Suspect Bad 'n Boosted Suspect 3 - You've Got a Friend in Me

[Bobsican]

After an internal council vote, it has been agreed to suspect test Pawmot!​

Thanks to a potent spread of 140 / 115 / 140 / 140 / 120 / 105, Pawmot has been a raising concern for the Bad 'n Boosted metagame, enabling Pawmot to make the most of its wide utility movepool, featuring moves like Wish, Knock Off, Nuzzle, Volt Switch, and most notably Revival Blessing. As opponents are often unable to OHKO Pawmot, it can often find opportunities to use Revival Blessing to invalidate progress made by the other team, sometimes even going as far as using Rest + Sleep Talk for indefinite use of the move, with the flaws on paper of such set being mitigated by Pawmot's access to Natural Cure.

However, Pawmot's typing isn't particularly good offensively or defensively, being almost trivial to force out by foes like Flutter Mane, Sylveon, and Vibrava, while also being unable to force out foes like Kilowattrel, Gardevoir, and Clodsire. Pawmot's well-defined metagame role of a support Pokemon can also be taken advantage of by being used as setup fodder depending on its set, especially with its average-at-best base 105 Speed leaving it rather vulnerable to Taunt from opponents including Salazzle, Arceus-Ground, and Skarmory.

Requirements:

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 Bad 'n Boosted 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 Bad 'n Boosted 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 requirements, please contact April, dhelmise, Giagantic or a member of OM staff.

- If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me or post here!

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2900 with B=2. The deadline for getting requirements will be Tuesday, September 23rd. Good luck to all!

 

[Demon Queen]

Really, deltarun fans?

 

[Delibird Heart]

Already gave my opinion on this in the main bad n' boosted discussion thread but pawmot is an unhealthy presence for the tier imo, mostly cause of revival blessing. Stall can abuse it, and offense getting +2 free lives is also not fun to play against. BAN for me.

 

[Ziek_Freek]

suspect pretty uneventful, was watching a danganropa fan game thats all i can rlly remember tbh. ban pawmot pls though

ooooh im using my powers to convince u to quick ban frosmoth toooo ooooooh ‍‍‍‍‍

 

[Sandwiches42]

As much as I like Pawmot as a wish passer, or specs with volt switch...
Revival blessing is too much stress for me when using it and when playing against it, and can flip a game on its head too easily. Mons with that much bulk were not meant to revive. It also works with stall, and for giving set up sweepers another shot, aka buffing the 2 best playstyles (I think at least)... also sleep talk is crazy, just to rng spam it even more.
Ban Pawmot.
(lol frosmoth isn't even that good imo, ribombee sweep)
((also friend inside me????? tricky tony back at it again))

 

[Tuthur]

I used Pawmot stall to get reqs. As often, ladder is filled with enexperienced players who have no idea how to break defensive teams, so this was easy even without using Pawmot in most games. As such the points I'm going to develop are mostly based on theorymoning and the battles I played against the few good players I faced.

I'm not in OM server and there hasn't seen to be much discussion on Pawmot in the forums, beside a couple very short posts (such as the ones above). The closest thing I could find is a 4 months old post defending Pawmot by DragonPhoenix333; I don't know if the author's opinion changed (and I'd be glad to hear from them if so!) or not since then, but I'm gonna use this as reference of the DNB side in the rest of my post.

Let's sum-up points made in this post that I do agree with and develop some of these points more. First, offensive Pawmot is terrible; it's a terrible progress maker, because it lacks set-up options and its STAB moves are bad. This makes Pawmot in offense a rather poor gimmick, even with Leppa, as you are giving free turns to your opponent, something offense really can't afford, with the mere benefits of getting half a Pokémon. Maybe in some kind of bulky offense team with a support moveset, it got a niche, but that's too underexplored to comment on. Then I do also believe Leppa Berry is an aberration on defensive sets; Heavy-Duty Boots are generally the best item, because hazards removal is quite bad and Pawmot is weak to Spikes and Toxic Spikes. Finally, I also believe Pawmot as a defensive glue able to WishPass is great and healthy.

