Metagame Metagame Discussion Thread

Corporal Levi

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I think Vullaby deserves a suspect test.

First things first - there is almost no chance that a post-Vullaby metagame would be immediately balanced or stable; Vullaby is simply too centralizing for a metagame without it to be even remotely recognizable. We can probably all agree that if we go into a Vullaby suspect and it gets banned, then the obvious expectation is that we will have to follow up with one or more bans as well. This was the primary reason why Vullaby was not suspected in SM; the belief was that by the time the majority of the community was calling for a Vullaby suspect, our time frame to SS wouldn't be sufficient for the amount of further metagame development required to stabilize a post-Vullaby metagame. Of course, this is a non-issue to our current metagame, as the new gen hasn't been announced yet.

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've mentioned Vullaby's checks a few times, and this ties into what really separates SS Vullaby from pretty much every other 70%+ usage mon (and don't forget that Vullaby is actually still a tier above that, as it hovers in the mid 80s) - even, to a minimal degree, SM Vullaby, where defensive pivot variants are more commonplace. Vullaby is an offensive mon first and foremost. Various other metagame trends have combined to allow NP Vullaby more splashability so that a significant portion of Vullabys are of this variant; this set is an extremely strong dedicated sweeper that would probably make for top 12 usage on its own, with its only real competition being Scraggy. Even outside of that, however, almost every Vullaby set is an immediate threat with Knock Off and the coverage provided by its powerful STAB moves. A regular 15/16 Atk, 15/16 Spe Vullaby has superb tools to both break and sweep that only feel relatively manageable because almost every team has a Pawniard (not actually that reliable against Vullaby) or Onix, as well as multiple soft checks including Vullaby itself. These aren't natural developments - these are developments that exist mostly because we have it so ingrained that Vullaby is absolutely mandatory to deal with. Nasty Plot, Life Orb, and traditional Berry Juice offensive variants all play off each other to make Vullaby as a whole even more threatening by granting it some surprise value the first time it's in.

I comfortably believe that Vullaby fits the mold for broken mons and in fact surpasses a majority of them in terms of centralization. The main justification I could see for an anti-ban stance is the general belief that a mon that usually fits onto a team as glue (rather than a sweeper or trapper), as Vullaby currently does in a metagame built to deal with it, cannot be seen as broken/overcentralizing because it is reasonably checkable, but that carries its own policy debate as well as the question of whether Vullaby is actually checkable enough to fit this description. In any case, I think it's difficult to justify not suspecting Vullaby soon when we were unable to suspect it last gen simply because it was too late.

Vullaby may not be the only suspect-worthy mon right now; Woobat is a good fit for a traditionally broken sweeper and Grookey is a superb balance breaker. I only lean a Vullaby suspect first because every other metagame trend rides so heavily on it; we can at least make an educated guess for what a post-Woobat or post-Grookey metagame might look like, which we can't really do for Vullaby.
 
I don’t think we need to suspect vulla. The main issue is that if we suspect it and ban it, it will probably create some bad consequences. Vulla is a good ground-immunity that helps a lot against ground types/ ground moves like against mudbray, trapinch, diglett (not orb). Especially good also for checking fights and psychic mons and giving less power to webs. I think all these things that vulla covers well and helps will be the problems if we ban it (increased webs power = increased scraggy/grookey power, also having less check for foo is really bad, it means that you will deal against uturn momentum). The nplot set is broken I agree but nowadays less broken cuz webs power is less and also there are a lot of nice moves/mons that can chip vulla to be in range of other mons (tbolt staryu, a lot of priorities like mpunch, fi, fake out, sucker punch, grassy, also ponyg, abra, koffing, gambit dig, taunt foo, porygon, scarf vulpix) (you kill one in some situation but after you will be revenged and it would be hard to roost if rocks are up). As you can see there are a lot of mons/moves that can help to face nplot vulla. Vulla isn’t broken itself, flinches are broken.

I also disagree about suspect woobat. It is kinda bad atm with webs usages lower and it is only good with webs/screens and in core with grookey which means you already take 2 slots (+ defogger/spinner + setter so same standard shit). The issue isn’t woobat itself but grookey. Woobat without grassy seed wouldn’t be broken.

Atm grookey is really strong prob third best mon, it influences a lot team building making it monotonous. Imo that’s also why koffing is higher in usages and mare lower. Definitely we have less checks/counters for it (you always need to put foong/koffing/trap/vulla/ -pony and vulpix- that are not really common and still they can be fucked if grookey runs tect or gseed acro to one shot foong or mega kick to make damages on vulla and koffing). Also it has a really strong priority (grass priority is really good in this meta cuz fire mons are uncommon) that means if you are slower you will still kill at some point (for example if you are facing scarf pory or scarf vulpix it does a lot). I think the only thing atm that could have a suspect is grookey.
 
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Fiend

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It is strange to me that often a conversation about a Vullaby suspect ends with concluding that aspects of Vullaby are indeed broken, and despite this it ought not to be banned. Perhaps I am reading these conversations too carefully, but this seems to be the common understanding. I think this alone validates a suspect test regardless of the perceived majority opinion. There usually is a false dichotomy presented between the offensive and glue sets. Entirely offensive and "glue" sets are discussed as if there is a tension on how these sets affect the metagame. It seems many evaluate Vullaby with the premise that the entirely offensive Vullaby sets (NP, also LO) are detrimental, but not to the extent where having access to something of a pivot Pokemon with Defog is worth losing. To me, this is not a seductive argument. If a single set of a Pokemon is broken, it makes little sense to dwell on its not broken sets. I think part of this assessment of value is an inherent disinterest in sorting out the resulting metagame, which is an issue Levi did touch on. It also seems to be the entire premise of Laro's stance against a suspect.

I do not think that centralization is the primary concern that Levi has, nor should it be the primary fascination of anyone arguing contrary to a Vullaby suspect. Instead, I think, the main point of the above is largely left unsaid in favor of describing strengths. Levi's post describes how Vullaby is broken; he specifically calls it broken and uses the limitations of hard answers as a point from policy outlines towards this. The main labor of his post is to explain how warped the metagame is towards managing the strengths of Vullaby, and for the most part these ought to be entirely agreeable facts. Levi is arguing that it is broken and this is why Vullaby is to this great degree of centralizing.

As time wears on I am increasingly unsure about how broken Vullaby is in this metagame; I still desire a suspect test on it. As a matter of follow up, there ought to be something done about the Grookey+Woobat combination as it is fairly deterministic. I lean towards axing Woobat. I am entirely against banning Grassy Seed or Grookey's ability. I am largely against Grookey itself.
 

LilyAC

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imo vullaby isn't suspect-worthy or even close to banworthy

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.
For starters, Vullaby's role isn't any more important than the role of a bulky fighter, and if it is, then it's very marginal.
You compare to Mienfoo's usage to argue otherwise, but forget to account for the existence of Timburr, which had 21.5% usage, and the vast majority of that isn't paired with Mienfoo. This would bring bulky fighter usage up to about 75%, which is a lot closer to Vullaby. And most of those remaining 25% of teams without foo/timburr will instead have Scraggy, another fighting type that we have to choose from.
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.

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.
If 15 def Timburr and Staryu's coverage are among the best examples of Vullaby warping the metagame, then it's probably not warping the metagame. The Timburr spread can be ran at very little cost, and it doesn't even run that spread half the time. Meanwhile, Staryu will always run Thunderbolt for its ability to hit other Staryu and Mareanie. Ice Beam is useful for hitting Grookey. And more often than Ice Beam, it runs Psychic, which doesn't even hit Vullaby at all. In reality, the only notable "warping" is needing a bird resist on every team.


I've mentioned Vullaby's checks a few times, and this ties into what really separates SS Vullaby from pretty much every other 70%+ usage mon (and don't forget that Vullaby is actually still a tier above that, as it hovers in the mid 80s) - even, to a minimal degree, SM Vullaby, where defensive pivot variants are more commonplace. Vullaby is an offensive mon first and foremost. Various other metagame trends have combined to allow NP Vullaby more splashability so that a significant portion of Vullabys are of this variant; this set is an extremely strong dedicated sweeper that would probably make for top 12 usage on its own, with its only real competition being Scraggy. Even outside of that, however, almost every Vullaby set is an immediate threat with Knock Off and the coverage provided by its powerful STAB moves. A regular 15/16 Atk, 15/16 Spe Vullaby has superb tools to both break and sweep that only feel relatively manageable because almost every team has a Pawniard (not actually that reliable against Vullaby) or Onix, as well as multiple soft checks including Vullaby itself. These aren't natural developments - these are developments that exist mostly because we have it so ingrained that Vullaby is absolutely mandatory to deal with. Nasty Plot, Life Orb, and traditional Berry Juice offensive variants all play off each other to make Vullaby as a whole even more threatening by granting it some surprise value the first time it's in.
There are plenty of natural developments that allow us to deal with Vullaby and plenty of options for soft checks. Porygon, Staryu, Mareanie, Koffing, Mudbray, Abra etc. all have some utility against it, and it's absurd to think we put all these Pokemon on our teams just for Vullaby. It's just not overwhelming to a degree where I could understand why anyone would think it's broken.
Vullaby's set is pretty predictable too - Life Orb is so uncommon it's almost not worth mentioning, and only a small portion are NP, and most of those are on webs or screens. If it's not on webs or screens, you'll soon know whether its NP or not because a non-NP Vullaby will generally get used much earlier in the game. (it's also probably paired with a Staryu)

In any case, I think it's difficult to justify not suspecting Vullaby soon when we were unable to suspect it last gen simply because it was too late.
It's safe to say Vullaby was a much bigger issue last gen, where it had Hidden Power to circumvent counters along with access to Fly Z. The fact that we wanted to suspect it at the end of last gen is irrelevant to this discussion.

