Metagame np: SS DOU Stage 7: Waterloo | Urshifu-R Remains DOU

[Yoda2798]

Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo, promise to love you forevermore
Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo, knowing my fate is to be with you
Wa-Wa-Wa-Wa-Waterloo
Finally facing my Waterloo ​

It's time for the next Doubles OU suspect test! This time we're putting Urshifu-Rapid-Strike under the microscope. Urshifu's alternate Single-Strike form is already currently banned from SS DOU from the quickbans after the release of Crown Tundra, and was banned by suspect during the Isle of Armor meta, but this is the first time we've looked at Rapid-Strike.

Initially thought simply to be the weaker version of Urshifu, due to Water being an easier type to deal with offensively and defensively compared to Dark, Urshifu-R has grown in popularity over time to the point of becoming a top metagame threat. Similar to its other form, Urshifu-R boasts a base 130 Attack stat combined with two strong STAB attacks in Close Combat and Surging Strikes, the latter's 100% critical hit rate also providing effective immunity to Intimidate. When boosted by an item like Life Orb or Choice band, very few Pokemon can avoid being at worst 2HKOed by one of Urshifu's STABs. The option of Aqua Jet also allows Urshifu to pick off faster targets if sufficiently weakened. Surging Strikes doesn't just ignore Intimidate, however; it also hits the two most common users, Incineroar and Landorus-T, super effectively, knocking them clean out. Urshifu's ability to bypass and deal with Intimidate has played a large part in pushing it out of the meta, and enables other physical attackers such as Zygarde and Kartana who are usually kept in check with it. When paired together with these threats, the resulting offensive combination can be extremely difficult to deal with.

Another unique perk Urshifu has is the power to ignore Protect, from its ability Unseen Fist. This incredible bonus to all of its contact moves (which is effectively all of them) allows Urshifu to deny another typical form of counterplay to strong attackers, preventing the opponent from using Protect to help safely position around it. The ability to hit through Protect is made all the more potent due to the sheer strength of Urshifu's offensive prowess, as few Pokemon want to switch into the brunt of one of its attacks either. While it's difficult to pivot around Urshifu, Urshifu can easily pivot around you, with access to an unblockable U-turn being an additional benefit of its ability.

However, Urshifu is not completely without flaws. There are a couple of Pokemon which can handle Urshifu defensively, Tapu Fini and Amoonguss, but the best way to deal with it is offensively. Urshifu's fairly middling Speed leaves it vulnerable to a number of faster Pokemon such as Kartana, Zapdos, Dragapult, and Zeraora, which can all outspeed and KO it. Choice Scarf Urshifu variants can alleviate this issue, but are noticeably weaker without a boosting item. The omnipresent Rillaboom can also pin it down with a super effective Grassy Glide, regardless of item. Speed control such as Tailwind can also help, letting slower Pokemon like Necrozma turn the tables on Urshifu and hit it before it gets the opportunity to fire off one of its powerful attacks.

Important: The laddering period will last for a total of nine days.

Laddering Period
Start: Friday, June 4th at 8:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-4)
End: Sunday, June 13th at 8:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-4)

All games must be played on the Pokemon Showdown! Doubles OU ladder on a fresh alt with a name of the form "DOUWA [name]". For example, I might register the name "DOUWA Yoda" to use on the suspect ladder.

To qualify to vote, you must achieve a minimum GXE of 80 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may subtract 1 game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 80 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 84. As always, needing more than 50 games to reach 80 GXE is fine.

Minimum games needed

GXE	minimum games
80	50
80.2	49
80.4	48
80.6	47
80.8	46
81	45
81.2	44
81.4	43
81.6	42
81.8	41
82	40
82.2	39
82.4	38
82.6	37
82.8	36
83	35
83.2	34
83.4	33
83.6	32
83.8	31
84	30

Urshifu-R will be legal during this suspect.

 

[Actuarily]

I was writing this on the last thread, so I’ll just copy-paste here:
As someone that doesn’t think Urshifu-rs is broken, I’ll post the other side of the argument. But first off, really good quality post Emma & others, I wish my disagreement could be as well written.

It’s always difficult to talk about doubles in a vacuum. It’s easy to devolve into hypotheticals of “well X won’t beat Y as long as they have Z” - obviously positioning always plays a role. But I’ll try.

To start with basically every Pokémon faster than Urshifu has the option to OHKO it. (Nihilego being the main exception). The list from JUST the top 3 tiers of the VR: Dragapult, Genesect, Kartana, Mew, Zapdos, & Zeraora. Even Volcarona can OHKO with psychic - but I’ll grant this a stretch.

Secondly there’s still a handful of Pokémon that can switch in on any of its attacks and take it on: Rillaboom, Tapu Fini, Amoonguss, Dragapult, Zapdos, & Cresselia - just from the VR. Then you must factor in that it is typically choice locking itself into a move, and once that move is revealed the list of checks quadruples.

Lastly it’s weak into so many common cores and teamstyles. Urshifu is weak to every terrain setter, and it’s lack of bulk means it can’t take two attacks, so it struggles to switch in against any type of speed control. This means that EVERY decent team has ways of checking it, so it requires a lot of proper positioning to really get going.

Next “offense”. I think people are casting a pretty wide net in what they categorize as “offense”, which ignores all the different styles within that categorization. Is a meta with Psyspam, grass spam, full room, rain & other types of weather really that homogenous? This is all up to differences of opinion, but I wouldn’t call my Psyspam version as an “offensive” team - it features two non-offensive threats in Amoonguss and Indeedee-f. There’s also plenty of examples of well-played balance & set-up teams beating these prototypical offensive teams. Here’s a couple instances just from DLT:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1332896989
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1331025616
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1337428300-f3vv0v36zigzh8bptegqu0tnsq9pp7jpw

 

[choicebadkyurem]

I do not think Urshifu-Rs is broken as apresive as it may be with a dumb ability in Unseen Fist and Surging Strikes for a really good Water stab grasses and Fini are far to comon and good for me to consider Urshifu-Rs broken it has a good amount of checks however it in conjunction with Zyg allow Grass Spam to not only work but become a good previlaent team style game in and game out however I’m Pointing the blame finger at Zyg this time it’s the more broken mon here imo. Also banishing Urshi-Rs makes the meta less diverse and leads to Fini being the only good water which is lame and will become stale quick also shakeing up the meta in the midst of a big tour like Snnl is not super great imo.

 

[Crunchman]

My thoughts on Urshifu:
- There are lots of offensive urshifu checks in the meta.
- There aren't many defensive switch-ins - Rilla, Pult, Zap, Cresselia? still don't want to come in on Urshifu. Tapu Fini and Amoonguss are two popular Pokemon that are also legit defensive switch-ins; while Amoonguss can't threaten it back, rage powder practically neutralizes the threat of urshifu (even ice punch can be tanked). The problem is that if you don't have two defensive switch-ins, something is going to take some pretty big damage.
- Urshifu can be paired with fast fake out support such as Zeraora to temporarily block threats such as Rillaboom or Kartana. Urshifu can then proceed to take them out or take their partner out. Urshifu breaking protect eliminates one usual method of counterplay. The counterplay in this scenario is: Pokemon that threatens Urshifu offensively + fake out, two Pokemon that threaten Urshifu offensively, Psychic Terrain/Queenly Majesty + offensive threats to Urshifu, and having a defensive switch-in (but you really need two to be safe).
- Urshifu typically needs to be choice locked to pack a punch. This means that it is easily forced out of the field, as it cannot protect and Pokémon can be brought in that resist whatever move it locks into. With that being said, if it can hit a Pokemon, switch out, and come back to clean, it is already getting very good value. A lot of the time Urshifu can choose effective moves just based on team preview - A good number of teams cannot pull out both two fighting resists and two water resists (as well as having to account for the odd ice punch). You can't scout for what move it's going to be locked into using protect because it breaks protect - this means sacrificing HP on a pokemon and/or a KO to be able to bring in a check to defend whatever move Urshifu is choice locked into.
- Lack of bulk - Lol. Water Bear is very fragile. Heatran eruption 2hkos meaning it can't even safely switch into that.
- Can always get at least 1 Pokemon worth of value unless you decide to throw it away for whatever reason. (Though, this isn't exactly rare. Viable and good Pokemon tend to carry their weight through matchups.)
- Because surging strikes always crits, you don't need to worry about getting crit anymore. yay.
Is Urshifu too meta-defining to be kept in the tier? Is the way it restricts counterplay too oppressive? Is its ability contributing to a hyperoffensive metagame? I still don't have answers to these questions, and my vote is nowhere near decided. I have played a lot in the past few months with and without urshifu as well as against urshifu. It's certainly something I have to keep in mind while building, but that's normal for all relevant pokemon in the metagame. Hopefully, these answers will be answered with the suspect ladder.

 

[sawamura]

I'll leave my thoughts here so:

Looking at urshifu I thought the same thing for a while now "This mon will be Easily Controlled by Fini and Rillaboom" as Heatran has played a very good Role in keeping the Monkey A at bay as long as there is an effective tailwind Game but urshifu has been the answer to those Intimidation Games Limiting Landorus and incineroar which are always the Starting Point of many teams and modifying the Game. With the different Viability has been a very outstanding Mon. Just by removing the land Rillaboom is out of orbit and eats U-turn or a Close Combat which can be very detrimental in most cases and that is what we do not want our Pivot to stay low health.

The Reasons are Obvious Urshifu has been very dominant in this Metagame since with rillabom with 92 evs of Atk Adamant does not 1hko Urshifu which is his Standard Base for his distribution in his Spread, all that is one more reason for Urshifu to have a decent second chance to hit one more time causing Large amounts of damage.

