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Metagame ORAS RU: Speculation Thread
- Thread starter phantom
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I think that Bug STAB might not be necessary - Knock Off can hit the intended targets of X-Scissor/U-turn(bar Spiritomb, Drapion[Drill Run], Sharpedo and Shiftry[Poison Jab]) while knocking off Doublade's Eviolite, among other things.
I think the ONLY reason to use M-beedrill is that Adaptability u-turn. Hit and run everything ,and when you can hit with a super effective drill run, knock off, or poison jab when it will do something. If you are using it for knock off there are much better users.
I want to get the ball rolling on something I'm really looking forward to...
Dragon / Fairy is just an amazing defensive typing. Lately, I've been moving away from the hyper offensive style that I used to like and becoming more of an user of balance/stall, and this thing will be really cool. With a physically defensive spread, it's able to tank hits from Delphox, Hitmonlee, Virizion, Jolteon, Rotom-Mow, Shiftry, Eelektross, Gurdurr, and others, by virtue of its typing and 75/110/105 bulk. It also has cool support options in Heal Bell, Perish Song, and Haze, and reliable recovery in Roost. It also has access to Dragon Dance, which could make a nice win condition on offensive and defensive teams alike. It doesn't exactly have competition for a defensive Mega Evolution either.
it can also donk doublade with fire blast yay
well clearly you aren't just using it for knock off—while I think it would be an inferior option overall due to dying to most physical priority while lacking priority of its own, should you choose to use it with an SD set it shouldn't have to use a bug STAB. However I do concur that adaptability U-turn will be what Mega Beedrill will be used for, I was just responding to the person who thought that beedrill didnt ave much reason to use a poison stab—granted, aromatisse doesn't exactly do much to it anyway, so you'd mainly be worried about granbull, which isn't very common.
Dragon / Fairy is just an amazing defensive typing. Lately, I've been moving away from the hyper offensive style that I used to like and becoming more of an user of balance/stall, and this thing will be really cool. With a physically defensive spread, it's able to tank hits from Delphox, Hitmonlee, Virizion, Jolteon, Rotom-Mow, Shiftry, Eelektross, Gurdurr, and others, by virtue of its typing and 75/110/105 bulk. It also has cool support options in Heal Bell, Perish Song, and Haze, and reliable recovery in Roost. It also has access to Dragon Dance, which could make a nice win condition on offensive and defensive teams alike. It doesn't exactly have competition for a defensive Mega Evolution either.
it can also donk doublade with fire blast yay
well clearly you aren't just using it for knock off—while I think it would be an inferior option overall due to dying to most physical priority while lacking priority of its own, should you choose to use it with an SD set it shouldn't have to use a bug STAB. However I do concur that adaptability U-turn will be what Mega Beedrill will be used for, I was just responding to the person who thought that beedrill didnt ave much reason to use a poison stab—granted, aromatisse doesn't exactly do much to it anyway, so you'd mainly be worried about granbull, which isn't very common.
I want to get the ball rolling on something I'm really looking forward to...
Dragon / Fairy is just an amazing defensive typing. Lately, I've been moving away from the hyper offensive style that I used to like and becoming more of an user of balance/stall, and this thing will be really cool. With a physically defensive spread, it's able to tank hits from Delphox, Hitmonlee, Virizion, Jolteon, Rotom-Mow, Shiftry, Eelektross, Gurdurr, and others, by virtue of its typing and 75/110/105 bulk. It also has cool support options in Heal Bell, Perish Song, and Haze, and reliable recovery in Roost. It also has access to Dragon Dance, which could make a nice win condition on offensive and defensive teams alike. It doesn't exactly have competition for a defensive Mega Evolution either.
Yeah, the more I look at this thing the more powerful it seems. To be honest, I wouldn't be all that surprised if this thing was quickbanned out of the RU tier (this is just me speculating what would happen if this thing was thrown into the current meta). It does have a weakness to Steel which might be annoying against faster threats such as Cobalion, but Fire Blast can donk any Steel. Mega Altaria seems to be really versatile, being able to run support with its great defensive typing or going MixAltaria/Special/Physical on the offensive side.
One flimsy check I can find off the top of my head is AV Escavalier, as it should be able to tank a Fire Blast from MixAltaria and KOing back with Iron Head.
252 SpA Altaria Fire Blast vs. 174 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Escavalier: 272-324 (83.9 - 100%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Escavalier Iron Head vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Altaria: 136-162 (46.7 - 55.6%) -- 73.4% chance to 2HKO
So unless Altaria has been weakened, Esca would lose the 1v1 easily.
More calcs:
252 Atk Cobalion Iron Head vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Altaria: 94-112 (32.3 - 38.4%) -- 98.3% chance to 3HKO
THIS THING IS UNKILLABLE
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Well yeah, because you forgot to make it Fairy-type.
