Just a disclaimer, I'm writing this post on behalf of me, !!11!1!! and Niadev, and not the entirety of the council.
Us three have been building extensively over the last couple of weeks, and have been finding teambuilding getting more restrictive with each and every day. Simply put, there are way too many threats to reasonably prepare for. We think there are 5 main offenders of this recurring problem, and I will go over them in order of how problematic we think they are.
Diggersby is just utterly ridiculous at this point. We were all thinking that this wasn't as bad, considering it can be easily revenged and had hard times coming in. Despite these 'downsides' of Diggersby, it really doesn't have much of an effect on its overall restrictiveness on the tier. Simply put, Choice Band has no switch ins. Normal + Ground STAB is just impossible to switch into, and the 'mons that can just get fucked over byKnock Off nevermind Solaris just invented Foul Play Diggersby and it just fucking 2HKO's Steela and I hate him for it. The only perhaps only form of defensive counterplay is Buzzwole who has a 77.7% chance to just straight up get 2HKO'd by CB Return WITH Leftovers recovery. This means that you have to rely on offensive counterplay, which is still really hard to accomplish. First is actually getting the offensive counterplay in vs Diggersby, which most of the time is after you had to sack something. Second is that a lot of offensive counterplay just gets cucked by CB Quick Attack if they're weakened enough, not to mention SD Quick Attack invalidates even more offensive counterplay. Like, what do you expect me to do vs this thing???? How you have to play vs this is just utterly insane and borderline impossible.
tl:dr It has no switch ins!
Ever since offensive Mega Venusaur has been used more and more, we've been having problems with it. It's not like pivots don't exist, they do. Latias, Reuniclus, Moltres and Rotom-Heat have been generally the most used defensive counterplay vs it. The thing is really that, outside of Reuniclus, all those 'mons get pretty much invalidated as solid counterplay when Sludge Bomb will poison them. Sludge Bomb having a 30% poison chance means it's really easy to fish for poisons on these 'mons. And even then, outside of the aforementioned 'mons pretty much no good defensive counterplay exists. Celesteela can just lose to HP Fire considering the damage output (and even then, some Mega Venusaur run Knock Off), Jirachi also gets beaten by HP fire (and even then, Earth Power sets have not been super uncommon, as they have the ability to hit Chandelure and Alolan Marowak too). Don't even get me started on trying to revenge kill this absolute unit, as outside of the hardest hitting SE moves it's just not possible. This has been a massive strain in teambuilding and in practice as there's just very little consistent defensive and offensive counterplay.
tl:dr Checks get fucked by common hax and nothing can revenge it. Is very limiting and has very little downsides.
Mega Diancie is just also really hard to consistently handle defensively. Counterplay exists, sure, and they're relatively splashable too. Slowking, Scizor, Jirachi, Mega Venusaur, Amoonguss. The absolute huge problem with this is, is that literally every single check is just 2HKO'd after literal minimal chip damage. This isn't hard to get, considering Mega Diancie has been the go to offensive Stealth Rocker in the tier. Diamond Storm / Moonblast / Earth Power is good enough coverage to hit practically the entire tier, but even then, options like HP Fire, Power Gem and other 4th slots like Calm Mind and Psychic are absolutely viable options as well and even further limit the counterplay Mega Diancie has. It can even come in on certain Pokemon for basically free and get a kill, like Moltres, Overheat Rotom-Heat, choice locked 'mons etc.
Offensive counterplay is absolutely there, with Bullet Punch Scizor, Aqua Jet Crawdaunt and Scarfers like Zarude, Infernape, Latias and Jirachi all being solid options to revenge a weakened Mega Dianice considering the overall lack of bulk. However, Diamond Storm having a 50% to raise your defense with +2 invalidates even some if this counterplay. For example, Scarf Zarude can not kill a +2 Mega Diancie with Power Whip.
tl:dr Mega Diancie needs very minimal chip to gets past its checks and counters outside of a very few select group of 'mons and can even invalidate some offensive counterplay because of Diamond Storm. I find this unhealthy and very restrictive.
Gyarados is the same as Diggersby in the sense that defensive counterplay pretty much doesn't exist. Water / Flying / Grass is pretty much all you need in the tier to hit everything, which makes it pretty much impossible to defensively prepare for should it get a Dragon Dance up. So we're pretty much forced to play super aggressive vs Gyarados with Scarfers and faster 'mons do we not want to get swept by it. Now, this isn't absolutely horrible. Lots of Scarfers are faster than it, pretty much the majority, and can most of the time do this job pretty well.
