JabbaTheGriffin
Stormblessed
New round, but unfortunately not really an exciting one. Deoxys-D was unanimously voted BL. Mew was close to moving to OU, but fell just short, while Scrafty almost dropped to make things pretty interesting for a while, but for some reason some cruel people insisted on using him enough in OU to keep him there. Anyway I'm not quite sure on ladder/server status, but D-D should be banned soon and I'm pretty sure the senate members want the ladder ratings to be reset. So have a blast playing a post D-D metagame!
ps here are the senate paragraphs
ps here are the senate paragraphs
I think Deoxys-D has all but eliminated playstyles other than offense from UU. Defensive teams have immense difficulty dealing with his easy Spikes, fast Taunts, and impregnable defenses (unless said stall team runs something like Leftovers Escavalier). Balanced teams are increasingly troubled with every free turn he conquers and the number of times Blastoise, Hitmontop, Chandelure, and other counters/spinners are required to switch in with hazards up. Even if you have something that can OHKO Deoxys, momentum is far from assured as he switches to a check and forces that counter to keep coming in until it runs out of switches due to passive damage.
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of comments about his ‘lack of offensive presence’, which is pretty irrelevant considering it’s hard enough to set up on him with faster Pokemon that legitimately change the game. If those Pokemon switch in on Taunt, they’re forced out again as he recovers, attacks, or sets up more Spikes. All of this contributes to what is essentially one long war of attrition that usually ends in two or more layers of Spikes + SR and many Pokemon wounded enough to sweep.
Continuing the war analogy, we must also consider the fact that Deoxys is never the general of its army. As a Spike-laying lackey, it does its job consummately well, and can usually be sacrificed once its job is done. The real problem starts when Deoxys has to switch out into one of its now extremely threatening teammates such as Raikou, who does far better when Snorlax and Swampert are worn down, Chandelure, Victini, and Darmanitan, who appreciate the ability to 2HKO Suicune with just their STABs and full laters up, and Cobalion, who destroys Slowbro with +2 X-Scissor and full layers.
The question stands: how does one adapt to these conditions? We’ve been playing with Deoxys in UU for over a year now, so the technology to defeat him and his minefield shouldn’t be a secret by now. For spinners, we had Donphan, who left us, Blastoise, who is solid as usual, and Hitmontop, who has immense trouble with spinblockers (all they want to do is burn him). Magic Bounce users included the late Espeon, and the ever-present Xatu, who wasn’t anywhere close to UU until Deoxys usage began to ascend to ridiculous heights, and can be trapped via Puruit. Flygon is a decent offensive Pokemon who could frankly care less about how many layers Deoxys has up, but it’s a different story when you figure out its U-turns deal piddling damage and Deoxys can sit there and set up regardless of what it does.
The reason I bring up old tier additions is to outline Deoxys’ steady decline into overpowering territory. Methods to deal with him became progressively worse and with more dominant suspects stepping aside, Deoxys has risen from a sleeper threat into UU’s new focus. For example, the team format of choice in UU is now Deoxys, spinner, and four offensive Pokemon, bulky or otherwise. These cookie-cutter teams are currently dominating the ladder and I for one would rather see a Roserade Spiking than a Deoxys. At least Roserade can’t Taunt you and Calm Mind users such as Cobalion and Raikou can have their way with it. With Deoxys, it’s all fun and games until somebody gets Taunted or does less than 50%, allowing him to set up or stall you out. Approximately third of UU is already walled by this guy. Spinners cannot outlast him. His counters are vulnerable to hazards just like anything else. Fighting against Deoxys imposes unrealistic expectations on the other player to where you’re using both one of the extremely limited methods of hazard prevention and one handful of Pokemon required to KO it safely, or else you’re outright losing to its momentum stealing, hazard setting, and offensive pressure from its teammates.
Deoxys-D for BL.
Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of comments about his ‘lack of offensive presence’, which is pretty irrelevant considering it’s hard enough to set up on him with faster Pokemon that legitimately change the game. If those Pokemon switch in on Taunt, they’re forced out again as he recovers, attacks, or sets up more Spikes. All of this contributes to what is essentially one long war of attrition that usually ends in two or more layers of Spikes + SR and many Pokemon wounded enough to sweep.
