np: Doubles OU Stage 3 - Hate to Love You - SKYMIN HAS BEEN BANNED

[Platinum God n1n1]

The root of the Jirachi problem in doubles ou is that people don't build teams with countering Jirachi + common teammates in mind.

For example look at team building compendium. How many times is Jirachi counter mentioned?
It gets ignored in team building by a lot of people as they focus on Kang, lando, sun, ect counters, ignoring the threat of Jirachi

 

[Checkmater]

really ... can we take meta discussion out of personal attacks? I'm guilty of this too, but seriously, move your rhetoric away from being extremely antagonistic and demeaning to more of a discussion. In a discussion, you respect the contributions of other people and take their viewpoints into account. I'm not specifically speaking of above, thought it is pretty bad and really should've been deleted tbh, but all across meta discussion that happens whenever some mon/team/core comes up things just get way too emotionally invested and personal.

 

[Platinum God n1n1]

from what I have seen across the doubles ou forum when we talk about team building jirachi checks and counters almost never come up. even though most of us agree its tier 1/1.5 viable. yet you will see mentions of kyurem checks, lando check, kang checks, diancie, heatran, the list goes on.
because we always account for kang in team building its win ratio drops.
when we do not account for jirachi in team building as a major threat then when good team builders use jirachi its win ratio will rise

I believe same thing happened with skymin for a while; towards the end of its time in ou everyone accounted for it. but before the lead up to initial discussion of banning skymin people did not account for skymin like the way they do kang, lando, ect. I think right now we are at the phase where people will start to consistently think about how to counter jirachi when team building with the same priority as they do when ensuring they have counters for kang

if this goes the way that skymin did then we will see people already having made up their minds before suspect and thus a ban. for the record I want skymin unbanned

 

[Bughouse]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/teams-from-spl-7-doubles.3562920/

please tell me in which games where Jirachi went 8-2 did the opposing team lack ways to deal with Rachi?

W1: Char-Y, Thund, Exca
W2: Entei, Zapdos, Aeg, Lando
W3: Rotom-W, Lando, Aeg, Volc, Scrafty
W4: Lando, Tran, Hoopa-U, Talon
W5: Talon, Hydrei, Hoopa-U
W6: Blaziken, Aeg, Lando
W7: Lando, Heatran, Talon
W8: Blaziken, Rotom-W, Gengar

L1: Thund, Lando, Tran, Aeg
L2: Hoopa-U, Nape, Hydrei, Rotom-W

Clearly there is no "preparation" that is consistently effective against Rachi builds, if it's 8-2 even when opponents all had 3+ checks. Beating Rachi alone isn't enough. And I don't even mean that in a Rotom-W wins, but it takes like 4 turns, kind of way. Every single one of those teams that lost had a fire type. 6 had a ground type. 6 had a ghost or dark type... 2 of which had 2 spooky mons.

I don't like reading too much into 10 battles. I wouldn't vote to ban tomorrow, at least not based on this evidence alone.

But if anything close to this usage winrate continues for the rest of SPL, yeah I'd strongly consider it.

 

[Braverius]

I think brav is worried less about the positional play and more that it's extremely punishing, where one or two turns you don't have positional advantage is pretty much game, or pretty close to it.

Took the words right out of my mouth, exactly what I was getting at. What I enjoyed about this format (and still do in a decent amount of games) is that it allows multiple opportunities for small swings of momentum. The way Jirachi plays and helps its partners is sort of all-or-nothing in terms of setup, but it's still good enough outside of setup that keeps the user alive even if they swing and miss with the setup, hence why I think it's not only unhealthy for DOU but also kind of overpowered on the right teams.

 

[Platinum God n1n1]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/teams-from-spl-7-doubles.3562920/

please tell me in which games where Jirachi went 8-2 did the opposing team lack ways to deal with Rachi?

