Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
This is metagame discussion, so discussion of your skill level might not be appropriate.
As to any miscellaneous metagame changes, https://www.smogon.com/stats/2019-07/metagame/ shows that there is no significant difference in the amount of hyper offense used or the stalliness of the metagame between July and August.
About the prevalence of Choice Scarf, the /moveset files show the increased prevalence of Choice Scarf. In July, 13.329% of 1630+ DNites were Scarfed. In August, 20.202%. Similarly with Tapu Lele and Greninja and Porygon: 14.781% to 19.737%; 10.019% to 12.427%; 43.141% to 51.493%. In fact, one common complaint is that everything is Scarfed now. However, it appears that 30.281% of Landorus-Therians were Scarfed in July, whereas 24.600% of them were Scarfed in August. I guess this is because of the increased prevalence of Serperior and bulky Fairies such as Tapu Lele and along with Dragonite continuously annoying the hell out of Landorus-Therian, although the total use of Landorus-Therian has increased by 0.3% percentage points.
It's also worth noting that any mon that runs Scarf can't run any boosting moves or a z move. Consequently they can struggle to break bulkier mons, especially those that can change type when they mega as that really puts pressure on the opponent to choose correctly. Try pairing your Greninja with a much bulkier mon or a sturdy user that covers it's scarf weakness. Alternatively you can run scarf Gren (which I despise but is a viable set) which effectively lures and kills a lot of choice scarfers
A few people have been asking about Dragonite so I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks. I'm also tired of hearing the same few people throwing insults at those who disagree with them. Please discuss here what effect you think Dragonite has on the metagame and if we should consider a suspect. Use proper etiquette and all that when discussing this.
Personally, I can see how it's pretty damn powerful. It's got a huge variety of sets and a lot of them are viable. It can run a Z-Move of nearly any type, band/scarf/specs are all good, setup is good, I've even seen a couple of cool stall sets. Should it be suspected? I'm still not sure. I'm not truly sure if there's enough variation between the sets that it makes Dragonite unpredictable at team preview or too difficult to prep against. I feel like you can gain an idea of what the set will be from team preview, though I guess you can always sacrifice some overall utility for the surprise tech.
Okay so, I feel like Dragonite should at least be suspect tested, because it has a very disruptive effect on teambuilding. While Mega Gyarados and Choice Scarf Haxorus all serve to be good counters to Dragonite, but many sets have sprung up just because of Dragonite's presence.
- While Will-o-wisp or Flame Charge are not niche moves individually on and by itself on Mega Charizard X, both of them clumped together on the same set has become a disturbing trend in recent times, which makes Mega Charizard X lose out on a lot of other matchups just to beat one Pokemon.
- Skill Swap Tapu Lele is yet another trend which has started to come up. Maybe I am being stuck on old sets I am comfortable here, but I seriously don't see what Skill Swap has over Z-Reflect or Taunt other than the fact that it can beat Dragonite.
- Dragonium Z Zeraora, which is otherwise a pretty bad set overall, is used exclusively to beat Dragonite, which is also pretty telling about Dragonite's effect on the meta.
The most stressful part about Dragonite is that both from a teambuilding and from a battle scenario PoV, it is pretty hard to gauge what subset of Dragonite a person is weak to or is run respectively. It is hard to gauge what set Dragonite is running - physical or special. This stems from the fact that Dragonite can tank almost any attack foes throw at it, and can KO in turn, or over the turns. Due to this, most of the teams need to run "Counters" which are nothing if not situational and/or partial counters.
So, I feel like Dragonite should be suspect tested, upon which, I feel it would (or should)be banned
sporeisgayaf69:omg sporeisgayaf69:quote talking about dnite sporeisgayaf69:time to make a 69 page post about everything about dnite even tho i never use him cus he is disgusting RunWithSeismitoad:69 page post, im excited for that
Now,i wanna say that iam not a dnite player but i have to say something about him.this post will be split into 2 parts.1 for advantages of dnite 1 for disadvantages for dnite
ADVANTAGES:
So,dnite is the jack of all trades in 1v1,this guy can do all,run z-move,run band,run specs and hell you could even go with weakness policy cus Multiscale is gotchu covered.All the best pokemon in 1v1 have great abilities that help them out a TON (zard x,zard y,lele etc)and dnite is no exception,multiscale makes dnite able to take a hit turn 1 for him to boost himself with dd or z-move your opponent,if he is dd he will either use outrage or a z move as said before he can either use firium z for mawile and magearna,flynium z cus fly and hurricane are strong or dragonium z to be a dick,as said this guy can do everything,this thing also has priority in extreme speed so if the opponent is faster and has a move that beats dnite,multiscale makes it live then use Xtreme speed.
