I don't particularly have an opinion on Sharpedo's placing, but the above statement is plain wrong. Sharpedo's Crunch hits about as hard as Tyranitar's, which is pretty strong. And Crunch + Waterfall hits everything minus Hydreigon, Azumarill, Crawdaunt, Greninja, Mega Gyara, Chesnaught, and Breloom for at least neutral. And by giving up Aqua Jet, it can also opt for ZHB to get more neutral coverage.
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Other XY OU Viability Ranking Thread (V2) (Last update on post #5189)
- Thread starter alexwolf
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I can't imagine why people would even bother running Sharpedo, when the community has remembered that Scolipede exists, can actually attack, and can pass off his boosts if something that can wall him shows up. (Also that sexy Fairy resist).
Is Speed Boost Sharpedo released yet? I need someone to verify that for me.
Also, is this a good late clean sweeper set?
Sharpedo @ Life Orb
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet / Destiny Bond / Protect
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Crunch
I'm currently using Aqua Jet, to kill late game talonflames (when I get 1 or 2 boosts)
Also, can anyone give me some calculations on how much damage does crunch and earthquake from this frail shark do to Aegislash Shield?
Also, is this a good late clean sweeper set?
Sharpedo @ Life Orb
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet / Destiny Bond / Protect
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Crunch
I'm currently using Aqua Jet, to kill late game talonflames (when I get 1 or 2 boosts)
Also, can anyone give me some calculations on how much damage does crunch and earthquake from this frail shark do to Aegislash Shield?
Yes, Speed Boost Sharpedo has been released since 5th gen. He's a decent late-game sweeper with that set. As for damage calcs:
252+ Atk Life Orb Sharpedo Crunch vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Aegislash-Shield: 250-296 (77.1 - 91.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Sharpedo doesn't get butt raped by Talonflame (If it carries aqua jet), so that right there gives Sharpedo a niche over Scolipede. Also Sharpedo has the potential to go Special/mixed to surprise some of its checks, such as Skarmory. Sharpedo has the better offensive typing of the two, while also having a higher initial attack stat. I would agree Scolipede is mostly better, but Sharpedo still has some advantages.
On 252/0 Aegislash-Shield
252+ Atk Life Orb Sharpedo Crunch vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Aegislash-Shield: 250-296 (77.1 - 91.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Life Orb Sharpedo Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Aegislash-Shield: 208-247 (64.1 - 76.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
That said, how does the rest of your team look, since you also have Scolipede to consider as a potential Speed Booster?
On the topic of Sharpedo, I have some experience using it. First off, I don't know how you can consider it weak. 120 atk with life orb brings it to over 500 atk, which I don't know how you can consider weak. Water/Dark/Ground coverage is pretty good, and you can substitute EQ for nice moves like Ice Beam and Destiny Bond, which can really come in handy. I also wouldn't say it's completely outclassed by Scolipede, as it's more powerful on Rain Teams, has priority, and has much better coverage (bug is an awful offensive type), not to mention having the utility of Destiny Bond. I think being a late game cleaner that can beat Talonflame is enough of a niche to warrant it somewhere in the C range. I think it's fine where it is.
Honestly I don't see why Sharpedo is getting so much hate - with Rain support it becomes a monster that can easily sweep late-game(and becomes faster with each attack to boot), and Water/Dark is good coverage - Sharpedo can also go mixed if needed, and in all is a underrated sweeper on rain teams.
The only reason I can think of it getting hate is it's walled by ferrothorn and skarmory, and that it's frail like beedrill.
The reason why people call it weak isn't because of its offenses, which are pretty good. It's because he has the defenses of wet toilet paper.
And how many things does it OHKO on neutral hits? Tyranitar is used because it's moves don't OHKO much but it's bulky af so it's likely to last for the second hit. Deo-S is faster than +1 Speed Boosted Sharpedo without wasting a slot and turn on Protect, better coverage, and capable of OHKOing many things with neutral Psycho Boost. No one would ever run Sharpedo as a cleaner in OU while Deo-S exists. And if we're talking Speed Boost cleaners, Scolipede is better, with 120 and 80 power STABs and better bulk as compared to frail with 80 power STABs.
