Approved Choiced Choice Scarf

[Birkal]

Previously titled "Scarf Is Not Dead"

This concept by srk1214 was approved for discussion. Is this concept worth pursuing? If so, what questions could we ask? How could we improve this? Everyone is free to discuss the following submission as if this was a concept discussion.

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Name: Choiced Choice Scarf

Description: A Pokemon that is a very effective user of a Choice Scarf in the current metagame, and and that is defined by its usage of Choice Scarf.

Justification: With the rise of priority and naturally fast pokemon in XY and ORAS, Choice Scarf, once one of the best items in the game, is now much less commonly seen. There is much less reason to use, for example, one of BW's most common Scarfers, Scarf Keldeo, when you could have a powerful priority user or fast Pokemon with the ability to change moves instead. This project would allow us to explore one of the biggest changes in the new metagame.

Questions To Be Answered:
-How has the importance of speed changed in Gen 6?
-What aspects of a Pokemon will make it an ideal user of a choice item, particularly scarf?
-What qualities would make a Pokemon willing to sacrifice its ability to change moves for extra speed?
-How successful can a Pokemon be when its best set is known and predictable?
-Since Choice Scarf is seemingly less useful of an item, is it even possible to make an OU-viable Pokemon who can do no better than Choice Scarf?
-How mediocre must the Pokemon's other options be to result in Choice Scarf's preeminence?

Explanation:
In Generation 5, a Choice Scarf user was mandatory on every offensive team. Even some stall teams found a team slot to fit a scarfer in. Choice Scarf was by far the best way to revenge kill in BW, as there was far less priority and very few pokemon broke the 110 speed tier. However, this has all gone out the window in Generation 6. Priority is everywhere, with new additions such as Talonflame, Mega Scizor, and Mega Lopunny combined with the newfound power of old abusers like Bisharp and Azumarill. There are also many new additions with incredibly high speed, such as Hawlucha, Mega Manectric, and Mega Aerodactyl. Even Thundurus-I has joined in the revenge killing frenzy with its priority Thunder Wave allowing it to ruin almost every setup sweeper. With all these options, there is virtually no reason to use a choice scarfer today. This project would allow us to explore what qualities would make a Choice Scarf user equally or more desirable than any of these, and also to gain a new understanding of the item itself. Given the extreme importance of revenge killing, I think that these would all be very useful subjects to explore.

The second qualification in the description - that the Pokemon be defined by Choice Scarf - is there to make sure the CAP will not just be a generally good pokemon that can use a Choice Scarf well (Keldeo, Landorus-T), but a Pokemon that is good only with scarf and otherwise mediocre. Think Genesect in very early B2W2 before people started using Rock Polish, but less broken obviously.

I understand that there could be some concern about how focused my concept is on studying a single item. My idea was that, through studying Choice Scarf, we could gain understanding of not just the item itself, but of a lot of other changes that have come with XY - particularly the greater emphasis on momentum and the change in speed's importance in OU. This concept would let us see at what point it is optimal to potentially risk momentum in order to achieve greater speed, what changes in the importance of speed have occurred (I can't make this much more specific because I'm not sure what the answer is), and what other Pokemon a Choice Scarfer would be competing for a teamslot with. I feel that these are great opportunities to learn about the metagame.

 

[KhosroTheGreat]

After a talk in the PS CAP Room, Pawou came to the conclusion that:
(In Pawou's words)

Mons with scarf as top item (from last months 1825) Lando-T, Tyranitar, Excadrill, Gothitelle, Magnezone, Kyurem-B

Basically, Scarfers aren't dead, their role has just changed from BW. Scarfers are typically relegated to trappers (goth, mag, ttar), amazing pivots (lando-t), or mons w/ absurd attacking stats (kyu-b). You can't just slap it on whatever offensive mon and call it a day. Else you'd be better off with a strong prio user, or simply a fast mon that can switch moves. Please note: I'm not against the scarf concept. My main point is that it currently implies a lack of scarfers, which isn't necessarily true.