Personally I don't want to do anything to the metagame right now, although I'm not opposed to a Woobat suspect (not sure what I'd vote on that yet).

Also we've been discussing Vullaby in council chat for a while now. This is where we all stand on it:
anti-suspect and anti-ban: shrug, pablo, tazz, ninja, me (5)
pro-suspect but undecided: coco, fiend, luthier, plas, zebra, star (6)
pro-suspect and pro-ban: levi (1)

there isn't exactly a clear consensus, so if more people want to share there opinion on this it'd be really useful! thanks
 

Kipkluif

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I don't think Vullaby's high usage is the problem. A Pokémon can be very essential and centralizing without being broken. I also think Vullaby's flexibility in sets isn't inherently broken - it can be somewhat scouted depending on the team and the way it is used. I do think Nasty Plot Vullaby is broken on it's own, though. It can flexibly run a combination of moves that is unresisted in the tier, or get rid of one for Endure, Roost or Protect to circumvent a would-be check like Fake Out Mienfoo, or First Impression Trapinch. Aside from that, Air Slash and Dark Pulse being able to just win regardless of checks due to flinches is something that completely destroys all counterplay and deserves to be suspected in my opinion.
 

Corporal Levi

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It feels like the main point of contention here isn't whether Vullaby's centralization is illustrative of its brokenness, it's whether Vullaby is especially centralizing to begin with, so I'm gonna do my best to address that.

For starters, Vullaby's role isn't any more important than the role of a bulky fighter, and if it is, then it's very marginal.
You compare to Mienfoo's usage to argue otherwise, but forget to account for the existence of Timburr, which had 21.5% usage, and the vast majority of that isn't paired with Mienfoo. This would bring bulky fighter usage up to about 75%, which is a lot closer to Vullaby. And most of those remaining 25% of teams without foo/timburr will instead have Scraggy, another fighting type that we have to choose from.
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.

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.

If 15 def Timburr and Staryu's coverage are among the best examples of Vullaby warping the metagame, then it's probably not warping the metagame. The Timburr spread can be ran at very little cost, and it doesn't even run that spread half the time. Meanwhile, Staryu will always run Thunderbolt for its ability to hit other Staryu and Mareanie. Ice Beam is useful for hitting Grookey. And more often than Ice Beam, it runs Psychic, which doesn't even hit Vullaby at all. In reality, the only notable "warping" is needing a bird resist on every team.
again this isn't among the points that I gave, and in fact in this case I was saying the exact opposite. Timburr spreads and Staryu coverage moves are nowhere near the best or most visible examples of Vullaby's influence, they're more subtle examples of how Vullaby's influence extends to pretty much every relevant mon and set in the metagame (it'd be ridiculous to claim that they're the most prominent examples anyways when I mentioned Onix immediately above). Timburr's investment is like 80% because of Vullaby and it carries notable cost for the same reason it doesn't run 15 Def every time, the SpD helps against actual dedicated Fighting checks like Mareanie (and further speed creep could be helpful too). In Staryu's case, Vullaby isn't the only mon that encourages Thunderbolt or Ice Beam, of course, but what I mean is that it's hard to justify running Staryu with just a Water STAB and Psychic, as was standard before SM, because hitting Vullaby is so important. These are both just brief examples of a noticeable influence. Individually, they're certainly not massive, and it's completely reasonable to prioritize coverage moves/spreads for the most used mon. At the same time, it's safe to say that the overall extent and depth of Vullaby's influence totally outclasses that of any other mon.

There are plenty of natural developments that allow us to deal with Vullaby and plenty of options for soft checks. Porygon, Staryu, Mareanie, Koffing, Mudbray, Abra etc. all have some utility against it, and it's absurd to think we put all these Pokemon on our teams just for Vullaby. It's just not overwhelming to a degree where I could understand why anyone would think it's broken.
Vullaby's set is pretty predictable too - Life Orb is so uncommon it's almost not worth mentioning, and only a small portion are NP, and most of those are on webs or screens. If it's not on webs or screens, you'll soon know whether its NP or not because a non-NP Vullaby will generally get used much earlier in the game. (it's also probably paired with a Staryu)
All of these soft checks can at least threaten Vullaby, but they are mostly limited to revenge-killing. The best case scenario is that Vullaby is max Atk/Spe Berry Juice after rocks and doesn't have a Weak Armor boost for them to even begin to qualify as switchins. Beyond that, none of them can safely switch into a 100% Vullaby, some of them lose 1v1, and Roost Vullaby can switch into Mareanie. All of them are also massively weakened in the process of trying to even revenge-kill Vullaby, but this trade-off is worth it because we're used to Vullaby as an individual mon offering more on average than what they do.

Vullaby is probably gonna reveal its set the first time it comes in, but that applies to pretty much any claim of versatility. Versatility alone isn't enough to break Vullaby or any mon with multiple sets would be broken, of course - the important thing in this case is that both physical and NP Vullaby sets are top tier, immediately threatening mons on their own already, so that even that one turn is impactful. Trying to make an educated guess on the set from team comp doesn't really detract from this strength since it's easy to build with surprise value in consideration.

It's safe to say Vullaby was a much bigger issue last gen, where it had Hidden Power to circumvent counters along with access to Fly Z. The fact that we wanted to suspect it at the end of last gen is irrelevant to this discussion.
This is definitely not safe to say when offensive Vullaby and Vullaby as a whole are clearly equally or more prevalent compared to SM. Reducing this to a loss of two sets neglects the various trends that allow Nasty Plot Vullaby massively more presence than last gen, in some cases trends that directly counteract the loss of its sets - for example, Trapinch is a much more reliable dedicated Onix answer than HP Grass Vullaby was.

I'm fine with suspecting either Woobat or Grookey instead of Vullaby if those are deemed more pressing issues (even if my personal first preference would be Vullaby).

---

I don’t think we need to suspect vulla. The main issue is that if we suspect it and ban it, it will probably create some bad consequences. Vulla is a good ground-immunity that helps a lot against ground types/ ground moves like against mudbray, trapinch, diglett (not orb). Especially good also for checking fights and psychic mons and giving less power to webs. I think all these things that vulla covers well and helps will be the problems if we ban it (increased webs power = increased scraggy/grookey power, also having less check for foo is really bad, it means that you will deal against uturn momentum). The nplot set is broken I agree but nowadays less broken cuz webs power is less and also there are a lot of nice moves/mons that can chip vulla to be in range of other mons (tbolt staryu, a lot of priorities like mpunch, fi, fake out, sucker punch, grassy, also ponyg, abra, koffing, gambit dig, taunt foo, porygon, scarf vulpix) (you kill one in some situation but after you will be revenged and it would be hard to roost if rocks are up). As you can see there are a lot of mons/moves that can help to face nplot vulla. Vulla isn’t broken itself, flinches are broken.

I also disagree about suspect woobat. It is kinda bad atm with webs usages lower and it is only good with webs/screens and in core with grookey which means you already take 2 slots (+ defogger/spinner + setter so same standard shit). The issue isn’t woobat itself but grookey. Woobat without grassy seed wouldn’t be broken.

Atm grookey is really strong prob third best mon, it influences a lot team building making it monotonous. Imo that’s also why koffing is higher in usages and mare lower. Definitely we have less checks/counters for it (you always need to put foong/koffing/trap/vulla/ -pony and vulpix- that are not really common and still they can be fucked if grookey runs tect or gseed acro to one shot foong or mega kick to make damages on vulla and koffing). Also it has a really strong priority (grass priority is really good in this meta cuz fire mons are uncommon) that means if you are slower you will still kill at some point (for example if you are facing scarf pory or scarf vulpix it does a lot). I think the only thing atm that could have a suspect is grookey.
I get what you're saying but remember that by Smogon tiering policy, we're not supposed to check broken with broken; if Vullaby is broken but prevents Grookey from being broken, then we should be banning Grookey too. SM Vullaby last gen was an exception because potentially might not have enough time to stabilize the metagame after banning Vullaby.
 
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dcae

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If there's to be any point to these posts, we need to be open to truly hearing the other sides viewpoint, not just rebutting it. I endeavor to do so when I post in suspect threads, but sometimes you just have to be blunt about when a side is being unreasonable.

imo vullaby isn't suspect-worthy or even close to banworthy
It's already obvious that this particular anti-suspecter has no intention of being open to any argument. When you open a post with something as hyperbolic as this "not even close to banworthy", you are not debating in good faith.

