Announcement BW OU Reuniclus Suspect Test

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dice

dice

is a Tiering Contributoris a Tutor Alumnusis a defending World Cup of Pokemon Champion
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Hi all,

Following the results of the recent BW Survey, the BW Council has elected to suspect test Reuniclus. While no other element broke a simple majority in terms of community opinion, Reuniclus had a resounding 80.2% community approval for a suspect.

In many ways, Reuniclus takes advantage of the best elements of this tier: it is immune to all passive damage, it is a fantastic Spikes partner, it has a versatility of sets, and it has very specific, and often narrow, counterplay. Partners such as Thunder Wave Latios can nullify its most common check, Chople Berry Tyranitar, priming Reuniclus for a sweep. On rain teams, Politoed is oftentimes mandated to run Encore to help keep Reuniclus at bay.

To quote my post in the aforementioned thread, "The discovery of Clefable being a legitimate defensive lynchpin has only bolstered the efficacy of Reuniclus (and other Magic Guard users at large). Clefable is able to soft pivot against a lot of annoying things that Reuniclus would have to otherwise (think: bulky waters, Ferrothorn, etc) allowing Reuniclus more breathing room to wreak havoc and do damage.

There are other moves which haven't even been tapped into at a high enough frequency—Signal Beam, for instance, provides similar coverage to Focus Blast with also a practically guaranteed victory in a Reuniclus ditto." Which is to say: as the metagame as progressed, the playerbase has optimized Reuniclus even further, making its executions potentially too powerful.

Anyone who has met any of the below thresholds is automatically qualified to vote from tournament placements.

1) 6+ games or 3+ wins in SPL XV
2) BW Cup VII top 8
3) Finals of BW Winter Seasonal
4) Overall 2023 BW Circuit top 16

A list of qualified voters can be seen below:

Fakes, SoulWind, Dark Eeveon, dice, sensei axew, Rewer, elodin, jisoo, watashi, Nalorium, Finchinator, mael, GaryTheGengar, Mako, Star, Garay Oak, Raiza, Feaniix, Quarante8, zaaya, 3d, Shoka, Rubyblood, Goootzinho, Garay Oak, Kristyl, marsandback, Sergi, Aliss

As always, we will be offering a ladder component for community members to have a chance to vote whom do not immediately qualify. You must create a new alt with the prefix BWR and achieve a rating of 1600+ and a GXE of 85+ simultaneously. Please do not continue to ladder on your account after you achieve the reqs as we may not be able to verify that you achieved them if your rating/GXE ends up dropping.

As a reminder, qualifying for a suspect via ladder is exclusive to that suspect only and does not carry over.

The deadline for posting ladder reqs is Monday, July 1st at 10:00 PM GMT -4, after which a voting thread will be created. This thread will remain open for discussion about this suspect ONLY, not other potential bans.
 
Big props to BW community. I've undoubtedly been critical of this metagame in the past, but what this community has done has really been incredible. Finch, elodin, Raiza, M Dragon, and dice in particular have been an excellent council—it's great to see how much they engage with the thoughts of the community. Seeing the discourse that was amplified by SoulWind a couple of months back translate into actual tiering action has especially been a joy to see.
 
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For context, in the poll I voted in support of a suspect test, but I actually lean towards do-not-ban. I'm in favour of testing on these marginal mons purely cos either the mon goes and we move on, or the mon stays and the discussion moves onto something else, feels like win-win. When we avoid testing controversial mons, the discussion just goes around in circles cos we don't have any actual data to work with re: community opinion.
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Reuniclus is a case that needs a nuanced view imo. We've lived with it doing mostly the same thing for almost 14 years, and whilst its been top tier and controversial at times, it is not some blatantly overpowered, uncompetitive, zero skill threat. Some of the discussion on discord has immediately leapt to the idea that Reuniclus is obviously broken, will obviously get banned (I'm not the only person in that poll to support a suspect but actually lean anti-ban, by the way...). Anyone parroting the idea that Reuniclus is a very clear cut Uber needs a reality check, and likewise, anyone thinking that Reuniclus is completely non-problematic is kidding themselves. This is clearly a borderline Pokemon that just slightly tips either way.

