I finally got reqs, ladder is bs and whoever is the CB Kleavor guy, respectfully fuck you since you made me play 40 more games then I had to. Anyways, I am very confidently voting
Ban.
Mamoswine isn't broken just because its almost unwallable, as being unwallable is not something new to RU, as Pokemon such as Gallade and Crawdaunt are fine and even healthy additions to the tier. The issue comes with Mamoswines other traits, primarily its trading ability and ability to chip revenge killers.
I'm going to cover the unwallability part, because plainly, not much beats it. Umbreon has to specifically be physical defense and while that set is good and all, having to give up specially defensive umbreon is such a big thing, as it can check Pokemon such as Armarouge, specs hoodra, and gengar that can otherwise be major annoyances. Slowbro is usually listed as a counter, but it just loses to either muscle band or nmi freeze dry variants if it has the slightest amount of chip, and these are not uncommon sets by any means. You have cresselia, but cresselia is a passive blob pokemon that I try to avoid using unless I absolutely have to, and even then it has to invest a ton of speed to actually beat mamo, since it doesn't want to get icicle crashed flinched. This ofc, comes at a great cost to its bulk, which is one of the few redeeming factors of cress. The rest are niche or straight up bad, no, heattom is not pushing it any forward as you have to tera it. So you have to go on the offensive route to check mamo usually, and thats where issues start to arise.
Firstly, mamos bulk is not bad by any means. Sure, its typing can be a bit lack luster, but against neutral attacks, it can stomach most of them and fire back a powerful attack. 110/80/60 is good enough to even live an armarouge armor cannon from full, which is not a weak attack by any means. Krookodile earthquake barely 2HKO's it while jirachi iron head does 68% max. So you better be hitting it hard, or you are doomed. This can lead it to just trade a lot easier then people give it credit for, especially against weaker attacks from walls. This sets mamoswine apart from something such as Crawdaunt, who also has priority but cannot take a hit for its life.
Secondly, mamoswines access to priority ice shard means that unless they resist ice, your revenge killer is going to have a nasty surprise for them. Lets say that your main revenge killer is gengar, that gengar is going to be taking 50+% in the process. This means your revenge killer has to be sturdy against ice shard, while also doing great damage to mamo (I would say 70%+ at least), which shockingly that list is very small, and just goes to show how bs this mon is.
Finally, I'd like to go over some DNB posts since I feel they don't actually talk about a lot of mamo's traits.
Being week to Water and Fighting alone makes is very fragile. Neither does it have the defensive stats to be bulky enough for it being relevant. It can fullfill a role as an offensive wallbreaker, with its moveset and general power. On the other hand there are enough checks or, in case it is banded, gives enough room to outplay.
Further it being weak to Stealth Rock limits the amount in can switch in the game.
The biggest weakness considering its role and it being more of a glass cannon is the mediocre Speed-tier. Even a lot of Suicunes are faster than it.
Having access to a priority-move is nice, but considering the base power of Ice Shard it is not a monumental threat and more a usefull tool for the tier, where a bit of priority helps to midigate some of the chaos that comes in from time to time.
Okay, firstly, mamo is neutral to rocks, if you meant "Mamoswine is weak to hazards", then thats a different story, one which I disagree with. Even non boots mamo can typically get in enough times so that doesn't matter, even with LO mamo, I found that just 2-3 switch ins was enough to get more then enough use to take down 2-3 mons on a team, with volt turn, this is exceptionally easy. I also keep seeing that mamoswine has mediocre speed, which is just wild to me. Mamo is a wallbreaker, but for a wallbreaker, its speed is more then fast enough. It gets the jump on armarouge, hersculegion, feraligatr etc, which are not slow mons by any means. Suicune outspeeds it but that comes at the cost of a lot of speed investment, which is not without its drawbacks. Finally, ice shards low bp is made up for the fact that it has great super effective and neutral coverage. Also we never tier stuff on the usefullness they bring to the tier, and we have lots of priority to help against offense and HO.
What you know about Mamo in battle is that it's basically a guarantee to have EQ and some option of Ice Stab(s) / SR / Tera Blast / Trailblaze, and it has a wide variety of options for items such as Boots, Life Orb, Choice Items, maybe a type boosting attack item like Icicle Plate or something along those lines to feint a choice item, or maybe you see some unset like Sash for SR -> Endeavor -> Ice Shard shenanigans. However, no combo of these really push Mamo into broken territory, maybe difficult to deal with, but nothing unreasonable. LO means means it risks dying faster to a 1v1, choice items give you way more chance to abuse mamo if they lock into a favorable move and you use that to your advantage, something like boots means you lack the power to get past a lot of checks. Like even when the tier had Mence, Gapdos, Gyara, Volc, even like Ori-Pom, and other things, Mamoswine continues to be like not even the best kind of thing around.
