Wow! Achieve an 80% Win Rate in Camo Tours and Leave Your Opponents Wet and Frustrated!
In the middle of this Dracovish suspect, here's a post about the closely related topic of Rain where I review some OMPL games to analyze how Rain functions at the top levels of play. Currently, Rain has an 80% win rate in OMPL, and I think it's totally busted.
Is this high win rate due to Rain curbstomping unprepared teams with Fishious Rend? Actually, Rain in OMPL has a
100% win rate versus teams with Water immunities, and these are the games we'll be looking at.
If you don't have time to read an essay and just got clickbaited by the title, scroll down to the bottom of the post where I linked a Rain team and have fun crushing people on ladder or in roomtours. Don't forget to leave a like on the way out!
What makes Rain so good is its ability to put massive pressure on Balance, Bulky Offense, and Stall teams. Type spam teams like Rain are the bane of any team whose game plan involves having switchins to opposing Pokemon. In a metagame like Camomons with so many possible threats, a team with a defensive core will have to spread its defenses thin to cover all possible type combinations. Type spam teams take advantage of this by hitting one pressure point repeatedly.
Rain's game plan of spamming strong Water, Electric, and Flying type moves is tough to meet, even with Water Absorb and the other defensive counterplay to Dracovish that
Ztest mentioned. In the OMPL game
Siamato vs geerat (Rain vs BO), Siamato pivots with Dracovish to bring his Specs Electric-type Dragapult in safely. It proceeds to 2HKO the enemy Jellicent with Thunder thanks to a crit, and after that geerat loses to Fishious Rend despite having 2 more Water resists.
It's a similar situation in
MetaRiolu7 vs hamhamhamham (Rain vs Balance), where the Water Absorb mon (also Jellicent) gets Hurricane confused by NP Mew on a pivotal turn and fails to get off a Toxic. Even without the Hurricane hax, hamhamhamham would have had an uphill battle facing down Vish and Barraskewda with Jelli at 20%. Also notable in this game is Scarf Fighting-weak Dracovish 1v1ing a Max Def Rocky Helmet Body Press Corviknight.
One more game analysis:
Havens vs DugZa (Rain vs Semistall). In this game, Lapras is the Water Absorb user, but it is passive and gives Havens' Mew free turns. Even though Dracovish has its Choice Band knocked off, it still nets a kill versus a defensive Water-resistant Mew — in order to be bulky enough to live Adamant Band, many Mew spreads give up the ability to outspeed Jolly Dracovish. Specs Dragapult sweeps once DugZa's team is weakened.
(For those curious, there were two more OMPL games featuring Rain: Rain vs Sun, won by Rain, and Rain vs Kyurem, won by the Kyurem team. Neither of these games featured Dracovish.)
What's the takeaway from this analysis? Watching these games, it was striking to me how irrelevant most Pokemon on both teams ended up being, and the games came down to how well the Rain sweepers matched up against the defending team's Rain answers. This dynamic doesn't leave much room for creative or skillful gameplay and opens the door for matchup wins and hax. Even when Rain finds itself at a disadvantage versus a well-prepared opponent, all it takes is a Waterfall flinch, Thunder para, Hurricane confusion, or crit to turn the situation around.
It's also evident from the replays that Camomons Rain isn't a flimsy, predictable HO strategy. Kommo, Mew, and Pelipper have the ability to run offensive and defensive sets and select the best typing for their role. Sweepers like Dracovish, Drednaw, and Dragapult require different defensive measures depending on which STABs and coverage they have, making them all the more difficult to wall.
The end result is that it takes more than a Water Absorb mon plus Electric and Flying resists to have a reasonable matchup versus Rain. I think this constitutes an unreasonable strain on teambuilding.
Bringing this back to the subject of the suspect test, I think it can't be ignored how well Dracovish performed in all the games, netting at least one kill despite the presence of Water immunities.
What's becoming clear to me as I watch more games is that having a mon that walls Dracovish is
not the same as not being weak to it. The OMPL games above feature tactics like using Vish's bulk to switch in on weaker hits and double switching out of Vish to gain momentum. Actually, all of the games feature double switching with Dracovish, and it's easy to see why. Because Scarf Dracovish outspeeds and OHKOs 90% of the metagame, the opponent has to play cautiously and thus predictably around it, which strong players capitalize on to maintain offensive pressure even when Water Absorb and other defensive answers are at play.
Is Vish broken because of Rain or is Rain broken because of Vish? I think it's a little of both — Dracovish gives Rain a breaker that functions well outside of Rain turns, while Rain lets Vish break through 2x resists and pairs it with sweepers that compliment it typewise. What is clear though is that in the current state of the metagame, a viable Camomons team requires multiple dedicated Rain checks, or a Dracovish of its own, or both.
To try it out for yourself, here's a rain team you can use on ladder.
. S/o all who tried to snipe me and failed, as well as that one asshole who turned on timer midgame AFTER i told him i had to poop (e: he still lost)
