np: ORAS UU Stage 3.1 - Sex on Fire [Victini Remains BL]

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kokoloko

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would've been nice if people didn't go into this suspect test with a stoic ban mentality. I'm pretty sure if people had kept an open mind about it, victini would have been voted UU.

not saying everyone who voted BL can't think for themselves but I'm certain a significant percentage of them voted based on preconceived notions rather than actually forming an opinion via the test.

unfort.
 

Deej Dy

Verified Ladder Scurb 乁( ◔ ౪◔)ㄏ
Shame about Victini, as I thought it added a exciting new dimension to the metagame.
However, more topics at hand are the possible suspect testing of Mega-Pidgey and Gatr, both of whom are extremely large, but not unstoppable threats. I'm not quite sure they are broken at the moment (more sold on Pidge being banned), but i would likely support a suspect as a popular opinion seems to warrant it at the moment.

Also we I think we should retest Crawdaunt, which I feel isn't really that much different from Sheer force Gatr, if we are to keep Gatr in the tier.
 
Nononono, I really can't see crawdaunt coming back. It's significantly stronger than gatr (sd life orb 1hkos Suicune and Umbreon after rocks) and basically forces stall to run chestnaught to stand any chance whatsoever. Nothing offensively can switch in of course as even Hydeigon who resists STABs doesn't want its item knocked off, and adaptability aqua jet finishes off a lot of the things that can take a hit. There's also a variety of sets to contend with like sd, dd and choice band all of which are pretty viable in different ways.

It's a nuke that almost invalidates stall while doing well against offense with really strong priority- it's borked af.
 

Cheryl.

Celesteela is Life
NOOOO My kawaii cannot V Create the UU butts now!! So, guys, what shall we retest/suspect next? It seems like everything in BL is too stronk and UU is so balanced Uggh lol
 

LilOu

PO poopyhead
NOOOO My kawaii cannot V Create the UU butts now!! So, guys, what shall we retest/suspect next? It seems like everything in BL is too stronk and UU is so balanced Uggh lol
UU is nowhere near balanced, hello? Mega Pidgeot and Feraligatr are on the scoop right now and, to be honest, I think we should have suspected them before Victini, as to introduce new threats to a tier we must have a balanced one first in my opinion.
 
I think weavile could be an interesting addition to the meta. Its has good sweeping and trapping ability with SD and Pursuit, Knock Off and Priority with Ice Shard. Its a huge offensive threat but I think that it can be dealt with easily due to its frailness, other priority beats it, and the fact it is worn down easily by hazards and LO. It would be a another weapon and threat to offense since it can check things like Pidge, which offense hates, and sweep other offense teams. Its not as strong as the other BL mons but its speed and coverage make up for it very well. Its def a test worth having.
 

r0ady

People like to invent monsters and monstrosities
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I think weavile could be an interesting addition to the meta. Its has good sweeping and trapping ability with SD and Pursuit, Knock Off and Priority with Ice Shard. Its a huge offensive threat but I think that it can be dealt with easily due to its frailness, other priority beats it, and the fact it is worn down easily by hazards and LO. It would be a another weapon and threat to offense since it can check things like Pidge, which offense hates, and sweep other offense teams. Its not as strong as the other BL mons but its speed and coverage make up for it very well. Its def a test worth having.
that would more than likely prove pointless as the rising popularity of weavile in ou will end up in us losing weavile soon anyway :[
 
I'm personally super happy withdraw ban, as I generally agreed with the better pro ban arguments. I agree we need to suspect other big threats next, especially mega pidgeot.
 

Deej Dy

Verified Ladder Scurb 乁( ◔ ౪◔)ㄏ
Nononono, I really can't see crawdaunt coming back. It's significantly stronger than gatr (sd life orb 1hkos Suicune and Umbreon after rocks) and basically forces stall to run chestnaught to stand any chance whatsoever. Nothing offensively can switch in of course as even Hydeigon who resists STABs doesn't want its item knocked off, and adaptability aqua jet finishes off a lot of the things that can take a hit. There's also a variety of sets to contend with like sd, dd and choice band all of which are pretty viable in different ways.

It's a nuke that almost invalidates stall while doing well against offense with really strong priority- it's borked af.
Fair enough, I wasn't here when it was banned so I don't know the extent of it's power, just seemed to be least the least overwhelming behind Victini with its lackluster speed and bulk.
 

kwahelgae

Banned deucer.
would've been nice if people didn't go into this suspect test with a stoic ban mentality. I'm pretty sure if people had kept an open mind about it, victini would have been voted UU.

not saying everyone who voted BL can't think for themselves but I'm certain a significant percentage of them voted based on preconceived notions rather than actually forming an opinion via the test.

unfort.
I mean, it would only make sense for people to come in with the ban mentality since it's already been banned and re-banned from UU twice now.

