Metagame np: SS DOU stage 0: Begin Again | Beat Up banned

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Is Gravsleep banned or not? On Showdown it won't let me use it and the rules on this thread list it under the clauses. But this thread says it was unbanned by the council and would be revisited if need be, which it so far hasn't been so far as I can tell. So....??
 
Is Gravsleep banned or not? On Showdown it won't let me use it and the rules on this thread list it under the clauses. But this thread says it was unbanned by the council and would be revisited if need be, which it so far hasn't been so far as I can tell. So....??
The GravSleep clause has been reinstated some time ago.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
Can we please ban beat up? Back before Home came out you at least had to commit to running a gimp mon that sucked if it didn't get beat up, and to not having the best Intimidator in the meta on your team, and it was still cringe. Now the mons are actually really good on their own and the only real counterplay is Follow Me or Weezing. Without those mons you're basically making trades at best, and "at best" is a really optimistic case honestly, because not much can OHKO dynamaxed terrakion, and you need two of them on the same team to stop it from lead, let alone getting caught out of position after a turn or two. You don't have to lead beat up to use it, which is the scariest part.

Unless someone can post a bunch of counterplay I'm forgetting about, I feel like this shit has to go.
 
I too would like to see beat up get nuked soon, or at least get a statement from a coucil member/TL about when we can expect to see a suspect or quickban. I understand that this is a relatively new issue and the council might not have discussed it in depth yet, but surely you guys must have already formed an opinion, especially since we're talking about an element of the game so overbearing that SPL players felt the need to gentlemen's to not bring it (and those who brought it gave us a great demonstration of how interesting beat up can make a game).
Honestly, seeing talk in the DOU discord about a potential beat up suspect taking place after a shadow tag suspect, in turn taking place after SPL is extremely worrying to me, as we're looking at potentially 2+ months of people having to unofficially agree to not use a toxic strat just to get some good games (not to mention the fact that having to play DLT on a ladder chock-full of this cheese might drive ragequits through the roof).

Speaking of cheese, I also wanted to quickly address this post:
I wouldn't quickban Beat Up btw, if things got banned for being too cheesy and requiring 0 skill, fullrooom also should have gotten banned when they turned from a checkmater meme strat that preys on players who lack fundamentals in Gen 6 into a full fledged legitimate (but brainless & cheesy ladder staple for people who overestimate their creativity and skill) archetype in Gen 7.
I feel like the big difference comes down to opportunity cost: on one hand you have a strategy that requires you to commit your whole team to it, run at least 2 tr setters and a bunch of mons that pretty much need specific conditions to do their job properly and will most likely fall apart if your opponent manages to prevent trick room from going up; on the other hand a strategy that has similar sweeping potential but only forces you to invest two slots, one of which is a tier 1 mon and the other is a not-great-but-still-viable-I-guess one, which doesn't become immediately dead weight if your opponent prevents you from boosting it. Having such a powerful strategy that requires so little investment allows you to buid a team with 4 perfectly good mons and then just be like

kaori Ieri alle 18:43
then i threw on beat up and called it a day

I won't go into a full-fledged rant about why I think beat up is unhealty and uncompetitive, as I feel other people in this thread explained it better than I ever could and that type of discussion would fit better in a suspect thread anyway, but I felt like getting out there the reason why this comparison doesn't really work in my opinion was important. I also want to reiterate that I, and I think many other people, would like to hear from the council ASAP about their plans and urge them to reconsider the current suspect schedule in light of the events of this last week of SPL.
 

talkingtree

large if factual
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(This is me talking, and not a joint statement of the council, though this post will still talk some about where the council stands right now in my eyes)

Hey everyone,

Council has been discussing a lot in the recent weeks, both leading up to and following the release of Home. We'd been planning to have a suspect that coincides with the playoffs of SPL for a couple reasons. First, this gives the post-Home metagame a little bit of time to settle and adapt without waiting too long to address a potentially problematic element of the metagame. The council didn't reach any unanimous consensus, so it felt wrong to say what suspect was planned or when but for the sake of transparency I'm making a post now.

