BH Balanced Hackmons Suspects and Bans Thread

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Just a small note that Levitate/Air Balloon/Magnet Rise/Telekinesis Targeted/Flying types don’t benefit from Terrain, so your point on Ray benefitting from Psychic Terrain does not apply.

It's not a direct benefit. Psychic Surge (and Dazzling) discourage people from running Fakespeed Refrigerate/Pixilate sets in general. These are two of Ray's biggest offensive checks/counters, so even if Ray got zero direct benefit from the terrain, it still enjoyed its presence for weakening and removing some of its major roadblocks from the meta.

Compare to ORAS, where Ray survived the GKR ban partly because it was forced to run King's Shield or switch out to avoid getting giga-wrecked every time Diancie/Kyurem/-ate lures got in on it.
 

cityscapes

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-Small, but Sunsteel's existence is another indirect buff to Ray, and other fast, frail mons, since it means Gear Grind is almost never seen, which makes Focus Sash more usable, which in this case is for the Sashsmash Ray sets.


might be wrong on this but i don't really see how new gen 7 mechanics can be used when determining whether something should be banned, i mean gengarite and magnet pull for example didn't receive any huge buff in gen 7 and those were still banned (rightfully so imo). instead i think it's a bit better to focus on the current metagame in itself. that being said you might be able to make a case to the contrary idk.

One thing I would mention about Rayquaza would be Misty Terrain slowing it down, where RegenVesters and Soundproofers such as Zygarde-Complete can handle its Dragon moves, either neutralizing the super effective hits or, turning neutral hits into a Pseudo resist.
first off this isn't even relevant. i mean sure this ability can counter mray in specific circumstances. how is this relevant to whether or not it should be banned

secondly...
This is a key factor bc how much harder would it be for Specs Ray to break Soundproof Slowbro-Mega under a Misty Terrain?
alright so we're running 2 limited defensive pokemon (i wouldn't call them useless outside of mray but they definitely do struggle to handle other offensive threats), just to "counter" a single ray set. and the best case scenario is that slowbro is forced to recover on draco and forces out mray. the worst case scenario is that slowbro just gets blown back by moongeist or volt switch and the team loses to boomburst.

If people considered Misty Surge combined with Soundproof for Specs, or Fur Coat for Choice Band, or Primordial Sea for Tinted Lens, that would make a huge difference.
fc vs cb tough claws is also kinda lame. first off fc is a pretty limited ability as well and not super viable in general. also, the only 100% counter to cb mray is fc slowbro, all other fc users can lose to specific coverage moves (steels, zyg to ice hammer, gira to dragon hammer) or just ray's stab (ogre).

other issue is that if you are running misty surge + soundproof + fc on your team (not including psea because ?????) then you just have a bunch of crunchy passive pokemon that lose to everything. without prankster setup becomes much more difficult to check, you want hazard control, you want a gar check, and even then something like mg diancie or triage ray :masuda: can just blow thru the team. everyone gets momentum for free.

edit: dazzling is a bad ability
 

Champion Leon

Banned deucer.


might be wrong on this but i don't really see how new gen 7 mechanics can be used when determining whether something should be banned, i mean gengarite and magnet pull for example didn't receive any huge buff in gen 7 and those were still banned (rightfully so imo). instead i think it's a bit better to focus on the current metagame in itself. that being said you might be able to make a case to the contrary idk.


first off this isn't even relevant. i mean sure this ability can counter mray in specific circumstances. how is this relevant to whether or not it should be banned

secondly...

alright so we're running 2 limited defensive pokemon (i wouldn't call them useless outside of mray but they definitely do struggle to handle other offensive threats), just to "counter" a single ray set. and the best case scenario is that slowbro is forced to recover on draco and forces out mray. the worst case scenario is that slowbro just gets blown back by moongeist or volt switch and the team loses to boomburst.


fc vs cb tough claws is also kinda lame. first off fc is a pretty limited ability as well and not super viable in general. also, the only 100% counter to cb mray is fc slowbro, all other fc users can lose to specific coverage moves (steels, zyg to ice hammer, gira to dragon hammer) or just ray's stab (ogre).

other issue is that if you are running misty surge + soundproof + fc on your team (not including psea because ?????) then you just have a bunch of crunchy passive pokemon that lose to everything. without prankster setup becomes much more difficult to check, you want hazard control, you want a gar check, and even then something like mg diancie or triage ray :masuda: can just blow thru the team. everyone gets momentum for free.

edit: dazzling is a bad ability
Primordial Sea was for Celesteela bc it isn’t weak to the other coverage moves, while resisting STAB. Flash Fire can be overridden with Mold Breaker + Fire Move (not necessarily Ray, but just in general). For Fire resists, Tinted Lens can bypass them as well.

Anyways, the whole reason for Misty Terrain was the fact that many people were acknowledging Probopass and Bastiodon, which is fine! But if we can use an all in 1 Dragon Damage reduction ability that also prevents Status moves... then it reduces the need for a Fairy or Steel type for Draco Meteor, which allows you to use a Check that isn’t afraid of Steel, Fire, Ground or Fighting Coverage Moves, and therefore you can use a bigger variety of options.

An ability that can keep Rayquaza-Mega from using 1/2 it’s STAB to full effect against your entire team is pretty helpful, especially when considering how many other Dragons like Garchomp-Mega, Dialga, Necrozma-Ultra, Sceptile-Mega, etc. pack strong Dragon STAB for offensive power.

I never mean to include Fur Coat, RegenVest, Primordial Sea and Misty Surge all in 1 team. Afterall, it depends on if you have a specific weakness to a certain set.

I use Unaware Audino-Mega, so Triage Rayquaza is literally never a problem for me.

But, if someone is concerned with say Specs, and already uses RegenVest, they could further prevent status like Toxic from breaking down their effectiveness, while also taking Dragon moves much easier.

Soundproof could also benefit from Misty Terrain.
The other benefit is removing other terrains set by the opponent like Red Orb Groudon with Electric Surge.

Anyways Misty Surge is not a bad ability, it’s more Defensive than the others, and since we are discussing ways Rayquaza-Mega bypasses sooo many things, my point is that a great Defensive Terrain can benefit the whole team and not force you to use Fairy or Steel types like Soundproof Mega Audino.

I think having a field effect is extremely nice, plus it frees up items slots so you can avoid filling teams with Safety Goggles, or using stuff like Comatose unless your truly afraid of Normalize.

TLDR- Misty lets you focus on stats and less on Defensive typing resists, aids in Item Slot expectations, and stacks on top of other abilities like Soundproof for handling moves.
 
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might be wrong on this but i don't really see how new gen 7 mechanics can be used when determining whether something should be banned, i mean gengarite and magnet pull for example didn't receive any huge buff in gen 7 and those were still banned (rightfully so imo). instead i think it's a bit better to focus on the current metagame in itself. that being said you might be able to make a case to the contrary idk.
It's more of a pre-emptive argument against people potentially saying "Ray was stronger in Gen VI and evaded a ban then, so it's not banworthy now." Which, on the surface, seems to be a very true and undeniable statement and was one I was thinking about making myself until I gave it thought in attempting to quantify that statement. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one reading here who hadn't gotten farther than "ate nerf + bulkier meta = Ray must be absolutely fine" when thinking about Ray's history and it surviving the GKR suspect.


Plus, yeah, even though it was a generation ago, it going to suspect and not getting banned is absolutely noteworthy and I do think it's important to clarify what changed objectively between now and then for Ray. That and species clause are unique in those regards whereas everything else doesn't have that sort of extra baggage.
 
I know I said I was dipping earlier (and I'm about done with actively participating on this thread), but for some reason I decided to come back to check on the current meta and I see this? With all due respect, this suspect is BS and needs to be cancelled.

For context, I absolutely abhor Rayquaza, I hate everything about it, from Its popularity, to its favoritism by Game Freak. For many, Rayquaza is one of the coolest Pokemon, to me, it is a nuisance that steals some of the thunder from my beloved Mewtwo and brings me much anguish, and even with all of that said, I can be objective enough to know that this thing isn't busted.

The problem with Rayquaza isn't that its "busted", the problem is that it has busted sets, but this is the same issue that Mewtwo had. When Psychic Surge and other offensive abilities were running around, did we ban the Mewtwo's for it? No, because back then we all came together as a community and determined that it was best to separate the sets from the mons that exploit them.

The Problem
Do you want to know the "problem" with Rayquaza?
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Zygarde-Complete: 485-573 (76.2 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252- SpD Diancie-Mega: 246-289 (80.9 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Giratina: 415-489 (82.3 - 97%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus: 415-489 (93.4 - 110.1%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252- SpD Mewtwo-Mega-Y: 461-543 (110.8 - 130.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Mewtwo-Mega-X: 944-1110 (226.9 - 266.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
That's the problem with Rayquaza. Since when was it a good idea to allow a superpriority ability to coexist with one of the highest stat-boosting moves in the game? That combination would make anything broken. Not only is it incontestable by anything from Prankster to Extreme Speed, this thing is essentially getting access to 3 Calm Minds in a single turn.

Solution
Extreme Augmentation:
The capabilities of the 'mon it is on that the set in question are difficult or impossible to check or counter. This implies that the power originates from the ability and that the choice of 'mon, item and even moveset, is irrelevant. e.g. Pure Power, Parental Bond
If you really want to solve the Rayquaza "problem", just ban Triage instead, as that ability isn't just "hax", but broken on a fundamental level. Despite this format's name, nearly everything in it adheres to a rudimentary concept of what Pokemon is supposed to be: Stronger Pokemon hit harder, Faster Pokemon move faster, etc. etc. Triage, as it is used in BH, completely breaks the game. With this ability, EV and nature investment essentially gets nullified. "Should I use max speed to outspeed potential checks? Nah, let's go Max Attack/Special Attack and run Triage". That's not even the worst of it, though. If you really wanted to, you could even run minimum speed to simultaneously outspeed everything in the game and land Core Enforcers on the obvious SashSmashDaz switchins to essentially beat everything in the game. This ability is literally the epitome of
removes the emphasis on skill,
Conclusion
I can assure you that with Triage gone, Rayquaza will go back to being balanced... To such an extent, even, that it would be hard to even imagine this thing having been busted. Aerialate? That can be tanked/blitzed, making it no different than Kyurem and Diancie. Dazzling? PrankHaze, UnawareThief, or even straight outspeeding it. Most of Its sets outside of that, like Tinted Lens, aren't significant enough to warrant suspecting.

If this suspect continues on, and worse yet, if it results in a ban, it'll inevitably open the door for any Pokemon found "irritating" to be banned as well. The community was already bouncing Groudon in and out of the meta, and now Rayquaza's joining It in this Ping Pong Catastrophe.

For those reading this, I'd advise to be cautious when running offense. Find a good Mewtwo, TTar, Greninja, etc. set? With the current community, you're going to be at serious risk of losing that mon in the format, possibly forever.