What makes Pawmot unhealthy is its ability to make use of Revival Blessing. "Revival Blessing only grants a slight advantage in that your opponent can't rush to take a one for one trade with no repercussion", this is not a slight advantage; it's game changing. Pawmot has an instant progress cancel button and this option is so strong that it doesn't matter that it can only be called once. Usually your opponent has one Pokemon that is able to make significant progress by getting a setup turn at full life on the right Pokemon; knocking this threat out may require to sacrifice one (if not more) Pokemon. This opens up the way for another threat and that's how you break defensive cores. However with Pawmot in the equation, you get to revive this defensive piece. In standard play, this is usually not an issue because a defensive piece at 50% is not a huge threat, especially as you're giving up a free turn for it; however in BnB, everything is significantly bulkier and a defensive Pokemon at 50% isn't a deadweight and can most often that not get back to full health. This also works with offensive Pokemon, as with Wish, Pawmot is able to revive a threat and then get it back to full. All in all, playing against Revival Blessing Pawmot requires far too many ressource. Identifying positive trades is a skill, but Pawmot's Revival Blessing lets you take terrible trades and still be rewarded. There is a natural advantage at using Revival Blessing Pawmot and you put yourself at a huge disadvantage running a team without it, as preventing a 140/140/140 bulk Pokemon from getting one turn is usually impossible. The sets everyone should be running on Pawmot is Wish/Protect/Revival Blessing/Filler on balance, and Rest/Sleep Talk/Revival Blessing/Filler in stall; anything else, while good, is suboptimal and outclassed by this combination.

Here is the team I used to get reqs. It's probably suboptimal, especially tera types as I don't remember clicking Tera on anything but Toxapex and Clefairy, but it's rolling over any non Pawmot team. It's a very straight forward stall team; you've got 2 Knock Off absorbers, 2 Regenerator pivots, tons of hazards, multiple anti-setup options, and of course Pawmot.

 

[jl36808]

Went 20-2 with this team, which is just the team I already posted but with taunt over sub on salazzle (I didn't know salazzle got taunt when I first made it lol) and its def an improvement.

I'm voting BAN but I do really wish that we could just ban revbless instead since Pawmot without revbless is a pretty cool mon. Revbless is just BS anyway, especially the RNG reliant sleep talk sets. Ig tiering policy and stuff prevent that tho (stupid floating psychic bug).

P.S. Ribombee is honestly quite broken, the bug was sweeping like half of my games

 

[MafuSimp]

Played a few games of pawmot stall (stole the team from delibird heart's post <3) god rev bless is disgusting and the fact you can call it with sleep talk is some insanity, frankly just a disgusting pokemon don't like the gameplay it creates, the way it limits teambuilding and why would i not add a mon to my team that gives me two more uses of my best offensive threats or add a mon to my stall team that can unbreak my stall honestly think we should just ban rev bless as a whole since id like to keep pawmot around as it is otherwise a fine pokemon

 

[uses stall teams]

Obviously if you're going to give pawmot the turns necessary to revive then you're at a disadvantage,but the same can be said for any mon that needs a certain amount of turns to setup stat boosts and then sweep. Counter it with taunt or whirlwind/roar/dragon tail on the turn it's using rest. Or have certain mons on your team like flutter mane that force pawmot to switch out.

 

[MafuSimp]

Obviously if you're going to give pawmot the turns necessary to revive then you're at a disadvantage,but the same can be said for any mon that needs a certain amount of turns to setup stat boosts and then sweep. Counter it with taunt or whirlwind/roar/dragon tail on the turn it's using rest. Or have certain mons on your team like flutter mane that force pawmot to switch out.

Forcing pawmot to switch out means it still got a turn to gamble for rev bless with sleep talk or just got the rev bless off with leppa so i dont really agree with the flutter mane point tbh, phasing doesnt exactly counter rest either since all you're doing is just letting it get the rest off and so next time in comes in it can fish for blessing, taunt is the only real answer but expecting there to always be a fast taunt mon there to stop the pawmot is unrealistic imo, even the most offensive teams ive seen have gaps in taunt coverage and one rev bless as stated before is enough to completely swing the course of a game, maybe you could make the arguement that pawmot benefits a lot from being very exploitable by being in a tier with such strong defensive answers that allow it to give mons free turns of setup and still be worth running although i think that strong defensive tools are just the identity of badnboosted, and obviously vs more defensive or passive teams there are very easy gaps in taunt that you can bring pawmot in and sleep talk or just rev bless, i think one of the key things about setup mons in this tier is the fact that they often require multiple turns before becoming uncheckable such as flutter mane or koraidon but pawmot only needs 1 turn usually to swing the momentum of a game, it also just makes certain teams like stall feel way too forgiving and i really dont like that stall can "unbreak" its stall as a whole tbh

 

[uses stall teams]

