Metagame SV RU Metagame Discussion (April Shifts #403)

[fluff!!]

RUWC Round 1 stats analysis
​

The first stats for the RUWC VI are here, so it's time to dissect them and see the metagame trends!
Remember that the sample size of these stats is not great enough to have reliable stats!

I. Top performers and frauds

In this part, we will discuss about all mons with a usage rate >10% and a winrate <40% or >60%

Win rate ≥ 70%

• Hisuian Goodra - 74.19%​
• Slowbro - 71.43%​
• Talonflame - 70.00%​

Hisuian Goodra and Slowbro dominating this first week will come to the surprise of no one, they have proven to be top tiers for a while now and Hisuian Goodra finally gets to show its strength in the biggest tournament since shifts.

More surprising however, is Talonflame, with a staggering 70% win rate and being present in 20 teams. The NU bird showed up in 1 stall team and 19 balance teams, usually paired with Hisuian Goodra. Its role was very often as a defogger, although there are a few games where it used a more stallbreaker-like set with Taunt + Will-O-Wisp, using its defensive profile to proc Flame Body on the many Close Combats flying around targeted at Hisuian Goodra. A very promising start for Talonflame, let's see if it will keep it up or end up falling flat.


Win rate ≥ 60%

• Krookodile - 62.86%
• Thundurus - 60.00%

Not much to say about them, they are tried-and-true staples of the tier and happened to perform quite well during this first week. Perhaps Thundurus's performance is linked to Talonflame's unexpected popularity?


Win rate ≤ 40%

• Jirachi - 37.14%
• Empoleon - 36.84%
• Bisharp - 35.29%
• Magnezone - 37.50%
• Reuniclus - 37.50%

Well, the least we can say is that many of our Steels seems to underperform. They also all have different roles, which leaves me perplex as how did all of them seemed to fall flat for this World Cup's first week. Jirachi and Bisharp are both countered by Talonflame, who took the tournament by storm, so there's that at least, but Empoleon and Magnezone just couldn't find their footing. Maybe a sign of Hisuian Goodra's dominance, or is there another Rocks setting Steel looking to take their place?... (foreshadowing)


Notable Pokemon with usage <10%

• Umbreon - 9.72% usage, 64.29% win rate
• Vaporeon - 6.25% usage, 100% win rate

The defensive Eeveelutions have had a strong showing this week as well, with Vaporeon sporting an undefeated streak of 9 games! Vaporeon was paired 7 out of 9 times with both Hisuian Goodra and Krookodile, with Galarian Weezing and Slither Wing being common teammates as well.
Umbreon was seen most commonly with slower Pokemon, like Hippowdon and Okidogi. Expectedly, it won all 5 games where it was paired with Hisuian Goodra. This shows how strong Hisuian Goodra + Wish was during Week 1. Hisuian Goodra was paired with either Umbreon or Vaporeon in 12 games out of the 31 games it was used, showing that the snail is not limited to these archetypes.

• Mimikyu - 8.33% usage, 16.67% win rate
• Revavroom - 6.94% usage, 50% win rate
• Armarouge - 6.94% usage, 30% win rate
• Maushold - 6.25% usage, 55.56% win rate
• Yanmega - 6.25% usage, 44.44% win rate
• Cloyster - 4.17% usage, 16.67% win rate

The HO goons are doing ok in average, with only Mimikyu and Cloyster severely underperforming. It seems Cloyster is not quite ready to replace Blastoise in HO squads, whereas Armarouge struggles to find its footing, although this might be a low sample size moment. Mimikyu though, is quite the tragic story. It seems HO cannot afford trading a big attacker slot for a get out of jail free card ever since Blastoise received the ban hammer.

• Registeel - 7.64% usage, 63.64% win rate
• Klefki - 4.86% usage, 85.71% win rate

There they are, the new meta Steels. Coming straight from NU, they performed much better than RU mainstays Jirachi and Empoleon, perhaps showing that the meta is undergoing a shift in what makes a Steel good.


Key points to remember

• Hisuian Goodra holds up to the favorite status it had going into this tournament
• Umbreon and Vaporeon Wish balance had a strong showing
• Talonflame rises to potential top tier status
• Mainstay Steel types underperform
• Slowbro stays strong after its great performance in RUPL
• Registeel and Klefki as the new Steel types in town
• Krookodile and Thundurus are popular and strong picks
• Stall is rare and underperforming

 

[feen]

October shifts!!!

+
-

We finally lost Okidogi, but now we have two weather setters and a potential HO mainstay / strong QD sweeper. How will the metagame develop? Discuss!

 

[Heatranator]

Alright, time to do the RU drops thing (its like 2 am in the morning for me, shush)

Okidogi leaving is MASSIVE. Defensive teams hated this guy, specifically stall, and quite a few defensive mons such as umbreon and amoonguss were stonewalled by it. Now? They aren't, so defense is a lot more flexible in its teamslots. Nothing can really 'replace' okidogi, though other fighting types will prob be slotted where it used to be (conk is my main predict to try and replace it as directly as possible). It will be interesting seeing which mons rise up due to it leaving, brelooom and terrakion will prob be a lot better (also rip gligar, still an amazing mon, but it lost one of its best matchups. Sorry for your loss fluff!!)

Torkoal dropping is cool, but prob not too impactful. Sun already struggles in the tier due to cyclizar, hippo and other big walls to it, so getting another spinner doesn't help much. It does threaten bike with body press, has rapid spin and stealth rocks, so it can have tons of utility. Sun will get slightly better, but don't be shocked if this mon falls.

WEBS, REJOICE (everybody else will be crying) Ribombee is a pretty big buff to webs, which were underperfoming in the meta. Ribombee is a decent pokemon in its own right, and can beat cyclizar by outspeeding it and either crippling it with stun spore or just raw moonblast. Its also decent into geezing, who it can psychic noise for decent damage, and while talon threatens it immensly with brave bird, it is still crippled by stun spore. QD sets will prob pop up, but I think they won't be the best, as it requires tera in order to break through steels, and has underwhelming power unboosted.

The one I'm most excited about, a-tales is big for many reasons. The most obvious one is screens or hail. Screens has been non existant in RU after the Light Clay ban (thank god), but a-tales taking one turn to set up is big. I think screens will be mid still, but they do improve. Hail has picked up recently while being forced to use abomasnow, and a-tales is an actually decent mon. Cetitan is terrifying under snow, with a-slash being decent too. The playstyle will def get better. However, I'm personally interested in its application on HO as a nasty plot sweeper. With 109 speed and decent physical bulk, a-tales can make up for its underwhelming 81 base special attack by setting up an np, which from there it can be deadly. Freeze dry stops water types from answering it, and with tera ground, it can beat steel types. Personally, I think pairing it up with yanmega could have some cool applications, allowing one to break the steel so the other can win end-game, but more applications could be seen. It also helps a lot in the rain/sun matchup, which HO can struggle a bit against.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ru-2213622095 Here's a replay of it already on ladder, which helped immensly in relieving rain pressure by forcing toed in every time.

ALSO NO OOMFIE :(

 

[Denial]

Quick talk on the shifts before going on the main thing i want to talk about in this thread.


I personally was fine with Okidogi staying in the first place and its definetely too early to talk about the effects of it leaving are gonna bring to the tier. Realistically probably not many? I feel like balance is still gonna be hard to pull off and while Okidogi was a big reason as to why i still dont see it realistically be any good. We just lack the mons for that rather than finding the issue in threatning Pokemon.


Pretty likely bad, Ninetales already does the sun way better and nobody bothers to try that. Probably gonna be popular on ladder tho.


I'm not sure how much of a thing snow can become with this, if it had Healing Wish like base Ninetales did i could see it, it does still have encore which is nice but i really am not sure if it will be enough to push snow. The Pokemon itself is bad please dont bother with Nasty Plot sets.


I hate this guy its either gonna be an annoying web setter or an annoying quiver dancer. I hope its broken so we can just get rid of it.

Now on why i even wanted to make the post to begin with:

Thundurus realistically has to go to improve the tiers health. It might sound insane to some because its not the classic broken like Hoopa where it just clicks one move and wins every game or Haxorus that clicks SD and then wins every game. The real issue with Thundurus is just how much out of your way when building and playing you have to go to avoid it making progress in one way or another. The first glaring issue is that we dont have good ground types to stop it from clicking volt switch all game. With Grass Knot it has coverage to 2hko every single one of them, apart from Flygon which instead does from Focus Blast (which like ok hitting both is the flip of a coin but that has never stopped stuff from being broken has it?). And lets say you do have a good SpDef sponge to take the Volt Switch, then a physical breaker just comes in and you're in an awkward spot. Thundurus can pretty freely click one of Knock Off and Volt Switch every turn its in cause its nearly unpunishable. The speed tie is realistically way too good for the tier and holds a lot of Pokemon that could be decent back, stuff like Zoroark and Gengar all get punished cause they're scared of giving Thundurus free progress with the combo of Knock Off and Volt Switch. I'll find that your Thundurus will also provide much more breaking power in games once you start dropping Twave for more coverage. Twave from Thundy at this point in time its too easy to tech with stuff like Lum or Tera, its not worth spending that moveslot for the HO matchup, just find something else. You could argue being bad against HO is a bad thing now but realistically HO has ever since been on a fast decline, its yet to pick up again and cause of that is hard to argue that Thundy doesnt actually gain from that. While its not "amazing", the bulk and typing also provide incredible defensive value that helps a ton in keeping Thundy alive for how usually any Thundy game lasts. In my opinion Thundurus promotes lazy and skilless gameplay by providing with free progress any team that may use it. I don't think it has any place in this tier if we aim for an healthier metagame.

 

[fluff!!]

Okidogi leaving is MASSIVE. Defensive teams hated this guy, specifically stall, and quite a few defensive mons such as umbreon and amoonguss were stonewalled by it. Now? They aren't, so defense is a lot more flexible in its teamslots. Nothing can really 'replace' okidogi, though other fighting types will prob be slotted where it used to be (conk is my main predict to try and replace it as directly as possible). It will be interesting seeing which mons rise up due to it leaving, brelooom and terrakion will prob be a lot better (also rip gligar, still an amazing mon, but it lost one of its best matchups. Sorry for your loss fluff!!)

Gligar is perfectly fine, don't worry. Losing a good matchup is fine when you still have 49 of those still in the tier. Speaking of which...

