LGPE NatDex

[Eve]

This is being posted at the request of Bobsican in order to formalize the tier.
​

LGPE NatDex is different from typical NatDex formats. The only elements LGPE NatDex adds to LGPE are all the Pokemon, including new ones- that means no items or abilities, and no moves beyond those which are already legal in LGPE. Think of it as if you could transfer any NatDex-legal Pokemon into the game via Pokemon Home, but had to remove non-LGPE elements from them beforehand. This does mean existing Pokemon gain LGPE-legal moves they don't have access to in the game, such as Soft-Boiled on Clefable and Heat Wave on Zapdos. Lastly, Mega Evolutions from ZA are currently not allowed. This is partly to create better parity with official NatDex, and partly because LGPE on Showdown is currently hardcoded to not allow them even with custom challenge rules . Hopefully we'll have this rectified eventually.

Tiering
Banlist: Alakazam-Mega, Arceus, Blastoise-Mega, Blaziken-Mega, Calyrex-Shadow, Darkrai, Deoxys, Deoxys-Attack, Deoxys-Speed, Dialga, Eternatus, Flutter Mane, Gengar-Mega, Giratina, Groudon, Iron Bundle, Koraidon, Kyogre, Kyurem-White, Lopunny-Mega, Lucario-Mega, Lugia, Lunala, Mewtwo, Miraidon, Naganadel, Necrozma-Dawn-Wings, Necrozma-Dusk-Mane, Palkia, Pheromosa, Rayquaza, Regigigas, Reshiram, Slaking, Solgaleo, Spectrier, Xerneas, Yveltal, Zacian, Zekrom
Watchlist:

• Latios-Mega & Latias-Mega: Both have incredible movepools that are only minorly nerfed by LGPE's movepool, and obviously incredible stat spreads. Very strong, fast, bulky, and versatile.
• Calyrex-Ice: Despite having effectively zero STAB moves and losing all its best coverage moves and being permarocks weak, it's still an obscenely statted menace that can abuse Leech Seed and/or Swords Dance rather effectively.
• Hoopa-Unbound: Basically just claims whenever it gets in.
• Volcarona: Despite being weak to permarocks, Volcarona is still incredibly threatening as it preserves basically every single important move in its learnset. The lack of scarfers/boosters and worse priority options also favour it heavily.

Please feel free to make a case for potential tiering changes in this thread.

Resources
All Moves in LGPE

Short challenge code (no move legality check)

/challenge gen7letsgoou @@@ +Uber, +Future, +Past, !Obtainable Moves, !Obtainable Misc

