np: ORAS OU Suspect Process, Round 3 - Ghosts [Giratina-O remains in Ubers - check the OP]

[AlphaGiratina]

I still don't see how anyone is taking this consideration of unbanning seriously. Giratina-O is A tier in Ubers, it's a really good mon in an incredibly hostile environment. And despite the OU council trying to bring him down as "a bulky mixed attacker" Giratina doesn't do much to the fairies that rule the stalling meta game but yet completely demolishes everything else. It's been said a hundred times but this thing hinders teambuilding to a huge degree. The OU council is taking a step I the right direction but Giratina is not the correct Pokemon to usher in a beneficial change in the OU tier (but its not my place in this thread to make recommendations tbh)
Also, Giratina is adapting to his checks. I've seen heal block run on the ladder alongside cm, rest, and shadow ball to stop clefable. It's getting ridiculous.

 

[The50mph]

While I don't have much experience with determining how "healthy" the current meta is, I don't quite seem to like Giratina-O. I have seen many posts on how it has a limited item, but this item gives the item in question a 1.2x boost to both its STAB. Regardless of my opinion, the thing I am most confused and slightly worried about is why the Suspect Test is not priority in OU (you can still play regular OU and No Mega OU). I believe everyone should get an idea of what the OU community is trying to introduce into the meta, and no one should have the ability to ignore the ST by playing regular OU and NM OU. Just my opinions. :]

 

[Thunder Pwoell]

Calm mind Clefable destroys giratina, Unaware clefable destroys giratina, Clefable can heal, Giratina can't really because restalk is random. You can't fit every move in Giratina-O's movepool bro, offensive will have shadow sneak to RK / DM / EQ or Earth power or aura sphere / hp fire / shadow ball / defog...it's already too much to fit in. Psychic Latios can 2HKO bold clefable too, it's called a lure set. There is no way such a bad coverage move will be viable other than hitting one or two mons, I don't see why you would use it tbh, it doesn't prove anything.

Pretty sure I've beaten every clefable i'm come up against. It's simply out classed.
+3 252+ SpA Giratina Shadow Ball vs. +2 252 HP / 0+ SpD Clefable: 150-177 (38 - 44.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Giratina Shadow Ball vs. -1 252 HP / 0+ SpD Clefable: 178-211 (45.1 - 53.5%) -- 2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ SpA Giratina Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 195-231 (49.4 - 58.6%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

as for clefable

+3 0 SpA Clefable Moonblast vs. +3 248 HP / 8 SpD Giratina: 168-198 (33.3 - 39.3%) -- 11.8% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
and just for fun

252 SpA Clefable Moonblast vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Giratina: 176-210 (34.9 - 41.6%) -- 75.4% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Counters my ass hahahah
This was just a regular giratina as well, the giratina -o hit's much harder

 

[Luxuryball13]

Giratina-O it's a great mon to have right now, it can bring a lot to the table, it does has his pros and cons like any other mon but we'll see, its interesting tho, gonna reserve my opinion until i try the ladder tho

 

[Firebird Maniac]

Just because something can be defeated 1v1 reliably by something or another doesn't mean it's not broken. Giratina-O in OU would be comparable somewhat to Primal Groudon in Ubers, in that it offers quite unrivaled degree of efficiency in combining roles (offensive threat, Defog + WoW shuffle, defensive check to many things) as well as an unpredictability in its exact set (offensive or defensive? special or physical? set up or no set up? RestTalk or no RestTalk?). This degree of splashability would cause it to be over centralizing, and the fact that it has a few solid checks will just make everyone run those checks, hence more centralization. Also it appears that people are still disagreeing over whether a cover all c&c actually exists, so there's that...

Also I saw some people mention that this is a mediocre mon in Ubers. This is simply not true.

