Tiering thoughts until ORAS

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Aldaron

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[19:07:33] <Feitan> are you guys doing any suspect tests btw
[19:07:38] <Feitan> or are we done
[19:07:38] <aldaron> i dunno
[19:07:46] <aldaron> i wanted to do thund-i before
[19:07:50] <aldaron> but now im not sure
[19:07:55] <aldaron> and im def not doing char-x anymore
[19:08:00] <Feitan> its not doing too well atm tbh @ thund
[19:08:01] <aldaron> nothing else is on my radar
[19:08:13] <Feitan> its still good but
[19:08:22] <Feitan> the type of teams that are common nowadays
[19:08:25] <Feitan> give it more trouble
[19:08:35] <Feitan> + thund itself isn't used much
[19:08:37] <Feitan> anymore
[19:08:45] <Feitan> bc it offers little defensive synergy
[19:08:48] <aldaron> what is even on people's radars
[19:08:55] <Feitan> i see more people opt for rotom/raik and whatnot
[19:08:57] <Feitan> nothing lol
[19:09:11] <aldaron> i said it right after mawile but i think this holds true still
[19:09:29] <aldaron> i think the meta has reached a spot where team match up is important but not a determining factor anymore

[19:09:43] <McMeghan> the meta
[19:09:47] <McMeghan> is rly cool right now :x
[19:09:48] <aldaron> two well built teams mostly have a chance to beat each other; one might have a better shot sure
[19:09:50] <aldaron> but that's fine

[19:10:13] <aldaron> im looking out for thund-i but atm
[19:10:19] <aldaron> im not interested in suspecting anything

(feitan is bloo)

Basically, at one point or the other, I had considered Thundurus-I and Charizard-Mega-X as potential suspects, but I no longer believe this to be necessary (at least at the moment).

The bolded part is especially important to me; I honestly don't believe team match up, at least between two well thought out and well built teams, is an extreme or absolute determining factor anymore. Sure, there is team match up, but I earnestly do not believe it is as outcome-determining as before. I truly believe a good player armed with a well built team stands a fair chance against any other team.

With that noted, I no longer to have to look towards metagame improvement bans, and can focus solely on "broken in a vacuum" bans that we used to solely focus on previous generations.

Is anything individually broken now? Why?

Don't just give me rehashed extremisms on thund-i / char-x btw; I'll delete and probably infract nonsense posts that don't show knowledge of the current meta.
 
I don't think anything is broken
Sand offense is so good at keeping in check thund/zard, and combined with scarf lando t those 2 mons are having lots of trouble, thund got very little usage in tour as far as I saw and zard was mostly being used for the WoW set, which is excellent but has its own problems (especially the sr weak)

The only other suspects to consider are the 3 wall breaking metas. Those have been pretty dominant in tour and in general, and are gigantic threats that one could call broken due to lack of counters and ability to fuck with most switchins (e.g. tpunch medi, wow gard, etc). However, in my opinion they aren't broken because
A. We are developing counters to them, acro gliscor, rachi, all the psychics used for medi. The meta may adapt around them to an extent but is that the worst thing? there are easy checks for offense and balance and stall have clearly been shown to be viable in tour, even if stall looks a little different than before.
B. They are all slow or slowish, meaning they can be rked easily. This combined with the lack of particularly strong prio means that they will never sweep offense, and every balance or even stall should have a couple things to outspend and rk.
c. They all offer little to know defensive synergy, gard is so physically frail that it can't even counter the latis cuz it is almost 2hkoed by psyshock, medi is frail as balls and hera is kind of bulky but not great typing usually means it can eat up one hit at best.

The only other thing to consider, and the one that interests me the most is sand exca. I know it has plenty of counters and checks, and isn't nearly as traditionally broken as those megas. However, it is incredibly centralizing, and forces all offense to adapt around it, and most offenses are fucked by it anyways. Im not saying its broken or should be banned, but i think it is worth taking a look at and at least seeing what the meta would look like without it (most likely it would make thund and zard broken and offset the balance but i just thought i should mention it)
 

jpw234

Catastrophic Event Specialist
I'm pretty sure there aren't any broken Pokemon at the moment (with the poooosssible exception of Char-X but I highly doubt he is). Therefore, I think this would be a good opportunity to discuss and possibly test several not-Pokemon, uncompetitive elements of the metagame.

