np: ORAS OU Suspect Process, Round 3 - Ghosts [Giratina-O remains in Ubers - check the OP]

[JoshHarmony]

Is anyone getting a Primal Groudon vibe from this whole Giratina-O suspect? I think Ubers players or anyone that has really even played in Oras Ubers will get what I mean.

Gira feels like a Poke that would entirely balance out the meta but it would make it too balanced. It would be on nearly every team because it completely balances out games. I mean you can play without it like you can without Groudon in Ubers, but it would almost always be there. Is anyone catching what I'm saying here.

Giratina-O in OU=P-Groudon in Ubers

 

[Lord Wallace]

Is anyone getting a Primal Groudon vibe from this whole Giratina-O suspect? I think Ubers players or anyone that has really even played in Oras Ubers will get what I mean.

Gira feels like a Poke that would entirely balance out the meta but it would make it too balanced. It would be on nearly every team because it completely balances out games. I mean you can play without it like you can without Groudon in Ubers, but it would almost always be there. Is anyone catching what I'm saying here.

Giratina-O in OU=P-Groudon in Ubers

I said this a few pages ago. Every team will have Gira-O and teams without Gira-O would probably be better with Gira-O somewhere.

 

[MANNAT]

Most of my actual thoughts have already been posted by other users here anyways, so I'm just going to say that the concept of testing out how certain ubers perform in the OU environment is extremely intriguing, and I think that it should be investigated further. However, Giratina-O is just too good for the OU environment for a plethora of reasons that have already been stated. Things like this should continue to be tested, and I sorely hope that this is just not an April fools day joke and this is not the last time that we see this in ORAS.

 

[WebBowser]

Guys, instead of using really useful Megas like Metagross, Altaria, Sableye, etc. we should use Mega Audino that's only good property is to counter a broken mon while doing nothing else!

Thats not overcentralzing at all. The only real counter is Audino, which is funny. the rest of the fairies (besides clef probs) cant switch in for shit. Not only is being a blanket check to most of the meta (i think people are tired of hearing 2/3 so im just gonna say most lol) overcentralizing, but having a pretty sexy offensive presence is too.

I'm probably not gonna go for reqs because

a. ladder is complete cancer
b. reqs end tomorrow (2 days for some people) and i cant get reqs in a day

Just an fyi, but reqs don't end until the 12th, a solid week and a half from now. You can still do it if you really felt like it. In fact the ladder only went up a couple of days ago.

 

[DouglasFalcon]

I think that people tend to overestimate Giratina's stats a little bit. While it's undeniable that 150/120/100/120/100/90 is a lot, one must also consider that those are just BASE stats. Being forced to run Griseous Orb means that no Choice Item, nor Assault Vest, nor Leftovers can be ran on it.
This means that, pretty much like a mega, its stats are limited to base+EVs.
Looking closely, we see that both difensively and offensively this guy is not as much overpowered as it seems.

Looking offensively, the first thing we see is that shitty base 90 speed. Ofc we get Shadow Sneak priority, but that's it. Giratina is outsped by a lot of common OU threats between natural faster mons and scarfers, meaning that it' from from impossible to revengekill.
And while it has great moves to use as STAB, like Outrage, Draco Meteor, Shadow Ball and Shadow Force, its two types toghether hit only Dragon, Ghost and Psychic for super effective damage, meaning that most of the times Giratina will only do neutral damage to its targets. I know that he gets excellent neutral coverage with them and Aura Sphere rounds coverage perfectly, but not hitting many stuff x2 AND being unable to run boosting items (I mean Griseous Orb is basically an inferior Muscle Band lol) mean that its damage output is actually inferior as you would expect.
Calm Mind sets (especially alongside with Substitute) tend to loose health very quickly because of its unability to hold lefties and/or carry a recovery move.

Now, let's have a more defensive approach with Giratina.
Of course, 150 base HP is huge. Base 100 on both defenses mean that with little investment it can take hits on both spectrum very easily, fearing no OHKOs courtesy of its lack of x4 weaknesses. It gets Defog and WoW, two moves that in the OU meta have great utility.
But it's not all good for our lovely little evil snake: as before, the total lack of recovery (would you use Pain Split on a 150 base HP? Lol) means that it's forced to run rest-talk to get some health back, taking two slots rather than one and therefore hurting its wide movepool. Something I somewhat find lame is that it doesn't get Taunt (come on Giratina is fucking Satan he's SUPPOSED to taunt people), as this would be helpful on some kind of stallbreaking sets. This lack of recovery means that Giratina is relatively easily worn down by repeated hits+rocks, hurting its walling capabilities a lot. Anither very important thing is the weaknesses it has: Dragon, Fairy, Dark, Ice and Ghost are all pretty common types in this meta, and we find at least one of them in every offensive threat and even some defensive one (Sableye, Clefable and Sylveon come to mind)

To sum up, while Giratina would be a dominating force in OU if unbanned, I think that it's also true that it would be far from broken; it would also check/counter dominating mons like Megagross, Landorus-I, Landorus-T or Keldeo, while being destroyed by less seen threats like Mega Altaria or Mega Diancie, giving them more reasons to be used.



On a little sidenote, I find Giratina to be extremely helpful as a Bisharp bait. With this set, Giratina can outspeed every non scarf Bisharp and burn it if LO or outright KO with Aura Sphere if BlackGlasses/Lum Berry.
Defog is to keep utility and Draco Meteor is a strong STAB that hits everything but fairies for solid damage, taking good coverage with Aura Sphere. I use this set on a bulky balanced team and it always pull off its job:)
Giratina @Griseous Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP/ 72+ Def / 188 Speed
Bold Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Defog
- Will o Wisp
- Aura Sphere

 

[Baelfire37]

I believe the way the Giratina -O to be overused very welcome. After Aegislash left, only Gengar managed to remain competitive, even Mega Banette has its space due in OU. And regarding the foundation, several megs achieve similar or higher values when mega evolve, so will not be a big problem. What can impact really are their resistances and immunities, as well as a very good movepool. A negative point to note is that necessarily will be using Griseous Orb and with that, if you do not have a offensive EV Spread, your item will not help anything, except to not take as much damage from Knock Off.

 

[NabboCheTesta]

In my opinion, it is obvious that a meta tends to be slate. The thing is: if you want to win, you try to use the best strategy out there, and that is why standard exists. The only thing which keeps people from just building the same team over and over and over is having a metagame which allows innovation: only then, the few people that don't feel well with standards will be able to find, in the amount of gimmicks or shit they produce, something good and innovative. IMO, we are going from too much teambuilding choice, to too little including such an overcentralizing force.

 

[Tymano]

I swear a lot of people want aegislash back in OU over G-O, but people don't really think about the fact that the aegi ban had a huge positive affect over the metagame, since it's ban made a ton of pokemon more viable, such as M-Garde, M-Hera. M-Cham, M-Pinsir, Starmie, Rachi, Lucha, Zone, M-Zam, raptor, and every single other psychic type ever. G-O, so far has not had such an effect as most of these pokemon, and many others have not become unviable due to our suspect (except maybe diggersby) but if we let aegislash back in, ao many of ORAS's new tools would become worse, its not even funny since the only pokemon that are beneffited by aegi's return are mandibuzz, M-Sab, and really nothing else. But there is a much bigger list of ORAS stuff that is affected, such as
M-Gal (RIP)
M-Lop
M-Bee
M-Glalie (Forced torun EQ)
M-Meta (Forced to run EQ)
M-Alt
M-Slow
Serp (forced to run HP fire or Ground)
Gatr

Most of these pokemon are very prominent, but if they were to become less viable, along with everything else that was bad due to aegi, then we'd have a metagame in a much worse state than it is now

 

[pwnémon]

Giratina O is so obviously broken due to its griseous orb boost Stan attacks , massive bulk, wide movepool and great defensive typing. The fact the your idea of introducing it to check heaps of stuff proves that you (the council) are contradicting yourselves by bringing in something broken to check other arguably broken stuff such as landorous. Either that or this is some elaborate April fools joke, well done.

 

[BlazeLatias]

I believe the way the Giratina -O to be overused very welcome. After Aegislash left, only Gengar managed to remain competitive, even Mega Banette has its space due in OU. And regarding the foundation, several megs achieve similar or higher values when mega evolve, so will not be a big problem. What can impact really are their resistances and immunities, as well as a very good movepool. A negative point to note is that necessarily will be using Griseous Orb and with that, if you do not have a offensive EV Spread, your item will not help anything, except to not take as much damage from Knock Off.

When has mega banette EVER been good in ou lol. Anyways This is where your wrong with the whole with no investment giras weak as in reality hes not. that boost still helps even defensive spreads. Also im pretty sure im not the only one but why did you bring up mega banette in the first place? its no where near as good as gengar or giratina.

 

[Empress]

I think that people tend to overestimate Giratina's stats a little bit. While it's undeniable that 150/120/100/120/100/90 is a lot, one must also consider that those are just BASE stats. Being forced to run Griseous Orb means that no Choice Item, nor Assault Vest, nor Leftovers can be ran on it.
This means that, pretty much like a mega, its stats are limited to base+EVs.
Looking closely, we see that both difensively and offensively this guy is not as much overpowered as it seems.

Looking offensively, the first thing we see is that shitty base 90 speed. Ofc we get Shadow Sneak priority, but that's it. Giratina is outsped by a lot of common OU threats between natural faster mons and scarfers, meaning that it' from from impossible to revengekill.
And while it has great moves to use as STAB, like Outrage, Draco Meteor, Shadow Ball and Shadow Force, its two types toghether hit only Dragon, Ghost and Psychic for super effective damage, meaning that most of the times Giratina will only do neutral damage to its targets. I know that he gets excellent neutral coverage with them and Aura Sphere rounds coverage perfectly, but not hitting many stuff x2 AND being unable to run boosting items (I mean Griseous Orb is basically an inferior Muscle Band lol) mean that its damage output is actually inferior as you would expect.
Calm Mind sets (especially alongside with Substitute) tend to loose health very quickly because of its unability to hold lefties and/or carry a recovery move.

Now, let's have a more defensive approach with Giratina.
Of course, 150 base HP is huge. Base 100 on both defenses mean that with little investment it can take hits on both spectrum very easily, fearing no OHKOs courtesy of its lack of x4 weaknesses. It gets Defog and WoW, two moves that in the OU meta have great utility.
But it's not all good for our lovely little evil snake: as before, the total lack of recovery (would you use Pain Split on a 150 base HP? Lol) means that it's forced to run rest-talk to get some health back, taking two slots rather than one and therefore hurting its wide movepool. Something I somewhat find lame is that it doesn't get Taunt (come on Giratina is fucking Satan he's SUPPOSED to taunt people), as this would be helpful on some kind of stallbreaking sets. This lack of recovery means that Giratina is relatively easily worn down by repeated hits+rocks, hurting its walling capabilities a lot. Anither very important thing is the weaknesses it has: Dragon, Fairy, Dark, Ice and Ghost are all pretty common types in this meta, and we find at least one of them in every offensive threat and even some defensive one (Sableye, Clefable and Sylveon come to mind)

To sum up, while Giratina would be a dominating force in OU if unbanned, I think that it's also true that it would be far from broken; it would also check/counter dominating mons like Megagross, Landorus-I, Landorus-T or Keldeo, while being destroyed by less seen threats like Mega Altaria or Mega Diancie, giving them more reasons to be used.



