LonelyNess
Makin' PK Love
<LonelyNess> reachzero, are you going to post a honchkrow thread, because if not in the next 1-2 hours, I will do it
<LonelyNess> (it needs to be done)
<reachzero> oh
<reachzero> go ahead
<reachzero> I don't think I'm going to get to it any time soon
<LonelyNess> ok
<LonelyNess> I'll have one up by the end of the night then
<reachzero> excellent
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So this is going to be the official discussion thread of Honchkrow, since the mammoth thread is getting too big to house discussions of individual Pokemon.
Posts that you might want to read first.
Ok, that's all of the relevent posts about Honchkrow I could find... and is that really it? The "Honchkrow isn't BL" side is rather paltry, and hopefully this thread will be able to remedy that.
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Anyway, I believe that the overwhelmingly negative response to Honchkrow lately is just solidifying that the close vote may have been a bit wrong (kind of like Crobat). I'd like to know if anyone has an argument against Honchkrow being BL, because the above arguments for it are pretty convincing.
<LonelyNess> (it needs to be done)
<reachzero> oh
<reachzero> go ahead
<reachzero> I don't think I'm going to get to it any time soon
<LonelyNess> ok
<LonelyNess> I'll have one up by the end of the night then
<reachzero> excellent
---------------------------------
So this is going to be the official discussion thread of Honchkrow, since the mammoth thread is getting too big to house discussions of individual Pokemon.
Posts that you might want to read first.
reachzero said:Speaking of Honchkrow, I completely underestimated how big an addition Brave Bird is to Honchkrow's repertoire. Honchkrow OHKOs so many Pokemon now that it's pretty amazing, and particularly taking down a lot of the Pokemon that would otherwise give Gallade problems. Granted, Rhyperior does make a big difference in facing Honchkrow, since it is a reliable switchin, but Honchkrow is still very, very strong. I voted Honchkrow UU the first time it came up, since I have perceived it as sortof the "Salamence of UU", but I'm really starting to thing now that with Brave Bird it's just a little too much to handle, even as relatively slow as it is.
One last thought....."playing defensively" seems to be harder than ever. I'm not talking so much about full stall as trying to play the "balanced" style that UU has seemed to evolve into in the last few months. Milotic is still great and Spiritomb is really useful right now, but they need to account for so many different threats that they can get really badly hurt early in the game, leaving another threat clear to sweep. This is especially true with Honchkrow around to open holes up for Gallade, etc
alakapimp said:Also imo Honchkrow is still showing the offensive characteristic, There just isn't anything that stops it well enough. Raikou is definitely showing a certain bl'ness to me. Rhyperior has been really underwhelming so far both in use and in playing against it. I'm not too sure on Gallade and some of the others yet.
Lemmiwinks said:I actually believe that Honchkrow is broken in much the same way (though not exactly the same) that Gallade is, i.e. the ability to effortlessly punch holes, but in the general case of your specific example. I have found that against the vast majority of teams, it is extremely easy for Honchkrow to inflict at least the equivalent of 100% damage to the opponent's team, and therefore punch a major hole in it. With 2-3 varied sweepers complementing Honchkrow, its effect will most often allow at least one of those sweepers to have a much easier time sweeping up. None of the surrounding sweepers are broken by themselves, but Honchkrow in fact is because of the effotless support it provides them.
I personally believe that the Support Characteristic should be split into two; Offensive Support and Defensive / Utility Support, and I would definitely nominate Honchkrow under the former.
Lemmiwinks said:With Honchkrow, it offensively supports sweepers in general. In any given battle, Honchkrow is probably not choosing its targets beforehand, but the general result is that something is punched into and heavily damaged, often something that at least one sweeper can exploit. It is the generality of its effect that I believe distinguishes it from the case of Raikou's 'supportability', which is arguably much less concrete from battle to battle.
BurtonEarny said:Also, Arcanine counters honchkrow just fine, well as close as it comes I guess...
Lemmiwinks said:Another problem with Honchkrow that hasn't been mentioned recently is this. Even if you do manage to play around it successfully, perhaps by making sure it has a difficult time coming in, or by making some clever switches to get into a favorable position with little damage inflicted, or whatever, ultimately the hax factor will screw you over more often than with any other similarly threatening Pokemon. Super Luck isn't quite as ridiculous now as it was when glitched, but 1 in 8 (for every move!) is still a fairly high probability for such a gamebreaking side-effect, and has made a huge difference in many of my matches.
Even bulky Arcanine, arguably the safest Honchkrow check populating UU right now (sorry, but Rhyperior is lol) can be screwed over quite often by this. It has happened with my Honchkrow once; Arcanine comes in on SR at full health and then Brave Bird crits for the OHKO. Another time, a near full health Steelix is one-on-one against my low health Honchkrow that can't afford to switch out, then BAM, Superpower crits and OHKOs. Don't get me started on how many times I have managed to get an extra KO on Milotic or other similar bulky Pokemon with recovery just trying to stall out my final recoil reserves.
Now I am certainly not saying that this should be a major factor for making Honchkrow a suspect, and you could rightly claim that critical hits are a part of the game. But in the case of Honchkrow, these incidents occur far more often, to the point where I would consider it to be a 'significant hax factor'. Much like the case with Garchomp and Sand Veil, it is far from the main reason for it being overpowering, but rather the icing on the cake that makes dealing with it even less certain and even more unfair.
ap#'s said:Honestly, Honchkrow rarely uses Super Luck to start with nowadays, and only LeadKrow has Night Slash.
Everyone wants Insomnia for Venusaur.
Honchkrow really isn't that threatening, IMO.
Ok, that's all of the relevent posts about Honchkrow I could find... and is that really it? The "Honchkrow isn't BL" side is rather paltry, and hopefully this thread will be able to remedy that.
-----------------------------------------
Anyway, I believe that the overwhelmingly negative response to Honchkrow lately is just solidifying that the close vote may have been a bit wrong (kind of like Crobat). I'd like to know if anyone has an argument against Honchkrow being BL, because the above arguments for it are pretty convincing.