Proposal Arcanine and Fearow in RBY PU

[Sabelette]

Hello friends, with phoopes's recent departure as RoA leader he's left it to me to keep RBY lower tiers running well, and boy am I busy.

On the recent RBY PU Council tiering survey, Arcanine was the most controversial Pokemon with a rating of 3.86/5, and so the RBY PU council (Sabelette, gastlies, Gangsta Spongebob, Teh, Wanted in 49 States) has unanimously elected to suspect test it. Right behind it was Fearow at 3.57, which will also be suspected at this time. The next highest-rated Pokemon was Gastly at 2.5, which will not be suspected at present.

Arcanine has become highly controversial in RBY PU. It is by far the most common lead in the tier and a staple on nearly all teams, even as other former staples like Nidoqueen and Seaking have fallen to respectable but not mandatory usage. While anti-leads exist, such as Nidoqueen, Porygon, and Seaking, Arcanine undeniably defines the lead metagame and these foes have flaws - Nidoqueen can get burned and simply lose the matchup, Seaking lets in Gastly and Staryu freely to get sleep or paralysis moves off, and Porygon generally loses to Rest Arcanine or by simply taking a critical hit while outsped, which is easily achieved since +2 Arcanine outspeeds +4 Porygon. Arcanine leads tend to trade hits with Body Slam, which adds significant variance; sometimes one Arcanine wins by a significant margin due to critical hits or full paralysis, allowing it to contribute further with its excellent stats and Speed tier. Agility lets it further push this advantage and prevents any easy revenge kills. That said, Arcanine is far from unstoppable and does contribute some positives to the metagame, serving as a bulky blanket check to a number of threats when healthy, including Fearow, Gastly, and Staryu. It is also setup fodder for Seaking, walled by Omanyte, and easily removed by Water- and Ground-types if paralyzed without Agility set up.

Fearow, meanwhile, is notorious for its swingy nature. In addition to its blistering base 100 Speed, which outruns all but two Pokemon in the tier and gives it a near 20% critical hit rate, it packs STAB Hyper Beam, which OHKOes nearly the entire tier on a critical hit. Defensively, it’s just as inconsistent, as its weakness to the common Blizzard and Thunderbolt means it’s prone to being shot out of the sky. The only Pokemon that resist or are immune to Normal-type moves are Gastly, Omanyte, and Graveler. Gastly is outsped and 2HKOed by Drill Peck, Omanyte is barely able to withstand Fearow and falls quickly given a critical hit, and Graveler, while an extremely effective Fearow check, is also slow and exists in a tier full of Pokemon packing Surf and Blizzard. That said, Gastly is ubiquitous and can serve as an emergency pivot, and Graveler is a relatively strong Pokemon that finds use on many teams, albeit mostly due to Fearow’s existence. Fearow also faces offensive checks in the form of Rapidash and Scyther, which outspeed it and are difficult to switch into; Scyther also threatens to set up against it for a Hyper Beam sweep. Arcanine and Nidoqueen cannot switch into Fearow, but quickly force it out if at full health, but Fearow’s sheer critical hit potential makes every matchup against it bar Graveler unsafe.

As a result, the PU council is opening this discussion thread and will be suspecting both Pokemon simultaneously but with separate votes on each. Voting reqs are as follows:
Made finals of the first RBY PU Lower Tiers Circuit Tournament (Sabelette, phoopes, BeatsBlack)
Made semifinals of RBY PU Open I (Ice Yazu, MrSoup, royzin, BeatsBlack)
Made finals of the RBY PU Spotlight (Sabelette, Volk)
Played at least 3 games and won at least 1 game of RBY PU in RBYPL IV (Teh, NotVeryCake, Hayburner, gastlies, stunner047, Volk, BeatsBlack)
Made semifinals of the second RBY PU Lower Tiers Circuit Tournament (NotVeryCake, gastlies, Medeia, BeatsBlack)
Played at least 3 games and won at least 1 game of RBY PU in PU Blind Draft (Sabelette, Teh, gastlies, NotVeryCake, phoopes)

Voter List

Sabelette
phoopes
BeatsBlack
Ice Yazu
MrSoup
royzin
Volk
Teh
NotVeryCake
Hayburner
gastlies
stunner047
Medeia

This thread will remain open for discussion for 2 weeks (until April 1) before the vote commences. Both voters and nonvoters are invited to post in the thread; see here to request posting access if you are not badged. A 60% majority will be required for a ban on either Pokemon.

