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I don't think Manaphy has 4mss at all with tail glow water stab energy ball and ice beam it gets all the coverage it needs. Luckily empoleon and tentacruel can't really hurt you and umbreon and florges are ok to set up on if they switch in. Basically everything is hit by neutral stab or se coverage or is lame toxicroak? The rain dance sets are basically only good IMO to crush Blissey which can be done easily enough with a partner.
Well I find that Tail Glow and 3 attacks makes it very vulnerable to Toxic which I don't really like about it from said defensive mons which can be common Toxic users.
Patrick1088 I agree with everything you've said, though I don't understand why it is being aimed at me? I feel like we arguing similar things?
The reason manaphy is broken is because of its massive bulk and excellent typing that allows it to setup easily against the majority of the tier and that combined with base 100 speed means its very hard to revenge kill. You cannot simply slap any generic scarf user or a mega aerodactyl and call it a day. Your options are basically raikou and life orb virizion (which is an inferior item on it). For countering purposes all you have is blissey really. Overall not enough answers to make it manageable in uu.
Edit: I also remember Kokoloko talking about how its a deadweight vs offense. While that might be true if you just blindly attack manaphy, here's a few more interesting calcs in which manaphy can survive an offensive poke trying to take it down before it gets to use tail glow boosted attacks against you. Note that all of these pokes are faster than manaphy either naturally, or through use of choice scarf and that the assumption is that you swap one of these pokes in as manaphy uses tail glow.
252 Atk Life Orb Mienshao High Jump Kick vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 269-317 (78.8 - 92.9%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Victini Bolt Strike vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 238-280 (69.7 - 82.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Hydreigon Draco Meteor vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 205-243 (60.1 - 71.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Azelf Explosion vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 265-312 (77.7 - 91.4%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 SpA Sheer Force Nidoking Thunderbolt vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 192-226 (56.3 - 66.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Iron Fist Infernape Thunder Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 252-298 (73.9 - 87.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
For a pokemon running no bulk, that's pretty damn good that it can survive those STAB or SE attacks. You really do need a faster grass or electric type to ensure you can strongly check it, as the STAB is really important.
While you can consider that impressive, you should remember that we have 3 other pokes in the tier with straight 100s: Celebi, Mew, and Victini, all of which can do just as well against every one of those calcs(even better vs Mien's HJK, no including the fact some do run bulk over power), as well as two having far more reliable recovery, and one having a move strong enough that it doesn't need boosting to be a threat. Their only "setbacks" come down to weaknesses, mainly due to dual typing(and Knock off for Mew). Celebi even gets both SD and NP for boosting, allowing it to setup as either physical or special.
When you take all of that out of the equation, Manaphy only provides one issue in the Tier: Tail Glow. Outside of that, the argument is basically broken down into whatever set it's using. Hydration Manaphy suffers the same as Crocune, with even less bulk after considering the SpDef boosts from CM, and Glow/3 moves risks residual damage from toxic/sand/etc. And both still risk getting Phazed/Hazed. Which, considering how much setup already exists in the tier, having one of those is already quite useful.
While you can consider that impressive, you should remember that we have 3 other pokes in the tier with straight 100s: Celebi, Mew, and Victini, all of which can do just as well against every one of those calcs(even better vs Mien's HJK, no including the fact some do run bulk over power), as well as two having far more reliable recovery, and one having a move strong enough that it doesn't need boosting to be a threat. Their only "setbacks" come down to weaknesses, mainly due to dual typing(and Knock off for Mew). Celebi even gets both SD and NP for boosting, allowing it to setup as either physical or special.
comparing a pure water type to typing as horrible as psychic / psychic + fire / psychic + grass as if it's nothing more than a "minor setback" ignores the fact that its this shitty typing that is even keeping any of these pokes from being overpowered. the amount of offensive counterplay you have against victini (pursuit, a billion weaknesses many of which are the most common offensive types in the tier, its stab makes it frailer and slower, weakness to hazards) compared to the amount you have against manaphy (only weak to the relatively rare grass and electric types, not weak to pursuit, spammable stab), the 100/100/100 bulk that they both share is basically irrelevant. it is fairly easy to fit a moderately fast defensive mon that can destroy -1 victini onto a stall team, it is not fairly easy to fit a 100+ speed grass or electric type mon that can OHKO manaphy.
