np: OU Suspect Testing Round 4 - Blaze of Glory

Specially defensive Jirachi is really good. It can't handle everything but Hurricane-spammers and Latios get dealt with nicely.

I still think Trick Room is best with Reuniclus. It's amazing how many times it's turned a probable loss into a win for me. Still having a hard time seeing it being called broken, as no matter what three move combination it picks, a few common things can beat it, and it doesn't take repeated hits as well as I'd like. A top tier threat for sure but it can be handled all right.

Ok,

THE ENEMY said:

I'm not done arguing about this. Its imprudent just to dismiss an argument simply because you dont agree with it.

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It's not the fact that I don't agree with it, it's because you're presenting your thoughts as facts without backing them up with solid reasonings.

On to your points. Lati twins lose to Reuncules (not CM roar Latias, which is an overcentralized counter to begin with) so im not sure what you meant. If they are Specd, they are univested, which means they are OHKO'd by a Trick Room Shadown Ball. If Reuniclus has a CM up, he can survive a hit, and OHKO back with Shadow Ball. Either way, if he gets scared, a simple no penalty switch out will occur.

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Stop assuming that Reuniclus has calm mind\trick room\focus blast\shadow ball\psyshock\psychic\hidden power fire all on the same set. This is just impossible. Every set Reuniclus can run has counters and checks. And no, the Lati twins can actually beat Reuniclus 1 vs 1 in most situations, not to mention that roar\calm mind Latias just laughs at it.

Perish song not the best solution, as eveyone knows, and encore users all fear Reuncules' moves to begin with, so maybe the second time they encore his trick room or CM, they eat a Psychic instead.... Either way, if he gets scared, a simple no penalty switch will occur.

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Yeah, obviously. The same can be said with every counter to every sweeper in the game. Gliscor counters Excadrill when at full health, but it no longer does at 50%. Same with encore\perish song users. Also, the fact that it's not the best solution doesn't mean that it's not a viable one. Have you ever tried these strategies??? Then again it's just that you need to adapt to a given threat instead of wanting to ban it.

Again, it doesnt come down to prediction or centralization as you think im saying. It comes down to MAGIC GUARD. Magic Guard is now on a powerful and terrific pokemon, making it too powerful.

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Then again, "too powerful" means absolutely nothing. Prove your claimings showing us damage calculations and actual in game scenarios or we'll just assume that you don't even know what you're talking about.

eh psycho shock cm reuniclus beats any lati@s without any single problem except trick variants which are duhhhhbvious.

oh and if you only use cm roar latias to stop that same reuniclus then youre in deep shit as last mon reuniclus will tear your shit backwards.

They beat psycho shock-less variants. As stated before you can use different checks once you know the set. CM Psycho shock Reuniclus has troubles with other Pokemon though and loses to SD Gliscor which is quite common atm.

Also, even when at +1 the standard CM Reuniclus takes 61,7 ~ 72,8% from Latios' specs DM which isn't "without any single problem" in my opinion. And as you stated there's always trick to scare it away.

All of you whining to ban something: First read Dougjustdoug's Characteristics of a desirable metagame and then proceed to study Sirlin's Playing to Win Part 1 and 2.

Seriously.

Warning: Inexperienced Reuniclus summary coming up.

Okay, I'll admit that I haven't had much of a chance to play the metagame due to a lack of consistent net access right now, but all of those campaigning for Reuniclus' ban seem to be missing a key thing right now.
Let me just try to summarise what I've read of the argument here:

For the Ban:
- Magic Guard preventing status/entry hazards
-> Doesn't prevent all status, just burn/poison
-> Doesn't stop your other Pokemon from taking entry hazard damage
- Shuts down full stall
-> So do many other Pokemon that can boost/heal (e.g. RestTalk sets)
Against the Ban:
- There are obviously several big counters to Reuniclus
-> Specialised counters means overcentralisation
--> The counters aren't specific to Reuniclus, they just fill that role as well
--> So did many other Pokemon in Gen4 OU (e.g. Scizor -> Heatran)
-> Some counter-moves (e.g. Encore/Pursuit) aren't available easily
--> The main Pursuiters (Scizor/Tar/Metagross) are good regardless and Encorers are able to switch in and Encore faster (or at least survive a hit on a misprediction)
- Suffers from 'Moveset Syndrome' - can't get all the moves it needs for coverage

Note that nothing on this list ends in favour of a ban. I'd like to see some counter-arguments for those points, ideally.
Personally, I think prediction should be considered, but only misprediction. It's one thing to say "The Reuniclus can predict the attack and switch/heal" - that's sometimes a lot easier said than done - but one misprediction against that Pokemon shouldn't be the end of everything. So, to all those for/against the ban, do you think mispredicting the Reuniclus attack/set ONCE is going to lead to a loss for your team?