Additional Note: This post was not edited by a moderator, nor was this edit inspired by the post directly beneath mine. While my stances haven't changed (for instance, Imposter is still a problem), these threads already have enough vitriol in them. I want to see this community grow and prosper, however some of the shenanigans that transpire on this thread can serve as a breeding ground for toxicity, which I'm not immune to being affected by. Receiving laughing emojis is one thing, however the angry ones demonstrated just how strongly the community took these words.

With that said, I'm fading out like a Phantom, however, like a Ghost, I may continue to lurk along the shadows, and if anyone is willing to engage these points, like a comrade, I'll return.
 
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Chloe

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I know I said I was dipping earlier (and I'm about done with actively participating on this thread), but for some reason I decided to come back to check on the current meta and I see this? With all due respect, this suspect is BS and needs to be cancelled.

For context, I absolutely abhor Rayquaza, I hate everything about it, from Its popularity, to its favoritism by Game Freak. For many, Rayquaza is one of the coolest Pokemon, to me, it is a nuisance that steals some of the thunder from my beloved Mewtwo and brings me much anguish, and even with all of that said, I can be objective enough to know that this thing isn't busted.

The problem with Rayquaza isn't that its "busted", the problem is that it has busted sets, but this is the same issue that Mewtwo had. When Psychic Surge and other offensive abilities were running around, did we ban the Mewtwo's for it? No, because back then some of you simpletons had enough sense to separate the sets from the mon.

The Problem
Do you want to know the "problem" with Rayquaza?
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Zygarde-Complete: 485-573 (76.2 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252- SpD Diancie-Mega: 246-289 (80.9 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Giratina: 415-489 (82.3 - 97%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus: 415-489 (93.4 - 110.1%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252- SpD Mewtwo-Mega-Y: 461-543 (110.8 - 130.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Mewtwo-Mega-X: 944-1110 (226.9 - 266.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
That's the problem with Rayquaza. Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to allow a superpriority ability to coexist with one of the highest stat-boosting moves in the game? That mess would make anything broken. Not only is it incontestable by anything from Prankster to Extreme Speed, this thing is essentially getting access to 3 Calm Minds in a single turn. That's the kind of mess that a young degenerate would concoct, not a format that actually takes itself "seriously".

Solution

If you really want to solve the Rayquaza "problem", just ban Triage instead, as that ability isn't just "hax", but broken on a fundamental level. Despite this format's name, nearly everything in it adheres to a rudimentary concept of what Pokemon is supposed to be: Stronger Pokemon hit harder, Faster Pokemon move faster, etc. etc. Triage, as it is used in BH, completely breaks the game. With this ability, EV and nature investment essentially gets nullified. "Should I use max speed to outspeed potential checks? Nah, let's go Max Attack/Special Attack and run Triage". That's not even the worst of it, though. If you really wanted to, you could even run minimum speed to simultaneously outspeed everything in the game and land Core Enforcers on the obvious SashSmashDaz switchins to essentially beat everything in the game. This ability is literally the epitome of

Conclusion
I can assure you that with Triage gone, Rayquaza will go back to being balanced... To such an extent, even, that it would be hard to even imagine this thing having been busted. Aerialate? That can be tanked/blitzed, making it no different than Kyurem and Diancie. Dazzling? PrankHaze, UnawareThief, or even straight outspeeding it. Most of Its sets outside of that, like Tinted Lens, are garbage and barely worth mentioning, and pose absolutely no threat to the meta whatsoever.

If this suspect continues on, and worse yet, if it results in a ban, it'll inevitably set a precedent wherein impulsiveness and idiocy reign as the format's primary form of reasoning over actual objectivity. Not to mention that this opens the door for any Pokemon found "irritating" to be banned as well. At first people were bouncing Groudon in and out the format, now they're extending their antics to Rayquaza.

For those reading this, I'd advise to be cautious when running offense. Find a good Mewtwo, TTar, Greninja, etc. set? With the current community, you're going to be at serious risk of losing that mon in the format, possibly forever, since all the years of accumulated logic and reason this community once possessed has been PrankHazed away.
You state above that you don't engage with the current metagame, that you haven't played it. That's why it doesn't surprise me that your take on this suspect is somewhat outlandish. Triage is definitely not Mega Rayquaza's only problematic set, especially with Aerilate's current prominence and arguable superiority. Your post is laced with ad hominems that don't make much sense. Your post, in all honesty, simply seems to be a bad attempt to derail the thread into Triage vs. Mega Rayquaza shenanigans, when the overwhelming consensus of players who actually play the metagame is that Mega Rayquaza is the issue that should be addressed, not the single set of Triage.

But you, someone who admittedly hasn't played the metagame in a while, supposedly knows better than everyone else. That the playerbase is setting a poor precedent by suspecting a problematic element within the metagame? Your comparison to Kyurem Black and Mega Diancie proves that you haven't played the metagame in recent times or perhaps all generation. Since when has Kyurem Black ever been as good as Aerilate Mega Rayquaza? Mega Diancie is much more reasonable to deal with defensively especially when considering its two popular sets have very similar checks. Mega Rayquaza is definitely a burden on teambuilding, and something that I and the majority of the BH community agree is suspect-worthy.

I'm unsure if you're a troll, or if you just get a kick out of yelling nonsensical insults and parading your outlandish ideas; but you should definitely rethink your point of view if you're in any sense serious.
 
Just look at it this way: Gen VII has time for this and maybe, maybe, MAYBE one more suspect if the community quickly hardcore agrees on something else. It'd take several successful suspects to ban around Ray to bring it in-line. At least two things with not everyone agrees on, but I can easily see four that might be needed. We straight up don't have time to be doing that much suspecting for one mon's sets.
 

a loser

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I will say I was surprised by the Mega Rayquaza suspect announcement. Mainly because I don't think it is worthy of a suspect at the moment but also at how quickly it all happened.

Specifically, discussion on Mega Rayquaza was first initiated by SL42 just 32 days before the announcement and wasn't really mentioned again for 22 days. In that span, things like Shell Smash, Moldy Moves, Shedinja, Species spam, and the user Rumors were all discussed. In the middle of that time span, Flint stated that Mega Rayquaza was the main focus of potential suspects even though Shedinja and Belly Drum had been the main talking points since SL42's post. After that, Mega Rayquaza still wasn't discussed but rather Shedinja and other setup moves. It wasn't until just 10 days before the suspect announcement that other users began voicing their opinions on Mega Rayquaza. These posts, for the most part, were standalone and didn't lead to much discussion outside of the use of Misty Surge. So yeah, the suspect announcement for Mega Rayquaza was a little surprising to me.

If you compare this to the two most recent suspects, Contrary and Sleep, you can see how fast this announcement seems. Contrary had been talked about on and off for a while but I can pin the date of the "official" start of discussion at GL Volkner's post on Contrary MMY. Following that, people primarily discussed Contrary for 67 days before Flint announced a suspect for it. Similarly, Sleep was talked about on and off for a while until ShedMiddleFinga revived the topic and got even inactive users to start sharing their thoughts. People discussed this topic for 69 days before Flint announced the suspect.

I'm not saying that time of discussion is equivalent to the degree of brokenness of something, but this definitely stands out to me. Seeing how no one seriously discussed a Mega Rayquaza ban until recently and it was briefly discussed by a few users over the span of 10 or so days makes this seemed rushed compared to how Sleep and Contrary were discussed for over two months each over the span of Gen 7 before getting a suspect.
 

cityscapes

Take care of yourself.
is a Tiering Contributoris a Community Contributor Alumnus
Additional Note: This post was not edited by a moderator, nor was this edit inspired by the post directly beneath mine. While my stances haven't changed (for instance, Imposter is still a problem), these threads already have enough vitriol in them. I want to see this community grow and prosper, however some of the shenanigans that transpire on this thread can serve as a breeding ground for toxicity, which I'm not immune to being affected by. Receiving laughing emojis is one thing, however the angry ones demonstrated just how strongly the community took these words.
lets be real here for a second bro. all this talk about this specific community doesnt really make sense to me when if you said something similar to a community of anything that people took seriously, you'd get laughed off at best and ignored at worst. the angry reacts are really because this community in particular is sick of posts that come off as uninformed. but you said you did want a serious response, so i guess i'll humor you here.

your argument basically comes down to "triage is the only broken ray set". let's look at the reasoning behind it.
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Zygarde-Complete: 485-573 (76.2 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252- SpD Diancie-Mega: 246-289 (80.9 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Giratina: 415-489 (82.3 - 97%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus: 415-489 (93.4 - 110.1%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252- SpD Mewtwo-Mega-Y: 461-543 (110.8 - 130.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+3 252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Mewtwo-Mega-X: 944-1110 (226.9 - 266.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
ok so he can kill offensive mons and some defensive mons as well after a turn of setup. you'd be hard pressed to find a setup sweeper that doesnt do the exact same thing.
That's the problem with Rayquaza. Since when was it a good idea to allow a superpriority ability to coexist with one of the highest stat-boosting moves in the game? That combination would make anything broken. Not only is it incontestable by anything from Prankster to Extreme Speed, this thing is essentially getting access to 3 Calm Minds in a single turn.
ok yeah it's strong. you could say something similar for shedinja (it's incontestable by anything not specifically designed to counter it, has essentially 100% accuracy horn drill, and can destroy prominent threats like sf mmy). specific game mechanics come together to create the environment where you have this powerful set that can bypass some traditional forms of counterplay. but this isn't an argument for whether or not it's broken. how does it fare in practice? is it utterly shutting down otherwise solid teams or does it struggle to find opportunities to set up?
Despite this format's name, nearly everything in it adheres to a rudimentary concept of what Pokemon is supposed to be: Stronger Pokemon hit harder, Faster Pokemon move faster, etc. etc. Triage, as it is used in BH, completely breaks the game.
ok so your point here is that triage allows a pokemon to move faster despite being slower? how is that different from normal priority moves like espeed
With this ability, EV and nature investment essentially gets nullified. "Should I use max speed to outspeed potential checks? Nah, let's go Max Attack/Special Attack and run Triage".
That's not even the worst of it, though. If you really wanted to, you could even run minimum speed to simultaneously outspeed everything in the game and land Core Enforcers on the obvious SashSmashDaz switchins to essentially beat everything in the game.
i feel like this is part of why your post wasnt taken seriously by many. why are you talking about ev investment when we've had full ev meta since march 2017? why are you talking about using an unused set (min speed core triage) and even talking about using core enforcer to remove abilities on the switch, another mechanic that was found to be inaccurate long ago? moving to the actual points, again they just address that triage is strong, not describing how it's "too much for the metagame" at all.

you can't really argue whether or not something is broken without considering it in the context of the metagame. look at what counters people have been using for triage ray, and consider how consistent they are in practice and how good against the rest of the metagame they are. look at what triage mega rayquaza has been doing in tournaments like ompl or seasonal. without considering its abilities outside of a vacuum, you can't make any meaningful arguments about a pokemon.
I can assure you that with Triage gone, Rayquaza will go back to being balanced... To such an extent, even, that it would be hard to even imagine this thing having been busted. Aerialate? That can be tanked/blitzed, making it no different than Kyurem and Diancie. Dazzling? PrankHaze, UnawareThief, or even straight outspeeding it. Most of Its sets outside of that, like Tinted Lens, aren't significant enough to warrant suspecting.
dazzling and tinted lens are pretty irrelevant sets. in regards to aerilate, i'm not really convinced that it won't be broken. the reasoning you used was incredibly vague ("tanked/blitzed" without replays? what?). comparing it to kyurem-w and diancie is a decent idea but overlooks some important differences between the mons. without factoring in natures, diancie has 40 less special attack than ray, so it's less effective at breaking mons and in practice deals much less damage to mons such as fc chansey. less bulky steels such as aegi can take on even modest specs diancie where before they would die to 2 modest specs ray boombursts.

another important note is the presence of hooh and primal kyogre, 2 mons that take on diancie and kyuw, respectively, really well and serve as great alternative options in case you don't want a steel/fc chans/shed on your team. specs ray has no alternative counter like this, and the diversity of teams has suffered as a result.
If this suspect continues on, and worse yet, if it results in a ban, it'll inevitably open the door for any Pokemon found "irritating" to be banned as well. The community was already bouncing Groudon in and out of the meta, and now Rayquaza's joining It in this Ping Pong Catastrophe.

