Chandelure

[TLK]

2:26 That same person was going to use Sword of Mystery on a Pokemon that's 4x resistant to it. Bad battlers are bad.

Edit: Every time I've faced Wobbufet in Ubers, I've just pounded away at it and it usually ends up using Counter/Mirror Coat and getting only 1 kill (possibly 2 with Custap). You should never try to set up on Wobuufet, just hit it with whatever attack your Pokmeon has (or Toxic).

One of the reasons why Wobb is banned is because it practically guarantees a kill every match. If it managed to get a kill, then if it's a good player, then they've done their job with Wobb and eliminated a big threat to their team.

Not saying this is justification for Shandera being banned, I've not tried him out yet so couldn't possibly say, but using the fact that Wobb "getting only 1 kill" is an argument that probably works against what you want.

 

[Syberia]

Wobb is banned because of the support characteristic, namely how it can easily lock something into a non-attacking move and guarantee a free turn of setup for something on your team. Alternately, it can function as a full stop to a huge variety of things that would otherwise threaten the rest of your team, in a way that other pokemon simply cannot, by depriving an opponent of the opportunity to switch out.

Shandera, if used correctly, should be fulfilling the second point I just made about Wobbuffet. Don't think of it as a way to ram your way through a team. Instead, think of it as a way to get rid of things that would otherwise sweep you or prevent your sweep. Use it sparingly, spam U-Turn to give it a favorable matchup, sacrifice a 'mon if you have to, and open a hole for yourself. If you manage to kill one or two things and have a 'mon left on your team that completely walls one of your opponent's, just keep sacrificing things, revenging with Shandera, and repeating until you're left with a 1v1 matchup that will end in your favor. At that point, you completely control the match and there's nothing your opponent can do about it (and I have been the unfortunate victim of such a tactic). In order for it to work, Shandera should be thought of as the supporter, not the sweeper.

Used in this manner (the Sub-CM set is stupid), I think a convincing argument can be made that Shandera (or more specifically, the Shadow Tag ability) falls under the same support characteristic that Wobbuffet did.

And before anyone says "lol Pursuit," remember that a sacrifice plus a Pursuit was also a full-stop to Latias, but that didn't stop her from going uber either. The difference between that case and this one was you got to choose who took a Draco Meteor to the face before the Pursuit kill. Shandera gets to pick its targets freely, and even one kill often means it's done its job. Think Wobbuffet taking out Scarf Palkia but (nearly, since that's the way Wobbuffet works) dying in the process, allowing DDRayquaza a sweep it wouldn't otherwise have had if the Palkia user could have switched out.

I am, of course, operating under the assumption that all Dream World pokemon have now been released, as seems likely by the fact that people are finding so many different ones.

 

[RocketSurgery]

Shandera, if used correctly, should be fulfilling the second point I just made about Wobbuffet. Don't think of it as a way to ram your way through a team. Instead, think of it as a way to get rid of things that would otherwise sweep you or prevent your sweep. Use it sparingly, spam U-Turn to give it a favorable matchup, sacrifice a 'mon if you have to, and open a hole for yourself. If you manage to kill one or two things and have a 'mon left on your team that completely walls one of your opponent's, just keep sacrificing things, revenging with Shandera, and repeating until you're left with a 1v1 matchup that will end in your favor. At that point, you completely control the match and there's nothing your opponent can do about it (and I have been the unfortunate victim of such a tactic). In order for it to work, Shandera should be thought of as the supporter, not the sweeper.

The main problems with your argument are that

a) it looks reasonable on paper, but we need to see if a player can consistently pull it off in game, and

b) people have been making this argument for pages and pages in this thread. Most of us are willing to admit there's some theoretical potential for shandera to do some broken-esque things, but coming up with hypothetical scenario after hypothetical scenario isn't proving anything and is just cluttering up the thread.

Until we actually get a hold of ST shandera and players start destroying other teams with little effort because of it, we should hold off on further broken/banning discussions and focus on what we can do with shandera's other capabilities. (DW sets are fine too, I'm just trying to stop the thread from getting bogged down in theoretical discussions about banning it before we're actually in a position to test for it.)

Edit: c) Not to mention the fact that stealth rocks and/or spikes makes the proposed scenario even a little more tricky to pull off.

 

[KokoaKiwi]

Oh my, a lot of stuff happened while I was asleep. ohboy_here_we_go.jpg

Alright, I see you guys made a point with support clause or whatever the heck's that called.

