np: BW OU Suspect Testing Round 12 - Always (I Wanna Be With You) [SEE POST #263]

[Halcyon.]

If you're preparing for Mienshao in UU by using Gligar, you're doing it wrong.

The main problem with Keldeo, which has been said time and time again in this thread is that you will usually have to run more than one check/counter to it in order to beat Keldeo. This is due to the fact that Keldeo can pick what counters it depending on its item choice and its Hidden Power type. We aren't banning it because you have to prepare for it–if we were, Terrakion would be top of the list–we are suspecting it because it causes a huge shift in the metagame towards water resists, and many of its counters are actually checks that can easily be played around. For example, Specs Politoed in the rain with Scizor support can defeat Latias, Latios, Toxicroak (depending on the set), Jellicent, Celebi, Rotom-W, Gastrodon, and Gyarados. Amoongus has a chance of being 2HKO'd as well by Hydro Pump, but I didn't include it in the list because it can switch out thanks to Regenerator (but then again, if you're switching Amoongus into Keldeo, it's probably your only Water resist). That's why Keldeo is questionable in my eyes. It puts an abnormal strain on a player's team building.

When I build a team, I have to have at least two ways of dealing with Keldeo. It sucks, but unless I want to run something like Colbur Berry Latias + Dugtrio, I'm going to need at least two checks to Keldeo. That may be seen as not a problem, because in checking Keldeo, you're also checking rain. So what is the problem, you might ask. Well, I would say that Keldeo is what makes "preparing for rain" so important. Specs Politoed is not nearly as threatening as Specs Keldeo. There are many more Pokémon that can counter or check Specs Politoed than there are who can say the same for Keldeo. Perhaps this is because Keldeo has much more Special Attack and Speed than Politoed does, so it is more of an offensive threat. Other than those two, Life Orb Analytic Starmie is the only thing that I can think of that can be as powerful as Keldeo in OU. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure those three are the only real Water type special attackers that are used in OU. You could count Rotom-W, but it never runs max special attack unless it's the Specs or Scarf sets, and those are almost never seen. Plus, Rotom-W is still not as threatening as Keldeo, since (like Politoed) it is slower and not as powerful (though it does come close with 252 SAtk and a Modest nature). I think it's pretty safe to assume, though, that when you put a Latias on your team instead of Latios and call it preparing for "rain" you are actually trying to protect your team from Keldeo and perhaps Specs Politoed. Unfortunately, I can't really comment on Politoed, because I think Drizzle is broken, so to simplify things, lets just take Politoed out of the equation. Keldeo is THE threat that we prepare for when we put Water resists on our teams.

But, like some have said, preparing for a threat is no reason to ban it. We have to prepare for plenty of threats these days if we want to keep up in this hard hitting meta. However, Keldeo causes us to overprepare for rain to the point where I think it has an unhealthy effect on the metagame. We talk about how great Celebi is right now, ignoring its role of walling Keldeo, and I totally agree with those people. Celebi is a fantastic Pokémon that can wall many of the tiers top Pokémon and it just so happens that list includes Keldeo. But Keldeo still has a large effect on how we use Celebi. Celebi could actually run a pretty great physically defensive set back before Keldeo was popular. If you thought that Cebeli walled Breloom before, oh boy, you just wait until your little mushroom kangaroo thing is staring down a physically defensive Celebi. As it stands now, Breloom can break Celebi with a Swords Dance and a lucky hit with Bullet Seed (4 hits + SR can OHKO). That really sucks, because a lot of people through Celebi on teams just to counter both Keldeo and Breloom. What sucks even more is that Celebi still doesn't even 100% wall Keldeo! Keldeo can use HP Bug and beat it! Well jeez, Keldeo shifted Celebi's place in the metagame for nothing. Keldeo has that effect on almost every wall. Why are people even considering using SDef Jellicent? The defensive spread is much better, but people feel obligated to use SDef (even though it is inferior) because it can better check Keldeo. But without even taking partners into account, Jellicent can be 2HKO'd by Hidden Power Ghost. Obviously, this will spark a response that says "well Halcyon, you won't always predict correctly" and that person would be absolutely correct. But you won't always predict correctly either. And those times where you do switch into an HP Ghost, you'll remember that Keldeo has a way of getting around all its counters.

In case my argument of over-preparation still hasn't been made clear, I'd like to compare Keldeo to Terrakion for a moment. Keldeo and Terrakion have many similarities. They both have base 108 speed, they both have one of their attack stats at base 129, and they both have the same defenses. When team building, you also have to prepare for both. However, when building your team, when was the last time you added two counters to Terrakion because you knew just one wasn't enough. When did you put Cresselia and Landorus-T on the same team just to prevent Terrakion from sweeping you? I'm guessing you haven't. That's because you don't have to prepare for Terrakion too much. However, there are many people who will say that they have used Celebi and Jellicent together to beat Keldeo. I have seen more than one anti-ban player say that Celebi+Jellicent can always stop Keldoe cold. But don't you see that having to put two counters to one Pokémon on your team is a little silly? And what's worse, is that if you add in teammates, ScarfTar and Specs Keldeo STILL can beat that core. So then what do you do? Is everyone supposed to run Celebi+Jellicent+Toxicroak to beat Keldeo? Cause I would rather not have to resort to that.

And that is why I think Keldeo is broken. It isn't that it's sweeping every team I make with no difficulty. It isn't that I think that it can't be dealt with/played around. I just think that it has shifted the metagame too far to be allowed. One Pokémon should not have this much influence on how we play the game. I'm personally running a sun team right now with Cresselia, Sawsbuck, and Latias and guess what? A Keldeo still won the game for someone I played today. So not only is Keldeo causing us to prepare for it to the point where I think it's unhealthy, sometimes that over-preparation isn't enough to stop it.

 

[MikeDawg]

--clip--

This illustrates what I am talking about perfectly. To quote Soul Fly, every successful team was forced to use Garchomp in order to remain competitively successful on the ladder because there simply wasn't a reason to not use Garchomp, which eventually necessitated players in to also needing multiple counters and checks.

I feel these are the imperative question that players need to ask themselves when they ladder. Will I lose if I don't use this? Can I win against people who are using this if I choose not to? Is there another competitively viable alternative, or am I forced to use this to win? People need to start relying on their battle experience to come to a consensus in these discussions.

I am not a suspect tester right now. I don't have an opinion on Keldeo, and I have been out of the loop since BW1, so I lack the experience and have absolutely no say here as to what Keldeo is like. But there are a lot of arguments being made for and against it that I think are missing their mark, and I think people need to shift their perceptions on how to approach suspect testing in general.

I think this post a serious case of "long and well-written, so must be right!" syndrome. I certainly liked the first part of your post, but have to disagree wholeheartedly with your second point. A pokemon doesn't NEED to be kyogre-esque centralizing to be banned to ubers. Hell, look at gen4 wobuffet, gen4 salamence, thundurus, tornadus-t, blaziken, landorus, deoxys-d, deoxys-s, hell, even excadrill to an extent.

Now of course you can argue that some of these pokemon, like tornadus for example, were indeed centralizing. "You had to run a jirachi or rotom or bronzong or zapdos or cresselia or different weather or ____ on every team!"

And so how exactly is that different from keldeo? (especially when at this time those resists like rotom were even MORE neccesary?) Jirachi and rotom were already sooo common. And tornadus is far more weather dependent than keldeo, so just changing the weather crippled it.

Why is it perfectly fine to say that having to run a jirachi on every team or a gliscor on every team makes the pokemon broken, when having to run MORE THAN ONE OF celebi/lati/jellicent/etc. doesn't?

Especially when you consider how easily keldeo can skate past one of celebi/lati/jellicent/etc. in many cases

I would much rather face a tornadus/landorus in this meta than I would a keldeo, simply because (even if I am "well" prepared) one mispredict and my "counter" is gone, whereas if keldeo mispredicts, jellicent gets maybe a free will-o-wisp?