Long challenge code

/challenge gen7letsgoou @@@ +Uber, +Future, +Past, !Obtainable Moves, !Obtainable Misc, -All Moves, +Absorb, +Acid, +Acid Armor, +Agility, +Air Slash, +Amnesia, +Aqua Jet, +Aurora Beam, +Baddy Bad, +Barrage, +Barrier, +Bide, +Bind, +Bite, +Blizzard, +Body Slam, +Bone Club, +Bonemerang, +Bouncy Bubble, +Brick Break, +Bubble, +Bubble Beam, +Bug Buzz, +Bulk Up, +Buzzy Buzz, +Calm Mind, +Clamp, +Clear Smog, +Confuse Ray, +Confusion, +Constrict, +Conversion, +Counter, +Crabhammer, +Crunch, +Cut, +Dark Pulse, +Dazzling Gleam, +Defense Curl, +Dig, +Disable, +Dizzy Punch, +Double Iron Bash, +Double Kick, +Double Slap, +Double Team, +Double-Edge, +Dragon Pulse, +Dragon Rage, +Dragon Tail, +Dream Eater, +Drill Peck, +Drill Run, +Earthquake, +Egg Bomb, +Ember, +Encore, +Explosion, +Facade, +Fake Out, +Feint, +Fire Blast, +Fire Punch, +Fire Spin, +Fissure, +Flamethrower, +Flare Blitz, +Flash, +Flash Cannon, +Floaty Fall, +Fly, +Focus Energy, +Foul Play, +Freezy Frost, +Fury Attack, +Fury Swipes, +Glare, +Glitzy Glow, +Growl, +Growth, +Guillotine, +Gust, +Harden, +Haze, +Headbutt, +Heat Wave, +Helping Hand, +High Jump Kick, +Horn Attack, +Horn Drill, +Hydro Pump, +Hyper Beam, +Hyper Fang, +Hypnosis, +Ice Beam, +Ice Punch, +Ice Shard, +Iron Tail, +Jump Kick, +Karate Chop, +Kinesis, +Leech Life, +Leech Seed, +Leer, +Lick, +Light Screen, +Lovely Kiss, +Low Kick, +Meditate, +Mega Drain, +Mega Kick, +Mega Punch, +Megahorn, +move:Metronome, +Mimic, +Minimize, +Mirror Coat, +Mirror Move, +Mist, +Moonblast, +Nasty Plot, +Night Shade, +Outrage, +Pay Day, +Peck, +Petal Dance, +Pin Missile, +Play Rough, +Poison Gas, +Poison Jab, +Poison Powder, +Poison Sting, +Pound, +Power Whip, +Protect, +Psybeam, +Psychic, +Psywave, +Quick Attack, +Quiver Dance, +Rage, +Razor Leaf, +Razor Wind, +Recover, +Reflect, +Rest, +Roar, +Rock Slide, +Rock Throw, +Roost, +Sand Attack, +Sappy Seed, +Scald, +Scratch, +Screech, +Seismic Toss, +Self-Destruct, +Shadow Ball, +Sharpen, +Shell Smash, +Sing, +Sizzly Slide, +Skull Bash, +Sky Attack, +Slam, +Slash, +Sleep Powder, +Sludge, +Sludge Bomb, +Smog, +Smokescreen, +Soft-Boiled, +Solar Beam, +Sonic Boom, +Sparkly Swirl, +Spike Cannon, +Splash, +Splishy Splash, +Spore, +Stealth Rock, +Stomp, +Strength, +String Shot, +Stun Spore, +Submission, +Substitute, +Sucker Punch, +Super Fang, +Superpower, +Supersonic, +Surf, +Swift, +Swords Dance, +Tackle, +Tail Whip, +Take Down, +Taunt, +Teleport, +Thrash, +Thunder, +Thunder Punch, +Thunder Shock, +Thunder Wave, +Thunderbolt, +Toxic, +Transform, +Tri Attack, +Twineedle, +U-turn, +Vice Grip, +Vine Whip, +Water Gun, +Waterfall, +Whirlwind, +Will-O-Wisp, +Wing Attack, +Withdraw, +Wrap, +X-Scissor, +Yawn, +Zippy Zap, -All Items, +Abomasite, +Absolite, +Aerodactylite, +Aggronite, +Alakazite, +Altarianite, +Ampharosite, +Audinite, +Banettite, +Beedrillite, +Blastoisinite, +Blazikenite, +Cameruptite, +Charizardite X, +Charizardite Y, +Diancite, +Galladite, +Garchompite, +Gardevoirite, +Gengarite, +Glalitite, +Gyaradosite, +Heracronite, +Houndoominite, +Kangaskhanite, +Latiasite, +Latiosite, +Lopunnite, +Lucarionite, +Manectite, +Mawilite, +Medichamite, +Metagrossite, +Mewtwonite X, +Mewtwonite Y, +Pidgeotite, +Pinsirite, +Sablenite, +Salamencite, +Sceptilite, +Scizorite, +Sharpedonite, +Slowbronite, +Steelixite, +Swampertite, +Tyranitarite, +Venusaurite

Current Council: Eve, Glimmer

 

[Bobsican]

Some initial thoughts:

Legal "Ubers"

Mons that at best are niche given they end up here by lacking an ability:



Mons that are legalized by a gutted movepool:



More interesting cases:

This being legal seems wild until you notice that this is a meta with Stealth Rock and absolutely no hazard removal, given that it lacks setup it's not surprisingly hard to answer, especially as it can't be used as a long term check to stuff with no Heavy-Duty Boots or Regenerator, if anything this is easily the most hostile meta for it.


This is really just a slightly better Weavile, huh? It's still kept in check by lacking a viable Ice STAB beyond Ice Shard, however.


M-Houndoom is out of a job, but at least this grants an alternative to M-Charizard Y for teams that'd rather use another mega.


Seems like an interesting choice with its colorful coverage and speed tier.


While it can afford to go mixed given the lack of EVs, the lack of Download places keeps it well in check.


Its STAB combo is interesting, but does surprisingly little else, it should be an usable breaker in any case.

Stuff to potentially free


It sure seems a bit weird to ban this, the lack of Scrappy places this in a weird spot against any Ghost-type, and it isn't helped by being forced to use High Jump Kick for a Fighting STAB as Close Combat doesn't exist here, and having to use Mega Kick for a Normal STAB is surprisingly mid as the accuracy leaves something to wish for compared to Return.


This is just a sidegrade Iron Valiant given the lack of Adaptability, if anything it seems more of a niche pick than something the meta would be defined around, as the cost of the Mega slot makes this just a sidegrade pick.


