gonna make one last post (before disappearing for a while) since the disrespect on my baby eternatus has been unreal. All the arguments made against eternatus are straight up false and fwiw I also do not agree that it should be promoted to A+ but you guys are really sleeping on this. I really think that this should be used more since its MUCH MUCH better in practice because it can freely make risky plays without worrying too much because it has decent bulk which means it doesnt instantly die to everything which attacks it, its fast and also gets recovery. I really dont think I can explain this really well since you wouldnt understand what I'm talking about unless youve actually used it or played vs it before but I wouldnt mind trying.
Can't believe this was nominated up. Eternatus is really not good at the moment, especially with almost every team having Necrozma-DM, Ho-Oh and Primal Groudon on them. It rarely ever has a dent on the match and shouldn't be used very frequently. It loses to so many common Pokemon, and doesn't do much back. There are Pokemon in the lower ranks I'd rather fit onto a team than this honestly. Eternatus is not that good.
I don't get how the prevalence of ndm hooh and don is bad for eternatus. It benefits eternatus if anything since neither of these mons can switch into it especially if it carries life orb. I'll go over these one by one,
Dusk Mane
252 SpA Life Orb Eternatus Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Prism Armor Necrozma-Dusk-Mane: 193-228 (48.4 - 57.2%) -- 45.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0 Atk Necrozma-Dusk-Mane Sunsteel Strike vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Eternatus: 166-196 (39.4 - 46.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Eternatus Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Prism Armor Necrozma-Dusk-Mane: 148-175 (37.1 - 43.9%) -- 100% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery (item knocked off)
Dusk mane has only 4 sunsteels vs eternatus and etern can recover those back easily. Flamethrower has much more PP than Morning Sun so you can just freely click Flamethrower and also get a burn (chance to burn is 10% and youre very likely to click flamethrower 10 times vs DM, Hooh Don teams). Even when you dont have the item, you can 2hko dusk mane after 20%ish chip. Now also keep in mind that
keeping Dusk Mane healthy is REALLY important since it performs plenty of roles on the team and if the eternatus is paired with Xerneas/Zacian then youre gonna have a really hard time especially if you get burned or fail to knock off the life orb. Because of this clicking Knock off isnt also very safe most of the time, since youll be left with low HP and you cant switch into zac/xern after this. Eternatus forces Dusk Mane to click morning suns and at one point its eventually gonna run of pp (since flamethrower has 24 and morning sun has 8) which means it has to switch out. Therefore not a consistent check.
Ho-Oh
Eternatus cannot freely click dynamax cannon since it has only 8 pp but clicking sludge bomb is fine since Ho-Oh is literally the only target for sludge bomb and it doesnt mind if ndm hard switches into it, since you can just flamethrower and beat it and force ndm to switch out at one point as well. Its really easy to predict when the dusk mane is gonna switch out (usually around the 3rd or 4th morning sun, when the person realizes that 'oh no i dont think my ndm is helping aaaaaaa').
Now idk if people forgot about this but sacred fire and brave bird do absolutely 0 to eternatus so your only play is to click whirlwind. and uhh congrats you 'checked' it by phasing it out?? did we forget about the part where eternatus just casually switches into hooh whenever it clicks sacred fire/defog/toxic?? eternatus is not a set up sweeper, it doesnt care about being phased out. it can literally come in any time and pressure hooh again. it does not mind rocks damage since it has 16 recover pp.
Whenever one sees an eternatus they are likely to switch into hooh first since its the safest
252 SpA Life Orb Eternatus Sludge Bomb vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Ho-Oh: 142-169 (34.1 - 40.6%) -- 48.3% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
If ho-oh gets poisoned here it will need assistance from jesus christ himself to check etern
if not, its just gonna whirlwind you out. switch in vs hooh again later, click sludge again and you'll get a poison eventually
lets just say they hard switch into dusk mane on the sludge bomb. you can just flamethrower and while it does knock your LO off, you can continue to use flamethrower vs dm or sludge bomb vs hooh.
