Metagame NP: RU Stage 4: Do My Thang (READ POST #2)

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Arikado

I'm really not on board with a Meleotta suspect. With my experience with, and against it, I personally don't think it's that overpowered of a Pokemon to the point where we need to ban it. Don't get me wrong, I think it's an amazing Pokemon. It can run a plethora of sets, and it can use all of them very well. I'm sure a lot of your emphasis is on the Choice Specs set, which is obscenely powerful, literally 2HKO anything that doesn't resist it, and having coverage for other things. It can also keep up momentum with U-Turn. Meleotta also has higher amount of checks, namely bulky physical attackers and special walls (sharpedo, registeel, reuniclus, opposing meleotta). However, as powerful as I see it, I don't see it as powerful, or even broken, in the way that Yanmega and Zoroark were, which were actually unhealthy for the metagame. Yanmega could easily just spam Bug Buzz with Choice Specs all day long, and if you didn't have something somewhat niche such as Lanturn on your team, it would easily just destroy your team. Meleotta, despite its average Speed and extremely (even higher than Yanmega's) high Special Attack stat, I don't think that it can just pull that off and by itself sweep teams. Zoroark could easily disguise as something such as Slowking to protect itself from Moltres and Delphox, and then KO easily with Dark Pulse and Sucker Punch. That's not the kind of overpowered Meleotta is. I just don't think we need to suspect a Pokemon that we can somewhat counter easier than the other two.

Pearl.

I'm somewhat opposed to Moltres getting a suspect, too. I get that it has a high Special Attack stat, two powerful STABs, and that it is extremely powerful of course, but I do think that there are a couple things that stop me from just agreeing. Like Arikado said, it has that nasty 4x Stealth Rock weakness, and both of its STABs have terrible accuracy. I'm not going to rely on Hurricane, which has the exact same accuracy as Focus Miss, to break through walls, at least not reliably. Its Base 90 Speed leaves it outsped by quite a few things (stone edge virizion, rock blast cinccino, sharpedo). I get that it's extremely powerful, and that if it DOES hit, it can scratch extremely hard, but I think the fact that it misses too much and that it's too slow is kinda meh. I get that people think outside of its STABs it has "great coverage with HP Grass" but I always think of:

252 SpA Life Orb Moltres Hidden Power Grass vs. 252 HP / 244 SpD Solid Rock Rhyperior: 285-335 (65.6 - 77.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

While Rhyperior procedes to OHKO with Rock Blast. Its actually pretty simple to have something on your team to check. AV Slowking is trappable by Pursuit, sure, but outside of that, it actually happens to be a great Moltres counter. I actually don't run complete counters, and I actually run things that can easily rid of it such as Sharpedo (speed boost op) and Dugtrio (who also outspeeds and proceeds to OHKO with Stone Edge).

I do, however, think that Moltres does happen to be a bit overpowered in the current metagame, I agree on that. But trying to ban it? I don't really agree with that. Maybe it'd be alright if we suspected it, but I can promise I would vote 'do not ban'.
 

Mew2

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Just a quick question: why are we talking about suspect tests when ORAS is just around the corner? Sounds a bit silly to me <_<
 

Mew2

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That's my opinion on that matter. Might be flawed or whatever, but it's still my opinion. UU was able to work around a lot of stuff going on with the tier during their open, and the finals was even held in a tier affected by tier drops and similar stuff. In general, I think that you (I might be wrong, could be more people, I'm not in touch with what happens behind the scenes) are way too afraid to suspect test things. The general agreement is that the tier is way too stale right now, and I hope that the new TeamBuilding Competition gets people who haven't realized it yet to see how stale the teambuilding formula is. That isn't good, and on top of that, I think that waiting 2 months for changes isn't the correct thought process when dealing with this situation.
Molk and the tier council aren't affraid to test things, but the work and time it takes is inmense and the whole test might take at least full month and remember that the meta will change 180 degrees in about two months posibbly making Moltres' test useless. While I agree with you that the current meta stale and boring I also acknowledge that testing random things won't make it more exciting and sometimes patience is the key; tryng new things, playing another tier or simply another game while waiting for ORAS to come out are all better ideas than testing pokemon for the sake of it.

