np: UU Stage 10 - Suspect Test Round 1 - Let it Snow

[DetroitLolcat]

Mew staying UU wasn't much of a surprise. It's definitely a great, unpredictable Pokemon, but it can be revenged easily regardless of the set it's running and has some Speed issues.

Nasty Plot Mew is one of the best Special attackers in the tier because of its insane movepool, but 100 Special Attack scares no one when you're spamming 90-95 power moves. Plus, almost every revenge killer in the game can stop this Mew since UU's revenge killers often use Sucker Punch or Megahorn as attacks. Nasty Plot Mew is nice in that with a little damage it can destroy defensive teams, but it struggles against offense, gets revenged easily, etc.

Swords Dance Mew is arguably the best set in my opinion. SD Mew gets priority, bulk, a way to boost its stats, and decent Speed for a Physical sweeper. Unlike NP Mew, which commonly carries Leftovers to offset the lack of reliable recovery, SD Mew can step it up a notch with Life Orb. Unfortunately, that power boost is pretty negligible when your two reliable attacks are Zen Headbutt and a non-STAB Drain Punch. Sucker Punch is what makes SD Mew the best set in my opinion. If you can wear opponents down, SD Mew becomes an obnoxiously good cleaner. Heracross, Honchkrow, and Hitmontop may be able to defeat a Mew normally, but if you can wear them down to 30, 40% or so, then Mew isn't afraid of them anymore. Drain Punch's recovery is also great because if an opponent's Pokemon is at 40% or so, chances are that a Drain Punch will KO them at +2. If that's true, then you can forego the shaky Zen Headbutt and reclaim 20% of you health with a Drain Punch.

Baton Pass Mew is exactly what it says on the tin: a more versatile, less threatening Venomoth. Venomoth is by far the best Baton Passer in the tier because it can pass Quiver Dances. Meanwhile, Baton Pass Mew needs multiple turns to pass (Special) Attack boosts and Speed Boosts, giving the opponent two turns to react to the Mew user's strategy. On the other hand, Venomoth just QD's up for a turn, passes to Togekiss, and watches as Togekiss cleans up even the most prepared teams. Baton Pass Mew is nice because it can use two attack moves while Venomoth can only use one, but Venomoth can put people to sleep and choose one of two gruesome abilities to facilitate its passing.

If Mew was packing 110 or 120 Attack/SpA stats with that movepool, it'd be in the BL tier right now. However, Mew just isn't tough enough to bring UU to its knees.


Speaking of Venomoth, by God is it a good Pokemon. Venomoth+Togekiss is the most lethal BP chain in the game right now (eat your heart out, Nidoking). Togekiss' great coverage with Aura Sphere+Air Slash makes it an utter beast at +1/+1. Add in the Special Defense boost and it's practically invulnerable to Special attacks. Venomoth's Wonder Skin makes even teams prepared to counter it fail half the time, while Tinted Lens lets Venomoth flex its muscles at those who want to kill it before it can pass.

how is it still bl2 smh...

[silenced]

So...the only 100% reliable way to get rid of QD venomoth with a status move now is Roar from Fraxure or mold breaker druddigon?

...well shit.

Blastoise might want to think about running dragon tail over roar now, which makes me think it will encounter a new set of problems from doing that, mainly the accuracy and bulkier subs...

[DestinyUnknown]

I think that the Wonder Skin thing is pretty worrying... Venomoth was already a huge threat before this, and now all its common checks are gone or at least, made severely unreliable (think of stuff like Blastoise, Froslass, Suicune, Swampert, Restalk Snorlax etc), as they have a very slim chance of beating Venomoth due to its ability.... I guess your best bet now is Roar Empoleon (or Roar Zapdos ?) as they can't be worn down by Venomoth so they have a better chance of hitting Roar.

But yeah this sounds bullshit, fuck Venomoth.

[Ernesto]

My god Mew wasn't banned, pif is gonna have a heart attack.