Thundurus realistically has to go to improve the tiers health. It might sound insane to some because its not the classic broken like Hoopa where it just clicks one move and wins every game or Haxorus that clicks SD and then wins every game. The real issue with Thundurus is just how much out of your way when building and playing you have to go to avoid it making progress in one way or another. The first glaring issue is that we dont have good ground types to stop it from clicking volt switch all game. With Grass Knot it has coverage to 2hko every single one of them, apart from Flygon which instead does from Focus Blast (which like ok hitting both is the flip of a coin but that has never stopped stuff from being broken has it?). And lets say you do have a good SpDef sponge to take the Volt Switch, then a physical breaker just comes in and you're in an awkward spot. Thundurus can pretty freely click one of Knock Off and Volt Switch every turn its in cause its nearly unpunishable. The speed tie is realistically way too good for the tier and holds a lot of Pokemon that could be decent back, stuff like Zoroark and Gengar all get punished cause they're scared of giving Thundurus free progress with the combo of Knock Off and Volt Switch. I'll find that your Thundurus will also provide much more breaking power in games once you start dropping Twave for more coverage. Twave from Thundy at this point in time its too easy to tech with stuff like Lum or Tera, its not worth spending that moveslot for the HO matchup, just find something else. You could argue being bad against HO is a bad thing now but realistically HO has ever since been on a fast decline, its yet to pick up again and cause of that is hard to argue that Thundy doesnt actually gain from that. While its not "amazing", the bulk and typing also provide incredible defensive value that helps a ton in keeping Thundy alive for how usually any Thundy game lasts. In my opinion Thundurus promotes lazy and skilless gameplay by providing with free progress any team that may use it. I don't think it has any place in this tier if we aim for an healthier metagame.

I'm not about to write an essay on Thundurus's place in the meta or anything, it would take way too long, and I haven't played with or against the mon enough to have the best of opinions on it. All I know is that it's a top tier tour mon, and that I believe it's a healthy mon. What I will do, however, is to tell you to try out Gligar in your teams to deal with Thundurus.

Gligar @ Eviolite
Ability: Immunity
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 248 HP / 116 Def / 128 SpD / 16 Spe
Impish Nature
- Spikes / Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- U-turn

This mon is truly one of the finest in bulky offense archetypes. Its role compression is umatched, giving a super bulky hazard setter with Toxic to instantly KO Slowbro and friends, a Ground and Electric immunity, probably the best mon in the tier at playing around Thundurus thanks to its Electric immunity and taking 0 from gknot and focus blast, and U-turn away from bad MUs and give your team all the momentum back. It is EV'd to live Specs Hoodra Draco Meteor after rocks from full, and this SpDef investment also helps against, you guessed it, Thundurus. I implore you to try this mon out if you haven't, you have to be sure that the rest of the team can beat big setup sweepers like Lum Salamence or Gyarados, but if you make sure to patch those holes, Gligar will be your mon.

 

[LBN]

Winners and losers? Lets get it

I'll divide into 2 categories for each, S rank and A rank winners/losers.

S Rank Winners

Mostly HO Bots, there's some exceptions though. Lilligant is definitely the biggest winner of this shift, okidogi leaving with a minor sun buff, as well as Veil lets it do its job much easier. Breloom is similar, okidogi leaving means a common check and competition is gone, and Grass/Fighting is a real stab combo again. Even has rock tomb for the others bar G-Weezing. Necrozma is probably THE partner for alolan ninetales, as Meteor beam SR is probably the most comfortable fit. Gyarados just thrives under veil, getting the dance off is huge and its already good natural bulk is massive for letting it get its shit going. Cetitan is here since Atales is a hail setter that doesnt suck. Honestly I still think BD Cetitan will rarely make a mark, but its definitely gonna be better, and it might find value on strictly Veil related HOs unrelated to purely hail teams.

A Rank Winners

(And the playerbase, for not having to deal with fucking okidogi anymore.)
These are mostly self explanatory, Slithers stabs are more spammable, Umbreon isn't getting stuffed as easily (real men ran twave long ago but alas the people didnt follow such genius), Conk loses some competition and a mach resist, and bisharp loses a tanky fighting type check. Okidogi was, in my eyes, the single most busted mon we had and only put up with because we knew UU was going to steal it. Thank fucking god its gone. Torterra is also here since it likes veil and webs to let setting up and cleaning shop becoming much easier with those in play.

S Rank Losers

First and foremost, lets all laugh at abomasnow and galvantula for having their bag snatched LMAOOOOOOO
As for the other 3, I'll go over the former 2 first. Gligar and glowbro lost the biggest reason to get used. Gligar less so, it's hard to make a bulky u turn spiker with this typing and stats w eviolite shit, but its definitely lost alot of luster.
Maushold requires a bit more elaboration. Firstly, 2/3 HO drops we got don't mess well with what maushold wants to do. It's main job was to provide HO with valuable hazard removal while also enabling things / being enabled by things cooked by helmet mons like hippo/g-weez. Maushold doesnt fit on webs, like at all. The whole point of webs is to slow shit down, and when your boosting option also clears them off? Yeah thats not a good trade, and yanmega/armarouge dont rlly abuse webs as hard as they do just spikes or rocks, so the synergy is fully lost. Against its far worse, a slower maushold is pmuch a dead maushold, you'll never remove webs on your own side. As for Veil, removing the veil that already doesnt last isn't rlly useful, especially since A-Tales is running either Boots or ig Eject Button because light clay is banned. Veil is best for mons that have a degree of bulk to them, mons like Gyarados, Necrozma, or Bisharp. Maushold does not have that typa bulk, even behind veil. And since your removing it to boost anyways, you see the issue. It lost its stangehold on HO, and for that reason I think it took a hit this shift.

Edit: Apparently Tidy Up doesn't remove veil. W/e still doesn't abuse it well I stand by my statement

A Rank Losers

(idk the fucking grinch who doesn't like fucking okidogi gone)
2 HO enablers got worse, but idk if i'd call them out of a job. Araquanid has its merits as a standalone mon as a water that ragdolls wo-chien and also sets webs in the same breath, so it has its own niche there as an offensive mon first and a web setter 2nd. Ninetales is real in OU so shit it has hope here. Yanmega is only here cuz its mostly incompatible with the drops in the same way maushold was to a lesser extent. Why tf are u using yanmega on webs is a question i dont think i need to answer, and Veil... Veil teams are not going to be rocking with removal, those rocks are getting up uncontested. Sure yanmega is fine with rocks it still functions, but idt its hugely benefitting and i'd rather use Gyarados to be a glorified tera hog on that archetype anyways. Matches up well vs webs though so that's nice. Mind you, Yanmega is still stupid its just not getting slapped on every single HO automatically now.

As for my actual thoughts on the drops themselves? They aight ig. Mostly sleeper tbh okidogi leaving was always the prize, since ogerpon was getting nuked on arrival that shit is iron leaves on fucking crack. Back on topic, Torkoal is def the worst, Sun's issues idt are getting magically patched by torkoal, though it helps. Alolan ninetales I think will be the best HO setter, as veil provides more immediate value to our existing HO crop than webs does, with mons like Gyarados, Necrozma, Torterra and Revavroom at the forefront (overcoat rev LETS GOOOOOOO). As an NP Sweeper... we'll see. I'm skeptical since 81 sp att is frankly ass so that ice/fairy/ground coverage gonna have to put in mad work. Speaking of fairy ground, ribombee as a QD bot is interesting and i look forward to seeing how it'll perform standalone. I think it has the capacity to be quite nutty but who knows its like hour 2 of these drops

 

[C0nfiden1 0yster]

out of all the drops, there is one that particularly struck me the most... one that wasn't even included in feen's op...

oh the horror, right? lets take a step back a bit and remember the circumstances in which it was originally banned. On may 1st, hawlucha and polteagiest were quickbanned here. And as you look back, you will start to see how long ago this was. Flamigo (which is now PU) was recently suspected and oricorio (PUBL) was getting touted for the next ban. Another interesting thing to look at is what rose from RU -> UU: Kilowattrel and Slowbro.

Then, another major shift occured in August 2023 as you can see in the OP and Hawlucha, in conjunction with Zarude, Lycanroc-Dusk, and Polteagiest, all remained unfreed from RUBL. And then ANOTHER shift after that here occured, in which lucha was kept banned AGAIN. And then ANOTHER shift AFTER that here occured, in which Hawlucha (& Polteagiest) were the only RUBL pokemons not freed.

So why? Why after every shift was lucha kept locked in its cage, staring down the bars with rage? Well according to EviGaro, it was because under psychic terrain, it was too powerful. But when you look at the first link, where it was initially banned, there was not really any discussion or even reasoning. And in all the following threads, there still was little reasoning for its continued status in RUBL. My point is, there has never really been any discussion about Hawlucha, throughout the entire generation despite the tier dramatically changing and readjusting multiple times.

So why not now? The tier has never been more balanced than it is now. There are also a number of pokemon that have been added that could potentially manage hawlucha, including hippowdon, weezing-galar, reuniclus, others that could be mentioned, and namely, Slowbro.

Now if you run the calcs yourself, they are, pretty much what would would expect imo. +2 Acrobatics is strong and add tera flying to that and there is a dangerous threat there. But it also comes at a cost, the cost of having to run a terrain team to build it around. I think in the past 3 months, I've seen like, one decent terrain team which had the broken blastoise on it. Psychic terrain is definitely not a consistent playstyle, so the old argument listed here by EviGaro no longer holds (neither rouge nor maushold are contentious threats at the moment). Grassy Terrain is a slightly different story though as multiple people have built g-terrain teams with Thwacky, but the last time it really took off was the Enamorus-T metagame. I don't think anyone can claim that terrain teams are a prevalent part of the current metagame

I am not arguing that Hawlucha would be completely balanced and that it should definitely be freed today and the council are stupid for not already doing so. But I think the lack of discussion around this pokemon, the drastic metagame shifts that occurred between a year and a half ago and today, and the lack of consistency with terrain teams, Hawlucha should be given a re-test. I can't give a definitive answer as to whether it would be broken or not, but I think there is a severe lack of evidence/discussion to definitively suggest otherwise.

I'd also like to address another counter-argument before this concludes. I think many will argue, even if hawlucha is balanced, it would not improve the tier as they will relegate it to 'degenerate HO cheese' or 'just another MU fish' or whatnot. I believe this argument is terrible and should never be the basis for any decision regarding cg tiering. The point of tiering should be to allow as many pokemon and as many options as possible. Any pokemon that is balanced and fair within a tier should be allowed to exist in the tier, and the same applies to hawlucha if it is balanced and fair and competitive.

 

[Miyami~~~]

my turn for thoughts:


I don't think this is gonna do much for HO, actually, unless you're going out of your way to also use cetitan and/or snowslash since five turns of screens isn't really worth sacrificing an entire teamslot when you also need to do so with hazards at face value. At the very least it's less awful at setting veil than abomasnow, but to get the most mileage out of it you will probably have to bring a slush rusher. That might be fine, Cetitan is probably good enough, but I'm not super sold on it just yet as its own thing. Pure hail is also probably still kinda bad since you'd rather have a hail setter that does something besides set hail/screens (free aurorus), but at this point "hail" is just screens HO with a cetitan on it so /shrug.

