The First Smogon Council - Salamence

[Chou Toshio]

Thanks for resonding Valk, and I can respect the distinction between power v. unpredictability (but I still disagree that mence has significantly more power).

As to 5th gen threats-- I would disagree that defensive pokemon help countering survive as a strategy.

In fact, I would say more powerful defensive threats makes countering harder, just like more offensive threats.

Semi Stall using a skarmory can serious screw over a stall team that's relying too much on non-flamethrower blissey to handle special attackers, and lets skarmory setup more and more spikes (letting the enemy sweepers plow through the stall).

Furthermore, if you find yourself with no more teammates that can seriously hurt skarmory, it doesn't matter how well you wall brave bird, you're probably not going to win.

Taunt Gliscor, Taunt Bulky Gyarados, and Roar Swampert all pose notable serious threats to stall. And they're not the only ones. How about Wish Jirachi? Crocune? The list goes on.

Semi-Stall with offensive pokemon and stall pokes like skarmory can crush the countering game and blast holes in defensive cores with a combination of entry hazards and attacking. Even worse, with all that powerful offense, by the time you manage to take down the enemy ghost, probably rotom-a (which could be really hard if you're using stall with no ttar), it might not matter any more as the team precedes to sweep your already weakened defenses.

The point I'm getting at is that defensive threats require proper answers just as much as offensive ones.

It doesn't matter if they release more hippowdons and Vaporeons into the meta, because if they are truly worthy of being OU, they too will make countering an even more ludicrous strategy.

People talk about a physical blissey, but what if they add a special skarmory, that gives birth to more spike-abusing semi-stall/offensive teams?

What if they make a fast and bulky ghost with Screens and/or boosting moves and Baton Pass to evade Pursuit users?

Such bulky pokemon would definitely be seen on stall teams (if they survive), and would check a lot of threats, but would make countering harder!


Offensive or Defensive threat, more pokemon + more moves = countering even more backwards minded.

 

[TheValkyries]

It's an interesting thought that defensive pokemon need counters too, but again, I sincerely doubt that pure Offensive pokemon, and pure Defensive pokemon is all that 5th gen is bringing to the table. There will be a multitude of different pokemon who can fill many different roles. That could mean a new CroCune, or a new CursePert, etc. Countering will still remain valid.

However, I do essentially agree that there will be a point when there is just too many pokemon to even consider trying to counter them all. But then again, even Stall nowadays doesn't do that. Stall now simply has dedicated Physical or Special tanks, and phazes out opponents, slowly wearing them down. It's physically impossible for them even now to counter everything, so they counter what they can (Namely the most common threats). If they truly could counter everything, then there would be no way to beat it outside of HO.

But again 5th gen has no bearing on 4th gen Mence.

 

[Chou Toshio]

What does have relevance is that lacking counters or being able to beat checks, or even over power checks (checks are, by definition, beatable) is no sign of Uber status in competitive pokemon. There has to be a more convincing argument.

At this point, I have heard nothing that convinces me any more than the SR argument convinces you.

Pro-Ubers argument clings to "no counters" just as much if not more than Pro-OU reminds of SR's effects on mence.

 

[TheValkyries]

It's not that he beats his checks, as everything has the possibility to beat their checks. It's more about how Mence does it. He doesn't have to run a set specifically designed to take down his checks (Gengar's Sub Pain Split), nor is he uncounterable via unpredictabilty** (Infernape's vastly different Mixed sets). He gets through his checks by simply dropping STAB down on the field, completely blind to whatever else is coming his way. On top of this, unlike Gengar and Infernape, MixMence can come back after smashing through his checks and sweep with little to no hindrance as long as nothing outspeeds him. And for the things that do outspeed him, one only needs something faster to sweep through them *cough* Jolteon *cough*, which puts Mence not only a short distance away from being Uber under the Offensive Characteristic, but also extremely close to being Uber under the Support Characteristic.

**- Mence's unpredictablity does not play any role in how he smashes his checks to the ground. His unpredictability however does play a key role in the fact that MixMence can consistently force the Bulky Water to come in, because if you try to switch a Steel on DDMence hoping to catch a MixMence's Draco Meteor, you're going to lose your Steel, and be left with a crippled Bulky Water. This is why I really find MixMence to be the more broken set of the two.

