np: OU Suspect Testing Round 1 - ...wait, I'm not Jumpman16!

[November Blue]

What? Iron head hits for SE damage rock and ice types (and the latter are rare to say the least), flying hits grass, bug and the omnipresent fighting types (Roobushin is on pretty much every team I see on the ladder).

Yeah, scratch that, I was thinking grass STAB (I'm tired, heh)
I can't think of a sure Skymin counter, instead. Crobat, jolteon, aerodactyl, weavile, mamoswine, heatran, multi hit moves, taunt, stun spore erufuun, swift swim rock blast armaldo, extremespeed inner focus dragonite/lucario, voltolos,... none of these are specialized.

ironically, Skymin may come in on Jalorda's leaf storm (quad resisting it) set up a sub on the switch out and proceed to flinch your team to death. Lots of pokemon can do this. Nattorei can come in and protect stall for sand damage or destroy shay with gyro ball while air slash 5HKOs.

I don't see any moveset syndrome, consdering that even things that resist the grass and flying combo can be 2hko'd ater a seed flare SpD drop. If you get the drop that is.
Skyimn's power is not serene grace alone, it's a combination of factors that makes it so broken. Heatran has a combination of factors that make it broken too. Broken doesn't always have to be synonymous with uber.

it doesn't need to. And this argument appies to many other Pokemon. Without hp fire Giratina is walled by Scizor, without outrage it's walled by Blissey, does it make Giratina-O less borken? I don't think so. And anyway, as stated before, after a SpD drop many Skymin's "counters" will risk a 2-3 HKO, and hitting twice or three times without being touched isn't hard with air slash. Grass has a lot of resists. Air slash has 75 BP. Its "incredible type coverage" runs off 349 special attack. Drops and flinches aren't surefire, and if you don't get one, it leaves you vulnerable. HP fire can't OHKO nattorei without specs (stealth rock weakness hurts specsmin) and air slash is a 5HKO. Natty has plenty of opportunities to break your sub and threaten a KO with gyro ball. Bulky pokes can force skymin out, because its coverage moves simply aren't powerful enough to KO cleanly. And unless it already has a sub up, it can't subseed something that threatens to KO.

on the other hand, though, Jalorda can't flinch to death while healing from leech seed, and believe me, that's relly annoying.

Jalorda doesn't need to flinch. It can just KO. It gets parafusion thanks to glare and swagger too.

most of the time Skyimin gains *the equivalent of a NP boost* by lowering the opponent's SpD with seed flare No it doesn't

eh, I believe it's funny that you say this. When we tested Skymin the last time, back in stage 3, you were not even a registered user here I've been lurking and playing competitively since gen 2/3.
and, believe me, there were way more concrete reasons that caused its ban than "the hype its STAB moves caused". We don't ban things based on a hype. You can't say it didn't influence people's vote though.

A part of me thinks "Maybe Darkrai is uber?" Why? Because it's darkrai. Uber. We're all so used to seeing and thinking this. There's a subconscious bias against change: "X pokemon is uber for this, this and that reason. I can't imagine it in OU." IMO this is part of the reason people want to ban stuff like deoxys-s.
Gen 5 introduced loads of overpowered pokes. The metagame has changed. Stuff that was uber last gen could find a place in OU now.


probaly there are Pokemon stronger that Skymin in the current meta, but that doesn't mean that Skymin is OU material by any means. Uh, yes it does? Are there any OU pokes stronger than mewtwo for example?

BIG EDIT: I agree with jrrrrrrr. The attitude in this thread is all wrong. The initial banlist was fine. It will be for a while to come.

 

[capefeather]

Ugh, I hate the bolded-reply-within-quote thing...

Re: Counters

Of all of those, I only commonly see Heatran and Voltolos. Where are the others? Do they, uh, not work well in this environment or something? (Actually, maybe they do work and we just haven't realized it yet for three months. Whatever, it's the only remotely valid argument that's been given.)

Re: "surefire"

Seriously? The argument is that COUNTERS aren't surefire. What's the point of mentioning that Serene Grace isn't surefire? Stone Edge can miss, too; that doesn't mean that Stone Edge can't be a factor in a hypothetical Pokémon being Uber. In fact, you make the same logical fallacy in the end, where Haunter said "power creep =/=> Skymin OU" (which is technically true) and you countered with "power creep => Skymin OU". Seriously, what? It doesn't help that you're brazenly accusing us of not playtesting Skymin when a lot of us are in the top 30 or so.

