np: BW OU Suspect Testing Round 12 - Always (I Wanna Be With You) [SEE POST #263]

[Gary]

Uggg there's a reason I never have the patience to get reqs. Other than the mass amounts boredom, rage, and BS that you encounter while laddering, it never ceases to amaze me the actual lack of players using the suspect Pokemon. The same thing happened when I laddered a bit during the Landorus-I suspect. It makes me feel like I'm playing the suspect ladder twice, not the OU current. In fact, I've played ~20 battles so far and have yet to see ONE Keldeo, aside from my own. All I see is a bunch of teams that are over prepared for Keldeo, so in the end I rarely end up doing anything with Keldeo the entire battle, so it's hard to gauge exactly how broken Keldeo is when I see Amoonguss + Slowbro/Jellicent cores everywhere and Toxicroak on every rain team (sometimes with Jellicent too). Just a little annoying. It would be nice to see how Keldeo fares against a simple HO team or a standard balance team that doesn't have 2-4 Keldeo checks/counters.

Anyways, something interesting that I've been seeing is the amount of people using either specially defensive or CM Meloetta. It's interesting to note that outside of rain, Meloetta is a decent counter to almost every Keldeo set out there, other than the Specs set. It's immune to HP Ghost, can avoid the 2HKO from Hydro Pump outside of rain, and threaten to KO it with Psyshock. Secret Sword does do a decent amount though, so that's the only thing keeping Meloetta from being a great hard counter. It is a great check though, and it can setup on Keldeo locked into HP Ghost or Surf. It can also beat T-Tar with Focus Blast or Close Combat if using the Relic Mixed set. All in all, Meloetta is probably one of the best check to the deadly T-Tar + Keldeo core (the one I'm currently using because I think that core has more of a potential of being broken then rain Keldeo), but it's still not a very reliable counter.

But yeah, the Current ladder has been Keldeoless for me. Weird.

 

[BKC]

There's also the fact that your opponent was using a shitty Celebi... SpDef without Recover? Come on. No wonder you were able to wear it down, especially when he thought it'd be a great idea to use SR against a +2 Breloom.

 

[X5Dragon]

To be deleted by a mod.

 

[Nglittleguy]

Like how you did mine? I only replied to the part that concerned me.


And offense teams do great against him as well.


I outplayed him and found opportunities to set up on his switches and managed to weaken Keldeo enough to make it happen.


I can bring other replays by other players if the many posts of offensive players who said the same thing that I did wasn't enough for you by now.



You argued the offensive teams suffer, using offensive pressure and checks makes sense when that is what these kinds of teams do. I even went into detail as how this works and how much set up and support Keldeo needs to have in order to avoid defeat.



I didn't, don't put words into my mouth.

Edit: From my first post in this topic:

"but I see the damage it is doing to defensive teams and I think it is wrong that his pokemon doesn't have any other method to deal with it other than "out offensing it".

1. You were lucky that celebi didn't recover. 2. Your crit on kyu-b mattered, and he could have done a switch from thundy to lure your surf instead, therefore forcing kingdra to die from lo dmg, leaving keldeo to ko lando

 

[Deluks917]

If people have 2700+ GLICKO their deviation is going to basically never fall low enough. Can we get an alternate standard. Maybe 60 games 4-1 or better ratio + 2500 GLICKO? Something for people who the GLICKO system is giving absurd ratings?

 

[X5Dragon]

To be deleted by a mod.

 

[undisputed]

keldeo should not be banned. it has too many counters and solid checks.

scarf keldeo is probably the best scarf user in the game, but it certainly has exploitable flaws. it's pretty much useless against defensive teams, and i don't think that's a disputable point. offensive teams are usually able to set up on a Water/Fighting type resistance and keep momentum too. most of the dangerous set-up sweepers are able to beat keldeo (espeed dnite, espeed lucario, passho volc, mach punch breloom, and so on). it's certainly not a catch-all scarfer.

specs keldeo is powerful but perfectly exploitable. even though it's really powerful in rain, it will still be hard walled by most good defensive teams. common combinations of pokemon like tentacruel, jellicent, celebi, latias, ferrothorn, landorus-t, roserade, starmie, gastrodon, and amoonguss are still very difficult to break even with the specs set in rain. offensive teams obviously get plowed by the specs set, but that could be said for the majority of powerful offensive moves. after sacrificing the appropriate pokemon, most offensive teams will have at least 1/2 pokemon that are faster than specs keldeo, and another 1/2 that can set up on a resisted move. in terms of practical effectiveness, i actually think the specs set is a little better than mediocre.

