there are new players here
thats ok
but theres a lot you need to learn as a new player that you simply
will not learn on the ladder. the first is that unlike in VGC, you have to pay legitimate consideration to switchins
. It's not enough to say checks exist to something like Mega Mence if nothing can switch in safely. A typical VGC game might have one to two switches on each side, a typical doubles ou game can have ten to fifteen. all setup sweepers, mega mence included, benefit
immensely from this; you can typically stop setup in vgc from team preview as long as you have a lead to beat it, but in doubles you more or less have to take into account a free turn that mega mence will get by coming in on things it can beat—this isnt hard because it beats a hell of a lot, and since it boosts speed it's impossible to check offensively so u cant let it set up at all. The only way to stop it from setting up is basically to play chicken with it and leave in things it ohkoes in the hopes you can cripple it if it goes for setup.
the second is that the ladder is utter garbage and will teach you nothing. frankly im not even sure why we do ladder reqs anymore. if you want to learn how the mence meta really plays you have to challenge people in the doubles ou room
it may not feel like it right now because to you mence meta is new and fresh, but the metagame is far more centralized with mence than without. The reason the high ladder uses only ten pokemon is that ladder kiddies are shitty players who suck shit and don't know shit; sylveon, thundurus, and heatran arent even top 10 pokemon (sylveon not even remotely) but theyre like three of the five most common on the high ladder because good players dont use the ladder. In reality, the metagame as of now is spectacular because there is no one top threat—the same thing that made late era dpp so great. there's a balance of power between the ~10 top threats, and even if most teams have some of these threats there's lots of room for innovation with lower-ranked pokemon. I'd say there are probably 60-100 viable Pokemon in DOU right now and im not even a creative builder.
Mence fucks this up by becoming the top threat. Metagames centralized around a single pokemon are garbage. Shit like Milotic and Sableye seeing use may seem like "fun innovation" at first but you will quickly come around to viewing it as "stupid bullshit" when it gets old and it
will get old, we had to deal with this shit for three months and it got super old, and i dont want to have to go on the fucking ladder again when that happens so i can vote to re-ban it.
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So let's talk about Salamence vs Kangaskhan. I said Laga's post was retarded and I damn well stand by that. Salamence is broken on its own merits, not because it's similar to kangaskhan and you can't check both. There are two main things Mence has over Kang: Speed and resists.
One of the best ways to beat Kang is to outspeed it. Here's a list of tier 2 or higher Pokemon that outspeed and check Kang which get outsped and checked by (aqua tail / double edge) Mence: Keldeo Mega-Diancie Terrakion Talonflame Gengar Blaziken Lando-I; and of course if you let Mega Mence use DD then you get to add literally every pokemon that beats Kang by outspeeding it, including Lando-T, Darkrai, Mega Gengar, Skymin, and more.
That's another thing about Kang vs Mence. It's so much less scary to let Kangaskhan set up than it is Mence. I mean don't get me fucking wrong, +2 Kangaskhan is scary, but it still gets beaten by all its offensive checks just as easily. Because of this, when Kangaskhan comes in, you don't have to immediately go into panic mode. It's not the right play for every situation but it's usually perfectly reasonable to just keep playin ur game and then once Kang gets a KO you get a free switch to something that can force it out. If Mega Mence sets up, all of its faster checks turn into sac fodder. Typically it's better to use fast checks than bulky checks for things because fast checks are able to do it multiple times, whereas bulky checks usually cripple themselves in order to do their job. Not to mention most of mence's bulky checks just get bopped by Jirachi support (standard cune icy wind is a fucking 3hko guys stop saying that icy wind is a counter to mencerachi). Because of all of this it's entirely 100% vital that you do not let Mence set up, like, ever. Which leads to the shitty gameplay I outlined in
this post.
The second thing is resists. Simply put Kang has no ability to play defense. If ur pokemon can do a thing, it can do said thing to Kang. Because of this, Kangaskhan doesn't have an easy time switching in or setting up; it typically has to come in after a KO and usually takes a big chunk if it tries to set up without support. However, Mence does have Pokemon that it 100% beats, which means that it can actually come in and set up on its own without too much difficulty. This gives it the ability to actually attempt setups multiple times throughout the match, which means that you can force your opponent into the shitty sac-something game that i described in my post i linked.
The other thing that mence having actual resists does is heavily shape the metagame. If you lose hard to mence, you become much worse. The only Pokemon that really loses hard to Kanga is Cress; every other pokemon can either cripple it with status or bonk it with a powerful STAB move if it tries to set up. Sure pokemon with better Kang matchups become better, and pokemon with terrible Kang matchups become worse, but there are so few pokemon with truly terrible Kang matchups that it's not a big deal.
Also like the only solid Mence switchin is Thundurus and i am 1000000%
not in favor of any metagame shift which drastically increases the viability of that annoying pos pokemon.
