np: ORAS OU Suspect Process, Round 3 - Wandering Ghosts [Aegislash remains in Ubers]

[Martin]

Gonna answer for him but the sd set is sub optimal because of the huge usage of bulky grounds in the meta: tankchomp, landorus-t, gliscor and hippowdon, along with other hard counters such as rotom-w, mega sableye, skarmory which is seeing a resurgence in usage and others. It is also weak as shit without setting up; even coming from 150 base attack a non stab 85 bp move will do absolutely zero to just about everything. Even after it has gotten off a swords dance it can't ohko common checks such as landorus-I, excadrill etc. Aegislash is much better off firing off shadow balls to punch holes in stuff, rather than being a free switch into your opponents stealth rocker every time it comes in.

SD Aegislash isn't going to be used mid game, which is what this post implies. SD Aegislash is a late game cleaner that takes advantage of its switch-ins being weakened before it comes in. Bulky SD is absolute garbage as it is trying to use it to wallbreak, which SD Aegislash shouldn't be trying to do. Also FYI you are using the same power moves on a physical set as you are on a special set, and Sacred Sword is literally only there for the sake of hitting Dark-types and 4x weak shit. With your post you're implying that you will be using it v.s. neutral targets, which shows a lack of understanding about the set. HP Ice is completely suboptimal, but SD is certainly not.

 

[radianthero156]

SD is sub-optimal in that it'll be worse than all of its other sets almost 100% of the time. firstly it doesn't beat anything that the mixed set (by mixed i mean the SD set with shadow ball over SD) already doesn't, while the opposite occurs (mixed sets can defeat hippowdon, skarmory and basically everything that doesn't resist ghost, as well offensive mons like keldeo/lando switching in, while SD fails to beat all of these). secondly it's made useless by burns from wow/scald. and lastly, if you're going to use SD, you need to save it until the late game. that means you can't exploit the massive amount of free turns aegi gets vs stuff like latios in the early-mid game. for those reasons i think aegi's versatility is overrated and imo if you counter subtoxic and the mixed set, your team is basically aegi-proof.

as for the metagame becoming stale and non innovative, did anyone see yesterday's tour?

 

[Pagoose]

Just going to throw out some calcs to prove that SD aegi can beat these bulky grounds
+2 252+ Atk Aegislash-Blade Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 56+ Def Gliscor: 229-270 (64.6 - 76.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal
+2 252+ Atk Aegislash-Blade Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 144+ Def Hippowdon: 223-264 (53 - 62.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+2 252+ Atk Aegislash-Blade Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Garchomp: 237-280 (56.4 - 66.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 252+ Atk Aegislash-Blade Shadow Claw vs. 248 HP / 216+ Def Rotom-W: 198-234 (65.3 - 77.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

But... Aegislash still loses to all if these mons. Gliscor 2hkos with earthquake, hippowdon ohkoes aegislash in blade form, garchomp kills with earthquake+rough skin+rocky helmet, and aegislash can't really drop a moveslot for shadow claw, not to mention it gets burnt and loses anyway.

SD Aegislash isn't going to be used mid game, which is what this post implies. SD Aegislash is a late game cleaner that takes advantage of its switch-ins being weakened before it comes in. Bulky SD is absolute garbage as it is trying to use it to wallbreak, which SD Aegislash shouldn't be trying to do. Also FYI you are using the same power moves on a physical set as you are on a special set, and Sacred Sword is literally only there for the sake of hitting Dark-types and 4x weak shit. With your post you're implying that you will be using it v.s. neutral targets, which shows a lack of understanding about the set. HP Ice is completely suboptimal, but SD is certainly not.

I was under the impression that sd aegislash ran sacred sword over iron head in order to hit things like bisharp, m-gyarados, Ferrothorn, heatran, m-scizor etc. I know some sets lack kings shield in favour of iron head or head smash, but after they attack they can be easily revenge killed by pokemon that can take a +2 sneak due to aegislash-blade's terrible defenses, For example keldeo, m-altaria, m-venusaur, gyarados, kyurem-b, etc. No matter what set sd runs it really is outclassed by special variants.

 

[Slimmer]

as for the metagame becoming stale and non innovative, did anyone see yesterday's tour?

