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Following our recent tiering survey, 1v1 council has decided to suspect Regidrago! With a large majority of players disliking the impact it has on multiple eras of SV (since its release in DLC1/Home even), it is no surprise that it finds itself getting tested. Many cite how it simplifies previews, since it is losing instantly to Fairy or Steel types, which are very obvious on team preview. It also encourages players to use one of these types on most teams, which some say leads to "stale" or "bland" team building options a lot of the time. On the other hand, Regidrago instantly losing to Fairy and Steel types on preview means most other dragons outclass it without extra effort. There is also more than just Steel or Fairy type counterplay as well, like Pokemon such as Landorus-Therian and Ursaluna, which gives more diversity in the builder than throwing a Fairy or Steel type on every team.
What do you think? Should it stay or be banned? Post thoughts you have about Regidrago in this thread, or in the metagame thread!
In order to become a qualified voter, ladder with the prefix 1drago and achieve suspect requirements listed below.
Click this link when you achieve requirements and DO NOT ladder until a moderator has verified your account.
The deadline is Wednesday, June 12th 11:59 PM -5.
NOTE: LT accounts do count for reqs as well however they must be made after this post.
GXE
Minimum Games
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50
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74.1
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74.7
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75.0
45
75.3
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75.6
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tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement ladder tysm :)
Disclaimer: yes I am aware I don't know how to argue about this mon but I'll still try.
I'd challenge the fact that it loses instantly to Steels. Drago is thicc and you need enough firepower to take it down before it can setup on you with DDance Focus Energy (s/o happysh).
I'd also mention that it has the potential to OHKO a very large portion of non-fairies and non-steels with Scarf Dragon Energy or Specs Draco Meteor which is ridiculous. Add to this a nice selection of utility moves such as Scale Shot and Breaking Swipe, and it becomes unpredictable and extremely difficult to build against.
I'll end the rant by mentioning the infamous Pecharunt-Regidrago core. Are you sure you want these two to stay together in the same meta?
I'd like to say that despite the many strengths of regidrago there are clearly some glaring weaknesses that do not make it a perfect pokemon in this metagame and so I will be voting no ban
The regidrago of now is very different from the regidrago of the archaludon meta or the regidrago of sword and shield. It has incredible freedom to choose what it wants to run or beat.
This is reinforced by the fact that regidrago's sets are all currently very good. It's an excellent scarfer, allowing it to pick up on meowscarada and generally ohko non obese non resists. It's still a good haban user, allowing opposing dragon matchups. It's a great specs user, allowing it to ohko anything but the studiest of walls.
And I want to note that the meta has absolutely no way of adapting to it. You cannot "tweak an EV spread" to live specs dragon energy, or make your pokemon faster to outspeed scarf. This leaves us with its current known counters: fairies and (very dubious at times) steels.
Regidrago by definition not unbeatable, but I would like to make the case that in a metagame with much more limited regidrago counters than previous metas or generations (look up the pool of actually useable fairies or real steels, it's super dire), in a meta where regidrago sets have never been better, it has on overly oppressive presence and should be banned.
Imo honestly, Regidrago has gotta be the biggest "got yo ass" mons I've ever seen.
This is just gonna be adding onto and agreeing with fruan tbh. BY DEFINITION, Drago is not unbeatable, yes. But, at the same time, its sheer power means that well... you kinda have to have something that can beat it. Do you know how hard it is to actually outbulk Dragon Energy? This is one of the strongest moves ever conceived. This thing is so powerful, it might as well ignore immunities altogether. Call it an exaggeration to say it's so strong it straight up bypasses immunities if you want to, but it just... it's strong.
The other thing to note in beating this thing: It has Earth Power/Earthquake, and Crunch. Most Steel types aren't even beating it with Dragon Energy in mind, let alone Earth Power or Earthquake. Crunch normally doesn't matter since Dragon Energy smacks Ghosts anyways, but Crunch means that, in the event that you face something that Dragon Energy and Earth Power/Earthquake doesn't hit very hard, it can still chunk them. Oh and it has Fire Fang FOR THIS EXACT MATCHUP VS CORVIKNIGHT AND SKARMORY (which neither doesn't even guarantee beating it and STILL didn't either way because Dragon Enerbonk).
Why does this thing exist? I don't actually think Medieval times had a dragon this powerful, but oh well. I'm on the ban wagon with this thing. I don't wish for this thing to be in the tier any longer, as long as it defined FireValDrago format (it was the Drago, in this case) and still defines gen 9 1v1 even now. Too versatile, too powerful (100 offenses are deceptively high when you have a free dragon choice band and a dragon type Water Spout). Plz ban this thing
There is one thing I want to make very clear, like many others have said Regidrago has counters. This is not your average "X is broken because it can beat everything so let's ban it" and as such if you're looking into whether it should be banned I wouldn't recommend going down a list of checks and counters and thinking about what "too many" means.
