Metagame np: NU Stage 12 - Nevergreen

[Robo Reagan]

My biggest problem with Sceptile in the tier is how the physical unburden set can out speed the entire tier. It seems rather quickly that people have shifted from life orb mixed to unburden to counter all of the scarfed mons ( scyther has been my preferred) that have been running around. It makes having a weezing a must just so you can have a counter because a scarf Mon that can ohko isn't really enough anymore. I understand that its being spammed as its a suspect ladder and all but its speed and power make it (IMHO) over centralizing to the meta.

 

[Sablenite]

So, about Weezing countering Sceptile.

I rarely see a Weezing on someones team so... not really a Sceptile Counter

BUT...

Swellow, Skuntank, Archeops with Scarf, Scyther, Haunter, Muk, Jynx, Mawile, Magmotar, Rotom-Fan, Crustle, and Pyroar

Are true counters too Sceptile and are medicorly on the NU field so...

Im saying that Sceptile Shouldnt be banned because of these counters to it.

If you disaggre with me quote me in the fourms so I can hear your opinions.

Running scarf on acheotops shouldn't have been a thing, and was created by the over centralization created by NU Greninja. It hits hard, has great coverage, and is easy to use as supporting your sweepers. And so many of your checks have to run berries to keep it alive so coverage doesn't kill it like it didn't exist. Not to mention most of the tier just hates taking a leaf storm. And the fact naive survives priority.

 

[Kiyo]

Hi, it's late and I forgot to study for my final tomorrow but anyways...

I'll be hosting a live suspect tour this Sunday March 20th at 12PM EST (Gmt-5) on the smogtours server of pokemon showdown TODAY AT 2PM EST IN THE NU ROOM ON POKEMON SHOWDOWN MAIN SERVER(in a similar fashion to other live tournaments such as Smogon Tour). Sceptile will be allowed, and the number of players qualifying for reqs will be dependent on the number of entries (see below). Look out for the sign-up thread in the Live Tours sub-forum. If you have any questions on the format or anything else regarding the tournament feel free to pm me on here or pokemon showdown.

If it is a...
- 24 man tournament, only the winning player gets reqs
- 32 man tournament, only the Top 2 players get reqs
- 48 man tournament, only the Top 3 players get reqs
- 64 man tournament, only the Top 4 players get reqs
- 96 man tournament, only the Top 6 players get reqs
- 128 man tournament, only the Top 8 players get reqs

Hope to see you guys then!

 

[Aladyyn]

My language has a saying that I think fits the Sceptile situation quite nicely. Imagine Sawk and Sceptile as roosters and NU as a junkyard. You can't have two roosters on a single junkyard because then it gets ugly. But hey we ate one of the roosters and so only one is left. Can a singular rooster live on our junkyard? Most posts in this thread have been solely focused on the rooster, but I dare say talking about the junkyard is at least of equal importancy.

I agree with Cased that there are really 2 relevant sets for Sceptile. These sets are obviously very different and threaten different Pokemon with few exceptions. Fortunately I think that one of these sets is very lacking compared to the other because of its contradictory nature. You want to surprise your opponent with SD Sceptile, but it's usually pretty obvious that you're using SD because you play it completely differently than you would AoA Sceptile. SD Sceptile wants to clean late-game while Mixed Sceptile punches holes in teams early- to mid-game. So while the set might not be obvious from team preview, especially if paired with other offensively fluid mons such as Skuntank and Mesprit, it shouldn't be hard to judge which it is during the first phases of the game. SD Sceptile is healthy for the metagame because it promotes and rewards skillful play.

