I think I'd ban Walrein over Snover personally, well, at the moment. I might change my mind. It's not only about the hail support. Unless, of course, Sealeo and Glalie are 'broken' under Snover, so broken that people will actually consider using Snover and Sealeo/Glalie, in which case Snover is the one who I would probably nominated for banning. This is what testing is for I guess, and everyone will have a different view on this, but nobody's opinion is wrong.
-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
np: UU - Six Deadly Suspects
- Thread starter Caelum
- Start date
- Status
I've used a bit of Trick Room recently, for kicks, but it's really quite cool.
Passho Claydol works really well, and is namely to stop Rain Dance teams, by Trick Rooming to make their Swift Swim boosts work against them. It can then Explode obviously too, so it's pretty good.
But more to the point of this post, Shelgon is really awesome. Before you all scream Gabite, Shelgon has higher Attack, but more importantly for me, 39% better Defense when both use 252 HP / 0 Def. Shelgon is better under Trick Room. Not having Earthquake is a bummer, but I doubt actually use it much if I had the choice, as it would be much easier to stall out my valuable Trick Room if I was locked into EQ as opposed to Outrage...still lame though.
For the doubters, I've conjured up some damage calculations.
CB Outrage to 252 HP / 252 Def Weezing: 49.40% - 58.38%
CB Outrage to 252 HP / 252 Def Spiritomb: 58.55% - 69.08%
CB Outrage to 4 HP / 0 Def Shaymin: 64.11% - 75.74%
CB Outrage to 4 HP / 0 Def Blaziken: 115.23% - 136.09%
CB Outrage to 252 HP / 0 Def Mismagius: 120.68% - 142.59%
CB Outrage to 4 HP / 0 Def Hitmonlee: 178.51% - 209.92% (lol)
You can see it's pretty strong...I know others have used this (namely LightWolf who also had pretty good results with Shelgon), and others such as Kevin Garrett have seen this work pretty well. It was especially nice as Azumarill with CB Aqua Jet was previously running over my team, but it only manages 17.96% - 21.26% to Shelgon now, which is awesome.
Foresight Hitmontop seems to be all over the place, too.
Passho Claydol works really well, and is namely to stop Rain Dance teams, by Trick Rooming to make their Swift Swim boosts work against them. It can then Explode obviously too, so it's pretty good.
But more to the point of this post, Shelgon is really awesome. Before you all scream Gabite, Shelgon has higher Attack, but more importantly for me, 39% better Defense when both use 252 HP / 0 Def. Shelgon is better under Trick Room. Not having Earthquake is a bummer, but I doubt actually use it much if I had the choice, as it would be much easier to stall out my valuable Trick Room if I was locked into EQ as opposed to Outrage...still lame though.
For the doubters, I've conjured up some damage calculations.
CB Outrage to 252 HP / 252 Def Weezing: 49.40% - 58.38%
CB Outrage to 252 HP / 252 Def Spiritomb: 58.55% - 69.08%
CB Outrage to 4 HP / 0 Def Shaymin: 64.11% - 75.74%
CB Outrage to 4 HP / 0 Def Blaziken: 115.23% - 136.09%
CB Outrage to 252 HP / 0 Def Mismagius: 120.68% - 142.59%
CB Outrage to 4 HP / 0 Def Hitmonlee: 178.51% - 209.92% (lol)
You can see it's pretty strong...I know others have used this (namely LightWolf who also had pretty good results with Shelgon), and others such as Kevin Garrett have seen this work pretty well. It was especially nice as Azumarill with CB Aqua Jet was previously running over my team, but it only manages 17.96% - 21.26% to Shelgon now, which is awesome.
Foresight Hitmontop seems to be all over the place, too.
As far as I'm concerned, I nominated Abomasnow as a Suspect for a combination of several factors, including its own presence and usefulness as well as its ability to support another Suspect; Froslass. So far I've come across exactly one Hail team, a battle that I actually lost but that was mainly due to being taken by surprise with Snover's Choice Scarf. Needless to say I have had next to nothing to go off so far, so I cannot make any judgment on Snover until people start using it more often.
