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[Guide] Competitive Analysis: Oblivicorn
#1
Well, Kiricorn is on Windos's list, and Oblivicorn and Coatlith are on Jabuloso's.  Seeing as Jabuloso hasn't been online here for months, let's take one of Phantom's suggestions that was on Jabuloso's list.

[Image: latest?cb=20160816234211]

Stats
HP: 75
Attack: 123
Defense: 67
Sp Attack: 67
Sp Defense: 65
Speed: 113

Welp, the Dark Horse certainly isn't taking any attacks, that's for sure (particularly since it only resists or is immune to two types).  It's already looking as one dimensional as Neopunk was with those kinds of offenses and defenses.  It has a few tricks though, as its species name might suggest.

Abilities
Mold Breaker: Ignores your opponent's ability if it would manipulate your move's damage, hit chance, or effect chance (Levitate users can be hit by ground moves, can lower the stats of pokemon with Clear Body, ignores Thick Fat, etc).  Cute Charm Minicorn get this ability when they evolve into Oblivicorn.  Useful, but Oblivicorn only sees niche usage of this ability.  

- Primarily, it's used to take out Zephy with EQ, Sturdy Astronite, S51-A with EQ (if you're not running Knock Off), using status moves on Magic Bounce users, and hitting Fur Coat Fafninter and Solid Rock Dermafrost for full damage with Play Rough and EQ/Superpower.  It also negates M-Metalynx's Heatproof if Oblivicorn is running Fire Blast for some reason.  If none of those situations are particularly concerning for your team, you don't really need to use this ability.

Quick Feet: Multiplies speed by 1.5x if affected by a special condition (and ignores Paralysis's usual speed drop).  A very powerful ability.  With it activated, Oblivicorn will outspeed almost everything even with minimal speed investment.  The downside: If you want to use it reliably, you have to sacrifice your item and use a Toxic Orb.

Defiant (HA, unavailable as of 1.1.0): Raises attack by 2 stages when any stat is lowered by an opponent's attack.  This ability is powerful.  It's best uses are against Intimidate users and pokemon trying to use Defog.  Or in Uranium's case, just Intimidate users since the only Defog users in the game don't use it at all (Oh, the irony...).  Niche usage, but a powerful niche, unlike Mold Breaker's. It also triggers if Sticky Web is set on your side of the field, which is particularly scary because that's a guaranteed +2 Attack every time Oblivicorn switches in!

NightMareish Speed (Quick Feet Abuser)
- Knock Off
- Play Rough
- Earthquake
- Swords Dance/Protect
Ability: Quick Feet
Item: Toxic Orb
Nature: Adamant or Jolly
EVs: 104 HP, 252 Attack, 152 Speed (Adamant)
OR 252 Attack, 44 Speed, 212 HP (Jolly)

This set's main goal: Sweep your opponent after you've KOed all their priority users and weakened their physical walls sufficiently, or revenge kill weakened foes.  The suggested EV spreads give Oblivicorn 300 speed at level 100, with a whopping 450 after Quick Feet activates.  That's enough to outspeed all unboosted, fully speed invested pokemon besides M-Inflagetah (you'll never 'outspeed' an Inflagetah with Oblivicorn anyways).

Play Rough and Earthquake have spectacular coverage when paired, and Knock Off helps round out the neutral coverage while providing some utility.  Swords Dance boosts you're power, and is a requirement for boosting your power at all on this set since Toxic Orb is your held item, but can be a risky play because of Oblivicorn's frailty.  Or you can use Protect to guarantee you can safely get the speed boost you need, though it comes at the cost of being unable to sweep your foe's pokemon easily.

Another thing to watch out for is your Toxic Orb.  While you're using it to trigger your ability, the Badly Poisoned status puts you on a time limit, making it difficult to sweep foes reliably.  Only attempt to clean up the battlefield if you're certain you can KO all of their pokemon before the toxic KOs you.  Also watch out for burns and paralysis, as while they trigger Quick Feet, they also come with crippling side effects besides damage that will ruin Oblivicorn's ability to do its job.

