Actually, Wobbuffet is borderline in BW.
-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Salamence
- Thread starter Aerrow
- Start date
Actually, Wobbuffet is borderline in BW.
It should be noted that since female Bagons are available (due to them being discovered in Hidden Hollows), its Egg moves are now available are Moxie Mence. This means that Salamence now has a larger expanse of moves to choose from, including Dragon Dance (available with other moves) and Hydro Pump (an alternative and/or somewhat stronger option against Gliscor, Hippowdon, and Skarmory in rain) with Moxie. Thoughts?
We already had female Bagon, the only problem was lack of Outrage+Dragon Dance+Moxie (both were Egg moves, Bagon could only come with one from DW).
Actually, the issue was that Outrage isn't an egg move. Salamence only gets it through Move Tutors and Dreamworld.
Is Scarf Mence even viable? First you have to remove faster scarfers, and just about all of them are faster except for Genesect. Then you have to remove steels AND Mamoswine. I dont like being forced to run Wob, especially when i have to run Mag as well for steels. I have tried him without all this support, and he did well, but not against anyone decent. Also, you pretty much have to run a Mamoswine or a faster scarfer, lest you get swept by Ditto. What are some other good partners for Mence?
Salamence is my personal favorite user of choice scarf, if you aren't having success with it then you are using it wrong. Usually I bring him in when he's the last member of my team, at that point hopefully everyone on the opposing team is within OHKO range, which isn't hard once Moxie starts building up. The only problem is Mamoswine, steels aren't a problem that late in a battle, he shouldn't be brought out until everyone is hurting, or too dragon claw another outrage locked dragon that you outspeed.
I can attest to Scarfmoxiemence's effectiveness. More over, if they don't IMMEDIATELY bring a Steel out to take an Outrage, or they're lacking sufficiently physically defensive enough Steel-types, after a +1 or +2 Moxie Boost, they simply can't take the boosted hits.
A good example is Specially Defensive Heatran. Yeah, a resisted Outrage is topping out at 29%, but if Salamence acquires a few boosts, you're suddenly looking at 48-58% at +2; more than enough for a 2HKO.
A good example is Specially Defensive Heatran. Yeah, a resisted Outrage is topping out at 29%, but if Salamence acquires a few boosts, you're suddenly looking at 48-58% at +2; more than enough for a 2HKO.
Scarf moxie mence is just about the best late game cleaner you could ask for, and he can run both fire blast a earthquake to deal with steel types (and should). Besides his vulnerability to mamo and weavile, he really needs to take something out right away to get his momentum going...if you can that first moxie boost though, and don't have that faster scarfer/stab ice shard, your team is getting swept.
ive been toying a bit with DD mence using hydro pump instead of fire blast on a rain team. its a nasty surprise for opposing gliscor, skarmory, forretress and balloontran, and under rain it gets a nice boost to it. it makes mence even weaker to ferrothorn, however, and the accuracy is unreliable at times. has anyone else tried hydro pump on mence, and if so, wanna share your results with it?
If you've got something to deal with Ferro (SubCharge 'Zone?), then this sounds like a fantastic addition to a rain team.
Back in the earlier days of BW1 I did run Hydro Pump on Mence, although this was before Moxie was released so most Mence sets were wallbreakers or DDs. It worked decently then because no one was expecting it, but it definitely didn't get me any more KOs than Fire Blast. I have used it a little in the BW2 metagame, but no more than 5 matches so its hard to conclusively say whether it works better than Fire Blast. On a rain team it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to run Fire Blast, because apart from anything thats 4x weak to Fire, you won't be dealing all that much damage unless you really pump a lot of EVs into SATK. So in regards to that, it could be nice for slightly additional coverage, although with the list of things you mentioned a standard rain team should be able to beat them with relative ease. All up I don't really think Hydro Pump on Mence is an incredibly useful move, unless you really want to run a Mence on a rain team, which isn't really the best team type for even a ScarfMoxie Mence.
I'm going to have to agree with Temp here, rain isn't the best environment for salamence. His best counters are steels that love a rain dampened fire blast. I understand you run hyrdo pump instead but don't see that viable against a decent team. Ferrothorn then completely walls you, and can get spikes down or leech seed to get residual damage plus iron barbs. Personally I don't even bring out scarf moxie mence until all steels are gone or low enough to kill. I try and use him as strictly a late game sweeper, if I can help it I don't even use him to revenge kill.