I've been playing around with "hail" a bit, here's some replays of tales and/or cetitan winning games for me.

It's probably a little too weak to do it in this tier but tales does have excellent coverage with tblast ground/fd/moonblast. Maybe NP could work?


pour one out for Galvantula, who would've rose to RU last month if it had been a normal shifts month and didn't get the chance before getting absolutely obliterated. Ribombee will probably just be a webs bot, but it's immediately better at it than galv or araquanid since it's faster than the bike and scares it out, although geezing blanks it very easily unless it runs psychic/noise and talonflame probably owns it regardless. QD and specs might also be interesting despite its pretty bad stab combination. If you want to deal with both poisons and steels, you have to drop a stab for tblast fire/ground and psychic/noise and you need tblast ground for the rare fires in the tier. I'd probably wager it as a B-rank on its own merits, with webs being a potentially huge upside.


this is far and away the most interesting drop, since sun has been very unexplored for a while. I'm not even sure if it's because kantales is just that bad or if the possible abusers (Slither Wing, Hilligant, Venusaur, Scovillain, random fires like Hyphlosion) are just not up to par. You probably do actually need Torkoal here since we don't have great tusk to play the hazard game on your behalf so that's at least a buff. I don't really know what else to say besides "give it a week or two", maybe it'll be good and maybe it won't. It's hard to tell right now.

what a weird set of drops, suddenly we have three weathers + hippo still being a very good mon and a buff to more standard HO. Curious to see how the weather wars play out!

 

[fluff!!]

out of all the drops, there is one that particularly struck me the most... one that wasn't even included in feen's op...

View attachment 674268

oh the horror, right? lets take a step back a bit and remember the circumstances in which it was originally banned. On may 1st, hawlucha and polteagiest were quickbanned here. And as you look back, you will start to see how long ago this was. Flamigo (which is now PU) was recently suspected and oricorio (PUBL) was getting touted for the next ban. Another interesting thing to look at is what rose from RU -> UU: Kilowattrel and Slowbro.

Then, another major shift occured in August 2023 as you can see in the OP and Hawlucha, in conjunction with Zarude, Lycanroc-Dusk, and Polteagiest, all remained unfreed from RUBL. And then ANOTHER shift after that here occured, in which lucha was kept banned AGAIN. And then ANOTHER shift AFTER that here occured, in which Hawlucha (& Polteagiest) were the only RUBL pokemons not freed.

So why? Why after every shift was lucha kept locked in its cage, staring down the bars with rage? Well according to EviGaro, it was because under psychic terrain, it was too powerful. But when you look at the first link, where it was initially banned, there was not really any discussion or even reasoning. And in all the following threads, there still was little reasoning for its continued status in RUBL. My point is, there has never really been any discussion about Hawlucha, throughout the entire generation despite the tier dramatically changing and readjusting multiple times.

So why not now? The tier has never been more balanced than it is now. There are also a number of pokemon that have been added that could potentially manage hawlucha, including hippowdon, weezing-galar, reuniclus, others that could be mentioned, and namely, Slowbro.

Now if you run the calcs yourself, they are, pretty much what would would expect imo. +2 Acrobatics is strong and add tera flying to that and there is a dangerous threat there. But it also comes at a cost, the cost of having to run a terrain team to build it around. I think in the past 3 months, I've seen like, one decent terrain team which had the broken blastoise on it. Psychic terrain is definitely not a consistent playstyle, so the old argument listed here by EviGaro no longer holds (neither rouge nor maushold are contentious threats at the moment). Grassy Terrain is a slightly different story though as multiple people have built g-terrain teams with Thwacky, but the last time it really took off was the Enamorus-T metagame. I don't think anyone can claim that terrain teams are a prevalent part of the current metagame

I am not arguing that Hawlucha would be completely balanced and that it should definitely be freed today and the council are stupid for not already doing so. But I think the lack of discussion around this pokemon, the drastic metagame shifts that occurred between a year and a half ago and today, and the lack of consistency with terrain teams, Hawlucha should be given a re-test. I can't give a definitive answer as to whether it would be broken or not, but I think there is a severe lack of evidence/discussion to definitively suggest otherwise.

I'd also like to address another counter-argument before this concludes. I think many will argue, even if hawlucha is balanced, it would not improve the tier as they will relegate it to 'degenerate HO cheese' or 'just another MU fish' or whatnot. I believe this argument is terrible and should never be the basis for any decision regarding cg tiering. The point of tiering should be to allow as many pokemon and as many options as possible. Any pokemon that is balanced and fair within a tier should be allowed to exist in the tier, and the same applies to hawlucha if it is balanced and fair and competitive.

Hawlucha is potentially the most broken mon in the current banlist, perhaps even stronger than Goltres.

I will preface it by saying that unbanning an un-revengekillable right after banning the un-revengekillable that is Blastoise (ban that made the tier 10x better btw) is not something I want to see.

Hawlucha is not a Terrain bot. Sure, it is insane in terrain, but it does not need it to succeed. Hawlucha has many ways of procing Unburden safely, with options like white herb or sub sitrus being the main ones. Hawlucha does not need terrain, you can slap it in any basic HO comp and get everything the mon has to offer. Seeing Hawlucha as only a Terrain enabler is very short-sighted imo.

Hawlucha also has no Tera hoging issue either. Blastoise was banned for being a revenge-killable that can pick the coverage it wants to beat selected checks and counters. Hawlucha just needs Swords Dance and its dual STAB do kill everything. From there, you can pick the cheese move of your choice to make the greatest guessing game of all time. Taunt completely shuts down mons like Hippowdon from phazing you, letting you set 3 SDs on its face. Substitute enables Sitrus Berry for Unburden and protects from T-wave from Slowbro/will-o from Geezing/toxic from Umbreon or Gligar, while making it a complete guessing game for psychics like slowbro to pick the right move. Tera Steel means that you aren't breaking the subs with your psychic moves and blocks T-wave, pretty much forcing you to click Scald if you don't wanna lose on the spot and praying for a 30% burn chance to not autolose. Great dynamic. Geezing just lets Tera Steel Sub set up 3 SDs for free. I did not even talk about Encore yet, making it a complete gamble to stay in as your "counter" if you clicked a recovery move as Hawlucha switches in, and completely stopping Tera Ghost Iron Defense Registeel from stopping Hawlucha. Hawlucha will not struggle to find setup opportunites either, Flying/Fighting is a deceptively great defensive typing, esp when combining it with the threat of Tera Steel Sub. Because of Unburden, you even prevent Ditto from stopping you completely. Hawlucha is also blessed with resistances to all of Mach Punch, Sucker Punch AND a double First Impression resistance, which are the main forms of priority in the tier. Adamant Band Tera Bug Slither Wing does 40 max with First Impression. Thundurus has priority T-wave and resists Hawlucha's STABs, but since Thundurus is already extremely popular, you can bet there's gonna be plenty Hawluchas runing Tera Elec to set up to +6 on Thundy's face. There is absolutely 0 reliable way of stopping a Hawlucha from setting up in the builder, except perhaps if you build literally your entire team around not losing to it, and even then it's a big maybe due to how brutally Hawlucha quells attemps at shutting it down due to Sub+Taunt+Encore guesses. You will see that I haven't even talked about the defense boosts Seeds would provide under terrain during this entire thing.
Oh and Hawlucha has Throat Chop, just in case you were planning on piercing sub with psynoise slowbro...

I'd also like to address another counter-argument before this concludes. I think many will argue, even if hawlucha is balanced, it would not improve the tier as they will relegate it to 'degenerate HO cheese' or 'just another MU fish' or whatnot. I believe this argument is terrible and should never be the basis for any decision regarding cg tiering. The point of tiering should be to allow as many pokemon and as many options as possible. Any pokemon that is balanced and fair within a tier should be allowed to exist in the tier, and the same applies to hawlucha if it is balanced and fair and competitive.

'degenerate HO cheese' and 'just another MU fish' are an antithesis to 'balanced and fair mon'. They are revelant points to bring up. If the point of the mon is to auto win against everything but 2 specific sets (which is what would happen with Hawlucha, and mind you, this is 2 sets that would be completely different depending on what 4th slot Hawlucha picks), it is just another MU fish, and it is not fair and balanced.

The point of tiering should be to allow as many pokemon and as many options as possible.

While keeping it balanced. Hawlucha would utterly destroy the tier.

 

[fluff!!]

I'd also like to address another counter-argument before this concludes. I think many will argue, even if hawlucha is balanced, it would not improve the tier as they will relegate it to 'degenerate HO cheese' or 'just another MU fish' or whatnot. I believe this argument is terrible and should never be the basis for any decision regarding cg tiering. The point of tiering should be to allow as many pokemon and as many options as possible. Any pokemon that is balanced and fair within a tier should be allowed to exist in the tier, and the same applies to hawlucha if it is balanced and fair and competitive.

Since I will mostly talk about stuff unrelated to Hawlucha, I will make a 2nd post for it as I think it deserves it.

'just another MU fish' arguments have always been a thing, and it opens many ways of looking at tiering, building, and playing.

Technically, every mon, no matter how unviable, is an MU fish to some extent: Inteleon is an unviable mon, but if you don't have spdef sponges, or big water resists, or faster mons, or water absorb mon, then it can destroy you. The thing is, any decent team has at least one of those, and most likely has all 3 of those, and this, without even thinking about Inteleon when building. We don't talk about such cases because, frankly, you probably have more problems than just the Inteleon MU.

Where the discussion becomes interesting, is when talking about more common, viable mons. Let's take Salamence as an example. Dragon Dance Salamence is already much more limiting in what ways and the amount of ways you handle it. It has a limited pool of mons who can reliably take it on both defensively and offensively, and requires having a solid gameplan against it from the builder already. Failing to account for it in the builder will make it really tough to win against it (as long as the Salamence player knows what they're doing). The reason why it hasn't been popping up in discussions, like, at all, is because you can reasonably account in the builder without making heavy concessions when trying to prepare for all the other threats in the tier, and, relevant to this post, because it has actual defined counters, like Iron Defense Registeel, Slowbro, Bronzong...
Then playwell in-game to not let it set up for free etc etc, not gonna make a course on how to play here. (DD mence is underrated btw, stealth broken mon)

However, this example is only a fraction of the diversity of threats you have to handle.


Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Scald
- Protect

You know it, you've faced it, and, let's be honest, you've lost to it. VinCune is a prime example of a tolerated 'MU fish'. VinCune does very 'ok' into HO since being a fat water with scald automatically lets you participate to some extent to the MU, but where VinCune shines is in the balance/fat/stall MUs. The more defensive and slow a team is, the more susceptible it is to VinCune, and the more you need to build specifically not to lose to it. Defensive counterplay is quite broad and restrained at the same time, ranging from a simple fast Encore from Jirachi, to your own Calm Mind mon that can beat VinCune, like Fezandipiti, or just from mons that beat it, like Haze Vaporeon or Ruination Wo-Chien. The thing is, despite having listed 3 different tactics to beat VinCune reliably, I haven't listed a lot of mons. That's simply because, frankly, there's not a lot of them that reliably handle it! Frailer Encore users risk getting hit by Scald on the switch, and other Calm Mind setters or fat mons lose to Suicune due to Pressure. It even runs Tera Dark to prevent Stored Power and Psyshock from scaling better than it. Even Volcanion, who literally cannot be damaged by Suicune, is forced to run Taunt, else it gets PP stalled and ultimately loses the 1v1.
Defensive teams have to rely quite a bit on offensive counterplay to handle Suicune if Wo-Chien/Vaporeon can't fit in the team, but since they have much less slots for these offensive mons, they have to tailor their attackers to play around Suicune, by running the likes of Thundurus, have faster mons that can pressure with Knock Off or status like Cyclizar, and then sweat during the game. The pressure Suicune puts both in the builder and in-game is, I believe, a lot of the reasoning behind its A rank in the VR, despite having several common unwinnable MUs. Ultimately, Suicune's MU-fishy nature shapes the metagame to some extent, favoring Calm Mind users like Fezandipiti or Psyshock Slowbro. The reason VinCune is tolerated is because its best answers are also quite popular already, Jirachi is consistently one of the highest used mons in the tier, Fezandipiti is the best Calm Mind wincon in the tier and so on, and how much of this is attributed to Suicune's existence, no matter how important, is not exactly known, but present. Its variance in sets don't impact many, if any, of its matchups, which is also a very important point.
Regardless, VinCune has clear, sturdy, failproof counters and counterplay tactics that are viable enough to not open up holes too big elsewhere.


There are, however, moments where MU fishes become too much, and a mon that teetered the line for a while before its ban is Blastoise.

I won't make an essay on Blastoise here, I redirect you to its suspect thread and previous posts both on here and the discord for further information. But as a tl;dr, Blastoise was banned partly due to pushing the concept of MU-fishing too far.
Offensive counterplay was severely limited due to its great natural bulk and outrunning every viable scarfer after a Shell Smash, limiting offensive counterplay to hitting him on the setup turn + having a strong priority user like Slither Wing or CB Entei. On the defensive however... It was less so about having specific sets, and more about guessing the set. Blastoise technically had counters, such as SpDef Milotic, Gastrodon, or SpDef Umbreon, but all of these checks and counters would lose to some Blastoise variant, from Tera Grass to Tera Fighting or Tera Ghost, and even Tera Elec to be immune to Jirachi's and Thundurus's paralysis. This would force teams to have several ways of handling Blastoise, both defensive and offensive ones, and was ultimately deemed too limiting in the builder for the playerbase.
Again, Blastoise did not necessarily have no counters, in fact, it had quite a bunch, but due to how they'd all lose to some variant of Blastoise, this was ultimately too much.

Blastoise is a great example of how 'MU fishing' can, in fact, lead to uncompetitiveness.

MU fishing comes in many flavors, some quite different, some very similar but with interesting subtilities.


So, with all that, we can conclude that... uuuh... idk I didn't plan that far ahead soooo do what you will with that, feel free to discuss about this on here and disagree with me, I hope it was a good read at least

 

[seed]

Hawlucha would utterly destroy the tier.

Ok this is pretty melodramatic… I really don’t think we can definitely say it would "utterly destroy" RU until it is re-tested in the current tier and demonstrates as much. This post outlines a lot of the things Hawlucha can do against its checks in theory, but in reality it only has one free moveslot to work with considering its other three moves are typically taken up by SD and STABs. Plus the RU in which Hawlucha was banned back in 2023 is very different than the current tier.

Take a look at usage stats for May/June 2023, before and after its drop and ban on May 1st.

May 2023 usage stats

Combined usage for RU (1630 stats)
 + ---- + ------------------ + ------- +
 | Rank | Pokemon            | Percent |
 + ---- + ------------------ + ------- +
 | 1    | Slowbro            | 33.024% |
 | 2    | Flamigo            | 30.957% |
 | 3    | Krookodile         | 29.916% |
 | 4    | Revavroom          | 27.500% |
 | 5    | Gardevoir          | 23.115% |
 | 6    | Brute Bonnet       | 19.831% |
 | 7    | Sylveon            | 16.728% |
 | 8    | Heracross          | 15.379% |
 | 9    | Bellibolt          | 14.699% |
 | 10   | Salazzle           | 14.303% |
 | 11   | Altaria            | 14.173% |
 | 12   | Oricorio-Pom-Pom   | 13.332% |
 | 13   | Klefki             | 13.037% |
 | 14   | Mudsdale           | 12.854% |
 | 15   | Weavile            | 12.521% |
 | 16   | Cloyster           | 12.434% |
 | 17   | Coalossal          | 12.272% |
 | 18   | Primeape           | 12.196% |
 | 19   | Arcanine           | 11.977% |
 | 20   | Rotom-Mow          | 11.847% |
 | 21   | Kilowattrel        | 11.430% |
 | 22   | Tatsugiri          | 10.901% |
 | 23   | Palossand          | 10.830% |
 | 24   | Copperajah         | 10.620% |
 | 25   | Frosmoth           | 10.558% |
 | 26   | Bronzong           | 10.399% |
 | 27   | Cryogonal          | 10.105% |
 | 28   | Dragalge           | 10.012% |
 | 29   | Blissey            |  9.987% |
 | 30   | Cetitan            |  8.797% |
 | 31   | Abomasnow          |  8.671% |
 | 32   | Mismagius          |  8.404% |
 | 33   | Arboliva           |  7.847% |
 | 34   | Naclstack          |  6.860% |
 | 35   | Avalugg            |  5.397% |
 | 36   | Froslass           |  5.380% |
 | 37   | Komala             |  4.855% |
 | 38   | Ditto              |  4.749% |
 | 39   | Sableye            |  4.641% |
 | 40   | Lycanroc           |  4.228% |
 | 41   | Hattrem            |  4.015% |
 | 42   | Goodra             |  3.752% |
 | 43   | Passimian          |  3.589% |
 | 44   | Indeedee           |  3.227% |
 | 45   | Oricorio-Sensu     |  3.136% |
 | 46   | Zoroark            |  3.124% |
 | 47   | Whiscash           |  2.607% |
 | 48   | Florges            |  2.373% |
 | 49   | Umbreon            |  2.351% |
 | 50   | Jolteon            |  2.268% |
 | 51   | Dudunsparce        |  2.228% |
 | 52   | Venomoth           |  2.195% |
 | 53   | Vaporeon           |  2.144% |
 | 54   | Sandaconda         |  1.979% |
 | 55   | Bombirdier         |  1.874% |
 | 56   | Bruxish            |  1.844% |
 | 57   | Mabosstiff         |  1.834% |
 | 58   | Magneton           |  1.824% |
 | 59   | Drifblim           |  1.795% |
 | 60   | Clawitzer          |  1.702% |
 | 61   | Scyther            |  1.672% |
 | 62   | Crocalor           |  1.662% |
 | 63   | Barraskewda        |  1.543% |
 | 64   | Spidops            |  1.414% |
 | 65   | Charizard          |  1.351% |
 | 66   | Braviary           |  1.260% |
 | 67   | Toxicroak          |  1.258% |
 | 68   | Qwilfish           |  1.149% |
 | 69   | Crabominable       |  1.088% |
 | 70   | Dachsbun           |  0.997% |
 | 71   | Medicham           |  0.972% |
 | 72   | Glimmet            |  0.941% |
 | 73   | Veluza             |  0.858% |
 | 74   | Honchkrow          |  0.840% |
 | 75   | Klawf              |  0.802% |
 | 76   | Floatzel           |  0.724% |
 | 77   | Scovillain         |  0.688% |
 | 78   | Toxtricity         |  0.688% |
 | 79   | Eelektross         |  0.590% |
 | 80   | Masquerain         |  0.518% |
 | 81   | Farigiraf          |  0.515% |
 | 82   | Rotom              |  0.490% |
 | 83   | Haunter            |  0.481% |
 | 84   | Oricorio           |  0.472% |
 | 85   | Ursaring           |  0.443% |
 | 86   | Rabsca             |  0.434% |
 | 87   | Beartic            |  0.425% |
 | 88   | Electrode          |  0.381% |
 | 89   | Vespiquen          |  0.375% |
 | 90   | Appletun           |  0.373% |
 | 91   | Tauros-Paldea-Combat |  0.373% |
 | 92   | Rotom-Frost        |  0.368% |
 | 93   | Muk                |  0.354% |
 | 94   | Camerupt           |  0.299% |
 | 95   | Zangoose           |  0.295% |
 | 96   | Perrserker         |  0.290% |
 | 97   | Zorua-Hisui        |  0.276% |
 | 98   | Sneasel            |  0.259% |
 | 99   | Golduck            |  0.241% |
 | 100  | Spiritomb          |  0.221% |
 | 101  | Flareon            |  0.199% |
 | 102  | Sinistea           |  0.193% |
 | 103  | Jumpluff           |  0.191% |
 | 104  | Glaceon            |  0.180% |
 | 105  | Houndoom           |  0.178% |
 | 106  | Lurantis           |  0.177% |
 | 107  | Lilligant          |  0.167% |
 | 108  | Tauros-Paldea-Aqua |  0.158% |
 | 109  | Squawkabilly       |  0.151% |
 | 110  | Flapple            |  0.134% |
 | 111  | Raichu             |  0.133% |
 | 112  | Leafeon            |  0.130% |
 | 113  | Chansey            |  0.126% |
 | 114  | Rotom-Heat         |  0.108% |
 | 115  | Sawsbuck           |  0.106% |
 | 116  | Tauros-Paldea-Blaze |  0.104% |
 | 117  | Quaxwell           |  0.103% |
 + ---- + ------------------ + ------- +

