np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 11 - We Didn't Start the Fire

[Finchinator]

Hello everyone, the OU tiering council has decided to test Gouging Fire!

Gouging Fire is another new addition to the DLC2 SV OU metagame that finds itself a suspect! After receiving lots of support in the recent tiering survey, the SV OU tiering council decided to suspect Gouging Fire. This gives the playerbase time to decide if Gouging Fire is banworthy or not without resorting to a prompt quickban, which could be seen as a kneejerk reaction as Gouging Fire previously received limited support in tiering surveys. Something important to note is that quickbans become less likely to occur the further we get from releases, so the metagame will see more suspects than anything else in the coming months.

Gouging Fire has a couple of different sets that make it so effective. Dragon Dance and Choice Band stand out as ways to make the most out of this new toy in SV OU! Dragon Dance sets can go with an attacking focus, aiming to dish out as much damage as possible while boosting in hopes of breaking or sweeping. However, the most impressive application may be the bulkier variants, which oftentimes use Breaking Swipes in conjunction with Dragon Dance, Flare Blitz, and Morning Sun. This allows for Gouging Fire to limit damage from things like Great Tusk's Headlong Rush, Dragonite's Earthquake, or Ogerpon-Wellspring's Ivy Cudgel. Even Dondozo is not able to regularly outlast and break past Gouging Fire, which was once seen as an easy form of counterplay. Gouging Fire is suddenly able to use would-be checks as set-up fodder, which is amplified by applications of Terastallization or certain items. Want to dwarf Garganacl while not worrying about secondary status or drops? Throw on Covert Cloak. Want to flip the match-up against Iron Defense + Body Press Pokemon like Zamazenta? Opt for Tera Ghost. Worried about Toxic from Gliscor, Slowking-Galar, or Clodsire? Both Tera Poison and Tera Steel can work on the Breaking Swipe set. We have reached a point where Gouging Fire is able to handpick what does and does not counter it.

Of course, there is also the nuclear approach: Choice Band Gouging Fire on Sun teams. While this is more support reliant and perhaps less consistent, Choice Band Tera Fire Raging Fury Gouging Fire on Sun teams does a number to...the entire metagame! Speed boosting Gouging Fire is the best and most consistent way to approach this as revenge killing it is much more challenging; it is already hard to OHKO something as bulky as Gouging Fire, but being able to outrun the unboosted metagame under Sun goes a long way towards making Gouging Fire an offense killer on Sun teams. Everything besides Dondozo, opposing Gouging Fire, Heatran, Alomomola, and Garganacl have to be worried about this boosted Raging Fury as is (and other attacks can hit Gouging Fire or Heatran, too). If you want to go a step further and sacrifice the speed for even more power, it just gets downright silly...

Thankfully these conditions are hard to come by as it requires Sun, Terastallization, and relint on a set that makes revenge killing much more possible than it otherwise would be, so my Dondozo lovers can rejoice. With this said, there is a lot of support reliance for Choice Band Gouging Fire and there is a lot of give-and-take for Dragon Dance Gouging Fire. While even the players more down on it must admit Gouging Fire is both strong and versatile, counterplay does exist. Pokemon like Earth Power Landorus-T, Toxic or Swords Dance Gliscor, Dondozo, Primarina, Curse Garganacl, Heatran, and Skeledirge all can play a substantial role in limiting or outright stopping Gouging Fire depending upon the set, Tera, and other battle conditions. This is a respectable list in terms of sheer number regardless of the circumstances that apply.

However, we still must look at circumstances as the game is played within the context of our metagame after all. The fact of the matter is that opponents have to play some weighted guessing games around the item, Tera, and timing of Gouging Fire's assault in order to assure it is contained even when using most of these potential checks. This dynamic puts a dispraportionate strain on teambuilding some will argue as people feel an urge to stack Gouging Fire counterplay to be truly safe against it. Others will argue, on the flip side, that Gouging Fire can only do so much on any given team and it can oftentimes be predictable. This makes approaching it perhaps more limited than how it was initially framed above.

No matter how you look at it: it is clear that Gouging Fire is strong and contains numerous possible sets. Even beyond the aforementioned DD + Breaking Swipe set, it can use a standard offensive DD set with Booster Energy, too. Overall, Gouging Fire is a great Pokemon in the metagame that has the communities attention as a potential target for tiering action. There is a lot going for it, but it is also possible to minimize Gouging Fire's impact on games depending on your specific approach. This suspect test will help determine if Gouging Fire is banworthy in SV OU or not!

• Reading this is mandatory for participating in the suspect test!!! The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 80 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 80 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 84. Also, needing more than 50 games to reach 80 GXE will suffice.

minimum games needed

GXE	minimum games
80	50
80.2	49
80.4	48
80.6	47
80.8	46
81	45
81.2	44
81.4	43
81.6	42
81.8	41
82	40
82.2	39
82.4	38
82.6	37
82.8	36
83	35
83.2	34
83.4	33
83.6	32
83.8	31
84	30

• You must signup with a newly registered account on Pokemon Showdown! that begins with the appropriate prefix for the suspect test. For this suspect test, the prefix will be OUGH. For example, I might signup with the ladder account OUGH Finch.
• Laddering with an account that impersonates, mocks, or insults another Smogon user or breaks Pokemon Showdown! rules may be disqualified from voting and infracted. Moderator discretion will be applied here. If there is any doubt or hesitance when making the alt, just pick another name. There are infinite possibilities and we have had trouble for this repeatedly. If you wish to participate in the suspect, you should be able to exhibit decent enough judgement here. We will not be lenient.
• We will be using the regular OU ladder for this suspect test. We will not be creating a new Suspect Ladder. At the beginning of every battle, there will be an announcement denoting the ongoing suspect with a link to this thread.
• The suspect being tested, Gouging Fire, will be allowed on the ladder.
• Any form of voting manipulation will result in swift and severe punishment. You are more than welcome to state your argument to as many people as you so please, but do not use any kind of underhanded tactics to get a result you desire. Bribery, blackmail, or any other type of tactic used to sway votes will be handled and sanctioned.
• Do not attempt to cheat the ladder. We will know if you did not actually achieve voting requisites, so don't do it. Harsh sanctions will be applied.
• Unlike previous tests, we will be posting the voting identification thread immediately after this thread. Your voting requisites will be confirmed by a Council member or OU moderator, to which we will edit in confirmation. Please avoid getting more games before getting confirmed.
• The suspect test will be lasting until Friday, March 15th at 11:59 pm (GMT-4), and then we will put up the voting thread in the Blind Voting subforum.

This thread will be open to allow all users to share their thoughts on this suspect test and discuss with one another their thoughts. However, this thread will be strictly moderated, moreso than the average OU forum thread. Our moderators will apply discretion as to what is appropriate. You are not allowed to post about other potential suspects or bans. Please read and keep in mind the following before posting:

• No unhelpful one liners nor uninformed posts;
• No discussion on other potential suspects -- if you wish to discuss another Pokemon, we encourage you to do so in the metagame discussion thread, but this thread is strictly to discuss if Gouging Fire is banworthy or not;
• No discussion on the suspect process -- this includes testing Gouging Fire vs other potential suspects;
• You are required to make respectful posts;
• You are required to read this thread before posting.
• Failure to follow these simple guidelines will result in your post being deleted and infracted without any prior warning.
• Please also take a moment to read over some suggestions from the OU Council and the OU Moderation team for posting in this thread; adhering these will help out our time moderating the thread and present your arguments better and more educated.
  • Do not argue because it's your favorite Pokemon. This should be common sense, but please don't do this, because we will delete posts like this.
  • You do not need a boatload of experience to have an informed opinion, but please try to minimize the theorymon aspect and use your experiences watching and playing. Playing some on the ladder before posting is plenty if you're concerned about this.
  • Do not flame, belittle, or be disrespectful to users in this thread. While not everyone will read this post in its entirety nor will everyone have an informed opinion, please be sure not to be disrespectful. If there's an issue, bring it up to a moderator.
  • Do not use the argument of broken checking broken. Should your argument rest on your opinion that banning the Pokemon or mechanic being tested in this suspect test will make a Pokemon or mechanic broken, overpowered, and/or uncompetitive; don't. If something needs to be banned because of the result this suspect, then so be it.
  • This thread is not to voice complaints about the suspect process or decisions of the council. While we are more than open to hearing complaints that may arise, this isn't the place for it. I suggest you message the OU Council, PM our Tier Leaders, Finchinator and Ruft, or make a post in Senior Staff requests, should you have a badge.

Should you have any questions about the suspect test, feel free to message the OU Council. And if you have any questions about the moderation of this thread, feel free to message the OU Forum Leaders. I am tagging dhelmise and Marty to let them know about this, too.

Keep in mind that our suspect tests are decided by the community; anyone who rightfully achieves voting requisites is allowed to vote. The outcome is up to you.

 

[Finchinator]

Locking for a day so people can collect their thoughts!

 

[Finchinator]

Voter Identification is also up for those who get requirements who are not named Exotic64: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...-identification-thread.3738133/#post-10014563

Thanks, have a good suspect everyone!

 

[Finchinator]

This thread is now open for discussion!