keldeo is an average set up sweeper. CM keldeo is really nothing special. once again defensive threats, like those mentioned above, typically wall it. the CM set has to choose its Hidden Power to beat specific threats. for example, HP Ghost beats Jellicent, but it leaves Keldeo prone to Dragonite. offensive teams typically deal with CM keldeo like the Specs set - outspeed and kill it or priority.

ebelt keldeo is above average, but it has declined in effectiveness recently. most of its value relies on surprise, not actual power. now that people know keldeo might have HP Bug or Icy Wind or whatever, they play more conservatively. now, almost all good players can identify the ebelt set by how their opponent plays keldeo, so they can plan accordingly.

a lot of people bring up the argument that keldeo counters are Pursuit weak, but that's easier said than done. jellicent and celebi (the top two most effective keldeo counters imo) are both tricky to Pursuit-trap. Baton Pass and WoW respectively make it hard for the Pursuit user to get in safely and kill its target. for tyranitar, Crunch vs. Pursuit can be a guessing game. scizor must be careful with WoW's, Baton Passes, HP Fires, Scald Burns, Spore/Stun Spore, etc. let's be honest: if Pursuit + keldeo were such an effective strategy, a lot more players would be using it and with more success. but the fact is they aren't.

 

[Gogeta]

Just like I said a while back with Kyurem-B, Keldeo isn't broken, but I assume a lot, if not the majority of players don't enjoy its presence in OU. Keldeo does have counters that are very viable outside of dealing with Keldeo, such as Jellicent, Toxicroak (who is one of the best pokemon in this meta right now), Celebi and Latias. There's also lower tier defensive stuff like Slowking that can deal with it well, so stall doesn't really have a major problem with Keldeo if the team is built well. Offensive teams only struggle with Scarf Keldeo really. Specs Keldeo OHKOing everything on an offensive team is no different to Banded Terrakion or Kyurem B OHKOing everything on an offensive team. Keldeo's power against offense is countered by the fact that it's very easy for offensive teams to revenge kill Keldeo, often having 2 or 3 pokemon capable of doing the job. Expert Belt Keldeo is not too hard to deal with as long as you can recognise the damage output it gives, because it is noticeably different to Scarf and Specs Keldeo; player ignorance is not a reason to ban something. I've yet to see evidence that CM Keldeo is better than average, so I'll hold comment on that.

The problem that Keldeo brings is that whilst its counters are viable, they're forced to run defensive sets in order to deal with it (except Toxicroak which can kinda get away with it), which harms the diversity of individual pokemon. Celebi has the potential to run dozens of interesting sets, some of which may not have even been explored yet. Yet in this meta, it has to run sp.def to deal with Keldeo, any other set will just be steamrolled by Keldeo. LO Latias is a great pokemon, but good luck being successful with that against KeldTar teams. Even the lower tier pokemon are restricted in order to deal with it. OTR Slowking can potentially be broken through by Keldeo, forcing you to run another hard check/counter to it, and Amoonguss has to be specially defensive to even be relevant in this meta. I don't like this effect Keldeo has, and whilst I understand that it's not a valid reason to ban something, I just thought I'd highlight that Keldeo does have a detrimental effect to the tier.

Also, I'm agreeing that laddering is going to be difficult without playing 9 billion matches. The ladder is fucking stupidly inflated right now, and I don't want to ladder if my deviation won't drop past 170 after 25 matches. I'm probably wrong on this, but isn't this caused by people creating alts on Showdown then trashing them after 3 or 4 matches? I don't know the technical way of dealing with that, but maybe limit people to a certain amount of alts or something? Idk, either way, I'm probably not gonna ladder for this one if I have to play that many matches.

 

[Yuy]

This is going to be one of those vanilla type messages:

All poke'mon have some kind of effect on the meta and keep some mons from running some sets due to certain predators. This has been brought up in "Keldeo pressures Celebi into sp.def" and well this isn't a reason to ban and I'm glad the person who made that post mentioned it's not a reason to ban. Collectively, the poke'mon make up the metagame and until a great % of OU has to react to just one poke'mon then it's how the game works and not over-centalizing or unhealthy.

Just wanted to highlight that. Also, we must consider the thin line between maintaining a competitive game and creating a custom game. If Keldeo doesn't warrant a ban but some want one anyway "just to shake things up" or because they're "tired of the meta" then that's a desire to create a custom game. If Keldeo truly warrants a ban(I'll go out and say I dislike Keldeo but think he's fine in OU) then that should be after close inspection and for the health of the metagame, in effect maintaining a competitive game. The custom vs competitive line is a dangerous one.