Continuing the war analogy, we must also consider the fact that Deoxys is never the general of its army. As a Spike-laying lackey, it does its job consummately well, and can usually be sacrificed once its job is done. The real problem starts when Deoxys has to switch out into one of its now extremely threatening teammates such as Raikou, who does far better when Snorlax and Swampert are worn down, Chandelure, Victini, and Darmanitan, who appreciate the ability to 2HKO Suicune with just their STABs and full laters up, and Cobalion, who destroys Slowbro with +2 X-Scissor and full layers.
The question stands: how does one adapt to these conditions? We’ve been playing with Deoxys in UU for over a year now, so the technology to defeat him and his minefield shouldn’t be a secret by now. For spinners, we had Donphan, who left us, Blastoise, who is solid as usual, and Hitmontop, who has immense trouble with spinblockers (all they want to do is burn him). Magic Bounce users included the late Espeon, and the ever-present Xatu, who wasn’t anywhere close to UU until Deoxys usage began to ascend to ridiculous heights, and can be trapped via Puruit. Flygon is a decent offensive Pokemon who could frankly care less about how many layers Deoxys has up, but it’s a different story when you figure out its U-turns deal piddling damage and Deoxys can sit there and set up regardless of what it does.
The reason I bring up old tier additions is to outline Deoxys’ steady decline into overpowering territory. Methods to deal with him became progressively worse and with more dominant suspects stepping aside, Deoxys has risen from a sleeper threat into UU’s new focus. For example, the team format of choice in UU is now Deoxys, spinner, and four offensive Pokemon, bulky or otherwise. These cookie-cutter teams are currently dominating the ladder and I for one would rather see a Roserade Spiking than a Deoxys. At least Roserade can’t Taunt you and Calm Mind users such as Cobalion and Raikou can have their way with it. With Deoxys, it’s all fun and games until somebody gets Taunted or does less than 50%, allowing him to set up or stall you out. Approximately third of UU is already walled by this guy. Spinners cannot outlast him. His counters are vulnerable to hazards just like anything else. Fighting against Deoxys imposes unrealistic expectations on the other player to where you’re using both one of the extremely limited methods of hazard prevention and one handful of Pokemon required to KO it safely, or else you’re outright losing to its momentum stealing, hazard setting, and offensive pressure from its teammates.
Deoxys-D for BL.
Sorry about the delay.
I will primarily be referring to two possible sets in these paragraphs.
Defensive
Deo-D @ Leftovers
Bold
252 HP / 176 Def / 56 Spe
-Taunt
-Toxic / Night Shade
-Recover
-Spikes
Suicide Spiker
Deo-D @ Leftovers
Timid
252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
-Stealth Rock
-Spikes
-Taunt
-Thunder Wave / Night Shade
Deoxys-D was the most used Pokemon among the 1337+ players last round, garnering almost 40% usage. There is good reason for this - Deoxys-D can easily and consistently lay down all its hazards while simultaneously stalling out a large portion of the tier with its defensive sets, and can prevent even relatively quick pokemon from setting up with its suicide spiker set. There are very few Pokemon that can consistently stop Deoxys-D from doing its job, and almost all of them fear status from its sets. Spinners like Blastoise and Hitmontop have to be wary of toxic, while powerful attackers like Weavile, Cobalion, Mismagius, and Heracross have to fear Thunder Wave. All these pokemon are also incapable of ohkoing Deoxys-D due to its absurd 50/160/160 defenses, so unless they run Taunt, it is entirely possible that can switch in safely and get paralyzed anyway. This makes it very risk to play against Deoxys-D, as it can either stack hazards or cripple important sweepers or important members of one's defensive core.
So why exactly is the ability to easily set up hazards a bad thing? Simply because it breaks a large number of sweepers. Another look at the 1337 stats will shed some light on this - the second most used Pokemon was Sharpedo. Sharpedo is a notoriously effective late-game sweeper, and if hazards are on the field, many of its checks are unable to avoid facing KOs. There are other Pokemon that also fit this description, such as Scarf Krookodile, Scarf Darmantian, Stoutland, Kingdra, and Zapdos. Note that all of these Pokemon are currently attaining extremely high usage. With spikes, these pokemon become extremely difficult to check, and it becomes much easier to wear down even hard counters - for instance, Blastoise goes from being able to switch into Darmantian at least three times (with just SR on the field) to being able to switch into it no more than once.