The pro-ban Reuniclus argument is obvious. This is a mon with a huge variety of coverage options which let it 1v1 some sets that are meant to be custom-built to handle it (e.g. HP Ice into SDef SD Gliscor). Its the best abuser of Spikes in the tier. It encourages the use of Thunder Wave partners which aim to paralyse pretty much anything they can in aim of a Reuniclus endgame, even defensive Pokemon like Skarmory, Politoed, Rotom-W, Amoonguss in some cases to improve Reun's consistency. Offensive powerhouses like Latios running Thunder Wave instead of attacking options indicates how strong Reuniclus is into paralysed foes. Tyranitar and some Scizor sets enter into Pursuit 50-50s making them unreliable answers. Jirachi becomes less favoured into it if Reuniclus is ever fortunate enough to take a Scald burn or Toxic earlier in the game. Encore only has 8PP and well-played Reuniclus can outlast most users. Tricking a choice item is a one-time punt. Reuniclus' best answer is often your own Reuniclus.

My anti-ban argument is: Despite all of the above I also think Reuniclus is the most misplayed-against Pokemon in the entire tier. There is a steep skill curve to handling Reuniclus, both in the teambuilder and in-game, and this curve rewards players that are good at recognising the importance of small interactions which are critical in keeping Reuniclus in check. In the hands of good players, most teams have more outs vs Reuniclus than the average player has vision to recognise - Reuniclus is just a highly optimised punisher of players taking a Knock Off on the wrong Pokemon, taking a Thunder Wave on the wrong Pokemon, getting out of position in the spinner vs spiker interaction, failing to account for PP usage as a win condition, clicking Scald/Toxic too freely then being unable to paralyse it, and so on. When people lose to an endgame Reuniclus you can very often point to multiple turns with these micro decisions that could have been played better and kept the Reun at bay - if the opponent Knocked Off the Reuniclus instead of getting an extra Spike then it would have been forced to recover and not CM 15 turns later, if Bronzong hadn't been paralysed then etc etc etc.

Teams sometimes have obscure outs vs Reuniclus that also aren't immediately obvious. Multiple phasers (e.g. Hippo + Skarmory) tend to be excellent at baiting it into PP depletion, depending on coverage. PP stalling Focus Blast and even the Psychic STAB are feasible outs in many cases. Early game Knock Off hugely cuts into Reuniclus' ability to act as a pivot. Thunder Wave + hitting it for 35-40% damage consistently wins out.

In a metagame that can sometimes feel like "big offensive breakers crashing into eachother for 20 turns", a Pokemon that forces a slow burn style of play where small decisions over many turns are imperative feels like it may be a good thing. I like stuff that rewards the better player and achieving consistency both with and against Reuniclus requires a great degree of skill.

I'm open to changing my mind and if I go for reqs then I'll have a really deep think about what I think is best for the tier. Reuniclus is highly effective and abuses some of the most disgusting parts of the tier efficiently, but at the moment I appreciate a Pokemon that 1) dissuades excessively passive teambuilding and 2) rewards players who are good at the small interactions surrounding Spike, Knock Off, paralysis, Hail, PP
 
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I've played very, very little BW OU and I'm a relatively average player anyways so take this with a grain of salt, but from the little I've seen and played about BW OU, it seems like Reuniclus is a strong pokémon that abuses everything about the tier to the fullest extent: good typing, above average coverage, ways to hit pursuit users with Focus Blast, immune to sand + spikes, and reliable recovery. It's very similar to Alakazam but better in almost every conceivable way: the bulk Reuniclus offers seems to far outweigh the speed Alakazam brings.

It's not an overwhelmingly dominant Pokémon, there are many forms of counterplay to it like Unaware, Chople Pursuit Tar, phazing, etc. The thing that slightly bugs me is that it seems as though any team that uses Reuniclus has a small but tangible advantage against a team that doesn't. I don't know if it's banworthy as I'm not nearly experienced enough, but it seems to me that a single Pokémon offering an advantage is unhealthy for the metagame. Reuniclus just takes everything that's "good" in the metagame and warps it to sometimes suffocating levels.

