General Suspect Discussion Thread

[SlimMan]

Damn. My first post in two months, and it's in a Suspect thread. >__>

Think of why Shaymin-S was banned: no matter what, you had an 80% chance to have your special defense drop by 2 stages from seed flare, and there's nothing you can do about it. Jirach is more of the same.

I honestly don't see how Jirachi is more of the same. If Skymin lowered your SpDef, you were going to get destroyed by the next Seed Flare. Skymin's Air Slash was strong enough that a flinch or two meant your pokemon was dead. And that's assuming Skymin didn't take you out in the first shot, with its 120 SpAtk and incredible STAB moves.

Jirachi also uses bs hax, but it's totally different. Getting flinched by Iron Head does make your pokemon utterly incapable of tanking the next one. Whereas Skymin had a real offensive presence, SpDef Jirachi (which is the set in question) has almost no offensive presence. It's a bitch to take out, for sure, but if you look at previous gens, defensive sets/pokemon rarely get banned. Not saying that we can't ban a defensive pokemon, but Jirachi's Iron Head is not exactly a sweeping move...

The odds of missing Garchomp twice in a row were 4%. Highly unlikely, but still a possibility. And it did happen quite a bit. And when it happened, you had almost certainly lost the game at that point. The odds of Jirachi flinching you enough times to work through an entire team are astronomically small. This is because an uninvested Iron Head is a weak-ass attack, and it will take multiple Iron Head flinches PER pokemon.

but Jirachi can paraflinch his way through your whole team if you're unlucky. And if you're unlucky, and you're not carrying a dedicated Jirachi counter, there isn't anything you can do about it.

The thing is, jirachi really can't flinch his way through an entire team. If you're running a stall team, you are going to have physical walls. With Leftovers recovery, Jirachi will run out of PP before it gets through more than one or maybe two pokemon. And here's the thing: Jirachi only has to fail once, a single time, for your pokemon to use Slack Off or Roost, and thus force Jirachi to start all over again. If Jirachi paralyzes your whole team, then great. Now your Hippo/Slowbro/whatever is immune to getting Toxic'ed.

If you're running an offensive team, then just about everything on your team will outspeed SpDef Jirachi. Hands down. Therefore, just about everything on your team will be immune to its flinches. Paralysis is a bitch to offensive teams, I'll admit, but against your typical HO team, where is Jirachi going to find the time to throw some Body Slams around? The entire point of HO is to avoid giving your opponent any leisure time, and Jirachi should never have a free turn to begin its hax-work anyway. I don't see how, under the best of circumstances, it is possible for HaxRachi to flinch its way through a whole team.

If any Jirachi set is worthy of scrutiny, I would point the finger at SubCM Jirachi. No one seems to blame it, though. I don't think it's broken, but seriously, fuck that thing.


@Genny/Matthew: I know it wasn't your intent, but please don't suggest anything that would adversely affect Sandslash. I freaking LOVE Sandslash omg so cute and squishy <3

 

[Jimera0]

Jirachi? I... no.

Jirachi is different from Double Team and other forms of hax in that, unlike Double Team which has no real countermeasures, Jirachi has countermeasures.

A LOT of them. People have arleady listed all the countermeasures above so I'm not going to get into it. Yes it's liable to paralyze something, but so is ANYTHING that carries Thunder-wave. No you can't be sure which paralysis method it's going to cause, but there are ways to scout. There are a lot of Pokemon in OU that either don't mind paralysis or are flat out immune to it (IE Poison heal Gliscor, Breloom, Guts Conkeldurr, Reuniclus, etc). Just switch in one of those and you should be OK. Jirachi's Iron Head also isn't powerful enough against many foes to KO them all on its own unless you get a ridiculously bad streak of luck. It's not like SV where one instance can screw you over; with Jirachi it needs something like 5 consecutive successful turns to get past even the least solid of it's checks, something that is not likely to happen and is on the same level as a crit from stone edge in terms of probability.

It's not skilless either. Jirachi is in a constant prediction game between using its paralysis move and Iron head. If you use Iron head when a fast check switches in instead of Body Slam, then you're messed. If you use a paralysis move on an already paralyzed Pokemon predicting a switch, you have a 75% chance of either getting hammered or losing all the progress you made in a single recovery move.