I hope you're not referring to McMeghan's finals teams cuz it was clearly obvious he used 4fun stuff since he already got reqs so those matches were just made for the sake of the tour
Did you see the ladder? That's just a bit more indicative than those pointless finals

fuck my net it took like 5 mins just to edit syntax mistakes

 

[Martin]

I was under the impression that sd aegislash ran sacred sword over iron head in order to hit things like bisharp, m-gyarados, Ferrothorn, heatran, m-scizor etc. I know some sets lack kings shield in favour of iron head or head smash, but after they attack they can be easily revenge killed by pokemon that can take a +2 sneak due to aegislash-blade's terrible defenses, For example keldeo, m-altaria, m-venusaur, gyarados, kyurem-b, etc. No matter what set sd runs it really is outclassed by special variants.

Usually SD runs SD+Iron Head+Sacred Sword+Shadow Sneak as Head Smash's targets are virtually unseen nowadays. If it gets unbanned, they may rise again but for now they are uncommon. Also you aren't going to be bringing it in to clean before stuff is weakened anyway. King's Shield + SD is genuinely ass as Aegi needs all the coverage that it can get, and you aren't exactly using it for its bulk.

 

[badabing]

This isn't even regarding how the 50/50 argument is again total bullshit since pokemon in itself is an uncompetitive game, though I suppose minimalazing the amount of luck is a good thing shrug.

this is just so wrong. we should minimalaze the amount of these posts. are you saying introducing a shit ton of lose-tie 5050s with a mon that is basically too good to pass up is comparable to the other typical instances of luck in pokemon? as in games already amount to conditions as bad or worse than that? i never been about zap cannon but that's just me. pokemon is an uncompetitive game? seriously beginning to question the democratic process here cuz thats prob an attitude that shouldn't be influencing the tiering of a competitive game.

i ain't finna spoonfeed djd doctrine but i think niggas need to re-evaluate their consideration of what is uber. something that "blanket checks" half the metagame, switches freely even with a pursuit weak and is difficult to punish, and possesses few defensive counters and especially limited offensive switchins is a more toxic presence than a flock of po memers. maybs a red flag when one mon is legit dictating coverage options. the community was just split on meta because of its offensive capacity compounded upon high checkability which made for little opportunity cost. well go fucking figure this is that gone exponential.

the subtoxic set is nuts. idk that gets its own section cuz it's really just a testament to the scope of this mons package. prob the best mon at getting and keeping a productive sub up i've ever seen. makes subglis look like some third grade trick or treat (BAN ME PLEASE)ry.

i haven't been keeping up with this thread, but i felt the need to pipe up in a less trolly fashion after my news feed showed a council member throwing some of this shit a bone. maybe niggas was just trying to encourage a balanced discussion even tho this one seems more no brain than your pop's latest foreplay session. and if adding a blanket check improves the metagame (sure as fuck don't make it tolerable), den i fully support a stached up kokoloko seizing the podium.

 

[WebBowser]

But Shadow Ball hits 'nite just as hard when its roosting anyway, and if its bulky roost you're better off using another check to HP Ice f*cking Aegislash (which is ass outside of very select teams as it is).

IIRC this subconvo was started when someone was positing a hypothetical scenario where bulky roost dragonite became common as an aegis check, and therefore I made my post under that assumption figuring it was useful theorymon. I figured the idea was to hit the dnite with shadowball to break multiscale and then surprise KO it with hp ice.

and honestly, I actually don't see a good reason for bulky roost to not start seeing more usage in an aegi meta, as bulky roost with EQ actually seems like a legitimate check to a wide variety of threats.

 

[WECAMEASROMANS]

okay so i've been trying to keep up with this thread and so apparently a bunch of people think aegi's SD + basically every lure set it has is shit and uneffective?_?

Max spatk + LO Aegislash with HP ice is definitely a feasible option. To the people who say "hp ice only hits spdef gliscor, and if your opponent doesnt have spdef gliscor you're basically using a shit aegislash with 3 attacks", this is definitely not true lmao. Other than spdef gliscor, LO HP ice 2hkoes chesnaught, something that walls the standard tank set, hippo, mandibuzz, spdef dnite, rocky helmet garchomp, & bulky landorus-t. How the hell is hp ice a sub par move? Obviously hitting spdef gliscor is its main use but it has a ton of other merits as well that you guys obviously completely forgot about.

