Type Cycle: Looking for hosting

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Type cycle is an OM unlike almost all others- instead of changing abilities, moves, or game mechanics, it changes something different- typing. The above image illustrates the rotation of the cycle of types of Moves and Pokemon in Type Cycle:

Of course, you might be thinking, What does it mean? That image is somewhat confusing- what is it talking about? The answer is simple- the type changes, that's all. It doesn't modify the types in any way, it only changes who has what type. As you can see, Arceus' type has just changed from Dark to Grass.




Now at this point, might be wondering about damage outputs without STAB to back it up. Will this metagame only favor those pokemon with deep movepools? Well, worry not- because your moves change type as well. Fire Blast, which formerly hit steel types and was some of the best coverage with flying out there, now hits Fighting and Poison types- the former Ice and Ground types

A few Abilities work a bit differently from what you're used to, as well. Specifically:

Normalize converts all moves to the
type.

Pixilate converts
moves to the
type. (eg Hyper Voice)

Aerilate converts
to the
type. (eg Return)

Refrigerate converts
moves to the
type. (eg Explosion)

Blaze bolsters
type moves when low on health. (eg Fire Blast)

Torrent bolsters
types moves when low on health. (eg Waterfall)

Overgrow bolsters
type moves when low on health. (eg Giga Drain)

Swarm bolsters
type moves when low on health. (eg Megahorn)

Gale Wings adds +1 to
type moves. (eg Brave Bird)

Dark Aura bolsters the damage of all
type moves. (eg Knock Off)

Fairy Aura bolsters the damage of all
type moves. (eg Moon Blast)

Sand Force boosts
,
, and
moves during a Sandstorm. (eg Iron Head, Earthquake, and Stone Edge, respectively)

This is to ensure the Abilities behave "as intended", especially as most of these Abilities would be useless or nearly useless for the Pokemon that get them if they kept their original behavior. Scrappy is excluded because no type is immune to Dark or Water anyway. Note that, for instance, Kangaskhan can still benefit from Scrappy via Earthquake, which is now Fighting-typed, so Scrappy is not left entirely in the lurch.

All other Abilities behave as in Standard.

Of course, move typing has changed, so Levitate protects from Psyshock rather than Earthquake, because Psyshock is now
while Earthquake is
type. One way of thinking of it is that Abilities with type-specific offensive modifications are adapted while defensive modifications are not. The effects of items are completely unchanged, as are most other effects that interact with typing, such as Gravity still disabling immunity to
, though don't expect them to do their thing to the same moves or Pokemon.

The one other special-casing is Stealth Rock: not only is the move itself
typed, but the rocks it sets derive their effectiveness from the
type, rather than the
type.

Other than these points, everything's behavior logically follows from the cycle being imposed on Pokemon and Moves: Arceus's default typing is
, while granting it the Splash Plate will convert it to the
type -but the plate itself still boosts
type moves, because items are excluded from this effect. Venusaur gets 50% more Special Defense when in a Sandstorm and is immune besides, while Golem is sad-faced and hurt by the sand. Moves that benefit from weather, unrelated to their type, still benefit -
Hurricane is still rain-loving- while type-based benefits and penalties apply to the newly re-typed moves, such as Close Combat failing in Desolate Land while Sludge Wave gets a 50% boost to its damage.

Hidden Power, however, remains unchanged

Ruleset
OU-based

Additional Bans: Metagrossite.

Unbans: Not yet.
 
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Some comment-worthy Pokemon to get started.

/

That's right, it only has 2 weaknesses, it's immune to Sandstorm, it can't be Poisoned, and Pursuit-trapping it no longer works. Shedinja is scary. On the other hand, it's actually a lot easier to wall its offenses: both Steel and Fire resist both its STABs, and it's extremely limited in its ability to use coverage moves to get around them: surprisingly, it can learn Solar Beam, which is super effective on Fire types, but its Special Attack is crap and that would require Sun support. Or that Shedinja waste a turn using Sunny Day itself. Or that it use Solar Beam as a two-turn move. It could Dig to land a Fighting hit on Steel types, but that's also a two-turn move. It can of course use Return or whatever to land neutral damage on Steel and Fire, but that's really about it, and with Shadow Sneak now a Fairy type move it's actually harder for it to Swords Dance up and then sweep with priority, since Fairy is resisted by Poison, Fire, and Steel, vs Ghost being resisted by Dark and useless on Normal. The fact that Fire types are also immune to Will O Wisp also troubles it, since, again, they resist both its STABs. Fire/Fairy (Gengar) is completely outside Shedinja's ability to realistically deal with.

/

It's Giratina-Altered, but in OU and with reliable recovery! Funny how that works out.

/

Holy crap, Vespiquen has an actually useful defensive typing! For that matter, Attack Order is actually kind of useful as an attacking move. Might Vespiquen be viable? It even resists Stealth Rock, it's immune to Toxic... there's some cool potential here.


The big thing here is
type Contrary Leaf Storm, which is an excellent offensive type. Unfortunately Dragon Pulse is now garbage as coverage, and Wring Out leaves Serperior walled by
type Pokemon, so it honestly still needs Hidden Power coverage.

/

Plus side: neutral to Stealth Rock. Minus side: doubly weak to Extreme Speed, Pursuit. Plus side: preferred STAB (Brave Bird) is an amazing attacking type. Minus side: STABs are both walled by
, with no coverage available to Talonflame to fix this, barring Natural Gift.

/

No double weakness! Its STABs are nearly perfect coverage! Facade gives it a 140 BP option for covering the one typing that walls its STABs! Minor flaw: weak to Stealth Rock. Likely to be an amazing Pokemon, able to extensively abuse Poison Heal.

/

Vulnerable to Sucker Punch, vulnerable to Extreme Speed, type-based immunity to Air Slash is now possible, reducing how powerful flinch-hax shenanigans are... it's still got an excellent Speed tier and amazing coverage between its STABs+Earth Power, and now it actually resists Stealth Rock, but it's not nearly as threatening as in Standard.

/

Krookodile is in the unfortunate position of being the only Pokemon in the entire meta that is doubly weak to Stealth Rock. Poor fellow. :(

/

Malamar is deeply unhappy with this meta. Its STABs and its favorite move -Contrary Superpower- are all walled by
type Pokemon, it's still got a double weakness but now that double weakness is to priority, severely weakening how good a Sticky Web-supported set could be, now it's weak to Stealth Rock... it's pretty miserable.

/

Gengar's STABs with Ground-type coverage in the form of the move Psychic is an excellent attacking combination, though a set running just those three plus Will O Wisp would really struggle with
/
and Levitating
types like Weezing, so Focus Blast is still worth considering as
coverage against those. Or you could run Giga Drain for recovery and tearing those Pokemon to shreds. It resists Sucker Punch and Extreme Speed, as well as Bullet Punch and Shadow Sneak, though now it's weak to Mach Punch, Vacuum Wave, and Ice Shard. It hasn't picked up a double weakness to restrict it, and in fact
/
is actually a good defensive type combination, one that even appreciates Levitate. Gengar is scary stuff, in all honesty.

/

Aegislash suffers enormously, with an awful defensive typing (double weakness to U-Turn, for one) that is distinctly uncomplimentary on the offense as well, being mutually walled by
and
. It can run Sacred Sword to help, but it lacks an actual anti-
coverage option, severely nerfing its offensive capacity. It has a decent selection of neutrally effective options -Return/Frustration if nothing else- but that's about it.

/

A typing that really struggles to survive, given a double weakness to Knock Off/Sucker Punch/Pursuit. The last point is especially concerning, given that it means a counter switching in may be the end of Breloom right there. Too bad for Breloom.
+

/
+
/

Two double weaknesses as Y vs two weaknesses at all as X. Y's Ability is also only particularly useful for enabling Solar Beam, which isn't actually all that complimentary of coverage for its STABs, whereas X's Tough Claws boost useful coverage moves like Frustration. X's secondary STAB -Dragon Claw/Outrage- may well be dropped entirely for more coverage, in all honesty. In any event, they've both taken a big blow to their viability.


Mega Kangaskhan's classic set of of Fake Out+STAB+Drain Punch, Power Up Punch, or Earthquake+Sucker Punch is a lot more impaired.
+
or
+
leaves you readily walled by
/
(Sableye, Spiritomb) and
/
(Krookodile) in specific, rather than providing perfect coverage. There are coverage options available -Avalanch will explode Sableye effortlessly- but then you're moving away from the core set of moves that is so amazing.

/

While this is a pretty miserably terrible attacking combination, since all of
,
, and
resist-or-better both STABs, it's actually a pretty nifty defensive combination, with Toxic immunity and only two weaknesses, making it a lot harder to break than in Standard. And it's not weak to Stealth Rock, either! It's also got tons of coverage options: Psychic-the-move grants coverage against two of those three, as an obvious option. Incidentally, Kyurem-Black is a lot less threatening of an attacker.

/

It's a good thing this guy's banned in Standard, because he's more horrifying here! His classic trifecta of Earth Power/Sludge Wave/Focus Blast is
/
/
coverage, and for starters this means he's even better at breaking Eviolite Chansey, as Earth Power hits harder than Focus Blast after STAB, nor does it miss, and now it is super effective against Chansey. There's types that wall that specific set, such as Hawlucha's typing of
/
but Psychic (
) and Grass Knot (
) give it more options for bypassing such, even before you consider the possibility of it breaking out Hyper Beam, or Return of Frustration, or the like.


Crocune is harder to beat on, with only one weakness, and to a type whose moves tend to be weak anyway, but running mono-attacker is a lot riskier when random
types like Alakazam are immune to Scald outright, and can use you as Calm Mind setup bait.

/

Foiled by random
and
types, no longer super effective against Chansey, your only coverage -Icy Wind- is the weak
type. (Which at least helps against those pesky
types, but not so much the
s) Ouch.

/

One of the worst typings in the game, doubly weak to Sucker Punch, Knock Off, and Pursuit, and still weak to U-Turn, albeit less so. Might be viable as a Scarfed revenger or something, though, as they're at least a pretty excellent offensive pairing.

/

Still a pretty terrifying Sand sweeper, arguably more than ever now that its STABs are both solid attacking types, though held back by a fragile typing -including a weakness to Stealth Rock- and the fact that both preferred Sand setters are badly flawed, most particularly in being vulnerable to their own Sand.


Like Suicune, arguably held back by Scald being possible to be immune to, especially since many Ground types are actually quite fast, such as Espeon. This is particularly concerning as none of its coverage is super effective against the
type: it has Shadow Ball (
), Energy Ball (
), Ice Beam (
), Dazzling Gleam (
), Psychic (
), and Signal Beam (
), leaving it to turn to Hidden Power if it wants to hit
types hard. This is a marked contrast to Standard, where Scald/Energy Ball/Ice Beam is nearly perfect coverage.

/

Along with Carbink, the only representative of one of the most infamously awful type combinations ever. Frankly, I will be amazed if it somehow proves viable in spite of itself.
+

/

Here comes the Sun! While Weather Ball is not, in fact,
type, but rather
type (Still 100 BP),
/
in the Sun is a pretty decent attacking and even defending combination, and Sludge Wave is monstrously powerful in the Sun. Victreebel in particular can be a fun sweeper, and would be pretty amazing in Type Cycle Doubles Ubers where it could support Primal Groudon. Amusingly, you could run in Sand, where
Weather Ball is an aid against those
types, while getting that Special Defense boost. The double
and double
weakness is pretty killer, though.

/

Nasty, nasty Sun abuser, resisting pretty everything Sun would normally hate, and it likes having
types to switch into when
types try to get at it. And it has Signal Beam for punching holes into weakened
types, too. Beware Shadow Sneak, though. Dry Skin Abusers are also mildly interesting, though I suspect they would tend to highlight the weakness to
in practice. It also lacks a strong answer to
types, but Shedinja is the only
/
, so whatever.


/

A much more useful combination for taking advantage of Filter (It's going to be hard totake it down rapidly), and a decent attacking combination in its own right. Trick Room Mega Camerupt has a fair amount of potential. It's too bad it's weak to Stealth Rock, though.

/

Oh man. Shell Smash backing one of the better typings of the game? Barbaracle still has to deal with Stone Edge not benefiting from Tough Claws, but holy crap is this potentially threatening. Its STABs are even a decent attacking pairing, with only
walling both of them -which, unfortunately it has no coverage for, but that's OK, since it's neutral to
itself, it really just needs a neutral coverage move or something to hit on specific Pokemon proves viable for checking it. Worst case scenario, run Frustration for sweet 132.3 BP widely effective coverage. And it resists Stealth Rock while ignoring Spikes, Toxic Spikes, and Sticky Web, making it very hard to pressure it with hazards.

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Doubly weak to Shadow Sneak, but has astounding coverage just on the power of its STABs, backed by Huge Power. Quick Attack also protects it some from priority, and it's doubly resistant to Extreme Speed. An excellent choice for breaking all those Dark types out there, since it doubly resists them in general.

