The Death of Landorus

over a decade ago the Pokémon company made a mistake they released a Pokémon so powerful it would not only go on to dominate the game but its absurd strength would make it almost mandatory on every single competitive team a Pokemon that had it all stats move pool ability typing everything a Pokemon could want landeras had and then it disappeared how could this happen How could a Pokémon so powerful that just showing a picture of one to a player from from 2015 would cause them to pass out on the spot just vanish maybe you think I'm not being completely honest that the reports of landis's death were greatly exaggerated well I recently entered the biggest official Pokemon Tournament of all time and do you want to guess what landis's best placement was top 256 but in order to figure out what happened to Lander atherion we need to understand what makes it so strong in the first place let's start with a simple distinction there are technically two landuses the Incarnate or base form and the theion form which is the focus of our video when landeras was first introduced it was only available in its incarnate form and it didn't see a ton of play but then in Pokémon Black and White 2 they added this stupid mini game you had to download on your 3DS where you had to use the gyroscope and the outer cameras to chase a bunch of little orbs around your house and you could only place so much each day for some reason I'm not making any of this up by the way this was a legitimate part of being a competitive player a decade ago anyway after like 2 weeks you would eventually unlock the reveal glass and in doing so you could transform all three Genies into their theion forms changing Tornadus thunderus or landeras from incarnate to thean form has a couple effects their move pool and base stat total remain unaffected but their ability and the stats themselves change t theion and thunderus theion are pretty widely agreed upon as being downgrades compared to their incarnate forms this was not the case for landeras while landeras incarnate was a niche offensive pick at the time landeras theion immediately became one of the most used Pokémon when it was introduced in 2013 but if the stat total and the moves didn't change what caused such a major shift the most obvious change is landeras theon's ability while landeras incarnate has access to the abilities sand force and sheer force which can boost its damage output landeras theion has intimidate intimidate for anyone unaware is one of the single best abilities in all of competitive Pokémon if not the very best every time an intimidate user hits the field it lowers the attack stats of both opposing Pokemon and with competitive Pokemon being double battles this is a massive deal after just one intimidate a Pokemon's attack stat is 2/3 of what it was to start and after two intimidates that's down to 50% getting to reduce your opponent's damage output so much as a passive benefit to just switching in and being able to do this multiple times per game to boot makes intimidate users extremely valuable but landis's ability change doesn't fully explain its meteoric rise to success and we need to understand its rise if we want to learn about its fall another piece of the puzzle is its stats let's compare the two tigers side by side you can see they have identical HP defense and special defense stats but Lander T trades 10 speed and 10 special attack for a whopping 20 attack for context this puts landeras T at nearly the same attack stat as Zan Groudon and Rayquaza and even though it technically has the same defensive stats as landeras and carnate in practice it feels much tankier because of intimidate effectively making its physical bulk at least 50 50% better okay so landeras T not only has one of the best abilities in the entire franchise it also has some of the best stats of any Pokemon that's not on the cover of a game but we're not done talking about landis's strengths yet let's talk about its typing as a ground and flying type landeras has only two weaknesses water and ice which is a quadruple weakness you might think that this quadruple weakness to ice is the secret to landis's demise but this major drawback comes with some pretty nice benefits in exchange for just these two weaknesses landeras gets three resistances and importantly two immunities to two of the best offensive types in the game ground and electric this is an amazing defensive spread but it doesn't stop there offensively with ground and flying moves landeras hits eight types for super effective damage with no single type in the game being able to resist both ground and flying these two types have amazing offensive Synergy because ground moves are resisted by bug and grass types and flying hits those for super effective damage whereas flying attacks are resisted by Rock steel and electric type Pokémon all of whom take super effective damage from ground moves hold it this is where landeras runs into its first problem it doesn't learn a reliable flying type attack or it didn't learn one when it was first introduced but we'll talk more about flying moves later for now let's talk about the other attacks Lander learns actually before we talk about landis's moves let's talk about the sponsor of today's video by I'm going to take a wild guest here and say that some of you are probably very interested in cool stuff that's exclusive to Japan and that's where baay comes in bayi is a proxy shipping service in Japan what that means is that for places that tend to only ship within Japan such as Amazon Japan Yahoo Japan rakuen and more baay will purchase Whatever item you want for you have it sent to their warehouse and then mail it internationally to you this is a big deal by using baay you can buy anything from Japan without having to go through scalpers who jack up the price I was just in Japan this past summer and I saw a lot of really cool stuff I bought this art book for an anime I really like and these coasters from well another anime I really like it's exciting to me to think that I might not have to miss out on great products just because I don't live in Japan if body sounds like something you might be interested in I have good news sign up using the link in the description and get 10% off your first purchase thanks again to baay for sponsoring this video you might think that considering everything Pokemon has given to landeras thus far they'd show a little restraint with its move pool if you thought that you'd be dead wrong Lander's move pool when it was first introduced was completely absurd for starters it gets access to earthquake and if you've ever played a Pokémon game I probably don't need to tell you how good earthquake is but it's a ground type so of course it gets earthquake what's really shocking is the coverage moves they decided to give to landeras superpower and Incredibly powerful fighting type attack knockoff a dark type move that removes the target's item rock slide probably the most infamous of landis's attacks thanks to the chaos it causes with a tii Flinch chance and most importantly for some godforsaken reason the bug type move U-turn does this thing look like a bug to you all bug is arguably the worst type in the game so why is landeras getting a bug type move such a big deal well it isn't the coverage that makes you turn strong it's the effect When U-Turn connects with the target the user is switched out it might not sound very exciting but this one move takes landeras from completely unbalanced to just plain unfair this type of manual switching is extremely valuable in competitive Pokémon because it allows you to scout for what your opponent wants to do and then decide which Pokemon you want to send in in after you've seen what your opponent has chosen for the turn it also allows you to more easily maneuver your Pokemon and this is an especially big deal with landeras because of its handy little ability that activates every time it hits the field and its Skyhigh attack stat U-turn allows landeras to come in intimidate the opponent and then easily switch out again while still doing damage and Scouting For what the opponent's counterplay is and even though bug isn't a super good type generally it's actually great for landeras as for a while the most popular Pokemon that was immune to ground type moves was Cresselia a Pokemon weak to bug there's a running joke in the community that Charizard is Pokemon's favorite child and there is some truth to that but when I look at everything that landeras was given I'm not so sure anymore the first year that landeras theion was legal was 2013 during the final year of black and white 2's competitive circuit but despite being one of the most dominant Pokemon for the entire year it actually didn't win the World Championships in large part because the winning team chose to use Mammoth wine instead as its ground type of choice thanks to its ability to one hit KO landeras and Thundurus despite missing out in the victory landeras still placed both second and third and was the number three most used Pokémon in the entire tournament not bad at all for a debut performance second wasn't good enough for landeras though and he was hungry for Redemption and he'd get it 2 years later the next time he became legal the world championships in 2015 were dominated by landeras theion that dominated might be an understatement of the top eight teams landeras was present on every single one and was the number one most used Pokemon in the entire tournament it's hard to imagine Lander atherion going from such an incredible Peak to completely unused in fact landeras theion might be the only Pokémon to ever have 100% representation in the top eight of the World Championships though I'm not entirely sure but our story isn't over yet this tale is about landis's demise and in 2015 landeras was the king next year in 2016 landeras fell off hard its best placement at the world championships was 16th and there were only five landeras total in the entire tournament a steep drop off compared to the 43 used the prior year and even more steep when you consider that world's 2016 was meaningfully bigger than world world's 2015 this was the first time it truly seemed that landeras could bleed so what happened in just one short year the short answer is that the power level increased a lot because 2016 was something called a restricted format meaning some of the strongest Pokemon in the game became legal Lander's matchup against Primal Kyogre was really bad and it wasn't that good against Pokemon like xerus Rayquaza or Yveltal it didn't help that bronzong was used much more than ever before thanks to its good matchup against xerus and ability to set trick room and of course there was also landis's one major weakness it doesn't learn a good flying type move with no way of using its flying type offensively landeras couldn't get around Pokemon like aongus hitmontop and scray and then Pokemon Sun and Moon came out and landeras wasn't in the game well at first 2017's rule set didn't allow the genie but in 2018 landeras was back and this time he had a new tool sun and Moon's unique mechanic was zoves extremely powerful once per battle attacks that turned a Pokemon's regular move into a supercharged version often close to twice as strong as its base counterpart and that meant for the first time ever landeras was actually able to make use of its flying typing offensively as