It's frankly embarrassing and an indictment of the tier and the way it has been run the past few years that Vullaby in SM was not at least suspected in the last year of the tier. One would think that given the opportunity of a new gen, with endless time, with a similarly broken iteration of Vullaby, maybe this time we would see a different result. At the very least, you would think at some point that a mon with 84%!!!!!!!! usage in LCPL would be suspected.

Of course, thinking is not the strong suit of the anti-suspecters. That is why, despite Vullaby's ridiculous dominance in this gen, we are making posts in a metagame discussion thread about whether it's suspect-worthy. We're not even talking about a ban, we're talking about a suspect. Put the power in the hands of the people and have them discuss, give the people a chance to have some input on a mon that has completely warped the tier for several years.

Let's talk about the mon. Levi did a fantastic job of describing the aspects of Vullaby that are overpowering and too overwhelming. Too many of us have come to accept the existence of Vullaby in LC, despite its usage influence. We rarely question the pivot set and usually deflect away from it while decrying the Air Slash and Dark Pulse flinches. Levi expanded on the problematic aspects of even the pivot set superbly, and I will add my own thoughts a bit later.

For the most part, I believe, the people are in agreement that the NP Vullaby set is broken. The people are right. NP Vullaby requires one turn to reach +2 +2. It's the rare sweeper that can be anything it wants to be, and barring possibly Scraggy the best sweeper in tier. This gen put the spotlight on this set and it has not disappointed. I myself used no less than 4 different versions of the NP Vullaby mon on the same Snake core team. I won't go into too much depth, as I'm sure everyone knows what this thing is capable of. Beyond its versatility and instant threat capacity, this set also benefits from STAB moves with extremely high flinch rates. Every single player in LC has lost to NP Vull Air Slash flinches before. If you haven't yet, you haven't played enough. This means that barring the use of priority, every check has a large chance of not connecting. And when I say every check, I mean every viable check aka literally just Onix, a mon that has to then further rely on inaccurate rock moves.

Putting NP Vullaby aside for a moment, let us take a look at the pivot Vullaby sets. This gen, we've predominantly seen the 15/16 atk 15/16 speed offensive Vullaby sets, most often running a standard set with either Heat Wave or U-turn then some sort of utility move. I understand it is probably blasphemous in the eyes of many, but this set is just as problematic as NP Vull but in its own way. Pivot Vull is suspect-worthy on its own. Much of Vullaby's usage comes as a result of this set. Fundamentally, the metagame is based off this mon. Take a look at Onix, a mon that is used virtually solely due to Vullaby. Onix is one of the most common mons in this tier and has come into its own thanks to the DD sets, but let's not pretend that it is used as often as it is because it's some sort of top tier mon. It's the only reliable and viable switch-in for pivot Vullaby.

Once again, levi has does an excellent job expanding on the virtues of this set. In particular the following:

All of them are also massively weakened in the process of trying to even revenge-kill Vullaby, but this trade-off is worth it because we're used to Vullaby as an individual mon offering more on average than what they do.
In essence, our perception of Vullaby is skewed due to the kind of dominance it has had. Every team structure is, whether consciously or subconsciously, engineered to have as many possible ways to absorb Vullaby hits. If I had the time and memory to do so, I could probably gather dozens of replays where a +2 speed regular pivot Vullaby completely gashes a team with a decent amount of soft checks just because none of them could truly take it after some chip or couldn't afford to lose their item to the strong Vull Knock Offs. In many ways, LC games that consist of standard v. standard are just a question of who played their Vullaby more effectively. This isn't normal. Whenever I discuss LC with a non-mainer, they ask me "why is Vullaby not banned, this thing broke asf". I used to ignore these takes because they weren't mainers, but I've long since come to realize they were just seeing what we LCers were too close to the tier to see: its broke asf.

I welcome anyone to demonstrate that I'm just seeing something that isn't there. The above posts defending Vullaby unfortunately do a rather poor job of attempting to demonstrate it not being broken. I am genuinely curious as to see any legitimate argument against a suspect.

All I ask for is a suspect to let the people have a chance to have their voice heard. It is truly disappointing to see so many members of the council unwilling to give them that chance (anti-suspect and anti-ban: shrug, pablo, tazz, ninja, lily, as per lily's post). In fact, in many ways it is alarming. After the Webs suspect, I had hoped the council would be more inclined to listen to the people and try to to be objective when it comes to suspect votes.

---

With respect to Grookey/Woobat, it is fairly obvious that Woobat is the one of the two that should be suspected. I completely understand individuals who want Woobat gone first; it is more of a traditional suspect target and does not have much collateral damage were it banned. I think the time we've had since the misguided Webs suspect has identified Woobat as the most problematic of the abusers we discussed then. I am amenable to this suspect. However, I believe that LC would be better served with a Vullaby suspect. Let's give ourselves the time for the meta to recover from a ban of that magnitude instead of putting it off. This is a chance to really send SS in the right direction and not repeat the mistakes of past generations.
 

Berks

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it seems disingenuous to call out Lily for being closed to debate and then write this extremely disappointing sentence:
Of course, thinking is not the strong suit of the anti-suspecters.
I have never personally felt constrained in the teambuilder by Vullaby. Combinations of Onix/Pawniard + prio or fatmons are good in LC for reasons that exclude Vullaby's presence. no one can reasonably argue against the fact that Vullaby shapes the metagame, but it does not, in my opinion, have the same effect on the viability of other Pokemon that Grookey has, for example, when it singlehandedly invalidates many of the Pokemon that would themselves be reliable Vullaby switch-ins or setup candidates (i.e. every smasher).

playing smartly around Vullaby is sometimes difficult. this is also not reasonably argued against. what is reasonably argued is whether it places overbearing strain on the player. that is the debate we should have, and we should do it without resorting to cheap one-liners that attack people instead of ideas. as for me, I think a Vullaby suspect would be a decent idea (it would get me TC!) but I would personally vote not to ban it. The reasons I have for that position are defensible as much as the reasons for a ban are, and to claim that one side or another lacks merit entirely is unfair and, frankly, wrong.

please be kind and make good arguments!
 
From tiering policy, definition of broken

"These aren't necessarily completely uncompetitive because they don't take the determining factor out of the player's hands; both can use these elements and both probably have a fair chance to win. They are broken because they almost dictate / require usage, and a standard team without one of them facing a standard team with one of them would be at a drastic disadvantage."

This is kind of tied to this point made by dcae
In many ways, LC games that consist of standard v. standard are just a question of who played their Vullaby more effectively
To me it feels like not having a Vullaby in your team puts you at a disadvantage, not only because you have to go out of your way in building to create a dedicated team structure to cover all the roles the bird can do just by itself, but also during the actual game. I can't count how many times I had to counter a weak armor boosted vullaby with my own and maybe even going for the speed tie because otherwise I have to sacrifice all my team to chip it down to Fake Out/Mach Punch range for example. This holds for both the physical and the NP sets, with the latter also being able to turn games around by itself with a single flinch (almost fitting the definition of uncompetitive tbh).
It's not broken in the sense of not counterable at all, but when its two most solid counters (Pawn and Onix) can not only be easily trapped with U-Turn + Dig or (better) Trapinch but can literally be beaten by the one thing they're supposed to counter, it's clear that even tho it might not always win games by itself, it puts so much pressure on the entire tier. Most of its soft checks get easily chipped too.
Even though I make it look like I'd vote ban immediately from this post, it's actually just to encourage a suspect test, which i think would not hurt at all, even I'm still unsure if I'd vote ban (the tier would be a complete mess after a ban), but I think it would be nice to keep the discussion going and let everyone voice their opinion.
Also, GrookBat is stupid, any suspect in that direction is also fine by me.
 
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I think that vullaby and grookey are suspect worthy right now.

Im going to list every single vull pro ban reason that I can come up with:

-1 Usage. A mon being used too much is not always something bad. But in this case it's a clear way to see how much centralizing vulla is. You literally have no reason not to use vullaby in your team, in fact it's kinda a handicap not using it. You also can't not to bring a flying resist or check in this metagame, becouse if you do that you are getting swept by vullaby most likely.

-2 The combination of Vullaby and trappers is so easily to abuse. This kinda reminds me to the rufflet case. Is not the same, but a little bit similar. In general, flying types + trappers are a good pair. It's not a coincidence that diglett had a 24% of usage last LCWC (that is kinda a lot). it's not a coincidence that koffing (only fighting check that can't be trapped) has became so popular recently. Let's be real, trappers are really good in this metagame, they are not broken, but really good. A bad player or a player that hasn't been playing properly during the early game can easily beat you just making a double into onix or u-turning with vulla into his trapper. Vullaby, as Rufflet did but in a lower state generate some really weird 50/50s. And you might argue that "well yeah, but 50/50s are part of the game". Well they are not when there are so many situations when if you lose that 50/50 you lose the game. Becouse if you lose the flying resist, you usually lose the game.

