np: ORAS OU Suspect Process, Round 3 - Wandering Ghosts [Aegislash remains in Ubers]

[Grim]

Not that far away from reqs now so I might as well make a post now.

As it is now, I have nothing against Aegislash in OU. Its typing is still amazing, making it a good check to Pokemon such as Mega Gardevoir, Mega Heracross, and Lati@s, but none of the relevant newly introduced ORAS Mega Evolutions have a particularly hard time with Aegislash. Mega Altaria has Earthquake and Fire Blast, Metagross has Earthquake (RIP Hammer Arm), Lopunny has Scrappy High Jump Kick, Mega Sableye actually walls most variants, Mega Diancie has Earth Power, etc. Most of them can 2HKO Aegislash, so it's most definitely not making them less viable. I also do not believe that Aegislash is 'broken' as in being overpowered. Sure it has lots of sets with different counters, but they all come with their own faults. For example, the fast Life Orb sets are hard to counter for balanced and stall teams, but are not hard at all to revenge kill by faster threats because of the bulk loss. Honestly I feel like people are exaggerating how hard it is to deal with Aegislash. You don't need to specifically put two Aegislash checks in your team (unless it's like stall preparing for fast Swords Dance Aegislash but even then you don't need two checks). If you have a well built team than you should by default have two Pokemon that hit it very hard because of Aegislash's weakness to common Dark, Fire, and Ground moves. I'm not saying that it's the players fault for being bad teambuilders, but Aegislash's ability to rip through teams is grossly exaggerated. You could argue that Aegislash's overcentralization is enough to push it back into ubers, but its overcentralization is not even that bad for OU as it makes the tier less matchup dependant. I used to be against an overcentralized metagame based around Aegislash, but I'm a decent enough teambuilder at this point that I know how hard it is to deal with all of the threats in ORAS OU. That said, I tend to change my mind a lot and OU with Aegislash might turn out to be too boring for me, so I might end up voting ban anyway.

 

[teamsnickers]

Before I start this post I want to say that I don't want anyone coming back at me saying that Aegis doesn't fit the definitions and descriptions I'm about to give. I don't feel I've played enough games on the suspect ladder to have a good feel of Aegis, I'm just talking completely about the theory and mentality here. So for that sake, just imagine Aegislash is over-centralizing whether that turns out to be true or not - I'm simply addressing the mentality and theory here rather than if Aegislash fits any of this at all. Same applies to the pro-ban side; don't come back to me saying the current meta isn't completely match-up based, I'm simply addressing the theory and mentality. drinking game how many times does kurona say theory and mentality
I've gotta jump in and say that something I'm seeing a lot on this thread and something that's really worrying me is that quite a few people on the anti-ban side - not all of them; I have seen quite a few legitimately good anti-ban posts from users who have thought this through well - is that there's this "Pick your poison" mentality. This isn't necessarily directed at any one individual, but I'm seeing a lot of "well the metagame is too match-up based right now and it's better to have it over-centralized". What you're doing there is not attempting to make the metagame good by bringing Aegis back down, what you're trying to do there is make the metagame slightly less painful by bringing Aegis back down. Maybe an over-centralized metagame is better than a match-up based one, I won't try and say one's better than the other because that's completely subjective, but what I will say is that neither is a desirable outcome in the slightest. What we should be striving towards is a metagame that's fun to play; not a match-up based one, not an over-centralized one which is in your opinion slightly less bad, but a metagame in which these problems either do not exist or are minimized as much as humanly possible. Funnily enough, I think teamsnickers summed it up pretty well himself; he honestly admitted that the current meta is awful, he felt there's no fixing it so might as well bring Aegis down. If you're voting to bring Aegis down because you think Over-centralization > Match-up, please reconsider. Neither is a good outcome and this will only cause much more trouble than it's worth; simply wait for the next suspect where hopefully a better solution will be found - such as a Lando-I suspect, for instance - but hastily jumping for Over-centralization over Match-up based won't solve a thing.

Kurona summed it up way better than I did and it really comes down to this
You have to admit you ***** up in order to recover.... we royally **** up in this metagame that when teambuilding there's a bunch of "over centralizing" things you have to take account for...
It's gotten so bad that people r begging for mega metagross to get retested even thou literally NOTHING CHANGED since the last test... now let me get back on topic before I go on another entirely different rant

How over centralizing can aegislash be?
Lets look at the viability rankings guys... We have 4 s rank mons that are all extremely diverse... but are all offensive (mega alt can run bulky thou) we all know how much the spooky sword **** hyper offense and can actually bring some diversity into a metagame that needs some CPR
95 percent of mons that get tested once and get banned wont come back
^I saw some people post a quote from AM saying this and I just sighed... This is NOT AT ALL the same metagame from x and y or anything close from that.. Aegislash was over centralizing than and was fairly "broken" then but both of those are not true in ORAS. Aegislash is not nearly as effective as it was in x and y (although it will still most likely be s ranked) and there's some much broken shit running around in this meta that it will stabilize it and be just as effective as all the other s rank mons...
Im not on the ou council (trust me u would not want me on it>) but we can all agree that SOMETHING has to change and this at least looks promising. The way to strive for a perfect metagame is banning, but after mega metagross not being banned (which would have lead to other bans) this is where we're at