These being banned is worth to reconsider, given that they're forced to be special attackers in the lack of any physical STAB or setup for this purpose, and while Calm Mind sets may seem strong, at that point they face competition with Iron Crown as their speed tier is poor and the lack of recovery (as they no longer have Morning Sun and similar) keep them well in check. At most they seem like a sidegrade version of Mega Metagross.


Kyurem-B being legal but not this is wild. Zekrom suffers like every other Dragon-type the lack of any good STAB beyond Outrage (which is mid in the lack of Dragonium Z), and being limited to Thunder Punch is quite limiting, in practice this doesn't seem hard to wall given its lack of setup. If anything I could see it becoming a healthy wall as its nice bulk with Roost provides a switch-in to Steel-types.


This may be more on the borderline end, but the lack of setup and an item slot just keeps this on the same power level as common megas like M-Diancie, and losing Focus Blast also means that it's almost trivial to wall with Steel-types, I could see this being fine at some point.


With actual Steel-types around it seems weird to start with this banned, especially given the lack of Beast Boost and Z-Moves.


No Freeze-Dry keeps this to a niche mon, it does quite little beyond clicking Hydro Pump, U-turn, and Encore, meaning that while it's good speed control, it's still manageable, especially as it's weak to Stealth Rock.

Other apparent meta changes


Steel-types with actual recovery! This alone quite increases the tolerable power level as then just wearing down the Steel-type that complements defensive cores to enable a sweep becomes more of a challenge.


The OP so far appears to have partial concerns on Pokemon that mainly aim to wallbreak using STAB moves typically resisted by Water-types, so it seems fair to point out their switch-ins, but the inability to remove status outside Sparkly Swirl is a valid issue to have as nearly everything gets Toxic, thus leaving all of the above but Toxapex and Empoleon forced into a timer once inflicted.


This Pokemon keeps Nidoqueen out of a job, huh? That's likely for the best as this is a healthy addition in general.


This mon was found dead in a trash can. The reason? Its STAB combo now sucks as it's trivial to wall with fatmons with actual recovery.

Stuff to potentially ban


This should be banned to reduce the surprise of this being disallowed out of lacking a legal movepool (Hidden Power being dexit'd and all).


No Z-Moves make a fair case for this being fine, but this may be a bit concerning as its capability to go mixed and that speed tier speak by themselves, having an unresisted type combo is also something.

Closing thoughts

So far ND LGPE seems to deviate from a Bulky Offense-like approach characteristic of the usual LGPE metagame to one that favors quite more balance, especially as the lower amount of setup options and defensive creep allow for a rising trend towards a slower pace of games.

 

[Eve]

Gonna write a bit about the stuff that proved to be good but not broken prior to the making of this thread, and also give my thoughts on the above post. I will note that some of the quirks of the banlist are an oversight due to the format not being played all that much during gen 9.

This is an absolute powerhouse in the format, with traits perfectly suited to lgpe's environment. Amazing defensive typing featuring a Rock resistance, Having fire-types somewhat pushed out the meta by Stealth Rock which it can set for itself, Leech Seed for longevity, and Power Whip for a surprising amount of output all combine to make Ferro a very consistent performer. Throw Power Whip, Leech Seed, Stealth Rock, and Protect or Thunder Wave together and you've got a strong set, or you can obviously run both the latter moves if you have a different rocker.

Regaining recovery in Soft-Boiled does wonders for Clefable, letting it act as a potent defensive tool in a format where Steel and Poison really aren't famed for their offensive capabilities, even in spite of lacking its Abilities. Take your pick of coverage, status spreading, and/or Stealth Rock alongside the obvious Moonblast and Soft-Boiled.

yeah FerroClefPex is good here. Once again, Toxapex functions well in spite of lacking Regenerator, being able to spread burns and poisons, keep healthy, and near-invalidate the existence of any setup Pokemon that can't OHKO it after a boost. It's definitely less good than the other two members of FerroClefPex due to actually being more killable, but as Toxapex often is it's hard to play around once it's in.

Incredible fast pivot mon that somewhat defines the pace of the format without being broken due to its pretty terrible neutral output. Without Dragon Darts and Dragon Dance there's basically nothing to be done with Dragapult on the physical side, and its 100 Sp. Atk is really on display when you don't have Choice Specs or Hex or even Draco Meteor. This thing is especially screwed by Clefable. Still, there's plenty to love, between the kind-of-ever-spammable Shadow Ball, strong coverage options, a super fast U-turn, and especially Will-o-Wisp. Dragapult is good at picking things off, spreading annoying status, and helping teammates get in more safely, and does so rather healthily imo.

