The Last Move on ADV OU Lanturn: An Analysis of Options
Introduction
Lanturn is currently the newest addition to the ADV OU threatlist. The Pokemon has, for the past week as of writing this, infiltrated discussion channels, Ruins of Alph roomtours, and all levels of the ladder. It provides a unique mix of utility to teams due to its fantastic special bulk, typing, and ability that afford it extremely safe switch-ins against tier staples like Starmie, Cloyster, Milotic, and Suicune, as well as giving it easy entry against any move from Zapdos, Jolteon, and Gengar besides Hidden Power Grass (or Toxic). It also brings a fairly powerful offensive presence that belies its mediocre stats, owing to its amazing coverage in just three slots: STAB Hydro Pump and Thunderbolt, and a powerful complementary coverage move in Ice Beam. After these three moves, however, Lanturn has no defined fourth. There is no move that Lanturn has that can definitively provide more utility in every situation than any other move as of now. With its relatively shallow movepool, Lanturn has a clear set of options, which will be discussed in this writeup.IntroductionThe Moves-Toxic: Toxic's power is self-explanatory. It whittles Pokemon that switch in, putting things on a timer. Toxic is very powerful in some matchups, and Lanturn can actually get a ton of mileage out of the common Refresh users (Pert, Milo, Dol) being threatened by Lanturn's other moves. Toxic cripples Pokemon like Salamence and Flygon attempting to dance around coverage. lt's less committal than using Ice Beam while preserving the meager PP on Pump and still being nasty to deal with. However, Toxic has some drawbacks. It's usually safe to throw out, but many Pokemon affected by Toxic aren't safely switching into Lanturn to begin with and can be hit harder by other moves. For instance, Tyranitar fears Pump and Flygon fears Beam while still getting trucked by Pump. In most matchups, your fantastic STABs are what you're tossing out, not Toxic. The biggest point against Toxic has to be the list of Pokemon that are immune or carry Natural Cure. This list unfortunately is comprised of some of the strongest Lanturn checks in the game, meaning that by running Toxic you forsake a fourth move that could be used to aid in more directly combatting these threats. Snorlax, Jirachi, Celebi, and Blissey are probably the four best Pokemon against Lanturn in the tier. Two of them are Toxic immune, and while Toxic is still very effective in the team effort against Celebi and Blissey, providing chip, forcing recovery, and creating switches, it's still frustratingly inconsistent against teams packing these two.
-Substitute: Sub is a midground play against Pokemon that you force out, and it has the noteworthy advantage of giving you both an Ice Beam on Celebi and two Pumps on a weakened Lax. These are both decent scenarios because a recovering or grass-spamming Celebi is a great point of entry for stuff like Mence, Gross, and Molt and chip on Lax is huge for specially-biased teams. Sub is also noteworthy as a great midground against the dangerous Dugtrio.
-Confuse Ray: Confuse Ray serves as a safe confusion move to harass checks. It has less upside than other moves but can annoy some switchins and help you get teammates in potentially unscathed. 100% accuracy is very good. Forcing Snorlax or a potential bulky or Agility Metagross to hit themselves and take decent chip is also not to be ignored.
-Swagger: This move serves as a less reliable Confuse Ray with stronger upside. Celebi is an amazing check to Lanturn and many of the mons that it is often paired with, and it can get rocked by a +2 "Hurt Itself". Same with Blissey. It is unfortunately worse against physical attacking special sponges/initial checks to weak special attackers, because giving Lax, Gross, and even AstaRachi a +2 boost can lead to things getting out of hand really fast. It requires more scouting than Confuse Ray and has worse odds to hit, but in some matchups it performs a lot better.
-Hidden Power Grass: This move has a pretty good niche. It lets Lanturn more reliably 1v1 defensive Swampert, potentially killing a Hydro-chipped Pert and avoiding Quake/Toxic. It's also obviously good in the Pert vs. Lanturn last scenarios, rare as they are. Obviously Pert is the virtually the only target, but it is a very important target, Grass and can stop a very cheeky trainer trying to pivot offensive Pert into Bolt/Beam. With 60 defense EVs Lanturn can survive an Earthquake from 0 attack Swampert (it needs 104 EVs in defense to guarantee survival against Earthquake and a round of sand). With this investment, the current standard Lanturn can survive an Earthquake and hit Swampert for upwards of 80% minimum. Lanturn can either provide a massive hit on OffPert or, with enough speed to outpace standard Pert benchmarks, 1v1 the thing. Obviously Pert can be left to teammates, but it's food for thought. Funnily enough, Lanturn 4HKO’s itself with Hidden Power Grass and is likely to 3HKO after sand damage. It’s an added buffer against opposing Lanturn, which is actually really helpful on some forms of special offense that struggle with it.
