this is true, but i still think there's a distinction to be made here even between high-level players and top-level players. the absolute best of the best play a different meta than the average reqs-getter. it's like the difference between a regular professional athlete and an olympian athlete. it's two different levels of play
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Announcement np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 11 - We Didn't Start the Fire
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It’s very clear that Gouging Fire isn’t on the line of brokenness like Sneasler or Bloodmoon. But (WARNING: Personal experience incoming!) while I don’t find the Dragon Dance set too oppressive (Tera is the only thing that breaks this), every time I use Band Gouging Fire in Sun it nearly always manages to grab 2-3 KOs with Raging Fury before Sun runs out or it hits itself in confusion and ends the run. There is literally no way to work around this without sacking several Mons unless you have Heatran. Landorus-T isn’t really even an answer.
-1 168 Atk Choice Band Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 32 Def Landorus-Therian in Sun: 356-420 (93.1 - 109.9%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
If this exists, I would like to see the average amount of Mons Gouging Fire KOs per game. I think the real problem in this argument is everyone has a different definition of “broken”. For you, it seems to be a, “People aren’t auto-winning with Gouging Fire. It isn’t broken.” For me, it’s more like, “You can beat it but you have to sack like half your team. That’s pretty oppressive and broken.” Broken is a pretty relative term.
i think different gouging sets are broken at different levels of play. the band sun set is broken on low and low-mid ladder, the ddance breaking swipe set is broken on mid-high and high ladder, and i think that's where the disconnect might be coming from regarding which gouging set is the "more broken" one, or the one that's breaking it, or whatever
I made a mistake. I’ve been revealed as my low-ladder self.
hey, it's nothing to be ashamed of. laddering's harder than people make it seemI made a mistake. I’ve been revealed as my low-ladder self.
(Disclaimer upfront: I'm responding to this in chunks as I read through, so I make no claims there will not be redundancies or later-addressed things like the response to Storm that occurs further in)
Comments as of this reply: 1)
Okay so first thing I need to address is that these responses still operate under the mistaken premise that a Mon not having extremely high usage and win-rate is an indicator that it is not having an unhealthy effect on the Meta. People have pointed already to the Dracovish example as a more-extreme-instance but still applicable principle: the mon exerting the pressure will frequently have less usage than its checks because the Checks are necessary to counterplay it, while you can capitalize on the mon's pressure without running it yourself (EX in that case would be using more Grass or Fairy attackers to hit Water resists/absorbers like Toed or Dragons). Gouging Fire is theoretically checked by several Common Pokemon like GT and Lando, but these Pokemon for example don't necessarily handle it long term without compromising their play against other things they're meant to do as Glue/Utility Pokemon, while GF itself can play the long-game thanks to its Bulk and Recovery (which it has room to fit easily on most sets).
This also goes into the point that even if the players can beat Gouging Fire, that doesn't mean it's fun to teambuild with it in mind. Legitimate question, is your point at the end of this section about "form your own opinions" (sarcastic condescension aside) meant to say this is a potentially-true conclusion that many pro-ban voters did not come to themselves (despite playing the latter, Reqs made or not), or that you think this is an untrue/illegitimate reason at base that is being parroted because Ban-GF is the popular sentiment? I want to respond to this point in more depth but also want to be clear on what I am responding to to avoid ambiguity or accusations of/accidentally strawmanning.
The mention of Raging Bolt (which I can more than believe is also not a good presence) is irrelevant to whether or not GF is unhealthy, as is frequently brought up in Suspects about other subjects and is a frequent occurrence this generation because of the absurd Power-Surge several new additions bring with each update. Brought up despite being the last point because it's not relevant to what I will subsequently argue but I also don't want to leave it unaddressed, though the "how many aren't mentioned" or "what about" sentiment is still something that hangs over other mentions like Dragonite that came up.
You mention "how to play vs each possible variant hasnot been inoculated" while not stating what those forms of counterplay are, nor responding to how the 6-member team with the entire Meta to contend with is where the restrictive teambuilding stems from: the question is not simply "is it possible to respond to all of Gouging Fire's variants" but "is it possible to respond to Gouging Fire's variants and still have a reasonable chance of competing with the rest of the Meta structures which may not be running it?" I don't disbelieve that you have counterplay examples in mind, but simply asserting that they exist and that the playerbase hasn't caught on yet doesn't forward anything. If anything it benefits your position to share such examples to make people see "maybe this works" so they will go try it and perhaps see your point that they can teambuild for it without great detriment. Unintentionally or not, withholding those examples either suggests you don't have a meaningful number to cite, or you just want to be smarter than the other players who don't figure out what you did a while ago even at a detriment to the DNB position.
One thing to bear in mind is that Gouging Fire can be assumed to play optimally but admittedly is not always piloted flawlessly in a match, whether due to player error or missing some predictions. The discrepancy here is that the penalty for misplaying on Gouging Fire is typically much lower than the penalty for the opponent in the vast majority of scenarios. Against the Breaking Swipe sets, positioning yourself poorly due to mispredicting the set or the move used puts GF in a position to Snowball if your team is not built with multiple forms of Counterplay present (which goes to the "restrictive on teambuilding" argument if you're not facing Gouging Fire but now dealing with stuff like Bolt or Ogerpon that that Counterplay building has severe problems with); against the Band Breaker sets, we've already seen calcs showing how hard it hits such that its sturdiest checks still have to watch themselves to weather it long term, while not often being offensive or too threatening themselves to actually put it on the backfoot rather than wait for it to run out of steam; Dragon Dance is a typical "set-up sweeper needs to grab a turn" condition, but on a mon that bulky there are significantly more things against which it can survive to grab that turn (Great Tusk is a roll to KO the Bulky set with SE Headlong after SR, and can't KO from full on 1 Spike, for a raw number demonstration).
All that rambling aside, Gouging Fire still needs to be piloted decently to achieve good results, but the imbalance is the fact that with both players flying blind without something like an Open Team Sheet, good plays by GF are to just not eat Glue against its common counterplay, while playing against it requires identifying the set while not having the appropriate counter measure on your team take too much damage in the process and THEN not eating glue with said checks. The Skill Floor (in this wording referring to the level of performance achieved without above-average playing ability) on GF is notably higher than most of the Mons in OU, even including other suspect-wanted Candidates.
I am counting the claim about "Everything I predicted is coming true" because the meaning behind the numbers does not objectively bear out that conclusion, it just feels like an assertion of intelligence over the incorrect ban voters)
Boots Meta is seeing presence for reasons that wouldn't be particularly exacerbated by Gouging Fire staying or going. When we have basically 3 worthwile Hazard countermeasures (and one of them in Cinderace is only a half-measure because it basically falls apart if you set your own), Boots are going to be common place because keeping Hazards off the field is not reliable this generation by nature. I don't see what Gouging Fire has to do with holding back Boots Spam when, Webs or not, they're already in the running for most relevant item in OU period.
It was brought up in a previous reply but I will reiterate it here because I also think it worth addressing: where is the Web Spam that you believe heralds a Boots Meta we are not in already? None of the Sticky Web setters crack the Top 30 on the usage listings you yourself posted and so heavily espouse the significance of, and considering the setters are few and synonymous with the style, their usage would be a good indicator of how many Webs teams are being run. Hypothetically, wouldn't Gouging Fire be a mon that heavily incentivizes Webs anyway, pairing well with them due to its "okay at best" speed and immense Breaking Power that would want to minimize faster offensive breakers like Dragapult, Roaring Moon, Kyurem, or Walking Wake? I don't see how Gouging Fire discourages Webs when it benefits immensely from them and a lot of its countermeasures don't care much about the Speed drop due to Boots or simply ignoring the hazards (Lando-T again here).
You're losing me again: you argue Gouging Fire does not "singlehandedly" stop a Boots Meta, but you have made prior arguments that a Boots Spam Meta is an undesireable state of things in this thread pertaining to the GF Suspect, which suggests a relevance of some sort since I don't take you for the type to make non-sequitor arguments given how strongly you feel on the Meta. With that said I would revisit my point that Boots are an incredibly common item for factors that long precede GF's presence in the Meta and continued into the one we currently sit in, as well as the assertion of Webs Emerging as something they would dominate despite the Usage stats shared not supporting that premise.
Several of these examples go back to my point about Raging Bolt early, which I might call "whataboutism" in terms of definition even if that term feels more loaded/accusatory than I would want to use here. Kyurem itself went up for Suspect and, while not banned, was still a Majority Ban vote at 58/60% needed. Raging Bolt, Roaring Moon, and Kingambit, along with some things you didn't cite like Ogerpon-W, are also all extremely contentious topics that rank high on the Surveys, GF simply ranked higher and thus was put to Suspect first after the most recent survey. And despite your facetious comment at the end, it's a consistent premise that if Gouging Fire ranked highest on the Survey and thus was considered most pressing for tiering action, then indeed people would (over) prepare for it and thus hamper GF's personal win rate even if it causes issue into other match ups. Hypothetically, Raging Bolt would feast on stuff like Dondozo and Alomomola, so if they're run more to deal with GF, it gains a greater win rate because more teams have things it capitalizes on, which is the case on the ladder even if it's below 50% in SPL (I bring this up to illustrate the idea, I think RB specifically neither supports nor disproves this idea in a significant fashion atm).
The Walking Wake suspect can be argued as pre-mature, but one important distinction there is that Walking Wake is/was SIGNIFICANTLY more dependent on Weather to achieve the results that got it attention, whereas Gouging Fire just goes from a Machine Gun to a Rail Cannon given Sun, making Weather removal a less effective counterplay method than it would have been for Wake.
The other citations I think just return to the cited point that listing other Pokemon that are made broken or unhealthy by these traits, especially ones that are frequently points of scrutiny like, again, Kingambit, does not further your argument in a meaningful way. The scenario Storm Zone could refute this with immediately is "Gouging Fire AND Kingambit are unhealthy for being able to tech Tera to dodge Revenge Killing after set-up"
The issue I take here is the assertion that Gouging Fire encourages a reasonable choice in practice (Team must outlast the outlast-outlaster, or pressure it hard so it can't last long enough to sweep me). On paper this sounds like a typical case of having to build so that your team is not weak to a particular Mon that can run rampant over the playstyle
(Note, Mons not chosen for strict relevant match-up with the moves used, but to have a baseline number used across all comparisons)
This is a mon with comparable Physical Bulk to 252 HP Skarmory or Corviknight without any investment itself, and easily beats the former on SpD or either if investing for its own Bulky sets. While there is some leeway to consider with factors like different Hazard weaknesses for sure, the raw tanking power Gouging Fire has while lacking the Passivity of most mons that reach that level of endurance is a much taller ask to beat than your average Bulky Sweeper like BU Great Tusk or DD Dragonite.
Not much to add here because a lot of it reads like asserting Storm or other players not using and sweeping with these styles is proof that they're not broken. While I do think Storm might be overblowing the dominance of Sun-Room GF for example, that kind of assertion isn't really something that can be meaningfully responded to since it's based on a lack-of-evidence rather than an argument based one. I'm not sure if the Zama-Webs comparison was to assert that said hypothetical style is equally theory-instead-of-practice or to argue that it is actually cheap and skill-less despite not getting complaints like the ones Storm is citing here.
For the sake of context, I went back to check the Usage statistics of Dracovish in OU prior to its Suspect and Ban in May of 2020.
Despite its much more extreme power in that Meta, Dracovish's usage trended around the same 11-14% range that Gouging Fire falls within for the statistics you cited here. Yes, as acknowledged, Dracovish is a very extreme case, as evidenced by Seismitoed sitting above it consistently and sometimes reaching as high as 28-30%, but if anything, Dracovish not achieving a more extreme usage rate despite its even easier "no think, just smash" capability would support the idea that usage doesn't reflect a Broken nature unless it swings VERY far to the other extreme such that it doesn't simply warp the meta but actively CANNOT be played without using, which very few things that were banned by Suspect I think have ever managed.
Your sample size is large but the data doesn't objectively bear the argument you claim it does because your argument depends on a premise as a given that isn't being held as true at the outset (i.e. "High Usage and Winrate is necessary to call unhealthy or broken").
I bring this up because there is the matter of how this matches up into other significant members of the Meta while handling GF this way: CB Rillaboom for example puts immense offensive pressure on anything besides Hydrapple (Grassy Glide obviously beats Ttar and Rotom-W, Drill and Val take 80% without Tera, and Glowking has to be afraid of Knock Off as a spammable move even into targets that don't take massive damage). The team also looks like it'd have to play particularly hard to get over Bulky Cores or certain mons like Gliscor.
Further context that assists this argument is how much success Storm had in other matches using this team structure, to show it's consistent against structures that both do and do not use Gouging Fire. This offers more to talk about by presenting counterplay structures that were alluded to in use outside of just a GF match on the Ladder. I brought up earlier how you mentioned people needing to be "inoculated" about better counter measures to GF teams, this is one example of why you should share more of those and more context on them.
I believe your word that he has been warned for the earlier postings outside the thread, but the repeated use of insulting and condescending tone/word choice feels equally derailing to the thread, considering it has been popping up repeatedly in the replies they have made since the first page of the thread and continued even into the post I responded to above, while being directed at multiple users who did not respond with the kind of irreverence or sarcasm I saw from them or DB. Even if it's not the intention as mentioned in a later reply edit, it's hard not to read such an outlook the wording occurring repeatedly and in replies to multiple people, be they specific user replies or constant allusions to the more abstract "Ban Crowd" that is constantly given the notion of only presenting opinions as opposed to his own statistical arguments.
