Tom's Teams: Fire Revisited

[holzerhedrpca]

Hidy-ho, neighborinos, and welcome to yet another edition of Tom's Teams. This week, we're going to revisit the Fire-monotype team. Unlike the Grass team, this won't be a totally different team. Looking back at the original team, there were a lot of flaws, especially in that there was no way to deal with entry hazards. Stealth Rock DESTROYS most

Comments

[cuchonchuir]

Not trying to start a debate or anything, but I personally feel that Stealth Rock should be banned from competitive play. I think it has too much of an impact on too many pokemon, simply due to type and ignoring defense and HP to boot.

Your team is an example to me; you have one member almost entirely devoted towards countering the move, and another member partially devoted towards preventing it.

Sorry for that little rant.

Good team, man. :D I love reading your entries.

[kanthia]

But Roark gives out the TM for Stealth Rock, and therefore it should be allowed due to its, uh, cuteness.

[holzerhedrpca]

Thanks for the props :)

While I don't agree in banning moves or Pokémon (free Garchomp and Wobbuffet!), I do agree that Stealth Rock has an overcentralizing influence on the game. Its presence is the sheer reason why I think Garchomp is banned to übers. There's only one Ice-type that's neutral to SRs. Everything else that could be a decent counter loses 25-50% of its HP. You get fewer Abomasnows around to change the weather to strip Chompy of its Sand Veil advantage, fewer Regices to come in and be able to take a boosted Fire Fang and still be able to dish back, fewer Articunos to set up a tanking situation to take Chomp down.

While Pandora can't stuff everything back in the box, I think they can couch SR's effect in future generations by adding similar entry hazards, limiting the number of elementally-based EHs to 1.