DISADVANTAGES:
As crazy as dnite could be,he is held back by the one and only megados,Yes 1v1s thicc fish.mold breaker ignores multiscale and outrages takes dnite down,other counters to him are haxorus (scarf or band works).Now we have the semi-counters,these mons can beat dnite if it doesnt have the set it needs to beat it.These mons are like magearna mawile and ice punch mega metagross.
MY OPINION:atm iam fine with a suspect test for dnite to give him some attention,iam still kinda mixed between a ban or a no ban,i will think about it
sry this wasnt 69 pages also,take a look at this #Quote:spore is bad #Quote:so that's ok
wow mate thx for the tough love,also love how did the suspect test a day b4 school,that timing my guy.
UPDATE:so first i wanna say that archeops doesnt beat dnite,its a 2 ko so i edited that one out and now for my opinion.i DO think dnite deserves a ban,it has wayy to many viable sets,its a pain to build a team that doesnt get 3-0ed by it,it has an amazing movepool and a great ability to back it up and its the most unpredictable mon in the meta atm,big rip for thicc barney.
There's a saying we use in League: If a champion is meta in more than one role, it's probably broken.
Dragonite is this incarnate.
Versatility is fine to have on a Pokemon, like how Greninja, Zeraora, and Victini do it. They have a cluster of decent-good sets that when all accounted for, make the Pokemon good. Contrary to this, Dragonite has a ton of top tier sets that when all accounted for, make it broken.
What really pushed this over the edge was scarf usage. Dragonite is arguably the hardest Pokemon to blanket check. Scarf made this even harder, making outspeeding unreliable. You have to either spread its sets across multiple Pokemon or pick a designated Dragonite counter, which is what you might call "not OK."
I would say yes to a suspect test, this tyrant does whatever it wants with no regards to the people; we must rise now! It is time for revolution! (Also screw you Maki and your stupid Dragonite spamming)
Dragonite is absurdly strong right now, and should be suspected. Flyinium Z 40.598% | Choice Scarf 20.202% | Dragonium Z 19.366% | Choice Band 11.607% | Weakness Policy 2.949% | Groundium Z 1.497% | Other 3.781% - 1630 items
Dragonite's main checks (not counters) are Specs Greninja, Lopunny, and LO/Dragonium Zeraora. Scarf (20.2%) beats all of these. It's absurd. You may never be able to beat Gyarados or Haxorus (Haban Dnite easy haxorus win)
Spdef ZardX can win, except there's Choiced Rock Tomb + Outrage for that.
Gardevoir can win, but Scarf Iron Head has to not flinch either time, garde has to hit Icy Wind or Willo, then hit Hyper Beam
This thing has checks and a “few” counters (just gyara p much) it’s not good for the meta, it should legitimately be banned.
My main problem is that it just has too many viable sets. On ladder it's really not that big of a problem because most people stick to the most useful sets like DragZ, FlyZ, and Scarf. So predicting against those isnt the worst thing ever and its actually pretty possible to figure out what set they are most likely using.
My big issue is that in tours Dragonite is extremely frustrating to play against because it's too difficult to figure out what set they are running and it has too many viable sets with an S Tier ability. It can run at least 6 viable Z moves and it just becomes impossible to predict on preview.
So basically Multiscale is elite and with the crazy move pool Dragonite has, it becomes this unpredictable beast that has few true counter (mons who beat it 100% of the time)
I would like to suspect to see what people think and I would also like to open up teambuilding even more without having to worry about Dragonites 10 possible sets
Spdef ZardX can win, except there's Choiced Rock Tomb + Outrage for that.
Gardevoir can win, but Scarf Iron Head has to not flinch either time, garde has to hit Icy Wind or Willo, then hit Hyper Beam
Zard is a 50/50 with Scarf, they have to flame charge t1 to win. Garde only wins with Icy, you take too much to win with WoW. Now onto your regularly scheduled post.
A few months ago, I'm not sure how relevant this discussion was. Everyone agreed that, while strong, Dragonite had really common checks. Greninja, WoW CharX and Garde, Gyarados. I'm going to argue that what makes this mon suspect is the rise of the scarf set.
The Choice scarf set checks most of the main sets' "counters". Worse, even, is the prediction game it forces. Often, a set that could potentially counter both sets like Spdef Will-O-Wisp Flame Charge CharX still needs to win the 50/50. As many others have said, this extends to team preview as well.
A common argument one might bring up is that many of the Dragonites have largely overlapping matchups. I posit that this actually makes it worse to predict what set it is on preview. Since there's an overlap, it can be hard to see what the team is weak to depending on the set. This makes it hard to play against to, as different sets requires different counterplay (mostly scarf).