I would support suspect tests on Stealth Rock and Shadow Tag, both of which I'm sure are uncompetitive but neither of which have really gotten a serious look with all of the broken stuff we've had to deal with. I'm happy to go into detail with my reasoning on either of these issues if there are a reasonable number of others open to the idea, but if everybody thinks I'm crazy I'm not going to waste my breath.

Edit: I would also like to point out that this is likely to be the only time we will have available to test non-Pokemon stuff with the flood of new crazy shit that ORAS will be bringing, and also that doing so now would be optimal because we would be able to do our ORAS tests with the new meta in place (particularly in relation to SR, which I think is the more pressing concern and is likely to have a larger impact on other suspect tests), making it even more relevant/beneficial to do these tests now rather than put them off or ignore them.
 
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I agree with Tesung on just about everything, I think the tier has nice counter play at the moment, in a way that still allows for games to be interesting and winnable even if the other person has a team advantage.

The one thing I will say is that prankster twave is a bitch, there is no worse feeling than greninja getting twaved by thundurus and getting full parad. I cant say that I would miss thundurus if he left, because I am pretty sure a prankster twave suspect is out of the question. But I think it brings a little bit too much hax to the table, while also being a top tier threat without twave. Ive even used a purely mixed attacking set with no twave that hit like 80% the tier SE. But yeah I guess I am saying everything else is good but I wouldnt mind a thundurus suspect test.


In response to jpw, I support a shadow tag suspect, but a SR one would leave the tier in shambles and I think trying to keep hazards off your side while getting them on your opponents is a good aspect of the meta.
 
i agree with the sentiment of this thread

that being said speed bracket ignoring thunder waves that just happen to be able to stop any sweeper that's already setup from sweeping regardless of the fact that you should be getting punished for allowing said sweeper to setup in the first place on a pokemon that's already incredibly offensively potent and easy to fit on any offensive team is a bit much in my opinion (yes i know this is subjective please don't reply by throwing bullshit at me about something like heal bell or revenge killing ground types or "klefki has prankster twave too" or any other ridiculous statement seen so often in these types of threads).

just my 2cents
 
stealth rock doesnt need a suspect test imo

this metagame is fine atm. the only things that i would be fine with a suspect test is what tesung said: thundy-i, megazardx, and megahera but just the prevalence of playstyles like sand offense and the adpting of new threats using diff moves for team preference makes this less of an issue. we cant fit everything on one team to check/counter all these threats and i can see arguments for those above possible suspects but these points itself means we prolly dont need any more suspecting (plus all these 'mon have some strong weak point too like tflame being all over to check megacross which can be seen common on stall, other common things like sash chomps screwing with thundy etc). leaving the metagame rest until ORAS seems best tbh
 
Thundurus is something that a lot of people hate because of Prankster Thunder Wave, but I think this is actually helps the metagame more than it hurts it. People don't use Thundurus for the hax involved with it. It sees usage because it's a great check to Flying Spam and offense in general. Thundurus helps offensive teams from being completely steamrolled by things like Talonflame and boosting sweepers such as Charizard X, Mega Gyarados, etc. I don't agree with the argument that "you deserve to lose if you let these things set up" because it's not like you're giving up multiple free turns to the opponent. One misprediction that gives the opponent a chance to get up one Dragon Dance can mean the difference between winning and losing a game in the offense vs. offense matchup, and Thundurus helps to remedy this.

And having Thundurus on your team doesn't suddenly make you invulnerable to setup sweepers and fast Pokemon. It's just a check to most offensive sweepers. Plenty of things do this, including many Choice Scarf and priority carrying Pokemon. Do they do it to the same extent that Thundurus does? Generally not quite. But you use it for the same reason, and if you set up with a Pokemon while the opponent has a Thundurus and then stay in when it comes out, you deserve to get it paralyzed.