In my opinion I think the Suspect test is something that I personally saw coming for a while, if in the event that urshifu was banned you would need if or if the presence of fighting type since the predominant one was urshifu and the current ones are not really relevant. Pizzazenta is something we should keep for the future because his performance and his set we are working with are somewhat questionable for his BST. In the conclusion urshifu stands out for his Offensively Oppressive stats plus his presence with Invisible Fist can Ignore Protections another reason why they are very reasonable for his suspect test because protections are one of the most Influential moves in the Game, this implies that you can make a prediction because the unseest Fist forces you to quickly make switch and then perform reckless actions are very risky in most cases.

I would perform a Ban not for being urshifu + BST but for his ability which has been a factor that has changed the game by 80%.

As I disappear from the Eternal Darkness Let's listen to this piece from the Past :D

 

[emma]

I will be voting to ban Urshifu-Rapid-Strike.

The biggest reason behind my decision is that there is no reliable defensive counterplay. Others have brought up options such as Dragapult, Rillaboom, and Cresselia, but the first two get 2HKOd by the Choice Band set's STABs (Dragapult also dies to CB Ice Punch 7/8 of the time), while Cresselia literally does not exist in this tier (one use in DLT Playoffs). I don't know about you, but I don't consider Pokemon that get cleanly 2HKOd to be consistent switch-ins. It's also important to note that standard Rillaboom only has a 1/16 chance to kill Urshifu-R with Grassy Glide in Grassy Terrain, Dragapult needs to click Draco Meteor to OHKO Urshifu-R, and Zeraora only kills 1/8 of the time with Max Attack Plasma Fists. Tapu Fini and Amoonguss can in fact avoid the 2HKO, but these Pokemon get worn down very easily.

Tapu Fini gets invalided by 'Grass Spam' of Rillaboom + Kartana, which is further amplified by the common Electric-type (Zeraora or Zapdos) you see on these HO structures. Furthermore, Tapu Fini is not allowed to run a Calm Mind set since it will never get a chance to set-up, and gets chipped easily by the strong barrage of attacks from Urshifu-R, Zygarde, and Heatran.

In this DLT Playoffs replay, Tapu Fini is already at 21% at the end of Turn 2 (partially due to a critical hit Volt Switch, but it would have been at ~40 and still unable to switch in again), forced to switch out, and dies when it comes back in Turn 6. Here we see Tapu Fini never get a chance to hit the field against standard Z Strats HO since Yoda is always applying pressure with one of Rillaboom, Kartana, or Zeraora on the floor at all times. While Urshifu-R never hits the field for Yoda, it shows how Tapu Fini cannot stop the onslaught of HO. Another example can be found here, where Tapu Fini gets worn down and eventually KOed by Heatran and Zygarde, two Pokemon it's supposed to check, and paves the way for Urshifu-R to pin down a +2 +2 Kyurem-B through Protect to secure the win. Tapu Fini simply cannot check Zygarde, Heatran, and Urshifu-R at once, and this issue is only made worse by Rillaboom and Kartana. In this replay, Urshifu-R is facing both Tapu Fini and Storm Drain Gastrodon, and yet still claims a free kill when it comes in on Turns 8 and 10. Once again, Tapu Fini is stretched thin, since it can't check both Psychic Spam and Urshifu-R at once.

Amoonguss does even less, as it makes zero progress against 2-3 Spore and Rage Powder immunities (depending on if Heatran is Safety Goggles) and even gets 2HKOd by Choice Band (and sometimes Life Orb) Ice Punch through Sitrus Berry, and takes 40-48% from Close Combat. Furthermore, running Amoonguss probably means you're running a variation of Necrozma, which does not match up well into Z Strats's HO because of Choice Band Zygarde, Rillaboom, Taunt Zeraora or Tailwind Zapdos, and Tailwind Kartana (1, 2). Here we have Urshifu-R against both Tapu Fini and Amoonguss, but it still ends up with three kills. In this replay, Urshifu 2HKOs a Rage Powder-ing Amoonguss with Ice Punch through Sitrus Berry, and pick up three other kills, including two free ones when it comes in on Turns 6 and 9. Tapu Fini and Amoonguss lose to Urshifu Offense.

This is all before mentioning the fact that breaking Protect is insane. This is what sets Urshifu-R apart from other extremely hard hitters such as Galar Zapdos. Breaking Protect destroys all passive maneuvering, since you no longer can shield yourself and switch into one your checks. One notable example of how good Unseen First can be is found here. On Turn 8, if Urshifu-R couldn't break Protect, Paraplegic can switch his Incineroar into Rillaboom and click Protect with Kyurem-B to stall out Tailwind and get Fake Out support on the field. Para would be in a pretty decent spot then, but his gameplan is invalidated by Urshifu-R. A similar situation can be found here and here.

Unseen Fist also takes away a lot of the risk when playing Urshifu-R. You no longer have to worry about attacking into a Protect and losing momentum as well as potentially getting KOed: Urshifu-R will almost always be 2HKOing whatever slot it's attacking. Additionally, guessing which STAB move it's clicking and praying you switch in your Rillaboom on the Surging Strikes or Dragapult on the Close Combat is pretty unreliable counterplay for obvious reason. Furthermore, the Urshifu-R player has two slots it can attack to help get around this 'problem'. Similar to people switching in their own Urshifu-S on the opponent's to take Choice Banded Wicked Blow, if you are relying on switching in your Dragapult to Close Combat when it gets 2HKOing by Surging Strikes and OHKOd by Ice Punch, it's safe to say that is not reliable counterplay.

Let's move on to Urshifu-R's solid coverage moves in U-turn and Ice Punch. The biggest problem with pivoting in Doubles is you always run the risk of U-turning into a Protect, getting blocked, and dying. Pivot moves are very strong in Singles play because there's minimal risk, and a similar dynamic occurs with Unseen Fist in Doubles. Not only does U-turn do over half to fake swtch-in Rillaboom, but it lets you pivot out to a Pokemon with a better matchup and gain momentum and an edge in the positioning game. I think pivot moves are really underrated in Doubles, and Unseen Fist takes away all the risk in using them.

Choice Band Ice Punch OHKOs both Dragapult and Zygarde, making them even riskier switch-ins (Surging Strikes 2HKOs both already). You also 2HKO Amoonguss through Sitrus Berry, so that's not the safest of switch-ins either. Of course, clicking Ice Punch is riskier than Surging Strikes or Close Combat, but it's still a play your opponent has to respect and a risk you take every time you try to pivot in your Dragapult (again, it gets 2HKOd anyway).

I very much disagree with the fact that Urshifu-R needs lot of positioning to succeed, in fact, I would argue that it's very easy to put Urshifu-R in a great position to win. Let's take a look at this replay. Urshifu-R comes in after a Pokemon faints on Turn #5 and collects its first free kill. It also could have collected another by having Rillaboom click Fake Out on Amoonguss and Close Combating Porygon2. Anyways, Urshifu-R then comes in again on Rillaboom's U-turn on Turn #9 and picks once more. Here we see Urshifu-R switch in on an Incineroar and a Kyurem-B, with the latter being Fake Outed by Zeraora. Urshifu and Zeraora is then able to dent Tapu Fini for 80% and all Urshifu-R takes in return is a Parting Shot. On Turn #8, Urshifu-R comes in on on a faint and claims its free kill. Lastly, on Turn #14, Urshfiu-R comes in via Rillaboom's U-turn and, you guessed it, claims its free kill.

Thanks to Fake Out and pivoting support (you are not even forced to run these, they are on every team), as well as even just coming in after a Pokemon faints, it is very easy to get Urshifu-R in a position where it literally claims its free kill. To be very clear, you don't have to "sack a mon" to get Urshifu-R in since it clearly has other ways. It's also able to switch in directly on Pokemon like Blastoise and Landorus-T, but nobody runs these anymore because they get owned by Urshifu-R and friends.

Now that we've established that Urshifu-R has no defensive counterplay and its very easy to position to pick up free kills, let's get to the next point: Urshifu-R has wrapped the metagame around itself and made Offense the only usable playstyle. Shadowmonstr7 debuted Z Strats's HO team on April 3rd, it got spammed in DLT Playoffs from April 26th to May 23rd, continued being spammed in early rounds of Seasonals, and it's now June 4th and no counterplay has been found. The metagame has adapted to Offense by... running Offense, since every other playstyle gets destroyed. I spammed Porygon2 Semiroom during my Winter Seasonal run, but even I realize it's unviable now due to the presence of Urshifu-R and friends. Porygon2 and Diancie get OHKOd by Close Combat and Surging Strikes, and the team itself can't pivot around all of Kartana, Urshifu-R, and Zygarde. Nobody has found anything to stop Offense because nothing exists.

I also don't think it's fair to say "give the metagame more time to develop, people will figure it out" since it has been two months and no answer has been found. Spectrier was "broken" during one week of Invitationals, and I completely agree that anyone who wanted to suspect it at the time was getting ahead of themselves. Eventually, we figured out how to beat it and the metagame changed in a healthy manner. However, two months is a lot longer than one week, so I think it's fair to say that as long as Urshifu-R is legal, the metagame will continue to be Hyper Offense spam. It's pretty fun that we have six sample teams, and like, 1.5 of them are useable right now. Hyper Offense being the only viable playstyle is not healthy.