 

[Vengeance417]

I still don't see how anyone is taking this consideration of unbanning seriously. Giratina-O is A tier in Ubers, it's a really good mon in an incredibly hostile environment. And despite the OU council trying to bring him down as "a bulky mixed attacker" Giratina doesn't do much to the fairies that rule the stalling meta game but yet completely demolishes everything else. It's been said a hundred times but this thing hinders teambuilding to a huge degree. The OU council is taking a step I the right direction but Giratina is not the correct Pokemon to usher in a beneficial change in the OU tier (but its not my place in this thread to make recommendations tbh)
Also, Giratina is adapting to his checks. I've seen heal block run on the ladder alongside cm, rest, and shadow ball to stop clefable. It's getting ridiculous.

Read this post please:

Sorry Ben, but you're just as clueless in OU as you are in Firebot.

Firstly, the viability of a mon in Ubers should never have any bearing on whether said mon should be allowed in OU. For example, Klefki is a solid A rank in Ubers but is allowed in OU, while Reshiram is in C- rank and is Uber. Secondly, Giratina-A and Giratina-O are considered separate Pokemon, as Karxrida stated. Unbanning Giratina holding a Griseous Orb is unbanning Giratina-O but keeping Giratina-A banned, hence why it's not a complex ban.

Anyways, after a couple games using Giratina, I gotta say, I don't really think it's that broken. People are going on about how bulky this thing is and how it essentially never dies, but from my practice using it, I find that trying to get a switch in opportunity can be hard at times. Having no access to reliable recovery (not counting Rest) and not even a chance to hold Leftovers hurts Giratina more than you would think. That's not meant to be interpreted that it CAN'T ever switch in, but a lot of very common pokes in OU can hurt it quite badly. Also, its base 90 speed, which isn't always invested in, is not particularly fast at all, leaving it easily revenged by a lot in OU.

Also, while it has access to Calm Mind as a boosting move, it doesn't have access to Swords Dance or Dragon Dance to boost the power of its physical moves. While it does get Hone Claws (which, in theory, could be scary on mixed sets using Draco Meteor or Stone Edge), it would much rather have +2 attack or +1 Speed and Attack.

That being said, having another Pokemon that, for the most part, resists the ever-so-common FWG cores of OU and is not only something as bulky as Giratina, but is also only taking neutral hits from SR (unlike Dragonite and pre-mega Altaria) and does not take up a mega slot (unlike Mega Ataria). That's huge for balance/stall teams if you ask me. Now, I don't know for certain if such an attribute and the others that it possesses could potentially make this thing too good in the future, but from what I can gather right now, it's not so bad.

 

[AlphaGiratina]

Was

Read this post please:



Anyways, after a couple games using Giratina, I gotta say, I don't really think it's that broken. People are going on about how bulky this thing is and how it essentially never dies, but from my practice using it, I find that trying to get a switch in opportunity can be hard at times. Having no access to reliable recovery (not counting Rest) and not even a chance to hold Leftovers hurts Giratina more than you would think. That's not meant to be interpreted that it CAN'T ever switch in, but a lot of very common pokes in OU can hurt it quite badly.

That being said, having another Pokemon that, for the most part, resists the ever-so-common FWG cores of OU and is not only something as bulky as Giratina, but is also only taking neutral hits from SR (unlike Dragonite and pre-mega Altaria) and does not take up a mega slot (unlike Mega Ataria). That's huge for balance/stall teams if you ask me. Now, I don't know for certain if such an attribute and the others that it possesses could potentially make this thing too good in the future, but from what I can gather right now, it's not so bad.

responding to a different guy about viability, and you must be on some good side of the ladder then, friend. Giratina is everywhere on the suspect ladder, abusing his massive movepool to degrees he could'nt do in ubers. You don't need to switch in when your foe is worried about the looming threat of this thing switching in and OHKOing something or phasing something else though. More importantly than Giratina bring undoubtedly broken, he's not encouraging growth in the meta or breaking the stale bulkyplaystyles of the meta; if anything, he's encouraging them. The main point of Giratina being brought to OU was to bring us a new bulky offensive ghost to help break bulky cores, but instead he's going full Ultron and doing what he wants, all the while flipping a middle tentacle. There's no reason to bring him from ubers.

 

[Fireburn]

I'm well aware that G-O's strongest STABs have downsides, though I don't think Shadow Force's 2-turn mechanic is all that bad considering it ignores protect, hits incredibly hard and has few switch-ins in and of itself.

