RU Stage 3 Suspect Voting

[Oglemi*]

Eligible Voters

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1. ShakeItUp
2. badabing
3. EonADS
4. Texas Cloverleaf
5. Upstart
6. ala
7. Nails

You may vote Ban, Do Not Ban, or Abstain for any of these Pokemon. Remember, if you are unsure about a Suspect's tiering, do not vote to Abstain, vote Do Not Ban instead. Abstain is only an option for those who do not want to vote for a Suspect, for whatever reason. That is different from being uncertain where a Suspect should be tiered.

Also when voting, Council members please give a little description explaining your votes, since this is replacing the IRC-discussion aspect of the Council setting.

The suspect for this round is Porygon-Z. Remember, suspects only need a 4-3 majority to be banned.

Porygon-Z

Remember, all admins, supermods, or PR mods voting (coughNailscough), you need to delete your post in order to keep this a "blind" vote.

This thread will be open until Sunday, December 18 at 11:59 pm EST or until all votes are in.

[Nails]

Porygon-Z: Ban

It was really close and i could've gone either way, but the bulky agility set is too strong. There are checks and counters even, but with the exception of gallade there isn't anything that can take a hit and OHKO back, and most pokemon are 2hkoed. Munchlax is almost a liability in the tier atm, as he takes full damage from sr, spikes, tspikes, and hail, and when combined with no leftovers it's hard to keep him alive. It can only really check P-Z once and then it dies. The speed issues, while valid, are mostly patched up with agility, and with lum + ~176 hp evs he can live a lot. 135 SpA with modest and a +1 boost hits really really hard.

Specs isn't broken. As a lot of people have said it is slow and easy to revenge kill. Scarf has power issues and being locked into normal moves or unstabbed moves is bad. But bulky agility is too good.

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Do Not Ban

Porygon-Z has yet to demonstrate to me that it is appreciably powerful enough to be seriously considered to be banned. While it is a powerful Pokemon that can beat a number of teams right now, I believe this is due to it taking advantage of the primarily physical bias in the current metagame, as opposed to it being too strong for it. In the form of checks and counters to Porygon-Z, both offensive and defensive teams have viable options for defeating it. On stall, Slowking and Munchlax are both able to switch in and beat Porygon-Z; Slowking can paralyze it, crippling Porygon-Z, while Munchlax can sponge its attacks all day, and phaze it if it decides to boost. For offensive teams there is no shortage of Pokemon that are capable of outspeeding it and either killing it outright or putting it in range of a revenge kill, due to Porygon-Z's base 90 speed stat, which while by no means is poor, is hardly the speed necessary for an easy sweep.

I also do not believe that any of Porygon's individual sets are inherently broken, due to the fact that Porygon cannot OHKO or outspeed many Pokemon without a boost, and the fact that Porygon is not sufficiently bulky to easily obtain such a boost. Naturally these boosts can be obtained through use of items such as a Choice Scarf or Choice Specs, but the inherent costs of such boosts, the locking in of a move, negate the benefits supplied in my opinion.

To touch on a final point, much has been made of the fact that Porygon-Z can 1 or 2 HKO the entire game without fail with the assistance of a full Spikes complement. While this is certainly an impressive statistic, I do not believe that it is a viable reason to ban Porygon-Z, one because laying 3 layers of Spikes is not the easiest thing in the world, particularly when you aren't running a stall team, and two, because frankly spinning in this metagame is not difficult, with effective spinners such as Cryogonal and Kabutops that are able to threaten spinblockers, not to mention Hitmonchan who is capable of running Foresight to negate the ability of the Ghost to spinblock at all. Therefore I do not feel that hazard support is a viable argument to say that Porygon-Z is broken.

In summary, I do not believe Porygon-Z is broken in RU due to my opinion that it is not breaking the metagame, simply taking advantage of specially defensive deficiencies. That being said, with the future metagame shift upcoming, with Qwilfish and especially Krookodile leaving the tier, it is possible that Porygon-Z may prove itself to be too powerful at that time, thus I believe that a future suspect discussion on Porygon-Z may be necessary at a future suspect period.

