Pokemon Thread

[ghjkl]

So is the tournament gonna be round robin for everything, or just round robin for seedings in a single elimination tournament bracket style?

[Demoli]

If it's like the last one, then i would say robin all the way, but maybe, just maybe, if we have a lot of competitors we can do it that way :mrgreen:

[Orpheus]

I'm in for it if there's time left to sign up.

[ghjkl]

ugh ou sucks rofl, keep getting stuck at 1440 on the ladder, while I can easily get 1540 on uu.

[sarg1010]

Hmmm Kabutops, Hitmon-lee/chan/top, or Misdreavous for the 6th slot in my single player game? Kind of leaning towards one of the Hitmon's. Any suggestions?

[Zaaps1]

Hitmontop. Hitmonchan is worthless, while Hitmonlee is a little too frail. Kabutops isn't so good outside of rain teams, and Mismagius...eh, there's better stuff out there for a special attacker/tank.

 

Hitmontop is a great rapid spinner, and is very effective at abusing priority moves thanks to Technician and a great movepool.

[PoorLepRecon]

Tournament sign ups are now closed. Bracket will be posted some time tomorrow. List of participants is on the first post.

[Alg]

Question for the tourney: Is Salamence going to be banned?

 

On a different note, Jirachi Wi-Fi event going on.

[PoorLepRecon]

Rules are on the first post. Salamence is not banned at the moment. I'll get working on the matchups.

[PoorLepRecon]

Round 1

 

1 A_local_Guy v Bye

2 Demoliboy2 v Ultimania92

3 Run4Runes v Buzzcut3

4 Squareroot2 v Riku3220

5 Kcdragon8116 v Omnitech

6 Roccodog25 v Zaaps1

 

 

You are free to use whichever server you want. but the Create a Pokemon server is suggested due to minimal lag. Smogons server is really bad sometimes. Use the rules on the first post for your matches.

[Orpheus]

Demo, I shot you a PM. Contact me when you can.

[Demoli]

Ultimania won, good match :thumbup:

[Orpheus]

Yeah, I won the matchup. Good match dude.

[Riku3220]

Squareroot won.

[Demoli]

Uber, the insane movepool it boasts is just unnacceptable in OU. This allows Salamence to not have a single counter to all his movesets, and in some teams an entire slot dedicated to counter it should it happen.

[Demoli]

Still, if you place one pokemon in front of Mence, you are never sure what set it is. With scizor, you know is either a swords dance or a Choice band user. Jolteon is pretty much 100% specs. Charizard is belly drum. Salamence is nothing unique. He is everything!

[PoorLepRecon]

I won against Omnitech.

[Demoli]

I'm feeling like battling some more, anyone here wants to go against me in shoddy?

 

Edit: Rocco, you don't seem to have that much experience in OU, heck even in any metagame, choice items change strategies drasticly. Choice Specs give an overwhelming boost to your special attack, converting sometimes a sub-par pokemon (like Jolteon for example) into a all around sweep. Choice band same, btu for physical pokemons. Choice specs creates a whole varieties of revenge killers.

 

Not only these options, but you can always trick a choice item into another pokemon and lock him into one attack, sometimes canceling their inpact on a match (choice a blissey for example)

 

Not only that, but some varieties like choice band scizor absolutely tear everythign appart with priority moves like bullet punch, or even regular attacks like superpower.

 

Yeah, they offer inconvenieces, but that doesn't stop them from being increadible items :thumbup:

[Zaaps1]

Thing is though, it's not incredibly fast. If you look at the other 2 OU dragons that were banned (Latias and Garchomp), they were both faster and stronger (Specs Latias had no solid counters, Garchomp could set-up on its counters), and had better defenses. Salamence has none of that. It really can't take Scizor's bullet punch, esp. if it decides to switch in on a Draco Meteor or Outrage. Gyarados more or less stops it if it's bulky (non-bulky Gyarados is trash anyway), and anything that is faster than it can probably KO it unless it's Dragon Danced.

 

Salamence is a sucker to priority, and it's a sucker to double switching as well. For example, when you see the Mence, switch to something like Metagross to absorb the Draco Meteor, then go to Flygon to take the Earthquake, and you got yourself in the superior position. Luring it to outrage is effective too, for example, instead of switching to Flygon, switch to Kingdra. Then, switch to Scizor or something like Empoleon to take the Outrage and KO/setup on Salamence.

 

And it's true you'll probably need to take Salamence into major consideration and probably have to dedicate a Pokemon to checking it. But then again, don't you do that with a lot of Pokemon? If you don't have a Scizor check, you aren't getting far. So every team needs something to take care of Scizor. Plus, many checks are good Pokemon already and can check many other Pokemon. Hippodwon is a decent check to Salamence that isn't specially based (Hydro Pump isn't going down very well for Hippo), and Hippodwon checks stuff like Scizor, Gyarados (unboosted Waterfall does not 2hko), Infernape (without Grass Knot), and many other physical attackers.Vaporeon deals with Salamence decently, and it checks Gliscor, Hippodwon, Tyranitar, Gyarados, etc. etc.

