DzNutsKong
Kinda Nuts
Now I know there's been a lot of anticipation for third kits lately. A big tournament is happening this weekend and recent data mines have held implications of them happening soon. People have been wondering where the threads about them are so I figured I'd throw my hat into the ring with a bit of discussion on some previous third kits.
When talking about Pokemon with good kits, Landorus-Therian is the first that would come to many people's minds. It has Stealth Rock, Earthquake, and a lot of utility moves in its kit, which when combined with its fantastic stats, ability, and typing, leads it to be a very good glue that fits naturally onto a huge amount of teams. It was already great from the get-go, so how could its third kit have made it any better?
Well, when it was first released in BW OU, its first kit notably included Earthquake, U-Turn, Stealth Rock, Hidden Power, Stone Edge, Explosion, Swords Dance, and Superpower. For most Pokemon this would be pretty nice, but not a movepool that would define a Pokemon unless it had all of the other great attributes that Landorus-T does. Most of it would be very limited by coverage. Stone Edge is nice, but Superpower has a tendency to be somewhat redundant with Earthquake. The fact that both this and a weaker Hidden Power were a vital part of its sets kind of spoke to this. A fantastic Pokemon, but not one without problems that the rest of your team would need to help it work around.
However, skipping its second kit of XY lets you see a night-and-day difference between its first kit in BW and its third kit in SM. It now had access to Defog in addition to the new and improved Knock Off. These were both absolutely huge boons to it. Defog allowed it to work even better as a glue by potentially filling out the team's hazard removal role if they already had a hazard setter. This simply was not possible before and only widened the amount of teams it could be fit on. Knock Off was a big deal as a lot of Pokemon need their items to function and it could scare a vast majority of Pokemon a lot with this tool, with many exceptions being Z-Move users which the ability to scout against was also fantastic for it. Having a very easy-to-click move let it compress a lot more utility into fewer moveslots, which is exactly what your goal is with a Pokemon like Landorus-T.
To that point, Z-Moves were now a thing and Landorus-T could abuse them in a way that most other Pokemon simply could not manage. Previously-run Swords Dance sets now had a way to effectively bypass their coverage issue with a one-time nuke button. Stone Edge was already most noteworthy for hitting a bunch of Pokemon for neutral damage and this complimented that nicely. Landorus-T's ability to spontaneously click Swords Dance when people might be anticipating a defensive or Choice Scarf set was a lot more dangerous when it could nuke its way past one of its answers, especially if said answers only worked as proper answers to those defensive or Choice Scarf sets. This also breathed new life into Agility and Fly, which it had already had on its first kit. You could just click Agility against more offensive teams and let your Z-Move of choice break past its one answer and its Supersonic Skystrike was a LOT stronger than its Continental Crush in a vacuum.
Its other sets were still as strong as ever with its new kit giving new opportunities to those as well. Choice Scarf sets could now run Defog as a fourth move if you had a secondary form of hazard removal as it could click the move freely if a more passive Pokemon that countered it was expected to switch in. Defensive sets saw more use in Toxic and the lightly-buffed Rock Tomb compared to before, with Rock Tomb eventually being found to serve well in messing with faster offensive threats. These defensive sets could weirdly make use of Z-Fly as well since its base Attack stat is high enough to make use of it regardless. Z-Moves often freed up a moveslot on its more offensive sets as well, allowing it to run Substitute, Defog, and Stealth Rock to either give it more setup opportunities or to further function as a glue.
At any rate, Landorus-T's third kit was likely the best it's ever seen on a Pokemon known for having good kits. SM was arguably its single most dominant generation and it's not hard to see why.
No matter how much it got buffed by its third kit, it was never outright broken by its third kit. This is where Magearna is at its most noteworthy. Magearna was similarly an incredible Pokemon when it was introduced in SM. Its statline was ridiculous and it too could run one of a number of sets, between defensive Assault Vest ones to maximize its bulk while maintaining an offensive presence, Shift Gear sets with a Z-Move or Calm Mind to turn it into a dangerous lategame cleaner, similar cleaning sets with Trick Room over Shift Gear, or even the odd pure defensive set. Its kit was very expansive here - Fleur Cannon, Flash Cannon, Ice Beam, Focus Blast, Thunderbolt, Hidden Power, Volt Switch, Shift Gear, Trick Room, Calm Mind, Heart Swap, Pain Split, Heal Bell, and many, many more moves all saw prominent usage on one of its many possible movesets.