Drill Peck, Roost, Bulk Up, U-turn. This guy has no other moves but you don't really need them; it loses to what it loses to and mercilessly invalidates what it mercilessly invalidates, and it slow pivots effectively which is really good and somewhat of a commodity. Pretty typical Corviknight stuff really.

Meet "the guys". These are the Ground-types that do good things and click Earthquake real good. Gliscor is the most defensive obviously, with Roost letting it sit around annoyingly and really just be a Gliscor. Add Toxic or Taunt or U-turn or Stealth Rock and have fun. You could try Swords Dance but that's what the other three usually do and they usually do it better. Garchomp does big damage and does it from a nice speed tier too, which tends to be quite successful. Has nice fringe coverage options or makes for a potent offensive rocker, as do the Landos. Garchomp also has the awesome bonus of being a free alternate Mega that you can sometimes use to suddenly nuke the opponent out of nowhere. Your choice of Landorus comes entirely down to Speed vs Damage, you notably get the jump on Mew with Incarnate. Both Landorus are capable of being offensive pivots and have that nice ground immunity, they form a nice middle ground between Gliscor and Garchomp.

It's Mew lol.



As for Bobsican's post:
Should also note that this guy has neither Sacred Fire nor Brave Bird in LGPE, meaning it's basically locked to a set of Calm Mind, Roost, Fire STAB, and either coverage or Wisp or Sub. Certain balances may be liable to get farmed by this but it's not too hard to put Rock Slide or Toxic on something and feel alright, and it's always working against starting at 50% hp.

This is on the banlist lol and probably should stay that way. LGPE has vastly worse speed control measures, and Darkrai keeps basically all of its important moves and doesn't remotely care about not having its Ability. Would just be quite unreasonable to keep in check.

This is very justifiably banned and will probably remain as such. Being an ultrafast pivot that resists Stealth Rock and has amazing synergy with the best U-turn recipient in the format, Hoopa-Unbound, is utterly obscene in a permarocks format with poor Speed control. You almost always end up moving after Lopunny, and have to just guess what it's doing; even then it can kinda just click U-turn and be happy. High Jump Kick is plenty sufficient as STAB (in fact it's the best Fighting move in the game and a godsend), especially with Ice Punch as coverage for The guys. You still have a slot spare after all of these amazing things and that can be spent on Encore which is obscene, Fake Out for often free damage, Swords Dance for favourable endgames, or some other random trash like Facade idk. You just run Encore and win in reality. This will probably stay banned unless Hoopa-U gets banned but even then I could imagine something else stepping up to act as breaker for Lop.

Yeah this could be tested I suppose. It does pretty obscene damage overall and has great coverage and great Speed but it has its flaws.

The provided assessment of these isn't quite correct- Solgaleo still has Agility and Iron Tail and really great physical coverage to complement the more predictable Calm Mind options, while Dusk Mane still has Swords Dance and... some moves. Solgaleo is probably actually better than NDM here lol. I think you could definitely make the case for freeing NDM, am slightly worried that Solgaleo would just be more strong stat bloat in the format. Also Iron Crown seems like it may be kinda crazy lol

I don't see how you ever really kill this thing is my main concern, all the while it's outputting from a great dual STAB and decent Sp. Atk and poisoning you and stuff. Seems unfun to deal with

I don't think we should have many regular Pokemon in format that are on a similar power level to Megas. That seems undesirable. Calm Mind Xerneas just seems like unreasonable levels of output for basically no cost at all, especially when the only common and decent Steel move is Flash Cannon and there's no Gunk Shot.

Since when has this thing ever actually struggled with Steels? I'm not sure why those are mentioned lol +2 Fire Blast to the face from a crazy Speed tier.

Yea I agree this guy should be unbanned

Steels: omg true we have Roost Empoleon now! That might be pretty good. You have to keep in mind that Mega Scizor lacks BP but it's a pretty cool slow pivot, somewhat justifiable. Much like Skarmory it can be hard to justify over Corv here. Ghold is probably extremely top tier.

Addressed this earlier.

Would love to discuss/play this tier with ppl hit me up if you're interested :)

 

[Bobsican]

Thanks for the explanations, but I'd want to add some extra comments on the matter:

Should also note that this guy has neither Sacred Fire nor Brave Bird in LGPE, meaning it's basically locked to a set of Calm Mind, Roost, Fire STAB, and either coverage or Wisp or Sub. Certain balances may be liable to get farmed by this but it's not too hard to put Rock Slide or Toxic on something and feel alright, and it's always working against starting at 50% hp.

