Research Week #2: Smeargle, Drifblim, Vileplume
Building off the last Research Week, were going to be upping the ante this time around, involving irc, the ladder and the forums in research week. Firstly, the need-to-know information.

Research Week looks to investigate Pokemon that have potential in RU, be it in stats, movepool, or supporting their team, to serve as an innovative choice in today's metagame. These are Pokemon that, for the most part, remain relatively untested. I've selected 3 Pokemon I feel, with help from everyone else, could see the rise of new and powerful sets, or the fulfilment of a particular niche. Perhaps the title is a bit of a misnomer; in fact, this installment (and likely future ones) of Research Week will continue as long as the discussion does, and that's where you all come in.

If you have anything to say about any of these Pokemon, please post about them! It doesn't matter if you've used them or have just faced them in battle, anything is fine (but please, do try them). Just be sure to back up your posts with good competitive reasoning!

-Be open-minded, don't just say something is terrible and walk away; at least look into them and see what options they may be able to utilize!
-Feel free to theorymon, but make it clear that you are theorymon'ing. At the end of the week, however, I want discussion to move towards how useful the Pokemon actually are in RU, and what sets are effective on them.
-Just because an analysis has been done for a Pokemon doesn't mean there isn't more to explore; it's quite possible that something might have gone unnoticed or is missing.
-Do not post in this thread complaining about the Pokemon I choose and/or suggesting ones we should do for future weeks. I want discussion to stay on topic about the 3 Pokemon we are "researching". Feel free to VM / PM me these suggestions, but don't expect the next research week to have all the Pokemon you suggested, or any of them.

So, the 3 Pokemon we will be looking at this research week are Drifblim, Smeargle and Vileplume

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How useful are these Pokemon in RU? What sets can they run effectively? What gives them trouble? What advantages do they have over other Pokemon?

Discuss; the discussion that come out of this will surely be illuminating! Don't forget, you're not just limited to this topic to discuss these Pokemon. The #rarelyused irc channel is a perfectly suitable place to discuss them as well. At the end of the discussion period, I hope we can reach a general consensus on how good these Pokemon really are, and that we might find some interesting discoveries.


Alright, now that that's out of the way we can get to the fun part of this. First up, Reasearch Week will now have a duration of roughly two weeks. The reason for this is as follows:

The Research Week Challenge:
Users will use one of the research week mons on their team
The user with highest ladder ranking at the end of the two week period will get temporary status (hops) in #rarelyused
Users will be expected to post their experiences with the pokemon they use
If they do not participate in the discussion they will be passed over

The first week of the challenge will be open for initial speculation on how one of the Research Week Pokemon will fare, previous experience with the Pokemon, or even just to say that you will be participating in the ladder challenge and on what alt (mandatory, new alts are required). The second week is where I expect the main discussion to occur and to heat up. This is when you can post battle logs, experiences with your team on the ladder and generally how a Pokemon has worked out for you.

Remember, if you are the top player at the end of the round you will get temporary hops in #rarelyused, which can become permanent depending on your track record. (If you already have hops+ we'll work something out)