As always with the EV spreads I recommend on Uranium's fastest pokemon, you can invest more in Speed at the expense of HP if you want to outpace the same species or be more secure in your speed advantage over typically faster and/or boosted pokemon.

Racing through the Night (Choiced)
- Play Rough
- Earthquake/Superpower
- Knock Off/Trick
- U-Turn/Trick
Ability: Any
Item: Choice Band/Scarf
Nature: Adamant or Jolly
EVs: 252 Attack, 252 Speed, 4 HP

Uh oh!  Choices on a Choice set!  Play Rough is Oblivicorn's most powerful STAB attack, and is a given on every set it uses (being the only physical Fairy move with reasonable power and spamming capability in existence).  The second is how you want to handle the steel types that would like to ruin your day, while providing coverage against some other types.  Earthquake smacks enemy Steel, Poison, Rock, and Electric types but can't hit Metalynx for much, while Superpower hits Actan and Rock types harder than EQ and let's you hit Metalynx reasonably hard, in addition to helping against Ice pokemon at the cost of losing coverage on Poison and Electric.

Knock Off is Oblivicorn's main Dark STAB and utility move, and U-Turn turns it into a decent Pivot, but Trick can be used over either of them to cripple enemy pokemon reliant on their ability to switch moves.

Any ability works for this set, but Defiant is the most likely to be consistently useful.

Charge! (Attacker)
- Play Rough
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
- Swords Dance/U-Turn
Ability: Any
Item: Life Orb/Black Glasses/Pretty Ribbon/Expert Belt
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252 Attack, 252 Speed, 4 HP

This set attacks, plain and simple.  Life Orb is for optimal power, while the other 3 items are intended to buff your power while feigning you're equipped with a Choice item.

Ability choice is the same deal as what the previous set had.

Surprise! (Anti-Support Set)
- Play Rough/Knock Off
- Earthquake
- Taunt
- Thunder Wave/Toxic
Ability: Any
Item: Life Orb
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252 Attack, 252 Speed, 4 HP

A set dedicated to making your opponent's pokemon miserable in the least expected ways.  Item Removal, can't use status moves, paralyzed or badly poisoned...Oblivicorn might not be doing it for very long, but a surprise advantage early on can be all you need to keep it for the rest of the game.

This is the one set where I think Mold Breaker can really shine, as it allows you to Taunt and status Mega Sableye and the other 3 Magic Bounce users, which your opponent might not be expecting because of how uncommon it is for Mold Breaker users to take advantage of their ability to negate Magic Bounce.  Unfortunately, Nimflora is only uncommonly used, M-Sableye and Espeon are scared off by Oblivicorn's blazing speed, raw power, and STAB moves, and M-Kiricorn obliterates Oblivicorn without a second thought, so Mold Breaker isn't likely to be breaking Magic Bounce unless you make some pro predictions or your opponent thinks they're safe from your status moves.

Other Move Options
Note: You can replace one of Oblivicorn STAB moves with the other coverage options fairly easily since Dark/Fairy and Ground has some really good neutral coverage in Uranium.

Crunch: More consistently powerful Dark STAB than Knock Off at the expense of the item removal. However, Knock Off is only strictly weaker if your opponent can take two hits from your Dark STAB or if they're holding an item Knock Off can't remove (like a Mega Stone). Two turns of Knock Off: 97.5 + 65 = 162.5 vs Two turns of Crunch: 80*2 = 160. Make sure to keep this in mind if you're worried about really, really physically bulky pokemon or pokemon holding Mega Stones.

Sudden Strike and Pursuit: Sudden Strike is a rare, Dark type Quick Attack.  It can be used on non-Quick Feet sets that buff Oblivicorn's power with Swords Dance or an item to great effect.  Pursuit, meanwhile, aims to trap and kill pokemon within KO range of your Dark attacks.  Either can be used over Knock Off in most of the sets.

