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Announcement np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 10 - London Bridge is Falling Down
- Thread starter Finchinator
- Start date
- Status
Preface: I know Finch and others have warned about deleting posts that talk about other suspects rather than Archaludon. Its almost necessary though to talk about the other pokemon/playstyles in this case since the whole issue with Archaludon is not Archaludon alone but specifically Archaludon on rain with common rain allies.
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Since using Archaludon Rain, I can say it is very very powerful. Its a super solid choice and Archaludon can help clutch a lot of wins, along with Raging Bolt and Barraskewda. Most people would say Archaludon is not powerful on its own or outside of rain and I agree; its the core that makes it super strong. I kinda want to toss around a Barraskewda suspect since I think that thing is very very powerful in rain and we could just be seeing what happens when it has decent team options supporting it (dragons that can resist opposing electric/grass moves and hit bulky waters hard while also being a powerful threat to opponent's whole team). However throwing around a Barraskewda ban instead does just open the door for it to be replaced by other slightly less powerful water sweepers like Floatzel and Basculegion. Double however, an honest question we may also need to have is: Would rain be more managable without Barraskewda and forcing rain to have to use Floatzel and Basculegion?
Both of those pokemon are much more opprotunity cost than Barraskewda. Neither quite has the same speed stat outside of rain with a special shoutout to Basculegion (and many other swift swimmers) being pretty slow honestly outside of rain. Floatzel is an interesting pokemon but like when we were using rain earlier this meta and mainly using floatzel; the mon does not have the most solid movepool and usually wanted to use the tera to allow it to blow stuff back either with Tera Water as a nuke or Tera Electric to hit opposing waters. Right now Barraskewda can feel like a nuke with options to hit the bulkiest opposing waters (outside of alomomola/dondozo) with its much nicer coverage moves. Is this still an Archaludon problem? Are we blaming Archaludon for its ability to consistently answer dozo/alomomola and be a general switch-in to the tiers most threatening pokemon instead of blaming Barraskewda for its ability to exploit teams that have been mildly weakened? I know people have been throwing the idea that Raging Bolt is broken too. In my eyes, it and Archaludon do very similar things on rain teams. Would removing Archaludon just cause an uptick in Raging Bolt rain usage? Im not sure either of these pokemon are that broken honestly, Barraskewda may be the issue. To give credit where its due though, Rain may also be more manageable forcing it to only use Raging Bolt and not Archaludon.
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All that aside, if the issue is the core, we should assess each option of the core. Is it Archaludon that is the issue? Is it Barraskewda? Is it rain, should we ban damp rock? Is this core enough of a problem longterm, or can we hope the metagame may adapt to it more in the coming weeks? Personally I dont know. I'm against a Damp Rock ban but that's ultimately it. This rain core is feeling like a problem but im unsure of who to ban or if the answer is just cope get good. This rain core has not been near the level of broken as many of the obvious quickban pokemon or even some of the mons we've suspected before. We may just need time to adapt.
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Since using Archaludon Rain, I can say it is very very powerful. Its a super solid choice and Archaludon can help clutch a lot of wins, along with Raging Bolt and Barraskewda. Most people would say Archaludon is not powerful on its own or outside of rain and I agree; its the core that makes it super strong. I kinda want to toss around a Barraskewda suspect since I think that thing is very very powerful in rain and we could just be seeing what happens when it has decent team options supporting it (dragons that can resist opposing electric/grass moves and hit bulky waters hard while also being a powerful threat to opponent's whole team). However throwing around a Barraskewda ban instead does just open the door for it to be replaced by other slightly less powerful water sweepers like Floatzel and Basculegion. Double however, an honest question we may also need to have is: Would rain be more managable without Barraskewda and forcing rain to have to use Floatzel and Basculegion?
Both of those pokemon are much more opprotunity cost than Barraskewda. Neither quite has the same speed stat outside of rain with a special shoutout to Basculegion (and many other swift swimmers) being pretty slow honestly outside of rain. Floatzel is an interesting pokemon but like when we were using rain earlier this meta and mainly using floatzel; the mon does not have the most solid movepool and usually wanted to use the tera to allow it to blow stuff back either with Tera Water as a nuke or Tera Electric to hit opposing waters. Right now Barraskewda can feel like a nuke with options to hit the bulkiest opposing waters (outside of alomomola/dondozo) with its much nicer coverage moves. Is this still an Archaludon problem? Are we blaming Archaludon for its ability to consistently answer dozo/alomomola and be a general switch-in to the tiers most threatening pokemon instead of blaming Barraskewda for its ability to exploit teams that have been mildly weakened? I know people have been throwing the idea that Raging Bolt is broken too. In my eyes, it and Archaludon do very similar things on rain teams. Would removing Archaludon just cause an uptick in Raging Bolt rain usage? Im not sure either of these pokemon are that broken honestly, Barraskewda may be the issue. To give credit where its due though, Rain may also be more manageable forcing it to only use Raging Bolt and not Archaludon.
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All that aside, if the issue is the core, we should assess each option of the core. Is it Archaludon that is the issue? Is it Barraskewda? Is it rain, should we ban damp rock? Is this core enough of a problem longterm, or can we hope the metagame may adapt to it more in the coming weeks? Personally I dont know. I'm against a Damp Rock ban but that's ultimately it. This rain core is feeling like a problem but im unsure of who to ban or if the answer is just cope get good. This rain core has not been near the level of broken as many of the obvious quickban pokemon or even some of the mons we've suspected before. We may just need time to adapt.
This question is strictly theoretical. We cannot answer it with the current metagame in-tact. We can answer the very real, focal questions on Archaludon in the current metagame, however.
Archaludon is obviously not broken without support; this is a noteworthy point against it. However, the convenience of the support and the practical context of the actual metagame still matters. In the end, tiering is a results oriented business, nothing more or less.
This really isn’t your job or the general public’s job. The tiering council decided to act on Archaludon; it is the public’s job to vote on if they believe it is banworthy or not. It is not your job to pick the subject of suspects or anything quite like that. Deeper policy issues aren’t always going to be perfectly democratic because, as you can tell by this thread, there are many people who don’t truly understand tiering, precedent, order of operations, etc. We made a decision based off of a plethora of public feedback and a unanimous internal consensus at the end of the day. It isn’t on anyone else to assess each option of the core or any other elements. This is why rules like the one in the OP I quoted before and you alluded to exist: to keep discussions on topic and away from losing the thread altogether.
Going from “not been near the level of broken as many of the obvious quickban pokemon” to “even the mons we’ve suspected before” is quite the range, but, nevertheless, I disagree. It’s one of the most broken suspects we have had and the metagame has been adapting quite a bit. The issue is, as we have seen, that adaptation forces very limited team structures and a small pool of Pokemon. Clodsire galore, water immunities all over, an abundance of cores stacking immunities to Electric and Dragon, etc. We cannot pretend that’s a healthy dynamic for the metagame.
