OU Suspect Coverage: Zygarde
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Art by Cretacerus.
Introduction
After more than a year since OU's last suspect test in Arena Trap, there has finally been a new suspect: Zygarde. Zygarde's sheer versatility in sets, which gave it the ability to beat checks to its other sets, and the overwhelming presence it had while teambuilding pushed it over the edge in the eyes of many players and prompted the council to suspect test it.
Zygarde
Zygarde's solid typing and bulk combined with a wide movepool consisting of moves like Glare, Toxic, Coil, Dragon Dance, Rest, Iron Tail, and, most notably, Thousand Arrows, as well as a variety of viable items to choose from such as Leftovers, Groundium Z, Dragonium Z, Figy Berry, and Steelium Z, gave Zygarde the potential to break past a majority of common checks like Tangrowth, Tapu Bulu, Clefable, Gliscor, Mega Scizor, and Slowbro depending on its moveset. For a more detailed analysis of each of Zygarde's sets, you should check out this article.
Ban Reasoning
Thanks to Zygarde's combination of huge offensive potential and great defensive utility, many people found Zygarde to be an overwhelming force in the USM metagame. Because of Zygarde's versatility, it had the potential to adapt to any meta trend and to deal with its potential answers. For example, when Tangrowth's usage went down and Mega Scizor and Clefable's usage went up to answer Dragonium Z variants, Zygarde simply started to run Groundium Z to break through those. After that, when Tapu Bulu and Tangrowth and started rising in usage and Heatran started becoming more dominant, Zygarde switched over to bulkier utility-based sets with Toxic or Glare, effectively showing that Zygarde could adapt to whatever the meta decided to favor.
Because of Zygarde's versatility allowing it to break through checks, it often necessitated multiple checks, meaning that it was overly centralizing. Furthermore, even when teams did have multiple checks to Zygarde and could effectively keep it from sweeping or breaking through them, it still did not struggle to switch into play against Pokémon such as Heatran and Celesteela thanks to its amazing defensive utility, meaning that it could still be a nuisance by forcing switches and potentially crippling checks such as Tapu Bulu, Tangrowth, and Slowbro.
No Ban Reasoning
Though the vast majority voted to ban Zygarde, there were still a large number of people who voted "No Ban." For the most part, the people voting "No Ban" agreed that Zygarde was capable of the things the pro-ban crowd claimed, noting its amazing offensive presence combined with good defensive utility along with its ability to adapt to any metagame trend; however, they disagreed that these traits made Zygarde unhealthy for the tier. They believed that Zygarde was simply a component of the already matchup-based metagame.
Zygarde's mediocre Speed and Attack, especially on bulkier sets, prevented it from acting as a threatening breaker before accumulating boosts. This, combined with Zygarde's lack of good options to hit bulky Grass-types, meant that Zygarde would really struggle to break through teams featuring Tangrowth if it was lacking Toxic. Another concern brought up by the no-ban crowd was whether the meta would actually change much if Zygarde were to leave. This belief was held because the answers used for Zygarde were useful outside of checking Zygarde. For example, while a large part of Tangrowth's usage came down to it countering Zygarde lacking Toxic, it was also useful for checking Pokémon like Ash-Greninja, Garchomp, and Tapu Koko. Mega Scizor was used to check Zygarde, but it was also used to check the majority of other physical attackers in the tier like Landorus-T, Tapu Bulu, and Kartana. Slowbro, while it was useful for checking Zygarde, still has a niche in checking Pokémon like Heatran, Garchomp, and Hawlucha.
Closing Words
With a 74.7% pro-ban majority, Zygarde is now banned from OU. You should make sure to try out the new meta now that Zygarde is gone, as it will surely be less constricting!
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