All Gens Pokemon Through the Ages: Flygon

Hogg

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I never really used Espeon much in ADV, but I recall seeing it used to good effect. Basically a fast special wall that also passed Subs and CM boosts - certainly nothing wrong with that.

I used Espeon a fair bit in gen V. It was tied with Latias as my favorite dual screener (post Deo-S), and I pretty much always used it on sun, both as hazard control and to pass into Duggy/Heatran trappers. Whenever I play sun, it's almost always Sunny Day Ninetales + Dugtrio + Magma Storm Heatran + CMpass Espeon + Venusaur + some sort of dragon, usually Hydreigon.
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
i think espeon in gsc is really underrated and good! passing growth to stuff like zapdos and gengar can be ridiculously good, the lack of spatk boost options in gsc makes people forget how strong a +1 stab thunder is. lets you break through stuff like snorlax that would otherwise be impossible to 3 shot. also bp in general is a sweet move in a gen where switching is super prevalent. additionally if you're not dumb and run morning sun you can have a pretty solid wall for most special attackers. i like the mono attacker growthpass set but some form of hidden power is also cool in niche cases. in fact (incoming shameless self promotion) i made a team with espeon like a year and a half ago and it did really well in pocl, got me 3 wins before people started cteaming so i had to switch :pirate: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rmt-animal-testing.3481348/

i don't know much about espeon in adv/dpp, but in bw1 i think it was really really good on sun. it fulfilled a very specific role, as bkc mentions, of bouncing rocks and weakening weather starters for dugtrio to clean up. this is back when getting perma sun meant 99% win instead of like 80% now. so by fulfilling the very niche role that it existed for, espeon actually became a relative staple on (good) sun teams. i wasn't the first one to use it, probably one of the first 10 or so, but i did use it quite a bit in 2012 during wcop/spl, preferred set was bp/psychic/hp fire/grass knot. i think it's not very good now and xatu does most things it's supposed to do, except better.
 

Bedschibaer

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I agree that Espeon is pretty cool in gsc but has problems to do as well as it's brother in law Vaporeon. It's better at baton passing the growth while Vap is better at using the growth. The predominance of that makes it surprising as soon as a Vap passes or an Espy does not pass for most players, which shouldn't be the case versus anyone who knows his stuff though. What is pretty cool about Espy is that it's hardest counter, Ttar, can be worn down fairly quickly due to lacking rest most of the time with spikes control and forcing it in alot. Breaking things like Blissey, Lax and Raikou to some extent can become a little bit trickier but is manageable. Most Espy teams will even look like Lavos'. Got your Cloyster for spikes, got your Zapdos to pass growth to (Raikou works too and the extra speed is nice for outspeeding things like Zapdos, Gengar, etc, not huge though. The noticeable decrease of power is pretty big though, as +1 Zapdos can even 2hko Snorlax with decent rolls after spikes) and you got 3 other offensive mons that round that up. Espeon is cool overall, but as already mentioned it works better on paper than in reality. There are also pretty cool teams that use both Espeon and Vaporeon and they certainly do work, since you can freely pass +1 to Vap on all non roaring Ttars, which is something your opponent has to find a switch-in with spikes up first. But again, sounds great on paper but isn't that great later on.
 
lets you break through stuff like snorlax that would otherwise be impossible to 3 shot.
Except that Snorlax comes in as Espeon Growths. Now what? Espeon can't kill Snorlax itself, and its targets typically can't go toe-to-toe either even with the boost.

The noticeable decrease of power is pretty big though, as +1 Zapdos can even 2hko Snorlax with decent rolls after spikes) and you got 3 other offensive mons that round that up.
No, Espeon passing 1 Growth to Zapdos won't allow Zapdos to 2HKO Lax. Even with Spikes, and both Thunders hitting (and remember, it's 51% that at least one of them will miss), and with max rolls. You need Spikes, both Thunders hitting, good (ie, significantly better than average) rolls, and on top of that Snorlax using Double-Edge twice (as opposed to Cursing first, or using a different STAB move) and getting decent rolls.
 
