How GREAT was Skarmory ACTUALLY? - History of Skarmory in Competitive Pokemon ft. BKC

hi guys bkc here i've been the writer for the singles portions of false wipes videos for about two years now which means that every joke you haven't liked has probably been my fault you're welcome today i'm grabbing the spotlight for myself so i can tell you about one of my favorite pokemon skarmory it can fly at 180 miles an hour or 300 kilometers an hour and i always thought it was really cool how steven stone flew around hoenn on one also the opening scene of pokemon coliseum where skarmory flies out over the desert sets the tone in a way few other pokemon games can match but today we are going to examine skarmory's impact on the competitive scene so we ask how great was skarmory actually and in this video we'll be going over these competitive formats unfortunately skarmory wasn't very good in its debut generation i'm just kidding i just wanted to say that skarmory was of course one of the most important pokemon in gsc if you're familiar with competitive pokemon you know the legends of the unkillable walling duo scar bliss or how skarmory famously stacks multiple layers of spikes well neither of those things were really the case in gen 2. blissey was unable to damage opposing pokemon at all making it a rare sight plus not only did spikes only have one layer but skarmory didn't even get the move so what made skarm such a big deal one very simple reason it was one of the best answers to the single best pokemon in the generation snorlax while it wasn't a perfect counter to everything snorlax could do it did endlessly thwart snorlax's most dangerous sets and for this reason it was a requirement on any serious stall team it was the only true counter to earthquake snorlax in the entire game as it was the only normal resist that didn't care about earthquake well besides aerodactyl but aerodactyl was frail and terrible so that didn't really count while growl miltank and charm umbreon were good at stalling out curse earthquake snorlax one on one they still got hit really hard by double edge on the switch especially with spikes down were hindered greatly by status and their attack lowering strategy stood no chance against belly drum lacks skarmory had none of that it wasn't affected by spikes it walled double edged for days even if status and with curse it could fend off even the mighty drumlax thus it was completely irreplaceable on stall also growltank and charmbrian stood no chance against another mighty physical threat in swords dance marowak but skarm thwarted it once again thanks to curse as well as its immunity to marowak's mighty stab earthquake now snorlax did sometimes run fireblast or flamethrower almost solely so it wouldn't be walled by skarmory however that meant it gave up another crucial move either coverage a boosting move or rest depending on the set making it easier to either play around or wall depending for this reason the combination of skarmory and a rock or ghost type was common such as tyranitar or misdreavus respectively as it allowed its user to check curse rest snorlax the most common and dangerous variant whether it chose earthquake or fire blast for its coverage skarm's amazing typing and massive bulk made it incredibly resilient as a whole as it floated above spikes and resisted explosion making it incredibly difficult to take out it was also particularly good at walling most variants of the dangerous exeggutor preventing it from getting a crucial boom off on one of skarm's teammates like raiku or zapdos every good gsc offense team needed to have a plan for getting past skarmory and its special wall friends usually raiku in addition to the obligatory snorlax or else they would just flail haplessly as it stalled them out it was particularly irritating if it got into a groove with whirlwind and started racking up spikes on the opponent which put the opposing team on an even faster timer for breaking through for example machamp was excellent in part because its stab cross chop was one of the very few physical attacks that could potentially break through scarves if set up correctly but it could not hope to beat skarm one on one thanks to skarm's super effective stab drill peck and its higher speed so if skarm started whirlwinding it in and slowly eroded its health through spikes as champ repeatedly ran from the matchup only to be dragged back in then one of the opponent's few options for breaking through skarm would have his odds significantly worsened overall its debut generation was where skarmory first made its name as the legendary physical wall it was the most reliable option there was for fending off the variants of snorlax that truck through quite literally everything else i.e the most dangerous lax variants and came to define much of the gsc metagame through its walling prowess skarmory received a ton of buffs in generation 3. it learned spikes which now went up to three layers and combined with tyranitar's permanent sandstorm for easily set up incredibly powerful passive damage with the