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Project Top 10 Titans of the Gen 8 UU Metagame
- Thread starter Lily
- Start date
zarude
18 Zera, 1 Glowbro, 1 Amoonguss
glowbro
I guess Zarude since everyone else is voting for it
swinubfan44
formerly TeamCharm
very obviously the red iron bug
amoongus
pokemonisfun
Banned deucer.
chansey
nominee's sprite here.
What effect did Pokemon have on the metagame?
Joining UU during DLC 1, Chansey and her enormous special bulk and access to key utility moves kept a plethora of special attackers in check and served as the defensive bedrock of several team archetypes.
Some of the special attackers Chansey was the preeminent counterplay for included Choice Specs Primarina, Hydreigon, pivot Thundurus, Nihilego and Celesteela. All of these Pokemon were at various points considered highly germane in the metagame, A rank or higher in viability. While most of these Pokemon still had ways to deal with Chansey, they had to run suboptimal sets or at least make concessions towards the metagame in order to do so. Furthermore, while these Pokemon had other counters or at least hard checks, nothing was able to blanket check so many of these threats will still fulfilling key utility moves.
In particular, Teleport was the main utility move that decided what type of archetype Chansey support - if she ran Teleport, she would be used on more bulky offenses and "Chansey offenses", while if she didn't run Teleport, she fit perfectly well on very defensive and balance teams. Teleport allowed extremely safe pivoting into very powerful attackers like Conkeldurr, Zygarde, and Mamoswine that otherwise struggled to find switch in opportunities throughout the game. When forgoing Teleport, Chansey had more room to fit in other utility moves like Stealth Rock, Aromatherapy, and Wish to support the rest of a defensive team.
In what main roles was Pokemon used?
In her role on defensive teams, Chansey was used over (or in conjunction with) other special walls with utility moves simply because she was the best and covered more roles than any other wall possibly could. Without Chansey, threats like Choice Specs Primarina and even Nidoking and Nidoqueen could become potent stallbreakers. But they weren't simply because of Chansey's ubiquity on stall teams. other similar special walls like Audino simply saw nearly no usage in UU because Chansey was just so much bulkier - it's only real competition was Umbreon, which was more of a partner than competition on most stall teams. This is especially true because most Umbreon were physically defensive this generation.
In her role on more offensive teams, Chansey found more competition because there existed a large quantity of highly viable bulky pivots in UU since DLC. For example, Slowking boasted more resistances (and weaknesses) along with Regenerator and Future Sight to keep healthy and aid offensive partners. Chansey's role was that it still had unrivalved special bulk to again keep key special threats in check and it could still, if necessary, fit an additional utility move like Stealth Rock if it had to.
What caused it to have a significant impact?
While the utility moves and archetypes that Chansey enabled have been detailed above, Chansey also extracted value from a certain group of partners.
Defensively, Chansey was the cornerstone of many defensive cores: Skarm/Chansey, Quagsire/Chansey, Umbreon/Chansey, and Salamence/Chansey all helped Chansey's comparatively low physical bulk (compared that is, to her special bulk, her physical bulk was still at least average for a wall). For more stall oriented teams, the defensive core simply meshed together into 5 or 6 Pokemon "cores" that walled the vast majority of the metagame comfortable. While Chansey had access to amazing utility, it could usually only run one or two key utility moves at most - this gave room for it's partners to pick up the slack. Notably Umbreon could provide Wish support on stall and freed up Chansey's role there.
Offensively, Chansey was less picky towards her partners - she could basically enable everything. Offensive threats as disparate as Zarude and Choice Specs Primarina and Choice Band Zygarde all greatly benefitted from Chansey. It was nice to not be weak to Fighting and have physical bulk but these qualities were far from necessary to partner with Chansey because Chansey still usually had at least one defensive partner on these offenses, notably Defog Salamence.
How do/did you deal with this Pokemon in UU?
While Chansey was doubtless the most important aspect of stall and possibly the most important defensive Pokemon, she still had extremely hard counters and checks.
Physically offensive Fighting types could destroy Chansey and OHKO or 2HKO at worst- Conkeldurr in particular didn't mind status as it as frequently burned anyways from the Guts Flame Orb tactic.
Many of the special attackers than Chansey was reliable in checking could adapt to get around her passivity or at least heavily reduce Chansey's effectiveness: Nihilego could run Knock Off or even Meteor Beam Pain Split, Thundurus could run Nasty Plot + Focus Blast or cripple with Knock Off and Hydreigon could run Taunt as some examples.
Special attackers that could more naturally get around Chansey were uncommon but effective to the point where they were considered stallbreakers because of how important Chansey was on stall: Calm Mind Magic Bounce Hatterene could beat Chansey with Drainkng Kiss and Aegislash could beat many Chansey because she could frequently not even damage Aegislash.
Besides directly beating Chansey with other Pokemon, her effectiveness could be reduced with strong use of hazards and Knock Off as Chansey was reliant on Eviolite for bulk which meant she rarely ran Heavy-Duty-Boots.
Zarude
scizor
