Landorus is not too much of a strain on team building. The other 20-30 niche threats that surround him are what's putting the strain on team building. This is ORAS, and now that the obvious broken mons are gone (Mence, Kangaskhan, Greninja, etc) there is no 1 Poke that is putting massive pressure on you. Everything has a fairly straightforward counter... but you can't use all those counters on the same team.
I question the legitimacy of any of your posts when you go as far to call SpDef Volcarona a thing that is even remotely used in the metagame, calling Skarmory a counter when Focus Blast has gained usage, implying that Rotom-W is some sort of huge burden on Landorus and then you have all these things that are never actually switch ins in the first place and saying that they somehow just revenge kill it out of the blue. So I'm assuming you're saying Scarf Victini correct because going off of base stats you would know that anything other than Scarf is getting outpaced by Landorus. Klefki loses to Focus Blast and that threat you called Specially Defensive Zapdos I find just goes to show much you're trying to further your point that Landorus can be easily dealt with. I'm not gonna really nitpick every single thing you call an answer to Landorus because after reading Skarmory there's not much of a point but I think what is important to note is that at least for myself and Im sure plenty of others we follow the trends going on in the meta to make use of the best assets Landorus can use. If people use fatter teams to counteract Landorus I'm gonna use the coverage move that best suits it based on meta trends + Calm Mind since I'll know teams are not adequately prepared for it because they're supposably running by your logic of being "prepped for RP Lando". I did this for awhile back when Landorus usage started picking up with very fat balance teams after the Greninja ban which was a breeze to beat teams with. Nobody prepped for Sludge Wave as such these SpDef Zapdos that supposably beats it lost to CM / Sludge Wave. Your list frankly isn't very large neither are half of these overbearing or even troublesome to not only Landorus builders but Landorus itself in the metagame. If you've prepped for RP Landorus you most certainly are not prepped for Landorus itself. That is an illusion and if the meta has to be forced to use extremes like Weavile and powerful wall-breakers just to handle Landorus like Latios, who really isn't a counter as much as people like to sort of just assume this, then that's not a good sign Landorus provides anything healthy for the meta-game which is obviously a problem if this idea that it's healthy for OU is being entertained.
How is "having" to carry Manaphy to have a chance against Stall/Balance an argument to keep Landorus? If we have to keep Landorus around for the sake of avoiding unbreakable Stall builds, then the issue is the Stall builds being powerful enough to require something we'd ban in order to break them. When you consider options like Gengar, Serperior, Kyu-B, Zard X and Y, Gardevoir, and Alakazam (to name a few from high ranks), there's plenty of offensive options for Wall/Balance Breaking.
I'm not seeing talk of people saying Icy Wind Gengar is "niche" and disregardable here in the thread, unless I'm not reading something the same way you are. The point was more that Landorus being OHKO'd is one of the big reasons Gengar likes Icy Wind, since other targets like Garchomp could be 2HKOed by Shadow ball anyway.
Even if RP is Landorus's best set, that doesn't mean you can get away with preparing only for that set. The AoA set is still able to do some pretty decent damage to offense, even if it's not sweeping the entire team.
And the issue is that Landorus has both much greater power, better defenses (not a wall, but there's much more he'll survive than Gengar), much less susceptible to passive damage (Gengar takes LO recoil, fears priority just as much if not more, while being just as vulnerable to hazards).
You only proved mons that can eliminate Landorus himself. You did nothing to disprove "the cores associated with it" by listing those. The point of cores is specifically for the mons to support each other because as good as they may be, no mon is perfect. The problem therein becomes that Landorus requires very little support to do his job while being extremely capable of supporting numerous mons himself without having to jump through hoops with his coverage.
