Announcement Free Bird - Torchic Suspect Test

[Hacker]

"'Cause I'm as free as a bird now, and this bird you cannot change"
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The LC Council has decided to suspect test Torchic.

On our most recent survey Torchic had an exceptional amount of people who wanted to see tiering action on it. Torchic has mainly been the cause for a lot of controversy lately because of how strong of a natural offensive type fire is in LC, with our options of fire resists being very limited. However, not even running some of the tiers best fire resists like Shellos means that you are out of danger. Due to the addition of Tera Blast in SV, Torchic is able to pick and choose its answers exceptionally well. Tera Blast Ground hits common fire resists like Chinchou and Glimmet while serving as a general good offensive type to click buttons with. Tera Blast Psychic hits Mienfoo and Mareanie, while Tera Blast Fairy hits Mienfoo, Vullaby, and any potential Tera Dragon users. Alongside the plentiful options Torchic has with Tera Blast, it isn’t hard to get on the field. With Foongus being on a very huge majority of teams, Mienfoo can commonly get in with U-Turn. The point being that SV has given Torchic the perfect toolkit for it to have the potential to blow past any of the mons that naturally would be giving it a hard time while not being hard to get in.

This being said, Torchic is not a flawless Pokémon and counterplay to it does exist. While fire resists options in this tier are limited, they do still exist. Chinchou and Glimmet can force Torchic to utilize Tera in order to damage them, while Shellos can tank two Tera Blasts with Tera after rocks. However, this does leave you vulnerable to Tera Grass Torchic. The aforementioned Tera Grass Torchic is vulnerable to being able to break past Tera Dragon, however that can require you to use your own Tera and Torchic could neutralize your counter play with Will-O-Wisp. Alternatively, you could bring a team that gives Torchic a hard time coming in. However, Torchic synergizes well with many common Pokémon in the tier like Mienfoo. Even the teams most prepared for Torchic can have a hard time dealing with it because as the game progresses and more stuff loses it’s resources, Torchic becomes even more dangerous. Torchic cannot beat everything, but the question is if the resources needed to reliable beat Torchic are reasonable.

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NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!

The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:

• Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in LC before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played LC before the test, full stop.)
• At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
• Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact myself, ghost, tazz, or a staff member.
• If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me/tazz/ghost or post here!

NEW​

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2800

The period to get the suspect requirements will be Saturday,<t:1755363360:f> with voting for the suspect going up after. Have fun laddering!

 

[Incognition]

There seems to be an agenda against fire types here...

 

[Incognition]

In all seriousness:



I've played SV LC recently again for SV Pools and the key issue I've noticed about Torchic is Tera Blast in particular, and the sheer fact that people aren't able to predict the type it'll be (Psychic, Ground, or even Grass).

I do agree that Fire Blast hits a lot of the meta hard, but it does this at the cost of recoil damage and potential switch in to rocks, so I feel it's fully utilised as a late game cleaner. Overall, I agree with the test and it wouldn't surprise me if it gets banned, although I personally feel Tera Blast is the key issue (I understand Smogon doesn't do Complex Bans).


On a separate note, I wonder if the community also finds Shellder being a potential issue, with it being used a lot more frequently and the main checks being Tera Steel Foongus, Mareenie, and Tera Water Mudbray(?) as although it needs the opportunity to set up, it has enough bulk to do this and once boosted can demolish a lot of the meta itself.

 

[Fille]

Scottie the Growlithe call-out kinda didn't mature too well, but I can do some stuff with that if needed.

 

[Colin]

Im going to run choice scarf agility Growlithe for the mindgames.

