Announcement LC Suspect — The Woo

[Coconut]

I told her wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo​

With the advent of Grassy Terrain/Seed strategies, Woobat has now collected the final infinity stone in the art of true cheese. It's massive defense stat boost the moment it hits the field combined with a weakened Knock Off—by far the most used Dark-type move in the metagame is the beginning of Woobat's reign of terror. It's respectable 17 speed allows it to quickly set a Calm Mind, boosting the other defense stat along with it's Special Attack. Woobat now becomes one of the most vicious metagame sweepers, with it's potent boosted Stored Power and ability to set up on a multitude of common LC threats. Woobat, however, is not alone in it's reign. Woobat relies on the partner of Grookey to set Grassy Terrain. Hardly a sacrifice for most teams as Grookey is extremely strong independent of Woobat, but the extra team slot limits creativity. Woobat is also restricted to another form of support, in the form of either Screen setters such as Natu or Webs setter such as Dewpider. Woobat gets nearly no usage without Grookey and one of the two supporter mons. Normally measures would be taken to counteract this, however the main strategies to beat Woobat tend to be hitting it hard before it sets up, which is limited by the speed drops of Webs. The other option being to power through the Eviolite-less defenses as Woobat tries to set up a Stored Power sweep, which is mitigated by Screens. Simply preparing for one of them might be possible, but prevent both from decimating a team in the teambuilding phase has become nearly impossible. Regardless, Woobat's extremely potent offense and defensive capabilities rings common in Little Cup as a whole; an offensive threat that has extremely potent defenses tends to be extremely problematic throughout many different banned Pokemon in our metagame.

The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 78 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 82. As always, needing more than 50 games to reach 78 GXE is fine.

minimum games needed

GXE	minimum games
78	50
78.2	49
78.4	48
78.6	47
78.8	46
79	45
79.2	44
79.4	43
79.6	42
79.8	41
80	40
80.2	39
80.4	38
80.6	37
80.8	36
81	35
81.2	34
81.4	33
81.6	32
81.8	31
82	30

For this suspect test, we will be using the regular LC ladder, so you must create a new account that begins with LCWBT to qualify. When you have reached the requirements, click here to post your proof. Woobat will be legal on the ladder until the suspect is over. The suspect period will end on Saturday, April 3rd, at 11:59 PM EST.

When posting in this thread, please keep in mind these rules:
1. No one liners or uninformed posts.
2. No discussion on other potential suspects or the suspect process.
3. Be respectful.

Your post will be deleted and possibly infracted if you fail to follow them.

 

[freezai]

Ban Please

 

[Kipkluif]

I don't think it's impossible to counter Woobat, options like Scarf Magnemite, fast Thunder Wave users like Staryu and Abra will always be able to annoy it, and before it gets to set up options like Spore Foongus or Head Smash Onix can definitely threaten it. That said, Woobat gets an insane reward in both offense and defense in 1 turn if the opponent decides to get a kill with a mon unable to threaten it and counterplay is either strictly worse against all other pokémon or inconsistent enough and it puts such stress on the teambuilder that I'm leaning towards voting ban for now.

 

[jm2202]

Hello, I just got out of a woobat battle and frankly, I think woobat should be banned. I went into that battle, fully prepared to counter woobat, with bergmite and duskull, but it was not enough. Please note that the team I used was constructed prior to the battle and not considering woobat. This shows how woobat is so good in LC that you must have it in mind while teambuilding, which restricts the pokemon you can sensibly use, and the teams will be built around countering woobat but woobat is not the only pokemon on the team. I also believe that a woobat holding a grassy seed is a strategy that allows woobat to set up practically for free, although it is true that foongus and other spore users can stop it in its tracks, it is obvious that a spore user would not be on the field before woobat gets on and then woobat would get x2 defense and be able to set up a calm mind for free. In addition, woobat being a flying type could predict an incoming foongus and use air slash which would damage it considerably or even KO it. Woobat is just too much to handle sometimes, so I vote ban woobat.

