Is Moltres a Viable Niche Pick in the New Meta?

[Raish]

I was inspired by some talks with Piexplode/Disaster Area (don't know which you'd rather go by on here) about how the conditions Moltres needs to be a viable sweeper are much easier to obtain in the current meta than in the past (unless your opponent is playing a water heavy team). That said, it pairs really well with Jolteon for handling such situations (and Zapdos) and can switch in on a Lax/Tauros Earthquake aimed at Jolteon. However, that team has a tough time keeping Rocks from getting value with an Electric and a Fire Type.

Moltres punishes Rest Jynx super hard and is capable of taking out Exeggutor after just some chip damage. Favorable matchups against 3 of the big 4 are nothing to scoff at, and Chansey risks switching in to various degrees (factoring accuracy, burn, crit, damage rolls) if it's below 75% thanks to a healthy Attack stat with Hyper Beam.

Because I've been out of the loop for a while thanks to traveling and health issues, I don't know what usage statistics are like at the moment, but I'm ready to come back experimenting because I don't have habit weighing me down! I'd like to hear what you all think!

[jorgen]

In most cases I'd rather have Flareon; no boltbeam weaknesses, a better Attack stat to threaten Chansey with, can at least paralyze Starmie, and unboosted, Moltres doesn't really outspeed anything relevant that Flareon doesn't.

Moltres' main niche has always been as an abuser of Agility + Fire Spin. 75% accuracy sounds kinda lame at first, but it can actually be a godsend if you bust Moltres out early, as it frees you up to threaten Hyper Beams and Fire Blasts against things in KO range, rather than wasting more Ptrap PP.

I think new meta actually hurts Moltres more than it helps. I guess Counter Lax is a bit more common as the likelihood of Lax dittos is even higher now, so that's more chances to switch in on EQs intended to scout for that. On the other hand, Starmie usage seems to have gone up due to Lapras falling out of favor a bit thanks to its inability to paralyze Chansey, which definitely hurts Moltres and other gimmicky things like it.

[marcoasd]

First of all, the metagame is not stable atm.

Snorlax's dominant sets are the Rest variants (well, I've always been hating those variant because I think they're kinda bad at mitigating team matchups, but they're actually a pain to deal with and can win games on their own).

Moltres is good in this environment where you just put pressure on the opponent: Reflect is fairly good in the metagame, and partial trapping laughs at it. Nonetheless, it has to look out for are the same old things:
1- Starmie (and to a lesser extent Alakazam): you don't want to burn them making them immune to paralysis.
2- Zapdos: Moltres is weak to Zapdos, and this hurts in teambuilding.
3- Golem/Rhydon: they don't like switching into Fire Blast, but as Raish said they're a bit painful if Moltres is paired with Jolteon.

I tried a Jolteon+Moltres+Slowbro build: it can work but it's kinda gimmicky. Can pair with Gengar too maybe; teambuilding's not easy.
Moltres looks like a subpar mon to use as 6th slot in order to cause devastation (remind RestLax is common) the way Zapdos/Articuno do, while it's not hard countered.
All in all, Moltres gained fashion and is now closer to the other two birds: they have hard counters and Moltres does not, but at the same time, burning Starmie can be even worse than having an hard counter.
Most similar mon is Cloyster (it can claim Explosion, though), and it looks better overall; Moltres can be slightly better offensively against physicals making it worth a small niche.

About the moveset, it sucks that it has no 100% accurate moves (FBlast/FSpin/HB/Agility), next best move is Double Edge... Agility is hard to drop, and i think Fire Spin is the dispensable move, even though it's important to keep momentum and it hurts bunred Chansey.

Moltres' Fire Blast is OHKO on a critical hit vs Tauros, and a burn is 30% likely to happen: that makes a good matchup.  Its physical D makes it a lot better vs Tauros and Lax, and it can switch into EQs.
So, it's way better than Flareon as it's likely to win vs Tauros (Body Slams don't paralyze the bull anymore...) while Flareon can be OHKO'd by Earthquake without even touching the bull. And take a look at this:
Tauros Hyper Beam vs. Moltres on a critical hit: 337-397 (87.9 - 103.6%) -- 23.1% chance to OHKO
Flareon can paralyze Starmie, but it's not as good overall; Moltres has obviously things to worry about, but can win games for real.

Nowdays, its usage is very close to 0%.

[magic9mushroom]

Moltres is always going to be compared to Articuno, since they've got essentially the same stats and movepools and share a few properties of type (NVE vs. Starmie/Slowbro, SE vs. Egg/Bel; both are weak to Electric and 4x weak to Rock while being immune to Ground). Moltres hits Jynx/Lapras/Cloyster better (but is 2HKOed itself by all three); Articuno hits Rhydon/Golem/Zapdos/Dragonite better (and can switch into Dragonite and threaten to come in on Rhydon/Golem). Moltres has a better likelihood of status; Articuno has a better status. Moltres has Fire Spin; Articuno is freeze-immune and Ice-neutral and doesn't undo freezes. Oh, and Articuno has a more accurate STAB and can carry Ice Beam as backup.

I will say that Moltres has great synergy with other Wrappers due to Wrap magnifying the effect of burns and Cloyster being able to remove Starmie quite reliably. So I think it's a legit pick in a Wrap-heavy team. Otherwise, not so sure.

[piexplode]

I'd say it's a legitimate pick although I'm not so sure if it's the new meta itself that's being kind to it or not. I think in some ways it's like the electrics insofar as it's matchup reliant. Jolt+Moltres doesn't have as much issues with rocks as you'd think. They don't want to switch into moltres due to burns and jolt can wear down rocks quicker than zapdos too. The main issue is probably sheer role-compression issues, making sure you can either para starmie/scout out whether there is a starmie and formulate a win if there is one by different means.

I'd say it's definitely worth experimenting with, and might be of value to bring to a tournament game or two here and there; some games and matchups it's truly a force.