-3 Vullaby has so many different sets that works in completely different ways. Scarf, spd berry juice, nasty plot, nasty plot iron defense, offensive pivot, life orb mixed... (i have underlined the most common ones). There are a lot of sets that are checked in different ways, in fact nasty plot vullaby has different checks than offensive pivot and it's almost a different mon that offensive vullaby is (being this gen onix the exception of this rule, but again, onix is trappable). Nasty plot vullaby usually can run endure (so you can't check it with priority moves like first impression or fake out like you might if it wasn't endure), but also can run roost (so you again you can't check it with fake out from foo but also the hazards doesn't help that much). Offensive pivot vulla can run heat wave, thief, endure, tailwind, roost... It's not just that it has different sets, but owing to the fact that vullaby has an incredible movepool, even inside of that different sets depending on the 4th move you might be able to check it with some mons or not.

Im not going list more reasons honestly these should be already enough but if you want more just scroll up to levi's post.

I don’t think we need to suspect vulla. The main issue is that if we suspect it and ban it, it will probably create some bad consequences. Vulla is a good ground-immunity that helps a lot against ground types/ ground moves like against mudbray, trapinch, diglett (not orb). Especially good also for checking fights and psychic mons and giving less power to webs. I think all these things that vulla covers well and helps will be the problems if we ban it (increased webs power = increased scraggy/grookey power, also having less check for foo is really bad, it means that you will deal against uturn momentum)
As Levi said, "we're not supposed to check broken with broken; if Vullaby is broken but prevents Grookey from being broken, then we should be banning Grookey too". But also i do not believe that grounds in a metagame without vulla and grookey will be as broken as vulla is right now. I might be wrong tho, that is speculate too much but if i had to bet then i would say that.

The nplot set is broken I agree but nowadays less broken cuz webs power is less and also there are a lot of nice moves/mons that can chip vulla to be in range of other mons (tbolt staryu, a lot of priorities like mpunch, fi, fake out, sucker punch, grassy, also ponyg, abra, koffing, gambit dig, taunt foo, porygon, scarf vulpix)
First of all NP vullaby does not depend on webs to shine. NP vullaby is definetely good in webs or any type of cheese, but is also good in standard balance teams where you can't predict if it is NP since the start like you can in webs or cheese. Second of all, I have already said my opinion about priorities. They doesn't even work if you are facing a concrete vullaby set, which is honestly terrifying. Also, chip vullaby to let it in range of other fast mons to RK is incredible hard owing to the fact that vullaby has WA. Apart of porygon literally none of these really check vullaby in the worst case scenario.

I also disagree about suspect woobat. It is kinda bad atm with webs usages lower and it is only good with webs/screens and in core with grookey which means you already take 2 slots (+ defogger/spinner + setter so same standard shit). The issue isn’t woobat itself but grookey. Woobat without grassy seed wouldn’t be broken.

Atm grookey is really strong prob third best mon, it influences a lot team building making it monotonous. Imo that’s also why koffing is higher in usages and mare lower. Definitely we have less checks/counters for it (you always need to put foong/koffing/trap/vulla/ -pony and vulpix- that are not really common and still they can be fucked if grookey runs tect or gseed acro to one shot foong or mega kick to make damages on vulla and koffing). Also it has a really strong priority (grass priority is really good in this meta cuz fire mons are uncommon) that means if you are slower you will still kill at some point (for example if you are facing scarf pory or scarf vulpix it does a lot). I think the only thing atm that could have a suspect is grookey.
I agree here. I do not think that woobat is suspect worthy right now. As I said at the beginning of the post, Grookey and Vullaby are suspect worthy in my eyes, being the second one (Vullaby) the one to suspect first.

With respect to Grookey/Woobat, it is fairly obvious that Woobat is the one of the two that should be suspected. I completely understand individuals who want Woobat gone first; it is more of a traditional suspect target and does not have much collateral damage were it banned. I think the time we've had since the misguided Webs suspect has identified Woobat as the most problematic of the abusers we discussed then. I am amenable to this suspect. However, I believe that LC would be better served with a Vullaby suspect. Let's give ourselves the time for the meta to recover from a ban of that magnitude instead of putting it off. This is a chance to really send SS in the right direction and not repeat the mistakes of past generations.
This is the only part of dcae's post where I disagree with. Suspecting Woobat would be a traditional suspect that wouldn't fix the tier at all. It's pretty obvious that the tier is not looking good right now, it's incredibly match up fish and i would say that it is due to vullaby's centralization. If we do suspect and ban woobat right now then after the whole process we would be in the same position that we are right now having to ban vullaby to make this gen great again and after so, having to ban another bunch of mons and also having to free woobat later. Becouse honestly the impact of woobat in the current metagame is so little, it's not even close to vullaby or grookey. I also do not believe that woobat is broken right now.

it seems disingenuous to call out Lily for being closed to debate and then write this extremely disappointing sentence:

I have never personally felt constrained in the teambuilder by Vullaby. Combinations of Onix/Pawniard + prio or fatmons are good in LC for reasons that exclude Vullaby's presence. no one can reasonably argue against the fact that Vullaby shapes the metagame, but it does not, in my opinion, have the same effect on the viability of other Pokemon that Grookey has, for example, when it singlehandedly invalidates many of the Pokemon that would themselves be reliable Vullaby switch-ins or setup candidates (i.e. every smasher).
You might exclude Pawniard in that list but onix would definetely not be that common without vullaby. Also yes, onix and pawniard are good mons, imagine that vulla was so incredible that in addition to having to use the same flying resist, droping a slot, they were bad!. About the "vullaby shaping the metagame" argument i find that you have chose a really bad and convenint example on Grookey, since i find grookey being broken as well. So I challenge you to nom a mon that is not called Grookey that shapes the metagame as Vullaby does.


--
That is all. I hope you have enjoyed my thoughts. If i haven't quoted your post either I agree with you or your name is LilyAC.

I also will be reading what you guys have to say, i might even end up double posting. See ya.
 
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Berks

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You might exclude Pawniard in that list but onix would definetely not be that common without vullaby. Also yes, onix and pawniard are good mons, imagine that vulla was so incredible that in addition to having to use the same flying resist, droping a slot, they were bad!. About the "vullaby shaping the metagame" argument i find that you have chose a really bad and convenint example on Grookey, since i find grookey being broken as well. So I challenge you to nom a mon that is not called Grookey that shapes the metagame as Vullaby does.
Aside from the fact that I disagree about Grookey being broken, I would argue that Pawniard shapes and has always shaped LC in the same ways that Vullaby does, to which we have long since adapted. It is the reason that the 17 Speed tier is so important, and in generations past it was the sole target of every HP Fighting. In this gen, its effectiveness has evolved due to an overall lack of faster threats and the loss of Hidden Power. Pawniard and Porygon are also the driving forces behind including Fighting-types on almost every viable team. The only thing that really seems to set Vullaby apart from Pawniard in this argument (that I can tell) is that Pawniard can't boost its Speed as effectively (which is avoided with smart WA Vull counterplay). Everything else: the amazing coverage, the random 30% flinches that can break checks, the ability to boost (SD Pawn anyone?), the interplay in the hazards game (Defog vs. Defiant is one of the most fun dynamics in the meta IMO); is similar.

I personally feel that the metagame is very well balanced between the top threats. Vullaby, Mienfoo, Grookey, Pawniard, etc. all find common checks in the metagame that are also good at checking other things (i.e. they don’t feel like Munchlax checking sun). Onix itself is very good because it is a rocker that beats both Pawniard and Vullaby, which is super cool. its sets are adaptable (I'm partial to SturdyJuice Endure Rocks but DD Rocks and so on are equally good in other situations) and it does more than just beat Vullaby. Koffing checks Grookey and fighters and spreads Wisp and has good coverage... and so on and so forth.
 
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it's just grookey is currently running rampant in the meta game. vullaby is acceptable becuase its basically checked by every rock type and porygons ice beam. but grookey is like required on every team or foongus but foongus doesn't have +1 priority stab moves that has really good bp. grookey does with the fairly good attack stat to one hit pawniard with it at half health. most pokemon have a noticeable flaw, like vullaby and foongus. but grookey's only flaw is vullaby and that's the only thing that is widespread enough to guarantee a 1 hit. even then it can switch out to slap whatever is out. im not saying ban grooke entirely but at least suspect its HA so it cant have turn 1 priority that's super spammable.
 

ninjadog

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Vullaby is absolutely not unhealthy for the metagame, in fact I find it pretty ridiculous that the same people who were against a Vullaby suspect in SM, a tier in which it was significantly more unhealthy due to its access to Z moves and HP Grass to break through checks, are now in favour of one.

