Discussion Weaknesses of the top tier decks

2

21times

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hello fellow Beach Bums,

From what I've seen in the new meta, matchups have been extremely significant, so I'm trying to detail out all of the major weaknesses of the top tier decks. This is what I've come up with so far, please feel free to contribute.

Volcanion - Garbodor, Rainbow Road, Water pokemon (Regice, Glaceon)
Mega Ray - Parallel City, Lysandres, Rainbow Road
Darkrai EX - Lysandre, Rainbow Road
Rainbow Road - Parallel City, Scizor, bench snipers (Audino, Greninja), hammers
Yanmega - Garbodor
Gardevoir - Rainbow Road, Scizor
Scizor - Volcanion
Mewtwo - Gardevoir, Scizor, Rainbow Road (Mew)
Xerneas Break - Scizor
 
What would you say the weakness to yveltal would be? From my experiments, greninja has been a rough matchup with yveltal BKT having no grounds to attack the bench and yveltal ex not able to do much damage with evil ball because a lack of energy
 
M Mewtwo certainly has a hard time against M Scizor. Counters which haven't been brought up for Yveltal and Mega Ray are Zebstrika BKP and Raichu GEN, 2 electric types who can hit hard and easily score lots of damage against these decks.
 
Mega Ray has no issues with Parallel City. Brock and Dragonite EX means they can get right back in the game.
 
Xerneos, to answer your question:

Yveltal (Fright Night, Oblivion Wing, and EX): I think it goes without saying that Jolteon EX is baby Yveltal's arch nemesis, and it 2 shots EX. As so many pokemon can 1 shot for 130 (or 170 or even 210), it is also inherently at a disadvantage against Mega Ray, Rainbow Road, Darkrai, and M Mewtwo.

I don't consider any of the Yveltals a stand alone, feature pokemon like Darkrai EX. I put Yveltal in the same category as I do Zoroark and baby Darkrai - they would all be complimentary pieces to a Darkrai EX top tier deck. They're good role players, but Darkrai EX is the star.
 
I think there is no real top tier level this year. I think when the dust settles a lot of those decks will be 50/50 in the power rankings.

There are just too many different ways to get around each one of these decks. For standard, I'm going take the winners with a grain of salt this year. That is until I see something with as much dominance as Toad, NM, and Villeplume. But ya, I don't see anything with that sort of dominance yet. I see good decks with auto losses to other good decks.

I think that is good for the game.
 
Agreed.

And there will still be more expansions beyond Evolutions that will continue to alter the balance of power... the meta will be in flux all year.

And yes much healthier for the game than when we were talking about Night March and the things that might have a chance at beating it.
 
I try to play every deck possible online and these are some of the bad matchups I've found:

Volcanion loses to greninja. Steam up gets disabled by mist slash and greninja can ohko anything after one shuriken.

Despair ray gardevoir destroys mewtwo. It doesn't even have to discard pokemon to get ohkos.

Scizor won't do as well as people initially thought it would against rayquaza. Karen, brock, and dragonite will make it easier to bounce back from getting stadium denied. Without garbodor, rayquaza is just too fast for scizor to deal with.

Jolteon is a big counter to yveltal. Not only does it hit for weakness, but is also shuts down most of their options. Zoroark makes the matchup more favorable though.
 
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I would argue that volcanions only real bad matchup is water mon. Because as much as Garbodor is a real pain, but all of the volcanions can one shot it with lysandre. Also you get energy acceleration with the first attack on the baby volcanion. As for Rainbow road, this really depends on the player and the list. I know my list has absolutely no problem dismantling a rainbow road. Those of us who play with all the extra stuff (Flareon EX, Entei, ninja boy, whatever), will have an issue with Rainbow Road for sure.

My deck for pokemon simply runs:
4 Volcanion EX
4 Baby Volcanion
1 Shaymin EX
1 Hoopa EX

I started play testing this deck about one months before sts was released, and I have used it in two league challenges... both times I went undefeated. Now I know this is going to be a question so here is what I faced:
Greninja BREAK
Vileplume Eeve-eons etc
Other volcanion ex decks
Yveltal and friends
Dark Tina
Yanmega Vespiquen
Rainbow road
Speed ray
metal ray

The idea behind my list is to get a T1 about 120 damage off of baby volcanions power heater plus the awesome acceleration of energy (This is really easy to do with my list even with hoopa ex as a starting basic). So just consider the different types of Volcanion decks out there because there is the super simple one (mine) or the erratic one.
 
I feel as though Darkrai-EX struggles a lot against Gardevoir-EX. Even with Giratina-EX the match up tough since they can either Hex Maniac or Lysandre and easily knock every other Pokemon you have. Plus Xerneas BREAK destroys Giratina, so that doesn't help. AND Gardevoir-EX resists Dark, so it's an incredibly tough match up in my opinion unless you get set up fast enough.
 