Probably the most popular defense will be that Mega Gyarados, an S rank Mon, hard counters practically every used Dragonite Z. I'd argue that this is even more centralizing than the counters to KyuB. Either run Mega Gyara or have an unpredictable matchup against Dragonite.
I think with it's diversity of threats and high power level, Dragonite is definitely worth a suspect. This thing has been losing threat after threat since SM started. And, to those arguing that it's too late in the meta, that's even more a reason to ban this. If it doesn't get banned, I don't like SM's future as an oldgens.
Hello There! So, pretty much, I’d like to start a serious discussion on why Dragonite isn't broken, but first, it is best to display many of its matchups versus the general metagame. Here are the primary sets.
Dragonite @ Choice Scarf / Choice Band
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Outrage
- Iron Head
- Fire Punch
- Earthquake
Here are its matchups versus the majority of the metagame. Since people have their own different feelings about how accurate the 1v1 Viability Rankings are, I will use the top 35 most used ladder pokemon, as shown here:
Thanks to Alakazam, the matchups have been mostly completed. Here it is. Use it for your arguments if you'd like, or edit stuff (I'll have to approve, just because people shitpost too much). Please do not hesitate to tell my if anything's wrong.
Dragonite: DNB (Maybe Suspect)
I personally think that Dragonite should not be banned. I do agree, it has significant versatility in the plethora of differing sets that it finds itself using on a match-to-match basis makes it a stellar Pokemon, (if not the best, definitely top 3), and its splashibility is nigh unrivaled. But I feel that it has consistent enough checks/counters to consider it alright in the metagame. A suspect test is something I can agree on, as the community as a whole should do, as a community based decision is always good, in my opinion.
Here are my thoughts on some of the ban arguements / statement nitpicks (because I'm bad):
While Will-o-wisp or Flame Charge are not niche moves individually on and by itself on Mega Charizard X, both of them clumped together on the same set has become a disturbing trend in recent times, which makes Mega Charizard X lose out on a lot of other matchups just to beat one Pokemon.
I'm pretty sure Will-O-Wisp isn't only used for Dragonite, but also Pokemon such as Mega Gyarados and Donphan. Flame Charge is used for Pokemon such as Mega Lopunny and Greninja as well. Substitute, Belly Drum and Dragon Dance have fallen out of favor for more than just Dragonite.
You've stated "more than one role" and never touched upon it again. Could you just state why you've said that? Dragonite's clearly a bulky offense oriented pokemon
To paraphrase TDA, scarf runs adamant for more guaranteed rolls, which is opportunity loss. Also, Zeraora can tank. Magearna's a pretty good check, any reason why you didn't mention them? Also, could you give me a replay for choiced Dragonite vs Zard X? Would appreciate, thanks.
So basically Multiscale is elite and with the crazy move pool Dragonite has, it becomes this unpredictable beast that has few true counter (mons who beat it 100% of the time)
Many of those sets are quite niche, making them quite hard to use consistently, this is coming from a player that makes wacky Dragonite sets. I do agree that the list is somewhat limited, but its not too limited (like 1-3 mons) Might be wrong in that. Tell me if I am.
Yo sporeisniceaf59 if you want someone to reformat your reply I can do that. Also:
Just to address this, oldgen suspects are garbage when you don't have a ladder. It took forever to whimsi to be banned in BW even when we did have the ladder which showed how broken it was. If we want to ban it and have a thorough and open suspect process, we should do it now.
+ ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon | Usage % | Raw | % | Real | % |
+ ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- +
| 3 | Gyarados-Mega | 10.35278% | 49876 | 8.146% | 15191 | 15.132% |
| 28 | Haxorus | 2.86166% | 15774 | 2.576% | 5601 | 5.579% |
These are the only counters to all 5 sets, and Scarf has a 20% usage.
"I do agree that the list is somewhat limited, but its not too limited (like 1-3 mons) Might be wrong in that. Tell me if I am."
What the actual fuck. If you actually listen to yourself, why are you considering 1-3 mons as a counter not too limited, within the top 50. EVEN IF WE COMBINE ZARD FORMS we still get more counters to them in the top 50 than that (Crustle, Donphan, Golem, Waterium Fini, Prima). And, this is one pokemon that is way more difficult to predict at preview than which zard forme. Also dnite can tank beam gren x. Magearna loses to band which is why it wasn't mentioned as a check.