The argument that we only view it as healthy is because we think running Onix/Pawniard on every team is normal is really poor to me and I think it was extremely disingenuous of levi to label these mons as 'dedicated vull checks'. Yes Onix usage would likely trend downwards in favour of Mudbray should Vullaby be banned, but both of these mons are extremely good in their own right and would see usage regardless of Vullaby. Pawniard has a great typing, a powerful knock off and some of the strongest priority in the tier, and also has great variety in the sets in can run such as RP as a Webs counter. Onix is also a threat to sweep in its own right with DD, and has 2 strong STAB moves in Head Smash and EQ that are hard to switch into. Both of course also fulfil the role of rockers, another important factor in their high usage. Additionally, both Pawniard and Onix have been seeing usage on Webs/Screens HO teams either as sweepers or in the case of Pawniard on Screens as a dedicated support lead.

As Lily already stated, you can also apply many of the same arguments to the fighting type duo of Mienfoo and Timburr, fighting resists are near mandatory - the combined Onix/Pawn usage was marginally higher than Koffing/Mareanie/Foongus in LCWC but this can be put down to the fact Pawn/Onix provide rocks and are featured on HO teams unlike the fighting checks which aside from Koffing are major momentum saps.

She also provided a list of soft checks for Vullaby, which levi counted saying you wouldn't want to switch a lot of these in to Vull, yet the same applies to Vullaby, you aren't going to hard Vull into many things out of fear of being knocked or wasting your juice. Vull also ends up checking itself a lot of the time, leading to tradeoffs which I think is perfectly fine.

The only real argument I see for suspecting Vullaby is the power of the NP set, this set has legitimate claims to being unhealthy due to its ability to flinch through checks and versatility in running roost/endure/dark pulse in the 4th slot.

Grookey I also think is great for the metagame, yeah it's strong but having such a strong priority move present helps to keep threats like DD Scraggy and Onix in check whilst terrain gives a slight nerf to trappers. Grookbat on Webs can be a real issue, and for that reason if we were to suspect something I really think it should be Woobat. The options to stop Woobat once it gets going are pretty niche, Final Gambit Balloon Dig is the best but in general it's much harder to fit checks to Woobat than it is Vullaby. The counterargument is that Woobat needs terrain up and often webs as well, and only gets one shot with the grassy seed before becoming useless after switching out, but I think the fact it is such a huge fish and capable of creating autowin mus leaves it an unhealthy mon in the tier.
 

Berks

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it's just grookey is currently running rampant in the meta game. vullaby is acceptable becuase its basically checked by every rock type and porygons ice beam. but grookey is like required on every team or foongus but foongus doesn't have +1 priority stab moves that has really good bp. grookey does with the fairly good attack stat to one hit pawniard with it at half health. most pokemon have a noticeable flaw, like vullaby and foongus. but grookey's only flaw is vullaby and that's the only thing that is widespread enough to guarantee a 1 hit. even then it can switch out to slap whatever is out. im not saying ban grooke entirely but at least suspect its HA so it cant have turn 1 priority that's super spammable.
Just so you know, official Smogon metagames try to stick to banning Pokemon as much as we can, especially when an ability is specific to only one Pokemon. It helps us prevent making a banlist that is super complex and confusing and keeps our overall discussions focused. Notable examples of doing otherwise include Moody and Chlorophyll, both of which were decided to be broken on multiple different users.

stick around in LC!
 

dcae

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I'm going to present a general counterpoint to what amounts to a poor whataboutism by both lily and ninja. They tried to draw an equivalence between bulky Fighters and Vull as justification for Vull's usage. However, analyzing this argument a bit more carefully renders a different picture.

First off, let's establish Vull's role relative to the fighters. Physical Vullaby is first and foremost an offensive threat. That is why the majority of Vull's are offensive sets with borderline max attack. The reason why every team runs Vull is simply because LC lacks good Flying resists and Knock Off is absurdly good in this tier. Moreover, it has inherent speed control in a predominantly physically based tier, and in LC, speed is the single most important factor.

Now, equating Vullaby to Mienfoo is interesting and I will address this in the next paragraph. However, before doing so, allow me to be clear: Timburr can't just be added onto Mienfoo's usage to prove some sort of blanket bulky Fighter argument. Timburr is completely different from Mienfoo both on paper and in practice, and is frankly nowhere near this conversation in terms of usage/splashability/overall utility. They're not interchangeable. Foo's primary role is being a pivot, which is something Timburr can never do no matter how irrelevant Mienfoo becomes. It is evident they do not play the same role offensively, but even their roles defensively are different. Mienfoo is able to sponge attacks while Timburr operates moreso as an offensive check thanks to its powerful Mach Punch.

Mienfoo, on the other hand, is pretty similar to physical Vullaby, but its a milder and therefore not broken version. The main differences being with Mienfoo's impact offensively. There are significantly more viable Fighting resists and all of them bar Koffing have forms of recovery. Furthermore, its use of Knock Off is far less punishing to Fighting resists (30ish%), unlike Vullaby relative to Flying resists (up to a 2HKO depending on the resist). Finally, Mienfoo lacks its own speed control. Yes it has Regenerator, a great ability, but in practice this makes Foo more of a defensive threat rather than an offensive threat the way Vullaby is. Due to the structure of the tier, where offense is much stronger, this makes Vullaby a more impactful threat. This is, of course, reflected in the usage difference.

All of the above also ignores the fact that Vullaby has access to NP Vull, which is widely acknowledged as broken, even by anti-suspecters such as ninja. At the end of the day, if Mienfoo was as good as Vullaby, regardless of Timburr or Scraggy existing, it'd have the same usage as Vullaby, or at least be close. Timburr and Scraggy do not fill the same role as Mienfoo. This equivalence falls flat the moment you really think about it.

Addressing your post in general: I'm disappointed in this post because it's pretty clear you read levi's first post, lily's reply, and then skipped every single post in between to jump to the bottom to type up a reply. You approach his points in a reductive manner, which is ultimately unproductive. Your post fails to demonstrate in any way that Vullaby's influence is not as widespread as levi eloquently expressed. Though DD Onix is a new toy which would probably be an interesting piece with or without Vullaby, it is incredible disingenuous to suggest it would receive anywhere near its current usage in a metagame with as much as Grookey as current SS LC. We have historical evidence in BW LC, where Vullaby being bad results in Onix being bad. Though this is pre-DD, Onix receives virtually 0 usage, so this example is not insignificant. No one is claiming that Onix would be completely unviable, as that's a completely unrealistic standard to meet for any mon, including literally any of the recent/existing bans.

In addition, you bring up Pawniard and go on a long tangent talking about its virtues, for some reason, when levi explicitly said Pawn is not actually a reliable Vullaby answer, and I explicitly did not include Pawn when referring to Vullaby checks. Pawniard isn't a Vullaby check, so this whole bit was a complete waste of time.

Vull also ends up checking itself a lot of the time, leading to tradeoffs which I think is perfectly fine.
You included this sentence, which I found interesting, as I said something conceptually similar: In many ways, LC games that consist of standard v. standard are just a question of who played their Vullaby more effectively. This isn't normal. In effect, you have identified part of the problem.

However, you came to a different conclusion, and this is largely due to years of habit of Vullaby doing Vullaby things. I understand that you're used to this, but that doesn't mean this is the way it should be. In a true healthy metagame, it doesn't usually come down to who played their Vullaby better. The following portion from Albinson's fantastic post further expanded on this aspect and why this qualifies Vullaby as broken:

To me it feels like not having a Vullaby in your team puts you at a disadvantage, not only because you have to go out of your way in building to create a dedicated team structure to cover all the roles the bird can do just by itself, but also during the actual game. I can't count how many times I had to counter a weak armor boosted vullaby with my own and maybe even going for the speed tie because otherwise I have to sacrifice all my team to chip it down to Fake Out/Mach Punch range for example. This holds for both the physical and the NP sets, with the latter also being able to turn games around by itself with a single flinch (almost fitting the definition of uncompetitive tbh).

it seems disingenuous to call out Lily for being closed to debate and then write this extremely disappointing sentence:

[...]

playing smartly around Vullaby is sometimes difficult. this is also not reasonably argued against. what is reasonably argued is whether it places overbearing strain on the player. that is the debate we should have, and we should do it without resorting to cheap one-liners that attack people instead of ideas. as for me, I think a Vullaby suspect would be a decent idea (it would get me TC!) but I would personally vote not to ban it. The reasons I have for that position are defensible as much as the reasons for a ban are, and to claim that one side or another lacks merit entirely is unfair and, frankly, wrong.

please be kind and make good arguments!
Actually, there is nothing disingenuous about that statement. Notice that I specifically addressed anti-suspecters. Fair play to anyone who wants to make arguments in favor of no ban (that won't stop me or anyone else from disputing those arguments), but it is unacceptable to be an anti-suspecter. There's been discussions in the LC community for a while now talking about the fact that people believe its broken. It is unacceptable as a member of council to not allow the people a chance to vote on something they believe to potentially be broken. The suspect process itself exists as a platform for discussion so that everyone can express themselves and subsequently vote the way they believe is correct. I will not begrudge a single person their vote. I will, however, begrudge anyone who will not allow them to even vote. So yeah, if you're an anti-suspecter, either thinking is not your strong suit, or your intent is malicious as you seek to prevent a vote out of fear people will vote in favor of a decision you're not in favor of.

