I hate to state the obvious but Scizor and Venusaur are two completely different Pokemon and it goes with out saying that dealing with them are completely different matters. Running Hp Fire is a good way to keep Scizor at bay... but you could run Ice Beam on every Pokemon and Venusaur will still be able to find a way to walk over you.
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np: UU - Rain Drops Keep Falling on my Head
- Thread starter JabbaTheGriffin
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I don't get what the whole fuss about the suspects are. Raikou and Moltres harm offense much more than stall. There are plenty of offensive Pokemon like Toxicroak, Nidoking, Alakazam, Houndoom, Rhyperior, and Blaziken that can deal with stall while not making life miserable for offensive teams.
You know, I don't really even care anymore. Everything on the list has an inferior, but still good replacement. Except for Duggy, who had better not get booted. Anyway, I say we discuss the replacements.
For Raikou, we have Manectric. I like Manectric because of its deadly Specs set. It only has 10 less base Speed and Sp. Atk than Raikou and has Overheat to do with Grass-types and Steelix, so it can run HP Grass for the rare, but possible case, of encountering a Quagsire, Gastrodon, and Lanturn.
For Froslass, we have every other spiker. They are all insanely inferior and well-known enough. Nothing else to say.
For Moltres, we have Magmortar or Charizard. We just discussed Charizard, so lets talk about Magmortar. It has a very nice movepool, including moves such as Thunderbolt and Focus Blast. This allows it to run a very decent Specs set to crush stuff with. You can also choose to run Life Orb if the ability to switch moves is more important than the extra power. However, it has bad Speed, so if you want a late-game cleaner rather than a wrecking ball, slap on a Scarf and you're good to go. The sad part: it is incredibly generic. I could've just taken the analysis of any wall-breaker or sweeper and pasted it here.
And I want to hear some predictions! Who's gonna be kicked out? I'm guessing Froslass and Raikou will be decimated, Moltres will be voted UU, but only just, and Dugtrio will stay in UU with few votes against it.
For Raikou, we have Manectric. I like Manectric because of its deadly Specs set. It only has 10 less base Speed and Sp. Atk than Raikou and has Overheat to do with Grass-types and Steelix, so it can run HP Grass for the rare, but possible case, of encountering a Quagsire, Gastrodon, and Lanturn.
For Froslass, we have every other spiker. They are all insanely inferior and well-known enough. Nothing else to say.
For Moltres, we have Magmortar or Charizard. We just discussed Charizard, so lets talk about Magmortar. It has a very nice movepool, including moves such as Thunderbolt and Focus Blast. This allows it to run a very decent Specs set to crush stuff with. You can also choose to run Life Orb if the ability to switch moves is more important than the extra power. However, it has bad Speed, so if you want a late-game cleaner rather than a wrecking ball, slap on a Scarf and you're good to go. The sad part: it is incredibly generic. I could've just taken the analysis of any wall-breaker or sweeper and pasted it here.
And I want to hear some predictions! Who's gonna be kicked out? I'm guessing Froslass and Raikou will be decimated, Moltres will be voted UU, but only just, and Dugtrio will stay in UU with few votes against it.
Magmortar really isn't that slow. The only things of significance Moltres outruns that he doesn't are Toxicroak and Hitmonlee and maybe Qwilfish outside the rain. Moltres speed ties with a lot more, true, but I've never put my faith in speed ties. Anyway, I think LOmortar is its best set. Fire Blast/Tbolt/HP Grass/Cross Chop or other filler (Magmortar has a lot of options). I also don't like Choice Manectric; Sub + 3 attacks or SubCharge seems much more viable, although I guess if you have something that can set up on duggy or rhyperior you could use choice.
I think you missed the point here. The point is that although both metagame are centralised around their No. 1 used Pokemon, the said Pokemon is nowhere near broken. Yes, Venusaur can find a way to walk all over you, but so can Scizor, quite easily. Here's an example: Scizor switched into something that can't really hurt it. Go Magnezone!! Scizor used U-Turn. Crap, missed him. Venusaur is similar, although plenty of Pokemon (So long as they don't switch into Sleep Powder) can force out Venusaur easily (Anything faster than Base 80 carrying a Fire attack, Substitute, etc)
I don't think "stall dominated the tour" gives you a valid way of deducing that "stall dominates the metagame", if that's what you're implying.
I mean, there have been Rain dominated tours, Hail dominated Tours, DS HO dominated tours, etc. You can't really say that because one tour happened to be mainly stall winners that it dominates the metagame.