And because there are so many countermeasures available for Jirachi, it becomes a challenge to use it properly. Sure any newbie can execute a paraflinch strategy, but any newbie can use CB Terrakion too. They both require prediction to be effective and can be devastating with the right prediction. The only difference is that one has a percentage attached to it, so people think LUCK BS HAX! instead of looking at it rationally.

Fishing for multiple paraflinch chances against a counter is similar to fishing for a crit, and should only be done in desperation anyway. People that rely on it to get past dangerous Pokemon like Heatran, Rotom-W or Scizor are going to lose more often than not because that's not handling probability properly.

In short, Jirachi is a healthy influence because its threat is managed through good probability management, which is an important skill to learn in Pokemon. Unlike Double Team, SV or evasion items, there are a lot of ways to manage the probability and tilt it in your favor. This is why Jirachi is not broken.

 

[Danger Mouse]

Note that I said I didn't necessarily think it should be banned. I think that flinchaxing is one of the cheapest and most unfair strategies out there, but it can backfire hilariously so meh.

 

[SpecsX]

I don't believe the discussion about sand veil, is whether all abusers are broken with it, instead, it is about whether Sand Veil detracts from the metagame significantly enough to be banned. However this is not the Sand Veil thread. That's a few inches down.

And yes, Cacturne is broken with Sand Veil.

 

[yee]

I only questioned it because I saw some inconsistency with the claim. Sand has broken some pokemon, as has rain and sun is just really good. Regardless of that fact people forget that while sand does not boost ground or rock based moves it does deal passive damage, making it somewhat unique (fuck off hail). Passive damage is a huge boon to a weather, or are we forgetting every calc in DPP that always factored in SR AND sand damage.

To be sure the intent of my post is completely clear I see Drizzle / Drought / Deoxys-D as suspects worsening the metagame beyond a doubt, whether it's team matchup / # of viable strategies / whatever needs to be proven. Sand in my opinion would need to be argued on its own, especially when the pokemon people point to (Terrakion / Sand Force Landorus) are very possibly just broken on their own or in Lando's case could be dealt with by banning the ability. The passive damage / SpD boost can make an impact but it certainly wasn't what a team would be focused on last gen.

 

[Danger Mouse]

Oh, but I want to say I don't think hail should be banned, even if we got rid of rain, sun, and sand. There's just no reason to ban it, in my book.

 

[SpecsX]

Why not? It was banned from UU and below because Blizzspam was too powerful. With Pokemon such as Kyurem SLAUGHTERING everything with Blizzard, I don't see how that wouldn't be broken, as it would force you to pack a ton of ice resists on a team. And Stallrein? Much easier to set up without opposing weather, much harder to kill if you can't change the weather.

 

[Danger Mouse]

Kyurem isn't exactly taking the metagame by storm. Sure, 100% accurate blizzards are nice, but Kyurem is let down by its speed and its weaknesses to priority from scizor and breloom. I've been running subroost kyurem lately, and it's pretty awesome...but I really can't see Kyurem as even close to being broken. Maybe if he had a better defensive typing.

 

[SpecsX]

I'm not saying he's broken. I'm saying if all other weather were removed, as you proposed, then Hail would likely be broken.

 

[Dark Fallen Angel]

Who have said that rain and sun should be banned? No. Take the rain out of the metagame, and you are going to create a metagame without diversity. The current metagame is centralized on rain (and arguably on sun) but that's not because of the rain and sun themselves; it's the number of things that they gained with B2W2. Sand gained very few things while Hail... lol.

Look not at the weathers themselves, they are not a problem. In fact, I love the BW generation much more than the previous because of this variety of weathers in the meta. I can't understand why people blame Drizzle and Drought for the problem created by the things that can be abused when rain and sun are up, respectively.

 

[chimpact]

There was no autoweather in lower tiers stopping you from spamming blizzard. Blizzard is not nearly as powerful when you have to rely on keeping Abomasnow alive to be able to use it consistently.

With other weather banned, hail does become significantly better and certainly has potential to be banned.

However, banning weather in any way is foolish. Weather has been a vital component to the BW OU metagame and banning it would just push the metagame back a few years.

