Competitive Pokémon History - Thundurus I & T Quiz

Answer: Prankster

Prankster grants +1 priority to all status or utility moves. This means Thundurus-I can threaten the opponent with a priority Thunder Wave or Taunt. A priority Thunder Wave would have a tendency to become incredibly clutch, allowing Thundurus-I to serve as a reliable emergency check to an opposing offensive threat which is heavily pressuring your team, crippling said threat with paralysis very reliably and giving your team a much better chance at dealing with it. Priority Taunt wasn't quite as broadly useful, but with good prediction it could do useful things. Denying a speedy Deoxys form the ability to setup entry hazards in the early game can be very annoying for the Deoxys user to deal with, for example.

Answer: 145

145 is a very, very good stat to have and makes Thundurus-T very hard to deal with defensively. Paired with a narrow but very specific movepool which gave it useful coverage options in Hidden Power Ice, Grass Knot and Focus Blast, and Thundurus-T was ready to take some names in its debut generation of standard play.

Answer: Nasty Plot

Nasty Plot doubles the user's Special Attack upon use. This was the secret to making Thundurus-T so hard to fend off defensively. Even Chansey cannot withstand Nasty Plot boosted, super effective Focus Blasts which are also likely boosted further by a Life Orb. Life Orb or not, this will 2HKO it after Stealth Rock. Thundurus-I similarly has an astounding matchup against offensive teams, able to at worst 2HKO any offensive Pokémon after a Nasty Plot boost.

Answer: 111

In the sixth generation, an incredibly wide variety of offensive Pokémon resided within the 110 Speed tier. Gengar, the Lati Twins, Mega Diancie, Mega Gallade, and Mega Metagross are just a handful of examples. Having just a single tiny point of an advantage is absolutely enormous, as these Pokémon mostly don't have particularly good defenses while Thundurus-I had very good offenses.

This means it could outspeed these Pokémon and revenge kill them, making it a great check that could be added to teams which needs these threats covered.

Answer: Latios and Latias

These two had the bulk to take a hit from Thundurus-T, then outspeed it and destroy it with Draco Meteor on the next turn. Where Thundurus-I was able to keep them at bay due to being able to outspeed them, despite being weaker offensively than Thundurus-T, the latter's inability to outspeed Latios or Latias spells its doom.

This is a good example of why being able to outspeed them was so utterly crucial, and why Thundurus-I was a top level threat in standard play while Thundurus-T was generally viewed as a niche threat.

Answer: Defiant

Defiant gives the user a +2 to Attack if any of their stats are lowered by an opposing Pokémon in anyway. This means that Intimidate will actually feed Thundurus-I a net gain of +1 to its Attack rather than imposing a -1 to Attack like it usually would, for example.

In an era where Defog became an important move for entry hazard removal, most teams carried at least one Defog user on their team. Defog removes entry hazards, but it also reduces the Evasion of the opposing Pokémon by one stage- this would activate Defiant if Defog was used against a Thundurus-I with the ability. As such, teams which attempted to stack hazards on the foe would get good mileage out of a Defiant Thundurus-I, as they could cause hesitation in the opponent before they used Defog, for fear that Thundurus-I could potentially switch in and gain the Defiant boost if they were to do so.

Answer: Tapu Koko

Tapu Koko was the new offensive Electric type on the block, and it offered a wide set of talents and utilities that made using either Thundurus form difficult to justify in seventh generation standard play. Tapu Koko's speed tier of 130 was massive, giving it the jump on Greninja who Thundurus-I was outsped by. Tapu Koko also brought Electric Surge for an ability, and could use it to support its team as well as supplement its own offenses to be on par with the mighty Thundurus-T. Finally, access to U-Turn and an excellent Electric/Fairy typing made Tapu Koko a good offensive pivot

Answer: UnderUsed's banned list

Neither form saw enough usage to be native members of standard play, courtesy of Tapu Koko overshadowing them for the most part. However, both were far too powerful to be allowed in UU. Thundurus-T had absolutely zero defensive counterplay which was in the slightest way reliable in UU, while Thundurus-I similarly tended to destroy offensive teams while faring quite well against defensive ones as well.

As such, they were somewhat in a state of Pokémon Purgatory here. They were not totally and utterly worthless garbage in standard play, but there was just about no real reason to use them instead of Tapu Koko the vast majority of the time.

Answer: Diancie

Amoonguss is actually cleanly 2HKOed by a non-boosted Psychic, or OHKOed by Nasty Plot boosted Psychic, so it could not consistently pull this off unless it switches in on a move which is not Psychic or Nasty Plot, ruling it out as a reliable counter.

Chansey, likewise, can't stand up to repeated Nasty Plot boosted, super effective Focus Blasts, as it is 2HKOed by the move and does not possess the offenses needed to dispatch Thundurus-T quickly enough.

With Mega Diancie not existing in the eighth generation, its base form could nevertheless handle Thundurus-T if needed. It had the bulk to survive a single Nasty Plot boosted move of any kind, or it could tank any two non-Nasty Plot boosted moves, then destroy Thundurus-T with a single super effective Diamond Storm. As such, Thundurus-T users were advised to pack an answer to Diancie somewhere on their team.

Answer: No

The return of Tapu Koko just about answers this question as firmly as possible. With the removal of Hidden Power Ice, Thundurus-I encountered problems handling Dragon types who resisted Electric. Tapu Koko's Fairy typing made this a non problem, giving it yet another advantage it had on the seemingly endless list of pros it had to being used instead of Thundurus-I.

Even if Tapu Koko did not exist, Thundurus-I would have a tough time existing in the eighth generation standard play metagame. The loss of Hidden Power really hindered it and made checking it with bulky Ground types very consistent. With the metagame's best Pokémon (Landorus-T, Garchomp to name a couple) being bulky Ground types, this is a crippling issue that hurt Thundurus-I a lot. As such, it was now definitely in a state of Pokémon Purgatory; too strong to be allowed in the lower tier, too weak to meaningfully contribute to the higher tiered metagame.