Salamence - The Face of The Next Suspect, or Merely OU's Strongest Dragon?

[Chillarmy]

Salamence isn't like Garchomp by any means in terms of being a powerhouse; however, its versatility can be compared with it. Choice Scarf Garchomp can easily be mistaken for Haban/Yache Garchomp; one player might switch in Skarmory on my Garchomp and take 60% from a +2 Fire Fang. All I have to do is ensure that at most of of my team can take 40% off of Skarmory which (imo) isn't hard to do. MixMence and DDMence boast amazing power. Not only can they 2HKO and OHKO a decent amount of the metagame, but a misprediction will cost you a chunk of your team. MixMence, dropping STAB Draco Meteors off of a 350 Special Attack stat, can dent just everything in OU while DDMence can force a switch and end up with +1 Attack and +1 Speed. Unfortunately, MixMence is difficult to switch in on since it requires luck, nothing more, nothing less.

Anyways, the #1 check to Salamence is SR and its own life orb recoil. Again you only need to make 1 smart switch to make salamence useless.

The thing is that nothing can reliably switch into Salamence. If you switch in Skarmory, you'd have to assume that it's not a MixMence while with a Choice Scarf user, you'd have to worry about a potential Dragon Dance. You need to play more intelligently than your opponent, which is an unreliable move.

Lapras is another decent counter to salamence, since it can iceshard for the KO and comfortably survives draco meteor, and doesn't care about dragon dance.

There's only one problem with Lapras being used as a check to Salamence: It isn't going to do anything else in OU with its horrid Ice/Water tying, terrible offensive capability and crappy movepool (yeah, for OU). What's more is that Lapras needs a significant amount of investment to secure the OHKO with Ice Shard after Stealth Rock damage. Theorymon is lol...

 

[Objection]

1 check that's not set up bait for anything else is shuckle, which I used on my ss team to get to CRE 1500 before. It's not a great number, but it's alright, and shuckle counters latias, rotom, infernape, heatran, etc.. too.

...

Lapras is another decent counter to salamence, since it can iceshard for the KO and comfortably survives draco meteor, and doesn't care about dragon dance.

...

And saying tentacruel is a solid switch for infernape is silly since outside of stall tentacruel is useless and gyara set up fodder. Infernape can beat gyara with nasty plot grass knot/hp electric and can also counter latias with u-turn.

You say Tentacruel is useless outside of stall, thereby implying that it is useful in stall. What kind of OU competitive team would use Shuckle or Lapras?

 

[Pombo]

@Haunter (about my post): I just laughed after i read my post. Its was so ridiculous, damnit. Im not saying i agree about it being susppect, but still....
I want to apologize for such shamefull post. If thats an (acceptable) excuse, it was 2h30 AM here when i posted it.

 

[zarator]

1 check that's not set up bait for anything else is shuckle, which I used on my ss team to get to CRE 1500 before. It's not a great number, but it's alright, and shuckle counters latias, rotom, infernape, heatran, etc.. too.

Shuckle? Are you kidding me? What does Shuckle do besides Encoring and Knocking Off? It is just a punching bag which will fall to anything with Taunt.

Anyways, the #1 check to Salamence is SR and its own life orb recoil. Again you only need to make 1 smart switch to make salamence useless.

A pointless argument. If it was true, Rayquaza would be OU, as outlined countless times

Lapras is another decent counter to salamence, since it can iceshard for the KO and comfortably survives draco meteor, and doesn't care about dragon dance.

Lapras is NOT a counter. The best it can do is forcing Salamence out one time. Not only that, but when you factor in SR (since you factor in SR for Mence, I will for Lapras), Lapras needs to be in complete tip-top shape in order to even have a shot at switching into a Draco Meteor or an Outrage(and this assuming you invest into defenses, otherwise good luck). Besides, Lapras is hardly useful against anything else. Gyarados can dispatch of him with Stone Edge. Same with Tyranitar. Scizor can U-turn/Superpower. If I had to use Lapras just for Salamence I may as well use Cresselia.