So, Deoxys-D sets up hazards consistently, prevents other Pokemon from setting up on it with the threat of Taunt and Night Shade / Status moves, and its hazards have a substantial impact on the metagame by making multiple sweepers prohibitively difficult to handle. Given that Deoxys-D can fit on any team and the fact that it has substantial utility as a wall even after laying down all its hazards, I advocate a Ban on Deoxys-D.
I will primarily be referring to two possible sets in these paragraphs.
Defensive
Deo-D @ Leftovers
Bold
252 HP / 176 Def / 56 Spe
-Taunt
-Toxic / Night Shade
-Recover
-Spikes
Suicide Spiker
Deo-D @ Leftovers
Timid
252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
-Stealth Rock
-Spikes
-Taunt
-Thunder Wave / Night Shade
Deoxys-D was the most used Pokemon among the 1337+ players last round, garnering almost 40% usage. There is good reason for this - Deoxys-D can easily and consistently lay down all its hazards while simultaneously stalling out a large portion of the tier with its defensive sets, and can prevent even relatively quick pokemon from setting up with its suicide spiker set. There are very few Pokemon that can consistently stop Deoxys-D from doing its job, and almost all of them fear status from its sets. Spinners like Blastoise and Hitmontop have to be wary of toxic, while powerful attackers like Weavile, Cobalion, Mismagius, and Heracross have to fear Thunder Wave. All these pokemon are also incapable of ohkoing Deoxys-D due to its absurd 50/160/160 defenses, so unless they run Taunt, it is entirely possible that can switch in safely and get paralyzed anyway. This makes it very risk to play against Deoxys-D, as it can either stack hazards or cripple important sweepers or important members of one's defensive core.
So why exactly is the ability to easily set up hazards a bad thing? Simply because it breaks a large number of sweepers. Another look at the 1337 stats will shed some light on this - the second most used Pokemon was Sharpedo. Sharpedo is a notoriously effective late-game sweeper, and if hazards are on the field, many of its checks are unable to avoid facing KOs. There are other Pokemon that also fit this description, such as Scarf Krookodile, Scarf Darmantian, Stoutland, Kingdra, and Zapdos. Note that all of these Pokemon are currently attaining extremely high usage. With spikes, these pokemon become extremely difficult to check, and it becomes much easier to wear down even hard counters - for instance, Blastoise goes from being able to switch into Darmantian at least three times (with just SR on the field) to being able to switch into it no more than once.
So, Deoxys-D sets up hazards consistently, prevents other Pokemon from setting up on it with the threat of Taunt and Night Shade / Status moves, and its hazards have a substantial impact on the metagame by making multiple sweepers prohibitively difficult to handle. Given that Deoxys-D can fit on any team and the fact that it has substantial utility as a wall even after laying down all its hazards, I advocate a Ban on Deoxys-D.
After flip-flopping multiple times on my view of Deoxys-D's tiering, I have ultimately decided that it's too strong for UU, and thus should be banned from the tier. After playing a lot last night with multiple teams utilizing different Deoxys-D (the max speed taunter and the more specially defensive taunter), I realized that no matter what EV spread and set you run (set being identical almost 99% of the time), Deoxys-D is perhaps the only spiker I can think of in UU that not only sets up hazards with ease, but also keeps them on the field.
Even though Froslass is a Ghost-type and thus can spinblock its own set hazards, it takes a lot from the tier's most common spinner Blastoise. Deoxys-D not only takes nothing from Blastoise's attacks, but can night shade for at minimum 27%, Taunt Blastoise's attempts at using Toxic or Rest, and slowly whittle down the spinner's HP to ultimately kill it and continue setting hazards up once it's dead. I think this alone warrents a Deoxys-D ban. It's ability as a hazard supporter was undisputed; however it's ability to act as a spinblocker because it kills all of the spinners even at the cost of its own hazards is what takes it over the top for me. If you lose your hazards once, it's perfectly fine because Deoxys-D can just set them up all over again without any problems! This to me screams broken. Nothing in Pokemon has this easy of a time continually setting up hazards, not even Spiker Roserade.
