Revisions - Revenankh discussion

[Umbreon Dan]

This thread is here for the purpose of revising Revenankh, Smogon's second CAP Pokemon. Revenankh is generally considered to be quite effective when placed alone in the OU metagame, but several of our own created Pokemon stand in its way of being successful in the CAP metagame.

All users should feel free to suggest any revisions which you believe will improve Revenankh's usefulness in the CAP metagame. The elements we are looking at here are ability, movepool, and stat spread.

Rules:

• All posts should demonstrate a good working knowledge of the CAP project and the competitive CAP Pokemon metagame. Posts that demonstrate a lack of knowledge and/or familiarity with CAP project rules and operating procedures will be moderated. Ignorance is not an excuse here.

• Do not discuss any Pokemon other than Revenankh.

• This is a competitive adjustment only. Do not suggest changes regarding flavor.

• Stay on topic, be nice, etc.

 

[KnightoftheWind]

I personally think that Revenankh doesn't need any changes. It functions perfectly fine in the metagame, thanks to it being hard to stop after a Bulk Up and its excellent STABs.

 

[hydrolphin]

Revvy seems to be fine, but a move I would like to see added to his repertoire would be Stone Edge. It would be useful to pick off annoying Togekiss and Yanmega, but would be far from broken. A bit more contreversial would be Zen Headbutt. It is SE against both Fidgit and Arghonaut.

As for stats, he could use a little more HP, but its not needed. Just if we put him up to 100, a Sub Punch set would be more viable.

 

[Coronis]

I agree on Zen Headbutt, Rev's has only one other option against Fidgit and Argh, and can only really run both on a CB set.

Rev's stats are fine the way they are, same with the abilities.

 

[zarator]

The only improvement I can think of right now is restoring the special Defense to its former 110 value. I'd also like to mention Shadow Claw. the slight (around 16%) boost over Shadow Punch may make the difference, and the crit chance is very appreciated on something as inclined to stall wars as Revvy

 

[BunnyMaster]

I agree with zarator about restoring its special defense. I use the bulk up set but a random special attack always does too much damage.

 

[Zystral]

I would say 100 Base, Max Sp.Def EV investment is pretty suitable.
Careful nature, he hits 300 odd Special Defence.

My comment would be to perhaps give Revenankh the other elemental punches, i.e. Fire Punch and Thunderpunch. Not sure why Ice Punch is sitting there in the first place.

 

[Fuzznip]

A few things I want changed on Revenankh.

1) I think we need to remove its ability, Air Lock, and give it something a bit more useful. Air Lock is rarely used and it doesn't really "help" Revenankh as much. I remember chatting about this last night on #cap, and we came up with abilities such as Iron Fist, Pressure, and Levitate. All of these abilities can be very useful to Revenankh offensively, and some defensively. Iron Fist makes Hammer Arm as strong as Close Combat and makes its other "punching" moves stronger by 20%, Pressure is excellent for stalling out PP from the opponent as its using a RestTalk Bulk Up set or something, and Levitate helps it deal with many more scary threats that have powerful Ground-type moves, like Colossoil. There are a handful of other usable abilities, these are just some that could be cool.

2) Revenankh should get a physical Psychic-type attack, probably Zen Headbutt. It needs to actually do something against Fidgit and Arghonaut, two big counters to it.

3) It should go back to its pre-nerf stat spread, the one that looks like this: 90 HP / 105 Attack / 90 Defense / 65 Sp. Attack / 110 Sp. Defense / 65 Speed.

That's all for now. If I think of anything else, I'll be sure to post.

 

[Raj]

Rev seems to be good as is from what I can tell. If anything, I'd suggest adding Suckerpunch to it's movepool.

 

[cyberzero]

The introduction of Zen Headbutt is probably the only change that could possibly have an impact on Revenankh now because it already has a beastly set that is only foiled by Arghonaut. Any other changes would have absolutely no impact on Revenankh because of its already great Bulk Up set.

 

[VKCA]

Revvy seems to be fine, but a move I would like to see added to his repertoire would be Stone Edge. It would be useful to pick off annoying Togekiss and Yanmega, but would be far from broken. A bit more contreversial would be Zen Headbutt. It is SE against both Fidgit and Arghonaut.