But still, you make it seem really easy to revenge kill with Shandera. Unless you can OHKO or 2KO, Shandy will take a lot damage (yada yada power creeps, weaknesses, entry hazards, etc). Granted, you get a free kill and that's what matters, I said I couldnt argue with that 10+pages ago. Even so, in my opinion at least, this doesnt seem broken whatsoever (considering other more potentially dangerous stuff arent banned). Fire/Ghost isn't really THAT threating offensively, meaning you need to resort to Hidden Power for coverage, making it hard to one-shot stuff unless they're x4 weak. IIRC, even Tyranitar can survive a Modest, 252 SpA HP Fighting (then again, it only survives at less than 15% health).
Shandera, as stated before, can be seen as Dugtrio counterpart. Trades the speed for Special Attack (and shandy can actually take a resisted hit).

 

[blasphemy1]

Oh my, a lot of stuff happened while I was asleep. ohboy_here_we_go.jpg

Alright, I see you guys made a point with support clause or whatever the heck's that called.

But still, you make it seem really easy to revenge kill with Shandera. Unless you can OHKO or 2KO, Shandy will take a lot damage (yada yada power creeps, weaknesses, entry hazards, etc). Granted, you get a free kill and that's what matters, I said I couldnt argue with that 10+pages ago. Even so, in my opinion at least, this doesnt seem broken whatsoever (considering other more potentially dangerous stuff arent banned). Fire/Ghost isn't really THAT threating offensively, meaning you need to resort to Hidden Power for coverage, making it hard to one-shot stuff unless they're x4 weak. IIRC, even Tyranitar can survive a Modest, 252 SpA HP Fighting (then again, it only survives at less than 15% health).
Shandera, as stated before, can be seen as Dugtrio counterpart. Trades the speed for Special Attack (and shandy can actually take a resisted hit).

There was a giant list I compiled of all the Pokemon Shandera can take out. With a simple set of Shadow Ball / Fire Blast / Energy Ball / Hidden Power Ice, a Modest nature, and a Choice Scarf, it can OHKO the following OU: Azelf, Breloom, Bronzong, Celebi, Dragonite, Flygon, Forretress, Gengar, Gliscor, Jirachi, Lucario, Magnezone, Mamoswine, Metagross, Roserade, Scizor, Shaymin, Skarmory, Starmie, Swampert, and Weavile. All guaranteed OHKOs without Stealth Rock. With Stealth Rock: Aerodactyl, Dusknoir, and Jolteon.

You can even run HP Ground to take out Heatran if your sweeper is SD Lucario and you need ScarfTran out of the way. HP Electric for Gyarados, etc. That's just the Scarf set. Essentially guaranteeing a sweep seems pretty broken to me. Thankfully, he doesn't technically have Shadow Tag yet. Without Shadow Tag, he's an inferior Gengar or Mismagius.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

I am, of course, operating under the assumption that all Dream World pokemon have now been released, as seems likely by the fact that people are finding so many different ones.

All pokémon up to 4th Gen have their HGSS overworld sprites programmed in B/W for the Dream World (when you go into that High Link forest to catch them); the 5th Gen pokémon, however, have not. Add on to that the Dream World being hyped pre-release as a means to get old-gen pokémon and Game Freak going to have an event for Self-Conscious Kumashun in a few days/weeks from now and... well. I'd say Shadow Tag Shandera is still non-existant and will be for quite a while.

 

[KokoaKiwi]

All pokémon up to 4th Gen have their HGSS overworld sprites programmed in B/W for the Dream World (when you go into that High Link forest to catch them); the 5th Gen pokémon, however, have not. Add on to that the Dream World being hyped pre-release as a means to get old-gen pokémon and Game Freak going to have an event for Self-Conscious Kumashun in a few days/weeks from now and... well. I'd say Shadow Tag Shandera is still non-existant and will be for quite a while.

I couldnt care less if its inferior to Gengar, I'd kill for a Levitate Shandy. <3

 

[RocketSurgery]

I couldnt care less if its inferior to Gengar, I'd kill for a Levitate Shandy. <3

It's probably less of a felony to hack it. =P It's not likely that they'll go and give shandera levitate when all of the dream world abilities are programmed into the game already.

 

[KokoaKiwi]

According to the sheet posted in the Speed Tiers thread, shandera is...relatively slow. It's ranked 29th with timid nature and a scarf. Even adamant ononokusu outruns after a single dragon dance, wtf. The list of faster pokes is actually greater than I expected...
Anyway @ RocketSurgery, I thought gen V abilities arent programmed, so game freak can still change them or improvise new stuff. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[RocketSurgery]

According to the sheet posted in the Speed Tiers thread, shandera is...relatively slow. It's ranked 29th with timid nature and a scarf. Even adamant ononokusu outruns after a single dragon dance, wtf. The list of faster pokes is actually greater than I expected...
Anyway @ RocketSurgery, I thought gen V abilities arent programmed, so game freak can still change them or improvise new stuff. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

The dream world abilities are programmed directly into the game. This is because the abilities can be passed down by breeding and there's a special flag in the code for it. In principle maybe they didn't need to hard code the abilities into the game for them to be passed down, but they did, so it looks like the odds of a levitate shandera are pretty close to zero.

