Introducing!...
Calm Mind Landorus!
Basically, everyone knows that Sheer Force Landorus gained massive popularity ever since its release, almost succeeding its most successful set from BW1:
September 2012 Statstics said:
Landorus | Abilties | Sand Force 55.354% | Sheer Force 44.646%
However, something intrigues me with the actual stats of the moves themselves. Calm Mind isn't even on the list of moves. It may seem silly at first to run Calm Mind on a Landorus, but it has so many benefits. Here's the set I used ever since Dream World:
(M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Sheer Force
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 Def
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Calm Mind
- Earth Power
- Focus Blast
- Hidden Power [Ice]
This set is just so amazingly unexpected yet so powerful that people don't realize what happened to them until they lose all 6 Pokemon. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it's possible. Since Landorus forces so many switches, you can easily use the opportunity to set up a Calm Mind (it really only needs 1 since it's just so fking powerful). It works similarly to the Rock Polish set, but sacrifices speed for power. Whenever one of my teams is weak to stall, this is my go-to guy. Honestly, I don't know a single stall team that has an answer to this. Let's take rainstall for example. Here's a common team that pretty much summarizes rainstall itself:
Alright. So. As you can see, the standard Rock Polish/Substitute Landorus does massive work to this team. However, it can't do a single thing until Chansey goes down. However, with Calm Mind, Landorus almost
always beats Chansey. For example: you bring in Landorus on Tentacruel. Obviously, rainstall doesn't want to lose their spinner, so they switch (most likely into Chansey). You Calm Mind on the switch. Now, this is how much a Focus Blast will do to a standard Chansey:
252SpAtk Life Orb +1 Sheer Force Landorus (Neutral) Focus Blast vs 252HP/0SpDef Eviolite Chansey (Neutral): 55% - 65% (390 - 460 HP). Guaranteed 2HKO.
Jesus. Christ. If they Seismic Toss, it's over for them. The only way they have a chance to beat it is to Softboiled stall out Focus Blast, but you can easily set up Calm Minds in the meantime. From there, it destroys the rest of the team if Skarmory's Sturdy has been broken. Of course, this is an example of 1 set of Pokemon, but I can assure you that very few (full) stall teams can handle this.
Okay, so it can break full stall. Not every team is stall, though (obviously). It still has amazing sweeping potential and can easily set up on weak special attackers like Celebi or Tentacruel. Rock Polish is obviously a good set, since it's able to outspeed many of its common threats like Genesect or Stoutland that come in to kill it, but Calm Mind is able to kill those bulkier mons that can live an unboosted Earth Power and retaliate back, such as (for example, there are obviously many) Reuniclus, Politoed, Volcarona, etc. It's unstoppable for many defensive teams, while some offensive ones can find a ton of trouble with it as well. It's also a really fun set to use, simply because it demolishes everything.
Everything.