W1: Char-Y, Thund, Exca
W2: Entei, Zapdos, Aeg, Lando
W3: Rotom-W, Lando, Aeg, Volc, Scrafty
W4: Lando, Tran, Hoopa-U, Talon
W5: Talon, Hydrei, Hoopa-U
W6: Blaziken, Aeg, Lando
W7: Lando, Heatran, Talon
W8: Blaziken, Rotom-W, Gengar

L1: Thund, Lando, Tran, Aeg
L2: Hoopa-U, Nape, Hydrei, Rotom-W

Clearly there is no "preparation" that is consistently effective against Rachi builds, if it's 8-2 even when opponents all had 3+ checks. Beating Rachi alone isn't enough. And I don't even mean that in a Rotom-W wins, but it takes like 4 turns, kind of way. Every single one of those teams that lost had a fire type. 6 had a ground type. 6 had a ghost or dark type... 2 of which had 2 spooky mons.

I don't like reading too much into 10 battles. I wouldn't vote to ban tomorrow, at least not based on this evidence alone.

But if anything close to this usage winrate continues for the rest of SPL, yeah I'd strongly consider it.

You cannot use 10 battles as a case here. it is an insignificant amount, anyone who has ever taken a statistics course can back me up here
in fact, this sample of battles where jirachi wins 80% of the time is a total coincidence!

After looking through 6 of the 8 wins (2 of the battles where incomplete due to disconnection) Jirachi had little to no significance on the win for the team with jirachi
Reason is because, like you mentioned, all those teams had plenty of jirachi counters

the game where jirachi had the most impact is here
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-doublesou-118531
after all the check you named (W8: Blaziken, Rotom-W, Gengar) had died jirachi used follow me next to Conkeldurr; at this point the opponent only had metagross and terrak. artic still had charY and rotomW in the back

again jirachi was really irrelevant in the other matches because of the checks you mentioned.


this got focused on SPL matches. my post is what I think about the jirachi and the meta game in whole which a hand full of players and 10 battles is not representative of

 

[Checkmater]

free skymin when

 

[Lohgock]

Not sure where to post it, so I just post it here.

Something that really made me sick during this seasonal is the whole bo3 with switching teams thing. What's the point of that?
The Doubles community claims to be a very competitive one but this is a step in the complete opposite direction. If you want to be competitive, you need to minimize randomness as much as possible while rewarding solid teams. The reason why most people dislike bo1 is, that there's too much room for a player to use odd, worse than standard stuff allowing him to win only by surprising his opponent (or what people refer to as "random'd"). By allowing players to switch teams after each match you end up having just two or three bo1s not improving anything. This often times leads to a player winning a lost match just because of having a weird set or team, that's in almost any cases worse than standard ones. He'd lose any normal bo3 with it since it's just worse than a solid team / generally better move but that doesn't matter because he only needed it for one game.

There's a reason I post this after my bo3 with Flame Road. I, by no means, try to insult or shittalk you or something, dude, please don't take it as that, it just perfectly fits as an example here (and yes, I'm salty).
He used a really solid team g1 (which we will never know how it'll end) and then opted to go with three really weird ones. I managed to win the first one of those three rather easily due to him being really weak to standard. Going into g2 I didn't even know what most of his mons are able to do. I controlled most part of the early game due to me having better Pokemon and him until he revealed TR Goggles Victini. This shifted momentum a little but I still felt like I had it, he then revealed Sitrus Hariyama and LO Diancie. I don't know what people normally run on them, maybe it's their "standard" item but even then they're not even worth running in the first place.
G3 went pretty much the same way. His teams wasn't that weird but still had some weird choices. I don't know why anyone would use Mega Garchomp but I was screwed the second he showed SD.

What I'm trying to show: all these teams won't be able to win g2 and g3 in a bo3 without switching teams since as soon as I know their surprise sets I just win by having the better Pokemon in my team.

I know a lot of you don't like comparisons between Dubs and VGC but in that regard VGC is way more progressive than we are. Do we want to have a lot of variance in the ones winning our tours or do we want the better players to win most of the time (not implying Flame Road is worse than me, speaking in general)?
If we really want to be a competitive community we should make a step into this direction. If we want to be a community where people can see "cool" sets and where anyone can beat everyone, that's fair, too. We should stop calling ourselves a very competitive community then though.

