Competitive Pokémon History - Terrakion Quiz

Answer: It hits everything in the game at least neutrally

A simple combo of Stone Edge and Close Combat gave Terrakion two high powered STAB moves which guaranteed that it could hit everything in the entire game for at least neutral damage with one of them. Meshed with access to Swords Dance and excellent offensive stats, and Terrakion was a terror to deal with defensively. This made it a very strong standard play threat.

Answer: 129

With an excellent offensive movepool, a 129 in Attack and a very formidable 108 for Speed, Terrakion had all the tools it needed to put the fear of Arceus into defensive teams gamewide. The only Pokémon who could even think of switching into it to weather it's physically offensive assaults would be Skarmory- even then, it needs to stay healthy if it wants a chance to properly check Terrakion.

Answer: Suicide entry hazard lead

Lacking the longevity or recovery to make any sort of walling or stall breaking set make sense, Terrakion could try its hand with a vicious suicide lead set. Access to Stealth Rock with good Speed along with Taunt ensured Terrakion had the tools to give its team the upper hand in the early game entry hazard war. Combined with Stone Edge, Close Combat and a high Attack stat, Terrakion could do well setting hazards, denying enemy hazards, and then doing good damage to the opposing team before eventually going down.

Answer: Ghost types in general

Psychic types were typically too frail to try to pull this off. The only exception in Lugia happened to be weak to Stone Edge while also lacking the offenses to immediately dispose of Terrakion, so that wouldn't do. Dragons simply lacked the resistances and/or bulk to consistently counter Terrakion. With Steel types being weak to Fighting, Close Combat tended to annihilate most of them.

Ghost types, however, were mostly insurmountable for Terrakion. From the monstrous Giratina formes, to Arceus-Ghost, even niche picks like Sableye could counter Terrakion. Giratina-A was so bulky that even a Swords Dance boosted Stone Edge came nowhere close to 2HKOing it, whereupon Giratina could cripple Terrakion with Will-o-Wisp or remove it and its boosts from play with Roar. Giratina-O could simply use its vastly superior statbuild to take hits from Terrakion and outduel it with its own strong attacks. The same dynamic also applies to Arceus-Ghost

Being able to ignore Close Combat and not keel over to Stone Edge while also either having ways around Terrakion's boosts or being able to hit its low defenses hard, Ghosts were difficult for Terrakion to handle in fifth generation Ubers.

Answer: Justified

Justified grants a +1 boost to the user's Attack if they are struck by a Dark type attack.

Terrakion's noticeably lesser bulk compared to its fellow Swords of Justice meant it couldn't activate the ability quite as easily and risk-free as they could. However, where it lacked the ease of use they did, it more than made up for how much more effectively it could use a boost from Justified it did receive. With Terrakion's outstanding offenses, any boost it gets, much less a mostly free one, could easily allow it to end the game on the spot if its counters are out of the way. As such, while inconsistent, Justified could be a true terror for the opposition, making it valuable for Terrakion.

Answer: UnderUsed's banned list

Terrakion saw its usage rate take a big hit. The introduction of Fairies was bad news for it, as they were generally Pokémon who, if they were not immediately OHKOed by Terrakion, could often do the OHKOing due to its lackluster defenses and weakness to Fairy.

Additionally, the standard play metagame in general became more hostile to it. The rise of Mega Sableye was really bad for Terrakion, as Mega Sableye was a hard counter to it. Moreover, the meta as a whole got more offensively inclined; Pokémon like Talonflame, Mega Charizards Z and Y, the Lati Twins, Mega Scizor and Mega Lopunny did not counter Terrakion, but mostly outsped and could OHKO it or at least inflict tons of damage onto it easily. This made boosting with Swords Dance much, much harder and, as such, curbed Terrakion's offensive potential significantly.

Low usage doesn't equate to a bad Pokémon in all cases. Terrakion's speed was still valuable, its Attack was still high, and its movepool was still very strong. Not needing to take up a team's Mega slot to offer these traits was still very valuable.

In any case, Terrakion was easily way, way, way too powerful for the UU metagame at this time. It was an easy ban candidate, lasting just seven hours in the tier before being swiftly banned from play.

Answer: Rockium-Z

A Swords Dance-boosted Continental Crush from Terrakion was so devastatingly powerful that it had close to no safe switch ins. With nothing being immune to the move, all but the bulkiest of bulky Pokémon who also resisted the move would simply get deleted by the it.

All-Out Pummeling was a strong option for sure, but came with some problems. Terrakion's mortal nemeses in Ghost and Psychic types resisted this move, with the former being flat out immune to it. Both of these types would be massacred by Continental Crush, making the latter a more consistent pick. This is reflected in its usage statistics.

Answer: Scizor

Scizor didn't necessarily 'comfortably' take hits from Terrakion, but it didn't matter. If Scizor survived with even a single hit point, it could immediately drop Terrakion with its predictable but difficult to deal with priority Bullet Punch, backed both by STAB and the Technician ability while also hitting Terrakion super effectively. The Red Menace's most common set at this point was a Choice Banded variant which made Bullet Punch hit even harder. What's worse, the need for Terrakion to flee the field in the presence of Scizor was highly exploitable via the latter utilizing U-Turn to gain momentum off of a predicted switch.

Unfortunately, as the tier's king, there did not exist an easy way of dealing with Scizor in UU. The most a trainer could hope to do was pair a Moltres with Terrakion and work vigorously at keeping Stealth Rock off their own end of the field. Terrakion could at least help in that regard, using its excellent offenses to pressure opponents who tried to set Stealth Rock against it.

Answer: No

Terrakion joined Virizion, Cobalion and Keldeo, joining Galar via the Crown Tundra DLC. Unlike its fellows, Terrakion did not suffer a tier demotion despite being late to begin receiving usage statistics.

Answer: Megahorn

Megahorn, in particular, made Celebi and Slowbro far easier for Terrakion to handle. Megahorn plainly annihilated Celebi, while a Swords Dance boosted Megahorn has a roughly 30% chance to eliminate Slowbro in one hit- far better odds than a Swords Danced Stone Edge being a shaky 2HKO.

In general, it made Psychic types even less safe trying to switch into Terrakion, making the move a mainstay for it.