Metagame np: Stage 9: Teenage Riot (July shifts in post 21)

[ishtar]

​

Toxtricity is one of the most potent sweepers and breakers in PU. It’s nearly perfect coverage in Electric/Normal/Poison with the added boosted damage of its sound moves thanks to Punk Rock makes Toxtricity one of the strongest Special Attackers in the tier.

Toxtricity’s main problematic set is Shift Gear, which takes advantage of its ability to force switch-ins to gain Speed on potential revenge killers and scarfers. As it stands, a +2 Modest Toxtricity has no reliable Choice Scarf revenge killers, and its use of Throat Spray in conjunction with its powerful moves allows it to set up quickly on weakened threats that struggle to deal with its move combination. Sets such as Specs, Boots, Scarf are more linear since they threaten the meta in a more linear fashion, making use of its coverage options to either nuke a specific target, function as a pivoting mon or revenge kill would-be-checks.

Its most common Tera type is Normal, which boosts the damage of Boomburst to gigantic levels, but Teras such as Ghost have been utilized to flip matchups on revenge killers such as Arcanine with Extreme Speed, works as a reliable spinblocker, flips matchup on Fighting-types expecting Tera Normal, and allow it to use Tera Blast Ghost vs. threats like Golurk and Palossand.

This does not mean that Toxtricity is unbeatable though, a big portion of the meta is able to hit it for reliable damage due to its awkward typing. It’s also easily revengeable prior to Tera by a plethora of faster mons due to its mediocre speed before setup. Defensive Tera such as Ghost and Steel, which are used on many Pokemon in the tier are able to take a hit and revenge Toxtricity. All in all, Toxtricity is a potential sweeper that requires solid positional play, or a powerful breaker with a decent number of stops, but its offensive potential, ability to flip matchups and different sets make it a worthy candidate for a suspect test.

The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 78 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 82. As always, needing more than 50 games to 78 GXE is fine.

minimum games needed

GXE	minimum games
78	50
78.2	49
78.4	48
78.6	47
78.8	46
79	45
79.2	44
79.4	43
79.6	42
79.8	41
80	40
80.2	39
80.4	38
80.6	37
80.8	36
81	35
81.2	34
81.4	33
81.6	32
81.8	31
82	30

Suspect information:

• There will be no draws allowed for any potential qualifiers. If you qualify with draws, your suspect requirements will not count, and you will not be allowed to vote. There is no way to actively enforce ties to prevent abuse, so they will be disallowed. Use stall at your own risk.
• All games must be played on the Pokémon Showdown! PU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "PUTC (nickname)”. For example, PUTC asa or PUTC shitar.
• Do NOT impersonate other people in your ladder alt, do NOT use any usernames which are offensive, flame-baiting, or targeting specific users, and do NOT use usernames which could be interpreted as breaking any of the username rules on Pokémon Showdown! Failure to abide to this will result in you being barred from voting in this suspect, and potential infractions.
• The suspect test will last for 16 days, ending on May, 27th 11:59pm GMT -4.

/!\ NOTICE /!\ PU will not be tolerating any form of voting manipulation. Any attempt to manipulate votes can result in an infraction, loss of eligibility to vote in the current test, and loss of the Tiering Contributor badge. While we won't necessarily enforce super strict punishment, this won't be tolerated and will be handled accordingly. Voting manipulation can simply be described as attempting to get people to vote a way on the test in inappropriate manners. Bribing with teams to vote a certain way, directly messaging people to vote a certain way, publicly announcing "vote this way" all fall under voting manipulation. For more query, feel free to PM me or asa.

 

[ishtar]

We will be doing two suspect test tournaments this weekend! Hop in the PU room for a competitive fiery fuego extravaganza experience on the battlefield against your fellow PUers for a chance at Toxtricity reqs!

Saturday 10am GMT -4, hosted by Melt Gibson
Sunday 5pm GMT -4, hosted by Bella

Good luck and may your Statics proc every single time!

 

[DugZa]

Just wanted to share some quick thoughts regarding Toxtricity. While I did vote for it to be suspect tested, I don't necessarily think its broken or banworthy. Its defensive typing isn't particularly great and its defensive stats are average at best too so it can't really take hits that well. Its best set is by far the Shift Gear set but that needs one turn for SG and another turn to activate Throat Spray which it really can't afford to do in most matchups without taking significant damage most of the time. Even if it does setup we have a bunch of Pokemon like Sandslash-A, Milotic, Florges, AV Glowbro, (AV) Golurk, Coalossal, Bronzong, Gastrodon, Goodra and AV Meloetta that can comfortably take a hit or two and KO, haze or phaze it out; some of them need tera to do this while the others don't even need to dedicate tera to deal with it. We also have strong priority users like Arcanine, Bombirdier, Grimmsnarl, Emboar, Skuntank, Decidueye, Zoroark, Ambipom and Lycanroc that can RK it if chipped; yes, some of them have trouble depending on if its tera Normal/Ghost but most of the time they are good enough to deal with it. Not to mention, even a random tera can just catch it off guard sometimes; for instance, I've used tera Ghost on Kilowattrel and it checks tera Normal Toxtricity quite well. I do think tera Ghost Toxtricity might be slightly better than tera Normal right now but the drop in power from STAB-boosted Boomburst vs. STAB Tera Blast is so so noticeable and is a massive letdown sometimes. The choiced sets are decent too but they are very prediction reliant and the Choice Specs set in particularly leaves it very easy to revenge kill considering its lackluster speed tier. All in all, I don't think its ban-worthy right now.

 

[UberSkitty]

Hot take: Lets just ban high-key since low-key doesn't get Shift Gear (has Magnetic Flux instead!)

abolish not tiering Toxtricity differently!

edit: I just realized I could've made some low-key amazing puns...

