OU combos

Trust

We know that there are a lot of good combinations of two type of moves, like Ghost/Fighting and Ice/Electric, and we know that few pokémons can resist both or no pokémon can resist it.

But this thread is about offensive combinations in OU. I will try to explain it with my bad english... In OU we could find 47 pokémons, which we will see every battle we play, so we should focus our attacks in those OU stuff.

My idea was to do some statistics where I get the number of weakeness to all the types. I used the 51 fist pokémons in the weighted usage Shoddy's list, so it includes all OU, and Alakazam, Kingdra, Roserade and Abomasnow. I will post now what I get, in a summary:

Type Numer of weakness
Fire 17
Ice 14
Grass 10
Electric 10
Ground 10
Ghost 10
Fighting 10
Flying 10
Bug 10
Dark 9
Rock 9
Water 8
Psychic 5
Steel 4
Dragon 4
Poison 2
Normal 0
Click to expand...

Now, I will post the best combos with the more effective type:
Combo Number of super effective
Fire Grass 26
Fire Ice 26
Fire Bug 24
Fire Ghost 24
Fire Electric 24
Fire Water 24
Ice Fighting 24
Ice Bug 23
Ice Ghost 23
Fire Ground 23
Fire Dark 23
Fire Fight 22
Fire Rock 22
Ice Dark 22
Click to expand...

We can see 2 great combos, which hit 26/50 effectives, and four with 24/50.
  • Fire/Grass (26). It's used by Infernape (Flamethrower and Grass Knot), Heatran (Fire Blast and HP Grass), sometimes Azelf (Flamethrower and Grass Knot) and Roserade (Grass Knot/Leaf Storm and HP Fire).
  • Fire/Ice (26). It's used ONLY by Hetran and Infernape, both with HP Ice.
  • Fire/Bug (24). It's not used...
  • Fire/Ghost (24). It's only used by Dusknoir with Fire Punch and Shadow Sneak, but with this Attack, it can't be considered offensive... Azelf could use it too with Shadow Ball and Flamethrower, but I've never seen one of these...
  • Fire/Electric (24). Azelf could use it with Flametrower and Thunderbolt, the same as Infernape and Heatran with HP Electric.
  • Fire/Water (24). Forget this one, because it could be used only by slow stuff like Slowbro, Slowking and Octillery.
  • Ice/Fighting (24). It's used by Gengar (Focus Blast/Punch and HP Ice), Tyranitar (Focus Punch and Ice Beam), Lucario (Aura Sphere/Close Combat and HP Ice), Weavile (Ice Punch/Shard and Brick Break), Machamp (Dinamicpunch and Ice Punch), Gallade (Ice Punch and Close Combat), Deoxys-S (Super Power and Ice Beam) and Abomasnow (Focus Punch and Blizzard).
Some people asked for a resistances list, so here it is about single types in OU:
Type Numer of resistances
Dragon 9
Flying 10
Dark 12
Ghost 12
Normal 12
Water 13
Electric 13
Rock 13
Fire 15
Ice 16
Ground 17
Psychic 17
Bug 18
Fighting 20
Steel 20
Grass 23
Poison 25
Click to expand...

You can see that Dragon is the less resisted, but, what a surprise in the second slot, Fliying!, only one more resistance... We couldn't ignore that Normal type is resisted only by 12, the same as Ghost and Dark, but an inmunity in Ghosts isn't good at all... At the end of the list, you can see the always great Poison type with 25 resistances (half OU...), followed by Grass, which is quite strange, because it forms one of the best "offensive" combos.

The combos list will be tonight, because now I don't have more time.

It took me some time to do that, so I wait that you could appreciate my effort and work, so I would like to read your opinions about it.

-Trust-
 
the information is good, but many of the attacking combos at the top are actually very poor combos by themselves

fire/grass is resisted by dragon and fire type pokemon. This attack combination is absolutely useless on salamence and heatran, two VERY common pokemon.

Fire/Ice is resisted by water and fire type pokemon. once again, pokemon who are very common like swampert, heatran and stamie.

to make this list more effective, i feel you should take the number of pokemon a combo hits super effective and subtract from it the number of pokemon that resist the combo. for example, fire/grass would have the 26 value and it would lose a point for salamence, heatran, dragonite, infernape ETC. The new values could then be listed in order from highest to lowest, and this would be a better representation of the best attacking combos.