 

[Stratos]

^no, we tried teamlock bo3 and it makes it impossible to win a losing matchup cuz if u outplay ur opponent on a bad matchup the first time then ur gonna get super rekt the second time once theyve figured out the matchup. bo3 being just 3 bo1s is to decrease the variance. teamlock bo3 sucks ass tho. just because it's true in vgc doesn't make it true here

last time u lost u bitched about timer, this time u bitched about team lock... lol

 

[KyleCole]

get comfy

Something that really made me sick during this seasonal is the whole bo3 with switching teams thing. What's the point of that?

If you can't switch teams between rounds then you can lose entirely from a bad matchup. When you can shake the teams up then it becomes more about how well you play and less about a matchup. In VGC this problem doesn't exist to the same extent because you can just bring a different group of 4 between games of the same round. The alternative is teamlock for the entire tournament, which definitely wouldn't be a problem, except that I don't think there is a problem that needs fixing in the first place.

The reason why most people dislike bo1 is, that there's too much room for a player to use odd, worse than standard stuff allowing him to win only by surprising his opponent (or what people refer to as "random'd").

I can't speak for you or anyone else (though I have a feeling the majority of people will agree with me on this one), but I don't like best of 1 because it increases the impact of RNG and decreases the impact of outplaying your opponent. Obviously this game does have a foundation in RNG but in a best of 3 (and double elimination), I feel we lean more towards RNG manipulation/management and farther from just praying the RNG doesn't own you.

By allowing players to switch teams after each match you end up having just two or three bo1s not improving anything. This often times leads to a player winning a lost match just because of having a weird set or team, that's in almost any cases worse than standard ones.

If the player has a "weird set or team" that leads to them winning then it wasn't a "lost match" to begin with. Saying a set is better or worse than a standard set is objective; if a set wins the game where another set would lose then the choice that you made which won the game was clearly better. I'm going to probably be repeating this idea a lot based on the rest of the post but what's better or worse is decided on what wins the game, not what your opinion of the set is.

He'd lose any normal bo3 with it since it's just worse than a solid team / generally better move but that doesn't matter because he only needed it for one game.

What's better or worse is decided on what wins the game, not what your opinion of the set is.

I don't know what people normally run on them, maybe it's their "standard" item but even then they're not even worth running in the first place..

What's better or worse is decided on what wins the game, not what your opinion of the set is.

What I'm trying to show: all these teams won't be able to win g2 and g3 in a bo3 without switching teams since as soon as I know their surprise sets I just win by having the better Pokemon in my team.

Managing the information exchange between you and your opponent is just another key aspect to playing well. Yes you would've no doubt had an easier time if you had known your opponents sets, which is why he switched them up. I understand that you dislike the "random" element here but his choices were (probably, again I can't speak for anyone else) not random. He built the team the best way he knew how and was able to win largely because he had more information about your team than you did about his AND he balanced out his less conventional team choices with some that were more expected and consistent (ie follow me on Togekiss). Playing around unexpected sets and teams is just another skill that you're required to have to perform well. And of course What's better or worse is decided on what wins the game, not what your opinion of the set is.

I know a lot of you don't like comparisons between Dubs and VGC but in that regard VGC is way more progressive than we are. Do we want to have a lot of variance in the ones winning our tours or do we want the better players to win most of the time (not implying Flame Road is worse than me, speaking in general)?

The player who manages their risk/reward situation better is the better player. Flame Road had more information than you because you used only standard sets on standard Pokemon which allowed him to more accurately assess his risk vs reward than you could not knowing his teams. This doesn't make him a fundamentally worse player, it makes him a more prepared one. I don't think that only using standard sets and Pokemon is a bad thing, but you play a game where your opponent essentially has all of the information and you have to hope you can consistently win in spite of that. Again, I don't think playing that game is a bad one I'm just summing up the situation.

If we really want to be a competitive community we should make a step into this direction. If we want to be a community where people can see "cool" sets and where anyone can beat everyone, that's fair, too. We should stop calling ourselves a very competitive community then though.