I think the seasonal set between Yoda and zee perfectly captures what the metagame has become. Game 1 seems zee load up Kyurem-Black and Tapu Fini from LTPL and get destroyed by standard HO. Game 2 is an Offense mirror match, with Regidrago (!) providing a big advantage. zee gets up Tailwind twice and Yoda can't do anything once they lose the momentum early on. Game 3 is, yet again, and Offense mirror! This isn't because either player is boring or lazy, it's because theres no other playstyle worth using if you want to consistently win. zee grabs momentum with Tailwind on Turn 7 and the game is over, since there is no defensive counterplay for Yoda to use, and they won't get a chance to set their own Tailwind with the massive amount of pressure zee is putting on. Overall, we saw 5/6 HO teams (with the only non HO getting smacked), and both Games 2 and 3 depending on who could gain an advantage with Tailwind and win with their broken Pokemon first.

I also disagree with techs such as Latias, Buzzwhole, or Rocky Helmet (heh) are real metagame development. First off, while these Pokemon do match up well into Kartana / Urshifu-R / Zygarde and deserves to be ranked at the moment for it, they are unranked for a reason. For example, Latias looks like it probably folds into Porygon2 / Diancie / Volcanion, but it doesn't have to worry about that since Urshifu-R and co make all those Pokemon irrelevant. Furthermore, you're still running offense, just with a random UR mon teched on to help in the mirror. Latias is cute and all, but being forced to run unranked Pokemon to get an edge in the offensive mirror matches is more of a sign of an unhealthy presence than metagame development.

Something else I need to touch on: not only does Urshifu-R have no defensive counterplay for itself, but it also invalidates checks for its partners. Urshifu-R has made both common Intimidate users, Landorus-T and Incineroar, borderline unviable because they no longer affect the best physical attacker in the tier. This has greatly increased the viability of both Kartana and Zygarde (specifically the latter since Kartana can already crit through Intimidate, but now it rarely needs to worry about hitting at -1) and has helped made the combination of the three insanely broken. Hopefully by removing Urshifu-R, the tier can finally find some space to breathe and once again start thinking about being able to pivot around strong threats instead of loading up some combination of the ten best Pokemon and hoping you gain momentum first.

You should also read these good posts that help point to why Urshifu-R is broken: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Overall, Urshifu-R is the most oppressive force in Doubles. It has no defensive counterplay, and has forced the tier into a Hyper Offense frenzy since that's the only way you can beat Hyper Offense. I consider a tier where there is one style of play to be unhealthy, and myself and many others have pinpointed Urshifu-R to be the biggest reason why. Ban Urshifu-Rapid-Strike.

 

[SMB]

The biggest reason behind my decision is that there is no reliable defensive counterplay. Others have brought up options such as Dragapult, Rillaboom, and Cresselia, but the first two get 2HKOd by the Choice Band set's STABs (Dragapult also dies to CB Ice Punch 7/8 of the time), while Cresselia literally does not exist in this tier (one use in DLT Playoffs). I don't know about you, but I don't consider Pokemon that get cleanly 2HKOd to be consistent switch-ins. It's also important to note that standard Rillaboom only has a 1/16 chance to kill Urshifu-R with Grassy Glide in Grassy Terrain, Dragapult needs to click Draco Meteor to OHKO Urshifu-R, and Zeraora only kills 1/8 of the time with Max Attack Plasma Fists. Tapu Fini and Amoonguss can in fact avoid the 2HKO, but these Pokemon get worn down very easily.

This is just not true, solid defensive counterplay definitely exists, in the likes of fini and amoonguss as you mention but anyway this is just a bad approach, sometimes, and specially in doubles, you can't check 1 mon with 1 mon and call it a day. You have to have 2-3 ways on your team to deal with top tier threats such as urshifu, if you put fini on your team you're not safe against urshifu, even if it is a counter, it gets worn down easily as you say, and it's not going to always be able to switch in, that's why you need more slots on your team to check it even if it's offensively instead of defensively.

For example semiroom teams can use: volcanion (surging strikes immunity), rillaboom/amoonguss and 1 fast mon like dragapult or zeraora
Balance teams: fini, rillaboom, zeraora, kartana...
Offense and hyper offense: almost any mon on these teams can check urshifu, the most important thing here is positioning and speed control.

I'm not sure if this is a good comparision because they are different metas etc, but since you're a bw enthusiast I'd ask you to look at your bw teams and see how you check kyurem black on them, and I bet most of the times your counterplay is not defensive (apart from intimidate). Since everything gets 2hkoed and there are no real switch ins you have to take a different approach as I said before, which is the whole point of this comparision, using either faster mons or solid speed control. This applies the same for urshifu with the difference that one of its attacks is immune to intimidate BUT it is way easier to check defensively.

Tapu Fini gets invalided by 'Grass Spam' of Rillaboom + Kartana, which is further amplified by the common Electric-type (Zeraora or Zapdos) you see on these HO structures. Furthermore, Tapu Fini is not allowed to run a Calm Mind set since it will never get a chance to set-up, and gets chipped easily by the strong barrage of attacks from Urshifu-R, Zygarde, and Heatran.

In this DLT Playoffs replay, Tapu Fini is already at 21% at the end of Turn 2 (partially due to a critical hit Volt Switch, but it would have been at ~40 and still unable to switch in again), forced to switch out, and dies when it comes back in Turn 6. Here we see Tapu Fini never get a chance to hit the field against standard Z Strats HO since Yoda is always applying pressure with one of Rillaboom, Kartana, or Zeraora on the floor at all times. While Urshifu-R never hits the field for Yoda, it shows how Tapu Fini cannot stop the onslaught of HO. Another example can be found here, where Tapu Fini gets worn down and eventually KOed by Heatran and Zygarde, two Pokemon it's supposed to check, and paves the way for Urshifu-R to pin down a +2 +2 Kyurem-B through Protect to secure the win. Tapu Fini simply cannot check Zygarde, Heatran, and Urshifu-R at once, and this issue is only made worse by Rillaboom and Kartana. In this replay, Urshifu-R is facing both Tapu Fini and Storm Drain Gastrodon, and yet still claims a free kill when it comes in on Turns 8 and 10. Once again, Tapu Fini is stretched thin, since it can't check both Psychic Spam and Urshifu-R at once.

Although I don't agree with this since I think cm is still a valid set, the main reason why you'd want to use fini right now is not to be your wincon but to check a big variety of popular mons like heatran, zygarde, urshifu or psyspam and sleep. So yeah you're not going to find as many opportunities to click calm mind as before but fini is still a good mon with many other good sets, it's not limitated to cm and leftovers.

On the first replay paraplegic is playing a team that looks more like something you'd use on a spectrier meta, since we built the necrozma psyspam team to stomp these builds I don't think this need a big explanation, 6 passive mons = lose on this meta.
Second replay zeefable loses their wincon turn 1 for no reason, the outcome of the game would have been different for this game if turn 1 was played correctly and fini definitely would have put some work since it checks half of yoda's team. Fastest mon on that team seems to be kyub btw so you can tell why this is bad too.
Third replay; again another balance build with 6 passive mons and the fastest mon is slower than urshifu.

You start to see the common trend right?

Idk if the fourth replay needs any comment but it is a good example of how you don't have to use fini vs psyspam, jrl's opponent sends it turn 2, being arguably their most valuable mon on that mu, when there's nothing on the field it can check and with jrl having psychic terrain and spore on the back just to lose 97% of its health.

This is all before mentioning the fact that breaking Protect is insane. This is what sets Urshifu-R apart from other extremely hard hitters such as Galar Zapdos. Breaking Protect destroys all passive maneuvering, since you no longer can shield yourself and switch into one your checks. One notable example of how good Unseen First can be is found here. On Turn 8, if Urshifu-R couldn't break Protect, Paraplegic can switch his Incineroar into Rillaboom and click Protect with Kyurem-B to stall out Tailwind and get Fake Out support on the field. Para would be in a pretty decent spot then, but his gameplan is invalidated by Urshifu-R. A similar situation can be found here and here.

I don't think I have anything to say about this breaking protect thing except that at this point we should be used to it, it's not a new mechanic on pokemon. When playing against this mechanic, pivoting is less important and good positioning and having ways to take advantage of urshifu being locked is more important.
Imo the protect thing is only relevant when paired with fake out at the same time since it allows it to get rid of faster threats.
Replays follow the same trend I mentioned before.

Unseen Fist also takes away a lot of the risk when playing Urshifu-R. You no longer have to worry about attacking into a Protect and losing momentum as well as potentially getting KOed: Urshifu-R will almost always be 2HKOing whatever slot it's attacking. Additionally, guessing which STAB move it's clicking and praying you switch in your Rillaboom on the Surging Strikes or Dragapult on the Close Combat is pretty unreliable counterplay for obvious reason. Furthermore, the Urshifu-R player has two slots it can attack to help get around this 'problem'. Similar to people switching in their own Urshifu-S on the opponent's to take Choice Banded Wicked Blow, if you are relying on switching in your Dragapult to Close Combat when it gets 2HKOing by Surging Strikes and OHKOd by Ice Punch, it's safe to say that is not reliable counterplay.

Let's move on to Urshifu-R's solid coverage moves in U-turn and Ice Punch. The biggest problem with pivoting in Doubles is you always run the risk of U-turning into a Protect, getting blocked, and dying. Pivot moves are very strong in Singles play because there's minimal risk, and a similar dynamic occurs with Unseen Fist in Doubles. Not only does U-turn do over half to fake swtch-in Rillaboom, but it lets you pivot out to a Pokemon with a better matchup and gain momentum and an edge in the positioning game. I think pivot moves are really underrated in Doubles, and Unseen Fist takes away all the risk in using them.