On a little sidenote, I find Giratina to be extremely helpful as a Bisharp bait. With this set, Giratina can outspeed every non scarf Bisharp and burn it if LO or outright KO with Aura Sphere if BlackGlasses/Lum Berry.
Defog is to keep utility and Draco Meteor is a strong STAB that hits everything but fairies for solid damage, taking good coverage with Aura Sphere. I use this set on a bulky balanced team and it always pull off its job:)
Giratina @Griseous Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP/ 72+ Def / 188 Speed
Bold Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Defog
- Will o Wisp
- Aura Sphere

Not really agreeing with this one. Mega Altaria and Mega Diancie are far from "less seen"; they are dominant forces in today's metagame. Moreover, whether a mon has or lacks checks/counters is not really a legit reason for it to be banned or not banned. A lot of mons in Ubers currently have their share of checks and counters in OU, yet they remain upstairs because of other factors.

Giratina is far from uncounterable, but it appears to be "blanket checking" more than it has been intended to. It's meant to be a check to Megagross, both Landorus formes, and Keldeo, but it eats many other mons alive such as Starmie, Bisharp (aura sphere variants), Mega Gallade, Slowbro, and many more that would be too much work to list. It's also completely unpredictable; I have seen people use the 4MSS argument, but in reality it just speaks dividends about Giratina's versatility. You can slap it onto any team and cater it to your needs, defensively or offensively, because it can effectively utilize so many of its options. Team Preview can only tell you so much about what Giratina is running- guess incorrectly and it'll more than likely wreck your team. Its insane bulk (it's about 1.33x bulkier than Deo-D ffs), deceptively strong offense, and unpredictability all make it an overcentralizing force in the metagame. While it's clear that the current "big boys" of OU need a decentralizer, Giratina-O is not the answer because it's a bit overwhelming itself. It's not blatantly broken, but it has a negative effect on the metagame, and whether or not Giratina comes back into OU, the metagame is gonna be a bit stale regardless. Personally I'd rather see three mons defining the metagame (Megagross, Landorus, and Keldeo) than a single mon doing so.

 

[WebBowser]

I think that people tend to overestimate Giratina's stats a little bit. While it's undeniable that 150/120/100/120/100/90 is a lot, one must also consider that those are just BASE stats. Being forced to run Griseous Orb means that no Choice Item, nor Assault Vest, nor Leftovers can be ran on it.
This means that, pretty much like a mega, its stats are limited to base+EVs.
Looking closely, we see that both difensively and offensively this guy is not as much overpowered as it seems.

Looking offensively, the first thing we see is that shitty base 90 speed. Ofc we get Shadow Sneak priority, but that's it. Giratina is outsped by a lot of common OU threats between natural faster mons and scarfers, meaning that it' from from impossible to revengekill.
And while it has great moves to use as STAB, like Outrage, Draco Meteor, Shadow Ball and Shadow Force, its two types toghether hit only Dragon, Ghost and Psychic for super effective damage, meaning that most of the times Giratina will only do neutral damage to its targets. I know that he gets excellent neutral coverage with them and Aura Sphere rounds coverage perfectly, but not hitting many stuff x2 AND being unable to run boosting items (I mean Griseous Orb is basically an inferior Muscle Band lol) mean that its damage output is actually inferior as you would expect.
Calm Mind sets (especially alongside with Substitute) tend to loose health very quickly because of its unability to hold lefties and/or carry a recovery move.

Now, let's have a more defensive approach with Giratina.
Of course, 150 base HP is huge. Base 100 on both defenses mean that with little investment it can take hits on both spectrum very easily, fearing no OHKOs courtesy of its lack of x4 weaknesses. It gets Defog and WoW, two moves that in the OU meta have great utility.
But it's not all good for our lovely little evil snake: as before, the total lack of recovery (would you use Pain Split on a 150 base HP? Lol) means that it's forced to run rest-talk to get some health back, taking two slots rather than one and therefore hurting its wide movepool. Something I somewhat find lame is that it doesn't get Taunt (come on Giratina is fucking Satan he's SUPPOSED to taunt people), as this would be helpful on some kind of stallbreaking sets. This lack of recovery means that Giratina is relatively easily worn down by repeated hits+rocks, hurting its walling capabilities a lot. Anither very important thing is the weaknesses it has: Dragon, Fairy, Dark, Ice and Ghost are all pretty common types in this meta, and we find at least one of them in every offensive threat and even some defensive one (Sableye, Clefable and Sylveon come to mind)

To sum up, while Giratina would be a dominating force in OU if unbanned, I think that it's also true that it would be far from broken; it would also check/counter dominating mons like Megagross, Landorus-I, Landorus-T or Keldeo, while being destroyed by less seen threats like Mega Altaria or Mega Diancie, giving them more reasons to be used.



On a little sidenote, I find Giratina to be extremely helpful as a Bisharp bait. With this set, Giratina can outspeed every non scarf Bisharp and burn it if LO or outright KO with Aura Sphere if BlackGlasses/Lum Berry.
Defog is to keep utility and Draco Meteor is a strong STAB that hits everything but fairies for solid damage, taking good coverage with Aura Sphere. I use this set on a bulky balanced team and it always pull off its job:)
Giratina @Griseous Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP/ 72+ Def / 188 Speed
Bold Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Defog
- Will o Wisp
- Aura Sphere

There is quite a bit wrong with this post tbh...

