All Gens The "What if" thread - Topic #66 : Physical-Special split in ADV

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First thing that comes to mind? Lax gets a hard counter in the form of Jellicent. Ofc jelli won't be doing anything back to him since there is no will-o-wisp, poison does nothing to rest lax, but it's neutral to EQ, and is immune to all 3 of it's normal stabs it runs. Resists both surf and blizzard on amnesia sets as well. Jelli has RECOVER which alone makes it an extremely indispensable mon. Tauros also has nothing to hit jelli with hard enough (assuming no crit on his EQs).

Zapdos/Jolteon would undoubtedly see a rise in order to counter it and perhaps slowbro as well since Jelli can't threaten him at all (no taunt in gen1) and he could just amnesia his way up until Psychic destroys.

Probably a lot of other changes and effects would be seen to this, but I'm too lazy to think of all them right now. I do think it'd undoubtedly be used in OU regularly though.
 
105 spatk and spdef with water, ice, psychic coverage, and normal immunity.

You'd beat this mon with Chansey. If you give it the TM for Mega Drain things get interesting against waters but slowbro would still ultimately beat it. Tbolt Lapras would also be valuable against a Jellicent if your sleepers and twavers failed.

Wrapdance tentacruel outspeeds jellicent and can take a hit on the switch. Victreebel outspeeds this thing and might 2HKO it with Razor Leaf. Other than Chansey I feel that this mon would displace the big four while being stopped hard by zam and starmie. Zam less so, because worse moves (and HYPER BEAM JELLI?)
 
I'll do the lookup for folks:

Jellicent: Water/Ghost (I had to check, I don't know my new gens too well :) heh)

Base Stats
HP 100
Attack 60
Defense 70
Special 105
Speed 60

Moves (worth mentioning)
Night Shade
Recover (!)
Bubblebeam
Hydro Pump
Grass Move: he learns Absorb by level up and Giga Drain by tutor ... so he would probably get Mega Drain by TM in Gen 1 ... do we count it?
Toxic
Ice Beam
Blizzard
Hyper Beam
Psychic
Rest
Surf

***

Lack of coverage against other waters is a bummer, and Psychic wouldn't help much against Starmie/Slowbro. Night Shade would be a solid choice (you can get lucky if Slowbro is paralyzed, and even if not you lock him into a Rest cycle while you figure out a better plan). If we include Mega Drain, which would do about 20% to Starmie and Slowbro, with a chance of crits (despite its low speed) and the healing element, you get a decent-enough coverage move there, especially to try to stall them out.

If Jellicent usage caught on, you might see Thunder/bolt on Amnesia Snorlax to prevent it from getting walled ... at the very least, Persian isn't completely walled by your ghost anymore :P

Possible Set:
Blizzard/Ice Beam
Surf/Hydro Pump
Recover
Night Shade

Ice move for coverage and freeze, water move for power (Hydro Pump does 33-39 to Snorlax, 47-56 to Tauros), Recover because duh, and Night Shade for generic coverage and to ignore opp's defense boosts. Mega Drain is interesting depending on what you need Jellicent to do on your team (drop Night Shade for it), and Hyper Beam is just too weak.
 
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Thunder Tauros might see a rise as Gengar likely drops in use making Earthquake less necessary. Of course this may then result in a rise in Gengar usage to counter Tauros.

Psychic might also see usage over Night Shade on GGs set, gives jellicent a way to pressure chansey/zam more effectively
 
Texas Cloverleaf said:
Thunder Tauros might see a rise as Gengar likely drops in use making Earthquake less necessary. Of course this may then result in a rise in Gengar usage to counter Tauros.

Psychic might also see usage over Night Shade on GGs set, gives jellicent a way to pressure chansey/zam more effectively
Click to expand...