 

[sufys]

not a toxtricity post, but i was surprised to see that staraptor of all things got the most support for action in the survey, when it's actually pretty underwhelming in practice, so wanted to address that.





while undoubtedly a potent presence in pu, staraptor has numerous flaws that prevent it from being an overwhelming presence, aside from the rocks weakness and the heavy recoil damage it takes. band sets are oftentimes pretty prediction-reliant and are fairly easy to revenge kill. while band doesn't have much in the way of defensive answers, its rocks weakness in conjunction with the heavy recoil damage it takes + potentially helmet damage typically limits it to trading 1-for-1 at best. regardless, there are still defensive counterplay options such as coalossal, bronzong, and houndstone that avoid being 2hkoed by band staraptor's stabs. choice scarf staraptor retains much of its strength while being a lot harder to revenge kill, making it have a pretty strong match-up into offense. however this is mitigated by the fact that offense typically gets rocks up early and carries priority which staraptor gets in range of very easily. the choice scarf set also has a lot more defensive counterplay in addition to what I've mentioned prior, pokemon such as mudsdale, bellibolt, and gligar all handle scarf variants fairly well. skuntank also effectively trades with any staraptor set with helmet + aftermath.



overall staraptor is not even particularly close to broken, i'd sooner ban bellibolt.

as for toxt, it requires pretty good positioning to successfully shift gear due to its awkward defensive typing, and with tera its always choosing between having a stronger boomburst + being more vulnerable to prio , or doing better into prio w/ tera ghost and having an arguably lacklustre damage output, this on top of the decent pool of checks dugza listed above makes me lean dnb

 

[Bella]

Congrats to.. myself actually! for winning the first suspect tour and thus qualifying for reqs! Apologies for the tour not starting earlier, melt had missed so I had to start the tour an hour later
Replays:
Semifinals #1 - Namelessinseattle vs Bella
Semifinals #2 - real ryan gosling vs Scarf Kricketune
Finals - real ryan gosling vs Bella

Bracket

 

[Bella]

Apologies for double posting, but I wanted to express my opinion on Toxtricity since I already got reqs.

I don't think Toxtricity is bannable. Simply put: The meta is too unkind to it offensively and defensively checking it and it feels so tera reliant to get going. For starters, priority is everywhere in this tier. Be it Arc Espeed, Sneaks from Houndstone and Deci, Aqua Jet from Tauros, Suckers from the likes of Skunk, Zoro, or Emboar, and Fake Outs from Ambipom, Hitmons, etc theres alot of perfectly good ways to beat Toxtricity just with Priority and it forces you to either have the right tera and burn that tera type or just get easily revenge killed. Thats not to say Toxtricity is only offensively checked either. Golurk, AV Glowbro, Bronzong, Alolan Sandslash, Palossand, Gastrodon, and more all force Toxtricity out, ruin its boosts, or force it to burn Tera which is not always favorable. Plus, Toxtricity relies on Shift Gear Throat Spray sets HARD to get going, and its defenses aren't great and you basically spend 2 turns just attempting to set up a sweep that is not always confirmed, and if the opponent as a sweeper of their own already on the field set up that is basically impossible to do. I also think Toxtricity struggles mightly with what Tera type it wants. It wants Ghost for Espeed and the Tera Blast Ghost for hitting Glowbro, but it also wants Normal for strong Boomburst and immunity to Sneaks. It oftentimes makes it difficult for Toxtricity as it needs to pick what top tiers it wants to lose to with the tera type. This is not even to mention how stray Tera Ghosts, Grounds, or Steels can screw it over big time and make it a momentum sink for a team. All in all, do i think Toxtricity is bad? No. I think its top 10 in the tier, but to say its more broken than the likes of Pokemon like Delphox, Zoroark, or Staraptor is wrong. As such, I'll be voting DNB.

 

[Bella]

Not Me Triple Posting

Anyways, congrats to eggselente (Onionlicker88) for winning the second suspect tour!!
Semifinals #1 - Poyo005 vs Onionlicker88
Semifinals #2 - Leoperi99 vs Claramelo
Finals - Leoperi99 vs Onionlicker88

Bracket

 

[ishtar]

Due to the server shutdown, we're extending suspect test by 2 days, meaning that the new deadline is May, 27th 11:59pm GMT -4. Good luck laddering!

 

[ishtar]

There are two more suspect test tournaments coming up:

-Saturday 10am -4, hosted by Melt Gibson (this time fr)
-Sunday 5pm -4, hosted by Hera
See y'all then, bring your best game nyeheheheh

 

[gulch]

congrats to Hera for winning the third suspect tour!!
semis 1 - Hera vs 495colon
semis 2 - Bert C vs OnlineOE
finals - Hera vs OnlineOE

bracket

 

[asa]

And congratulations to MZ for winning the fourth and final Toxtricity suspect tour!

Semifinals - beefdreams vs 26 yertee
Semifinals - MZ vs zoowi
Finals - MZ vs beefdreams

bracket

 

[asa]

Toxtricity remains legal in SV PU! Feel free to discuss your thoughts and concerns as well as how you think this will impact June's metagame, which is on the horizon.

 

[fish anemometer]

With the recent DNB verdict on toxtricity, the SV PU tier's next step is mostly unknown, with only some murmurs about Scrafty, but for the most part the playerbase won't find enough support for any other direction, as proven by a recent tiering survey. However, since the final wave of DLC in April, there has been one tiering "mistake" that should long be fixed. I hate to use the word mistake, it was the council and TLs being rightfully cautious in a turbulent early metagame with 50+ new pokemon. I think we should properly revisit the ban on damp rock.

We first and foremost tier Pokemon before non Pokemon elements. Non pokemon elements needing drastic reasonings to be considered, and while our reasoning were understandable and had some precedent, I think some additional context slipped through. The reasonings to ban damp rock currently stand on very flimsy ground, nowhere near drastic enough to warrant a ban that destroys the entire playstyle.