Its second kit was actually where its rise to the absurdly overpowered state it's in now began, but it's for a lot of similar reasons as its third kit. For the first time in this thread I'll get to talk about a negative change - no more Hidden Power, Heart Swap, or Z-Moves. Bummer. However, the amount of stuff its kit had gained just about equaled that, with its third kit including all of Trick, Spikes, Draining Kiss, Stored Power, and Tera Blast, in addition to these moves allowing Iron Defense to see more use. Sounds like a reasonable tradeoff given every recent generation's huge power creep, right?
Well, for one, Trick gave it access to Choice Specs sets now. It previously was a fine set, but too difficult to justify next to other options since its offensive typing was so rough that it made it difficult to justify locking into any one move. Now Trick allowed it to easily punish certain defensive Pokemon that could otherwise switch in like Amoonguss, Toxapex (who is another interesting subject for this thread, by the way) or Blissey, and the immediate power of Choice Specs let it break past practically anything else with only very simple prediction and without it needing to run too many different moves to cover everything. Even offensive Pokemon that resisted its moves were ripped to shreds thanks to its high Sp. Atk stat and access to such a strong move in Fleur Cannon.
Otherwise Draining Kiss and Stored Power easily made up for its lack of Z-Moves on its boosting sets, although they now absolutely needed to run Calm Mind and either Shift Gear or Iron Defense. Stored Power would destroy everything once you got only a few boosts and Draining Kiss kept it healthy, beat the Dark-types that were immune to Stored Power, and let it pose some minor threat before getting too many boosts. It is worth noting that these sets would sometimes run Grassy Seed with Shift Gear to boost its Defense and reduce the damage of Earthquake. You absolutely needed to answer this set quickly with some offensive Pokemon unless you were specifically using Haze with Toxapex or prior to the Sleep ban, Spore with Amoonguss. Otherwise there was nothing that could answer it defensively. Not even the defensive titan of Blissey could respond in time.
See the problem? While it now runs less sets than before, the two sets both had extremely limited counterplay and extremely different counterplay. If you incorrectly guessed which of the two sets this Pokemon was running then you would often lose the game on the spot. Either a key defensive Pokemon of yours would be taken out of commission or you'd have a Magearna with several boosts in several stats staring down your team without a single point of HP lost. While the Choice Specs set plays more to the early-game or mid-game than the boosting set would, you could absolutely use this fact to bait opponents that much harder by using one of those sets at the "wrong" time.
What's more, this is SV we're talking about. Terastallization is now a thing and it's only natural that such a strong Pokemon would be able to make use of it to its absolute fullest. Specifically, Fire-type or Ground-type Tera Blast is twice as strong as Hidden Power ever was for it and could break past some of its already incredibly limited checks of its choosing. It could also run a defensive Tera typing on its boosting sets to make boosting even easier for it than its high bulk and great typing already allow.
As such, despite power creep being absolutely monstrous in these past two generations in particular, Magearna has stood the test of time and come out even stronger every passing game despite its only changes being to its kit. It was OU in SM, but got banned to Ubers very quickly in SwSh and even more quickly than that in SV. It's difficult to imagine how much more powerful Magearna could become in future generations, but knowing how things have trended and seeing some of the ridiculously overtuned moves Game Freak has given us recently, it's still entirely possible for things to continue trending upwards.