The tone of such arguments has also led to rather cyclical discussion at points, with things such as repeated comparisons to other Suspect Radar Mons (Raging Bolt, Kingambit etc.) having occurred as early as the second post they made and again popping up in the most recent ones, despite having already been brought up in other responses and running counter to the 2nd rule about not discussing other potential suspects (perhaps a "soft" break but the context has repeatedly been "these traits cited about GF also apply to these other Pokemon"). It feels incongruous with the notion that most of the replies are being responded to or taken in good faith: one of my own previous replies took a follow-up response to be acknowledged as not a "troll attempt," and despite apologizing for the tone taken because of that perception, it resumes in replies following almost immediately, which leaves me confused as to whether the apology was sincere or if CTC simply does regard that many of the Ban-arguments made as "troll attempts" in the thread.
It's not my place to say any action should be taken outright, but I also think the tone and behavior that I've found so off-putting has been occurring as a repeated pattern throughout the thread rather than just between the two users cited interacting with each other.
(Since I noted these were a problem last time I will also be keeping count of sarcastic or condescending statements, whether standalone sentences like the end of this first one, or an insulting tone for otherwise legitimate arguments.
Comments as of this reply: 1)
Okay so first thing I need to address is that these responses still operate under the mistaken premise that a Mon not having extremely high usage and win-rate is an indicator that it is not having an unhealthy effect on the Meta. People have pointed already to the Dracovish example as a more-extreme-instance but still applicable principle: the mon exerting the pressure will frequently have less usage than its checks because the Checks are necessary to counterplay it, while you can capitalize on the mon's pressure without running it yourself (EX in that case would be using more Grass or Fairy attackers to hit Water resists/absorbers like Toed or Dragons). Gouging Fire is theoretically checked by several Common Pokemon like GT and Lando, but these Pokemon for example don't necessarily handle it long term without compromising their play against other things they're meant to do as Glue/Utility Pokemon, while GF itself can play the long-game thanks to its Bulk and Recovery (which it has room to fit easily on most sets).
This also goes into the point that even if the players can beat Gouging Fire, that doesn't mean it's fun to teambuild with it in mind. Legitimate question, is your point at the end of this section about "form your own opinions" (sarcastic condescension aside) meant to say this is a potentially-true conclusion that many pro-ban voters did not come to themselves (despite playing the latter, Reqs made or not), or that you think this is an untrue/illegitimate reason at base that is being parroted because Ban-GF is the popular sentiment? I want to respond to this point in more depth but also want to be clear on what I am responding to to avoid ambiguity or accusations of/accidentally strawmanning.
(Sarcastic Statements Count: 3)
The mention of Raging Bolt (which I can more than believe is also not a good presence) is irrelevant to whether or not GF is unhealthy, as is frequently brought up in Suspects about other subjects and is a frequent occurrence this generation because of the absurd Power-Surge several new additions bring with each update. Brought up despite being the last point because it's not relevant to what I will subsequently argue but I also don't want to leave it unaddressed, though the "how many aren't mentioned" or "what about" sentiment is still something that hangs over other mentions like Dragonite that came up.
You mention "how to play vs each possible variant hasnot been inoculated" while not stating what those forms of counterplay are, nor responding to how the 6-member team with the entire Meta to contend with is where the restrictive teambuilding stems from: the question is not simply "is it possible to respond to all of Gouging Fire's variants" but "is it possible to respond to Gouging Fire's variants and still have a reasonable chance of competing with the rest of the Meta structures which may not be running it?" I don't disbelieve that you have counterplay examples in mind, but simply asserting that they exist and that the playerbase hasn't caught on yet doesn't forward anything. If anything it benefits your position to share such examples to make people see "maybe this works" so they will go try it and perhaps see your point that they can teambuild for it without great detriment. Unintentionally or not, withholding those examples either suggests you don't have a meaningful number to cite, or you just want to be smarter than the other players who don't figure out what you did a while ago even at a detriment to the DNB position.
One thing to bear in mind is that Gouging Fire can be assumed to play optimally but admittedly is not always piloted flawlessly in a match, whether due to player error or missing some predictions. The discrepancy here is that the penalty for misplaying on Gouging Fire is typically much lower than the penalty for the opponent in the vast majority of scenarios. Against the Breaking Swipe sets, positioning yourself poorly due to mispredicting the set or the move used puts GF in a position to Snowball if your team is not built with multiple forms of Counterplay present (which goes to the "restrictive on teambuilding" argument if you're not facing Gouging Fire but now dealing with stuff like Bolt or Ogerpon that that Counterplay building has severe problems with); against the Band Breaker sets, we've already seen calcs showing how hard it hits such that its sturdiest checks still have to watch themselves to weather it long term, while not often being offensive or too threatening themselves to actually put it on the backfoot rather than wait for it to run out of steam; Dragon Dance is a typical "set-up sweeper needs to grab a turn" condition, but on a mon that bulky there are significantly more things against which it can survive to grab that turn (Great Tusk is a roll to KO the Bulky set with SE Headlong after SR, and can't KO from full on 1 Spike, for a raw number demonstration).
All that rambling aside, Gouging Fire still needs to be piloted decently to achieve good results, but the imbalance is the fact that with both players flying blind without something like an Open Team Sheet, good plays by GF are to just not eat Glue against its common counterplay, while playing against it requires identifying the set while not having the appropriate counter measure on your team take too much damage in the process and THEN not eating glue with said checks. The Skill Floor (in this wording referring to the level of performance achieved without above-average playing ability) on GF is notably higher than most of the Mons in OU, even including other suspect-wanted Candidates.
(Sarcastic Comment Count: 6
I am counting the claim about "Everything I predicted is coming true" because the meaning behind the numbers does not objectively bear out that conclusion, it just feels like an assertion of intelligence over the incorrect ban voters)
Boots Meta is seeing presence for reasons that wouldn't be particularly exacerbated by Gouging Fire staying or going. When we have basically 3 worthwile Hazard countermeasures (and one of them in Cinderace is only a half-measure because it basically falls apart if you set your own), Boots are going to be common place because keeping Hazards off the field is not reliable this generation by nature. I don't see what Gouging Fire has to do with holding back Boots Spam when, Webs or not, they're already in the running for most relevant item in OU period.
It was brought up in a previous reply but I will reiterate it here because I also think it worth addressing: where is the Web Spam that you believe heralds a Boots Meta we are not in already? None of the Sticky Web setters crack the Top 30 on the usage listings you yourself posted and so heavily espouse the significance of, and considering the setters are few and synonymous with the style, their usage would be a good indicator of how many Webs teams are being run. Hypothetically, wouldn't Gouging Fire be a mon that heavily incentivizes Webs anyway, pairing well with them due to its "okay at best" speed and immense Breaking Power that would want to minimize faster offensive breakers like Dragapult, Roaring Moon, Kyurem, or Walking Wake? I don't see how Gouging Fire discourages Webs when it benefits immensely from them and a lot of its countermeasures don't care much about the Speed drop due to Boots or simply ignoring the hazards (Lando-T again here).
(Sarcastic Comment Count: 7)
You're losing me again: you argue Gouging Fire does not "singlehandedly" stop a Boots Meta, but you have made prior arguments that a Boots Spam Meta is an undesireable state of things in this thread pertaining to the GF Suspect, which suggests a relevance of some sort since I don't take you for the type to make non-sequitor arguments given how strongly you feel on the Meta. With that said I would revisit my point that Boots are an incredibly common item for factors that long precede GF's presence in the Meta and continued into the one we currently sit in, as well as the assertion of Webs Emerging as something they would dominate despite the Usage stats shared not supporting that premise.
(Sarcastic Comment Count: 8)
Several of these examples go back to my point about Raging Bolt early, which I might call "whataboutism" in terms of definition even if that term feels more loaded/accusatory than I would want to use here. Kyurem itself went up for Suspect and, while not banned, was still a Majority Ban vote at 58/60% needed. Raging Bolt, Roaring Moon, and Kingambit, along with some things you didn't cite like Ogerpon-W, are also all extremely contentious topics that rank high on the Surveys, GF simply ranked higher and thus was put to Suspect first after the most recent survey. And despite your facetious comment at the end, it's a consistent premise that if Gouging Fire ranked highest on the Survey and thus was considered most pressing for tiering action, then indeed people would (over) prepare for it and thus hamper GF's personal win rate even if it causes issue into other match ups. Hypothetically, Raging Bolt would feast on stuff like Dondozo and Alomomola, so if they're run more to deal with GF, it gains a greater win rate because more teams have things it capitalizes on, which is the case on the ladder even if it's below 50% in SPL (I bring this up to illustrate the idea, I think RB specifically neither supports nor disproves this idea in a significant fashion atm).
Chi-Yu comparison is indeed exaggerated in terms of raw number, nothing I can add there.
The Walking Wake suspect can be argued as pre-mature, but one important distinction there is that Walking Wake is/was SIGNIFICANTLY more dependent on Weather to achieve the results that got it attention, whereas Gouging Fire just goes from a Machine Gun to a Rail Cannon given Sun, making Weather removal a less effective counterplay method than it would have been for Wake.
The other citations I think just return to the cited point that listing other Pokemon that are made broken or unhealthy by these traits, especially ones that are frequently points of scrutiny like, again, Kingambit, does not further your argument in a meaningful way. The scenario Storm Zone could refute this with immediately is "Gouging Fire AND Kingambit are unhealthy for being able to tech Tera to dodge Revenge Killing after set-up"
(Sarcastic Comment Count: 9)
The issue I take here is the assertion that Gouging Fire encourages a reasonable choice in practice (Team must outlast the outlast-outlaster, or pressure it hard so it can't last long enough to sweep me). On paper this sounds like a typical case of having to build so that your team is not weak to a particular Mon that can run rampant over the playstyle
(Note, Mons not chosen for strict relevant match-up with the moves used, but to have a baseline number used across all comparisons)
252 Atk Great Tusk Close Combat vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Gouging Fire: 168-198 (47.8 - 56.4%) -- 84.8% chance to 2HKO
252 Atk Great Tusk Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Skarmory: 148-175 (44.3 - 52.3%) -- 19.1% chance to 2HKO
252 Atk Great Tusk Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Corviknight: 189-223 (47.2 - 55.7%) -- 21.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Gouging Fire: 174-205 (49.5 - 58.4%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Skarmory: 220-259 (65.8 - 77.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Corviknight: 187-222 (46.7 - 55.5%) -- 16% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Great Tusk Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Skarmory: 148-175 (44.3 - 52.3%) -- 19.1% chance to 2HKO
252 Atk Great Tusk Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Corviknight: 189-223 (47.2 - 55.7%) -- 21.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Gouging Fire: 174-205 (49.5 - 58.4%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Skarmory: 220-259 (65.8 - 77.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Dragapult Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Corviknight: 187-222 (46.7 - 55.5%) -- 16% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
This is a mon with comparable Physical Bulk to 252 HP Skarmory or Corviknight without any investment itself, and easily beats the former on SpD or either if investing for its own Bulky sets. While there is some leeway to consider with factors like different Hazard weaknesses for sure, the raw tanking power Gouging Fire has while lacking the Passivity of most mons that reach that level of endurance is a much taller ask to beat than your average Bulky Sweeper like BU Great Tusk or DD Dragonite.
(Sarcastic Comment Count: Still 9)
Not much to add here because a lot of it reads like asserting Storm or other players not using and sweeping with these styles is proof that they're not broken. While I do think Storm might be overblowing the dominance of Sun-Room GF for example, that kind of assertion isn't really something that can be meaningfully responded to since it's based on a lack-of-evidence rather than an argument based one. I'm not sure if the Zama-Webs comparison was to assert that said hypothetical style is equally theory-instead-of-practice or to argue that it is actually cheap and skill-less despite not getting complaints like the ones Storm is citing here.
(Sarcastic Comment Count: 11)
For the sake of context, I went back to check the Usage statistics of Dracovish in OU prior to its Suspect and Ban in May of 2020.
December 2019:
January 2020:
February 2020:
March 2020:
April 2020:
January 2020:
February 2020:
March 2020:
April 2020:
Despite its much more extreme power in that Meta, Dracovish's usage trended around the same 11-14% range that Gouging Fire falls within for the statistics you cited here. Yes, as acknowledged, Dracovish is a very extreme case, as evidenced by Seismitoed sitting above it consistently and sometimes reaching as high as 28-30%, but if anything, Dracovish not achieving a more extreme usage rate despite its even easier "no think, just smash" capability would support the idea that usage doesn't reflect a Broken nature unless it swings VERY far to the other extreme such that it doesn't simply warp the meta but actively CANNOT be played without using, which very few things that were banned by Suspect I think have ever managed.
Your sample size is large but the data doesn't objectively bear the argument you claim it does because your argument depends on a premise as a given that isn't being held as true at the outset (i.e. "High Usage and Winrate is necessary to call unhealthy or broken").
This high level replay does demonstrate that counter-teams to structures GF likes do exist, though I am curious about the structure of the opposing team since there's a massive Ground Weakness to note and I'm curious how the members synergize (not a diss of the teambuilding, but an acknowledgement that there is a lot more insight given to Storm's Sand team than the other half of the match).
I bring this up because there is the matter of how this matches up into other significant members of the Meta while handling GF this way: CB Rillaboom for example puts immense offensive pressure on anything besides Hydrapple (Grassy Glide obviously beats Ttar and Rotom-W, Drill and Val take 80% without Tera, and Glowking has to be afraid of Knock Off as a spammable move even into targets that don't take massive damage). The team also looks like it'd have to play particularly hard to get over Bulky Cores or certain mons like Gliscor.
Further context that assists this argument is how much success Storm had in other matches using this team structure, to show it's consistent against structures that both do and do not use Gouging Fire. This offers more to talk about by presenting counterplay structures that were alluded to in use outside of just a GF match on the Ladder. I brought up earlier how you mentioned people needing to be "inoculated" about better counter measures to GF teams, this is one example of why you should share more of those and more context on them.
Sorry to bring this in at the end of the essay response, but I want to also talk this because I don't think it does justice to the issue I've been taking with CTC's posting, as another user myself who admittedly lacks laddering or trophy chops. If this is deemed inappropriate or unwelcome in the thread, I request this section alone be edited out rather than expunging the entire reply.
I believe your word that he has been warned for the earlier postings outside the thread, but the repeated use of insulting and condescending tone/word choice feels equally derailing to the thread, considering it has been popping up repeatedly in the replies they have made since the first page of the thread and continued even into the post I responded to above, while being directed at multiple users who did not respond with the kind of irreverence or sarcasm I saw from them or DB. Even if it's not the intention as mentioned in a later reply edit, it's hard not to read such an outlook the wording occurring repeatedly and in replies to multiple people, be they specific user replies or constant allusions to the more abstract "Ban Crowd" that is constantly given the notion of only presenting opinions as opposed to his own statistical arguments.
The tone of such arguments has also led to rather cyclical discussion at points, with things such as repeated comparisons to other Suspect Radar Mons (Raging Bolt, Kingambit etc.) having occurred as early as the second post they made and again popping up in the most recent ones, despite having already been brought up in other responses and running counter to the 2nd rule about not discussing other potential suspects (perhaps a "soft" break but the context has repeatedly been "these traits cited about GF also apply to these other Pokemon"). It feels incongruous with the notion that most of the replies are being responded to or taken in good faith: one of my own previous replies took a follow-up response to be acknowledged as not a "troll attempt," and despite apologizing for the tone taken because of that perception, it resumes in replies following almost immediately, which leaves me confused as to whether the apology was sincere or if CTC simply does regard that many of the Ban-arguments made as "troll attempts" in the thread.
It's not my place to say any action should be taken outright, but I also think the tone and behavior that I've found so off-putting has been occurring as a repeated pattern throughout the thread rather than just between the two users cited interacting with each other.
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I just had to respond to this, one of the most atrociously loud and wrong posters in the thread to whom I referred as 'seemingly a troll' in my prior post. I will avoid sarcasm because it does not go over well with certain people. let me respond to your points plain and simple.
"Okay so first thing I need to address is that these responses still operate under the mistaken premise that a Mon not having extremely high usage and win-rate is an indicator that it is not having an unhealthy effect on the Meta. People have pointed already to the Dracovish example as a more-extreme-instance but still applicable principle: the mon exerting the pressure will frequently have less usage than its checks because the Checks are necessary to counterplay it, while you can capitalize on the mon's pressure without running it yourself (EX in that case would be using more Grass or Fairy attackers to hit Water resists/absorbers like Toed or Dragons). Gouging Fire is theoretically checked by several Common Pokemon like GT and Lando, but these Pokemon for example don't necessarily handle it long term without compromising their play against other things they're meant to do as Glue/Utility Pokemon, while GF itself can play the long-game thanks to its Bulk and Recovery (which it has room to fit easily on most sets)."
- Again you and many other pro banners tote the 'statistics and winrate isnt everything' banner but failed to show any significant counter argument to my original. Dracovish usage only picked up right before its ban when people realized that speed is key when spamming this mon under rain, in an environment where only water absorb and 4x resists can come in (very few). It was 2hkoing bold pex which had never been seen before from a resisted hit. Scarf was not reliant on rain and band could operate out of it too, whereas gouging loses not only the weather boost but also misses out on proto, relegating the strong set to sun only (the one with no or few switchins). Not only do dragons and offense run the current meta, slowking's ubiquity precludes easy weather wars for sun. Sun is very limited by its structural constraints and how many opposing mons get boosted by torkoal. Compared to the actual switchin-less dracovish, gouging has many more direct and indirect checks/counters, with it being rocks weak and having worse defensive typing. Further, you should show the win rate and not just usage. The win rate will tell you that in the limited games it was used, it still achieved extraordinary dominance whenever it came out. You cannot omit one half of usage and win rate, on a measly two digit sample size no less.
Once again ending the argument with theoreticals while denouncing statistical significance of average usage and win rate is not a good look for the side of facts and logic.
"This also goes into the point that even if the players can beat Gouging Fire, that doesn't mean it's fun to teambuild with it in mind. Legitimate question, is your point at the end of this section about "form your own opinions" (sarcastic condescension aside) meant to say this is a potentially-true conclusion that many pro-ban voters did not come to themselves (despite playing the latter, Reqs made or not), or that you think this is an untrue/illegitimate reason at base that is being parroted because Ban-GF is the popular sentiment? I want to respond to this point in more depth but also want to be clear on what I am responding to to avoid ambiguity or accusations of/accidentally strawmanning."
- I just want people to take their time and learn to deal with this mon before prematurely complaining. The next thing will come, it may be some bulky raging bolt that people will complain that is too bulky to chip away at while the booster spa set demolishes fat. There will always be more threats optimized for the current meta, but take a look at trends in usage and win rate: the people are figuring it out slowly. There was a long period where I thought gambit needed to go, but it took so long before the suspect that the meta had adjusted and came up with more strategies to handle it rather than tusk on every team: ima created encore ho in early sv which popularized encore as a whole to check this mon, and trick choice mons/surprise tera blasts also were seen frequently used against predictable gambit strategies. IDC how the pro ban voters came to this conclusion, but I urge them to take some time to try and overcome this mon instead of just giving up vs it like those who quit due to gambit being broken (it was comparatively way more broken than current gouge in early SV).
"The mention of Raging Bolt (which I can more than believe is also not a good presence) is irrelevant to whether or not GF is unhealthy, as is frequently brought up in Suspects about other subjects and is a frequent occurrence this generation because of the absurd Power-Surge several new additions bring with each update. Brought up despite being the last point because it's not relevant to what I will subsequently argue but I also don't want to leave it unaddressed, though the "how many aren't mentioned" or "what about" sentiment is still something that hangs over other mentions like Dragonite that came up."
- People keep bringing it up, but I just want to know what the problem is with making comparisons and referring to precedents. The bolt and nite comparisons show how silly it is for people to claim that gouge is a resource constraint when building and playing, because a lot of mons are. Again, this is to illustrate the gouge is not uniquely broken.
"You mention "how to play vs each possible variant has not been inoculated" while not stating what those forms of counterplay are, nor responding to how the 6-member team with the entire Meta to contend with is where the restrictive teambuilding stems from: the question is not simply "is it possible to respond to all of Gouging Fire's variants" but "is it possible to respond to Gouging Fire's variants and still have a reasonable chance of competing with the rest of the Meta structures which may not be running it?" I don't disbelieve that you have counterplay examples in mind, but simply asserting that they exist and that the playerbase hasn't caught on yet doesn't forward anything. If anything it benefits your position to share such examples to make people see "maybe this works" so they will go try it and perhaps see your point that they can teambuild for it without great detriment. Unintentionally or not, withholding those examples either suggests you don't have a meaningful number to cite, or you just want to be smarter than the other players who don't figure out what you did a while ago even at a detriment to the DNB position.
One thing to bear in mind is that Gouging Fire can be assumed to play optimally but admittedly is not always piloted flawlessly in a match, whether due to player error or missing some predictions. The discrepancy here is that the penalty for misplaying on Gouging Fire is typically much lower than the penalty for the opponent in the vast majority of scenarios. Against the Breaking Swipe sets, positioning yourself poorly due to mispredicting the set or the move used puts GF in a position to Snowball if your team is not built with multiple forms of Counterplay present (which goes to the "restrictive on teambuilding" argument if you're not facing Gouging Fire but now dealing with stuff like Bolt or Ogerpon that that Counterplay building has severe problems with); against the Band Breaker sets, we've already seen calcs showing how hard it hits such that its sturdiest checks still have to watch themselves to weather it long term, while not often being offensive or too threatening themselves to actually put it on the backfoot rather than wait for it to run out of steam; Dragon Dance is a typical "set-up sweeper needs to grab a turn" condition, but on a mon that bulky there are significantly more things against which it can survive to grab that turn (Great Tusk is a roll to KO the Bulky set with SE Headlong after SR, and can't KO from full on 1 Spike, for a raw number demonstration)."
- Now thats the way to do it. If you want an academic discussion, I am happy to share the numerous ways to deal with this mon.
Lets divide the mon into 3 types, bulky setup BS/offensive setup OS/band BB as these seem to be the optimal sets.
BS: For an offensive team, pivoting to lando with ep seems to be the easiest way. Uturn or taunt to a bulky trading dragon and you wont even have to burn tera. Lando Kyu, lando Bolt, Lando Pult, Lando Prima and so on. Usually if its not run with sun and doesnt have the booster active, or doesnt take rocks, you can bet on this set with possible teras poison, ghost, fairy, and water. Other ways offense can check this is aggressively trading into this mon with special attackers or choiced attackers like dnite, as the main issue with the mon is its lack of immediate power, especially when hitting fire resistant special attackers. Tusk with bu is often another easy check, as lefties or tera fairy allow it to muscle and outlast the swiping beast.
For a more defensive setup, gliscor, garg, and alo all spell instant doom for this set less it has covert cloak. None boots versions of this mon on any non ho setting is risky, as coming in at 75% with no lefties recovery and also being piss weak is not breaking the majority of the meta. Otherwise, one can go clef or scor, two popular knock users, then proceed with garg/alo. Slowking toxic also forces it to tera, hat can nuzzle it, and prima comes in on the bulky set for life no matter the item. Any offensive fairy tera can flip the script on this guy, from dnite, rm, boulder, and so on. Stall has mostly similar access to these tools, almost always winning the exchange with max def gliscor to force tera > alo scald forever as long as the cloak has been knocked.
OS: Similarly checked like dragonite and moon, but with the caveat of having significantly more bulk in the vein of dnite. This thing likes to tera fairy or ghost, and is checked by the same meta glues holding back dnite minus the fire weak birds, ie: zama, toxic, lando-T, unaware, bu alongside it with tera flip, or the faster booster encore/dbond which has been a blanket check to offensive setup for the entirety of SV. Prio also comes to mind in the form of Espeed, but this mon is harder to revenge rather than having the appropriate immediate switch in. The fat mons that check this generall are the same.
BB: The hardest set to handle, as only heatran is a surefire counter to this alongside peli/tar weather changers on the right move. However, +spe ones are still handled by garg/alo/dozo on slower teams and trade similarly to +spe wake vs offensive teams, but it is now much easier to revenge with sucker, espeed, and any booster/scarfer. With glowking being such an oppressive presence in the meta, sun has a hard time even setting up the environment to bring this thing in. To pressure sun, rocks/tusk/bolt/glowking/lando/kyu/lu/nite/gambit/zama are ubiquitously used, and you would be hard pressed to find a team without one of these or an aforementioned fat mon which checks this to a certain extent. While the entire meta is indeed 2hkod, I learned from the stall discord courtesy of SupaGmoney that pivoting and teraing gliscor to dragon can effectively end this mon with a timely knock or tox. Another strat is simply having protect alo + protect gliscor to stall some turns. switch alo, tect, switch dozo, if 2hkod then back to alo, tect, and now we are at 5 turns of sun. Assuming sending tork in was a turn, even gouge coming in on gliscor protect leaves u with 0 turns of sun after that sequence, letting you pivot dozo again and rest up or sack something to tera dragon the gliscor (gouge needs to tera to 2ko dozo).
Balances with decent pressure and hazard wincons are good vs sun, as banded is simply another hard hitting easy to revenge mon that falls victim to most gambit wincon teams since it is impossible to keep this mon at high hp. Further, 2 non-boots fire types being mandatory on sun already sabotages its defensive structure and removal capabilities, making sun one of the easier strategies to prepare against.
"All that rambling aside, Gouging Fire still needs to be piloted decently to achieve good results, but the imbalance is the fact that with both players flying blind without something like an Open Team Sheet, good plays by GF are to just not eat Glue against its common counterplay, while playing against it requires identifying the set while not having the appropriate counter measure on your team take too much damage in the process and THEN not eating glue with said checks. The Skill Floor (in this wording referring to the level of performance achieved without above-average playing ability) on GF is notably higher than most of the Mons in OU, even including other suspect-wanted Candidates."
- This is purely conjecture. With both players flying blind, good plays by the GAMBIT/ZAMA are to just not eat glue. The skill floor is on the ceiling this generation because anyone can pick up a gambit/zama wincon team and farm unsuspecting players. Gouge even being one of the unfortunate victims to zama. Your last sentence is entirely made up and is your opinion which has been passed off as factual.
"I am counting the claim about "Everything I predicted is coming true" because the meaning behind the numbers does not objectively bear out that conclusion, it just feels like an assertion of intelligence over the incorrect ban voters)"
- Yes.