LiftoffLizard said:
I would argue that volcanions only real bad matchup is water mon. Because as much as Garbodor is a real pain, but all of the volcanions can one shot it with lysandre. Also you get energy acceleration with the first attack on the baby volcanion. As for Rainbow road, this really depends on the player and the list. I know my list has absolutely no problem dismantling a rainbow road. Those of us who play with all the extra stuff (Flareon EX, Entei, ninja boy, whatever), will have an issue with Rainbow Road for sure.

My deck for pokemon simply runs:
4 Volcanion EX
4 Baby Volcanion
1 Shaymin EX
1 Hoopa EX

I started play testing this deck about one months before sts was released, and I have used it in two league challenges... both times I went undefeated. Now I know this is going to be a question so here is what I faced:
Greninja BREAK
Vileplume Eeve-eons etc
Other volcanion ex decks
Yveltal and friends
Dark Tina
Yanmega Vespiquen
Rainbow road
Speed ray
metal ray

The idea behind my list is to get a T1 about 120 damage off of baby volcanions power heater plus the awesome acceleration of energy (This is really easy to do with my list even with hoopa ex as a starting basic). So just consider the different types of Volcanion decks out there because there is the super simple one (mine) or the erratic one.
Click to expand...

How do you feel about only running one Shaymin? I feel like you and try and keep my Volcanion list simple and fast and don't bother with the rest of the fluff. I may try playing with one Shaymin and either upping my Acro Bike or Trainer's Mail count to 4 for more speed.
 
Daniel Clatworthy said:
How do you feel about only running one Shaymin? I feel like you and try and keep my Volcanion list simple and fast and don't bother with the rest of the fluff. I may try playing with one Shaymin and either upping my Acro Bike or Trainer's Mail count to 4 for more speed.
Click to expand...
One shaymin has honestly been wonderful with this deck, although I wouldn't say absolutely necessary. With one hoopa and one shaymin played in T1 then parallel city to discard them, I love the way that works and I get what I need for that everytime.
 
- Mega Ray - Parallel City, Lysandres, Rainbow Road, Giratina-EX
- Rainbow Road - Parallel City, Scizor, bench snipers (Audino, Greninja), hammers
(For this one, I personally think that if a person runs Delinquent and dual types they won't have a huge issue with Parallel City. They can still do decent damage. And that Ninja Boy tho.)
- Scizor - Volcanion, Giratina-EX
- Mewtwo - Gardevoir, Scizor, Rainbow Road (Mew), DarkTina

I put in bold the things I would add, personally.
 
Circling back to this with a summary of all of the suggestions above:

Volcanion - Garbodor, Rainbow Road, Water pokemon (Regice, Glaceon, Greninja)
Mega Ray - Parallel City, Lysandres, Rainbow Road (Galvantula), Giratina
Darkrai EX - Lysandre, Rainbow Road
Rainbow Road - Parallel City, Scizor, bench snipers (Audino, Greninja), hammers
Yanmega - Garbodor
Gardevoir - Rainbow Road, Scizor
Scizor - Volcanion, Giratina
Mewtwo - Gardevoir, Scizor, Rainbow Road (Mew), Darktina
Xerneas Break - Scizor
Greninja - Yanmega, Garbodor

Basically, I'm trying to gauge which decks have the least weaknesses, since that seems to be driving the meta at this point. It's not how strong and powerful your deck is, it's how few chinks you have in your armor.
 
21times said:
Circling back to this with a summary of all of the suggestions above:

Volcanion - Garbodor, Rainbow Road, Water pokemon (Regice, Glaceon, Greninja)
Mega Ray - Parallel City, Lysandres, Rainbow Road (Galvantula), Giratina
Darkrai EX - Lysandre, Rainbow Road
Rainbow Road - Parallel City, Scizor, bench snipers (Audino, Greninja), hammers
Yanmega - Garbodor
Gardevoir - Rainbow Road, Scizor
Scizor - Volcanion, Giratina
Mewtwo - Gardevoir, Scizor, Rainbow Road (Mew), Darktina
Xerneas Break - Scizor
Greninja - Yanmega, Garbodor

Basically, I'm trying to gauge which decks have the least weaknesses, since that seems to be driving the meta at this point. It's not how strong and powerful your deck is, it's how few chinks you have in your armor.
Click to expand...
Hmmmm... I think that is is perfect, but Scizor does have an advantage over Mega Ray. Even before Liverpool (Where MRay dominated), Parallel City has slowly become more common in Scizor decks.
 
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