Salamence is BEATABLE. If it was UNBEATABLE then more people in OU would use him, like they did with chomp and are with scizor.

Again, moot argument. Neither Deoxys-S nor Wobbuffet were at the first place in usage when they got banned - hell, they were even less used than Salamence.

And saying tentacruel is a solid switch for infernape is silly since outside of stall tentacruel is useless and gyara set up fodder. Infernape can beat gyara with nasty plot grass knot/hp electric and can also counter latias with u-turn.

I know that Tentacruel is useful only in stallish teams, but at least the option is there. Moreover, Tentacruel can do something more than sitting there and taking hits (in a Cresselia-esque style), since it got Toxic Spikes and Rapid Spin. And also, for the last time, don't throw at me the Hp Electric/U-turn Infernape bullshit (Grass Knot does not kill if you invest a bit in defenses, by the way, even if boosted). Latias is faster than you, so you have to hit her on the switch, which is situtational at best. And HP Electric is an inferior option. Salamence does not have to go out of his way with some obscure Hidden Power in order to beat his would-be checks/counters. This is what makes any comparison between Salamence and Infernape/Gengar/Lucario pointless.

EDIT: also, what Objection and Oxymentus said

 

[Rising_Dusk]

And saying tentacruel is a solid switch for infernape is silly since outside of stall tentacruel is useless and gyara set up fodder.

It really isn't useless, though. He's a solid toxic spikes user, which can be integral to a team's success.

Salamence is BEATABLE. If it was UNBEATABLE then more people in OU would use him, like they did with chomp and are with scizor.

I don't believe that anyone (sensible) is arguing that it's unbeatable, as it's obvious that you can revenge kill it. The argument is that it can smash anything with little threat to itself. Sure, you can switch in a water type to a fire blast, but he's still pretty quick (especially if he got a DD out), so that next move is going to mess someone up no matter how you slice it.

 

[Mariachi]

The problem with Mence is basically how to counter DD variants. If Soul Dew was banned from the OU tier, why don't we ban a move, Dragon Dance for example?

If Mence doesn't carry DD, is easier to counter him...

Just my two cents

 

[Mario With Lasers]

The problem with Mence is basically how to counter DD variants. If Soul Dew was banned from the OU tier, why don't we ban a move, Dragon Dance for example?

If Mence doesn't carry DD, is easier to counter him...

Just my two cents

Soul Dew is banned on every pokémon; by your logic, we'd have to also ban Dragon Dance from competitive play...

 

[Rising_Dusk]

We've been over this already, though. If Mence is the only one that presents an issue with the availability of Dragon Dance, then it is the Pokemon and not the move that should be dealt with. If all Pokemon with Dragon Dance were to become unstoppable killing machines, only then would the move merit a ban. (ie. Evasion Moves)

 

[Every1XplodeNOW]

What kind of OU competitive team would use Shuckle or Lapras?

One of mine.

It would be interesting to see the OU metagame without salamence, but could it really compete in Ubers? I don't think so. There is nothing wrong with salamence in OU, putting salamence in your team doesn't guarantee you a victory, so why even test it? I personal think it would be a waste of time and clearly, I'm not the only one.

 

[cantab]

We've been over this already, though. If Mence is the only one that presents an issue with the availability of Dragon Dance, then it is the Pokemon and not the move that should be dealt with. If all Pokemon with Dragon Dance were to become unstoppable killing machines, only then would the move merit a ban. (ie. Evasion Moves)

Yes, we've been over it to no end in the other thread...and I've already explained why a move doesn't have to be broken on every single thing that learns it to be considered broken.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

It does have to be broken on a vast majority of things that can use it properly. If it's not, then it's not the move that's broken, it is the Pokemon wielding it.