Thundurus is a bitch, but it's a nice offensive check to offensive teams, which is a good thing to have in OU.
 

alexwolf

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Just want to clear out one common misconception, but Thundurus is not a check to offensive teams, it's a boon to them. Thundurus is mostly seen on offensive teams due to its frailty, which makes it unfit for balanced and defensive teams. Furthermore, Thundurus allows offensive teams to be more versatile, as it covers so much in one slot, such as birdpsam check, hard hitter, lure (Hidden Power Flying, Psychic, even Knock Off for Chansey), and revenge killer. Not arguing that it's broken, just explaining that Thundurus is not something that keeps offense in check but something that makes offense better.
 
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I am posting on behalf of Dekzeh who believes Greninja to be broken.

[06:35 pm] <&dekzeh> greg is retarded in the same way sand exca is retarded
[06:35 pm] <&dekzeh> it makes HO nearly unviable
[06:35 pm] <&dekzeh> it forces you to pack random do nothing checks turning any potential offense team into shitty balance and a healthy metagame should have all playstyles equally viable
 
Since jpw234 brought up the topic of testing non-Pokemon stuff, this is something that I heard people buzzing about a little back in BW and it came up again while I was playing a ladder match recently...

What are your thoughts on a possible suspect test on Scald? Everyone knows it's annoying as fuck, but can it be considered uncompetitive (I think it's debatable)? I personally wouldn't mind giving it a test if we have time for it before ORAS.
 
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Valmanway

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I doubt Scald will be suspected. The burn chance only kicks in 30% of the time, and it's not like it prevents something from attacking, so it's not exactly anti-competitive, unlike Swagger for example, which provided a 50% chance to have a free turn entirely. It's very annoying to randomly get burnt, I'll agree to that, but I wouldn't say that it's worth suspecting.
 

jpw234

Catastrophic Event Specialist
If you think Scald is "uncompetitive" (aka unhealthy for the metagame independent of how it is instantiated in the metagame) then you need an explanation for why Discharge, which is similarly powerful and causes just as crippling of an effect, is not uncompetitive. Otherwise you're making an argument about brokenness which is going to be difficult if not impossible to establish.
 

MattL

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If you think Scald is "uncompetitive" (aka unhealthy for the metagame independent of how it is instantiated in the metagame) then you need an explanation for why Discharge, which is similarly powerful and causes just as crippling of an effect, is not uncompetitive. Otherwise you're making an argument about brokenness which is going to be difficult if not impossible to establish.
For Discharge, the Pokemon which are immune to its status generally resist or are immune to the move. For Lava Plume, the Pokemon which are immune to its status generally resist the move. Therefore, there are many Pokemon which can switch into Discharge or Lava Plume without fearing taking much damage or being statused. However, the Pokemon which are immune to Scald's status are generally weak to Scald, so almost every Pokemon either risks the burn or is hit super effectively (Water Absorb, Storm Drain, and Dry Skin are very rare in OU). That's the line of reasoning which helps lead some people to believe that Scald is worse than Discharge and Lava Plume. I think we should be fine without a Scald suspect test, but I'm just saying that there is a reason for this.
 
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For Discharge, the Pokemon which are immune to its status generally resist or are immune to the move. For Lava Plume, the Pokemon which are immune to its status generally resist the move. Therefore, there are many Pokemon which can switch into Discharge or Lava Plume without fearing taking much damage or being statused. However, the Pokemon which are immune to Scald's status are generally weak to Scald, so almost every Pokemon either risks the burn or is hit super effectively (Water Absorb, Storm Drain, and Dry Skin are basically nonexistent in OU). That's the line of reasoning which helps lead some people to believe that Scald is worse than Discharge and Lava Plume. I think we should be fine without a Scald suspect test, but I'm just saying that there is a reason for this.
Took the words out of my mouth. I'm not 100% convinced that Scald is uncompetitive, but I do see a reason why people might think it is and I was just thinking that maybe since we have time, we can humor the idea and give it a test. But, if the OU Council wants to give it a pass, that's fine too.
 