Before the release of home, the potential suspect target that we most agreed on was Shadow Tag. In this case, it would definitely be the ability as a whole and not just Gothitelle. It has already been shown that Gothorita can do many of the same things that its evolution can do, so the ability itself would be what the suspect addressed as opposed to any individual Pokemon (or, more awkwardly, two Pokemon simultaneously). I don't want to go too in depth into why, as everyone knows the contentious issue of trapping, but the addition of Fake Out and the ability to trap foes in with an offensive threat that can Dynamax and get guaranteed KOs / stat boosts make it more prevalently an issue.

Since the release, Beat Up has emerged as another potential suspect target. Taking care of or preventing the setup of a Dynamax'd, +6, speedy threat is both very difficult and very urgent. Also, as Qwello noted, it's fairly easy to slap onto teams when the two best Beat Up users and the best Justified Pokemon are all solid threats in their own right. However, there is some slight flexibility and counterplay that makes it not entirely overbearing, so having a quickban/council vote seems rash and at the very least we wanted to get some more formal community input.

So, what do you think? I can tell by the likes / reactions to the two posts above that there's a decent amount of support for a Beat Up test, which I understand, but I'm cautious about shelving an issue (Shadow Tag) that's shown itself to be potentially problematic for longer without any signs of it going away.
 

GenOne

DOU main. GMT-7. PS!: GenOne
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I think Shadow Tag is worth suspecting at some point, but not before Beat Up. Shadow Tag has been contentious for multiple generations, and the re-introduction of Incineroar gives us renewed Tier 1 counterplay against Shadow Tag as a threat. There are plenty of good reasons to want to suspect Shadow Tag, but it isn't new news and I think we should let the meta settle more first to see how modern teams deal with it.

Beat Up + Justified on the other hand has escalated tremendously. In past gens it was a strat that you (or bad ladder players) used to punish opponents that didn't respect or know fundamental teambuilding / playing skills. Nowadays, the opportunity cost to run Beat Up as a 3rd move on Tier 1 mons like Dragapult and Whimsicott is completely insignificant, and adding Terrakion (or another Justified mon) as your 6th on a team of 5 goodstuff mons is incredibly easy to do. The Dynamax mechanics of ignoring Fake Out and doubling HP also make Justified mons a much more serious threat now than in the past. Imagine if XY Belly Drum Azumarill could ignore Fake Out, had 200% HP and could set rain. Azu might have actually been more broken than Rachi then :P

With all that said, wanting a Beat Up suspect =/= me automatically thinking it's a problem. I just think it's worth suspecting first over Shadow Tag.
 
I think doubles is an extremely balanced type of format in general--I think most things are relatively manageable, and bans are rare. Shadow tag has hung around for a while, and hasn't been particularly broken, but a little bit over-punishing. In an ideal world, Shadow Tag wouldn't be in the format, but I do not think it is particularly urgent. Shadow tag admits of consistent counterplay in mons like Incineroar and Dragapult, each of which hit Gothitelle super-effectively and can switch out of tag. Basically: shadow tag is good, but not cancer. It might be too good, but I think that that's by degrees.
Beat up, on the other hand, is cancer. In particular, I offer 3 claims.

1) Beat up can immediately win games in a (largely) undeserving manner. Currently the power level and set of board positions is such that it's not amazingly simple for gothitelle to come in. However, if you simply kill Whimsicott's partner as it sets up tailwind, or even kill both whimsicott and its partner, Terrakion and/or Dragapult can come in, and instantly win the game with dynamax and beat up. Getting to +6 or +5 (or even +4) can be enough to instantly win the game, so it puts a lot of pressure on the beat up counters, e.g., follow me, to be on the field constantly, and any instance of misplay guarantees loss. Basically: it is too punishing to mess up, which was the problem with e.g. goth lax last generation. That gives too much of an advantage to the beat up user.

2) Beat Up removes interactivity. While I agree with Marilli that hard TR can defeat opposing teams, I claim that it is relatively simple to outplay the hard TR player with a number of teams that are not necessarily suited to the task--i.e., don't have specific hard tr counters but just have good pokemon. The first TR always goes up, but there are ways to prevent the second tr from going up by outplaying your opponent. In other words, hard TR admits of interaction, even once it has secured the first step in the game.
Beat up does not. Once the terrakion is at +6, the game is over. it Dynamaxes, and boosts its speed and special defense and ohko's everything with rock slide. There is nothing to do once the gimmick has been achieved. Even with things like shedinja, you can pp stall and so forth. With terrakion, there's nothing to do.

