Competitive Pokemon History - Moltres Quiz

Answer: Fire Spin

Due to first generation mechanics, Fire Spin would stop the opponent from doing anything at all unless the user used a different move or the attack itself missed. Fire Spin was the core of a moveset which consisted of itself + Agility + Fire Blast + Hyper Beam. With an Agility boost, Moltres outsped the entirety of the metagame, meaning it could choke out one or two threats on the opposing team by just relentlessly Fire Spinning them to death. Fire Blast was used to quickly remove threats Moltres could naturally succeed against, such as Exeggutor, as to save Fire Spin's PP for its iffier matchups. Finally, Hyper Beam was rather filler due to Moltres' puny movepool, but it did have one important niche of doing a decent amount of damage to Chansey, who Moltres would otherwise have to basically use up all of its Fire Spin PP against. The move did roughly 55% damage to Chansey, which means Moltres would only need to land a handful of Fire Spins, not dozens, to ultimately take the pink blob out.

Unfortunately, Fire Spin was resisted by plenty of prominent Pokemon that happened to easily beat Moltres as a result. Its 70% accuracy was also unfortunate, and could cause Moltres to fail to achieve anything at all with an untimely miss against a particularly threatening foe, as Moltres usually relied on immobilizing these targets to overcome them. Because of these drawbacks, Moltres was viewed as a viable but ultimately niche threat for the tier.

Answer: Charcoal

With the other three items not existing yet, the extremely niche Charcoal was the correct choice. Moltres' best set was usually Fire Blast/Sunny Day/ Hidden Power Grass/ Filler. With the boost from Charcoal, if Moltres could set up Sunny Day safely, it could 2HKO Snorlax, the king of the tier, with Fire Blast. It was still stopped dead by Raikou, Zapdos, Blissey, Tyranitar, and a myriad of other threats in the tier, which is why Moltres was a generally underwhelming pick for the tier.

Towards the end of the generation, Moltres' usage statistics declined so much that it actually briefly dropped out of standard play by usage and fell into UnderUsed. Its stint there lasted a whopping 48 hours before it was very quickly banned to the tier's banned list.

Answer: Will-O-Wisp

Where Articuno got the amazing Heal Bell and Zapdos received the nifty Baton Pass, Moltres got slapped in the face with Will-O-Wisp. This move offered little to Moltres' offensive sets, which would rather blast through foes with its turns rather than wittle away at them. Sure, Will-O-Wisp wasn't completely useless, but this was more because Moltres' movepool sucked enough where it ran the move as a "why not" rather than getting any sort of neat utility out of it.

Answer: Substitute/Toxic staller

With Pressure, good speed, good bulk and good offenses for the tier, Moltres could become a virtually unkillable nightmare for offense and stall teams alike with what would become a flagship set for generations to come. The objective of the set is pretty simple; ideally bring Moltres in against an opponent who can't do much to it, or one which is forced to switch. Use a turn to put up a Substitute, Toxic or Flamethrower on whatever came in, and shift between Roost and Substitute accordingly. With Pressure, Moltres could PP stall with unmatched efficiency. Bulky waters couldn't deal with this behemoth, as none of them wanted to take a Toxic, and none of them could outspeed Moltres, allowing it to just keep putting up Substitutes and keeping up the lost HP with Roost while Toxic damage become progressively more burdensome. It got to the point where incredibly niche tactics, such as Rock Blast Rhyperior, were seeing use because this set was so deadly efficient and just about always guaranteed multiple KOs by itself otherwise.

Moltres was not a one tricky pony, however. The introduction of Choice Specs and Choice Scarf let it operate the way it had in previous generations; showing up and just blasting everything in sight with its incredibly strong moves. Due to the lower relative power level of this tier to tiers Moltres has lingered in in the past, Moltres could open holes in the opponent's team with even more efficiency than it could before!