For those reading this, I'd advise to be cautious when running offense. Find a good Mewtwo, TTar, Greninja, etc. set? With the current community, you're going to be at serious risk of losing that mon in the format, possibly forever.
i won't lie, broken things can be fun to use. i invented ph knock/spore/power trip/shell smash ttar in pre sleep clause meta, and it was super fun to use because it could just bypass all counterplay. i made penguin, and similarly, that team could cheese a good amount of teams while having little to no losing matchups. do i think these strategies should stay in the meta? not in a million years. my personal short-term enjoyment shouldn't come before the long-term enjoyment of everyone including me. penguin was fun to ladder with, but now other people are starting to use pokemon like shed and mray to a similar or even greater extent in ompl, and the metagame is suffering because of it.

if a new set is found that has no counters, not banning it would just be asking for an unhealthy, centralized metagame. and no, this isn't because we "love stall", or whatever you're claiming these days. look at ompl replays and you'll see that defensive playstyles get punished hard in the majority of games. furthermore, compared to the variety of balance and even offense teams i'm happy with, i really only have one stall team that i think is actually good. the issue lies in the fact that realistically you can't hope to counter everything commonly used in the meta, so a lot of games end up being one-sided and decided on matchup. by banning mega rayquaza, we seek to prevent that.

one more thing. i've associated with this community for a couple years and i do have several disputes with it. but there's no conspiracy going on here. we love watching good players destroy passive playing just as much as everyone else, we just want to see it done through proactive and skillful play rather than through absurd offensive threats that win simply because the opponent has no way to counter them.
 

E4 Flint

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I will say I was surprised by the Mega Rayquaza suspect announcement. Mainly because I don't think it is worthy of a suspect at the moment but also at how quickly it all happened.

Specifically, discussion on Mega Rayquaza was first initiated by SL42 just 32 days before the announcement and wasn't really mentioned again for 22 days. In that span, things like Shell Smash, Moldy Moves, Shedinja, Species spam, and the user Rumors were all discussed. In the middle of that time span, Flint stated that Mega Rayquaza was the main focus of potential suspects even though Shedinja and Belly Drum had been the main talking points since SL42's post. After that, Mega Rayquaza still wasn't discussed but rather Shedinja and other setup moves. It wasn't until just 10 days before the suspect announcement that other users began voicing their opinions on Mega Rayquaza. These posts, for the most part, were standalone and didn't lead to much discussion outside of the use of Misty Surge. So yeah, the suspect announcement for Mega Rayquaza was a little surprising to me.

If you compare this to the two most recent suspects, Contrary and Sleep, you can see how fast this announcement seems. Contrary had been talked about on and off for a while but I can pin the date of the "official" start of discussion at GL Volkner's post on Contrary MMY. Following that, people primarily discussed Contrary for 67 days before Flint announced a suspect for it. Similarly, Sleep was talked about on and off for a while until ShedMiddleFinga revived the topic and got even inactive users to start sharing their thoughts. People discussed this topic for 69 days before Flint announced the suspect.

I'm not saying that time of discussion is equivalent to the degree of brokenness of something, but this definitely stands out to me. Seeing how no one seriously discussed a Mega Rayquaza ban until recently and it was briefly discussed by a few users over the span of 10 or so days makes this seemed rushed compared to how Sleep and Contrary were discussed for over two months each over the span of Gen 7 before getting a suspect.
Seems like the concern is that we have rushed into suspecting Megaray based on.. how much time has passed since it was brought up? I don't know if I would use that as a real standard; how much discussion is enough before we move to the next step? What about Qb's or polls?

Well, traditionally, my view is to hold suspects when I feel that there is a level of consensus - which I accept can be somewhat vague. However, since Megaray, Shed and the others were brought up, I intentionally left the floor open to discuss any of them and it seems like there was more needed for Shed and the rest, but there wasn't much to add for or against MegaRay. What exactly would we then be waiting for?

After factoring in other things I've seen, ranging from agreements made for BH games in (imo) the most prestigious OM tour in OMPL, to other feedback I've received about how MegaRay "should've" been suspected a long time ago by various active players (some of whom have liked your post - mystifying to me if that means they agree..) to even insinuations that I personally don't want to suspect it for whatever reason, made me think it was a pretty straightforward move.

Having said that, if people think more time is required to discuss how to address it, I can consider rescinding the suspect and proceeding to a different one - I've never done that before and I would have to look into whether there's precedent for it, but I've always wanted the community to drive the decision making process.
 
ok so he can kill offensive mons and some defensive mons as well after a turn of setup. you'd be hard pressed to find a setup sweeper that doesn't do the exact same thing.
The difference between Triage and other sets is the counterplay. SashSmash sets can easily be Prankhazed, Unaware-Stalled, or even blitzed by Mold Breaker and/or Core Enforcer sets, Triage can't. Not only is this ability near impossible to tank, and *actually* impossible to outspeed (including with Prankster), but can easily support Breaker Moves to chip, or even kill opposing Unaware mons. Combine this with the fact that most of your Unaware switch ins will do nearly no damage in the event they *do* land, say, a Spectral Thief on it, and you get a tactic that can be easily executed with no risk whatsoever to the user.

Even basic Triage sets can do noticeable damage to Unaware walls like Audino
252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Audino-Mega: 146-173 (35.6 - 42.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (29.1 - 34.6% recovered)

While even the most fringe Audino sets fail to even outdamage the regeneration on Ray's Oblivion Wing
252+ Atk Choice Band Audino-Mega Spectral Thief vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Rayquaza-Mega: 79-93 (19 - 22.4%) -- possible 5HKO

The only real threats that Triage sets have to worry about is losing their PP and receiving stray super effective hits, outside of that, and unlike other tactics, such as BDrum, Smash, Shift Gear sets, there is no easy "answer" to this.

ok so your point here is that triage allows a pokemon to move faster despite being slower? how is that different from normal priority moves like espeed
Espeed Mons can't safely raise their speed by 3 stages with no consequences (x2 and x2.5 can make a huge difference), run multiple priority coverage moves, and heal in the process, and depending on the mon that a Triage set hits, it can heal nearly all their HP. Another important detail is that Espeed sets themselves can feasibly be outsped by faster Espeed users (who in turn likely get walled by bulky mons that the slower ones had the STAB to check). This creates a healthy balance cycle wherein meticulousness and adaptability are actively encouraged, which is the foundation of any serious metagame.

in regards to aerilate, i'm not really convinced that it won't be broken. the reasoning you used was incredibly vague ("tanked/blitzed" without replays? what?). comparing it to kyurem-w and diancie is a decent idea but overlooks some important differences between the mons. without factoring in natures, diancie has 40 less special attack than ray, so it's less effective at breaking mons and in practice deals much less damage to mons such as fc chansey. less bulky steels such as aegi can take on even modest specs diancie where before they would die to 2 modest specs ray boombursts.
This doesn't necessarily make Aerilate broken, though. Its an extremely powerful ability with Rayquaza, but this is more so due to the power of -ates themselves. Even mons that don't get "STAB" from these abilities (like the Mewtwos, for instance) can deal significant damage with them. Rayquaza, unlike Kyurem and Diancie, also has a 4x weakness it has to worry about. A single 'Frigespeed from a powerful physical attacker can one shot any serious MRay set, and even a stray Blizzard from a weak Mon like Registeel can inflict over 70% of MRay's health (note: this is just an example, I'm not saying that this is the new meta). Meanwhile, even with Max SpA, Specs, and +2 SpA, which isn't even possible, MRay can't break past Registeel with Its strongest practical attack +2 252+ SpA Choice Specs Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 270-318 (74.1 - 87.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO. Many, if not most MRay sets also go straight to attacking, which leads to it getting walled by even more mons like Tina, and ZGarde. All of this isn't to say that Aerilate is bad. It's a very good ability with an amazing user, but being slightly inconvenient to switch in on isn't sufficient for warranting a ban on an entire Pokemon.

Another important note is the presence of hooh and primal kyogre, 2 mons that take on diancie and kyuw, respectively, really well and serve as great alternative options in case you don't want a steel/fc chans/shed on your team. specs ray has no alternative counter like this, and the diversity of teams has suffered as a result.
This is a very important point, and I'll agree that diversity in the meta is preferable to monotony, however, when looking at MRay and Aerialate, while it can certainly be said that they're strong, especially in conjunction with each other, its difficult to see a narrative wherein Aerilate MRay centralizes the meta when considering the aforementioned points, in fact, I'd argue that among the extremely powerful offensive combinations, MRay's is probably one of the better ones to deal with, since every decent mon in the tier can pressure, or even outright one shot it with Ice coverage. I understand this gen is coming to a close, however there shouldn't be any rush to ban things at the moment. We should wait a bit longer and experiment with more forms of counterplay before jumping to the next suspect petition.

My personal short-term enjoyment shouldn't come before the long-term enjoyment of everyone including me. penguin was fun to ladder with, but now other people are starting to use pokemon like shed and mray to a similar or even greater extent in ompl, and the metagame is suffering because of it.
The very fact that I agree with you is why I'm disagreeing with you here. I wasn't lying when I said I hated MRay. If I could go back and prevent that Mon from existing, I almost certainly would, yet, if things started getting banned simply based on what I, or anyone else dislikes, the meta would be chaotic (and likely, dead). That's not to say this is what you're doing, but rather, that it's what I'm not doing. I will agree with you that Shedinja needs to go, however I don't think Ray should have to go down with it, since ultimately, for as strong as Rayquaza is, you're still playing Pokemon when you fight against it, when you fight Shedinja, however, you're just playing Shedinja.

