Hello please forgive my english. I would like to ask people to consider something when talking about the utility of
relative to other ground types and hazard options, which I don't think has been mentioned yet, and that is tempo. Maybe it has been mentioned I couldn't read all the posts, but lando by far gives the best tempo of all the ground types in the tier apart from perhaps steel beam booster
, which is one time use anyway, and doesn't have the benefit of intim and helmet chip.
What do I mean by tempo. By this I mean the ability to pivot in short, but also have utility and reason to switch in.
has historically been one of the best options for this job, and in this generation continues to be. Whilst things like AV
and a few others might be better at this job, you also want a ground type on every team to not get bullied by mainly
and also gives no outplay potential for volt switch in general.
, booster
, and even
are excellent options on offense builds, however they all lack in a few areas relative to
.
cannot pivot outside the one time eject pack, booster
is one time use and volt switch on booster sets is not only blockable, but also means you aren't running one of rocks, ice spinner, knock off, or iron head (I like this for
, split
, fairy
, and surprising
trying to set up on you). Usually it means no ice spinner though, allowing other ground types (
) to come in on you and grab a free u-turn or pop rocks themselves or pop an eq if you have limited switches into it, which I will talk about next.
One thing I've noticed when running BO teams is that, unless you're running a
, your earthquake switch ins are not very good. Many teams I've encountered will run
as their only ground immune (see sample teams for several examples), which, unless you are leftovers, is not something you can switch into u turn ever, because the opponent just goes into something which forces you to switch or tera if you want to roost back to multiscale. Having lando allows you to not only come in on the eq u turn combo, but also get rocky helmet chip, which can be instrumental in setting up the endgame for your
.
Any Pokémon can hold a rocky helmet, but why use
uniquely is also a ground switch in, anti removal (anti-defog and forces corv to take chip, helping your team) and the ability to pivot into offensive breakers. In a tier with such a saturated threat count where every utility and defensive role needs to be very compressed, having a generally bulky mon that can take a hit, or multiple if played well, get helmet chip, set up rocks, and pivot out quite freely, is very strong when paired with something like
for double hazard control and potentially double helmet chip, whilst also making
and other team members more annoying to kill after the opponent is at -1 atk, giving you more entry points versus using other pivots!
Next we can talk about taunt, which I lowkenuinely think is the best move in the game outside Hazards. Or atleast it is the most fun to use. Being able to force chip to stay Vs bulkier teams by blocking defog and recovery to enable your sweepers is a very powerful tool, and it also stops the otherwise free tera + setup combo on mons like dnite or gambit in the endgame, allowing you to keep them at -1 or +0 atk for the rest of your team (and get helmet chip!). Outside the niche options of booster speed bulk up
sets, which I think are also very good on offensive builds for the same reasons, but lack rocks, or max speed jolly
(try it out if you haven't it's very fun into fat) but apart from these I don't think taunt is really used outside
or
(but Val runs everything so that doesn't count). Standard
would be giving up rocks or ice spinner or knock or whatever other coverage you run on it if you slotted taunt, which creates the same issue as
that I discussed earlier for slotting volt switch on
This isn't even discussing the potential of offensive
sets, which is mainly just scarf tb right now unless you're trying to snipe fat with smack down sd sub or something like this. But these mainly fit on different team architypes than the one I'm discussing so I won't mention them anymore. Side note though I do love banded sets on teams that have a way of dealing with
and
.
For a fun building exercise, throw a choiced
onto an AV
+
+
pivot slop team alongside another choice user with a pivot move + a way to lure or beat the aforementioned flying mons, and you can probably farm a lot of points. Maybe this team is ass though I just made it up haha.
Ok thank you for reading this all please let me know if I am missing any nuance but I do think
is very good and useful in the current meta! I recently got top 10 on the ladder for the first time using a team that I plan on RMTing soon if I can push a bit higher with it, and
has been instrumental in many of the areas that I discussed in this post in a way that no other mon could have been!
A buddy of mine pointed out that I neglected to mention defensive u-turn
which is very true.
being able to come in frequently and grab momentum as well is something worth considering, but the lack of helmet and immediate damage in base atk difference + immediate softening of threats through intimidate create enough differentiation in this case, I think, and still justifies using
on offense teams who prefer the faster traunt on things like
or
behind screens, since u-turn
to the best of my knowledge, correct me if I am wrong please, often runs less speed and more bulk to get better entry and u-turns off!
Ultimately the ground types overlap a lot, but their unique traits enable them all to be viable depending on what your team needs. I still prefer
on my BO teams just because that -1atk is such a good crutch to enable the rest of the guys in many situations I've been in haha.
and 
on the current meta? I think that they have some important strengths but they are kind of niche overall
or 
, immunity to Spikes and TSpikes so it's harder to pressure with hazards and a powerful Volt Switch that can pressure pokemon such as 
unless you tera, and it's defensive stats are starting to feel insufficient for a metagame as powerful as SVOU is. It doesn't help either that you give a free switch to 
unless you Volt Switch 
or 
and being a more offensive 
