Competitive Guide: Nucleon

[Dragonstrike]

Spoiler

Why hasn't Choice Scarfed Actan been brought up as a counter to Nucleon? Scarfed Actan will outspeed Nucleon with 200 EVs in Speed and a Jolly Nature and will net a guaranteed KO with Knock Off if the Nucleon holds a Scarf. There is almost no reason why Nucleon wouldn't be running a speed boosting nature (Timid) and full EV investment in Speed while holding the Choice Scarf in order to outspeed the entire unscarfed meta, except for Mega Inflagetah. With those assumptions about Nucleon in mind, here are my damage calculations to substantiate this:

252 EVs in Special Attack, 252 EVs in Speed Nucleon with Timid Nature (Hidden Power Fighting) holding a Choice Scarf
   vs 200 EVs in Speed, 116 EVs in Attack Actan with Jolly Nature holding a Choice Scarf
    amounts to 77.18% to 90.99% of Actan's total health; guaranteed 2HKO.

Hidden Power Fighting is only a 2HKO, despite Actan being 4 times weak, even with optimal Special Attack investment from Nucleon against an Actan that is uninvested in Special bulk. In turn, Choice Scarfed Actan will have no problem outspeeding Scarfed Nucleon after it switches in and will net the OHKO:

200 EVs in Speed, 116 EVs in Attack Actan with Jolly Nature (Knock-Off) holding a Choice Scarf
   vs 252 EVs in Speed, 252 EVs in Defense, 4 EVs in HP Nucleon with Timid Nature holding a Choice Scarf
   amounts to 100.00% to 117.73% of Nucleon's total health; guaranteed OHKO.

FYI: A Timid Nucleon with Hidden Power Fighting and full investment in Speed ends up having a speed of 305 before getting a 1.5X boost from the Choice Scarf. A Timid Actan with the above described investment in Speed will end up having a speed of 308 before getting a 1.5X boost from the Choice Scarf.

I don't think Actan is a mediocre or niche Pokemon, unlike Geigeroach or Soundproof Paraboom. This is the only set and the bare minimum that it can use which is a true counter to Scarfed Nucleon, but there are other sets it can use to check Scarfed Nucleon and force the Nucleon user to switch out and find a replacement good enough to tank a hit from Iron Head, Earthquake, Crunch, Knock-Off, and even Outrage.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say that Nucleon isn't ban worthy. I am just aiming to shed light on a new possible strategy that can be used against Nucleon if there are people who are interested in playing a metagame where Nucleon is allowed.

P.S.: I understand that finding/catching a fully competitive Actan is like winning the lottery, but you can easily force it's Nature to be Jolly 50% of the time by bringing a Synchronize lead to its encounter and as long as its HP IVs are larger than 1, and its Special Defense IVs exactly 31, it can do it's job surviving against Hidden Power Fighting while still OHKOing and having an ideal distribution of (scarce) IVs that optimizes overall Special bulk. I guess this would take approximately 70 encounters on average (and you still have to catch the thing too, ugh...). At least it is considerably lower than the shiny odds. The fact that obtaining a counter to Nucleon that isn't niche/mediocre compared to the surrounding Pokemon in the meta is so much of a pain to do definitely solidifies Nucleon as ban necessary, if there was ever any doubt about it in the first place. Otherwise, I hope this knowledge might help make the meta a bit less suffocating for those deciding to play against it in Ubers.

Actan is a Check at best by Smogon's definition of the terms Check and Counter.  It can't reliably switch into Nucleon every single time, and Nucleon will eventually wear it down if Actan tries to.  Yeah, any Choice Scarfed pokemon with more than 90 base Speed can outspeed a Nucleon guaranteed (provided Nucleon doesn't use Quick Attack), but almost no pokemon in the game is able to comfortably stomach Nucleon's main attack.  If you can't switch in every time against the pokemon, you can't Counter it.

The main reason Actan isn't used more often is because its weaknesses are easily exploitable by some of the most powerful pokemon in the game. Inflagetah and Archilles wreck it with STAB moves and Yatagaryu has its choice of Thunderstorm boosted Thunder or Focus Blast, to list a few examples. In addition, in a meta centralized around removing your opponent's Steel types as quickly as possible so your Nuclear type can sweep, having easily exploitable, common Steel type weaknesses isn't exactly a good thing.