np: LC - Blackbird, now with Voting!

[KratosAurion]

First of all, Murkrow deserves a nomination. As said by those before me, Murkrow is the most dangerous Pokemon in today's Metagame, not only being able to setup on both, Physical and Special threats, but also having said setups with uncontested priority in Mischievous Heart. The fact that makes Murkrow such a dangerous threat to face it's it's umpredictabiliy, much like Salamence in OU back in the day. Murkrow's sets, going from FeatherDance + Calm Mind to Substitute already have few counters by themselves, but when you add the fact that you cannot foresee which set it is, it becomes a very dangerous threat in it's own right. Murkrow's versatility and umpredictability, along various perks like MH Priority setup and MH Priority Roost make it a very dangerous threat which threatens to overcentralize the metagame.

Droughtin itself is also a very dangerous ability, which gives makes Sun Teams extremely threatening in today's metagame. As mentioned by others before, Pokemon such as Bellsprout and Churine take advantage of the everlasting Sun with Chlorophyll, using their movepools which conveniently have all necesarry moves to setup and sweep the opposition. With the inclusion of Evolution Stone, Bellsprout becomes even more dangerous boasting Swords Dance or Growth boosted STAB attacks, Sun Boosted Weather Ball and Sleep Powder as well as Sucker Punch as tools to take advantage of the Sun with. Churine is an often overlooked Pokemon who takes the Sun with a different approach, becoming a very bulky and fast sweeper with access to both, Sun boosted Synthesis and Sleep Powder, as well as the extremely dangerous Growth in addition to powerful STAB Solarbeams from a very good base Sp. Attack. In addition to this, Fire Type Pokemon, already dangerous in their own right, become even better with the power granted by everlasting Sun, with Pokemon such as Houndour taking hte spotlight as the worst threats. The everlasting Sun removes the only weakness fo Sun Teams, which were the turns that their Sun stopped shining, and throws it out of the window, allowing Sun Teams to invest more into offensesand forego Sun setups with Drought in tow. All in all, Drought in itself is a very dangerous ability which may also overcentralize the game to Sun Teams, greatly reducing the variety of viable Pokemon in today's metagame to those that can survive against the onslaught of Sun sweepers.

EDIT: My apologies for the bolds, they have been corrected.

 

[Engineer Pikachu]

I actually think that Shed Skin is the superior ability on Zuruggu. True, Moxie gives you a near impossible chance of being countered after you start of your sweep, but Shed Skin makes it soo much more easy to set up.

 

[smashlloyd20]

Agreed. With Moxie, sure, you'll OHKO everything, but +1 Zurugggu already OHKOs most of the metagame. With Shed Skin, you can switch in on things like Purunuini (no idea how to spell that) and set up in their faces without fearing status.

 

[v]

Things we are going to stop doing: Bolding Pokemon names, trying to nominate Pokemon. Nominations are NOT open right now. Do NOT try to nominate anything right now. Thanks.

 

[Crux]

I’m going to start off by saying that I don’t think that Drought is broken. Unlike Drizzle in OU, Drought is not overcentralizing, it is not unbeatable and it is definitely not broken.

I’m going to be blunt and say that none of the suspects that have been put forward can be easily dealt with if you actually think when putting together a team. I’m sorry, but I have always been under the impression that this was one of the most important aspects of competitive Pokémon.

It seems to me that people want to ban anything and everything that they find even remotely difficult to deal with.

I’m sorry if I seem rude, but it seems to me that the Little Cup community has just become extremely ban-happy, and I don’t think this benefits the metagame, let alone the community, at all. Competitive Pokémon is about adapting to deal with threats, not banning something just because you were unprepared for it and lost.

Personally, I don’t find anything to be broken or overcentralizing. The reason it seems prevalent is because the only ones using it are poor players (GK), of which there are great numbers. All of the Pokémon / abilities are perfectly manageable if you actually make sure you have them covered when you are building your team.