June 2023 usage stats

Code:
Combined usage for RU (1630 stats)
 + ---- + ------------------ + ------- +
 | Rank | Pokemon            | Percent |
 + ---- + ------------------ + ------- +
 | 1    | Krookodile         | 30.557% |
 | 2    | Iron Thorns        | 26.481% |
 | 3    | Gardevoir          | 25.234% |
 | 4    | Revavroom          | 22.945% |
 | 5    | Mudsdale           | 21.644% |
 | 6    | Rotom-Mow          | 19.911% |
 | 7    | Arcanine           | 19.726% |
 | 8    | Altaria            | 19.627% |
 | 9    | Heracross          | 19.492% |
 | 10   | Grafaiai           | 17.892% |
 | 11   | Sylveon            | 17.520% |
 | 12   | Primeape           | 16.727% |
 | 13   | Cloyster           | 15.721% |
 | 14   | Klefki             | 15.069% |
 | 15   | Weavile            | 14.893% |
 | 16   | Tatsugiri          | 14.476% |
 | 17   | Oricorio-Pom-Pom   | 13.435% |
 | 18   | Bronzong           | 13.006% |
 | 19   | Mismagius          | 12.405% |
 | 20   | Brute Bonnet       | 10.847% |
 | 21   | Coalossal          | 10.598% |
 | 22   | Arboliva           | 10.562% |
 | 23   | Salazzle           |  9.861% |
 | 24   | Palossand          |  9.844% |
 | 25   | Avalugg            |  9.829% |
 | 26   | Copperajah         |  7.766% |
 | 27   | Naclstack          |  7.724% |
 | 28   | Dragalge           |  7.663% |
 | 29   | Blissey            |  7.522% |
 | 30   | Bellibolt          |  7.507% |
 | 31   | Oricorio-Sensu     |  7.244% |
 | 32   | Frosmoth           |  7.114% |
 | 33   | Cryogonal          |  6.817% |
 | 34   | Ditto              |  6.545% |
 | 35   | Florges            |  6.435% |
 | 36   | Abomasnow          |  6.399% |
 | 37   | Cetitan            |  6.046% |
 | 38   | Lycanroc           |  5.827% |
 | 39   | Sableye            |  5.736% |
 | 40   | Passimian          |  5.550% |
 | 41   | Froslass           |  4.745% |
 | 42   | Zoroark            |  4.596% |
 | 43   | Barraskewda        |  4.541% |
 | 44   | Indeedee           |  4.169% |
 | 45   | Bruxish            |  4.159% |
 | 46   | Vaporeon           |  3.898% |
 | 47   | Komala             |  3.402% |
 | 48   | Goodra             |  3.315% |
 | 49   | Hattrem            |  2.450% |
 | 50   | Qwilfish           |  2.315% |
 | 51   | Clawitzer          |  2.150% |
 | 52   | Bombirdier         |  1.854% |
 | 53   | Drifblim           |  1.730% |
 | 54   | Toxicroak          |  1.727% |
 | 55   | Oricorio           |  1.553% |
 | 56   | Magneton           |  1.437% |
 | 57   | Mabosstiff         |  1.419% |
 | 58   | Venomoth           |  1.334% |
 | 59   | Whiscash           |  1.332% |
 | 60   | Crocalor           |  1.268% |
 | 61   | Braviary           |  1.252% |
 | 62   | Medicham           |  1.133% |
 | 63   | Sandaconda         |  1.081% |
 | 64   | Umbreon            |  1.036% |
 | 65   | Scyther            |  0.961% |
 | 66   | Dudunsparce        |  0.956% |
 | 67   | Pincurchin         |  0.896% |
 | 68   | Jolteon            |  0.894% |
 | 69   | Eelektross         |  0.867% |
 | 70   | Spidops            |  0.840% |
 | 71   | Rotom              |  0.724% |
 | 72   | Hawlucha           |  0.668% |
 | 73   | Muk                |  0.609% |
 | 74   | Masquerain         |  0.607% |
 | 75   | Farigiraf          |  0.603% |
 | 76   | Scovillain         |  0.600% |
 | 77   | Polteageist        |  0.589% |
 | 78   | Veluza             |  0.581% |
 | 79   | Ursaring           |  0.574% |
 | 80   | Klawf              |  0.471% |
 | 81   | Slowbro            |  0.470% |
 | 82   | Lurantis           |  0.467% |
 | 83   | Rabsca             |  0.451% |
 | 84   | Charizard          |  0.443% |
 | 85   | Honchkrow          |  0.439% |
 | 86   | Tauros-Paldea-Combat |  0.360% |
 | 87   | Dachsbun           |  0.356% |
 | 88   | Sawsbuck           |  0.352% |
 | 89   | Spiritomb          |  0.340% |
 | 90   | Sudowoodo          |  0.313% |
 | 91   | Rotom-Frost        |  0.297% |
 | 92   | Appletun           |  0.285% |
 | 93   | Crabominable       |  0.284% |
 | 94   | Beartic            |  0.281% |
 | 95   | Haunter            |  0.254% |
 | 96   | Camerupt           |  0.252% |
 | 97   | Vivillon           |  0.240% |
 | 98   | Skuntank           |  0.238% |
 | 99   | Houndoom           |  0.236% |
 | 100  | Glimmet            |  0.219% |
 | 101  | Chansey            |  0.167% |
 | 102  | Flareon            |  0.165% |
 | 103  | Cacturne           |  0.158% |
 | 104  | Slaking            |  0.155% |
 | 105  | Zorua-Hisui        |  0.152% |
 | 106  | Vespiquen          |  0.139% |
 | 107  | Basculin           |  0.139% |
 | 108  | Kilowattrel        |  0.130% |
 | 109  | Jumpluff           |  0.129% |
 | 110  | Zangoose           |  0.113% |
 | 111  | Misdreavus         |  0.109% |
 + ---- + ------------------ + ------- +

At this point, we have many more defensive checks like Hippo, Reuni, Gweez, Talon, Quag, Red Card Mimi, Thundy, etc. that are more adept at handling Hawlucha than any of the defensive checks at the time. Note that while Slowbro was at the top of usage in RU in the May stats, it rose to UU by usage at the same time Hawlucha dropped. Also notable is the fact that Polteageist dropped at the same time as Lucha, making it an especially potent partner for it on Psy Terrain teams.

I'm not saying it would or wouldn't be too much for the tier, but I agree with Oyster that it's at least worth a reexamination since it's been a almost year and a half since its initial ban.

 

[Elec-ant1234]

While we're on the topic of Pokemon who have never had a chance in RU...

Free Polteageist.

 

[C0nfiden1 0yster]

i don't usually like making follow-up posts since it usually ends up clouding discussion, but I saw a comment this morning from a council member which irked me the wrong way. They labeled the discussion as a 'waste of time' which is just incredibly dismissive, especially when their argument resides in purely theoretical claims without any basis.

The biggest issue that people took with the post was the implication that it could only work on terrain teams, of which was fully intended. To justify this, I'd like to look at some evidence, of which we have plenty since hawlucha has been sentenced to the banlists multiple times throughout its tiering history.

So obviously in SV RU it was banned for its presence on terrain teams, specifically psychic terrain. This is evidenced by Evi's follow up here (I believe this is actually the only reasoning for why hawlucha was banned for the entire generation actually)

Then in November of 2020, it was banned in SS UU, in which Hogg explains his reasoning here. He specifically cites Tapu Bulu and Tapu Lele being fantastic teammates to enable hawlucha, citing sky-attack sets as subpar.

And then before that in January of 2020, it was banned in SS UU for the first time, in which TDK acknowledges White Herb and Power Herb as potential sets, but primarily discusses Electric seed as set in question (as seen here).

This is all to say that terrain seeds have always been the primary set and that other items have never proven themselves to be banworthy sets on hawlucha. Im not saying terrain seeds are potentially its best sets, I am outright claiming that in any tier where terrain setters exist, terrain seed sets are going to be its best and most consistent set, as based on its track record. Claiming otherwise is pure theory without basis.

What is most interesting, as explored in fluffs post, is that people who do not want Hawlucha to be re-tested all concede that there actually isn't one primary set that will bulldoze past the entire tier, that the hawlucha user will have to pick between taunt, encore, sub and various tera-types in order to beat certain pokemon. Clearly, that implies that there is more room for discussion regarding this pokemon and that there are many uncertainties regarding it. It was mentioned that tera-electric could help with thunderus-i, but is that actually practical considering it is then passing up on tera flying and then has a worse matchup into hippowdon, gligar, and quagsire? There are tons of potential move/tera combinations in theory, but which ones are actually practical? That is the reason why I ask for a re-test, in order to see whether they actually overbearing or whether this pokemon much more limited than originally anticipated.

 

[MrAldo]

The tier already struggled with dealing with the concept of Blastoise for being a reasonably bulky pokemon with shell smash and terastalization, I dont think adding Hawlucha to the mix is something the tier needs right now. Right now the tier needs to find its footing as it is, and many things on the defense and offensive side that were chokeholded by Okidogi overall effectiveness can be viable again.

Dont think a Hawlucha suspect should even be considered at this point after an important tier shift. Besides how it is always having a extensive movepool to get past pseudo counters is seen as a 4mss instead of being a pain in the ass on trying to figure out if your counter actually beats the Hawlucha set? I never understood that strawman of a though that you will always get the right scenario vs a rather problematic unburden mon.

We already have things like Yanmega, Armarouge, and Revavroom which are mons that get too dangerous and fast in just a couple of turns at most. Dont think Hawlucha will add anything valuable to the conversation, other than another headache tbh. Just hope they dont pack stone edge I guess!

I know I may come as an asshat nowadays, but I would like to give a kudos to the new people that are keeping the community work up. I am glad forums and discussions are as lively as they should be, keep that up and thanks

 

[EviGaro]

Hi I've been name dropped omg

The reasoning for Hawlucha's ban was almost always linked to terrain support, yes. It's always been the view of Council when I was TL that there really was no point to retest it - and Polteageist - in any of the retest periods because 1- We didn't want to add another archetype to evaluate to the mix and 2- Retest periods are already stupid volatile. We knew what these two would do, hardly anyone ever supported voting otherwise on them, they were locked.

Notice again the use of "retest periods" here, but it's not opposed to lulls in tiering at all. This gen, RU has gone from suspect to suspect, complain to complain, and at that point adding something that will do something everyone knows and yet still be a crazy add to the tier was never truly considered. I'm sure there were some people that wanted to test it, I definitely remember those discussions on the discord. But it's like, when? This is where I'm not on board with the "whole gen" argument, because sure that sounds big and all, but we're talking about three three weeks periods at most where big sweeping changes were tested. It's not a lot. And there's arguments to point out that RU still needs a bit of cleaning.

