Metagame SS OU Metagame Discussion Thread v7 (Usage Stats in post #3539)

Regards to beat up:

- Banded beat up can be read in team preview.

- Banded beat up usually needs to come out in the earlier turns for full effectiveness.

Because both of these things are usually true on a banded beat up set, if your Weavile check is scizor, you would run a lead that will matchup well vs Weavile and force it out. Your game rhythm in the early turns will also be easy, as you’ll know for example the landorus will be trying to u turn whenever it can to get Weavile into position. This makes the opponents plays predictable.

Banded beat up has a lot of pressure on needing to come out early in a match to be relevant. Gameflow can deny that.

—

Regards to steel types being amazing as is:

I am all for reducing the viability of steel types and increasing the viability of hard hitting physical Pokémon that aren’t resisted by steel. You’re implying that you’re not for that??? There’s too much steel in Ou

—

Regards to urshifu and dragapult walled by toxapex:

Fair point on urshifu, however thunder punch is definitely a thing. Also how much of urshifu viability comes from its use defensively, as a Pokémon that conveniently hits hard offensively. It has some unique traits, such as simultaneously checking the tiers most viable Pokémon: heatran, Weavile, landorus as well as some fringe threats teams some teams struggle with: band Tyranitar, crawdaunt.

Dragapult doesn’t get walled by toxapex consistently. Since dragapults whole shtick is to fish for the 20% SpD drop against non-resist checks. It’s speed is almost uncontested , so it can do that!!
 
Ctann said:
Regards to beat up:

- Banded beat up can be read in team preview.

- Banded beat up usually needs to come out in the earlier turns for full effectiveness.

Because both of these things are usually true on a banded beat up set, if your Weavile check is scizor, you would run a lead that will matchup well vs Weavile and force it out. Your game rhythm in the early turns will also be easy, as you’ll know for example the landorus will be trying to u turn whenever it can to get Weavile into position. This makes the opponents plays predictable.

Banded beat up has a lot of pressure on needing to come out early in a match to be relevant. Gameflow can deny that.

—

Regards to steel types being amazing as is:

I am all for reducing the viability of steel types and increasing the viability of hard hitting physical Pokémon that aren’t resisted by steel. You’re implying that you’re not for that??? There’s too much steel in Ou

—

Regards to urshifu and dragapult walled by toxapex:

Fair point on urshifu, however thunder punch is definitely a thing. Also how much of urshifu viability comes from its use defensively, as a Pokémon that conveniently hits hard offensively. It has some unique traits, such as simultaneously checking the tiers most viable Pokémon: heatran, Weavile, landorus as well as some fringe threats teams some teams struggle with: band Tyranitar, crawdaunt.

Dragapult doesn’t get walled by toxapex consistently. Since dragapults whole shtick is to fish for the 20% SpD drop against non-resist checks. It’s speed is almost uncontested , so it can do that!!
Click to expand...

Saying that the steel type is too good is really kind of an issue outside of the context of smogon and comes from the type chart and game design decisions from GF, not something that can really be rectified by a suspect test and subsequent ban. In PRACTICE, steel types are an immensely important and splashable blanket check to many things which helps prevent numerous tests and bans (law of parsimony lel). I don't think you're arguing in bad faith, but your arguments are just a bit flimsy.

Also, CB Beat Up being predicted in team preview is not a case against how problematic it's been recently. Whether or not your team gets blown to bits and 2hkoed almost the entire game is contingent on not just the teambuilder, but some smart plays by Weavile's team. CB Beat Up teams know that people have begun to expect it, and they're taking advantage of that very fact. Furthermore, the fact that Swords Dance Weav and Beat Up weav are checked by such different things can turn matches into a guessing game where it sometimes feels like the best thing to do is pray that the opponent isn't using the set you're the weakest to.
 
Ctann said:
Regards to beat up:

- Banded beat up can be read in team preview.

- Banded beat up usually needs to come out in the earlier turns for full effectiveness.

Because both of these things are usually true on a banded beat up set, if your Weavile check is scizor, you would run a lead that will matchup well vs Weavile and force it out. Your game rhythm in the early turns will also be easy, as you’ll know for example the landorus will be trying to u turn whenever it can to get Weavile into position. This makes the opponents plays predictable.

Banded beat up has a lot of pressure on needing to come out early in a match to be relevant. Gameflow can deny that.
Click to expand...

Scizor is no Weavile check. Or at least not a good one. Offensive sets can't switch in and Spdef sets take way too much from beat up on switch in, get their items knocked in general and are constantly forced to roost, letting in a ton of dangerous threats.

Banded Weavile being predicted at team preview isn't much of a knock against it. Weavile players have become accustomed to people expecting in and have only gotten better at leading off with those teams and forcing mindgames. It's not at all that predictable what will happen. And even in the mid to late game, Weavile does not lose effectiveness. Especially if it has already punched massive holes with beat up.

I'm also confused to your stance against steel types. As clementinabroccolina put it

clementinabroccolina said:
In PRACTICE, steel types are an immensely important and splashable blanket check to many things which helps prevent numerous tests and bans (law of parsimony lel).
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Steel being so good defensive wise is important to the health of the game. Having such splashable mons to blanket check threats is great to ease the burden on team building.

clementinabroccolina said:
Furthermore, the fact that Swords Dance Weav and Beat Up weav are checked by such different things can turn matches into a guessing game where it sometimes feels like the best thing to do is pray that the opponent isn't using the set you're the weakest to.
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This also is also what I do ultimately dislike about Weavile's impact on the metagame. Checking both of its main sets while also trying to check other mons just feels strenuous and if feels like with Weavile alone, I just check one set and hope to not encounter other.
 
i feel the argument of weavile being problematic because it has two sets that are checked by different things is faulty. every weavile set is dealt with relatively the same in builder; steel types, fairies, buzzwole, and toxapex. the only thing a little different is the interaction between iron barbs / baneful bunker and beat up. sure cb weav CAN run low kick, which can turn it into kind of a guessing game but that doesnt really change your options on your team for weavile checks. most teams run multiple outs defensively vs weavile and a speed control which is typically more than enough from a building stand point, while in game it can be different story depending how its played, weavile "picking" its checks isnt really something id consider an argument when calling weavile broken. lets compare this to protean greninja which legitimately can pick and choose what checks it, or a more recent swsh example being magearna which ran a wide variety of sets which were all checked differently and magearna still had options to cheese past those.

i think weavile is worth discussion for sure, i dont think it would hurt to look into one or two more things before the new games. while weavile is ridiculous in practice, I dont consider it a problem in the way people have described above.

on a side note i feel the wave of beat up is relatively over anyway, its still a fun and good option on some offense teams but id go into most games expecting knock/shard/low kick/axel on a band weav for the reason that this set is far more consistent than beat up in applying pressure and is all around better outside of a few instances you might find people playing against beat up weav like a moron
 
On a somewhat unrelated note, what would everyone say the best Tapu is as of now? Would you say it's Lele? I feel like the big three have sort of rotated around in terms of who is better quite a bit this generation
 
clementinabroccolina said:
On a somewhat unrelated note, what would everyone say the best Tapu is as of now? Would you say it's Lele? I feel like the big three have sort of rotated around in terms of who is better quite a bit this generation
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I feel like it's definitely lele, that thing just puts a lot of pressure on almost every team conceived by man and I feel is really only held back by focus blast's 70% accuracy. Nothing really checks specs lele comfortably, and one wrong prediction could really lose you the game against it. Offensive teams struggle less against it, but from what I've seen the meta right now favors bulkier teams over HO and the likes (could completely be wrong though) and that's just a great place to be for lele which repeatedly comes in from an allied pivot on slower mons and forces extremely dangerous 50/50s. I feel like it's continued presence will lead us to see more chople ttar/melms/ferros in the future to be able to deal with it more efficiently.

Koko is the same as always and while being a reliable endgame sweeper, there's nothing right now that makes it particularly good, especially since the aforementioned fat teams that aren't as scared by koko's middling Spatk as more offensive teams would. It still gets credit for being a good offensive check to weavile and non-scarf shifu because of its amazing speedtier, but that was always the case.

Fini's definitely favoured by the Weavile craze going on, being it's premier check/counter, but I still wouldn't say its as good as lele. While it is annoying to deal with for some teams, it's lack of recovery makes it so you can always kinda just brute force through it over the course of a game, through hazard or just a million resisted hits. The fact that defensive variants don't really hit back with anything also plays in its disfavor: it's a pretty passive mon over all, notably lacking any sort of pivot unlike other walls in the tier like corv, lando, slowbro, etc. that would allow it to keep momentum going.

On another note, I wanted to share a Victini set I've had quite some success with recently, especially in this replay where I face one of the ladder's dreaded mono-bs teams: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1558137345

Victini @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Victory Star
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- V-create
- Taunt
- Toxic
- U-turn

Let's be realistic; When's the last time you clicked Bolt Strike/Fusion Bolt on your boots victini ? That shit does like 40% to physdef pex anyways, I wouldn't run it on non-choiced sets. For this reason, I prefer to run this taunt/toxic variant which can easily cripple mons that like to come in on Victini that are extremely passive such as Hippo, Defensive Mew, etc... and can really be crippled by Toxic on the Switch or Taunt + U-Turn. Let me know what you think.
 
Delibird Heart said:
I feel like it's definitely lele, that thing just puts a lot of pressure on almost every team conceived by man and I feel is really only held back by focus blast's 70% accuracy. Nothing really checks specs lele comfortably, and one wrong prediction could really lose you the game against it. Offensive teams struggle less against it, but from what I've seen the meta right now favors bulkier teams over HO and the likes (could completely be wrong though) and that's just a great place to be for lele which repeatedly comes in from an allied pivot on slower mons and forces extremely dangerous 50/50s. I feel like it's continued presence will lead us to see more chople ttar/melms/ferros in the future to be able to deal with it more efficiently.

Koko is the same as always and while being a reliable endgame sweeper, there's nothing right now that makes it particularly good, especially since the aforementioned fat teams that aren't as scared by koko's middling Spatk as more offensive teams would. It still gets credit for being a good offensive check to weavile and non-scarf shifu because of its amazing speedtier, but that was always the case.

Fini's definitely favoured by the Weavile craze going on, being it's premier check/counter, but I still wouldn't say its as good as lele. While it is annoying to deal with for some teams, it's lack of recovery makes it so you can always kinda just brute force through it over the course of a game, through hazard or just a million resisted hits. The fact that defensive variants don't really hit back with anything also plays in its disfavor: it's a pretty passive mon over all, notably lacking any sort of pivot unlike other walls in the tier like corv, lando, slowbro, etc. that would allow it to keep momentum going.

On another note, I wanted to share a Victini set I've had quite some success with recently, especially in this replay where I face one of the ladder's dreaded mono-bs teams: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1558137345

Victini @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Victory Star
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- V-create
- Taunt
- Toxic
- U-turn

Let's be realistic; When's the last time you clicked Bolt Strike/Fusion Bolt on your boots victini ? That shit does like 40% to physdef pex anyways, I wouldn't run it on non-choiced sets. For this reason, I prefer to run this taunt/toxic variant which can easily cripple mons that like to come in on Victini that are extremely passive such as Hippo, Defensive Mew, etc... and can really be crippled by Toxic on the Switch or Taunt + U-Turn. Let me know what you think.
Click to expand...

Multiple interesting parts to this. First off, your point about Victini and Strike/Bolt. The one situation I do see them having any use is on a Urshifu hoping to eat a v create. I often find myself swapping out to avoid specifically that. I feel like any pivot mon can benefit from taunt. And whilst it was a cosmic power mew in that case, I think it would great for completely nullifying spikes mew (and I'll try anything that shuts down that).
But the other component I actually found interesting was the regidrago in that replay. Are you using it entirely as a meme or was there some sort of reason for it?
 
The shifu point is kinda valid, and being able to ohko it on the switch with a powerful electric hit is nice, but overall I still prefer toxic/taunt because I feel like it's more useful in many other situations, as I explained earlier. Besides Shifu can't come in on V-Create too many times, and if you predict a switch out you can always just pivot with U-Turn or toxic anyways. Still though you do make a good point, I guess I didn't even think of that haha

As for Regidrago, I've been playing around with it lately with two different teams, and I've found it to be either entirely game-ending or just decent depending on matchup, and I do believe it brings enough to the table to be considered as at least somewhat viable. However I'm preparing a post about that (possibly a nom on the VR?) so I won't go much further into detail about it rn, but I will leave you with a satisfying screenshot:

1650553268382.png

Needless to say, this has 0 (zero) switchins in the entire tier except for fairy types.
 