God it's been like a year since we've had a proper metagame discussion discussion-
As always, the first thing to think about in a "broken" argument is checks and counters:
S Rank
?1 Charizard-Mega-X mainly struggles with the 50/50 vs dd dragonium and Scarf is another 50/50 if zard's even speed crept to outspeed after fc/dd
?2 Dragonite
1 Gyarados-Mega hard L
S- Rank
?3 Magearna scummy z-coverage and carefully crept band sets can get the better of magearna
A+ Rank
?4 Greninja Scarf or super spdef for specs beam
?5 Metagross-Mega requires Ice Punch for reliability, struggles with scummy z-coverage
?6 Tapu Lele beats every set pretty nicely other than scarf iron head
A Rank
?7 Gardevoir-Mega scarf iron head can flinch, but garde p much wins, otherwise
2 Mew Kew hard counters. The only downside is that it needs an attack for Z-Dragon Dance techs.
3 Slowbro-Mega only loses if it predicts physical but runs into special with max spa stab zmoves and vice versa
?8 Zeraora protect lol. Scarf doesn't even KO zera-
?9 Zygarde-Complete a lot of speed wars involved, though Ice Beam should win otherwise.
A- Rank
?10 Primarina only loses to DD Flyinium or weird Z-thunder wave stall
?11 Tapu Fini while it has the capacity to beat all sets, it mainly struggles with outspeed + the 50/50 between Taunting or GoA turn 1 vs DD Flyinium
B+ Rank
4 Altaria-Mega similar case to Slowbro
?12 Celesteela mainly loses to banded Fire Punch or z-Fire
5 Clefable banded Iron Head is not a thing-
6 Jumpluff just don't miss ez
7 Mawile-Mega not necessarily 100% hard L, but after seeing Firium lose to Mawile, it's basically as good a counter as you can get
8 Sableye-Mega just needs to predict physical vs special
?13 Serperior mainly struggles with scarf and special flyinium
9 Togekiss Z-Thunder Wave and Charm
?14 Tyranitar-Mega superpower
10 Victini Icium beats all. Other sets all vary/lose
B Rank
11 Aggron-Mega unless you're running min spdef vs Firium, burst into Head Smash should win
12 Haxorus Scarf > Scarf
13 Jirachi Scarf Ice Punch
?15 Lopunny-Mega loses to scarf superpower or random protects, needs ice punch
14 Necrozma berry eats p much any hit
15 Pheromosa z-blizzard is yikes, but wins. Even outspeeds Scarf
16 Porygon2 multiscale trace is yikes, not even band superpower saves you
?16 Registeel loses to band/ carefully used z-coverage
?17 Type: Null beats everything except DD Dragonium
?18 Whimsicott only really struggles vs special Flyinium
B- Rank
?19 Archeops loses to scarf, smashes everything else
?20 Deoxys-S would be a reliable win if it didn't have to 50/50 DD sets all the time
?21 Diancie-Mega only loses to iron heads and groundiums
?22 Kyurem scarf is a real bully :( requires icium otherwise
?23 Manaphy a set with like charm/acid armor and ice beam could probably win, but yuck
?24 Medicham-Mega protect/scarf
?25 Swampert-Mega relying on sleep rolls is always a big yuck
C+ Rank
?26 Ambipom scarf/protect
17 Audino-Mega bulks hits across the board
18 Avalugg Avalanche is just a clean KO
?27 Entei weird Rockium sets with WoW can probably win but eh-
?28 Gyarados DD Dragonium is just a bit too much for gyara to handle
?29 Heracross-Mega major speed wars to see who kos who turn 1
19 Quagsire requires careful bulking, but can eat both physical and special hits quite nicely
?30 Smeargle scarf or (god forbid) max speed
?31 Umbreon only fears banded Superpower
Anything marked with a ?X is a check, while X on its own is a counter, which puts us at about 19 counters and 31 checks from S to C+ out of about the 100 mons in those ranks, meaning about half of the most viable/relevant metagame handles a majority of things Dragonite can throw at them, if not everything.
"Counter", by my definition, being something that should win against a vast majority, if not all, of Dragonite sets, viable and otherwise
"Check", by my definition, being something that beats a majority of Dragonite sets, but struggles with one particular set or the more niche sets like Scarf and Groundium/Firium, or otherwise struggles with reliability, like making Heracross outspeed Dragonite or getting more than 1 turn of sleep with Swampert.
Honestly, I was prepared to do a whole comparison to kyub, digging through usage stats to see its impact on the meta over time, but just doing matchups alone has changed my mind from previously being an abstain to DNB.
Okay so I think everyone knows how powerful and annoying Dragonite can be sometimes because of how hard it is to counter all the sets it can run and how it can sort of limit teambuilding to an extent. However, I don't think it needs to be banned as I don't feel that it's outright broken due to there being quite a few mons that are able to check Dragonite which you can see in Osra's VR Matchups.