Now for Mixed Scep. Can we just be real for a moment and say that wow, Sceptile actually only has 1 or 2 moves that can chunk stuff? One of these is Focus Blast and the other is Leaf Storm. Leaf Storm SUCKS. Grass is a mediocre offensive typing and hey, there's a reason you never see fire types run Overheat. Yea it nukes stuff. But then you're stuck with a -2 Sceptile and that is not doing anyone any favors. Add to that a solid case of 4mss and Sceptile suddenly doesn't look too powerful. Add its frailty and limited ability to find space to switch in and what you get is a couple downsides that people barely mention. Sceptile is by no means a perfect pokemon, it has exploitable weaknesses, the question is whether NU has enough tools to exploit these weaknesses. And this is the part where I complain about lack of discussion in this thread outside of "boohoo it chunks Weezing". Yea honestly maybe Weezing is just not a good answer to special Sceptile and we should explore other options. Roselia is a great pokemon in the current metagame and doesn't really care for anything LO Sceptile throws at it. We all know how it goes with Sliggoo. Hell, Vileplume does well against Scep with some clever investment if you want something that checks Fightings better than Rose. Vullaby is a pet mon of mine, but again, it does very well against Sceptile, has reliable recovery and brings nice utility to a team with its versatile movepool. If you want to get more crazy, let's talk about Dustox, Wormadam-Trash, Shuca Berry Muk, go crazy, you have great options now. From posts here and discussions in the PS room I get the feeling that a lot of people are still stuck in the double rooster meta. So everyone who's doing reqs and exploring the current metagame. Tell me all about your ideas for dealing with Sceptile, tell me how you've adapted to this huge threat. Let's discuss how the meta has changed with the Sawk ban, what are the things you can get away with now, not just how you're sad that your old friend Weezing doesn't like taking Leaf Storms. Let's try and solve Sceptile before we jump the gun.

I believe that with some time, we could be able to let this rooster stay. Unfortunately this suspect came very soon after the Sawk one which might not be enough and so I will probably lean towards no ban for now.

Sorry if it comes off as incoherent rambling, I've been up for 27 hours.

 

[Cased]

SD Sceptile is healthy for the metagame because it promotes and rewards skillful play.

This is a pretty silly reason to say something is balanced. No Pokemon "promotes and rewards skillful play" more than any other offensive Pokemon. If played well, C/D ranked Pokemon can have a ridiculously high impact on a game. There's a higher ceiling for SD Sceptile regarding impact on a game just because of how good it is in general, but saying a specific Pokemon rewards and promotes skillful play isn't exactly correct. SD Sceptile isn't the big thing that makes Sceptile broken in my opinion, but it's not healthy because it rewards skillful play, all Pokemon reward skillful play regardless of their standing in their tier, because skillful play wins 90% of the time.

Now for Mixed Scep. Can we just be real for a moment and say that wow, Sceptile actually only has 1 or 2 moves that can chunk stuff? One of these is Focus Blast and the other is Leaf Storm. Leaf Storm SUCKS.
Grass is a mediocre offensive typing and hey, there's a reason you never see fire types run Overheat. Yea it nukes stuff. But then you're stuck with a -2 Sceptile and that is not doing anyone any favors.

Leaf Storm from Sceptile blasts a majority of the tier for about 50% or more, except for 4x resists or Pokemon that have abilities that give it an immunity. Yes there's a reason you never see Fire-types use Overheat, because there's Fire Blast. That's a blatantly bad comparison because you act as if there's a better STAB that doesn't trade ridiculous amounts of power just to not wind up with a -2 SpA stat. Also, Earthquake / Rock Slide sport great coverage against the NU tier and there are a large amount of Pokemon who are forced out by Sceptile thanks to Rock Slide and Earthquake. Its usefulness as a mixed attacker sprouts from being able to still do decent things at -2, esp. when -2 Focus Blasts and Leaf Storms still do a lot to a majority Offensive threats.

Add to that a solid case of 4mss and Sceptile suddenly doesn't look too powerful. Add its frailty and limited ability to find space to switch in and what you get is a couple downsides that people barely mention. Sceptile is by no means a perfect pokemon, it has exploitable weaknesses, the question is whether NU has enough tools to exploit these weaknesses. And this is the part where I complain about lack of discussion in this thread outside of "boohoo it chunks Weezing". Yea honestly maybe Weezing is just not a good answer to special Sceptile and we should explore other options. Roselia is a great pokemon in the current metagame and doesn't really care for anything LO Sceptile throws at it. We all know how it goes with Sliggoo. Hell, Vileplume does well against Scep with some clever investment if you want something that checks Fightings better than Rose. Vullaby is a pet mon of mine, but again, it does very well against Sceptile, has reliable recovery and brings nice utility to a team with its versatile movepool. If you want to get more crazy, let's talk about Dustox, Wormadam-Trash, Shuca Berry Muk, go crazy, you have great options now. From posts here and discussions in the PS room I get the feeling that a lot of people are still stuck in the double rooster meta.

