OU: Pokémon Latias

[Scattered mind]

Latias: Dragon/Psychic

Stats:
HP: 80
Atk: 80-100
Def: 90-120
Sp. Atk: 110-140
Sp. Def: 130-150
Spe: 110

Ability:
Levitate

Viable moves:

Draco Meteor
Dragon Pulse
Psyshock
Psychic
Thunderbolt
Hidden Power
Calm Mind
Roost
Healing Wish
Defog
Stored Power
Substitute
Reflect Type

----------------------

Common sets:

Latias @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 72 HP / 184 SpA / 252 Spe or 252 SpA / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Defog
- Draco Meteor
- Psyshock/Thunderbolt
- Healing Wish/ Roost

Latias @ Latiasite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 84 Def / 176 Spe
Bold Nature
- Calm Mind
- Roost
- Reflect Type/ Substitute/ Dragon Pulse
- Stored Power/ Psyshock

----------------------

Why using Latias?

You have two main ways to use Latias- The regular Latias and the Mega Latias. Since each path is extremely different, it should be completely separated. So first of all, lets start with the regular Latias:
Latias is one of the best Defog users in the metagame. Thanks to its bulk and great speed, as well as its good special attack, Latias can find many opportunities to use Defog and thus help her teammates to switch in safely without getting hurt by hazards. Healing Wish gives her another great way to support the team by fainting and give another teammate its health back as well as clearing any status condition it had before coming in. Healing Wish Latias is one of the greatest help for set-up sweepers, giving them another chance to sweep the opponent's team. Although Latias is being used mainly for its supportive abilities, she is still a great offensive Pokemon. 110 SpA with Life Orb and Draco Meteor allows her to put offensive pressure if needed. Psyshock can break through specially defensive mons and Thunderbolt can deal with Azumarill which otherwise can threat Latias greatly with Play Rough or Belly Drum set up.
Latios, her twin brother, give her a lot of competition, with its base 130 SpA and 110 Spe it is considered to be one of the best offensive defoggers if not the best one. Dark types Pokemon are the number 1 threat for Latias. Mainly Bisharp and Weavile. Bisharp can come in on Latias's Defog and receive +2 Atk with its ability while Weavile can simply outspeed Latias and OHKO her with Knock Off.


Why using Mega Latias?

As stated above, Mega Latias serves a completely different role than Latias's vanilla form. With much greater bulk and the ability to take only weak Knock Offs thanks to its megastone, it is much harder to take her down with just one hit. Along with Roost and Reflect type, Mega Latias can stay in and set up in front of many threats such as Ferrothorn and Mega Metagross. Finally, with her ability to use a deadly combo of Calm mind+Stored power, Latias can sweep the opponent's team while tanking hits one after another. The problem comes when you realize how almost every team these days has all 3 of the types Mega Latias hates to go against: Steel, Dark and Fairy. Not to mention the fact that you must take down Dark-types with another teammate before sending Mega Latias to sweep since they are immune to Psychic-type moves. This can be solved by switching Reflect Type for Dragon Pulse but then you lose the ability to set up in front of Mega Metagross.

Some questions for discussion:

How do you think Latias is doing in the current metagame?
What other things makes Latias a good Pokemon in the current metagame? What makes it bad?
What other sets you think are viable?
What Pokemon makes a great core with Latias and in general what are the best teammates for him?
Have you used Mega Latias before? Please share with us the set you've used and the team if possible.

 

[crystal_pidgeot]

How do you think Latias is doing in the current metagame?

I use a Latias on my OU team, though my set is for hitting types my team has problems with. My set with Latias is Defog, Energy Ball, Dragon Pulse and Hidden Power Fire, running Life Orb. She is a decent attack that can fill roles needed in the team ( my team doesn't have a grass attacker and this helps because I use a Vaporeon). Latias to me, with its base 110 Speed stat and wide movepool (Why no Flamethrower GF?) it can outspeed threats and hit them for a good solid 60%, which lets my Mega Pidgeot kill if needed). I also think Running Thunder Wave helps as well for those fast attackers like Char X with Dragon Dance. Also Latias's ability to do what ever it wants (in terms of sets), she always has this surprise factor. Latias is a Pokemon I like seeing because they are easy to bring down if standard but I'm always cautious as to what they may have.

What other things makes Latias a good Pokemon in the current metagame? What makes it bad?

What makes Latias is its 80/90/130 bulk as well as its base 110 speed. With its dragon/psychic typing with levitate, it can make many defensive switches. Support roles can also carry self healing moves to heal status and health. Without it, it can come in and maybe scare some stuff out. What makes it bad is the fact it doesn't have much needed moves like Focus Blast, Earth Power and Flamethrower/Fire Blast. Because you have to run HP Fire, you sac your speed stat, which means you lose to other base 110 speed Pokemon. I feel you have to run HP Fire because of how common Scizor and Ferrathron are and while you do about 60% to both, the damage goes a long way. Also without moves like Earth Power, Heatran completely walls you but by far the worst thing about it is you have to sack it just to get a defog off.

Since a large amount of my team are birds, Stealth Rock is a problem and most of the time, I find myself sacking my Latias just to deal with Rocks, because any super effective attack just kills it. Knock off, Bug Bite, Hyper Voice, the list goes on. Since Defog is needed on the team, sacking a Pokemon to just deal with a move is bad.

What other sets you think are viable?

I feel support sets are great. Roost/Healing Wish/Protect and maybe filler is good just to scout what the opponent wants to do and go from there. I tend to like my Latias on support attack role, covering types the rest of the team can't. The thing is Latias can get type resisted my a lot of types.