 

[Ulevo]

I think this post a serious case of "long and well-written, so must be right!" syndrome. I certainly liked the first part of your post, but have to disagree wholeheartedly with your second point. A pokemon doesn't NEED to be kyogre-esque centralizing to be banned to ubers. Hell, look at gen4 wobuffet, gen4 salamence, thundurus, tornadus-t, blaziken, landorus, deoxys-d, deoxys-s, hell, even excadrill to an extent.

Now of course you can argue that some of these pokemon, like tornadus for example, were indeed centralizing. "You had to run a jirachi or rotom or bronzong or zapdos or cresselia or different weather or ____ on every team!"

And so how exactly is that different from keldeo? (especially when at this time those resists like rotom were even MORE neccesary?) Jirachi and rotom were already sooo common. And tornadus is far more weather dependent than keldeo, so just changing the weather crippled it.

Why is it perfectly fine to say that having to run a jirachi on every team or a gliscor on every team makes the pokemon broken, when having to run MORE THAN ONE OF celebi/lati/jellicent/etc. doesn't?

Especially when you consider how easily keldeo can skate past one of celebi/lati/jellicent/etc. in many cases

I would much rather face a tornadus/landorus in this meta than I would a keldeo, simply because (even if I am "well" prepared) one mispredict and my "counter" is gone, whereas if keldeo mispredicts, jellicent gets maybe a free will-o-wisp?

First of all, my post was about what should be banned based on the principle I talked about, not what has been banned as a means to justify my point. You assume I should agree with all of those suspsects being banned for the reasons they were banned for, meanwhile I feel a lot of those suspects were judged improperly based on faulty tiering philosophy. That's practically the entire reason I posted this; to show people that there is a more definitive way of deciding suspects. Too many players have adopted the ideology that banning Pokemon based on preference rather than based on relative power by relevant choice is acceptable because it happened once or twice and set a precedent, which in turn has led us to primarily suspect test 'what we don't like.' Part of what proliferates these problems is that Pokemon is becoming more and more imbalanced due to power creep, and the idealistic notion of a 'balanced' metagam that we will likely never have again seems to be enough to justify banning Pokemon based on those preferences to achieve it, but it shouldn't happen that way.

Secondly, the rest of your post is a strawman. I mentioned how I'm not a suspect voter for Keldeo, so I'm not sure why you went off on such a tangent.

I don't want to derail this thread in to a discussion on the philosophy of how bans are made when its about Keldeo, so if you disagree with my sentiments then just PM me. But I felt the initial post was important if people were going to make an accurate judgment.

 

[MikeDawg]

First of all, my post was about what should be banned based on the principle I talked about, not what has been banned as a means to justify my point. You assume I should agree with all of those suspsects being banned for the reasons they were banned for, meanwhile I feel a lot of those suspects were judged improperly based on faulty tiering philosophy. That's practically the entire reason I posted this; to show people that there is a more definitive way of deciding suspects. Too many players have adopted the ideology that banning Pokemon based on preference rather than based on relative power by relevant choice because it happened once or twice and since has become the accepted way, which in turn has primarily come down to a suspect process of 'what we don't like.' Part of what proliferates these problems is that Pokemon due to power creep is indeed imbalanced, and the idealistic notion of a 'balanced' metagame seems to be enough to justify banning based on those preferences, but it shouldn't happen that way.

Secondly, the rest of your post is a strawman. I mentioned how I'm not a suspect voter for Keldeo, so I'm not sure why you went off on such a tangent.

I don't want to derail this thread on to philosophy of how bans are made when its about Keldeo, so if you disagree with my sentiments then just PM me. But I felt the initial post was important if people were going to make an accurate judgment.

As I mentioned, I agree with/like your philosophy. What I don't like is how it ignores precedent. I don't assume that you agree with all of those suspects, in fact I thought the opposite. However, whether you agree with them or not does not change the fact that these suspects were voted to be banned by a wide majority, and so the same reasons for those bannings should definitely apply to keldeo

The second post was not a strawman... rather an "on another note" sort of argument, don't take it as an attack to you.

 

[Ulevo]

As I mentioned, I agree with/like your philosophy. What I don't like is how it ignores precedent. I don't assume that you agree with all of those suspects, in fact I thought the opposite. However, whether you agree with them or not does not change the fact that these suspects were voted to be banned by a wide majority, and so the same reasons for those bannings should definitely apply to keldeo

The second post was not a strawman... rather an "on another note" sort of argument, don't take it as an attack to you.

Ah, alright. Well to clarify then, I'm not ignoring precedent. I very much acknowledge it. I'm saying our tiering decisions up until now have largely been based on the precedent that has been made, and that needs to change if we are going to judge suspects like Keldeo accurately. That's all.

 

[Kidogo]

First of all, to commment on the prediction issue--this is absolutely valid to bring up, and here's why. It's true that it can go either way depending on the prediction, but...these are keldeo's counters we're talking about--the mons that can handle it best in the game! The fact that keldeo can get by them if it wins a 50/50 is a little troubling to me. You don't say, "I hope my opponent's terrakion doesn't use stone edge while I bring in landy-t, because then i'll be screwed"--you say, "I'll bring in landy-t on terrakion because even CB stone edge never 2HKOs even after SR (-1 252 Atk Choice Band Terrakion Stone Edge vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Landorus-T: 138-163 (36.12 - 42.67%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock). That is the definition of a counter. Meanwhile, ebelt keldeo (which is a very viable and common set) flat-out beats celebi if it uses either hp bug or icy wind on the switch, flat-out beats latios if it icy winds on the switch, and does an average of 80% to latias with the 1-2 icy wind - hp bug, which can easily KO after SR with high rolls.

The only absolute checks I see, which keldeo cannot get around via easy 50/50 predictions, are SpD amoonguss, SpD jellicent, and SpD latias (oh and slowking, which ojama mentioned I believe, but which I'm eh on because it's not typically considered OU-viable).

Having said all of that, I am definitely on the anti-ban side. For anyone who is not, definitely check out the posts DU linked. Basically, the central points are:

• For choiced keldeo, things set up on any move it can be locked into. Even just dragonite can set up a DD for free on literally any keldeo (scarf or specs) choice-locked into anything but an ice move, while any steel-type sets up on weak HP ice or icy wind.
• Although keldeo's best checks and counters are weak to pursuit, they are not necessarily easily pursuit-trappable. Celebi can BP out of pursuit, jellicent outspeeds basically all scizor and ttar bar scarftar with a small, standard speed investment, and can easily take hits from them when burned (avoiding, in fact, the 2HKO from anything but ttar's CB crunch).
• Keldeo gets worn down--weak to all hazard and weather damage, which somewhat counteracts the benefit from the SR-resist, and has no method of recovery
  
• All keldeo's checks have great methods of recovery. This is super super important. This, combined with weakness to hazards and passive damage and lack of recovery, means that it can't really play the long-term wearing-down-counters game. This is a huge difference between it and tornadus-t, who had a similar situation with only a few absolute checks and a decent list of counter, but who could wear them down via immunity to spikes, regenerator, u-turn spamming, and exploitation of the fact that it's prime counters (jirachi, rotom-w, bronzong) lacked reliable recovery. As ojama pointed out, every single thing that we're calling a check or counter to keldeo has good to great recovery options (amoonguss, lati@s, jellicent, celebi, tentacruel, gastrodon, even toxicroak has dry skin...)
• It's not actually all that over-centralizing--basically, it is just the posterchild for "rain spam", but in all honestly it has not spawned a huge focus on mons that counter or fare well against it (has anyone really seen a lot of slowking recently?)
• Finally, as ojama pointed out, keldeo actually does do a lot of great things for the meta. Sure, it doesn't help as far as "rain vs" is concerned, but it checks dragons, is perhaps the best offensive check to scizor and volc, and serves as a decent "catch-all revenge-killer" for a host of offensive threats that would certainly be tougher to handle without keldeo around.

Personally, I find all of this a convincing enough argument to vote no ban. While keldeo is incredibly strong and has a ton going for it, I just don't think, due to the above factors, that it is broken in battle.

 

[effyouzion]

Surf? What surf? If i predict a celebi, starmie, latis switch im simply going to icy wind then follow with hp bug next turn. There, now your main check is dead and im still unscatched, good luck trying to revenge kill me now. Yeah sure there are some pokemon that can wall it depending of the hp (some, not a lot) but thats what teammates are there for. And what if you dont have them in your team? Youre supposed to sack something to bring a revenge killer in everytime keldeo gets on the field?