The problem is just that the Gyarados user can simply attack instead of Dragon Dancing. Scarfers that would like to revenge, like Thunder Punch Infernape & Urshifu, Thunderbolt Latias, HP Electric Keldeo and Stone Edge Mienshao & Terrakion pretty much get fucked by any of its coverage moves outside of like Latias. Both sides are forced to play aggressive and always result in very uncomfortable 50/50's which most of the time should be in favour of the Gyarados user, considering it should be in vs something that it would want to beat / set up on. This makes it so a Pokemon that already has basically no defensive counterplay forced most battles into insane 50/50's should the Gyarados user not play like absolute garbage (which I'm gonna be honest, most people don't use Gyarados that well). Simply 'luring out the Z-Move' isn't a good argument considering this forces even more 50/50's and Bounce itself is still a fine move to use in a lot of situations.
tl:dr No defensive counterplay + forces a lot of 50/50's which isn't exactly the healthiest.
It took a while but Niadev, Baker and I finally broke Jirachi. Mixed Z-Happy Hour sets accompanied with Psychic Terrain Indeedee has immense destructive power and pretty much no reliable counterplay. Jirachi flinches so easily through most of its checks it's absolutely insane. Not to mention +1 Expanding Force in terrain pretty much has no switch ins outside of immunities, and blows through a lot of checks like Moltres, Rotom Wash and Heat, as well as 2HKO'ing standard bulky Scizor. Last move is Thunder to nail the rest of the tier like Slowking and Steels outside of Terrain. Z-Happy Hour is just uncompetitive considering its solid bulk makes it so literally nothing can revenge from full outside of Scarf Punishment Weavile, and can just easily flinch through its checks.
I want to note that I don't want to necessarily ban all of these Pokemon. I just find them Pokemon that we should pay close attention to.
I want to also note that all these have been speculated and talked about for a long time now by us three, and have been playtested a shitload with over the last couple of days (maybe even weeks at this point). It always resulted in these 5 specifically being absolutely near impossible to deal with if you have to factor all of them in. We're hoping the tour will prove us wrong and will explore some options to maybe stop these Pokemon, but as of right now, I doubt we're not going to take action on at least one of these. We're still actively discussing within the council, where opinions are still divided as of now.
I hope the people in NDPL can maybe respond in this thread how they feel about these Pokemon specifically after everything has been said and done (or at some point, whenever you feel like it), as this will be the first time UU is getting a huge rise in playerbase and some feedback on the metagame would be greatly appreciated.
Have a nice day everyone!
Us three have been building extensively over the last couple of weeks, and have been finding teambuilding getting more restrictive with each and every day. Simply put, there are way too many threats to reasonably prepare for. We think there are 5 main offenders of this recurring problem, and I will go over them in order of how problematic we think they are.
Diggersby is just utterly ridiculous at this point. We were all thinking that this wasn't as bad, considering it can be easily revenged and had hard times coming in. Despite these 'downsides' of Diggersby, it really doesn't have much of an effect on its overall restrictiveness on the tier. Simply put, Choice Band has no switch ins. Normal + Ground STAB is just impossible to switch into, and the 'mons that can just get fucked over by
tl:dr It has no switch ins!
Ever since offensive Mega Venusaur has been used more and more, we've been having problems with it. It's not like pivots don't exist, they do. Latias, Reuniclus, Moltres and Rotom-Heat have been generally the most used defensive counterplay vs it. The thing is really that, outside of Reuniclus, all those 'mons get pretty much invalidated as solid counterplay when Sludge Bomb will poison them. Sludge Bomb having a 30% poison chance means it's really easy to fish for poisons on these 'mons. And even then, outside of the aforementioned 'mons pretty much no good defensive counterplay exists. Celesteela can just lose to HP Fire considering the damage output (and even then, some Mega Venusaur run Knock Off), Jirachi also gets beaten by HP fire (and even then, Earth Power sets have not been super uncommon, as they have the ability to hit Chandelure and Alolan Marowak too). Don't even get me started on trying to revenge kill this absolute unit, as outside of the hardest hitting SE moves it's just not possible. This has been a massive strain in teambuilding and in practice as there's just very little consistent defensive and offensive counterplay.
tl:dr Checks get fucked by common hax and nothing can revenge it. Is very limiting and has very little downsides.