I would be super sad to see it go considering it's literally my favorite Pokémon of all time (pfp lol) but it's not up to me and I could totally see it being banned.
 
Damn, i just checked the ladder and you need to be top5 to have 1600 elo, is the number 1600 just default for all suspects reagardless of ladder size?
 
The ladder is not usually so inactive as to need top 5 for 1600. You will probably find as this suspect goes on that many more people rise above that threshold.

in terms of this being a normal standard, 1600 has been the requirement for the prior two suspects for BW given this ladder isn’t the most active. For other tiers with more active ladders such as SV and ADV, they would probably raise this requirement further.
 
Let’s shift this thread back to discussion of Reuniclus being broken or not in the eyes of experienced BW OU players. Those are are still getting into the tier are always welcome, but it may be best to lurk more initially or post in the BW Hub first given that this is an ongoing suspect. And if people have questions or concerns on the suspect format, you can PM me and we can hash it out there.

Thanks, have a nice day.
 
bdt2002 said:
Here, though, we’re seeing Magic Guard having been added to Pokémon that were or could have been strong but balanced even without it, those being Alakazam and, of course, Reuniclus itself.
Click to expand...

I doubt Alakazam would be OU if it didn't have magic guard, especially considering very early in BW it was RU until magic guard came out. So choosing to make it a magic guard suspect is not a good idea.
 
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On paper, Reuniclus seems so broken until you realize what the meta would look like without it. Without Reuniclus, the tier would become a painfully passive abomination of a tier with scald spammers suffocating the tier and preventing any meaningful progress. So, for the sake of everyone's sanity (except for the scald spammers and passive teams), I will be voting do not ban if I ever get voting reqs.
 
Here's Weegee! said:
On paper, Reuniclus seems so broken until you realize what the meta would look like without it. Without Reuniclus, the tier would become a painfully passive abomination of a tier with scald spammers suffocating the tier and preventing any meaningful progress. So, for the sake of everyone's sanity (except for the scald spammers and passive teams), I will be voting do not ban if I ever get voting reqs.
Click to expand...
The argument of scald spam doesnt make sense we have good enough scald punishers like clefable , poison heal breloom or if ur using more offensive teams lum berry stuff makes more safe to use phys attackers vs it . which already make stuff like tenta , toed harder to spam scald. People even have been experimenting specs poli to punish those kind of teams aswell. banning reun will make fighting types alot better specially breloom. I do agree on rise of more passive teams but i still find reun preety annoying to deal even if u arent using passive teams
 
Here's Weegee! said:
On paper, Reuniclus seems so broken until you realize what the meta would look like without it. Without Reuniclus, the tier would become a painfully passive abomination of a tier with scald spammers suffocating the tier and preventing any meaningful progress. So, for the sake of everyone's sanity (except for the scald spammers and passive teams), I will be voting do not ban if I ever get voting reqs.
Click to expand...
This is not the way suspect tests work. You clearly state that you believe that Reuniclus is broken, if banning Reuniclus somehow makes something else broken, then we can suspect this new broken thing (especially if it's Scald we are talking about, which plenty of people already rightfully think is broken even with Reuniclus existing). ; Especially when leoperi99 is right about Scald counterplay would still exist post-Reuniclus ban. I know that the prospect of slippery slopes is even scarier in old gens as the playerbase is extremely conservative (sprinkle a bit of Stockholm syndrome too, Reuniclus has been broken for 14 years and still counting and only evaded bans because the scarce playerbase didnt want to spam Reuniclus all the way), but it doesn't change the fact that the logic is fallacious.

