np: ORAS UU Stage 3.1 - Sex on Fire [Victini Remains BL]

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Earlier in this thread, I posted that i believe Victini was a tad to good for the tier, after playing with/against it I have changed my mind. What makes Victini strong is its obvious V Create nuke. People have been messing with the mixed/mainly special variant which to me is quite underwhelming as it is just a much weaker, yet bulkier Azelf. People, along with myself at first thought the problem was that you would never know its set, making it scary and hard to prepare for. Although this is indeed true, I believe scouting for the set is quite easy, as most teams have a pokemon that can chew a hit and once the set is scouted, Victini is far more easy to play around. Victini is still a very effective pokemon, and would be considered a solid A+ rank on the viability rankings but I do not think it should be banned from the tier.

Another reason I like with having Victini in the tier is how it would be almost the only physically offensive fighting check, making team building more easier, and preparing for fighting types less stressful.
 
Christo The Gr8 said:
Another reason I like with having Victini in the tier is how it would be almost the only physically offensive fighting check
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meh2u.jpg
 
Christo The Gr8 said:
Earlier in this thread, I posted that i believe Victini was a tad to good for the tier, after playing with/against it I have changed my mind. What makes Victini strong is its obvious V Create nuke. People have been messing with the mixed/mainly special variant which to me is quite underwhelming as it is just a much weaker, yet bulkier Azelf. People, along with myself at first thought the problem was that you would never know its set, making it scary and hard to prepare for. Although this is indeed true, I believe scouting for the set is quite easy, as most teams have a pokemon that can chew a hit and once the set is scouted, Victini is far more easy to play around. Victini is still a very effective pokemon, and would be considered a solid A+ rank on the viability rankings but I do not think it should be banned from the tier.

Another reason I like with having Victini in the tier is how it would be almost the only physically offensive fighting check, making team building more easier, and preparing for fighting types less stressful.
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I have to disagree about the mixed set, the reason that set is so good and not just a bulkier Azelf is that it can still nuke things with a Life Orb V Create with pretty much no Atk investment required, particularly blasting away conventional special bulk mons that other special attackers struggle with while threatening whatever can take V Create with its other moves, it does so much in one slot and is much more consistent than Azelf.

The banded set is a different beast. Now that I've had the chance to play around with it I think it's the best set and the main issue with playing against that set is how little opportunity is lost by just clicking V Create on anything. There's almost no scenario in which just clicking V Create doesn't work out for the Victini user considering Suicune is not a switch in to this set and Swampert lacks reliable recovery and takes like 35% from V Create. There's just so much immediate pressure put on the other player no matter how many V Create "checks" he or she has, and that's not even mentioning the VoltTurn aspect of the set and how it makes VoltTurn even better in UU, absurdly so. I just don't think Victini is a good influence on the tier no matter how you frame it.
 
Christo The Gr8 said:
I totally agree with you about the Banded set, it is my preferred set and is a really good wall breaker! I just do not think it is ban worthy, rather a very good pokemon. But the Mixed set with non invested V Create is far less scary, and does not "bop" most special walls as all are most likely bulky enough to take that non invested V- Create.
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4 Atk Life Orb Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Florges: 231-273 (64.1 - 75.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

4 Atk Life Orb Victini V-create vs. 248 HP / 8 Def Empoleon: 278-329 (74.9 - 88.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

4 Atk Life Orb Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Umbreon: 231-274 (58.6 - 69.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

4 Atk Life Orb Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Blissey: 458-539 (64.1 - 75.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Azelf has nothing on MixTini bro, I agree its not as scary as Banded but it still has plenty of merit and can be extremely scary for teams that get their BandTini checks bopped by MixTini then have nothing to take the LO V Creates afterwards. It's still pretty strong even uninvested.
 