with zoves the mediocre fly was transformed into Su Sonic Sky strike with a new tool in its belt landeras would go on to win all three international level tournaments during the year as well as countless Regional level events I myself won a regional using landeras theion as a special attacker on my Charizard X team it looked like Lander's victory at the world championships was all but assured but it didn't happen landeras once again played second and third but just like in 2013 it failed to bring home the title the Pokémon standing in its way this time though wasn't mammo swine and it wasn't even a ground type this Pokemon was far more Sinister and would be the single biggest factor in landis's demise incinerar 2018 didn't only Mark the year landeras would arrive in alola it also marked the first year that incinerar reached full power as it finally had access to its hidden ability starting partway through the year and for anyone lucky enough to not know what incin War's hidden ability is already allow me to be the bearer of bad news it's intimidate with incinerar entry into the scene landeras for the first time had actual competition offensively landeras is the superior Pokémon its ground and flying typing are better at hitting things for big damage than incin or's fire and dark typing and its base stats allow it to be both faster and harder hitting but the thing is incinerar isn't supposed to be an offensive Pokemon it instead excels at supporting its team and even though it doesn't do as much damage as landeras it more than makes up for it in other ways incinerar is tankier than landeras its typing is better defensively especially because it doesn't have a single quadruple weakness it gets access to the move fake out one of the best supporting moves of all time and just like Lander is it gets access to U-turn but somehow it's even more useful on incinerar than it is on landeras that's because when you're using one of these manual switching moves one of the main advantages that I didn't mention earlier is that switching out after your opponent has already attacked with both of their Pokemon for the turn means you can bring in one of your own Pokemon without any risk of taking damage one of the biggest drawbacks to switching normally is that whatever you switch in can take massive damage if you aren't careful but a low and bulky U-turn Pokemon can sponge any damage itself and then let your offensive trailer Pokemon come in for free it isn't as relevant with landeras because it doesn't really have the bulk to be making too much use of this most of the time but you know who does have the bulk incinerar for the first time ever landeras was in trouble in fact incinerar was strictly better at repeatedly intimidating down opponent than landeras was often times managing to switch in four or five times in a single match compared to landis's two or three and this ultimately led to incinerar defeating landeras in the finals of the world championship an extremely ominous Omen for the Earth and Genie the following year incinerar would take over completely as the rules once again shifted to allow for restricted Pokémon inc's absurd bulk allowed it to be a much more valuable Pokémon against these superpowered threats and its dark typing was invaluable against the newly introduced Soo lunala and Ultra necrozma out of 78 teams in the world championships incinerar was present on 65 a usage percentage of over 83% would you like to guess how many teams landeras was present on zero not a single person at the World Championships thought landeras could do it landeras had less usage than ditto and salazzle but it wasn't enough for incinerar to just take landis's job this sadistic cat wanted to do even more damage see incinerator usage was the the highest any Pokémon had ever been over the course of history even the year where landeras was present on every single team in the top eight its overall usage was only 57% in the tournament a way lower number than incor is 83% and the developers over at Pokemon headquarters noticed they saw how powerful incinerar was and going into sword and shield they realized that something had to change so they buffed incinerar in my over two decades being a Pokemon fan this is probably the single most baffling decision I have ever seen the Pokemon company make incinerar was given a new move Parting Shot which is just like U-turn except instead of doing a little damage the targets attack and special attack stats are lowered for a defensive Pokemon like incinerar this is a strict upgrade and would cause incinerar to be better than ever before but buffing landis's biggest competitor wasn't enough for the Pokémon company going into sword and shield they reworked several old abilities so that they were no longer affected by intimidate these include inner Focus Scrappy oblivious and own Tempo sword and shield also introduced Dynamax giving some physical attackers a way to offset intimidate with Max knuckle giving an attack boost this generation would also introduce urfu an absolute nightmare of a Pokemon who not only is faster than Lander aerion but its signature move always crits with critical hits ignoring intimidate completely this was yet another major threat to landeras just like in Sun and Moon landeras wasn't legal during the first format of the new generation but due to the pandemic Both Worlds 2020 and 2021 were cancelled so we can't say too much about them it seemed like landis's only shot at Redemption would be in 2022 the restricted format of sword and shield and as you've probably realized these restricted formats have never been kind to landeras but things somehow weren't looking as bad as you might expect in fact Dynamax was even