The use of Legendaries in competitive battling

[PokemonCollector-N]

I'm not a huge competitive battler yet myself, but a question has been floating around in my mind for a while now. The question is: What is your opinion on using legendary Pokémon in competitive play? Be it an official tournament or an unofficial match with a friend. Are there some legendaries you would feel that were justifiable to have used in a battle? From both sides of course. Thinking about how you'd feel if the Pokémon was used against you, or used by you in battle. I'm not overly familiar with the tier system so I won't make any comments there, but feel free to do so if there's something you want to add.

Personally I'm fairly indifferent to the subject, although there are some times where I don't enjoy playing against legendary monsters and quite frankly I'm not a big fan of using them either. I have more fun training and battling my friends with random, out-of-the-blue Pokémon.

 

[WingedDragon]

I'm not a huge competitive battler yet myself, but a question has been floating around in my mind for a while now. The question is: What is your opinion on using legendary Pokémon in competitive play? Be it an official tournament or an unofficial match with a friend. Are there some legendaries you would feel that were justifiable to have used in a battle? From both sides of course. Thinking about how you'd feel if the Pokémon was used against you, or used by you in battle. I'm not overly familiar with the tier system so I won't make any comments there, but feel free to do so if there's something you want to add.

Personally I'm fairly indifferent to the subject, although there are some times where I don't enjoy playing against legendary monsters and quite frankly I'm not a big fan of using them either. I have more fun training and battling my friends with random, out-of-the-blue Pokémon.

The Uber legends like mew, mewtwo, etc. I get why they are banned. Others like Zapdos, (who I use myself) Sometimes push it in competitive. Some times they are too strong. At times.

 

[Griffinbane]

For some of the legendaries (at least half of them), they're not really any stronger than stuff like say Garchomp or Metagross. Actually, they can be pretty weak. Like how Articuno who is almost completely bait (like Charizard in a rocky hah situation). I don't see any reason not to use these guys. Stuff like Mewtwo and Arceus though, they're really powerful and letting people use them outside of tiers or rules, you'd almost have to build a specialized team to deal with them. /Those/ guys, I don't like seeing in battle.

But really though, a lot of people like to group the weak legendaries with the strong legendaries together and just ban/allow them all because they're /LEGENDARIES/ and therefore special, therefore allowed/banned in ALL situations. This pisses me off because if you ran a team say, Articuno, Moltres, Entei, Raikou, Uxie, and Mesprit together and your opponent uses an OU team, you'd better be a damn good strategist to win.

Legendary pokemon are just pokemon that can't breed, as far as I'm concerned. Banning the whole lot just because they're "special" makes me wanna smack people around. IMO Smogon's got the lot split up pretty fairly and VGC, although somewhat inconsistant, has made a good effort towards banning the ridiculous from tournaments.

 

[PlatinumDude]

As Griffinbane mentioned, some legendary Pokemon don't have what it takes to be Ubers. I know she said Articuno, but I'll mention Entei as well. Sure, it's legendary, but it's outclassed by things like Arcanine and Darmanitan because of its shallow physical movepool. While it gained Flare Blitz as an event move, it must use an Adamant nature to use it, as all event Entei with the move are Adamant; this makes it slower than base 90-100 Speed Pokemon with a positive Speed nature.

Let's look at another example: Zapdos. While it was OU for the first 4 generations, it dropped down to UU this generation because Thundurus (and later its Therian forme) did whatever it could do better (special attacking).

 

[Griffinbane]

I was gonna use Raikou as an example of a glass cannon but then I took a proper look at its defenses. I was gonna mention Entei as a legendary version of Flareon but I forgot. Heh!

 

[KorpiklaaniVodka]

Having used Kyurem-B a lot, I think he's the second best legendary Pokemon in the OU tier after Keldeo. He's just awesome with that Substitute attacker set.

 

[Nolafus]

I don't like using legendaries personally. I know that some of them are pretty weak, but it's just a personal preference that I have. I tried using some, but I ended up replacing them because I felt like they weren't getting the job I wanted done.

As far as competitive play as a whole goes, I'll agree with the majority and say that they're fine within their respective tiers. Heck, my grass team even held their own against an uber team. Although, Ferrothorn was doing most of the work...

 

[Sirfetch’d]

I use them and don't think anything about it. Legendaries aren't anything too special when looking at competitive battling because as others have stated, not all are cut out for Ubers. Heck, there are legendaries in the RU tier just like there are non-legends in Ubers.