A Pokemon being good doesn’t mean its suspect worthy and a wall of calcs doesn’t prove a Pokemon is broken.Now that Metagross-Mega, Urshifu, Ash-Greninja, Tornadus-Therian and Darmanitan-Galar are out of Natdex, a lot is going to change and new pokemons that will emerge with great force. I have to admit that after the ban on the 5, the goal became a little healthier. However, there are still several threats present. one of them being more problematic than the others.
Dracovish. It is not the first time that they talk about this pokemon and it probably won't be the last.
It has two main sets, one with choise band and one with choise scarf. with Scarf he is faster than several pokemons, one of them lopunny-mega being the second fastest pokemon in Natdex. 409 may not seem like much, but it is enough that the only pokemon faster than that, with the exception of other scarfs, is Dragapult.
while with Choise Band he becomes an absurd wall destroyer, there is no safe entrance to it. any pokemon suffers from Dracovish, and there is no usable water immunity to guarantee this. its tufts have a hard time facing it.
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tangrowth: 164-193 (40.5 - 47.7%) -- 59% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 248 HP / 16 Def Tapu Fini: 233-274 (67.9 - 79.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Crunch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 226-268 (57.3 - 68%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 179-211 (45.4 - 53.5%) -- 40.2% chance to 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Alomomola: 221-261 (41.3 - 48.8%) -- 14.8% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Ferrothorn: 158-186 (44.8 - 52.8%) -- 28.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Psychic Fangs vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 190-224 (62.5 - 73.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 141-167 (46.3 - 54.9%) -- 98.8% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
as you can see, Choise band Dracovish has a great power and the situation only gets worse in the rain.
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tangrowth in Rain: 246-290 (60.8 - 71.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 248 HP / 16 Def Tapu Fini in Rain: 349-411 (101.7 - 119.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro in Rain: 269-317 (68.2 - 80.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Ferrothorn in Rain: 237-279 (67.3 - 79.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Alomomola in Rain: 332-391 (62.1 - 73.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Strong Jaw Dracovish Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex in Rain: 212-250 (69.7 - 82.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
Certainly, with the ban of 5 pokemon, Dracovish becomes even more popular and problematic than before. Maybe you can have a Suspect Test of this depending on how everything develops.
The problem with Dracovish is that it makes more more compromises when choosing sets and the weaknesses of both show up more often than before.
Yes, Dracovish is fast when you slap a choice scarf of it, but you have to slap a choice scarf on in to get Dracovish that fast, which comes at a large power cost of power, which is more noticeable here than in SWSH pre-DLC, and you can say a lot of Pokemon are fast with a choice scarf since it’s an item that boosts your speed by a fair amount compared to non-Choice Scarf users. Not to mention that Dracovish needs to be Jolly nature to reach 409 Speed, which something like Toxapex will be 3HKO’d by Psychic Fangs.
Yes, Dracovish 2HKOs a lot of walls with Choice Band and being in Rain, but it’s much easier to keep Dracovish off the field and alternative weathers are much easier to utilize thanks to better setters and especially now that Ash-Greninja and Tornadus-T are gone, making Rain a lot less viable.
There is also the issue of more priority users in NatDex that nullify the double power in Fishious Rebd, having far more viable checks, having actual non-Water Immune counters like Mega Slowbro, there existing scarier Pokemon in the Meta now, and the Meta is going to be drastically different now that 5 top tiers were banned.
At least wait a few days before calling to ban a Pokemon that’s Currently B Ranked, especially when the thing that changed was removing some of its buddies. It hasn’t even been a full week since those 5 Pokemon were banned.
In unrelated news (or sort of related I guess);
This won’t be Metagame defining, but it will be a pretty decent combo to consider since Abomasnow could potentially be viable.
Yeah after playtesting, Abomasnow is just shit.
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