Actually,I think this is going to be a great set with a few changes.If u ran aqua tail instead of Hydro Pump it would be even better.Although it makes mence more weak towards Skarm and Forry but hey,with hydro pump it's ferro weak anyway.All 3 of them can be removed by Magnezone.Aqua Tail will give me mence a reliable pseudo STAB in rain letting u abuse moxie more as well as becoming more powerful with DD.Rain pokes such as Keldeo and Politoed are going to pair well with mence too becoz of their ability to deal with mence's 2 common revenge killers such as Scizor,Mamoswine etc.
ScarfMence is pretty great. I'm not going to lie. Ditto has to Speed tie it, and there's that chance that Salamence could win the tie. Also, Ditto appears to be rather uncommon, so you don't exactly have to worry about it too much. To answer your question, wall-breakers such as Terrakion and Hydreigon appear to be its best friends, bashing down the bulky physical walls that impede its progress. In return, Salamence can revenge kill those Pokemon that threaten the wall-breaker.
Surprised MixMence doesn't receive more love. It is by far the most difficult Pokemon to come into the tier and doesn't have to waste time Dragon Dancing to demolish teams. Just spam DMeteor and go. IMO, you are much better off having a Pokemon like Salamence destroy defensive cores and having a much higher speed Pokemon or priority like ScarfTerrakion, Jolteon, Scizor, Breloom, or Alakazam clean up than utilizing a speed boost to sweep. The popular Scarfers other Genesect and Rotom-W are those that occupy a speed tier above Salamence: Terrakion, Landorus, Thunderus-T, Latios (not really that popular), and soon to be Garchomp. Then you have Scizor's classic bullet Punch and the BW2 popular Mamoswine's Ice Shard to deal with. Overall, I think Mence is more suited to be a smasher than a sweeper right now. Another reason why people should be trying the incredibly powerful BandedMoxie Mence, don't you dare fodder off a poke to that thing.
My preferred ability on MixMence is Intimidate since it allows it to come in more consistently throughout a match to reset Draco Meteor's power. Intimidate also takes advantage of the popularity of Technician Breloom, making it much easier to come in on.
My preferred ability on MixMence is Intimidate since it allows it to come in more consistently throughout a match to reset Draco Meteor's power. Intimidate also takes advantage of the popularity of Technician Breloom, making it much easier to come in on.
Yeah I am not sure what happened to mix-mence, it was getting rarer after moxie was realeased, but completely dropped off the map once moxie + dragon dance + outrage in BW2. I think everyone is to happy getting late game sweeps by simply just having it at the end, rather than breaking walls. The lack of walls in this offensive meta for breaking might also are something to do with it.
I find that Salamence is a very high maintenance pokemon that yields very impressive results with its DD moxiemence set. Scizor can remove Mamo/Weavile, Xatu can keep hazards off the field and use them against the opponent to break sashes/sturdy. It also outspeeds scizor and fries him with heatwave, wobb can counter faster scarfers (who I've rarely encountered, I should check usage stats some time soon) as well as give him a free turn to DD through encore. Fire gem could be run to try and beat ferro in the rain, something like sunny day heatran or a support 'mon like Uxie could also provide it to bulldoze past ferro/forry/skarm.
Salamence is way more poweful than ever thanks to moxie+DD+Outrage, if you eliminate priority users passive damage required to defeat him is Sr plus 12 turns of sand, which won't be present with a sunny day user I mentioned to power up fireblast, the boost in power also means you could use flamethrower instead for more reliability.
Salamence is way more poweful than ever thanks to moxie+DD+Outrage, if you eliminate priority users passive damage required to defeat him is Sr plus 12 turns of sand, which won't be present with a sunny day user I mentioned to power up fireblast, the boost in power also means you could use flamethrower instead for more reliability.
Hey guys, just wondering what nature you guys run on salamence, specifically ddmence. The site recommended naive/jolly for awhile, and then adamant/lonely, but now it's back to just naive. Notable pokemon that are outsped with +speed nature are hydreigon, haxorus, and lucario, but honestly none of them see that much usage and they usually run neutral natures themselves. I don't know if any notable KOs are gained through +atk, but I don't see the point in running +speed.