 

[gastlies]

Gonna focus on Arcanine here and explain why I think it is not broken. I've been pretty vocal about my dislike for Fearow on RBYcord, so I don't feel the need to repeat my thoughts here.

So if you look at any random replay of a modern RBY PU game there's a very high chance the start of the game will look like this.

The Lead Arcanine mirror has honestly been kind of a meme at this point. In fact, in the first five weeks of PUBD, the ongoing PU team torunament, Arcanine has a whopping 61% usage in the lead slot. I have seen come comparisons to RBY UU's lead Hypno, but at Hypno's peak, it had over 90% usage in the lead slot, so it's really not a good comparison imo. Arcanine is used on almost every team, having 94% usage overall. This means roughly 35% of teams with Arcanine had it in the back. These facts lead my to my two main arguments, which when combined make me lean heavily towards anti-ban on Arcanine.

1. Lead Arcanine has counterplay, and is not the ultra-dominant lead that people make it out to be (although it is definitely the best and most spammable lead, no denying that.)
2. Back Arcanine is a healthy and important part of the meta

Starting with point 1: There are other leads that exist. Nidoqueen is the second-most popular lead, and its matchup against Arcanine is roughly a 60-40. The main reasons why Nidoqueen isn't as popular then, is because back Nidoqueen is very valuable, and getting the unlucky 40% (either through crit or burn) means you now lost your Nidoqueen, and revenge killing Arcanine is quite tricky. However, it is still a decent option. Lead Porygon has also picked up very recently (I'm talking about the last 2-3 weeks here lmao) and as of now it seems like it's a decent enough Arcanine anti-lead, since it can Twave turn 1, and use Agility to snipe a Nidoqueen switch.

Onto point 2: All of the complaints about Arcanine have to do with lead Arcanine. Nobody is complaining about back Arcanine, which to me is a very healthy pokemon. It's in my opinion the third-best check to the deadly Gastly (behind Abra and Magmar), but Arcanine is much easier to fit onto a team than the former two, so it's arguably the most important form of Gastly insurance. On top of that, it's also a decent Fearow check, since it survives Double-Edge into Hyper Beam (barring crits of course). It also is great at dealing with other fire-types, since it generally defeats both Rapidash and Magmar one-on-one. This means, Arcanine does a lot of great things for the metagame by stabilizing these matchups. I know the saying "it doesn't matter how much good something does for the metagame if it's broken," but I genuinenly don't beleive Arcanine is broken, and unless I'm able to be convinced otherwise in the next two weeks, I will be voting Do Not Ban on Arcanine.

 

[Sabelette]

Quick thoughts:

Arcanine: Honestly I don't think Arc is "broken" in an unhealthy way and I think counterplay to the lead Arc is developing rapidly. I'd rather give it some time and see how this year goes then reevaluate after the next NU VR if Arcanine stays in PU. I'm fairly neutral overall though and open to people's thoughts.

Fearow: Broken, ban the bird. It just has too much offensive power for this tier and has literally a single check that has any consistency. It's very borderline for me but I'm going to vote ban unless something really convincing is posted.

 

[phoopes]

Arcanine: if you asked me not that long ago I would’ve told you that Arcanine overcentralized the lead metagame and made it really boring. But we’ve seen stuff deployed recently that makes me think counterplay is actually possible. (Porygod my beloved let’s gooooo). Even Nidoqueen lead isn’t awful into it. I still like Gastly lead too now, even better if people start using Porygon to counter Arcanine. So yeah, I’m much happier with how the lead metagame is these days. Arcanine is still probably the best one but it’s not nearly as boring a meta as it was even a few weeks ago.

Fearow: Gotta be a ban from me. Yes Graveler exists, yes Omanyte exists, but let’s be real… the power level is just too much for this tier. So many times the game is swung by a Fearow speed tie or a Fearow crit. Just doesn’t feel right to have it continue on in PU. It’s the only mon that feels truly mandatory to me and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just way too unbalanced to remain.

 

[NotVeryCake]

My stance on the matter is that Arcanine is banworthy broken and Fearow is chaotic good; let me explain why.