[Upstart]

Ban- PZ is hands down the most powerful special attacker in the tier. He can single handily 2hko the entire tire. As a result no solid counters can switch in consistently and as such revenge killing is the primary means of disposing of PZ. The agility set is imo the best set as with a download boost and agility speed, one might as well say gg.

[ShakeItUp]

Do not ban

Porygon-Z may be strong with a massive base 135 Special Attack stat, but its 90 base Speed really deters it from doing anything too phenomenal in RU. A variety of threats outrun it, and it simply does not have the bulk to make up for it. It is also weak to Fighting, meaning that Pokemon such as Hitmonchan can really revenge kill it. Honchkrow and Entei can also finish off a weakened Porygon-Z pretty easily. It is also stopped cold by Munchlax, and it has a relatively hard time defeating Ferroseed even with Hidden Power Fighting. Choice Scarf variants can be played around, especially through the use of the ever-present Spikes and Stealth Rock.

[EonADS]

Okay, here goes something.

Porygon-Z: Do Not Ban

From what I've seen, Porygon-Z has two main sets. The scarf set, which is easily walled by stuff like Slowking and is surprisingly underpowered with a Timid nature and no boosting item, and the Specs set, which gains the power to 2HKO the majority of the teir at the cost of being very easy to revenge kill. Having used both, I can definitively say that neither set is broken. Porygon-Z's biggest failing point is that all of its sets run exactly the same offensive moves. This makes it supremely easy to predict what they will do. In addition, Porygon-Z's relative frailty, susceptibility to all status moves, and defensive typing that grants it a grand total of one immunity and zero resistences mean that switch-in opportunities are few and far between. Porygon-Z's Scarf set generally ens up as a dedicated revenge killer while its Specs set generally ends up being almost useless. Its best use is for laying damage into teams so other Pokemon can finish the job; not exactly something I would call broken.

[badabing]

Porygon-Z: Ban

Pz is simply too overpowered for this tier. Specs has literally zero safe switchins with the ability to 2hko even dedicated special walls through sheer base 135 muscle complemented by a monstrous dual-stab tri-attack and solid coverage, so conventional checks (fast mons and scarfers that pick on his frailty and mediocre speed) haven’t a prayer either, causing you to often sack pokes just to force Pz out. He can also utilize Nasty Plot to boost up and pick apart stall teams or Agility by forcing a switch (ex. Choice bluff with LO) to mop up offensive teams. Scarf lets him directly threaten offensive mons and would-be checks, making him a very tough customer lategame if you’re not packing a Mach Punch user, and even when lacking firepower he can still cripple walls with Trick. In summary, excessive special attacking power, a workable speed stat, excellent coverage, and versatility with boosting moves and trick push him over the edge imo.

[ala]

Porygon-Z: Do Not Ban

I've thought about this for the last couple of days, and chances are when something is broken in the metagame I can tell pretty quickly. I don't have that feeling about Porygon-Z who has been surprisingly underwhelming in my experience. The special attack is definitely amazing with download backing it, but it's main attack (Tri Attack) is coming off of a pretty bland attacking type for RU. Most teams have a Ghost type as their spin blocker, which is an automatic check for the Scarf set and many teams have a Rock type or Steel type as well, preventing it from a late game clean up.

Porygon-Z is also quite frail and not overly fast. This hinders any of the sweeper sets from completely dominating and makes it not more threatening than any of the other special sweepers (Moltres, Rotom, Sceptile, etc). Priority is extremely prevalent in RU, with must teams having 1-3 priority users really prevent Porygon-Z from realising its true potential.

To summarize, Porygon-Z, while a very good pokemon in most respects, just falls short of being broken because of its sub-par attacking type, frail defenses and weakness to priority.

[Oglemi*]

Weeeeeee

And with that we find out that Porygon-Z is hotly contested as well, receiving a final 3-4 vote to ban it.

This means that Porygon-Z will be an automatic suspect in two rounds from now.

The server will be reset this time I swear! Stay tuned for Stage 4 where Honchkrow will be voted on again, and we'll have a 9 man Council with the possibility of repeats.