3) The mirror is turbo cancer. Did you see the Kiichi vs Kaori game? Random ally switch, max air stream, random thunder wave, and then the game was over on turn 3. Terrakion just clicked rock slide every other turn.

I personally have not played too much against it because I've been gentlemanning it against Qsns, Stax and Arcticblast, my SPL and ssnls opponents respectively. when I have played against it it has felt decently strong in power level, (not unbelievably broken, my teams often didn't let my opps set it up). However I think the real problem is that the opportunity cost to run it is so low and the cancer involved by having it is so high that it's not worth it.
Further, the metagame shaping effects are severe. Every team basically has to run blastoise, or weezing, or be hyper offense to deal with Terrakion. I think that's a large restriction on teambuilding that needn't exist.
 

tennisace

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Echoing the first point in the above post. The main difference between Beat Up and Shadow Tag is the level of punishment. If you make a mistake against Goth, you might lose a Pokemon and put yourself in a hole, but there's usually opportunities to play yourself out of it later. If you make a mistake against Beat Up the game is over and you take an L.
 

Fran

formerly Frania
is a Tiering Contributor
DPL Champion
I agree that beat up is very problematic, I'd like to see a Melmetal vote too. Shadow Tag hasn't yet proven to be broken in my opinion and it shouldn't be discussed in the same way the two other things are. It has a rather shitty SPL winrate and isn't even close in how centralizing it is. That being said I'd rather wait before w9 ends, before making a longer post, we still have a lot to learn about how the post home meta functions in practice.
 
I was planning on writing about beat up and how BS it is really. I think Qwello Lee and Ezrael pretty much covered what I wanted to and way more. As far as shadowtag goes, I fully agree with frania. Yes, goth can be a bully with shadow tag and really good mon in general with the options it has and its ability to enable dmax or set up mons. But, I don't believe it's broken to the point where it needs any banning. I agree with a suspect test, but generally u can play around shadow tag. Beat up though is a totally different beast altogether, because it's GG after terrakion achieved it for most teams and how much it forces u to teambuild in a certain way, hence limiting ur options on that regard.
 

Kenpwnchi

formerly Pwndkthnx
Since everything has been said already, fuck Beat Up. The gimmick always has and always will be garbage. It used to only work against those who didn't expect it, but it can beat you now...even if you expect it. Yeah, no. That's not healthy at all. Honestly, you guys should quick ban it, and kill the cancer immediately. A suspect test would be a waste of time. Shadow Tag is fine. Gothitelle gets dunked on by Max Darkness.
 
I have a few problems with SS DOU, Beat Up is one of them. When I am building a team and look at the team, the first thing in my mind: can I beat Beat Up Whimiscott or Dragapult/Terrakion team? We can slap Beat Up on Dragapult or Whimiscott with low opportunity cost because it has immediately win condition. Beat up is overcentralizing and put too much strain on teambuilding because we have a few pokemon that can stop them such as Blastoise, Weezing, hyper offense playstyle and other counterplays. I feel like I need to lead two pokemon that can beat Beat Up/Terrakion to avoid the immediate loss but they don't need to lead them which they have too many advantages in the start of the games, board positions and win conditions. I think the meta is assuredly better without them, we should wait to see if Shadow Tag is broken or not when Beat Up is banned.
Get Beat Up the fuck out of here.
 
beat up in SwSh DOU is genuinely stupid, and should be quick banned, not suspected. Beat Up has grown from a potent strategy since the start of the gen, to an overbearing monster with the introduction of Terrakion. Arcanine was easier to deal with, as it had mediocre coverage in Fire, Electric, Fighting and Normal, and couldn't touch the premier redirector at the time, Togekiss (also couldn't handle Indeedee+Hatterene lead super well), The set also faced competition from Arcanine's much more useful support set. However, now that Beat Up has a new flagship sweeper, Terrakion, the strategy has evolved significantly. Now the user can plan around sweeping late-game with Beat Up (as others have said, even +3 is enough to sweep a team late-game) or just going in turn 1. Each Beat Up user has their own use, too; Whimsicott can run a combination of Beat Up, Tailwind, Worry Seed, Taunt, Encore or Helping Hand, based on the user's needs; Dragapult offers a strong offensive presence and immunity to Fake Out, as well as being able to run Ally Switch or Will-o-Wisp.