Now into my Moltres stance I think people give this thing a lot of credit; sure it has amazing special attack and powerful STAB moves but base 90 speed isn't outstanding and x4 weakness to SR demands a spinner or defoger and Moltres has poor synergy with most of them. While I agree that Moltres has no counters it doesn't mean it is automatically broken. 5th gen Hydreigon is a good example of this and to a lesser extent Kyurem-B. Really Moltres wishes it could have Hurricane, Fire Blast, Roost, Toxic, Sub, Flamethrower and HP Grass holding Lefotvers, Life Orb and Choice Scarf but sadly he can only choose 4 moves and a single item which makes him much more manageable and while Moltres lacks counters it has enough checks to make it balanced for the meta. On a sidenote people should stop pretending Moltres has 100% accuarcy FB and Hurricanes. Would write more but I'm not using my laptop.
 
I'm somewhat opposed to Moltres getting a suspect, too.

both of its STABs have terrible accuracy. I'm not going to rely on Hurricane, which has the exact same accuracy as Focus Miss, to break through walls, at least not reliably.
I don't have a strong opinion on a Moltres suspect but this logic is pretty flawed (at least in regards to a suspect test). Sure, it means that Moltres is farther from being a consistent win button, but that's only because of hax, not because there's another legitimate way to play around it.

It's kind of like OHKO moves, sure they only work 30% of the time but we don't keep them unbanned just because they usually won't work. When they do they are massively overpowered and there is (nearly) nothing you can do about it except keep rolling the dice and we don't want our games to reduce to that. Obviously Moltres isn't that extreme but being able to hax your way around it isn't a valid argument in a suspect, unless you can stack the odds into your favor (for example, you can spam Substitute on its Hurricane and you have a pretty good ~83% chance to get yourself a free sub in 5 chances).
 

Pearl

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Sorry if I'm being too pretentious, but I think you're being ridiculous in a huge amount of different senses. First of all, of course it takes immense amounts of time and work to run a tier, of. fucking. course. they're in charge of something a lot of people, including I, cherish and fight for the good of, so it's obvious it'll take considerable amounts of their time. However, they got their position with that in mind. They'll do it if it's good for the tier, because that's their role, they will do it whole heartily as long as they like the tier (pay attention that this has nothing to do with whether Moltres is broken or not).

Also, playing another game or another tier is not an option. I'm not playing RU because I'm bored. I'm not wasting my time replying to someone who didn't get any of my previous (and already large post) posts because I'm bored. I'm posting this because I like this tier, and I'm relatively involved in it and with the people that play it actively too. Probably way more than you, but it's not correct to make such assumptions. So yeah, I'm wasting my time because I've decided to devote myself to this tier, and I'm not, as some people assumed incorrectly, agreeing on suspecting Moltres because I'm bored. If it's broken in this metagame, it should be banned, no matter the circumstances. If ORAS eventually balanced it out, then it returns. Re-testings are not something out of this world (check: XY UU tier. check: BW2 RU Durant / Cresselia re-testings. Cresselia was deemed broken for a second time after being tested and was banned too, but that's not related to my point).

Onto the second point: Calling the suggestion to ban Moltres "something random", is obnoxious and disrespectful to the people who share such opinion. Pay attention that I'm not entirely sold on it, so I can understand arguments for both sides. However, you're really stretching it right now. 90 Speed. It looks bad. In tiers with different mechanics and Pokemon. RU in general is a slow tier, matter of fact. Doublade is slow, Hitmonlee's Speed is average. Meloetta and Moltres have a speed tie. Those are the S Rank Pokemon. Among the entire S + A Rank, only 5 Pokemon (Cobalion, Virizion, Jolteon, Dugtrio, and Durant) out of 28 Pokemon are faster than Moltres. This excluding priority moves and Sharpedo for simplicity, but if you include those, they are still 12 out of 28 , including priority that won't scratch Moltres at all, such as Hitmonlee's Mach Punch and Doublade's unboosted Shadow Sneak. The point is that RU is not a fast tier at all. Coupled with that, there's also the fact Moltres' bulk is respectable, and it's not a glass cannon such as, say, Hitmonlee, Durant, or Sharpedo. It also has Roost! This means that Moltres excels at pressuring the enemy team, and that missing as Moltres is not as punishing as say, Gengar missing a Focus Blast in OU. Or even if you want a RU example: Durant and Hustle. This because Moltres isn't a glass cannon, Moltres isn't easy to wear down, it forces a lot of switches and since a great amount of its counters are lacking in recovery, it will generally outlast them and clean up or pave the way for one of the previously mentioned glass cannons to destroy stuff. Also, basing arguments on accuracy is ridiculous (check Zebstrika's post for insight on this).

