AAA Almost Any Ability

[Rakan]

So I just started playing this metagame as I got pretty bored with the playstyle of OU, and lower tiers are still pretty volatile at the moment, and I have to say, it is quite possibly the most fun I've had in a long time with Pokemon. There's some obviously broken / annoying as hell stuff like Pixilate Koko, Triage abusers, Aerilate Dnite, etc. but overall I still find that there's a lot of room for creativity. One of my favorite sets to use is Electrium-Z Protean Dragon Dance Latios. It may sound weird at first but I've found it to be marvelously effective. It gets past bulky Waters, Skarmory, and Celesteela with Z-Thunder, I have Ice Beam for opposing Dragon-types and BoltBeam coverage, and Earthquake, which, when combined with the Protean boost can 2HKO Magearna and OHKO Magnezone even without any investment or a Dragon Dance boost. Dragon Dance allowed Latios to get the drop on scarfers that would normally outspeed it. I've also found Flash Fire Ferrothorn to be hilarious, as it can wall entire teams once Fighting-types are removed. Anyways, after playing a lot of this tier over the past few days I eventually ended up getting voting reqs.

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I don't know if it's just my luck, but I've seen maybe one or two Fluffy users, neither of which were particularly effective. I personally don't think it warrants a ban when stupid stuff like the -ate ability abusers exist.

Do Not Ban

Can someone color in my TC now pretty plz

 

[Gross Sweep]

proof

I would like to say this suspect was my first experience ever playing in the aaa tier, and I must admit I'll definitely be playing more from now on. I'd also like to thank darksylvion, without taking a team of yours from the bazaar I wouldn't have gotten reqs (I did make a few changes tho). With that being said I really don't have much experience with fluffy, however, I saw a magnezone eat my Terrakions adaptability Close Combat, and it cost me a game - so out of spite of that I have to vote BAN

 

[crystalcash]

Honestly, while Fluffy itself isn't broken in a traditional sense, it does promote unhealthy teambuilding. It is among many other things that should also be looked at, because the meta right now is in a state where it promotes lazy decision making and rewards bad players somewhat consistently(in ladder long run, most of the the good players eventually get rewarded, but) in a tournament setting where every match is important- having such a volatile metagame that can reward the worse player is very unappealing. I'm voting BAN

 

[Pagoose]

reqs

Gonna have to vote ban here. Its pretty insane how throwing fluffy on any bulky mon lets it invalidate most physical mons in the game. I think balance teams are the best abusers of this rather than stall, being able to throw a fluffy zapdos or mandibuzz on your team and volt switch/u-turn out and gain momentum on so much shit is amazing. I think we all know how crazy the defense is, but just some examples:

252 Atk Life Orb Tough Claws Hoopa-Unbound Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fluffy Zapdos: 126-149 (32.8 - 38.8%) -- 6.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Aerilate Pinsir-Mega Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fluffy Mandibuzz: 79-94 (18.6 - 22.1%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery

Some of the strongest attackers in the game do jack shit damage. banhammer for a fur coat clone is well justified.

Some other thoughts on mons I've been using:

Magearna is a god. RegenVest is amazing, excellent bulk with a nuke in fleur cannon on par with latios's draco meteor. Literally the best dual typing in the game allows it to switch into so many things, and then it can use a slow volt switch to gain momentum at literally no cost because it regens back the HP. This one set alone is probably worth S rank, I haven't even tried a shift gear boosting set which has some nice possibilities like tinted lens with fairium-z. The aegislash of gen 7, basically no downside to running this and it fits on HO, balance, hard stall, even niche styles like trick room and rain.

New surge abilities are awesome, in particular psychic surge. A 50% boost is strong by itself for psychic types, but invalidating priority moves is such amazing team support. Latios the mamoswine check lmao

Grassy surge ferrothorn along with leftovers acts like pseudo poison heal, and in combination with leech seed ferro just doesn't die. As a bonus palpatine himself would approve of power whip's 50% power boost. I still prefer flash fire but if you have some solid fire resists this is a hilariously fun set.

Poison heal boosting zygarde was already a massive threat, now it can run mono-attacking with only 2 pretty rare resistances, as most grass and bug types also have secondary steel or poison types. Can totally also run a sub toxic set like gliscor from like 3 years ago with a stab that bodies anyone who can avoid poison. Might have to be looked at later.

Nice new bulkier tentacruel alternative for stall, although no rapid spin. What do you guys run on this? I personally ran unaware but I'm sure there's better sets out there

In terms of broken shit, aerilate is still borked like last gen. Dragonite, landorus-t and noivern all still do exactly the same as they did before, they need a ban. The first two are kinda held in check by fluffy but I don't want a broken checking broken situation, hopefully banning fluffy will prompt these getting banned afterwards.
Also stakeout might have to be looked at later. Not only does it shit on stall when used on something like choice band tyranitar, OHKOing skarmory for example, it gives pokemon the ability to completely destroy your own soft counters. This is totally nuts, completely and utterly insane. Especially for fast pokemon with mixed coverage like thunderus, keldeo, or latios, you just can't switch into them at all. I guess we will see how the meta settles but I don't know how long these will last.

 

[Bronto Burt 2]

reqs

A lot of firsts for me. The first time I've participate in a suspect test, the first time I played AAA, and the first time I've made a post. Anyways, I decided to make a stall team to get a feel for how broken Fluffy was and... unsurprisingly, its way too broken. A lot of people were unprepared for stall and were unable to handle it. Fluffy is a big contributor to this, as it essentially gives a Pokemon Fur Coat for an added fire weakness... great for mons that already die in a couple of hits to a fire move such as Ferrothorn, Skarmory, Celesteela etc. You are basically doubling their defence for nothin, in essence giving them Fur Coat. I had a lot of success with Fluffy Avalugg, which was even able to take some physical fire moves such as a Flare Blitz from A-Marowak.

The best way I found to stop these Fluffy mons was either to surprise them with a special fire move, which you can usually see coming and switch out, or use a special stall breaker. The Z-Hyponsis Xurkitree set had some success doing this, but after a while I was able to predict them going for the Z-Hypnosis and switch into a Magic Bounce mon to shut them down. Fluffy is also very splashable and hard to predict as to which mon will be using it. Due to the benefit with very little downside, the unpreparedness of teams to combat it, and the splashable and unpredictability of it, I vote to Ban Fluffy.

 

[mrmime4]

COIL

I really like the positive and negative sides of Fluffy. I honestly think this ability isnt broken because you can exploid it much better than other abilites(I already showed some ways to counter fluffy users in a previous post). I would enjoy it if GF gives us more of these double edged abilites...
Therefore I vote DO NOT BAN

 

[Aku Mau Ngetroll]

COIL

Fluffy, an ability that almost as a same as Fur Coat, while this ability give fire weakness, that almost nothing become a problem, as you can see the fire weakness can be covered with other team mates. this give an easier time for building team for stall, since it like almost giving so many random pokemon something a "resistance" which halved almost any the physical attack. i tried before with mew and chesnaught (over buzzwole because worry seed, their resistance is almost a same anyway). it's ridiculous to see an pixilate return tapu koko almost doing nothing to ches and buzz, which means stall can compress their job to 1 or 2 pokemon. bringing every other mons a random *not so viable moves like Tapu Koko having Hidden Power Fire just to kill a buzz/ches/skarm whatever with fluffy is just silly (yeah as Zephyr said), not even Wild Charge / Galvanize return or (Pixilate return in case of buzz/ches) can 2hko. this is not the same with giving your skarmory a volt absorb, if skarm given a volt absorb, atleast we can still doing much damage to skarm with a strong neutral move like close combat, but with fluffy, that skarmory is impossible to kill ! not counting that you need a time to understand who is going fluffy, which make you lose so much momentum.

yeah other point already covered by others, so i vote BAN

 

[blergsid]

Can I just say one thing about the fluffy ability?
Long reach.
That is all.