People misuse this word all of the time. Something is COMPETITIVE if people are COMPETING. The phrase you're looking for is skill based, and the situation in DOU is certainly skill based, the same players win most often. There isn't an "anyone can beat everyone" situation just because someone can build a team that beats standard S-A+ only squads. Diversity in team building and set building is a sign of a healthy metagame. "Cool" sets are cool sets because they win, not because they are different, and as we all know by now

What's better or worse is decided on what wins the game, not what your opinion of the set is.

 

[Lohgock]

If you use good teams, you won't have bad matchup. How could that apply to VGC but not to Dubs? We can actively regulate the meta, VGC can't, yet it still works there, good players win most of the time and using solid teams gets rewarded. Dubs is a meta to use "cool" non-standard stuff, that's great, we should stop trying to be competitive then though. This means, you can play Dubs to have some fun and joke around a bit, not taking things too serious. If that's our claim, then we're good to go how things are atm. I'm fine with that, don't get me wrong. I'm playing VGC for competition and Dubs to fool around a little, that's cool.

Your whole reasoning shows me you don't quite seem to get the point of having a competitive meta. You want your cool and creative meta and I don't blame you on that, it's a cool thing until you really want to play a game on a high level. A competitive meta is "boring" to most people since there will be way less mons and sets played, I've been thinking like this a long time, too, until I realized I don't want to waste my time playing this game for fun anymore. I want to play it to have success and competition.

I didn't propose the timer issue and this one because I wanted to bitch or something like that. I mean, come on.. I'm 20 and playing this game for about 8 years now. Of course I get salty over such losses but it's not like insulting my opponent, bitching around or something benefits me anything, especially since I don't get anything for winning a Dubs game. I'm trying to improve Doubles based on my experiences. If you don't want anyone to critisize what's happening in Dubs, keep reacting like you're doing right now. Thinking I'm doing this to bitch, well.. idk is just dumb.

kyle:
there definitely is a difference between good and bad mons (we also have Viability Rankings for that). It's also not objective what Item/Moveset is good and what's bad. If I'm using Fire Punch Kanga, this'll aid me in a very specific matchup, but generally you're better off using Sucker Punch instead.

Risk/Reward is a thing in Pokemon, yes, but when you have a good team you don't need to take too many risks. The goal of any team and player should be to avoid "predicting" as much as possible since it's just guessing anyway. You need to create situations in which you can make safe plays without any drawbacks. This also involves reducing chances to a minimum. If you're using Focus Blast or Iron Tail, you're just begging to lose a game to a miss. If you get yourself in a situation where you have to guess what the opponent does, you'll probably end up losing if you don't guess correctly. Of course, this isn't always avoidable but you get what I'm saying.

SSB Melee is a good example: only few charakters are good and to become a solid player, you need to learn how to use them. Is anyone crying because they can't get to see Kirby in action? I am, because Kirby is cute and I love it and that's why I won't be good at this game anytime soon. I'm playing it for fun, beating my little sister in a game if I want to but that's it. Only Melee doesn't involve surprise sets and that's exactly why it's more skill based than Pokemon.

 

[Stratos]

If you use good teams, you won't have bad matchup. How could that apply to VGC but not to Dubs? We can actively regulate the meta, VGC can't, yet it still works there, good players win most of the time and using solid teams gets rewarded. Dubs is a meta to use "cool" non-standard stuff, that's great, we should stop trying to be competitive then though. This means, you can play Dubs to have some fun and joke around a bit, not taking things too serious. If that's our claim, then we're good to go how things are atm. I'm fine with that, don't get me wrong. I'm playing VGC for competition and Dubs to fool around a little, that's cool.

Your whole reasoning shows me you don't quite seem to get the point of having a competitive meta. You want your cool and creative meta and I don't blame you on that, it's a cool thing until you really want to play a game on a high level. A competitive meta is "boring" to most people since there will be way less mons and sets played, I've been thinking like this a long time, too, until I realized I don't want to waste my time playing this game for fun anymore. I want to play it to have success and competition.