Choice Band Ice Punch OHKOs both Dragapult and Zygarde, making them even riskier switch-ins (Surging Strikes 2HKOs both already). You also 2HKO Amoonguss through Sitrus Berry, so that's not the safest of switch-ins either. Of course, clicking Ice Punch is riskier than Surging Strikes or Close Combat, but it's still a play your opponent has to respect and a risk you take every time you try to pivot in your Dragapult (again, it gets 2HKOd anyway).

I very much disagree with the fact that Urshifu-R needs lot of positioning to succeed, in fact, I would argue that it's very easy to put Urshifu-R in a great position to win. Let's take a look at this replay. Urshifu-R comes in after a Pokemon faints on Turn #5 and collects its first free kill. It also could have collected another by having Rillaboom click Fake Out on Amoonguss and Close Combating Porygon2. Anyways, Urshifu-R then comes in again on Rillaboom's U-turn on Turn #9 and picks once more. Here we see Urshifu-R switch in on an Incineroar and a Kyurem-B, with the latter being Fake Outed by Zeraora. Urshifu and Zeraora is then able to dent Tapu Fini for 80% and all Urshifu-R takes in return is a Parting Shot. On Turn #8, Urshifu-R comes in on on a faint and claims its free kill. Lastly, on Turn #14, Urshfiu-R comes in via Rillaboom's U-turn and, you guessed it, claims its free kill.

Thanks to Fake Out and pivoting support (you are not even forced to run these, they are on every team), as well as even just coming in after a Pokemon faints, it is very easy to get Urshifu-R in a position where it literally claims its free kill. To be very clear, you don't have to "sack a mon" to get Urshifu-R in since it clearly has other ways. It's also able to switch in directly on Pokemon like Blastoise and Landorus-T, but nobody runs these anymore because they get owned by Urshifu-R and friends.

Clicking ice punch very often results into a huge loss of momentum for the urshifu player, and if your opponent has good enough soft checks many times you get nothing from it. And in return what you get is your opponent clicking any speed control move which is huge if the urshifu player is playing an offense team. This applies the same for the other moves (except uturn, which in most situations isn't getting a kill), you should be fine with letting something die if you're getting on the field on the next turn your speed control mon + fake out/something that threatens urshifu offensively.
I think people forget this but choiced items are a really high cost high reward item even if they don't look like it.

On the first replay you send; apart from being a team with 0 offensive pressure under trick room there are clear misplays on the early turns, I'm not sure if le xrn would have won that game doing the correct plays but when you put yourself on such a disadvantage before urshifu even comes in...
Second replay is a replay I've already commented before, if you use 6 passive mons slower than urshifu, it will do what it did on this replay.

Now that we've established that Urshifu-R has no defensive counterplay and its very easy to position to pick up free kills, let's get to the next point: Urshifu-R has wrapped the metagame around itself and made Offense the only usable playstyle. Shadowmonstr7 debuted Z Strats's HO team on April 3rd, it got spammed in DLT Playoffs from April 26th to May 23rd, continued being spammed in early rounds of Seasonals, and it's now June 4th and no counterplay has been found. The metagame has adapted to Offense by... running Offense, since every other playstyle gets destroyed. I spammed Porygon2 Semiroom during my Winter Seasonal run, but even I realize it's unviable now due to the presence of Urshifu-R and friends. Porygon2 and Diancie get OHKOd by Close Combat and Surging Strikes, and the team itself can't pivot around all of Kartana, Urshifu-R, and Zygarde. Nobody has found anything to stop Offense because nothing exists.

I also don't think it's fair to say "give the metagame more time to develop, people will figure it out" since it has been two months and no answer has been found. Spectrier was "broken" during one week of Invitationals, and I completely agree that anyone who wanted to suspect it at the time was getting ahead of themselves. Eventually, we figured out how to beat it and the metagame changed in a healthy manner. However, two months is a lot longer than one week, so I think it's fair to say that as long as Urshifu-R is legal, the metagame will continue to be Hyper Offense spam. It's pretty fun that we have six sample teams, and like, 1.5 of them are useable right now. Hyper Offense being the only viable playstyle is not healthy.

I think the seasonal set between Yoda and zee perfectly captures what the metagame has become. Game 1 seems zee load up Kyurem-Black and Tapu Fini from LTPL and get destroyed by standard HO. Game 2 is an Offense mirror match, with Regidrago (!) providing a big advantage. zee gets up Tailwind twice and Yoda can't do anything once they lose the momentum early on. Game 3 is, yet again, and Offense mirror! This isn't because either player is boring or lazy, it's because theres no other playstyle worth using if you want to consistently win. zee grabs momentum with Tailwind on Turn 7 and the game is over, since there is no defensive counterplay for Yoda to use, and they won't get a chance to set their own Tailwind with the massive amount of pressure zee is putting on. Overall, we saw 5/6 HO teams (with the only non HO getting smacked), and both Games 2 and 3 depending on who could gain an advantage with Tailwind and win with their broken Pokemon first.

You're being too extreme here, and again this is not true. Offense is just the best playstyle to win games rn, and for a good reason, since it's a better playstyle than the others at the moment, but that doesn't mean other playstyles are invalidated by offense (unless you're using 6 passive mons).
Other playstyles such as balance or bulky set up are just as valid as offense, but should be used less, because in general they are worse teams, but that doesn't mean they cannot win games.
I'll give you some examples of both balance and bulky set up with some of the teams I built for dlt playoffs, since I know every set and why they are the way they are.

urshifu checks: comfey, band rillaboom, adamant zeraora, flying type move agility bulky moltres
psyspam checks: double dark type + rillaboom, although psychic terrain is super annoying for the team
kartana + rillaboom checks: incineroar, moltres, super bulky zygarde + comfey, band rillaboom

urshifu checks: band rillaboom, air slash celesteela, fini, adamant zeraora
psyspam checks: double terrain, celesteela, incineroar, av kyub
kartana + rillaboom checks: celesteela, band rillaboom, incineroar, av kyub


Of course I'm not saying these teams are going to win every game vs offense, but you can get at least an even or favourable matchup, and of course I used offense stuff too during my run, including a variation of the z strats team with sets I consider better to deal with offense, but limiting yourself to just using offense is again a bad approach, on tours you're getting counterteamed more easily if you just play offense. Other playstyles aren't unusable. They are just worse. But there's always going to be 1 playstyle above of the others, just like during wcup was fini, mew, gene good stuffs or just like p2 semiroom was right after.

Not to mention there are also many variations of offense teams you can use, it's not like you're limitated to using only grass spam or psyspam.

I also disagree with techs such as Latias, Buzzwhole, or Rocky Helmet (heh) are real metagame development. First off, while these Pokemon do match up well into Kartana / Urshifu-R / Zygarde and deserves to be ranked at the moment for it, they are unranked for a reason. For example, Latias looks like it probably folds into Porygon2 / Diancie / Volcanion, but it doesn't have to worry about that since Urshifu-R and co make all those Pokemon irrelevant. Furthermore, you're still running offense, just with a random UR mon teched on to help in the mirror. Latias is cute and all, but being forced to run unranked Pokemon to get an edge in the offensive mirror matches is more of a sign of an unhealthy presence than metagame development.

I don't know what you consider metagame development if this isn't? Why wouldn't I want to use a mon that matches up well vs top tier mons? I don't know if you're biased because some of these options have been UR during all SS but if they work against popular stuff they're worth using.
I'll give you again an example with a different gen, in this case SM, lurantis was overall a trash mon and UR during most of the time SM was the current gen right? but it made it to tier 4 because it matched up well vs the balance playstyle that's dominant on SM, mainly incineroar, landorus, fini builds. Well if a mon matches up well vs the offense playstyle that is dominant in the current SS, then it's worth using and if it makes it into teams and does well, that is metagame development.
Same for items such as chople berry on kyurem-black, most offense teams rely on fighting coverage to deal with it, living a hit is more important than doing an extra 30% dmg or recovering 6% hp.


I'm glad this suspect test is happening because many people were asking for it but honestly, for me this the clearest do not ban we've had for a while. The only thing I'd consider "broken" about urshifu is the bypassing protect stuff but in my eyes that's not enough reason for a ban. Most of the pro-ban arguments I've read on the last weeks are just what I consider a bad approach to smogon tiers and not be willing to develop the metagame or suddenly not accepting that one playstyle is better than others.

 

[Yoda2798]

The laddering period has now begun! Suspect alts must be of the form "DOUWA [name]" to qualify, see the OP for more details. The thread for posting reqs can be found here.

The suspect ladder will be up until just over one week from now, Sunday, June 13th at 8:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-4).

 

[GenOne]

My first thought when this suspect was announced was: if Urshifu-R does get banned, what else could try to replicate its role on an offense team?

One word: Birdshifu!

I know. I know! Its not an exact equivalent to Urshifu. But when you compare Zapdos-G's attributes to the Urshifu line, there are definitely a lot of similarities they share as mid-speed Fighting-type breakers:

Urshifu (Single Strike) (Already banned)​ Strong base 130 Attack stat Intimidate immunity (via 100% crit chance with Wicked Blow) Bypasses defense boosts via Critical Hits​ Access to U-turn and good coverage attacks Bypasses Protect with Unseen Fist Access to priority move (Sucker Punch, 70 BP) Nearly "perfect" STAB coverage; hits everything (on the VR) but Fairies and Zapdos-G for at least neutral damage Other notes: Was especially adept at OHKO'ing bulky Psychics like STAG Gothitelle and Mew, which were popular during Urshifu-S's time.​

Urshifu (Rapid Strike) (Under suspect test)​ Strong base 130 Attack stat Intimidate immunity (via 100% crit chance with Surging Strikes) Bypasses defense boosts via Critical Hits Access to U-turn and good coverage attacks Bypasses Protect with Unseen Fist Access to priority move (Aqua Jet, 40 BP) Imperfect (but still good) STAB coverage; resisted by metagame threats like Amoonguss and Dragapult Other notes: Is adept at OHKO'ing both Intimidate users (Incineroar and Landorus) as well as Defense-boosted Diancie. Has trouble with Rillaboom and Kartana.