Of course, stall is considered the "best" style of play for tournaments if I'm not mistaken anyway.
JabbaTheGriffin said:
Offense can use Cloyster, Qwilfish, and Omastar quite effectively as Spikers, however the main difference is that offense isn't crippled by having to use like one of four leads for beating Froslass. As such, balance and bulky offense will not have to worry so much about spinning. It as black and white as you make it seem to be.
JabbaTheGriffin said:
While they can break through stall and offense with little support and using one-dimensional tactics - well Raikou can at least, Moltres is hard to wall only with Spikes support, but with Spikes support stall will indeed have trouble - I think thats the main issue with these two Pokemon.
If you remember back in the older UU days when Froslass and Raikou were (rightfully) BL, people could not win using these purely fast Offensive teams and win because, well, Raikou and Froslass weren't there to make the team work. I remember using a designated stall-breaker on all of my successful teams. I'm sure Eo and others (even LR actually; I played his stall with Roar Torterra too :P) remember that every good team I had used mixed Blaziken to give me a way to beat stall.
Stall really wasn't any better or worse off.
Well we did ban Pokemon that beat Offense, such as Yanmega, Shaymin, and Crobat. However, it is true that these Pokemon are all offensive to begin with.
I really think that instead of blaming the voters for this, we should actually look at the defensive characteristic (this has absolutely been brought up before). The defensive characteristic is the most objective characteristic in the metagame, and because of this, it is really hard to place any Pokemon in BL solely because of it's defensive capabilities since the standards are so high.
"Stalling out" any Pokemon is very very uncommon to begin with, and to stall out a "significant portion" of them is, well, not going to happen unless Lugia drops down to UU. So by definition there are actually no UU Pokemon that do this, but rather, there are defensive Pokemon who check and counter too many Pokemon (Milotic is a possibility, I guess) or are bulky enough to set up +6 in a stat and sweep (the former Cresselia, for example).
This is really the most logical reason why only offensive Pokemon are banned, even if Pokemon are banned for destroying both offense and stall.
This is basically a tl;dr of my post. All of the suspects really harm offense more than stall, even if they are tools used by offense in the first place.
Agreed that the DC is really hard to satisfy. It took a poke with 600BST, no offensive stats, and levitate to get voters to ban something off the DC.
That said, I don't think it really matters, because nothing is really defensively broken, and I don't see anything dropping down and becoming so.
That said, I don't think it really matters, because nothing is really defensively broken, and I don't see anything dropping down and becoming so.
I don't think Cresselia was banned on just the defensive characteristic. Sure, perhaps people did choose to highlight how it could wall so much of the metagame with ease, but at the back of everyone's minds they knew Cresselia was also capable of sweeping with a Calm mind set or helping its team with a myriad of support moves. In my mind it was banned for filling or almost filling two or three of the characteristics.
@ Lonewolf: People have discussed this before, but there is no actual replacement for Raikou. Manetric cannot walk into special attacks, he cannot stat boost, he cannot outspeed Base 110s or tie with 115s.
That. MysticGar, for example, will most likely Protect on first turn to scout whether you're gonna use BP or Pursuit; but if it turns out said Scizor is not choiced and uses SD you're pretty fucked.
On another note, regarding "stall dominated tour" thing, it wasn't quite that. Stall dominated the stage. If any of you faced Ace Matador's team, which I consider to be one of the best stall teams I've ever faced, you'll see his team is no more than pure abuse of the current stage of this metagame, in which every fucking goddamn team has the same freaking build (I won't really write essays about his team, but the ones who got to face him should know what I'm talking about), and that it wouldn't work nearly as well on stages like Yanmega's. Just like people took rain for granted on past stages when building teams, people are now taking stall for granted when building teams, and stall players are doing no more than taking advantage of that (yes guys, stop using Froslass, Donphan, Moltres, Milotic, Venusaur, Registeel teams that can't break stall).
You aren't implying what I think your implying... are you?
Anyway, why not use something like Altaria? It seems like an effective counter if you hate Venusaur that much.
@ Bluwind: well said
@ Flare: whats so good about subcharge Manectric? What does it have over Subcharge Rotom or hell SubNP Raichu?
While that may be, Manectric comes pretty damn close to being one. The reasons you listed why are also the reasons that it is a replacement, not a carbon copy. If Manectric was as good as Raikou, than maybe both of them would be used. But Manectric is not as good, which is why it is a replacement. Magmortar is nowhere near as good as Moltres, but it is an acceptable replacement.
