WIP Persian

Persian

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 1400"]

[TD="align: center"]Sprite[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Name
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Pokedex No.[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Type 1
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Type 2
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](Base) HP[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](Base) Attack[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](Base) Defense
[*HP][/TD]
[TD="align: center"](Base) Special
[*HP][/TD]
[TD="align: center"](Base) Speed[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Critical Hit Ratio
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]4x Weak[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]2x Weak [/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Neutral[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]2x Resistance[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]4x Resistance[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Immunity[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Persian[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]053[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Normal[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]N/A[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](65)
333[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](70)
238[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](60)
218
[72594][/TD]
[TD="align: center"](65)
228
[75924][/TD]
[TD="align: center"](115)
328[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]22.46%[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]N/A[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Fighting[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Bug, Dragon, Electric, Fire, Flying, Grass, Ground, Ice, Normal, Poison, Psychic, Rock, Water[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]N/A[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]N/A[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Ghost[/TD]
[/TABLE]

Movepool

Bide, Bite, Body Slam, BubbleBeam, Double Team*, Double-Edge, Fury Swipes, Growl, Hyper Beam, Mimic, Pay Day, Rage, Rest, Scratch, Screech, Skull Bash, Slash, Substitute, Swift, Take Down, Thunder, Thunderbolt, Toxic, Water Gun.

* Evasion moves are banned in Stadium OU.

Movesets

Standard

• Slash
• BubbleBeam
• Substitute
• Thunderbolt

Alternative Options: Body Slam, Thunder, Hyper Beam.
[HR][/HR]
Slash always critical hits due to Persian's base speed making it effectively just under 140BP – the most powerful STAB attack without drawbacks and the only reason why Persian has a niche in Stadium OU. It's considered a must to use Slash if you are using Persian. Slash additionally has a benefit of ignoring Reflect.

BubbleBeam is a fantastic choice that prevents Golem and Rhydon from walling Persian, as they not only resist Slash but also happen to have some of the highest HP-Defense products. In fact, Rhydon is top and Golem third. BubbleBeam allows Persian to 2HKO both, and OHKO with a critical hit.

Substitute allows you to scout a switch at less of a risk, as you lose 25% HP instead of potentially more, assuming Persian is faster than the foe. If they do switch, it provides you with a safe opportunity to do at least some significant damage, as they have to break the Substitute before they can damage Persian directly. Substitute also blocks status such as Thunder Wave from Chansey, and possibly Starmie too if you win the speed tie.

Thunderbolt is considered the best choice for the fourth move slot as it's useful against unboosted Slowbro, as well as the less common Cloyster and Gyarados, and hits Gengar harder than BubbleBeam can. It can also be used as a last resort to paralyze the opponent and hope they become fully paralyzed. Or it can be just used for hoping for a critical hit on a Water-type.
[HR][/HR]Body Slam generally does an improved job of Thunderbolt's latter use of trying to accomplish paralysis and/or deal more damage with a critical hit – for use either in a desperate situation, or against an incoming Starmie attempting to recover off the damage received from Slash.

Thunder is an alternative to Thunderbolt that sacrifices accuracy for more Base Power. Thunder is notable for dealing an average of around 53% damage to Cloyster, providing it hits.

Hyper Beam is Persian's strongest STAB attack - but unfortunately comes with a massive drawback of always having to charge for a turn after. It also only does slightly more damage than Slash, 150BP compared to ~140BP. So it's recommend to only use this if Persian will otherwise faint after having used Slash, particularly if a critical hit is necessary against the foe also.
[HR][/HR]Standard Usage

Generally, against most foes, the idea is to just use Slash. If you think the opponent may switch, you can use Substitute. If the foe is a Ground/Rock type, use BubbleBeam. And if you know a foe Water-type has weak special, you can use Thunderbolt or Thunder.

If your opponent has a Substitute Alakazam and they switch out with 75% HP, you have the potential to use BubbleBeam when facing a Golem/Rhydon. If the opponent switches out to Alakazam, it does between 9.5% and 10.5% damage. This can bring it down to 65%, which happens to be the average damage of Slash to Alakazam - plus if the 10% chance of a speed drop is successful, you now outspeed Alakazam with a good chance to KO it if it stays in.