/

Weak to Stealth Rock, doubly weak to Bullet Punch, hurt by its own Sandstorm, STABs are walled by random Steel types... Tyranitar is really hurt by Type Cycle.
+

/

Immune to Scald, immune to Paralysis, resistant to U-Turn... Nifty utility Pokemon all around, able to switch in on a lot of stuff, particularly Slowbro with its bulk and access to Regenertor. Too bad both STABs have immunities, though, including that there's a decent selection of Pokemon that are immune to both STABs, including Claydol, Cresselia, the Latis, Azelf... and that's just some of the Levitating Ground types! Rhyperior is a
type with Lightning Rod, for instance. Coverage is going to be very important to these Pokemon, so it's a good thing they have a good selection.

/

Still vulnerable to Stealth Rock but now exposed to other hazards, weak to the omnipresent
type... on the plus side, its STABs are actually a decent compliment. Not perfect -
/
walls it, as does
/
and a few other typings- but the primary type to wall
is
and it's weak to
.

/

Mutually walled by
and
types, with Thick Fat being a lot less useful, but overall a less fragile typing. Being weak to Stealth Rock is a bit of a pain, though.

/

Really struggles with
types as well as certain Levitators, such as Claydol, but overall its STABs are a lot more complimentary, and it has Energy Ball for dealing with
types anyway, so it's not so bad, especially since
types types are generally slow and fragile, giving it time to punch holes or get up a Calm Mind, and they almost universally loathe being hit with Will O Wisp anyway.

/

Look at all those immunities!

... mind, it's weak to the omnipresent
type, but it may well prove a lot easier to get the space needed to get a Calm Mind off. On the minus side, Stored Power is actually walled by more Pokemon, not fewer, since it's now blocked by Levitate. But hey, it's no longer blocked by Shedinja!
+

/
+
/

Rotom! That can become Rotom-Mow! Only there's no Levitate here. It's too bad it lacks a good
STAB, but both typings are nifty, and the second one in particular is actually pretty good all around, aside from being walled by
types. The two even compliment each other some, since the former resists
and
while the latter is vulnerable, meaning you can psych out your opponent by refusing to Mega Evolve when they expect it.

/

I'm so sorry Garchomp. On the plus side, bulky Rough Skin+Rocky Helmet builds are a lot tougher to take out, aside from the Stealth Rock weakness, due to the lack of a double weakness/low number of weaknesses overall, helping get out more punishment before fainting. Even the troubles against
types are manageable: just slap on Frustration.

/

Ouch. On the plus side, Flashfire is covering a weakness. On the minus side... nearly everything else. It's not even a good offensive pairing. I'll be genuinely surprised if it remains viable.

/

Aside from Levitators and
types, it's not the worst offensive combination ever. It also provides a decent amount of switch-in utility, in terms of Scald immunity, the ability to switch in on Brave Bird without health loss, etc. Actually pretty useful typing for bulky support 'mons, in all honesty.

/

A considerably more vulnerable typing with a fairly substantial blow to its offensive utility, too. It's even weak to Stealth Rock. Spore immunity isn't even that valuable, since as a Mega it would just bounce it anyway. On the other hand, it's still resistant to omnipresent
moves, and is still a good Prankster. Has potential, but is going to struggle a lot more to stay relevant.

/

On the plus side, its Bullet Punch spam is a lot more widely effective. On the minus side, two double weaknesses and a third weakness beside, instead of one double weakness alone. Way, way more fragile, and immunity to Hail does not remotely make up for it. On the plus side, it's resistant to Stealth Rock. Huzzah?

/

Ow. Two double weaknesses, weak to Stealth Rock... Klefki has been seriously hurt, even before considering that Foul Play is considerably weakened.

/

Behold one of the only Pokemon that is both immune to Hail and has Blizzard with enough stats to actually care! (Genesect is another) Mind, Blizzard is crap coverage, so I doubt anybody will care. Strangely, this is actually a mildly complimentary defensive typing, and of course it provides boltbeam coverage on its STABs. Baton Pass it some Speed, maybe?
+

+
/

... ah.
Ah!
AAAAAAH!
It resists Stealth Rock! Its primary attack is nearly unresisted! It carries Earthquake to deal with pretty much anything short of
/
! (Which, thankfully, it can't hit super effectively at all, post-Mega Evolution) This frees it up to put pretty much whatever it feels like as its third slot! I mean, it's coverage is actually really limited, but hey, spam Knock Off just to screw with stall, or something. One of the best defensive typings in the game! Even before it Mega Evolves it's actually an OK Pokemon, and might go for Moxie boosts. Run for your lives!

/

Gyarados called, it says Terrakion is a sucker. Doubly weak to Aqua Jet, for one. Could be worse though. And hey, Spin-punishing! Switch in on Rapid Spin, trigger Justified. That's pretty cool, and far from the only example that can crop up. And at least unlike Standard Gyarados it actually has both STABs.

/

One of the more defensively solid typings out there, resistant to Stealth Rock, resistant to Sucker Punch (Though weak to Extreme Speed et al, as well as Shadow Sneak), pretty decent all around, and it can run Psychic to hit
types that aren't
type. (There are no
Levitators) Giga Drain is also a way better typing, though if you run it+STAB you're going to be walled by
types. Considerably more viable as a late-game cleaner, though risky anyway: almost anything that isn't completely passive can spring a powerful
move on you, so a lot of things you'd think you can setup on can actually OHKO you.

/

Its STABs are now walled by
and
types, but are otherwise considerably more viable, and it can handle the latter by running Knock Off, leaving only
types as a reliable way to wall it -and even then, it can run Brick Break if it really cares, though at that point it's instead walled by
types, unless you're abandoning a STAB or abandoning Protect. Beedrill has some hard choices to make, basically. Thankfully, it now resists Stealth Rock, considerably improving its ability to just U-Turn right through everything without fainting, and its typing is, broadly speaking, very resistant to harm, further extending its longevity.


Make way for Belly Drum Extreme Speed Linoone! Nothing's immune to it, though it's not that hard to get a hold of halfway decent resists... at least until it pulls out the coverage. Between Shadow Claw (
), Play Rough (
), and Pin Missle (
), it's got coverage against everything that resists Extreme Speed... and Shadow Claw and Pin Missile cover all three types by themselves. Potentially very scary.

/

Only one weakness -even if it is omnipresent- with three immunities, and access to Boomburst for hitting the myriad Pokemon that share its typing... among other things. Unfortunately, its STABs are pretty underwhelming. Still, a Nasty Plot Boomburst sweep has some potential...


Avalugg is pretty awesome. Immunity to Toxic dramatically improves its walling ability, even aside from its typing being better defensively in general, it's now neutral to Stealth Rock with unblockable Rapid Spin (But you can spin-punish now! Switch in a Justified Pokemon, take advantage... though, +1 252 Atk Life Orb Terrakion Zen Headbutt (Ground type) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Avalugg: 159-187 (40.3 - 47.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery is pretty bad) it can Roar out enemies to take advantage of hazards/annoy setup sweepers... it's pretty cool.



Alakazam intrigues me. It gets Special EdgeQuake (Psychic/Psyshock, Energy Ball) and Gravity! (For dealing with the few things that are protected against EdgeQuake by Levitate, Magnet Rise, whatever) It's not the only Pokemon that gets this combination (Arceus, Beheeyem, Chimecho, Cresselia, Deoxys, Exeggutor, Genesect, Girafarig, Giratina, Gothitelle, Hoopa, Jirachi, Medicham, Meloetta, Meowstic, Mew, Mewtwo, Musharna, Reuniclus, Sigilyph, Stantler all do as well) but it seems like one of the better (legal) options for such, and many of the other choices really have better things to be doing with their time -Medicham wants to run Physical, after all, Cresselia resents breaking its own Levitate, Meowstic-M really ought to be focusing on Prankster, etc.


Weak to Stealth Rock (Can be mitigated by Magic Guard, admittedly), absolutely awful as an offensive typing, overall inferior to
as a defensive typing, has no immunities of any kind... Clefable is probably overall unhappy with this meta, especially since Stored Power shenanigans are actually easier to wall, having both a type-based immunity to deal with plus myriad Levitators. Though, on the plus side, Shedinja isn't immune to Stored Power. That's a plus... and Clefable gets Gravity. Hmmm. (4MSS, though)

/

Neutral to Stealth Rock, immune to Paralysis, resistant to the omnipresent Physical
coverage. Weakness to
is mostly ignorable, because you're a Physical wall anyway (Fear Mega Medicham, though), weakness to
is a bit worse but, again, most (competent) cases are Special anyway (V-Create being a noteworthy exception, and Entei's Sacred Fire another), and weakness to
is also pretty ignorable because, again, it's almost always Special! While it sucks that more things are immune to Scald, things might actually be overall to Quagsire's advantage, I'm surprised to say.

/

Last Unaware. Not that it's much of a wall. No recovery, for one. Still, it's got immunity to Paralysis and immunity to
coverage going for it, it might have some value as a Simple sweeper. Maybe. Or maybe offensive Unaware might be a thing out of it? Slice through setup walls?


How about that priority?

: Extreme Speed, Feint, Quick Attack, Fake Out.
: Aqua Jet, Water Shuriken.
: Mach Punch, Vacuum Wave.
: Bullet Punch.
: Ice Shard.
: Shadow Sneak.
: Sucker Punch.


Upper BP for wide-spread (ie I am excluding signature moves), spammable (The move must have no special conditions, such as major damage variance) moves, by type.

: 150 BP, Head Smash, followed by 100 BP, Stone Edge. Special caps out at 80 BP, barring Technician Hidden Power, but very few Pokemon get Power Gem.
: 140 BP, Boomburst, followed by 120 BP, Double Edge and Thrash, followed by 102 BP, Return/Frustration, 90 BP for Special.
: 130 BP, High Jump Kick, followed by 120 BP, Close Combat/Superpower/Focus Blast.
: 120 BP, Brave Bird. Special largely caps at 75 BP, Air Slash, unless you're willing to risk Hurricane (And have it), in which case you've got 110 BP for Special.
: 120 BP, Flare Blitz, 110 for Special, Fire Blast. Honorary mention goes to V-Create, 180 BP. Heat Wave's 95 BP is also worth commentary, as a decent number of Pokemon get Heat Wave as their only Psychic coverage.
: 120 BP, Gunk Shot, but more realistically 80 BP, Poison Jab, for Physical. Special is 90/95 BP, Sludge Bomb and the less common Sludge Wave. Honorary mention for Venoshock, which is 130 BP against Poisoned targets, and may prove viable.
: 120 BP, Megahorn. More realistically, 80 BP, X-Scissor, and 90 BP for Special, Bug Buzz. Even more realistically, 70 BP, U-Turn.
: 120 BP, Outrage. More probably, 80 BP, Dragon Claw, 85 BP, Dragon Pulse. Draco Meteor's 130 BP is worth commentary, as well.
: 120 BP, Petal Dance, Solar Beam, Power Whip, Wood Hammer. No, seriously. If you don't want any of those flaws, you're looking at 90 BP on Special, 75 if you want Giga Drain. Physical gets 90 off Leaf Blade and Petal Blizzard, though plenty of Pokemon will be stuck with 80 BP, Seed Bomb.
: 110 BP, Blizzard. More realistically, 90 BP, Ice Beam, followed by 75 BP, Ice Punch. Avalanche's 120 BP is worth commentary, as "being attacked" isn't a hard condition to meet.
: 110 BP, Hydro Pump. Usually you'll stick to 80 BP, Scald, and similarly 80 BP, Waterfall on the Physical end, though 100 BP Crabhammer should not be discounted, and 90 BP, Aqua Tail, is worth commentary as well.
: 110 BP, Thunder, though usually you'll stick to 90 BP, Thunderbolt, or 70 BP, Volt Switch. 90 BP is your general upper limit, Physically.
: 100 BP, Earthquake, which is everywhere. Less commonly, 90 BP, Earth Power, for the Special end.
: 97.5 BP, Knock Off when removing an item. There's also 95 BP, Foul Play, but mostly you'll be hitting at 80 BP, with Crunch on Physical and Dark Pulse on Special, aside from Knock Off spam.
: 95 BP, Moon Blast. 90 BP, Play Rough on the Physical end. 80 BP, Dazzling Gleam, for most non-Bugs.
: 90 BP, Psychic. Often you'll be running 80 BP, Psyshock, and on the Physical end your options are 80 BP, Zen Headbutt or 70 BP, Psycho Cut.
: 80 BP, Iron Head or Flash Cannon, take your pick. Some Pokemon can do better, such as Ferrothorn's Gyro Ball usually hitting at 150.
: 80 BP, Shadow Ball. 70 BP, Shadow Claw, if you're looking at the Physical end.


There's some quirky stuff going on with moves that interact unusually with types.

Freeze Dry is a
move that's super effective against
. This is particularly comment-worthy against Pangoro and Scrafty (
/
), but in general helps make up for how mediocre
offense is, type-wise, for those that get the move.

Flying Press is a
/
move. There's no big synergy there, but it's also not self-destructively pointless like in Standard.

Venoshock is a
type move that doubles in power if the target is currently Poisoned. That's honestly a much better deal than in Standard -one of the two types immune to Poisoning is vulnerable to Venoshock by type, while the other is merely neutral, where in Standard they're immune and resistant, respectively.

Hex is a
type move that doubles in power if the target is suffering under any major status effect. This has the unfortunate point that Pokemon immune to being Burned resist it, as do Pokemon immune to being Poisoned. On the other hand, nothing is immune to it, so that's something.

As Night Shade is
type, nothing can be immune to it! (Except Shedinja) This makes it a lot more reliably useful as offense for stallmons like Eviolite Dusclops.

Seismic Toss isn't quite as lucky, as
type has Ability-based immunities available aside from Wonder Guard, but it's still got a lot fewer things that can shrug it off.

By a similar token, Counter being
type is a big boost to, among other points, Wobbuffet.

Mirror Coat isn't so lucky, as
typing has an Ability immunity in addition to type immunity, and even being able to hit Shedinja is small consolation when Shedinja isn't going to attack on the Special end...

Circle Throw is
type. Can't be immune to it by type! This contrasts against...

Dragon Tail is derp
type, so things can still be immune to it by type.

Curse can only be used in its Curse-laying capacity by Aerodactyl, Crobat, Farfetch'd, Skarmory, and Tropius. Skarmory, Crobat, and Aerodactyl all intrigue me -all three for their access to reliable recovery, acceptably decent defensive typings (Yes, even Skarmory), and Crobat and Aerodactyl for their potential to suicide-Curse when near death as a last-minute screw-you.

Misty Terrain is arguably a lot more useful, since most users aren't natively immune to
type attacks, and the Pokemon that are now
type are fond of tossing out Thunder Waves. As such, simultaneously protecting from Thunder Waves and halving the damage of a Volt Switch is actually pretty cool!

Grassy Terrain is kind of interesting, actually. Halving the damage of Earthquake is legitimately useful when your average Grassy Terrain user is vulnerable to
moves, and boosting the damage of
is actually still useful to some of the potential users -Tangrowth has Knock Off, for instance. Heck, it might even appreciate the passive healing, given its tendency to be a bulky Regenerator!

Electric Terrain is probably bad. Bolstering
moves isn't very useful when your Electric Terrain setters almost never get
moves. Heliolisk with Surf is the only exception, outside of Hidden Power, I think.

Hey, Powder is still useful! Kinda.

Surprisingly, Smack Down grounding the target is actually useful to some Pokemon. There's a decent pool of Pokemon that get it+Zen Headbutt, actually!

Cacturne can boost itself with Rototiller, actually. I mean, why you'd do that when you have Growth, in Singles, is beyond me...

Have I mentioned that Gravity is actually relevant to tons of Pokemon? Heck, drop a Future Sight and then set Gravity! That's not half-bad, actually.

Smack Down is a bit more screwed over. You need to have Zen Headbutt, too, to get realistic use out of it, which most Smack Down-capable Pokemon don't have. (None of them get Psycho Cut) There's still a decent pool, though...

Miracle Eye is close to useless, alas. Not that it was ever used by people anyway, mind....

Odor Sleuth/Foresight is better off, as Earthquake access is fairly widespread, including that several Pokemon with access to one of these has STAB Earthquake, such as Diggersby.

Synchronoise is kind of interesting now that you don't resist-by-default if you can be affected by it.

Telekinesis is now really, really bad, instead of merely bad, since it renders them immune to what is likely your primary STAB.

Magnet Rise is even more limited than in Standard, though there's some surprising cases of getting it -Volcarona, for instance, really is Special Metagross!

Thunder Wave, as a
type move is still possible to be immune to by type!

Same for Volt Switch, while U-Turn remains able to power through everything short of Wonder Guard.

Trick or Treat is a lot less appealing now that it isn't making the target vulnerable to your default STAB type. Conversely, Forest's Curse is no longer making them resistant... but they're still immune to Leech Seed if you hit them with it. Hm.

Soak is a lot more interesting, given that it by default makes the target vulnerable to your
Scalds. Kind of obnoxious, even.

Water Sport and Mud Sport are marginally less useless, honest! After all, instead of their default users being resistant and immune, respectively, to the types being weakened, they're neutral and neutral, respectively.

Final Gambit no longer has type-based immunities to fear... and Explosion and Self-Destruct can only be laughed at by Shedinja. Yikes. Same for Endeavor! And Super Fang.


Interesting Ability stuff.

Flashfire makes it really hard to Poison something. Odd thought, that.

Grass Pelt is a bit more interesting, as Grassy Terrain has a lot more potential. With Grass Pelt, Gogoat is quartering the damage it takes from Earthquake (Which it's otherwise weak to!), while picking up passive healing. It can even run Payback if it wants a move getting boosted.


That actually sounds pretty cool. Gogoat would be really interesting in Doubles, where it would be plausible to get it Sandstream support to turn it into an absurd tank, but even in Singles it's got a lot of potential, especially since normally its Gogoat's Defense that's its weak defensive stat. Once its doubled? Not so much.

Guts has only one thing particularly worth commentary to me.


Flareon can finally run Flame Orb like all its fellow Guts abusers! Huzzah!

Heatproof is only worth commentary to me because Bronzong is overall better off running it than Levitate, in terms of covering weaknesses, which is just weird.

/

Look ma, I'm Bad Standard Mamoswine! (Because Mamoswine has Thick Fat, which also weakens Ice) Well, Heatproof also slows damage from Burns, but even so... and really, you may still prefer to run Levitate. Depends in part on how popular Gravity-assisted
shenanigans are.

Water Veil hasn't really changed any, in all honesty. Now it's
types that have semi-common Burn immunity access. Whatever.

Mold Breaker/Turboblaze/Teravolt

/

Mega Ampharos gets little use out of Mold Breaker, given that
and
get no Ability-based immunities anyway. Shedinja has type-based immunity to the first of them, too! In general, Mega Ampharos is liable to be a lot less appealing, alas.


Basculin is better off, since its STAB -
- is blocked by three different Abilities... and Superpower is blocked by three Abilities, too. Bypassing such Ability-based immunity is actually legit-useful.


Druddigon never got a lot out use out of Mold Breaker in the first place. Being
typed doesn't help much, unless being able to bypass Sap Sipper with Sucker Punch proves to be uniquely valuable... which admittedly is possible.

/

Excadrill gets a lot less use out of Mold Breaker, since neither of its STABs is blocked by Abilities aside from Wonder Guard. To the best of my awareness it's not like it'll block Justified or Rattled from triggering on Rapid Spin...

/

Mega Gyarados is unclear. Its STABs now both have Abilities that block them (Unlike in Standard, where only one STAB benefits), but Earthquake no longer does. More use? Less?

/

Hawlucha actually gets legitimate use out of Mold Breaker now, since its High Jump Kicks (And Flying Press) have three different Abilities that block them! (Which having High Jump Kick impossible to switch in an immunity on is genuinely valuable in preserving life and limb) Not so much on Earthquake, but oh well.


Haxorus is in the same position as Druddigon, only it actually got use in Standard because of its propensity to Earthquake. Though, to be fair, it doesn't have Sucker Punch, so the Sap Sipper scenario I described for Druddigon can't possibly apply for it. But it also has Zen Headbutt...

/

Pangoro's STABs are now both blocked by Abilities, making Mold Breaker a lot more relevant. One of only a few Mold Breaker Knock Off options, too, which is relevant thanks to Sap Sipper blocking Knock Off.


Pinsir gets even less use out of Mold Breaker than ever before, not that anybody uses it for Mold Breaker anyway... usually you're just trying to get a Moxie boost and then Mega, or take Hyper Cutter to laugh at Intimidate one time. Oddly, one of the only Mold Breaker Knock off options.


Rampardos gets even less use out of Mold Breaker than it used to, basically. I mean, it does have Zen Headbutt... so it's not actually useless.


Bert and Ernie get more use out of Mold Breaker, with their STAB being walled by Abilities now. The last two Knock Off-capable Mold Breakers, too.

/
+
/+
/
+
/

Kyurem-White and Kyurem-Black get even less use out of not-Mold Breaker than in Standard, as their Guest Signature Moves are now
and
, respectively, neither of which is blocked by Abilities, and their own STABs don't care all that much either. (Well, it is nice to have undodgeable and un-bounceable Toxic). Same for Reshiram and Zekrom, only its their STABs. No longer do Reshiram and Kyurem-White carry the distinction of laughing at Heatran and incinerating it.
 
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STAB Boomburst Noivern and STAB Extremespeed Dragonite yet another meta as if they didn't have that already

Edit: Oh never mind it's dark so basically dark type coverage
 
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Lcass4919

The Xatu Warrior
some funny things:
volcarona basically becomes psychic/steel, gaining access to stab steel bug buzz, and psychic fiery dance! and giga drain is now rock type. thank god steel types seriously lack bulk, or have complete crap typing (lmao poor scizor, steel/ice)

talonflame actually got nerfed pretty badly :o 4x weak to dark AND ghost, both of which gain priority from espeed and talons own brave bird. and to make matters worse, normal types are IMMUNE to its priority...so all in all the threat below seems like the perfect counter:

dragonite gains the coveted normal/ghost typing...with multiscale. normal/fighting/dark (dragon claw, eq and extremespeed) also provides decent coverage.
 
Can we officially rename SR to Stealth Balloons? It just makes more sense and sounds funny too.

Also, Hoopa Unbound becomes Ground/Grass. A decent defensive typing, but not super scary anymore. It's Hoopa-Confined I'm really scared of. This guy gets the coveted Ground/Fairy type for awesome STAB combination, a huge movepool (it gets Fire coverage from Gunk Shot too), amazing mixed offenses, Nasty Plot for setting up, and more tools to play around with. Of course that 70 base speed and pathetic Defense really lets it down.
 

canno

formerly The Reptile

Black and White sprite fits our Steel / Ghost friend here. With Eviolite and access to Roost, this thing can become a dangerous bulky sweeper with SD. It can also act as a sweet pivot. It can also be used as a pseudo-Mega Pinsir - not as amazing due to the lack of strong priority and general crazy power, but it doesn't eat up a slot and has other moves over it like Roost and U-Turn. Overall a neat Pokemon.
 
some funny things:
volcarona basically becomes psychic/steel, gaining access to stab steel bug buzz, and psychic fiery dance! and giga drain is now rock type. thank god steel types seriously lack bulk, or have complete crap typing (lmao poor scizor, steel/ice)
+1 252+ SpA Volcarona Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Vespiquen: 148-174 (43.1 - 50.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

This is Physically Defensive Vespiquen. Now, of course you can run Psychic to hit it super effectively, but if you're running STABs+Giga Drain and Quiver Dance, or maybe Roost instead of coverage, you've got a problem. Meanwhile, if you're running Psychic to hit Vespiquen hard, then you have a problem against Heatran.

+1 252+ SpA Volcarona Psychic vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Heatran: 115-136 (29.7 - 35.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Worst case scenario, both of them can potentially wreck you with Return/Frustration, hitting your unboosted-and-bad defensive end for super effective damage.

And of course Volcarona is ruined by Talonflame and random Extreme Speeders. At least it resists Sucker Punch...

But overall Metagross Volcarona looks cool, yeah. Just don't under-estimate the opposition.

Can we officially rename SR to Stealth Balloons? It just makes more sense and sounds funny too.

Also, Hoopa Unbound becomes Ground/Grass. A decent defensive typing, but not super scary anymore. It's Hoopa-Confined I'm really scared of. This guy gets the coveted Ground/Fairy type for awesome STAB combination, a huge movepool (it gets Fire coverage from Gunk Shot too), amazing mixed offenses, Nasty Plot for setting up, and more tools to play around with. Of course that 70 base speed and pathetic Defense really lets it down.
In my own internal documentation I've been referring to Stealth Rock as Stealth Wings.

Hoopa Unbound has the misfortune of being doubly weak to Bullet Punch. Arguably that's an improvement over being doubly weak to U-Turn, but it reinforces that even passing off Speed boosts to it still leaves it open to being ripped apart. And yeah, Hoopa-Confined looks cool.

Wow really cool meta... I would like to see if Greninja would be balanced...
Honestly? Probably not. My own thoughts on Ubers possibly being unbanned go like this:

/

Maybe.
/
is painfully redundant and bad as an offensive combination, taking away its near-perfect offense. Being weak to stuff like V-Create isn't exactly fun, either.

/

As I covered in the OP, its typing is horrible and it's fairly reliably walled by
types. Good odds of an unban, actually.

(By default, obviously)
No, obviously. Even with losing the 20% boost on STAB in all non-default forms, it's still Uber-tier.

/

Worse than Standard? Better than Standard? Hard to say. Being weak to Talonflame didn't stop it from being banned from Standard...


Given that Dark Void is the primary reason it's ban-worthy? Not likely.


With Extreme Speed better than ever before, and Deoxys-Defense granted an actually good defensive typing? Doubt it.

/

The typing is hilariously bad, with a double Fighting weakness and no real redeeming qualities. Offensively, its walled by random
types, for starters. It's conceivable.

/

Much worse of a defensive typing, but its offensive capacity is arguably much improved, and its always been threatening by its offensive capacity.

/

Not a chance.

/

It's not got the magic of its Standard typing, but
/
is still a pretty awesome defensive typing. Not likely.