If you think Scald is "uncompetitive" (aka unhealthy for the metagame independent of how it is instantiated in the metagame) then you need an explanation for why Discharge, which is similarly powerful and causes just as crippling of an effect, is not uncompetitive. Otherwise you're making an argument about brokenness which is going to be difficult if not impossible to establish.
how could u possibly insinuate a burn, which damages all pokes and practically permanently impairs physically based pokemon, is an equal to paralysis which can be a benefit to slower utility mons in a stall game and only affects speedy sweeper mons? furthermore, scald has almost no viable immunities and can be boosted in power by weather. plus, any bulky water can afford to use scald while there are a relatively minute amount of pokes which can utilize discharge effectively. i'm not for a scald test either, but that possibly the worst argument i've read against it itt
 

jpw234

Catastrophic Event Specialist
how could u possibly insinuate a burn, which damages all pokes and practically permanently impairs physically based pokemon, is an equal to paralysis which can be a benefit to slower utility mons in a stall game and only affects speedy sweeper mons? furthermore, scald has almost no viable immunities and can be boosted in power by weather. plus, any bulky water can afford to use scald while there are a relatively minute amount of pokes which can utilize discharge effectively. i'm not for a scald test either, but that possibly the worst argument i've read against it itt
Chill.

I didn't see the argument didn't exist, I said it needed to be made - I agree that Scald is worse than Discharge/Sludge Bomb/Lava Plume (although I don't agree that it needs a suspect). Burn is not "equal" to paralysis, but it isn't conclusively better or worse, either - each of them are more or less effective in different situations. Just as it might be good for a Pokemon to get paralyzed to avoid another status (like a stall mon), it might be good for a Pokemon to get burned to avoid another status (like a special sweeper who now can't be stopped by Thundurus). Distribution is irrelevant if you're making an argument about uncompetitiveness, because to say a move is "uncompetitive" is to say it's bad for the metagame independent of how it's instantiated in the metagame - otherwise you're making an argument about brokenness.

MattL made the good point that for Discharge (and Sludge Bomb/Lava Plume, too) the types that are immune to the status resist the move which is flipped for Scald, which is definitely a big part of the reason Scald is so powerful (it makes it super spammable since anything that wants to come into it type-wise could potentially be crippled by the secondary effect). On the other hand, it's unclear to me why flipping the type chart in this manner is grounds for calling something uncompetitive. Something like Freeze Dry is similar in discouraging common resists from coming in - is that much different, or is it just that we don't care about Freeze Dry very much since its distribution is so limited?

My suspicion would be that people get pissed with Scald since the thing that "gets you" is a secondary effect with a 30% chance, and that's viewed as "hax", rather than something like Freeze Dry where the type-flipping mechanic is built into the move. If I switch in Slowbro on a Mamoswine and get bopped with LO Freeze Dry I don't walk away thinking "man, that was such bullshit", I think "well, he got me with a nice set, wp". But if I switch in Mega-Venu to a Keldeo and get crippled from a Scald burn I think "gah, dumb hax" etc. Just because this particular way of overcoming your counters/flipping the type chart has a % chance attached to it doesn't seem to me a reason that it is automatically uncompetitive.

But again, I'm not saying Freeze Dry = Scald in terms of how good the move is, I'm just trying to get people to tease out exactly what about Scald makes it uncompetitive so we can evaluate the claim better.
 
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I have wanted scald banned forever, the only pokes I ever feel kind of comfortable switching into scald are venusaur, clefable, and then the obvious suicune/water absorb pokes. So there is the issue of scald having a "30%" chance to burn although I am not kidding I seriously wonder if that is accurately inputted on PS, and while it may be difficult to compare status, I would say that scald ruins things way more than any other move would, I mean poor mons like azumarill seem like they would be such safe switch ins to scald but if it gets burned its as good as dead, literally. But the main reason I want it banned and might call it outright uncompetitive is because it takes literally ZERO knowledge/prediction/skill to know that if you get your bulky water out safely on a fire type(or anything tbh) you can just click scald and either hit it SE or sit back and hope for hax and over the course of a battle it honestly isnt even hax because it becomes damn near guaranteed after a few turns if not the first turn. Moves like this dont take skill to use and have a great distribution to the point where any team can comfortably fit scald. I could go on but I'd like to see a good reason we shouldn't at least suspect test it before I continue.

