I am against suspecting Vullaby and Grookey right now, but I am of this opinion for completely different reasons than most of the anti-suspecters in this thread. I would not even firmly place myself within in the "anti suspect, anti ban" position in Lily's categorization of Council members: I believe that the arguments for banning Vullaby and Grookey are much stronger than many of the council members have given them credit for, and would not be at all surprised if either of these Pokemon end up getting banned in the future. My objection to a suspect is more grounded in my idea of when and why we should suspect Pokemon rather than my own opinions on whether or not those aforementioned Pokemon are broken in this meta.
1. When should we suspect a Pokemon?
LC is in a unique position in terms of tiering on Smogon, especially in relation to the other lower tiers (we are not a lower tier policy wise, but our tournament representation and player base size and behavior in relation to the larger Smogon community puts us basically in line with them) with which we overlap in player base. Our pool of viable Pokemon is significantly more shallow than OU, and unlike usage-based tiers we have no powerful drops to worry about every month. I think that given this limited pool of Pokemon Game Freak has given us to work with we can and should take our time with suspects more than other official tiers, and make sure that we don't rush into premature and unwarranted suspects and bans.
I mention premature suspects and bans because they are traps that I believe we have fallen into or have come close to falling into in the past. I will use the Web suspect as an example as most everyone reading this thread should remember it: That particular suspect was largely based off Webs' performance in Snake, where everyone was struggling (and often failing) to find ways to deal with Webs properly. This is exemplified nowhere more clearly than dcae's run: Many of his opponents somewhat expected him to use Webs and prepped extensively for the playstyle, but he was still able to use it multiple times in a row for win after win. At the start of the suspect I was personally fairly convinced that Webs would end up getting banned, but even by the end of that short suspect people had started to figure out ways to get consistent positive matchups against Web teams (even if they had to bend-over-backwards a little bit to do it) and ended up voting against a ban.
At the beginning of LCWC it was looking like Web based setup spam teams might still be broken, but as that tournament progressed people continued to come up with new ways to beat them consistently without sacrificing too much viability against non-cheese. By the end of the tournament Web usage had dropped significantly, and it was only used once in playoffs. I think it's fair to say that now that the metagame has adapted to have more of a fighting chance against webs and that there is not a serious push to get Web resuspected, and even many of us who ended up voting ban now consider Web not ban worthy (for transparency I did vote ban, but it was more a 'whatever' vote as I ended up going back and forth for too long and the suspect was over before I decided). There are some who believe that Webs are still broken as a playstyle, but I think its fair to say that this constituency is far less significant than it was immediately after the conclusion of Snake.
Webs is the the public example of this, but this pattern of a particular Pokemon or move getting a serious push for its suspecting/banning but then losing it when the meta shifts away from them is even more true of the Pokemon who were not publicly suspected around the end of Snake. I'll use Scraggy as an example: I don't think that the push to suspect Scraggy ever manifested in council members actually posting about it to gain community support, but such a move came very close to a majority around november (I share this screenshot with permission):
I think my position in this screenshot has been vindicated by how the metagame has developed: only one of the people on that list is still in favor of a Scraggy suspect and it is currently solidly below both Timburr and Mienfoo in fighting type usage. I won't post more screenshots from around this time period regarding the various other threats on setup spam, but suffice to say that the general council mentality in November after snake was that some combination of the various members of the setup spam archetype were completely broken and many of us even thought that we might have to follow up with a series of bans even after the webs suspect in order to return to a meta where balance could reasonably deal with cheese. This sentiment that multiple bans might be necessary to nerf setup spam was not just held by us: dcae's popular critique of our decision to suspect Webs did not dispute that some aspect of the play style was broken; it simply accused us of targeting the wrong one.
In other words this whole suspect is, as I've expressed elsewhere, a scapegoating of an enabler of the actual suspect worthy and broken threats. These include brokens such as Scraggy, Grookey, probably Woobat, Vullaby pre-DLC (which should probably be given a chance with all the new Rock types we got through DLC).
Tons of players are experiencing similar levels of success with screens as with webs running the same set-up mons. Most standards now run these same threats too with similar success, although the strategy is different. Yet to be fully explored is the Dwebble HO + threats archetype, but thus far it has proven to be remarkably effective as well.
The fact is the shared broken factor is the setup threats in LC rn. The fall of Abra and deleted Hidden Power has led to a meta that is primarily exploited by these setup threats. Banning webs will do nothing but distract from the real issue at hand, making this suspect unnecessary and quite frankly a waste of everyone's time.
