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My fingers keep on clickin' to the beatin' of my heart
Hey, I can't stop my feet
Ah Zigzagoon, the ever-present noob-killer has finally got his time in the spotlight. How times have changed, where Zigzagoon went from a threat halted by most players with an understanding of the metagame, to being able to break through the options that we have to defeat it with relative ease. Zigzagoon's classic set, the Belly Drum Sweeper set, has not changed much over the years. The general game plan is to get some support from your teammates in the form of Screens or Memento, use Belly Drum, and with the equipped Berry Juice regenerate to full health. From there it becomes hitting Extremespeed and occasionally one of Zigzagoon's coverage options and watching everything disappear. In the past, we have had options in order to mitigate Zigzagoon, with mons that comfortably eat Extremespeed, such as Onix, Ferroseed, Magnemite, and Pawniard. Additionally, Sash users such as Abra, or very defensive threats such as Timburr have been able to score a revenge kill from full health. Finally, we have had more of a presence of Ghost-types, who ignore the main STAB move that Zigzagoon uses. While many of these answers are still prevalent today, many things have changed in the metagame which prevents these Pokemon from getting the usage they have had in the past. The single best answer to Zigzagoon, Gastly, has been banned for the majority of the generation, leaving the only viable Ghost-type in Frillish, who is easily outpaced and killed by one of Zigzagoon's coverage options. Additionally, Onix has become very vogue with the Vullaby ban, and several Steel-types often are tasked with taking more chip damage, which limits their ability to check Zigzagoon. Finally, with the recent bans, the pace of the metagame has become more volatile, which makes it significantly more challenging to prevent your opponent from setting up Zigzagoon. In the past, proper pivoting and thinking ahead were used at a higher level of play to prevent Zigzagoon from sweeping, but with the many recent changes to the metagame, the gap of counterplay has thinned dramatically. Generally, players have been able to change their teams accordingly to counteract Zigzagoon in the various metagames where it has become more popular, as opposed to the current metagame where Zigzagoon has largely been resistant to the adaptations that have been made. Zigzagoon has largely become the face of matchup fishing as a whole, and the only true counterplay has been largely unviable sets against a majority of standard teams. Defeating Zigzagoon has come down to keeping your team's Steel-type extremely safe, which can often lose you the game to one of the other Pokemon on the team, particularly with matchup-fishing teams, another strong sweeper can likely only be stopped by your Steel-type. Trappers such as Magnemite, Trapinch, and Diglett can also be tailored to break the Steel-type, with Diglett being able to Memento as well. All of which paves the way for an easy Zigzagoon sweep. The LC council believes that Zigzagoon should be reviewed for its ability to warp matches, limit to specific sets and teams in the builder, and potentially change the outcome of games in which it takes place.
A bit of housekeeping as well, Zigzagoon is a very low collateral Pokemon to have in a suspect test, after the conclusion of this suspect, regardless of the outcome, there is the possibility that we move relatively quickly onto another potential suspect.
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.
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 LCZGG to qualify. When you have reached the requirements, click here to post your proof. Zigzagoon will be legal on the ladder until the suspect is over. The suspect period will end on Sunday, November 28, 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.
Rroo ka doong ka doong ka do ka do ka doong doong
I'm very unsure of what to vote here. Zigzagoon does not feel broken in the sense that there is no reasonable counterplay available; There's Pawniard and Ferroseed, a healthy Koffing, but none of these mons have the ability to engage in the match and stay at full health. There's also niche ghost types like Sinistea and Golett, which I used to ladder for reqs, but these are not meta for a reason even though I don't think they're complete garbage. Despite this, using fringe mons like this often points to an unhealthy strain on the builder which makes me lean towards voting ban on this suspect, but I'm not certain yet.
Zigzagoon is a very interesting suspect, mainly because it is not clearcut whether it is broken or not. On one hand, it can easily be thwarted by something like Ferroseed or Pawniard, but on the other, if these lose their Eviolite sand get chipped enough, they can't stop it anymore. While I have not made reqs mainly due to not playing enough due to time constraints, I'm leaning towards BAN here.