Yeah if you predict 100% correctly and have the proper hidden power on you then Keldeo can beat some of its counters. That's only been mentioned in virtually every post in this thread. Also, idk what kind of pokemon you have on your team, but an ebelt Keldeo is far from killing something every time it comes on the field. Its moves are pretty weak if they're not hitting for super effective damage.

 

[Chou Toshio]

So I'm playing the suspect ladder only. I'm at ~2650 with 153 (wow, lol)

I'm not entirely convinced I'll have enough time to try going for reqs because I'm packing up my entire life to move to China right now (by the end of the month). Anyway, my thoughts on the suspect ladder is that I'm not entirely convinced that the meta is significantly better or worse without Keldeo. I feel a bit more at liberty to user Ferrothorn, but with every OTHER water typing having a good chance to burn, it's not exactly impressive.

Tangrowth is a beast on suspect just because of how powerful/popular Garchomp and Terrakion are, but even so-- Tangrowth is terrible at stopping Politoed, Rotom-W, and Starmie who are also everywhere. Giving up that slot for a grass type that can't touch rain is pretty sub-optimal. I think Celebi is still going to be the best grass type, but being able to go physical celebi is pretty cool.

I dunno... I guess from the suspect ladder my thought is that the meta with or without Keldeo doesn't change enough to make me really to care all that much one way or the other-- something I thought would be the case from the start of the Keldeo suspect thread.

 

[yee]

I mostly agree with the anti-ban here.

Keldeo is as a good friend once described this game "ultra-retarded", but it doesn't make the metagame unbearable. I've seen a bit of a "bearable" vs "best" metagame debate unfold a bit recently, and the bottom line for me is that Keldeo isn't going to make the hugely better if it leaves. If we were going to strip down every stupid thing in the game I would throw Keldeo out without a second thought but we're going for "bearable" here, and this metagame is there.

I normally think "positive benefits brought to the metagame by this mon, can't ban" arguments are beyond ridiculous in their context, but here to me they a decent way of saying we shouldn't ban things unless they are eye-poppingly broken because unless we get rid of the Voltturn / Rain Sun etc. mindless / game simplifying stuff that is included here (trust me they won't let us) I don't expect getting rid of Keld to make this game noticeably better.

This all basically hinges on the fact that I don't think Amoonguss is a piece of crap and therefore find Keldeo allows a full spectrum of offense / balance / stall teams. The power in rain is flat out broken if there is no counterweather, but to me it seems in an even playing skill level match a guy with balance will be able to reasonably prevent Keldeo from using broken rain Hydro Pumps too often and not without reasonable drawbacks. Slowking / Jelli / Celebi kinda also help me feel more comfortable about letting Keldeo be in this meta, and I definitely like Voltturn / Rain Stall (has to not only run Tentacruel but preferably a water immune too) being less good because they are very low quality games.

Of course I don't think anti-ban has all the answers (especially when pretty much every pro-ban side in the entirety of BW2 suspect tests has) because Keldeo is without a doubt overpowered in rain and occasionally setting up on it's counters is very annoying. I won't tell people who say Keldeo is broken in our current metagame goal are wrong (unless it is one of those blacklisted people I just might). I just don't think it's bad enough, it has to be like Lando which was Hydreigon level wallbreaking + better speed + sweeping at the same time or even worse like all of the previous suspects if we plan to ban it without stripping the game down more.

Btw yes, for all the people that misread my other post I don't think we should ban Keldeo just because it is the best pokemon in BW2.

And @ Chou try out 252 / 136 def / 120 spD on Tang. 252 / 252 is almost like running Blissey with no SpD and I bet Specs Keldeo OHKOes that with Icy Wind / Specs Toed OHKOes with Hydro Pump, 120 should let you survive those and even if it doesn't the diminishing returns in defense past that point compared to the special defense gains you could get are so far beyond not worth it!

 

[Bughouse]

Got reqs in OU, a metagame I just don't tend to like all that much.

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Also, the ladders were very weird. What's going on with the rankings and deviations!?

I'm likely going to vote Ban. While I don't think Keldeo is unstoppable, a good test is using a team slightly prepared, but definitely not overly prepared, for Keldeo in both ladders. The team was far easier to use in the suspect ladder than in the one still with Keldeo. IMO, any time you have to plan a whole team around dealing with a Pokemon, rather than just slapping on a counter or two checks or whatever, you have a problem. While, yes, some things like Amoonguss or Toxicroak are very hard counters under almost all circumstances, they're hardly OU standard, nor should they be. I personally find Keldeo is overly centralizing, though I do think it is marginally so, and I totally understand the Do Not Ban side as well.

 

[Myzozoa]

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1. Observations based on the test:

The main thing everyone should notice right away is both Current and Suspect ladders are extremely inflated. This is not a problem by itself (for me, others may question the validity of the voter pool), but I think it could bring about another problem.

First, it means that crappier players can attain rankings closer to good players than previously. This is a problem because it means the top of the ladder isn't a good way to judge the metagame, as it has a range of weak teams that have still managed to get high rankings. I noticed this more on the suspect ladder than on the current one.

I bring this up because it means that it's harder to make statements about what the metagame would be like without Keldeo. Because of the state of the ladder, I wasn't able to get many matches against strong opposition that was trying to optimize for a Keldeo-less metagame. I have no real insight into what OU would actually be like without Keldeo outside of my experience in BW1. I think this is problematic because it makes it harder for me to argue that the metagame is better without Keldeo, many of us would like the chance to make this argument confidently.

Because of ladder inflation I didn't bother trying to adapt towards anything. I just built my team and spammed it for 80 games. I disconnected or timed out of tons of battles, didn't even matter, it probably made my deviation go down faster.

2. The main difference I see between Keldeo and every other pokemon in the tier, is that Keldeo requires unique preparation in team construction unless you want it to destroy you. Amoongus, Sp. d Celebi, Jellicent, etc. These are not pokemon that most teams really want to be using, and I don't think they'd enjoy as much usage in a Keldeo-less metagame (see bw 1 usage). I'm not saying every team has to have these pokemon (I would not argue this at all), but the reason Weatherless and Sand are weak to Keldeo is because they have no room to run answers to Keldeo better than Starmie or Latias. They cannot afford to lose the utility that these pokemon have and Celebi/Jelli/Amoongus can't replicate it.

Offense that doesn't run a dedicated Keldeo 'counter' (by which I mean amoongus, celebi, and Jellicent) will lose a pokemon every time they don't guess Keldeo's move or set correctly. Latias and Starmie aren't going to like coming into expert belt Icy Winds followed up with hp bugs, and it has similarly affective ways to get past some of its other checks.

The point I'm trying to show is that Keldeo has a restrictive affect on the diversity and competitiveness of the metagame. Think of every Rain team that runs Celebi instead of Ferrothorn, they're doing that to check Keldeo. I think that Keldeo is unique (with the exception of weather) in the metagame in forcing such trade offs, and these trade-offs are bad because they increase the importance of team match-up over skilled play. Keldeo can only be reliably neutralized by counters that are outclassed by other pokemon. These other pokemon are not used because they lose to Keldeo. So Keldeo is forcing players to choose to lose a certain set of matches due to bad team match-up and that isn't competitive as the most skilled player should win any given match.

Think about a sand team: Ttar, Ferro, Land-t, Latias, Scizor, Terrakion

and another sand team: Ttar, Skarmory, Amoongus, Land-t, Scizor, Terrakion

The first team is significantly better than the second one against teams of any kind that don't have Keldeo. The second faces slightly worse to much worse match-ups against sun, rain, and weatherless teams, but may be preferred to the first team specifically because it has Amoongus to handle Keldeo. Whichever version you choose, you are choosing to lose some matches before they're played.

 

[haunter]

For those who didn't read the OP: DON'T POST THE SCREENSHOT OF YOUR REQUIREMENTS HERE. An identification thread will be posted later.