Forcing pawmot to switch out means it still got a turn to gamble for rev bless with sleep talk or just got the rev bless off with leppa so i dont really agree with the flutter mane point tbh, phasing doesnt exactly counter rest either since all you're doing is just letting it get the rest off and so next time in comes in it can fish for blessing, taunt is the only real answer but expecting there to always be a fast taunt mon there to stop the pawmot is unrealistic imo, even the most offensive teams ive seen have gaps in taunt coverage and one rev bless as stated before is enough to completely swing the course of a game, maybe you could make the arguement that pawmot benefits a lot from being very exploitable by being in a tier with such strong defensive answers that allow it to give mons free turns of setup and still be worth running although i think that strong defensive tools are just the identity of badnboosted, and obviously vs more defensive or passive teams there are very easy gaps in taunt that you can bring pawmot in and sleep talk or just rev bless, i think one of the key things about setup mons in this tier is the fact that they often require multiple turns before becoming uncheckable such as flutter mane or koraidon but pawmot only needs 1 turn usually to swing the momentum of a game, it also just makes certain teams like stall feel way too forgiving and i really dont like that stall can "unbreak" its stall as a whole tbh

"maybe you could make the arguement that pawmot benefits a lot from being very exploitable by being in a tier with such strong defensive answers that allow it to give mons free turns of setup" Yes this is something i didn't mention before you can use mons like flutter mane and get one free setup turn."i think one of the key things about setup mons in this tier is the fact that they often require multiple turns before becoming uncheckable such as flutter mane or koraidon" Yes setup mons don't become uncheckable after one turn but they can be dangerous after one and can get 2 if they are bulky enough to survive a hit and fast enough to sweep afterwards.

 

[MafuSimp]

"maybe you could make the arguement that pawmot benefits a lot from being very exploitable by being in a tier with such strong defensive answers that allow it to give mons free turns of setup" Yes this is something i didn't mention before you can use mons like flutter mane and get one free setup turn."i think one of the key things about setup mons in this tier is the fact that they often require multiple turns before becoming uncheckable such as flutter mane or koraidon" Yes setup mons don't become uncheckable after one turn but they can be dangerous after one and can get 2 if they are bulky enough to survive a hit and fast enough to sweep afterwards.

i think the main issue is that the one free turn they get on pawmot is easily negated with a well built team, most teams should have defensive or offensive checks to deal with a setup mon with one turn of setup and pawmot is no different, it doesnt help that many of these setup mons dont have acess to reliable recovery and that these mons can be chipped to a point where they can no longer sweep while pawmot only really needs to stay healthy enough for 2 rev blesses or to just rest, the point is that pawmot can make progress in one turn while most other mons that require a turn of nothing in the tier need multiple to make any meaningful progress and that seems p unhealthy

 

[uses stall teams]

i think the main issue is that the one free turn they get on pawmot is easily negated with a well built team, most teams should have defensive or offensive checks to deal with a setup mon with one turn of setup and pawmot is no different, it doesnt help that many of these setup mons dont have acess to reliable recovery and that these mons can be chipped to a point where they can no longer sweep while pawmot only really needs to stay healthy enough for 2 rev blesses or to just rest, the point is that pawmot can make progress in one turn while most other mons that require a turn of nothing in the tier need multiple to make any meaningful progress and that seems p unhealthy

"easily negated with a well-built team" that's not pawmot countering setup it's a different mon. also pls tell me what you think would immediately counter... say a flutter mane that has 1 calm mind.

 

[MafuSimp]

"easily negated with a well-built team" that's not pawmot countering setup it's a different mon. also pls tell me what you think would immediately counter... say a flutter mane that has 1 calm mind.

depends on the flutters set obviously but any unaware pokemon that can out sustain flutter such as clod can deal with flutter, if you want more offensive answers zacian can beat up non booster speed, ive seen fire lash salazzle do relatively well into a flutter with 1 boost and if its not booster speed/not taunt skarm can just fast taunt +whirlwind idt its crazy to say that +1 flutter is a threat but that its not always in danger of sweeping, also theres some infestation pjab haze pex that forces flutter to taunt it and and can realistically whittle down flutter in time, i feel like discussing flutter is somewhat missing the point about pawmot tho, however i do not feel flutter main is on the same tier of broken as pawmot is due to being limited by item choice and movesets always leaving gaps, my main point is that pawmot forces progress in an incredibly difficult to deal with way while a pokemon like flutter doesnt have nearly the same ease as trying to force through progress