Strategy & Metagame Knocking On Wood: What Knock Off Has Improved in XY UU

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The main thought I'm having on this article is to show what mons have been significantly improved due to the Knock Off buff. Pokemon include:
Mienshao
Crawdaunt
Tangrowth
Absol
Escavalier

As a show of how I would go through it:

Escavalier:

Escavalier has been a lucky soul this generation, obtaining the buff to Knock Off and Drill Run, letting it be a potent threat in the metagame with a strong 135 base attack stat to dominate switch ins. Not many Pokemon like to come in on a Choice Banded Knock Off, and it's solid 70/105/105 bulk is not laughable either.
Escavalier @ Choice Band
Ability: Swarm
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Brave Nature
- Drill Run
- Megahorn
- Knock Off
- Iron Head
The Set
Escavalier will do extreme damage with max attack and a Choice Band. Bug and Steel STABS are very nice, being able to hit a lot of metagame threats neutral or super-effective (minus Zapdos and a few other Pokemon) but the two STABS are quite mighty. Swarm can even let Megahorn excel to a even stronger power, able to dominate threats with as much as a poke from it. Escavalier now gets Drill Run as an egg move, letting it hit switches that would resist it's STABs (Toxicroak for one) for super-effective damage. And of course, Knock Off.
How Knock Off Plays A Part
Knock Off lets Escavalier hit switches much more freely (because nothing likes to lose it's items, other than Hawlucha.) Plus, a Knock Off is brutal anyway coming off the attack stat of Escavalier. It helps it utilize Choice Band better by not having as many switches.

252+ Atk Choice Band Escavalier Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Hippowdon: 115-136 (27.3 - 32.3%) -- 61.2% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Escavalier Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Cofagrigus: 260-306 (81.2 - 95.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Escavalier Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Cofagrigus: 198-234 (61.8 - 73.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Escavalier Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 242-286 (61.4 - 72.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Escavalier Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 237-279 (33.6 - 39.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

I imagine the next issue is almost done, so this probably would be better to do for next issue.
 
PumpHead, for such a specific topic, you'll need to go a little more in-depth to get more content, because right now it doesn't look like much. Perhaps Knocking Off specific items will allow Escavalier to obtain certain 2HKOs/KOs in general that it wouldn't have got (due to Eviolite/Leftovers/etc)? I think if you follow suite of how Fuzznip did his Assault Vest article (http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue32/biting-the-bullet), it'll go better. (I mean, you can take ideas from it but still do your article as you'd like to do.) So basically, if you're able to add more content to your stuff, this topic looks okay.

The UU forum/UU in general is still relatively new though soooo perhaps we can wait a bit? I'd like you to get at least some more UU posts so you can show off your knowledge before you start writing the article. Like, maybe a couple weeks then we'll go on and see how it is now. We just want to make sure you have the proper credentials before we approve you. If there are people who can vouch for your UU skills, that will help too. (We're more likely to trust badged vouchers hehe, but if the voucher is pretty well known to be a good battler or something, that's fine too.) Would that be okay with you?
 
Yeah, that sounds fine. Right now I'm in a bit of a struggle in UU (kind of like a writer's block for battling) but I'm working towards being more of a person in the UU community. I will wait a bit.
 
PumpHead, so how's it going? I think if you're able to add more content to your Escavalier then be able to apply what you wrote for that afterward to your other Pokemon, this will go well. Can you think of anything more to write?

Afterward, if you get more written, I'll get some of the UU experts to look at what you wrote for content checking. Once that's all done, we should be good to go!
 
I think I'll scrap this. UU hasn't caught my interest as much I thought this gen, and I might let it settle before I try something like this again.
 
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