Monotype Suspect: Hoopa-Unbound (again)

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I was going to bring up how Hoopa-U would affect its own types if it left, but I didn't have time and thought that there was no point (in the end the ban will come to the Hoopa itself, not how Psychic and Dark will be affected), but Dece1t pointed out (see quote) what I was going to say about Psychic: It will lose nothing. I've been laddering badly with a Psychic team (one less Dark type to deal with), and I've realized Psychic has so many viable offensive options to replace Hoopa-U (I've heard Meloetta is doing quite well at replacing it, although I prefer Choice Scarf Gardevoir) that it won't lose anything from the ban, should it happen.

Dark however, will be hit harder. Dark already lost a big defensive threat in Mega Sableye, and should Hoopa-U be banned, it will lose a big offensive threat. However, I feel that Dark will recover. Dark, like Psychic, has a lot of good offensive threats, and while they may not do their job as well as Hoopa-U does and it may lose a bit of viability as a type, it will not be hit incredibly hard (like Ghost was).

As I said at the start though, the ban will not come down to these things, but it is good to bring them up, and although I feel both Psychic will not lose too much and Dark won't be completely unviable, I still stand by my opinion that Hoopa-Unbound shouldn't be banned, and at this point it will take a lot to change my opinion.

EDIT: While laddering with the Hoopa-free Psychic team, I couldn't help but notice something about Dark teams. Out of the 45 or so battles I did, I fought two Dark teams, which adds up to about 4% (slightly under last month's usage of 4.9%), which shows that Dark teams don't seem to be hit too badly.

Another thing I noticed is that I won against both these Dark teams with my Psychic team. According to the matchup table (which I inserted in the post; I'm not very good at just sticking images in) from March 2016, Psychic has a 39% chance to win. It is important to keep in mind that both of these turned up around 1300, and that this was before the Sablenite suspect. It wasn't too easy to win but I won against both of these which either shows that either I'm really lucky or that without Hoopa-Unbound, Psychic has a better matchup against Dark. If that's the case, it's a bit worrying. Psychic is getting stronger and even Dark, the type that's meant to take no damage from their attacks, can't even stop it.

Gonna say what I said before, the ban will not come down to type effectiveness, but just pointing this stuff out.
Saying Dark would be fine is one thing. Dream Eater Gengar mains Dark, and from what I saw with him, that is not the case. Not only would Fighting be significantly harder, but Dark would also lose another Fairy check, Water would now have an advantage against it (think about it, most of water is Special-Oriented, so Mandibuzz is not a challenge to take out, TTar is weak to water, Sableye is just about the same as Mandibuzz, Darks 3 best Megas can't do a lot against it, and Water is notirious especially for carrying a lot of ice coverage, so Hydreigon can also be checked), same for Electric (once TTar is out, you have the advantage essentially). So, in conclusion, yea, I think Dark would be affected, and its viability would drop a considerable amount (refer to stats after Greninja was banned, and before Hoopa was released).

Hoopa-U's ban would slightly nerf Psychic, but I agree that it would likely remain a higher tier type. This suspect is not about nerfing Psychic nor promoting diversity though, and it never was. It's about whether or not [primarily Choice Specs] Hoopa-U is broken. It sucks, but even if Hoopa-U is important to Dark, if it is determined to be "broken" on Psychic, that reason trumps keeping it on Dark, imo. With Shaymin-S and Kyu-W, we decided we wouldn't keep powerful Pokemon just to help out lower used types, I don't see why that wouldn't apply here.

IDK, it just seems like this suspect is just turning into a big question of "Does Hoopa-U bring an unhealthy element to the meta, and/or is it broken? If so, should it be banned, or should we keep it in order to salvage Dark's viability?" ofc I might be wrong, but the second part of that question is overshadowing what voters REALLY need to be asking themselves. "Does Hoopa-U bring an unhealthy element to the meta, and/or is it broken?" If the answer to that question is a yes, it should be banned.
See even if considering that, I don't think Hoopa falls under that margin. On paper there are Pokemon that are also widespread that could very well be considered more threatening than Hoopa depending on the curcumstances (I was actually talking about that very topic with a friend earlier, we were talking about how excadrill + its team support can actually seemingly be more threatening than Hoopa-U + what team support it has). Even with that, despite Specs Hoopa-U has in theory no switchins, it is a lot easier to check than other wallbreakers. You do come up with a good point, which in a sense I do agree with you, but I personally don't see the huge hubub other than that 1 fact (that fact that it can break anything in theory). I wouldn't agree with that being the reason why it should be banned, because again, there are pokemon that, with their team support, can actually be seen as more threatening.
 
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I honestly think it is a bit too early to talk about Hoopa alone being broken. It doesn't matter now but as others said before we should have waited a bit with suspecting it once again. We should wait to see if the infamous Specs set would gain more and more usage and if the types would adapt to it. I guess our best bet is letting it stay.

Ps: Are we allowed to do a 3rd suspect? Just a random question about the rule system.
 
I honestly think it is a bit too early to talk about Hoopa alone being broken. It doesn't matter now but as others said before we should have waited a bit with suspecting it once again. We should wait to see if the infamous Specs set would gain more and more usage and if the types would adapt to it. I guess our best bet is letting it stay.

Ps: Are we allowed to do a 3rd suspect? Just a random question about the rule system.
It’s allowed but suspecting something 3 times in the same meta doesn’t make sense at all. You would have to probably wait until sun & moon.
 
I mean, hoopa-u was resuspected because the situation changed, if it changed again then we could resuspect a third time. It's just unlikely that the situation would change in that little time.
In the 5 months or so since the community decided not to ban hoopa, it looks like only a couple things changed:

- mega sableye banned
- people started using other choice sets

If that's all it takes to consider a re-suspect, I pose a few important questions to the community:

1. If we don't ban hoopa this time, are we gonna retest it in November because we didn't consider the sub + 3 attacks set w/ life orb, or the trick room set?

2. If we do ban it, is the new precedent for suspect tests going to be "keep testing the suspect until it's banned"?

3. If hoopa does end up banned, will we suspect test mega sableye again? After all, part of the argument was that it had great teammate support, which would theoretically change the situation with mega sableye should we ban one of its supporting teammates..

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to troll but genuinely want to know the answers to these questions
 
In the 5 months or so since the community decided not to ban hoopa, it looks like only a couple things changed:

- mega sableye banned
- people started using other choice sets

If that's all it takes to consider a re-suspect, I pose a few important questions to the community:

1. If we don't ban hoopa this time, are we gonna retest it in November because we didn't consider the sub + 3 attacks set w/ life orb, or the trick room set?

2. If we do ban it, is the new precedent for suspect tests going to be "keep testing the suspect until it's banned"?

3. If hoopa does end up banned, will we suspect test mega sableye again? After all, part of the argument was that it had great teammate support, which would theoretically change the situation with mega sableye should we ban one of its supporting teammates..

I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to troll but genuinely want to know the answers to these questions
I was under the impression that we are resuspecting because the rules of banning a mon have been taken in a new direction. In the old suspect, it would matter if someone said banning Hoopa would hurt dark. Now it doesn't. Only the effect on the meta game and if it is broken matter
 
Rules were the same in the old suspect.
But they weren't applied the same way.

It would be like if a mon like M-Altaria wasn't banned (it was banned because of a rarely used moveset as an example). Then we banned a different mon letter for a rarely used moveset because it was broken. People would want to resuspect M-Altaria then because they realize now how strange it was that they didn't ban it too.

Just like the M-Sableye ban showed people how strange it was not banning something just because it would make one type bad isn't a valid argument. So now they want to resuspect Hoopa
 

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But they weren't applied the same way.

It would be like if a mon like M-Altaria wasn't banned (it was banned because of a rarely used moveset as an example). Then we banned a different mon letter for a rarely used moveset because it was broken. People would want to resuspect M-Altaria then because they realize now how strange it was that they didn't ban it too.

Just like the M-Sableye ban showed people how strange it was not banning something just because it would make one type bad isn't a valid argument. So now they want to resuspect Hoopa
That doesn't mean any set in stone rules have changed. That would just mean a lot of people outlook on hoopa have changed and maybe a mistake was made during the first suspect. That doesn't mean any part of the tiering philosophy or "rules" have changed because im like 99% sure that they haven't since the first suspect.
 

DoW

formally Death on Wings
Warning: attrocious post ahead (edit: for example I can't even spell atrocious), I currently have a fever and stuff but anyway enjoy

Certainly people have been looking at the way we thought about Hoopa-U the last time as not being perfect, and I think the M-Sab ban has made a difference and made it more obvious that we should probably take action against Psychic's core in order to help balance the metagame. While people talk about the choiced sets I think people put too much emphasis on it, Specs Hoopa-U is certainly strong but I don't think we'd be banning Hoopa-U just for that set in the same way that Lando-I isn't banned (correct me if I'm wrong on this, but as far as I can see neither really has any switchins from about 50% of monotypes). I think it was a combination of these things - the sab ban, new sets being uncovered somewhat, problems with the way the last suspect was done and argued about, the overall view that psychic is overpowered somewhat - that led to the suspect. However I don't really know that there was one reason you can point to (to the extent that people are pointing to the specs set, for example) in terms of why this suspect is happening - from what I remember of council discussion, at least, a reasonable amount of the argument concerned overall metagame balance.
The fact that none of these reasons is individually very strong, combined with the fact I'm not particularly unhappy about how the last suspect went, were certainly contributing factors to me voting no suspect.

However to answer your question, pokemon are suspected on how good they possibly can be - for example, sash endeavor / quick attack shaymin-s isn't broken but it's ignored when we discuss whether it should be allowed in monotype because it's not shaymin-s's most viable set. If we did find out the day after the suspect that actually sub/LO hoopa-u is broken, then we'd need another suspect. The hope is that we don't find an all-powerful new set though, as it's pretty unlikely that a set will just have been completely ignored by the entire community.
 
The laddering period in the 5th Monotype suspect has come to an end. Congratulations to all qualified voters!

If you qualified but your name is not in the list below please start a pm with all members of the monotype council briefly showing that you made reqs and posted to the ID thread before the deadline.

How to Vote
You will message your vote to scpinion here on Smogon via a private message (i.e. Blind Voting). You have 2 options:
Hoopa-Unbound: Ban
Hoopa-Unbound: Do Not Ban
A 60% majority will be required to ban Hoopa-Unbound.

Once we reach the voting deadline scpinion will tally them up and post in the ORAS Monotype discussion thread with the results. Everyone's vote will be listed in that post.

Voting ends on Monday, August 22, at 11:59 PM UTC



Tagging The Immortal to remove the COIL metric from the Monotype ladder. Thanks!
 
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