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Bedschibaer

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No, Espeon passing 1 Growth to Zapdos won't allow Zapdos to 2HKO Lax. Even with Spikes, and both Thunders hitting (and remember, it's 51% that at least one of them will miss), and with max rolls.
+1 Zapdos Thunder vs. Snorlax: 212-250 (40.5 - 47.8%) -- 60.9% chance to 2HKO after Spikes
+1 Zapdos Thunder vs. Snorlax: 212-250 (40.5 - 47.8%) -- 4.3% chance to 2HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery
i actually thought it was more in my memory, but hey, 4,3% is something i guess.
 
+1 Zapdos Thunder vs. Snorlax: 212-250 (40.5 - 47.8%) -- 60.9% chance to 2HKO after Spikes
+1 Zapdos Thunder vs. Snorlax: 212-250 (40.5 - 47.8%) -- 4.3% chance to 2HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery
i actually thought it was more in my memory, but hey, 4,3% is something i guess.
I thought as much. Think about what's actually going on in this scenario rather than just ticking boxes on a form.

Super secret skillz:
That calculation is if Snorlax switches into Zapdos, taking Spikes and the first +1 Thunder, recovers with Leftovers once, and then is hit again.

What will actually happen is that Snorlax switches into Espeon's Growth, taking Spikes and recovering with Leftovers, will attack or Curse as you pass and will recover with Leftovers a second time, and then will take the +1 Thunder as it attacks and recovers with Leftovers again. As such, the second +1 Thunder won't KO unless it's taken recoil damage as well as Spikes.
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
no need to be condescending, i have a machamp on my team for a reason and espeon can in fact use the fabled Baton Pass move to get a favorable switch on lax! therefore ur argument is kinda silly
 
no need to be condescending, i have a machamp on my team for a reason and espeon can in fact use the fabled Baton Pass move to get a favorable switch on lax! therefore ur argument is kinda silly
Huh, I must have edited out the bit in my own post about the "pass 2 Growths" and "dry-pass to Machamp/Marowak/Rhydon" super secret tactics. Whoops.

I was more just annoyed at your apparent claim of "Espeon makes it easy to get past Lax", when Lax is in fact one of Espeon's biggest problems; I wasn't saying that your actual team sucked (I did notice the Machamp). The condescension was mostly aimed at Bed because he was being a script-kiddie.
 

Jorgen

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Snorlax doesn't enjoy staying in on +1 Zapdos, even if Zapdos had to switch in on it. Phazing should be the standard defense against it, at least at first pass (in case anyone was thinking to use Lax as their primary Espeon check).
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
Huh, I must have edited out the bit in my own post about the "pass 2 Growths" and "dry-pass to Machamp/Marowak/Rhydon" super secret tactics. Whoops.

I was more just annoyed at your apparent claim of "Espeon makes it easy to get past Lax", when Lax is in fact one of Espeon's biggest problems; I wasn't saying that your actual team sucked (I did notice the Machamp). The condescension was mostly aimed at Bed because he was being a script-kiddie.
ok that makes a lot more sense, i was especially confused by the super secret tactics that didnt exist. but yeah lax is definitely an issue, except i think 99.9% of players will immediately switch to lax when espy comes out so you can get a really free machamp turn due to that. also another thing, espy takes a huge dump on gengar which is apparently a popular pokemon now (?_?) so that's another reason to use it
 
ok that makes a lot more sense, i was especially confused by the super secret tactics that didnt exist. but yeah lax is definitely an issue, except i think 99.9% of players will immediately switch to lax when espy comes out so you can get a really free machamp turn due to that. also another thing, espy takes a huge dump on gengar which is apparently a popular pokemon now (?_?) so that's another reason to use it
The "super secret skillz" in my reply to Bed are in transparent text. Select the text, or quote it and choose BBCode view, and it's visible. (I would have used the spoiler tag, but Smogon hasn't implemented the XenForo
functionality into its forum code.)

However, they're not the ones I said I edited out, I legitimately didn't post those originally, which was my mistake. The stuff in invisitext is just me telling Bed why his calcs were incorrect.
 
Snorlax doesn't enjoy staying in on +1 Zapdos, even if Zapdos had to switch in on it. Phazing should be the standard defense against it, at least at first pass (in case anyone was thinking to use Lax as their primary Espeon check).
It doesn't enjoy it, but at the end of the day if they do go through with it Zapdos is dead and Snorlax might not be.

Roar Tyranitar, if you have it, is indeed the best defense. Skarm and Lix will get worn down eventually since they're passive phazers against it and +1 Psychics actually hurt, but you're right that they're okay for a switch or two (surprise HP Water is a problem for Lix, though).
 