So IMO the best thing we can do to bring SOME stability to the metagame is by bringing the spooky sword.. if anyone here has another way to fix the metagame PLEASE LMK because in the 20 plus pages of this thread there hasn't been any

 

[Sharpteeth]

Kurona summed it up way better than I did and it really comes down to this
You have to admit you ***** up in order to recover.... we royally **** up in this metagame that when teambuilding there's a bunch of "over centralizing" things you have to take account for...
It's gotten so bad that people r begging for mega metagross to get retested even thou literally NOTHING CHANGED since the last test... now let me get back on topic before I go on another entirely different rant

I'll start counter-arguing here then.

How over centralizing can aegislash be?
Lets look at the viability rankings guys... We have 4 s rank mons that are all extremely diverse... but are all offensive (mega alt can run bulky thou) we all know how much the spooky sword **** hyper offense and can actually bring some diversity into a metagame that needs some CPR

Incorrect. The most common playstyle is Aegislash-Lop-Bisharp-Lando Hyper Offense right now. Aegislash does not beat hyper-offense: it gives it an extremely strong breaker and defensive check to stuff at once. Stall is so dead it can now escape Shadow Tag.

95 percent of mons that get tested once and get banned wont come back
^I saw some people post a quote from AM saying this and I just sighed... This is NOT AT ALL the same metagame from x and y or anything close from that.. Aegislash was over centralizing than and was fairly "broken" then but both of those are not true in ORAS. Aegislash is not nearly as effective as it was in x and y (although it will still most likely be s ranked) and there's some much broken shit running around in this meta that it will stabilize it and be just as effective as all the other s rank mons...

1. We do not use broken stuff to check broken stuff. Technically, M-Rayquaza could check every broken thing in OU, but it'd ruin the meta.
2. Aegi does not keep them in control at all. With Aegi around, one of 2 case happens: Aegi either becomes their best partner (Lando, Keldeo, Bisharp, Lopunny come to mind) or Aegi completely replaces them (Metagross, Gardevoir) and is harder to handle. That's the problem with using broken to check broken. You bring back Aegi to check Pokemon X, and next think you know, everyone's using the Aegislash-Pokemon X core.

Im not on the ou council (trust me u would not want me on it>)

Correct.

but we can all agree that SOMETHING has to change

Debatable.

and this at least looks promising.

After making reqs, my opinion is that that's incorrect. Aegislash becomes a lazy way to not lose to a lot of mons, which kills creativity and diversity.

The way to strive for a perfect metagame is banning, but after mega metagross not being banned (which would have lead to other bans) this is where we're at

I have no idea where "this" is, as you didn't explain, so I won't comment.

So IMO the best thing we can do to bring SOME stability to the metagame is by bringing the spooky sword.. if anyone here has another way to fix the metagame PLEASE LMK because in the 20 plus pages of this thread there hasn't been any

This entire argument is based on the assumption that the meta desperately needs fixing. I mean, technically, we reached a point where new suspects for being banned from OU are starting to get split votes, so in other words, the point where things aren't clearly broken anymore. I don't think the current OU meta is actually terrible.

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

Just randomly throwing this out there, not like my post isn't going to get lost in the sea of posts anyways... but Air Balloon Aegislash is pretty legit imo. Requires a lot of prediction skills to not get your balloon popped but against mons like Excadrill or Mega Metagross you can potentially get a free SD or just knock them out. There's also stuff like Landorus (a set like RP/Earth Power/Sludge Wave/Focus Blast is totally walled). Worst case scenario you're forcing your opponent to predict your switch with Iron Head when they're trying to Rapid Spin with Exca.

Also if you've never tried this, mixed LO Aegislash is probably the best Shell Smash recipient there is O: Flatout immunity or resistance to common priority moves, outstanding power and flawless coverage. Not that this is relevant but if you want to have some fun on the suspect ladder give it a try.

 

[WebBowser]

Just to chime in on MikeDawg's excellent point on the correlation between something's usage, viability, and the amount that something defines the meta. If something is not used, then there is no incentive to prepare for it because you'll never encounter it. If the aforementioned something was viable, then almost inevitably someone will notice that and begin abusing everyone's lack of preparedness for positive matchups on the ladder (which is pretty much what I do whenever I feel like laddering with my BP team). Eventually, good players will notice that they are losing to this threat that they have not really prepared for, and react either by editing their team or changing their in game strategy. This is how a metagame develops. Providing that the sole goal of competitive players is to simply "win" by any OU legal means, usage should correlate with viability at the highest play levels.