And last, because this is sort of tiring, Moltres doesn't really "wish" it had all of those things, that's just putting words onto someone else's mouth or pure lack of knowledge. All of Moltres' sets serve a different purpose, and saying how it would be better if it had all of those sets' characteristics is sort of sad, cause it's one of the poorest arguments I've ever seen lately, even worse than those defending Claydol or Hitmonchan's viability. So yeah, I've got nothing to add, and I don't think I'll have the patience to reply to anything else about this matter, because it feels really awkward for some reason.

spirit edit: godly post dude
 
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aVocado

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I'm trying to get all the reasonings you want a Moltres suspect in a bulletpoint format right now, and I have this:

- it has no counters outside of Slowking and niche things such as jellicent, lanturn, rhyperior, regirock, gastrodon, and cresselia.
- the tier is stale and banning moltres will change things around.
- moltres is a scary wallbreaker that's not frail

Am I correct with those 3?

First of all, the 1st statement is absolutely false and absurd in many ways. So what if a Moltres counter is a niche mon? it's still a counter, and despite people saying Jellicent isn't good, while it isn't A+ material, it's not D material either, and Jellicent clearly has quite a few uses, especially against stall. Rhyperior is a Moltres counter because generally, only one Moltres set carries HP Grass and clearly the most common set right now (speaking from ladder experience here) is the Choice Scarf one. The metagame changed and Rhyperior isn't a no-no when it comes to countering Moltres anymore. Gastrodon is good and I legit have no idea why you guys are dismissing it. It's also the same as Rhyperior, where it only fears HP Grass (which, again, is only carried by LO Moltres which isn't the absolute standard anymore), and Lanturn.. well I don't have much experience with it so I don't know how good it is outside of countering Moltres. Cresselia has recovery, takes like 35% from Fire Blast, and on top of all that it can paralyze Moltres. Specially Defensive Golbat can even beat the SubToxic which some counters may not be able to beat, thanks to Infiltrator + Toxic.

If you're going to dismiss Moltres counters simply because of a coverage move that a set might carry, then honestly, Meloetta is more broken in this regard because it has 3 or 4 equally viable sets imo and all of them could potentially have different counters... and it has access to dazzling gleam so spiritomb isn't an end-all counter.

The 2nd bulletpoint is a ridiculous one. That's literally saying "Let's suspect Moltres because it will shake RU quite a bit" or at least what's what I'm getting from it. That's outright absurd and I probably don't have to go on and explain why it is.

The 3rd point is a solid one, but again, that's not enough. There are also other scary wallbreakers that aren't frail.

Also,

90 Speed. It looks bad. In tiers with different mechanics and Pokemon. RU in general is a slow tier, matter of fact. Doublade is slow, Hitmonlee's Speed is average. Meloetta and Moltres have a speed tie. Those are the S Rank Pokemon. Among the entire S + A Rank, only 5 Pokemon (Cobalion, Virizion, Jolteon, Dugtrio, and Durant) out of 28 Pokemon are faster than Moltres. This excluding priority moves and Sharpedo for simplicity, but if you include those, they are still 12 out of 28 , including priority that won't scratch Moltres at all, such as Hitmonlee's Mach Punch and Doublade's unboosted Shadow Sneak. The point is that RU is not a fast tier at all. Coupled with that, there's also the fact Moltres' bulk is respectable, and it's not a glass cannon such as, say, Hitmonlee, Durant, or Sharpedo. It also has Roost! This means that Moltres excels at pressuring the enemy team, and that missing as Moltres is not as punishing as say, Gengar missing a Focus Blast in OU. Or even if you want a RU example: Durant and Hustle. This because Moltres isn't a glass cannon, Moltres isn't easy to wear down, it forces a lot of switches and since a great amount of its counters are lacking in recovery, it will generally outlast them and clean up or pave the way for one of the previously mentioned glass cannons to destroy stuff. Also, basing arguments on accuracy is ridiculous (check Zebstrika's post for insight on this).
I'm not sure about you but 6 out of 28 Pokemon is quite a lot, and the fact that literally all of them have a way of OHKOing Moltres is even worse, especially considering the fact that almost all teams would at least have one of those Pokemon, putting in mind how good they are. The matter of its Speed being not so low is a subjective thing, and personally I view Delphox's speedtier (or Drapion perhaps) as a good one, and not Moltres'.