Im not picking any suspects, I'm discussing the pokemon that obviously revolve around this ban. Can we not discuss whether one part of a core is broken or not just because we aren't on council?? What is this elitism? "Its not our job" We don't have a job; we're the public. We are free to discuss the pokemon in question in this thread, which I am doing by bringing up the possibility that Archaludon only being broken because of a core means it may not necessarily be the most broken pokemon in that core. I would have much rather you responded with just: "Here is the reason we decided to suspect Archaludon instead of Barraskewda/rain". I wasnt even critiquing council for choosing Archaludon as a suspect, I was simply proposing it might not be him thats the biggest issue and trying to discuss if thats true. So why are you giving me this defensive response? I dont think we're losing the discussion thread if the reason Archaludon is even being suspected is because of rain and we're discussing rain.
I have said multiple times you guys are free to discuss this in the metagame discussion thread. I even said it in the post you alluded to last time. Discussing other Pokemon being a problem over Arch just isn’t correctly placed in a thread specifically on Arch. This isn’t a debate so much as it’s reality.
Claiming I am an elitist for…doing my job given the literal word of the rules…and giving people a proper place to discuss things is nuts. We have taken so many steps to get people involved between surveys, more suspects, most active discussion ever, etc. This isn’t me getting defensive so much as me just doing my job as a moderator of the forum, which I also am regardless of my status on council. It’s important people know where to discuss things and basic posting etiquette. And when people question it, reasoning is good to provide. Transparency is important. That doesn’t make me an elitist. I don’t appreciate being labeled as such — if you want me to be “defensive”, then yes, I take some offense to that being your reaction. But my initial post was just matter-of-fact and explaining.
I'm saying in my initial post that its difficult to fully discuss and debate Archaludon's brokenness without talking about rain in general. Its only logical with Archaludon being broken only in a certain core that it would make others wonder if its Archaludon that is the primary problem. I think thats worth discussing if we are trying to decide on if Archaludon is a problem. I don't even necessarily find Barraskewda or rain to be the for sure biggest issue, I just wish we would discuss it and maybe that would lead us back to saying "it isnt barraskewda thats the issue here, it definitely is Archaludon thats broken". These are important things to discuss imo. These are the things that will most likely lead us to our personal votes of Ban/DNB on this suspect.
I would also like to point out your initial response to me was not "you should move this to metagame discussion." It was "The council has decided x and you should live with that. Do not discuss it, its for us to discuss", which is what I felt was elitism. It read like you were just shutting me down like I dont have a say and not like you were telling me an alternative place to discuss it. Like I said I think its worthwhile we critically think and assess the parts of each core. For me at least, that is a hang up I have as to whether or not I'd vote Ban here. You can tell me to move that discussion at least but you did kinda just go "thats for us to decide"
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This person has been my hero since I seen their first post. Keep up the good work and stick around for as long as you want. We need more people like you :)
This doesn’t add up at all to me. At the start of your first post, you referenced the post where I said this is off-topic.
In that same exact post, I mentioned metagame discussion as the proper place to discuss:
There is never any good faith discussion that has realistic implications that I am going to shut down unless people are being unreasonable. But there are proper places for every discussion, and suspect threads derail (like this) when this occurs.
My understanding was you read that post that you alluded to, and I had mentioned metagame discussion in that post.
We have like 5 or 10 different areas to talk about e everything, hell the mods are actually more lenient towards shit posting than even I care for lol. We even have discord! Why do we need to bring up every other thing under the umbrella on this thread? Where was all of this before Arch if rain was that bad as a whole? Got a problem? Argue back - in the main meta game discussion thread!
Anyway, as a lower elo player (14/1500 range), I find Arch to be a particularly annoying barrier of entry to the tier, so to speak. I felt this about Gouging, but I don't like to complain about certain threats, since it could be a skill issue that will resolve itself with time. But Arch...it's not like I can't beat it, but I'm dedicating too much into getting rid of that, like a low key Bloodmoon, or Annihilape although I wasn't around in the meta to properly compare that.
Team building is obviously supposed to be tough. Still, this is just silly. Comparing it to the meta literally a few months ago, in which I was very active, I can say that this is a different ball game. Someone said it perfect, there is set diversity - for particular playstyles, leaving others in the dust. I find HO boring, I'd rather play Balance, and that playstyle feels even more punishing to play than before.
I dunno if losing Arc will make a huge dent. But it will be a start. I also implore other lower elo players to speak their mind, in respects to their experience in the meta. I may not be able to earn the reqs to vote (or I won't bother), but sharing your opinion is a huge contribution to the process either way. Or at least, that's what I tell myself.
Anyway, as a lower elo player (14/1500 range), I find Arch to be a particularly annoying barrier of entry to the tier, so to speak. I felt this about Gouging, but I don't like to complain about certain threats, since it could be a skill issue that will resolve itself with time. But Arch...it's not like I can't beat it, but I'm dedicating too much into getting rid of that, like a low key Bloodmoon, or Annihilape although I wasn't around in the meta to properly compare that.
Team building is obviously supposed to be tough. Still, this is just silly. Comparing it to the meta literally a few months ago, in which I was very active, I can say that this is a different ball game. Someone said it perfect, there is set diversity - for particular playstyles, leaving others in the dust. I find HO boring, I'd rather play Balance, and that playstyle feels even more punishing to play than before.
I dunno if losing Arc will make a huge dent. But it will be a start. I also implore other lower elo players to speak their mind, in respects to their experience in the meta. I may not be able to earn the reqs to vote (or I won't bother), but sharing your opinion is a huge contribution to the process either way. Or at least, that's what I tell myself.
I havent made reqs, but I firmly believe after some time that archaludon is NOT broken. Yes it can be a steamroller in the right matchup and can be quite difficult to remove, which makes it a great pokemon. But its only extremely threatening in rain. If we think back to the Walking Wake suspect, no one argued Wake was broken outside of sun, only in sun, and in time, people learned to minimize the threat level of sun wake to win games. It is the same story here. Archaludon possesses zero recovery, so if it is forced out once, especially in rain, it is put at a severe disadvantage the next time it comes back in. It also ALWAYS runs the same set, AV with tera Fairy, which makes it way easier to respond to before it even comes in. At least walking wake had some different sets to contend with. This thing is also stopped cold by clodsire and many ground types can easily 1v1 it even in rain to prevent it from running over teams. Rain as a style is also tapering off just a bit from last week, though obviously it is still quite a strong style, NO ONE can argue archaludon is broken outside of rain, and rain in and of itsself is a temporary condition and it cannot setup that rain by itsself, therefore I dont find this to be the problematic element of the metagame. Personally I’m salty Kyurem dodged the ban and I find that to be way more egregious but that’s not really the point. Archaludon should stay in the metagame on the basis that rain as a style is limited in effective turns even with archaludon helping shore up some of the traditional defensive holes in rain teams, and they are extremely beatable.