Persian can be a handy revenge killer, finishing off weakened foes which Persian's teammates helped to wear down. It can be used to Slash in a high-risk, high reward situation against Starmie and Persian foes provided you win the speed tie and they are in range to be KOed by Slash. The worst case, generally, against Persian is that you'll be depleted of over half your HP. The worst case against Starmie is being paralyzed by Thunder Wave and then getting fully paralyzed, therefore probably missing your chance at KOing Starmie.

When faced against Gengar, Thunderbolt deals the most consistent damage, though you would probably want to avoid this situation as much as you can by taking out Gengar early with another member of your team. Against Chansey, using Substitute is beneficial to either block a Thunder Wave or anticipate a Counter. You can then Slash in safety, likely 2HKOing Chansey. If necessary, you can also switch into Slowbro on a predicted Rest, and Thunderbolt for a likely 3HKO if it's unboosted - or try for a Thunderbolt critical hit if it is boosted.

If you find yourself in a desperate endgame against your opponent, where you simply cannot win by reliable means: you'll have to rely on the chance of Hyper Beam achieving a critical hit against most foes; Body Slam if you want a chance to induce paralysis and have them fully paralyzed next (also possibility of a critical hit); and Thunderbolt or Thunder, against primarily Water-types, with the possibility of both effects happening.

Moveset History

The sole Persian set, Standard, is much the same as its RBY equivalent. Due to Hyper Beam being a lot less effective though, Substitute took its place, being superb in allowing it not to be paralyzed by Chansey. Substitute also allows for safe scouting/capitalizing on a potential switch, e.g. from a Rhydon/Golem misdirection. Screech was also relegated from a good fourth move option as a result.

Suspect Options

Screech is not as viable as it would be in RBY due to Hyper Beam charging always in Stadium and the abundance of Substitute. Persian can only take advantage of Screech if it opts for Body Slam, Hyper Beam or any other STAB alternative over Substitute (Slash and BubbleBeam deemed more necessary). This is because Slash ignores stat changes. It can still be used against Substitute-less Chansey or paralyzed Starmie if one really must.

Toxic, while working in some cases, is considered too unreliable. After switching out of bad poison received from Toxic, the foe then becomes normal poisoned, and is immune to burn, freeze, paralysis and sleep. It also may be hard to determine when the foe will switch out (e.g. Chansey with Softboiled) and possibly ruin your chance to capitalize on the situation. It does force Chansey, Starmie and Alakazam to recover more though, which will mean they attack less and use up their recovery pp more quickly.

Bide is considered a suspect option because Persian lacks instant 50% recovery in the form of either Recover or Softboiled. This means Bide won't be able to be repeated much, i.e. Persian could do one bide while taking two attacks or two bides while taking one attack each. It does only get 2HKOed by powerful special attackers or a Persian foe. So, in theory, it should be able to pull off at least one Bide - but that is not taking into account the opponent could not attack, catch on, and thus use the time to Thunder Wave or Stun Spore Persian. Also, any critical hit to or full paralysis of Persian would spoil the effectiveness of the move.

Mimic, most of the time, will probably not allow Persian to get a worthwhile attack as Slash is the best physical attack (except against Gengar and Rock-types), provided the user has enough base speed. Picking up Blizzard, Earthquake, Psychic, Softboiled or Surf may prove useful though.

Growl in most situations would probably do more harm than good, as Body Slam is a common attacking move you come up against and has a 30% chance to paralyze. Additionally, Persian is frail, so it'd probably be more beneficial for Persian just to attack. Plus critical hits ignore the stat changes, and foes can switch out. Therefore a potential situation in which it could be useful is against a lone Snorlax that Persian can't KO but perhaps its team mates can with the aid of the weakened Snorlax's Body Slam. But that doesn't seem like a common occurrence.

Double-Edge's sole purpose is to hope for a critical hit when the foe can't be KOed by Slash but can by a critical hit Double-Edge or perhaps to hope for two critical hit Double-Edges in the hope Persian doesn't suffer as much damage. This is really for desperate times though as Persian only crits around 22% of the time and Double-Edge also has recoil which will activate if the opponent isn't KOed.