Of course, occasionally other factors may come into play in usage.

Many players prefer some playstyles over others, which in extreme cases dictate entire metagame trends. For example, the widespread stigma against Geopass has prevented Smeargle from receiving anywhere near the amount of usage that his probable brokenness implies.

Furthermore, Some pokemon are easier to fit onto teams then others. For example, Greninja was quite a bit more broken then Lando-T, but according to the January usage stats(aka, stats right before Gren got banned), Gren was well below Lando-T and Heatran in usage just because the latter two were so much easier to slap onto teams.

 

[Let's go shuckles]

The whole idea of this retest is that aegislash will bring a healthy and stable metagame by being a reliable check to many top tier threats at the risk of causing overcentralization. Seeing that it's been beaten to death that aegi does and will cause the metagame to be extremely overcantralized around the thing just like it did in the x and y metagame, the question is, does aegi actually brings a healthy and stable metagame?
The answer to this imo is no. While Aegi does decrease the viability in some top tier threats, such as mega gross, mega altarai, and mega garde, it also leads to the increase in power in other pokemon, like lando-i, bisharp, and mega charizard y, to gain increased viability to easily replace the fallen threats with other ones. The metagame will still be heavily offensively focused with aegi reintroduced only with different top tier threats and a metagame that revolves around aegislash.

 

[teamsnickers]

I'll start counter-arguing here then.



Incorrect. The most common playstyle is Aegislash-Lop-Bisharp-Lando Hyper Offense right now. Aegislash does not beat hyper-offense: it gives it an extremely strong breaker and defensive check to stuff at once. Stall is so dead it can now escape Shadow Tag.



1. We do not use broken stuff to check broken stuff. Technically, M-Rayquaza could check every broken thing in OU, but it'd ruin the meta.
2. Aegi does not keep them in control at all. With Aegi around, one of 2 case happens: Aegi either becomes their best partner (Lando, Keldeo, Bisharp, Lopunny come to mind) or Aegi completely replaces them (Metagross, Gardevoir) and is harder to handle. That's the problem with using broken to check broken. You bring back Aegi to check Pokemon X, and next think you know, everyone's using the Aegislash-Pokemon X core.



Correct.



Debatable.



After making reqs, my opinion is that that's incorrect. Aegislash becomes a lazy way to not lose to a lot of mons, which kills creativity and diversity.



I have no idea where "this" is, as you didn't explain, so I won't comment.



This entire argument is based on the assumption that the meta desperately needs fixing. I mean, technically, we reached a point where new suspects for being banned from OU are starting to get split votes, so in other words, the point where things aren't clearly broken anymore. I don't think the current OU meta is actually terrible.

I think you missed my point here
youre right u dont use broken to check broken you ban the broken stuff but mega metagross wasnt banned and we're to far along now...

picture aegislash like a bandaid to the current metagame and thats fine what you dont think the metagame is broken thats your opinion but the vast majority thinks its royally**** up (hence why people want mega metagross retested despite the fact that the metagame has not changed what so ever, and nothing is clearly broken because in the metagame as I said there's so much broken ***** for a regular ou that we're use to,... but oras aint like that (not that this is a problem its just a fact) also about killing diversity... we dont have any diversity rn anyway so if anything this will help, people saying things like aegi stops mega hera and medicham etc... those mons arent used anyway and if it stops the s rank megas (alt/megagross) then if anything this promotes diversity

But we can all agree aegi is not broken (well most of us can) but as u know most of your points were valid I just think you're overstating aegislash's effectiveness on the metagame

 

[Immortal]

The whole idea of this retest is that aegislash will bring a healthy and stable metagame by being a reliable check to many top tier threats at the risk of causing overcentralization. Seeing that it's been beaten to death that aegi does and will cause the metagame to be extremely overcantralized around the thing just like it did in the x and y metagame, the question is, does aegi actually brings a healthy and stable metagame?
The answer to this imo is no. While Aegi does decrease the viability in some top tier threats, such as mega gross, mega altarai, and mega garde, it also leads to the increase in power in other pokemon, like lando-i, bisharp, and mega charizard y, to gain increased viability to easily replace the fallen threats with other ones. The metagame will still be heavily offensively focused with aegi reintroduced only with different top tier threats and a metagame that revolves around aegislash.

While lando I may already be broken and it becoming even better may not be ideal, i gotta say that char y and bisharp while great pokemon are much easier to check than mega meta, and maga alt (who would still be great just not borderline broken) because Char Y's SR weakness and underwhelming speed and bisharp's low speed and 4x fighting weakness which is easily taken advantage of by top pokemon like keldeo. Honestly what you said seems like a good thing, a few very top threats will be slightly weaker and a couple good but not great mons will get slightly better making none except possibly lando I broken, creating more diversity. If this is true lando I just might have to go like it has in the past

 

[Alfalfa]

Kurona summed it up way better than I did and it really comes down to this
You have to admit you ***** up in order to recover.... we royally **** up in this metagame that when teambuilding there's a bunch of "over centralizing" things you have to take account for...
It's gotten so bad that people r begging for mega metagross to get retested even thou literally NOTHING CHANGED since the last test... now let me get back on topic before I go on another entirely different rant

How over centralizing can aegislash be?
Lets look at the viability rankings guys... We have 4 s rank mons that are all extremely diverse... but are all offensive (mega alt can run bulky thou) we all know how much the spooky sword **** hyper offense and can actually bring some diversity into a metagame that needs some CPR
95 percent of mons that get tested once and get banned wont come back
^I saw some people post a quote from AM saying this and I just sighed... This is NOT AT ALL the same metagame from x and y or anything close from that.. Aegislash was over centralizing than and was fairly "broken" then but both of those are not true in ORAS. Aegislash is not nearly as effective as it was in x and y (although it will still most likely be s ranked) and there's some much broken shit running around in this meta that it will stabilize it and be just as effective as all the other s rank mons...
Im not on the ou council (trust me u would not want me on it>) but we can all agree that SOMETHING has to change and this at least looks promising. The way to strive for a perfect metagame is banning, but after mega metagross not being banned (which would have lead to other bans) this is where we're at

So IMO the best thing we can do to bring SOME stability to the metagame is by bringing the spooky sword.. if anyone here has another way to fix the metagame PLEASE LMK because in the 20 plus pages of this thread there hasn't been any

We could alternatively fix the actual problem by banning Pokemon that are problems instead of inserting a blanket check that only the metagame even more cancerous to deal with. Why is everybody afraid of suspecting Landorus or anything else that could be a problem? In addition, while Aegislash can check some of the potential problematic Pokemon in OU (bar Landorus), you also run the risk of improving that Pokemon by introducing a very easy way to remove any one of its checks, which has been pointed out for the past 20-25 pages. You could argue that Aegislash brought stability, but you could have argued that with Gira-O as well, even if it was a joke suspect, and Gira-O was clearly overpowering.

 

[RoyalDispenser]

Honestly, the current state I see our metagame in makes me wonder if banning/unbanning aegislash will fix it or not. However, that's the thing.. the metagame is borked as it is. If aegislash doesn't fix it from being borked, then there is no point in trying to ban aegislash if the outcome is the same regardless. Sure it's another threat to prepare for, but it's been argued to death by not only anti-ban but pro-ban alike the pokemon itself is not broken, but the metagame is (which I disagree). If the meta is stale and difficult for the average player to enjoy, then what's the difference if it becomes stale and difficult with aegislash's presence.

Also, I know a lot of claims are "Teams are just lop+lando+aegislash+3 checks" but realistically banning the element that isn't broken due to the synergy it provides, isn't exactly the solution to "copy and paste" teams. Think baton pass; banning scolipede would've stopped baton pass abuse all together.. he was the one who pretty much defined the baton pass playstyle, but instead we nerfed the playstyle itself rather than banning the pokemon that defined it. If HO or balanced is defined by aegislash, it's not aegislash's fault, but another principle that needs attended to. If lopunny becomes broken, potentially it always was.. (if megameta wasn't around as much I'm sure it'd go out of control) if lando becomes broken, obviously, it always had been and warrants a potential test sooner or later regardless of aegi's influence. Worrying these cores will get out of control seems really more or less like theorymoning and discluding the idea we still can suspect other broken elements.

As others have said, the metagame is stale, it's matchup reliant, and it's not exactly improving in the slightest since lando isn't meta defining, just broken and difficult to counter.. while megagross who is meta defining, passed his suspect test to keep fairies and the like in check.

I'm not attempting to use this as a pro-ban, or even a legitimate poor anti-ban argument, however It's gotten to that point in the metagame where whatever we do, the result will always be stale or unbalanced at some point, and we even asked for this when we let metagross remain in the OU tier, which the playerbase voted for already, and the main reason why we're desperately trying to reintroduce a mon like aegislash or even joked around with introducing giratina into the tier. Vote Ban, Vote Do not Ban, Vote Ban KS, it's not solving anything. My conclusion is that the already shit metagame becoming worse isn't exactly what we should be looking at with aegislash's reintroduction, but rather how much better, or neutral the playstyles that define it, have become as a whole.

Stall doesn't seem to gain much, one of stall's issues was lack of something to handle stallbreakers, which sableye fills the role aegislash does, while still being a gothitelle answer to stall. Even with aegislash, he's not stopping goth from doing it's job, assassinating chansey for deadly sweepers like zard Y to take advantage of. It's neutral here.