The standard max spatk LO aegi set is shadow ball shadow sneak flash cannon sacred sword. you can easily just replace flash cannon with hp ice, as they both hit the same intended targets (mandibuzz, chesnaught, spdef dnite), while hp ice gives you a lot more coverage vs ground types & gliscor, while flash cannon helps you combat fairies better such as clefable + altaria.

and for the fast SD being shit, thats not true either lol. maybe the slow ass stance dance is subpar but fast SD isn't. Sure, it might not be its best set in the metagame currently due to the predominance of garchomp + hippo in both tours and ladder but you're missing the fact that its able to sweep or severely weaken whole balanced builds. AV torn-t is a decent check to the tank aegi set if sr isnt up but it just dies to sd set. sd + head smash also destroys passive ass walls like heatran + skarm, and you can even run a balloon on SD aegi so you can set up on shit like hippo. not to mention the fact that you get like a free SD vs the latis and a +2 LO max atk shadow sneak is doing good damage to pretty much every pokemon on an offensive team, i.e thundy/lando, and you outspeed azu and KO it at +2 before it can touch you

 

[Patolegend!]

So I was up theorymonning last night about potential aegi counters, and I came up with an interesting idea: Knock Off Ferrothorn!

(note, this post is not anti or pro ban, these are just some musings on my part.)

4 Atk Aegislash-Blade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 88+ Def Ferrothorn: 124-148 (35.2 - 42%) -- 84.9% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Aegislash-Blade Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 168 SpD Ferrothorn: 121-144 (34.3 - 40.9%) -- 55.8% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
0 Atk Ferrothorn Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Aegislash-Blade: 230-272 (70.9 - 83.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+2 252 Atk Aegislash-Blade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 88+ Def Ferrothorn: 294-346 (83.5 - 98.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

So basically, standard OU utility Ferro with knock off actually underspeeds and beats aegislash given even a small amount of prior damage. KS is risky here because aegi would rather not eat a leech seed or free hazards (and Knock Off is kinda rare atm anyway). Given that Knock Off is already a legitimate choice on ferro for crippling offensive and defensive switch ins that don't fear his STABS, I would say that some variant of knock off ferro could easily find itself a place in both offensive and defensive teams alike. Steel Typing allows him to troll sub--toxic, and he can even take a +2 sacred sword (not that I would ever leave ferro in on SD aegi, leave that to quagsire or skarm or something). Good news is that SD aegi is pretty well telegraphed, so stall and balanced teambuilders builders really shouldn't have any issues with countering that (they deal with SDers all the time).

Note I also looked at sp defensive EQ forretress, only to find that 1. EQ doesn't OHKO and 2. Forret, even SP def, takes a huge amount from shadow ball (not to mention forret is pretty trash anyway).

Just came back from a weekend away, so sorry for the necro-ing of this comment, but wanted to mention this.

I actually used KO Ferro in the test, and the problem is this:

252+ SpA Life Orb Aegislash-Blade Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 168 SpD Ferrothorn: 157-187 (44.6 - 53.1%) -- 30.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

4 Atk Life Orb Aegislash-Blade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 88+ Def Ferrothorn: 161-192 (45.7 - 54.5%) -- 54.3% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

252+ SpA Life Orb Aegislash-Blade Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 168 SpD Ferrothorn: 157-187 (44.6 - 53.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock, 1 layer of Spikes, and Leftovers recovery

KO Ferro is not a guaranteed counter, especially for offensive spikestacking teams (which is a lot of the ladder right now). Even with just rocks up, there's a scald's burn chance of a 2HKO with shadow ball and SS. If it survives the second hit, it'll KO Aegi, and it does win 1v1, but it only checks Aegi.

Not to mention that damned 10% chance of a defense drop :(

 

[NotSoClutch]

you didnt have to quote my post in order to post your own because they're pretty much unrelated. you claim that team matchup isn't a factor but in literally the next sentence you claim the underlying problem to pokemon is the inability for certain teams to play around "cores," that of which are smaller than actual teams lol and objectively easier to deal with.

also, this is a thread about whether aegislash should be banned or not, and at no point did you explain why aegislash would fix this extremely important "problem" that is plaguing everything pokemon related (it cant because the problem doesnt exist!)

You may want to take another look at my post then because all I am saying is that there is a matchup issue in Pokemon. Never did I say matchup wasnt an issue. I dont believe that Aegislash fixes this issue, but your argument of "if you are good at team building" is laughable because matchup issues are inevitable in a game as diverse as Pokemon.

I dont think that matchup was ever not a problem though. In each generation you couldnt cover every threat. Heck gen 5 it was basically a triangle of team types. Either you had weather, anti weather, or a really solid team that lost to weather more often than not that could beat anti weather. You basically had to pick your poison. This gen is no different.

