AAA Suspect Coverage: Fur Coat + Ice Scales

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Pokémon in Almost Any Ability (AAA) famously enhance their offensive capabilities with powerful options like Adaptability and Sheer Force, while defensive options include Regenerator, Intimidate, and various immunity abilities—most popularly Volt Absorb and Flash Fire. Up through Sword and Shield, AAA had always used Two Ability Clause, which enabled infamous Regenerator cores that could be wildly frustrating to make progress against; the Scarlet and Violet AAA council decided to employ Single Ability Clause, breaking up these cores, but also decided to free powerful and previously-untested defensive abilities in Fur Coat and Ice Scales (and their little brother Fluffy) alongside various offensive abilities. While such a drastic change to the tier's defensive options was unprecedented, Scarlet and Violet came with changes that made this seem feasible: Terastallization was introduced as the generational mechanic, recovery moves were generally decreased to 8 PP, and incoming powerful prospects like Iron Valiant, Great Tusk, and Dragapult seemed capable of wallbreaking even the sturdiest walls.

With Terastallization banned in mid-December, the metagame developed for another month, but the next big thing was inevitably the combination of Fur Coat and Ice Scales, also dubbed as "FurScales". As one could expect, various walls like Corviknight and Hippowdon became regular users of FurScales, but perhaps less predictably, even offensively-inclined Pokémon like Quiver Dance Volcarona and Nasty Plot Gholdengo capitalized on the extra bulk provided by FurScales to set up more easily. The resulting centralization around FurScales meant most (if not all) teams made use of it. It's no wonder that Fur Coat and Ice Scales were chosen for a suspect test, but it's certainly worth taking a closer look into why.

What uses did Fur Coat and Ice Scales have?

Fur Coat and Ice Scales had two key applications within AAA—defensive users and offensive users. FurScales amplified how well defensive Pokémon could take hits, essentially meaning that they could do their main role better. Common Pokémon of this archetype were Florges, Hippowdon, Skeledirge, and non-Bulk Up Corviknight.

On the other hand, the much more controversial FurScales users were the offensive users. These Pokémon used FurScales to increase their bulk, providing additional setup opportunities and increased resilience against revenge killers. This is where most of the complaints with the abilities were drawn from—some argued that it was impossible to consistently prevent these setup users from accruing multiple boosts and blasting through a team's defensive checks. Many of the culprits were some of the limited offensive Pokémon that had recovery, such as Gholdengo, Volcarona, and Polteageist, although others like Great Tusk weren't far behind.

Pro-ban reasoning

As stated above, the majority of complaints about FurScales were due to setup users. Most argued that the extra bulk offered by the abilities was too much and enabled the setup users in question to boost too easily in order to break past the other team. Many of these Pokémon enjoyed using an ability that boosts one defensive stat and then a move that boosts the other, such as Calm Mind + Fur Coat or Bulk Up + Ice Scales, making them nearly impossible to revenge kill once set-up. Conventional counterplay to setup has been greatly nerfed in SV as well; Toxic distribution has been severely curtailed, Unaware users typically only have 8 recovery PP and are more prone to being stalled out, and slow pivoting suffers from a lack of slow pivots. Another potential issue was matchup fishing, where a team could bring a FurScales setup user and potentially gain a dramatic advantage through the opponent not having specific prep for said setup user. The extremely varied nature of the FurScales setup users presented its own challenge; if Volcarona was the only potentially broken one, it would be relatively easy to prepare for, but its counterplay was wildly different than Corviknight, or Iron Hands, or Oricorio, or...you get the idea.

Anti-ban reasoning

While FurScales bulky setup sweepers could indeed be difficult to revenge kill, they were by no means impossible to defeat. Some argued that adaptations such as Mold Breaker Choice Band Great Tusk could wallbreak regardless of opposing abilities, and phazers like Iron Moth, Ting-Lu, and even defensive Iron Hands deterred setup while their teammates attempted to execute possible wincons. Particularly powerful attackers like Hadron Engine Dragapult, Sheer Force Iron Valiant, and Iron Bundle managed to threaten FurScales with decent or significant damage anyway. FurScale setup sweepers also came with the significant drawback not being able to be run with a conventional FurScales wall, noticeably weakening the defensive core. Another argument was that even with their bulk, many FurScales users could be worn down and/or PP stalled. Fur Coat Volcarona only had 8 Morning Suns available to mitigate damage from attacks like Salt Cure and Earthquake, and even a straight up wall like Clodsire didn't want to be forced to recover over and over, as it's already passive by nature. Lastly, some believed that the pool of potentially overwhelming FurScales users was small enough to take action on the users, leaving the actual abilities intact for every other Pokémon to benefit from.

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Outcome

With a 65% majority to ban Fur Coat, 63.33% majority to ban Ice Scales, and 61 total votes, Fur Coat and Ice Scales were banned from AAA. A massive amount of offensive threats are likely to face the banhammer, leaving the tier almost unrecognizable. Fluffy will likely rise to prominence as a Fur Coat replacement, closely followed by other alternatives like Intimidate, Tablets of Ruin, Vessel of Ruin, and Regenerator + Assault Vest users.

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