So. Lets first look at the ban. One thing that stands out is that Drednaw was voted on at the same time as damp rock. Drednaw was banned regardless of rain because of its Shell Smash sweeping potential, but it was also the main abuser of rain. No other rain abuser generated close to as much discussion. Rain was never given a fair chance to be tested without Drednaw. All the concerns regarding its competitiveness were purely theoretical, and done in a very early meta with a more naive understanding of the shaping tier. The circumstance of the damp rock ban were highly uncharitable to it. I admit I was part of the bandwagon at the time, but my understanding of the metagame has changed a so much, so regarding this I ask for some understanding.
What about the actual reasonings? The council usually lists Drednaw along with a few other rain abusers. At the time, we were cautious, and grasping for some short term solutions that would stabilize the meta. However, as mentioned previously - rain without drednaw is only known in theory. Additionally, as our meta progressed, I think it even became more adapted to the listed threats that appear in the council's reasonings. There were also some reasonings saying checking rain would make building awkward, but I don't think fitting a defensive tera water on a wall, amongst other ways to stifle hyper offensive teams is unreasonable at all. And other arguments like "too many sillies rn" don't hold weight anymore. As the only the only foreseeable tiering action in the future regard Scrafty, which is still at the murmurs stage.

Some rain abusers and setters include: Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Ludicolo, Floatzel, Poliwrath, Tauros-paldea-aqua, Inteleon, Tornadus, Grafaiai.
Now are any of these over the top with rain? Maybe? But I'm not convinced. And the few that might be broken, I'm ok with just banning individually. Killing the whole playstyle is unnecessary. These are not cornerstone mons, most of them are sitting in ZU and getting rid of them individually would most likely not have any negative effects on the rest of the metagame. We don't have drizzle in this tier. Setting up rain wastes a turn and then you still have to find a way to pivot these frail mons in to abuse the limited turns.
Now for some VR ranked mons that can counterplay rain. I will include common tera water stuff because tera water or dragon is a good tera type regardless of rain, proven by multiple metagames: Milotic, Bellibolt, Slowbro-galar, Arcanine (strong prio is scary for frail rain sweepers), Skuntank, Florges, Tauros-paldea-aqua, Gastrodon, Wo-chien, Bronzong, Tatsugiri, Ambipom, Decidueye, Goodra, Grimmsnarl: this is a lot of PU ranked mons and I'm not even going to explore below B+. So there are options. People saying they don't want to be forced to run X already get 6-0ed by Inteleon clicking hydro and not missing.

Tier leader's post regarding why damp rock was banned, and how it got approved.
Ishtar's intent is good here, but there are some things written that seem off. Firstly touching on something already previously touched on:

"Getting rid of mons like Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Tornadus, etc., for the sake of rain existing is even more damaging to all playstyles, creates a meta with much less individual variety, and inflates the PUBL list significantly for the sake of saving an archetype just cuz its "fun to play""

Torn and Kingdra are both ZU. Nobody is thinking about them. Getting rid of them would change absolutely nothing for most playstyles and I doubt diversity would be hampered. In fact, removing rain as a playstyle is more harmful than removing "fun to use" ZU pokemon. Also this post and a lot of our council reasonings are just slippery slope fallacy. It's unlikely all those mons would need a ban anyway.
And what precedent are we talking about exactly? Pellipper in UU? They elected to ban the pokemon, not the item or ability. NU who is having a PR thread? Older SV PU metas? If it's the older SV PU metas, I think the comparison is unfair. We had tier shifts every month, we had to stabilize things as fast as possible and avoid risk. Quick action and short term solutions were necessary because not all the DLC waves hit. Things are slower now. So I don't think the precedent argument stands on two legs.

I would like to give manual rain the fair chance that it never really got, and follow procedure properly. Ban individual elements based on their proven efficacy and not theorymon, and if it's way too many of them (whats our arbitrary number?) we can ban damp rock knowing fully well we've exhausted our other options and done everything we could to save the playstyle. Sooner rather than later, there will always be "another tour", after PUPL will be SCL then PUWC then circuit etc. delaying action.

ALSO BAN SCRAFTY

 

[Aurist]

"Getting rid of mons like Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Tornadus, etc., for the sake of rain existing is even more damaging to all playstyles, creates a meta with much less individual variety, and inflates the PUBL list significantly for the sake of saving an archetype just cuz its "fun to play""

Torn and Kingdra are both ZU. Nobody is thinking about them. Getting rid of them would change absolutely nothing for most playstyles and I doubt diversity would be hampered. In fact, removing rain as a playstyle is more harmful than removing "fun to use" ZU pokemon. Also this post and a lot of our council reasonings are just slippery slope fallacy. It's unlikely all those mons would need a ban anyway.

For me, this rationale gets more into why Damp Rock was a successful and appropriate ban than it does support a Damp Rock unban. Tornadus and Kingdra might be ZU but they're both completely viable pokemon in the B tier of PU's VR list that have multiple sets they can use and bring much more to the tier than just their broken roles in rain. You just can't argue that Tornadus and Kingdra are precluded from consideration from any angle especially not in a tier that's only just begun to stabilise in the last month or so, especially not in a gen with this high cutoff. Every single rain threat mentioned in your post is currently on the PU Viability List with the most recent update being long after the Damp Rock ban.

Damp Rock ban successfully handled a broken element in the tier in the most efficient way it could, in a way that addressed the chief problematic nature of the playstyle - the extended number of turns allowed you to just spam any number of rain sweepers, which there are a number of as listed in your post, and overwhelm with the extreme variety in ways you need to check rain teams. Individual rain mons and small rain synergies are still possible to use in the tier. I don't see a reason to reapproach this completely successful tiering action, nor do I see a reason to seek an unban in PU which I already feel is oversaturated with threats.