The best way to counter Beat Up right now is Follow Me/Fake Out Blastoise, but even it's able to be chunked/killed by the combination of Terrak's Max Rockfall + Draga's Draco/Tbolt.

tl;dr: just read anyone else's post, all these posts are just agreeing with previous posts and adding onto why beat up is broken/why it's annoying
 
+ban on beat up
in the past beat up has always been one of those gimmicks that usually just didn't work that well. dynamax is prob the thing that pushed it slightly over the edge as well as the speed changes. terrakion really just drove it over the cliff with a spread move, better offensive typing, and even the ability to airstream.



and for the only thing i'll bring to the table
+++ on ally fucking switch
bullshit move that falls in the lines of gen6/7ou aegislash ban. a constant 50/50 feast or famine piece of shit kill it
 
Beat up is only a "problem" because you guys banned Marshadow and Jirachi. This is on you. We could really use Marshadow to steal beat up boosts and redirection from the perfect typing steel/psychic going against Terrakion. Shit even op Melmetal would be useless. Beat up and Melmetal/shadow tag Gothitelle would not even exist, it would not even be viable at all, but thinks to your premature bans here we are now. Bans have consequences that only lead to a floodgate of more bans. With Melmetal on every team Kyurum would even be balanced.

With that said I'm in favor of no bans altogether, but since you guys have already opened that box. Beat up is not that hard to deal with, but it forces you to always run a Blastoise or Indee. It limits team building is my only problem with it, not its power. Speaking of team building there is a worse problem.

Now the real problem is Melmetal. That should be the first suspect. And once you guys ban beat up taking away the only good viable fighting type its really going to run wild. Melmatal is even more centralizing than beat up in team building. You need 2-3 checks for the thing because when it is max it does not die. It can kill keldo with max lighting, kill fire/ground types with max ground, boosts its attack back up with max fighting after intimidate from incin and than kill incin. And the gmax version is not even out yet. Its only going to get worse. How the hell you dictators miss this? You can just slap this thing on any team it does not matter. It makes running a different steel type retarded because none of them measure up to this so why run the other ones? Most brain dead mon ever created. Best max mon in the game. Oh yeah it can boosts its already insane defensive stats making it more unkillable.
 
Beat up is only a "problem" because you guys banned Marshadow and Jirachi. This is on you. We could really use Marshadow to steal beat up boosts and redirection from the perfect typing steel/psychic going against Terrakion. Shit even op Melmetal would be useless. Beat up and Melmetal/shadow tag Gothitelle would not even exist, it would not even be viable at all, but thinks to your premature bans here we are now. Bans have consequences that only lead to a floodgate of more bans. With Melmetal on every team Kyurum would even be balanced.

With that said I'm in favor of no bans altogether, but since you guys have already opened that box. Beat up is not that hard to deal with, but it forces you to always run a Blastoise or Indee. It limits team building is my only problem with it, not its power. Speaking of team building there is a worse problem.

Now the real problem is Melmetal. That should be the first suspect. And once you guys ban beat up taking away the only good viable fighting type its really going to run wild. Melmatal is even more centralizing than beat up in team building. You need 2-3 checks for the thing because when it is max it does not die. It can kill keldo with max lighting, kill fire/ground types with max ground, boosts its attack back up with max fighting after intimidate from incin and than kill incin. And the gmax version is not even out yet. Its only going to get worse. How the hell you dictators miss this? You can just slap this thing on any team it does not matter. It makes running a different steel type retarded because none of them measure up to this so why run the other ones? Most brain dead mon ever created. Best max mon in the game. Oh yeah it can boosts its already insane defensive stats making it more unkillable.
I definately agree with you in how OP Melmetal is, nobody can deny that, but it is much less punishing than terrak, and perhaps more importantly, one of the few non dedicated checks and counters as long as the beat up user is faked out (dragapult is immune but whim is more common, and you can incorporate sucker punch to certain mons), or trick room has been set up. It's also not unbeatable since he is very slow without trick room, somewhat frail on the special side without assault vest, which is further compounded by the rise of sun and vulnerable to burns without lum berry, safeguard or aromatherapy/heal bell. What I am trying to say is that I support a suspect test, but, quoting you, banning Melmetal now would have as a consequence, a further strengthening of beat up, which would further unbalance the meta, and thus the suspect should only be performed after beat up is gone.
 
