Captoats said:
I don't see how his weakness is so bad that you can't make a deck around him, especially when blastgatr and blastzel are well known decks? Blastzel is set up T3 at the latest just like most other decks and has very little problem with recovery imo.
It isn't BDIF, but it is definitely a good deck and can ohko reshiram with it's techs, not even having to use the main attacker which is pretty good imo.
I've used Blastgatr and dabbled in Blastzel, so while it's very good in theory, there are a few really important things holding it back. In order, imo:
1) Borderline Autoloss to Zekrom and Magnezone.
Zone can burn two every turn and that's easily enough to score KOs as a rule. ZPS can flatten Blastoise even without the donk, and with Yanmega and other techs being used to help ZPS mid/late game, the matchup for Blastoise gets even worse. It beats the shit out of Reshiram and Donphan, but lightning weakness is nothing to scoff at in this format. Zone and Zekrom are also extremely common in this format in one form or another.
2) Reliance of stage twos.
Whether you run Feraligatr or the faster Floatzel, you still need a main attacker with four energy ready to go for the attack, and an energy acceleration tech to keep attacking. This is very difficult to do consistently at speed without some kind of draw support.
3) Pokemon Catcher
Whether you use the fragile Floatzel or the slow Feraligatr, catcher really hurts this deck. Floatzel might do okay if you set up two of them, but it's still an easy KO. Feraligatr suffers from the same problem Emboar has in a terrible attack and retreat cost. This paired with the current decks in format (other than maybe Reshiram) put this deck in a bad situation. Also, Catcher makes bench sniping a little more redundant imo, as bench sniping pretty much gains the advantage of stalling, which is nice, but with Switch seeing more play, stalling to this point might be inconsistent. Not as big a deal as the above problems, but the slower speed and bad weakness puts a nail into Blastoise's coffin.
All in all, I think Kyurem is a better water based bench hitter. It has a better weakness, is much faster, and has a better use of Feraligatr's Hydro Crunch attack in the event that it does get dragged out.