ayte, so i gues i don't post here much (might be ocd or something acting up, why is this still round 16 ;-; ), but i guess i'm feeling motivated right now. this might just be personal bias getting at me, but i honestly feel as though the tanking core has been fairly mediocre for quite a while now, and it's only gotten worse as of late. i mean, to an extent i have to agree with celever in that it isn't prepared for nearly as heavily as it was in prior stages of the metagame; i know i haven't been giving much mind to this core in particular in my team-building much, regardless of the playstyle i was building for. however, i still have yet to struggle against this core, and i had a little trouble explaining clearly why, but i think i finally have a decent explanation for it: at its core, every aspect of this core is relevant to the point that most teams should already have them covered, without the need to immediately address the tanking core itself.
this probably sounds really awkward, so i'll explain a little bit. for instance, look at tangrowth. practically every offensively inclined team will already be packing something to eat Sleep Powder, whether it be a sleep talk user, vital spirit 'mon, or maybe even a sap sipper 'mon, and from there-on in it's just a matter of verifying coverage moves, if that's even necessary. what's more, there are plenty of circulating lure 'mons out there, such as fire blast absol, lo sheer force druddigon, and generalized ebelt electric-types, that are already that are perfectly useful even without tangrowth in the equation (considering stuff like esca, steelix, generalized electric-immune 'mons are already worth baiting). defensive teams might not have these sort of responses per say, but they're already going to be carrying 'mons like roselia and cryogonal for other purposes in addition to tangrowth, and most are going to be carrying clerics and / or spdef normals on top of that. as for slowking, every team should already have a couple answers to this, it's basically the most relevant 'mon in the tier lol. it's one of the biggest reasons pursuit is as worthwhile an investment for offense as it is, and no playstyle would be giving it too much leeway.
let me give a quick example. a few days ago i decided i wanted to make a casual team built around cm+bp musharna. the first thing i decided upon was to utilize scarf magneton, since it would make a solid recipient for cm boosts that could multi-purpose alongside mushy really well, trapping problem Steel-types quickly to open a better window for mushy to sweep itself, cleaning decently late-game (outpacing ScarfBoar being p.relevant), and applying pressure to the common dark-types of the tier without much trouble. from there i decided it would be a great opportunity to use an old favorite set of mine, bulky agility moltres, since it makes an effective breaker and cleaner in one, has nice synergy with both mushy and magneton (ridiculous with a cm boost, smashes ground-types / spdef grass-types for magneton, etc.). deciding to determine how to go about my means to hazard prevention later, i pretty quickly pick up seismitoad, since it has ridiculously good synergy with moltres, offers a nice check to bulky waters that can re-posses momentum on volt switchs and such nicely, and of course provides sr support. as much as i dislike fwg cores, it looked like roselia would be a really nice 'mon to have at this stage; having a clean status and tspike absorber looked to be really nice, it formed a decent "defensive core" between it, 'toad, and mushy put less pressure on the team to exert constant offensive pressure on the opp, and tspikes of my own helped wear down a ton of 'mons that check / counter my win-cons (plus it meant that i could splurge for protect on 'toad :] ). lastly, i decided to splash in a variation of offensive cryogonal w/lum berry in order to offer spin support, bait bulky waters to get poisoned, and offered some kind of game plan v.smeargle x_x
kinda longer than i thought, whoops lol. regardless, this is what i'm talking about; even without addressing the tanking core once in team-building, this team takes it on pretty well. tspikes ruin tanking, moltres ruins the core if it can hit consecutive hurricanes, individually both are covered cleanly between toad and rose, mushy sets up on the core fairly easily, etc. while i can't exactly say that my team is the best example of a "standard team", it does follow a lot of the regular cadences of the tier (fwg core, couple of things to pressure drudd, bulky psychic-type "pivot" 'mon, etc.), and in a lot of cases other teams are better prepared, running bug-types like esca or sd pinsir (still the man :> ), cb drudd, actual pursuit / baits as i mentioned, and so forth. i'm not going to go as far as to call the core outright "bad", since it still is moderately effective at checking generalized stuff and can probably get by if you're just laddering around, but i'd be lying if i were to say that it's some kind of big problem for most teams.
