thesis: i am arguing that the council ought to
quickban cutiefly and then
suspect rufflet.
WHY CUTIEFLY SHOULD JOIN DRIFLOON AND VULPIX-A IN THE GREAT SOYFACE MON TEAM IN THE SKY, INCLUDING A BUREAUCRATIC ARGUMENT TO SATISFY SMOGON U'S POKEMON POLITBURO PEDANTS
on the merits, cutiefly is extremely broken. the fast special attacking pivot set puts extreme pressure on opposing teams, its 19 speed giving it ample opportunity to fire off moonblasts or uturn to gain momentum while wearing down its few checks. this set can also set webs, nullifying one of its own most important checks (diglett) while removing the possibility of speedchecking medium-speed heavy hitters on the cutie user's team. the most common hazard removers (timburr and vullaby) cannot come in and eat a moonblast, making clearing a multi-stage and (in part because of the pressure exerted by the webs and cutiefly itself) often prohibitively difficult or costly process; bulky dedicated webs sets make removal nigh impossible while retaining much of cutiefly's attacking value. thus far ive neglected the the most immediately apparent example of cutiefly's unplayablity, the qd roost moonblast fourthmove set. it sets up with relative ease on a large portion of the metagame, including on necessary softchecks (mareiene) to the attacking pivots. the forth move either broadens the slate of mons cutie can set up on (substitute, charm) or reduces its need to do so in the first place (bug buzz, psychic). other sets (lo in particular) are usually worse but can be the most problematic for any given team, esp given the often taped-together nature of most cutiefly response plans.
if you dont believe me, look at the last few weeks of spl, or think seriously about your own building and playing. nearly every game had a cutiefly of some sort, determining the set of which occupied a good portion of early game resources in many matches. perhaps more importantly, each team had to pick from the dedicated set of cutiefly checks, a slim set among whom there are few seriously viable mons and fewer easily exploitable by combinations involving cutiefly itself. honedge resists its STABS and coverage, but it doesnt hit hard enough to be viable; munchlax eats moonblasts and shrugs off even boosted psychics, but is a target for knock offs; ponyta can stop a setup, but catch a uturn and it gets picked off for free. basically the two best checks to this are ferro and pawn, with an honorable mention for ponyta and mudbray. this is why every serious spl team in the later weeks included these mons in some combination. that these combinations were an explicit anti-cutie measure is something you'll have to believe, i guess, but i think everyone can see it: cutie is the most dangerous mon in many ladder games, tests etc. confide, recently returned to the lc room, told me after a friendly that he was rusty because he "couldnt build a team without cutiefly"; i responded that his read on the meta was exactly right.
now if you refer to first bold portion of this post's thesis statement you will see that i want to quickban cutiefly instead of suspecting it. i understand why you might be skeptical of the procedural elements at play here. i respect smogon law, subsection littlecup suspect rules / ban types / pokemon-removal mechanisms and when to implement which, and will lay out a case under the established guidelines for why a quickban would be here acceptable. I will reproduce them below:
rules said:
1. We will only consider quickbans immediately following major metagame shifts that are otherwise out of our control, e.g. a new generation.
2. When a topic is being seriously discussed for a quickban, it will be mentioned in the metagame discussion thread at least a week before the potential quickban so that non-council members can share their thoughts. However, if the council unanimously agrees a topic is so overwhelming that it shouldn't even warrant a basic discussion (think Scyther/Sneasel/Swirlix levels of powerful) then it will be autobanned, completely bypassing quickban discussion and voting. This will be determined with a swift informal vote at or around the time of the release.
3. If there have been no reasonable arguments against a quickban brought forth in the metagame discussion thread (note: "reasonable" is subjective, but we'll try to set this bar quite low), then the council will proceed to a vote.
