Copyediting Special Attack Booster Iron Moth [QC 2/2] [GP 0/1]

[bern]

[SET]
Special Attack Booster Energy (Iron Moth) @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Overheat
- Sludge Wave
- Dazzling Gleam / Bug Buzz / Acid Spray
- Protect / Endure

[SET COMMENTS]
* Iron Moth is able to utilize its great offensive typing, huge movepool, and the Booster Energy item to quickly eliminate important threats like Iron Crown, non-Assault Vest Urshifu-S, and Sylveon.
* Overheat can OHKO Metagross, Corviknight, and Alolan Ninetales.
* Sludge Wave easily gets rid of Fairy-type Pokemon like non-bulky Primarina and Iron Valiant.
* Dazzling Gleam notably beats Urshifu-S.
* Bug Buzz can easily handle non-Assault Vest or Choice Scarf Hoopa-U.
* Acid Spray is commonly used to get KOs on Pokemon that are usually difficult for Iron Moth to get rid of otherwise, like non-Clear Amulet Pecharunt and Sitrus Berry Manaphy.
* Protect is most commonly used to prevent Custap Berry users like Primarina from going first with an attack. Endure is used for a similar reason, with it being more useful against Hoopa-U due to Hyperspace Fury breaking Protect, but it also risks Iron Moth into getting hit by Encore from Primarina.
* Since Iron Moth's biggest issue tends to be its weakness to Water-type Pokemon like Manaphy and Dondozo, Grass-type Pokemon like Meowscarada and Serperior often make as good teammates for it.

[SET CREDITS]
Written by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/bern.563650/

Quality checked by:
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Grammar checked by:
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[pqs]

AMQC
holy I haven't done one of these in so long
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Copyedit

[SET]
Iron Moth @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 76 Def / 180 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Overheat
- Sludge Wave
- Dazzling Gleam / Acid Spray / Bug Buzz
- Protect / Endure

[SET COMMENTS]
* Iron Moth is able to utilize its great offensive typing, huge movepool, and the Booster Energy item to quickly eliminate important threats like Iron Crown, Alolan Ninetales, and Sylveon.
The only reason that Iron Moth beats the examples that you listed is because of the first thing you listed: its "great offensive typing." It only uses its STABs for these three examples so I wouldn't really say it uses its "huge movepool" to beat them, and it beats these Pokemon regardless of whether it has Booster Energy or not because they're pretty clean OHKO/2HKOs, so I wouldn't say its because of its Booster Energy either. To remedy this, I would change up the examples; maybe keep Iron Crown as an example for its offensive typing, then add something that Iron Moth beats with one of its many coverage moves for the "huge movepool" part, then add something that Iron Moth needs the Booster Energy boost to reliably KO, e.g. Band Urshifu-S.
* Overheat can OHKO Metagross, Corviknight, and Alolan Ninetales.
* Sludge Wave easily gets rid of Fairy-type Pokemon like non-bulky Primarina and Iron Valiant.
Any Prim above 220 HP becomes a roll for Sludge Wave killing. There is a Prim in the 1630 SV usage stats that received above the 6% threshold usage which ran a spread of 252 HP / 72 SpD, so it's worth mentioning.
* Dazzling Gleam notably beats Fighting-type Pokemon like both Urshifu-S formes and Great Tusk.
| Spreads |
| Adamant:252/252/0/0/4/0 23.745% |
| Adamant:168/248/4/0/76/12 21.064% |
^^ two most common Urshifu-R spreads on last month's ladder, 180 SpA Quark Drive Iron Moth Dazzling Gleam vs. 168 HP / 0 SpD Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 346-408 (90.3 - 106.5%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO)

Against Great Tusk you use Overheat since it does more damage, no? Third most common spread on ladder is this
| Jolly:204/4/4/0/44/252 14.931% |,
which necessitates you to click Overheat instead of Gleam to reliably KO:
180 SpA Quark Drive Iron Moth Overheat vs. 204 HP / 44 SpD Great Tusk: 427-504 (101.1 - 119.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
180 SpA Quark Drive Iron Moth Dazzling Gleam vs. 204 HP / 44 SpD Great Tusk: 350-414 (82.9 - 98.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

So is Dazzling Gleam actually good enough to be the first slash for the third move? Idk. Maybe if you can find other examples of stuff it beats it could be good, but it only being reliable into Urshifu-S is pretty bad.