Aside from the fact that I disagree about Grookey being broken, I would argue that Pawniard shapes and has always shaped LC in the same ways that Vullaby does, to which we have long since adapted. It is the reason that the 17 Speed tier is so important, and in generations past it was the sole target of every HP Fighting. In this gen, its effectiveness has evolved due to an overall lack of faster threats and the loss of Hidden Power. Pawniard and Porygon are also the driving forces behind including Fighting-types on almost every viable team. The only thing that really seems to set Vullaby apart from Pawniard in this argument (that I can tell) is that Pawniard can't boost its Speed as effectively (which is avoided with smart WA Vull counterplay). Everything else: the amazing coverage, the random 30% flinches that can break checks, the ability to boost (SD Pawn anyone?), the interplay in the hazards game (Defog vs. Defiant is one of the most fun dynamics in the meta IMO); is similar.
So, as I said in the previous paragraph, fair play to anyone who wants to make anti-ban arguments, but I and others will dispute those arguments. This Pawniard - Vullaby comparison is one of the worst I've ever seen and demonstrates that you don't grasp the effect mons have on each other. It is completely incoherent with respect to the actual state of the metagame. You took an arbitrary top tier mon and expect it to even approach Vullaby in influence when they are not in the same ballpark. You claim that Pawniard (and Porygon???) are the reason why teams run Fighting types. This is obviously wrong, given we recently had a meta that lasted a month where the most relevant fighter was Scraggy, doesnt function defensively against either mon. Fighting types aren't even switching into Porygon, that's irrelevant.

You also try to equate Vullaby affecting the majority of EV spreads and team compositions to mons running HP Fight for Pawn in past generations, which is not only nonsensical on its face, but also ignores that HP Fire and HP Grass hitting Ferro and Onix respectively were much more common in SM. Finally, you try to draw a parallel between SD Pawn and NP Vull??? while conveniently brushing over the massive x factor, which is Vullaby's ability to boost speed.You're trying to compare a set that got used maybe once in LCWC tops to what's probably the single strongest sweeper in the tier. There's a lot more wrong with your comparison, but there's no point going through all of it.


This is also addressed at arts and stuff, but at the risk of being rude, if you have no clue what you're talking about, please do not clutter the thread up with nonsense. Thank you!
 

ninjadog

levi of the decade
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I'm going to present a general counterpoint to what amounts to a poor whataboutism by both lily and ninja. They tried to draw an equivalence between bulky Fighters and Vull as justification for Vull's usage. However, analyzing this argument a bit more carefully renders a different picture.

First off, let's establish Vull's role relative to the fighters. Physical Vullaby is first and foremost an offensive threat. That is why the majority of Vull's are offensive sets with borderline max attack. The reason why every team runs Vull is simply because LC lacks good Flying resists and Knock Off is absurdly good in this tier. Moreover, it has inherent speed control in a predominantly physically based tier, and in LC, speed is the single most important factor.

Now, equating Vullaby to Mienfoo is interesting and I will address this in the next paragraph. However, before doing so, allow me to be clear: Timburr can't just be added onto Mienfoo's usage to prove some sort of blanket bulky Fighter argument. Timburr is completely different from Mienfoo both on paper and in practice, and is frankly nowhere near this conversation in terms of usage/splashability/overall utility. They're not interchangeable. Foo's primary role is being a pivot, which is something Timburr can never do no matter how irrelevant Mienfoo becomes. It is evident they do not play the same role offensively, but even their roles defensively are different. Mienfoo is able to sponge attacks while Timburr operates moreso as an offensive check thanks to its powerful Mach Punch.

They don't fill the same role but the point is they mandate the same checks, Timburr yes is different to Mienfoo but they are by and large checked by identical mons, so it really doesn't matter what their individual roles are bc they place the same constraints on teambuilding, and do generally beat the same things despite doing it in different ways. Mienfoo is obviously far more versatile but there are times when the priority mach punch or coverage of Timburr is preferred.

Mienfoo, on the other hand, is pretty similar to physical Vullaby, but its a milder and therefore not broken version. The main differences being with Mienfoo's impact offensively. There are significantly more viable Fighting resists and all of them bar Koffing have forms of recovery. Furthermore, its use of Knock Off is far less punishing to Fighting resists (30ish%), unlike Vullaby relative to Flying resists (up to a 2HKO depending on the resist). Finally, Mienfoo lacks its own speed control. Yes it has Regenerator, a great ability, but in practice this makes Foo more of a defensive threat rather than an offensive threat the way Vullaby is. Due to the structure of the tier, where offense is much stronger, this makes Vullaby a more impactful threat. This is, of course, reflected in the usage difference.

All of the above also ignores the fact that Vullaby has access to NP Vull, which is widely acknowledged as broken, even by anti-suspecters such as ninja. At the end of the day, if Mienfoo was as good as Vullaby, regardless of Timburr or Scraggy existing, it'd have the same usage as Vullaby, or at least be close. Timburr and Scraggy do not fill the same role as Mienfoo. This equivalence falls flat the moment you really think about it.
This highlighted bit is just wrong - 'significantly more' as in 3 over 2? What flying resist is Vullaby 2HKOing with a Brave Bird after Knock or with 2 Knocks? Regen makes Foo more defensive but it's still capable of being an offensive threat, uninvested Mienfoo has 15 atk vs a 236+ Vullaby with 16 not to mention HJK is stronger than Brave Bird.

To suggest that if Mienfoo was as good as Vullaby it'd have the same usage is extremely ignorant and just complete disregards team composition, thanks to Rufflet being banned Vullaby stands alone as the best flying type with only Wingull being semi-viable - there is no competition for that slot so you don't have to worry about balance or overloading weaknesses when adding it to a team, as I stated earlier Mienfoo and Timburr largely beat and lose to the same things so you aren't just going to chuck both of them on there, or if you do the Mienfoo is likely to be Scarf/Band/Evio offensive because having 2 slow Fighting-types is just going to compound weaknesses and you only have 6 slots so other things are going to be prioritised. Likewise if Rufflet was still legal Vullaby's usage would drop down in no part due to it being any worse. No one is saying Timburr/Scraggy/Mienfoo fill an identical role but they literally take up the same spot in team composition.

Addressing your post in general: I'm disappointed in this post because it's pretty clear you read levi's first post, lily's reply, and then skipped every single post in between to jump to the bottom to type up a reply. You approach his points in a reductive manner, which is ultimately unproductive. Your post fails to demonstrate in any way that Vullaby's influence is not as widespread as levi eloquently expressed. Though DD Onix is a new toy which would probably be an interesting piece with or without Vullaby, it is incredible disingenuous to suggest it would receive anywhere near its current usage in a metagame with as much as Grookey as current SS LC. We have historical evidence in BW LC, where Vullaby being bad results in Onix being bad. Though this is pre-DD, Onix receives virtually 0 usage, so this example is not insignificant. No one is claiming that Onix would be completely unviable, as that's a completely unrealistic standard to meet for any mon, including literally any of the recent/existing bans.

In addition, you bring up Pawniard and go on a long tangent talking about its virtues, for some reason, when levi explicitly said Pawn is not actually a reliable Vullaby answer, and I explicitly did not include Pawn when referring to Vullaby checks. Pawniard isn't a Vullaby check, so this whole bit was a complete waste of time.
No that example is literally completely irrelevant, the reason Onix would still be good would be due to 1) being an offensive threat and 2) Getting up Rocks. Like if we go back to a meta where knock off is way less prevalent meaning +1 EQ will KO less, where Onix doesn't get DD, where Onix doesn't get Head Smash then obviously it's not getting usage. Hippopotas is also very good in BW so that's more competition for the Rocks slot and a mon that completely walls Onix.

Pawniard doesn't check Vullaby on it's own but is still an important part in doing so because it prevents the mindless clicking of Brave Bird, and still beats non-Heat Wave variants, completely disingenuous to act like the presence of Pawniard doesn't somewhat stop Vullaby. Additionally, if Pawniard was really that bad at handling Vullaby then Onix usage would be a lot higher than it is. But it's not, because Vullaby is rarely just single-handedly dominating games.

You included this sentence, which I found interesting, as I said something conceptually similar: In many ways, LC games that consist of standard v. standard are just a question of who played their Vullaby more effectively. This isn't normal. In effect, you have identified part of the problem.

However, you came to a different conclusion, and this is largely due to years of habit of Vullaby doing Vullaby things. I understand that you're used to this, but that doesn't mean this is the way it should be. In a true healthy metagame, it doesn't usually come down to who played their Vullaby better. The following portion from Albinson's fantastic post further expanded on this aspect and why this qualifies Vullaby as broken:
I really don't think it comes down to 'who played their vull better' - one player can often make a read based off whose Vull will be more effective in the mu and try to trade, additionally a potential downside of going to your own Vull first and either taking damage, getting knocked or having WA trigger is that is potentially gives an opposition Vull a free turn.