Ah Psychic could also be used vs opposing Gengars. Yeah, Psychic definitely has utility. That lost slot I think is a real wild card between Night Shade, Psychic, and Mega Drain (and, I suppose, the unpredictable Hyper Beam or even Rest), depending on what gives your team the most trouble. That's actually pretty fun, because there's room to be surprised - harder to predict means more scouting and more fun mind games.

Honestly, I can see this showing up a TON. It's another bulky water, which are useful enough already - it's weak to the super common electric attacks, but so is every other water in the game, plus Ghost offers Normal immunity AND doesn't introduce any meaningful new weaknesses (Bug and Poison? Really?), so why WOULDN'T it get a spot on like every team?
 
Ooooh recover bulky ghost that's not weak to eq radically changes the meta. It's top 10 mon for sure, if not even higher, just for the sheer utility it has against lax and bull.

I wouldn't be so quick to say Persian or Tauros can just get around it with Tbolt/Thunder though... Persian and Tauros both need 2 crits to break through, which is only a ~5% chance. It's too bad Jellicent doesn't get any RBY status moves other than Confuse Ray tho. It does make the chance that the normals hax through eventually reasonably decent since all they fear is a 3hko surf.

This also probably has huge effects on Explosion in general, since this is a Ghost you can switch in on boomers, where even if you guess wrong and they attack, you might just be fine. Jellicent lives 2 EQs from Golem and threatens back out with Surf anyway. Exeggutor without drain can't do much if something's already sleeping, and Jellicent's Blizzard 3hkos. Lax can't do anything other than outstall if it's Rest. Great counter to Cloyster where you won't even need to switch around between mons, since Clamp does 4% and Jellicent should pretty much always get a chance to recover before it racks up too much damage. Also a very good stop to Dragonite. Victreebel becomes the premier wrapper I think, or at least it tightens up.

Unfortunately, Jellicent would really suck against Chansey, Starmie, Slowbro, and Alakazam in general. One thing that would be particularly interesting is if Jellicent, like the only RBY ghost line, learned Lick. This I think is a reasonable assumption, so I will be making it :p If it did learn Lick, this would give it a 30% paralysis move to use against Starmie and Zam in particular, and it would probably be the best 4th move imo, since Jelly lacks for meaningful coverage.
 
Even if Psychic wasn't immune to Ghost in RBY... no. Zap Cannon in future gens is niche enough at 50% accuracy and sometimes actually dealing meaningful damage.

Thunder(bolt) [fast Normals] would fare just fine due to RBY's crit rates. They're going to PAR and eventually break Jellicent who is stuck spending too much time Recovering and not enough time attacking back. At any rate, I don't think much needs to be said beyond well-statted Ghost with Recover. :toast: Probably takes Starmie's place as a #5-#6 best mon, as it does mostly the same things except for countering Slowbro, which is worth giving up for all the perks of being a Ghost.
 
Zapdos and Starmie would have a spike in usage I would believe. Golem would probably get a notable drop, as on top of being a terrible matchup for it thanks to being Boom proof it would make it much less safe to use since unlike Gengar he doesn't have a reliable move to possibly kill Jellicent.
 
Golden Gyarados said:
plus Ghost offers Normal immunity AND doesn't introduce any meaningful new weaknesses (Bug and Poison? Really?)
Click to expand...
Ghost actually resists Bug in RBY (The type chart u were probably looking at (on site at smogon) is wrong here). One can see this when using a bug type move on Stadium against Gengar it does neutral damage (bug hits poison effectively in gen1, so one can deduce that it must hit ghost uneffectively as a consequence of hitting Gengar neutrally).
Granted it is confusing with the cartridges since they will display a "super effective" text due to some bug i cannot explain but is probably well known...

tl;dr Ghost resists Bug in RBY
 
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Lusch said:
Granted it is confusing with the cartridges since they will display a "super effective" text due to some bug i cannot explain but is probably well known...
Click to expand...
In RBY, when a Pokémon takes 1x damage as a result of a resistance neutralizing a weakness, either SE or NVE is displayed. Whichever defensive type effect is listed later in the ROM takes precedence.
 
