Salamence: Uber or OU?

[Dark Azelf]

Salamence

Well for those of you who haven't been living under a rock, Latias is now uber and Salamence is our newest suspect as shown here https://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72048.

Thoughts (not the ass member)? (I'll post mine later)
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[blaQk]

It's going to be pretty retarded if they bump him up into Ubers. Yeah, he's a beast and all, but the lack of decent defenses and his weakness to Stealth Rock and Stone Edge make him somewhat too fragile. Besides, he's not that great in Ubers unless he's paired with Rayquaza.

I'm also going to miss Latias. :/

 

[RTHookers]

IMO Mence should be OU.
BTW I love the quote in your sig.

 

[.Gamer]

Well, I'm going to be playing suspect so hopefully I can vote. As of now, if I can vote, I won't vote Uber, because otherwise nothing can really break stall. Except stupid stuff like Staraptor, but that really only works on SkarmBliss or CeleTran but its even a 3HKO on Skarmory. Without Salamence Stall is a lot easier to pull off and despite it not being able to break EVERY stall team, its ability to break some is invaluable.

The only reason I would possibly vote uber is if someone finds a stallbreaker that can do just as good as Mence. While I would love the idea of less dragons and not have to pack 2 steels per team, I can't say it is Uber simply on that. If we do get a better Stallbreaker I would vote Mence Uber because of this reason:

It has no true counter.

Almost every other pokemon in OU has at least 1 pokemon that is a 100% counter. Rotom-A happens be a big one for lots of those. Jirachi is countered by Swampert and other Bulky Waters, but if it has Grass Knot/TBolt respectively, it has other counters. Gyrados is countered by Rotom-A (except for CB who can hurt it with Payback but then its just going to something that resists Payback). Lucario is countered by Gliscor and Gyarados and Salamence (and I think Pert but I cba to do calcs). Metagross is countered by pretty much the same stuff all Steels are countered by. Salamence however, you cannot safely switch in one pokemon. Skarmory/Bronzong are each dominated by Fire Blast (granted Bronzong is a 2HKO so you have a small chance). Heatran eats an Earthquake. Its not that Salamence was broken before, but with Latias gone it is nearly impossible to counter. It can be checked and revenge killed, but not counter. Latias was vital because, and I guess Flygon can take its place but Naive Flygon is so weak even to Fire Blasts, is because it forced Mence to use Outrage because of its stellar 130 SpDef stat and Levitate. MixMence running Fire Blast/Earthquake/Draco Meteor/Outrage is just too strong. Even DD Mence with DD over Outrage is a pain in the arse.

So thats my reasoning, and while I enjoy the metagame without Salamence, lots more variety and stuff, I feel like losing it would be for the worst, so far. It is also only day 2 of suspect so opinions are open to change in the next 28/29 days.

(inb4skippysayingmencedoesn'tbreakstall)

 

[Skip Shot]

Salamence is indeed powerful and has a lot of destructive force in OU. However, I don't see enough evidence that Salamence is ready to be banned from OU. It is definitely suspect material, true, but honestly I think that Smogon just isn't ready to ban Salamence. If you look at how the suspect test is currently going, everybody is complaining about how hard stall is to break without Salamence (which I honestly don't get, just run an offensive team and destroy it lol). And even with Salamence gone, Dragonite just took his place as a worse version of Mixmence in an attempt to break stall in the same way. I feel that enough people are going to get annoyed at stall teams that they will bring Salamence back into OU. If they don't, D_A just has more of a reason to take #1 on the OU ladder lol.

EDIT: @ Gamer I'm pretty sure they're only taking the top nine votes for some reason.

Originally posted by Aeolus

We will be asking for information relating to your rating and deviation on both the suspect and standard ladders in addition to inquiring about any recent and relevant tournament success/participation. From the applications we've receive, Jumpman and I will select nine active and qualified players to cast a vote on Salamence to decide his fate.

 

[Dark Azelf]

Here are some of the arguments ive seen presented for mence.

