CAP 16 CAP 5 - Playtest

Deck Knight said:
Namington should have used Crunch, not Power Whip as the 4th move. The PP and Acuracy gain alone is great, and Crunch can wear opponents down with Def drops There's also no immunities (Sap Sipper) and the only 4x resists are Lucario and Steelix. Steelix could Roar it out, but that set is weak to phazers anyway.
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That was me, and I actually changed to Crunch just after that battle. Though it leaves me walled to death by Lucario and Cobalion, its otherwise a great improvement. The power loss misses out on some vital OHKOs, but I can recover when they're at 1%.
 
I really enjoyed this experience working on Malaconda with you guys, but I think this will be my last post for a while. Maybe I'll see you next time we do a CAP or otherwise probably around Gen 6's release.

Thanks again guys. Look out for those U-Turns. ;)

Vann
 
Yeah guys I goofed up and confused 4x Rock resists with 4x Dark resists.

That said Justified is annoying but the entire exercise with that Malaconda is that it can easily stall out Low PP Moves once it gets enough stat boosts.

Boy it would have been fun if Namington coulda Baton Passed those boosts >_>
 
Deck Knight said:
Boy it would have been fun if Namington coulda Baton Passed those boosts >_>
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1) Get Smeargle to Baton Pass Ingrain to Malaconda.
2) Stall out Starf Berry until +6 in everything
3) Baton Pass to Lati@s, Terrakion, Sala/Mixmence, Landorus-T or Keldeo (depending on weather for the latter 2)
4) Wreck everything.

Muahahahahaha...
PureQuestion said:
And Scraggy. if you want to be a smartass.
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And Pawniard. If you want to be a smart(er)ass.
 
I've switched to U-turn Malaconda, and it is so much better than the version without. Unfortunately, 4MSS is a really big problem here. If I could run Crunch / Power Whip / U-turn / Rapid Spin / Rest I would be so happy, but I have to cut one and it's hard to figure out which. Currently I'm running with no Grass STAB and it's doing reasonably well, but I've still missed it a few times.
 
Deck Knight said:
Namington should have used Crunch, not Power Whip as the 4th move. The PP and Acuracy gain alone is great, and Crunch can wear opponents down with Def drops There's also no immunities (Sap Sipper) and the only 4x resists are Lucario and Steelix. Steelix could Roar it out, but that set is weak to phazers anyway.
Click to expand...

Rattled.

js.
edit: nvm...

Also, whoever is running flamethrower ninetales, don't. It's not strong enough. First of all, ninetales has bad SpA to be running flamethrower, sure it could do some damage, but not enough. You want to be running fire blast, or overheat for some extra base power and accuracy, but the SpA drop is pretty bad. Luckily, ninetales will likely only be out for a turn or two.

But seriously, use fire blast, not flamethrower.
 
I agree. MalaCent is a great core for a Sun team. Since switching out a mon for Jellicent on my team, I've now gone 12-2. Sunbalanced/Sunstall is muuuuuuch more viable with LumRest Rapid Spinning Malaconda. Just be sure to overprepare for Scizor. Jellicent helps with that. So do Heatran and all the usual Scizor counters.
 
Agile Turtle said:
Rattled.

js.
edit: nvm...

Also, whoever is running flamethrower ninetales, don't. It's not strong enough. First of all, ninetales has bad SpA to be running flamethrower, sure it could do some damage, but not enough. You want to be running fire blast, or overheat for some extra base power and accuracy, but the SpA drop is pretty bad. Luckily, ninetales will likely only be out for a turn or two.

But seriously, use fire blast, not flamethrower.
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This.
Malaconda walls Flamethrower Ninetales in the sun.
That's just how specially bulky Malaconda is (and how bad Ninetales is).

Unfortunately Malaconda compounds sun teams' typical weakness to Heatran, so you'll need a plan for it. Jellicent can't really do anything to Heatran in the sun and smart players will know how to play around Dugtrio.

If you run Malaconda in rain teams instead, you'll need to prepare for random U-Turn users such as Jirachi and Scizor. Landorus-T can hanadle most of them as well as opposing Malacondas with its own U-Turn.
 
bulk up conkeldurr seems to break down a lot of these teams so far. with guts it doesnt mind getting paralyzed by malaconda's glare and drain punch and ice punch combo really breaks down a lot of common pokes i've seen so far, such as malaconda (obviously), heatran, landorus, gliscor and even the oh so uncommon ferrothorn. also im finding using forretress as my rapid spinner instead of malaconda works well because it walls most physical attackers in this metagame and gives malaconda more options on it's movepool. so far i've only lost a game with this strategy but i've only played about 10 or so games.

also having landorus-t as a pivot with intimidate really helps weaken things down for forretress and conkeldurr
 
I wonder if anyone's done a full blown Moody strategy of simply stalling with a Starf Berry, and gaining all the boosts it can before slaughtering.