Also WebBowser has made a good point in the past and it has gone largely unaddressed that scolipede is deserving of a suspect test. I also want to bring this up because it is still been a problem in OU and when people bring it into some of the tourneys we have it gets really frustrating. His ability to get to +2 defense and +1 speed in one turn and then baton pass out to counter whatever switched in his pretty lame and doesnt require any skill. I mean I think baton pass strats are all cheap and have no place in competitive but even without that bias I think scolipedes baton passing abilities are too great, I could throw out some calcs that show him taking ubers hits with ease, or eating up a ho-oh brave bird with just one boost but we have all already seen his abilities to sponge physical attackers, and him combod with espeon can literally destroy most teams with just one free turn, with pokemon like alomomola and mew getting more popular those turns are getting easier to come across. Honestly at this point I dont see why we dont just ban speed boost+baton pass because we have basically already tested it, and to my understanding most of us realize that we chose wrong when we did suspect it, I think just voting on it again without a test would be sufficient, but idk let me know what you think.
 
The only other suspects to consider are the 3 wall breaking metas. Those have been pretty dominant in tour and in general, and are gigantic threats that one could call broken due to lack of counters and ability to fuck with most switchins (e.g. tpunch medi, wow gard, etc). However, in my opinion they aren't broken because
A. We are developing counters to them, acro gliscor, rachi, all the psychics used for medi. The meta may adapt around them to an extent but is that the worst thing? there are easy checks for offense and balance and stall have clearly been shown to be viable in tour, even if stall looks a little different than before.
Not really, there are no counters to the M-pinsir Knock off/Magnezone teams who are currently very popular on the top of the ladder. Ever since the aegislash ban, stall's performance is incredibly matchup based and can easily be defeated without sacrificing any performance against offensive teams.
 
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Albacore

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Speaking of Magnezone+Pinsir teams, one thing I'd like to see is a Magnet Pull suspect. A Shadow Tag suspect (which I support btw) has already been brought up, and one of the best and most common arguments against it is that Shadow Tag isn't very relevant in OU. Well, Magnet Pull is definitely relevant at the moment, and I find it to be just as uncompetetive as Shadow Tag since, although it traps fewer things, it's still a horrible strain on teambulding. Pokemon that would normally counter other Pokemon are no longer solid answers since Zone can just trap them. Sure, you can run Shed Shell on Skarm, but Ferrothorn needs Leftovers recovery way too much to afford which is deadweight in 95% of matchups, and MScizor can't run it either for obvious reasons. And besides, even now that Stall has adapted to Magnezone by running Shed Shell on Skarm, Magnesir teams have also adapted and started to carry Knock Off on Pinsir. And yeah, you can make the argument that you can just predict the Magnezone switch and double switch, but that's a pretty bad argument and everyone knows it. Are you supposed to double-switch every you send Ferrothorn in? That just leads to excessive 50/50s which are really unhealthy. "Just don't use Ferrothorn" is also a really stupid thing to say and I'm not even going to bother explaining why.

I personally believe that anything which, upon switching in removes the ability for the opponent to switch (a vital aspect of competetive Pokemon) is inherently uncompetetive, but here, it's even worse than that : it's also unhealthy. Magnet Pull Magnezone promotes excessive offensive play by invalidating quite a few key Steel types, a type which in and of itelf is very important for defensive teams to function. It's a lazy way to very easily get rid of one of your opponent's Pokemon instead of actually playing around it. I honestly believe that Magnet Pull is unhealthy for the metagame and would like to see it suspected.
 