 

[Manveru123]

In my opinion what really makes Keldeo broken is rain. Outside of rain, he's very fearsome, but not to the point of banning. In the rain, however, it turns into a game-breaking monster, as even a scarfed Keldeo can wreck water-resists with Hydro Pump under rain, not to mention specs set. Rain is already (arguably) the best weather, and further boosting it is simply unnecessary.

 

[jpw234]

As somebody who plays a lot of stall, I'm amazed by the consensus in this thread that Keldeo does a lot more damage to offense than to stall. While the damage manifests itself in a more "hidden" fashion, the restrictions that Keldeo puts on stall teams are far scarier than anything else I have recently had to deal with, other than Lando-I and Kyurem-B.

(Note - I assume a Scarf set unless otherwise specifically stated, and I assume HP Ghost to be standard)
Consider the effect that Keldeo has on a given stall team (the two I commonly use are Hail and Sand stall). The Keldeo counters who are stall-friendly are Celebi, Jellicent, defensive Latias, Gastrodon (fringe), and Amoonguss (I don't include Starmie as a counter because HP Ghost or Bug both 2HKO it and defensive Starmie, which is what is seen on stall teams, can only sometimes hit back with a Psyshock which doesn't OHKO). Note as well that if Keldeo runs a Specs set, which is less common than Scarf but still completely viable, Gastrodon is not a counter as it is easily 2HKOed by Secret Sword, Latias is 2HKOed by HP Ghost, and Jellicent must run a dedicated specially defensive set in order to avoid a 2HKO by HP Ghost which crimps its viability as a counter to physical threats like Scizor and Tyranitar.
Now consider that the inclusion of Tyranitar, Scizor or Weavile on Keldeo's team puts the fear of God into your three most common counters - Celebi, Jellicent, and Latias. I don't want to make this argument hinge on the viability of Pursuit trapping because if you play perfectly you can avoid it in most situations, but it should be acknowledged the threat makes the margin of error a lot smaller for the defensive player than the Keldeo player. Celebi can only avoid such trapping by running Baton Pass (which hurts its utility unless you're running a dedicated NastyPass set which isn't really stall-oriented) or an offensive set which again isn't used on stall. Jellicent can only avoid the threat with a well-timed WoW (a move with 75% accuracy - even if you predict right you can still be screwed 25% of the time). And defensive Latias has no common ways to avoid Pursuit trapping - only Substitute on the CM set or the more gimmicky Reflect Type.
Consider also that the power of Keldeo means that if you use only one Keldeo counter on your team you are playing with fire. Using Celebi to do anything but switch in on Keldeo can quickly turn it from a Keldeo counter into Keldeo food - Hydro Pump in the rain 2HKOs with Celebi at 50ish% with the Scarf set and 80ish% with the Specs set. Using Latias to take a hit from something like Politoed is dangerous as HP Ice, HP Ghost or Hydro Pump in the rain will 2HKO at about 65% with the Scarf Set or 90% with the Specs set. Only special Jellicent is really all that safe to be used outside of sponging Keldeo hits, and it dies to Specs HP Ghost with 80% or less HP on the switch. This means that Keldeo is free to come in at any given opportunity, fire off an attack, and either OHKO something or dent your counter before switching out with impunity...talk about "momentum". Consider as well that this is assuming the standard Scarf and Specs sets - when you include things like EBelt lures, HP Bug, Calm Mind, etc., you get even more potential to lose your "counter" without much warning. If you actually want to be safe against the spectrum of viable Keldeo sets, running one counter is basically not an option. There's the common refrain that a Keldeo that you battle can only be one Keldeo with four moves and one item, not Hydro Pump/Icy Wind/Secret Sword/HP Ice/HP Ghost/HP Bug/Substitute/Calm Mind LO/Specs/Scarf/EBelt. That's fine, but equivalently your Keldeo counter can only be one Keldeo Counter, not special Jellicent/BP Celebi/Special Amoonguss/CM Latias all rolled into one. In the context of a time period where the frequent complaint about about the BW2 metagame is that battles are too often decided by team matchup, it seems silly that we're willing to accept that your Keldeo counter could straight-up get fucked by a common and viable set before the battle (that isn't even specifically designed to be a lure).

Of course we can always run two Keldeo counters, or one Keldeo counter with a pokemon that can handle the particular set that your counter loses too. But that gets my imba senses tingling. If you're running two Keldeo counters you're all of a sudden constraining two entire slots on a stall team to basically a pool of 10ish pokemon (Celebi, Jellicent, Latias, Gastrodon, Amoonguss, maybe Rotom-W, maybe Starmie, maybe Tentacruel, Roserade). These pokemon share a lot of weaknesses - lots of Pursuit weaks, everything is weak to BoltBeam coverage except Gastrodon and Roserade who are not common in OU, not many of them have a useful role outside of being a special wall except Amoonguss with Spore and Starmie/Tentacruel who can spin. Packing a counter and a specific counter to a set that beats it still sucks because you'll probably lose your counter in finding out that you're facing the Keldeo set it can't beat, and the pool of extra checks is quite hypothetical (I actually can't think of any defensive pokemon I'd pair with one of the counters in order to patch up its weakness to a particular Keldeo set).

Anyway, I think that Keldeo (along with Kyurem-B) is one of the biggest things keeping stall teams down in BW2 and that its versatility and power are good reasons to ban it.

@undisputed's post: I've discussed why I think Keldeo is threatening for defensive teams. I can't really speak to its effectiveness against offense. When discussing specs against defensive you say "common combinations of pokemon can wall it", but I've already kind of talked about the restrictions that puts on your teambuilding and the ineffectiveness of trying to counter Keldeo.

@Ojama's post: The ability of Keldeo's "counters" to recover their health is nice but not really all that relevant. First off, if you're forced to recover every time you switch in a counter to sponge a hit, you lose all of the momentum that switching in a counter is supposed to bring you and allow them to switch in their opposing threat for free. Secondly, in many non-100% health situations Keldeo's counters won't have time to recover because they get 2HKOed anyway.
Then you say that Keldeo can only beat its counters when they are alone, but not when there are more than one. Sorry but that's kind of ridiculous and what I discussed at the end of my post. What top threat in the metagame today can boast that it can run one of several viable sets and beat its main counters? Maybe SD Rock Gem Terrakion? Maybe NP Thundurus-T? And these two sets sacrifice most of the utility of the standard sets (Terrakion can't revenge kill w/o scarf, Thundy-T now has to take a hit to set up, etc.). Keldeo can run up to four different sets that don't require set up and do the same thing with just some decent prediction. It's on another level as far as that ability goes.
And saying things like

And I don't want to read stuff like "ya but it's annoying to bring this Pokemon and this Pokemon to counter Keldeo", don't make me believe that these Pokemons are only useful to counter Keldeo

comes off as kind of high-and-mighty. Yes, Ferrothorn and Jellicent can check and counter Keldeo respectively and are a good core. Not everybody wants to run Rain Stall. Not everybody can fit Amoonguss on their team. It's unreasonable to restrict defensive teams to a pool of under 10 pokemon for two of their team slots. Doing so not only directly limits those two slots, but also indirectly limits the possible pokemon for your other four slots by restricting them to pokemon that work well with your Keldeo counters. For example very few Keldeo counters work with Sun teams, should they just lose to every Keldeo if they can't win the weather war?
And things like "Keldeo is useful for the metagame" are not good arguments. Yes Keldeo is a good, even top-tier revenge killer. So was Genesect. There are other good revenge killers, the metagame will adapt to fill in the space that Keldeo leaves. Hopefully that will provide some opportunity for innovation rather than stagnation.