Re: Heatran

This is just semantics... Heatran isn't "broken" and never was. It's just a very good Pokémon who has decent checks but is also a great check to many opponents.

 

[haunter]

JT Swift, at this point your posts are not even worth the time needed to reply. You pretend to come here with your one month long forum experience and tell us that we can't play Pokemon and that we're wrong if we try to keep distinct Heatran and Skymin?! Seriously dude, your post should be probably infracted with a "lurk more" warning.

You can't say it didn't influence people's vote though.

Who do you think we are? Do you think that we allow anybody to decide our tiers? Jumpman16 and Aeolus spent almost 2 years of their Smogon time trying to select the best and more competent voters for our suspect votes. Now mr. 40 posts comes here saying that our ban policies are wrong and that our attitude is wrong as well, lol.

 

[Arc Tech]

I think skymin is the strongest candidate for Uber. The only flaw in its stab attacking combination is that it is resisted by steel, which is easily made up for by its movepool.

And while people have been comparing it to jalorda, it's much better. It quite simply has higher sp atk off the bat, and doesn't absolutely need to use a grass move upon switch in or have almost no sp atk, allowing it to play around and hurt it's checks more. 127 versus 113 base speed is a world of difference- especially when you have 60% flinch air slash to wear down pokes- something jalorda can't do. Having a decently strong second stab which hits pokes immune to leech seed SE also significantly helps skymin over jalorda.

The main problem is that skymin usually has a 60%-36% chance to beat it's checks. Even if not specs, nattorei is going down to a lo hp fire after an air slash. Jalorda on the other hand, does not have that option to weaken it's checks, and is outsped by amny more pokes. lack of neutral coverage (lati@s resists grass+fire, steels resists grass + ice) also hurts it severely.

I really don't think anything other than skymin is too bad. The only other thing I would nominate for suspect is sleep (not Darkrai, sleep).

 

[Gabe]

If you think Heatran is broken, you suck.

 

[symphonyx64]

Echoing everyone else who feels Darkrai, Shaymin, Deoxys-A, etc are "broken" and should be considered for Uber.

With the new sleep mechanics, you can pretty much assume the the sleeping Pokémon will remain asleep for the duration of the battle. It is extremely difficult to leave a Pokémon 3 in three turns straight, especially with how the current "metagame" is now with threats looming at every corner. Shaymin-S, thanks to a massive Speed and Special attack stat, combined with Serene Grace, Air Slash, and Seed Flare, and other moves can rip right through the opposition.

Aside from those three Pokémon, I don't feel Doryuzuu is broken like the majority thinks it is. Yes, looks great on paper. But, in practice, its just another pure physical attacker that is stopped cold by the likes of Gliscor, Hippowdon and Skarmory to an extent, though the least that Skarmory can do is just Whirlwind it away. Its also easily revenged killed by moves such as Mach Punch when weakened enough. People were thinking Doryuzuu was going to centralize the metagame, I just don't see that as the case right now.

 

[JSND]

Okay im going to make review so far of my experience and some ubers many people seems to scream OU(data is from PO, Smogon, and gamefaqs)

Dialga, Giratina, Reshiram, Zekrom : This is included due to some saying 90 speed is slow. I dont agree a lot. Speed is impotant but not to much. Individualy, Dialga is absurdly versatile and has crappy good typing. Giratina-O is a very good spinblocker, mixed and Cm sweeper. While A is less popular, it has gigantic defenses and his attacking stats isnt bad in OU. Reshiram and Zekrom ahs absurdly powerful STAB. Even with Nattrei around, Zek make Nattrei a MUST in a team due to its massive power or his STAB alone will give trouble.

