Through the Looking Glasses: Using Safety Goggles
Pokémon X and Y brought us a litany of new tools to play around with when creating new teams. With new Pokémon, moves, and abilities drawing the most attention, the new items introduced to us in this generation have fallen to the wayside. These new items bring some unique effects to the table and are still plenty unexplored and underused. My personal favorite of the newly-introduced items is Safety Goggles. Even if you have played through the main story of X and Y extensively, you could have very easily missed the Safety Goggles.
The in-game description of Safety Goggles reads “These goggles protect the holder from both weather-related damage and powder.” This more or less grants the holder the effects of the newly buffed Overcoat ability. This gives your Pokémon an immunity to the passive damage dealt by Sandstorm and Hail, grants it an immunity to the various status-inducing powders (such as Sleep Powder and Spore), and most importantly allow your Pokémon to ignore Rage Powders.
Right now, VGC ’14 has a couple of very potent threats that can be mitigated by Safety Goggles. If you’ve followed the Video Game Championships at all in the past few years, you’ve noticed that Amoonguss has been an absolute terror since it was introduced into the game. The mushroom’s natural bulk combined with access to both Spore and Rage Powder has made it a VGC mainstay and one of the biggest annoyances in the game. Another relatively new threat this year is Venusaur. With access to Sleep Powder and its Hidden Ability Chlorophyll combined with Mega Charizard-Y’s Drought, Venusaur has turned into a very dangerous sleep abuser. Both Amoonguss and Venusaur have seen extensive usage in the developing metagame, but a well-placed pair of Safety Goggles can slow them down.
Pokémon that I’ve Stuck Goggles On:
Rotom-H is one of the best users of Safety Goggles, especially because it can tilt the sun matchup in its favor. When pitted against the Venusaur / Mega Charizard-Y combination, the Safety Goggles allow Rotom-H to ignore Venusaur’s lightning-fast Sleep Powders and fire off Thunderbolts into Mega Charizard-Y while resisting almost everything that the duo can throw out at it. More often than not, you’ll be able to take down a Pokémon or two or at least threaten the team without having to fear that Rotom-H will fall asleep.
Scizor is an interesting Pokémon to use Safety Goggles with. While Scizor doesn’t deal with Sun like Rotom-H does, it utilizes the Goggles in another manner. Amoongus’ Rage Powder is a vital tool that many teams use to preserve things like Mega Kangaskhan or Mega Tyranitar. A Scizor with Safety Goggles can help play against these sorts of teams because the Goggles ignore the effects of Rage Powder. Mega Tyranitar is no longer safe to Dragon Dance with Amoongus’ protection, and it will not be able to put Scizor to sleep. Amoongus’ role on these particular sorts of teams is weakened greatly by Safety Goggles Scizor. There have been more times than I can count where an opponent assumes that their low health Pokémon are safe next to Amoongus, only for it to go down before they know it.
Why you should consider Goggles
Safety Goggles give a Pokémon an additional role that it wouldn’t normally have. The Goggles help transform Pokémon that are ordinarily not seen as Grass counters into full-fledged hard counters. We’ve seen how powerful Spore is in the metagame and this niche item is the perfect answer for it.
Next time you’re building a team and are struggling with Amoongus or Venusaur, don’t hesitate to try on some Safety Goggles and experiment. Who knows, maybe Safety Goggles are just what you need to complete your ensemble.
About the Author
Huy is a grizzled Pokemon veteran. Having played competitively since RBY, he picked up VGC in 2009 and never looked back. He has played in 3 World Championships (Second only to Ray Rizzo) and has placed in the Top 10 in all 3 while managing to secure Top 8 in 2. He is the only American in the world to have won two Customized Worlds DS'es.
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21 Responses to Through the Looking Glasses: Using Safety Goggles
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Nice analysis, good to see the emphasis on the negation of Rage Powder. It’s one of the least expected plays, and can catch even seasoned players off guard since there’s no obvious way to scout Safety Goggles without weather being up.