 

[Jukain]

@Rayquaza_'s point is that Keldeo, independent of its support, is solidly OU. I actually disagree with this opinion as well, PHILOSOPHICALLY. When you have like half your team already planned out for Keldeo to succeed (Tyranitar/SR setter or Politoed/Scizor or Weavile) though, it does seem as though Keldeo is unable to dominate teams on its own. Offense is easier pickings for the Scarf set, but then balanced teams have an easy time, or for that matter, any team with [insert typical Keldeo counter here]. The fact is that Pursuit is not even guaranteed against Reflect Type/Sub CM Latias, BP Celebi, Will-O-Wisp (aka all) Jellicent. Even Latios -- just a check -- can beat Tyranitar and Scizor (the latter with a bit of prior damage) thanks to Rain Dance + Water Gem-boosted Surf. If you want to bring Roserade into the argument (which is fairly hurt by Pursuit due to its piss poor Defense), well it can Sleep Powder Tyranitar/Scizor. Heck, it can even HP Fire Scizor. Amoonguss/Gyarados can't be Pursuit trapped and wreck Tyranitar/Scizor in Gyarados's case -- physically defensive Amoonguss is the only variant that can legitimately wall Scizor, which is kinda ehh with Keldeo in the metagame.

The point is that unless you are a literal god with prediction and double switching, Pursuit will not always happen, and Keldeo will remain walled. Obviously both sides can make misplays and Pursuit trapping will often happen, but it is not guaranteed. That is why I think Pursuit trapping is a kind of weird argument as a deciding factor for Keldeo's banning.

With that said I am by far on the anti-ban side. I was on the fence leaning anti-ban at the beginning, but Ojama's and undisputed's posts have solidly convinced me what my vote will be.

 

[Spinda]

I think this post a serious case of "long and well-written, so must be right!" syndrome. I certainly liked the first part of your post, but have to disagree wholeheartedly with your second point. A pokemon doesn't NEED to be kyogre-esque centralizing to be banned to ubers. Hell, look at gen4 wobuffet, gen4 salamence, thundurus, tornadus-t, blaziken, landorus, deoxys-d, deoxys-s, hell, even excadrill to an extent.

Now of course you can argue that some of these pokemon, like tornadus for example, were indeed centralizing. "You had to run a jirachi or rotom or bronzong or zapdos or cresselia or different weather or ____ on every team!"

And so how exactly is that different from keldeo? (especially when at this time those resists like rotom were even MORE neccesary?) Jirachi and rotom were already sooo common. And tornadus is far more weather dependent than keldeo, so just changing the weather crippled it.

Why is it perfectly fine to say that having to run a jirachi on every team or a gliscor on every team makes the pokemon broken, when having to run MORE THAN ONE OF celebi/lati/jellicent/etc. doesn't?

Especially when you consider how easily keldeo can skate past one of celebi/lati/jellicent/etc. in many cases

I would much rather face a tornadus/landorus in this meta than I would a keldeo, simply because (even if I am "well" prepared) one mispredict and my "counter" is gone, whereas if keldeo mispredicts, jellicent gets maybe a free will-o-wisp?

Yeah because there's absolutely no risk in using hp ghost on something that most likely won't take shit from it and will be able to hit you back or status you if you mispredict, right? I'd say the majority of the metagame has a way of atleast crippling keldeo anyway.. Even if you do switch to that jellicent you mentioned and they hp ghost, you can switch out on that. Hp Ghost is complete set-up fodder, and if they do double switch predicting you to switch, you still have a semi-healthy jellicent, which can switch into keldeo's actual threatening moves and recover on it, providing you don't mispredict a second time.
Keldeo needs to predict, risking getting set up on, crippled, or even killed in order to weaken a jellicent that only requires you to mispredict once to undo that..

I like these odds.

 

[jpw234]

Yeah because there's absolutely no risk in using hp ghost on something that most likely won't take shit from it and will be able to hit you back or status you if you mispredict, right? I'd say the majority of the metagame has a way of atleast crippling keldeo anyway.. Even if you do switch to that jellicent you mentioned and they hp ghost, you can switch out on that. Hp Ghost is complete set-up fodder, and if they do double switch predicting you to switch, you still have a semi-healthy jellicent, which can switch into keldeo's actual threatening moves and recover on it, providing you don't mispredict a second time.
Keldeo needs to predict, risking getting set up on, crippled, or even killed in order to weaken a jellicent that only requires you to mispredict once to undo that..

I like these odds.

All you've established is that in most situations, and discounting the entirety of the rest of the teams involved in the battle, Jellicent counters Keldeo. This is true and irrelevant. The existence of a counter to a pokemon is not a reason that it should remain OU, particularly when sets like EBelt and CM exist that don't require the prediction you've described.
Also, your statement can be turned around almost exactly to describe the difficulties of a defensive player knowing when to switch in Jellicent.
"I'd say keldeo has a way of crippling the majority of the metagame anyway...even if they do switch to Jellicent and you Hydro Pump, you can switch out on that. Jellicent is complete set-up fodder, and if they do double switch predicting you to switch, you still have a semi-healthy keldeo, which can switch into their threatening pokemon and kill them, providing you don't mispredict a second time.
Jellicent needs to predict, risking getting set up on, crippled, or even killed in order to sponge a keldeo hit that only requires you to mispredict once to undo that.."
Prediction is a two way street.

 

[Leader Fox]

Only special Jellicent is really all that safe to be used outside of sponging Keldeo hits, and it dies to Specs HP Ghost with 80% or less HP on the switch.

Where are you getting that damage output from? If Keldeo did 80% damage to Jellicent, heck I be on the Pro Ban Side too, but this is not the case.
252 SpA Choice Specs Keldeo Hidden Power Ghost vs. 252 HP / 220+ SpD Jellicent: 164-194 (40.59 - 48.01%) -- 10.94% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Speacial Defense Jellicent is also bad IMO because its just make Tyranitar more likely to kill you off.
This Damage Calc is Physical Jellicent and as you can see Jellicent can come in on keldeo.
252 SpA Choice Specs Keldeo Hidden Power Ghost vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Jellicent: 218-258 (54.09 - 64.01%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Yes it does it does 2HKO Jellicent, but its not like the stall player is just gonna let jellicent die, reason? Its simple, Keldeo is only going to be dealing damage with it main 2 stabs, and if it comes in on any pokemon that is not HP Ghost Weak during the match, that 40-50%ish Jellicent is still there and can really f*** the keldeo player if he/she goes for Hydro Pump or Secret Sword. The last thing I would like to point out is that what if the Keldeo isn't choice specs? Jellicent isn't going to have a problem handling keldeo if keldeo isn't choice specs.

If the keldeo was choice scarf and had Band Ttar on his side, I probably go into my BP Celebi because Celebi has the least trouble with these two combinations, while also having jellicent on my stall team as a spinblocker, not just a Keldeo Counter/Check

 

[Halcyon.]

Where are you getting that damage output from? If Keldeo did 80% damage to Jellicent, heck I be on the Pro Ban Side too, but this is not the case.
252 SpA Choice Specs Keldeo Hidden Power Ghost vs. 252 HP / 220+ SpD Jellicent: 164-194 (40.59 - 48.01%) -- 10.94% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Speacial Defense Jellicent is also bad IMO because its just make Tyranitar more likely to kill you off.
This Damage Calc is Physical Jellicent and as you can see Jellicent can come in on keldeo.
252 SpA Choice Specs Keldeo Hidden Power Ghost vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Jellicent: 218-258 (54.09 - 64.01%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Yes it does it does 2HKO Jellicent, but its not like the stall player is just gonna let jellicent die, reason? Its simple, Keldeo is only going to be dealing damage with it main 2 stabs, and if it comes in on any pokemon that is not HP Ghost Weak during the match, that 40-50%ish Jellicent is still there and can really f*** the keldeo player if he/she goes for Hydro Pump or Secret Sword. The last thing I would like to point out is that what if the Keldeo isn't choice specs? Jellicent isn't going to have a problem handling keldeo if keldeo isn't choice specs.

If the keldeo was choice scarf and had Band Ttar on his side, I probably go into my BP Celebi because Celebi has the least trouble with these two combinations, while also having jellicent on my stall team as a spinblocker, not just a Keldeo Counter/Check

Just to clarify, I think he was saying that if Jellicent is at 80% HP or less, then it is 2HKO'd by Specs Keldeo 100% of the time. Not entirely sure, but I think that's what he meant (not that it really matters, you could say it gets OHKO'd at 40% HP...).