I will say, I understand the idea behind reapproaching the process because it was ~technically theory~, but I honestly don't think it was remotely a leap to believe that rain was broken without Drednaw as I got into a bit above, and I don't feel that PU can benefit at all from engaging a process that would destabilise the tier and inevitably result in multiple avoidable bans (though maybe my pro "ban a bunch of stuff" position would benefit here :clowned:)

also low key support the scrafty sus tbh

 

[ishtar]

I have more than a few issues with the previous post regarding our ban reasoning with Rain at the time:

Fish points out that our decision regarding the Damp Rock ban was under a different set of circumstances that do not line up with our current tiering philosophy due to the way things were being handled at the time, 1-month shifts. I’m not gonna regurgitate what fish said since he pointed out the reasoning for this within the environment of needing a quicker development to actually get down to tiering the way we’ve been doing now.

I also agree that the meta has changed drastically since then which allows us to look at this decision much more handily. I am not even opposed to this idea if the rest of the council shares the sentiment, though I know that a few of them mentioned disagreeing with certain notions about what’s potentially broken in rain, the value of looking at individual Pokemon within the environment, the lengthiness of the potential tiering process, etc. Just today two council members expressed animosity towards the idea of reintroducing it due to these factors.

I feel like for this next portion I need to defend myself against certain points which were taken out of context:

"Getting rid of mons like Kingdra, Kilowattrel, Tornadus, etc., for the sake of rain existing is even more damaging to all playstyles, creates a meta with much less individual variety, and inflates the PUBL list significantly for the sake of saving an archetype just cuz its "fun to play""

Torn and Kingdra are both ZU. Nobody is thinking about them. Getting rid of them would change absolutely nothing for most playstyles and I doubt diversity would be hampered. In fact, removing rain as a playstyle is more harmful than removing "fun to use" ZU pokemon. Also this post and a lot of our council reasonings are just slippery slope fallacy. It's unlikely all those mons would need a ban anyway.

My reply to the user in question in which I said this was written less than a week after we unanimously decided to ban Damp Rock. You said earlier that you agreed with that decision and your vote reflects that, but then mention the example of two Pokemon that were valid and perfectly viable in the PU environment at the time of the post. Yes, it does fall under what you call “the slippery slope fallacy”, but considering our same vote at the time, I think we accepted that reality within the context of the tier at the time as the best way to address weather to free up development. My issue with this use of a fragment is that you agreed with my point regarding how we approached weather at the time but respond to my reasoning within the context of now, which obviously does not still apply, and in turn simply makes me look like someone who has no idea wtf they’re doing. If you had the same reasoning as me about Damp Rock at the time, you could’ve utilized your own reasoning as excuse, and I would’ve considered it valid within the context of how we were tiering at the time.

I also wanna comment on what I meant by “precedent” on the subject of rain. Lower tiers have been known to target item bans for weather related reasons, mostly in turbulent one-month tiers. It’s the same reason why Light Clay is consistently banned in lower tiers, but it is also an unfair proposal to compare Damp Rock to tiers that have Ability-related self setters that are easier to remove like Pelipper and Ninetales. If you don’t believe that this is what I meant by precedent, here’s me asking in tiering discussion in the leaders section of Smogcord about this, since despite knowing how I wanted to approach this, at the time I had just become TL and I wanted to make sure that I was following the proper procedure, clearly no one had an issue with that either amongst our council:

damp

Secondly, I really wish more council members would’ve been allowed to discuss this issue in a timely manner since this was only brought up on council this morning and a few of us were asleep/unavailable, and the post reflects particularly bad on Council when its brought up in Policy Review, since it pertains to an issue that, as I’ve said before, we were meaning to engage in but weren’t given the time to.

I’m glad that this is a proper discussion at this point in time but I think its relevant to remember the context of our decisions and accept how our opinions can change over time, allowing for new and proper discussion about relevant matters. I’ll gladly continue engaging in this subject matter and I’m sure that the rest of the council will continue to share their thoughts as well, but there needs to be a level of communication to allow us to engage, and to expect others to also do it in good faith. I’m sorry I didn’t touch properly on my thoughts regarding rain at this point in time, but I’m exhausted and considering the nature of this post it felt wrong to leave it unanswered, but expect a post about that properly next week.

 

[Tuthur]

The biggest concerns about the Damp Rock ban is that it's based on Theorymoning only, and there was no Policy Review thread to back it up. Every non-Pokemon element ban needs to go through Policy Review, and that didn't happen here. It's not about to know who messed up, but about to fix what's not been handled properly.

- Damp Rock was banned on a hypothetical metagame, without any Rain abuser being considered first (Drednaw doesnt count it was broken outside rain too). Damp Rock wans't banned in the context of 1-month shift, it was banned on April 7 which coincides with the start of the 3-month shift.
- Damp Rock was banned without a PR thread, which is the norm for non-Pokemon elements ban. The Light Clay precedent got one, and more recently NU and ZU have had one to tier their issue with sun and Grassy Terrain, respectively.
- The precedent used to ban Damp Rock without a PR thread is Monotype. A tier that functions completely differently to lower tiers (idt I've to explain why), and that has had Damp Rock on its initial banlist at least since SS. The other history examples are from turbulent 1-month shift tier in-between DLC, which are not applicable anymore to SV PU. I don't know what Aberforth meant by lower tiers have a long history of banning Damp Rock, because it is factually wrong, only Monotype has. The only long history of weather related bans is Drizzle and Drought.
- Related to my 2nd point, but non-Pokemon bans =/= Pokemon bans. It's at the center of Smogon policy that we should only not tier Pokemon when it would result in many of them to conserve one non-Pokemon element (hence Drizzle, Drought, and Light Clay bans).

Let's not accuse fish of being in bad faith trying to bring up a Tiering Policy problem in Policy Review, when it's the place meant for it. fsh anemometer is not asking to bring back Damp Rock because he thinks the metagame is better for it (though I'm sure he does think it is), but because he thinks the reasoning to ban it went against tiering policy precedents, which is why PR was the right subforum for it.

 

[MZ]

The biggest concerns about the Damp Rock ban is that it's based on Theorymoning only, and there was no Policy Review thread to back it up. Every non-Pokemon element ban needs to go through Policy Review, and that didn't happen here. It's not about to know who messed up, but about to fix what's not been handled properly.

