Tbird

Past is past buddy, cringe worthy as it all might be it's never worth outright rejecting. The cringe factor being mainly why I avoid my old posts like the plague! The shoddy days were pretty awesome to the say the least. For me it was the hub of my activity, it all got a bit shit passed that. But like you I try to pop in to see some old friends, or friend (singular) as wraith is potentially the only person that I too still recognise. Well take it easy buddy!

I ban Gin because where in God's name have you been

Woop. No one died.

If its geard around charizard then you're definitely going to need a spinner. A good team mate in that regard is Hitmontop who'll happily take Rock typed attacks aimed at Charizard. Cloyster is another particularly good team mate who can take water typed attacks for charizard. Last but not least by any stretch is Starmie who does particularly well at taking on bulky waters and things like gyarados that could threaten charizard, in return charizard will eliminate bulky grassers. Scizor is a goo team mate as its slow U-turn allows for charizard to switch in for free, anything that baits Earthquake will also allow charizard a free switch in, too. Be aware that EQ is commonly paired with stone edge, so tread with caution. Please remember its your job to come to us with a team or a specific set(s) for us to critique or help with. We're not here to build your team for you.

So there're a couple of mons so far that look like pretty cool / interesting additions and since stats and moves are pretty much completely released I thought id talk about them a little bit. Hawlucha Fight / Flying 78 / 92 / 75 / 74 / 63 / 118 Some key points: + Neutral SR damage / no rock weakness + Flying Press is a great move for removing bulky Grassers / Normals / steels + Can get passed the TanKing duo, making Hawlucha a good wall breaking asset. - some sets will suffer from 4ms - will probably find bulky waters an issue with no solid grass or electric moves to abuse. Hawlucha is a cool little thing and from what I can see there's going to be a couple of ways to play him, which is always nice! As a foreword I'm not in a position to be able to actual calcs so I unfortunately won't be able to back a whole lot up, so ill keep absurd claims to a minimum. Set one: Physical Hawlucha @ life orb / choice scarf / choice band 4 hp / 252 atk / 252 Spe Adamant / Jolly Limber - Flying Press / Hi Jump Kick - Stone Edge / Hi Jump Kick - X Scissor - Roost / U-turn This will be pretty good for late game clean ups and generally acting as a momentum stealer. Flying press as a nice stab that will also help in taking out bulky Grassers and other fighters, of which he'll spend most his time switching into. Plus obligatory Stab. Stone edge for flying types switch ins, x scissor for psychic coverage and depending on the item roost or u turn make great 4th moves. Roost will allow it to heal off LO recoil and potential damage taken from missed HKJ, and somewhat mitigates the SR weakness, u turn works great for scouting purposes and general momentum stealing, thus putting Grassers in a bind. I would argue that with nature you can run adamant regardless of item due to its high base speed allowing to outspeed max speed base 100's anyway, with jolly that extends to base 115. Choice band sets will hit very hard and scarf sets will be very fast, all depends on what you need. Lead / stall breaker. Hawlucha @ Life orb / Lum Berry 4 hp / 252 atk / 252 Spe Jolly Limber / unburden - Taunt - U turn - Flying Press - Stone Edge / toxic All that's needed to disrupt most stallers and walls, get in, mess it up and get out. Coverage does suffer somewhat on this set and it will definitely miss roost, 4ms hurts this guy. Set up sweeper Hawlucha @ life orb 4 hp / 252 atk / 252 Spe Jolly Limber - Swords Dance - Flying Press - Stone edge - x scissor This set aims to force a switch, SD up and attack with its blistering speed and high atk. I think this set will be really good for late game sweeping once bulky waters and their kin have been taken out of the equation. Taunt could be used again on this set to ensure that phasers don't ruin his sweep. A combination of unburden and fight gem could also really help him, ensuring that scarfers don't ruin his sweep. Potential checks / counters: lati twins, Gyarados, Skarmory, Gliscor, Jirachi, Donphan et al Good team mates would be Heracross who can take out psychics and loosen up walls with a similar attacking style. Jolteon / insert quick electric here provides good defensive synergy and can take out flyers and usually come out on top against Gliscor and the like with hidden power ice. Lastly Jirachi would be a good team mate for luring out mons like Gliscor and OHKO with ice punch / hp ice, she also provides good defensive synergy and can provide wish support for ease of switching in. Barbaracle Rock / water 72 / 105 / 115 / 54 / 86 / 68 Key points: + Razor shell in the rain has 165 BP (assuming x1.2 boost with tough claws) + great tanking stats + access to shell smash, swords dance and rock polish + tough claws and a great physical move pool + ability to abuse rain and sand - 4x weak to grass Shell smash Barbaracle @ white herb / life orb 252 atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe Adamant / naughty - shell smash - razor shell - Stone edge / rock slide - Hidden power [fire / ice] / x scissor / earthquake This guy has got bulk enough to pull this set off at a moment's notice and has coverage enough to really work it. Razor shell will be the stab move of choice as from what I can gather it doesn't get waterfall, stone edge is secondary stab which has great coverage razor shell and the last move is for picking off specific walls, fire for Ferrothorn, ice for Gliscor, X scissor for bulky Grassers / psychics (a la Latin twins) and earthquake is another option to utilise QuakeEdge (though its quite redundant as what's covered by EQ is also covered by SE and razor shell). Potential checks would be Skarmory, Ferrothorn, Scizor, Starmie, hitmontop, Conkledurr and Empoleon to name a few. Good team mates as such would be magnezone for trapping purposes, and the lati twins should be able to deal with the non steels and would also lend a hand with defensive synergy (albeit one sided) (More to come... Again)