I didn't want to talk too much about older generations since they're easy targets, but the third third kit (lol) I'd like to talk about and the final I'll mention for the sake of this post is that of Scizor. This is probably the single biggest buff a third kit has given in the whole franchise. It was released in Pokemon Gold and Silver, which was a big point in Game Freak's growing pains with the series's mechanics and mentality for making things the way they work. In RBY, a Pokemon not having moves that match its type (aka STAB moves) was a very normal thing and you'd see a handful of Pokemon turn out decent in spite of this. Exeggutor, Venusaur, and Gengar were all examples of Pokemon that did very well in Nintendo's official formats without STAB moves. As such it wasn't yet a huge focus for them to make sure that every Pokemon had these.
As a result, Scizor's initial kit in GS left a lot to be desired to say the least. Notable moves included Steel Wing, Hidden Power, Thief, Double-Edge, Swords Dance, Agility, and thankfully for it, Baton Pass. Its job of a bulky Baton Pass user was its absolute saving grace. Baton Pass is a pretty cheesy playstyle and Scizor was far from its best enabler but it was the only Steel-type with access to the move and the fact that it was Bug-type as well left it without otherwise major weaknesses to Ground or Fighting.
The moment you would try to step away from Baton Pass sets it would immediately become apparent just how bad things were. Having access to multiple boosting moves is nice but Steel and Bug are the two worst offensive types in the game, it has zero coverage unless it wants to drop Hidden Power Bug, and the fact that none of its non-Normal attacking moves are over 70 base power is a huge problem. It wouldn't have been as big of a deal in RBY where having access to pre-nerf Slash and Hyper Beam could have been perfectly serviceable for a Pokemon like this but you're instead having to rely on Double-Edge as your strongest move in most situations. When people are considering running Light Screen and Counter on a Pokemon like this, you know you've messed up.
However, Scizor's third kit in DPP is an absolute night and day difference. For one, it got real STAB moves! Iron Head, X-Scissor, and to a lesser degree Bug Bite were standard for most Pokemon that would have this typing and for most people who know anything about competitive Pokemon, Scizor is basically synonymous with Bullet Punch. U-Turn is a solid choice on some movesets for grabbing momentum for the team with a big chunk of damage. While Hidden Power no longer had any use on it due to changes in other mechanics, Superpower gave it some legitimately good coverage. It had already had access to Pursuit and Quick Attack in Gen 2 but was now able to make full use of them thanks to its new ability in Technician.
For the first time in Scizor's life, it was a legitimately threatening Pokemon! Many people were running it and it quickly became one of the most iconic Pokemon from a competitive standpoint largely thanks to its new kit. Its old friend Swords Dance was still the basis of many of its movesets but it no longer relied on Baton Pass to get anything done as it was now a scary enough Pokemon to make use of the doubled Attack stat itself. Bullet Punch and Quick Attack both had amazing synergy with this as Technician and its insane base 130 Attack made the moves' low base power less of an issue and the fact that it was a priority move made Scizor's low Speed less of an issue. Having both priority moves at the same time was a legitimate choice to let you clean up weakened teams that you couldn't otherwise.
That's not all it could do though! Choice Band was a solid choice for Scizor as well. U-Turn being here meant it could deal heavy chip damage to would-be switch-ins and likely force them to swap out soon as you could switch into something that counters the opponent's active Pokemon. This move pairs with a Choice Band very well because of how often Choice Band sets force switches and how U-Turn lets you keep up momentum with that. Pursuit allowed it to trap certain Pokemon depending on your team's structure and the aforementioned priority moves worked similarly as they did on the Swords Dance set, plus you could run Bug Bite, Iron Head, and Superpower as more straightforward attacking moves.
Things didn't really turn out perfect for DPP Scizor in the end as meta shifts proved unfavorable for it. As time went on, Scizor's bad offensive typing and low Speed stat both proved to be big problems for it when put together. Many Pokemon like Heatran, Rotom, Gyarados, and Zapdos rose in prominence, and Scizor still didn't have the tools to handle those. They were all faster than it, didn't care about either of its priority moves for the most part, and had ways of messing with it bigtime while not being broken past super easily. It still is absolutely worth remembering just how prominent Scizor was during its time in the spotlight though and it continued to be a strong threat for the next several generations to come.
