Quagsire (BW2 Revamp) (QC 3/3) (GP 2/2)

ScraftyIsTheBest

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Well, here's good old Quaggy



Derp

[Overview]

<p>Quagsire returns for another round of OU, but unfortunately, its transition to BW2 was not a kind one. Quagsire is now overwhelmed by new threats such as Keldeo, Sheer Force Landorus, and Technician Breloom. Due to this massive increase in power, Quagsire's bulk and access to Unaware simply does not cut it in this fast-paced metagame. To make matters even worse, Quagsire faces stiff competition from Landorus-T, which packs Intimidate and Stealth Rock. However, as dire as things may have become for Quagsire, it still clings to its niche. Thanks to Unaware, it is capable of checking some of the more threatening physical boosting sweepers in the metagame, including Swords Dance Terrakion, Moxie Salamence, and Dragonite. This allows Quagsire to serve as glue to stall teams in need of a way to check boosting sweepers which would otherwise plow their way through the team. In short, Quagsire does have a unique niche in OU; just do not expect too much from it otherwise.</p>

[SET]
name: Physically Defensive
move 1: Scald
move 2: Earthquake
move 3: Toxic
move 4: Recover
item: Leftovers
ability: Unaware
nature: Relaxed
evs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD

[SET COMMENTS]

<p>This is Quagsire's best bet at contributing to the team. Thanks to its rare Unaware ability and good defensive typing, it can check a myriad of boosting sweepers such as Swords Dance Terrakion, Moxie Salamence, and Thundurus-T. Scald is the primary move of the set; although weak coming off of base 65 Special Attack, its 30% chance of inducing a burn helps Quagsire's ability to check the threats it is supposed to. Earthquake is chosen here for STAB, and although Quagsire is rather weak, it can hurt some opponents, such as Terrakion and Magnezone, for a modest level of damage. Toxic is chosen here to poison bulkier targets, such as Jellicent and Dragonite, as Quagsire cannot hit them hard enough. Finally, Recover is chosen here as a form of recovery to ensure Quagsire will last long.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

<p>Maximum EVs are invested into HP and Defense to provide the most physical bulk possible in order to check the threats Quagsire needs to. A Relaxed nature is chosen here in order to further compound this, while merely lowering Quagsire's already low Speed. Leftovers is chosen as the item for its consistent recovery. Stockpile is a very usable choice to buff Quagsire's defenses to high levels, and with Unaware's ignoring of stat boosts, Quagsire can very effectively utilize the move.</p>

<p>Quagsire dislikes Grass-type attacks, so Amoonguss makes for a great teammate, sporting good synergy with Quagsire while also incapacitating opponents with Spore. Blissey and Chansey are also good teammates as they are able to sponge special attacks while also providing Aromatherapy support, which is crucial for Quagsire should it be hit by status. Hazard support from the likes of Forretress or Ferrothorn is also appreciated, as Quagsire will be forcing some switches. The former can also provide Rapid Spin support to prevent Quagsire from getting worn down.</p>

[Other Options]

<p>Quagsire has a couple of other options at its disposal. A specially defensive set is usable, but Quagsire will lose the ability to take on Terrakion and Salamence. Furthermore, most special attackers will still hit it hard due to Quagsire's poor Special Defense. Curse may seem like a cool boosting move to raise Quagsire's decent Attack and Defense, but this is generally not a good idea due to a poor Special Defense hampering Quagsire's ability to survive. Yawn is decent to induce sleep and cause switches. Counter is a decent move to deal heavy damage to most physical attackers, but this also requires Quagsire to take damage in order to deal damage, which is not always a good idea. Acid Spray allows Quagsire to run a special attacking set, but is outclassed by Tentacruel. Finally, Quagsire has Swagger to annoy the opponent with severe confusion damage and can work well with Unaware ignoring the Attack boost.</p>

[Checks and Counters]

<p>Grass-types are the greatest counters to Quagsire, as they can hit it 4x super effectively and resist both of its STABs. Abomasnow, Amoonguss, Celebi, and Ferrothorn are all good examples of these. Haxorus and Kyurem-B, thanks to Mold Breaker and Teravolt, respectively, laugh at Quagsire's Unaware and can boost and hit it hard with Outrage. Bulky Water-types, such as Jellicent, Slowbro, and Vaporeon, take little from Quagsire outside of Toxic, which the latter can ignore due to Hydration, and can wear it down with repeated Scalds. Users of Taunt, particularly Sableye, can shut Quagsire down while not taking much from its attacks. Quagsire is also prone to users of Choice Band. Finally, thanks to Quagsire's pitiful Special Defense, strong special attackers, such as Keldeo, Hydreigon, and Tornadus, can make quick work out of it.</p>
 
i think you should mention Swagger in OO, quagga is the best user of the move thanks to unaware and is a great strtegy if used alongside Imposter ditto...
 