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Wet toilet paper....your're being too kind. Sharpedo doesnt like taking hits so if it doesnt OHKO the target, it dies to even resisted STAB attacks. Without any way of boosting its offenses, it can't wallbreak. Its then relegated to a Revenge Killer role, which so many other pokemon can do. Scolipede doesnt need to be taking a Brave Bird to the face when it can just Baton Pass on the Talonflame switch-in. Sharpedo can't Baton Pass out, meaning it can be walled easily. Sharpedo does have a niche so I don't think it should be unranked. Having Destiny Bond and priority helps out alot although Aqua Jet wont be OHKOing alot of healthy threats.
Because it needs more support than most other A+ mons and has many checks that make its life difficult.
The reason Vaporeon isn't ranked is because it is outclassed. Yes, it can function as a bulky water, but it is mostly inferior to other bulky Water-types like Slowbro and Suicune who pack far greater niches, as the former has endless recovery and checks more stuff, while the latter is a nice wincon for stall with its famous Mono Attacker set. Oh and there's also Quagsire who has Unaware which makes it a staple on stall teams, already giving Vaporeon trouble finding a teamslot. Bulky Waters are rarely actually needed beyond Slowbro, Suicune, and Quagsire in this metagame, especially since they don't wall that much in the metagame. Vaporeon does have a unique combination of a Water-typing and Wish, but that just isn't needed in OU right now. It's kinda sad, but Vaporeon simply lacks a viable niche in the current generation.
Vaporeon does have a niche on Denis's team as everyone probably knows about by now. Its bulk + Stored Power + Scald is the reason why he uses it as his primary sweeper on his Baton Pass team. Just because of this, I would put it in D rank since to me being unranked means you should never ever use it in OU and Denis did find a good reason to use it in OU even if it needs a shitload of support to work.
Edit: Here is the D rank description: Reserved for Pokemon that are mediocre in the OU metagame, but are viable enough to justify their use on select teams. These Pokemon are either usable but have no real niche, or are only capable of doing their specific task and fail at doing anything more than that. Pokemon from this rank have multiple crippling flaws that prevent them from being successful a majority of the time, and are often severely outclassed because of it.
Edit: Here is the D rank description: Reserved for Pokemon that are mediocre in the OU metagame, but are viable enough to justify their use on select teams. These Pokemon are either usable but have no real niche, or are only capable of doing their specific task and fail at doing anything more than that. Pokemon from this rank have multiple crippling flaws that prevent them from being successful a majority of the time, and are often severely outclassed because of it.
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Except in the new 3BP teams, Vaporeon is gone, as the only BP users left are Scoli+Espeon+Smeargle. Therefore Vaporeon deserves to get dropped to unranked.
Also "being a late game cleaner when check/counter X, Y, Z, is dead" is not enough of a qualification to be ranked. There's already a lot of good Rain attackers in OU, not to mention good water types in OU in general, and Sharpedo is outmatched in all categories of being good on Rain, being a good water type, and a Speed Boosting attacker. Also, there's this calc:
252+ Atk Choice Band Talonflame Brave Bird vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Sharpedo: 477-562 (169.7 - 200%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Sharpedo Aqua Jet vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Talonflame: 237-281 (79.5 - 94.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Talonflame is far more likely to murder Sharpedo than the other way around. Scoli at least could BP out of Talonflame's face and bring in a counter or something.
Also "being a late game cleaner when check/counter X, Y, Z, is dead" is not enough of a qualification to be ranked. There's already a lot of good Rain attackers in OU, not to mention good water types in OU in general, and Sharpedo is outmatched in all categories of being good on Rain, being a good water type, and a Speed Boosting attacker. Also, there's this calc:
252+ Atk Choice Band Talonflame Brave Bird vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Sharpedo: 477-562 (169.7 - 200%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Sharpedo Aqua Jet vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Talonflame: 237-281 (79.5 - 94.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Talonflame is far more likely to murder Sharpedo than the other way around. Scoli at least could BP out of Talonflame's face and bring in a counter or something.
Scolipede very much cannot BP out of Talonflame's face considering Talonflame has Super Effective 120 BP priority and the LO cleaner 'pede doesn't run Substitute.
