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Eledyr

Le vilain petit Wooloo
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Has there been / is there an effective Semi-TR HO/BO team? I'm thinking using TR Calyrex-Ice + TR NDM and wondered what existing teams have used this combo.
https://pokepast.es/4ca19c9bdc1f73c8
This is a team I've seen quite much on the ladd (i'm not sure on the EVs spreads). Trick Room can be quite tricky to use, because Calyrex-S can easily 6-0 the team if you don't play cautiously around porygon2. Otherwise, it is okayish. It has several flaws, including the relative weakness to Taunt after Hatterene is down, but it can be good against specific matchups.
EDIT : also about NDM, the problem with it is it can't really setup without taking risks or being heavily damaged and put in range to revenge kill. Notably, your best niche to setup the trick room is Eternatus, and you don't appreciate Flamethrower, and you can be annoyed by Dragon Tail too. But I give you it could be used over probably Melmetal.
 
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Manaphy

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How do i beat subseed caly other than snarl yveltal?
-Taunt Yveltal does fairly well against it, although it can still lose
-Whirlwind Ho-Oh can tank +2 Astral and phaze it out
-Zarude is immune to Leech Seed so it's really solid vs it
-Blissey is immune to Astral so it just sits on it
-U-Turn Yveltal + Scarfer/Marsh doesn't autowin at all and is still very hard but it at least gives you some counterplay. Any good Caly will invest a lot of defense so you likely won't break Sub in one go
-Running HO and just winning before it does
-Leech Seed missing :blobpensive:
 
How well does Calyrex-S mix up its move for different sets? For example, it uses various combinations of Leech Seed/Substitute/Disable/Nasty Plot/Psyshock/Astral Barrage. Is there a risk to misread a set?
 
does anyone have replays of Outplaying HOs with Weakness Policy NDM?
I just find this mon extremely hard to deal with, since it could run DD or Stone Edge or recovery, etc. and trying to chip it and scout it without activating WP etc.
 
Hello, I'm not much into competitive but I have a q.

I'm reading often that Quagsire can often be used to check things in random tiers in random gens, like Kyogre in Gen 3 with Water Absorb or setup pokemon with Unaware in OU. I know that means it's not a full-on counter, but I believe a check should mean that unless the opponent has specific move choices, Quagsire can stand a chance against certain pokemon (pending how good a player is, etc). How can Quagsire check these pokemon when its stats are so abysmal? Even if Kyogre can't Water Spout or setup pokemon don't get their boost, wouldnt their vastly superior stats still be able to overwhelm Quagsire with other neutral moves?
 

Garrett

Banned deucer.
Hello, I'm not much into competitive but I have a q.

I'm reading often that Quagsire can often be used to check things in random tiers in random gens, like Kyogre in Gen 3 with Water Absorb or setup pokemon with Unaware in OU. I know that means it's not a full-on counter, but I believe a check should mean that unless the opponent has specific move choices, Quagsire can stand a chance against certain pokemon (pending how good a player is, etc). How can Quagsire check these pokemon when its stats are so abysmal? Even if Kyogre can't Water Spout or setup pokemon don't get their boost, wouldnt their vastly superior stats still be able to overwhelm Quagsire with other neutral moves?
I'm not qualified for serious old gens Ubers discussion (so you might get a better answer from that community), but Quagsire has a defensive typing and stats that in many of the older gens of OU before power creeps did their thing was decent. Unaware and recovery moves place Quagsire in a small pool of users. Specific to gen 4, Water Absorb had a niche.
  • In DPP Ubers, even if Kyogre is carrying Ice Beam: 252 SpA Kyogre Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Quagsire: 108-128 (27.4 - 32.4%) -- 65.3% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
It here looks like it stands a chance and can threaten it out with Yawn or Toxic.
 
That's a really cool example! Like I said, I'm very much a casual, so seeing a 65 SpD defend so well against a 150 SpA (albeit only a 95 non-stab attack) is very surprising to me.
 
For the Ubers tier, why did the Dynamax ban also ban Gigantamax?