"the CAP will not just be a generally good pokemon that can use a Choice Scarf well (Keldeo, Landorus-T), but a Pokemon that is good only with scarf and otherwise mediocre."

This kinda pushes "slowmon w/ mediocre defenses w/ great attacking stats", limiting its potential w/out scarf.

Of course, we'd be able to make a viable scarfer, because viable scarfers exist in OU. The issue is: would we be just recreating an already existing mon, or something that fills nearly the same role? If we went with slow/frail good attacking stat mon, it either would need a) a trapping ability or b) absurd attacking stats to avoid being completely outdone by current scarfers. I guess going in a different direction is possible, but idk what that would be. Looking at current successful scarfers, they each have one of the three traits I mentioned earlier.

 

[Bughouse]

You never could just slap Choice Scarf on any mon. Scarf has always had drawbacks in terms of letting stuff set up. A classic example would be to let your Rotom get pursuit trapped by Scarf Tar so you could set up SD Lucario. The item's function has not changed. It still has pluses and minuses, but today for almost every mon but Landorus-T, the minuses in general seem to be greater, given its decreased usage.

The difference was that in BW, you almost always had to assume your opponent had a Scarfer. In XY, Choice Scarf is a surprise to face, except on a few Pokemon (Landorus-T, Magnezone, and the rare Gothitelle). No other Pokemon will ever be assumed to be Scarf.

 

[trc]

i don't like this concept and never have :{|} common scarfers in ou are: landorus-t, keldeo, tyranitar, latios, heatran, magnezone, magneton, gothitelle, garchomp and this isn't even including any of the more niche ones such as hydreigon and jirachi. "no other pokemon will ever be assumed to be scarf" is kinda untrue. in this meta, the oras one, i'd say scarf users are actually more common; landorus-t and keldeo were picking up scarf usage in mid-late xy, latios is only recently being seen with scarf again, garchomp too, even hydreigon. while it is true none of these pokemon are defined by their usage of choice scarf, i really don't see how having a pokemon defined by choice scarf is beneficial at all? all it does is make the pokemon predictable but in the end you just have, well, another choice scarfer. you mention all the time that scarfers are uncommon due to an abundance of priority or prankster twave, but this simply isn't true; both types of revenge killing are common. to me there's simply nothing to learn here :x

 

[nyttyn]

[09:13] <nyttyn> !usage landorus-T
[09:13] <TIBot> Landorus-Therian - #1 in OU | Usage: 31.04862% | Raw count: 437,943 | Weight: 0.0998663129314
[09:13] <nyttyn> !usage landorus-T items
[09:13] <TIBot> Choice Scarf 48.439% | Leftovers 41.192% | Earth Plate 3.298% | Rocky Helmet 2.156% | Other 4.915%
[09:14] <nyttyn> !usage Keldeo
[09:14] <TIBot> Keldeo - #3 in OU | Usage: 19.62993% | Raw count: 224,177 | Weight: 0.123336637782
[09:14] <nyttyn> !usage Keldeo items
[09:14] <TIBot> Choice Specs 33.224% | Leftovers 33.136% | Choice Scarf 24.513% | Life Orb 4.467% | Other 4.661%

Scarf is far from dead these days. It stills coffers powerful advantages (patching up the powerful landorus-T's pitiful speed, making Pony incredibly fast, etc), and it still sees usage on a number of mons (to the point where scarf landoge is the most common mon in OU).

There's pretty much nothing we can learn from this, tbh. Scarf is still relevant, and has been ever since it came out. As the concept itself said, "scarf is not dead."

 

[DetroitLolcat]

Agreeing with what people are saying. Scarf isn't dead; it's been fine ever since the day DP came out. Sure it suffered a decline in use in early XY when monstrous priority like Talonflame's Brave Bird and Mega Pinsir's Quick Attack were more prevalent, but in late XY and ORAS the metagame's shifted to be much more favorable to Choice Scarf users. There is very, very little about the metagame we can learn from this Concept in my opinion.

