UU Nominations (Round 6)

[JabbaTheGriffin]

I haven't read through the nominations yet, but I have noticed there's a large number of Raikou nominations. Just make sure in your Raikou nomination you say more than "it's strong" and talk about why it was voted uu two rounds in a row but now should be suspect again/voted bl. If you don't mention this at all/your reasoning is flimsy, reach and I are likely to completely ignore your nomination. Thanks.

 

[Anachronism]

I would like to nominate Kabutops under the Offensive Characteristic andthe Support Characteristic.

Most people feel it is better to remove Damp Rock but I believe that Kabutops, along with 2 other rain sweepers, are the main problems with Rain Dance rather than 8 turns. I think that Rain Dance should be a semi-viable strategy but it needs to be made slightly less competetive, and that is done by removing the best sweeper rather than by destroying the strategy completely.

The standard/basic set for Kabutops looks like this:

Kabutops @ Life Orb
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Speed / 4 HP
Nature: Adamant/Jolly
Ability: Swift Swim
Swords Dance
Waterfall/Aqua Jet
Stone Edge
Aqua Jet/Return

Kabutops can set up on a decent portion of the metagame, and once Kabutops gets a Swords Dance in, it has up to 722 Atk points, a speed stat that lets it beat most walls, and excellent type coverage with STAB Water/Rock. It also has a great STAB priority move that the great coverage allows it to use with little worry. Stone Edge is nearly as powerful as Gallade Close Combat without rain, and impressive defenses allow you to take weak hits from walls effectively to set up as well as absorb even some super-effective priority moves.

In rain, Kabutops becomes absolutely ridiculous. After setting up on things such as taunted Registeel, Spiritomb, Umbreon, and Miltank, one can use a double-STAB Waterfall and Aqua Jet for opposing priority along with up to 568 speed, enough to outrun anything in the metagame (other than opposing Qwilfish or Kabutops), as well as that awesome secondary STAB in Stone Edge, to wreak havoc on the opposing team.

While Kabutops is certainly potentially the most powerful of the Swift Swimmers, it also has the best counters. Poliwhirl, Quagsire, and Toxicroak wall Kabutops harder than the other rain sweepers unless it chooses to run Return, and even then they still can counter it at the expense of about 55-70% of their health. Uxie, Tangrowth, and Registeel can all take 2 unboosted hits or a single Swords Danced hit but all of them are nearly killed by 'tops as well. Even if Kabutops fails to KO the target, the checks are so severely weakened that other rain sweepers such as Qwilfish or Ludicolo can easily sweep the weakened team, and as a result Kabutops can also qualify for the support characteristic, opening sweeps for other rain members.

 

[The 1 and Only Lady Gaga]

I would like to nominate Kabutops under the Offensive Characteristic.

Most people feel that Damp Rock is the main problem with Rain Teams, but I feel it is Kabutops.

This is the most common Kabutops set in the rain:

EVs: 252 Atk, 252 Spe, 4 HP
Nature: Adamant
Held Item: Life Orb
Ability: Swift Swim
Swords Dance
Waterfall
Stone Edge
Aqua Jet

In the rain, all Kabutops need is just one turn of set-up with Swords Dance (prefarably against a Fire type which you can scare off) to rip apart a very large portion of the UU metagame. After a Swords Dance and a Life Orb boost, Kabutops will have a sky-high 938 attack to work with, a a Waterfall from an attack that high will OHKO walls like Registeel, Steelix. Hariyama and Miltank. Stone Edge from the same 938 attack will make short work of bulky waters like Milotic, Blastoise and Slowbro, and with a bit of residual damage like Stealth Rock, the former 2 are OHKOed, and while the latter won't be OHKOed, it will be severely wounded. It can also cripple you with Thunder Wave, but not without it going down in the process.

Tangrowth is one of the few Pokemon that give Kabutops problems, he only takes 65.3-77.2% from a +2 Life Orbbed Stone Edge, while the other bulky grass type Leafeon gets OHKOed by a +2 Life Orbbed Stone Edge, even with the bulkiest possible set, that is the Wish Passer.

Tangrowth can be easily dealt with a fellow Swift Swimmer, Qwilfish can 2KO with STAB Poison Jab, while special attacking ones like Omastar and Ludicolo have an easy OHKO with Ice Beam.

Finally, there is Aqua Jet to deal with Vacuum Wavers who think they can revenge kill you, like Blaziken, who is OHKOed with a Swords Dance boost, and same thing for Absol with Sucker Punch. Toxicroak can be a problem, but he normally utilizes the physical set, and besides, a +2 Life Orbbed Stone Edge OHKOes him despite being resisted, so if you can predict his switch-in, he is toast.

Kabutops is lost against Quagsire and Poliwrath, but a Ludicolo, a fellow Swift Swimmer, easily deals with them.

Conclusion: Kabutops is really too powerful, and his fellow Swift Swimmers deals with most of his counters like Poliwrath, Quagsire and Tangrowth.

 

[Jun.]

I would like to nominate Moltres under the Offensive Characteristic.


It goes without saying that Moltres is a beast when on the offensive. With base 125 SpAtk and base 90 Speed Moltres has the speed and power to wreck many teams. To add to this, Moltres has amazing Coverage with Fire Blast / Air Slash / Hp [Grass]. Now we get to the important part: What could stop this pokemon? The most common way to halt Moltres' viability is what this tier is currently centralized to: spike stacking. With Stealth Rock in play, Moltres loses half of its life on its entrance, thus robbing it of half its battle life before any attack scratches it. Next we go to viable switch-ins. The most reliable switch-in is Chansey, which completely walls this set. Other good switch-ins consist of bulky waters such as Azumarill, Milotic, and SpDef oriented Slowking. Azumarill has no recovery, but has Aqua Jet to force it out. Milotic is arguably the best of the three due to its overall versatility and recovery. A SpDef oriented Slowking does just as well as Milotic, but does not see as much use due to Milotic being an overall better bulky water. However, these factors are easily dealt with through various means.

Firstly, the only 100% counter to the Offensive set, Chansey, is only viable on Stall teams because of its huge weakness to Physical attacks as well as its only attacking move of Seismic Toss, so Chansey will be omitted from this paragraph; a good team with Moltres can break Stall through other means. As stated earlier, this current tier is very centralized in spike stacking abuse; this drastically helps Moltres to sweep a team. The first way spike stacking does this is that many teams run a Rapid Spinner, which removes the rocks that hinder Moltres' battle life. The second, and much more important, way that spike stacking helps is that ALL of Moltres' checks are grounded. This instantly hinders the viability of the bulky waters. Azumarill's lack of recovery becomes very apparent, and Milotic and Slowking can lose if 2+ layers of Spikes and SR are present. Something that hurts all of these pokemon is also the now less common Toxic Spikes. With this in play, Leftover recovery is negated on the switch-in (the pokemon takes 6% damage first turn if there is a lack of a second layer) which further hinders the viability of the bulky waters. So, due to so many hindrances to it's checks, as well as lack of checks Moltres is BL under the Offensive Characteristic.


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If I have time to finish them, I will edit in my other nominations.