The Mix and Mega Council has decided to suspect test Lugia!
Although not particularly overpowering at its introduction, in the months since it was unrestricted in Mix and Mega Lugia has established itself as one of the most reliable win conditions in the metagame. Multiscale and an excellent defensive statline give it numerous opportunities to set up, and getting access to Magic Bounce from mega stones prevents many of the best ways to deal with setup sweepers from functioning against Lugia. Absolite sets come in at an astonishing 150 base speed, making them very difficult to safely revenge kill, while Sablenite sets make use of 106/180/204 defenses and Calm Mind to make themselves essentially unbreakable. Lugia's movepool is not particularly deep, but the tools it does have give it everything it needs to be effective; decent special stab options, psychic noise to prevent opponents from recovering, a decent array of special coverage, and of course reliable recovery.
While Lugia has many advantages, it is also not without its flaws. While its Psychic / Flying leaves it with a fairly decent defensive profile, Lugia is still weak to a number of common offensive types. This leaves Absolite sets vulnerable to revenge killing from the one common pokemon who is reliably faster, Regieleki, and Sablenite sets can struggle with a number of slower offensive pokemon like Samurott-Hisui and Sandy Shocks. Both Lugia sets are also vulnerable to being outboosted by setup sweepers with super effective attacks such as Lunala and Arceus-Ghost. In addition, Lugia's offensive presence leaves something to be desired; a base 90 special attack leaves its attacks distinctly unimpressive even after a mega stone boost, and between that and the common resistances to its stab combination there are rather a lot of pokemon that can safely soft check or pivot around Lugia such as Corviknight, Slowking-Galar, and Garganacl. Even without any form of dedicated hard counterplay, teams can often find ways to mitigate Lugia's effectiveness by use of multiple soft checks or making predictions.
When taken holistically, is Lugia simply too potent a setup sweeper to be allowed to continue mega evolving? The council has elected to suspect test Lugia in order to allow the community to answer this question.
Requirements:
NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING A NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!
Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in Mix and Mega before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played Mix and Mega before the test, full stop.)
At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact KaenSoul, Giagantic, Isaiah or a member of staff.
If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me or post here!
The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2800. The deadline for getting requirements will be Saturday, November 23rd.
Voting:
Once the suspect period is over, everyone who has obtained reqs will be tagged. The post will then outline a process of blind voting, which will be clarified once the time arrives. For now, follow the above "Requirements" subheading to ensure that you have achieved requirements and linked your account
A super-majority of 60% ban votes is required to restrict Lugia from Mega Evolving in Mix and Mega
TL;DR:
- Lugia is permitted on the suspect Ladder
- The COIL value is 2800
- You must ladder on a newly-created alt of any name
- You must link your suspect alt with your smogon account using /linksmogon, though the voting process will happen in a thread in blind voting.
- The suspect test will run conclude at 11:59pm GMT -5 (EDT) on Saturday, November 23rd.
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Also wanna talk about Garganacl. I feel like this thing is just a pain to deal with in builder. Most counters are Substitute (which is difficult to fit on most mons, Ghosteus is probably best for this), Watershifu, Walking Wake, CC Great Tusk, Gravity Groundeus, Covert Cloak mons like Lunala or Ndm. While this is a pretty decent pool of mons they aren't very splashable imo and constrict the rest of the team. In battle Garg is also restrictive, if you wanna bring your Garg counter you have to risk taking Salt Cure, unless you are covert. Watershifu and Wake both take a million damage into Salt Cure and both of them have generally easy to fit counters. Garganacl also has a million sets, Def/SpD Sable, Def/SpD Latiasite, Aggronite, Tyranitarite, Pinsirite, even Altarianite. The risk of guessing wrong (especially the -ate ones because garg just explodes on your face) is pretty high. I feel like most people aren't too worried about Garg because "ohh just another bulky rocker you want banned" or something, but I feel like some recognition or action would be nice.
Magearna is another mon that is hard to deal with imo, not nearly as much as Garg. Again set guessing between bulky/stored power Latiasite, Pinsirite, Manectite, Sablenite, even niche Blue Orb or Venusaurite as well as dealing with pre-mega Soul-Heart can be pretty game deciding if you make the wrong play. However, most of these aren't too threatening even you you guess wrong other than the Stored Power ones and Magearna also has 4MSS between having Ice Beam, Fleur Cannon, Spikes, Encore, on defensive sets so I think it isn't too bad.
or some MonBulky with Roar / Whirlwind
