Competitive Pokemon History - Arceus-Grass Quiz

Answer: Thunder Wave

Arceus-Grass' best switch-ins were typically Steel types who were immune to Toxic, making that a poor choice for a moveslot. Heatran and Ho-Oh also hard-countered it, so Will-o-Wisp was a poor idea due to it giving them an even easier time switching in to Arceus-Grass. Due to Arceus-Grass' shaky matchup against Cloyster and Forrettress, Stealth Rock was generally inadvisable unless the move just could not be fit onto another Pokemon on its team.

However, Arceus-Grass made for an amazing Thunder Wave user. Electric types weren't immune to paralysis at the time, making Ground types the only ones who were immune to Thunder Wave. Arceus-Grass' mighty Judgment or Grass Knot did heavy super effective damage to Ground types, preventing them from being effective switch ins to its Thunder Wave. Thus, Arceus-Grass could quite reliably spread paralysis, which was a godsend for slow setup sweepers like Groudon, Kyogre, Tyranitar or Manaphy. Thus, Arceus-Grass had an incredible, unique niche in fourth generation Ubers.

Answer: The Uber meta has consisted of heavy threats hit harder by Grass Knot than Judgment

Grass Knot is a move whose power is based on how heavy the target is. Against a Rattata, the move's power is a lowly Base 40 due to how light it is. Against the massive Groudon or Kyogre, this shoots up to an excellent 120. The Uber meta is generally filled full of cover legendary Pokemon that take the forefront of the relevant metagame. Thus, Grass Knot's target in Ubers is usually a heavy enough Pokemon to the point where it exceeds Judgment's Base 100 power. Thus, it is frequently preferred to Judgment for this reason.

Answer: An entry hazard control unit

Arceus-Grass didn't innately find itself matched up poorly against offensive Pokemon; they would have to have a type advantage to reliably outslug it. However, entry hazard control units were armed with Pokemon like Heatran, Giratina, Skarmory, Dialga, Forrettress, Cloyster, Excadrill, sometimes Blissey and commonly other formes of Arceus. All of these Pokemon (in)conveniently either have typing advantages against Arceus-Grass, or have just the right stats to fend it off rather reliably. Any serious competitive team must place a large emphasis in how they handle entry hazards, so for Arceus-Grass to generally freely allow the opponent's entry hazard control unit to do their job was quite annoying and led to a decline in its viability.

Answer: Four

A resistance to Ground without a weakness to Rock made Arceus-Grass an excellent Groudon check, and let it fend off Garchomp quite decently as well. Resistances to Water and Electric enabled Arceus-Grass to pivot into Kyogre or just straight up switch into it and outslug Choiced variants. A resistance to itself wasn't useful due to only itself and the Flying type Shaymin-S being relevant Grass types in Ubers, but resistances in general aren't bad; the odd stray Grass type move thrown out, like a Grass Knot from Mewtwo, could be easy for Arceus-Grass to take.

Arceus-Grass actually has five weaknesses, more than its resistances. However, only weaknesses to Fire and Ice were truly notable in fifth generation Ubers. Poison and Bug were pretty much non-existent in Ubers and Flying wasn't terribly common. Thus, Arceus-Grass boasted pretty effective defensive utility for the average team.

Answer: 120

Having 120s in everything makes Arceus-Grass quite tanky, hit decently hard, and often move first with its well above average Speed score. With no crippling statistical deficiencies, Arceus-Grass' counterplay is usually fairly limited to just Pokemon with a type advantage or with extreme stats in some particular area, such as Blissey being able to soak up any of its Special Attacks or Deoxys-A able to potentially overwhelm it with extremely strong attacks.