 

[The Requiem]

We can come at estimates from another angle thanks to EV spreads. No or very low special attack EVs probably indicates not Mixmence - so either Dragon Dancer or Bulky. At least 60.6% of Salamence are NOT Mixmence. Meanwhile, 32.9% are running very high or max Special Attack; these are probably mixed. Meanwhile, 54% of Salamence run max or very high Atk EVS - these are probably Dragon Dancers.

Both EV stats and move stats are in accord with the claim that the Dragon Dancer is the more common set, but the Mixed sets are not uncommon.

Appreciate the correction. What I quoted was what I looked into, don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to fabricate a point of view, I was merely offering what mine was after a short bit of what was apparently unfinished research. So after that major oversight:

That being said, I'd say that puts a slight dent in its unpredictablity factor, since a majority of the dragons are running similar sets. My guess on the spread would be, Plenty DDMence, some Mixmence, and the rare bulky mence, or some other random/gimmick set.

Fixed.

Yes, we've been over it to no end in the other thread...and I've already explained why a move doesn't have to be broken on every single thing that learns it to be considered broken.

Agreed. Getting rid of DD isn't going to solve the problem though. Not to mention that would hurt many of the other pokemon with DD.

putting salamence in your team doesn't guarantee you a victory, so why even test it? I personal think it would be a waste of time and clearly, I'm not the only one

Putting Garchomp on your team didn't guarantee you a victory either. So why did we even test him? =/

I personally think that citing the reason "it's a waste of time" is NOT a good reason to not test Mence, especially when you look at how heated people are at talking about the possibility of it being suspect. If enough people have this big of an issue with it, no, a suspect test is NOT a waste of time.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I think if anything, testing him won't hurt anyone. If he is found to be okay for OU, then he stays OU and no one is the wiser. If he is found too strong for OU, then he is sent to Uber and the original accusations against him were founded. Nothing is really lost except time, and if we're playing Pokemon on Shoddy then time isn't a concern. :P

 

[IcyMan28]

One of mine.

It would be interesting to see the OU metagame without salamence, but could it really compete in Ubers? I don't think so. There is nothing wrong with salamence in OU, putting salamence in your team doesn't guarantee you a victory, so why even test it? I personal think it would be a waste of time and clearly, I'm not the only one.

Clearly you are not understanding how tier placement works...a pokemon's performance in the Uber tier has little to do with its own strength. You don't see anyone arguing that Forretress is Uber because it has a niche there.

 

[Aura Guardian]

We've been over this already, though. If Mence is the only one that presents an issue with the availability of Dragon Dance, then it is the Pokemon and not the move that should be dealt with. If all Pokemon with Dragon Dance were to become unstoppable killing machines, only then would the move merit a ban. (ie. Evasion Moves)

In any case, isn't this thread about whether Mence is broken, not it's attacks? There's a separate thread for that (I can't find it just yet, but it's a poll with the name, "Which is more broken" and something about the Drragons or the Dragon attacks).

Clearly you are not understanding how tier placement works...a pokemon's performance in the Uber tier has little to do with its own strength. You don't see anyone arguing that Forretress is Uber because it has a niche there.

As a side comment, unfortunately, there will always be someone who thinks that Ubers is based on what can compete there. I guess the best we can dof is thoroughly explain that NO, Ubers are based on being too powerfull in OU.

 

[Aura Guardian]

Let's get the conversation back on Salamence. I'm going to say that while Salamence can hit like a truck, it only hits like an empty truck. Salamence is not so grossly overpowered that it's Uber. Salamence is stopped readily enough by common enough members in the metagame and does not sweep consistently enough to qualify.

 

[IcyMan28]

Let's get the conversation back on Salamence. I'm going to say that while Salamence can hit like a truck, it only hits like an empty truck. Salamence is not so grossly overpowered that it's Uber. Salamence is stopped readily enough by common enough members in the metagame and does not sweep consistently enough to qualify.

I want specific examples if you want to assert this. Common enough members in the metagame? I've already listed the few reliable (focus on this term, I don't want any ambiguity to exist in what I'm trying to prove) checks to all Salamence, and really only Scizor and ScarfLatias are in the Top 10 most used.