The bolded is the important part. I've never realized this before, but this is one of the best arguments against Froslass, and I am surprised no one realized it, or realized it but never brought it up. Froslass centralizes the entire lead slot. If you aren't running a Froslass lead, you are forced to run Kabutops, Armaldo, Cloyster, Sneasel, Spiritomb, or anything else with Taunt that outspeeds. If you don't, you're risking having spikes set up in your face. (I'm guessing this has been brought up and I missed it, but in case it hasn't, I want to point it out.)
So... if you don't want to use Froslass, there are a number of options you can use to stop it from setting up Spikes, but because it forces you to use one of these so-called "counters"/"checks", and without them, it will get Spikes, it's broken...? Yeah, that argument wasn't brought up probably because that's not very good. If you want to make sure you beat something, you have to have at least a check for it. If you don't, you're doing so at you're own risk. When there are numerous checks/counters available, you can't just ignore them all, screaming that the Pokemon forces you to be... gasp... prepared for it by using them.
Under this logic, we'd have to send Aerodactyl to Ubers. After all, the only things that can stop it from actually doing its job and setting up Stealth Rock are Electrode, and risking a speed-tie by using Aerodactyl yourself. Since apparently five other options aren't enough in the case of Froslass, then only one other option definitely wouldn't be enough to keep Aerodactyl from being broken, so it should get the boot.
But once it's gone, we have another problem in the OU lead metagame: Azelf. With Aero gone, you're again stuck with two primary options for the lead slot: Electrode and Azelf. Look's like it's getting the boot too.
After that, where does that leave us... Jirachi? Uxie? Yeah, you get the gist. Quite obviously, from that it's been established that a Pokemon's ability to successfully get up Entry Hazards doesn't make it broken, or else we would have banned a huge chunk of the more common leads inn OU.
That is... unless you want to make the case that getting Stealth Rock up reliably isn't broken, but the ability to get up multiple layers of Spikes reliably is. In which case, you're left with two options: 1.) Ban Spikes themselves under the Support Characteristic 2.) Ban Frosslass under the support characteristic for being able to get up multiple layers of Spikes much easier than practically anything else in the lead metagame. Between the two, option #2 definitely does seem to be the better bet, as, at least for now, no other Spiker seems to be as good as Froslass, so option #1 would probably be a hard one to sell.
In any case though, that would be banning Froslass because it can, against a number of opponents, reliably get up multiple layers of Spikes, while also, due to its typing, making it difficult for the foe to Spin these Spikes away. Froslass "centralizing the lead metagame" by forcing you to carry some of a number of answers to it? Yeah.... not so much, as that comes off sounding like there are indeed answers to it, but you just don't want to change you're team to deal with Froslass at all and refuse to use any of them, which would be your problem, and not one with Froslass itself.
If it actually does very reliably get up Spikes and make it hard to remove them, then just say that, but, if I were to vote in BL, I definitely wouldn't say in my paragraphs that it centralizes the lead metagame by making me choose from one of like five leads if I want to beat it. As my point is that it's hard to get past it, I'd want to say that it's very difficult for any one Pokemon in the lead metagame to stop it from setting up Spikes, not fall prey to one of Froslass's other options, and kill it/prevent it from switching out so that it can put up Spikes/Spin-block later on, and its these combination of aspects that makes Froslass BL under the Support Characteristic. Just saying, or even mentioning the fact that it seems to be centralizing the lead metagame, makes it sound at least to me that you just want it gone and don't want to deal with it moreso than anything, so if it were me, I'd just leave that out and not bother with it at all, as I'm pretty sure that argument wouldn't help me and could in fact hurt me, and that's why I'm guessing most people haven't mentioned that: it doesn't really help their case much and they don't need it to support the case that Froslass is BL anyway.
The difference between your OU lead argument and Froslass is that spikes make many Pokemon broken. With 2 to 3 layers of spikes, Moltres is unstoppable. Many common sweepers have very few safe switch-ins because their counters take up to 25% each switch. Stealth Rock in OU doesn't make that many Pokemon have few safe switch-ins. You could say "but Pokemon whose counters are weak to Rock also take 25% on each switch also." This is true. However, grounded Pokemon are way more common than Rock-weak Pokemon, especially in UU. Add to that that Stealth Rock is easy to set up in any tier, but Spikes are harder to set up in OU. With both Spikes and Stealth Rock grounded Pokemon take damage, and Flying-types take damage. Froslass is the best Spiker in UU, the other ones can have their Spikes spun away while setting them up. Froslass can't. The conclusion? Froslass is BL.