Here is the video of the match

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8lc-1308593493-nr2zox3mfxtlg3koy7n0q6ci9b3nbghpw

 

[gali]

Woobat cheese reminds me of nothing so much as Baton Pass chains in ORAS and SM. Like BP, it takes the concept of matchup fishing to the extreme and is nigh unbeatable against a lot of good, standard teams. It has even fewer unwinnable matchups than BP chains do, though, since the Woobat user can pivot around until they're able to get it in safely. You have to play perfectly the whole time too, since with even one free turn Woobat just ends the game. This replay vs. Kip is a good example of this. While I'm not certain a Woobat ban will make screens healthy, it's clearly the biggest issue by far with cheese teams rn and needs to go.

 

[AxCypher]

Hi,
I think woobat should be banned.
The problem with this pokemon is that it can become completely unmanageable.
Once his boost in def and a Calm Mind, he tanks almost all the attacks in the game. Even Knock off with the stab thanks to his loss of item and his boost in defense.
For my part, I play abra with the "encore" attack just to handle it so it hangs on the Calm Mind attack.
This pokemon really needs to disappear from the metagame. It's anti-gambling

 

[Mathwiz617]

I’ve gone 2-0 against woobat teams in the past two battles - I know that’s not much - but I think the grassy seed woobat/ grassy surge Grookey should be banned. I’ve found head smash onix, no dragon dance, cant ohko it. What I do find works is Weak Armor Vullaby brave bird on the Grookey, Uturn the woobat, then head smash the woobat. This *might* ok the both of them.

Giving up 2 party slots to counter this one strat is BS, though.

 

[fabwooloo]

After tilting with three alts, i've come to the consensus that woobat should be banned, ive noticed mons like encore abra and scarf porygon on every team along with vullaby(i know vullaby is super common in lc but still kinda counts) and having these mons just to counter woobat says how much of a pain it is, you could be playing perfectly the entire game yet one mishap which lets woobat come in and the game is over with +2 being able to tank head smash from onix

236 Atk Onix Head Smash vs. +2 76 HP / 252+ Def Woobat: 14-20 (58.3 - 83.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

It invalidates teambuilding which is why i feel it should be banned

 

[ghost]

I have already made my thoughts known on Woobat and the metagame at large. Banning Woobat is not a silver bullet for fixing the tier, but this thing is clearly broken and anybody laddering for this suspect knows what a pain it is to deal with it.

 

[Ojbros]

I'm somewhat new to LC, but from what i've played this mon forces a ton of matchup wins. The fact that you need to run two checks to it without being streamrolled by it is unhealthy for teambuilding. If i do get reqs, I will be voting ban.

 

[Plas]

I haven't been around for super super long but from the time I've played and been viable there has never a pokemon like woobat. Specifically such a restricting set up sweeper that forces 2 slots (3 almost always cause you generally need dewpider for webs or natu for screens as well) and a specific teamstyle but who's upside is very often just auto winning games very consistently. I do think woobat has counterplay but the counterplay is so obscure and frankly bad outside of woobat matchups that to me woobat is very clearly just an unhealthy presence that encourages more and more screens/webs brings and makes them more consistent. I do prefer cheese being an option in metagames but specifically the consistency and lack of good counterplay that isn't complete ass in other matchups is not a presence I am a fan of. Echoing what KSG said banning woobat is not going to fix the tier, but it will get rid of a clearly unhealthy presence that will limit screens and webs and we can reassess from there. I'll be voting to ban woobat.

 

[MK007]

The issue with the bat seems to be a lack of prep for aggressive webs clearing.

If you let your opponent get up screens, webs, and grassy terrain you deserve to lose. Woobat is simply the mon that takes advantage of those the most.