Anyway, I'd like to chime in on WS Venomoth because I'd already commented on it once. If there's something that can change a battle outcome is a Whirlwind missing at exactly the wrong moment, you're using the unanimously called 'safest' phazing move, due to not being stopped by Soundproof—which is pretty much the only reason to use it over Roar on those that get both—, and suddenly you've got a +2,+2,+2 Venomoth powerful enough to kill your phazer. That picture has already been presented, but I'll say that I've been there about three months ago, which was the last time I used defensive Snorlax tbh, though at that moment I thought it was a bug because I read 'status moves' as in 'status inducing moves' (which probably happened to most of you, considering this wasn't debated before).

Now I'm gonna start talking about the virtue of having a 50% chance of evading Taunt when using Venomoth in the lead spot. Common Pokemon using Taunt, and some more uncommon, include Azelf, Mew, Sableye, Crobat, Froslass, and to a lesser extent Aerodactyl and Cobalion. Of all those, Sableye, Cobalion, and Froslass have no other way of dealing with the moth, so a miss could be pretty game-changing (it allows you to set up QD on Cobalion and Lass, or put Sableye to sleep). The rest all have much safer answers to Venomoth, being able to hit it for super effective damage and even KOing it in most cases. That said, by the same fact that KOing it now sounds much better that trying to Taunt it (hell, even Stone Edge's 80% accuracy suddenly becomes better than Taunt's 50% chance of hitting), I could easily see Focus Sash being usable on Venomoth trying to get an early advantage, especially if the user has backup options for a late-game sweep. Now it's gonna have a guaranteed QD on Crobat's face should it opt to attack, and then it will outspeed and be able to put it to sleep 75% of the time. That's just to get a better matchup against those Taunt users that outspeed it, but by no means should Venomoth's role be left as a lead. This is just exploring the possibility of actually winning matches from turn 1, which goes a long way to saying that Venomoth could indeed be deemed broken.

That, along with the fact that you can now have a second chance of putting something to sleep if Sleep Powder missed against Blastoise or Suicune while they Roared you out, makes the use of Venomoth mid-to-low risk/very high reward. RestTalk Snorlax, arguably one of the best common answers to Venomoth (though not very good outside of that), suddenly only has a 16,67% chance of Whirlwinding it out after it was put to sleep. That is a second QD, and suddenly Venomoth is at a place where it can actually beat Snorlax one on one (though it'll still take a while, lol)!
Now if D-Tail on Blastoise or Snorlax becomes a thing, it will only encourage Venomoth users to actually forgo Bug Buzz for Substitute, so it's not as if that'll make it any easier to beat... Not that I'm saying that it's worth it to run no attacks on Venomoth because I don't think so, but some people are gonna like the stakes, when Taunt has a 50% chance of missing and that way actually making up for not running any attacking move whatsoever. #venomothforubers2013 , 'nuff said

[hilarious]

i know i'm cherry picking from the paragraphs but sentences like these

While overly defensive team may struggle to break it, any well-built UU team should have a means of getting past it.

make me sad. yeah defensive teams aren't well-built teams anymore, for the most part even I think this is true. The senate had a chance to help fix this problem by attacking one of the greatest wallbreakers and has now clearly shown it rather protect several wallbreakers than a playstyle. i always thought a balanced tier was what we were seeking and i thought a balanced tier meant a tier where any playstyle (from the most offensive to the most defensive) could exist. the only defensive team i can make work now is hail stall my best non hail stall team for this metagame just has too many holes.

i have always thought i was justified in using this argument ever since sand was banned for the sake of a "better, more diverse" tier. is it just not applicable now because you guys do not like stall? are you willing to give subjectivity that much sway over how you decide to make tiers? if so all senate members should tell us, all should tell us exactly what you check off in your head to deem something is broken. yes the paragraphs do that to an extent but i'm talking about an overbearing thought process. this is especially true since the majority of senate members contributed little or no discussion on the forums (although pretty much all said a bunch on irc, not many people access that).