First of all if Msab were to become broken from the departure of lando-i then it would be banned because we don't keep broken to check broken. Now to the most ridiculous part. "Being forced to run one of the few breakers" is this a joke? If you know anything about the meta you'd know that there is a surplus of breakers in the tier and even worse you make it sound as if having to run a breaker is some sort of centralizing symptom of removing lando-i. Like is this a joke? Breakers have been mandatory roles in offensive cores since the birth of competitive pokemon. You're forced to run breakers even with lando-i in the tier so I really have no idea what your trying to say here. Also the last sentence about a "stally meta" just shows your extremely biased toward offensive playstyles. I'm an offense player and you don't see me trying to selfishly vote for my own benefits over the good of the meta. There is more playstyles than offense man, you can't just vote no ban because your playstyle doesn't struggle with the suspect while it's proven that other playstyles struggle against it. With your logic I guess we should unban greninja because it can't break stall and offense can pressure it! I guess we should unban Mega Lucario because offense has multiple checks to it! Seriously stop being blinded by your bias toward one playstyle. Balance cannot afford to forego it's defensive synergy to run a lot of the faster lando checks on one team and the offensive core on balance teams isn't enough to prevent lando from finding opportunities to come in and do it's work. If this is all the anti-ban side has to say then I see no reason as to why lando-i isn't broken and shouldn't be banned from the tier.
So your logic is: "please don't ban landorus or else I will have to use manaphy to beat stall teams!!"
No my argument is that with the disappearance of Lando-I, different variations of M-Sable stall has increased tenfold. You no longer need the M-Sable + Chansey/Cressilia core cancer as Lando isn't a threat anymore. This gives stall teams much more variety in what they pick and how they deal with teams. It's makes the meta much more matchup dependent then what it used to me. Kyu-B isn't a stallbreaker, in fact it loses to a lot of things on stall now. M-Hera is revenge killed by Goth on stall easily. If you're running skarm or ferro on stall then you're running Shed Shell unless you want to lose. Goth is beatable by M-Sable. Zardx is beaten by Quag. Also these possibilities are made because the typical stall steam doesn't need a Chansey/Cress as much as it used to anymore.
So who cares if different variations of stall have increased tenfold? We're going to let lando stay in OU because we don't want stall to have more variety? If stall starts getting too much for the meta to handle then we'll start suspecting defensive threats. Just because you don't like stall and just because you don't know how to beat it without lando doesn't mean we need to keep lando in OU. You're acting like lando and manaphy are the only 2 mons in existence that can beat stall teams.
I've bolded the part I'm really curious about. You argue that Stall would become "unimaginable" with Landorus-I gone, but then go on to say that it's not "centralizing." So your logic states the following: Landorus is the only Pokemon keeping Stall back but, nope, it's not metagame defining. Those two contradict each other, not to mention breaks one of the suspect rules that you can, and should, read here:
The bolded statement here applies to the argument you proposed. Keeping Landorus in OU so that Balance and Stall don't pollute the metagame is not only a flawed argument, but it's also against the rules to discuss.
edit: yay 200th post this is a big deal for me i'd like to thank my mother and beyonceginganinja said:
Actually the variety in stall proves that the metagame got healthier, more cores can be run after a cancerous low maintenance offensive team building crutch has been removed, a degree on the variety of stall cores is a symptom of a better metagame for Christ sake, also take a look at balance and bulky offense now relying on different cores that moved away from Lando I and have to turn those cores into more specific ones to deal with stall + momentum keeping ability against more playstyles, I don't know why people hold this bias against stall, man if anything that's the hardest playstyle to pull off properly in ORAS. Drop the bias and enjoy the new cores that came after that team building crutch is removed. So it does matter, sorry if I sound angry but many stall players are rejoicing for this very reason and bulky offence is getting a bit more original in their builds, it is proof enough of a healthy metagame with that evidence.
Why yes switching is quite easy, but the point of that list is to say that Lando I has a significant amount of checks in the metagame, and while yes you can switch, you lose momentum and predict switches and so on and so on (also Crawdaunt dosen't OHKO which is why I said I was pulling because both can OHKO with rocks). The reason I said it was not centralizing, yet needed for making stall manageable is that while there are other Special Non-Mega wallbreakers, Lando I is the best and checks many common cores while also being checked by others as well. Lando-I is not broken, he just excels at his job,and the point of that list was to show that Lando does have many hard checks and they aren't niche choices which is the point of my post falling in the rules of the thread. Also thank you for making such a well composed and thought out response, since most of the rest of this thread got really of topic and are just shit-flinging at this point.