Sceptile barely has 4MSS, you cater the last slot to what your team needs and you miss out on one/two Pokemon maximum by changing the moves, it's not a crippling 4MSS by any means. Not preferred but it barely works against it. I think most people (including myself) have mentioned in these posts or just casual talks about Sceptile that not being able to switch-in goes against it obviously, nobody barely mentions this stuff just because you say nobody does.

The Pokemon you mention towards the end are just downright bad in the current metagame. Wormadam-Trash struggles against a huge amount of threats even though it's notably bulky and checks a few Pokemon if used correctly. It doesn't check Normals very well if it needs the SpD EVs to take on Sceptile, but it's just really poor right now. Same goes for Dustox / Roselia, there are so many Fire-types in the current tier that make Dustox generally a bad choice to put on a team. While Roselia struggles against a majority of Pokemon now as well, even though it is better than it used to be, it's still mediocre. I also think having to throw on a Berry to turn a Pokemon into a reliable check to something is silly anyways, but that's just Berry Grower Cased.

There is a huge difference between being "stuck in the double rooster meta" and having to find incredibly subpar Pokemon that lose to a majority of the meta but have the ability to switch into Sceptile comfortably. They're just not good currently, actually they're painfully bad. And this is coming from someone who uses shitty Pokemon very often.

So everyone who's doing reqs and exploring the current metagame. Tell me all about your ideas for dealing with Sceptile, tell me how you've adapted to this huge threat. Let's discuss how the meta has changed with the Sawk ban, what are the things you can get away with now, not just how you're sad that your old friend Weezing doesn't like taking Leaf Storms. Let's try and solve Sceptile before we jump the gun.

Running way below average Pokemon on a team isn't exactly adapting to a huge threat, and if 50% of the Pokemon that are able to effectively switch-in to Sceptile are terrible Pokemon more often than not, that says a lot about the suspectable Pokemon. I think everyone has adapted or attempted to adapt to Sceptile. The good switch-ins are just small in numbers and the other ones are blatantly ineffective Pokemon. There's a difference between Sliggo rising in usage because its niche in the metagame before Sceptile was still notable and good, but Pokemon like Wormadam-Trash and Dustox never had much of a niche in the first place. I think a majority of people are tired of having to run the same 2-3 decent Pokemon in order to "effectively" be able to switch into Sceptile instead of using generally bad Pokemon. I've had to adapt to Sceptile in SPL and it's pretty miserable to do without running the same stuff over and over

Still trying to understand how Leaf Storm sucks when Grass isn't a terrible Offensive-type in NU when its supported by Rock and Ground coverage :|

 

[Cheryl.]

So I've been getting reqs for the past few days (Will probably get them at the end of the weekend), and I have things to say about Sceptile. In my opinion, Sceptile is an unhealthy force for the NeverUsed tier due to it's overwhelming Speed stat, power and versatility in having three effective sets, some of them beating another set's supposed checks and counters, but in my opinion what makes Sceptile so unhealthy is how it affects a large number of Pokemon negatively. I will cite some examples of these negatively effected mons in this post.

Base 110 Speed tier mons

Sceptile's presence in the tier have made the 110 Base Speed tier a lot less valuable and scary. To show you an example of this, just look at the Viability Ranking. Pokemon like Tauros and Archeops have all moved down in ranking due to reasons including Sceptile's presence making them a lot easier to revenge kill. Even Floatzel, who before Sceptile came in was a really anti-meta mon thanks to it's 115 Speed, has bumped down to B- Rank, pretty much all due to Sceptile. Sceptile's presence has also made Scarfers almost an essential part of offensive teams so they can't get stomped on by Sceptile and it's Speed. Scarfers were generally frowned upon until Sceptile came in, and look how it's changed since it has came in. It's also made Swellow, the one thing besides Ninjask and Electrode that can outspeed Sceptile, a lot more popular as well, showing you the influence it has on the tier.

