havent suspect thread posted in a while, but I got reqs and want to share my brief-ish thoughts, but the tldr is that Moon is broken and is a necessary ban to weaken the strength of HO in the metagame.
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I think Moon is a very obviously broken mon that contributes highly to a negative dynamic in the tier with that being the plethora of HO teams it fuels running around and causing a tier that leans towards MU dependency instead of player skill.
Moon itself has a very slim list of real checks and these checks are often left irreparably weakened into the range of one of Moon's teammates, making accounting for these HOs and their variations often a considerable headache in the builder that cannot reasonably be expected to be outplayed in-game as opposed to something like Ogerpon-W where even defensively shoddy teams can often bully it with pace and tempo control, unlike Moon which hits 555 speed after a single turn and can force its way through classic defensive pivots ie landoT tusk zapdos moltres slowbro ferro.
It would be ignorant to think that moon's ban will kill HO off though, as HO will still be a strong archetype with Dragonite being able to stand in for Moon seamlessly on most structures. However, when HO is in a state where it is too prevalent and/or strong, I believe the name of the game is reducing the threat list that needs to be accounted for instead of evaluating if the mon is broken purely in a vacuum. Current HO builds often heavily rely on moon as either a tremendously strong breaker with knock to open things up or fast cleaner to abuse holes made by teammates. There is no replacement for roaring moon on these HO builds when it comes to the versatility in how it can function on a game-to-game basis, with the closest being the aforementioned Dragonite, but with the lack of Knock Off and consistent raw power compared to Moon, Dragonite is significantly less efficient at this role, which is why I believe that a moon ban will sufficiently nerf HO into a more palatable state for the metagame. As a quick note, I think claims that center around Z instead of booster are just incorrect tbh.
With a few exceptions (Ghold suspect, Tera suspect) I am typically not very invested in a suspect outcomes, but I must say that moon staying would be deeply disappointing and will almost definitely cause the tier to grow considerably worse as time goes on with it legal and HO sees more innovation in NDPL as it always does. If moon goes, I don't think the tier will regress into this fictional glisc spikestack meta that supposedly everyone is running either...
Will be an easy Ban vote for me!
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I think Moon is a very obviously broken mon that contributes highly to a negative dynamic in the tier with that being the plethora of HO teams it fuels running around and causing a tier that leans towards MU dependency instead of player skill.
Moon itself has a very slim list of real checks and these checks are often left irreparably weakened into the range of one of Moon's teammates, making accounting for these HOs and their variations often a considerable headache in the builder that cannot reasonably be expected to be outplayed in-game as opposed to something like Ogerpon-W where even defensively shoddy teams can often bully it with pace and tempo control, unlike Moon which hits 555 speed after a single turn and can force its way through classic defensive pivots ie landoT tusk zapdos moltres slowbro ferro.
It would be ignorant to think that moon's ban will kill HO off though, as HO will still be a strong archetype with Dragonite being able to stand in for Moon seamlessly on most structures. However, when HO is in a state where it is too prevalent and/or strong, I believe the name of the game is reducing the threat list that needs to be accounted for instead of evaluating if the mon is broken purely in a vacuum. Current HO builds often heavily rely on moon as either a tremendously strong breaker with knock to open things up or fast cleaner to abuse holes made by teammates. There is no replacement for roaring moon on these HO builds when it comes to the versatility in how it can function on a game-to-game basis, with the closest being the aforementioned Dragonite, but with the lack of Knock Off and consistent raw power compared to Moon, Dragonite is significantly less efficient at this role, which is why I believe that a moon ban will sufficiently nerf HO into a more palatable state for the metagame. As a quick note, I think claims that center around Z instead of booster are just incorrect tbh.
With a few exceptions (Ghold suspect, Tera suspect) I am typically not very invested in a suspect outcomes, but I must say that moon staying would be deeply disappointing and will almost definitely cause the tier to grow considerably worse as time goes on with it legal and HO sees more innovation in NDPL as it always does. If moon goes, I don't think the tier will regress into this fictional glisc spikestack meta that supposedly everyone is running either...
Will be an easy Ban vote for me!