 

[cim]

I don't see why endless (71-page) discussions of "counters" are even relevant, or why the concept of "counters" is even relevant to competitive battling. Seriously. Countering is something that only comes across my mind when building a defensive team, and that is usually even after I've accomplished other team objectives. (edit: yes i consider all of the metagame threats when building a team i just don't go "oh i need a gyarados counter and a metagross counter and and") It's been shown time and time again that making a team that solely aims to "counter everything" will never work in OU, so why is the focus of the thread "what are the pokemon that can stop Salamence in a worst case scenario with set x, y, and z"? People argue "well a paper counter isn't necessary" without even realizing why paper counters are unnecessary: It's because smart and intelligent battlers never let these "ideal situations" even happen. The battle against your opponent is a balance of minimizing their openings while maximizing yours, and a counter is a last-ditch, "i better stop him from plowing through everything" solution to a Pokemon.

People will say "Scizor isn't a counter to Salamence!" all day long, but why is Scizor the #1 Pokemon in OU? Because the smart battlers using Scizor are also setting up Stealth Rock, Sand Stream, and not throwing around shit that Salamence is immune to around very much. You'll pretty quickly see that a Scizor can even defeat Leftovers Salamence if you're playing smart and not just using Earthquake all the time. This intelligent play, preventing Salamence from coming in, making it take damage all the time, etc. makes already viable Pokemon like Scizor, Scarfers, etc. perfectly acceptable answers to Salamence. This also highlights Salamence's often talked about flaw: To get the deadly power it needs to beat 90% of teams, it needs Life Orb, while already being SR and Sand weak. This essentially means Salamence can only come in once, instead of over and over. And I'd hardly say the battle is over if Salamence safely comes in that first time.

 

[TheValkyries]

Aye, it's impossible to counter everything when given a team of only 6 pokemon. But when it comes to Mence he has none that doesn't take up deadspace on your team, and even his checks are incosistent. MixMence makes all of them (bar Bronzong) look absolutely stupid for even thinking they could switch in to a Mence by simply spamming Draco Meteor. If you bring in a Steel, prepare to eat a Super Effective EQ. And if EQ is not super effective you are carrying one of four pokemon, only one of which can take a -2 Fire Blast and live to tell the tale. As you just said, "the battle against your opponent is a balance of minimizing their openings while maximizing yours." Well it goes both ways. Putting Stealth Rock on a lead and slapping a Scizor on your team does not mean they will work to check Mence every time. Your opponent will be working just as hard to maximize his chances. That means Magnezone, LO Spinning Starmie, etc, etc. You're preparations will be thought of by the Mence user, and will be taken advantage of.

 

[cim]

Aye, it's impossible to counter everything when given a team of only 6 pokemon. But when it comes to Mence he has none that doesn't take up deadspace on your team, and even his checks are incosistent. MixMence makes all of them (bar Bronzong) look absolutely stupid for even thinking they could switch in to a Mence by simply spamming Draco Meteor. If you bring in a Steel, prepare to eat a Super Effective EQ. And if EQ is not super effective you are carrying one of four pokemon, only one of which can take a -2 Fire Blast and live to tell the tale. As you just said, "the battle against your opponent is a balance of minimizing their openings while maximizing yours." Well it goes both ways. Putting Stealth Rock on a lead and slapping a Scizor on your team does not mean they will work to check Mence every time. Your opponent will be working just as hard to maximize his chances. That means Magnezone, LO Spinning Starmie, etc, etc. You're preparations will be thought of by the Mence user, and will be taken advantage of.

You're still missing my point. You're assuming a full health Salamence came in for free, against an un-advantageous matchup, and that Salamence is somehow capable of using all 4 of it's attacks at the same time! When you see that Salamence can come in, yes, and take a bit of damage, then Pokemon like Scizor finish Salamence off even if you predict wrong and you switch in the wrong Pokemon. Also, there are a fair number of Pokemon that can take a single Draco Meteor from Salamence. Jirachi comes immediately to mind, but so can Blissey, Metagross, Heatran, etc. (Scizor needs specialized EVing). What happens if your opponent killed your Draco Meteor switch in? Sacrifice something and now you're up against a -2 SpA Salamence, with probably around ~50% health due to Sand, SR, and the Life Orb hit it just took. Said Salamence's options are severely limited, and you have a few different options for taking it out of commission, the most common of which would be Scizor. Say you predicted wrong and you switched in Jirachi to Fire Blast or Heatran to Earthquake? Well, it happens, but not the end of the world either, you get a free revenge switch at least, maybe you can make something happen there with any Pokemon higher than base 100 speed being a threat (which is a lot, when you count the multitude of scarfers).

