Landorus-I [1/2] Writing

[BlueSkiddo]

[OVERVIEW]
· Easily deals with Steels / Fires
· Faces competition from special Lando-T
· Lando-T provides intimidate support, while as Landorus hits harder with its sheer force boosted attacks.
· Threatened by speed control / faster mons
· Doesn’t lose power from Bulu and, unlike earthquake users, ground weak mons can’t be protected from Landorus’s EP by Wide Guard.

· Hurt by the increase in Ice-Type coverage attacks due to high usage of Salamence-Mega, Zygarde, and Landorus-T.

[SET]
name: Life Orb Attacker
move 1: Earth Power
move 2: Sludge Bomb / Rock Slide
move 3: Hidden Power Ice
move 4: Protect
item: Life Orb
ability: Sheer Force
nature: Timid
evs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe

[SET COMMENTS]
Moves
========
· Earth Power benefits from Sheer Force and OHKO’s many common threats such as shuca berry Heatran, Aegislash, and Tapu Koko.
· EP 2HKO’s many unboosted neutral mons, such as Tapu Fini and Milotic.
· Sludge Bomb deals with Fairy- and Grass-types such as tapu bulu and tapu fini, and Rock Slide, with a Sheer Force and Life Orb Boost, has a chance to OHKO Mega Charizard Y.
· Hidden Power Ice allows Landorus to deal large amounts of damage to Mega Salamence, Landorus-T, and Zygarde.
· Protect keeps Landorus safe for the turn and stalls out opposing Tailwind and Trick Room.

Set Details
========
· 252 Special Attack EVs allow Landorus to get the most damage out of Life Orb and Sheer Force.
· 252 Speed EVs combined with a Timid nature make sure that Landorus will outspeed base 100 Speed Pokemon.
· The leftover 4 EVs are placed in SpDef.
· Life Orb is used in tandem with Sheer Force to boost the power of Landorus’s attacks with secondary effects with the added bonus of receiving no recoil damage from Life Orb.
· A Naïve nature can be used with Landorus if running Rock Slide in order to guarantee the OHKO on bulky versions of Mega Charizard Y.

Usage Tips
========
· Landorus’s high powered attacks are very threatening, but its speed tier and lack of general bulk puts it at risk from faster threats.
· Landorus works well both early-game with its ability to chunk many bulky pokemon with Earth Power and late-game once its major threats have been removed and it is free to finish off nearly anything that is below 50% health and doesn’t resist it.
· Landorus does not switch into many attacks well because of its average bulk, but it does benefit from being immune to both ground and electric attacks.
· Its immunity to Electric-type is less useful, as many Electric-types, such as Tapu Koko, Zapdos, and Rotom-W, are either immune to Earth Power or outspeed it and carry Hidden Power Ice.
· Opposing speed control greatly threatens Landorus, as it prefers to move first in order to avoid damage and deal with threats.
· Use your own speed control in order to allow Landorus to keep pressure on the opponent.

Team Options
========
· Steel-types pair well with Landorus and appreciate its ability to beat opposing Fire- and Steel-types with Earth Power.
· Steel-types such as Aegislash, Genesect, and Mega Metagross help to deal with Ice-Types such as Kyurem-Black.
· Fairy-types such as Tapu Lele and Bulu also benefit from the removal of Fire- and Steel-types.
· Speed control is appreciated greatly by Landorus. This can come in several forms, such as Icy Wind and Tailwind.

· Partners which are able to switch into Water- and Ice-Type attacks.

[STRATEGY COMMENTS]
Other Options
=============
· Focus Blast can be used to deal with Kang / Tyranitar / Snorlax.

· Choice Scarf can be used to alleviate Landorus’ issue with slow speed and surprise opposing Lando-T’s / Zygarde / Mega Mence with HP Ice.

Checks and Counters
===================
**Ice-types**: Landorus is 4x weak, so it doesn’t like ice types. Ice type coverage moves are also everywhere because of mega mence / lando-t / zygarde. Common ice coverages mons include Zapdos, Tapu Koko, and Mega Metagross, the later 2, however, are ohko'd easily by EP. Ex: Weaville, Kyurem-B, Ninetails-A

**Water-types**: Landorus has little to deal with bulky water types and gets OHKO’d by most water moves. Ex: Milotic, Tapu Fini, Azumarill, Rain mons

**Tailwind and Trick Room**: Landorus is frail and doesn’t like bulky and powerful TR mons moving before it.

**Faster Pokemon**: Landorus is rather frail, and is therefore threatened by faster pokemon such as Genesect, Deoxys-Attack and Mega Salamence.

 

[BlueSkiddo]

Open for CC, I can't think of any decent Other Options worth mentioning, so suggestions are welcome.