Houndoom's never dominated OU, but he's never really been at the bottom of the barrel, either. BL for GSC and ADV, he got a chance to make more of a name for himself in DPP and BW UU. So, what niches helped separate Houndoom from other threats? What were its best sets, roles, teammates, and counters throughout the gens? Anything about Houndoom's past is up for discussion~

 
Houndoom is kind of an anti meta pokemon in adv ou. It's main purpose is trapping gengar with pursuit. It has a small niche over the other pursuit trapper, tyranitar, in that it's not as vulnerable to gengar's status moves and isn't hit as hard by giga drain (so as not to allow gengar to survive an extra pursuit). It has a number of other nifty things up its sleeve however. It completely blanks most celebi, and gives it a hard time as they have to decide whether you will pursuit or use a fire move. Outside of this, its typical fire grass coverage can be hard to deal with especially for teams that run swampert, and even without hp grass, it has willowisp that can be detrimental to a number of pokemon that would otherwise be good switch ins to its attacks, including snorlax, salamence, swampert, and even suicune to an extent. This makes it rather difficult for physical offense teams to deal with. Of course it does have a number of issues. It's frail, which makes it harder to switch in to gengar's attack moves, as well as making it difficult to survive any non burned physical attack. It is also quite vulnerable to dugtrio. The presence of pursuit tyranitar which can actually provide some defensive utility to a team really hinders its use, however it definitely has a place in ou.
 
Houndoom in GSC OU is a nice niche Pokémon. It has the strongest Pursuit in the game which, coupled with his good speed, allows him to trap things like Eggy and Misdreavus pretty easily (Gengar can either Explode, or risk a Hypnosis/Dynamicpunch. Destiny Bond can also be used to trade). It also has access to Counter to bounce back a physical attack to someone that tries to exploit his weak defense.
Another fun set to use is Sunnybeam. Fire Blast under the sun hurts even Snorlax and Solarbeam hits the fire-resistant Water and Rock-types. Blissey walls this set though.
 
In GSC it has the strongest Pursuit/Crunch in the game, and is also one of three Fire-types to get SolarBeam for the SunnyBeam set (Ho-Oh is better at it, but it's Uber). Problem is its frailty - it does get Counter to help somewhat with that, though. If Celebi hadn't been banned it might have been relevant; Tyranitar has issues actually forcing out Celebi to Pursuit it due to only having an 80 BP super-effective STAB which doesn't 2HKO.
 

Jorgen

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Houndoom's probably not the best SunnyBeamer in GSC. Although its SpA is high enough to 3HKO Lax in Sun and it obviously gets Solarbeam for Suicune, it's just so frail. Not to mention that if you want Houndoom to be a good pure SunnyBeamer, you'll want HP Fighting as your 4th to beat back Ttar, who otherwise doesn't fear getting hit by anything on the switch and subsequently threatens to OHKO with Rock Slide. Frankly, Entei's a better SunnyBeamer, despite the lack of SpA high enough to 3HKO Lax in Sun.

Houndoom's niche is therefore more defined by Pursuit than SunnyBeam. In particular, it shuts Egg down harder than anything else in the game. SunnyBeam is just a perk, a secondary function, something that might give Houndoom a chance to be useful against non-Egg teams.
 
Ho-oh in GSC Ubers is usually looked down upon, compared to other Ubers like Lugia or Mewtwo. But it has its charms. Access to the only viable burn inducing move, Sacred Fire, scares many physical attackers from switching into it. It has a nasty 4x weakness to rock and no good physical STAB to abuse that huge Attack (lol HP Flying), which is too bad. However, its great Sp. Def coupled with Recover is awesome.
As of sets, a Curse set is viable or a all out attacking one. Sunny Day + Sacred Fire/Fire Blast is fun to use.
 

Fireburn

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best mon 10/10

That being said, Ho-Oh had modest beginnings, mainly because teambuilding in GSC Ubers is limited and Ho-Oh offered little to the table in comparison to the metagame staples.. Mew/Snorlax/Mewtwo are requirements, Lugia is almost a requirement, and Heal Bell is a requirement (Celebi/Miltank), so that really only gives you one or two teamslots to play with, and the usefulness of spreading burns (what Ho-Oh was known for) could be somewhat limited at times since everything has recovery and most teams have clerics. That being said, Ho-Oh is great at pressuring key staples like Celebi and Steelix, and SD Mew usually could not OHKO it without resorting to Explosion. Though it lacks good physical STAB, it makes a decent Curse user with Sacred Fire to ward off potential checks such as Steelix, TTar, and Skarmory. It can also run an all-out attacking moveset with EQ/Shadow Ball/Thunderbolt as possible coverage moves, but its lack of physical STAB hurts it vs Snorlax and the odd Blissey.

