Competitive Pokémon History - Arceus-Water Quiz

Answer: Swords Dance

Lacking access to the other three options, Swords Dance is nevertheless a stellar boosting move. Water was a fine offensive typing, giving the set the ability to quickly turn a devastating sweep if left unchecked.

Answer: Instant, reliable recovery

Access to Recover made Arceus-Water nearly entirely superior to the competition as far as a bulky Water type goes. The only advantages Kyogre had were being better at dealing with Darkrai and offering rain support to its team; Arceus-Water did everything else better.

Answer: Kyogre's rain makes Arceus-Water more potent

After a Swords Dance boost and when benefitting from Kyogre's rain, Arceus-Water's Waterfalls become frighteningly brutal to face down at. To give an idea of its absurd power, it even 2HKOes Giratina-O despite its resistance to the move and incredible bulk. If anything of Kyogre's complements Arceus-Water particularly well, it would be Kyogre's amazing Specially offensive qualities, beating down physical walls that can stand up to Arceus-Water's physical assaults.

The same can be said vice versa, as Arceus-Water can generally easily deal with special walls that would slow Kyogre down.

Answer: Giratina-Altered

The key thing to note about countering Arceus-Water is that it was extremely common for it to be paired with Kyogre, thus usually receiving an offensive boost from Kyogre's rain support. Therefore, anything looking to counter it generally had to resist Water on top of having amazing physical bulk. Giratina-O came close, but it was usually 2HKOed by Swords Dance + Rain boosted Waterfall while generally failing to outslug Arceus-Water after giving it a free turn to switch in. Ferrothorn and Kyogre itself also joined Giratina-O in that regard, despite all of them resisting Water.

Giratina-A, however, was so extremely bulky and resisted Water that it could tank Swords Dance + Rain boosted Waterfalls admirably. From there, it could temper Arceus-Water's raging maelstrom with a Will-o-Wisp, halving its offenses, before Roaring or Dragon Tailing it off the field to clear out any Swords Dance boosts it had picked up. This made it a picturesque counter to the Creator in this forme.

Answer: No

The introduction and subsequent dominance of Primal Groudon rocked the meta for Water types, and the Creator was no exception. Swords Dance sets were now quite underwhelming, easily being stopped by P-Don itself. Additionally, Arceus-Water's defensive traits were far more attractive to the average team, ironically making it out to be quite a great P-Don check as well as a check to plenty of prominent threats in general.

As such, Arceus-Water became a lot more one dimensional, but didn't really suffer a loss to its viability.

Answer: Judgment + Will-o-Wisp

A moveset of Judgment/Will-o-Wisp/Recover/Defog was incapable of doing a single point of damage to Primal Groudon, who Arceus-Water was relied on to at least slow down, if not outright check. Therefore, Judgment + Will-o-Wisp was a no go. Replacing either Judgment with Ice Beam or Will-o-Wisp with Toxic, or perhaps doing both, was basically compulsory because of that.

Ice Beam + Toxic, according to Smogon usage statistics, was the most common pairing for Arceus-Water to go with Recover and Defog. Ice Beam + Toxic made out the best response to Primal Groudon, able to afflict it with deadly poison and continually damage it with Ice Beam to speed up the process of wearing it down. This did come with the consequence of leaving Arceus-Water at the mercy of Mega Lucario, but this could be efficiently patched up via a teammate suitably equipped to deal with it.

Ice Beam in generally was recommended somewhere on Arceus-Water to allow it to deal with Mega Salamence, Rayquaza and, to a lesser extent, Yveltal. If the player already had ample countermeasures to them, however, Judgment's good general neutral damage was a solid pick. The player could opt to forgo both Will-o-Wisp and Toxic in order to fit Judgment and Ice Beam on the same set if they so desired, enabling Arceus-Water to check the aforementioned threats, be capable of damaging Primal Groudon, dealing with Mega Lucario, and doing good general damage if desired.

Answer: Trapping

Mega Gengar and Gothitelle had a tough time directly switching into an active Arceus-Water. However, if given a free switch, they can proceed to shut Arceus-Water down and remove it from the game. This could be quite a setback if a healthy Pokémon Arceus-Water needs to check remains, or if it hadn't Defogged away entry hazards at that point.

Answer: Being able to generally check most Pokémon

Arceus-Water didn't match up well against every single thing, but if it wasn't at a completely obvious disadvantage, it would perform pretty well most of the time. It wasn't super good at dealing with setup sweepers or trappers that weren't weak to its attacks, but it wasn't passive to the point where it was total setup fodder or could be easily switched into. Apart from that, it could generally deal with most threats, adding lots of integrity to a defensive team's backbone.

Answer: Zygarde-C

A swift Ice Beam would allow Arceus-Water to quickly beat down any Zygarde set that dared to stand before it. While super effective Judgments would seem to beat Ho-Oh down, Ho-Oh's mighty Special Defense and the general lack of significant Special Attack investment let it take Judgment quite well and ultimately enter a stalemate with the Creator.

Answer: It has offered the best defensive role compression

Arceus-Water has been the only forme of Arceus capable of blanket checking most of the metagame. Other formes of Arceus have been more vulnerable to a surprise coverage move, status, both, or something else that have stopped them from achieving this status. Being able to generally deal with much of the meta has heavily eased the need for the rest of the team to patch up holes that aren't there thanks to Arceus-Water. With power levels blasting through the roof after the sixth generation, Arceus formes became more useful based on defensive presence, and the Water forme has definitely stood tall amongst the pack in that regard.