I laddered with a team with evio weak armor vullaby with defog and got reqs in under an hour (while not dropping a single game vs a woobat). The team needed aggressive defogging because it was a shell smash dwebble team, but I selected it because of the team's playstyle of removing hazards as quickly and reliably as possible when I saw it was a Woobat suspect. Most Woobat teams have to be willing to sack their dewpider to get up webs (into offensive teams at least, vs slow bulky offense they may not need to sack). This obviously won't always be the case, but when faced with an offensive matchup dewpider will likely get sacrificed. With dewpider and webs gone woobat loses a lot of presence. Aggressive defoggers don't fit on every team, but their lack of use definitely helps enable Woobat. Being able to have a slot be a hazard removal and 3-4 other things is great, but you sacrifice some of the reliability of the hazard removal if you take off items like eviolite. Having 1 slot on a team dedicated to removing hazards is not a bad thing.

For a while, Mareanie and Koffing (and to a lesser extent foongus) have been the tiers main haze/clear smog utilizers. Other haze users being played because they arent weak to psychic isn't necessarily a bad thing. Mareanie has filled the haze role for a while, while also being very good in its own right in other roles. I think that is a good thing. Haze Stunky and Duskull seeing usage isn't a bad thing. Decentralizing the meta is good.

If you have a bulky offense team then you will struggle with woobat. If you run hyper offense, you generally won't. It's definitely a good mon but it's not at that broken level. It's very on dimensional and simple to play against. Ofc it can always cheese wins with flinches, but so can NP vull. Speaking of vull I'd love to do a comparison on which is harder to play into.

Predicting the wrong vull set can lose you a game in one turn. Woobat doesn't have much variety (evio vs grassy seed) and pretty much reveals it's set as soon as it comes out.

Woobat requires a lot of support. Vullaby can be splashed into any team as glue.

Like, I see the reasoning, but I don't agree. If people would rather ban a mon than adapt to it that's fine, but I think this isn't a problem. I didn't need to build a team specifically for woobat, I grabbed one that was an updated version of a team from gen7. Don't let your opponent get so far ahead they have webs, terrain, and screens. If you let someone get that much tempo on you while they're running a dewpider and a natu you did something wrong.

 

[Kipkluif]

Hi, you seem to make some mistakes in your reasoning.
You act like letting your opponent get grassy terrain up is something you can prevent, while all it takes to do so is run a Grookey, and safely U-turn or switch it out otherwise, which is barely any investment at all and can be done multiple times a game. Not only that, the Woobat doesn't immediately have to come in, because the terrain will last a few turns.
Next, you state that hyper offense doesn't struggle with woobat as much as bulky offense does. While this is true for some forms of hyper offense, a single pokémon shutting down the most basic of team styles is definitely unhealthy. To add on to that, a metagame where hyper offense is the only good team style is very matchup reliant and leaves less room for player skill to play a factor, which is undesirable.
You also claim pokémon like Mareanie and Koffing have run Haze, which is simply untrue. Haze is another example of an extreme matchup fish that does absolutely nothing and hinders the pokémon running it against any other team. Not to mention, none of your Haze users mentioned beat Scraggy or Magby, two other pokémon that often accompany woobat on a setup spam team.
Nobody has claimed Woobat has no counterplay, and people aren't refusing to adapt to it; the meta is just in a worse place as long as we have to guess whether we need to prepare for it or not.

 

[MK007]

"You act like letting your opponent get grassy terrain up is something you can prevent."

Please show me where I said this.

Allowing your opponent to have grassy, webs, and screens up is preventable. If your opponent gets enough of a lead on you that they are allowed to get all 3 they have already won.

"Next, you state that hyper offense doesn't struggle with woobat as much as bulky offense does. While this is true for some forms of hyper offense, a single pokémon shutting down the most basic of team styles is definitely unhealthy. To add on to that, a metagame where hyper offense is the only good team style is very matchup reliant and leaves less room for player skill to play a factor, which is undesirable."

Hyper Offense is not the only good team style right now. Would you rather have a meta where bulky offense + 1 breaker(the closest thing LC has to stall) is the only consistently good team style? Because we get there every gen and then complain about the meta being stale. Are we going to be OU and ban everything until it's stall meta? We'll just end up with this gen looking like gen 7 did at the end, where the games were boring and stale, vull sat at a >75% usage rate, and teams were so similar more games were decided by hax than when there was variety in the meta.

