levi post = zebra likin
I think Levi outlined the crux of this suspect discussion succinctly in a post in the other metagame discussion thread,
here:
Corporal Levi said:
We shouldn't compare Sun to specific Pokemon, because of course its lack of checks are going to seem impressive when we compare a single Pokemon to a core that requires a full team to support it. The question here is whether Sun is more difficult to check than other prominent offensive playstyles, such as Shellder offense or Fightspam. In a double Chlorophyll team, a single check like Ponyta can easily be negated with Acid Downpour from Bulbasaur so that Bellsprout sweeps - is this different from Alolan Grimer trapping Abra and Gastly for Bulk Up Timburr, or Corphish knocking off Mienfoo for Tirtouga? Does madoka's
sample team have a better matchup versus the metagame than Dundies' sample team?
It's an excellent point. In my opinion, the distinction between typespam and sun builds will be the deciding factor in this suspect test, and we should examine these similarities and differences thoroughly as we come to our own conclusions. What makes sun feel more suspect-worthy than any of those other examples provided in the quote above? Is a timer a fair trade-off for the lack a required set-up turn?
Levi accurately drew together the similarities
here; to summarize, both styles of teams pummel soft checks and require multiple answers to effectively deal with them, and they attract the usage of hard counters that are not great as a whole, but are fine in the context of dealing with typespam (Spritzee was a fine enough counter-example to Munchlax and co for me). I find these thoughts to be both true and acceptable. However, I feel that the differences were glossed over somewhat, so I'd like to extrapolate on each individually.
Reliance on Vulpix
Sun has a genuine and hard weakness in its reliance on Vulpix. Vulpix is frail (with Heat Rock), weak to SR, and sits at just an OK speed tier. It can be trapped (Pursuit, Diglett) or otherwise pressured by faster Pokemon, and losing Vulpix early often means losing the game outright. My potential sun counterplay
against Sken revolved around trapping Vulpix with Pursuit, keeping SR up, and having Rain Dance in the back on one of my faster-than-Vulpix Pokemon so that hopefully it could not return to set sun. You don't necessarily have to play around Bellsprout & its partner to beat sun -- and indeed doing so is very hard -- because Vulpix is the weakest link.
At the same time, Vulpix -is- hard to punish effectively. It does not have to stay in on anything not named Diglett, so you can feasibly use it to set sun and then switch to one of sun's many pivots / sacs. Slowfoo is probably the most important of those, since it can tank a hit and immediately U-turn into a Chlorophyll. While its speed tier (17) is not great, it is fast and strong enough to pose a threat on its own, and Flame Charge makes it difficult to sacrifice something -> trap with Diglett.
Other options exist for setting sun (stuff like Sunny Day on your rocker comes to mind) but sun is much less effective, if not entirely ineffective, once Vulpix is gone.
The difference between Vulpix and a set-up move
Corporal Levi said:
Bellsprout's Speed tier is less impressive when you compare it to LC's other fast setup sweepers, primarily Shell Smashers and Zigzagoon, which are also difficult to check by outspeeding post-setup.
This is true, yes. It is also true that handling Vulpix throughout a match & finding set-up opportunities are similar in execution. However, the important difference here is the one mentioned as a trade-off with the timer: Pokemon that are setting up must spend a turn themselves to do so. Levi did not expand upon this to the degree that I'm interested in in his post, so I'll take it further:
- Pokemon that are setting up must have at least one turn to do so. There are ways to ease the transition, like with Memento support or on a predicted switch/Protect, but in almost all scenarios a Pokemon that is setting up must do so with the notion that they will be taking at least one hit.
- Because Pokemon that are setting up must take a hit, they are weakened and are more easily revenged by priority moves and other follow-ups.
- Because Pokemon that are setting up must take a hit, it is entirely feasible that you can prevent an opponent's Pokemon from setting up through excellent play. I can keep my opponents DD Scraggy from sweeping me by not KOing something with my defensive Staryu, a Pokemon that enables its setup, and instead feeding the kill through my Dazzling Gleam Gastly. This is perhaps the most important distinction between the two.
- Shell Smashers weaken themselves further with defense drops, again making them more susceptible to priority. Other boosters are more easily revenged by fast (16+ spe) scarfers.
- Vulpix's sun lasts even after the first abuser is KOed.