With all that being said, I’m not particularly against any of the suspects that have been put forward being tested. However, I don’t really think that any of them deserve a ban; none of them are broken, none of them are overcentralizing and I don’t think that bans on any of them would improve the metagame at all.

 

[SlimMan]

I’m sorry if I seem rude, but it seems to me that the Little Cup community has just become extremely ban-happy

Have you seen the OU Suspect Thread?

Anyway, has anyone else started noticing MixKrows a lot? I've seen prolly 3 or 4 just tonight.

 

[smashlloyd20]

Lol.

Mixkrow has been common for a while. It's, in my opinion, one of the hardest Murkrow sets to counter because of its power and versatility. Zuruggu? Brave Bird. Gligar? HP Ice. Komatana? Heat Wave. I believe it's this set that makes Murkrow a Suspect; it's near-impossible to counter. The only solid check I've seen is Will-O-Wisp Misdreaveus.

 

[Brawler1235]

Lol.

Mixkrow has been common for a while. It's, in my opinion, one of the hardest Murkrow sets to counter because of its power and versatility. Zuruggu? Brave Bird. Gligar? HP Ice. Komatana? Heat Wave. I believe it's this set that makes Murkrow a Suspect; it's near-impossible to counter. The only solid check I've seen is Will-O-Wisp Misdreaveus.

This set and the mono CM attacker. With mischievous heart coupled with feather dance, roost, and calm mind, this murkrow is very difficult to take down. The only way i can see beating this is with crits and either toxic or burn. You bring in your physical attacker? Priority featherdance will cripple it. Special attackers cant do a thing after a couple of calm minds. And with priority roost, it can lose its flying type, making it only weak to fighting type attacks, not rock, ice, or electric like it previously was. Overall this set is just too hard to take down without relying on crits.

 

[Moo]

This set and the mono CM attacker. With mischievous heart coupled with feather dance, roost, and calm mind, this murkrow is very difficult to take down. The only way i can see beating this is with crits and either toxic or burn. You bring in your physical attacker? Priority featherdance will cripple it. Special attackers cant do a thing after a couple of calm minds. And with priority roost, it can lose its flying type, making it only weak to fighting type attacks, not rock, ice, or electric like it previously was. Overall this set is just too hard to take down without relying on crits.

The only surefire counters for CM krow are Kotomana and Hyper Cutter Gligar. But that's just one set that it runs.

Also @ Crux, the only way you can definitely counter sun is if you have a specific team to deal with it. It's pretty ridiculous actually because most sun sweepers have Sleep Powder and Growth which doubles offensive stats...

 

[SlimMan]

Mixkrow has been common for a while.

Allow me to re-phrase. I meant a sudden increase of them.


Moving right along, I have had very little trouble with Zuruggu. Granted, that's basically just because of how my old team was. Had I made it any differently, Zuruggu would've screwed me. I'm just saying that I don't think it is broken... yet.

 

[NeoSeth]

Moving right along, I have had very little trouble with Zuruggu. Granted, that's basically just because of how my old team was. Had I made it any differently, Zuruggu would've screwed me. I'm just saying that I don't think it is broken... yet.

I feel a bit like that's pro-testing Zuruggu right now. How did you make your team? Zuruggu definitely has counters, but it's so easy to remove those counters and continue on with your sweep.

I don't really feel like it's "broken", but it's just so powerful compared to the rest of the metagame. I'm still on the fence about this, though.

Out of curiosity, what was your team made of?

 

[SlimMan]

I feel a bit like that's pro-testing Zuruggu right now. How did you make your team? Zuruggu definitely has counters, but it's so easy to remove those counters and continue on with your sweep.

I don't really feel like it's "broken", but it's just so powerful compared to the rest of the metagame. I'm still on the fence about this, though.

Out of curiosity, what was your team made of?

Well, what I meant by that was that the pokemon I use by themselves don't counter Zuruggu. I meant that I simply tailored them to do so. Which, I suppose is over-centralization but a moveslot or some EVs isn't so bad.

