Moltres - Burn Baby Burn

[jamashawalker]

I would not like not consider miltank a true nor good counter...It doesnt have a good special defense nor can it be EVed to outspeed moltres without being specially defensive which wouldnt really be good except for countering only moltres and he only has thick fat to stop fire blast....here's a good miltank countering moltres set

Miltank @ Leftovers
Thick Fat
252 HP 82 SpDef 176 Speed
Timid
Rock Slide
Body Slam
Milk Drink
Heal Bell

Those are enough speed EVs to outrun positive speed Moltres.... and timid moltres does about 44%-56% with a LO air slash... this is probably the only set miltank can run to 100% counter moltres at full at health...still a very shaky counter to say....

 

[IronBullet]

Moltres is definitely overpowered, but not broken. I myself use Moltres and there are a number of conditions to ensure that Moltred actually sweeps,
and these lead me to state that Moltres is NOT broken:
1. You absolutely need Rapid Spin support. You don't want Moltres to be coming in at half it's health and expect it to sweep.
2. You need to weaken your opponents counter to it enough so that Moltres can atleast 2HKO it. Although not many pokes can counter Moltres reliably, Milotic is a good enough one, and it is seen on almost every team out there, and hence nearly every team ends up having a decent Moltres counter.
3. It is easily revenge killed by a number of pokes, like Duggy, Zam, Raikou,Rotom and the like.
4. It's STAB can easily give pokemon like Arcanine and Houndoom a free boost, and since both of them are faster, they can defeat Moltres and potentially sweep.

 

[-Mind-]

I would not like not consider miltank a true nor good counter...It doesnt have a good special defense nor can it be EVed to outspeed moltres without being specially defensive which wouldnt really be good except for countering only moltres and he only has thick fat to stop fire blast....here's a good miltank countering moltres set

Miltank @ Leftovers
Thick Fat
252 HP 82 SpDef 176 Speed
jolly
Rock Slide
Body Slam
Milk Drink
Heal Bell

Those are enough speed EVs to outrun positive speed Moltres.... and timid moltres does about 44%-56% with a LO air slash... this is probably the only set miltank can run to 100% counter moltres at full at health...still a very shaky counter to say....

 

[dbcb]

Lanturn

Calm, 252 spD/252 HP

modest life orb fire blast: max 30%
modest life orb air slash: max 18.9%
modest life orb HP grass: max 47.1%

timid life orb fire blast: max 27.5
timid life orb air slash: max 17.2%
timid life orb HP grass: max 43.2%

And even if you use the standard smogon set with only 40 evs in HP, hp grass still only does max 48.9% against timid moltres, which most are.


unfortunately, lanturn doesn't OHKO with either of its stabs if moltres is full health (but with SR up it obviously does)... but it could twave moltres making it a sitting duck (phoenix?), toxic it, or just hit it hard with one of its stabs.

definitely an option... works even better for wifi moltres since they rarely carry hp grass.

 

[Thund91]

The thing is is that Lanturn has no reliable recovery. It only has access to Rest. Moltres can just Fire Blast it first and switch out. The next time Moltres is in a Fire Blast + Hidden Power is enough to knock Lanturn out without it having done anything. Milotic and Chansey atleast have recovery that allows them to keep coming in.

 

[jamashawalker]

Moltres is definitely overpowered, but not broken. I myself use Moltres and there are a number of conditions to ensure that Moltred actually sweeps,
and these lead me to state that Moltres is NOT broken:
1. You absolutely need Rapid Spin support. You don't want Moltres to be coming in at half it's health and expect it to sweep.
2. You need to weaken your opponents counter to it enough so that Moltres can atleast 2HKO it. Although not many pokes can counter Moltres reliably, Milotic is a good enough one, and it is seen on almost every team out there, and hence nearly every team ends up having a decent Moltres counter.
3. It is easily revenge killed by a number of pokes, like Duggy, Zam, Raikou,Rotom and the like.
4. It's STAB can easily give pokemon like Arcanine and Houndoom a free boost, and since both of them are faster, they can defeat Moltres and potentially sweep.

lol This kind of backs up the idea of moltres being suspect....
1. True you do need to pair it with a rapid spinner same with yanmega...
2. Milotic is still a shaky counter due to its only ability to switch into an STAB fire type move and must be at full health otherwise offensive moltres beats milotic on the switch(that's not a fire attack). Also this backs up the point that alot of ppl use milotic as their moltres counter as well as a chansey...
3. True easy to revenge kill, but not too many ppl will like the stall set
4. Arcanine and houndoom will not be able to beat moltres if they do not have HP rock and if moltres is not below 40%....You are forgetting also that moltres has two STAB attacks, air slash as well..If moltres is not weakened and they dont predict fire blast, it is defintely a huge mismatch

 

[A.P.]

How so, Jamasha?