- Damp Rock was banned on a hypothetical metagame, without any Rain abuser being considered first (Drednaw doesnt count it was broken outside rain too). Damp Rock wans't banned in the context of 1-month shift, it was banned on April 7 which coincides with the start of the 3-month shift.
- Damp Rock was banned without a PR thread, which is the norm for non-Pokemon elements ban. The Light Clay precedent got one, and more recently NU and ZU have had one to tier their issue with sun and Grassy Terrain, respectively.
- The precedent used to ban Damp Rock without a PR thread is Monotype. A tier that functions completely differently to lower tiers (idt I've to explain why), and that has had Damp Rock on its initial banlist at least since SS. The other history examples are from turbulent 1-month shift tier in-between DLC, which are not applicable anymore to SV PU. I don't know what Aberforth meant by lower tiers have a long history of banning Damp Rock, because it is factually wrong, only Monotype has. The only long history of weather related bans is Drizzle and Drought.
- Related to my 2nd point, but non-Pokemon bans =/= Pokemon bans. It's at the center of Smogon policy that we should only not tier Pokemon when it would result in many of them to conserve one non-Pokemon element (hence Drizzle, Drought, and Light Clay bans).

Let's not accuse fish of being in bad faith trying to bring up a Tiering Policy problem in Policy Review, when it's the place meant for it. fsh anemometer is not asking to bring back Damp Rock because he thinks the metagame is better for it (though I'm sure he does think it is), but because he thinks the reasoning to ban it went against tiering policy precedents, which is why PR was the right subforum for it.

This “pr thread being mandatory” is literally just false, and if there was any truth to it then there would’ve been issues at the time of the ban. Also there is a long history of banning items like this if you fold in Heat, Smooth and Icy Rocks instead of acting like Rain is the only weather. Also admin was consulted and said a pr thread wouldn’t be necessary, ishtar posted the screenshot. I feel like I’m going crazy here, y’all should know better.

Re: Scrafty - putting aside what we might get from tier shifts, I genuinely think it’s gonna be a case of us adapting to its presence and learning to beat it better. The fact that if often has to Tera, and usually into pretty predictable types for any significant benefit, is pretty big. I don’t exactly have a ton of evidence I can spin up for this, just a feeling of where the meta would go if we got more time.

 

[asa]

I've said on both PS and Discord that I wouldn't be against reintroducing Damp Rock in July, and I stand by that. It has less to do with tournaments and more to do with the fact that it would be a change that has next to no support among the playerbase and runs the real risk of ruining what's left of this meta. If the question, then, is why later and not now, we're past the point of drastic meta shifts, so chances are that the real meta developments we've seen that double as counterplay won't disappear overnight. If there's any shot at us getting even more rain counterplay, why not wait for it (and possible further metagame developments that happen to deal with rain) and then give rain as fair a shot as possible? You can maybe make a case that a Damp Rock resuspect should've happened already, especially since the ban was partially based "in theory," but there hasn't been much discussion on it until recently (in council chat and just in general), likely due to how no one seems to want it back. As such, it'd feel like we're bending over backwards out of nowhere to fix something that isn't broken.

I understand that fish's post was not made in bad faith and likely intends to start the discussion that I'm saying hasn't happened yet, I just don't agree with how it's framed. I wouldn't call our decision a "mistake," for example, especially since it's something members of the council are willing to undo. I also don't agree that removing a playstyle does more harm than removing several Pokemon, all of which are fine outside of rain and none of which are more broken than rain as a playstyle. Furthermore, I don't think the comparisons to older PU metas and Monotype/other lower tiers are as ludicrous as they're being made out to be. These are still instances where the ideal solution was to ban Damp Rock instead of going through a potentially lengthy list of Pokemon one-by-one while letting rain continue to dominate and possibly ruin a metagame. This is to say nothing about how the discussion absolutely should've started here or continued on Discord before going straight to PR, which ishtar and MZ (+ DugZa on Discord) already went into detail about.

 

[Bella]

Hello hello haiiii I wanted to revive this thread in preperation for PUPL so here's Bella's fun little opinions on the state of the hazard metagame in the meta!

First, lets take a look at some of the (good) entry hazard setters.
Stealth Rock:

Spikes:

Toxic Spikes:

Sticky Web:
(Smeargle technically applies to everything here)

And then, our (good-ish) forms of hazard control
Rapid Spin:

Defog:


Heres some thoughts of the hazard metagame to me at least


Coalossal and Alolan Sandslash are easily the two most important Pokemon in the hazard metagame atm, primarly because they are the only two who are both entry hazard setters AND forms of control, making them extremely valuable utility Pokemon and easily some of the best utility Pokemon in the tier rn, seriously Coal is so annoying with Flame Body lmao.

On Spikes:
Spikes to me is super super good rn, and pretty much every team should at least try to fit a setter imo. With so many viable rockers, Spikes is insanely easy to slot on a team especially when you consider the options we have for spikers. All of them except Froslass are all very good defensive walls and backbones that can slot on nearly every team, especially Gligar and Gastro. Pretty simple to understand and honestly the spikers alone are what makes hazardspam so good of a playstyle imo.

On Toxic Spikes and Sticky Web:
I think Toxic Spikes atm are completely unviable. In a world where Galarbro is the best / second best mon in the tier, its never going to work out. Thats not even accounting the other perfectly viable Poison-types in the tier rn like Skuntank, Toxtricity, and Salazzle that roam around on every team, to the point pretty much every team will have a Poison-type Pokemon. It also does not help that theres only two setters in the tier, one of which would rather run rocks / spikes and the other of which prefers Taunt 99.99% of the time. So unfortunately i think Tspikes is super ass.