If a new set is found that has no counters, not banning it would just be asking for an unhealthy, centralized metagame. and no, this isn't because we "love stall", or whatever you're claiming these days. look at ompl replays and you'll see that defensive playstyles get punished hard in the majority of games. furthermore, compared to the variety of balance and even offense teams i'm happy with, i really only have one stall team that i think is actually good. the issue lies in the fact that realistically you can't hope to counter everything commonly used in the meta, so a lot of games end up being one-sided and decided on matchup. by banning mega rayquaza, we seek to prevent that.
I respect your position and the elaboration therein, however I don't believe banning MRay will contribute much towards this end, the non-Triage sets already have checks. Some may require using mons that an individual may not particularly enjoy, but that's the nature of any meta. Banning Rayquaza won't, for instance, make Bellsprout or Diggersby more viable. Additionally, in regards to the "onesidedness" and matchup-dependent battles, that's an inevitability in nearly every meta. A standard XTwo set for instance, may lose to Sheer Force YTwo sets, that lose against tanky Steels, which lose against XTwo. This cycle will always exist in any format with a varied and diverse roster of characters, and banning Rayquaza isn't going to eliminate this. As stated above, Shedinja would be your target if you want to cut back on the matchup-heavy nature of the meta. Checks, and maybe Counters, are healthy, the binary "invalidate your opponent or get invalidated" nature of Shedinja is toxic and borderline uncompetitive.

One more thing. I've associated with this community for a couple years and i do have several disputes with it. but there's no conspiracy going on here. we love watching good players destroy passive playing just as much as everyone else, we just want to see it done through proactive and skillful play rather than through absurd offensive threats that win simply because the opponent has no way to counter them.
Apologies if I gave the impression that you were a bunch of mustache-twirling stallers, however it can't be denied that this meta is extremely defensive, and I still believe that the Contrary ban was possibly excessive. Some people argued that Contrary helped defense, however a good amount of that could've been resolved by suspecting V-Create instead, which is arguably more harmful for any offensive mon that isn't Groudon. With that said, however, I will admit that with Contrary, it was easy to just "press buttons", and find yourself clearing out opposing teams, I also think that this problem exist with Triage. Where it doesn't exist, however, is with Rayquaza, and just like we did with Surge, we need to set our sights on the ability before the 'Mon.

Having said that, if people think more time is required to discuss how to address it, I can consider rescinding the suspect and proceeding to a different one - I've never done that before and I would have to look into whether there's precedent for it, but I've always wanted the community to drive the decision making process.
I'd definitely look into that as a possibility. Rayquaza can be irritating and salt-inducing, but banning it for that isn't a good look for the meta, and it likely wouldn't help anything. Give the Rayquaza subject more time before jumping in. If anything is needed at the moment, it would be a Shed suspect. Perhaps the community will find it balanced and keep it, but many people have been voicing their frustrations on this mon, and if clearing it out is what the community genuinely determines is best, we should be provided with an opportunity to act on that.
 
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a). Meanwhile, even with Max SpA, Specs, and +2 SpA, which isn't even possible, MRay can't break past Registeel with Its strongest practical attack +2 252+ SpA Choice Specs Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 270-318 (74.1 - 87.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
You used normal Ray instead of MRay in your calc.

Anyway, Registeel doesn't get a free switch into Ray in the first place. That's simply not a realistic situation. It has to switch in, take a hit and still be able to heal off before taking another hit.

252+ SpA Choice Specs Aerilate Rayquaza-Mega Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 156-183 (42.8 - 50.2%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO

So what is probably the bulkiest steel in the meta, has an extremely slim chance of being 2HKO'd and that's only if it's taken no chip whatsoever and you still need to predict that Ray is clicking Boomburst in the first place. What if it Volt Switches and you take this?

252+ SpA Choice Specs Rayquaza-Mega Volt Switch vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 87-103 (23.9 - 28.2%) -- 94.1% chance to 4HKO

Chances are the Ray player is bringing in something that's going to force your Registeel out leaving you unable to heal. Which also means you now die to 2x Boomburst if you aren't running Pranskter.

Now you might be thinking well just run Regenvest which is fine and all but Ray still has coverage moves. It can run Magma Storm, Earth Power or even Secret Sword.

252+ SpA Choice Specs Rayquaza-Mega Magma Storm vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Registeel: 166-196 (45.6 - 53.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after trapping damage

252+ SpA Choice Specs Rayquaza-Mega Secret Sword vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Registeel: 232-274 (63.7 - 75.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Choice Specs Rayquaza-Mega Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Registeel: 148-176 (40.6 - 48.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

If you're running AV you no longer have a recovery option and Regenerator isn't going to sustain enough compared to repeatedly taking these unless you can manage to gain momentum to bring Registeel back in for free.

Also let's keep in mind that this is only Aerilate. Tough Claws is popular too and you have to scout Ray before you can even attempt to take advantage of its set. You mentioned FridgeSpeed earlier but in what world is Ray going to stay in on a common Pokemon that uses it? If you slow pivot into MMX, the Ray player is going to assume you have something that beats it and obviously nobody is staying in on either Kyurem form.
 

Champion Leon

Banned deucer.
The difference between Triage and other sets is the counterplay. SashSmash sets can easily be Prankhazed, Unaware-Stalled, or even blitzed by Mold Breaker and/or Core Enforcer sets, Triage can't. Not only is this ability near impossible to tank, and *actually* impossible to outspeed (including with Prankster), but can easily support Breaker Moves to chip, or even kill opposing Unaware mons. Combine this with the fact that most of your Unaware switch ins will do nearly no damage in the event they *do* land, say, a Spectral Thief on it, and you get a tactic that can be easily executed with no risk whatsoever to the user.

Even basic Triage sets can do noticeable damage to Unaware walls like Audino
252+ SpA Life Orb Triage Rayquaza-Mega Oblivion Wing vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Audino-Mega: 146-173 (35.6 - 42.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO (29.1 - 34.6% recovered)

While even the most fringe Audino sets fail to even outdamage the regeneration on Ray's Oblivion Wing
252+ Atk Choice Band Audino-Mega Spectral Thief vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Rayquaza-Mega: 79-93 (19 - 22.4%) -- possible 5HKO

The only real threats that Triage sets have to worry about is losing their PP and receiving stray super effective hits, outside of that, and unlike other tactics, such as BDrum, Smash, Shift Gear sets, there is no easy "answer" to this.


Espeed Mons can't safely raise their speed by 3 stages with no consequences (x2 and x2.5 can make a huge difference), run multiple priority coverage moves, and heal in the process, and depending on the mon that a Triage set hits, it can heal nearly all their HP. Another important detail is that Espeed sets themselves can feasibly be outsped by faster Espeed users (who in turn likely get walled by bulky mons that the slower ones had the STAB to check). This creates a healthy balance cycle wherein meticulousness and adaptability are actively encouraged, which is the foundation of any serious metagame.


This doesn't necessarily make Aerilate broken, though. Its an extremely powerful ability with Rayquaza, but this is more so due to the power of -ates themselves. Even mons that don't get "STAB" from these abilities (like the Mewtwos, for instance) can deal significant damage with them. Rayquaza, unlike Kyurem and Diancie, also has a 4x weakness it has to worry about. A single 'Frigespeed from a powerful physical attacker can one shot any serious MRay set, and even a stray Blizzard from a weak Mon like Registeel can inflict over 70% of MRay's health (note: this is just an example, I'm not saying that this is the new meta). Meanwhile, even with Max SpA, Specs, and +2 SpA, which isn't even possible, MRay can't break past Registeel with Its strongest practical attack +2 252+ SpA Choice Specs Aerilate Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 270-318 (74.1 - 87.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO. Many, if not most MRay sets also go straight to attacking, which leads to it getting walled by even more mons like Tina, and ZGarde. All of this isn't to say that Aerilate is bad. It's a very good ability with an amazing user, but being slightly inconvenient to switch in on isn't sufficient for warranting a ban on an entire Pokemon.


This is a very important point, and I'll agree that diversity in the meta is preferable to monotony, however, when looking at MRay and Aerialate, while it can certainly be said that they're strong, especially in conjunction with each other, its difficult to see a narrative wherein Aerilate MRay centralizes the meta when considering the aforementioned points, in fact, I'd argue that among the extremely powerful offensive combinations, MRay's is probably one of the better ones to deal with, since every decent mon in the tier can pressure, or even outright one shot it with Ice coverage. I understand this gen is coming to a close, however there shouldn't be any rush to ban things at the moment. We should wait a bit longer and experiment with more forms of counterplay before jumping to the next suspect petition.


The very fact that I agree with you is why I'm disagreeing with you here. I wasn't lying when I said I hated MRay. If I could go back and prevent that Mon from existing, I almost certainly would, yet, if things started getting banned simply based on what I, or anyone else dislikes, the meta would be chaotic (and likely, dead). That's not to say this is what you're doing, but rather, that it's what I'm not doing. I will agree with you that Shedinja needs to go, however I don't think Ray should have to go down with it, since ultimately, for as strong as Rayquaza is, you're still playing Pokemon when you fight against it, when you fight Shedinja, however, you're just playing Shedinja.


I respect your position and the elaboration therein, however I don't believe banning MRay will contribute much towards this end, the non-Triage sets already have checks. Some may require using mons that an individual may not particularly enjoy, but that's the nature of any meta. Banning Rayquaza won't, for instance, make Bellsprout or Diggersby more viable. Additionally, in regards to the "onesidedness" and matchup-dependent battles, that's an inevitability in nearly every meta. A standard XTwo set for instance, may lose to Sheer Force YTwo sets, that lose against tanky Steels, which lose against XTwo. This cycle will always exist in any format with a varied and diverse roster of characters, and banning Rayquaza isn't going to eliminate this. As stated above, Shedinja would be your target if you want to cut back on the matchup-heavy nature of the meta. Checks, and maybe Counters, are healthy, the binary "invalidate your opponent or get invalidated" nature of Shedinja is toxic and borderline uncompetitive.


Apologies if I gave the impression that you were a bunch of mustache-twirling stallers, however it can't be denied that this meta is extremely defensive, and I still believe that the Contrary ban was possibly excessive. Some people argued that Contrary helped defense, however a good amount of that could've been resolved by suspecting V-Create instead, which is arguably more harmful for any offensive mon that isn't Groudon. With that said, however, I will admit that with Contrary, it was easy to just "press buttons", and find yourself clearing out opposing teams, I also think that this problem exist with Triage. Where it doesn't exist, however, is with Rayquaza, and just like we did with Surge, we need to set our sights on the ability before the 'Mon.


I'd definitely look into that as a possibility. Rayquaza can be irritating and salt-inducing, but banning it for that isn't a good look for the meta, and it likely wouldn't help anything. Give the Rayquaza subject more time before jumping in. If anything is needed at the moment, it would be a Shed suspect. Perhaps the community will find it balanced and keep it, but many people have been voicing their frustrations on this mon, and if clearing it out is what the community genuinely determines is best, we should be provided with an opportunity to act on that.
This post is strictly for clarification bc I need to acknowledge what was not addressed.
Unaware Audino-Mega is the safest option for Triage sets in the event Rayquaza runs Shell Smash Drain Punch, or some cheese Secret Sword with Tail Glow for mixed coverage.