 

[Finchinator]

I intend to vote ban on Gouging Fire.

I find the Choice Band sets on Sun to be hyped up a bit too much actually, but the Dragon Dance sets are very hard to cover. Breaking Swipes arguably broke Gouging Fire, permitting it to swipe past would-be checks or counters like Dondozo, Great Tusk, Gliscor (depending on Tera + Toxic), etc. The right item between Booster Energy, Covert Cloak, or even Boots can dictate counterplay while the right Tera between Ghost, Fairy, Poison/Steel, etc. can flip match-ups, too. While it is true that you can only run one item, one tera type, and four moves on Gouging Fire, it is also true you can only exhaust so much teambuilding energy in trying to minimize opposing Gouging Fire. I think it dispraportionately strains team construction and influences gameplay behavior to an unhealthy degree, making it broken.

I will make a larger post going through each set, some team structures, and maybe even example replays later if requested and/or it feels necessary.

 

[CTC]

I intend to vote ban on Gouging Fire.

I find the Choice Band sets on Sun to be hyped up a bit too much actually, but the Dragon Dance sets are very hard to cover. Breaking Swipes arguably broke Gouging Fire, permitting it to swipe past would-be checks or counters like Dondozo, Great Tusk, Gliscor (depending on Tera + Toxic), etc. The right item between Booster Energy, Covert Cloak, or even Boots can dictate counterplay while the right Tera between Ghost, Fairy, Poison/Steel, etc. can flip match-ups, too. While it is true that you can only run one item, one tera type, and four moves on Gouging Fire, it is also true you can only exhaust so much teambuilding energy in trying to minimize opposing Gouging Fire. I think it dispraportionately strains team construction and influences gameplay behavior to an unhealthy degree, making it broken.

I will make a larger post going through each set, some team structures, and maybe even example replays later if requested and/or it feels necessary.

Key word is can. if you have the wrong tera you will lose to your counters. tera poison? U dont beat alo + toxic since toxic scor or slowking can force the tera after which chilling/scald alo destroys. covert cloak ones take rocks vs offense and can be knocked, non cloak ones gotta face daddy garg's belt. Non tera ghost ones still lose to zama and get roared out. Choice band ones either dont break stall w +spe or suffer from being hit by every hazard and loses to knock/status. Plus attack booster is fairly useless vs offense and plus speed does not break hard enough. Tera fairy and ghost suffer vs toxic, lando t/tusk being omnipresent dont help either. For every versatile counter tech this mon can have, it also loses its ability to cover a whole other portion of the meta. This is one of those versatile but fair sweepers that need a lot of things to go right for a sweep, albeit the setup is incredibly easy to pull off. However, a well built team should not be suffering from a glaring gouge weakness. Bulky teams and ho teams both have outs vs this mon, and balance can still tech unaware or fairy teras to take advantage of the predictable setup movepool. Faster encore, phazing, unaware, and status are all problems for this mon much like they are for gambit. gouging provides a much needed offensive check to volc and gambit, among other things, curbing the brainless spam mons to a degree. Banning this mon further diminishes sun for no reason and takes us a step closer to boring boots spam balance as it is currently one of the only tools for ho to deal with unaware dozo teams, forcing fat teams to get creative. Sun is also a healthy check to offense while also being able to tech vs stall, the great equalizer, so to speak. diminishing rain and sun further will make suicide lead/veil/webs type cheese ho the preferred style for ho and drastically reduce meta variety. Again, a well built team should account for this mon as much as it does volcarona and gambit, and this mon's various sets have predictable weaknesses that keep it from being broken like the no drawback sneasler or ursaluna that have been banished to ubers who hit the field w the power of a choiced mon or free +2 speed. Tanky gouging doesnt have the muscle and offensive gouging does not go the distance. We need to accept that this mon is healthy for the meta and that we need to stop banning the few setup mons that can fight back against unaware in order to keep the meta from minmaxing to boots balance.
I will be voting to KEEP gouging fire in the tier

mark my words: we are a goug ban and maybe 1 ban away from weav boots spam being the meta welcome back to dlc1 hell

 

[Magcargo]

I believe Gouging Fire should be banned.

Defensively answering the sets under sun is simply an impossible task when "checks" such as Garganacl are taking well over 50% from a resisted Tera Fire Raging Fury. What makes this set broken to me is the fact that Raging Fury does not inflict Recoil or even make contact, so potential counterplay such as Landorus-T winds up completely failing. Dealing with this defensively, on top of other Pokemon on sun that are already difficult to deal with on sun such as Raging Bolt and Walking Wake feels too difficult with balance, even if the sun teams supporting these Pokemon are not structurally the most sound.

Currently I have not found the breaking Swipe set to be extremely problematic though its match-up fishing potential is no doubt there. I have been using a lot more Garganacl lately, so this may be why. Simply put, this set cannot do everything at once. Because these sets typically do not run Boots, they have a difficult time dealing with Entry hazards. Garganacl, or the combination of a Pokemon with Toxic and Skeledirge / Pokemon with Will-O-Wisp / can deal with this set -reasonably- well. I personally have not been too impressed with this set when using it due to its lacking initial power and requiring too many turns to properly positioned and too many checks to be absent from the board. Match-ups such as Ting-Lu, ID + BP Zamazenta, etc. are quite hard. That being said, I am also not the most experienced in using this set and have not seen adaptations such as Covert Cloak be run, so my opinion here may be uninformed.

The booster attack set IMO is very threatening, being a strong breaker that is capable of punching holes for other breakers such as Roaring Moon or Kingambit. Sets with Tera Ground EQ deal a lot of damage to Garganacl and Skeledirge, This set is handled reasonably well by a few other Pokemon, particularly if it opts for Morning Sun over Dragon coverage. However, many of these Pokemon will lose to the slightest adaption. Landorus-T will typically lose to Tera Flying, Dragonite loses to Dragon coverage, Fire-types don't deal any damage back to this Pokemon so they are setup fodder, etc.

In general, I find this Pokemon's bulk to be too high. Many players complain about Gholdengo being too bulky, but Gouging's bulk is on an entire different level, eclipsing Gholdengo in every category. Combined with recovery, a speed boosting move, a perfect STAB Combination, and Tera, this makes Gouging extremely difficult to stop via traditional counterplay. Revenge killing this Pokemon with something like Iron Moth is very difficult because Iron Moth is barely dealing over 50% with a Neutral Sludge Wave, which goes out the window against bulky sets. Kingambit's priority mostly bounces off, dealing under 50% vs bulky sets, even with Black Glasses +5 fallen. Defensively checking this Pokemon is difficult outside of running very specific counterplay, which Gouging Fire can tech for itself. I have seen this Pokemon run multiple different Tera Types, such as Fairy for strong Draco Meteors, Ghost for ID + BP mons, Poison for Toxic Pokemon, etc.

I don't believe Gouging Fire to be an entirely unhealthy presence, as incentivizing Garganacl and Landorus-T usage is IMO a good quality, but I believe this Pokemon's combined attributes to be too much for the tier, espicially given the other limiting presences in the metagame.

 

[CTC]

I believe Gouging Fire should be banned.

Defensively answering the sets under sun is simply an impossible task when "checks" such as Garganacl are taking well over 50% from a resisted Tera Fire Raging Fury. What makes this set broken to me is the fact that Raging Fury does not inflict Recoil or even make contact, so potential counterplay such as Landorus-T winds up completely failing. Dealing with this defensively, on top of other Pokemon on sun that are already difficult to deal with on sun such as Raging Bolt and Walking Wake feels too difficult with balance, even if the sun teams support these Pokemon are not structurally the most sound.

Currently I have not found the breaking Swipe set to be extremely problematic though its match-up fishing potential is no doubt there. I have been using a lot more Garganacl lately, so this may be why. Simply put, this set cannot do everything at once. Because these sets typically do not run Boots, they have a difficult time dealing with Entry hazards. Garganacl, or the combination of a Pokemon with Toxic and Skeledirge / Pokemon with Will-O-Wisp / can deal with this set -reasonably- well. I personally have not been too impressed with this set when using it due to its lacking initial power and requiring too many turns to properly positioned and too many checks to be absent from the board. Match-ups such as Ting-Lu, ID + BP Zamazenta, etc. are quite hard. That being said, I am also not the most experienced in using this set and have not seen adaptations such as Covert Cloak be run, so my opinion here may be uninformed.

The booster attack set IMO is very threatening, being a strong breaker that is capable of punching holes for other breakers such as Roaring Moon or Kingambit. Sets with Tera Ground EQ deal a lot of damage to Garganacl and Skeledirge, This set is handled reasonably well by a few other Pokemon, particularly if it opts for Morning Sun over Dragon coverage. However, many of these Pokemon will lose to the slightest adaption. Landorus-T will typically lose to Tera Flying, Dragonite loses to Dragon coverage, Fire-types don't deal any damage back to this Pokemon so they are setup fodder, etc.