In ADV, things started looking up - Ho-Oh got a nice friend in Groudon, who could provide sun for it to abuse Sacred Fire and a very fat resistance to Rock Slide. Choice Band and the EV limit also improved Ho-Oh's offense considerably, and it was now able to deal effectively with special tanks such as Latis and Blissey using a physical set. However, it still lacked good physical STAB, wasn't much of a sweeper, and had very annoying weaknesses to Rock Slide, Thunder, and Surf, which can make it somewhat hard to utilize. It was a definitely a threat and it found good use on some teams, but it wasn't dominant. Not yet, anyway.

DPP was when Ho-Oh really started gaining prominence, though it had a bit of a rocky start. It finally gained physical Sacred Fire, but DPP Ubers was quickly dominated by rain based teams as Kyogre gained massive benefits from Choice Specs/Scarf and further cemented its #1 spot in the usage statistics. Ho-Oh still only had unSTAB Earthquake with which to fight back. It also lost physical Shadow Ball and did not gain a comparable replacement, giving it issues against Latis and then newcomer Giratina-O. Stealth Rock was also a huge downer, as Ho-Oh was not overly fast and losing half of its health just by coming in ruined its solid bulk. Spinning was also somewhat difficult as Giratina(-O) were extremely difficult to kill and Forretress, the only real viable spinner, had massive trouble dealing with them. Between Stealth Rock and troubles dealing with the heavily Fire resistant metagame, Ho-Oh struggled a bit to find significant usage.

However, HGSS finally gave Ho-Oh good physical Flying STAB in Brave Bird, and that changed everything. It could now effectively fight the Latis again, Kyogre went from being a good counter to a shaky check at best, Giratina-O struggled to switch-in - the phoenix went from having several solid switch-ins to almost none as very few Pokemon could withstand the high-power physical STAB attacks Ho-Oh had always needed. It found easy switch-ins on most teams due to the pressing need for Steels to combat Dragons, and was tough to KO assuming you could keep Stealth Rock off the field. As in DPP, its most common set was SubRoost, and it was usually guaranteed to get a kill if it managed to get in on your Steel. Though Stealth Rock was still a huge issue, the reward for using Ho-Oh was now much greater, and that helped give it a spot on many sun offense/stall teams as a bulky, nuclear attacker that could check things like Darkrai and Latis.

Ho-Oh got even better in BW2. Though it introduced more things that Ho-Oh could check (CM Arceus formes, Ferrothorn, Genesect), and gave more viable spinners (Excadrill, buffed Cloyster, Kabutops was starting to pick up), the biggest buff Ho-Oh got by far was Regenerator, which gave it a little defense against Stealth Rock and massive tanking ability once the hazard was cleared. It also made Choice Band quite viable again as it no longer needed Roost to try and stay alive against Sneaky Pebbles, giving it even more damage potential. Ho-Oh ended up becoming the face of BW sun offense and also found considerable usage on sand and stall teams. Most sets were LO Roost or Choice Band, though stall teams also started making use of physically defensive sets that could check a wide range of threats such as Darkrai, EKiller, Psystrike Mewtwo, and Lati@s.

Overall, Ho-Oh started off as a somewhat mediocre wildcard and finished as one of the most dangerous Pokemon in the entire game as it was slowly buffed with each new generation. Many people have gone so far as to say that Stealth Rock is the only thing keeping the phoenix in line nowadays. Even in the earlier gens, don't underestimate this bird. Or birds in general, really.

