Project National Dex OU Next Best Thing: Cycle 34 - Medicham-Mega (Voting)

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I'm going to vote for Defog. Anyway congrats to Super Suit for winning this very long round. Also SputnikGT is now a Co-host for this project because I'm clearly not reliable at this lol.

Cycle 5
:ss/cinderace:

Cinderace has been a dominating presence in the metagame in the 2 months. Its HDB set is very hard to kill due to its fast speed and coverage which lets it pressure every defensive core in the tier. It also can run a great BU set that can murder teams that relie on using very defensive options to deal with it. If you the player is feeling good about clearing hazards off the field it can also slap on a Z-Crystal of its choice to potentially snipe the opponent answers to it.

Deadline is October 12th.
Banned sets.

Since Cinderace is so customizable It was hard trying to get a Banned Set thing but I hope I got the major ones.​
 
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reserving taunt

:ss/cinderace:

Cinderace @ Heavy-Duty Boots / Darkinium Z
Ability: Libero
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Gunk Shot
- Zen Headbutt
- High Jump Kick / Pyro Ball
- Taunt

Taunt cinderace was something I experimented with right after the big 5 ban and it works decently well. The idea is to bypass would be checks that rely on recovery moves, namely toxapex, slowbro, mandibuzz, hippowdon and gastrodon. It also turns ace into a dark type, reducing damage from scald, foul play and earthquake from the aforementioned pokemon. However its fairly prediction reliant and you have to risk a scald burn or two, making tapu fini and heal bell/aromatherapy users excellent partners. When pulled off correctly the only mons that can reliably check it is the uncommon aegislash, the mostly stall exclusive mega sableye, and gliscor. Pyro ball is an option on the third slot which beats specially defensive sableye, aegislash, wears down landorus-t quicker and eases prediction against corviknight and skarmory but at the cost of losing to the far more common heatran. However the latter is significantly easier to wear down.

A couple hours after I made this post I checked the Z effect of taunt out of curiosity and turns out it raises attack by one stage. Z taunt sounds extremely heat on paper since you're raising attack while simultaneously shutting down defensive mons but in practice using a z move just to raise attack by one stage when ace already gets an attack boosting move seems like a waste, not having boots really sucks, and the boost isn't needed for beating most of the aforementioned pokemon. I decided to add it as an option anyway since one advantage it has over boots is beating gliscor. Pyro ball is necessary for this reason, but gliscor is just as relevant as heatran so its worth it. Its also recommended to run 8 hp/16 def for living a gliscor eq from full health, and also avoiding the 2HKO if you're not a fire type but not mandatory since the chances are pretty low anyway.

Gliscor switches in on pyro ball and takes 40 min, leaving it at 60% and 73% after poison heal recovery

232 Atk Libero Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 244 HP / 52 Def Gliscor: 141-166 (40 - 47.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Poison Heal

Cinderace goes for z taunt as gliscor either uses eq or a status move like defog, rocks, roost, toxic or SD, the former will do less than half now that you're a dark type and the latter it will be unable to do. After this turn gliscor will be at 86%.

0 Atk Gliscor Earthquake vs. 8 HP / 16 Def Cinderace: 127-151 (41.9 - 49.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Cinderace goes for zen headbutt (since pyro ball would make you die to eq), doing 40 min at +1 leaving gliscor at 59% after pheal recovery and gliscor will not be able to KO cinderace with eq

+1 232 Atk Libero Cinderace Zen Headbutt vs. 244 HP / 52 Def Gliscor: 141-166 (40 - 47.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Poison Heal

Now gliscor is precisely in +1 pyro range

+1 232 Atk Libero Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 244 HP / 52 Def Gliscor: 211-249 (59.9 - 70.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Of course keeping cinderace at full health without boots isn't exactly the easiest thing in the world but its doable.
 
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Reserving specs ace
:ss/cinderace:
Slowbro go ded (Cinderace) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Libero
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Electro Ball
- Fire Blast
- U-turn
- Focus Blast
Specs ace is a special attacker which hits pretty hard as libero and specs makes you forget this is from a base 65 special attack stat.
It has electro ball to hit water types extremely hard or click fire blast to dent ground and grass types.
Focus blast is here so you don't get walled by ttar or heatran and uturn is to gain momentum.
This ace set does better against water types and physical walls.
 
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cinderace.png

Cinderace
Ability: Libero
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Sucker Punch
- U-turn
- Acrobatics
- High Jump Kick
I give you, Itemless Cinderace. In exchange for losing heavy duty boots, and thus its ability to deal with hazards well, Cinderace gains a potent option in acrobatics. This set accomplishes 2 things:
1) Acrobatics: It takes the game out of RNGs hands. Acrobatics, while 10 power less than pyro ball, is perfectly accurate. Most of the threats in the tier that didn't appreciate a pyro ball/gunk shot (helmet tang, amoongus, tapu fini, etc) still receive the necessary damage from an acrobatics to be 2hkod (Fini is an exception, which only has a 1/3 chance of being 2hkod after rocks, but flying Cinderace always lives 2 moonblasts w/o hazards so you could theoretically win that trade). In addition, for some reason, this is the best possible set when dealing with Mega Venusaur. Base 110 acrobatics outdamages zen headbutt, and to my knowledge, this is the only way for Cinderace to 2hko Mega Venusaur guaranteed even under a leech seed. The list goes on. It's a great way to catch opponents off guard, because it's difficult enough to predict what coverage Cinderace is going to have with HJK, Gunk, Sucker, Zen Headbutt, and U-Turn all as viable options. Perhaps more importantly...
2) It discourages knock, and blocks trick - You might be thinking to yourself that a trick/knock blocker is redundant with z slots and mega slots, but I assure you that even with both of them, it is devastating when certain pokemon are tricked the wrong items. Item displacement is now a huge factor when preparing for any gen 8 meta, but it's especially scary in natdex. More importantly, this Cinderace set could net you huge gains when it is switched in on a player attempting to trick. A free switch is vitally important in these natdex games, where momentum plays more of a role than ever with the balance-focused meta. Itemless adds a cool new level of depth to Cinderace.

A cool thing to add is that this set works with items such as psychic seed when paired with Tapu Lele. Something to be noted is that, if flying gem is added into the game, this set is completely eclipsed by flying gem with the same moveset. This pokemon is also severely hazards weak, and needs ways to recover hp. I would almost always pair this pokemon with wishport Clefable and some form of potent hazard control (Defog Zapdos? Excadrill?). I hope you guys enjoy!
 
I'm gonna vote Taunt, congrats to Dragonpiley for winning the week!

Cycle 6
:ss/latias-mega:
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The addition of Aura Sphere to Mega Latias's movepool has made it a top tier threat almost instantly in the metagame. It's good coverage and newfound ability to threaten the Pursuit trappers of Weavile and Mega Tyranitar makes it a very tricky Pokemon for many teams to adequately handle. Mega Latias doesn't have much set variation right now; what can you think of?

Voting will go until November 8th
Banned Sets
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Latias-Mega (M) @ Latiasite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Psychic
- Earthquake
- Ice Beam
- Roost

Old usum set Which still works. Pretty much makes the mu vs tran/gliscor way easier. This set Also works vs the likes of rillaboomer/pult (Altho i dont recommend staying in vs it) and much more
 
Reserving defog

:sm/latias-mega:

Latias-Mega (F) @ Latiasite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ice Beam
- Aura Sphere / Earthquake / Refresh
- Recover
- Defog

Latias is a pretty good defogger as it can defensively and offensively check a large portion of the metagam's offensive defoggers such as Heatran, Garchomp and Landorus-T as well as coming with the bonus of checking additional threats such as Swords Dance Gliscor, Bulk Up Cinderace, almost all variants of Kartana, Mega Charizard-Y, Thunder Punch Mega Medicham and Swords Dance Rillaboom. Ice Beam allows it to switch into and threaten Landorus-T and Garchomp with an OHKO which is necessary to prevent them from simply swords dancing and going for a Z move as they can with most of the other foggers since Latias outspeeds them. With the second slot you can choose how to deal with heatran, aura sphere is recommended as it makes it harder for Weavile and Tyranitar to pursuit trap Latias as well as hitting some steel types harder however earthquake hits Heatran much harder even with an attack hindering nature and scores a 2HKO whereas aura sphere isn't even a guaranteed 3HKO on spdef Heatran. Refresh is an option if you hate being poisoned by tran, but having ice beam as your only attacking move kind of sucks.
 
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reserving whirlpool + toxic + reflect type

Latias-Mega (F) @ Latiasite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Reflect Type
- Recover
- Whirlpool

i rlly like this set, basically u trap somethin with whirlpool n toxic stall them, reflect type is there because its a really cool move n can mess up ur opponent if u do some nice predicts, i think this set would fit well with a magnezone for trapping steels n something to benefit from walls being knocked out, maybe ashgren?
 
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Reserving Dragon Dance

Latias @ Latiasite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 116 HP / 142 Atk / 76 Def / 176 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Zen Headbutt
- Earthquake
- Recover


Zen Headbutt is your main STAB (I thought this would be better than Dragon Claw), Earthquake for coverage. Recover because there would be literally 0 reason to use this over MLatios, let alone any other dragon dancing pokemon if you were to carry any other move. The EVs were made to avoid a 2HKO on Clefable, and notable allows it to; avoid 2HKO from Tapu Fini, avoid an OHKO from Jolly Mega Tar (If anyone even uses that) (Regardless Adamant offensive tar only has a 37% to OHKO) (Offensive Mega Tar actually loses to +1 Mega Latias if it has taken SR damage once before) (yes my use of brackets are totally necessary), avoid an OHKO from Mega Medicham's Ice Punch after stealth rock, gives it a 75% chance to live Lando's Z Fly, allows it to live 2 Jolly Dragapult's Dragon Darts and always live a Volcarona's Bug Buzz after stealth rock. Speed allows it to outspeed scarf Victini, but Max speed can be run to outspeed adamant Pert / Modest Venu / Scarf Kartana. rest went into Defence to take the hard physical hits better, such as Mega Tar's Crunch and Mega Medi's Ice Punch. Going with 76 SpD gives you a much better chance to live Ash Greninja's Dark Pulse, and takes Scarf Lele's Moonblast better, as well as give it a chance of living Specs Lele. 76 Def also makes unboosted Dragapults DDarts a likely 2HKO after Stealth Rock, as appossed to a 50/50.

There goes my braincells and my sanity.
 
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That's a victory for Whirlpool, congrats to Pannu for winning the week!

Cycle 6
:ss/slowbro:
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Slowbro's Future Sight/Teleport Shenanigans have become the bane of several different tiers across Smogon, and National Dex is no exception. Slowbro has largely been running one set for a while now as a result. Can you give this pink blob some variation?

Posting will go until November 24th
Banned Sets

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