Manaphy in UU sounds pretty ridiculous imo. It has 600 bst, and a great movepool that includes a perfect coverage like Ice/Water/Grass-Psichic and two of the best setup moves of the game such as Calm Mind and Tail Glow. Manaphy also has as good ally its Hydratation ability which in combo with Rain Dance makes it pratically immune to status move and hard to counter even for some Special Wall that usually stops it like Blissey, the presence of CMrest set in the tier force the stall teams to use a Water absorber (Seismitoad/Gastrodon/Jellicent) or CM Slowbro, and they are not even an immediate switch-in because of Energy Ball. I personally think that Rain Dance Tail Glow is the most dangerous set in terms of unpredictability, has pratically no switch in, you can t exactily know if it runs Ice Beam or Psychic, and scouting sometimes could cost you the game. It deserves to remain BL without any doubt, I also find funny that something that last Meta was in Uber is now discussed in this tier.
After playing some games with Manaphy I can confirm the brokenness. He's not as blatantly overpowered as I first thought, but still worse than other things that I thought should have been banned.
The guy obviously misplayed when he switched Toxicroak into my ice beam, but even if he didn't, his best option would have been to sucker punch me with croak, then try and finish me off with Aero. That's an easy 2-for-1 in Manaphy's favor against a pretty well built team, or a clean sweep if Aero didn't do enough damage to get the kill... and I even set up on a specs Hydreigon's draco meteor (it was -2, but still -- wall breakers like Infernape or Haxorus would never risk setting up on that move).
The reason manaphy is broken is because of its massive bulk and excellent typing that allows it to setup easily against the majority of the tier and that combined with base 100 speed means its very hard to revenge kill. You cannot simply slap any generic scarf user or a mega aerodactyl and call it a day. Your options are basically raikou and life orb virizion (which is an inferior item on it). For countering purposes all you have is blissey really. Overall not enough answers to make it manageable in uu.
Honestly, if I see one more Raikou I'm going to be sick. The spark in usage of Raikou is for all the wrong reasons. People are using it for Manaphy, obviously, and that's pretty dumb. What are you going to do? Switch into it? No, you'll get worn down. Send it in after something dies? Okay, it just switches out and does the same thing again. Raikou should only be used for its resistances, which at the moment don't really counter much. Obviously, there's stuff like Crobat, but taking a whole slot for Crobat and a very suspect "check" for Manaphy is a bit absurd.
I realize that checks for Manaphy are a bit hard to come by, but for the love of god, at least use a check that covers more ground for your team. And if you decide to use Raikou, it better be for a good reason.
Expert Belt Raikou is pretty dope. It's great for gaining momentum and luring shit like Swampert to its doom (always use HP Grass). Aura Sphere gets great coverage and even with Rash nature you hit 329 speed. It's no Megaman but it's not to be slept on.
atm im thinking i will let this test run until about the end of the month, that way we can tackle the remaining tests once the drops occur. as of right now i estimate we will be done with the initial phase of suspecting by the end of the year. probably sooner.
comparing a pure water type to typing as horrible as psychic / psychic + fire / psychic + grass as if it's nothing more than a "minor setback" ignores the fact that its this shitty typing that is even keeping any of these pokes from being overpowered. the amount of offensive counterplay you have against victini (pursuit, a billion weaknesses many of which are the most common offensive types in the tier, its stab makes it frailer and slower, weakness to hazards) compared to the amount you have against manaphy (only weak to the relatively rare grass and electric types, not weak to pursuit, spammable stab), the 100/100/100 bulk that they both share is basically irrelevant. it is fairly easy to fit a moderately fast defensive mon that can destroy -1 victini onto a stall team, it is not fairly easy to fit a 100+ speed grass or electric type mon that can OHKO manaphy.