I agree with your second paragraph. It's ridiculous, but perhaps not really broken. And I hope you don't mind if I don't reveal my team, cuz it wasn't actually very good... >.<

 

[NeoSeth]

I’m going to start off by saying that I don’t think that Drought is broken. Unlike Drizzle in OU, Drought is not overcentralizing, it is not unbeatable and it is definitely not broken.

I’m going to be blunt and say that none of the suspects that have been put forward can be easily dealt with if you actually think when putting together a team. I’m sorry, but I have always been under the impression that this was one of the most important aspects of competitive Pokémon.

It seems to me that people want to ban anything and everything that they find even remotely difficult to deal with.

I’m sorry if I seem rude, but it seems to me that the Little Cup community has just become extremely ban-happy, and I don’t think this benefits the metagame, let alone the community, at all. Competitive Pokémon is about adapting to deal with threats, not banning something just because you were unprepared for it and lost.

Personally, I don’t find anything to be broken or overcentralizing. The reason it seems prevalent is because the only ones using it are poor players (GK), of which there are great numbers. All of the Pokémon / abilities are perfectly manageable if you actually make sure you have them covered when you are building your team.

With all that being said, I’m not particularly against any of the suspects that have been put forward being tested. However, I don’t really think that any of them deserve a ban; none of them are broken, none of them are overcentralizing and I don’t think that bans on any of them would improve the metagame at all.

I like this. None of the suspects are incredibly broken, and they can be countered.

I want to test Drought anyway, though. There are enough powerful sweepers to just wear you down, so there isn't really a definitive counter. I've been Theorymonning that Curselax, with his godly Special bulk and ability to boost his Defense, and his resistance to Fire, would make a solid Sun check. The set I was thinking of is Max HP/Max SpD/everything else in Def with Body Slam or Return/Curse/Rest/Sleep Talk.

 

[Nails]

Posting to give thunderpunch meditite some love. With a set of fake out/bullet punch/drain punch/thunderpunch you have all of the power that you should need, multiple priority moves, and you're only walled by gligar and koffing, both of whom are scared to come in on you because every meditite runs ZHB/Ice punch. Thunderpunch does like 2/3 to slowpoke with adamant/life orb, so if it switches in on SR + Drain punch it dies. Puru lives thunderpunch with like 1 hp after rocks, so if you happen to have a layer up or something then it doesn't stop your sweep. Drain Punch still hits like a <weapon; nuke, truck, bomb, etc>. Missy scares out Meditite anyways.

Agreeing that krow is broked. Drought is bad for the meta. I think Tite and Zuruggu are broken too, since tite doesn't really have counters especially if people start running Tpunch tite. Which is a total boss. Zuruggu is countered by some stuff but having to keep your counter alive is bad for the meta.

@ neoseth, run stockpile lax. better than curselax at countering sun. except it can't actually kill anything so you need to have rocks up. see my stall rmt in my sig for info.

 

[fatty]

Agreeing that krow is broked. Drought is bad for the meta. I think Tite and Zuruggu are broken too, since tite doesn't really have counters especially if people start running Tpunch tite. Which is a total boss. Zuruggu is countered by some stuff but having to keep your counter alive is bad for the meta.

Pretty much how I feel in a nutshell, except Drought is seeming like less and less a problem. It is definitely one of the easier suspect variables to check, atleast in my opinion.

 

[SkyNet]

Yeah, in the last week my view on Drought has taken a complete u-turn, there are just too many pokemon in the metagame at the moment that just walk all over Drought teams. EM made a very nice post on the last page so there is no point in me just repeating what EM said.

Zuruggu isn't even close to being broken imo. Nails you stated that if your Zuruggu counter dies then ofc your going to be swept by it, you can use that logic with any sweeper in LC. If your Canavanha counter dies then chances are you will be swept by it, same to with Murkrow, Meditite and Gligar, just to name a few.

 

[sax king]

Zuruggu has never been a problem for me. All you need is a scarfed pokemon with strong SE moves, like Machop, Kojofuu, Mankey, Komatana, or any Flying Type. Alternatively, you can use Croagunk or Dokkora. Zuruggu really isn't too much of an issue.