1. "Its unpredictable" is a BS argument. Being unpredictable doesn't make something uber, sorry. Anything from Lucario to Honchkrow to Sudowoodo can be unpredictable. Nor do you need to sac a poke to find out its set honestly. Seems people cant predict anymore. The ability to predict and deal with things separates people like IPL from scrub99778 at 100 CRE on the ladder. Smogon (as said by Aldaron), myself and im sure alot of other players dont care about lesser ladder players, they are the ones keeping Ninjask, Vire etc OU.
2. "MixMence shreds stall!" This is one of the more stupid arguments i have seen, a well built stall team doesnt lose to Mence, ever. Want proof ? IPL, Earthworm, myself and god knows who else have all either been #1 or #2 on the OU ladder with no Mence of our own and using stall teams. Again if you cant deal with Salamence "maybe you're just bad?" to quote MoP.
3. "Salamence can kill anything with prediction!". So can Gallade, Magmortar, Dragonite etc lol.
4. "Magnezone makes Salamence's job sweeping easier and removes Scizor as a check" Not Mences fault, make Magnezone suspect under the "support characteristic" then.
5. "Bulky Mence is too strong" Yeah because something that loses to anything with Def evs is totally too strongh! It also loses to previous counters in bulky waters lol :/
6. "Checking and revenge killing is not viable" Sure because forcing it to switch and take 25% when it comes back in is not viable? :/ As for checking, yes this is VERY viable, making the Mence user think "Damn i have to predict correctly to gain kills or im gonna have to switch and take 25% again!" and be fair though if you can predict well you DESERVE to get kills. No Pokemon guarantees kills through.
7. "SR is moot, Mence has Roost and Rapid Spin support!" Cool so the Rotoms suddenly make spinning sooo easy ? [/sarcasm] ._. As for Roost thats kinda like arguing Toxic Spikes is stopped by Natural Cure, yeah sure the problem goes away but its still always there and it cuts the effectiveness drastically of things like Blissey, Bliss has to keep healing and switching which gives you free switch ins. If Mence Roosts you get a free switch in and then has to keep healing each time it comes in to avoid getting wasted by SR. :]
8. "No counterz bawwww" Welcome to DPPTHGSS the metagame where alot of pokemon have no counters! Honestly if this was valid Dragonite and Lucario would be uber lol. No really they would.

Honestly Pokemon is becoming whinymon. Aka ban all the stuff that hits slightly hard and the slippery slope argument is coming into full effect.

No matter how much you look at it, SR is THE most common move in the game. Tyranitar is Salamences 2nd most common team mate (aka with SS, SR and LO recoil Salamence loses 41% of its HEALTH IN 1 TURN) and if you play around it with your preferred playstyle you really shouldn't lose. I.e. HO sacrifices Pokemon to stop others setting up, not just mence. Stall as said either has scarfers, multiple steels or bulky as hell pokes for Mence to get past which it shouldn't do if you play intelligently with them and use your brain. This is viable and you cant say otherwise or we wouldnt have stall teams at the top of the ladder (see: GOOD PLAYERS). Lastly doesnt bulky offense has a crap load of priority most of the time and Scizor ? A pokemon who can switch in on 3/4 of its moves at least on all sets and after SR and one turn of LO recoil kills it with Bullet Punch. Not to mention BO teams have a ass load of steels and stuff like Swampert and other bulky waters etc, thats more than enough to deal with it if you dont suck. Not to mention scarfers and revenge killers. Since you know thats kinda what they're for, if your actual counter/check goes down they let you deal with things.

TL;DR Pokemon is rarely about perfect counters, its about situations, predictions and scenarios. Applying counters to EVERYTHING is archaic. Very rarely are you going to get a match vs opponent after opponent where you can just switch in counters vs all of his guys, sooner or later you are gonna come across a few threats you HAVE to outplay. Not saying counters don't work (they are vital on stall for example), but applying them to absolutely everything in the tier and relying on them solely is asking for trouble.