As for stats, he could use a little more HP, but its not needed. Just if we put him up to 100, a Sub Punch set would be more viable.

Well since he's immune to seismic toss anyways does it really matter?

 

[GOTO2435]

Well since he's immune to seismic toss anyways does it really matter?

perhaps he menat for night shade but i don´t really know a pokemon who uses it

 

[Deck Knight]

Would it kill people to check Revenank's Smogon Moves page before suggesting moves it already was approved for in the Tutors thread?

A lot of the initial shallowness came from not wanting to supplant Dusknoir, but Dusknoir is nigh useless these days and its been nearly two years since Rev was initially made.

So I think we can open the movepool up a bit.

First: Thunderpunch. This gives Rev a way to deal with Gyara and at least somewhat harm Arghonaut without lowering its speed or risking a miss (like HA and PW).

I would also suggest Close Combat, as the Bulk Up set relies on SpD keeping it around, and it would be more viable on CB Revenankh.

 

[Zystral]

abilities such as Iron Fist, Pressure, and Levitate.

Out of those, I like Levitate the best, because as with the arugment for Zen Headbutt, it lets you switch into Fidgit with a lot more ease.
Pressure is the next best option, although I can't really see Revenankh trying to stall out much until they bring in something Specially Offensive.

Of course, notable then is the fact that using any of these means losing Shed Skin and therefore Rest becomes slightly less appealing.

 

[zarator]

I agree on Close Combat, the most powerful Rev set (ShedRest) would not abuse it at all. A new ability over Air Lock is also cool. But before suggesting new ones, I want to discuss the ones suggested by Fuzznip.

Iron Fist is completely useless, sorry. Any ability which would improve the standard set is silly - Shed Skin is that good. If you really want to make Revenankh's STABs more threatening (maybe for a CB set or something like that) we may as well give him Close Combat and call it a day. Sure, Iron Fist powers up also the Elemental punches and Shadow Punch (and Focus Punch, although there are better Subpunchers out there), but I think we can do better than Iron Fist.

Pressure is a tad better than Iron Fist, but still incredibly underwhelming. Revenankh makes a horrible Pressure RestTalk user for 4 reasons:
1) Each of his moves has a type immune to it. This is not something like Water Absorb, we are talking about letting Revenankh getting completely walled by either Ghost types (which is not good since Rotom, Kitsunoh and hopefully Revenankh itself are all too threatening and common) or by Normal types (which is better than Ghost but still far from feasible, with shit like Togekiss flying around, literally)
2) Revenankh's weaknesses are not numerous, but easily exploitable from the special side (the one Rev will not boost). Psychic and Ghost are quite obvious, but even Flying types can get threatening with stuff like Air Slash or Hidden Power.
3) Revenankh's ShedRest is generally better. This may seem a less apparent point, but still holds true. One of Revenankh's selling points over other Rest users is the ability to go with 2 moves (with perfect coverage and STAB) and still not be (possibly) setup bait for other threatening sweepers. Giving this up for some PP draining is quite unreasonable, if you ask me.
4) There are better RestTalk users out there. If I want a pure setup RestTalk sweeper, CroPert and especially CroCune are far better thanks to better monoSTAB and (in Suicune's case) less exploitable weaknesses (Electric and Grass come generally from the special side, the one Suicune is boosting). If I want a Spinblocker, RestTalk Rotom is better thanks to a superior set of resistances.

Some of these points are debatable, but when you sum them up, you can see that Revenankh is not the best candidate for Pressure.

Levitate is slightly good. Certainly not something outstanding (I'd still go for Shed Skin all day, unless I run a Choice set maybe) but at least it gives some kind of competition to Shed Skin. It has not the extraordinary impact it has on Rotom, but it is still considerable.

An ability which I want to suggest is Mold Breaker. Exchange the power of Shed Skin in order to overcome Arghonaut's Unaware is an interesting choice competitively (yes, Mold BReaker nullifies Unaware, check the Smogondex). And if you really want to make a RestTalk set viable (at least), Scrappy isthe way to go. At least using Hammer Arm as the only STAB will be feasible now (hi Kit).