It's worth noting that Shadow Force's 2-turn effect is actually advantageous when paired with residual damage sources such as Will-O-Wisp and/or Toxic (Spikes), letting you get more bang for your buck.

I would overall have to agree with you that what makes Giratina-O so deadly is not its raw ability to take hits, but its ability to do that and destroy a bunch of stuff at the same time, and it's pretty difficult to find out what it is equipped to destroy considering it has like 10 viable sets lol.

 

[ryan]

After playing a bit on the ladder, I still find Giratina is a welcome addition to the metagame. Aside from just being infinitely more fun than standard OU, I've found team matchup to be much less of an issue, as I predicted in my previous post. You do have to prepare considerably for Giratina, but the same can be said for most of the top Pokemon in OU. Covering Giratina can be as simple as adjusting EV spreads or completely rebuilding teams because although defensively it's far from impossible to defeat, actually killing it can be problematic, especially if it is a RestTalk variant. And although it does check a lot of Pokemon, it counters few without running RestTalk. This is furthered drastically by Giratina's lack of Leftovers, which makes Stealth Rock and any other passive damage take a huge toll on its ability to check certain Pokemon, especially Keldeo.

The real problem with Giratina is how heavily it warps the metagame around itself. I strongly dislike Pokemon that have such a large influence on a tier (see: Serperior in lower tiers, Suicune in UU, Scolipede in BW NU). Frankly, they make the game less fun to play. Pokemon should encourage variety in order to keep things fresh and fun, and an argument could be made that Giratina does not allow that in the OU metagame. However, as you'll notice with my example of Suicune in UU, something having such a large influence on a metagame isn't necessarily banworthy. While we want to encourage versatility and creativity, we should also strive to keep banlists as small as possible.

I'll have to keep laddering for reqs before I can make a responsible decision because I can understand both sides of this argument.

 

[PlatypusPrincess]

So the whole Giratina thing is brought up. It might be balanced. This thing hates every little bit of damage it might take. And when I say every little bit, I mean every little bit. It's only way of recovery is rest. That move which gives up a shit ton of monumentum unless you carry something with Heal Bell or run Sleep Talk, but even then you give up a turn every three times. Then there is wish. But there are only two pokemon (I'm counting Blissey and Chansey as one since they do the same) which can actually heal it. Healing Wish is almost nonexistent, but dangerous when paired with it. The issue makes Giratina-O comparable with The Forbidden One (aka Donphan) if you want to remove Hazards. They both hate them, but can remove them. It is also comparable to G4 Bronzong in this part.

Giratina-O suffers from a horrible case of 4MSS. Recovery without wasting turns costs two moveslots. If you add Calm Mind, three turns are wasted which means it is walled by either Faries or Normals. Rest only means it is immobile for some turns and nothing is worse than Giratina not being able to do anything. No rest means that every damage done to it is permanent, limiting it's potential dramatically and the number of things it can wall.

The best way to deal with it is abusing this. It either wasts a shit ton of turns, a shit ton of moveslots or a shit ton of walling power. Chipping Damage paired with a huge final blow is thus pretty helpfull. If you have something that can do ~50% of damage to it, you are safe. Most teams have this. If you can wall it, being able to deal ~25%-30% should be enought. This counts for every single set Giratina might run. Make sure you can hit it hard and fast when you can, or make sure you can force it out as often as you can.

 

[fish anemometer]

I would like to point out that Giratina also has recovery in pain split. Although it is a little hard to use and because of giratina's titanic hp, it barely restores anything.

 

[Analytic]

Thoughts at first glance:​

Potential great addition to OU.Like haunter mentioned in his post,it will give Balanced teams a good check to ZardY and Landorus-I while making the OU meta more diverse.

It seems impossible to break down though.It has incredible bulk.

TL;DR:Giratina-O seems like a welcome addition to a meta that has gone stale tbh.Checks S Rank Threats like Landorus-I, Keldeo and M-Metagross.What more do you want lol

 

[Mr. Hothead]

Thoughts at first glance:​

Potential great addition to OU.Like haunter mentioned in his post,it will give Balanced teams a good check to ZardY and Landorus-I while making the OU meta more diverse.