Lol that's exactly my point, stall having more variety isn't a bad thing at all.
Alright let me address these points
Lots of calcs. Will use a hide tag.
Before I look into any of these, I should note that needing to Revenge Landorus means he already killed something, which is a pretty big loss to have for Stall or balance, which need to maintain their cores until big offensive threats like Lando are beaten.
Lando should not be kept in the tier for the sake of checking things. If Stall really became so ridiculously unmanageable, we'd move to defensive suspects. Also, no non-Mega Special Wallbreakers?
Not sure where you got the idea those moves don't see significant usage, but could someone provide the usage statistics since I'm fairly certain these moves are plenty common if Rock Polish is an S-Rank set on the set viability?
I wasn't sure what you meant by "pulling" when I replied, sorry. I think you meant stretching? Anyway, terminology aside,
Landorus's checks and counters have been discussed thoroughly towards the beginning of this thread, and there seems to be a mutual agreement that the only counters are Mega Latias and Cresselia. I think it's a bit of a stretch to call Rotom-W, Zapdos, and Gliscor "hard checks" when they're all 2HKOd by various coverage moves. You can say that Rotom-W can live any hit and Hydro Pump back, but a well played Landorus will wait until said "checks" are weakened enough to the point where it can be knocked out by a coverage move. I'm trying to avoid the prediction argument here, so all I'm going to say is that it happens. And that's why being 2HKOd by a move should constitute as a shaky check.
"Most of the metagame" can't exactly come in and kill Landorus. And almost every single one of the revenge killers you listed is actually OHKOd after Rocks (think Rock Polish, Modest) and are mostly seen on more offensive teams. Saying that Landorus dies to Water and Ice moves doesn't "prove" that it's not broken; it just explains that it can be threatened out or revenge killed, just like every other Pokemon. I think I addressed the "revenge killing is a flawed argument" in 2.) in response to your first point. Lastly, saying that Landorus is "incredibly frail" is a massive overstatement. 89/90/80 defenses on something as powerful and threatening as Landorus is actually really impressive. Here's a pretty good example:
Yep my bad as well, the antiban faction arguments ended up making me hate myself for sharing the same species with them for a moment, not trying to be rude or anything tough.
Well this is going to take a while since I already typed this twice and accidentally refreshed the page.
First of all, there is a ton of generalization going on in this thread, suggesting that all-anti-ban arguments are completely invalid and idiotic, which is not the case.
Ok, so you are saying that even though Lando-i is pretty ineffective against a dominant playstyle, it is still broken. Has this ever been the case? Greninja had coverage to beat every so-called check or counter it faced, and no other banned suspect has really not been effective against every single playstyle. So, to conclude, Lando already isn't on par with other banned suspects because of its ineffectiveness against a major playstyle in the current meta.
Really? You make it sound like all the other playstyles have become extinct just because of Lando's presence. This is far from the case, and there are a lot of other reasons why balance and stall have been forced to decline other than lando. Even then, the above bolded statement is false because neither balance nor stall are rendered completely unviable because of lando, and also because the suspect ladder also consists mainly of offensive teams in spite of Lando being gone. There's more on this later.
