Upon me waiting for the new Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire to come out, I began studying up on Beedrill. It's fairly obvious that there is a certain moveset to use when it is mega evolved. But what I wanted to know was, "Is it possible to use it in a competitive game, where it can become a sweeper?" I, personally, believe that it is possible to be used and can easily 6-0 an entire team under the correct circumstances. However, it would require a Focus Sash and enough luck to have an opponent without priority. Agility is available on Beedrill, so that is a good move to have to make up for a rather low speed base stat of 75. After you use that, the opponent will either set up or Attack. After one Agility, you can have many coverage moves. I prefer X-Scissor, as it is the most powerful Bug Type attack. Not only that, but you can have the Swarm ability increases Bug Moves power by 50% when it's HP is bellow 1/3. This is already in use after your focus sash is used to keep you alive after the agility. Next up is Poison Jab, the strongest Physical Poison type move. Lastly, I'd prefer Acrobatics. It's power is increased to massive numbers after losing the Focus Sash. Although this is powerful, you can get walled by not having a attack to wall Rock Types. So, I would suggest, as an alternate to Acrobatics, have Drill Run. It's a powerful move to hit Rock and Steel Super-effective. It also has a a high Critical-Hit Ratio.
Taking these ideas into consideration, I believe that Beedrill has good potential to be a useable Pokémon in a competitive view. However, it can be easily stopped by priority. Please tell me what you guys think of the strategy, feedback is greatly appreciated.
problem i see its a 2hko for anything even with focus sash and ferrothorn/garchomp will stop a sweep immediately with rough skin/iron barbs unless you get enough set up to the point you an 1hKO a full def invested ferro with drill run/accrobatics. Can it sweep yes, can it reliably sweep not a chance unless its mega'd i'm afraid its just doesn't have the stats to do it in the higher tiers of smogon or VGC.
While that is true, most people would go for a super effective hit. And though I can see where you are coming from, I still think it is able to be used against most
Sweeper threats. For example , I used it against a Alakazam. It outspeed and OHKO. And with it's variety of moves, it still should get more praise than what it gets without Mega Evolution.
The problem in using Mega Beedrill is it's lack of priority counters. The dramatic decrease in defenses means pretty much any priority attack can make it suffer a KO. A Life Orb boosted Fake Out from Ambipom does a minimum of 80% to Mega Beedrill and a Mega Scizor has a chance of scoring an OHKO on it with a turn 1 Bullet Punch. Mega Kangaskhan also has enough power to shut Mega Beedrill down with a Fake Out + Sucker Punch. If switched in after an Azumarill has used Belly Drum you can also expect to see an Aqua Jet tear Mega Beedrill's pride away.
Now all of that is just a small, short rundown on Mega Beedrill's glaring weakness but a quick look at standard Beedrill reveals similar weaknesses. As shown, priority will completely shut you down. As a non-mega Beedrill has lower speed and attack, to reach usable levels in competitive play I would equip Beedrill with a Focus Sash. His 75 base Speed stat isn't going to give it much of an advantage without a boost so running Agility on a maxed Attack/Speed Beedrill seems like a plausible idea. This leaves an Adamant Beedrill with a modest 156 Attack at level 50. This is aided by a Swarm boosted X-Scissor, stab Poison Jab, and Drill Run for utility purposes. Again we see that Beedrill is at the mercy of any sort of priority from an opponent so I would suggest that if this set were used in competitive play that it should be used in single battles once the opponent's priority users have been dealt with. Outside of this setting I do not see Beedrill having much success just the same as Mega Beedrill.
In summary, both Beedrill and Mega Beedrill will be outmatched at the first sign of priority. Play around this fact and take out any priority the enemy team has before switching in Beedrill. For a Beedrill that is not planning to take advantage of its mega evolution, equip a Focus Sash and use Agility on the first turn while you wait for your HP to drop activating Swarm. Pretty much all of this has been said by the OP but this post is simply my own analysis of Beedrill and it finds similar conclusions to what was said in the first post.
Nov 15, 2014, 11:54 AM (This post was last modified: Nov 15, 2014, 12:01 PM by evilsabre.)
Yea but who sends their sweepers into or leaves them in against a +2 speed pokemon with a SE stab attack... Typically you'l face a pokemon who can only be hit neutrally at best and has some bulk behind it. The 90 base attack is nothing to write home about leaving it unable to break most walls only being a 3hko on slowbro who beedrill has se stab on or a 5hKo on milotic. Garchomp and salamance both obliterate beedrill with barely any hp loss garchomp taking at max 38% from x scissor unboosted but he will get the 1 turn ko with rough skin to break the sash salamence even less only taking like 28% from a poison jab/knock off. While its clear you desperately want to use regular beedrill its just too easily dealt with by many common pokemon (kang, ferrothorn, salamence, garchomp or anyone with priority) and while i value surprise factor highly using agility or passing a boost over instantly gives away your game plan since a baton passer would use ninjask, scolipeed or smeargle instead.
I don't want to beat on the idea but i also don't want people getting the idea that beedrill is actually strong, without its mega its sadly lacking in many areas.
Mega Beedrill massively fixes the issues normal beedrill faces since it eliminates the need to set up and gains adaptability to give it some more punch than swarm gives but for 2 types instead of just bug moves.
Edit: note that beedrill down in lower smogon tiers can be quite powerful especially with focus energy and sniper but in the upper tiers he's going to be lucky to go 1 for 1