/

Just as diverse as ever, arguably even more so than in Standard. I doubt it. Protean is good stuff, and it's not even weak to Stealth Rock or anything. Being able to switch in on attempted Spores and Paralysis attempts is valuable, too, arguably placing it in an even better position than in Standard.
It's surprisingly hard to find Primal Groudon 3D GIFs.
+
/

Its weather is a lot less helpful to it, but it's not remotely bad, Stealth Rock weakness or no, weak to Talonflame's Brave Birds or no.

/

Doubly weak to
and
, both of which bring powerful priority to the table. On the other hand, in Standard it's still in Ubers even though Stealth Rock rips half its health off. I have serious doubts.


Its primary STAB has been much improved, but it's no longer got the near-perfect combination of moves/typing of those moves to threaten everything everywhere. I'd love to suspect it at some point, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it proves overwhelming just from its STAB.


Even worse off than Groudon about inadequate support from its weather, and now Water Spout can be switched in on without an Ability. Still doubt it.

/

Essentially straight-up improved. No.

/

Its Type Cycle typing is arguably much worse than its Standard typing, particularly given that
walls both its STABs... but it's still versatile, flexible, and obnoxiously hard hitting on either spectrum. Maybe. That its Close Combats can no longer be ignored entirely based on typing is a big boost to it.

/

With Golurk's excellent typing? No way. Even considering how strong some of its weaknesses are, this is one of the best walls to exist, ever.

/

With Sucker Punch being way weaker a type and its defensive typing being miserable, it's a possibility. Its STABs+Sucker Punch are all simultaneously walled by
and
, making it vastly less threatening than in Standard.

+
+
/

No. The original Uber? No.

/

Heliolisk's typing isn't half-bad. I have difficulty imagining how it would be able to drop, honestly.

/

Certainly not Mega Rayquaza, with Extreme Speed being so much more useful. With its typing being amazing defensively, rather than crap... I have significant doubts about even regular Rayquaza.

/

Girafarig's typing is actually pretty good, even if it has problems offensively. Highly unlikely, even considering that Turboblaze is pretty useless to it.

/

Well... it's possible. Depends on what kinds of staple walls there are, how influential Extreme Speed is, etc, I suspect.

/

Flinch-hax is a lot less effective when the myriad powerful
types are straight up immune to Air Slash. It could potentially drop.


I wish. :(

/

Uber-tier Special Trevenant. Well. It could happen. Maybe.

/

Honestly, even with
/
being tortuously redundant on the offense -both are bad against Steel, both have value as super effectives, etc- I doubt it.
 
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Can we talk about Avalugg for a second? The only thing holding it back in standard play was its abysmal defensive typing, and now that it's Poison instead of Ice I think it's going to perform a lot better. It still has those godly defenses and reliable recovery; plus, Rapid Spin is a Dark-type move now, so it can't be spinblocked.

On a similar note: poor, poor Ferrothorn.
 
Yeah,



Avalugg is pretty awesome. Immunity to Toxic dramatically improves its walling ability, even aside from its typing being better defensively in general, it's now neutral to Stealth Rock with unblockable Rapid Spin (But you can spin-punish now! Switch in a Justified Pokemon, take advantage... though, +1 252 Atk Life Orb Terrakion Zen Headbutt (Ground type) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Avalugg: 159-187 (40.3 - 47.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery is pretty bad) it can Roar out enemies to take advantage of hazards/annoy setup sweepers... it's pretty cool.



Alakazam intrigues me. It gets Special EdgeQuake (Psychic/Psyshock, Energy Ball) and Gravity! (For dealing with the few things that are protected against EdgeQuake by Levitate, Magnet Rise, whatever) It's not the only Pokemon that gets this combination (Arceus, Beheeyem, Chimecho, Cresselia, Deoxys, Exeggutor, Genesect, Girafarig, Giratina, Gothitelle, Hoopa, Jirachi, Medicham, Meloetta, Meowstic, Mew, Mewtwo, Musharna, Reuniclus, Sigilyph, Stantler all do as well) but it seems like one of the better (legal) options for such, and many of the other choices really have better things to be doing with their time -Medicham wants to run Physical, after all, Cresselia resents breaking its own Levitate, Meowstic-M really ought to be focusing on Prankster, etc.

Unaware Pokemon!



Weak to Stealth Rock (Can be mitigated by Magic Guard, admittedly), absolutely awful as an offensive typing, overall inferior to
as a defensive typing, has no immunities of any kind... Clefable is probably overall unhappy with this meta, especially since Stored Power shenanigans are actually easier to wall, having both a type-based immunity to deal with plus myriad Levitators. Though, on the plus side, Shedinja isn't immune to Stored Power. That's a plus... and Clefable gets Gravity. Hmmm. (4MSS, though)

/

Neutral to Stealth Rock, immune to Paralysis, resistant to the omnipresent Physical
coverage. Weakness to
is mostly ignorable, because you're a Physical wall anyway (Fear Mega Medicham, though), weakness to
is a bit worse but, again, most (competent) cases are Special anyway (V-Create being a noteworthy exception, and Entei's Sacred Fire another), and weakness to
is also pretty ignorable because, again, it's almost always Special! While it sucks that more things are immune to Scald, things might actually be overall to Quagsire's advantage, I'm surprised to say.

/

I actually covered this in the OP, though I was thinking more Simple than Unaware. Which I stand by, honestly. Alas, it cannot set Gravity to support its own Stored power shenanigans.

/

Last Unaware. Not that it's much of a wall. No recovery, for one. Still, it's got immunity to Paralysis and immunity to
coverage going for it, it might have some value as a Simple sweeper. Maybe. Or maybe offensive Unaware might be a thing out of it? Slice through setup walls?

---

Move interesting-ness!

Freeze Dry is a
move that's super effective against
. This is particularly comment-worthy against Pangoro and Scrafty (
/
), but in general helps make up for how mediocre
offense is, type-wise, for those that get the move.

Flying Press is a
/
move. There's no big synergy there, but it's also not self-destructively pointless like in Standard.

Venoshock is a
type move that doubles in power if the target is currently Poisoned. That's honestly a much better deal than in Standard -ne of the two types immune to Poisoning is vulnerable to Venoshock by type, while the other is merely neutral, where in Standard they're immune and resistant, respectively.

Hex is a
type move that doubles in power if the target is suffering under any major status effect. This has the unfortunate point that Pokemon immune to being Burned resist it, as do Pokemon immune to being Poisoned. On the other hand, nothing is immune to it, so that's something.

As Night Shade is
type, nothing can be immune to it! (Except Shedinja) This makes it a lot more reliably useful as offense for stallmons like Eviolite Dusclops.

Seismic Toss isn't quite as lucky, as
type has Ability-based immunities available aside from Wonder Guard, but it's still got a lot fewer things that can shrug it off.

By a similar token, Counter being
type is a big boost to, among other points, Wobbuffet.

Mirror Coat isn't so lucky, as
typing has an Ability immunity in addition to type immunity, and even being able to hit Shedinja is small consolation when Shedinja isn't going to attack on the Special end...

Circle Throw is
type. Can't be immune to it by type! This contrasts against...

Dragon Tail is derp
type, so things can still be immune to it by type.

Curse can only be used in its Curse-laying capacity by Aerodactyl, Crobat, Farfetch'd, Skarmory, and Tropius. Skarmory, Crobat, and Aerodactyl all intrigue me -all three for their access to reliable recovery, acceptably decent defensive typings (Yes, even Skarmory), and Crobat and Aerodactyl for their potential to suicide-Curse when near death as a last-minute screw-you.

Misty Terrain is arguably a lot more useful, since most users aren't natively immune to
type attacks, and the Pokemon that are now
type are fond of tossing out Thunder Waves. As such, simultaneously protecting from Thunder Waves and halving the damage of a Volt Switch is actually pretty cool!

Grassy Terrain is kind of interesting, actually. Halving the damage of Earthquake is legitimately useful when your average Grassy Terrain user is vulnerable to
moves, and boosting the damage of
is actually still useful to some of the potential users -Tangrowth has Knock Off, for instance. Heck, it might even appreciate the passive healing, given its tendency to be a bulky Regenerator!

Electric Terrain is probably bad. Bolstering
moves isn't very useful when your Electric Terrain setters almost never get
moves. Heliolisk with Surf is the only exception, outside of Hidden Power, I think.

Hey, Powder is still useful! Kinda.

Surprisingly, Smack Down grounding the target is actually useful to some Pokemon. There's a decent pool of Pokemon that get it+Zen Headbutt, actually!

Cacturne can boost itself with Rototiller, actually. I mean, why you'd do that when you have Growth, in Singles, is beyond me...

Have I mentioned that Gravity is actually relevant to tons of Pokemon? Heck, drop a Future Sight and then set Gravity! That's not half-bad, actually.

Miracle Eye is close to useless, alas. Not that it was ever used by people anyway, mind....

Synchronoise is kind of interesting now that you don't resist-by-default if you can be affected by it.

Telekinesis is now really, really bad, instead of merely bad, since it renders them immune to what is likely your primary STAB.

Magnet Rise is even more limited than in Standard, though there's some surprising cases of getting it -Volcarona, for instance, really is Special Metagross!

Thunder Wave, as a
type move is still possible to be immune to by type!

Same for Volt Switch, while U-Turn remains able to power through everything short of Wonder Guard.

Trick or Treat is a lot less appealing now that it isn't making the target vulnerable to your default STAB type. Conversely, Forest's Curse is no longer making them resistant... but they're still immune to Leech Seed if you hit them with it. Hm.

Soak is a lot more interesting, given that it by default makes the target vulnerable to your
Scalds. Kind of obnoxious, even.

Water Sport and Mud Sport are marginally less useless, honest!

Final Gambit no longer has type-based immunities to fear... and Explosion and Self-Destruct can only be laughed at by Shedinja. Yikes. Same for Endeavor! And Super Fang.


---

An interesting point is that Flashfire makes it really hard to Poison something. Odd thought, that.
 
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So i was looking for some cool sticky webbers, and it turns out almost ALL of them got buffed, with things like Steel/Flying Shuckle, Steel/Ghost Masquerain (has intimidate and a great movepool to boot), and Steel/Dragon Galvantula running around i see sticky web as being a much more splashable entry hazard. Bug types in general have recieved a big bonus to viability, I see pokemon like Yanmega becoming viable.
 
+1 252+ SpA Volcarona Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Vespiquen: 148-174 (43.1 - 50.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

This is Physically Defensive Vespiquen. Now, of course you can run Psychic to hit it super effectively, but if you're running STABs+Giga Drain and Quiver Dance, or maybe Roost instead of coverage, you've got a problem. Meanwhile, if you're running Psychic to hit Vespiquen hard, then you have a problem against Heatran.

+1 252+ SpA Volcarona Psychic vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Heatran: 115-136 (29.7 - 35.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Worst case scenario, both of them can potentially wreck you with Return/Frustration, hitting your unboosted-and-bad defensive end for super effective damage.

And of course Volcarona is ruined by Talonflame and random Extreme Speeders. At least it resists Sucker Punch...

But overall Metagross Volcarona looks cool, yeah. Just don't under-estimate the opposition.
Running STABs + Psychic(Steel, Psychic, Ground) is only resisted by Armaldo, Crustle, Shuckle, Dwebble, and Anorith as far as I can see, (and that's including Levitate.)

also: +1 252+ SpA Volcarona Bug Buzz vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Heatran: 230-272 (59.5 - 70.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

as lcass mentioned Dragonite is now wonderful both defensively and offensively and murders Talonflame.

Also new BP clause means baton passing Emp speed is a myth
 
If this gets uploaded i have a question about the typing, will it display the Pokemon's new typing when you hover the cursor over it or it's original type (and thus figure out the typing from there)? Also including the new move typings and ability descriptions?
 
If this gets uploaded i have a question about the typing, will it display the Pokemon's new typing when you hover the cursor over it or it's original type (and thus figure out the typing from there)? Also including the new move typings and ability descriptions?
Having it display would be preferable, though it basically depends on who codes it and how competent/dedicated they are. Abilities don't even get descriptions in-battle, though, so I'm not sure how you'd even update those.

Running STABs + Psychic(Steel, Psychic, Ground) is only resisted by Armaldo, Crustle, Shuckle, Dwebble, and Anorith as far as I can see, (and that's including Levitate.)

also: +1 252+ SpA Volcarona Bug Buzz vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Heatran: 230-272 (59.5 - 70.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

as lcass mentioned Dragonite is now wonderful both defensively and offensively and murders Talonflame.

Also new BP clause means baton passing Emp speed is a myth
Derp, forgot the new BP clause.

And yeah Volcarona running that set is pretty hard to wall, short of bring in Chansey. (Who, note, is immune to Fiery Dance)

Yeah I won't be surprised if Dragonite ends up being a ban at some point, as in so many metas.

So i was looking for some cool sticky webbers, and it turns out almost ALL of them got buffed, with things like Steel/Flying Shuckle, Steel/Ghost Masquerain (has intimidate and a great movepool to boot), and Steel/Dragon Galvantula running around i see sticky web as being a much more splashable entry hazard. Bug types in general have recieved a big bonus to viability, I see pokemon like Yanmega becoming viable.
-1 252+ Atk Guts Conkeldurr Drain Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Masquerain: 136-162 (39.5 - 47%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

It's surprising how bulky one can get with, among other things, an actually decent typing.