252 SpA Eternatus Sludge Bomb vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Ho-Oh: 109-130 (26.2 - 31.2%) -- 13% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
this is how the calc looks. so if they switch to hooh on one of the flamethrowers vs dm, you can spam sludge bomb till you get a poison. poison + 2 sludge bombs will do *atleast* 73% (26*2 from sludge bombs + 25% from 2 poisons) damage, which hooh cannot recover off even with 2 regenerators. While yes all of this is really based on predictions, it always favors eternatus more which I'll explain later
Groudon-Primal
everyone knows that don is easy af to chip, because its been used as a zacian check and as a rocks setter, same reasons as to why hooh and dm are being used, except they get recovery and don doesnt so its easier for eternatus to kill it
252 SpA Life Orb Eternatus Dynamax Cannon (100 BP) vs. 252 HP / 200 SpD Groudon-Primal: 204-242 (50.4 - 59.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
dont need to say much here, need light screen to switch in lol
sludge bomb/flamethrower + dmax cannon does minimum 72 which means youre rlly not switching into this
there wasnt any actual argument other than the prevalence of these 3 mons hurting etern. if youre willing to use some random B/lower rank trash then its totally up to you.
Problem with eternatus is, it doesn't check nothing. Ho-oh runs sacredfire and whirlwind so it's a fairly safe answer to eternatus especially once NDM has knocked the LO off (dont use metronome for real). Then, every team carries 1 or 2 grounds (zyg/pdon/arceus) and zacian. The remaining slots can include a dmax sweeper and ditto, so great, eternatus loses to the whole team. There's really no opportunities to switchin except ho-oh (burn/phazing) and NDM (knock off), and then you have to predict every turn not to let ground types/zacian switchin for free and KO you. Also zacian can even switch-in on LO-less flame, so eternatus just cannot thrive in this meta and definitely needs to be played very well. The ho-oh burn matters a LOT because it forces the recover quite often, and every time u are in recover range ur oppo will go berserk and send their zacian/pdon/w/e in... or not, so dynamax cannon if you wish, at your own risk.
Also tyranitar makes etern's day very very tough, but i dont see ttar being popular for long once they start getting bopped by focusblast yveltal.
Leave eternatus in A, i disagree with both A- and A+ noms, it's fine where it is imo. Thanks for reading
This is a nice post and I do agree with all your points actually but I still think your arguments are still a bit flawed.
Ho-oh runs sacredfire and whirlwind so it's a fairly safe answer to eternatus especially once NDM has knocked the LO off (dont use metronome for real).
already explained why this isnt true
Then, every team carries 1 or 2 grounds (zyg/pdon/arceus) and zacian. There's really no opportunities to switchin except ho-oh (burn/phazing) and NDM (knock off)
On the flip side, the first 4 mons you mentioned also cannot switch into eternatus. Its a really common understanding
that the defensive mon is the one whos gonna switch into an offensive mon, not the other way around. the fact that it can switch into ndm and hooh and potentially beat them is actually VERY GOOD. Ho-Oh and DM are on almost every team, youre beating and switching into 2 of the top 3 defensive walls in the meta, not many offensive mons can do that .-.
then you have to predict every turn not to let ground types/zacian switchin for free and KO you.
No, its the other way around again.
Zacian is the one who should hesitate to switch into flamethrower. Eternatus has reliable recovery and can switch into plenty of mons and force them out. Most eternatus teams have solid counterplay to zacian so eternatus doesnt have to worry about 'letting zacian come into free'. Youre making it sound like everytime you see an eternatus, youd just casually hard zacian on that turn which is a huge risk since youre taking miniumum 75% from it. This means that you have to use your zacian even more carefully since you dont have a lot of HP left. again as I said, even if the eternatus does not get the predict right it can easily just switch out, come in later and try to get the predict right again.
Every relevant ground type is 2hko'd by eternatus.
The whole point of this is that
youre the one whos taking the risk by switching into zacian/zygarde/groundceus/don.
If you get the prediction wrong, your VERY important defensive backbone is destroyed. (since eternatus does solid damage to mentioned things)
If I get the predict wrong, I can just straight up switch out and come back again later.
I can afford to take the risk because I have recovery and I have plenty of opportunities to switch in. But youre the one who doesnt have recovery (other than groundceus), so youre the one whos risking the existence of your pokemon by hard switching into this monster.
i wasnt rlly clear here so tldr is that the 'prediction game' which youre playing here is in favour of eternatus and not the mons youre using to switch into it.
Also heard something about ditto. Eternatus is VERY EASY to improof. You can scout the dittos move by switching to hooh and you also lock ditto into a move and they cant even dynamax, so its super easy to wall it.
again i dont think that eternatus is an A+ mon but I strongly believe that its the best out of the A rank mons and is viability wise closer to an A+ mon than an A- one. This is without a doubt the most underrated mon in national dex ag, but please dont use it because it always beats me thanks