Before I say anything else, you made a little mistake: Celebi isn't Psychic/Psychic, and Mew isn't Grass.
Honestly, Psychic is only considered a bad typing right now due to Knock Off. Pursuit is hardly a factor, as barely anyone actually runs it. Even then, all 3 can generally survive a Knock Off, barring Banded. Celebi is really the only one I'd really consider having bad defensive typing, due to the 4x to U-turn.
You want "moderately" fast grass or electric types? (calcs are using the Tail Glow/3 move set on the calculator)
Raikou/Jolteon/Heliolisk(all 3 pretty much give the same result):
252 SpA Choice Specs Heliolisk Volt Switch vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 302-356 (88.5 - 104.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
- Rakou and Jolt hit harder than Helio with Volt Switch
- Tbolt is OHKO regardless
- Helio fully walls Rest/Rain Dance/Tail Glow set
Galvantula:
252 SpA Galvantula Thunder vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 294-348 (86.2 - 102%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock (12.5% w/o Rocks)
- Even your humble Sticky Web setter can outspeed and potentially OHKO.
Sceptile:
252 SpA Life Orb Sceptile Giga Drain vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 276-328 (80.9 - 96.1%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
- Leaf Storm obviously OHKOs
Scarf Rotom-C:
252 SpA Rotom-C Leaf Storm vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 366-432 (107.3 - 126.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Sash Alakazam:
252 SpA Alakazam Psychic vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 151-178 (44.2 - 52.1%) -- 75.4% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Wish Prankster Encore even an offensive Whimsicott can kill off Manaphy after switching in on the setup:
252 SpA Whimsicott Giga Drain vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 174-206 (51 - 60.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
And if you're feeling ballsy/run Sticky Web:
252 Atk Choice Band Victini Bolt Strike vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 354-418 (103.8 - 122.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Literally everything on that list naturally outspeeds 252+ Speed Manaphy(barring Victini of course). And with how common Sticky Web is, I'm sure there's a few more.
And as I mentioned in a prior post, with the prevelance of setup already in the tier, it's smart to run Haze/Clear Smog/Phasing already. Hell, Goodra takes ~50% from a +3 Ice Beam, and Empoleon even less from +3 Energy Ball, both of which can phase Manaphy and possibly subject it to further hazard damage.
Guess it isn't that hard to find a fast Grass/Electric type to use against Manaphy. Few of them can even tank a +3 attack. There's even some outside of that typing that can beat it pretty well. As for the Hydration/Scald set, It shares the same issues as Crocune, except it gets to a more offensive point a bit faster at the cost of overall bulk, unless it runs CM, then it really is just a Crocune.
Thing with Manaphy is that it can completely destroy you if you aren't prepared for something like it. But that can be said for a number of things in the tier. I honestly can't say if it should be BL'd or not, but thankfully it's not up to me.
Before I say anything else, you made a little mistake: Celebi isn't Psychic/Psychic, and Mew isn't Grass.
Honestly, Psychic is only considered a bad typing right now due to Knock Off. Pursuit is hardly a factor, as barely anyone actually runs it. Even then, all 3 can generally survive a Knock Off, barring Banded. Celebi is really the only one I'd really consider having bad defensive typing, due to the 4x to U-turn.
You want "moderately" fast grass or electric types? (calcs are using the Tail Glow/3 move set on the calculator)
Raikou/Jolteon/Heliolisk(all 3 pretty much give the same result):
252 SpA Choice Specs Heliolisk Volt Switch vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 302-356 (88.5 - 104.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
- Rakou and Jolt hit harder than Helio with Volt Switch
- Tbolt is OHKO regardless
- Helio fully walls Rest/Rain Dance/Tail Glow set
Galvantula:
252 SpA Galvantula Thunder vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 294-348 (86.2 - 102%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock (12.5% w/o Rocks)
- Even your humble Sticky Web setter can outspeed and potentially OHKO.