Although Deoxys-D can be taunted and effectively neutered from doing its job, I just didn't see that happening in all of my test games. Sure Mismagius, Froslass, Sableye, and other Deoxys-D can taunt it, but because of Deoxys-D's great bulk and access to Recover it can shrug off this weakness and come in on the majority of the metagame and continue setting up hazards. I playtested the specially defensive set the most, with 120 speed EV's for some creeping, and I must say it never failed to get hazards up in a single game, being able to come in on the tier's most prolific special attackers including LO Roserade and LO Zapdos.
As a defensive wall, Deoxys-D is nowhere near broken. It can be defeated by powerful attackers including Stoutland and Darmanitan, and opposing entry hazards give it trouble. However, Deoxys-D is the best spiker in the tier, and its ability to constantly put pressure on the opponent by persistently setting up hazards is too much. It needs to go.
Even though Froslass is a Ghost-type and thus can spinblock its own set hazards, it takes a lot from the tier's most common spinner Blastoise. Deoxys-D not only takes nothing from Blastoise's attacks, but can night shade for at minimum 27%, Taunt Blastoise's attempts at using Toxic or Rest, and slowly whittle down the spinner's HP to ultimately kill it and continue setting hazards up once it's dead. I think this alone warrents a Deoxys-D ban. It's ability as a hazard supporter was undisputed; however it's ability to act as a spinblocker because it kills all of the spinners even at the cost of its own hazards is what takes it over the top for me. If you lose your hazards once, it's perfectly fine because Deoxys-D can just set them up all over again without any problems! This to me screams broken. Nothing in Pokemon has this easy of a time continually setting up hazards, not even Spiker Roserade.
Although Deoxys-D can be taunted and effectively neutered from doing its job, I just didn't see that happening in all of my test games. Sure Mismagius, Froslass, Sableye, and other Deoxys-D can taunt it, but because of Deoxys-D's great bulk and access to Recover it can shrug off this weakness and come in on the majority of the metagame and continue setting up hazards. I playtested the specially defensive set the most, with 120 speed EV's for some creeping, and I must say it never failed to get hazards up in a single game, being able to come in on the tier's most prolific special attackers including LO Roserade and LO Zapdos.
As a defensive wall, Deoxys-D is nowhere near broken. It can be defeated by powerful attackers including Stoutland and Darmanitan, and opposing entry hazards give it trouble. However, Deoxys-D is the best spiker in the tier, and its ability to constantly put pressure on the opponent by persistently setting up hazards is too much. It needs to go.
Deoxys-D
Sporting base 50 Hp, base 160 in both defenses and recover, Deoxys is a defensive behemoth able to tank hits from a majority of the tier without being 2hkoed. However, it is Deoxys’ ability to support that allows him to break the metagame. Beyond the ability to status teams, Deoxys is able to set up hazards and taunt oppositional attempts to gain momentum. With Deoxys’ defense he can easily switch in and immediately start setting up hazards on a large quantity of the tier. This problem is compounded by the lack of viable spinners in the UU metagame. This is due to: one, spin blocking being easier than spinning as spinners often lose momentum and two, Deoxys will simply outlive the opponents spinner in most cases due access to defenses and recover that the spinners namely hitmontop and blastoise cannot live up to. Thus with the ability to outlive spinners, Deoxys can easily get hazards on the field gaining an insane amount of momentum. Additionally, with the use of taunt Deoxys prevents set up and breaks opponents momentum. This is directly seen in the dwindling of the defensive/ stall play style that have difficulty killing deoxys while also having to continuously remove hazards. Thus it becomes evident that defensive ability combined with the tremendous support that Deoxys offers is steps ahead of other pokemon in the tier which has led to a spikes centric metagame, an almost complete end to the stall play style, and gains an incredible amount of momentum.
