Garchomp an Uber?

[Politoed666]

Some dude on the 'pedia is claiming Garchomp is now an uber. Your thoughts?

 

[The Outrage]

Some dude on 'pedia probably failed to mention how Garchomp was only uber for Smogon and all things affiliated with it and doesn't really affect anything at all

Also there was an old thread on it here where people blew the whole thing out of proportion. Long story short, the ones who were actually into competitive battlign agreed, except me who had no real opinion since I always had a hail team so Garchomp never had an easy time.

Also where was this mentioned? Don't tell me it was in that awful attempt at Bulbapedia's tiers -_-

Personally I don't think tiers should be mentioned at all on the main pages since they are liable to change and that there are multiple tiers out there.

Also this: Borderline
BL Pokémon are considered by some to be too strong for UU and may be found in some OU battles. They are classified as BL because they simply do not have the capacity to compete in solid OU consistently

That is not what BL is. BL is the ban tier of UU. Pokemon are UU merely because they are underused, Pokemon are BL because they are too broken for UU yet are not overused. Things like Magneton who is shit at everything other than killing Skarmory was OU because it was used a lot to kill Skarmory.

There is a corrolation between usage and power, but no tier apart from BL and Ubers actually take power into consideration. If you are going by power, then one should not classify them by usage terms

 

[Shinx3000]

Nearly everytime I face a garchomp in wifi battle tower, I KO them with my dragonite and when that fails, I use substatute+blizzard with emploeon which 9/10 hits if the garchomp digs first.

I'd probably rate garchomp on similar to dragonite but dragonite being slightly weaker than garchomp, only difference being it can learn dig and earthquake, but dragonite is part flying and second highest base stat average of all non-legendary Pokémon and it can take out a garchomp with ice beam as it can learn it too.

asides from my pro dragonite thing which is beside the point. It does have the second highest base stat average like dragonite and slaking, but Garchomp has the lowest Attack stat of any of the pseudo-legendary Pokémon. I think garchomp to be a good pokemon and maybe should be considered an uber, but my teams always KO garchomp before it ever gets much of a chance to do anything.

Slightly offtopic, I have noticed a lot of garchomp in wifi battles called "Jetblade" I can see why its called that, I must have seen 6 different peoples garchomp with same name. And I have yet to come up against dragonite and I have not seent hat overused. I used metagross a lot and have seen more garchomp that most other pokemon (besides infernape) used.

 

[The Outrage]

Nearly everytime I face a garchomp in wifi battle tower, I KO them with my dragonite and when that fails, I use substatute+blizzard with emploeon which 9/10 hits if the garchomp digs first.

Shinx3000 you realise that standard competitive play is always 6 vs 6 and that wifi battle tower, despite its name is still controlled by computers? Saying that the only difference between Dragonite and Garchomp is EQ and Dig (which is crap move anyway) is the biggest understatement of the year.

Garchomp just lols at Salamence being two base speeds higher. Yes its offensive stats are slightly lower, but with Swords Dance, it completely makes up for it. It is blessed with great defenses allowing it to effectively use Yache Berry sets to survive its counters, who for the most part cannot survive an SD Outrage/EQ if it had been damaged a previous turn.

It is resistant to Stealth Rock meaning that it can switch in far more easily than Salamence or Dragonite can, and immune to Thunderwave, giving it more oppurtunities to switch in.

It gains STAB in both Dragon and ground, assuming it uses Dragon Claw, its a base 120 and 150 move with STAB, and Outrage its a base 180 and 150 move. Ground and Dragon hit everything in the game except for floating Steels and can easily make up for that with its access to Fire type moves.

In fact, even with its low SAtk, Chain Chomp, which runs Draco Meteor/Fire Blast/Earthquake/Swords Dance is able to kill most physical walls by surprise and kill special walls with Earthquake. Sure Garchomp may not have the wide movepool that Dragonite has, but like Wobbuffet, Dragonite has perfected itself with what it has.

Of course, its not as outright uber as let's say Rayquaza, but it does meet the one criteria of an uber that most new players don't see right off the bat: It overcentralizes the main metagame. Every team needs a counter for it, but its not just that. When Smogon tested a game without Garchomp, a lot of new Pokémon surfaced like Nidoqueen and Magnezone made its come back. Garchomp had a strangle hold on the metagame, hence its banishment.

I'd probably rate garchomp on similar to dragonite but dragonite being slightly weaker than garchomp, only difference being it can learn dig and earthquake, but dragonite is part flying and second highest base stat average of all non-legendary Pokémon and it can take out a garchomp with ice beam as it can learn it too.

So I already went over what an understatement the first part of this post was. About the whole "Dragonite can take Garchomp" scenerio, Garchomp has over twenty base speed points above him. Unless Dragonite has Dragon Danced, Garchomp will always be able to kill Dragonite. And of course no one in their right mind, unless they are computers who are stuck with a team of three, would send Garchomp in until Dragonite has been dealt with if it was allowed to DD.

I mean Dragonite beats Rayquaza if it had Dragon Danced, both Salamence and Garchomp could probably kill it aswell. A Shedinja can kill a standard Kyogre set because it can't touch it, and for Kyogre to use a move merely to kill Shedinja would weaken it as a whole.