Has anyone else had a look at smogons preliminary base stats? Jesus christs some of them look crazy on the mega front, alakazam with apparently 175 SpA and 150 Spe. Mawile with huge power and 105 atk, never mind that it has swords dance and sucker punch. Those sorts of stats even make mega charizards offences that's look wimpy at 124/ 129/ 100. Even Heracross has 185 atk. I think a lot of megas will infortunatly be banned of these prelims are correct, which'll be a shame, they went too far one way

I understand the extra SpD for ol 'zam, but a HP boost would have been nice, or more noticeable. Same with Pikachu. Nothing ground breaking but we'd only complain if it were. I just wish someone would hurry up an get definitive base stats!!!

Or maybe its just a move that he learns and has now pretty cool coverage. I hate to sound pessimistic but theyll never give Gyarados part dragon. That'd just make too much sense. That'll be the day Flareon gets flare blitz! -wishes intensifies- 2013 the year of the scarf blitz Flareon!!!

I like this a lot. Weather teams are fun, but it can't rain forever metaphorically and literally speaking. I did like the good old days where playing weather was high risk high reward. So this new mechanic will sit right in the middle, gotta give up lefties if you want a long storm and 10 turns is more than enough for those of us used to 5-8 turns. I think this is going to be a lot of fun, maybe we can see drizzle swimming again, Kingdra back in OU rocking them cool ass spex. Will be interesting to see whether or not the storm can be resummoned upon switching in past 10 turns. Not resetting the counter I agree with and whole hartedly agree to, but if that's it for the game that's going to kind of suck. But if we can resummon upon subsidence its going to mean that that Pokemon is even more valuable than before. No more can we sack our Ninetales as KO fodder just because the oppositions Tyranitar is fainted, which again is good, allows for more depth of play. I wonder if this new electric field type move will also have a corresponding ability? That'll be interesting. Do we know the ins and outs of this weather yet? I'm hoping for a SPA boost for steels, or maybe an accuracy boost for steels. Magnets.

Can I get some sauce with that please Wraithykins?

Yesss that would be pretty cool for pursuit trapping. More so in lower tiers though, I feel. Because the usage of it would always make it reactive to spinning. Unless their designated spinner can outright defeat him, they'll switch and you'll treat someone else with a ghost typing, which they might not mind so much, think about Snorlax switching in, its going to love not being weak to fighting anymore. Though, I guess anything with a ghost typing is going to be scared shitless of pursuit/ sucker punch. On a side note I can't really see the point in spoilers as given the nature of this thread people will know what they are getting to when they open it. I will edit the OP to mention that the following posts contain spoilers. If that can't be gleaned from the title already.

I've had a quick look through all the, still fully unconfirmed, leaks and if in 10 or so days they turn out to be true I dare say we truly are going to have a massive rethink on what constitutes as uber. Now, Gengar and aero dactyl are your glass canons that hit hard but not hard enough to be stand alone sweepers, just sort of softeneners. they both don't need any more speed so if they follow trend and get a boost to say 130+ in special / attack, they're going to be absolute monsters. They'll both still have problems with priority, that is unless they OHKO whatever switches in, or throw up a sub as to choose the right move to spell doom with. I think OU will feel a massive massive MASSIVE power creep, and the lower tiers will be full of the has-beens that don't get a boost, thus making them much more diverse... Either that or ÜBER will be massive this gen which'll pretty much go against the point of that tier. Then there'll also be the anti-meta teams that don't use megas just to screw with those that do. I think that that fat alone could be what saves the megas from getting the boot. As for the dual typed moves, I'm excited so long as they are done right. The right way to do it would (in my opinion of course) would be to apply effectiveness of the secondary typing and ignoring the resistances. Otherwise like previously stated every move will just be neutral. Which'll be shit. They coul also spin it so that the secondary typing doesn't gain the full super effective boost. I do believe you can recode ROMs in a way that makes effectiveness be as low as only 1.1 effective. In any case if its not currently doable with the current and previous gens (which I'm sure it is) I'm sure Nintendo could do that now. It'd be good because it would put somewhat of a cap on how much damage can be dealt, for instance Ferrothorn would be 6x weak to fire punch, and they'd be strong enough even without stab. 75 + stab = 112.5 x 6 = 675. That's stupid. But again, even if that is the case it might be needed to somewhat mitigate how powerful other pokes are going to be. Fight fire with fire and all that. I guess we'll see in just over a week!

