Mamoswine
Well, we now know that Mamoswine will rear it's tusked head from the frozen tundra on Feb 16th (or the 17th for Asia).
The whole thing seems pretty straightforward with one exception. The exclusive move. What will we get?
Powder Snow/Avalanche is a great combination, generates energy fast and hits with 2 bars for strong damage. Avalanche, in particular, is like Dynamic Punch for Ice.
So if we get Blizzard, that would be comparable, but not quite as good. Ice Beam, or Aurora Beam, would be further downgrades.
So I'm speculating that it has to be a Ground move of some type, or possibly a new fast move (like TTar's Smack Down). Bulldoze is sub par, something like Earthquake, Dig, or Drill Run would be a step up. Drill Run would rock, but Mamoswine seems to me to be a big ponderous attacker (which doesn't really jibe with Avalanche, which is very quick), so Dig would make more sense, even though it's slow. Of course, in PvP, Earthquake is by far the better Ground move, with Drill Run being so-so, and Dig downright bad.
The possibility of carrying two moves is interesting, but if you look at Mamoswine's typing, it has the disadvantages of ice. Combined with Ground, it has 6 weaknesses and only two resistances (double to Electric, single to Poison). So, for me, it seems that it's really a one trick pony - best ice attacker.
The final wrinkle, of course, is something not currently in the game data. That could be fun.
But overall, I'm much more excited about Mamoswine finally arriving than the special move, and the ability to do extra Trainer Battles (not sure if that's the game trainers or other players, or both). Text implies a possible increase in Sinnoh Stone rates (except for Mr-ex777, who Niantic has banned from getting them, just to spite him, because they love reading his posts here). But the text "Earn up to 5 Sinnoh Stones" implies that you just get more shots at them, and nothing else for sure.
Should be interesting. My perfect Piloswine can finally be all that he can be, ....
Answers
Of the existing moves it can receive, none of the existing ice attacks it can learn would serve it better than Powder Snow/Avalanche. It doesn't get access to Drill Run and Earthquake is actually worse for it than Bulldoze. Mud Shot pretty much ties with Mud Slap when paired with Bulldoze. Mud Bomb would be the better ground move for it to learn.
Now for the fun speculation, there's about three avenues they can take it - Icicle Crash, Earth Power, or Ancient Power. To make people excited for Icicle Crash it needs to be stronger than Avalanche, which itself is a Dynamic Punch clone. If they go balls to the wall and make it as strong as any of the existing starter moves it puts Mamoswine in a position to solo Rayquaza by itself - no weather boost necessary. A Hydro Cannon clone hits 52(!!) DPS against Rayquaza on the DPS/TDO chart while a Blast Burn clone puts it at 48. A Frenzy Plant clone falls in the middle.
Earth Power - while substantially less exciting but much more needed for the ground type movepool - could be the first truly "good" ground charge attack we see. As shown with Smack Down, some moves added for community day don't stay exclusive. We could hope to see it spread to other Pokemon eventually.
Ancient Power... novelty and nothing else. A nice callback to its evolution method but offers Mamoswine nothing Stone Edge doesn't already.
> none of the existing ice attacks it can learn would serve it better than Powder Snow/Avalanche.
Why do people keep saying this? Pillowswine's two fast moves are Ice Shard and Powder Snow, and Ice Shard rates higher than Powder Snow. I don't know how Frost Breath compares, but it can't be worse than Powder Snow. Powder Snow has good EPS, but abysmal DPS. At the very least, Ice Shard should be better, possibly Frost Breath too.
I somewhat agree. Ice shard comes out just barely ahead of powder snow in most simulations, but it is very close. And frost breath performs similarly to both.
The very slight advantage ice shard has over powder snow, coupled with the very slightly higher attack stat of Mamoswine over Weavile makes me wonder why people keep saying that Mamoswine is going to be far and away the best ice attacker. I get that Mamoswine is somewhat bulkier, but its DPS looks like it will be pretty much identical to Weavile's, and the difference in bulk hardly makes Mamoswine a game changer.
Because it is a game changer. Mamoswine's DPS is 16.016 compared to Weavile which is 15.335. That's significantly higher. Coupled with the fact that it has much more TDO, just puts it ahead of every other ice type. That perfect balance of attack + bulk makes it the best pokemon to solo a future Rayquaza raid or any other poke that's weak to ice.
