Will Lucario define the Ultra League?
One of the main problems in league fights probably will be dealing with the old sandbags. For the Ultra League this will be Blissey. Every trainer will probably have to field one Pokemon for the specific purpose of defeating her. Now, Machamp used to be the choice for this role, but he gets hurt effectively by both of Blisseys good charge moves. In addition, his strength is capped in the Ultra League, and there is a wide range of strong flying and psychic types to take him down. He is, in my opinion, a bad choice for the PvP format.
Enter Lucario: Attack stat higher than Machamp, and he can go to higher levels in the Ultra League. Even with only Close Combat he will deal as much damage as Machamp. His secondary steel typing provides perfect protection against Blissey and all the usual strong opponents. And with Shadow Ball he has a second move with great neutral damage.
The presence of Lucario might force Blissey out of the Ultra League, and force players to field fire or psychic types to counter him.
Answers
Not ikely. Lucario may be a steel type, but its defense it still quite small and its limited by the one bar close combat (because of those shields). Leaving it will little survivability despite a higher-than-machamp attack stat DPS is also not as important in PvP, TDO is significantly more so. Lucario
A better counter to Blissey and chansey (as theres a large number of them when not factoring in DPS, as that was the currency of the gm meta) will be Registeel, it's high defense and access to focus blast and rocksmash, as well as a perfect level 40 is bellow that level cap. Theres also meteor mash metagross, Aggron and other such pokemon that are defensive coutners.
Defensive counters will be more relevant than DPS counters, PvP will require a different mindset than what we have now for raids and gyms, one will substantially less emphasis on DPS, and one with much more on TDO and survivability.
No more expensive than any other legendary.
the amount of dust used for a level 20 mewtwo, kyogre, rayquaza and a level 20 registeel are the same, as well as the candy cost. Yes catching a few extra ray's or mewtwo might add an extra couple candy, but the difference between say 200 and 180 Rc used isnt that large. It's just the ray or the mewtwo was powered up gradually, a few candy at a time, not really thinking about how much was used over all.
A lot of people I know actually raided the regi's just incase they ever became super meta defining, which from what we know of PvP, suggests they very well might. I'm personally just glad when I was clearing out my space for beldum day, I kept my 98% registeel.
Dont disagree, but most people also power up more than one mewtwo and such. After you power up that first one and mew onto the second/etc, its likely to be all rarecandy. Mewtwo's also a bit of a special case because the 5 candies from raids substantially increasing the amount of candy that month, I was more so considering pre-mewtwo month, as I know more maxed their mewtwo prior to it. However for registeel, because its CP max is bellow the cap, you likely wont need more than a single high leveled registeel for PvP in 2500, and a slightly leveled one in 1500 CP
Individually, the registeel will cost more, but over all, they might not be as costly as you dont need teams of them
Why are you suddenly mixing in powering up raid counters? That has nothing to do with this. Powering up a Registeel for PvP is expensive if you didn't raid them. Whether people want to power up several Mewtwos for raiding is a totally separate matter that's not related to this discussion in the least.
Not everyone raided mewtwo as heavily, some may have raided the regis more and some may have raided mewtwo more, every person has a different number of candy for each. saying what essentially becomes "we raided mewtwo more than the regis" doesnt apply to every person, which is why things need to be observed in a vacuum, one cant applying the 'mewtwo is less expensive because we raided it more' to everyone as the default because it isnt always true.
Most things when it comes to this game are observed in a vacuum, we rate legendaries against nonlegendaries at the same level without consideration of RC cost when the nonlegendaries are much more available, so its either apply the RC cost consideration to legendaries against nonlegendaries in rating of pokemon as well the likely raided legendary to the less likely raided legendary for expense of cost or apply every thing is equal in candy cost for expense at powering up.
Is it more likely one raided mewtwo more? yes, but is it always true? no.
And was I trying to apply my situation for generalization? No. I explicitly stated, multiple times, that this applies to some people. Not everyone.
Trying to generalize this or looking at it in a vacuum is utterly pointless. It doesn't yield any useful insights, because each person's candy stock can be so wildly different.
"... the amount of dust used for a level 20 mewtwo, kyogre, rayquaza and a level 20 registeel are the same, as well as the candy cost."
Umm, no. A level 20 perfect Registeel has CP 1398. A level 20 perfect Kyogre has CP 2351. To power each up to just under CP 2500 will cost A LOT more dust and candy for the Registeel than the Kyogre. Of course, the Kyogre can't really play in the CP 1500 league.
Now, if this isn't what you meant, all right. Explain it differently.
Further, when it comes down to it, there will usually be a non-legendary option that performs similarly to a legendary pokemon (possibly at a higher level) for both of the CP capped leagues. Many (not all) legendaries are saddled with less than optimal moves to make up for their sheer stat power. That's why Mewtwo has Psychic instead of Future Sight, Ho-Oh has Brave Bird and Fire Blast instead of Sky Attack and Overheat, etc.
Finally, the 98% or 100% Registeel might not be the best one. The best one will probably be one of the number of combinations that powers up to 1500, 1499, or 1498. Ending on 1473 would be leaving CP on the table.
That statement for powering one up was to take one to level 40, not the highest level for under 2500 CP. I should have specified that.
I agree legendaries tend to get less than optimal moves (exceptions being ray, kyogre, raikou, entei, moltres), but its not like those moves are unusable on the others, with PvP seemingly eliminating damage windows and cooldowns, moves with long cooldowns but high power, like fireblast, could actually become better.
This also wasnt a hard supreme PvP strat analysis, this was more so looking at things conceptually. As well as the OP's original question was about Lucario against blissey and my response was about looking at registeel beign a better option, is one of the few legendaries with very high bulk and a double fighting set that also maxed out before the 2500 CP cap.
I could have worded things better, my apologies.
Lucario is only barely more durable against psychic and fairy attacks than Machamp, since it's a fair bit glassier in a neutral setting. And if the meta is more TDO than DPS centric, Metagross is likely going to be a better counter to Blissey than Lucario. Lucario may be end up being good, but I don't see any ability to be meta defining.
What about ground types and fighting types, in addition to the fire types you mentioned?
And his partial steel typing negates super effective damage from psychic, while simultaneously having the ability to run shadow ball against psychic types
Also your argument relies on the basis that blissey will reign supreme, and based on the current lack of evidence, I strongly disagree with this hypothesis, although I like the idea of this thread :)
I do not think every team will run a counter to blissey.
Lugario's steel typing does crcrease the damage from psychic and fairy moves, but it does have less defense and HP than machamp, when that is taken into consideration, the survivability of Lucario against a lot of other things isnt that high
That and the shields mean Lucario needs to charge close combat 3 times to land one on blissey assuming they use both shields on the first 2
I think people will pick Metagross before Blissey. A lot we don't know, but Blaziken could be a factor with Fighting+Fire. Even with less than ideal fighting and fire charged moves. Might already have one at 2400-2500 because it was never worth taking over level 30 (I've had a level 30 100% for 10 months).