Lugia : one of if not THE most popular Uber to OU. Many say power creep crap but power creep in gen 5 isnt as immense as gen 4. In fact, move is the determining factor of power creep and gen 5 has no high power influental move other than HJK. If lugia ever reach OU, a stallwar will definitely occur. OR offense war with lugia's deadly CM set which makes things like Wobb and lugia check overused just to handle lugia. As a wall, he influent the game too much. Lugia make fighting types has a very hard time due to typing, pressure, and roost to heal. Also pressure is the better ability in long run due to Stome Edge. I hear Lugia has been allowed for 2 days and its proved to be so broken. I agree to. Lugia has very beastly defensive stats combined with 110 speed. Things like Terrakion which pack SE didnt even able to beat him logically. Not to mention specially defensive nattrei has same bulk as uninvested lugia.
About the fighting type YES you CAN use SE or Payback on Robu to beat lugia, but seeing how viable cm set was(110 speed with enough 90 SpA) Aeroblast will give very huge trouble to things like robb. This make the metagame shift from fighting type to weather wars in which Sandstorm get the advantage alongside rain. SS have breelom and robb check in form of lugia while Rain get CM lugia with thunder

Skymin : i dont care and know too much. It because that PO has very messy RNG AFAIP. I ever had my specs Dialga flinched for 12 turn in a row by Jirachi making me unable to share opinion in full scale. But for some argument i must agree hes hard to prepare for. I love Subseed set the most.

Darkrai : the only reason i might think rai for uber is his movepool which include Boltbeam and spacial rend. This make my solid check in form of hera and croak dont work well. Otehr than that, his high speed is normal in the meta due to weather wars.

Deo-A : its a matter of stealth rock. After SR become more popular, hes not a problem anymore. Thats my opinion.

Echoing everyone else who feels Darkrai, Shaymin, Deoxys-A, etc are broken and should be considered for Uber.

With the new sleep mechanics, you can pretty much assume the the sleeping Pokémon will remain asleep for the duration of the battle. It is extremely difficult to leave a Pokémon 3 in three turns straight, especially with how the current "metagame" is now with threats looming at evert corner. Shaymin-S, thanks to a massive Speed and Special attack stat, combined with Serene Grace, Air Slash, and Seed Flare, and other moves can rip right through the opposition.

Aside from those three Pokémon, I don't feel Doryuzuu is broken like the majority thinks it is. Yes, looks great on paper. But, in practice, its just another pure physical attacker that is stopped cold by the likes of Gliscor, Hippowdon and Skarmory to an extent, though the least that Skarmory can do is just Whirlwind it away. Its also easily revenged killed by moves such as Mach Punch when weakened enough. People were thinking Doryuzuu was going to centralize the metagame, I just don't see that as the case right now.

For dory i dont think it centralize. Homever theres 2 thing that happen alongside the introduction of dory this gen that currently creates the meta called fighting hype. The immense fighting type buff and introduction of dory make fighting type nearly a must, preferably priority. WIth beatly priority fighting STAB user we know and love around, and dory being a huge threat(dory is most likely SS main weapon). This make many pokemon suffer from amch punch weak such as Cloyster. So yeah it isnt broken but it is influental

 

[Nails]

Dory centralizes; it also has shit tons of counters, all of whom are incredibly viable already. Bronzong, Gliscor, Roobushin, Balloon Terakion, Balloon Heatran, Hippowdon, Suicune... There are way more than that too, and you can't argue that any of those pokemon or more can't be fit on your team, as they're all top tier OU. It's not broken, stop using 6 EQ weak pokes or countering it with fliers. There's tons of ways to beat it.

 

[Bologo]

Dory centralizes; it also has shit tons of counters, all of whom are incredibly viable already. Bronzong, Gliscor, Roobushin, Balloon Terakion, Balloon Heatran, Hippowdon, Suicune... There are way more than that too, and you can't argue that any of those pokemon or more can't be fit on your team, as they're all top tier OU. It's not broken, stop using 6 EQ weak pokes or countering it with fliers. There's tons of ways to beat it.

At the same time, there's lots of things that counter these Rain sweepers that everyone seems to be overrating. Nattorei and Suicune are two huge counters to Rain-based teams (though I guess Suicune needs to watch out for Thunder). Scarfmin-S also checks a lot of the Rain sweepers, and Latias is a pretty good check as well. Chansey actually takes a lot of hits pretty well from Rain sweepers, even physical hits. Storm Drain Gastrodon can fuck with a lot of the members of a Rain team too, and he's been seeing a lot more use this Gen, so he's not useless.