Frankly, Yanmega looks like it has a lot of potential, in all honesty, between Speed Boost, Tinted Lens, and a fairly awesome typing. (Though it has to fear Talonflame revenging it)

---

Here's a popular Pokemon that's taken a bit of a hit.

/

This is, of course, actually a fairly cool typing, but it's one with three weaknesses instead of one, and its nasty offensive combination no longer exists. In Standard, it can Volt Switch you or dump a Will O Wisp on you, and if you're immune to one or the other of those, you hate being hit by a Hydro Pump, generally speaking. (Barring Abilities, basically) Here? Immune to Will O Wisp=neutral to Rotom-Wash's STABs, immune to Volt Switch=neutral to Hydro Pump and probably meh about Will O Wisp (Or, in Gengar's case, immune to that too)...

Rotom-Wash resents Type Cycle.

Its other Formes, however...

/

Hey, it's a Lati!

... but with a lower BST, lower Speed tier, no Roost, no Defog, no Calm Mind.

Honestly, it probably has some kind of place somewhere, but it's not got its Standard utility, and it's not a replacement for the Latis. The typing is useful... at least in Standard... maybe not so much in Type Cycle.

/

Look, it's Special Levitating Tyrantrum!

Things are looking up for Rotom-Mow, honestly.

/

It's Giratina-Origin Forme! But with a much lower BST!

... still an enormous improvement over its position in Standard.

/

Levitating Dragalge! Only unlike Dragalge, you can drop a Will O Wisp on random
types. Mind, Dragalge could toss out a Scald...

... but the big thing is that you're way faster than Dragalge ever was. Also, you can Trick Choice Scarf to screw with walls! Rotom-Frost's Special Attack is even slightly higher than Dragalge's -nowhere near enough to make up for the lack of Adaptability, but hey, Levitate makes it easier to get switch-ins.

---

Some more interesting Ability-oriented stuff.

Grass Pelt is a bit more interesting, as Grassy Terrain has a lot more potential. With Grass Pelt, Gogoat is quartering the damage it takes from Earthquake (Which it's otherwise weak to!), while picking up passive healing. It can even run Payback if it wants a move getting boosted.


That actually sounds pretty cool. Gogoat would be really interesting in Doubles, where it would be plausible to get it Sandstream support to turn it into an absurd tank, but even in Singles it's got a lot of potential, especially since normally its Gogoat's Defense that's its weak defensive stat. Once its doubled? Not so much.

Guts has only one thing particularly worth commentary to me.


Flareon can finally run Flame Orb like all its fellow Guts abusers! Huzzah!

Heatproof is only worth commentary to me because Bronzong is overall better off running it than Levitate, in terms of covering weaknesses, which is just weird.

/

Look ma, I'm Bad Standard Mamoswine! (Because Mamoswine has Thick Fat, which also weakens Ice) Well, Heatproof also slows damage from Burns, but even so... and really, you may still prefer to run Levitate. Depends in part on how popular Gravity-assisted
shenanigans are.

Water Veil hasn't really changed any, in all honesty. Now it's
types that have semi-common Burn immunity access. Whatever.

Mold Breaker/Turboblaze/Teravolt

/

Mega Ampharos gets little use out of Mold Breaker, given that
and
get no Ability-based immunities anyway. Shedinja has type-based immunity to the first of them, too! In general, Mega Ampharos is liable to be a lot less appealing, alas.


Basculin is better off, since its STAB -
- is blocked by three different Abilities... and Superpower is blocked by three Abilities, too. Bypassing such Ability-based immunity is actually legit-useful.


Druddigon never got a lot out use out of Mold Breaker in the first place. Being
typed doesn't help much, unless being able to bypass Sap Sipper with Sucker Punch proves to be uniquely valuable... which admittedly is possible.

/

Excadrill gets a lot less use out of Mold Breaker, since neither of its STABs is blocked by Abilities aside from Wonder Guard. To the best of my awareness it's not like it'll block Justified or Rattled from triggering on Rapid Spin...

/

Mega Gyarados is unclear. Its STABs now both have Abilities that block them (Unlike in Standard, where only one STAB benefits), but Earthquake no longer does. More use? Less?

/

Hawlucha actually gets legitimate use out of Mold Breaker now, since its High Jump Kicks (And Flying Press) have three different Abilities that block them! (Which having High Jump Kick impossible to switch in an immunity on is genuinely valuable in preserving life and limb) Not so much on Earthquake, but oh well.


Haxorus is in the same position as Druddigon, only it actually got use in Standard because of its propensity to Earthquake. Though, to be fair, it doesn't have Sucker Punch, so the Sap Sipper scenario I described for Druddigon can't possibly apply for it.

/

Pangoro's STABs are now both blocked by Abilities, making Mold Breaker a lot more relevant. One of the only Mold Breaker Knock Offers, and the only one with STAB. This is important if you want to Knock Off a Sap Sipper.


Pinsir gets even less use out of Mold Breaker than ever before, not that anybody uses it for Mold Breaker anyway... usually you're just trying to get a Moxie boost and then Mega, or take Hyper Cutter to laugh at Intimidate one time. Oddly, one of the only Knock Off-capable Mold Breakers.


Rampardos gets even less use out of Mold Breaker than it used to, basically. I mean, it does have Zen Headbutt... so it's not actually useless.


Throh and Sawk get more use out of Mold Breaker, with their STAB being walled by Abilities now. The last two Knock Off-capable Mold Breakers, too.

/
+
/+
/
+
/

Kyurem-White and Kyurem-Black get even less use out of not-Mold Breaker than in Standard, as their Guest Signature Moves are now
and
, respectively, neither of which is blocked by Abilities, and their own STABs don't care all that much either. (Well, it is nice to have undodgeable and un-bounceable Toxic). Same for Reshiram and Zekrom, only its their STABs. No longer do Reshiram and Kyurem-White carry the distinction of laughing at Heatran and incinerating it.
 
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Yeah in terms of unbans- Aegis and Mawile definitely, probably Lucario, maybe on all of Genesect, Dialga, Ho-Oh, Kyu-W, and Shaymin-S, depending on how popular Fighting types are for the first two(and Fire as well for Genesect), Ho-Oh based on whether Normals and Extreme Speed are popular, Kyu-W probably if Gene gets unbanned, Shaymin-S will depend on how popular Normals are.. but they probably won't be short of Kyu-W.

Former BUGs become Steel, which is excellent.. but most Bug types suck.. but they can probably make up for it(source: Skarmory is OU.)

Pinsir and Volcarona have already been mentioned, and are awesome.

Heracross
Steel/Water
Running (w/ Mega Stone) Pin Missile + Arm Thrust + Knock Off + Swords Dance gives decent coverage, although it doesn't like Galvantula, Rotom-Wash, and other Heracross.

Too lazy to write anymore even though I got this far but Masquerain, Shuckle, Accelgor, Scyther, and Galvantula are the main notable other ones.
 
After reviewing KyuW a bit, it's better than I expected from Normal/Poison- It can run Ice/Poison/Ground(Flash Cannon/Ice Beam/Psychic) perfect coverage(yes, including Levitate,) Normal/Poison is actually semi-good defensively(2 weaknesses, 3 resistances, 1 immunity,) still is a monster with its Special Attack, is bulkier than Mew and still has reliable recovery so it can run a defensive set. tl;dr don't unban the monster, it got better overall not worse
 
Former BUGs become Steel, which is excellent.. but most Bug types suck.. but they can probably make up for it(source: Skarmory is OU.)
Vespiquen actually has a higher BST than Skarmory. (The advantage is small, and it has poor distribution, with slightly higher HP, double the Special Attack, and losing more Defense than it gains Special Defense, but it's still amusing)

For that matter, so do Yanmega and Scyther. After Eviolite, Scyther is even actually fairly bulky, though Yanmega is just plain fragile.

Ex-bugs are prone to unusual movepool advantages... like Quiver Dance. That kind of thing can go a long way to making up for stat deficiencies.

I disagree with the idea that
types will be uncommon. They still make up a large number of high BST, good movepool, good Ability options Pokemon, and there are cases where the way things have changed gives them some fairly notable advantage -the insanity of Dragonite has already been pointed out, but there's also stuff like Sap Sipper Goodra being immune to Knock Off, Taunt, etc (Mold Breaker Knock Off is surprisingly rare), which is legitimately amazing -and backed by its 600 BST, the difficulty in picking on its weaknesses... give it some Wish support and it can be an amazing wall-ish thing.

In fact, more interesting Ability stuff, starting with Sap Sipper itself.

In Hide tag because space consumption.

---

Sap Sipper is still limited in distribution, but a lot more relevant, thanks to crucial moves like Knock Off and Taunt being
type.

/

Azumarill still wants Huge Power more.

... unless you want Stall Azumarill, in which case Sap Sipper is actually pretty huge.


Bouffalant, Miltank, and Stantler are eh. They probably have better things to be doing with their Ability slot, honestly... though, actually it might be worth running Sap Sipper for immunity to Knock Off. Also Sucker Punch, Foul Play, Taunt... Hmmm.

/

Girafarig is actually covering a weakness with it, so that's good. Not sure it really justifies running it over Meloetta, though.


Gogoat is also actually covering a weakness with it! Awesome. Definitely the go-to Ability if you're not going to be setting Grassy Terrain.


Goodra no longer considers it redundant with its typing. Hydration and Gooey seem better, though... though Gooey doesn't look that appealing, given that your one weakness almost never makes contact, and with how hard it is to actually hit Goodra for solid damage, I wouldn't be surprised if Rain-setting Hydration/Rest Goodra might prove viable. Sap Sipper is also, of course, good for blocking Knock Off -hold onto your Assault Vest or Leftovers fairly reliably.

/

Sawsbuck is also covering a weakness, hooray!


Zebstrika is the new Goodra. Yaaaay. It doesn't even really appreciates immunity to Taunt, Knock Off, etc all that much.

---

Sand!

Sand Veil's main thing going for it is that instead of being on a bunch of Pokemon that are natively immune anyway+Cacturne and Heliolisk, it's on a bunch of Pokemon that aren't natively immune... except for Cacturne... which is actually the only Sand Veiler that has any realistic shot of wanting to run Sand Veil... the irony, it burns.

/

Cacturne's typing is actually pretty cool, and between the Special Defense boost and the Sand Veil Evasion gain, it's vaguely conceivable might try to set Sandstorm itself. It's either that or Water Absorb, which admittedly isn't a bad choice, and is certainly more useful if you're not going for Sand abuse.


Donphan would probably rather stick with Sturdy... if people run it at all...


Dugtrio far prefers Arena Trap, by the same token.

/

Garchomp would rather run Rough Skin.

/

Gliscor would rather run Poison Heal. Seriously, it'll be amazing with Poison Heal.

/

Golem's typing is considerably less vulnerable than in Standard, but honestly it would probably still rather run Sturdy. Or maybe Rock Head. Doesn't have the recovery to stall in Sand, really.

/

Heliolisk would rather run Solar Power or Dry Skin. Just like in Standard.


Sandslash would rather run Sand Rush.

/

Stunfisk... is terrible, and if it's going to try to be relevant would probably rather run Static.

As an aside, Limber is no longer uselessly redundant on Stunfisk!... that's about it for Limber, though, in terms of anything particularly interesting.

Sand Rush is only found on three Pokemon.


Sandslash's problem is that it's bad Excadrill... though, to be fair, Excadrill's typing in Standard is basically a straight upgrade over Sandslash's, which is not so true here. Regardless, if you're running Sandslash you should probably be running Sand Rush, as your other option is Sand Veil.

/

Excadrill's main problem is that its new typing is really fragile. On the other hand, it may be worth ignoring Mold Breaker anyway, and Sand Force doesn't have nearly as much payoff, so it might be worth running it as your default Ability even with no Sand support, just to get the boost if enemy Tyranitar or Hippowdon hit the field running Sand Stream. (Which is admittedly somewhat unlikely outside of a dedicated Sand team)


Stoutland's main issue in Standard is that its typing sucks. Not so much here. Now the main issue is: would you rather have Intimidate? (Scrappy isn't even relevant)

---

More weather!

Dry Skin is overall a bit more useful.

/

Parasect's typing remains awful, but at least Dry Skin isn't simply redundant with its typing, instead covering a weakness at the cost of a mild weakness to something that is otherwise neutral. Alas, you're so vulnerable to being randomly one-shottted by Psyshock, Earthquake, etc....

/

Jynx's typing is actually nifty, and again, Dry Skin covers a weakness at a mild cost. That's an OK deal, and the net result is only 3 weaknesses, which isn't half-bad. Now if only Jynx's Physical durability wasn't garbage, or its Speed tier legitimately good.

/

Hey Volcanion, what are you doing here before your release?? But seriously, this is a pretty cool setup.

/

Already covered it in the OP, but it's the only Dry Skin Pokemon that doesn't really care for the intersection of its typing and Dry Skin.

