No, it's better than that. Super Luck, High-Crit Rate Move and Scope Lens give +1 each, Focus Energy gives +2, and you only need +3 to get a 100% crit rate. Basically, Focus Energy gives you 50% crit and any kind of crit boosting on top of that gives you guaranteed crit. The only competitively viable combination is Focus Energy + Scope Lens, which makes Sniper Kingdra hit insanely hard with a spammable Draco Meteor. Without Sniper, wasting an item to get something barely better than Work Up isn't worth it.
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Serebii is still using some outdated info on their stage %'s, so watch out on that. It also still lists focus energy as a 1 stage boost (it's 2).
While the Nido's were a bad idea, I'll defend focus energy Hydreigon sets.
Hydreigon @ Scope Lens
Ability: Levitate
Nature: Naive/mild
EV's: 252 SpA/ 252 Spe/ 4 Atk
-Focus Energy
-Draco Meteor
-Superpower
-Fire Blast/Flash Cannon/Charge Beam/Dark Pulse
His only boosting move is work up but that's no good if your main moves lower your stats!
Now you can spam choice-specs Draco Meteors and Superpowers all day long, but without the choice lock. This would be better if he actually got a poison type move, but Fire Blast for Mawhile and Ferrothorn, Flash Cannon for Sylveon/Gardevoir, Charge Beam for Azumarill and Togekiss... maybe? This really depends on him 2KOing each of them respectfully, one on the switch in and the second to finish them off since none of them outspeed and he resists sucker punch and aqua jet.
Can somebody run the calcs on that? Also see if Mawhile can take a superpower before and after mega evolving. Remember that intimidate is ignored due to the critical hit.
Unfortunately, Mawile can take a Superpower even without Mega Evolving, and even more so after Mega Evolving, however, even Flamethrower is a clean OHKO
+1 0 Atk Hydreigon Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mawile: 154-182 (50.65 - 59.86%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 0 Atk Hydreigon Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mega-Mawile: 112-132 (36.84 - 43.42%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+1 252+ SpA Hydreigon Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Mega-Mawile: 328-388 (107.89 - 127.63%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Charge Beam is still very weak, especially against Togekiss and Azumarill which are already quite tanky
+1 252+ SpA Hydreigon Charge Beam vs. 212 HP / 0 SpD Azumarill: 212-250 (53.8 - 63.45%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ SpA Hydreigon Charge Beam vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Togekiss: 156-184 (41.82 - 49.32%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Flash Cannon too, is hard to get an OHKO
+1 252+ SpA Hydreigon Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Gardevoir: 182-216 (53.52 - 63.52%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ SpA Hydreigon Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Gardevoir: 248-292 (72.94 - 85.88%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ SpA Hydreigon Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Sylveon: 222-262 (56.34 - 66.49%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
At the end of the day, Hydreigon is not getting past any Fairies minus Mawile anytime soon, unless you nail them on the switch, which only Togekiss survives the 2HKO, unless you get a lucky Charge Beam +1.
Focus Energy + Draco Meteor is just brilliant, haven't thought about that combination, for the first time since its release I'm actually interested in Hydreigon!
Thank you for running these calcs. Charge beam was a bad idea, hidden power electric would be marginally more powerful. But at least he gets a lot of them on the 2HKO, which was what I was looking for (except Togekiss).
The idea is that once Hydreigon is out and Focus Energy'd, none of the fairy counters have a safe switch in. Sure, they'll revenge kill him faster than dry wood in a volcano, but they can't prevent him from Draco Meteor spam until he kills something or you get lucky with a bad prediction, and none are fast enough to get the first move in (without choice scarf. Mega-Gardevoir is faster, but uses her old speed on the first turn. And Hydreigon resists all of their priority attacks).
Drawbacks: He can't carry a move to counter all the fairies, and he still needs to worry about GenV's threats. So now he's got 4MSS up the wazoo, something the life orb and choice specs sets don't have. So this set depends on either late-game sweeping once counters are removed, or a lot of prediction and subterfuge.
Other options: He gets Steel Wing, Iron Tail, and Thunder Fang, all that can hit fairies on their lesser defense stat. But each are lacking in base power and/or accuracy, and draw off his lesser attack stat. Plus he really needs to carry Flamethrower/Fire blast for Ferrothorn, Skarmory, and Mawile, so 4MSS.
you are forgetting that togekiss is hit for SE by flash cannon as well, which you can get the 2HKO with. but either way, it is still challenging to defeat fairies, so it makes a good teammate against something that can lure in and kill fairies, something like CB poison jab haxuros
So I just read through everything here and noticed the final crit stages never got posted here. Someone finished testing +1 in the main game mechanic thread and I told them to post it here as well, but I did not see it (unless I'm blind).
