Lower Tiers ADV NU Viability Ranking (found new host)

Made a nice lil resource, tier evaluation here http://pastebin.com/SUCHYivv

My instinct is saying bellossom/relicanth up, whilst diglett is worth at least B rank (CB adamant is strong enough, enough bulk to make occasional use of rock/poison resists, baton pass helps bring it in [e.g. from mawile, venomoth, plusle/minun, etc], and the list of mons it can trap includes basically every rock/steel type [agility/screens on metang, baton pass on mawile, and relicanth/'s insane bulk all hurt its cause though], as well as some other Pokemon such as Arbok, Swalot, and Flareon). It's not really broken but you need to prepare for it, e.g. if your team is using a really diglett-weak mon (such as magcargo, lairon, or swalot say), then you need a plan to abuse it being choice-locked into earthquake to steal back the momentum/advantage, etc. I guess maybe it warps teambuilding a lil as a consequence though :q also venomoth is a gr8 lead m8
 
Even Abra is a fucking threat frens, with that crazy Sp.Attack,and it forces ez switches like Sableye which are reasonably easy to exploit. Even Digglet when kept unrevealed can be very difficult to play against,by letting you snipe weakened components of defensive cores, but thats always been there I guess. Also guys Toxic Hitmonchan please use it :s,it lets you screw over Sableye and steadily weaken it throughout the game and lets you spin pretty easily. HP:Ghost+Toxic Spin Chan can put in serious work :D. Also Raticate/Pidgeot can be very hard to deal with especially once the normal resists are worn down enough.Glalie is extremely solid n_n, and can force out most leads not named hitmonchan,and even verus that it can threaten an explosion N_N.
 
Charmeleon/Magby/Quilava/Ponyta all function very similarly and probably deserve a very similar ranking (Hypnosis is particularly cool of Ponyta)
 
Yeah but they all have slight distinctions.
Ponyta can only OHKO Glalie 100% of the time by using Charcoal Overheat, so it's punishable by smart switching, although Hypnosis is threatening. Faces a lot of competition with Venomoth as a sleeper lead, but being fire type, it can sleep something other than Glalie often.
Magby can OHKO Glalie without resorting to an attack that drops its SpA 2 stages, with Fire Blast and charcoal. It outspeed Glalie but really does nothing more than this.
Quilava/Charmeleon both tie with Glalie and play very similarly, both require Charcoal+Fire Blast or Overheat w/ lefties to OHKO glalie, and can usually force it out as a consequence, and the difference between the two is Dragon Claw on Charmeleon makes it harder to wall it with Shelgon(/Dragonair) and hit stuff generally better neutrally, whilst Quilava has access to Roar and Quick Attack, allowing it to beat EndRev users (as can Ponyta!), and Roar which none of the others get, allowing it to phaze, and do damage even when Flareon or something is around, if you can get spikes up, e.g. with a cacturne/roselia partnered.
 
it hard counters huntail, most flareon, sableye, chimecho, and a billion other minor threats while not being completely threatened by grass-types (like whiscash) or electrics (plusle only has a ~40% to 2hko most times). i've found it invaluable when using it and it's a heavy stall team must with perish song and/or resttalk
 
I'm not totally it should be quite that high up, just since it only fits very specific sorts of teams, and not a sort of team that is really all that easy to put together or varied. Guess I can't call for it to be like C rank or anything though now .. maybe low A? Or do you really find it that useful?
 
Last edited:
i've found it to be a good catch-all especially if you're not using huntail. if you're using huntail there's zero reason to also bring a dewgong, but if you want a special backbone that's not kecleon or lickitung i've found it to be the best replacement.

anyway i moved

relicanth a- -> a
abra c- -> b
diglett c- -> b-
charmeleon b -> b-
magby c+ -> b-
pontya c+
houndour c+

magby and charmeleon are definitely a cut above pontya and quilava despite the super similarity, magby cuz of speed + movepool and charmeleon thanks to bulk + dragon claw (which is infinitely superior to a weak quick attack)

don't think bellossom deserves s rank. it's a good mon but not THAT good imo
 
Oglemi said:
i've found it to be a good catch-all especially if you're not using huntail. if you're using huntail there's zero reason to also bring a dewgong, but if you want a special backbone that's not kecleon or lickitung i've found it to be the best replacement.
Click to expand...
I think unless the team is hard stall, requiring Perish Song, SunnySynth Bellossom probably works pretty nicely as well.

Oglemi said:
magby and charmeleon are definitely a cut above pontya and quilava despite the super similarity, magby cuz of speed + movepool and charmeleon thanks to bulk + dragon claw (which is infinitely superior to a weak quick attack)
Click to expand...
I think Charmeleon and Quilava are pretty much the same Pokemon though, and it's a case of Quick Attack+Roar vs Dragon Claw.. Shelgon's pretty rare, and you're not exactly breaking Flareon or whatever quickly with Charm, so I think I'd at least rank them equally.

(Otherwise I basically agree with everything else, yet to personally test Abra though. What do you make of it?)

e: also why would I use Octillery when Crawdaunt exists?
 