introduction of split evs as well as power creep with choice band and boosting moves like dragon dance it wasn't as much of a wall anymore but it still staved off a ton of the metagame especially as it resisted nearly all the physical moves now boosted by the new choice band and its spikes facing an occasional toxic wore opposing teams down with incredible ease it was a staple of one of the most dangerous team styles in advance the tss teams or the toxic spike sandstorm teams which focused more on dishing out as much passive damage as possible skarmory was incredibly resilient itself thanks to its immunity to all three of toxic spikes in sandstorm no other pokemon was immune to all three also this was the generation where the scar bliss combo took off and established itself as one of pokemon's foremost household names while the two were not immovable they were immensely reliable at switching back and forth between physical and special attacks while wearing the opponent down with passive damage plus blissey could keep skarmory healthy with wish further solidifying the duo's longevity in the face of opposing attacks now skarmory did have a foil in the form of magneton and its newly gained ability magnet pull which let it trap skarm and slam it with thunderbolt mag's sole reason for existence was pretty much just ko and skarm and entire team styles mostly physical offense were born from its ability to take skarm out of the game devoting a team slot to a potentially useless pokemon like magneton just to remove scarms spoke to how utterly dominant and potentially unkillable skarm was plus skarm was so good that even with magneton in the picture it thrived and remained one of the absolute best pokemon in the metagame spikes were so powerful especially in sand that even if magneton removed skarmory the one layer skarm would leave behind would help its team immensely especially defensive skarmory also almost always survived thunderbolt allowing it to get a second layer of spikes or phase the magneton out with the latter allowing the scarm user to preserve it and have crucial death fodder for later in the game plus it was not like skarm was necessarily helpless against mag though it required tough prediction the skarm player could potentially switch out as mag came in to attempt to trap the skarm and trap it back with doug trio removing it from the game and giving scarm free reign even one's own could potentially toy with other mag especially if the opposing mag was running hidden power grass and not fire finally some players even ran offensive hp ground skarmory sets which were more unreliable overall due to their lack of defensive investment but could completely turn the table on mag now though it may seem like it skarm was not merely a defensive spreader of passive damage yes that was what it excelled at but that did not mean it only fit on defensive teams in fact the tss teams were at shown brightest were more offensive than anything else oh sure they had bulky pokemon and loved their residual damage but their aim was not to switch around endlessly until the opponent ran out of hp now they wanted to force their opponent into a situation where they could no longer handle the tss team's offensive threats and skarm's spikes hitting every non-flying and levitating pokemon were a huge part of enabling these offensive threats the best example was aerodactyl tied for the fastest pokemon in the tier who most tss teams anchored on to clean the opposition up late game in its own right aerodactyl was a strong offensive pokemon and with sandstorm limiting the longevity of bulky pokemon like suicune it was already difficult to counter however the metagame's number one physical wall swampert was immune to sandstorm and switched into arrow all day now swampert was pretty resilient but with spikes in the picture spikes that skarmory set up effortlessly in swampert's face by the way then swampert would struggle to switch into arrow more than a few times spikes were great at supporting pokemon with grounded counters as a whole in a similar vein to arrow dragon dance tyranitar's boosted stab rock slides cut through flying types meaning that it was mostly spikes vulnerable pokemon that checked it thus skarmory was huge in turning already dangerous threats into absolute monsters with very little effort it didn't just do this by laying spikes though it forced damage on opponents pokemon they didn't want switching in through whirlwind and could take this even further with taunt which prevented blissey from healing and made it easy prey for its teammates later on gaining an advantage over opposing skarmory was incredibly useful as well skarm's impact on the advanced metagame cannot be overstated and could be felt in every intricacy of the tier from how it was one of the few pokemon able to quell hair across his mighty mega horn to how it forced choice span metagross to immediately sacrifice itself with explosion just to prevent skarmory from getting even a single layer of spikes down to how teams loaded with special attacks still