Pokemon Black and White (SPECULATIONS ALLOWED HERE)

[NDenizen]

I'm frankly just surprised Ranculus even has good Offensive stats, considering he seems to be based off something that specialises in survival - I expected good defense foremost. High Special Attack is awesome though, and he'll be right at home in Trick Room.

He's my favourite, so I want a way of using him :3
He'd be good for support options, but if not, i'm sure he'll have means of caring for himself.

And with Magic Guard, he could effectively stall or sweep depending. Life Orb ftw.

 

[CRASHiC]

No shit Sherlock. But metagames do have consistency to them. A lot of OU Pokemon carry over, and a lot of moves remain fantastic. Particularly when you consider there's less and less room to change with each generation.

Only Starmie and one other carried over OU to OU every gen. Also, no other gen has brought us 156 new pokemon before. This change is bigger than ever. No new mechanics can replace the huge impact that such a large number of pokemon will bring.

Stats and typing. Psychic is really kinda shit, unless they change the type chart.

That's not why Psychic sucks, not because of just the type chart. Psychic sucks because of things in the game outside of JUST the type chart. Physical Pursuit and U-turn as well as Tyranitar. Fire isn't a crappy typing, but Stealth Rocks and the omnipresent Earthquake make it less than steller in today's enviroment.

Slow, terrible physical defense and average Sp.Def coupled with that and you have a NU in the making.

Clefable has shit everything and is weak to the very common fighting type attacks in UU

It still won't do anything. Any decent Pursuiter would flat out murder it. It just can't really do much.

You say that without any knowledge of its movepool or new items to be released next gen.

Bottom line, the metagame will undoubtedly change, but I doubt it'll change enough to make something like this disaster viable.

That's far from what I'd call a disaster. Maybe you should go look at Sableye sometime.

 

[Artix]

Only Starmie and one other carried over OU to OU every gen. Also, no other gen has brought us 156 new pokemon before. This change is bigger than ever. No new mechanics can replace the huge impact that such a large number of pokemon will bring.

There's still very much consistency. Gyarados has been BL, UU, OU OU. Starmie, you mentioned, Snorlax has always been OU too. Heracross has been OU, OU, OU. Scizor has been BL, BL, OU. Gengar and Zapdos have also always been OU if memory serves.

Also, do you realize what would need to happen to make this crappy little twerp usable? You'd need to make U Turn and Pursuit unusable, and gen5 will have to introduce a plethora of fighting types to OU [and even then they can probably kick his ~50 base defense ass] or be ridiculously special attacks focused to make this thing usable.

Honestly, it's just a fact that to warrant such low base stats, over ALL gens, the Pokemon had to have more going for it, usually type-wise, [See: Skarmory in gen3] stats-allocation-wise [Jynx in gen 1] or having something unique going for it [Misdreavus in gen 2, Ninjask in gen 3] or a combination of all of these [Like Breloom in gen4]

That's not why Psychic sucks, not because of just the type chart. Psychic sucks because of things in the game outside of JUST the type chart. Physical Pursuit and U-turn as well as Tyranitar. Fire isn't a crappy typing, but Stealth Rocks and the omnipresent Earthquake make it less than steller in today's enviroment.

That's... kind of what that means. I mean if Psychics weren't weak to those, they wouldn't really fear it. Plus Psychic is also very very mediocre offensively.

You say that without any knowledge of its movepool or new items to be released next gen.

Can you stop tripping? I clearly said that it's only if we apply him to gen4's metagame. But as I added, I doubt gen5 will be radically different enough from 4 to suddenly make that crappy little thing viable.


The bottom line is that the Pokemeta would have to turn upside down to make this thing viable. It's just unfortunately cliched - psychic with low def, but good sp.atk, and yet he misses on the speed that they often have.

Honestly it's like wondering why Torkoal doesn't work.

 

[JojoX3]

Only Starmie and one other carried over OU to OU every gen. Also, no other gen has brought us 156 new pokemon before. This change is bigger than ever. No new mechanics can replace the huge impact that such a large number of pokemon will bring.



That's not why Psychic sucks, not because of just the type chart. Psychic sucks because of things in the game outside of JUST the type chart. Physical Pursuit and U-turn as well as Tyranitar. Fire isn't a crappy typing, but Stealth Rocks and the omnipresent Earthquake make it less than steller in today's enviroment.


Clefable has shit everything and is weak to the very common fighting type attacks in UU


You say that without any knowledge of its movepool or new items to be released next gen.


