Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.
First, I'm going to start by attempting to define the Offensive Characteristic a little more clearly. I myself do not entirely agree with the give criteria for an Uber, however, I will attempt as best I can to work within the given parameters. First of all, I'm going to quantify the vaguer terms. Common battle conditions applies to anything that happens in at least 33% + 1 of battles Salamence participates in – large enough to avoid a super majority against it, which is - while arbitrary, I admit - a decent benchmark. Because team variety is so high, even attempting to define “a significant portion of teams would be a useless endeavour, so I won't bother. Instead, I'll split teams up into their individual pieces – Pokemon. Rather than using a “significant portion of teams in the metagame”, I shall define it as a “significant portion of Pokemon in the metagame”. Here, a significant portion will be 50% + 1, or in other words, the majority of Pokemon in the metagame, and the metagame shall be the OU Standard Metagame, with the inclusion of Salamence. Again, significant is arbitrary, I am aware of that flaw.
The reason why I've used the OU Standard Metagame, with the inclusion of Salamence, as a judge of common conditions and teams, as opposed to without Salamence is thus: Smogon's philosophy is the we ban as little as possible while maintaining a high level of diversity and balance. As such, everything is considered allowed, unless explicitly otherwise stated. We're not taking a metagame without Salamence, and seeing if we should add it, we're taking a metagame with Salamence, and seeing if we should remove it, and I think this is a crucial point. I'm aware some of those reading this may think that this is flawed, because any metagame with a powerful threat will centralize around it to a certain extent, and therefore Salamence's effects may be masked, but I believe it is better than the alternative option
Finally, the term “with little effort”. I'm going to define “little effort” as “given one turn's free set-up”. This takes very little effort – Salamence has perfect synergy with a large list of Pokemon – Metagross, Lucario, Jirachi, Magnezone, and Bronzong. Their weaknesses are Fire, occasionally Fighting, and Ground, which Salamence resists (Fire, Fighting) and is immune to (Ground), and Salamence's weaknesses are Ice, Rock, and Dragon, which all of the listed Pokemon resist (Lucario even has the advantage of a 4x Rock resistance). Under common conditions, Salamence will have the backup of at least one of these Pokemon – a significant portion (as defined earlier) of Salamences will be supported by at least one, and the first three listed, Metagross, Lucario, and Jirachi, are among Salamence's five most common team-mates. (Salamence is paired with Metagross 24.79% of the time, Lucario 22.18% of the time, and by Jirachi 20.75% of the time. Magnezone is also notable at 12.69% of the time, but not to the same degree as the first three. Bronzong partnership is negligible.)
All of these Pokemon are likely to draw Fire, Fighting or Ground attacks that will allow Salamence to switch in with relative ease, and for free if it was a Ground type attack. This is compounded by the fact that over 80% of Fighting type attacks used are Physical based, which Salamence's Intimidate will reduce to 67% damage. The only trouble Salamence has, is with Stealth Rocks sapping 25% of it's HP upon switch in, and Sandstorm damage, which are both common conditions. However, it is easy enough to switch Salamence in on something, which then Salamence can force out, gaining it a free turn – with very little effort. This free turn can equate to either one free Dragon Dance or one free Roost. Seeing as the most common set is the Dragon Dancer, I'll assume that it is Dragon Dance, therefore, all following statistics assume that the Salamence has 1 Dragon Dance available.
Now, assuming that the Dragon Dance Salamence in question is running 232 Atk / 24 SpA / 252 Spe, Naughty, and has a Life Orb (the most common variation), the following calculations show a little of the damage it is capable of to the metagame:
(note: all calculations assume given defensive Pokemon has 252/252 in HP and the applicable defense, and a nature that boosts the applicable defense)
Code:
Pokémon Attack Min% Max%
Flygon Outrage 164.4998 193.5292 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Latias Outrage 152.8599 179.8352 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Salamence Outrage 151.9744 178.7934 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Kingdra Outrage 151.8127 178.6032 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Smeargle Outrage 145.3519 171.0022 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Dragonite Outrage 139.2272 163.7967 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Ninjask Outrage 125.3551 147.4766 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Roserade Outrage 114.1991 134.3519 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Gengar Outrage 109.0476 128.2912 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Jolteon Outrage 105.7827 124.4502 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Weavile Outrage 98.2775 115.6206 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Electivire Outrage 93.8823 110.4498 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Aerodactyl Outrage 92.8776 109.2678 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Tentacruel Outrage 92.8776 109.2678 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Breloom Outrage 92.4042 108.7108 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Azelf Outrage 91.5551 107.7119 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Blissey Outrage 90.3929 106.3445 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Infernape Outrage 90.2948 106.2292 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Starmie Outrage 89.0139 104.7222 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Porygon-Z Outrage 86.6591 101.9519 (Chance to OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Heracross Outrage 85.5091 100.5989 (Chance to OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Rotom-A Outrage 81.7055 96.1241 (Chance to OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Gyarados Outrage 76.5707 90.0832 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Vaporeon Outrage 76.1453 89.5827 (Chance to OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Zapdos Outrage 75.1055 88.3594 (Guaranteed OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
Togekiss Outrage 71.8472 84.5261 (Chance to OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