This is mainly due to the restriction zigzagoon places in games. One is forced to keep their steel/rock pokemon in near pristine condition, which causes the player's choices to shrink dramatically, as suddenly, you can't switch into that mareanie easily with your ferroseed, lest it knock you off and leaves you vulnerable to being swept. While zigzagoon does require skill to play, The simple fact of the matter is if I load in a team without a normal resist, my opponent is virtually guaranteed to win as long as they don't make a blunder.
Simply put, when Zigzagoon is walled, it's really walled, but when it isn't walled, it cleaves through a team like a hot knife through butter. Making your building and play so restrictive that you cannot switch into a mon with a hard counter for it (aforementioned Ferroseed and Mareanie) indicated to me that it is unsuitable for the tier, especially with how it is basically guaranteed to setup on most things thanks to memento support.
Before this suspect and during the SCL, I had the strong feeling that Zigzagoon was broken for two reasons :
- Most of the time, teams structures favoured Zigzagoon's power to break and sweep these teams. Indeed, it was common to play against same kind of 6 like fight/steel/poison/water/psychic/ground. Against these, it's pretty easy to setup Zig and to destroy opponents because there are no real way to manage a +6 Zig and his +2 priority. Normal resists or immunity were almost nonexistent so Zig wasn't a "fish" pokemon but he was a huge threat who guaranteed a good chance to win your game if you succeed to setup it. Let me show you one of my replay to illustrate this : https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8lc-1444643336-6t9v84sk45s26dyguj0t9q31q02orzhpw
- The second reason follow from the first one. My point of concern was that you didn't need to play HO and to setup screens in order to setup Zig. In fact, it's totally possible to run Zig in a very common team with some techs to allow his setup like Memento Dig or Memento Koffing for instance. Consequently, Zigzagoon wasn't only a powerful sweeper in HO called cheese teams but he also was a great breaker/sweeper in Bulky Offense, the main playstyle in LC and that's why I was worried. This replay should illustrate my thinking (SCL week 5 - Laroxyl vs Boulicrok) : https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8lc-584818
In the same vain, here are some BO teams with Zig played at SCL :
To conclude this first part, my decision was to BAN Zigzagoon due to his powerful priority and the lack of good checks.
However, in a second part, I noted that players were adapting to this new threat. Indeed, before the rise of this little furet, the metagame was restricted and players often played same mons; so, as I said, it was easy to break that with Zig. Now, we can find several under used mons who have a new life in order to counter Zig and/or HO in general.
- On the one hand, I'm thinking about Onix of course but also Tyrunt in a more offensive role who are both good normal resist with an utility. Onix is interesting against Koffing, Tyrunt or Ponyta-Kanto whereas Tyrunt appears as a strong win condition. So there are not limited in one role : "zig checks"
- On the other hand, I'm thinking about Ghost types. Indeed, ghosts weren't played before but if we take a look on the metagame we notice that ghost resists/immunity are really uncommon except Pawniard. Consequently, Ghosts are interesting for now because this adds an immunity to Extrem Speed in addition to bring a good offensive utility (and defensive utility if I talk about Frillish especially). That's why we're seeing a rise of Sinistea, Scarf Golett, Scarf Frillish or Fast Bulky Frillish in usages.
Once again, let me show you some replays :
- https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8lc-1450471679-p2gmfp9l3dlco96pgxu4yfdwcxr0db9pwFall Seasonals Round 9. Acehunter already did a topic on this team just here : https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-lc-sample-teams.3661419/post-9029980 I'll just quote him : " this team has a great matchup against opposing setup spam. Psychic Fangs on Tyrunt destroys screens. It would be difficult for Zigzagoon to break through both Rock types, and both Ponyta and Onix check Magby after it sets up."
- I cannot find good replays with Ghosts but here is a team with Golett Scarf used in Seasonal in order to counter Zig and HO :
In conclusion, with metagame changes, I'm reviewing my opinion and I'm not 100% in favour of a ban. At this moment my newest question is : is it good for the meta to be always prepped to Zigzagoon (Onix, Tyrunt, Ghosts) even if it's restricted the meta (or not I'm not sure) ?