S Rank
?1 Charizard-Mega-X mainly struggles with the 50/50 vs dd dragonium and Scarf is another 50/50 if zard's even speed crept to outspeed after fc/dd
?2 Dragonite
1 Gyarados-Mega hard L
S- Rank
?3 Magearna scummy z-coverage and carefully crept band sets can get the better of magearna
A+ Rank
?4 Greninja Scarf or super spdef for specs beam
?5 Metagross-Mega requires Ice Punch for reliability, struggles with scummy z-coverage
?6 Tapu Lele beats every set pretty nicely other than scarf iron head
A Rank
?7 Gardevoir-Mega scarf iron head can flinch, but garde p much wins, otherwise
2 Mew Kew hard counters. The only downside is that it needs an attack for Z-Dragon Dance techs.
3 Slowbro-Mega only loses if it predicts physical but runs into special with max spa stab zmoves and vice versa
?8 Zeraora protect lol. Scarf doesn't even KO zera-
?9 Zygarde-Complete a lot of speed wars involved, though Ice Beam should win otherwise.
A- Rank
?10 Primarina only loses to DD Flyinium or weird Z-thunder wave stall
?11 Tapu Fini while it has the capacity to beat all sets, it mainly struggles with outspeed + the 50/50 between Taunting or GoA turn 1 vs DD Flyinium
B+ Rank
4 Altaria-Mega similar case to Slowbro
?12 Celesteela mainly loses to banded Fire Punch or z-Fire
5 Clefable banded Iron Head is not a thing-
6 Jumpluff just don't miss ez
7 Mawile-Mega not necessarily 100% hard L, but after seeing Firium lose to Mawile, it's basically as good a counter as you can get
8 Sableye-Mega just needs to predict physical vs special
?13 Serperior mainly struggles with scarf and special flyinium
9 Togekiss Z-Thunder Wave and Charm
?14 Tyranitar-Mega superpower
10 Victini Icium beats all. Other sets all vary/lose
B Rank
11 Aggron-Mega unless you're running min spdef vs Firium, burst into Head Smash should win
12 Haxorus Scarf > Scarf
13 Jirachi Scarf Ice Punch
?15 Lopunny-Mega loses to scarf superpower or random protects, needs ice punch
14 Necrozma berry eats p much any hit
15 Pheromosa z-blizzard is yikes, but wins. Even outspeeds Scarf
16 Porygon2 multiscale trace is yikes, not even band superpower saves you
?16 Registeel loses to band/ carefully used z-coverage
?17 Type: Null beats everything except DD Dragonium
?18 Whimsicott only really struggles vs special Flyinium
B- Rank
?19 Archeops loses to scarf, smashes everything else
?20 Deoxys-S would be a reliable win if it didn't have to 50/50 DD sets all the time
?21 Diancie-Mega only loses to iron heads and groundiums
?22 Kyurem scarf is a real bully :( requires icium otherwise
?23 Manaphy a set with like charm/acid armor and ice beam could probably win, but yuck
?24 Medicham-Mega protect/scarf
?25 Swampert-Mega relying on sleep rolls is always a big yuck
C+ Rank
?26 Ambipom scarf/protect
17 Audino-Mega bulks hits across the board
18 Avalugg Avalanche is just a clean KO
?27 Entei weird Rockium sets with WoW can probably win but eh-
?28 Gyarados DD Dragonium is just a bit too much for gyara to handle
?29 Heracross-Mega major speed wars to see who kos who turn 1
19 Quagsire requires careful bulking, but can eat both physical and special hits quite nicely
?30 Smeargle scarf or (god forbid) max speed
?31 Umbreon only fears banded Superpower
imo Dragonite is just a mon that's powerful, but doesn't break the meta as there are a lot of counters/checks. I wouldn't say it actually limits teambuilding that much because you could also argue for that Mega Charizard limits teambuilding as well in the sense that you need to prepare for both forms with 1 Mon.