Sceptile's Effect on Sweepers

While most sweepers can outspeed and kill Sceptile after a Speed boost, some of them can't, and have lowered down in viability as a result. The easiest example of this is Carracosta, who before Sceptile's appearance was a great Shell Smash sweeper with it's typing and power and also a cool defensive Stealth Rocker. Sadly, Sceptile coming into NU has greatly lowered it's viability to C rank, thanks to Carracosta not being able to outspeed Sceptile at +2. This is the main reason why people have been running Shell Smash Barbaracle over SS Costa: it's ability to outspeed Sceptile after a boost. Before Sceptile came into the tier, Barbaracle was at like B rank, and Carracosta was at like A-. Now thanks to Sceptile, Barb is A, and Costa is C, all because of Sceptile's crazy Speed tier.

Sceptile's Effect on Offensive Grass types

While defensive Grass-types weren't exactly affected by Sceptile in NU, offensive Grass-types such as Lilligant and Shiftry have taken a hit with it coming down into the tier, thanks to Sceptile's versatility and Speed. Lilligant is perhaps the most affected, as Sceptile doesn't need to set up in order to outpace most of the tier, and is powerful right off the bat as well, making Lilligant a lot less splashable and useful on a lot of teams. Ludicolo is also affected, as it needs Rain to be fast (Unless it's Scarf Ludicolo), while Sceptile is fast right off the bat.

As you can see from these examples, Sceptile and it's Speed tier and versatility have made a lot of Pokemon less viable in the NeverUsed tier, and while it has made Pokemon such as Sliggoo more viable and popular, it still doesn't make up for it's unhealthy presence in the tier due to it influencing the drop in usage of the once feared Base 110-115 Speed tier, the rise in usage of Choice Scarfed mons, making sweepers that can't outspeed it such as Carracosta suffer in viability, and also influencing it's fellow Grass-types as well, and that is why if I do get reqs, I will be voting to Ban Sceptile.

 

[Punchshroom]

Now I can't say I don't utterly enjoy using Sceptile and I'd prefer it to stay for sentimental reasons, but let's be real here: Sceptile is just a massive force of nature.

#Witty

The most apparent issue people have right now is with Life Orb Sceptile, as it sits in an excellent Speed tier and, unlike most Pokemon sitting in its Speed bracket, possesses both immense neutral power and exceptional coverage. This sheer attacking capability gives Sceptile practically unrivaled offensive potential, allowing it to holepunch, wallbreak, and threaten to sweep lategame all at once. While Sceptile does not possess the raw effectiveness of most of the suspects' 4 move coverage, Sceptile's threat level stems from how viable its moves are:

- Giga Drain: reliable STAB move, its healing effect offsetting LO recoil while being incredibly useful for an offensive Pokemon in general, synergizes incredibly well with Overgrow
- Leaf Storm: nuking move, easily up there as one of the most powerful neutral attacks in the tier (Timid LO Leaf Storm barely outdamages Modest Omastar's LO Hydro Pump)
- Hidden Power Ice: generally the most useful Hidden Power for Sceptile, doing solid damage to most of the bulkier Grass- and Flying-types in the tier
- Substitute: avoids status and Sucker Punch, can safely help inch Sceptile into Overgrow range for boosted Giga Drain
- Earthquake: primarily targets Poison-types, while nailing Fire-types for great damage
- Rock Slide: mainly takes down the 4x Rock-weak Flying-types in Scyther and Charizard, but still useful to do some damage to other Fire- and Flying-types
- Focus Blast: Hits more miscellaneous foes such as Sap Sipper Pokemon and a couple of Steel-types, but still handy for taking out Normal-types

Before one cites this as '4MSS', keep in mind that Sceptile doesn't need all of these moves to function well. Quite the contrary, Sceptile can handpick pretty much any combination of 4 of these moves and still do well due to how adaptable Sceptile is, which is just about as far away from 4MSS as you can get. Grass coverage isn't even that bad in NU, as the popularity of dual STAB Sceptile is a testament to this. This also makes Sceptile tricky to play around, as it can be difficult to discern Sceptile's coverage moves until it actually uses them.

