jpw234's is the first anti aegi post i've read that shows metagame knowledge, so it's one i need to answer.
there are probably more, but these are some of the examples i remember the best. in these replays the winner just played standard and won easily, why? matchup is the reason. try covering all the A/S rank threats using a core of 3-4 pokemon and you see what i'm talking about.
EVEN THEN i'd still have a mon like this in the meta than having to play a metagame that, on the highest level of game, is decided on who counterteams the best, which is my whole point.
(i'm gonna skip the next part of your post where you explain why aegi is broken because i agree with it)
the sheer diversity of pokemon is actually the cause of matchup issues. since there are over 40 equally viable pokemon, you can't really cover every single one of them while still executing your main strategy (like a zard-x sweep). people who followed SPL's ORAS OU games closely saw how there were a lot of games in which the losing player simply couldn't do anything. watch the replays below:The current metagame (w/o Aegi) is awesome. Much like SINFUL DESIRES said in an earlier post on this thread, we have diversity in both playstyle choices and Pokemon. The mechanic of only allowing one mega evolution per team means that plenty of not-top-tier Pokemon retain powerful niches and we see metagame evolution and innovation on a weekly basis in things like Smogon Tours. I hear an incredibly large number of people complaining about "matchup", but I have not once heard an explanation of why "matchup" is a driving concern.
yeah, someone finally got it why aegi is broken. it's not fucking overcentralisation, it's because aegi gets AN AMAZING AMOUNT of free turns and what it does with those free turns (438 sp.atk STAB shadow ball is carnage) is very hard to cover. and subtoxic fucks over traditional counters like mandibuzz and chesnaught. there is literally ONE mon that 100% counters aegi which is spdef gliscor. please don't mention the SD set though, as that's terrible. seriously, all you're doing with SD is taking a mon that 2HKOes 99% of the tier and turning it into a piece of crap walled by 100% of the teams.As far as Aegislash itself goes. Aegislash is a Pokemon that defies comparison. This is the number 1 red flag for a Pokemon being broken. Contrary to popular belief, the easiest way to be "broken" is not to be overwhelmingly strong, it is to fill a role that the metagame is unprepared for. This is why Mega-Metagross (a Pokemon that is undoubtedly "more powerful" than Aegislash in absolute terms) is much less difficult for the metagame to handle than Aegislash.
Aegislash is:
- One of the bulkiest Steel types in the game
- The only Steel type with an immunity to Fighting and the ability to block Rapid Spin
- The only Pokemon in the game that can threaten to cripple an opposing Pokemon while using Protect (we're not counting Chesnaught)
- The most powerful offensive Ghost-type in a metagame that is unsuited to handle Ghost types, particularly physical Ghost types
- Capable of filling roles literally everywhere on the offense-defense spectrum, from pure defensive counter (SubToxic) to pure wallbreaker (SD Head Smash)
It is impossible to compare a Pokemon like this to anything else in the OU metagame. The fact that we have people in this thread trying to pigeonhole it as "just a bulky pivot" and compare it to Landorus-T, Rotom-W or lol HEATRAN is ridiculous. Aegislash is not "just a bulky pivot". Aegislash is simultaneously the bulkiest pivot on both sides of the defensive spectrum in OU, and one of the hardest hitting wallbreakers on both sides of the offensive spectrum in OU, and the premier spinblocker in OU, and carries the most coveted typing in OU, and, and, and...
EVEN THEN i'd still have a mon like this in the meta than having to play a metagame that, on the highest level of game, is decided on who counterteams the best, which is my whole point.
so what? the existence of aegislash in the tier doesn't invalidate the use of hawlucha, it just makes it so that the hawlucha user has to counter aegi properly, and thats how team building works. if your sweeper is countered by pokemon A, run an A counter, if it gives free turns to B, run a B counter. in fact, hawlucha was used 5 times in the last live suspect tour, and won 4 battles. how in the world is that being unviable? as for the whole "you're forced to run aegi in order to have a competitive team" argument, it's also fallacious, seeing as not only aegislash had 54% usage and 45% win in the same tour, this guy who won one of the semi-finals was running the following team: Crawdaunt / Porygon2 / Reuniclus / Dragalge / Cresselia / Steelix. yeah in FUCKING OVERUSED. and he won. how is innovation not possible in the aegi meta?Let's talk about "metagame diversity" and the effect that a Pokemon like Aegislash has on less-used Pokemon. We have people in this thread trying to explain away trends that we already saw when Aegislash got banned - stats that show that many Pokemon, in particular Psychics, Fairies and Fighting types, see much less usage in a metagame where Aegislash is dominant. Saying something like "not every team will have an Aegislash, so these Pokemon will retain their niches" shows a lack of understanding of how "niches" in a game like competitive Pokemon work.
Underused Pokemon are not default picks for their roles. Instead, they are chosen for a team when their unique characteristics are a good fit for the team's needs. Let's take the example of Hawlucha. Hawlucha is certainly an OU-viable Pokemon and a legitimate threat, but it is not, in a vacuum, the best choice for its role of "late-game cleanup against offense". This role is objectively better filled by Pokemon like scarf Keldeo, Mega-Manectric, Mega-Lopunny, or Talonflame. So why does Hawlucha ever get used? It is used because while it is not overall better than these other choices, it has some specific advantages over them. For example, it doesn't take up a mega slot, isn't crippled by Stealth Rock, and has a fairly unique set of STABs in flying/fighting. So an offensive team that already had a mega evolution, didn't put much priority on keeping Stealth Rock off the field, and already had a couple of Water types might choose Hawlucha over these other options.
Now what does a dominant Pokemon like Aegislash do to this calculation. Aegislash flattens niches. What this means is that it forces underused Pokemon to meet a much higher standard in order to justify their selection. In an Aegislash metagame, Hawlucha suffers from all of its previous problems, plus it gives completely free switches to Aegislash. Now a player selecting their late-game cleaner has to have some very serious reasons to pick Hawlucha over Keldeo, Mega-Lopunny, Talonflame, etc. Either they need to be completely unable to shuffle their team around and use one of these threats, or they need to be very comfortable with giving free switches to Aegislash whenever Hawlucha comes in (something that is very hard to do). As a result, very few people pick Hawlucha, regardless of the fact that not everybody is running Aegislash. The same goes for a bunch of other Pokemon. Sure, you can pick Jirachi for your Latios counter. But why do so when it gives free switches to Aegislash and Heatran works there too? You can check electrics with Roserade, but why not Hippowdon? You can use Starmie for your spinner, but why not use TTar + Exca?
(i'm gonna skip the next part of your post where you explain why aegi is broken because i agree with it)
well, it's the ladder. people there are looking for consistency, and using standard teams that can win vs most of the meta. and can you explain why not seeing starmie and jirachi on the ladder is necessarily a bad thing? if we return to the current metagame where keldeo dominates and you rarely see weavile/crawdaunt in the ladder is it also a bad thing? why?This amount of role compression is not part of a healthy metagame. I've already seen it on the suspect ladder, where Aegislash is omnipresent and teams are forced to overprepare for it. The dominance of Mega-Lopunny, Landorus, and Charizard-Y and the relative lack of Aegi-weak Pokemon like Jirachi and Starmie testify to the negative effects Aegislash has on the metagame. Dropping it would be a massive mistake.