★ HOT TO GO! - Ogerpon-Hearthflame Suspect

[DripLegend]

Following recent metagame discussion and a council vote, Ogerpon-Hearthflame is back for another look! Similar to the original release it is up to similar antics, being the premier glue in the tier due to very reliable core matchups. Not to boot it boasts a fantastic ability in Mold Breaker, allowing it to beat Sap Sipper pokemon such as Goodra-Hisui and Azumarill without compromising moveslots. The very beautiful mask is not just for show either, giving a damage boost which allows Ogerpon-H to consistently be able to hit hard on top of heavily investing in its own bulk. Not to say that it is unbeatable, as it can only stretch itself so far and not every set is able to be combined into one in game. Specific sets do have general weaknesses, such as Counter variations losing to most special attackers, Leech Seed sets losing to sound moves or Taunt, and overall not having a great matchup due to typing into Dragon-types.

What do you think? Should it stay or be banned? Post thoughts you have about Ogerpon-Hearthflame in this thread, or in the metagame thread!
In order to become a qualified voter, ladder with the prefix 1heart 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 Friday, July 19th 11:59 PM -5 so the vote can end before the next PL week.

Required GXE and Games

Minimum GXE	Number of Games
71.0	100
71.1	99
71.1	98
71.2	97
71.2	96
71.3	95
71.3	94
71.4	93
71.4	92
71.5	91
71.5	90
71.6	89
71.6	88
71.7	87
71.7	86
71.8	85
71.8	84
71.9	83
71.9	82
72.0	81
72.0	80
72.1	79
72.1	78
72.2	77
72.2	76
72.3	75
72.3	74
72.4	73
72.4	72
72.5	71
72.5	70
72.6	69
72.6	68
72.7	67
72.7	66
72.8	65
72.8	64
72.9	63
72.9	62
73.0	61
73.0	60
73.1	59
73.1	58
73.2	57
73.2	56
73.3	55
73.3	54
73.4	53
73.4	52
73.5	51
73.5	50
73.8	49
74.1	48
74.4	47
74.7	46
75.0	45
75.3	44
75.6	43
75.9	42
76.2	41
76.5	40
76.8	39
77.1	38
77.4	37
77.7	36
78.0	35

We will also have suspect tours that will be announced at a later date within this thread so stay tuned!

 

[DripLegend]

council votes and reasonings will be included here:

drip	bo	deg	litt	kaif	delemon
ban	ban	ban	dnb	dnb	dnb

bo reasoning

Ogerpon-Hearthflame: Ban Hearthflame is not what I would consider traditionally broken, as the overall matchup spread is not all that impressive when comparing it to other banned mons. In the builder, Hearth is still manageable, but it does make building quite a bit more difficult and structured as consistent answers (that are still viable) are limited. Which brings me to my next point: almost no pokemon can beat Hearth without trying (No extra evs or moveslots required). Getting through subseed as well as 10 offensive sets proves to be difficult for any pokemon. Unlike Wellspring, which struggles against opposing grass, steel, and fairy types, Hearthflame does very well vs grass, steel, and fairy (all common in the meta) at the relatively small cost of losing to fire types and select rock types. And lets not forget about Mold Breaker (wellspring has useless water absorb) which ruins your dreams of using sap sipper pokemon without saccing the set to ability shield. Its not like Hearth is invincible or anything, it has plenty of weaknesses, and they can be exploited, the point is that building and playing would be more fun with it gone, and there is very little punishment for bringing it to every game all the time.

deg reasoning

Unhealthy chokehold on metagame alongside other borderline elements. It enables stuff like Drago, Pech, and Hoopa-U to be more threatening and restricting since it covers their counters really well. Doesn't even need plethora of sets, counter, leech seed, and AoA are hard to distinguish on preview and already beat a good chunk of the metagame.

my reasoning

i've thought this mon was rly dumb for a while now, especially during the last suspect kek. it pairs well with everything and punishing high usage of it is really not something that u can do with most broadly viable mons. we did gain a decent amount of new counterplay since the last time this mon was on the block but it is rly inhibiting in build diversity and i believe it to make the tier overall interesting/skill based with it here. nothing punishes loading this mon every game, every set is good, every set can mix match pair up with anything.

 

[fake tom numbers]

This is really weird timing for this suspect, interfering with LT finals and PL is pretty bad. Realistically the best option is making a break week after week 4 of PL, then having the suspect end that week, giving SV players an extra week to prep if they want and not interfering with LT. Unfortunately that option is too smart and cannot be done because it was suggested by fake tom numbers (evil user) so just move suspect ahead a few days to not interfere with LT, or just make it so that the ban doesn't take place during the final round.

Anyways, this suspect will come down to your building playstyle. If you prefer trying to beat everything consistently you'll probably want Oger-H banned due to the myriad of sets and the general difficulty to build against it without sacrificing something, while if you'd rather build for better matchups instead of consistency you probably don't mind Oger-H too much because a lot of the different sets sacrifice other matchups. All of the other arguments seem very flawed (being high usage doesn't really matter when it consistently has a negative win rate, enabling other mons to be more broken is a weird reason to want to ban it because you'd rather ban those other mons first then see if Oger is still good later, making the meta more diverse is dumb when you realize almost nothing new has been made/built since arch ban outside of more usage from the good mons that lost to it, ladder stats being irrelevant because it's ladder, seriously, we should never use ladder statistics for discussing something because there's no good players on there except for suspects/ladder tour, and the top players on ladder are only there because they've played thousands of games. probably some other arguments that I'm forgetting but you get the idea) except for how you feel when building versus it, so it's just gonna depend on the majority mindset of players.

In my opinion I think Oger-H is fine, yes it's versatile but you're never going to get 3-0d by it, if you aren't running the normal ss+encore/subseed all of the sets feel very inconsistent because of having to sacrifice speed or attack, and some sets are just plain bad (counter, anti pz when pz is irrelevant). Take my opinion with a grain of salt though because I still think Arch was bad+haven't used Oger-H and a lot of other top mons in months.

tl;dr move suspect deadline a week after the original date

 

[DripLegend]

hihi suspect live tour dates and times are confirmed:

Wednesday July 17th 9:30 AM -5
Friday July 19th 3 PM -5
gl to everyone looking to participate :)

 

[happysh]

I just want to spark discussion about the suspect test. Im in the middle and would currently vote ban because of how its different sets can flip so many matchups without sacrificing too much. I also don't feel to strongly about banning it because it seems manageable to cover its 3 main sets and I feel like some of the proposed moves on it like trailblaze, u-turn, superpower, and play rough are fake. I have also heard that mold breaker is really problematic on it but the only matchups I can think of it affecting is vs sap sipper. Take this all with a grain of salt because I am not a big user of oger-H and should probably use it more to get a better understanding of it.

I think the sentiment rn is pro ban so keep oger free people should start posting.

 

[Lumii]

The second suspect live tour is being hosted now.
Join it here!