Competitive Pokemon History - Arceus-Fire Quiz

Answer: Latias

Arceus-Fire only really had room for its Fire type attack and an Electric type move to cover Water types who resisted it. Therefore, most Dragon types figure to make for great counters. Latias is an example of one such counter, resisting both of those moves and being able to turn Arceus-Fire into setup fodder. Salamence, by virtue of its lack of resistance to Electric, cannot counter Arceus-Fire consistently.

Other counters to Arceus-Fire included the likes of Latios, both formes of Giratina, Kyogre, Arceus-Water, Arceus-Rock, Tyranitar, Garchomp, Blissey, Lugia, Ho-Oh and Heatran. For such a tall list of prominent counters, it's not surprising to question how Arceus-Fire was even viable in Ubers. Yet, it thankfully undoubtedly was viable.

Answer: Groudon

Groudon's Drought ability summoned permanent sunlight, which fueled devastating power behind Arceus-Fire's Judgment or Fire Blast. This sunlight also helped to eliminate Arceus-Fire's weakness to Water, which could help turn the tide against Arceus-Water and other non-Kyogre Water types. Groudon could also set Stealth Rock, keeping Ho-Oh at bay and providing useful chip damage Arceus-Fire could use to sustain a sweep. Finally, Groudon pummeled Blissey, Tyranitar and Arceus-Rock, could lure in and defeat Ho-Oh and Lugia with Stone Edge, and could make life hard on Kyogre in attempting to maintain the rainy weather that made it such a major threat. Thus, any team looking to build around Arceus-Fire pretty much added Groudon to such a team by default.

Answer: Three

Only having three weaknesses seems acceptable on paper, but when you consider that those three weaknesses of Rock, Ground and Water were the most common offensive typings in Ubers, that dampens the sentiment almost immediately. Being weak to Stealth Rock didn't help matters at all either. Thus, defensive formes of Arceus-Fire were not too good, and were overall outclassed by other formes of Arceus, namely Water, Steel, Dragon and even Fighting.

Answer: It had superior alternatives

Judgment is and always has been a fine move, boasting a good 100 base power, excellent 24 PP, perfect accuracy and no significant drawbacks. However, Arceus-Fire had two better options: Flamethrower and Fire Blast. Flamethrower had just five less points of base power, a negligible difference, with the beneficial tradeoff of having a chance to burn the target and having even more PP than Judgment did, rendering it completely superior. Fire Blast was generally a better option than Judgment too; it had far less PP and less accuracy, but it also was far, far stronger and was the best option for if Arceus-Fire was being used on a hyper offensive team.

Answer: Reshiram

Reshiram was a lot stronger, packed an alternate Dragon typing to smash Fire-resistant foes with, and had a stronger signature move in Blue Flare to roast its targets with. Arceus-Fire had a couple of advantages, namely reliable recovery, better bulk and higher Speed.

However, the former dissipated upon the release of "Black & White 2" when Reshiram received access to Roost. Thus, using Arceus-Fire became a pretty questionable decision; its higher bulk wasn't too valuable due to its poor defensive typing, and while higher Speed sure was nice, it wasn't generally enough to offset the major opportunity cost that came with using it. Thus, Reshiram caused Arceus-Fire's usage to drop off by quite a lot.

Answer: Losing to a plethora of the best Pokemon in the tier

Primal Groudon, Primal Kyogre, Yveltal, Mega Gengar, Lugia, any forme of Arceus not weak to Fire, Ho-Oh, and even Xerneas, who had a type disadvantage against Arceus-Fire, could defeat Arceus-Fire quite easily. The list of notable threats that easily defeat, or even counter, Arceus-Fire is quite long, while the list of relevant threats Arceus-Fire can take out is incredibly short, and it can't even reliably defeat most of them. Arceus-Fire matched up so immensely poorly against the overall meta, that this alone outshone its great movepool and good stats by a long shot.

Answer: Primal Groudon

Primal Groudon, now a Fire type when undergoing a Primal Reversion, so laughably badly outclassed Arceus-Fire as an offensive, and of course defensive, Fire type that it wasn't even funny. It was way, way stronger, way, way bulkier, was not weak to Stealth Rock, and had a much stronger signature move, Precipice Blades, to throttle the enemy with. Unlike base Groudon, the sunlight Primal Groudon summons goes away when it switches out of battle or faints, so it cannot pass the weather over to Arceus-Fire to help its offenses out like it could in the prior two generations.

Answer: It had no room to viably fit Recover

Arceus-Fire needed to dedicate moveslots to a Fire type move, an Electric type move to hit Water types with, and an Ice type move to hit Ground and Dragon types. It needed the fourth move to be Calm Mind, so that it could actually try and pose some sort of threat to the opposing team. Because of this, it had no room to viably fit Recover onto its moveset, meaning it was an Arceus forme that both lacked longevity and a major offensive presence. Thus, it's not hard to see why Arceus-Fire was a plainly horrible Pokemon in sixth generation Ubers.

Answer: Firium-Z

Firium-Z as an item, with Arceus-Fire's Fire type move of choice being either Fire Blast or Overheat, granted it one-time access to the immense nuke Inferno Overdrive. This could actually enable Arceus-Fire to defeat Primal Groudon one-on-one due to how sheerly strong it was, combined with Primal Groudon's sunlight amplifying it further. To give an idea, after a single Calm Mind boost, a Fire Blast-based Inferno Overdrive has roughly a 50% chance to OHKO offensive variants of Primal Groudon, and tops out at doing 83% damage to defensive variants, despite their resistance to the move. Thus, Arceus-Fire was no longer absolutely helpless against the king of the tier.

While this may seem to have given Arceus-Fire some degree of viability, the truth is that all it did was make it even more of a meme. The opportunity cost of forgoing the use of another Arceus forme is risen significantly when one realizes they cannot use a Z Crystal on anything else either. Moreover, Primal Groudon has little reason to actually confront Arceus-Fire seeing as how there are plenty of other, less important Pokemon who can do this for P-Don. Primal Kyogre can switch into Arceus-Fire as it uses Inferno Overdrive, forcing it to totally waste the Z-Crystal for no gain. Formes of Arceus with a resistance to Fire can also absorb Inferno Overdrive. Even those lacking a Fire resistance could survive the move, while formes like the Ground type can do so and then threaten a KO in return with Earthquake or Judgment. Thus, Arceus-Fire was still a total joke and not worth using on a serious team.

Answer: Wide movepool

Arceus-Fire, like all formes of Arceus, had a pretty great movepool. Unfortunately, Arceus-Fire's need to run niche moves for specific situations other Arceus formes would handle just fine has prevented it from actually taking advantage of this. This is largely why it was the worst forme of Arceus in the sixth and seventh generations.