Sticky Web to me i feel like is a very underrated playstyle atm. I get its hard to justify hyper offense atm considering how powerful Galarbro/Belly balance is atm, but consider how many powerful webs abusers we actually have. Its pretty fun to run stuff like Toxt, Deci, Skunk, Scyther, etc on webs, especially as the control options are pretty mediocre rn. My main gripe with webs is that theres just not a super solid setter atm. Vika is fine, but feels pretty awkward to especially as you want all 5 of Tbolt / Bug Buzz / Volt Switch / Energy Ball / Twave but can only fit three, and Smeargle is just super ass and inconsistent imo.

Speaking of those mediocre control options...


I personally find Alt, Coalossal, and Alolan Sandslash to be our best forms of hazard control atm, but all three have major flaws. Alt is passive, Coal
kinda has an iffy defensive typing at points, same with Aslash. I dont think of them are bad options for control but are lacking pretty bad, which is super unfavorable.


The other 3 viable options aren't that great either. Tatsu seems extremely frail, and while its pure power somewhat makes up for it, i still think its easily the worst of the 3 spinners. Scyther and Decidueye arent bad options by any means, but both have much better offensive SD sets that can be hard to justify using Defog over, so i dont find that that appealing either...

I think the point im trying to put in this post is simple: entry hazards in the current meta are very, very overwhelming at times. Its not as terrible as it was in Pre-DLC when the only 2 forms of control were Quaxwell and Dartrix, but to say the metagame is in a good balanced state when it comes to entry hazards is wrong to me. Im not sure how we can fix that though, as i don't really believe anything is very bannable, and i want to hope that NU drops in the coming weeks will at least remedy that. It's not a major issue atm, but i feel like its 100% something to watch out on in the future and just to keep in mind.

Tldr: Fuck Altaria and Coalossal :3

 

[asa]

Copperajah moved from NU to PU
Raikou moved from NU to PU

Not a huge shift for us, but Copperajah seems like an incredibly useful addition to bulky offense and balance and Raikou... sure looks interesting. The council already voted not to immediately quickban Raikou (6 no QB vs 1 QB), so we'll be giving it a week to prove whether or not it's as broken as we feared. Feel free to share your thoughts on either of the two new Pokemon and where you think the meta's going, and have fun :D

 

[MZ]

I enjoy SV PU quite a bit. But I do think it could be better. There are 3 Pokemon that have come up as potential suspect candidates in PU council talks and we'd like to get some community feedback before taking any action.


New dog! I think he's fun, already used him in PUPL, and Raikou comes with a lot of on-paper broken characteristics. High special attack, good bulk, access to CM and Scald coverage, a few funny moves like Aura Sphere and Shadow Ball but mainly Tera Blast to supplement that coverage even more. Raikou is a restricting Pokemon, but also one that needs to predict a bit more due to its main STAB having common immunities and none of its coverage being especially strong before any boosts. Me personally, I do not think Raikou is the biggest issue at the moment. It's restricting in all the ways I thought it would be and definitely a little broken, but naturally blanketed and kept in check by a lot of popular things (Gastrodon/Florges/AV Glowbro obviously but I'm also thinking Decidueye, Meloetta, Hoopa, any physical scarfer, the fact that it can't do quite as much damage to Mudsdale as it wants to, Wo-Chien, Goodra, any physical scarfer). Raikou's counterplay to me personally feels more diverse and easy to accomodate than bachelor number two's...


I've always been annoyed by Inteleon but recent weeks have really sealed the deal. So. much. Gastrodon/Milotic. It's really getting to be a pain. Aside from those 2 and the handful of water immunity abilities, almost nothing gets to switch in for free. It can run strong teras to beat most of its checks, and it also gets to U-turn on switchins when PU has no shortage of incredible breakers that would love to take advantage of them. I think Inteleon is banworthy at the builder and much less so in game, and I think that getting rid of it would improve the tier significantly. The council is not totally in agreement there though, and even though its only a single week of data it is true that Inteleon had a winrate of 1/7 in PUPL week 1. I just think that it's the biggest factor holding back team diversity. You're all but required to be running HO or have a fat, momentum-sucking check that makes it hard to run offense. And I really pride myself on being a creative builder working out ways around it, like my last 2 PUPL teams had a more offensive bent with Flip Turn Milotic and Poliwrath, respectively. But relative to Raikou, I think Inteleon is lacking ways to check it at the builder and it's honestly more oppresive than our big electric dog. However, at least one person on council thinks there's a third thing more worth banning than these two.


Between Bulk Up and Dragon Dance, Scrafty can run two very different very annoying setup sets that abuse plenty of the bulkiest PU has to offer while being a pain to revenge kill. Between Poison Jab, Ice Punch, Throat Chop, multiple good tera types, and probably a whole untapped section in its movepool waiting to lure things as people experiment more (Roar Scrafty anyone?), Scrafty can surprise a number of would-be checks from Flamigo to Alluring Voice users. The name of the game is being versatile and difficult to KO. Scrafty isn't too hard to pressure offensively on paper, but throw in tera and defense/speed boosts and all of the sudden it's a bit more of a question whether your Scyther or Fire Tauros are gonna do the trick. Like Raikou, the thing that keeps me personally from wanting to axe Scrafty first (or at all) is the way its checks are more versatile and common. It absolutely has a large impact on the meta and can run its way through games barely impeded, but we've already got a lot of Fighting checks, plenty of phazing and stat clearing, and lots of high-damage Pokemon that can make it somewhat difficult for Scrafty to boost. I've talked about this before but I also personally think that the more annoying Scrafty gets, the more people will go into their bag of tricks to check it. It doesn't have the raw speed and power of, say, Inteleon, where there's very little you can innovate to make it stop winning.


So yeah, maybe the TLs will do an official survey of these 3 + other things but for now they've said I can post this and we'd like to see how people feel about some potential suspect candidates. There have also been discussions of freeing Damp Rock, I personally do not want to wade into that discussion aside from saying I don't really want to, but if you'd like to argue in favor of that, it's been a bit of a topic recently.

