Zarude has existed as a setup wincon within the tier for a long time now, with the “broken” aspect of the mon only coming to light in recent times, with Tornadus-Therian and Heatran rising. These pokemon weren’t the most solid Zarude checks ever, with Torn often being unable to pressure Zarude enough and taking too much damage from a boosted Knock Off, and Heatran being relatively easy to wear down into a boosted Knock Off’s range for a KO. However these pokemon made Swords Dance Zarude sets much higher floor than alternatively using Bulk Up as the setup move of choice. Due to the boost in power helping KO Tornadus/Heatran with less necessary chip, and Bulk Up’s pay off being significantly lower into these two high usage mons being special attackers with super effective STAB.
Now without these mons present, defensive counterplay to Zarude still exists without question, with Tinkaton, Mandibuzz, Hydrapple, Skarmory, and others existing to help keep even a boosted Zarude at bay. However, with Bulk Up in unison with Jungle Healing and/or a defensive Tera, most of these defensive pivots into Zarude become setup fodder quickly, and while SD + Trailblaze sets were always strong and irritating to revenge kill due to Zarude’s natural bulk…. Bulk Up sets are inherently more difficult to revenge due to common physical priority like First Impression being significantly nerfed due to defensive boosts from Bulk Up, which was not commonplace before.
Zarude’s objective and consistent counterplay is primarily phasing, due to it often being too bulky to simply never give a setup opportunity to in unison with a defensive tera. Jungle Healing and Trailblaze also prevent other common setup counterplay such as status and revenge killing with fast mons much more difficult to achieve. The primary splashable Unaware pokemon available in the tier is also weak to Zarude’s STAB Knock Off, and while Skeledirge still stops Zarude from winning outright due to Unaware, it doesn’t do so comfortably, often having to sacrifice its boots, a big chunk of HP, or tera at the bare minimum.
Another potentially suffocating aspect of Zarude is that it fits on multiple archetypes, HO, Sun, Terrain(s), BO, Balance, etc. There is no shortage of opportunities to splash this guy onto your team and make use of how consistent of a wincon it can be. While some of these archetypes are very niche, stuff like Seed items + Terrain effects and abusing Leaf Guard + Synthesis on Sun adds new layers to answering this already difficult pokemon offensively and defensively.
There is no debate this pokemon is a strong wincon, especially with cases of it outright winning being well documented via SCL, ladder, etc. Whether it’s truly “broken” or not is something you all will have to decide with this suspect.
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NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!
The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:
- Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in UU before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played UU before the test, full stop.)
- At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
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- If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me/Lyssa or post here!
The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2900. The deadline for getting requirements will be Sunday, November 23rd at 11:59pm GMT-4. GLHF chaps
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