Based on my experience, Victini made team-building hard initially was that it beat not only traditional Fire-type checks, but also beat checks to its own sets, such as BulkyMence and Rotom-H, but I acknowledge the points that both koko (surprisingly) and Christo have made.

Frankly speaking, I think releasing Victini for suspect testing was poor judgement altogether since it doesn't solve the problems the tier has at the moment (Pidgeot and Krookodile Feraligatr).

On a different note, Lanturn is a pretty dope pivot post-Victini since it can (safely) switch into Pidgeot and Feraligatr and immediately threaten them to some degree. It's an interesting offensive/defensive pivot to try out.
 

kokoloko

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no, it doesnt. having people come in with narrow-minded mentalities and voting based on preconceived notions is literally the exact opposite of what suspect tests are about.

why do you think we bother having people ladder to qualify? its absolutely not to find out who is good enough to vote because... well, just no. it's about making people actually experience the metagame with or without the suspect in question and having them form an opinion of /that/ metagame.

which is exactly what a ton of people did not do.

so again, unfort.
 
Attitudes are transitive. Some people will change, some people won't. And besides, what suspect tests should do in theory doesn't necessarily mean it will happen in practice.
With that logic, Victini should've been UU. Too many people were theory-monning saying that Victini could beat all its counters. Well yeah, in theory. LO mixed gets defeated by things like Aero, whereas CB gets shat upon by things like Swampert. I didn't even bother to ladder because everyone came in with the mentality that in theory it was broken, so they just assumed that every time they lost against someone who used Victini, they deemed Victini broken.

Pretty upset with the state of UU. There's a difference between restricting team building, broken, and very good in a tier. Suicine restricts team building, is very good, but isn't broken. Mamo beats a lot of balanced cores, is retardedly good, and has a couple of sturdy counters in the form of Rotom-H and things like that, but I don't see people crying about it.

tl;dr this suspect test was a complete joke.
 
Sort of correct there UU ALL DAY, but not fully correct.

The thing was, especially given the lack of victini used in the suspect, there was always going to be elements of theorymon needed, given the lack of practical experience facing it.

Secondly, while it cannot do so in one single set, Victini can actually beat its checks/counters outside of snorlax, and certain cresselia spreads. The thing that needs to be noted there is that Victini has the luxury of picking what checks and counters it. Its pretty much the reason I ran a special tini on the ladder because I wanted to test the idea that victini is capable of adapting to what checks and counters people use against it. For the most part, it worked exactly as I wanted it to. I lost track of the number of hydreigon I had slain with tini from using dazzling gleam, swampert sets from energy ball, or just weakening/KO'ing checks like krook/bulky waters to let SD lucario/bulky water sweeper (suicune and gatr in my case) sweep with much more ease. It's because so few teams can let victini just take down mons without weakening checks to key sweepers from its great coverage, and not getting locked into moves allowed me to put pressure straight back on offensive mons (especially those that need victini to lose speed from using V-create) while accepting passive walls could sit in front of me safely, but risk being set up on by other team members. This is opposed to people nuking with V-create, but having to scramble a defensive check/sacking something to the offensive pokemon that takes advantage of victini's lowered speed or choice locked move.

Addressing the anti-ban side in general now.

I also had some serious issues with some of the anti-ban arguments. Scouting was the worst offender as a counter-argument. To me, thats a fancy way of trying to use prediction as an argument, which just doesn't work, especially for something so versatile as victini. For every success story of someone playing around LO victini's coverage, there's going to be rage quits from E-belt/charcoal victini racking up kills from its quality coverage and bluffing of items. Even if someone gave me dozens of replays of them out-predicting victini players, I would never accept is as a good argument because the variation in choices of items/moves/player skill/team builds makes it impossible to accurately confirm the statement that victini's movesets can be scouted.

People say that there are only so many good sets, yet we have threads like the next best thing that give great viable ideas that can be used over ideal sets (Pursuit M-aero is one such set that comes to mind). That doesn't even take into account making specific sets for specific teams. No player will ever have an exact equal skill measurement to another outside of ladder scores being exactly tied (or tournament wins if you prefer). People will not make the same choices on a consistent basis either. You just cannot say you can outpredict on a consistent basis without it being incorrect from the significant number of variables that cannot be properly equalized for.