Megahorn: Do you REALLY hate Leafeon, Ludicolo, Cocaran, Coatlith, and Gellin?  Then this move will heavily damage them for you!

Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, and Fire Blast: If you decided to pour some EVs into Sp. Atk rather than HP on a Quick Feet set (and maybe sacrificed a little attack), then you could actually use these moves to put a reasonable dent in anything 4x weak to them.  The best nature for this would be Naive or Hasty, with an EV spread of 44 Speed, 252 in one offensive stat, and 212 in the other offensive stat.  Unfortunately, you'd still be lacking a little OOMPH! because you'd have to use a Toxic Orb to reliably use Quick Feet...

Sing: Another surprise status, this time as an egg move from the Owten line.  It's unreliable, but inflicting Sleep could be crucial to securing an advantage over your opponent if you don't mind taking the risk!

Head Charge and Double Edge: I'm not sure why Minicorn has Double Edge (1/3 recoil) as an egg move when both its evolutions learn the strictly better Head Charge (1/4 recoil).  How odd.  Maybe it's for Little Cup or something.  Powerful, but more powerful on Kirikorn, who gets STAB on them.

Poison Jab and Iron Head: For when you want to kill fairies not named Luxelong, Winotinger, and Oblivicorn.  Poison Jab in particular is a decent weapon against Syrentide.

Zen Headbutt: Does absolutely nothing for Oblivicorn that Earthquake doesn't do already, aside from hitting Luchabra's 4x weakness to Psychic.

Substitute: Hide behind a doll on a predicted switch and Swords Dance or attack in relative safety!  Just don't try it around Hyper Voice and Boomburst users, who'll deafen you to death before you can pull that off.  

Me First: The Minicorn line is the only one that gets this move through leveling in Uranium!  Floatzel is the only other one that can use it, and it's an egg move for them.  If you happen to be facing, say, an enemy Oblivicorn, and you know you're faster, you can Me First and hit them with a stronger version of their own Play Rough.  But you'd kill them anyways with your own Play Rough, so...yeah, really niche way to try and hit enemies with Super Effective moves, or use a boosted version of a move Oblivicorn can already learn.  Requires a godly prediction sense to use well.

Checks, Counters, and Partners

Metalynx and Syrentide: Oblivicorn has nothing reasonable that it can hit these two with if it isn't running Superpower and Poison Jab respectively.  

Gliscor: Without a niche Ice Beam using set or 2 or 3 Swords Dances under its hooves, Oblivicorn doesn't have much that can take out its fellow nighttime lover, who'll just Protect and stall out the horse with its amazing health recovery coupled with great defenses.

Tracton: A Tracton with Protect and a lot of speed investment combined with Speed Boost and a plus speed nature can quickly ruin Oblivicorn's merry massacre if it hasn't invested in enough speed to outspeed a full speed Tracton with 1 Speed Boost under its treads (Need 330 speed to outspeed a level 100, +1 speed Tracton guaranteed, which requires Oblivicorn to have a +speed nature and 152 speed EVs)

Oblivicorn and Kiricorn: Enemy unicorns that pack more speed investment than yours can easily ruin your own dark, horned horse by matching your speed tier with a Quick Feet activation of their own.    

Inflagetah and Archilles: +2 priority moves of incredible strength says it all.  No hope of outspeeding, no hope of living.  They can't switch in directly, though, due to their sever allergic reaction to taking an EQ on the switch in.

Chimaconda and M-Arbok: They can Petrify and outspeed Oblivicorn not using Quick Feet with a decent amount of speed investment, KOing it with a powerful Gunk Shot or Sludge Bomb.

Pokemon that can handle Metalynx, Gliscor, and Syrentide are some of Oblivicorn's best allies.  Fairies in general can give it some trouble too if those fairies aren't named Luxelong or Winotinger, so steel types of your own like Tracton and Metalynx can help it out (how ironic).  And while Oblivicorn doesn't struggle too much with most Steel types, pokemon that can remove them more easily such as Archilles and Laissure are greatly appreciated. 