I didn't propose the timer issue and this one because I wanted to bitch or something like that. I mean, come on.. I'm 20 and playing this game for about 8 years now. Of course I get salty over such losses but it's not like insulting my opponent, bitching around or something benefits me anything, especially since I don't get anything for winning a Dubs game. I'm trying to improve Doubles based on my experiences. If you don't want anyone to critisize what's happening in Dubs, keep reacting like you're doing right now. Thinking I'm doing this to bitch, well.. idk is just dumb

every team has one bad matchup or another lol are u kidding me wtf is this logic, if there was a team with no bad matchups we'd all be using it. the fact that you seriously for half a second entertained that DOU doesn't have team lock because we want to style on people with meme sets is blowing me out of the fucking water rn

 

[KyleCole]

stay comfy

kyle:
there definitely is a difference between good and bad mons (we also have Viability Rankings for that). It's also not objective what Item/Moveset is good and what's bad. If I'm using Fire Punch Kanga, this'll aid me in a very specific matchup, but generally you're better off using Sucker Punch instead.

I 100% agree that there is a difference between good and bad mons. The good mons are ones that win games, and the bad ones are those that do not (you may remember the theme of my last message). Fire Punch Kangaskhan fits in the second group, but if it was to start winning games I would put it in the first.

Risk/Reward is a thing in Pokemon, yes, but when you have a good team you don't need to take too many risks. The goal of any team and player should be to avoid "predicting" as much as possible since it's just guessing anyway. You need to create situations in which you can make safe plays without any drawbacks. This also involves reducing chances to a minimum.

Yep I agree! One of the chances that I like to reduce to a minimum is the chance that my opponent knows everything about my team, while balancing it with being effective. Just because it isn't standard doesn't mean it isn't effective. There may very well be a specific team out there where Fire Punch is a better pick than Sucker Punch for Kangaskhan. Does that mean this team isn't competitive? Does that mean it shouldn't ever win in a best of 3? Of course not.

SSB Melee is a good example

SSB Melee is not a good example. SSB melee is a game where physical skill, coordination, and reaction time is what separates good players from bad players. Pokemon is a game of risk management. Melee is more skill based than Pokemon in the sense that there isn't as big of an RNG factor, but the two require totally different "skills" to be successful. They are entirely different games.

Although going along with this, in SSB you can pick different characters between sets, and from my limited knowledge of SSB I do know that each character has different favourable and unfavourable matchups. Does this mean that a less used character has no place? Of course not. Like I've been saying all along, if it wins games it's a good pick.

 

[Bughouse]

There's nothing wrong with Goggles TR Victini, fwiw. Sitrus Hariyama and LO regular Diancie are questionable though...

Anyway, to keep it really simple. We tried teamlock before. No one really liked it. The end.

 

[Checkmater]

LO regular diancie is a fucking sexy set you sit the fuck down



Anyways I really wanted the talk about this but didn't get much discussion, and was thinking about it myself for a bit and I still don't get it.

Why don't we want positional play? This makes almost no sense to me. It's Doubles, the entire metagame revolves around the way you position with your two mons to secure a victory. Jirachi never did and never will change this... timed sacs and preventing momentum sucks and protecting to rotate your partner will always be a thing... getting the right partner to cover that Keldeo, whether through redirection or through offensive pressure so your Kang can KO Keldeo's partner... and bringing in your own Kang to cover their Latios they're bringing in to cover your Keldeo... etc.. this is something I find to be intrinsic to Doubles

Is it just that Jirachi makes this too punishing? Does it force out certain options/team styles? I'd love for some discussion on what exactly differentiates a 2v2 metagame with Jirachi and a 2v2 metagame without Jirachi in terms of positional play and the metagame as a whole


As for some comments on the balance factor of Jirachi:

It's brought up a lot that Jirachi is just free setup, sac a rachi, get a +6 azumarill, easier than pie. Except that's not how it works. Someone using Jirachi has to be especially conscious of how hard it is to get the right situation with both Jirachi and Azumarill out. You have to outright dodge Talonflame, while making sure things that can just tank Azumarill's +6 ajet and ko/hurt it back (Latios, Rotom-Wash, Charizard if it's at +5, Venusaur, Jirachi itself, Aegislash come to mind). Quite often, the difficulty with Azumarill+Jirachi comes with both getting the right position and getting enough mileage out of setup Azumarill to make it worth it. Say you're sacking a mon while protecting Azu or Jirachi and bringing in the respective partner out for both to be out at the same time. Presumably, you're setting up while redirecting, and, presumably, Jirachi dies. Well, you've lost like 1.5 mons or a fourth of your team, in essence, and have to rely on Azumarill being able to just sweep, which it often can't do. In many cases it requires the right partner next to Azumarill to cover the threats Azu can't cover (Talonflame is a popular option). Basically I just want to point out that using Jirachi+Azu isn't as straightforward as "Oh I'll just click this and this, now I win", which I'm pretty sure we all know but tends to be neglected in metagame discussions.

Also, could we hold off on a suspect? I don't know exactly how timelines for this stuff works, but I think it'd be better to let a metagame with Jirachi being "suspectworthy" in people's eyes to last longer before we actually suspect it. For one, I think Skymin (resuspect when?) meta lasted quite a long time before we ended up actually suspecting it into banning it, letting the metagame develop more before making a final judgement call. Doing a suspect test right now feels premature and rather quick, while we could just let the meta find directions to go before deciding that a metagame with Jirachi is healthy/unhealthy.

 

[megacyber]

Is it just that Jirachi makes this too punishing?

yh tbh

 

[Derivatives]

Why don't we want positional play? This makes almost no sense to me. It's Doubles, the entire metagame revolves around the way you position with your two mons to secure a victory. Jirachi never did and never will change this... timed sacs and preventing momentum sucks and protecting to rotate your partner will always be a thing... getting the right partner to cover that Keldeo, whether through redirection or through offensive pressure so your Kang can KO Keldeo's partner... and bringing in your own Kang to cover their Latios they're bringing in to cover your Keldeo... etc.. this is something I find to be intrinsic to Doubles

Is it just that Jirachi makes this too punishing? Does it force out certain options/team styles? I'd love for some discussion on what exactly differentiates a 2v2 metagame with Jirachi and a 2v2 metagame without Jirachi in terms of positional play and the metagame as a whole


As for some comments on the balance factor of Jirachi:

It's brought up a lot that Jirachi is just free setup, sac a rachi, get a +6 azumarill, easier than pie. Except that's not how it works. Someone using Jirachi has to be especially conscious of how hard it is to get the right situation with both Jirachi and Azumarill out. You have to outright dodge Talonflame, while making sure things that can just tank Azumarill's +6 ajet and ko/hurt it back (Latios, Rotom-Wash, Charizard if it's at +5, Venusaur, Jirachi itself, Aegislash come to mind). Quite often, the difficulty with Azumarill+Jirachi comes with both getting the right position and getting enough mileage out of setup Azumarill to make it worth it. Say you're sacking a mon while protecting Azu or Jirachi and bringing in the respective partner out for both to be out at the same time. Presumably, you're setting up while redirecting, and, presumably, Jirachi dies. Well, you've lost like 1.5 mons or a fourth of your team, in essence, and have to rely on Azumarill being able to just sweep, which it often can't do. In many cases it requires the right partner next to Azumarill to cover the threats Azu can't cover (Talonflame is a popular option). Basically I just want to point out that using Jirachi+Azu isn't as straightforward as "Oh I'll just click this and this, now I win", which I'm pretty sure we all know but tends to be neglected in metagame discussions.

Also, could we hold off on a suspect? I don't know exactly how timelines for this stuff works, but I think it'd be better to let a metagame with Jirachi being "suspectworthy" in people's eyes to last longer before we actually suspect it. For one, I think Skymin (resuspect when?) meta lasted quite a long time before we ended up actually suspecting it into banning it, letting the metagame develop more before making a final judgement call. Doing a suspect test right now feels premature and rather quick, while we could just let the meta find directions to go before deciding that a metagame with Jirachi is healthy/unhealthy.