The other aspect to Sceptile's dominance is that it boasts numerous advantages over other offensive Pokemon, even discounting its terrific power-to-speed ratio. Most of the premier offensive Pokemon in the tier suffer from an SR weakness and/or are prone to being worn down. Sceptile is none of those things; in fact Giga Drain allows it to circumvent the second problem almost entirely. You cannot discount even a 2% Sceptile if it can threaten to Overgrow Giga Drain something on your team for solid damage, allowing it to spring right back up and continue pummeling your team, and even try to manage its LO recoil correctly to fire off repeated boosted Giga Drains; this is especially scary coming from dual STAB Sceptile, as an Overgrow boosted Giga Drain followed by Leaf Storm (which may be Overgrow boosted as well) would not be something many Pokemon would enjoy taking at all. This kind of longevity means that Sceptile players are rarely punished and are often even rewarded for letting their Sceptile take non-fatal damage. For a Pokemon with that caliber of offensive presence, this is an absolutely disgusting advantage to have.

An argument I've seen is that Sceptile doesn't have a particularly powerful attack that can be spammed repeatedly, such as Fire Blast, Hydro Pump, Close Combat, and whatnot. However, Sceptile can come pretty close to replicating that with Substitute + Overgrow Giga Drain. Meanwhile, Sceptile's natural Speed and lack of a hazard weakness means that Sceptile hardly ever minds being forced to hit-and-run with Leaf Storm; this issue becomes even lessened if paired with Giga Drain, as it gives Sceptile longevity and an alternate reliable attacking move. Sceptile is barely hindered by its lack of a strong spammable attack, and Giga Drain is not far from fitting that bill as it is.

As for Sceptile counters, while they do exist, a good majority of them (examples can include Vileplume, Weezing, Xatu, Rotom-S) just end up feeling too specialized to counter Sceptile, by which I mean they have to tweak their EV spreads to accommodate for Sceptile's power and versatility but end up notably weakening their matchup against other threats. Probably the more glaring issue is just how well Sceptile does against the rest of the tier that forces most teams to fall back on these counters every time. Another note is how these counters tend to overlap in terms of how they are dealt with; the core I posted nearly a month back handily deals with nearly any Sceptile switch-in, and there are probably even more combinations of teammates out there. This isn't really too strong of a point against Sceptile, but it still bears some mentioning imo.

Meanwhile I feel the SD set is so far away from what I would consider Sceptile's most problematic attributes that I would barely even contribute it to Sceptile's brokenness (hell, it barely beats any of LO Sceptile's counters), but the LO set alone is just so amazingly effective at what it does that it is cause for concern.

 

[Vore Gidal]

I recently got reqs and while I think a lot of what has needed to be said about Sceptile has been said, I'd like to quickly reiterate rather than repeat what I think are some pertinent points being made. Its speed makes it incredibly menacing in itself, outspeeding much of the tier with the exception of Swellow or scarfers. Combined with Sceptile's power, it becomes, in my opinion, an overwhelming force that is threatening at any part of the game and is equally capable of wallbreaking, revenge killing, sweeping or just blowing chunks out of the opposing team in general. Life Orb Sceptile has incredible offensive prowess whereby it can outspeed and nuke the majority of the tier, especially with Leaf Storm, and its coverage can be tailored (HP Ice for Grass and Flying, Rock Slide for Charizard and Scyther etc.) without necessitating heavy team support to fill in the gaps in Sceptile's moveset, nor does this choice mitigate Sceptile's overarching ability to match up well against so much of the tier by itself. There's no detriment to running Sceptile and a pretty big detriment to not running dedicated Sceptile answers and I think Sceptile's negative influence is apparent in both the teambuilding stage and in practice during battle.