Quick Feet sets appreciate Wish users such as Luxelong greatly, as it gives them more chances to come in a wreak havoc.

Defiant sets heavily appreciate Sticky Web support from the likes of Uranium's various bugs. If your opponent sets up Sticky Web, you'll need some sticky threads of your own to take full advantage of the hazard reliably boosting your attack to huge levels.

Summary
Oblivicorn is a fast and powerful pokemon that can hit most of the game at least neutrally with just one of its STAB moves and Earthquake, and is something that should be accounted for, lest it come in and destroy you with its blazing fast and reliable attacks.  A few popular pokemon almost completely shut it down if it lacks the coverage for them, though, limiting its usage.  While that might be somewhat discouraging, it doesn't mean Oblivicorn can't do its job of denting just about everything in the game before they can even move.  This horse isn't afraid to cause some trouble, and will gladly do so.

EDIT 1: Corrections here and there.

EDIT 2: Sticky Web also triggers Defiant.

EDIT 3: More details for Crunch vs Knock Off in Other Moves.
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#2
Just a few corrections

Quote:NightMareish Speed (Quick Feet Abuser)
[...]
The suggested EV spreads give Oblivicorn 300 speed at level 100
You want to make your calcs based on stats at level 50


Quote:Racing through the Night (Choiced)
[...]
while Superpower hits Actan and Rock types harder than EQ and let's you hit Metalynx reasonably hard, in addition to helping against Ice pokemon at the cost of losing coverage on Poison, Rock, and Electric.
Superpower hits Rock-types for super effective damage


Other than that I haven't really taken the time to analyse the viability of the sets, I'll edit this post later.
Props for your dedication
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#3
(06-13-2017, 04:43 AM)shademonkey Wrote:
Quote:NightMareish Speed (Quick Feet Abuser)
[...]
The suggested EV spreads give Oblivicorn 300 speed at level 100
You want to make your calcs based on stats at level 50

I do them at level 100 mostly because it's one less number to worry about, though I know the reason why you say that is because of Uranium's online battles all taking place at 50.  

While that's good and all, I also do them at 100 because level 100 online battles could become a thing in the future.  The far future, most likely, but it's a possibility.  And VT battles all lack the level adjustment as well, so...

And the final reason is that the differences between level 50 and 100 are rather slight for the most part.  Speed tends to also see the fewest discrepancies as well from what I can tell.

Good catch on the Rock thing there, btw.  My bad.
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#4
Dark Unicorn!~ Wonderful Guide.

I'd always prefer Sudden Strike as a Dark-Type-STAB. It may seem a little weak with only 40 Basepower, but add STAB, 31IV + 252EV in Attack Stat and adamant nature to it... Awesome. If only Defiant-HA will be released ever - free additional boost if switched in into Intimidate or Sticky Web. <3

Also nice that you took a look at the egg moves! Sing is my somewhat favorite - More of a gimmick-move due to it's not realiable at all, but the suprise attack is surely something.
"Anything can be art. Anything can be self-expression. Now take your weapon and run with it" [Gerard Way]
--Windos is my OTP ❤---
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#5
(06-13-2017, 12:43 PM)PhantomUnderYourDesk Wrote: Dark Unicorn!~ Wonderful Guide.

I'd always prefer Sudden Strike as a Dark-Type-STAB. It may seem a little weak with only 40 Basepower, but add STAB, 31IV + 252EV in Attack Stat and adamant nature to it... Awesome. If only Defiant-HA will be released ever - free additional boost if switched in into Intimidate or Sticky Web. <3

Also nice that you took a look at the egg moves! Sing is my somewhat favorite - More of a gimmick-move due to it's not realiable at all, but the suprise attack is surely something.