Aside from my deleted post where I contributed 0 to discussion and called people out, nobody has said they don't want positional play... and I really don't know why you're calling the entire idea of the Jirachi suspect "positional play" when it's mostly about threat level and matchups. It faces stellar matchups all across the board and threatens every core aside from Thundurus+Landorus-T which makes teambuilding a bit too much of a mess considering those lose to quite a bit on their own (such as Scarf Kyurem-B, Ferrothorn, Gengar...) and face difficulty switching in to Diancie Diamond Storm on their own. Every single pokemon aside from Landorus-T and Ferrothorn and really just a few others that aren't as worth mentioning get dunked by Diancie+Jirachi, and the two of those (sorry this will sound like I just played my first doubles game) have easily exploitable 4x weaknesses that can be prepared in the case of those two.
It becomes all about shitty positional play in preparation of that late game which seriously sucks things out of the meta game, to answer your question (if I understand it correctly).

 

[Big_Danny_Mason]

Is it just that Jirachi makes this too punishing? Does it force out certain options/team styles? I'd love for some discussion on what exactly differentiates a 2v2 metagame with Jirachi and a 2v2 metagame without Jirachi in terms of positional play and the metagame as a whole

Specifically with regards to jirachi diancie, which i think is what most people see as the uncompetitive aspect, is that so many things that could beat diancie in thoery get utterly stonewalled by jirachi (venusaur, megagross, serperior, amoonguss, deoxys), and diancie slaughters like 80% of things that are actually capable of ko'ing jirachi (dark types, fire types, keldeo). Leaving you essentially scarf lando, lando i and aegislash among standard goodstuffs as mons that are capable of dealing with both, and of those, only aegislash can switch in comfortably. This means that unless you bring aegislash, unless you have positioned yourself to deal with both jirachi and diancie in the same turn, diancie is going to be in the position to heavily punish your team.

Assuming you replace jirachi with something like amoonguss, all of a sudden all of those grass types, as well as metagross and deoxys, become options that can beat diancie on a more regular basis, and things like sun, which can theoretically deal with diancie, but can struggle in practice due to the aforementioned jirachi, get a lot better.

All of this assumes your opponent can put jirachi and diancie in a position to shine, which is obviously easier said than done. But i think the difference when comparing these two to things like keldeo and kang is that diancie has the offensive coverage (even aegi will eventually die to repeated earth powers, whereas keldeo can hydro and ss amoonguss til its blue in the face), a spread move that hits a ton of meta incredibly hard and that the volume of checks to jirachi and diancie is simply much smaller than the amount of checks to other prominent meta stables.

Edit: I agree that things like jirachi + azu are not at all broken or unmanageable.

 

[Stratos]

If u wanna bluff scarf lando use belt, not fucking ass vest.

First, look at these calcs:

252+ Atk Landorus-T Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 64 Def Mega Charizard Y: 332-392 (92.2 - 108.8%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO <- scarf
252 Atk Landorus-T Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 64 Def Mega Charizard Y: 300-356 (83.3 - 98.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO <- ass vest
252 Atk Expert Belt Landorus-T Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 64 Def Mega Charizard Y: 360-427 (100 - 118.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO <- expert belt

252+ Atk Landorus-T Superpower vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Mega Kangaskhan: 312-368 (88.6 - 104.5%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO <- scarf
252 Atk Landorus-T Superpower vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Mega Kangaskhan: 284-336 (80.6 - 95.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO <- ass vest
252 Atk Expert Belt Landorus-T Superpower vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Mega Kangaskhan: 341-403 (96.8 - 114.4%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO <- expert belt

in these two cases, not only does belt pick up crucial KOes that vest misses, but it also does a better job bluffing scarf than vest does, because if you lowroll with vest your bluff is revealed, but if you high roll with belt it's capped at 100 anyways. There's also these calcs:

252 Atk Landorus-T Earthquake vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Shuca Berry Heatran: 254-300 (78.3 - 92.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Expert Belt Landorus-T Earthquake vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Shuca Berry Heatran: 305-360 (94.1 - 111.1%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO

252 Atk Landorus-T Earthquake vs. +1 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 182-216 (75.5 - 89.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Expert Belt Landorus-T Earthquake vs. +1 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 218-259 (90.4 - 107.4%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO

and if you choose to run stone edge:

252 Atk Landorus-T Stone Edge vs. 244 HP / 108 Def Thundurus: 274-324 (76.1 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Expert Belt Landorus-T Stone Edge vs. 244 HP / 108 Def Thundurus: 329-389 (91.3 - 108%) -- 50% chance to OHKO

The only real benefits that Vest gives you are a slightly-worse-than-even chance of winning the 1v1 vs bulky thund (you have to hit 3 rock slides and flinch on one out of two) but honestly, i don't ever go for that HP ice unless the lando is -1 in which case vest has a really bad chance of winning it, you get to tank rotom-w hydro (keld hydro still drops you) (but rotom-w still wins the matchup easily), you take two aegis shadow balls / +2 aegis shadow ball but WG aegis still wins the matchup and you take two heatran heat waves, which is the only one of these benefits that i really consider to be super useful. However, Belt not only gives you some important KOes but it also gives you PROTECT, which is big lol. It's honestly never been hard for me to figure out when my opponent is running vest lando (they've tried it on me twice, zach in winter and sam in spring, and both times i figured it out before they were in a position to make me pay for falling for it). When you're running protect, your lando is significantly better after the bluff's been found out because well like uh it's protect. and i can't force lando out with kangaskhan. or scarfers. also, it's protect, lol. knock is only marginally useful, and u-turn even less so.

 

[thinkin]

av landorus takes on diancie way better.

 

[Big_Danny_Mason]

I think somebody brought up a potential belly drum suspect in chat, and I'd kinda like to talk about it, specifically with regards to azu. I think its kinda uncompetitive in a sense that while it is entirely manageable if you have the proper checks, games with azumarill in them become entirely centralized around azumarill, as the opponent simply spams the same ole fake out/follow me/rage powder crap. I play doubles basically because of how similiar to chess, and how many options you have in a turn and how you have to manage the game in both the immediate and future sense. I feel that mashing the same combo's over and over again totally robs the game of its intellectual value.

 

[BlueSkiddo]

Even though it may not be the most original idea or the most fun to play against, just banning things because they're good and boring isn't something that you want to set a precedent for. There are very few things in my opinion that could constitute a ban worthy mon, and access to a belly drum certainly isn't one of them. There are always going to be things that you need checks for, and azu + rachi is just another one of those things. You shouldn't leave your team without a couple checks to that just like you shouldn't leave your team without a couple talon checks. The fact that people centralize their teams around azu just means that once you take it out they are far weaker than a team more well rounded would be. Also the question remains as to what the ban-worthy aspect of it would be. Is it the redirection and jirachi? Is it belly drum in itself? Is it azumarill's access to priority moves + belly drum? The issue to me seems to be a combination of things. Without redirection, azu wouldn't be nearly as easy to set up or hard to take out. Without aqua jet it wouldn't be able to get nearly as many kills as it might with it. It doesn't make any sense to me to ban a mon or a move because you can put a couple of mons around it that make it difficult to beat. Many people say that the biggest issue with mega-mence was jirachi, but it is also widely agreed upon that it would still be broken on its own, hence the ban. You cannot say the same thing for azu and its regular redirectors. Azu + redirectors has been around forever and no one complained, but its rise in usage and complaints about it recently just says one thing to me, people aren't prepared like they should be for it.

 

[Derivatives]

He's not saying it's because Azumarill is like thalk in which its entire presence makes the game about as fun as winning a life's supply of stale bread, but rather that you win a life's supply of bread that's seemingly OK but then it turns out half of it is moldy.
I will say however that I'm perfectly fine in a meta game with azumarill, you just have to keep your checks in line 80% of the time and you'll stomp that pretty bulkless rat. The rest of the time the azumarill can't even find a good place anywhere on ur team to actually abuse belly drum, and without belly drum it does like 0 lol.
If you really feel you can't find enough ways to beat azu on ur team you should try bulkier attackers and add some taunt or even some weird stuff like clear smog or something (clear smog amoong is like really cool tbh :^).

 

[Haruno]

#freemence

 

[Checkmater]

what the fuck weren't you avidly calling for a ban during the suspect