Acid Spray is commonly used to get KOs on Pokemon that are usually difficult for Iron Moth to get rid of otherwise, like Skeledirge (I am pretty sure Skeledirge always wins this matchup turn 1 by Encore locking Moth into any of its moves and then Torch Songing and getting into Custap/Blaze range and Blast Burning... https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen91v1-2421887228 , https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen91v1-2421887478) and Volcarona. is this a common tours set or something..? Custap only makes up 3% of ladder usage:
| Items |
| Life Orb 38.382% |
| Passho Berry 29.010% |
| Leftovers 15.472% |
| Rocky Helmet 4.195% |
| Custap Berry 3.157% |
Again, don't see much real reason to run Acid Spray. Hopefully there are better examples out there.

Finally, Bug Buzz can easily handle non-Assault Vest / Choice Scarf Hoopa-U. Choice Scarf is the third most common item on ladder 15% usage
* Protect is most commonly used to prevent Custap Berry users like Skeledirge and (you lose anyways as stated earlier) Primarina from going first with an attack. Endure is used for a similar reason, with it being more useful against Hoopa-U due to Hyperspace Fury breaking Protect, but it also risks Iron Moth into getting hit by Encore from Primarina.
* The EVs allow Iron Moth to survive an Adamant Choice Band Sucker Punch from Urshifu-S.
* Since Iron Moth's biggest issue tends to be its weakness to Water-type Pokemon like Manaphy and Dondozo, Grass-type Pokemon like Meowscarada and Serperior often make as good teammates for it.

[SET CREDITS]
Written by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/bern.563650/

Quality checked by:
[insert user link]

Grammar checked by:
[insert user link]

All ladder stats I used are from here btw https://www.smogon.com/stats/2025-07/moveset/gen91v1-1630.txt. I reccomend checking this out before saying a Pokemon blanket loses to / wins against another Pokemon because an item might be a lot less or more common on ladder (which should be the basis for analyses unless something is extremely prevalent in tours but not ladder) than you think. I could see an argument to go down to 1500 due to SV ladder being a lot lower than SS (in SS QC we based all of our analyses off 1630 usage).

I didn't touch the wording of this analysis, but in the future I recommend straying away from phrases like "x is commonly used" or "y's biggest issue is" because they age very poorly in a meta that shifts as rapidly as 1v1. You might sound repetitive saying "x is for ..." 1 million times but it'll end up being more factually correct in the long term.


btw you might want to add a nick to your set? "SpA Booster Energy"?

 

[bern]

qc to the amqc
(Comment)

Copyedit

[SET]
Iron Moth @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
EVs: 76 Def / 180 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Overheat
- Sludge Wave
- Dazzling Gleam / Acid Spray / Bug Buzz
- Protect / Endure

[SET COMMENTS]
* Iron Moth is able to utilize its great offensive typing, huge movepool, and the Booster Energy item to quickly eliminate important threats like Iron Crown, Alolan Ninetales, and Sylveon.
The only reason that Iron Moth beats the examples that you listed is because of the first thing you listed: its "great offensive typing." It only uses its STABs for these three examples so I wouldn't really say it uses its "huge movepool" to beat them, and it beats these Pokemon regardless of whether it has Booster Energy or not because they're pretty clean OHKO/2HKOs, so I wouldn't say its because of its Booster Energy either. To remedy this, I would change up the examples; maybe keep Iron Crown as an example for its offensive typing, then add something that Iron Moth beats with one of its many coverage moves for the "huge movepool" part, then add something that Iron Moth needs the Booster Energy boost to reliably KO, e.g. Band Urshifu-S. (i'll put in urshifu-s over a9, should also be worth mentioning fyi that band urshifu-s isn't in the setcomp, despite it being a common item on the pokemon. which is why i'll be putting "non-assault vest urshifu-s" [roseli doesn't see much play either])
* Overheat can OHKO Metagross, Corviknight, and Alolan Ninetales.
* Sludge Wave easily gets rid of Fairy-type Pokemon like non-bulky Primarina and Iron Valiant.
Any Prim above 220 HP becomes a roll for Sludge Wave killing. There is a Prim in the 1630 SV usage stats that received above the 6% threshold usage which ran a spread of 252 HP / 72 SpD, so it's worth mentioning. (ayup)
* Dazzling Gleam notably beats Fighting-type Pokemon like both Urshifu-S formes and Great Tusk.
| Spreads |
| Adamant:252/252/0/0/4/0 23.745% |
| Adamant:168/248/4/0/76/12 21.064% |
^^ two most common Urshifu-R spreads on last month's ladder, 180 SpA Quark Drive Iron Moth Dazzling Gleam vs. 168 HP / 0 SpD Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 346-408 (90.3 - 106.5%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO) (you missed the 76 SpD EVs that would've enhanced your point, i do agree that Urshifu-R is a bad mention here.)