 

[gulch]

I enjoy SV PU quite a bit. But I do think it could be better. There are 3 Pokemon that have come up as potential suspect candidates in PU council talks and we'd like to get some community feedback before taking any action.


New dog! I think he's fun, already used him in PUPL, and Raikou comes with a lot of on-paper broken characteristics. High special attack, good bulk, access to CM and Scald coverage, a few funny moves like Aura Sphere and Shadow Ball but mainly Tera Blast to supplement that coverage even more. Raikou is a restricting Pokemon, but also one that needs to predict a bit more due to its main STAB having common immunities and none of its coverage being especially strong before any boosts. Me personally, I do not think Raikou is the biggest issue at the moment. It's restricting in all the ways I thought it would be and definitely a little broken, but naturally blanketed and kept in check by a lot of popular things (Gastrodon/Florges/AV Glowbro obviously but I'm also thinking Decidueye, Meloetta, Hoopa, any physical scarfer, the fact that it can't do quite as much damage to Mudsdale as it wants to, Wo-Chien, Goodra, any physical scarfer). Raikou's counterplay to me personally feels more diverse and easy to accomodate than bachelor number two's...


I've always been annoyed by Inteleon but recent weeks have really sealed the deal. So. much. Gastrodon/Milotic. It's really getting to be a pain. Aside from those 2 and the handful of water immunity abilities, almost nothing gets to switch in for free. It can run strong teras to beat most of its checks, and it also gets to U-turn on switchins when PU has no shortage of incredible breakers that would love to take advantage of them. I think Inteleon is banworthy at the builder and much less so in game, and I think that getting rid of it would improve the tier significantly. The council is not totally in agreement there though, and even though its only a single week of data it is true that Inteleon had a winrate of 1/7 in PUPL week 1. I just think that it's the biggest factor holding back team diversity. You're all but required to be running HO or have a fat, momentum-sucking check that makes it hard to run offense. And I really pride myself on being a creative builder working out ways around it, like my last 2 PUPL teams had a more offensive bent with Flip Turn Milotic and Poliwrath, respectively. But relative to Raikou, I think Inteleon is lacking ways to check it at the builder and it's honestly more oppresive than our big electric dog. However, at least one person on council thinks there's a third thing more worth banning than these two.


Between Bulk Up and Dragon Dance, Scrafty can run two very different very annoying setup sets that abuse plenty of the bulkiest PU has to offer while being a pain to revenge kill. Between Poison Jab, Ice Punch, Throat Chop, multiple good tera types, and probably a whole untapped section in its movepool waiting to lure things as people experiment more (Roar Scrafty anyone?), Scrafty can surprise a number of would-be checks from Flamigo to Alluring Voice users. The name of the game is being versatile and difficult to KO. Scrafty isn't too hard to pressure offensively on paper, but throw in tera and defense/speed boosts and all of the sudden it's a bit more of a question whether your Scyther or Fire Tauros are gonna do the trick. Like Raikou, the thing that keeps me personally from wanting to axe Scrafty first (or at all) is the way its checks are more versatile and common. It absolutely has a large impact on the meta and can run its way through games barely impeded, but we've already got a lot of Fighting checks, plenty of phazing and stat clearing, and lots of high-damage Pokemon that can make it somewhat difficult for Scrafty to boost. I've talked about this before but I also personally think that the more annoying Scrafty gets, the more people will go into their bag of tricks to check it. It doesn't have the raw speed and power of, say, Inteleon, where there's very little you can innovate to make it stop winning.


So yeah, maybe the TLs will do an official survey of these 3 + other things but for now they've said I can post this and we'd like to see how people feel about some potential suspect candidates. There have also been discussions of freeing Damp Rock, I personally do not want to wade into that discussion aside from saying I don't really want to, but if you'd like to argue in favor of that, it's been a bit of a topic recently.

hi it's gulch, other notable SV PU enjoyer, wanna give my thoughts on some stuff. do wanna state for the record that i generally agree with the lot of the above so i'm not gonna reiterate a ton of it


I think one thing MZ failed to touch on here is that this bitch is also FAST. Inteleon is the fastest unboosted Pokemon in the tier bar Kilowattrel, which is not nearly as splashable or consistent as most teams would like out of their Inteleon check. There are some things that have been innovated lately that can kind of deal with it, and we have seen them in PUPL (Arboliva, Shaymin, Poliwrath, etc.), but these are still relatively unproven and again, not as splashable or consistent as most teams would want their Inteleon check to be. I think the room for creativity in the builder to check Inteleon IS there, but you are absolutely forced to either scrape the barrel or use very specific things to make your Inteleon matchup consistently playable. The strain this thing has on the builder can not be understated, and even if checking it in actual play is often much easier it places a very noticeable strain on the tier's continued growth and the fear of it railroads a lot of teams into very predictable balance cores or full hip-fire HO. I think the influence this Pokemon exerts on the tier is definitely not a good one, especially in a meta where we're extremely lacking in Pokemon that can resist Ice/Grass and also have a decent Sp.Def stat without also folding to Hydro Pump. the power is also ludicrous, my PUPL team almost ran Passho Berry Golurk before we ran the numbers and realized that Inteleon kills through the berry with Hydro Pump anyway. I think a suspect test for this is more than adequate.


I just don't see a world where this is ever okay, sadly. Pressure with Sub and/or Protect outlasts any fat that gets thrown at it, and it has a similar issue to Inteleon where the speed, power, and overall coverage come together to make something that's just insanely stressful to cover for in the builder. A lot of things that are already good do function at checking it, but most if not all can get owned by at least one set. I think Raikou's ability to very easily pick and choose its own counters with it also not being very hard to load up the team with other things that beat these checks (Skunk in particular is an insanely good partner) is massively unhealthy. It's also less easily navigable in gameplay as well, as unlike Inteleon, it has a massive amount of sets and variations that can cook you if you guess wrong. This being banworthy is less of an if and much more of a when in my opinion.


