How this Pokemon Ruined Competitive Play

Pokemon should not work at least not as a competitive game there are over a thousand different characters and Incredibly complex type chart that makes rock paper scissors look like rock rock rock and Unique centralizing Mechanics added every 3 years it's a game that anyone can see has no business working competitively there's too many variables there's just too much going on it shouldn't be possible that it works and yet it does and the single biggest factor in allowing Pokemon to actually operate as a competitive game has to do with a single move not something flashy like gigantamax wildfire or a baddy bad but a move that doesn't even do any damage a move that is nearly worthless during a traditional playthrough of the game a move that someone new to competitive Pokemon would certainly glance right [Music] over protect is a very simple move during this turn the user doesn't take any damage Dage it can't be used successively without risking a high chance of failure and nearly every Pokémon in the game learns it it isn't fancy but it is the Bedrock of competitive Pokémon thanks to protect the game is able to center around positioning and preservation because competitive Pokemon is entirely double battles being able to keep your Pokemon safe while your partner takes out a threat or you switch out to gain a better matchup or more support is the only reason this game works at all without protect competitive Pokémon would Center entirely around whose offense could blow through the other person first and games would be decided nearly instantaneously based on who had a better turn one because protect is the foundation of competitive Pokemon getting around it is really tricky you can commit to using faint a super weak move that can break protect but it will do next to nothing if the opponent doesn't go for it and it also requires your partner to actually be the one doing the damage you could use imprison which can stop opponent from using protect but it takes a turn two of your own Pokémon's moves and it isn't even given to that many Pokémon in the first place there's a couple other even more Niche moves that can get around it but you probably get the picture to get around protect you need to invest a ton of resources and even then it'll be inconsistent at best or hear me out you can pay $30 our tragic tale begins all the way back in sword and shield after a massive release of the franchise's first ever Mainline game on a Home console Pokemon had a decision to make it was clear that the model of releasing a sequel game was no longer working after the disaster that was Ultra sun and Ultra moon but bonus content added onto the main game of the generation was still a good way to make money and hold fans over until the next Generation the solution Pokemon came up with was the modern idea of paid DLC there would be two of these and the first one the aisle of armor added a new sub region to explore and introduced several new Pokémon one of those additions changed competitive Pokémon in a way we literally could not see coming the aisle of Armor's exclusive Legendary Pokémon was called U and it had the brand new ability unseen fist which allows any attack it uses that makes contact to bypass protect and its counterparts like spiky Shield obstruct to detect painful bunker King shield and silk trap wait what is silk trap oh it's spy ops's signature move that's probably why I didn't know what it was now this isn't the first time that Pokémon has experimented with allowing moves to hit through protect the first time was 7 years ago with the release of sun and moon and their unique Z move mechanic these once per battle super powerful moves would still do damage through protect though it was only a quarter of what they would have done otherwise the same concept was used once more with the introduction of Dynamax and sword and shield where Dynamax Pokemon's moves would turn into Super powerful Max moves just like Z moves using a Max move into protect resulted in a quarter of the damage going through importantly while these moves could bypass protect it's clear that Pokemon realized just how dangerous this was so they built in several checks to these mechanics only doing a quarter of your damage is a massive deal as is the fact that these powerful moves can't be used recklessly Z moves could only be used once per battle so you really didn't want to use them in front of protect and while Dynamax lasted for three turns each of these moves was weaker than their Z move counterpart and Max moves could be blocked completely with Max guard the Dynamax equivalent of protect add on to this the doubled HP pool of Dynamax Pokémon and you'll see that while each of these mechanics were very powerful they didn't break the game because they still allowed protect to do its job so it's clear that Pokémon understands how precarious the game really is and the proverbial duct tape holding it all together is a beautiful little move that lets your monsters chill out for a single turn so you might imagine that urfu a Pokemon that can hit through protect would have similar limitations to the other ways of bypassing protect right right [Music] right for some reason game freak decided that they should throw out the entire basis holding competitive Pokemon together and that U would do 100% of its damage when hitting through protect no drawback no downsides just 100% pure fist in your spy doob face the single restriction placed on U is that the only moves it can use that go through protect are moves that make physical contact with the opponent thankfully for the worst bear of all time all of the relevant moves it likes to use make physical contact effectively this restriction is like taking a kid to a dollar store and saying hey don't spend more than I don't know 100,000 bucks it's not doing a whole lot of course an ability alone does not make a Pokémon great there are several Pokémon with absurd abilities but they're balanced out by other factors to make sure they don't take over the game giving unseen fists to a Pokemon like I don't know spy Ops for example wouldn't make any impact on the game except to give YouTubers some extra content but unseen fist isn't