Vaporeon is being used as the main win condition in 3BP teams as it has good bulk, unlike Espeon. After its checks and counters are gone, usually the boosts are passed to Vaporeon and Vaporeon ends the game. It doesn't have BP, but that doesn't mean its not part of the team. That alone doesn't mean that it should be ranked, but it can wishpass too, so maybe it should be, but I don't know.
And Sharpedo doesn't need its checks and counters dead, it just needs them weakened as it's a late game cleaner, so it should be assumed that most Pokemon are around 40-60%. Deoxys-S can't OHKO much at all, but that doesn't mean that it's not a good late game cleaner, because it doesn't need to OHKO many Pokemon. It justs needs to deal enough damage to them to finish them off after your sweeper or whatever has weakened them.
Also, since it likely won't be the first time Talonflame is out in the whole game since it's literally the last few turns, Talonflame will probably have already taken some form of damage, so Sharpedo will be able to win. Scolipede could not BP out of Talonflame's face because Talonflame has priority.
Sharpedo should maybe go to C since there are reasons to use it over Scolipede, Deoxys-S, and Talonflame, but those reasons aren't usually big enough to make Sharpedo's use worth it unless it's on a rain team or something similar, so most of the time it will be outclassed. However, I've never used it so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
I haven't ladder much lately, so I have to ask: are there people who even try to modify Denisss's formula? It is true that he uses Vaporeon, but if no one has really tried to modify his team, then it's not a staple of 3BP teams, it's a staple of Denisss's team, and I don't think we should rank a Mon just because it is used on 1 team that no one has attempted to modify for their own use. So long as you have outs for Quagsire and Clefable and at least 1 out for set-up sweepers, I don't see why you couldn't just pass beastly boosts to wallbreakers like Kyurem-B or Landorus-I. If people have tried to modify the team and the teams all proved inferior to Denisss's team, then I could understand giving Vaporeon a D rank since we did give it to Mr. Mime for that reason, but I would imagine it takes more than a week for such diversity to show up, if it exists. Also, from what I can tell from the post-nerf BP forum, it seems that most people just copy Denisss's formula, and those who are capable of innovating the team don't use it either due to it being too formulaic for them or due to its stigma.
I don't know if other sweepers would work better than Vaporeon or not, but I do know that Vaporeon works pretty well as a sweeper on Denis's team. Kyurem-B and Landorus-I do not have Stored Power which means they need more Special Attack boosts to hit hard enough. They also have more trouble pulling off two attack sets to fit in Substitute and a boosting move. I think Denis is a good enough teambuilder that if there were a better sweeper for his team, he would be using it. If someone else can show another sweeper doing the job as well or better than Vaporeon, then maybe Vaporeon should remain unranked. Right now we are just theorymoning how other sweepers would do on Denis's team; we have actual evidence that Vaporeon works well. I realize that Vaporeon is shit without Baton Pass support, but it does its job pretty well when it gets that support and that is why I think it should be D rank and nothing higher.
I do think it fair to note a few very realistic points unaccounted for.
- If Sharpedo's cleaning late game, the Hazard Controller is likely dead/too weak to do so.
- Talonflame is not likely to be full health if it has switched in as any other point in the match, ESPECIALLY if its banded. Plus, even if it comes down to this situation, Talonflame will die to recoil after taking an Aqua Jet
Point being, even if Talonflame manages the OHKO, it doesn't make it out unscathed against Sharpedo, even in a best case scenario.
I'm not saying this alone should move Sharpedo up, but Talonflame alone isn't enough to stop it from serving its role as a late game cleaner.
I think it might be a good idea to clean up the lower ranks since there is some really questionable stuff down there. Here is a list of Pokemon I think should be dropped from the list entirely.
Venomoth: I don’t know why this thing is even ranked much less C rank. If you really want to quick pass Quiver Dance then Smeargle is better because it has a 100% accurate sleep move and it can run Taunt or Magic Coat in the fourth slot to stop phazing and other stuff. Its analysis was also rejected.
