magby takes an attack and two turns. what's to stop them from simply using catcher on the pokemon you're going to use to knock out the goth? you'd need a counter that same turn not next turn. i've given this thought and burn isn't the best way to go. poison seems a little easier to pull off. venomoth lets you flip for poison, heads you are, tails i am. if you flip tails and poison yourself, were you really gonna live if you hadn't been poisoned anyway? most likely not. but a heads can be amazing. the other choice would be roserade, attach a rainbow or a psychic energy and you have the auto poison but at the cost of your attachment for the turn. pick your poison. flip or absolute with using your attachment...
Magby works. You only need 1 of 2 coin flips to hit tails.
You use Magby to burn their active. If they flip tails, then they'll move the 20 damage off, no issue. That's not the flip we care about. They hit whatever they want for knockout, let's say. Both ZPST and Tyram can swarm attackers, so you have something that can hit for 120. Going IN to your turn, they flip for burn damage (FLIP #1) If they hit tails, they now have 110HP and you can Flare/Bolt for KO. If they flip heads, you still go ahead and hit them for 120. Assuming the previous flip was heads, they now have to flip agains for burn. (FLIP #2) If they hit tails, they die of burn damage. So to survive, they need two heads: 25%.
But even if they hit both heads, they're still burned until they retreat (most variants use serperior or something else a a tech, very little metagross and dodrio running about) so you can keep on trying as much as you need to.
Probability of burn offing them in the Xth flip:
1: 50%
2: 75%
3: 87.5%
4: 93.75%
5: 96.88%
x: ((2^x)-1))/(2^x) * 100
well that's nice but to be honest, my area has already solved that problem, they do run dodrio. simply put, you need a same turn counter not a high probability counter. you need it to be 100% turn one, not xth turn. I really am surprised to see the percent chance of magby, honestly. but you fail to acknowledge that your opponent also factors in this. they're not just gonna stay there so you can prove your equation right.
Ditto this. Also, the opponent can simply drop a DCE, retreat for another Gothitelle, Shaymin the energy from the first one over and KO the Magby. Even if it stayed asleep, there is the chance to double Catcher and remove it from the game. Once that happens, the Magby player will have no way to OHKO Gothitelle and the matchup will return to its normal state.
so with the magby theory... say you burn them and they take 20... they just move the damage. so you really only have 1 chance at them flipping tails which is at the end of their turn/beggining of your turn. and thats IF there stupid enought to keep the burned goth active. honestly that tech might never work
Wow. You REALLLLLLLY need to read post #6 again...
I used the same tactic against a ross.dec with Donphan active. Got realllly lucky and he flips both tails so I was able to KO it with an 80 damage Bolt Strike. Tho this is only a 25% chance vs Donphan, the 75% against Goth makes Magby too legit to quit.
this is entire different horse to beat dead. donphan can't retreat as easily as goth and goth can still play the switch, as where donphan can't.
Even if you flipped tails on the burn, you can power up Reshiram/Zekroms Outrage just by moving the 2 damage counters from Reuniclus's Damage Swap.