Official RU Stage 5 Suspect Voting

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.

The suspects for this round are Durant and Sharpedo. Suspects will need a 5-4 majority to be banned.

Durant
Sharpedo

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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 close Sunday, February 26 at 11:59 pm, or when all votes are accounted for.

Durant BAN

reasoning: OMG, this thing hits like a truck, and outruns the majority of the metagame, thos basically means, unless you have a pokemon like steelix or magneton, SOMETHING is going to die to the CB set. the Hone claws set has enough immunities, and forces enough switches, to set up, from there it 2HKOES max HP klinklang. honestly steelix and magneton cannot be used on every team, the only direct counters to it. Its checks, poliwrath, and qwilfish, have no recovery, and cannot do much back to durant. aggron can switch in on x-scissor, but is 2hkoed by iron head. gligar is set up by the hone claws set rather easily. with the appropriate move, adamant CB durant 2hkoes nearly the entire tier with the appropriate move. Durant's insane power, combined with its incedible speed and shortage of checks and counters, has a bad effect on the metagame, making it banworthy imo

Sharpedo: Do Not Ban

reasoning: Sharpedo is the best late game sweeper in the RU metagame, with its ridiculous attack and special attack, excellent coverage, and most importantly speed boost, which makes it harder to revenge kill without priority. but i do not feel its bannable at the moment, for one thing, hitmonchan and entei are very common in the metagame, making sharpedo easier to revenge, sharpedo also has two solid switch ins in ferroseed and poliwrath, all of which are very useful outside of checking sharpedo. sharpedo is a dangerous late game cleaner, and can create win conditions rather easily. imo The only things holding sharpedo back from being bannable are:
1) it only gets 1 chance to sweep, one miss, or being unable to OHKO the opponent and its game over
2) how common extremespeed and mach punch are in the current metagame
3) the fact that it has many checks and at least two hard counters, if these checks move up, sharpedo will be more dangerous

in the future, i could definatley see sharpedo suspected again, and possibly banned, but i simply feel the metagame has changed to adapt to it. Best late game cleaner in RU, but not broken atm, possibly later down the road

Durant: Ban
Sharpedo: Do Not Ban

Durant: Ban.

Pearl. said:

imo, durant is op in ru mainly due to the fact that all of its counters lack recovery, which means it's very easy to rack up enough damage to put them on x-scissor or iron head's ko range. everything else relevant has already been covered, but since this isn't enough i'm just gonna say what everyone else said. a combination of hustle, life orb and a boost from hone claws means that few things are able to take more than two hits from durant. also, the last move on hone claws set (which is either thunder fang, rock slide or baton pass) can completely shut down some usual counters durant has (baton pass can be used to avoid scarfless magneton, thunder fang is a 2hko on qwilfish and rock slide is pretty self explanatory), which is awesome. the choice band set is also very good (and i risk saying it's underrated) since it hits hard right of the bat and most people don't expect that. it can also work in a similar way gen 4 choice specs jolteon worked. both of them are frail hard hitting pokemon that can fit baton pass on a choiced set to scout stuff, except durant is much stronger (like it was already mentioned over and over).

last, but not least, most people understimate durant's ability to switch in. some pokemon, like hidden power rock lilligant, will do, in the worst case scenario, around 40% to durant, which means it still has 6/7 (depending on damage rolls) hits to deliver, considering it's using a life orb. also, 58/112 defense isn't that bad, giving durant the ability to tank feraligatr's aqua jet or hitmonchan's mach punch in a last resort. oh, and i've used durant for pretty much the entire round, so i know my shit.

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Sharpedo: Abstain.

i don't really wanna vote on sharpedo. hope you understand.

Durant: Ban
Not much else to say. Sky high attack, hits harder than SD Arceus after a Hone Claws, with great defense and typing to allow it setup on threats such as Tangrowth and users of weak physical attacks. Sure it does have checks, but the Choice Band set 2HKOes/OHKOes almost all of them with proper prediction (or even no prediction at all). It's also very fast, outspeeding a lot of important pokémon that would check it, such as Entei. For those reasons, I think Durant makes the metagame unhealthy and should be banned.

