Announcement NP: Stage 22 - Banana Man (Thwackey Suspect)

[etern]

Grassy Terrain has been a highly controversial topic in NU for the majority of generation 9, with many bans being at least partially influenced by it's presence, for example Oricorio-Pom-Pom, Oricorio-Sensu, Necrozma, Iron Thorns, and Cresselia. Despite the countless tier shifts and tiering changes which have occured throughout the generation, Grassy Terrain has managed to remain as a dominant and highly influential playstyle which has reinvented itself to invalidate traditional methods of counterplay. The difference between Grassy Terrain and other team compositions is the way in which it is able to invalidate almost all methods of counterplay and gameplay interaction, creating many scenarios where certain matchups are decided at turn one due to the nature of terrain sweepers and the limited defensive options available in the tier.
Unburden sweepers like Grafaiai, Drifblim, and to a lesser extent Hitmonlee are able to tailor their sets to beat specific checks and would-be-counters while also outspeeding the entiremetagame after Grassy Seed activates, which places immense pressure on teams to be able to cover them while still being viable into the rest of the meta. We've seen sets such as Throat Chop Grafaiai be created to stop Roar Vaporeon from phasing, Taunt to shut down Whirlwind, and Facade to setup on Wisp / Scald users. Drifblim has evolved constantly, with both Strength Sap and Substitute sets being able to shut down eachothers checks, and the invention of Tera Electric Thunder to OHKO Vaporeon at +1 before it gets a chance to Roar, or forcing it to Tera, opening the path for the rest of the terrain sweepers to win. Espeon is another Pokemon that has surged in popularity after a year+ of irrelevance, this is because it can completely ignore any phasing attempts from Whirlwind Copperajah, Roar Houndstone, and Roar Vaporeon, as well as Toxic from Gligar and Bellibolt thanks to Magic Bounce. Espeon also takes advantage of the Grassy Seed defense boost to break through teams with powerful Stored Power boosts which can even tear through Chansey and Bronzong after enough Calm Minds.

Perhaps the toughest part about dealing with Terrain is that these classic terrain abusers can be partnered with a myriad of unpredictable Pokemon like Scrafty, Drednaw, Decidueye, Reuniclus, Raikou, Chandelure, and Articuno-Galar, depending on team composition. While it can be argued that nothing on Grassy Terrain is individually broken or lacking in checks, what cannot be argued is the immense strain it places on team building by being malleable and dynamic. The level of constraint terrain places on teambuilding is viewed by many as unhealthy, oppressive, and ultimately a negative influence on the metagame as a whole. Gameplay loops forced by Grassy Terrain can often become extremely uninteractive, which is a clear sign that it inhibits skillful play and is an uncompetitive element of the tier.

After much discussion and deliberation amongst the community, internal discussion with the NU Council, and conversations with the Tiering Admin team, we have settled on Thwackey as the suspect target, as it is the only consistent terrain setter that sees 100% usage on terrain teams at this point in time. However, if Thwackey is banned and terrain is still deemed to be an issue down the line with people resorting to Grookey or Arboliva, then we will re-assess whether further action needs to be taken. For the time being, please only discuss Thwackey, as that is what this specific suspect is centered around.​

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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 NU 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 NU 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, Rabia, or a member of staff.
• If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me.

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2800. The deadline for getting requirements will be Thursday, April 16th at 7pm GMT+11.

 

[Diamonds_realm]

Terrain as a playstyle has been quite a controversial presence in tours for years now, but this past year has seen by far the most innovations to the archetype and has led to terrain sticking around for much longer than its past nature of taking over tours for 2-4 weeks and disappearing. While terrain isn't strictly broken and nothing it can run is truly unbeatable, it's important to remind ourselves that there are other reasons something can be considered bannable. In terrain's case (or thwackey for suspect purposes) the sheer variety of threats that it can enable and the ways they can beat their checks put immense strain on the builder limiting creativity in order avoid losing to terrain and promoting an unhealthy, uncompetitive form of matchup fishing because the immense capacity of potential threats outweigh what a team can reasonably prep for in the builder, meaning that in games where despite you prepping quite well for terrain on paper, terrain simply packs on a threat that beats your counterplay options and wins the game at team preview, taking away all agency from the player to outplay terrain and making even high level games look like jokes at times. Now matchup fishing is a pretty common thing for HO across various styles, however other styles, like weather for example, lack the diversity in their list of threats that terrain has making for far less auto win matchups and less prep required to leave room for outplay potential, making other styles feel more like good prep when they find those good matchups and otherwise have competitive games far more often rather than blind fishing with terrain. So overall I am heavily PRO BAN on thwackey for the pressure terrain exerts on teambuilding and the nature of which it tends to eliminate competitivity from matches.

 

[Shengineer]

Just completed my reqs run with "The Most Anti-Terrain Team Ever" and terrain really wasn't that hard to beat. Literally just use Whirlwind Copperajah and get good guys (I didn't even use this mon on my climb). Here are some assorted ramblings of an insane man:

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All jokes aside, this suspect did prompt me to think a bit deeper on what a Terrainless (Thwackeyless) world would look like, and whether I would enjoy it more than the current meta. This process has been a more difficult deliberation than previous suspect tests, as I believe many of the arguments from the pro-ban side are legitimate, and yet in spite of this I'm not totally convinced on banning Thwackey.

I enjoy building and using terrain for one of the same reasons it may be unhealthy: the sheer diversity of threats that are viable on the style. Many pokemon that would otherwise have no place in NU are given viability through the magical power of Grassy Seed. Building terrain offers a high degree of creativity that I find appealing.

There are a multitude of ways to ensure your team is equipped to beat terrain. It's not realistic for me to list all of them here, but common and powerful pokemon like Copperajah, Duraludon, Incineroar, (Scarf) Munkidori, Klefki, Vaporeon, and more are all able to disrupt terrain's spam of setup sweepers, and phasing in particular is particularly devastating considering an early use of Grassy Seed on a key pokemon can ruin its chances of sweeping. Grassy Seed does make it hard for you to brute force your way through setup threats with physical breakers, but many of the pokemon on terrain are frail by nature and will still take considerable damage. Special breakers in particular are hard for terrain to set up on, though we did just lose one of the strongest in Toxtricity.

I'd say the pokemon on terrain that skirts most common counterplay is Espeon, and it's definitely the most prone to matchup fishing (doing nothing or 6-0'ing). I'm not really sure what to do about it. In theory it's nice to have another hazard control option around, but it only gets seriously used as a fishy wincon. On the topic of matchup fishing, stall is now a viable archetype, and can easily fit the tools to defeat terrain. Terrain teams will have to invest resources into stallbreaking that they previously did not have to, which could take down their overall power a slight bit, but I honestly don't believe most players will do this. They will just hope they don't load into stall. I'm not sure what to make of this either.

Would NU be a better tier without terrain? Maybe. I really don't know. Is the tier enjoyable with terrain present? Yes. Will it still be enjoyable in terrain's absence? Also yes. In the end I trust the collective mind of the community to figure out what is right.