BUMP. Sorry, Incon's leaving kinda made us have to do a lot of work so it wasn't very easy to keep this going. For the fifth Pokemon of the Week, we will be spotlighting everybody's favorite starter Pokemon, Charizard. 78 | 84 | 78 | 109 | 85 | 100 With an interesting Fire/Flying typing, solid offensive movepool, and great offensive stats, Charizard is one of the premiere attackers in NU. With moves like Fire Blast, Air Slash, Solar Beam, Sunny Day, Roost, it's hard not to use this thing on one of your teams. Base 109 Special Attack means that anything that doesn't resist Charizard's STAB is getting nuked, and Base 100 Speed allows Charizard to outpace any Pokemon that could possibly tank any attack from Charizard. Set-up moves like Belly Drum, Swords Dance, and Dragon Dance often sway people to try physical movesets, although a large amount of people agree that the specially offensive Charizard is one of the hardest Pokemon to take on in the current metagame. Teammates: Like any Pokemon that's 4x weak to Stealth Rocks, Charizard absolutely loves it when its able to come in without taking hazard damage. Rapid Spin is very rare in NU, and Claydol, Wartortle, and Armaldo are the most common Rapid Spinners, although they all share a weakness with Charizard, it's able to be patched up with the remaining four Pokemon on your team. Charizard also has fantastic synergy with the numerous Water/Ground type Pokemon in the tier. Quagsire, Gastrodon, and Seismitoad all resist Electric/Rock-type attacks, while Charizard is 4x resistant to Grass-type attacks. Although offensively, Charizard is often walled by bulky Water-type Pokemon, so it's only natural that Grass/Electric-type Pokemon make fantastic offensive partners for Charizard, being able to threaten the numerous bulky waters in the tier. Drawbacks: I think it's fairly well known that Charizard is 4x weak to Stealth Rocks, which is its biggest downfall. Since Charizard rarely runs Leftovers, a badly supported Charizard can have little to no effect on any game, being able to be revenged by basically every scarfer and a few Pokemon who naturally outpace Charizard. Charizard's biggest weapon is its versatility, since Fire and Flying-type attacks have decent synergy, and Hidden Power Grass is able to patch up that weakness to Rock-type Pokemon, so when equipped with a Choice Scarf/Specs, Charizard must predict right or else the opponent has just gained all the momentum. So with that, lets discuss the Charizard has on the tier. Are there other Pokemon that synergize well with Charizard? What else counters Emboar, and how does it deal with said counters? Why use Charizard when there are other great Flying-type Pokemon? What sets can Charizard use to great success?
Everyone else is gonna post special sets, so I'll post a physical one that catches people by surprise: Charizard @ Salac Berry / Flying Gem Ability: Blaze EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk) - Swords Dance / Dragon Dance - Substitute / Acrobatics - Fire Punch / Flare Blitz - Earthquake Most people expect Charizard to be a special attacker, given its far superior base 109 Special Attack stat, but its mediocre base 84 Attack can have a great surprise value with its wide physical movepool and access to several brilliant physical boosting moves, including the legendary Belly Drum that got it noticed in gen 2. While BellyZard sadly isn't viable in today's meta because of the omnipresent Stealth Rocks, this set doesn't mind them so much, and can even help it in some situations. The idea's pretty simple; bait a special wall like Grumpig or Lickilicky to switch in, set up in the meantime, and disembowel it afterwards. If they see a Swords or Dragon Dance, you might even get two turns of setup. Substitute on the other hand will keep the opponent unaware and give you ample opportunity to nuke them. The slashes are corresponding, meaning the two 'sets' in this set are Swords Dance, Substitute, Fire Punch and Earthquake with a Salac Berry as the hold item, or Dragon Dance, Acrobatics, Flare Blitz and Earthquake, with a Flying Gem as the preferred, although the Salac Berry can also be used to lesser effect. Not as effective as the special sets, but a great novelty that shouldn't be overlooked.
Well, the sunny day set is very good, and specs zard is very powerfull even with sunny day. I'd like to highlight the 78/78/85 defenses. Im not saying use it as a wall, but im saying its not all that frail and some super effective attacks from defensive pokemon wont OHKO, while things like kangaskhan's suckerpunch do rather pathetic damage, while it's speed lets it outspeed a heck of a lot of stuff. Anyways, charizard/gastrodown/vileplume seems like a nice core, classic FWG, gasto takes the hits charizard cant, spreading toxic on walls is also very usefull and scald on offensive pokemon or pokemon that you cant toxic for extra damage, and vileplume can KO a number of stealth rockers, take on rock types in general and aromatherapy support lets you stay in for that one extra turn like on t wave you normally wouldnt do. Sleep powder also gives charizard an easier switch in and can take out one of it's checks while stun spore can give support against a few faster pokemon. It also takes out water types which can trouble charizard. Charizard is a threat, even if you have rocks up
Nah, a physical set should look like this: Charizard @ Flying Gem Ability: Blaze EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk) - Swords Dance - Acrobatics - Roost - Earthquake Dragon Dance is illegal with Acrobatics, and Charizard still hits everything absurdly hard with +2, even Eelektross. It is basically taken from Smogon, but it is up there for a reason.