 

[ginganinja]

Just because a brain got beat by a pokemon doesn't mean it needs to be banned. He/she must have played badly and didn't calculate the possibility of scarf.

I didn't say this makes Keldeo ban worthy, so please do not put words into my mouth. I was making the point that even at high levels, Keldeo teams can and do threaten offensive teams on occasion, thus attacking his point that claimed that Keldeo did nothing of the sort.

 

[BurningMan]

I actually think that Keldeo isn't that easy to revenge kill for offensive teams as many say, because it is really bulky, here are some clacs of the most common Choice scarfers and a lot of them fail to OHKO.

252 Atk Terrakion Close Combat vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 213-252 (65.74 - 77.77%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Salamence Outrage vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 220-261 (67.9 - 80.55%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252 SpA Latios Psyshock vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 288-338 (88.88 - 104.32%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Jirachi Zen Headbutt vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 240-284 (74.07 - 87.65%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252 SpA Thundurus-T Thunderbolt vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Keldeo: 368-434 (113.58 - 133.95%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252 Atk Landorus-T Earthquake vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 195-229 (60.18 - 70.67%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252+ Atk Choice Band Dragonite ExtremeSpeed vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 160-189 (49.38 - 58.33%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252 SpA Rotom-W Thunderbolt vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Keldeo: 294-348 (90.74 - 107.4%) -- 81.25% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Garchomp Outrage vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 214-253 (66.04 - 78.08%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

+2 252 Atk Life Orb Technician Breloom Mach Punch vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 278-329 (85.8 - 101.54%) -- 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Lucario ExtremeSpeed vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 242-285 (74.69 - 87.96%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252 SpA Keldeo Secret Sword vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 153-180 (47.22 - 55.55%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

252 SpA Alakazam Psyshock vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Keldeo: 294-348 (90.74 - 107.4%) -- 81.25% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

How exactly can offensive teams easily revenge kill Keldeo when even super effective Stab attacks can fail to OHKO it? Also almost everything on this list is outspeed and 2HKOd by Scarf Keldeo just spamming Hydro Pump quite a few even without rain not to speak that Keldeo can simply switch out as it is SR resistant and has enough resistances that it will have no trouble switching in again contrary to something like Kyurem-B and Terrakion.

 

[Gogeta]

Burningman, whilst its true that Keldeo has very respectable bulk, I think its unfair to assume that Keldeo will be healthy enough to withstand revenge killing. As you say yourself, Keldeo's typing makes it a good switchin to very common pokemon like Scizor, meaning it's susceptible to taking chip damage from things like CB Bullet Punch that puts it well in the range of revenge killing from pretty much all of those pokemon you listed. Furthermore, unlike Lando-I, Keldeo is affected by all forms of hazards, so throw in a layer of spikes or two and Keldeo isn't healthy enough to withstand a lot of the attacks you listed. A well played Scarf Keldeo can sweep offensive teams lategame, no question, but from my personal experience, it's rare for Keldeo to be at full health, making revenge killing relatively easy for offensive teams.

I don't have time to calc right now, but I'm fairly sure most of those calcs become near to guaranteed OHKOs after taking a Scizor U Turn or a Lava Plume from Heatran.

 

[SmashBrosBrawl]

Yeah, except that barring zam and the latiwins offense will be forced to use a scarfer in order to revenge kill it, giving the keldeo user an advantage as he can now use that revenge killer as setup bait or easily revenge kill it with the next mon. Lol why would keldeo even need to stay in and take the hit? You can simply switch to an appropriate response since you know your opponent is going to lock itself into a move.

 

[NoUserName]

Keldeo may be vulnerable to Spikes unlike Lando-I, but resists SR, Ice Shard and Bullet(but not Mach Punch, but the only common user of Mach is Breloom)

Resistance to SR and Ice Shard/Bullet and 108 Speed can make it hard to revenge kill.

 

[RaXes]

Yeah, except that barring zam and the latiwins offense will be forced to use a scarfer in order to revenge kill it, giving the keldeo user an advantage as he can now use that revenge killer as setup bait or easily revenge kill it with the next mon. Lol why would keldeo even need to stay in and take the hit? You can simply switch to an appropriate response since you know your opponent is going to lock itself into a move.

So you're assuming that you have an appropriate response for everything that can revenge kill Keldeo, but your opponent doesn't have a safe switchin for Keldeo or it's teammates?