-Screech: Screech is only to be used when Lanturn is paired with Dugtrio as a teammate. Screech drastically lowers the defense of the target, and puts some of Lanturn’s best counters into range of a Dugtrio trap. -2 Blissey gets OHKO’d by Choice Banded Dugtrio, same with AstaRachi. Celebi is harder to switch into to get a successful trap off due to grass hitting both Lanturn and Dugtrio effectively, but Dugtrio kills Celebi with Hidden Power Bug regardless. Snorlax needs to be chipped to reliably go down even after being screeched; Dugtrio still doesn’t guarantee an OHKO with a Spike down (though the odds are overwhelmingly in its favor with one layer). The trap becomes more difficult without sand up, especially if the opponent also has a threat preventing you from sacrificing Lanturn to Snorlax to enable the trap (some Snorlax partners can pose a threat to some variants of the special and mixed offenses that Lanturn fits on, Suicune and Claydol come to mind). While niche, unreliable, and heavily limited to use on specific teams, Screech can put in work.
-Thunder Wave: Lanturn can throw around the Yellow Magic well enough. Thunder Wave is obviously a powerful move due to its capacity to slow down threats and give chances for full paralysis. However, Thunder Wave is much more niche than it initially seems. For starters, Thunder Wave has the same issues as the aforementioned Toxic: it often isn’t the best move against the Pokemon that it’s targeting, and the Pokemon that get hit by it are often reluctant to switch into Lanturn to begin with. Additionally, Thunder Wave Lanturn gives Swampert free turns, as Lanturn struggles to fit both Thunder Wave and Hidden Power Grass on the same set, unlike Zapdos and Jolteon (among others). Thunder Wave is basically useless against Blissey and Celebi and only useful for the full paralysis chance on Snorlax, with Swagger being much more effective against the former two and Substitute more effective against Lax. However, Thunder Wave is extremely useful against AstaRachi, being Lanturn’s best move to hit it with by a mile (unless you’re running Screech+Dug and can get into a perfect position for the trap). Thunder Wave is also noteworthy against bulky Metagross sets that attempt to serve as an interim check, and can force either a paralysis or a Boom to take out non-lum AgiliGross. The move, like most last slots on Lanturn, has huge upside against some checks while getting Lanturn completely blanked by others.
-Rain Dance: Rain Dance gives Lanturn the chance to crank up its power and support teammates. Lanturn can fit on weather-change teams as a weather changer and as a counter to threats that can annoy these teams, absorbing moves from things like mixed Zapdos and using resistances to reliably remove sand. Lanturn also hits scarily hard with rain-boosted Hydro Pump and a 100% accurate Thunder. Sand being gone is beneficial to many Pokemon, which is why weather change is viable in the first place. Obviously this move is really only worth using if you’re going to pair Lanturn with other weather-change staples like Dugtrio, Suicune, and Snorlax.
-Protect: Finally, we have the old reliable: Protect. Lanturn is a great Protect abuser because it resists several common moves found on choice banded Pokemon and can turn a choice-locked Pokemon into offensive momentum with its fantastic coverage. A quadruple resistance to Meteor Mash and a resistance to Hidden Power Flying from Aerodactyl and Salamence (among others) is what makes this move effective on Lanturn. Unfortunately, Protect cannot be used to gain leftovers recovery in sand with Lanturn, but scouting opposing physical moves is reason enough to run it. Lanturn has so many special resistances that strong physical attacking Pokemon are often the best way of handling it, and Protect lets Lanturn and its teammates pivot around the physically offensive threats that 2HKO or OHKO the fish. Protect also comes with the advantage of scouting Hidden Power Grass from Gengar and the electrics and stuffing Gengar’s Boom, letting Lanturn easily gain important moveset information that lets it choose its entry points even more safely and even potentially remove one of the strongest Pokemon in the tier without being touched.
ConclusionThis is an exciting time for Lanturn, a time where the movesets and spreads of the friendly little anglerfish are being refined and experimented with. I will continue to post in this thread as more about Lanturn is discovered. Perhaps some of these moves will be rendered unnecessary with future standard spreads, or found to be unviable when opponents know what Lanturn can and might do. Eventually I might come back to this and rank the moves when I feel more comfortable and knowledgeable in doing so.
To wrap this up, I’d like to thank the folks in BKC’s Discord Server. This current wave of Lanturn was born there, and it’s been so fun to discuss such an offbeat Pokemon for the last week. As a newer player, I’m experiencing firsthand how fluid oldgen metagames are, and participating in such enthusiastic and open discussion on a Pokemon that nobody has thought about in OU for years has done a lot to make Pokemon more approachable to me. Special shoutouts go to SEA (aka Everything is Something) for being the patron saint of Lanturn and for quality-checking and proofreading this post. I could not have done this without him, and nobody here would be talking about the Light Pokemon without his inventiveness and dedication. This community’s a great place in large part because of people like him.
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