Hoopa-Unbound is quite the Pokémon. Boasting excellent mixed offensive stats with a non-negligible Special Defense to back it up (notably surviving a Moonblast from Choice Scarf Tapu Lele), it can be a great asset for Dark and Psychic teams. It provides a secondary special attacker, only shared by Greninja, Hydreigon, and Galarian Moltres for Dark teams, and a secondary physical attacker, only shared by Mega Gallade, Victini, and Iron Boulder, for Psychic teams. Due to Hoopa-Unbound's great offenses, it can break through most defensive cores in Steel, Ground, Flying, and Poison with just a Choiced set. For instance, Choice Band Hyperspace Fury will always 2HKO Toxapex, Corviknight, and Gliscor, while Choice Specs is able to almost 2HKO Blissey and Assault Vest Iron Hands. Even "resists" aren't safe from it; Choice Band-boosted Hyperspace Fury 2HKOes Alolan Muk after Stealth Rocks. A Z-move set can also be run, allowing it to swap moves but retain its great breaking power to smash its desired targets. It can also run a Choice Scarf, allowing it to outrun the majority of the unboosted metagame and pick up surprise OHKOs from would-be offensive checks like Mega Lopunny and Mega Diancie. Lastly, though this might not get as much traction in NDM, an Assault Vest is a plausible item of choice, allowing it to act as an offensive but reasonably defensive team mate for both its types, shrugging off Mega Diancie and Gholdengo reasonably well.
Even though everything written so far makes it feel like a mistake to reconsider Hoopa-Unbound due to its sheer power and possible variance in its sets, it might not be the case in practice. For instance, even though a Choice Scarf set is appealing, it's slow enough that the team needs a secondary Choice Scarf user to deal with threats to their type, such as Blacephalon or Iron Valiant. Meanwhile, Choice Specs or Choice Band sets suffer from its middling Speed, making it unable to do much in faster-paced matchups like Dragon, Fairy, and Electric. It's also extremely vulnerable to chip damage and is deathly afraid of U-turn, which pivots like Corviknight, Jirachi, and Gliscor can utilize to punish it. Near-unwallable Pokemon sporting a decent speed tier are also not unheard of in NatDex Monotype which includes Mega Gallade, Landorus, Mega Diancie, and Mega Charizard-Y, and these are already faster than Hoopa-Unbound. Another point to ponder on is that these types might not even use Hoopa-Unbound to begin with; Dark already suffers an extreme six-Pokemon syndrome and already has Meowscarada and Hydreigon to beat up Fighting- and Steel-types respectively, while Psychic teams struggle to make room for it in popular Mega Gallade builds.
Because of these reasons, the NDM council thought that this reconsideration would be the best action to take to determine how to handle Hoopa-Unbound.
Why not Suspect test it instead?
The council determined that a standard two week suspect test is not optimal for verifying if Hoopa-Unbound is healthy in National Dex Monotype. With the NDM ladder tour coming up in a few hours, the council hopes that Hoopa-U will be used in high levels of play this tour would make to properly determine its place (or lack of) in the metagame. These games will be made public in the NDM subroom, so the players can see if Hoopa-U is too much for the tier.
If the council finds that Hoopa-U is still too much for the tier, a quickban to this Pokemon is still on the table. That being said, we don't think that's necessary though. If enough people think Hoopa-U is an issue, a suspect test will occur after the ladder tour.
Tagging dhelmise and Marty to unban Hoopa-U in National Dex Monotype, thank you in advance.
Last edited: