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Genesect
- Thread starter Ad Terminum
- Start date
Nope, Marvel Scale affects Defense, not Special Defense.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
A Specially Defensive Gastrodon set is far superior to Milotic when it comes to walling Genesect, if you are truly that averse to using Heatran. Observe:
Detailed Result: 252 +1 SpAtk Genesect Bug Buzz vs 252 HP/252 SpDef Gastrodon (+SpDef) : 39.67% - 47.18%
3 hits to KO
And that's assuming they even run Bug Buzz. U-Turn will do around 20% at +0, Flamethrower is insignificant, Ice Beam does about as much as U-Turn, and Thunderbolt doesn't even affect it. Unless you happen to run into Energy Ball Genesect (lol) then SDef Gastro is a hard counter to it.
Gastrodon @ Leftovers
Trait: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Scald / Ice Beam / Earth Power / Toxic
- Scald / Ice Beam / Earth Power / Toxic
- Scald / Ice Beam / Earth Power / Toxic
- Recover
Trait: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Scald / Ice Beam / Earth Power / Toxic
- Scald / Ice Beam / Earth Power / Toxic
- Scald / Ice Beam / Earth Power / Toxic
- Recover
Adding to the above post, Gastrodon is probably more significant than Milotic as well. You don't want to run specialized Pokemon to counter just one threat, that's a problem a lot of people tend to do when trying to counter specific Pokemon. The downside to this is that if your opponent doesn't carry a Pokemon you're trying to counter, then you have a teammate that is just dead weight.
Has anyone tested Choice Band Genesect on the archetypical heavy offense teams from old BW (Deoxys-D, VoltTurn, Gengar, strong Fighting-type, Dragon-type sweeper)? I tried a team out with Choice Scarf Genesect over Scizor and Thundurus-T over Rotom-W (a more minor change) and while it was a bit overloaded on the special side, it did really well for me, and I believe august got to at least #7 on PS with it. However, I have been wanting to try out Choice Band Genesect instead to try and surprise opponents, especially because this would also give me a jump on a lot of common switch-ins.
Also I'd definitely point out that the Rock Polish set is definitely the least consistent Genesect set simply because there are battles when it will absolutely smash and there are battles where it just serves as death fodder. I've been trying to support it really well but it definitely is not Genesect's best set and I'd probably go with a Pokemon that will do more damage when it is able to boost its Speed, such as Terrakion or something. Has anyone really found a lot of success with the Rock Polish set?
Has anyone tested Choice Band Genesect on the archetypical heavy offense teams from old BW (Deoxys-D, VoltTurn, Gengar, strong Fighting-type, Dragon-type sweeper)? I tried a team out with Choice Scarf Genesect over Scizor and Thundurus-T over Rotom-W (a more minor change) and while it was a bit overloaded on the special side, it did really well for me, and I believe august got to at least #7 on PS with it. However, I have been wanting to try out Choice Band Genesect instead to try and surprise opponents, especially because this would also give me a jump on a lot of common switch-ins.
Also I'd definitely point out that the Rock Polish set is definitely the least consistent Genesect set simply because there are battles when it will absolutely smash and there are battles where it just serves as death fodder. I've been trying to support it really well but it definitely is not Genesect's best set and I'd probably go with a Pokemon that will do more damage when it is able to boost its Speed, such as Terrakion or something. Has anyone really found a lot of success with the Rock Polish set?
Choice Band Genesect is pretty good...if you get an attack boost from download, U-Turn hits like insanely hard, OHKOing weaker pokemon and anything weak to it, and even stuff that resists it won't like eating one on the switch.
What other moves do you use on that set? Genesect isn't really overflowing with physical attacks.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
1. u-turn
2. iron head / flamethrower / ice beam
3. iron head / flamethrower / ice beam
4. explosion
it's a highly underrated set and more people need to use it, generally standard rotom-w doesn't expect to be nearly ohko'd by +1 genesect's u-turn.
you can also run zen headbutt (gets some surprise OHKO's) and quick attack (good way to pick off some weakened pokes)...iron head isn't all that useful though...
Lavos
Banned deucer.
i disagree, iron head is great stab and it doesn't force you to switch out like uturn does. besides, what does zen headbutt hit? venusaur?
quick attack isn't a bad idea, but the opposing pokes have to be really weakened...if you're going to run a cb quick attack over a cb explosion your team must really need some help lol.
personally i prefer a set of u-turn/iron head/flamethrower/explosion, it just flat out hits the hardest and flamethrower is a great surprise factor once the opponent realizes you're cb.
i wouldn't say what iron head is great STAB - steel is a lousy offensive typing. it might be worth trying though, it might hit a few things worth hitting.
zen headbutt is good for stuff like, yes, venusaur, tentacruel, toxicroak, basically anything slower that is weak to psychic. i'm considering the set you suggested though, might be worth a shot.
zen headbutt is good for stuff like, yes, venusaur, tentacruel, toxicroak, basically anything slower that is weak to psychic. i'm considering the set you suggested though, might be worth a shot.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
i guess tentacruel is the big one, because iron head ohkos toxicroak and you're not going to want to stay in on venusaur under sun. if it doesn't have hp fire, well, you have flamethrower for it, so i prefer iron head just to smash stuff, especially dragonite/salamence since i'm not running ice beam. it's also really useful against terrakion that thinks you can't hurt it, as well as landorus. i agree with you, steel is a bad offensive type, but on cb genesect it has its uses.
i suppose zen headbutt could be worth a try, though. thanks for the suggestion.
The best thing about Choice Band Genesect is the way walls are working. Most special walls (Gastrodon, Blissey) Genesect can't touch even with U-turn on its standard set. However, the physical walls of BW2 (Slowbro, Skarmory, Hippowdon) get rolled over hard by genesect's coverage, on top of dishing out huge damage to the special walls as well with U-turn. I think it's a far superior option to specs or rock polish, but expert belt still has my vote. However, I haven't tried CB gene, but that's what the future is for.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
you make an excellent point that i think more people should be aware of when considering genesect: the choice band version puts a ton of pressure on walls because they're suddenly unsure of what to expect when they see the damage u-turn does on their special wall, and it puts the opponent in a sticky situation where they have to either send in their skarmory and pray you don't have flamethrower, or play it safe and lose 65% on their sdef jirachi to a banded u-turn.
of course i'm in no way undermining how effective the scarf set is. fantastic offensive pivot, scouter, and revenge killer, all rolled up into one.
Fantastic pivot as and (best) revenge killer in the game it may be, I still find it disappointing. The inability to wallbreak with such wallbreaking-style pokemon is something I don't like to do a lot. It's like putting a choice scarf on hydreigon: of course it's effective, but you're really putting a limiter on its potential. Not having access to all the power locked up inside those pokemon drives me insane. Sometimes maybe I will use genesect as a 5th generation flygon, but for now I'm in love with its pure power.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
i'm glad you bring that up, because i think it's often overlooked that genesect has fantastic base 120 attacking stats. that and its superb movepool make it a stellar revenge killer, but also a choice band user of considerable prowess, as explained above.
related to that topic, i'm curious if anybody has tried a choice specs genesect, and if so, how has it worked out for you? i've never tried it myself, but from the looks of it, i feel like it would be extremely underwhelming given the great potential of the scarf/band sets. still, i'm not going to give up on it until people tell me it's horrible. thoughts?
i think since most of the time you're spamming uturn, specs is, ironically, a waste of genesect's power. it's true that part of the reason uturn works so well on genesect is because almost nothing is willing to stay in on its wide special coverage. it's also true that with specs, genesect's raw killing ability goes up. but its uturn doesn't really gain much from the change and you lose a lot of speed. moreover, genesect is a really prediction-heavy mon if you focus on its coverage moves. unlike guys like specs latios that just click draco meteor and go, a poorly chosen special attack will force genesect out for little to no gain, which is precisely why uturn works so well. the lack of stab, and the poor neutral coverage of each individual move, also hurts.
i think if you really want to make use of genesect's broad special attacking pool, expert belt really is the way to go (i would argue it's better than LO, actually, because genesect's classic set is choiced). being able to switch moves is so much more useful than getting some extra power on unstabbed coverage, seeing as being able to select a super effective move will probably be equal to or better than a neutral/resisted specs-backed hit. compare that to a specs-packing dragon (again, latios) where chances are super effective coverage is meaningless and you could just meteor everything, in which case it's not so much about move selection as it is about raw power. i think this is also part of why hydreigon does better with LO/ebelt than with choice items. hydreigon's coverage is excellent (meteor/fire blast/earth power/dark pulse/focus blast/uturn/earthquake/superpower) and it doesn't even need a hidden power, so the ability to switch moves can often make up for the lack of choice boost - the reason being that you have a ton of super effective coverage to compensate with. latios on the other hand has very poor coverage options (meteor/psychic/psyshock/surf/thunder) so it's tougher to score super effective hits and thus you tend to get more out of just spamming your strongest move. also, hydreigon can use uturn more easily on a non-choiced set to get out of matchups that it can't win, which is something it shares with genesect (uturn is also nice for ditching -2 spatk drops from draco meteor and -1atk/def drops from superpower)
idk if my point came across very well in this post...? i guess what it boils down to is that, if most of your special attacking prowess is due to the excellent variety of coverage you carry, you generally benefit more from an ebelt/LO than from specs. genesect has no stab on any of its coverage moves but it has a lot of them, so it's a great example of that. on the other hand, if you have strong neutral power, specs can be very rewarding for that kind of "spam this until you get forced out" mindset. keldeo under rain (is your target immune to hydro pump? Y: use secret sword or switch out. N: use hydro pump), darmanitan under sun, or latios, are good examples of that. hydreigon is somewhere in between because it has a powerful draco meteor that rewards choiced sets but can also smash a lot of stuff with its coverage. i think people generally lean towards LO/ebelt on hydreigon mainly because it's too slow to sweep and it's easier to wallbreak if you can switch moves, but it's the kind of mon that can do any item well. i'd imagine that if hydreigon had just like 5 more speed, choiced sets would become a lot more popular (as well as hydreigon in general >_>)
i think if you really want to make use of genesect's broad special attacking pool, expert belt really is the way to go (i would argue it's better than LO, actually, because genesect's classic set is choiced). being able to switch moves is so much more useful than getting some extra power on unstabbed coverage, seeing as being able to select a super effective move will probably be equal to or better than a neutral/resisted specs-backed hit. compare that to a specs-packing dragon (again, latios) where chances are super effective coverage is meaningless and you could just meteor everything, in which case it's not so much about move selection as it is about raw power. i think this is also part of why hydreigon does better with LO/ebelt than with choice items. hydreigon's coverage is excellent (meteor/fire blast/earth power/dark pulse/focus blast/uturn/earthquake/superpower) and it doesn't even need a hidden power, so the ability to switch moves can often make up for the lack of choice boost - the reason being that you have a ton of super effective coverage to compensate with. latios on the other hand has very poor coverage options (meteor/psychic/psyshock/surf/thunder) so it's tougher to score super effective hits and thus you tend to get more out of just spamming your strongest move. also, hydreigon can use uturn more easily on a non-choiced set to get out of matchups that it can't win, which is something it shares with genesect (uturn is also nice for ditching -2 spatk drops from draco meteor and -1atk/def drops from superpower)
idk if my point came across very well in this post...? i guess what it boils down to is that, if most of your special attacking prowess is due to the excellent variety of coverage you carry, you generally benefit more from an ebelt/LO than from specs. genesect has no stab on any of its coverage moves but it has a lot of them, so it's a great example of that. on the other hand, if you have strong neutral power, specs can be very rewarding for that kind of "spam this until you get forced out" mindset. keldeo under rain (is your target immune to hydro pump? Y: use secret sword or switch out. N: use hydro pump), darmanitan under sun, or latios, are good examples of that. hydreigon is somewhere in between because it has a powerful draco meteor that rewards choiced sets but can also smash a lot of stuff with its coverage. i think people generally lean towards LO/ebelt on hydreigon mainly because it's too slow to sweep and it's easier to wallbreak if you can switch moves, but it's the kind of mon that can do any item well. i'd imagine that if hydreigon had just like 5 more speed, choiced sets would become a lot more popular (as well as hydreigon in general >_>)
To be honest, it's completely underwhelming. The power it has the potential to achieve seems tempting at first, but when you look at the results it's just awful. For example, even with a special attack boost - which the opponent will actively try to prevent you from getting - it only has a 1.17 chance to 2HKO specially defensive Heatran after SR damage with Thunderbolt, and a .24% chance to 3HKO standard Blissey with Bug Buzz. So it really doesn't gain much in the way of power, and the loss in speed compared to Choice Scarf is so crucial that it makes a Choice Specs set non-viable in my eyes.
EDIT: Also what alkinesthetase said. The power U-turn gets from Band, the speed from a Scarf that gives you much more freedom in spamming it, or the ability to switch moves is much mroe useful than an extra special offensive boost on Genesect.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
okay, that was pretty convincing. two sound testimontials that specs genesect sucks + me testing it on showdown and confirming those sentiments. new players, if you're reading this, don't use specs genesect.
moving on to other genesect-related topics, anyone making use of the rock polish set? i've found it to be extremely situational: at times it's a perfect sweeper, at other times it's a waste of a team member. i've also asked around on irc, and some people have nothing but good things to say about it, while others dismiss it as a gimmick that hardly ever works. your thoughts on the boosting bug?
moving on to other genesect-related topics, anyone making use of the rock polish set? i've found it to be extremely situational: at times it's a perfect sweeper, at other times it's a waste of a team member. i've also asked around on irc, and some people have nothing but good things to say about it, while others dismiss it as a gimmick that hardly ever works. your thoughts on the boosting bug?
