np: UU Stage 6 - No Surprises

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JabbaTheGriffin

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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

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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.
 
time to get into uu again :P

roserade and froslass have some huge shoes to fill imo, as deo d was the best spiker in the tier for most teams.
 

kokoloko

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I still think "np: UU - Where the fuck is Scrafty? :(" would have been a better name.

If people take advantage of Deoxys leaving and start building more defensive teams, bulky Water usage should go up quite a bit, giving Roserade plenty of opportunities to set up.

So yeah I give it ~two weeks before Spikes start shitting on the metagame again :)

edit: Also, fuck sand is so gay... I wanna use Morning Sun Arcanine /=
 
Now that Deoxys-D is gone, I believe that most players will change their playstyle. God damnit, I was a bulky-offensive or a balanced player and I had to build a hyper offensive team to reach top 20 on the ladder. I also see Krookodile dropping a little bit in usage, as Pursuit trapping or mindgames with Crunch are not so fundamental to win a game. However, I do believe that having Deoxys-D in the tier made some very good variants of Pokemon pop out now which were once rarely seen, I am talking about CB Heracross. Everyone was obcessed with CS Heracross until they found out that CB 2HKO's even the sturdiest walls like Bronzong and Suicune (iirc). Sand will probably rise up again, and I have this feeling that it will be suspect in the next few rounds. As for hazards, Roserade and Froslass definetly taking the lead now
 

SJCrew

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Like I said before, Roserade UU is better than Deo-D UU. But by how much, I wonder?
 
Like I said before, Roserade UU is better than Deo-D UU. But by how much, I wonder?
I disagree. Roserade UU is actually just as bad, if not worse. Roserade can actually hit things back with powerful Leaf Storms/Giga Drains and Hidden Power Fire/Hidden Power Ice, instead of trying to use Magic Coat to laugh at a Taunter; or it can disable the Pokemon by outspeeding and putting it to sleep with Sleep Powder. Toxic Spikes is more lethal on anything that isn't a Steel-type. Steels get wrecked by HP Fire. Roserade's Physical defense may not be great, but it has a Special Defense that more than makes up for it, as well as a solid base HP.

However, Deoxys-D was equally threatening (and only better in the defenses department - its offenses are utter crap such that it needs Night Shade in order to do anything else) and equally tier-shattering in its support of offensive teams.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
I think sand veil is pretty broken, not more so with Deoxys-D gone but more obviously so since there is one thing less to focus on now.

I think it should be banned because it gets a very consistent amounts of win without actually relying on a coherent strategy, unless you count stalling for misses with Toxic Spikes down as a strategy...

I used Cacturne and it is ridiculously good because of sand veil and only because of sand veil sweeping shit like its nothing with a simple SD/Sub/Sucker/Drain combo.

If you combine Toxic Spikes/Stealth Rock/Sand Stream the passive damage becomes so massive that merely subbing down can reduce health to the point where Sucker Punch can get a messy kill on basically anything that tries to revenge kill Cacturne. Toxic Spikes is a very usable hazard in UU, even though Roserade usage is surely going to rise even more, because sand teams are going to use Stoutland which will always be able to badly mess Roserade up with Pursuit and great attack.

Of course there are other abusers, one of which I have been using alongside Cacturne is Gligar with an equally simple Sub/Root/SD/EQ set. It is fast and bulky which lets it abuse Substitute very well, especially as everyone always tries to status Gligar to neuter it. Being walled by floating stuff is a surmountable problem because most Flying stuff can't beat it either. Flygon is basically always choiced and can't break through Gligar without lots and lots of crits, getting stalled to death. Same for Bronzong without the choice because Swords Dance has huge PP (48). Zapdos cannot actually win without using HP Ice or Life Orb Heat Waves which would beat you even if you could hit it. Most other Flyers could beat you regardless but thats besides the point I think. Once sturdy counters like Milotic or Slowbro have to hope very hard not to miss, otherwise Toxic Spike damage quickly overcomes them with just one miss.

Also as all sand veil users will use Hippotas as a teammate, their teams will also almost always use Stoutland which easily cleans up when combined with sand veil abusers.

And if you want to point out a flaw in my logic here's a start...

I assume that all Hippowdon reliant teams (and by extension sand veil teams) are going to use Stoutland. I assume that Stoutland is going to reliably mess up Roserade, the only common grounded UU poison. I assume that counting on misses with Sand Veil is not a real strategy.
 
