POKEBILITIES AAA TIERING ACTION
Hope you're enjoying the Spotlight Ladder! As the month closes out, we'd like to announce one more round of tiering action to address two of the more oppressive attackers in the tier.
CINCCINO HAS BEEN BANNED
Cinccino is a menace. Skill Link + Technician is a fantastic combination of base abilities, granting Cinccino an absurdly strong Tail Slap, Bullet Seed, Rock Blast, and Triple Axel. With other options like Encore, Knock Off, and Tidy Up, Cinccino could be an unpredictable attacker, but these gimmicks are all surpassed by a terrifying Choice Band and Protean set. Cinccino's absurd damage output has earned it a slot on the banlist along with Cloyster, our other problematic Skill Link + Technician user.
ZAPDOS-GALAR HAS BEEN BANNED ONCE MORE
Two Pokemon that were banned in early Generation 9 were freed as part of a trial! Dondozo has found a home in the tier, but Zapdos-Galar has proven to be too much for the metagame to handle. Unlike in AAA, where Zapdos is kept in check by Corviknight's omnipresence, Zadpos benefits from Intimidate and is able to prey on Corviknight with a devious interaction: Thunderous Kick activates Corviknight's Mirror Armor, which drops Zapdos's defense and activates Defiant! Defiant doesn't just make Zapdos harder to wall, either. Its presence in the tier strongly discourages the use of Intimidate in the builder, and physical attackers able to bypass Fluffy, like Cinderace, Meowscarada, and Ogerpon-Wellspring have all gotten significantly harder to check.
WHAT'S NEXT?
The council is keeping an eye on several Pokemon, including:
Ogerpon-Wellspring has been brought up in several discussions. It's strong, but has little advantages over its AAA counterpart. Ogerpon is easily walled by Pokemon that resist its STAB combination, especially common Water Absorb and Desolate Land users, and is quite vulnerable to being forced out by faster Pokemon. The effective absence of Intimidate due to Zapdos-Galar's presence has been a huge buff for Ogerpon, and we will be monitoring Ogerpon's success in the tier with the new rotation of physical walls.
The strongest priority in the tier, Talonflame is a fantastic revenge killer and late-game cleaner, able to both OHKO important threats like Iron Moth and Meowscarada as well as beat down defensive Pokemon after a Swords Dance. Like Ogerpon, it capitalized on the rise of Fluffy to score KOs with Flare Blitz, and is significantly weaker to Intimidate than many other threats. Talonflame is certainly difficult to play against, but it definitely has counterplay.
Pokebilities AAA will be one of the featured metagames in the first
OM Mashups Premier League! Come check it out, along with other classic formats like STABmons Mix and Mega, Camove Chaos, and more!
We're also planning on releasing an exit survey at the end of the month! Please share your thoughts with us about your experiences on the Pokebilities AAA Ladder, and what you had the most fun with!
tagging
dhelmise to implement
at 170 atk to do my best to replicate its true attack stat, 170 reaches its pure power stats with 248 evs so thats what im going with.