In general, I find this Pokemon's bulk to be too high. Many players complain about Gholdengo being too bulky, but Gouging's bulk is on an entire different level, eclipsing Gholdengo in every category. Combined with recovery, a speed boosting move, a perfect STAB Combination, and Tera, this makes Gouging extremely difficult to stop via traditional counterplay. Revenge killing this Pokemon with something like Iron Moth is very difficult because Iron Moth is barely dealing over 50% with a Neutral Sludge Wave, which goes out the window against bulky sets. Kingambit's priority mostly bounces off, dealing under 50% vs bulky sets, even with Black Glasses +5 fallen. Defensively checking this Pokemon is difficult outside of running very specific counterplay, which Gouging Fire can tech for itself. I have seen this Pokemon run multiple different Tera Types, such as Fairy for strong Draco Meteors, Ghost for ID + BP mons, Poison for Toxic Pokemon, etc.

I don't believe Gouging Fire to be an entirely unhealthy presence, as incentivizing Garganacl and Landorus-T usage is IMO a good quality, but I believe this Pokemon's combined attributes to be too much for the tier, espicially given the other limiting presences in the metagame.

So let me get this straight, you think the sun set is overpowered currently because of gouging? The broken sun that has seen all dlc2 lows in terms of usage and winrate in ost and spl, that sun? Also the breaking swipe set that a lot of good players actually complain about is fair to you? So why even complain about the mon if the only broken set is fair to you as explained in the second paragraph. You literally named like 6 checks. Garg was uu before goug and pult needed checking, boosting it to ou and bringing more diversity to the tier by adding more forms of progress making. The bulk is too high huh, must not hae heard of tusk, kyurem, volc, ghold, bolt..... etc. The entire rant about bulk too high can very easily be applied to zama if u dont know what mon is being referred to here, just read through it yourself and think for 1 second.

Please, i implore the player base to name some actual arguments as to why this mon in particular is more broken then gambit, bolt, and zama for example, all of whom posses very similar qualities that people claim make gouging uniquely broken (they are wrong).

I will be in this thread all day

 

[Akalli]

Simillary to Walking Wake, I don't have an issue with the banded sun sets while they can arguably be stupid (savouras mncmt game in spl is probably the best exemple you can find for this) sun will always be super flawed as a playstyle and while surely viable, it isn't as simple as it looks to get GF going there. So yeah, would be bad faith to say the sun sets are apart of the problem imo because they really aren't.

The bulky/offensive booster energy dragon dance setters are just reaching game breaking levels, literally picking what your counterplay will be never be healthy, on top of the guessing stuff it brings to the table. There is some counterplay which is worth noting, but half of it become set up fodder after tera; great tusk is set up food once booster is burned, tinglu works but last mon will lose the 1v1, landorus helmet annoys it but also becomes set up fodder with any other tera than poison, garganacl loses to covert cloak unless its set up with tera fairy, Heatran works but you never know if a random earthquake is coming and Heatran is hard to fit on most stuff, Primarina can't come in unless it's literally super invested in defense, Skeledirge works pretty well but still loses to offensive Earthquake sets. It's bulk is way too huge when it has access to reliable recovery, and there's really no offensive way to revenge kill most of the time.

Removing GF does blow because it brings some really cool stuff to the tier outside of that, limiting Rillaboom is a gift from god, serves as one of the only Volcarona checks on offense prior to tera which you will most likely be happy with, another Kingambit" offensive answer" and probably more. So yeah unlike Sneasler and Roaring Moon in DLC 1 that were pure cheese that you could remove without really feeling bad, there are some downsides to a Gouging Fire ban for sure and it'd be bad faith not to mention it, but ultimately they don't outdo it for me.

But yeah, I'll be voting to ban Gouging Fire, I just believe we absolutely need bans as the tier is way too congested with threats right now and Gouging Fire is arguably the best one of them atm.

 

[heileone]

I think that gouging fire should be banned as the mere existence of the breaking swipe set heavily constrains balance building and increases the volatility and matchup fishiness inherent in the game. While it is true that balance can be creative and find smart ways to deal with it, it will always come with compromising the teams ability to deal with other pokemon.

Its very hard to build "defense in depth" style answers to gouging fire on balance involving the ability to soft check it in multiple ways and hamper its ability to make progress between the capabilities of multiple of your pokemon. I think a good example of where this works is kingambit, where balance can tactfully build to draw it out and chip it/ answer it with multiple different pokemon over the course of the game. With gouging fire it is a much more clear cut either you have an answer or you dont scenario. It can shrug off most of what balance has to threaten it and with its ability threaten a win the turn it comes out as well as longevity with morning sun, it requires dedicated answers that can beat it 1 on 1. This means using valuable move/item/ pokemon slots in a metagame where the amount of threats and things you have to defensively plan for are already overwhelming. Thats not even mentioning the fact that it can easily pick and choose what it wants to beat. If you want your dedicated gouging 1v1 mon to be 2 attack dozo, you can still loose to tera ghost. If you want it to be garg, covert cloak. This usually means you need not just one pokemon that can 1v1 it, but two. And thats just a massive compromise that severely hampers your ability to play in a bad matchup.

I understand that for tour players, this may not be as much of an issue, since stuff like this rewards good scouting and prep, which is just as much of a skill and part of the game as actual in game play. However, as I am a ladder player, this type of stuff is very disheartening to me. Never before as the game felt more like fishing simulator in the admittedly short time I have played it. The amount of games I load and go "oh this is a free win" or "oh, I just insta lose in preview" is way, way too high. And I think that most people on the ladder know this. Seriously, the ladder has never been as dead as this in my time of play. Noone wants to play the game when theres a chance they just load up into some specific threat that 6-0s them, no skill involved. I think for the health of the game, gouging fire really needs a ban due to it contribution to the heavily fishy metagame we have at the moment.

 

[TheTraininator]

The bulk is too high huh, must not hae heard of tusk, kyurem, volc, ghold, bolt..... etc. The entire rant about bulk too high can very easily be applied to zama if u dont know what mon is being referred to here, just read through it yourself and think for 1 second.

You do realize that literally only Gholdengo on that list has recovery like Gouging Fire does, right? (EDIT: And Volcarona, but lol I would not call that physical bulk good). That’s a huge part of the problem with Gouging. Massive bulk, recovery, and strong 2 moveslot coverage are what make the setup sets too consistent.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

The bulk is too high huh, must not hae heard of tusk, kyurem, volc, ghold, bolt..... etc.

except that kyurem should also be banned. and bolt. and possibly volc, still on the fence about it. and ghold (in my opinion at least). so yeah, i think there might actually be something of a compelling argument here considering you compared it to 4 potentially banworthy mons

Please, i implore the player base to name some actual arguments as to why this mon in particular is more broken then gambit, bolt, and zama for example, all of whom posses very similar qualities that people claim make gouging uniquely broken (they are wrong).

nice whataboutism

 

[Heatranator]

I will be voting ban on Gouging Fire, and for once I might be able to get requirements (key word, might, I am known to disappoint the ones around me lmao).
If gouging had a single set, it would be alright potentially. A difficult mon to deal with, but alright. However, just the fact that it can run a multitude of sets which if you don't have specific counterplay to it, you will lose instantly.
Dd sets without breaking swipe are the easiest to deal with in my opinion. They take a little while to get going and one whirlwind (which is niche I know) or strong hit will demolish it. It also has coverage issues as it wants either e-quake or morning sun, lacking one of them in a relevant matchup severly restricts its ability to snowball.
The breaking swipe set is dumb, it can 1v1 a lot of mons it shouldn't, the only thing it cannot 1v1 is dondozo, but even then it can be outplayed if done correctly. It makes it easy to set up multiple boosts which can end games on the spot.
The banded set is seen as the least problematic, but that's because its on the wrong team. On sun, you have to reduce your attack evs to get a proto speed boost, which undercuts its power a bit. However, on sticky web teams, it is disgusting cause you can afford to run adamant since you still outspeed anything due to the speed drop of webs. Combine this with sunny day which is set up by ribombee, and huge holes are broken in the opposing teams defenses which can be easy pickings for the rest of the team, even on 4 turns of sun.
I don't have much more to say, because gouging is just stupid broken to me, though I will end off with this. PLEASE BE CIVIL. I have already seen people being a bit rude about the topic (you know who you are, I know you are a top player, doesn't give you the right to be nasty to others.) Also, if a ban results in a shit meta, that is alright because we can then ban the thing that is problematic next. We shouldn't have to deal with something bad because it is keeping something else in check, that is called "broken checks broken."

 

[Magcargo]

So let me get this straight, you think the sun set is overpowered currently because of gouging? The broken sun that has seen all dlc2 lows in terms of usage and winrate in ost and spl, that sun? Also the breaking swipe set that a lot of good players actually complain about is fair to you? So why even complain about the mon if the only broken set is fair to you as explained in the second paragraph. You literally named like 6 checks. Garg was uu before goug and pult needed checking, boosting it to ou and bringing more diversity to the tier by adding more forms of progress making. The bulk is too high huh, must not hae heard of tusk, kyurem, volc, ghold, bolt..... etc. The entire rant about bulk too high can very easily be applied to zama if u dont know what mon is being referred to here, just read through it yourself and think for 1 second.

