As mentioned in our last ban post, we waited until after the survey to vote, and that vote has now taken place. As a result, Ceruledge has been quickbanned!
CeruledgeThis shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who read the recent survey results - since getting Poltergeist, Ceruledge has become more and more problematic over time. With Weak Armor, any physical hit it takes will give it a +2 in speed, which makes it functionally impossible to revenge kill aside from niche priority users (who will be covered later) and Sand Rush Excadrill in sand, who has to fear the potential Shadow Sneak over Close Combat anyways. Combine that with Swords Dance, high attack, one of the best STAB combinations in the tier with an extremely high base power Ghost type STAB and a secondary STAB that is strong and heals Ceruledge, then throw in a Close Combat to take out Mega Tyranitar for good measure, and you get an incredibly powerful sweeper that is extremely hard to stop. On the Hyper Offense teams on which it is usually found, which can easily get the hazard advantage with their leads, rocks aren't even that big of an issue for it.
Ceruledge has functionally extremely limited reliable answers, other than itemless bulky waters which are bad for very obvious reasons (and lose to the occasional Ghostium Z anyways), and more illustrate the extreme and unhealthy lengths one has to go to in order to reliably answer Ceruledge. Everything gets blasted by its high power near unresisted STABs, especially at +2, and the few resists to that combination that do exist (ie. Tyranitar and its mega) just get cooked by Close Combat or are at best niche otherwise. Clefable needs to be Unaware which sucks outside of stall, Tapu Fini is extremely easy to wear down enough for Poltergeist to OHKO after hazards, Mega Venusaur needs to be Earth Power to avoid being a Bitter Blade pit stop, or worse, setup fodder, Buzzwole is a roll to be OHKOd by +2 Bitter Blade after rocks and needs to be Earthquake to not be a free heal, Ting Lu and Toxapex need to be max defense to not risk +2 Close Combat just OHKOing or Poltergeist OHKOing after minimal chip respectively, though the former can handle Shadow Sneak variants adequately while the latter can just lose to Ghostium, Hippo can about manage non Ghostium sets but is rather niche with Ting Lu in the tier and still needs to fear chip from hazards and teammates. None of this is mentioning that Air Balloon variants can just scupper multiple of these checks' already limited ways of actually dealing with it once it's in, assuming it hasn't been hit yet.
Due to Weak Armor's defense drop, one might bring up priority as a countermeasure to it, but we face something of a good priority user drought, with our good priority mons consisting almost entirely of Cinderace, Aegislash, other Ceruledge, and Scizor. I don't think I need to tell you why Scizor's Bullet Punch is an unreliable answer at best to a Ghost/Fire type Pokemon that can heal with one of its powerful STABs. Aegislash doesn't run or have space for Shadow Sneak often, much preferring Toxic, Substitute, King's Shield, etc., outside of, of course, its own Swords Dance set, which doesn't fit well on many teams except for HO, which are one of the few archetypes that don't inherently struggle with Ceruledge to begin with. To round it all off, it can get outprioritized by Shadow Sneak variants anyways. Cinderace would much rather run other moves in this meta, not to mention sucker wars are a thing that the Cinderace user can very feasibly lose, especially since Cinderace lacks much in the way of moves that actually hit Ghost/Fire well other than Sucker Punch.
In addition, it's not like Ceruledge necessarily needs Weak Armor's boost to be devastating, as 85 speed is pretty serviceable for a breaker and I just went over how bad defensive mons are at handling this thing at +2, not to mention attempts to revenge kill it may just activate Weak Armor instead and are hampered to begin with by Bitter Blade's healing and Ceruledge's acceptable bulk. Shadow Sneak is also a move that exists, allowing it to be a decent priority sweeper once checks to CCless Ceruledge are removed even if nothing activates Weak Armor.
Overall, it is an overwhelming and devastating sweeper that has incredibly limited counterplay, said counterplay being limited further by HO overwhelming them, which Ceruledge is usually on, and options Ceruledge can run to bypass many of them. For these reasons, Ceruledge has been unanimously quickbanned.
Here are the voting results:
| Cinderace | Ceruledge | Iron Hands | Kommo-o | |
| Arishem | Suspect (1) | Quickban | Suspect (2) | Retest (3) |
| Runo | Suspect (2) | Quickban | Suspect (1) | Do not take action on |
| Niadev | Suspect (1) | Quickban | Suspect (3) | Retest (2) |
| Pubo | Suspect (2) | Quickban | Suspect (1) | Retest (3) |
| TBIC106 | Suspect (1) | Quickban | Suspect (3) | Retest (2) |
| Outcome | Suspect (1) | Quickban | Suspect (2) | Retest (3) |
In addition to this ban, Cinderace will be our next suspect test. Cinderace has been on our radars for a very long time, but there has always been something more broken that shows up to steal the spotlight from it, so we will finally be able to get around to dealing with it (likely after shifts), so stay tuned.
As for Kommo-o, after further discussion, we have decided to remove a few more broken elements in the metagame before we tackle unbans for the time being, but there was a general consensus that it should be retested eventually. With the volatile state of the meta and existing difficulty with teambuilding, dropping another threat into the meta, which Kommo-o would absolutely be thanks to its combination of excellent traits, doesn't seem like the best move.
Tagging Kris to implement, thanks in advance!