I do want to say something on this matter. I was laddering w/ a few teams w/ and w/o Victini and it looks like a very versatile mon with great stats, great movepool, and also perform a few rolls in terms of successful useage in the UU tier. I see some sets being standard CB that can smack basically anything that isn't a fat mence, swampert, or cune. You can even run a mix LO lure set w/ glaciate, grass knot and/or thunder to beat its switch-ins and can still run V-Create to catch things that think they can wall u like blissey, florges, or w/e. Good thing is it can be revenged kind of easily after it v-creates w/ pursuit Krookdile, Aero, and so forth. Tbh as an OU player, I did find teambuilding kind of limited for me with this running around with me being forced to run the standard "checks" to it on almost every team and it's still hard to beat this thing. Even tho it has like 2 sets, both sets can help teams tremendously when it comes to weakening or removing checks for opposing win conditions, like MixTini luring in Suicune and Swampert, and you have a Hone Claws M-Aero or a Mamo in the back to clean with these removed or at least worn down. Other than that, i'm not seeing anything else that likes to fight Victini besides maybe Cresselia and Goodra (or a snorlax if your name is Arifeen xd). That's all i have to say, I think it should stay ban from UU but that's just me.
 
Ok so I just acquired reqs so it is time to post my thoughts on why Tini should be banned...

victini.gif


This little guy was sadly nowhere to be seen on the ladder as much as everyone had hyped this guy for UU. I was and still am leaning towards ban, but lemme explain why I believe this should be the case.

With its newly popular specially inclined LO set w/ V-Create, Psychic, Glaciate, and Energy Ball / Grass Knot, it can tear apart a lot of things on common stall and balance teams. With this impeccable coverage, most of UU is forced to check this threat offensively as thanks to the nuke-nature of V-Create, no special walls are safe as most get decimated by V-create and even those that can take a V-Create, specifically specially defensive inclined Water-types, can be worn down / straight up lose to Energy Ball / Grass Knot or a surprise Bolt Strike. Another problem is that for balance to check this thing (and even some offensive teams) they must rely on it going for a V-Create and proceeding to beat up on it at -1 Speed. This thing's coverage is also very nicely with it being able to check a ton of common balance cores and stall cores with its coverage, which seems to shake up the meta. In my honest opinion, sadly, its shakes up the meta in a bad way. This thing literally can tear apart balance and stall at their seams and as such it makes players who commonly play stall (Serperior for Uber Lapras!) or balance (me and idk who else lol) hard pressed to find a check for this beast. I feel like the reason this thing is breaking UU is its access to a 180 BP STAB move that can allow it to get around special walls that may wall its coverage (Blissey, etc.).

252 SpA Life Orb Victini Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blissey: 221-260 (30.9 - 36.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Life Orb Victini Psychic vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blissey: 122-146 (17 - 20.4%) -- possible 7HKO after Leftovers recovery

4 Atk Life Orb Victini V-create vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Blissey: 458-539 (64.1 - 75.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Victini is also allowed to pick and choose its checks / counters thanks to the plethora of coverage it has access to, meaning until you can scout the set, you are hard pressed to keep your team alive. While it does have a crippling weakness to every hazard and gets worn down via LO / lack of bulk since using a non-attack hindering nature, most hazard setters on common stall and balance teams cannot keep up with the offensive pressure Tini and his common teammates (other offensive mons like Mega Pidgeot, Mega Aero, Gatr, etc.) and as such cannot get the hazards on the field like they want.

All in all, with balance and stall having to rely on the debilitating effect of V-Create as well as not being able to keep up the pressure of offense while providing the defense most balance tries and provides, I feel Tini is that "push" over the edge that makes offense the overwhelming playstyle in UU and I do not want that as I feel right now barring a couple of threats (looking at you Gatr and Mega Bird Jesus <_<) UU is the most balanced between all the playstyles it has ever been and I would love to keep it that way. #BANTINIPLS
 
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Ive taken my time in enjoying this suspect and from what ive seen ive formed my opinion. whenever i saw a victini the most annoying part of it all is guessing which set the fire rat is running..whether it be CB, life orb physical, life orb mixed with special bias, weakness policy trick room, choice scarf...look point is the mon not only chooses its counters it also breaks apart teams that dont have at least 2 checks for it. with that in mind i was forced to move from playing HO/balance to using stall to get reqs this suspect and even then victini layed down the pain with the 50/50s. imo it should stay in BL as it limits team building worse then mence and gator put together. i hope everyone enjoyed there suspect this time around..hf and kill some time.
 
I'm not going I write a super long post because it has already been said for the most part. For this suspect I played balance primarily, which if you know me is a bit out of type as I'm primarily an offense player. Hell, I used a wildly outdated team (pre-Mamo/Mandi) and didn't bother to rebuild. While facing Victjni was a pain in the ass to scout, I still managed to get through the read process relatively unscathed. Victini meta punishes poorly thought out play and encourages scouting and reading, two big +s for the meta game. As such, I've votes to unban it.
 