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alexwolf

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The metagame is perfectly able to adapt to Magnezone's presence without the need of gimmick checks and counters or coin flips (see Mega Gengar in Ubers). Many defensive Steel-types dgaf about Magnezone, such as U-turn Jirachi, SpD Heatran, and Doublade, and the ones that are helpless have other ways of getting around Magnezone (Skarmory can run Shed Shell, Mega Scizor can go speedy to play first against non-Scarf sets and has Superpower to prevent Zone from coming in easily). Basically, the only Steel-type that is helpless against Magnezone is Ferrothorn, which unlike Skarmory can't afford to run Shed Shell that easily due to the lack of reliable recovery. This just means that Ferrothorn might not be such a great Pokemon anymore, or needs to be paired with secondary checks to the Pokemon it checks due to the presence of Magnezone, not that Magnet Pull needs to be suspect tested.

However, i would be all in for a Shadow Tag suspect test, as an uncompetitive element. Gothitelle, even while not that great in OU, royally screws teams that lack offensive presence by easily removing key defensive Pokemon with little to no effort. Wobbuffet can do the same against choiced or all-out attacking Pokemon, or turn slow defensive Pokemon into liabilities, by making them set up bait for its teammates, PP stalling them, or using Tickle to make them easy pickings for Pursuit users. And there are so many cases where, if Gothitelle or Wobbuffet trap you, you can't do anything about it, while the same can't be said about Magnezone, simply because of the much lower amount of Pokemon it can trap. You just have to win the coin flip each time you want to bring in your ''insert Gothitelle or Wobbuffet weak Pokemon here''.
 
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Knight of Cydonia

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If a popular team archetype is beating your stall at team preview that means you need to adapt your team to the current meta. Match up is always going to be the main factor when using stall so I would not suspect magnet pull when there are other reasonable options for Pinsir like Doublade and Zapdos. This is how the metagame evolves, there is nothing about magnet pull that stands out as broken.

Thundurus has the strongest case for a suspect but I don't think even it needs one. Save the time and effort for oras.

Edit just wasted my time oh well
 

Jukain

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i definitely agree with the idea that trapping is unhealthy for the metagame and uncompetitive. to me, here's what trapping does: instead of improving your teambuilding or play, take this easy way out and get rid of whatever you want, and with goth and mag we really have the tools to do that. gothitelle is really underused and if i'm going to be completely honest not that good on the whole, but on the teams it does succeed on it _enormously_ exacerbates the matchup component of the game in that a well-played goth paired with mons that benefit from it will wreck your typical stall or balanced team. even those 'stupid' goth sets like trick cm rest and the infamous trick taunt rest create a ridiculous matchup parity for these teams that has been heavily overlooked this generation. i shouldn't have to take a defensive team and accept that no matter what i do, i will never beat this pokemon. stall adapted to mega medicham, stall adapted to mega gardevoir, stall adapted to mega heracross, stall adapted to terrakion, it has adapted to all these frankly ridiculous threats in crazy ways but still at this point in the metagame it is impossible for these teams to prepare for goth unless you're seriously suggesting 6 shed shell mons or something. playing around getting trapped is not competitive play, it is a total 50/50 shitfest and there is nothing positive about that.

i mean alexwolf i love the sentiment that some steels can get around mag, but the primary ones that matter for mag to trap aka skarm and ferro really can't do much. sure skarm can run shed shell but (1) are you seriously suggesting this is a healthy effect and (2) there's a thing called knock off pinsir so gl with that. skarm is obviously an important cog in the defensive grounding of stall and balanced teams, it has been this way since its inception and this has become a problem now because magnezone is actually extremely good in this metagame. 'there are other pinsir counters' yea ok, i have no words if doublade (a niche mon for defensive teams) and zapdos (which is ass in this metagame and i know many people can back me up on this) are considered other acceptable pinsir answers. there's also like hippowdon i guess... also ferro can't do anything about being trapped, like even if you could run shed shell it just gets knocked off by azumarill and then you're screwed. what you basically just said is 'don't run ferrothorn' and there are multiple obvious reasons why this is not an option, look at its #2 tour usage for proof of this.

