Choice Band Skarmory [QC 1/2]

[Here Comes Team Charm!]

[SET]
name: Choice Band
move 1: Iron Head
move 2: Body Press
move 3: Counter
move 4: Brave Bird/Dual Wingbeat
item: Choice Band
ability: Sturdy
nature: Adamant
evs: 248 Atk / 56 Def / 204 Spe

Skarmory possesses useful STAB attacks, great Defense, and Sturdy, giving it a notable niche as a Choice Band user. Iron Head is Skarmory's best Steel-type attack, hitting Pokemon like Crustle, Sylveon, and fast Choice Band Rhyperior. Body Press provides Fighting-type coverage and is useful against Pokemon like Porygon-Z, Magnezone, and non-Chople Berry Snorlax. Counter allows Skarmory to beat physical attackers that don't fear its STABs, like Dracozolt, Dracovish and Choice-item Zeraora. Either Brave Bird or Dual Wingbeat provides Skarmory with a way to beat Grass-type Pokemon like Rillaboom and Whimsicott. Both moves have their selling points: the former cannot miss and deals more damage, notably allowing Skarmory to beat Choice Band Urshifu-R, while the latter is necessary to defeat Sawk and Substitute Volcarona. 56 Defense EVs allow Skarmory to survive two Choice Band-boosted Outrages from Haxorus while also boosting Body Press damage. 204 Speed EVs let Skarmory outspeed bulky Kyurem and Silvally. The remaining EVs are invested in Attack to maximize damage.

While Skarmory beats most Grass-type Pokemon, it loses to Rotom-C and Chople Berry Ferrothorn, who lack a weakness to Skarmory's Flying-type move and can respectively 2HKO and Leech Seed stall. Skarmory also struggles against stall Pokemon like Chansey and Galarian Corsola and bulky special attackers like Rotom-H, Rotom-W, and Primarina. It also fails to beat some physical attackers that can avoid Counter, most notably Fake Out Zeraora and Kommo-O. For this reason, Skarmory's teammates should possess special bulk and stallbreaking capacity: Pokemon like Sylveon and Goodra consequently make for good partners.

[CREDITS]
- Written by: [[HereComesTeamCharm, 501918]]
- Quality checked by: [[Dogknees, 317056], [username2, userid2]]
- Grammar checked by: [[username1, userid1]]

 

[Here Comes Team Charm!]

Ready for QC, still feeling like the second paragraph is a bit light on content so would appreciate suggestions there.

 

[dogknees]

check

[SET]
name: Choice Band
move 1: Iron Head
move 2: Body Press
move 3: Counter
move 4: Brave Bird/Dual Wingbeat
item: Choice Band
ability: Sturdy
nature: Adamant
evs: 248 Atk / 56 Def / 204 Spe

Skarmory possesses useful STAB attacks, great Defense, and Sturdy, giving it a notable niche as a Choice Band user. Iron Head is Skarmory's best Steel-type attack, hitting Pokemon like Togekiss, Crustle, and Sylveon. for super-effective damage. (Not wrong, but doesn't need to be mentioned either.) Body Press provides Fighting-type coverage and is useful against Pokemon like Porygon-Z, Magnezone, and non-Chople Berry Snorlax. Counter allows Skarmory to beat physical attackers that don't fear its STABs, like Choice-item Zeraora Dracozolt, and Dracovish, and Choice-item Zeraora. (I know this contradicts when you were told to order Pokemon based on viability, but the prevalence of Choice-item Zeraora is far lower than its other sets and thus should be at the tail of Counter targets, since it's not very common anymore.) Finally, either Brave Bird or Dual Wingbeat provides Skarmory with a way to beat Grass-type Pokemon like Rillaboom and Whimsicott. Both moves have their selling points: the former can't miss and deals more damage, and allows allowing Skarmory to beat Choice Band Urshifu-R, while the latter is necessary to defeat Sawk and Substitute Volcarona. 56 Defense EVs allow Skarmory to survive two Choice Band-boosted Outrages from Haxorus while also boosting Body Press damage. 204 Speed EVs let Skarmory outspeed bulky Kyurem and Silvally. The remaining EVs are invested in Attack to maximize damage.

Skarmory needs to be weary of certain Grass-type Pokemon such as Rotom-C and Ferrothorn which both take neutral damage from Flying-type STAB due to their dual typing, since they are incapable of being OHKO'd and can Leech Seed stall or KO respectively. (Scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but there's really not much that needs to be said. Short and sweet is often fine if the Pokemon is straight forward to use, doesn't have complicated matchups, and has no exceptions to archetypes that you normally beat.) Skarmory also struggles against stall Pokemon like Chansey and Galarian Corsola, as well as bulky special attackers like Rotom-A Rotom-H, Rotom-W, and Primarina. It also fails to beat some physical attackers that can avoid Counter, most notably Fake Out Zeraora and Kommo-O. For this reason, Skarmory's teammates should possess special bulk and stallbreaking capacity: Pokemon like Sylveon and Goodra consequently make for good partners. Beware of using Skarmory together with other Choice-item users, as the resulting team will be weak to Pokemon such as Aromatisse and Torment Steelix. (I'm personally not a fan of this point. It's not something that we include in other analysis' of Choice-item Pokemon, so I don't see a reason as to why Skarmory is an exception. We don't generally highlight what not to pair a Pokemon with.)

love it, let me know when implemented
edit: 1/2