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Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
This has all been an interesting process to be sure. Since this may be the last Ubers suspect test for a long time, let me just conclude by expressing some things I've learned from the last two suspect tests.
- Gothitelle surprised me by the amount of work it puts in. It has the capacity to screw over certain Pokémon, and more importantly certain teams, in a serious way. Few things control the flow of games more than Gothitelle when given the chance. It's hardly a shitty gimmick; it's the real deal. If you see a Gothitelle on the opposing team, you need to be extra careful not to be trapped after a double switch or revenge kill, or else you could be in for quite the uphill battle.
- Gengar is great as a stand-alone Pokémon, but Shadow Tag sends it through the roof. It's fast, it's powerful, it has a very annoying and flexible movepool, and this thing overall demands a serious level of preparation and prediction to play against. It is a great revenge killer, mid-game wallbreaker, and late-game cleaner. Even better, it is almost uncounterable thanks to its controversial ability and disruptive movepool. Gengarite is more than deserving of the Uber title.
- It's disingenuous to speak of 50/50s with Shadow Tag; taking away the opposing player's ability to switch is huge and is not to be understated. The thing with Shadow Tag is that if you are switching around as part of a typical match and end up on the losing end of a bad matchup against Mega Gengar or Gothitelle, they are in control of the matchup for as long as THEY choose. If they choose to switch out to an even better matchup, they can do so. If they choose to simply dispose of your Shadow Tag-weak Pokémon, then there is nothing you can do about it at that point. Yes, Shadow Tag can be counterteamed as much as the next dangerous strategy (do not understate this point either), but overpreparing for this threat is just as dangerous as underpreparing for it.
- As dire as things may seem, losing or winning any particular Shadow Tag matchup is not the end of the world. There are countless times I've lost a key Pokémon due to stag or otherwise and bounced back. Of course, I have also lost games I thought were practically won. It's amazing just how far a clutch late-game decision (or also hax) can turn the tide of a match. Many people might hate this, but I see the capacity for an interesting match even when the outcome looks all but inevitable as a crucial part of a healthy metagame.
- Team matchups are brutal. Team-building seems to be at the same time more restrictive and yet more difficult to get right in XY. Xerneas, Mega Gengar, Mega Mewtwo X/Y, and Mega Kangaskhan are all serious threats on their own. But adequately preparing for all of them while at the same time not getting wrecked by the classics like Arceus of every flavor, Kyogre, and Ho-Oh? Now that's rough. The plan of attack I've had the most success is to execute my plan before the opponent executes theirs. HO just gets better and better. With ORAS just weeks away, this trend looks like it won't be changing any time soon.
- "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." When it comes to major decisions such as
electing your representativescrafting the future of Ubers with a consistent and fair ideology, the suspect testing process is looking more and more like a waste of everyone's time. Ubers is my favorite tier (yeah, I said tier) precisely because of how elegant its ruleset has been in the past and hopefully in the future. However, it does zero good to say that only stuff that makes the game uncompetitive shall be banned when there are hundreds of different voices each pulling in their own direction, each with their own interpretation of "competitive" vs "uncompetitive". I'd be sad to see these kinds of tests go away completely from Ubers, but every member of the voting pool should have a good understanding of what they are doing, and why they think their decision is best for the metagame and tier as a whole. I am grateful for filters on the votes via reqs and paragraphs, but this process has still felt like a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth" lately.