Very good! Here's the next topic. What if spikes were stackable in GSC?

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So in gsc spikes could only really be used once unless the opponent uses rapid spin. In the following gen, you were able to stack spikes up to 3 times. This allows you to increase the damage taken by grounded foes when they switch in. So what if this was also the case in gsc? Would the meta change at all or will it stay mostly the same? You tell me!
 
Forretress would probably become the preferred spiker as Cloyster, with its Toxic vulnerability, doesn't exactly have the longevity to put up multiple layers, especially when fighting against now-mandatory spinners. Delibird might even see some use a la the Claydol Spikes-immune-spinner role of ADV?

Zapdos starts to make serious advances to being #1 poke. Seriously. Being immune to Spikes is huge when you can stack. 25% on the switch means Lax is Resting that much more often; Sleep Talk becomes a lot more common on him, and he gets a lot less scary as a result. Raikou takes a big hit too, because 25% on the switch means even he can succumb to Zapdos on occasion, plus it really hurts him against Vap, too.
 
increase of spikers, therefore more spinners, more Gengar, and more Ttar as a result. this meta wouldn't really be kind to lax for sure; jorgen hit the nail on the head (tho spikes + spin is illegal on delibird ;c)
 
Stackable spikes puts a really severe strain on pretty much any grounded Pokemon that doesn't commonly run rest.

So like offensive TTar, Machamp, and Exeggutor would all become less reliable. TTar probably remains useful for being able to pursuit trap to then spin, but the other 2 are definitely getting worse.

Meanwhile, this probably makes Marowak way better because stackable spikes brings way more into its KO ranges tho Skarm is obviously still the top counter and Zapdos is now god.
 
marowak is the gsc mon that hates spikes the most as it is the only one without recovery and two of the four most common checks are flying types. exeggutor still dies to hp bug even without spikes, so youre only really helped vs cloyster and suicune, but suicune teams very frequently carry skarmory, and zapdos would become everpresent so...

marowak is absolutely not helped by more spikes layers in the short term and i dont see the meta transforming to the point where it becomes helped in the long term either. in fact i bet dragonite would be more common too, which can cause big issues with ice beam etc...so yeah marowak would not be good.
 
Marowak only needs one stack of Spikes to kill everything anyway because virtually everything that does survive one hit barely does so. More layers only hurt it.

Spikes usage becomes all the more mandatory but does Forry become the definitely preferred user? Cloyster can use Rest and it's still less of a general liability than the offensively impotent Forretress. Cloyster can still scare some things off with its modest STAB attacks: Forry itself, Donphan/Golem if they becomes more of a player in this hypothetical metagame as additional Rapid Spin users, Gengar isn't a literally free switch in. Forry doesn't gain any advantages it didn't already have over Cloyster, namely the ability to beat Starmie with HP Bug and the option to run Rapid Spin + Explosion, but it still doesn't have enough moveslots to do everything by itself. Whether Forry or Cloyster usage rises more I think mostly depends on how much Starmie usage rises relative to Spin Donphan and Golem entering the metagame.

Likewise with Ghosts, unsure if the relative split between Gengar and Missy changes much since neither want to switch into the Ground Spinners anyway. Missy is better against Starmie due to lack of Psychic weakness, but Gengar is better against Forry and Cloyster due to Toxic immunity and a stronger Thunder/bolt. That said, Gengar gains if anything because we'd definitely see more Cloy/Forry whereas Starmie's gains are less certain with alternative Spinners in the mix (or players saying fuck it and going without one still, whether or not they design the team around crushing Forry/Cloy as hard as possible to prevent Spikes from ever getting stacked). Missy also applies little direct offensive pressure and stacking Spikes hurts its ability to stall for Perish Trapping.