I'm glad that the web suspect did not succeed, as I think its clear with the benefit of hindsight that we were wrong; the meta shifted away from cheese.
I now consider Webs a bad suspect given how the meta developed afterwards. So, what does a good suspect look like? I think a good archetypal suspect (without going back too far; I'm a boomer so my impulse was to cite ORAS Swirlix but I don't want to lose all you zoomers) for the purposes of this post would be the recent Rufflet suspect pre-DLC. Rufflet was popularized during SPL and rose from #25 usage in LC Snake to a premier threat, but as it became more and more popular it became clear that it didn't work like other strong type based threats. When Timburr shoots up in usage you would expect (and we received in late LCPL) a surge in Mareanie use, but Rufflet had the ability to muscle through its "checks" no matter what the opposing team was running through a combination of Close Combat 50/50s and Trapinch support. A healthy threat (like the aforementioned Timburr, for instance, or Scraggy that had its usage rate plummet as Timburr was popularized) should wax and wane in relation to the options people can run to check it. It is at that point of stagnation where the metagame around a threat has been exhausted and it cannot be properly dealt with where we should look for a ban.
2. Should Grookey be suspected?
Because we're in between the major team tournaments (LCWC, LCPL and Snake, or whatever it will be called this year) it's a bit difficult for me to accurately describe LC's meta development at the moment. Far fewer people are really working to push the meta forward and as a result the meta always develops really slowly around this time of year (which is why we badly need a third LC forum team tournament like most lower tiers have
Coconut Merritt , but I digress). I'll include some of my own personal thoughts on the current metagame here and there, but the first place we should look for a healthy metagame around Grookey (and other threats) for now is LCWC.
I already had this sense just by my own memory of how the meta progressed over the course of LCWC, but when I actually went back and looked at the usage stats my position was solidified: the metagame has absolutely not stagnated around Grookey as a threat. I think that the meta during LCWC shifted heavily in interesting (and healthy, imo) ways week to week, and this was particularly true both for Grookey itself and for Pokemon that are run to ensure positive matchups against Grookey. Grookey itself started out with very high usage, with 28% usage in Week 1 and peaked at 40% usage in week 2. It would immediately drop to 25% usage the following week and would hover around the 23% range for the rest of the tournament (excluding finals and semifinals, where the usage rates were much more radical because of the small sample size often populated by one person building for an entire team).
Concurrent to this fluctuation was the rise of Trapinch, who shot up in use around week 3 (immediately after the 40% usage week). Trapinch was very rare at the beginning of the tournament, only getting 12% usage the first 2 weeks of the tournament. After week 4, however, it would be over 20% usage every single week. It was the spot directly above or below Grookey in usage nearly every week.
Within these Pokemon the sets and standard teammates have also been changing over time: at the beginning of LCWC Life Orb with Swords Dance and three attacks was the most popular set by a significant margin, but the rise of Trapinch led to more and more Protect usage in the final weeks. At the very end of the tournament LilyAC introduced Fake Out Grookey, which gives Swords Dance and Protect (not to mention U-turn, another very solid option) serious competition as it allows Grookey to revenge Scraggy and Nasty Plot Vullaby with incredible consistency.
I think that Grookey is incredibly strong as a Pokemon and might warrant a suspect in the future, but from these usage stats and my own personal experience building with the Pokemon I believe that the meta around Grookey still has a lot of room to explore. Only one or two people are using Fake Out Grookey extensively, Protect Grookey is relatively new and its impact on the meta is in my opinion not completely played out, and in general people are still experimenting with all sorts of sets to beat it or overcome the Pokemon that block it. I'd like to wait a little bit longer before we press the community for a verdict on this Pokemon, as I could honestly see it either remaining dominant in the future or going the way of Scraggy.
3. Should Vullaby be suspected?
I think it is clear by this point that Vullaby is the far more contentious Pokemon of the two most discussed in this thread, and is undoubtedly the more complicated and difficult one to understand and analyze. Grookey, as powerful as it is, is a fairly standard offensive Pokemon: it provides relatively few defensive resources is mostly included to pressure the opposing team as much as possible. It also only has two or three main sets, and the difference between them really only boils down to different coverage choices rather than function.
Vullaby, by contrast, is incredibly diverse both in the sets it can run and in the roles It can fill. Any fluctuation or development in Vullaby use is much harder to spot as that fluctuation would manifest in running one set over another, making usage state useless in spotting the "wax and wane" that I look for. I will try my best to use usage and evidence in this argument, but its much more soft than the Grookey argument.
