Ugh…
Mienshao
Scizor
Infernape
Staraptor
Ambipom
Tornadus-T
Genesect
Heliolisk
Greninja
Noivern
Jolteon
Mega Manetric
Rotom
Scarf Diggersby
Scarf Pangoro
Not all of these are often used as scouts but their the best I could think of that can use U-Turn/Volt Switch (or Parting Shot in Pangoro’s case).
staraptor is not a scout, it can but it’s not very good at it
Neither is Mienshao, Heliolisk or ScarfDiggersby really, I just put up pokes that can perform the role when necessary.
they are better scouts than staraptor is, due to their respective abilities and typings (none are weak to SR), mienshao is a great scout (regenerator + u-turn), heliolisk is a bitch to switch into (awesome coverage), on second though, diggersby is probably about as well off as staraptor for scouting (not as bad because of a lack of SR weakness)
staraptor really doesn’t care what switches into it, it’s going to deal a fuckton of damage, as long as it’s not a ghost switching into close combat/double edge or something that quad resists his moves, he’s just going to blow things up (for example, ttar and heatran can be 2HKO’d by brave bird running offensive sets)
staraptor would rather bash people’s heads in than try to scout stuff, being weak to SR and the lack of recovery on its sets is a problem
Just use Greninja because he’s fucking great and also a ninja… albeit a gross, slimy one.
greninja would be the best scout if genesect wasn’t so god damn fucking stupid
but yea, greninja is an awesome scout with great coverage and power while not wanting to use a choice item
What makes Bisharp good? I know it dies to Fighting type moves.
few things
first off, dark is almost a necessary defensive type this gen thanks to it being the only type to resist both ghost and dark
second, with defog being buffed and now everywhere, bisharp gets a huge boost when any of his stats are dropped, so basically, (he gets a free SD if he switches in on defog) this is a huge momentum swing
he’s the only steel type that still resists dark and ghost
he is fucking scary if you manage to get sticky web up on the opponents side, he’s also scary if you put sticky web up on his side thanks to defiant
he has a monstrous attack and a great offensive type
knock off is the tits
he’s one of the few dark types that instills fear into opposing fairy types
he got a huge buff this gen with practically everything, he’s awesome
Alright, all that’s left for me to do for this team is some Maison Runs and Leveling.
Yeah the specific poke I have in my mind for scouting is so left field. Im not surprised I havent seen it being used competitively but hopefully that works in my favor.
(As long as it’s something with U-turn, Volt Switch or Regenerator, it’s probably at least decent as a “scout”. Anything that force switches due to being really damn annoying like Klefki or Whismicott or Sableye also probably works depending on what you actually mean and want by “scouting”. I guess Frisk also works, though the only pokemon that’s worth using with seems to be Gourgeist.)
Speaking of damn annoying, the award for most annoying team might go to one I found today, complete with the user having a douchebag name. I really want to believe this person is a troll instead of even remotely sincere: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-82585718.
Beyond that, I can’t remember if posted these two matches of mine. I don’t think I did since I’m pretty sure they’re from last night:
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-82401237
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-82403994
I also found last night that Hidden Power Ground does pretty pathetic to Heatran with the current set-up I have for Sylveon that emphasizes HP and Defense instead of Special Attack or Special Defense, which both take a 1 IV penalty for Hidden Power Ground. As such, I’ve changed it to Heal Bell for now instead tried to change Magnezone to a more boring Substitute variant, but I’ve only gotten one match that so far and I’m still not really liking. I also think I want to just go with Taunt on Skarmory instead of Defog and perhaps just outright switch Stealth Rock on it and Hippodown.
Shrug.
I do know that I’ll talk about the banning topic later night and I also want to use Hawlucha and still use an unexpected Assault Vest user whose Special Defense is normally rather crappy compared to its excellent Defense, which arguably defeats the point of Assault Vest. Still, it gets an interesting attack that very few other pokemon get to make use of without dying and gives me an excuse to run Dugtrio perhaps.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-82791969
didn’t expect to sweep so easily with Suicune but once Ferrothorn was dead setup was easy.
Assault Vest User? Pick Conkeldurr. Knock Off and Drain Punch, really fucking annoying.
Now if only Pokebank would come out so I could put a legit AV Conk on my Wifi team…
(Ugh. I fell asleep, meaning I forgot to do this and overcharged the battery of my laptop again. Fucking incompetence…)
So, yeah, when it comes to the precarious job of banning things, I do think at the very least some things need to be banned. Evasive moves do need to be banned in my opinion just because Pokemon already heavily revolves around luck a lot of the time and the options for dealing with evasion are relatively sparse and weak (unless you have Technician). Admittedly, they’re not as sparse as dealing with Stealth Rock, but they’re still pretty weak and if evasion was allowed, then Baton Pass teams would instantly become dominant, especially since Haze and the few pokemon that can use it are vulnerable to Taunt. Additionally, Magic Bounce existing on three pokemon, all with Baton Pass, would make things pretty dumb. Similarly, Psych-Up doesn’t get around the heavy luck issue and only Malamar has Topsy-Turvy at present.
Beyond that, what “needs” to be banned gets hazier from there to me. Things beyond 600 BST probably do need their own tier, though of course even that’s sort of an arbitrary thing since some things above that BST aren’t as dominant and some things below that would still be obnoxious even if there was no “Ubers” bracket or whatever.
The Clauses get a bit excessive perhaps, though Species Clause and Moody Clause are needed and Sleep Clause was definitely needed because of Spore. One might be able to make an argument that Sleep Clause is no longer needed since now all Grass pokemon and pokemon with Overcoat (and the relatively rare Insomnia) are automatically immune to Spore, but then Darkai and Smeargle get to run rampant with Dark Void.
All that said, I can of course understand not taking what Smogon says on…well, anything, as gospel, especially since they obviously have various biases. I mean, it took them fucking forever to ban Salamence in Gen IV before I stopped paying attention to them even though Salamence was obviously overpowered due to typing chart bullshit and the lack of any non-Steel Dragon- check. Basically it mirrored Smashboards bullshit when it came to not banning Metaknight from Brawl for quite a while because the people in charge were egregiously too attached to him and the “rules” are pretty much dependent on their whims.
still doesn’t understand how Drizzle and Drought are banned in UUbeta already
But, yeah, to me, there needs to be some type of medium between “allow everything (to punch and be punched in the face)” and “No items, Fox only, Final Destination” when it comes to banning things. That’s obviously easier said than done, though. Otherwise we wouldn’t have…this.
waves hand around to indicate thread itself
First, why did you quote all of that? Seriously.
Second, I meant a more unconventional Assault Vest user. I’m not doing it to be “special”; I just want to explore and I’m well aware that Conkledurr, Goodra and Snorlax work quite well with Assault Vest.
(I’ll concede that I do still think Conkledurr looks completely stupid though. Gen V was at the very least the nadir of visual pokemon design.)
Finally, I just made a team around an Assault Vest user that I haven’t seen anyone use (or, at least, talk about) who should work quite well even though it wasn’t the pokemon I had intended on using initially. It’s surprisingly bulky by default and already Fighting type, so…
sleep cause is absolutely needed, smeargles are going to start to use dark void and sleep is the 2nd most damaging status you can have, unless you have sleep talk or the (dear god why) snore, you’re screwed
assault vest really doesn’t have that many users, conk is by far the best one thanks to it’s massive attack stat, great HP, and already good physical bulk, on top of having a healing move to use with assault vest (drain punch)
most other AV pokes i’ve seen have been underwhelming, excadrill does make great use of it with rapid spin/earthquake/iron head/rock slide, lauging at the ice beams and hydro pumps that may fly its way
(So noted about AV Excadrill, who I was considering adding to that Ubers team I finally just completed.)
Damn it. I knew I was forgetting something in that sentence with regards to Sleep Clause, which is why it seemed incomplete. I’ve edited it appropriately now.
I’ll try to get some matches in with the newer team tonight or something, especially since the Tyrantum one has been increasingly disappointing or, at least, was so last night. My AV user has Drain Punch too, though. I made sure it had access to it considering I was looking to see who had it after DukeC mentioned he was one of the only people using AV Gallade–it’s not Gallade though, as much as I wanted to use him.
my opinion on bans is well noted, i do think shit needs to be banned as sometimes, it takes way too much team building to just check some things
sometimes, smogon likes to let things rock before coming to a final decision, there are some things that are laughably broken (i’m looking at you blaziken, you stupid ass fire chicken) and some things that aren’t (i honestly consider mega venusaur to be too strong as it singlehandedly stops teams that don’t carry multiple flying/psychic moves, but that’s for way later down the road possibly, but he’s not as stupid as what’s being suspected now)
let’s take gen IV for example, garchomp was laughably broken, if you wanted to do well, your team was: garchomp, tyranitar, garchomp counter 1, garchomp counter 2, garchomp counter counter 1, garchomp counter counter 2 and that’s it. SD Yache Chomp just went ape shit over the tier and gave no fucks. It also didn’t help that Scarf Chomp gave about zero fucks as well.
Move forward to platinum when it was Salamence/Latias time, while they over centralized, they didn’t pull your pants down and played with your butthole like garchomp did, yes you needed both to win but you had so many more options to deal with them and neither had a usage percentage like what garchomp and ttar did in early gen IV (chomp was at like 52% before it was banned and ttar at like…40%). scizor also got bullet punch to revenge kill the shit out of them as well.
they were deemed overcentralizing and were subsequently banned (it was either both or none as they were huge checks to each other and were a reason why they were playable in OU for such a long time) and when they were banned, heatran rose to the top spot over scizor and then gen V came out and a lot of people would like to forget competitive gen V existed
I’m going to guess that The Damned is using the Fat Man, aka Yokozuna, aka Hariyama as his Assault Vest user.
Ban, don’t ban, whatever, just keep that other place and its scrubbery far, far away from me…
Don’t complain about the metagame being “unbalanced” when you fuck up the ecosystem by banning everything in sight, creating a domino-effect of unchecked beasts that run rampant everytime one of its counters/checks gets removed due to knee-jerk reactions…
banning stuff has made the game more balanced, gen V not included as that was a clusterfuck of shit and they never banned the real problem (perma weather, specifically rain)
sometimes it may seem knee jerk, but with shit so offensive right now, it’s probably better off, you try finding a counter to something that 1-2HKOs every single pokemon in the game after 1 turn, on top of having priority and an awesome speed stat, it’s just fucking obnoxious to find even the most obscure shit that could work (which hint, there is nothing, he mauls everything), just better to get rid of it instead of making the game revolve around 1 single poke