Still very good work though
 
EDIT:

Awesome. Actually, this reminds me of my old thread... which may be of use to this one as well. I'm glad you actually took the time to count up the OU pokemon. (Mine just does a theoretical count vs all of the theoretical pokemon... including Ghost/Steel ones and stuff. So the numbers are less applicable than yours)

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35684

I'm somewhat surprised that Ice/Ground isn't doing as hot as predicted, and the best fire attack predicted was Fire/Ground.
 
This is actually pretty cool.
Didn't expect Fire to be so high up.
Then again, I haven't look at top weighed usages in months.
Nice job.
 
This is really cool. After looking at yours and dtamers i feel inspired to make one that would list every attacking type and the number of pokemon it hit as well as each one.

but this is an excellent job.
 
Bug+Fire is sometimes used by Yanmega (Bug Buzz + HP Fire), just to put it out there, especially for Skarmary/Scizor/Forretress/Magneton.


Although Scarf + Tinted Lens versions usually use HP Ice instead, as Bug Buzz is only 5 Base Point less than a Super Effective HP Fire.
 
This list is really good; good job!

ultimifier said:
to make this list more effective, i feel you should take the number of pokemon a combo hits super effective and subtract from it the number of pokemon that resist the combo. for example, fire/grass would have the 26 value and it would lose a point for salamence, heatran, dragonite, infernape ETC. The new values could then be listed in order from highest to lowest, and this would be a better representation of the best attacking combos.
Click to expand...

However, implementing something like this can vastly increase the applicability of the list. It would be a better indicator of which moves are really helpful in the OU environment.
 
try Rock+Fighting:

Rock Covers; Bug, Fire, Flying, Ice

Fighting Covers; Ice, Steel, Rock, Normal, Dark.

I am aware that while (not including Ice 2x) they only cover 8 types, they, still cover the most common types (Flying, Dark, Steel, and Bug).

Now, 1 could argue that SR replaces the need for having a Rock attack and in a sense it does, especially when its 4x effective (Moltres/Yanmega/Ninjask, etc.).

But based on ultimifier, i believe we should consier the rock+fightying combo.
 
Fire+Bug and some other combos could get more use if people started using different hidden powers. While I was breeding for HP ground growlithes I got one with HP bug. Initially I kept it for awhile because it still hit Tyranitar, Starmie, etc. But eventually I tossed it because I thought the hidden power wouldn't work very well.

HP Fire Venasur is looking pretty good right now.
 
Ice/Electric is mentioned in the first sentence. It's not in the graph because the other combos hit more OU pokemon than Ice/Electric.
 
Ice Electric is good because it has few resists. Compare this to Fire/Grass in which every Fire and Dragon Pokemon resists it. On the other hand, there are only about 3 pokemon that resist Ice / Electric.

The statistics gathered don't count for that.
 
It may be good to consider making a seperate or additional chart with 3 types, as some pokemon are pure sweepers, with maybe Nasty Plot/Swords Dance as their only other move,

ie: Infernape: NPlot/Fire Blast/Close Combat/Grass Knot

Hell, let's not forget Electivire!
 
Type Numer of weakness
Fire 17
Ice 14
Grass 10
Electric 10
Ground 10
Ghost 10
Fighting 10
Flying 10
Bug 10
Dark 9
Rock 9
Water 8
Psychic 5
Steel 4
Dragon 4
Poison 2
Normal 0

So THIS is why Heatran is such an important pokemon in defensive combos...

You should take account STAB and move strength (close combat, outrage, etc) into this. It's kind of misleading the Dragon has only 4 pokes that are 'weak' to it, yet it is still such an awesome attacking type, since it hits everything but steels neutral.

Good effort!
 
Awesome, the new CaP Pokemon is Fire/Grass so it has the best OU attacking combo.

and agreeing that this:

to make this list more effective, i feel you should take the number of pokemon a combo hits super effective and subtract from it the number of pokemon that resist the combo. for example, fire/grass would have the 26 value and it would lose a point for salamence, heatran, dragonite, infernape ETC. The new values could then be listed in order from highest to lowest, and this would be a better representation of the best attacking combos.

would help greatly
 
Type combo resistances are just as important as what they hit super effective. Being completely resisted by fire and dragon types makes a rather poor offensive combo on its own.
 
