@choutoshio, while you pretty much summed up those 2 sets, to determine Salamence as OU or Uber, you have to look at the pokemon as a whole, not 2 seperate sets. Not knowing what set Salamence is running can be costly to an opponent, and can cause the loss of pokemon just because you have almost no clue what set it is going to be running.
Salamence's other sets are not the ones people are bitching about, nor are they particularly good. As to whether you can tell what set it is--
Did I not just describe how these sets work??? DD mence HAS to come in to a situation it is likely to get a free turn AND face weakened opponents to do his job effectively.
Mixmence WILL be used as an early game wall breaker, or else if your team is weakened to the point of losing to a mixmence, you're already weakened enough to get your ass killed by a whole slew of pokemon that are frankly better at sweeping than mixmence (who is meant to be a wall breaker by profession).
Keeping that in mind, it is pretty easy to figure out what set it is-- or if it's not the one that makes sense, your opponent isn't using Salamence to best effect anyway.
Frankly, if you're switching a porygon-2 into an unidentified Salamence fairly early in the game, I think you deserve to have your ass mowed. If you are so worried about this thing, why not develop strategies that let you switch in something that can check BOTH sets? Whenever I see a salamence, I think "Big dragon hits hard," and make a move that could let me handle either mence it that's what it came to.
Even if it does cost me my 30% health death fodder. Oh well.
Well, this theory is flawed when your opponent will switch to thier "check" when Salamence is sent out, the person on the recieving end has a choice of six (or less) pokemon to switch in. That pokemon will likely die (given other calcs run throughout this thread) this is most likely the same thing people use to stop a DD mence (as they have little knowledge to the set should this be mid-game) which those same pokes are often used to stop T-tar ect. While the Salamence user has no actual control over the opponents moves likely something imprtant will die, even so no wall-breaker can have complete control over what they kill, as the opponent can switch in any of thier 6 pokes, But the real problem is Salamence has killed one of yours while you are forced to make an obvious move or be punished by another Salamence attack.
But possibly the worst part is this is a Metagame bent around stopping a Salamence, yet Salamence can still guarentee at least one kill and then puts you in a good position for the rest of the match.
Salamence takes 35% or 41% after switching in and attacking; that is easily enough to attack again and likely take another foe with it and has revealed at least 3 members of your team and has broken your defensive core and likely put your revenge killer in a poor position,
Even if you happen to have fodder, which is difficult to know during the early or Mid- game as you have incomplete information, Salamence has 100 base speed, a stall team is hard pressed to outspeed it or has to take another hit. (Btw salamence will not do 40% unless resisted and the Mixmence set has perfect coverage so he can easily use another attack type)
The problem with this analogy is in Yu-Gi-Oh you have a deck of (not sure about this) 60 cards losing one is not as important as losing one in a team of six, while I agree that Yu-Gi-Oh is also a strategy game and some other analogies can be compared this one can't hold any water.
Not to go into yu-gi-oh, but this comment of yours smells so much of stupid it's painful. You don't have 60 cards-- you have 6, usually less. You only have the cards you've actually drawn and have yet to use.
That's limited resource management, just like your limited pokemon. When playing yu-gi-oh, you got to make every last card count if you want to win-- and throwing out "sac to kill one of his, let him choose which one he loses." certainly isn't getting anywhere.
If you have a well planned strategy that doesn't need all its members and is prepared to make specific sacrifices over the course of the game, you can easily win the resource-war against salamence.
When facing a Salamence you have an~ 50/50 chance to either be swept (by a DD mence) or have a member of your team killed by a MixMence. Their is no room for any intelligent sacrifices when if you try to sac something you can get set-up on. This has happened to me before, I tried to sac my (fairly) useless lead and then was set-up on, and then I had to face Salamence that could kill most of my team and had to make a poor choice that likely lost me the game. I have done the opposite thing as well, switched in my Skarmory to wall what I could only guess was a DDMence and then was 2koed by Fireblast and had then lost my counter to other key players. Forcing your opponent into a game of guessing and then still having the upperhand afterwords is not intelligent gaming.
Salamence is consistent in getting AT LEAST one kill per game, and unlike other Wall-breakers like Infernape he can't be resonably walled, as very, very few pokes can take two attacks from a Mixed Salamence and then do ~67% in return, not to mention then be able to take an attack from a DDmence who could have set-up in that switching turn.
While I agree with most of your (very good) summing up of Salamence's two popular sets, Salamence can use both sets forcing a game of guessing on your opponent, and then has the raw muscle to power through even with correct (lucky) guesses, and can seriously punish wrong guesses.
@ Vile
Salamence doesn't have any thing that can switch into both sets, no other poke can say this without hurting their chance to do actual damage otherwise E.g. Focus Punch Gengar and U-turn, Earthquake, Thunderpunch Infernape.
Most of this post is indecipherable jibberish, but I'll try to make the obvious short corrections to points of stupidity.
-What is this 50/50 prediction bull crap? You could have a 100% chance of facing my 30% Mixnape that I've already used to terrorize your team and beat face on your "walls." Die to HP Ice or kill nape and let me revenge/force you out (and if you go out, you're coming back at 30% health from SR and other damage, too crippled to really do anything but be death fodder or use desperation attacks). That's the real salamence.
-And no, it's not only a 30% mixnape, but a 30% ANYTHING that can screw over mence. THAT'S why his inability to switch around PLUS his inability to control his kill (let the opponent choose what it kills), makes him so very shitty half the time.
-Otherwise, go play 50 games with Scarf Flygon and come back to tell me how many games were NOT decided by the decision between Outrage and Earthquake during a late-game clean up.
-Well aren't you the stupid one for trying to use death fodder that cannot hurt salamence. Besides, what kind of lead could you possibly have used that doesn't hurt salamence? Azelf has explosion, infernape can use endeavor, TTar has Stone Edge/Crunch, Metagross has Explosion, Bullet Punch or Meteor Mash, Swamp (lol), Mamoswine (lol), etc. etc.
-One of the consistent points of this thread is that it's a tough time to D.D. mence to set up because the vast majority of OU pokes can do something that would beat the crap out of him if he gave them a free shot, whether it be throwing out thunder wave, w-o-w, whirlwind, roar, attacks from ice, rock, dragon, or STAB from anything neutral. Most pokemon are carrying something on that list, which means they are NOT setup fodder for ddmence should they simply decide to stay in and attack. So almost ANY OU poke can be used as good death fodder against mence.
-What the fuck are you doing putting al the burden on one pokemon to handle salamence, ttar and others? That's just stupid. Remember I said pokemon is a WAR OF ATTRITION and a team should be built both to execute a plan that takes into account losing pokemon AND be able to function WITHOUT all of its members.