Outside of the couple months after release, I hadn’t played a whole lot of SV before this suspect, and before SV, I hadn’t played much Pokémon at all since SM. It feels good to play mons again, and I have liked this metagame, but I do think there are some major issues to tackle moving forward.
Rain is definitely the strongest I have ever seen it, and I think Archaludon is a big part of the reason why. Arch’s toolkit is the perfect complement to rain/Barraskewda. Defensively, it packs extremely useful resistances to common rain answers like Water and Grass types. It also has incredible physical bulk that allows it to handle the priority attackers who would normally threaten rain teams. On top of this, Arch can further augment its defensive profile with Tera, and rain teams can usually afford to hold onto Tera until the mid or late game.
Arch is no slouch offensively either. Electro Shot is unequivocally broken in the rain, granting Arch pseudo-Electric STAB and a consistent way to snowball into 2-3 kills per game. The fact the Electro Shot still grants the SpA boost even if a Ground type comes in is also borderline absurd because none of the Ground types want to take a +1 Draco and Arch sports plenty of bulk to live a hit and KO. The last two slots (on AV) are usually Flash Cannon and Body Press, with FC being a consistent STAB option and BP being yet another means for Arch to snowball out of control (and kill Kingambit/Steels).
I used a standard-ish rain team for most of my run. Arch was extremely valuable on the team, being able to handle pretty much every Barraskewda check that my opponents could come up with. My Arch even teched Earthquake with a Quiet (non Attack-reducing) nature over Flash Cannon to handle Clodsire (Electro Shot is as powerful as Flash Cannon so long as rain is up). Couple that offensive power with the fact that rain has a ton of tools to get Arch in safely, and Arch was able to systematically break down my opponents' teams to clear the way for a Barra sweep in a lot of games. My only bad matchups came late in the run when people were running Waterpon or G-King+Water Resists explicitly for rain, but a well played Archaludon was still able to muscle through most of these teams by netting kills or forcing Teras from stuff like Primarina.
Outside of rain, I think Arch is pretty underexplored, so I am not convinced that it's "only broken on rain" and therefore undeserving of a ban. I have only seen the bulky Iron Defense set, but Arch has the stat line and movepool to arguably pull off Specs, Power Herb + Electro Shot/Meteor Beam, Offensive SD, Bulky SD, Mixed Power Herb. I cannot argue about Archaludon's strength on rain being the central problem here though.
Ultimately, I think Arch just offers too much to rain teams and thus puts too much pressure in the teambuilder for most archetypes. Though we talk a lot about Arch's effect on bulkier builds, it retains high value against offensive teams as well thanks to its typing and bulk. All of this considered, I will be voting to ban Archaludon.
Rain is definitely the strongest I have ever seen it, and I think Archaludon is a big part of the reason why. Arch’s toolkit is the perfect complement to rain/Barraskewda. Defensively, it packs extremely useful resistances to common rain answers like Water and Grass types. It also has incredible physical bulk that allows it to handle the priority attackers who would normally threaten rain teams. On top of this, Arch can further augment its defensive profile with Tera, and rain teams can usually afford to hold onto Tera until the mid or late game.
Arch is no slouch offensively either. Electro Shot is unequivocally broken in the rain, granting Arch pseudo-Electric STAB and a consistent way to snowball into 2-3 kills per game. The fact the Electro Shot still grants the SpA boost even if a Ground type comes in is also borderline absurd because none of the Ground types want to take a +1 Draco and Arch sports plenty of bulk to live a hit and KO. The last two slots (on AV) are usually Flash Cannon and Body Press, with FC being a consistent STAB option and BP being yet another means for Arch to snowball out of control (and kill Kingambit/Steels).
I used a standard-ish rain team for most of my run. Arch was extremely valuable on the team, being able to handle pretty much every Barraskewda check that my opponents could come up with. My Arch even teched Earthquake with a Quiet (non Attack-reducing) nature over Flash Cannon to handle Clodsire (Electro Shot is as powerful as Flash Cannon so long as rain is up). Couple that offensive power with the fact that rain has a ton of tools to get Arch in safely, and Arch was able to systematically break down my opponents' teams to clear the way for a Barra sweep in a lot of games. My only bad matchups came late in the run when people were running Waterpon or G-King+Water Resists explicitly for rain, but a well played Archaludon was still able to muscle through most of these teams by netting kills or forcing Teras from stuff like Primarina.
Outside of rain, I think Arch is pretty underexplored, so I am not convinced that it's "only broken on rain" and therefore undeserving of a ban. I have only seen the bulky Iron Defense set, but Arch has the stat line and movepool to arguably pull off Specs, Power Herb + Electro Shot/Meteor Beam, Offensive SD, Bulky SD, Mixed Power Herb. I cannot argue about Archaludon's strength on rain being the central problem here though.
Ultimately, I think Arch just offers too much to rain teams and thus puts too much pressure in the teambuilder for most archetypes. Though we talk a lot about Arch's effect on bulkier builds, it retains high value against offensive teams as well thanks to its typing and bulk. All of this considered, I will be voting to ban Archaludon.
Sir, I will hear no Clodsire slander, for he is friend shaped and doing his best to hold the tier together.
More directly on topic:
I'm hardly a suspect-earning player, so bear that in mind, but I don't view Archadulon as overpowered in a game - but I find the claims of people who build the teams that I
This really folds into how there are so many distinct (offensive) threats in the tier; none are impossible to check, most even have a decent enough variety of options, but those options can't cover everything unless you go full-on stall with six defensive mons. It's fine if there's one or two threats that your counterplay is "Play around them" - I remember a top RMT stall entry whose listed counterplay to Virizon was "forfeit" - but that should be the exception, not the rule.
In this view, removing Arch isn't so much because rain needs a nerf (outside the first week in SPL, it hasn't been dominating), but because preparations specifically for Arch don't overlap much with other top threats, and it'll make team building much less restrictive.
I won't earn recs, but I do encourage people to vote Ban.
A Top RMT Stall whose counterplay to Virizion was forfeit? *Vietnam flashbacks
I disagree with this. The context of the tier and the interactions Archaludon has got with rain/other playstyles are important factors to establish whether it should be banned or not. Every single Pokémon ban could potentially influence the entire metagame, so it's not off-topic to go in depth about something not directly suspected, as long as it helps explaining your position on the matter. Let alone people to explain their opinion as they prefer, they aren't doing anything wrong. This tier will need a lot of help to get playable, all kind of advices should be welcome from new players too. Especially because they are the only ones to show any interest to SV OU related tiering threads. I wonder why.