I honestly didn’t know Safety Goggles protected against powders. Well I now know what item to hunt for. Thanks, and nice article.
Very interesting read. Has given me food for thought regarding my Articuno…
While losing Charti Berry is unpleasant it would give him an additional supporting ability, namely the ability to ignore Amoonguss completely and to counter it even harder and focus on taking down the Perish Trapper with Tailwind (outspeeds Mega Gengar after one) and attacks or whatever his partner is or might be doing. A supporting fighter that can’t be put to sleep or hit by weaher damage sounds very tempting
Great article. I liked using Safety Goggles on my Vivillon so Amoonguss wouldn’t redirect Sleep Powders.
I used Safety Goggles on my Aromatisse in order to make sure I can hit Scrafty and others weak to Moonblast through Rage Powder, stop Amoonguss from preying on my TR mode, and allow her to cooperate great with Abomasnow… But I unfortunately didn’t run into Amoonguss at all at regs.
Still a neat item, and putting it on Scizor is interesting.
Vivillon just got nerfed already. Lol xD
Fascinating! I hadn’t considered the rage powder negating aspect of the goggles, that’s really interesting. I’ll have to look into these quirky goggles a little more…
bidoof, this is a great write-up, but I’ve been running Safety Goggles on my Rotom-H for a month now for surprise factor and this will negate that…
Oh well, time more people learn about this awesome item!
I used Safety Googles Politoed on my Virginia regionals team and I played against 2 Venusaurs, 3 Amoonguses and an Eggy(not sure how to spell it so I won’t even try). Needless to say the item did it’s job very well.
Wow, great article. I personally think item reviews should be on the front page more often. Stuff like this gets my mind bursting with team ideas. Never really looked at the saftey goggles! I think I want to “look into” them now.
I honestly didn’t notice that pun until I typed it.
The googles! They do EVERYTHING!
Great write-up, even though it means so many more people are going to be countering my Amoonguss now
I did not know about googles negating sleep powder effect!
That’s very cool!Thank you,it’s just what I was looking for!
It’s very useful in trick room, countering its biggest threat, amoonguss
Someone needs to write one of these on assault vest and weakness policy, two under-used items imo.
Its good on prankster abusers with charm too, Stops Amoonguss from redirecting any status from a physical mon like Kang or Mega Tyranitar,
I think Chandelure gets quite a nice possibility to efficiently shut down Trick Room by using the goggles, not only being immune to Fake Out and ignoring Aromatisse’s Aroma Veil via Imprison, but also being immune to both Rage Powder and Spore an opposing Amoonguss could throw at one to get off the Trick Room with the partner.
It’s not smart to use it on Chandelure, as he outspeeds Amoongus, thus already getting an attack off before the Spore, and commonly has Heat Wave, which is a spread attack. Rage Spore would be used in that situation only to redirect the partner’s attack, so I’d rather put it on that Pokemon.
Safety Goggles Aromatisse is legit. It’s a perfectly good item to keep in mind for the back half of your team, after probably exhausting your Sitrus/Lum Berries and Leftovers.
Half the time though I’m looking at stuff like Rotom-H or Talonflame and I’m just kinda like “okay why goggles on this mon when I could just OHKO the annoying enemy grasser”
Most of the time amoonguss can survive an overheat or brave bird (if it is LO, then it can survive at -1) and spore back. Or it annoys you by rage powdering while it’s partner can deal with something. These are two reasons why safety goggles could be useful against amoonguss, even if they pretty much beat it.
I had I nice read, and this item does create a nice niche for a lot pokemon who fall victim to powders and sand and hail damage
I gotta say I’m all for the idea of safety goggles, but the problem is one of 2 things imo;
1. You get stuck with an item that isn’t optimal in some situations(opponent having amoongus nor weather, although I know the weather isn’t why this gets used)
2. Most pokemon that use goggles the best imo are usually just gonna beat it outright(talonflame, rotom-h)
And then there’s the argument of using the goggles on rotom-w, but amoongus will most likely just Gita drain it while the partner helps wittle it down.
So tl;dr goggles are situational