So I'm struggling to find what this thing is actually good for.
If you look at what it's pros are, it has high speed, Boom Burst, Frisk, and a couple of other neat little things. Problem is that it doesn't really have much worth when compared to Flygon and Latios/Latias. If you're using it as a standard Specs set, Latios does the job better. It flies without inheriting the Flying type weaknesses, Dragon Pulse does more damage than Boom Burst on Noivern, it has better resistances, isn't weak to Stealth Rock, still OHKO's almost everything it needs to with HP Fire compared to Flamethrower, and they both have item swaps. On top of all this, Latios does more damage. The only things Noivern has left is Frisk (useful, but eh...), Focus Miss, Hurrican with terribad accuracy, and U-Turn. And U-Turn is always going to be uninvested, coming off of 70 Base attack. And if you wanted something fast with U-Turn, Flygon does a better job. It's immune to Thunderwave and Electric moves, is able to go Scarfed for good speed, has better resistances, and it's U-Turn will actually do something.
It's speed isn't even that good. I mean, it IS good. But when compared to Latias and Latios, the only things it is outspeeding is Geninja, Tornadus-T, Azelf (?), Mega Absol and Houndoom (?), Serperior, Tornadus, Thunderus (Prankster...), Gengar, Espeon, and the Eon dragons themselves. I feel like the speed you gain isn't enough to compensate for the advantages you give up.
Hmm I feel like you are severely underrating Noivern. Firstly you've washed over the benefits of using him in one sentence, when actually having access to Frisk is a niche in itself. It gives you a ton more reliability when dealing with lead pokemon, as knowing the item tells you the moveset. It also lets you revenge kill much more reliably, without falling for choice scarves, expert belts or focus sashes. I don't think this ability should be so overlooked.
Secondly, while you are right that Noivern has a crippling stealth rock weakness, the eon twins have psychic typing, which is made even worse this gen due to the rising strength of both ghost and dark type moves, as well as the rise of sucker punch.
Lastly the two pokemon have very different support options. I'm sure Noivern has some potential outside of just specs even tho that set is most common by far. For instance, access to frisk, taunt, u-turn, and tailwind and incredible speed should make him a potent anti-lead, perhaps with a focus sash.
Another set could use a mixture of taunt, u-turn/roost and super fang to break down walls. Basically what I'm trying to say is that taunt is good guys.
Choice scarf is probably better than people think. People used to use choice scarf on deoxys-s despite its insane speed, because it works well as an anti-lead when also paired with taunt + a setup move (most likely tailwind) as well as something like draco meteor, which hits way harder than deoxys-s' fire punch. This Noivern has the distinction of surprising and beating all of the common scarfed dragons, scarfchomp gets ohko'd, as does scarfed latios. I dont think scarfed latias is a thing but it has a decent chance of beating that too. Alternatively you could drop the tailwind for flamethrower and gain a tool to always beat lead scarf genesect, one of the most bothersome pokemon in the metagame.
Something like this:
Noivern @ Choice Scarf | Frisk
Timid |
100 Hp /
252 SpA /
156 Spe
-Switcheroo
-Taunt
-Draco Meteor
-Flamethrower
156 speed is enough to beat anyone choice scarfed with 110 base speed. The rest is put into hp. This allows it to outspeed latios, terrakion, genesect, garchomp, basically any scarfed dragon. The extra hp allows it to do some fun things like switch into scarf victini and take less than 50% damage from both bolt strike and v-create. The combination of taunt + switcheroo + frisk means you can beat a lot of common setup leads. Naturally you also ohko genesect leads which are so common at the moment.
Also- has anyone considered using infiltrator with a not ultra-offensive set? He has access to toxic that hits through subs. I'm sure something like toxic + roost + sub + flamethrower could be used. You cant touch heatran though.
TLDR (although you should read it T_T)
I'm not saying Noivern is necessarily as good as or better than the twin dragons, because I dont think thats true. I'm just saying he definitely has a niche even with his somewhat shallow movepool, because he has enough when combined with his ability to carve some sort of niche.
