"The Flying Kite of Doom"


(VGC) Mega Salamence - Attack (Mixed/Mono-Dragon Dance) Options

• Steel types: Since Mega Salamence is weak to Dragon, Fairy, Rock, and Ice type attacks it would make ever more sense to have Steel type partners who can easily take these hits since most of them are resisted to at least 3/4 of these attacks (factoring in dual typings). Arguably the best part Steel type Pokemon (& to me the best partner for Mega Salamence) who can threaten all 4 types as well as an additional 8 types (resisted and immune) is Aegislash. I can't really think of another Pokemon who forms a great defensive synergy with a pseudo 150/150 in both offensive and defensive stats than Aegislash since it walls threats like Abomasnow, Thundurus, Sylveon, Mega Gardevoir, Mega Mawile, Cresselia, and even opposing Mega Salamences. Heck 3 of the 4 types mentioned here (Ice, Fairy, and Rock) are extremely weak to a STAB Iron Head / Flash Cannon from a base 150 Physical/Special Attack from Aegislash. Another trait Aegislash has over some other Steel types is the fact it can shield Mega Salamence from spread damage from Rock Slide, Blizzard, and even Pixilate Hyper Voice by spamming Wide Guard.  In turn, Mega Salamence can provide Aegislash with a Intimidate drop to add to its overall bulk and go head to head against opposing Fire and Ground types with strong Aerilate hits or with Earthquake.
  
  As far as other Steel type partners are concern, Heatran, Ferrothorn, Exadrill,  Bisharp, Scizor, and Metagross make great teammates for Mega Salamence. Heatran is the most notable here since thanks to its Fire/Steel typing, it has a quad resistance to Ice/Fairy, takes incoming Will-O-Wisp hits with Flash Fire, can deal with opposing Steel types in case Mence doesn't have a coverage option, and can retaliate against those Rock, Ice, and Fairy types with a super effective Flash Cannon. Ferrothorn is an amazing defensive wall which can effectively deal with Water types like Rotom-W or Milotic who can give Mega Salamence some headaches. Excadrill is a great offensive partner considering Mega Salamence's part Flying typing allows driller to hit STAB Earthquakes against its opponents. Bisharp can be used as an Intimidate/Icy Wind deter given it would receive a +1/+2 in its physical attack which can allows the Dark/Steel type to hit significantly harder. Scizor is able to KO most Fairy types like Sylveon and Mega Gardevoir with a Life Orb STAB Bullet Punch and can protect Mence from Prankster Thunder Wave with Quick Guard. Regular Metagross is a creative, yet clever way to trick your opponents into having a duel Mega options as Metagross can deal massive damage against opposing threats.
  
  
• Electric Types: Mega Salamence needs ways to deal with bulky Water Pokemon since they can take a Aerilate Double Edge/ Hyper Voice and finish the psudo-legendary off with an Ice Beam.  Electric type Pokemon such as Rotom-W, Zapdos, Raikou, and Thundurus make great partners as Salamence can provide Intimidate support for these bulky threats as they can fire off super effective Thunderbolts on Water types. Some of these Pokemon mention can provide speed control with Thunder Wave or Electroweb to slow down the opposition enough for Salamence to outspeed.
  
  
• Sand Archetype : Ever since early April, Japanese Sand-based teams have used Mega Salamence as the premier Mega Evolution of choice to beat annoying Grass and Fighting type Pokemon that threaten Tyranitar and Excadrill. In turn, both Tyranitar and Excadrill have wider liberty to use their coverage options such as Rock Slide, Iron Head, Crunch, and etc to deal with things such as Cresselia, Thundurus, Aegislash, Charizard Y, etc. Both of these Pokemon threaten opposing Steel types like Mega Metagross, Heatran, and Aegislash since none of them want to take either an Earthquake from Excadrill or Crunch from Tyranitar. Mega Salamence and Tyranitar really pair well with each other since Tyranitar can easily take a Ice Beam or Draco Meteor for Salamence due to its 1.5x special defense boost from the sand. In fact, Hyper Voice + Assurance is a powerful combination to try out since Mega Salamence will get off its attack first, then Tyranitar can hit a base 120 STAB Dark move who has taken chip damage, surely knocking them out.
  