struggled to break through it without sustaining crippling spikes and toxic in return to help the entire lifespan of the third generation metagame players have built their teams around limiting it and yet even in the face of anti-skarmory techniques such as rapid spin around every corner it's still dominated matter of fact some players in the past even clamored for its ban or at least for it to only be allowed to set up one or two layers of spikes skarmory in advance ou was as excellent and metagame defining as pokemon come the fourth generation was power crept like hell and in addition to all the buffed bass power moves like close combat and focus blast further boosted by all the life orbs and choice specs flying around the new physical special split meant skarmy no longer resisted nearly every physical attack in the game however scarm got several buffs of its own first off it finally gained instant recovery and roost it also received stealth rock but since rocks were learned by pretty much everything including skarm's favorite partner blissey and spikes had more limited distribution it preferred to focus on spiking however it did love the addition of rocks as they complemented spikes beautifully both hitting the flying and levitating pokemon that hovered above spikes as well as providing even more damage on grounded pokemon magneton received an upgrade in the form of its evolution magna zone but skarmory can now escape the clutches of magnet pole with a new item shed shell of course leftovers recovery was preferred so it did not have to manually heal off little hits like u-turns with stealth rock up but the fact that it had the option to single-handedly ruin the strategy magnazone teams were built around was amazing in and of itself thus being able to thwart teams loaded with dangerous physical attackers like scizor kindred gyarados and dragonite skarm's ability to shrug off the newly buffed outrage in particular was invaluable especially when the dangerous swords dance garchomp was still allowed plus the greater overall power level meant skarm was not as unkillable as in the previous generation meaning magnazone at the height of his usage was never nearly as popular as magneton was in advance anyway speaking of that which was prominent in gen 3 scar bliss was as powerful as ever in the new generation spreading increased residual damage with stealth rock hitting everything as well as the potential addition of toxic spikes limiting option to break through them even more the pair thrived even in the face of the famed scar bliss killer mixed infernape especially when paired with cresselia in the early stages of diamond and pearl many an inexperienced player clamored for the duo or the trio in skarm bliss cress's case to be banned chris fell off as platinum came and introduced scissor in the rotom appliances as well as eventually ladios but skarm bliss remains strong throughout the generation finally skarn received an upgrade to its stab as it went from the rather unimpressive drill pack to the surprisingly powerful brave bird whose recoil was minimal and provided big smacks on not only pokemon skarm checks such as the aforementioned physical attackers but also on pokemon that often tried to switch into it like starmie and infernape skarm wasn't just a physical wall though one invested in special defense as it did when ladias first dropped down to the tier and began raining spec's draco meteors everywhere it was an excellent special tank as well capable of shrugging off a ton of special attackers like gengar and offensive suicune and generally being nearly impossible to ko without an invested stab thunderbolt or fire blast which meant it remained the standard set even once latias was banned with taunt to wear down blissey it had whirlwinded in and wrote him appliances to thwart rapid spit attempts from fortress scarm was excellent at setting up scenarios for teammates like carmine jirachi to clean up while being a terrific defensive fallback against much of the metagame's threats it was also one of the better methods of dancing around the incredibly dangerous salamence as it could easily absorb the draco meteor mix-men's love to lead off with and could survive a fire blast from dragon dance variants while phasing it out that said it certainly was thankful salamence was eventually banned and the semi-stall style skarmso stood out on became even more difficult to deal with without one of its biggest threats around eventually the residual damage immune clefable popped up which at first seemed like a threat to the team skarm anchored and it was but it also turned out to be a great asset for them as knockoff crippled and wore down the opposition even further while magic guard helped its team remain stalwart in the face of reposing residual damage especially as toxic spikes were more popular with the excellent skarmcleff partner nidoqueen also rising in usage as these new skarmcleff neto teams made their mark on the metagame dangerous physical threats like superpower brelum and choice ban gyarados appeared to