But speaking of Hawlucha now, there's a few things that make me pause. First, yes, Psychic terrain would get a huge boost. Not everyone thinks Armarouge is that contentious, personally I still think it's broken as hell and I know I am not the only one, but you're talking about the mon with its main archetype very nerfed. Adding Hawlucha pretty significantly changes that, on top of everything it already excels at. Second, I don't really think the tier changes really matter to the point others think. RU is bulkier now that it was earlier, sure, but building defensive concepts around Hawlucha is always putting you in a reactive spot. Hawlucha can change its set, sure, but Hawlucha will be put on a build that aims to make those choices easier. So it's not really fair to say it HAS to pick Encore, or Taunt, or Stone Edge, because that's literally why you build with five offensive dumbos to begin with. Third, yes, you are adding a gamechanger in possibly the worst period to do so. Two big team tours - ruwc being obviously the main draw here - and two circuit tours? Council has a responsibility in those moments to keep the metagame together. Yes, we aim to include the most mons and playstyles possible. But above that we have to aim for a metagame that is for sure playable. And sometimes, like it or not, these two visions collide. I always preferred the latter, but that's me.

(And honestly terrain is usable now, people are just not ready to talk about how lazy building has become for many players)
(ban tera)

 

[Heatranator]

Wanted to give my thoughts on a potenial Hawlucha unban.
Also TLDR cause I realise this is a lot to digest, Hawlucha decimates offensive styles, its movesets are disgusting, it can pick and choose its 4th moveslot without having 4mss, and its tera type completely flips any resembelence of counterplay. Don't unban this mon.

Firstly, I can't believe that people haven't talked about how hawlucha basically invalidates any offensive playstyle that isn't rain or that has a mimikyu (which while a great mon on offensive teams already, would be necessary on any offensive team, which is not healthy in the slightest), because after hawlucha has procced unburden (which due to its typing and ability to invest in a bit of bulk, is easy), nothing is outspeeding it or ko'ing it. Reminder, this mon resists most of our common priority moves in sucker punch, mach punch and even quad resists first impression.
The common ways that HO deals with said double speed abusers (that's what I'm calling terrain+weather teams) is via there own double speed methods (think revavroom or armarouge, and even potentially yanmega if you play your cards right) or priority.

As stated above, priority is a no go oh, and would you look at that, every single counterplay to deal with double speed mons is evicirated by hawlucha cause it still outspeeds them even if they get their double speed. Revavroom is OHKO'd by +2 cc, and has to rely on gunk shot in order to actually OHKO hawlucha, armarouge is OHKO'd by +2 acrobatics (and if hawlucha decides to use power herb sky attack, it can proc unburden and ensure armarouge is getting ko'd at some point lol) and yanmega, well, neutral acro OHKO's it and yanmega has to pray lucha doesn't tera AND it gets a triple protect (which is a 1/32 chance, so not good).

So if these options don't work, what does? Well, as previously stated, you would have to fit mmq on every offensive team, but also have a sash mon that can OHKO or at the very least heavily damage lucha (it can invest a bit in bulk because its so fast it outspeed most things in the meta after an unburden proc) and t-wave thundy (tera electric hawlucha gets a free turn to setup against thundy, making it even more lights out). So, the only reasonable way HO teams will be able to stop hawlucha, is having a healthy mmq, which while possible, is also used for a litany of other threats such as armarouge, yanmega, np thundy and any setup sweeper that might have gotten out of hand like bisharp or moxie scarf krook. So trading hawlucha for mmqs disgauise is the worst thing it can do... Yeah, that's not really a horrible trade, and if you somehow break disguise with another mon, all I will say to you is good luck, cause you are going to need to defensively tera and hope you can KO hawlucha in return (so you will also be forcing tera, so in all scenarios, you will be forcing the opponent to concede something important).

Now, the obvious response to this is "well, don't let hawlucha proc unburden/set up" and oh boy, that's way harder then people give it credit for. While hawlucha isn't exactly powerful at neutral, it also isn't weak by any means. 92 base attack is not good, but that's made up for by the strong base power of its stab moves, 120 and 110 for cc and proc'd acrobatic respectively. If it decides to use power herb sky attack (more onto that later) then it has a 140 bp move that has a 30% chance to flinch and high crit chance :DDDDDD.

Secondly, it also threatens out a lot of great HO mons in the tier. Terrakion, bisharp, krookodile, maushold, crawdaunt, infernape, hilligant, lycanroc dusk, porygon-z, gallade, torterra and that's just going down to B- rank on the VR, others such as lucario and cloyster (though you should unrank cloy, just saying...) don't really want to deal with it either. This allows it to set up easily to proc unburden, or get up an sd, as said mons don't want to be taking a cc, sky attack or acro to the face.

Finally, hawlucha has a pretty great defensive typing in order to take on hits. One immunity with 4 resistances is alright, but this means it completely walls krook (can take a gunk shot decently well), can take on slither wing easily (zen headbutt does hurt, but it doesn't OHKO unless its banded and then some dark type can set up), does decently well into bisharp (iron head into sucker only ko's if you get high rolls for both, which can be alleviated by sub) and most fighting types in the tier don't do amazingly into it. So, while it does have some level of dfficulty setting up, its not hard for it to, especially with tera which means mons that usually beat it, are now setup fodder.

I won't talk about defensive teams counterplay, since that's been discussed to death on the forums and discord, but I will say that most defensive mons are screwed over by one of taunt, encore, throat chop, stone edge or sub. Now onto the sets it would run. When judging whether a mon should be unbanned, I think its best to try to find the most broken set that the mon could use, because at the end of the day, somebody will try to abuse that set to win games, cause people play this game to win, first and foremost (I'm mainly talking about tourneys, ladder is another thing, though people do try to get to the top of ladder). This is why I think the arguements that it will only be on terrain/banworthy for these sets, kinda fall flat. People will be abusing different sets, which will require different counterplay and make teambuilding more constrained.

Psychic/Grassy terrains are mid right now (I think psy terrain is genuinelly ass), but lucha would make the viable/dominant. The main issue with these teams is that the unburden users are... awful. You have between grafaiai (the best of them, but still not good), hitmonlee (not really good, and it commonly struggles with its moveslots), sceptile (saw it in one game on misty terrain, and while it was threatening, it was the main mon that was threatening lol) and drifblim (I'm sorry blim, you are really ass). Hawlucha is meanwhile great, and it's able to threaten huge damage due to stab acrobatics with cc taking on the steel types that resist it. It also gets a nice defensive boost from it, which allows it to easily set up. Misty terrain could also be good with lucha, as with tera, you can't status it, and geezing is a genuine mon, so it isn't complete deadweight.

Now, onto the other movesets. Sky attack power herb is the most interesting, as it can not only throw off a powerful 140 bp move, but it also makes itself even deadlier by doing so (remind anyone of a certain bug that is contentious which also does this). The only issue with this set is that sky attack after power herb is consumed is basically a dead moveslot, but I think thats fine enough since you launch a nuk while doing so. White herb sets do a similar thing, but have a free moveslot that other movesets don't normally have. Sitrus berry sets with substitute render status moves obslete and give it an opportunity to get an sd off safely, which due to its naturally fast speed stat (118 is blazing fast, only bike, vern, bee, talon and barra outspeed it, and 3 of these don't want to switch into it at all), it will be able to. It also eases prediction as it can scout switchins much easier without having to thud into something (like cc'ing into geezing).

Finally, the 4th moveslot options basically make counterplay even more obselete. Taunt is probably going to be the standard, which means no phazing, status moves such as toxic or wisp, and you can't try to use tactics such as iron defense or bulk up to try and match its boosts. Substitute as stated before eases prediction and stops status. Encore means it can use other setup mons as opportunities or with tera, lock a status mon in to get more free turns, throat chop to make sure slowbro and other psychic types can't use psynoise on it or stone edge in order to hit the few mons that can maybe trade with it (such as talon and noivern) by hitting them super effectively. And before somebody states 4mss, no, Hawlucha wouldn't have 4mss, it doesn't NEED all these moves, it simply likes them, but is able to go without them quite easily.

Don't even get me started on tera types. Tera flying for insane damage, tera electric to ignore thundy para, tera fire to setup on talon and others, tera steel to avoid toxic and set up on fez or geezing (provided you have taunt), tera water to take out barra and then sweep rain teams (the only offensive playstyle its meant to be bad against) this mon would be so dumb.

I don't think there is a world where lucha isn't broken in RU unless we get a lot more offensive and defensive staples in the tier. It simply can pick and choose its counters way too easily, and would be a headache in the builder.

 

[fluff!!]

Hello RU citizens, today, I would like to start a discussion on HO extraordinaire Maushold.

​

I don't think there are many Pokemon that divide the community more than Maushold (outside of perhaps Yanmega or Revavroom, but that's a post for another day). According to the discord, Maushold is either complete buttcheeks, or a broken op menace for society. I would like to give my opinion on the matter and hopefully spark constructive discussions on the forum instead of one-liner buzzword skirmishes on the discord.

Maushold is seen on bulky offense and hyper offense teams as a wallbreaker and sweeper with hazard removal properties. The main source of contentiousness, however, lies with its signature move, Population Bomb.

Population Bomb is one of, if not the single strongest move in the tier, rocking a monstrous 300 base power with technician's boost, but without accounting for STAB. However, this nuclear warhead is held back by a few properties: Being a Normal-type move comes with the downside of not being able to hit for weakness, and having to deal with an immunity and 2 resistances. Most importantly (because, let's be honest, if a move with an effective BP of 450 hits you in the face, you probably die if you don't resist it), is that all 10 hits proc contact effects. This means that Rocky Helmet is an effective OHKO on Maushold if you manage to survive 6 hits. It also makes it effectively guaranteed to proc Talonflame's Flame Body and Bellibolt's Static.

The whole debate around Maushold is whether forcing the use of Rocky Helmet in every team is a good thing or not. The problem I have with the Rocky Helmet argument is that even Rocky Helmet itself can't autowin the Maushold matchup for free. Not only is getting the helmet knocked not an unrealistic scenario seeing as how widely used the move is from many great mons like Krook and Thundurus (Krook who loves knocking helmets from Hippowdon, Geezing, Chesnaught and Slowbro, btw), but the sheer threat of Maushold completely dictates the pace of entire games due to how impossible to handle Maushold is without Helmet. How impossible are we talking about? well, to the level that if Maushold uses Tidy Up when a mon as bulky as Registeel switches in, Maushold can consistently win the interaction thanks to the threat of Tera Ghost + Encore and being strong enough to 2HKO with Population Bomb.

+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 80 Def Registeel: 170-210 (46.7 - 57.6%) -- approx. 71.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

A few more egregious calcs:

252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Umbreon: 330-390 (83.7 - 98.9%) -- approx. 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Weezing-Galar: 250-300 (74.8 - 89.8%) -- approx. 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Empoleon: 290-340 (77.9 - 91.3%) -- approx. 31.3% chance to OHKO after 1 layer of Spikes
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 340-420 (86.2 - 106.5%) -- approx. 25% chance to OHKO
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 120 HP / 0 Def Goodra-Hisui: 250-300 (75.5 - 90.6%) -- approx. 31.3% chance to OHKO after 1 layer of Spikes
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 204+ Def Chesnaught: 330-400 (86.8 - 105.2%) -- approx. 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 120 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Bisharp: 120-140 (39.8 - 46.5%) -- approx. 3HKO after Stealth Rock
Bisharp cannot OHKO back, so it needs to either tank another population bomb or let Maushold setup a Tidy Up, and then has to 50/50 between sucker punch or another move due to Encore

Granted, some of these calcs use Spikes to reach OHKO territory, which wouldnt be played in conjunction with Tidy Up. However, if you look at these Spikes as a mere 12% HP of chip damage from any source, then...