Otherwise, based on stats and a Normal-typing, Unaware Chansey would technically be best if Rayquaza just runs Special Attacks based on Chessking’s set reference of:

Rayquaza-Mega @ Life Orb / Safety Goggles / Leftovers
Ability: Triage
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Oblivion Wing
- Tail Glow
- Moongeist Beam / Giga Drain / Earth Power / Secret Sword / Volt Switch
- Spore / Substitute / Any of moveslot 3

However, in regards to Audino-Mega, since it isn’t particularly weak to physical or Fighting-Type moves, won’t be impacted by stray Core Enforcers (throughout the match) removing Unaware, and can carry the latter move against Imposter without fear...

Audino-Mega can show it has some key factors that give it more clout over Chansey in some situations: The first being a higher set of offensive stats, which is nothing to brag about, but important bc it’s a large improvement over Chansey, and matters when using Spectral Thief against Shell Smash, Belly Drum, or Tail Glow. *More on this later.*

Audino-Mega @ Safety Goggles / Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Recover
- Spectral Thief
- Core Enforcer
- Baton Pass

The strategy here is to not only take away Ray’s boosts / ability, but to pass on the boosts to a Dazzling user like MMY so now Rayquaza-Mega is threatened.

Or if they switch out on the turn you slow pivot with Baton Pass, you have an answer to their Unaware Pokémon with your Special Attacker with either a Moldy move, or Entrainment such as Gengar-Mega.

If they have a Prankster Haze Pokemon that switches in on the turn you Baton Pass, then switching to your own Triage user is also an option.

Point is, Audino-Mega is not just meant to check Rayquaza with a weak Spectral Thief, it’s meant to pivot your check to their next switch, which can include many different offensive powerhouses to benefit from the Tail Glow you just stole.

*The other benefit, is that if Rayquaza is their last Pokémon (they cannot switch), your Spectral Thief just boosted your Core Enforcer, allowing you to out Damage their Oblivion Wing Heals.*

+3 252 SpA Audino-Mega Core Enforcer vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Rayquaza-Mega: 310-366 (74.8 - 88.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

VS

+3 252 SpA Chansey Core Enforcer vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Rayquaza-Mega: 204-240 (49.2 - 57.9%) -- 97.7% chance to 2HKO

Chansey with Core would not do much, even after a Spectral Thieved Tail Glow*

Audino-Mega is basically safe against anything Rayquaza-Mega Triage plans to use besides a stray Sunsteel Strike on a Shell Smash Set- But since that’s not even a considerable option, it’s more likely Moongeist Beam is the ideal choice so you go for +3, rather than +2.
————
I only posted so you saw that Audino-Mega isn’t just an idle wall, it plans to set up its ally in the face of both an Offensive (staying safe with your Dazzling Sweeper), or Defensive (Unaware and Prankster) Check to the Tail Glow Boost you just stole.

Also, Diancie-Mega also has a 4x weakness to Steel.
 
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I'm gonna give my two cents on M-Ray here. Note that the majority of my experience comes from today getting reqs against a majority of people who weren't going for reqs at all which puts into question their skill at BH. (Please don't kill me based on my opinions or anything, thanks! :psyglad:)

With that out of the way, I truly do not think that M-Ray is broken. It is certainly centralizing but I think it is in a positive way. All of the talk about how you don't really know what set it is seems kinda bogus to me, because you can pretty easily see from preview if it is their sweeper, (Shell Smash / Triage) physical breaker, (Banded TC) or mixed aerialate. Banded TC and Aerialate seem a bit blurrier but generally if it is a team lacking an immediate physical breaker it is band TC. If not, and especially if they lack priority, aerialate.

But what I really want to talk about is Species Clause.

The really broken thing about having 4-6 of the same pokemon is that you LITERALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT IS IN FRONT OF YOU.

For example, if the opponent has 6 rays and leads with one of them, how does the opponent know if it is a lead, antilead, setup sweeper, or breaker; some of many of M-Ray's sets, while they can be all of them.

It would seem easy to just ban M-Ray, but this strategy is by no means limited to Ray, it could be any pokemon with high dual offenses and speed. I laddered with MMX but you could also ladder with MMY, Deo-A, Ultra Necrozma, and probably more niche stuff like Ash Gren or even Blace.

The thing is, all of these pokemon can have some jank antilead, unexpected revenge killer, breaker, and 3 shell smashers; with at least 1 being dazzling. This kind of strategy overwhelms basically every non HO because "counters" are easily beaten by sash, and with the jank antilead the opponent should never get rocks on you.

Here's a prety good example of what I mean. In the replay, you can clearly tell that the opponent has to make a guess as to what the heck my set is. If the opponent is ever wrong, (Triage O-Wing on my dazzlesmasher) the opponent crumples under such high power. The great thing for me in these kinds of games is that my knowledge of my team is more valuable his knowledge of his team.

TL DR: 1 M-Ray = not busted, 4-6 M-Ray / anything else = borked
 
All of the talk about how you don't really know what set it is seems kinda bogus to me, because you can pretty easily see from preview if it is their sweeper, (Shell Smash / Triage) physical breaker, (Banded TC) or mixed aerialate. Banded TC and Aerialate seem a bit blurrier but generally if it is a team lacking an immediate physical breaker it is band TC. If not, and especially if they lack priority, aerialate.
First off, priority nor a physical breaker is actually required on a team. Well known and very good team made by Gurpreet Patel (Sent you a Friend Request) known as "penguin" completely lacks a physical breaker at all. And while I have no specific example to cite right now, I know there are plenty of viable teams that do not use ate priority. Speaking of penguin though...

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/bh-waves-on-waves-on-waves.3650082/

Heres the team in question. As you can see, the ray is obviously triage. So if you were to look at this replay: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7balancedhackmons-942374516
Looking at team preview, you would immediately assume that that ray is triage, right? after all the team is known to have triage mray, and theres no priority present on the team.


But fucking NOPE my boi pazza literally gets fuckin smacked because guess what that ray was actually BAND TC ray which he had no damned way of knowing until he sends his dialga and watches it take a solid 53% from Dragon Ascent (a resisted move btw). That dialga was regenvest, which could solidly come in on specs boomburst and was his best shot against triage. Let us also note that the team hes using is itself an rmt by fellow good player Anaconja, and since that dialga finds that it gets 2hkod by banded tc ray on a resisted move, it cannot win against ray.

Oh but I did mentioned that the dialga was merely his best bet against triage right?

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7balancedhackmons-896975254

cityscapes here is sl, creator of penguin himself. Team still just dies because despite dialga, you still just lose to triage ray.

You also failed to back up your claim that its "centralizing in a positive way". A pokemon that is centralizing in a positive way is imposter, since it stops brainless un-improofed HO from being the dominant playstyle. Meanwhile the sets of tc band, specs ate, and triage ray all are too much for any defensive core in the meta to stop without giving up properly checking the rest of the meta. Please, anyone, bring forth your magical teams that dont lose to all three and still manage to work outside stopping them.

And because I really havent seen this said enough, just because the damned things have checks does not make them immediately okay to have in the meta. EVERY FUCKING SUSPECT so far had checks. Do you know why they were banned anyway? Because in reference to the rest of the meta, these checks were either unviable or simply not enough. Nevermind that the fact that any team you had WITHOUT these checks immediately lost. There was no skill you could have to outplay it, it just clicked buttons and won.

Penguin spammer Zoe, out.

No species clause is still bullshit tho nice catching that one
 
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Champion Leon

Banned deucer.
Though, Audino kinda does lose to Aerilate. With Fake Out and Boomburst it's dead almost always? I think really isn't just one set being too powerful, everything it runs is extremely good really.

edit:
252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Rayquaza-Mega Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Audino-Mega: 308-363 (75.1 - 88.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

As mentioned, you beat Triage and Aerilate, and any number of sets, but you can't really handle the diversity? Is the problem.
I completely agree. And I understand only the Soundproof ability allows Audino-Mega to handle Aerilate Rayquaza, due to already being immune to Dragon via its Fairy-typing, as well as the typical coverage moves in Moongeist, Secret Sword, etc.

My post was strictly for Triage since PhantomVortex mentioned Triage was the most powerful of all sets, and I just wanted to help come up with a safe solution for basically any variation of its coverage moves. Chansey is ideal for most of the Triage Special Attack sets, but it isn’t as safe for all of them, such as Secret Sword, which hits off of Defense and is super effective.

I also agree that the diversity of Rayquaza-Mega is considered the problem for those wishing to banish it.

I do think that while I don’t always feel the need to specifically plan for it, like I do Imposter, it’s up there with MMY, in terms of “what will it be this time?”

I see the points of both sides, and while I don’t know which side I plan to vote for, as of yet, it’s good to see helpful Calcs and points made by everyone here. Also, I see you are new: so welcome to our threads!

Great points, great post. :)
 
Short version at the end of the post. And sorry for the wall of text.

I'm gonna change the subject of the discussion because of my experience of laddering for the suspect (still doing that btw). As most of you know, low ladder is terrible in BH, with teams that run less than 6 mons, autowin with shed/imposter, monstrosities like Mray with haze/calm mind/sludge wave/clanging scales and we all know I can go on for a while.
But one thing emerged from that. Not mray, but spam teams. MMX, MMY, Mray, MMX + MMY being the most prominent ones, but other exists. The only time I faced Mray spam in the suspect, the Mrays where trash (z-conversion into electric, to say an example) but the others were just unacceptable on a "healthy metagame" basis. Now I'm quoting myself, and elaborating more (and better) since I'm no longer on a chat.

ElMustacho on the Discord said:
this suspect is being trash. 1/4 of matches so far are spam team, with mray nowhere to be seen while laddering. sure mray is broken, me not seeing it while laddering is irrelevant and wabba wabba whatever but you know also what? lack of species clause is straight overwhelmingly uncompetitive with
A) scouting heavily limited, also abusing the mechanic of naming everything with the same name
B) no skill really involved in teambuilding because you still have good results with no planning
C) not having imposterproof sets and still beating imposter should smell like decaying sewer rats (if someone thinks that the problem is how imp is played go on and show proof of that with replays and stuff)
D) nothing counters or checks every set of whatever species spam is used, rendering choice of walls irrelevant
E) this is also the new era of sash smash (dazzling sometimes) spam, and I don't remember the majority of players being happy about it
F) on the sash specifically you can't lay hazards and break them because 1 turn later everything is already snowballing and it's too late, also there's always a sash magic guard defogger so it's only a mild annoyance
G) fuck species spam
H) if you prepare for species spam you are not preparing realistically for everything else
I) literally the first point of the first post of the suspect thread, section clauses (quoting): "Dominant strategies with either no checks, or the player has to choose between preparing for this specific strategy or the general meta", you may not call it dominant right now but just read letter H again and you should see the problem
A) There are 6 Mray on team preview, what do you send out? If it's a wall, then good luck picking one that actually walls that specific Mray, because regenvest doesn't wall tc and fc doesn't wall specsburst. If it's an offensive answer then you are frail, and mray can fakespeed, live with sash and retaliate, or outspeed with scarf. If there was only one Mray, and you brought checks to most sets, chances are you won't get swept that easily. The same argument can be brought for MMY and MMX, with appropriate differences.