 

[Empress]

Gonna echo what everyone else has said- Choice Scarf is far from dead in the ORAS metagame. However, we can definitely salvage something from this concept if we refer to the second part of it: a Pokemon "that is defined by its usage of Choice Scarf." Therefore, we're not going to learn anything about the usefulness of Choice Scarf in ORAS, but we will be learning about what goes into a Pokemon that is specifically designed to use Choice Scarf and no other item. Like srk said in his concept:

Think Genesect in very early B2W2 before people started using Rock Polish, but less broken obviously.

Before Rock Polish became a thing, Genesect could do absolutely no better than Choice Scarf, which wasn't a hindering factor to it at all. With high enough speed to beat the entire unboosted metagame, Download raising its offensive power no matter what, and solid offenses backed by wide coverage, it was adept at forcing switches, breaking walls, and most importantly, retaining momentum for your team. It wouldn't use Life Orb, as it really dislikes being worn down. It wouldn't use Specs or Band, as Download will not always boost the offensive stat that you need. Moreover, several Pokemon break base 99 Speed, so instead of sending in a bulky threat to soften a guaranteed hit from Genesect, a player could send in a faster threat to force it out or kill it before it uses its move. It wouldn't use Leftovers, as it is a hyper-offensive mon rather than bulky offensive.

Simply trying to create a very good user of Choice Scarf would be a poor project. But this concept calls for "Choice Scarf: The Mon"; it does not call for Keldeo or Landorus-T 2.0, as those Pokemon work very well with other items. In turn, this could help us learn further about what a one-dimensional Pokemon needs in order to function, and what goes into a Pokemon built for Choice Scarf and nothing else. This concept still wouldn't be perfect in that sense, as we already have viable OU Pokemon that are confined to one role, such as Mega Manectric and Bisharp. But now that we have a focus on what that role is, we can certainly use the aforementioned Pokemon, as well as Genesect, as our reference points to make the ultimate Choice Scarf user.

 

[KhosroTheGreat]

Moxie users aren't limited to Scarf, they can run other, perfectly viable sets.

Tarontos what papa suggested we should look for here is a Pokemon that is good for Choice Scarf and only Choice Scarf.
So, we need to look at what makes things good with other common items, and then look at why current Scarfers run Scarf, and make a Pokemon which doesn't have the ability to use other common items well, but use Choice Scarf very well. I would like to second what papa said, as it also means that, with some effort, hopefully we can make a CAP which isn't just a copy of one of the current Scarfers.

On that note, looking at what make current Scarfers run Scarf. Their roles are:
- A trapper (Gothitelle, Magnezone) which looks to use Scarf to outspeed the things it is trappping so that it can kill them easier. It does not suffer from locking itself into 1 move as much as normal mons, because it guarantees itself a good matchup, so spamming the same move is what it would probably do anyway.
- Pokemon with very strong offensive stats (Kyurem-B, Excadrill, Garchomp) - these use scarf to cover for their below average speed. Their power means that they will often do lots of damage even when locked into 1 move.
- Pokemon with good offense and good speed (Hydreigon, Keldeo) - they use Scarf to make themselves extremely fast while using their good offensive stats to hit hard, but not as hard as the Kyurem-Bs.

 

[nyttyn]

However, we can definitely salvage something from this concept if we refer to the second part of it: a Pokemon "that is defined by its usage of Choice Scarf." Therefore, we're not going to learn anything about the usefulness of Choice Scarf in ORAS, but we will be learning about what goes into a Pokemon that is specifically designed to use Choice Scarf and no other item

Wh0s raises some very good points, and a very valid proposal. Therefore, I recommend we tweak the concept to directly revolve around using scarf, and only scarf. Would anyone have any objections or suggestions for this?

 

[Bughouse]

That was always the intention of the concept

 

[Birkal]

Right, but the entire point of the concept workshop is that we can tweak them to suit the CAP Process... of course we can make edits. That being said, I'd be particularly interested in whether or not nyttyn's proposal would alleviate trc's concerns and would like to hear his opinions on the matter. I'm not sure it necessarily suits the process any better, but it may lead to some more intriguing questions.