 

Also, back to Latias and Garchomp, Salamence can't nearly match them. Salamence's typing isn't as good. Latias was not flying or ground typed, so it was not 4x weak to Ice. Also, both have resistance/immunity to Electric, whereas Salamence is ohko'd by Specs Jolteon after Stealth Rock/Sandstorm. While it does have access to Roost recovery, it's not nearly bulky enough to use it, like Cleric Dancer Dragonite can, or CM Latias can when it uses Recover. It cannot, unlike Garchomp and Latias to an extent, setup on its counters. When you gave Garchomp a Yache Berry, you could try to throw stuff like Vaporeon or Starmie at it, but you'd only end up letting it have two Dragon Dancers under its belt to play with. You could try you do something like Pursuit Latias, but then again, it had Reflect and was fast enough to use it effectively. Remember Specs Latias also 2hkos Tyranitar, so Scarf Tyranitar couldn't counter it. Scizor could KO it with U-Turn or Pursuit, but Latias could just Hidden Power Fire it for a KO before then, making Bullet Punch the only option against non-scarf versions. Bullet Punch can't OHKO Latias. Don't forget Latias functioned amazingly well as a tank. The CM set could come in on stuff like Heatran and start doing what it does best.

 

All of this, of course, Salamence can not say. It can't setup against Starmie, Gyarados, etc. It can't take a Specs Jolteon Thunderbolt. It can't tank hits or even use Roost effectively unless it packs bulk, and it can't really deal with the most popular Pokemon today, Scizor.

 

Taking all of this into consideration, there are two more things that are important. 1) Latias was Uber by a pretty narrow margin, and 2) Garchomp wasn't made Uber by an overwealming landslide either. When you see how much worse Salamence is compared to Latias and Garchomp, it's clear Salamence isn't ubers material.

[Omnitec]

Lost against KC because I loaded the wrong team for the challenge :P Had a random altaria that i'd never seen before :S Oh well, don't think I could have beat him with the actual team anyway, good job KC :D

[Zaaps1]

Why would anyone actually use the Choice [whatever] items? They lock you into one attack and if the other person switches your attack could do nothing.

 

Because they allow you get to instant power/speed. A few examples.

 

1. Gyarados, after a dragon dance, does less damage than Salamence without any dragon dances. Salamence is also faster if you Choice Scarf it.

2. Choice Scarf Heatran revenge kills over half the metagame

3. Fear Choice Band Scizor, if you aren't prepared to deal with this guy, you aren't going far with your team

4. Choice Scarf Jirachi and KO many of its counters if you are lucky with Iron Head

5. Choice Specs Latias was able to 2hko Tyranitar when it was still OU. This mean your Latias got to stay alive. If Latias had Life Orb or Choice Scarf, it missed the 2hko and as a result Tyranitar would kill you.

 

Any team that's not stall or heavy-offensive needs a choice-itemer for the instant power they provide. Yes, the problem is that you're locked into a single move, but you learn to work around that after you use it for a while. On paper, they really don't seem that great. But once you use them, they're incredible.

[Demoli]

Ok rocco, i'm in there :thumbup:

[Demoli]

-snip-

 

Still, you have to take in consideration that comparing Mence with chomp and Latias isn't that decisive in a judgement, mainly because he doesn't have to compete with them, he just has to be that much more powerfull than other OU pokemons.

 

The thing is, Salamence doesn't really ahs a counter because his movepool covers almost everything. Not only that, but in most of his sets he has a "choice" attack. While cleric Dnite (which can set up on ice beams) needs every single move he has, Salamence doesn't. Let's see the DD set. You have DD, Dragon Claw and Earthquake. The 4th move is up to you: Want a rock attack? Stone edge. Want extra power? Outrage or Draco Meteor can do it. afraid of scizor? Roast him with flamethrower or fire blast. Blissey giving you trouble? Brick Break does it. This only counting the physical varieties (and mixed). This thing has sucha variety it's dam near impossible to prevent it.

[Zaaps1]

Rofl, absolute slaughter.

 

Btw rocco, what's your shoddy name? Mine's Zaaps1, but I might instinctively log-in as -Artisan-, who I usually ladder with, so if someone with that name challenges you, just know it's me.

 

 

-snip-

 

Still, you have to take in consideration that comparing Mence with chomp and Latias isn't that decisive in a judgement, mainly because he doesn't have to compete with them, he just has to be that much more powerfull than other OU pokemons.

 

The thing is, Salamence doesn't really ahs a counter because his movepool covers almost everything. Not only that, but in most of his sets he has a "choice" attack. While cleric Dnite (which can set up on ice beams) needs every single move he has, Salamence doesn't. Let's see the DD set. You have DD, Dragon Claw and Earthquake. The 4th move is up to you: Want a rock attack? Stone edge. Want extra power? Outrage or Draco Meteor can do it. afraid of scizor? Roast him with flamethrower or fire blast. Blissey giving you trouble? Brick Break does it. This only counting the physical varieties (and mixed). This thing has sucha variety it's dam near impossible to prevent it.

 

But with Dragon Claw, it's such a fallible loss of power, you really want Outrage.

 

Dragon Dance Mence can't really prevent Suicune or Vaporeon from countering it. Remember the big problem with DD Mence is that it needs that one turn to setup, which it may not be able to afford. It gives its counter a free switch-in. Switching out isn't even a terrific option since next time Salamence switches in, it will be at 50% health, or less in sandstorm. Yes, it comes with power, but DD Mence has far more counters since it needs to setup. For example, Mamoswine and Weavile can now ohko Salamence, while if it was facing a MixMence,it would be KO'd by any attack Salamence throws at it.

[ghjkl]

Mixmence has no counters except for random scarfed pokemon. Nothing can switch in on an d meteor then survive the oncoming outrage/fire blast/eq.