 

[zarator]

Let's get the conversation back on Salamence. I'm going to say that while Salamence can hit like a truck, it only hits like an empty truck. Salamence is not so grossly overpowered that it's Uber. Salamence is stopped readily enough by common enough members in the metagame and does not sweep consistently enough to qualify.

Icyman is right, at this point of the debate being so generic is useless. We have made specific points about why Salamence may be Uber - you can find them in a post of mine in the page before, in response to Chou. Instead of keeping saying "I'm not certain that...", "I don't think that...", and so on, why don't you and the others try to prove the points I asked for? I will repeat them for you:

1) Salamence does have a check which is not easily trapped by Magnezone, which is not Pursuit bait, and which is not set up bait for pretty much anything else in OU
2) Another Pokémon in OU does lack a decent answer to him. In other words, another OU Pokémon like Salamence is unbeatable within the limits of competitive viability even if you prepare for him.

Try to show that at least one of them is true, because otherwise Salamence clearly deserves a test, to the least.

 

[Aura Guardian]

In case anyone was wondering, I just wanted to get the conversation back to Salamence and whether it should be a Suspect, and also I wanted to get it away from the irrelevant commentary about what determines Uber status. My previous post had little more meaning than that.

HOWEVER:
Is there a pokemon that can reliably enough prevent Salamence from getting in? That should also be a question we ask.

 

[zarator]

Is there a pokemon that can reliably enough prevent Salamence from getting in? That should also be a question we ask.

You just need 1 or 2 Pokémon which can't prevent Salamence from getting in to fuck you up. Building a team where Salamence can't come into play on any of your Pokémon put a great restriction on your teambuilding process (and chances are that team is Scizor weak, trust me...)

 

[Aura Guardian]

There are ten sets viable for Salamence in the analysis. The question is "Does one set or more make it Uber?" If one set is uber, then Salamence is. However, Salamence cannot run every set at once. It has been said before, and I will say it now that Salamence seems to be running too many moves whenever we discuss it. Until one set, with no other sets allowed for discussion, is proven Uber, Salamence is not Uber. If we discuss counters for most sets, then bringing in other sets is unfair to the process. We need to discuss sets by the one, or maybe by the two. that will allow us to flush out whether those sets, and thus Salamence, are Uber. Salamence always seems to be running two and a half sets whenever we discuss it. Vaporeon would be quite a bit stronger if it could run Wish/protect/Surf/Ice Beam/HP Electric all on the same set, but it can't. So, why should we allow Salamence to have more than one set at a time in our discussion?

 

[Potential]

There are ten sets viable for Salamence in the analysis. The question is "Does one set or more make it Uber?" If one set is uber, then Salamence is. However, Salamence cannot run every set at once. It has been said before, and I will say it now that Salamence seems to be running too many moves whenever we discuss it. Until one set, with no other sets allowed for discussion, is proven Uber, Salamence is not Uber. If we discuss counters for most sets, then bringing in other sets is unfair to the process. We need to discuss sets by the one, or maybe by the two. that will allow us to flush out whether those sets, and thus Salamence, are Uber. Salamence always seems to be running two and a half sets whenever we discuss it. Vaporeon would be quite a bit stronger if it could run Wish/protect/Surf/Ice Beam/HP Electric all on the same set, but it can't. So, why should we allow Salamence to have more than one set at a time in our discussion?

The way I see it, it's not that Salamence is actually running all of those sets at once, but rather that it has the probability to, without compromising its "effectiveness."