B) 6 MMX; 2 dazzling, 2 prankster, 1 magic guard, 1 -ate. That took 15 seconds to type, and it's basically no skill teambuilding. This is going to easily overwhelm most defensive cores.

C) In regarding to this imagine that most of the sets run shell smash + sash. Imp gets in for free on boosted M-something. If they also run spectral thief you can click x because there's nothing you can do then. If imp goes first, opponent lives it and kill with +4 vs -1 if they spectral, possibly super effective or deinvested, and outspeed anyway next turn. Or the opponent goes first (or lived your first hit bc of sash), and murders your imp (example for mmx, +2 252 SpA Pixilate Mewtwo-Mega-X Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252- SpD its imposter: 728-858 (103.4 - 121.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO, both have a smash under the belt), and it's snowball time. You can do this with most spam teams. Even MMY can do that: +2 252 Atk Mewtwo-Mega-Y Spectral Thief vs. 252 HP / 0 Def (0 IV) its imposter: 710-836 (100.8 - 118.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO. For Mray, all you need is ice coverage, and hopefully you don't need a calc to believe that. And it doesn't even need to be the same mon, because the next mon has sash and does the same thing, or your imposter actually has 1 less speed than the next opponent so they can smash again and outspeed all the times, which leaves you with 1) imposter dies and snowball or 2) sack something then pray for speed tie, otherwise snowball. And the thing is repeatable. Prank haze you say? Overwhelmed or taunted.

D) Name one set that walls all mray, that walls all mmy or walls all mmx. I'll take this back if you do, but I also reserve the right to instead answer with a sightly modified common set that beats it, and I can afford to run it since I have another 5 back here.

E) If only we had an ability which ignored opponent items this wouldn't be a problem, but that's fantasy. No matter how strong you hit, how much you boosted or how frail the opponent is, it won't die to one hit. Given that multi hit moves are extremely unreliable (expected base power is 79, ranging from 50 to 125), they either aren't used or they are, but that brings us to H, which is for later. So the opponent never dies to one hit and can almost always reverse the situation, even in dire circumstances. Like opponent has 1000000 smashes under the belt, but you live 120000020 bp power trip on mmy and kill back. So nice.

F) Counterplay to sash is scarce but let's investigate further. Magic room (or wonder, not important)? Also stops your items, so no ph activation, no rocky helmets to catch contact shed, no googles for spore and so on. Knock off? Removes after the hit, and sash already did the job. Trick? Tricking faster stuff will make them boost AND faster/stronger, and if you are faster chances are they'll 2hko you. Hazards? Ok, who sets rocks on a smasher? Like why? It's a death wish. When they are not running mbounce, otherwise that goes from a death wish to a suicide wish. Pranksters are already strapped for moveslots and it's hard to find places for rocks, otherwise sure, that's reasonable, not like dark can prevent them. But let's say you somehow got rocks up, they'll have a magic guard user that is immune to OHKO because of said sash, and it defogs. And it still has offensive presence, because hjk, mind blown, light of ruin and stuff.

G) Self explanatory, but also irrelevant to discussion. Sorry not sorry about using strong language.

H) Ok you've had enough of species spam teams and decided to counter team them. You pick skill link to break sashes while ohkoing, but that doesn't stop mmx (no multi hit move can ohko it based on typing), and it may go down to prank dbond. So you run msab to wall mmx, but mmx runs pixi and it dies. You run cresselia, which walls mmy like a god, except when it runs smash and it coincidentally runs se coverage (+2 252 Atk Mewtwo-Mega-Y Power Trip (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Cresselia: 430-508 (96.8 - 114.4%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO), so you run also unaware audino, since it walls power trip rather well, except when they run sunsteel, and photon isn't a good matchup anyway, and they might run sf sludge wave on something else which does a ton, so you run fc chansey, but psystrike hurts, and they can smash until they get past it by ohko, and so you run [...]. Now observe that all of this ends up quite subpar, and you can't reasonably bring anti species clause teams, or even specifically anti MMX spam (for example), without compromising the matchup with everything else. Your zygarde, mbro, msab, tina core may be optimal vs common and even most obscure sets of MMX, but Mray (and not just spam) sits on that.

I) Final point. This is why, for me, lack of species clause is worse than having mray in the meta. The real problem isn't that boomburst 2hkoes 90% of the meta, dragon ascent 2hkoes 85% of the meta, or +3 lorb owing outspeeds 95% of the meta and 2hkoes 60% of the meta, the problem is: it can be something else. Your counter to boomburst isn't the counter to dragon ascent. And lets be real, it's not a big problem if you somehow know that mray is always something specific. We have pdon, but it can only run desoland no item, and while v-create is nigh unbeatable in power, it's not broken, because tina gets in knowing it walls and, well, it walls. The same would be true if mray was somehow limited to just 1 set. Limited to specs burst? Soundproof something is usually good enough, if you know you won't get dragon ascended in the face. Band tc? Fc, problem solved. While this can cause some discussion (people never having a problem with triage because they run a lot of anti setup/priority means the "mray is broken" argument is 1/3 less effective against them, maybe below the line of banworthy), ray is still a lot to take in when teambuilding and playing, and we at least agree to acknowledge it. And lack of species clause is worse than that, because 6 same mons is likely to have 99+% 2hko chance vs whatever single mon, and up to 3 mons considered together that percentage doesn't go down. A set (or couple) that breaks your defensive core deemed unbeatable to that specific threat exists. That's not a opinion, it does and that is. Your fc bro goes down to galva boomburst from mmx. Soundproof msab dies to lorb mg mmx. Cresselia doesn't survive smash trip from mmy. They are not the only set that beats the defensive wall. And while none of them are "the good ones", there's room for them in the spam species teams. But, to finally compare species spam thing with Mray;

Mray can be something else, species spam will be something else. And it will very likely and promptly beat you, even if you brought a supposed counter.

Seems like the concern is that we have rushed into suspecting Megaray based on.. how much time has passed since it was brought up? I don't know if I would use that as a real standard; how much discussion is enough before we move to the next step? What about Qb's or polls?

Well, traditionally, my view is to hold suspects when I feel that there is a level of consensus - which I accept can be somewhat vague. However, since Megaray, Shed and the others were brought up, I intentionally left the floor open to discuss any of them and it seems like there was more needed for Shed and the rest, but there wasn't much to add for or against MegaRay. What exactly would we then be waiting for?

After factoring in other things I've seen, ranging from agreements made for BH games in (imo) the most prestigious OM tour in OMPL, to other feedback I've received about how MegaRay "should've" been suspected a long time ago by various active players (some of whom have liked your post - mystifying to me if that means they agree..) to even insinuations that I personally don't want to suspect it for whatever reason, made me think it was a pretty straightforward move.

Having said that, if people think more time is required to discuss how to address it, I can consider rescinding the suspect and proceeding to a different one - I've never done that before and I would have to look into whether there's precedent for it, but I've always wanted the community to drive the decision making process.
Well also this. I think we lacked a final:" Is this what you want to get suspected?". Not to say that mray doesn't deserve the suspect, nor that the idea just came up lately. But it feels like we missed the opportunity to correctly look at smash, bdrum, shed and lastly (and specifically, at least personally) species clause, and we instead went for mray. Even the discussion was lacking; from the "hey we are thinking about the new suspect, what do you think" we had 3 weeks and 2 pages of discussions, most of those posts are indeed about Mray, but even then only a fraction are actually good posts; the majority of those posts are "that's not how ray works" for better or worse, bad post, or posts about something else that died in 2-3 answers, with the occasional reminder of avoiding posting without knowledge or proofs. The discussion, as a whole, was lacking, and by extension the decision was hustled. That is, in my opinion.

Short version; species clause before ray suspect, last year please.
 
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Species Clause
While it is understandable how some may be upset about ISpecies (Infinite Species), it is a fundamental element of what makes BH itself, and removing it would be ridiculous. This was the exact point I was making in my previous posts: Why should certain players have the "right" to have perfect miracle counters to every offensive team? If somebody goes out of their way to build a deviant set to bypass standard walls, why shouldn't they get an edge for it?

"You can still do that with Species Clause", some may say, however the problems with this become immediately apparent. Say you're running a "standard" BH XTwo set: LO, Refrige, Photon, Drain Punch, Espeed, Spectral Thief. Normally, this set can threaten a variety of opponents and deal massive damage, however you soon realize that you get hard-countered by any MSableye set... and you can't switch into another XTwo to combat it, so you decide to scrap Spectral Thief for Play Rough. Well now you just discarded your potential Setup/Psychic/Ghost check in favor of a niche move that is only ever useful in the event that your opponent designates another niche mon (Sableye) to counter you. You can finally manage that pesky Sableye, however you now find that Pokemon that had to at least be cautious around you, such as set-up spammers, and certain YTwo sets, can now freely switch in and do as they please. You only have one XTwo, but this just won't do, so you scrap Drain Punch for Spectral Thief. At first it seems to be working out rather fine for you. Your XTwo now has access to the amazing Ghost-Type, and can potentially shut down a variety of strategies, however, you then find that you have no way to defend yourself against Regigigas (a mon that Mewtwo normally claps), and the steel-type mons. Additionally, you've lost your only form of recovery on what is an otherwise fragile-to-average bulked mon. Now, you're in a bind. You can't remove Photon Geyser, because then you become unable to consistently OHKO Gengar, but the moment you remove Play Rough, Sableye comes back in. Espeed is your way of dealing with faster mons, priority spam, pranksters, and MRay, so you can't remove that, and if you remove Spectral Thief, the aforementioned problems return in full. The point being, if only one of each species is allowed, none of the mons will be able to use their full potential anymore.

There's also another very important detail,
in that most offensive sweepers are easily fainted themselves, either through unfortunate weaknesses (including double weaknesses), and/or simply-awful defensive stats. The Mewtwui, Diancie, Sceptile, TTar, and possibly even MGar/Ray would likely fall an entire tier or more from this change, as most of them are easily K.O.'d in a single hit, and oftentimes rely on either overpowering their opponent first, through specific sets, or by virtue of numbers.