  
• Redirection Users Pokemon like Amoonguss, Clefable, Evolite Clefairy, Togekiss, and even Volcarona can provide redirection support with either Rage Powder or Follow Me. Amoonguss is statistically the most used redirection partner paired with Mega Salamence given how it can Rage Powder away single target hits from Mega Salamence, threaten Water and sometimes Fairy types with Giga Drain/Sludge Bomb, or even Spore targets so Mega Salamence take out targets easily. Clefable and Evolite Clefariy are some somewhat similar in support, yet Clefable is more offensive option with the ability to hold an item along with a 95 SpA stat while Evolite Clefairy provides its ally with Friend Guar defense boost which can be clutch. Both are solid options especially for a Dragon Dance Mega Salmanence, however if you want more offensive capabilities that doesn't rely on its item, go with Clefable. For those intrigued Friend Guard's 25% attack reduction to the teammates and in need of an item (Sitrus Berry on Rotom-W), go with Clefairy. Togekiss and Volcarona are slightly more offensive redirection partners as they can also provide Tailwind support, though it would only compound Mega Salamence's Rock type weakness.
  
  
• "Support" Pokemon In order to support Mega Salamence effectively, you'd want to have Pokemon who can stop opposing speed control with Taunt (possibly maintaining your own), have disruption options, or can simply give a Helping Hand to power Mega Salamence. Thundurus-Incarnate is one of the most paired partners with Mega Salamence since it can use Prankster Taunt, Thunder Wave, Swagger, etc to disrupt the opponent from using speed control or any setup. Liepard is another Prankster user who's in the same boat as Thundurus except it can Encore opponents into Protects or use Fake Tears so Hyper Voice can KO a certain target. Snarl users like Arcanine, Suicune, Raikou, Scrafty, and Entei can drop the special attack (or attack with the Intimidate drop) of both targets by stage to allow Mega Salamence to attack freely or setup with Dragon Dance. Other Pokemon such as Cresselia, Sylveon, Clefable, Clefairy, and etc can simply offer a Helping Hand to boost Mega Salamence's attack for potential knock outs. Gothetelle is another great partner for Mega Salamence as it can trap any physical attacks as Mence can easily either take out the targets or setup if needed.
  
  
  

• Bulky Water with Ice Coverage: In all seriousness, Mega Salamence cannot one shot the vast majority of the bulky water types like Rotom-W, Suicune, Milotic, Gastrodon, Swampert, Lapras, etc without some prior damage in general and all of theme can retaliate with their respective coverage ice coverage. Rotom-W deserves somewhat of a special mention here as Mega Salamence cannot KO the washing machine Pokemon at all thanks to its Electric/Water typing to resist Flying and its ability Levitate to negate the Earthquake damage completely. In turn, Rotom-W can either Will-O-Wisp it to cripple Mega Salamence or paralyze it so a slower Pokemon like Sylveon can knock it out.
  
  
• Electric Types : While I've discuss Rotom-W as a soft counter to Mega Salamence, other Electric Pokemon like Thundurus (both forms), Zapdos, the Rotom-A forms, Raikou, and etc can take an Aerilate hit quite well and fire a neutral Thunderbolt or HP Ice. In fact, all of these Electric types can potentially OHKO Mega Salamence with an HP Ice or can elect to paralyze the dragon with Thunder Wave to neuter its fast offensive capabilities.
  
  
• Steel Types: While most Mega Salamance carry at least Earthquake or a Fire move to deal with Steel types, it can find itself walled completely if its doesn't have either option. Aegislash is the premier Steel counter for Mega Salamence as it resist all of its Aerilate attacks, blocks Hyper Voice with Wide Guard, or can go for King's Shield  to reduce Mega Salamence's physically attack to -2 if Mence uses a contact move. Other Steel types like Mega Metagross, Mega Mawile, Ferrothorn, Heatran, and Klefki can hold their own against Mega Salamence provided it doesn't have a coverage option.
  
  
• Other "Bulky" Pokemon with High Defensive Stats: This time we are talking about Pokemon which Mega Salamance cannot even 2HKO at times if they have maximum defensive investment, or are just stupidly bulky. Pokemon like Cresselia, Porygon2, heck even Mega Kangaskhan can take a hit and retaliate with an Ice coverage attack. Tyranitar is another threat as it can take a spread Earthquake fine as it can outspeed slower variants with a Scarf, paraylze it with Thunder Wave, or just use Ice Beam or Ice Punch for a potential knock out.
  
  
• Opposing Speed Control: Though Mega Salamence enjoys having speed control to maintain momentum, it certainly doesn't want to be facing off against a Suicune in Tailwind or Cresselia with Trick Room. In fact, every form of speed control will surely slow down Mega Salamence enough so a teammate can knock it out with a super effective hit. Funny enough, most of the common speed control based Pokemon like Prankster Thundurus, Zapdos, Cresselia, Rotom-W, Suicune, Milotic, and others can easily threaten Mega Salamence with a coverage option or a speed reduction.
  