 

[Dinnerblaster]

I don't like Tkion, it's substitute set is deadly! Status? No! Revenge kill? Not likely! It will at least eat half of your team before it's down. Although this isn't as big of a priority as the Therians. Thundurus T 2HKOs eviolite chansey with focus blast after a single nasty plot boost, and if chansey took entry hazard damage, she is dead! This thing can set up stupidly fast on stall! Think you can kill it with a scarf pokemon? Well! Would you look at that! It has agility and nasty plot to troll hyper offensive and stall teams alike! It is also difficult to paralyze due to volt absorb! So unless you have body slam Jirachi... wait that cant stop it! It's just set up fodder for it! It is also resistant to common priority in the form of Mach punch and aqua jet, so Thundurus -T is very dangerous pkmn so beware! I really can't say much on Tornadus T, because I have only recently taken Jirachi off of my team. I do know this though, the Therians are making rain offensive just a little too popular. Although, unrelated I am sick of so many offensive teams! THERE ARE OTHER STRATEGIES, OK!!!!! I haven't fought a stall team in weeks!

 

[mailanbr]

I really wasn't around in the competitive scene until the end of the Excadrill ban, and from what I recall, it's lack of counters and it's high speed with the added Swords Dance made it too powerful for the metagame to handle.

The reason I mention this, is because I see that some people are saying that Tornadus-T isn't broken, because once it is taken out of rain, it isn't as threatening. Now let's think here, did anyone actually use Excadrill outside of Sand? No, because that would just be a decent late-game sweeper, even if you would consider it that.

The point I'm trying to get at here, is that to the people who say Tornadus-T could be easily dealt with by changing the weather, need to realize that it's much easier said than done. Excadrill could have also been easily dealt with by changing the weather, but who in the right mind is going risk their weather starter being obliterated? I truly think that Tornadus-T is just as broken as Excadrill was when it was around, and with the current metagame as of now, I feel that it should be suspected for further studies.

 

[Dark Fallen Angel]

As long as you avoid Superpower/Focus Blast, it's easy to switch Tyranitar into Tornadus-T because it's enormous Special Defense (under sand) and resistance to Hurricane. Outside of this, it is not easy to change weather with Tornadus-T spamming that powerful Hurricane, but still I don't think that it's broken. This doesn't change the fact that Tornadus-T is very dependent on the weather, and can be easily revenge killed as long as it isn't behind a Substitute.

 

[alexwolf]

Let's talk about Genesect a bit. The poke that can threaten every single poke (yeah even Heatran) in the OU meta, and will keep you guessing until it is too late. My main problem with Genesect is that he is the most versatile poke in OU right now. Do you know why? Because after 1 month of testing, people have started realizing that special Scarf and EB special are not the only sets Genesect can run. Except from the standard moves you all know (U-turn, Flamethrower, BoltBeam, Bug Buzz), he can also use Iron Head, Zen Headbutt, Explosion and even Quick Attack to a great result. I have been messing with mixed Genesect lately and the possibilities are just endless. Let me start counting sets:

1. You can run EB physically mixed, with U-turn and Flamethrower, and in the last slots any of Iron Head / Zen Headbutt / Ice Beam / Thunderbolt.

2. You can run EB specially mixed, with U-turn, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam and any of Flamethrower / Bug Buzz / Hidden Power Ground in the last slot.

3. You can run a CB set, with U-turn and Flamethrower as givens, and in the last 2 slots use any move out of Iron Head / Zen Headbutt / Ice Beam / Thunderbolt / Explosion / Quick Attack.

4. You can run a special Scarf set, with U-turn, Thunderbolt and Ice Beam as givens, and in the last slot anything of Flamethrower / Bug Buzz / Flash Cannon

5. You can run a physical Scarf set, with U-turn, Flamethrower, and then anything out of Iron Head, Zen Headbutt, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam and Explosion

6. You can run a Specs set, with U-turn, Bug Buzz, Thunderbolt / Thunder and anything of Flamethrower, Flash Cannon and Ice Beam in the last slot.

7. You can run a Rock Polish set, with Rock Polish and Bug Buzz as givens, and then anything of Ice Beam, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt and Flash Cannon.