I think sand veil is pretty broken, not more so with Deoxys-D gone but more obviously so since there is one thing less to focus on now.

Oh boy, what do we have here? Let's hear thy case before I shatter it like glass.

I think it should be banned because it gets a very consistent amounts of win without actually relying on a coherent strategy, unless you count stalling for misses with Toxic Spikes down as a strategy...

I used Cacturne and it is ridiculously good because of sand veil and only because of sand veil sweeping shit like its nothing with a simple SD/Sub/Sucker/Drain combo.

Sand Veil isn't the only reason Cacturne is good. It has a good Attack and a movepool to go along with the ability, and a good offensive typing for the likes of handling Bulky Waters - however, Grass/Dark also means it fears Bug-types immensely. All Sand Veil does is give it an extra environment to be good at, and actually allows it to synergize with Hippo and Stoutland.

If you combine Toxic Spikes/Stealth Rock/Sand Stream the passive damage becomes so massive that merely subbing down can reduce health to the point where Sucker Punch can get a messy kill on basically anything that tries to revenge kill Cacturne. Toxic Spikes is a very usable hazard in UU, even though Roserade usage is surely going to rise even more, because sand teams are going to use Stoutland which will always be able to badly mess Roserade up with Pursuit and great attack.

ERROR: There's a reason why Sigilyph and other Magic Guard Pokemon neuter this argument, but it requires people to actually have the knowhow of the ability.

However, Stoutland's power is undebatable.


Of course there are other abusers, one of which I have been using alongside Cacturne is Gligar with an equally simple Sub/Root/SD/EQ set. It is fast and bulky which lets it abuse Substitute very well, especially as everyone always tries to status Gligar to neuter it. Being walled by floating stuff is a surmountable problem because most Flying stuff can't beat it either. Flygon is basically always choiced and can't break through Gligar without lots and lots of crits, getting stalled to death. Same for Bronzong without the choice because Swords Dance has huge PP (48). Zapdos cannot actually win without using HP Ice or Life Orb Heat Waves which would beat you even if you could hit it. Most other Flyers could beat you regardless but thats besides the point I think. Once sturdy counters like Milotic or Slowbro have to hope very hard not to miss, otherwise Toxic Spike damage quickly overcomes them with just one miss.

Are... you arguing that Gligar is broken? I am at a loss for words when there exists Ice-types that make it cry in UU moreso than OU. And Pokes that have a good Sp.Atk. and Ice Beam/Blizzard, like Porygon-Z.

Also as all sand veil users will use Hippotas as a teammate, their teams will also almost always use Stoutland which easily cleans up when combined with sand veil abusers.

Stoutland is solid on its own as a revenge killer, for its movepool is sufficient to hit everything with impunity. Sand Rush is icing on the cake. Using him in Sand exacerbates his power to levels of "lethal".

And if you want to point out a flaw in my logic here's a start...

I assume that all Hippowdon reliant teams (and by extension sand veil teams) are going to use Stoutland. I assume that Stoutland is going to reliably mess up Roserade, the only common grounded UU poison. I assume that counting on misses with Sand Veil is not a real strategy.
1. Hippowdon is banned in UU for being too tanky for Pokes to deal with. Then there's his sand which reinforces OHKOs from its decent Attack and array of moves, and his shrugging off hits with Slack Off easily. Hippopotas, an NFE, is something that is meh overall.

2. Stoutland doesn't have to use Pursuit to kill Roserade. He knows Fire Fang and uses that to kill it.

3. Using Cacturne is all and good, but Sand Veil isn't the exclusive reason for its power. If all it had was Sand Veil, then it wouldn't be able to be put on even NU teams, because that would imply that it had nothing to attack with, or imply that outside of Sand it was impossible to use.

4. If you're arguing that Stoutland is too powerful for UU, I can agree with that as well. But banning Sand won't really change that, since its job is revengekilling, and it has good Speed already. Sand Rush doubles his already-good Speed, and makes sure Sand doesn't give it residual damage. Other than that, you will likely need to still give it a Choice Band or get a Swords Dance boost anyway, and even then you will still need a Jolly nature to make sure you outspeed everything in UU (or at least try :P).

Sand Veil isn't broken. The last metagame discussion thread for UU made that absurdly clear. I'd quote all the arguments that Sand Veil isn't broken from the last thread, but that would take too long and be insulting to your intelligence.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
1. Hippowdon is banned in UU for being too tanky for Pokes to deal with. Then there's his sand which reinforces OHKOs from its decent Attack and array of moves, and his shrugging off hits with Slack Off easily. Hippopotas, an NFE, is something that is meh overall.

