Announcement 1v1 Suspect #7 - Power Construct (Zygarde-Complete)

[The Official Glyx]

1v1's seventh suspect will be Power Construct! While Zygarde-Complete's inception into SS 1v1 was met with fierce competition from many notably more powerful Pokemon there were which also happened to check it, almost every consecutive ban afterwards has shifted the metagame further and further in its favor. With a naturally absurd bulk level that only further gets bolstered by Power Construct, a solid variety of defensive setup and offense-lowering moves, as well as the progressive power de-creeping of the metagame with each of the prior bans, Zygarde-Complete finds itself in a position where not much can really KO it, short of high-powered offense from threats that can hit it super effectively, like Regidrago and Darmanitan-Galar. Additionally, despite somewhat of a limited movepool in relation to prior bans, Zygarde still finds itself capable of running a wide variety of sets and items that allow it to eke out wins against multiple Pokemon that otherwise would have threatened it. While a Dragon and Ground type may seem like an obvious target for Ice moves, not much running Ice Punch or Ice Beam short of proper Ice-types actually have the power to reliably KO every iteration of Zygarde; the same goes for Fairy-types, which often find themselves being walled by Assault Vest sets. All of this leaves people struggling to experiment in teambuilding without either having to setguess every Zygarde at team preview or otherwise slapping a Regidrago or Darmanitan-Galar on every team.

Zygarde-Complete sets are constantly evolving, with each new one leaving even more of a sour taste in people's mouths. While Zygarde-Complete initially started off running mostly basic resist berry + setup builds, once the metagame began stabilizing, it came to pick up more nuanced sets like specially defensive Weakness Policy, Rocky Helmet with Breaking Swipe, and Leftovers with Protect, Substitute, and Toxic, and even Choice Band seeing use in the recent Circuit Champsionships. With no particular build dominating mainstream usage, this had led to people having to guess as to what an opponent's Zygarde may be running, since a Weakness Policy or Assault Vest set means your Primarina or Sylveon don't really work anymore, while a Rocky Helmet set makes both Urshifu formes and Avalanche Aggron into a loss, and a Substitute completely blocks Goodra's Acid Spray as well as Leech Seed and Toxic from various stallers, and vice versa, while many of these Pokemon can't really adapt back in a way to counteract Zygarde-Complete's adaptations without suffering far too much in opportunity cost. This leaves reliable Zygarde answers being limited to mostly hyper-focused Pokemon, between hyper-offensive threats like Regidrago, Darmanitan-Galar, Glastrier, Choice Band Unnerve Haxorus, Choice Specs Porygon-Z, and Choice Band Triple Axel Pheromosa, as well as some purely defensive threats that can stall out Zygarde-Complete like Aromatisse, Tapu Bulu, Ferrothorn, Whimsicott, and the like, with a few fringe options also getting the job done, like speedy Choice Specs Tapu Fini, Taunt Spectrier, Kyurem, Choice Band Avalugg, and double dance Kartana.

On the other hand, Zygarde-Complete still does face some opportunity cost in switching between sets, since while something like an Assault Vest may allow you to withstand powerful special attacks from Naganadel and Sylveon as well as defeat Trick from Togekiss, it also disallows you from using your status moves, meaning you can no longer Coil up against Landorus-Therian or Metagross, while not having the added special bulk naturally loses you the aforementioned matchups, and using Leftovers with Toxic loses you the benefits of both of those in favor of gaining mostly lower-ranked matchups and the mirror, and so on so forth. Additionally, it is far from the most intuitive Pokemon to use, with matchups like Sylveon, Garchomp, Dragapult, Necrozma, Primarina, and etc requiring both specific play and specific sets on both sides in order for Zygarde-Complete to pull off the win. Overall, while Zygarde-Complete may have some strong aspects to it that make it difficult to safely play against, the user also faces difficulties in using it effectively without otherwise making it utterly obvious which set they're using, meanwhile, the general metagame also seems to find itself adapting more and more while Zygarde-Complete has remained somewhat stagnant over the past few months, so while Zygarde-Complete may have a strong variety of tools that presently allow it to centralize the metagame around itself, it still has a number of exploitable weaknesses in one form or another that continue to grow as time goes by.

For this suspect test, we will be using the regular 1v1 ladder, so you must create a new account that begins with 1PC to qualify. Power Construct will be legal on the ladder. The Deadline for the Power Construct Suspect Suspect is Thursday, January 6th, 11:59 PM EST (GMT -5)

This suspect shall be reusing the sliding scale system from the prior suspects, being:

Minimum Games Needed

GXE	Minimum Games
75	50
75.3	49
75.6	48
75.9	47
76.2	46
76.5	45
76.8	44
77.1	43
77.4	42
77.7	41
78	40
78.3	39
78.6	38
78.9	37
79.2	36
79.5	35

The way this works is that the minimum game requirement is reduced by 1 game for every 0.3 GXE you have above 75 GXE, down to a minimum of 35 games with a GXE of 79.5 or above, with the absolute minimum GXE requirement being 75%, with at least 50 games played.

You must use a fresh account registered after the posting of this thread for your reqs. This alt must begin with 1PC, e.g. 1PC Rosa

Additionally, we will be implementing a procedure used by other tiers where suspect reqs will be verified by the 1v1 Tier Leaders / subforum moderators. With this in mind:

• DO NOT LOAD UP MORE GAMES AFTER GETTING REQS UNTIL YOU HAVE BEEN VERIFIED!
• Once verified, your post will be edited with you being notified of the verification.
• If you load up more games before being verified and end up losing your qualifying GXE, your post will be deleted and you will have to qualify again.

If you have achieved the voting requirements, CLICK HERE.