I think that's it. You may think that i am overreacting when having 2 EB sets, one physical and one special, one physical Scarf set, and one Specs set, but the truth is that they work (i have tested everything aside from Specs, which seems great in theory). Each of them serve specific purposes, and all together can fit into literraly any team... Tbh i don't know why one wouldn't use Genesect in his team. He is simply that good! He can do anything you want him to, because he is the most versatile poke. You want a good revenge killer with a useful typing, and an awesome ability with a strong STAB U-turn? Scarf Genesect. Or maybe you want a physical powerhouse that destroyes most of it's common counters, and there you have it, CB Genesect (which btw can easily dispose of Heatran as a +1 Explosion deals 78.18 - 92.2% to max HP Heatran). Or maybe you want an exceptional lure, that can lure and eliminate everything you want it to... Go ahead pick either of the EB sets (the special EB set with HP Ground is an amzing Heatran lure). Or maybe you want a Genesect that can get past Heatran without dying (+1 Specs Thunder 2hkoes SpD Heatran after SR 90% of the times, while also 2hkoing SpD Jirachi with Bug Buzz w/o SR), while also being able to ohko-2hko 4/5 of OU with only Bug Buzz? Then Specs is where you are at. And finally if you want some sweeping, go for the unexpected Rock Polish set.

As you can see he can really do everything. And the ridiculous thing is that even if you have figured out the item and the spread by doing calcs, you still have a lot more to figure out, as Genesect's coverage moves can keep you guessing 'till the game is over.

Simply put Genesect is overpowered and deserves to be banned, imo, because of the element of surprise. It is like Mew but 10 times worse, as every time you make a mistake something dies. And iirc, Mew's versatility was what got him broken in 4th gen from OU. So if we were able to know what exact Genesect the opponenet was running, then he would be manageable, but as of now he isn't.

 

[ginganinja]

I don't see Genesect as overpowered. Sure, it can run a few different sets, but that doesn't make it broken. Despite what you claim, Heatran is going to be pretty darn good at beating most Genesect out there, sure it has to watch out for HP Ground, but that forces Genesect to miss out on a coverage move which in turn, means its walled by something else. Volcarona for example, is also a pretty nice switch in (provided rocks are not up) and can handle most Genesect, and can discourage U-Turn by threatening with Flame Body. If Genesect is not scarfed, then its trolled by its 99 base speed stat, which makes it vulnerable to a fair amount of the metagame.

The actual problem I have with your post however, is that it fails really to say why you think its broken. The Element of Surprise, is not a reason we would ban something, being versatile, is nothing something we ban for (look at Jirachi). O.k, so Genesect can fit into a lot of teams, and do a lot of cool stuff... well good on it! I don't see how this is a bad thing, add variety to the metagame, and honestly, iv found the metagame with Genesect rather enjoyable.

It is like Mew but 10 times worse, as every time you make a mistake something dies. And iirc, Mew's versatility was what got him broken in 4th gen from OU. So if we were able to know what exact Genesect the opponenet was running, then he would be manageable, but as of now he isn't.

Ignoring the fact that you used a DPP suspect example in a BW2 metagame, personally, I believe it was Mews Baton Pass set that pushed it over the line. I wouldn't really argue that we banned it for its versatility, if memory serves it was banned under the support characteristic (even tho these characteristics are somewhat outdated) since DS Azelf, and then BP Mew was exceptionally difficult to defend against.

 

[alexwolf]

The problem Gingninja is that you can't deal with him in the long run, because he can always surprise you and OHKO one of your mons. And he will always surprise you, as almost all of it's sets can pack tremendous surprise value only by changing a single move. How are you supposed to deal with Genesect, when you don't know what it's coverages moves are, and if it is Scarfed or not? Are you supposed to switch out every poke that usually counters Genesect, or not send them in against him, just to scout if they have a move that can screw them? Well do this, and have fun losing momentum as Genesect opts for a more standard move, which badly damages your second best check (you switched out your first best in order to scout his moveset, remember?) or by losing momentum due to U-turn.

And Jirachi is not nearly as versatile as Genesect is. Once you see Jirachi use Sub, you know it is the SubCM set so you know that your SpD Hippowdon, your Perish Song Celebi and your LO Roost Hydreigon can counter it. Once you see him using Wish, you know that he is either the SpD Jirachi or the physically defensive Jirachi with CM, so once again your SpD Hippo or anything else that can't get flinched to death and doesn't fear the occasional Thunder can counter him. And even if you guess wrong against one Jirachi set, and you send in the wrong poke, do you know what is another difference with Genesect? The price you pay for bringing in the wrong thing. Most of the times Genesect will be killing its target if it hits it with the right move, unlike SubCM Jirachi which slowly boosts and has no offensive presence from the get go, while also having way less coverage.

