It's about time I make an appearance in this thread after over 3 pages of trainwrecking. Like Jumpman defending his Boah, allow me to clear up some confusion.
First off, it seems a certain few of you seem to think this set is so overreliant on Garchomp's "weak" 80 base Special Attack and that it strays too far from the original set that it cannot, will not and may not be as effective as the standard. So, I will point you to this thing's type coverage. Dragon/Ground is resisted by Skarmory and Bronzong. Fire Blast OHKOs the former nearly all the time (and I mean 99% absolute minimum damage), Bronzong is 2HKOed unless it has Heatproof, in which case Earthquake is of course going to bang it up badly. And that is max HP, max Special Defense, +SpDef natured Bronzong here.
In short, Draco Meteor + Earthquake has the same type coverage as Dragon Claw + Earthquake, and given the boost in Special Attack this Garchomp has over the standard, Fire Blast is going to do an awful load of damage should it ever come to play, more than the pathetic Fire Fang or the conventional Fire Blast-for-floatin'-Steels.
Now, may I also point out that more than half of the set works the same as the good old standard we were all calling uber months before the game was out? Swords Dance, Earthquake @ Life Orb. What Chainchomp has instead of the "standard" is that it uses Draco Meteor to quickly dispell the counters the old set brought up, but unlike a lot of gimmicks like Surf Tyranitar and Focus Punching Alakazam, it is not doing away with its main task. It just helps itself clear the tables before it cleans them up.
Now, some random points I read this morning I'm going to counter.
Deck Knight said:
what if they run more SpDef than you calculated?
When I do damage calculations, I am not going to promise more than I can. I took into account the absolute minimums of damage my attack will do. Most of the time (ESPECIALLY if you use the recommended Stealth Rock support, which I'll get into later) you will find these "counters" not even surviving two Draco Meteors without any residual damage, however, better safe than sorry. If people run more SpDef on their Hippowdons or Skarmories or whatever to take this on, I think the set's been pretty succesfull at shaking up the metagame at first, but also that they will take more damage from the Earthquakes Garchomp deals out as well as other hits (assuming they took their EVs from Defense). In other other words, the total damage from, say, Draco Meteor + Earthquake will not really be affected much if they shift EVs from Defense to Special Defense (though it will be cut down a tiny little bit because putting EVs into a lower defensive stat helps more % wise than a higher one, hence why Blissey is getting Defense EVs and Dusknoir is getting max HP).
relies too much on Stealth Rock man, not cool
Pretend you live in the peaceful world of Diamond/Pearl before this discovery was released. Would you refuse to use Stealth Rock on your team, or would you go and abuse the broken Spikes rip-off that it is to mangle dangerous fiends such as Salamence, Gyarados and Zapdos? Yeah, I thought so.
The same goes for Sand Stream, too. The effect really hurts a shitload on opponents sometimes, Sand Veil will help out Garchomp, not to mention that Hippowdon makes a nice lead on teams based around this since it can also Stealth Rock.
Have fun sacrificing a slot for Crunch or Fling or something, I guess. To me this is like these people that put Surf on their Tyranitar because of Rhyperior. It is nothing new that Garchomp is stopped cold by Cresselia, but it is certainly not the hardest Pokemon to get rid of anyway by a longshot thanks to Pursuit. If it was countered by Shed Shelling Skarmory like the standard Subbing, Swords Dancing variant I would be more worried, personally...
futuresuperstar, I like how you're being creative (instead of an asshole), but I would really not want to lock myself into Outrage simply because the biggest Special wall in the game shows up, especially not if Chainchomp catches up.
draco meteor is such a huge drawback outrage is better!!!
Thanks, you made my evening.
EDIT
And for anyone pretending this is pure theorycraft...it has been tested by several people. This idea has been swinging around for a week or so now I think.
