I agree with a lot of what Lucario has to say on the subject, but overall I tend to agree with Django more.
I laddered a ton with a Munkidori team that is arguably rather weak to Muk and faired pretty well against it overall. Tricking the Muk essentially makes it a non-factor and opens up a lot of doors for Slowbro to win games. I also squirmed a bit vs Muk in the early part of game 4 and fell behind quite a bit, if your team isn't prepped well or even if you just don't play accurately you will absolutely fall behind and have to play out of a hole. 1 2 3 4 I had some trouble vs Stories and Ninja because their teams were very well prepared to face Scarf Munkidori and were not entirely reliant on Muk to deal with it. 5 6
- Switching into A-Muk's STAB combo without being punished by poison can be difficult, it requires the use of specific type combinations or tera to comfortably switch into with one Pokemon. That being said, we have a good chunk of them that lead to different types of team compositions.
- I think Lucario may be too quick to write off the effectiveness of hazards in keeping Muk at bay just because we finally have some reasonable removal tools. The removal is not as free as it's made out to be and all of the hazard removers can each be pressured in their own way to deter/block defog/spin respectively.
- I think there is an implication in Lucario's post that we need to have specific one-to-one counterplay to pokemon in the metagame, and I simply do not think this is true. You have a team of 6 pokemon and they work dynamically to cover threats together. To hinge an argument on their needing to be a reliable sole counter, a-la Swalot, is reductive and fails to adequately take into context how games of pokemon are actually played.
- Django hits the nail on the head when he talks about having a few tools that can work against Muk, even if they do get worn down over the course of a game, and using these tools effectively by keeping momentum on your side to avoid getting worn down. This is player skill differential. This is what we want to strive for in competitive metagames and is the goal of our tiering philosophy.
I laddered a ton with a Munkidori team that is arguably rather weak to Muk and faired pretty well against it overall. Tricking the Muk essentially makes it a non-factor and opens up a lot of doors for Slowbro to win games. I also squirmed a bit vs Muk in the early part of game 4 and fell behind quite a bit, if your team isn't prepped well or even if you just don't play accurately you will absolutely fall behind and have to play out of a hole. 1 2 3 4 I had some trouble vs Stories and Ninja because their teams were very well prepared to face Scarf Munkidori and were not entirely reliant on Muk to deal with it. 5 6
Last edited: