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Palossand exists.
252 Atk Great Tusk Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Palossand: 146-172 (39 - 45.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Palpssand also sets up Stealth Rock, has better recovery, and can threaten to 2HKO Offensive Great Tusk.
Hell, Rotom (original form) can technically do this too.
252 Atk Great Tusk Knock Off vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rotom: 122-144 (40.1 - 47.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Also if Offensive Great Tusk runs Earthquake, it can 2HKO Houndstone after chip and using Booster Energy.
252 Atk Protosynthesis Great Tusk Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Houndstone: 154-183 (44.2 - 52.5%) -- 80.1% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Not to mention that Earthquake Choice Band straight up 2HKOs Houndstone.
252 Atk Choice Band Great Tusk Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Houndstone: 178-210 (51.1 - 60.3%) -- 89.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Fair point, forgot about the Sand. However, Houndstone has these things to distinguish itself from Palossand:
1. Way higher bulk vs contact moves. I used this Mon in Ubers and it tanked crazy stuff there, like Band Crunch from Chien Pao.
2. Fewer weaknesses.
3. Body Press.
4. WoW.
5. Roar.
Regarding the moves, it of course can't run them all at the same time and using Restalk (or Rest alone,but for different reasons) limits it too, while Palossand has Shore Up and even Stealth Rock. However, the dog still has a decent niche in my opinion, not OU, but not unranked either.
Also, Restalk Houndstone easily walls most Sneasler sets, that one Mon everyone is fearing (Palossand does it too, but takes higher damage from Night Slash and can't burn it, so Tera Sneasler has it easier).
Kingambit is probably the best example of this and certainly the most memorable because of the reverse-sweep potential, but I would argue it isn't the only one. Dragonite was the big example early on, but it's a big deal again with Tera Flying and especially Tera Fire usage on the rise over just the predictable Tera Normal sets, all of which have different counter-play, especially if Marvel Scale is intact (I was going to say "at least Dondozo covers all of them", but it hates Encore DD sets and gets cleanly 3HKOd by CB Tera Flying Tera Blast).
My latest frustration, however, has been Bax, which between Tera Fairy/Ground/Ice/Dragon is almost solely responsible for me tilting so hard that I went from 1725 to 1375 in one night. It has enough bulk and enough set versatility that it can come in in the mid-game and if you guess the wrong set/tera combo at preview and preserve the wrong checks, there's just not a ton you can do. The natural Wisp immunity really pushes it over the edge, since it means Tera Ground blocks virtually all status-based counterplay (Boots protect against T-Spikes, while STAB EQ/Ice is gonna take care of just anything running Toxic unless Home brings transfer moves). Tera Fairy dunks on faster Dragons, and Tera Dragon/Ice just power through bulky non-resists. Boosting Sets can even mitigate Glaive Rush's secondary effect through Ice Shard use and/or just being faster than you (Ice Shard has a definite place even on DD sets to outrun opposing priority users/block sucker punch/clean weakened threats without boosting).
Tera Preview kinda helps solve this problem, but unless it's combined with "only one Tera Mon" per team, it also basically just tells you which games to forfeit at preview, since every team is going to have unsolvable weaknesses to certain lineups. Honestly, that's just the cost of keeping the mechanic.
Anyway, I'm gonna go meme it up and see how many games I can win turn one with Sub/DD/Darts/TB Tera Fire Dragapult.
Everything feels broken with Tera anyway (especially Kingambit) so I hope Magearna will be allowed even if it doesn't last long. I'm really curious about its potential with a broken mechanic on top of its crazy movepool.
Now, while I do think Magearna is broken, it is for me less broken than in SS and brings more positive things to the meta, there are more checks to Specs (the most broken set by far) in current Meta than there were in SS. Might do a post later when the veredict is posted and Finch gets his coveted daily likes.
HOUNDSTONE UNBANNED FINALLY WE CAN USE FLUFFY HOUNDSTONE GET READY FOR FLUFFY HOUNDSTONE PROPAGANDA GUYS
Tusk Breaker (Houndstone) @ Leftovers
Ability: Fluffy
Tera Type: Water/Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Night Shade
- Will-O-Wisp
- Rest
- Sleep Talk/Body Press
Are you guys aware of what greavard can do in LC? Well this houndstone set tries to do the same, clown on the popular rapid spinners of the tier (aka great tusk).
I've had this interaction in ubers already and houndstone is great at taking hits from tusk. Here, take a look at the calcs:
0 Atk Great Tusk Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fluffy Houndstone: 64-76 (18.3 - 21.8%) -- possible 5HKO
0 Atk Great Tusk Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Houndstone: 99-117 (28.4 - 33.6%) -- 95.6% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Great Tusk Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fluffy Houndstone: 115-136 (33 - 39%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Great Tusk Knock Off vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fluffy Houndstone: 78-92 (22.4 - 26.4%) -- 16.5% chance to 4HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Great Tusk Headlong Rush vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fluffy Houndstone: 106-126 (30.4 - 36.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Great Tusk Headlong Rush vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fluffy Houndstone: 71-84 (20.4 - 24.1%) -- guaranteed 5HKO
The only tusk the ghost dog will have to be afraid of is bulk up, which can easily overpower houndstone after a couple of bulk ups, will o wisp can help but not if its tera fire. Still, needing very specific tusk sets to 1v1 houndstone is great when its main goal is to spinblock.
It's certainly a niche, I don't think it'll do very well against other offensive threats (much less against pokemon without contact moves like meowscarada and especially cinderace).
Gholdengo and Houndstone will probably make the best anti hazard removal core out there, with houndstone blocking rapid spin while being a great physically defensive wall and gholdengo clowning on any defog corviknight.
Tera water is useful as it removes fluffy's x2 damage from fire type moves
Night Shade might unfortunately be the best ghost move it gets, the only other physical ghost attacks it gets is shadow sneak and phantom force
Body Press gives it a chance against kingambit, assuming it can't tera
I hope Mag is Ubers and Finch is baiting us. The bunny is busted and the best case scenario for us is that it’s overcentralizing as all hell since we have so few good fairy types rn, especially fatties. I’d say it’s probably healthier than Spectrier or Urshifu S, but it’s still pretty nasty potentially.
I’d love to be proven wrong since I think having a nice fat tanky fairy type would be great for the tier as a glue mon. I just worry it’s gonna be Gen Viii mag part two.
I’d like to see mag get a chance, this meta feels a lot more equipped to handle mag’s past sets. Granted mag feels like the perfect Pokémon for Tera type/Tera blast shenanigans
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I hope Mag is Ubers and Finch is baiting us. The bunny is busted and the best case scenario for us is that it’s overcentralizing as all hell since we have so few good fairy types rn, especially fatties. I’d say it’s probably healthier than Spectrier or Urshifu S, but it’s still pretty nasty potentially.
I’d love to be proven wrong since I think having a nice fat tanky fairy type would be great for the tier as a glue mon. I just worry it’s gonna be Gen Viii mag part two.
Try gen 7, AV Mag is even more of a glue than lando, I swear to god, you can have whatever the fuck, and say "hmm, av mag" z moves are cool with her, you can mix and match, and use heart swap which is a thing in gen 7
if Magearna does end up becoming legal for when Home meta slides around, I can actually see why. In the current meta, bulkier Fire-types like Skeledirge and Volcarona are pretty common, and they can check most Magearna sets pretty well (Skele is one of the hardest checks to standard CM Mag thanks to Unaware). Even the squishier ones like Cinderace and Iron Moth do a good job at dealing with Mag. You also have to take into account that Mag is really slow at first, even slower than most of the bulky Ground types that can snipe it with EQ. And to be honest, a Steel/Fairy type being potentially healthy would be a sick add-on for utility purposes in building. Now, with that being said, Magearna can still cripple a lot of its checks with Trick, especially the bulkier ones like Skeledirge and Clodsire. And even though standard CM sets from the past may have better counterplay, Magearna is going to abuse Terastalization like crazy. Tera Ground with Tera Blast for most of the Fire-types and Steel-types sounds really good on it, or even something like Tera Electric Thunderbolt. Whether or not it's feasible to fully check all of its sets, Tera will make dealing with the set-up sets much more of a chore than it probably would be otherwise. So yeah, Magearna COULD be fine, but it would likely end up becoming another annoying to predict Tera monster within a couple of weeks. I'd unban it before the Ape though
Echoing 1LDK, Magearna was literally a swiss army knife in the sense that you could customize it to do whatever the hell you wanted in Gen 7, it was a guilty pleasure of mine lmaoo
Though in Gen 8 when it was legal, I mainly used Draining Kiss sets and I can wholeheartedly say I understand why some people in this thread are vocal about Dexiting it, that thing literally never died and kept snowballing with Soul Heart, it's ludicrous.
I don’t see Magearna dropping to OU unless some reason GameFreak decides last minute to not give it Stored Power. Or Smogon decides to ban Stored Power like they did with Last Respects, letting it and Espathra drop.