Okay, glad it was a mistake. Didn't want those calcs to be true lmao.
And yeah, apologies for the calcs, I always forget little things like this :[
Just wondering, but Mega Altaria can defog right?
nope
Darn that sucks, thanks. Regardless it's still looking pretty nice right now with a great support movepool as well as a pretty nice offensive movepool. I'm pretty excited about this thing.
Yeah, I kind of have to agree with this. Protect I think is going to be kind of mandatory on Mega Beedrill due to the frailty and subpar starting Speed of base 75. Obviously, it's just fine after it Mega Evolves, but Beedrill really needs that Speed to do what it needs to do.
Something not a lot of people have talked about is Mega Gallade. They took Mega Gardevoir's stat distribution and gave Gallade an even better one. (they kinda had to with the shit ability) Base 110 Speed is ahead of the musketeers, Durant, Heliiolisk, Meloetta, Moltres, and a whole host of other Pokemon Gallade could not previously outspeed. It also has insane Attack, Swords Dance, great STABs and the broken af Knock off. Gallade is looking really powerful and the boost in physical bulk is really nice to take resisted or weak neutral physical attacks. Oh, and did I mention the insane Attack stat? Base 165 is running over shit with a powerful STAB in Close Combat. Swords Dance / Bulk Up boosts just put icing on the cake. Here's something I had in mind for it:
Gallade @ Galladite
Ability: Justified --> Inner Focus
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Psycho Cut / Zen Headbutt
- Knock Off
Can you say absolute nuke? That's literally what Mega Gallade is after a boost. Find a way to KO or slow down faster physical Pokemon and Mega Gallade can, and will, destroy almost anything in its path. SD to boost the power to obscene levels. Close Combat demolishes whatever it touches unless its super bulky and has a resist. Psycho Cut nails resists really hard, especially Poison-types. Zen Headbutt is there for a little extra kick and does have a neat flinch rate that can actually come in handy with Gallade's higher Speed. Knock Off punishes Ghost-types. It's tempting to run Adamant, but Mega Gallade sits just above the musketeers thus making Jolly mandatory to avoid being outsped by them.
Even though Gallade will likely rise ASAP, there will still be a period of time where he is still in the tier with his Mega available.
Well, we can't really determine bans or anything at this point. The tier needs to be fully implemented and given a bit of time to settle.
Mega Gallade has better stats and a better movepool than Mega Medicham so I think the chances of it rising are pretty high
on the other hand, mega medicham has:
- pure power
- hjk
- fake out?
which kinda make it a bit better on paper imo. gallade does have SD though which is cool.
There will still likely be a 2-7 day period (depending on if we decide to do any quick-bans) of Mega Gallade being available to use in RU, whether it rises to UU or not. The same will be true for the likes of Sceptile, Lopunny, and any other Mega currently RU or lower by usage.
I'm actually more curious to see how the new megas affect the usage of the rest of the tier rather than the usage of the megas themselves.
I can't help but notice that a large number of the new offensive megas, specifically Gallade, Lopunny, Sceptile, and Beedrill, (although its safe to assume Gallade will rise/get banned) are all very weak to Fletch. Fletch OHKOs all of them, even without any prior damage, and bypasses all of their blazing new speed stats with its priority. Steelix is a pain in the ass, but its another counter that is severely crippled by WoW. It even wrecks a lot of the things that are likely to rise in usage (albeit slightly) thanks to new moves, like Pangoro, Slurpuff, and Gourgeist.
Bronzong could also could conceivably rise, since its an amazing counter to DD Mega Altaria (w/o Fire Blast), Mega Steelix, SD Sceptile and Sceptile w/o HP Fire, and avoids a OHKO from Glalie's Explosion and resists its normal coverage.
Granbull is also the best bet at a Mega Gallade check, taking only around half from +2 Psycho Cut and OHKOing with Play Rough. It also counters Mega Lopunny quite well, and can switch into Mega Beedrill's U-Turn repeatedly.
Spiritomb could also check Mega Gallade, albeit shakily, avoiding a OHKO from Knock Off (but needs like 90+ health) and neutering it with WoW.
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On an unrelated note, Mega Sharpedo seems rather underwhelming. A lot of people (not necessarily in RU) are over-hyping this thing, but I think people are overestimating its power by quite a bit. I ran a couple of calcs, and determined this:
Physical Moves: - ~15% power (in comparison to regular LO Sharpedo)
Strong Jaw Moves: + ~28% power
Special moves: - ~23% power
So really, only Crunch gets a power boost while the rest of Sharpedo's moves get a reduction in power. This is really mitigated by the fact that there are far more Water resists than Dark, but the reduction of power on its coverage moves can be detrimental in a lot of scenarios, specifically on Cobalion and Gurdurr. Also, even with the power boost on Crunch, its still doesn't have enough power to get past usual checks and counters like Alomomola, Aromatisse, Amoonguss, Druddigon, Tangrowth, other physically bulky things, etc. For example, even Doublade still isn't OHKOed by Crunch. Mega Sharpedo also lacks the ability to run a special or mixed set effectively, further exacerbating its inability to get past checks and counters.