 

[ginganinja]

The problem Gingninja is that you can't deal with him in the long run, because he can always surprise you and OHKO one of your mons. And he will always surprise you, as almost all of it's sets can pack tremendous surprise value only by changing a single move.

Genesect is not the only pokemon that can do this. Volcarona for example, is something that can change what counters it by running Hidden Power Ground / Hurricane / Hidden Power Rock / something else. Dragonite is in a similar boat, how do you handle Dragonite when it might have Earthquake for Heatran, Fire Punch for Skarmory, Extreme Speed for weakened Mamoswine, or it could be running CB, or Sub DD, it could be Tank Nite, or it could be Mixed, or even Rain attacker Mixed. How do you handle Meloetta, which can forme change, or run Calm Mind, or even Specs. I could go on here but the point is that Genesect is not the only pokemon that can switch up its moveset, just because it can does not make it broken. You deal with Genesect the same way you would deal with any of these pokemon.

The problem Gingninja is that you can't deal with him in the long run, because he can always surprise you and OHKO one of your mons. And he will always surprise you, as almost all of it's sets can pack tremendous surprise value only by changing a single move. How are you supposed to deal with Genesect, when you don't know what it's coverages moves are, and if it is Scarfed or not?

I have played this metagame a fair amount, Im not so arrogant to call my self a top tier player, but I am well aware of the metagame, and Genesect has never been a real problem for me. I can predict around it, keeping my options open, slowly and surely scout its set. For example, I can look at my opponents team, (thanks to team preview), and make rough judgements based upon this. I can highlight possible revenge killers, I played enough games to know if something is a CB U-Turn or a scarf U-Turn, likewise a Specs Ice Beam or an Expert Belt one. Each and every Genesect set can be checked and countered without too much hassle. Genesect is good, I freely admit this, but I honestly don't consider it broken at all.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

Ive been getting back in the grove, (so excuse me if I am a bit off) and I have to agree, Genesect is pretty ridiculous, Im trying to give it a fair shot, but man is it powerful. I have to disagree with Alexwolf though, generally genesect runs pretty much the same set with variations from what I have seen. My main problem is simply put the lack of safe switch ins outside of Heatran, its essentially a mixed scizor on seroids without priority. With Scizor or Rotom, you had a few pokemon that took minimal damage on the u-turn or volt-switch, Genesect has a serious lack of that. Your options against genesect are short, run heatran or some fringe counter, go hyper-offensive taking advantage of the momentum you get after it kills your pokemon, set up hazards like crazy and sack or allow it to chip pokemon until it dies, lose as it does damage to all your pokemon and facilitates a sweep from something else or itself.

To honest this is not a healthy metagame where your limited to pretty much 3 options to deal with a pokemon, one of which is crappy, one of which forces a play style on you, and one of which forces you to use a very specific pokemon. To be honest I see this as very detrimental to the balanced play style which I doubt anyone thinks should be less valid because of one pokemon. Although I personally and doing pretty well because I am running heatran and stalling, but if your not running heatran and have some sort of defensive core, I don't know what your doing for Genesect to be honest. Again I am just warming up to Genesect, so that is partially a question: what are those people doing for Genesect?

 

[chewyourfood]

Like Ginganinja, I haven't found Genesect to be much of a problem, and I don't run Heatran on any of my teams. But for me the first step with dealing with Genesect is figuring out whether or not it's scarfed. I do this by switching in some Pokemon that resists a predicted bug buzz/flamethrower/ice beam/tbolt, that is at the same time threatened by another one of Genesect's moves. From there I either do a double switch or use protect to see if they'll go for that SE move (sometimes I'll protect and then switch out anyways as a better tactic to see whether or not they're bluffing a choice item). If they switch out, I assume the Genesect is choiced, and from then on I just use team synergy to deal with its moves (And its use of U-turn is as much of a problem as Scizor or volt-switch Rotom, AKA it's not really a life threatening problem/grounds for banning). If I can assume its not choiced, then I have still found it easy to switch in faster threats like Keldeo or Lati@s on resisted moves that threaten to KO it with LO/specs Hydro pump or HP fire.

