vs
With the rise of moltres, wanted to do a fun exercise and compare these two. This is mostly from watching plays and trying it out/fighting against it, so it might not be the most correct analysis ever, but I wanted to try it out anyway
Offensive usage
Zapdos is a great offensive tool, especially but not exclusively in rain teams. There's not a lot in the tier that resists the thunder/hurricane combo, and it keeps momentum alive with unstoppable volt switches. Outside of rain, hurricane and heat wave are still great. Heat wave in specific is a great tool vs kingambit, who can survive one hit and threatens to ohko it depending on supreme overlord stacks or put it on sucker punch mindgames. Hurricane makes tusk volt switch blocking almost unviable, and its good typing means even without bulk investiment it can still survive vs higher threats like valiant, sneasler, zama.
It does forego thunder wave and some sort of speed control for its team, but the pokemon it can nail down make it worth it and static helps with punishing attackers, even turning checks into winnable matches if unreliable.
Compared to bulkier sets though, its easier to nail down and while I did say the typing helps it keep some of that defensive profile, it doesn't like getting hit by nukes like gholdengo, specs pult, pyro ball etc, and gets chipped faster/needs to click roost more often. Ting Lu, lando and sandy shocks can stop it and without the bulk, the latter two may threaten to ko it or force it to switch out. Glowking is also a great stop to it.
I haven't seen a lot of offensive
Moltres, so I can't talk about it in depth. I think it has a lot of potential and moltres hasn't been fully explored yet, but having no equivalent of rain enabling and competition with cinder which provides hazard control is an issue. If anyone has any experience with it though let me know!
Defensive usage
I'm starting with Moltres since I talked too much about zapdos LOL.
Moltres, just like zapdos, has a great defensive profile vs a lot of the offensive threats right now. Flame body is an incredible ability, in quite a few situations even better than static. While zapdos without heat wave can be picked apart by gambit, which doesn't
like thunder wave but doesn't get super bothered by it, moltres immediately threatens it to get burned, and doesn't allow for a sword dance equalizer by forcing it out immediately. Similar situation with valiant, tusk, sneasler, dnite etc. It can run wow if it wants a consistent crippling too, but just the threat of flame body forces a lot of switches in the moltres player favor, which zapdos doesn't force as much
A lot of the mons it has good matchups against tend to overlap with zapdos, but stuff like resisting valiant/enamorus moonblast, ghold make it rain and the fact it doesn't have to rely on hurricane for some matchups is really good. It toasts corvi resisting both cinder pyro but also the uturn makes it great at helping keep spikes up/open up the path to get spikes up
U-turn, while not dealing the same amount of damage like zapdos, still makes it a good pivot that doesn't get stopped by ting lu.
It also has issues that overlap with zapdos, but also some issues exclusive: the typing, while great for a lot of things, is scared of gren and h-samu, which zapdos can threaten easily. It struggles harder with garg, especially tera water, and doesn't like pult thunderbolt.
It has lower speed, and has some of its bulk benefits cut by the fact it will often be hit first, roosting is trickier, and is more scared of 2hkos/3hkos than zapdos in certain situations. While running hurricane, it still hates rain teams (for obvious reasons lol) and is a bad mu against them.
What do you guys prefer to use? which teams fit each better?
Please let me know if I missed anything, got anything wrong etc.
)
ing so hard from seeing my Sliggoo put in so much work for me. Once I get more actual testing down (it was a goof around with that Rain team and screwing about with Sliggoo instead of Goodra), I feel like I could actually get something more solid down. K-Goodra feels like it may actually have a small Rain niche pre-DLC.