I feel like even though lele is super strong offensively it doesnt really affect team building as much as mons like weavile or urshifu do. The only thing lele really does is force a steel onto every team which isnt too much of a restriction because the vast majority of teams would probably have a steel on them anyways. Whereas weavile and ursifu force some form of fini, buzzwole, pex, or ferro onto basically every team.
 
overlord bliss said:
snip
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The thing is there's not even really any available counters, even steels get cooked by focus blast. The closest thing there is Aegislash or Victini until you remember Lele can have shadow ball, too. The reason why it's not putting pressure on building is because theres literally no mon that reliably checks it, you only can rely on playing well and predicting what move it's gonna click/getting lucky with fb to beat it. When was the last time you played against specs lele and it didn't kill at least one mon ? Sure weavile and urshifu warrant the presence of some physically defensive mons on most non-HO teams, but when did balance / bo / anything else fat not need at least a semi-dedicated physwall ? If you want to argue about the pressure they inflict, you could talk about the increasing usage of rocky helmet on mons that other wise would love to hold lefties or hdb such as slowbro and buzzwole just to get that chip on their preferred stabs of surging and triple axel, or the resurgence of physdef ferro and physdef pex compared to spdef. They're good mons but I feel like the meta has adapted to their presence and honestly I don't think they're unfair. They have a bunch of available checks and some counters too (looking at you big buzz), unlike Lele.
 
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Some of these comments are so so unserious (Lele, really???) cause the only thing that would probably even earn a suspect test is Weavile and even then it might not actually be banned depending on how the CB Beat Up fad affects the meta in the coming weeks and such. There's still a chance for it not to end up unproblematic depending on how effective or restrictive the mon's counterplay becomes (and I'm very aware that this might not happen to the extent to make it healthy, like how a lot of the stuff to justify keeping Latios in BDSP for its first suspect test never really came to fruition)
 
Weavile would definitely be under suspect if we could still run kings rock beat up lol, that set was menacing.

is hail considered the best weather right now? I feel like the only weather that isn’t super great right now is sand, but the other 3 seem pretty comparable. Personally, I’m a big fan of specs Zard in sun, that mon just nukes everything with weather ball:

252 SpA Choice Specs Solar Power Charizard Weather Ball (100 BP Fire) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex in Sun: 179-211 (58.8 - 69.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

it’s honestly impossible to switch into without a quad resist, and heatran running flame body makes it much more viable
 
DutroPodoboo said:
Weavile would definitely be under suspect if we could still run kings rock beat up lol, that set was menacing.

is hail considered the best weather right now? I feel like the only weather that isn’t super great right now is sand, but the other 3 seem pretty comparable. Personally, I’m a big fan of specs Zard in sun, that mon just nukes everything with weather ball:

252 SpA Choice Specs Solar Power Charizard Weather Ball (100 BP Fire) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex in Sun: 179-211 (58.8 - 69.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

it’s honestly impossible to switch into without a quad resist, and heatran running flame body makes it much more viable
Click to expand...


I think all weathers are viable , but feel like it's rain>hail>>sun>> sand. Been seeing way more high elo rain and hail teams then I do for sun or sand lately.
 
I think the big problem sand has is that the only good mons it has are excadrill and dracozolt, which are fine Pokémon, but they’re not especially good outside of sand. Skewda is insane in the rain, but it can function even if you’ve lost peliper because of its good speed and attack, unlike the sand abusers
 
Delibird Heart said:
The thing is there's not even really any available counters, even steels get cooked by focus blast. The closest thing there is Aegislash or Victini until you remember Lele can have shadow ball, too. The reason why it's not putting pressure on building is because theres literally no mon that reliably checks it, you only can rely on playing well and predicting what move it's gonna click/getting lucky with fb to beat it. When was the last time you played against specs lele and it didn't kill at least one mon ? Sure weavile and urshifu warrant the presence of some physically defensive mons on most non-HO teams, but when did balance / bo / anything else fat not need at least a semi-dedicated physwall ? If you want to argue about the pressure they inflict, you could talk about the increasing usage of rocky helmet on mons that other wise would love to hold lefties or hdb such as slowbro and buzzwole just to get that chip on their preferred stabs of surging and triple axel, or the resurgence of physdef ferro and physdef pex compared to spdef. They're good mons but I feel like the meta has adapted to their presence and honestly I don't think they're unfair. They have a bunch of available checks and some counters too (looking at you big buzz), unlike Lele.
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I should have mentioned that I dont believe that weavile or urshifu are broken or unfair just that I find them to be more restricting to team building to lele.
 
DutroPodoboo said:
I think the big problem sand has is that the only good mons it has are excadrill and dracozolt, which are fine Pokémon, but they’re not especially good outside of sand. Skewda is insane in the rain, but it can function even if you’ve lost peliper because of its good speed and attack, unlike the sand abusers
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I think the main problem with sand is that the abusers aren't very good outside of sand like you said.