I understand the following:
  • The idea was quickly dropped from OU because even without its biggest abusers like Dynamax Gyarados, the double-your-HP and get-snowballing-Max-Moves mechanics were still too powerful, overcentralizing, and 50/50 based to keep around.
  • But all of those mechanics were balanced in Ubers with the Dynamax Clause for nearly a year, up until the Crown Tundra glut of legendaries which made the clause too difficult to maintain.
  • Therefore, there is already a balanced precedent in Ubers to let some Pokemon Dynamax and some not.
  • Specifically, the list of Pokemon had to:
    • not be based on BST (bad precedent)
    • not be affected by OU's tiering decisions (bad precedent)
    • be curatable by Smogon in a reasonable amount of time
Wouldn't Gigantamax meet all of these conditions?
  • Gigantamax forms getting to double their HP and use Max Moves are unlikely to be broken, since the Dynamax Clause wasn't broken.
  • There is no glut of legendaries among the Gigantamax forms to maintain.
  • Unlike OU, there is already a balanced precedent in Ubers to let some Pokemon Dynamax and some not.
  • Gigantamax forms are not based on BST and are already all (understandably) banned from OU.
  • Forms listed as separate in Smogon's dex can be tiered separately, so even if one Gigantamax form was overpowered in Ubers it could be individually banned to AG without issue.
There's the easy answer of "letting some Pokemon Dynamax and some not would be a complex ban", but:
  • Ubers already allowed some Pokemon to Dynamax and some not. This would just be making the list significantly easier to curate.
  • Gigantamax is much less complex than the complex ban. "Dynamax is banned and Gigantamax is banned" is barely less complex than "Dynamax is banned".
  • The argument about "Dynamax and Gigantamax are basically the same mechanic" doesn't have any effect on "Ubers already allowed some Pokemon to Dynamax and some not".
  • Weaker analogy: As the flagship mechanic of the generation, Dynamax is to Gen 8 as Drizzle was to Gen 5. If I recall correctly DrizzleSwim was the first ever Smogon complex ban, and it was done specifically because banning Drizzle would've damaged the identity of the generation. So a complex ban was given more deference (in fact, the first ever deference). My reaction to "because complex ban" here is pretty similar to how many in Gen 5 would've reacted to "Drizzle should be banned because complex ban".
Prior to posting this, I read through all of the various Dynamax suspect test threads which is why I agree that Gigantamax should've been banned from OU alongside Dynamax. I'm trying to find a satisfying answer to the questions I've had. For example, I originally had the question "why didn't we just add all the Crown Tundra Ubers to the Dynamax Clause" and got the satisfying answer "Ubers does not want to ban Pokemon without testing them or perform too many suspect tests". But I haven't yet found a satisfying answer to this question. Per the explanations above, I can't find "because complex ban" or "because Dynamax and Gigantamax are too similar" satisfying.

Finally, it's just weird to scroll through the SwSh dex on Smogon and see something like Gigantamax Butterfree supposedly so powerful it was banned from Ubers into AG.

I like to think up counter-arguments to my own stuff, so after typing up that last sentence I thought of this:

"What if there were a Pokemon with a BST of 1 in each stat and no movepool, but its only ability was Moody? Then why wouldn't you say "it's weird to scroll through the dex and see this Pokemon supposedly so powerful it was banned from Ubers into AG"?"

Then my best answer would be that this kind of situation should be extremely rare. Instead, we have 33 Pokemon currently stuck in AG. This ties back into the "give more deference to flagship mechanics" argument.
 

GeniusFromHoenn

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It would simply make team building complicated.
Imagine yourself teambuilding for ss and gigantamax is legal. It suddenly makes a lot of meme strategies like gmax charizard sun, rain gmax drednaw etc viable. You're now supposed to check a lot of more memes things (OR some gmax only like I believe gmax Shifu rilaboom and melmetal could be good)
Sword and shield ubers doesn't allow much variation simply due to a number of things to check which only a few defensive cores can handle. Adding more things like gigantamax which you'll obviously want to check would make more slots fixed. Would you play a metagame where 5 mons are fixed and required so you don't lose to anything? Atleast I wouldn't. Crown Tundra brought a lot of new threats to check and you could not deal with dynamax same time. Similarly it might not be broken (I could be wrong) but it would certainly make the metagame A lot more boring.
For the Ubers tier, why did the Dynamax ban also ban Gigantamax?