Sporting base 50 Hp, base 160 in both defenses and recover, Deoxys is a defensive behemoth able to tank hits from a majority of the tier without being 2hkoed. However, it is Deoxys’ ability to support that allows him to break the metagame. Beyond the ability to status teams, Deoxys is able to set up hazards and taunt oppositional attempts to gain momentum. With Deoxys’ defense he can easily switch in and immediately start setting up hazards on a large quantity of the tier. This problem is compounded by the lack of viable spinners in the UU metagame. This is due to: one, spin blocking being easier than spinning as spinners often lose momentum and two, Deoxys will simply outlive the opponents spinner in most cases due access to defenses and recover that the spinners namely hitmontop and blastoise cannot live up to. Thus with the ability to outlive spinners, Deoxys can easily get hazards on the field gaining an insane amount of momentum. Additionally, with the use of taunt Deoxys prevents set up and breaks opponents momentum. This is directly seen in the dwindling of the defensive/ stall play style that have difficulty killing deoxys while also having to continuously remove hazards. Thus it becomes evident that defensive ability combined with the tremendous support that Deoxys offers is steps ahead of other pokemon in the tier which has led to a spikes centric metagame, an almost complete end to the stall play style, and gains an incredible amount of momentum.
Deoxys-D is BL (for the next couple of days at least)
The ease with which Deoxys-D sets up Spikes is the most important reason why it is BL but not the only one. By essentially guaranteeing two layers minimum of hazards every game at the beginning of the game, the presence of Deoxys-D severely limits the effectiveness of teams that rely on smart switching and health management, while rewarding teams that simply using strong attacks and nothing else. The degree to which this has happened is massive, as defensively-oriented teams are nonexistent. This problem is compounded by the fact that Deoxys-D has the natural bulk to outlast every common spinner in UU as well as Recover. Given that the common spinners are also subpar Pokemon in general, spinning isn't a solution to Deoxys-D that works in practice. All of these factors add up to show that Deoxys-D's presence significantly limits the skill involved in playing UU.
Fast suicide spiking isn't the only thing Deoxys-D can do though, and if it were, Deoxys-D would not be broken. Dealing with those offensive teams behind Deoxys-D can be tricky, but creative teambuilding allows you to target the sweepers behind Deoxys-D instead of Deoxys-D itself. Most of my recent teams have involved heavy use of Thunder Wave for this reason. The problem with this is that bulky Deoxys-D exists and it is impossible to distinguish from fast Deoxys-D in team preview. Loading Deoxys-D up with Defense or Special Defense EVs allows it to counter pretty much every Pokemon that hit it from that side of the spectrum without a super-effective attack (and many that have one). Any creative teambuilding around Deoxys-D is destroyed when Deoxys-D simply walls and paralyzes all of your Pokemon without a way for you to infer the set ahead of time with Team Preview.
Deoxys-D severely limits the skill involved in UU while not allowing creative teambuilding to compensate for this loss, and therefore is BL.
The ease with which Deoxys-D sets up Spikes is the most important reason why it is BL but not the only one. By essentially guaranteeing two layers minimum of hazards every game at the beginning of the game, the presence of Deoxys-D severely limits the effectiveness of teams that rely on smart switching and health management, while rewarding teams that simply using strong attacks and nothing else. The degree to which this has happened is massive, as defensively-oriented teams are nonexistent. This problem is compounded by the fact that Deoxys-D has the natural bulk to outlast every common spinner in UU as well as Recover. Given that the common spinners are also subpar Pokemon in general, spinning isn't a solution to Deoxys-D that works in practice. All of these factors add up to show that Deoxys-D's presence significantly limits the skill involved in playing UU.
Fast suicide spiking isn't the only thing Deoxys-D can do though, and if it were, Deoxys-D would not be broken. Dealing with those offensive teams behind Deoxys-D can be tricky, but creative teambuilding allows you to target the sweepers behind Deoxys-D instead of Deoxys-D itself. Most of my recent teams have involved heavy use of Thunder Wave for this reason. The problem with this is that bulky Deoxys-D exists and it is impossible to distinguish from fast Deoxys-D in team preview. Loading Deoxys-D up with Defense or Special Defense EVs allows it to counter pretty much every Pokemon that hit it from that side of the spectrum without a super-effective attack (and many that have one). Any creative teambuilding around Deoxys-D is destroyed when Deoxys-D simply walls and paralyzes all of your Pokemon without a way for you to infer the set ahead of time with Team Preview.