Birdshifu (Zapdos-G) (Not broken)​ Strong (enough) base 125 Attack stat Intimidate immunity (via Defiant ability) Does not bypass defense boosts Access to U-turn and... *checks notes* Blaze Kick and Steel Wing? Does not bypass Protect No access to priority move Nearly "perfect" STAB coverage; hits everything (on the VR) but Zapdos-K and Aegislash (lol) for at least neutral damage Other notes: Currently Tier 5 on the VR and I have never heard anyone say this is broken. Does not have trouble with Rillaboom and Kartana.

I only bring up Zapdos-G so I can help isolate what actually pushes Urshifu-R over the edge, because some arguments like "OffEnSe iS t0O goOd" feel a bit lacking to me given how good offense would still likely be without Urshifu in the metagame.

But with that said, I think what makes Urshifu suspect-worthy boils down to:

• The ability to bypass Protect
• The ability to bypass Defense boosts (really just relevant for Diancie, but in theory good other set up mons like Registeel too)

Bypassing Protect in itself isn't enough to make a Pokemon broken in my opinion, even if it also happens to be a strong breaker. Anyone who played SM or XY will remember playing with Hoopa-Unbound, which similarly had strong offensive stats and STAB moves that could bypass protection. Yet Hoopa-U was never regarded so much as that great of a mon, let alone anything worth banning; it had enough pronounced weaknesses (U-turn, poor physical bulk) and a really middling speed that made it manageable to deal with. Urshifu-R, of course, has more positive traits going for it than Hoopa-U did so it's not a completely fair comparison; in addition to bypassing Protect, like I mentioned above Urshifu also has guaranteed crits, good offensive typing and a great all around movepool going for it. So if someone's position is that Urshifu is already really good, but bypassing Protect is what pushes it over the edge, I can accept that position. But as I said, bypassing Protect, in isolation, isn't enough to make something broken.

As for the guaranteed crits / bypassing Defensive boosts. I think realistically other than Diancie I'm not sure what Pokemon would really want to try to win through bypassing defense boosts anyways. I've been pushing Registeel as a fringe pick that arguably is a good defensive wincon, but it honestly doesn't care that much about Urshifu anyways since Surging Strikes doesn't get the 2HKO after leftovers recovery - Urshifu is honestly better off clicking Close Combat anyways unless you somehow let Regi get up to +4 Defense. (Edit: I also forgot about Iron Defense Kommo-o - not sure how much that's been explored but they REALLY don't care about Urshifu lol.) And anyways, bypassing Defense boosts isn't really an attribute unique to Urshifu anyways, since Kartana can also achieve the same thing (albeit with RNG) by using Scope Lens-boosted Leaf Blades as well as Sacred Sword. I've also read some people think that Kartana is also problematic, but that's a different discussion altogether.

And speaking of Kartana, that's a good segway into grassy spam (Rillaboom + Kart or Tsareena) which seems to be the other piece to these "broken" offense teams I'm reading about...people aren't forced into running grassy spam to beat Urshifu; people are running grassy spam because it's good on it's own! Rillaboom has Fake Out utility and good bulk (usually with Assault Vest) so it's not a huge liability to stack two grasses on a team given the value you get for 1.3x'ing Kartana's already high Attack stat. And on the flipside, I wouldn't really say that Urshifu "enables" these grassy spam builds to beat Heatran and fires, because this all cycles back to my original point above that if Urshifu dissapears Zapdos-G can serve a very similar role on that type of archetype (and I'm sure there are other ways to "enable" grassy spam too).

Everything I just said about grassy spam...ditto goes for offensive psyspam builds too.

To end things off, I will say that I think there's still room to innovate in this metagame with Urshifu present - Actuarily and SMB's posts articulate this better than I would be able to, but I agree with the points they made.

This might be looking like a do not ban vote for me, although I do understand both sides. My main thing is let's just make sure we're accurately framing what actually pushes Urshifu over the edge into "broken" territory. Its only truly unique attribute is bypassing protect - everything else it does more or less can also be done by other mons in this metagame, although it is perhaps fair to say Urshifu compresses too many advantages into a single slot if one is to take the ban Urshifu position.

 

[emma]

I already wrote two thousand words about why I want to ban Urshifu-Rapid-Strike, so I won't personally debate back and forth forever, but the previous posts made some points that I want to directly respond to.

Bypassing Protect in itself isn't enough to make a Pokemon broken in my opinion, even if it also happens to be a strong breaker. Anyone who played SM or XY will remember playing with Hoopa-Unbound, which similarly had strong offensive stats and STAB moves that could bypass protection. Yet Hoopa-U was never regarded so much as that great of a mon, let alone anything worth banning; it had enough pronounced weaknesses (U-turn, poor physical bulk) and a really middling speed that made it manageable to deal with. Urshifu-R, of course, has more positive traits going for it than Hoopa-U did so it's not a completely fair comparison; in addition to bypassing Protect, like I mentioned above Urshifu also has guaranteed crits, good offensive typing and a great all around movepool going for it. So if someone's position is that Urshifu is already really good, but bypassing Protect is what pushes it over the edge, I can accept that position. But as I said, bypassing Protect, in isolation, isn't enough to make something broken.

I know you that you mention that Urshifu-R can still be broken while Hoopa-Unbound is healthy in previous generations, but somebody reading your post will accidentally misinterpret it as "Well Hoopa-U broke Protect in XY and SM and that isn't broken, so there's no way Urshifu-R can be broken in SS!" and I want to make sure everyone understands that this is faulty reasoning.

This comparison is really far off, because Urshifu-R in SS DOU and Hoopa-Uin XY DOU (and SM DOU, but I'll primarily be focusing on XY in this post) are literally completely different Pokemon in completely different situations. Hoopa-U notably does not ignore Intimidate, which puts it at a major disadvantage against a Pokemon that saw 85% usage (that also outspeeds and OHKOs it with U-turn) last DPL. Furthermore, not only is Choice Band Talonflame (7th in usage) always around to revenge kill, regardless of Speed Control, Tyranitar (4th in usage) completely walls all attacks and threatens a near OHKO back. This is all without mentioning Hoopa-U's middling speed tier (80 compared to 97) which forces it into running Trick Room and leaves it without room for Hidden Power Ice or Drain Punch (neither of these moves break Protect). Overall, it is not a fair comparison at all. The similarities start and end with the fact that with their main STABs break Protect. Hoopa-U being not broken in XY DOU is not a viable reason at all for why Urshifu-R is not broken in SS DOU. Yes, breaking Protect by itself does not mean a Pokemon is 100% broken, but it is what pushes Urshifu-R over the edge in SS, but not Hoopa-U in XY, because it is a much better individual Pokemon.

I've also read some people think that Kartana is also problematic, but that makes me scratch my head a little bit given that Kart had all the same tools in SM and was never considered broken.

This is unrelated to the current suspect but this comparison is also off. Kartana in SS DOU is not the same as it was in SM DOU. I am admittedly not an expert in Gen 7, but some clear reasons we can point to as to why this comparison is off-base are Mega Evolution, no Dynamic Speed mechanics, and no Rillaboom. Mega Metagross, Mega Salamence, and Mega Charizard Y, the top three Megas on the VR, all matchup favorably against it. Tailwind is also nerfed a bit as the speed boost no longer applies the same turn for Kartana's problem. Lastly, Rillaboom is not legal in SM. This means if you want the critical hit and Grassy Terrain Leaf Blade boost you need to run Kartana along with Tapu Bulu, and what I understand, Tapu Bulu is nowhere near as viable in SM as Rillaboom is in SS due to lack of Fake Out, Grassy Glide, and U-turn. This is all without factoring in major changes such as Z-Moves, Terrain Change, and how good Rain and Fullroom are. Again, this is not a fair comparison at all. Kartana is allowed to be healthy in SM, but potentially broken in SS because the situation changes massively.

 

[GenOne]

I already wrote two thousand words about why I want to ban Urshifu-Rapid-Strike, so I won't personally debate back and forth forever, but the previous posts made some points that I want to directly respond to.


I know you that you mention that Urshifu-R can still be broken while Hoopa-Unbound is healthy in previous generations, but somebody reading your post will accidentally misinterpret it as "Well Hoopa-U broke Protect in XY and SM and that isn't broken, so there's no way Urshifu-R can be broken in SS!" and I want to make sure everyone understands that this is faulty reasoning.