It seems impossible to break down though.It has incredible bulk.

TL;DR:Giratina-O seems like a welcome addition to a meta that has gone stale tbh.Checks S Rank Threats like Landorus-I, Keldeo and M-Metagross.What more do you want lol

we want a pokemon that doesnt single handedly wall 2/3's of the metagame

 

[Adaam]

Obviously they are gonna deny if this is an April fools joke. If this is serious why is the normal OU ladder still playable? If it was real the suspect ladder would be the only playable one, along with the No Mega one.

Anyway, on the off chance that this is real I don't see how this is any different from Aegislash which the OU council seems adamant on keeping banned, except fairies aren't completely invalidated

 

[Guidorealmsmc]

I would like to point out that Giratina also has recovery in pain split. Although it is a little hard to use and because of giratina's titanic hp, it barely restores anything.

Pain split is counterproductive with that base 150 hp. Giratina might make a welcome addition especially because it's restriction in it has to hold griseous orb,it helps with lando and keldeo which both run through a huge portion of the meta.

 

[The tank is here]

Playing on the suspect ladder and reading through the thread has led me to point out a few things I've noticed.

I saw a few people making the comparison of Giratina-O to Aegislash, mentioning that Aegi isn't affect by Toxic Spikes. Giratina-O has Levitate, so it actually isn't affected by Toxic Spikes, or Spikes itself. It also carries Defog, making it an ideal hazard remover since it isn't weak to SR.

Although this should also be rather obvious, Griseous Orb is not as harmless as it seems. Yes, it does get rid of predictability of what Giratina is holding, the Orb essentially acts as a Draco Plate and Spooky Plate for it, boosting already ridiculously strong STAB moves such as Draco Meteor and Shadow Force.

The first post mentioned that Giratina could check OU powerhouses such as MegaZard Y and Lando-T. I've seen a few arguments that discuss this issue as if there is nothing in the tier that stops it. Mega Altaria, Mega Diancie, and Mega Sableye all seem to have ways of dealing with this beast, making them decent checks (notice I said checks and not counters, don't freak out and start showing me calcs that tell me that those Pokemon don't wall Giratina. I know they don't).

I can understand the need for a Ghost-type with strong offensive typing in the tier. Giratina-O, I would say, is a welcome test, but not one to be easily determined. Giratina-O does have great potential as a mixed attacker to break down the bulk of the metagame, but the coverage it has is extraordinary. Considering a 120 base stat in both Attack and Special Attack, dealing with it in particular will be very difficult with moves such as Earthquake, Iron Head, Aura Sphere, Thunder, etc. to deal with potential checks. I've seen a few comparison of it with Kyurem-B as well, the other supposedly Ubers mon that got dragged down. I think that this argument may shed some light on this comparison: yes Kyurem-B has the more frightening 170/120 offensive stat, but it does lack in some coverage moves to really round it out as threatening enough to be kicked out of OU into Ubers. On top of that, Ice/Dragon (or anything with Ice typing, let's be real here) just does not make for a ideal of a defensive typing as Ghost/Dragon does.

Despite having no reliable recovering outside of ResTalk or Pain Split, a bulky/tank/support set is still viable, as 150/100/100 defensive stats is actually pretty high in the OU tier, compared to other bulky beasts such as Mega Metagross, Mega Venusaur, and Tyranitar. Along with that, it has everything from Will-o-Wisp, Thunder Wave, Toxic, and Magick Coat to even Tailwind and Destiny Bond. 90 base speed may not be impressive compared to other speedy creature in OU, but given it's bulk and impressive power, 90 is enough for it to outspeed threats like Bisharp. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if I run into something as ridiculous as CroTina-O, it has so many options.

One last thing I want to mention is how people have mentioned that others in the Uber tier can do Giratina-O's job in OU better than it can itself (I'm looking at you, Lati twins). Yes, that is true, but I don't think that necessarily unviable or completely outclassed. It's still a very good defogger and Primal Groundon check in the tier, and can though not as bulky as it's Alternate brother, can still take both physical and special hits very well whilst boasting the ability to switch in without worrying about Spikes or Earthquake. I'm not the most Seasoned Ubers player, but I do believe that Giratina-O does still have a niche for itself in the Ubers tier. It seems that labeling it "outclassed" in its current tier makes for a weak argument for why it should drop to OU.