 

[Frochtejohgurt]

I don't get why a metagame with more viable pokes is necessarily better ("more creative") than an overcentralised. I for one enjoy XY with Aegi more than post ban, because it's centralising effect made it easier to actual have good metagame coverage with your team building (see the disappearence of Stall due to the rise of Gradevoir-M, Heracross-M etc after the ban). After all it is Competitive Pokemon and not Creative Pokemon, and the first is easier optainable in a meta with less viable Pokemon. At this point I'm more willing to deal with a massively powerful (I'm not saying that is broken. I actually don't know it.) Aegislash than a dispersed and slightly less powerful pool of Pokemon.
I don't have reqs, so this may be some useless talking, but it's how I see it.

Come on OU Council, just go UU style already

 

[pika pal]

I don't get why a metagame with more viable pokes is necessarily better ("more creative") than an overcentralised. I for one enjoy XY with Aegi more than post ban, because it's centralising effect made it easier to actual have good metagame coverage with your team building (see the disappearence of Stall due to the rise of Gradevoir-M, Heracross-M etc after the ban). After all it is Competitive Pokemon and not Creative Pokemon, and the first is easier optainable in a meta with less viable Pokemon. At this point I'm more willing to deal with a massively powerful (I'm not saying that is broken. I actually don't know it.) Aegislash than a dispersed and slightly less powerful pool of Pokemon.
I don't have reqs, so this may be some useless talking, but it's how I see it.

Come on OU Council, just go UU style already

The issue is that Aegislash is being tested with the hope that his centralizing effect will reduce the issue with team match-up (whether or not it is there is a different matter).

However, Aegislash's splashability, support power, versatility, and complete lack of opportunity cost doesn't ultimately have that effect. While he reduces the pool of viable Pokemon, he makes some of the remaining Pokemon exponentially harder to deal with: Lando-I remains as powerful and also checks another important mon in Aegislash himself, while Lopunny is a crux for HO teams and runs over Aegislash heavy offense as well. In the current Metagame, I might lose because I didn't prepare for Weavile or Mega Diancie covering most other threats; in the Aegislash meta, I could lose because I prepared for all 20 threats, but I didn't prepare ENOUGH for Lopunny because I needed a lot of prep for Landorus-I. Whether or not you believe the current Meta is match-up reliant, there's just as much reason to see it in an Aegislash metagame, and if we're testing Aegislash to reduce match-up, then that means we don't want the match-up reliant Aegis meta either.

So whether or not a centralized metagame is better or worse than a diverse metagame, if Aegislash is not mitigating the issue he is being tested to mitigate, the justification to retest him in the first place is null. Aegislash meta is not different from our current one, save trading the quantity of threats for the degree of preparation necessary for them. If our current meta is borked, the Aegis meta is just as much so; if our current meta is balanced by the same token, reintroducing a centralizing threat for a metagame that is not inherently more balanced adds nothing.

 

[WebBowser]

Just came back from a weekend away, so sorry for the necro-ing of this comment, but wanted to mention this.

I actually used KO Ferro in the test, and the problem is this:

252+ SpA Life Orb Aegislash-Blade Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 168 SpD Ferrothorn: 157-187 (44.6 - 53.1%) -- 30.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

4 Atk Life Orb Aegislash-Blade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 88+ Def Ferrothorn: 161-192 (45.7 - 54.5%) -- 54.3% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

252+ SpA Life Orb Aegislash-Blade Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 168 SpD Ferrothorn: 157-187 (44.6 - 53.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock, 1 layer of Spikes, and Leftovers recovery

KO Ferro is not a guaranteed counter, especially for offensive spikestacking teams (which is a lot of the ladder right now). Even with just rocks up, there's a scald's burn chance of a 2HKO with shadow ball and SS. If it survives the second hit, it'll KO Aegi, and it does win 1v1, but it only checks Aegi.

Not to mention that damned 10% chance of a defense drop :(

Yeah, I kinda forgot about LO mixed, which is a massive issue considering that is a set that gives stall and balanced teams a lot of trouble... ugh, back to the drawing board(again!).

To chime in on the "4MSS" debate, pretty much the only constant for aegislash is that you know he's packing a ghost type STAB, usually shadow ball. You can literally have aegislash run shadow ball and nothing else and it still does most of the stuff you would expect aegislash to do. The sheer amount of nuetral coverage he gets off of that 1 STAB alone gives him 3 bloody moveslots to do pretty much whatever he darn well pleases. He can afford to run situational coverage moves like HP whatever and head smash. He can afford to run utility moves like KS and subs, he can even afford to run stuff that would be considered gimmicks on virtually any other pokemon like Magnet Rise and Destiny Bond, because ghost STAB is just that good.