 

[Kiyo]

Hi, I overslept. So we're rescheduling the suspect tour to 60 minutes from the time of this post. Also due to popular demand we'll be hosting it on Pokemon Showdown main server, so come by the nu room.

edit: yeah i know thats the same time as Smogon Tour, sorry in advance

 

[peaswar]

{Let's discuss how the meta has changed with the Sawk ban, what are the things you can get away with now, not just how you're sad that your old friend Weezing doesn't like taking Leaf Storms. Let's try and solve Sceptile before we jump the gun.}
Shouldn't Weezing resist Grass?

 

[Ren-chon]

{Let's discuss how the meta has changed with the Sawk ban, what are the things you can get away with now, not just how you're sad that your old friend Weezing doesn't like taking Leaf Storms. Let's try and solve Sceptile before we jump the gun.}
Shouldn't Weezing resist Grass?

Yeah, it does, but a Leaf Storm coming from a Life Orb Sceptile hits so insanely hard that Weezing can't afford to switch in more than once.
252 SpA Life Orb Sceptile Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Weezing: 159-187 (47.6 - 55.9%) -- 25.8% chance to 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
And that's not even considering rocks. Just posting this to answer his question, so sorry for the lack of content on my post n_n

 

[Brawlfest]

Yeah, it does, but a Leaf Storm coming from a Life Orb Sceptile hits so insanely hard that Weezing can't afford to switch in more than once.
252 SpA Life Orb Sceptile Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Weezing: 159-187 (47.6 - 55.9%) -- 25.8% chance to 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
And that's not even considering rocks. Just posting this to answer his question, so sorry for the lack of content on my post n_n

solution: av weezing
252 SpA Life Orb Sceptile Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Weezing: 70-84 (20.9 - 25.1%) -- 0% chance to 4HKO

honestly these new niggas don't know what innovation is im not even sorry for the lack of content in this post

 

[Brawlfest]

solution: av weezing
252 SpA Life Orb Sceptile Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Weezing: 78-94 (23.3 - 28.1%) -- 84.7% chance to 4HKO

honestly these new niggas don't know what innovation is im not even sorry for the lack of content in this post

solution: SD natural gift sceptile

Sceptile @ Starf Berry
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Natural Gift
- Swords Dance
- Acrobatics
- Leaf Blade

+2 252+ Atk Starf Berry Sceptile Natural Gift (100 BP Psychic) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Weezing: 306-362 (91.6 - 108.3%) -- 50% chance to OHKO

Honestly I already handled the future shift of the meta seriously somebody needs to start paying me

 

[Froggyboy]

solution: SD natural gift sceptile

Sceptile @ Starf Berry
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Natural Gift
- Swords Dance
- Acrobatics
- Leaf Blade

+2 252+ Atk Starf Berry Sceptile Natural Gift (100 BP Psychic) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Weezing: 306-362 (91.6 - 108.3%) -- 50% chance to OHKO

Honestly I already handled the future shift of the meta seriously somebody needs to start paying me

solution: payapa berry belch weezing
Weezing @ Payapa Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Modest Nature
- Belch
- Whatever else you want to run on Weezing

+2 252+ Atk Starf Berry Sceptile Natural Gift (100 BP Psychic) vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Payapa Berry Weezing: 153-181 (45.9 - 54.3%) -- 53.1% chance to 2HKO
0+ SpA Weezing Sludge Wave vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Sceptile: 284-336 (101 - 119.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO (belch on calc when?)

 

[boltsandbombers]

Ok, enough with the joking around, one joke was enough and just tacking more on really isn't helping at all. Please keep the discussion serious, any more posts that are completely off topic and joking will be deleted.

 

[Nash.]