I'm still on the fence for this whole issue, but as I take more time on the suspect ladder, I'm finding Giratina-O harder to deal with and less reasonable to bring down to OU.

 

[Talpr0ne]

Obviously they are gonna deny if this is an April fools joke. If this is serious why is the normal OU ladder still playable? If it was real the suspect ladder would be the only playable one, along with the No Mega one.

Anyway, on the off chance that this is real I don't see how this is any different from Aegislash which the OU council seems adamant on keeping banned, except fairies aren't completely invalidated

They never take down the regular OU ladder during suspect test if the banlist beetween the two ladders is different(e.g. Giratina-O being allowed only on the suspect ladder, or in past suspects Aegislash or Mega Metagross being banned only on the suspect ladder). If you're wondering low tiers don't do this during their tests because of the way smaller player base.

 

[iamQmai]

Personally I think after about ten games on the ladder I would enjoy a Giratina-O metagame. It's very strong and defensive, yes, will it be S rank? Yes. But is it too good? Personally right now I don't think so. megagross has ridiculous stats and ability and it didn't get banned. I actually think after using in place of latias on my team (defog life orb) doing effectively the same role it's slightly underwhelming in terms of power even though it's modest with 176 evs in spattack. Defensively it's very good. But it's got very common weaknesses. And you know what loves it? Scarf ditto, as obviously both stabs are super effective against itself. more to come later I guess!

 

[Towertroll]

I still don't see how anyone is taking this consideration of unbanning seriously. Giratina-O is A tier in Ubers, it's a really good mon in an incredibly hostile environment. And despite the OU council trying to bring him down as "a bulky mixed attacker" Giratina doesn't do much to the fairies that rule the stalling meta game but yet completely demolishes everything else. It's been said a hundred times but this thing hinders teambuilding to a huge degree. The OU council is taking a step I the right direction but Giratina is not the correct Pokemon to usher in a beneficial change in the OU tier (but its not my place in this thread to make recommendations tbh)
Also, Giratina is adapting to his checks. I've seen heal block run on the ladder alongside cm, rest, and shadow ball to stop clefable. It's getting ridiculous.

Use Smash Cloyster with focus sash, skill link and icicle spear - don't let these legendaries scare you!

 

[qsns]

I feel this suspect test had great intentions (and don't get me wrong, I love the idea of dropping something) but Gira-O is not the mon to drop. I don't see how dropping a potential S(+) rank threat that the metagame will centralize around fixes the issue. I really like the comparison to Primal Groudon: it can fit on every single playstyle and can only really be taken advantage of by its lack of recovery. It's even harder to wear down Gira-O in OU though because of its extremely useful immunities (spikes!!!) and resistances. While Gira-O may fix a bit of the matchup issue, do you really want the metagame to instead centralize around one mon? Teambuilding becomes easier and less skillful because you just slap on a Giratina as a blanket check for a disgusting amount of mons. The OU council is trading skill for consistency and that's not what this game should be about.

 

[Swaqfeq]

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/oususpecttest-221746382 just a nice replay of me 6-0ing stall

On giratina, I definitely think that bringing this mon will make ou a lot less stall. Ive been using this rough team that i quickly built after finding out about the suspect and giratina as a spinblocker is amazing on hazard stack teams. The fact that its forced to run a griseous orb, although handy when running a special/phys/mixed atking set also hinders it on recovery only being able to use rest or, in my case leech seed recovery/wish passing. Looks like a good mon but not broken. Also, as others have said, helps check the monster that is lando i and its just good to have a bulky spinblocker that beats starmie or atleast forces it out :~)

 

[shrang]