The only viable thing Quagsire has atm is checking physical boosters that don't run a grass attack. His defenses are just not that good and while his typing let Quagsire have only one weakness, it is unfortunate that he can't take a specially defensive hit thanks due not resisting them. (Read : Keldeo can spam surfs on him all day and there are not many specially offensive boosters he can wall) The physically defensive set can at least wall the dragon dancers and swords dancers. He's only usable if your team has a glaring weakness to Gyarados, dd Dragonite, sd garchomp/terrakion. And even then, there are probably better pokemons to use. My suggestion is to only use a defensive set. He gives free switches all day long if you don't run toxic.

Also, it is really hard to fit Quaggy in a team, apart from stall.


Just my 2 cents
 
get rid of spd, it doesn't "wall" any rain threats that gastrodon / frog thingy with same typing (lol its bad, but it has SR) would do better. additionally, i would even get rid of curse as well. i've personally only found it useful if my team needed a reuniclus check. physically defensive is quagy's best bet of walling shit in the metagame. conkeldurp, dragon dancers bar hax, etc. are all handled by quaggy, and it's his only niche. i'm surprised you didn't list the only viable set originally (imo), but it's okay, haha.


[SET]
name: Standard
move 1: Scald
move 2: Recover
move 3: Earthquake
move 4: Toxic
item: Leftovers
ability: Unaware
nature: Relaxed
evs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD

-swagger
-curse with waterfall, nature change
-stockpile but mention how it sucks

actually, now that i think about it, stockpile actually isn't that garbage as it once was since toxic users are down coz metagame is so offensive, but it probably requires too much team support but w/e.
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
Not sure where Quagsire fits into this metagame. It only walls a few threats and gets run over by the rest. It can take on...what, MoxieMence and DDNite? Terrakion? Erm...Conkeldurr? That's just about all I'm coming up with. On the other hand, it's trounced by extremely common threats such as Breloom, Keldeo, Latios, Tornadus-T, even Thundurus-T with Grass Knot, a move that is gaining in popularity with the steady rise in Hippowdon usage. If you want this analysis to get through QC, the fact is you're going to need to put a better case together for Quagsire in OU.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
Better than moxiemence, DDnite, terrakion, conkeldurr, latias, and any other less-used boosting sweeper? Not to mention it does pretty nice against NP thundurus-T, even if it can't totally deal with it.

I'd also like to point out that i could sub in skarmory instead of quagsire in that paragraph and no one would blink an eye. Sure, skarmory has far more utility, but if it just walled all that stuff, i'm betting people would still use it in OU

Edit: It beats SubCM latias via PP stalling it.

We don't get to ignore any of those things(Side note:Continue? What?)-that was the whole "utility" thing-i didn't feel like listing all of the stuff skarmory had over quagsire. At the same time... it's beaten by a lot of top pokemon, and it's still OU. Spikes are great. Know what's better? Not caring if you accidentally let a sweeper boost several times in a row. As for SDloom, that's one of the few-i'd mention CM keldeo if it actually existed, but at this point it seems like it's gone AWOL.

You should probably remove the curse set-if you want a good bulky booster, you might as well go with cradily at that point-still taken down by trick and crits, but it can at least beat stally teams with its phasing immunity. As for the stockpile set, bri, i find that stockpile and quadweaknesses don't mix. If you really want to use a stockpiler, just use stockpile hippowdon for the phasing and weather control-quaggy doesn't need to phase to beat setup sweepers, but it's kind of got a problem with dealing actual damage-dual stabs are weak, and stab+toxic carries its own problem, being either taunt jellicent,tentacruel, and ferrothorn, or skarmory/gliscor/bronzong.
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
Better than moxiemence, DDnite, terrakion, conkeldurr, latias, and any other less-used boosting sweeper? Not to mention it does pretty nice against NP thundurus-T, even if it can't totally deal with it.

