Volcarona is super good in OU and unlikely broken. The only thing that isn’t predictable about it is its Tera type. The counter play to it can be standardised for any team structure:
there’s always a catch to every Tera type.
for example, the most deadly one, Tera ground, invites aqua jet, ice shard and grassy glide counterplay. The most recently trendy one, Tera dragon, risks getting blanked by Primarina, tera fairy raging bolt, etc.
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When comparing Volcarona to other contentious pokemon:
Basically, in a vacuum these all sound broken, but in the current iteration of OU they’re fairly balanced by each other. Except I’m still hugely in favour of a kingambit ban rn , as I think it’ll open the floodgates.
- Stall - blissey, clod, etc
- Bulky - scout pivot (such as glowking) + a check or 2, and potentially back up tera’s
- Balanced/hybrid - mixed checks, a responsive Tera, or offensive pressure, such as luring volc into sub 80% with mixed hasty/naive Kyurem that runs scale shot +3A
- HO - HO needs a solution for every sweeper, usually it’s just out speeding and out pressuring
there’s always a catch to every Tera type.
for example, the most deadly one, Tera ground, invites aqua jet, ice shard and grassy glide counterplay. The most recently trendy one, Tera dragon, risks getting blanked by Primarina, tera fairy raging bolt, etc.
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When comparing Volcarona to other contentious pokemon:
- the king of OU needs 3-4 ways of countering/checking it, and most of them need to be healthy when it’s at 3-5 allies fainted.
- The raging clap has a ridiculously effective, although predictable Tera fairy that allows it to get past almost any offensive counterplay after it pulls down a threat. Although usually it comes at a cost since almost every team has anti-fairy counterplay now. It’s also impossible for it to deal with bulkier teams that can chip it if it’s not running HDB, as the booster sets only like coming in once, and it doesn’t open up teams the way that the following threat does;
- Roaring knock off is very easy to check, especially with balloon steels, although it opens up holes in teams very efficiently, has a progress making knock off that puts the competition to shame and possible causes more pressure on counterplay than any other breaker right now
- Water cudgel pon can’t really be checked by anything reliably, and it’s only flaws are weakness to everything faster than it, predictable Tera, and not being able to run HDB so it’s hazards-weak.
- Kyuice beam is excellent at breaking checks if they have to keep coming in on ice attacks, eventually there is a freeze and then the well-crafted team that “counters” kyurem can’t really switch into it anymore.
Basically, in a vacuum these all sound broken, but in the current iteration of OU they’re fairly balanced by each other. Except I’m still hugely in favour of a kingambit ban rn , as I think it’ll open the floodgates.
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