(me when I land a triple axel)
Though surprisingly tamer than a lot of people first expected it to be, weavile has been a controversial element in UU from the moment it dropped till now, and it's not hard to see why when taking into account that it's the fastest pokémon commonly used in the tier, with access to perhaps both the best dark and ice type moves of all time. So why has taken it so long to feel over the line?
The answer is UU is surprisingly finely equipped to deal with weavile.. in the short term. We have a variety of pretty decent switch-ins between tinkaton (which is also able to steal it's boots with pickpocket!), skarmory, fezandipiti, as well as more nicher ones such as cobalion or talonflame, but none of these mons are really capable of answering it the long run, as accumulating damage on them or getting a favourable position is not too hard, especially thanks to how great hazards are in the current metagame, as with the rise of sinistcha it's really difficult to remove them. Aside from defensive answers, we have a good number of priority users as well as offensive checks that are to be thanked for keeping the ship from drowning thus far. conkeldurr, scizor, lokix, gardevoir and more are excellent at avoiding weavile from outright ending games sometimes after a swords dance, but they don't really swap into the mon very well as well as can be dealt with, be it with the right tera or priority range.
There is also another facet to weavile, and that is non-standard sets. They're overall considered more dangerous and a lot closer to outright broken but the balancing factor is each one of those comes with opportunity cost or very specific teambuilding, taking tera blast sets (fire, electric) or beat up(specific teammates)/life orb(really only sustainable for HO builds) or adamant(being slower than latios and thundurus-i) as examples.
Basically, to most people weavile isn't really outright broken, but playing against it is a race against time as answering it longterms is next to impossible, and that as well as the hefty restrictions it puts on teambuilding were enough to both get it a decently high score on the survey from a couple months ago, as well as being an unanimous vote for a suspect test within council. How do you feel about weavile? Have you felt a similar way yourself? Let us know your thoughts down below!
NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!
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 UU 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 UU 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, vivalospride , or a member of staff.
- If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me/vivalospride or post here!
The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2900. The deadline for getting requirements will be Friday, April 17th at 11:59pm GMT-4, this is going to be a shorter test than usual as we want to have a verdict before the r1 of WCoP qualifiers begins, please take note of this. GLHF everyone!