exclusive to a Pokemon that even other bug types are embarrassed to share the same patch of grass with unseen fist was given to U and U only who is not only one of the single strongest Pokemon introduced in all of sword and shield but it's also a Pokemon with two forms making it twice as versatile now sometimes Pokemon having different forms doesn't really change anything there are a ton of Pokémon with forms that are purely aesthetic and even when there are differences between forms often times there's either a clear best option like with vascan who has different stats depending on gender or the two forms are similar enough that the differences are minor like with tatagari u is the rare case where although each of its forms are unbelievably broken they're also distinct enough that it does really function as two different Pokemon both uu form share the same stats and mostly the same move pool where they differ is their signature move and their typings ersu rapid strike is a water and fighting type whereas ersu single strike is a dark and fighting type their signature moves are extremely powerful attacks called surging strikes and wicked blow respectively these are high base power moves that always result in a critical hit and surging strikes actually hits three times to make matters worse you can't tell which U form it is at Team preview a huge tournament was actually won during sword and shield with five water types and U dark opponents unlucky enough to go up against this team simply assumed it was U water and were then caught off guard you might notice that none of these things that we're talking about are exclusive to scarlet and violet in fact U single strike received a slight Nerf on it signature move in these games and the team preview issue is less of a problem for Live Events now that we use team sheets detailing each player's team before the battle so why am I making this video now and not when uu was introduced 3 years ago when uu was released the premier gimmick of the region it was born into was Dynamax with Dynamax once per game any Pokemon on your team could inflate itself into a kaiju for three turns gaining double its health and access to those stronger Max moves we were talking about earlier that also had secondary effects activating stat boosts or changing effects on the field any non-damaging moves would be converted into max guard which was just a super protect that could even block Max moves crucially Max guard could block other moves including ones affected by U's unseen fist for the first ever DLC in Pokemon history it was kind of a no-brainer that game freak made the Pokemon you'd be paying for pretty strong even strong enough to exist and thrive in a format with Dynamax threats but given how overpowered uu was it was a relief that they didn't forget to give it counterplay with Max guard trainers at least had some type of defense against U and even though Max guard guard wasn't always a great use of your three turns of Dynamax the doubled HP pool of Dynamax Pokémon made U getting attacks off much less of an issue with a mechanic like Dynamax being so integral to the game the existence of uu still isn't justifiable but it was at least manageable let's pass forward to generation 9 talization is the new mechanic once a battle a Pokemon on your team can change their type in my opinion this is a much more flexible and dynamic addition to the game than Dynamax but a problem lurks on the horizon for our Crystal competitors Pokemon homes release sneaks up all too quickly and to every VGC player in the world surprise uu is legal again and this time Dynamax isn't here to save us but the sponsor of today's video might be able to save you especially if you haven't got a gift 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to holr for sponsoring this video now to be clear I'm not saying that Max guard or even Dynamax as a whole was the only counter to U the strategies we have available now to counter it though are uh a little bit limited by far the more popular U form is rapid strike largely due to its signature move surging strikes surging strikes has two characteristics that all but guarantee that when it's directed into the correct slot it's taking a ko. first it will always critical hit this is true of wicked blow as well critical hits do three things they do 50% more damage they ignore any defense boosts on the Pokemon getting crit and any offensive drops on the PO doing the critting and finally they make people who need therapy punch holes in their computer the important thing to take away from this is stat reduction tactics like intimidate or Charm won't save you now we've seen this always crit mechanic implemented with almost no issues on Pal's fully evolved and fully bipedal grass starter mascara's signature move flower trick but flower trick is meaningfully weaker than surging strikes and Meara is much weaker than U also grass type attacks have five resistances whereas water only has three also when this is just like a really tiny minor thing uh mowca can't hit through protect second thing that makes surging strikes broken is that it hits three times not only does this mean that defensive options like the item Focus Sash and the ability sturdy don't work against it but it also makes the animation take longer which is especially tilting when playing against U each hit does 25 damage or 37.5 with the crit totaling to 12 base power keep in mind that typically all moves with 100 base power or higher are given a meaningful drawback whether that's imperfect accuracy or recoil the stronger a move is the more significant the cost of using it in U's case they created a move well over this threshold that rather than having a drawback instead has the advantage of always critting surging strikes as water typing has a hidden extra benefit in that it can be powered up by 50% in the rain ersu is threatening enough even Without Rain rain being active in the rain even Pokemon that resist surging strikes can't switch in safely between the sheer power of the Pokemon and the removal of consistent counterplay once again since you can't protect in front of it you can see why this Pokemon might be considered a problem the reason I wanted to make this