In fact, the Froslass factor makes the situation a bit more complicated. It is clear that there is nothing else in UU that has the same utility as Froslass on Hail teams, which makes it that much more difficult to compare the effect of Hail teams with Abomasnow and Snover respectively.
While there are more grounded poisons in UU, the thing about UU is that there are a *lot* less viable Steel-types, Levitators, and flyers. Where in OU there's Heatran, Metagross, Scizor, Empoleon, Bronzong, Jirachi for Steel-types, you're basically limited to Steelix and Registeel for Steel-types in UU outside of terrible gimmicks. Couple that with the fact that a lot of premium walls hate hate HATE TSpikes (Slowbro, Tangrowth, Chansey, etc), levitators (Uxie, Mesprit, Claydol, Weezing, Mismagius) are few and far between, and all the fliers get shredded by Stealth Rock, and TSpikes aren't exactly terrible in this metagame.
Talking about the lack of Steel-types in UU, this might be sort of obvious, but isn't it interesting how, since the Steel-type is so good, that there about a dozen Steel-type OUs, which leaves very little left for UU in terms of Steels. Same with the Dragons. Since all the stronger Steel and Dragon types are OU, we're left with Steel and Dragon types that aren't as strong in comparison to the rest of the tier in UU.
Likewize, Fire-types that aren't Infernape or Heatran (e.g. are weak to Stealth Rock) fare badly in OU, and Grass-types are also weak offensively, and so on. This leaves a lot more of these types in UU, and, as a result of them being weak in OU, this means that the Fire, Ice, Grass, etc. types that we have in UU are stronger in comparison to the rest of the tier, and may dominate more.
I hope someone understands what I'm getting at. It'd be interesting if, when we get more tiers established, we'd see some sort of fluctuation. (e.g. OU would be Steel and Dragon dense, UU would be Fire and Grass dense, for example, NU would be Steel and Dragon dense again, then NU2 would be Fire and Grass dense, and so on). The types I used are just examples by the way.
Does anybody understand what I mean?
Likewize, Fire-types that aren't Infernape or Heatran (e.g. are weak to Stealth Rock) fare badly in OU, and Grass-types are also weak offensively, and so on. This leaves a lot more of these types in UU, and, as a result of them being weak in OU, this means that the Fire, Ice, Grass, etc. types that we have in UU are stronger in comparison to the rest of the tier, and may dominate more.
I hope someone understands what I'm getting at. It'd be interesting if, when we get more tiers established, we'd see some sort of fluctuation. (e.g. OU would be Steel and Dragon dense, UU would be Fire and Grass dense, for example, NU would be Steel and Dragon dense again, then NU2 would be Fire and Grass dense, and so on). The types I used are just examples by the way.
Does anybody understand what I mean?
Yeah, I've noticed that exact thing whenever I look at the metagame. The UU metagame is currently filled with "good ideas, bad execution". Things that are good (and therefore prized) in OU are nearly nonexistant in UU, and vice versa. One of the other examples is the Bulky Water. OU has Swampert, Vaporeon, Suicune, Starmie, Tentacruel, leaving only the subpar or outclassed ones in UU (Slowbro/Slowking, packing a weakness to Dark and a propensity to getting wrecked by Pursuit/Tyranitar, and Milotic, which is outclassed by Vaporeon and is rather iffy in the support department). Similarly, all the awesome Steels and Dragons get snapped up in OU, and so they're nearly nonexistant. Meanwhile, Fire-types and Grass-types are rather mediocre in OU (who needs a fire (grass) type when you have Infernape/Heatran (Celebi)?), while they're absolutely fantastic in UU.
I noticed when choosing an offensive team, steel types are almost staple to an offensive team due to the resistances you'll be switching on. I found that there are no offensive steel types in UU. I also found that two of the most broken types are all on OU. The steel types and dragon types in UU are really defense based rather than offensive based. Dragon types are offensive players utilize better than defensive. Steel type could go both ways, but not one offensive steel exist in UU.