Ok, its good that you concede the fact that the pro-ban side is suggesting that the RP set is unbeatable because they honestly are. Now, as for the rest of your argument, yes it is important to take into account all of the common sets of a top threat. However, the amount of overexaggeration the RP set is getting is forcing belief that it is the most viable set in the meta and unbeatable, meaning that if you prepare for it, you are prepared for every set. While this may be false to a certain degree, it still has the basic ring of truth that you are prepared for a hard-hitting wallbreaker with a huge speed stat to go along with it. If you are prepared to be able to beat a Lando with a RP set up, you will most likely be revenge killing it, with priority users such as CB Azu and Weaville. If you bring either of these two mons, you should be able to beat any common Landorus set other than a Sub set or some random defense investment, indicating that you are prepared for all viable sets. I mean, this can obviously be interpreted from the point of view that Landorus is sacrificing one of its coverage moves, and so therefore has more switchins, meaning that you could beat it more easily, but that is only half the argument. The real argument, as stated above, has no bearing on whether you can switch in to RP Lando or not, but rather if you can revenge kill it.
Oh, the centralization argument. First off, you acknowledge the existence of Balance and Stall as legitimate playstyles even though you stated earlier that Lando is forcing them not to exist. Second, when is any top-tier threat not considered centralizing to a certain degree? You act as though any centralization is the final word in whether a mon is bannable or not, and this isn' the case. Centralization indicates that you have to prepare for the common sets of a mon. By your logic, Keldeo would be overcentralizing because Balance, Stall, and offense have to prepare for the AoA Specs Set, Scarf Set, and Sub CM, as well as the occasional LO Taunt Set. Does the existence of all of these different sets mean Keldeo is broken and overcentralizing? Of course not. As far as the whole two slots argument goes, many teams have secondary checks to top tier threats, and it isn't usually considered overpreparation at all. Landorus is a powerful top tier threat, and it deserves to be prepared for because of its capabilities.
I won't argue with you over the fact that Lando is the tier's best wallbreaker, but the basis of this argument is wrong. You state that Lando is proven better because it has sat in S rank for the entire period of the metagame, yet you ignore the fact the metagame trends can force changes in the viability rankings. For example, TankChomp has slowly risen since the dawn of ORAS as a bulky defensive SR setter to the position of A+ Rank, while Ferrothorn has sat in A rank the entire time. Now, some might argue that it is in A+ for its ability to run multiple sets, but its rise from A rank to A+ rank was almost entirely because of its newly discovered Tank set. As of right now, many people would argue that TankChomp is a better bulky SR setter than Ferrothorn, even though Ferrothorn was originally a more popular mon to fill that role. While their roles may differ slightly, this example is to prove that metagame trends can influence the Viability Rankings and change which mons are best at their respective roles. If a trend causes a surge in usage of Mega Latias, then Landorus will become less viable.
I appreciate the fact that you mention counter-play and hazards because this is the only reason why Lando is the tier's best wallbreaker. Other than these reasons, other wallbreakers would be on par with Lando as far as power, speed and bulk. I really can't deny any of this part because Lando is still an incredible wallbreaker. However, scouting isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be, especially the Tornadus argument you make. It really isn't that hard- switch into Torn-T on an Earth Power and then switch into a Rock Resist on the presumed rock slide. Based on the results, Lando is going to lack a certain coverage move. If this only applies to Stall or Balance, then any mons that take chip damage should be able to heal it off later.
Alright, so there is a surplus of breakers in the tier, yet Lando-I is still overcentralizing to you. If Lando was actually as overcentralizing as you made it seem, then there would be no need to run any other wallbreakers other than it. Obvously it doesn't outclass everything in its role because the other breakers in the tier still are very viable. The idea of bannable overcentralization would imply that the metagame has deteriorated into stale battles where every team includes Landorus as its mandatory breaker and teams are filled with Lando, Lando's checks/counters, and checks/counters to Lando's checks/counters. Obviously this isn't the case as a lot of threats are still extremely viable, and many teams do not include Landorus as their mandatory wallbreaker.
Yeah I wouldn't use this argument as a case against Landorus' banning saying, "this is why this was banned", when in reality it was banned cause people voted for it to be banned for their own individual reasons not always necessarily collectively and Mega Metagross was pretty close in the votes anyways.
