Enough of this mawile discussion the mons great but it isn’t S considering the fact that people are considering dropping fucking landorus t out of the rank.
A mon that is criminally underrated atm is Garchomp. After using a slew of Garchomp teams from
imsosorrylol and making a few of my own inspired from those, I’ve realized just how much of a versatile and effective mon this thing can be and am nomming it to rise to
A- rank.
As an offensive SR user, garchomp is one of the few SR users that blows Defog Torn-T out of the park and can basically ensure the hazards stay up for the time being as well as being able to blow past tang, provide an actually solid offensive check for Heatran, and punish voltturn cores with its typing in conjunction with rough skin. Additionally, it’s speed tier is an absolute boon, being able to snipe stuff like Tapu Lele and Kyurem-B without having to risk a potential speed tie as well as threatening out base 100 breakers like Zardy and Medicham that are fairly popular right now.
On the more defensive side of things, Garchomp can go for a complete voltturn punishing approach with rocky helmet that prevents mons like scarf lando and gren from mindlessly clucking uturn, set rocks, and provide a pretty consistent answer for physically offensive threats like Kartana, Mega Scizor, and Hawlucha that are normally very irritating for bulky offense to deal with. Alternatively, Garchomp can go for a specially defensive leftovers set with roar that can be used on hazard stack to shuffle opposing teams, reliably check heatran, and other similar roles.
Normally it isn’t a very good idea to just run over a mons features and sets like this in a VR nom, but Garchomp frankly hasn’t been explored very much at all until recently due to its scarf set falling out of favor and people have just now realized the insanely potential this mon has. The (fairly) recent rise of slower breaking cores and teams that tend to be pretty slow in general is very beneficial for the effectiveness of the offensive SD set as that set can just blow past torn and keep pressure against those teams constantly. Additionally, the newly adapting bulky offense structures with the increased usage of glues like tangrowth that synergize well with garchomp and much lower usage of landorus-t has made Garchomp significantly easier to fit onto teams and easier to use in general. Overall, garchomp is a prolific offensive and defensive set that’s very well suited to the current metagame and deserves to move up to A- rank. I know that multiple rank jumps are usually frowned upon, but garchomp is just so fucking good atm that I think it more than deserves the rise.
After reading Srn's post, I also want to make a Magearna nom of my own, but for different reasons. Magearna has cemented its place as a top tier threat and this has been shown between OLT, Opening STour weekend, and SSD. Therefore, I'm going to nom Magearna for
A+ rank.
As of late, people have started to use Fleur Focus SG Gear to blow through standard BO and Balance archetypes instead of the otherwise underwhelming BoltBeam set, and it has had devastating results. CM just completely runs through most teams that lack Toxapex and Thunderbolt can even break through Toxapex teams given entry hazard support. Z Fleur Cannon is incredibly strong and can blow past most neutral targets barring the bulkiest special blanket checks in the tier and can even do absurd things like OHKO Magnezone at +1. On the defensive side of things, AV has seen an uptick of usage to account for the increased usage of Mega Alakazam and the continued potency of the tier's most potent special breakers such as Ash Greninja and Tapu Lele, fitting snugly onto Voltturn Bulky Offense teams that need a check to all of these mons. Stall teams that struggle with the always annoying Tapu Lele have also started to run a SpDef set to deal with a lot of threats that normally blow past Stall while providing a psuedo-unaware user with Heart Swap. Finally, the recent discovery of the CM Painsplit has allowed Magearna to act as a stallbreaker that can soft check a lot of the stuff that it does otherwise while simultaneously dismantling the stall teams that seem to be flooding the tier trying to get free wins at the moment. Overall, Magearna is a versatile offensive and defensive threat that can fit on a variety of archetypes ranging from full HO to full stall and everything in between and more than deserving of
A+ rank, even pushing the boundaries of S (although I wouldn't place Magearna at S just yet)
Misc Thoughts: (Mega) Gyara should move down again since OLT laddering bullshit ended, MLatios could move down since one of the major losers in the zam meta (altho draco sets r still good), Reuni/Volc should move up because Acid Armor and Roost respectively are really strong sets atm that are blowing past a lot of teams, etc.
