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Format Discussion Metronome Battle
- Thread starter Ivy
- Start date
Opchurtle100
I COULD BE BANNED!
it reminds me ALT1SU
confirming as mnome madara 
Not sure if Fur Coat deserve a ban, but I'd like to bring to the attention of the council the move metronome, it's an uncompetitive facet of the game and infracts Smogon's battling and tiering philosophy and it is also greatly unhealthy from a learning and accessibility POV as well. Thanks for the attention, looking forward your reply
mammalu
So, Fur Coat is absolutely broken. GooberGamer and I have been labbing lots of ideas behind the scenes and he managed to get ladder #1, #2 and #3 simultaneously by using the best team we could find. I borrowed it for Reqs and 3 of those losses were explosions, with the last being a turn 1 toxic. the only team type it loses to is Ampharos-Mega special HO (46-54 according to test data, it also loses to nonsense like Normalize Ursaluna but that isnt viable for obvious reasons).
Not sure on Fluffy, it may be alright but seeing as this is a test of both I have to say ban. If it stays, expect a rise in Mold Breaker, using that on Mega Hera or Ursaluna also beats Fur Coat teams at the cost of not beating other types nearly as well.
TLDR: I agree with Pyuk when she said " Fur Coat is just free money in the damage economy. Might as well unban Huge Power. "
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^ I originally thought Fur Coat would be fine, it is not. It's so strong. I haven't done extensive testing but I think Fluffy is probably fine (it's definitely not nearly as good), but Fur Coat has gotta go. If you think it doesn't I challenge you to get #1, #2, and #3 on the ladder lol
ggs
Ban fur coat and fluffy lol
I just threw it on Bonk Stall and it's so clearly broken. Even if it wasn't, it's no doubt centralizing. Mold Breaker would become a requirement when it never has been before...
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Ice Scales is still legal and will likely remain as such forever. The main advantage fur coat has over it is the fact that physical moves are decently more common than special ones.Idk when I played with ice scales legal, I felt that was broken. This feels even more broken, about as bad as the sturdy Shedinja
I'm starting to lean more towards ban than unban than before, but I'm still not so sure about voting ban. It might be that my luck is typically so bad that Magic Guard-Life Orb tends to screw me over in the long term compared to Choice items or Weakness Policy (any ability manipulation grants your MGLO mon a quick-acting death sentence, and your damage output sucks compared to picking an ability that actually boosts offences, so your opponents have time to roll ability manipulation), but the biggest thing (from my personal experience) pushing me towards voting ban is how it starts restricting my teambuilding.
I've noticed that my double Enamorus-Therian team is losing noticeably more often than before the suspect test: enough so it drops to my average win rate (which I suspect is around 60% to 2/3's of the time). It's at the point where I'm subbing in Mega Ampharos instead on my suspect test teams.
...and honestly, my Fur Coat Glastrier + Mega Ampharos team (inspired by some of the suspect test teams here) is winning no more often than my suspect test double Wishiwashi-School team, and given that Glastrier often gets KOed first(!!!), it might not actually be winning more often than my pre-suspect test double Enamorus-Therian team in the current meta.
My personal finding is that Mold Breaker and clones still suck at providing damage on average compared to flat damage boosts like Download (the Mega Ampharos from my new team above used to have Teravolt for a good 3 games before I went back to semi-good old Download).
Teambuilding-wise, it's starting to feel like the meta is swinging strongly towards bulky special attackers at the expense of physical attack, and I'm not sure that a meta where my best chances of breaking are with Mega Ampharos and Wishiwashi-School, with Enamorus-Therian's glory days already over, let alone Glastrier/Ursaluna/Mega Heracross's, is a meta that I support.
(For the record, my record with even double Dusclops teams has always been pretty mediocre: I never could break 1400 with them.)
The major thing preventing me from voting to ban Fur Coat is that I cannot seem to build a Fur Coat team that wins 70% of the time on the ladder (at peak, my double Enamorus-Therian team did feel that good pre-suspect test), and my pre-suspect test teams seem to have kept their rough win percentages from before except for that Enamo-T team. Honestly, Fur Coat feels no better on defensive mons than Unaware, and my win percentage with defensive teams tanked pre-suspect test with any ability other than Unaware (double Flarelm, with one of them being Flower Veil, kept losing compared to double Dusclops).
I've noticed that my double Enamorus-Therian team is losing noticeably more often than before the suspect test: enough so it drops to my average win rate (which I suspect is around 60% to 2/3's of the time). It's at the point where I'm subbing in Mega Ampharos instead on my suspect test teams.
...and honestly, my Fur Coat Glastrier + Mega Ampharos team (inspired by some of the suspect test teams here) is winning no more often than my suspect test double Wishiwashi-School team, and given that Glastrier often gets KOed first(!!!), it might not actually be winning more often than my pre-suspect test double Enamorus-Therian team in the current meta.
My personal finding is that Mold Breaker and clones still suck at providing damage on average compared to flat damage boosts like Download (the Mega Ampharos from my new team above used to have Teravolt for a good 3 games before I went back to semi-good old Download).
Teambuilding-wise, it's starting to feel like the meta is swinging strongly towards bulky special attackers at the expense of physical attack, and I'm not sure that a meta where my best chances of breaking are with Mega Ampharos and Wishiwashi-School, with Enamorus-Therian's glory days already over, let alone Glastrier/Ursaluna/Mega Heracross's, is a meta that I support.
(For the record, my record with even double Dusclops teams has always been pretty mediocre: I never could break 1400 with them.)