Bite is perhaps even more desperate, with a 30% chance to flinch but only 60BP. Even with a CH, it's weaker than Slash. But that extra damage may well be necessary in rare situations.

Rest is regarded as a poor choice because Persian gets 3HKOed by a lot of Stadium OU threats, meaning being unavailable to attack for 2 turns is just not viable.

Swift is unfortunately only useful if Persian's accuracy is lowered thanks to a ban on evasion moves. It's a sure-fire way to hit the foe, but it's doubtful a foe would even use such a move, as Persian is frail and can be 2HKOed by the likes of Alakazam.

Worthless Options
Scratch is a weak 40 BP move, which only has high (35) PP going for it. Since Persian has no reliable recovery, PP stalling is out of the question.

Water Gun is also a 40BP move, having 25 PP compared to BubbleBeam's 20 BP. Unfortunately that makes no practical difference as above.

Take Down works similar to Double-Edge, but suffers a loss of 10BP and is only 85% accurate.

Fury Swipes has 80% accuracy; stops when a substitute is broken; only has a base power of 18 for each hit; and only has a 12.5% chance for 5 hits.

Rage is a 20BP move that forces the user to be locked into it, that will eventually raise attack stat to +6. The stat change peak effectively makes it an 80BP move. It's still worse than Body Slam's 85BP, however.

Skull Bash is a 100BP move over 2 turns, therefore 50BP over 2 turns.

Pay Day is an attack that due to lacking any battling effect, is even inferior to Scratch because of less PP.


Partners

Foremost, Persian has to be partnered with Pokemon that can lure Gengar to sacrifice itself - as Gengar dwarfs all other attemps at walling Persian. It also needs to be partnered with something that can wall Gengar's attacks. The other focus is just to aid in giving Persian the upper hand in the tough one-on-one match ups - by means of paralyzing, pp stalling, and doing enough damage to allow Persian to finish off the threat with Slash/BubbleBeam/Thunderbolt.

Tauros can be an effective partner due to it possessing the same speed as Gengar and 2HKOing Gengar with Earthquake (1HKO with critical hit). Though the situation isn't ideal for Gengar, it can deal some vital damage with Thunderbolt and/or Explosion if it wins any of the speed ties - therefore it can stay in, giving you the opportunity to most of the time accomplish a benefit to Persian by either fainting Gengar or dealing over 60% damage. But likewise, the potential damage to Tauros should be considered. Starmie with Psychic is also a valuable teammate. It can lure Gengar to use Thunderbolt or Hypnosis against it, at a risk, giving Starmie the chance to use Psychic and deplete Gengar's HP to less than 50%. As Gengar rarely carries Rest, its effectiveness as a wall to Persian will almost certainly be significantly reduced. Alakazam, Chansey, and Jynx can also be good lures for a Gengar's Explosion, particularly if Persian hasn't been revealed yet.

Focusing on walling Gengar: Alakazam, Chansey, and Exeggutor are partners that all soak up Gengar's special attacks well but don't appreciate an explosion. Additionally, Gengar can perhaps be used to wear down Gengar if one doesn't want to suffer Explosion at the opposing Gengar's conclusion. Golem and Rhydon are also useful for absorbing Gengar's Thunderbolt.

Alakazam and Chansey find another purpose as partners in that they can pp stall the potential special threats to Persian by recovering off damage with Recover and Softboiled respectively. Starmie also performs a similar role, but is scared off by powerful Electric and Grass-type moves. Alakazam, Chansey, Starmie are also, along with Slowbro, effective users of Thunder Wave. Meanwhile, Exeggutor has the less accurate Stun Spore to paralyze foes with.