I don't like to be the one who would pull the "but it's weak to Stealth Rock!" card, but it really is weak to Stealth Rock. How many times were you pressured into not switching to Moltres against like a Doublade or a Hitmonlee because Rocks are on the field? How many times could you not check a Doublade because there were rocks and doublade could just claw + sneak for a kill after rocks? etc. Stealth Rock is very common and getting rid of it (Gligar, Hitmonlee) can be hard at some times, and being pressured to do so because you have an x4 mon weak to Rocks on your team is even worse.

Finally, basing arguments on accuracy isn't ridiculous, because more often than not a Fire Blast or a Hurricane miss will put you in a bad position. It being hax or not is irrelevant, because it will happen regardless, and the reason being is Moltres doesn't have reliably accurate yet powerful moves and it has to deal with it. Also, not only set has Roost.
 
I'm gonna throw in my support for a Moltres suspect, not necessarily a ban but defo a suspect.

First of all I don't think the low acc of its moves argument can be used to go against Moltres, simply because you don't know when it's going to miss, so it isn't any easier to handle than if it had 100% accurate moves. What I mean is you can't just say switch to Sharpedo on a Hurricane because it might miss, you have to play every turn with the assumption that it will hit its attack, so the low accuracy of Hurricane (not really Fire Blast) doesn't make it any easier to Check. Sure you might get lucky and it might miss, but you can never make plays expecting that, well I mean you can, but you're going to end up losing a lot of pokemon that way.

Stealth Rocks are a legit point, if you are unable to remove them Moltres isn't very difficult to handle, it's unable to use its decent defenses and defensive typing to Check things, Scarf is unable to U-Turn freely, Life Orb, it it chooses to attack cannot switch out and come back in again, and on the turn you roost the opponent can bring in a Check/something faster and force you out again. However this tier has a lot of good Defoggers and Spinners available. Gligar is obviously the most prominent, it finds multiple opportunities to come in and Defog throughout a match, definitely the most reliable and shares some synergy with Moltres. You also have Golbat/Shiftry/Skuntank are all p reliable at getting the defog off too, though Golbat doesn't share good synergy. For spinners you've got Hitmonlee and Kabutops, which are p reliable since they can force out a lot of things and threaten Ghost types, but Doublade can make this difficult. So overall hazards are fairly easy to remove but you need Defog to remove them reliably and if u cant remove them Moltres isn't too threatening.

Now I'll go over some Checks/Counter for Moltres:

AV Slowking (possibly its worst viable set) - Beats all offensive sets bar a very smasll chance to lose to Specs, and loses to Sub Toxic, eventually.
Lanturn - Solid Counter, doesn't lose to any set, however it lacks recovery and doesn't appreciate HP Grass.
Regirock - Same boat as Lanturn, although dislikes Sub Toxic a lot more.
Carbink - with a Sp Def spread is probably the best counter, however it will lose to Sub Toxic without Rest.
Cresselia - Beats all sets bar Sub Toxic.
Rhyperior - Good Check, HP Grass is still common though

Those are the main ones, and they generally universally fail in being able to beat Sub Toxic. There's other good Checks like AV Drudd, Gastrodon, AV Kabutops, AV Tyrantrum but all either have an exploitable weakness, are avg mons or would prefer to be running other sets.

Obviously it can't be running Sub Toxic and LO 3 atks at the same time, but Cress and Slowking are the only true RU pokemon that can claim to Counter Life Orb, everything else Checks at best or isn't an RU pokemon, and has a very limited niche outside of Checking/Countering Moltres.