I definately agree with you in how OP Melmetal is, nobody can deny that, but it is much less punishing than terrak, and perhaps more importantly, one of the few non dedicated checks and counters as long as the beat up user is faked out (dragapult is immune but whim is more common, and you can incorporate sucker punch to certain mons), or trick room has been set up. It's also not unbeatable since he is very slow without trick room, somewhat frail on the special side without assault vest, which is further compounded by the rise of sun and vulnerable to burns without lum berry, safeguard or aromatherapy/heal bell. What I am trying to say is that I support a suspect test, but, quoting you, banning Melmetal now would have as a consequence, a further strengthening of beat up, which would further unbalance the meta, and thus the suspect should only be performed after beat up is gone.
Thats what i'm saying, once beat up is gone melmetal is about to get a lot worse. And teams are running screens with melmetal now making its special defense a void argument. And it can boosts its special defense anyways making it a none issue. after 1-2 turns it can tank special attacks. it really doesn't have low special defense. low number, but that is not its actual number in live gameplay. melmetal maxes 90% of the time. It can tank a special hit in max form turn 1 and just boost tell the point it shurgs them off after. It can survive a max hp eruption from torkal if its boost is special defense before torkal gets on the field and kill it with max ground.

Since its defense is so high it really doesn't need trick room to be effective, it can just tank. and the fast ones with a tailwind set up are really fast. It has no problem with speed control in either direction. The best you can do is just get a fighting type out on the field before it gets on the field to scare it off from coming in, but with incineroar intimidate that is also 100% always on the same team with it even fighting moves get tanked.

Quick ban this thing forget a suspect its more powerful than marshadow, jircihi, kyurum ever was in the whole 2 hours they were legal before the dictators quick banned them. Why the hell was this left out? 600 base stats, perfect typing, no viable hard counters. You guys have already shown you have no problem skipping giving the user base a vote on things so quick ban this thing also.

Treat it as a vote to "unban"
 
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Amaranth

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I've actually found time to ladder a bit so I have moderately informed opinions to share on all this

- Shadow Tag is incredibly busted with Incineroar around, I think it's especially good in Trick Room - leading Goth+Incin is just so hard to counter, they can take on so many combinations of pokemon because you can often just fake out whichever one is more immediately threatening and pick whichever of TR or Parting Shot is going to get you in a better position - the versatility is really absurd, obviously there's negative matchups here and there but Incin and Goth are relatively bulky mons that have no trouble double switching in during the midgame in a lot of cases so you need to be wary of this at all times and I feel like it's just too restrictive and too powerful. I was pro STag ban in SM and I'm pro ban again in SS where the meta is overall even weaker and Incineroar does an even better job of debilitating the things you trap, would really like to see it suspected although I don't think it's necessarily urgent because the counterplay is (sorta) out there

- Beat Up is not necessarily broken but it's definitely uncompetitive, pulling it off successfully is so powerful that games are often dumbed down to a handful of mindgames over two or three turns which just doesn't feel good to me, both players know what's going on so it pretty much dumbs games down to pure guessing but I'm not here to play rock paper scissors I'm here to play pokemon. I'm sure this is made worse by Ally Switch and I've always been a big believer in Ally Switch being a dumbshit move that should not exist - but I think even without considering AS beat up is problematic and we don't lose much at all from getting rid of it

- Melmetal is REALLY good. Sure intimidates and sure willowisps (if they're not running lum) but it just feels too powerful, deals a casual 50 to resists and a casual 100 on neutral hits, very fat, great typing, kills through sashes, can use dmax well if the situation calls for it, I just feel like its power level across the board is a bit too much. I can't point to one thing in particular that makes it ban worthy but it just feels like it outclasses everything else in the tier in terms of damage dealt / damage taken and those are pretty important things in a pokemon game so yea. I honestly would have quickbanned this the moment it dropped and tested to allow it back rather than the other way around, but what's done is done. He doesn't do anything too gamebreaking so the meta can shift around it and it's not an urgent priority to address this I don't think, but he definitely feels S+ tier to me and I would probably like to see it tested eventually. Don't think it's as problematic as STag and Beat Up though.
 