TTar is too prone to being worn down as it is. I'd imagine Sleep Talk Umbreon becomes the big Pursuit user in this metagame as despite otherwise having zero offense, it does do a better job purely at Pursuit-trapping Gengar because it's not afraid of walking into a random Dynamicpunch. Umbreon also pulls off Sleep Talk much better, so it's less bothered by Hypnosis. TTar is better against Missy insofar as it has the option to Roar and Crunch 2HKOs the Perish Trap, with Pursuit trading if Missy double Protects the second Crunch, but if Gengar gains more usage and Spikes hurts it too much...

Zapdos becomes god. Skarm I dunno if it really gets much better other than maybe Snorlax is more likely to carry Sleep Talk and less likely to carry Fire Blast. But all Normal resists become much more potent against Snorlax in that case, which your now ubiquitous Ghosts already take advantage of. Do you waste the team slot on a relatively redundant mon in this case? Shuffling becomes much stronger in this metagame I suppose, so Skarm probably still has a place. Zapdos itself would probably start taking advantage of Whirlwind. On that note, Blissey usage might even shoot up because Zapdos is so stupidly good. While it's no more immune to Spikes than the usual Snorlax or Raikou, Blissey is much tougher to actually get the KO on due to taking significantly less damage and having instant recovery.

Reminder than Smeargle is also a Pokémon that exists and learns Spikes.
 
Cool. Here's the next one. What if abomasnow existed in adv?
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Abomasnow has always been an interesting pokemon. It possesses the extremely rare snow warning ability which allows it to summon hail whenever it appears. However since its debut in dpp, its many weaknesses and rocks held it back.However what if it existed in a gen where it's typing is not as bad? So in this scenario, abomasnow will receive its ability snow warning and hail will retain any benefits hail provides in adv. So would it change the way adv is played or will it not make much of a difference? What sets might it use and how would other pokemon react to it? You tell me!
 
Intriguing. It's got a pretty good typing for switching into special attackers and bulky waters when it's not getting murdered by SR. As long as they aren't running HP Fire (which would start to see some/more use) it can come into the likes of Swampert, Celebi, Regice, Zapdos, Gengar, Milotic, Jolteon, Raikou, and other stall mons fairly easily and either start subseeding in the case where it's vs a pert or a regice or throw around Blizzards if it's vs a Skarm. The residual damage is useful too as things like Aerodactyl and Metagross, and especially things like Protect Skarm, no longer have the ability to come in completely without risk. Now generally speaking it can't stand against any kind of physical attacker, Mence/Meta/Tar/Aero all wreck it, but in most cases they won't like switching in either and I'm fairly sure Duggy can't OHKO without priors either preventing that from being an easy way to remove it. If it can get SubSeed running it could become difficult to take down, especially when it's best answers in Lax and Blissey would be healing it for full Subs after Lefties.

Essentially it seems like it becomes Sub Seed celebi with better offensive presence and little support benefit with a solid defensive and offensive niche. I'd imagine you're starting seeing a lot more fire punch gengar, and hp fire would become more prevalent on celebi, with niche appearances on pert and the elecs.
 
Hmm I think the rock weakness would still be a bit of an issue for it. Mainly because with hail up most of the defensive rock resists in the tier become a lot worse. Definitively has a solid defensive niche though on the special side, providing a solid answer to defensive celebi as well as most water and electric types while being annoying with leech seed.
 
It definitely has a niche, being able to do well against a lot of common balance-type mons in Celebi, Swampert, Suicune, Raikou, Jolteon, and Zapdos, and not needing to worry about Stealth Rock (i.e... what Celebi can already do for teams). But that's about it. It would be pretty darn useless against any more offensive team. The lack of Ice Shard really hurts it here since it gets forced out by Mence, Aero, Flygon, and also can get trapped by Dugtrio.

To me this makes it a generally worse Celebi, since Celebi's stats are better and it has reliable recovery, though it definitely has teams where it would be the better fit because of how Blizzard reduces the number of available switch ins.