Please, i implore the player base to name some actual arguments as to why this mon in particular is more broken then gambit, bolt, and zama for example, all of whom posses very similar qualities that people claim make gouging uniquely broken (they are wrong).

I will be in this thread all day

Its moreso that the bulk is too high in tandem with Morning Sun. Ghold's bulk is significantly lower + it doesn't have a speed boosting move. IMO a fair mon (though others certainly disagree). Kyurem and Bolt are comparably bulky but don't have recovery which is a massive weakness for both, particularly Kyurem. Volcarona's bulk is significantly lower, though I think it is the most comparable Pokemon to Gouging Fire for sure. IMO It has higher highs and lower lows because of Quiver dance being a better boosting move than DD and helping it beat counterplay. Still, Volcarona's physical bulk isn't that great so it is more easily checked by priority.

I do agree that Garg being more common is generally a positive thing, esp since Tera Water Garg is good for a lot of other shit. Some other counterplay I've tried was Tera Water Phsydef Unaware Clefable (possibly unserious set) which doesn't do terribly vs the DD variants and is good for a decent amount of other shit such as some QD Volc, some CM Raging Bolt variants (when you do not Tera), etc. Lando-T is another rising superstar who's viability is owed in good part too Gouging. Special sets are doing 50%+ to the Breaking Swipe set and deal a shitton of recoil with Helmet. Any Tera aside from Poison gets fucked by Gliscor, which IMO is still great. That being said, balance's options to deal with Gouging are really limited outside of Garg & specific cores, which is restricting to deal with in tandem with other threats. Maybe Tera Water Ting-Lu if you are not facing Gouging last. Tera Water Corv likely works too, but a few Gougings are running Tera Ghost + Corv wants Tera Dragon IMO for Ogerpon. I have been seeing a rise in Dirge usage which also does sollidly against this set. On its own, I don't think the Breaking Swipe set is entirely a negative metagame presence given that it promotes some interesting counterplay, although it is a bit constraining accounting for everything.

That being said, most of this "interesting counterplay" goes out of the window when dealing with sun because these answers get completely destroyed. As someone who voted DNB on Walking Wake, I find Gouging Fire to be more restrictive because of its drastically higher damage output on top of its fantastic trading ability due to its bulk. Granted, its bulk is undercut by the Stealth Rock Weakness, which is fair, but I find that it can be difficult to setup hazards against sun, at least early on due to Hatt.

168 Atk Choice Band Gouging Fire Raging Fury vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew in Sun: 379-447 (111.1 - 131%) -- guaranteed OHKO
244 SpA Choice Specs Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Mew in Sun: 283-334 (82.9 - 97.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

The main arguement I see against this is that sun isn't structurally great, which is a fair point. But the exact same point could have been brought up for rain and Archaludon, which also got banned. Rain was basically locked to 4 mons (treads, Arch, barra, Peli) + not great into a number of mons, including Specs Pult, Tera Water Garg (which had no switch-ins on rain aside from maybe Bolt and Rilla), Sand, Superpower Ogerpon, Atales, etc. Yet we banned Arch anyways because of its fantastic trading abillity when it got predictions correct + strong snowballing potential. Gouging Fire on the other hand, doesn't even need to predict. Its mostly just free to use Raging Fury / Heat Crash to destroy any switch-in. Booster Attack is particularly scary for slower teams, though Booster Speed is by and large better. Regardless, this shit is OHKOing a ton of relatively bulky resist like Primarina with BOOSTER SPEED. Dealing with this on top of other shit like Wake, Raging Bolt, Lilligant, etc. simply feels like too great of a burden, even if the current sun structures are not the greatest. Pokemon like this certainly don't help with the match-up fishy issues players have with gen 9.

Personally I would prefer banning Damp Rock / Heat Rock in either of these cases, but that approach doesn't seem like it will be entertained.

Still given how the notion of the sun sets being broken isn't entirely popular, its likely that this is just a skill issue on my end. Gouging Fire's issues on teambuilding may be exacerbated by other Pokemon such as Ogerpon-W and Raging Bolt, which may be more restricting presences that makes it more difficult to account for Gouging.

 

[TMTito]

Gouging Fire should be banned.

For this vote I'm not as specific towards only Paradox Entei itself, but much of it comes down to the environment this suspect takes place in.

105/121/93 bulk is definitely wall material, and access to Morning Sun gives it the longevity needed to consistently come in and out during a match. While it's true it's weak to hazards, with 91 speed and a fire STAB move it's guaranteed to pressure common hazard stack staples such as Meowscarada, Weavile and Skarmory after a dragon dance. While it has a slightly lower attack stat for a fearsome dragon dancer, none of the above share such incredible natural bulk, mitigating a bit the difficulty of this matchup. Add that to the mentioned longevity and Gouging Fire will do what we've seen it do: Come in and never come out, which is scary for a setup sweeper. While rare, Flare Blitz will also cripple physical attackers able to check it with a burn, which should drastically change things.

In my opinion, the dragon dance sets could be a nice addition to the meta. Defensive setup gives us diversity which in turn affects all styles as it enforces some form of preparation. In my ideal world, I'd say Gouging Fire shouldn't be banned, but in my ideal world Gliscor would always be allowed to toxic it, Zamazenta and Dondozo would always be allowed to Body Press it, and Dragapult would always threaten it before it got out of control. This is not the case with SV OU, making dragon dance sets a strong tool in the box. If the only things at table were these sets, I might've had a harder time deciding for the ban as I actually like them being around - though I didn't give it too much thought as it was an easy ban vote for me, so I could've been persuaded or even gotten there on my own.

What makes things easier for me is the choice band set. I agree that it's overhyped, anyone who have tried to use it can relate to the difficulty of it: There's hazards, there's choice locking, sun turns, speed and priority threats - It's not the easiest set to use especially because sun teams generally only have "item pivots", that is, eject pack or button pivots. Kyurem has the prime pivot in Glowking, Archaludon had Pelipper and Barraskewda, even Sneasler had Wood Hammer U-turn Rillaboom. Gouging Fire usually doesn't have that kind of quality pivoting by its side, further mitigating the power of the choice band set.

The issue, as with dragon dance sets, is when it manages to come in. If there's an opening, the effect will be devastating to basically all archetypes. A 105/121/93 bulk pokemon will force you to exhaust resources in order to stop it, which is not nice. The presence of stall keeps it's speed in check, encouraging some to run 309 effective speed (Attack protosynthesis), but there are examples of successful teams using 463 speed (Speed protosynthesis) choice band sets out there.

Outspeeding the entire unboosted tier while wearing a power-boosting Choice item was something we thought okay for Walking Wake as it's a bit frailer and has a few more defensive answers in the meta, but the damage of sun-boosted fire STAB moves with 120 BP in addition to the incredible bulk it has makes it unstoppable. There's one more hidden perk to this set: The move Raging Fury does not make contact, preventing Gouging Fire from being damaged by Rocky Helmet and Rough Skin, which might cause it to get away with more damage done than it should have.

As such, having two extremely powerful sets while being able to use a matchup card to avoid some of it's checks depending on the team's needs leads me to think the tier would be better off without Gouging Fire. Things could have been different in a different environment, but as often stressed in these threads, we're here to discuss Gouging Fire and Gouging Fire alone, in the environment that we have. Therefore, it should be banned.

Edit: lol autocorrect photosynthesis

 

[ant4456]

Sun is also a healthy check to offense

I don't know why some people as of late have been pretending that Sun/Rain teams are not just Offense. They are offense. They are just another form of HO in most metas. Sun's goal is to use positive trades and positioning to quickly wipe your team efficiently, Rain's the same, HO's goal is the same. Same with other forms of HO.

These are literally all just HO teams, you just have the freedom to run several types of HO lmao. Sun checks Offense in the same way that Offense checks Offense (try to outspeed the other frail Pokemon, get positive trades, etc.)

Another thing, I don't get why "this teamstyle checks this teamstyle" is something we are supposed to interpret as positive. I think a good metagame is one where every teamstyle has fine odds against other teamstyles if they are built correctly. Having a game where every teamstyle has a major weakness to another decently common one just makes the game more matchup-fishy, as people increasingly give up on checking all of them with one team, and instead just accept bad matchups.

You can't "creatively build" around having a bajillion Pokemon to check, unless you run HO where you can just outspeed and KO them back, most of the time.

 

[Da Pizza Man]

So let me get this straight, you think the sun set is overpowered currently because of gouging? The broken sun that has seen all dlc2 lows in terms of usage and winrate in ost and spl, that sun? Also the breaking swipe set that a lot of good players actually complain about is fair to you? So why even complain about the mon if the only broken set is fair to you as explained in the second paragraph. You literally named like 6 checks. Garg was uu before goug and pult needed checking, boosting it to ou and bringing more diversity to the tier by adding more forms of progress making. The bulk is too high huh, must not hae heard of tusk, kyurem, volc, ghold, bolt..... etc. The entire rant about bulk too high can very easily be applied to zama if u dont know what mon is being referred to here, just read through it yourself and think for 1 second.

Please, i implore the player base to name some actual arguments as to why this mon in particular is more broken then gambit, bolt, and zama for example, all of whom posses very similar qualities that people claim make gouging uniquely broken (they are wrong).

I will be in this thread all day

edit: nice reaction join date 2013 btw still posting @ this level

I'm assuming this is a troll post, but I'm going to pretend this is serious just to entertain myself for a couple of minutes while I'm bored at work. I will say though, that in the rare event that you are being serious, this is exactly the type of rhetoric you want to avoid when making an argument.

Saying "these mons have these qualities too" isn't a very good defense for why Gouging Fire is fine, because it's not painting the whole picture. Note how none of the mons you listed, with the exception of Gholdengo, have access to reliable recovery like Gouging Fire does. That alone makes Gouging Fire's already fairly high bulk really stand out from other offensive mons in the tier, and when you add stuff like Breaking Swipe on top of that, suddenly you have a really strong sweeper with almost as much defensive prowess as a wall.

Also, anyone who unironically gives a shit about reactions needs to touch grass.

 

[Srn]

Nobody makes me want to main forums like CTC

Key word is can. if you have the wrong tera you will lose to your counters.

I've always found this to be a stupid argument because you cannot surmise tera types accurately from team structure.

Sure, there are times when it's obvious, 9/10 times the dnite is tera normal, rmoon tera flying, etc but that's not what I'm talking about. You can take my SPL team last week as an example: it's a little weak to wisp hex pult, and you will eventually see the balloon on kingambit, so you can make a good guess that one of my wisp targets (zama, kingambit, even hammy) is tera fire. However, from the opponent's perspective, it is a complete guess as to whether the zama or the kingambit is tera fire. There are many good reasons why I could be tera fire on either.

Why does this matter? Well it's a very important difference in information. The GF user knows if they have the wrong tera and whether or not they have a 6-0 matchup, but the opponent does not. Even with a bad matchup, if you preserve your GF reasonably well, you can consistently force your opponent to keep multiple pokemon healthy enough to handle the worst case scenario, which is much more difficult than what the GF user has to do. Even with the wrong tera, you are at an advantage simply because of how versatile and oppressive the pokemon is.

tera poison? U dont beat alo + toxic since toxic scor or slowking can force the tera after which chilling/scald alo destroys.

The availability of toxic is being largely overstated here. It's actually quite difficult to fit toxic onto a team these days, much less one that can stand up to GF. Toxapex sucks ass, Clodsire often drops toxic and isn't a GF answer, Glowking's moveslots are super contested and can't always fit toxic, and often needs to be sdef for huge threats like volcarona, raging bolt, kyurem, etc. These toxic users are not good or cannot switch into two flare blitz's, making them shaky half answers at best. You've technically got other toxic choices like glimmora, pecharunt, and mandibuzz, but these are super fringe and imo barely viable.

The real GF answer and toxic user mentioned here is gliscor, but once again, toxic is increasingly rare on gliscor despite GF's dominance because it's forced to run other sets to be more consistent. Taunt Lando-T in particular will shut down toxic/spikes/eq gliscor with ease and has made that set inconsistent, on top of existing counterplay like skarm, corv, clefable, balloon ghold, sub serp, subcm enam, etc. In order to be more consistent, we've seen more sets like taunt, SD, and U-turn, but most of these can't fit toxic and are hardly effective answers to GF.

covert cloak ones take rocks vs offense and can be knocked, non cloak ones gotta face daddy garg's belt. Non tera ghost ones still lose to zama and get roared out. Choice band ones either dont break stall w +spe or suffer from being hit by every hazard and loses to knock/status. Plus attack booster is fairly useless vs offense and plus speed does not break hard enough. Tera fairy and ghost suffer vs toxic, lando t/tusk being omnipresent dont help either. For every versatile counter tech this mon can have, it also loses its ability to cover a whole other portion of the meta.

All of this counterplay is true, but in the case of tera types, the issue is that the GF user knows exactly which portion of the meta they cover, but you cannot. It places an undue burden on the player trying to contain GF. Not every team can fit Scald Alo+Toxic Glowking/Gliscor+ID roar zama to cover one single threat, and it's pretty damning that this is the amount of teambuilding resources I need to dedicate to just one mon.

This is one of those versatile but fair sweepers that need a lot of things to go right for a sweep, albeit the setup is incredibly easy to pull off. However, a well built team should not be suffering from a glaring gouge weakness.

I've actually criticized storm zone in the past for this phrasing, and funny enough it was also being used to defend a really broken mon (chien pao). I'm gonna repeat myself when I say that the phrase "A well built team should not be suffering from a glaring X weakness" is vapid, meaningless, and misses the point. By definition, a "well built team" will account for the top metagame threats and not have any big weaknesses, but that doesn't mean that these top metagame threats are healthy or balanced. The existence of these "well built teams" is constant, no matter how good or bad the meta is, as long as people care enough to play. You could drop miraidon into OU tomorrow and "well built teams" would have answers to it. Does this mean that miraidon should stay in OU?

The point is that by saying "well built teams can handle GF," you're completely missing how difficult it is to build those teams and how restricting of a metagame presence GF is. We're openly acknowledging that we can dedicate 2 teamslots to checking GF and still lose to a viable set. I think that's quite bad!

Bulky teams and ho teams both have outs vs this mon, and balance can still tech unaware or fairy teras to take advantage of the predictable setup movepool. Faster encore, phazing, unaware, and status are all problems for this mon much like they are for gambit.

All true, but shaky at best, and usually puts you at a disadvantage. It's not really easy to fit encore which is faster than dd GF onto a team lol, fairy teras are a valuable resource that you need to check other threats (like grass tera for waterpon or ghost for zama, etc) and blowing that on a GF that hasn't tera'd can put you at a disadvantage. This GF set can literally beat dondozo and clodsire so it's straining unaware, it's immune to burns in base form and it's not easy to fit in status users that can check GF. The durability of phazers like ting lu, zama, and less viable ones like dragon tail dnite or roar tusk/moltres are generally lower than GF and can be outlasted, which is an issue seeing as you're only putting off the problem, not taking care of it.

gouging provides a much needed offensive check to volc and gambit, among other things, curbing the brainless spam mons to a degree.

We dont keep brokens to check brokens. We didn't keep archaludon to check waterpon, and even though waterpon is better now, it would be stupid to go back and unban bridge to check waterpon. You may disagree but the voters decided and it's been done. We may be losing a volcarona and kingambit check, but there are other checks to both, mons that are much less oppressive on the builder and much healthier for the tier. It is absolutely a net positive to ban GF, and it may be a net positive to look into these alleged "brainless spam mons" as well.

Banning this mon further diminishes sun for no reason and takes us a step closer to boring boots spam balance as it is currently one of the only tools for ho to deal with unaware dozo teams, forcing fat teams to get creative. Sun is also a healthy check to offense while also being able to tech vs stall, the great equalizer, so to speak. diminishing rain and sun further will make suicide lead/veil/webs type cheese ho the preferred style for ho and drastically reduce meta variety.

Imma keep it real with you, and I think you already know this, but sun is truly ass rn. Even with GF already here, I really don't see sun getting that much worse tbh. The banded sets in sun are honestly noobtraps, there are way better breakers that sun has access to like band tusk, band rmoon, a billion bolt sets, and I think there's room to explore stuff like heatran, offensive cinderace, CB ceruledge, blaziken, arcanine-hisui, sandy shocks, iron moth, slither wing etc. Even raging bolt is imo 2x more threatening in sun than GF is, and I am confident that banning GF is not going to greatly harm sun's already low viability. GF did very little to fix its issues to begin with (hazards, glowking, struggle to fit in crucial resists like ghost, ground, fairy, dragon) and imo the real killing blow to sun was when torkoal lost yawn. Making your weather setter passive and unable to pivot is a huge flaw that GF is not fixing, and I really am not convinced by the argument that we have to keep GF to keep sun viable and checking other teamstyles or w/e.

Idk why you draw an arbitrary line in the sand between rain/sun and suicide lead/veil/webs as if weather is not cheese and the other stuff is. It can all be cheesy, it's all still viable, GF is not preserving some intricate harmony that is holding off the threat of "boring boots spam balance." I think you are injecting your own opinions on what kind of metagame is good here, which is fine, you're definitely entitled to your vote and your views. But let's not act like this is some objective best meta that we must all strive for. The votes will speak and determine what direction the meta takes, and it's up to voters to adjust or keep going.

Again, a well built team should account for this mon as much as it does volcarona and gambit, and this mon's various sets have predictable weaknesses that keep it from being broken like the no drawback sneasler or ursaluna that have been banished to ubers who hit the field w the power of a choiced mon or free +2 speed. Tanky gouging doesnt have the muscle and offensive gouging does not go the distance. We need to accept that this mon is healthy for the meta and that we need to stop banning the few setup mons that can fight back against unaware in order to keep the meta from minmaxing to boots balance.
I will be voting to KEEP gouging fire in the tier

mark my words: we are a goug ban and maybe 1 ban away from weav boots spam being the meta welcome back to dlc1 hell

In the few weeks or so before SPL was starting up, I remember boots balance was very popular and arguably "the meta" with teams like this volc+weav balance or this meow+kyurem balance which was easily topping ladder. These teams fell off and show no signs of returning, because this meta is offensive af and it's actually very easy to break these balance teams in half. We have way more tools at our disposal to break balance than balance does to try and contain all of offense, and it shows in the meta rn. If I wasn't tied up using 2 mons to check GF, 2 mons to check waterpon, 2 mons to check rmoon, 2 mons to check volcarona ETC I would have even more freedom to curbstomp fat.