MajorBowman

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Thanks to everyone* for the civil discussion, this has been very helpful in giving the council some info to work with.

Here's the sitch: we're going to do a council vote on Beat Up this coming Monday, March 2. While Beat Up wasn't really the original target (in my head, at least), it has become clear that Beat Up is the more pressing issue to more people. I had some initial qualms about doing yet another council vote, but given the idea that we're essentially in a new meta again now that Home has been released, I think it's a valid way to go about addressing Beat Up (especially given the near unanimous consensus in this thread).

This is your last chance to make your case regarding Beat Up - if you have a few final words before its fate is decided, speak now or complain about it later forever hold your peace.

After that, probably a Shadow Tag suspect? Maybe Melmetal later on? Possibly an executive order from yours truly to ban tennisace once and for all? Thanks again for the discussion, keep it up yall.
 
I'll go ahead and put my two cents in about the current meta:

Melmetal - I've got mixed thoughts on this one. I've never personally felt like I had to go out of my way to find something specifically to deal with it (like I did in standard OU), but I also can't deny that it is stupidly strong and kind of brainless. If we could do complex bans, I'd probably suggest preventing it from Dynamaxing, which I think would at least keep it from being too overpowering.

Shadow Tag - I never argue against banning a trapping Ability. Even though Goth is far from invincible on its own, Shadow Tag is an outright cancer that has no business being anywhere outside of Ubers or AG (especially when paired with Cosmic Power and Rest for PP draining).

Beat Up - I have discovered the art of Faking Out and then nuking a Whimsicott right out of the gate to prevent it from getting any ideas. You would not believe how many Beat Up-based teams crumble when Whim doesn't get the chance to use it. Not trying to push for or against a ban here, just offering a suggestion to make it more manageable. I'm honestly indifferent and wouldn't care either way if it does or doesn't get banned.

Also, I would be remiss not to end this post with a "Don't sleep on _____" plug, so allow me to introduce:
capnbeartic.jpg

Beartic @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Slush Rush
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Superpower
- Liquidation
- Play Rough

As I was walkin' down Icirrus Street,
To me way aye, blow the Dragapult down,
A pretty young Cubchoo I chanced to meet,
Give me some time, to blow the Dragapult down.


That's right, ye scurvy dogs! Yer not gonna sleep so easily on a polar bear wearin' pirate garb, are ye? Especially when it be wieldin' Slush Rush and some coverage in its movepool. If Hail be up, Beartic be faster than a Dragapult. Ayecicle Crash be Beartic's main STAB attack, sendin' the dead fish back to whar it came from. Suparrpowarr be anotharr useful attack, hittin' Rock- and Steel-types like a cannonball rippin' a hole in the poopdeck of an enemy ship. Liquidation and Play Rough also be thar for additional coverage against Fire- and Fighting-types, although the former be of less effective use when Dynamaxed. Speakin' of Dynamax, Beartic be bulky enough that it can take some occasional hits when Dynamaxed, which be why Weakness Policy be the item of choice.

Beartic be best paired with Alolan Ninetales to set up Hail, as well as Aurora Veil. It also be appreciative of additional support when dealin' with Trick Room, Conkeldurr, and Sandstorm-based teams. Here be some replays showin' Beartic in action alongside some more established mons of this meta (and a few less-established ones, too):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1072026411
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1072030330
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1072034558
 
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I'll go ahead and put my two cents in about the current meta:

Melmetal - I've got mixed thoughts on this one. I've never personally felt like I had to go out of my way to find something specifically to deal with it (like I did in standard OU), but I also can't deny that it is stupidly strong and kind of brainless. If we could do complex bans, I'd probably suggest preventing it from Dynamaxing, which I think would at least keep it from being too overpowering.

Shadow Tag - I never argue against banning a trapping Ability. Even though Goth is far from invincible on its own, Shadow Tag is an outright cancer that has no business being anywhere outside of Ubers or AG (especially when paired with Cosmic Power and Rest for PP draining).

Beat Up - I have discovered the art of Faking Out and then nuking a Whimsicott right out of the gate to prevent it from getting any ideas. You would not believe how many Beat Up-based teams crumble when Whim doesn't get the chance to use it. Not trying to push for or against a ban here, just offering a suggestion to make it more manageable. I'm honestly indifferent and wouldn't care either way if it does or doesn't get banned.