Deoxys-D severely limits the skill involved in UU while not allowing creative teambuilding to compensate for this loss, and therefore is BL.
I think Deoxys-D is just slightly over the line between broken and just "really effective". There are a couple of obvious reasons and a couple, maybe.... unorthodox reasons. I'm not going to argue "why D-D as opposed to other Spikers", because that is not what I'm voting on. Without further adieu:
What does D-D do? Set up hazards, walls, stalls, etc. Why is that broken? We've all seen the calculations. It's just too hard to stop various (as opposed to one or two that would imply that they are the culprits) threats with Spikes constantly without doing the exact same strategy back. Unless we're going to consider Staraptor a Staraptor check, that would be a stupid argument to make anyway.
I don't want to bore you all with numbers since we've seen them before, so I'm sure we can agree that the bulk / Spikes factors are going to push D-D over the line. It would not be crazy, however, to suggest that it's "uselessness" actually pushes it back. But is D-D really that useless? Carrying Taunt or Thunder Wave means setting up Spikes and Stealth Rock takes 4-5 turns with little consequence besides taking some damage...which you can Recover off. The Speed that you have plus the bulk you retain while still being fast makes this possible. I have a hard time considering "not doing much" after setting up entry hazards "useless" by the sheer nature of entry hazards being so, well, "useful". If D-D's entire team was vulnerable to be swept during the set up, it would be different.
This also isn't considering the fact that Toxic or Stoss + Recover still beats a large portion of the metagame.
Deoxys-D has always been around but never obviously broken, so why now? I think there are many reasons as to why D-D has been under the radar. Donphan was here, and it is a great Spinner, check, and Stealth Rock user. The next best mon at his job is Claydol, and most of us can agree that Claydol often doesn't cut it as a replacement. There were also just more threats around that got banned. They sort of put Spikes/SR in the shadows, and D-D along with them.
What does D-D do? Set up hazards, walls, stalls, etc. Why is that broken? We've all seen the calculations. It's just too hard to stop various (as opposed to one or two that would imply that they are the culprits) threats with Spikes constantly without doing the exact same strategy back. Unless we're going to consider Staraptor a Staraptor check, that would be a stupid argument to make anyway.
I don't want to bore you all with numbers since we've seen them before, so I'm sure we can agree that the bulk / Spikes factors are going to push D-D over the line. It would not be crazy, however, to suggest that it's "uselessness" actually pushes it back. But is D-D really that useless? Carrying Taunt or Thunder Wave means setting up Spikes and Stealth Rock takes 4-5 turns with little consequence besides taking some damage...which you can Recover off. The Speed that you have plus the bulk you retain while still being fast makes this possible. I have a hard time considering "not doing much" after setting up entry hazards "useless" by the sheer nature of entry hazards being so, well, "useful". If D-D's entire team was vulnerable to be swept during the set up, it would be different.
This also isn't considering the fact that Toxic or Stoss + Recover still beats a large portion of the metagame.
Deoxys-D has always been around but never obviously broken, so why now? I think there are many reasons as to why D-D has been under the radar. Donphan was here, and it is a great Spinner, check, and Stealth Rock user. The next best mon at his job is Claydol, and most of us can agree that Claydol often doesn't cut it as a replacement. There were also just more threats around that got banned. They sort of put Spikes/SR in the shadows, and D-D along with them.
Ban
Before I say anything else, let me clarify that my reason for voting this way has absolutely nothing to do with how "difficult" it is to kill off Deoxys-D. Read on for more details.
My reasoning for wanting Deoxys-D gone from the tier is as follows:
Much like Deoxys-S did in OU, it simply supports its team far too well. Not only does it have access to both Spikes and Stealth Rock, which alone puts it a tier above other support Pokemon, but it also gets a slew of other support moves like Recover, Thunder Wave and Taunt, and has all the right stats to take advantage of them. It has enough Speed to quickly set up multiple layers and abuse Taunt, and since its Defenses are so massive, it retains plenty of bulk even when it uses max Speed, letting it set up on a ton of Pokemon.