Weav boots spam is not the end of the world, it's not unbeatable, I would argue it's pretty mid rn, and a GF ban will not change that. We don't keep broken mons in the tier to maybe stop a teamstyle you personally don't like from becoming more common. If it does come to that, I'm confident you will adapt

I will be voting BAN on Gouging Fire and I encourage every voter to do the same.

 

[SandVeil10]

To be honest, I haven't played enough OU as of late to have a solid opinion on Gouging Fire, even though I do find it overbearing for many of the reasons listed in this thread by other people. I'm also a low ladder player, so my understanding of the meta is admittedly limited.

That being said, watching SPL last week, there are 2 games involving Gfire that I found interesting:

[TIG] S1nn0hC0nfirm3d vs Mada [TYR] - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-751466 (Mada's Gouging comes in on turn 14)

CTC rightfully listed valid answers to the different variants of bulky DD+Swipe Gfire sets, and on paper, S1nn0hC0nfirm3d's team looks to be very well-prepared vs Gouging. BP Zama would work well vs the Tera Steel variant ; Gliscor w/ Toxic can deal with non-Tera Poison/Steel ; Heatran (w/ Earth Power very likely) resists both STABs and incidentally doesn't have to worry about EQ because this Gfire doesn't have it ; Samu-H w/ Sucker Punch can theoretically punish Tera Ghost ; even Dnite with ESpeed (+ EQ, very plausibly) can revenge KO the non-Tera Ghost variants after chip damage.

However, despite all of that good prep, Mada's Gfire still manages to KO 4/6 of S1nn0hC0nfirm3d's mons. The possible threat of EQ makes Gliscor arrive in Heatran's stead, but Toxic misses twice in a row, allowing Gfire to set up and bypass Glisc while taking some recoil damage. Dnite comes in next, but Tera Ghost makes ESpeed useless, allowing Gfire to 2HKO without losing a single hit point. Morning Sun gives Gfire a way around Samu-H's Sucker Punch, which only musters up 64% damage the following turn despite Tera Dark + supereffectiveness. Heatran falls last, with the game effectively being lost.

Granted, there were things that S1nn0hC0nfirm3d could've done better to prevent that sweep. The turn 1 Tera on Samu-H prevented him from having a defensive Tera still available to him vs Gfire. Moreover, he could've called out Gouging being Tera Ghost and click EQ with Dnite. The double Toxic miss was also very unlucky and isn't a common occurrence, but I suppose you would want your counterplay to Gouging to not have a 10% chance each turn to backfire if it does miss.

I still feel like this sweep is at least in part the result of Gfire's remarkable strengths: a great variety of movesets to keep the opponent guessing, its snowball potential putting a lot of pressure on the opponent to immediately answer it, being able to outspeed a great number of meta staples after 1 or 2 Ddances, and its impressive bulk and sustain thanks to Morning Sun. That does look overbearing imo, and as mentioned by others in this thread, even mons like Zama, Ghold, Gambit, Bolt and Volc that CTC listed in his post don't quite combine all these strengths all at once, and overall, just feel easier to stop than Gouging.


Here's another game from SPL:
[RUI] Fc vs Finchinator [CRY] - https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9ou-751443 (Fc's Gfire comes in at the end of turn 19)

In this match, Finchinator looks to be in a great position to win after turn 19. At +1 Atk, his Tusk can put a lot of pressure on Fc's Gouging and Tusk, with Scarf Enam available to clean up if need be. However, thanks to Tera Fairy, Gfire gets a turn to use Ddance, followed by Substitute to lower Tusk's defense even more after it uses Headlong Rush. The turning point of this endgame is Fc revealing *Scale Shot* (+ prolly Loaded Dice) Gfire, getting all 5 hits to OHKO -2 Def Tusk, boosting its Speed up to +2 overall, thus making Scarf Enamorus powerless and giving Fc the victory.

That Gfire set is great, kudos to Fc and his team for that, but I don't really know what Finchinator could've done better there. Switching in Enamorus on the Scale Shot would've given him the win, but that move is so rare on Gouging to begin with. Besides, if Finch did that, Enam could just as well have come in on Heat Crash instead.
That's not to say that Sub+Scale Shot is unbeatable either, but this is yet another possible potent set for Gfire to keep its opponent guessing and take games by the scruff of the neck.


Not every single one of Gfire's SPL appearances in week 7 were like this, it sometimes only came in to claim a KO before getting KO'd itself. But I feel like these instances are less so proof of Gouging not being that overbearing, but rather were caused by the complexion of these games asking for Gfire to be used as a stopgap instead of a wincon.

I think the 2 examples I listed were impressive showings that highlight just how impactful Gouging Fire can be, and though I'd need to play more and improve in order to have a better opinion, right now I consider Gfire to be too unhealthy for the metagame.

 

[Docter_Peng99]

Again I'm dumping my thoughts here but yeah gouging fire isn't that broken in my opinion but I can see where this is going also yeah it's all fun and games until your fire resist gets 2 shot by a fire type so I can see why it is broken but I also know that its helpful against some dragons and some fairys but yeah it's joever if it sets up believe me I know practically swept me after setting up 6 dragon dances but that just might be a skill issue on my part :/ but it still has multiple checks kinda so all in all I can see where this is going but I still feel like it's more balanced than something like bolt and boulder

 

[658Greninja]

Banning this mon further diminishes sun for no reason and takes us a step closer to boring boots spam balance as it is currently one of the only tools for ho to deal with unaware dozo teams, forcing fat teams to get creative. Sun is also a healthy check to offense while also being able to tech vs stall, the great equalizer, so to speak. diminishing rain and sun further will make suicide lead/veil/webs type cheese ho the preferred style for ho and drastically reduce meta variety. Again, a well built team should account for this mon as much as it does volcarona and gambit, and this mon's various sets have predictable weaknesses that keep it from being broken like the no drawback sneasler or ursaluna that have been banished to ubers who hit the field w the power of a choiced mon or free +2 speed. Tanky gouging doesnt have the muscle and offensive gouging does not go the distance. We need to accept that this mon is healthy for the meta and that we need to stop banning the few setup mons that can fight back against unaware in order to keep the meta from minmaxing to boots balance.

The fearmongering in this post is silly. I never seen anyone hate Dondozo this much. No HO doesn’t lack tools to deal with Dozo.

-Ogerpon-W
-Valiant (Either Encore, Mixed, or CM)
-Raging Bolt
-Tera Dark/Fighting Gambit with SO boosts
-Taunt Moon with Hazard support
-Encore Dnite
-Primarina
-Dragapult
-Rillaboom
-Serperior
-Iron Moth after Tera Grass or Water
-Hawlucha with Encore

Sun is still gonna be hella good without G-Fire. What did G-Fire do for Sun? Break holes? Not like that can’t be replicated by the other paradox doggos Wake and Bolt.

Boots Spam Balances are simply not it rn and G-Fire being erased doesn’t make it much better. They’re reliant on Knock + Hazards to accumulate pressure and that’s hard when you got powerful offensive threats breathing on your neck and a Great Tusk that will remove almost all your progress. The fact they’re forced to run boots on everything besides stuff like Gliscor, Skarm, and Clef means they lack the immediate offensive power to fight back and have trouble slapping on speed control. It simply cannot cover these matchups without resorting to the same defensive cores.

You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but fearmongering is not the way to go with expressing it.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

The fearmongering in this post is silly. I never seen anyone hate Dondozo this much. No HO doesn’t lack tools to deal with Dozo.

-Ogerpon-W
-Valiant (Either Encore, Mixed, or CM)
-Raging Bolt
-Tera Dark/Fighting Gambit with SO boosts
-Taunt Moon with Hazard support
-Encore Dnite
-Primarina
-Dragapult
-Rillaboom
-Serperior
-Iron Moth after Tera Grass or Water
-Hawlucha with Encore

Sun is still gonna be hella good without G-Fire. What did G-Fire do for Sun? Break holes? Not like that can’t be replicated by the other paradox doggos Wake and Bolt.

Boots Spam Balances are simply not it rn and G-Fire being erased doesn’t make it much better. They’re reliant on Knock + Hazards to accumulate pressure and that’s hard when you got powerful offensive threats breathing on your neck and a Great Tusk that will remove almost all your progress. The fact they’re forced to run boots on everything besides stuff like Gliscor, Skarm, and Clef means they lack the immediate offensive power to fight back and have trouble slapping on speed control. It simply cannot cover these matchups without resorting to the same defensive cores.

