How a Shocking Legendary Won a Pokémon Tournament

here is the final moment of the Indianapolis regionals oh my God meon has the speed Advantage how much is discharge going to do electric Terin boosted Hy engine boosted ter electric boosted Choice specs boosted discharge is it enough damage it is didn't even need the double protect but Ryon claims its first championship in regulation G Rajan ball Rajun and his triple electric movement Ryon won the entire tournament but entering theour tournament you wouldn't have expected this to happen Believe It or Not maridon wasn't getting a lot of respect people looked at it as good but not great take a look at the usage rates of the tournament maridon was only the number five restricted Pokémon entering the tournament 91% of people would have rather used a different legendary the current format started this month and is regulation g a format that allows you to bring one restricted legendary Pokémon per team it's the first of its kind for Generation 9 this creates a very intriguing dilemma your restricted legendary is going to be by and far the best Pokémon on the field as such choosing the right legendary is incredibly important why was maridon so underestimated why did it end up so dominant and why did it have three electric type moves maridon is known for one thing it's sheer power it's an electric type Pokémon who sets up electric terrain whose ability gives it extra power when in that electric terrain and who has relatively strong electric type moves including a signature move Electro drift and on top of that the winner of the tournament used Terra electric off of a base 135 special attack that is a threat to one hit KO literally any Pokémon even Pokemon that resist it that is one of the reasons why you use maridon sheer unadulterated power you don't really understand what that means unless you see it in action for example a Terra electric volt switch cleanly one hit K incor that is unimaginable to do that much damage on an attack that isn't even super effective electr drift isn't actually the key move for maridon it's volt switch but I'm getting ahead of myself the ceiling is very clear if you can take advantage of maridon you koe everything however as you may know power is isn't everything and it's why maridon was underestimated first of all there's the opportunity cost of not being Cal Shadow opportunity cost is an extremely relevant Concept in a restricted legendary format when you use maridon or any legendary for that matter you are not using Cal Shadow or Cal's ice broken legendaries in their own right Cal Shadow emerged as one of the top restricted legendaries of the format it is faster than maridon still extremely strong has a signature move that is a spread move which targets both opponents and it gains special attack on every kill and on top of all of that it's immune to fake out if you're going for the fast special attacker Arch type why not calri Shadow but even more there's grassy surge reloom look at the usage rates reloom is on 1/3 of teams and reloom is a direct counteracting Force to maridon whenever you use maridon you're going to have to deal with reloom and extremely common Pokémon switching in and removing the source of your power it's definitely not unwinable for example Draco meteor Cano non- assault Fest reloom but it does beg the question why use a legendary that is going to have inherent issues with a common meta Pokémon again cal Shadow is right there and there's also raging bolt raging bolt is a statistical monster it is honestly almost like a restricted Pokémon itself when you use maridon raging Bolt becomes redundant so you wouldn't pick it so when you pick maridon you're using one restricted legendary Meanwhile your opponent gets their legendary and raging Bolt the gap between maridon and raging bolt is smaller than the gap between another restricted Legendary Pokémon and its analog you could even argue that maron's competition is Raging bolt not calri Shadow these three Pokémon really limit maridon but this triple electric maridon did win the tournament and here's how it did it electr drift is your nuke button and it will want to KO anything and Draco meteor is there to hit the Pokemon you can't touch like raging bolt but the deceptively key move is actually volt switch Terra electric volt switch koes a surprising amount of Pokémon and the real asset is that it allows you to switch around your Pokemon to escape danger doing damage while switching is fundamentally broken and volt switch is arguably maron's best move ordinarily there's a trade-off your switch move is weaker and that's the cost you pay for gaining the benefit of switching but maridon is so strong that its weaker move gets The Knockout anyway it isn't exposed to the vulnerability of staying on the battlefield it kill something and you pivot to a better matchup this is the aspect of maridon that was overlooked if you looked at maridon from the point of view of wow strong electr drift you would have been interested and then you would have moved on because you realized it wasn't enough and you'd be correct having one strong move isn't enough but when you stick around to find the Practical value of attacking and switching at the same time you would have seen what makes him ride on so good the Terra electric oo and switch combo is Tournament winning it really comes in handy when fighting against reloom for example it gives you ways to switch out and switch back in later to reset electric terrain then the final move is another high value innovation discharge discharge is a move that you almost never see the main problem is that it hits everyone on the field including your partner Pokémon you can play around it with ground type partner Pokemon and protect but threatening to hit yourself is always awkward but with maridon what if that's actually okay the upside is that you solve one of maron's weaknesses that unlike caler Shadow you can only target one Pokemon