TL;DR: you can't say "Reu is broken" followed by Do Not Ban

ps: at this point we should have a button in the text editor called "redirect ppl to a post explaining why not banning pokemon because of slippery slopes is fallacious" pretty please
 
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[
peng said:
For context, in the poll I voted in support of a suspect test, but I actually lean towards do-not-ban. I'm in favour of testing on these marginal mons purely cos either the mon goes and we move on, or the mon stays and the discussion moves onto something else, feels like win-win. When we avoid testing controversial mons, the discussion just goes around in circles cos we don't have any actual data to work with re: community opinion.
------

Reuniclus is a case that needs a nuanced view imo. We've lived with it doing mostly the same thing for almost 14 years, and whilst its been top tier and controversial at times, it is not some blatantly overpowered, uncompetitive, zero skill threat. Some of the discussion on discord has immediately leapt to the idea that Reuniclus is obviously broken, will obviously get banned (I'm not the only person in that poll to support a suspect but actually lean anti-ban, by the way...). Anyone parroting the idea that Reuniclus is a very clear cut Uber needs a reality check, and likewise, anyone thinking that Reuniclus is completely non-problematic is kidding themselves. This is clearly a borderline Pokemon that just slightly tips either way.

The pro-ban Reuniclus argument is obvious. This is a mon with a huge variety of coverage options which let it 1v1 some sets that are meant to be custom-built to handle it (e.g. HP Ice into SDef SD Gliscor). Its the best abuser of Spikes in the tier. It encourages the use of Thunder Wave partners which aim to paralyse pretty much anything they can in aim of a Reuniclus endgame, even defensive Pokemon like Skarmory, Politoed, Rotom-W, Amoonguss in some cases to improve Reun's consistency. Offensive powerhouses like Latios running Thunder Wave instead of attacking options indicates how strong Reuniclus is into paralysed foes. Tyranitar and some Scizor sets enter into Pursuit 50-50s making them unreliable answers. Jirachi becomes less favoured into it if Reuniclus is ever fortunate enough to take a Scald burn or Toxic earlier in the game. Encore only has 8PP and well-played Reuniclus can outlast most users. Tricking a choice item is a one-time punt. Reuniclus' best answer is often your own Reuniclus.

My anti-ban argument is: Despite all of the above I also think Reuniclus is the most misplayed-against Pokemon in the entire tier. There is a steep skill curve to handling Reuniclus, both in the teambuilder and in-game, and this curve rewards players that are good at recognising the importance of small interactions which are critical in keeping Reuniclus in check. In the hands of good players, most teams have more outs vs Reuniclus than the average player has vision to recognise - Reuniclus is just a highly optimised punisher of players taking a Knock Off on the wrong Pokemon, taking a Thunder Wave on the wrong Pokemon, getting out of position in the spinner vs spiker interaction, failing to account for PP usage as a win condition, clicking Scald/Toxic too freely then being unable to paralyse it, and so on. When people lose to an endgame Reuniclus you can very often point to multiple turns with these micro decisions that could have been played better and kept the Reun at bay - if the opponent Knocked Off the Reuniclus instead of getting an extra Spike then it would have been forced to recover and not CM 15 turns later, if Bronzong hadn't been paralysed then etc etc etc.

Teams sometimes have obscure outs vs Reuniclus that also aren't immediately obvious. Multiple phasers (e.g. Hippo + Skarmory) tend to be excellent at baiting it into PP depletion, depending on coverage. PP stalling Focus Blast and even the Psychic STAB are feasible outs in many cases. Early game Knock Off hugely cuts into Reuniclus' ability to act as a pivot. Thunder Wave + hitting it for 35-40% damage consistently wins out.

In a metagame that can sometimes feel like "big offensive breakers crashing into eachother for 20 turns", a Pokemon that forces a slow burn style of play where small decisions over many turns are imperative feels like it may be a good thing. I like stuff that rewards the better player and achieving consistency both with and against Reuniclus requires a great degree of skill.

I'm open to changing my mind and if I go for reqs then I'll have a really deep think about what I think is best for the tier. Reuniclus is highly effective and abuses some of the most disgusting parts of the tier efficiently, but at the moment I appreciate a Pokemon that 1) dissuades excessively passive teambuilding and 2) rewards players who are good at the small interactions surrounding Spike, Knock Off, paralysis, Hail, PP
Click to expand...