2. Stoutland doesn't have to use Pursuit to kill Roserade. He knows Fire Fang and uses that to kill it.

3. Using Cacturne is all and good, but Sand Veil isn't the exclusive reason for its power. If all it had was Sand Veil, then it wouldn't be able to be put on even NU teams, because that would imply that it had nothing to attack with, or imply that outside of Sand it was impossible to use.

4. If you're arguing that Stoutland is too powerful for UU, I can agree with that as well. But banning Sand won't really change that, since its job is revengekilling, and it has good Speed already. Sand Rush doubles his already-good Speed, and makes sure Sand doesn't give it residual damage. Other than that, you will likely need to still give it a Choice Band or get a Swords Dance boost anyway, and even then you will still need a Jolly nature to make sure you outspeed everything in UU (or at least try :P).

Sand Veil isn't broken. The last metagame discussion thread for UU made that absurdly clear. I'd quote all the arguments that Sand Veil isn't broken from the last thread, but that would take too long and be insulting to your intelligence.
1. I never said Hippotas should be banned...

2. Return does more than Fire Fang lol. Pursuit almost guarantees that Rosy dies though since no Rosy wants to stay in on Stoutland. I bring up Roserade only because I said using Sand Veil+Toxic Spikes is absurdly powerful and uncompetitive.

3. Sand Veil really does make Cacutrne usable otherwise it would be a worse Bisharp.

4. Never did I say Stoutland was broken or sand should be banned. Sand Veil should be banned because it gets too many wins with no real strategy. For the record I think Stoutland is no where near broken but whatever.

As a matter of fact I did read the last thread. As you so eloquently put "Sand Veil isn't broken, but merely annoying." Well I say its beyond annoying actually, its completely uncompetitive...so why do we keep an uncompetitve move in a competitive game? Of course Splash is not going to be banned but that is because it is not overpowered.

No amount of arguments or statistics really should change your stance, banning sand veil, the way I see it, is an opinion question. Is waiting for a miss a real strategy? My sand team here http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3463375 reached number two on the ladder by doing nothing more than haxing. If you want to keep shit like this in your game, that is fine by me, I'll just keep racking up the wins but hey, that is your choice...
 

Meru

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Sand Veil isn't broken. The last metagame discussion thread for UU made that absurdly clear. I'd quote all the arguments that Sand Veil isn't broken from the last thread, but that would take too long and be insulting to your intelligence.
Plenty of players, council members included, posted comments about how Sand Veil should've been eliminated with Abomasnow. So go ahead and feel free to "insult their intelligence."
 

FlareBlitz

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Sand Veil is uncompetitive and should be banned if we expect to remain consistent within the principle of our own clauses. I know some other council members feel similarly, since we've all lost enough games to misshax bullshit.

Whether this is practical or not is the question - there are other things that should be occupying our attention (kingdra, roserade, stoutland, and just adapting to the new metagame in general) and a Sand Veil ban may not even be feasible, with the way PO is set up (which was one of the problems we encountered when attempting to ban Snow Cloak / Snow Warning last time). Given the general sentiment of the community, these obstacles may not be worth overcoming. I just wanted to let it be known that a Sand Veil ban is something that I personally, at the least, would like to happen.
 
Not going to comment on sand veil, I haven't used it (in UU atleast). Lost a few games to it, but damn it's pretty funny. Luck sure as hell makes a game exciting. When you send in your heracross late game. Knowing you will only win with a crit, do you ragequit? HELL NO you go in there with your hera and beg for that crit. Most of the time doesn't matter. But when it does. You gotta admit in your head you are like.


And Yes, it's different from gligar who has a better shot at getting the miss. And will often be played specificly bait said miss. But guys I like him. Certainly add flavor to sand teams.

And guys be nice to him he was just banned from LC


But aside from this


TR Offensive bronzong. What a boss. Using a set I just threw together. It's seriously messing alot of people up. I can lead with it and throw huge dents in everything. He can come in, or even lead. Thanks to massive bulk and many solid resistances Then sweep so hard. I threw him on a team where I previously had him on as a SR set up guy, but replaced him with nidoqeen. Then thought I'd try him out, and in all of my games (save one) with this new team (where he has absolutely no support) I've shot up the ladder a solid 200 points undefeated. (granted from 1000 [twas trolling with baton pass which is always fun])
I can imagine with, cleric support he will massively rape teams. Thinking I'm gonna throw one together a team around him read quick. maybe umbreon or clefable to support.