HO gains a powerful pokemon that synergizes well with the team and can clear out walls like latis for pokemon like keldeo and zard y to take advantage of. However at the same time, aegislash balances HO vs. HO with metagross, the other hard hitter which nearly 2HKO's the tier, completely defining it. This is more of a trade between gaining a new offensive threat that surpasses others, while still nerfing others from becoming massive threats. It's not "adding to the list" but rather, going on top of the list to boot the others off of it as uncontrollable. Call it broken checking broken, but I'm still not convinced aegi is broken enough to rightfully label the situation as broken vs. broken. Annoying, maybe, but many things are annoying which isn't a viable excuse for something to be removed.

Balance, pretty much the same as HO in this case. However balance still needs those support mons like ferrothorn and the like which aegislash does not synergize well with. He fits well on balance teams while offering offensive pressure, but from a defensive and support perspective aegi will only be able to fit on so many balance teams.

Rain, yeah no, aegislash have no influence here at all unless you consider swampert checking him enough of a reason for a rise in rain teams..

Baton pass, I haven't seen a BP team effectively utilizing aegislash to support it, so I cannot say there is necessarily a connection here. I'm sure a certain somebody might find a neat little trick with this new toy, but I don't think it'll be a metadefining adaptation to the playstyle itself.

Other playstyles I do not see, and I lurked and seen past debates whether or not other playstyles like trick room as considered playstyles.. so I'll just leave it with those few I listed.

 

[Mastoise]

Aegislash should definitely be banned, as it is way too good against offense

I mean, some threats are better against stall than Aegislash is against offense, but uh...

hm...

(oh yea mixed aegis, too bad no one ever used it for the most part)

tons of people used mixed aegis, Shadow ball + sacred sword is literally all you need attacking wise. mixed attacker with life orb is it's best set imo.

 

[teamsnickers]

We could alternatively fix the actual problem by banning Pokemon that are problems instead of inserting a blanket check that only the metagame even more cancerous to deal with. Why is everybody afraid of suspecting Landorus or anything else that could be a problem? In addition, while Aegislash can check some of the potential problematic Pokemon in OU (bar Landorus), you also run the risk of improving that Pokemon by introducing a very easy way to remove any one of its checks, which has been pointed out for the past 20-25 pages. You could argue that Aegislash brought stability, but you could have argued that with Gira-O as well, even if it was a joke suspect, and Gira-O was clearly overpowering.

while this is true giro o was overpowering.... aegi is not its not broken most of us have came to realize that (and when it was broken in x and y it was decided by 2 votes>) the question is if aegislash is healthy for the metagame or not

 

[SketchUp]

So you guys want to bring back Aegislash to OU and you use the argument that it checks top tier threats????
The only things Aegislash does is making many of these threats better and even the borderline broken things it is supposed to counter [m-alt and m-meta has been brought up a few times] can get past Aegislash with Fire Blast / EQ and EQ respectively. In fact, Aegislash stops many pokemon that are healthy for the metagame (Jirachi, Celebi) better than it stops stuff like Mega Diancie.
When I am reading some pro-OU posts the most common arguments are 'it helps with the matchup problem' and 'it is not even that broken'. Both arguments are perfectly fine but if you think any further these two arguments can be countered and that is exactly what I am going to do:

RoyalDispenser

''The Metagame is stale and matchup reliant''

To begin you are completely missing the point by saying the metagame is stale. How is a non-centralized, diverse metagame stale and why the hell do you want to fix this non existing staleness by reintroducing a centralising pokemon? Many people dislike the ORAS metagame but one of the nice parts of ORAS [and late XY] is its diversity and Aegislash will take this diversity away for the most part because centralisation => less innovation. Of course the bad part about diversity is the problem many people have with matchup. I've played many games in ORAS and I have build some good teams and of course there are some matches where I had a big disadvantage because of the matchup but this problem will always be there. The amount of games I had a big disadvantage were very small though. The amount of matches I had a small advantage (or disadvantage) in matchup was significantly higher. You know why? Because I build a better team (or the opponent did) than my opponent / I did. Better teambuilding has been rewarded in this matchup. Small advantages can never be avoided if you have a metagame with more than 6 pokemon and I don't see how a metagame where teambuilding is rewarded is bad.
The thing we need to solve is the amount of matches were one player has a big disadvantage, even though both players have a good team. I know Smogon's main policy is to ban the least amount of pokemon as possible but I don't see why we shouldn't ban more stuff if it creates a better metagame. Banning broken pokemon is way better than retesting Aegislash (which even helps many of the borderline broken pokemon) because it leaves you with a diverse, non-centralised metagame and a metagame were broken doesn't check broken.

''Aegislash isn't even that broken''

Agreed. But for me the question 'Is it healthy?' is way more important. Do I think Aegislash is healthy? You can read that in the previous paragraph. (the answer is no btw)

 

[Kejmur]

So IMO the best thing we can do to bring SOME stability to the metagame is by bringing the spooky sword.. if anyone here has another way to fix the metagame PLEASE LMK because in the 20 plus pages of this thread there hasn't been any

I did suggest one idea and it's pretty simple, exactly first post at page 20. In case someone missed it I will repeat it.