In this manner, I'll try to draw an analogy to quantum theory (I'm not exceptionally learned in the subject yet, but it sort of popped into my head, so I'll go along with it): Salamence has this probability of running any set (any at all), but the probability for the vast majority of those sets (like some weird Toxic/Cut/Air Cutter/Dragon Rush thing) is vanishingly small and so can be disregarded. Since the two most common/relevant (and apparently most powerful) sets used today (I believe something like 50% and 35%, respectively; correct me if I'm wrong) are DDMence and MixMence, we can just use those in our "Salamence wave function." I think we can simplify it to being primarily those two cases for our argument. So, Salamence might be running either of those sets, but an opponent can only know for sure what it is in any particular game after it discloses a key move to one of the sets (the "observation" of the particular Salamence). A key argument for the pro-Uber party (at least, as I see it) is that this "Uncertainty Principle" makes Salamence Uber; either one of its primary sets can be checked reliably, but since checks to the one set are beaten by the other (I'm too rushed to try to demonstrate now; can someone try to show this if I don't get a chance?), it is, essentially, a coin flip. This is clearly bad, but I can't say whether or not it, in itself, fits a Characteristic.

This is kind of what I'm trying to say (the first point of it).

 

[Aura Guardian]

Probability is irrelevant. What we need is to find the most destructive sets and examine them. Would you declare that Lucario needs to be tested because no one knows what set it is running until it is attacks? What about Smeargle? It can run any set, but when it uses its first attack, it becomes predictable. The same goes for Salamence. The exact set will remain unknown for a little while, but it becomes predictable. Aren't Ubers supposed to be able to sweep through a significant portion of the team reliably? Sure, you may have to sacrifice something to beat Salamence, but Salamence just doesn't sweep through enough teams on a regular enough basis, does it? I guess that is what this discussion is to decide.

 

[Potential]

But the thing is, with Lucario, the probabilities of not running SD are relatively low, and the other sets tend to not do as well, compared with Salamence's 2 sets, which are equally the most destructive and closer to equally probable. About Smeargle, I guess I missed something, since the key there is that it doesn't have nearly the destructive (or rather the equivalent in supportive) power of Salamence.

Also, I think a "significant portion" doesn't necessarily mean straight out wiping out at least 2 or 3 Pokémon. Rather, the key is that if you guess wrong, which is a real possibility, then at the very least one Pokémon almost invariably is going to take major damage. Then, more may follow immediately if it's DDMence (since it's generally harder to revenge), and it can switch out and cause another such situation if it's either 1, or, if it's lucky, 2 more times. It might even use Roost to make more such situations, but we've deemed that irrelevant.

 

[MrIndigo]

Probability is irrelevant. What we need is to find the most destructive sets and examine them. Would you declare that Lucario needs to be tested because no one knows what set it is running until it is attacks? What about Smeargle? It can run any set, but when it uses its first attack, it becomes predictable. The same goes for Salamence. The exact set will remain unknown for a little while, but it becomes predictable. Aren't Ubers supposed to be able to sweep through a significant portion of the team reliably? Sure, you may have to sacrifice something to beat Salamence, but Salamence just doesn't sweep through enough teams on a regular enough basis, does it? I guess that is what this discussion is to decide.

Probability isn't irrelevant, because it is how we identify (in part) what sets are the most dangerous. Your argument, however, is flawed; just as almost every argument citing Smeargle has been so far. Suspect/Uber analysis is not based just on one set, otherwise that set could be banned. Suspect/Uber analysis looks at the pokemon overall, and multiple sets with potential can interact with each other. For most pokemon, this doesn't make a difference because the checks to the different sets are largely the same, or at least overlap a great deal. With Salamence, it has been argued that the checks to one set are totalled by the other, and vice-versa. This increases the power of Salamence significantly because it puts the defending player down to a coinflip chance at completely losing.

In regards to the oft-cited Smeargle example: it is not the collection of moves that makes the set. The set includes the pokemon stats. Smeargle's stats are so low that none of it's sets are even arguably a problem.

Salamence's stats are so high, that just spending a turn to work out what set it is running will frequently cause you to lose a pokemon, which means it has already achieved it's purpose in battle, and you haven't even dealt with it. Furthermore, if it uses something like Earthquake, you don't even have any information about what set it is.