I don't find this banworthy, definitely just really good. I think most of the "options" it has are largely inconsistent as well, and very much agree that there's a lot of tech that can be innovated to stop Scrafty from winning games it shouldn't. The Speed before boosts is a real issue that makes you vulnerable to being revenge killed, Tera is just as much of a guessing game for the Scrafty player as it is for their opponent, and hazards can especially make finding chances to get going very difficult for you since Leftovers is common. You also have plenty of combination from other setup Fighting-types like the bulls which not only makes your job harder in finding a slot on the team but also means that the meta innovating to find tech for them ends up in a roundabout way as the meta innovating to find tech for you. Nothing I've seen from Scrafty has made me look at the game and go "wow, that's silly" or "wow, that shouldn't have done that".


I don't think this is worth revisiting, at the very least not until PUPL is over and/or we know what path we're taking on Raikou and Inteleon. I do agree that the process for the ban may have been a little rushed, but the amount of options this has right now (even arguably in a world where we ban Raikou and Inteleon) and the very easy ways it could tech to beat checks is just too much to see it as a healthy addition to the tier. Insert "get ready to learn Chinese buddy" image with Poliwrath pasted over Adam Silver here.

 

[Theycallmephil]

Mz summoned us all sooo, moderately extensive post abt meta thoughts time methinks..

Okay so I'm gonna touch on a few key components i think are currently troubling the meta and it's players and mention a few mons I think are good examples

#1 The breaker problem

These 2 have made it their mission to punish balance cores and upset many players with their insane breaking potential, inteleon is the pokemon I personally think is more problematic and unhealthy so I'll touch on it first, inteleon has all the makings of an extremely potent breaker in the PU tier, incredible speed tier(only outmatched by electrode,kilowattrel,jolteon and various scarfers) its immense damage particularly with its specs set, the ability to pivot rather easily without the fear of coalassals burn that many other uturners have nowadays, aswell as pretty specific checks both offensively and defensively, when it comes to proper defensive checks you really only get gastrodon and milotic, the latter is an incredible pokemon and would be so with or without inteleon, however the former, is a pokemon I've had nothing but criticism for and thus find inteleon forcing me to use it on some teams to be very irritating and limiting, but yeah, 2 defensive checks with their own clear issues is hard enough, but this is SV so very few hard checks are actually hard checks, as inteleon can opt for tera grass tera blast or grassblast, too completely tear through gastrodon and heavily threaten milotic, so stopping this thing in its tracks is no easy task, what about taking it down before it gets going? Well for that you mainly have electrode-hisui and kilowattrel, both of which just became a bit harder to fit with the addition of raikou. Kilowattrel has sort of fallen out of favor with many people citing things like hurricanes inaccuracy, it's extreme frailty, fear of priority as reasons why it's just not that easy to fit rn, electrode has been around a long time but is seeing some new discussion around it, particularly for its prowess in the inteleon matchup as with good prediction, it can actually kinda force itself in vs inteleon, something the extremely frail kilowattrel has no hope of doing, electrode also has a relatively favorable MU against Raikou which is always nice, all in all tho I think electrode still has bulk and power issues of its own, preventing me from ranking it very highly and thus seeing it as a very reliable check to inteleon. If it wasn't obvious I am 100% in favor of a ban on inteleon

Now that I've probably lost most people's attention with my rambling, let's talk
Golurk is what I like to call a product of its environment, at first golurk was thought to be just as good as its ground type brothers, but it quickly became clear it was much more, as I actually literally talked abt right before typing this(and is the reason I decided to write a post) the tiers current meta bulky pokemon, are typically more specially leaning, something I kinda blame intel for, but they're also just amazing pokemon, and this special lean means golurk hits them really hard, but ofc there are physically bulky meta mons, so what's up w golurk being so unstoppable, well these mons, such as slowbro-galar,bellibolt,coalassal. Are all extremely vulnerable to golurks ground typing, slowbro even being weak to ghost aswell, these are some of the most common physical walls you'll see in PU so golurks great matchup vs the 3 is absolutely incredible golurk also gets a few more fun tools, as it's ghost type provides it the ability to spinblock, oftentimes letting it in virtually for free(with the added bonus of keeping your hazards up obv) a very common spinner is actually coalassal, which absolutely hates golurk, being 4x weak to its non-contact stab earthquake. Other spinners do threaten you much more, such as alolan-sandslash and hisuian-avalugg but these MUs aren't unwinnable. You are also threatened by tatsugiri. One thing truly holding golurk back, is its speed, and honesty this is the thing that imo, makes it balanced unlike inteleon
Sure it's fast enough to ruin most defensive pkm, but it's MU vs offensive teams is typically much less favorable, albeit not awful because it can usually still find a way to force a trade, it's speed does hold it back from punching holes the way it wants to vs these teams, an issue inteleon doesn't have because it's stupidly fast.
Overall I don't think action on golurk is particularly nessacary rn buy I do see the concern and think keeping an eye on it is a good idea!!

It deleted my set up sweeper section so I'll rewrite that later!

Anyway I finally get to talk abt the new drops, mainly and why I think we should still ban it.
First of all idt raikou is rlly as broken as we expected, haven't posted noms yet but I'm leaning towards low A+ for it, possibly the worst A+ mon, HOWEVER I do think it's extremely unhealthy, raikou has a handful of sets, most of which honestly aren't very problematic, the main set I'm worried about is sub-CM, as much as I love to joke that raikou "isn't that fast" it's more than fast enough and bulky enough to put uo a sub vs alot of things and oftentimes force then out, this awards it free calm mind turns this tier can't rlly afford for it to get, I mentioned earlier how absurd inteleon is and how ot kinda puts a target on gastrodons back, meaning if you're running inteleon and raikou you'll want to get gastrodon gone fast, and typically will be successful. Once this hard wall to some versions of the sub CM set is eliminated there's not much to stop it, overall I do think it was technically underwhelming but I do think it should be banned.