1. Griseous Orb is far, far from an "inferior muscle band". A much better comparison is to spooky and draco plate, the former actually sees some use due to ghost's excellent nuetral coverage. Also, unlike muscle band, the orb makes Giratina-O immune to trick and weakens knock off considerably, making it an all around superior item. It also makes shadow ball essentially a 95 BP STAB move, which isn't bad at all coming off of 120 base SPA, invested or uninvested.

2. CM sets should not be taking too many hits. The idea is to swap into something you can force out, get a CM on the switch, and bop the swap in with your +1 shadow ball the next turn. A single CM is often all he needs to remove many of his common checks and counters.

3. You don't need to run dual STAB on Giratina, I personally think duel STAB is actually kind of awful because ghost STAB alone already has great coverage. Instead of Duel STAB, why not look at all of his amazing coverage options like aura sphere, thunderbolt, or earthquake?

4. With 150 base HP, you're much better off investing EVs into Giratina's defenses. Try running 68/252+ Def/ 188 Speed instead. Alternatively, you can say "**** outspeeding Bisharp, I tank knock offs like a boss anyway" and reduce the speed creep to jolly ttar.


*edit*

I swear a lot of people want aegislash back in OU over G-O, but people don't really think about the fact that the aegi ban had a huge positive affect over the metagame, since it's ban made a ton of pokemon more viable, such as M-Garde, M-Hera. M-Cham, M-Pinsir, Starmie, Rachi, Lucha, Zone, M-Zam, raptor, and every single other psychic type ever. G-O, so far has not had such an effect as most of these pokemon, and many others have not become unviable due to our suspect (except maybe diggersby) but if we let aegislash back in, ao many of ORAS's new tools would become worse, its not even funny since the only pokemon that are beneffited by aegi's return are mandibuzz, M-Sab, and really nothing else. But there is a much bigger list of ORAS stuff that is affected, such as
M-Gal (RIP)
M-Lop
M-Bee
M-Glalie (Forced torun EQ)
M-Meta (Forced to run EQ)
M-Alt
M-Slow
Serp (forced to run HP fire or Ground)
Gatr

Most of these pokemon are very prominent, but if they were to become less viable, along with everything else that was bad due to aegi, then we'd have a metagame in a much worse state than it is now

1. Serperior was irrelevant during the aegis era because it didn't have contrary. Also, most serps run HP fire/ground anyway because it's coverage options are utter garbage (how many other non-dragons seriously consider running dragon coverage?), so "being forced" to run an already popular coverage move doesn't seem like a big deal.

2. As for mons that giratina-o wrecks, how about virtually ever physical attacker not named megazard-x? That's not even an exaggeration, Giratina either walls or outright kills physical attackers so easily it's not even funny. It's not even a matter of "oh, I'll run a slightly sub-optimal coverage move to beat it"(ie EQ), it's "I get completely hard walled by this guy, even though I'm running an SE coverage move that may or may not even be that good".

And that's only the physical defensive set. Remember that Giratina-O has a plethora of other sets like the incredibly potent wallbreaker shadow force set or CM fairy stomper sets (that's literally the purpose of CM sets, lure in special fairies like sylveon and m-gard and stomp them with +1 shadow ball).

 

[Water5tar]

Personally, I believe that this suspect is actually a good idea. However, don't get me wrong, I don't think in the slightest that Giratina O should be dropped. I think this suspect is an amazing stepping stone as it shows that the council is willing to try some different things. It also shows players a new point of view on things, it shows what a meta with an incredible, over centralizing force is, potentially even more so than Aegislash, and what the meta could look like with many of these top tier threats debunked. Giratina O is an amazingly powerful force in the OU meta game being able to wall a significant portion of it, deal an incredible amount back, and pairing up with several other OU pokes. All in all, I think that Giratina O is not the right choice to drop from Ubers, but maybe something is.

 

[Dee Train]

I swear a lot of people want aegislash back in OU over G-O, but people don't really think about the fact that the aegi ban had a huge positive affect over the metagame, since it's ban made a ton of pokemon more viable, such as M-Garde, M-Hera. M-Cham, M-Pinsir, Starmie, Rachi, Lucha, Zone, M-Zam, raptor, and every single other psychic type ever. G-O, so far has not had such an effect as most of these pokemon, and many others have not become unviable due to our suspect (except maybe diggersby) but if we let aegislash back in, ao many of ORAS's new tools would become worse, its not even funny since the only pokemon that are beneffited by aegi's return are mandibuzz, M-Sab, and really nothing else. But there is a much bigger list of ORAS stuff that is affected, such as
M-Gal (RIP)
M-Lop
M-Bee
M-Glalie (Forced torun EQ)
M-Meta (Forced to run EQ)
M-Alt
M-Slow
Serp (forced to run HP fire or Ground)
Gatr

Most of these pokemon are very prominent, but if they were to become less viable, along with everything else that was bad due to aegi, then we'd have a metagame in a much worse state than it is now

To be fair M-Lops scrappy allow its to HJK aeig...but kings shields predicts!

However I dont think the viability of other mons should factor in to whether the mon in question is balanced or not

 

[-gizmo-]

I think that people tend to overestimate Giratina's stats a little bit. While it's undeniable that 150/120/100/120/100/90 is a lot, one must also consider that those are just BASE stats. Being forced to run Griseous Orb means that no Choice Item, nor Assault Vest, nor Leftovers can be ran on it.
This means that, pretty much like a mega, its stats are limited to base+EVs.
Looking closely, we see that both difensively and offensively this guy is not as much overpowered as it seems.

I honestly think you're really trying to undersell giratina. If you want to look at it as a mega pokemon because it is forced to run griseous orb, then you must note that its actual stat spread would be 150/154/100/154/90, which is by no means underwhelming in the ou metagame.

