Metagame NP: NU Stage 8 - Venus as a Boy (Venusaur banned from NU)

[kay]

I think it's time to think about Slowbro. Disclaimer: I've not been active in NU for a while, so forgive me if my metagame knowledge is off.

As far as I remember, one of the biggest reasons Slowbro was not unhealthy in NU was because it helped keep Emboar under wraps. However, with Emboar gone (I know, it's BEEN gone), It's probably time to think about Slowbro again. It seems to me that the Scald/Psychic/Toxic/Slack off set is incredibly potent right now, as it makes it difficult for grass types to switch in. This small change in the Slowbro meta aside, it does what it always has: acted as a super fat counter to many mons, while also being a reliable pivot and way to wear out the enemy team. The two biggest physical threats that seem to have taken the place of Slowbro are Medicham and Incineroar. Incineroar can run train through Slowbro after taking its Colbur away (all the easier if its a Z set). Medicham 2hkos bro with T-Punch after rocks if Jolly and does not need rocks if Ada.

I'm not going to make a lengthy post about Slowbro in the meta as I just want this to be a reminder that Slowbro being OP or restricting on teambuilding is a topic that should be revisited. Personally, and also without much experience in the current meta, I think Slowbro is not really OP, but may potentially still be overcentralizing (need more time to find out), but I remain interested in seeing how the meta would open up without it around. Perhaps because of Medi and Tiger, there is no justifiable reason to ban Slowbro, but on the other hand, it remains S tier after all this time for a reason. Perhaps it is still putting a chokehold on the development of NU as a tier. I want to hear YOUR opinion.

P.S.

Btw, after my long hiatus, I decided to ask my good friend Eternally for a match in order to get a better sense of what NU is like nowadays. Eternally then proceeded to bring a stall against me in a casual game that I was using in order to learn the meta. This not only violated the rule "Don't bring stall against friends," but also provided me nothing useful in terms of learning the meta, as the stall team was clearly from SUMO (I know because I saw it back then). I find that this was a detestable display of Eternally's lack of sportsmanship and honor. I am both enraged and crushed by the treatment that I received by the man who I once respected and considered a friend. I made this post just to include this Old Man Rant about Eternally.

While I do feel like Slowbro has maintained a status of "maybe this is too good" since the start of the gen, its always been pushed back as a low priority. I feel like if we ever do look at slowbro, it'll have to be during a calm meta where there aren't more pressing issues at hand. Slowbro itself isn't really hurting the tier all that much so I don't mind it staying a bit longer while we look at other things.

So what are those other things? Well, Sand really. I think Sand as a splashable core has really shown itself to be too much for the tier, just looking at NUL and NUPL as examples. Sand right now really lacks any sort of meaningful counter play both offensively and defensively. Teams are stretched enough as it is to cover the threats in the metagame, but now they're asked to deal with +2 Z-EQ Sandslash and Stoutland, both with double speed. The counter play to this is literally stuff like Tangela or hoping you can out play your opponent/they mess up.

Just given how splashable it is, how strong it is, how consistent it is, and how little counter play actually exists in the tier, its pretty clear its a very big issue.


So how do we deal with it? Well there are a few ways to go about it. We can either suspect Gigalith, Sand Stream, Smooth Rock, or Sand Rush. Personally I think all 4 have their own merit so I'll run them one by one.

Gigalith suspect is the most standard way of getting rid of Sand. It dropped, it made Sand broken, it can be suspected. The down side is I don't actually think the mon itself is actually the problem. I think if people really wanted they could make Hippo sand on a pretty degenerate level too, and we end up banning a mon that otherwise could be really cool inside our meta.

Sand Stream on the other hand has the effect where it kills Sand as a whole by butchering Gigalith and Hippo, but it ends up killing the mons in the process. I think this would be a better approach then suspecting Gigalith but overall I don't think its the right one as its not really hitting what the core problem with Sand is, it just makes it nerfed into non-viablity and takes out Gigalith in the process.

Smooth Rock ban would all tho nerf the overall playstyle, I don't think it would be enough to actually take care of the problem. 5 turns of Sand would still be enough to do what it needs to do, so overall while still an option, I think its the worst of of the 4.