Well, so what? It does its job well. Its supposed to. It's not like Spikes are impossible to prevent or get rid of, right? Wrong. That's the catch with Deoxys-D imo, its the fact that unless you're constantly keeping up enough offensive pressure to prevent it from setting up too much, you're left relying on Rapid Spin to not get completely hazard-fucked. Usually this wouldn't be too big of an issue, but then you have to consider the fact that the Spinblockers in the tier completely outmatch the Spinners. Then compound to that the fact that the Spinners themselves are really subpar Pokemon outside of actually Spinning (I mean lets be honest, no one would use Top or Blastoise if they didn't Spin), and you start realizing that relying on Repid Spin isn't exactly a good thing. In the short term, yes, Spinners do a good job of keeping hazards off the field, but in the long term, Deoxys actually outlasts every single Spinner and just sets hazards up again and again, and once your Spinner is gone, hazards are staying there. So then, you're left relying on one thing to keep Deoxys at bay - offense.
I saw a ton of posts in the megathread whose argument for keeping it around was basically "it gets 2HKO'd by x Pokemon with y move" or "its useless if it gets Taunted." But, so what? Its not like Deoxys is going to stay in on said Pokemon to get killed or Taunted. Its going to switch out, use one of the plenty of opportunities it gets to come in, set up another layer as you switch, then switch right back out and do it again. It doesn't need to stay in multiple turns to do its job because it doesn't need to set up all its layers at once. So then, it becomes pretty obvious that the only thing left for you to do is to have so much offensive pressure on your team that Deoxys just does not get a good switch-in opportunity, otherwise you run the risk of getting set up on.
So yeah, that's essentially why I believe Deoxys-D is a negative influence on UU. I don't like the idea of a metagame where you are essentially forced to run hyper-offensive teams just to not get fucked over by a single Pokemon.
Before I say anything else, let me clarify that my reason for voting this way has absolutely nothing to do with how "difficult" it is to kill off Deoxys-D. Read on for more details.
My reasoning for wanting Deoxys-D gone from the tier is as follows:
Much like Deoxys-S did in OU, it simply supports its team far too well. Not only does it have access to both Spikes and Stealth Rock, which alone puts it a tier above other support Pokemon, but it also gets a slew of other support moves like Recover, Thunder Wave and Taunt, and has all the right stats to take advantage of them. It has enough Speed to quickly set up multiple layers and abuse Taunt, and since its Defenses are so massive, it retains plenty of bulk even when it uses max Speed, letting it set up on a ton of Pokemon.
Well, so what? It does its job well. Its supposed to. It's not like Spikes are impossible to prevent or get rid of, right? Wrong. That's the catch with Deoxys-D imo, its the fact that unless you're constantly keeping up enough offensive pressure to prevent it from setting up too much, you're left relying on Rapid Spin to not get completely hazard-fucked. Usually this wouldn't be too big of an issue, but then you have to consider the fact that the Spinblockers in the tier completely outmatch the Spinners. Then compound to that the fact that the Spinners themselves are really subpar Pokemon outside of actually Spinning (I mean lets be honest, no one would use Top or Blastoise if they didn't Spin), and you start realizing that relying on Repid Spin isn't exactly a good thing. In the short term, yes, Spinners do a good job of keeping hazards off the field, but in the long term, Deoxys actually outlasts every single Spinner and just sets hazards up again and again, and once your Spinner is gone, hazards are staying there. So then, you're left relying on one thing to keep Deoxys at bay - offense.
I saw a ton of posts in the megathread whose argument for keeping it around was basically "it gets 2HKO'd by x Pokemon with y move" or "its useless if it gets Taunted." But, so what? Its not like Deoxys is going to stay in on said Pokemon to get killed or Taunted. Its going to switch out, use one of the plenty of opportunities it gets to come in, set up another layer as you switch, then switch right back out and do it again. It doesn't need to stay in multiple turns to do its job because it doesn't need to set up all its layers at once. So then, it becomes pretty obvious that the only thing left for you to do is to have so much offensive pressure on your team that Deoxys just does not get a good switch-in opportunity, otherwise you run the risk of getting set up on.
So yeah, that's essentially why I believe Deoxys-D is a negative influence on UU. I don't like the idea of a metagame where you are essentially forced to run hyper-offensive teams just to not get fucked over by a single Pokemon.