Competitive Pokemon History - Salamence Quiz

Answer: Dragon Dance

Salamence's excellent stats become easy to boost, and easy to reach extremely threatening levels, when utilizing Dragon Dance. It was the best sweeper by a million miles, because it simply had all of the best tools to make sweeping quite easy most of the time.

While it could do many other things, its Dragon Dance set was easily its most common, and any teambuild, offensive or defensive, had to prepare to face off against it, lest they fall prey to the best end-game cleaner in the tier!

Answer: Intimidate

Intimidate automatically cuts the Attack of the opposing Pokemon by one stage whenever Salamence enters play. This made boosting with Dragon Dance even easier against physically based threats, making Salamence even harder to deal with.

Answer: Utility Wall

With access to Wish, Salamence could work diligently at keeping itself and its teammates healthy. With Intimidate and decent physical bulk, Salamence could make use of its great movepool and longevity to consistently check many physical attackers in the game. The Utility Wall moveset was frequently Flamethrower/Wish/Protect/Toxic, though this could be tinkered to help Salamence deal with specific threats a bit better; for example, Earthquake could replace Toxic to let Salamence better deal with Tyranitar and Metagross, while Hidden Power Flying was also an option to let Salamence perform well against Celebi and Heracross.

One of the selling points to this set was that it naturally had good offensive presence, due to Salamence's mighty Base 135 Attack stat, meaning it could deal with opposing threats in the short and long term if needed.

Answer: Forming a wallbreaking core with Rayquaza

"RayMence", the core was donned, became the absolute best offensive core in the game by a million miles once it was discovered and started getting some attention. The idea behind it was simple; because Salamence and Rayquaza are both so similar, it stands to reason they have mutual checks. Lugia, Skarmory, Mewtwo, Dialga and to an extent Groudon come to mind.

Therefore, you could send out Rayquaza or Salamence, bait in one of these checks, pound the living hell out of it as much as possible before Rayquaza or Salamence went down, then send the other one in to finish the target off, and ideally sweep with that check being out of the way. Because these two were so hard to effectively switch in to and defeat by their lonesomes, it stands to reason that switching in to one and defeating both would be literally impossible against an even semi-skilled trainer. Thus, Salamence found a niche as a deadly partner to Rayquaza.

Answer: Roost

Roost immediately heals the user for half of their maximum HP, in exchange for giving up the defensive properties of their Flying typing for the rest of the turn; the user would become susceptible to Ground type moves and wouldn't be weak to Rock, for example, until the ensuing turn.

Unfortunately, the move wasn't terribly useful on Salamence quite yet in fourth generation Ubers; it really needed to dedicate all of its moveslots to offensive moves, to best supplement its offensive presence in the tier.

Answer: Moxie

Moxie grants the user a one stage boost to their Attack everytime they KO an opposing Pokemon. Now, sacrificing something to get a Salamence check on the field for free would no longer be a viable way to eventually bring Salamence down. Additionally, having a Pokemon on the field at low HP would ring the dinner bell for Salamence to come in and place the opponent into a checkmate situation; they either leave the low HP Pokemon in to certain doom, feeding Salamence a Moxie boost, or they switch it out and bring something else in, which is a great way to have that Pokemon end up being at low HP too and face a similar dilemma against it shortly afterward.

Despite this seeming like Salamence would be too strong for standard play once again, it actually was allowed back in the tier. The gargantuan amounts of power creep made Salamence more reasonable, but they certainly didn't stop it from once again being top tier to the max, carving up offensive and defensive teams alike with ruthless efficiency.

Answer: Aerilate

Aerilate turns Normal type moves, like Return and Double-Edge, into Flying type moves and boosts their power by 30% in addition to granting STAB. The Pokemon who, as a Bagon, once dreamt of flying now became better at doing that craft than anything else in the whole entire game, bar Mega Rayquaza.

It should come as little surprise that Mega Salamence was an easy ban candidate from sixth generation standard play, and went on to be a no doubt top five Pokemon in Ubers. It served as an amazing check to top tier threats, like the king of the tier in Primal Groudon, Yveltal (most of the time), Ho-Oh, most forms of Arceus which did not have Ice Beam, and even its old partner in crime, Rayquaza, could generally be checked quite effectively by Mega Salamence.

It was top tier to the max, being a top ten Pokemon in the whole entire game, when factoring Mega Rayquaza in to that discussion.

Answer: Facade and Refresh

Thanks to Aerilate, Facade would now become a Flying type move, meaning that on top of the status Mega Salamence would inevitably be inflicted with battling stall teams, Facade now benefited from STAB and an additional 30% power boost on top of that. To illustrate how stupidly strong it gets when Mega Salamence becomes statused, after just one Dragon Dance, Mega Salamence's Facade cleanly 2HKOes Skarmory, a bulky physical wall who resists the move, and Lugia, the overall bulkiest Pokemon in the game, both from full HP. That's pretty scary! Good luck trying to stall this one out!

Alternatively, if the player wanted their Mega Salamence to break down stall teams while having better longevity, Refresh was an option, with Return or Double-Edge replacing Facade. This was better at handling paralysis than Facade was, but it did make breaking down Skarmory, and especially Lugia, harder without the added power of Facade. The advantage was allowing Mega Salamence to find setup opportunities far more easily. As its team's last Pokemon, Mega Salamence could also easily win against stall teams, since its boosts could then not be removed due to being phazed. Lugia with Ice Beam definitely beat this set much more easily than Facade, and could still beat it as the last Pokemon on its team, which generally meant Facade was preferred. Still, Refresh was definitely viable in its own right.

Answer: Utility Wall

Like its base forme in the third generation, Mega Salamence's stats and movepool gave credence to a more defensive set. Unlike its base forme in the third gen, it did this with a completely different moveset. The set was generally Dragon Tail/Roost/Defog/Body Slam.

This set was capable of phasing and removing boosted threats, spreading paralysis with decently strong Aerilate boosted Body Slams, and removing entry hazards with Defog, while staying healthy with Roost. While not 'flashy' by any means, it could do all of this quite effectively, and was thus a great choice for Uber balanced teams.

Answer: UnderUsed's banned list

Base Salamence was way too strong for UU, as its Moxie sets of old would carve the tier up like nothing. Sadly, base Salamence was a thoroughly mediocre Pokemon in standard play. Sure, its movepool was impressive, but it encountered severe four moveslot syndrome, and had gaping holes of counter-play depending on what move it left home without. Combine that with being generally outclassed as a Moxie sweeper by Gyarados, and base Salamence was unfortunately stuck in Pokemon Purgatory during the seventh generation.