I'm curious if Spikes are so easy to set up, if they so easy to keep on the field and if they make Pokemon like Moltres unstoppable, why was the UU tour a stallfest? What did stop the set-up-spikes-trap-chansey-sweep-with-moltres strategy from sweeping these stall teams anyway? If sweeping with Raikou is so easy with Dugtrio support, why didn't Raikou sweep the UU tour?
I wish I could see for myself, but I don't have the logs, so ...
I wish I could see for myself, but I don't have the logs, so ...
Well said indeed BW.
As for who will replace Raikou, do people not have an open mind whatsoever? Why does its replacement have to be an Electric-type that isn't useful and currently NU. Raikou can be replaced by any special sweeper. Fuck I've been using Houndoom and Alakazam and they've done more for me then Raikou has done. Alakazam can run a Subcm set and has better Spe/SpA at the cost of bulk. Houndoom's Nasty Plot is much more destructive than Raikou's LOCM set because it can actually 2HKO Chansey and has no problems getting through Registeel in one go either. Neither of these Pokemon are one-dimensional like Raikou either. Zam can CM, Encore, and Trick while Houndoom can go mixed and has other move options in Taunt/Beat Up/etc...People need to stop thinking "OMG WHAT WILL IT BE REPLACED BY????" Manectric just isn't that useful. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if it reached UU because of everyone replacing their Raikou on their teams with it. At least Charizard can actually run a set that's the exact same to Moltres (on top of it having so many other options, which is why IF Moltres gets banned it'll go to UU). But I don't get why everyone has the need to find a Raikou replacement that is Electric-type. Think outside the box a bit people.
/rant over
As for who will replace Raikou, do people not have an open mind whatsoever? Why does its replacement have to be an Electric-type that isn't useful and currently NU. Raikou can be replaced by any special sweeper. Fuck I've been using Houndoom and Alakazam and they've done more for me then Raikou has done. Alakazam can run a Subcm set and has better Spe/SpA at the cost of bulk. Houndoom's Nasty Plot is much more destructive than Raikou's LOCM set because it can actually 2HKO Chansey and has no problems getting through Registeel in one go either. Neither of these Pokemon are one-dimensional like Raikou either. Zam can CM, Encore, and Trick while Houndoom can go mixed and has other move options in Taunt/Beat Up/etc...People need to stop thinking "OMG WHAT WILL IT BE REPLACED BY????" Manectric just isn't that useful. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if it reached UU because of everyone replacing their Raikou on their teams with it. At least Charizard can actually run a set that's the exact same to Moltres (on top of it having so many other options, which is why IF Moltres gets banned it'll go to UU). But I don't get why everyone has the need to find a Raikou replacement that is Electric-type. Think outside the box a bit people.
/rant over
NO!
Only an electric type can take up Raikou's mantle. IT IS WRITTEN. All joking aside, the switcheroo set is still pretty viable (with or without Raikou)
A choice specs Chansey/Registeel is just priceless.
Sub CM Alakazam? Sounds very destructive. Anyone notice a lot less Drapion/Spiritomb? Are the dark types of UU really forgotten?
Only an electric type can take up Raikou's mantle. IT IS WRITTEN. All joking aside, the switcheroo set is still pretty viable (with or without Raikou)
A choice specs Chansey/Registeel is just priceless.
Sub CM Alakazam? Sounds very destructive. Anyone notice a lot less Drapion/Spiritomb? Are the dark types of UU really forgotten?
Funny you should mention that. I fought a lot of Drapions yesterday but only 2 Spiritombs (one was Flare's and my Zam actually beat it due to Signal Beam confusion :P). My set doesn't really have problems with Non-CB Drapions though. They ALWAYS set up first turn for some reason and I just Calm Mind that turn then Encore them. Next time they send in their Drapion they just get OHKO'd :)
I think that Raikou will stay UU.
Dude... it just got aura sphere and weather ball to add to its arsenal and it was wayyy broken before. Now that it can hit its two "counters" super effectively (Registeel and Chansey) I highly doubt it will remain UU
See sig. Let's not talk about such anymore. We'll let our fists (paragraphs) do the talking.
BTW, the sharp drop in Sharpedo leads has me worried. It was a pretty decent anti-lead even if it it's defenses were craptastic.
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