 

[Zystral]

An ability which I want to suggest is Mold Breaker. Exchange the power of Shed Skin in order to overcome Arghonaut's Unaware is an interesting choice competitively (yes, Mold BReaker nullifies Unaware, check the Smogondex).

I can see this being useful.
If we have Careful Rev with no Atk EV investment using Zen Headbutt (if that's added) against Arghonaunt with 220Def/252 HP, it does less than 30%.

Meanwhile, Careful Rev, no Atk EVs, but a +3 Boost from Bulk Up using Shadow Sneak just between 40%-50%

 

[Elevator Music]

I'm actually dead set against making any of the CAPs more bulky than they already are. So I'm obviously against adding SpDef to Rev... (it really doesn't need it guys, pokes like Technician Stratagem can't even do that much to it currently). I'm also not really sold on adding new abilities. Revenankh's problem isn't that Air Lock is a crappy ability, its that it is too easily countered by Fidgit and Arghonaut. It won't matter what else you guys do to Rev if you don't address two those well enough. EDIT- Mold Breaker is easily the best of the abilities thrown out there for that very reason.

I like Thunderpunch. EDIT2- and Shadow Claw I'd also actually like adding a bit more attack to Rev, so it can pose slightly more of a threat to Fidgit/Arghonaut. I'm not sure how much attack would be nice to add, but bumping it up to 110 or even 115 wouldn't be awful, would it? At the very least it'd be helping Rev hit Gengar/Azelf with +1 SS a bit harder...

EDIT 3- Also like Plus said, raising Speed wouldn't be a horrible idea. Going to around 80 wouldn't be awful (still lower than Rotom/etc)

 

[BetterThanYourGod]

Although Iron Fist seems useful at first (due mainly to the boost of shadow punch), there are much better abilities that could be used (Mold Breaker would work pretty well). I'd say that simply giving it shadow claw would be enough zen headbutt would be enough (the new ability would be nice, but wouldn't exactly be necessary. If we give it Mold Breaker and Zen Headbutt, then we'd probably end up having to give Arghonaut some new way to counter Rev).

 

[Plus]

I never realized that #cap actually agreed on fucking Iron Fist lol, I guess #cap must have been 4 users at 3:00 in the morning.

Iron Fist's not a bad choice for something whose main goal is for offensive purposes as it really doesn't net important 2HKOs and such for something like Rev, but if you are aiming to use something like CB then there are much better choices for this. CB Tyranitar, Scizor, and Salamence are great examples of pokemon who are able to soften up teams with their force. CB Tyranitar can even 2hko a defensive Skarmory. There are enough CB users in the metagame in OU and CAP alike, but there is only one BU Shedrest user in the CAP metagame, which is our buddy Revenankh. Revenankh imo seems hard to revise because it has such an interesting combo that nothing else shares with it in the game (that is viable at least), but from my experience it's a bit lackluster in what it used to do a year ago and what it does today, which is the same thing. Fidgit, Arghonaut, and Kitsunoh definitely hurt Revenankh a lot, and Mold Breaker seems like a good choice to help this situation a bit. Since Revenankh already has Earthquake, it would be able to hit Fidgit and Kitsunoh hard, and could probably be replaced over something like Payback/Sneak/Punch as it hits Rotom-a and Gengar anyways. Although it can't hit the Psychics, I think it's enough of a price to pay and could work on offensive sets.

Another thing we could do is give Revenankh a speed boost (bear with me here!) so it can outspeed Arghonaut and Taunt it. Sure, Arghonaut can Waterfall you, but Mold Breaker also nullifies Unaware, allowing you to set up on Arghonaut instead of the other way around. Furthermore, Arghonaut is unable to set up and do whatever it wants. I guess it's a bit situational but Taunt Revenankh is something I've wanted to try out, but it really doesn't work that well.

 

[zarator]

Another thing we could do is give Revenankh a speed boost (bear with me here!) so it can outspeed Arghonaut and Taunt it. Sure, Arghonaut can Waterfall you, but Mold Breaker also nullifies Unaware, allowing you to set up on Arghonaut instead of the other way around. Furthermore, Arghonaut is unable to set up and do whatever it wants. I guess it's a bit situational but Taunt Revenankh is something I've wanted to try out, but it really doesn't work that well.