Sceptile:
252 SpA Life Orb Sceptile Giga Drain vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 276-328 (80.9 - 96.1%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
- Leaf Storm obviously OHKOs
Scarf Rotom-C:
252 SpA Rotom-C Leaf Storm vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 366-432 (107.3 - 126.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Sash Alakazam:
252 SpA Alakazam Psychic vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 151-178 (44.2 - 52.1%) -- 75.4% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
Wish Prankster Encore even an offensive Whimsicott can kill off Manaphy after switching in on the setup:
252 SpA Whimsicott Giga Drain vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Manaphy: 174-206 (51 - 60.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
And if you're feeling ballsy/run Sticky Web:
252 Atk Choice Band Victini Bolt Strike vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy: 354-418 (103.8 - 122.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Literally everything on that list naturally outspeeds 252+ Speed Manaphy(barring Victini of course). And with how common Sticky Web is, I'm sure there's a few more.
And as I mentioned in a prior post, with the prevelance of setup already in the tier, it's smart to run Haze/Clear Smog/Phasing already. Hell, Goodra takes ~50% from a +3 Ice Beam, and Empoleon even less from +3 Energy Ball, both of which can phase Manaphy and possibly subject it to further hazard damage.
Guess it isn't that hard to find a fast Grass/Electric type to use against Manaphy. Few of them can even tank a +3 attack. There's even some outside of that typing that can beat it pretty well. As for the Hydration/Scald set, It shares the same issues as Crocune, except it gets to a more offensive point a bit faster at the cost of overall bulk, unless it runs CM, then it really is just a Crocune.
Thing with Manaphy is that it can completely destroy you if you aren't prepared for something like it. But that can be said for a number of things in the tier. I honestly can't say if it should be BL'd or not, but thankfully it's not up to me.
re: the "mistake", + = dual typing, / = new pokemon. in other words, mew = psychic, victini = psychic + fire, celebi = grass + psychic. thought that was clear lol
mew is the only one who you can even make a convincing case of having "decent" typing, victini has horrible typing. Ground / Rock / Water moves are some of the most common defensive types, not to mention weaknesses to hazards, and ofc the knock off / pursuit / sucker punch weaknesses. celebi has horrible typing too obviously.
re: the rest of your post
if you reread my post you will see that i said it was impossible to fit an offensive counter to manaphy on a defensive or stall team. none of the pokemon you listed are even remotely comfortable on a stall team (except MAYBE whimsicott, but not 252 spa whimsicott by any means). Also, there are very very few viable pokemon that have a slot to run Haze or Clear Smog, if they even get it. Finally,
+3 252 SpA Life Orb Manaphy Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Empoleon: 190-224 (51 - 60.2%) -- 87.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
SpD Empoleon (which isn't that great anyway) can only prevent a Manaphy once - and scald only does like 10%. It certainly doesn't resolve the problem of Manaphy for defensive teams, it just delays it by phazing it away. If it is leftovers, the same fundamental problem still occurs. Same thing with Goodra - although at least it has slightly more offensive pressure with Power Whip / DM.
re: the "mistake", + = dual typing, / = new pokemon. in other words, mew = psychic, victini = psychic + fire, celebi = grass + psychic. thought that was clear lol
mew is the only one who you can even make a convincing case of having "decent" typing, victini has horrible typing. Ground / Rock / Water moves are some of the most common defensive types, not to mention weaknesses to hazards, and ofc the knock off / pursuit / sucker punch weaknesses. celebi has horrible typing too obviously.
re: the rest of your post
if you reread my post you will see that i said it was impossible to fit an offensive counter to manaphy on a defensive or stall team. none of the pokemon you listed are even remotely comfortable on a stall team (except MAYBE whimsicott, but not 252 spa whimsicott by any means). Also, there are very very few viable pokemon that have a slot to run Haze or Clear Smog, if they even get it. Finally,
+3 252 SpA Life Orb Manaphy Energy Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Empoleon: 190-224 (51 - 60.2%) -- 87.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
SpD Empoleon (which isn't that great anyway) can only prevent a Manaphy once - and scald only does like 10%. It certainly doesn't resolve the problem of Manaphy for defensive teams, it just delays it by phazing it away. If it is leftovers, the same fundamental problem still occurs. Same thing with Goodra - although at least it has slightly more offensive pressure with Power Whip / DM.
