ProTox Pidge sounds very appealing right now and I don't think that saw any usage this nupl; you shit on pretty much everything that's not Maw/Metang and ofc you can always pair that with Diggy. In any case, dropping Pidge below Kecleon is just criminal, and I say that as an avid user of Kec, and especially criminal to drop it that far down below Golbat.
ProTox sounds neat, but if it hasn't seen any usage rn I don't know how I feel about raising it based on a set that has speculative success, especially with Metang being super hot. I think I've been a little more keen on pidge since I dropped him on whatever week, though, and I know a couple other people like him. Murkrow's frailty is a bigger issue than I made it out to be before, I think, and I actually like the sub three attacks set a bit. He's probably ok in A- even if I rank him slightly lower than that.
Most people seem big on dropping Veno back down and getting Poli back on the ranks. I am not super passionate about Veno (even if bp is cancer) and I am really so uninspired about a discussion on Poliwhirl's fringe viability that I'll concede on these
Clamperl (crazy after an agility, might be outclassed by Octillery in that regard).
I don't really want to re-rank Clamperl, though. In terms of being a strong ass Water-type, Wailord has that role covered and then some. Clamp lacks the bulk, the speed, the lefties, and boom. In terms of being a recipient for BP, Oct should be used 999/1000 times. Clamperl's inability to be crit is pretty negligible when you're almost always getting passed into with a Sub, and making your BP team be able to be countered by Roar/Whirlwind is awful.
There are a couple of people who hate on bat and idk why. He offers a ton of unique shit to a team that no other mon does. A sunny beam check + hitmon check + speed. I don't even think it's a mon that is easy to switch into, when you're frequently fearing a Sludge Bomb poison. He's as strong as Pidgeot too, yet I see a lot of people saying Pidge is as good or better when it offers nothing defensively.
I still could see Dewgong in mid A;
Agree with Dewgong being worth mid A,
Sure. A- or A is fine with me, as long as he isn't within a sub rank of Wailord.
As poh also already said Castform is a weather counter. To elaborate, it has a unique niche in being anti sun AND anti rain in one slot. This role compression is appreciated for some offenses that want to use a specific core that can't fit in 2 weather checks.
I think castform was a lot more relevant ~2 years ago when Rain Dance mons were big. Nowadays, Rain mons are far more obscure picks and are often covered by your team's Grass or Water type anyhow. Often you're just going to have Castform be a dedicated sun check, in which case it's just a shitty Fire-type that could be a Flareon or Torkoal. Like, yes, theoretically you could have a 5 mon team that has absolutely nothing for Rain and Sun that could use Castform, but that is a 1 out of 1000 kind of team that Castform fits onto. I don't think that niche is important enough to rank it over.
Torkoal I have zero idea why it'd ever be that high I get it has spin but everything else about it is awful. Low B rank confuses me a bit too, Togetic and Wigglytuff don't really need to be the same rank as Lickitung. Also Graveler... idk I've never seen anyone use it but C rank would seem a lot more appropriate.
e: that would explain why all my torkoals aren't spin. it's still just so mediocre, exploding is the only reason I'd ever use it over flareon
I can drop Graveler. He's not amazing and it's hard to find reason to use him over Reli. Between Toge, Wiggly, and Licki, I would rather just see Wiggly drop than anything else happen. Toge is a much better sunny beam check than the others and it has room for other useful tech, like immediate healing with Softboiled, Baton Pass, T-Wave, etc. Wiggly theoretically is more threatening with access to shit like Fire Blast and Thunder, but it's much less bulky for sure.
Torkoal is a super useful glue mon. Flareon is amazing obviously, but I think Torkoal makes use of its typing better than Flareon in not so obvious ways. For example, Bellossom pretty commonly partners up with Diglett to get rid of Flareon. However, Diglett does like 50 max to Torkoal and makes it a lot harder for Bell to find that opportunity to sweep late game. Torkoal also acts as a much more sensible Metang switch in because it fears EQ a lot less, and it works as a back up check to a lot of scary physical threats like Tropius, Hitmonchan, and the birds. It's also becoming very hard to undervalue explosion imo. Yeah, it doesn't do offensive sets nearly as well as Flareon does, but I think it does defensive sets as good or arguably better. I get that a lot of people haven't really made use of him in NUPL, but I consider Torkoal a super high value mon for most teams. I use this set if you wanted to try him out.
Torkoal @ Leftovers
Ability: White Smoke
EVs: 252 HP / 228 Def / 28 SpA
Relaxed Nature
- Flamethrower
- Explosion
- Toxic
- Protect
Gonna work on getting this updated, too, since the majority of people have commented and have minimal gripes about the list at large. I'll edit in a list of changes I made from people's suggestions and the stuff we're currently talking about etc etc. Thanks for the talk so far dudes.
edit for the update:
Code:
Did:
Sableye A+ --> S
Dewgong A- --> A
Pikachu A -- > A-
Venomoth A -- > A-
Graveler B- --> C
Minun C --> B-
Wigglytuff B- --> C
Poliwhirl UR --> C
Talking about:
Torkoal
Clamperl
Castform