Let's start off by explaining what regidrago is. Regidrago is, fundamentally, a huge ball of stats. Dragon has always been a good defensive typing and a very neutral offensive one, which means thata dragon type with high raw offensive power has the potential to deal loads of damage to all but 2 types (fairy and steel). Regidrago's ability Dragon's Maw and a powerful selection of dragon type moves (with base powers of 120+ both physically and specially) give it this raw offensive power.
There are a few pokemon that can reliably beat some drago sets. It's possible to tank a Specs Draco Meteor or even Dragon Energy, it's possible to tank a Choice Band Outrage, but very few pokemon can cover all bases. Beyond that, even if you can survive all attacks Regidrago can possibly throw at you, there's still the question of getting a KO in return. Yes, AV Suicune can survive anything Regidrago can possibly throw at it, but this doesn't let it beat Drago.
Which brings me to the point that everyone keeps raising, and I'll try my best to explain it in a way that others have not. If you want to survive a hit from Regidrago and still have power budget left over to actually kill it, just run a Fairy/Steel type. In Regidrago's case it's important to think about the effects this has on teambuilding as a whole. I think we can all agree that having to run a small handful of pokemon because otherwise you lose to X pokemon is bad. If Kyurem-Black loses to Magearna and nothing else, then obviously mandating a Magearna on your team is bad. But this is only half the issue. In 1v1 it's important to cover your bases, and beating a single pokemon is only half of what a pokemon should do. The other half is the rest of the metagame, you're not running a Fairy or Steel type just to beat Regidrago, but running most other Drago answers doesn't cover your bases in the same way a Fairy type would. Yes, you can run Cetitan and get away with beating most dragos, but it comes at the cost of losing to Gouging Fire and a handful of other dragons, as well as not giving the coverage against Hoopa-Unbound and Iron Hands that a Fairy type could provide.
In conclusion: Although Regidrago is not impossible to counter, its incredibly high damage and significant bulk narrow the available counters down to a very defined category, which warps teambuilding into a very telegraphed system of Dragon (not necessarily drago) + Fairy + Fairy counter. The prevalence of this style of teambuilding, largely propagated by Regidrago, reduces player freedom and centralises the metagame.
One thing I should mention: For some people centralisation is a good thing, it makes a metagame more predictable which can make teambuilding feel like less of an impossible task. In a hypothetical world where every team is Drago + Primarina + Primarina Counter, it reduces the need to think about 3 mons, and allows for focus on what your primarina counter will be, and lets you focus on building sets. On the other hand, some players may prefer a heavily decentralised metagame where anything goes, and you won't know what to expect at all. These players may value creativity and surprise, or enjoy the puzzle of trying to cover a large metagame with few pokemon.
Personally I play SM which has a degree of centralisation but isn't as centralised as SV, and I enjoy the puzzle of covering all the top tiers with 1-2 pokemon and then getting broad and creative with the rest of my team. My point is centralisation is different for everyone, and if you're thinking about whether we should ban Regidrago you need to consider how you feel about its centralising effect. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's any policy guidelines on what we're looking for when it comes to centralisation, which is why I concluded that it's up to personal preference. If we do have written guidelines for centralisation they should definitely be referenced in this discussion
Regidrago is a very strong Pokémon in the current meta; however, I do not think it's currently broken. The first reason I believe Regidrago is not broken is its predictability at preview. Regidrago's counters are mostly hard counters that it has no way around, making it predictable at preview, unlike other threatening top tiers in the meta like Hooper. Like every other top-tier Pokémon, Regidrago forces you to bring counters for it on your team if you want to build viable teams. Pokémon that counter Regidrago, like Primarina or Corviknight, are very easy to include in your teams because of their already amazing matchups in the meta, even without considering Regidrago. Without the set diversity of other meta-defining mons like Ogerpon and with the presence of many hard counters that can fit onto almost any team, I believe Regidrago does not deserve a ban.
I feel like drago’s preview is the one aspect I find to be the worst/unhealthiest part about it and I don’t rly agree with other points on it. It nullifies previews largely to the type chart, with little room for other possible answers to be techable. Not that it isn’t possible but the fact that there is no real ambiguity on regidrago on preview is a double edged sword for the user and opponent: the answer/counter is very obvious. Which then nullifies preview into what some call a “coin flip” in a matter of picking LeDragoAnswer or not.
