Very interesting. I always considered Umbreon underrated, and I'm not too surprised that it does well in PvP. As for Kabutops, that catches me off guard. I've always loved the fossil Pokemon, so I'm impressed reading that. They just gave Kabutops Waterfall. I wonder if that'll outdo Mud Shot? I'm curious.
2 surprisingly effective pkmn in pvp
I was a bad pvp player, but since I discovered the potential of 2 of my mons I have been surprisingly strong. Before that my main best pkmns were, and still are excellent cloysters with ice shard+avalanche (one 1490 cp and shiny for great league) and my beloved 2236 Jynx with confusion/avalanche (while a bit frail, she has excellent dps and she single handedly defeated a mewtwo in ultra league with ease) I plan to power up these for the future as I get more dust.
Now to surprising ones:
My Umbreon at 1493 cp with snarl+dark pulse is a beast in great league. Umbreon is very durable and tanky, in neutral match ups always wins with ease in this league. I wont power it up for I want it to remain king in great league, I will evolve another near max eeve for ultra league.
Other surprising pkmn is my Kabutops with 2310 cp with mud shot+ancient power. This one is god in ultra league and even effective in master league. What makes it this good is mud shot generates power very fast, and you can chain attack with ancient powers since they require little energy and do huge damage. You really must try this attack combo to see it in action, it is amazing. Forces the enemy to use their shields, and even then they still can not escape the fury of the rocks blasting on their face. Very, very effective. I will max this one too.
Have you experienced the same with these mons? Any other surprising mons you found? Any chance of nerf in the future or is this legit? My Umbreon and Kabutops made me win many battles against even legendaries and pseudo legendaries.
Answers
Umbreon has been a good great league contestor ever since the introduction of PvP indeed.
I'm not sure if your statement still holds after last rebalance. From what I have read is that 3-bar attacks got nerved in PvP, but I am unaware if this turned out to be the truth.
I lost the reddit source that was specifically aimed at PvP questions, does anyone have it for me?
Interesting. I find one bar moves utterly useless in pvp, especially for glass cannon mons. Alakazam, for instance, never impressed me in pvp because he never got a chance to fire his charge move before getting KO'ed. Gengar on the other hand is very effective with shadow ball. Multiple charge moves are almost always better in pvp, IMHO. Ofcourse in raids it is quite the opposite for saving time. Hmm. I guess these differences between different areas of game play are interesting and fun. You can have raid-centered mons and pvp spesific mons.
"one bar moves" is severely misleading. Moves don't have bars in PvP, they have energy costs that aren't in any direct relation to the displayed number of bars for a lot of moves. For example Dazzling Gleam, a 2-bar, takes more energy to charge than Earthquake, a 1-bar. Glass cannons in general have a bad time in PvP, but you are right that they will be especially bad if they're limited to slow charge moves.
Multiple bars are generally preferable in raids, they have significantly less risk of wasting energy, which leads to lower overall DPS.
Raids/gyms and PvP are indeed like night and day. Low attack tanks like Umbreon, Azumarill, Altaria, Cresselia, Giratina are amazing in PvP and completely useless in PvE.
Umbreon is hardly surprising, it ranks very high in PvP TDO for great and ultra leagues. Its power is well known in the online community and most pvpers in my area seem to have one for GL, although Umbreons with LR are rarer.
Haven't tried Kabutops but MS/AP definitely sounds like a fun moveset, spamming charge moves is always nice.
It is amazing indeed. Check your kabutopses and if they have the set try one out. Ancient power is excellent with good attack power+kabutops's decent attack+stab+type coverage, and mud shot while weak on its own allows it to be used repetitively.
It is especially fun to use against Blanche's Articuno. Kabutops actually resists ice thanks to its part water type, which surprised me. And ancient power utterly wrecks Articuno. It is really unfair. And for Moltres it is even funnier for IIRC Kabutops also double resists fire while still doing double super effective damage.