 

[Yuy]

I'm not trying to sound sarcastic or rude but one thing I notice on here are posters standing up for stall. Here's an example:

"As somebody who plays a lot of stall, I'm amazed by the consensus in this thread that Keldeo does a lot more damage to offense than to stall. While the damage manifests itself in a more "hidden" fashion, the restrictions that Keldeo puts on stall teams are far scarier than anything else I have recently had to deal with, other than Lando-I and Kyurem-B."

This poster made a great post. I'm only making an observation here, but we're over a year into a decidedly and accepted offensive metagame. It's been this way since the very beginning of BW1 and into BW2. I just think it's strange that suddenly stall has a voice. I was a gen 4 stall player myself and I currently use balance in this meta.

Another observation is that it was a powerful scarf that got banned before also in Genesect, and before then it was a weather-boosted STAB with coverage for its checks in Torn-T. Keldeo seems to be a mix of both while being slightly less threatening in both senses. I don't have reqs(I'm Yuy, the chronic spectator) but I've seen a ton of matches and between some battling and a lot of spectating I still can't come to a conclusion on Keldeo.

So far this is what I think about Keldeo: A part of me thinks there are enough base 110+ speed mons to deal with it and that the scarf set is just weak enough without enough coverage to be alright too. It could be we're using a limited amount of things to deal with Keldeo? We're mentioning the same things over and over but a +1 Mence kills with outrage if it isn't scarf, even a quick feet user could score a kill with facade and there are things like t-wave and toxic that do a number to it too. Maybe the counters/checks supplement other ways to deal with quick mons who hit hard but have limited movepools. --- Regardless of the last part of that, a part of me thinks there are enough speedier mons to deal with it and scarf sets are just weak enough to deal with. Still working out a conclusion, though.

That's just my 2 cents.

 

[Myzozoa]

• For choiced keldeo, things set up on any move it can be locked into. Even just dragonite can set up a DD for free on literally any keldeo (scarf or specs) choice-locked into anything but an ice move, while any steel-type sets up on weak HP ice or icy wind.
• Although keldeo's best checks and counters are weak to pursuit, they are not necessarily easily pursuit-trappable. Celebi can BP out of pursuit, jellicent outspeeds basically all scizor and ttar bar scarftar with a small, standard speed investment, and can easily take hits from them when burned (avoiding, in fact, the 2HKO from anything but ttar's CB crunch).
• Keldeo gets worn down--weak to all hazard and weather damage, which somewhat counteracts the benefit from the SR-resist, and has no method of recovery
  
• All keldeo's checks have great methods of recovery. This is super super important. This, combined with weakness to hazards and passive damage and lack of recovery, means that it can't really play the long-term wearing-down-counters game. This is a huge difference between it and tornadus-t, who had a similar situation with only a few absolute checks and a decent list of counter, but who could wear them down via immunity to spikes, regenerator, u-turn spamming, and exploitation of the fact that it's prime counters (jirachi, rotom-w, bronzong) lacked reliable recovery. As ojama pointed out, every single thing that we're calling a check or counter to keldeo has good to great recovery options (amoonguss, lati@s, jellicent, celebi, tentacruel, gastrodon, even toxicroak has dry skin...)
• It's not actually all that over-centralizing--basically, it is just the posterchild for "rain spam", but in all honestly it has not spawned a huge focus on mons that counter or fare well against it (has anyone really seen a lot of slowking recently?)
• Finally, as ojama pointed out, keldeo actually does do a lot of great things for the meta. Sure, it doesn't help as far as "rain vs" is concerned, but it checks dragons, is perhaps the best offensive check to scizor and volc, and serves as a decent "catch-all revenge-killer" for a host of offensive threats that would certainly be tougher to handle without keldeo around.

I will respond in order:

1. "Things can set up on any move Keldeo locks itself into"- this is hardly a surprising result, it's true of every choice pokemon.

The reason this is a terrible argument is that Keldeo is especially effective at bluffing a choice set. Part of the reason expert belt keldeo is good against offense and stall is that there is often no way to know if it isn't scarf Keldeo until after it switches moves. This means that the Keldeo user has you by the balls until you find out what item he has. In other words, part of the reason Keldeo is good is because it can bluffed effectively to destroy pokemon that would try to set-up on it.

2. "Pursuit trapping isn't a sure way of eliminating counters" Well I agree with this statement in principle. I like how you claim Jellicent invests in speed to outspeed scizor, I see maybe one in 4 Jellicents that out pace 8 spe Scizor, but if you want to tell me about all the ways you've modified pokemon in specific ways in order to handle pursuit trapping, that only convinces me that Pursuit trapping is actually an effective strategy. Baton Pass Celebi: now you can't run Perish Song, now you aren't running U-turn, maybe you were never gonna run U-turn and you just completely wasted a moveslot just so you could escape from Pursuit: that's a shittier Celebi.

Jellicent loses to Ttar if it doesn't predict perfectly, so I can't understand why no one will just straight up admit it: Jellicent loses to Ttar, it is pursuit trapped by Ttar more easily than any pokemon in the tier other than Latias. I'm not even touching the weird things you may or may not be doing with Jellicent's ev spread that will no doubt make it worse against everything in the tier that isn't Scizor or Ttar.

3. "Keldeo gets worn down--weak to all hazard and weather damage, which somewhat counteracts the benefit from the SR-resist, and has no method of recovery" I don't understand this comment at all. I obviously agree with the details, Keldeo is vulnerable to hazards and sand storm, and it has no recovery, but I haven't noticed that wearing down Keldeo was an easy task. C'mon guys, this is like saying Garchomp is worn down easily if you get hail up and 3 layers. Basically I disagree with the entire sentiment of this claim. My experience has not been consistent with this claim at all and I reject it because of this. I would be willing to argue about this more, mainly because I find it such an odd claim given the experiences I've had playing against Keldeo.

Also I figure you could probably say the same thing about any pokemon and it would be true. In my experience Keldeo has significantly better longevity than most pokemon.

4. "All keldeo's checks have great methods of recovery" Well this is technically true as well, too bad it doesn't work out in practice. A significant reason why people pair pursuit and Keldeo is because Keldeo's counters give you a free turn to switch in your Pursuit as they recover. With or without pursuit the opponent will get a turn to switch in something that can take advantage of your check. I hope I don't have to explain to you why giving away a free turn is so bad for offensive teams, it's only 'pretty bad' for bulkier teams, either way Keldeo is indirectly supporting the rest of the team by helping them switch in for free on weak counters. This argument seems to say that it's okay to give your opponent a free turn so that in exchange you get to not kill Keldeo, or even cripple it, but merely so that you can switch into it again.

Also note that Icy Wind +HP bug will destroy some pokemon that like to switch in on Water or Fighting, such pokemon as Lati@s and Starmie. Recover doesn't make these pokemon any more reliable, further these are actually two of the best Keldeo 'checks' that offensive teams can hope to run.

5. "It's not actually all that over-centralizing"


I addressed this in part 2 of my last post, see my example regarding standard sand teams.

6. "keldeo actually does do a lot of great things for the meta"

Scarf Keldeo is pretty much the best revenge killer in the tier and it doubles as a cleaner, I'll admit this. It certainly is not the best offensive check to Scizor, and further no one would ever claim scizor is close to being broken. Just because Keldeo (like many water types faster than Scizor) checks Scizor, does not mean it is adding anything to the tier. The only way Keldeo is handling most threats is with a Choice Scarf, but don't you remember?? 1. "Things can set up on any move Keldeo locks itself into" and 2. There will still be ubiquitous, quality revenge killers if Keldeo were banned, so again not adding anything unique to the tier, other than the addition of team matchup factoring a bunch more into who wins matches.

 

[MikeDawg]

I would really like to address the whole "o u can just switch out if u mispredict yay" argument

Here's a brief log from a recent battle:

The foe's Keldeo used Hidden Power!
It's super effective! Jellicent lost 55.9% of its health!

Ok. So I can just switch out now and keldeo still can't spam hpump, right? Of course. Yay, keldeo sucks it can't do anything!

But if I switch out, I now have 0 things to switch into scizor/dnite/lando-t/mamo/etc. because it is midgame and my forry is already weakened.