By all means, go ahead and do that. It is something I mentioned you can do in Other Moves.  Oblivicorn gets more than enough coverage from just Play Rough and Earthquake.  It's big 3 dark moves are all rather interchangeable as a result.

Also, forgot for a moment there that Sticky Web nabs ya a boost too, which is great for Sudden Strike users.  I'll note that.
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#6
Hey there! Good work here, my old friend! I'm not playing Pokémon anymore, some things happened and ended up stopping. So this means that you guys can do whatever you want with whatever it's in my list. Came here just to see how things are going after, what, half a year? Happy to see a thread named "Tournament" and to see that an actual tourney happened, seems that the competitive scene is starting to develop. Great battle in the finals, btw. Wish you all the best of luck, keep the good work!
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#7
(06-13-2017, 02:29 PM)Jabuloso Wrote: Hey there! Good work here, my old friend! I'm not playing Pokémon anymore, some things happened and ended up stopping. So this means that you guys can do whatever you want with whatever it's in my list. Came here just to see how things are going after, what, half a year? Happy to see a thread named "Tournament" and to see that an actual tourney happened, seems that the competitive scene is starting to develop. Great battle in the finals, btw. Wish you all the best of luck, keep the good work!

Well, that's not what I expected to see!  Glad you dropped in one last time to say hi!  What an odd coincidence, no?  Speak of the devil, and he shall appear and all that Tongue

Yeah, it's been picking up a little more steam lately, despite the bugs in multiplayer still.  Guides are being written again, players are getting into battling...good stuff.

Well, wish you all the best as you move on!

Guess this also means I know what the next guide I write is going to be: Coatlith!
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#8
Didn't comment earlier, since you already know my opinion of my your guide (Its great!), but I would be interested in helping setting up and official Competitive scene. Given that updating the game is going to be a veeeeerrrrry long time coming, forming some tiers and setting some guidelines for Comp play would be a splendid idea! Or just start hosting some more tournament, and see if that drums up more interest in the scene!
Like the wind, I come and go as I please... but I am always there to provide a comforting breeze.

Member of Team PUNishment. Pun-pare for Struggle, make it Double Team!

Heart Phantom is my OTP~ Heart

Online ID: 000650
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#9
(06-13-2017, 03:24 PM)Lord Windos Wrote: Didn't comment earlier, since you already know my opinion of my your guide (Its great!), but I would be interested in helping setting up and official Competitive scene. Given that updating the game is going to be a veeeeerrrrry long time coming, forming some tiers and setting some guidelines for Comp play would be a splendid idea! Or just start hosting some more tournament, and see if that drums up more interest in the scene!

Well, we do still have the preliminary rankings for all of the fully evolved pokemon already, so that's a good start.

More tournaments would be a good thing.  I think it'd be interesting to see some that don't use the S tier and Nuclear tier pokemon, or ones that only use B rank and below (basically UU).

Another possibility is looking at Little Cup.  I was actually planning to start that by looking at which pokemon are elligible for it, first of all.  Of course, LC is a whole different beast to other metas since everything is done at level 5 and being able to breed level up and egg moves is an even bigger deal than it is for normal competitive play.

As far as banning stuff to Ubers goes, that's been discussed a few times already, and those old discussions are still pretty valid for the most part.
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#10
(06-13-2017, 03:33 PM)Dragonstrike Wrote: More tournaments would be a good thing.  I think it'd be interesting to see some that don't use the S tier and Nuclear tier pokemon, or ones that only use B rank and below (basically UU).

Functioning online battles would do wonders to that. The whole Tournament got stalled by random Disconnections between players, at some point it gets just annoying... But that surely is a big and time-consuming task.

Setting a special tier to be used and the only one allowed in a Tournament is a great idea!
"Anything can be art. Anything can be self-expression. Now take your weapon and run with it" [Gerard Way]
--Windos is my OTP ❤---
`❤★`°・:*:・。[Image: fgHY4]。・:*:・゚’★❤`
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