Instead of suspect testing Aegislash, let's just present simple suspect test metagame, where most controversial candidates at the moment are out.

Plan MINIMUM:

Landorus-I
Meta Metagross

Standard Plan:

Mega Altaria
Landorus-I
Mega Metagross
Keldeo

I realize that Keldeo ISN'T broken, but it's S threat which has huge impact on metagame, Mega Altaria as well although she is so versatile that she may be a bit too much to handle sometimes. Plus it was mentioned by one of council members, that banning something not even broken MAY be allowed as exception if it would help out make metagame less stable/desired/interesting. So yep, standard plan include removing for suspect test all current S rank Pokemon. I would be curious how metagame would shape up with those missing and it would certainly take a heavy burden of team building without introducing something that literally blocks half of metagame with his existance alone. In potential future we would consider suspect testing them one by one if people desired so. Also I feel like testing Aegislash without them would make this less controversial and clouded as Aegislash make those even stronger, mostly with his Pursuit support. And as I said - I'm not a fan of Aegislash suspect test with all those (and few others as a bonus, but I feel like this is least drastic method) unlike introducing all banned in the past from OU Uber as I still feel like 'broken check out/support broken' aftertaste may be noticed in a way at the moment IMO with Aegislash in. So yes, I agree that Aegislash isn't broken, but also it's not healthy (well said btw) which is why I dislike it at the moment.

This is just my simple idea. If people won't like it - they won't discuss it.

 

[Alfalfa]

while this is true giro o was overpowering.... aegi is not its not broken most of us have came to realize that (and when it was broken in x and y it was decided by 2 votes>) the question is if aegislash is healthy for the metagame or not

I never stated in that quote that Aegislash was broken, but that it was problematic for the metagame due to the reasons I stated in that quote. A large number of people in XY OU, including those pro-ban, did not see it as broken either. The point is its negative and over-centralizing presence in the metagame due to how easily it can remove an opponent's defensive checks. You are not really explaining why Aegislash is not broken or even problematic. You argue that the metagame does not have that much diversity (without Aegislash), but this is far from true. There are an abundant number of threats from OU to choose from, and most of them are subject to experimentation, so saying that the metagame lacks diversity is an overstatement.

 

[Noulis]

So you guys want to bring back Aegislash to OU and you use the argument that it checks top tier threats????
The only things Aegislash does is making many of these threats better and even the borderline broken things it is supposed to counter [m-alt and m-meta has been brought up a few times] can get past Aegislash with Fire Blast / EQ and EQ respectively. In fact, Aegislash stops many pokemon that are healthy for the metagame (Jirachi, Celebi) better than it stops stuff like Mega Diancie.
When I am reading some pro-OU posts the most common arguments are 'it helps with the matchup problem' and 'it is not even that broken'. Both arguments are perfectly fine but if you think any further these two arguments can be countered and that is exactly what I am going to do:

RoyalDispenser

To begin you are completely missing the point by saying the metagame is stale. How is a non-centralized, diverse metagame stale and why the hell do you want to fix this non existing staleness by reintroducing a centralising pokemon? Many people dislike the ORAS metagame but one of the nice parts of ORAS [and late XY] is its diversity and Aegislash will take this diversity away for the most part because centralisation => less innovation. Of course the bad part about diversity is the problem many people have with matchup. I've played many games in ORAS and I have build some good teams and of course there are some matches where I had a big disadvantage because of the matchup but this problem will always be there. The amount of games I had a big disadvantage were very small though. The amount of matches I had a small advantage (or disadvantage) in matchup was significantly higher. You know why? Because I build a better team (or the opponent did) than my opponent / I did. Better teambuilding has been rewarded in this matchup. Small advantages can never be avoided if you have a metagame with more than 6 pokemon and I don't see how a metagame where teambuilding is rewarded is bad.
The thing we need to solve is the amount of matches were one player has a big disadvantage, even though both players have a good team. I know Smogon's main policy is to ban the least amount of pokemon as possible but I don't see why we shouldn't ban more stuff if it creates a better metagame. Banning broken pokemon is way better than retesting Aegislash (which even helps many of the borderline broken pokemon) because it leaves you with a diverse, non-centralised metagame and a metagame were broken doesn't check broken.


Agreed. But for me the question 'Is it healthy?' is way more important. Do I think Aegislash is healthy? You can read that in the previous paragraph. (the answer is no btw)

i understand what you are saying but let me ask you this...lando-i is getting suspected regardless of aegishlash coming back to OU or not and chances are that is going to be banned, then the most "broken" mon that comes to mind is mega-meta but we already suspected it and obviously it didn't got banned, so after the possibly lando-i ban that leaves us practicly with no choices, what then? and plz don't tell me we resuspect mega-meta.