It seems that most of the Vullaby discussion differentiates between the standard physical set and the Nasty Plot set, with the latter being much more problematic. I agree with this necessary division, and will argue against them separately. I'll start with what is in my opinion the more complicated argument (I don't think the complication is any indication of its weakness, however; you just need a sense of LC history to grasp it):
Physical Offensive Vullaby is not broken and is not worthy of a suspect. The pro-banners in this thread have correctly pointed out that Vullaby is virtually required on nearly every balance team, but I don't agree with the leap that this is because the Pokemon itself is broken.
I will bring up this quotation from Levi himself again, but I think that it's integral enough to just preface the entire argument with it to avoid any confusion:
Bulky fighter is a clearly defined niche that provides to a team the roles of [Pawniard counter, Ferroseed counter, Onix counter, Scraggy check, Porygon check], and the mons that perform these roles best compete with each other for a slot. On the other hand, Vullaby doesn't have clearly defined roles that it's the definitive best at, its niche is being able to do basically everything.
This way of thinking about the meta in terms of what niches each individual Pokemon provides to any given team is incredibly useful for understanding how balance is constructed in LC. Every balance team needs to fulfill a list of requirements in order to function: it might come up weak in some areas and be particularly covered in others, but in order to function at all it has to have the most basic roles. This is why nearly every balance team ends up including a fighting type: the role compression that is represented in the fighting type option is worth it for nearly every team, and if you don't include a fighting type you have to go to great lengths in the rest of your team to compensate for the functions that you are missing out on for not running it.
The second part of this quote–that Vullaby is somehow outside of this dynamic and is just "able to do basically everything"–is a fundamental misunderstanding not only of how Vullaby functions now, but of how Vullaby has functioned for two generations. The most basic defined defensive niche that Vullaby inhabits now is the same one that it has inhabited for all of SM and SS (and I will phrase it as he did the fighting type niche): [Ground Type Immunity, Secondary Fighting Switch-In, Hazard Remover]. Through a combination of Bans and metagame shifts Vullaby has become the only consistently good inhabitant of this niche, and I think a lot of newer players (and older ones, myself included) have just resorted to slapping Vullaby on every team out of obligation without really understanding what It does defensively, and I think to understand this defensive role you have to remember previous metas where this niche was less instinctively filled.
I think the single best meta to look at to demonstrate the constancy and significance of this defensive role is the Snake II meta, as it was the time when Vullaby had the most competitors fore its primary defensive niche. I understand some degree of skepticism at comparing roles in the current metagame to roles three years ago, but in truth there have been a couple common roles in LC that have stayed constant through most of these two generations: Fighting Type and Fighting Type Switch-In are two examples, as is Vullaby's current defensive niche which I think my analysis will show.
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Shown above is a visual representation of every game that happened during phase one of Snake II, which I think is the best way of understanding this point as there is overlap in usage stats (due mostly to type spam strats) that can screw usage-based analysis. During this time period there were three major competitors for the defensive [Ground Immunity, Secondary Fighting Check, Defogger] niche: Vullaby, Wingull and Gastly (Gastly obviously functions a bit different from the other two as you have to outsource hazard removal to another Pokemon, but defensively it discourages both Ground and Fighting STAB very well because of how dangerous giving it a free switch in is). Pay close attention to the team structure of these teams, particularly the ones that forego Vullaby entirely. You'll notice very quickly that
every single team that doesn't use Vullaby without exception uses either Wingull or Gastly to fulfill this needed role on balance.