Teambuilding should be less about being able to prepare for everything and more about choosing what you can and cannot prepare for. If you prep hard for Woobat you lose out on being able to prep for something else.

There are teams that do not prep for NP Vull and lose the matchups to it because they are focusing on being prepped for a wider array of threats. Why is Woobat treated differently?

"You also claim pokémon like Mareanie and Koffing have run Haze, which is simply untrue."

https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/pokemon/koffing/
Clear Smog was a slash on Koffing for all of Gen 7 and is notable enough to be listed in other options for gen 8.
Haze is notable enough on Mareanie that it is mentioned 6 different times in the Gen 7 listing, and while not mentioned in gen 8 that is due to the fact that a more in depth analysis hasn't been written yet as it's still early in the gen (275 words vs 1556 words). Saying that Mareanie running haze doesn't happen is false.

"Not to mention, none of your Haze users mentioned beat Scraggy or Magby, two other pokémon that often accompany woobat on a setup spam team."

Yes. The mons that are theoretical hard answers to woobat (though I'm sus of duskull but I saw it mentioned so I figured id mention it's usage) don't beat magby or scraggy. However, Scraggy gets beat by literally half the tier, and magby cannot setup on most mons. If a team has all setup sweepers and breakers you might not be able to have an answer for every single one, that's literally the reason the team was built that way. On the flip side of the coin those teams have no defensive backbone and fall to pretty much any sweeper that gets going on your side, and if you are playing without a dedicated wincon on your team you're boring and want to win via statchecking your opponent until we have a meta where everyone has the same mons and statchecking is useless and the meta is a semi-mirrored match 95% of games.

 

[Jakistani]

Wth even oneliner mean?

Anyways for me Woobat dont deserve ban. There is one psychic type mon who dont deserve to be in LC. Abra. It has 100 base spatk and 90 speed. Its ability Magic Guard enables it to be immune on poison burn and hazard damages. Only Woobats fault is Simple and Grasy seed. If this is reason to ban woobat and keep abra in LC meta looks like something is wrong.

 

[jm2202]

Wth even oneliner mean?

Anyways for me Woobat dont deserve ban. There is one psychic type mon who dont deserve to be in LC. Abra. It has 100 base spatk and 90 speed. Its ability Magic Guard enables it to be immune on poison burn and hazard damages. Only Woobats fault is Simple and Grasy seed. If this is reason to ban woobat and keep abra in LC meta looks like something is wrong.

Woobat is the bigger threat now, but an abra suspect test is reasonable.
Woobat with grassy seed is an easy setup, all you need is a grookey and the woobat has to be holding the grassy seed. Then it could set up free calm minds and tank everything while dishing powerful attacks.
I do agree in a way about the abra suspect test, but woobat is the most unhealthy for LC of the two.

 

[Jakistani]

Woobat is the bigger threat now, but an abra suspect test is reasonable.
Woobat with grassy seed is an easy setup, all you need is a grookey and the woobat has to be holding the grassy seed. Then it could set up free calm minds and tank everything while dishing powerful attacks.
I do agree in a way about the abra suspect test, but woobat is the most unhealthy for LC of the two.

whats more unhealthy in ur opinion? being sweeped by scarfed abra or being sweeped by grookeys grassy glide? You know well the answer

 

[Gray]

The issue with the bat seems to be a lack of prep for aggressive webs clearing.

If you let your opponent get up screens, webs, and grassy terrain you deserve to lose. Woobat is simply the mon that takes advantage of those the most.

I laddered with a team with evio weak armor vullaby with defog and got reqs in under an hour (while not dropping a single game vs a woobat). The team needed aggressive defogging because it was a shell smash dwebble team, but I selected it because of the team's playstyle of removing hazards as quickly and reliably as possible when I saw it was a Woobat suspect. Most Woobat teams have to be willing to sack their dewpider to get up webs (into offensive teams at least, vs slow bulky offense they may not need to sack). This obviously won't always be the case, but when faced with an offensive matchup dewpider will likely get sacrificed. With dewpider and webs gone woobat loses a lot of presence. Aggressive defoggers don't fit on every team, but their lack of use definitely helps enable Woobat. Being able to have a slot be a hazard removal and 3-4 other things is great, but you sacrifice some of the reliability of the hazard removal if you take off items like eviolite. Having 1 slot on a team dedicated to removing hazards is not a bad thing.