The major thing preventing me from voting to ban Fur Coat is that I cannot seem to build a Fur Coat team that wins 70% of the time on the ladder (at peak, my double Enamorus-Therian team did feel that good pre-suspect test), and my pre-suspect test teams seem to have kept their rough win percentages from before except for that Enamo-T team. Honestly, Fur Coat feels no better on defensive mons than Unaware, and my win percentage with defensive teams tanked pre-suspect test with any ability other than Unaware (double Flarelm, with one of them being Flower Veil, kept losing compared to double Dusclops).
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Any eviolite stall + fur coat seems to win 70%+ for me lol
I'll make a new account and see what GXE I end at when I hit #1
confirming
mish
mish
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(she/her pls)
These are two different statements, and one of them was a joke. I explained that Huge Power has several innate advantages over Fur Coat, namely being more consistent by making games shorter rather than longer and not being ignored by Mold Breaker. However, it also has another major advantage: leaning. Offense loves to stack multipliers as much as it can because this maximizes its average damage output; for example, the average of 2.25 (1.5 * 1.5) and 1 is 1.625, while the average of 1.5 and 1.5 is just 1.5. However, by this same principle, defense must use its defensive multipliers to equalize the damage it receives, so leaning hard into physical defense with Fur Coat leaves it more vulnerable to a balanced offense if it runs +Def instead of +SpD.
With all that said, if defense hopes to counter a leaning offense, it needs to lean just as hard in the same direction to equalize the damage, and the Metronome meta leans physical by default thanks to the distribution of possible moves and the lack of a special counterpart to Intrepid Sword (if you aren't adjusting your spreads to make Download give physical attack boosts in the Fur Coat meta, you should be). Also, Fur Coat really is free money; it's not like running Fur Coat somehow makes you weaker to a balanced offense than running no ability at all. After all, it's still the single biggest reduction in damage taken available in an ability short of an uncontested Intimidate.
~
In my reqs post I didn't mention Fluffy, but my opinion on it is the same as it was before the suspect: you can't reasonably suspect test Fur Coat and Fluffy at the same time because one totally overshadows the other. Fur Coat does everything Fluffy does but better, and you can't even really run Fluffy to try and get a sense of how good it would be because everything anyone runs to beat Fur Coat beats Fluffy too so the meta is overprepared for it.
This brings me to Mold Breaker, which handily ignores Fur Coat, Fluffy, Ice Scales, Unaware, Magic Bounce, Flower Veil, Sturdy, and Wonder Guard. "Just run Mold Breaker" is not an argument to unban Wonder Guard, it didn't keep Sturdy Shedinja from being rebanned, and it should not be an argument for unbanning Fur Coat. You might as well unban Huge Power since it loses to Imposter. ;)
Although... before the Fur Coat suspect, the Metronome meta was loosely based around the Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship between offense, stall, and Imposter. The argument to keep Fur Coat banned is partly that it allows stall to beat offense while still beating Imposter, putting it at the apex of the metagame. However, Mold Breaker seems to work as the reverse of Imposter, beating stall that isn't Intimidate/Dauntless Shield while losing to offense. Thus, if Fur Coat really does make stall too strong for offense, we need only replace our Imposter teams for Mold Breaker teams and the meta is "balanced" once again... right? The thing is, I'm not sure Mold Breaker actually "beats" stall. It doesn't have any other effects, so at best it essentially just trades abilities one-for-one (or occasionally one-for-two vs. some Flower Veil teams), and at worst it gives up a precious ability slot for no effect whatsoever.
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I agree with basically everything you say here, all I can really add is insights I have from lots of simulated games. I mentioned Mold Breaker not as an argument for unbanning, but because its the only archetype that can consistently beat the best Fur Coat teams with notably better odds than a coin flip. Even double mega Amphy is only slightly favoured in the long run. (and you kinda have to run Plus/Minus because of the download tech you mention). One particular demon that I know is good but dont want to actually use is Fur Coat mega hera, which is better than intrepid according to the sims too. Offence and Stall at the same time, such fun! I have a much cleaner conscience using Mold Breaker mega hera or the good old Intrepid HO one.
mb about the pronoun thing, no harm meant.
Unless, of course, someone actually convinces tiering leaders to allow it somehow. But that someone will not be me, lol.
For the first time I now have the glory of being number one on the ladder. Now it is time for me to give my final thoughts on this current suspect test.
Here is the time that I laddered with.
Venusaur-Mega @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Fur Coat
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Metronome
Venusaur-Mega @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Flower Veil
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Quiet Nature
- Metronome
It was a simple idea at first, just taking two of the best abilities available right now and combining it with one of the best Pokemon right now. This team just wins games. The vast majority of my losses along the way were to Explosion/Final Gambit/Imprison/OHKO Move etc, and it felt super consistent. This team just destroys common teams such as Mega-Hera and non-Unaware Stall teams (which is common rn since they can run Fur Coat), but the main struggle is Blissey teams, which can easily take advantage of all of these ability-based boosts, but as of late you really don't see too much of it.
When it comes to the suspect, I currently plan on voting BAN for Fur Coat, and UNBAN for Fluffy. Fur Coat has simply made stall too good in my eyes, and I feel like a metagame that revolves around stalling a game to 16 turns just doesn't feel like a fun one. Yeah, you can just use Mold Breaker, but then those Pokemon don't get the stat boost that they likely run, making the game last just as long anyways. While I would love to see the metagame where we adapt to this by using more special attackers, I just think it would be worse overall.
Fluffy is an unban in my book, because it is a worse buff than is given by Fur Coat, and comes with the downside of being extra weak to fire. It will likely be best used with Primordial Sea, to negate that downside. Due to the restrictive nature this ability brings around, it definitely doesn't feel broken in my opinion.