[JabbaTheGriffin*]

Let's assume full stall isn't viable at all (it can be). Would banning Mew solve the problem? No. Would banning Mew and Heracross solve the problem? No. Would banning Mew and Heracross and Victini solve the problem? No it would not. We could go on and on and on. The simple fact is that we were voting on Mew, not on whether we should make stall more viable. Stall being unviable (to a degree, it can still work but it needs to be very well put-together) seems to be a symptom of BW that permeates every tier. In OU, UU, RU, and NU, it is much easier to put together an offensive or balanced team than it is to put together a stall team. The power creep has made it insanely harder. If you really want stall to be as viable as it has been in the past you may as well ask kokoloko to suspect all of BW.

You could cherry-pick what I'm saying and say that Mew is simply better than those threats at wall-breaking and it's the main problem. But that's where we'll fundamentally disagree I guess, since I believe that Mew, while pretty good, is nowhere near the offensive threat that other Pokemon in the tier are. I find teams all across the board have an easier time dealing with Pokemon that need to set up before they can do any real damage. The real threats are usually the Pokemon that have insane initial power. Base 100 attack/spattack is not something to be too worried about, even after a boost.

So yeah, I get where you're coming from, but I just don't think Mew is the real problem here and unless we want to ban 5-10 Pokemon we'll just have to accept that BW has made Pokemon a much faster metagame.

[cim]

Originally Posted by Fat PK Gaming

Anyway, the issue with WS Venomoth is that common phazers now have a chance of failing when attempting to remove Venomoth, which translates to a free hit per miss for Venomoth. If you get unlucky and miss multiple times, you risk losing the match straight up! That's bullshit.

It's not NEARLY as bad as everyone is making it sound. You have to let something absorb the sleep, but even if Wonder Skin makes you miss on Venomoth, what stops you from just using Whirlwind on the turn it uses Baton Pass? Snorlax is really a big problem for Venomoth in general and while Wonder Skin is wonderful, it's not an auto-lose.

[Super Mario Bro]

Wow, unanimous vote to keep Mew around. Unexpected, but glorious news nonetheless!

Can we just keep UU like this and not change it at all? It's as good as it's going to get, IMO (in a good way). Though, I'm looking forward to Abomasnow's presence in the meta. He will probably make hail stall a force to be reckoned with.

[Ernesto]

Originally Posted by Fat cim

It's not NEARLY as bad as everyone is making it sound. You have to let something absorb the sleep, but even if Wonder Skin makes you miss on Venomoth, what stops you from just using Whirlwind on the turn it uses Baton Pass? Snorlax is really a big problem for Venomoth in general and while Wonder Skin is wonderful, it's not an auto-lose.

You're right, nothing's stopping you from phazing the receiver. However, any good player should keep Venomoth that has reached +2 in Special Attack on the field until the phazer is eliminated, Baton Passing out is, of course, a silly thing to do. The 50% miss chance essentially enables Venomoth to be able to deal with the phazer on its own, but you're right in saying that Snorlax is usually too big of a wall to get around. Unless you're planning on running max SpA on Venomoth, the only way it's winning against Snorlax is if it's a RestTalk variant which was forced to sleep. Then, it'll only have a 16,67% chance of Whirlwind actually hitting, meaning Venomoth will have a clear chance of beating it. Of course, this is all theorymonning, but we should expect WS Venomoth being a much bigger threat than Tinted Lens.

[cim]

Any Snorlax with Whirlwind almost certainly has Sleep Talk, so its odds go back up to normal, but Snorlax can just paralyze Venomoth directly anyway.

Phazers aren't even the best way to deal with Venomoth - a Choice Scarfer is, or any strong attacker with reasonable Special Defense. Wonder Skin is wonderful but people are REALLY freaking out about it when they just don't need to.

[DestinyUnknown]

| 54 | Chansey | 3.404% |
| 56 | Abomasnow | 3.179% |

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthr...94#post4523894

oh shit

[Honey boo boo]

OMG, chansey is back!!!!!! GG uuHail will finally not be a gimmick now.

[kokoloko*]

Ah! This should be an interesting suspect round.