Just some more of my random thoughts on the current state of the metagame. One thing that I've notice over the last two days, (I played pretty much solidly on the ladder yesterday =/) is that Roserade useage has changed significantly. Now, this may just be statistical variation in the matches I've played, even the time of day I played, but I digress. From what I remember of playing earlier in the test, Roserade weren't that common. They were generally Sleep Powder + Toxic Spikes varients, most commonly found on stall teams. Yesterday I might have faced two of those vareints, at most, I can't remember exactly. I did, however, meet many lead Roserade, fast sleep as alluded to by Bologo and his Butterfree. They also tended to be carrying Leaf Storm and Sludge Bomb, and I never saw the last move, although I will assume that it is generally Hidden Power Fire, to hit Steels hard.
I actually found these Roserade quite hard to deal with, I don't tend to run status absorbers, I find them a hinderance sometimes, and I don't like them being on a team just to do that job. Milotic is essentially my "Status Absorber" so she takes the Sleep Powder (a safe bet with Crobat as a lead). Although this renders my Milotic pretty useless for the rest of the battle, so I'm going to have to find a way around that, but I'm just going to slap a Lum Berry on my Crobat. Although staying in and waiting is "OK" both players run the risk of ending up on the wrong side of the coin flip, a four turn sleep will not be good for you. I though that this was an interesting metagame trend that I have noticed, and I was wondering if others had noticed a similar thing, and have any clues as to what might have caused it. Maybe it was simply popularised by someone. Either way, Roserade is a good versatile Pokemon, that has support and offensive capabilities, and is definately something to watch out for, from what I have seen.