I realize that I rely much on prediction in dealing with Genesect, and that one wrong move could cost me a Pokemon, but don't we all deal with many threats, like Mixmence, Virizion, Reuniclus, etc., the same way?

Edit: I don't know if anyone's brought up Terrakion yet, but I find it extremely useful in dealing with Genesect. It resists its bug stab and flamethrower, while takes minimal damage from ice beam and thunderbolt. If sand stream is up, dealing with Genesect becomes even easier. In return, Terrakion can dish out some pretty nasty close combats/set-up. I know it dies to iron head, but I've honestly never seen anyone use iron head on Genesect. I feel like the only reason would be to specifically lure in Terrakion so that some other Pokemon (maybe Volcarona) can have an easier time. Otherwise I feel like by wasting a moveslot on iron head one would sacrifice too much in the form of great coverage.

 

[alexwolf]

ginganinja the problem with Genesect is that you can't really know its moveset, until he reveals all of it, and this is what makes him so versatile. This is the difference between him and Dnite. The moment that Dnite uses DD, you know that your physical Skarmory / Hippowdon can wall him. The moment you see him using a super powerful Outrage from the get go, you know it is CB. The moment you see him using a LO Thunder, you know it is the mixed rain abusing set. But with Genesect there isn't this luxury, because the last slot of Genesect is up for grabs, even if you have realized his spread and item. And there is of 'course this STAB U-turn that weakens counters and earns momentum, so there you have another difference with Dnite. Oh and that SR weakness, let's not forget.

Oh and Scarfwynaut, special Genesect has more counters than just Heatran. SpD Ninetales with Pain Split and the pink blobs avoid the 2hko from anything he can do (even at +1 SpA), but of 'course there is always the problem of U-turn (Heatran has this too though).

 

[ginganinja]

ginganinja the problem with Genesect is that you can't really know its moveset, until he reveals all of it, and this is what makes him so versatile.

This is the problem with almost every pokemon. You need to phrase this better because as it stands, lots of pokemon can still do this. Venusaur for example, can run Growth / EQ / HP Fire / Sludge Bomb / Sunny Day / Leech Seed / Giga Drain / Substitute, and yet noone is really lining up to ban Venusaur.

The moment that Dnite uses DD, you know that your physical Skarmory / Hippowdon can wall him. The moment you see him using a super powerful Outrage from the get go, you know it is CB. The moment you see him using a LO Thunder, you know it is the mixed rain abusing set. But with Genesect there isn't this luxury, because the last slot of Genesect is up for grabs, even if you have realized his spread and item.

I can make the very same arguments (btw id be a little careful since Skarmory doesn't like a +1 Fire Punch, wouldn't call that "walling" it). But, o.k, here I go...

The moment you see a powerful U-Turn from Genesect, its CB, the moment I see a powerful Thunder, its Specs, If its constantly switching in against my LO Thundurus-T, its prolly scarfed etc etc. In addition, like 90% of all Genesect are running IB / U-Turn / Flamethrower, (yes that includes Choice Band), so I don't get your argument that "omg you cannot beat Genesect, what moves does it run help". I am not really trying to compare Genesect and Dragonite, my point is to show that many pokemon are versitile in there movesets, its not a reason to ban something.

So far, I have yet to see any actual argument, to argue for a Genesect ban, all I seem to be hearing is, "wow it has nice coverage moves" and "omg it U-Turns out of Heatran how do I counter???". You completely ignored my point in the above post, Dragonite can be just as hard to switch into, and people can handle it fine, using basic prediction skills. People can play around it, its not even very hard. Its how I, and other players deal with it, I certainly don't need a Heatran to beat Genesect, and its never really been a problem for any team that I have built.

tl:dr, explain to me what makes it broken (having a nice movepool I don't consider a good argument sorry), and perhapes why that myself, and others, can play around (and beat) Genesect just fine without Heatran, Blissey, or Specially Defensive Ninetales, which you seem to claim are its only real counters.

 

[alexwolf]

sginganinja what i have been trying to say is, that even after you find his spread and item (which is not easy to do against a good player), he can still surprise you and kill one of your pokes. Let's take Heatran for example. Genesect can switch out of Heatran for 3-4 times, making you think you are safe to counter him (so you won't switch out), and at the right moment he can take you down with HP Ground. Or he has Flash Cannon in the last slot, and he predicts your Terrakion switch-in, and.... bam! Dragonite cannot do that. Once you seem him using DD, you know that he will have Outrage, Extremespeed and Fire Punch / EQ. Same for Meloetta. Once you figure out her set, you know what moves to exppect. But with Genesect it is very difficult to do this.