Just got reqs using this team http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/baking-with-yabo-uu-cupcake-offense.3536966/. I feel sad cos I think I am late in getting the reqs as the thread is locked already right now. (Can someone confirm this ?)

Anyway for the suspect itself, I feel like Victini is a great mon to use and undoubtly puts an immense around of pressure to the opponent as soon as tini comes out on a mon that it threatens. Equiped with great stab in v create, bolt strike, zen headbutt, glaciate, energy ball and god knows what, it is really hard to exactly predict is set. This is a problem because pokemons that are usually checks it can be overcomed by at least one of its move. If you team needs to lure in swampert, energy ball bops it. Salamence ? glaciate bops it. Stall ? band V create + Bolt Strike / PuP put in a lot of works. It is like lando-I in UU but at a much lesser extent.

Victini is also not as frail as it looks, with solid 100/100/100 that thing can take hits if it needs be and retaliate with a powerful hits or its coverage. Even its speed is quite fast by UU standards. The combination of this coverage, bulk and v create spam is what makes Victini terrifying.

Despite all of these traits that makes tini seems so amazing, it however suffers from stealth rock weakness making the number of switches it can make limited. A weakness to scald, EQ, knock off also seems to hold victini back as those moves are common af. Not too mention it is weak to pursuit trap. In fact Victini is so weak to being pursuit trapped that it the moment it lets itself v creating a mon, krook can come in and get a free moxie boost and can possibly threaten to sweep. It makes tini a bit of a liability.

Surprisingly there are not many victini in the suspect ladder, idk it feels so weird. The first victini I saw is like on my 20th suspect game.

In my opinion victini deserves does not harm the uu metagame what so ever. It brings neither positive or negative. However I feel like some playstyle will be better that the other as stall and semi stall or a more defensive oriented balanced team really have trouble dealing with Victini if they are unprepared. I can't say much about this cause I enjoy all kind of metagames, if a mon gets banned so be it.

Can't say much really about tini since there is not many tini around for me to feel the impact. But if i have to pick between ban or no ban, I'd say BAN it because the UU without tini feels good. Don't try to fix what is not broken.
 
Hi Bob here.

Now that the suspect test is almost coming to an end, I'd like to post my thoughts on Victini. I played 50 games for reqs and a few more after for fun, and I think I saw no more than 10 Victinis', I think this was because everyone was so paranoid about it that they over prepared for it. Thus it's rather hard to cast my thoughts on it, so I do apologize if I am a little misinformed.

When I first heard that Victini was coming back, I was really kinda scared, because it reminded me of the old days of facing King UU on ladder with his well known volt-turn team. However this time around, after playing facing a few Victinis and trying to build around it and using it, it seemed to be a lot less intimidating that i remembered it to be.

The main arguments for Victini being over centralizing is its power and versatility. Thus why the choice band and mixed set are the most common sets running around on the ladder at the moment.

Probably the strongest weapon in Victini's arsenal, V-Create, is a razor sharp double edged sword. While capable of punching massive holes in teams, it leaves the user extremely vulnerable to revenge killers, especially trappers, such as Krookodile. Even if you have no trappers, it's pretty much forced out every time it nukes, so having rocks up will wear it down very easily. At the same time the opponent can easily take advantage of a free turn by predicting a switch.

Victini has a huge move pool so it can pretty much bop everything that can stop it, but I feel that it's so unpredictable that it's predictable. After the first hit, the damage is a dead giveaway of whether it's banded or expert belt/life orb. From then on it's very easy to adjust your playstyle to get around it. The mixed set pretty much all have the fire/electric/grass/ice coverage (not always), and people tend to make conservative predictions when using the mixed set, so it isn't too difficult pivoting around it to get your appropriate check inside. Also note that the mixed set isn't particularly powerful like the band set.