Honestly, I really think the only Rain sweeper that's broken is Manaphy. None of the other Rain sweepers even come relatively close to this thing's abilities in the Rain. I'm actually willing to say that Manaphy is both the best offensive and defensive user of Rain there is, and it can put both together to create a deadly combination. If you don't have something that can basically OHKO it (and is faster than it), there's really nothing you can do besides try to Trick some garbage onto it. This is what's making me wonder why people are thinking of nominating Politoed instead of Manaphy.

This reminds of that time in DP UU when Froslass was in UU and as a result, people were trying to get...Snover banned. Seriously, this is the exact same thing, because Politoed is making Manaphy broken, yet people are trying to ban Politoed when Manaphy's the one that's actually dangerous.

Clearly the problem is Manaphy, not Politoed, who's arguably helping the metagame by adding a lot of new strategies that simply weren't viable before. For example, RainStall was completely unviable before Drizzle came into play. Now you can actually use pokemon like Parasect in OU and not get laughed at. In addition, some really crappy pokemon like Gorebyss and Huntail can actually do something in OU too because of this.

Rain is not nearly destructive enough to warrant basically destroying 2 entire playstyles (RainStall and RainOffense). Yes Swift Swim makes the users really fast and powerful, but they're not impossible to play around.

 

[Mazinger]

...

This. Exactly this has been bothering me since Salamence was banned. People keep looking for things they need to ban in order to get a better metagame instead fo thinking what they can do to improve the one they already have. Spiritomb, for example, is a counter (well not a true counter, specs and sashed variants beat it, but lol) to deoxys A, while not being useless at all; it has actually gained viability with Rankurusu, who is a lot more difficult to stop than you'd think, and the loss of rotom-A as the cookie-cutter spinblocker, yet everyone starts screaming for deo A to be banned right from the start.

Also Bologo is right; if something is broken in the rain, it's the pokemon who is broken, not the rain.

 

[Nails]

Yeah, manaphy is broken. Latios with thunder counters it, as does zappy, but with tail glow's buff and auto rain, manaphy is too good. It serves as a sweeper and a status absorber for rain teams, with infinite rain it is too good, and having to support it with only 8 turns wouldn't stop it from being too good.

 

[zdrup15]

Does winning those Tournaments mods host on PO give you some "points"?

 

[Kevin Garrett]

In GSC, if this current community played it, Snorlax and Skarmory would have been banned. Probably Blissey too. In advance, Celebi would have been banned (omg i have to run hp bug to beat it! overcentralized!). Instead, they weren't banned and the players actually had to learn how to play against it. We've had a server for not even a month and people are already discussing like 10 pokemon that they want banned. Wtf? You haven't even had enough time to think of counters for it yet. Get some perspective. People have to learn the fact that there will always be centralizing pokemon in any tier...that's the entire point of tiers.

You are downplaying the impact certain suspects have on the metagame. It's not as simple as, "omg I have to run HP Bug to beat it!" Manaphy basically destroys everything after one turn that doesn't outspeed it and hit it with massive super effective damage, such as Jolteon or Latios. It's the same story as the stage 2 test in DPP, but only Tail Glow got a boost and Manaphy is sporting automatic weather with support from Politoed. You must be kidding yourself if you can compare that to ADV Celebi.

Manaphy isn't even the worst. I would like to see Darkrai, Shaymin-S, Deoxys-A, and Doryuuzu join it for starters.

 

[Lirg]

I may be new on these forums, but I also have my opinion.

I think that, for the time being, three pokémon must be suspected... Manaphy, Darkrai and Skymin.

I don't say that these poké are impossible to KO, but they're "too strong" for OU.

Manaphy : I'll be the first to say that rain team are annoying but I know that they aren't unbeatable. But Manaphy (under the rain) is really too powerful. Free rest and tail glow who boosts spe att +3 with double STAB water attacks is insane. To beat it, OHKO is necessary. Even with the power creep that everyone talks about this gen 5, it's difficult to find something powerful enough and also fast enough (because double STAB water attack +3 OHKO a lot of things) is hard to find...