It used to be +speed for a while because of a particular metallic purple bug that ran amok in the OU tier, finding a spot in pretty much every team.
Now, there's no reason not to run adamant. Scarf Hydreigon, Scarf/DD Haxorus and... uh... Scarf Lucario? (lol) are pretty much inexistant in this meta. You may or may not get additional KOs, but it lets you put Ferro/Forry and the other steels in 2HKO range easier
According to last month's stats, those three add up to ~15% of OU. They were also oppressed by the now-Uber Genesect, which means that they could be seeing more usage this month. And here's the kicker: Scarf Salamence. We are now up to 25% of OU, and you are not getting past that shit with a +Att nature.
Having done the calcs just now between Heatran and Ferro, the damage boost vs bulky Steels is a 4-6% increase at best (EX: +1 LO Outrage vs 252 HP Heatran w/Jolly: 48.2% - 56.7%; w/Adamant 52.8% - 62.4%), so you're probably not going to notice that in an actual match. However, you will notice getting bitchslapped by Jolly Luke or Timid Hydreigon all of the sudden, Pokemon that Salamence is usually called upon to check. Covering contingencies is always better than greed.
Having done the calcs just now between Heatran and Ferro, the damage boost vs bulky Steels is a 4-6% increase at best (EX: +1 LO Outrage vs 252 HP Heatran w/Jolly: 48.2% - 56.7%; w/Adamant 52.8% - 62.4%), so you're probably not going to notice that in an actual match. However, you will notice getting bitchslapped by Jolly Luke or Timid Hydreigon all of the sudden, Pokemon that Salamence is usually called upon to check. Covering contingencies is always better than greed.
He asked specifically for DDmence, and I doubt there is going to be a sudden influx of scarf Lucario and scarf Hydreigon.
Scarf Salamence however is really important, idk how I managed to forget about it.
Scarf Salamence however is really important, idk how I managed to forget about it.
Well SubCM Jirachi and Volcarona are two pokemon that you might like to tie with when you are unboosted (though both usually can't OHKO you) and tieing with Scarf Jirachi after a boost isn't bad either. There is also modest lando-I and +Spe Nature Kyurem-B or Lando-T.
While none of them are incredibly common(at least not with the mentioned EV spreads/natures) once in five matches you will at least see one of these pokemon so saying that there is no reason not to run adamant/naughty isn't right, however with genesects ban it got a lot more reasonable to run a + atk nature than it was before and there are valid reasons for both natures.
I usually try to get as much speed as possible as outspeeding a certain pokemon seems simply more often game deciding than the 10% more damage that you get from +atk natures, but thats propably something you could argue about forever so it's much more about preference here.
While none of them are incredibly common(at least not with the mentioned EV spreads/natures) once in five matches you will at least see one of these pokemon so saying that there is no reason not to run adamant/naughty isn't right, however with genesects ban it got a lot more reasonable to run a + atk nature than it was before and there are valid reasons for both natures.
I usually try to get as much speed as possible as outspeeding a certain pokemon seems simply more often game deciding than the 10% more damage that you get from +atk natures, but thats propably something you could argue about forever so it's much more about preference here.
Mind you, I did read that part, but decided to segue into a discussion about the benefit of speed natures overall, since a lot of people fall into the trap of "Those Pokemon are not top 20, so why do I have to care about them?" I've even wanted to run Scarf Adamant Mence at one point, but was too scared by the thought of being caught off guard by an offensive QD Volcarona.
Like BurningMan said above me, speed decides games more often than a few extra %.
Timid Jirachi, Scarf Salamence, and HP ice Volcarona are definitely worth checking I suppose. I guess adamant doesn't matter as much once you've managed a DD and a moxie boost since you 2HKO everything in the metagame regardless of nature.
So if I go +speed, is naive recommended over hasty? Resisting Special attacks seems pretty useful in this rain dominated metagame, but having more physical bulk would be nice for taking priority moves.
So if I go +speed, is naive recommended over hasty? Resisting Special attacks seems pretty useful in this rain dominated metagame, but having more physical bulk would be nice for taking priority moves.
Priority is the best way of handling DDMence after a boost, and the most common priority attacks (e.g. Mach Punch, Bullet Punch, Ice Shard, ExtremeSpeed) are physically-based. That alone should be a good enough reason to run Naive > Hasty.