masterful said:
-_- What mixKen carries Shadow Claw/StoneEdge?
About other Kens he is just a 'check' as he can't switch in on one of its four moves.
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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 3 - So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
- Thread starter reachzero
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-_- What mixKen carries Shadow Claw/StoneEdge?
About other Kens he is just a 'check' as he can't switch in on one of its four moves.
What would MixKen run BESIDES one of those two moves?
Is it just me, or does Blaziken remind me of Gen 4 Salamence? They're the same in that they have no counters since they can run physical or mixed sets that make it impossible to predict correctly. Think Slowbro's a counter? Blaziken 2HKOS with HP Grass/Electric. Also, Blaziken can arguably run a physical set-up set even better than Salamence with no SR weakness and Outrage Lock-in. IMO, Speed Boost Blaziken is potentially even stronger than Mence. However, I'm on the fence on whether it should be banned. Blaze needs to get hit in order to set up SD, and after that a priority user can easily finish Blaze off.
Pretty much any MixKen running HP Grass or Electric will have Stone Edge. It is also an option on HP Ice MixKen, but most prefer to run Protect in that slot.
Shadow Claw isn't really seen on MixKen in my experience, as it lacks power to KO bulkier ghosts without an SD behind it.
EDIT: This is completely unrelated to the Blaziken/Drizzle discussion right now, but has anyone other than me been using NP Azelf to decent success? Now that the most common Scizor I see are SD / Bug Bite / BP / Roost, and Mach Punch is the priority of choice, it tears shit up with few issues. LO Psychic / HP Fight / Fire Blast / Nasty Plot is all it really needs, honestly.
It outspeeds the entire metagame except for Starmie (HP Fight is imperfect speed), and hits really freaking hard without Blissey around. Fighting trio? KOd. 252/168 Sassy Tyranitar? KOd at +2. Scizor / Ferrothorn? KOd. Jirachi? KOd. Genies? KOd. Everything is crushed. Really all it needs is some support to remove Latios, Latias, and Starmie, and it will sweep with that high SpA and Psychic / Fire / Fighting coverage.
Sure Victini can do the same with additional STAB on Fire Blast, greater bulk, Focus Blast, and useful Ice/Grass resists, but Azelf outruns everything the metagame has to offer and has a bit of an element of surprise since NPElf hasn't been really used since late DP, just before Platinum. Thoughts?
I used to use NP Azelf a while back and it was certainly great. 115 speed was its greatest selling point when comparing it to bulky NP mew. Switching HP Fighting for Grass Knot would probably be a good idea since GK also KOs any variant Tyrannitar (except Rindo Berry) and also KOs several other bulky walls such as Hippowdon and Suicune that Azelf otherwise can't kill if they are running specially defensive spreads.
Well, it's been a while since I last posted.
Seeing the current nominations, I can live with them. BrightPowder and Lax Incense would be gone already. Drizzle was auto-nominated due to that being the next part of Alderon's proposal [Drizzle gets a vote in the next stage, to see if it's broken on it's own]
Drought, I can understand why it's been nominated. Blaziken is outright broken under the sun, Volcarona is pretty close without SR up, and then you get the stuff like Growth + Cholrophyill Venusaur. There are too many broken, or near broken aspects about sun for an Alderon-style ban. Either the worst abuser [*Cough* Blaziken *Cough*] need to go, or Sun does as a whole.
The diversity Sun has is another upside to it too...
Let's face it, for Sun to be getting this much flak, while the other two common weathers are strong against half of the abusers of Sun, something is wrong.
As for the pokemon... well, I'm a bit behind, so I don't know who's nominated right now. I imagine Blaziken is though, so I'll throw my two cents on him.
He needs to be banned.
Blaziken forces every single team to use one of the few scant checks to him. I personally use Azumarill, which makes me pretty boned if I face a Blaziken in the sun [Which usually winds up in my needing to sacrifice something to bring out Politoad, and then sacrifice something else to get Azumarill in safe]
Blaziken is like 4th Gen Salamence... but even worse. Salamence at least had sets which would not boost to stupid speed such as MixMance. Blaziken speed boosts automatically, and that is clearly what puts him over the edge [Otherwise, people would still be using Infernape...]
Throw in Work Up and Swords Dance as well as options, and you have a massivly powerful mixed sweeper, with insane STABS [I want to hunt down whoever had the bright idea of giving HJK 130 BP], who can boost 3 stages in a single turn, and boost constantly while attacking.
Now, I rarely get swept by Blaziken, because I use Azumarill and rain. However, I know full well how many games I would have lost without Rain/Azumarill...