Hail has arctozolt and sandslash which aren't exactly great and have basically the same problem as sand abusers, though veil is what makes hail really good.
(take this with a grain of salt as i barely ever play hail)

Rain is super good. Ferro in rain is annoying to play against in general, but skewda in rain with spikes up is a nightmare to deal with. It presses flip turn a couple times at the start of the game and then clean easily with liquidation. Rain really doesn't have any good counters, and with Rillaboom dropping in usage lately there aren't many good rain checks. even outside of rain, skewda still has really good speed and attack esp with band.

Sun is really fun, and personally i feel that its actually pretty good (though not as good as rain). Venusaur is very strong, and the abusers (band/scarf vic, specs zard, scarf darm, etc,.) are pretty strong in sun, but there are also a lot of ways to beat the fire moves. Heatran still runs flash fire a lot, but when it tries to switch in on zard it dies to scorching sands (or focus blast if you just dont miss). After the fire resists die, sun can just destroy a team
.......
in theory.
in practice it loses to a lot of good mons.

im definitely biased towards sun tho.
its 100% a playstyle i would recommend because its super fun to play
its not exactly optimal considering it just dies to rain
or hail
or everything

still fun to play with!
 
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Bluecliqse said:
I think the main problem with sand is that the abusers aren't very good outside of sand like you said.

Hail has arctozolt and sandslash which aren't exactly great and have basically the same problem as sand abusers, though veil is what makes hail really good.
(take this with a grain of salt as i barely ever play hail)

Rain is super good. Ferro in rain is annoying to play against in general, but skewda in rain with spikes up is a nightmare to deal with. It presses flip turn a couple times at the start of the game and then clean easily with liquidation. Rain really doesn't have any good counters, and with Rillaboom dropping in usage lately there aren't many good rain checks. even outside of rain, skewda still has really good speed and attack esp with band.

Sun is really fun, and personally i feel that its actually pretty good (though not as good as rain). Venusaur is very strong, and the abusers (band/scarf vic, specs zard, scarf darm, etc,.) are pretty strong in sun, but there are also a lot of ways to beat the fire moves. Heatran still runs flash fire a lot, but when it tries to switch in on zard it dies to scorching sands (or focus blast if you just dont miss). After the fire resists die, sun can just destroy a team
.......
in theory.
in practice it loses to a lot of good mons.

im definitely biased towards sun tho.
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Yeah the issue with arctozolt and excadrill is they are a great core on paper but they have a weakness. For the most part They don't really have the same checks and counters and it's hard to lure the checks of one of with the other. The few shared checks they have ( hippo/landorus) tend to stop them pretty cold. Excadrill wants the metal birds, slow and zapdos gone , but they will never stay in on dracozolt.

Dracozolt in particular has amazing coverage , but in practice is very prediction reliant to maintain momentum. You want lo to be able to switch movew abuse its coverage and speed to sweep , but it gets worn down quickly. If you go choiced, the moves aren't spammable and again are prediction reliant


Versus with sun and rain, the the abusers can usually spam the weather boosted stabs of choice in most scenarios and naturally lure in and destroy even water resists or fire resists. Especially Volcanion, thundurus, victini , darm, and zard. Barraskweda can get away with just clicking flip turn and cc for ferro , then has crunch or psychic fangs to lure slow twins or toxapex for another rain abuser. But with flip turn you are at least doing good chip on most water resists and maintaining momentum.

And as you mentioned hail has aurora veil support at least to give their abusers extra longevity so they can break.
 
Lord Xen III said:
Yeah the issue with arctozolt and excadrill is they are a great core on paper but they have a weakness. For the most part They don't really have the same checks and counters and it's hard to lure the checks of one of with the other. The few shared checks they have ( hippo/landorus) tend to stop them pretty cold. Excadrill wants the metal birds, slow and zapdos gone , but they will never stay in on dracozolt.

Dracozolt in particular has amazing coverage , but in practice is very prediction reliant to maintain momentum. You want lo to be able to switch movew abuse its coverage and speed to sweep , but it gets worn down quickly. If you go choiced, the moves aren't spammable and again are prediction reliant


Versus with sun and rain, the the abusers can usually spam the weather boosted stabs of choice in most scenarios and naturally lure in and destroy even water resists or fire resists. Especially Volcanion, thundurus, victini , darm, and zard. Barraskweda can get away with just clicking flip turn and cc for ferro , then has crunch or psychic fangs to lure slow twins or toxapex for another rain abuser. But with flip turn you are at least doing good chip on most water resists and maintaining momentum.