Most other dragons are in fact better than drago since they don’t have the same glaring weakness, (i.e gouging or bolt) but the difference is mainly how they function on preview. Since the way drago interacts on preview is often different than other dragons, it also finds itself pairing well with fairy answers very well.
There was a team rly popular last PL that was like drago volcarona corv. Which is pretty simple but saw plenty of usage and when u hear the three mons it is fairly easy to see what the team looked to accomplish: make fairies less clickable/harder than usual to click, and it did see some success iirc? Finding different ways to hash/do this concept is going to give anyone a fine to decent match up, and with new monslike pecha it only helped drago out more.
Overall, I will probably be voting ban due to LeOutline above. I think recent fairy gen with no drago can see a lot more flourishing without it being here/open the skill ceiling in terms of play and building in my opinion.
Regidrago is a very strong Pokémon in the current meta; however, I do not think it's currently broken. The first reason I believe Regidrago is not broken is its predictability at preview. Regidrago's counters are mostly hard counters that it has no way around, making it predictable at preview, unlike other threatening top tiers in the meta like Hooper. Like every other top-tier Pokémon, Regidrago forces you to bring counters for it on your team if you want to build viable teams. Pokémon that counter Regidrago, like Primarina or Corviknight, are very easy to include in your teams because of their already amazing matchups in the meta, even without considering Regidrago. Without the set diversity of other meta-defining mons like Ogerpon and with the presence of many hard counters that can fit onto almost any team, I believe Regidrago does not deserve a ban.
I don't think you've read a single post on regidrago, because not a single decent player has said that regidrago is broken. Regidrago is simply too centralizing to make every team run a fairy, steel or bulky ground/dragon. Even then stuff like ursas, ting lu, corv, iron crown and cress can just randomly lose to different sets, and dragons have a bad matchup versus drago anyways. Also yes, steels and fairies are good and you'll run them even without regidrago existing, but currently you cannot run a team that doesn't have steels or fairies, or a very specific group of mons unless you want to get 3-0d.
I don't think you've read a single post on regidrago, because not a single decent player has said that regidrago is broken. Regidrago is simply too centralizing to make every team run a fairy, steel or bulky ground/dragon.
Yeah people will build for meta mons (no way) but unlike something like Gouging it has way less answers, and those answers are narrowed down into the same typing and roles making building very repetitive and restricting. Oger-H is a different case (since some consider it to be banworthy) so that's a different topic for another time. Imo if one of the main reasons that we banned arch is because it had "very few" reliable counters to it, then something like drago which has less counters than arch should be banned. If you want to see a matchup spread you can check out bern's post from a while back, though some stuff like hax can lose.
Some thoughts and likely unconnected rambling about Regidrago
It's obviously a good pokemon, its Scarf set OHKOs nearly everything that Dragon hits neutrally or effectively. There are exceptions to this - see the afforementioned Ting-Lu and Cresselia (Also Assault Vest), but generally this is the case. Regidrago's obvious flaw is the near complete inability to break Steels/Fairies, because i don't buy Focus Energy being a viable set. This is why I don't think Regidrago could ever be "broken" over "very good", since Steels/Fairies that would otherwise be viable (Crown, Meta, Valiant, Prim, Corv, Ninetales, etc.) will always rise to check it.
Personally, I've faced quite a few teams recently that Regidrago goes 1-2 or even 0-3 against. Be it Haban Berry, AV, a good ol' fashioned Steel/Fairy, or Endure(/Sturdy)/Custap, Regidrago just doesn't feel like the autowin that would be expected of a broken pokemon in my experience.
Elaborating on Custap and Haban, Drago sets have adapted by using Haban itself/Scale Shot / Breaking swipe physical or mixed sets. This has reasonably lead to the argument that Drago can pick and choose what to win against. I don't really see it this way, as I don't think that these alternative sets are too strong in a post-Arch metagame - Also it kinda feels better that it's now not completely one-dimensional, in a way.
Also, Drago is slow enough to the point where any scarfer, and even some non-scarfers (E.G. Chien-Pao against Fast Drago / Dragapult) outspeed it. This is another way to beat Drago without running otherwise unviable sets. Chien-Pao underrated btw.
A lot of arguments focus on its ability to force a DFS metagame. This really comes down to whether you prefer a centralised or decentralised metagame, and I'm personally OK with the current level of centralisation. For these reasons, I'll most likely be voting Do Not Ban unless there are some convincing arguments made to the contrary.
Felucia rambling 