And Milotic/Slowbro aren't? I sort of see where you're coming from, but that's not to say that Fire and Grass types dominate UU, because they quite evidently don't, at least nowhere near to the same level as Dragons and Steels do in OU. If anything close to that happened in UU I'd get sick of the metagame VERY quickly.
Mind you, I've still noticed the merits of Dragon as a defensive type in UU with Fire / Grass types more common. Altaria is an often overlooked and underrated wall, and works great against most Shaymins and Blazikens among other things.
Well there's still Aggron and Magneton. They aren't the most appetizing offensive options, but you can't be too discerning for obvious reasons.
I've used defensive altaria on a stall team and she worked great. It's always nice to have something else to switch into fire attacks and shaymin doesn't carry anything to hit her for SE damaged. Natural Cure is nice as well.
I'm more concerned about the lack of rapid spinners than lack of steel types. Sure there are pokemon that learn the move but their effectiveness is highly suspect with the ghosts running around. most of the ghosts learn WoW stopping the physical spinners (sandslash, armaldo, and hitmontop) from firing off damaging neutral attacks and the special ones get beaten outright (Cloyster, blastoise, and torkoal). Rotom just plain forces out cloyster and blastoise and torkoal can't take stab t-bolts/shadowballs. Blastoise can opt for toxic to wear ghosts down but missy is faster (she really shouldn't be spin blocking anyway) and can sub while most tombs are resttalk. This leaves claydol with no recovery move and a weakness to ghost attacks.
The only useable spinners I see are claydol, sandslash, hitmontop and to an extent blastoise. I include sandslash because he can spin/sr and his high def and attack allow him switchins and the ability to hurt the opposing team. I know there is foresight hitmontop but using two attacks to accomplish one thing highly specialized Top. Claydol is the obvious choice for a spinner since he has the spin/sr combo ground/spikes/t-spikes immunity. Blastoise tends to be dead weight more often then not as he doesn't hit hard enough or wall well enough but his water typing is nice (even if shaymin and roserade say hey).
I say this because I've seen a lot more stall teams (esp in the tour) and I'm really not surprised. Spikers may noy be very good compared to OU but it doesn't matter if they can't be taken off the field reasonably. Grounded poison types ruin t-spikes? good thing toxic exists. Everything is so bulky right now that breaking stall right out just doesn't happen. The only all out offensive teams I've seen work are rain teams. Everything else falls to recoil and residual damage.
I'm more concerned about the lack of rapid spinners than lack of steel types. Sure there are pokemon that learn the move but their effectiveness is highly suspect with the ghosts running around. most of the ghosts learn WoW stopping the physical spinners (sandslash, armaldo, and hitmontop) from firing off damaging neutral attacks and the special ones get beaten outright (Cloyster, blastoise, and torkoal). Rotom just plain forces out cloyster and blastoise and torkoal can't take stab t-bolts/shadowballs. Blastoise can opt for toxic to wear ghosts down but missy is faster (she really shouldn't be spin blocking anyway) and can sub while most tombs are resttalk. This leaves claydol with no recovery move and a weakness to ghost attacks.
The only useable spinners I see are claydol, sandslash, hitmontop and to an extent blastoise. I include sandslash because he can spin/sr and his high def and attack allow him switchins and the ability to hurt the opposing team. I know there is foresight hitmontop but using two attacks to accomplish one thing highly specialized Top. Claydol is the obvious choice for a spinner since he has the spin/sr combo ground/spikes/t-spikes immunity. Blastoise tends to be dead weight more often then not as he doesn't hit hard enough or wall well enough but his water typing is nice (even if shaymin and roserade say hey).
I say this because I've seen a lot more stall teams (esp in the tour) and I'm really not surprised. Spikers may noy be very good compared to OU but it doesn't matter if they can't be taken off the field reasonably. Grounded poison types ruin t-spikes? good thing toxic exists. Everything is so bulky right now that breaking stall right out just doesn't happen. The only all out offensive teams I've seen work are rain teams. Everything else falls to recoil and residual damage.
After a few nights of laddering:
-This metagame appears to be more like the OU in the way that it's very speed based; everyone is gunning for that extra Scarfer or that extra Speed point
- Uxie and the Hitmons have flooded the metagame, for reasons I'm still trying to figure out.