  
• Defiant/Competitive Users: Prior to Mega Evolving, Salamence can set off Defiant/Competitive on either Bisharp, Milotic, Braviery, Wigglytuff, Primape, etc and receive a +1 Atk / +2 SpA depending on the Pokemon. Since its part Steel type, Bisharp can handle most of Mega Salamence's Aerilate boosted attack and threaten it with a Sucker Punch, but an Earthquake or Fire coverage retaliate it as well. Milotic can take most of Mega Salamence's hits (bar a crit) and respond with a +2 Icy Wind or Ice Beam.
  
  
• Random (or fast) Ice Moves Hitters: Pretty much same thing I've said about the Landorus-Incarnate thread so here's the deal: Mega Salamence hates Ice type moves...at least special. Whats even more scarier are Pokemon who can outspeed its impressive base 120 speed like Greninja, Mega Gengar, Mega Manetric, Weavile, and a host of other speedier Pokemon who are non Scarf.
  
  
• Powerful Fairy Hits: While Mega Salamence can outspeed and threaten most Fairy types, it surely cannot take a single Fairy hit like a Pixilate Hyper Voice or Play Rough. Sylveon and Mega Gardevoir can effectively knock out Mega Salamence if they don't prioritize on knocking out the two Pixilate users. Mega Mawile can Intimdate Mega Salamence in its base form as it switches in, and threaten it with a Huge Power Play Rough from base 105 attack. Azumarill is another Huge Power Fairy who can easily exploit Mega Salamence's Fairy weakness as it Belly Drums on a Protect to threaten the rest of the team.
  
  

• Tailwind - Mega Salamence does have access to Tailwind as a means of maintaining speed control for the rest of the team by doubling the speed stats for three turns Given how fast and bulky Mega Salamence is, Tailwind can be set with ease so that the teammates can outspeed the opposing team. This gives Mega Salamence the same speed if it had gone for two Dragon Dances and allows it outspeed weather sweepers like Ludicolo, Excadrill, or a Kingdra while being capable of knocking them out.
  
  
• Fire Blast / Heat Wave - Alternative for using Flamethrower are both Fire Blast and Heat Wave which both are dependent of a designated role. Fire Blast is Mega Salamence's Strongest Fire base coverage attack as it can surely KO most Ferrothorn variants about 85% of the time. The only problem is the other 15% when Fire Blast misses  and low Power Point value of 8 in case the battles are drawn out longer. Heat Wave is a spread coverage so Mega Salamence can hit Steel types but their opposing partners with chip damage with the small chance to burn on either target.
  
  
• Rock Tomb / Bulldoze - Mega Salamence can learn some speed control attack such as Rock Tomb and Bulldoze to support the team by dropping the speed stats of the opposing Pokemon[s] by one stage.  
  
  
• Hidden Power Ice / Ground   - An interesting option to consider for Mega Salamence is running Hidden Power Ice to catch opposing Landorus-T and other Dragon types off guard. HP Ground is there in case you are worried about Wide Guard and want to hit Fire and Steel types like Arcanine or Heatran hard.
  
  
• Leer - Ok... why should anyone run Leer where one could easily just damage off or go for a Dragon Dance? Basically what Leer does is it drops the defensive stats of both Pokemon one stage, effectively giving Mega Salamence a pseudo "+1" boost rather by attacking either targets. The defense drops can help physical attackers like Tyranitar, Excadrill, Scizor, etc get off a kill against a -1 Pokemon especially if they have don't have switch-ins.
  
  
• Frustration - In case Smeargle or Ditto want to transform to your Mega Salamence, just run Frustration in place of Return since its likely that the trainer will have a higher happiness to copy utilize a Return. Essentially Frustration and Return are the same, the difference is being how the level of happiness/affection each Pokemon. Max/Min happiness and will result to having the a damage output of 102 in Return/Frustration respectively and the base power varies between 1-102.
  
  

(Oct 9, 2015, 01:35 AM)GMX Wrote: Mega-Salamence

I've already said it multiple times but.. once you get used to M-Mence (and how to teambuild around it), there's no going back. Its raw power, abilities (Intimidate & Aerilate), speed and movepool are simply amazing.

I've not been playing Pokemon for about 2 weeks but i was leaning toward an Adamant set on my last M-Mence given the fact i'm not even counting Terrakion and M-Metagross as potential threats to outspeed anymore (due to their massive drop in usage.. or i would say almost non-existent usage on BS in the 1700+ zone ) and now that Landorus-T usually holds an Assault  Vest there are more opportunities to setup a Dragon Dance in front of it without fear of a potential flinch. Remember that Adamant M-Salamence still outspeeds Jolly M-Kang (and Garchomp) even without max speed investment, so there's also space to add some bulk on it too.

PS: thanks for mentioning my set.