You wouldn't know it by looking at its stats, but Espathra is actually one of the top meta threats... The Team: pokepast.es/22... Join the Team Freeze Discord! / discord
@@fanderp5954 Only with Tera Flying do you not die to a fighting Tera Blast though and since Espa is usually behind screens, good luck killing it. Iron Head means no priority
dear fucking god what a journey this thing has had. In the span of 11 days espathra went from falling to uu,to destroying uu, to getting banned from uu, to properly rising to ou, to destroying ou, to getting banned from ou. All while getting suspected in natdex. Espa had a whole story unfold in a week and a half. Truly one of the favorite gen 9 mons of mine defying logic all over a single ability
You have to consider the opportunity cost of running it though, because it needs calm mind, stored power, and a coverage move so you'd need to forgo protect for added safety in protect
Yeah I think Lumina Crash is a great move and really cool, but unfortunately it's not really meaningful in singles. That said I could see it being big in doubles to break a sash and put something in ko range of a weaker spread move like electroweb, and it's great in Tera Raids.
@@craigyeah1052 "Lumina Crash isn't good in singles" >Serene Grace Seed Flare entered the chat It's not that the move is bad, it simply doesn't fit with the set up nature of the Stored Power sets
@@becausesakamoto5938 honestly i think roost is better then protect because the longer you stay in the field with speed boost espathra the more your stored power gets buffed and espathra can tank some things pretty well
@@galvsparks6295 True, but people are using Pult for its ridiculous revenge killing ability, not for its raw power. The specs just ensures that it gets the extra damage necessary to score KOs.
Honestly I love using espathra with opportunist and mirror herb as if people aren’t expecting it I suddenly copy their boosts and double them (and since it learns baton pass that is a useful combo)
If you save the sub reveal, you can also dodge sucker punches with it which is nice for not getting revenge killed. I feel like you’d probably miss roost though still
Man, I remember when you had less than 1k subs and I was watching little cup content from ya. It's really awesome to see how much your channel's grown!!
What a great example of a balanced Pokémon, can be handled easily if you’re prepared for it, but can be devastating if left alone for too long, and even then doesn’t auto-win. On top of that, it needs help from its teammates to make it all work, I love Pokémon that force you to have synergy with its teammates.
I remember looking at this thing for one second and thinking, “this is the most borderline pokemon of all time” every new aspect I saw affirmed that for me. It’s cool that it can see actual use right now, and I hope it lasts.
I find this video incredible bro. I discovered Espathra day 2 of SV, climbed to rank 2 with it and i really loved how accurate all the information u provided about my fav pokemon this gen was. Things like dtail immunity with fairy type against chomp, stall breaking potential and Synergies with Cyclizar and Annihilape are some info u provided and i really liked. Great video man, keep up the awesome content!
Espatra Was my first shiny in Scarlet, used it to great success on my in game team and can’t wait till I get an ability patch to turn it into a competitive monster
I really love this psychic chicken so much. One of the best Gen 9 Pokemon IMO. I'm very surprised they didn't make it Psychic/Flying tbh, since it's a psychic chicken.
Espeathra used substitute! Espeathra used Protect! Espeathra used substitute! Espeathra used Protect Espathra used sto- "The connection to the opponent was interupted
No one's talking about tera dark clodsire as a counter. Unaware on a dark pokemon with that much bulk, recovery, and toxic is the absolute end all shutdown to espathra. Even when its fully boosted to max, tera blast fighting/dazzling gleam does absolutely pitiful damage and gets recovered right off as espathra dies to toxic XD
This is the first mon I made a team around because I thought this thing was soooo cool with the combination of Speed Boost, CM and Stored Power. Also I really like it's design, cool to see GF add an ostrich Pokémon after so long. All I'm curious about is whether or not this mon will work well in VGC. I could see it work alongside Indeedee or maybe something like Friend Guard Maushold. Idk food for thought for sure!
@@craigyeah1052 Setup is actually pretty fire rn in VGC, the tool for it are there. It's just that you need to take Booster Energy mons and priority users into account when building around this strat
To think that in order to do something of this magnitude back in the day, Scolipede with Baton Pass into Krookodile Power Trip was pretty much your only option, and now we have a mon in Espathra to do the same thing, all combined into one mon. Back in the days of Rotation Battles, I used an Espeon with Magic Bounce for Stored Power with Calm Mind under Substitute spam to sweep teams, but because Rotation Battles were never a popular format, I never got to actually use it to its fullest.
I honestly think I just want to run specs lumina crash with u turn for coverage incase the opponent wants to switch to a dark type. You can also trick specs on the the incoming dark type to cripple.
Have been laddering a bit the last few days and enemy Espathra legit never did a single thing. But I do use Kingambit, that kinda covers that mon in its entirety
They should've traded steel's resistance to Psychic with dark because arguably evil is usually taken down with metal weapons and metal armor is good for protection when facing evil but psychics are well known for bending metal spoons and lifting large metal objects with their abilities so you don't have to make it super effective but at least ditch the resistance I say
The metal > evil is debatable but yeah kinda weird that it resists psychic. Maybe it's because a lot of steel-types are like robots which could be immune to telepathic attacks?