power through them that is until skarmory adopted physical defense investment again and shrugged them off with ease making its teams even more difficult to break through all in all despite not being an offensive threat skarmory was once again one of the best most important definitive pokemon throughout every single stage of the fourth generation of ou scarm was also excellent in ubers it shrugged off all the choice draco meteors outrages and spatial wrens flying around it dominated the bulky and often choiced steels used to check those same draco meteor's outrages and spatial rents such as choice ban cesar and choi scarf jirachi it walled the majority of groudon sets it walled most dragon dance and storage dance rayquaza it completely stuffed garchomp and its spikes wore down dangerous often choice threats like kyogre skarm's resistances in whirlwind forced the opponent to switch around and switching around was of course painful thanks to the spikes spikes also made scarm's partner pokemon like gladios even more dangerous skarm had to be careful with uber's weather dynamic as it would crumple two potential sun boosted fire moves and rain boosted water moves as well as perfect accuracy thunder but on the other hand it would shrug off rain weakened fire moves like giratina origin's hidden power fire and sun weakened water moves like palkia locked into hydro pump without a problem while 50 accurate thunders were not something the opponent wanted to be throwing out in short scarm was amazing gen 5 shook ou with its cascade of monstrous behemoths and skarmory was there to stand in their way it wasn't too good against most rain teams apart from checking the occasional toxic croak and ferrothorn was a better choice as a hazard supporting steel on those rain teams since it was able to withstand ladies's rain boosted surfs but physically defensive skarmory was the best pokemon for sand teams against opposing sand teams and their terrifying sand abusers sandrush excadrill sandforce landorus and good old garchomp against these as well as other common pokemon like conk elder varision and swords dance poison heal score it was nigh immovable it walled them it phased them out it stayed healthy with roost and it laid spikes for good measure chipping at even the things it couldn't quite wall like tarakion it wasn't just the sand abusing ground types that skarmy was crucial in holding off though dragon types were more dangerous than ever with garchoms return dragonite gaining multiscale and the freakishly powerful haxaris even when forced to run shedshell by the influx of magmazone even when it had to play around smackdown landorus making it vulnerable to earthquake skarm held the metagame together eventually ou calmed down quite a bit garchomp was banned and excadrill followed as a bonus drag mag teams had a major drop in usage sandvale flying gem acrobatics blizzcord rose to take garchoms place but neither it nor the sub-toxic poison heal set were nearly as dangerous as chomp with the significantly less frenetic pace of the metagame skarmory no longer had game after game of just barely holding off threat after threat for its team and was able to focus more on spiking it remained a centerpiece of the metagame but less as a necessary defensive wall and more as an effective residual damage component of the newly hazards and sand focused metagame that lasted through the end of black and white one sand stall teams were especially effective since rain had lost a major threat when thunderous was banned alongside excadrill since skarm was no longer scrounging for every bit of recovery it could get with leftovers or avoiding magnazone with shedshell it was free to explore a new item rocky helmet which piled on even more residual damage and was particularly useful for chipping pokemon like fortress and starmie attempting to rapid spin against it allowing skarm to win long-term wars of attrition it was also nice against offensive teams punishing dragonite acrobatics gliscor and cesar's u-turns with his last part being especially useful when the metagame was overrun by the combination of vault switch and u-turn known as voltern never for a minute was skarmory not one of the best most important pokemon in black and white one then black and white 2 came and turned the metagame on its head rayne came back with a vengeance releasing monsters like keldiel thunders therian and tornados therian landrus also got a new therian form but that wasn't all its regular form now known as the incarnate form received sheer force turning it into a violently powerful special attacker further powered up by life orb that didn't have recoil on earth power and focus blast due to their secondary effects genesect was shredding the entire metagame finally shortly into black and white 2's existence garchomp was unpanned and kieran black followed soon after so how did skarmory fit into this metagame the answer was with the return of the specially defensive set even without physical defense investment it was still an excellent counter to garchomp and landorus