Early posting too, had a rough week with low ladder as well. Gonna split Poyrgon up into 2 different pokemon for this week, to differentiate between eviolite and z-conversion.
I will possibly add a section on starmie and terrakion later depending on if I find time!
In the end, I have to say I preferred Eviolite porygon2 as it was more consistent, but both options need quite a bit of team support to make work, and aren't very splashable.
One of it's greatest benefits however is what trace can do for it, between tracing abilities such as flame body from moltres to dissuade physical attackers, tracing water absorb from volcanion to make it unable to click its water STAB, tracing sheer force from nidoking to hit harder, tracing serene grace from togekiss to massively increase para/freeze chances, or tracing natural cure from starmie and celebi to clear itself of status, and much more.
Unfortunately however, it is not able of dealing with nasty plot users such as celebi, or fighting type special attackers such as lucario and infernape, especially as celebi has natural cure. In the team above I decided to pair it with an AV bisharp to solidify the latias and celebi matchups for p2 (incase latias gets burned by something else), and a mega-bro/moltres pairing to deal with infernape and lucario, which also is there to help it with physical attackers such as cobalion/terrakion and scizor respectively.
However, porygon2 is weak vs most physical attackers, although it can check weaker offensive ones like aerodactyl that don't carry fighting type moves or knock off , there is a lot of fighting type coverage going around and knock off to threaten it. It also has to watch out for knock off from special attackers such as empoleon and tentacruel.
Another major issue for it is it's over reliance on eviolite to check special attackers, and its weakness to status in non-stall matchups (will come to stall matchups in a minute). Unfortunately however, a cleric would typically be overkill with porygon2 as there is a large overlap in what they check, which means you need to rely on tracing natural cure from pokemon like starmie/celebi/blissey to cure yourself, or using toxic immune pokemon such as steels and gligar to sponge toxics.
However, where eviolite porygon2 comes in as a real boon over a lot of other special walls is that it isnt dead weight in the stall matchup. This is primarily due to what trace can do for you in the stall matchup. By tracing natural cure from blissey, you are able to sponge status from it, and waste its seismic toss pp with your recovers. By tracing regenerator from alomamola, you can give yourself a free heal, and you dont have to care about knock off particularly in this matchup either here. By tracing pressure from moltres/articuno, you can waste their pp in reverse, and whatever they swap into too.
In contrast to blockbro, this doesn't trap and kill stall itself, but instead makes itself a hard pokemon for stall to actually kill, and makes it waste a lot of pp against it.
Eviolite porygon2 has a nice set of options it can run for attacks. Recover and toxic are basically a requirement, but it has multiple options in the last 2 slots. Discharge + ice beam give it boltbeam coverage and allow it to also spread paralysis around. Foul play + tri attack allows it to hurt physical attackers trying to come in on it, while giving it a strong spammable stab attack, that can also 2hko altaria when you trace pixilate. Magic coat or thunder wave are also options that allow you to bounce back hazards / status or spread paralysis with a much greater chance, but don't offer you as much coverage. It can even run psywave to have a pseudo-seismic toss, however it needs to have its hidden ability analytic to do this.
Tl-dr: An interesting option for teams wanting a blanket check to a lot of key special attackers, but requires a reasonable level of defensive/offensive support for the things it struggles with. However, in the same light as block-bro, allows you to play more defensively by being a defensive pokemon thats not dead weight against stall.
Porygon2 however requires quite an amount of support to pull off this role, since this is a one-time usage, all potential checks need to be in range of being killed before it can start a sweep. It also has trouble setting up a lot of the time, with pokemon it would like to set up on offering Attack boosts from download instead, eg. florges/sylveon (which wall you if you dont get a +2 boost), and offers 0 stall matchup due to being unable to break past quagsire and blissey, the prior even hazing you if it has it. It also has very subpar bulk before setting up, due to no eviolite, making it harder to find opportunities.
Also, no matter which type is chosen, there will be a bunch of offensive pokemon capable of revenge killing you. For electric p2, scarf krookodile, mega aerodactyl and thick fat mamoswine all pose serious threats, though aerodactyl will need some chip first, and for ghost p2, scarf krookodile, scarf hydreigon, bisharp and more. Other pokemon such as rotom-heat may not be able to beat you offensively, but can toxic you while resisting your dual boltbeam stabs, putting you on a timer.
An advantage over other omniboosters it has however is that bolt-beam coverage allows it to reliably run recover, with only a few pokemon such as mamoswine, rotom-heat and magneton resisting your dual stabs.
The team for this one attempts to aid porygon2 by using hippowdon to prevent florges/sylveon from healing themselves until they are in range of sweeping, and blockbro to trap and kill other bulky pokemon porygon2 cant break. However, in a lot of games it was still tricky to actually get set up opportunities.
Tl-dr: Heavily matchup dependent, likely to either have a very good matchup and sweep easily or be complete dead weight or struggle to ever get an opportunity to set up. Electric is probably better than ghost as it increases your sweeping more, and scarf krookodile is a problem for you either way anyway.
I will possibly add a section on starmie and terrakion later depending on if I find time!
In the end, I have to say I preferred Eviolite porygon2 as it was more consistent, but both options need quite a bit of team support to make work, and aren't very splashable.
Porygon2 - Eviolite
Click sprites for team importable.