- Charizard is dangerous down there. If he gets off a clean Belly Drum, only the occasional Sharpedo or Floatzel will stop it.
- Rain is everywhere.
-This metagame appears to be more like the OU in the way that it's very speed based; everyone is gunning for that extra Scarfer or that extra Speed point
- Uxie and the Hitmons have flooded the metagame, for reasons I'm still trying to figure out.
- Charizard is dangerous down there. If he gets off a clean Belly Drum, only the occasional Sharpedo or Floatzel will stop it.
- Rain is everywhere.
I love Skuntank in this environment. It can check (though not really counter for some) Mismagius, Espeon, Shaymin (eh, it depends), Roserade, Sceptile etc. plus has almost a guarantee to take out at least one Pokemon a game with either Explosion or Aftermath. Not only this, but it is also the only really viable STAB Pursuit user in UU, which is super helpful versus Slowbro and Uxie. Ahh I just love him. Usually I'll either go Bulky CB in a similar fashion that CBTar does it, or ResTalk.
Also Lunatone has been acting very well as a lead with
Lunatone @ Focus Sash
Modest - Levitate
6 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Stealth Rock
Psychic
Earth Power
Hypnosis / Explosion
I'm not sure if this is just me trying to find a way to use Lunatone effectively, but it beats some common leads like Arcanine and Drapion.
Also Lunatone has been acting very well as a lead with
Lunatone @ Focus Sash
Modest - Levitate
6 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Stealth Rock
Psychic
Earth Power
Hypnosis / Explosion
I'm not sure if this is just me trying to find a way to use Lunatone effectively, but it beats some common leads like Arcanine and Drapion.
-This was to be expected, with Swellow and Sceptile being prominent threats. Also, with Rain (and Sun) teams flooding(no pun intended) the place, people need their attacking threats to outspeed that Kabutops in the rain.
-I assume that Uxie rose to counter the Hitmons, which rose because 2 of them were good sweepers, and one was used to Rapid Spin.
-Bellyzard was always a threat, it even works in OU if your team is dedicated to a bellyzard sweep. But priority beats it, and that's pretty common, with CB Azumarill Aqua Jet, and Floatzel, like you said.
I've given up speed for Hp. Haven't regreted it yet. Uhm.. screw defensive Alteria. Life Orb Alteria will 1HKO-2HKO the entire metagame with the correct move combination. I wouldn't go so far to say Steelix or Registeel are bad steels...
slowbro beats bellyzard. EQ is doing 70% so either switch in on the BD or sacrifice something (yes, I tend to keep my slowbro at that high of health). Or if you have SR up damage the thing and BD fails. If slower Zard gets the BD off but dies. If charizard gets of BD and a salac boost it is likely sitting at 1% which is easily killed by any priority attack.
Fun fact: subroost moltres is only KO'd 28% of the time by fire punch with SR damage factored in.
Fun fact: subroost moltres is only KO'd 28% of the time by fire punch with SR damage factored in.
I actually haven't been seeing very much Rain lately, which is a good thing considering I dropped Articuno. It's become all about stall in UU, or at least for the good players, which is why Hitmontop is becoming so popular (with its ability to Foresight + Rapid Spin to delinate Spin Blockers). Most teams can't afford to pack two Ghosts because of Honchkrow, so that is a fairly effective counter. However, CB Trapinch might have something to say about that in the future...
Well here are my two cents.
This current metagame, is....well....not much fun. Its even MORE stall oriented than Old UU (which sadly, im starting to miss). In this UU there is no more Powerhouses such as Staraptor, who could effectively take out everything Slower than Base 100, and then some. Spiritomb is easy to take out for me, but then im down to 4 fire blast PP, which isnt enough. Im down to 2 if i Miss.
Almost every successful team is stall, at least in the top 5 ALL of them are stall if i remember correctly. At least i know EUM is a stall player, and ggGerbil(Lemiwinks) uses a Stall team, which are the top two atm. Even though i made it to the top 3 with an Offensive team, i just feel its substantially harder to play this effectively in a metagame filled with stall.
