I've gotten lots of utility from Breloom. Hard to use early game but very useful in mid and great at cleaning up. Access to spore, colorful movepool and two great abilities allow it to be rather unpredictable and makes it fit on a lot. Genuinely think it's kinda underrated right now, but I am prolly too low on ladder to really know
Ehh Garg has to have terad prior or else switching into Loom is a risky gamble that can lead to it being blown up by a bullet seed. It's not perfect for either side but Loom is at an advantage pre tera (and even post tera, non physdef Loom can still be 2HKOd by bullet seed on the switch).
Maybe i missed something somewhere, but why so soon?
the difference is that in many eyes (including mines), Emu bird went from 3 to hard 5, due to Orthworm gaming (shed tail) support from indeedee, armarouge and also a new tera fire set that shits on Clodsire and skeleridge, there are a few games about it SPL but I haven't watched so if somebody could post those games, I will be thankful
There have definitely been a good amount of developments since mid-January. And it’s not like we can afford to have empty weeks with Home on the horizon, SPL ongoing, and OST hitting the weekly rounds now. The playerbase had a pretty large outcry for more change, and we reacted by giving them a platform to voice those stances. In prior generations, people have been critical of the council for being too slow and not communicative enough, so we are simply working on being more proactive and using communal feedback to help improve our processes. Obviously we cannot please everyone (and this post is good evidence of that as it seems there are also people who question having too frequent surveys — but, with all due respect, I think the reasoning is sound and nothing is lost in obtaining a more modern data set).
Yeah, it was funny seeing some people saying that he was gonna be underwhelming and he may even drop to UU or maybe RU because protean was nerfed as if we weren't in the need of a good water special attacker. I still think that they could've given him some new tools other than swords dance or switcheroo, maybe knock off? sucker punch? but I can deal with what we have right now.
Iron Valiant, Corviknight, Ceruledge in MOST circumstances, Cinderace, Chien-Pao if it carries Ice Shard, Dragapult, Gholdengo, Glimmora, Greninja, Iron Moth, Meowscarada with Play Rough, Booster/Acrobatics Roaring Moon, Scizor, offensive Volcarona... And those are just in the OU tier. They all either outpace it raw, don't care about Spore, or have priority that slaughters it before it can do anything meaningful.
whoops didn't see this earlier but better late than never
5. definitely a 5. the fact that it can and will 6-0 teams at any given moment is not at all healthy and i think it needs to go, be it by suspect test or even a quickban. espathra is just so threatening from team preview and it being able to sweep even with precautions taken is absolutely not okay. it doesn't help that its best "check" requires tera to beat it and gets used as setup fodder by espathra's teammates, which could open up another opportunity for the opponent to set up and sweep. espathra is obscenely broken and action should be taken against it as soon as possible
4. it's not unbeatable but even with counterplay being developed, it's still very easy for it to set up and clean teams after one wrong tera prediction. it's so easy for garganacl to click "terastallize" on a check and continue to sit on them as usual instead of being forced out immediately, which is something i find to be quite concerning, and being immune to status does not help its case either. and no magic guard users means garganacl can freely spam salt cure and start rapidly chipping down teams by spreading its free passive damage button. its one saving grace and the only reason why i think it isn't a 5 right now is the addition of covert cloak, an item that bypasses the passive damage of salt cure, which helps would-be checks to garganacl like gholdengo be full-on, reliable garganacl checks (and also shed tail HO teams kinda run this pokemon over). so while it has some counterplay, it still can be a major threat to teams once its checks are removed. not as urgent as espathra but something definitely worth keeping an eye on
2. do i have to explain why this pokemon isn't banworthy? it's definitely not unproblematic but i do not see how anyone could vote anything higher than a 3 for this guy. it gets forced out or forced to terastallize against a lot of the metagame, gets revenge killed easily even with a choice scarf, suffers a ton from 4MSS, can't even spinblock against two of the best rapid spinners, etc. it has its fair share of weaknesses, enough to the point where i can't say it's worth taking immediate action against
I sit down for a couple hours every survey and read through as many responses as I can. Sometimes it’s just sorting through numbers and other times it’s reading the feedback. Sometimes people have genuine metagame input and other times Endrism asks me what my favorite type of cheese is.
well smogon is a community... low ladder or not you see the general consensus of what the community overall thinks of it. There is a reason why finch also asks what qualification do you have so he can see what the pros think
agreed that houndstone and zamazenta-H should be unbanned but giratina? i don't necessarily disagree but i'd love to hear why it's worth testing in OU
What is categorized under qualified responses?
The questions at the end that ask if you’re in the top 150 elo, have achieved reqs for a suspect test, or have played in a major tourney
milestones
From "pretending" to read? No, not at all.
My friend, the council is actively courting opinions from the public, which invariably includes a bunch of low ladder players. Yes, their individual opinions are unlikely to be as useful in making tiering decisions as the individual opinions of top level players, but every player's voice is being considered here with these tiering surveys. All responses will be given the appropriate weight as the council decides what to do next.
Excuse my lack of knowledge as I am very new to the game competitively, but what in what way does tera fire on espathra break clodsire, they run unaware tera dark to my knowledge, yes? Skeledirge I can understand why Tera Fire would to better, though.
It's also worth noting that a large gap between "Regular perception" and "High-rank perception" is, in itself, useful data.
I think Finch is referring more to natural switch-ins to Espathra like Kingambit, Gholdengo, Corviknight, and Iron Tread. But it's not just Tera Fire, It's Fairy Dazzling Gleam sets, it's Fighting Tera sets. It has a lot of unpredictable options because of tera and honestly the only thing that I've seen consistently to break Espathra is Ting-Lu. Skele can't really switch-in if it's 2 Calm Minds in.
Top 150 ladder
Considering the fact that there are contrasting opinions on virtually everything, it’s impossible to cover every opinion and account for everyone. We work in tiering with the underlying premise that we cannot please everyone — this is not the business of making people happy. It’s the business of making the game competitive. So yes, some opinions are thrown out or discounted while others are given preference. This mirrors many aspects of the real world as well.