When posting in this thread, please keep in mind these rules:
1. No one liners or uninformed posts
2. No discussion on other potential suspects or the suspect process
3. Be respectful

Your post will be deleted and possibly infracted if you fail to follow them. Have fun!

 

[crow crumbs]

to keep it short i will be voting dnb and i encourage others to do the same. the most convincing argument against zyg is that its too oppressive in the builder but purely looking at its (b-ranked and up) counters/mons that are reliable enough to be ran as counters (idpress, band) its very clearly possible to beat zygarde without falling back on repetitive cores/team structures. so by what other metric can zygarde be considered banworthy for the threat it poses in the teambuilder? its true that zygarde has ways around some of these mons but some of the techs like endure+wp/helm+espeed for phero, sludge wave, or core enforcer for idpress urshifu are really bad and the low-oppurtunity cost ones like superpower on av for specs pz can still lose to offsets like defensive nasty plot. cheese is a part of 1v1 and zygarde is not rly unique here. also running two-checks and setguessing is a valid strategy since its generally pretty easy to at least differentiate av and non-av previews.

i dont see zygarde drastically evolving further, its been pretty highly explored at this point and the only theorycrafted set thats yet to see tour usage is spite. band is rly bad even vs a wp spammer, put the replay of it dropping to custap goodra instead.

 

[zioziotrip]

I will be voting dnb once I get reqs as I believe zygc is currently manageable both in-game and in the builder. I think people are quick to overplay zygc’s capabilities when
1) it has plently of hard counters in the form of specs/id fini, ice types, hax/drago, ferro, id/cb urshi, spect, sylv, and whimsi while having plenty of soft checks in grasses/fairies/pz/ice moves
2) I don’t find its ability to cheese particularly impressive next to other top mons which have similar capabilities. For example: Fini will always beat non-custap venu with specs ice beam. Fini can make the cele mu dubious, if not strictly losing for cele, with id cm taunt. Drago can make lugg/glast inconsistent at checking it with breaking swipe which is easy enough to fit on AV.
Point being, top mons often have deceptive MUs and this is just something you have to account for either by running hard counters or deciding to leave it up to setguessing in-game.
3) zygc is prone to losing MUs it simply should not due to its lackluster attack, plethora of weaknesses, and over-reliance on setup. Zygc has lost to zera, volcanion, and frogging custap goodra. I think it’s evident if you look at tours that zygc is never a 3-0 or even fake 3-0 into people who play the tier. It has a fair amount of opportunity cost between sets which often leads it to having some dubious MUs in cases where it should be strictly winning.

have fun laddering all or at least remain sane. nice song Rosa

 

[DEG]

I think people are downplaying ZygC capabilities. It does, in a way, constricts teambuilding and revolves the metagame in a bad way around it. Let me explain by saying that I look into what a Pokemon can do on two levels. First level being on the teambuilding and second when it comes to team preview/picking.

First I would like to correct two things about bird's matchups. ID Taunt Shifu loses to Toxic Zygarde, Ferrothorn can be tech'd by Rest Zygarde deepnding on both movesets, Volcarona can easily be tech'd by a rock move cause Zygarde usually have a free slot so using it as a check is unreliable, and yea as you said PZ can be tech'd by AV. I'm not gonna include other stuff like sludge wave for bulu and offensive Iron Tail for Aroma cause they're dumb and have huge opportunity cost to an extent, and they're a good teambuilding factors and part of 1v1.

• Teambuilding

Anyway, now that I got this out of the way, I'm gonna start with teambuilding. I do believe that Zygarde wraps teambuilding around it in an unhealthy way. It is true that some Pokemon can defeat Zygarde but some Pokemon are forced to constrict themselves into one set to be able to beat it, Urshifu is stuck with Band, PZ is stuck with Anti-Cheese NP, Fini is stuck with either Specs or taunt on the cm set, Bulu is stuck with Disable and taunt. Some of these Pokemon can't afford to run other stuff or they'll be disadvantaged against Zygarde which in a way restricts creativity and teambuidling. When compared to other top threats like Fini, Celesteela, and Regidrago, most of their checks do not have to restricts themselves to a specific set to be able to beat them which is a difference when comparing Threats and Broken Pokemon.

Secondly, I also believe that fitting a 100% Zygarde check to not risk set guessing is also a huge restriction when it comes to teambuilding and that is exacerbated by the presence of Regidrago. You can't run a fairy and expect to beat both Dragons because one can tech it so sometimes you're stuck with a fairy that can't beat all Zygarde and have to run another Zygarde check and either risk the set guessing or start to fall into repetitive teambuilding.

Thirdly, building with Zygarde isn't that hard, it's an extremely splashable Pokemon and pairing it with ambiguous Pokemons uch as Zeraora, Regidrago, and Fini or Pokemon like Celesteela and Metagross that can goes well with Zygarde can allow it to hide it set pretty well. So you make the preview harder to read

• Preview

Zygarde has plenty of sets and tech potential which makes reading its preview pretty annoying when the team is well built. If you're running a set guessing team it can be pretty dangerous going in against a Zygarde team since a misread can cost the game, and when compared to other top threats this isn't the case.

It also goes well with a lot of Pokemon as it covers a wide range of stuff and doesn't get beat by a lot which makes a lot of the games a 5050 game when picking into the Zygarde team on top of its set guessing potential, which can be a nuisance to guess specially since AV beats most fairies while other sets are oriented to other stuff, and as mentioned above, there's cores that can pretty much hide the sets.

At first I wasn't too sure about Zygarde being broken but when I started building for champs and other SS teams I found it hard finding great cores that deal with Zygarde+Teammates in check while not too repetitive, on paper it doesn't seem too restricting and broken but in practice it's such a nuisance to deal with. And with sets such as Spite and the usage of Sludge Wave starting to get traction this lowers the pool of viable Pokemon that can 100% beat Zygarde.