Darkrai : I always find sleep annoying. But with him, it's too much. A sleeping pokémon is as good as dead. Dark void is too accurate for me. And unlike other attacks who immunities or good resistances where pokemon can switch on, only a few poké can come on sleep move. Insomnia, vital spirit and Magic mirror are the only abilities I know and only the latter is really used... I can note that Primeape annoys Darkrai with vital spirit and fighting attacks... But it's primeape, I don't see him coming to OU just for countering Darkrai (besides, I'm not sure that Primeape could survive a focus blast of Darkrai) And if someone say that Spore is a more accurate sleep attack inducer, Breloom and Parasect are a lot more slower and so, a lot of poké can attack it one time before being put in sleep.

Skymin : If Shaymin-s hadn't serene grace, it'll be OU certainly. But it' have Serene Grace. Skymin is far to be unbeatable but it's annoying as hell to KO it. When you face a Skymin, if you can't outspeed it, all the fun to beat it is to click on the button of the attack, hoping that the attack succeed and KO it. A good metagame must be fun to play... well, trying to pass over flinch hax is far of being fun. Jirachi and Togekiss are the same but slower. Find something that can outspeed base 100 is easier that outspeed base 127 (in the case of Jirachi). Ice shard is one thing which stop Skymin, but if the user isn't dumb, he counters your ice shard user (the example coming in my mind at the moment is weavile which is stopped cold by roobushin... And anyway, Weavile can't switch on Skymin, he could only came on revenge kill...). And slap a scarf on a base 130 to be only sure to counter Skymin isn't something I want too (above all, most of them are frail too)

I could talk about other pokémon to be suspect, but they are less dangerous immediately. Deoxys (attack, normal and speed) could be very annoying... but not vital to be banned. I'm not for a massive banning to oober, but a minimum is necessary.

 

[lmitchell0012]

You are downplaying the impact certain suspects have on the metagame. It's not as simple as, "omg I have to run HP Bug to beat it!" Manaphy basically destroys everything after one turn that doesn't outspeed it and hit it with massive super effective damage, such as Jolteon or Latios. It's the same story as the stage 2 test in DPP, but only Tail Glow got a boost and Manaphy is sporting automatic weather with support from Politoed. You must be kidding yourself if you can compare that to ADV Celebi.

Manaphy isn't even the worst. I would like to see Darkrai, Shaymin-S, Deoxys-A, and Doryuuzu join it for starters.

Shaymin-S actually isn't all that bad. A specially defensive Rotom-H can wall it all day (unless it gets a TON of flinch hax). It resists seed flare and air slash, and since it has levitate it's also immune to earth power. Also, HP ice and fire can't hurt it, so the only way it can really beat it is to use something like HP rock or dark.

Darkrai and Deoxys-A however, should probably be in ubers. Not so sure about Dory though.

 

[reachzero]

In terms of the metagame itself, the majority of the teams I've seen are dedicated to either Sand or Rain, with a few running very powerful (i.e. "likely Suspect") Pokemon without weather support. Stall is almost non-existent, but I have seen a fairly number of balanced/sem-stall teams. If I were building an anti-metagame team right now, I'd use most of my team slots on Pokemon that work well against both Rain and Sand, such as Birijion. On the other hand, if I were building a Sand or Rain team, I'd want Pokemon that work specifically well against dedicated anti-Rain/Sand Pokemon, such as Tyranitar with Fire Blast and/or Ice Beam. That being said, here are the Pokemon I've found impressive, in the order in which I find them impressive.

1. Shaymin-s: Strongly anti-metagame and difficult to actually metagame against. SubSeed Shaymin-s is unbelievably difficult to deal with in the current metagame. More than a few teams rely heavily on SpD Nattorei to deal with it, and Nattorei will often sacrifice 40% or so of its health just to break Skymin's Sub. There are a few Pokemon for dealing with it somewhat; SpD Heatran, SpD Jirachi, SpD Zapdos. I haven't had the guts to try Crobat, which would probably be useless against Sand and Rain (i.e. in 75-80% of battles). Almost all of these hate SubSeed, so hitting Skymin immediately is extremely important. I thought Shaymin-S got a raw deal in Gen 4, but it's definitely right near the top of the likely Suspects in Gen 5 so far.