Taunt Revenankh may seem cool at first sight, but what would the other moves be? Certainly Bulk Up, since otherwise where is the point of setupping anyway? But then? If you run 2 attacks (something like Taunt/Bulk Up/Revenge/Shadow Punch(Sneak) - No Hammer Arm since you do not want to lower your speed generally when Taunting) then I think you are playing just a weaker Taunt Gyarados. If you run Rest and 1 attack, then you incur in the same issues I outlined above talking about Pressure (i.e. getting walled by either Ghost or Normal types).

So far, I think the best set of improvements is:
1) Movepool: add Close Combat and Zen Headbutt
2) Ability: change Air Lock to Mold Breaker
3) Stats: raise Sp Def a little (at least 10 points IMO)

I'm obviously still open to suggestions at this point, I only wanted to sum up what was I thinking as of now.

 

[Plus]

Taunt Revenankh may seem cool at first sight, but what would the other moves be? Certainly Bulk Up, since otherwise where is the point of setupping anyway? But then? If you run 2 attacks (something like Taunt/Bulk Up/Revenge/Shadow Punch(Sneak) - No Hammer Arm since you do not want to lower your speed generally when Taunting) then I think you are playing just a weaker Taunt Gyarados. If you run Rest and 1 attack, then you incur in the same issues I outlined above talking about Pressure (i.e. getting walled by either Ghost or Normal types).

I guess I was too specific when I said this and drifted off to my own dreamland here, but please realize that I am not creating a set off of Taunt, and that there are no specifics. Taunt on Revenankh would allow for things like Zapdos to not roost in its face while Revenankh can dish out an Ice Punch, or you can Taunt on the switch in on Skarmory so it cannot Spike up, which is very common. Apologies for making it sound like rest+bu+taunt with my example but Taunt really does fuck around with stall. Giving it a slightly higher speed would help regardless of whether Rev gets to set up Bulk Up on it.

But anyways, it's only the first day so there's still lots of room for discussion. I'm not a big fan of huge back and forths so I'll leave it at this.

EDIT: I don't think you got my kinda indirect point, so I won't leave it at this and I'll edit my post like you have to respond to you. As long as you take out x and y is susceptible is terribly easy to do, but Stall does not fall down as fucking easily as that. As long as you take out Perish Song Celebi, Skarmory, Arghonaut, and Fidgit, of course Revenankh can pull off a Bulk Up sweep. You can say this for virtually any pokemon. "if x dies you are weak to y". Revenankh and Taunt Gyarados are different in the sense that Revenankh does not aim to go for a sweep unlike Tauntrados, unless you are still in the mindset of a BU/rest/taunt set with one move, where you yourself have pointed out that it will not work. The idea is not to use Taunt to go for a sweep, but to put the opponent in a different kind of lock, one where they are forced to attack and you can switch in easily without having to worry about getting statused, or having your opponent lay down a layer of spikes. It eases the prediction up. Taunt Gyarados is used so nothing gets in Gyarados's way during a sweep.

But, that really wasn't my indirect point. I might be out of place here as I do not mod this forum, but zarator, I think you've said enough for today. Give people a little more room, because honestly I feel like you are commenting at almost every post in this thread, while it is only the first day. If something grinds your gears THAT much could you at least wait a bit before saying it :/

 

[zarator]

I guess I was too specific when I said this and drifted off to my own dreamland here, but please realize that I am not creating a set off of Taunt, and that there are no specifics. Taunt on Revenankh would allow for things like Zapdos to not roost in its face while Revenankh can dish out an Ice Punch, or you can Taunt on the switch in on Skarmory so it cannot Spike up, which is very common. Apologies for making it sound like rest+bu+taunt with my example but Taunt really does fuck around with stall. Giving it a slightly higher speed would help regardless of whether Rev gets to set up Bulk Up on it.