Arcanine​

My biggest gripe with Arcanine in the tier is that it is wholly cancerous as a lead, nothing, and I mean nothing anti-leads it consistently; people have resorted as of late to try and use incredibly exploitable Pokemon to even attempt at anti-lead it such as Machamp, Omanyte, Slowpoke, someone even used Porygon. The only solid anti-lead to Arcanine is Nidoqueen, who can still be burned and crit through with little issue quite a lot of the time. Most of the time the games entire outcome is dictated right at the start of the game in the Arcanine lead ditto, which is a messy ditto involving lots of critical hits and and full paralysis, where quite a bit of the time, Arcanine ends up so healthy it ends up getting to smack whatever has tried to revenge kill it with a massive STAB Fire Blast. Arcanine not in lead is not a problematic Pokemon, it is what it does in lead that is the real issue to me.

Fearow​

Fearow, in my opinion, is completely fine, I think that, while yes it is swingy when it comes to critical hits, it keeps the tier fast paced and is far from uncheckable, its best check (Graveler) is also incredibly hard to properly switch into and also walls various other Pokemon on top of Fearow, such as Scyther or Magneton. It also has to deal with Nidoqueen and Rapidash, which can be crit through, still handle it consistently and both get at least one attack off against it as Rapidash outspeeds it and Nidoqueen is guranteed to live a crit Hyper Beam, and, similarly to Graveler, these Pokemon are incredibly hard to switch into. think Fearow keeps the pace of the game up in a healthy way, discouraging frail Pokemon like Staryu from eating too much chip.

 

[Sabelette]

Porygon anti-led Arcanine fine every time I used it btw and I played it more than once. Sorry for the one-liner but Porygon wasn't a one-off and it wasn't a failure.

 

[gastlies]

Adding on to that, I dug up every replay of Porygon vs Arcanine's lead matchup.

All replays are from PUBD
Week 3 - Sabelette vs phoopes G2 - Sabelette forces phoopes to rest with Arcanine, getting her Seaking in
Week 3 - gastlies vs Teh G1 - Porygon paralyzes Arcanine and Fearow
Week 4 - Sabelette vs gastlies G3 - Porygon KOes 2 mons and paralyzes Staryu
Week 5 - Sabelette vs Freezai G2 - Porygon forces Arcanine out and paralyzes Gastly
Week 5 - NotVeryCake vs gastlies G1 - Only instance where Porygon didn't face Arcanine
Week 5 - Teh vs phoopes G2 - Porygon forces Arcanine out and lands Psychic on Gastly, this notably gets it into Fearow OHKO and Seaking 2HKO range, which will make it much less effective later in the game
Semifinals - Teh vs Sabelette G2 - Sabelette got the bad Porygon into Drowzee matchup here but even then she was able to force Arcanine out and paralyze Drowzee

So based on these replays Porygon has been helpful in every single one of them, even the one where it had its worst matchup (drowzee). This is a very recent development (first uses for lead pory were in week 3) which is why I think we shouldn't axe Arcanine since there's clearly room for the lead metagame to grow.

 

[NotVeryCake]

Adding on to that, I dug up every replay of Porygon vs Arcanine's lead matchup.

All replays are from PUBD
Week 3 - Sabelette vs phoopes G2 - Sabelette forces phoopes to rest with Arcanine, getting her Seaking in
Week 3 - gastlies vs Teh G1 - Porygon paralyzes Arcanine and Fearow
Week 4 - Sabelette vs gastlies G3 - Porygon KOes 2 mons and paralyzes Staryu
Week 5 - Sabelette vs Freezai G2 - Porygon forces Arcanine out and paralyzes Gastly
Week 5 - NotVeryCake vs gastlies G1 - Only instance where Porygon didn't face Arcanine
Week 5 - Teh vs phoopes G2 - Porygon forces Arcanine out and lands Psychic on Gastly, this notably gets it into Fearow OHKO and Seaking 2HKO range, which will make it much less effective later in the game
Semifinals - Teh vs Sabelette G2 - Sabelette got the bad Porygon into Drowzee matchup here but even then she was able to force Arcanine out and paralyze Drowzee

So based on these replays Porygon has been helpful in every single one of them, even the one where it had its worst matchup (drowzee). This is a very recent development (first uses for lead pory were in week 3) which is why I think we shouldn't axe Arcanine since there's clearly room for the lead metagame to grow.

There is also room for the metagame to grow in a direction that doesn't make Fearow as coinflippy, considering that the Arcanine lead ditto is what half of the metagame is based around and who wins it, there could potentially be a massive surge in back Arcanine uses if lead Porygon and its anti-leads catch on, making bulky teams more common and frail teams less common, with Fearow shredding through less teams as a result.

 

[Sabelette]

Arcanine and Fearow remain unbanned!