Answer: Arceus-Ground and Primal Kyogre

Both P-Don and Yveltal would blast Arceus-Grass to pieces due to their typing advantages over it. Ho-Oh could do the same, while Lugia could just take hits from Arceus-Grass all day and easily Toxic stall it. Mew wasn't viable in sixth generation Ubers, while Mewtwo generally had a favorable matchup against Arceus-Grass due to its wide movepool. Arceus-Ground was a huge metagame threat that took the tier by storm in the sixth generation, and Arceus-Grass happened to be able to hard-counter it due to its resistance to Ground and lack of weakness to the complementary Stone Edge. Primal Kyogre, unlike base Kyogre, cannot wield a Choice item, so Arceus-Grass will always be able to outspeed and 2HKO it with Grass Knot, while Primal Kyogre can only guarantee a 3HKO with Ice Beam and is outsped. A 2HKO with Ice Beam is possible, so Arceus-Grass can't reliably counter Primal Kyogre, but it can at least reliably check it.

While seemingly niche, these two threats were huge players in the Uber meta, and Arceus-Grass' ability to reliably take them out was exclusive. Conveniently, the king of the tier by a mile in Primal Groudon struggled with Arceus-Ground and could have trouble with Primal Kyogre on occasion, so being able to defer to Arceus-Grass extended P-Don's longevity by a lot, giving Arceus-Grass a highly appreciable niche.

Answer: Stone Edge

Arceus-Grass' lack of access to Heal Bell was unfortunate; it would have definitely made for a good user of the move, too. Thunder was redundant in tandem with Grass Knot, which hit Water types hard enough. Judgment was now strictly inferior to Grass Knot, as this Arceus-Grass set was more concerned with checking very specific threats than it was with worrying about doing good damage to more of the general meta. Even then, Grass Knot would've been superior anyway, but considering it fit the main focus of this set far better, the decision was a no-brainer.

Stone Edge seems like a weird choice for a special attacker. However, the move itself was actually totally indispensable for offensive utility variants of Arceus-Grass. The move hit Ho-Oh for a 2HKO at worst, stopping it from countering Arceus-Grass. It didn't achieve anything else, but because Ho-Oh was so common and otherwise dominated Arceus-Grass so thoroughly, Arceus-Grass couldn't leave without Stone Edge, as any form of utility it could try and provide would then be totally blocked off by the fairly ubiquitous golden phoenix.

Answer: Stall

Blissey, Chansey and Lugia feared absolutely not a single thing Arceus-Grass could do to them, could switch right into it, and then just sit straight on the battlefield and cause Arceus-Grass to waste its time and PP throwing out weak moves at them. Depending on Arceus-Grass' moveset, Skarmory, Giratina, various formes of support Arceus and Xerneas could also make this claim. Clefable was a common win-condition on stall teams who could effortlessly boost with Calm Mind against Arceus-Grass as well.

In general, Arceus-Grass would become total deadweight against stall teams. Anyone using Arceus-Grass would essentially be starting the game down a Pokemon when facing off against a stall team. This was what really hindered Arceus-Grass competitive value in the sixth generation.

Answer: It no longer had a niche

Arceus-Grass' offensive utility set just didn't really work anymore, as various newcomers from the seventh generation conveniently happened to be able to either get around it, or caused a ripple in the meta where the set's targets were no longer viable or were better dealt with otherwise. Arceus-Grass' only serious value was being able to blanket check a rather wide variety of Pokemon due to its large movepool.

To be clear, Arceus-Grass was technically not viable, though it wasn't totally pathetic either. Grass Knot getting STAB and guaranteeing a 2HKO on Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre was nice, and Arceus-Grass' good stats and movepool enabled it to pick certain threats it could deal with in a vacuum. However, it didn't really do anything specifically useful for any sort of teambuild, so its usage statistics declined immensely because of this.

Answer: Ho-Oh

Arceus-Grass no longer had room to fit Stone Edge on its moveset. Grass Knot and Recover were mandatory, while Ice Beam was needed so that Flying types like Mega Salamence and Yveltal couldn't freely take advantage of Arceus-Grass. Fire Blast was now mandatory due to the ascendance of Ferrothorn and especially Necrozma-DuskMane into the meta, and they both took pitiful damage from Grass Knot or Ice Beam. Thus, Arceus-Grass had no room for Stone Edge, which was great news for Ho-Oh, as it could now effortlessly come into play and slaughter Arceus-Grass without serious consequence.