as "too powerful". Special defense tied with flying/levitate typing can give certain pokemon the chance to not only counter Lando but also start to threaten the other pokemon on the opponents team, or support its own team. Gravity could muck with things, but that's also a turn coming in with no damage, so CM and recovery could possibly mitigate the effects of gravity.

Sorry that I'm more focused on anti-Lando play than actually using it on my team, I don't have much to add to Lando usage except that I think Naive with U-Turn is a tremendous asset worth trying to fit in over focus blast.
 
56k Hmmm, perhaps we have different definitions of setup bait, because using the pokemon calc's set (gravity + 3 special attacks is still my fav), I found these.

252 SpA Life Orb Landorus Hidden Power Ice vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Latias: 127-151 (42 - 50%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Milotic: 188-224 (47.7 - 56.8%) -- 37.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Psychic vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Mismagius: 147-173 (56.1 - 66%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Claydol and mantine both hard counter lando-I as long as they are running ice beam, they can comfortably take a psychic, sludge wave, or even a gravity EP and KO back easily with ice beam or attempt to setup.

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Claydol: 144-172 (44.4 - 53%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Mantine: 130-153 (38.9 - 45.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Or not... As this illustrates, trying to setup in front of an offensive threat like lando-I is dangerous, you are basically banking on the opponent feeling threatened by a possible ice beam and swapping out, giving you a free turn. If gravity is up, lando-I cleanly 2hkos all of these, and even without gravity, it can still nail most of these guys pretty hard.

For the record, all these mons except mismagius can and prolly should carry ice beam, meaning that they can comfortably swap in and ohko.

So to reiterate, lando-I is NOT setup bait, also, many garchomps nowadays carry iron head to nail clefable, and a lot of clefables don't appreciate STAB EQs either. Talonflame is only setup bait for ttar is he's locked into a move besides u-turn, otherwise he just nails ttar with u-turn (though he may take some heavy pursuit damage in the process, but one cannot use pursuit and setup at the same time, so tflame is still not setup bait). So like I said, true setup bait is very rare due to the large number of pokemon capable of sweeping a considerable fraction of the tier with a mere one turn of setup, and regardless, lando-I is NOT setup bait.
 
^

Obviously I did my calcs with maxed or near-max special bulk :)

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Sludge Wave vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Latias: 127-151 (34.98 - 41.59%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers

So not only can Latias counter the full special sets, but it can even set up a CM and then start recovering


Anyway the point I'm trying to get across is this: Landorus-I does pretty severe damage even to his counters. Paired up with a pursuit user like Bisharp, and a partner in crime such as LO Kyurem, and then it becomes pretty hard to punish or even just wall the special spam. Take the Latias example above. Yes it switches in and absorbs the special moves, but it's then a sitting duck for something like an Aegislash or Scizor to come in and pursuit it off.

Other pokemons that can handle Landorus-I, but bring different forms of offense to the table, is something I'm really interested in for my team building right now. I'm using a simple ice beam Latias at the moment, and it's alright if I can keep TTar out, but other options would be appreciated. A community can come up with a lot more ideas than one person!
 
^Fair enough. The point I'm trying to get across is that lando-i is simply not a mon you want to try and set up in front of, focus more on simply forcing it out. HP-ice manec makes a decent lando-I lure, if you can nail him with HP-ice on the swap in, it's an easy kill. As for mons that beat it that aren't vulnerable to pursuit trapping... hmmm, greninja is prolly the closest thing, esp if it's running HP fighting to nail ttar. Keldeo could prolly beat it, it really doesn't need an ice move to ohko, lando-I is pretty frail and usually runs spdef- nature anyway, but neither of them can switch in. If it's already weakened, chansey can come in and KO with s-toss. OOH, here's one, gyarados could prolly wreck him, and he counters ttar to boot, esp if it still has megaevo on the table. ideally you swap in gyara while he's unmega'd into lando-I, threaten him out, and megavolve after ttar swaps in. Both megazards can threaten him out if gravity is not up. megamaw can KO him with sucker punch if he has a small amount of prior damage. SP defensive gastro can come in as often as it likes and most lando-Is pack nothing for it (I've never seen one with HP grass because then they miss out on gliscor, other lando's and dragons).
 