 

[Elfam]

so correct me if i'm wrong but i'm getting the impression that all the dw world pokemon aren't released at the same time. so how are they going to be releasing them? are they like all the event pokemon like how mew is available in 2 days and only for limited time? Or are they released and then available from that time on? any ETA's at all on dream world abilities would be cool.

 

[XienZo]

I don't get why everyone's hyped about how Shandera can remove key members of the opponent's team when Dugtrio can basically do the same to all non-fliers. I suppose Dugtrio can't pick off ALL of the members of the opponent's team, since they'll likely have at least 1 flier, but it didn't really pick off many in a single battle to begin with.

 

[Elfam]

I don't get why everyone's hyped about how Shandera can remove key members of the opponent's team when Dugtrio can basically do the same to all non-fliers. I suppose Dugtrio can't pick off ALL of the members of the opponent's team, since they'll likely have at least 1 flier, but it didn't really pick off many in a single battle to begin with.

mainly because dugtrio lacks the versatility shanderaa has... plus dugtrio is weak attack wise.. 80 vs 145... also dugtrio has 35/50/70 defenses. paper compared to 60/90/90. also yeah traps it all. like someone else said dugtrio on steroids.

plus spin blocking is important to a lot of ppl

PS dugtrio made UU with those crappy stats so why wouldnt shanderaa at least make ou with better stats in all but speed which is why scarves exist.

 

[KokoaKiwi]

so correct me if i'm wrong but i'm getting the impression that all the dw world pokemon aren't released at the same time. so how are they going to be releasing them? are they like all the event pokemon like how mew is available in 2 days and only for limited time? Or are they released and then available from that time on? any ETA's at all on dream world abilities would be cool.

ST Shandera may never even exist. It hasnt been released yet.

 

[Elfam]

ST Shandera may never even exist. It hasnt been released yet.

Yeah but i didnt think hardly anything was released yet. Thought just eevees and a couple of others.

 

[XienZo]

mainly because dugtrio lacks the versatility shanderaa has... plus dugtrio is weak attack wise.. 80 vs 145... also dugtrio has 35/50/70 defenses. paper compared to 60/90/90. also yeah traps it all. like someone else said dugtrio on steroids.

plus spin blocking is important to a lot of ppl

PS dugtrio made UU with those crappy stats so why wouldnt shanderaa at least make ou with better stats in all but speed which is why scarves exist.

Still, Dugtrio follows the same general strategy as the supposedly broken one for Shandera of picking off threats. All the stats do is that it gives Dugtrio a slightly different set of pokes it can revenge (faster, frailer non-fliers vs slower, bulky ones), but it still has a sizable amount of pokes that it can revenge, and the strategy itself still isn't successful enough to keep it in OU.

 

[KokoaKiwi]

Still, Dugtrio follows the same general strategy as the supposedly broken one for Shandera of picking off threats. All the stats do is that it gives Dugtrio a slightly different set of pokes it can revenge (faster, frailer non-fliers vs slower, bulky ones), but it still has a sizable amount of pokes that it can revenge, and the strategy itself still isn't successful enough to keep it in OU.

Shandera has a better shot at coming in since it resists most priority, which is why everyone's creaming their pants. For example, Shandy can come in Lucario and KO back with Fire Blast, whereas Duggy gets assasined by Extremespeed. Same goes for Scizor, or fliers. Seems broken on paper, but on practice I can hardly call it broken, since any bulky pokemon wont get ohkod and random scarfers will lol at you, since Shandy isn't particularly fast even with a scarf.

 

[T.D.]

lol, Im sorry. Shandera is my favourite Gen V pokémon hands down. Even if she was NU I'd still use her. I'm just trying to prove she is NOT broken to prevent one of the most unnecesary bans.

l totally agree. Even ST isn't that great witl all her weakness. lt's like being a god with no powers.

She'll most likely be UU, flash fire seems like the more useful ability at this point. I'm optimistic but people really are overhyping.

0/0/0/999/0/0 stats dosent make a poke uber

 

[Elfam]

Still, Dugtrio follows the same general strategy as the supposedly broken one for Shandera of picking off threats. All the stats do is that it gives Dugtrio a slightly different set of pokes it can revenge (faster, frailer non-fliers vs slower, bulky ones), but it still has a sizable amount of pokes that it can revenge, and the strategy itself still isn't successful enough to keep it in OU.