Okay, I seriously do not understand this move, at all. I don't play OU any more and I really shouldn't comment on a metagame I don't play, but this is so blatantly out of place even a player who doesn't play the metagame can see it. I mean shit, I'm pretty happy to play a Giratina-O OU metagame, but let's seriously be realistic here. You're telling me that out of all the things that you wanted to test out from Ubers, that Giratina-O came to mind first? There are a bunch of shitty Ubers that get next to no usage in Ubers that we could test out (Reshiram, Bugceus, Psychicceus, Fightceus, Deo-N). Even Giratina-A would be a better choice since it freaking sucks. Yes, yes, you can tell me that performance in Ubers has no bearing on OU tiering, but come on, you cannot justify that a Pokemon that is A rank in the tier that has higher stats, better typings and better utility in pretty much everything than OU would be a more balanced fit that some of those mons above. What would have been better, if we were serious about this, we should probably just retest some bans we've done already. Why not retest Aegislash before Giratina-O? Gira's like Aegislash but pretty much better in every way. Why not retest Mega Mawile, or Genesect, or something like that? And don't tell me "don't you know how broken those things were, of course they should stay banned" because I'd just point at Giratina-O and laugh at you. I'm not advocating for these suspects, I'm merely pointing out that Gira-O is a bad choice.

Let's run through the reasons of this here (I'm going to go via the OP) - just obvious things which I think are really wrong:

After removing from the metagame numerous offensive powerhouses, we realized that the time had come to invert the course. Presently, the OU metagame is stale and the abundance of defensively oriented teams led us to believe that a mixed attacker with great defensive and offensive typing will probably give back some vivacity to the tier.

No-one thought that adding Giratina-O to a defensively oriented metagame would make it more defensive? I mean it only has what, 150/100/100 defenses, right? Dragon/Ghost + Levitate also happens to resist a crapload of things. This thing is like, the perfect fit on stall teams.

Its base statistics are on par with those of several other Pokémon who characterize the current OU metagame

680 BST is "on par" with Pokes in OU currently? Sure, I understand many of the Mega evolutions bumped a lot of Pokemon's BSTs into the 600-700 range, but you have to remember Mega stones 1) require a turn to evolve, 2) do nothing apart from Mega evolve (and be immune to Knock Off). Unlike Mega stones, Griseous Orb boosts both offenses by 20%, so in reality Gira has a higher BST than 680 if you're going to treat it like a Mega evolution, without needing the turn to Mega evolve. IIRC if you're going to count it like a Mega stone without extra effects, its BST is closer to 760 (IIRC, I forgot what the exact figure was, I remember Jibaku mentioning this previously, if you can correct me, that would be great). That's not "on par" with all the other Mega evolutions and Pokemon in OU, that's "better than" virtually everything, with the exception of like, Kyu-B.

the fact that it's forced to run Griseous Orb makes Giratina-O a relatively predictable threat

Um, not really. Off the top of my head (just theorymoning here), but Gira-O can potentially run these threats:
1) Mixed attacker/phazer
2) RestTalk phazer
3) SubCM
4) CM + 3 attacks
5) Tailwind
6) CM RestTalk
7) Pure physical attacker
8) Pure special attacker
9) Support with Defog
10) Defensive with WoW
- All of the above can have all sorts of EV variants that allow them to do different things with the same set

I don't know how many of those sets would be viable (I suspect most of them), but it's there to highlight how flawed the reasoning of "can only carry 1 item = predictable". If that was true, Primal Groudon is also incredibly "predictable". Arceus Ghost can only carry one item, I don't think that it's particularly "predictable". Predictability isn't really an issue either when a Pokemon can do one thing incredibly well. Something like Deo-A is also incredibly predictable, but the one thing that it did destroyed everything, even when you predicted what it could do and prepared for it.

Giratina-O's 150/100/100 defenses will help balanced teams deal with threats such as Charizard-Y, Landorus-I and Serperior.

Or, they could, along with 120/120 offenses just end up dominating the tier by itself. We could drop many Ubers like Primal Groudon, Ghostceus, Xerneas and stuff like that with the same reasoning to balance out certain threats, but you can easily see that dropping those things would just mean a shitfest where said suspect dominates the crap out of entire metagame.