Also, I would be remiss not to end this post with a "Don't sleep on _____" plug, so allow me to introduce:
View attachment 225782
Beartic @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Slush Rush
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Superpower
- Liquidation
- Play Rough

As I was walkin' down Icirrus Street,
To me way aye, blow the Dragapult down,
A pretty young Cubchoo I chanced to meet,
Give me some time, to blow the Dragapult down.


That's right, ye scurvy dogs! Yer not gonna sleep so easily on a polar bear wearin' pirate garb, are ye? Especially when it be wieldin' Slush Rush and some coverage in its movepool. If Hail be up, Beartic be faster than a Dragapult. Ayecicle Crash be Beartic's main STAB attack, sendin' the dead fish back to whar it came from. Suparrpowarr be anotharr useful attack, hittin' Rock- and Steel-types like a cannonball rippin' a hole in the poopdeck of an enemy ship. Liquidation and Play Rough also be thar for additional coverage against Fire- and Fighting-types, although the former be of less effective use when Dynamaxed. Speakin' of Dynamax, Beartic be bulky enough that it can take some occasional hits when Dynamaxed, which be why Weakness Policy be the item of choice.

Beartic be best paired with Alolan Ninetales to set up Hail, as well as Aurora Veil. It also be appreciative of additional support when dealin' with Trick Room, Conkeldurr, and Sandstorm-based teams. Here be some replays showin' Beartic in action alongside some more established mons of this meta (and a few less-established ones, too):
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1072026411
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1072030330
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1072034558
"I have discovered the art of Faking Out and then nuking a Whimsicott right out of the gate to prevent it from getting any ideas. You would not believe how many Beat Up-based teams crumble when Whim doesn't get the chance to use it. "
This statement is completely fallacious, because most beat up teams abuse dragapult for beat up, which also happens to get ally switch, thunder wave and disable with an already incredible speed tier in DOU, only bested by zeraora. And if u thinking of statusing the terrakion, then good luck as all of them tends to run lum berry, and immediately dmaxes with +6 attack and kills ur status user thus not giving u a second chance.
Another argument why beat up should be nuked is the opportunity cost. It only takes 2 mons, dragapult+terrakion to pull it off and dragapult on its own is a tier 1 mon. By the time u do manage to take it out, the damage has already been done and they have lost only 1 mon, compared to 3 or 4 on ur side. Can u see the problem here? You have lost like half or more than half of ur team , while they still have 5 good mons in the back. It's just low risk, super high reward.
Is beat up then invincible? Well, definitely not. You can run redirectors. But most redirectors, like togekiss(previously a tier 1 mon) get shit on by a dmax terrakion, and same can be said about indeedee. The only viable redirector is blastoise. But that creates an issue on its own, which is the restrain on teambuilding. It forces u to teambuild in a certain way, thus limiting ur options.
Another thing that pushes beat up over the cliff is dynamax. Beat up was just a gimmick in other gens, but with dmax giving immunity to fake out and doubling hp makes it more potent.
I can continue on about this, but I think you should take a look at Qwello Lee's and Ezrael's posts, who have gone into much more depth on why beat up this gen is busted.
 
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Beat Up - I have discovered the art of Faking Out and then nuking a Whimsicott right out of the gate to prevent it from getting any ideas. You would not believe how many Beat Up-based teams crumble when Whim doesn't get the chance to use it. Not trying to push for or against a ban here, just offering a suggestion to make it more manageable. I'm honestly indifferent and wouldn't care either way if it does or doesn't get banned.
Do you realise that Dragapult learns Beat up? Fake out isn't working against Dragapult + Dynamaxing Terrakion, Dragapult has incredible support movepool to support Terrakion. You should watch Kiichi vs Kaori game that Ezrael highlight that game, it's full of fucking trash with random Ally Switch and random Thunder Wave. We don't want to play in the shit metagame like that.
 