SR weakness/LO recoil was another that while a solid argument, I didn't think highly of. To me, wall-breakers are not that badly hindered by hazard weakness/LO recoil if they are doing their job of wall-breaking. They can be hindered by hazards/LO recoil in terms of the number of times they can wall-break in a match, but they aren't being stopped from doing their job of wall-breaking outside of playing a check/counter that forces them to stop and switch out. Also, while this point is subjective, if something is broken enough with some support (in this case, hazard removal) it's well worth running that bit of support so you can use your broken mon to the fullest. Togekiss and volcarona have already proven this, and while victini is nowhere near in the same class of pokemon that either of those two were, it could still be argued that hazard removal was worth it to get the most out of victini's broken characteristics.

That being said, I do think that if Kokoloko was right about the biased ban mentality, then this suspect went poorly.
 
The thing was, especially given the lack of victini used in the suspect, there was always going to be elements of theorymon needed, given the lack of practical experience facing it.
Just want to point out Victini was rocking plenty of usage.
2 | Victini | 22.64272% 1760s (the important one imo)
3 | Victini | 17.34922% 1630s

I went into this suspect test with the preconceived notion that Victini was broken based on past metagame experiences. When the idea of the suspect came up I didn't think enough had changed to make any difference. My experience in the suspect test only solidified how I viewed Victini in this metagame. The argument that the suspect test was biased can't really be proven. What we do know for sure is that every single voter experienced the metagame Victini's presence created and based on the usage stats they had very likely played against Victini enough times to form an opinion on its effectiveness in that metagame.
 

LeoLancaster

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Just want to point out Victini was rocking plenty of usage.
2 | Victini | 22.64272% 1760s (the important one imo)
3 | Victini | 17.34922% 1630s

I went into this suspect test with the preconceived notion that Victini was broken based on past metagame experiences. When the idea of the suspect came up I didn't think enough had changed to make any difference. My experience in the suspect test only solidified how I viewed Victini in this metagame. The argument that the suspect test was biased can't really be proven. What we do know for sure is that every single voter experienced the metagame Victini's presence created and based on the usage stats they had very likely played against Victini enough times to form an opinion on its effectiveness in that metagame.
Odd, because I faced maybe 6 or 7 Victini total, and most of them were Scarf (lol). As I said before, UU could stand to have suspect tours. If NU gets to have them I'm sure we could.
 

Hogg

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I was just about to post about Victini's usage, but xMarth beat me to it. C'est la vie. But yeah, an average of 15% usage across all different levels means that if it took you 50 games to get reqs, you probably saw 7 or 8 Victinis at the most... which seems to be about what most people are reporting.

Anyhow, I have no problem with people who came into the suspect test with an open mind (even if they were leaning in one direction or another), and decided in the end to vote to keep it BL. While I don't agree with some of the arguments made, I understand most of them.

What DID disappoint me this time around was seeing a number of posts here and comments on the UU room in Showdown that more or less amounted to, "Well, I haven't personally seen Victini do broken stuff myself this suspect test, but I'm sure I just haven't seen it played to its potential!"

Also, I think that people tend to find the idea of a threat that can't be reliably countered by any one single 'mon really scary, and that tends to cause them to panic and cry for a ban. (For other examples, see the recent panic when Mamoswine first dropped just a little while ago, or the panic when Mence and Hera dropped back into the tier despite the fact that they were fine the last time they were around.) It's true that there's next to nothing in the tier that can truly be called a 100% counter to any and all Victinis. Then again, the same thing can be said about Haxorus, and Haxorus is barely considered a threat these days. I saw "the lack of any true counters" brought up several times this suspect test, and while that's certainly something to consider when talking about banning, I don't think it's a good sole reason to ban something - at least not when that something sits at an average Speed tier, is easily revenge-killed, and has trouble getting in safely despite above-average defenses because of a terrible defensive typing. Yes, Victini is exceedingly hard to counter - it's a wallbreaker. That's what wallbreakers do: they punch a hole in the opposing team, either through sheer power (CB V-Create) or surprising coverage (mixed LO), and usually die in the process. Victini was definitely one of the best wallbreakers around during the suspect test, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.

Anyhow, done is done. I liked the meta before this suspect test, so it's not like the failure to bring Victini back into the tier is ruining anything. Looking forward to future tests.
 

feen

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What's done is done. Victini remains banned, which is healthy for the metagame IMO. Let's move on to the next thing which I believe should be suspected long before Victini:

SUSPECT ME PLS


This thing is an absolute monster, with insane speed of 121, outspeeding the majority of the tier while having a great Special Attack of 135, and having a decent bulk of 83/80/80 and shooting never-missing 110 Base Power STAB Hurricanes which 2HKOs anything that isn't Specially Defensive/ Resists it. Furthermore, it has a great coverage move in Heat Wave, hitting Steel types which resists Hurricane, dealing massive damage to it. Also, it has access to U-Turn, which gives it momentum to switch to something that can beat its checks. It also has Roost, meaning it cannot be worn down since it has reliable recovery. It has a dangerous set-up move in Work Up, as well as a cleric move in Refresh. This pokemon can threaten every playstyle in the tier depending on its sets. It tears through offense as it outspeeds any non-scarfs and OHKOing almost the entire team. This is why Offense retorts to running LO Lead Azelf with Thunderbolt to beat lead Pidgeots. The most annoying thing about Mega Pidgeot is that it can spam this 110 based STAB Hurricanes with no drawbacks, giving a 30% chance to confuse, meaning it can beat its checks by confuse haxing. Yeah, it obviously relies on luck, but if you confuse a Florges on the switch, you're definitely staying in because 1 confuse = Florges dead. Also, the Work Up set allows it to beat it's usual checks, notably Curse Lax, who'd rest and you can Work Up on them and beat them with a bit of luck. Work Up Refresh set completely 6-0s stall teams unless they have something that can kill it back, which stall tends to have problems finding one. . Also, it restricts teambuilding a lot, making Empoleon, Snorlax really common and not building one with them makes you prone to it. So these are the main reasons to suspect this Broken Bird.

tl;dr The ability to abuse a base 110 STAB move with 30% confuse rate backed up by 135 SpA with 121 Speed and having great movepool while restricting teambuilding gives it more than enough reasons to suspect it.
 
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"... sits at an average Speed tier, is easily revenge-killed..."
just some nitpicks but 100 is far from being average, maybe for an offensive 'mon it might be considered average.
secondly, arguably the best pursuit trapper band krook can't reliably 1hko it from full so it might not be so easily revenged killed as to just scaring it off after a v-create speed drop :
252 Atk Choice Band Krookodile Pursuit vs. -1 0 HP / 0 Def Victini: 272-324 (79.7 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
 

sniperr

Pineapples don't belong on pizza
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What's done is done. Victini remains banned, which is healthy for the metagame IMO. Let's move on to the next thing which I believe should be suspected long before Victini:

SUSPECT ME PLS


This thing is an absolute monster, with insane speed of 121, outspeeding the majority of the tier while having a great Special Attack of 135, and having a decent bulk of 83/80/80 and shooting never-missing 110 Base Power STAB Hurricanes which 2HKOs anything that isn't Specially Defensive/ Resists it. Furthermore, it has a great coverage move in Heat Wave, hitting Steel types which resists Hurricane, dealing massive damage to it. Also, it has access to U-Turn, which gives it momentum to switch to something that can beat its checks. It also has Roost, meaning it cannot be worn down since it has reliable recovery. It has a dangerous set-up move in Work Up, as well as a cleric move in Refresh. This pokemon can threaten every playstyle in the tier depending on its sets. It tears through offense as it outspeeds any non-scarfs and OHKOing almost the entire team. This is why Offense retorts to running LO Lead Azelf with Thunderbolt to beat lead Pidgeots. The most annoying thing about Mega Pidgeot is that it can spam this 110 based STAB Hurricanes with no drawbacks, giving a 30% chance to confuse, meaning it can beat its checks by confuse haxing. Yeah, it obviously relies on luck, but if you confuse a Florges on the switch, you're definitely staying in because 1 confuse = Florges dead. Also, the Work Up set allows it to beat it's usual checks, notably Curse Lax, who'd rest and you can Work Up on them and beat them with a bit of luck. Work Up Refresh set completely 6-0s stall teams unless they have something that can kill it back, which stall tends to have problems finding one. Here's a demonstration: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/uu-233653621 . Also, it restricts teambuilding a lot, making Empoleon, Snorlax really common and not building one with them makes you prone to it. So these are the main reasons to suspect this Broken Bird.

tl;dr The ability to abuse a base 110 STAB move with 30% confuse rate backed up by 135 SpA with 121 Speed and having great movepool while restricting teambuilding gives it more than enough reasons to suspect it.
sad thing is lax isn't even a counter because of basedhaxgod. I remember I had one team that lost to pidget as soon as I lost snorlax. rip me.
 
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Hogg

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I would consider anything in the 90-100 range just average for an offensive threat - consider that this includes things like Krook, Haxorus, Mence, Luke, Hydreigon, Entei, etc. Tini sits at the upper end of average, but also drops down to the "slow" range as soon as it uses its best move.

Regarding Krook and Pursuit trapping, that's still fairly reliable as it becomes guaranteed with rocks damage, and Tini racks up residual damage easily (especially if using LO). But in any case, there's a difference between trapping and revenge killing.
 
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