Phew, Greninja's ban really motived me to do my first post on this thread to finally express my opinion on everything
(not that anybody cares sooooooooooooo). First off, I'll start talking about one of the elephants in the room:
B+ --->
A-
Starmie is just a little less offensive, much more fast and fragile Spinner than Excadrill, who altrought it's been use more often as an sand sweeper, still gets the job done and it's the first to come in mind when talking about a viable hazard remover not having Defog. Outside that, Starmie is literally undergoing for a virtually unstopable increase of viability on the last months; Just think about it: When Aegislash still was OU, Starmie only could pathetically 3HKO him, while for the other player just 1 turn was more than enough, thus making she unviable in OU for quite a long time, which was crutial since newer players never seen the BW Starmie shine, making much more difficult to revive she again nowdays. Then, Aegi was banned; Everyone was talking about Gardevoir, Medicham, Pinsir and Heracross, but then again, Starmie was left into the forgivness and while she gained a lot more viability, no one used her. But then I ask you, why she wasn't used this time?, The awnser is simple: Greninja. Far more used and stabilized in OU, Greninja was faster, stronger and commongly carried Dark Pulse, so once again, no Starmie. And now guess what happened? Greninja get the banhammer this time. It's almost ironic the acumule of luck Starmie has been getting over time, and to my comprehension, if more people start to use her I honestly think the next month or two we will see Starmie back to OU.
Even after I talked all the stuff above, I didn't even get started at all the things she can cover: The most valuable thing about Starmie is that she has 2 main sets, and both checks different things to increase mind-games due to unpredictability. The biggest thing Defensive Stamie can check is definitively Mega Metagross, who on his most standard set (MM/ZHeadbutt/IPunch/HArm or EQ) can only 3HKO her with EQ, and keep in mind that smart players tend to use Hammer Arm to bypass Skarmory and Mandibuzz, so your chances of hard cheking it only rises... But if he carries EQ anyway, you can try Recover stall his PP while trying get a burn from Scald, and after that happens, gg Megagross. Just to not get unallarmed, she also can check non SubCM variants of Keldeo, which is very sweet. As her Offensive variant, things are even better: Excadrill, Garchomp, Gengar, Heatran, Keldeo, Lati@s, Thundurus and Mega Venusaur are all outspeeded and 2HKOed at the very very last, and all pokes I've mentioned are top-tier treats, either offensively or defensively.
As far as ranking goes, I think that A- is a pretty fair deal at this time... A+ has just too much priority going on and A has 6/14 who checks/counters Starmie.
B+ --->
A / A+
This one is way more radical than Starmie, but it has as much reason to happen. Basically everything I already said about Starmie can be applied to Raikou in the same way, but with a slight difference: He never had something really stoping him to do his job, but then again, Greninja was a very annoying stone on Raikou's shoes. Some people could argue that his only viable set to use in OU was the AV for a very long time, uniquelly to handle Greninja better with the extra Sp.Def buff, and I honestly can't judge these people wrong since, quite frankly, it's true. But then Greninja got banned, and now Raikou sits on a very trolling 115 base speed, who let it outspeeds, among other things: Garchomp, Mega Gallade, Gengar, Keldeo, Lati@s and Thundurus.
However, check bird-spam is the thing Raikou was made for this generation, and even after the strategy had a decline over the past weeks, Raikou is always one of the first to come in mind when thinking about check the likes of Mega Pinsir and Talonflame, AKA the SmogonBirds Co. Besides that, Raikou also has another main hole that isn't check bird-spam, but is a characteristic that many people overlook about him and is very precious to Bulk Offense have on their teams: Raikou is an incredible momentum machine all-around, being able to provide a very fast Volt-Switch to those Offense teams and the ability to directly switch into a plethora of neutral hits to deliver those mentioned pivots. In fact, Raikou is such a good pokémon that if the rising cutoff of the January month were the standard 3.41%, he would been OU right now.
While I think A+ is a bit exagerated, I really think Raikou deserves more attention to get into the proper rank; By now, A is perfect to it... Speaking of A ranks:
A --->
B
Really obvious and quick one: For all what I speak about Raikou, MegaMan is a carbon copy of that while being strongest, quickest with an better ability but with worse bulk. While Raikou can be both an pivot and a bird spam check, MegaMan can only be a pivot, since it lacks the mentioned bulk, cannot hold Lefties and suffer from a gigantic opportunity cost from being a mega.
It still has some advantages over Raikou thought: Manectric is a MUCH better pivot thanks to Intimidate and speed, while also doing more damage due to higher Sp.Atk, but being a mega and failing to do any more than this puts Raikou at a much better landing, so therefore A is just too damn high to it to be. I was considering suggested to drop him all the way to C+, but like I said he has some advantages over Raikou and is better on what he does, but those same advantages doesn't make him any more higher than B for me.
A+ --->
S
I really wanted to go in depth over this one, but I'm very tired and I would only add more redundancy to the topic, so I'll just make an overview of my opinion: In short, Clefable is a fantastic pokémon that can easily be compared with the actual S rank, being able to run 3 extremely solid sets, 2 extremely solid abilities and a overall base stat that gives tons of freedom to customization. Stall is the most deadliest playstyle actually and notting breaks through him better than Clefable does. She can lure on his best counter, Heatran, with Focus Blast while also having other overlooked things like Psyshock, Knock Off and the rare Healing Wish. It's an overall low-risk/high-reward poke that totally deserves the S rank
Now that I finished to talk about everything I wanted, here are others changes that I can talk in the near future, but for now I'm only write they to everyone express your opinion about because it's freaking 5:00 PM in my GMT and I just wanna sleep a bit:
A+ --->
A
A+ --->
A
A --->
A+
A- --->
A
We need more time