I'd also like to point out that i could sub in skarmory instead of quagsire in that paragraph and no one would blink an eye. Sure, skarmory has far more utility, but if it just walled all that stuff, i'm betting people would still use it in OU
It loses to more than half of the top ten most used Pokemon in OU, including the single most common boosting sweeper in the game, Breloom. And it doesn't actually beat SubCM Latias without Ice Punch and Curse. Also, we somehow continue to ignore the fact that Skarmory is immune to Toxic, whereas if Quagsire gets hit by Toxic it's essentially useless. Skarmory also has hazards and phazing, both of which Quag lacks. It even has Curse! Quagsire's only advantage is its ability, and seeing as we have seen a huge decline in the use of boosting sweepers in BW2, that too is made much less useful. I can't fathom why one would want to use Quagsire in OU, it's far past its prime.
 
Quag serves a niche on stall teams strictly, especially against rain where it can help against CM Jirachi. Additionally, it helps against scizor, lucario, terrakion, dnite, salamence among other threats. I see Quagsire as a sort of glue to a defensive core for rain stall.
 

ScraftyIsTheBest

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I'll switch the specially defensive to physically defensive, and add Stockpile and Swagger to OO.

Anyways, yeah, Quaggy took a big hit in the transition to BW2, with Techniloom and shit running around, but it still clings to its small niche of beating things like Terrakion, Scizor, Lucario, MoxieMence, etc. It can still beat setup sweepers nicely, so it's still viable even though the transition to BW2 did quite a bit of damage.

EDIT: Should I really remove the Curse set from the analysis?
 

jc104

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Switch the set order and make sure to give them the right names. Otherwise I think this is fine.

Quagsire has definitely lost much of its usefulness, but the threats it checked in the past do all still exist, and therefore I believe it has a niche. As always, I urge you not to oversell Quagsire in the writeup, but I'm happy to see an analysis for it.
 
QC Team: Just from personal testing, I really think that Curse should just get AC'd. It can't set up easily, SpDef EV's suck since boosted Surf's, Hurricanes, Dracos, and Hydro's still pound you, the omnipresent Breloom says fuck your set-up, and the only thing you actually beat better is Reuniclus (CM Varients mostly) who is unknown. Setting up w/ Quagsire isn't worth it, so I don't think it deserves a set.
 
This metagame isn't exactly built for Quagsire, and certainly not well enough for a Curse set. The only big reason to run that would be to deal with boosting Thundurus-T better than any other mon could. I would just keep the physically defensive set because it was steadily good throughout all of BW1 and I think it could still potentially find some slots on some decent stall teams out there. Boosting Terrakion without Life Orb are still very common and nothing deals with it one on one like Quagsire, there's also occasional SD Scizor and ScarfMence out there which again fail against nothing more than a Quagsire. However, make it very clear that you will probably end up using Landorus-T as your bulky ground instead because you can sandwich SR with it's incredible bulk, Intimidate, additional power and U-Turn. Quagsire you want if you want insurance on your stall team that can even switch in on a lot of threats completely risk free if it's not 2HKOed by it's boosted attacks thanks to Recover. There are also less common but very threatening attackers like Toxicroak that could very well force you to mold your team around Quagsire rather than Lando-T at some point. Because the physical set's niche has been so well established in the past and still holds a touch of usefulness-

 

PK Gaming

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Just adding to what Yee posted, Curse should be removed. It isn't a good set.

Curse Quagsire was decent in early BW1, when Exca was legal and GK-less Thundurus's were everywhere. It suffers from a bunch of threats that just shut it down (Breloom, Rotom-W, etc) and it isn't threatening after a boost.

I'm not sure why this analysis suggesting that Quagsire can "beat" Terrakion. It takes a massive (59.39 - 70.05%) from Close Combat on the CB set, and it doesn't even OHKO in return with Earthquake or Scald because of its own ability[/B]. Quagsire is a good check to Terrakion at most(it can usually beat SD, Scarf and SR sets, especially if it switches into Stone Edge), you need to make sure to emphasize that. It's best if you advertise Quagsire as a utility Pokemon that's somewhat effective at checking boosting sweepers and a couple of other Pokemon, because when it comes to walling physical attackers it comes short (it loses to pretty much all of the relevant ones).
 