therian and its newfound special bulk allowed it to stave off life orb and specs tornados therians hurricanes and focus blasts all day while not being at all prone to its common partner doug trio reign teams were more offensive than ever and rarely stop to spin meaning skarm spikes tended to go up uncontested and thus chipped away at the dangerous genesect and keldeo it also helped somewhat against landorus incarnate while it wasn't able to switch into the sheer force pun intended a focus blast for fear of being cleanly to a ko'd through leftovers it took just little enough to be able to roost stall lando in a one-on-one situation with how much of a threat lando was anything a team could do to withstand it was valuable thus skarm's ability to check it if it found its way in on an earth power or hp ice was a major boon since lando was famous for ransacking the bulky team scarm was such a major part of eventually the meta game calmed down once again genesect was banned tornadoes therian was banned diox's defense was banned and landorus incarnate was banned meaning that once again bulky hazard stacking sand teams took over with skarmory as integral a piece of them as ever it still ran a specially defensive spread as this let it fulfill the invaluable role of an alakazam check unaffected by spikes however for the first time it was not purely a pokemon scene on defensive teams the dioctus defense ban was pertinent not only because dod hyper offense was difficult for defensive teams to handle thus making those defensive teams better post ban but also because players were searching for a new hyper offense suicide lead able to replicate what dod did turns out skarm was the best choice with a brand new custard berry set now gen 5 had buffed sturdy to become a built-in focus sash but for the most part skarm only ever used it in emergencies such as sacrificing itself to check volcarono with brave bird however with this new set it was making use of it on a game to game basis with sturdy it would survive any hit to get up rocks and on the next turn the custap berry would activate allowing skarmory to go first either getting up a second layer of spikes or ko'ing itself with brave bird to prevent rabbit spit attempts it also packed taunt to prevent opposing rocks from slower pokemon like hepoudon making it an all-around solid lead choice and just like that skrarmery was the new face of hyper offense of course its primary role was still as a spike stacking anchor of bulky sand eventually the metagame shifted from favoring sand teams to completely revolving around them with skarmory spikes fully abused by the magic guard psychic types rhiannoclass and the aforementioned alakazam skarm's spike immunity and instant recovery meant it was favored over ferrothorn allowing it to fully engage in the long battles those teams shone in to combat this metagame excadrill was unbanned with the caveat that sandra sets could not be used on sand teams as sand force and mold breaker sets had been released thus skarn became more important for sand teams than ever unlike ferrothorn it could switch in on check and spike against any variant of extra drill all day which strangely enough was important against rain because that was a style using sand rush drill eventually rush drill was banned as a whole and the metagame shifted slightly more to tend to cruel reign with thunderous therian which in conjunction with ladies and gosh's huge popularity led to a rise in ferrothorn drag mag also experienced a resurgence in popularity and scarf could no longer afford to run shed shell as leftovers and rocky helmet were simply too important however even if skarm got trapped its spikes would remain valuable and it would often take a banded cure and black or dragonite with it with repeated outrages racking up rocky helmet damage this allowed its user to preserve their secondary physical check for the scarf guard chomp waiting in the wings on their drag mag using opponents team however even at this its lowest point a far cry from the near necessary place it held in the metagame before skarmory never ceased to be an excellent important pokemon as a whole for its efficiency in dealing with opposing sand especially since it handled threats as huge as excadrill and alakazam and nearly every sand team had one of those too all in all skarmy was one of the most important pokemon in the fifth generation of ou throughout its entirety it held the metagame together against several of the biggest threats around while reliably laying down its trademark spikes skarm was solid in ubers once again ferrothorn was a better pokemon overall since it was an amazing check to king kyogre and leach seed was simply impossible to switch into but skarmory countered the mighty extreme killer arceus and got the better of pharah thorn thanks to taunt this in conjunction with its spike's immunity and instant recovery allowed it to slice through stall teams relying on pokemon like chancy and jirachi as well as safely forcing most other arceus forms like ghost fighting dark grass and ground