Argument
One of the perks about BH is being able to wall nearly anything, however another perk is that nearly any wall can be broken. This type of balance is what contributes towards a healthy and intuitive meta. Once this balance begins to slant too far in either direction, the game inevitably degenerates into a monotonous and unengaging experience. Some may try to argue that the balance of the meta would stay intact regardless "I get one 'Tina, and you get one Mewtwo, is that not fair?", however, as is the case with most metas, defensive play almost always has an inherent advantage over aggressive play. One bulky 'Mon can sweep an entire team of offensive mons, while the opposite is hardly true. Mewtwo/Ray etc. can't beat 'Tina, ZGarde, Slowbro, Sableye, and other mons like Ho-Oh/Registeel with one set. They can never deal enough damage without Supereffective moves, lack the moveslots to cover everything without losing to other common sets, and aren't nearly bulky enough to stall with statuses like proper walls can. This doesn't apply on the opposite end, however. Giratina doesn't need to hit you with supereffective coverage, because it can simply nullify its opponent's abilities, set statuses, and PP stall until each mon dies. The Offensive possessing the ability to "threat-stack" is its answer for the Defense's ability to wall a variety of mons with a single set, and for as frustrated as some select individuals can get from this reality, sometimes "brute-forcing" your way past checks with a menagerie of offensive threats is the only way to deal with certain walls without cycling through 140 turns of "micro-interactions" and hoping for the best.

The Problem
With Species Clause in place, all offensive threats would become "Poke-Coded", i.e., You see a Mega Mewtwo X? Switch into Tina. "Oh, Tina got switched in?", Send out Dianice. Diancie's here? Registeel. Regi's on the field? XTwo, ad infinitum (with maybe an occasionally U-Turn thrown in). When only a single one of each 'Mon is allowed to be played, it forces that mon to run its "optimal" set, since it can't afford to run "omnicoverage" sets with the confidence of having a more consistent "twin" in the back. This means that it'll likely be possible to predict an opponent's exact set just by looking at their mon on the team preview, and checks that were once a competitive "conversation" will gain absolute supremacy over the Mon they're designed to oppose. Some users spoke of their concerns regarding the meta potentially losing its diversity due to MRay, however, with Species Clause implemented, the meta would definitely lose its diversity, and the format would inevitably go from being "Balanced Hackmons" to "Ubers, with a few new toys".

Conclusion
Superficially speaking, it is easy to look at a 5-6 monospecies team that challenged, or perhaps even bested you, and brand it unfair, or brainless. However many of these teams are meticulously designed, and have had countless hours poured into them to ensure they could successfully execute their given roles. Perhaps running monospecies teams is unusual, but it's not wrong or unfair, just different. Like with most competitive games, some people may this format for its unique mechanics, others, for the particular meta's "culture", and then there are those who may play because they came to love specific elements or aspects of the game and wanted to use the meta's capabilities to make those elements work in a significant way. All of these types of players are valid, and it would be insensitive and callous of us to tell them they can't play in a way that makes them happy, especially when it's not breaking anything. This is something that even goes beyond the subject of ISpecies as well: If people want to run fringe FEAR sets, use attacking Dittos, or have Magikarp try its hand in things, let them do as they wish and enjoy the glories of the low-ladder. Likewise, if people want to take their favorites, such as Gengar, Rayquaza, or Mewtwo, and stack them on a team with the intent to reach new competitive heights, allow them to take their approach through things. This isn't like Contrary, where even a Smeargle can become a manner of threat with little risk required; If a player is truly bad, they can run six Triage/TC/Aerialate Rays and still get obliterated, because they simply have no idea what they're doing, and if a player is truly good, they aren't winning because they're "threat-stacking" (or any other such nonsense), but rather because they had a vision of what they wanted, and the ingenuity to execute it.
 
I would not call "threat-stacking" nonsense. It's a whole corner stone of the Ability Clause which has made a much better meta overall. You can see how strong ability threat stacking was when it was allowed from an old RMT of mine here. Yes, I know, it's from X/Y, but that's the most recent existence of being able to threat stack in BH via abilities. If you look at the replays, people tended to give up once they knew they were up against and, even when running the counters of the day, such as Entrainment, it only disrupted rather than stopped the team and they just got swept away.

Building the team was also somewhat brain-dead. I spent more time nitpicking some small details than the overall structure.

Also worth noting that this worked with a number of abilities at the time, like Contrary, Protean, Imposter, and others I don't recall.

Also, 22/3 might not sound impressive these days, but back then perfect win streaks were unheard of until Adrian Marin went 40/1 with his Paranoid Stall team thanks to today's low ladderstraight up not existing. An eye opening win-rate then, but par the course for a suspect test these days.

So back to species clause, it is threat stacking. A team cannot defensively afford to respond to, say, 6 Diancies in team building. Doing so would compromise their team's defensive integrity against everything else. However, the 6 Diancies only need to account for their checks/counters on a few members and run some counter-counter sets or lure sets to beat them, at which point they are free to demolish the opponent as they please. The spam user has the space to account for everything likely to give them trouble, but the defensive player cannot account for multiples of the same mon running the same or similar sets without hurting their overall effectiveness.

Removing threat stacking helps stop losses from happening from the team builder on players preparing for "normal" teams with otherwise perfectly good and viable teams. This in turn makes for a more fair metagame, as the more matches that are decided in the match itself, rather than teambuilder/preview, the healthier the meta is.


Second, the scenarios you describe with the MMX involves something called in economics "Opportunity Costs". Basically, the cost of doing something is the loss of doing the next best thing. Or something like that, I've not been inside an Econ class in years. But, opportunity costs absolutely play a role in BH, or competitive Pokemon, or competitive gaming, or just gaming in general. You can tell a game has at least some balance if it has good opportunity costs.

In MMX's case, it must weigh the cost of using one move to cover these threats versus using another move to cover these other threats. The team must also weigh the cost of different teammates to support MMX's choices versus each other. Without species clause, there is no opportunity cost. The MMX player can forego needing to make tough choices and working with inferior mons and just take another MMX. And another MMX. And another. Because MMX is a top tier mon, taking more of them is "cheaper" than taking something like Duskmane in the place of one of them. The only time opportunity costs start to rear its head is once you start on the 4th or 5th team slot, at which point considering other strong mons like Imposter or Ray to shore up the current vulnerabilities do exist. But taking more MMX isn't a wrong move still.

The non-spam teams absolutely need to weigh opportunity costs on every monslot. Why should there be a strategy that gets to bypass this, even a little?


Third, species spam results in he masking of information that would otherwise be available to the player. The sim doesn't keep up with multiples of the same mon and it gets confused, making it difficult for the opposing player to keep track of moves/abilities, statuses, HP counts, and so forth. If multiple of the spammed mons are at the same HP and status, it is literally impossible to tell them apart unless the spam player is kind enough to use different nicknames. A player can take notes outside of the match, sure, but that's only somewhat more effective. Note taking's effectiveness can also be hamepered by the spam player turning on the timer, reducing the time they have to write down notes and, for slow writers/typists, is basically impacting their ability to play via means outside the battle.

It's a very similar problem to Illusion, which was banned largely in part because it removed player skill by turning calculated moves into blind guesses when it was present. Species clause does the same. If you can't tell the spammed mons apart then all you can do is blindly guess and hope for the best. That's not skill, that's luck.
 
I would not call "threat-stacking" nonsense. It's a whole corner stone of the Ability Clause which has made a much better meta overall. You can see how strong ability threat stacking was when it was allowed from an old RMT of mine here. Yes, I know, it's from X/Y, but that's the most recent existence of being able to threat stack in BH via abilities. If you look at the replays, people tended to give up once they knew they were up against and, even when running the counters of the day, such as Entrainment, it only disrupted rather than stopped the team and they just got swept away.
While I absolutely agree that "threat stacking" exists, there seems to be an implicit assumption that by running more than one of a similar set, the "threat stacker" will automatically win the game, when this is far from true. Monospecies teams require much excellence and adaptability to be useful to their users, and this important point is seldom acknowledged. It is also important to mention how, when "threat stacking" got out of hand, we promptly dealt with it in the form of Ability Clause, and, as you yourself stated, the meta became better for it. With that said, we must also be cautious not to "overstep", lest we end up damaging the very meta we are trying to protect.

So back to species clause, it is threat stacking.
Sure it is. There's nothing inherently wrong with stacking offensive mons, just like there's nothing wrong with "check-stacking" either.

A team cannot defensively afford to respond to, say, 6 Diancies in team building.
While I understand this is just an example, a healthy way to manage this would simply be to run Baneful Bunker and Sunsteel Strike. If needed, lead with a bulky steel mon and set rocks. At this point, it would put them on the defensive. They don't know what your steel mon's exact purpose is. If they want to stop hazards, they'd have to bring a Magic Bouncer with them, which, as you said, presents opportunity cost. Next, they'd have to determine if the steel mon is even going to set hazards. Hard-Switching into their bounce Diancie when the steel mon could be running STAB would be fatal. Considering their team's composition and the looming threat of x4 damage hitting them, they'd most likely attack with one of their SE coverage moves, such as Quake or V-Create, which you'd be able to tank well enough to still fulfill your role. Maybe, if you so desire it, you let your steel mon get sac'd after this. Finally, you switch into your Baneful/Sunsteel Mon (assuming its faster), and press two buttons to win the game. Suddenly this seemingly unstoppable team finds itself wholly devestated by two mons, and these sets aren't even particularly unusual.

Removing threat stacking helps stop losses from happening from the team builder on players preparing for "normal" teams with otherwise perfectly good and viable teams.
Person A preparing checks for a normal team and Person B preparing their counterchecks is also a healthy part of the meta.

In MMX's case, it must weigh the cost of using one move to cover these threats versus using another move to cover these other threats. The team must also weigh the cost of different teammates to support MMX's choices versus each other. Without species clause, there is no opportunity cost. The MMX player can forego needing to make tough choices and working with inferior mons and just take another MMX. And another MMX. And another. Because MMX is a top tier mon, taking more of them is "cheaper" than taking something like Duskmane in the place of one of them. The only time opportunity costs start to rear its head is once you start on the 4th or 5th team slot, at which point considering other strong mons like Imposter or Ray to shore up the current vulnerabilities do exist. But taking more MMX isn't a wrong move still.

The non-spam teams absolutely need to weigh opportunity costs on every monslot. Why should there be a strategy that gets to bypass this, even a little?
The problem with this is that most offensive mons are easily K.O.'d. While your post is worded very thoughtfully, the reality is that a hypothetical XTwo's decisions don't matter in the grand scheme of things. No matter what XTwo decides to run, Its very likely to get 1 to 2-shotted by a big bulk of the tier. Say you decide to run Adapt LO Photon, Drain Punch, Spectral, and U-Turn. "Turn 1: Mewtwo-Mega-Y used Light of Ruin! Mewtwo-Mega-X lost 100% of its health!" There goes your one Mewtwo. Now, not only have you lost all of your Mewtwui, you also lose a significant bit of momentum before you even get the chance to feel your opponent's sets out. This means that if you want to preserve your Mewtwo, you're forced to either run Protecto moves, or make hard pivots whenever anything even remotely offensive appears to ensure you don't lose that mon for the rest of the game. I used Mewtwo for these examples, however this applies for any offensive mon.