He doesn't have 4MSS, he has shadow ball and 3 moveslots filled with situational crap to get around stuff that can tank a shadow ball.

 

[Slimmer]

I don't get why a metagame with more viable pokes is necessarily better ("more creative") than an overcentralised. I for one enjoy XY with Aegi more than post ban, because it's centralising effect made it easier to actual have good metagame coverage with your team building (see the disappearence of Stall due to the rise of Gradevoir-M, Heracross-M etc after the ban). After all it is Competitive Pokemon and not Creative Pokemon, and the first is easier optainable in a meta with less viable Pokemon. At this point I'm more willing to deal with a massively powerful (I'm not saying that is broken. I actually don't know it.) Aegislash than a dispersed and slightly less powerful pool of Pokemon.
I don't have reqs, so this may be some useless talking, but it's how I see it.

Come on OU Council, just go UU style already

I'd prefer a centralizing metagame too but Aegislash is not the right answer. The reason we want a centralized metagame is because dealing with too many threats (and when I say "too many threats" I mean there are 53 top threats aka 53 pokemons between S and A- rank -plus other 50 mons with lower rank- , versus the 38 of BW2 and 31 of DPP) penalizes chances that teambuilding can deal with all of them because there will always be something that can smash your team with minimum effort (sometimes you can't even do nothing), so even good players sometimes gotta play perfectly to avoid losing by matchup and this won't garantuee the win.

Why Aegislash can't help the tier?
I repeated this like too many times but Aegislash, other than being by far one of the most unpredictable mons (even if it runs 4 moves of which one will almost always be Shadow Ball and other one will always be King's Shield), is also a too much good support for too much already strong threats. And here we are, in a tier where when you build you gotta deal with Aegi (mixed pivot / subtoxic / full special / sd / wpolicy etc) and this is not so easy; plus, you gotta deal with lopunny landorus megagross and all other S/A+/A etc mons and Aegislash by itself (the good blanket check saviour) isn't enough to deal with em.

Are we unbanning Aegislash for its offensive purpose or its defensive purpose? Because the first one is too good than the second one which can be nullified with the raise of too much offensive mons, supported by aegi itself, when all good checks and counters of them are goin to disappear due to Aegi's presence that makes them sorta unavailable. I agree Aegi is a good blabla-blanket check but it's also a terrifying offensive and support mon and these two last aspects doesn't make the deal good.

We can also consider the ban of King's Shield (no 50/50 right?) but in this way Aegi even loses its only utility and reason of why it should be unbanned, which is its defensive purpose.

I personally think keeping it banned (plus banning something else that is currently an issue) is the best solution

 

[henry]

Still cannot believe that we're 44 pages into this thread and there are people still vehemently defending aegislash.

Not even its sympathizers can detract from the fact that its very existence is almost inarguably the most defining force ever in any gen6 tier, and even off that principle its insanely hard to justify it staying in the tier, considering the fact that it's so insanely influential the OU metagame cannot possibly change. given the fact that relative to the lifespan of other OU tiers ORAS OU is very young, adding aegislash essentially means that the tier will never change for the entirety of its existence. It's honestly awesome to think about how 7 year old tiers like DPP are still evolving and changing over time even as they gain less and less spotlight among the community, and really is a testament to how deceptively diverse competitive pokemon really is. I suppose this notion would make it marginally more difficult to adapt to the changing metagame, so i guess for those who want the tier to literally never change for years to come, aegislash is a great choice!

aegislash's four weaknesses are, from an untrained eye, easy to exploit. however, in reality its quite the opposite!

fire: charizard-y and heatran are the only pokemon that can reliably punish aegislash in OU with fire type moves. physical fire moves like talonflame flare blitz and victini v-create are easily exploitable through king's shield.

Ghost: only other pokemon that actually can use ghost type attacks is gengar, that of which is obliterated by the ever common shadow sneak ( LO variations of gengar dont even ohko standard aegi spreads!)

Dark: once more a very obscure weakness. the only dark move that can actually get a guaranteed OHKO on aegislash (are we really gonna include specs hydreigon lol) is adamant LO bisharp, which is seamlessly lured by the ever annoying max speed aegi and is ohkoed by sacred sword

ground: again an easily exploitable type to avoid (noticing a pattern?) we all should remember in XY when it became so painfully annoying to kill aegislash that pokemon like heracross and terrakion absolutely needed to run EQ at the risk of being hard countered. It's insanely easy to scout for these moves with ks, and even easier to switch into a pokemon that is completely immune to said move


5050s have been sort of a taboo lately in this discussion but it needs to be addressed that, with king's shield, aegislash dumbs down the need for actually being a competent and smart player, primarily because its insanely easy and mindless to force the outcome / general momentum of a match through blindly guessing correctly with king's shield.

the great kevin cronin perfectly illustrates the fact that there really is no competitive benefit to aegislash with such a retarded move like king's shield with a situation like this:

lets use this dpp late game scenario to illustrate a 50/50: youve got a scarf infernape (god knows why) out with a 40% shaymin in the back, your opponent 50% cm jirachi out and your opponent has 50% passho heatran in the back.
- if you use close combat and jirachi stays in, you lose
- if you use fire blast and jirachi stays in, you win
- if you use close combat and heatran switches in, you win
- if you use fire blast and heatran switches in, you lose

it doesn't matter if you don't know what pokemon is or if you're the best player of all time, there is no way you can reliably win this situation. the good player has the literal exact same chance of winning this game as the bad player. the running joke (or i hope its a joke) "outplaying the 5050" means literally nothing because flipping a coin has the same chance of winning this game as a player staring at his screen for an hour deciding for himself.

with this in mind coupled with the fact that this is a competitive gaming community, I dont see how aegislash is beneficial to the competent competitor's state of mind in any way. we shouldn't blindly put our support in something just because we dont like the way the tier is atm, especially because the rationale for apathy towards ORAS OU is almost always incorrect!

 

[Of Moose & Men]

Still cannot believe that we're 44 pages into this thread and there are people still vehemently defending aegislash.

Not even its sympathizers can detract from the fact that its very existence is almost inarguably the most defining force ever in any gen6 tier, and even off that principle its insanely hard to justify it staying in the tier, considering the fact that it's so insanely influential the OU metagame cannot possibly change. given the fact that relative to the lifespan of other OU tiers ORAS OU is very young, adding aegislash essentially means that the tier will never change for the entirety of its existence. It's honestly awesome to think about how 7 year old tiers like DPP are still evolving and changing over time even as they gain less and less spotlight among the community, and really is a testament to how deceptively diverse competitive pokemon really is. I suppose this notion would make it marginally more difficult to adapt to the changing metagame, so i guess for those who want the tier to literally never change for years to come, aegislash is a great choice!

Honestly, this is what made me worry about some of the community. . . Some people have blatantly stated they see the problem, but refuse to see it as a problem. And to be quite honest, this sounds a lot to me like I did in the mMAw suspect thread. At one point in time, I was against that thing leaving OU, towards the end of the suspect I started to feel differently. However, the point of this is, it was entirely based on bias for me. There was nothing I could say to defend my point. I knew it was broken, but refused to admit it was broken. I'm seeing a lot of that here. Many people have read through statements explaining how Aegi is cancerous for the meta, and refuse to comprehend what that means. All that points to is Bias, I've been there, I can call it. Which is about 95% of the reason I stopped posting here outside of calling people on their bullshit.

If they're set on keeping Aegi in OU, they're set on Aegi remaining OU, you could 6-0 them 3 times with a different set of Aegislash and they'd refuse to see it. It's beating a dead horse at this point.

 

[Norne]

Honestly, this is what made me worry about some of the community. . . Some people have blatantly stated they see the problem, but refuse to see it as a problem. And to be quite honest, this sounds a lot to me like I did in the mMAw suspect thread. At one point in time, I was against that thing leaving OU, towards the end of the suspect I started to feel differently. However, the point of this is, it was entirely based on bias for me. There was nothing I could say to defend my point. I knew it was broken, but refused to admit it was broken. I'm seeing a lot of that here. Many people have read through statements explaining how Aegi is cancerous for the meta, and refuse to comprehend what that means. All that points to is Bias, I've been there, I can call it. Which is about 95% of the reason I stopped posting here outside of calling people on their bullshit.

If they're set on keeping Aegi in OU, they're set on Aegi remaining OU, you could 6-0 them 3 times with a different set of Aegislash and they'd refuse to see it. It's beating a dead horse at this point.

I have yet to see a 6-0 aegis, but it's not uncommon for him to grab momentum, or put whatever the aegislash player wants to eliminate or lure on a comfortable threshold for the match to be decided. Anyways aegislash based metagame bore me to death on how team building outside of Yolo for the lolz cores become stagnant as hell due to the presence of aegislash as a crutch making several S and A+ pokemon perform better.

I'm going for keeping it banned for my personal enjoyment, and probably on the hope that the community finally moves on and bans other stuff instead of blindly hoping their favourites aren't banned.

 

[fyourblog]

5050s have been sort of a taboo lately in this discussion but it needs to be addressed that, with king's shield, aegislash dumbs down the need for actually being a competent and smart player, primarily because its insanely easy and mindless to force the outcome / general momentum of a match through blindly guessing correctly with king's shield.

This a pretty bad argument imo. This entire game is based on 50/50s. I don't think I've been in a competitive game that doesn't rely on 50/50s near end game. It's almost always possible to calculate how many 50/50s you need to predict to win. People are acting like sucker punch/protect/substitute/sword dance aren't a thing. All these moves contribute to 50/50s that can seal a game. KS is no different and KS doesn't make 50/50s "easier" either.

And your anecdotal, cherry-picked example of a 50/50 makes no sense in the context of Aegislash. The fact is, with or without Aegi, the game is already based on 50/50s. Yes, a 50/50 is no different than a coinflip, but this game is based around a lot of coinflips. It'd be stupid to ignore the vast amount of 50/50s every game sees. Every time you make a prediction, it's a 50/50.

 

[decis]

All arguments are already posted, so I'll keep this very short.
Aegislash seems to me a lazy attempt to fix a broken metagame, it won't even help that much centralizeing the metagame and solving the matchup issue, i'd rather take an approach similar to the one Kokoloko used back in XY UU, as such, I will vote BAN when the thread will appear.

 

[Rumor]

at this point in the meta, it's hard to say whether aegi will be a good or bad thing. To me, it just seems like gyarados/lando-i food, both very prominent threats. However, aegi does help out with some other common problems, like the aforementioned Mega Metagross, where it was suspected but not banned. Metagross is now forced to run EQ to even try and combat Aegi, which is good enough for me. It also stops another huge threat in the form of Altaria. As for the 'Only ban king shield' debate, i do not agree with it. It would be essentially banning Aegislash's shield forme, making it's Specially defensive set more or less irrelevant. From me, i choose No Ban.

 

[Mur]

Lol can't believe I'm still seeing 50/50 arguments after 40 something pages. This game is not "centered around 50/50's" as a matter of fact 50/50 scenarios only really occur in very specific late game scenarios like Henry demonstrated a few posts above. Seriously if you believe this game is centered around 50/50's go to the battling 101 section and watch Plus's video about 50/50's where he explains how 50/50's are not common and gives an example of a play where bisharp sucker punches and it is not a 50/50. That being said the 50/50's aegi creates are for the most part real 50/50's (there are very specific scenarios where going for ks or attacking will have a long term risk therefore there is a "best play" so it isn't a 50/50 but those are quite rare from my experiences) but I digress the 50/50 argument was bad during the first suspect and is bad now so it holds no weight to me, I only talked about it because apparently some people lack risk/reward and long term playing skills and seem to think all competitive pokemon is is a 50/50 fest (not calling anyone in particular out I've seen at least 10 people throughout the thread mention this and it just got on my nerves a lil bit).

Anyways now that that horrid argument is aside I feel that aegislash should stay in ubers. Like people have said this monster hits hard as absolute fuck and can take some decently powered hits, just add on an incredible offensive and defensive typing the tier is not prepared for and a ridiculous movepool and you have one of the most fearsome wallbreakers in the tier. The various sets of aegislash also add to the ridiculousness of this mon since would-be counters like mandi and spdef gliscor get rocked by various lure moves or the subtoxic set making a aegi a nightmare to account for in teambuilding and in battle. The centralization aegi causes is not too healthy since it kills off some very healthy mons in the tier while amplifying the power of the top threats which is the total opposite of what the suspect is supposed to accomplish. This was a test to see if aegi can restrict some of the top threats enough to where matchup would be reduced which very clearly aegi does not do. In the short time the suspect was up we saw some powerful cores most notably the aegi+lando+Mlop core showing how well aegi makes with said threats. Aegislash just pairs well with too many top threats to where it becomes a game of does your aegi+threat team beat the opposing aegi+threat team which is essentially no different then the problem we have now just a very unhealthy mon thrown into the mix.

Personally I do believe the matchup issue is exaggerated a little bit too much but saying it is not there is absurd. It's been a problem for a few gens now and most likely will stay that way in the future so all we can do is limit it as much as we can. Most of the community agrees that we did that successfully in XY with the series of bans that occurred so I have no reason to believe the same course of action should not yield the same result. So with that I leave this post saying that dropping aegislash will not bring us closer to our goal of a favored metagame so Aegislash should stay in ubers.

