PSA: Garchomp can have earthquake
Tl;Dr: it's not always a weak-ass dust tornado, sometimes it's a 10.0 quake bomb coming to push your face in.
It seems like everyone in the 2000-2500 range thinks sand tomb is the only option for the landshark. It's been really good for my ELO and rare candy stash, but I think it's time to get the word out. Just because all the youtubers run sand tomb doesn't mean you're safe from getting quaked.
I ran into 5 metagross in my last set, and only one shielded the earthquake. Two of them were the last pokémon, and had a shield and nearly full health against my one shield, mangled chomp and depleted metagross. If they'd shielded, BP probably would have KO'ed before I got to a second EQ, and they would have had plenty of energy and health to have a shot against what was left of my metagross.
In fairness the no-shield makes sense if almost everyone else has ST. When my metagross sees an opposing garchomp they almost always have ST and throw it ASAP, so I guess the odds favor saving the shield for after the de-buff.
For those now thinking about double-nuke garchomp, you really want to have shield advantage before you bring out your chompy fren, but so many people are depending on switch priority that it's pretty easy to get them to shield early if you can do without. And you lose the bait potential, but I don't put much stock on baiting as a strategy anyways, in the best case it seems to have about an even chance of failing, and I'd rather carry big moves and have a 50% chance to OHKO.
For a wild ass guess I'd say around 20% of my wins would have been close without landing EQs on metagross and/or outrage on dragonite. And every once in a glorious while, I line up with shields and energy versus a metagross and dragonite and nuke them both into the stratosphere. Garchomp is best girl and totally deserves all the dust and rare candy I give her.
That one trainer who shielded EQ was the only one I lost to in this set, and it was the gary/2x steel team that I usually walk all over, so good play there. Take the cue from them and get suspicious when chomp is taking a long time to throw. Or don't, I wouldn't mind a shot at rank 9 this season.
Posted Jul 16, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC
I mean, it can, I agree.
But I've tried both, and found that you're just too prone to getting shielded out if you're doing EQ/Outrage. And you overkill because you can't farm with the mud shots really.
Swampert does the same thing, better IMO. Even with the lower CP, hydro cannon is a really good move that makes up the difference.
Yeah, happens sometimes, and when I don't get shield advantage I usually lose. But I've found it so easy to draw shields I'm winning most of the time. I do think swampert is the better anti-steel, if you can line it up. In my team that would be hard because I intentionally give away switch priority, so I need pokes that counter at least two points of the steel/dragon/fairy triangle.
The typical win goes a bit like this:
I Lead metagross. Most opposing leads, I charge a MM and bail to gyarados. If there's a togekiss or magnezone it comes out now. I do whatever damage I can, don't shield, and faint with time left on the switch clock. Metagross comes back in to farm (unless magnezone, then chomp comes in). That energy applies shield pressure in the next match, and once I have the advantage I switch to garchomp and blow their doors off.
There's some tricky situations of course, but unless you plow garchomp into a togekiss there's usually a win condition.
Hmm, I have been trying similar with Snorlax on lead, gyarados up second. It does pretty well, because you hardly ever have to switch out. You lose the lead but farm down, and set up farming for Swampert to sweep.
I might try metagross/gyarados though instead. That might work to draw out the things Swampert can't really do well against.
I think it works because everyone has something that's weak to metagross, so they pounce on the chance to bring it out against something else. But if you don't need switch, after gyarados faints metagross gets to farm them anyways, and then it has the energy to pressure shields enough that it's game over if you have something that charges fast and can KO most of the meta with one or two moves.
Swampert could maybe work but I'm not up to date on how it synergizes with metagross. The MG to GY switch tends to draw togekiss, magnezone, or snorlax most often, or the occasional dragonite or gyarados, so if that sounds helpful maybe give it a shot.
This sounds like a fun team actually, what move set do you run on gyara?