Groudon's best uses
I've had mine at double ground for a while now, but im curious what you guys think it's best moveset and use is.
Double ground it's the best of those types, but there's always something better if youre up against fire, rock, or steel.
it's the best at countering electric and poison, but will those ever be a big concern? maybe if raikou is ever brought back, or if gen 4 has some good Electivire, or Magnezone raids?
next gen also has Dialga, which will only be vulnerable to ground or fighting. there will be better DPS options than double ground Groudon, but probably not any better tankier options.
Next gen also brings Heatran which ground will be extra effective against which could make up for the poor moveset Groudon has?
And this is all without presuming any Gen 4 ground type usurpers like Rhyperior. Maybe if that happened they'd give Groudon a moveset that elevated it but those are both unknowns.
Not sure if that's all worth keeping it ground?
But even if I changed it to SB i'm not sure how helpful that would even be. It'd be great against rock types which really just includes Regirock and any sub T5 gen 4 bosses, and it'd cover ground well if I tm'd to DT/SB could cover water types too but at an extreme risk of the boss having water moves and wrecking you.
I know a lot of people have powered up Groudons but im really just seeing a bunch of VERY niche uses here and no clue what to use my 1 for.
Answers
One of my ultimate goals in this game is Dialga. As such, I've slowly been building a base of 'mons that match the two types that it's weak to: Ground and Fighting. I now have a decent base of Machamps and a single powered up 15a/13d/11s SB Groudon.
On a whim, I went to Pokebattler and did some playing. I raised my Groudon to LV37.5 (on a par with my Machamp group), changed it to Earthquake, and ran the numbers against Registeel and Regirock, as both have the same basic weakness profile as Dialga (Fighting and Ground). The results were... painful. While Groudon had better survivability, it lagged hard behind my Machamp group in terms of finishing time. And to make matters worse, it hit 12th place against Registeel behind my Flareon group, my Blaziken, and even my Hariyamas that are around LV34.
Unless they pull a Lugia and re-release Groudon with a buff to Earthquake or give us Precipice Blades, I don't find much use for a pure-ground Groudon at this point. Best of its kind, but other types do the same job so much better...
Double ground Groudon will be a lot better when they add precipice blades, but that wont likely be til gen VI, bt even then, Double Ground groudon has key match ups againt 3 of the most difficult pokemon GO will ever have, Dialga Zekrom and Reshiram,
its double ground moveset covers all three when few others will be able to stand against them, there may be better DPS pokemon for them, but high DPS is meaningless if you dont last long enough to let the damage build (this is especialy important on legendary raids as more and more people do smaller groups, where whipping out because of high DPS kills the ability to win)
Have you actually tried any shortman raids yourself? Because you are blatantly wrong. DPS is what matters. The reason you fail shortmans is only ever because you didn't deal damage fast enough and I'm speaking from experience here.
Now tankiness does factor into this, because death animations and rejoins take time, but if you lower your DPS in favor of tankiness too much, there's no gain over just using the top DPS glass cannons. I've run numbers on this in excel for a fair bit and tankier teams generally speaking are only better when they manage to just skip the last rejoin.
There's a reason the meta revolves around DPS and that reason is the raid clock. The goal is to optimize the total damage you deal during the raid and the most important factor for that is high DPS. Tankiness helps, but that's all it does, it helps.
Heatran is double weak to ground. That more than makes up for the moveset, Groudon will out-DPS any non-ground pokemon.
And like you said, Groudon will be the TDO king for Dialga. Likely it will also be within the top 5 DPS, which makes it a great raid counter.
As for competition, Garchomp is the only serious threat regarding DPS and has good chance of usurping Groudon as the best electric counter due to an additional layer of resistance. Mamoswine and Rhyperior are 23 and 29 base attack stat lower respectively, which is a big difference. They'd have to get amazing movesets, which means new ground type moves or a big shakeup for the existing moves, because every ground move currently in the game sucks.
The thing about Groudon is that its stats will continue to stay in the absolute elite category over the new generations. It's a lasting investment that may not pay off much right now (although it is paying off right now because Blizzard Kyogre exists), but will likely continue to pay off in the future.