Looking offensively, the first thing we see is that shitty base 90 speed. Ofc we get Shadow Sneak priority, but that's it. Giratina is outsped by a lot of common OU threats between natural faster mons and scarfers, meaning that it' from from impossible to revengekill.
And while it has great moves to use as STAB, like Outrage, Draco Meteor, Shadow Ball and Shadow Force, its two types toghether hit only Dragon, Ghost and Psychic for super effective damage, meaning that most of the times Giratina will only do neutral damage to its targets. I know that he gets excellent neutral coverage with them and Aura Sphere rounds coverage perfectly, but not hitting many stuff x2 AND being unable to run boosting items (I mean Griseous Orb is basically an inferior Muscle Band lol) mean that its damage output is actually inferior as you would expect.
Calm Mind sets (especially alongside with Substitute) tend to loose health very quickly because of its unability to hold lefties and/or carry a recovery move.

I can't say I agree on the feelings of most in saying that base 90 on a pokemon like giratina is that much of a hindrance, as it just has so much bulk that it can heavily speed creep up to pokemon like bisharp to outspeed and wisp, crippling a normally huge threat to defensive teams.

On its coverage, it hits near all relevant pokemon in this metagame with stabs alone, then the utility and offensive coverage in its movepool EASILY patches up the rest with options like EQ/Aura Sphere/Will-o-Wisp etc. Hell, even something like thunder if you have a use for it. It just has so many options..

Now, let's have a more defensive approach with Giratina.
Of course, 150 base HP is huge. Base 100 on both defenses mean that with little investment it can take hits on both spectrum very easily, fearing no OHKOs courtesy of its lack of x4 weaknesses. It gets Defog and WoW, two moves that in the OU meta have great utility.
But it's not all good for our lovely little evil snake: as before, the total lack of recovery (would you use Pain Split on a 150 base HP? Lol) means that it's forced to run rest-talk to get some health back, taking two slots rather than one and therefore hurting its wide movepool. Something I somewhat find lame is that it doesn't get Taunt (come on Giratina is fucking Satan he's SUPPOSED to taunt people), as this would be helpful on some kind of stallbreaking sets. This lack of recovery means that Giratina is relatively easily worn down by repeated hits+rocks, hurting its walling capabilities a lot. Anither very important thing is the weaknesses it has: Dragon, Fairy, Dark, Ice and Ghost are all pretty common types in this meta, and we find at least one of them in every offensive threat and even some defensive one (Sableye, Clefable and Sylveon come to mind)

There are viable wish passers in ou for sure(alomomola and chansey especially)
Giratina finds no trouble in being on teams with these pokemon just because of the sheer utility it offers defensive builds(spinblock, switchin to huge metagame threats, good offensive presence, spreads burns etc.) Yes its weak to common attacking types in dark fairy and dragon I agree on that, but its typing really isn't bad at all. It is IMMUNE to fighting and ground attacks(to a lesser extent normal) as well as resisting somewhat common types in fire/water/grass/electric as well as bug/grass/poison

 

[Expert_Occultist]

"It is 2015. The ORAS OU metagame is in shambles. Powerful threats roam the land unchecked and the top players feel powerless to stop them all. Frustrated by failed attempts at bannings the top players cry out for a solution. The OU high council, with much deliberation, appealed to another realm. The realm of UBERS took notice and sent down a champion..."

I personally love this new Giratina-O meta and think that this a much better idea than testing Angislash. Giratina is easier to wear down due to actually eating a toxic. Giratina's typing is also much worse as well and it dosen't create 50/50 situations (at least not as much compared to your average mon although Shadow Force is annoying).

As for its effect on the meta it's not that hard to deal with honestly (I agree with pretty much everything the anti-ban side is saying about its power and lack of good recovery, bad speed etc.). Contrary to popular belief there are teams with no Giratina that are doing very well. This meta is barely a day old and everyone has new toy syndrome. New checks are being discovered every day (try lo Hydreigon). All in all I don't think its invalidating as many pokemon as people are saying (that is, making them totally unusable) and if given time I can see it doing exactly as intended.

 

[Analytic]

"It is 2015. The ORAS OU metagame is in shambles. Powerful threats roam the land unchecked and the top players feel powerless to stop them all. Frustrated by failed attempts at bannings the top players cry out for a solution. The OU high council, with much deliberation, appealed to another realm. The realm of UBERS took notice and sent down a champion..."

I personally love this new Giratina-O meta and think that this a much better idea than testing Angislash. Giratina is easier to wear down due to actually eating a toxic. Giratina's typing is also much worse as well and it dosen't create 50/50 situations (at least not as much compared to your average mon although Shadow Force is annoying).

As for its effect on the meta it's not that hard to deal with honestly (I agree with pretty much everything the anti-ban side is saying about its power and lack of good recovery, bad speed etc.). Contrary to popular belief there are teams with no Giratina that are doing very well. This meta is barely a day old and everyone has new toy syndrome. New checks are being discovered every day (try lo Hydreigon). All in all I don't think its invalidating as many pokemon as people are saying (that is, making them totally unusable) and if given time I can see it doing exactly as intended.

Giratina is really hard to break.150/100/100,these are its HP and defenses stats.Tell me,how is this even remotely healthy for the OU Metagame?Griseous Orb ups the power of STABs by x1.2,I think.It can function as a Stallbreaker,Phazer and even run a RestTalk set.While the OU Council must be lauded for their effort for trying to freshen up the metagame by doing this suspect test,all it is gonna do is make it even more stale.

 

[TheEnder]

I know a lot of people have mentioned some of the arguments I'm about to talk about, but I want to express them myself either way. First off, huge props to the OU Tiering Council for going outside the box on these suspect tests; it might just be what the tier needs, seeing as how we're stuck in a tough situation. However, I feel like this suspect test in particular seems a little desperate, and it kind of contradicts with the values that were considered important during the Aegislash suspect test. More specifically, it contradicts with the concept of not bringing down broken Pokemon from Ubers to check other, potentially, broken Pokemon. As someone who generally enjoyed the late XY metagame, I think we should try to maintain those values.

At the moment, we have tons of borderline broken Pokemon in the OU tier, but none of them really warrant a ban by themselves. This is what makes teambuilding incredibly hard, becuase there are a huge number of threats, and only so many slots to cover them. Having Giratina-O in the tier would easen teambuilding a whole lot, having it checking like two thirds of the metagame. I still don't think bringing it down would be beneficial, though, becuase it is such a huge force in itself. Being bulkier than most Pokemon, having decent Speed, and decent offenses, it can be played in a similar matter as Aegislash. Additionally, its movepool is huge, and its STABs are incredibly powerful, meaning it can go both defensive and offensive, each version having different "counters". Its access to coverage moves, utility moves and boosting options is also impeccable, with Aura Sphere, Earthquake, Will-O-Wisp, Defog, Dragon Tail, Calm Mind, and Hone Claws being some of the most relevant options. In other words, I think its fair to assume the metagame is going to be wrapped around Giratina-O, if we decide to bring it down. We might have fixed one problem, but in the process, we have created another.

While all playstyles in one way or another benefit from the addition of Giratina-O, I think its going to cause more havoc than it fixes. Offense is going to have an incredibly hard time dealing with defensively inclined versions with Will-O-Wisp and Shadow Sneak. Balance and Stall, on the other hand, are going to have to pack answers to multiple sets, like they were forced to during the Aegislash era. When combined with hazard support, especially Toxic Spikes, there is not a lot stopping the set Valentine proposed, apart from like Clefable and Toxic Chansey. To be honest, I'd rather see the long, painful process of suspect testing each of the threats that currently cause trouble in the tier (Landorus, Mega Sableye, Mega Altaria, Mega Metagross) than us bringing down broken Ubers to solve any problems. This way we can, potentially, easen teambuilding and lessen the importance of team matchup, without having to force a stale metagame, which is what I think will happen if we decide to bring down Giratina-O.

 

[KnivesNPistols]

I will just say that I find comparisons gen 5 Kyurem-B flawed, you can't compare a mon with outstanding utility and great typing to another with everything but that (though Kyurem-b did look broken on paper because of his stats). With the utility that Gira-O provides (non hazard or pursuit weak defoger, wisp, priority, phazing...) and its tremendous match up against literally 80+ % of the metagame there is little reason not to use it on basically every team. Sure it helps with certain "cheap, unfair, broken" mons like Lando-I, Metagross, Thundy but it on the other hand makes many balanced things significantly less viable (bulky Starmie, Mega Manetric, Zard Y, Excadrill, Mega Gallade... ). Suspect test will show if Giratina is actually broken in terms of strenght and walling but we don't need a test to know that it will overcentralize the metagame and make it kinda stale.

 

[Expert_Occultist]

Giratina is really hard to break.150/100/100,these are its HP and defenses stats.Tell me,how is this even remotely healthy for the OU Metagame?Griseous Orb ups the power of STABs by x1.2,I think.It can function as a Stallbreaker,Phazer and even run a RestTalk set.While the OU Council must be lauded for their effort for trying to freshen up the metagame by doing this suspect test,all it is gonna do is make it even more stale.

The wallbreaker sets are actually outdamaged by Hydreigon (I use Giratina as a breaker buddy with Hydra and still find that Hydra does this job better), phazer sets are stopped by fairies, and resttalk is unreliable. We've also discussed its stats enough to conclude that stats alone don't make the mon. All I can suggest is play the ladder and get creative with team building. Checks and counters do exist. Hell, I just ported my old team and slapped Giratina in there and it's doing fine. It even has Keldeo and Thundurus! This isn't Angi level bad. At least Giratina doesn't invalidate the entire psychic type :P

 

[Halcyon.]

I really liked Enki's post. That's the angle from which we should be looking at tests like this.

All through Black and White as well as X and Y, we keep having suspects where people complain about how we are "forced to run obscure counters" and that the Pokemon in question "stifle diversity." Finally, we have a metagame that is pretty much as diverse as can be, with Pokemon ranging from OU to RU being legitimate metagame threats. This, in tandem with the Mega Pokemon that teeter on the line between broken and non-broken makes the metagame match-up reliant. And unfortunately, this is a side effect of a diverse metagame. If you want more Pokemon to be viable, you have to accept that there will then be more threats to consider while teambuilding, and therefore more threats you will inevitably be weak to. Metagames that are diverse tend to, in a competitive sense, favor Teambuilding skill. By this I mean, when two players of equal skill fight in this metagame, usually the one with the team matchup will win. That's an inherent quality of a diverse meta. This is, in part, why tournament players are baffled that newer users are able to beat experienced veterans like Bloo or McM or whoever, and why newer players like Tesung, Anti, and Ben Gay are widely considered to be the best ORAS players. They're great players, but they're FANTASTIC team builders. They are able to take advantage of the sometimes obscure but still powerful threats ORAS has to offer, while still building teams that solidly cover as many threats as possible. This type of skill is more favored in a metagame as diverse as ORAS is. To put it simply, if a metagame has threats A, B, C, D, and E, and you aren't the best team builder, you might cover threats A and B, but be unable to cover C, D, and E. However, a better team builder might be able to cover threats A, B, C, and D, while only being weak to E. This means they are less susceptible to matchup, and therefore have a greater chance of winning any given battle.