Seeing the current nominations, I can live with them. BrightPowder and Lax Incense would be gone already. Drizzle was auto-nominated due to that being the next part of Alderon's proposal [Drizzle gets a vote in the next stage, to see if it's broken on it's own]
Drought, I can understand why it's been nominated. Blaziken is outright broken under the sun, Volcarona is pretty close without SR up, and then you get the stuff like Growth + Cholrophyill Venusaur. There are too many broken, or near broken aspects about sun for an Alderon-style ban. Either the worst abuser
The diversity Sun has is another upside to it too...
Let's face it, for Sun to be getting this much flak, while the other two common weathers are strong against half of the abusers of Sun, something is wrong.
As for the pokemon... well, I'm a bit behind, so I don't know who's nominated right now. I imagine Blaziken is though, so I'll throw my two cents on him.
He needs to be banned.
Blaziken forces every single team to use one of the few scant checks to him. I personally use Azumarill, which makes me pretty boned if I face a Blaziken in the sun [Which usually winds up in my needing to sacrifice something to bring out Politoad, and then sacrifice something else to get Azumarill in safe]
Blaziken is like 4th Gen Salamence... but even worse. Salamence at least had sets which would not boost to stupid speed such as MixMance. Blaziken speed boosts automatically, and that is clearly what puts him over the edge [Otherwise, people would still be using Infernape...]
Throw in Work Up and Swords Dance as well as options, and you have a massivly powerful mixed sweeper, with insane STABS [I want to hunt down whoever had the bright idea of giving HJK 130 BP], who can boost 3 stages in a single turn, and boost constantly while attacking.
Now, I rarely get swept by Blaziken, because I use Azumarill and rain. However, I know full well how many games I would have lost without Rain/Azumarill...
I've actually never used nasty plot azelf because I was never too impressed when it was used against me. That and I'm still in the age of CB Bullet punch everything. Those Scizor variants have been dissapearing however, so he might be worth a shot...
I've actually never had problems with Blaziken, my Claydol doesnt take a lot of damage from him and I can 2HKO him with Psycho Shock.
If this was during Platinum, it is a reasonable assessment. Now, though, CBScizor is less common (it dropped a bit once Mence was banned, IIRC), and fighting priority is more common, as well as Extremespeed somewhat.
And if you just think about the coverage, there are very few things that resist Psychic / Fire / Fighting - Latios, Latias, Starmie, and Victini are the only things that come to mind.
Psychic is essentially equivalent to Thundurus' Thunderbolt, and when factoring in the SR weakness Azelf is actually slightly bulkier, not to mention that the speed helps. Tyranitar have been less inclined to run Pursuit in favor of the Crunch / Rocks / Fire Blast / Coverage sets, and as I noted earlier, 252 / 40 Atk / 216 SpD SDRoost Scizor is increasing in popularity compared to the CB set. I can't think of much that will like taking +2 LO Psychic.
+2 Flareblitz is a guaranteed OHKO with LO, or a >50% chance to ohko without LO if SR is up and you're revenging (no lefties).
+2 Blazekick in the sun has a greater than 50% chance to OHKO without LO. (51% without SR or residual damage, taking into account accuracy).
Also, both of these calcs assume max/max+ claydol, while I think they usually split their evs. (If ev's are split to 252/144+, both are guaranteed ohko's, barring misses and that it's switching into SR without lefties (revenging) in Blitz's case).
Claydol can NOT take a +2 flare blitz and live, and blaze kick/shadow claw almost ohko, (and this is with max hp and Def).
There is no way he can survive and 2hko back, unless the Blaziken is NOT at +2 and hitting with Blaze kick/shadow claw, and even then... its really freaking close.
Edit: Ninjad apparently, although by about 10 minutes, because I walked away from my computer as I was in the process of writing this post.
There is no way he can survive and 2hko back, unless the Blaziken is NOT at +2 and hitting with Blaze kick/shadow claw, and even then... its really freaking close.
Edit: Ninjad apparently, although by about 10 minutes, because I walked away from my computer as I was in the process of writing this post.
The first thing that comes to mind as an effective check to this is Bulk Up Scrafty (full SpD investment). I'm reasonably certain that Crunch or Payback will OHKO, but not so sure about whether +2 SE HP Fighting will OHKO. What have you found?
The other thing I'm considering is Spiritomb: Sucker Punch and Shadow Sneak are kind of a pain to deal with, and it's immune to everything but Fire Blast.
Yeah, Scrafty is a decent check. I'm not too familiar with the spread it runs, but assuming 216 HP / 252 SpD Careful, it is never OHKOd by +2 LO HP Fighting (unless Spikes are down, then there's a chance) and can easily KO back, while Spiritomb has always been Azelf's main issue. Fortunately, both are fairly uncommon compared to the more popular threats that Azelf does beat, so the tradeoff is worth it.
no its not, your talking about Pockets proposal wich was not passed. The reason drizzle is up for voting again is because almost everyone in tyhe nomination thread nominated it.