I'm not understanding the" this mon is broken on this playstyle only but not others, so it's not banworthy" idea. I agree that outside of rain, arch is kind of mid but if it is wouldn't most of its usage be where it's strongest? And even outside of rain, it still is pretty daunting trying to switch into it, or not give it boosts to body press through.
You missed the entire point.
You can discuss other Pokemon in this thread. You can discuss the context of the metagame. It is necessary to analyze any suspect. This is a given.
The point is that if you’re calling for bans or suspects on other things specifically, then you need to do so in the other thread. This has nothing to do with not being welcome; we have made it clear on a plethora of occasions it’s both welcome and preferred people state their stances.
I'll be voting ban on Arch, I already spent hours on the reqs so won't bother with making a long post, if you want that then Akalli's post on the topic pretty much covers all the bases.
As someone who has been abusing rain for most of the last two months, I feel pretty confident in saying that rain does need to be addressed in some way. It creates dangeous situations for opponents incredibly naturally, has some of the strongest assets you could ever hope for in this metagame, and puts a lot of pressure on the teambuilder in a metagame that is already insanely hard to build.
Rain in its current form has proven to destroy regular teams to the point that it has become a primary consideration in the builder for the last few weeks. As a result of this we've seen basically anything in the tier that can put pressure onto rain seeing some type of use in recent weeks. While some of these options are legitimately quite good in the tier, I don't see how we're expected to keep up the same intense level of anti-rain building for long. Here's a rough summary of what I think works into rain:
1) Stall - Obviously stall teams have access to Clodsire and Blissey for Archaludon + Raging Bolt, and Alomomola for Barraskewda, which makes the natural matchup pretty strong. Stall itself is also at one of its strongest points ever in the current metagame, but it's always struggled in this gen whenever people have the space/motivation to prep for it, so I don't see this as a major part of a long-term solution to rain. The other issue here is that half of the point of using stall right now is to lock down the rain matchup, and yet even when rain is more limited in its variation, a few tweaks can make stall sweat a lot. A good example here is this game by Carkoala, where the anti-Archaludon core crumbles to EQ + Press Arch. The Archaludon set doesn't even lose out on much coverage, mainly losing out on some extra damage vs Tera Fairy mons and the rare Unaware Clefable which isnt seen on the most common stalls anyway. Tweaks like this barely even change the team, and imo in a metagame like this it's completely fair to run any 2 of Flash Cannon/Press/EQ alongside Draco + Electro Shot, as the situations where these moves come up are pretty specific and can usually be played around.
2) Ting-Lu fat - I'm not gonna get into Clodsire fat right now because I think it's mostly a worse version of stall that now finds Weather Ball bolt and EQ Arch a pain in the ass (i.e. pretty neutral matchup), but Ting-Lu fat balances can somewhat justify their rain matchup by running a system where you use the combination of Ting-Lu (to chip Arch) + Teraing something into a water resist + Spikes + speed control to eventually clean up rain teams. Depending on the specific matchup this style can either be pretty neutral or really annoying for rain to play against, but honestly that's also true of most styles when they face Ting-Lu balances. I'm noting it down here because I think it's fine in rain meta and will stay fine regar dless of whether rain is a thing, but it's definitely gets less auto-win matchups into rain than stall does.
3) Offense with 3-4 water resists, or 2-3 Water resists + Gambit - This is another existing style that can kinda work because there's enough Water resists for offense to use. That being said, Barraskewda will always be able to create problems unless it's an Ogerpon based offense and Archaludon with Tera has real potential to snowball, so you're really shooting for a neutral matchup here. While offense does have a lot of good Water resists at its disposal, it's not necessarily easy to stack 3 Water resists on the same team especially when imo you also need a Gambit in the back to really make things annoying for Rain. Ogerpon-Wellspring versions of these teams can do okay, although again without Gambit you still need to find a clear answer for how you're winning the game, otherwise there's a few ways to get owned, either by getting 50/50s wrong into Ogerpon, getting steamrolled by Arch + Raging Bolt + Tera, or even just things like Tera Gambit that are legitimately hard to stop right now because Ogerpon struggles to choose between Encore and being able to hit the Rain mons. These matchups are almost always reasonable for both sides, and the style itself should survive just fine, so this does at least contribute a little bit to having a healthy metagame around rain.
4) Volcanion - Honestly this mon is cursed to be a niche pick forever no matter how good it looks into current meta trends, but again the question to ask is how are you gonna handle all the non-Barra threats. Volcanion teams are usually forced into some sort of Boots spam and the speed control options on those teams dont hit Arch or Tera Raging Bolt that hard, which means there's a big question mark around handling all of Arch/Bolt/Gambit in those games. I think this replay is a fine example of the building difficulties here - honestly barring some genius build that I haven't seen yet, I don't think Volcanion is particuarly amazing into rain.
5) Kyurem + Gking - This is another core that is definitely overrated into rain imo. I played against tons of Kyurems during my initial rain spam phase, both with rain and without, and what I've learned is that the biggest thing these teams struggle with is a direct offensive gameplan that exploits the defensive cores on these teams being thin and predictable - once again, Rain has access to plenty of these gameplans, coming back to the big 2 (Arch/Bolt) as well as stuff like Jolly Gambit or Waterpon in the last slot, not to mention positions where you can just start 2hkoing everything with Barra against teams that lack appropriate Physdef water resists. Chilly Reception can obviously help out to a degree with this. As far as matchups go, I think there are plenty of teams that do worse into the Kyurem Gking structures than rain does.
6) Arch lures - Sets like Superpower Ogerpon and SD LO Rilla can attempt to lure in Arch and force it to either die early or take too much chip. When this works, it's obviously very high upside, but it's worth pointing out that many of these sets aren't fully sound, in the sense that Superpower Oger doesn't cover Raging Bolt, and SD Rilla can sometimes be slower than Arch (seriously fast Arch is annoying as fuck for a lot of counterplay), as well as having its own issues with not having U-turn on a playstyle that desperately needs to keep momentum like Gterrain.
In context, it's important to remember that outside of these avenues and maybe a couple of others, what you're looking at is some pretty easy victories for rain, and even within these building styles, there's still lots of room for these forms of counterplay to struggle. In basically every point here, the structure of rain where you get to have two Dragon types that have basically no switchins, with great bulk, + one of the most free Tera buttons of any style (there is very little that you're ever required to commit defensive Tera for with rain) poses an issue for the meta, because most of the best rain counterplay even at a time when rain is trending right now, can only bring the matchup to a roughly equal level. I don't think this level of counterplay is particularly sustainable, and I expect that the moment that people decide it's more important to focus on other styles than rain, we'll be back to the start of this cycle where I'm able to pick up a quick 100 points on high ladder with 5-6 rain games (as I was doing for most of January). From the other side (building against rain), I think it's pretty hard to justify a situation where your dedicated counterplay still comes with several stipulations that you need to deal with in the builder before you can secure the matchup properly.