In response to Albinson's post, I really disagree that I am forced to go to my own Vull - (the exception of this sometimes being vs NP Vull), often I'll do so but that feels like more a judgement call eg. I'd rather get my own Vull knocked/weakened than let my Koffing get knocked or my Timburr/Mienfoo brought down to low %s for example. I also don't really feel I'm being overexerted in the builder trying to stop Vullaby, because so many of the soft checks will just fit naturally on a team, NP maybe but no more than say a Grookey or a Scraggy.
 
I really disagree that I am forced to go to my own Vull - (the exception of this sometimes being vs NP Vull), often I'll do so but that feels like more a judgement call eg. I'd rather get my own Vull knocked/weakened than let my Koffing get knocked or my Timburr/Mienfoo brought down to low %s for example
Yes, it’s a judgement call, depends on the situations, but it’s a judgement call you have to make most of the times, because as you said, you don’t want to lose health on key pokemon (Timburr and Foo just die after like 15% chip, losing Koffing Evio + taking a strong knock off means fighting types and Grookey destroy you). In front of a +2 speed Vull, you go to your flying resist and get hit + u-turned on or you basically sac something and come in with a revenge killer, only to get u-turned on. The other option is getting your own Vull knocked, go to +2 speed and pray you win the tie.
I’m focusing on the pivot set because the NP set and the insane pressure it puts on the tier has already been addressed and is clear to everyone.

I also don't really feel I'm being overexerted in the builder trying to stop Vullaby, because so many of the soft checks will just fit naturally on a team
i didnt mean that you need to check Vullaby with a million things, it’s rare that Vullaby will win a game by itself unless you have literally no flying resist (or unless it’s the NP set), but the main point is you have no reason to not have a Vullaby in your team. Yeah it’s the only available flying type, but that doesn’t make it healthy nor does it justify keeping it at any cost despite it being arguably broken.
Of course it would have less usage with Rufflet around, cause Rufflet is even more broken in the common sense of the word (no way to reliably stop it). If there was another viable flying type it would most likely be completely outclassed by Vullaby, because it probably would not have all the tools the bird has (amazing stabs, versatility of movepool/sets, weak Armor), and if it was at the same level of Vull in terms of tools or strength, we would probably discuss about banning that too.
 

fatty

is a Tiering Contributor
NUPL Champion
the np set is enough by itself to suspect vulla and council should damn well know it, all the rest of these words are bollocks. idk when we crossed over the line in terms of tiering by looking at how a mons other sets might benefit the tier or whether or not we’ll like the meta post-suspect but it should probably stop. this isn’t sm vull, np clearly has risen in usage and effectiveness exactly because vulla doesn’t have the tools people are citing to just run 4 atk z moves and not even have to set up. vulla also doesn’t need to run bulky sets this gen because gasbra isn’t a thing, opening the door for np to be much more splashable. the only reason vulla wasn’t suspected last gen was timing, and whether or not you agreed with that decision is a different argument. stop bringing it up here.
 
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):
Screen Shot 2021-01-26 at 4.41.20 PM.png

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.

:Jangmo-o: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Magnemite: :Foongus: :Vullaby: vs :Mienfoo: :Magnemite: :Tirtouga: :Diglett: :Vullaby: :Wingull:
:Snivy: :Spritzee: :Pawniard: :Wingull: :Onix: :Pancham: vs :Abra: :Chinchou: :Diglett: :Ferroseed: :Gastly: :Mienfoo:
:Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Trapinch: :Grimer-Alola: :Spritzee: :Vullaby: vs :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Ferroseed: :Frillish: :Wingull: :Trapinch:
:Pawniard: :Vulpix-Alola: :Shellder: :Zigzagoon: :Spritzee: :Vullaby: vs :Clamperl: :Vulpix-Alola: :Sandshrew-Alola: :Diglett: :Spritzee: :Vullaby:
:Ferroseed: :Magnemite: :Mienfoo: :Onix: :Spritzee: :Wingull: vs :Vullaby: :Spritzee: :Mienfoo: :Ferroseed: :Tirtouga: :Diglett:
:Trapinch: :Ferroseed: :Magnemite: :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Gastly: vs :Gastly: :Spritzee: :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Kabuto:
:Staryu: :Foongus: :Magnemite: :Vullaby: :Onix: :Timburr: vs :Vullaby: :Mienfoo: :Magnemite: :Wingull: :Onix: :Foongus:
:Mareanie: :Wingull: :Pawniard: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Chespin: vs :Wingull: :Mienfoo: :Pawniard: :Bunnelby: :Ferroseed: :Spritzee:
:Mienfoo: :Tirtouga: :Vullaby: :Abra: :Magnemite: :Diglett: vs :Zigzagoon: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Vullaby: :Foongus: :Pawniard:
:Gastly: :Onix: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Timburr: :Snivy: vs :Mareanie: :Elekid: :Trapinch: :Ferroseed: :Vullaby: :Mienfoo:

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:

:Grookey: :Ferroseed: :Timburr: :Koffing: :Vullaby: :Mudbray: vs :Trapinch: :Grookey: :Timburr: :Mareanie: :Vullaby: :Pawniard:
:Trapinch: :Mareanie: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Timburr: :Porygon: vs :Pawniard: :Staryu: :Vullaby: :Timburr: :Koffing: :Grookey:
:Onix: :Ferroseed: :Scraggy: :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Porygon: vs :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Ferroseed: :Abra: :Onix: :Scraggy:
:Grookey: :Ferroseed: :Timburr: :Koffing: :Vullaby: :Mudbray: vs :Onix: :Ferroseed: :Scraggy: :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Porygon:
:Staryu: :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Pawniard: :Grookey: :Mienfoo: vs :Trapinch: :Pawniard: :Mienfoo: :Grookey: :Vullaby: :Mareanie:
:Porygon: :Mudbray: :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Mareanie: vs :Foongus: :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Diglett: :Pawniard: :Staryu:
:Mienfoo: :Ferroseed: :Onix: :Abra: :Mareanie: :Vullaby: vs :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Grookey: :Onix: :Vullaby: :Koffing:
:Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Vullaby: :Onix: :Frillish: :Grookey: vs :Onix: :Ponyta-Galar: :Grookey: :Koffing: :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo:
:Mienfoo: :Grookey: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Mareanie: :Scraggy: vs :Koffing: :Dewpider: :Scraggy: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Porygon:

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.
 
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Corporal Levi

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The first half of the above post primarily addresses why Grookey is a poor choice for a suspect and Woobat is a good one - while I don't agree with every point, I would prefer a Vullaby suspect first rather than a Grookey suspect so I won't address it for now. I am also fine with a Woobat suspect, but with the understanding that Vullaby is also suspect-worthy and/or banworthy, I would prefer to get the more generally impactful mon out of the way first as it is much more likely to significantly affect future suspects (both Woobat and Grookey) than the other way around.

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.

:Jangmo-o: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Magnemite: :Foongus: :Vullaby: vs :Mienfoo: :Magnemite: :Tirtouga: :Diglett: :Vullaby: :Wingull:
:Snivy: :Spritzee: :Pawniard: :Wingull: :Onix: :Pancham: vs :Abra: :Chinchou: :Diglett: :Ferroseed: :Gastly: :Mienfoo:
:Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Trapinch: :Grimer-Alola: :Spritzee: :Vullaby: vs :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Ferroseed: :Frillish: :Wingull: :Trapinch:
:Pawniard: :Vulpix-Alola: :Shellder: :Zigzagoon: :Spritzee: :Vullaby: vs :Clamperl: :Vulpix-Alola: :Sandshrew-Alola: :Diglett: :Spritzee: :Vullaby:
:Ferroseed: :Magnemite: :Mienfoo: :Onix: :Spritzee: :Wingull: vs :Vullaby: :Spritzee: :Mienfoo: :Ferroseed: :Tirtouga: :Diglett:
:Trapinch: :Ferroseed: :Magnemite: :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Gastly: vs :Gastly: :Spritzee: :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Kabuto:
:Staryu: :Foongus: :Magnemite: :Vullaby: :Onix: :Timburr: vs :Vullaby: :Mienfoo: :Magnemite: :Wingull: :Onix: :Foongus:
:Mareanie: :Wingull: :Pawniard: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Chespin: vs :Wingull: :Mienfoo: :Pawniard: :Bunnelby: :Ferroseed: :Spritzee:
:Mienfoo: :Tirtouga: :Vullaby: :Abra: :Magnemite: :Diglett: vs :Zigzagoon: :Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Vullaby: :Foongus: :Pawniard:
:Gastly: :Onix: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Timburr: :Snivy: vs :Mareanie: :Elekid: :Trapinch: :Ferroseed: :Vullaby: :Mienfoo:

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'm going to address your example of Vullaby's usage being reduced by its competition before I move on to the surrounding argument. Vullaby's earlier usage can largely be attributed to the playerbase simply becoming more and more accepting of Vullaby/Wingull, which as dcae explained earlier, are already uniquely threatening given LC's available pool of mons. Its usage rises steadily across the generation as can be seen in the usage stats for snake and LCPL/related tours (slightly weaker, but much larger sample size) before stabilizing in the mid-80s:

Snake 1 (Sept 2017) - Vullaby at 45.92% usage, Wingull at 15.31% usage
LCPL 7 (May 2018) - Vullaby at 53.44% usage, Wingull at 22.90% usage
Snake 2 (Sept 2018) - Vullaby at 59.46% usage, Wingull at 27.03% usage
(Wingull is banned)
LCWC (Nov 2019) - Vullaby at 70.21% usage
(Trapinch is banned)
LCPL 8 (April 2019) - Vullaby at 84.59% usage
Snake 3 (Sept 2019) - Vullaby at 81.91% usage

You'll see a similar pattern in SS as well, with a steady rise of Vullaby's usage across the gen to its current positioning at 85% in Snake / 84% in LCWC, but its data points are less meaningful because they're interspaced with major metagame shifts like DLC drops and the Cutiefly ban.