My mistake on the typing. I was reading the / as the dual type.
Whimsicott can 2hko with the SpAtk, but it doesn't exactly need it, as it can just keep abusing encore if they try to stay in(for some ungodly reason). Was going off default listings for the calc, which do seem odd sometimes(though I'm now inspired to try semi-offense Whimsicott..).
And you're right, Stall can have trouble finding a way to deal with it. But then we're trying to claim a Pokemon is too good because it can stomp 1 type of playstyle. And as much as stall players probably hate that fact, judging it based of that feels a tad skewed to me.
But maybe we all have been asking the wrong question. Perhaps the real question is: Is Tail Glow too good? While banning a move that isn't Evasion or OHKO would probably be considered silly and shot down, would Manaphy still be too good without it? Or would it give UU another solid water type with a decent bit of utility? After all, the only two who get Tail Glow are Manaphy and Volbeat, who isn't even considered in UU to my knowledge.
My mistake on the typing. I was reading the / as the dual type.
And you're right, Stall can have trouble finding a way to deal with it. But then we're trying to claim a Pokemon is too good because it can stomp 1 type of playstyle. And as much as stall players probably hate that fact, judging it based of that feels a tad skewed to me.
No, that's a perfectly reasonable way to judge it. If one pokemon singlehandedly demolishes an entire playstyle with its most common sets, that's a very real problem.
My mistake on the typing. I was reading the / as the dual type.
But maybe we all have been asking the wrong question. Perhaps the real question is: Is Tail Glow too good? While banning a move that isn't Evasion or OHKO would probably be considered silly and shot down, would Manaphy still be too good without it? Or would it give UU another solid water type with a decent bit of utility? After all, the only two who get Tail Glow are Manaphy and Volbeat, who isn't even considered in UU to my knowledge.
Manaphy's brokenness is not solely due to tail glow, and given that the only viable user of tail glow in the tier is Manaphy, it makes no sense to ban Tail Glow. It's an unnecessary complex ban, so we shouldn't fixate on one move in a suspect.
actually i kinda disagree with the entirety of kitten's post above mine lol
honestly, if there's a threat that completely stomps stall, then stall needs to adapt, its not the threats fault, its the fact that pure, full stall is a shitty playstyle for this very reason. how many things would we need to ban if we wanted to preserve that shit? haxorus woulda stayed BL for one.
HOWEVER, manaphy fucking destroys every non-pure offense style, not just stall. especially the way i've been using it. i've been spamming rain dance to get out of the low ladder zone quickly and i just slapped a tail glow 3 attacks wacan manaphy on that team and oh my fucking lord.... you can't beat it. literally the only time it doesn't get 2-3 kills or straight up sweep is when their shaymin wins the speed tie. either that or they crit it as i set up. otherwise it just sets up on anything cause status doesn't stick with hydration and wacan eliminates half its weaknesses.
while i still stand by the fact that people were, and still are, way overestimating manaphy, i will admit i kinda underestimated it. going into this test i was sure i was going to have a hard time making up my mind... not the case. im like 100% certain this thing deserves BL status now.
also kitten, tail glow /is/ manaphy. without it, it would be like RU probably. nothin but a worse suicune. so i heavily disagree there.
still not banning tail glow, though. don't wanna open that can of worms unless its for something significant.
i referred initially to stall and all remotely defensive teams, but somewhere in the trickle-down it got condensed to just stall. what i really meant to say is that there are very few (if anyone) reasonable and viable defensive counters, which forces you to run tons and tons of offensive pressure (e.g. scarf electrics and grasses, generic scarfmons, banded fastmons, stickyweb) if you want to have a chance at mitigating the threat it has.
ok fsr I thought that suicune had way worse defensive stats than it actually does (for some reason i thought it was like 90/100/80? idk fucking retard kitten strikes again) so I thought that cm manaphy outclassed crocune, when it obviously totally doesn't. however, even without tail glow offensive manaphy would still be a pretty cool mon for rain teams.