Sand Rush I think is the real problem here and is where I'd personally like to look at a suspect for. The problem with sand is just how broken the abusers are in it, not sand itself. Sand doesn't just give speed, it can give teams interesting defensive synergy and gives chip on both sides which can create creative team builds. The thing that takes Sand over the top is the ability to get +2 on Sandslash and break open a team/ clean sweep, and then have a banded Stoutland in the back as a back up plan. Its the power it gives these wallbreakers that's the issue not sand itself. By suspecting Sand Rush you take take care of the problem while maintaining Gigalith in the tier which keeps things like Sand balance a thing.

Given just how many different ways you can take this suspect I'm interested to hear what you guys have to think over it, or if it even needs a suspect in some form at all.

 

[Skelos]

While I do feel like Slowbro has maintained a status of "maybe this is too good" since the start of the gen, its always been pushed back as a low priority. I feel like if we ever do look at slowbro, it'll have to be during a calm meta where there aren't more pressing issues at hand. Slowbro itself isn't really hurting the tier all that much so I don't mind it staying a bit longer while we look at other things.

So what are those other things? Well, Sand really. I think Sand as a splashable core has really shown itself to be too much for the tier, just looking at NUL and NUPL as examples. Sand right now really lacks any sort of meaningful counter play both offensively and defensively. Teams are stretched enough as it is to cover the threats in the metagame, but now they're asked to deal with +2 Z-EQ Sandslash and Stoutland, both with double speed. The counter play to this is literally stuff like Tangela or hoping you can out play your opponent/they mess up.

Just given how splashable it is, how strong it is, how consistent it is, and how little counter play actually exists in the tier, its pretty clear its a very big issue.


So how do we deal with it? Well there are a few ways to go about it. We can either suspect Gigalith, Sand Stream, Smooth Rock, or Sand Rush. Personally I think all 4 have their own merit so I'll run them one by one.

Gigalith suspect is the most standard way of getting rid of Sand. It dropped, it made Sand broken, it can be suspected. The down side is I don't actually think the mon itself is actually the problem. I think if people really wanted they could make Hippo sand on a pretty degenerate level too, and we end up banning a mon that otherwise could be really cool inside our meta.

Sand Stream on the other hand has the effect where it kills Sand as a whole by butchering Gigalith and Hippo, but it ends up killing the mons in the process. I think this would be a better approach then suspecting Gigalith but overall I don't think its the right one as its not really hitting what the core problem with Sand is, it just makes it nerfed into non-viablity and takes out Gigalith in the process.

Smooth Rock ban would all tho nerf the overall playstyle, I don't think it would be enough to actually take care of the problem. 5 turns of Sand would still be enough to do what it needs to do, so overall while still an option, I think its the worst of of the 4.

Sand Rush I think is the real problem here and is where I'd personally like to look at a suspect for. The problem with sand is just how broken the abusers are in it, not sand itself. Sand doesn't just give speed, it can give teams interesting defensive synergy and gives chip on both sides which can create creative team builds. The thing that takes Sand over the top is the ability to get +2 on Sandslash and break open a team/ clean sweep, and then have a banded Stoutland in the back as a back up plan. Its the power it gives these wallbreakers that's the issue not sand itself. By suspecting Sand Rush you take take care of the problem while maintaining Gigalith in the tier which keeps things like Sand balance a thing.

Given just how many different ways you can take this suspect I'm interested to hear what you guys have to think over it, or if it even needs a suspect in some form at all.

Whilst I think Sandslash is surprisingly strong, I still think the main issue here is Gigalith. First of all, banning the mon itself makes the process less complicated than banning sand rush and smooth rock alone, which could still leave some issues behind that I'll tell my opinion on later. Besides, the popularity of the playstyle and its strength was only discovered when they've gotten a solid setter in Gigalith.

However, this move leaves some questions to think about. Did sand had this much success even without Gigalith? Was Sandslash just snubbed so much that the power of its Z set under sand was ignored? Is the current meta just too favorable for Sand offense?