On the flip side, you can have a metagame that lacks diversity, but has only a few threats to keep track of. This diminishes matchup-based wins, and therefore teambuilding skill is not as important as in a diverse metagame. In a centralized metagame, battling skill is more heavily favored. Think about a metagame like GSC. Completely centralized. There are only a handful of Pokemon that are legitimately effective (compared to the later games), and every team carries a Snorlax and 2-3 ways of beating it. However, GSC is considered by some to be the best meta, and it is often compared to chess. In a meta like this, since there are fewer threats to cover with team building, the battling skill of each player is more important than the team building skill in determining the winner.

So those are the two different types of metagames we can have. I diverse, matchup-based one, or a centralized, battle-centric one. Ultimately, the decision as to what kind of metagame we're looking for is a simple one as soon as we answer the following question: do we inherently value teambuilding skill or battling skill more? If we value teambuilding more, then a diverse meta is what we want. If we value battling skill, a centralized meta is what we want. Obviously both skills are important, but determining which is MORE important will lead us in the direction we want the metagame to go.

 

[The Manifold Curiosity]

I for one want to heap a huge amount of praise on the OU counsel for this suspect process. They have cherry-picked a Uber mon which has the ability to check and balance the top tier threats and at the same time remove the bad match up issues this meta has. But the real beauty of picking G-O is the fact it has no reliable recovery, which means while it can check these many threats it can only do so for a little while. This means you have to be wise when to switch him in and imo promotes a higher level of skillful playing.

After watching and playing multiple matches with G-O I have come to the viewpoint that it is not broken, but very centralizing. Its meh speed, common weaknesses (especially against the all-powerful fairy type), good but not amazing offenses and no reliable recovery means it is not too hard to wear it down, nor does it have overwhelming offensive pressure. Its high HP stat is a blessing and a curse. While it lasts longer it cannot use pain split effectively and there are only 3 wish-passers in OU (the 2 pink blobs and pink fish) that can actually heal it.

I think the comparison between G-O and PDom is a very fair and accurate one. Like other people have said we have a choice about how OU is going to operate and both meta-games will have some evils we will have to live with. We can either go with the status-Quo where there is a major match-up issue due to their being too many powerful threats for each time to deal with. Currently it does not matter how good your team-building is, there will always be at least one top-tier threat that will shred though your team if you give the opponent the slightest opening. Whats different this time is that none of these threats are powerful enough to be banned from OU (M-Meta being the case in point, I strongly believe him not to be broken) with the possible exception of Landorus-I (who has been in XY OU for years and still has not had enough momentum to get banned). Nobody can say Char-Y or M-Eye is truly broken, but if you have not got a answer you are doomed to lose. I don't think this is fair, I think the best player should win not the luckiest on the day.

This is why I am pro G-O being OU. Yes I will admit it now that he is VERY centralizing. It will be used on almost every team because it is basically a free good Mega (in the same way the Primals in Uber are free good Megas) which has enough diversity to be useful for every play-style. However it balances the play-field and means the best player will win instead of the luckiest. Yes it can check most of the meta, but it does not mean Char-Y, M-Meta, Keldeo etc are no longer effective as all of them can beat G-O after he has been worn down. As I said before he is only a temporary check/counter which means you still need to be a good team-builder and player in order to deal with the top threats. This comes at the cost of having one central S+ threat in OU, but it balances the tier.

You have to decide for yourself what you want OU to be. As a Uber player I don't have a big problem with centralization and I think its a price worth paying so that the best player will always win. I wish I had time to get reqs, all well.

Edit. Ninja'd by Halcyon lol

 

[Synchronation]

Away for 2 days and over 21 pages are here. I will read them later...

These are my thoughts after a few battles and testing:

Giratina-O is definitely not broken on the level of Kanghaskan or Salamence. You can't put it in your team and expect to sweep with little to no effort. Offensively, with "only" 120 on both attack stats without LO is not game breaking when you are considering that we have things like Metagross with 145 attack and Tough Claws. In addition, only Shadow Force and Draco Meteor are his really strong STAB moves, so he is neither strong nor has spammable STAB-moves with high base power. His ability to go mixed is nice but the inability to hit ANY kind of fairy for a good amount of damage is a real problem in a metagame that is spammed with good fairy-types. CalmMind-sets are nice setup-sweepers but they need a significant amount of team support to actually work well. CroTina seems impressive on paper but both of its STABs are not suit for this kind of set (Ghost doesn't hit normal types, Dragon doesn't hit Fairy, everything else is pretty weak). All in all, his offensive capability is rather disappointing for a Pokemon that was in Ubers for so long. Neither stall nor balance should have problems dealing with him from an offensive perspective.