Beyond it being very difficult to Counter/Check, Moltres also boasts a respectable 90 Speed tier, allowing it to outspeed a fair amount of the meta, but also be outsped by a fair amount of it. It's typing is, aside from the SR weakness, p nice offering up 4x resists to Grass + Bug, Immunity to Ground and resisting Fire/Fighting/Steel, so it can find a lot of opportunities to come in.

tl;dr Moltres lacks viable Counters, can run a myriad of sets, has a good match vs basically all playstyles, low acc moves shouldn't be a topic of discussion imo, and whilst SR is very crippling it's not enough to stop it being suspect worthy imo.

Edit: Although it's rare Sunny Day Moltres beats most counters listed apart from Cress which gets its moonlight boosted.

I'll prolly post about Reuniclus tomorrow, since I think that thing is broken af.
 
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EonX

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Alright, I've been quiet about this long enough, but I'm going to bring up some things that probably not everyone is going to like / agree with.

From what I can gather, a lot of people want to suspect Moltres because it has next to 0 defensive counters (outside of AV Slowking, Regirock, etc.) Ok, but isn't that the job of a wallbreaker? Why not suspect Clawitzer because it has next to 0 defensive counters? (it 2HKOes AV Slowking w/o team support) Why not Exploud which has THE most spammable offensive move in the game with Scrappy Boomburst? (it has 0 safe switch-ins, period thanks to Fire Blast / Surf coverage) I mean, wallbreakers are supposed to beat defensive Pokemon. That's why they're called wallbreakers after all. Your best bet with the best ones is to beat them with Speed, and Moltres is no different. Jolteon, Heliolisk, Scarf Rotom-C, Sharpedo, Cobalion and Virizion w/ Stone Edge, Rock Slide Durant, Cinccino, Dugtrio. They're all faster and have a super effective move guaranteed to OHKO Moltres regardless of whether Rocks are up or not. If you keep Rocks up, you can add Scarf Meloetta, Sucker Punch Hitmonlee, Delphox, and Sucker Punch Spiritomb to the list.

Ok, so it decided to run a Scarf set. Well, that means you need to take a different approach. Now it lacks raw power and the ability to switch moves. All of a sudden, Rhyperior, AV Druddigon, Cresselia, and AV Eelektross become much better options than they were with the LO set. That's on top of the defensive Water and Rock types that are good initial switch-ins for the LO set becoming that much better. Oh, and now Moltres has no way around Sucker Punch from Lee and Tomb as well. SubToxic is basically like any other defensive Pokemon. You beat it by overpowering it with moves its weak against. Rock Blast users such as Rhyperior and Cinccino are deadly and Rhyperior is already a firm check to all sets (counters any w/o HP Grass) Volt Switch users can really expose it so long as you have something to bring in that will threaten Moltres out. With less firepower, offensive Pokemon neutral to Fire can easily deal damage off of a Volt Switch from stuff like Jolteon, Cobalion, and Rotom-C. Specs Moltres might be stronger than the LO set, but now it can't switch moves and still suffers from being revenge killed by many faster threats. Find a resistance to its STAB moves and you'll be ok most of the time.
And if we're wanting to suspect Moltres because it's so versatile, why not suspect Meloetta, which as 6 viable sets?

I've actually been working on something lately that involves Moltres and I've had to do quite a bit of research for it. The one thing I've found is this: Have a good initial switch-in that can beat most sets. If Moltres is using a set that the initial switch-in can't beat, Tres will have to reveal it right then and there. For example, Rhyperior is a solid initial response because more often than not, Moltres will lead with a STAB move or U-turn. If you see LO recoil, then you know what's coming next; a switch or HP Grass. Oh, and the reason that Scarf Moltres has risen so much in popularity isn't just because it can screw Slowking. It absolutely bones the one playstyle everyone seems to want to use right now, Hyper Offense. Ever heard of adapting a bit and trying some other playstyle that doesn't auto-lose to Scarf Tres so easily? Just a thought.
 
I'm not sure whether or not I think Moltres should be banned, but I think your approach to posting about it is completely mislead. Saying Moltres is a wallbreaker and does what every wallbreaker does is stupid. I could easily say, "Yanmega isn't broken. It's a wallbreaker. Similar to Moltres, Exploud, and Clawitzer, it breaks walls like it's supposed to." You can't simply group a pokemon with the thing it does, and say that's a reason it's not broken. After that, you just mention a bunch of pokemon that can revenge Moltres, but almost any pokemon can be revenged by at least 5 other pokemon in the tier. Your basis on whether or not a pokemon is broken shouldn't consist of grouping it with a whole bunch of pokemon that play a similar role.