The main thing, though, is the 'overcentralisation' point. Gen4 Scizor was a HUGE threat in OU, and pretty much forced the metagame towards Fire attacks & Steel resists, as has already been said. So the metagame shifted and created something that was still balanced but took a lot of careful consideration to work in. That is what Reuniclus does - Taunt is not specific to him and shuts him down quite well (assuming he's unboosted/a TR variant.) It also allows full stall to have a better chance against him by preventing Recover. Roar does a good job of shutting down the CM sets early on, which still gives SR damage to the new Pokemon (if nothing else), and Unaware manages the same thing at any time in the match. Spiritomb is another nice thing for stall to have against him, and is another Pokemon that still has its uses past Reuniclus (albeit much more limited). Finally, the other top threats all counter Reuniclus' different sets - it's just a question of knowing what set you're against. As such, I find it impossible to see Reuniclus as broken; it's just a nice answer to the current metagame that is still quite easily countered (and could force a slight shift in meta, for all that I can't see it being that good.)

As a point, I want to ask all of you campaigning to ban Reuniclus: assume you're against a team of lead/Tyranitar/Scizor/Lati@s/filler/filler and SR is up. If it's a CM Reuniclus, where do you get a chance to set up? If it's a TR Reuniclus, do you have a way around all of the opposing trio?
And, far more importantly, would you see the opposing team as being bad if Reuniclus was not in the metagame?

Just to finish this up, I'm going to list, off the top of my head, some very obvious counters to Reuniclus, regardless of set, that can at least force it out and gain some momentum and SR damage:
- Fast Taunters (Whimsicott, Gliscor, Aerodactyl and Deoxys come to mind)
- Tyranitar/Scizor/Lati@s (as mentioned earlier, depends on the opposing set)
- Spiritomb
- SpDefensive healers (Vaporeon/Jellicent were mentioned?)
- HaxRachi (if nothing else, stops it coming in w/o TR already in place)
- Pursuit
- Mold Breaker/something to change its ability

That's... a pretty wide variety of counters there. I wouldn't call that overcentralising.

By extension mentioning Scizor as a counter to the little green fart, Escavalier is also an absolutely solid counter to it as well since even if you switch its still going to cripple your switch in.

Actaully Escavalier is a better Reuniclus counter than Scizor as it has better SpD, access to megahorn and is among the few Pokemon that are naturally slower than Reuniclus meaning that it can take advantage of trick room to outspeed and ohko the psychic Pokemon.

The only problem with Escavalier is that it has serious movepool problems and isn't as useful as Scizor on most teams.

To those who say Reuniclus breaks stall, what exactly does Reuniclus do to a) Deoxys-D and b) Mew?

Deoxys-D: The standard set Deo runs is hazard(Spikes)/Taunt/Recover/Knock Off. CM variants of Reuniclus hit Deo for little damage off of its huge SpDef while DeoD Taunts Reu, heals damage with Recover and Lefties and can actually beat Reu 1 on 1 with only Knock Off since that removes Lefties. As for TR variants, they get Taunted, rendering them uselessly slow and/or Knock Off`d of their Life Orb providing then as easy fodder for whatever pokemon is best equipped to kill Reu on your team (fun fact: Tyranitar is on 95% of viable stall teams {using personal experience, viable being defined as a team able to get a rating of 1100+, experience coming from both middle and top of ladder).

Mew is less of a counter but is still able to Taunt Reu and heal off whatever damge Reu can do, as well as being able to burn any potential incoming Pursuiters.

So yeah, those are two amazing pokes for stall that aren`t beaten at all by Reuniclus--if nothing else, Mew can PP stall CM Reuniclus.

Just to finish this up, I'm going to list, off the top of my head, some very obvious counters to Reuniclus, regardless of set, that can at least force it out and gain some momentum and SR damage:
- Fast Taunters (Whimsicott, Gliscor, Aerodactyl and Deoxys come to mind)
- Tyranitar/Scizor/Lati@s (as mentioned earlier, depends on the opposing set)
- Spiritomb
- SpDefensive healers (Vaporeon/Jellicent were mentioned?)
- HaxRachi (if nothing else, stops it coming in w/o TR already in place)
- Pursuit
- Mold Breaker/something to change its ability

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Slight nitpicking here.