Harvest seems like it has potential.
+
+

/
+
/
+
/

... yeah OK Harvest isn't liable to be all that influential on the metagame, given Tropius is the only one of the bunch with a type combination lacking crippling double weaknesses, and it's vulnerable to way too many important things. Like Knock Off. And the omnipresent
type.

:(

---

Scrappy! Not as useless as you'd think.



Kangaskhan's Earthquakes and, if you care to go this route, Outrages benefit from Scrappy. Scrappy Earthquake could be useful against
/
Pokemon like Pidgeot, in fact, giving it a legitimate use on some Kangaskhan.


Exploud's in the same position as Kangaskhan, in fact, with the same moves. In its case Boomburst is liable to slant it toward the Special end of things, where Scrappy is considerably less useful... probably better off running Soundproof, in all honesty, especially since you're vulnerable to Pixilated Hyper Voice and the like. Assuming you run Exploud at all.

/

Mega Lopunny is the obvious biggest victim of Scrappy being meh. Short of Hidden Power, all it has are Mud Slap and Dig to benefit from Scrappy, which is just terrible.


Miltank doesn't get Outrage or anything of the sort, but, again, Scrappy Earthquakes.

/

Pangoro also gets Earthquake and Outrage.


Stoutland is in pretty much the same position as Mega Lopunny... except it has access to Intimidate and Sand Rush, so it hardly misses it.

/

Swellow gets virtually nothing to abuse with Scrappy either... which is fine, because it would probably rather slam everything with Guts-boosted moves anyway.

So in summary, out of 7 Scrappy Pokemon, only 3 don't get use out of Scrappy (Well, arguably 4 if we count Exploud), only 1 of which really cares. I'm as surprised as you are!

---

Flashfire protects from almost all forms of being Poisoned, and is especially advantageous to

/

Houndoom and

/

Heatran, as it covers up a weakness in each case. Houndoom even has Sludge Bomb to benefit from Flashfire's boost to
moves! (Not so much Heatran) Otherwise Flashfire is mostly useful as Totally Not Immunity.

Yeah, I'm weirded out too.
 
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The only thing I have against Vespiquen is the existence of Scyther. Without Scyther Vespiquen would be up there, but Scyther is better unless you really want the item slot or you're really afraid of Knock Off.
nd I just forgot Yaega.

Yeah looking at coverage / stats all of Kyub, Garchomp, Dragonite, and Goodra will be popular. Kyube is still really good. I was tired when I was thinking
 
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Vespiquen's access to Pressure and Cosmic Power Defend Order and Heal Order shouldn't be ignored. With an actually competent typing, it'll actually be a fairly obnoxious PP staller, capable of switching in on and wiping out a lot of 8 PP moves in just 4 switches, or PP stalling out stubborn opponents in general. Eviolite Scyther is definitely more general a wall, with its functionally superior bulk and the enormous Speed advantage, but Vespiquen may have a niche over it on some teams.

They both look like interesting walls just for the fact that they have access to U-Turn, giving Stall walls that can scout and so on. That's pretty unusual, compared to Standard.



Resists the omnipresent
offense, helping make up for its weaker Physical bulk. (252 Atk Azelf Explosion vs. 4 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 175-206 (27.2 - 32%) -- guaranteed 4HKO, or better yet 252+ Atk Choice Band Lickilicky Explosion vs. 4 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 333-392 (51.8 - 61%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) Immunity to
equates to protection from V-Create, making it possible for it to fairly reliable switch in on Victini. Best case scenario for Victini against Chansey is: 252+ Atk Choice Band Victini Zen Headbutt vs. 4 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 237-280 (36.9 - 43.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO, which is obviously crap. Resistance to
, especially in conjunction with immunity to
, means it is fully protected from Talonflame's STABs. (252+ Atk Choice Band Talonflame Brave Bird vs. 4 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 156-183 (24.2 - 28.5%) -- 98.4% chance to 4HKO) No, Banded Talonflame isn't breaking through it, barring maybe surprise Natural Gift on an already weakened Chansey.

It's no longer weak to Secret Sword, being instead neutral. This dramatically improves its utility against Keldeo.

Weakness to
means be wary of Mega Gardevoir. +1 252 SpA Pixilate Mega Gardevoir Hyper Voice vs. 4 HP / 252 SpD Eviolite Chansey: 350-414 (54.5 - 64.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO. It only needs one Calm Mind to reliably 2HKO Chansey. Unfortunately, Diancie is the closest thing to a decent
Special wall, which would be the ideal thing to help Chansey against Mega Gardevoir's
/
STAB offense. Levitate isn't much help here either, as the few Levitators that resist
are not good wall material. Unaware isn't much of an answer, either: Specially Defensive Clefable can, from full health, tank Hyper Voice, but if Stealth Rock comes into play, or Leftovers are removed, or Mega Gardevoir drops a Will O Wisp on Clefable, or a crit occurs... it doesn't work anymore. Quagsire and Swoobat are both vulnerable to Psychic/Psyshock, while Bibarel is bad and weak to Hyper Voice anyway.
/
basically hard-walls Mega Gardevoir, so consider pairing Chansey with Shuckle, Wish Passing it health when feasible.

Weakness to
is close to ignorable.
is strongly slanted toward Special attacks, and one of the stronger examples out there results in this: 252 SpA Life Orb Gengar Shadow Ball vs. 4 HP / 252 SpD Eviolite Chansey: 174-211 (27.1 - 32.8%) -- guaranteed 4HKO. Do keep in mind that there are plenty of Pokemon with Shadow Claw without being a
, so some Physically oriented Pokemon you might be expecting to wall can actually slam you super effectively, but otherwise it's not much of a weakness.

Weakness to
is a bit of a nuisance, as Earthquake is extremely widespread coverage, but mostly it means some mixed attackers may be able to seriously hurt Chansey unexpectedly. Earth Power isn't much of a threat, outside of the banned Landorus-Incarnate. (252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Nidoking Earth Power vs. 4 HP / 252 SpD Eviolite Chansey: 195-229 (30.3 - 35.6%) -- 31.2% chance to 3HKO) Otherwise though, most things that are using
coverage either aren't something Chansey wants to stay in on or are attacking on the Special end but are too weak to break through Chansey. There aren't even that many Pokemon that get Calm Mind+Earth Power, and fewer still that are at all viable.

Chansey is still going to be a staple in Type Cycle teams, and in some ways has been substantially improved, surprisingly enough.

/

I'd been assuming Mega Gardevoir was effectively nerfed by Type Cycle -
is basically "Bad
" offensively and basically "Bad
" defensively- but apparently it can break Chansey. That's huge!
/
are also, on the face of things, a really bad offensive pairing, as
is immune to one and resistant to the other, but as
types almost universally have bad Special bulk (And most of them hate having a Will O Wisp dropped on them and lack recovery, to boot) Mega Gardevoir can essentially ignore this flaw in the type pairing and power through almost all cases that it applies. Diancie is the only exception of any competency -and its lack of recovery gives it difficulty switching in and out repeatedly, particularly as it is weak to Stealth Rock. Mega Gardevoir is, itself, weak to Stealth Rock, but it's not the sort of Pokemon you tend to switch in and out constantly, and if you're using it primarily as a stallbreaker it may even be able to get away with using Wish to heal itself -or take advantage of Wish support from allies.

Seriously. It breaks Chansey. I cannot repeat that often enough.

Last of the Ability stuff.

Hydration


Here's a really interesting Pokemon: its bulk is honestly pretty bad, but it's lightning fast, can Rest through almost anything if it has Rain support (Or it can set its own Rain), and its typing goes a long way to make up for the bad defenses. Its HP is OK, too. Has some potential as a bizarrely fast wall, one that can U-Turn out of trouble at that.


I'd stick to Regenerator and just be glad you resist Stealth Rock now. The main argument in favor of Hydration is to Rest right through Toxic, and I'm not convinced that's a strong argument.

/

Pretty much the only possible reason to use Dewgong... and it's got a lot of competition. Access to Hydration is also slightly redundant with Toxic immunity, though that's not huge.


One of the main arguments in favor of Hydration over Sap Sipper is the ability to ignore Burns, if running a Physically inclined Goodra. Overall Sap Sipper seems a stronger choice to me, but a Rain team with Hydration Goodra could be interesting.


There's a lot of competition for the utility, and Vaporeon in particular is almost flatly its superior as a Hydration abuser. Probably better to focus on Swift Swim if you want to run it in the Rain at all.

/

Main problem is that horrible double weakness. If you can get around that, it could be a decent Hydration abuser.


Luvdisc is awful and has too much Hydration competition.


Your only Ability available. Overall Manaphy has a weaker performance in Rain than in Standard, lacking Focus Blast to maximize the utility of the Rain, and it doesn't even care about protection from Paralysis being granted by Hydration -it's already immune. Hard to argue for trying to fit Manaphy into a Rain team just to take advantage of Hydration, overall.

/

Keen Eye and Big Pecks are pretty eh, so why not? The question is whether Swanna is worth running, which it might be -its typing is a lot harder to pick on, with an innate immunity to Paralysis and to two different attacking types, one of which is powerful and common.


With just the one weakness -and native immunity to Paralysis, at that- Vaporeon is arguably a lot more viable as a wall. Overall this is an easy choice in Ability, though -if you're not providing Rain support, just take Water Absorb. If you are, give serious consideration to Hydration.

/

Your other options are Oblivious and Anticipation. Oblivious is, admittedly, actually decent...

Ice Body has the advantage that, in Type Cycle, none of its users are natively immune to Hail. It has the disadvantage that Hail has always been the weakest weather, and its setters aren't immune to it in Type Cycle. It's not like the effect is strong enough to be liable to justify setting it with an Ice Body Pokemon -too much 4MSS.


Honestly? Probably better off running Sturdy. Still, it could be OK in a Hail team.

/

Not a good typing to try to do the patient wall thing. Worse, you're basically outperformed by Walrein at it anyway. If you're going to run Dewgong at all, Hydration (Or maybe Thick Fat) is the way to go.


It's this or Snow Cloak. Of the two, Ice Body is actually reliable, albeit less dramatic in its payoff. Glaceon does, in fact, have a lot more potential as a cleric or the like with its new typing, so it might even crop up.


It's this or Inner Focus, and if you're running Glalie, it's probably so it can be Mega Glalie, in which case I'd go for Ice Body just so there's a chance of payoff. (Even just switching into a Hail and taking no damage from it is a payoff)


It's this or Weak Armor. Thing is? Weak Armor is probably better -help make up for its bad Speed tier, and its statline (And movepool) is oriented more toward fast attacker than wall. It might even have a niche, now that its typing is not so awful.

/

Classic Stallrein. Thick Fat and Oblivious are your other options. Unfortunately, Walrein is painfully vulnerable to
, and it's liable to be quite common. I'm not sure how viable it will be in a general sense.

Snow Cloak is only on a few Pokemon, and a 20% chance of dodging in Hail+immunity to Hail is pretty eh if Hail isn't permanent. I don't even feel like going through the full list, honestly.

Filter+Solid Rock are arguably a lot more relevant.


Poor Mega Aggron. Filter at least makes its pain a bit more tolerable, but it still misses Toxic immunity, the zillion resistances, having a good typing at all... its offense is a bit better, but if that's what you care about, staying regular Aggron probably makes more sense.

/

MIME. Not really that different from Standard, in terms of Filter's utility... beyond that it has more weaknesses... which isn't a good thing... oh, and now it's weak to Stealth Rock. Hooray.

/

No double weaknesses!

... but weak to Stealth Rock. Eh, still overall an improvement.

/

Also no double weaknesses, but weak to Stealth Rock. I think Lightning Rod is probably more useful, overall.

/

A really good typing, immune to grounded hazards, resistant to Stealth Rock, with no double weaknesses and indeed only two weaknesses at all, as well as immunity to Paralysis. Yikes.

Leaf Guard is available to a small pool of Pokemon, and in all honestly Jumpluff and maybe Meganium are the only ones that seem like much of a Sun team Pokemon. Even so.

/

With how crazy-fast Jumpluff is anyway, it's basically either Leaf Guard or Infiltrator. If you're running Jumpluff in a Sun team, I'd give Leaf Guard serious consideration -a lighting fast supporter that can't be Paralyzed is good- but otherwise Infiltrator is probably the better choice. It's not like Mega Charizard Y is liable to be popular standalone, like it is in Standard.


It's either this or Chlorophyll, which is actually a kind of difficult decision, particularly if you're running Leafeon as a Physical attacker. Fast Leafeon has obvious advantages, but Leaf Guard Leafeon ignores Burn attempts.


Not sure why you'd run Leaf Guard, when Quiver Dance followed by Own Tempo Petal Dance is so much more viable in Type Cycle. The only strong argument in Leaf Guard's favor is immunity to Paralysis, really.


If you're running Sun Meganium, go ahead and take it. Otherwise? I'd probably stick with Overgrow -Giga Drain actually synergizes well with overgrow.


I'd honestly probably stick to Regenerator, even in Sun. (And in Sun I'd probably go for Chlorophyll first anyway) Regenerator is amazing.
Levitate covers weaknesses on Pokemon with less frequency, and is a lot more likely to be bypassed by Gravity in this meta anyway. Furthermore, the type it guards against is weaker and less widespread than in Standard, making it overall less appealing. Still, there's value to be found here.


