Ok, i have some stuff to say to balance the electric type.
I will say unban Zekrom from the electric type only, because there is so much threats that electric cant get rid of.
Electric is walled by Gastrodon, Chansey, and Mega Venusaur, all of which zekrom can take care of. Also, electric can get killed easily by Serperior Contrary and Excadrill. And Mega Sableye can OBLITERATE electric completely, calm mind recover? Whats electric gonna do, all the physical attackers suck. Zekrom can destroy mega sableye, leaving us not getting swept 0-6 by sableye. Sure, you can say "oh, just superpower/knock off the chansey, or grass knot the gastrodon". Well it isnt that dam easy for those of u who dont use electric. They can easily switch out into something else, and grass knot only does about 50-60% to gastrodon. Mega venusaur, what the heck can get rid of that on electric except stalling? Seriously, Zekrom can get rid of so much problems with electric. Also, you guys unbanned Kyu-W from ice, gave grass contrary serperior and skymin, what are u gonna give electric? Zekrom is the only thing that can help it. Heck, electric didnt even get an oras electric mega. No support given to electric at all. Seriously, even volc boosted can sweep electric. Mono normal will most likely destroy electric, thanks to chansey, porygon, lopunny, and especially diggersby. Even a +1 or +2 Charizard X can sweep electric.
And even if electric did have Zekrom, all of it's counters wouldnt be covered. Zekrom can still rek electric pretty well, especially scarf mold breaker. And according to monotype usage stats, electric is the least type used. And even water and flying, where i should have an "advantage" have many ways to kill electric. Ferrothorn can still counter zekrom, too. Many physical walls can still wall zekrom, and electric has crappy phyiscal users. Electivire? who uses that garbage. Too slow and frail. Eelektross? Come on, that thing is so slow. And even electivire is faster than zekrom. Seriously, zekrom isnt gonna make electric "op". If anything, electric needs zekrom to compete. Things like lando-t, ferrothorn, physical defense mega venu, hippowdon, maybe mega swampert, excadrill, scizor, +1 charizard x, and more all can counter zekrom.
Ok, I'm gonna do this in a somewhat reverse order, and start with one of this argument's conclusions:
We must not unban more ubers in this metagame. It's a wonderful idea to give weaker types more powerful pokemon, and it'd be great if all types were equally powerful, but let's face it: it just doesn't work. For example, Ice was recently given Kyurem-W because of a number of reasons, such as the type in general not being particularly powerful, as well as some things like +2 M-Scizor literally having no counters after SR was set. In hindsight, it was the right thing to do to give Kyu-W a chance, and it would have been great had the experiment worked. But it failed. Let's look at some stats to back up these claims:
Ice team usage: 2.83%, 4th lowest, above electric, grass, and finally rock. This is getting on for a quarter as much usage as flying, so the idea that it would now be on equal footing is completely out the window. It's still practically insignificant. To put it into context, a pokemon used less than 3.41% of the time in OU is considered UU. By this standard, Ice teams as a whole would be UU, in other words considered completely outside of the common standard pokemon used in a standard tier.
Ok, so the usage wasn't increased, but that doesn't mean the type didn't improve, right? Well, let's look at how well they do. The first thing you note when you look at
scpinion 's lovely chart at the bottom of
this page is that ice either does very well or very badly. For example, ice beat flying 65% of the time in the 1630 stats, not to mention beating grass and dragon 70% of the time and poison 75% of the time! But wait. The most imbalanced matchup of all, shown below that lovely chart, happens to be fighting vs. ice, in which ice loses a whopping 85.8% of the time! And the 4th worst matchup, ice against steel, they lose 83% of the time! On that bottom chart, ice shows up five times out of fifty games, winning one time and losing four.
So what does this all tell us? Well, it tells us that ice has improved, that's for sure. There's no way they'd be beating Poison 75% of the time without that monster! But is that really a good thing? Poison's already underpowered enough, it doesn't need another monster unleased to destroy it further, and if you want to unleash a poison uber to deal with Kyu-W then you're getting into Arceus terratory, and trust me when I say you
don't want to unlease Arceus onto Monotype. And don't even suggest Mega Gengar. What's this really saying? It's telling us that if you use Ice, then it's not going to be about how good you are at pokemon. In the end, it's going to be a question of what types you're up against. And that's pretty much the definition of uncompetitive: you're simply making games luck-based rather than skill-based. This is not what we want in monotype games. The whole point of competitive pokemon is that it is competitive, and therefore based on the players' skill rather than luck. And it doesn't even do what it was originally there for: +2 M-Scizor with rocks up sweeps whether teams run Kyu-W or not!
And more, good players still don't use ice! My evidence for this is the fact that, even in the weighted stats, Kyu-W is used a mere 70% of the time, meaning the dream pokemon sent to make ice better isn't even being used all the time! With Kyu-B having 20% usage, this still leaves 10% of players not using either of the better Kyurems, showing rather well that it hasn't done its job to any real extent.