I'll be just dwelling on the 1st one
So first off, people didn't really attempt much on sand before since the best setter they have is Hippopotas. The main issue is that this mon is slow and especially not that bulky since it wants to run smooth rock over eviolite to apply more offensive pressure, and offers little utility in SR and Toxic support besides sand. This hurts its ability to produce multiple sand streams albeit having recovery in slack off, due to its poor overall bulk coupled with bad speed. What does Gigalith do? Just SR and Toxic support most of the time as well. The difference? Gigalith has much much more defensive utility due to its pure Rock typing which also is a benefactor of sand, and its natural bulk is just humongous that lets it check a huge portion of special attackers in the meta and could stay up til late game and will give you multiple sand streams if played well unlike hippo. It baits in Slowbro and palossand easier since it can actually withstand hits on those 2 most common sand checks and eventually hit them with Toxic.

2nd, Vanilluxe is one of the best mons in the meta. Vanilluxe just stops hippo cold in its tracks due to how passive it is, which lets Vanilluxe get hail up. Fast forward to the Gigalith meta, Vanilluxe is still the same pokemon, but it's not an easy task to remove sand anymore. Vanilluxe doesn't really have much opportunities switching in on most offensive sand builds since it doesn't really want to get hit. If successful in doing so, it has to beat Gigalith. Unfortunately, Gigalith beats it. Now, the best opportunity by Vanilluxe is just by going hard on switches such as on Sandslash. By doing so, Gigalith can switch back in, and can tank 3 hits at max from Blizzard, assuming all hits. This is already a huge development for sand. Yes, Gigalith gets worn down in this process, and so does Vanilluxe. Due to how aggresive sand offense is, an even well played Vanilluxe can't outlast another well played Gigalith here. The bottomline here is that hippo has nowhere near the utility Gigalith gives for sand that makes the playstyle vulnerable to much more counterplays.

For now, I think Gigalith is just too good of a mon itself, and it just gives so much utility for sand teams or any other teams that needs an extremely bulky rocker. I personally am in favor of doing something in this playstyle, though I'm still not sure if we should take this course of action.

 

[Jarii]

Sand Rush I think is the real problem here and is where I'd personally like to look at a suspect for. The problem with sand is just how broken the abusers are in it, not sand itself. Sand doesn't just give speed, it can give teams interesting defensive synergy and gives chip on both sides which can create creative team builds. The thing that takes Sand over the top is the ability to get +2 on Sandslash and break open a team/ clean sweep, and then have a banded Stoutland in the back as a back up plan. Its the power it gives these wallbreakers that's the issue not sand itself. By suspecting Sand Rush you take take care of the problem while maintaining Gigalith in the tier which keeps things like Sand balance a thing.

Given just how many different ways you can take this suspect I'm interested to hear what you guys have to think over it, or if it even needs a suspect in some form at all.

+1 to this solution.
I personally think Sand itself isn't the problem, the two mons with Sand Rush have amazing match ups most of the time and don't have synergy issues like Hail has (all Ice types). I do not think Gigalith is the issue at all like Skelos said, Hippopotas might have not good synergy with Sandslash and Stoutland while Gigalith does. But if you let Gigalith stand alone in the meta is basicly a diancie with sand up and no secondary typing. People will talk about the fact that it would make things complex but if we go back to all the other weather mons this is a different case, Ninetailes with Drought is already really good in RU with a Choice Specs it is able to nuke things like nothing. Pelipper with Drizzle has the same thing, 100% accurate Choice Specs Hurricane and boosted Hydro Pumps will hurt everything in the tier. We banned Drought before because it was broken, but Ninetailes with Drought will be as broken without Chlorophyll as it was with Chlorophyll pokémons. If we gonna speak about the complexity ban I want to bring up something we have banned before "Aurora Veil". Aurora Veil was banned about being broken but Hail wasn't, people basicly banned it because it was 1 turn Reflect and Light Screen. The easier way was banning Snow Warning since Aurora Veil is useless without it, also less mons get Snow Warning then Aurora Veil. If this is able to be happening I don't see why we can't keep Sand Stream and ban Sand Rush while we basicly did the same with Aurora Veil. I hope that this will be considered since Gigalith with Sand Stream and no Sand Rush will make the tier probably more healthy then not. Thank you for reading my post! Have a nice day!

 

[Yui.]