“ clicking Knock-Off instead of a spike to make it recover instead of CM after 15 turns…”

Pokémon is a game that has not only RNG, but blatant unpredictability. Yes, the most optimal/midground move might be clicking move 1, but the opponent might have one move that could punish it, which in turn loses to all (or some) other options you click. (Example Crunch Vs Pursuit mindgames where one might win you the game vs lose the interaction) So now, you’re simply in a 50/50 of what happens (clicking an optimal/midground move or the move that counters that) and how the game will progress. Saying “play better” by telling you to predict a situation in 15 turns is utterly insane, there’s so many choices and plays in each turn. Even in the game of chess, common COMPUTERS (Stockfish) calculate up to 18 iirc moves in advance, and that has no rng to account for, no “I’ll play a bad move to counter your optimal one” (that plainly doesn’t exist as you don’t get value off of 1 turn in chess). Why are we expecting humans to similar WITH variables?
At some point, things are simply unaccountable for.
Clicking Knock off in your example might lead to a turn where you don’t kill or have the ability to play around another mon because you’re lacking spikes damage. Saying “you misplayed that turn” because of something that happens 15 turns afterwards isn’t that clear in the moment itself (hindsight is 20/20 and easy to speak of), and it could even lead to a worse game state afterwards. And I’m keeping this vague because this entire argument might work for some specific examples where truly the move played is just plain bad from any point of view, but conceptually, this argument doesn’t work. (Hell, sets and EVs aren’t shown in team preview, which also brings in unpredictability, even if you’re some amazing analyst and can usually guess the structure and workings of the opposing team.)

Micro-decisions, “obscure outs” and whatnot can certainly be a showing of skill, but when you layer guesses (moveset and EVs) over guesses (midground vs punishing a midground (not entirely 50/50 I know but it’s still a guess at the end of the day)) over guesses (team members having a move you did not account for/did not expect, or plainly couldn’t account for since there’s too many options), the skill is vastly overshadowed by something you are not in control of.

I just find an argument saying “skill issue” to not be a good point, especially when
1. That was the only counterpoint, saying players are bad lol
2. it has been brought up multiple times as a problem for years and despite the endless years of Reuniclus and being able to learn how to play it/against it, top players are still saying it’s broken regardless?
Like, CTC telling people skill issue for complaining about Gouging in SV OU is one thing, it was a new Mon and the meta and players hadn’t adapted (and he turned out to be right lol) but for a Mon that has been doing this for what 10 years? That’s disingenuous, isn’t it?
 
Vukes I think you're taking one specific example far too literally, I didn't even describe a specific enough gamestate to go this all-in on.

I'm not saying you need to predict 15 turns into the future. You don't need to be perfect every turn. Obviously this is would be insane. But the point I'm making is that winning or losing vs Reun often involves sequences of decisions which may not be impactful until a lot later e.g. Knock Off is not immediately gratifying, but you don't need a chess supercomputer to know it will make it easier to break down Reuniclus with Thundurus/Keldeo/Mamoswine, force more Recovers on Poli switches to Encore, and so on. The chess computer point actually makes no sense when 1) 15 turns in the future is clearly just a random number I plucked to mean "later in the game", it could very easily make a difference within a couple of turns and 2) you don't need to predict the precise gamestate you just need to estimate a rough direction to how you'll win the game.

Decisions like this surround how Reuniclus interacts with basically every top usage Pokemon in the game - they all have something that Reuniclus doesn't want to directly engage with and therefore needs to delicately played around, which tests the skill of both players. Latios has Trick/Roar/Twave on many of its sets; Tyranitar, Jirachi, Excadrill, Scizor are pretty hard roadblocks; Gliscor and Ferrothorn threaten Knock Off which make every Pokemon with an attacking move better against it (SD Gliscor also outright wins the 1v1 vs any non Ice set); Skarmory phases; Landorus-T does enough damage with Earthquake to threaten crits and at minimum burn a heck of a lot of Recover PP, all turns it can't click Calm Mind or attack.

I think your post and comments on BKC's youtube are a misrepresentation (my post was "truly disgusting" and a "shitpost" lol cmon). You're summing up my entire post as just shouting "skill issue" but I think its fairer to phrase it as this - over the course of longer games, with decisions that need you to defer gratification (hazards, Knock, Twave and so on), the better player has more opportunities to leverage the difference in understanding of the game. Some of these small decisions look like 50-50s on the surface, but they rarely are. Good players win more than 50% of them and they go on to win more games. Thats not an attempt to shame bad players and shut down their arguments. If anything I'm saying its good to have Pokemon that are challenging to both use and play against and I think this makes for some positive interactions in the tier.