For what it's worth, I did briefly return to rain, playing a few games which I won't share, but I will share the first 3 teams I faced on high ladder:
yyysneasel's team: Corviknight / Gliscor / Dondozo / Slowking-Galar / Blissey / Clefable
1 Bagre's team: Kyurem / Great Tusk / Garganacl / Corviknight / Dragapult / Primarina
SippinSyzzrrp's team: Tyranitar / Excadrill / Raging Bolt / Corviknight / Clefable / Ogerpon-Wellspring
Easy 3-0 for standard rain (???????)
P.S. forgot to mention bulky Sand teams with Mola + Boots Ttar, those are legitimately good into rain although I only have one sand team. Other sand variants can still be probed at with Barra + Arch.
Post post-script. If you're struggling to get high value with Archaludon + Barra, remember that doubling between these mons is often a safe and powerful option, and also remember that there's nothing actually forcing you to click Electro Shot with Archaludon immediately. The amount of opponents I've seen instantly crumble after their Ground type gets Draco'd on the switch is hilarious, and to be fair to them there often isnt much of a way to play around it because of the fact that Electro Shot is still a free click for any player willing to take the EQ chip on the next turn or Tera in front of the Ground type. Welp.
As someone who has been abusing rain for most of the last two months, I feel pretty confident in saying that rain does need to be addressed in some way. It creates dangeous situations for opponents incredibly naturally, has some of the strongest assets you could ever hope for in this metagame, and puts a lot of pressure on the teambuilder in a metagame that is already insanely hard to build.
Rain in its current form has proven to destroy regular teams to the point that it has become a primary consideration in the builder for the last few weeks. As a result of this we've seen basically anything in the tier that can put pressure onto rain seeing some type of use in recent weeks. While some of these options are legitimately quite good in the tier, I don't see how we're expected to keep up the same intense level of anti-rain building for long. Here's a rough summary of what I think works into rain:
1) Stall - Obviously stall teams have access to Clodsire and Blissey for Archaludon + Raging Bolt, and Alomomola for Barraskewda, which makes the natural matchup pretty strong. Stall itself is also at one of its strongest points ever in the current metagame, but it's always struggled in this gen whenever people have the space/motivation to prep for it, so I don't see this as a major part of a long-term solution to rain. The other issue here is that half of the point of using stall right now is to lock down the rain matchup, and yet even when rain is more limited in its variation, a few tweaks can make stall sweat a lot. A good example here is this game by Carkoala, where the anti-Archaludon core crumbles to EQ + Press Arch. The Archaludon set doesn't even lose out on much coverage, mainly losing out on some extra damage vs Tera Fairy mons and the rare Unaware Clefable which isnt seen on the most common stalls anyway. Tweaks like this barely even change the team, and imo in a metagame like this it's completely fair to run any 2 of Flash Cannon/Press/EQ alongside Draco + Electro Shot, as the situations where these moves come up are pretty specific and can usually be played around.
2) Ting-Lu fat - I'm not gonna get into Clodsire fat right now because I think it's mostly a worse version of stall that now finds Weather Ball bolt and EQ Arch a pain in the ass (i.e. pretty neutral matchup), but Ting-Lu fat balances can somewhat justify their rain matchup by running a system where you use the combination of Ting-Lu (to chip Arch) + Teraing something into a water resist + Spikes + speed control to eventually clean up rain teams. Depending on the specific matchup this style can either be pretty neutral or really annoying for rain to play against, but honestly that's also true of most styles when they face Ting-Lu balances. I'm noting it down here because I think it's fine in rain meta and will stay fine regar dless of whether rain is a thing, but it's definitely gets less auto-win matchups into rain than stall does.
3) Offense with 3-4 water resists, or 2-3 Water resists + Gambit - This is another existing style that can kinda work because there's enough Water resists for offense to use. That being said, Barraskewda will always be able to create problems unless it's an Ogerpon based offense and Archaludon with Tera has real potential to snowball, so you're really shooting for a neutral matchup here. While offense does have a lot of good Water resists at its disposal, it's not necessarily easy to stack 3 Water resists on the same team especially when imo you also need a Gambit in the back to really make things annoying for Rain. Ogerpon-Wellspring versions of these teams can do okay, although again without Gambit you still need to find a clear answer for how you're winning the game, otherwise there's a few ways to get owned, either by getting 50/50s wrong into Ogerpon, getting steamrolled by Arch + Raging Bolt + Tera, or even just things like Tera Gambit that are legitimately hard to stop right now because Ogerpon struggles to choose between Encore and being able to hit the Rain mons. These matchups are almost always reasonable for both sides, and the style itself should survive just fine, so this does at least contribute a little bit to having a healthy metagame around rain.
4) Volcanion - Honestly this mon is cursed to be a niche pick forever no matter how good it looks into current meta trends, but again the question to ask is how are you gonna handle all the non-Barra threats. Volcanion teams are usually forced into some sort of Boots spam and the speed control options on those teams dont hit Arch or Tera Raging Bolt that hard, which means there's a big question mark around handling all of Arch/Bolt/Gambit in those games. I think this replay is a fine example of the building difficulties here - honestly barring some genius build that I haven't seen yet, I don't think Volcanion is particuarly amazing into rain.
5) Kyurem + Gking - This is another core that is definitely overrated into rain imo. I played against tons of Kyurems during my initial rain spam phase, both with rain and without, and what I've learned is that the biggest thing these teams struggle with is a direct offensive gameplan that exploits the defensive cores on these teams being thin and predictable - once again, Rain has access to plenty of these gameplans, coming back to the big 2 (Arch/Bolt) as well as stuff like Jolly Gambit or Waterpon in the last slot, not to mention positions where you can just start 2hkoing everything with Barra against teams that lack appropriate Physdef water resists. Chilly Reception can obviously help out to a degree with this. As far as matchups go, I think there are plenty of teams that do worse into the Kyurem Gking structures than rain does.
6) Arch lures - Sets like Superpower Ogerpon and SD LO Rilla can attempt to lure in Arch and force it to either die early or take too much chip. When this works, it's obviously very high upside, but it's worth pointing out that many of these sets aren't fully sound, in the sense that Superpower Oger doesn't cover Raging Bolt, and SD Rilla can sometimes be slower than Arch (seriously fast Arch is annoying as fuck for a lot of counterplay), as well as having its own issues with not having U-turn on a playstyle that desperately needs to keep momentum like Gterrain.