Being more serious now, Torchic is broken because speed boost + protect + substitute denies most speed control options and most of the rest depend on Torchic having the correct Tera into it. Torchic is also a top tier breaker with no safe switch ins factoring in Tera, and limited trading options factoring in wisp and potential setup in the back. With all of this, the most effective ways to beat it are to deny entry, or aggressively Tera against it. The former limits team construction, as metagame staples such as Foongus and Tinkatink are immediately threatened with ohkoes and are therefore unable to switch into the pivots they are fit on teams to beat. against the many faster Pokemon, torchic has trouble entering due to needing to protect to outspeed, but therefore being vulnerable to a substitute 50 50. Defensive Tera is consistent, but can be easily scouted by substitite protect, and in general those Teras are not offensively threatening and weaken their team vs Torchics teammates.

Torchics real weakness is that it is difficult to build with due to its poor immediate speed tier and lack of defensive utility. Eventually, players optimized it's offenses, and so even with common flaws such as nothing to outspeed Mienfoo or a weak defensive backbone, it can just win first because everything is weak to Torchic and Torchic can find entry on most of them without too much difficulty.

 

[Kingler]

I think Torchic is broken. Colin's post is great, but I just want to say that defensively tera'ing in advance is not really a viable strategy against Torchic team. Not just revealing your tera, but tera'ing preemptively is a huge concession to make and if you've tera'd while the Torchic team hasn't, you are basically asking to get swept by a surprise tera or take a really bad trade (for example, in the mienfoo/vullaby matchup). Most of the time you'll have your "check" in and it's a game of seeing whether you tera on the right turn to take the Torchic hit; Torchic can sub or protect on the same turn to put those odds in its favor. I think that a lot of Torchic games come down to weird 50/50s, the vast majority of which are actually weighted 50/50s in its favor. This is not to mention that it can use moves like wisp to make life harder for mons trying to gain momentum vs it by u-turning. The amount of bending over backwards/weird techs to try to catch torchic, having two mons that live at full or after hazards but still feeling like it's sketchy vs it, and praying that we're facing a favorable tera for our chic matchup we had to do building in LCPL did not feel great. If I get reqs, I'll certainly be voting ban.

 

[Shiif]

I agree with Kingler's post and i also think Torchic is way too broken in this metagame for two simple reasons. The first one is that Torchic is at the same time a late game sweeper, and a wallbreaker. The lack in fire resistances in the tier make the mon way too frightening to play against, and you can use it early game to break into the opponent's team (most of the time forcing the use of tera, and you can even not tera yourself so you gain a big advantage), or keep Torchic through the game until late game for an easy sweep. As Kingler said, most of the time you will be forced to anticipate a certain teracristal, because you can't just keep all your options to answer the grass, ground, fairy or psychic terablast. So all the games will end in a strange situation of 50/50 or just gambling on a tera to lose on an other.
The second reason is that, Torchic relies too much on missing moves (fire blast, wow), resulting in frustrating games. These moves are mandatory, and will just be frustrating for everyone. It just keeps randomizing the games (miss, random tera, random counter etc.)
Torchic is not the strongest pokemon in all the games and that's not the point of this suspect, but each game I see one (in my team or in my opponent's team), it's just a frustrating moment to go through, which is not healthy at all for the tier. If I get reqs, i'll be voting ban too.
Sorry for my english i'm not fluent thanks :)

 

[Éric]

I think Torchic needs to go. With this post i want to elaborate on why, given a perspective of teambuilding and playing.