That's far from what I'd call a disaster. Maybe you should go look at Sableye sometime.

Maaan, I wish I had pointed that out myself =/ Well, it was said, either way^^. I guess I´ll just wait for the game. The real thing proves everything better than any theory. Kinda wonder what stats Gochiruzeru will have tough. Rankurusu sure looked like the more defensive one out of tose two...

...to warrant such low base stats, over ALL gens, the Pokemon had to have more going for it...

I´m not going to go into everything of your post, as I admit I lack the knowledge of Gen I,II,III. But Rankurusu HAS going more for itself: one of the best abilities in existence. Considering the SR-mania won´t stop, this is VERY useful. Tricking Flame Orbs around without drawbacks sure is a nice thing to do, as well as being able to take any toxics and no damage from entry hazards.

But as I added, I doubt gen5 will be radically different enough from 4 to suddenly make that crappy little thing viable.

I´m not too sure about that. It often takes only little things to change something. Take the addition of Stealth Rock. It changed the metagame drastically from Advance, along with Physical/Special split. Scizor began to be a threat everyone should consider just because it got Bullet Punch(go on, say it´s main use is U-Turn scouting. It still stays true, that it´s usage only went up AFTER Platinum´s add of Bullet Punch.). And(now I´m going to unknown territory) I think the TM Curse pretty much defined the main direction of Gen II metagame.

 

[Artix]

But Rankurusu HAS going more for itself: one of the best abilities in existence. Considering the SR-mania won´t stop, this is VERY useful. Tricking Flame Orbs around without drawbacks sure is a nice thing to do, as well as being able to take any toxics and no damage from entry hazards.

This is based on him getting Trick, and based on SR staying the same next generation. But even if we acknowledge that... why use it over Clefable?
Going by what we have, Clefable has roughly the same stats except more defense, a confirmed recovery move, and in fact a movepool Rank is very unlikely to match.

So it gets to resist fighting instead... but at the cost of getting U Turned into oblivion. Plus, with that terrible defense, I doubt that fighting resist will prove too handy.

That said, if you're gonna argue about U Turn and Pursuit next, remember that good moves carry over. One of the very very few examples of a move considered good one gen and not so the next is Psychic, and that's because of the type getting nerfed as hell as whole. In other words, I heartily doubt U Turn and Pursuit won't be just as useful next metagame, as TWave, recoveries, protect, etc always have.

I´m not too sure about that. It often takes only little things to change something. Take the addition of Stealth Rock. It changed the metagame drastically from Advance, along with Physical/Special split.

It did, but it didn't completely flip it upside down. Good Pokemon that are weak to SR didn't suddenly lose favor completely. Gyarados is still like, the 4th most used?
As for the special/physical split, aside from the fact that gen4 won't have something as radical as that, what it really did was give more moves to Pokemon, but you'd be hard-pressed to find something that shot up from NU or UU to OU because of it.
Most remained unaffected [any physical Pokemon ever], or found substitutes [Alakazam].

Gen4 change the mechanics a lot, but in the end good Pokemon from gen 3 mostly remained good Pokemon.
It gave some niche availability to others, but again, I don't see what on earth could make this thing suddenly viable.

That said, I'll admit that it can't be disproven, it's just very very unlikely. So I suggest we just drop it, place a bet on it and shove it in the other person's face when the metagame stabilizes.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

Hmm, guys.


It just occurred to me that I don't recall to have ever read any official announcement of Rankurusu and Gochiruzeru being counterparts. Sure, the former is exclusive to peasant White and the latter, exclusive to master race Black, but has it ever been explicitly said they ARE counterparts? Even if they are obtained at the same route, we've had Gligar and Skarmory back in G/S too, and yet Gligar was more or less of a counterpart to Delibird, while Skarmory was to Mantine.


So, even if Gochiruzeru doesn't evolve, it is possible Rankurusu does, with both having a chance of being minimally useful in Gen V competitively... right?

 

[blasphemy1]

Hmm, guys.


It just occurred to me that I don't recall to have ever read any official announcement of Rankurusu and Gochiruzeru being counterparts. Sure, the former is exclusive to peasant White and the latter, exclusive to master race Black, but has it ever been explicitly said they ARE counterparts? Even if they are obtained at the same route, we've had Gligar and Skarmory back in G/S too, and yet Gligar was more or less of a counterpart to Delibird, while Skarmory was to Mantine.