 

[Halcyon.]

So you're assuming that you have an appropriate response for everything that can revenge kill Keldeo, but your opponent doesn't have a safe switchin for Keldeo or it's teammates?

I already covered that argument in my last post. YES it is fair to assume that. You don't a team around countering a single Pokémon, but you DO build a team to support a single Pokémon. It isn't at all unheard of for an entire team to be built to support Keldeo's sweep. And if it is the case that teams are being built around countering Keldeo, then why are we allowing such a presence to dominate our metagame?

 

[Homeslice]

So you're assuming that you have an appropriate response for everything that can revenge kill Keldeo, but your opponent doesn't have a safe switchin for Keldeo or it's teammates?

I'm not pro-ban or pro-unban yet, keep that in mind so I don't seem to have a biased mindset

It's easily fair to assume this, I'm not bringing in a Keldeo to 6-0 a team (though it could, but then again so can a lot of stuff) but how Keldeo teams are made and played is that you save Keldeo to be a late-game sweeper and have the whole team supporting it whether it be taking hits against something that would otherwise be hard-walled because you don't have the right hidden power (Dragonite when lacking icy wind/hp ice or Jellicent when lacking hp ghost) to take care of stuff like that and then once around 3 mons on the opponent's team are down I send in Keldeo to be unstoppable. You can argue a lot of teams focused around a sweeper are similar to this, but the difference between them and Keldeo is the fact Keldeo literally only needs its two STABs to be almost unstoppable because of it's pure power and that it's a lot easier to take down Pursuit-weak pokemon than it is to take down a Specially Defensive Hippowdown, for example (and the fact that Keldeo literally isn't walled by any generic wall like Blissey because of Secret Sword doing physical damage)

Keldeo also restricts Teambuilding for me, the first two Pokemon that come to mind as a Special Wall is Jellicent or Celebi purely because of Keldeo whereas Blissey and Jirachi I completely ignore because they can't effectively deal with Keldeo, even if they offer more otherwise being weak to Keldeo (a special attacker) makes them awful at their role.

That being said, Keldeo also lacks total power outside of a item or weather effects AND hazards in combination, meaning that you are a little restricting in what Keldeo can do when building a team (i.e. if I don't have a crapton of hazards or weather support I don't feel safe in Keldeo netting some OHKO's over 2HKO's) so I have to waste team members making Keldeo completely overpowering rather than it doing it by itself and for that reason I can't say it's broken as of now

Also @undisputed I'm not sure if you're saying only Choice-locked Keldeo is exploitable by defensive teams or all Keldeo variants are but if it's the latter I can say with certainty that Keldeo is a huge threat to defensive teams when not choice locked purely because of Secret Sword making it a pseudo-mixed attacker.

 

[RaXes]

I already covered that argument in my last post. YES it is fair to assume that. You don't a team around countering a single Pokémon, but you DO build a team to support a single Pokémon. It isn't at all unheard of for an entire team to be built to support Keldeo's sweep. And if it is the case that teams are being built around countering Keldeo, then why are we allowing such a presence to dominate our metagame?

You're right, you don't build teams to counter one specific pokemon, but you DO build teams to cover a large portion of the OU tier, including Keldeo and possible partners! If you aren't prepared for it, it's your fault.
Of course does Keldeo restrict teambuilding a bit, like all prominent threats in the meta, but you're just exaggerating at this point. It's not nearly as bad as you and Homeslice make it seem.

 

[Ojama]

Keldeo definitely shouldn't be banned but I'd love people to stop using dumb arguments to prove it's either broken or not. Keldeo is an amazing Pokemon and NO it hasn't too many counters/checks. Amoonguss, Jellicent and Slowking are Keldeo's real counters. Other stuff like Tentacruel, Celebi, Gastrodon and Latias are checks. Keldeo is extremely powerful, has a great double typing, boosted by Rain, really fast but it's still manageable because it isn't immune to Spikes and Toxic Spikes, it doesn't have many resistances and some stuff can set up on it / revenge kill it.

As undisputed said it, ScarfKeldeo is walled by Stalls though a Stall Team shouldn't underrate ScarfKeldeo, especially Modest ScarfKeldeo. An offensive Team cannot be not weak to ScarfKeldeo as it's probably the best Scarfer of the Metagame and it's strong enough to OHKO/2HKO everything in an Offensive Team.