better for landeras than zoves had been as Max Airstream was one of the best Max moves in the game raising both the user and their partner speed stats and unlike Z moves which only let landeras use a flying move once per battle Dynamax lasted for three turns Max Quake was a great Max move as well increasing its team special defense pairing extremely well with landis's intimidate ability an especially useful ability to have with Zan and Groudon running around of course incinerar was still here and it was far in away the better intimidate user but landeras still found some success especially when paired with Kyogre landeras played second at both International tournaments despite not being especially popular overall and when the World Championships rolled around there was a question in the air would landeras be able to do it could it Dethrone the king and once again claim the title Lander is's best finish was Sixth and there were a handful of landeras in the top 16 as well this is a totally respectable performance but for the once King of the game it can't help but feel a little lackluster compared to the heights that landeras once knew but unfortunately for landeras incinerar was still causing problems at the 2022 World Championships incinerar was used on 83 teams with a total usage of 74% and once again took home the title while its usage wasn't quite as high as the year prior it was clear that the Pokémon Company still had some work to do to get incinerar in line scarlet and violet added several more tools to help players manage intimidate most notably is the item clear amulet which allows any Pokemon to effectively have the clear body ability making them immune to intimidate as well as all other external stat drops most notably can Gambit and annihilate who have the ability defiant powering them up whenever any of their stats is dropped and dondoo who has the oblivious ability making it immune to intimidate but once again landras wasn't in the game for most of 20203 the first year of scarlet and Violet's competitive rule set I say most because in a shocking twist for the first time ever the World Championships would use a different rule set than the entire rest of the format and suddenly landeras was added to the mix for this final and most important event of the year and this time for the first time in six years incinerar was not in the game for the third generation in a row landeras was able to use the new mechanic to get around its lack of flying type moves with Terra flying Terra Blast landeras had a reliable flying type move that could be used until it fainted without a timer like Dynamax and zmoves had and with this new tool and no wrestling cats in sight for the first time in 8 years landeras would go on to win the World Championships despite being one of the most infamous and strongest Pokemon of all time this was only landis's second win at world but it very well might be its last for quite some time although landeras would go on to do well at many of the events following the World Championships last year it was running on borrowed time the DLC for Pokémon scarlet and violet arrived soon after worlds and though landeras could withstand the addition of ogre paon in the teal mask the second DLC would serve as a death Nell with the indigo disc incinerar was back in the game which brings us to now with landeras performing poorly at every event since incin aura's reintroduction or I should say landeras theion performing badly in some bizarre twist of fate glanderous incarnate has actually been doing quite well it's a special attacker which means it isn't slowed down by incinerar and with sheer force life orb and Terra poison sludge bomb adds great additional coverage to to earth power threatening lots of meta Pokémon like incinerar reloom ente gouging fire ogre Pawn raging bolt and more it also naturally outspeeds uru something that landeras theion doesn't share turns out those 10 speed points matter more than you might expect not that any of this helps landeras theory in it seems like nowadays if you want a Pokemon with intimidate you should use incinerar and if you want a ground type offensive Pokemon landeras incarnate is a better bet which begs the question question is landeras theion gone for good on the one hand I don't think landeras T will ever be mainstream again as long as incinerar is around the gap between them is just too large and if Dynamax wasn't enough to let landeras overtake incinerar it's hard to imagine anything else will be but landeras still has a lot going for it and I'm sure that on the right team at the right time it can still be a great Pokemon and of course there's always the question of future Pokémon games there's no guarantee that incinerar will be in every game going forward though given how much the Pokémon company seems to love it I wouldn't bet on incinerar getting left behind anytime soon even without incinerar I don't think landeras will ever dominate the way it once did there's just too much counterplay to intimidate between the new items the new Pokémon and the old ability changes but maybe that's okay landeras had its time in the spotlight and even though it's not there anymore we can still appreciate it for what it was a strong reliable good party away at these Pokemon iron hands is doing very very little in terms of that Dam on Gyarados though maybe it's for the best that landus died

Channel: WolfeyVGC

Views: 412,849

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, Landorus, Landorus therian, Incineroar, Wolfey landorus, wolfey incineroar, pokemon day, pokemon day leaks, pokemon day leaked

Id: oxVGOD7dsSk

Length: 23min 37sec (1417 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024