i was initially gonna make a more general post here since my lccl team got eliminated, which would probably include a teamdump and even my own vrs (its probably a good idea to post them before lcpl at least?), but i think its fair for me to first address all this current talk of potential bans in more detail than i did in discord since ive been playing dpp lc in teamtours for a while now and am pretty much the catalyst for this whole discussion popping up in the first place.
firstly, i kinda have to agree with the notion of cranidos being rly oppressive. im p sure u can count the number of mons that are even able to switch into two head smashes and still survive on one hand. bronzor is the main one and its like the easiest thing to overwhelm as its already expected to handle half of the metagame (gligar, snover, normal types, croagunk, etc), not mentioning that cranidos can just eq and there goes bronzor. the others are like bulky ground types which are hard to fit due to having poor mu against lot of the established meta (gligar, snover, bronzor, gastly, all the waterspam). trapinch could take two head smashes with oran and it traps and ohkos crani which is nice sure, but its kinda a momentum sink after and it also wants to trap munchlax and stunky, not to mention if crani crits its gone. u can try hippo, phanpy, onix but yea like i said theyre hard to build with since they just sux vs most of the meta as half of the mons on most teams resist/are immune to ground. any other rock resist is deleted by two head smashes or by cranis other coverage should it opt to use those.
this basically means the counterplay to crani is to sack something to head smash (u often see people throw munchlax in due to its high hp) then revenge kill with priority from like gunk or snover, but if crani is positioned well it doesnt need to use head smash, something that the crani player wants to put themselves ideally. this might open itself up to being pursuit trapped by a healthy lax (or stunky/houndour if locked into zhb) and that can mean its able to be picked off by priority sure, but that also just means crani can come back later and terrorise something else if its in position.
as for scarfers, many of the common ones like snover or machop dont outspeed crani to begin. meanwhile, people throw their scarf wailmer into crani hoping to win the speed tie/be faster/miss head smash/stone edge at best while at worst having crani lose over half its hp from head smash recoil, which is just rly silly, might be in the favor of the wailmer player but its just not interactive. faster scarfers like gligar and chinchou can be used but these mons also have other purposes that make slapping a scarf on them less than ideal, esp for chinchou. like yes there is counterplay to this mon but if it often means ur expected to sack a mon or even two, esp for teams without bronzor, just to deal with it then isnt that kinda grounds for concern anyways? as an aside, its not like crani has any defensive utility in this tier, its most useful trait is resisting fake out but u obv dont want it to switch in on any attack lol so that u can more easily throw out head smashes.
as for machop, i would 100% prefer a ban of dynamicpunch or no guard instead. i think a no guard ban would be way more doable for the sole reason that machop is the only mon with no guard whereas other mons learn dynamicpunch and are obv not busted by it, altho i think dynamicpunch is just rng nonsense to begin with so why not remove it. sure it might alter the meta lots and that goes against what people like about dpp which is that the meta evolves naturally despite minimal tiering changes, but no guard dynamicpunch just makes machop beat mons it has no business beating otherwise if the rng goes right which is downright silly. either way, please just dont ban machop entirely ban no guard/dynamicpunch instead cause machop has actual defensive traits and stats that lot of other fighters in dpp dont have.
honestly while were on this topic of potential bans, i need to mention why is baton pass just unrestricted here like lmfao??!?? it sounds silly to bring it up randomly as obv im aware it hasnt quite manhandled dpp lc the same way it has in other metas despite attempts to make it work, but this move is just unserious to me all it does is promote cheese. the good mons that have bp (gligar, aipom) already have uturn and anything else viable thats using bp isnt using it to drypass. only thing is that it hasnt seen much tour success as of now so who gaf i guess but i still think this shit is uncompetitive and should be gone rofl, its not like adv ou where we have drypass zapdos and celebi as meta staples or whatever.
i think a tiering poll from the active playerbase (if thats feasible/something we do here) followed into any potential suspect would make sense cause its p clear that the playerbase is divided on if/how we approach this.
also, we rly need to update some of the sets on the site because stuff like the download porygon set thats picked up as of late still isnt on there, not to mention adjusting the sets of all the 2010 ass analyses to modern standards and not just machop.