Firstly yes, Taunt shuts down Reuniclus however I doubt Reuniclus will dare set up on a Taunt user not to mention all of the taunters mentioned are somewhat risky switch-ins.

-Tyranitar/Scizor/Latias. Yeah ill give you these and they are the traditional counters to Reuniclus. CM + Roar Latias loses to Last poke Reuniclus though and it also has to watch out for Psyshock Varients. Tyranitar also has to watch out for Focus Blast which does a shitload and its not exactually hard to predict a T-Tar switch in (especialy if its your opponents only Reuniclus check)

-Spiritomb. Yeah o.k it walls it on the other hand as someone who has actually used Spiritomb as a Reuniclus check in the past it has limited use in the metagame. Especially since if you are using Spiritomb its probs on stall and therefore used for spinblocking making it slightly easier to wear down.

-SDef healers yep fine although I don't see what the hell Vaporeon does to Reuniclus bar Roar in which case Reuniclus sweeps as a last poke

HaxRachi- Yep thats fine

Pursuit- I disagree with this being a counter. To start with, only Scizor and T-Tar can dare Pursuit Reuniclus. In addition, both take a fair bit from Focus Blast, AND Reuniclus can actually survive Pursuits with ease if it stays in. For example I brought in my CB Tyranitar in on Reuniclus, got owned by Focus Blast, Pursuited which it promptly survived and killed it off with a second Focus Blast. So no I don't really consider it a "counter".

-Mold Breaker, So what...Haxorus which dies upon switching in? Also ffs if we go around suggesting shitty moves like Gastro Acid to deal with Reuniclus then it just goes to show how much people are grasping at straws to check it.

Also regarding your "team" (with the top 3 Reuniclus counters -_-) 2 of those are beaten by TR Reuniclus so that just leaves Scizor stopping it from sweeping. Also something to remember is that I can go out and build a Reuniclus proof team in a few minutes. However it might also need to check things such as Excadrill or Scraggly or something.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that with a pokemon or too in support its exstremely easy for it to sweep. For example Mew, Deoxys D, Lati@s all check Reuniclus but all can be lured out and then nailed by a CB Tyranitar or something. Maybe im straying a little close to the "predicting prediction" or X sweeps if Y takes out Z but not if G removes D" arguments but Reuniclus is a very frustrating pokemon to deal with.

"Pursuit" really boils down to T-Tar and Scizor.

Vaporeon only counters with Yawn or Roar, since Scald can't kill it and burn does no damage.

Too tired to argue on other side, not enough experience to give an educated opinion, but those two things jumped out at me.

To give you an idea of Reuniclus's relative bulk, with 252/252 Bold, Choice Scarf Garchomp with Adamant and 252 EVs on Outrage comes just shy of a 2HKO. With Choice Band, its always a 2HKO. Garchomp with Swords Dance is always a 2HKO.

So basically, if Reuniclus wants to survive hits, it needs max to heavy investment. If it does run this, it loses out on a lot kill power. Even then, it needs to be at full HP to take hits appropriately, and its going to die quickly without Recover.

The thing with Reuniclus is that you have to keep it in mind every time to team build, which causes mild centralization. Same goes for many threats, but you have to extra cautious when facing Reuniclus, e.g Keeping Scizor at a health amount of HP. Most players have adjusted to Reuniclus being in the metagame, but banning it would free up some space on standard teams.

Having spent a little more time laddering, all supicions that Reuniclus is not broken have been erased from my mind. Haxrachi is the only solid counter because the others take so much damage on the switchin from Focus Miss that they can't reliably beat it. It is also incredibly easy to pair Reuniclus with Magnezone and basically cut the counter number to nil. I guess Ttar is still possible but it's not really a solid counter - more of a check, since you can't switch into Focus Blast.
To use the example of my team, I use Swords Dance Scizor to beat Reuniclus. If the opponent has Magnezone, my options are to be swept by Reuniclus or to have my Scizor killed by Magnezone and then get swept by Reuniclus. I don't want to use Tyranitar or Spiritomb on every team. Deo-D and Mew also need to be in relatively good shape to counter it so the opponent forces you to only use 5 Pokemon just by using Reuni. If that's not broken then say, Garchomp definately isn't either. There are lots of things that can stop +2 Garchomp if they have full health. Additionally vs. deo and mew fetus can just switch out and then you are incurring entry hazard damage while it is not. (incidentally if clus doesn't get banned this round I'm going to start abusing it with toxic spikes and Magnezone because once specifics are eliminated it can often guarentee a win.

I am thinking when the 3rd version comes with the move tutors, we might see a few more pokes than can counter Reuniclus. It seems to be a top OU poke but not banworthy imho.

Jcpdragonx said:

The thing with Reuniclus is that you have to keep it in mind every time to team build, which causes mild centralization. Same goes for many threats, but you have to extra cautious when facing Reuniclus, e.g Keeping Scizor at a health amount of HP. Most players have adjusted to Reuniclus being in the metagame, but banning it would free up some space on standard teams.

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I don't even know why you'd bother bringing that up.

If we banned Tyranitar, that'd free up a lot of space too. Or Ferrothorn. Hell, if we banned Ferrothorn, there'd be a LOT more room on teams.

Reuniclus isn't hard to prepare for while team building, and he's even easier to handle due to Team Preview. If you need Scizor at high health to deal with it, you know you'll have to at the start of the match.

FastFlygon said:

Having spent a little more time laddering, all supicions that Reuniclus is not broken have been erased from my mind. Haxrachi is the only solid counter because the others take so much damage on the switchin from Focus Miss that they can't reliably beat it. It is also incredibly easy to pair Reuniclus with Magnezone and basically cut the counter number to nil. I guess Ttar is still possible but it's not really a solid counter - more of a check, since you can't switch into Focus Blast.

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Most OU threats nowadays don't have common OU counters, just checks. This isn't new.

FastFlygon said:

I don't want to use Tyranitar or Spiritomb on every team.

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You don't have to. You can use the plenty of other options mentioned in this thread. I hate it when people do this.

FastFlygon said:

Deo-D and Mew also need to be in relatively good shape to counter it so the opponent forces you to only use 5 Pokemon just by using Reuni. If that's not broken then say, Garchomp definately isn't either. There are lots of things that can stop +2 Garchomp if they have full health. Additionally vs. deo and mew fetus can just switch out and then you are incurring entry hazard damage while it is not. (incidentally if clus doesn't get banned this round I'm going to start abusing it with toxic spikes and Magnezone because once specifics are eliminated it can often guarentee a win.

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If Reuiniclus switches out, its either being hit by Pursuit, damaging the replacement, or allowing the opponent a turn to set up.

I mean, if I know my opponent is going to switch out Reuniclus if I switch in my check, wouldn't it be obvious that that would give me a perfect opportunity to sweep?

i.e. Swap in Volcarona on Reuniclus. They switch, you Quiver Dance.

Also, Deoxys-D isn't being used. If you think its broken, then by all means abuse it.

Ulevo said:

I don't even know why you'd bother bringing that up.

If we banned Tyranitar, that'd free up a lot of space too. Or Ferrothorn. Hell, if we banned Ferrothorn, there'd by a LOT more room on teams.

Reuniclus isn't hard to prepare for while team building, and he's even easier to handle due to Team Preview. If you need Scizor at high health to deal with it, you know you'll have to at the start of the match.

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Team preview really changed a lot this gen. Could be the real factor why Reuniclus isn't too unbearable seeing that with TP, you have a heads-up on what they are bringing and what you need to keep healthy later in the match.

Cheapoman said:

Team preview really changed a lot this gen. Could be the real factor why Reuniclus isn't too unbearable seeing that with TP, you have a heads-up on what they are bringing and what you need to keep healthy later in the match.

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To be honest, Team Preview is a big reason a lot of things are probably not getting the axe. In Gen IV, Pokemon without reliable ways to check or counter them easily that were threatening were a fairly big problem because you never knew if the opponent had them or not, so you could never know what to sacrifice in a match in order to win unless you scouted really, really well. Even then, it wasn't always sufficient.

With Team Preview though, you can handle things with surprise movesets, creativity, and better prediction since you know your opponents assets, and can manage your remaining resources.

- Shuts down full stall
-> So do many other Pokemon that can boost/heal (e.g. RestTalk sets)

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Stall should be equipped to deal with last mon stat uppers. The issue is that they are generally mono attackers and therefore far easier to wall. However, because of magic guard, reuniclus doesn't fear toxic and can run a coverage move, which is huge. It's simply not the same situation.

A lot of times when I am fighting an opponent with Reuniclus, if I notice they'r not willing to commit to keeping it in and switching whenever I bring in something that threatens it, I typically save my Trick until its one of if not the last Pokemon. That way I cripple it without worrying about it swapping to something else, and it means I'm usually fighting 6v5. Since this usually involves my use of Latias, if my opponent isn't running Tyranitar, it's often easy.