It can still afford a Calm Mind + Recover set as to avoid having to deal with Stealth Rock, but if it's phazed at all while rocks are up it's practically gg.

This is very justifiably banned and will probably remain as such. Being an ultrafast pivot that resists Stealth Rock and has amazing synergy with the best U-turn recipient in the format, Hoopa-Unbound, is utterly obscene in a permarocks format with poor Speed control. You almost always end up moving after Lopunny, and have to just guess what it's doing; even then it can kinda just click U-turn and be happy. High Jump Kick is plenty sufficient as STAB (in fact it's the best Fighting move in the game and a godsend), especially with Ice Punch as coverage for The guys. You still have a slot spare after all of these amazing things and that can be spent on Encore which is obscene, Fake Out for often free damage, Swords Dance for favourable endgames, or some other random trash like Facade idk. You just run Encore and win in reality. This will probably stay banned unless Hoopa-U gets banned but even then I could imagine something else stepping up to act as breaker for Lop.

...Lopunny doesn't get SD in ND formats as Champions stuff is ignored right now, same for ZA for that matter (unless the challenge code happens to make this legal, I guess). TBH this seems more of a concern with Hoopa-U beyond that, especially as this'd invite potentially banning other pivots when at that point the enabler (Hoopa-U) is the blatant problem, and I wouldn't particularly oppose tiering action of it.

HJK being a good STAB by LGPE standards is a valid point and all on paper, but being a mindgame away from losing half of max HP if a Ghost-type hard switches in is not ideal, especially as it's forced out whenever it faces one in the lack of coverage, even more so with the lack of Pursuit in the meta. I'd legitimately consider using Iron Valiant or Tapu Koko over it NGL.

The provided assessment of these isn't quite correct- Solgaleo still has Agility and Iron Tail and really great physical coverage to complement the more predictable Calm Mind options, while Dusk Mane still has Swords Dance and... some moves. Solgaleo is probably actually better than NDM here lol. I think you could definitely make the case for freeing NDM, am slightly worried that Solgaleo would just be more strong stat bloat in the format. Also Iron Crown seems like it may be kinda crazy lol

Iron Tail is quite unreliable as statistically it has about a 50% chance to miss at least once within 2 uses, and that's ignoring that Steel isn't a good typing offensively, with resists being fairly common naturally. While Earthquake, Rock Slide, and Flare Blitz are nice physical options for Solgaleo, the lack of setup and STAB on them quite compensate.

0 Atk Solgaleo Iron Tail vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Ting-Lu: 61-73 (26.5 - 31.7%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
0 Atk Solgaleo Flare Blitz vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Melmetal: 88-104 (41.9 - 49.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
0 Atk Solgaleo Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Gyarados-Mega: 46-55 (27 - 32.3%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
0 Atk Solgaleo Iron Tail vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias-Mega: 64-76 (41.2 - 49%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
0 Atk Solgaleo Iron Tail vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Hippowdon: 66-78 (36 - 42.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Beyond that, there's an interesting contrast between Solgaleo and NDM in this meta, as NDM has Swords Dance and Earth Power compared to Solgaleo at the cost of not having Fire coverage or physical Steel STAB at all, while either of them may not be the first thing to suspect, they don't seem inherently problematic IMO, but at least there's Mega Metagross as an alternative that is better than either in almost every way (namely it lacks physical STAB, Fire coverage, and setup beyond Agility) at the cost of the mega slot.

All of that said, to add some extra food for thought, I'd want to comment on some other mons:


Azelf's higher offensive stats, colorful coverage and speed tier grant it an edge over Mew's Nasty Plot sets, bonus points for being the fastest mon with Stealth Rock + Taunt + Explosion, allowing its use as a lead too.


No Poison STAB sucks, but beyond that it still manages to keep M-Charizard Y out of a job by having better coverage, not costing the mega slot, and a lesser weakness to Stealth Rock.


With abilities being no longer a factor, this seems strong with STAB Superpower + Rock Slide + SD.


Semi-fast Spore go brrr.


Huh, this mon sure has a bloated movepool, it's legitimately an alternative to consider over Iron Crown and M-Metagross because of this.


Its movepool and stats are deceptively good, I could see it working as a sort of jack of all trades mon given the lack of EVs in the tier, it can even pivot with U-turn away from the Steel-types this invites in.


Funny to think that this is a meta where it coexists with Tapu Lele yet has an actual niche as the lack of items and abilities means that being an stat stick has a legitimate merit, bonus points for having some nice utility moves to complement with.