Throughout the process of teambuilding and the subsequent battle, you can generally gameplan for boosting sweepers via your play & by whittling it into range where something else can kill. This is not true for Vulpix and the Chlorophyll Crew, because all they need to do is switch in Vulpix once then flee to the nearest pivot and bring in their powerhouses. You, very generally, cannot prevent Vulpix from setting sun by pressuring it and making smart switches. It just sets sun by -existing-. This is an advantage that heavily favors sun, in my opinion.
Timer
And does the timer truly offset this? Most people have stalled out a sun timer easily enough, but what about twice? What about the fact that stalling out the sun timer necessitates taking constant chip damage between all of your Pokemon, or that Vulpix can just come back in and reset it? A team that simply survives the timer without actually removing the Chlorophyll Crew will just have to go through the whole shebang again, slightly weaker this time.
The concept of simply stalling out the timer is one I genuinely think I'm not understanding as an argument. To me, you -can't- stall out the timer unless you have like two Fake Out Mienfoos and a Protect on something else. Is it the combination of stalling it out & killing one of the sun sweepers in a timely fashion? If you're not doing anything except attempting to outpredict the sun player for 5 or 6 turns in a row, there's a really big issue there and I'm a little confused as to why nobody else sees it that way. I want to see what everyone else thinks and why this is used as an argument for "sun's limited effectiveness". Please, enlighten me!
Priority & speed
Typically, boosted sweepers (SSers are what I mean mostly here, as they have the similar speed tier w/ Chlorophylls) and sun are handled similarly due to a lack of faster Pokemon, but here are the differences I see:
- Boosted sweepers, as mentioned above, must take a turn to boost. This gives an avenue to handle them, whether it's through attacking the booster outright and revenging with priority or
preventing it from setting up altogether.
- SSers are typically weak or neutral to common priority moves (Fighting / Water / Dark) and have to deal with defense drops; ChloroCrew does not have these issues.
- Slower sweepers (DD Scraggy, etc) do not have to worry about defense drops, but they are prime targets for standard speed Scarf Pokemon (like 16+ works fine for most things I can think of).
- While Fake Out is often a much more pressing concern for sun sweepers than SSers, they can typically sit through them and grab a KO after eating one Fake Out and repeating the process (or they can always switch out, and come back in... still with sun up).
- A good chunk of shell smashers have genuine hard checks that are quite good. Pawniard is commonly seen as an answer for Shellder, Timburr for Dwebble, etc.
In regards to speed, I wrote this earlier:
While it also demands multiple answers because of the risk of something dumb like Z-Poison Jab, one of these answers can just be "something faster", and in LC that's how you can effectively deal with any Pokemon not named Torchic/Carvanha.
This is important to consider not just in the context of shell smashers vs sun, but as a whole for LC. If you're playing against Fightspam and something dies to a Mienfoo, you have the option to bring in a Pokemon that immediately threatens it, whether it's by virtue of being faster like Abra/a scarf Pokemon, or being fat enough that it can eat any hit and KO back like Spritzee. After it kills something that's slower, you can be faster and put pressure on the opponent again. If the opposing Mienfoo is actually scarf, you can feasibly identify this based on team structure and deal with it appropriately because it's locked into one move. When you're fighting sun, you are *always* on the back foot until you stall the timer out because you simply cannot pressure sun sweepers post-kill (unless you're running like Meowth).
**
No other team archetype completely subverts the concept of revenging sweepers and handling typespam the way that sun does. You can't truly prevent sun set-up by pressuring it, because Vulpix just needs to switch in to set it up. You can't chunk the sweepers in exchange for their setup & to weaken them to priority, because they literally are not present for the setup. You can't outspeed them unless you're running extremely fast scarfers, whose usefulness I have outlined before. If you kill the fast, dangerous Chlorophyll sweeper, you could immediately face another one with nearly the exact same unrevengable qualities. Your priority options are limited because they resist two of four common priority types and can dodge another (sucker) with Sleep Powder. Vulpix really only has to be able to set sun twice to dominate a game, so if it can escape once into a sacrificed Pokemon then even stalling out the sun timer once feels meaningless.
Corporal Levi said:
Due to the drawbacks of hard checks, most teams will instead pack multiple ways to deal with Fightspam and Birdspam; in a metagame where Sun is a top threat, we add Chlorospam to that list. And while double Chlorophyll can still win against a team that is prepared for Sun, this is no different from how Fightspam will still have a good chance against teams that run multiple Fighter checks.
Yes. They both can decimate their soft checks, but it's the combination of instantaneous speed, ability to overwhelm checks, and resistance to priority/not needing to eat a hit that separates sun from set-up sweepers and other typespam builds.