This comparison is really far off, because Urshifu-R in SS DOU and Hoopa-Uin XY DOU (and SM DOU, but I'll primarily be focusing on XY in this post) are literally completely different Pokemon in completely different situations. Hoopa-U notably does not ignore Intimidate, which puts it at a major disadvantage against a Pokemon that saw 85% usage (that also outspeeds and OHKOs it with U-turn) last DPL. Furthermore, not only is Choice Band Talonflame (7th in usage) always around to revenge kill, regardless of Speed Control, Tyranitar (4th in usage) completely walls all attacks and threatens a near OHKO back. This is all without mentioning Hoopa-U's middling speed tier (80 compared to 97) which forces it into running Trick Room and leaves it without room for Hidden Power Ice or Drain Punch (neither of these moves break Protect). Overall, it is not a fair comparison at all. The similarities start and end with the fact that with their main STABs break Protect. Hoopa-U being not broken in XY DOU is not a viable reason at all for why Urshifu-R is not broken in SS DOU. Yes, breaking Protect by itself does not mean a Pokemon is 100% broken, but it is what pushes Urshifu-R over the edge in SS, but not Hoopa-U in XY, because it is a much better individual Pokemon.

This is unrelated to the current suspect but this comparison is also off. Kartana in SS DOU is not the same as it was in SM DOU. I am admittedly not an expert in Gen 7, but some clear reasons we can point to as to why this comparison is off-base are Mega Evolution, no Dynamic Speed mechanics, and no Rillaboom. Mega Metagross, Mega Salamence, and Mega Charizard Y, the top three Megas on the VR, all matchup favorably against it. Tailwind is also nerfed a bit as the speed boost no longer applies the same turn for Kartana's problem. Lastly, Rillaboom is not legal in SM. This means if you want the critical hit and Grassy Terrain Leaf Blade boost you need to run Kartana along with Tapu Bulu, and what I understand, Tapu Bulu is nowhere near as viable in SM as Rillaboom is in SS due to lack of Fake Out, Grassy Glide, and U-turn. This is all without factoring in major changes such as Z-Moves, Terrain Change, and how good Rain and Fullroom are. Again, this is not a fair comparison at all. Kartana is allowed to be healthy in SM, but potentially broken in SS because the situation changes massively.

I might not have been super articulate with my points since it was kind of just a brain dump and I didn't proofread or anything.

I think I acknowledged that Urshifu-R and Hoopa-U aren't directly comparable. My point was mainly just that breaking protect, in isolation, isn't enough to make a mon "broken." I definitely didn't mean to imply "Well Hoopa-U broke Protect in XY and SM and that isn't broken, so there's no way Urshifu-R can be broken in SS!" :)

And I think you had an old version of my post loaded up when you typed out your points about Kartana - this was already flagged for me in Discord and I ended up removing that bit from my post.

 

[fespy]

Definitely not banworthy.

I'm not going in depth because everyone above has done a great job of doing so, but in short:
1. Shifu gets killed by everything faster than it (which is a lot of very common mons)
2. So many good/viable mons can eat hits from either of its stabs

 

[h2h-99]

Urshifu rapid is not broken at all it mave have a good ability and a move with a one hundread percent crit rate however there are lots of pokemon that don't need protect to deal with it seeing as how the most effective urshifu rapid strike killers rely on hard offense and there are pokemon that don't care about the guaranteed crit because of battle and shell armor and weezing just kills it thanks to neutralizing gas turning unseen fist off four times resisting its close combats and having strong stab super effective fairy moves to kill it give it a choice scarf to not give urshifu a chance to crit it and unless it has a scarf of its own it dies every single time so don't ban urshifu just because you don't know how to deal with it

 

[RelicanthPrimal]

actuarily and smb summarized the mons that counter it by outspeeding and the defensive counterplay that does exist very well already.

So what i want to add is that urshi absolutely slaps when it gets that speed control advantage so u need to really make the opponent fight for it.

urshi doesnt feel broken at all, just a strong mon.

intimidate or tect+switch to counter was often the defensive counterplay to physical mons but for urshi u need other methods which are available.

its 97 speed is really what keeps it from being crazy imo.

 

[Hugo]

For me Urshifu is a bit on the edge of being broken and being not. Urshifu has a good attack stat of 130 with good defence of 100 and the same goes for HP and it has one of the best moves in the game with surging strikes wich makes it for sure an top mon in terms of DOU but I think all of this is mainly negated by the fact that one of if not the most common mon hard counters him like no ones business wich is rillaboom who just runs the tier and ofcourse urshifu has more counters but boom is by far the most common and strongest counter to ursifu wich makes up for his broken move and ability and I feel like water this gen is by far not as strong as it used to be in the previous gens and mabye that is because of boom but idk about that for sure either way I feel like the the good stats, ability and moves are made up for the fact that water is not a type thats all that good in this gen, rillaboom and fini being verly common, its disapointing speed wich barrely doesn't hit the 100 being left at 97 wich makes it not to hard to outspeed and his low sp. def but in the end I don't care to much if it gets banned or not I don't use a single team wich has urshifu (I prefer the truth that is dracomish) wich may just devalue everything I just said cause I don't use him but as I said I don't care to much since I think its an A+ mon but not broken like Urshifu-S

(edit and yes I know the voting already happend I voted no ban and that no one cares about this) The main reason why I voted for no ban is not so much because it broken or not its more the case of fun I don't have a single DOU team or any team with Urshifu-S but it keeps lando and incin in check or atleast makes that they are not on 100% of the teams but instead on only 95% or so wich I think makes the game much more fun and enjoyable because I am so sick of intimidate spam wich makes that your team needs to have atleast 4 sp. atk mons if you want to have some sort of fun.

 

[Arcticblast]

Urshifu rapid is not broken at all it mave have a good ability and a move with a one hundread percent crit rate however there are lots of pokemon that don't need protect to deal with it seeing as how the most effective urshifu rapid strike killers rely on hard offense and there are pokemon that don't care about the guaranteed crit because of battle and shell armor and weezing just kills it thanks to neutralizing gas turning unseen fist off four times resisting its close combats and having strong stab super effective fairy moves to kill it give it a choice scarf to not give urshifu a chance to crit it and unless it has a scarf of its own it dies every single time so don't ban urshifu just because you don't know how to deal with it

hey I'd like to step in and use your post to make a couple things clear to everyone engaging in this thread:
- "X isn't broken, it's checked by Y" is not a very good argument when Y is bad. If you're going to use a niche pick to counter a strong Pokemon, that niche pick better be at least okay against the rest of the metagame, or it's going to be deadweight outside of that speciifc role. If a Pokemon is forcing these sort of bad niche picks as answers, that's a pretty good argument to ban the Pokemon in question.
- Please for the love of fucking god use punctuation in your posts

 

[HeatEdgeSword]

Now that I've gotten the req, I feel like I should be leaning towards a ban on Urshifu.

On the one hand, I can agree that there are definitely checks and counter to Urshifu Rapid Strike such as Rillaboom, Tapu Fini, and Dragapult. On the other hand, I felt that Urshifu has been pretty centralizing in DLC 2. I will admit that Urshifu Rapid Strike isn't overcentralizing to an unbearable level, especially when compared to its Single Strike form.

• For starters, its ability to ignore protection with contact moves (hint: all its moves) changes how players think when facing against it. Urshifu forces switch for anything that doesn't resist any of its greatest hits most of the time rather than safety positioning with Protect. Additionally, it hits like a truck with Choice Band.
  • While Hoopa Unbound from previous generations can lift protection effect (which is different than just ignoring it) with Hyperspace moves, it suffered from having a meddling speed of 80, being awfully weak to U-turn, and relying on Dark/Psychic coverage while being mixed leaves a lot to be desired, especially against Dark-type.
• It formed an infamous core with Kartana and Zygarde, as I mentioned before, the core is at its worst during the Shadow Tag suspect test since getting trapped by it and being slower means your only option is to get demolished by Urshifu.
• Zapdos has to run max speed now to not get hit by Surging Strike before it could even act instead of the more traditional bulky spread.
• Landorus Therian and Incineroar have fallen because they're weak to Surging Strike and Critical Hit ignores any attack drops from Intimidate. That said, they also have their own problems in this format (Landorus Therian provides nothing too important there, Incineroar still gets threatened by Kartana and Zygarde), it's just that the presence of Urshifu has amplified it.

With all that being said, I can definitely understand the viewpoint of the anti-ban side and I wouldn't mind Urshifu ended up not being banned.

 

[Levant Mir Celestia]

- Lack of bulk - Lol. Water Bear is very fragile. Heatran eruption 2hkos meaning it can't even safely switch into that.

IF Heatran is at or close to full, which it probably won't be because of hazards, and the fact it's not that fast. Heck, just coming in on hazards makes it lose enough health for this to happen:

252 SpA Charcoal Heatran Eruption (131 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 144-170 (42.2 - 49.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

And that's assuming nothing else attacked it beforehand, because 77 base is not very fast.

Urshifu rapid is not broken at all it mave have a good ability and a move with a one hundread percent crit rate however there are lots of pokemon that don't need protect to deal with it seeing as how the most effective urshifu rapid strike killers rely on hard offense and there are pokemon that don't care about the guaranteed crit because of battle and shell armor and weezing just kills it thanks to neutralizing gas turning unseen fist off four times resisting its close combats and having strong stab super effective fairy moves to kill it give it a choice scarf to not give urshifu a chance to crit it and unless it has a scarf of its own it dies every single time so don't ban urshifu just because you don't know how to deal with it

How many Battle Armor or Shell Armor Pokemon are viable in doubles? Off the top of my head, only Torkoal comes to mind, and it's tier 5 (also, it's weak against Surging Strikes). Also, Galarian Weezing is UR, last I checked, and not only that, it's weak against Zygarde, which is one of its most common partners, and on top of all that, no respectable player would leave their Urshifu in in such a scenario. Either way, you're not making a good case for not banning Urshifu if you're encouraging bad niche picks like Scarf Weezing as "counterplay" (also, Weezing is slow enough that it ain't outrunning Urshifu without a scarf AND massive speed investment, which cuts into its ability to do its job because you have to sacrifice points in other stats - and even then you probably won't OHKO it).