The main goal of this post is to provide some thoughts on appropriate options taking into consideration various positions. So, I hope it'll help and clarify thinkings.
PS : sorry for my average english, I tried to do my best and I hope to be understandable.
this should be a fairly simple ban
- a well built zigzagoon HO is way too efficient at forcing out and breaking steel types. Because zigzagoon effectively restricts all play to whether or not you can preserve the steel, they can easily stack pokemon that either break steels down themselves or can easily sweep after the steels are gone. The bare bones zigzagoon archetype really requires only three or so pokemon to work properly (diglett/zig/pory) leaving a ton of room for other unhealthy matchup fishes. The best example of this is the magnemite set that we saw in semis of SCL: that set can only exist on cheese because if you run into a pawniard matchup it will be nearly useless.
- This discussion about rock types and ghost types is just not portraying the actual viability of these pokemon. Y'all have been discussing gollett and sinistea as is they're real options to deal with zigzagoon, but those two pokemon are unviable garbage on balance. Gollett is just a significantly weaker scarf mudbray, which at this point is already a mediocre at best set, and sinistea can't meaningfully touch pawniard and is way too weak to priority to have any place on non cheese teams. Rock types are a bit more viable, but they remain suboptimal at best and see minimal use despite being the most solid checks to zig for a reason. They are strictly inferior in balance vs balance games, and have a terrible matchup against any team with grookey
At this moment my newest question is : is it good for the meta to be always prepped to Zigzagoon (Onix, Tyrunt, Ghosts) even if it's restricted the meta (or not I'm not sure) ?
I would answer a definitive no. Unlike most other mons, lacking an immediate Zigzagoon response nearly guarantees your loss with no further interaction. Historically this was balanced by most teams already having Zigzagoon responses without even considering it, but Vullaby's ban exposed Onix as a mediocre mon without nearly the inherent strengths to warrant its previous 30-40% usage. Zigzagoon checks still technically exist as they always have, but they are currently weak enough that sufficiently accommodating for Zigzagoon currently puts a team at a significant disadvantage against non-Zigzagoon teams. It is no longer reasonable to fit multiple Zigzagoon checks onto a team, and by design, Zigzagoon teams require multiple checks for reasonable counterplay.
So even if the metagame develops to revolve around the threat of Zigzagoon, the archetype has proven itself to be well in line with other strategies that we have banned for uncompetitiveness through matchup-fishing, such as Baton Pass and Aurora Veil.
While this probably won't bring the metagame to a balanced/diverse state on its own, I would rather we get this out of the way now so that we can quickly and more easily address less straight-forward mons like Mienfoo/Grookey without having a third of games decided on preview.
I made a video here discussing my thoughts on Zigzagoon, but I understand not everyone wants to listen for 15 mins so I'll just detail my thoughts below as well :)
In-Game
I pretty much agree with everything that has been said above. I think the biggest issue is that the "checks" that are common (and not bad such as fringe ghosts/rocks) is the fact that these pokemon 1. can literally take only ONE hit and 2. do not have reliable recovery (and the ones that do cannot be chipped whatsoever/have their eviolite knocked off). This makes it very easy to pressure the opponent's team with knock off from your mienfoo, tri attack from a porygon, and u-turn into a trapper.
The other issue is the lack of revenge killers, espeed invalidates scarfers/priority users and for that reason it means that the only counterplay is defensive counterplay which leaves us with a heavily warped in-game. Threats such as abra, pony, and grookey (to less of an extent) have both offensive and defensive counterplay that doesn't completely suck tempo, making the game more robust and giving you more options in game.
Builder
In terms of the builder, I think there is some clamor that mons such as rock types, ghost types, timburr can be used as checks and while I agree that they seem relatively solid, there is still a large opportunity cost. I enjoy pokemon like tyrunt and frillish but when I do use these mons I do wish that I was using something else when not faced with a zig. I don't want to reiterate too much from above but yeah scarf golett, onix, and any other fringe mons are fringe for a reason and feel pretty meh in my opinion (although definitely fun and it was nice to see the metagame adapt)