Victini's presence really doesn't have that big of an effect on teambuilding. For example, I had used my HO pert RMT team, which was built pre-victini, without any alterations and it really had no trouble dealing with tini. Victini's checks are far too common in the current metagame and that you don't have to resort to using obscure things to counter it like you had to do with Serperior. Victini shines the most when facing balanced teams but balanced teams are somewhat uncommon these days. Against stall or HO, it really struggles. Stall usually have a combination of Pokemons that can completely counter the different sets. While against HO, it's mediocre speed means that it will lose a lot of 1 on 1 match ups and has trouble getting turns to click the nuke, it's also very easy revenge bait due to the drops.

TL;DR
V-create drops are bad
predictable
easy revenge
common counters

UNBAN
 
Yifeng

Victini can be predictable but that doesn't mean it's not a beast in UU, while Victini suffers with the drops and has common counters it can still shine in the metagame, specially with it's LO set which I used in the suspect ladder. Having a great movepool lets it counter most of it's counter. I used Grass knot to deal with water switchins (Swampert, Suicune), Blue flare as fire stab to avoid the drop and do damage to physical bulk pokemon, glaciate for predicting a mence switchin and V-create as a last resort and some uses U-turn to pivot away; this set has proved to be super effective against most teams.Also Victini has great team mates to help it as it can server as late game cleaner, Mega-Abomasnow takes on Bulky Water and Flying types, Mandibuzz can tank any hit that is taken against Victini and the list goes on.

NV said:
Victini is also allowed to pick and choose its checks / counters thanks to the plethora of coverage it has access to, meaning until you can scout the set, you are hard pressed to keep your team alive. While it does have a crippling weakness to every hazard and gets worn down via LO / lack of bulk since using a non-attack hindering nature, most hazard setters on common stall and balance teams cannot keep up with the offensive pressure Tini and his common teammates (other offensive mons like Mega Pidgeot, Mega Aero, Gatr, etc.) and as such cannot get the hazards on the field like they want.
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I really wish I had time to expand here but I'm parked outside work atm so I can't but I really need to say this:

pretty much every argument I've seen in favor of returning victini to BL is flawed in one way or another (not all just most)... but there's one particular brand which is just fucking absurd:

"I wanna keep it in BL because the tier is fine and I don't wanna introduce another nuke" HELLO? this is literally just "I don't like change" lmao

funny how the council almost unanimously agrees that the meta is in bad shape right now but only 2-3 out of 12 members think victini is a problem.

hint: the problem has to do with lack of good hurricane switchins

do I really need to step back in? @_@
 
kokoloko said:
I really wish I had time to expand here but I'm parked outside work atm so I can't but I really need to say this:

pretty much every argument I've seen in favor of returning victini to BL is flawed in one way or another (not all just most)... but there's one particular brand which is just fucking absurd:

"I wanna keep it in BL because the tier is fine and I don't wanna introduce another nuke" HELLO? this is literally just "I don't like change" lmao

funny how the council almost unanimously agrees that the meta is in bad shape right now but only 2-3 out of 12 members think victini is a problem.

hint: the problem has to do with lack of good hurricane switchins

do I really need to step back in? @_@
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I don't see anyone saying the meta is fine right now. In fact general consensus amoung the ban people is that the meta is complete shit right now and the introduction of tini just makes it worse
 
Dream Eater Gengar said:
Yifeng

Victini can be predictable but that doesn't mean it's not a beast in UU, while Victini suffers with the drops and has common counters it can still shine in the metagame, specially with it's LO set which I used in the suspect ladder. Having a great movepool lets it counter most of it's counter. I used Grass knot to deal with water switchins (Swampert, Suicune), Blue flare as fire stab to avoid the drop and do damage to physical bulk pokemon, glaciate for predicting a mence switchin and V-create as a last resort and some uses U-turn to pivot away; this set has proved to be super effective against most teams.Also Victini has great team mates to help it as it can server as late game cleaner, Mega-Abomasnow takes on Bulky Water and Flying types, Mandibuzz can tank any hit that is taken against Victini and the list goes on.
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I do not think Bob ever implied Victini is not a "beast" pokemon, rather that it is not a ban-worthy pokemon.
 
kokoloko said:
I didn't say that fool
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"I wanna keep it in BL because the tier is fine and I don't wanna introduce another nuke" HELLO? this is literally just "I don't like change" lmao

thats exactly what you said wtf
 
o oops I misread your post but here's one example just on this page:

Mackie's said:
Just got reqs using this team http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/baking-with-yabo-uu-cupcake-offense.3536966/. I feel sad cos I think I am late in getting the reqs as the thread is locked already right now. (Can someone confirm this ?)