"Boots Meta is seeing presence for reasons that wouldn't be particularly exacerbated by Gouging Fire staying or going. When we have basically 3 worthwile Hazard countermeasures (and one of them in Cinderace is only a half-measure because it basically falls apart if you set your own), Boots are going to be common place because keeping Hazards off the field is not reliable this generation by nature. I don't see what Gouging Fire has to do with holding back Boots Spam when, Webs or not, they're already in the running for most relevant item in OU period."
- Just because you don't see it, does not make my prediction any less valid nor my points which I had reiterated over and over.
"It was brought up in a previous reply but I will reiterate it here because I also think it worth addressing: where is the Web Spam that you believe heralds a Boots Meta we are not in already? None of the Sticky Web setters crack the Top 30 on the usage listings you yourself posted and so heavily espouse the significance of, and considering the setters are few and synonymous with the style, their usage would be a good indicator of how many Webs teams are being run. Hypothetically, wouldn't Gouging Fire be a mon that heavily incentivizes Webs anyway, pairing well with them due to its "okay at best" speed and immense Breaking Power that would want to minimize faster offensive breakers like Dragapult, Roaring Moon, Kyurem, or Walking Wake? I don't see how Gouging Fire discourages Webs when it benefits immensely from them and a lot of its countermeasures don't care much about the Speed drop due to Boots or simply ignoring the hazards (Lando-T again here)."
- The webs spam saw ubiquitous usage in spl and ost this past week, showing that it can beat a lot of ho with little to no skill in piloting. This may be one of the factors leading to boots usage creeping up (as seen in the increased usage of boots spam teams in spl and ost this last week, I would substantiate it but cbf to find all replays, I watch all the games so you should take my word for it). None of them are cracking top 30 usage because usage doesn't update on a weekly basis, but if you look at usage ratio to all teams there is a stark increase last week in webs usage. Furthermore, this has nothing to do with the gouging fire discussion. Please leave theoreticals out of this and stop talking about nonsense.
"You're losing me again: you argue Gouging Fire does not "singlehandedly" stop a Boots Meta, but you have made prior arguments that a Boots Spam Meta is an undesireable state of things in this thread pertaining to the GF Suspect, which suggests a relevance of some sort since I don't take you for the type to make non-sequitor arguments given how strongly you feel on the Meta. With that said I would revisit my point that Boots are an incredibly common item for factors that long precede GF's presence in the Meta and continued into the one we currently sit in, as well as the assertion of Webs Emerging as something they would dominate despite the Usage stats shared not supporting that premise.
- I'm sorry that you couldn't understand. Let me break it down for you: A boots centric meta would be undesirable, but a revolving metagame where boots shift into and out of focus is fine. Just because boots existed before gouge does not mean a boots centric meta is fun. See: wcop meta and gliscor ban meta where zap lu gking boots was not only the safest choice but also has the best mu vs the field. I am simply extrapolating data from events that literally happened to make informed predictions, these may not be facts but I prefaced that these are simply forecasts, however accurate they have turned out to be/may turn out to be. Again, I am on the side of fun and diversity here, hence arguing against a possible timeline where the meta degenerates into a boots-centric cesspool lacking diversity.
The rest of your responses are rather opinionated and lack sufficient substance for me to respond to, it's just a skeleton of useless calcs and theoreticals strung together by a loose dracovish comparison on a sample size smaller than the games in a WNBA season.
I do thank you for voicing your opinion as the average player (not a dig) and getting the discussion going, and I am sorry if the ban crowd feels offended by my tone because I for one was deeply offended by the quality of responses.
We should keep civilized discussions like this going in the thread, I will continue to address each argument in an academic way so as we don't lose sight of the subject: gouging wake being absolutely fair and necessary for the metagame.
Last but not least, I must address this response to the SZ game:
"This high level replay does demonstrate that counter-teams to structures GF likes do exist, though I am curious about the structure of the opposing team since there's a massive Ground Weakness to note and I'm curious how the members synergize (not a diss of the teambuilding, but an acknowledgement that there is a lot more insight given to Storm's Sand team than the other half of the match).
I bring this up because there is the matter of how this matches up into other significant members of the Meta while handling GF this way: CB Rillaboom for example puts immense offensive pressure on anything besides Hydrapple (Grassy Glide obviously beats Ttar and Rotom-W, Drill and Val take 80% without Tera, and Glowking has to be afraid of Knock Off as a spammable move even into targets that don't take massive damage). The team also looks like it'd have to play particularly hard to get over Bulky Cores or certain mons like Gliscor.
Further context that assists this argument is how much success Storm had in other matches using this team structure, to show it's consistent against structures that both do and do not use Gouging Fire. This offers more to talk about by presenting counterplay structures that were alluded to in use outside of just a GF match on the Ladder. I brought up earlier how you mentioned people needing to be "inoculated" about better counter measures to GF teams, this is one example of why you should share more of those and more context on them."
- To this I reply: massive ground weaknesses remedied by levitator, regenerating ground resist, and probably balloon exca. This is just one example of creative teambuilding that curbed gouge, but for you to shit on it and say 'massive ground weakness' when 3/6 of the members shrug them off or are straight up immune is disingenuous or you just showed your lack of understanding of this metagame... which is no indictment on the validity of your post, but it does make your arguments less credible.
Once again, I implore you not to get into theoreticals, we are not operating on the same plane and I would not want to bring skill into this as this discussion is about the use of gouging across all skill levels. Saying his team has holes vs certain threats is fruitless. He also has all the tools to outplay a gliscor between possible ice gk, ice tar, balloon drill sd punish, hydrapple tank/punish with drain, and rotom possible tera steel. Val also is a mon that can tera and take out an out of control sd gliscor in a pinch.
The burden of proof remains on you to show how his team matches up vs other teams, because my point is just showing how he prepared well vs the meta in a game he won. We don't know what would happen if he had faced other threats, but he didn't, and in this reality, he faced gouge and handled it with ease.
here are 2 more games to show gouge flopping, with me being on either side:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-748406?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-752755?p2
me sacking gouge early because the mu dictates that it was going to do fuckall. (lost 1v1 to ghold w ls)
In the first replay, I could have had even more outs to gouge by pressuring morning suns with my corv tera, but unluckily I get burned by FB. Ok, we still have roosts to stall out more than 2x the pp in swipes right? Nope. Gone. However, a well prepared dondozo in the back still helped me pp stall this set because I had had prior experience getting swept by it already, and developed counterplay.
In the second replay, I had a gouge vs damn near all bulky dragons and fairies/grounds, making me believe that this mon did not hit the ideal mu despite having screens support.
I have plenty of replays of ways people have handled gouge to match every replay of it clicking dd and sweeping. My point is, as the meta progresses people will learn to handle these threats better and better.
Finally, to respond to your request: I am now inoculating people with the knowledge of how to better handle gouge in the builder and in game. If there are any more questions I would be happy to answer.
PS we can have amicable debates, but do not report me simply because we have differing ideologies. I only criticized certain ideas as absurd and called out the mindless following behavior instead of any particular player.
To anyone offended by my posts, I have as much right posting my opinion as anybody else, so long as I engage in a reasonable manner.
The sarcasm and tone are part of my character and for the comedic effect of satire, and I reiterate that I have no beef with any user on this website: I have no enemies. With respect, I invite everyone who I have responded to to engage back with me in friendly banter.
Let's keep the discussion civil and not have anyone attack me for defending my opinion in an entertaining manner (without hurting anyone's feelings or breaking site rules), go after my arguments instead.
Cheers
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When evaluating a suspect test mon, it’s important to isolate its attributes and impact on the metagame. Does this mon add something positive to the metagame and does it have a healthy presence?
My answer to that would be no. There is very little to nothing that GF contributes to the tier that is noteworthy and its impact on the metagame is unhealthy. It barely checks anything, it CAN beat its checks, and puts too much strain on the team-builder, which we already had enough of before its introduction to the meta.
GF is very punishing if you dont stop it in time. And that’s easier said than done. Its snowball capabilities are among the Elite, next to the likes of Volcarona and DD Kyurem. GF is also extremely bulky and can invalidate physical attackers with its Breaking Swipe set. On top of this it has Morning Sun! Reliable recovery is always dangerous on a mon this bulky and can spiral out of control with Dragon Dance.
Sun sets are also extremely strong and can break through the whole tier easily. Dragon + Fire STAB is also rarely resisted in the tier, and it has coverage moves like Earthquake, Iron Head, Crunch, etc. The fact that GF can choose its checks and counters is very unhealthy. Im sure many of you have already heard of GF breaking through Dondozo, with either its Banded or Breaking Swipe sets. That in itself tells a whole story as Dondozo is the best physical check in the game. The unpredictability in what set GF is really puts strain on the tier as a whole.
We can say “oh but what about x mon still being legal” (ahem Kingambit) or something arguably being more broken (Raging Bolt, Volcarona, Roaring Moon). But its important that we look at Gouging Fire itself and decide if its broken. Evaluating Gouging Fire both in theory and practice I found it to be banworthy.
For all these reasons I’ll be voting ban on Gouging Fire.
My answer to that would be no. There is very little to nothing that GF contributes to the tier that is noteworthy and its impact on the metagame is unhealthy. It barely checks anything, it CAN beat its checks, and puts too much strain on the team-builder, which we already had enough of before its introduction to the meta.
GF is very punishing if you dont stop it in time. And that’s easier said than done. Its snowball capabilities are among the Elite, next to the likes of Volcarona and DD Kyurem. GF is also extremely bulky and can invalidate physical attackers with its Breaking Swipe set. On top of this it has Morning Sun! Reliable recovery is always dangerous on a mon this bulky and can spiral out of control with Dragon Dance.
Sun sets are also extremely strong and can break through the whole tier easily. Dragon + Fire STAB is also rarely resisted in the tier, and it has coverage moves like Earthquake, Iron Head, Crunch, etc. The fact that GF can choose its checks and counters is very unhealthy. Im sure many of you have already heard of GF breaking through Dondozo, with either its Banded or Breaking Swipe sets. That in itself tells a whole story as Dondozo is the best physical check in the game. The unpredictability in what set GF is really puts strain on the tier as a whole.
We can say “oh but what about x mon still being legal” (ahem Kingambit) or something arguably being more broken (Raging Bolt, Volcarona, Roaring Moon). But its important that we look at Gouging Fire itself and decide if its broken. Evaluating Gouging Fire both in theory and practice I found it to be banworthy.
For all these reasons I’ll be voting ban on Gouging Fire.
ok so for the record i just got back from the gym i took preworkout before but i didnt eat shit all day lmao so i left bc i wasnt feeling good but im still caffeinated af so imma type out my thoughts on gfire as someone who pretty regularly maintains spots on the high ladder (1900+ elo and 85+ gxe) when actively playing.
like a lot of people i instinctively put 5 for gfire because ive seen what the breaking swipe set can do. i thought it was gimmicky at first when someone passed me a team w it (the same team that me and the rza rmtd which ill get into as its important) then i loaded up vs some gliscor dozo balance shit that got made in nov or dec of 2023 and 6-0d that guy lmao. i was shocked to see what it could do then i got a team from my boy storm zone w it and was cooking hard af on a ladder alt after using some mid shit to hit 1800. at the time it seemed banworthy like the fuck do u even do if its the right tera???? the sheer bulk, the surprise factor, the ability to quickly change the pace of a game given made me want it gone.
idk if ill get reqs, im a bit busy this week and already made a new ladder alt yday so repeating low ladder is just not appealing to me.
back to what i was saying about the breaking swipe dd sets as thats what anybody good complains about. After reading Ctcs posts, which i do appreciate despite the tone which i still understand bc some in the ban everything crowd being themselves, and seeing the stats i have come to the conclusion: GFIRE IS A HIGH LADDER TREND THAT GOT EVERYONE ON THE WAVE OF IT BEING BROKEN EVEN THO ITS NOT DOMINATING TOURS OR THE LOW/MID LADDER. I myself have been part of that trend and won a lot of games due to the sheer unexpected nature of the set and my ability to exploit unsuspecting players of a similar skill level to give myself the edge.
i know that the initial claim to fame of the fat set was pp stalling dozo thus shitting on balance as i alluded to earlier, but in the current meta balance just is not losing to fat dd. Strong Combinations of very good fatmons tinglu, gliscor, mola, garg, dozo, dirge which are good EVEN IF GFIRE DIDNT EXIST will beat it, not to mention the speed control balance elects to run like id zama or wisp pult can harass it (pult in the instance if it teras which it needs to in order to have a shot vs the aforementioned fatmons pult outspeds too at +1 or can play the fun little tera game itself since we want to go there). The fact of the matter is that balance has ADAPTED to gfire, gfire does not shit on up to date balance anymore. where it DOES go in is offense and some BO with lots of physical mons and the special attacker struggles vs it think like gholdengo as the primary spatter being an excellent example.
so this leaves us in a bit of a predicament.. more offensive teams will struggle to live it because even tho its not maxed out in attack gfire has a solid attack stat and flare blitz is a high bp stab move while the incredible bulk combined with tera makes it very irritating to deal with. tho something i didnt see brought up was even when gfire is "useless" in the balance with all those aforementioned fatmons it can still serve a purpose depending on the speed control and other mons. look at the grasspon trend we're seeing recently in spl and high ladder. theres also weavile running low kick which is a good option to threaten standard gambit offense and give balance a better matchup vs it tho having gfire significantly delays weaviles ability to kill things on ur team so u can kill balance first. My initial thought was has a role vs fat clobbers other teams ban, though as time went on i realized it wasn't that simple.
this set was a real hidden gem for a while, once me and the rza published that rmt i noticed that i won a lot less w the fat gfire sweeps. dont get me wrong it was still a solid part of the team i used to spam but it struck me as less broken than i initially thought. gen9 is incredibly versatile and gives you so much to work with, in part so the fact that we can find counterplay doesnt just make it fine (look at the dogshit people were justifying to keep arch in the tier yea nah im not on that wave) but its important to consider that with the SURPRISE FACTOR REMOVED and the community being faced with a top tier threat the natural result is.. ADEQUATE COUNTERPLAY. things like heatran, taunt lando, primarina, id roar zama, SAND (LOOK AT LAST WEEK OF SPL) etc are all very solid options that fit on more offensive/bo teams that arent straight HO and can deal with it AND ARE GOOD OUTSIDE OF GFIRE WHICH IS IMPORTANT WE DONT WANT PEOPLE RUNNING HORSESHIT LIKE DASCHABUN FOR IT WHICH THIANKFULLY NOBODY GOOD IS RESORTING TO.
