A lot of controversy has developed in DOU regarding Espathra, and I wanted to add on because some of the viewpoints I have on it haven't been reiterated by others. I'd like to preface this by saying that I'm not against innovation in the game by any means. However, Espathra crosses the line between creative teambuilding and imbalanced pokemon in a way that is both uncompetitive and spammable.
If you don't feel like reading through the rest of my post, the points that I'm trying to get across are that Espathra forces unreasonable choices in the builder and can still outprepare you unless you bring suboptimal picks. I'll be referring to many sources throughout this post to keep it as balanced and thorough as possible. Let's get into it!
1. Espathra forces unreasonable choices in the builder
This is a pokemon that doesn't need much time to get going. Give it 1 or 2 turns to set up even one calm mind, and suddenly it has a 120bp STAB move that's only going to get stronger. It's not like you can outspeed and KO Espathra before it gets going in most cases either: because it has speed boost, it can afford to both be really bulky and outspeed everything after protecting once, and this is without taking fake out or follow me into consideration. Even if you do manage to get Espathra low after a few turns, it will baton pass out or start spamming attacks that you can't deal with. An argument you can make against this is that this is the entire point of mainstay setup sweepers in DOU, such as Nasty Plot Gholdengo (which I think is also not
super healthy but thats beside the point). However, the reason Espathra is so much more limiting than other sweepers is speed boost. While Gholdengo can consistently be tera-forced by Landorus if it really wants to sweep, Espathra just needs to wait one turn to outspeed and set up on it. If something walls Espathra defensively, then it can just baton pass out into another threat.
If a team doesn't have a dedicated way to stop the ostrich, it becomes a nightmare to deal with. As an example, I'll use
Game 1 of my LCQ match against TanDaMan, where if I did not have cloak roar incin I had no counterplay to Espathra at all and would have lost in the builder (I still lost that game, but that was due to a game-losing mistake on turn 14). As evidence, here's
Game 3 where I couldn't phaze Espathra and had basically no way back into the game because of it. Now, is covert cloak roar incin a reasonable or common set in any way possible? Of course not.
But if I didn't want to lose to Espathra on preview, I needed to use something like that. I wouldn't be surprised to see Murkrow picking up usage just because of haze if Espathra stays in DOU, which is also an unreasonable tech choice considering Torn is around. The snowball potential that this pokemon carries is frankly braindead, and the choices it forces in the builder are not healthy ones for the DOU metagame because they have very little application outside of stopping the ostrich.
2. Espathra can outprepare you even if you have tech for it
the counterplay is hardly up for you to decide, it's rather what the opponent lets you get away with.
This is the core point that I'll look at here My LCQ set from before shows this perfectly, where in game 1 I used roar on incin to stop Espathra from sweeping me multiple times. However, in game 3 TanDaMan pulled out cloak taunt rillaboom to stop me, leading to me losing so much ground on that turn 1 that I basically couldn't come back into the game anymore. There are many more examples that I can think of, such as prankster taunt to stop Espathra being stopped by tera dark, any sort of hard wall like lu getting baton passed on, and setup of your own (like calm mind bolt) just losing the damage trade against stored power. The core point that I'm getting at is that
a typical build doesn't focus on JUST beating Espathra, but Espathra builds focus on beating all possible counters. This means that even if you keep Espathra in mind, its toolkit and abusers are wide enough to still outplay it. The only consistent counterplay that can't really be stopped is haze, but if your user isn't fast enough, you'll get taunted out of it (this is why I think if Espathra stays around, Murkrow will pick up in usage). I'll discuss some of Nails's arguments as they did bring up some good points:
espathra is just a cheese fish ostrich. it is easy to counter if you want to run hard tech and it also loses to offensive pressure (cheese). it can't usually run away with a game unless it has a good mu (fish). and failing that, anything can get through it with a well timed crit so the only option a lot ot the time is to bury your head in the sand and pray you don't get rnged out (ostrich).
Cheese: Firstly, Espathra doesn't really
lose to offensive pressure. You can outspeed the entire unboosted metagame at +1, which turns out is not that hard to do on a speed boost mon. I'd understand what you mean to an extent in singles, because there are no resources like follow me, fake out, instant speed control like prankster twave or tailwind, intimidate while you stay in, baton pass being banned, etc. However, the damage reduction that DOU can provide while Espathra sets up can definitely mess up a lot of offensive pressure, not to mention the only relevant stat it doesn't boost itself can be boosted via grassy seed, its most common set.
Fish: I agree with the fact that Espathra's a fish
to an extent. If your opponent has prankster haze, then you legitimately can't really do anything if they don't intentionally throw. However, almost all other counterplay will be prepped for by the Espathra player. So often times if you're playing against Espathra, you're going to be hoping that your counterplay was overlooked by the Espathra player. Doesn't the fishing get reversed here?
Ostrich: This last argument is in my opinion extremely misleading. Does that mean that Incineroar is a useless pokemon because a "well-timed crit" can ignore all of the drops it inflicted? Is Bolt Balance unviable because a "well-timed crit" can bypass all of the spdef boosts? Has Aurora Veil become a terrible move because crits ignore screens?
No, of course not. If some of the most common archetypes in the tier are also extremely susceptible to crits, why is this argument being presented as one to support Espathra specifically?
snarl tends to get there against it, giving tons of time to crit it out or make it watch its friends die or let the opponent set up their own threat. it's not a behemoth until it gets a few boosts, and only really can safely find that time against hard durdle.
True, snarl can slow Espathra down quite a lot unless its a very unorthodox set. However, every time you click snarl, you're not only risking a miss but also letting Espathra get 40 more bp in stored power assuming they calm mind, let alone baton passing the spdef and speed boosts to a different mon that isnt affected by snarl like cloak [insert special attacker]. For the last point, I'll just use what eragon said before me:
I've seen the argument presented that Espathra only punishes durdle but a quick look at the following replays from yesterday shows how this is not the case:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-885536
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-885535
DOU has been in a stable state for a good while now, and I don't want it to be looked back on as the Espathra generation. I am calling for either a QB or a suspect test on this pokemon asap to restore the balance this tier has had for such a long time.