 

[Pietrym]

Personally, I'm surprised at the amount of people who don't seem to be in favor of banning Urshifu-R considering its clearly unhealthy stranglehold on the current Doubles OU metagame. As emma stated in her reply, Urshifu-R has made hyper offense the only viable playstyle, since defensive teams will just get run over easily. Protect is just a waste of a move slot with Urshifu-R around thanks to Unseen Fist bypassing it if it uses contact moves, of which most if not all of its moveset contains, and it isn't like a few Pokemon can wall and sit on it since its movepool contains terrific coverage that smashes would-be checks, especially if Urshifu-R is running Expert Belt, which isn't exactly farfetched given the superb coverage offered by its type combination.

For example, Tapu Fini, Rillaboom, Dragapult, Whimsicott, and Amoongus all appear to be sound checks on paper, but none of them would want to take an Ice Punch (or in Tapu Fini's case, Thunder Punch or Poison Jab), and Urshifu-R could simply U-Turn out if it is not running those moves to let a teammate handle them before coming back in for more later on in the game and wiping away the opponent's team, while also heavily denting the Psychic-types sent out to KO it. Even so, Rillaboom can't OHKO Urshifu-R with Grassy Glide without Grassy Terrain, which Tapu Lele/Indeedee-F replaces, and Urshifu-R's common teammates, Kartana and Kyurem-Black, can remove the remaining competition once Fire-types are removed, which Urshifu-R does with extreme ease. Not even Intimidate can help, since the guaranteed critical hits from Surging Strikes don't even care about the attack drop and the main Intimidate users, Incineroar and Landorus-T, hate Surging Strikes. Fake Out users are also ruined if a Tapu Lele/Indeedee-F decides to switch in, which removes another one of the incredibly limited amount of options that can be used to take down Urshifu-R.

I believe I've made my point clear in this discussion, and believe me when I say I could go on for much longer. However, in conclusion, I believe the current Doubles OU metagame is not in a healthy position with Urshifu-R around. The very few checks it has can easily have their usefulness nullified if it is running a different set or has certain teammates. If Urshifu-R is on the opposing team, there's a moderately high chance you've automatically lost, and it isn't a forgone conclusion to say that the best answer to Urshifu-R is one's own, which already doesn't seem like a very good check. If the metagame is this low on semi-reliable options to take Urshifu-R down, then clearly it's time for a ban.

 

[Grandmas Cookin]

I’d like to expand on the point emma made about using UR mons and how its not truely meta development.

I'm pretty sure I was the first to look at latias in the hyper offensive meta of right now. (if someone wants to say otherwise I don’t really care)

while that was my first draft of latias, it was built to win the tw ho mirror by outspeeding kartana and setting tailwind first. While this version of the team was left unused in my builder, I quickly shifted to just replacing one of the tw setters on the kartana rillaboom zapdos urshifu zygarde heatran teams, and immediately it found success in testing.

However, as good a mon as I feel latias is I don’t think this is healthy development. latias has absolutely no viability into trick room builds that use p2 or diancie, and yet urshifus presence alone invalidates those teams, thus removing that weakness. I cannot call this a development when all this pushes is the outcome of a battle is who gets up tailwind first.

I’d also like to touch in the different sets urshifu can run. while most people are used to standard cb, life orb adds protect, and switching moves to the list of things urshifu can do, and scarf even lets you outspeed would be checks kartana and zeraora at the cost of choice bands early breaking power. Referencing emma once again with her psyspam team that uses scarf urshifu with reasoning mentioned in her rmt. well worth the read.

 

[Karnisbroke]

Urshifu R isn't even the best mon(most viability rankings from players put kyu b fini rilla and sometimes other mons as significantly better then urshifu). I see some posts saying Urshifu R is broken, or urshifu r has no defensive checks. This is obviously not true because urshifu has plenty of defensive checks but even without them this wouldn't really be a good argument. Urshifu r is banded typically which is where a lot of its power comes from which suffers from locking into a move that even mons who lose to urshifu can defensively counter. As for life orb urshifu it causes it to dies to plenty of relevant threats in one hit. Despite this I am still in favor of banning Urshifu. Urshifu breaking protect is a very toxic mechanic that eliminates a lot of healthy 50/50s. On top of this it can crit through intimidate(killing the best users of it with no problem) causing the meta to be overun with powerful physical attackers. If it comes down to just viability I will agree Urshifu should not be banned but I don't think that should be the only reason to ban something, we should look at whether or not it warps the entire meta for the worse.

 

[SMB]

Personally, I'm surprised at the amount of people who don't seem to be in favor of banning Urshifu-R considering its clearly unhealthy stranglehold on the current Doubles OU metagame. As emma stated in her reply, Urshifu-R has made hyper offense the only viable playstyle, since defensive teams will just get run over easily.

Hi, I took a moment to take some replays from the latest dlt to show you this is not right not only with words. I only picked games where urshifu was featured against teams that had very few offensive elements. If you check the replays thread you can find more examples of teams that are not hyper offense, and if you read my first post on this thread you could see examples of how balance and bulky builds can have plenty of checks for the most common offensive archetypes.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1331025616
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1337428300-f3vv0v36zigzh8bptegqu0tnsq9pp7jpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1346043430

I'll also add my only replay saved during my laddering run fighting vs urshifu with a team that has 4-6 mons that are not "viable" because of urshifu being "broken". I don't think they made any terrible mistake with urshifu and you can see they even needed luck to have a chance to win but they end up losing anyway.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1353536474-cacf2gmf0t6akoxvut6s2b88pxcrzfapw

For example, Tapu Fini, Rillaboom, Dragapult, Whimsicott, and Amoongus all appear to be sound checks on paper, but none of them would want to take an Ice Punch (or in Tapu Fini's case, Thunder Punch or Poison Jab), and Urshifu-R could simply U-Turn out if it is not running those moves to let a teammate handle them before coming back in for more later on in the game and wiping away the opponent's team, while also heavily denting the Psychic-types sent out to KO it. Even so, Rillaboom can't OHKO Urshifu-R with Grassy Glide without Grassy Terrain, which Tapu Lele/Indeedee-F replaces, and Urshifu-R's common teammates, Kartana and Kyurem-Black, can remove the remaining competition once Fire-types are removed, which Urshifu-R does with extreme ease. Not even Intimidate can help, since the guaranteed critical hits from Surging Strikes don't even care about the attack drop and the main Intimidate users, Incineroar and Landorus-T, hate Surging Strikes. Fake Out users are also ruined if a Tapu Lele/Indeedee-F decides to switch in, which removes another one of the incredibly limited amount of options that can be used to take down Urshifu-R.

I'm not sure what's the thing with assuming your team has everything to deal with your opponent's team and the opponent's team has nothing to deal with yours but this comparision is just not fair.
I'm repeating myself but choice band is a high cost high reward item, sometimes you getting a kill means you're locked in the wrong move and that can cost you the game. Again, you can read my first post for a deep explanation.
Anyway if you get every single move right and your opponent doesn't and doesn't have a way of taking advantage after that, it probably means that you deserve to win and not that x mon is broken.

The very few checks it has can easily have their usefulness nullified if it is running a different set or has certain teammates. If Urshifu-R is on the opposing team, there's a moderately high chance you've automatically lost, and it isn't a forgone conclusion to say that the best answer to Urshifu-R is one's own, which already doesn't seem like a very good check. If the metagame is this low on semi-reliable options to take Urshifu-R down, then clearly it's time for a ban.

Believe me any good team should have easily 3 either defensive or offensive checks to urshifu not needing to count a possible urshifu mirror. If your team doesn't have answers to a top tier threat (see some of emma's replays, also some of the ones i linked but didn't seem to matter on the outcome that they had 0 or very few urshifu checks huh), that are so easy to fit on a team, then you should probably delete it and start again.

However, as good a mon as I feel latias is I don’t think this is healthy development. latias has absolutely no viability into trick room builds that use p2 or diancie, and yet urshifus presence alone invalidates those teams, thus removing that weakness. I cannot call this a development when all this pushes is the outcome of a battle is who gets up tailwind first.

 

[umbry]

Urshifu is broken so it should be banned.

I've seen people arguing in the thread that urshifu isn't broken because "it dies to everything faster". Urshifu has a great speed tier, naturally outspeeding common meta staples such as kyurem-black, tapu lele and zygarde. Sure, faster checks like kartana & dragapult exist but they all die a painful death to urshifu's STABs and most common coverage in ice punch and u-turn. The main issue with those checks is that doubles is a tier with plenty of support options: fake out, tailwind and redirection, which, unsurprisingly, all 3 work incredibly well with urshifu because of Unseen Fist.

SMB made examples about possible urshifu checks and counters, which I will get into later. I would like to focus on this part of his first post for now.

I don't think I have anything to say about this breaking protect thing except that at this point we should be used to it, it's not a new mechanic on pokemon. When playing against this mechanic, pivoting is less important and good positioning and having ways to take advantage of urshifu being locked is more important.
Imo the protect thing is only relevant when paired with fake out at the same time since it allows it to get rid of faster threats.

I'd point out that, as I previously said, this also works in conjunction with tailwind and redirection and it's so easy for urshifu to break through any kind of team thanks to his great offensive typing (offensive fightning is amazing) and simply because Unseen Fist invalidates repositioning. Urshifu is able to beat his own checks without too much struggle.