It's getting interesting if you look at his defensive capabilities: Ghost/Dragon has so many useful resistances that it can act as a blanket check to pretty much the entire metagame. With just full investment in HP he can wall Landorus-I, Charizard-Y lacking Dragon Pulse, Keldeo, Scizor, Thundurus lacking Dark Pulse (who runs that already?), Manaphy lacking Ice Beam, Mega-Manectric, Slowbro and more. All of these are just a few very important threats in the metagame and he walls them with JUST full investment in HP. If you then start to invest in his defenses he will basically live any attack you throw at him. I'm not a fan of calcs to prove a point but here are three to show how bulky this thing really is:

252 Atk Tough Claws Mega Metagross Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Giratina-O: 170-202 (33.7 - 40%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock
+1 252 Atk Tough Claws Mega Charizard X Dragon Claw vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Giratina-O: 374-444 (74.2 - 88%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Pixilate Mega Gardevoir Hyper Voice vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Giratina-O: 362-428 (71.8 - 84.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

These are 3 of the most powerful very effective attacks in the OU tier and they still fail to OHKO it (bar CharX, who has a small chance after one DD and rocks). I'm not saying he can check Mega-Guardevoir but living such a powerful attack in a pinch is very impressive. Without a dedicated wallbreaker it will become impossible to break it on stall teams, especially if you consider Wish-support. He might not be able to hold other items than Griseous Orb, but this isn't neccessarily a downside since he can act now as a secondary Knock Off catcher besides your Mega. There are only two really strong Knock Off user in the tier: Bisharp and Crawdaunt. All other users of this move don't have STAB on it or use it as an utility move which won't do much to Giratina-O. If this isn't enough, it has for a defensive Pokemon immense attack and special attack, good coverage, nice speed, doesn't care about spikes or toxic spikes and a great amount of useful moves including Defog, Will-O-Wisp, Thunder Wave, Tail Wind and Dragon Tail.

His only real downside is his lack of recovery besides Rest and Pain Split so he needs Wish-support to check and counter all these threats the entire match. I know that Giratina-O can help to balance out the metagame but we have to avoid a "broken checks broken"-scenario. I'm not a good stall player so I hope someone who excells at this playstyle could tell us how this lack of recovery really influences his usefulness on those teams.

Right now, I am on the fence. I will test it more and hopefully so do others. I hope everybody thinks carefully enough about Giratinas qualities and how it will influence the tier.

 

[AM]

Yeah there's only so much centralization that should be encouraged before it becomes ridiculous. Also I wouldn't exactly throw around the concept of Primal Groudon comparisons when we're talking about something that lots of Ubers players despise (P-Don) and think it's actually a positive to its respective tier when people have been vocal about Ubers meta come ORAS in a negative way due to its centralization. Also its funny how people see this as an answer to match-up when in reality it makes already strong threats even much more stronger due to its ability to defensively blanket check much of the top tier threats, providing them a buffer and more or less a contributor to laziness. I guess you can say this contributes to a "chess like" aspect in where first person to lose their dominant piece is surely to be the loser but it's done in a manner that is unorganized and doesn't even come close to fixing whatever match-up issues are being exaggerated. Match-up is a prevalent factor in ORAS but at the end of the day a lot of it comes down to a combination of player ability, team-building, and the plethora of threats in the tier is somewhat a factor as well but not to the extent that it's being made out to be where you simply auto-lose come preview. If we're talking about closing the gap between skill level then by all means look at it from the perspective that some centralization should take place but don't exaggerate match-up when you're 6-0'd by a generally bigger threat in the meta like M-Gardevoir, M-Altaria, or M-Scizor that you should be prepared for at least relatively well. Match-up problems =/= player problems and if you played poorly no matter what's in the tier that's on you and you should admit it and stop making petty excuses for yourself.

Ending my rant on that I think centralization needs to be there but the extremity of what's centralizing it definitely shouldn't be Giratina.

This is why I am pro G-O being OU. Yes I will admit it now that he is VERY centralizing. It will be used on almost every team because it is basically a free good Mega (in the same way the Primals in Uber are free good Megas) which has enough diversity to be useful for every play-style. However it balances the play-field and means the best player will win instead of the luckiest. Yes it can check most of the meta, but it does not mean Char-Y, M-Meta, Keldeo etc are no longer effective as all of them can beat G-O after he has been worn down. As I said before he is only a temporary check/counter which means you still need to be a good team-builder and player in order to deal with the top threats. This comes at the cost of having one central S+ threat in OU, but it balances the tier.

You have to decide for yourself what you want OU to be. As a Uber player I don't have a big problem with centralization and I think its a price worth paying so that the best player will always win. I wish I had time to get reqs, all well.

Edit. Ninja'd by Halcyon lol

Well this isn't Ubers so centralization to that extreme shouldn't be endorsed on the level you're implying. Also lol balance what? It's just Giratina + all the threats we have and then a couple of terrible lure sets that'll fade out in like 2 weeks when people realize it doesn't work. Anything can be beaten after it's worn down rofl and you're making this implication that the Giratina player is a moron by not knowing this. I mean yeah it may seem that way after reading these comments and reading ways on how people tackle a foreign concept to them may make it seem like it's easy as hell with Foul Play Diggersby (no offense to who made that but really ._. ?!?). Yeah you don't need to be a good team-builder to plop Giratina on a team and call it a day so that's not even remotely true so this notion isn't even relevant when people throw out the "good player" and "good team-building" argument in a game of Pokemon of all things. Plenty of people are dealing with top tier threats fine with the exception of stuff that has been on the radar for being busted for awhile and that's a different story altogether because it really just comes back to Halycons post about banning or creating centralization. I don't think I need to reiterate all the points that people have been saying about Giratina, TheEnder made a good post last page back on it about it which I agree with.

I agree with Halycons post to an extent but let's be real here throwing a fat as hell ghost type that makes the idea of Rapid Spinning a complete liability amongst arbitrarily blanket checking top tier threats under the illusion that it's the healthy way of going about this is ludicrous and baffles me that people take introducing power creep to this extent seriously. Bring stuff back down for the sake of promoting some sort of balance is ok but not to the level that is being implied with this suspect.

 

[Halcyon.]

I should have been clearer in my post, but I'm actually 100% against Giratina in OU. I just think that the idea of being centralized isn't inherently bad. Giratina however, is both centralizing and broken in the traditional sense.

I was moreso talking about Pokemon like Aegislash in my post :x