hey y'all I really don't want Volc to get banned bc a) I love matchup fishing and b) I don't want to replace it with a fatmon to have any prayer of handling Val, but imma share two replays from the last few days of me using Heatran as setup bait to get Volc to +6 and win me the game, which is preposterous enough that even my heavily biased brain cannot justify this thing in the tier anymore
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1881433741
So here was the first one, where I kinda played like shit and had a really difficult time breaking through the Slowking-Amoonguss pair. My Volc set is physdef-tera fairy-tera blast, which gets walled on team preview by Tran. I hadn't actually matched up against one yet, but this is the team I've been using literally since like before the Espathra ban and I didn't want to change my set even though it gets walled by Heatran. The thing is, I had been theorizing that since Tran doesn't have Toxic anymore, non-Taunt variants can't actually do anything to Volc besides chip it, and if I can get to +6 I might be able to break through with normal Tera Blast before I run out of recovery. My opponent got scared of me boosting in his face, he couldn't do anything to stop me, and so he Tera'd to stop my own Ground tera. I set up to +6 and proceed to sweep him with Tera Fairy.
Obviously, that Tera was a pretty bad play, since that bug tera gets killed much quicker by no-tera tera blast without giving himself nearly as much time to chip me down or land a crit themself anyway. The real problem is that his team gets 6-0'd by Tera Ground Volc, and while the limited pool of checks to that set is solid evidence of Volc's brokenness anyway, I just chalked that up to a panic decision in a bad matchup. But then it happened again.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1882265607-gk3me4g74sjqa0g2hdj5ylyi0hmdwf8pw
I have no idea what his Tran's tera was, although if I was ground then I probably just 6-0 him too so if he had a favourable Tera for that matchup, maybe he should have taken it. Now, this one required more luck to go my way to beat him with straight up no-tera tera blast, but I will point out just how easy it is for Volc to spiral out of hand. I dance on the switch, then dance again as they protect. This one has Taunt, so it's easy to say that he should have just taunted there, but maybe he doesn't have a good Tera there and I just turn ground and sweep him right there. Now I'm at +3 before he can do anything, and I think it's reasonable for him to want to trap me before he taunts, but a couple misses later and that plan goes out the window. He doesn't get to both trap and taunt me until I'm already at +6, at which point I can break through with a few good rolls.
What's the point of this? After all, even in the 1800s we have people still figuring out their Volc counterplay on the fly, so this is hardly tournament level play. That said, I think it shows just how well Volc can leverage the threat of its versatility, even when it can't beat the entire meta at once. I gave a few clips where they could have easily covered their Ground Volc weakness with a Dragonite, but I don't even need to actually run that Tera to force the Tran into making unfavourable decisions to cover it. Unlike basically anything else in the meta, Volc blows up attempts to handle it with multiple overlapping soft checks. Like, I could handle Zama with the combination of Pult and Volc to deal with various Tera options, or Chien-Pao by pivoting around it with Volc, Tusk and Gambit, but the problem is that even if I guess wrong the first time, then I can bring in the right check or a revenge killer afterwards. Volc is unkillable on the special side after boosts, there's basically nothing that can break it on the physical side that doesn't get ruined by either a boosted Tera Blast or a Flame Body proc, and if Heatran can't get the better out of an exchange where neither of them can touch each other, nothing can.
So what we're left with is that either you run Pex or Clod, because both of them can take a hit and Toxic you back, which is the only thing that can make progress on the Volc even if it has the Tera to beat you. It has other checks, but the problem is that because it's so fast and strong with so little setup, unkillable on the special side and a threat to ruin physical attackers with Flame Body, you're operating with so little margin for error, and if you guess wrong with your first switch-in, you not only traded a mon for info, but now you better hope that it didn't turn that mon into setup bait with either Tera or a Flame Body proc to the extent that it's literally boosted too much for your backup option to handle.
Oh, I have a moral! The massive issue with Volc this gen is not that it can beat everything with the right set. Yeah, it loves Tera, it loves Boots, but it dodged the ban hammer last gen with Boots, and Tera doesn't really do anything for it that it couIdn't do with gems, Z-moves, Hidden Power, or even just exploiting its own absurd traits. The issue is that for four generations, every team could fall back on at least one thing that could live a boosted hit and Toxic it, which puts it on a timer and makes progress even if burns and boosts through every attacker. Bulky Volc is so good right now not only because it checks a bunch of useful meta threats, but because dodging Toxic users is a realistic condition to play for on ladder, and a Volc that doesn't fear Toxic can afford to sacrifice its ability to cover as much of the meta as it can in favour of sponging hits, setting up to max, and just muscling through the things it's not supposed to beat. I think it's actually less matchup-fishy than it usually is, because it's less dependent than before on having the exact right set to break through opposing teams. Instead, all it needs to fish for is a team that doesn't have Pex, Clod, or one of the few counters to its specific set. From there, it is just a matter of whether you can get the positioning to start the snowball, and get enough reads or RNG in your favour to boost through your opponent's counterplay.
@ Leftovers