Now it makes more sense, although I always feel as if I'm doing it the wrong way. I mean, should I use Taunt on Revenankh, I'd feel anyway like I would be better off
1) using Revenankh in another way
2) using another Taunt user

To get more specific, I feel that, while Taunt is a great stallbreaking tool, Revenankh is a major threat to stall teams with his good ol' ShedRest set. As long as you put Celebi and (possibly) Fidgit out of commission (i.e. make sure the opponent no longer has Trick/Encore/Perish Song to screw you over), standard Bulk Up Revenankh is guaranteed to won you up the game as a last stand Pokémon.
Also, there are so better Taunt users in the OU metagame (Gyarados, of course, but even Skarmory if you want to fuck up stall in particular) that Taunt Revenankh would fare averagely in my opinion, even with a reasonable Speed boost (and heck, even if we would give some crazy Ninjaskesque Speed stat to Revenankh as a result of us enjoying ourselves at some dirty rave party, I believe we could come with better ideas for using it rather than Taunt).

EDIT: ZystraL, the list I posted above wasn't really a priority list. The order I listed the changes I'd like to make is completely random.

 

[Zystral]

So far, I think the best set of improvements is:
1) Movepool: add Close Combat and Zen Headbutt
2) Ability: change Air Lock to Mold Breaker
3) Stats: raise Sp Def a little (at least 10 points IMO)

I think Ability takes predominance over Movepool, see calcs I posted above.
I also can't see much use in raising his Special Defence.

Let's take a Standard Choice Scarfed Togekiss. Maximum Speed and Timid. Let's use Air Slash against standard BU Revenankh. 44.27% - 53.12%
Without any Entry Hazards and with Lefties, it's got <1% to 2HKO.
110 Base Sp.Def Revenankh; 42.19% - 50%
Without Hazards and with Lefties, any chance of 2HKO is gone, but that's not exactly a massive difference.

Outside of Scarfed Rotom-S (which fears this set as it is) I can't think of many other Special Flying type abusers in OU from the top of my head

 

[Deck Knight]

In regards to stats, I came up with a modest boost that should help Rev keep its feel while making a Taunt set more viable.

90/110/90/65/100/70. +5 Base Atk, +5 Base Spe. BST: 525

PSweep: 140 (Rank 5: Good)
PTank: 147 (Rank 5: Good)
SSweep: 92 (Rank 3: Below Average)
STank: 160 (Rank 6: Very Good)
ODB: -3.65 (slightly biased to defense)
PSB: 5.0 (slightly biased towards physical)
Overall Rating: 291 (Good).

Arghonaut has base 75 Spe, but it rarely invests in it, so if you wanted to run Taunt, use 44 EVs to beta 0 Spe Arghonaut. The additional Attack boost helps offset some EVs. I don't think we need to go hog wild on Speed, Rev's main STAB is still Hammer Arm. The most important pokemon at 65 Base Speed is Scizor anyway, so now you can peg it before it U-turns out. Otherwise you now have equal speed to Metagross, Skarmory and Breloom.

For a "DK Stat Whore" tweak of this:

90/108/90/65/100/72.

Which naturally outspeeds aforementioned no speed Groos/Skarm/Breloom, and Honchkrow, if you care about that. Oh, and Max Speed Jolly can wear a Scarf and outspeed Jolteon/Aero and co. The changes in ratings are minor, slightly increasing physical/special sweepiness and ending up with a rating of 298 (Good).

Here is a more expansive (traditional) upgrade:

95/110/90/65/105/70. +5 HP, Atk, SpD, Spe. BST: 535

PSweep: 140 (Rank 5: Good)
PTank: 152 (Rank 6: Very Good)
SSweep: 92 (Rank 3: Below Average)
STank: 173 (Rank 6: Very Good)
ODB: -5.74 (Moderate bias to defense)
PSB: 3.85 (Slight bias to Physical)
Overall Rating: 303 (Very Good.)

Which restores Rev essentially back to its initial bulkyness along with the offensive improvement.

 

[Jibaku]

Been a while since I took part in CAP

Anyways, I would like to expand a bit on Revenankh's support movepool and give it Will-o-Wisp. If I can recall, one argument used against it was because it would be too much like Dusknoir. However, since Dusknoir has been trashed nowadays we shouldn't care about it much anymore

With Will-o-Wisp, Arghonaut can be seriously crippled as it uses physical attacks to deal damage, and it becomes less effective at taking hits. Fidgit also doesn't like being burned all that much, given that its only recovery move is Wish. Furthermore, Will-o-Wisp can deter Calm Mind Jirachi from swapping in and wrecks Metagross, Gyarados and Salamence to an extent. You can also use it in conjunction with Taunt to beat up slower arghonaut and Gyarados. With four moves, I highly doubt it'd become broken. Also, for flavor reasons, all the other ghosts bar frosslass gets it :). And if you think WoW does not fit just because he looks flammable...well honestly, explain Fire Blast Weezing or Cutless Zangoose, or Ice Punch Kitsunoh.