Finally, Persian is good to pair up with tanks and sweepers that will inflict heavy damage on a foe so that Persian can finish off with Slash, BubbleBeam and Thunderbolt. Psychic from Exeggutor or Alakazam on Golem or Rhydon will always inflict enough damage to make it a guaranteed KO with BubbleBeam after. They are also good along with Articuno, Jolteon, Jynx, Lapras, Starmie, Zapdos, at wearing down power physical attackers such as Snorlax, Tauros and other Persian - with powerful special attacks. If the special attackers do around 50% damage to a Persian foe, then Persian has a likely chance to KO, and a 50% chance on top of suffering no damage due to outspeeding. The latter special attackers are also great at severely damaging an Exeggutor foe by means of Blizzard, Pin Missile or Drill Peck. Tauros and Snorlax act as good partners as Body Slam has a 30% chance of paralyzing a foe each time it's used. Furthermore, Body Slam is a good Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB) move backed up by good Attack stats from Tauros and Snorlax. Tauros with Double-Edge can also always get a Tauros foe in Persian's Slash damage range, providing two Double-Edges are pulled off. Persian then has a very likely chance to KO with Slash.

Counters

Gengar is considered the greatest wall of Persian, as it is immune to Slash, and takes relatively little damage from, Thunderbolt, Persian's regularly most powerful damaging attack (regular maximum around 16% damage, with a critical hit - 32% damage). In return, Gengar can comfortably averagely 3HKO Persian, owing to its high special of 358 and Persian's seemingly mediocre special stat of 228, securing its status as the best counter to Persian.

The next best counters (and walls) in Stadium OU come in the form of Pokemon with high HP-Defense products, particularly those ones that do not take high damage from BubbleBeam or Thunderbolt, and can deal a good amount of damage to Persian. Notable examples include: Slowbro, taking little damage after an Amnesia, provided Thunderbolt doesn't critical hit, and striking back with a powerful Surf or Psychic; Lapras, which deals a minimum of 49.5% damage to Persian with Blizzard; and Snorlax which can 3HKO with Body Slam - and made easier by a potential paralyzed and fully paralyzed Persian. All mentioned are usually only 4HKOed from Persian's Slash at full HP, but sometimes 3HKOed.

Rhydon and Golem, who have high HP-Defense products and deal high damage to Persian, but lack safety due to Persian's potential BubbleBeam, can misdirect the opponent by switching in on a Persian's predicted slash, and then switching to another Pokemon which can handle Persian's predicted BubbleBeam. The net result is one hasn't switched into a highly damaging Slash.

Other staples such as Alakazam, and to a lesser extent Exeggutor and Tauros, are favourable in one-on-one matchups against Persian - assuming both are at full HP. Alakazam usually 2HKOs with Psychic. Persian equivalently 2HKOs Alakazam also, but fortunately Alakazam is faster. Exeggutor 2HKOs on the high end of damage, and also has a chance to special down on the 1st turn or critical hit with Psychic, as well as sleep Persian, before inevitably being 3HKOed by Slash. Rest can be a move option on Exeggutor so it can recover off the damage received from Slash at a later stage. Tauros, while being 3HKOed by the faster Persian's Slash, and in return only 3HKOing Persian by Body Slam, has a 51% chance to paralyze Persian with Body Slam, thus winning the close damage match-up by means of speed. Furthermore, Body Slam's damage can be boosted by a critical hit and Persian can potentially become fully paralyzed.

Articuno and Zapdos can also usually 2HKO with Blizzard (always 2HKOes when hits) and Thunderbolt respectively, while Persian always 3HKOs them.

Due to Persian's high speed and relatively low defensive stats, it's very beneficial if one can paralyze it, e.g. by Thunder Wave. If it loses its speed, it loses a lot of sweeping potential by not being able to finish off unparalyzed foes that are in KO range, without taking damage.

Starmie is effective in that it is never 2HKOed by Persian's Slash and has a valuable move in Recover, which restores 50% HP. This means it can switch into a Persian's Slash at full HP and continually recover against Slash, only fearing the potential stray critical hit Thunderbolt or paralysis resulting from Thunderbolt.

References

1. Do you like Eggs? - Stadium OU Team
2. PO Wiki RBY Analysis
3. Smogon RBY Analysis
4. Marble Palace Damage Calculator

Contributors

Written by Lutra. Special Thanks to those who commented below, on PO and on NBS.

 

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