But ok, the comparison to Kyu-W can only go so far. Perhaps there's differences here, that will change things? Well, let's look at the complaints electric teams have: Gastrodon? Since when was Giga Drain Galvantula not a solid answer? Sure, it's not the most amazing poke ever, but on electric teams it's more than decent. I always make sure my offensive teams carry a grass move for the hippowdon/gastrodon core, that's something to watch out for, but it's far from unbeatable by any means. Chansey? If you're complaining about Electivire or Knock Off/Superpower Thundurus, then that's your problem. They're perfectly good answers, and if there's answers which you simply dislike using then that's a problem with your teambuilding, not with the meta in general. Having to run a pokemon you dislike is simply sometimes a necessity, and there's far worse situations out there such as Mega Medicham's power against Normal teams. Contrary serperior? The thing's annoying, but a number of pokemon do decent damage to it and you can take it down with relative ease.
252 SpA Life Orb Galvantula Bug Buzz vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Serperior: 330-390 (113.4 - 134%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Excadrill? This thing's annoying, that's true. But mold breaker sets are almost always scarf and handily walled by zapdos, while sand rush sets are beaten by rotom-w. It's generally fairly easy to tell which set it'll be from the team, as well.
Ok, onto the tougher pokes. Mega Sableye? Sheesh, that thing sweeps loads of teams. IMO, ban it. Otherwise, the reasoning for no ban will include the fact that those arguing for no ban simply believe it beating electric isn't enough reason for a ban. In which case, unbanning an uber for the matchup really isn't going to be worthwhile either. And as the calcs in the above post showed, Zekrom doesn't even beat it! So it's not exactly a reason to unban Zekrom.
Mega Venasaur? I feel your pain, that thing is annoying as heck. If you don't want to run something like Psychic Thundurus or offensive HP flying Zapdos, that thing's gonna be trouble. That said, it's used a whopping 3.63% of 1630-level games, against teams where you can keep up offensive pressure to some extent, and even then it's probably not gonna be doing particularly much damage to you. If the worst comes to the worst, synthesis only has 8pp and you've got pressure zapdos on your side. It's an uphill battle, but it's an uphill battle in less than 4% of games, and if you play very well you can still win in any case.
So sure, electric struggles. But there's very little it absolutely can't beat, if you build your team well. It seems to me that adding Zekrom is unnecessary. It's a shame that Electric isn't as good at the other types. I'd love a metagame where any type had a 50% chance of beating any other type, or even within 10% or 15% or even 20% of that. But the sad fact of the matter is, it's not gonna end up that way, and it certainly won't end up that way if we go about it by unbanning more ubers.
So let's say we unbanned Zekrom anyway, despite not only having dire warnings not to, but also not actually having a need to. What would happen? Would it be any different to what happened with ice? Well, the short answer is no. The long answer is nope. The even longer answer goes as follows:
Electric now thrashes Flying and Water teams. After their ground-type is down, which is easy enough to do by spamming Draco Meteor the first few times it comes in then switching out into another threat, Scarf Bolt Strike will sweep pretty easily.
252+ Atk Teravolt Zekrom Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Zapdos: 208-246 (54.1 - 64%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Teravolt Zekrom Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Lanturn: 259-306 (57 - 67.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Teravolt Zekrom Bolt Strike vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Mega Charizard X: 118-140 (32.8 - 38.9%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO - Ok bulkzard wins this but is it really gonna risk the draco meteor? And in any case, the electric player can always just switch out and in again. And it doesn't even KO back:
0 Atk Tough Claws Mega Charizard X Dragon Claw vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Zekrom: 246-290 (72.1 - 85%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Ok, so Electric (which can easily pressure those ground-types BTW) has a serious advantage here. So what about Electric's weaknesses?
Well, vs. Dragon Zekrom evens it out a little, it's hard to argue with that. But dragon teams are made, in part, to beat opposing dragon teams. They're not only going to have no problems with revenge killing Zekrom, but they're also gonna have no problems sacking a poke each time it comes in, because then Scarf Kyu-B comes in to say hi and something on the electric team dies if the dragon player predicts right, and assuming you don't have a balloon magnezone sitting in the back. In fact, Kyu-B is still a prominent threat vs. electric teams, and its 5 higher base speed means it's still unhindered by its half-brother Zekrom.
So what about Electric's second-worst matchup, Ground? Well, to be honest not much has changed:
252+ Atk Teravolt Zekrom Outrage vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Hippowdon: 153-181 (36.4 - 43%) -- 98.2% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
4 SpA Teravolt Zekrom Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Hippowdon: 214-253 (50.9 - 60.2%) -- 89.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery - Nice in theory, until you realise the SpA drop means it's unable to 2HKO and Hippo can just heal up in its face, getting back up to 100% while it switches out after Leftovers, assuming no Rocks (which isn't much of an assumption against electric).
So, yeah, it can clean if Hippo's in a bad position... but the lack of hazards means it can't just force switches until Hippo's weakened enough to hurt it, and other than that Ground teams are still going to 100% wall any electric teams... assuming they don't run a grass move, which was your problem with them in the first place: that they forced you to run a grass move. Explain again,
how exactly is that a problem?
tl;dr I have no life cuz i just spent two hours writing this. But anyway,
Do not unban Zekrom for the love of any gods there may be. That thing is "borked af" (technical term) and would not only not be the help that electric wants, but pose yet another threat to the metagame and further weaken some types that are already weak: How exactly would you recommend poison deal with this threat?
In fact, I'll go yet further and ask that we
Suspect test Kyu-W alongside the other unbanned ubers,
after the current round of suspects is dealt with. At least let us deal with those first though.