Moltres and Exploud are both wallbreakers, but they're far from similar. Exploud has many different advantages and disadvantages that Moltres doesn't have-- so many, that it's not even worth listing them out. Moltres is not only fantastic at being unwalled by almost all of the tier, it overcentralizes, forcing teams to run Slowking so commonly just to take it on. On top of this, Moltres has reliable recovery in the form of roost, and u-turn to pivot out against pokemon such as Slowking. These factors, in conjunction with its massive special attack and superior bulk and speed to the other pokemon you listed, make Moltres stand out as a fantastic pokemon on every team.

Finally, your last paragraph just mentions some ridiculous measures to take on Moltres. You're assuming your predictions will always work out, but that should never be mentioned when discussing a potential suspect. I wouldn't go as far as to say hyper offense "auto-loses" to scarfed Moltres, but a quality of a pokemon that could render a playstyle completely useless is a huge reason to ban it. If I say Yanmega renders stall useless, would it make sense to say not to run stall? Your own post contradicts itself in that regard, so I don't understand what you're trying to say.
 

Pearl

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Yeah, might as well just back up Omfuga's post, since I've become too lazy to discuss my own stuff about Moltres, as it's not going to happen anyways. But yeah, I feel that comparing Moltres to Exploud / Clawitzer is somewhat weird, because:

With Exploud, it's always gonna be choiced and not too hard to play around (Unless your opponent is real and using WORK UP Exploud). Even if you make no effort in countering it, you'll always have at least a solid Normal-type resist that can KO Exploud back (be it Cobalion, Rhyperior EDIT: NOT EVEN A CHECK LOL etc), along with something that can take its coverage moves. This makes Exploud slightly easier to play around. It's still hard, maybe as hard as Moltres, honestly speaking, but that coupled with a lower Speed tier, being easier to wear down and some other factors make them different Pokemon.

Clawitzer is pretty much the same, since its Speed tier is even lower than Moltres', and it'll be more often than not wearing a Life Orb. You'll be forced into predicting, but at least you won't be forced into having to teambuilding entirely around the Pokemon's sole existence in the tier.

EDIT: I'm not questioning those Pokemon's viability. They're arguably two of the most dangerous Pokemon, but balancing their perks and problems, they're quite not on Moltres' level. They're also extremely one dimensional compared to the later.
 
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Mew2

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I'm not sure whether or not I think Moltres should be banned, but I think your approach to posting about it is completely mislead. Saying Moltres is a wallbreaker and does what every wallbreaker does is stupid. I could easily say, "Yanmega isn't broken. It's a wallbreaker. Similar to Moltres, Exploud, and Clawitzer, it breaks walls like it's supposed to." You can't simply group a pokemon with the thing it does, and say that's a reason it's not broken. After that, you just mention a bunch of pokemon that can revenge Moltres, but almost any pokemon can be revenged by at least 5 other pokemon in the tier. Your basis on whether or not a pokemon is broken shouldn't consist of grouping it with a whole bunch of pokemon that play a similar role.

Moltres and Exploud are both wallbreakers, but they're far from similar. Exploud has many different advantages and disadvantages that Moltres doesn't have-- so many, that it's not even worth listing them out. Moltres is not only fantastic at being unwalled by almost all of the tier, it overcentralizes, forcing teams to run Slowking so commonly just to take it on. On top of this, Moltres has reliable recovery in the form of roost, and u-turn to pivot out against pokemon such as Slowking. These factors, in conjunction with its massive special attack and superior bulk and speed to the other pokemon you listed, make Moltres stand out as a fantastic pokemon on every team.
Going to backup EonX here; he obviously knows that Moltres is better than Clawitzer or Exploud, he was just saying that having zero counters is nothing special at all in this metagame and therefore can't justify the suspect test of a Pokemon. Next you say that Moltres forces players to run Slowking which is a ridiculous argument because Slowking is a great Pokemon with or without Moltres in the tier being able to fully counter CM Delphox and Cobalion while dealing and taking damage of course if you for some weird reason you heavily dislike Slowking you can use Lanturn or specially defensive Cresselia so saying that "if forces you to run Slowking" is an invalid argument. Finally keep in mind that while Moltres has amazing options against most of his counters, it losses either power, coverage or both meaning he can't do every single role he wants.