 

[shiloh]

ill be voting to ban fluffy because its obviously broken along with a bunch of other shit. while i get the point of public suspects and why they are helpful i strongly disagree with doing it for the next few suspects. there is a ton of broken shit running around and doing 2 week suspects for each one will just promote a broken and "unfun" metagame (even though thats not a valid reason its still a good point to bring up). for the next few either do council voting which i think should have been done for this, or do multiple suspects at once for each 2 week period (kyube / weavile / protean / -ates / etc) just to name a few that were annoying during laddering are all obviously broken and should be dealt with before the open starts. i think just doing mass bans for the next few potentially broken mons then maybe trying them out again on their own in a few months should be the way to go. sorry for the rant but i feel that handling suspects publicly when there are a lot more than 1 offending member should be a last case scenario which i feel should not have been applied here.

here are some teams i put together if anyone wants to try them out bc i dont have any use for them with the suspect being over

https://hastebin.com/raw/igahugumoc

fun ho i made similar to the team i used last aaa open. basically get up rocks then start breaking through shit with zam / thund / hoopa and clean up with luc and gar. bit weak to slush rush mons but most offense will be. tinted lens hoopa is fun as fuck and kind of a necessity because the rest of the team has problems dealing with fatter shit like magearna.

https://hastebin.com/raw/ogelivojur

more of a balanced build around ph fini bc it seemed fun to use. unaware zap turned out to be the mvp of this team because it just deals with a ton of shit in the meta like kartana / nite and other scary set up mons. av mag because i feel is a necessity on these kinds of teams atm due to how much utility you pack into one slot (check to refridgerate mons like cb kyube / check to aerialters) etc. sd devastating drake chomp is one of the best balance breakers atm bc just being able to nuke something with 380bp dragon move after stab will almost always net you a kill. zam + luc have a cool backbone that might seem counter productive but it rarely ever came into play in my games.

 

[The Immortal]

Reminder that there's one day left for the suspect test.

Also, I'd like to let you know that the council is currently voting on quickbans. Expect the first batch of bans as soon as this test ends.

 

[LorisMasta17]

https://hastebin.com/raw/ogelivojur

I'm guessing this team isn't supposed to have Steafast Lucario.

 

[Boomburst]

According to the votes, fluffy will be banned in AAA,so why is fur coat still allowed in inheritance?

 

[EV]

According to the votes, fluffy will be banned in AAA,so why is fur coat still allowed in inheritance?

Completely separate metagames. Maybe you should broach the topic of Fluffy in the Inheritance thread if you think it's unhealthy there.

 

[Zephyr Dragon Lord]

According to the votes, fluffy will be banned in AAA,so why is fur coat still allowed in inheritance?

In addition, the stuff with Fur Coat and Fluffy have bad defensive movepools in general. Compare this to here, where you can recover freely while being Fluffy. It's easy to see why there were many votes for it being banned.

 

[sin(pi)]

tfw u realise reqs are only 2700

not much to say which hasn't been said, BAN FLUFFY

 

[3.14dgeot-Mega]

reqs

everything i have to say about fluffy has already said, so ban fluffy

 

[Serrak]

This is my first time getting reqs for a suspect test so I don't know if I've attached the screencap properly, but I'm voting to ban fluffy. It basically doubles defense in most relevant circumstances, and the best Fluffy users are those that either have good matchup against most methods of circumventing it or count on a partner to handle Fire coverage anyhow. It's just too much value for too little cost (*cough* Poison Heal *cough*).

 

[Laxpras]

MASS BAN ANNOUNCEMENT
​

Fluffy has been banned by a lopsided voting spread of 21-3.

More importantly, based on community outcry thanks to you guys, and my constant nagging, TI has also allowed our council to vote to quickban on several aspects of the meta. We required a unanimous vote to quickban, and this resulted in the following 5 items being unanimously banned:
Dragonite, Kyurem-Black, Illusion, Protean, Stakeout.

For reference, we also discussed the following, most of which were ban favored, but were debated and thus will remain in the AAA metagame for now:
Hoopa-Unbound, Kartana, Snorlax, Suicune, Xurkitree, Innards Out, Poison Heal, Stamina.