to burn through their recover pp quickly lest they fold to accumulated spikes damage as always it shrugged off choice dragon moves with ease and staved off most variants of groudon it also countered excadrill who was dangerous in ubers as well and was one of the best sponges for choice scarf genesect's u-turn the metagame's greater power with new pokemon like kirim white and zekrom in addition to old threats in kyogre and palkia meant that skarm's overall walling capabilities were diminished but it remained a solid useful pokemon for many bulkier teams generation six's defog buff bestowed a new role upon skarmory whereas before it laid down the hazards now it got rid of them however for the duration of the xy meta game it wasn't too good it was mostly just used as a necessary evil on weak stall teams unable to dish out any damage and thus barely doing anything more than passively countering the occasional megapincer it couldn't even reliably do its job of keeping stealthrock off as it lost hard to common users of the move notably heatran but as a whole the part where defog had less pp than stealthrock didn't do it any favors as it meant that it wasn't going to be even things that should be beating in theory like garchomp and ferrothorn in the long run however once aorus came around players realized that defog didn't actually make spikes not worthwhile and began using spike's skarmory again it almost instantly became a metagame juggernaut once more in addition to it spiking all over the place its ability to stave off the terrifying aorus edition of mega metagross was invaluable as it racked up chip with rocky helmet and can withstand even thunder punch walling's swords dance gliscor was excellent as well after mega meta failed to get banned its usage dropped for a while and skarm shifted to a specially defensive spread once again this allowed it to safely switch in on and spike against ladies one of the tier's few defoggers it also used iron head for stab this allowed it to check several dangerous fairy type megas mega altaria mega gardevoir and megadiancy dianzi was especially relevant as its magic balance would make scarb spike on itself but since it feared an oco from iron head thanks to its quadruple weakness and couldn't even to a ko especially defensive skarm with hp fire this wasn't a problem also while it wasn't a mega one could never be too safe against clefable especially since clef stood in the way of scarves strategy of crippling the opposition with spikes while iron head wouldn't be 2 ako in it colin clefable would be three he ko'd and forced to burn a lot of soft-boiled pp all while not threatening skarmory even with leftovers this was yet another cross-generational example of how far special defense investment goes on skarm the specifics of skarm's role shifted a few more times in accordance with the rises and falls of the offensive pokemon around it in the metagame double defog teams with sash doug trio had a brief surge in popularity turns out scarbory wasn't such a bad defog user when it wasn't the only one on its team and alongside zapdos it was excellent at denying opposing stealth rockers facilitating sash doug to its full extent eventually doug trio was banned and the strategy was no longer worthwhile at the same time mega metagross and storage dance gliscor experienced resurgences so skarmory shifted back to a focus on a physically defensive set that handled them unlike its spiking competition ferrothorn skarms spikes immunity and instant recovery providing it with superb longevity were also significant in giving it several notable advantages over pharaoh and the spike-laden elongated balance wars that came to provide the aorus landscape with mega meta's regained popularity making the aforementioned fairy megas more or less obsolete as well as clefable running a bold nature quite often the need for iron had dissipated and skarn began to explore some new options several players used a set of spikes roost whirlwind and defog this gave it flexibility as it meant it could either lay the hazards or remove them depending on what was needed in that specific situation for its team brave bird was also used on occasion its main purpose was thwarting mega meta cham and mega heracross who were renowned for thrashing the balance style of team skarm found itself on but it also turned skarm into an emergency check with sturdy against superior and volcarona when physical offense teams with monsters like belly drum and zumeril and swords dance bishop in addition to mega metagross surge skarmory was there to stand in their way potentially even using counter and bounce their powerful attacks back at them once again here was a team style skarn was more efficient against than pharaoh overall skarmory got off to a slower start in this generation but once it found its groove it became an elite meta defining pokemon once again skarmory had a good niche in ubers once again the tier's main spiker was klefki since it was able to check the terrifying xerneas but skarn was a great pokemon nonetheless with