This tier lacks good fire resists. We've known this, we've banned plenty fire types in the past (Growlithe and Magby) and have had others be top tier as well (Numel and Torchic). In our current Viability Ranking, we can see 7 fire resists, none of which sadly actually do beat the fire types: Glimmet and Chinchou are tasked with checking other threats like Vullaby, while lacking recovery; Shellder, Wingull and Axew are offensive Pokémon without recovery that do not intend on switching into hits, and are still frail and prone to Will-O-Wisp and/or Terablast; lastly, Mareanie and Shellos are more passive Pokémon, tasked with other threats to check and forced to click Recover, while still being one Terablast away from dying. This lack of native counterplay to Torchic (which always runs a Fire type move and a Terablast of choice) forces all teams to rely on Tera types to check it. This leaves the tier with a few problems: first, all Tera types are weak to a certain Torchic set (mainly Terablast type). If you run, for example, Dragon Mienfoo + Water Foongus, in addition of being way weaker into Shellder, your team will lose to Will-O-Wisp + Terablast Grass Torchic, or even Terablast Fairy Torchic, depending on who you decide to terastalyze (more on this later). The other main problem this "Tera type monopoly" that Torchic has creates is the constriction of teambuilding and the making of other threats stronger. Given that you need multiple Tera types to beat Torchic, other Pokémon like Shellder and Spore Foongus become more problematic, because if you want to adapt to them, you will be giving up a lot of "security" vs Torchic. This also means that, in a less immediate way, the pool of Pokémon we use isnt as big as it could be, because with less defensive resources per team you can't make big concessions, and most people end up choosing proven cores like Foongus + Mudbray or Mareanie + Toedscool, making the Pokémon that beat them harder to adapt to (like, mainly, Spore and Shellder). All of this is to say Torchic forces a ton of teambuilding habits that do nothing but harm the tier.

Now on the playing aspect. In my opinion, Torchic is the single most carrying Pokémon you can have. By this I mean that it is the Pokémon most easy to win with, demanding the least skill to use and win with, while also rewarding it. Its floor is incredibly low, offering you ways to either win the game on the spot or hinder the opposing team enough where your other Pokémon will win, while its ceiling is stupidly high, meaning the more times you get it in, the higher chance you have at winning. As the Torchic player, you have perfect control on what you can do with it, when to get it in and when to switch it out. Every time you click U-Turn on your Mienfoo, your opponent will have to respect the Torchic and not go Foongus, unless they want to sacrifice a Pokémon really early in the game, limiting their plays too much. If Torchic can't win on its own, it will burn the opposing Vullaby or Mienfoo so that Shellder wins the game, or maybe even burn the Shellos so that Diglett can click Earthquake without fear of getting walled. Here is an LCPL semifinals game where both Torchics control the pace of the game, with mine burning the Mienfoo so much that my Shellder immediately becomes a much bigger threat, while my opponent's Torchic tried to hit an Overheat onto my Mienfoo which, had it hit, would've put me in a terrible spot into thier own Shellder.
Other times, Torchic is the one winning, and it has it really easy to do so. I haven't mentioned move variety on Torchic, but it is one of the key aspects to its game. Torchic will always be carrying Protect, Fire Blast and Terablast, which is already a ton of variety given its ample Tera type options, but it also has mainly 3 different options for its last move: Will-O-Wisp, Substitute and Overheat completely change the way you play as Torchic and against it, and it is incredibly more deadly the less things it has revealed (Tera type and fourth move). Will-O-Wisp, as stated, will help you set up with your partner Pokémon, and Overheat will get sneaky KOes so you can sweep more easily, but Substitue is perhaps the most deadly of them all. In this LTWC playoffs replay, that is perfectly illustrated, as Wail is able to kill basically the entire opposing team after setting up a Substitue on a sacrifice, making it unable for his opponent to hit it (thanks to speed boost) because Wail just happened to have the right Tera type to win on the spot. As the opponent, you have to make a lot of hard, game ending decisions vs Torchic constantly, while the Torchic user has little to no downside to its moves, provided they hit. If you guess wrong, and let it set up a Substitute or burn your win condition, you probably will lose. In this LCPL semifinals replay, we can see an instance where I would be able to win on the spot if I had Substitute, given my opponent tried to sacrifice his Mudbray into a Torchic on turn 10, and we can also see proof of how teams aren't really able to fit fire type checks, relegating to defensive Tera types, hoping you cover for the right set and winning before the opposing Torchic does. Torchic has it so easy, and its opponents have it so far.

All in all, I think Torchic is a very toxic presence on the metagame, which only creates teambuilding restrictions and wins its games way too easily, and its departure will bring balanced fire types like Numel and Salandit into the tier, and more diversity overall, so I will be voting BAN.

 

[bleahey]

Torchic: ban