So, what happened to this variety? It should be fairly obvious in the case of Gastly: the removal of pursuit completely broke the Pokemon. Some of the pro banners have claimed that Vullaby has outcompeted Wingull because of its broken-ness, but I think that this ignores the decline of Wingull. Most of the recent metagame trends, especially during Snake, hurt it significantly: It has a really difficult time adapting to the reintroduction of Porygon, struggles to do enough damage to ferroseed based teams, and its saving grace in early SS of having an excellent Web matchup was invalidated by the introduction of setup spam webs that have little trouble sweeping right past with only a single turn of setup. It also isn't just Wingull use over Vullaby that has dropped off: Wingull use as a whole has dropped off completely. If Wingull was simply outclassed by Vullaby and was still a good Pokemon one would expect bird spam to remain a viable team archetype as it was in early DLC 1 SS, but Wingull was only used four times in the entirety of LCWC, none of which was in playoffs. Wingull isn't terrible because Vullaby is so much better, Wingull is just terrible. There was a time, however, before many of the trends that hurt it really took off, that it genuinely competed for this very same defensive niche with Vullaby:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8lc-1161109185-xxagy202p6ie015k5wbsyuu9vdwyvfmpw
This replay from the early DLC1 meta has Lily using what was considered one of the most generally solid builds at the time, with Wingull fulfilling the defensive roles that Vullaby covers now. This type of team would not be considered viable right now, but it shows pretty clearly even in SS that this idea that Vullaby does not have a clearly defined niche and is thrown onto every team because it is just that good Is completely false. No, in reality bans and metagame shifts have left Vullaby the sole viable occupant of its defensive niche, which explains well its astronomical usage.
I'll now respond to specific passages of Levi's argument with the existence of these roles in mind.
I'll respond explicitly to this aspect of the argument made earlier in this thread.
SS and SM Vullaby are the most absurdly influential mons in any Eviolite metagame (DPP is a different ballpark because its fewer mons and lack of defensive options is naturally going to centralize it more). Every meta has its best mon, of course, but this doesn't really cover the extent to just how much Vullaby is better than every other mon in SS. When it comes to usage, Vullaby completely dwarfs every other mon; it was on 84% of teams for LCWC, where the second most used mon, Mienfoo, had just under 2/3s of Vullaby's usage at 55%. Usage isn't a reasoning on its own; it serves here to illustrate how Vullaby alone holds a more important role for most teams than the role of a bulky fighter, or bulky fighting check, or trapper, or even bulky flying check - which should really just be treated as the role of a Vullaby check because, let's be real here, Onix isn't the 4th most used mon for its ability to check Ponyta and tie Woobat.
It's hard to overstate the degree to which the entirety of the metagame revolves around Vullaby, which extends far beyond Onix and bird checks ( I really doubt DD/SR Onix would be above low B if it wasn't also Vullaby's most reliable check). Every little thing from Timburr spread to Staryu coverage move heavily accounts for its effectiveness against Vullaby. The only mons that are comfortable with being walled by Vullaby are the trappers, as their perks are unaffected by whether they are walled by their target's teammates, but even then, much of their viability stems from how well they pair with Vullaby itself. For the vast majority of archetypes, Vullaby's presence in the tier reduces the teambuilding process from building with 6 mons to building with 4 mons, a Vullaby set, and a dedicated Vullaby check. We're so used to this that building with it just feels familiar at this point; you have to take a step back just to grasp how absurd it is that a single mon can warp teambuilding to such a degree.
I think you misread because I didn't try to claim that Mienfoo was the sole bulky fighter at all, it's been well defined for a while that bulky fighters consist of both Mienfoo and Timburr (plus gunk in XY). My point is that you can outright sum up the numbers for an entire role, including bulky fighters for Mienfoo and Timburr - which doesn't account for the small minority of teams that run both - and they would still have 7% less usage than Vullaby by itself. Scraggy occupies a different niche and can't really count for a bulky fighter; adding up all three fighters does come up with numbers higher than Vullaby, but I don't think summing the usages of three individually top/high tier mons across different niches and comparing them to Vullaby alone is particularly meaningful.
LilyAC said:
So Vullaby's higher usage doesn't illustrate that it's any "better" or any more powerful than other Pokemon in the metagame, it only shows that it's less replaceable. There's just nothing in LC that functions similarly to Vullaby. If there was, then its usage would be drop significantly, just like Mienfoo's does because of the existence of Timburr. Another way to understand this is to imagine what would happen if Timburr was removed from the metagame: Mienfoo's usage would increase dramatically, but it wouldn't become any more powerful or any more banworthy. That's where we're at with Vullaby.
This is a neat train of thought but I struggle to see how it actually applies to Vullaby. Bulky fighter is a clearly defined niche that provides to a team the roles of [Pawniard counter, Ferroseed counter, Onix counter, Scraggy check, Porygon check], and the mons that perform these roles best compete with each other for a slot. On the other hand, Vullaby doesn't have clearly defined roles that it's the definitive best at, its niche is being able to do basically everything. It's not actually an outright solid check to any high tier mons - Grookey and Foongus can comfortably muscle past Vullaby over the course of a game, for example - which makes sense, because anything that a metagame force like Vullaby could solidly check has no chance of being high tier (see Slowpoke). It's not the best choice for removal, it's not the best web answer, and it's nowhere near the most reliable pivot. NP Vullaby may be the best dedicated sweeper, but that can carry its own discussion, and as you mentioned, a majority of Vullabys are physical.