I've never been bothered by Meditite either for the same reasons as Zuruggu. I have a scarfed flying type to take care of it, and it can be walled. If it has Thunderpunch, Koffing is great, and if it has ZHB, Slowpoke is great (most have ZHB). It's slowish, not terribly bulky, takes a lot of damage from its LO, and can easily be revenged.

To me, the only pokemon who stand out are Vulpix and Murkrow.

Alternitively, I know I'm going to get a shitstorm for this, but what about Lickitung? It has an uncounterable set with Cursetalk Dragon Tail, great power, and great bulk. I know it's not popular, but once it catches on it will be an issue. This thing, with proper investment, can take hits from many fighting types and still live comfterably. But I'd like to hear some thoughts on this one, it's not as obvious as the other suspects.

 

[Nails]

I believe murkrow and meditite are broken anyways. carvahna isn't strong enough to where it has nothing that can check it that isn't meant to (eg, evo stone gligar at full health beats it but you wouldn't use it as your counter). Zuruggu just has so few mons that beat it. You can't play around it like you can with other stuff.

edit @ sax: shitstorm commence. Lickitung is destroyed by fighting types. obviously if you let it get +3/4 you can't kill it... that's why you don't let it set up. I could use the same reasoning with zuruggu: let it set up 3/4 boosts and it's uncounterable.

 

[SkyNet]

Nails you are missing the point, Zuruggu has many counters, not just one but many counters and many checks. sax king posted most of them in the post above.

 

[Nails]

No, I get your point. However, the counters all have major drawbacks to using them.

Scarfed fighting types let a ghost come in and set up a free sub. They also don't like switching into repeated drain punches and hjk's from zuruggu. They also can all be defeated by Zen Headbutt if you mess up and it gets +2. They are quite powerful, but very difficult to use and they have other issues that can potentially be a liability if you don't predict right.

Scarfed flying types have to switch in, taking 25% damage, use an attack with huge recoil for stab, and they're incredibly predictable, as well as walled by things like evo stone gligar, bronzor, etc. Any good team will have a way to deal with flying attacks because of life orb krow, so dealing with unboosted brave birds shouldn't be a problem. They also do nothing against a +2 Zuruggu, so they suffer from the same longevity issues facing Zuruggu, in they they can counter it once, maybe twice.

Croagunk and Dokkora are fairly easily walled by an Evo Stone Gligar (seeing a pattern here?) and have large issues with coverage. Croagunk is really frail, and Dokkora needs to set up to pose any real threat.

Additionally, there's its ability to set up on a ton of really good mons. See elevator music's post on the second page, because that explains this point perfectly.

So, saying it lacks counters was a mistake. The counters however, are a potential liability to their team (at best easily walled, at worst setup bait for something scary).

 

[Crux]

Nails, that same logic applies to any and all Pokemon, in both respects of your post. All Pokemon have their downsides and are potentially detrimental to a team, whilst all Pokemon can rip through any team, given approriate support. You have basically described all offensive well-built offensive teams. Your argument about Zuruggu's counters all having flaws is equally flawed.

 

[Heysup]

No, I get your point. However, the counters all have major drawbacks to using them.

Scarfed fighting types let a ghost come in and set up a free sub. They also don't like switching into repeated drain punches and hjk's from zuruggu. They also can all be defeated by Zen Headbutt if you mess up and it gets +2. They are quite powerful, but very difficult to use and they have other issues that can potentially be a liability if you don't predict right.

Scarfed flying types have to switch in, taking 25% damage, use an attack with huge recoil for stab, and they're incredibly predictable, as well as walled by things like evo stone gligar, bronzor, etc. Any good team will have a way to deal with flying attacks because of life orb krow, so dealing with unboosted brave birds shouldn't be a problem. They also do nothing against a +2 Zuruggu, so they suffer from the same longevity issues facing Zuruggu, in they they can counter it once, maybe twice.

Croagunk and Dokkora are fairly easily walled by an Evo Stone Gligar (seeing a pattern here?) and have large issues with coverage. Croagunk is really frail, and Dokkora needs to set up to pose any real threat.