Against Great Tusk you use Overheat since it does more damage, no? Third most common spread on ladder is this
| Jolly:204/4/4/0/44/252 14.931% |,
which necessitates you to click Overheat instead of Gleam to reliably KO:
180 SpA Quark Drive Iron Moth Overheat vs. 204 HP / 44 SpD Great Tusk: 427-504 (101.1 - 119.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
180 SpA Quark Drive Iron Moth Dazzling Gleam vs. 204 HP / 44 SpD Great Tusk: 350-414 (82.9 - 98.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

So is Dazzling Gleam actually good enough to be the first slash for the third move? Idk. Maybe if you can find other examples of stuff it beats it could be good, but it only being reliable into Urshifu-S is pretty bad. (the main reason i would've said no to adding great tusk is the fact that it can be Speed Booster and that's a setcomp set, and i would enhance the wording to "non-Speed Booster Energy Great Tusk", although it is a bit wordy, it is the best alternative. i checked other alternatives like Haxorus and even then Dazzling Gleam doesn't KO, there's a strong case to remove it imo, for now i will wait for the second QC member to decide what to do.)

Acid Spray is commonly used to get KOs on Pokemon that are usually difficult for Iron Moth to get rid of otherwise, like Skeledirge (I am pretty sure Skeledirge always wins this matchup turn 1 by Encore locking Moth into any of its moves and then Torch Songing and getting into Custap/Blaze range and Blast Burning... https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen91v1-2421887228 , https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen91v1-2421887478) (ty for this catch btw) and Volcarona. is this a common tours set or something..? Custap only makes up 3% of ladder usage:
| Items |
| Life Orb 38.382% |
| Passho Berry 29.010% |
| Leftovers 15.472% |
| Rocky Helmet 4.195% |
| Custap Berry 3.157% |
Again, don't see much real reason to run Acid Spray. Hopefully there are better examples out there. (oop, should've been more specific, i meant all volcarona, if there's an issue with that lmk in the QC chat)

Finally, Bug Buzz can easily handle non-Assault Vest / Choice Scarf Hoopa-U. Choice Scarf is the third most common item on ladder 15% usage (thumbsup)
* Protect is most commonly used to prevent Custap Berry users like Skeledirge and (you lose anyways as stated earlier) Primarina from going first with an attack. Endure is used for a similar reason, with it being more useful against Hoopa-U due to Hyperspace Fury breaking Protect, but it also risks Iron Moth into getting hit by Encore from Primarina.
* The EVs allow Iron Moth to survive an Adamant Choice Band Sucker Punch from Urshifu-S.
* Since Iron Moth's biggest issue tends to be its weakness to Water-type Pokemon like Manaphy and Dondozo, Grass-type Pokemon like Meowscarada and Serperior often make as good teammates for it.

[SET CREDITS]
Written by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/bern.563650/

Quality checked by:
[insert user link]

Grammar checked by:
[insert user link]

this QC and the Diancie one are insanely high quality which is why the 1v1 C&C staff unanimously decided that you join the QC team to make your QCs official, we hope to see more from you! as it stands this will count as QC 1/2.

this is ready for qc 2

 

[bern]

qc2 by bea in sv qc channel

ready for GP Team