That's 26 Pokemon which under common battle conditions and Salamence having been given a free turn of set-up which can be OHKO'd, and this assuming that they're running incredibly defensive sets, which many, such as Porygon-Z and Heracross, will not run anyway. Salamence, with little effort, can sweep the majority of the Pokemon in the metagame
with a single move. When you take the other two attacking moves in his most common set, Fire Blast and Earthquake, into account, you get these added OHKOs:
Code:
Forretress Fire Blast 117.4091 138.1284 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Scizor Fire Blast 102.5687 120.6691 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Magnezone Earthquake 153.1258 180.148 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Heatran Earthquake 144.2256 169.6772 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Lucario Earthquake 104.8663 123.3721 (Guaranteed OHKO)
Empoleon Earthquake 84.4556 99.3595 (Chance to OHKO with Stealth Rocks)
That's a further six Pokemon, making 32 OU Pokemon a single Salamence set is capable of OHKOing with little effort – that's 68% of the OU metagame! Never mind the majority of the metagame, that's the super majority of the metagame. Once you've done this, you then have to remember that those statistics are just from one set – part of Salamence's terrifying offensive qualities is that he is incredibly diverse and can hit from both sides of the spectrum. Between the Choice Band set, the Dragon Dance set, and the Choice Specs set, there isn't a single Pokemon that can survive two hits, or survive one hit and out speed in order to OHKO (with the exception of ScarfCune and ScarfCress with Ice Beam, both of which can be considered negligible in terms of usage). So, Salamence is definitely one of those Pokemon who has no counter that is not overspecialising in order to defeat him. This means that he has to be handled entirely via checks – Pokemon which can outspeed and OHKO. After one Dragon Dance, the only Pokemon in OU capable of outspeeding Salamence and OHKOing (which in this situation means 75% damage because of Stealth Rocks) with moves that are useful for things outside of Salamence (indicating they do not have to overspecialise in order to check Salamence) are Choice Scarf Latias (Draco Meteor), Choice Scarf Gengar (HP Ice), Choice Scarf Starmie (Ice Beam), Weavile (Ice Shard
or Choice Scarf Ice Punch), Choice Scarf Jolteon (HP Ice), Choice Scarf Aerodactyl (Stone Edge), Scizor (Bullet Punch), Metagross (Bullet Punch), Lucario (Extremespeed), Dragonite (Extremespeed) or Mamoswine (Ice Shard). If your team does not have one of those Pokemon, or one of ScarfCune or ScarfCress, your team has a weakness to at least one Salamence set. Even then, some of those sets are ridiculously overspecialised. Seeing as I think that teams without those Pokemon represents a rather significant portion of the metagame, then I think I've proven that Salamence fills all of the conditions necessary for an Offensive Uber Characteristic. Salamence, in common battles conditions, is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.
Now that I've (hopefully) established that Salamence is Uber, I'd like to discuss the effect removing Salamence would have on the current OU metagame. I'd like to note that from this point on, everything is Theorymon, so feel free to ignore it, however, I agree with Tangerine in that we can't just state facts like I've done above, we also need to state what the effects of those facts are. So, what would removing Salamence do to the metagame?
Salamence is the metagame's best physical sweeper
and best mixed sweeper, facing very little contest in both departments. Should Salamence be removed, other physical sweepers and mixed sweepers would likely become more popular – I think both Infernape and Lucario would be the most visible beneficiaries on the mixed side, and I think most physical sweepers would increase, especially those based around stat raising such as DDTar and DDDos. Possibly, this would allow certain Pokemon near the OU cut-off to rise – I could see Rhyperior usage receiving the slight increase needed to return it to OU.
Latias, Flygon, Dragonite and Kindra usage would rise. As the four remaining decent Dragon types, they would now have to fill the hit-anything-not-part -Steel-type-like-a-truck shaped hole that Salamence had left. Dragonite, Kingdra and Flygon would probably rise more, as they focus on the physical side, whereas Latias was arguably already a better special Dragon sweeper than Salamence, and would have less of a hole to fill. This could have a knock-on effect – increasing Kingdra numbers could lead to increasing the number of Rain Dance teams, which could boost all sorts of Water types, including some very close to the OU boundary such as Ludicolo. Focusing on Dragonite and Flygon briefly, they'd almost certainly see a sharp rise – they share the exact same synergy with the Steel types that Salamence had, meaning they'd very likely become more frequent partners for them, increasing their usage.
On that note, Salamence's former partners may see a slight decrease. Jirachi certainly owes a lot of its usage to Salamence, and I can see Jirachi usage dropping quite a lot, although less so for Metagross and Lucario, who already have great uses. Magnezone usage would probably drop quite severely – not only did it lose a great partner, but Steel type usage as a whole may dip slightly due to the removal of a major Dragon type, on which they had the defensive monopoly. With decreased Steel numbers, Magnezone is much less useful. Scizor, one of Magnezone's best targets, would probably see the largest drop of all, as one of Scizor's best uses is for picking off weakened Salamence with the strongest priority move in OU.
With the reduction in Steel types, walls may become in general slightly more varied, and certain non-Steel walls could rise in prominence – Swampert would begin to dominate even more than it does now. Some walls close to the OU cut-off, such as Clefable, Milotic, and Umbreon, may receive the rise in usage necessary to make OU, although I doubt Milotic will due to the current over saturation of bulky water types in OU. The biggest losers will probably be Mamoswine and Porygon2, because I would estimate that the majority of their usage comes from acting as checks to Salamence. Porygon2 would almost certainly be denied his place in OU, and Mamoswine usage could dip, although he'd still have many other useful purposes.
All in all, I think that removing Salamence would lead to a more balanced metagame, that is less centralized around powerful Steel type walls, and lead to at least a few more Pokemon making the OU cut-off, adding to diversity as well.
Thanks for reading. =]