Additionally, there's its ability to set up on a ton of really good mons. See elevator music's post on the second page, because that explains this point perfectly.

So, saying it lacks counters was a mistake. The counters however, are a potential liability to their team (at best easily walled, at worst setup bait for something scary).

A counter is a valid argument if it causes a significant threat.

Zuruggu "counters" summary:

Dokkora: If you think this thing isn't threatening then you need to reevaluate more than just your position in this discussion. It can come in and set up Bulk Up, and similar to Zuruggu, its counters can be weakened and easily passed by a +1 Drain Punch / Payback. Gligar can barely beat it if it gets a bit of a head start.

Kojofuu: Scarf Fighting types, ok, but when they have U-turn the Ghost Subs argument is somewhat moot. "Pair it with a Pursuiter".

Monmen: After Zuruggu DDs and you let this get a sub on you and you will regret ever using Zuruggu. It's incredibly hard to stop without a dedicated U-turner specifically for Monmen, and obviously Spikes are going to come into play. Either way, it's threatening and shuts Zuruggu the fuck down.

Croagunk: Gligar you say.....switch Gligar into an Ice Punch and then what. Gligar can't Roost and set up while at 0 HP.

Has anyone ever thought of using basic Roar users or simply just physically defensive mons?

Hippopotas eats Zuruggu, Roars, spreads entry hazards, Toxics, etc.

What about various non Fighting-type scarfers. Overheat ScarfDour / Vulpix.

"The possibilities are endless!"

Zuruggu just doesn't get a good chance to get set up, in fact the only reason that it has a shot in the first place is because of Evolution Stone.

 

[Darkamber8828]

The Croagunk argument works both ways.

Fighting-type? ZHB on the switch.

Gliggy, take Ice Punch.

Monmen, take anything that isn't Dragon Dance.

Hippo, HJK.

Zuruggu can maim anything that switches in with prediction, which isn't hard with wifi clause, since most run a pokemon just to counter/check Zuruggu.

 

[Destiny Warrior]

A counter is a valid argument if it causes a significant threat.

Zuruggu "counters" summary:

Dokkora: If you think this thing isn't threatening then you need to reevaluate more than just your position in this discussion. It can come in and set up Bulk Up, and similar to Zuruggu, its counters can be weakened and easily passed by a +1 Drain Punch / Payback. Gligar can barely beat it if it gets a bit of a head start.

Kojofuu: Scarf Fighting types, ok, but when they have U-turn the Ghost Subs argument is somewhat moot. "Pair it with a Pursuiter".

Monmen: After Zuruggu DDs and you let this get a sub on you and you will regret ever using Zuruggu. It's incredibly hard to stop without a dedicated U-turner specifically for Monmen, and obviously Spikes are going to come into play. Either way, it's threatening and shuts Zuruggu the fuck down.

Croagunk: Gligar you say.....switch Gligar into an Ice Punch and then what. Gligar can't Roost and set up while at 0 HP.

Has anyone ever thought of using basic Roar users or simply just physically defensive mons?

Hippopotas eats Zuruggu, Roars, spreads entry hazards, Toxics, etc.

What about various non Fighting-type scarfers. Overheat ScarfDour / Vulpix.

"The possibilities are endless!"

Zuruggu just doesn't get a good chance to get set up, in fact the only reason that it has a shot in the first place is because of Evolution Stone.

This.

P.S.Heysup do you have to say everything that I want to?

 

[Heysup]

The Croagunk argument works both ways.

Fighting-type? ZHB on the switch.

Gliggy, take Ice Punch.

Monmen, take anything that isn't Dragon Dance.

Hippo, HJK.

Zuruggu can maim anything that switches in with prediction, which isn't hard with wifi clause, since most run a pokemon just to counter/check Zuruggu.

So Zuruggu has DD / ZHB / Ice Punch / HJK / Drain Punch / Crunch????

Let's stick with the only "best" four-slot moveset, otherwise we look like we don't know what we're talking about.