2. Drizzle Politoed: Manaphy completely aside, Rain is far, far more powerful than Sand, even accounting for Doryuuzu. Kingdra and Shell Break Pokemon (Gorebyss and Omastar) are more threatening in Rain than Doryuuzu is in Sand, in my opinion. In addition, A dedicated Rain team has much greater defensive type coverage than a dedicated Sand team, they aren't hurt as badly by walls like Gliscor, or sweepers like Balloon Terakion. Kingdra and Ludicolo go a long way defensively. Yes, Nattorei is a problem for Rain teams, but Nattorei is also reasonably easy to lure with Pokemon like Lati@s with HP Fire, and the lack of recovery means that punishing Nattorei really hard once can really hurt its attempts to wall your repeated Ice Beams.

3. Darkrai: When you start a battle and you see the opponent has Darkrai, you choose right away which Pokemon to sacrifice to Dark Void. With that out of the way, you still have to worry about it being either Nasty Plot, meaning you need to deal with it with a Scarf user/Doryuuzu or Swift Swimmer/Mach Punch or Vacuum Wave user. Darkrai definitely can't just come in early, Dark Void first turn, Nasty Plot second turn, sweep. That doesn't work well in this metagame. More often you Dark Void something early, switch out, then come back in much later in the game. On the other hand, Darkrai is a phenomenal Scarf user; Scarf Ice Beam tends to be deadly against other Scarf users hoping to force you out as you Nasty Plot. I'm on the fence regarding Darkrai. It's obviously really, really strong, but not obviously imbalanced.

4. Deoxys-a: Every team MUST have a dedicated SpD Pokemon in this metagame. If Darkrai kills it or puts it to sleep and Deoxys-a comes in, gg. If it's still alive, however, Deoxys-a is manageable. It'll survive an unboosted Roobushin Mach Punch, but it isn't surviving much else.

A few Pokemon really stand out for their ability to shut down many of the extremely common threats.

SpD Jirachi (i.e. 252 Hp/220 SpD/32 Speed Careful, Leftovers, Iron Head/Body Slam/Stealth Rock/Wish "Ubers Jirachi")

Deals great with Deoxys-a, almost perfectly against Lati@s, very well against Darkrai, and well enough against Shaymin-s, for the most part. To give you a sense of its sheer survivability, at full health it can survive an unboosted Doryuuzu Earthquake and paralyze it back with Body Slam. Isn't even 2HKOed by LO Latios HP Fire. Nattorei, Gliscor and Hippowdon come in on you at will, though.

Poison Heal Gliscor: Performs extremely well against Sand teams, especially with Swords Dance. Shutting down Roobushin and Doryuuzu is almost single-handedly worth it. Doesn't do much against Rain, though.

Sub/SD Randorosu and Garchomp: The Sand team members that worry me the most.


Edit: If I haven't already implied it strongly enough, I'm not especially impressed with Doryuuzu in this particular metagame. It loses against Gliscor, and several of its checks benefit as strongly from Balloon as it does (i.e. Terakion). Doryuuzu teams also tend to be fairly cookie-cutter, and so very easy to teambuild and gameplan against.

Edit 2: Manaphy is a whole different can of worms depending on whether Drizzle Politoed is around. With perma-Rain up, it is the single most powerful Pokemon in Standard. Without it, it's still fearsome, but moderated a lot by the speed of the metagame, Nattorei and Burungeru.

 

[Bologo]

Shaymin-S actually isn't all that bad. A specially defensive Rotom-H can wall it all day (unless it gets a TON of flinch hax). It resists seed flare and air slash, and since it has levitate it's also immune to earth power. Also, HP ice and fire can't hurt it, so the only way it can really beat it is to use something like HP rock or dark.

Darkrai and Deoxys-A however, should probably be in ubers. Not so sure about Dory though.

Shaymin-S doesn't need flinchhax to beat Rotom-H, no matter how much it invests in its defenses. All it needs is Choice Specs and Seed Flare, and it 2HKOs Rotom-H 80% of the time due to the Special Defense drop.

Specsmin-S is really deadly. While I don't know if it's a broken set, it still takes out a lot of his normal checks. Even Blissey can't avoid a 2HKO if Stealth Rock is in play. Air Slash hits even harder now, and is able to actually OHKO a lot of frail sweepers.