Again, genesect has horrid STABs FOR A SPECIAL ATTACKER. Physically, it can cover a lot of special walls nicely with some additional coverage moves for physical walls. Not many special attackers have that privilege aside from some psyshock users. I feel banded would give you a better spamming potential over specs.
@alkines OHGOD darmanitan in the sun. If you have no heatran, something is dying. Even vaporeon....OHKOing my vaporeon....
@alkines OHGOD darmanitan in the sun. If you have no heatran, something is dying. Even vaporeon....OHKOing my vaporeon....
If rock polish can be saved until the verrrry end game, then it's golden. Otherwise, not so much. Also, it doesn't have as much muscle as you would believe to get past defensive pokemon. It's great at going through offensive teams, as it has nifty priority resistances. It really can't OHKO much, so saving for the very end when everything is weakened is crucial. I've seen it paired with a sash, which screwed my only way of dealing with it. Proper support would allow it to do its job, but at that point the team itself would be extra weak to stall. Maybe getting it with sableye would allow it do function well.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
well i'm watching a good friend of mine test it out on showdown, and i'm noticing the key to its success seems to be hazards. a good spike-stacking balanced team can put rock polish genesect in the perfect position to set up late-game and sweep, and most opponents don't even see it coming until it's too late. i.e.: oh look a genesect switched into my 75% dragonite, guess i'll get out of ther- OH GOD NO WHY, etc.
maybe a core of ttar/skarm/jelli/rp gene could do some work? just an idea, but i think it merits testing.
as with all other sweepers carrying speed-boosting moves, they tend to only shine against offensive teams where they don't need a ton of punch to win. i think the same can be said for any sweeper that runs rock polish/agility but genesect has the particular problem of relatively poor power for a sweeper (all its coverage is unstabbed) where as other rock polishers like terrakion can crack stuff open just by spamming close combat. that's also part of why RP sect benefits a lot more from hazards than some other RPers... kinda needs them if it wants to be scoring OHKOs.
lol i calced for the hell of it and 252+ CB darm in the sun deals min 70% to 248/252+ vaporeon. crazy. you take like 30% of your own HP in recoil because you hit THAT hard
I just saw a post in ubers today about not using garchomp as a swampert because of "opportunity cost"...the choice of not using the amazing scarf or SD garchomp on your team. I feel that RP is an opportunity cost set...it will get KOs, but so will every other Genesect set if played correctly, and Gene just doesn't have the moves to sweep. It's a waste of potential, really. Also, its bad for a set-up sweeper to have a total hard stop, heatran. Before anyone says anything about HP ground, 1. have you ever seen it used, 2. does it have the space to give up a move
RP Genesect definitely isn't bad, but it's not that great either. As has already been said, it takes quite a bit of support to pull off, and doesn't have the destructive power that other sweepers do, being unable to break through well built defensive cores. It works for sure, but it's one of those things that you have to specifically build a team around to work; it doesn't have anywhere near the versatility or general applicability that it's other sets do.
and @GatoDelFuego Expert Belt would certainly still be viable. On most Pokemon a Life Orb would be preferred, but since Genesect is spamming UI-turn so much, you really don't want that sort of timer on it. It's the same reason why Expert Belt is so good on Landorus. if it was used solely for it's surprise factor, Expert Belt sets probably wouldn't even get on-site sets since it would completely ruin the effectiveness of them.
and @GatoDelFuego Expert Belt would certainly still be viable. On most Pokemon a Life Orb would be preferred, but since Genesect is spamming UI-turn so much, you really don't want that sort of timer on it. It's the same reason why Expert Belt is so good on Landorus. if it was used solely for it's surprise factor, Expert Belt sets probably wouldn't even get on-site sets since it would completely ruin the effectiveness of them.
I want to ask a philisophical question: what happens if Expert Belt becomes the standard item? With the bluffing of a choice set gone, will it still be viable? It would be the first case, I would think, of a number 1 set being an expert belt. Personally, I think it would still be great, as expert belt still gives a tasty 20% boost.