Sharpedo: No Ban
While I think Sharpedo is pretty overpowered, people have convinced me that it's not broken enough to be banned. It simply lacks the raw power to break through defensive cores, and offensive / balanced teams almost always have something to deal with it, be it either something bulky enough to survive a hit or priority. It also has a lot of counters, like Ferroseed, Poliwrath, Alomomola, etc. For this reason, I think it should be RU for at least another round.

Durant: No Ban


The ant has a lot of power but we are overlooking its Accuracy issues and poor Spdef/HP. This makes it a victim of scarf/quick volt switches and missing crucial hits(CB set mainly but Hone Claws set still suffers from this when Durant can't get off a Hone Claws).


As for ways to deal with Durant, I am going to focus on the Hone Claws set(no BP and no Thunderfang, who the heck uses those?) and the CB set. RU has Poliwrath, Cofagrigus, Magneton, Steelix, Qwilfish, and fast strong Special Attackers, which I think is more than enough for Durant. A healthy Qwilfish+Intimidate+Twave, shuts down any plans of a Durant sweep. Yes it can be easy to wear Qwilfish down but the same could be said about racking up LO(if you choose to run that) and Hazard damage on Durant. Since accuracy is always an issue for CB durant, it leaves qwilfish in a better position to outlast Durant. Magneton makes for a good offensive counter by roasting the trapped ant with HP fire. Cofagrigus can take away Durant's hustle power and Willowisp is back. Although Cofagrigus isn't the best method to deal with durant, its not uncommon to see this spinblocker be paired with another wall that can check Durant on a stall team. The true defensive counters would have to go to Poliwrath and Steelix who both just shrug off any attacks that Durant tries to do. However Poliwrath should watch out for CB thunderfang though.


There are so many revenge killers that can stop Durant or catch it in the middle of setting up a Hone Claws boost it isn't even funny. Scarf Manectric, Scarf Typhlosion, Sceptile, and many more. It isn't hard for a Sceptile to KO it with Focus Blast or choose to Sub until that Hustle accuracy kicks in. Maybe for an offensive team its a game of which speedy killer outlasts the other, but an offensive team should pack enough pressure that Durant can't reliably set up. It's hard for Durant to enter the battle against an offensive team where it is likely that 5 out of the 6 pokes can ohko the bug. That is another area I want to address, the ability for the Hone Claws set to actually set up. Being vunerable to burn and paralysis, unless you catch the right poke in at the right time, Durant is most likely going to take a good chunk of damage or get crippled by status. CB Durant on the otherhand could lock itself into a move where it allows the opponent to set up afterwards or just not even hit due to Hustle accuracy.


Overall, not many great counters, lesser checks can be flinched KOd and worn out easily, very powerful attack, but it comes at a big enough price that Durant shouldn't leave RU. Hustle accuracy(especially for CB set), easily revenged, and not many switch in/set up opportunities due to its weakness defenses. It's close to being broken, but not close enough in my opinion.


Sharpedo: No Ban


Priority weak(even resisted honchkrow suckerpunch does a ton), fragile as hell, and definitely has its counters/checks. Does not even deserve to be nominated for a vote in my opinion. Poliwrath and Ferroseed(watch out for HP fire but even that will fail to OHKO) are the counters to any set Sharpedo runs while physically offensive sets get walled by Qwilfish, Spiritomb Mandibuzz, Alomomola, Tangrowth, and Crawdaunt. Depending on whether or not Sharpedo runs HP fire or Ice beam on the mixed set, it will most likely share most of the counters of the physical attacking set. Hitmonchan, entei, and even honchkrow all do a fine job of killing sharpedo with priority. Most offensive threats like Feraligator, Druddigon, TR cofagrigus won't get OHKOd so it isn't likely to force many switch outs until the late game. Not being immune to any hazards, status, and being pretty much forced to run LO and Protect doesn't help sharpedo either. Great late game cleaner, not much more than that.

Durant: Ban

Although I initially wanted to keep Durant in the tier, it has proven to be a force nearly unstoppable without a Steelix or Magneton on your side. I could go in-depth about my reasoning, but it is plain and simple: Durant is simply too powerful for RU, being able to OHKO or 2HKO at worst every Pokemon in the tier with the exception of the aforementioned. RU will be a healthier metagame without it.