 

[Aurafire]

Mence has been OU forever and it seems like we've entered into a metagame where a few centralizing characteristics are causing people to complain a hell of a lot more than they did during DP. I don't particularly like having to deal with ridiculous powerful offensive threats like Outrage Mence but honestly, there's a reason not everyone is good at competitive pokemon. Skilled players find ways to play around these threats while people who can't figure it out moan about how Outrage is "broken"

Latias is the first casualty of this new mindset and frankly I didn't think she deserved this fate. Others may disagree but Latias was OU for a long time and we learned to deal with and play around it. It had multiple checks and with the massive rise in Scarftar usage I simply do not understand how or why it was broken in OU. Now we're going down the same exact path with Mence who it arguably even more versatile and powerful than Latias. I don't think it's so much the alleged "brokenness" of these pokemon as it is the mindset that the Platinum metagame has us in, that steels and dragons are going to dominate everything and somehow we have to fix it. Well tough. Especially for a pokemon like Mence, which has been played around for such a long time without any serious complaint, and in comes Latias and suddenly Mence is broken too? Sorry I don't buy it.

Like D_A pointed out above me there is not ONE viable argument that isn't stupid ass theorymon that makes Mence uber. This is just people feeling the need to "fix" the metagame and it's getting ridiculous at this point.

 

[myrrh25]

It's funny, I've done 37 online battles now, i've not once seen a Salamence O_o

 

[Silent Storm]

"Magnezone makes Salamence's job sweeping easier and removes Scizor as a check"
"SR is moot, Mence has Roost and Rapid Spin support!"

These two take the cake at being some of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. If this is what people are using, then competitive pokemon has become a joke.

If one pokemon is making another sweep easily, then the fault lies with the support pokemon, not the Pokemon doing the sweeping. Welcome to a game where when you remove another pokemon's check's or counters, that pokemon can sweep. :/

The second quote is on par with the first one, because Salamence can Run Fire Blast / Roost / Dragon Dance / Outrage and Earthquake at the same time. DDMence is rarely going to find time to rest off damage from Stealth Rock, Life Orb and Sandstorm, and when he has rest, he has to give up coverage over Steel type pokemon like Skarmory, Scizor and Metagross, who have a party when mence lacks fire blast AND is locked into Outrage.

The whole thing is a big joke tbh, I personally find mence to be a liability for my teams but I still don't think it should be uber.

 

[_Prince_]

I've done over 50 battles in the suspect test, what has changed?

According to smogon with mence gone these pokemon are getting popular

Roserade leads: uh okay, So mence were stopping these from before somehow? Don't buy it.

LO Starmie? okay so, how did removing mence made its chances easier to sweep?

Lucario? How about we kick scizor out and maybe we'll see a rise in P-Z again =P

Stall is much harder to get around, there's no good wall breaker as Salamence =/

Salamence is indeed a very powerful pokemon and the one to watch out for, however IMO he doesn't cut it for ubers, you need to factor in together everything in a battle field, salamence's suffers up to 25% health everytime it switches in, to get the maximum damange he needs an life orb, thankyou every much another 10% health off, with SS it's health is chiping fast, unlike garchomp. I will not go into garchomp, we all know what it could do.

All these recoils do greatly hurt mence, makes revenge killing easier, hell if you managed to outpredict Mence making it switch out, hell yeah more punishment when he wishes to switch in next time. On another note versatility does not make a pokemon uber, if that was the case, lets ban gengar, infernape,lucario, pokemon who can run many different sets to lure their counters and kill them.

 

[Kenpachi316]

personally im really happy latias is gone, i always struggled against it with my feraligatr, who normally slays dragons.
salamence on the other hand, not a problem, i really cant see them banning it from ou.
it'd be like banning metagross or tyranitar.

 

[myrrh25]

Uber-ing Scizor is a much better option the Salamence tbh. I had someone lead me with his Scizor, and he wiped everything on my team with either OH or 2H with Bullet Punch.