1: 6.25%
2: 12.5%
3: 50%
4: 100%
Just to make sure there is no confusion, I am using the notation bulbapedia and serebii use, where the base unmodified crit stage is 1. This would mean that +3 is 100% since that is 3 higher than 1 and thus 4.
Anyway I have a friend who ran Hydreigon in 5th gen with the following
Hydreigon @ life orb
Ability: Levitate
Nature: Naive
EV's: (not sure on these but is was all in attack, special attack, and speed)
-Work Up
-Dragon Pulse
-Crunch
-Earthquake
I told him about how focus energy + scope lens could get him auto crits which is like work up without the life orb. He was considering it for its wall breaking potential already, but then when I mentioned the draco meteor part he was immediately sold. People are right that it may not be strictly better to go for the crit strategy. You are trading off the power of your other 2 moves for the ability to spam draco meteor and ignore screens and defenses.
1: 6.25%
2: 12.5%
3: 50%
4: 100%
Just to make sure there is no confusion, I am using the notation bulbapedia and serebii use, where the base unmodified crit stage is 1. This would mean that +3 is 100% since that is 3 higher than 1 and thus 4.
Anyway I have a friend who ran Hydreigon in 5th gen with the following
Hydreigon @ life orb
Ability: Levitate
Nature: Naive
EV's: (not sure on these but is was all in attack, special attack, and speed)
-Work Up
-Dragon Pulse
-Crunch
-Earthquake
I told him about how focus energy + scope lens could get him auto crits which is like work up without the life orb. He was considering it for its wall breaking potential already, but then when I mentioned the draco meteor part he was immediately sold. People are right that it may not be strictly better to go for the crit strategy. You are trading off the power of your other 2 moves for the ability to spam draco meteor and ignore screens and defenses.
One question about it: do we know if critical hits ignore modifiers like Assault Vest? How about the SE-blocker berries, like Yache? Guard Split in doubles? Abilities like Thick Fat and Fur Coat?
That is to say, are there defensive modifiers that crits do not ignore?
That is to say, are there defensive modifiers that crits do not ignore?
Crits don't ignore defense boosts from items or abilities, and I don't think they ignore Guard Split.
I don't know if they ignore defensive advantages from field conditions like Rain Dance, Sunny Day, and Misty Terrain, but I haven't found any information that suggests that they would, so I assume they don't. Perhaps someone could test that to be sure?
Hm...
Maybe a Blaziken lead could make good use of this when combined with Kingdra.
Blaziken
Naive /neutral nature
Speed Boost
Scope Lense
-Focus Energy
-Overheat
-Superpower
-Baton Pass
And
Kingdra
Modest
Sniper
Razor Claw
-Draco Meteor
-Surf /Hydro Pump
-Ice Beam /Signal Beam (/ Clear Smog? )
-Hidden Power Fire / Ground // Focus Energy
Maybe a Blaziken lead could make good use of this when combined with Kingdra.
Blaziken
Naive /neutral nature
Speed Boost
Scope Lense
-Focus Energy
-Overheat
-Superpower
-Baton Pass
And
Kingdra
Modest
Sniper
Razor Claw
-Draco Meteor
-Surf /Hydro Pump
-Ice Beam /Signal Beam (/ Clear Smog? )
-Hidden Power Fire / Ground // Focus Energy
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The way crits are programmed they use either the modified or unmodified attack, special attack, defense, and special defense stat, whichever is more advantageous. Light screen and Reflect are programmed such that they modify the stat in a similar manner to stat stage changes. So in theory any other boosts that were programmed in a similar manner would be ignored as well.
Lets say you have reflect up, but are down 3 stages of defense. Your modified stat is more advantageous because your defense drop makes more of a difference than the screens so it will actually calculate with the screens still in place.
Thick fat effects the power of fire and ice moves only so crits will not ignore that. Fur Coat halves damage of physical moves, so most likely it will not be ignored. However if it achieves this by halving the physical attack stat of the opposing pokemon (which I doubt), then it would be ignored provided you were at no higher than 2 stages (at 2 stages the damage would be the same either way).
It might be worth looking in to whether it ignores eviolite. I believe eviolite modifies your defense and special defense stats. Does anyone know if the increased defenses from eviolite is factored in to defense boosting moves? For example say a pokemon has 100 defense. With an eviolite it would have 150 defense. If it used iron defense does it go up to 200 or 300? If its the latter than I'm pretty sure crits will ignore eviolite. If it's the former than I'm pretty sure they won't but it could still be worth testing.