I've been pondering through the different attacking combinations myself as of late, and one thing I that doesn't work out as cleanly as these numbers is the relations to resistances. For instance Grass Fire being blocked by dragon and fire as someone mentioned. Fire doesn't have any really solid secondary attacking type, nor does water simply because most secondary typings would be dually walled by one common type or another. Unfortunately you're not just attacking into the whole pool or OU, you're attacking into a team, and hoping not to get walled. It doesn't matter if you could 5/6 pokemon for super effective if the one laughs at you completely, and most teams are built for balance of course.
 
ChouToshio said:
I've been pondering through the different attacking combinations myself as of late, and one thing I that doesn't work out as cleanly as these numbers is the relations to resistances. For instance Grass Fire being blocked by dragon and fire as someone mentioned. Fire doesn't have any really solid secondary attacking type, nor does water simply because most secondary typings would be dually walled by one common type or another. Unfortunately you're not just attacking into the whole pool or OU, you're attacking into a team, and hoping not to get walled. It doesn't matter if you could 5/6 pokemon for super effective if the one laughs at you completely, and most teams are built for balance of course.
Click to expand...

i'm not so sure about that. a lot of times if you're just hitting at neutral, non-stab, you wouldn't stay in anyways. how many times have you seen a poke with such impressive type coverage? probably not a lot. to me, when you build a team, you have to keep a poke's counters in mind and deal with the 1/6 that way. if a pokes can destroy 5/6 pokes i'll say that's pretty damn good. if you can't get past that last one given the 5 other slots on your own team, that's the team builder's problem.
 
^That's also true, but I think it depends on the pokemon we're talking about-- who it is and what what it is potentially letting in by hitting fewer types nuetral.

For instance infernape can do the above mentioned fire/ghost with flamethrower + shadowclaw, but question: Do you really want to be using an infernape that is laughed at by tyranitar?

Better example, I've been messing around with special tyranitar for a while now-- dark pulse, substitute, and 2 other special attacks. 2 slots for Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt. Initially I was going with Flamethrower, to be different from Bolt Beam and to because, well-- just look at the info here! Fire hits so many great things for super effective, and nailing steel and bug for super effective looks really nice on paper. However, after battling with it more, I discovered that while ttar could (on paper) take down things like bronzong or scizor nicely this way (hiding behind a substitute), letting water types (and fire types) switch in so easily was just too dangerous. And infernape (and heatran). Letting infernape switch in whenever, was not fun.

Maybe if it weren't a tyranitar it would be different, but here's an example of how sometimes just being able to hit a lot of pokemon super effective isn't enough-- it's being able to hit the certain trouble pokemon. In other words, being able to hit metagross, scizor, jirachi, bronzong, foretress, and many others turned out to be . . . not so good . . . when gyara and even infernape could switch in anytime they liked. I mean seriously, tyranitar being almost walled by INFERNAPE. >.>


Another thing to consider is that the OU pokemon have held their place because they can survive in this format. In other words, it might not be just that "Look, Fire hits a lot of OUs!" but rather, "Since there are so few sources of STAB fire, fire-weak pokemon have thrived in OU."

In other words, cause and effect is hard to understand, and the fact that fire is strong in OU might be indicative that fire is not a very available option in OU *cough*stealthrocks*cough*earthquake*cough*

edit: One could say the same about ice too. If Ice wasn't SUCH a crappy defensive type, and STAB'd ice (or if gamefreaks actually invented some tougher ice pokemon and higher BP ice attacks) was found all over, maybe garchomp and salamence wouldn't be as quite as present. Or better yet, an ice SR-- let them feel charizard's pain.

I'm not trying to make "what if" magic game-altering arguments, but just pointing out that sometimes it's the lack of an available danger that allows a pokemon to thrive in the envirement. Hey, just look at Fighting Arceus in an envirement where half the pokemon are psychic type. O,o

edit: One more concern is that one has to consider which side of the "Combo" is the STAB. Dragon-Fire works great, bu Fire-Dragon is crap, because Arcanine packing dragon pulse is just not dishing out enough damage to the things that resist fire.
 
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