Hi guys! It's my first post and I'm new to competitive battle, although I've been reading you for months.
I've really been intrigued by this thing (saur-Msaur) because I found nowhere a mon that packs utility, tanking, recovery (Giga drain, Syntesis and Leech Seed mitigate the lack of lefties) altogether in one set, with potentially a lot of more options and different sets while having those insane stats (bar speed, but hey, the normal form has it doubled in sun). I've seen him in battle and it never comes short of what he needs to do. Even in game or with my friends, I am kind of fond of tankish hard hitter so M-saur is the go-to-Mega at the moment. I have a female Chloro Ivy and a male Chloro Ivy from which I'm about to breed my M-saur, so, being new to competitive battling and all, I've a few questions to clarify my mind, and I hope someone will share my thoughts.
I'm basically leaning towards a tankish quiet set that packs earthquake. Now, the first problem is the 4MS that venusaur packs. I've decided to abandon Leech Seed, pretty sure about Giga Drain (solid damage coming of 120 spa and recovery) and, as I've said, earthquake. Now, down to business:
M-saur
Quiet Nature
Chlorophill-Thick fat (I guess chloro packs always more utility than Overgrow even with an hindering nature, on occasion such a dead Zard Y on the other team and a rotom in to be outsped momentarily by Saur, or in presence of some sunny day setter)
IVs: 31-31-31-31-31-?? (I'll explain later)
Evs: 252 HP (that's a given I guess) 6 ATK 252 SPA
Moveset:
Earthquake
Giga Drain/hidden power
Sludge Bomb/sleep powder/toxic
Syntesis
EQ is good, extremely good, and Syntesis is a given. Now, on this kind of set, is sludge bomb really necessary? I know that sleep powder utility is extremely valuable in some situations (for example with Skarmory or faster hard hitter coming in and you suddenly gain a free switch) and toxic is toxic. You're now free food for other grass types and dragons though, breelom can SD, Dnite and Mence can DD etc. (clearly if you have Talonflame that's not an issue at all) Should I run EQ/Sludge/status move/syntesis to avoid that? Or, with the presence of GD, I can leave Syntesis apart to run GD-EQ-SB-status (to be clear, I think that Syntesis-less sets are the worst)? Or, again, I can maybe keep SludgeB with his nice poison chance and run both Syntesis and Sleep powder with no GD? As you see, I'm pretty confused lol.
I have yet another option. I've really liked the not fire-hp discussion, and I'm wondering if, alongside EQ, there's an HP that guarantees enough coverage (better than EQ-GD or EQ-SB or even GD-SB, just drawing all possibilities out) to allow you to use better the two last moveslots (status+syntesis) with those kind of Ivs. I'm not willing to sacrifice bulk and hp fire seems a pain to obtain, so I'm sticking with those ivs. I'm also wondering if a different EVs spread will be better (maybe enough investment in attack to allow EQ to kill 100% of time -1 MegaLuke that has just close combated one of your pokes to death? Or to bury 252/6 Heatran?) and more rewarding. Thanks for the patience to anyone who will read this piece of junk and respond, hope you don't get out of your mind as I am now.