a physically defensive set it staved off several of the tier's most dangerous pokemon such as mega salamance extreme killer arceus sword stance arceus ground and most variants of rayquaza and primal groudon it was also excellent against lester's scene but no less terrifying threats like mega mewtwo x and mega kangaskhan as always spikes were terrific now more than ever with the amount of grounded pokemon lacking leftovers in addition to the plate-dependent arceus both primals had to escu leftovers in favor of their respective orbs and xerneas had to hold power herb skarm didn't have to fear lottie twins and arceus forms defogging its spikes away either as it would them with the same toxic it would use against the offensive threats it checked as well as preventing ho-oh from switching it safely overall skarmory was solid in aorus ubers sun and moon came out and skarmory established itself as one of the most important pokemon on the doug trio stall teams that dominated the tournament scene with doug's attack stat receiving a major buff and thus making it even easier for it to pick off a few pokemon threatening to break through these stall teams that were already difficult enough to handle to begin with skarm's ability to counter so many of the metagame's top most threats even those packing z moves made it invaluable it staved off common stealth rockers garchomp and landry's therian though it had to be careful around rocky mz swords dance variants of the latter as well as other dangerous swords dancers in topu bulu cartana and mega scizor with the spike's defog set it could choose between spiking up to wear the opposition down or defog to preserve doug's sash the latter made easier by his teammate mega sabley handling several hazard setters it might not want to switch into such as ferrothorn furthermore doug's ability to remove heatran made this court even nastier if skarm's team was running ground dmz dugtrio it didn't have a sash that needed to be preserved and thus skarm could prioritize spiking making it even easier for doug to pick things off as you may have been able to tell dugtrio was what really drove the viability of these teams and thus when it was banned stahl took a huge massive hit and skarmory basically dropped off the face of the planet for the first time ever it had steel flying competition that was a better choice on non-stall teams cela stila kept the ability to thwart tapu bulu and kartana but unlike skarmray it also had huge special defense which allowed it to easily handle the dangerous tapu lele and mega alakazam while specially defensive skarm had been good against similar threats in the past now they were simply too powerful not to mention that stila actually threatened them with ocos thanks to its powerful heavy slam furthermore while stila didn't have roost it did have access to an absolutely incredible move in leech seed wearing down opposing offensive pokemon like heatran and mcgirena far more quickly than skarmory could skarm spikes were also easily replaceable spike's greninja was everywhere and so was spike's ferrothorn which was incredible largely because it was so good against greninja ash greninja in particular outside of stall there wasn't that much of a reason to use skarm when both its defensive utility and spikes were found on pokemon that had far better matchups against the metagame at large stahl had a few sporadic appearances still and skarm was used on some of those teams it even used hp fire for cortana a few times but it was no longer anywhere close to a requirement for physical walls and or hazard clearers those teams tended to prefer pokemon that matched up better against the meta as a whole this meant pokemon like poison heal default gliscor defog mega scizor rapid spin avalog physically defensive tang growth defog zapdos and defog moltres however turns out skarm was better than it had been given credit for once it had been explored a little near the end of the generation a few players did use skarm outside of stall with decent success it combined the physical threat checking of celastila with the spiking capability of ferrothorn thus saving its team a slot and all it required was utilizing different checks to greninja and the psychics this opened up some interesting new avenues for team building after all skarm did reliably check several dangerous threats and spikes were always appreciated especially as they opened up a move slot on the already dangerous greninja toxic crippled several defoggers namely tornados therian as well as rotom wash and scarf flanders therian against habuffini whose misty terrain shielded it against toxic scrum could simply play to its strengths the long game as they easily stuck around with roost and had more spikes pp than feeney had defog it was especially easy to pressure feeny long term since skarm would be paired with a stealth rocker despite it clearly being its worst generation thus far skarm was probably on the underrated side and should have been used more than it was in the seventh generation as it showed it was still more