Competitive Pokémon History - Landorus I & T Quiz

Answer: Ubers

Landorus-Incarnate would go on to spend the entirety of the next three generations in Ubers, sheltered away from standard play. It doesn't look particularly overwhelming at first glance, but when meshing good offenses, a stellar offensive ability, perfect offensive movepool and lack of reliable counterplay, Landorus-I proved over the next three generations time and time again that it was simply too much to be allowed in standard play.

Answer: OverUsed (standard play)

Landorus-T would go on to be the #1 most used Pokémon, per Smogon statistics, from the fifth to the seventh generation without that distinction being challenged. Landorus-T was not immediately available for use in the eighth generation, so this broke the streak up.

However, it would eventually find its way into Galar, and when it did, it was right back to the tippity top. Simply put, if you were to pull a hundred competitive trainers aside and ask them what Pokémon they think of when they think standard play, it is likely that most, if not all of them would tell you Landorus-T.

Answer: Sheer Force

Sheer Force takes damaging moves with secondary effects, removes those secondary effects, then provides them with a 30% damage boost. 30% is a pretty enormous boost, especially for a Pokémon with a high Special Attack and the perfect move set to utilize it.

This was what led to Landorus-I being so overwhelming to deal with, as it was so powerful that it could often claim two KOs before going down itself even in matchups which didn't seem strictly favorable on paper.

Answer: Intimidate

Intimidate reduces the opponent's Attack stat by one stage when the user enters play. This was very useful on Landorus-T, giving it the upper hand against physically offensive threats and letting it be a very effective pivot.

Answer: Lugia

Lugia checks all the boxes in the worst ways; it's faster than Landorus-I, can take hits from it basically forever, and can swiftly eliminate it with a single 4x super effective Ice Beam. Lugia is such a profoundly awful matchup for Landorus-I that a minimum of one teammate who can deal with Lugia is basically compulsory. Due to Lugia's exploitable typing and one dimensional nature, this wasn't the end of the world when team-building, but it was essential all the same.

Answer: Skarmory

The thing to note is, countering Landorus-T is particularly difficult because of how sheerly how versatile it was. It had a mind boggling number of different viable sets it could run, varying in general dynamic from offensive, defensive, utility laden and more.

This is why the fact that Skarmory was a counter to it was even more impressive than at first glance. Skarmory's attributes come together to allow it to counter every single Landorus-T set known. Offensive Landorus-T sets simply can't quite break through Skarmory and its unmatched physical walling capabilities. Defensive Landorus-T can set Stealth Rock against Skarmory, but apart from that can do nothing but flail pathetically against it and go down to progressively crippling Toxic damage, or after repeated attacks from Skarmory. The most Landorus-T could ever threaten Skarmory with is the ability to U-Turn into an allied Magnezone to trap and remove it; this idea would fail against Skarmory with Shed Shell, which became increasingly more common this generation.

As such, Skarmory was a difficult adversary for Landorus-T to deal with.

Answer: It was outclassed

Landorus-I was outgunned as a specially offensive wallbreaker by a myriad of threats, Yveltal, Xerneas and Primal Kyogre to name a few. Those three, along with others, were also bulkier and had more defensive utility they could offer to teams as a result. As such, Landorus-I was simply outdone stats-wise, rendering it unviable and generally never seen in Ubers play.

Sadly, it was still way, way, way too much for standard play at this time. As such, it resided in Pokémon Purgatory during this generation; too powerful for standard play, not powerful enough to be meaningfully used in Ubers.

Answer: Smack Down

Smack Down causes a flying or levitating Pokémon to be knocked to the ground until they switch out, thus rendering them susceptible to Ground type moves. It is also a 50 base damage Rock type attack.

While Stone Edge was still typically the go-to for its general consistency, trainers who either wanted Landorus-T to be able to lure in and deal with Skarmory itself, or who could not afford stronger counterplay to the metal bird, would get good value out of Smack Down. Smack Down will take away Skarmory's immunity to Ground and turn it into a weakness, thus abruptly giving Landorus-T the upper hand in the matchup.

Rotom-W is another Pokémon who Landorus-T was countered by, but could be overcome with the use of Smack Down. While niche, this gave Landorus-T another trick in its arsenal that trainers and opponents alike had to consider when building their teams.

Answer: Pivot

Sweeping and/or wall breaking set of Landorus-T were laughably outclassed by Primal Groudon and were typically very difficult to justify using over Arceus-Ground. As well, Landorus' Incarnate form did the role of a wall or stall breaker better than the Therian form did.

A pivot set, however, had quite a lot of potential. Speedy Earthquakes coming off of Landorus-T's excellent 145 in Attack were quite potent, 2HKOing all Primal Groudon sets and being strong enough to let Landorus-T generally deal with any threat weak to Ground, as well as a wide array of threats which did not resist it. Stone Edge complemented it well, letting Landorus-T prevail against Ho-Oh, Rayquaza and non-Choice Specs Yveltal.

The set usually used the Choice Scarf item and rounded off the move set with U Turn for efficient pivoting and Explosion to take something out that Landorus-T's team needed eliminated. Choice Scarf let Landorus-T just about always move first to deliver the Explosion as well.

Answer: Necrozma-DuskMane

Necrozma-DM garnered the second highest usage in all of Ubers, falling well short of Primal Groudon but being far, far ahead of anything else. It was an amazing Pokémon, able to perform very well in both offensive and defensive roles. However, even a dedicated specially defensive set took an average of 70% damage from Landorus-I's strong super effective Earth Powers, and any other set got cleanly destroyed in one fell hit. Additionally, Landorus-I was faster, meaning it would move first to dish out this damage.

Not a whole lot of Pokémon could claim to scare out Necrozma-DM as bad as Landorus-I, and the majority of them that could packed some opportunity cost such as taking up a Mega slot or a team's Arceus slot to do so. As such, while it was still overshadowed by other threats, Landorus-I could at least offer an incredibly good matchup against a couple major Ubers threats in Primal Groudon and Necrozma-DM.

Answer: Defog

While Landorus-T could be tasked with setting Stealth Rock, it could instead be designed to remove it from one's end of the field with Defog. With good defensive and offensive stats, Landorus-T could leverage its strong matchup against a wide variety of hazard setting threats to become an exemplary Defog user.

Answer: Flyinium-Z

Up to this point, despite being part Flying type, Landorus-T had yet to receive a usable Flying type move for its offensive arsenal. Enter Z-Crystals, which offered a one-time solution. Pokémon who could contend with Landorus-T such as Tangrowth, Tapu Bulu, and Serperior would get obliterated by a super effective Supersonic Skystrike coming off of Landorus-T's excellent Attack stat.

Rockinium-Z to create Continental Crush was a solid option for generally beating down neutral threats, which mostly included Pokémon resistant to Ground. However, Flyinium-Z offered Landorus-T an extra dimension to its offensive movepool and, thus, was typically preferred.

Answer: Hidden Power Ice

Lacking access to Hydro Pump or Ice Beam, Landorus-T sometimes began to use Hidden Power Ice for the sole purpose of guaranteeing victory against an opposing Landorus-T which did not have Hidden Power Ice itself. The move also began showing up on the strangest of Pokémon for similar reasons, such as Mega Scizor, Ferrothorn and Garchomp who had absolutely zero reason to use the move otherwise.

While far from mandatory in order to actually beat Landorus-T, this was the tip of the iceberg for a loud minority of tournament goers, who argued that having this level of impact on the competitive scene was indicative of overcentralization, and that Landorus-T should be suspect tested for a potential ban to Ubers. Try as they might, a suspect test never came to fruition, but it still left a landmark on the generation proving that Landorus-T was the absolute top dog of standard play.

Answer: Calm Mind

Lacking access to the other three options, Calm Mind Landorus-I was notoriously dangerous for threatening to end the game on the spot if the opposing team lacked something faster than it. The meta got to be quite a bit slow and bulky in response to devastating threats such as the eventually banned Zacian forms, Eternatus, Calyrex-S and more. Landorus-I's simple but deadly Calm Mind + 3 Attacks set took advantage of this metagame trend, and it thus became a nucleic glass cannon.

Answer: Corviknight

Zamazenta was banned to Ubers and, as a genuinely horrible Pokémon, wouldn't be able to counter Landorus-T anyway.

Corviknight shared a lot of traits in common with Skarmory, and fittingly could deal with Landorus-T incredibly similarly as well. With a typing leaving it immune to Ground and strong physical bulk letting it handle Stone Edge well enough, Corviknight was basically insurmountable for Landorus-T, and it would need to teammates to provide it support in this regard.