For a while, Mareanie and Koffing (and to a lesser extent foongus) have been the tiers main haze/clear smog utilizers. Other haze users being played because they arent weak to psychic isn't necessarily a bad thing. Mareanie has filled the haze role for a while, while also being very good in its own right in other roles. I think that is a good thing. Haze Stunky and Duskull seeing usage isn't a bad thing. Decentralizing the meta is good.

If you have a bulky offense team then you will struggle with woobat. If you run hyper offense, you generally won't. It's definitely a good mon but it's not at that broken level. It's very on dimensional and simple to play against. Ofc it can always cheese wins with flinches, but so can NP vull. Speaking of vull I'd love to do a comparison on which is harder to play into.

Predicting the wrong vull set can lose you a game in one turn. Woobat doesn't have much variety (evio vs grassy seed) and pretty much reveals it's set as soon as it comes out.

Woobat requires a lot of support. Vullaby can be splashed into any team as glue.

Like, I see the reasoning, but I don't agree. If people would rather ban a mon than adapt to it that's fine, but I think this isn't a problem. I didn't need to build a team specifically for woobat, I grabbed one that was an updated version of a team from gen7. Don't let your opponent get so far ahead they have webs, terrain, and screens. If you let someone get that much tempo on you while they're running a dewpider and a natu you did something wrong.

I think if people could "adapt" to Woobat, they would've done it by now.

Just to patch up a few things you said:
Clear smog Koffing and Foongus are unviable: Koffing heavily relies on poisoning Pokemon or just doing damage on Sludge Bomb. Clear smog wouldn't get it anywhere besides dealing with Woobat. Clear Smog Foongus would lose the common mirror match against other Foongus. It's not worth running these unreliable sets that hinder the Pokemon greatly (like Kip said) just to click on a Woobat and maybe Scraggy.
This is ESPECIALLY the case when you aren't sure if you will have your Pokemon in when Woobat comes in. (In other words, it's even unreliable against Woobat.)

Sure, there are ways to deal with Woobat (U-Turn into Final Gambit Diglett, Magnemite, Fast T-Wavers + getting lucky, Scarf Pory, and a few others) but I believe this suspect was used as a way to nerf hyper offense itself by taking away its best asset. Natu screens with the combination of scraggy/tyrunt/woobat/magby/grook is insanely hard to deal with for any team that isn't completely cteaming. Defog Eviolite Vull doesn't get you much against these type of teams cuz the sequence would go like this:
Can't lead it vs Pawn or Ferro unless you want it to get crippled, can't defog screens while Natu stays in cuz it'll get bounced back, forced to have a counter for Tyrunt or even Scraggy when they come in on Vull with a reflect up (both win the 1v1 when vull takes rocks damage), Natu can come in later in the game and get up a last effort screen, etc.

And if you think you can just defog screens/rocks/terrain away without wasting a turn and getting swept, you're completely wrong. More than likely, you'll have to stall the screens away or just bring counters for those sweepers, which is completely restricting for teambuilding.

 

[MK007]

I think if people could "adapt" to Woobat, they would've done it by now.

Just to patch up a few things you said:
Clear smog Koffing and Foongus are unviable: Koffing heavily relies on poisoning Pokemon or just doing damage on Sludge Bomb. Clear smog wouldn't get it anywhere besides dealing with Woobat. Clear Smog Foongus would lose the common mirror match against other Foongus. It's not worth running these unreliable sets that hinder the Pokemon greatly (like Kip said) just to click on a Woobat and maybe Scraggy.
This is ESPECIALLY the case when you aren't sure if you will have your Pokemon in when Woobat comes in. (In other words, it's even unreliable against Woobat.)