This suspect reminds me a lot of kyurem where I agreed that it "restricts building" and wanted it banned AT THE START though as i played more and considered the plethora of options and combinations available to beating it my stance SOFTENED INTO A RELUCTANT DNB AND EVENTUALLY GLAD IT IS STILL HERE. Fact of the matter is anything thats above A rank on the VR "restricts building" in some way, shape, or form. You have to prepare for the top tier threats to win as consistently as possible and gfire is not an exception to this. I do believe the surprise factor of breaking swipe sets being diminished reduces the uncompetitive aspect as it is now easier to identify what set the gouging fire is based on team structure, how it is played, and of course any item reveal upon it entering the field. Similar to how kyurem was kicking ass at the start of the new meta (along side meow and boulder who have now been exposed as fraudulent. weavile >>> meow and ppl use shit boulder sets but theres 1 good one which i wont tell u bc i dont want to lose to it on ladder lmao) but died down. Combinations of gambit/gking BO teams that have very limited opportunities for kyurem to come in thanks to offensive pressure were good then and are still good now and would be good if kyurem wasnt in the tier. And of course, like gfire, its sets have tradeoffs and flaws that come with picking one over the other UNLIKE ARCH WHJICH WAS STRAIGHT BS.
Kyurem and gfire are worthy of comparison imo. both can break and sweep tho the breaker gfire sets require dogshit torkoal and the sweeper kyurem sets pretty much mandate u tera and r super inconsistent and lacking in utility that gfire provides thanks to its ability to invest in bulk + recovery. ik some people r still mad kyurem wasnt banned (btw i missed the vote bc i was busy that weekend lol if i voted ban which i just mightve then itd have been 1 vote away lol thats crazy) but like come on BE FUCKING FOR REAL its not ruining the meta right now. It reached a fever pitch bc of the newness of DLC2 dropping and people taking time to figure out whats good. I'm still not seeing the oh so broken kyurem dominate spl or high ladder which theoretically should happen since after all according to the pro ban side its mediocre winrate was just people "overprepping" for it and we know now people aren't doing that as we're too busy "overprepping" for gfire not kyurem so where r all the games where it farms?? I've moved from definite ban to slight no ban the more i think about it honestly, objectively and put past my initial biased opinion of the wins I was able to attain from gfire while the breaking swipe set was still unknown to most people. I feel like the fever pitch around this mon is kept up from others similar experiences but like ctc pointed out its just not happening NOW on the scale that warrants a clear ban.
REPLAY TIME (NOTE IM ONLY POSTING PEOPLE I CONSIDER AT LEAST GOOD IF NOT VERY GOOD SO IF I POST U AND U DIDNT WANT THAT I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE)
vs rillabolt bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2055040755 - notice how i kill all the special attackers and garg first then get the gfire to go in. this wasnt just some willy nilly bullshit i pulled out of my ass it was calculated and relied on me knowing my set and him not knowing it.
vs tinglu bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2055152322 - i get an early lead thanks to oger after dnite died early, gfire cleans up to ensure a win a tiny bit sloppy on my part but it was guaranteed after oger, this is undoubtedly a top tier mon putting in work. Able to check gambit and counter volcarona w/o it exhausting tera are things i consider positive
vs webs - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2063938309?p2 - like i alluded to before, very good into more offensive builds w/o a fat ass backbone, he didnt know i was u turn oger and tried to catch my double before but this ended up being a situation where gfire got an inch and took a mile plus i called out the tera fairy so the game just ended there this is like the BEST CASE for gfire and it being broken and i still had to win a 5050 + him make a call out + be an uncommon set to come back from a bad position early on
vs bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2064782678 - wins the game here, i was setting it up got a bit cocky trying to call out doubles thanks to spat drops so ik id live even if sludge but couldve been /safer/ tho whatever looks insane here tho cant lie again shit like this is why people think its broken. note i had to avoid sludge bomb poisoning and exhaust tera and make a read on the incoming gking due thanks to conditioning
vs rilla offense - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2065730427?p2 - switches into tusk and beats it thanks to tera since we both do it anyway. again looking mad fucking good into the matchups where it shits on the physical attackers and the special attackers either die, struggle vs it (ghold) or are not that good (manaphy)
i had like one game where i did the funny dozo interaction vs some 1700s guy with a wack ass team, stall really should not lose to this as my friend 3d found out the hard way in ost: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-751748?p2
vs balance - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2059675437?p2 - it doesnt end up doing much besides chipping dirge into oger range, got a bit lucky with flame burn on weavile but gking lives knock anyway and again gfire is there to sponge hits from it if i so chose. its still got some utility here though lets stop kidding ourselves that its going to solo fat made in 2024
vs prim lando bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2066096412 - i struggle to make headway early on and gfire is in no way able to pull this game out of its ass thanks to max def lando with a prim in the background and me having to exhaust my tera to stay in the game which allows gambit bluffs + exploit for his tera. gfire is dead weight here like at best it helps against gambit and teras into pult lol the proper way to go about this matchup is tusk which took some trial and error
vs heatran bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2068348233?p2 - even with him teraing to scout eq which bulky doesnt run (again unknown possibiliites forces scout but we all know what its doing now) heatran still beats gfire look at how little breaking does tho the drop kinda sucked i still think tran wins this and w the proper knowledge and no tera there its no question
vs rain - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2068226668?p2 - pretty ass into rain for obvious reasons, even with tera fairy for gambit lol it doesnt even kill at 40 with blitz i get a lucky burn it was a 5050 again we're starting to see limitations due to all the defense evs needed to pull off some of the bullshit seen above where its not killing things it should
vs valiant offense - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2072131248 - i was trying to get the set up vs gambit because i didnt want a special valiant to win the game since moonblast + blitz recoil + moonblast will kill me and i need +2 on tusk to outspeed. LOOK AT THE DATE OF THIS REPLAY ITS MARCH 2... just under 3 weeks after me and the rza dropped his rmt detailing the bulky gouging set. my opponent knew what i was doing and was able to adequately respond i got caught lacking unlike the gfire victims u saw above. again we're seeing the lack of power on fat lefties come into play
The savvy have already picked up on this tho let me make it crystal clear: look at the date of the replays the gfire doing everything sweeps vs it not doing as much. the rmt dropped on Feb 11 it took time for people to digest and react but they did so, in my opinion, accordingly. All of the teams used in the replays where gfire doesn't do much are good and would still be good WITHOUT IT. These are of course only a snippet of all my games played with it but i definitely notice a shift pre and post rmt with how effective the fat set is.
TLDR: we have reached a point where the cat is out of the bag. people know about the fat gfire set, are able to identify based on team structure and it entering the field what set it is thus what its capabilities are, and the counterplay to it is at the VERY LEAST significant if not sufficient enough to where my stance as someone who has used this quite a lot has shifted to slight no ban.
like a lot of people i instinctively put 5 for gfire because ive seen what the breaking swipe set can do. i thought it was gimmicky at first when someone passed me a team w it (the same team that me and the rza rmtd which ill get into as its important) then i loaded up vs some gliscor dozo balance shit that got made in nov or dec of 2023 and 6-0d that guy lmao. i was shocked to see what it could do then i got a team from my boy storm zone w it and was cooking hard af on a ladder alt after using some mid shit to hit 1800. at the time it seemed banworthy like the fuck do u even do if its the right tera???? the sheer bulk, the surprise factor, the ability to quickly change the pace of a game given made me want it gone.
idk if ill get reqs, im a bit busy this week and already made a new ladder alt yday so repeating low ladder is just not appealing to me.
back to what i was saying about the breaking swipe dd sets as thats what anybody good complains about. After reading Ctcs posts, which i do appreciate despite the tone which i still understand bc some in the ban everything crowd being themselves, and seeing the stats i have come to the conclusion: GFIRE IS A HIGH LADDER TREND THAT GOT EVERYONE ON THE WAVE OF IT BEING BROKEN EVEN THO ITS NOT DOMINATING TOURS OR THE LOW/MID LADDER. I myself have been part of that trend and won a lot of games due to the sheer unexpected nature of the set and my ability to exploit unsuspecting players of a similar skill level to give myself the edge.
i know that the initial claim to fame of the fat set was pp stalling dozo thus shitting on balance as i alluded to earlier, but in the current meta balance just is not losing to fat dd. Strong Combinations of very good fatmons tinglu, gliscor, mola, garg, dozo, dirge which are good EVEN IF GFIRE DIDNT EXIST will beat it, not to mention the speed control balance elects to run like id zama or wisp pult can harass it (pult in the instance if it teras which it needs to in order to have a shot vs the aforementioned fatmons pult outspeds too at +1 or can play the fun little tera game itself since we want to go there). The fact of the matter is that balance has ADAPTED to gfire, gfire does not shit on up to date balance anymore. where it DOES go in is offense and some BO with lots of physical mons and the special attacker struggles vs it think like gholdengo as the primary spatter being an excellent example.
so this leaves us in a bit of a predicament.. more offensive teams will struggle to live it because even tho its not maxed out in attack gfire has a solid attack stat and flare blitz is a high bp stab move while the incredible bulk combined with tera makes it very irritating to deal with. tho something i didnt see brought up was even when gfire is "useless" in the balance with all those aforementioned fatmons it can still serve a purpose depending on the speed control and other mons. look at the grasspon trend we're seeing recently in spl and high ladder. theres also weavile running low kick which is a good option to threaten standard gambit offense and give balance a better matchup vs it tho having gfire significantly delays weaviles ability to kill things on ur team so u can kill balance first. My initial thought was has a role vs fat clobbers other teams ban, though as time went on i realized it wasn't that simple.
this set was a real hidden gem for a while, once me and the rza published that rmt i noticed that i won a lot less w the fat gfire sweeps. dont get me wrong it was still a solid part of the team i used to spam but it struck me as less broken than i initially thought. gen9 is incredibly versatile and gives you so much to work with, in part so the fact that we can find counterplay doesnt just make it fine (look at the dogshit people were justifying to keep arch in the tier yea nah im not on that wave) but its important to consider that with the SURPRISE FACTOR REMOVED and the community being faced with a top tier threat the natural result is.. ADEQUATE COUNTERPLAY. things like heatran, taunt lando, primarina, id roar zama, SAND (LOOK AT LAST WEEK OF SPL) etc are all very solid options that fit on more offensive/bo teams that arent straight HO and can deal with it AND ARE GOOD OUTSIDE OF GFIRE WHICH IS IMPORTANT WE DONT WANT PEOPLE RUNNING HORSESHIT LIKE DASCHABUN FOR IT WHICH THIANKFULLY NOBODY GOOD IS RESORTING TO.
This suspect reminds me a lot of kyurem where I agreed that it "restricts building" and wanted it banned AT THE START though as i played more and considered the plethora of options and combinations available to beating it my stance SOFTENED INTO A RELUCTANT DNB AND EVENTUALLY GLAD IT IS STILL HERE. Fact of the matter is anything thats above A rank on the VR "restricts building" in some way, shape, or form. You have to prepare for the top tier threats to win as consistently as possible and gfire is not an exception to this. I do believe the surprise factor of breaking swipe sets being diminished reduces the uncompetitive aspect as it is now easier to identify what set the gouging fire is based on team structure, how it is played, and of course any item reveal upon it entering the field. Similar to how kyurem was kicking ass at the start of the new meta (along side meow and boulder who have now been exposed as fraudulent. weavile >>> meow and ppl use shit boulder sets but theres 1 good one which i wont tell u bc i dont want to lose to it on ladder lmao) but died down. Combinations of gambit/gking BO teams that have very limited opportunities for kyurem to come in thanks to offensive pressure were good then and are still good now and would be good if kyurem wasnt in the tier. And of course, like gfire, its sets have tradeoffs and flaws that come with picking one over the other UNLIKE ARCH WHJICH WAS STRAIGHT BS.