tl;dr kacaw
 

Mr.378

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Yeah Fireburn put things pretty well. Ho-oh was one of the lower end Ubers for a lot of it's existence, with some legitimate argument to un ban it in some . This is mostly due to it's then misaligned stats and rather meh movepool. It was a Fire Flying type with great Attack and Special attack, but no real flying attacks and special fire attacks. It's primary use then was to spread burns using sacred fire and just be a general tank with it's good special defense and recover. It was ok at this but kind of hard to use, especially over some of the better ubers. DPP helped it out by giving it's main attack physical, but it was still missing something that made it really good considering that Kyogre and Palkia, the two most used mons in Ubers at the time had a x4 resistance to it and can kill with high-powered water moves. The addition of stealth rock also really hurt for obvious reason, and for a while Ho-oh was once more left to the wayside. Then HGSS came out and gave Ho-oh Brave Bird which is what it really needed as now Kyogre and Palkia, the aforementioned most common checks, could no longer switch in as Brave Bird did massive amounts to both on the switch. SInce then Ho-oh has only been getting better, particularly with B2W2 giving it Regenerator which gives it a great amount of longevity. This is also no even mentioning it's most recent help...

To summarize: Ho-oh was an ubers that started out average for one but has only been getting better.
 
ADV Ho-oh is massively underrated when it comes to a pure wall role; an sdef set with Sball/Toxic/Sacred Fire/Recover easily takes care of Lati@s, the best mons in the meta and poses much more of a threat to offense than Lugia which could be considered for the same role.

DPP Ho-oh I can't speak for much as my DPP Ubers skills are quite sub-par, I'd assume that due to the fact that there exists a grand total of 1 spinner outside lead roles, and that spinner isn't getting to spin consistently, Ho-oh is quite hard to use. I've heard notions from players like BKC about a Light Screen set which sounded intriguing. Overall I assume it's pretty meh here.

BW2 Ho-oh is where things started looking up again, though it was still incredibly hard to spin. Regenerator is of course a big. Ho-oh wasn't extremely splashable outside sun offense (could be used on sand), but sun offense in itself had its peak during this time (IMO) just because of Ho-oh's power. The best set, LO subroost, was just an incredibly easy way to win certain match ups. Subroost with leftovers is also workable as it checks CM Arcs more reliably. I used CB a lot as well but in hindsight I've come to realize how good Roost is to have on this mon. It seems like the CB Ho-oh trend at the end of BW2 carried on to XY and even ORAS for some reason, which is rather confusing (especially in the case of ORAS) as LO is just so much better in most cases.
 
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BL for GSC and ADV, Kingdra got its chance at OU stardom during DPP. It dropped down to UU for BW, where it was one of the top threats in the tier. So, what were its best sets, roles, niches, teammates, and counters throughout the gens? Everything about this seahorse is up for discussion this week ^.^


 
kingdra is pretty good in adv, most offense gets its clock cleaned rather hard by it. its issues are an inability to touch blissey/rest cune (they sometimes run toxic)/milotic, although to poison the latter you usually end up eating a toxic yourself.

in dpp it was mainly a sub dd dude sometimes showing up as a mixed sweeper on rain teams until atticus created chesto rest, which took everyone by surprise. it actually lives 2 hits from what were two of the most feared mons in the metagame at the time, lo starmie and offensive suicune, letting it dd rest and sweep. without the surprise factor it's not quite as good although it's certainly serviceable. while it's capable of beating several teams with little effort i personally don't like it because it doesn't hit very hard. can't expect everything to be a dd mence replacement but christ... i remember some people used specsdra as a semi-latias replacement after the ban since modest dra's spatk stat is 2 lower than timid lati but the 295 -> 269 speed drop means you're not beating a ton of important shit (+spe tran, lucario, jolly mamo, jolly nite, suppose it's worth mentioning jolly gyara while i'm here) while dra can't come in on half the shit lati could (grass, fighting, ground). specsdra is definitely legit though, always nice to nuke an incoming skarmory/swampert/celebi/shaymin/sometimes even breloom expecting dd. its most dangerous set without question however is the rain dancer which i believe really took off some time after bw came out although it definitely was seen before just not too often. i remember atticus played gouki for botw and he changed the kingdra on his team to rd. it just cuts through offense like butter and can play similarly to specs against defense that might expect a dd set.

in bw everyone ran specs on rain before the drizzleswim ban and marveled at how hydro 3hkoed ferrothorn (or "nattorei" back then). after that it was reduced to a niche mon you could throw on your offense team to help out with rain a little. it was pretty good in uu with its 4x fire resist being very valuable to sponge ridiculously strong attacks like victini's v-create and darmanitan's flare blitz while posing an offensive threat.
 

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