The reason almost every team runs Vullaby anyways is because it can do so much, both in utility and soft checking various mons, all the while being an enormous offensive threat with Weak Armor and strong STAB moves. It only needs to check something decently to get into play and take advantage of its offensive presence, and its stats mean that even though it isn't a solid check to anything left in the meta, it's a soft check to almost everything. If there was another mon that was a perfect enough mixture of offensive threat and glue to compete for Vullaby's slot, then sure, Vullaby's usage might drop slightly, and that mon would probably be broken too.
I'll respond to these passages together as they're all related (and often repeat similar arguments) and misunderstand similar things about team structure. I also won't address many of the usage-stat based arguments, unless they're refuted by the similar technique earlier of visualizing team structures team-by-team. Usage stats can be incredibly deceptive when we're arguing about roles (especially when Levi here considers usage differentials of 7% significant), as type spam and cheese archetypes can muck up the stats by containing extra Pokemon within a role in the case of the former or omitting common Balance roles in the case of the latter.
I'd first like to reject that Scraggy does not compete within the fighting type niche: it's true that most teams that use Scraggy have to compensate a little bit for not being able to switch into Pawniard and Onix as well, but the offensive role of wearing down fighting resists (Scraggy is very good at forcing switches and chunking even without setting up) and threatening Ferroseed and Pawniard out is absolutely still there. In games where my opponent has an Abra and it is clear that my Scraggy will realistically never be able to sweep I use it to switch into Ferroseed and force it out all the time.
With that in mind, let's look at a visual representation of Lily's point about replaceability:
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Above is a representation of every playoffs game in LCWC. I think that most of Levi's arguments based on usage fall apart once you look at a visual representation of team compositions like this one. Every single one of these teams follows a common fundamental team structure: [Flying Immunity, Secondary Fighting Type Check (Vullaby in this meta), [Flying Resist, Rocker], [Fighting Type], [Fighting Type Resist], Filler, Filler. Let's rephrase one of his arguments around the fighting type role to illustrate Lily's point.
It's hard to overstate the degree to which the entirety of the metagame revolves around [Fighting Types], which extends far beyond [Mareanie] and [Fighting] checks (I really doubt [Mareanie] would be above low B if it wasn't also [Fighting Types'] most reliable check). Every little thing from [15 Def Vullaby] spread to [Agility Porygon] coverage move heavily accounts for its effectiveness against [Fighting Types] ... For the vast majority of archetypes, [Fighting Types'] presence in the tier reduces the teambuilding process from building with 6 mons to building with 4 mons, a [Fighting Type] set, and a dedicated [Fighting Type] check. We're so used to this that building with it just feels familiar at this point; you have to take a step back just to grasp how absurd it is that a single [role] can warp teambuilding to such a degree.
As some simple replacement and comparison to the above LCWC teams show, this statement is every bit as true of the interactions between fighting types and their checks. The original passage sounds terrible because Vullaby is the sole viable inhabitant left of the role it plays on balance, but if we banned Timburr and Scraggy tomorrow this passage would be every bit as true of Mienfoo. (and was, for a little while, when Mienfoo was at 70% usage at the beginning of Snake). It too would be irreplaceable.
It is true that Vullaby forces Pokemon like Onix into viability that probably would not see much use, but this is mostly due to Vullaby being the last Viable physical flying type; If Fletchling still had Gale Wings and was around today Onix would still be very viable even after Vullaby's ban. Even if this weren't true it is completely normal for healthy A+ and S rank threats to force otherwise mediocre Pokemon to shoot up in viability: Archen, for example, would not be half as viable in ORAS if not for the existence of Fletchling. Onix is by no means a terrible Pokemon, it is the most consistent rocks user in the tier and is more difficult than Pawniard for Fighting Types like Timburr to deal with consistently as it can use Explosion (or protect, if you prep for Mienfoo matchups) at any time to prevent fighting types from checking another Pokemon on its team well.