There's no other consistent way to deal with urshifu and friends (tailwind offense) besides your own offense, balance just gets swept off the fact alone that defensive urshifu answers are huge momentum saps, Tapu fini takes about 40% and gets abused by the omnipresent grassspam cores, Amoonguss just isn't able to make enough progress back, also because of safety goggles being a great item option on offense mons like heatran or zapdos. Semiroom structures can't withstand the pressure because as an archetype it needs a lot of repositioning to setup trickroom at least 2-3 times a game to make any progress and the most common tr setters (diancie and porygon2) get ohko'd by urshifu stabs while necrozma doesn't really enjoy getting rid of one of protect or important coverage to fit it, probably still a better shot than the other two. Setup teams suffer the same fate as they will eventually crumble by fake out+urshifu (note that urshifu naturally outspeeds most setup pokemon) and hyper offense is just inconsistent in general as a playstyle.

This is just not true, solid defensive counterplay definitely exists, in the likes of fini and amoonguss as you mention but anyway this is just a bad approach, sometimes, and specially in doubles, you can't check 1 mon with 1 mon and call it a day. You have to have 2-3 ways on your team to deal with top tier threats such as urshifu, if you put fini on your team you're not safe against urshifu, even if it is a counter, it gets worn down easily as you say, and it's not going to always be able to switch in, that's why you need more slots on your team to check it even if it's offensively instead of defensively.

For example semiroom teams can use: volcanion (surging strikes immunity), rillaboom/amoonguss and 1 fast mon like dragapult or zeraora
Balance teams: fini, rillaboom, zeraora, kartana...
Offense and hyper offense: almost any mon on these teams can check urshifu, the most important thing here is positioning and speed control.

I'm not sure if this is a good comparision because they are different metas etc, but since you're a bw enthusiast I'd ask you to look at your bw teams and see how you check kyurem black on them, and I bet most of the times your counterplay is not defensive (apart from intimidate). Since everything gets 2hkoed and there are no real switch ins you have to take a different approach as I said before, which is the whole point of this comparision, using either faster mons or solid speed control. This applies the same for urshifu with the difference that one of its attacks is immune to intimidate BUT it is way easier to check defensively.

I agree with the first statement, however, even with multiple urshifu checks you're never going to be safe against it. I also think compairing it to BW Kyurem is just unfair fwiw seeing as after it has locked itself into outrage it can neither pick a target or switch out, dclaw is significantly weaker and as you said it's weak to intimidate.
Every urshifu answer dies to it and you would have to constantly guess every move to even attempt pivoting around it, Life Orb and Scarf sets are absolutely viable while a bit niche so you're never sure you can abuse a possible choice lock, it might even just keep killing everything, it's for sure not easy to check at all.
Zeraora and Rillaboom aren't even able to ko urshifu from full without boosting items, and with those they just lose its purposes, SMB suggested adamant zeraora but you're trading your ability to outspeed dragapult for a roll on urshifu, which honestly doesn't sound as appealing, it also has pretty good odds to die to both stabs even with max HP. Choice Band Rillaboom is a completely viable set but a glide lock is very likely to get abused by common threats like kartana and heatran, also doesn't switch into anything.

Bunch of calcs

252+ Atk Rillaboom Grassy Glide vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Urshifu-Rapid-Strike in Grassy Terrain: 318-374 (93.2 - 109.6%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO (this is even assuming the rilla is running max atk, which in order to have it would require sacrificing a lot of bulk since speed is also important, probably the best way to go about it in an urshifu meta regardless)
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Close Combat vs. 64 HP / 0 Def Rillaboom: 322-379 (90.1 - 106.1%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO (offensive rillaboom)
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Close Combat vs. 248 HP / 36 Def Rillaboom: 309-364 (76.6 - 90.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Grassy Terrain recovery (bulkier spread from damage calc)
252 Atk Zeraora Plasma Fists vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 294-348 (86.2 - 102%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Zeraora Plasma Fists vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 320-380 (93.8 - 111.4%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Dragapult on a critical hit: 177-207 (55.8 - 65.2%) -- approx. 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Dragapult: 312-368 (98.4 - 116%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike U-turn vs. 192 HP / 0 Def Latias: 250-296 (71.6 - 84.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Close Combat vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Naganadel: 190-224 (66.2 - 78%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Naganadel: 318-376 (110.8 - 131%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 144 HP / 0 Def Zapdos on a critical hit: 318-378 (89 - 105.8%) -- approx. 18.8% chance to OHKO
108 SpA Zapdos Volt Switch vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Urshifu-Rapid-Strike: 302-356 (88.5 - 104.3%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Close Combat vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kartana: 464-548 (179.1 - 211.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Choice Band Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Zapdos-Galar on a critical hit: 306-363 (95.3 - 113%) -- approx. 87.5% chance to OHKO

Probably forgot something but everything can get ohkod/2hkod, zapdos is really sad because it needs HP to live surging strikes but would also like SPA investments for volt switch not to be a roll but thanks static and tailwind it's still one of its best checks.

So how do you actually deal with urshifu? Of course, very passive/slow teams will just lose on preview and every good team should have means of speed control. Since scarf users and setuppers are just going to get outran in tailwind without some lucky positioning/misplays, the most logical answer is to run your own tailwind offense, which actually works and it's the only thing that really helps in having at least an equal matchup. Scrolling through the list of mons/VRs I only see 2 solid tailwind setters (kartana and zapdos) and a couple more niche options (Latias, Naganadel, maybe Togekiss as well but it's slower than urshifu), mew could work but it's too passive of a pokemon atm and probably outclassed by latias at this stage, I also would never consider whimsicott as a viable pokemon for similar reasons to mew even if it has priority, obviously not every team structure can fit those.

Also agree with Latias being good meta development btw. I just don't think it's the one we should be getting, it just makes offense more dominant than it already is and adds more variance to matchups but I guess it can't be helped.

Hi, I took a moment to take some replays from the latest dlt to show you this is not right not only with words. I only picked games where urshifu was featured against teams that had very few offensive elements. If you check the replays thread you can find more examples of teams that are not hyper offense, and if you read my first post on this thread you could see examples of how balance and bulky builds can have plenty of checks for the most common offensive archetypes.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1331025616
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1337428300-f3vv0v36zigzh8bptegqu0tnsq9pp7jpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1346043430

I'll also add my only replay saved during my laddering run fighting vs urshifu with a team that has 4-6 mons that are not "viable" because of urshifu being "broken". I don't think they made any terrible mistake with urshifu and you can see they even needed luck to have a chance to win but they end up losing anyway.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8doublesou-1353536474-cacf2gmf0t6akoxvut6s2b88pxcrzfapw

These don't really look like good examples to me.
first replay fespy simply loses because his team got 6-0d by dragon dance zygarde (no ice punch on urshifu).
second replay JRL runs into psyspam with scarf urshifu and the necrozma (win condition btw) is sacked within the first 3 turns.
third replay JRL just had to cc the kyurem, no reason not to.
last replay zygarde got sacked early on instead of a useless grimmsnarl, zyg had a really good matchup and is usually your late wincon vs fullroom together with kartana or any partner really.

TLDR; Urshifu breaks through his own checks and pushes offense over the edge, I'll be voting ban.

 

[Human]

I have been fairly indifferent as to whether or not Urshifu was broken or not, but I think I might even go as far as to say that Urshifu Rapid-Strikes is healthy. This is because for the most part the cycle of Protect into positioning with Fake Out or Intimidate gets broken by Urshifu. This gives a different type of response to set up outside of stat reduction and Trick Room speed control.

The craziest thing is how much it invalidates Landorus-T, but Landorus-T is already invalidated by most of the metagame. I mostly feel like it's to the point where Urshifu isn't a Pokemon you can neglect, but that goes for every good Pokemon.

It's still possible to invest in bulk and to get value out of it and to build teams that can pull that off, it's just that those teams need to also have some fast Pokemon or especially powerful priority, and that isn't an unreasonable ask. Urshifu/Zygarde/Kartana/Rillaboom is powerful now, and it's probably going to stay a Tier 1 Core, but the metagame will continue to adapt, and we'll have some different checks come up that can handle those combinations. The whole meta isn't a mirror match there, and the mirror continues to be optimized in different ways to keep the matchup interesting.

I'm strongly leaning toward voting no ban.

ETA: Urshifu for the most part only sequences once or twice effectively outside of being used as a pivot or to force something specific out. That's generally healthy.

 

[maovgc]

I will be voting ban, and I wouldn't do so without heavy consideration.

I believe that Urshifu's presence in the DOU metagame not only heavily influences team building decisions, but also dictates which archetypes and playstyles are viable at the moment. One of the main symptoms of Urshifu's potency is reflected in Rillaboom and Kartana usage, and it's definitely clear how much of a necessity it is to stack offensive answers to Urshifu, especially given that Urshifu by design is unaffected by defensive gameplay. While both Kartana and Rillaboom are good answers, their arguable necessity to beat Urshifu in a balanced context seems bad for the metagame going forward. Urshifu punishing passive gameplay also forces teams to formulate game plans more proactively, thus making offense significantly more viable than the alternative.

I also believe that the stalemate between Urshifu and its answers improves the viability of those counters, especially considering Urshifu covers its answers' weaknesses very well. Fire types in the metagame are near invalidated unless they're sitting next to Rillaboom, which has caused sets like Scope Lens Kartana to run rampant, enabling an arguably bigger issue.

​

While I don't think Urshifu is nearly as broken as Shadow Tag, Unseen Fist still invalidates a central asset to Doubles: Protect. When something as important as switching or protecting is eliminated from otherwise viable game plans, other natural balance that occurs within a metagame is diminished.