definitely agree that tail glow is why it's even in suspect though, and my wording was absolutely shit in the above post. it was really more of a commentary on why complex bans don't work in general - they mentioned volbeat also getting tail glow, yet volbeat obviously isn't broken in any sense of the word. when i say that "Manaphy's brokenness is not solely due to tail glow", what i really mean to say is that if you knew nothing about manaphy's stats / typing / abilities / movepool, other than the fact that it had tail glow, you could not immediately dismiss it as broken. although tail glow is a huge contributing factor towards manaphy being broken, it would be entirely useless if it had shit stats and typing, a bad offensive movepool
tl;dr my above post is a wonderful combination of horribly shitty wording as well as some good old dumbassery. whoops
There is an incredible amount of bias against stall probably because people think it as a boring playstyle, which makes sense seeing as it takes longer and most of you are adolescent first world middlish class males (:0 as am I) you guys tend to fit the profile of liking things faster paced. Therefore it doesn't surprise me when you guys say something along the lines of "if stall cannot adapt, too bad it is just not that good!" Setting aside the fact I am fairly certain stall can adapt to beat Manaphy sets (hello Whimisicott again!) I was mildly disappointed to read those posts after reading the Volcarona ban reasoning. You guys complain about having to adapt on your offensive teams of running Stone Edge on fast Scarfers and complain about how hard it is for your offensive teams to maintain SR, which are all reasonable complaints because it really does suck to be stuck in SE and SR is not easy at all to maintain. What is less reasonable to me however is that you guys you used that, along with of course Volcarona's amazing Quiver Dance and base stat spread, as legitimate reasons to ban Volcarona. You guys couldn't adapt so to speak your offensive teams so away went with your threat, Volcarona was banned. Stall on the other hand had little problem with Volcarona because Volcarona was never really getting past Toxic Blissey in reasonable conditions bar Sleeping for several turns. Nobody was saying though offensive balanced playstyles were unusable because they couldn't get past a single threat, instead you decided for a ban to help out the style. Do you see a problem with what I am saying?
If you don't that may be because you see something concretely wrong with my post which is ok, maybe you disagree on how I read the reasoning and that Volcarona was banned for different reasons and it wasn't so strong against offensive teams.
However if you disagree and see no problem I suspect it is more likely because you have adopted yourself a very different tiering policy from what Smogon has at least pretended to do. You probably think that tiering philosophy is a load of word maneuvering and has no concrete principles. You have no problems with banning (or not banning) anything as long as it makes the tier better in your eyes, and by better you mean more fun because Pokemon is after all a game. I understand you may think yourselves as the champion of pragmatism. But tiering this way, doing bans this way, has such a clear amount of bias from my viewpoint at least and without any guiding concrete principles this tiering style seems like it can eventually lead to unrestrained convoluted bans. Please be very careful when you do these bans
We banned Diggersby because it single-handedly dismantled Stall. Volcarona tends to beat offense with team support. How is that biased in offense's favor? Different Pokemon man-handle different playstyles, so don't bring out your bullshit about how we're biased against stall when we've banned EVERY broken Pokemon AND when the most powerful of them (Diggersby, Landorus, Terrakion) have been handled by offense but dismantled stall.
idk why pif insists on spewing this type of bullshit every other week but i don't want people thinking thats how we do things, so i'll oblige.
volcarona was not banned because it forced offense to adapt (lol?), it was banned because the only ways offense had of dealing with it were both unreliable and prone to get you into a shitty situation. however, they already existed as standards (stone edge on scarfape and scarfshao is standard, so why pif calls it adaptation is beyond me).
don't know where you get off calling us out like that when uu has like the biggest banlist in history and a huge part of that is because we tried to preserve every playstyle. if you look at the shit that's been voted bl during testing, everything that's there is a threat to multiple team archetypes--except for magnezone, which is only a threat to stall (or at least was when we voted on it), so again, lol, and volcarona, which is mostly a threat to more offensive teams, granted. you can bitch and moan all you want but these are facts, almost every mon in BL is there because its broken versus a wide variety of playstyles.