Charizard x is goin to be a beast, Heatran will be the only thing able to resist its STABs, and even then its got high speed and EQ, if we can still class base 100 as high. And what's this? No more 4x SR weakness. You know Charizard is about to unleash unholy hell on all tht once mocked him. This gon be good.

Id always sooner go with Twave over body slam, just for that guarantee. She is bulky but you don't want to risk surviving one Tbolt from any Pokemon just for body slam to not get the para and you get 2HKOd. Endure reversal is a waste of time, if they carry a single scarfer or priority user youre screwed. Hitmonlee certainly won't be taking many hits anyway, but to literally limit him to one hit in a fast metagame just doesn't tickle my fancy none to much. You'd be better off running normal gem and fake out or fighting gem hi jump kick if you want to abuse unburden, but even still, its risky and I'd usually just slap a life orb on him or even a scarf/ band. Make sure you try before you buy when it comes to using suggestions.youre team should already be solid enough for you to refute mine or anyone else's critiques before you put it up for review. If you find a team is constantly losing ditch it and tart over, if its winning then all we should be doing is adding little details.

You'd be correct. Standard is 252 atk / 252 Spe / 4 hp or spA with a jolly or hasty nature. Eq / outrage / u turn or dragon claw / fire punch or fire blast.

This team looks like it is going to suffer a lot to every sort of playstyle. It's too slow to play (ie a lot of set up) to be able to handle sheer aggression from hyper offence teams and has absolutely no way of dealing with stall. You've got a lot of good switch ins, but that's all, this team will effectively always be playing reactively with very little in the way of proactive solutions. This is something you find with very balanced team, it has zero win condition, its purpose is to win but with no clear way of doing it, which means stall (idea: don't lose) can very easily stall the team out and offence (idea: predefined game plan) can execute what it wants when it wants. So how can we help ourselves? I would be inclined to lose sawbuck and replace it with something that hits hard and fast and has good synergy with the rest of the team, someone like hitmonlee could fit that role nicely. You then lose Twave support? Slap that on Togekiss for mass hax, lose nasty plot, you won't need it. Then two then complement each other nicely. You could then lose Golurk for scarfgon who will help you retain some offensive pressure and help to build momentum whilst keeping your electric immunity. Turn empoleon into a more support orientated variant, I believe I used to run 252hp/ 164 def/ 80 SpD with a bold nature and scald / ice beam / roar (toxic) / stealth rock. Can survive flagons EQs etc. Your aim would be to get hitmonlee or flagons to sweep by using Arcanine and empoleon to remove big threats and walls, but even so you lack a win condition so ou may want to reevaluate altogether. Hope I helped!

See now that would be awesome, and it'd make sense. Ice melts into water anyway, so why when ice hits fire it's not very effective. Something like sea foam or general ice sludge would make for a good concept vs fire. Then Ice could kind of be the antithesis to steel, you know instead of resisting everything it instead kills everything. I'm still waitin for an ice move that's super effective against fighting, like I said to you a couple years back, it only makes sense. If nothing else hail should slow fighting and normal types down or something. Alas I digress from the topic. That's a pretty cool TC, but I don't think we could use it on a strong speculatory level because of how sketchy they are in relation to the actual games a lot of the time. I do agree that it'll probably be trollingly weak like glaciate and scald and the other moves with 100% crit chance.

Did they EVER make balance patches? Balance patches are stupid anyway, its just the developers pandering to a few whiny kids, then other kids whine because they're favourites get nerfed. It's a slippery cycle I certainly would hate to see this, they've got plenty of time to test and make it right. And if it doesn't work? Well this is why we have tiers. This does highlight something important though, for there to be a need to even mention balance patches we can deduce that something big has changed, potential pointer to new damage mechanics?

There's a survival technique used wherein a wet person will roll around in fine snow to dry themselves off as the water is absorbed from their body and into the snow. If a fish was dry it'd die. That much makes sense. There's no need to change the whole type. Any water Pokemon deprived of its water should indeed be weak to the attack that caused that effect. See it as an additive or gimmick, personally I like it. It goes for a more realistic approach than anything else, which is lovely and more believable to me.