I'm excited that we're finally going to be able to get this meta going in a much more stable, and hopefully fun, manner. We are discussing some other major changes to the meta, which I will bring to the thread at a later time once the meta has settled on account of these changes. Notably, we are focused on addressing the generally overwhelming strength of stall in the meta.

Summary:

• Fluffy has been banned as a result of the suspect test
• The following have been banned by unanimous council votes:
  • Dragonite
  • Kyurem-Black
  • Illusion
  • Stakeout
  • Protean

Thank you to everyone who participated in the suspect test, and an additional shoutout to those who spoke out about the meta. Your voices were vital for the persuasion to allow these changes to happen.
So, how are all of these changes going to affect the meta? There is certainly a lot to discuss!

The Immortal
​

 

[Aku Mau Ngetroll]

i'm suggesting a ban or a suspect for a Dugtrio. yes we already ban Arena Trap, but Dugtrio is still the original abuser, so it can still use Arena Trap. while stall lose a fluffy, they still have many options, and eliminate the threat to team with Duggy. i think it still too much to handle.

 

[Zephyr Dragon Lord]

RIP Protean. It's a terribly fun ability to play around with...
The rest of those are stuff I'm happy is gone. I was going to make a Stakeout post... but now I don't need to!
If OU can handle Duggy, AAA can, as well. The whole metagame got better around it. Plus, hazards break its Sash. Right now, though... defense has a much better hold on the meta right now. Dugtrio is not the big part so much than Poison Heal Zygarde and Tapu Fini being powerful forces. We may need a Zygade suspect eventually....

 

[Ryota Mitarai]

Lol why isn't this posted here yet?

Minigod

Minior @ Focus Sash
Ability: Dazzling
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature / Adamant Nature
- Shell Smash
- Acrobatics
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake

So here how this god set can work:
Click Shell Smash. Taunt your opponent to try to OHKO you. Activate Focus Sash and start spamming Acrobatics. If the opponent resists Acrobatics for some reason, spam Stone Edge and/or Earthquake. Keep it away from Mold Breaker shenanigans, Stealth Rock, Unaware, and multi-hit moves. Dazzling gives you permanent imunnity to priority moves, which would straight away kill Minior after Shell Smash.

Calcs

+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kartana: 261-307 (100.7 - 118.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Alakazam: 447-526 (178 - 209.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Terrakion: 357-421 (110.5 - 130.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 200 HP / 0 Def Zygarde: 280-330 (68.7 - 81%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

[Sylveon.]

Not gonna lie, that set is a beast against offense as sitting at 120 base speed minior is impossible to outspeed at +2 and gets more than excellent coverage, but most of the time it doesn't do anything vs balanced and absolutely nothing against stall, as 100 offenses are just not enough in general.

 

[G-Luke]

Lol why isn't this posted here yet?

Minigod

Minior @ Focus Sash
Ability: Dazzling
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature / Adamant Nature
- Shell Smash
- Acrobatics
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake

So here how this god set can work:
Click Shell Smash. Taunt your opponent to try to OHKO you. Activate Focus Sash and start spamming Acrobatics. If the opponent resists Acrobatics for some reason, spam Stone Edge and/or Earthquake. Keep it away from Mold Breaker shenanigans, Stealth Rock, Unaware, and multi-hit moves. Dazzling gives you permanent imunnity to priority moves, which would straight away kill Minior after Shell Smash.

Calcs

+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kartana: 261-307 (100.7 - 118.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Alakazam: 447-526 (178 - 209.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Terrakion: 357-421 (110.5 - 130.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+2 252+ Atk Minior Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. 200 HP / 0 Def Zygarde: 280-330 (68.7 - 81%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Isnt Minior like Aegislash in that its other form cannot be accessed without its signature ability

 

[Scarf]

Isnt Minior like Aegislash in that its other form cannot be accessed without its signature ability

IIRC it's sent out in its core form first, then immediately its ability activates and transforms it to Meteor Form. That's how it works in-game iirc.
Then without its ability theoretically it wouldn't transform initially at all, maintaining its Core form.
iirc

e: iirc

 

[Iynhe]

My team has a dragonite and a protean latias. Well, crap.
I don't think that minior will change form, btw.