Naturally, if the biggest walls in the tier, even those who resist the move, fold this easily, I will let you figure out the calcs against squishier targets.
This is further aided by Maushold's elite 111 base Speed and pseudo-Dragon Dance boosting move, letting it outspeed any relevant scarfer after a single turn of setup.

Hitting Maushold before it Tidys Up is a possibility, and it could realistically work due to its paper thin defenses, however, in doing so, you leave your slower, squishy offensive mon in against an OHKO machine. As you can imagine, such a play is a complete gamble on whether Maushold clicks Population Bomb or Tidy Up. The mindgame layering does not end there, as if Maushold stays in to hit the foe, but they switch out to a Rocky Helmet user, Maushold is instantly OHKOed as seen previously.
Maushold does have options to hit Rocky Helmet mons however. For example, it can run the technician-boosted Bullet Seed to hit Hippowdon without making contact, which also covers the Basculegion-F matchup.
Maushold's use of Encore further complicates things due to its ability to completely thwart would-be counterplay such as Iron Defense or Sucker Punch.
The reason of why I advocate for more discussions around Maushold is precisely due to its gambling nature. Every action taken against Maushold is near game decisive due to its nuclear firepower, setup threat, rocky helmet bypassing tactics, and Encore.

Not to mention that losing games because the Maushold was Protective Pads and did not proc Talonflame's Flame Body + Maushold got lucky and hit enough times to OHKO is a real possibility... totally not a ptsd...


All in all, I have doubts about Maushold's healthiness due to the sheer amount of decisive mindgames it creates out of thin air from team preview, and the relative ease of playing around otherwise safe counterplay (knocking helmet with another mon etc).

I would like to have your opinion on the matter, since it is very much an important topic, especially with HO's resurgence. How do you feel about Maushold in SV RU?

 

[Heatranator]

Hello RU citizens, today, I would like to start a discussion on HO extraordinaire Maushold.

​

I don't think there are many Pokemon that divide the community more than Maushold (outside of perhaps Yanmega or Revavroom, but that's a post for another day). According to the discord, Maushold is either complete buttcheeks, or a broken op menace for society. I would like to give my opinion on the matter and hopefully spark constructive discussions on the forum instead of one-liner buzzword skirmishes on the discord.

Maushold is seen on bulky offense and hyper offense teams as a wallbreaker and sweeper with hazard removal properties. The main source of contentiousness, however, lies with its signature move, Population Bomb.

Population Bomb is one of, if not the single strongest move in the tier, rocking a monstrous 300 base power with technician's boost, but without accounting for STAB. However, this nuclear warhead is held back by a few properties: Being a Normal-type move comes with the downside of not being able to hit for weakness, and having to deal with an immunity and 2 resistances. Most importantly (because, let's be honest, if a move with an effective BP of 450 hits you in the face, you probably die if you don't resist it), is that all 10 hits proc contact effects. This means that Rocky Helmet is an effective OHKO on Maushold if you manage to survive 6 hits. It also makes it effectively guaranteed to proc Talonflame's Flame Body and Bellibolt's Static.

The whole debate around Maushold is whether forcing the use of Rocky Helmet in every team is a good thing or not. The problem I have with the Rocky Helmet argument is that even Rocky Helmet itself can't autowin the Maushold matchup for free. Not only is getting the helmet knocked not an unrealistic scenario seeing as how widely used the move is from many great mons like Krook and Thundurus (Krook who loves knocking helmets from Hippowdon, Geezing, Chesnaught and Slowbro, btw), but the sheer threat of Maushold completely dictates the pace of entire games due to how impossible to handle Maushold is without Helmet. How impossible are we talking about? well, to the level that if Maushold uses Tidy Up when a mon as bulky as Registeel switches in, Maushold can consistently win the interaction thanks to the threat of Tera Ghost + Encore and being strong enough to 2HKO with Population Bomb.

+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 80 Def Registeel: 170-210 (46.7 - 57.6%) -- approx. 71.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

A few more egregious calcs:

252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Umbreon: 330-390 (83.7 - 98.9%) -- approx. 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Weezing-Galar: 250-300 (74.8 - 89.8%) -- approx. 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Empoleon: 290-340 (77.9 - 91.3%) -- approx. 31.3% chance to OHKO after 1 layer of Spikes
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 340-420 (86.2 - 106.5%) -- approx. 25% chance to OHKO
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 120 HP / 0 Def Goodra-Hisui: 250-300 (75.5 - 90.6%) -- approx. 31.3% chance to OHKO after 1 layer of Spikes
+1 252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 252 HP / 204+ Def Chesnaught: 330-400 (86.8 - 105.2%) -- approx. 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

252 Atk Technician Maushold Population Bomb (10 hits) vs. 120 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Bisharp: 120-140 (39.8 - 46.5%) -- approx. 3HKO after Stealth Rock
Bisharp cannot OHKO back, so it needs to either tank another population bomb or let Maushold setup a Tidy Up, and then has to 50/50 between sucker punch or another move due to Encore

Granted, some of these calcs use Spikes to reach OHKO territory, which wouldnt be played in conjunction with Tidy Up. However, if you look at these Spikes as a mere 12% HP of chip damage from any source, then...

Naturally, if the biggest walls in the tier, even those who resist the move, fold this easily, I will let you figure out the calcs against squishier targets.
This is further aided by Maushold's elite 111 base Speed and pseudo-Dragon Dance boosting move, letting it outspeed any relevant scarfer after a single turn of setup.

Hitting Maushold before it Tidys Up is a possibility, and it could realistically work due to its paper thin defenses, however, in doing so, you leave your slower, squishy offensive mon in against an OHKO machine. As you can imagine, such a play is a complete gamble on whether Maushold clicks Population Bomb or Tidy Up. The mindgame layering does not end there, as if Maushold stays in to hit the foe, but they switch out to a Rocky Helmet user, Maushold is instantly OHKOed as seen previously.
Maushold does have options to hit Rocky Helmet mons however. For example, it can run the technician-boosted Bullet Seed to hit Hippowdon without making contact, which also covers the Basculegion-F matchup.
Maushold's use of Encore further complicates things due to its ability to completely thwart would-be counterplay such as Iron Defense or Sucker Punch.
The reason of why I advocate for more discussions around Maushold is precisely due to its gambling nature. Every action taken against Maushold is near game decisive due to its nuclear firepower, setup threat, rocky helmet bypassing tactics, and Encore.

Not to mention that losing games because the Maushold was Protective Pads and did not proc Talonflame's Flame Body + Maushold got lucky and hit enough times to OHKO is a real possibility... totally not a ptsd...


All in all, I have doubts about Maushold's healthiness due to the sheer amount of decisive mindgames it creates out of thin air from team preview, and the relative ease of playing around otherwise safe counterplay (knocking helmet with another mon etc).

I would like to have your opinion on the matter, since it is very much an important topic, especially with HO's resurgence. How do you feel about Maushold in SV RU?

I'd like to give my thoughts on maushold so this post doesn't become dead in the water.

Maushold by definition, is a feast and famine mon. In some matchups, it is completely dominating the game and sweeping teams 6-0, but other times it hits a wall and just instantly dies (in one game, a maushold tera dark'd turn one against my thundy, only for me to switch into rocky helm krook and precede to die lmao). I think maushold is somewhere in between these two extremes. Its a fine mon that can sweep unprepared teams that don't account for it, but teams that tech an option or two for it can usually be just fine.

Now, of course, the main issue at hand is whether or not being forced to use rocky helmet on every mon, and to that I say, no.
As in my above example, rocky helmet krook is an option which I have used in the past, and I think its a genuinelly good option on krook with intimidate, as it can rack up chip damage, which offensive teams like. Think of it as rocky helmet tusk in OU, except trade spinning for stab knock and psychic immunity. Rocky helmet hippowdon is also a mon that I think highly of (stop slapping mono-quake hippo on teams, either run rock slide or pack options to take on the flying mons that switch in on it) that completely shits on maushold, with tera ghost being a good option on it too to stop fighting types and make maushold dead weight (more onto tera ghost later). Talonflame is also a great mon in the tier that does make maushold unsure if it wants to click its stab option (and bellibolt exists, haven't seen that mon in a hot minute). Slowbro and reun can also use rocky helmet, and can do well with it due to the tier being filled with fighting types. Hisuian Goodra commonly runs Gooey (though sap sipper has popped up more recently), and this completely ruins maushold, making it extremely slow. Amoonguss and Chesnaught are premier grass types (cause we basically have nothing else lol) that also shit on maushold with rocky helmet. Empoleon is also a good option as it resists pop bomb and resists u-turn, giving it free chip damage. Finally, geezing can run it as it quad resists u-turn, and commonly tera steels in order to get an elite defensive typing.
I think ultimately fitting rocky helmet onto teams (or similar things in the case of talon/belli) is not really hard. You kinda slap it on, and maushold is mostly taken care of, but you still need to account for scenarios when helmet will be knocked of, such as with tera ghost or resists.

One thing I will say that I don't like about some arguements the 'maushold is dogshit' crowd has said, is that fitting knock onto HO teams is difficult. I heavily disagree with this. BU scale shot krook is an amazing set that can rip through teams that don't pack geezing, SD mienshao is a deadly setup sweeper that can rip through bulky teams by switching in and out constantly, BU conk is actually disgusting, use that set, Crawdaunt while only alright, can help against bulky teams, gallade can slot it in to help against slowbro/other psychics, DD necrozma can use it as an option to cripple other psychic types (I think tera dark is also amazing on it, which boosts its power) and cetitan/alola-slash, which are popping up in viability due to a-tales dropping, can use it as coverage to hit slowbro. There are also special attackers, such as gengar, horoark and thundy that can fit it on to cripple there own checks.
https://pokepast.es/e61d9f9e70b26171 This is a HO team which I created a while back in order to abuse maushold as much as possible, and while it definetely isn't the best team (I could have probably swapped out horoark for something like DD necrozma or craw), it is able to remove the helmets from said mons that stop a maushold sweep semi-consistently.

An option that I want to discuss that helps against maushold, is tera ghost. With a tier full of fighting types, tera ghost is honestly, not a bad defensive typing. It also helps against any id+bp sweepers, which with registeel rising recently, is a good safety check. Slapping on a tera ghost can flip the matchup, as a mon that was threatened by maus can now probably ko it back due to maus's paper thin defenses.

Overall, I would say that maushold is more uncompetitive/annoying then broken, but if it was suspect tested, I would vote ban to get this cheesy mon out of the tier. It's not broken in my eyes, but god, is it annoying to face.

 

[Canard]

I feel like maushold is very similar to linoone in gen 7 RU, another fast normal type sweeper relying on a normal type move for most damage that looks awesome on paper and they're both answered by similar things, offensive pressure, fat steels... it's also important to note that even though maushold does not NEED to setup to do it's scary damage, linoone does not have much issues with setup thanks to decent bulk and pinch berries combined with gluttony meaning you need to do more than 83% damage to actually stop it from using belly drum (and it also does actual damage with it's coverage) so maus isn't better than linoone in my opinion, so if they're both so similar in usage and counters why is one concidered a mediocre matchup fish while the other is concidered broken? shouldn't they both be concidered mediocre MU fishy mons that struggle to do much against offensive teams?

I personnally do not find maushold that good, especially in HO which is often what maus is associated with, it's unreliable in an archetype that has access to a solid pool of reliable mons that also hit for different types, HO also does not run knock off on anything unless you use a niche pick like krook so it is just killed rocky helmet and the utility it brings is not really much useful, if you really want hazards to stay off your side of the field your best bet is to use a fast taunt lead for that sweet role compression and you don't need removal in HO when you just have taunt on your rlead and 5 sweepers pressuring the opponent without ever letting it get a free turn

Maus is a mon that works better on paper than in actual games, it either gets an awesome matchup 20% of the time like webs, goes crazy and wins the game by itself or just sits there with no opportunity to be sent on the field to do something because the opponent's team is too offensive or has either a rocky helmet mon that didn't get knocked or talonflame which is rising in popularity. it can definetly work very very well but require too much team support too often to be concidered broken in my opinion, needing heavy knock off support for bulkier teams and not being able to do much into fast-paced teams, plus, having to run a rocky helmet mons on some teams isn't that bad rocky helmet is a good item even without considering maus. in my opinion, maus is overrated as it is associated with the very high highs it can get in a good matchup without concidering the much more common lows it has, the only real structure that gets entirely countered by maushold without rocky helmet is webs and it itself is matchup fishy.

 

[Elec-ant1234]

I've seen some talk about infernape and I felt this was the best way to condense my thoughts on the mon.

 

[Miyami~~~]

The 30% Problem in SV RU

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SV RU often feels like a tier dominated by luck. This has been brought up for a while but the sheer amount of win conditions in the tier that have a flinch chance stapled to their most spammable moves is really dumb and not even limited to those three up there. Add on the large amount of paralysis in the tier and more specific stuff like toxic chain fez and scald/flame body procs and you have a recipe for a very frustrating tier to play in spite of how balanced it is. I'm going to focus on flinching in this post (and mostly the three above ignoring stuff like bisharp/gyarados) because I feel like it's the most egregious. We're the only tier where Inner Focus mons are in high demand and it's part of the reason Umbreon and Entei are so good right now even if they'd still be good enough without it.



With respect to the above Maushold posts, no discussion about the uncompetitive elements of this tier can be had without yanmega at the very top. Yanmega is a terrible presence in the tier. While it coincidentally has somewhat similar counterplay to Thundi, and thus you might be fooled into thinking it's a cleaner/sweeper like that, it's actually much more similar to something like Skill Link King's Rock Cloyster. It's exceedingly rare for Yanmega to win at preview (or win at all without consuming tera), but the 30% Air Slash flinch chance and the fact that it's always going first means it has plenty opportunity to flinch out its (oftentime lone) check and take the opponent's entire team out behind it. This creates an extremely frustrating game state in which Yanmega can win at any time, through anything, in a way that is entirely outside either players' control, and thus the yanmega player is incentivized to just click air slash and see what happens on pretty much any turn where it can't kill the opponent. We can argue all day about whether it's "broken" or not all day but at the end of the day it's a clearly unhealthy element the tier would be better off without. Fishing for luck should not be rewarded to such an extent as this.


Better sweeper than yanmega, worse cleaner, less reliant on flinches since it has the coverage to subvert its checks, but no less frustrating. The fact that Yanmega + Revavroom are such a perfect HO pair to each other and that optimal HO at this point essentially gets around its bad matchups not by making concessions in the builder or playing better, but just by attempting to flinch its way through with one of these two, and the fact that HO is the most common playstyle in the tier, creates a tier that just feels bad to play. If you want to ladder for the ongoing suspect, you have to mentally prepare yourself for the fact that a decent number of however many losses you take are going to be to one of these two almost specifically. I do not think both of these two can continue to exist in the tier, one of them has to go. Between the two I would prefer Yanmega leaving as car at least has some defensive utility and can beat its checks without just fishing, whereas Yanmega essentially wins or loses on the strength of its flinch rolls.


Jirachi isn't really a problem despite the higher flinch chance I just really hate the scarf set who decided serene grace should be an ability. Maybe because it doesn't fit on the same structures as the other two easily so it's usually not stacking flinches with something else but god this mon is annoying

Is this broadly just a salt post? Sure. But I think something has to be done about the sheer abundance of rng present in the tier at the moment, especially on HO, where fishing for flinches is practically optimal.

 

[seiuqq]

Alright, I'm new here but time to give my opinions.

You probably don't know me, but I'm the one who brought Brute Bonnet Sun to Top 100 in UU. It was a really cool team: Volcanion, Scream Tail, Sandy Shocks, and of course: The ugly mushroom.

I think a similar idea may work in this tier, especially now that Torkoal is a thing. Now to present my 5min team...

Torkoal - The main enabler of this team. Sets the sun to get everything going. I've decided to run solar beam over bodypress, although I prefer bodypress now that I've seen more Cyclizar on the ladder. Note that all comments about the ladder are low ladder because I'm yet to ladder into the higher stages. Cut me some slack I played this tier for like 2 days.

Brute Bonnet - Star of the show and king of them all. I absolutely adore this thing. It's what got me t100 in UU and I think the same principles would follow here. It's able to OHKO barras with sucker punch in the sun, and after one growth setup, this thing is unable to be beat. With tera fire, it sits on hyphlosion and other wisp users that potentially ruin its day.

Entei - Now you may think, why not use Hisuian Typhlosion? Entei is the worse of the fire type spammers. This is due to its mixed attacking capabilities. While prediction-reliant, I use a mixed scarf set to catch both special and physical walls in the tier. Sacred Fire and Eruption hit two very different targets, and this can make opponents conscious about what to switch in. Eruption OHKOs a lot of targets with tera, and 2HKOs most without.

Scream Tail: Dedicated support mon and wish passer - For longer games (or to keep Entei's Eruption in tip-top shape), this thing is great. When setup sweepers don't get the job done, Scream Tail can spam paralysis to allow them to do so. An example is running enough speed on Brute Bonnet to outspeed a paralyzed threat like Kingdra. It has the Eject Button for shorter games, and to act as a knock off sponge.

Volcanion: Rain is obviously my most troublesome matchup but volc makes this much easier. With tera ground. it's able to bait volt switches from staples like thundurus, and trap them with fire spin for the kill. This is important as thundy is a huge stopper in Brute Bonnet's way. I ensured to run AV for Kingdra and enough defense to avoid 2hko from barraskeezy

Venusaur: The classic Sun sweeper. I opted for a special set here with Giga Drain and Earth Power as my last, found it very useful against Fezandipiti.

 

[LBN]

Despite the ongoing suspect, I think that this tier has 2 specific pokemon I think don't get enough flack for the amount of work they put in on a game to game basis. These 2, no they are not Yanmega or Armarouge, feel constricting and really feel awkward to prep for off of various reasons. Personally I'm still torn on Thundurus so I really don't know what I'd prefer for it, but strictly personally I probably would've preferred a suspect on one of these two before Thundurus. I will say we've gotten to the stage where suspect mons aren't as warpingly stupid as they were before so my wish for their bans are steadily declining which is good. That said, as far as suspects go I think these 2 are prime candidates.

Meet Grandmaster Tera Merchant. Everytime it feels like a guessing game of what tera this thing has and how it's going to ignore my counterplay to it. Talonflame gets worked by tera fire, Tera ghost can pmuch facetank anything without question thanks to the bulk from eviolite. Tera Fairy lets it do similarly but with extra perks vs opposing dark types not named Bisharp. Flying lets it avoid EQs while still blocking Slither wing and you get the idea. Its bulk is comical and it tends to have alot of interactions where you become a god just by taking a sp def drop off a stray shadow ball. Gooey interactions are similar and I've powered up like I'm goddamn Vergil by smacking at an H-goodra because they got cheeky with their Maushold insurance. This Pokémon feels like suicune to me where anytime I see it on preview I know straight away that unless I brought in a quagsire it can just steal the game no matter the context. Sometimes it's left wanting on bulk even with eviolite and its clicks aren't the greatest ever seen but its previous traits paired with Okidogi's departure makes this thing feel like a cancer. It's definitely the most standout mon to me as far as suspect candidates go and I think it shouldve been swung on before Thundurus. Compared to H-Goodra (spoilers), I definitely feel confident to say a suspect for this pokemon is probably in order.

I still don't know how to feel about this thing. Like there's a large part of me who thinks its fine and its manageable but sometimes I look at the builds its encouraging and loathe its presence. I'll be real specs draco is the best nuke in the tier and its not particularly close. The bulk and chances it gets to do so are numerous and its coverage borders on flawless. Prediction reliance is pretty much the only flaw I can wager against H-Goodra beyond the obvious drawbacks of Draco Meteor. The teams structured around punching through with H-Goodra supported by wishbots like Umbreon, Vaporeon and Jirachi are really obnoxious and breaking through them requires pretty specific mons as alot of the pokemon who can handle the pair of choice falls vs other pokemon like Slithers, leading to a suffocating presence of bulkier styles. Offense has it better, sure. But they also dont rlly have switchins for H-goodra and its defensive profile means odds are its walking away with 1 kill per game at a minimum. It's like okidogi in that sense, but far less stupid in all ways. Frankly I could live without seeing a suspect of this thing, but I think its checks are liable to explode by just calling them properly with Tbolts for Empoleons and Fire moves on Jirachi and Registeels, let alone Knocks. This one is probably more of a hot take but I think the presence it has on the overall tier is probably negative, though at the same time I think more exploration like with AV reuniclus can help.

Again I don't think these are really pressing issues as far as presences go, but truthfully kinda wanted to yap on the tier today so hey

 

[feen]

Thundurus has been banned via suspect test. Tagging Marty and dhelmise to implement in PS!

 

[HoopsspooH]