I understand the following:
  • The idea was quickly dropped from OU because even without its biggest abusers like Dynamax Gyarados, the double-your-HP and get-snowballing-Max-Moves mechanics were still too powerful, overcentralizing, and 50/50 based to keep around.
  • But all of those mechanics were balanced in Ubers with the Dynamax Clause for nearly a year, up until the Crown Tundra glut of legendaries which made the clause too difficult to maintain.
  • Therefore, there is already a balanced precedent in Ubers to let some Pokemon Dynamax and some not.
  • Specifically, the list of Pokemon had to:
    • not be based on BST (bad precedent)
    • not be affected by OU's tiering decisions (bad precedent)
    • be curatable by Smogon in a reasonable amount of time
Wouldn't Gigantamax meet all of these conditions?
  • Gigantamax forms getting to double their HP and use Max Moves are unlikely to be broken, since the Dynamax Clause wasn't broken.
  • There is no glut of legendaries among the Gigantamax forms to maintain.
  • Unlike OU, there is already a balanced precedent in Ubers to let some Pokemon Dynamax and some not.
  • Gigantamax forms are not based on BST and are already all (understandably) banned from OU.
  • Forms listed as separate in Smogon's dex can be tiered separately, so even if one Gigantamax form was overpowered in Ubers it could be individually banned to AG without issue.
There's the easy answer of "letting some Pokemon Dynamax and some not would be a complex ban", but:
  • Ubers already allowed some Pokemon to Dynamax and some not. This would just be making the list significantly easier to curate.
  • Gigantamax is much less complex than the complex ban. "Dynamax is banned and Gigantamax is banned" is barely less complex than "Dynamax is banned".
  • The argument about "Dynamax and Gigantamax are basically the same mechanic" doesn't have any effect on "Ubers already allowed some Pokemon to Dynamax and some not".
  • Weaker analogy: As the flagship mechanic of the generation, Dynamax is to Gen 8 as Drizzle was to Gen 5. If I recall correctly DrizzleSwim was the first ever Smogon complex ban, and it was done specifically because banning Drizzle would've damaged the identity of the generation. So a complex ban was given more deference (in fact, the first ever deference). My reaction to "because complex ban" here is pretty similar to how many in Gen 5 would've reacted to "Drizzle should be banned because complex ban".
Prior to posting this, I read through all of the various Dynamax suspect test threads which is why I agree that Gigantamax should've been banned from OU alongside Dynamax. I'm trying to find a satisfying answer to the questions I've had. For example, I originally had the question "why didn't we just add all the Crown Tundra Ubers to the Dynamax Clause" and got the satisfying answer "Ubers does not want to ban Pokemon without testing them or perform too many suspect tests". But I haven't yet found a satisfying answer to this question. Per the explanations above, I can't find "because complex ban" or "because Dynamax and Gigantamax are too similar" satisfying.

Finally, it's just weird to scroll through the SwSh dex on Smogon and see something like Gigantamax Butterfree supposedly so powerful it was banned from Ubers into AG.

I like to think up counter-arguments to my own stuff, so after typing up that last sentence I thought of this:

"What if there were a Pokemon with a BST of 1 in each stat and no movepool, but its only ability was Moody? Then why wouldn't you say "it's weird to scroll through the dex and see this Pokemon supposedly so powerful it was banned from Ubers into AG"?"

Then my best answer would be that this kind of situation should be extremely rare. Instead, we have 33 Pokemon currently stuck in AG. This ties back into the "give more deference to flagship mechanics" argument.
 

SparksBlade

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To me the Gigantamax list would just be a lazy Dynamax Clause list because we have a ready made list of Pokemon that would be bunched together even though they are very different from each other. Gigantamax is only different from Dynamax by 1 move having a special effect. While it's true that Game Freak specially labelling Gigantamax gives us a distinct list of Pokemon to look at, in the end it's only barely different from regular Dynamax.

Gigantamax Butterfree might not actually break the tier, but allowing it just cos one of the Max Moves has a unique effect is not a good policy. Dynamax Xatu might be just as good (or bad) as Gigantamax Butterfree, but because it doesn't have that unique move we deem it to be much for the tier?

In the end the Gigantamax Pokemon should not be treated as a collective set of Pokemon and should be looked at individually, just like you don't look at the two Mega Mewtwos as one collective Mega. And since the Gigantamax Pokemon need to be looked at individually, we arrive at the old Dynamax Clause which has been rejected as a proposal quite a few times.
 

Taka

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does anyone have replays of Outplaying HOs with Weakness Policy NDM?
I just find this mon extremely hard to deal with, since it could run DD or Stone Edge or recovery, etc. and trying to chip it and scout it without activating WP etc.
I think this is somewhat prediction reliant, but good reads with offensive yveltals can chip it down enough for your cleaners like marshadow. I also believe urshifu survives a hit at +1 with a bit of bulk, if rocks aren’t up, but don’t quote me on that one.
 

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