In context, it's important to remember that outside of these avenues and maybe a couple of others, what you're looking at is some pretty easy victories for rain, and even within these building styles, there's still lots of room for these forms of counterplay to struggle. In basically every point here, the structure of rain where you get to have two Dragon types that have basically no switchins, with great bulk, + one of the most free Tera buttons of any style (there is very little that you're ever required to commit defensive Tera for with rain) poses an issue for the meta, because most of the best rain counterplay even at a time when rain is trending right now, can only bring the matchup to a roughly equal level. I don't think this level of counterplay is particularly sustainable, and I expect that the moment that people decide it's more important to focus on other styles than rain, we'll be back to the start of this cycle where I'm able to pick up a quick 100 points on high ladder with 5-6 rain games (as I was doing for most of January). From the other side (building against rain), I think it's pretty hard to justify a situation where your dedicated counterplay still comes with several stipulations that you need to deal with in the builder before you can secure the matchup properly.
For what it's worth, I did briefly return to rain, playing a few games which I won't share, but I will share the first 3 teams I faced on high ladder:
yyysneasel's team: Corviknight / Gliscor / Dondozo / Slowking-Galar / Blissey / Clefable
1 Bagre's team: Kyurem / Great Tusk / Garganacl / Corviknight / Dragapult / Primarina
SippinSyzzrrp's team: Tyranitar / Excadrill / Raging Bolt / Corviknight / Clefable / Ogerpon-Wellspring
Easy 3-0 for standard rain (???????)
P.S. forgot to mention bulky Sand teams with Mola + Boots Ttar, those are legitimately good into rain although I only have one sand team. Other sand variants can still be probed at with Barra + Arch.
Post post-script. If you're struggling to get high value with Archaludon + Barra, remember that doubling between these mons is often a safe and powerful option, and also remember that there's nothing actually forcing you to click Electro Shot with Archaludon immediately. The amount of opponents I've seen instantly crumble after their Ground type gets Draco'd on the switch is hilarious, and to be fair to them there often isnt much of a way to play around it because of the fact that Electro Shot is still a free click for any player willing to take the EQ chip on the next turn or Tera in front of the Ground type. Welp.
Hello everyone, i would like to take the time to back up the goat CTC , address the suspect of archaludon and state my opinions on it and why i strongly believe it is balanced:
- The only set people ever complain about is a set that is heavily reliant on 3 teammates, yes you need 3 teammates, iron treads for momentum purposes, pelipper, and barraskewda for flip turn, if it doesnt have one of these 3, it struggles, barraskewda is needed for the speed, if not, threats that outspeed archaludon threaten it, aka offensive tusk, offensive lando, destiny bond valiant, tera ground blast iron moth, any offensive ground ever, and if the tera is forced that is a penalty that will allow it to be revenge killed later on, i do not think rain is a consistent playstyle, there are tons of threats that put a stop to rain like dnite, roaring moon, kyurem, specs pult, gastrodon, clodsire, Hippowdon sand which i recently topped the ladder with while facing no rains, which proves its not only good for countering rain but for being anti meta as a whole, hippo sand is good into every style rn, and it hard counters rain, so with these large variety of counters, i strongly believe archaludon is good but its not great or game breaking, its not reverse sweeping literally any team with fallen5, im not saying gambit is broken but i cant deny that its way stronger than this fucking bridge, same with gouging and raging bolt, they all are better and arent even broken on their own.
- Its stabs are not spammable in this meta, flash cannon resisted by volcarona, heatran, and any water, ik people gonna bring up electro shot to counter argue this, the first thing you learn when you are learning how to structure a team is to always have a solid ground type, an electric resist because the pivot move volt switch exists, and ground types are stronger than ever this gen, like ting lu, great tusk, clodsire, lando, they all beat archaludon, in another point i will list all the counterplay to archaludon, but what i mean by non spammable stabs, is that people seem to have insomnia, didnt people cry like toddlers for walking wake to be quickbanned when it first came out? We adapted so nicely to walking wake that it was never discussed again , and i find that walking wake was way harder to adjust to than archaludon, i think people will adapt much more easily to archaludon in the future and the rain hype will die soon, remember you being sick of rain =/= it being broken, thats your problem, you dont make tiering decisions because you hate something, you make it for the betterment of the metagame, in the longterm, the ones that are advocating the archaludon ban are the most short sighted i have ever seen, you dont think it through long term or you havent been around long enough to watch an entire tier evolve and adapt till the next generation, so i would say make the right decisions and stand with me to vote do not ban you will thank me later because the metagame is still developing.
- The List of counterplay to archaludon is long as hell:
1. Hippowdon (its good i faced every team but rain and still topped ladder which proves its good without countering rain)
2. Clodsire
3. Ting Lu
4. Great Tusk
5. Landorus Therian
6. Tera ground iron moth
7. Garchomp
8. Destiny bond or cc iron valiant
9. Zamazenta (it forces tera for a revenge kill later on)
10. Superpower wellspring
11. Sash hex pult cripples it or specs tera ghost pult kills it
12. Lategame tera gambit
13. Qd tera ground volcarona
14. Tera ground volcanion
15. Twave galar slowking or chilly reception in general to reset weather
16. Tera cm raging bolt
17. Kyurem
18. Even glimmora 1v1s
19. Dd roaring moon (forces tera)
20. Torkoal and sun
21. Walking wake (fucks rain in general)
22. Opposing archaludon
23. Iron treads
24. Mirror coat tera fairy spdef alomomola(with prough to hit moon)
25. Sd high horse power rillaboom(which just beats rain lol what a joke)
As u can see this is way more counterplay than gambit, raging bolt, gouging fire or walking wake will ever have, the meta has adapted to those very nicely, but hey who knows... Uhh gee " if its banned ill make 20 posts crying or go on twitter or go in discord servers and complain about the guy who made only 1 post on it and dipped!! " sorry had to do my impression of the bird as a joke, they refer to birds as girls where i live ok back on track, let me get to my next point.
- Rain loses to any other weather, it remains the most inconsistent weather, and i used to think about spl winrate to disprove this point but by that logic, someone can bring enamorus therian 6 times and win 6 times and itll have 100% spl winrate, so that doesnt prove anything, rain loses to sun, it definitely loses to sand, and it loses to snow or veils the hardest, and thats with the slightest water resist, the second thing u learn when structuring cores is to have a solid water resist, so ground type + water resist should defeat any rain if played well,its not like wake where it forces a bulky water + fairy, which is way more restricting than archaludon, just because a pokemon is doing well on rain and it annoys people they want it gone, thats the softest thing ive ever heard, thats a biased subjective decision and does nothing for the future of this tier, all the comments on GOAT pokeaim videos are trashing the council for this suspect, even someone on the council was against it, it speaks volumes as to how unnecessary this suspect was, catering to spl instead of the majority and the better of the meta as a whole, every 2 weeks theres a survey, ive had hundreds of friends quit because of it, let the metagame adapt and see if it remains a problem u get like 3-4 years per gen theres more than enough time, look at kyurem, it just isnt as good as people think it is if anything it forces people to run good teams instead of cheese.
