Haven’t posted in a bit, but I just finished my second run through of USUM and thought I’d way in on my teams:
Poplio - pretty much agree with this thing’s tiering. In both playthroughs I ran around after getting tauros ride for 10 mins or so to get water/grass/fire pledge for my starter; which greatly lessens the pain of losing early game scald. A
Ralts - Available through island scan on the first island. Didn’t take long to find at all. It gets stab moves pretty early on (in the form of confusion at level 4 and disarming voice at 11), but is sort of stuck with draining kiss until dazzling gleam tm (lack of good fairy stab seems to be a theme in USUM). It gets Calm mind at 24 and psychic via tm or by level up at 30. It can run charge beam and screens via tms, or has decent coverage from signal beam, shock wave, icy wind from tutors. Outside of its coverage and decent level-up Movepool, though, it’s pretty well useless until at least evolving into Kirlia. It’s simply too weak as a ralts compared to even Mr. Mime or Kadabra around the same point. It can’t take a hit at all. Kirlia did decently against Totem Araquanid and even evolved into Gardevoir just before Olivia. It was able to set up a couple calm minds against anorith and psychic its way through the whole fight (it doesn’t take a rockium Z very well without a reflect up, though). It does decently throughout the mid-late game but it’s physical bulk and not overly high speed stat hold it back from sweeping and taking the plethora of neutral dark/bug hits. Mine also often got knocked out by team skull poison things if it didn’t outspeed. Doesn’t do anything against Marowak, togedamaru or Mimikyu. It’s a toss-up for Kommo-O (it has flash cannon, which mine took and returned an OHKO with a +1 draining kiss). Didn’t use it against Necrozma but I don’t think it could take any hit without x items, so that’s a no go. Does decently in the E-4, but overall I wasn’t as impressed by it as in previous games. C+
Murkrow - this guy did great for me. He hits very hard early game, gets access to the lovely flyinium Z and once you get the scope lens he’ll crit a ton. His speed tier is great right up until mid/late game, but he won’t take hits too well. He can go mixed too, which is okay for a icy wind (via tutor) or tms like calm mind, psychic, shadow ball. I also found Psych Up to be occasionally useful for Totems who boosted their stats. He really starts to fall off late game if you don’t get the dusk stone ASAP from poke Pelago. I got mine around the electric trial and found honchkrow actually took hits pretty well with his decent hp stat. He still outspeeds some things but definitely misses murkrow’s speed tier. Once you get access to night slash you’ll be constantly hitting crits and 105 BP neutral hits that ignore stat changes are nothing to laugh at coming off honchkrow’s great attack. He did great in quite a few trials (Normal trial, Hala, Araquanid, Lurantis, Marowak, even Kommo-O) but suffers pretty hard in a few as well (togedemaru, mimikyu, ribombee, Olivia). Overall he performed very well as both a murkrow and a honchkrow. I’d put it in B
How are we tiering SOS chained Salamence/Volcarona? I used one in each of my playthroughs. It never took me more than 40 minutes to find either (Salamence actually only took about 20 encounters to find a bagon and 10 minuets of calling to get Salamence). But I recognize that this could easily take 1-2 hours. If we dock them a tier or two for availability they still destroy the game once you get them.
Salamence - Very low availability, with a 1% chance to be called by Bagon on route 3, which also has a 1% encounter rate to begin with. You can’t have bagon call for Salamence until you get adrenaline orbs (which is after the third trial, but I traded a few over from Ultra Sun via gts after the first trial). Assuming you wait until after Kiawe for adrenaline orbs I’ll say it’s early/mid game availability. It has to use dragon breath/bite/brick break/rock tomb for a while, as it doesn’t get a flying move until aerial ace on the second island. It can use iron tail and aqua tail from tutors, but it’s probably better off without them. Intimidate is absolutely increadibly useful in game. I won’t go too much more into detail just in case we don’t tier these, but this thing never ever suffered in game and was by far my team’s power house from the end of the first island all the way to the E-4. It outspeeds and wrecks everything. Assuming we dock it a tier or two for availability I’d put it in - A/B
Volcarona - it’s available in lush jungle after getting machamp shove. So fairly late. But it’ll be much stronger than anything you have at this point. It’s encounter method is the same as Salamence, so it takes a while to find one. Once you get it you can tutor signal beam and giga drain, as well as TM fire blast. It won’t get quiver dance until the move relearner, which really hurts it. It held its own very well for the rest of the game but also doesn’t particularly cheese any of the upcoming totems/fights (apart from ribombee). I won’t go too much into detail until I know whether or not we’re tiering these SOS encounters, but I’d probably put Volcarona in C due to pretty late and rare availability, and lack of reliable stabs until flamethrower/bug buzz via late tm/move relearner.
I also used Mawile and didn’t find it nearly as good as this list suggests. It does have access to intimidate and okay power for early game but it doesn’t take special hits very well and gets nothing for decent stab until iron head. I dumped mine for a klefki at thrifty megamart (which was absolutely invaluable thanks to prankster). It just missed out on quite a few KO’s. I often used mine to heal up my other team members, which was useful but could probably have been done by any steel type. I’d put it in C+/B
I’ll post about a few more of my team members when I have time in the next few days.