Announcement NP: RU Stage 20 - Smooth Criminal [Mienshao Suspect Test]

[feen]

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Following the April 2026 shifts, the council did an emergency slate on Mienshao and with 8/9 members suggesting tiering action, we have decided to suspect test Mienshao!

votes

Mienshao has been a storied Pokemon with RU over the years. Being banned (SM), being banned (SS), and then SV where.. it was mostly outclassed by Zapdos-Galar. It had its place to be sure, Tera Normal Double-Edge sets were nice for Fezandipiti and Weezing-Galar, and Life Orb sets were never truly poor, but it was mostly seen as a second fiddle. Fast track to the departure of all three of the above Pokemon, and Mienshao quickly shot up in viability to the highest levels. With Volcanion's departure, Noivern fell to the side on many teams for Talonflame, who's Flame body 30% chance to get an effective OHKO on Mienshao should you score that 30%. Of course, Talonflame had to be concerned about Stone Edge sets, but the equation was balanced out nicely with Talonflame in conjunction with secondary measures like Amoonguss and Slowbro. Especially thanks to the fact that Talonflame threatened an OHKO with Brave Bird. Of course, Talonflame after being knocked off without scoring that burn was not great, and Mienshao was more than capable of being paired with the tiers reliable list of Clerics and Resuscitators, like Heal Bell Blissey, Lunar Dance Cresselia, and Healing wish Jirachi.

Fast forward to now, and with Talonflames departure the equation has become far too lopsided in the eyes of the RU council. Mienshao's coverage of Triple Axel allows it to handle much of the remaining checks, such as Gligar, Amoonguss, Vileplume and Noivern. Knock off is free progress on Psychic types like Reuniclus, Slowbro of both forms, and Cresselia. Thanks to Regenerator, Mienshao was capable of both threatening to beat teams down through the course of a longer game, and invite in dangerous partners that threaten all its checks like Porygon-Z, Specs Magnezone and Gengar. Mienshao's longevity combined with its exemplary damage output made it contentious even with Talonflame, as it left a large strain on archetypes that weren't Hyper Offense or Stall.

Mienshao, however is not perfect. Priority users such as Extreme Speed Entei, Aqua Jet from Crawdaunt and Feraligatr and Thunder Wave Klefki could threaten Mienshao with a revenge kill from quite high health's due to its poor bulk, and that same poor bulk limited its opportunities for entry without being knocked out. That bulk will haunt it even further, as emergency Tera usage from Pokemon like Registeel, Slowbro, and Hisuian Goodra could easily spell an audicious Mienshao's doom. However, none of these are sure-fire, as Mienshao can very easily U-Turn at a moments notice, and it's these traits that have encouraged the council to take action with a suspect test.

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 RU 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 RU 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 below! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact myself, TheFranklin, Rarelyme, or a member of staff.

>>VOTER LIST<<

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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 2800 with a B-value of 7. The deadline for getting requirements will be Saturday, April 11th, 23:59 GMT -4. Good luck to all!

 

[colorednaem]

Im a little bit confused by this suspect to be honest. After the gapdos rise i can understand the suspect of mamo as that was something the community had been pushing for a while but i have hardly even seen anything about mienshao and it wasnt even on the last community survey. I do understand that talon significantly shifts the mienshao counterplay to where it may be pushed off over the edge and i understand rupl is on but there hasnt been any period of this new meta for us to figure out whether or not it is broken. Because of this and the fact that back to back suspects rarely happen i and maybe others will feel like for the best future of the tier we have to vote based on what we think mienshao will be in this meta instead of on anything really concrete. Would love to hear others opinions abt this if there is something im missing. (also if this is an april fools u fucking got me lol haha my post but its well past april first in my timezone)

 

[LBN]

As the writer for the OP, I have to subscribe to writing things gently, and in a specific way to seem both relatively impartial, and give a quick but intricate view of the big picture to why a suspect was decided and why a mon is contentious. Most notably, I have to write things quite eloquently.

And with replying to this OP, I am under no such niceties.

