I strongly side with
Vert and
CTC ‘s stance on this whole situation and believe that there must be some administrative action in regards to this extremely sudden decision to quickban Volcarona DESPITE many consistently 1900-2000+ ladder players including myself voicing our disagreement in regards to the situation when the “volc quickbanned” was just a leak. I have concerns and question the future of the council if we are going around banning a ‘mon that wasn’t even on the radar a few days ago, and with Urshifu’s mediocre 3.0 rating in the recent tiering survey. I’ve explicitly stated in some of my other posts that I’ve found Volcarona to be manageable, however the prospect of it being able to break its normal counters like Heatran with tera blast ground/water is a very good feature for a Mon that is able to take over the game after only a quiver dance. There are very obvious counters to Volcarona, most notably priority moves (sucker punch, extreme speed, aqua jet etc) which are very reliable against Volcarona as a result of it having naturally very low bulk on the physical side. From experiences on all spectrums of the ladder (I am 2k on my climbing alt rn and 34-1 on another alt, making it to 1700 losing only ONCE), I can say that the most common Volcarona set in this Heatran/Tinglu fat-meta is a full offensive modest/timid Volcarona set with tera blast and no defense investment. There are some bulkier giga drain fiery dance sets however I find those to be very insignificant as they suck vs the many dragons and heatrans in the meta as of current. Volcarona is a very tempo reliant ‘Mon, to successfully set it up to be ready to sweep is easier said than done; +1 quiver rarely kills many mons and as the meta as of current is Spike Stacking fat teams with primary wall breaker of Dragapult/Urshifu, volc struggles to find an opportunity to set up since it will get revenged easily or whirlwinded as a last resort (+3 252 SpA Volcarona Bug Buzz vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 470-554 (91.4 - 107.7%) -- 50% chance to OHKO). That’s a +3 offensive volc having a chance to not even OHKO a ting Lu… LOL
although I agree with volc being very oppressive in the current meta and being difficult to stop directly in its tracks due to tera blast, the move is so telegraphed by this point where if you send out heatran you should always scout for the tera blast with protect since it’s pretty obvious by this point. The prevalence of priority moves makes it not overwhelmingly difficult to revenge kill, and it is possibly to bait volc’s tera because it’s so obvious and this ends up as a disadvantage for the opponent. I understand both sides and while i do not think the Mon is personally banworthy, the fact that the council has jumped straight to the conclusion of a BAN is just utterly ridiculous; a suspect, which many players have voiced for, is not even being considered for; it seems like this council is just banning whatever the fuck they want without getting some opinions on high ladder players and people who understand the meta well, such as my friend Vertex or Storm Zone (which I would heavily advocate to be on the council, as they are in touch with the metagame and consistently high ladder players).
The same thing goes for Urshifu to be honest. The mon has a decent 322 max speed, which outspeeds most of the metagame however leaves it open to revenge kills easily and the Swords Dance set is very prone to momentum, which is VERY prevalent with the amount of volt-turns from zapdos and pivot moves in general. Garganacl, a Mon I STRONGLY believe needs a suspect is 100 times worse and it can turn into water and completely invalidate the physical mons of OU with its curse/ID BP set. Many mons are running tera water right now, and it’s not helping urshifu whatsoever. The best set imo is choice band urshifu water, since it gets very good straight up value with its very hard hitting band booster Surging Strikes, although it is now prone to flame body/static (which is much more op than dire “mid” claw - in which the council is still obsessing over despite the move being shit). Is Urshifu a good Mon? Absolutely. Its raw power debatably makes it a contender for a suspect test, but ABSOLUTELY not a straight up quick ban. We are devaluing the existence of quick bans, as CTC outlined; quick bans are for the absolutely undisputed overpowered ‘mons like Regieleki, Marshadow and Iron Bundle, NOT for 2 mons that the community is divided over.
most importantly, zamazenta-h is so much more oppressive than volc AND shifu in my opinion, as it’s high speed tier as well as it’s lefties sub set with ID let’s it even stall out variants of pex and clod, which is pretty absurd.
It’s time for a change. I do not wish to flame the council for their decisions, but the end line is that they are quickbanning mons that 90% of players would agree that a suspect is much more sensible. I believe strongly that a quickban is unreasonable UNLESS it is an absolutely broken Mon that is undisputedly broken by the high ladder players, and all other ELO ranges too.
I’ll say it again; I personally believe volc and shifu deserve suspects. My real question is why is zama-h not even banned yet even though people have expressed their disapproval of that Mon in OU from the beginning??
Action must be taken.