Here is the set for anyone who wants to try it.

Bronzong @ Life Orb
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SDef
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Trick Room
- Gyro Ball
- Earthquake
- Zen Headbutt

Zen Headbutt right now is okay. Loves grabbing the OHKO against crobat leads that taunt, but gonna build a team around him and report back.


Another Thing I've had alot of luck with is trickscarf Azelf. (just an edit to pass the time)
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
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Can we stop with the Sand Veil is broken nonsense?

For something to merit a ban, it has to be broken. Not "uncompetitive" (lol what does this even mean) or "bullshit" or "gay".

FlareBlitz said:
Sand Veil is uncompetitive and should be banned if we expect to remain consistent within the principle of our own clauses. I know some other council members feel similarly, since we've all lost enough games to misshax bullshit.
Please find one piece of Smogon policy that states that "misshax bullshit" should be banned. In fact, I would argue that the vast majority of Smogon policy would oppose a ban on Sand Veil simply because Sand Veil is not a dominating force in the metagame. All Sand Veil does in this metagame is give two Pokemon, the latter of which is almost never seen, one small Evasion boost.

I love how people call something "uncompetitive" yet they don't know what competitiveness is as defined by Smogon and fail to realize that invoking competitiveness actually helps the opposing argument.
CDM said:
The metagame should encourage players to play to win.
That's all competitiveness is. Nothing about luck, or Sand Veil, or "misshax" or anything else. Even in the explanation for the CDPM, it clarifies that minor occurrences of luck have nothing to do with competitiveness. The quote:

CDM said:
While some players may "play just for fun", or carry personal opinions about "winning the right way" -- these ideals should not be a focal point of the metagame.
I posted at length an analysis of why Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are not at odds with any relevant Smogon policy. It also has some stuff on Brightpowder but that seems like a lost cause now. Link: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4110085&postcount=122.

If you want Smogon policy to be changed to have a more negative attitude towards Sand Veil, that's fine, but to say that current policy supports a Sand Veil ban is just incorrect.
 

kokoloko

what matters is our plan!
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
Yes because policy dictates what gets banned and not the other way around -.- you're kidding right? There's been a ton of instances where so-called 'policy' had to be 'changed' in order to accommodate for a desired change. The Moody ban comes to mind... Policy is created as a guideline, not as an unbreakable rule. It would be ridiculous to bind ourselves like that.

Why was Moody banned? Because it created an uncompetitive environment where players willingly and actively handed control of the game to the RNG. Sand Veil does essentially the same thing, but to a much lesser extent, that much I'll grant you.

It's one thing to oppose a ban on Sand Veil because you don't think its ban worthy, but it's another entirely to say that we can't declare it a suspect based on policy. You claim something has to be broken as opposed to uncompetitive in order to be banned because there's no solid definition of uncompetitive, right? Okay, so what's your definition of broken? (hint: there is none)

ps. uncompetitive == broken in my book, js
 

FlareBlitz

Relaxed nature. Loves to eat.
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Past SPL Champion
Please find one piece of Smogon policy that states that "misshax bullshit" should be banned.
Evasion clause. The Brightpowder ban.

Also, it's hilarious that you say "hey, see, policy says we shouldn't ban sand veil" and then ignore precedence (which is stronger than strict policy) which suggests that we should.

I love how people call something "uncompetitive" yet they don't know what competitiveness is as defined by Smogon and fail to realize that invoking competitiveness actually helps the opposing argument.
Competitiveness is simply minimizing the number of factors that affect the chance of a player of greater skill winning over a player of lesser skill. Moody was the definition of uncompetitive, for example.
There have been many counter-examples offered (such as Serene Grace flinch abuse etc) and all of them have been addressed in previous threads, so unless you want this to turn into a "who can quote previous posts the most" war let's stick to whether or not banning Sand Veil is practical, not whether we can (because the answer to that is, to borrow Obama's catch phrase, "yes we can").

Anyway, I'd like to discuss Sand Veil and what we should do about it (if anything) with the rest of the senators at some point. For now, though, I mostly just want impressions of the metagame.

