I think mega swampert should be compared to seismitoad as they share similar roles on rain team and an lo hydro pump hits almost as hard in rain as mega swamperts waterfall. They both share coverage to hit ferrothorn and grass types, both provide rocks support and are similarly bulky although toad has to deal with lo recoil and bad accuracy on its moves. On phone now so calcs would be welcome.
-
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.
Other ORAS OU Viability Ranking Thread - Check post #2359
- Thread starter alexwolf
- Start date
- Status
I got you:
252+ Atk Mega Swampert Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mew in Rain: 240-283 (59.4 - 70%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock and 3 layers of Spikes
252+ SpA Life Orb Seismitoad Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Mew in Rain: 289-341 (71.5 - 84.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock and 3 layers of Spikes
252+ SpA Life Orb Seismitoad Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Mew in Rain: 289-341 (71.5 - 84.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock and 3 layers of Spikes
0 Atk Life Orb Latios Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Heatran: 328-390 (85.1 - 101.2%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO
0 Atk Mega Latios Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Heatran: 344-408 (89.3 - 105.9%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
Even the slightly higher physical attack doesn't really mean much since most of the time you're going to be EQ'ing to finish Tran off after dropping a Draco, and both are going to be OHKO'ing after rocks anyway. If you're not at least running a physical lure move, which most Latios both mega and regular don't, 40 of those increased base stat points are going to waste (and they're still pretty wasted since LO makes them nearly equal), and the 30 SpA base stat increase is also wasted because you can achieve that and more by simply giving regular Lati a Life Orb, so that brings the wasted total to 70 base points. So in other words, you're blowing a mega slot to increase his Def by 20 and his SpD by 10, which is a pretty lame 'payoff'. Mega Lati can pull off a DD set better, but surely there are better DD'ers to pick from, like Mega Alt, Zard X, Gyara, etc. In a metagame things can't really be looked at in a vacuum, and just like Mega T-Tar, M-Latios just struggles to justify its use on a team, which is ultimately what the viability rankings are about.
Hydro and Focus Miss are pretty dodgy moves to try and sweep/clean with though whereas Swampert has fully reliable moves, which can't be glossed over either.
Last edited:
That is true, but we were discussing the main reasons why seismitoad could replace mega swampert as a rain cleaner to save a mega slot.
Those are good reasons? Having moves that have perfect accuracy is a great feeling. There's also the difference that Seismitoad is a special sweeper, while Swampert is physical, so it really depends what your team needs if you want to decide between the two, I guess. I can't speak too well since I've only used them a few times, but it's a point I thought I'd add.
I mentioned the accuracy issues and yeah the physical special is true but they beat similar things so apart from swamp being walled by skarm and seismotoad by chansey for example it is not too relevant. And LO Hydro Pump hits a fair bit harder than waterfall so toad is a better nuke whilst also getting siwft swimn on turn 1 and not wasting a mega slot. They should both be B or B-rank imo.
Yeah, why is seismitoad low C-rank anyways?
252+ Atk Mega Swampert Waterfall vs. 248 HP / 252 Def Skarmory in Rain: 150-177 (45 - 53.1%) -- 87.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Skarmory can't switch in at all if SR are up, but yeah, I agree with the rest of your post.
EDIT: Why did the calculator put Careful nature in there hello
252+ Atk Mega Swampert Waterfall vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory in Rain: 136-162 (40.8 - 48.6%) -- 10.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Better
And you still have to worry about the flinch from Waterfall but w /e
Last edited:
That is an interesting idea, usually in a rain team however, that role is fulfilled by Specs/LO Kingdra.
Last edited:
Tbh requiring a Mega Stone is not a great reason to hold Swampert back, since it's the mega evolution that capitalizes the most of the Rain and the other mega evolutions don't improve nearly as much in rainy weather(some such as Charizard X actually get worse). Thus, if you're against Swampert moving up, find better argument than "it occupies the mega slot".
It's taking the Mega slot as well as providing nothing special to rain teams. Apart from being bulkier than other Swift Swimmers, that is.
Mega Metagross loses a fire weakness in the rain, making it easier to rock polish.