So, even if Gochiruzeru doesn't evolve, it is possible Rankurusu does, with both having a chance of being minimally useful in Gen V competitively... right?

On that same point, Gligar has an evolution, while Delibird does not (albeit 2 generations after its debut in the games).

 

[TLK]

There's still very much consistency. Gyarados has been BL, UU, OU OU. Starmie, you mentioned, Snorlax has always been OU too. Heracross has been OU, OU, OU. Scizor has been BL, BL, OU. Gengar and Zapdos have also always been OU if memory serves.

Stuff may always be OU, or whatever, but the game still changes around them.

Snorlax in Advance was a complete monster, and along with CroCune was one of the greatest threats around. In Gen IV, they're still threats, but not to the standard they were last time around.

Stuff changes within generations even. With the addition of one move, Salamence went from OU to Uber which then led to Heatran being the most commonly used Pokemon.

There's some level of consistency, but the metagame will always change.

I think it's stupid to dismiss this Bubble Psychic thing so early. It could have a Clefable-esque movepool, with one of the best abilities in the game to make it very viable in at least UU. As a psychic type, it's probably going to get some really handy support moves, such as trick/dual screens/heck even psycho shift which is better than trick with a flame orb as you can continually pass it around the entire team.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Just to deviate from pointless arguing, these are my hopes/thoughts on what's going to happen with the upoming games.

-Pokobu's final evolution will probably be Fire/Dark. Makes sense to me with the color scheme. i hope it will look something like ganon from twilight princess, except bipedal and with fire motifs. Bipedal because all the fire starters have been bipedal, at least at most times (typhlosion). I also just want pokobu to be cool. really bad :(

-the water starters will/should be the whole samarai thing. 2nd evo looks that way. and water/fight is a great combo.

-grass starter will, sadly, probably end up looking like the fake one. Grass/psy matches, to me at least, with his design.

-SR will be weakened, but not ruined. I imagine all the damage levels will be lowered by one, as in 50% becomes 25%, 25% becomes 12.5%, and so on.

-if my SR prediction is true, fire types will hopefully get a boost in usage. as will flying types.

-I really hope they give sceptile something good to bring him some usage. A new move, a good ability, something. Too damn cool to be wasted.

-there will probably be more ways to avoid entry hazards. There are just so many now, i dont see why gamefreak wouldnt put out any way to counter it better.

just my thoughts. And please dont attack me for speculation. Thats all it is, speculation.

 

[CRASHiC]

There's still very much consistency. Gyarados has been BL, UU, OU OU. Starmie, you mentioned, Snorlax has always been OU too. Heracross has been OU, OU, OU. Scizor has been BL, BL, OU. Gengar and Zapdos have also always been OU if memory serves.

Snorlax is barely OU these days
Heracross is UU.
GDose being UU back when UU was NU.
Scizor was a pretty boring pokemon until Plat came around.
As for Blissey, she's just fuckin crazy.

Also, do you realize what would need to happen to make this crappy little twerp usable?

1. Create a life orb like item that increases speed
2. Make a special version of sucker punch
3. Make Trick Room viable
4. Give him Vacuum Wave
5. General metagame changes.

You'd need to make U Turn and Pursuit unusable, and gen5 will have to introduce a plethora of fighting types to OU [and even then they can probably kick his ~50 base defense ass] or be ridiculously special attacks focused to make this thing usable.

None of that seems out of line, considering the fact that gens before Gen IV were special based, EVEN WITH Blissey soaking up shit like a sponge.
It could also end up being less speed based, as Gen 3 or 2 was.

Honestly, it's just a fact that to warrant such low base stats, over ALL gens, the Pokemon had to have more going for it, usually type-wise, [See: Skarmory in gen3] stats-allocation-wise [Jynx in gen 1] or having something unique going for it [Misdreavus in gen 2, Ninjask in gen 3] or a combination of all of these [Like Breloom in gen4]

We know so little about the pokemon that we can't judge anything but number 1.

That's... kind of what that means. I mean if Psychics weren't weak to those, they wouldn't really fear it. Plus Psychic is also very very mediocre offensively.

No that's not what it means. What you are saying is that its type is horrible no matter the metagame.

The bottom line is that the Pokemeta would have to turn upside down to make this thing viable.

Not at all. No major changes are really needed to get this thing to UU. Just give the damn thing Vacume Wave and suddenly a lot of its counters are no longer counters.

Honestly it's like wondering why Torkoal doesn't work.

Just because of the metagame. Under the right circumstances it could be a decent pokemon.