Sure, there are ways to deal with Woobat (U-Turn into Final Gambit Diglett, Magnemite, Fast T-Wavers + getting lucky, Scarf Pory, and a few others) but I believe this suspect was used as a way to nerf hyper offense itself by taking away its best asset. Natu screens with the combination of scraggy/tyrunt/woobat/magby/grook is insanely hard to deal with for any team that isn't completely cteaming. Defog Eviolite Vull doesn't get you much against these type of teams cuz the sequence would go like this:
Can't lead it vs Pawn or Ferro unless you want it to get crippled, can't defog screens while Natu stays in cuz it'll get bounced back, forced to have a counter for Tyrunt or even Scraggy when they come in on Vull with a reflect up (both win the 1v1 when vull takes rocks damage), Natu can come in later in the game and get up a last effort screen, etc.

And if you think you can just defog screens/rocks/terrain away without wasting a turn and getting swept, you're completely wrong. More than likely, you'll have to stall the screens away or just bring counters for those sweepers, which is completely restricting for teambuilding.

I wasn't the most clear in my post, my apologies for that.

I agree that clear smog koffing and foongus don't work for woobat. My point was that since these mons (and mare) cannot deal with woobat were starting to see other haze/clear smog users gaining traction, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing.

Again, apologies for not being the clearest in the post.

I've always had a lot of success into the screens/web matchup with evio vull, but I generally have a lot of safety nets for sweeps on evio vull teams since those teams usually feature a sturdyjuice sweeper. I generally run heat wave on vull for ferro fwiw, but its almost never a lead.

 

[Fiend]

I'm moderating this thread now. Thanks everyone.

You can find a lot of the questions posed in this thread answer in the metagame discussion thread. The general premise of Woobat is that is wins versus underprepared teams, which implies that it can be prepared for. The issue is that the mode of dealing with Woobat is fairly close to being on/off, where it simply wins if you lack a handful of outs and does not win yet is very limiting anyway if you do have these Pokemon. The problem begins with how limited answers to Woobat are.

For the record, MK, I have no idea what you are on about. The main screens team does not run Evio Vullaby, webs can run a variety of Vullaby sets including Endure, and largely speaking it comes across like your experience with the subject at hand is limited to versus poor players.

 

[Jakistani]

Looks like the censorship on Smogon works perfectly...

Woobat can be countered by quite few mons in lc meta. First example? Inkay. With tupsy-turvy it can revert woobats boosts to -0,5 def sp atk and sp defense. Besides exists ability Unaware which allows wooper to hit boosted woobat with normal damage. Lastly there are many dark types like vullaby or pawniard that are immune to stored power and can tank air slashes addictionally pawniard have sucker punch which can deal reasonable damage even with boosted defense on woobat.

 

[Merritt]

Looks like the censorship on Smogon works perfectly...

Woobat can be countered by quite few mons in lc meta. First example? Inkay. With tupsy-turvy it can revert woobats boosts to -0,5 def sp atk and sp defense. Besides exists ability Unaware which allows wooper to hit boosted woobat with normal damage. Lastly there are many dark types like vullaby or pawniard that are immune to stored power and can tank air slashes addictionally pawniard have sucker punch which can deal reasonable damage even with boosted defense on woobat.

Inkay is indeed an answer to Woobat, though it's generally an extremely mediocre Pokemon outside of answering Woobat (actually a mirror to how decently Inkay does vs Webs in general and how incredibly underwhelming it is aside from that). Most issues with Inkay stem from how bad it is outside of fighting Woobat, it's only a step above playing down a Pokemon in other games since Webs teams will often just not set up webs if they can't deal with a boosted Inkay.

Unaware has basically no good users in LC, but the one you mentioned (Wooper) isn't exactly an answer to Woobat. Stored Power doesn't benefit from the special attack boosts but the BP does still go up as Woobat sets up, and Stored Power begins outdamaging even the bulkiest Wooper's Recover after two Calm Minds, while Wooper fails to do any meaningful damage back.