- It forces good building habits, have a solid ground and water resist or immune off the bat, which is 2 of the fundamentals of teambuilding, and if that doesnt scream healthy i dont know what is, its overall a positive influence on the meta, if anything its preventing the use of uu mons in ou, just play uu if u wanna use shitmons, or limit ur shitmons to 1 per game.
- Nobody complained when sun got 5000 buffs this gen, as soon as rain got its buff people are mad, we cannot be biased against playstyles its not good tiering practice, if sun gets to thrive so does rain, veils is amazing too veils is better than any arch rain rn, if people would care to explore it like they explored sleep, its forcing u to explore new archetypes like sand and veils which is overall super healthy for a developing metagame, banning pokemon because you think its broken isnt an excuse, its making the metagame less boring with each ban, then they wanna complain about balance and how balance is the strongest, we ban the balance breakers, of course its the strongest, but id have to disagree with someones point when they said balance is easy to counter if it is then you have not built it right the whole idea behind the style is to balance the team out with the right amount of offense, defense, and pivoting, which == the best playstyle.
-the only rains i face are hardstuck 1700s players, rain is scarce on the high ladder mainly because of its inconsistency and ability to easily be stopped by a random tera, so 90% spl winrate, 10% ladder winrate, 0% winrate vs me, i dont even consider preparing for archaludon or rain, ill use an ho with no water resist sometimes, and ill still beat every archaludon, and people want to ban it?, I think even iron moth is dumber than arch, one fiery dance boost and iron moth gets 3 kills if u dont have ting lu, also garganacl is dumb as hell rn, waay more restricting than archaludon but people gonna say bc its defensive dont act on it, this is not the time or place to discuss other suspects but i aint discussing other suspects im just saying these mons are dumber and people label them fine so why label archaludon broken, you hating seeing rain is no excuse, if anyone argues this i will not acknowledge you, i wont even acknowledge responses to this post i am stating my opinions and leaving.
- 1 move that is heavily reliant on an inconsistent style and 3 teammates is an absurd reason to discuss a ban on something, any weather beats it because it neutralises electro shot, this 1 move people hate, i just dont get it, if this were to get banned for this reason, it would be the worst tiering decision in recent memory, so people remember we need to vote do not ban to help the metagame in the long run, lets not be short sighted.
Conclusion: I will be voting do not ban on archaludon as i feel a strong sentiment on this stance, dont ask me for teams or dont talk to me if ur gonna blindly vote ban here without making solid counter arguments for every single point i have, responses to this post will not be acknowledged i encourage people to make healthy tiering decisions and vote do not ban, thank you for your time and have a good day/night.
- The only set people ever complain about is a set that is heavily reliant on 3 teammates, yes you need 3 teammates, iron treads for momentum purposes, pelipper, and barraskewda for flip turn, if it doesnt have one of these 3, it struggles, barraskewda is needed for the speed, if not, threats that outspeed archaludon threaten it, aka offensive tusk, offensive lando, destiny bond valiant, tera ground blast iron moth, any offensive ground ever, and if the tera is forced that is a penalty that will allow it to be revenge killed later on, i do not think rain is a consistent playstyle, there are tons of threats that put a stop to rain like dnite, roaring moon, kyurem, specs pult, gastrodon, clodsire, Hippowdon sand which i recently topped the ladder with while facing no rains, which proves its not only good for countering rain but for being anti meta as a whole, hippo sand is good into every style rn, and it hard counters rain, so with these large variety of counters, i strongly believe archaludon is good but its not great or game breaking, its not reverse sweeping literally any team with fallen5, im not saying gambit is broken but i cant deny that its way stronger than this fucking bridge, same with gouging and raging bolt, they all are better and arent even broken on their own.
- Its stabs are not spammable in this meta, flash cannon resisted by volcarona, heatran, and any water, ik people gonna bring up electro shot to counter argue this, the first thing you learn when you are learning how to structure a team is to always have a solid ground type, an electric resist because the pivot move volt switch exists, and ground types are stronger than ever this gen, like ting lu, great tusk, clodsire, lando, they all beat archaludon, in another point i will list all the counterplay to archaludon, but what i mean by non spammable stabs, is that people seem to have insomnia, didnt people cry like toddlers for walking wake to be quickbanned when it first came out? We adapted so nicely to walking wake that it was never discussed again , and i find that walking wake was way harder to adjust to than archaludon, i think people will adapt much more easily to archaludon in the future and the rain hype will die soon, remember you being sick of rain =/= it being broken, thats your problem, you dont make tiering decisions because you hate something, you make it for the betterment of the metagame, in the longterm, the ones that are advocating the archaludon ban are the most short sighted i have ever seen, you dont think it through long term or you havent been around long enough to watch an entire tier evolve and adapt till the next generation, so i would say make the right decisions and stand with me to vote do not ban you will thank me later because the metagame is still developing.
- The List of counterplay to archaludon is long as hell:
1. Hippowdon (its good i faced every team but rain and still topped ladder which proves its good without countering rain)
2. Clodsire
3. Ting Lu
4. Great Tusk
5. Landorus Therian
6. Tera ground iron moth
7. Garchomp
8. Destiny bond or cc iron valiant
9. Zamazenta (it forces tera for a revenge kill later on)
10. Superpower wellspring
11. Sash hex pult cripples it or specs tera ghost pult kills it
12. Lategame tera gambit
13. Qd tera ground volcarona
14. Tera ground volcanion
15. Twave galar slowking or chilly reception in general to reset weather
16. Tera cm raging bolt
17. Kyurem
18. Even glimmora 1v1s
19. Dd roaring moon (forces tera)
20. Torkoal and sun
21. Walking wake (fucks rain in general)
22. Opposing archaludon
23. Iron treads
24. Mirror coat tera fairy spdef alomomola(with prough to hit moon)
25. Sd high horse power rillaboom(which just beats rain lol what a joke)
As u can see this is way more counterplay than gambit, raging bolt, gouging fire or walking wake will ever have, the meta has adapted to those very nicely, but hey who knows... Uhh gee " if its banned ill make 20 posts crying or go on twitter or go in discord servers and complain about the guy who made only 1 post on it and dipped!! " sorry had to do my impression of the bird as a joke, they refer to birds as girls where i live ok back on track, let me get to my next point.