Dragonite is absolutely the most dominant force in the meta currently. It's sheer versality, boasting more than six top tier sets, makes it really difficult to counter. I'm not entirely convinced its banworthy, but I do think a suspect is warranted. Difficult reqs please
1 Gyarados-Mega hard L 2 Mew Kew hard counters. The only downside is that it needs an attack for Z-Dragon Dance techs. - No, there is a 50/50 here on band/DD. Scarf also wins here. 252+ Atk Dragonite Outrage vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Mew: 220-261 (54.5 - 64.7%) Scarf is also unreliable, especially when people are putting more evs in spdef instead of pure HP 3 Slowbro-Mega only loses if it predicts physical but runs into special with max spa stab zmoves and vice versa - This is a perfect example of an unreliable w
4 Altaria-Mega similar case to Slowbro - Same reasons as above. Also you can lose to band iron head 5 Clefable banded Iron Head is not a thing- Yes it is... Iron Head 22.782% and scarf is only 20% + not all of them run iron head. 6 Jumpluff just don't miss ez - Scarf and espeed
7 Mawile-Mega not necessarily 100% hard L, but after seeing Firium lose to Mawile, it's basically as good a counter as you can get - OK, this one is actually ok. Espeed and bulk can actually win 50/50s though depending on both sets so it's still somewhat unreliable. The fact that you say this is as good as you ca get for this is representative of how garbage this shit is 8 Sableye-Mega just needs to predict physical vs special - 50/50s are not counters lol. Also matchups vary based on the sableye set + 252+ Atk Choice Band burned Dragonite Outrage vs. 248 HP / 8 Def Sableye: 207-243 (68.3 - 80.1%) band just wins 90% of the time. 9 Togekiss Z-Thunder Wave and CharmCharm 12.077% @ 1630 AND 252+ Atk Choice Band Dragonite Iron Head vs. 156 HP / 0 Def Togekiss: 306-362 (87.4 - 103.4%)
10 Victini Icium beats all. Other sets all vary/lose Icium Z 1.156% I'll give you this one though. The fact that this is even a set just proves how overcentralizing dragonite is that it necessitates these sets in tourneys to reliably counter.
B Rank
11 Aggron-Mega unless you're running min spdef vs Firium, burst into Head Smash should win
12 Haxorus Scarf > Scarf 13 Jirachi Scarf Ice Punch 252+ Atk Choice Band Dragonite Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Jirachi: 366-432 (107.3 - 126.6%)
14 Necrozma berry eats p much any hit With the right set you should be able to just ID T1 and win. You do lose to crits though. Band can also give you trouble 252 Atk Choice Band Dragonite Outrage vs. 248 HP / 20 Def Necrozma: 292-345 (73.5 - 86.9%). A low roll kills you (shut up i know it's not ada, im counting this as a counter)
15 Pheromosa z-blizzard is yikes, but wins. Even outspeeds Scarf Icium Z 4.320%. Refer to Vic point. I'll give you this one.
16 Porygon2 multiscale trace is yikes, not even band superpower saves you
17 Audino-Mega bulks hits across the board
18 Avalugg Avalanche is just a clean KO
19 Quagsire requires careful bulking, but can eat both physical and special hits quite nicely
Fixed matchups. I think that some of these examples just show how dumb this thing is that people made sets just to have a chance to counter it.
"Counter", by my definition, being something that should win against a vast majority, if not all, of Dragonite sets, viable and otherwise. 11 counters, with most of those from B rank and having incredibly low usage (avalugg, audino, p2, quag), shows that this thing is busted. I'm not sure if there's a single other poke in the meta with these kind of matchups in terms of coverage and unpredictability. Even if you won't ban it, it's at least worth a suspect. Also, Quote, if you do do a suspect please make it high reqs.
Dragonite is very, very kyub-esque. It has little to no counters, and what it doesn't have in raw base stats it makes up with stuff like dragon dance and extreme speed. I think dragonite in a meta where firium and scarf don't exist, it's fine. There's a lot of options. But both of these sets are relevant and used in tour play, as well as more often than you'd think on ladder. Dnite is unhealthy. Any team without like a gyarados is probably weak to/lured by a specific Dnite set. I think a suspect before the gen ends would be fine. This mon is pretty controversial, and if it doesn't get banned it doesn't get banned. I think these days in USUM 1v1, people are just way too comfortable with matchup issues and way too much versatility. There's a reason people take so long to prep in usum 1v1 tournaments, it's because covering even a lot of the metagame is impossible. You'll always want to be prepared for what your opponent brings, and not the b- rank mons they don't that your teams will be weak to anyways. Dragonite imo while perfectly unhealthy / way too versatile on its own also represents this general unhealthy decentralization the meta absolutely has. An USUM 1v1 metagame without dragonite will be a lot healthier, and will let you cover other things.