 

[trc]

i still don't like it

reason: i think it could potentially be interesting for the process to try and come up with a pokemon solely good with a choice scarf and not at all without one, but i think this is both unfeasible and uninteresting in the end because in the end a choice scarf user in general has a main role: to revenge kill pokemon. as such, we can infer that we are trying to revenge kill setup sweepers that boost speed, as most strong pokemon that don't boost speed are typically not difficult to revenge kill without a choice scarf user. they also would have to be able to ko the pokemon they are trying to revenge kill; this is why choice scarf landorus-t isn't s rank anymore, the metagame has a wealth of new speed-boosting sweepers that it has trouble with, such as dd altaria and the surges in fast rp diancies and landorus-i. now, we could easily make a pokemon able to revenge these pokemon, but at that point because of the coverage it needs and the speed stat it must already hit to outspeed certain benchmarks, it becomes a threat in its own right, making it almost impossible to create a pokemon that is only good with a choice scarf and nothing else, even in bw there wasn't anything like this :{|}. genesect doesn't count bc the gene did not only use scarf until people used rp even though that in itself is kinda dumb lol. the only other scarfer not explicitly aiming to revenge pokemon is scarftar which traps and checks thund pinisr latis etc, or at a stretch gothitelle which is a whole new dynamic.

 

[KhosroTheGreat]

Still thinking about this, but just for fyi you need 163 base speed (467 after nature, max EVs + IVs) to outspeed a base 110 rock polish/agility user like M-Diancie or MegaGross after Choice Scarf, and 152 base speed (443 after nature, max EVs + Ivs) to ouspeed lando-i rock polish after Choice Scarf.

 

[Mowtom]

Still thinking about this, but just for fyi you need 163 base speed (467 after nature, max EVs + IVs) to outspeed a base 110 rock polish/agility user like M-Diancie or MegaGross after Choice Scarf, and 152 base speed (443 after nature, max EVs + Ivs) to ouspeed lando-i rock polish after Choice Scarf.

And if you're that fast, why are you using a Scarf?

 

[trc]

thats the point

 

[nyttyn]

Perhaps, then, we could modify this concept to become the ultimate scarfer, a pokemon whom would excel at taking out the super fast threats (such as DD mega altaria) in this meta that no other choice scarfer can hope to take on, without the use of priority? I think that would be a viable direction to take it down, but granted, this would also come at the risk of the pokemon possibly failing the concept and forsaking the choice scarf for a different item, like a life orb.

 

[Alfalfa]

Yeah, the biggest risk of nyttyn's idea is the possibility that this "ultimate" Choice Scarf user could just run a Life Orb and use its high speed and decent offenses to wreck the opposing team. Everybody seems to complain about locking a CAP into a single concept though, so I can imagine some questions to be raised about this concept.

 

[Bughouse]

I can't believe I have to spell this out, but a scarfer doesn't have to be able to outspeed literally every threat in the metagame. A scarfer that can't revenge RP Landorus isn't automatically bad.

 

[nyttyn]

That somewhat misses the point srk1214. Yes, a scarfer does not need to outspeed every threat, in fact, currently no scarfers in the OU metagame do so, and nobody can call them bad. Certainly, we could just go ahead and create a pokemon that simply uses choice scarf as its primary option much as Landorus-T does, but the idea behind an "ultimate choice scarfer" would be that there is nothing (within reason, of course, we aren't going to outspeed a +4 RP landorus) that it cannot outspeed when equipped with a choice scarf, thus differentiating it from the current Choice Scarf users which already exist. Otherwise we'd be doing a concept that's something already well covered in OU.

 

[LightningLord2]

I want to point out that, if a Pokémon really hits 140+ Speed just to outrun Agility/RP users after a boost, chances are it will run Choice Band/Specs instead to smash the unboosted guys with really strong moves.

