Ubers was originally not really a tier, but rather was a place you could use all the banned things. Nobody banned anything because Ubers was the bans. At some point Ubers finally became a real tier, with not only the potential for a real metagame but an eye toward that metagame -as proven by the fact that Mega Rayquaza prompted the creation of AG. If Ubers were still just "that place the banned go to die", nobody would care that Mega Rayquaza is a cut (or three) above the other Ubers.
This is true in a sense, but there is a reason ubers has an S+ rank, and no discussion of banning Pdon. It is still the tier for the insane. W/ almost no limitations. Banning Luc is ridiculous when, honestly, it performs no better than salamence after the boost. Comparing it's Pinsirite set to megamence, Salamence has slightly higher attack, way better bulk, an incredible speed tier, dragon dance to boost speed, and it's return at +1 has as much power as lucarios Espeed at +2. The only thing Luc has over mence really is the ability to beat weavile (and fridgespeed). Mence mostly makes up for the lack of priority w/ it's great speed tier and ability to boost it even further.
I'm taking the view that MnM is a tier (That is, it's not "Uber-based" in the sense that broken-as-fuck stuff is what it's all about), and one with absolutely ridiculous combinations available. I've been suspect-happy because I've been aware, from day one, that MnM has the potential for the kind of insanity you find in Balanced Hackmons, only without Balanced Hackmons in-built capacity to necessarily check insanity with other insanity. Only in some ways the potential is yet worse, because Balanced Hackmons doesn't let you tweak stats and typing to suit your needs!
But balanced hackmons has never banned anything, to my knowledge, though suspects aren't unheard of and clauses exist. It is a tier, and we should be more liberal w/ bans than ubers, but not to this extent. Their are ubers in the tier for a reason. This OM is meant to be insane. If not, why make it ubers-based at all? This defies logic. If it is to be ubers-based, treat it as though this is ubers, not OU with some other stuff available. Because something creates significant pressure does not make it broken.
I have been pleasantly surprised at how many of the things I had concerns about have proven to not be a problem at all. -ated Boomburst has had essentially no influence on the meta, where it has been so prominent in so many other metas. Aggronite hasn't been used to produce any unbreakable walls, never mind that it's Filter+Steel typing+walling stats, available to literally anything. Red Orb has proven to be viable on only a relatively small pool of Pokémon, my own concerns aside. And Sablenite has only once had me wondering if it might need to be banned. (Back during the Cresselia suspect)
This is where I'm coming from.
This isn't one of those insane things tho. It is by no means meta-breaking, and it just forces offense to play like it's meant to: aggressively and fast-paced.
Landorus-Therian isn't broken because a double-dancing attacker with two attacking moves has restricted coverage, making it problematic to get into position for the sweep (You need two turns of setup) and making even a fully setup sweep potentially fall apart in the face of the right Pokémon (If you're running Edgequake, Levitate can be added to anything that resists Rock and your "perfect coverage" is gone), and you need two turns to setup, which is hard to get. Not even getting into the fact that Landorus-Therian has no priority itself and therefore is scared of priority.
Comparing the two to try to imply Lucario isn't broken is nonsensical.
That's not exactly my point. I wasn't saying, "look at lando, it's not broken; lucario must not be either!" Rather, I was drawing a comparison to prove a point. Is it perfect? Not remotely. Rather, it demonstrates the intensity of this meta. Lucario, even with Espeed, doesn't exactly just leave the rest of the meta behind. As per the argument that it is "too unpredictable," then mew should have been banned long ago. It's pidgeotite set creates as much or more pressure than any of Luc's, and it has any number of other options. It literally can use any stone effectively. Pidgeotite requires you switch in a magic bouncer or something w/ insomnia or something or it will land a kill, or just turn you into setup fodder.
Mega Rayquaza broke Ubers through brute force. Excellent Speed tier, enormous damage output, all the coverage it needs, more bulk than it has any right to have. (And then it throws in the ability to hold an item, just so it can be Scarfed or Life Orbed or whatever and destroy the idea that any given thing can handle it)
Of course Lucario isn't broken in the way Mega Rayquaza is broken.
And? Your point is?
... If you would pay attention to the whole post, and actually read it to understand what I was suggesting, it would be clear what my point was. But, I will reiterate it for you, just so you know I'm not brushing off anything. My point is, this set a precedent that was not broken before, and despite you're argument that it is a tier now, they haven't even suspected anything since. The general philosophy in ubers is that even if something is absolutely broken, it shouldn't be banned unless ABSOLUTEY necessary. Is that exactly how to go about banning things? No, that isn't fun to play. But this is nowhere near that level. We're this OU-based, I'd say it is undoubtedly too much. But it's not, and therefore bans should be treated as such.
The only way something would break MnM the way Mega Rayquaza does is if we gave the Ubers access to Mega Evolution the way we've given everything else access to it. This is kind of obvious: Mega Rayquaza is broken in Ubers in the same sort of way Mewtwo is broken in OU, by virtue of simply winning by every ordinary metric of quality.
Comparing Lucario to Mega Rayquaza is really unhelpful. It's a metric that suggests nothing is banworthy other than Mega Rayquaza, or that only those few things with stats in the Ubers range without being Uber (eg Kyurem, Dragonite) could possibly be banworthy.