Celebi: Why use this over any of the higher ranked Grass types? Its defensive typing is terrible. If you want to do Nasty Plot + Baton Pass, you are probably better off using Mew which has more options for the other two moveslots and doesn’t have as many weaknesses.
Jirachi: Its analysis got rejected. It is versatile, but almost everything it can do can be done better by something else. Chansey, Sylveon, and even Umbreon are better at passing Wishes, Togekiss does ParaFlinch better, the Scarf set is very weak, and there are a ton of better SR setters out there. There are also a ton of Ground, Fire, Ghost, and Dark type moves out there to blast it.
Toxicroak: With rain now limited to 8 turns, Dry Skin just isn’t that good anymore. There is nothing about Toxicroak that makes it stand out as being good in OU.
Empoleon: Scald + Stealth Rock + Defog is unique, but is that really worth running something which is otherwise really bad? Its defensive typing isn’t that great outside of countering a few specific threats, and it has no reliable recovery. I think it belongs with Donphan, Forretress, and Tentacruel in the shitty utility Pokes category.
Also, I’m not sure if something having an analysis automatically means it must be ranked, because it is really difficult to make an argument for why someone should use things like Moltres, Snorlax, Meloetta, and Cofagrigus in OU.
Venomoth: I don’t know why this thing is even ranked much less C rank. If you really want to quick pass Quiver Dance then Smeargle is better because it has a 100% accurate sleep move and it can run Taunt or Magic Coat in the fourth slot to stop phazing and other stuff. Its analysis was also rejected.
Celebi: Why use this over any of the higher ranked Grass types? Its defensive typing is terrible. If you want to do Nasty Plot + Baton Pass, you are probably better off using Mew which has more options for the other two moveslots and doesn’t have as many weaknesses.
Jirachi: Its analysis got rejected. It is versatile, but almost everything it can do can be done better by something else. Chansey, Sylveon, and even Umbreon are better at passing Wishes, Togekiss does ParaFlinch better, the Scarf set is very weak, and there are a ton of better SR setters out there. There are also a ton of Ground, Fire, Ghost, and Dark type moves out there to blast it.
Toxicroak: With rain now limited to 8 turns, Dry Skin just isn’t that good anymore. There is nothing about Toxicroak that makes it stand out as being good in OU.
Empoleon: Scald + Stealth Rock + Defog is unique, but is that really worth running something which is otherwise really bad? Its defensive typing isn’t that great outside of countering a few specific threats, and it has no reliable recovery. I think it belongs with Donphan, Forretress, and Tentacruel in the shitty utility Pokes category.
Also, I’m not sure if something having an analysis automatically means it must be ranked, because it is really difficult to make an argument for why someone should use things like Moltres, Snorlax, Meloetta, and Cofagrigus in OU.
Red Cat
Okay, hide tags really are the death of me. I'll just tag you.
It does have an analysis. It isn't useless, and it will usually pull its weight in a match. Wonder Skin is a nice niche over Smeargle. It could maybe drop, but it should be ranked.
Small, tiny niche that is usually performed better by other Pokemon. It seems to fit in perfectly with C-.
Same as Celebi
It's a great Pokemon in UU, but that unfortunately doesn't translate here. I honestly wouldn't rank this one. Actually, yeah. It's a solid way to beat Keldeo on rain teams. D rank may work.
Its defensive typing is actually pretty solid. It has nice bulk, and a combination of utility from Rocks, Scald, Defog, and Knock Off. It's usually not worth using over other defoggers, but it has use on select teams, warranting a place at D.
It's actually a really underrated specially defensive mon that can beat Lando, Charizard-Y, Mawile, and a couple others reliably. It would be great if it weren't for SR, but whatever. I'd actually want it to be moved up, but I guess I'll save that for later.
Agree. There's little reason to use AV Lax. It suffers from Goodra syndrome, but is weaker and has worse coverage.
It's obviously niche, but that's what the D rank is for. AV and SubCM can both really be useful additions to teams, and in general it's useful as a Psychic that can beat ghosts. Honestly I think it's better than D, as it doesn't have any inherent flaws.
I personally don't understand this one, but others adamantly support it. w/e[/quote]
Okay, hide tags really are the death of me. I'll just tag you.
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