 

[Imanalt]

why does a hypothetical scarf mon need to outrun literally every speedbooster in the tier. Youre telling me scarf genesect wouldn't be good in this meta? That if genesect didnt have priority and speedboosting options it wouldn't run scarf? We're obsessing too much over whether its possible to build the perfect scarfer, rather than just whether its possible to build a viable mon defined primarily by its scarf set.

 

[Burt Racecar]

why does a hypothetical scarf mon need to outrun literally every speedbooster in the tier. Youre telling me scarf genesect wouldn't be good in this meta? That if genesect didnt have priority and speedboosting options it wouldn't run scarf? We're obsessing too much over whether its possible to build the perfect scarfer, rather than just whether its possible to build a viable mon defined primarily by its scarf set.

perfect post ^^^

There's a bit of a goldilocks zone for scarfers in terms of speed. If it's too fast a mon wants to use all manner of items other than scarf, as nicely stated above. But too slow and the same thing happens, band/specs/lefties become the optimal item.

 

[Vryheid]

Scarf Pokemon are still great in OU- when Salamence whips out a Dragon Dance it's not going to be a frigging Sucker Punch that keeps your team from being swept, it's gonna be the scarf Latias with Draco Meteor. Scarfers are a particularly great answer to annoying, bulky Mega sweepers like Mega Charizard X, Mega Diancie, Mega Gyarados and others that are not going to fall to a random priority move.

Sure, you can load your team with generic priority users like Talonflame and Bisharp and the like and hope that it serves as an effective safety net, but you're always limited by the fact that if you fail to KO the target you're going to get hit back (with the exception of Fake Out). Scarf users can wear a target down with repeated U-turns/Volt-Switches in a pinch, sacrificing less valuable Pokemon in its place, before finally going for the kill. This can be game changing if your opponent is depending on a single sweeper to win them the match.

Scarf-mons are also set apart by easy Trick abuse which is a fantastic stall-breaking move.

 

[trc]

Scarf Pokemon are still great in OU- when Salamence whips out a Dragon Dance it's not going to be a frigging Sucker Punch that keeps your team from being swept, it's gonna be the scarf Latias with Draco Meteor. Scarfers are a particularly great answer to annoying, bulky Mega sweepers like Mega Charizard X, Mega Diancie, Mega Gyarados and others that are not going to fall to a random priority move.

Sure, you can load your team with generic priority users like Talonflame and Bisharp and the like and hope that it serves as an effective safety net, but you're always limited by the fact that if you fail to KO the target you're going to get hit back (with the exception of Fake Out). Scarf users can wear a target down with repeated U-turns/Volt-Switches in a pinch, sacrificing less valuable Pokemon in its place, before finally going for the kill. This can be game changing if your opponent is depending on a single sweeper to win them the match.

Scarf-mons are also set apart by easy Trick abuse which is a fantastic stall-breaking move.

all of your examples aren't really valid because a) dd salamence is irrelevant in ou, b) using a pokemon revenged by ice shard sin't a good example as it it's in priority's favour as c) scarf latias doesn't exist. yes scarfers are good answers to common setup sweepers for your non mega-diancie examples (meta bpunch? azu ajet? scizor bpunch?). but idk what your point is since i can't see the direction of your point. i guess what you're saying is that you disagree with the concept because you believe that scarf isn't dead?

anyway, this concept still irks me because i cannot think of any possible circumstance where a pokemon would be bad UNLESS it is using a scarf. if you have any possible examples srk, please tell me

 

[KhosroTheGreat]

anyway, this concept still irks me because i cannot think of any possible circumstance where a pokemon would be bad UNLESS it is using a scarf. if you have any possible examples srk, please tell me

On this, I was thinking maybe a slower and less bulky Excadrill? What I mean by that is that it has great attack/SpA, but it lacks the bulk to be a bulky attacker (w/ band/specs, lefties), while having enough speed for a scarf set to allow it to outspeed many common threats. Basically, it's too frail to function without being fast, and too slow to be fast without scarf, but is sufficiently fast with a scarf. This forces the CAP to either use a Sash or Scarf set - maybe a SR weakness could solve that? Idk, just an idea.