Following the most recent tournaments and general community sentiment, the National Dex Doubles council has decided to suspect test Marshadow in SV Natdex DOU. Marshadow has had a solid place in the tier since the very beginning, but was often overshadowed by other metagame-defining fighting types, most notably Urshifu-Rapid and Zamazenta, who both ended up banned. Fundamentally, Marshadow is a very strong Pokemon, with its incredible speed, attack and unresisted STAB coverage causing it to be banned from both SM and SS DOU. However, SV Natdex DOU has always been an extremely high power level format, and with it being surrounded by a plethora of powerful offensive Pokemon, Marshadow was never as obviously broken as in previous iterations of DOU. Despite this, Marshadow still basically always saw a fair amount of play, often on hyper offensive teams with Chien-Pao. This year, Marshadow has been used on a much wider variety of teams and has seen an explosion in popularity, becoming one of the most used Pokemon in the tier. Along with this, the council has seen a significant shift in the consensus of active players, with the topic of banning Marshadow becoming one of the most common discussion topics in the ND DOU discord. As such, the council feels that suspecting Marshadow is the clear route forward.
As previously noted, Marshadow’s STAB combination of Ghost and Fighting hits every relevant pokemon (and every pokemon in the game besides Zoroark-Hisui) for at least neutral damage. In tandem with its high base power moves, this means Marshadow is able to threaten 2HKOs on essentially every Pokemon in the tier, with CC in particular dealing incredible damage. Thanks to Technician, Marshadow also has the strongest priority move in the tier in Shadow Sneak, which can be pushed to even higher levels of damage with Life Orb and often Tera Ghost. Most notably, this means Marshadow can often force progress and threaten KOs even when it doesn’t have the speed advantage, in contrast to most other offensive pokemon. As if that wasn’t enough, all of the above is still without considering Marshadow’s most oppressive tool. Spectral Thief’s high base power and ability to steal stat boosts make it possibly the single best move in the entire tier, changing the way most teams approach the game, making positioning setup win conditions much scarier, and forcing many games to revolve around Marshadow to a high degree.
Regardless, Marshadow still has some obvious weaknesses. In general, it can be difficult for a fast and (relatively) frail single target attacker to become broken in doubles, and Marshadow is not immune to this. Marshadow can be susceptible to opposing speed control and can often be forced into trading one for one (or less) with bulkier opposing pokemon, such as Tapu Fini or Rillaboom. Further, as a physical attacker, Marshadow can have its attacking power heavily reduced by Intimidate from pokemon like Incineroar, Salamence, or Landorus-Therian. Unfortunately, many of the Pokemon that can check Marshadow or reduce its damage output are not super consistent at doing so, as they can be heavily chipped trying to switch into it or (like in the case of Incineroar) simply don’t fare too well even after dropping its attack. Most annoyingly, Marshadow also threatens to beat itself with Shadow Sneak, creating volatile games in the mirror where both sides most consider both the speed tie and the potential Tera from the other side (since Marshadow most commonly runs Tera Ghost, but can also run other types, including Normal). All of this leads to Marshadow essentially having two main checks: Mega Salamence and Landorus-Therian. While these two definitely match up well against Marshadow, they have fairly similar defensive profiles and Marshadow teams can target them fairly extensively in the builder.
All in all, Marshadow is a very strong offensive pokemon that is uniquely difficult to switch around and can leverage extensive pressure throughout its games thanks to the threat of Spectral Thief. This has been made more obvious with the increasingly wide variety of teams being built to utilize it, as it has seen much more play outside of the Chien-Pao teams it was often confined to before. While Chien-Pao remains an effective partner for it, Marshadow has excelled on more positional teams (often with hazards and Ting-Lu) that make better use of its surprisingly decent natural bulk, making it easier to position and harder to trade against. With the emergence of this development over the course of the last 6 months, the council feels that Marshadow is due for a suspect given the state of the tier and the general consensus among the community.
As usual, 60% of the vote must be in favor to ban Marshadow.
NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!
The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:
- 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 Natdex DOU 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 DOU 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 myself, eragon, bumboclaat , or another ND CL.
- If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM Smudge , big pichu, or eragon - or post here!
The suspect laddering period is now underway and the deadline for getting requirements is <t:1790557200:F>. (This is a timestamp, and will show in your own timezone.)
Marshadow will be legal during this suspect.
Suspect Test Ladder Rules:
- Laddering with an account that impersonates, mocks, or insults another Smogon user or breaks Pokemon Showdown! rules may be disqualified from voting and infracted. Moderator discretion will be applied here. If there is any doubt or hesitance when making the alt, just pick another name. There are infinite possibilities and we have had trouble for this repeatedly. If you wish to participate in the suspect, you should be able to exhibit decent enough judgement here. We will not be lenient.
- We will be using the regular National Dex Doubles ladder for this suspect test. We will not be creating a new Suspect Ladder. At the beginning of every battle, there will be an announcement denoting the ongoing suspect with a link to this thread.
- The element being tested, Marshadow, will be allowed on the ladder.
- Any form of voting manipulation will result in swift and severe punishment. You are more than welcome to state your argument to as many people as you so please, but do not use any kind of underhanded tactics to get a result you desire. Bribery, blackmail, or any other type of tactic used to sway votes will be handled and sanctioned.
- Do not attempt to cheat the ladder. We will know if you did not actually achieve voting requisites, so don't do it. Harsh sanctions will be applied.
- No unhelpful one liners nor uninformed posts;
- No discussion on other potential suspects -- if you wish to discuss another Pokemon, we encourage you to do so in the metagame discussion thread, but this thread is strictly to discuss if Marshadow is banworthy or not - not other elements of the metagame;
- No discussion on the suspect process -- this includes testing Marshadow vs other potential suspects;
- Do not use the argument of broken checking broken. Should your argument rest on your opinion that banning the Pokemon or mechanic being tested in this suspect test will make a Pokemon or mechanic broken, overpowered, and/or uncompetitive; don't. If something needs to be banned because of the result this suspect, then so be it.
- You are required to make respectful posts; Do not flame, belittle, or be disrespectful to users in this thread. While not everyone will read this post in its entirety nor will everyone have an informed opinion, please be sure not to be disrespectful. If there's an issue, bring it up to a moderator.
- Failure to follow these simple guidelines will result in your post being deleted and infracted without any prior warning.
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