 

[Alfalfa]

at this point in the meta, it's hard to say whether aegi will be a good or bad thing. To me, it just seems like gyarados/lando-i food, both very prominent threats. However, aegi does help out with some other common problems, like the aforementioned Mega Metagross, where it was suspected but not banned. Metagross is now forced to run EQ to even try and combat Aegi, which is good enough for me. It also stops another huge threat in the form of Altaria. As for the 'Only ban king shield' debate, i do not agree with it. It would be essentially banning Aegislash's shield forme, making it's Specially defensive set more or less irrelevant. From me, i choose No Ban.

The issue with your anti-ban argument is how it is leaving out any consideration of the counter-argument against the pro-ban side; to put it simply, you are looking at it from too simple and linear of a perspective. This "balancing out the metagame by Aegislash" is a point that has been refuted several times through the course of this 44-page thread, so saying that it balances out the metagame is really not a viable argument anymore. In addition, Aegislash was never supposed to beat Landorus-I one-on-one, but Mega Kangaskhan wasn't supposed to beat Keldeo or Terrakion one-on-one, and yet that got banned as well. Broken Pokemon are always going to lose to particular Pokemon one-on-one, so how is that even a point? Plus, the metagame is already adapting to Mega Gross and Altaria, Gross through bulky Garchomp and AV Slowking, and while Altaria is more diverse and has a smaller number of checks that can handle all of its sets (except for Mega Venusaur and a couple of others), in no way is it problematic to the point where we need to unban Aegislash just to check it.

 

[eden]

See one thing that really hinders the point of this suspect test,is that some people are making snap decisions on Aegislash. It was banned before,so what? So were Garchomp,Keldeo and a few others in gen 5. We bring things down if we feel that they will help the development of the meta as a whole. Aegislash doesn't help develop the meta, or even make it more diverse for that matter. But it does help balance some of the stuff down here in OU. The role compression is definitely the best part of having this pokemon available to build with, and the worst is by far not knowing what set it has at team preview. We say it encourages 50/50s but aren't predictions a series of glorified 50/50s? I mean we talk about gauging the opponent but in the, it turns pretty much into a coin toss. Aegislash's move King's Shield encourages 50/50s but is that really a reason to ban it? I don't really think so. The question here is, are the benefits that Aegislash bring to the defensive end of things, outweighed by its impact on the offensive and support end of the spectrum? Also people here are talking about lure moves, ffs if we counted lure moves then nothing really counters anything,you have Sp.Def TFlame to check Lando-I? Too bad I have Rock Slide even though its a subpar move! You got Tini to check MGross? zzz I have the bad EQ on my Metagross RIP. Lure moves are just that,moves that are typically bad outside of their intended purpose.Aegislash lure sets,get this BEAT pokemon they're supposed to lure! What a surprise! -.-. Just some stuff to mull over owo

 

[Alfalfa]

See one thing that really hinders the point of this suspect test,is that some people are making snap decisions on Aegislash. It was banned before,so what? So were Garchomp,Keldeo and a few others in gen 5. We bring things down if we feel that they will help the development of the meta as a whole. Aegislash doesn't help develop the meta, or even make it more diverse for that matter. But it does help balance some of the stuff down here in OU. The role compression is definitely the best part of having this pokemon available to build with, and the worst is by far not knowing what set it has at team preview. We say it encourages 50/50s but aren't predictions a series of glorified 50/50s? I mean we talk about gauging the opponent but in the, it turns pretty much into a coin toss. Aegislash's move King's Shield encourages 50/50s but is that really a reason to ban it? I don't really think so. The question here is, are the benefits that Aegislash bring to the defensive end of things, outweighed by its impact on the offensive and support end of the spectrum? Just some stuff to mull over owo

Aegislash doesn't balance out Pokemon, it only makes the top threats even more difficult to deal with by targeting any defensive checks its teammates need to be dealt with. While King's Shield and solid offensive and defensive backbone does allow Aegislash to check these Pokemon, Aegislash uses its defensive capabilities to support its offensive firepower by giving it more opportunities to switch in.

 

[azureleaf17]

Goodness gracious, when a single Pokemon alone can create monumental bad match-ups (what screws over one set can easily fall to another), you have to question whether this is fixing the "match-up reliant" metagame against which the anti-ban camp seems to be arguing.