The biggest drawback in my opinion however, is its lack of Speed Boost after evolving, meaning it really only has one chance to sweep. After getting a boost, it needs to be able to completely clean the opposing team, unless it is really slow. This is unlike regular Sharpedo, which can threaten out offensive threats with its revenge killing prowess early game if it needs to. And with the abundance of checks and counters (the only one really lost is Virizion, which is 2HKOed most of the time by Crunch now), its quite hard to sweep. Really, most of the things that stop regular Sharpedo can still stop Mega Sharpedo.
Then again, I might be underestimating it a little bit. I think that a major perk it has that people seem to be overlooking its its boosted bulk. While still as frail as shit, it can handle priority slightly better, notably surviving Fletchinder's Acrobatics 100% of the time, and has a high chance of surviving Lee's Mach Punch. This, coupled with the lack of LO recoil (which is also nice), really decreases the necessity of Aqua Jet, allowing it to run a third coverage move with much less opportunity cost. I personally think Earthquake is the preferred coverage move, since it can nail Cobalion, but Ice Fang is also cool, but still can't KO the bulky Grass-types and Gligar. Anyway, back to its bulk, it can also tank rogue Sucker Punches and the like, as well as switch into resisted moves if it really needs to.
tl;dr Mega Sharpedo has a lot going for it, but its not an extreme powerhouse by any means and makes much less of a splash on the tier than a lot of the other megas do
I can't help but notice that a large number of the new offensive megas, specifically Gallade, Lopunny, Sceptile, and Beedrill, (although its safe to assume Gallade will rise/get banned) are all very weak to Fletch. Fletch OHKOs all of them, even without any prior damage, and bypasses all of their blazing new speed stats with its priority. Steelix is a pain in the ass, but its another counter that is severely crippled by WoW. It even wrecks a lot of the things that are likely to rise in usage (albeit slightly) thanks to new moves, like Pangoro, Slurpuff, and Gourgeist.
Bronzong could also could conceivably rise, since its an amazing counter to DD Mega Altaria (w/o Fire Blast), Mega Steelix, SD Sceptile and Sceptile w/o HP Fire, and avoids a OHKO from Glalie's Explosion and resists its normal coverage.
Granbull is also the best bet at a Mega Gallade check, taking only around half from +2 Psycho Cut and OHKOing with Play Rough. It also counters Mega Lopunny quite well, and can switch into Mega Beedrill's U-Turn repeatedly.
Spiritomb could also check Mega Gallade, albeit shakily, avoiding a OHKO from Knock Off (but needs like 90+ health) and neutering it with WoW.
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On an unrelated note, Mega Sharpedo seems rather underwhelming. A lot of people (not necessarily in RU) are over-hyping this thing, but I think people are overestimating its power by quite a bit. I ran a couple of calcs, and determined this:
Physical Moves: - ~15% power (in comparison to regular LO Sharpedo)
Strong Jaw Moves: + ~28% power
Special moves: - ~23% power
So really, only Crunch gets a power boost while the rest of Sharpedo's moves get a reduction in power. This is really mitigated by the fact that there are far more Water resists than Dark, but the reduction of power on its coverage moves can be detrimental in a lot of scenarios, specifically on Cobalion and Gurdurr. Also, even with the power boost on Crunch, its still doesn't have enough power to get past usual checks and counters like Alomomola, Aromatisse, Amoonguss, Druddigon, Tangrowth, other physically bulky things, etc. For example, even Doublade still isn't OHKOed by Crunch. Mega Sharpedo also lacks the ability to run a special or mixed set effectively, further exacerbating its inability to get past checks and counters.
The biggest drawback in my opinion however, is its lack of Speed Boost after evolving, meaning it really only has one chance to sweep. After getting a boost, it needs to be able to completely clean the opposing team, unless it is really slow. This is unlike regular Sharpedo, which can threaten out offensive threats with its revenge killing prowess early game if it needs to. And with the abundance of checks and counters (the only one really lost is Virizion, which is 2HKOed most of the time by Crunch now), its quite hard to sweep. Really, most of the things that stop regular Sharpedo can still stop Mega Sharpedo.