Finally updated this, and I am happy this discussion is still continuing unlike Thundy-T :/
Removed Physical Sweeper, I've kept testing it and I just felt that Sheer Force was more useful and required less support, and HP Ice kinda didn't cut it most of the time when damaging most Dragon-types, as the only real 4x Ice weak 'mons now are Lando (both formes), Dragonite and Chomp, so Psychic can hit more targets like Zapdos, Rotom-W, Mega Venusaur, and other common stall teammates that Lando can wreck. Also added Calm Mind as a boosting move alongside Rock Polish.

Scarf was also kind of underwhelming imo and it didn't promote too much discussion, so I removed that too.
 
Finally updated this, and I am happy this discussion is still continuing unlike Thundy-T :/
Removed Physical Sweeper, I've kept testing it and I just felt that Sheer Force was more useful and required less support, and HP Ice kinda didn't cut it most of the time when damaging most Dragon-types, as the only real 4x Ice weak 'mons now are Lando (both formes), Dragonite and Chomp, so Psychic can hit more targets like Zapdos, Rotom-W, Mega Venusaur, and other common stall teammates that Lando can wreck. Also added Calm Mind as a boosting move alongside Rock Polish.

Scarf was also kind of underwhelming imo and it didn't promote too much discussion, so I removed that too.
1. No mention of a gravity set? I feel like gravity + 3 sp attacks is really nice

2. HP ice is worth running over sludge wave imo because dragons and lando-bros are a 100 times more scary and are usually immune to EP, while most fairys boast of no such immunity. It at least deserves a slash on special sets (HP anything on any phys mon is kinda worthless atm). I wouldn't get rid of psychic for it though.

3. Any mon with U-turn deserves to have it mentioned somewhere, it's that good of a move.
 
1. No mention of a gravity set? I feel like gravity + 3 sp attacks is really nice

2. HP ice is worth running over sludge wave imo because dragons and lando-bros are a 100 times more scary and are usually immune to EP, while most fairys boast of no such immunity. It at least deserves a slash on special sets (HP anything on any phys mon is kinda worthless atm). I wouldn't get rid of psychic for it though.

3. Any mon with U-turn deserves to have it mentioned somewhere, it's that good of a move.
I'll probably still mention all of them (Grabbity, it pulls ya down....to hell!), but HP Ice is still really meh outside of the targets it hits, while Psychic and Sludge Wave is still pretty spammable (even though EP is what you'll use 96% of the time), and Sludge Wave still hits most of the targets you mentioned for some decent damage on switch-in's:

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Psychic vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Garchomp: 174-205 (48.6 - 57.2%) -- 93.4% chance to 2HKO

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Psychic vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Landorus-T: 183-216 (47.9 - 56.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

Shit, forgot about Gliscor,

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Psychic vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Gliscor: 192-227 (54.2 - 64.1%) -- 92.6% chance to 2HKO after Poison Heal

pretty gud. Lando-T loses if it gets hit by a Psychic when it switches in on SR (same with Gliscor), but DNite is pretty hard to take down with or without HP Ice bc it's only powerful on 4x SE hits (Multiscale makes it 2x SE), so idk. Lando does like Sludge Wave to out-troll CM Magic Guard Clefable and other specially defensive Fairy-types in which most people will attempt to check it with.
 
canman98 I would definitely not run hp-ice over psychic, the neutral coverage and hitting megavenu is very nice. Maybe it's just that my team has more trouble with dragons then it does with fairies not named azumarill or megamawile (both of them run disgustingly strong priority that can kill lando-I pretty hard core, even if he does get a safe swap in and is running sludge wave (yes I know sludge wave doesn't hit mawile)). But on 4 special attack sets, HP ice > sludge wave imo.

grabbity > either of those though
 
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