Came back to smogon mostly because I saw that there were a lot of misconceptions that made almost everyone start to say that Skymin is nowhere near banworthy which I will blatantly say is wrong.
- Amazing 127 Speed Tier. in a class of it's own and able to outpace lots of threats that aren't augmented via choice scarf or other forms of speed control.
- The Grass/Flying typing. Giving it pretty decent offensive coverage throughout the meta, letting it hit on a lot of things at least neutrally and muscle past bulky waters such as Suicune and Wash Rotom. Also, Flying type grants it immunity to Earthquake, one of the most common and annoying mves in the meta.
- Access to the Serene Grace Ability. The most annoying thing about this Pokemon. Coupled with Air Slash, this thing can hit for pretty solid damage and the very high 60% chance to flinch, making it a very disruptive Pokemon to common balance teams.
- Seed Flare. THis highly powerful Base 120 power Grass type move i Shaymin's most powerful attack. And coupled with an 80% chance to drop Special Defense by 2 stages can make things that would otherwise tank or resist its blows no problem get completely leveled next turn or support an incoming special move by its partner if doubling up on the enemy.
Basically all of these things are pushing teambuilding to a screeching halt to the point where something in Tier 1 is just getting pushed down to Tier 1.5 in Rotom-Wash, purely because it's a sack of shit against hyper offense teams unless you run Trick+Scarf, and while it's not all Skymin, it is one part of hyper offense as a whole just tearing apart poor Rotom. 127 Speed is not contested for anything other than other Skymin, and of all things ranked on the viability rankings, very few things (Aerodactyl, Deoxys-Attack, and Mega Gengar - Mega Manectric is just pure shit) naturally outspeed it, and each one takes heavy amounts of damage from a Seed Flare/Air Slash on switch-in. Of the two things that use priority to beat Skymin (aside from things you are forced to run in order to beat Skymin that would really just be terrible outside of a Skymin meta game, such as Ice Shard on Mamoswine/Weavile), only Thundurus is that reliable. Quick Guard from Keldeo stops Talonflame completely, and Air Slash gets a straight 2HKO on Talonflame. It doesn't enjoy switching into a Hydro Pump from Keldeo either. Thundurus even has plenty of issues. It has to kill a Keldeo first before even attempting to Thunder Wave, because if it just Thunder Waves emptily into a possible Quick Guard it has not only wasted a turn but let the Skymin do something very important. Even if you have Thundurus which is just a great threat to Keldeo+Skymin, ORAS brought Mega Diancie to eternally fuck things like Thundurus, Aerodactyl, and Mega Gengar as well as Talonflame. The best checks to a Keldeo+Skymin core aren't even full stops which is just outright stupid, and lots of common partners for this two mon core are full stops to the checks.
Now this is an announcement to all people saying that Hyper Offense will still be as consistent in a meta game without Skymin. SPOILERS: that's more remote from correct than anything said in this thread. Skymin can't be so easily replaced by Serperior or Sceptile or some other weird grass shit that beats Mega Diancie, because they'd literally just be some fast grass shit that beats Mega Diancie and Keldeo and pretty much nothing else.
Serperior by no means OHKOs Suicune unless you're at +2 and nothing has managed to killed you yet, and unlike Skymin it doesn't just completely shit on Breloom. It also doesn't create free switches to things with fast Air Slash flinches, as the 56% chance to flinch with Air Slash is much higher than whatever the hell Serperior has, the best it has is either Swagger or Glare and neither of those are even close to a Serene Grace Air Slash flinch. Finally, I've never seen a fast grass not named Skymin that has a good matchup against Steels.
Now, the cons:
- Grass/Flying Typing. While giving it immunity to Earthquake, Rage Powder, and the oh so annoying Spore, this typing also hinders it in the form of its x4 weakness to Ice, weakness to fire, weakness to Rock, and and weakness to Flying in the form of the ever so threatening Priority Brave bird from good ol' TalonSkill.
- Weakness to the most common of spread moves [barring Earthquake]. Icy wind, Heat Wave, Rock Slide, Diamond Storm, Blizzard. Easily thrown at Shaymin and it's powerless to defend itself against them.
- No way to handle Speed Control. Any form of speed control will ruin this thing's momentum. Icy Wind dropping its speed by 1 stage will let it get outsped by the majority of the un-augmented metagame. And with Shaymin's fragile defenses, it's not taking any good hits very well whatsoever from anything neutral. Tailwind isn't as heavily jarring on it, but letting things outspeed it and get around its disruptive Air Slash flinches is quite clutch and will vastly null it's threat level. At least for the 4 turns it's up.