Fuck this piece this shit. The amount of strain this thing puts on the tier could be considering a disease that the WHO would take attention to. First, let's start with the longevity aspect. Regenerator is, all in all, a free opportunity to slap Life orb on this Pokemon for easy breaking and power boost without dealing too much with the flaws Life orb tends to bring. As a pivot, it needn't care about Rocky Helmets, and damaging hazards are only a problem at their max, sticky webs and toxic spikes notwithstanding of course. You guys remember Zapdos-Galar, right? Tier hero, tier staple, all that fun stuff. You remember how we handled it on average yeah? For all of Gapdos's value, good stats, great clicks, hazard resilience, its biggest fault was longevity caused by Rocky Helmet chipping it down from U-turning on turns all day freely, and Brave Bird eating into its lifespan. Mienshao, realistically, did not have these problems beyond Talonflame.

If you wish to argue for Vileplume and Bellibolt, be my guest. But let's be clear here, these are cope. As big of a Vileplume defender as I am, it is on its best days, a sidegrade Amoonguss in every other application that isn't fishing Mienshao. Bellibolt meanwhile, unless you sink Tera, is 2 shotted from life orb Close Combats from full 54% of the time vs calc set Bellibolt. Admittedly, this equation changes a little bit when we take off the fucking HIPPOWDON speed creep and put a whopping 32 more evs in defense. As far as contact punishing went, this is why Talonflame was preferred. With Helmets being useless, Talon was the only one who could really stop Mienshao from U-Turning to something like Porygon-Z all game long. While the risk of Knock off was big, let alone dying to Stone Edge, the odds to score a burn combined with being faster than Porygon-Z and most others allowed Talonflame to restrict Mienshao's otherwise vast impunity to do whatever it wanted. This is why you'd see a lot of Talonflame&Slowbro, Talonflame&Amoonguss, and so on as cores on teams whenever somebody DID load something less all-in.

And you know the best part of all of this talk of fishing status on Mienshao?

It never fucking mattered.

Now with Talonflame gone, well we just do not have sufficient tools to stop Mienshao from KnockTurning the entire tier into a blender. "But what if I just overpower it with offense!" I hear you say. Why yes, this does work quite well. But uh, do I need to explain why having balance builds be near inoperable is a bad thing?

"Why didn't we touch Porygon-Z instead! It was the one being a problem in PZ&Shao cores!" Sure, at the time. And BELIEVE ME, you will not catch me within the same county line as defending PZ as a healthy mon, trust me, that fuckass duck is still under intense scrutiny. But, I can say with 200% confidence that Mienshao without Talonflame is more nightmarish than PZ is, which is why we struck it instantly. Like, I'm sure people who use nothing but stall and HO rn think Mienshao is fine! Shit, I fell under the same trap with calling Mamoswine a bum when i spam Cresselia constantly. But the moment I said, "fuck it. Lemme load a Reuniclus." Dude it's fucking bad. Absolutely dire straights.

Case in point, this mon is pure filth. Filth in the battle, Filth in the builder. Pure, Seine River FILTH. Ban it, send it to the gallows of RUBL with the rest of the soccer team we can make out of the banlist.

 

[Yourwelcomethanku]

I would have personally preferred that something else was looked at first or that we suspected multiple Pokemon at once. The main threats in the tier in my personal view right now are Bisharp, Mienshao, Armarouge, and Porygon-Z and I would favor banning all of them except maybe Bisharp. Mienshao has no real answers outside of like Tera Fairy fats and like Houndstone (which is very nice on stall actually) or Scream Tail. Between all of its attacks it is hard to wall, and whatever fat wall it cannot answer, it can just U-turn into like Armarouge or Porygon-Z. It's very fast, it is hard to wear down due to Regenerator. I already got the reqs and intend to vote ban.

A side note, but I think stall teams are really oppressive in the tier. Between Blissey, Chesnaught, Quagsire and the other Pokemon found on stall teams, it is very difficult to make progress against these kinds of teams and there are all sorts of adaptions that stall teams can make to deal with would be counters. Many teams just cannot deal with stall on the spot, and you could say that is their fault, that is certainly true, but actively looking for ways to handle these teams is difficult. Even something like Porygon-Z or Armarouge or Mienshao is not really enough to deal with stall by itself. I laddered with this for about half or more

I made another version with Palossand over Houndstone, solely for Toxtricity but Houndstone is better in general. Tera Psychic Blissey is to check Shift Gear Tox and Psyshock Armarouge in one so they don't Drain Punch and Psyshock and beat you over. On the Palossand version I just stuck with the normal Tera Dark.