The same question applies to Assault Vest
You might have to ensure that all the opponent's fairies are dead before you bring Hydreigon out.
This actually gives Mixmence something he isn't outclassed by if you wanted to use a scope lens/focus energy set, as Salamence gets focus energy and the ability to use physical attacks of a base 135 stat. It's probably the best abuser of the new guaranteed critical hits.
Salamence @ Scope Lens
Naive or Hasty Nature
Ability: Intimidate
64 Attack / 192 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Focus Energy
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
- Draco Meteor
You get a STAB Draco Meteor that always Crits and Edgequake for coverage on everything but Skarm (with no power sacrifice). It's worth noting that Stone Edge is a high crit move.
The EV spread here may not be ideal. I'd probably EV it in Special Attack to OHKO a Skarmory after stealth rock if I could then put the rest in attack. Let me calculate and I'll bring an EV set shortly.
Edit: calcs to show his wall-breaking potential
univested special attack
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 224 HP / 32 SpD Skarmory on a critical hit: 210-247 (64.22 - 75.53%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Jellicent on a critical hit: 313-369 (77.66 - 91.56%) -- 31.25% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 232+ SpD Rotom-W on a critical hit: 231-273 (76.23 - 90.09%) -- 18.75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 232 HP / 0 SpD Rotom-W on a critical hit: 310-366 (103.67 - 122.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
132 SPA will OHKO the same Jellicent guaranteed, so that may be the best number so it doesn't burn you, but 252 Attack / 252 Speed / 4 SPA is viable.
Salamence @ Scope Lens
Naive or Hasty Nature
Ability: Intimidate
64 Attack / 192 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Focus Energy
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
- Draco Meteor
You get a STAB Draco Meteor that always Crits and Edgequake for coverage on everything but Skarm (with no power sacrifice). It's worth noting that Stone Edge is a high crit move.
The EV spread here may not be ideal. I'd probably EV it in Special Attack to OHKO a Skarmory after stealth rock if I could then put the rest in attack. Let me calculate and I'll bring an EV set shortly.
Edit: calcs to show his wall-breaking potential
univested special attack
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 224 HP / 32 SpD Skarmory on a critical hit: 210-247 (64.22 - 75.53%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Jellicent on a critical hit: 313-369 (77.66 - 91.56%) -- 31.25% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 232+ SpD Rotom-W on a critical hit: 231-273 (76.23 - 90.09%) -- 18.75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 232 HP / 0 SpD Rotom-W on a critical hit: 310-366 (103.67 - 122.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO
132 SPA will OHKO the same Jellicent guaranteed, so that may be the best number so it doesn't burn you, but 252 Attack / 252 Speed / 4 SPA is viable.
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I'm not sure I would run stone edge in that set. It doesn't have the best accuracy and the high crit doesn't help because all your moves are auto-crit anyway. Steel and fairy are what you can't draco meteor, and while EQ hits most steels, like you said it misses skarmory and bronzong. I might run fire fang instead. It hits skarmory and bronzong harder than Stone Edge. The only pokemon I see stone edge being better against is Togekiss, but I doubt that will see much use in OU. I guess a heatran on a balloon could be an issue, but I'd still prefer the higher damage on skarmory and the more reliable attack with the burn chance.
The set obviously has Bronzong and/or Togekiss issues, but the other fairies don't want to eat an earthquake. I'd probably slash in Extremespeed/Fire Fang/Stone Edge/Dragon Claw, as there's a good case for the 4 of those. Fire fang is probably better, although you'd have to switch out vs. togekiss and you'd need a counter for it.
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It seems like the only viable users of Focus Energy are...
Kingdra (Sniper, Draco Meteor)
Blaziken (Overheat, Baton Pass) [Banned]
Salamence (Draco Meteor)
Hydreigon (Draco Meteor)
...where the Pokémon has one of the Overheat-like moves, and no other viable way to boost attack stats by two stages, and in the case of Kingdra, Sniper to boost damage to 2.25x instead.
The other users I can think of are better off using their item slot for something else and/or have Nasty Plot or Swords Dance. Has anybody thought of any other applications that aren't outclassed options?
I love the concept of 100% critical rate, as it's an interesting way to boost power and ignore stat drops and enemy defense boosts, but it does seem rather gimmicky on anything except Kingdra, who will admittedly miss Swift Swim and Politoed Drizzle support.
Kingdra (Sniper, Draco Meteor)
Blaziken (Overheat, Baton Pass) [Banned]
Salamence (Draco Meteor)
Hydreigon (Draco Meteor)
...where the Pokémon has one of the Overheat-like moves, and no other viable way to boost attack stats by two stages, and in the case of Kingdra, Sniper to boost damage to 2.25x instead.