As stated in my previous post, this also makes nearly any checks absolute in nature. Say you run Mega Mewtwo Y, and your opponent has a Beedrill on the field. In a meta where monospecies is allowed, the YTwo will still have a say in how things play out, whether it be in the form of surprise 'scarf sets, or fringe DBond sets. With Species Clause, however, the YTwo can't afford to run less common abilities, and would be forced to switch into something that you hope resists all of its coverage (since you have no guarantee it won't run V-Create or other moves, considering its in control). Species Clause would degenerate the meta into an RPS fest where players win, not because of their ingenuity, but because they simply managed to get lucky with their matchups and gained an unquestionable advantage for it.

Third, species spam results in he masking of information that would otherwise be available to the player.
This is more of a problem with the simulator, rather than ISpecies.

It's a very similar problem to Illusion, which was banned largely in part because it removed player skill by turning calculated moves into blind guesses when it was present. Species clause does the same. If you can't tell the spammed mons apart then all you can do is blindly guess and hope for the best. That's not skill, that's luck.
The same thing applies with Check-Stacking, though. If an opponent loads their teams up with Tinas/ZGardes, you're in a bind no matter what you do. Even if you manage to max your offenses, and run priority, you won't be able to know what each set does from the jump, and if you use your breaker move against a Prankster, or your priority against an Unaware, you suddenly lose all of your momentum, and potentially even get placed into disadvantage for factors that you couldn't have possibly predicted in full. Worse yet, Species Clause would fully break Threat-Stacking, but not Check-Stacking. Giratina and Zygarde are practically duplicates of each other, and would still have enough combined versatility and bulk to deal with nearly anything that comes their way, and the problem would be the same: Which is running Prankster? Which is running Unaware? What if they're both running the same ability? Every game would get slowed to a crawl because any offensive mon would have to constantly stall or pivot out to avoid getting tricked by a gimmick "checkset" and having their momentum reversed on them. Artificially lengthening the duration of matches through panic pivots isn't creating a more "intelligent" meta, it's simply creating a weaker, monotonous one, and a less balanced one at that.
 

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i dont think threat stacking is broken, people who have used them in tournaments and for the suspect have done disturbingly well but ultimately i would say that there are much more consistent strategies that can achieve better w/l ratios. instead, i think it's uncompetitive and almost completely takes the game out of the players' hands, and it comes down to whether or not the other player has sufficient counterplay on their team.
While I absolutely agree that "threat stacking" exists, there seems to be an implicit assumption that by running more than one of a similar set, the "threat stacker" will automatically win the game, when this is far from true. Monospecies teams require much excellence and adaptability to be useful to their users, and this important point is seldom acknowledged. It is also important to mention how, when "threat stacking" got out of hand, we promptly dealt with it in the form of Ability Clause, and, as you yourself stated, the meta became better for it. With that said, we must also be cautious not to "overstep", lest we end up damaging the very meta we are trying to protect.
"excellence and adaptability"? you mean theres a significant amount of skill involved in sending out the pixilate mmx instead of the other mmx, making 1 prediction to call out the giratina, and just winning the game after that? also im really not sure what makes ability spam problematic for you and not species spam because theyre pretty much the same thing.
While I understand this is just an example, a healthy way to manage this would simply be to run Baneful Bunker and Sunsteel Strike. If needed, lead with a bulky steel mon and set rocks.
this is what i mean by matchup based. what are you even using that runs baneful bunker + sunsteel? what if they have taunt lead diancie to block hazards, or a magic guard sash (very common) one in the back to threaten out the sunsteel user + remove hazards? what if they have multiple shell smash users, set up on the stealth rock, and prevent you from getting in the sunsteel user at all?

i'm not saying that this will always fail against species spam, but it is inconsistent. so we're running an offensive mon with bunker + sunsteel, which is extremely rare btw, and hazards specifically on a steel type, just to sometimes beat 6 diancies which is almost never used? what if i dont want to run bunker + sunsteel (i dont think ive found a use for this on any pokemon)? what if a better hazard setter for my team would be giratina?
The problem with this is that most offensive mons are easily K.O.'d. While your post is worded very thoughtfully, the reality is that a hypothetical XTwo's decisions don't matter in the grand scheme of things. No matter what XTwo decides to run, Its very likely to get 1 to 2-shotted by a big bulk of the tier. Say you decide to run Adapt LO Photon, Drain Punch, Spectral, and U-Turn. "Turn 1: Mewtwo-Mega-Y used Light of Ruin! Mewtwo-Mega-X lost 100% of its health!" There goes your one Mewtwo. Now, not only have you lost all of your Mewtwui, you also lose a significant bit of momentum before you even get the chance to feel your opponent's sets out. This means that if you want to preserve your Mewtwo, you're forced to either run Protecto moves, or make hard pivots whenever anything even remotely offensive appears to ensure you don't lose that mon for the rest of the game. I used Mewtwo for these examples, however this applies for any offensive mon.

As stated in my previous post, this also makes nearly any checks absolute in nature. Say you run Mega Mewtwo Y, and your opponent has a Beedrill on the field. In a meta where monospecies is allowed, the YTwo will still have a say in how things play out, whether it be in the form of surprise 'scarf sets, or fringe DBond sets. With Species Clause, however, the YTwo can't afford to run less common abilities, and would be forced to switch into something that you hope resists all of its coverage (since you have no guarantee it won't run V-Create or other moves, considering its in control). Species Clause would degenerate the meta into an RPS fest where players win, not because of their ingenuity, but because they simply managed to get lucky with their matchups and gained an unquestionable advantage for it.
i dont know man, just... dont keep mmx in on mmy and dont keep mmy on bee? i think its pretty obvious that this is a disadvantageous position for the mewtwo user, and unless theyre going for a hard read the obvious play is to just switch out into something that can take the attack, in order to get back into an advantage state.

calling it an "rps fest" is really just dumb. if i have an mmy on my team, and the opponent has a mega beedrill, that doesnt mean that i automatically lose from preview. it might be annoying because the beedrill can come in for free whenever my mmy kills something, but i can play around the beedrill using things like stealth rock and rocky helmet to limit the amount of times it can come in and uturn, take advantage of its near complete inability to break pokemon like giratina, or cleaning up late game with a pokemon like ph xern, mixed aerilate ray (if mray gets banned i can just use base ray), or imposter after mmy has taken care of all the defensive obstacles.

species spam is the real rps fest here. even the best species spam teams automatically lose to some things or cant do anything against specific forms of play. but other teams are fighting an uphill battle the whole way and are forced to make blind guesses about sets.
The same thing applies with Check-Stacking, though. If an opponent loads their teams up with Tinas/ZGardes, you're in a bind no matter what you do. Even if you manage to max your offenses, and run priority, you won't be able to know what each set does from the jump, and if you use your breaker move against a Prankster, or your priority against an Unaware, you suddenly lose all of your momentum, and potentially even get placed into disadvantage for factors that you couldn't have possibly predicted in full. Worse yet, Species Clause would fully break Threat-Stacking, but not Check-Stacking. Giratina and Zygarde are practically duplicates of each other, and would still have enough combined versatility and bulk to deal with nearly anything that comes their way, and the problem would be the same: Which is running Prankster? Which is running Unaware? What if they're both running the same ability? Every game would get slowed to a crawl because any offensive mon would have to constantly stall or pivot out to avoid getting tricked by a gimmick "checkset" and having their momentum reversed on them. Artificially lengthening the duration of matches through panic pivots isn't creating a more "intelligent" meta, it's simply creating a weaker, monotonous one, and a less balanced one at that.
?????? there are a ton of viable psychic types that can fill the same roles as mmx or mmy in case you still want your precious psychic spam in a species clause meta. mega zam, mega gallade, deoxys-a, medichamite medi, mega gardevoir, mega metagross, hoopa-u, ultra necrozma are all usable psychic type breakers/sweepers, and a significant portion of them can go mixed. and lure sets have always been a thing on non species spam teams. i mean i ran thunder ph xern last week in ompl to catch hooh. those wont go away with species clause.

if you wanna argue that gira + zyg would be unfair or whatever, first off we gotta see whether gira + zyg, or gira + gira, or zyg + zyg is used in the meta. and guess what? outside of a few really fringe strategies like double final gambit zyg and stall, which is bad anyway, it's not. using 2 mons that are weak to the same things on a 3-4 mon defensive core is really bad because you cant guarantee that you can get the prank one in to dbond the things it needs to, and what if ph xern or whatever comes in and just starts spiking up? that would kinda suck.

but lets assume you get your situation. you have a wallbreaker that can ohko both the gira and the zyg, but one is prank and youre not sure which. if you bring it in on gira, you can immediately double out. if they dbond, theyre the prank user for sure; if they switch out, its more ambiguous. this is overall a great situation for you to just double into another offensive threat, because they'll be forced to play defensively around this wallbreaker that you have out. for example if you have sf mmy out vs zyg, you can double to ph xern on either the dbond or the fc chans switchin to set up hazards.
One bulky 'Mon can sweep an entire team of offensive mons, while the opposite is hardly true.
this might be the most incorrect thing ive ever seen

address dinodudes post it gets more to the point
 

pazza

Banned deucer.
alright ladies and gentlemen hyper offense master 69 here and ill explain to you why no species clause is dumb.

for this post im gonna be using this rmt as an example, look over it if you want, its just 5 mmx sets and 1 ttar.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...wtwo-xs-and-a-tyranitar.3652085/#post-8173505

now ill explain why the team is good and uncompetitive

you know what checks mmx? zyg and giratina. you know what checks those mons, pixi mmx. "but pazza won't they know that its pixi mmx!!!!" no they wouldn't know because you have 4 other mmx that very well threatening to their team. their choices would be either stay in and guess if its pixi or not or switch out and supposedly let it set up for free. now most mmx dont run pixi so 7/10 times you will boomburst and they will lose 90% of their health.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7balancedhackmons-935229032 check turn 8 because of this, it allowed me to be able to sweep with normal mmx dazzling, without even setting up

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7balancedhackmons-934901186 this replay i got the zyg very low turn one, which allowed me to sweep with shell smash mmx

great, just by match up already your winning since their check to mmx is gone, and you have 5 mmx left. with variants such as 2 shell smash mmx which giratina and zyg are both prankster most of the time. one check is down. "But what about imposter!!" no that doesn't check this team either because you have 2 checks in the back. magic guard mmx or prankster mmx, either or can come in spectral thief and kill the chansey and then go for destiny bond or spectral thief again to chip/ko a mon.


you see what im talking about not even 2 turns into the game and your team is already at a big advantage because of how dumb not having species clause is.

now what i want to propose is a dex clause. where you are limited to one pokemon per the dex. this now would allow us to run both mmy and mmx. why i say this is because no other meta could allow you to run mmy and mmx.

dex clause would be both efficient at stopping most spam teams and wouldn't be stopping the user from running mmy and mmx.
 
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