SpecsKeldeo is probably Keldeo's scariest Set as it 2HKOs like 95% of the Metagame. That's why Tentacruel, Celebi, Gastrodon and Latias cannot be considered as counters. Even EBelt Keldeo isn't handle by these ones as HP Bug does like 85% to Celebi, 2HKOs Latias + Icy Wind to drop its Speed, Secret Sword does like 45% to Gastrodon and whether it's in Rain or in Sand Tentacruel can't handle it. Even Jellicent, Amoonguss and Slowking can't come in against it easily as HPump in Rain has 56% to 2HKO Amoonguss after Stealth Rock and HP Dark/Ghost has 11% to 2HKO Special Wall Jellicent. That being said, SpecsKeldeo can be revenge killed by some stuff and the player has to predict very well to be able to beat Jellicent, Amoonguss & stuff. That is probably Keldeo's biggest problem as we always have to predict very well to beat its counters and we all know that we don't have the right to make big mistakes with it because of Keldeo being hurt by everything (Sand, Poison, Spikes) and because it can let some stuff set up if it's locked on the wrong move.

We also forget something about Keldeo's checks & counters: they all have a way to recover. Amoonguss gets Regenerator, Slowking Regenerator + Slack Off, Latias Recover, Jellicent Recover, Tentacruel Rain Dish (+Protect), Celebi Recover, Gastrodon Recover etc. That's why we all have the feeling that Keldeo is manageable and is easily walled by a lot of things. As I said it above, it's true that Keldeo does have real counters and checks, though they aren't many, with a recovery move/ability but Keldeo also has a way to beat them depending on the Set and the Hidden Power, which is the reason why Keldeo is a fantastic Pokemon and probably the best Pokemon of the current Metagame. But we all should focus on the fact that it has real counters & checks which wasn't the case with Landorus-I. Landorus-i's coverage was almost impossible to handle and in addition, the Ground STAB is probably the strongest STAB + Landorus-I didn't need a Choice Item. That's different with Keldeo as there are stuff that can handle its both STABs + set up on them and it isn't that hard to find a core that beats it (Jellicent - Ferrothorn for example, or Latias - Rotom-W for an Offensive Team, Dragonite - Volcarona - Gyarados etc can set up on it depending on which move it's locked on). Once again, what makes Keldeo that strong is its ability to be able to beat these checks & counters when they are ALONE, not when they are together. And I don't want to read stuff like "ya but it's annoying to bring this Pokemon and this Pokemon to counter Keldeo", don't make me believe that these Pokemons are only useful to counter Keldeo. Ferrothorn + Jellicent is an amazing core, Amoonguss really is useful to slow down Offensive Teams, Lati@s + Rotom-W are top tier, etc.

We also shouldn't forget that Keldeo is useful for the Metagame as it can Revenge Kill a lot of powerful threats like Dragonite, Alakazam, Garchomp, Gengar, Jirachi, Volcarona, Gyarados (Icy Wind that drops its Speed) etc. We would really miss it if it finally gets banned.

 

[Halcyon.]

Moving away from Keldeo for a second, has anyone else noticed a huge number of sun teams on the ladder? I have run into a ton of sun teams today. i think that might explain why so few Keldeo are on the OU Current ladder, since Keldeo isn't too much of a problem for sun teams. Just curious if this is only happening to me or if it's happening to everyone else too.

 

[X5Dragon]

To be deleted by a mod.

 

[PDC]

I think we've had more than enough players a lot higher skilled than you say that Keldeo does do well against offense, you're not going anywhere with this. Don't even start with "offensive pressure" because it doesn't work as well as you think it does in theory. Also, I was specifically stating on the LADDER. Not an actual high-stakes match. I don't think I faced more than 1 or 2 competent players on the OU Current ladder that used Keldeo. Of course I can make them cave from offensive pressure, they don't know how to handle it and I know they can't pull off proper predicitons or double switches. Yes, offensive teams can beat a good player using Keldeo, but they are still at a bit of a disadvantage.

Also on the IRC bit, I don't think I ever asked somebody to post for me. I think I was only pointing out how flawed your arguments are.

And no I haven't seen much sun, maybe 2 in my entire time laddering.

 

[Arcticblast]

Why are you guys all complaining about not seeing Keldeo? It's not like Genesect on the Kyu-B suspect ladder - Keldeo had under 11% usage last month, and there's no reason for the OU Current ladder to be very different (apart from normal fluctuations).

 

[MoosyDoosy]

Lol, Ojama just destroyed my argument xD But I'm still not for either ban or pro ban now.

 

[Manveru123]

Just a question, do I have to get both voting requirements on the same alt, or can I use one for every ladder?