Edgequake resistance! Ultimately, I suspect the only one that will tend to matter is Azelf -Uxie runs into the problem that Cresselia exists while Mesprit runs into the problem that Azelf and Uxie exist- but it's a nifty little quirk for them.


Some pretty obvious utility to the type/Ability combination, probably mostly held back by Carnivine itself. At least it's no longer redundant in its typing/Ability, and its STAB is a very powerful offensive type. Could be decent?


More edgequake resistance!... but Chimecho is Chimecho. :(

/

The ultimate in edgequake resistance! Note that it's a Rapid Spinner, though, alas, it's weak to Stealth Rock, and it lacks recovery.


Edgequake wall. Honestly? Cresselia looks amazing in Type Cycle.


Weezing from another reality. Unlike Weezing, it has reliable recovery and access to Rapid Spin. It's also surprising fast! Main flaw is that its Defense is awful. Might have some niche utility on some teams, though.


Not nearly as cool a synergy as in Standard, but still a really good defensive typing.

/

Levitating Mega Lopunny?? Honestly, I think Flygon's main hope is to lean Special to abuse Boomburst -which isn't a half-bad approach, admittedly. What bearing does Levitate have on this? None!

/

A solid situation. Gengar is amazing stuff.

/

Well, if
/
/
offense proves powerful and viable in Type Cycle Ubers for some reason, then it has a unique niche. Problem: Barring Hidden Power, that's not even a possible trio.

/

It's a floating Sawsbuck. On the plus side, it no longer has a double weakness. On the minus side: weak to Stealth Rock, two crappy attacking types as STABs, Ability is non-synergistic with typing...

/

Again, three different immunities. Total block to
/
/
offense. Which... Mew can run... more-or-less nothing else can pull off the combination, though.

/

Oh. Yay. This is just... bad. Standard Rotom-Fan at least has no double-weaknesses. And an OK BST. And a good movepool.


A floating
rather than a floating
isn't really much of a change, but then, there's the question of what kinds of coverage Pokemon tend to run, and who's highly viable. Could be decent.
Oh man look how happy it is

Not that anybody uses them... but... uh, edgequake resistance, hooray?


Arguably a direct downgrade for Weezing's defensive ability, but its offense is dramatically improved, its Explosions are horrifying, being able to soak a Will O Wisp isn't the worst thing in the world (And ties nicely back into unblockable, potentially super effective Explosions), and even though it's vaguely stall-y it's not really a stallmon so the loss of Toxic immunity isn't so bad. And two weaknesses isn't that much worse than one.

Lightning Rod is, unfortunately, still primarily found on already-resistant-or-immune Pokemon. However, overall fewer Lightning-Rod-capable Pokemon find it redundant, so that's something.


Still redundant. And it doesn't even get Surf to remain a part of Discharge Surf teams.


No longer redundant! In fact, since it's protecting it from Scald, this represents a fairly big boost to Marowak's viability. Its STAB still has to deal with an immunity, but that's trivial to deal with -just toss on Frustration, and you just need coverage against
s. You can actually run Fury Cutter for that, funnily enough. Now you have perfect coverage, with room for Swords Dance!


Still redundant, and no Surf for you.


Once Surfing Pikachu is a thing again, Surf spam team! Prior to that? Well, being able to switch in on a Scald for a Special Attack boost isn't the worst thing in the world.

/

Weirdly enough, Rhyperior can act as a participant in Surf-spam Doubles teams, giving and taking boosts for spamming Surf. Very weird. From a Singles perspective, it's covering a weakness, which is a big improvement over "totally useless" like in Standard. Main question is whether you want Lightning Rod or Solid Rock.

/

The good news: Lightning Rod is no longer tortuously redundant with your typing. The bad news: your typing is awful. On the plus side, the combination of Scald and Earth Power is somewhat uncommon, with most Pokemon that have access to it preferring to run Physical anyway, so its utility as a Scald absorber is acceptable.


Poor Seaking. Lost its one niche -Discharge team fodder that isn't, itself, yet another
type. On the other hand, now it can toss out STAB Surfs to trigger fellow Lightning Rods. So now they're just Surf teams. Huh.


No Surf, more's the pity. Probably better off with Sap Sipper, for immunity to Knock Off and so on.

Motor Drive is on only three Pokemon, and they're all resistant anyway. But let's go into more detail regardless.


Electivire has one very good reason to run Motor Drive anyway: Scald immunity! That, and its Speed tier can use the boost. But I cannot overstate the value of Scald immunity, particularly given how good Electivire's Physical movepool is.

/

As if anybody is going to run Emolga...


Hi again. Similar reasons as with Lightning Rod, with the sub-point of "116 is already crazy fast".

Volt Absorb is rather redundant on everything that gets it...


Slightly less redundant than in Standard, though still pretty redundant. On the other hand, Quick Feet is even worse about being lame -being able to heal off a Scald is, again, nothing to scoff at. Jolteon itself has access to
coverage in the form of Signal Beam, and Hyper Voice gives it a way around a lot of
types huge pool of resistances, giving it overall more potential than in Standard... though unfortunately it's weak to Bullet Punch and Shadow Sneak.

/

It's either this or Water Absorb. Honestly? I'd probably take Water Absorb. Lanturn can Heal Bell away Burns and doubly resists Scalds and so on, whereas Close Combat off of something like Guts Conkeldur can hurt even resisted -especially since Lanturn has much worse Defense than Special Defense, so it really needs more help patching up its Physical durability. It has the incidental advantage of protecting it from Seismic Toss, neutering a lot of Chansey in the face of it, where they'd just Seismic Toss right through it if you're running Volt Absorb.


Meh. It's Minun.


Pickup instead? Hard to say, especially since people don't run Pachirisu in Standard OU.

/

The redundancy with its typing is a strong argument for sticking with Incarnate, for Prankster or Defiant. Incarnate is faster, too. But, again, the ability to soak a Scald is legitimately amazing, and Thundurus-Therian has a unique combination here that might block a major threat.

Water Absorb

/

I already talked about Cacturne with Sand Veil, but Water Absorb does have merit. It's kind of like Standard Storm Drain Cradily, only not really. Covering a neutrality is nice, anyway, especially one with powerful moves like Close Combat in it.

/

Jellicent doesn't get anything huge out of Water Absorb, but it's covering a neutrality so it's perfectly nice. It no longer has the distinction of hard-walling Keldeo, but it's still not fun for Keldeo to face, and two immunities, two weaknesses, assorted resistances is quite good.

/

Covered this under Volt Absorb, but overall Water Absorb strikes me as more useful for protecting against powerful Physical moves, rather than trying to protect against the likes of Scald. Among other points, Water Absorb provides much better protection against Keldo than Volt Absorb does.

/

Lapras covers a neutrality with it. Shell Armor and Hydration are your other options, and with that double Ground weakness I have doubts about Lapras pulling off a Rest+Hydration wall sort of thing. Might as well get in an immunity. Regardless, Electric/Poison is actually a neat typing in terms of letting you eat Paralysis and Toxic attempts.

/

Mantine gets to cover up a neutrality with this, so that's cool, and, like Lanturn, it's got garbage Physical Defense while most competent
moves are Physical. It's not like Water Veil does you any good. Swift Swim might be useful for it, maybe. but Water Absorb seems like a solid choice.


Maractus is outright covering a weakness with Water Absorb. Problem: Maractus is incredibly lame and has way too much competition among other, better plants. Also, arguably it should be using Storm Drain instead, anyway.


Main thing is: if you're running Politoed, its for Drizzle. Otherwise, it could be cool. But seriously, Drizzle, for your Rain team.

/

Poliwrath, why you gotta be so bad so consistently? I kid, kinda. Poliwrath actually looks like it's got a lot of potential as a Rain 'mon, with Swift Swim and STAB rain-boosted moves like Focus Blast. (Also: I had no idea Poliwrath's Fighting
movepool was so shit. Where's Close Combat, or Drain Punch, or something good? Yeah, Focus Punch is totally a good idea with Swift Swim... at least now I understand why it's never been meta-relevant) But Water Absorb on it seems dubious.

/

Just run Unaware, please. Or Seismitoad. Seismitoad is better in pretty much every way except a small loss to Physical bulk, as a Water Absorber.

/

The Pokemon to look to if you're contemplating insanity running Quagsire as Water Absorb. Just run this toad! It's even got a nifty type combination that's reasonably complimentary on the offense.


It's either this or Hydration for Vaporeon. Most Vaporeon are Water Absorb in Standard, where they resist the type. Here? The decision should be easy, especially since
means much more powerful and widespread moves in Type Cycle.

Storm Drain is really rare.

/

Slow Storm Drain Special Aerodactyl. OK then. Covers a weakness, its typing is actually pretty solid... looks cool! Especially since this typing resists Stealth Rock, in Type Cycle.

/

Not as uniquely amazing as in Standard, but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the value.


Has Lumineon ever been viable? Too much competition... still. At least Storm Drain is no longer outright redundant with its typing.


I still doubt running it at all is a great idea, but overall this seems like its best choice, out of its three Abilities, yes.

Rain Dish is only particularly worth commentary as normally Rain Dish Pokemon are all Rain-lovers for other reasons. Not so much in Type Cycle.


Note that Aura Sphere benefits from the Rain, so Blastoise is reasonably OK with the Rain. It's nothing amazing for it... even so, you might as well run Rain Dish where possible if you're running Mega Blastoise on the off-chance you switch it in while Rain is up and its injured.

/

Vulnerable to
and resistant to
, not a great thing for a Rain Pokemon. Besides, Swift Swim has more payoff, especially since Ludicolo has a double weakness to
, so acting like it's liable to be a Rain stallmon is a stretch regardless.

/

Given your alternative is Keen Eye, might as well go with Rain Dish if you're going to be running it at all. Probably not much of a Rain Pokemon, though.

/

Like Ludicolo, it's weak to
while laughing at
, making it sub-optimal as a Rain Pokemon. Clear Body -or maybe even Liquid Ooze to punish Drain Punch and Giga Drain, both of which are super effective against Tentacruel- is probably better for Type Cycle Tentacruel.

Spin punishing!

Justified is cool for Spin-punishing, among other things. Its main flaw is that no Justified Pokemon resists
, making it difficult to get a Justified boost off of stuff like Extreme Speed without straight-up dying -Arcanine is outright vulnerable, in fact! One particularly interesting point is the possibility of multi-hit
moves being viable enough to get a +2-5 on a switch-in: Cloyster might actually run Spike Cannon, for instance, as a decent coverage move, at which point you can come in and get +5 Attack stages all at once with a good predict!

/

Why can't you escape a double weakness, Virizion? Not very good at abusing Justified... though switching into a Hyper Voice or the like wouldn't be so bad, assuming Physical Virizion. (Or mixed)

/

As cool as Keldeo is, if you're running it Physical to be a Spin punisher, you've got a problem.

/

The overall Physically bulkiest Spin-punisher available, and it prefers to run Physical anyway, overall. Typing could be better, but it could be worse.

/

One of your best options for Spin-punishing or the like, with a solid Defense, high Attack, a good Speed tier, and neutral to
. The double weakness to
is a problem thanks to Aqua Jet, though.

/

A bit fragile to be taking advantage, but it does have Extreme Speed, so a Cloyster you manage to switch in on without dying (+2 252 Atk Cloyster Spike Cannon (5 hits) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Lucario: 240-285 (85.4 - 101.4%) -- approx. 6.3% chance to OHKO) then you've got this going. (+5 252 Atk Lucario Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Cloyster: 161-190 (66.8 - 78.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) Which... isn't great, admittedly... whatever, there's potential there, is my point. Maybe switch in on a Tail Slap or something.


Actively vulnerable to
type moves. :( Stick to Intimidate.


Again, a bit fragile to be taking advantage, but if you're running it as Mega Absol you might as well run Justified and keep your eyes peeled for an opportunity to switch in on a Rapid Spin or the like.

/

Like Absol, you might as well run it if you're going Mega. Because why not? That double weakness to Sucker Punch sucks, though.

Rattled has a lot more potential, even considering that only Granbull, Dunsparce, and Sudowoodo have it out of fully evolved Pokemon. Given that
,
, and
mean very different things.


Dunsparce resists the latter two, but its vulnerable to the former. Probably better off with Serene Grace-based ParaFlinching anyway.


Sudowoodo is resistant to the first one, and
includes things like Rapid Spin, making Rattled a form of Spin-punishing, albeit one that's only questionably viable.


Granbull is just sort of left in the lurch, in spite of normally being the most viable of the three. Probably better off sticking to Intimidate.

Even though all three (fully evolved) users of Rattled are painfully slow, there's still some potential for payoff by switching into a multi-hit move. Unfortunately, there are no
or
multi-hit moves, only
... even so, the possibility of switching in on something like Tail Slap and getting +5 to Speed has the potential to actually be relevant.

Solar Power was never in a great place. Arguably its worse off, but I'd argue Solar Power is almost never taken advantage of in Standard anyway.

/

Charizard has no
moves to really fully abuse Solar Power with, though it does get Solar Beam. Honestly? People will probably only run Charizard for Mega Charizard X anyway. Regular Charizard's STABs are horrible as a combination...