I might have sounded way too sarcastic for my own good here, but I mean come on, where did we get the idea that dropping Giratina-O is any semblance of a good idea? I thought this was an April Fools' thing but that's already been debunked. I'm probably one of the players who is most against bans around the place, and even I can see how blatantly broken this would be. I'll be playing on this ladder just because I find broken metagames fun and will just enjoy the chaos, but the reasonable part of me knows that this is a bad idea.

 

[Grim]

After playing about 20 matches on the ladder, I don't think Giratina-O is healthy for OU. I have been using the bulky Substitute + Calm Mind set and outside of certain Fairy-types (Unaware Clefable, Sylveon) it has literally no counters, just some checks. I like the idea of testing Ubers Pokemon, but in this case I do not believe that the metagame improves with the addition of Giratina-O. Sure, it checks a lot of threats by virtue of its bulk and typing, which is amazing for all teams and makes teambuilding easier. However, I for one do not want to play an OU that completely revolves around Giratina-O. I know that the suspect ladder is not an accurate view of how the meta would be if we decide to keep it here, but from what I have seen the meta is all about Giratina-O, Bisharp, and Unaware Clefable. Half of the old top tier threats (Keldeo, Landorus-I, etc) have almost literally dissappeared. This is a great idea, but in this particular case I don't think Giratina-O is in any way healthy for the tier, it just makes the metagame even more stale as there is no reason not to use Giratina-O simply because of how amazingly good it is. My mind might still change as I'm still going to ladder a lot, but those are my current thoughts.

A few replays showcasing Giratina-O's effectiveness:
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/oususpecttest-221724563
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/oususpecttest-221639561

 

[Bluwing]

Okay, I seriously do not understand this move, at all. I don't play OU any more and I really shouldn't comment on a metagame I don't play, but this is so blatantly out of place even a player who doesn't play the metagame can see it. I mean shit, I'm pretty happy to play a Giratina-O OU metagame, but let's seriously be realistic here. You're telling me that out of all the things that you wanted to test out from Ubers, that Giratina-O came to mind first? There are a bunch of shitty Ubers that get next to no usage in Ubers that we could test out (Reshiram, Bugceus, Psychicceus, Fightceus, Deo-N). Even Giratina-A would be a better choice since it freaking sucks. Yes, yes, you can tell me that performance in Ubers has no bearing on OU tiering, but come on, you cannot justify that a Pokemon that is A rank in the tier that has higher stats, better typings and better utility in pretty much everything than OU would be a more balanced fit that some of those mons above. What would have been better, if we were serious about this, we should probably just retest some bans we've done already. Why not retest Aegislash before Giratina-O? Gira's like Aegislash but pretty much better in every way. Why not retest Mega Mawile, or Genesect, or something like that? And don't tell me "don't you know how broken those things were, of course they should stay banned" because I'd just point at Giratina-O and laugh at you. I'm not advocating for these suspects, I'm merely pointing out that Gira-O is a bad choice.

Let's run through the reasons of this here (I'm going to go via the OP) - just obvious things which I think are really wrong:



No-one thought that adding Giratina-O to a defensively oriented metagame would make it more defensive? I mean it only has what, 150/100/100 defenses, right? Dragon/Ghost + Levitate also happens to resist a crapload of things. This thing is like, the perfect fit on stall teams.



680 BST is "on par" with Pokes in OU currently? Sure, I understand many of the Mega evolutions bumped a lot of Pokemon's BSTs into the 600-700 range, but you have to remember Mega stones 1) require a turn to evolve, 2) do nothing apart from Mega evolve (and be immune to Knock Off). Unlike Mega stones, Griseous Orb boosts both offenses by 20%, so in reality Gira has a higher BST than 680 if you're going to treat it like a Mega evolution, without needing the turn to Mega evolve. IIRC if you're going to count it like a Mega stone without extra effects, its BST is closer to 760 (IIRC, I forgot what the exact figure was, I remember Jibaku mentioning this previously, if you can correct me, that would be great). That's not "on par" with all the other Mega evolutions and Pokemon in OU, that's "better than" virtually everything, with the exception of like, Kyu-B.