at a time the downside is that you have to be extremely careful when you use a move that can hit your partner that's the move that most people would Overlook but is actually deadly when played right early game you could spam volt switch and in the late game you could clean up with discharge but again you do have to make sure you're not koing your own Pokemon when you do that this is what made a lot of people underestimate maridon they underestimated volt switch on paper when you look at maridon you see a Pokemon with fundamental flaws but in practice you can outp position your opponents and you can leverage huge damage outputs into threatening positions what does your opponent do when you threatened to OKO reloom with Draco meteor and threaten to Simply volt switch and comeback later It's Tricky and through those complications you create a lot of pressure the second reason it performed well was because it was anti- meta caler Shadow is a truly dominant Pokémon and every team is stacking multiple dark or normal type Pokémon just to have a chance it is rightfully overprepared for in fact this maridon team literally had two normal type Pokémon and an assault vest incore on the other other hand no one is really stacking multiple ground types on their team in fact there's not many ground types to begin with iron Treads is bad landeras is out of favor Groudon is out of favor and the only real ground type is URS saluna take a look at the top eight of the tournament there's only two people with a ground type Pokemon and funnily enough they're both maridon players these metagame factors are relevant and if maridon was more on the radar we would have definitely seen more ground type Pokémon being used but maridon was anti- meta and took advantage of the trends looking at Ren's team you can see a lot of the thought that went into it for example maridon is paired with Tailwind Focus sash whimsicott that's a pretty straightforward idea you want maridon to outspeed everything and get one hit kills so you want Tailwind but why did he pick whimsicott instead of prankster Tornadus the more popular Tailwind Pokémon the reason is because whimsicott has a much better matchup into raging bolt also whimsicott has prankster oncore with which can lock opponents into their moves that's really good versus Calm Mind raging bolt for example it's also valuable for maneuvering through Pokemon using protect because you can peral lock them into that move Pokemon are going to be protecting a lot in front of a maridon then there's electric seed FID Raff which gains defense next to maridon the key value addition of FID giraffe is that it stops priority moves like fake out that is one of maron's key vulnerabilities unlike caler Shadow it doesn't have the Ghost type which means it easily gets disrupted by fake out incinerar not anymore for rid giraffe with trick room also turns the table on opposing trick room teams notably Cal's ice one of the best legendaries in the format to boot it even has helping hand to support even more Maron destruction with whimsicott for tailwind and for giraffe to fight trick crew you set the foundation for maridon to fight with the support of speed control then there's an ogre Pon Rock one of the more Uncommon ogre Pon forms usually teams prefer water or fire but here does a couple of things one is that it prevents the team from falling into a little bit of a trap often times people get carried away and rely on their restricted legendary for all the power output and when that happens sometimes they have too many support Pokémon ogre Pon gives a physically attacking presence to the team and its Rock typing helps offensively versus Cal's ice and defensively versus terap pagos two of the top restricted Pokémon but even though it's an offensive Pokémon it can still support the team with follow me to redirect attacks off of maridon and last but not the least it has the sturdy ability which is generally good but it's a special help for maridon when you operate with this volt switch spam attack you do need Pokemon to come into the game after the volt switch and be exposed to potential damage its resource management and focus Sash on whimsicott and sturdy on ogre Pon gives you additional switch in ideas then there's an URS saluna blood moon a ground type for discharge spam and a total nuke of a wall breaker to fill the role of the secondary attacker a very underestimated aspect of electric terrain is electric terrain unfortunately there aren't many good Paradox Pokémon who benefit from Electric terrain the best Paradox beneficiary of electric terrain is iron bundle who gains a speed boost but most other iron Pokémon aren't relevant but the other use of electric terrain is that it makes Pokémon immune to Spore electric terrain gives you the added benefit of shutting down a lot of what amongus wants to do which is inval notably FID giraffe plus uluna blood moon is a fantastic trick room core but it struggles with Aus who UND speeds both of them and can Spore not anymore maridon gives you that team building freedom to build around cores that ordinarily would have struggled with amongus and finally there's an assault vest incor who is always valuable with its disruption with fake out and good matchup into reloom and calri Shadow it doesn't need to use safety goggles because it can bet on having electric terrain support with intimidate and AV it too an effective switch in after a volt switch as well as generally being the best non-restricted Pokémon in the format you can see how the team synergizes to highlight maron's strengths and fix its weaknesses the metag game will continue to develop and people will respect maridon undoubtedly people will adapt which legendary do you think will be the next to get the spotlight will Maron repeat or maybe calri will take over let me know down below

Channel: Freezai

Views: 137,756

Keywords: pokemon

Id: pv83Evgw0iw

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024