You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but fearmongering is not the way to go with expressing it.

true, and aside from ho having plenty of other dozo answers, the fact of the matter is that a physical fire-type setup sweeper/breaker with no supereffective coverage against water shouldn't be able to beat dondozo, and especially not two different ways with two different sets. gouging fire being an answer to dozo in any capacity is an indicator that it's a problem, because dondozo is supposed to be a blanket counter against every physical mon in the game that doesn't hit it supereffectively. that's just how the mon works

 

[CTC]

Nobody makes me want to main forums like CTC

I've always found this to be a stupid argument because you cannot surmise tera types accurately from team structure.

Sure, there are times when it's obvious, 9/10 times the dnite is tera normal, rmoon tera flying, etc but that's not what I'm talking about. You can take my SPL team last week as an example: it's a little weak to wisp hex pult, and you will eventually see the balloon on kingambit, so you can make a good guess that one of my wisp targets (zama, kingambit, even hammy) is tera fire. However, from the opponent's perspective, it is a complete guess as to whether the zama or the kingambit is tera fire. There's many good reasons I could be tera fire on either.

Why does this matter? Well it's a very important difference in information. The GF user knows if they have the wrong tera and whether or not they have a 6-0 matchup, but the opponent does not. Even with a bad matchup, if you preserve your GF reasonably well, you can consistently force your opponent to keep multiple pokemon healthy enough to handle the worst case scenario, which is much more difficult than what the GF user has to do. Even with the wrong tera, you are at an advantage simply because of how versatile and oppressive the pokemon is.


The availability of toxic is being largely overstated here. It's actually quite difficult to fit toxic onto a team these days, much less one that can stand up to GF. Toxapex sucks ass, Clodsire often drops toxic and isn't a GF answer, Glowking's moveslots are super contested and can't always fit toxic, and often needs to be sdef for huge threats like volcarona, raging bolt, kyurem, etc. These toxic users are not good or cannot switch into two flare blitz's, making them shaky half answers at best. You've technically got other toxic choices like glimmora, pecharunt, and mandibuzz, but these are super fringe and imo barely viable.

The real GF answer and toxic user mentioned here is gliscor, but once again, toxic is increasingly rare on gliscor despite GF's dominance because it's forced to run other sets to be more consistent. Taunt Lando-T in particular will shut down toxic/spikes/eq gliscor with ease and has made that set inconsistent, on top of existing counterplay like skarm, corv, clefable, balloon ghold, sub serp, subcm enam, etc. In order to be more consistent, we've seen more sets like taunt, SD, and U-turn, but most of these can't fit toxic and are hardly effective answers to GF.


All of this counterplay is true, but in the case of tera types, the issue is that the GF user knows exactly which portion of the meta they cover, but you cannot. It places an undue burden on the player trying to contain GF. Not every team can fit Scald Alo+Toxic Glowking/Gliscor+ID roar zama to cover one single threat, and it's pretty damning that this is the amount of teambuilding resources I need to dedicate to just one mon.


I've actually criticized storm zone in the past for this phrasing, and funny enough it was also being used to defend a really broken mon (chien pao). I'm gonna repeat myself when I say that the phrase "A well built team should not be suffering from a glaring X weakness" is vapid, meaningless, and misses the point. By definition, a "well built team" will account for the top metagame threats and not have any big weaknesses, but that doesn't mean that these top metagame threats are healthy or balanced. The existence of these "well built teams" is constant, no matter how good or bad the meta is, as long as people care enough to play. You could drop miraidon into OU tomorrow and "well built teams" would have answers to it. Does this mean that miraidon should stay in OU?

The point is that by saying "well built teams can handle GF," you're completely missing how difficult it is to build those teams and how restricting of a metagame presence GF is. We're openly acknowledging that we can dedicate 2 teamslots to checking GF and still lose to a viable set. I think that's quite bad!


All true, but shaky at best, and usually puts you at a disadvantage. It's not really easy to fit encore which is faster than dd GF onto a team lol, fairy teras are a valuable resource that you need to check other threats (like grass tera for waterpon or ghost for zama, etc) and blowing that on a GF that hasn't tera'd can put you at a disadvantage. This GF set can literally beat dondozo and clodsire so it's straining unaware, it's immune to burns in base form and it's not easy to fit in status users that can check GF. The durability of phazers like ting lu, zama, and less viable ones like dragon tail dnite or roar tusk/moltres are generally lower than GF and can be outlasted, which is an issue seeing as you're only putting off the problem, not taking care of it.


We dont keep brokens to check brokens. We didn't keep archaludon to check waterpon, and even though waterpon is better now, it would be stupid to go back and unban bridge to check waterpon. You may disagree but the voters decided and it's been done. We may be losing a volcarona and kingambit check, but there are other checks to both, mons that are much less oppressive on the builder and much healthier for the tier. It is absolutely a net positive to ban GF, and it may be a net positive to look into these alleged "brainless spam mons" as well.


Imma keep it real with you, and I think you already know this, but sun is truly ass rn. Even with GF already here, I really don't see sun getting that much worse tbh. The banded sets in sun are honestly noobtraps, there are way better breakers that sun has access to like band tusk, band rmoon, a billion bolt sets, and I think there's room to explore stuff like heatran, offensive cinderace, CB ceruledge, blaziken, arcanine-hisui, sandy shocks, iron moth, slither wing etc. Even raging bolt is imo 2x more threatening in sun than GF is, and I am confident that banning GF is not going to greatly harm sun's already low viability. GF did very little to fix its issues to begin with (hazards, glowking, struggle to fit in crucial resists like ghost, ground, fairy, dragon) and imo the real killing blow to sun was when torkoal lost yawn. Making your weather setter passive and unable to pivot is a huge flaw that GF is not fixing, and I really am not convinced by the argument that we have to keep GF to keep sun viable and checking other teamstyles or w/e.

Idk why you draw an arbitrary line in the sand between rain/sun and suicide lead/veil/webs as if weather is not cheese and the other stuff is. It can all be cheesy, it's all still viable, GF is not preserving some intricate harmony that is holding off the threat of "boring boots spam balance." I think you are injecting your own opinions on what kind of metagame is good here, which is fine, you're definitely entitled to your vote and your views. But let's not act like this is some objective best meta that we must all strive for. The votes will speak and determine what direction the meta takes, and it's up to voters to adjust or keep going.



In the few weeks or so before SPL was starting up, I remember boots balance was very popular and arguably "the meta" with teams like this volc+weav balance or this meow+kyurem balance which was easily topping ladder. These teams fell off and show no signs of returning, because this meta is offensive af and it's actually very easy to break these balance teams in half. We have way more tools at our disposal to break balance than balance does to try and contain all of offense, and it shows in the meta rn.

Weav boots spam is not the end of the world, it's not unbeatable, I would argue it's pretty mid rn, and a GF ban will not change that. We don't keep broken mons in the tier to maybe stop a teamstyle you personally don't like from becoming more common. If it does come to that, I'm confident you will adapt

I will be voting BAN on Gouging Fire and I encourage every voter to do the same.

Lets address this. U named possible fire zama and gambit as arguments against gouge when those 2 with the appropriate tera also benefit the user while forcing the opponent to keep multiple checks in the back, preserving the fairy vs fire for steel/fire zama and the pult vs tusk for anti fire/fairy gambit. How is having to guess goug tera different from having to guess volc tera/val tera, or the aforementioned threats? Just because volc and val can be more easily offensively checked?

Reread this sentence to urself and replace GF w volc, zama, or gambit. Thank you for substantiating my original argument for me:
'Why does this matter? Well it's a very important difference in information. The GF user knows if they have the wrong tera and whether or not they have a 6-0 matchup, but the opponent does not. Even with a bad matchup, if you preserve your GF reasonably well, you can consistently force your opponent to keep multiple pokemon healthy enough to handle the worst case scenario, which is much more difficult than what the GF user has to do. Even with the wrong tera, you are at an advantage simply because of how versatile and oppressive the pokemon is.'

A well built team should have a fighting chance vs the top threats in the meta, I stand on that. Here are some statistics on gouging:

.......Sitting at an astounding 50% wr and fighting primarina and weavile for usage in the top 20. But professor, what about none-tour usage? The masses are suffering!

Here are the 1500 stats making up 50% of the ladder games. Gouging usage is relatively high but still healthy. In fact, the higher up you look on the ladder, the more checks emerge over gouging such as zama and glim. Below are 1695 and 1800 stats, putting this usage at about the top 5% of ladder games. These players use more glim, zama, and still preserve the usage of other mons already ahead of goug that check it, such as lando/bolt. Notice how dozo usage even creeps up the higher you go, and goug usage goes down the higher you go.

It is clear at this point this is one of those noob check mons. The higher the skill level, the lower this mon's usage and winrate. It is time to look inward and consider why such an easy wincon is farming you so effortlessly. This is similar to when gambit was winning every game in the earlier sv games and people considered it broken, even so far as to discuss a ban. I am not saying this mon doesnt potentially need to be looked at, as I put it at the highest on my list of on the radar mons. It is on par with gambit, volc and zama in terms of its ability to take over games, with slightly more offensive bias whereas dog has more defensive bias. Regardless, we have barely stepped into post nerf rain meta and do not know the full extent of the ramifications. Teams are getting bulkier, poorly structured anti offense that sits around doing nothing get punished by gouge.