Yeah, might as well just back up Omfuga's post, since I've become too lazy to discuss my own stuff about Moltres, as it's not going to happen anyways.
Exactly, both sides are extremely stubborn at this point, let's move to something else please.
 

Pearl

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Exactly, both sides are extremely stubborn at this point, let's move to something else please.
And guess why I don't feel like making them at all? Because of people like you who just "read" my posts, cherrypick parts of it to make "counterarguments" and don't even get the point. It's frustrating to write walls of text only for that to happen.

But yeah, sorry if that was too aggressive, but being called stubborn because I've ran out of patience to defend my point of view sort of chips away at someone's good will.
 
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I like c_l's posts. Short, usually constructive and straight to the point.

and ill actually support the moltres suspect. About the ban, iunno. Thats the point of suspecting stuff i guess. To see if theres really something to it, ye?

oh yeah, moltres makes it hard for me to run mola stall ;_;
 
This is seriously disgusting, Clawitzer is mediocre (I have no used yet Clawitzer I'll give him a try in a future) but comparated with Moltres is horrible because is slow, no strong stabs and lacks of defensive utility, is a bad mon w/o Sticky Web.

Rhyperior is not a Moltres check, needs Rindo Berry to be called as check because otherwise only checks Scarf versions but loses vs the most threatening Moltres which is LO ._.'
 
i'm pretty sure the main question here is; is a stale meta really reason enough to ban moltres? like..it may be suspect worthy, but im pretty sure the metagame has reached a point where it's adapted / developed to the point where it can't do so anymore. i mean, you can pretty much tell just by looking at the teambuilding competition thread that nearly every team has the same structure, which really just goes to show how this meta is. i mean that's probably the question we all want to know the answer to, so i'll let you guys kinda harp on it since it's hard to reach a general consensus, unlike past suspects..

and like Omfuga said, if a mon makes a playstyle completely useless, then why would that be a reason for it to stay? hyper offense can't really adapt to scarftres, and by adapt, i mean run something that can switch into it more than once and revenge kill it, barring rhyperior whose switchins are almost nigh-obvious and can be easily played around considering scarftres's most common partner is gligar. as stated time and time before, we're trying to make a metagame in which all playstyles are equally viable.
 
Time for my arbitrary post I suppose. Moltres is definitely worth suspecting. It has a lot of versatile sets, and they can all wreak havoc on various team archetypes in the tier. The Life Orb set is basically impossible to counter outside of a couple of set, and the SubToxic variant of Moltres poses great problems for many of Moltres's would-be counters. Not to mention, if Moltres runs Sunny Day, it can be even more impossible to stop and can jut destroy teams in an instant. Scarf Moltres is an extremely potent force against offensive teams, and dealing with it can be very difficult, especially because it resists Fighting-type priority, and also has the bulk to take an attack if need be; U-Turn makes it especially threatening, since all of a sudden, the opposition's amazing counter in Slowking can be trapped by a Pursuit user, making Moltres even more devastating than it already is. Sure, Hurricane may miss, but 70% accuracy isn't even that terrible, remaining that argument isn't even very valid. Moltres has so much versatility that it makes its power even more deadly, adding to the offensive prowess of the fiery demon from the skies. Stealth Rock exists, but so does Defog, and even though Stealth Rock can cripple Moltres if the hazards are on the field, they simply are not enough to forgo a suspect test; Yanmega was 4x weak to Stealth Rock as well, and didn't even have the capability to run Roost like Moltres can to mitigate the effects of Stealth Rock. I'm not sure on whether it should be banned, but a Pokemon that poses this much of a threat to various playstyles in the tier definitely deserves a suspect test.
 

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Not sure if my voice carries any weight here any more but if a suspect test happens I just want to see people go in without preconceived expectations. You can't get a fair test with people walking in thinking its obscenely broken (HI HOTNCOLD) and you can't walk in with people thinking it's ridiculously manageable.

Realistically Moltres is an excellent Pokemon that could be potentially determined broken and worthy of a ban, and its also possible that it can be found to be fine in the current meta. Sounds like a suspect to me.
 