1. Yanmega was far worse. It could come in, and just fire off Bug Buzz willy-nilly, uncaring. I know many people just spammed Bug Buzz with Yanmega, and still destroyed. You come in as something sets up SR, and then you have two more switch-ins later. Yanmega was the true definition of unstoppable.

2. You're right here, Milotic is a pretty shaky counter, because it can't take repeated beatings, and spamming Recover is just inviting shit like Raikou or Venusaur to come and rain on your parade.

3. Seconded. However, the idea of revenge killing can be easily countered by smart switch-ins.

4. Who the hell is stupid enough to spam Fire Blast to start with? I always prefer to start with Air Slash, the only exceptions being against Donphan, Registeel, and Steelix.

 

[dbcb]

The thing is is that Lanturn has no reliable recovery. It only has access to Rest. Moltres can just Fire Blast it first and switch out. The next time Moltres is in a Fire Blast + Hidden Power is enough to knock Lanturn out without it having done anything. Milotic and Chansey atleast have recovery that allows them to keep coming in.

stealth rocks?

 

[IronBullet]

lol This kind of backs up the idea of moltres being suspect....
1. True you do need to pair it with a rapid spinner same with yanmega...
2. Milotic is still a shaky counter due to its only ability to switch into an STAB fire type move and must be at full health otherwise offensive moltres beats milotic on the switch(that's not a fire attack). Also this backs up the point that alot of ppl use milotic as their moltres counter as well as a chansey...
3. True easy to revenge kill, but not too many ppl will like the stall set
4. Arcanine and houndoom will not be able to beat moltres if they do not have HP rock and if moltres is not below 40%....You are forgetting also that moltres has two STAB attacks, air slash as well..If moltres is not weakened and they dont predict fire blast, it is defintely a huge mismatch

1. Rapid Spin is not always a guarantee, and Moltres absolutely requires it to be able to sweep.
2. Sort of agree on this one, yes Milotic isn't a reliable check and yes Moltres' counters are limited.
3. We are talking about sweeping here, hence I'm obviously referring to offensive Moltres, who is easy to revenge kill.
4. Arcanine and Houndoom both 2HKO Moltres with a boosted Fare Blitz/ Dark Pulse respectively, hence if they switch into Fire Blast, they will defeat Moltres.

 

[Nas]

1. Rapid Spin is not always a guarantee, and Moltres absolutely requires it to be able to sweep.
2. Sort of agree on this one, yes Milotic isn't a reliable check and yes Moltres' counters are limited.
3. We are talking about sweeping here, hence I'm obviously referring to offensive Moltres, who is easy to revenge kill.
4. Arcanine and Houndoom both 2HKO Moltres with a boosted Fare Blitz/ Dark Pulse respectively, hence if they switch into Fire Blast, they will defeat Moltres.

Are you forgetting that almost all Arcanine run Intimidate over Flash Fire? You speak of houndoom 2hko'ing Moltres with a boosted Dark Pulse, but switching into a Fire blast only boosts Dooms fire attacks. So Houndoom has to rely on Fire Blasts 85% accuracy while only getting 4 attacks due to Pressure. Then again, a full health moltres will be able to take the boosted FB and KO with Air Slash...either way, I'm not seeing how these two beat Moltres.

 

[Stagnant]

Are you forgetting that almost all Arcanine run Intimidate over Flash Fire?

Arcanine is number two on the usage board and thus running Flash Fire over Intimidate is far from unreasonable. Also, a check is a check no matter what the usage statistics say.

 

[Banedon]

I think Moltres is a very powerful Pokemon, but not BL material. Its biggest problem is its speed. 90 may be decently fast, but not fast enough, with a variety of dangerous Pokemon faster (Mismagius, Alakazam, Raikou ...). There are also a lot of other problems:

Ex: if Moltres kills someone it can easily be revenged, and may not even be able to switch back in if Stealth Rock is in play.
Ex: Uxie can switch into Moltres, Thunder Wave it and essentially remove it from the game.
Ex: Moltres has no priority attacks and is instead weak to a priority attack (Aqua Jet).
Ex: Life Orb recoil sucks on Moltres. The more your opponent predicts around Moltres's attack and you rack up Life Orb recoil, the more you risk Aqua Jet.

Are you forgetting that almost all Arcanine run Intimidate over Flash Fire? You speak of houndoom 2hko'ing Moltres with a boosted Dark Pulse, but switching into a Fire blast only boosts Dooms fire attacks. So Houndoom has to rely on Fire Blasts 85% accuracy while only getting 4 attacks due to Pressure. Then again, a full health moltres will be able to take the boosted FB and KO with Air Slash...either way, I'm not seeing how these two beat Moltres.