Murkrow: Prankster Eviolite Haze, Perish Song, Taunt Espathra is one of those pokemon I quickly realized that I would NEVER like having to fight...so that's what I use to shut it down
I've been running espathra but there's a lot of dark types around in the meta (roaring moon, the ruins, iron jugulis) that make it hard to use stored power. Dazzling gleam does well until they tera steel, and i find i don't have the flexibility to set up calm mind enough to oneshot some of them.
One of my favorite gimmicks to use is wrap orthworm with coil and body press, since it lets it trap and kill pokemon such as garchomp and kingambit who get walled hard by it and let's orthworm set up easily.
Wait. Cyclizar not only has Shed Tail (busted move even with it’s downside) but it’s HA is REGENERATOR? How am I just now finding this out, that’s disgusting
ngl I was surprised how long it took freezai to find out how good espathra is it was basically my second gen 9 ou team's star i even had 2 pokemon dedicated to setting it up
you should use flittle in lc before it gets banned, tera fighting to beat pawniard is almost a perfect tera type for it and theres hardly anything that can stave it off other than opposing flittle
@@DreamingGodofstorysI mean the fact a lot of the threats that break stall such as Roaring Moon, Dragapult, Annihilape etc are pretty much only on the radar because Tera gets to cover there weaknesses says to me that not banning Tera would only benefit Stall in the long run as offensive threats get more and more banned due to the mechanic giving them the ability to turn checks into set up fodder
This is cool and all... every esperada I've fought gets obliterated by gallade... so do most things. Don't sleep on gallade, sharpness is literally gorrilla tactics with no downside on gallade and with one agility you outspeed virtually anything and then you can just use life orb and sharpness for a very balanced 1.8x power on your moves
@@GravityIsFalling definitely a con this is one of the ugliest designs I ever seen and it looks like shit. It looks like a dr Seuss creature not a pokemon. At least pawmi and the evolutions are cute. I was worried the evolution would ruin it like quaxly. Glad I chose sprigatito even if it is a furry.
yo i think that Dark Green Hue guy was also seen in pokeaim/bkc's roaring moon video also complaining about terrastallize LMAOOOOOO EDIT: i was wrong; that woulda been a sick crossover LOL
I think in my opinion espeon is the same level as grimsnarl. It depends what you want though, if you want to keep hazards off espeon is very good especially with abilities like toxic debris, it can punish those who forget about magic bounce as well by giving toxic or thunder wave, it gets reflect and light screen off okayish, it's not guaranteed like grimsnarl but it's ability to stop set up sweepers is still noticeable with yawn or thunder wave and it can hit great tusk and roaring moon for super effective if they haven't terastilized
Freezai: when i started youtube, I mentally prepared myself for a lot of eventualities, toxicity, hate comments, etc. I did not mentally prepare myself for breezai cake. if you dnot know what breezai is you arent a real freezai fan
A fun but less consistent strategy is to use opportunist with a power herb and swap in on something like a quiver dance and you immediately run away with the game
It’s stats are what keeps it from being broken in a tera type meta game. And 481 isn’t bad, along with its distribution being in speed and special attack which it’s all it needs. Hp and special attack/ or speed investment with a reflect up can do wonders. It’s biggest roadbump is clodsire who can shut it down with a toxic. Luckily a lot of clodsires get greedy and want a water immunity so you can atleast over power it with calm mind boosts
The first thing i looked up when gen 9 startes was : stored power, looking for some cheese. Imagine my surprise when i found Speedboosting stored power mon
Even though stored power eventually is strong enough to beat skeledirge, clodsire and dondozo, they can still switch in early and completely body you. unaware Torch song turns YOU into setup fodder, clodsire can try and toxic you before you while stored power is still 80 BP and dondozo just erases you with wave crash. I think having a separate setup sweeper who can spare a move slot for toxic (and can learn it) to lure in these unaware guys and cripple them with chip damage and toxic. It also learns reflect, just sayin
Freezai, I found a fun new strategy you could try out. On national dex, they added fissure to machamp in gen 9, on top of his already-existing ability no guard. You can see where this is going. Use this knowledge as you please.
The best Espathra counter is Espathra. Opportunist, Calm Mind, Stored Power, Roost, Coverage move, Tera Dark/Steel/Fairy. Calm mind on the same turn as them and you get +2 SpA, +2 SpD, and +1 Spe per turn. That’s 100 base power onto your stored power. Tera dark to counter stored power. If you really want to counter other Espathra go 252 HP / 240+ SpD / 16 Spe to outlive and outrun pretty much any set.
I haven't played competitive in a long time and Sterling violets competitive seems crazy since it seems like there's a lot of good or seemingly overpowered mons. Got any tips for me? The few games I've played have actually been enjoying Aurora Vail Abamasnow but I can't decide whether to commit to pure offense or not
This is my first instinct too. Maybe "broken" is not quite the word, but it makes Pokemon so unpredictable that it becomes unreasonable to prepare an answer for every Tera-type they might have. At least it is much more interesting (and less straightforwardly broken) than Dynamax though. If you wanted to nerf Terastallising without banning it, you could just ban Tera Blast. The fact that Pokemon can have a STAB base 80 move of any type is kinda scary.
@@alexpotts6520 but banning TERA blast make mons With No coverage at all unplayable while Pokemon what dont need TERA blast can abuse TERA still (Like paradox salamence With acrobatic and flying tera) so banning TERA blast make only weak or not Meta mons punish while the meta mons dont care