Um, not really. Off the top of my head (just theorymoning here), but Gira-O can potentially run these threats:
1) Mixed attacker/phazer
2) RestTalk phazer
3) SubCM
4) CM + 3 attacks
5) Tailwind
6) CM RestTalk
7) Pure physical attacker
8) Pure special attacker
9) Support with Defog
10) Defensive with WoW
- All of the above can have all sorts of EV variants that allow them to do different things with the same set

I don't know how many of those sets would be viable (I suspect most of them), but it's there to highlight how flawed the reasoning of "can only carry 1 item = predictable". If that was true, Primal Groudon is also incredibly "predictable". Arceus Ghost can only carry one item, I don't think that it's particularly "predictable". Predictability isn't really an issue either when a Pokemon can do one thing incredibly well. Something like Deo-A is also incredibly predictable, but the one thing that it did destroyed everything, even when you predicted what it could do and prepared for it.



Or, they could, along with 120/120 offenses just end up dominating the tier by itself. We could drop many Ubers like Primal Groudon, Ghostceus, Xerneas and stuff like that with the same reasoning to balance out certain threats, but you can easily see that dropping those things would just mean a shitfest where said suspect dominates the crap out of entire metagame.

I might have sounded way too sarcastic for my own good here, but I mean come on, where did we get the idea that dropping Giratina-O is any semblance of a good idea? I thought this was an April Fools' thing but that's already been debunked. I'm probably one of the players who is most against bans around the place, and even I can see how blatantly broken this would be. I'll be playing on this ladder just because I find broken metagames fun and will just enjoy the chaos, but the reasonable part of me knows that this is a bad idea.

not gonna respond to your whole post, but you seem to miss the point. like why gira-o and not aegislash, and other pokemon in the ubers metagame with low usage didn't drop down. gira-o is chosen because it checks/counters some pokemon thats in some regards is impossible for an ou team off 6 slots to check well either way, like u said it has nothing to do with it's ranking or performance in the ubers game, but it has a ton to do with it's typing, ability and ofc it's bulk! having a pokemon that checks zard y / lando-i / serperior / m-metagross in one slot is an incredibly valuable feat in the ou metagame and it is to help balance out the metagame because off the power creep. ive played whole xy ou and whole oras ou and i can say by heart that this suspect test is smart and a good way to see if bringing something down can help the metagame "evolve" or "balance" out as it won't atm due to the huge powercreep in ou atm.

 

[Lord Wallace]

I'm starting to become a little bit concerned at how desperate the OU council has become to try and "shake things up" in OU after Metagrossite escaped it's ban.
Some of Smogon's most recognized players at the time admitted themselves that we weren't trying to ban Metagrossite because it was necessarily broken (I don't think it was, anyway, but let's not have a discussion about that here) but because it's the ideal place to start to change the current shitty status quo.
I feel like the same thing is happening here, I'll concede that Giratina-O looks really appealing for OU at a glance because yeah as the OP said it provides an incredibly viable and lucrative for every playstyle check to top tier threats that have made OU rather stale lately (Keldeo, Landorus, Metagross, yadayada), but I don't think it's worth the amount of damage this monster could do in return.

Looking at it's combination of stats, typing, ability, and movepool, what I fear will happen is that Giratina-O will become in OU (or rather, probably already is) like Primal Groudon is in Ubers, where it isn't blatantly overpowered from an offensive standpoint but can perform so many roles and provide so much utility and blanket check so much that there's little reason not to use it on a team, and any team without Giratina-O would probably be better with Giratina-O.
It may seem like I'm suggesting we roll over and just accept that this game is shit and nothing we do can change that, but I'm not, I'm really not, I just think the OU council may have been a little rash here and we need to be more careful about where we start because what I feel happened is we saw G-O and saw a solution to all of our problems and from there we blinded ourselves to the repercussions of trying to check bad with even worse, imo of course.
I'd even go as far as to say I would have preferred banning Metagrossite to this (as a measure to diversify the metagame, I'm not saying that we wouldn't have tried this at some point even if we did ban Metagrossite).

Anyway, these are simply my initial opinions and observations so take them with a grain of salt because I haven't played the ladder yet, though I can't say I don't look forward to naming my Giratina "Big O"