I don't think Hail itself makes a particularly big splash in the meta. Hail Stall as it were could be a thing, since it hits more opposing mons than Sandstorm will, but Abomasnow can't even dream of doing as much as TTar does for Stall.
 
It would be OK in ADV Ubers. Good Kyogre check (no SR or Choice Specs to worry about) that isn't overly bothered by Thunder Wave and can spread Leech Seed around + mess with weather strategies. Sponges Thunders well and isn't weak to Ice Beam, and STAB combo isn't the easiest to switch into. It does have to compete with Regice for a teamslot though, who boasts Thunder, Explosion, and much better Special Defense for Lati@s. Also can't handle anything physical despite the Ground resistance which is lame. That's about it, decent alternative Kyogre check but not much more.
 
aboma sounds very underwhelming in ubers, the only thing it has going for it is hail which can chip steel and ground types unlike sand. a lot of stuff has coverage to hit it, and outside of like kyogre, aboma has a really bad matchup against the tier as its stabs are easily resisted by steels which can handle abomas eqs fairly easily, hp fire isn't that much better but i suppose it stops it from being spikes bait for forretress.

other than that it annoys the most common spikers and can screw over people that general rely on them as a dragon/psychic/ice resist.
 
I think Abomasnow would be amazing. Cutting off Lefties on so many things is part of why Tyranitar is so menacing with Sand Stream, and now you have a Poke that cuts them off from EVERYTHING barring other the rare Jynx/Cuno and other Aboma (edit: forgot Regice somehow. still.) - obviously Tar threatens it but with powerful Blizzard, SE STAB Giga Drain, Leech Seed and even Focus Punch, it's not exactly a 100% safe switch. We would definitely see a rise in Dug just to help with the weather wars. Dude seriously getting rid of SkarmPert's Leftovers is insane, as well as other guys like Flygon/Jirachi/Metagross/Claydol. No Grass except for other Aboma (and you can bet HP Fire would be popular) wants to switch into it so Leech is really powerful, and as DPP has shown us it's got the stats and movepool to pull off a solid mixed attacking set. It blanks the shit out of Suicune, which is amazing; HP Fire on Cune for it would be a little silly but I think we'd see a rise in Toxic which is already good for other waters and annoying Bliss. Dug can be a prick but more Dug weak things than Aboma are successful, the tools are there to get around it (haven't even mentioned Sub yet). Man it even blanks Electrics (barring some funky Drill Peck/HP Fight Zapdos shit), goodness. It'd definitely be a good choice, nowhere close to an inferior Celebi
 
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Kinda late to the party but Abomasnow would be pretty cool. Hail cutting off Lefties is really nice (especially if you run it with a Knock Off mon to ensure that Skarm and Pert are actually slowly dying), and is super nice to wear down a lot of teams, stall or offense. Definitely there'd be a rise in Dugtrio or lures on stall teams to counteract this, Hail Offense would also be cool to help wear down defensive mons for Mence / Aero whatever.

Aside from the advantages that Hail would bring to certain teams, Ice / Grass is a neat typing (seeing as how Fire types don't exist), stalling Electric types and offensive waters (it disrupts Kingdra's rain while shrugging off it's other moves) is really nice for certain offenses too as they usually would have to bank on something prone to being worn down like Lax for this job. Leech Seed is already annoying and even more so considering as how other Grass types run from 100% accuracy Blizzard (which you could run over IB on offensive water teammates which appreciate Celebi running and Electrics being blocked) (edit, nvm its not perfect accuracy but still if I were Celebi I wouldn't be chancing a SE STAB move with 120 BP), while it can also run Giga Drain for extra healing and has the coverage to threaten Physical Offense (while wearing it down with Hail and LS). IMO it'd probably be a high A rank, Hail (and the mon too!) get a lot done vs pretty much anything, it's technically inferior to Celebi but it has a decent bit going for it too.
 
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