 

[GenOne]

For OO, you could probably just copy what was written in the ORAS analysis as its still relevant:

"Landorus forces a lot of switches with its powerful moves, so Substitute can be used to catch opponents off-guard. Landorus has a shallow movepool and shouldn't really be using anything not listed on the main set besides that. It can also run a Choice Scarf to surprise foes such as Landorus-T, but this misses out on the compounding power behind Life Orb + Sheer Force."
​

Under Checks and Counters, **Faster Pokemon** should be a category as Lando-I is pretty frail and doesn't benefit from the Intimidate support it gets in Therian forme. Mega Metagross beats it with Ice Punch, some Kokos run HP ice, Mence probably kills it with D-Edge but I'm too lazy to calc that rn, etc

Also, the standards around "X-Type Pokemon" recently changed and the new convention is just "X-Types." As part of this shift, the type categories are now inclusive of common users of non-STAB users - eg. Koko HP Ice and Megagross Ice Punch would fall under the Ice-Types category iirc

 

[talkingtree]

A lot of these suggestions are things that you may have already been planning on elaborating in write-up, but as I'm pretty sure this is your first analysis, I just wanted to be super clear. Sorry in advance if it comes off as condescending, I promise that isn't my intention.

• [Overview] When you say it faces competition from Special Lando-T, talk about what separates them from each other (Intimidate vs sheer power being the main one)
• [Overview] "Beats common WG users" isn't really accurate when it loses to 3 out of the 4 viable ones (Celesteela, Araquanid, Pelipper). Either just say Aegislash or that, unlike Earthquake users, Wide Guard doesn't shield Ground-weak foes from its primary attack. This could also probably be combined with "Doesn't lose power from Grassy Terrain"
• [Overview] Hurt by the omnipresence of Ice-type coverage moves due to Zygarde, Mega Mence, and Landorus-T's dominance in the metagame
• [Set] Remove the Naive slash, even the bulkiest of Zard have a 70% chance to drop to 0- Atk Lando-I Rock Slide and bulky spreads are not common right now
• [Moves] Earth Power is super strong and it should be made clear that this is Landorus' main move, and 2HKOes many bulky foes that are only hit neutrally, like unboosted Tapu Fini and Milotic
• [Set Details] I don't care where you put the extra 4 EVs, just as long as it's *not* HP. That would bring Landorus's HP stat to 320, adding an extra point to be subtracted each time it uses HP Ice, which is just silly
• [Set Details] Even though Naive isn't getting slashed, you can leave the mention here for now (It's also written without the diaeresis but w/e)
• [Usage Tips] Landorus doesn't only work mid- or late-game, in fact I'd say it's a pretty good breaker early-game to help out cleaners that typically have spread attacks and appreciate bulky foes being weakened
• [Team Options] Speed Control users, which you've mentioned multiple times in the rest of the analysis so I know you know they belong here
• [Team Options] Something to switch in on Water- and Ice-type attacks (your own Water-type is good here)
• [Other Options] Quick on-the-record response to GenOne's comments, it's never ok to copy and paste sections of a past analysis, this will be treated as plagiarism and punished as such. That being said, taking similar ideas and rewriting them in your own words is not only allowed but often encouraged. Sub is pretty bad this generation so leave that out, but Choice Scarf and Psychic could have some value (Scarf for surprising fast things like Koko/Gengar/Mence, Psychic mostly for Amoonguss).
• [Checks and Counters] GenOne is right about **Faster Pokemon** and **X-type Pokemon** -> **x-types**
• [Checks and Counters] All of these need to be more fleshed out in writeup

Do all of those^ and I'll give this one last look before stamping!

 

[Pocket]

4 EVs in HP results in a bad HP #, 320. It will be taking maximum residual damage from the likes of Leech Seed, Poison, burn, & LO recoil (when using HP Ice). Move those 4 EVs into Def or SpD.

As for OO:
- Gravity
- Focus Blast for phat Kanga, Ferro, TTar
- Due to the increased usage of TTar, physical Sand Force Lando-T with EQ, Rock Slide, etc isn't a bad option in this heavily specially bulky meta.
-- may even be able to pull off a Rock Polish / Swords Dance Sand Force set.

 

[talkingtree]

- I touched on the HP thing already but those are other good reasons to change it, no need to mention them in the analysis though
- Gravity is gimmicky and not worth mentioning especially when Levitate users are getting shafted by Thousand Arrows already
- Focus Blast seems decent for OO for the reasons listed
- Sand Force sounds kind of cool, but it's totally theorymon; also, as BlueSkiddo pointed out to me when we were discussing OO, Sand Force boosts are the same as Sheer Force boosts, so even facing specially bulky targets, the disparity isn't enough to overcome the spread reduction. Also, if you're pairing it with TTar, adding an EQ user isn't super helpful, especially when using Excadrill with Drill Run is an option

 

[BlueSkiddo]

Alright, I will implement these changes soon.

 

[BlueSkiddo]

Updates have been implemented. Despite how long it took me to do this, I will be much more available now and should be able to implement any further changes within a few days. Sorry for the delay.

 

[talkingtree]

• [Moves] Give an example or two of Sludge Bomb targets
• [Set Details] Still says 4 in HP :x
• [Checks and Counters] **Ice-types** should also include Ice-type coverage carriers, such as Zapdos, Tapu Koko, and Mega Metagross (should mention caveat that latter two are dunked by Earth Power)
• [Checks and Counters] For **Faster Pokemon**, replace Tapu Koko and Mega Metagross with Deoxys-A and Genesect

QC 1/2 go ahead and write this up once you implement the above!

 

[BlueSkiddo]

Apparently I didn't get a notice for your comment, sorry. I'll get to work on it.