That's not to say that Weavile is bad. No, it's a great glass cannon and a great pokemon overall. But Mamoswine, rightly deserves every bit of hype and love that it gets. After 3 Generations of mediocre ice type after another, we finally have ourselves a king.
What are the variables that go into those DPS calculations? What level? What friend bonus? What defender/boss? I'm sure I could cherrypick different variables that would put Weavile ahead.
In almost every simulation that I've looked at, IS/A Piloswine has slightly better time to win against Rayquaza than PS/A. So, in my mind, that means that, on the same pokemon, IS/A has slightly higher cycle DPS.
Mamoswine has a base attack stat of 247, and Weavile's is 243. That's a difference of about 1.6%, which is somewhat offset by the fact that IS/A is a higher DPS moveset. So does Mamoswine hit harder? Maybe, but not enough that you'd ever notice.
As for bulk, Mamoswine is roughly 20% bulkier that Weavile, which is significant, but far less than the difference between, say, Electivire and Raikou (Raikou being 36% bulkier), or Venusaur and Breloom (Venusaur being 60% bulkier). A closer comparison would be Dragonite vs. Salamence or Rayquaza.
So is Mamoswine better? Yeah, probably. But a game changer? No. Similar DPS with 20% higher bulk means that the main difference is going to be whether Mamoswine's dual typing helps him or hurts him in a given situation.
Mamoswine has 5% better DPS than Weavile. Lick/SC Gengar have 6% better DPS than Hex Gengar. Would you say Lick/SC are "similar DPS" and not game changers compared to Hex? I think a fair number of people would disagree if you claimed that.
Mamoswine's DPS advantage is significant and the additional bulk will only give it a larger advantage in TTW compared to Weavile. Its advantaged in all ways by a fair margin. As for the typing, the first relevant matchup will likely be Rayquaza, against which Mamoswine has the advantage of being neutral to rock.
Is Mamoswine better? Yeah, absolutely. There is zero justification for saying "probably". It's absolutely better, and significantly so.
Powder Snow doesn't have good EPS, it has top shelf EPS. The list looks like this:
Present 15.38 (special move for Delibird)
Fury Cutter 15.00
Powder Snow 15.00
Charge Beam 13.64
Psycho Cut 13.33
Thunder Shock 13.33
Note that the last three are considered great for EPS, and Powder Snow is well above them.
In PvP, it's also a low damage high energy option. With an efficient, powerful, reasonably low energy attack like Avalanche, Powder Snow is a deadly combination.
You can say that again. Avalanche, is already great. If they gave it another great ice attack, it's not like you're doomed if you miss this CD.
On the other hand, if they give it say a ground move, then you've got yourself a great ground attacker depending on how good the unaccounced move is.
Either way, it's a win win situation, I love it!
It's lame that someone could get unlucky with getting Shinnoh Stones and be blocked from the exclusive move no matter how much they grind. I have several 96+% Piloswines. It would take at least 3 stones to get me to leave the house. 6 or 7 for it to be worth grinding the whole 3 hours. If Niantic wants participation, they better make stones much less rare, at least temporarily.
I missed out on gathering up a bunch of Swinubs during the winter event due to working an insane amount of hours. I’m very happy that they are having a CD for Swinub. The 3x Stardust is just icing on the cake for me at this point.
Also depending on what the legacy move will be, I might just wait on evolving so I can just get powder snow + avalanche because thats already amazing as is. If they add a really strong ice type move, I’ll evolve but I might hold off.
Hi, why do you assume that everyone is drowning in sinnoh stones? My success rate for past several weeks in 1 in 20 PvP battles. My son with whom I battle each day is getting one almost each day so 1 in 4 or 5 for him. Unless they do bump up the success rate for Feb Comm Day it won't be worth doing PVP. to get 5 stones at my present rate would be 100 battles, at 4-5 minutes per battle that is 400-500 minutes or 7-8 hours!!!!! Wouldn't have time to catch swinubs.
Nice troll. Impossible duo and looks pretty hard trio, especially Kyogre.( i did 4 man both, and was close to time up Blizzard Kyogre, and probably not enough to try 3 man Groudon, despite using proper counters etc) Trios based on things like 6 Kyogres or Raikou are unrealsitic for most players.
I agree, that Rayquaza deserve more respect, not just easy duo.