 

[lighthouses]

I think this is yet another example of the absolute slowfest nonsensical tiering that has plagued this tier for so long now, act on mienshao and ONLY mienshao and just because talonflame rose. Its the same type of tiering that led to that whole mamoswine volcanion thing.
There is no need for everything to move so slowly guys, it just comes off as lazy at this point rather than careful, because weve already seen what this decision making process leads to, and its like it just doesnt matter.

The fact that its very hard to know what the council is thinking at any given moment aside i dont understand why we are not allowed to simply suspect test all of the problematic pokemon at once, hell, at the very least suspect pz + mienshao and then look at other stuff like bisharp and arma. Its like either some rise has to happen or we just religiously adhere to what tiering surveys say despite terribly obvious disconnect between those and the vocal opinions of active participants in ru tournaments on discord and the like.

Pz is not op because of mienshao + pz teams, it simply is too much by itself. And the fact that most of the borderline pokemon in this tier are a)offensive and b) tera abusers makes it really easy to understand the current dichotomy of either use stall or cheese ho to win, the presence of pz is way more of a detriment to balance teams than mienshao, it forces you into using very passive and not-so-great pokemon like blissey and umbreon which ultimately leads you to stall. If you want to keep up with all of pz, bish, arma you need to either be running hyper offense yourself or you need to be dipping into full stall. Without some or all of these threats in the tier balance would be very safe into hyper offense right now without the need to stack ultra passive mons.

This dichotomy is extremely obviously the very thing everyone dislikes about the tier and reason for it is very clear and yet still somehow were suspecting things one at a time? Starting with a mon that is comparatively less of a problem than something like pz?
Will we ban mienshao right here then wait x amt of time before suspecting again only to only suspect pz and nothing else? Or are we just gonna keep only being reactive until scl arrives and the tournament community at large starts shitting on this tier which leads to quickbanning mons that have been in the tier for a while.

As an example PU reacted to the most recent tier shifts by freeing heracross into the tier immediately no nonsense no time wasting, and im sure every one of the drops + heracross can be looked at later.

I get that shifts suck and that sv has been going on for a while which for sure does not help but come on we can be a bit more proactive than this no?

Im not sure what i would vote on mienshao at this moment, i would absolutely have loved to see the state of a meta without pz but with mienshao allowed as i do not believe its solely making balance teams 'impossible' to use. On paper sure but on practice during the games its poor bulk and general fear of status since in sv clerics are not abundant makes it a bit hard to just switch mienshao into mons its supposed to abuse in order to make all the progress its supposed to on paper.

I suspect personally that a tier with mienshao and without pz would see all these problems being much more bearable on a teambulding perspective, and a tier without pz and arma and bisharp would make it so one can actually build a balance team that can put up a fight against HO.

 

[TheFranklin]

I think this is yet another example of the absolute slowfest nonsensical tiering that has plagued this tier for so long now, act on mienshao and ONLY mienshao and just because talonflame rose. Its the same type of tiering that led to that whole mamoswine volcanion thing.
There is no need for everything to move so slowly guys, it just comes off as lazy at this point rather than careful, because weve already seen what this decision making process leads to, and its like it just doesnt matter.

The fact that its very hard to know what the council is thinking at any given moment aside i dont understand why we are not allowed to simply suspect test all of the problematic pokemon at once, hell, at the very least suspect pz + mienshao and then look at other stuff like bisharp and arma. Its like either some rise has to happen or we just religiously adhere to what tiering surveys say despite terribly obvious disconnect between those and the vocal opinions of active participants in ru tournaments on discord and the like.

Pz is not op because of mienshao + pz teams, it simply is too much by itself. And the fact that most of the borderline pokemon in this tier are a)offensive and b) tera abusers makes it really easy to understand the current dichotomy of either use stall or cheese ho to win, the presence of pz is way more of a detriment to balance teams than mienshao, it forces you into using very passive and not-so-great pokemon like blissey and umbreon which ultimately leads you to stall. If you want to keep up with all of pz, bish, arma you need to either be running hyper offense yourself or you need to be dipping into full stall. Without some or all of these threats in the tier balance would be very safe into hyper offense right now without the need to stack ultra passive mons.

This dichotomy is extremely obviously the very thing everyone dislikes about the tier and reason for it is very clear and yet still somehow were suspecting things one at a time? Starting with a mon that is comparatively less of a problem than something like pz?
Will we ban mienshao right here then wait x amt of time before suspecting again only to only suspect pz and nothing else? Or are we just gonna keep only being reactive until scl arrives and the tournament community at large starts shitting on this tier which leads to quickbanning mons that have been in the tier for a while.