Kyurem and gfire are worthy of comparison imo. both can break and sweep tho the breaker gfire sets require dogshit torkoal and the sweeper kyurem sets pretty much mandate u tera and r super inconsistent and lacking in utility that gfire provides thanks to its ability to invest in bulk + recovery. ik some people r still mad kyurem wasnt banned (btw i missed the vote bc i was busy that weekend lol if i voted ban which i just mightve then itd have been 1 vote away lol thats crazy) but like come on BE FUCKING FOR REAL its not ruining the meta right now. It reached a fever pitch bc of the newness of DLC2 dropping and people taking time to figure out whats good. I'm still not seeing the oh so broken kyurem dominate spl or high ladder which theoretically should happen since after all according to the pro ban side its mediocre winrate was just people "overprepping" for it and we know now people aren't doing that as we're too busy "overprepping" for gfire not kyurem so where r all the games where it farms?? I've moved from definite ban to slight no ban the more i think about it honestly, objectively and put past my initial biased opinion of the wins I was able to attain from gfire while the breaking swipe set was still unknown to most people. I feel like the fever pitch around this mon is kept up from others similar experiences but like ctc pointed out its just not happening NOW on the scale that warrants a clear ban.
REPLAY TIME (NOTE IM ONLY POSTING PEOPLE I CONSIDER AT LEAST GOOD IF NOT VERY GOOD SO IF I POST U AND U DIDNT WANT THAT I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE)
vs rillabolt bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2055040755 - notice how i kill all the special attackers and garg first then get the gfire to go in. this wasnt just some willy nilly bullshit i pulled out of my ass it was calculated and relied on me knowing my set and him not knowing it.
vs tinglu bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2055152322 - i get an early lead thanks to oger after dnite died early, gfire cleans up to ensure a win a tiny bit sloppy on my part but it was guaranteed after oger, this is undoubtedly a top tier mon putting in work. Able to check gambit and counter volcarona w/o it exhausting tera are things i consider positive
vs webs - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2063938309?p2 - like i alluded to before, very good into more offensive builds w/o a fat ass backbone, he didnt know i was u turn oger and tried to catch my double before but this ended up being a situation where gfire got an inch and took a mile plus i called out the tera fairy so the game just ended there this is like the BEST CASE for gfire and it being broken and i still had to win a 5050 + him make a call out + be an uncommon set to come back from a bad position early on
vs bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2064782678 - wins the game here, i was setting it up got a bit cocky trying to call out doubles thanks to spat drops so ik id live even if sludge but couldve been /safer/ tho whatever looks insane here tho cant lie again shit like this is why people think its broken. note i had to avoid sludge bomb poisoning and exhaust tera and make a read on the incoming gking due thanks to conditioning
vs rilla offense - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2065730427?p2 - switches into tusk and beats it thanks to tera since we both do it anyway. again looking mad fucking good into the matchups where it shits on the physical attackers and the special attackers either die, struggle vs it (ghold) or are not that good (manaphy)
i had like one game where i did the funny dozo interaction vs some 1700s guy with a wack ass team, stall really should not lose to this as my friend 3d found out the hard way in ost: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-751748?p2
vs balance - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2059675437?p2 - it doesnt end up doing much besides chipping dirge into oger range, got a bit lucky with flame burn on weavile but gking lives knock anyway and again gfire is there to sponge hits from it if i so chose. its still got some utility here though lets stop kidding ourselves that its going to solo fat made in 2024
vs prim lando bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2066096412 - i struggle to make headway early on and gfire is in no way able to pull this game out of its ass thanks to max def lando with a prim in the background and me having to exhaust my tera to stay in the game which allows gambit bluffs + exploit for his tera. gfire is dead weight here like at best it helps against gambit and teras into pult lol the proper way to go about this matchup is tusk which took some trial and error
vs heatran bo - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2068348233?p2 - even with him teraing to scout eq which bulky doesnt run (again unknown possibiliites forces scout but we all know what its doing now) heatran still beats gfire look at how little breaking does tho the drop kinda sucked i still think tran wins this and w the proper knowledge and no tera there its no question
vs rain - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2068226668?p2 - pretty ass into rain for obvious reasons, even with tera fairy for gambit lol it doesnt even kill at 40 with blitz i get a lucky burn it was a 5050 again we're starting to see limitations due to all the defense evs needed to pull off some of the bullshit seen above where its not killing things it should
vs valiant offense - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2072131248 - i was trying to get the set up vs gambit because i didnt want a special valiant to win the game since moonblast + blitz recoil + moonblast will kill me and i need +2 on tusk to outspeed. LOOK AT THE DATE OF THIS REPLAY ITS MARCH 2... just under 3 weeks after me and the rza dropped his rmt detailing the bulky gouging set. my opponent knew what i was doing and was able to adequately respond i got caught lacking unlike the gfire victims u saw above. again we're seeing the lack of power on fat lefties come into play
The savvy have already picked up on this tho let me make it crystal clear: look at the date of the replays the gfire doing everything sweeps vs it not doing as much. the rmt dropped on Feb 11 it took time for people to digest and react but they did so, in my opinion, accordingly. All of the teams used in the replays where gfire doesn't do much are good and would still be good WITHOUT IT. These are of course only a snippet of all my games played with it but i definitely notice a shift pre and post rmt with how effective the fat set is.
TLDR: we have reached a point where the cat is out of the bag. people know about the fat gfire set, are able to identify based on team structure and it entering the field what set it is thus what its capabilities are, and the counterplay to it is at the VERY LEAST significant if not sufficient enough to where my stance as someone who has used this quite a lot has shifted to slight no ban.
just wanted to point out one passage from this absolute tolstoy novel of a post that bugs me more than the rest of it does:
aside from the fact that you're still responding to your opponents' arguments with what amounts to "nuh uh", gambit and zama aren't the mons we're talking about right now. please stop bringing them up unprompted. this is a thread about gouging fire, which is being suspected right now, and not those other things, which are not being suspected right now. i understand that it's easy for a person to get distracted when they're as smart as you are, but let's try to stay on topic
So I just got reqs, and I will be voting BAN
I respect everyone's arguments and counter arguments above, this has been one of the better suspect threads in a while.
I won't get super deep just because it's not a mon I'm super passionate about.
It has 3 sets to my knowledge and I'll kinda break down some stuff about them (Ofc there's more but these are the 3 main ones)
Booster Energy set outside of sun - This set is probably the weakest set out of the three, it still does very well in general, you usually go Booster Attack / Speed, preferable booster Attack (similar vibes to Roaring Moon) Tera Ground is really nice so you don't get paralyzed, and Earthquake being the 2nd or 3rd move on this set (EQ + Flare Blitz + Filler / EQ + Flare Blitz). This set gets walled by Dondozo, also in general encore booster energy is a decent switch in if you dont get hit with a Flare Blitz on switch. This set behind screens and webs usually claims 1-2 kills pretty easy. If this was the only set to exist or it being one of the better sets I honestly wouldn't mind keeping it in the tier (not much further to add outside it being a good set to use with little to no support)
Choice Band under sun Speed / Attack Boosting - Essentially outside of anything having Flash Fire, pretty much nothing can switch into it after it decides to tera Fire under sun.
Some calcs of it running Booster Attack + Tera Fire Choice Band:
So essentially nothing switches in on it safely, and you need masterful execution to get Glowking on the field and try to Chilly reception.
I get it that games are more than just calcs and things like entry hazard is something to always worry about but without a doubt this will put holes on any team with minimal effort, esp since you can runny Sunny Day on Torkoal now because of no Yawn.
I won't break down the other moves but most of the time you're clicking either Raging Fury, Flare Blitz or Heat Crash. It's a pretty brainless set, this set alone is pretty crazy but not enough to justify a ban (one could argue) because I did the same thing with Walking Wake.
Bulky Breaking Swipes set: Yeah, this set is disgusting, people need to understand how bulky this mon is:
This spread is to outspeed Ogerpon-Wellspring after one Dragon Dance, the rest of the spread follows similarly after other popular sets, first of all you don't have to put 252 on defense to utilize how insanely bulky this thing is. This thing acts like a wall essentially that has access to setup and sweep, if it tera poisons it beats Gliscor, if it Teras Ghost it easily beats Zamazenta. Breaking Swipes beats most Dozos 1 v 1. Rillaboom doesn't do anything but allows it to setup and becomes an amazing switch 9/10 times. Meow cannot do much unless it has Trick, Weavile literally just Knocks it off and prays that it doesn't outspeed after one Dragon Dance, but pretty much just gets beaten by Breaking Swipes if it tries to Swords Dance in its face. Waterpon hopes to catch it on the Encore before it Dragon Dances and hopes to outspeed. Skarm / Corviknight do nothing. Bro we have to resort to Chilling Water Alom....
Defensively it being a Fire type allows it not to get wisped unless it teras, overall it being neutral to water is amazing, just overall this thing really becomes difficult to stop and we have to finesse like crazy on team build to make sure this thing doesn't sweep. Which has been echo'd here a lot which is the pressure it puts on builder. This thing just becomes an absolute hassle to handle, as I've said in prior posts regarding anything broken which is it's easy for me to adjust but doesn't mean I don't want to deal with this thing, I want the freedom of building cool teams without it being extremely cookie cutter.
I respect everyone's arguments and counter arguments above, this has been one of the better suspect threads in a while.
I won't get super deep just because it's not a mon I'm super passionate about.
It has 3 sets to my knowledge and I'll kinda break down some stuff about them (Ofc there's more but these are the 3 main ones)
Booster Energy set outside of sun - This set is probably the weakest set out of the three, it still does very well in general, you usually go Booster Attack / Speed, preferable booster Attack (similar vibes to Roaring Moon) Tera Ground is really nice so you don't get paralyzed, and Earthquake being the 2nd or 3rd move on this set (EQ + Flare Blitz + Filler / EQ + Flare Blitz). This set gets walled by Dondozo, also in general encore booster energy is a decent switch in if you dont get hit with a Flare Blitz on switch. This set behind screens and webs usually claims 1-2 kills pretty easy. If this was the only set to exist or it being one of the better sets I honestly wouldn't mind keeping it in the tier (not much further to add outside it being a good set to use with little to no support)
Choice Band under sun Speed / Attack Boosting - Essentially outside of anything having Flash Fire, pretty much nothing can switch into it after it decides to tera Fire under sun.
Some calcs of it running Booster Attack + Tera Fire Choice Band:
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Dondozo in Sun: 230-271 (45.6 - 53.7%) -- 42.2% chance to 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 192+ Def Toxapex in Sun: 194-229 (63.8 - 75.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Alomomola in Sun: 291-343 (54.4 - 64.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 52 Def Garganacl in Sun: 268-316 (66.3 - 78.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Skeledirge in Sun: 253-298 (61.5 - 72.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Tera Water Slowking-Galar in Sun: 413-487 (104.8 - 123.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO (LOL)
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Multiscale Dragonite in Sun: 182-215 (56.3 - 66.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 192+ Def Toxapex in Sun: 194-229 (63.8 - 75.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Alomomola in Sun: 291-343 (54.4 - 64.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 52 Def Garganacl in Sun: 268-316 (66.3 - 78.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Skeledirge in Sun: 253-298 (61.5 - 72.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 252 HP / 16 Def Tera Water Slowking-Galar in Sun: 413-487 (104.8 - 123.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO (LOL)
252 Atk Choice Band Protosynthesis Tera Fire Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Multiscale Dragonite in Sun: 182-215 (56.3 - 66.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
So essentially nothing switches in on it safely, and you need masterful execution to get Glowking on the field and try to Chilly reception.
I get it that games are more than just calcs and things like entry hazard is something to always worry about but without a doubt this will put holes on any team with minimal effort, esp since you can runny Sunny Day on Torkoal now because of no Yawn.
I won't break down the other moves but most of the time you're clicking either Raging Fury, Flare Blitz or Heat Crash. It's a pretty brainless set, this set alone is pretty crazy but not enough to justify a ban (one could argue) because I did the same thing with Walking Wake.
Bulky Breaking Swipes set: Yeah, this set is disgusting, people need to understand how bulky this mon is:
This spread is to outspeed Ogerpon-Wellspring after one Dragon Dance, the rest of the spread follows similarly after other popular sets, first of all you don't have to put 252 on defense to utilize how insanely bulky this thing is. This thing acts like a wall essentially that has access to setup and sweep, if it tera poisons it beats Gliscor, if it Teras Ghost it easily beats Zamazenta. Breaking Swipes beats most Dozos 1 v 1. Rillaboom doesn't do anything but allows it to setup and becomes an amazing switch 9/10 times. Meow cannot do much unless it has Trick, Weavile literally just Knocks it off and prays that it doesn't outspeed after one Dragon Dance, but pretty much just gets beaten by Breaking Swipes if it tries to Swords Dance in its face. Waterpon hopes to catch it on the Encore before it Dragon Dances and hopes to outspeed. Skarm / Corviknight do nothing. Bro we have to resort to Chilling Water Alom....