Then again, I might be underestimating it a little bit. I think that a major perk it has that people seem to be overlooking its its boosted bulk. While still as frail as shit, it can handle priority slightly better, notably surviving Fletchinder's Acrobatics 100% of the time, and has a high chance of surviving Lee's Mach Punch. This, coupled with the lack of LO recoil (which is also nice), really decreases the necessity of Aqua Jet, allowing it to run a third coverage move with much less opportunity cost. I personally think Earthquake is the preferred coverage move, since it can nail Cobalion, but Ice Fang is also cool, but still can't KO the bulky Grass-types and Gligar. Anyway, back to its bulk, it can also tank rogue Sucker Punches and the like, as well as switch into resisted moves if it really needs to.
tl;dr Mega Sharpedo has a lot going for it, but its not an extreme powerhouse by any means and makes much less of a splash on the tier than a lot of the other megas do
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Mega-Sharpedo's role is actually kinda different from LO Sharp. M-Sharp is more of a late-game sweeper/wallbreaker than a revenge killer. Like you said, it only gets one chance to sweep if it chooses to mega evolve. IMO the key way to play it is to pick exactly WHEN to Mega-Evolve, because it certainly isn't dead weight w/o mega evolving, and it can still dish out decent damage without the Strong Jaws/Life Orb boost.
However, M-Sharp is now weaker to Aromatisse, as originally it had LO Boosted Waterfall. However, now it only gets a boost in Crunch (which Aromatisse can easily shake off) and it gets straight up KO'd by Moonblast.
However, M-Sharp is now weaker to Aromatisse, as originally it had LO Boosted Waterfall. However, now it only gets a boost in Crunch (which Aromatisse can easily shake off) and it gets straight up KO'd by Moonblast.
Pretty much just nitpicking here, but Sharpedo is also more used as a late game cleaner, and while it is capable of revenge killing something, it doesn't really do that often. Also, it has Strong Jaw Poison Fang if it wants to hit Aromatisse.
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Yeah, but TBH it can't really afford running that (needs protect/crunch/waterfall) and EQ tends to be the superior coverage move.
I see your point though :^)
when is eq ever the superior coverage move? i'd rather run mixed ice beam on regular sharpedo or ice/poison fang on m-sharp over eq 9 times out of 10 to hit gligar or aromatisse (e: i guess magneton is a potential target, but i feel gligar is a much bigger threat)
that said, i believe it was overhyped outside of poison fang, as the lack of lo, lack of speed boost, and the fact that it takes up a valuable mega slot kill it for me. i had high hopes for it on page 1 (pre-stats), but the fact that it only has 140 attack sorta killed it for me. i'm on my phone so posting more is dumb but i /still/ wanna talk about more shit, specifically how strong panda is and how fun kecleon is, among other mons.
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I think Pangoro is going to be a threat.
It now gets everything boosted by Iron Fist besides Mach Punch, Bullet Punch, and Meteor Mash. It also gets Knock Off, so it has the perfect STABs and all the coverage it needs. You can also run Gunk Shot instead of Poison Jab for fairies, which are the main thing I see it having trouble with.
Other than that it's a straight upgrade and exactly what it needs to be successful.
It now gets everything boosted by Iron Fist besides Mach Punch, Bullet Punch, and Meteor Mash. It also gets Knock Off, so it has the perfect STABs and all the coverage it needs. You can also run Gunk Shot instead of Poison Jab for fairies, which are the main thing I see it having trouble with.
Other than that it's a straight upgrade and exactly what it needs to be successful.
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While Pangoro has gotten a much needed boost to its move pool, its still going to be lacking one major thing...Speed. Pangoro is still mediocre when it comes to speed and this is really going to be holding him back from doing much of anything. So while ORAS will help, its not gonna help enough for Pangoro.
what....
Even if it has low Speed, I don't see why that's so bad when it has good bulk and phenomenal power to more than make up for it. I don't think that 2HKOing the whole tier unboosted with just entry hazard support is going to "hold it back from doing much of anything". There's quite a few parallels between Exploud and and Pangoro, and if Exploud can compensate for its subpar Speed by having raw power, then I'm pretty sure Pangoro can easily do the same thing. That's not to mention that Pangoro has access to one of the best pivot moves in the game (Parting Shot). I just can't fathom how people can't see this Pokemon being at least somewhat good in ORAS.
Even if it has low Speed, I don't see why that's so bad when it has good bulk and phenomenal power to more than make up for it. I don't think that 2HKOing the whole tier unboosted with just entry hazard support is going to "hold it back from doing much of anything". There's quite a few parallels between Exploud and and Pangoro, and if Exploud can compensate for its subpar Speed by having raw power, then I'm pretty sure Pangoro can easily do the same thing. That's not to mention that Pangoro has access to one of the best pivot moves in the game (Parting Shot). I just can't fathom how people can't see this Pokemon being at least somewhat good in ORAS.
58 speed is around the same speed tier of other succesfull RU wallbreakers such as Clawitzer, Exploud or Emboar, so Pangoro will still be plenty of good despite its bad speed. Parting Shot and a very strong Knock Off are extremely useful tools and Pangoro can make good use of them. And lets not forget Gunk Shot, which makes Fairy types and Tangrowth cringe.
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