/

Heliolisk has no
moves, but that's never stopped it in Standard. It's a useful type combination to ally with Sun, anyway.

/

Mega Houndoom does still have a
move -Sludge Bomb. It even compliments nicely with its primary STAB of Dark Pulse, while Solar Beam can be used as coverage against
types and to a lesser extent
types.


Sunflora has a
move -Sludge Bomb, just like Mega Houndoom. Main flaw with this idea is that it really ought to be running Chlorophyll if it's going to try the Sun route.

/

Tropius has no
move. Unlikely to be viable, even with no double weaknesses to drag it down.

Thick Fat is in an odd place.

/

For starters, Thick Fat is basically uselessly awful for Mega Venusaur. Hooray for triple resistance to
and double resistance to
? Really, Mega Venusaur is likely to be just plain awful in Type Cycle...

/

Azumarill's typing actually appreciates the protection, though really, why aren't you running Huge Power? Or Sap Sipper, if you're a stallmon, for protection from Knock Off et al.

/

Dewgong and Walrein's typing has bigger concerns, and they would much rather have Levitate. Alas.


Grumpig's typing appreciates Thick Fat, actually, and it doesn't have anything better to run, really.


Hariyama's typing considers it redundant, and really you'd probably rather run Guts or Sheer Force anyway.

/

Mamoswine's typing doesn't really care either way. Probably its best choice overall, just because Snow Cloak is narrow and unreliable and Oblivious isn't a great fit to Mamoswine's preferred roles. A bit unfortunate that Mamoswine is weak to Stealth Rock, though.


Miltank is basically OK with it, probably. As is Purugly and Snorlax, I guess, though they all have other things they could be doing.

Adaptability


Basculin's STAB now has to deal with type-based immunity. Ouch. Honestly? Probably stick with Mold Breaker. Or don't run it at all.

/

Mega Beedrill running
/
offense is actually pretty terrifying. Walled by
and
, but it can correct the latter with Knock Off, and U-Turning out of major threats is a thing with it anyway. Now that it resists Stealth Rock, it can readily afford to do so repeatedly, even.

/

Crawdaunt's STABs are mutually walled by
and
, which hurts it a lot. Metal Claw acts as coverage against both of these, but it's really weak, so much so you'd do almost as much damage with a neutral Frustration.

/

Dragalge's
/
offense could be worse. Arguably it's an improvement over its Standard STABs, even.

/

Mega Lucario's STABs are still pretty redundant... but with anti-
coverage, it's basically good to go. So, Dark Pulse or Crunch. Yikes. Technically, Dry Skin Parasect hard-walls it, but there's a question there as to whether Parasect is viable enough to care. Plus, Mega Lucario running Earthquake is doubly super effective against it, so it can't remotely assume that it's safe to switch in on Mega Lucario.


Porygon-Z now has an unblockable STAB -no type immunities, no Ability immunities aside from Shedinja. Yikes.
 
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STAB Bolt Beam + Agility is pretty nice with LO 111 SpA, and more speed than Mega Amphy.



Rock / Fire typing on a Chlorophyl sweeper? Yes please! Sludge Bomb is now a 90bp sun boosted fire STAB, backed by Solar Beam, which being a 120bp special Rock STAB is a lot nicer than a Grass STAB. Round that out with Growth and HP Dark (Grass), and you've got yourself perfect neutral coverage and bucket loads of power. Also Ninetales is no longer weak to stealth rock, and can hence set up sun more, and Venu even resists SR.
+2 252+ SpA Life Orb Venusaur Sludge Bomb vs. 4 HP / 252 SpD Eviolite Chansey in Sun: 269-317 (41.9 - 49.3%) -- 86.7% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
(Calced with Venu and Sludge Bomb being Fire ofc)
Sun could actually be really strong in this meta.

Also its a shame that none of the good Water type Swift Swimmers get Thunder.
 
Megagross new meta(gross). Seriously tho. It's pretty much MnM mamo, only faster and bulkier and pretty much just better. This thing is looking broke AF. Not really, but seriously dangerous. Holy scary. Offensive steel types in general look seriously solid. Unfortunately empoleon and skarmory are more defensive in design, because they have pretty awesome offensive typings.

Edit: looks like scyther has some legit use, due to its incredible typing, along with vivillon, butterfree... not so much. Overall, bug types are pretty good. Scolipede gets a nifty steel/fire typing, which is pretty awesome, hoopa C has one of the most coveted type combinations in existence, toxicroak has neat coverage, but it's seriously hurt by its lack of ability to abuse sun, tho it is immune to water, which is actually sick (I think- that's actually kinda confusing. dry skin hurts you in sun, heals you in rain, makes you weak to psychic and resistant to electric??? idk). I'm bored of listing stuff, but this meta is cool. You can bet I'm going to run Megagross on every team.
 
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Yeah,
/
is a hard pairing to wall, with only certain Levitators and some
type combinations resisting-or-better both at the same time. (No Thick Fat Pokemon work, lacking useful typings for it) Rock Slide provides adequate
coverage for handling that, or you can run Grass Knot for
coverage that's Tough Claws boosted, even if it's off-stat. It's not even that bad a defensive typing, and the fact that it protects from Scald cannot be underestimated, especially since any Scalder bar, like, Omastar, is going to be weak to Zen Headbutt.

Toxicroak with Dry Skin is immune to
moves, and slightly more vulnerable to
moves. Which is, indeed, cool, even if it's unhappy from a weather perspective. Not a big deal in Singles.

Let's talk about Gravity-assisted
shenanigans!

Azelf, Celebi, Delphox, Espeon, Gallade, Gardevoir, Grumpig, Hypno, Jynx, Latias, Latios, Lugia, Malamar, Mesprit, Mr. Mime, Slowbro, Slowking, Swoobat, Unown, Uxie, Victini, and Xatu are the only
types that lack Gravity. Of these, a fair few wouldn't even want to run it, such as the Latis and probably the Lake Trio, while others are sufficiently low viability (Unown) or at least not oriented toward attacking (Mr. Mime) that you don't really care. It does hurt Espeon's viability, since it can't actually Stored Power through everything. Indeed, Chimecho, Clefable, Meowstic-F, Musharna, and Sigilyph are the only Pokemon that get both Stored Power and Gravity, which may well give one or more of them a major niche. (Finally a reason to use Meowstic-F? Most overall competent of the bunch, and Competitive is legitimately cool)

For the myriad
types that do have Gravity, only
and
present a usable wall. Even Chansey can't be counted on, due to widespread access to Psyshock. This makes Stealth Rock an amazing support to Gravity-assisted
offense, as the only two types that aren't neutral-or-worse to
under Gravity are vulnerable to Stealth Rock.

Note that Metagross has access to Stealth Rock and Gravity, and that its
offense rips apart
types. Mean combination.

-wise, options for trying to stop Gravity shenanigans include...


Advantages: Unaware means you can't boost past it, Specially-oriented
types largely lack Power Gem for
coverage (Only Starmie has Power Gem and Gravity at the same time), Specially oriented
types largely lack
coverage (Only Mew, Exeggutor, and Metagross have Sludge Bomb, and only Mew has Sludge Wave), leaving only
coverage to fear... which, admittedly, Energy Ball is found on a fair few
types, and even overlaps pretty strongly with access to Gravity, which leads to this:

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clefable: 205-242 (52 - 61.4%) -- 94.9% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

making Clefable unable to switch in reliably on one of the more obvious abusers of Gravity.

But for Gravity abusers lacking Energy Ball, Clefable can be a pretty solid answer.


Florges' bulk is absurd.

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Florges: 140-166 (38.8 - 46.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Psyshock vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Florges: 121-142 (33.6 - 39.4%) -- 16.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

A Specially Defensive Florges is utterly outside of Alakazam's ability to beat unboosted. Synthesis or Wish+Protect will let you keep your health up -just switch in, Wish, and if they'd attacked a second time, Protect. Might be a bit specialized of a counter, and it's not necessarily a counter to Calm Mind builds -and Alakazam can get away with Psyshock or Psychic/Energy Ball/Calm Mind/Gravity. Only
/
(Krookodile, doubly weak to Stealth Rock) and
/
(Malamar, Hoopa-Unbound, neither of whom has recovery -beyond Hoopa Unbound's access to Drain Punch, admittedly) simultaneously wall
+
coverage backed by Gravity.

/

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Togekiss: 174-205 (46.6 - 54.9%) -- 10.2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Psyshock vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Togekiss: 91-108 (24.3 - 28.9%) -- possible 5HKO after Leftovers recovery

Another decent option, with excellent recovery too. You might expect the
typing to be a problem, what with
coverage being so widespread, but when it comes to Special
Chimecho, Espeon, Gardevoir, Girafarig, Jynx, Lugia, Meloetta, and Mew, are the only competent examples that have access to Hyper Voice, and thus have decent Special
coverage. (Surprise Hyper Beam is always an option, but 252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Hyper Beam vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Togekiss: 286-338 (76.6 - 90.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery is only good enough if you have Stealth Rock) Only Chimecho, Girafarig, Meloetta, and Mew have Gravity to boot, and only Meloetta and Mew are particularly threatening. The weakness to
is functionally ignorable for this discussion -Mewtwo's access to Hurricane is the only case in the entire game of a
type having a Special
move without outright having STAB on it, and Sigilyph is the only STAB-access case to have Gravity anyway.


252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Sylveon: 159-187 (40.3 - 47.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Psyshock vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Sylveon: 123-146 (31.2 - 37%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Take what I said about Florges, but dump Synthesis for "always Wish all the time". You also get a stronger offense, assuming Pixilate.

For
options...


Weirdly enough, Absol can function as a tank of sorts for this purpose. It even has Wish.

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Psyshock vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Absol: 133-156 (39.8 - 46.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Absol: 142-168 (42.5 - 50.2%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO

Again,
types almost entirely lack
and
coverage, and they also largely lack
and
coverage...
coverage is more common, in the form Dazzling Gleam, so Absol won't work against all of them, but we're starting to get into 4MSS for our Gravity abusers -Alakazam wants Psychic (or Psyshock), Energy Ball, Dazzling Gleam, Gravity, and Calm Mind all at the same time?

And then Absol can Sucker Punch Alakazam for an easy OHKO.

Beware Stealth Rock and the possibility of Dazzling Gleam, however.

/

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 248 HP / 108 SpD Mandibuzz: 123-146 (29 - 34.5%) -- 99.8% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

This is as hard-hitting as Alakazam gets against Mandibuzz, barring pulling out a Hyper Beam... which admittedly can be used to get a OHKO with the help of hazards, even against a Specially Defensive Mandibuzz, but that's basically sacrificing Alakazam. Better be worth it!

Mandibuzz of course has STAB Foul Play etc, excellent recovery, the ability to Defog away hazards, and is an excellent tank all around. The typing is actually pretty hard to pick on for Special attackers, too, not just acting as a niche Gravity counter.

/

Mandibuzz's offensive cousin of a prior generation. Here's the worst Alakazam can do, short of Hyper Beam:

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Honchkrow: 220-259 (64.5 - 75.9%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO after 3 layers of Spikes (Simulating Stealth Rock vulnerability)

Now, Honchkrow isn't a tank, but it can effortlessly Sucker Punch Alakazam out of existence, and it can Roost off damage to keep attempts going in the future. It also has U-Turn for holding momentum.

/

Broadly speaking, I'd say Hydreigon is Not Happy with this meta, but it might, oddly enough, have a niche as an anti-Gravity 'mon.

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Hydreigon: 182-216 (46.9 - 55.6%) -- 16.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Specially Defensive Hydreigon new meta? It's got Roost, it's got U-Turn...


252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Dazzling Gleam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Umbreon: 140-166 (35.5 - 42.1%) -- 12.5% chance to 2HKO after 3 layers of Spikes and Leftovers recovery (Still simulating Stealth Rock vulnerability)

A premier bulkmon in general, so bulky it can usually switch in on Stealth Rock and still tank a super effective coverage hit from Life Orb Alakazam, which is nuts. Alakazam has one of the highest Special Attack stats of
types: ignoring Megas and Ubers, only Hoopa (Both Formes) beat it out... and Hoopa doesn't have any Special moves that are super effective against
. (Of course, then it uses Nasty Plot or a Physical move and renders the whole point moot)

Do keep in mind that Toxic Wishtecting won't do anything against Alakazam in specific.

/

252 SpA Life Orb Alakazam Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Mega Sableye: 87-103 (28.6 - 33.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after 3 layers of Spikes (Still simulating Stealth Rock)

Again, best Alakazam can do to it. (Once it's Mega Evolved, anyway) It's also immune to things like shenanigans with Taunt. Niiice.

Outside of these Pokemon, it gets really hard to properly wall Gravity-assisted
offense.

The vulnerability to Sucker Punch makes it easier to keep up the offensive pressure, though.
 
Type cycle code.

I am reasonably confident it works. It at least has no "so obvious JSlint/Pastebin call me a retard" errors. (Well, JSlint whines, but it also whines about OM code I know works, so whatever)

Tagging Snaquaza to hopefully implement it onto Aqua.
 

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