video is because uu is the only Pokemon that's broken to come out of sword and shield good thing these games didn't add any other horrifying overpowered stupidly broken Pokemon right [Music] okay so obviously a lot of the Pokemon that were added during sword and shield are really strong so why are we talking about U specifically I don't think that many people would try and argue that U is stronger than Zan and you could probably even make a case that it's not as strong as something like flutter man though I don't know how many people would agree with you the thing is strength isn't what we're talking about here U completely breaks competitive Pokemon in a way that is completely unique to any other Pokémon the problem with u is that it operates outside the rules of the game it's kind of like if in chess 2 they added a knight who could move two turns in a row maybe it wouldn't have as much raw strength as something like your queen but it would still completely warp the game around it competitive Pokemon is entirely balanced around protect and having a Pokemon that ignores protect with no drawback and having that Pokemon be incredibly strong on its own it totally breaks the game now typically when a physical Pokemon is dominating the the metag game reflect and intimidate crop up to slow them down but thanks to its signature move always critting this doesn't work against ersu Pokemon with water resistances can still be koed in two hits If U is boosted in some way with a tera or in the rain out speeding uu is extremely difficult when it can run a choice scarve or be paired with Tornadus and some players even opt to do both and if you can't outs speed U and you can't protect in front of it your only remaining option is to Simply take the damage even using psychic flying and fairy type attacks isn't that effective as U Rapid Strike will often run Tera water eliminating over half of its weaknesses and boosting its damage output further of the six major events that have happened since U was added to scarlet and violet it has won five of them the only one it didn't win it finished second this isn't necessarily a feature of raw strength rather even teams with specific ersu counterplay can't stop it as an example gastadon was something that many players considered going into this year's World Championship with its storm drain ability it's not only immune to all water moves but it forces them to Target gastron making it one of the best answers to U on paper in the game you would think that with gastron in the format a Pokemon good enough to have won World Championships even before U was introduced that we would have a reliable counter if somebody wanted one right but even the world's most slippery slug can't do anything to U close combat still hits incredible hard and even if you found a way around close combat gastron still couldn't reliably stop U the thing is while gastron has an amazing match up versus U it's not well positioned versus a lot of the other top Pokémon in competitive Pokémon players select four of their six Pokémon each battle leaving two behind so players using U aren't even forced to bring it versus gastron if they don't want to slug players on the other hand have to play a super dangerous game of chicken should they bring gastron knowing that they'll likely be at a disadvantage if the opponent doesn't bring U or should they instead Bluff and leave it behind exposing themselves to an uu site all of the Power here is in the hands of The UU player in a matchup that in theory they should be heavily disadvantaged this isn't just a gastron problem either amongus is a Pokemon that on paper destroys uu with its great natural bulk recovery via its regenerator ability grass typing ability to redirect attacks with rage powder and access to SP for it seems like a great flexible Pokémon that is capable of stopping ersu even more so when you add on the rocky helmet an item that does damage every time the holder is hit with a contact move which is especially effective against the three hits of surging strikes but even with all of this it isn't enough to be a consistent answer to u the world's winning U for example ran taunt a move that decimates amongus and other players have had success with things such as safety goggles or shiu allowing them to completely ignore amongus and actually turn it into a liability for pretty much every possible counter you can think of The UU players have a response it's worth noting that in the current format we're mostly talking about uu water while uu dark is still powerful its typing is worse both offensively and defensively and it really struggles against iron hands who not only resist its powerful Wicked blow but can also hit it for super effective damage and heal back up U dark having at least one actual counter right now makes it much more manageable than its slippery sibling so ersu is a Pokemon that not only fundamentally breaks the game via its ability that operates outside the rules of competitive Pokémon but it's also got no drawbacks to any of its absurd strengths a ton of flexibility with how it can be played and virtually no consistent counters unfortunately we haven't finished talking about its strengths some Pokémon are extremely powerful but require very specific support in order to bring out their full potential TL for example can take out entire teams on its own but it requires trick room to be used most effectively U however doesn't need any one type of support but benefits immensely from lots of the top Pokemon in the format one of the most obvious pairings is uu and Tornadus with Tat's prankster ability it's able to set Tailwind up before any other Pokemon moves immediately doubling the speed of your team it can also use rain dance to boost U's power sign significantly and Bleak when storm to hit the grass types that resist surging strikes U when paired with Tornadus can hold an item to do more damage such as Mystic water or it can hold a choice scarf to allow it to beat other Tailwind Centric teams U also pairs incredibly well with the new Pokemon chenow thanks to its sword of Ruin ability when it's on the field all other Pokemon take more damage from physical moves giving ersu an additional damage boost