I'm not even a hardline anti-banner lol but this chess computer gotcha is so off base that i felt the need to respond lol
 
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Reuniclus paraspam is a very reliable and powerful strategy but I don't think it's uniquely more broken than the numerous insane threats we have in BW. It's pretty cancer to deal with, and I think there's a valid pro ban argument just based on that, but pretending it's a 50% usage obvious Uber is insane. I'll be voting dnb and I encourage people to actually get the reqs before they make such declarative statements as Reuni has been an Uber for 15 years or Knock Off is bad because you can't predict 15 turns in the future or whatever.
 
While I have every bit of trust that this move was made in good faith, announcing a change to the deadline on the eve of the deadline is a clearly flawed decision that sets a dangerous precedent. It gives the freedom to mask personal interests under the guise of increasing participation. Allowing the council to move the deadline poses a conflict of interest given council members have a vested interest in the outcome of the vote. This move undermines the voting requirement process and the integrity of the suspect processes as a whole.
 
It is impossible to predict how active the ladder will become during a suspect, which is needed to determine how to properly set ladder reqs. Initially this was a roadblock that prevented laddering reqs altogether, but in an effort to curb elitism and limited voter pools, we took the risk last test and a lot of people were happy we did as it gave them a chance to vote.

We were met with a lot of people getting reqs, which was awesome, but it was inflated quite a bit by rampant cheating (boosting, forfeit requesting, etc.) which made numerous reqs illegitimate. Between this and slightly lower interest/ladder volume during this test, it became clear that the parameters we used were not getting the job done this test like we hoped they would. And we lacked the accurate feedback from last test to change requirements due to the numbers being skewed from the cheating removals.

Here is precisely what happened: Numerous council members received negative feedback about reqs right now, including both dice and myself. I mostly brushed them off as I was without power 2 days this week and had too much going on to really say much else, but dice did his job better than I could and brought it up in the chat with a possible solution -- dice has been proactive throughout this whole process at times when I have conflicts and the tier owes a lot of progress to him.

Yesterday, dice asked if it would be posible to extend reqs, Raiza said he is not sure but reqs should be lowered next time, M Dragon agreed the ladder had too low activity right now for the given test, and I said it was fine to extend on the contingency we got approval from Star and Aug, who run Old Generation Councils. From there, they both said it was fine and dice posted the extension. There was no acting in bad faith or with an agenda -- 3 total people got voting reqs from ladder, which is just kind of sad and very low. I specifically did not let this happen without getting explicit approval from OGC leadership, so any of thie masking vestered interest logic does not apply.

Finally, changing the ELO/GXE is a non-starter mid-test due to people already being deep into runs and honestly usually changing the deadline is close to this status, too, but it is by far the easiest to change of the three, so we bit the bullet once we got approval.
 
i think this test didn't get much traction bc it wasn't publicized outside of the bw forum. extension doesn't undermine the integrity as a test of skill bc let's be honest, these reqs are easy to get; they just take a decent amt of time investment. given the low publicity and large time commitment relative to the deadline given, it's reasonable to provide an extension. i don't believe there exists a conflict of interest in the council given their likely differences in tier perception and requirement for ogc leadership to vet their decisions.
 
I'm glad the council has been active during this suspect and are doing their best to make the suspect as quality as possible. Although in my opinion, I thought the reqs were entirely achievable even if the ladder was slightly harder, and that the extension was entirely unnecessary.
 
I think that reuniclus cm sets are easy to deal with especially using the well known move: thunder wav. That said the trick room LO max spe atk set is smth else and can be very annoying especially if it doesnt miss focus blast and has good coverage (tbolt/ energy ball/grass knot). I gots req using mono fight and I didnt had special issues with reuniclus except that tr set so PLZzz DO NOT BAN because the trick room take one turn to be setup and most mons take one hit so you can still rk it with priorities and stuff.
reuniclus.gif


I personally think that extending the deadline was a good thing because i forgot about this and thx to the extension i remembered so ty for this. also free Cloyster!
 
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