4. For a topic to be quickbanned, at least 80% of the council must believe it is broken (12/15 members).
5. If this threshold is not reached, it will instead be suspected.
taking these point by point, we start with the hardest to clear: "we will only consider quickbans immediately following major metagame shifts that are otherwise out of our control". a cutiefly quickban would not be, in a strict calendar sense, "immediately" after the relevant imposed shift, here the introduction of Home. but that neglects the circumstances of lc tiering at the time. we banned vulpix-a first, it being novel and cutiefly having been balanced pre-home. after we had completed this suspect, we were relatively deep into spl. there is a commonly-accepted practice of not making major metagame shifts while that meta has been used for a large portion of a serious, important tournament, so we did not have access to the practice of banning cutiefly, or really anything, in that period. this should, therefore, freeze the period considered for application of the above statute, meaning logically
a cutiefly quickban would be occurring immediately after the vulpix-a suspect in the relevant sense. helpfully for my cause, the author of the rules, the former tier leader, and the overall architect of lc tiering policy in gen 8 agrees with my interpretation here:
with that resolved, we move on to 2, which i am doing here w this post. on 3, 4, and 5, the other paragraphs in this section should persuade you (esp if you are a council member) that cutie is broken. if you think otherwise you belong with coconut in fail jail, but i feel pretty confident that if put to an up-down vote a supermajority of the council would vote to ban.
of course what i just explained is why a cutiefly quickban would be possible, not why it is desirable -- why we ought to do it. why is speed of the essence? lcpl is starting soon, and i dont want this forum's most prestigious and least acrimonious teamtour marred by a bad metagame. but, you may be asking, lcpl starts in -- i havent checked this, this date is approximate, just based on history here -- twelve weeks; surely we have time to do a suspect in that time. well, dear reader, i have a different mon i would like to propose we suspect instead.
WHY RUFFLET NEEDS TO GET THE AXE, OR: A CASE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT EXCEEDING CURRENT STANDARDS OF INTERNATIONAL TREATY OBLIGATIONS
the other mon that was absolutely terrifying to prepare for in spl was rufflet. the band set just goes fucking berserk. if you dont resist it it will kill you immediately. even if you resist brave bird your shit is going to get insanely rocked by close combat. the band set gets more opps to fire off attacks by bluffing scarf, which just runs through thinner offensive teams. bulk up gets boosts on nearly anything, shrugs off any attack from perhaps the best current set (WA RB) for the only real check to the other two sets, sets up against a ton of slower mons, etc.
it's probably worth establishing the differences between ruff in this meta and in gen 7. this meta is much slower. staryu, abra, gastly, mienfoo all went buh-bye, so band has more opportunities to fire its shit off. electric moves (mag in particular, but also stuff like star or gast thunderbolts) evapped off the earth, so BU has fewer things that threaten it after it picks up a head of steam. and scarf is less impeded by prio stuff like foo fake outs.
you can again see this in teamcomps for spl. onix is absolutely everywhere, it being the only even passable resist to brave bird. you can run like honedge? but have fun just getting chunked and firing some shit off for 18% damage into a vullaby or a mudbray. guessing the set puts you under extreme pressure: get it wrong, youve given up a turn and lost. you're stuck duct-taping together checks for its various sets, guessing based on teamcomp, accepting defeat if you lose. or, he hasnt brought it; or, he has missed.
the misses! one of our human biases in this game is an inability to properly factor in the accumulated probabilities of this game, relate them to probabilities of wincons and so on. maybe when the machines take over internet pokemon, dundies brain fused with the google go-playing ai to create the perfect mix of deep strat thought and clicking instinct, we will understand how to play based on percentages that arent 50 or 50. what im trying to say is that we all sorta play rufflet straight up, as in dont base our plays off of misses. this makes games fucking infuriating. as the rufflet player, you're clenching in your seat every time you click brave bird. as the person trying to defend your team, you're left hoping that a 20% will take your least-bad option into a passable one, but you cant count on this. if youve brought in onix, you're hoping not to eat a band cc, or see a bu right in your face. the only way you can really avoid this is to overstack against it, but that contibutes to obvious matchup problems. basically, you're taking your fate out of your hands at the team selection stage (how heavy do i prep?), at the countering phase (guess the set ingame), at the individual move stage (do i bring my onix in on this band cc?), and at the actual move stage (will this shit hit?). it's rng-based as well as overpowered.
this mon should be gone before lcpl. the counterargument here would be: what if the cutiefly qb results in a changed meta favorable to checking rufflet? but actually trying to game this out doesnt really lead to anything. without cutie the special attackers and foo will come back? hustle brave bird will be easier to switch into? we'll just be losing a fast special attacker in a time of great need. ruff will become more dangerous.
in short, qb cutie, suspect ruff, save lcpl. pce.
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