from D - B+
Mewtwo has no reason to be in the D rankings. It is nowhere near unviable as the current viability ranking says. One might be confused to as why I am nominating it to the same ranking as its more powerful version,
so I’ll begin to explain my reasonings.
When looking in a vacuum, yes,
does look strictly inferior to
, but that’s not really the case here. There are 2 big things that set these apart. First of all,
, unlike
has the pressure ability, and a defense stat 20 points higher than its mega counterpart. You might be confused to as why this matters, but I’ll come to that later. The second thing that differentiates them is the fact that
is able to hold an item. Of course having
forced to hold an item not make it any worse. This has been proven multiple times with the likes of
,
,
and others. However,
not being forced to hold an item does give it more roomspace.
The nasty plot moveset is almost entirely outclassed by
, even when equipped with a
, it still has a 44% chance to not knock out ho-oh in 1 hit after a nasty plot, and whilst it’s better than
s roll, the lacking speed is crucial. However, the one set that sets it apart from its mega counterpart, is the foul2 set.
If you’re someone who’s not familiar with the ubers meta historically, you might be confused to as what the set is, and what it does. But if you have played ubers for a while, you may remember it being a big threat in old ubers metas, and after playing with it myself, I do believe that it still has a niche in the current meta.
Mewtwo @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psystrike
- Will-O-Wisp
- Foul Play
- Recover
(Keep in mind that this nomination is heavily stall biased)
Using
as a defensive presence may look odd, but it does have some niches going for it. First of all, with willowisp and foul play, it can become very threatening against a lot of physical attackers. It specifically matchups up well against the mighty
. While this may not look very promising at first due to a handful of other pokemon checking
,
still has a small niche over them all.
First of all, while
may look like a straight up better check to it, as it not only is immune to a light that burns the sky, but is also sure to get a one hit knock out it
decided to stay in its original form, not ultra bursting into
, and thus keeping its prism armor ability. But 1 big flaw comes with this. The ability to not use another arceus form. Ever since national dex anything goes was replaced with national dex ubers, species clause has been removed, thus not allowing the use of multiple arceuses when building a team.
is one of the top pokemon in the tier, with its ability to be any type a user desires, it can be fit on a lot of different team structures, which means that if you want to use another
, you will not be able to use
to check
.
But there are still other viable dark types that can be used to check
.
is a prime example. With its massive hp stat in conjunction with stab foul play, it looks like all the problems are solved. Not only does
check
, it also leaves room for an
in the tesmbuilder. This is however, when a new problem pops up.
leads. This may seem extremely nitpicky. Glimmora leads aren’t very common, and even if you do happen to face one, there’s often another pokemon on your team that can handle it. This however, is not the case with stall teams.
The only reliable pokemon commonly seen on stall that can tear apart
leads is
with its infamous tkiller set. This, however runs into a new problem. Role compression. Whilst yes, you can use
and
to both beat
and
, you can still do both of that with a foultwo
set. At the end of the day, you only have 6 pokemon and 36 moves to beat 1000 pokemon. This is why role compression is so important. If you can use 1 pokemon to do the job for 2 pokemon, that’s a good trade. You will not be able to just put both
and
on every team, which is why this set is that effective. If you still think that beating
leads is too nitpicky,
can still help against other matchups.
It does have some small niches such as out speeding and being able to burn taunt
forms, but one of the biggest reasons to use it is due to its still effective offensive presence. Even with uninvested special attack,
can still hit hard, most importantly against the rest calm mind
set.
With rest and calm mind, it can feel very heinous to play against this set. It can be very tough to take down with 8 rest pp and the ability you burn you with scald.
fixes that. With uninvested attack, you can make sure to be able to 3hko an opposing
when switching in. This means that you won’t have to use as many resources as you’d normally need.
With a base speed of 130 in conjunction with foul play, it can still be able to hit some big threats hard. Physical set up sweepers such as swords dance
that hasn’t gotten time to rock polish yet, can take about 50% damage from a foul play coming from a
. But there are also other big threats that
can handle. Powerful psychic types such as the aforementioned
or
aren’t able to hit
with their psychic stab very hard and can take lots of damage from foul play due to their low defenses.
may still look like a very niche pokemon, and some may argue that it shouldn’t be in the same tier as
, and u totally agree with that. The problem comes up when you look at the lower tiers. B tier, the tier under B+ has pokemon such as
, a pokemon that is never seen in high ladder and is mainly just a bad matchup fish pokemon into stall, and
who lost its niche in the metagame with smash pass being banned.
is a middle of the road type of pokemon in that sense. It has better niches than a lot of the pokemon in B rank, but is generally worse than the pokemon in B+ rank. If the vr gets an update, and removes the unviable pokemon from the middle tiers,
would probably sit at around B or B- rank, but as of now it is now, the best i can give it is B+.
I’ve personally been starting to use a foultwo team recently, and had some success on the high ladder peaking at 1930.
During the time laddering, I’ve also saved numerous replays of
doing good work.
[Note that during these replays, my was holding a only for speed creeping s not holding a . For the majority of games stood in its base form, and when it did mega, the main principle often still implied.]
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldexubers-1944708352-ek1egcog44snqlfj1p3m08ylywspcjdpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldexubers-1943388386-4748xzvmi57xvca171zapfgxhac6pvkpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldexubers-1942652961-mdr6uwntsgd1eop2qg4hu4nctnidjkmpw
Again, whilst
isn’t the most splashable pokemon ever, saying that’s it’s better than other pokemon such as
,
or
and is unviable is just straight up not true.