Anyway for the suspect itself, I feel like Victini is a great mon to use and undoubtly puts an immense around of pressure to the opponent as soon as tini comes out on a mon that it threatens. Equiped with great stab in v create, bolt strike, zen headbutt, glaciate, energy ball and god knows what, it is really hard to exactly predict is set. This is a problem because pokemons that are usually checks it can be overcomed by at least one of its move. If you team needs to lure in swampert, energy ball bops it. Salamence ? glaciate bops it. Stall ? band V create + Bolt Strike / PuP put in a lot of works. It is like lando-I in UU but at a much lesser extent.

Victini is also not as frail as it looks, with solid 100/100/100 that thing can take hits if it needs be and retaliate with a powerful hits or its coverage. Even its speed is quite fast by UU standards. The combination of this coverage, bulk and v create spam is what makes Victini terrifying.

Despite all of these traits that makes tini seems so amazing, it however suffers from stealth rock weakness making the number of switches it can make limited. A weakness to scald, EQ, knock off also seems to hold victini back as those moves are common af. Not too mention it is weak to pursuit trap. In fact Victini is so weak to being pursuit trapped that it the moment it lets itself v creating a mon, krook can come in and get a free moxie boost and can possibly threaten to sweep. It makes tini a bit of a liability.

Surprisingly there are not many victini in the suspect ladder, idk it feels so weird. The first victini I saw is like on my 20th suspect game.

In my opinion victini deserves does not harm the uu metagame what so ever. It brings neither positive or negative. However I feel like some playstyle will be better that the other as stall and semi stall or a more defensive oriented balanced team really have trouble dealing with Victini if they are unprepared. I can't say much about this cause I enjoy all kind of metagames, if a mon gets banned so be it.

Can't say much really about tini since there is not many tini around for me to feel the impact. But if i have to pick between ban or no ban, I'd say BAN it because the UU without tini feels good. Don't try to fix what is not broken.
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there you go r0ady

I would find more but I'm honestly far too lazy. much like people are far to lazy to try and play around menageable threats.
 
kokoloko said:
I really wish I had time to expand here but I'm parked outside work atm so I can't but I really need to say this:

pretty much every argument I've seen in favor of returning victini to BL is flawed in one way or another (not all just most)... but there's one particular brand which is just fucking absurd:

"I wanna keep it in BL because the tier is fine and I don't wanna introduce another nuke" HELLO? this is literally just "I don't like change" lmao

funny how the council almost unanimously agrees that the meta is in bad shape right now but only 2-3 out of 12 members think victini is a problem.

hint: the problem has to do with lack of good hurricane switchins

do I really need to step back in? @_@
Click to expand...
For Mega Pidgeot we have....

...we have...

Hmmmm

Gigalith the God?
 
I agree with kokoloko , many arguments seem to be stemming from a few things

"I want it banned so I don't have to adjust my stall/balance team for another threat"
The lack of Victini on the ladder shows just how many people don't want to change their old teams and are unwilling to try out new ones with Victini.

"It's coverage is too good and you never know what set it is"
Like Yifeng said, it's called scouting and if you bait with Swampert you will very soon (in 1 turn) find out if it's special with E-ball or the Band set

"V-create does too much damage" (While neglecting to talk about the drops it experiences and Victini's limited switchins due to a SR weakness)

From a glance the banning of Victini seems to be a more of an issue of "out with the new", rather than any solid attempt to adapt to the new Pokemon.
I understand this its annoying to have to build new teams, but this thing isn't broken.

Also, unlike many other suspect worthy mons, it is not as "splashable", meaning you can't just slap it on any team easily and increase the team's value (See Megalix in NU), you actually have to build around it.

Edit: and yes I was one of the 10 or so people who used it on the ladder, so I know its drawbacks
 
I said this in the viability thread. pidgeot is the most centralized pokemon right now. victini already stresses team building, and makes balance less viable, but that's been said. I honestly would rather have victini and in uu over pidgeot out anyday. but uu already has too many problem to check, so I'm not in favor of Tini period. regardless of what's more broken, it doesn't help the tier positively period.
 
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