Defensively it being a Fire type allows it not to get wisped unless it teras, overall it being neutral to water is amazing, just overall this thing really becomes difficult to stop and we have to finesse like crazy on team build to make sure this thing doesn't sweep. Which has been echo'd here a lot which is the pressure it puts on builder. This thing just becomes an absolute hassle to handle, as I've said in prior posts regarding anything broken which is it's easy for me to adjust but doesn't mean I don't want to deal with this thing, I want the freedom of building cool teams without it being extremely cookie cutter.
i think gouging fire is not broken and if I could be bothered to parse through low ladder for recs (I cant, evidently) I would vote dnb.
gouging’s ability to bruteforce answers is overstated with breaking swipe needing a lot of free turns to get going which I dont think it generates for free. You can tell spread almost immediately as it comes in and if it’s not bulky enough then you can just spam attacks to ensure it isnt able to get better than +1 which is a common scenario (raging attempting to set up on gholden for example.) breaking swipe is also a limiting stab option with any mon that resists fire (and mons that can tera to resist fire with tera water being incredibly common) being able to spam free turns into gouging which is exploitable such in cases as twave/toxic/fs+sludge gking turning into a water type and winning the 1v1 if it comes in raw.
booster dd reveals itself immediately and is a fairly average wincon easily traded down for with good common mons such as landot tusk glis val ting or tera on mons like gambit bolt just to give a few examples.
free opportunities for gouging are also overstated. grasses for example, either pivot (meow rilla), threaten crippling status (serp), or just outright threaten enough raw damage (pons.) there are also cases where you should be baiting tera ie having glis reveal tera poison so u can scald burn it w mola but I get people dont like these interactions being listed as counterplay; this section is more to the effect that supposedly gouging susceptible mons have options for it even factoring in set variance.
overall, the builder and playing strain of gouging is overstated to me. I didnt even mention how opposing offense totally washes it and how mandatory rocks-off support is a massive inhibitor to its entry points. I don’t want this to come off as gouging being less “relatively broken” than other mons in the tier, that has zero relevance to me. gouging fire as it is simply not an overbearing mon.
gouging’s ability to bruteforce answers is overstated with breaking swipe needing a lot of free turns to get going which I dont think it generates for free. You can tell spread almost immediately as it comes in and if it’s not bulky enough then you can just spam attacks to ensure it isnt able to get better than +1 which is a common scenario (raging attempting to set up on gholden for example.) breaking swipe is also a limiting stab option with any mon that resists fire (and mons that can tera to resist fire with tera water being incredibly common) being able to spam free turns into gouging which is exploitable such in cases as twave/toxic/fs+sludge gking turning into a water type and winning the 1v1 if it comes in raw.
booster dd reveals itself immediately and is a fairly average wincon easily traded down for with good common mons such as landot tusk glis val ting or tera on mons like gambit bolt just to give a few examples.
free opportunities for gouging are also overstated. grasses for example, either pivot (meow rilla), threaten crippling status (serp), or just outright threaten enough raw damage (pons.) there are also cases where you should be baiting tera ie having glis reveal tera poison so u can scald burn it w mola but I get people dont like these interactions being listed as counterplay; this section is more to the effect that supposedly gouging susceptible mons have options for it even factoring in set variance.
overall, the builder and playing strain of gouging is overstated to me. I didnt even mention how opposing offense totally washes it and how mandatory rocks-off support is a massive inhibitor to its entry points. I don’t want this to come off as gouging being less “relatively broken” than other mons in the tier, that has zero relevance to me. gouging fire as it is simply not an overbearing mon.
I have to agree with the above posters. I will mainly talk about the breaking swipe set since this is the moveset that seems to cause the most grievances.
I was initially one of the people thinking that GF breaking Swipe set was broken. "If it can set up on Don and Glis, what can't it set up on?"- Is what I thought. But we simply went about it the wrong way.
During my suspect run and doing more laddering in general, I have changed my mind about Gouge. I will simply post my experience doing multiple ladder runs. Simply how I feel about this. Since my time doing suspect runs and making multiple accounts to test stuff, I have encountered countless counterplay that I could also incoperate in my gamplan myself.
Offensively, I have noticed how slow the breaking swipe set is momentum wise. It is not really threatning at +1 and can be heavily pressured by myrad special attackers. Primarina, Heatran, Walking Wake, Iron Valiant, Tera Volc, Dragapult ect..... even stuff like rocky special Landorus check it or force it out. It needs atleast +2 to be do any real damage and outspeed the myrad offensive threats. Even physical mons aren't completely helpless. Boulder beats it, Choiced Moon beats it. Tusk can beat it too especially runinng helmet. It rarely got going ever since it got more well known. GF gets heavily pressured by any powerful special attackers. And I am gonna repeat myself here, defensive GF needs at least +2 and to get any real damage and outspeed the myrad of offensive threats(or even +3 for like booster Valiant or Boulder). It should give you plenty of time to respond to this mon. Just don't play passively. Sometimes you gotta hard switch your threatning mon in which is okay, because he doesnt hit that hard unboosted unless it is super effective and even then breaking swipe itself is extremely weak so most offensive water types should be fine as long as he isn't boosted too much. I myself have begun to hard switch my Walking Wake more often into it if I feel any real danger.
- Simply my perspective as a guy who mainly runs offensive teams or sun teams.
Defensively, I already saw bunch of people running double status. "Oh you tera poisoned to evade toxic? Let me switch in my G-Weezing to burn you real quick. Now it can't do shit to bulkier teams even at +6. Alternatively, you can just paralyze him as a nice midground so you can let faster threats handle him. (unless tera ground but that can bring other problems like being weak to grass). As for Dozo, we have already seen that BP+curse sets beat it so this was simply a matter of set adaption. Mola, Dirge, water Glis wall him too and can threaten status or setup on their own. There is also some ID mons that can beat him with the appropriate tera like Corv with Brave Bird. I know people here don't like to use "just tera your mon" as an arguement but if part of GFs strengths is teraing itself to avoid some counterplay against it, why shouldn't teraing yourself apply as well?
During my ladder runs, I also found him extremely predictable. Outside of sun, you know it is gonna be setup variant either the bulky one or the offensive ones both who both had similar answers. In fact offensive DD GF isn't any more threatning then Moon in my opinion but that is another topic that can be discussed. If it is with Rilla, it is even more predictable since you know it is gonna be a grassy seed one.
Inside sun is where it is a little more tricky. Choice are more immediately threatening in sun and you have seen the calcs but more people have also run setup variants inside sun too. Nonetheless, GF set can be snuffed out by which his Proto boost he has. Not to mention the time GF spends seting up is another turn of sun wasted (which sun really needs) so I still find setup variants in the sun subpar to CB variants that can get a couple of kills during those turns not to mention the defensive answers above will still force out setup GF even during sun.
As for him enabling other setup sweepers, I think this is simply the meta we are in. This isn't really whataboutism, I genuinely believe that this trait isn't unique to GF but more of a trait about the Meta in general. For example a lot of people rarely use Moon to sweep nowadays but more as a midgame breaker to enable other endgame sweeepers an easier time(me included). There are other examples like using Iron Valiant to weaken Clod or Slowking to allow Volc or Iron Moth a better time. There is also Raging Bolt+ Kingambit, grass spam, dragon spam ect. This kind of thing always existed since like gen 5? It is more pronounced nowadays due to the sheer volume of powerful sweepers that can also act as breakers too. Regardless, I sympathise with you if you dislike this cause this kind of playstyle seems even more powerful then in previous gens and can sometimes be a little "brainless" so to speak. I kinda feel what Gouging Fire respresents is... the meta itself. He isn't neccessarily broken but it brutally punishes passive play. I absolutely can understand the ban crowd. I myself have a lot of grievances with this meta but that won't change with GF gone(in fact GF makes the meta a bit more fun for me).
I will vote NO BAN since my experience laddering align more closely to the No ban crowd arguements even though I initially held a different stance. There are a lot people with different experience, something that shouldn't be dismissed. The tone could be a lot better in this thread but it is great to see a lot of passion put here.
I was initially one of the people thinking that GF breaking Swipe set was broken. "If it can set up on Don and Glis, what can't it set up on?"- Is what I thought. But we simply went about it the wrong way.
During my suspect run and doing more laddering in general, I have changed my mind about Gouge. I will simply post my experience doing multiple ladder runs. Simply how I feel about this. Since my time doing suspect runs and making multiple accounts to test stuff, I have encountered countless counterplay that I could also incoperate in my gamplan myself.
Offensively, I have noticed how slow the breaking swipe set is momentum wise. It is not really threatning at +1 and can be heavily pressured by myrad special attackers. Primarina, Heatran, Walking Wake, Iron Valiant, Tera Volc, Dragapult ect..... even stuff like rocky special Landorus check it or force it out. It needs atleast +2 to be do any real damage and outspeed the myrad offensive threats. Even physical mons aren't completely helpless. Boulder beats it, Choiced Moon beats it. Tusk can beat it too especially runinng helmet. It rarely got going ever since it got more well known. GF gets heavily pressured by any powerful special attackers. And I am gonna repeat myself here, defensive GF needs at least +2 and to get any real damage and outspeed the myrad of offensive threats(or even +3 for like booster Valiant or Boulder). It should give you plenty of time to respond to this mon. Just don't play passively. Sometimes you gotta hard switch your threatning mon in which is okay, because he doesnt hit that hard unboosted unless it is super effective and even then breaking swipe itself is extremely weak so most offensive water types should be fine as long as he isn't boosted too much. I myself have begun to hard switch my Walking Wake more often into it if I feel any real danger.
- Simply my perspective as a guy who mainly runs offensive teams or sun teams.
Defensively, I already saw bunch of people running double status. "Oh you tera poisoned to evade toxic? Let me switch in my G-Weezing to burn you real quick. Now it can't do shit to bulkier teams even at +6. Alternatively, you can just paralyze him as a nice midground so you can let faster threats handle him. (unless tera ground but that can bring other problems like being weak to grass). As for Dozo, we have already seen that BP+curse sets beat it so this was simply a matter of set adaption. Mola, Dirge, water Glis wall him too and can threaten status or setup on their own. There is also some ID mons that can beat him with the appropriate tera like Corv with Brave Bird. I know people here don't like to use "just tera your mon" as an arguement but if part of GFs strengths is teraing itself to avoid some counterplay against it, why shouldn't teraing yourself apply as well?
During my ladder runs, I also found him extremely predictable. Outside of sun, you know it is gonna be setup variant either the bulky one or the offensive ones both who both had similar answers. In fact offensive DD GF isn't any more threatning then Moon in my opinion but that is another topic that can be discussed. If it is with Rilla, it is even more predictable since you know it is gonna be a grassy seed one.
Inside sun is where it is a little more tricky. Choice are more immediately threatening in sun and you have seen the calcs but more people have also run setup variants inside sun too. Nonetheless, GF set can be snuffed out by which his Proto boost he has. Not to mention the time GF spends seting up is another turn of sun wasted (which sun really needs) so I still find setup variants in the sun subpar to CB variants that can get a couple of kills during those turns not to mention the defensive answers above will still force out setup GF even during sun.
As for him enabling other setup sweepers, I think this is simply the meta we are in. This isn't really whataboutism, I genuinely believe that this trait isn't unique to GF but more of a trait about the Meta in general. For example a lot of people rarely use Moon to sweep nowadays but more as a midgame breaker to enable other endgame sweeepers an easier time(me included). There are other examples like using Iron Valiant to weaken Clod or Slowking to allow Volc or Iron Moth a better time. There is also Raging Bolt+ Kingambit, grass spam, dragon spam ect. This kind of thing always existed since like gen 5? It is more pronounced nowadays due to the sheer volume of powerful sweepers that can also act as breakers too. Regardless, I sympathise with you if you dislike this cause this kind of playstyle seems even more powerful then in previous gens and can sometimes be a little "brainless" so to speak. I kinda feel what Gouging Fire respresents is... the meta itself. He isn't neccessarily broken but it brutally punishes passive play. I absolutely can understand the ban crowd. I myself have a lot of grievances with this meta but that won't change with GF gone(in fact GF makes the meta a bit more fun for me).
I will vote NO BAN since my experience laddering align more closely to the No ban crowd arguements even though I initially held a different stance. There are a lot people with different experience, something that shouldn't be dismissed. The tone could be a lot better in this thread but it is great to see a lot of passion put here.
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With this suspect I kind of get the impression it's not entirely purely about Gouging, but about reducing the amount of strong offensive mons around, but to what end I ask, because from Gens 1-7 you can consistently make progress against fat consistently with Hazards whereas Boots and or Regenerator makes that complicated and Knock Off has a more limited distribution than ever, so I personally feel that big breakers like Gouging are required in a sense.
Of course there should be limits on this, I believed and believe right now it was correct for Archaludon to be banned due to just how difficult to handle Electro Shot + STAB by itself made it to handle, others have already said what checks Gouging, but it's alot more varied and alot more consistent compared to Archaludon, which could just turn into fine red paste most of its "checks" with a single correct prediction and whom's consistent counterplay was just Clodsire for a certain set. Whereas you can run things like Earth Power Heatran or Lando-T to handily check Gouging just off the top of my head.
I was initially pro-ban, but now I feel quite neutral on the topic, having some sleep on the DD Breaking Swipe set changed my mind. I almost kind of want the suspect period to be extended for this reason, because said set was the proverbial straw that broke the Camerupt's back for wanting to ban Gouging in the first place, like lucky333 said it only took adding BP for Dondozo to handle DD Gouging again
Of course there should be limits on this, I believed and believe right now it was correct for Archaludon to be banned due to just how difficult to handle Electro Shot + STAB by itself made it to handle, others have already said what checks Gouging, but it's alot more varied and alot more consistent compared to Archaludon, which could just turn into fine red paste most of its "checks" with a single correct prediction and whom's consistent counterplay was just Clodsire for a certain set. Whereas you can run things like Earth Power Heatran or Lando-T to handily check Gouging just off the top of my head.