As for early post-DLC where Wingull got usage - I think it's pretty telling that the metagame phased Wingull out almost immediately once team tournaments began. It wasn't nearly as good as Vullaby, and it shows with how Vullaby currently has the same usage stats as it did at its zenith in SM - hardly what you would expect if gen 8 Wingull was supposed to offer any real competition for Vullaby.

I've left Gastly out because it fundamentally does not occupy the same niche as Vullaby, similarly to how you wouldn't claim that Trapinch competes for Timburr's niche despite both being answers to Pawniard. The examples you present from Snake 2 are rare exceptions that only grew rarer as the metagame shifted further toward Vullaby. While they share some similarities (soft Fighting check, soft Grass check, Ground immunity), the defensive weaknesses they present to the team are very different, and the mons against which they exert their offensive presence are even less comparable. Vullaby's sole defensive drawbacks are to Fairies and Onix, both of which Gastly was able to reasonably handle; on the other hand, Gastly lets in pretty much any faster mon, many of which Vullaby checks. Offensively, they have completely different STAB moves and coverage options so I won't go into that.

This is definitively visible in the usage stats too: I'm using this site and I'm not sure if there were a few mistakes, but it shows that in both of the modern post-Trapinch tournaments (LCPL 8 and Snake 3), Vullaby was one of Gastly's teammates over 70% of the time. In fact, for Snake 3, every single team where Gastly did not have Vullaby as a teammate, it had a Surskit instead. They clearly aren't competing directly with each other when Vullaby is Gastly's most important teammate.

Albinson brought this up earlier so I'll also mention a more recent metagame that imo involves a much more comparable mon to Vullaby than Wingull: the various iterations of SS that included Rufflet. This is pretty obvious, since Rufflet has a more similar stat spread, an emphasis on versatility/surprise value in its variety of sets, almost the exact same spread of checks, and clearly defined setup sweeper sets (NP Vull, BU/Agility Rufflet) as well as breaker sets (physical Vull, Choiced Rufflet).

And of course, the important bit to note is this:

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.
SM Wingull and SS Rufflet were both broken.


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.

[Examples discussed above]

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:

:Grookey: :Ferroseed: :Timburr: :Koffing: :Vullaby: :Mudbray: vs :Trapinch: :Grookey: :Timburr: :Mareanie: :Vullaby: :Pawniard:
:Trapinch: :Mareanie: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Timburr: :Porygon: vs :Pawniard: :Staryu: :Vullaby: :Timburr: :Koffing: :Grookey:
:Onix: :Ferroseed: :Scraggy: :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Porygon: vs :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Ferroseed: :Abra: :Onix: :Scraggy:
:Grookey: :Ferroseed: :Timburr: :Koffing: :Vullaby: :Mudbray: vs :Onix: :Ferroseed: :Scraggy: :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Porygon:
:Staryu: :Vullaby: :Koffing: :Pawniard: :Grookey: :Mienfoo: vs :Trapinch: :Pawniard: :Mienfoo: :Grookey: :Vullaby: :Mareanie:
:Porygon: :Mudbray: :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Mareanie: vs :Foongus: :Mienfoo: :Vullaby: :Diglett: :Pawniard: :Staryu:
:Mienfoo: :Ferroseed: :Onix: :Abra: :Mareanie: :Vullaby: vs :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo: :Grookey: :Onix: :Vullaby: :Koffing:
:Mienfoo: :Diglett: :Vullaby: :Onix: :Frillish: :Grookey: vs :Onix: :Ponyta-Galar: :Grookey: :Koffing: :Ferroseed: :Mienfoo:
:Mienfoo: :Grookey: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Mareanie: :Scraggy: vs :Koffing: :Dewpider: :Scraggy: :Vullaby: :Pawniard: :Porygon:

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.



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.
This argument relies on the assumption that Vullaby's strength stems primarily from its uncontested niche, when it's Vullaby's strength that creates this status quo. As your own example helps to illustrate, Vullaby's niche is uncontested because Vullaby is that good, given that anything strong enough to visibly contest it tends to get banned.

This is easier to discuss with Fighting-types where a next best mon to fill a potential ban exists. I did try working with the conflation of bulky Fighting-types at first to show that Vullaby was still a notch above, but ultimately I think dcae's explanation was a lot better as to why conflating multiple mons into a single overarching niche isn't sensible to begin with. On the vast majority of teams, Mienfoo is used so much because it's inherently a fantastic mon, not because it's a Fighting-type; its usage wouldn't even come close to encompassing the current sum of all Fighting-types if Timburr/Scraggy disappeared, because its biggest strength is that of a defensive pivot. Similarly, if Mienfoo were banned, then Timburr's usage might double to 45% or so, but the Fighting-type role would be nowhere near mandatory as it is seen to be now.

If we bring the argument down to Vullaby vs Mienfoo, Vullaby is both the more immediately offensive threatening mon and simply outright better overall. So the question becomes whether Vullaby is dominating enough to be more comparable to mons that were banned for medium brokenness (along the lines of Misdreavus etc), which is hard to say because no other mon that even approaches Vullaby in strength and splashability has been allowed to exist in the tier for so long -- except for SM Vullaby, which was left unbanned not because it wasn't good enough, but because it was too good at too late a stage in the metagame.

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.
While I've mostly been discussing physical Vullaby just because I think there's more to say - NP Vullaby is pretty straight-forward - I do think NP Vullaby is broken as well. It may lose more of its value acting as a utility check than physical Vullaby does, but at the end of the day, special Vullaby is certainly still able to act as a secondary check to mons. Losing the ability to sweep afterwards is not the same as not being unable to check mons at all. Deeming a potential sweep to be more valuable and withholding NP Vullaby from being used as a switchin is a testament to its sweeping strength, not an issue of its inability to switch in.

I don't think the splashability and wax / wane arguments can be effectively applied to NP Vullaby for one reason: it carries the unmatched opportunity cost of having to give up your physical Vullaby. Other sweepers may carry the opportunity cost of giving up a single mon slot, but no other set is as valuable in that slot in the majority of cases as physical pivot Vullaby. And in general, no other mon is as valuable as Vullaby; that's why Vullaby is on 84% of teams.
 
I love how all these arguments consistently gloss over trappers invalidating a whole type that vullaby is weak to (electric) nearly invalidating playing another (ice, due to sr and bad MUs W vulla pairings) and how half the teams represented with vulla have a trapper... But its ok. Picking off checks doesnt help a mons usage grow... We'll stay in trap meta... With fastest mon in the meta diglett... Thats ok...

TRAPPER META 2021

"A grook in the ball doesnt help your mons NOT get picked off ;3"

"People dont carry trapper checks, they either have responses for after they lose a mon, surrender or play the game until the mon that was supposed to be checked blanks all their mons because its check was trapped" if thats not broke idk man...
 
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Berks

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Just wanted to drop a couple notes from when I was laddering, nothing too contentious:
  • Scarf Magnemite did really well on a ladder that had Onix and Trapinch as people’s main Ground-types. Perhaps it speaks to the quality of play on the ladder, but I was never really worried to Volt Switch because people feared Analytic Flash Cannon so much. This helped a lot against Woobat, Vullaby, and Abra.
  • Teams without Vullaby were noticeably worse against me than teams with Vullaby as a broad, probably overgeneralized observation.
  • Combinations of Foongus and Vullaby were the most suffocating “defensive” cores I faced on the ladder. They synergize extremely well.
  • Mienfoo feels underwhelming in a meta full of Grookey checks. I was well served by a 24/15 Guts Timburr carrying Ice Punch for Foongus and Vullaby, which has the added benefits of doing better switching into Ferroseed and non-Neutralizing Gas Koffing.
  • Interestingly, NP Vullaby on the ladder seemed to choose Dark Pulse over more utility-based options like Endure or Roost. This was unfortunate to discover with Pony-G every game in which it was the case.
That’s all for now. I will personally be voting no ban on Vullaby because it still does not feel to me that it can be truly called broken. I did lose a game or two to an unfortunate Air Slash flinch, but that is not my primary focus. My overall rationale is that things that are generally good in an offense-heavy, defense-weak tier, like priority stacking and overall bulky offensive mons, are enough to handle Vullaby. Others certainly disagree, and I’m excited to see how the vote plays out!
 

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