God it's been like a year since we've had a proper metagame discussion discussion-
As always, the first thing to think about in a "broken" argument is checks and counters:
S Rank
?1 Charizard-Mega-X mainly struggles with the 50/50 vs dd dragonium and Scarf is another 50/50 if zard's even speed crept to outspeed after fc/dd
?2 Dragonite
1 Gyarados-Mega hard L
S- Rank
?3 Magearna scummy z-coverage and carefully crept band sets can get the better of magearna
A+ Rank
?4 Greninja Scarf or super spdef for specs beam
?5 Metagross-Mega requires Ice Punch for reliability, struggles with scummy z-coverage
?6 Tapu Lele beats every set pretty nicely other than scarf iron head
A Rank
?7 Gardevoir-Mega scarf iron head can flinch, but garde p much wins, otherwise
2 Mew Kew hard counters. The only downside is that it needs an attack for Z-Dragon Dance techs.
3 Slowbro-Mega only loses if it predicts physical but runs into special with max spa stab zmoves and vice versa
?8 Zeraora protect lol. Scarf doesn't even KO zera-
?9 Zygarde-Complete a lot of speed wars involved, though Ice Beam should win otherwise.
A- Rank
?10 Primarina only loses to DD Flyinium or weird Z-thunder wave stall
?11 Tapu Fini while it has the capacity to beat all sets, it mainly struggles with outspeed + the 50/50 between Taunting or GoA turn 1 vs DD Flyinium
B+ Rank
4 Altaria-Mega similar case to Slowbro
?12 Celesteela mainly loses to banded Fire Punch or z-Fire
5 Clefable banded Iron Head is not a thing-
6 Jumpluff just don't miss ez
7 Mawile-Mega not necessarily 100% hard L, but after seeing Firium lose to Mawile, it's basically as good a counter as you can get
8 Sableye-Mega just needs to predict physical vs special
?13 Serperior mainly struggles with scarf and special flyinium
9 Togekiss Z-Thunder Wave and Charm
?14 Tyranitar-Mega superpower
10 Victini Icium beats all. Other sets all vary/lose
B Rank
11 Aggron-Mega unless you're running min spdef vs Firium, burst into Head Smash should win
12 Haxorus Scarf > Scarf
13 Jirachi Scarf Ice Punch
?15 Lopunny-Mega loses to scarf superpower or random protects, needs ice punch
14 Necrozma berry eats p much any hit
15 Pheromosa z-blizzard is yikes, but wins. Even outspeeds Scarf
16 Porygon2 multiscale trace is yikes, not even band superpower saves you
?16 Registeel loses to band/ carefully used z-coverage
?17 Type: Null beats everything except DD Dragonium
?18 Whimsicott only really struggles vs special Flyinium
B- Rank
?19 Archeops loses to scarf, smashes everything else
?20 Deoxys-S would be a reliable win if it didn't have to 50/50 DD sets all the time
?21 Diancie-Mega only loses to iron heads and groundiums
?22 Kyurem scarf is a real bully :( requires icium otherwise
?23 Manaphy a set with like charm/acid armor and ice beam could probably win, but yuck
?24 Medicham-Mega protect/scarf
?25 Swampert-Mega relying on sleep rolls is always a big yuck
C+ Rank
?26 Ambipom scarf/protect
17 Audino-Mega bulks hits across the board
18 Avalugg Avalanche is just a clean KO
?27 Entei weird Rockium sets with WoW can probably win but eh-
?28 Gyarados DD Dragonium is just a bit too much for gyara to handle
?29 Heracross-Mega major speed wars to see who kos who turn 1
19 Quagsire requires careful bulking, but can eat both physical and special hits quite nicely
?30 Smeargle scarf or (god forbid) max speed
?31 Umbreon only fears banded Superpower
Anything marked with a ?X is a check, while X on its own is a counter, which puts us at about 19 counters and 31 checks from S to C+ out of about the 100 mons in those ranks, meaning about half of the most viable/relevant metagame handles a majority of things Dragonite can throw at them, if not everything.
"Counter", by my definition, being something that should win against a vast majority, if not all, of Dragonite sets, viable and otherwise
"Check", by my definition, being something that beats a majority of Dragonite sets, but struggles with one particular set or the more niche sets like Scarf and Groundium/Firium, or otherwise struggles with reliability, like making Heracross outspeed Dragonite or getting more than 1 turn of sleep with Swampert.
Honestly, I was prepared to do a whole comparison to kyub, digging through usage stats to see its impact on the meta over time, but just doing matchups alone has changed my mind from previously being an abstain to DNB.
The issue here is that there are so many question marks. There are very few counters and even stuff like necrozma can lose to ryyjyywyy 's z-haze set, victini can lose to Z-Surf dragonite (not common, but used in ghosting tour finals and theoretical), haxorus lose to haban berry, etc. Dragonite can beat pretty much everything it wants to, just like kyurem-black. Blazikin can back me up when I say that electrium dragonite can beat non-bulky gyaradoses too, it's menacing.