than capable on the few occasions it did appear in uber's skarmory reprised its role from the previous generation with a slightly expanded pool of pokemon it checked in addition to its previous repertoire of mega men's normal and ground swords dance arceus and most rayquaza and primal groudon it was also a terrific check to swords dance necrozma both as dusk made necrozma and ultra necrozma spikes were nice as always and it could toxic the newfound plethora of defoggers in the tears such as ho-oh of course skarm had strong competition as a steel type wall and olives other competition had excellent special bulk which was a major driving factor in why they were more easy to slap on teams cela stila could stand in the way of the mighty deoxys attack while spreading leech seed ferrothorn also provided leech seed and matched skarm spikes while checking primal kyogre and maghirna and necrozma duskmane were excellent xerneas counters still what skarmory did was important and thus it found itself with a solid niche in ubers once again generation 8 has seen scarm have it tougher than ever as far as ou is concerned it has excellent new steel flying competition in corvinite who can pp stall easily with pressure alongside roost packs defog and taunt just like skarm can set up and sweep with a terrific substitute bulk up set and can maintain momentum with u-turn now what it doesn't have is spikes but it has never been easier to deal with hazards than now thanks to the prominence of heavy-duty boots which completely ignore them so the unthinkable has finally happened skarmory has dropped to uu where it remains at the time of this video there it is excellent it was the most dangerous physical attackers in the tier crocodile bisharp mimikyu and lycanrock as well as being a solid check to tarakion and generally being excellent at spreading chip damage thanks to rocky helmet however it's not just a wall gen 8 gifted skarm one of the most amazing moves it could have asked for in body press which turns its enormous defense set into a weapon that allows it to dish out actual damage of course roost is also a given but skarm has a lot of flexibility in its last two move slots with iron defense it can make itself even bulkier and at the same time effectively stronger toxic threatens otherwise safe switchings like keldeo and road and wash iron head is solid stabbed for mimic you and prevents hattering from switching in freely finally good old spikes are always an option as heavy duty boots aren't as prominent ungrounded pokemon as they are in ou meaning the spikes will still be useful for chipping away at dangerous top tier pokemon like jirachi and kirim as well as the aforementioned kaldio and tarakion skarman yuyu is still a new phenomenon but it looks to be establishing itself as one of the metagame's premier pokemon and that's it so how good was skarmory actually well it is no exaggeration to call it among the best singles pokemon of all time emphasis on singles because this thing is useless in vgc however from generations two through six it was one of the best most important pokemon in ou it was the definition of defense and made players everywhere either love or hate spikes depending on which side they were on even in gen 7 where ou scarm was at its lowest it was still quite good sure it wasn't as dominant as the previous five generations i mean that's a tall task but it was still solid it's finally dropped to you in generation eight where it is currently excelling we've often said in these videos that new generations of uu resemble old generations of oh you and with skarmory now roaming underused with its friend tyranitar perhaps this will inspire old players to give the newest generation a shot so that's been my time i hope you guys enjoyed i have my own channel where i do competitive pokemon if you want to check it out and kellen will see you next week thank you so much to our writer bkc for guest starring in this video you should definitely go check out his channel as he has some of the best competitive pokemon knowledge out there and as always if you like the video and you want to see more be sure to subscribe to fall sweat gaming for more weekly pokemon content and in the comments i want to know what do you think about competitive skarmory what would you give it to have it do something in vgc whatever it is let me know in the comments also thank you so much to our patrons for continued support of our videos and to everyone else watching as well [Music] [Music] and follow my crew on these social media platforms and that's all i got see you next time everyone [Music] you

Channel: False Swipe Gaming

Views: 629,127

Keywords: Pokemon, Skarmory, Pokemon Go, Pokemon Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Pokemon Black, Pokemon White, Pokemon X, Pokemon Y, Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon, Pokemon Sword, Pokemon Shield, Isle of Armor, Competitive Pokemon, Smogon, VGC, False Swipe Gaming

Id: nButlaxSKz8

Length: 35min 38sec (2138 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020