That's all I have to say for now. There are plenty more Pokemon that could be discussed here, but I don't want to go on for longer than I already have. What's your favorite third kit? Do you think I could have talked about a more impactful or interesting one than I did in this post?
When talking about Pokemon with good kits, Landorus-Therian is the first that would come to many people's minds. It has Stealth Rock, Earthquake, and a lot of utility moves in its kit, which when combined with its fantastic stats, ability, and typing, leads it to be a very good glue that fits naturally onto a huge amount of teams. It was already great from the get-go, so how could its third kit have made it any better?
Well, when it was first released in BW OU, its first kit notably included Earthquake, U-Turn, Stealth Rock, Hidden Power, Stone Edge, Explosion, Swords Dance, and Superpower. For most Pokemon this would be pretty nice, but not a movepool that would define a Pokemon unless it had all of the other great attributes that Landorus-T does. Most of it would be very limited by coverage. Stone Edge is nice, but Superpower has a tendency to be somewhat redundant with Earthquake. The fact that both this and a weaker Hidden Power were a vital part of its sets kind of spoke to this. A fantastic Pokemon, but not one without problems that the rest of your team would need to help it work around.
However, skipping its second kit of XY lets you see a night-and-day difference between its first kit in BW and its third kit in SM. It now had access to Defog in addition to the new and improved Knock Off. These were both absolutely huge boons to it. Defog allowed it to work even better as a glue by potentially filling out the team's hazard removal role if they already had a hazard setter. This simply was not possible before and only widened the amount of teams it could be fit on. Knock Off was a big deal as a lot of Pokemon need their items to function and it could scare a vast majority of Pokemon a lot with this tool, with many exceptions being Z-Move users which the ability to scout against was also fantastic for it. Having a very easy-to-click move let it compress a lot more utility into fewer moveslots, which is exactly what your goal is with a Pokemon like Landorus-T.
To that point, Z-Moves were now a thing and Landorus-T could abuse them in a way that most other Pokemon simply could not manage. Previously-run Swords Dance sets now had a way to effectively bypass their coverage issue with a one-time nuke button. Stone Edge was already most noteworthy for hitting a bunch of Pokemon for neutral damage and this complimented that nicely. Landorus-T's ability to spontaneously click Swords Dance when people might be anticipating a defensive or Choice Scarf set was a lot more dangerous when it could nuke its way past one of its answers, especially if said answers only worked as proper answers to those defensive or Choice Scarf sets. This also breathed new life into Agility and Fly, which it had already had on its first kit. You could just click Agility against more offensive teams and let your Z-Move of choice break past its one answer and its Supersonic Skystrike was a LOT stronger than its Continental Crush in a vacuum.
Its other sets were still as strong as ever with its new kit giving new opportunities to those as well. Choice Scarf sets could now run Defog as a fourth move if you had a secondary form of hazard removal as it could click the move freely if a more passive Pokemon that countered it was expected to switch in. Defensive sets saw more use in Toxic and the lightly-buffed Rock Tomb compared to before, with Rock Tomb eventually being found to serve well in messing with faster offensive threats. These defensive sets could weirdly make use of Z-Fly as well since its base Attack stat is high enough to make use of it regardless. Z-Moves often freed up a moveslot on its more offensive sets as well, allowing it to run Substitute, Defog, and Stealth Rock to either give it more setup opportunities or to further function as a glue.
At any rate, Landorus-T's third kit was likely the best it's ever seen on a Pokemon known for having good kits. SM was arguably its single most dominant generation and it's not hard to see why.
No matter how much it got buffed by its third kit, it was never outright broken by its third kit. This is where Magearna is at its most noteworthy. Magearna was similarly an incredible Pokemon when it was introduced in SM. Its statline was ridiculous and it too could run one of a number of sets, between defensive Assault Vest ones to maximize its bulk while maintaining an offensive presence, Shift Gear sets with a Z-Move or Calm Mind to turn it into a dangerous lategame cleaner, similar cleaning sets with Trick Room over Shift Gear, or even the odd pure defensive set. Its kit was very expansive here - Fleur Cannon, Flash Cannon, Ice Beam, Focus Blast, Thunderbolt, Hidden Power, Volt Switch, Shift Gear, Trick Room, Calm Mind, Heart Swap, Pain Split, Heal Bell, and many, many more moves all saw prominent usage on one of its many possible movesets.