I'd like to give some feedback on my experience of the suspect ladder while getting reqs. There was a lot of sceptile being used on the ladder which would seem natural due to the possibility of Sceptile leaving would make people more entitled to use. It was interesting to see the various of Sceptile sets being used. Swords Dance, life orb special, life orb 4 attacks physical, mixed, sub SD/sub 3 attacks. It was interesting to see all the variations of the Sceptile since i hadn't had much experience with NU pre-test. After getting reqs i decided to rethink of the ladder and how Sceptile being in the tier affected the meta. My impression on the ladder is that it was difficult at times to deal with sceptile. my go to check for Sceptile (being ferroseed) could easily get 2hko'd by focus blast or hp fire. My other check being Garbodor still gets destroyed if SD earthquaked. So even with having 2 decent checks to Sceptile in made it hard to switch into until accurately knowing the set it is running. If i switch into a focus blast then my ferro would be 2hko'd and lost, or if it sets up an SD and can EQ my garbodor for a clean KO.

TLDR: I believe im leaning more towards the BAN of Sceptile from NU due to my experiences on the ladder.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Gonna hijack this thread since it's socially acceptable to post cool sets without replays and I barely ever save replays (bad rule imo, creative moveset thread is dead).

Mr. 85 (Tauros) @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Climb
- Iron Head
- Fire Blast
- Substitute

So this guy doesn't need earthquake that badly since fireblast is doing more to most steels and iron head is doing more to most rocks. Tauros 2hko's a shitton of mons but often requires an annoying prediction to do so. With substitute, you can reduce the impact of the prediction part at the cost of 25% hp. Sub can also be very useful when your opponent sacs something on tauros (which is rather common since he's such a monster). Finally, sub is an excellent way of bypassing sucker punch, especially on tauros since no one ever expects a tauros to not attack.

Swanna @ Life Orb
Ability: Big Pecks
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Scald
- Air Slash/Hurricane
- Substitute
- Endeavor

Came up with this trying to make an offensive set that punches holes in stall teams. Swanna's coverage is amazing, but this gen, it faces an extreme counter in the form of lanturn. With this set, swanna can take him down, just like he can take a whole lot of things annoying your team at the cost of it's life. Substitute and your life orb give you a good control over your hp and once your hp is low enough, you can endeavor whatever is walling your team to a ridiculous amount of hp. If you had an intact sub, you can even pull off the kill after that. Ghosts are usualy a pain to this tactic when used on other mons such as tauros, but swanna air slashes gourgeist and outspeeds rotom and haunter for important damage leaving only mismagius as a relevant ghost stopping you. swanna hits pretty hard and has dope stab coverage making it hard to play around it for your opponent that desperately wants to save that one mon you decided to endeavor. Also note that lanturn's only electric move is usualy volt switch, so he doesn't even counter you so well as with sub, he'll have to switch back in after each hit giving you endeavor opportunities.

Note: don't forget to take in consideration endeavor is affected by LO recoil

EDIT: peaswar I don't know, back in the dayz, the np thread was for general meta discussion. I know this has no link with sceptile which is the suspect, but the last np thread is locked so I just posted it here. I guess I could have waited the next one, but I didn't...

 

[peaswar]

Gonna hijack this thread since it's socially acceptable to post cool sets without replays and I barely ever save replays (bad rule imo, creative moveset thread is dead).

Mr. 85 (Tauros) @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Climb
- Iron Head
- Fire Blast
- Substitute

So this guy doesn't need earthquake that badly since fireblast is doing more to most steels and iron head is doing more to most rocks. Tauros 2hko's a shitton of mons but often requires an annoying prediction to do so. With substitute, you can reduce the impact of the prediction part at the cost of 25% hp. Sub can also be very useful when your opponent sacs something on tauros (which is rather common since he's such a monster). Finally, sub is an excellent way of bypassing sucker punch, especially on tauros since no one ever expects a tauros to not attack.

Swanna @ Life Orb
Ability: Big Pecks
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Scald
- Air Slash/Hurricane
- Substitute
- Endeavor

Came up with this trying to make an offensive set that punches holes in stall teams. Swanna's coverage is amazing, but this gen, it faces an extreme counter in the form of lanturn. With this set, swanna can take him down, just like he can take a whole lot of things annoying your team at the cost of it's life. Substitute and your life orb give you a good control over your hp and once your hp is low enough, you can endeavor whatever is walling your team to a ridiculous amount of hp. If you had an intact sub, you can even pull off the kill after that. Ghosts are usualy a pain to this tactic when used on other mons such as tauros, but swanna air slashes gourgeist and outspeeds rotom and haunter for important damage leaving only mismagius as a relevant ghost stopping you. swanna hits pretty hard and has dope stab coverage making it hard to play around it for your opponent that desperately wants to save that one mon you decided to endeavor. Also note that lanturn's only electric move is usualy volt switch, so he doesn't even counter you so well as with sub, he'll have to switch back in after each hit giving you endeavor opportunities.