 

[Aberforth]

I'm strongly opposed to having anything be banned if it's not either broken or uncompetitive, so I want to ask a simple question. To those saying keep it ubers, do you believe it is broken, or do you philosophically disagree with me on bans? Because if we are to have discussions, it is best to not go in with assumptions on anyone's position.

 

[Alfalfa]

I'm strongly opposed to having anything be banned if it's not either broken or uncompetitive, so I want to ask a simple question. To those saying keep it ubers, do you believe it is broken, or do you philosophically disagree with me on bans? Because if we are to have discussions, it is best to not go in with assumptions on anyone's position.

I am arguing it should stay banned on the premise of it only making the top threats even harder to deal with by being able to remove almost any defensive Pokemon. The idea that it balances out the metagame is delusional because it only strengthens the top threats and throws everything else that loses to it under the barrel, even if they are good Pokemon without Aegislash being taken into equation.

 

[SketchUp]

i understand what you are saying but let me ask you this...lando-i is getting suspected regardless of aegishlash coming back to OU or not and chances are that is going to be banned, then the most "broken" mon that comes to mind is mega-meta but we already suspected it and obviously it didn't got banned after the possibly lando-i ban that leaves us with practicly with no choices, what then? and plz don;t tell me we resuspect mega-meta.

If there is no option left to suspect.. congratulations! You just made a good metagame. It is not like there absolutely need to be any suspects. LC wanted to suspect something a few months ago although nothing was broken and it resulted in no bans at all.
Obviously this won't happen to the OU metagame because there will always be something that prevents the metagame from being stable. The pokemon / ability that will be unhealthy is nearly impossible to predict so there is no reason to try.

 

[Sanger Zonvolt]

I did suggest one idea and it's pretty simple, exactly first post at page 20. In case someone missed it I will repeat it.

Instead of suspect testing Aegislash, let's just present simple suspect test metagame, where most controversial candidates at the moment are out.

Plan MINIMUM:

Landorus-I
Meta Metagross

Standard Plan:

Mega Altaria
Landorus-I
Mega Metagross
Keldeo

I realize that Keldeo ISN'T broken, but it's S threat which has huge impact on metagame, Mega Altaria as well although she is so versatile that she may be a bit too much to handle sometimes. Plus it was mentioned by one of council members, that banning something not even broken MAY be allowed as exception if it would help out make metagame less stable/desired/interesting. So yep, standard plan include removing for suspect test all current S rank Pokemon. I would be curious how metagame would shape up with those missing and it would certainly take a heavy burden of team building without introducing something that literally blocks half of metagame with his existance alone. In potential future we would consider suspect testing them one by one if people desired so. Also I feel like testing Aegislash without them would make this less controversial and clouded as Aegislash make those even stronger, mostly with his Pursuit support. And as I said - I'm not a fan of Aegislash suspect test with all those (and few others as a bonus, but I feel like this is least drastic method) unlike introducing all banned in the past from OU Uber as I still feel like 'broken check out/support broken' aftertaste may be noticed in a way at the moment IMO with Aegislash in. So yes, I agree that Aegislash isn't broken, but also it's not healthy (well said btw) which is why I dislike it at the moment.

This is just my simple idea. If people won't like it - they won't discuss it.

We already did this in the past when Mega Lucario, both Deos, and Genesect were all suspect tested at the same time. So much attention was on Genesect and Lucarionite that the Deos avoided being suspected until months later due to Swagger. If you suspect too many mons at the same time it's hard to focus on how each individual mon is shaping the meta.

i understand what you are saying but let me ask you this...lando-i is getting suspected regardless of aegishlash coming back to OU or not and chances are that is going to be banned, then the most "broken" mon that comes to mind is mega-meta but we already suspected it and obviously it didn't got banned, so after the possibly lando-i ban that leaves us with practicly with no choices, what then? and plz don't tell me we resuspect mega-meta.

First, while I know that Lando-I is hated quite a bit, unless you can predict the future you can't assume that Lando-I is ever getting banned, so you shouldn't make any decisions based on a result of potential future that has yet to come. Second, why can't we re-suspect Mega Metagross? In BW Excadrill and Thundurus both got multiple suspect tests before being banned, so it's not as though there's no precedence for it.

 

[WebBowser]

Think baton pass; banning scolipede would've stopped baton pass abuse all together.. he was the one who pretty much defined the baton pass playstyle, but instead we nerfed the playstyle itself rather than banning the pokemon that defined it.

Quick nitpick on an otherwise good post: Many players, myself included, believe that BP clause was the wrong way to go about nerfing baton pass and is akin to trying to nerf HO by only allowing a single mon with a boosting move per team. We shouldn't use complex bans to nerf playstyles.

Not to mention that banning scoli alone does absolutely nothing about geopass, which relies on Smeargle (who happened to also be a key member of ye olde glorious pass, along with scolipede). Many people even consider smeargle to be a far larger problem then scoli.