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I think I have responded fairly well to arguments based on Vullaby's seemingly obligatory role on balance team structure, which I consider a misunderstanding of why it is so hard to not use Vullaby: it is not that Vullaby is just that broken, it is because you forego crucial structural roles that have been integral to balance for years that Vullaby is currently the sole viable filler of. As for the question of whether or not the offensive aspect of physical Vullaby is broken or suspect worthy, I again think not. It's more difficult for me to quantify this aspect of my opinion, as it is primarily based on an experience of how Vullaby pragmatically functions over the course of the match that can only be gained by playing LC at a high level extensively. I will try to explain it as best I can.
Now that Vullaby can run offensive EVs with little drawback (the decline of LO abra and banning of Gastly makes the SpD a complete waste), it is more able to be used offensively in team builds consistently. This does not, however, actually translate game-to-game. Vullaby wants to act within its defensive as a secondary check to Pokemon like Mienfoo, Timburr and Grookey as much as it wants to just spam Knock Off and Brave Bird and start punching holes, and whenever it does one it is less able to do the other. It can come in on these Pokemon with ease, but they will activate its Berry Juice in the process which will limit it for the rest of the game, even if there are rocks up. I think it is this simultaneous dance between offensive threat and defensive glue in a hyper offensive tier that both balances Physical Vullaby and makes it extremely interesting to play with and against. If we actually go through with this suspect I will elaborate more on that later.
Most of the pro-banners in this thread identify the Nasty Plot set as the more problematic offensive aspect of Vullaby, and I agree with them on this point: I think that this set, particularly when utilized on Webs, is potentially the set that pushes Vullaby over the edge. I do take issue with some of the arguments in this thread surrounds it, particularly the splashability one: Nasty Plot Vullaby is incapable of performing the glue function of Vullaby, as if you try to use it as a secondary check to Fighting Types of Grookey it will no longer be able to sweep and is not immediately threatening enough without setting up to make it worth breaking the Berry Juice. This argument also does not hold up in the slightest when it comes to usage: Nasty Plot Vullaby has been used only once on balance in the entirety of LTPL, and that one time was on Serene's pseudo-cheese hail team.
I also believe that the "wax and wane" that believe happens with balanced offensive threats has happened to some degree with Nasty Plot Vullaby: it is nearly impossible to follow NP Vullaby usage exactly because of the existence of Physical Vullaby without manually going through replays manually as I just did (if someone wants to watch all of LCWC be my guest, I don't have the time), but I believe that the usage behavior of its best check tells a story. Week 1 saw an incredible amount of cheese and Nasty Plot Vullaby spam, and because immediately after that people were scared shitless of it Onix usage peaked out week 2 46% (!!!). This rate immediately fell, however, getting 36% the following week and hovering around 30% for the rest of the tournament. People also figured out (and continue to figure out) how to properly deal with NP Vullaby on Pawniard based teams, an aspect of NP Vullaby's meta that I likewise don't think it completely solved. This is another case where I think that the relatively unexplored Fake Out Grookey has the potential to make some real waves: the set is able to reliably revenge Nasty Plot Vullaby with minimal chip. I believe that if some component of Vullaby is broken it is certainly the Nasty Plot set, but just like Grookey I would like to see it more explored before we commit to what would possibly be the most consequential suspect and ban in the history of LC.
4. What About Woobat?
I have thus far left the third Pokemon that people have talked about in this thread unmentioned, and that is because I would like to present it as the Pokemon we should be suspecting as opposed to Grookey and Vullaby. I won't spend too long here as considering that Woobat is used almost exclusively on cheese and is very straightforward in how it functions. The meta around Woobat as an offensive threat is not a regular one where it attempts to wear down its checks as Vullaby and Grookey from turn 1: in cheese matchups it almost always either wins outright with very little counterplay or is unable to function because of the presence of one its checks. The Pokemon that allow teams to be relatively safe against it are far too specific and low in viability to be healthy: under webs the only Pokemon that will be consistently stopping it are Sash Abra and Air Balloon Diglett, the former of which has been hurt significantly by the trend of increasing priority within the tier and the latter of which would probably almost never be used over its other item options if not for its ability to sacrifice itself to kill Woobat. Cheese archetypes can include the matchup fish too easily in their spare slots, and Woobat is far too consistent in this role without adding anything of real substance to the meta to be healthy.
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I may add some more responses to the Vullaby posts in this thread later, I chose Levi as he was the first (and his arguments are in my opinion the most egregious). I want to post this now to add to discussion before any suspect goes up to hopefully recontextualize the argument around Vullaby and shift a discussion towards Woobat. This post was, despite its length, more rushed than I would have liked so I may add to it later and I may have to reformulate here and there.