- Trick Room and Yellow Magic! These two things completely stop Shaymin in its tracks. Trick room turns it's amazing speed tier from an incredible asses to a damning hinderence. Even the slowest of mons will be outpacing and shredding it to ribbons like nothing once the win button has been pressed. And Thunder Wave will achieve the same result permanantly while also having the added chance to not allow it to attack at all on some turns. Being this slow, Shaymin will lose all momentum and any level of threat it has will be null and void for the time being.
Grass/Flying typing: I see no Ice types in this meta game that are remotely relevant aside from Abomasnow, which is rarely used (until we started suspecting Skymin..............) and Kyurem-B, which definitely loves facing a Keldeo/Diancie/Kangaskhan. The only Flying type moves come from Talonflame (which I have addressed as nowhere near a counter to Skymin+Keldeo) and other Skymin, but ignoring other Skymin since we are debating Skymin's brokenness, it only comes from Talonflame. Weakness to Rock I can agree with - Landorus-T Rock Slides beat Skymin, however I wish you luck getting the wanted flinches on Keldeo.
Weakness to common spread moves: Blizzard is only used on Abomasnow, which gets brutally fucked by Keldeo's Secret Sword as well as Skymin's Air Slash. Any other Blizzard users are usually noticeable (for instance, seeing Greninja on a hail team should be a red flag), and they sorta get fucked hard by Seed Flare, Air Slash, or Secret Sword. Diamond Storm only comes from Mega Diancie which just gets straight OHKOd by Seed Flare and can't switch into Keldeo or Skymin at all. Icy Wind is most definitely not a common spread move, and Heat Wave only comes from Charizard and Heatran, one of those two gets fucked by Secret Sword from Keldeo and both of those two lose hard to Mega Diancie, and one of those two loses hard to Mega Kangaskhan while the other has big issues.
No way to handle Speed Control: Air Slash flinches? OHKOing Suicune and Breloom? Having Bisharp as a partner probably 60% of the time? Having Hoopa-U as a partner the other 40% of the time? OHKOing Jellicent as well as using a Seed Flare+partner's attack to potentially KO a Trick Room/Tailwind setter? Protect Stalling? My, what a speed control weak Pokemon........
Trick Room and Yellow Magic: Trick Room definitely has issues with both Skymin and Keldeo as the two relevant Fake Out users lose to Keldeo brutally and Skymin has nice access to a 56% chance to flinch. You should only say, when discussing Skymin,
if Trick Room goes up, Skymin could potentially lose if the user of Skymin doesn't do things such as Protect stall or bring in something like Mega Diancie, Kangaskhan, Bisharp, or Hoopa-U to deal with the Trick Room that's up, or even Kyurem-B having the ability to stall out Trick Room with Substitute, which is kind of great for the Skymin user considering there's only a 44% chance to actually even set up Trick Room, unless you just want to sack your Fake Out user and target Skymin over Keldeo. As for Yellow Magic, if it's Quick Guard Keldeo (which it likely is if it's Kangaskhan>Diancie, if not then have fun thunder wave spamming), you won't have fun against Skymin.
Now I did say a brief thing about Diancie just getting most of Skymin's checks. The thing is that Diancie just destroys all of Skymin's checks, but there are definitely variants of Hyper Offense that are successful even without Diancie. How? Because all of Skymin's checks are anally fucked by strong fast rock moves. Landorus-T and Diancie are the best examples. Aerodactyl serves as a secondary option to defeat Talonflame but not Thundurus. Of course, finally's HO Sun has Rhyperior - mainly significant because it resists Brave Bird, has great defense and HP, redirects Thunderbolt and Thunder Wave, and of course has amazing access to Rock Slide.
One final note: if Hyper Offense were just the nature of 2v2 meta games, how is Hyper Offense so easy to take down in VGC??? Making a comparison to VGC fits for once, because they are completely different meta games yet still share the idea of 2v2. Hyper Offense is in no way a stellar archetype there despite being a 2v2 meta game, and Defensive teams as well as bulky offense teams actually work there and don't work here. It is not the nature of 2v2 meta games, it's the nature of a game centralized around by far the best supportive attacker DOU has ever seen.
Overall what we have here is a Pokemon that overcomes its weaknesses easily when given the right partner, and excels against anything it's not weak to while only being considerably good against a team with lots of checks to it. Remember that Hyper Offense will be far less amazing than it is right now without Skymin and will be by no means a great archetype when you make your vote.