Lol you clearly need to lurk more before posting
And what is this "normal life orb" set? 4 attacks? Cuz if so then E power is the only guaranteed move. I don't see how you lose out on coverage when running certain moves. E power, hp ice, sludge wave, and Rock slide hits literally everything hard and invalidates 2/3 of landos checks. You literally lose out on nothing because you're now only walled by SpDef Venusaur and mega Latias /Cresselia
Okay, stuff kills Lando. That doesn't matter. What matters is that shit can't switch into it in fear of 'x' coverage move, whether Lando is actually running it or not. Just the fear of a certain move is enough to keep a mon at bay. And that alone puts immense pressure on an opponent which can force suboptimal plays. That's not healthy for the tier.
I'm really lost here ._.
Because why would you not use a mon that instantly makes your team better?
Yeah this was not meant to suggest all the arguments were idiotic, it was meant for the people that I mentioned above biasing their votes to their one playstyle and was more of my opening. Not really much to discuss here just a misunderstanding of what was meant by my post here.
Actually yes that has been the case in the past and most of the arguments being made are based off of this which may be why you see lando differently than myself. Greninja was never able to beat stall and offense never really cared about not being able to switch into it since offense only focuses on offensive synergy. A majority of the arguments from the greninja suspect involved greninja dominating and centralizing balance and this was a huge point for the pro ban side even though the tier was mostly offense(mainly because of gren). Honestly the effects lando-i causes are a lot similar to greninja in a way. It has various moves to get past the common answers to it, threatens two of the three playstyles immensely(greninja only bodied 1/3), and gravitates the meta toward offense. Now I think that's where your argument here falls apart because based off this information lando is indeed on par with greninja in terms of it's effects on the tier. Actually if you look back on it greninja really only tore apart one playstyle while lando tears apart two. I'm not sure about you but if greninja was banned for it's unhealthy effects toward one playstyle I'm not sure why lando-i can't go for beating two.
I paired these together because they basically are the same topic. While yes balance and stall are not completely extinct and lando isn't the entire reason for offense reining supreme, but it is indeed the head of the group that is making balance and stall less viable. This group I referred to is indeed these "super breakers" that reside in the tier. These super-breakers put a lot of strain on balance specifically because the entire team isn't all defensive mons leaving a gaping weakness to said mons somewhere(enter the "matchup" problem). This is what causes some of the other mons like metagross and altaria(who is already suspect worthy on it's own) to seem way more ridiculous then they really are since they can be paired with these super-breakers that give these beasts that already don't need much to sweep a larger hole to work with. Now enough with my thoughts on whats wrong with the tier, so how does this involve lando? Well in your post somewhere you do agree to say that lando is indeed the best breaker in the tier which I think everyone agrees on whether you want it banned or not. This of course makes lando-i the head of these super-breakers so obviously it is going to be the one causing the most trouble. Now yes being a top tier threat does mean you are centralizing in some way but I'l use your keldeo example to show you why lando-i's centralization is that of the unhealthy kind shown among other banned mons. The difference between lando and keldeo is quite simple. You say the playstyles have to prepare for all sets of keldeo but in reality they are contain virtually the same checks. Latios, starmie, Mvenu etc will always be solid checks to keldeo regardless of what it is running. Now with lando this isn't the case. What checks the rp set (torn-t, latis) does not exactly check the AoA set and vice versa. This forces you to dedicate multiple slots to deal with all the sets of lando while keldeo is stopped with just one slot therefore making lando more restricting then other mons in it's class(except for maybe altaria but that's being talked bout as a potential suspect too, but this isn't the place to discuss that). Also not every team runs multiple checks to everything and most certainly is not forced to so I'm not sure where this is coming from as a reason as to why the fact that lando is essentially forcing you to run multiple checks to it when nothing else really needs that preparation does not make it an unhealthy centralization.