Eviolite porygon2 when invested with special defence seems at first to be an incredible special wall, capable of dealing with threats such as latias, aerodactyl, hydreigon, gengar, nidoking, primarina, nihilego, volcanion, starmie and moltres, although it needs to predict the z-fight and recover on it to avoid the 2hko from gengar, as it is a roll for a 2hko from gengar, and it can only check latias if it's not been burned by something. Click sprites for team importable.
One of it's greatest benefits however is what trace can do for it, between tracing abilities such as flame body from moltres to dissuade physical attackers, tracing water absorb from volcanion to make it unable to click its water STAB, tracing sheer force from nidoking to hit harder, tracing serene grace from togekiss to massively increase para/freeze chances, or tracing natural cure from starmie and celebi to clear itself of status, and much more.
Unfortunately however, it is not able of dealing with nasty plot users such as celebi, or fighting type special attackers such as lucario and infernape, especially as celebi has natural cure. In the team above I decided to pair it with an AV bisharp to solidify the latias and celebi matchups for p2 (incase latias gets burned by something else), and a mega-bro/moltres pairing to deal with infernape and lucario, which also is there to help it with physical attackers such as cobalion/terrakion and scizor respectively.
However, porygon2 is weak vs most physical attackers, although it can check weaker offensive ones like aerodactyl that don't carry fighting type moves or knock off , there is a lot of fighting type coverage going around and knock off to threaten it. It also has to watch out for knock off from special attackers such as empoleon and tentacruel.
Another major issue for it is it's over reliance on eviolite to check special attackers, and its weakness to status in non-stall matchups (will come to stall matchups in a minute). Unfortunately however, a cleric would typically be overkill with porygon2 as there is a large overlap in what they check, which means you need to rely on tracing natural cure from pokemon like starmie/celebi/blissey to cure yourself, or using toxic immune pokemon such as steels and gligar to sponge toxics.
However, where eviolite porygon2 comes in as a real boon over a lot of other special walls is that it isnt dead weight in the stall matchup. This is primarily due to what trace can do for you in the stall matchup. By tracing natural cure from blissey, you are able to sponge status from it, and waste its seismic toss pp with your recovers. By tracing regenerator from alomamola, you can give yourself a free heal, and you dont have to care about knock off particularly in this matchup either here. By tracing pressure from moltres/articuno, you can waste their pp in reverse, and whatever they swap into too.
In contrast to blockbro, this doesn't trap and kill stall itself, but instead makes itself a hard pokemon for stall to actually kill, and makes it waste a lot of pp against it.
Eviolite porygon2 has a nice set of options it can run for attacks. Recover and toxic are basically a requirement, but it has multiple options in the last 2 slots. Discharge + ice beam give it boltbeam coverage and allow it to also spread paralysis around. Foul play + tri attack allows it to hurt physical attackers trying to come in on it, while giving it a strong spammable stab attack, that can also 2hko altaria when you trace pixilate. Magic coat or thunder wave are also options that allow you to bounce back hazards / status or spread paralysis with a much greater chance, but don't offer you as much coverage. It can even run psywave to have a pseudo-seismic toss, however it needs to have its hidden ability analytic to do this.
Tl-dr: An interesting option for teams wanting a blanket check to a lot of key special attackers, but requires a reasonable level of defensive/offensive support for the things it struggles with. However, in the same light as block-bro, allows you to play more defensively by being a defensive pokemon thats not dead weight against stall.
Porygon2 - Z-Conversion
Click sprites for team importable.
Porygon2 is an interesting option as an omnibooster, with the potential to become more powerful than the other options due to download. Both electric and ghost types are options for z-conversion porygon2, with electric hitting harder and hitting more things supereffectively, and also resisting bullet punch, while ghost is immune to normal and fighting type priorities and does not share the ground weakness that makes it easier for aerodactyl to revenge, and also is able to hit mamoswine harder, due to thickfat making mamoswine easily dealing with electric. Click sprites for team importable.
Porygon2 however requires quite an amount of support to pull off this role, since this is a one-time usage, all potential checks need to be in range of being killed before it can start a sweep. It also has trouble setting up a lot of the time, with pokemon it would like to set up on offering Attack boosts from download instead, eg. florges/sylveon (which wall you if you dont get a +2 boost), and offers 0 stall matchup due to being unable to break past quagsire and blissey, the prior even hazing you if it has it. It also has very subpar bulk before setting up, due to no eviolite, making it harder to find opportunities.
Also, no matter which type is chosen, there will be a bunch of offensive pokemon capable of revenge killing you. For electric p2, scarf krookodile, mega aerodactyl and thick fat mamoswine all pose serious threats, though aerodactyl will need some chip first, and for ghost p2, scarf krookodile, scarf hydreigon, bisharp and more. Other pokemon such as rotom-heat may not be able to beat you offensively, but can toxic you while resisting your dual boltbeam stabs, putting you on a timer.
An advantage over other omniboosters it has however is that bolt-beam coverage allows it to reliably run recover, with only a few pokemon such as mamoswine, rotom-heat and magneton resisting your dual stabs.
The team for this one attempts to aid porygon2 by using hippowdon to prevent florges/sylveon from healing themselves until they are in range of sweeping, and blockbro to trap and kill other bulky pokemon porygon2 cant break. However, in a lot of games it was still tricky to actually get set up opportunities.
Tl-dr: Heavily matchup dependent, likely to either have a very good matchup and sweep easily or be complete dead weight or struggle to ever get an opportunity to set up. Electric is probably better than ghost as it increases your sweeping more, and scarf krookodile is a problem for you either way anyway.
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