Competitive Pokémon History - Heracross Quiz

Answer: Simply deals a ton of damage

With a massive 120 base power, Megahorn has never needed a secondary effect to put in some good work, even with its iffy 85% accuracy. Off the strength of Heracross' meaty attack stat, and it was pretty simple to see how best to use it- bring Heracross into play, and click this move unless you have an incredibly good reason not to, such as if predicting a Skarmory switch in or something like that.

Answer: Skarmory

Skarmory had monstrous physical bulk and packed a 4x resistance to Megahorn, taking pitiful damage from the move despite its impressive power. With Heracross being 4x weak to Flying, the approach to the matchup for Skarmory was extremely straightforward.

In general, Flying types could easily answer Heracross due to their resistance to Megahorn and tendency to be able to hit it in its huge weakness to Flying quite reliably.

Steel types such as Steelix were a bit shakier of a response because they did not resist Earthquake, a common coverage move for Heracross to use. Off the heels of its huge attack stat, this was often enough to let Heracross take on Steel types without a way to mitigate Ground type attacks.

Likewise, Gengar could shrug off Megahorn with no issues, but crumpled hard to Earthquake.

Answer: Guts and Swarm

There has historically been a near endless debate over which of these abilities were better for Heracross during this era, as both had their drawbacks but also gave Heracross some terrifying potential due to how both offered huge immediate offensive boosts.

Guts reduced Heracross' susceptibility to status, punishing opponents for afflicting Heracross by giving it a +2 to its attack stat if it did gain a status affliction.

Swarm gave Heracross' Bug type moves, namely Megahorn, a humongous +2 boost if it fell beneath 25% of its maximum HP. Because of its good but not great defenses and similarly effective defensive typing, this was actually activated reasonably often. The main advantage over Guts is that Heracross did not need to take a debilitating status effect to activate it. The downside was that Heracross' need to be at low HP combined with its low speed stat meant its performance in practice was relatively inconsistent, as an opponent with a faster Pokémon could put down Heracross with Swarm activated before it got terribly far most of the time.

Answer: Darkrai

Scizor generally had a slight upper hand against Darkrai, but there were many ways things could go wrong and Darkrai could potentially prevail. However, Heracross' typing and Guts ability made it much, much more reliable against the Pitch Black Pokémon. Guts and the Choice Scarf item made Heracross easily the best switch in to Dark Void in the entire game, as Dark Void would put it to sleep, activating Guts, Heracross' Choice Scarf would allow it to outspeed Darkrai, and having Sleep Talk along with two STAB moves that would tear Darkrai apart meant Heracross could seamlessly maintain momentum and place the Darkrai user into an unenviable position.

With Darkrai taking the metagame in Ubers by storm, trainers scrambled to find reliable ways of answering it. Heracross settled in to a very comfortable niche as the best Darkrai counter in the entire game.

Answer: Moxie

Moxie grants the user a +1 to attack if they KO an opponent. Heracross' high 125 for attack could be amplified even further with this ability, and its access to high powered moves in Megahorn and Close Combat let it best take advantage of this. Unsurprisingly, Moxie became its best ability by far as a result.

Answer: Cofagrigius

Cofagrigius could be especially annoying. Even if it's HP happened to be too low to actually take a hit, it's Mummy ability would be activated if Heracross physically struck it, which would let Cofagrigius take Heracross' ability away entirely. Guts variants would be now crippled by status, but Moxie would also now fail to activate, meaning even if Heracross somehow prevailed, it would come away a big loser still. A healthy Cofagrigius has nothing to worry about, resisting both of Heracross' STAB and having the bulk to easily take a couple of super effective Night Slashes, retaliating by trading blows with Shadow Ball or potentially crippling it with Will o Wisp.

Dusclops couldn't mitigate any of Heracross' abilities, but it packed even more bulk and had the same typing to easily deal with Heracross as well.

Answer: 185

185 for a Pokémon not banned to Ubers was unbelievable at the time, giving Mega Heracross second to none raw power with high base power moves to abuse this notion even further. Unlike its base form, Mega Heracross simply could not reliably be countered, as it had the movepool to hit everything for neutral damage, and neutral hits were going to dent the target hard, if not outright plow it over.

This predictably restored its status in standard play and made it a big threat to look out for.

Answer: Skill Link

Skill Link guarantees that multi hit moves will always hit the maximum five times. Moves such as Pin Missile will randomly hit the target between two and five times, and their unreliability has historically made them weak options on Pokémon not in possession of the Skill Link ability.

Pin Missile, now guaranteed to hit all five times, would now actually be slightly more damaging than Megahorn, while also possessing a 10% accuracy advantage. Additionally, Rock Blast became a large upgrade over Stone Edge due to Skill Link, letting Mega Heracross hit Flying types extremely hard if the user predicted them switching into it. Rock Blast hit any and all Rock-weak Flying types for a guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock, which Stone Edge often simply fell short of achieving.

Answer: 75

75 in speed is simply deficient for an offensive Pokémon. With a respectable 85 for HP, great defense stat of 115 and special defense of 105, Mega Heracross did have the bulk to take a non-Flying type hit first, which meant it wasn't extremely crippling to be slow. Still, with no means of healing off a hit taken, Mega Heracross did have to be played relatively conservatively, as to not prematurely let it get taken down.

Answer: Spikes

Acquiring access to Spikes via the generation's new Technical Record mechanic, Heracross could now serve as an offensive entry hazard setter. With solid enough bulk and good offenses with a workable speed stat of 85, Heracross was actually quite good at doing this in RU.

While it could simply employ the same fire and forget strategy and try to use Moxie to snowball as it had for a long time, the opponent now would have to respect the possibility of Heracross using Spikes, which added a layer of newfound unpredictability to Heracross' gameplay.