Nah I don't think it's anything as complicated as all that, plain and simple as it says on the tin, this move is super effective against water types (such as scald being a water move that can burn). Ice being super effective in general is something that I too could understand and get behind but if that were the case they'd have revealed that alongside the steel devamp (though I understand we can read too much into anything that hasn't been revealed.) I am fully behind a poison buff, as a defensive typing its quite good, but with toxic being its main strong point, a move which every other type can learn regardless, it does leave a lot to be desired. But even then its not so much about the typing, its tht the Pokemon themselves have poor move pools and or stats. For instance Arbok with 100 speed and a bit more attack would be pretty damned awesome, because its move pool is fantastic. I think poison types have the portrayal of being rather shorty when in actual fact they're not half bad, Golbat is one of the bet walls around (in lower tiers) thanks to its typing and move pool (and eviolite).

http://www.serebii.net/xy/pics.shtml Check the full evolved fossil pictures out. Ice totally been screwed, hahaha. Wraith I think you're on to something. However, here's something cool for you. It's as if Gamefreak could hear your incessant crying and said 'take this and shut up!!' New ice type move that is super effective against water, called freeze dry. If you ask me that's a fantastic move for Ice types, giving them a stab option to break down bulky waters. I dare say it'll be a special move, so weavile wont gain much from its inauguration, but any other specially inclined ice type with taunt would certainly enjoy it for general stall breaking purposes.

It's like you say there's so much to think about, with the plethora of Pokemon to choose from at this point it would be ridiculous to think that any one Pokemon can yank or sweep the whole metagame. Well see balanced teams become completely eradicated I think and each and every Pokemon per team will be used on their individual strengths instead of "can cover xyz and then sweep once v has been removed." The teams themselves will probably have to be more diverse as their is a more diverse offensive and defensive selection. Win conditions will be more vital than ever before. I hope I'm making sense there. TLDR, more thought because of more diversity.

I like the idea of an even more aggressive playing field. Think of what that could lead to. We could have Pokemon like Lugia sent back down fr über, which I personally think would be awesome. It would allow for a much neater tansition between tiers. If we have things rocking around in OU that can get passed the likes of Lugia and giratina without breaking a sweat then they're quite clearly über. More aggression will invariably lead to more diversity in the defensive aspect in the game. The alternative is hurrr durrr too powerful fire up dem ban hammers, and then we play a glossed over rehash of Gen IV an V. Which is stupid when there are Pokemon (potentially) capable of balancing out the tier(s). As for MegaKangaskhan, I don't think she'll be half as powerful as your thinking, Wraithy-baby. From what I glean, the baby and she attack in the same turn, think of it sort of like hitmonchan and tyrosine both throwing a fire punch, its not THAT game breaking. It'll mean that Kangaskhan can get passed sub users better and hit with about 1.5x strength (the combined power of both moves). Sure if its the case that its two STABed returns coming off of kangas attack were in trouble, but I highly doubt that that would be the case.

Banning the mechanic in general would be a super shit idea. This right here is an interesting and game changing mechanic of magnitudes far greater than we ever percieved. Your thinking of these changes in comparison to gen IV/V. Which is wrong. They're incomparable, it's a new slate and this mechanic is something that needs to be thought of when tiers become more defined. MegaGarchomp, for instance loses speed and gains power. The power already was overkill, so nothing much will change there except for the fact that that BandGon and DDMence will hard counter it. So there you go, it's got counters, it can be contained, its not uber. Mega Kangaskhan, I theorise it'll have CB sort of power just sans the move lock, still, Scizor and Skarmory don't give even a single fuck, it won't be banned. I would e massively concerned for the competitive playing field if they start throwing out mass bans on a whole mechanic, it'd be like banning stealth rock, for crying out loud. Think, Gengar will no longer have to run hidden power fire to get passed steels, it can just shadow ball them in the face and keep on keeping on, sub gar will ruin things, will it be banned? We don't know, as I said , the game changes now and the goal posts have been moved, we may need mega evolutions to keep old threats that have been buffed at bay.

You've basically covered the bulk of my thoughts there, Wraithy-baby. Flying and psychic type moves aren't all that common as it stands, aside for obligatory Stab moves on a select few such as skarm and the Latis, which are easy enough to make your own contingency for, so I dare say Venusaur should still find some solid use regardless. I don't see it as a downgrade I think this will play out a lot like the Porygon wars, in that regard. You do raise an interesting point, though, about the ability to turn off the mega evolution. I don't think that'll be possible, simply because that could essentially mean that any given team can have 7 Pokemon roles, which would put the other team to a massive disadvantage. Also there is a new Pokemon released, no name as of yet. Looks like a weird Absol. It might be worth someone who had the time to do so to check that paste bin and see if any of the descriptions fit. If so it coul. Help to prove or disprove that list's viability.