Yeah, I know, "You got outplayed. That's not a good argument, you just suck. Hah." And that would be great, except for the fact that at least 5 other times that match I outplayed the other user with keldeo with fun switches into jelli/forry/etc.

And what exactly came of those plays? Nothing. My opponent switched out and I got in a free will o wisp, or a free gyro ball, etc.

But what happened the ONE time I mispredict what keldeo did? I don't lose the ability to deal with keldeo. But I do lose the ability to deal with A TON OF OTHER THREATS.

I think it needs to be made clear that Keldeo is NOT the only pokemon you have to worry about ever. As such, even the hard checks like jelli and celebi, who have recovery and can technically continue to deal with keldeo, are always in HIGH PRESSURE situations.

A VERY common argument from the anti-ban side is that all of these checks for keldeo would already be on your team in the first place to check other things. Okay, but that is why it is especially problematic that keldeo has the potential to 2hko lati with hydro pump, or do 55% to jelli with hp ghost, or catch celebi with an hp bug, etc. THESE POKEMON HAVE OTHER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT BESIDES KELDEO, HENCE WHY THEY ARE ALREADY SO "COMMON" ON TEAMS.

Now, this argument can be made for almost any hard hitting pokemon, but what makes keldeo so different is that it can so easily walk past its counters and checks with one good play/one different set/one particular hp/etc.. So easily. Add to this how shaky these checks are in the first place and how neccesary they are to stave off already large threats and the problem becomes even more apparent.

Not only does keldeo have the ability to sweep on its own and bypass its own counters for its own benefit, but in doing so it opens the way for a multitude of other pokemon to sweep, even if keldeo is still managed by a weakened check.

 

[Leader Fox]

I would really like to address the whole "o u can just switch out if u mispredict yay" argument

Here's a brief log from a recent battle:

The foe's Keldeo used Hidden Power!
It's super effective! Jellicent lost 55.9% of its health!

Ok. So I can just switch out now and keldeo still can't spam hpump, right? Of course. Yay, keldeo sucks it can't do anything!

But if I switch out, I now have 0 things to switch into scizor/dnite/lando-t/mamo/etc. because it is midgame and my forry is already weakened.

Yeah, I know, "You got outplayed. That's not a good argument, you just suck. Hah." And that would be great, except for the fact that at least 5 other times that match I outplayed the other user with keldeo with fun switches into jelli/forry/etc.

And what exactly came of those plays? Nothing. My opponent switched out and I got in a free will o wisp, or a free gyro ball, etc.

But what happened the ONE time I mispredict what keldeo did? I don't lose the ability to deal with keldeo. But I do lose the ability to deal with A TON OF OTHER THREATS.

I think it needs to be made clear that Keldeo is NOT the only pokemon you have to worry about ever. As such, even the hard checks like jelli and celebi, who have recovery and can technically continue to deal with keldeo, are always in HIGH PRESSURE situations.

A VERY common argument from the anti-ban side is that all of these checks for keldeo would already be on your team in the first place to check other things. Okay, but that is why it is especially problematic that keldeo has the potential to 2hko lati with hydro pump, or do 55% to jelli with hp ghost, or catch celebi with an hp bug, etc. THESE POKEMON HAVE OTHER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT BESIDES KELDEO, HENCE WHY THEY ARE ALREADY SO "COMMON" ON TEAMS.

Now, this argument can be made for almost any hard hitting pokemon, but what makes keldeo so different is that it can so easily walk past its counters and checks with one good play/one different set/one particular hp/etc.. So easily. Add to this how shaky these checks are in the first place and how neccesary they are to stave off already large threats and the problem becomes even more apparent.

Not only does keldeo have the ability to sweep on its own and bypass its own counters for its own benefit, but in doing so it opens the way for a multitude of other pokemon to sweep, even if keldeo is still managed by a weakened check.

Show me the whole log, probably to late but to be fair you had a sun team consisting of Ninetales/forretress/darmanitan/venusaur/latias/jellicent.
Latias on sun hmm well ok but you didn't have dugtiro on your team so Ttar(Since the Pro Ban side talks about pursuit support on keldeo) can now completly come in pursuit trap latias without any worries that a dugtrio will be right there to revenge kill him, in which case keldeo can no longer function. Also you not giving us any details you just gave us a damage calc
and hinted towards that you have a latias, however who woulda knew that you had a sun team and that u were running 2 PURSUIT WEAK POKEMON on a sun team without Dugtrio >.< , So if you were taking on a sand team with Ttar+keldeo which would probably be your biggest problem because Ttar can just kill your 2 keldeo checks. I can see what you are trying to say but this is not convincing me that keldeo should be uber with a person running latias and jellicent on a sun team.

 

[MikeDawg]

Show me the whole log, probably to late but to be fair you had a sun team consisting of Ninetales/forretress/darmanitan/venusaur/latias/jellicent.
Latias on sun hmm well ok but you didn't have dugtiro on your team so Ttar(Since the Pro Ban side talks about pursuit support on keldeo) can now completly come in pursuit trap latias without any worries that a dugtrio will be right there to revenge kill him, in which case keldeo can no longer function. Also you not giving us any details you just gave us a damage calc
and hinted towards that you have a latias, however who woulda knew that you had a sun team and that u were running 2 PURSUIT WEAK POKEMON on a sun team without Dugtrio >.< , So if you were taking on a sand team with Ttar+keldeo which would probably be your biggest problem because Ttar can just kill your 2 keldeo checks. I can see what you are trying to say but this is not convincing me that keldeo should be uber with a person running latias and jellicent on a sun team.

It was a latios, and one that easily lures and beats Ttar anyhow. And I thought it had been discussed how jelli isn't all that vulnerable to pursuit.

But regardless, what in the world does any of that have to do with my argument? (hint: none, which is why I didn't mention any of it)

The "brief log," was obviously facetious... it was nothing more than a damage calc basically (though one that happened in practice) and served no purpose other than being a qt exposition

 

[Kidogo]

I will respond in order:

1. "Things can set up on any move Keldeo locks itself into"- this is hardly a surprising result, it's true of every choice pokemon.

The reason this is a terrible argument is that Keldeo is especially effective at bluffing a choice set. Part of the reason expert belt keldeo is good against offense and stall is that there is often no way to know if it isn't scarf Keldeo until after it switches moves. This means that the Keldeo user has you by the balls until you find out what item he has. In other words, part of the reason Keldeo is good is because it can bluffed effectively to destroy pokemon that would try to set-up on it.

2. "Pursuit trapping isn't a sure way of eliminating counters" Well I agree with this statement in principle. I like how you claim Jellicent invests in speed to outspeed scizor, I see maybe one in 4 Jellicents that out pace 8 spe Scizor, but if you want to tell me about all the ways you've modified pokemon in specific ways in order to handle pursuit trapping, that only convinces me that Pursuit trapping is actually an effective strategy. Baton Pass Celebi: now you can't run Perish Song, now you aren't running U-turn, maybe you were never gonna run U-turn and you just completely wasted a moveslot just so you could escape from Pursuit: that's a shittier Celebi.

Jellicent loses to Ttar if it doesn't predict perfectly, so I can't understand why no one will just straight up admit it: Jellicent loses to Ttar, it is pursuit trapped by Ttar more easily than any pokemon in the tier other than Latias. I'm not even touching the weird things you may or may not be doing with Jellicent's ev spread that will no doubt make it worse against everything in the tier that isn't Scizor or Ttar.

3. "Keldeo gets worn down--weak to all hazard and weather damage, which somewhat counteracts the benefit from the SR-resist, and has no method of recovery" I don't understand this comment at all. I obviously agree with the details, Keldeo is vulnerable to hazards and sand storm, and it has no recovery, but I haven't noticed that wearing down Keldeo was an easy task. C'mon guys, this is like saying Garchomp is worn down easily if you get hail up and 3 layers. Basically I disagree with the entire sentiment of this claim. My experience has not been consistent with this claim at all and I reject it because of this. I would be willing to argue about this more, mainly because I find it such an odd claim given the experiences I've had playing against Keldeo.

Also I figure you could probably say the same thing about any pokemon and it would be true. In my experience Keldeo has significantly better longevity than most pokemon.