- Rain loses to any other weather, it remains the most inconsistent weather, and i used to think about spl winrate to disprove this point but by that logic, someone can bring enamorus therian 6 times and win 6 times and itll have 100% spl winrate, so that doesnt prove anything, rain loses to sun, it definitely loses to sand, and it loses to snow or veils the hardest, and thats with the slightest water resist, the second thing u learn when structuring cores is to have a solid water resist, so ground type + water resist should defeat any rain if played well,its not like wake where it forces a bulky water + fairy, which is way more restricting than archaludon, just because a pokemon is doing well on rain and it annoys people they want it gone, thats the softest thing ive ever heard, thats a biased subjective decision and does nothing for the future of this tier, all the comments on GOAT pokeaim videos are trashing the council for this suspect, even someone on the council was against it, it speaks volumes as to how unnecessary this suspect was, catering to spl instead of the majority and the better of the meta as a whole, every 2 weeks theres a survey, ive had hundreds of friends quit because of it, let the metagame adapt and see if it remains a problem u get like 3-4 years per gen theres more than enough time, look at kyurem, it just isnt as good as people think it is if anything it forces people to run good teams instead of cheese.
- It forces good building habits, have a solid ground and water resist or immune off the bat, which is 2 of the fundamentals of teambuilding, and if that doesnt scream healthy i dont know what is, its overall a positive influence on the meta, if anything its preventing the use of uu mons in ou, just play uu if u wanna use shitmons, or limit ur shitmons to 1 per game.
- Nobody complained when sun got 5000 buffs this gen, as soon as rain got its buff people are mad, we cannot be biased against playstyles its not good tiering practice, if sun gets to thrive so does rain, veils is amazing too veils is better than any arch rain rn, if people would care to explore it like they explored sleep, its forcing u to explore new archetypes like sand and veils which is overall super healthy for a developing metagame, banning pokemon because you think its broken isnt an excuse, its making the metagame less boring with each ban, then they wanna complain about balance and how balance is the strongest, we ban the balance breakers, of course its the strongest, but id have to disagree with someones point when they said balance is easy to counter if it is then you have not built it right the whole idea behind the style is to balance the team out with the right amount of offense, defense, and pivoting, which == the best playstyle.
-the only rains i face are hardstuck 1700s players, rain is scarce on the high ladder mainly because of its inconsistency and ability to easily be stopped by a random tera, so 90% spl winrate, 10% ladder winrate, 0% winrate vs me, i dont even consider preparing for archaludon or rain, ill use an ho with no water resist sometimes, and ill still beat every archaludon, and people want to ban it?, I think even iron moth is dumber than arch, one fiery dance boost and iron moth gets 3 kills if u dont have ting lu, also garganacl is dumb as hell rn, waay more restricting than archaludon but people gonna say bc its defensive dont act on it, this is not the time or place to discuss other suspects but i aint discussing other suspects im just saying these mons are dumber and people label them fine so why label archaludon broken, you hating seeing rain is no excuse, if anyone argues this i will not acknowledge you, i wont even acknowledge responses to this post i am stating my opinions and leaving.
- 1 move that is heavily reliant on an inconsistent style and 3 teammates is an absurd reason to discuss a ban on something, any weather beats it because it neutralises electro shot, this 1 move people hate, i just dont get it, if this were to get banned for this reason, it would be the worst tiering decision in recent memory, so people remember we need to vote do not ban to help the metagame in the long run, lets not be short sighted.
Conclusion: I will be voting do not ban on archaludon as i feel a strong sentiment on this stance, dont ask me for teams or dont talk to me if ur gonna blindly vote ban here without making solid counter arguments for every single point i have, responses to this post will not be acknowledged i encourage people to make healthy tiering decisions and vote do not ban, thank you for your time and have a good day/night.
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I know you don't intend to acknowledge any replies to your post, but the bolded part is just blatantly false as the OU Council was unanimous in wanting action on Archaludon.
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DaRotomMachine
I COULD BE BANNED!
Wait. There's actually high level players that disagree that Arch is broken and have somewhat valid reason to it?
Thank you Storm Zone. I completely agree with your post and will be doing my part in keeping the GOAT in the tier.
It may be an uphill battle for the pro-Arch community, but your post has re-invigorated the one thing we need the most right now: Hope.
They said that kyurem and gimmora is part of the counterplay to Arch, which if you look at the calcs, ain't actually counters. Most of the counters they show cannot switch into it and do not ko it from full. They also say it is the most inconsistent weather because it loses to other weathers which is, just plain wrong. Like I had to double check it to make sure. Sand it destroys just due to water being super effective against it and sand only really having drill to abuse it, snow it struggles a bit against but again only really cetitan and kyurem can abuse it, and arch helps a lot with kyurem so there is that, and sun it does quite well against due to torkoal being extremely pressured against the water assault, while raging bolt which would be a bad matchup is countered by treads, with walking wake being the only thing that can even contend with rain.
I do think that rain is a problem overall and arch is not the main problem, but the post was so bad that I could not support it, like it being 'inconsistent' is plain wrong.
Storm Zone's the goddamned goat, I agree with everything he said, even the part where he started wandering off talking about birds being referred to as girls where he's from. DNB.
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I love it when the hero comes to write a long speech about a ban forthcoming. I am not going to suspect this mon but I read the forums on the regular. It seems that when people lose to a certain Pokémon, they want it banned. Like, if you lose to a Lechonk do you want that to be banned? How about Flygon? Can’t stand First Impression? What about Pecharunt? Tired of Blimax’s Hazard Stack team giving you hell? Ban it too? The meta is very new to most players. As a hobby, I normally play card games like MTG and the ban list doesn’t come out for 4-6 months minimum or none at all if the meta seems stable or if a deck starts to win multiple tourneys then it becomes a problem and gets looked at. Are there records claiming rain+arch to win multiple events? Is it always claiming the top 10 on the ladder? If it isn’t, then you know it’s in check. If I were to vote for any suspect, I’d vote DNB and let the meta be what it is and see what happens in April at the minimum to have more data or evidence claiming any sort of pokemon braking the format. Just because hearsay lost 5 times and calls it broken is not an excuse. You lost 5 times so that’s on your play style and couldn’t handle Arch+rain with the team you’re brewing. It’s the same people losing to Gouging Fire, Raging Bolt, a Tera flip the script, etc that get all salty and ruin the game for others brewing. At some point, and it will happen if it continues, we continue to ban pokemon that people didn’t give time to develop, we will be seeing every team with a Gliscor, a Pecharunt, an Iron Valiant. Then what? More complaining? You all thought banning pokemon so quick in DLC 1 was a problem, then look at what is happening now. The same cycle is happening right before you but once the first opinion sticks, there goes the rest of the cult. I’m glad SZ made this post. Give Arch+rain time because you know once Arch is gone, Sun will be next. I know some people here are gonna defend their beloved Roaring Moon but people will turn against you and get it banned too. You can believe what higher people say and don’t know what the meta will look like after the verdict. However, you do know so let rain flourish and vote DNB.
I didn't read everything because mucho texto, but he is right, don't touch archaludon and kyurem. SUSPECT GOUGING FIRE, ROARING MOON AND RAGING BOLT or i'm going to s2g
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