While he loses the blinding Speed of the Choice Scarf set, he's still got 388 Speed, so he's still going to be able to do a lot of damage before he goes down.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

You are downplaying the impact certain suspects have on the metagame. It's not as simple as, "omg I have to run HP Bug to beat it!" Manaphy basically destroys everything after one turn that doesn't outspeed it and hit it with massive super effective damage, such as Jolteon or Latios. It's the same story as the stage 2 test in DPP, but only Tail Glow got a boost and Manaphy is sporting automatic weather with support from Politoed. You must be kidding yourself if you can compare that to ADV Celebi.

Manaphy isn't even the worst. I would like to see Darkrai, Shaymin-S, Deoxys-A, and Doryuuzu join it for starters.

I wasn't comparing them in the sense that they are equally as powerful. They were very different metagames. I was comparing the fact that they were both really good pokemon for their time and could easily bring up claims of "overcentralization". In Advance, people used HP Bug sets to beat the overcentralizing Celebi because there weren't many other things that could even 2hko it. This thread to me should be about trying to find ways like that to beat potential suspects like Manaphy, instead of just discussing why it should be banned. Lati@s, Choice Scarf users, Nattorei, Ludicolo, other weather changers, etc.

I would just like to say that if you think something is broken, start thinking of ways to beat it instead of just giving up and say "ban it!". You already got team previews so you know it's coming, use all of this to your advantage!

I really think we should have waited for at least our first tier list before thinking about suspect tests =\

 

[idiotfrommars]

I was never around for the 4th gen until late Salamence, so I had no experience with the former OU's of early 4th gen. Still I have found that their are a few poke's that atleast need a suspect test.

Manaphy: Like posters before me have said it's not rain that's broken it's Manaphy. It can run defensive and offensive stall extremely effectively and the only chance you have of defeating it is with a Pokemon that can OHKO it or Trick it. I would say that banning Manaphy would be much more productive than banning Drizzletoad.

Skymin: Skymin I am on the fence about. It is extremely difficult to counter but counter's do exist. I think it's best to do a suspect test for it atleast, but I am not convinced it is broken.

Darkrai: With the new sleep mechanics this guy screams broken and in my opinion it needs to be banned. Still it has a few counters so it will be interesting to see how things go.

Deoxys A: Out of the Deoxys forms this is the most broken with its insane attack and special attack and extremespeed. Definately deserves a test.

 

[reachzero]

I wasn't comparing them in the sense that they are equally as powerful. They were very different metagames. I was comparing the fact that they were both really good pokemon for their time and could easily bring up claims of "overcentralization". In Advance, people used HP Bug sets to beat the overcentralizing Celebi because there weren't many other things that could even 2hko it. This thread to me should be about trying to find ways like that to beat potential suspects like Manaphy, instead of just discussing why it should be banned. Lati@s, Choice Scarf users, Nattorei, Ludicolo, other weather changers, etc.

I would just like to say that if you think something is broken, start thinking of ways to beat it instead of just giving up and say "ban it!". You already got team previews so you know it's coming, use all of this to your advantage!

I really think we should have waited for at least our first tier list before thinking about suspect tests =\

I don't mind the logic of this as much as I mind how theoretical this is--what are you actually using to stop Shaymin-S, Manaphy, Deoxys-a? If you are talking about ADV Celebi, you know what you can switch into it, how to play with or against it. No one is throwing in the towel when it comes to playing competitively here. In fact, to reach the rating requirement, you HAVE to figure out how to deal with the major threats. You can "play around stuff" and win even in the Ubers metagame, but whether such a metagame is desirable for Standard is a whole different story. Ultimately the question will be how hard a specific Pokemon is to play around--I'd be interested to hear about how well you are doing against these threats you think we are overestimating, and what you are using against them.

 

[Bologo]

I wasn't comparing them in the sense that they are equally as powerful. They were very different metagames. I was comparing the fact that they were both really good pokemon for their time and could easily bring up claims of "overcentralization". In Advance, people used HP Bug sets to beat the overcentralizing Celebi because there weren't many other things that could even 2hko it. This thread to me should be about trying to find ways like that to beat potential suspects like Manaphy, instead of just discussing why it should be banned. Lati@s, Choice Scarf users, Nattorei, Ludicolo, other weather changers, etc.

I would just like to say that if you think something is broken, start thinking of ways to beat it instead of just giving up and say "ban it!". You already got team previews so you know it's coming, use all of this to your advantage!

