Moltres (OU Anti-Lead)

[(makeup)]

Moltres (OU Power Herb Lead)

http://www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/moltres

status: needs proofreading

[SET]
name: OU Power Herb Lead
move1: Sky Attack
move2: SolarBeam
move3: Fire Blast / Overheat
move4: U-turn
Item: Power Herb
Nature: Hasty / Naive
EVs: 172 Atk / 252 HP / 84 Spe
Ability: Pressure

[SET COMMENTS]

<p>Due to Moltres' huge Stealth Rock weakness and Stealth Rock's abundance in OU, many people don't use it (It's weakness to Swampert is very unappealing too), but using it before Stealth Rock is still viable in OU. Sky Attack rips Anti-Lead Machamp and Gallade to shreds, both of which can survive Air Slash and hit heavy on Moltres. It's also the most reliable attack you have against Roserade (Although it gets rid of Power Herb).</p>

<p>Not only does Power Herb help Sky Attack not fail, but SolarBeam also abuses it. Hidden Power Grass will never OHKO a 252 HP neutral Swampert, but SolarBeam hits the OHKO mark easily. SolarBeam also kills random Kabutops and Omastar leads (like you'll ever see those in OU). The choice between Fire Blast and Overheat is tough. Overheat will do extreme damage to anything that doesn't resist it, but Fire Blast can be used more than once without criplling Special Attack. Fire Blast is recomended, but Overheat is the better choice if you want to have some fun with U-turn, but both options are viable.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

Just to show how powerful Moltres is, here are some calcs against common leads:

Azelf: Fire Blast (99% - 117.1%) then U-turn out for the KO.​

Swampert: SolarBeam (137.6% - 162.4%).​

Heatran: U-turn (4.3% - 5.3%(yeah, it's not very strong)), not much you can do here, but how often do you see Heatran leading?​

Metagross: Fire Blast (114.6% - 135.5%).​

Machamp: Sky Attack (111.7% - 132.1%).​

Tyranitar: U-turn for super effective damage (27.7% - 32.7%), , but not enough to 3HKO.​

Jirachi: Fire Blast 111.4% - 132%), Moltres doesn't mind TrickScarf as it turns Moltres into a revenge killer!​

Roserade: Fire Blast (140.5% - 165.6%) then U-turn.​

 

[TubaKing]

I'm not sure what the EV spread you're proposing is doing.
I'd imagine that if you're trying to use this as an anti-lead that you'd want to run a 4/252/252 spread and either a Timid or Modest nature to get the jump on opposing leads and add add some power to help beat Occa Berry Metagross.

Once Power Herb is gone, half of Moltres' moveset is effectively useless, which greatly reduces midgame utility. Why not run a Life Orb with Air Slash and Hidden Power Grass instead? It nabs all the same KOs against the leads listed and grants Moltres some usefulness later in the game. Also, the damage output of a Modest Life Orb Overheat to Occa Berry Metagross is 95.9% - 112.7%, which is markedly better than non-Life Orb (or Choice Specs) variants. If you run Modest, though, you will always be slower than standard Roserade (which is true of your current EV spread as well). Running a Timid nature means you always outrun Roserade that runs HP Fire and a Focus Sash, giving you the chance to win if you get flinch hax after breaking his sash or Sleep Powder misses.

I'm not sure if you posted this in the wrong place, or if this somehow got QC approval, but this set seems really iffy to me.

EDIT: Here's a post that Plus made about a proposed Choice Scarf Moltres Anti-Lead not too long ago:

I'm going to reject this based on the fact that the things this moltres can force out can quite possibly see it coming as setsuna said before, however this alone does not necessarily mean a "win", Machamp is commonly paired with Shuca heatran in the back, and what are you going to do to that? A good Swampert player would scout the HP Grass with Protect and proceed to switch out, and what next? Said player would bring in something to take the HP Grass and force you out in the process. It does not matter if you get rocks down turn one as long as you actually get the rocks up. And unless your team is specifically tailored to not let leads get any openings whatsoever, you can be assured that any lead with SR will get their rocks up in a certain scenario once you bring in something that said SR lead can exploit.

So long as an opponent can find one oppurtunity to get rocks up on your team (which is stupidly easy unless you are packing 6 checks to one lead), then Moltres's effectiveness goes down substantially. It won't be easy to switch Moltres in at all unless you have a spinner, which limits the types of teams you can use this lead on. "Use a spinner", like what? Forretress or Starmie, take your pick. If you honestly need a rapid spinner on every team you use this set on to prevent a scenario in which your opponent will get rocks up any turn in the game, then I'm not buying this set. Apart from that, Moltres's only benefit as a lead comes from the surprise factor of actually using scarf moltres to OHKO leads. Sure, all leads may have bad matchups, but the main selling point of many leads is their ability to d o what they do best later on in the game when an undesired matchup occurs turn 1. With the SR weakness you got going around, Moltres's effectiveness goes down after SR goes up, which can be anytime in the battle.

Rejecting.

 

[(makeup)]

Well actually the EV spread gives it enough Speed to outrun neutral Gallade (I've been seeing a lot of these guys lately) and neutral Mamoswine (I get the jump on hiim before he can Stone Edge me and OHKO with Fire Blast (unless it's sashed)). Your idea sounds good, and I didn't know I needed apporoval (Oops) Should I delete this or something...?

 

[TubaKing]

A moderator will move this to the OU Quality Control subforum for you when they read through this post. Once this topic is moved to QC, the QC staff will state their opinions on this and give it three stamps of rejection or approval. If this set gets rejected, it will be put in the locked analyses subforum for people to look at for ideas that have already been rejected by QC. If it is approved, it will be moved back here for you to do the write-up of this set.

 

[(makeup)]

Ok thank you I was worried about getting baned or something...well I just personally think this set was cool and I've tested it on P-O (Sadly, shoddy doesn't allow Power Herb as an item for some reason) so I really hope it gets approved,thanks though

 

[TAY]

You need to put some testing into this set (and really some time into playing pokemon!). Sky Attack and Solarbeam are not competitively viable on any pokemon, especially on a lead. What is to stop Machamp from just switching out of sky attack after it uses dynamicpunch, lol?

Good job with the concept of this set though; it is definitely viable in OU. Feel free to repost in Quality Control after you do some more testing.

p.s. try modest with overheat to OHKO machamp (you must use Choice Specs or Life Orb; honestly white herb is a waste on a lead that will probably have to switch out after getting a KO). HP Grass is nice to hit swampert but a lot of people expect it, so hp ground might be worth a shot to hit lead heatran. A good number of people don't lead with shuca anymore!