There are megas that support rain better, like Heracross who can demolish Rain's main troubles such as Chansey and Ferrothorn, or Manectric/Ampharos, who can provide volt switch support. Mega Swampert is honestly not that great imo. A stall team has so little trouble walling it, and if you run it you are gonna be in trouble against stall/defensive teams without having another dedicated wallbreaker. The fact that you don't speed up during your Mega evolution isn't really helped by its great bulk. If you are that slow you may have to take two hits, one on the switch-in, and one as you're mega evolving, rather than the one hit that other Rain sweepers have to take, meaning more damage overall. Mega Swampert doesn't have the capacity to threaten teams that aren't fully offensive. If I'm running Rotom-W, or another bulky water resist which most teams have, I never have to worry. So yeah, I think B+ is too good for Swampert.
Camerupt does definitely need to drop. Pretty much everything about it has been said. I've tried a lot of different sets to try and make it live up to its name, but it's just inherently lackluster in this tier. It's useless against stall because of Chansey and bad against offense because of the Lati's, Rotom-W, Balloon Heatran and there being a ton of really common mons like Lando, Keldeo and so on that all check the hell out of it, giving it few opportunities to get to put in any serious work. Another problem is that CM users like Clefable can even check it by being able to set-up in front of it before being hit, basically destroying its wall breaking ability against them. It's slow, its STAB combination isn't stellar and it's just sorely outclassed by many other things. Doesn't belong in B rank, needs to be C or lower.
jbtc10:
First, I don't know what you mean by "wasted" stat points. That implies that Mega Latios would be better off without the extra Atk and SpA, which is not true. Any lower and LO Latios's power advantage would be even more significant than it is now. It might not be enough to overshadow LO Latios in terms of power (and maybe some of those Atk points could have gone to Spe), but they aren't wasted.
Second, I think you misunderstand what I'm arguing. I'm not saying that Mega Latios is a lot better than its regular form, certainly not to the extent of other top Megas. However, it is better overall. You can downplay the advantages it has all you want, but they still exist. And no, the extra Def/SpD is not "lame," nor are the other defensive advantages (lack of Life Orb recoil and lesser Knock Off damage). Seeing as how one of the main reasons that Latios is so popular on offensive teams is because it offers a decent defensive backbone with its solid bulk, good resistances, and reliable recovery, additional bulk and longevity is actually a pretty significant advantage.
Now, I know that you can't look at Pokemon in a vacuum, but that's not what I'm arguing either. If I were looking at Mega Latios purely in a vacuum, I would be nominating it to A+ rank easy, maybe even S. What I am instead saying is that restricting Mega Latios to the B ranks should be enough to get the point across about his opportunity cost without the need to drop him lower within those ranks. While the opportunity cost associated with Mega Latios is high, I don't think it's enough to drop what could potentially be a top-ranked Mega all the way down to B-. I think as long as it's anywhere in the B's, it's good enough, and I think it should be high in those ranks because it's simply better than the other Pokemon among them.
It's fine if you disagree with this approach, but I just want you to understand what exactly I'm arguing. I'm honestly just throwing out an opinion here because I don't think there's a clear-cut answer to this, nor is there really much of a precedent to work off of. I don't think we've ever had a Pokemon that was so good on its own yet let down by such a huge opportunity cost as this. This is one reason that I brought up the question earlier in this thread about how much we need to weigh opportunity cost, and it's cases like this where your answer to that question is going to have the most impact.
First, I don't know what you mean by "wasted" stat points. That implies that Mega Latios would be better off without the extra Atk and SpA, which is not true. Any lower and LO Latios's power advantage would be even more significant than it is now. It might not be enough to overshadow LO Latios in terms of power (and maybe some of those Atk points could have gone to Spe), but they aren't wasted.
Second, I think you misunderstand what I'm arguing. I'm not saying that Mega Latios is a lot better than its regular form, certainly not to the extent of other top Megas. However, it is better overall. You can downplay the advantages it has all you want, but they still exist. And no, the extra Def/SpD is not "lame," nor are the other defensive advantages (lack of Life Orb recoil and lesser Knock Off damage). Seeing as how one of the main reasons that Latios is so popular on offensive teams is because it offers a decent defensive backbone with its solid bulk, good resistances, and reliable recovery, additional bulk and longevity is actually a pretty significant advantage.
Now, I know that you can't look at Pokemon in a vacuum, but that's not what I'm arguing either. If I were looking at Mega Latios purely in a vacuum, I would be nominating it to A+ rank easy, maybe even S. What I am instead saying is that restricting Mega Latios to the B ranks should be enough to get the point across about his opportunity cost without the need to drop him lower within those ranks. While the opportunity cost associated with Mega Latios is high, I don't think it's enough to drop what could potentially be a top-ranked Mega all the way down to B-. I think as long as it's anywhere in the B's, it's good enough, and I think it should be high in those ranks because it's simply better than the other Pokemon among them.
It's fine if you disagree with this approach, but I just want you to understand what exactly I'm arguing. I'm honestly just throwing out an opinion here because I don't think there's a clear-cut answer to this, nor is there really much of a precedent to work off of. I don't think we've ever had a Pokemon that was so good on its own yet let down by such a huge opportunity cost as this. This is one reason that I brought up the question earlier in this thread about how much we need to weigh opportunity cost, and it's cases like this where your answer to that question is going to have the most impact.
Something that seems to get lost in these arguments:
252 SpA Adaptability Mega Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Abomasnow: 380-448 (98.9 - 116.6%)
252 SpA Life Orb Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Abomasnow: 317-374 (82.5 - 97.3%)
Lo latios is only stronger when using non phys. coverage moves
252 SpA Adaptability Mega Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Abomasnow: 380-448 (98.9 - 116.6%)
252 SpA Life Orb Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Abomasnow: 317-374 (82.5 - 97.3%)
Lo latios is only stronger when using non phys. coverage moves
the hell? mega latios doesn't get adaptability
Probably comes from that one "leak" a long time ago that said that Mega Latios got Adaptability and Mega Latias got Multiscale. But sadly, they both kept Levitate. If only...
I'm not sure where you got those calcs or the idea of Adaptability, but here are calcs with the beta ORAS damage calc which has the new mega stats.
252 SpA Mega Latios Draco Meteor vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Abomasnow: 285-336 (88.7 - 104.6%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Life Orb Latios Draco Meteor vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Abomasnow: 317-374 (98.7 - 116.5%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
What I mean by 'wasted' points is that if they don't offer any significant advantage to the new mega over the original form, they can be somewhat redundant, and in the case of M-Latios, they kind of are. Since regular Latios with an LO hits slightly harder on the special side (which is the main side he uses) and slightly less so on the physical, when those two are averaged, both mons hit the same. Therefore, it can be argued that using a Life Orb does the job of what 70% of a Latiosite does because they both hit the same (70 base points out of 100 were used to bring M-Latios up to speed attack wise with his regular LO version) and only 30 extra points distributed between his defenses and no 10% recoil are what separates him from regular Latios. That's NOT particularly attractive, since many other megas received significant upgrades over their base forms, including better stat distributions, typings and improved abilities. I don't deny for a second that M-Latios is better than regular Latios, he certainly is, but simply not THAT much better, and I think a viability ranking has to consider what using a mon means overall.
To illustrate that last point, lets assume M-Latios is a broken mega and that M-Metagross is a broken mega. If you were going into a serious tournament and were trying to maximize your chance of winning, would you rather chose M-Latios and 5 balanced pokemon or LO Latios (who's almost as broken as M-Latios), M-Metagross and 4 balanced pokemon? I know what you're saying about direct comparisons and you have a point, but I think that relativity is key issue that philosophy fails to take into account, which is essentially what viability is at heart; how good options are relative to other options. LO Latios + a Mega + 4 is generally going to be considered by most team builders a better option than M-Latios + 5.
You know, there are 79 pages so I didn't go through it all to be honest. But I've seen no mention of Umbreon. I've been using him as the only under-tiered Pokemon in my OU team for the last couple of weeks and he's probably been among the most consistently useful and viable options in my team. When I'm doing a 3 v. 3 I pretty much always end up picking him as one of my three. I was curious as to other opinions on Umbreon.
There's been quite a bit of discussion on it; I think a couple of pages back even. General consensus is that it's pretty much unviable.
Last week there was a bit discussion. Look at page 66, 67 and 74. There are +/- 10 posts in total about Umbreon
Umbreon has been brought up before fairly recently, but was decided against putting a rank because there isn't any niche for Umbreon that's valuable in OU that other Pokemon such as Sylveon can perform better.
Also, 3v3's and 6v6 are completely different, due to the fact that you can't pack nearly as much on a team with the former as you can with the latter as well as the fact that you also now have to predict what the enemy team is going to choose to use in the battle. Even though Umbreon works well for you in a 3v3 environment, it doesn't really mean Umbreon does well in a 6v6 environment.
- Status