Its second kit was actually where its rise to the absurdly overpowered state it's in now began, but it's for a lot of similar reasons as its third kit. For the first time in this thread I'll get to talk about a negative change - no more Hidden Power, Heart Swap, or Z-Moves. Bummer. However, the amount of stuff its kit had gained just about equaled that, with its third kit including all of Trick, Spikes, Draining Kiss, Stored Power, and Tera Blast, in addition to these moves allowing Iron Defense to see more use. Sounds like a reasonable tradeoff given every recent generation's huge power creep, right?
Well, for one, Trick gave it access to Choice Specs sets now. It previously was a fine set, but too difficult to justify next to other options since its offensive typing was so rough that it made it difficult to justify locking into any one move. Now Trick allowed it to easily punish certain defensive Pokemon that could otherwise switch in like Amoonguss, Toxapex (who is another interesting subject for this thread, by the way) or Blissey, and the immediate power of Choice Specs let it break past practically anything else with only very simple prediction and without it needing to run too many different moves to cover everything. Even offensive Pokemon that resisted its moves were ripped to shreds thanks to its high Sp. Atk stat and access to such a strong move in Fleur Cannon.
Otherwise Draining Kiss and Stored Power easily made up for its lack of Z-Moves on its boosting sets, although they now absolutely needed to run Calm Mind and either Shift Gear or Iron Defense. Stored Power would destroy everything once you got only a few boosts and Draining Kiss kept it healthy, beat the Dark-types that were immune to Stored Power, and let it pose some minor threat before getting too many boosts. It is worth noting that these sets would sometimes run Grassy Seed with Shift Gear to boost its Defense and reduce the damage of Earthquake. You absolutely needed to answer this set quickly with some offensive Pokemon unless you were specifically using Haze with Toxapex or prior to the Sleep ban, Spore with Amoonguss. Otherwise there was nothing that could answer it defensively. Not even the defensive titan of Blissey could respond in time.
See the problem? While it now runs less sets than before, the two sets both had extremely limited counterplay and extremely different counterplay. If you incorrectly guessed which of the two sets this Pokemon was running then you would often lose the game on the spot. Either a key defensive Pokemon of yours would be taken out of commission or you'd have a Magearna with several boosts in several stats staring down your team without a single point of HP lost. While the Choice Specs set plays more to the early-game or mid-game than the boosting set would, you could absolutely use this fact to bait opponents that much harder by using one of those sets at the "wrong" time.
What's more, this is SV we're talking about. Terastallization is now a thing and it's only natural that such a strong Pokemon would be able to make use of it to its absolute fullest. Specifically, Fire-type or Ground-type Tera Blast is twice as strong as Hidden Power ever was for it and could break past some of its already incredibly limited checks of its choosing. It could also run a defensive Tera typing on its boosting sets to make boosting even easier for it than its high bulk and great typing already allow.
As such, despite power creep being absolutely monstrous in these past two generations in particular, Magearna has stood the test of time and come out even stronger every passing game despite its only changes being to its kit. It was OU in SM, but got banned to Ubers very quickly in SwSh and even more quickly than that in SV. It's difficult to imagine how much more powerful Magearna could become in future generations, but knowing how things have trended and seeing some of the ridiculously overtuned moves Game Freak has given us recently, it's still entirely possible for things to continue trending upwards.
I didn't want to talk too much about older generations since they're easy targets, but the third third kit (lol) I'd like to talk about and the final I'll mention for the sake of this post is that of Scizor. This is probably the single biggest buff a third kit has given in the whole franchise. It was released in Pokemon Gold and Silver, which was a big point in Game Freak's growing pains with the series's mechanics and mentality for making things the way they work. In RBY, a Pokemon not having moves that match its type (aka STAB moves) was a very normal thing and you'd see a handful of Pokemon turn out decent in spite of this. Exeggutor, Venusaur, and Gengar were all examples of Pokemon that did very well in Nintendo's official formats without STAB moves. As such it wasn't yet a huge focus for them to make sure that every Pokemon had these.
As a result, Scizor's initial kit in GS left a lot to be desired to say the least. Notable moves included Steel Wing, Hidden Power, Thief, Double-Edge, Swords Dance, Agility, and thankfully for it, Baton Pass. Its job of a bulky Baton Pass user was its absolute saving grace. Baton Pass is a pretty cheesy playstyle and Scizor was far from its best enabler but it was the only Steel-type with access to the move and the fact that it was Bug-type as well left it without otherwise major weaknesses to Ground or Fighting.
The moment you would try to step away from Baton Pass sets it would immediately become apparent just how bad things were. Having access to multiple boosting moves is nice but Steel and Bug are the two worst offensive types in the game, it has zero coverage unless it wants to drop Hidden Power Bug, and the fact that none of its non-Normal attacking moves are over 70 base power is a huge problem. It wouldn't have been as big of a deal in RBY where having access to pre-nerf Slash and Hyper Beam could have been perfectly serviceable for a Pokemon like this but you're instead having to rely on Double-Edge as your strongest move in most situations. When people are considering running Light Screen and Counter on a Pokemon like this, you know you've messed up.
However, Scizor's third kit in DPP is an absolute night and day difference. For one, it got real STAB moves! Iron Head, X-Scissor, and to a lesser degree Bug Bite were standard for most Pokemon that would have this typing and for most people who know anything about competitive Pokemon, Scizor is basically synonymous with Bullet Punch. U-Turn is a solid choice on some movesets for grabbing momentum for the team with a big chunk of damage. While Hidden Power no longer had any use on it due to changes in other mechanics, Superpower gave it some legitimately good coverage. It had already had access to Pursuit and Quick Attack in Gen 2 but was now able to make full use of them thanks to its new ability in Technician.
For the first time in Scizor's life, it was a legitimately threatening Pokemon! Many people were running it and it quickly became one of the most iconic Pokemon from a competitive standpoint largely thanks to its new kit. Its old friend Swords Dance was still the basis of many of its movesets but it no longer relied on Baton Pass to get anything done as it was now a scary enough Pokemon to make use of the doubled Attack stat itself. Bullet Punch and Quick Attack both had amazing synergy with this as Technician and its insane base 130 Attack made the moves' low base power less of an issue and the fact that it was a priority move made Scizor's low Speed less of an issue. Having both priority moves at the same time was a legitimate choice to let you clean up weakened teams that you couldn't otherwise.
That's not all it could do though! Choice Band was a solid choice for Scizor as well. U-Turn being here meant it could deal heavy chip damage to would-be switch-ins and likely force them to swap out soon as you could switch into something that counters the opponent's active Pokemon. This move pairs with a Choice Band very well because of how often Choice Band sets force switches and how U-Turn lets you keep up momentum with that. Pursuit allowed it to trap certain Pokemon depending on your team's structure and the aforementioned priority moves worked similarly as they did on the Swords Dance set, plus you could run Bug Bite, Iron Head, and Superpower as more straightforward attacking moves.
Things didn't really turn out perfect for DPP Scizor in the end as meta shifts proved unfavorable for it. As time went on, Scizor's bad offensive typing and low Speed stat both proved to be big problems for it when put together. Many Pokemon like Heatran, Rotom, Gyarados, and Zapdos rose in prominence, and Scizor still didn't have the tools to handle those. They were all faster than it, didn't care about either of its priority moves for the most part, and had ways of messing with it bigtime while not being broken past super easily. It still is absolutely worth remembering just how prominent Scizor was during its time in the spotlight though and it continued to be a strong threat for the next several generations to come.
That's all I have to say for now. There are plenty more Pokemon that could be discussed here, but I don't want to go on for longer than I already have. What's your favorite third kit? Do you think I could have talked about a more impactful or interesting one than I did in this post?
