Ktütverde
of course
Hello, I just wanted to put my two cents in about the kingler suspect, because I've seen many people in the PU room saying that ursaring is more dangerous or that octillery is stronger, and also because even mid- / good- level players with not enough experience in PU sometimes don't really know exactly why kingler is broken, which is understandable given all its flaws. The main reasons have been given above, so I want to list some scenarios and Match-Ups vs Kingler.
Here are some scenarios showing how unhealthy kingler is:
-vs Offense (ex: mesprit/chan/togedemaru/pyroar/lycanrock/swanna).
Kingler might look semideadweight because it is ko'd or almost ko'd by mesprit, swanna, pyroar, Z lycan, and zingzap. The issue, however, is that it can come in on chan relatively safely and do a ton of damage to mesprit/swanna which try to check it. You will say: well same with a drampa/ursaring, you can't wall it! Yes, but kingler can just come back later via parting shot/healing wish/on a resisted move, use agility and JUST WIN. tl;dr : kingler wallbreaks and sweeps at the same time; it is therefore self sufficient. Its good typing (pure water)+high physical bulk help it further achieving this goal: if it gets an agility, machpunch+accelerock won't be enough to Ko it.
-vs Balance (ex: regirock/tangela/pyroar/skuntank/poliwrath/togedemaru)
Bulky teams always have a tangela/silvally-water/silvally-dragon JUST for the kingler matchup (even though they aren't bad at all), so one could think RIP kingler. But kingler doesn't really care actually. Whether you are using SD or agility, it can often break the team on its own. I just created a random BO team here with two of the "best kingler checks", tangela and poliwrath. This team is probably the least weak to kingler since you can check it defensively and offensively with pyroar and toge, but you can also just mispredict and have your tangela icebeamed, or your poliwrath SD+superpowered. Good matchup, but only because of Tangela+Poli (which could be tangela+silvally-W/D). The team is still super-centered around the kingler matchup, and will struggle with stuff like lanturn w/ icebeam, eelektross or swanna, but the priority is kingler nowadays. I won't even talk about kingler+spikes, because nothing can reliably check that.
-vs Stall (ex: pyukumuku/altaria/articuno/regirock/audino/tangela)
No pyukumuku=instaloss vs kingler. The only pokemon able to COUNTER kingler is pyukumuku, so I don't need to explain further: stall would simply be unviable (or relying on predictions/wish passing to kingler checks) without pyuku, so you had better keep it healthy vs kingler. I don't like stall, by that I mean if you are stalling and get swept that's your problem, but I find it pretty scary that kingler destroys almost any stall without pyuku (stall can still use other methods to wall gurdurr/Crotomb/absol etc, but nothing else is able to 100% beat kingler)
-Note that Kingler+Mesprit is super common (well mesprit itself is super common), so saying that Kingler+HW is broken for exemple is stupid since Healing Wish is THE meta and should be taken into account just as stealth rock and defog.
-The teams used as exemples don't belong to anybody as far as I know, I just put together pokemons which represent the playstyles and synergize together quite well.
Agility sweeper
Kingler @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Liquidation
- Ice Beam
- Stomping Tantrum
- Agility
SD wallbreaker
Kingler @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Liquidation
- Knock Off
- Superpower
- Swords Dance
Kingler @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Liquidation
- Ice Beam
- Stomping Tantrum
- Agility
SD wallbreaker
Kingler @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Liquidation
- Knock Off
- Superpower
- Swords Dance
Here are some scenarios showing how unhealthy kingler is:
-vs Offense (ex: mesprit/chan/togedemaru/pyroar/lycanrock/swanna).
Kingler might look semideadweight because it is ko'd or almost ko'd by mesprit, swanna, pyroar, Z lycan, and zingzap. The issue, however, is that it can come in on chan relatively safely and do a ton of damage to mesprit/swanna which try to check it. You will say: well same with a drampa/ursaring, you can't wall it! Yes, but kingler can just come back later via parting shot/healing wish/on a resisted move, use agility and JUST WIN. tl;dr : kingler wallbreaks and sweeps at the same time; it is therefore self sufficient. Its good typing (pure water)+high physical bulk help it further achieving this goal: if it gets an agility, machpunch+accelerock won't be enough to Ko it.
-vs Balance (ex: regirock/tangela/pyroar/skuntank/poliwrath/togedemaru)
Bulky teams always have a tangela/silvally-water/silvally-dragon JUST for the kingler matchup (even though they aren't bad at all), so one could think RIP kingler. But kingler doesn't really care actually. Whether you are using SD or agility, it can often break the team on its own. I just created a random BO team here with two of the "best kingler checks", tangela and poliwrath. This team is probably the least weak to kingler since you can check it defensively and offensively with pyroar and toge, but you can also just mispredict and have your tangela icebeamed, or your poliwrath SD+superpowered. Good matchup, but only because of Tangela+Poli (which could be tangela+silvally-W/D). The team is still super-centered around the kingler matchup, and will struggle with stuff like lanturn w/ icebeam, eelektross or swanna, but the priority is kingler nowadays. I won't even talk about kingler+spikes, because nothing can reliably check that.
-vs Stall (ex: pyukumuku/altaria/articuno/regirock/audino/tangela)
No pyukumuku=instaloss vs kingler. The only pokemon able to COUNTER kingler is pyukumuku, so I don't need to explain further: stall would simply be unviable (or relying on predictions/wish passing to kingler checks) without pyuku, so you had better keep it healthy vs kingler. I don't like stall, by that I mean if you are stalling and get swept that's your problem, but I find it pretty scary that kingler destroys almost any stall without pyuku (stall can still use other methods to wall gurdurr/Crotomb/absol etc, but nothing else is able to 100% beat kingler)
-Note that Kingler+Mesprit is super common (well mesprit itself is super common), so saying that Kingler+HW is broken for exemple is stupid since Healing Wish is THE meta and should be taken into account just as stealth rock and defog.
-The teams used as exemples don't belong to anybody as far as I know, I just put together pokemons which represent the playstyles and synergize together quite well.