Of course, someone's going to read my post and go "lol if you have to sac something to beat it it's uber!". No, I"m just saying even if your Draco Meteor switch in died in a tragic Magnezone accident you can still do something. Even if your opponent is stacking Salamence-response-responses against you, there are a few key things to notice. (1) Unless these Pokemon are effective otherwise, they're overspecializing, and compromising the strength of the rest of their team - perfect for making openings of your own (See, it really goes BOTH ways), and (2) You too can prepare for these and see them coming from a mile away.

Pokemon is far, far less simple than "how counterable is x". If you're asking that question, you're not really looking into all of the options you have.

 

[shrang]

Okay, since I sense that the vote is probably going to happen soon, I'm going to sum up my points. Let's look at Mence with accordance to the "Characterstics of an Uber".

Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

Some more detail to this characteristic can also be summed up with:

Capable of sweeping standard in common battle conditions with one turn of set up or less.

Common battle conditions: Sandstorm, 1 layer of SR, Spikes or Toxic Spikes, no screens
Little to no effort (My definition) includes the quote above and little to no team support (Which means using Dragonite to soften up counters does not count, Magnezone is debatable).
Sweeping significant portion of teams = 3+ Pokemon in a row

This characteristic is most associated to all the different DD Mences. We have Offensive DD Mence, Bulky DD Roost Mence, and DD MixMence (With Draco Meteor). Both the Bulky and Mixed DD Mence has coverage issues, meaning it would be walled by Skarmory and Bronzong quite easily (Or Heatran). Those two sets are out of the question. Standard Offensive DD Mence is probably the closest thing to being broken.

Offensive DD Mence runs DD/Outrage/Fire Blast/Earthquake. While on paper, it has the potential sweep entire teams, it often has difficulty. Bulky Waters like Swampert and Suicune can take a +1 Outrage and OHKO back with Ice Beam. Physical walls like Hippowdon can also take a +1 Outrage and OHKO back with Ice Fang or Roar Mence out. Outrage also has a crappy side-effect, which means getting locked in early can mean stuff like Jirachi and Heatran can revenge it, meaning it isn't "sweeping". Also, residue damage wears Mence down quite quickly, and after one DD and one Outrage, it loses 25 + 6.25 + 10 + 6.25%, meaning it would be at 53.5% after one attack, meaning quite a lot of things would be able to KO it if he can't manage to KO by itself.

For DD Mence to be truly effective, it requires quite significant support, like Magnezone to trap and kill Steels that can stop its sweep. It also needs physical walls like Hippowdon to be weakened before attempting to sweep. This, in my opinion is too much support for Mence to be banned under the Offensive Characteristic.

Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.

I don't think we even need to assess Mence on the DC, right?? I mean, FatMence is cool to check physical threats like Lucario, but it isn't going to wall anything.

Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.

Probably the best characteristic for Mence to fit, judging by all the discussion. A lot of the productive discussion (Probably <10% the posts) are centred around Mence's ability to break down pretty much any Pokemon using the New MixMence set. However, if we look at the SC, we will see that one keyword of this Characteristic has not been discussed at anywhere near the detail that is required: consistently. I don't believe Mence can consistently break down Pokemon to allow for a teammate to sweep. Read on for reasoning.

One thing I see a lot in this thread is how Mence turns the game into a "50-50 guess" of what he might do (Steels eat Fire Blast/EQ, everything else eats Draco Meteor/Outrage). So, using this "50-50" argument as a starting point, you can see that "consistent" is already starting to look shaky, since 50-50 is not very consistent. You need to be operating at at least 75% in a Pokemon game (Maybe more) to be consistent. Now, with smart play and good prediction (By analysing the situation and deciding which switch/move is best), 50% is dropped dramatically (Taking into account that the Mence user is predicting as well). If we ball-park it (There is no way of calculating a percentage with so many variables), let's say 25%, the chances of a crippling blow was dealt. Now, even if a crippling blow was dealt, the Support Characteristic implies that a teammate needs to be able to take advantage of it and sweep. The chances of that are lower again, since firstly, Mence cannot control what it kills. If a bulky Water was severely crippled, there's no guarantee that say, Scarf Tran or DD Gyarados would be around to take advantage of this, nor if a Steel was taken down that DD Kingdra, Scarf Flygon or DD Dragonite could take advantage of this. This is also assuming that the Pokemon Mence cripples/kills is the ONLY check to your sweeper (Which it often isn't). This reduces the chances even further, down to say 5-10% that Salamence can create a condition where a teammate can sweep. This is also ignoring th fact that Mence dies easily to residual damage and all that jazz. 5-10% is definitely not "consistent" in my book. Therefore, Mence, does not fit the Support Characteristic.