ScraftyIsTheBest

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Just adding to what Yee posted, Curse should be removed. It isn't a good set.

Curse Quagsire was decent in early BW1, when Exca was legal and GK-less Thundurus's were everywhere. It suffers from a bunch of threats that just shut it down (Breloom, Rotom-W, etc) and it isn't threatening after a boost.

I'm not sure why this analysis suggesting that Quagsire can "beat" Terrakion. It takes a massive (59.39 - 70.05%) from Close Combat on the CB set, and it doesn't even OHKO in return with Earthquake or Scald because of its own ability[/B]. Quagsire is a good check to Terrakion at most(it can usually beat SD, Scarf and SR sets, especially if it switches into Stone Edge), you need to make sure to emphasize that. It's best if you advertise Quagsire as a utility Pokemon that's somewhat effective at checking boosting sweepers and a couple of other Pokemon, because when it comes to walling physical attackers it comes short (it loses to pretty much all of the relevant ones).
Removed Curse. Was lazy, but I was considering removing it. Added the Curse set to OO.

Well, I specified SD Terrakion as the thing it can check. I mentioned it can check boosting sweepers like SD Terra, MoxieMence, and such. And made some changes otherwise.

Anyways, still needs more checks.
 

Pocket

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Your Checks and Counters need more beef ScraftyIsTheBest

~ Most Water-types that dgaf about EQ / Scald beats Quagsire. Rotom-W (offensive or specially defensive in the rain), Politoed, Jellicent, Hydration Vaporeon, Starmie, and Gastrodon all fall into this category.

~ Special offensive dragon-types like Hydreigon, offensive Latias and Latios does the trick

~ Also noteworthy to list some physical sweepers that are not walled by Quagsire. You already mentioned Kyurem-B and Haxorus, but there's also Breloom, LO Lucario, LO Terrakion, CB Dragonite, LO or CB Outrage Garchomp, and Sand Force-activated LO Landorus-I

~ Add Tornadus-T with GKnot Thundurus-T - it's Hurricane destroys Quagsire.
 
Quagsire is really not viable. It can't reliably check anything because they can run a grass move easily or just run CB or powerful special attacks (thundurus, conkeldurr/dragonite, salamence/latias, respectively).
 

ScraftyIsTheBest

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Quagsire is really not viable. It can't reliably check anything because they can run a grass move easily or just run CB or powerful special attacks (thundurus, conkeldurr/dragonite, salamence/latias, respectively).
Lol.

Quaggy got hurt badly in BW2, but it can still check some things, namely SD Terrakion (I name specific variants of the Pokemon it can check), and MoxieMence. Either way, Quaggy can check some things, and still has a small niche.

I'll add up the beef to the C&C as requested by Pocket, and it should be ready by then.
 
Physically Defensive:

  • In the AC please mention Stockpile instead of in OO. The QC have determined it is useful enough for AC, particularly in such an offensive metagame.
Checks and Counters:

  • Anything called a Grass-type kills it (Abomasnow, Ferrothorn, Celebi)
  • Haxorus and Kyurem-B laugh at Quagsire thanks to Mold Breaker and Teravolt, respectively
  • Bulky Waters take nothing from Quagsire and can take it down in a flash (flesh this out)
  • LO Lucario
  • CB Terrakion
  • Keldeo
  • Latios
  • Hydreigon
  • Sand Force Landorus-T
  • CB Dragonite / Garchomp
  • Taunt users (Sableye!)
  • Thundy-T with Grass Knot
  • Torn-T, Hurricane whoops its ass
Several of the things you mentioned were powerhouses that Quagsire can't wall, but they aren't checks. Checks are things that can revenge kill it, but can't necessarily switch in.



[qc]2/3[/qc]
 
What about Body Slam for Paralysis? It has a 30% chance of happening, just like Scald does. Or even Encore to help another Pokemon defeat/set up on the opponent?
 

Agonist

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What about Body Slam for Paralysis? It has a 30% chance of happening, just like Scald does. Or even Encore to help another Pokemon defeat/set up on the opponent?
Body Slam is incompatible with Unaware (I see it's an egg move) but there's still not really any point. Burn is more useful than paralysis, so imo there's no point in mentioning that.
 

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