 

[Artix]

I think it's stupid to dismiss this Bubble Psychic thing so early. It could have a Clefable-esque movepool, with one of the best abilities in the game to make it very viable in at least UU. As a psychic type, it's probably going to get some really handy support moves, such as trick/dual screens/heck even psycho shift which is better than trick with a flame orb as you can continually pass it around the entire team.

Oh absolutely, I just don't see it being anywhere near viable in standard. And even in UU, I'd find it hard to justify using this over Clefable.

 

[Artix]

1. Create a life orb like item that increases speed
2. Make a special version of sucker punch
3. Make Trick Room viable
4. Give him Vacuum Wave
5. General metagame changes.

This is the only relevant part of your post, so I'll bite:
1 - I don't see how a life orb item that increases Speed would remotely help it... or you mean help it to wear down foes? Or something?
2 - Not really. Even if it were psychic typed, his base Sp.Attack really isn't good enough, and psychic is a terrible type offensively. Does Absol having Sucker Punch, STAB'd, coming off of his 130 or something attack make it semi-viable? Naw.
3 - This is your best point, in my opinion, but even then, what will this thing DO? You mean to turn it into some sort of slow [now fast] sweeper? With what? He's mono-psychic, that's awful offensively.
4 - And what will he do with that? Slap STAB'd pursuiters with a 80 BP attack? I guess it'd help with Weavile and TTar, that's... something.
5 - Need to be more specific.

You know, even in the event that ALL of these occurred... he still wouldn't be any good!

I really think his best bet is being supportive, but Cresselia does whatever he does better by far.

 

[Kitsunine]

Here. The screenshot beside it on the scan had Rankurusu at level 50 in battle, facing a Gochiruzeru. So, if Rankurusu really is at level 50, then its stats are, at worst (neutral nature, 31 IVs) 80/45/49/97/69/19=389, and at best (neutral nature, 0 IVs), 95/60/64/112/84/34=449.

I thought it might be good to find some comparables so people might have a better idea on its stats.

Assuming the best, it's comparable to
Rapardos's physical defense (97/60)
Torterra's special defense (95/85)

Assuming the worst, it's comparable to
Kricketune's physical defense (77/51)
Toxicroak's special defense (83/65)

Additionally it has piss-poor speed, meaning it will nearly always get hit first. And its physical defense is extrapolated by being pursuit and u-turn weak. The special defense isn't bad, but Psychic has no resistances useful for special defense.

So, uh, yeah. I'm willing to guess it'll be stuck being a trick-room NU, or left for fooling around ingame.

 

[BlueCookies]

@Artix- I don't see how you can say with 99% certainty that it will be complete trash. All you know about it is that it's psychic type and the apporixmation of its base stats (both the typing and stats aren't very good, which you're right about). You have no clue about any moves it could get (always a chance of a potential broken new move only learned by him or it could just have an amazing movepool), new mechanics, maybe pursuit and u-turn become less useful in the metagame or they get nerfed in-game. It would be like seeing Smeargle's typing and base stats before g/s comes out and declaring with 99% certainty he sucks, before knowing that he can learn every move in the game. But I couldn't care less about smogon's metagame, so I just hope he's viable in doubles/triples or whatever VGC is next year.

 

[blasphemy1]

I thought it might be good to find some comparables so people might have a better idea on its stats.

Assuming the best, it's comparable to
Rapardos's physical defense (97/60)
Torterra's special defense (95/85)

Assuming the worst, it's comparable to
Kricketune's physical defense (77/51)
Toxicroak's special defense (83/65)

Additionally it has piss-poor speed, meaning it will nearly always get hit first. And its physical defense is extrapolated by being pursuit and u-turn weak. The special defense isn't bad, but Psychic has no resistances useful for special defense.

So, uh, yeah. I'm willing to guess it'll be stuck being a trick-room NU, or left for fooling around ingame.

We have no idea if he is level 50.

 

[Cuiv]

I thought it might be good to find some comparables so people might have a better idea on its stats.

Assuming the best, it's comparable to
Rapardos's physical defense (97/60)
Torterra's special defense (95/85)

Assuming the worst, it's comparable to
Kricketune's physical defense (77/51)
Toxicroak's special defense (83/65)

Additionally it has piss-poor speed, meaning it will nearly always get hit first. And its physical defense is extrapolated by being pursuit and u-turn weak. The special defense isn't bad, but Psychic has no resistances useful for special defense.