I dunno but according to my calculations Life Orb Timid Houndoom = 319 special attack vs. Moltres with zero SpD investment = 206 special defense, using Dark Pulse, does 175-206 damage per hit? Which is more than sufficient to KO sweeper Moltres with two hits, and that's not counting Life Orb recoil on Moltres.

 

[IronBullet]

RT- I never said Houndooms Dark Pulse would get a boost. It still 2HKOs.
Almost all Arcanine? You are mostly talking about the defensive sets, while the LO sets that are rising in usage almost always run Flash Fire.

 

[Scoopapa]

Moltres doesn't just need spin support, he needs a dedicated spinner designed to bypass spin blockers (or a combo to do the same). Otherwise, he's ruined by a team that puts emphasis on spin blocking. It's this fact that prevents him from being broken. Basically, his overpowered-ness is offset by the amount of support he needs. Still, I've used a stall Moltres on a team with two spinners and he more than makes up for the wasted moveslots. He walls a significant portion of the metagame, and many of his counters fail if they were poisoned by him the last time they met. Pressure just makes it even better, letting him stall out Stone Edge and Hydro Pump.

 

[jamashawalker]

Well if we are talking about offensive arcanine which most of them run adamant out of no fear of the 80 base speed but you are correct that they do 2HKO after a flash fire boosteither way its hard to see these two being a major threat without switching into a fire move

 

[IronBullet]

True, guess it depends on your experience then...and Arcanine has given my Moltres a lot of trouble:)

 

[Swine]

Dugtrio -> Arena Trap -> Rock slide. YES

 

[Lightsabre]

Swine- Moltres is immune to Arena Trap. it can walk out at any time

EDIT: lol beat leman by 3 seconds

 

[Leman]

Dugtrio -> Arena Trap -> Rock slide. YES

Moltres is Flying typed and can switch out of Arena Trap....

EDIT: Dammit, beaten.

EDIT2: I'm pretty sure Hidden Power Grass OHKOs with LO. Haven't calc'd it tho.

 

[Choice Socks]

Choice band Azumarill swithces into to any attack without problem, and aqua jets for the OHKO

 

[Cuiv]

Swine- Moltres is immune to Arena Trap. it can walk out at any time

EDIT: lol beat leman by 3 seconds

Also, all standard versions of Dugtrio are OHKOed by all Moltres Fire Blasts (Modest or not, LO or Specs or other item), and also by many Moltres Air Slashes, so Dugtrio can't switch in.

 

[Rolf]

Best check:

Mantine
Chansey

Semi-check:

Milotic
Azumarill
Kabutops (Aqua Jet will not OHKO if Moltres is in mint health)

The funny thing about those? All of them but Azu and Buto get raped by the Stall set, and Azu really doesn't like Toxic if it comes in while Tres has a sub.

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet (and even Hyu didn't mention it, probably because he abuses it :P) is the fact that Moltres is almost uncounterable if you have spikes and sr up, as Milotic will then be KO'd by Fire Blast + HP Grass with those entry conditions. NOTHING can switch in safely. If you're at full health Tres survives AJ's from Azu and Buto also and you can feel free to KO back with HP Grass.

I still don't know if I'd vote it BL, but I think it is a suspect for sure.

 

[Thund91]

The funny thing about those? All of them but Azu and Buto get raped by the Stall set, and Azu really doesn't like Toxic if it comes in while Tres has a sub.

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet (and even Hyu didn't mention it, probably because he abuses it :P) is the fact that Moltres is almost uncounterable if you have spikes and sr up, as Milotic will then be KO'd by Fire Blast + HP Grass with those entry conditions. NOTHING can switch in safely. If you're at full health Tres survives AJ's from Azu and Buto also and you can feel free to KO back with HP Grass.

I still don't know if I'd vote it BL, but I think it is a suspect for sure.

Not Restalk sets....but for some reason barely anyone uses those. I think it was 17% of Milotic only run Rest. Anyway when using stall I found the best way to rid of Moltres is to keep rock ups because that severely limits it's ability to switch in, and with offensive teams I just hit it as hard as I can. And Ninetails loves setting up on it anyway. =)

 

[MegaKick]

Milotic is in no way a counter for moltres-with 1-2 layers of spikes (easy with froslass), modest moltres with life orb and fire blast+hidden power grass (my current set) can easily KO with fire blast on the switch plus HP grass. its so fun how everyone switches waters like slowbro into moltres only to get koed by HP grass.

 

[Sir Azelf]

The only real trouble ive had with Moltres is that damn sunny beam set.

That thing hits so incredibly hard its stupid.

LO Solarbeam Vs 252/0 Milotic 81% - 95.7%

LO Fire Blast Vs 0/252 Calm Chansey in the Sun 44.1% - 52.1%

LO Fire Blast Vs 252/ 216 Calm Mantine in the Sun 35.3% - 41.9%

Honestly the only thing that is keeping Moltres uu is its SR weakness. :x