Competitive Pokemon History - Dialga Quiz

Answer: Bulk Up

A classic, simple set of Outrage/Bulk Up/Rest/Sleep Talk was bar none the best bulky booster in the metagame, hands down. At the time, the Dragon typing had nothing which was immune to it, meaning Dialga did not risk having anything perpetually wall it by only running a single Dragon move. Outrage normally poses the large risk of causing the user to get Confused and becoming easy prey if the 40% self-hit rate came into play.

However, if Dialga's Sleep Talk calls upon Outrage while Dialga is sleeping, Dialga will never become confused and thus, has access to a Base 120 move with no immunities and essentially no drawbacks.

Its great bulk made amplifying that terrifying power with Bulk Up quite easy!

Answer: It cannot move on the next turn

Roar of Time is a slightly more powerful version of Hyper Beam. When using it, Dialga and its trainer cannot do a single thing on the next turn. The trainer cannot even opt to switch Dialga out, much less have it use a different move on the following turn. Because Roar of Time's damage output can therefore be tracked over a two turn timespan, the move itself is even being out-gunned by the weak Dragon Pulse, which also wouldn't prevent Dialga from switching out, or using a different move if need be. Thus, Roar of Time was completely and utterly useless in competitive play.

Answer: Boost Steel and Dragon type moves

The Adamant Orb is essentially Dialga's version of Palkia's Lustrous Orb. Notably, the Adamant Orb will not work unless Dialga is using it, meaning if the opponent were to use Trick and steal the Adamant Orb, they would be essentially receiving a totally useless item.

Answer: Scizor

The scenario in question assumes Dialga is being used on a Trick Room team, often setting the field condition itself. Even if Dialga has a nature which reduces its Speed, usually Quiet, and runs absolutely zero Speed IVs or EVs, it is still literally one point faster than an uninvested Scizor.

As Scizor users practically never invest Speed into Scizor out of this endeavor being wasteful, this meant that Scizor would now outspeed Dialga with Trick Room up, and could destroy it with a super effective Superpower.

At level 99, the aforementioned conditions would now enable Dialga to outspeed the Red Menace when Trick Room was active, where Dialga could incinerate it with a Fire Blast.

Answer: Pressure

Pressure could be of mild use on Dialga's renowned Bulk Up set, but was every bit as ho-hum as it was on Palkia on any of Dialga's other sets.

Answer: Not being weak, defensively, to Dragon

Dialga was the only Pokémon in all of the fourth and fifth generations who was both a Dragon type and a Dragon type that was not weak to its own STAB. This naturally meant Dialga had strong matchups against other Dragons across the game, giving it fantastic competitive utility both offensively and defensively.

Answer: Telepathy

Telepathy makes the user immune to its partner's attacks in doubles. Moves like Earthquake, Surf or Discharge would also hurt the user's partner in addition to the two opponents, and Telepathy corrected this completely. Unfortunately, Telepathy did absolutely nothing in singles, and was thus not useful for Dialga at all here.

Answer: Yes

Primal Groudon can do a lot of things better than just about anything else, but it can't do them all at once. Primal Groudon's sweeping sets had no room to fit Stealth Rock on them, making a Stealth Rock-setting Dialga a great pick for teams built around such a Primal Groudon. Dialga had numerous great qualities that let it shine in this role. Its Steel typing meant it could blast away the 4x weak Mega Diancie, and Draco Meteor would nuke Mega Sableye, allowing Dialga to just force its way past the two Magic Bouncers in order to set Stealth Rock.

If a user did opt to use a hazard setting Primal Groudon, Dialga would unfortunately not have a place on such a team. Its sweeping sets of old were obsolete due to the introduction of the Fairy typing, and it was rather unspectacular as a straight up wallbreaker. Still, it did have a reasonable niche on reasonably common teams, thus enabling it to be solidly viable.

Answer: Bulky Arceus formes in general

Any bulky Arceus forme, with the exception of Arceus-Dragon, could cause havoc for Dialga quite easily. Arceus-Ground is notable, as it can just spam Judgment against the Ground-weak Dialga and win pathetically easy. All bulky formes of Arceus easily outspeed Dialga, and all of them bar the Dragon variant can survive Draco Meteor, use Recover to heal up, and then easily sponge hits from there on out due to Draco Meteor halving Dialga's Special Attack with each use. Arceus-Fairy is even more annoying unless Dialga has Flash Cannon, since Draco Meteor will do literally nothing to it. Arceus-Steel is also a terrible matchup, resisting anything relevant Dialga can run.

In general, support formes of Arceus were immensely common, and many of them carried Defog to get rid of Dialga's entry hazards with, so this was quite troubling. Calm Mind formes also threatened to setup against Dialga, and could potentially shoot for a game-ending sweep in doing so.

Answer: Necrozma-DuskMane

Necrozma-DM seemed to be an all-around superior option for entry hazard setting. Up to this point, Dialga's only viable function in Ubers was a Stealth Rock setting lead on teams that preferred their Primal Groudon to do something other than set Stealth Rock. Necrozma-DM therefore outclassed Dialga in that role.

However, Necrozma-DM also turned out to be quite potent as a sweeper itself. It was within the realm of possibility to combine the terrifying power of Primal Groudon and Necrozma-DM and use both as sweepers, or one as a wallbreaker and the other as a sweeper. On these progressively more niche, albeit decent, teams, Dialga still had a place as an entry hazard setter, so it was still viable in Ubers despite this setback.