What Pokemon makes a great core with Latias and in general what are the best teammates for him?

For me, I like to play with my favorites, so my team has holes and cant deal with some thing effectively (like heatran). I feel she is better covered by Steel types, like Scizor and Ferrathorn because they cover her weaknesses and maybe bulky fairy types. Since I'm a conservative player, maybe running recovery on Latias can help it stay around longer.

Have you used Mega Latias before? Please share with us the set you've used and the team if possible.

I haven't used Mega Latias and the reason for this is I make Pidgeot exclusively my mega and the other thing is Mega latias's base speed stat is still 110, which is a big deal. 110 is still a decent speed tier but for a mega, it would really appreciate the speed boost but a 700 base state total is still good. Since Gen 6, The speed tier for Pokemon rose to like base 116 since most Pokemon now can easily get over 110. Since Latias gets bulkier, I feel that can be exploited but its defensive typing does it no favors.

For sets, I feel it can still do whatever it wants and the boost to attack let it do that better, even more so since you have more power surprise Earthquakes. I feel Latias is better off leaving the attacking to her older brother but Latias can put in work as well. I feel Latias's bulk helps it more here, since base 150 special defense is really good but that base 80 HP (301 uninvested) hinders her defensive capabilities.

 

[Professor Palutena]

I like Latias as a Pokemon but I don't think it's as good in OU as people think.

It's primary role is to act as a supportive Defogger for teams that want Latias' longevity over Latios' power. This seems cool but it only creates a larger Bisharp weakness on the team as Latias' limited offensive movepool means Bisharp can easily walk all over her. I don't understand the offensive set as I'd rather just use Latios instead. Healing Wish is her only niche over Latios on offensive teams and so I'd end up using a 3 attacks + Healing Wish set on Latias if I were to use her on an offensive team.

Mega Latias had an awesome niche as the only guaranteed Landorus counter. But Landorus is gone now and so Mega Latias suffers. The supportive set isn't worth using up the Mega slot for with Landorus-I gone, as regular Latias does it better due to Leftovers. The Calm Mind set is interesting, but it still creates a big Bisharp weakness and Steel weakness in general given that it's usually just accking with STABs (Fairies are particularly a problem, especially Unaware Clefable).

One thing I find myself doing a lot with Latias is comparing her to Clefable. Pretty much everything Latias can do, Clefable can also do, and Clefable does it with better typing and, debatably, better abilities. Calm Mind Clefable is a rising threat in the metagame, and it's so good to the point where I struggle justifying using Latias, especially Mega Latias. Clefable has also always had an incredible supportive set. It may not get Defog, but it does get Stealth Rock which is, in my opinion, more important.

In closing, while Latias is a good Pokemon, I feel like it's got an inferiority complex. It'll always be compared to Latios no matter what it does, and Latios just does so many things better than Latias. Other threats like Clefable and Mega Altaria offer roles very similar to Latias that bring certain advantages to the table at the cost of other traits, namely Healing Wish. If you want to use Latias, please play to the advantages that she has or you'll find you're just using a poor man's version of something better.

 

[Chaos Jackal]

Personally, while I like Latias, I do consider her presence to the metagame very limited. I don't like any of her Mega sets-I just can't justify using her over many of the other Megas, who are stronger, faster or don't get completely walled by a certain type (I hope you all rot Fairies). I love and have repeatedly used the Defog+Healing Wish+2 attacks set, and consider it the only viable Latias set. Latias has two things going on about her, and that's Defog and Healing Wish. Play her as that and you'll find it's a good mon. Maybe not an amazing one, but definitely good, and if she fits in the team then I'm all for it. But on most other roles I find her outclassed. I can't justify the usage of any offensive set, since the extra bulk doesn't make up for the extra power that a similar Latios set would pack. The only set I would justify is a Healing Wish+3 attacks set. But otherwise, she gets outclassed by her older brother in most cases.

 

[Scattered mind]

I think Latias is doing pretty well in the current metagame considering the fact that there are so many threats for her that should make her leave. The way I see it, Latias's Healing Wish support with Defog is what makes her different than Latios. If someone uses her without one of these moves he misses the point of using her. The fact that Latias has Healing Wish and Defog is not enough to make her stand out of other support Pokemon like Clefable. She also has great offensive abilities that are still relevant to be used so she rarely finds herself useless in battles. I think Healing Wish support is one of the best support moves for set-up sweepers, but the metagame is becoming more and more offensive and people are looking for more ways to hit harder than keep their Pokemon healthy, and so they rather use more offensive support such as BP SD Celebi and the Smashpass strategy which was banned lately and might bring Latias back into the spotlights.

Mega Latias is something I have only tried recently. I have tried the CM+Stored Power combo with not much of a success. Each time I brought her in after removing Dark types I had to use Calm Mind because of how weak Stored Power is without a boost, and that gave my opponent the opportunity to use its coverage move to bring me to the point Mega Latias was too low on health to survive another hit (and too slow). I changed SP to Psyshock and I'll see how it would work out. Eventually I think Mega Latias is good, but you need to have the knowledge of how making her work well.

As for teammates, although Clefable gives her a lot of competition indeed, It also serves as one of her best teammates imo. Absorbing Toxic, set up Stealth Rock, handles Dragon-types and Dark-types bar Bisharp. The thing I like about this core, especially, is how each one of them can take on the role of the set-up sweeper and the support T-Wave spreader.
As well as how versatile they can be with their moves.