Mega Diancie is just also really hard to consistently handle defensively. Counterplay exists, sure, and they're relatively splashable too. Slowking, Scizor, Jirachi, Mega Venusaur, Amoonguss. The absolute huge problem with this is, is that literally every single check is just 2HKO'd after literal minimal chip damage. This isn't hard to get, considering Mega Diancie has been the go to offensive Stealth Rocker in the tier. Diamond Storm / Moonblast / Earth Power is good enough coverage to hit practically the entire tier, but even then, options like HP Fire, Power Gem and other 4th slots like Calm Mind and Psychic are absolutely viable options as well and even further limit the counterplay Mega Diancie has. It can even come in on certain Pokemon for basically free and get a kill, like Moltres, Overheat Rotom-Heat, choice locked 'mons etc.
Offensive counterplay is absolutely there, with Bullet Punch Scizor, Aqua Jet Crawdaunt and Scarfers like Zarude, Infernape, Latias and Jirachi all being solid options to revenge a weakened Mega Dianice considering the overall lack of bulk. However, Diamond Storm having a 50% to raise your defense with +2 invalidates even some if this counterplay. For example, Scarf Zarude can not kill a +2 Mega Diancie with Power Whip.
tl:dr Mega Diancie needs very minimal chip to gets past its checks and counters outside of a very few select group of 'mons and can even invalidate some offensive counterplay because of Diamond Storm. I find this unhealthy and very restrictive.
Gyarados is the same as Diggersby in the sense that defensive counterplay pretty much doesn't exist. Water / Flying / Grass is pretty much all you need in the tier to hit everything, which makes it pretty much impossible to defensively prepare for should it get a Dragon Dance up. So we're pretty much forced to play super aggressive vs Gyarados with Scarfers and faster 'mons do we not want to get swept by it. Now, this isn't absolutely horrible. Lots of Scarfers are faster than it, pretty much the majority, and can most of the time do this job pretty well.
The problem is just that the Gyarados user can simply attack instead of Dragon Dancing. Scarfers that would like to revenge, like Thunder Punch Infernape & Urshifu, Thunderbolt Latias, HP Electric Keldeo and Stone Edge Mienshao & Terrakion pretty much get fucked by any of its coverage moves outside of like Latias. Both sides are forced to play aggressive and always result in very uncomfortable 50/50's which most of the time should be in favour of the Gyarados user, considering it should be in vs something that it would want to beat / set up on. This makes it so a Pokemon that already has basically no defensive counterplay forced most battles into insane 50/50's should the Gyarados user not play like absolute garbage (which I'm gonna be honest, most people don't use Gyarados that well). Simply 'luring out the Z-Move' isn't a good argument considering this forces even more 50/50's and Bounce itself is still a fine move to use in a lot of situations.
tl:dr No defensive counterplay + forces a lot of 50/50's which isn't exactly the healthiest.
It took a while but Niadev, Baker and I finally broke Jirachi. Mixed Z-Happy Hour sets accompanied with Psychic Terrain Indeedee has immense destructive power and pretty much no reliable counterplay. Jirachi flinches so easily through most of its checks it's absolutely insane. Not to mention +1 Expanding Force in terrain pretty much has no switch ins outside of immunities, and blows through a lot of checks like Moltres, Rotom Wash and Heat, as well as 2HKO'ing standard bulky Scizor. Last move is Thunder to nail the rest of the tier like Slowking and Steels outside of Terrain. Z-Happy Hour is just uncompetitive considering its solid bulk makes it so literally nothing can revenge from full outside of Scarf Punishment Weavile, and can just easily flinch through its checks.
I want to note that I don't want to necessarily ban all of these Pokemon. I just find them Pokemon that we should pay close attention to.
I want to also note that all these have been speculated and talked about for a long time now by us three, and have been playtested a shitload with over the last couple of days (maybe even weeks at this point). It always resulted in these 5 specifically being absolutely near impossible to deal with if you have to factor all of them in. We're hoping the tour will prove us wrong and will explore some options to maybe stop these Pokemon, but as of right now, I doubt we're not going to take action on at least one of these. We're still actively discussing within the council, where opinions are still divided as of now.
I hope the people in NDPL can maybe respond in this thread how they feel about these Pokemon specifically after everything has been said and done (or at some point, whenever you feel like it), as this will be the first time UU is getting a huge rise in playerbase and some feedback on the metagame would be greatly appreciated.
Have a nice day everyone!
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