EDIT: I'd also like Shadow Claw for the power boost and Zen Headbutt for Fidgit/Arghonaut.
EDIT2: Will-O-Wisp also makes Kitsunoh cry

EDIT3:
Okay now that I've thought about it, I recommend changing Rev's base stats to:

100/100/90/65/120/65 +10 HP -5 Atk +20 SDef. BST = 540
PSweep: 121 (Rank 4: Above Average)
PTank: 157 (Rank 6: Very Good)
SSweep: 88 (Rank 3: Below Average)
STank: 203 (Rank 8: Fantastic)
ODB: -13.46 (Biased towards Defense)
PSB: -1.9 (Slightly biased towards Special)
Overall Rating: 311 (Very Good)

Before you go anywhere, some of you think it might be crazy to sharply increase its Special Defense ad add in a bit to HP on something already tanky as Revenankh. Looking back at the Rev analysis however, Fidgit, Kit and Argho aren't its only problems. Rev has problems taking several special hits and I wish to fix this. The prime target for this base stat change is Cyclohm, and in consequence, Draco Meteor Salamence. Cyclo's Life Orb Draco Meteor, for instance, does 50%-59% to the 90/100 Rev, and Thunderbolt deals 34%-40%. This simply means that Rev can be 2HKOed by Bolt + Meteor in sandstorm, and 3HKOed by Thunderbolt + Thunderbolt + (either another TBolt or Meteor) in Sandstorm's absence. With massive physical defense, Cyclo can swap in quite easily too.

With the sharp boost in HP/SDef, Draco Meteor now does 50% maximum to Revenankh, and Thunderbolt deals 34% maximum (in other words, the minimums in the current stat spread is now the maximums in this stat spread). This means that
1) When sandstorm is not around, Timid Cyclohm has a 10.361% chance of KOing Revenankh with Thunderbolt + Thunderbolt + Draco Meteor
2) When sandstorm is around, Cyclohm can not KO Rev with Thunderbolt + Draco Meteor.

Salamence's Draco Meteor does around the same to Rev as Cyclo's, and if you get two Bulk Ups he's not going to bust Rev up with Outrage

Other calcs (against new Rev, max/max careful):
Min SAtk Togekiss Air Slash: 30-36%
This will at least give Rev a fighting chance, with Air Slash being a 4HKO instead of a 3HKO. Togekiss will probably win anyways due to flinch

Max SAtk Jirachi's Psychic: 39%-46%
256 SAtk Jirachi's Psychic: 34%-40%
No longer has that shot to 2HKOing barring SDef drop from Psychic on the first calc. Second calc means that a SDef drop from Psychic won't kill Rev.

Starmie also only has a 14.045% chance of 3HKOing new Rev with Hydro Pump, allowing it to spinblock better. This not only allows Rev to defeat it with ease, but to also set up on it which it may have problems doing so with the old spread.

To compensate for the bulk increase, I dropped the Attack stat by 5 points. This should not hurt Rev that much, however.

Bulk Up Hammer Arm (min Atk) vs Cyclohm (min HP/Def): 40%-46 (this is assuming Cyclo switches into Rev, unless the analysis lies)
If Cyclo tries to Slack off stall this, you can easily snag in another Bulk Up. If sandstorm is not active, you are free to Hammer Arm it for a bit till Leftovers heals enough for you. Under sandstorm, just grab a second bulk up and beat up Cyclo with Hammer Arm + Shadow Sneak (Life Orb + sandstorm will wear him down very quickly).

Is it too much?
It shouldn't be too much IMO. Rev still falls to Kit, Arghy, Fidgit with this base stat arrangement alone. He is also still stopped by his usual counters, but no longer falls prey Cyclo and has a better fighting chance against other special attackers. Then again, my definition of "too much" may differ greatly from yours. Chances are he doesn't need this stat boost, but it would certainly help him a bit. If you don't like it, feel free to ignore it.