So, uh, yeah. I'm willing to guess it'll be stuck being a trick-room NU, or left for fooling around ingame.

Or it might do this weird thing that Pokemon are famous for and evolve.

 

[TLK]

I hope it doesn't evolve. It looks so fucking cool as it is. I probably wouldn't evolve in-game, unless the evolved form looked somehow more amazing than it already does. That thing is so cool looking, it makes Dragonite look like Cradily or some shit.

 

[Lee]

Anyone else super-stoked that Famitsu ranked this as the best Pokemon game ever? In fact, they gave it a perfect score and that's only the 15th time they've done that in their 25 year history. That puts Pokemon Black and White alongside the likes of Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XII so this is pretty exciting!

 

[CRASHiC]

inb4nintendogs

 

[Mario With Lasers]

Or it might do this weird thing that Pokemon are famous for and evolve.

Point is, Melkor/Hiro (somebody from Pokéxperto) said Gochiruzeru doesn't evolve, so I posted calling bullshit on it as Rankurusu apparently had shit stats in one of the scans and they are both really sucky counterparts, then people started discussing back and forth that we cannot judge its usefulness yet, with me finally asking - and being more or less ignored - if they have ever confirmed both pokémon to be counterparts or merely version-exclusives.

Anyone else super-stoked that Famitsu ranked this as the best Pokemon game ever? In fact, they gave it a perfect score and that's only the 15th time they've done that in their 25 year history. That puts Pokemon Black and White alongside the likes of Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XII so this is pretty exciting!

IIRC, 9 of those perfect scores have been given out in the last four years. While B/W might truly be deserving of the score, or at least be the best Pokémon games ever, it's not like Famitsu is as strict nowadays as they were back in the Ocarina times.

 

[TLK]

Anyone else super-stoked that Famitsu ranked this as the best Pokemon game ever? In fact, they gave it a perfect score and that's only the 15th time they've done that in their 25 year history. That puts Pokemon Black and White alongside the likes of Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy XII so this is pretty exciting!

Its encouraging to say the least. I don't see how it can be viewed as a bad thing at all - the alteratives would it not be voted 40/40, which is worse.

So what if they've been giving perfect scores away like Christmas presents, it's still nice to see.

Also, you're from Newcastle. You're cool.

 

[GtM]

This Rankarusu thing is basically a special Rampardos that is vastly underpowered, but gets access to Life Orb without recoil. Which... still makes it weaker than Rampardos, probs. I hope it gets Agility, otherwise it's not going to be viable in any way, shape or form.

 

[blasphemy1]

This Rankarusu thing is basically a special Rampardos that is vastly underpowered, but gets access to Life Orb without recoil. Which... still makes it weaker than Rampardos, probs. I hope it gets Agility, otherwise it's not going to be viable in any way, shape or form.

Except it has one of the best abilities in the game, decent special bulk, and probably more HP / defense than what we think. I'm still not convinced those stats are from a level 50 Rankurusu.

 

[DFang]

If these rumors from Melkor turn out to be true it will be interesting to see the distribution of these new pokes around Isshu.

I somewhat expected Meguroko and Shikijika to be found early in-game and there's been no sign of them yet. It certainly gives me hope for how powerful Meguroko's final evo should be and I'm dying for a description.

I'm also kind of surprised we haven't started getting any official leaks yet (CoroCoro or otherwise). I'm thrilled for Pokexperto's leaks because they appear to be extremely viable. This is A LOT of effort and it is either accurate or the greatest trolling of all time. I think Serebii and Pokebeach's unwillingness to comment further gives credit to the leaks because while they don't have the info to confirm them, they cannot immediately discredit them. In the past, Serebii has been pretty quick to quell blatant BS.

Now I keep refreshing the twitter page waiting for any info on Meguroko, Desukan, Denchura, Ononokusu and Basurao. Just barely hanging on!

 

[Pombo]

This Rankarusu thing is basically a special Rampardos that is vastly underpowered, but gets access to Life Orb without recoil. Which... still makes it weaker than Rampardos, probs. I hope it gets Agility, otherwise it's not going to be viable in any way, shape or form.

except that Rampardos have no 100% counter (bulky waters are the best answer, but they still take a good chunk from his moves), got Edgequake (with stab in the former part) and Mold Breaker.

Ok, Rank have toxic/SR/Spikes/SS-Hail immunity, but i dont think it is enough to compensate the psychic STAB and the anti levitator EQ (which was useful when Bronzongs run rampant and there were no scizors to ruin his fun)