And as you mentioned hail has aurora veil support at least to give their abusers extra longevity so they can break.
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Dracozolt especially seems really good on paper, but in practice its just worse than arctozolt. Even without veil, arctozolt is just better.
1650582525984.png

While arctozolt has a lot lower speed, in hail its fast enough, with it hitting 452 speed with the recommended set.
Arctozolt has the better stabs, with ice/electric being a lot better than dragon/electric. Dracozolt hits pretty hard wth its stabs, but it has shortcomings.
lando and other bulky grounds are hard walls to dracozolt and sand in general, and honestly dracozolt's spatk isnt very impressive. Dropping a draco does some okay damage, but really isn't anything special.
Honestly, sand was pretty carried by the megas in the past couple generations, because without them sand isn't really anything crazy. In gen 5 it was insane, but with all the power creep excadrill really just isnt cutting it. The fossils were a nice buff to sand when fishy fishy was terrorizing the tier, but dracozolt really just doesn't compare to mons like skewda and its sibling arctozolt.
 
Screenshot_20220422-065438_Chrome.jpg

Perhaps if sand was allowed to use its new toy it would be better, but alas we are not allowed to live in this world. Perhaps one day Smogon will allow for the banning of ability + pokemon rather than the entire pokemon, but I don't see that day coming anytime soon.

(I'm still sad Cinderace was banned, court change is such a cool move)
 
5camp said:
Perhaps if sand was allowed to use its new toy it would be better, but alas we are not allowed to live in this world. Perhaps one day Smogon will allow for the banning of ability + pokemon rather than the entire pokemon, but I don't see that day coming anytime soon.
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*Points to gen5 and the whole complex ban debacle with Excadrill*

There is good reason we don't do complex bans. No thanks. Anyways-

DutroPodoboo said:
I think the big problem sand has is that the only good mons it has are excadrill and dracozolt, which are fine Pokémon, but they’re not especially good outside of sand. Skewda is insane in the rain, but it can function even if you’ve lost peliper because of its good speed and attack, unlike the sand abusers
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This problem actually extends to every weather honestly. Skewda can still function outside rain but the power drop off is very noticable and it struggles to break common walls while being paper thin defense wise. Which sort of sums up why weather teams as a whole are not the most consistent. But sand has this problem especially so because outside sand their two main abusers are fairly unremarkable Pokemon. Dracozolt in particular struggles with Spdef LandoT and gets worn down by its own life orb.

To answer the original posed questions rain is technically the best weather right now simply due to its ease of building and use. But it still has problems that make it not totally consistent. Followed by hailz which is harder to build but has more room for variety, then sun. Sand just straight up isn't good imo.
 
Tbh I find it really interesting how people are saying sun is better than sand because of how drill and draco rely on the sand, which makes me ask how venu doesn't have the same issue? Also what other abusers besides venu do you guys use on sun? While I don't use weather as a whole much myself I do have a couple of sun teams, such as this volcarona sun https://pokepast.es/22fe5da4cd1c56ad
as well as a zard sun https://pokepast.es/c3cb1bcc6bd2c075

Edit: Ik I'm a bit late to this, but I got a couple anti-stall squads myself, such as this Haxorus+fsight lele BO
https://pokepast.es/4bcb72da557aac8e

And this CB beat up bisharp BO
https://pokepast.es/8eace39c19e77f2a
 
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5camp said:
Perhaps if sand was allowed to use its new toy it would be better, but alas we are not allowed to live in this world. Perhaps one day Smogon will allow for the banning of ability + pokemon rather than the entire pokemon, but I don't see that day coming anytime soon.
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smogon doesn't like complex bans because they're both annoying to implement, complex (literally), and might be hard to understand for some newer players.
Also, dracovish wasn't just broken in sand, it was broken in all capacities. if you got fishy in, it got a kill.
The reason it got banned is that it put an extreme strain on teambuilding. Otherwise average mons like seismitoad were rising in usage solely because of water absorb, not even because of swift swim, which really isn't healthy for the metagame.
Cinderace was banned because it also put a strain on teambuilding. Sure, court change is cool and all, and libero is fun to use, but soccer rabbit is extremely strong. Even things that would theoretically check it died in practice.
Toxapex? zen headbutt.
Clef? gunk shot.
Its checks weren't checks if you actually took the time to look into its movepool; and since it got stab on everything it was just too strong.

Sure, we could just ban libero, but the real question is why?
(refer to this thread for why)

TLDR; they can't pick and choose when and how they do tiering action. They need a consistent process to apply, not just something depending on the situation.
 
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