Note: don't forget to take in consideration endeavor is affected by LO recoil

I am quite baffled on how this relates to Sceptile, I am sure there is a thread somewhere for showing your pokemon off

 

[erisia]

I guess the issue is that you haven't linked these sets as getting any better or worse in the current meta. I think they could be pretty good but you're probably better off posting them in the creative sets thread and asking there if the rule on replays can be removed. For the record I feel like getting one good replay of a set isn't too hard (or it isn't a set worth posting about) and it's a good way to prevent people from spamming theorymon.

To avoid this being off-topic, my thoughts on the Sceptile meta are a little less complicated than they were for Sawk. While Sawk certainly made certain Pokemon less viable in comparison, such as Scarf Primeape and Pinsir, it doesn't seem to do this nearly as much as Sceptile. Sceptile makes Pokemon such as Tauros and Archeops considerably worse due to its better Speed tier and even better power on occasion (special attackers are generally harder to wall than physical attackers anyways, and Sceptile has coverage for common special walls), and it also makes Grass-types such as Lilligant and Shiftry harder to justify unless you're building a team around them (and often that team is Sceptile + GRASS TYPE SPAM). Sceptile reduces the diversity of teambuilding considerably, and while I wouldn't consider this ban-worthy in itself, the fact that it can run both a deadly special set and a potent physical sweeper which both have almost completely different checks makes it very difficult to reliably build against. Even just running Substitute over Leaf Storm gives Sceptile a significantly different set of checks, and it makes Overgrow Giga Drain even more consistent. Generally the best policy is to just build around the special set and hope that your team doesn't get weakened enough to be swept by the physical set if it reveals itself. You can somewhat predict what set it's going to run if you're paying attention but it's still not certain. Sure something like Swellow is faster and Boomburst is more spammable than Leaf Storm, but the power drop is significant and Swellow's predictability makes it much more manageable.

I think the fact that Sceptile has speed, power, and versatility all in one makes it too threatening to stay. So I'd go for SCAN BEPTILE.

 

[DouglasFalcon]

To me, what makes Sceptile suspect worth is not actually its power, its versatility or its speed, but the combination of the three.This leads Sceptile to outclass a lot of pokémon in their roles, reducing the variety of viable pokémon which is notoriously unhealty for a metagame. Not only that, but Sceptile presence in NU means that its base 120 speed becomes crucial to consider when building a team. And this means then even less pokémon are viabile, because they just can't reach this speed tier.
Apart from these things, Sceptile is not broken imo. Its power is quite mediocre without a boost or when it's not using Leaf Storm, and it actually has some true counters that it can't get past even with its vast coverage. But the insane restriction to the metagame viability leads me to believe that Sceptile is unhealty for NU and therefore should be BANNED

 

[Raseri]

Voting thread

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/oras-nu-stage-12-suspect-voting.3568299/

 

[Raseri]

Sceptile has been banned

 

[Raseri]

tagging The Immortal

 

[AmazingAli]

gotta love that ban
i hope to get rhydon back to S and other remaining one's
cheers !!! <3

 

[Complicating]

Is it okay if we use this thread (at this point) to discuss how the NU meta will change/revert/adapt now that Sceptile has been banned from NU? I'd like to see what people think the "new" meta will be like and where the central focuses of the Meta will be. For a start, Gurdurr was pooled up to the RU tier (goodbye old friend. We will miss having you in NU). If one of any of the moderators or co-leaders would prefer not seeing a discussion for thoughts and ideas about the new meta in the thread, let it be known and do whatever seems fit.
(I won't post anything regarding my question until there's some form of confirmation about it. My apologies if I'm out of line here or something.)