Sharpedo: Do Not Ban

Sharpedo, while quite powerful, isn't really ban-worthy at the moment. It's best used as a late-game cleaner, as it can be stopped by Pokemon such as Poliwrath, or by priority users, such as Hitmonchan and Entei. It has potent offenses, but it isn't overwhelmingly powerful, and is susceptible to many different Pokemon such that it doesn't pose as much of a threat as Durant. Offensive teams don't have difficulty with it thanks to priority, while stall teams can easily stall it out and wall it in some way.

Durant: Ban

I was undecided on this, but in the end it came down to the fact that it's very strong and outspeeds almost the entire metagame. It isn't that hard to revenge kill but you can't switch anything into it, and it can plow through checks with ease because of its sheer power, much like specs porygon-z. The CB set has really only one safe switch in and can 2hko a lot of resists with a stab move. Without a Steelix, you're really just guessing and hoping you don't guess wrong or you lose a pokemon.

Sharpedo: Ban

This one goes against he popular opinion, but sharpedo is really really good. It suffers from the same problem as Durant, in that you can't switch it into anything, but once in it can cause tons of damage. There are hardly any switch ins for sharpedo, and the fact that it is generally sent out late-game means that defensive cores are usually worn down by the time it's ready to go. Ferrothorn, arguably the second best check to sharpedo, has trouble staying healthy over the course of a game due to eviolite and no recovery. Poliwrath is a reliable counter, but to be honest, it really isn't a very good pokemon in this metagame, and it's about the only hard counter in the tier. After that, there really is a drop off on the list of pokemon that can handle sharpedo. Choice band entei can check it with extremespeed, but the fact that nearly all sharpedo carry protect allows the sharpedo user to scout the entei's move and then switch out to something else that can take advantage of a choice locked normal move after already killing a pokemon (since entei isn't a great switch into sharpedo).

Offensively, it is a powerhouse. A lot of stuff has been said about how powerful it is, so I'm not gonna go into that much.

Sharpedo suffers from weak STAB on the physical side that makes its 120 Base Attack much less threatening than it could be. To maximize its damage output, Sharpedo should invest in Special Attack as it has access to higher Base Power moves, and a decent (Not great) Base Special Attack to work with. It is decently powerful, but its lack in power allows for many other Pokemon to KO it after it fails to do, because Sharpedo has 70/40/40 defenses, which are not only poor for RU, but in any usage tier. That it automatically gets speed boosts through its ability certain aids it sweep, but it just cannot unless a team is thoroughly weakened late in the game, and in those situations, many different Pokemon can sweep/clean up even better than Sharpedo can due to higher raw power. Sharpedo's frailty allows for priority on offensive and balanced teams to destroy it, and allows for status/pure walling from defensive teams to defeat since it just isn't strong enough to break through them.

Vote - Do Not Ban


Durant is a very powerful Pokemon with an ability that makes it a very immediate threat with the 50% boost in its Attack stat. Its unique and high Base Speed allow for it to outspeed a significant portion of the metagame, but it does its drawbacks. Durant's Hustle decreases its accuracy (Although this can be remedied by using Hone Claws), it has terrible Special Defense, meaning that most STAB special attacks will do large amounts of damage to Durant and can deter it from switching in, and the fact that Hone Claws does not also boost Speed like Dragon Dance allows for faster Pokemon (whether through an item or their Ability) come in to revenge kill it, since Durant is not particularly bulky with no defensive investment. But, these Pokemon cannot switch in as Durant's massive power can mean that switching into an attack would mean that you lose your check. There are very few things that can reliably take Durant's attacks such as Steelix, Magneton, and Poliwrath. Playing around Durant without these Pokemon can be difficult, but possible as long as one minimize its opportunies to punish your team. While Durant is the biggest physical threat in the tier, I do believe that can be dealt with in a reasonable manner without opening up your team to other threats.

Vote - Do Not Ban

And that's everyone, here are the results: (I swear I counted right this time! :x )

Durant: 7-2 Ban

Sharpedo: 1-1-7 Not Banned

With that Durant will be banned in standard RU play, while Sharpedo will most likely not be considered a suspect again, barring major metagame shifts!