Finally let's talk about Vullaby and Pawniard. The main issue here seems to be a misunderstanding - Woobat usually runs Heat Wave, not Air Slash which causes Pawniards to explode. The other issue is the sheer bulk that Grassy Seed gives Woobat. It's actually able to use some Vullaby as setup fodder which is a little bit nutty.
236+ Atk Vullaby Knock Off vs. +2 76 HP / 252 Def Woobat: 8-12 (33.3 - 50%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 12)

Meanwhile Pawniard Sucker Punch only does about half, meaning Woobat needs to have taken some solid damage before Pawniard can come in to clean. More distressingly though is that Woobat's somewhat free to play Roost mindgames with Pawniard since Knock Off also only keeps up with Roost healing and rarely outdamages it.
236+ Atk Pawniard Sucker Punch vs. +2 76 HP / 252 Def Woobat: 12-14 (50 - 58.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 14)

A few hard counters to Woobat do exist, they're just generally quite difficult to fit on teams due to their limited effectiveness when fighting teams that do not have Woobat on them.

 

[Jakistani]

What even is one-liner in Smogon's opinion?

Anyways Woobat is not that threatening pokemon even with grassy seed. Many dark rock electric and ice type pokemon in lc meta can effectively check it before it can use calm mind. Elekid can ko it with its STAB thunderbolt and thunder. Onix can use rock blast. Amaura obliterates woobat with hyper voice addictionally boosted with refridgerate. Not to mention bug types like Larvesta or dragon/dark type deino

 

[MK007]

What even is one-liner in Smogon's opinion?

Anyways Woobat is not that threatening pokemon even with grassy seed. Many dark rock electric and ice type pokemon in lc meta can effectively check it before it can use calm mind. Elekid can ko it with its STAB thunderbolt and thunder. Onix can use rock blast. Amaura obliterates woobat with hyper voice addictionally boosted with refridgerate. Not to mention bug types like Larvesta or dragon/dark type deino

I am not pro Woobat ban but your arguments are tenuous at best.

Woobat clicks calm mind when you hard to elekid and gets +2 SpD before it comes in. Physical Elekid could be something but not for grassy seed sets.

216 Atk Life Orb Elekid Wild Charge vs. 76 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Woobat: 18-23 (75 - 95.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
Possible damage amounts: (18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 23)

Physical Elekid is a super sus mon tho.

Onix speed ties.

Amaura same as elekid.

Larv is outsped and gets smacked by air slash. Scarf larv is not good, the only good set is a beefy physical check that fishes for flame body procs. Deino is unviable.

The reason bat shouldn't be banned is because there are hard defensive answers, and then the fact that it gets overran by many offensive teams if they get a tempo lead.

Elekid, Amaura, Deino, and Larv are not the answers.

If you wanted a hard physical answer that can hard in you could cheese like scarf rock wrecker dwebble because that's a guaranteed one shot vs grassy seed after rocks but id rather just have the tempo to not allow it to come in and setup in the first place if I'm not running a defensive answer.

236+ Atk Dwebble Rock Wrecker vs. +2 76 HP / 252+ Def Woobat: 18-24 (75 - 100%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
Possible damage amounts: (18, 18, 18, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 24)

 

[daunt vs]

Im not for a bat ban but your arguments are trash.


Woobat clicks calm mind when you hard to elekid and gets +2 SpD before it comes in. Physical Elekid could be something but not for grassy seed sets.

216 Atk Life Orb Elekid Wild Charge vs. 76 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Woobat: 18-23 (75 - 95.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
Possible damage amounts: (18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 23)

Physical Elekid is a super sus mon tho.

Elekid can beat woobat , it doesn't matter a lot because elekid is not relevant atm because pinch high usage and lack of hidden power,and other problems elekid has always had, but it can ohko woobat usually even with the cm boost , so saying it doesn't beat it it's just a lie
If it's 23hp :
236 SpA Life Orb Elekid Thunderbolt vs. +2 0 HP / 0 SpD Woobat: 18-26 (78.2 - 113%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
Possible damage amounts: (18, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23, 26)
And even if its 24hp you leave it in range of any prio move / faster mon
pd: evio woobat is trash and should never be used