Nerf plz.

 

[.Gamer]

Uber-ing Scizor is a much better option the Salamence tbh. I had someone lead me with his Scizor, and he wiped everything on my team with either OH or 2H with Bullet Punch.

Nerf plz.

:|

Scizor is a hell of a lot easier to check than Salamence. "Go Gyarados" "Go Zapdos" "Go Magnezone" "Go Swampert" "Go Jirachi" "Go Forretress" all come to mind.

 

[Dawn]

I personally disagree with changing the rules for any reason at any time in competitive battling. Make em once, make em good, never change them and screw people over.

 

[Crimson assassin]

personally im really happy latias is gone, i always struggled against it with my feraligatr, who normally slays dragons.
salamence on the other hand, not a problem, i really cant see them banning it from ou.
it'd be like banning metagross or tyranitar.

comments like this are why we are having this debate and this is the only reason mence is really called into question. The popular I'm having trouble with statements. Mence in my opinion is the only really versatile pokemon the ou teir has that is not a legendary. It brings suprise and instability to the metagame. I've seen a bunch of mences build a million diffrent ways. From wish mence, to cb mence, to mixed mence, and hell even some great sets i've invented. The OU metagame would become even more predictable than it is now without this big lug. I think it's mostly inexperience or players of a lower caliber who don't know how to read mence who want him gone.

And aura I'd honestly have to disagree about latias even though I've never had a problem with latias it deserves to get it's old uber status back. It rendered quite a few pokemon in the ou teir useless and I mean big pokemon completly useless like zapdos, heatran can't even ohko with a dragon pulse even with max spatk and latias having no spdef evs ,even to an extent gyarados is checked, even infernape if it wasn't running a scarf and u-turn . Plus if you've noticed far more sandstorm teams with bulky spdef t-tars or scarf t-tars came around and if latias has the power to change not how just one or 2 players but an entire metagame worth of players build their teams it is far to strong. It's like how raikou was in UU I loved him being down their in my favorite teir but he certianly deserves his uber status

And this is off topic but why would you want metagross or t-tar gone?

I've done over 50 battles in the suspect test, what has changed?

According to smogon with mence gone these pokemon are getting popular

Roserade leads: uh okay, So mence were stopping these from before somehow? Don't buy it.

LO Starmie? okay so, how did removing mence made its chances easier to sweep?

Lucario? How about we kick scizor out and maybe we'll see a rise in P-Z again =P

Stall is much harder to get around, there's no good wall breaker as Salamence =/

Salamence is indeed a very powerful pokemon and the one to watch out for, however IMO he doesn't cut it for ubers, you need to factor in together everything in a battle field, salamence's suffers up to 25% health everytime it switches in, to get the maximum damange he needs an life orb, thankyou every much another 10% health off, with SS it's health is chiping fast, unlike garchomp. I will not go into garchomp, we all know what it could do.

All these recoils do greatly hurt mence, makes revenge killing easier, hell if you managed to outpredict Mence making it switch out, hell yeah more punishment when he wishes to switch in next time. On another note versatility does not make a pokemon uber, if that was the case, lets ban gengar, infernape,lucario, pokemon who can run many different sets to lure their counters and kill them.

It doesn't matter how good he will do in ubers bro it only matters if he is to strong for OU because ubers is a ban list for ou and nothing more.

And also wall breakers they are everywhere and actually some are better than mence for example super fang nidoking, super rang mixed crobat, rampardos, rock polish aggron, mixed dragonite, choice band t-tar 2 hits skarm and blissey with fire punch

and also the one pokemon we will see a huge rise in will be sub punch breloom if mence leaves and I know I can't be the only person who hates that damn thing

 

[Radiation]

The only reason I don't think Mence is Uber is the fact that it can be played around. It's frail and SR weak such that, if the Mence user makes one mistake, it's GG to Mence.
After I heard all this "MENCE UBAR!" talk I tried building a team around Mence to try and "prove" his uberness to myself. No matter what combination of pokes I used, I was never able to give Mence the support he needed to consistently pull off a sweep. Not to mention, switching him in more than once was nearly impossible. Sure if I just attacked recklessly Mence could always take a good chunk out of whatever switched in, but no matter what set I used, Mence was never able to fully justify his slot on my teams. Sure I threw a Bronzong on my stall team specifically to handle Mence but it still is not a huge loss. In fact, I am extremely impressed as to how well Zong has performed so far.

TL;DR: Mence is extremely inconsistent, as D_A says, situational. It works in certain situations with good predictions, but fails miserably in others. I certainly woudn't consider him an ubers candidate.

 

[_Prince_]

It doesn't matter how good he will do in ubers bro it only matters if he is to strong for OU because ubers is a ban list for ou and nothing more.

And also wall breakers they are everywhere and actually some are better than mence for example super fang nidoking, super rang mixed crobat, rampardos, rock polish aggron, mixed dragonite, choice band t-tar 2 hits skarm and blissey with fire punch

and also the one pokemon we will see a huge rise in will be sub punch breloom if mence leaves and I know I can't be the only person who hates that damn thing

Excuse me, what are you talking about, where have i mentioned ubers? :l Please re-read I was talking about his OU circumstances.

The wall breakers you are mentioning are slower than mence, mence has the speed required and power to be the most powerful wall breaker at this current of time in OU. i'm not saying those wall breakers are any bad, mence is just better i'm afriad.

yes breloom is a pain, without mence around....gah breloom

 

[Flare Riqueza]

Mence is a good wall-breaker, granted.

However, I think it's not really ubers material, bar one thing.

Latias. Now Latias is uber, the only thing that can kill Mence bar an Ice Shard (most users get eaten by Fire Blast, or just KO'd by any other attack Mence uses) is ScarfFlygon. And, well, that only revenge kills. And if you run Mence + Steel, Flygon is dead.

My overall opinion is it probably should be uber now.

 

[Kenpachi316]

comments like this are why we are having this debate and this is the only reason mence is really called into question. The popular I'm having trouble with statements. Mence in my opinion is the only really versatile pokemon the ou teir has that is not a legendary. It brings suprise and instability to the metagame. I've seen a bunch of mences build a million diffrent ways. From wish mence, to cb mence, to mixed mence, and hell even some great sets i've invented. The OU metagame would become even more predictable than it is now without this big lug. I think it's mostly inexperience or players of a lower caliber who don't know how to read mence who want him gone.

And this is off topic but why would you want metagross or t-tar gone?

here's why i had trouble against it; recover

recover doesnt belong on something fast bulky and powerful, with no 4x weaknesses, like that in ou.

put the soul dew back on it and welcome it back to ubers.


as for metagross or ttar i was just comparing them to mence, as fellow base 600's, and in my opinion staple ou pokemon.

i dont think they should be banned at all.

imo pokemon that breed are legal (although i never got to test garchomp)

i also dont think mence is the only really versatile poke in ou, it is really really versatile, perhaps the most, but not the only.

hell i hope they dont ban mence.

 

[Crimson assassin]

Excuse me, what are you talking about, where have i mentioned ubers? :l Please re-read I was talking about his OU circumstances.

The wall breakers you are mentioning are slower than mence, mence has the speed required and power to be the most powerful wall breaker at this current of time in OU. i'm not saying those wall breakers are any bad, mence is just better i'm afriad.

yes breloom is a pain, without mence around....gah breloom

prince anything that is guaranteed at least 50% damage to anything it hits outclasses mence or any wall breaker especially if they can do it without locking themselves into a single move and then being confused after.lol

you may need to read your post again you did make a statement saying he just doesn't cut it for ubers that is why i said his performance in ubers is not important

Kenpachi: of course all pokemon are versatile to a degree however the sets always have something in common so none of the sets really stray to far away from another set (barring legends)
only pokemon with versatility like mence in my personal opinion are his other 2 fellow dragons in ou and t-tar