the reason you continuously see me saying that stall should adapt and that its a shitty playstyle isn't just because i think its boring and not fun to use (i can't even lie though, i do think that) its because stall is the playstyle most prone to getting run over by random boosting sweepers. the lack of momentum and offensive pressure when using stall causes this. its the nature of the style. why the fuck should i, as a tier leader, go out of my way to ban everything that beats stall when stall can't even beat a well played mega absol + cb heracross combo ?_?
edit: mind you, im referring to full stall here, not the semi-ok playstyle that involves the use of a choice scarfer and other tactics to, you know, actually beat stuff.
so ive been playing quite some games with manaphy now and i have to say it's very good, it simply can not be ohko'd bar a strong super effective move. the problem with manaphy is not only it's strength, but it's ability to actually set-up due to it's excellent typing and bulk, this allows it to easely plow through bulkier playstyles and if you let it set up vs an offensive team (which you should never do) you are going to lose 1 or 2 pokemon which forces offensive teams too stay in on manaphy just to avoid it from setting up on you which is in my opinion not healthy. manaphy also has a cool set which is more reliable and stronger than the cm cune set which is cm + rain + rest this set ofc has the same problems as cm cune has, but it has a more reliable way to recover up and hits harder with rain to support it's scald. tho suicune is bulkier than manaphy it doesn't really have manaphys staying power and power in general, the rain cm set is also a great way for manaphy too beat more offensive builded teams.
I just want to say that I completely disagree with Koko's logic behind "babysitting" certain playstyles more than others. In my opinion, whether you think a certain playstyle is fun, viable, or whatever, they should be treated the same. And I don't mean random playstyles that are offshoots. We are talking about heavy offense, balance, bulky offense, and stall. If it is impossible for one of those four to adapt to a Pokemon (and I mean really adapt), then it, in my opinion is broken. I don't care if you dislike stall or think it's not viable. Many users have proven that stall is in fact viable. It's clearly not the strongest playstyle, but when has heavy offense ever been strong.
This whole debate is a little retarded anyways, as Manaphy is broken. Here's the short version, Volc made bulky offense and heavy offense not viable. Manaphy makes nearly everything besides stall and balance not viable. Let's move on and stop bs'ing about the details. The facts are there and the end result is the same.
Also, random note, but as far as I know, most people on the council are not for banning Scald. Maybe I'm wrong though.
Ignoring how Koko conducts himself, he DID address your concern. Maybe not directly, but again, that's a different conversation. The point is to have a BALANCED metagame, not a fun one. You are the only person claiming that the Council is making decisions based on what they think is fun as opposed to balanced. If other Council members come in and say they booted all these Pokemon because they believe it would result in a more fun metagame, then you have an argument.
Manaphy at first just seems ok in UU seeing its like all the other base 100 spread pokemon like mew, celebi, jirachi, etc. Then you can see how it can tear through teams. Hydration used with a rain setter like tornados makes manaphy unable to be stopped with para, toxic. With access to tail glow, it only takes to to be at +6 and rip through teams. Its mono water typing only gives it two weaknesses, electric and grass. a typical Manaphy spread i see is surf, ice beam, energy ball and tail glow. those three moves alone give it pretty much all the coverage it needs. Its 100 speed tier makes it worth investing for a sweeper, and accounting for the fact it has bass 100s across the board, you could even run bulky sets with it. Do i see Manaphy being unstoppable? No. Blissey for one walls it with its towering Special D and can kill with seismic toss. Anything above 100 Speed can check it, such as Raikou and Galvantula. Im even sure Infernapes with ThunderPunch could check manaphy but I'm not sure about that. There are most likely more than that but i didn't think of them. Off the top of my head though that's 1 counter and 3 checks which doesn't seem justifiable to let Manaphy into UU. I say keep him in BL. With its average 100 BST it seems ok, But tail glow is just too good of a boosting move along with its typing and move pool to let into UU