As an example PU reacted to the most recent tier shifts by freeing heracross into the tier immediately no nonsense no time wasting, and im sure every one of the drops + heracross can be looked at later.

I get that shifts suck and that sv has been going on for a while which for sure does not help but come on we can be a bit more proactive than this no?

Im not sure what i would vote on mienshao at this moment, i would absolutely have loved to see the state of a meta without pz but with mienshao allowed as i do not believe its solely making balance teams 'impossible' to use. On paper sure but on practice during the games its poor bulk and general fear of status since in sv clerics are not abundant makes it a bit hard to just switch mienshao into mons its supposed to abuse in order to make all the progress its supposed to on paper.

I suspect personally that a tier with mienshao and without pz would see all these problems being much more bearable on a teambulding perspective, and a tier without pz and arma and bisharp would make it so one can actually build a balance team that can put up a fight against HO.

I would like to reply, since I don’t fully agree with most of these points.

To start with, I don’t think the tiering process has really been that inactive the last few months. We have discussed multiple times within the council and the overall consensus was that nothing was deemed broken. Our view aligned with the last survey that we have done, though it is important to note that that survey moreso acted as confirmation than the reason nothing was suspect tested.
Calling us lazy here just doesn't make any sense. We acted right after the shift and went for a vote. That the vote turned out to be suspect and not ban immediately has nothing to do with lazy, only with the opinions of the council.

The fact that its very hard to know what the council is thinking at any given moment aside i dont understand why we are not allowed to simply suspect test all of the problematic pokemon at once, hell, at the very least suspect pz + mienshao and then look at other stuff like bisharp and arma.

Lack of transparency is a fair point for the past though I don't think it applies for this case specifically. It has already been discussed in the cord that council is thinking about mienshao -> PZ. Calling for a double suspect is something that is obviously just not on the table and a moot point.

Its like either some rise has to happen or we just religiously adhere to what tiering surveys say despite terribly obvious disconnect between those and the vocal opinions of active participants in ru tournaments on discord and the like.

I think you are greatly misrepresenting the sentiment of ru mainers in the past months here. The fact that there are some people vocal about it does not mean that is the main sentiment in the community. As said previously, the majority of the council did not see PZ as problematic in that time, same for both the non-qualified and the qualified (read mainers/ru tour players) part of the survey. I'm talking about the past months here, because this sentiment has been starting to shift since the start of rupl.

Now onto the timeline: questioning the timing of this suspect and calling the council reactive is very puzzling to me. Talonflame leaving, the only pokemon in the tier that can actually punish mienshao spamming knock + uturn (through rng), is a very logical moment to look into mienshao. The entire tier can not switch in safely to mienshao. Even slowbro is threaten by knock into tera dark knock KO. Furthermore mienshao can now actually run Ice Spinner/Triple Axel comfortably so gligar and ches are way worse into it. So yea, to me the timing of this suspect is just very logical and makes perfect sense.

I do agree that suspecting shao is gonna make things a bit slow. I personally preferred an immediate ban. I think talon leaving has the potential to push multiple mons (arma//pz/bisharp/krook) over the edge. Both BO and stall lose an important piece, which will likely shift the metagame in favor of HO. Assuming we are gonna do mienshao into PZ, it will actually take another month before we can look into one of the other threats.

Lastly, my completely personal view on Porygon-Z. I think people cope a lot about Porygon-Z. It is possibly the biggest tera hog we have in RU. In 90% of games it has to tera to be effective. Don't get me wrong, it does that very well. But it does come with a big cost of using it effectively. I also don't think it puts that much strain on teambuilding. An effective team in current SV RU should be equipped to handle all kinds of different HO's (normal/weather/cetitan/webs). I never have trouble accounting for PZ in the builder, because if you want to be well equipped into those styles you automatically cover PZ. Stuff like cetitan, a lot of mons on webs (for example torterra) feel much more annoying to cover than PZ for me. I think people are just lazy in their BO builds, load a BO without solid priority and then act surprised when they lose.
Personally i think PZ is not broken and I would not ban it right now. However, the overall consensus seems to be different so we will most likely get a PZ suspect soon.