Jcpdragonx said:

The thing with Reuniclus is that you have to keep it in mind every time to team build, which causes mild centralization. Same goes for many threats, but you have to extra cautious when facing Reuniclus, e.g Keeping Scizor at a health amount of HP. Most players have adjusted to Reuniclus being in the metagame, but banning it would free up some space on standard teams.

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This is exactly what is wrong with this community has become. Let me summarize your post:

"I don't want to think about my opponent's pokemon when making a team, so let's just ban everything that's popular."

Most of the people posting in this thread would flip a shit if they were playing in the past gens. The same people complaining about how they have to think to counter Reuniclus would ragequit every GSC match when they saw a Snorlax. You think it's broken? Why not use one of the dozens of counters we've listed and own opponents who are trying to use it? That will cut down on this "centralization" real quick. This thread has turned from legitimate discussion of potential threats to a soapbox where every random user can complain about pokemon they can't be bothered to beat.

"Overcentralization" is the biggest joke of an argument I've ever heard. Something is popular, therefore it must be too good? If you apply that logic every round, you will end up banning literally everything. Overcentralization isn't even a word. Stop using it like popularity decides what is good.

jrrrrrrr said:

This is exactly what is wrong with this community has become. Let me summarize your post:

"I don't want to think about my opponent's pokemon when making a team, so let's just ban everything that's popular."

Most of the people posting in this thread would flip a shit if they were playing in the past gens. The same people complaining about how they have to think to counter Reuniclus would ragequit every GSC match when they saw a Snorlax. You think it's broken? Why not use one of the dozens of counters we've listed and own opponents who are trying to use it? That will cut down on this "centralization" real quick. This thread has turned from legitimate discussion of potential threats to a soapbox where every random user can complain about pokemon they can't be bothered to beat.

"Overcentralization" is the biggest joke of an argument I've ever heard. Something is popular, therefore it must be too good? If you apply that logic every round, you will end up banning literally everything. Overcentralization isn't even a word. Stop using it like popularity decides what is good.

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Jrrrrrrr, what is your take on weather? You seem to have the disposition of preferring to have top threats remain within OU (such as the recently banned Blaziken and Manaphy) while going against the abilities like Drought and Drizzle. I'd like to hear your reasons for these preferences, particularly since you seem more inclined to actually find solutions to problems rather than find problems for solutions the way many posters here seem to do with supposedly "broken" Pokemon.

RotatingAtom said:

Popularity does not decide what is good. If something is good, it becomes popular. If it is very good, it becomes very popular, until "Crowd A" has it in every team, and "Crowd B" doesn't want to see it anymore because they're tired of it. Neither of those effects is a reason for a ban - however, if even Crowd A admits that the Pokémon in question is TOO good for a tier regardless of how fun they think it is to use it, we have a reason for a ban. [/complex sentence]

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Largely this.

Popularity does not decide what is good. If something is good, it becomes popular. If it is very good, it becomes very popular, until "Crowd A" has it on every team, and "Crowd B" doesn't want to see it anymore because they're tired of it. Neither of those effects is a reason for a ban - however, if even Crowd A admits that the Pokémon in question is TOO good for a tier regardless of how fun they think it is to use it, we have a reason for a ban. [/complex sentence]

I don't know why they call it Team Preview as if it's the official name of something, and even abbreviate it! More pressingly, it is also misleading to the nature of the mechanic.

A more accurate name would be Battle Box Check, since it's checking both your and your opponent's Battle Boxes, and selecting how many Pokémon to use, which ones, and in which order. People are forgetting that it is exactly what happens before battle in Pokémon Battle Revolution.

The difference is not just pedantic: Theorymon and Pokémon Online, which fails to simulate this mechanic, reduces it to a view of which Pokémon the opponent is already set on using.

I think before the server is edited to ban something, it should be upgraded so that people who updated it months ago aren't locked out of the ladder.

jrrrrrrr said:

This is exactly what is wrong with this community has become. Let me summarize your post:

"I don't want to think about my opponent's pokemon when making a team, so let's just ban everything that's popular."

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I'm not saying that, I'm saying you have to be extra careful and it is a top priority when your team building.

jrrrrrrr said:

"Overcentralization" is the biggest joke of an argument I've ever heard. Something is popular, therefore it must be too good? If you apply that logic every round, you will end up banning literally everything. Overcentralization isn't even a word. Stop using it like popularity decides what is good.

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Where did I say Overcentralization? Also, popularity is why Latios is still OU and Deoxys-N is banned.