Last edited:
Castform D+ -> somewhere from C to B-
no really. I mean it's niche is fairly minor in the sense that there's only a very small set of Pokemon it pairs with.. Basically, as you can see in the analysis in my siggy, Castform basically pairs nicely with Huntail, as a great Bellossom answer, + rain abuser with ok speed, and whilst its Power level is a lil underwhelming it's using high-powered moves. Only Bellossom running non-Solarbeam Grass type attacks (little need since the best set of that sort prefers SunnyBeam generally) really gets around it easily. It beasts bell in both rain and sun. Its 70/70/70 bulk means it can generally take one hit from pretty much everything not named Hitmonchan and retaliate or at least set up Rain.
 
really minor but I bumped up Ariados, Volbeat, and Spinda a couple slots due to their utility on Baton Pass chains.

Speaking of, they're really good, here's a couple replays:

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-253814166
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen3ou-78627 (woulda won with hypnosis hit >:u)

i had a third against innovamania but i guess i didn't save replay

If anyone wants to play against BP more hit me up, I'm going to be really available the next week here and I wanna test it some more.
 
played a few more matches with the bp team and overall it's pretty flawed and prone to crits and stuff, but still effective if against the right teams. the original i posted above was pretty weak to sunnybeamer bellossom, but i think i've fixed that with replacing spinda with togetic. togetic doesn't get any stat boosts to pass, but it has insane bulk and dual screens, so i think it works. here's another match of it working successfully with togetic over spinda for those interested: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-254487554
 
some moves post corsola cup

vigoroth s- -> a+
flareon a+ -> s-
relicanth a -> a+
golbat b+ -> a-
wailord b -> b+
pikachu b- > b
magcargo b- -> b
togetic c+ -> b-
castform d+ -> c+
 
Flareon into S is highly questionable. Other than that I think the moves are passable, even on ones I disagree.

I'd also consider the following:
Shedinja -> C+ or B-
Poliwhirl -> B-
Magby -> B
Houndour -> B
Arbok -> A
Cacturne -> A-

There are also a handful of mons that imo are ranked too highly and I never even see like Seadra and Whiscash.
 
I dunno about seadra but whiscash is actually pretty hot, pair it with a grass type and u can beat electrics, it can check birds, great answer to fire types (beware HP grass though), good pupitar check, and decent movepool [surf, ice beam, spark, earthquake, hidden power, rock slide, toxic, protect, rest, sleep talk make up most of its movesets]. Like Wailord it's a little unpredictable at first glance, due to having the capacity to go mixed, physical, special, and more offensive or defensive, albeit without curse or explosion it's much less immediately threatening. It is really incredibly bulky; I tend to prefer a bulky tank/pivot set with ice beam, earthquake, protect, surf/toxic. Surf if the team's pretty pupitar/sudowoodo/graveler weak, toxic otherwise. I mean I can go more into why I prefer it, and the EVs, but damn it's just effective at answering lots of stuff, whilst it can be bait-killed since it covers so much you generally do add redundancy alongside it making that less problematic [e.g. whiscash+cacturne handles all electrics if you play carefully, even haunter too unless giga drain+hp fire..; whiscash+pelipper answers all fire types really handily as well as doing a multitude of other things].
 
agreeing with bughouse on giving magby a rise up. the best glalie anti-lead, imo, as it hits way harder than ponyta (not having to use charcoal overheat to guarantee the kill is so nice), and still outspeeds glalie, while quilava/charm only speedtie it.

as i think about it, quilava and charmeleon should probably drop a bit. shelgon isnt common enough to justify using charm over magby or pony, and quilavas niche (quick attack) is incredibly situational and will rarely come up.

been watching some corsola cup matches, and i think that pupitar should get a. yeah, it struggles with huntail/chan/grasses, but its honestly just so hard to stop once it gets a dd up, and can really easily clean late game with proper support. getting a dd up is easier than it seems, in practice, and it can set up a dd pretty freely on the opponents normal/flareon/bird, which most every team carries atleast one of. pupitar is atleast just as good as/better than graveler, and its ranking should reflect that
 
Agree with Magby rising. After a few games with it, it's quickly become one of my favorite leads. It deserves a high B at least.

Also agree with astroboy , Pupitar need to rise. The fact that it is the premier late game sweeper alone means it deserves better than a low A. I credit a lot of my Corsola Cup success to that mon... very powerful and easy to sweep with.

Onto my main talking point... Mawile needs to drop. It's really overrated. Almost every mon in the S & A ranks can dish out heavy damage against it. It's low Speed, crappy SpDef and weak physical movepool make this out to be a pretty underwhelming Pokemon. I've hardly ever seen this mon put in work. It's main selling point is it's ability to pass Subs and SD's with a good defensive typing, but it is really easy to play around. Normal types are literally the only thing it can set up on. Not a fan of Mawile at all.

so yeah

raise magby
raise pupitar
lower mawile
 
I actually like mawile a lot, subpass with diglett and a sunny beamer is really dangerous, and the defensive toxic protect set is an insane pivot on defensive teams. I think a lot of people ev it a bit too offensively which prevents it from being able to switch in on stuff it's meant to take on no problem. With a defensive spread it puts in a lot more work imo.
 
I think you're right that Mawile is really good under certain circumstances, but I just don't think it fits the S-Rank definition. If you want to use a Diglett/Mawile core with an abuser, that's already half your team.

I also admit that it's a good pivot on defensive teams, but it's deadweight on HO. Mawile lacks the splash-ability that is required for being S-rank.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top