I digress, back to addressing your points:
All true, but shaky at best, and usually puts you at a disadvantage. It's not really easy to fit encore which is faster than dd GF onto a team lol, fairy teras are a valuable resource that you need to check other threats (like grass tera for waterpon or ghost for zama, etc) and blowing that on a GF that hasn't tera'd can put you at a disadvantage. This GF set can literally beat dondozo and clodsire so it's straining unaware, it's immune to burns in base form and it's not easy to fit in status users that can check GF. The durability of phazers like ting lu, zama, and less viable ones like dragon tail dnite or roar tusk/moltres are generally lower than GF and can be outlasted, which is an issue seeing as you're only putting off the problem, not taking care of it.

This entire argument is baseless as you call my points shaky, when 'not really easy to fit encore', 'not really easy to fit status', and 'not really easy to keep things in the back alive' are your only points then you come across just as ignorant.

'The availability of toxic is also limited' when gliscor usage beyond eclipses gouge usage at every level of OU played shows that gouging usage is even more limited.

'We dont keep brokens to check brokens. We didn't keep archaludon to check waterpon, and even though waterpon is better now, it would be stupid to go back and unban bridge to check waterpon.'
This is either willful ignorance or you are just slow, arch was banned because of the no drawback +1 per turn move as strong as stab draco that allows it to freely spam vs every non unaware mon in history. If i want arch unbanned for its body, I would still want electro shot to stay gone because it is the move that broke the mon. Look at the usage stats, ep landorus is doing the Lebron Miami run rn in ou boasting high usage and high winrate. Alongside it, the other 2 grounds tusk and scor are both top tier in usage. Among other things, tanky traders like bolt, kyurem, and the aforementioned encore users like val, or red card users like glim, in addition to stall staples such as garg and alo all do a good job of curbing this mon. Btw, most of these checks and counters that are 'hard to fit' on a team have way higher usage across the board than gouge, and the disparity only worsens the higher the ELO.

'Idk why you draw an arbitrary line in the sand between rain/sun and suicide lead/veil/webs as if weather is not cheese and the other stuff is. It can all be cheesy, it's all still viable, GF is not preserving some intricate harmony that is holding off the threat of "boring boots spam balance." I think you are injecting your own opinions on what kind of metagame is good here, which is fine, you're definitely entitled to your vote and your views. But let's not act like this is some objective best meta that we must all strive for. The votes will speak and determine what direction the meta takes, and it's up to voters to adjust or keep going.'

I do not draw the arbitrary line as to what kind of ho is cheese. I have always championed diversity and never wanted a limited metagame. I said in multiple posts that a healthy meta needs ho and stall in it to form a checks and balances system and force good team building. The zap lu gk samu boots spam meta proved that once you limit the amount of none boots progress makers in the meta, a certain saturation will be achieved to min-max. Gouge is one of those key non-boots progress makers, punished by a well built hazard/status system and rewarded when it is allowed to be greedy. Ofc i will have no idea what meta we WILL get, but using past data I can extrapolate what meta we MIGHT get once a few dominoes fall in place, which is what I am actively trying to prevent. Rain's demise is so drastic that we have had no time for other experimentation with the style, perhaps it will bounce back and become yet another form of offensive check to gouge. TDK used a rain team and did quite well, we just need to let people experiment and for the meta to adjust for itself before all the rushed bans. Lastly, nowhere did I state what style is good for the meta or what style is bad for the meta, boring is referring to the absence of alternatives due to minmaxing or a lack of power in the meta, making boots the default best style with knock hazards as progress makers since nothing kills anything.
Banning gouge and later possibly oger may very well be the downfall of the non-boots progress makers, reducing the meta diversity drastically. Once max boots balance takes hold there will be even fewer offensive ways to make progress because hazards already discourages ho and certain mons like pult, zama, gambit and co on boots spam are opporessive to fat as well.
Now these things may or may not happen, but from where I stand gouge is not in immediate need of a ban.
Over 7 weeks being out of top 10 usage in spl while having the very ironic 50% wr alongside the showdown usage stats for feb reveal that this mon is clearly not immediately broken. The illusion of its opressiveness is in that the games you lose vs it feels like you couldn't do much, similar to a gambit beatdown or a zama beatdown under the right circumstances, also anyone remember what volc used to do?
I am voting DNB not because I think this mon CAN'T BE or ISN'T bordering on being broken, but its role in the ecosystem is so essential that I would rather let it live and observe it further. It is much easier to not ban a mon than to ban it then go whelp we were wrong like was the case with volc last meta and roaring moon before sneasler.
If the mon was truly broken, I would like to see statistical proof like what I provided here showing its absurd winrate and usage. Afterall, when ursa and sneas were banned they had near 70% wr and usage.
I urge the public to hold off on a decision that can shift the metagame drastically again, not two weeks after an already major metagame shift NOT TWO MONTHS into a new meta.

I am not trying to attack everyone and their views, but put forth some statistics and we can debate them. I really don't want to revisit the on-paper mu it has vs the rest of the meta if every pro ban post is going to continue to attack my original arguments on the basis of theorymon, cuz again, I can theory w u all day. Come with stats and we will discuss how this near borderline top 15-20 usage and 50% win rate mon is breaking the metagame apart.

Again, I want to move forward amicably. I want nothing but a diverse and healthy meta with no overwhelming oppressive threats and no dominant archetype being minmaxed undermining variety and creativity. I simply do not see how the stats in comp or ladder support the notion that gouge is even on the same level as the previously banned threats ursa, sneas, and bax.

Give gouge a chance and let the meta settle. If the winrate and usage skyrocket and settle at an exorbitant amount (high 60s), then yes, you are all proven right and us DNB voters are proven wrong. However, if we ban this mon before things have had a chance to settle down, we may not get the clearest picture. I am a champion of diversity and creativity and hate oppressive cheese just as much as the next person. I am on the people's side here, I just see certain future paths unfolding that may be different from others. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? Can we let gouge sort itself out in the next couple weeks before the ripple of rain's nerf has even spread throughout the metagame?

TLDR: I think voting DNB on this mon until it proves statistically to be overwhelming for the meta is a better idea. Perhaps this suspect should have been conducted 2 weeks further out.

srn's post is valid and I respect your opinion, but can the ban side provide an inkling of statistical support, a crumb perhaps.
btw the dude below linked a goug sweep due to 2 tox misses when it woulda been one of the dudes in the back that should have swept if toxic landed, if anything that replay is a counter argument for gouge's brokeness since tera poison was better there but u cant always have the right set!

the scale shot niche set winning I can show u 10 replay equivalents with other niche sets, sub dd pressure kyurem being a prominently spammed one that given the correct metagame composition can seem just as broken as the top threats.

Bring me facts and not feelings, lets have a conversation. Looking at spl statistics, dnite is literally higher usage and higher winrate, and can boast the same advantages in set versatility + tera utility. Please just let the meta settle before getting ban happy, If gouge is banned then it is the most benign mon ever to be banned with such a short amount of exposure to the meta. You cannot convince me gouge is on the same level of broken as ursa, sneas, or bax.
Cheers, happy voting DNB if you believe in math and science

 

[658Greninja]

Banning gouge and later possibly oger may very well be the downfall of the non-boots progress makers, reducing the meta diversity drastically. Once max boots balance takes hold there will be even fewer offensive ways to make progress because hazards already discourages ho and certain mons like pult, zama, gambit and co on boots spam are oppressive to fat as well.
Now these things may or may not happen, but from where I stand gouge is not in immediate need of a ban.

“Once max boots balance takes hold there will be even fewer offensive ways to make progress because hazards already discourages ho.”

Um….no. One reason HO is so good right now is because it diminishes the effects of hazards. When your goal is to win a game as quickly as possible, 3 layers of spikes aren’t gonna matter much, and there is less room to set them up in front of greedy setup sweepers. Even if hazards are a concern, HO has Taunt Lando, Hatt, Tusk, and Treads to deal with them.

G-Fire and Oger aren’t even the best mons vs Boots Spam. Hatt 1v1s the best spikers and those fatter builds don’t even run Hamu often. Taunt RH Lando is really good at shutting down these builds in conjunction with a breaker. CM Prim can sometimes 6-0 these builds on preview. Valiant can make some progress with Mixed sets or SD.

My problem with the post isn’t because you gave arguments on why it shouldn’t be banned, nor your points, it is the fearmongering. There is this bizarre fear that the tier will be SS OU 2.0 after a few bans. The mechanics and mons are too different to allow the metagame to be the same. Rather than focus on what will happen if we ban it, focus on what is does now.

As an example.

Raging Bolt should stay because it is a healthy presence in the meta, with reliable and splashable counterplay on each archetype. Bolt also provides the tier with both speed control and breaking capacities in one slot. Just cause I hate Zapdos doesn’t mean it is the reason I want to keep Bolt, js.

 

[CTC]

Notice how the ban side is coming with opinions. I said excessive bans may lead to stale meta with precedent as an example, but foresight must appear to those with 0 insight and logic as fear mongering since brain unable to imagine 2 steps ahead. Please bring statistical arguments because the burden of proof rests on the ban crowd, convince me with its excessive win rate or usage that its presence in the tier is overwhelming.