I know Knock Off is weaker. But I didn't remember if I bred Night Slash onto Torchic. I THINK I did. But I did a lot of breeding, so I lost track.
I wasn't sure HOW to preserve Blaziken, to be honest. I'm not used to having a wall with no recovery, and no way to stall at least a little. Most of my team is really frail. Without a Baton Passer or similar means of setting up, I don't see how I could preserve them. My limited Type variety meant that I couldn't switch in freely, and I didn't have the bulk to last long enough to whittle things down. Crap. I totally should have given Baton Pass to Blaziken. Pass the Speed Boosts to Talonflame, set up Swords Dance, then wreck shop.
Posted now. gtg in 2 min, but: Yeah, Cofagrigus was certainly a problem for your team. Volcarona can 1v1 it and come out on top, but nothing really likes to switch in on the shadow balls. Also, just a detail: Knock Off is way weaker than Night Slash since we are playing without items. =P
I did have both Ironhead and EQ, but a rock move alongside that is great for coverage on Excadrill. Also, that Careful nature and defensive build really came in clutch as well, because the offensive variants that I'm more used to playing would have been easily OHKOd by Volcarona. And yeah, Blaziken is a scary mon to go up against. I did have one decent answer to it in Cofagrigus, but once that goes down, I'm only left with Blastoise as a check, who can't even switch in. And without that as well, I'd just straight up lose to a +2 speed Blaziken. It's still a pretty tough matchup in general. But I do think TW on ferro and some careful preserving of Blaziken as well as maybe a stronger set on Banette could have the potential to turn things around.
If you did save the code, could you put it up? Just to get it up in the thread. The only coverage I had for Cofagrigus was on Banette. Who couldn't switch in on a Shadow Ball. My only other option would be Blaziken, who had Night Slash or could get Knock Off. But that would mean giving up either Protect or Stone Edge. Which is one more option to handle Aerodactyl gone.
And perhaps. If I kept Shadowballing, there would always be that risk of an SpDef drop eventually, which might have forced an attack from Talon. Otherwise, I'd probably have stayed in until I had to struggle to be honest. Aerodactyl already goes down to +4 Acrobatics (if you're running max attack) so I really had no other option than passing Mummy to it. If I ran out of every move on Cofagrigus, my play would have been to switch to another less valuable pokemon, and then back to Cofagrigus to try to bait the attack. But yeah, that could still have been really bad for me though. =P
I never thought of Thunder Wave. That might have been an option. I really didn't need Power Whip against your team. I wasn't expecting Rock Tomb. I don't know why. I was thinking you carried STAB (Iron Head and Earthquake), Stealth Rock, and I didn't even think you'd have a Rock Move. I was hoping I could pressure you out against the damage from Fiery Dance (and maybe get the Sp. Atk boost), then set up on the switch. But, Volcarona died immediately. I think that Blaziken could've done work as well, if I could get it in with enough Speed Boosts up. Rock, Fighting, and Fire is good coverage. So many of my Pokemon require set up, though. And you could just freely switch around them to crush me.
Well, I'd have to think about that one for a bit. But I feel Talonflame and/or Volcarona are the keys to winning pretty much. Once Talon gets set up, my only option is basically to sac Cofagrigus to pass Mummy to it in order for Aerodactyl to safetly revenge it. Also, running TW on Ferrothorn is always an option since the only pokemon immune to it is Excadrill, who pretty much loses to Ferrothorn anyway. So it's a pretty safe option to hit my switch ins with. Finally, I've never used non-mega Banette either to be honest, but I do feel like there has to be something it can do better. I know it gets access to Disable, so it can always pull some tricks with that, in order to prevent too much setup. And it also gets taunt, for stall-breaking. So I'd probably try to use it for that, I think. Also, once Cofagrigus goes down, I don't really have any switch-ins for Blaziken, so if you can manage to preserve Blaziken until Cofagrigus goes down, it becomes a lot more valuable.
Maybe I could have PP stalled Shadow Ball off Despair, and gotten you to switch out so I didn't lose Gale Wings? And then MAYBE the resisted +6 Acrobatics might have wiped Aerodactyl?
Good game. Question: What would you have done had our teams been reversed?
