Einsam_Delphin said:
| burninmylight said:
Yeah, in 2010...
But this is 2016, and now Serperior is very popular not only on Battlespot, but on battle simulators like Showdown as well. It's in Smogon's OU (overused) tier now: http://www.smogon.com/dex/xy/pokemon/serperior/
Wondering why it's so popular now? Hint: it only involves a single move in its learnset, not some expansive movepool...
|
And it's movepool as a whole is still jank. It's thanks to an OP hidden ability that it found better usage.
Going off topic but if what you say about it is true then I'm actually surprised such a one dimensional Pokemon is doing so well. I struggle to even bring mine into the match with every team having like 3-4 Pokes that resist it.
|
Yeah, it's movepool as a whole is trash. But my point is that an expansive learnset isn't the be all, end all. If a Pokemon has other redeeming factors, then usually one or two moves are all it needs. I've faced plenty of Contrary Serperiors both online and in the Maison: the one consistency between all of them is that the opponent doesn't give a damn about type matchups and resistances. He/she/it is going to spam Leaf Storm and get that special attack sky high no matter what you throw at it.
Hell, I just faced a guy with one two nights ago; I had a Delphox, a Mega Pinsir and a Dragalge on my team: three Pokemon that resist grass (two double-resist) and can one-shot it with the right set up. The dude didn't care: he kept spamming Leaf Storm and Giga Drain like there was no tomorrow, and I barely won the match. If you allow that thing to freely get off two Leaf Storms and can't outspeed it, you just might be f'ed.
But getting back to the point, from a competitive, PvP standpoint, there really aren't as many Pokemon that benefit from a huge movepool as you think. It's nice to have, but it's usually not the deciding factor on whether a Pokemon is good or not. Again, Donphan: has a godly physical moveset variety, but most people don't use it as a straight up attacker. Hawlucha and Blaziken have an OK moveset variety, but most people only use their two STABs plus an attack-boosting move (I've seen a lot of people with only one on Blaziken too).