NP: UU - Silent Night

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Fireblast is like a 3 ko or something
That's Flamethrower and only without any hazards. Like...rocks gives a really good chance of a 2HKO to 4/0 Cross, which begs the question ... how much bulk are people thinking of investing? Heracross has a really nice speed so I'm sure most people will be running 200+ EVs in speed to make good use of it and lowering attack is just ..eh..
 
regardless of what you may have "heard" it's easy to independently verify that heracross is going to be uu

according to http://www.smogon.com/articles/tiers, a pokemon is ou if the probability of finding it on a team is greater than or equal to the sum of the same chance for every pokemon divided by 176.14073324. naturally, the latter is very very close to 1/176.14073324. if you look at the percentages in the usage stats, that corresponds to the chance of finding the pokemon on a given team -- there are six pokemon per team, meaning the percentages should add up to 600%. if you divide that by 176.14073324, you get the cutoff percentage. 600/176.14073324 = ~3.406.

note that there is some weighting of different months involved... but that doesn't matter for heracross.

june: 3.04%
july: 3.37%
august: 3.35%

since all three months involved in the tiering change have usages of less than 3.406%, there's no way any weighted sum of them could possibly be greater. since the gap is so large it means the approximations we took (assuming the sum to be equal to 1, using rounded percentages) are not significant.

also i did the calcs for every pokemon with the raw data and the real formula in excel and it turned up the same way :p

anyways something interesting i've been thinking about is that weezing will have to drastically change if it wants to beat heracross, just like it had to change to beat special lo venusaur. jolly +2 lo megahorn deals 57.8% - 68.3% to 252/0+ weezing which is obviously a 2hko, while weezing doesn't ohko with any attack... yeah that's right, it does 61.1% - 73.1% with hp flying. weezing will have to run physical defense if it wants to have any hope of beating heracross, not even to mention flame orb facade versions. and it will have to run something beyond restalk sludge bomb wow, which obviously messes with its ability to deal with venusaur.

same deal with arcanine... its most popular set now is specially defensive, but if it wants to properly deal with heracross it needs to run 176 speed jolly. that arcanine takes 51.8% - 61.2% from a -1 lo close combat... jesus christ it's not even boosted and it will do enough damage so that arcanine cannot switch in twice in a row while stealth rock is up even if it recovers. and now venusaur's sludge bomb will deal 45.3% - 53.4% which is a big healthy chunk of hp. which means arcanine will no longer be able to one set contentedly to deal with top threats... it'll have to specialize, which makes it much less effective at dealing with a single one.

to be honest i sort of like the metagame change that heracross will bring. at least we know we'll have one more vote before dpp ends...
 

Bluewind

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@Banedon (yes I don't drop it): And I could care less about you Ice Beaming my Venusaur if I'm going to: Sleep the incoming switch in and then get a free Synthesis? Oh I have already said that, it seems you're just refusing to read what I post. Also don't detract from my main point saying Omastar can do this and Tangrowth can do that, because the point was never saying Venusaur was a full stop to them. My point (and if you cared to actually read those posts instead of continuously backing up your false claims you would have noticed it) was showing that Heal Bell doesn't stop Sleep like it does to other status effects. I don't care if Omastar will setup as I switch to Venusaur, that will happen regardless of Heal Bell and Sleep Powder. What I'm showing here is that it won't be hard at all for Venusaur to come back throughout the match and put another poké to sleep.
 

PK Gaming

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Interesting Heracross calcs:

Assuming 252 Atk Adamant Nature without the guts boost.

Choice Band Close Combat vs Physically Defensive Weezing: 29.6% - 35%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Standard Moltres 53.3% - 62.6%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Standard Scyther: 33.5% - 39.5%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Standard Milotic: 66.7% - 78.9%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Standard Venusaur: 60.5% - 71.4%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Morning Glory Arcanine:71.8% - 84.6% (intimidate)
Choice Band Close Combat vs Physically Defensive Donphan: 53.9% - 63.5%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Rapid Spin Hitmontop: 51.3% - 60.5% (intimidate)
Choice Band Close Combat vs Toxicroak: 72.3% - 85.3%
Choice Band Megahorn vs Toxicroak: 36.2% - 42.7%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Qwilfish: 73.1% - 86%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Physical Tank Hariyama: 68.8% - 81.1%
Choice Band Megahorn vs Physical Tank Hariyama: 34.3% - 40.5%
Choice Band Close Combat vs Standard Blastoise: 62.4% - 73.8%

What a handful! The sad thing part is that SD Flame Orb Heracross OHKOes all of those pokemon. (Without the exception for Scyther, Moltres, Toxicroak (speed tie) since they outspeed)
 

Erazor

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Hey guys let's make this playtest period last 8 weeks or something, abusing Heracross is going to be sooooooo fun...
 