If Moltres is being seen as a suspect-worthy Pokemon by dedicated RU players, than that's fine with me, seeing as I can hardly say I play the tier as much as these people so my own judgement on Moltres is probably flawed. What does surprise me though is the sudden outcry for a suspect test among many players, who hardly expressed opinions of Moltres's apparent suspect-worthy status before the initial suggestion. I'm not trying to say that it seems like bandwagoning, but it certainly doesn't feel like suppressed opinions are now being given because of a single opinion being used as a catalyst, rather, it seems like people are bored of a somewhat stale metagame and feel like trying to shake it up a bit, by trying to come up with what seems closest to suspect status. In my eyes, Moltres simply isn't a broken Pokemon, its SR weakness + LO on LO sets wear it down incredibly quickly and Roost isn't always easy to use in a metagame of hard hitters. Its Choice Scarf sets + Pursuit users are interesting but nothing over the top and have far more checks and are easier to wear down surprisingly, even though they lack the recoil caused by LO. I don't want to seem naive since I haven't played RU much recently, but my post isn't about whether Moltres is broken or isn't, it's about the peculiarity of a Pokemon that seemed fine until recently suddenly become of the opinion of being suspect-worthy by a reasonably large group of people.
 
I'm not sure how many other people have thought of this comparison, but moltres is incredibly similar to how yanmega was when it was RU, and a lot of the reasons it was banned also apply to moltres. while it isn't as powerful, it has the same effect on defensive teams: you can either run one specific counter that is good otherwise but is easily trapped by common partners to said wallbreaker (then it was registeel and dugtrio, now it is slowking and spiritomb), or run one of several niche counters that you would almost never be running if not for this one threat (togetic, spdef golbat, etc before, regirock, carbink, lanturn now). additionally, like yanmega's speed boost set, scarf moltres is incredibly difficult to handle for hyper offense, and bulky offense basically has to run slowking or get steamrolled by it. while i'm obviously not saying that moltres is as broken as yanmega was, a lot of what made yanmega broken applies to moltres as well, and some anti-suspect arguments, mainly the fact that moltres requires hazard removal and really wants trapping support, were also completely true for yanmega.

I really don't see the harm in suspecting a pokemon that may not be broken. like that's half the point of suspect tests, to determine whether or not something is banworthy. suspect testing something does not mean that it will be banned, and if a significant portion of the community believes that a pokemon is worth looking at, I really don't see why it shouldn't be looked at.

also, to address TRC's point about bandwagonning, while i can't speak for everyone, i actually would have brought up moltres as a potential suspect some time ago, however i thought that not many people would agree with me and that it would be very unlikely that anything would actually come of it (i mean come on, even now over half the council wants a test and we may not even get one .-.), so i never really bothered to say anything about it. additionally, even if there is a lot of bandwagonning, that in no way undermines the legitimacy of the points brought up.
 

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I don't have a problem regarding Moltres being suspected, but I don't feel it should be banned. It could be put in the same boat regarding the Yanmega ban, but unlike Yanmega, it doesn't have the abilities like Yanmega that would deem it broken. Plus the glaring 4x SR weakness requiring constant Rapid Spin or Defog support from pokemon like Hitmonlee, Gligar, or Shiftry. Plus its not broken to the point where you have 2 have a dedicated counter or check to Moltes tho most ppl do anyway.
 
Has anyone considered specs Whimsicott? It might sound kinda dumb, but 116 speed goes well with base 77 coupled with specs. I find it great in RU. All you really see these days are support Whimsicott's, and if it isn't support, it's Life Orb. Whimsicott get's Infiltrator, U-turn, and other powerful moves. Tell me what you guys think.

Whimsicott @ Choice Specs
Ability: Infiltrator (ignores Safegaurd, Mist, Reflect, Light Screen and Substitute on opponent)
EVs: 4 SpD / 252 Spe / 252 SpA
Timid/Hasty Nature
-Hurricane
-Energy ball / Giga Drain
-U-Turn
-Moonblast

If you REALLY have a problem with steel type pokemon, feel free to replace Hurricane (or even U-turn, if you really don't need it) with HP Fire. Shadow ball or Psychic may seem pretty tempting, but STAB moonblast does the job well enough with choice specs :)
 
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