Blaziken sort of Remedies stall, but it seriously cant take a whole Stall team on its own, especially when Shaymins with EP are running around on EVERY team, including stall.
My Anti-stall lead is helping too, but tbh this metagame needs some of the suspect Pokemon.
Im surprised no one "misses" Raikou, because i certainly do. Raikou was the BEST thing keeping Shaymin down, even though you might not see it at first. Raikou can come in on an Air Slash, or on the Revenge, and get a Free Sub or CM, because Shaymin cant afford to Spam Seed Flare to break the subs with Pressure. It also keeps Stall teams in Check, being easy to set up on 5/6 members of a Stall team.
I do infact miss the Old UU, and pre Suspect UU. But we are far from done with the test i guess.
P.S. Hail Stall is still viable, and equally as annoying.
This current metagame, is....well....not much fun. Its even MORE stall oriented than Old UU (which sadly, im starting to miss). In this UU there is no more Powerhouses such as Staraptor, who could effectively take out everything Slower than Base 100, and then some. Spiritomb is easy to take out for me, but then im down to 4 fire blast PP, which isnt enough. Im down to 2 if i Miss.
Almost every successful team is stall, at least in the top 5 ALL of them are stall if i remember correctly. At least i know EUM is a stall player, and ggGerbil(Lemiwinks) uses a Stall team, which are the top two atm. Even though i made it to the top 3 with an Offensive team, i just feel its substantially harder to play this effectively in a metagame filled with stall.
Blaziken sort of Remedies stall, but it seriously cant take a whole Stall team on its own, especially when Shaymins with EP are running around on EVERY team, including stall.
My Anti-stall lead is helping too, but tbh this metagame needs some of the suspect Pokemon.
Im surprised no one "misses" Raikou, because i certainly do. Raikou was the BEST thing keeping Shaymin down, even though you might not see it at first. Raikou can come in on an Air Slash, or on the Revenge, and get a Free Sub or CM, because Shaymin cant afford to Spam Seed Flare to break the subs with Pressure. It also keeps Stall teams in Check, being easy to set up on 5/6 members of a Stall team.
I do infact miss the Old UU, and pre Suspect UU. But we are far from done with the test i guess.
P.S. Hail Stall is still viable, and equally as annoying.
My team isn't stall, or at least I don't consider it to be. I don't see how a team containing Kabutops, CB Honchkrow and NP Toxicroak can be considered stall by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that I'm also using a few defensive Pokemon just means that my team is not purely offensive; it's a balance of the two. My honest opinion is that proper stall is incredibly risky because of Clefable and, to a lesser extent, Honchkrow / Drapion.
One interesting thing of note, though, is that my current team has only one previously BL Pokemon, and four UU originals. And yet there were people saying that the BLs would dominate.
I do, however, agree with this sentiment. People kinda overreacted with regards to some of the suspects, and I hope more people see that overall they helped balance the metagame more than hinder it. I foresaw such a situation occurring, which was why I never agreed with the idea of testing as much as possible at such an early stage of metagame development.
The actual decision on any of the 6 suspects is still to be determined, they are in "limbo" right now. If you realize that "hey, maybe Staraptor wasn't so bad?" (just an example - don't nitpick my use of Staraptor or something), you are perfectly justified in voting him UU in the sense of "I want him reexamined right now". Any voting decision you make at the end of the month is open for reexamination near down the road so don't be afraid to maybe vote a bit conservative.
This is what I got:
- Diverse Metagame, primarily stall oriented.
- Diversity with leads.
- Weather can be formidable; Rain teams especially.
- Bulk is the new Speed! At least that's what I've decided.
Mismagius is pretty hard to beat while a specific strategy or prediction. I have to use a Mismagius of my own to consistenly beat it or dmg it with something bulky with good sp. atk like Shaymin. Also to mention, Shaymin is a bitch to handle mid-game
Clefable is also a killer for all stalls. Makes stall teams unfun to play with vs it.
But UU is so fun with so much diversity
Clefable is also a killer for all stalls. Makes stall teams unfun to play with vs it.
But UU is so fun with so much diversity
- Status