The first sentence is just nonsense and doesn't really make any sense, ofc its going to have eq+icicle crash+ice shard, blastoise had its item+three of its moves spelled out for you and that didn't make a difference. The issue is that 4th move can redefine counterplay (btw, stealth rock mamo is bad, don't use it). LO it dies faster, but in return it has a lot, lot more power. With just stealth rocks and a layer of spikes, Slowbro is 2HKO'd by Earthquake, which is not a hard ask to do lol. Choice Band Mamo is bad, nobody is using that set anymore, meanwhile Choice Scarf is meant to surprise KO offensive mons that think they can revenge kill it. Boots makes up for hazards and if needed, adamant can be used to boost up its power.
Annoying when you see it, but never unmanageable, hell personal opinion, but I don't even think Mamo is close to the most broken or unhealthy thing in the tier right now. Gapdos being gone means that more fighting types should be usable on teams that can scare off Mamo or win 1v1s. Sure as I've said before the base 60-70 range of pokemon never existed for scarfers to be used because why would have used those when almost all of them lose to the most used mon in the tier in Gapdos, but there exists a chance for people to innovate some of those, but they still might not exist proper. It hates a lot of our offensive threats and will likely lose a 1v1 to them because so many things carry a coverage move that hits it for super effective. Slower offensive Pokemon like bisharp and crawdaunt have priority that heavily chunk or straight up beat Mamo usually forcing it to maybe tera to not lose to those. Defensive Pokemon can still get around it with a well time attack and using tera to avoid dying to Mamoswine and might just kill it back. I think Mamo is an A rank threat, and should be treated as such, but it's just a really good Pokemon, not something we can't deal with.
Gapdos leaving IDT changes too much, mienshao just takes its place and still does not exactly appreciate ice shard, as its doing 48% min, which while regen can help keep it out of that range, isn't always possible. The base 60-70 range of pokemon are just bad scarfers aside from hersculegion, who was already used and in general I consider a waste of a hersculegion since agility and specs does way more game to game. Gapdos never kept that range of Pokemon down, they were just always bad scarfers. Gardevoir barely gets away with base 80 speed because literally everything else about it is so good. It hates facing lots of our offensive threats, but loves partnering with them. Bisharp is a great partner that can chip down walls to allow Mamoswine to sweep, while Mienshao is great pivot support that can also chip down Mamo checks. Finally, if you are having to dedicate tera to beat Mamo, then I think you need to throw in the towel. Something such as Slowbro is having to specifically be tera fairy to beat mamo, which is not good at all to force it to always be that tera, as tera poison is a very good tera as well.
Since it's not covered really I'll list a chunk of at least defensive checks/counters that we have access to that are still pretty good: The usual Bulky waters (Slowbro / Cune / Quag / Gastro) and we have a new water that resists both its stabs to a degree in Araquanid which I hope we see some use on the ladder though it's not tanky enough but at least avoids a 2HKO probably. Cresselia / Zong kind of forces it to need Knock Off to keep it honest otherwise they walk over it. Tbh might be reaching but with the banning of Volc and rise of Gapdos, something like Avalugg actually might have some value once again on occasion and it's not like we haven't used this thing in metas where annoying physical mons were around even though it's low end. There are not a lot of options that wanna switch into both its stabs, but a lot of dealing with Mamo is just kind of winning the prediction game of what move is it gonna click because if it picks wrong you have a very good chance of living and trading for the kill, but also setting yourself up to take advantage of what it clicks and or setting yourself up to win a 1v1.
Slowbro, quag and gastro absolutely hate taking freeze dry, and the latter two don't even take mamo on well since icicle crash does so much even with just muscle band. Suicune hates getting its lefties knocked off and really wants to keep its HP intact to try to sweep. Araquanid is going to be niche at best, and is relegated to more HO teams, which isn't the issue with Mamo. Cresselia as stated above is passive af, and as much as I love zong, it also is niche. And frankly put, I am not switching zong into a mamo unless I am 100% sure it has no knock off, and zong/cress's existence in no way shape or form forces mamo to carry knock off, it does just fine without it. Avalugg is a shitmon, I've tried it so many times, all it does is answer mamo and nothing else, it is so horrible and gapdos being in the tier didn't make it worse, it was just that shit. Sure, theres the prediction game, but mamo can do that just as easily, trying to bait icicle crash and switching into jirachi could mean a meaty Knock Off comes its way and now it isn't switching into mamo whatsover.
Finally, something that I've seen in different discords is the claim that "We need to keep mamo to make sure defensive playstyles are kept in check", which I will call it out bluntly, is the most cope arguement I have ever seen. Seriously, this tier is filled to the brim with wallbreakers. Just in RU alone, theres armarouge, basculegion, crawdaunt, entei, gallade, gengar, goodra, krookodile, hilligant, lycanroc, magnezone, mew, reuniclus. And this isn't even counting more unorthodox options such as empo or a-muk, or even including NUBL, NU, PUBL, or PU, which probably doubles this list lol. If you want to make a good arguement to keep mamo in the tier, please don't use this one, it instantly makes your arguement so much worse.
I really hope we ban this disgusting pig, as I do believe the tier will heavily improve without it.
Here are the main teams that I used throughout my run, some might be ass, but better then nothing ig.
https://pokepast.es/5fc8d48ea06a1db9
https://pokepast.es/d25e8fb0171bd9d9
https://pokepast.es/8507b6c18888e468