I agree with you that we should be figuring out ways to beat things. The only problem is that in these topics, whenever someone mentions a way to beat a big threat, you always get a chain of jackasses that post after that saying "OH SO I'M FORCED TO CARRY [insert pokemon name] ON EVERY ONE OF MY TEAMS JUST TO DEAL WITH [insert threat]? OVERCENTRALIZATION! BAN NOW!" I'm serious. Even when you explicitly mention that people shouldn't do that, they're still going to do that. That literally happened all the time in Gen 4, and it's part of why I stopped caring about suspect tests halfway through.

People unfortunately don't understand that centralization doesn't equal uber, and a lot of the time it doesn't seem like they're ever going to get it. At least this is the way it's been with the OU tier. I just hope people aren't going to continuously cling to this idea of everything having a counter and "overcentralization".

I really think we should have waited for at least our first tier list before thinking about suspect tests =\

I really think we should've waited until after exams to start a damn suspect test. It's really, really hard to find time to play without taking up study time, much less trying to get 1500, which I don't think will be possible with exams.

...

One tip if people want to deal with a majority of these faster threats is to use OTR Bronzong. His Gyro Balls are fuckishly strong, despite the 89 base Attack, and he turns the high Speed of a lot of these threats against them. Not to mention that he's a near perfect Doryuuzu and Deoxys-A counter. He does have a lot of trouble with Manaphy, however, so he can't deal with every likely suspect.

 

[Naxte]

Shaymin-S doesn't need flinchhax to beat Rotom-H, no matter how much it invests in its defenses. All it needs is Choice Specs and Seed Flare, and it 2HKOs Rotom-H 80% of the time due to the Special Defense drop.

Specsmin-S is really deadly. While I don't know if it's a broken set, it still takes out a lot of his normal checks. Even Blissey can't avoid a 2HKO if Stealth Rock is in play. Air Slash hits even harder now, and is able to actually OHKO a lot of frail sweepers.

While he loses the blinding Speed of the Choice Scarf set, he's still got 388 Speed, so he's still going to be able to do a lot of damage before he goes down.

Don't really have any particular feelings on Skymin either way myself for the moment, but I just want to say that this really seems misleading though, since the chances of that all happening are much lower than 80%. I mean, Seed Flare only has a 64% chance of even hitting twice in a row, and that's not factoring in the chance of getting a SpD drop on the first hit (SpD-drop on Serene Grace Seed Flare is still 60%, unless I missed a change to it; in other words, the same as Air Flinch-hax). Doing so would put the chances of this scenario happening below 50% I believe, or in other words, in Rotom-H's favor most of the time, meaning it's not a very favorable opponent for Skymin, unlike that 80% statistic suggests. And, not having the time to do the damage calcs myself for the moment, that's assuming that that 80% in your post comes from Seed Flare's accuracy, and isn't the chance of Rotom-H being 2HKO'd even in that situation (it's really unclear in your post), which would push it even lower.

 

[Bologo]

That really seems misleading though, since the chances of that all happening are much lower than 80%. I mean, Seed Flare only has a 64% chance of even hitting twice in a row, and that's not factoring in the chance of getting a SpD drop on the first hit (SpD-drop on Serene Grace Seed Flare is still 60%, unless I missed a change to it; in other words, the same as Air Flinch-hax). Doing so would put the chances of this scenario happening below 50% I believe, or in other words, in Rotom-H's favor most of the time, meaning it's not a very favorable opponent for Skymin, unlike that 80% statistic suggests.

1) Seed Flare has 85% accuracy, not 80%. So it's a 72% chance of hitting twice in a row.
2) Um, it's always been an 80% drop with Serene Grace, even in Gen 4.

In other words, it's actually about a 60% chance of that scenario occurring if you take into account accuracy as well, meaning that it's still actually a favourable opponent for Skymin.

 

[Naxte]

Ah, my mistake then. Been a while since the Gen IV Skymin test, so I guess I got my facts on Skymin mixed up since that time. Sorry about that.

 

[Arc Tech]

Rotom-h doesn't have any reliable way of healing anyway, outside of rest, meaning that shaymin could just switch out if it misses/doesn't get the drop.

Also the chance of seed flare hitting twice and getting the sp def drop on the first is 57.8% - so the match is still in skymin's favor.