Fell Stinger

Hey dude you're wrong, I like fell stinger. I do think it's a bit wasted on Mega Beedrill, and I'll explain why later. I love the idea of having Moxie in a move essentially, a weak move, but a move nonetheless. It certainly shouldn't be replacing your Bug STAB, but it's a neat tech that your opponent probably won't be expecting. I remember running this pre-release of ORAS when we had information on the megas and they were added to showdown and it was honestly pretty effective.

The reasons I think it's a bit of a waste on Beedrill are that Beedrill already suffers from 4MSS. It needs Protect in order to be good, U-turn for a strong STAB option that gains momentum on obvious switches, Poison Jab for its strongest STAB option and essentially a nuke option. And then I would generally consider having the additional coverage that Drill Run provides or the additional utility from Knock Off to be more useful than the potential to revenge kill and get a slightly stronger Poison Jab/U-Turn. Beedrill is also very frail, making it very susceptible to priority, generally faster mons (of which there aren't many) and mons that live a hit. The latter makes up a fairly high proportion of the meta without some prior damage, meaning Beedrill will often be scared out meaning it can't really take advantage of the boost. This is the same reason why Swords Dance Mega Beedrill isn't a common thing, it can't really take advantage of it like something like Mega Scizor can.

I'd love to see this mechanic added to different types and mons though.

 

I'm personally not really a fan of fell stinger. I've actually used it a few times doing nuzlockes of X/Y, but I always felt like there were better moves to fill up that slot, and better Pokémon to use those strategies with. There are some Pokémon like gliscor and azumaril that have an ability or immunity that allows them to switch in on a move, force a switch and get a near-guaranteed free set up, and I'm absolutely on board with that strategy. With a move like fell stinger that has the condition of you actually having to KO your opponent with it for it to work, though? It just doesn't make sense to me to use it over swords dance which has no such conditions, or to just use high-power moves and good coverage to eliminate the opposing Pokémon anyways.

 

In competitive the idea is that you pick up a KO that you would have gotten otherwise while also getting a +1 boost, as opposed to setting up and needing to take a hit while doing so. For a frail mon like beedrill, not needing to take that hit is crucial, since otherwise the only time it would be able to get a boost is on an obvious switch, at which point the Pokémon they switch out to will probably be able to beat you even at +2.

But yeah certainly for in game SD Gliscor makes a lot of sense (not so sure about Azumarill, since using Belly drum cuts your health in half and I'm assuming you don't have a sitrus for every battle and so you might get knocked out on the turn you set up). But yeah I wouldn't equate Fell stinger to more reliable set up moves like SD, since it relies on your opponent staying in and allowing you to KO their Pokémon as opposed to saving it for fodder, as well as it killing in the first place (you feel so greedy when they only just live lol). It's kind of like "Well I'm going to get the kill anyway, might as well get the +1 boost", or at least that's how I'd use it.

 

In my opinion Fell Stinger is a really risky move. You would have to know the exact time when to use it and afterwards you have to decide whether it was really worth the effort or not because M Beedrill is easily KO'd by priority moves or your opponent can switch out into a defensive tank that can take anything Beedrill can throw at it.