Edit: Of course they have, that'll teach me to read the entire thread first. Still, probably the deadliest strategy so far
 
To build on what Gasoline said, I've seen a lot of Conkeldurr in this playtest, and while I'm sure they're good against Malaconda, they're basically just fodder for my rain team. This raises an interesting possibility that I'm not sure we ever considered: Malaconda encouraging rain usage by losing to things that rain beats. We'll have to see how this develops.

Actually, I'm seeing surprisingly few Malaconda so far. I haven't used it yet and a number of my opponents haven't had it either. Some of those were probably new people that don't know what it is, though.
 
This is the Set
Malaconda @Custap Berry
Brave nature
252 Atk 252 HP 4 Def
Moves:
Synthesis
Power Whip
Glare
Foul Play

Custap means that, if not for priority, I get first move.
Synthesis also gets priority, as does Glare, allowing me to cripple opposing pokemon
E.g Ninetales threatens to HKO after switching in
Custap activates: Glare!!!
 
jynx KB said:
I wonder if anyone's done a full blown Moody strategy of simply stalling with a Starf Berry, and gaining all the boosts it can before slaughtering.

Edit: Of course they have, that'll teach me to read the entire thread first. Still, probably the deadliest strategy so far
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It's only deadly if you get it right. You can really only do it once all priority users are defeated and 4x Dark resists are gone, and its pretty gimmicky. The difficulty is setting it up. However, if you do get it set up, it can 6-0 entire teams... As long as they lack pHazers and priority.
 
I find it amusing that we aimed to lower the usage of Water-types during the concept assessment, but Water-types are probably the best partners for Malaconda xD
 
ElectivireRocks said:
This.
Malaconda walls Flamethrower Ninetales in the sun.
That's just how specially bulky Malaconda is (and how bad Ninetales is).

Unfortunately Malaconda compounds sun teams' typical weakness to Heatran, so you'll need a plan for it. Jellicent can't really do anything to Heatran in the sun and smart players will know how to play around Dugtrio.

If you run Malaconda in rain teams instead, you'll need to prepare for random U-Turn users such as Jirachi and Scizor. Landorus-T can hanadle most of them as well as opposing Malacondas with its own U-Turn.
Click to expand...

Oh, I have landorus-t on my sun team, which can force heatran out, and if heatran doesn't switch, it can OHKO with earthquake. Although landorus-t usually isn't the one who takes out the opponent's heatran for me.

Ninetales is what usually takes out heatran. They'll come in, thinking they can get a free switch-in because they have flashfire, and think they can force a switch next turn. But little do they know my ninetales has HP Ground which OHKOs heatran right away.
 
Dracoyoshi8 said:
I find it amusing that we aimed to lower the usage of Water-types during the concept assessment, but Water-types are probably the best partners for Malaconda xD
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I think in the end the numbers will support the outcome though. Sun's usage has gone up and will likely stay up (though down from where it currently is). Those usage numbers have to come from somewhere. Rain as a playstyle, is headed downwards. And moving some teams from being 3 Water types or more to being just 1 will inevitably lead to Water's usage going down.
 
So here's an effective Malaconda set which I and a few others have been trying out:

Malaconda @ Choice Band
Trait: Infiltrator
252HP/252Atk/4SpD
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SpA)
-Pursuit
-U-Turn
-Sucker Punch
-Power Whip

Jas (who else?) was the first guy I saw running this set, and it works very well as a revenge killer/late-game sweeper. It also has a surprise element to it, as most people would assume that you were running a berry set, taking advantage of Harvest. Pokemon low on health faint from Sucker Punch, and then any ghost/psychic type which Malaconda switches into will want to switch, allowing for Pursuit and certain death. EVs ignore Malaconda's speed, since the opposing pokemon will most likely outspeed it anyway, whilst also building on Malaconda's great special bulk.
 
vyomov said:
This is the Set
Malaconda @Custap Berry
Brave nature
252 Atk 252 HP 4 Def
Moves:
Synthesis
Power Whip
Glare
Foul Play

Custap means that, if not for priority, I get first move.
Synthesis also gets priority, as does Glare, allowing me to cripple opposing pokemon
E.g Ninetales threatens to HKO after switching in
Custap activates: Glare!!!
Click to expand...

you sure you wanna run foul play over crunch? with that + nature maxed out attack, you'll probably want to take advantage of your own attack, right? especially if you're targeting something like lati@s, as physical attackers aren't really things you want to stay in on (especially fighting types and scizor)
 
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