And the problem i mentioned above starts AFTER you figure out Gensect's EV spread and item, which is not as easy as you make it seem. How are you supposed to find out that a Genesect that it constantly U-turning out is an EB Sect? A good player can even force out faster pokes that could kill Gensect, bluffing the Choice Scarf set, and then surprise you when it hurts the most by showing you he is not Scarfed.

And just to clarify, i never said that Genesect's counters are the blobs, SpD Ninetales and Heatran, i said that these are the counters to the special Scarf set. Genesect as a whole has not counters. And he has no counters while running viable moves, itmes and spreads, not gimmicks that have one and only purpose.

So i think he is broken, because his unpredictability is way too big, which makes playing against him a guessing game to a certain extend. While you can make educated guesses about him from Team Preview, and also figure out his EV spread and item by playing VERY carefully, he can still eliminate its target after you let your guard down, with the right move. Oh and add to all this U-turn. One of the trickiest things about Genesect is, that while you try to figure out his moveset, he just U-turn out, dealing damage and keeping momentum, which doesn't work in your favour. The pressure that Gensect puts once he is in, is abnormal, and this is a testament to his power.

 

[Jimera0]

Ok, after reading some more arguments I want to go back and clarify on a few things.

One, with Tornadus-T. I agree that saying that it doesn't function well outside of it's own weather is a bad argument. My argument is that it's easy enough to beat even IN it's own weather. Why? Well offensive teams have offensive pressure and Priority to deal with him. If you're careful not to give Tornadus-T opportunities to switch in (which isn't that hard since it doesn't have outstanding defensive typing), then it can't slam your stuff with Hurricane. If it does get in, being HO you just sack something, force it out and keep going. It doesn't matter if it ends up surviving til the end as long as you make sure to keep your counter to it alive, just like any other sweeper. Balanced and stall teams on the other hand are going to have something that can take powerful Special hits anyway, be it heatran, Blissey, Jirachi, Tyrantitar etc. Superpower is NOT that powerful on it. Most of these Pokemon can take one Superpower anyway, and there are teammates for those that can't. If Tornadus-T is choiced, then you can easily switch in a resist after it moves once. If it's LO, then it loses health every time it attacks and gets worn down with careful switching. If you're using a stall or balanced team, such tactics are things you'll need to learn anyway for plenty of other threats like Terrakion, Landorus, Thundurus-T, Salamence and others.

You don't need to run weather changing abilities or moves to beat it. You don't need a hard counter to beat it in rain either. You just need to play well.

As for Genesect, I don't think that it's the variety of movesets it can run alone that make it dangerous. The only argument for banning it that makes any sort of sense to me is that it might push Volt-Turn over the edge. It's probably the most threatening user of U-turn in the entire metagame, and considering how bad volt-turn was BEFORE it came out that's a bit worrying. I will say that personally I haven't had much trouble with it, but that's primarily because the teams I've been running have been ones which dgaf about Volt-Turn (primarily Regenerator cores). Because of this, I'm not chomping at the bit to say to ban it. However I do see how it can be very difficult for other teams to deal with when combined with Pokemon that can take advantage of its ability to maintain momentum. Things like it's potential partnership with trappers like Dugtrio and its contributions to Volt-Turn in general make it seem like it might just barely be broken.

Again though, this is mostly theorymonning. The teams I have been using have just so happened to be ones that really don't care about Genesect, just by chance. I don't think that most teams fall into that boat though, but all my thoughts on it are based on the experiences of others, not myself.

Oh, and one more note @Dinnerblast, I tend to almost exclusively use stall or defensively oriented teams and I can't honestly say I've had any difficulty with the new threats. Maybe your techniques simply need updating? I know the stall I run now isn't the same as the stall I ran in BW1, so if you haven't changed your teams to deal with new threats that could be why you're having trouble.

 

[Razza]

genesect isnt ovverpowered imo, makes for some good mindgames and prediction (is he gonna uturn? is he scarf is he ebelt? will i lose a mon if i guess wrong?) which add another element of strategy to the game.