Personally I'm a fan of the Gigalith suspect option. I think that neutering sand as a playstyle is a fairly drastic option. It would be less extreme to ban the superior sand setter and allow sand to live with the less effective baby hippo. Sand has existed before in this state and nobody really talked that much about it, as far as I know. Gigalith is a very good mon in itself, being fairly similar to Diancie, as Jarii stated, which makes sand all the better with gigalith as a setter. It is very possible that without Gigalith, sand will still be too strong in this meta, but I believe it's better to first test the waters by suspecting Gigalith and doing suspect laddering with Gigalith banned. This will give people an opportunity to see if Hippo sand pops up as an alternative. If the Gigalith ban does not go through, then it will be clear that Sand Rush is the issue. Perhaps this way of resolving the issue of sand is too tedious, but I feel it is quite possible that Hippo being a sand setter could bring sand into a more balanced state, being used in a niche way like rain or sun would be, as xatu and vanilluxe would become drastically more effective versus sand (a point which I should probably elaborate, but I am too tired to and I feel it is pretty self explanatory). I would say a ban on Gigalith would probably be the best option.

 

[Rabia]

I'm in favor of banning Sand Stream + Sand Rush rather than Gigalith itself. The only reason anyone talks about sand as an archetype is Gigalith sure, but that really doesn't demonstrate Gigalith being an overbearing presence itself; rather, it's the combination of Gigalith being a great sand-setter, and two really good Sand Stream abusers in Sandslash and Stoutland.

While I can acknowledge the argument of "sand sucked before Gigalith", I don't view that as good ground to stand on when deciding what to suspect. Yeah sand was a pretty bad meme prior to Gigalith's drop, but if we look at Gigalith separately from sand teams I don't see a Pokemon restricting team-building to some great degree. The Pokemon Gigalith itself is easy to manage; it's the abusers which make the archetype hard to deal with.

This isn't to bash on Gigalith itself though; I personally view it as a potentially cool Pokemon outside of full sand teams given its ability to act as a really cool special wall that isn't passive. It checks prominent threats such as Diancie and ice cream and messes with all the Slowbro-rank Pokemon in the tier since it doesn't really care about weak Scalds under sand.

tl;dr Gigalith isn't the problem; the problem is we now have a viable sand setter and two really broken abusers of Sand Stream. Suspect Sand Stream + Sand Rush.

 

[EviGaro]

I don't have much to add, I very much support the idea of a Sand Rush suspect, but to add a quick note, suspects aren't based on what the meta was, or what the meta would be. Sand being awful without Gigalith doesn't necessarily correlate on Gigalith being the issue currently. While yes, having a mon that can switch into repeated hits, set up hazards, poison stuff or hit pretty darn hard all very much help sand, using Gigalith itself, in my experience, can also put you at risk against actual sand builds, because you're simply giving them another chance to use sweepers that are extremely difficult to check due to their high speed tier / difficulty to find robust counterplay to. Gigalith itself is a very very good mon, probably one of the best even, but Sand Rush screws matchups to an absurd degree.

 

[Moron5]

I’ve gotten around to playing this tier a bit more as of recent and analyzing how big of a problem sand really is as well as counterplay and restrictions it may have on team building. Sand is very strong but I think some Pokémon are underutilized vs sand as well like Palossand, Ditto, and even Gurdurr (I also think t spikes is very good vs sand and Qwil prob doesn’t deserve D but feel free to disagree).

However, at its current state, I believe sand + abusers is just a little borderline too restrictive to the metagame however I propose something of an alternative to banning anything. I believe whole heartedly a Mega Abomasnow resuspect might bring balance back in the metagame as Vanilluxe is a rather shabby counter as a Gigalith switching in cuts Blizzard’s accuracy by a third and only is a 3HKO with specs while Aboma can Wood Hammer or Giga Drain back some chip while also having the ability revenge sandslashes. I don’t believe it would negatively impact the metagame similarly to Vanilluxe being much slower, lacking item versatility (while making up for it in movepool), and a more awkward defensive typing.

It could hit two birds with one stone however if this is not plausible solution (understandably), then I’d vote (in order of most plausible to least) 1) sand rush ban 2) smooth rock 3) Gigalith 4) sand stream (I don’t think hippo sand is worth killing and Gigalith is bad golem which is bad Rhydon)

TLDR weather wars please

 

[Finchinator]

Re: Sand,

This conversation should, ideally, be split into two different, albeit related, discussions. The first one would be if there is a problem at all. The second one, which only would take place if the answer to the first one was yes, would be what we should do to handle the problem.