when it's already so strong is terrifying not to mention the fact that chena's high speed and access to Priority moves allows it to combo with uu easily often koing a Pokemon before they can move this is a good time to bring up the fact that because U hits through protect players are just way less likely to click protect in front of U in general in other words uu allows your partner Pokemon to kind of gain its ability as a side benefit for offensive teams with strong and fast Pokemon this increases the amount of pressure they put on immensely not that you need to lean into off offense to support U there are several support Pokémon that pair very well with it two of whom were used this year to win the World Championships iron hands is a great partner for uu because despite sharing a fighting typing iron hands has access to the move fake out this stops the target from moving but only works the first turn after iron hands has switched in normally one of the best ways to deal with fake up pressure is to just protect with both of your Pokémon but in front of U that doesn't work obviously and iron hands isn't the only takeout user around reloom is an incredibly popular grass type Pokémon that pairs well with U for similar reasons as iron hands providing fake out pressure and a lot of bulk both RAB boom and iron hands are good as well because they can hit the water type Pokemon for a super effective damage that resist U surging strikes speaking of grass types the other world winning uu support Pokemon was amongus amongus is one of the best support Pokemon ever redirecting attacks with rage powder healing his partner with pollen puff and disabling opponents with Spore most teams only have one or two Pokémon that are immune to Spore so if amongus hits the field at a time when you aren't able to knock it out the typical play is to protect and Swit an immunity to sleep this strategy is not the best one in front of uru meaning on top of keeping U safe and healthy amongus can help to put opponents in a lose lose situation for they're forced to either take a powerful surging strikes or a Spore there's lots more Pokémon that pair well with u but by highlighting how of the strongest Pokémon in the format independent of U also enable it to be even more menacing I think you get the gist it is worth noting that there is counterplay to UU I wouldn't say that these are hard counters as in add this Pokemon to your team and you'll never have to worry about U but instead that it is possible for teams without U to beat teams with it the best thing you can do to make sure you don't get run over by the bear is to move before it attacks using things like Tailwind trick room and certain speed booster Pokémon like flutter Main and roaring moon are effective at letting you move before it at my most recent tournament I ran Speed Booster teror grass energy ball flutter M allowing me to outspeed and KO even choice scarf U for example if you can't outspeed it you can at least hope to trade favorably with it if you have two Pokemon on the field that are bulky enough and can threaten enough damage such as iron hands and reloom you can force the U player to double into one of your Pokémon if they want to take it out and attack with both of your own Pokémon in return into U to try and force a trade of course if they protect you can be out of luck but many U hold the choice scarf item making them harder to keep safe fake out is a great move against uru in general because it allows you to reposition without taking a big attack kind of like a pseudo protect in this case it helps that like I mentioned two of the best fake out users do match up pretty well against U an offensive grassy Glide user like aoom with a way to boost its damage or an ogre Pawn when paired with r boom is a new way to outspeed and KO uru though intimidate can render this tactic less effective Rocky helmet is a great item against U though it should never be your sole answer for it often times it can be used for Meaningful chip against U or to discourage U from attacking one of your Pokemon in the first place which can be especially helpful on Pokemon that provide speed control like Tornadus and figer there are some other tricks you can use to make U's life a little harder but for the most part this is how U needs to be stopped not with a single Pokémon but with a collection of tools that each make its life harder on their own this is very difficult to pull off I mean even with players doing their utmost to stop U it continues to win tournaments I was personally very hopeful that ogre pond water might be the hard counter to U we so desperately need but Choice scurf U just outspeeds it and uses U-turn into it every time it hits the field eventually whittling it down to where it can't do its job anymore so now you know all there is to know about U and I think that means it's time to answer our question question is uu ruining competitive Pokémon I think the answer is complicated first of all competitive Pokémon is not ruined even now when there's a Pokemon dominating competitive play that's nearly impossible to stop players are finding clever Innovations and creative Pokemon that can work tournament attendance is the highest it's ever been for this part of a generation and players are still having fun with the game but I think the game would be much better without U just because it's still going well now that doesn't mean that urs's presence is anything other than a huge net negative on the game having a Pokemon that breaks the rules of the game also be so powerful at the end of the day just isn't Fun and the severely limited counterplay is the final nail in the coughing

Channel: WolfeyVGC

Views: 1,002,145

Keywords: Wolfey, Pokemon, VGC, Wolfe Glick, Competitive Pokemon, Pokemon VGC, twitch, pokemon nuzlocke, nuzlocke, hardcore nuzlocke, smallant, ludwig, pokemon challenge, pokemon challenges, alpharad, wolfeyvgc, purplecliffe, pm7, pokemen7, mandjtv, shiny pokemon, pokemon scarlet, pokemon violet, scarlet, violet, scarlet and violet, fuecoco, quaxly, sprigatito, urshifu, strongest Pokemon, urshifu wolfey, legendary Pokemon

Id: 8dwocAz1A7M

Length: 24min 43sec (1483 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024