"[Analysis] Fire Punch Groudon: The rise of a new Meta?"

#PokemonGO: https://ift.tt/2ShqQ8Q cat's out of the bag. Niantic announced that the Hoenn part of the Throwback research will award a Groudon with the exclusive move Fire Punch,a low-cost charge move that Groudon sorely needed.Let's have a look at Fire Punch stats: 55 damage, 40 energy, 1.38 DPE; paired with Mud Shot outstanding 4.5 EPT means high spamming potential. But let's get a little more practical.Two shields in play against the Meta:https://ift.tt/3aN2Fpc can see two predictable losses, Kyogre and Dragonite and three interesting wins, Dialga, Melmetal, Metagross. What's even more interesting, Giratina and Togekiss don't get out of the matchup too well now.https://ift.tt/3f2vmSv in particular heavily relies on baiting both shields correctly as a failure to do so results in a loss.https://ift.tt/2xicnSJ shield situationsLet's move on and see if Groudon's performance in the two shields scenario is an isolated case:https://ift.tt/3bMaugh would have imagined, it's even better! Now, in addition to the steel trio, Giratina, Togekiss, Mewtwo and even Swampert bow down to the ruler of the land.Only six pokemon among the meta can stand up to it now: Gyarados and Dragonite resist all its moves, Lugia lives due to being a flying fortress, Landorus and Mamoswine outspeed it and Kyogre is, as always, its nemesis.Sure, Groudon could run Solar Beam to deal with the overgrown fish but ends up losing the wins over the Giratina twinshttps://pvpoke.com/battle/multi/10000/custom/groudon/11/1-3-4-FIRE_PUNCH-1/2-1/master/No shields, no problemWhat if Groudon has to rely only on its own bulk? Well, the situation gets a bit worse as Giratina O and Swampert get their wins back (although with broken bones) and Togekiss can now breathe easily. Sixteen wins over twenty-five matchups, a 64% win rate, is still astounding though.The numbers speak clearly here, Groudon could very well break the endless circle of Dialga > Giratina > Melmetal > Dialga, shutting down Metagross in the process. We've seen the three Steel types losing in all shields scenarios, Dialga particularly needs two shields and a shield advantage over Groudon to win.https://ift.tt/2YgrqHC did not go into detail about Melmetal because, unlike Dialga, it has only one good move (therefore ignoring Flash Cannon And Hyper Beam) that isn't resisted by Groudon and that's Superpower: point is, getting debuffed while being under a barrage of supereffective Fire Punches is a BAD idea.Now, only time will tell whether this will be enough to affect the usage of Dialga and Melmetal or even change the meta completely. In my humble opinion, it will make Dragonite and Kyogre even more useful and finally give some viability to Lugia, which would make for a more diverse and interesting meta.I hope you enjoyed reading this, feel free to point out any mistakes I might have made. Good luck for the end of season!Edit:as u/gtrbrad pointed out in the comments Groudon also relies on baiting correctly to beat Giratina in the 2v2 shields. It's still a better situation than the 0v0 where it straight out loses. via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2YeEwp1