The other users I can think of are better off using their item slot for something else and/or have Nasty Plot or Swords Dance. Has anybody thought of any other applications that aren't outclassed options?
I love the concept of 100% critical rate, as it's an interesting way to boost power and ignore stat drops and enemy defense boosts, but it does seem rather gimmicky on anything except Kingdra, who will admittedly miss Swift Swim and Politoed Drizzle support.
People are way too focused on getting FE on a Poke that already does well enough offensively. what about "focus passing" to things like Super Luck Honchcrow or Skill Link Cloyster? Scarf/OrbKrow and SmashCloyster are my main points because Krow has a hugely diverse movepool to take advantage of 100% crit rate, and even at 50%(possibly 100% with a scope, though I wouldn't recommend this with Cloyster being weak to 3/5 of the popular priority moves {thinking on it more 50% crit would be best on a smashing cloyster as about half your hits are either +2 or a crit, also leaving Razor shell a semi-reliable coverage move with 100% crit}) there is very little that can stand up to RB/IS and reliably KO back.
This new and much improved FE can be seen as a way of getting some extra omph out of pokes may not have fared well even with boosts and especially any poke with an abusable multi-hitting move.
This new and much improved FE can be seen as a way of getting some extra omph out of pokes may not have fared well even with boosts and especially any poke with an abusable multi-hitting move.
To begin off, there aren't many viable users of FE that aren't better off passing something else. Plus, as for Super Luck Honchkrow, I'm sure Moxie Krow is way better, because you get the same amount of damage by getting a kill, can snowball, and you don't even have to focus pass to it. Considering Superpower is not longer mandatory on Honchkrow other dealing with Tyranitar, both Cloyster and Honchkrow don't really have anything to abuse that is not done better with a DD/QD/SmashPass.
Imo, the biggest winner in terms of this will be Pokemon's that have powerful attacks that lowers in power on successive uses as Muhznit mentioned. For anything else, it is just plain not worth the effort trying to get to 100% crit when the damage output is only as much as a Work Up.
It's a matter of whether you find you want to go for an all in with said pokemon.
With MoxiKrow you're banking on your ability to kill the opponent to get traction going, with CritKrow you're getting an arguably more consistent damage return that's even harder to wall because you can't boost back to compete with it, and with honch's respectable mixed stats you can't be absolutely sure what type of defensive mon will best sponge it's next incoming attack. HonchKrow is 100% beat by strong priority so whether you'd rather focus on his neutral game or have him function as a late game sweeper is the decision that I'm seeing here.
You're so depressingly right about the damage nerf killing the potential of FE passing. If the damage return were even slightly higher...
Kingdra
Modest - Sniper
Scope Lens
252 hp / 4 def / 252 sp atk
Focus Energy
Hydro Pump/Scald
Draco Meteor
Agility
Really gimmicky, don't know about having 2 set up moves, but hopefully you get agility off by forcing a switch and then hope the 252 hp lets you survive a hit from whatever comes in for you to get off focus energy.
Needless to say, make sure you kill anything that can one shot 252 hp kingdra.
After an agility you can outspeed speed boost natured pokemon at base 130.
You have 100% crit rate with focus energy and scope lens sooo....
With sniper, crits do 225% damage in gen 6. Plus STAB, Draco Meteor will probably one shot everything that doesn't resist it. The best part is how you don't have to retreat after using it. Its a guranteed sweep if they don't have a fairy that can soak up Scald/Hydro Pump.
Weaknesses:
Priority Brave Bird from Talonflame does I think 80% so if it took a hit while setting up double boosts, it will probably get revenge killed by that. Azumarill will resist both moves and kill with play rough (Not sure if scald burn will impede it in any way. Probably turns 1hko into 2hko). Not sure how other fairies will fare against the water stab + sniper crit, but burns from scald will stop things like mawile from doing anything. Ferrothorn resists both stabs and can probably stall it out with leech seed/substitute/protect or something of the sort. It takes a little more than 50% from the meteor and then it will throw out a leech seed.
Can't really think of anything that walls this very well. After the crit and sniper, it just about KOs most things with Meteors or Hydro Pump.
Aegislash can survive with about 20% hp left but can't really hurt it back much unless Kingdra was already weakened coming in.
I'm probably really biased in my analysis right now because I just thought of all this and am kind of excited, but the best way to deal with this is to just... not let it spend 2 turns setting up agility and focus energy.