Another check came to mind for Blaziken but a Priority LO Hitmontop can kill Blaziken with Fake Out + Mach Punch but then again thats no different from Azumarill in the rain. I think what works in favour of Blaziken this gen is its been said time and time again in Gen 5 the most dominant attack types now are Fighting, Dragon and Fire.
I would say ground is a more dominant type than fire, but that's neither here nor there. Hitmontop can take out Blaze with little issue after a small amount of residual, and with the near necessity of using Flare Blitz (as running LO is not always a good idea with HJK's effect making Wide Lens preferrable), combined with the near ubiquity of things like entry hazards or sandstorm, that's not really asking for much.
Just checking in,
Been playing out the ladder for the better part of an hour, and honestly, I keep remembering why certain weather nominations are still up: The ladders are completely infected with weather. I am like 9-2 just because my antiweather team is tearing through sand paddlers, and chlorophyllers alike (and of course, those damned genies, even though I run one).
Blaze is still ridiculous, and only Choice banded mach punch Conckledurr/Rooboo keeps him from annihilating me, and even that can't switch in meaning I need to lose a poke first...(and most good players will switch into something that can take the punch.
Been playing out the ladder for the better part of an hour, and honestly, I keep remembering why certain weather nominations are still up: The ladders are completely infected with weather. I am like 9-2 just because my antiweather team is tearing through sand paddlers, and chlorophyllers alike (and of course, those damned genies, even though I run one).
Blaze is still ridiculous, and only Choice banded mach punch Conckledurr/Rooboo keeps him from annihilating me, and even that can't switch in meaning I need to lose a poke first...(and most good players will switch into something that can take the punch.
I vote rain since its retarded to me(only some thing is great though). I vote thundrus and tornadus since its just crap at me everytime i play with them and when i use them they are just stupid ESPECIALY Tornadus(although without rain hes just a mild threat). The other rain and sun stuff doesnt become that huge of problem to me(cept ken and venus maybe)
the funny thing is i always get fucked by Terrakion even when i run zor and roob
the funny thing is i always get fucked by Terrakion even when i run zor and roob
After much testing and playing, I'm going to sum up what I think should happen.
I'd like the abilities Drizzle and Drought to be banned. No Pokemon, just the abilities.
I'd like the abilities Drizzle and Drought to be banned. No Pokemon, just the abilities.
Then let's go ahead and ban Sandstream too. No pokemon, just the ability. Just as many Pokemon can abuse Sandstream as those that can abuse Drizzle and Drought. I think it should be either all or nothing.
Haha um no. Every water type in the game can abuse rain's increase in their water stab and not to mention Hydration, Swift Swim, Rain Dish, and Dry Skin.
Sun gets Chlorophyll and an increase in Fire Stab with many abusers of Chlorophyll and many pokes such as Volcarona which can abuse the nerf of Water moves in Sun.
And Sand gets an increase in Spdef to Rock types and Sand Paddle and Sand Strength, with Excadrill, Landorus, and Garchomp being the only abusers used much.
So no Sandstream is weak compared to all the other weathers in terms of abusers and effects of said weather.
They are not remotely the same. They do completely different thing and drizzle is many times more powerful than sandstream is or has ever been.
I agree. It has it's boosted to super level pokemon, just like drizzle and drought. Not as strong as Drizzle'd swift swimmers, but I really wouldn't call the chlorophyller's much, if at all, better than Excadrill or Landorus- and blaziken is still arguable without drought.
While it lacks stab boosts, it messes with your opponent through it's residual damage, and makes a variety of strategies useless, as well as quite a few moves. I wouldn't call it any worse- indeed, the residual damage can help sweepers just as much as a stab boost, by allowing them to guarantee a 2hko on things they only deal 50% to on average- regardless if their move of choice is stabbed or not. And note both water and fire have abilities that nullify them.
I have to agree that any anti-weather set you pack almost instantly throws you up a few ranks on the ladder because of how reliant most are on the weather. Really I slapped in a Swift Swim sweeper Mantine to cover some weaknesses after being suggested it and it turns the tables and rips through the average Sun/Rain/Sand teams so easily. Seriously, Mantine, even considering it as competitively viable would've got you a few immature giggles last gen.
Rain teams usually don't have much to break him and because of the combo ban on Smogon server he outspeeds them completely. Sun teams simply get nerfed by him overriding weather with rain and enjoying similar resistances to Gyarados and Sand/Hail teams simply are gonna have issues when they can't stall or abuse Blizzard anymore.
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