The current influx of mixed-sweepers using over-heat style moves got me looking for good mixed sweepers, and during that, the concept of CB-starmie came to mind... Starmie is almost always a bolt-beamer, moderately sturdy, countered by any strong pokemon that's not weak to Boltbeam and carries pursuit... Metagross/Heracross/TYRANITAR. So, I sat down and came up with some calculations for a Naive 252 atk/252 spd/6 def starmie. (Only real threat is pursuit because it's un-switchable, so you have to take the hit, hence why the -sdef instead of -def.)
Keep bolt-beam in the form of blizz/thunder for similar damage and special-sweeping ability. 409 attack after CB isn't something to scoff at, especially seeing as how blissey may be jumping in to handle a bolt-beamer. Waterfall/return for coverage, blizz (lesser special attack, more damage to compensate...) Thunder (same reason...) The real key to this is that starmie is a premier bolt-beamer, and getting hit with a CB'd Return or CB-stabbed waterfall might just hurt a special-tank. Mind you, it makes starmie much, much less sturdy, but the damage is nice enough to elminate some threats. It's primary purpose will to be mix things up and confuse your opponent, possibly getting you a free KO or two against players not expecting a mixed starmie.
It also handles most of the usual starmie counters I can think of. (Read as: bulky things with pursuit.) Also, avoid going 1v1 against an enemy starmie... You'll lose 90% of the time. (No calculations on that. Just pure logic. You can hurt them on the switch, but then get your butt out of there. Too many variations to do calculations for anyway.)I'll start with the four most obnoxious starmie-counters I can think of, CBweavile, CBtyranitar, metagross, and CBHeracross. (CS-heracross won't likely run pursuit, and will thusly be switch-out-able.) And heck, I'll include blissey too, since she's the bane of most special-attackers and is the single most used pokemon in the D/P metagame (as far as I can tell.)
Keep bolt-beam in the form of blizz/thunder for similar damage and special-sweeping ability. 409 attack after CB isn't something to scoff at, especially seeing as how blissey may be jumping in to handle a bolt-beamer. Waterfall/return for coverage, blizz (lesser special attack, more damage to compensate...) Thunder (same reason...) The real key to this is that starmie is a premier bolt-beamer, and getting hit with a CB'd Return or CB-stabbed waterfall might just hurt a special-tank. Mind you, it makes starmie much, much less sturdy, but the damage is nice enough to elminate some threats. It's primary purpose will to be mix things up and confuse your opponent, possibly getting you a free KO or two against players not expecting a mixed starmie.
It also handles most of the usual starmie counters I can think of. (Read as: bulky things with pursuit.) Also, avoid going 1v1 against an enemy starmie... You'll lose 90% of the time. (No calculations on that. Just pure logic. You can hurt them on the switch, but then get your butt out of there. Too many variations to do calculations for anyway.)I'll start with the four most obnoxious starmie-counters I can think of, CBweavile, CBtyranitar, metagross, and CBHeracross. (CS-heracross won't likely run pursuit, and will thusly be switch-out-able.) And heck, I'll include blissey too, since she's the bane of most special-attackers and is the single most used pokemon in the D/P metagame (as far as I can tell.)
- ~CBweavile
- ~CBTyranitar
Calculations: CBTTar, One pursuit (without the switch) would OHKO starmie with sandstorm damage. 255 MINIMUM damage, sandstorm destroying the last 6 hp starmie has left. So if you can scout and see if it's not got pursuit and is instead running crunch, you're good to switch into your 4x dark-resist that Great-sage so commonly mentions. Otherwise, 1v1, CBtar wins. Non-CBtar loses MOST of the time. CSTar wins 100% of the time. (Though I doubt CSTar is being run with pursuit, so you could switch out.)
The ideal situation is you send starmie to "revenge-kill" something weak to bolt-beam... and hit TTar on the switch: They send in TTAr and get hit by waterfall, doing 70%ish of it's HP if it's standard CBTar. Second hit kills it before starmie gets hit. In this scenario, if they're standard neutral def/hp CB/CStar, it's a guaranteed 2HKO. CBtar dies outright, unable to do anything but sandstorm... CS hurts, but dies.
- ~CBCross:
sleep-talk heracross. Prediction is key here. If you outspeed it AND get it on the switch, all is good. If you don't outspeed it, it's probably not
running pursuit and you get to switch out after doing 225 (average) points of damage. (HP flying is also handy for breloom.)
- ~Blissey:
Waterfall does around 293 or so damage, or 40% of blissey's HP. That's a rather convenient 3HKO (no softboils on that number) on blissey with
leftovers recovery. Now, if you can get blissey on the switch, that's a nice chunk of damage you just did.
At this point, you can either stay in if it's a CM bliss with no fear of being thunderwaved, or stay in and prepare for a long battle of waterfall/softboiled/attacks. If she doesn't softboil on turn 3 or 4, she's dead. If she uses thunderwave, it doesn't affect you because you have natural cure on your side. Kill her, then switch to the appropriate counter and starmie's just fine.
However, do NOT stay in against blissey if she is only using softboiled, as she'll recover 10% of her hitpoints every turn against you, assuming you're not paralyzed fully. Only stay in if you expect they'll have the gumption to attack instead of Softboiling within the first three softboileds after thunderwave. (And you are willing to risk a full paralysis/fully-healing opponent's blissey.) Personally, if you fear Blissey that much, you can run a "special-sweeper heavy team" and include the starmie and a poke with pursuit to handle bliss. 1 waterfall and a strong pursuit will kill this blissey. Just beware of paralysis. The key to taking blissey out in this case is to force a bad switch onto your starmie. In most situations, this will kill blissey, leaving room for your special-sweepers to come in and kick serious butt.
- ~Metagross:
minimizing the number of calculations I'm going to do, I will assume this is an adamant, 252 hp, 6 def metagross. (Seems common enough to
me.) Actually, now that the math is done, I've calculated somewhere around a 0% chance of sucess. It'd be a 3hko without leftovers, and starmie is unlikely to survive long enough to do that. IF you are at full health, hit metagross on the switch in and can survive one of its attacks, you will kill it.
However, that being said, I find that unlikely. (You have to outspeed it AND survive one attack for this to work.) I'd highly reccomend switching out, despite the threat of pursuit. If you know they have pursuit and want to risk things, you can probably survive a SINGLE CB'd pursuit, allowing you to get the 3hko.
- ~Anything else:
- ~Final word
In terms of team-building, I'd highly reccomend running this starmie with a good special sweepers and a CBTar. CBtar is fully capable of finishing
what starmie started using pursuit, especially in the case of blissey, while being fully able to handle itself otherwise. As long as blissey dies, and you can bring CBtar in on cresselia, your special sweepers have little to fear. If they're not running bliss or cresselia, I suspect you'll have the upper-hand. Just make sure your special sweepers resist each other's weaknesses and you have the edge over the no-bliss opponent. Special/mixed lucario and slowbro, anyone?
And that's it. The post is over. The first-post analysis of physical starmie is over. Bring me more material, or do calculations on your own, and
let's see how far we can take this baby.