I really don't see the down sides to a suspect whatsoever. Part of the issue with kyub was that it can beat whatever it wants, and dnite is no different. It is stupidly versatile, and restricts teambuilding unless you purposely choose to ignore its very relevant other sets. Please suspect with hard reqs (rachi ones were good).
1. How does Dragonite impact teambuilding? What is requisite for a team to have a good shot against Dragonite, and is this mandatory? Do you think that Dragonite is so centralizing that every team needs a specialized counter for it?
2. What are some Pokemon that also have few checks/counters that Dragonite beats? Would a Dragonite ban allow them to run rampant?
3. Hypothetically, would Dragonite be broken/uncompetitive if its set was known in Team Preview?
Considering the movement against Dragonite, I believe that it would be beneficial to suspect Dragonite not because it's broken, but because a precedent would help the metagame going into Gen 8. High reqs are optimal to fence out the mob of angry low- to mid-ladder players who either spam Dragonite or are damn frustrated with it.
If we are to compare Dragonite with Mimikyu, we see a similar image. Dragonite's situation mirrors that of Mimikyu: there are enough checks/counters to each set, but there are few Pokemon that counter both sets.
1. How does Dragonite impact teambuilding? What is requisite for a team to have a good shot against Dragonite, and is this mandatory? Do you think that Dragonite is so centralizing that every team needs a specialized counter for it?
As Kardistry has said previously, I feel a lot of SM has gotten too comfortable with matchup issues. Even for me when I'm building, it's hard to slot in a hard counter to Dragonite outside of Mega Gyarados. The way I do it is make sure that between my mons each one can cover most Dragonite sets at least and rely on predicts to beat other sets. I'd argue that a team with Magearna and a band Dragonite check like Greninja would cover it, but I'm not sure how comfortable I would feel against it. I don't think every team NEEDS a centralized counter, but mostly because it's so versatile that that would be unfeasible without being overcentralizing. It sure feels better when you have a Gyarados and they have a Dragonite.
I think the largest winner would probably be Garchomp. The effect would be doubled, as without Dragonite Mega Gyarados usage definitely takes a dive, both of which were key checks to this menace. Overall though, I don't see too many things that are checked by Dragonite that get made too good after a ban.
I don't think so at all. This thing's greatest strength is its unpredictability. It's individual sets are pretty good due to Multiscale just being insane, but that gives it the ability to run almost anything and be the busted thing it is.
I disagree with the suspect being on Dragonite.
With Lugia and Lunala being already banned, I think the suspect should be on Multiscale, which imo is the real reason behind Dnite's potency.
Why ban an ability rather than a pokemon ? Because I'm tired of mons being banned, and yes it's purely subjective.
The objective reason I could draw behind it is that even tho I know people are against complex bans (that's why Snorlax is banned as a whole and not just Yawnlax), we should try to pinpoint as exactly as we can what makes a suspect OP. And in the case of Dragonite, it goes without saying that his ability, which basically gives him double effective HP for as long as he is at 100% HP, is the issue here. If you consider Multiscale as having double the HP as your teambuilder says for as long as you didn't get attacked, a Max HP Dragonite has more effective HP than a max HP Blissey, on top of having actual attack stats, physical defense stats, speed and a plethora of setups.
Outside of that, I think we can all agree that outside of being strong bait material because of Multiscale Dnite being the norm, Inner focus Dnite is actually not worthy of a suspect. Heck I wouldn't even consider it A tier.
Non-Pokemon elements, at least in my opinion, should only ever be considered for bans when they are solely the source of a problem in the metagame, not when they are just a part of the problem.
Multiscale alone is not what makes Dragonite borderline overpowered, but the fact that it has Multiscale AND pseudo legendary stats alongside one of the widest varieties of usable coverage, stab, and setup moves of any pokemon in the metagame.
When it comes to non-Pokemon cases, you need to consider how effective the aspect would be on more of a subpar Pokemon, say Phione for example. If Multiscale were the sole source of why Dragonite is OP, then the same should also apply for Phione. This is why OHKO moves are banned instead of the most viable users, as well as Evasion boosting and Accuracy lowering, as these moves placed little to no importance on the Pokemon using them having to be viable in order to win with them.
That said, we do have moments where the logic needs to be scaled carefully, namely the Perish Song ban. With Perish Song, it's a bit more contentious of a matter, as something like Perish Song Cubone is going to have much more difficulty dealing with attacks in order to survive to Perish Song activating than something like Lapras. Despite this, it was ultimately felt that enough Pokemon became problematic with Perish Song to warrant a ban on the move, rather than its best users.
Ultimately, you don't see any tiers with, say, V-Create being banned over Victini, and that's for good reason.