I am noticing a much wider variety of spikers. It seems that most spikestack offense teams are simply using spikers other than Deo-D to get their hazards up. It's gratifying to see that these new spikers are not nearly as efficacious, although some are quite good. I've been using a certain set:

Scolipede @ Leftovers / Lum Berry
Jolly
176 HP / 80 Atk / 252 Spe
-Spikes
-Swords Dance
-Megahorn
-Rock Slide / Earthquake

For those of you who played Gen IV, this plays a lot like the old SD / Rapid Spin Kabutops. This is an excellent spiker that beats every single spinner. Hitmontop can't touch you, as you're immune to Toxic and 4x resist Fighting moves. Blastoise is 2hko'd by +2 Megahorn 100% of the time after SR and one turn of Lefties recover - its only chance is to burn you (hence the Lum Berry). This outruns and ohkos Cryogonal. Xatu can't switch in without fear of taking boosted Megahorns to the face (+2 Megahorn guaranteed to ohko 252 / 0 variants, 2hkos 252/252+ variants while you avoid an ohko from Psychic). Rock Slide is for Zapdos (my team hates it) but you can go with Earthquake if Cobalion and Nidoqueen concern you more.

Also, this beats the shit out of Froslass, which is always nice.
 

shrang

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Also, it's hilarious that you say "hey, see, policy says we shouldn't ban sand veil" and then ignore precedence (which is stronger than strict policy) which suggests that we should.
Why do we have to follow precedence, especially when that piece of precedence is ridiculously controversial? The Brightpowder / Lax Incense ban was probably the most pointless ban in the history of Smogon, it did absolutely nothing to change the metagame. The only reason why people elected to have it banned was that it was broken on Garchomp, and we ended up banning Garchomp anyway, when we realised that Brightpowder did nothing to make it more or less broken (arguably less, since Leftovers was infinitely better).
 
Considering how I've been playing stall in UU with Deoxys-D as my core, so :(. Oh well, could see it happening, Deoxys-D was pretty amazing. I did try offense/balanced, but didn't really worked considering how powerful stall was now. Now might be able to try new strats :P
 
Yep, gotta admit when Deoxys was around it would tale like not even 2 mins to come up with a good team and hit high on the ladder, but now I gotta spend and test bare Pokemon.

LO Arcanine is even better now, destroying everything. People tend to mispredict and lose more than one Pokemon and Arcanine is still alive, that thing is too underrated. From the depths of the sea comes Kingdra, the subdd set being more efficient now with Deoxys gone. The increased useage in Froslass is all cool, cauz for some reason they always let up and let Raikou get several calm minds and a substitute lmao.
 

Psychotic

Banned deucer.
Specs Kingdra is probably my favorite new set to use with Deoxys-D gone. Deoxys-D walled it, and you could never spam Draco Meteor or else it would come in and set up for free. Now I just spam it fer days, and a lot of teams have to sacrifice a poke every time they want to switch in or be forced to recover, giving me a free switch. So many people switch in or stay in with their bulky water or Top thinking I'm Dragon Dancing, only to get obliterated.
 

FlareBlitz

Relaxed nature. Loves to eat.
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Past SPL Champion
Why do we have to follow precedence, especially when that piece of precedence is ridiculously controversial?
We don't have to at all. My point was that if we're going to stand on a point of principle regarding policy, we shouldn't ignore precedence, which is equally if not more relevant. I would rather not do either, though.

And regarding Kingdra, my preferred variant is still Special RD. Not only does it obliterate sand teams once Empoleon is gone / weakened, it's a late-game cleaner of unparalleled power and speed. And you can use it as a mini-specs kingdra if you really wanted to.
 
who cares about policy and needing fancy reasoning for banning stuff , sand veil is complete bullshit and everyone knows it is just ban it.
 
Ok I'm fairly new to UU but I've played OU since 4th gen. But IMO there is really no reason to ban Sand Veil, only 2(?) pokes get it, one has less than 1% usage in the tier, and the other... Well its not like he is only useful because of it. Banning it will have absolutely zero impact on the tier at all (Cacturne gets used even less than his already pitiful usage stat and Gligar uses Hyper Cutter or Immunity nbd) and, again, IMO unless something is actually dominating the tier with an iron fist of OPness it doesn't need the see the banhammer. Anytime a ban doesn't have any impact on a tier it probably didnt need to be banned, granted technically I'm theorizing, but I doubt sand veil being gone will cause giant ripples in the tier causing Rattata to rise up and overtake the number on spot. (Sarcasm)
 
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