Again this was apart of the argument underneath it and was more aimed toward the people saying that the other breakers are the same as lando. I was simply pointing out that this can't be true because of lando-i being consistently a higher rank then the rest. You did mention something however that can kind of strikes me an an indicator of an unhealthy force in the meta that I previously did not notice before. You mention how if Mlatias started increasing in viability lando would lose some viabilty. Now if lando were not over the top then yes that would be true but hilariously enough that is exactly what is happening except lando is staying at the top. Mlatias is not a bad mon and has even been used on a popular team in the tour community but it clearly has some issues and some loss to using it, mainly that it takes up the mega slot. So Mlatias is increasing in usage but lando is still staying where it's at? While Mlatias is not a niche mon by any means the fact that the biggest counter to lando-i is rising and it practically hasn't even made a change to lando's viability shows me that something is wrong here. This kind of leads into what I will mention next about team support and the whole risk/reward argument that I feel a lot of the anti-ban side seems to be overlooking so I'l leave this section off right here.
Well by nature scouting around one of the hardest mons to switch into in the tier(broken or not) is going to be a little hard regardless so I think you are kind of downplaying this but it isn't too relevant to the argument so we can ignore this. I guess I did not really go too much into depth into why the lando-i user has little risk doing whatever it wants so I'l try it again being more specific, not going into the prediction argument, and trying to not cherry pick the ideal situation for the lando-i user. So let's say lando-i(no moves revealed yet) is in on something like a clefable and you have a torn-t and scizor sitting in the back. The safest play for the lando user is to simply sludge wave as it hits clef and the incoming torn-t. Now that the situation is mapped out let's look at the options for the clefable user and the amount of risk associated with them. If you stay in with clef you risk getting hit with a sludge wave, which is the safest play for lando, without doing much back to lando if sludge wave is not used so you are aware that you cannot stay in and you know that your opponent most likely knows this as well since it's an obvious play. So what if you go torn-t? You risk the unrevealed coverage move being knock off or rock slide either being crippled from switching into lando further or taking a massive hit to torn and possibly dying if rocks are up all to just force lando out. Well what if you go to scizor on the obvious sludge wave? If the unrevealed move turns out to be knock off scizor loses it's choice band and if rock slide is revealed you take about 32-36% all for scouting for that unrevealed move that may or may not be revealed here. Now what if scizor comes in on the sludge wave and then what? You're stuck in a similar set of positions in which there is high risk to each move all over again and whose to say that maybe the lando user wants scizor dead so they bop you with earth power catching you trying to scout? So what is the lando user thinking during all of this? Whether they have rock slide or not the risk is minuscule compared to that of the opponent. If you sludge wave and they go to scizor oh well you still have the advantage as it can't do much back and if they go to torn you net about 6-13%(more if rocks) before being forced out and if clef stay in it dies. If you rockslide you potentially kill torn or do 32-36% to scizor and you risk clef staying in and doing about 30% with moonblast. If you knock off you cripple any of the 3 mons that decide to appear in front of you while risking clef staying in and moonblasting. Finally if you earth power you risk giving torn a free switch while possibly
I think you know this was specifically aimed toward the individual making some absurd claims somewhere in the thread that I mentioned at the beginning of this novel but I do actually like how you made an argument out of what I said regarding the matter this was very clever on your part. Anyways I think just about everything said here was covered somewhere else as this seems like a bit of a summary to me but I'l cover the few things I may not have replied to. Well lando being the best breaker does indeed outclass the rest but being outclassed does not mean the same as unviable(see gallade vs medicham both are viable yet one is outclassed). Yes there are many viable and amazing breakers in the tier but is there really a reason not to use lando? Let me show you something:
While saying that lando-i is 6-0ing stall and pushing balance to extinction is clearly over exaggerated, what I have stated above is not. Landorus-Incarnate is the tiers best wallbreaker, doesn't cost a mega slot, resembles similar traits to previously banned mons, is arguably more effective at it's role then the previous suspect who barely survived, has the ability to beat two of the three major playstyles, centralizes said playstyles more then any other mon in the tier, skews common risk/reward scenarios in it's favor just by hitting the field, and lacks counter-play from the opposing playstyles that it threatens. I hope this has convinced you to change your opinion but to me and many others this is an obvious Ban.
Summarised this for ya:
