Well, I've gone a little crazy, surely, someone's gonna save me"
SV LC has decided to suspect Heat Rock.
While the best option to tier around Sun has been hotly debated across past generations, we’ve chosen to suspect Heat Rock instead of Chlorophyll — this is because of the extra turns of Sun that Heat Rock provides make Sun more difficult to stall out with defensive checks, especially when Sun sweepers often do enough damage to trade favorably. Given the inherent strength of Fire-types even outside of Sun, action solely targeting Bulbasaur seemed insufficient, too. Sun is a classic offensive archetype that has emerged with consistency in every LC generation since Pokemon Black and White introduced auto-Sun setting via Vulpix's Drought. The LC community has deemed Sun overwhelming in one generation after another, and Vulpix sits banned in a majority of them, including SV LC. In one of the two exceptions, SS LC, Vulpix was freed from tiering jail by way of banning the Chlorophyll sweepers instead because of the strength of manual Sunny Day teams (and, as veterans of the post-Vullaby ban meta can tell you, Vulpix Sun teams returned with a force without any need for the the Grass-types). For the second generation in a row, manual Sunny Day hyper-offense has become a powerful and potentially problematic team structure, despite it taking time to emerge as such.
Sun hyper-offense has risen in earnest since the Voltorb-Hisui ban and the beginning of the LCBC tournament. As in other generations, Sun’s strength derives from the combination of fast dangerous Weather Ball Chlorophyll sweepers like Bulbasaur and strong STAB-move-spamming Fire-types like Torchic and Growlithe-Hisui. Experimentation with Sun sixes is still afoot, but the common elements tend to be the reliable hazard lead and Sun-setting combination of Diglett-Alola and Prankster Shroodle, Bulbasaur, at least one strong Fire-type, and a strong secondary sweeper that can play the clean-up role after Sun, such as Shellder or Bulk Up Timburr. The core danger of Sun teams is how they force opponents to Terastallize defensively as not be swept by Bulbasaur and then abuse that lack of defensive flexibility thereafter. Defensive Tera Dragon has made a return, but those Pokemon often struggle to check Sludge Bomb Bulbasaur, and Shellder is particularly excellent at punishing this specific Tera. Add in Bulbasaur healing off chip damage with Growth-boosted Giga Drain and the sheer strength of Sun-boosted Fire-types, which can often brute-force their way through resists, and Sun becomes extremely constraining both in the teambuilder and in-game.
Despite Sun's strengths, it is not a flawless strategy, and therefore comes with some innate weaknesses. As discussed previously, Sun's team structure is quite linear and has little room for customization. As such, it's not entirely impossible for standard teams to adapt to a more Sun-centric metagame if players know exactly what to expect. However, how healthy, and how metagame warping will this required adaptation be? These are the questions we hope to find answers to in this Heat Rock suspect test, and we encourage anyone who has an opinion to both participate in discussion and voting.
Editing credit goes to kythr
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NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!
The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:
- Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in LC before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played LC before the test, full stop.)
- At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
- Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact myself, Coconut, or a staff member.
- If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me/Coconut or post here!
NEW
The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2800 with a B-value of 7.The suspect test will be ending on Sunday, February 2nd at 10:59 pm (GMT -4). Have fun laddering!
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