One of the bigger weaknesses is that it has to go all or nothing, agility on its own is useless because Kingdra's base special attack is kinda weak especially without a specs or life orb (maybe you can pick off a weakened pokemon with draco meteor) and focus energy just gets you get outsped and revenge killed by a speedy dragon that comes in like Noivern or Garchomp.
The biggest advantage to this set is the fact that it will be completely unexpected. If the opponent doesn't catch on to what you're trying to do, they'll be in for a big surprise after you use focus energy...
With a dedicated baton passer of focus energy and maybe agility such as scizor or smeargle (or a chain from a speed booster), you can hopefully ignore the issue with setting up, but even then, pass chains are susceptible to phaze etc.
At its best, this thing hits hard like Specs Latios, but it can stay in and keep firing meteors and can freely switch to hydro pump for things like skarm or metagross.
At its worst, it doesn't get a chance to set up the whole game and is a waste of a slot on the team. (Your opponent is also probably snickering at you behind his 3ds.)
Modest - Sniper
Scope Lens
252 hp / 4 def / 252 sp atk
Focus Energy
Hydro Pump/Scald
Draco Meteor
Agility
Really gimmicky, don't know about having 2 set up moves, but hopefully you get agility off by forcing a switch and then hope the 252 hp lets you survive a hit from whatever comes in for you to get off focus energy.
Needless to say, make sure you kill anything that can one shot 252 hp kingdra.
After an agility you can outspeed speed boost natured pokemon at base 130.
You have 100% crit rate with focus energy and scope lens sooo....
With sniper, crits do 225% damage in gen 6. Plus STAB, Draco Meteor will probably one shot everything that doesn't resist it. The best part is how you don't have to retreat after using it. Its a guranteed sweep if they don't have a fairy that can soak up Scald/Hydro Pump.
Weaknesses:
Priority Brave Bird from Talonflame does I think 80% so if it took a hit while setting up double boosts, it will probably get revenge killed by that. Azumarill will resist both moves and kill with play rough (Not sure if scald burn will impede it in any way. Probably turns 1hko into 2hko). Not sure how other fairies will fare against the water stab + sniper crit, but burns from scald will stop things like mawile from doing anything. Ferrothorn resists both stabs and can probably stall it out with leech seed/substitute/protect or something of the sort. It takes a little more than 50% from the meteor and then it will throw out a leech seed.
Can't really think of anything that walls this very well. After the crit and sniper, it just about KOs most things with Meteors or Hydro Pump.
Aegislash can survive with about 20% hp left but can't really hurt it back much unless Kingdra was already weakened coming in.
I'm probably really biased in my analysis right now because I just thought of all this and am kind of excited, but the best way to deal with this is to just... not let it spend 2 turns setting up agility and focus energy.
One of the bigger weaknesses is that it has to go all or nothing, agility on its own is useless because Kingdra's base special attack is kinda weak especially without a specs or life orb (maybe you can pick off a weakened pokemon with draco meteor) and focus energy just gets you get outsped and revenge killed by a speedy dragon that comes in like Noivern or Garchomp.
The biggest advantage to this set is the fact that it will be completely unexpected. If the opponent doesn't catch on to what you're trying to do, they'll be in for a big surprise after you use focus energy...
With a dedicated baton passer of focus energy and maybe agility such as scizor or smeargle (or a chain from a speed booster), you can hopefully ignore the issue with setting up, but even then, pass chains are susceptible to phaze etc.
At its best, this thing hits hard like Specs Latios, but it can stay in and keep firing meteors and can freely switch to hydro pump for things like skarm or metagross.
At its worst, it doesn't get a chance to set up the whole game and is a waste of a slot on the team. (Your opponent is also probably snickering at you behind his 3ds.)
Don't get me wrong, rain abuse physical kingdra is way better than anything a crit set could do
But the point of crit is to ignore the sp atk drop. The set you mentioned only gets to drop draco meteor once. The sniper crit set deals more damage and can keep firing them off.
Perhaps sticky web and a few more spd evs will negate the need for agility as secondary set up.
When looking at this set, don't think of focus energy as some gimmick set up move. Think of it like a one time use nasty plot that prevents sp atk to decreasing.
But the point of crit is to ignore the sp atk drop. The set you mentioned only gets to drop draco meteor once. The sniper crit set deals more damage and can keep firing them off.
Perhaps sticky web and a few more spd evs will negate the need for agility as secondary set up.
When looking at this set, don't think of focus energy as some gimmick set up move. Think of it like a one time use nasty plot that prevents sp atk to decreasing.
Garchompi
Banned deucer.
Physical Kingdra has no way to get past Ferrothorn, while the crit Draco Meteor set 2HKO's it. That alone is enough to make you reconsider the bolded statement.
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