Answer: Wider distribution of Stealth Rock with weak anti-entry hazard options

With Drizzle, Ho-Oh and the only good Sand Stream users in Hippowdon and Tyranitar being banned from UnderUsed, these could not have been the reasons for Moltres' decline. Stealth Rock, something which already hindered Moltres, was given to a much larger amount of Pokemon by virtue of Black and White's in-game move tutors along with a large amount of new Pokemon who could utilize it. Sadly, since Rapid Spin was the only move that could remove Stealth Rock at the time, there were not many Pokemon who could effectively remove the entry hazard, and this was a large nuisance to Moltres. Being 4x weak to the entry hazard was almost solely responsible for Moltres fainting very early in a game, and led to the lesser overall usefulness of its movesets.

In RarelyUsed, however, Moltres pulled the same antics as it did in fourth gen's UU metagame with lethal results. The lower overall power level meant Moltres could overcome its Stealth Rock weakness a lot easier than it could in higher tiers.

Interestingly, Moltres gained a new niche in this generation's OverUsed tier. In standard play, Moltres actually operated very effectively on rain teams of all things, benefiting from a 100% accurate Hurricane and offering the utility of OHKOing Ferrothorn with its Fire moves even in the rain.

Answer: RarelyUsed's ban list

Moltres was RU by usage statistics in the fifth generation, but it received the Flame Body ability in that gen's famous Dream World. This was found to make Moltres a smidge too strong for Gen 6's RU tier, and then Defog began to remove entry hazards, making Stealth Rock much less of an issue, solidifying that Moltres needed to go.

It was still not UU by usage statistics, but it did gain the aforementioned promotion in being in "RUBL."

Answer: Roost + 3 attacks

Choiced sets were a no-go because they had too many good switch-ins, checks, and were ultimately plagued too much by the constant need to switch in and out and take Stealth Rock damage. SubToxic had a tough time getting going due to its relative passivity, weakness to phasing, and the tier's overall power level in conjunction with Stealth Rock. So, Moltres took the generic route of a Roost + 3 attacks set.

The attacks in question were Fire Blast, Hurricane and Hidden Power Grass or Ancientpower. This set wasn't bad, but it really didn't have too much of a niche; it couldn't really wallbreak, it was too slow to sweep, and it lacked the defensive properties to take on much of a walling role. So, Moltres was usually left on the sidelines in this tier unless a team needed its specific offensive typing and movepool.

Answer: Yes

With Ferrothorn and Skarmory being legal in standard play, Moltres gained a newly found niche as a Pokemon who could directly switch into them, as well as a surprising number of other entry hazard setters, and effortlessly Defog in their faces to take away the momentum they had gained. Any attempt by Skarmory or Ferrothorn to resist this would run a mighty risk of taking a Fire Blast to the face and getting OHKOed, so they would almost always switch out to let Moltres Defog. There's more; Moltres would tear apart Bisharp with its Fire attacks, which was important, as Bisharp usually loved switching in to Defog to trigger its Defiant ability and gain a free +2 to its Attack. This attribute let Moltres separate itself from Zapdos, who could run into a sticky situation against Bisharp in these scenarios, and also could have trouble with Ferrothorn depending on its moveset.

Unsurprisingly, Moltres took these talents to UnderUsed to gain some viability in its home tier too.

Answer: Yes

Moltres didn't have Sacred Fire, but Flamethrower was sufficient otherwise. A simple set of Flamethrower/Roost/Toxic/ Substitute or Defog would allow Moltres to have utility in spreading status alongside either entry hazard removal or efficient PP stalling.

This gave Moltres even more utility in OverUsed and UnderUsed, leading to a surprising resurgence to what was thought to be somewhat of a lost cause of a Pokemon.

Answer: RarelyUsed

Moltres was quite magnificent when it was allowed in RU during the fifth and sixth generations, before it got banned from RU during the latter. It easily had the usage statistics to never come close to falling to NU or anywhere below that, and it would've been extremely oppressive in lower tier meta games, being an easy ban candidate even if it didn't get used much in RU. On the other hand, Moltres was a bit of a late bloomer in OU; it wasn't much to behold in that tier within its first four generations, but it started to pick up some momentum in OU in the fifth generation before it was finally recognized as a legitimate standard play threat in the sixth generation and beyond. Moltres is a peculiar case of a Pokemon with a bad typing and massive Stealth Rock weakness that was able to fill some important niches with its movepool and base stats in later generations.

While it has never been an OU must-have, these attributes have served to make it worth running and will likely keep it as at least a niche threat in OU for some time.