The bigger arguement is that shanderaa can hit much more and hits like a truck. pokemon is all about versatility and honestly a large quantity of the game dugtrio cant break. 80 attack is miserable... even super effective hits suck. 145 lets shanderaa get a lot more KOs dugtrio could only dream of. I feel the UU status isnt a reflection on the strategy but the pokemon

l totally agree. Even ST isn't that great witl all her weakness. lt's like being a god with no powers.

She'll most likely be UU, flash fire seems like the more useful ability at this point. I'm optimistic but people really are overhyping.

0/0/0/999/0/0 stats dosent make a poke uber

if it had priority it would be...(but still feel like it would need a hit point)

 

[Zebstrika]

0/0/0/999/0/0 stats dosent make a poke uber

if it had priority it would be...(but still feel like it would need a hit point)

Vacuum Wave, to be specific. Otherwise its using its not-so-good attack stat.

Assuming both pokemon are running max speed and their higher attacking stat is maxed:
Modest scarf shandy: 427 SpA, 388 Speed
Timid scarf shandy: 389/426
Adamant banded Dugtrio: 426 Atk, 339 speed
Jolly banded Dugtrio: 388/372
Adamant Life Orb Dugtrio: 369/339 (like max SpA/Spe Alakazam with no nature)
Jolly Life Orb Dugtrio: 336/372

Shandy's defensive stats are strictly better, Modest Specs Shandera>banded dugtrio, barring scarf dugtrio as far as stats go, and if there is no general benefit to attacking either physically or using special attack. Shandera has more immunities. Shandera's Fire Blast has a higher BP than Dugtrio's EQ, though EQ has a higher BP than Shadow Ball and Flamethrower. Shandera has 2 STABs, dugtrio has one. Shandera's ST traps more than Arena Trap.
Note the similar attack stats with a banded dugtrio and a scarfed Shandera, so both are about equally strong, so that makes me realize that 427 SpA is a little weak compared to common pokemon with a Life Orb.

 

[Sandstreamer]

You people finally have a good point here: Shadow Tag Shandera is just a Dugtrio on steroids. And Dugtrio sucks. If Dugtrio was top-class OU, I'd understand people going like "OMG uberzzz" (even though it would still be silly considering we are playing a new game now). Of course, Shandera is OU material, because it is way better than Dugtrio, who is not OU material. But seriously guys, you're hyping something here...
I managed to play a few battles in PO Beta phase and I faced some Shanderas and one thing about them struck my mind: Sure, they tended to easily pick up my weakened sweepers, but there was no single occasion of Shandera revenging something Dugtrio wouldn't have. (Of course, my team did not have many flyers.)

 

[cobaph]

Also, while Shandera has Shadow Tag, it also has a LOT of common weaknesses due to its dual typing that the trapped Pokemon could potentially be running. Earthquake comes to mind as an extremely common move that non-Ballooned Shanderas should beware. Oh, and weakness to SR.

 

[KokoaKiwi]

Also, while Shandera has Shadow Tag, it also has a LOT of common weaknesses due to its dual typing that the trapped Pokemon could potentially be running. Earthquake comes to mind as an extremely common move that non-Ballooned Shanderas should beware. Oh, and weakness to SR.

I made a rather good set in the Shandy Thread, abusing Flash Fire and Balloon to maximize immunities. Works amazinlgy well, but balloon being a one time item ruins the point. Still, my favorite set hands down.

 

[cobaph]

I made a rather good set in the Shandy Thread, abusing Flash Fire and Balloon to maximize immunities. Works amazinlgy well, but balloon being a one time item ruins the point. Still, my favorite set hands down.

My preference for Shandera is also for Flash Fire as the utility of Shadow Tag is too overrated in practice, in my opinion. Baiting fire attacks, especially from Urugamosu, for a boost in an already monstrous STAB fire is more beneficial than trying to sneak a Shadow Tag into an opponent who isn't Banded.

Also, I thought this was the Shandera thread, lol.

 

[KokoaKiwi]

My preference for Shandera is also for Flash Fire as the utility of Shadow Tag is too overrated in practice, in my opinion. Baiting fire attacks, especially from Urugamosu, for a boost in an already monstrous STAB fire is more beneficial than trying to sneak a Shadow Tag into an opponent who isn't Banded.

Also, I thought this was the Shandera thread, lol.

...this is the shandera thread. Shadow Tag is the only thing being discussed here, but mods just won't do a thing about it.

Also, Flash Fire Shandy is an amazing lure for an opposing Shan.

Shadow Tag Scarf enemy Shandera comes in. Since you both can switch (or so does your opponent think), he'll expect you to switch to a steel type to take the obvious shadow ball, thus, he'll just Fire Blast.
Congratulations on successfully trolling with Flash Fire. Now you are free to do whatever the hell you feel like. Sub, Nitro Charge, or just attack.