PU Suspect Coverage: Virizion

By gum. Released: 2021/02/14.
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Art by Zephyr2007

Art by Zephyr2007.

Introduction

An old RU staple, Virizion was first introduced to the PU tier back in the mid-December tier shifts, and it immediately became an excellent wallbreaker. While it was at first slightly overshadowed by stronger wallbreakers like Sirfetch'd, Machamp, and Duraludon, their bans allowed it to establish itself as the tier's best one. Despite its average offensive stats, Virizion quickly became an issue to many due to its excellent coverage and Speed, making it extremely hard to reliably switch into and revenge kill; this led to its eventual suspect test.

Sets

Virizion
  • Life Orb Virizion @ Life Orb
  • Ability: Justified
  • EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
  • Hasty Nature
  • - Leaf Storm
  • - Close Combat
  • - Stone Edge
  • - Air Slash / Synthesis / Zen Headbutt

This set is Virizion's best one, and it's not hard to see why; it's extremely hard to switch into due to its great movepool, solid Speed tier, and decent offensive stats. This is partly due to Leaf Storm's power; even Grass-resistant Pokémon like Weezing and Tangela struggle to comfortably shrug it off. Other common Grass-resistant Pokémon such as Talonflame and Whimsicott find themselves unable to switch into Virizion's coverage options, often limiting its counterplay to offensively pressuring it with faster threats like Sneasel and Archeops and specific defensive options like Garbodor and Golbat, which Virizion can still get past if they're weakened. Synthesis is an option for the last slot, as it allows Virizion to switch into various Pokémon like Palossand and Heliolisk more reliably and consistently, while Zen Headbutt always OHKOes Toxicroak and hits other Poison-types. Despite its large movepool, Virizion's lackluster offensive stats leave it forced out by most targets that aren't hit super effectively by its moves, like Mesprit and Silvally-Fairy, further limiting its wallbreaking opportunities against more offensive teams.

  • Life Orb Lum Berry Virizion @ Life Orb / Lum Berry
  • Ability: Justified
  • EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
  • Jolly Nature
  • - Swords Dance
  • - Close Combat
  • - Leaf Blade
  • - Zen Headbutt / Stone Edge

Despite its somewhat mediocre Attack, Swords Dance Virizion is a very threatening and capable wallbreaker due to its bulk and movepool; it can easily get past answers to the mixed set like Garbodor and Aromatisse after a boost. As long as Virizion's last move stays unrevealed, the opponent takes a huge risk by sending out their Poison-types, which could struggle to take a boosted Zen Headbutt, or their Flying-types, which all quickly drop to Stone Edge. While Life Orb gives Virizion a much appreciated boost to its moves, Lum Berry can be used to avoid getting crippled by defensive behemoths that Virizion is otherwise capable of taking advantage of freely like Jellicent and Palossand while also making it harder to wear down. Similarly to the mixed set, Virizion struggles against faster threats while also being extremely reliant on having the right coverage option, as it is otherwise rather underwhelming.

  • Life Orb Virizion @ Life Orb
  • Ability: Justified
  • EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
  • Timid Nature
  • - Calm Mind
  • - Focus Blast
  • - Giga Drain
  • - Air Slash / Stone Edge

While not being an amazing set on its own, Calm Mind Virizion has the advantage of using common answers to its two previous sets, like Weezing and the aforementioned Aromatisse, as setup fodders while being harder to revenge kill for special attackers like Whimsicott and Choice Scarf Mesprit. Furthermore, this set is capable of taking advantage of bulky Water-types such as Lanturn without risking a Scald burn. Air Slash hits Grass- and Bug-types such as Gourgeist-S and Scyther, and, despite seeming odd on a specially oriented set, Stone Edge hits the extremely common Talonflame as well as still hitting Bug-types. Where this set falls short, however, is how underwhelming it is before a couple of boosts; Focus Blast is a rather unreliable STAB move, while Giga Drain doesn't hit particularly hard. This makes this set easier to wall than the previous two, and it often has to rely on the surprise factor. Just like the previous two sets, this set also struggles against common faster threats such as Sneasel and often struggles to wallbreak properly if it doesn't carry the right coverage option for the matchup at hand.

Ban Reasoning

The main argument the ban side used was that its versatility made it almost impossible to reliably counter, with all of its sets having somewhat different answers. This is made even worse by all of its sets being able to choose what they wanted to beat due to Virizion's outstanding movepool. Moreover, they also believed that Virizion forced extremely similar team structures in an attempt to prevent it from running over teams. Lastly, Virizion isn't particularly easy to play around; it created a lot of 50/50 scenarios that were usually heavily skewed in the Virizion's user favor, making it very different from most Fighting-types.

No Ban reasoning

The no ban side argued that, despite having defensive answers to all of Virizion's sets, none of its answers were niche or mediocre picks that would otherwise never get added to a team; they all provided much more than just a Virizion answer and were all rather easy to add on a team. While it is true that Virizion's versatility made it hard to safely switch into it, it's extremely reliant on having the right set and predicting correctly to plow through teams. Furthermore, they believed that Virizion's typing and Speed tier left it rather easy to offensively pressure it, which made preventing just how much it gets to do considerably easier. Similarly to the defensive answers, the offensive ones were all solid threats outside of simply pressuring Virizion. Finally, Virizion also didn't get many opportunities to switch into the field due to its susceptibility to getting crippled by many defensive threats it usually wants to switch into.

Closing words

With Virizion staying in the tier, PU should remain rather stable until the next tier shifts in April. However, it might have to get looked at again when those happen; one of Virizion's most splashable answers, Talonflame, is predicted to rise to NU.

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