4. "All keldeo's checks have great methods of recovery" Well this is technically true as well, too bad it doesn't work out in practice. A significant reason why people pair pursuit and Keldeo is because Keldeo's counters give you a free turn to switch in your Pursuit as they recover. With or without pursuit the opponent will get a turn to switch in something that can take advantage of your check. I hope I don't have to explain to you why giving away a free turn is so bad for offensive teams, it's only 'pretty bad' for bulkier teams, either way Keldeo is indirectly supporting the rest of the team by helping them switch in for free on weak counters. This argument seems to say that it's okay to give your opponent a free turn so that in exchange you get to not kill Keldeo, or even cripple it, but merely so that you can switch into it again.

Also note that Icy Wind +HP bug will destroy some pokemon that like to switch in on Water or Fighting, such pokemon as Lati@s and Starmie. Recover doesn't make these pokemon any more reliable, further these are actually two of the best Keldeo 'checks' that offensive teams can hope to run.

5. "It's not actually all that over-centralizing"


I addressed this in part 2 of my last post, see my example regarding standard sand teams.

6. "keldeo actually does do a lot of great things for the meta"

Scarf Keldeo is pretty much the best revenge killer in the tier and it doubles as a cleaner, I'll admit this. It certainly is not the best offensive check to Scizor, and further no one would ever claim scizor is close to being broken. Just because Keldeo (like many water types faster than Scizor) checks Scizor, does not mean it is adding anything to the tier. The only way Keldeo is handling most threats is with a Choice Scarf, but don't you remember?? 1. "Things can set up on any move Keldeo locks itself into" and 2. There will still be ubiquitous, quality revenge killers if Keldeo were banned, so again not adding anything unique to the tier, other than the addition of team matchup factoring a bunch more into who wins matches.

1. Things setting up on choice-locked keldeo
My issue with your argument about keldeo bluffing is this: the ebelt set is great at bluffing as choiced, but the choiced sets don't bluff as ebelt. In 99% of games, if I send out keldeo against your +1 dragonite with multiscale broken, you're going to be perfectly right to conclude that it is scarfdeo. Furthermore, if that keldeo then proceeds to outspeed my dragonite and KO it with hp ice, i'm going to go straight to my SDzor and set up. Bluffing works great in the other direction: for example, if I hydro pump the blissey switch-in and it does 30%, and it has 29% health left now, and i hydro pump again instead of secret swording, then maybe the next time celebi comes in on my hydro i can hp bug it. Your argument would only really make sense if choice sets were rarely used, when in fact 54% of keldeo are choiced (according to most recent stats) and only 14% are ebelt.

My point was basically this: given that keldeo benefits so much from being choiced, and that so many of the pro-ban arguments depend upon the boosts it receives from scarf or specs (it's nowhere near as difficult to counter if we ignore specs, and doesn't function as a revenge-killer / late-game cleaner at all without a scarf), we have to look at the fact that it's one of the most set-up-on conducive choice-users out there--secret sword has a type immune to it, as does hpump via water absorb, dry skin, etc. It doesn't get decently powered coverage moves (it's the only OU mon I can think of that regularly uses a 50 BP move--horrible movepool in terms of coverage). Furthermore, its STAB's, while powerful, have meh coverage--and what's worse, one of the most major types that often resists both are dragons, which happen to be some of the best set-up sweepers in OU (dragonite, mence, lati@s, etc.). And sure, it can revenge them with hp ice on the scarf set, but hey, steels, another hugely threatening type, can set up on that! (Non to mention that half the set-up sweepers in OU can take many scarf hp ices from keldeo because it's so weak). Compared to something like terrakion, whose SE has literally no immunes and few resists, and who doesnt need coverage moves--basically literally, ever--keldeo is so much more prone to letting sweepers set-up on choice-locked variants of it.

2. Pursuit-trapping
The standard jellicent listed first in the smogon analysis has 44 Spe EVs, specifically to outspeed 8 speed scizor. Not only is this totally logical (given that checking scizor is a big perk of jellicent's), but jellicent's taunt is one of its greatest assets, and it needs speed to make use of it (taunting politoed before it toxic, ferro before it leeches, etc.). Outspeeding standard bandtar requires 88 spe EVs, which comes out to 11 points less in a defense--generally not something that will often cost you a game. Again, because jelli can make good use of the speed, this is a totally viable option. Just because these are not super common (if indeed they are not--I don't think I know a single skilled played who has run anything below 44 speed on jellicent) does not decrease their effectiveness. Meanwhile, I don't really see BP being such a big hindrance to celebi--you can absolutely still run psong, as very often you'll be needing them independently of each other, so they wont conflict. I dont really see why u-turn is a big loss--celebi never used it for anything but the free switch, and it's actually nice quite often not to take the iron barbs / rough skin damage.

And so what if these changes are being made to escape from pursuit (although I'm not even saying that they are 100% at all--as I said, jellicent makes great use of the extra speed for the faster taunt, and celebi runs u-turn 33% of the time anyway--and interestingly, psong only 8%--and basically doesn't lose anything by using BP over it)? I could make the argument that ebelt keldeo's HP bug is almost exclusively for celebi. So? Mons run unusual moves to get by their counters all the time, and there's nothing wrong with it. Celebi is one of keldeo's best and most common checks, so keldeo runs a move to beat it. Similarly, ttar and scizor are celebi's greatest enemies, so it runs a move to escape from them. (Not to mention that celebi gets far greater use out of baton pass outside of escaping pursuiters than keldeo gets from hp bug outside of beating celebi.) In fact, being able to use a wide variety of moves viably to get past counters is a huge bonus to a pokemon, and is one of the things that people are claiming makes keldeo broken!

3. Weakness to passive damage
You're right, you could say this about most any pokemon. I was more expressing that keldeo is not like tornadus-t in its ability to beat its counters by outliving them via regenerator. I agree with you, keldeo is probably less prone to being worn down than most pokemon due to the SR resist (equal to garchomp, yep), but it's can't play the "spam attacks and then switch out to wear down counters while staying in perfect shape regardless of residual damage" game like torny-t did. Not an important point, was just noting a significant difference between the two mons (particularly important since I'm pretty sure that was the deciding factor for a huge portion of the voters).

4. Checks have reliable recovery
I'm not 100% sure what you're arguing here. I agree that something being able to recover does not make it a foolproof counter, and that yes, recovering does give the opp a free turn. But just because something has a recovery move doesn't mean that it has to use it every time it takes damage. Your assertion about the momentum gained is basically just saying "if I can 3HKO your check if I start with an obvious move, i don't lose any momentum by using it, because they are forced to recover or risk the 2HKO the next time I'm in". Absolutely true. But this has nothing to do with them having recovery--it has to do with the fact that keldeo is a potent attacker who can 3HKO even its checks with proper prediction. I was making a totally separate point.

Which is that, as the converse to the point above, keldeo can't just wear its counter down over the course of the game. Landorus-t may be a more solid check to terrakion than celebi is to keldeo (no terrakion--bar hp ice lol--can come close to 2HKOing landy-t, whereas keldeo easily 2HKOs with hp bug), but if your keldeo does not have hp bug, you will NEVER get past that celebi without help from other mons or hax. It can take ANY 2 attacks from full health, and heal off more damage than you deal. On the other hand, the terrakion user can and will often get by that landorus-t through smart play--every time I stone edge as you switch in, I'm 30% closer to breaking though. If I switch out each time to something that forces landy-t out, it only takes 2 hits before terrakion can break through landy the next time I send it in. Meanwhile, this will literally NEVER happen with keldeo, because each and every one of its checks has the ability to recover off damage as fast as keldeo can deal it (basically).

5. Not over-centralizing
My point was mostly about the fact that obscure keldeo checks have not become common in OU (slowking is #132, for example). Not a big point, but the fact that rotom-h rose a ton in usage in genesect's prime but that slowking, which is a much more viable mon in terms of stats and movepool (and which shares typing with bro, which is relatively commonly used), has not, says a fair amount amout how much keldeo really has shaped the meta.

Don't have time to reply to the last one, but I will in a bit. Interested to hear your thoughts, myzo!