I was initially pro-ban, but now I feel quite neutral on the topic, having some sleep on the DD Breaking Swipe set changed my mind. I almost kind of want the suspect period to be extended for this reason, because said set was the proverbial straw that broke the Camerupt's back for wanting to ban Gouging in the first place, like lucky333 said it only took adding BP for Dondozo to handle DD Gouging again
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How much discussion of Burning Bulwark has there been? There has been a lot of talk on the main 3 sets, which don't usually tend to run Bulwark over other things. And usually, I find that they don't run it and I'm better off assuming they don't so that I an more easily play around what is more common. But nearly every time I have had a physical attacker to try and check or even just properly chip Gouging Fire, and then it pulls out the Bulwark, it's been an automatic loss for me. I'm sure some would correctly tell me that Gouging prefers to run other things with its four moves, but that's not really the point. The point is there is likely more room for diversity in GF sets, and thus, even more stress in building for the GF threat.
Burning Bulwark GF and Lando-T in combination on a team can theoretically invalidate practically all the physical attackers in the tier. So you can potentially spend the remaining 4 slots on running more Assault Vests, specially defensive pivots, and/or offensive mons that have naturally decent special bulk like Roaring Moon, Waterpon, Latias, Hoopa-U, Iron Moth, Comfey, etc. I have not properly tested this because I don't normally use Gouging Fire. I just assumed it would be banned. But with how strong some of the pushback has been, maybe it's worth investigating this sort of thing? Who here has tried this?
Anyways, I find that it's natural physical bulk and the existence of BB really requires you to have special attacking threats. The need to have a proper special attacker, the need to chip Gouging Fire immediately seems to be easily telegraphed. What if one were to make a specially defensive Gouging Fire set to exploit this? By the time you figure it out, it could be at +2. +1 to take advantage of a forced switch and + 1 when the special hit does nothing against invested 93 special defense, which isn't bad with base 105 HP, does nowhere near what you were counting on.
On the other hand, I find teams where I run Glimmora tend to have a somewhat easier time with it. Toxic Spikes is nice. Stealth Rocks before it Teras is nice. Power Gem doesn't always work because it often Teras, but it still is better to chip it with a special attacker. I know T-spikes was mentioned, but the combination of that plus having a Rock type special attacker is kind of nice verse it. It's not a check. You still get 1 shot by EQ. But I do find having it on the team makes complimentary counterplaya little less awful.
Another thing I found handy is Red Card. In general, Red Card is handy because of all the setup sweepers in the tier. It let's you have a greater of margin of era so that a single window. And once you know the set of something like Gouging Fire, it's easier to play around everything except the defensive sets that heal if they wall you. I just have a hard time fitting Red Card on my teams lately.
Burning Bulwark GF and Lando-T in combination on a team can theoretically invalidate practically all the physical attackers in the tier. So you can potentially spend the remaining 4 slots on running more Assault Vests, specially defensive pivots, and/or offensive mons that have naturally decent special bulk like Roaring Moon, Waterpon, Latias, Hoopa-U, Iron Moth, Comfey, etc. I have not properly tested this because I don't normally use Gouging Fire. I just assumed it would be banned. But with how strong some of the pushback has been, maybe it's worth investigating this sort of thing? Who here has tried this?
Anyways, I find that it's natural physical bulk and the existence of BB really requires you to have special attacking threats. The need to have a proper special attacker, the need to chip Gouging Fire immediately seems to be easily telegraphed. What if one were to make a specially defensive Gouging Fire set to exploit this? By the time you figure it out, it could be at +2. +1 to take advantage of a forced switch and + 1 when the special hit does nothing against invested 93 special defense, which isn't bad with base 105 HP, does nowhere near what you were counting on.
On the other hand, I find teams where I run Glimmora tend to have a somewhat easier time with it. Toxic Spikes is nice. Stealth Rocks before it Teras is nice. Power Gem doesn't always work because it often Teras, but it still is better to chip it with a special attacker. I know T-spikes was mentioned, but the combination of that plus having a Rock type special attacker is kind of nice verse it. It's not a check. You still get 1 shot by EQ. But I do find having it on the team makes complimentary counterplaya little less awful.
Another thing I found handy is Red Card. In general, Red Card is handy because of all the setup sweepers in the tier. It let's you have a greater of margin of era so that a single window. And once you know the set of something like Gouging Fire, it's easier to play around everything except the defensive sets that heal if they wall you. I just have a hard time fitting Red Card on my teams lately.
You can’t tier out of fear for the future with different sets and brokenness arising then. We are looking at the current sets and the current tier. If anything your point about it being underexplored is reason to preserve it and look into it again in the future.
I implore people to not try and read too far into the logic in the above post and instead take a look at the current tier regardless of what side you are on in this and future suspects.
I implore people to not try and read too far into the logic in the above post and instead take a look at the current tier regardless of what side you are on in this and future suspects.
Just hit reqs - it just doesn't feel broken to me. While it can muscle it through unaware mons and other physical walls, there's definitely adequate counterplay with lots of status, toxic spikes, even rocky helmet, and just generally applying enough pressure. Most wins I found were from people randomly spamming lava plume with their torkoal or other passive nonsense like that while gouging fire is RIGHT THERE. Stop giving it free turns, and progress your own win conditions. I definitely feel like the meta will adapt to it (BP Donzo) and normal order will be restored.
As far from what I can gather nobody has really made a set involving that move on a super high performing team like Breaking Swipe, but you could theoretically handle it with Earthquake, Stone Edge/Rock Slide, Dragon Darts, Special Attackers, Status, Poison Heal Gliscor, Lum or even Protective Pads but the last I don't recommend seriously. There's also it competing for move slots with GF other moves, you can only run 1 attack if you're also using Morning Sun + DD, but multiple attacks requires cutting one of those two moves. This is not me trying to say it's a bad move by any means, more that I think it wouldn't force a completely distinct kind of counterplay characteristic to a broken set on a broken mon
i feel like the main point of breaking swipe on that set is to lower the attack of stuff like dondozo that's supposed to check it, so maybe burning bulwark or will-o-wisp could serve a similar purpose? a burn produces a more immediate loss of attacking power and also affects body press, but the lack of damage alongside it is… not good. could it be a sidegrade? i don't particularly know and i have my doubts, but i figure it's worth someone trying
No it wouldn't work, Burning dondozo doesn't matter as they'll just curse up, then rest, and eventually roll the attacking move with Sleep Talk. In this particular situation (Gouge against Dondozo) it needs to be able to both lower the attack and also PP stall it out, which in practice doesn't really happen but you don't need that anyway, all that matters is getting out of the 1v1 with Dondozo with very low PP so you can make a path for other physical sweepers (gambit, zama to only name a few), which makes the 8 BS PP mandatory there. And outside of that only having one stab will be abusable once you know the set (which is an issue).
I think the other major issue with Burning Bulwark is that it kind of squanders Gouging Fire's biggest strength: its Snowballing threat and potential to grab momentum fast. Looking at the sets GF is currently under scrutiny for, almost all of them scream "deal with me now or you're in a bad spot," be it the Band set to punch a massive hole, offensive DD sets with Raging Fury to Spam, or the Breaking Swipe set daring you to bring in Physical checks while it goes to +2-3.
Burning Bulwark by comparison requires the opponent to use a Contact move for you to see a particular benefit for the turn, when even putting aside Special Attackers, a lot of GF checks don't use Contact moves (Earthquake users like Lando or Gliscor) or simply aren't hampered in managing it by a Burn like Alomomola. The cases where BB will yield a meaningful Burn in OU are going to be few and far between, and you lose the surprise factor the first time it's used.
Compare to Aegislash, another famously strong (banworthy in two cases) Pokemon that made heavy use of a Signature-Protect clone that would heavily penalize Contact Attackers. A major reason this benefited Aegislash was because the main use of King's Shield was meant to be switching to its more defensive form. Even if the opponent didn't hit it that turn, the increased bulk mitigated damage on the following turns so that Aegislash was in a better position regardless of the opponent attacking into it or not (I'd say Aegi's Ghost STAB and GF's high BP Fire both present enough threat that calling a bluff to set-up was already risky). In addition to this, things like the SubToxic set meant that simply stalling that turn out made potential progress for Aegislash, while GF makes massive progress when attacking, but generally only when making attacks, compared to something like dedicated Status spreaders or Garg with Salt Cure active. Finally, Aegislash is generally targetted by Contact Moves more often due to its weakness to Dark moves like Knock Off, while GF's most frequent weaknesses are from moves that, even Physical, don't tend to be Contact ones.
Perhaps I'm missing some heat tech given GF's got bulk to surpass Skarm/Corviknight if wanted, but at least with regards to its current playstyle that it's already on docket for, the move doesn't do much for it. And if some kind of Offense-eating Defensive set emerges to compliment its Bulky/Balance breaking ones now, that'd just throw more on the pile for its Teambuilding Strain.
Burning Bulwark by comparison requires the opponent to use a Contact move for you to see a particular benefit for the turn, when even putting aside Special Attackers, a lot of GF checks don't use Contact moves (Earthquake users like Lando or Gliscor) or simply aren't hampered in managing it by a Burn like Alomomola. The cases where BB will yield a meaningful Burn in OU are going to be few and far between, and you lose the surprise factor the first time it's used.
Compare to Aegislash, another famously strong (banworthy in two cases) Pokemon that made heavy use of a Signature-Protect clone that would heavily penalize Contact Attackers. A major reason this benefited Aegislash was because the main use of King's Shield was meant to be switching to its more defensive form. Even if the opponent didn't hit it that turn, the increased bulk mitigated damage on the following turns so that Aegislash was in a better position regardless of the opponent attacking into it or not (I'd say Aegi's Ghost STAB and GF's high BP Fire both present enough threat that calling a bluff to set-up was already risky). In addition to this, things like the SubToxic set meant that simply stalling that turn out made potential progress for Aegislash, while GF makes massive progress when attacking, but generally only when making attacks, compared to something like dedicated Status spreaders or Garg with Salt Cure active. Finally, Aegislash is generally targetted by Contact Moves more often due to its weakness to Dark moves like Knock Off, while GF's most frequent weaknesses are from moves that, even Physical, don't tend to be Contact ones.
Perhaps I'm missing some heat tech given GF's got bulk to surpass Skarm/Corviknight if wanted, but at least with regards to its current playstyle that it's already on docket for, the move doesn't do much for it. And if some kind of Offense-eating Defensive set emerges to compliment its Bulky/Balance breaking ones now, that'd just throw more on the pile for its Teambuilding Strain.
I’ve noticed you’ve brought up GF’s win rate often in your recent posts and I’d like to expand upon on how you could present this argument to make it more convincing to users like myself and others.
Tbh, I’m not sure how to interpret win rate in the context of something being broken.
It makes sense that a broken mon would have a high win rate, but on the other hand if it was super broken people would have to be very prepared for it. Thus, the broken mon may only have a ~50% win rate because people are over prepared (ie it constrains teambuilding)
Another argument for why a broken mon would have a relatively low win rate is that if it was super broken everyone would use it and it’d naturally gravitate towards 50%, but you’ve pointed out GF has a relatively low usage % so that doesn’t apply in this case.
To convince me win rate is worth considering when evaluating a suspect, I’d like to see the win rates (in high level tournament play like SPL etc.) of every mon we’ve banned this gen over a predetermined amount of time (eg “Gliscor had a X% win rate in these tournaments one month before it was banned”).
Doing it this way avoids cherry-picking cuz I’m sure you could say “mon X had a 65% win rate in week 5 of SPL and was later banned proving win rate is associated with being broken” but then someone else could say “mon Y had a 45% win rate in week 2 of SPL and was later banned proving win rate isn’t associated with being broken” and then y’all go back and forth cherry-picking a few more examples.
If we had a nice graph showing us all this data then I could be convinced that broken mons tend to have high win rates and thus GF’s low win rate supports it not being broken.
I say all this because I’ve rarely seen win rates brought up in suspect discussions in the past but GF’s win rate seems important to your argument. I don’t think you’re going to convince many people that “low win rate = not broken” unless you do something like this.
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I’d like to chip in to say that perhaps we’re focusing on the wrong statistic. Instead of focusing on the broken mon itself, why not focus on some of its counters? It would be far easier, for example, to see stuff like maximum defense Ferrothorn rise in usage to counter Vish (I’m sorry if these aren’t correct, I didn’t play SSOU in Dracovish times), than to take Dracovish itself and analyze its win rate and use rate, since those two metrics would be skewed by meta counter-adaptation and counter-adaptation to that counter adaptation. Just a thought.
i know that earth power lando-t has massively risen in popularity and gouging fire is a large part of that. i've also seen people talking about (and using) resttalk bpress curse dozo recently, which does beat the breaking swipe set but hurts some of its other matchups (mono-attack with a non-stab move that has an immunity doesn't scream "optimal" to me). so that's at least two things that are being run as gouging fire answers that seem, to me, not too great outside of it
ep lando is ran to hit tusk notably harder and not up glimm’s tspikes. it is also independently a good mon for ho and bo able to soft check+get two rounds of helmet minimum on any given physical attacker while being a solid pivot that gets rocks up (also denies glimm glis skarm erc rocks/spikes if so you please)
mono bpress dozo gives you a more immediate option against gambit without needing to blow tera as frequently and lets you actually hit waterpon which is incredibly significant for stall.
I think you are conflating general meta shifts (or just outright optimization in the case of landot) to mons needing to adapt to gouging. These are good mons running good sets that cover a wide number of mons including gouging but that doesnt mean they are being forced to adapt. These are minor optimizations that come with separate benefits anyways.
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