magnezone is almost the entire reason for the shift to a heavily offensive metagame as of late. i don't think ANYONE agrees that this is healthy, and these mag + [insert physical spam here] teams are absolutely ridiculous to deal with effectively for any team reliant on defensive cores, including stall, balanced, and even bulky offense teams. knock off pinsir + magnezone on its own has zero viable defensive answers. the metagame was shifting toward a healthy balance mostly in the middle of the road bulky offense - balanced which was, and i'll make a somewhat subjective claim here, the best metagame in xy but the rise of these hyper offense teams due to the potency of mag + sweeper is cancer.
 

alexwolf

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Jukain said:
i mean alexwolf i love the sentiment that some steels can get around mag, but the primary ones that matter for mag to trap aka skarm and ferro really can't do much. sure skarm can run shed shell but (1) are you seriously suggesting this is a healthy effect and (2) there's a thing called knock off pinsir so gl with that. skarm is obviously an important cog in the defensive grounding of stall and balanced teams, it has been this way since its inception and this has become a problem now because magnezone is actually extremely good in this metagame. 'there are other pinsir counters' yea ok, i have no words if doublade (a niche mon for defensive teams) and zapdos (which is ass in this metagame and i know many people can back me up on this) are considered other acceptable pinsir answers. there's also like hippowdon i guess... also ferro can't do anything about being trapped, like even if you could run shed shell it just gets knocked off by azumarill and then you're screwed. what you basically just said is 'don't run ferrothorn' and there are multiple obvious reasons why this is not an option, look at its #2 tour usage for proof of this.
As you said, we are talking about two defensive Steel-types. And at the end of the day, if two Pokemon can't adapt to the metagame then i don't get why it's Magnezone's fault. If those Steel-types can't survive in a Magnezone infested metagame then they should just step aside and let the Steel-types that actually can take the spotlight. Also, it's not like there aren't viable solutions of getting around the problem of Magnezone trapping Skarmory and Ferrothorn. You can use another Defog user. You can use another birdspam check. You can use Shed Shell on Skarmory. It's not like we are talking about the diminish of a playstyle or centralization so big it causes the metagame to revolve around said Pokemon (see Aegislash). What has Magnezone done to the metagame? It made Skarmory hold Shed Shell. It decreased the usage of Ferrothorn. It made offensive threats such as Mega Pinsir and Diggersby more popular. And that's it. A slight increase in offensive teams is hardly a metagame defining presence.

As for Mega Pinsir using Knock Off, this has less to do with Magnezone being too good and more to do with Mega Pinsir being versatile enough to bend defensive teams to their knees no matter how much they adapt to it. Or Mega Pinsir lacking viable counters outside of Skarmory. Is this a problem that Magnezone is causing? Really??? It's like saying that Tyranitar should be banned because Keldeo's checks and counters are easy to get rid of.

But really, if people start blaming Magnezone first instead of Mega Pinsir for how offensive the metagame is getting, then i don't really know what to say...
 
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Jukain

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i can see what you mean in the fact that pinsir mag is the real problem. thinking about it i think it's reasonable to say that these mag offense teams would be nowhere near as good without pinsir spearheading their success. this is evidenced by the fact that combos like gyarazone are simply not nearly as effective as pinsir mag. it's definitely more than a 'slight increase in offensive teams' and i think these types of teams are a problem. idk whether the approach is to get rid of pinsir but i don't feel this meta is healthy.
 

alexwolf

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i can see what you mean in the fact that pinsir mag is the real problem. thinking about it i think it's reasonable to say that these mag offense teams would be nowhere near as good without pinsir spearheading their success. this is evidenced by the fact that combos like gyarazone are simply not nearly as effective as pinsir mag. it's definitely more than a 'slight increase in offensive teams' and i think these types of teams are a problem. idk whether the approach is to get rid of pinsir but i don't feel this meta is healthy.
I meant that only a small portion of the increase in offensive teams can be attributed to Magnezone, as there are multiple other reasons, including Mega Pinsir.
 
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