Heracross only means good things for Rain too. More fire types in an attempt to combat Hera = easy time for rain. Scarf Close Combats = Hi Uxie set up rain on me etc. etc.
 
Hey guys let's make this playtest period last 8 weeks or something, abusing Heracross is going to be sooooooo fun...
seconding this

also the bad thing about sd flame orb heracross is that it dies so so fast. yeah it ohko's or 2hko's all its supposed checks or counters, but its really easy to wear down by sacrificing death fodder or using <priority move>.
 

alamaster

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I don't see the huge deal really, sure he's powerful but including Dugtrio on your team limits him to one kill. I know blah blah blah that's the definition of BL but I'm just saying that at least it won't be sweeping very often. If it's endure/salac (lol) then priority does the same job.
 
I want everyone to keep an open mind, though.

I'll be abusing fast offensive sweepers like Alakazam or Scyther to either A)sweep after my own Hera rapes shit or B)force Hera out cause you don't wanna give these guys free turns. I doubt Hera will be paired with Chansey or Tomb so Zam is in the clear.
 

Meru

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Heracross dropping down is the perfect time for Golbat to actually make a blip on the UU radar for once! Resists both of his stabs 4x and OHKO's with Brave Bird or Air Slash if you wanna go NP
 
You seem to forget that Weezing could use max HP / near max SpA whistle, which would allow it to KO Life Orb Heracross consistently. It gets 79.7% - 94.4% with HP Flying at max SpA with a neutral nature., which means it doesn't even need max SpA to always KO LO Cross. I was trying to figure out what the minimum necessary to guarantee the KO with Rock and LO, but the Smogon damage calculator isn't really facilitating that. This obviously opens up Weezing to Venusaur, and overall is quite overly metagamed.

Heracross is obviously going to stir up UU. It is easily more broken than Gallade, as there is no "Spiritomb" for Heracross. You can't burn it without making it even more ridiculous, and it has excellent bulk on either side while Gallade was really weak physically. It might not have the movepool that Gallade has but CC, Megahorn, Stone Edge, Facade, Night Slash, and Swords Dance are pretty much all you need (other than maybe a Bulk Up set).

Dugtrio is an interesting answer to non-scarf Heracross, but using AA Dugtrio simply to deal with it is such obvious centralization (as is HP Flying Weezing). This is the same kind of stuff that got Garchomp banned: ridiculous centralization of otherwise suboptimal sets/pokemon.

I also agree with ghost's sentiments that rain will be a playstyle to watch for this period (I think I was the one that told him that actually). An increase in Arcanine and Moltres and an overall reduction of FWG elements and a probably reduction in Toxicroak usage all make rain look very good. Expect teams to stock up on fast offensive stuff that can stop a potential Heracross sweep as well, further exposing teams to rain.
 

Meru

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I would not call Aerial Ace on Dugtrio overcentralizing. It's already slashed into the set and he has been using it since RSE era if I remember correctly. It has plenty of application for Fighters without priority and weakened Grass/Bug types.

Comparing it to something like Skill Link Icicle Spear Cloyster vs. YacheChomp is just over the top.
 

SJCrew

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Dugtrio only needs three moves to do its job, so I don't think it's worth even looking into that Aerial Ace is only used for Heracross. If it beats the biggest threat in the metagame at the cost of virtually nothing, of course it's viable.
 
But what moves would you get rid of? Standard Duggy runs EQ, SE, SP, Sub, all of which it needs. I don't really see what AA is hitting harder then EQ is, besides Heracross, that's important.
 

uragg

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lol looks like Dugtrio has found a way out of the shithole of low usage. why is it that it's only useful for killing suspects? anyhow, rain is definitely going to be on the rise again. I think the one thing we've agreed on after all that arguing over damp rock is that rain is fucking awesome in an unstable metagame, and this is definitely going to be an unstable meta for at least a little while. we can all theorize about how broken hera is, but I really don't think that we can definitively quickboot it without giving it a proper test. I do however think that stall is going to be much much harder now (sorry eo) and must adapt more than ever to not get slaughtered (hp flying on...everything).
 

Arcticblast

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I'm set for Hera. Mantine's HP Flying is a OHKO with Rocks up, and Uxie can 2HKO without a CM boost and OHKO at +1. Yeah, my team's weird.

As for speculation, I think Moltres, Scyther, Heracross, and Milotic will quickly become / stay the most used Pokemon. As for the first three, none can switch in to each other safely. Hera is just powerful, Scyther outspeeds and can SD on the switch, and Moltres resists their STABs and can KO back with Air Slash.
 
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