No, rayquaza is so broken because it has the ability to utilize it's many great tools it has, along with its ridiculous stats. Arceus is only 60 points behind it, bst-wise, but it's not nearly as broken. Things don't just need to have absurd star totals to be broken, as mega ttar shows. It is how a poke uses its stats and what tools it gets that determines if it's broken. Smeargle has terrible stats, but I doubt anyone would say banettite bellypass wasn't broken. Explain how lucario is actually broken, and prove it with actual scenarios/calcs. You've yet to do this at all, just ranting, "no you are ignoring the facts and stubbornly pushing your points that haven't been specifically disproven." Explain how lucario is actually broken, and prove it.
That's never been the basis of the argument behind Lucario being broken. Lucario hits a lot of subtle sweet spots: yeah, it's not the fastest thing. Yeah, it's not the hardest hitting thing. It's certainly not the toughest thing. But. Most things that outspeed it can't switch in reliably -they're fragile enough they can't risk being hit with a coverage move or a Close Combat. Worse yet, a fair few things that outspeed it are outright vulnerable to one or both of the preferred -atespeeds, instantly removing them as an option if they can't -atespeed it themselves. Things that are bulky enough to switch in fearlessly are usually slow and have insufficient offensive pressure to KO it before it KOs them.
What sweet spots? It literally hits one sweet spot, and that is Espeed. It is weak, slow, frail, and fighting has never been good defensively (though steel obviously is). It wastes a bunch of it's already unimpressive BST in the off-stat, so it's really lacking everywhere else. This argument is just blatantly untrue.
I think Arceus could probably take on every variation of Lucario reliably, at least with the right Plate, but it's the only Uber I think could reliably pull off the job, which is alarming right there, and OU-and-below Pokémon are just not reliable. Far too many supposed "checks" are things Lucario can power through with the right coverage if you assume Pinsirite Lucario is the only viable Lucario. Which itself is an inaccurate premise.
Ok, you have completely ignored the fact that I admitted that it is viable with other stones, but they are all outclassed and a waste of a mega stone. For example, Pidgeotite is decent, I mean, it's even frailer than Pinsirite, but hey, 180/110 offenses are not bad, but wait, forgot, infernape gets 169/128. Tough claws/adaptability sweeper (well, infernape again), but even cobalion is better, as it's still faster w/ an adamant nature than jolly Luc can reach w/ the same stone, and it is just short of Luc in terms of power (close enough that it's hardly noticeable, if at all- like, 6 points)
You keep saying things are predictable and I keep disagreeing with you. Just because the ladder was heavily weighted toward individual popuilar builds doesn't mean Dragonite was, in actual fact, predictable.
dragonite was predictable, not because it's other sets were bad, but because they were vastly outclassed. For example, it could run Pidgeotite to throw around no guard hurricanes, but tornadus could do it better, by virtue of its 25 more points in SpA, and 20 or so more in Spe. And tornadus could run sets to surprise it's normal checks, like Pinsirite bulk up. The genies are far less predictable than dnite, and are very good with their obvious sets as well as their less predictable ones. Im not saying you always know exactly what set, or even coverage it is running, but it's other sets weren't that good, relatively.
Literally every check you've proposed, or that anyone else has proposed, has been premised under one or both of two assumptions: the check switches in and Mega Evolves before it is ever attacked (But is in perfect condition when it fights Lucario, having suffered nothing from getting the chance to Mega Evolve) or Lucario is specifically failing to run a specific coverage move it has access to. That's not much of a check, and trying to argue Lucario won't run a coverage move to kill a check to it is literally nonsensical. That's the entire point of coverage moves!
But that's the thing, greninja, for example, has a bunch of ridiculous coverage options that let it switch in and out and just nuke whatever plagues your team. Luc doesn't have the same degree of ridiculous unpredictability. Can it run different coverage moves? Of course! And? Literally everything can. I suppose that you are suggesting that we should just ban every Pokemon ever that has more than 4 possible moves? Obviously not, but for example, most Gyarados don't run coverage anymore, however turns out that EQ mega Gyarados is really creaking good. By this logic, it's got to be broken. But no one is arguing that it is. Greninja, on the other hand, is meant to punch holes in whatever your team is weak to, since the only thing that was a guaranteed switch in was P2. The reason that I bring this up is because Luc, as literally everyone seems to agree except for you (including, I believe, AJA), Luc struggles to perform to its maximum potential until late game, when it's meant to just clean up the mess. Coverage is useful at that point, but not as useful as it is for something like Greninja that likes to punch holes in the opposing team mid game, switch out, come in and do it again, and repeat (it also functioned as a decent cleaner, but it wasn't really strong enough to do so w/o everything having already been weakened quite a bit). So just because it has a decently wide movepool doesn't exactly mean anything, in comparison.
Concerning Espeed, tho the quote was messed up, I am not actually underestimating it; I've used it a lot, actually. It is awesome. I'm just saying it's not as incredible as you think. All it does is let's you outspeeds some targets that you wouldn't otherwise. Looking to salamence again, it's access to dragon dance means that it will outspeed everything after a boost (barring prio, obviously) with all of its moves, unlike Luc, who's just as slow with its secondary stab and coverage moves, despite the turn used to set up. I'm not saying it's bad, or even that it isn't way good. I'm just saying that you are also overselling it.