 

[remlabmez]

good post shrang, i agree with most of the stuff you said. standard battle conditions make mence less of a pain, and people act like the mence user will always pick the right move...and I cant even remember the last time I was swept by a DD mence that wasnt by a crit....

 

[Shizzle]

good post shrang, i agree with most of the stuff you said. standard battle conditions make mence less of a pain, and people act like the mence user will always pick the right move...and I cant even remember the last time I was swept by a DD mence that wasnt by a crit....

Hit the right move? We have been over this soo many times. There is barely anything that outspeeds Salamence [without a scarf] that can take any of his hits. Anything slower is going to be finished by another move if its first does not. Hit the right move or not, chances are he is still going to kill.

 

[Tayla]

It doesn't matter, if you can get those Pokemon in safely. Jolteon, Azelf, Timid Jirachi. There are plenty of Pokemon capable of either coming in the revenge (Jolteon), or coming in on something advantageous to itself (Azelf on the Earthquake, Rachi on the Outrage / Meteor). Salamence has raw power, no one's arguing that. However, it just can't use that power consistently enough that it should be Uber. You have to keep in mind that alot of times Salamence itself is wrecked in many situations that it can't merely attack and hope to win like some of you have been stating.

 

[MrIndigo]

On a somewhat-but-indirectly-related point: I think the time where pokemon were judged unusable on the basis of giving one turn of set-up has been and gone.

There are simply so many varied Pokemon capable of devastation with one turn of setup (Salamence, of course, but also SD Scizor, DDos, Agiligross, Tyranitar, Empoleon, Lucario, Latias when she was here, MixApe, etc., etc.), coupled with the fact that the concept of a counter has more or less died in OU to be replaced only with 'checks', revenge killing has become nearly essential to every team. Consequently, 'one turn of setup' doesn't usually translate to a game win because everyone packs methods to deal with one-turn-boosted sweepers. Such scenarios happen in almost every single battle (sometimes multiple times) and they do not necessarily represent the win-or-loss.

I feel that to be judging anything on the basis of one free turn of setup is simply obsolete. You do not lose a game for giving your opponent one free turn of set-up, because almost everything in the game can be forced into a switch and net a free turn of setup to SOMETHING.

 

[Shizzle]

@MrIndigo, this is all well and true, but Salamence has other sets, namely the New MixMence set which is still extremely usable. Finding out which variant of Salamence it is can lose you the check/counter you have

 

[rxhar]

It occurs to me that what differs Mence from previously banned 600s is he doesn't make people feel that much of a presence. Back in the old days, you can see SD Chomp sweeps consistently (nothing to do with OC, it's just the wording), so even if he wasn't on the foe's team you are still aware that he is around, and still expected him come in from the beginning of any battle. Later when Deoxys-e was there, it was quite similar. As for Mence, I've been using a team with no serious offense, nothing over 300 spd bar lead Aero and no real wall since I returned to Shoddy 2 months ago and have seen plenty of Mences in the process, yet I don't remember being swept by a Mence. Neither do I see a Mence coming from a mile away, and even if he comes he usually ends up KOing 1 of my Pokemon before going down. I don't know if it's just me but I think I'm quite the normal and average battler.

 

[cim]

Interesting points, shrang. The main thing I want to point out though is that your logic for the Offensive Characteristic could be applied to a lot of Pokemon that are currently banned (notably Latias). Then again, the Support Characteristic in my mind is the only "valid" Pokemon characteristic at all; because the kind of Pokemon that are banned by the offensive characteristic never become Suspects at all, and there has never been nor will be a Pokemon that meets the Defensive characteristic but not the Support Characteristic.

I would suggest looking at Dragon Dance Salamence via the Support Characteristic as well and seeing what you come up with.

I feel that to be judging anything on the basis of one free turn of setup is simply obsolete. You do not lose a game for giving your opponent one free turn of set-up, because almost everything in the game can be forced into a switch and net a free turn of setup to SOMETHING.

While true, I still think when you're battling you should be building teams that make the number of free turns possible as close to zero as possible.

 

[Aeolus]

Closed. See my new sticky on the subject.