/digression

As far as whether or not we want metagame centralization in the form of aegislash, I'm personally rather ambivalent myself. We already have lando-t for blanket checking all but a tiny handful of physical attackers (and more then a few special attackers too), it can even lure and take out it's own checks with stuff like explosion, yet nobody has seriously argued for it's ban. So yeah, I don't buy the whole "overcentralizing is bad" argument. I feel like aegis effect on many mon's viability is overstated, especially already strong offensive mons like m-gard, m-diancie and mmeta, it's a mon with very limited sweeping potential but still has enough offensive presence to be threatening.

It may be worth noting that the only reason I would be against Giratina-O in OU is that his CM set is actually obnoxiously difficult to stop, turning him from an insanely good blanket check into yet another threatening sweeper in his own right.

 

[Noulis]

We already did this in the past when Mega Lucario, both Deos, and Genesect were all suspect tested at the same time. So much attention was on Genesect and Lucarionite that the Deos avoided being suspected until months later due to Swagger. If you suspect too many mons at the same time it's hard to focus on how each individual mon is shaping the meta.


First, while I know that Lando-I is hated quite a bit, unless you can predict the future you can't assume that Lando-I is ever getting banned, so you shouldn't make any decisions based on a result of potential future that has yet to come. Second, why can't we re-suspect Mega Metagross? In BW Excadrill and Thundurus both got multiple suspect tests before being banned, so it's not as though there's no precedence for it.

First of all i did't say that is going to be banned just that it is more likely since i haven't met anyone who is saying that they want to keep it in OU,also i wasn't around st BW era since i started playing pokemon competitively since xy so i wasn't aware of the multiple suspect tests of exca and thundurus, but still i find it hard to see something getting banned when its already been established (in the first suspect test) that it isn't broken. i don't say that it isn't possible but it's hard for me to see it.

 

[Aberforth]

I am arguing it should stay banned on the premise of it only making the top threats even harder to deal with by being able to remove almost any defensive Pokemon. The idea that it balances out the metagame is delusional because it only strengthens the top threats and throws everything else that loses to it under the barrel, even if they are good Pokemon without Aegislash being taken into equation.

I didn't say for a fact that it balances out the metagame (although I believe it does to an extent), but it making other mons good isn't a good reason for it to be banned and not those mons. Tyranitar and Hippowdon summoned sand that made excadrill broken, but excadrill was the one that was banned, and not ttar/hippo.

And that still doesn't make it broken.

 

[Freeroamer]

I'm not sure how you can say Aegislash balances out the metagame(or think it does to any extent) when it doesn't really do anything to handle what I class as 3 of the hardest threats to prepare for right now in Lando-i, Keldeo and Zard Y.(Add Mega Meta and Altaria and you have what I see as the top 5 offensive threats). If anything it makes these pokemon even better and harder to deal with which I see as absolutely counter productive to this test, and to go alongside it has reintroduced a potentially broken element in itself in a mon which has an incredible diversity of sets it can run, with very few "true" counters and acting as a blanket check to half the metagame which severely limits teambuilding and makes for an incredibly stale metagame. I'm not even going to get into the King's Shield and potential for 50-50 bullshit because I don't think it's needed when you consider all of the other factors, and to be totally honest, I can't see why anyone sees this metagame as preferable unless they're that bored of the old metagame that they just wanted change but as the old saying goes, you never realise what you had until it's gone and I think a lot of people will feel this way if Aegislash does stay.

 

[WebBowser]

First of all i did't say that is going to be banned just that it is more likely since i haven't met anyone who is saying that they want to keep it in OU,also i wasn't around st BW era since i started playing pokemon competitively since xy so i wasn't aware of the multiple suspect tests of exca and thundurus, but still i find it hard to see something getting banned when its already been established (in the first suspect test) that it isn't broken. i don't say that it isn't possible but it's hard for me to see it.

Metagame shifts happen. For example, one of the first XY suspects was genesect, m-lucario, and deo-s. However, both m-lucario and genesect really didn't care much about deo-s, and were much more used then the latter, so very few people voted for deo-s' ban. After that and a handful of other suspects, people started realizing that the deos were really really good hazard stackers, and the deosharp HO core was born. This core was incredibly powerful, leading to the deos suspect and eventual ban.

So yeah, under most circumstances where something gets suspected multiple times, it's because metagame shifts (usually in the form of bans or expansions like ORAS and Platinum) caused a pokemon to go from not broken to broken.

Whether or not stuff gets banned or not really does come down to whether or not enough people are abusing it for it to become insufferable for the rest of the community.

*edit*

Freeroamer I think the idea is that by reintroducing aegislash, it'll allow teambuilders to ignore the myraid of threats that aren't lando, keldeo, m-alt and friends, allowing them to put in more solid checks without suddenly realizing "Oh crap, now my team's hawlucha weak!" or something.