Bughouse

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The only feasible argument I would see against banning Beat Up would be that Dynamax is the larger issue. That said, Beat Up as a strat is still significantly buffed from past generations, even aside from Dynamax. Terrakion's speed tier is much better in this generation and there are more/better viable users of Beat Up to go along with it.
 

talkingtree

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By a unanimous 7-0 vote, the DOU Council has agreed to BAN Beat Up. I'm sure this comes as no surprise and everyone knows why; still, I'll include our reasonings below. If you only read one, Stratos's was by far the most in-depth and well-written, so that's the one I'd peek at. Thanks to everyone for providing your input and continuing discussion! Council will be talking about next steps, probably involving a suspect test coming shortly.

Ban Beat up

It has no real use besides justified shenanigans and the sheer power it has in this gen to win games nearly instantly is just stupid. Just get rid of it.
Ban Beat Up

Strategies like Beat Up are only balanced when there is a significant opportunity cost to using the strategy which does not exist right now.
Ban Beat Up

To a larger extent than ever, Beat Up is a markedly unhealthy presence in the metagame thanks to both its potency and the extremely low opportunity cost involved in using it. Both of the prominent Beat Up users and the main recipient are all great Pokemon in their own right, and their ability to very easily flex to a Justified + Beat Up combo is a bit overbearing
BAN BEAT UP

there's little to no counterplay to the combo: we have blastoise, togekiss dying to max rockfall, and galarian weezing. if you get caught out of position against beat up + justified without these in, you lose. i'm simplifying both of these a bit (not much!) but the majority of the time, handling a +4-6 dynamax'd terrakion takes multiple sacks that ruins a gameplan entirely. the other truly scary part of the combo is that running beat up + justified forces otherwise very specific suboptimal plays from the opponent in fear of being caught out of position, giving you an incredible handle over the tempo of the game. definitely overpowered & overcentralizing.
Ban Beat Up

Since making my original post in the thread I've laddered a good bit with Whims / Draga / Rak / Incin, and I've realized that there's some more counterplay than I thought. Here's an incomplete list of things I won't lead beat up against:

Any Prankster
Any 2x Speed weather ability
Dracovish + any Tailwind
Any Follow Me
Weezing

But the key word here is lead Beat Up. The majority of teams has one of these things (those with none auto lose), but even when I don't lead Beat Up, it usually wins the game.

As Jon pointed out in the thread, the main issue here is that when Beat Up works, it works too well. Because giving Whims + Rak a single free turn auto-loses (thanks in part to new Tailwind mechanics), the opponent is forced to counterlead it. If I don't lead Beat Up, they have to choose between letting their beat up answer get injured (opening themselves up for a sweep later) or switching it out, and risking getting caught out of position—especially easy for me to do with double Beat Up. Often it's as simple as leading Whims Incin and using Twind + Parting Shot turn 1 into Beat Up.

Even if I never successfully use Beat Up, the opportunity cost is incredibly low. Even without Beat Up Terrakion is pretty solid in this meta, where it's finally "fast" again. Dragapult and Whimsicott we have known for a while are good in this meta. For the cost of a single moveslot on top tier Pokemon—in Draga's case, on a Pokemon that only even wants three other moves—you just get way too much benefit.


I will say I'm not 100% convinced Beat Up is absolutely broken, although the more I write the more convinced I get. However, I also think that (1) nobody will be sad to see it go and (2) we need to play a little more fast and loose with tiering policy considering the DLC release model (fuck gamefreak btw). In an ideal world we reexamine this after the DLC but considering point 1 there is so much I'd rather spend suspect time on in the future lol.
Ban Beat Up

Any turn that can result in an instant winning of the game in one turn is always worth looking at from a tiering perspective. In a healthy metagame, these will only happen due to solid planning, teambuilding, and play or a complete lack of one of those three from the opponent. However, Beat Up has a much lower bar to reach that level. I think some of the claims on Beat Up are pretty exaggerated; there is counterplay in speed control, redirection, Weezing, Prankster Worry Seed, and faster Pokemon like Durant. However, even if Beat Up isn't pure satanic cancerous brokenness, I think it still rises to the level of needing to go.
Ban Beat Up

This generation Beat Up (+Justified) has been catapulted from a niche gimmick to an overpowering and central aspect of the metagame. Beat Up has little true counterplay, mainly just redirection, and a very low opportunity cost to run. It's easy to pull off in a game, and it can just as easily end it there. This incredible combination means Beat Up warps games and the meta in an unhealthy manner, and so should be removed.


Also, tennisace you're on thin ice -- you got 3 votes to ban :blobpex:
 
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