Personally, I believe that the Sand archetype is pretty ridiculous. Double rush + Eject Button builds are what I am most familiar with and those are simply potent and largely regarded as cheese. The thing is that they chew up pretty much any opposing offensive team and balances/stallier builds hinge on having something like Tangela or Weezing in conjunction with normal physical pivots such as Slowbro, Steelix, etc. and while Tangela has been trending up lately, it is still a tall order to ask for such specific defensive counterplay. The fact of the matter is that the inherent element of Sand Rush abusers getting 2x their speed with a simple condition being met, which is having sand up, largely eliminates a fundamental element of counterplay -- revenge killing/offensive counterplay. This argument is largely similar to some arguments made in BW OU for the banning of Swift Swim and Sand Rush back in the day, but watered down as this metagame has lesser abusers and lesser defensive presences/revenge killing methods -- regardless of this, the fact of the matter is that there are not many strong priority abusers who can minimize the damage done by the Sand Rush abusers and no common scarfers outrun Stoutland, Sandslash, or Lycanroc in Sand. So basically the archetype of hyper offense or even outright offense becomes inherently risky to use when metagame conditions are what they currently are and even bulky-offense has to take more of a balanced approach as per necessary defensive presences mentioned above. I believe that something should be done here if Gigalith does not rise in June and there are no other factors that play into changing the metagame significantly (I do wish to wait for this to come and see the effects it has on the tier, however).

As for what should be done, banning Gigalith or Sand Stream makes little sense to me as little Hippo was in the tier and nobody used this shit then and Gigalith is a good, not individually broken addition to the metagame. I feel like the clear root of any and all issues would be Sand Rush and banning that ability would be the best solution that makes sense given our tiering history, minimizes collateral, and does not involve anything too complex.

tl;dr -- we should wait and see what June shifts have in store for NU and if nothing of note changes, we should look into Sand teams, specificaly by suspecting (and likely banning) the ability Sand Rush

 

[yogi]

Okay, I'll have a jab at this discussion.

I think when considering what the issue is, two things should be brought up to help decide what the actual cause of the problem is.

1) Was Sand ever a problem before Gigalith dropped, was it seen commonly or even at all in play and did it put some level of restriction on teambuilding?
2) If Gigalith was banned, would sand still be an issue?

Well, to answer the first, no. Sand wasn't a playstyle that was used at all when Gigalith wasn't here. To answer the second, also no. Gigalith is what makes Sand in NU.

I know there's the "if we ban the ability Sand Rush then we preserve Gigalith", but I don't think that's the best way of dealing with it. First of all, if for whatever reason, Gigalith rose back to RU, then you have essentially banned an ability in a tier where it is not an issue, which seems rather silly. If you take Gigalith out of the equation Sand Rush becomes not an issue again, as I am certain that no one will break the meta with some HippoSand style team.

Yes by itself Gigalith isn't broken, but the fact that it dropping is what caused Sand to be a hard to play against archetype proves that it is the issue. Its ability to switch in to Hail setters like Vanilluxe and set sand multiple times thanks to its great bulk makes team using typical measures like the aforementioned Vanilluxe still struggle to deal with Sand.

All in all I believe that if anything should be suspected, it shouldn't be abilities, it should be the Pokemon causing the issues.

 

[MaahirMomtaz12]

Clearly Sand became an issue when Gigalith dropped, and no one uses Hippopotas. The best solution is to either see if Gigalith rises to RU in June, or you suspect test Gigalith

 

[HJAD]

Hi, I would like to contribute to this subject. I feel like everyone definitely agrees on why Sand as a playstyle became popular in the first place, and that is through the Gigalith drop. By virtue of it being not-complete-trash like Hippopotas, people have obviously become more willing to try out Sand as an archetype without the afformentioned deadweight. There are 2 real questions behind this discussion I feel; Is sand broken? and if it is, how should we deal with it? I'll explore both questions, but I particularly feel as though the former question has rather been underexplored, with the later having every single scenario debated and discussed amongst the above users.

So, is sand broken? (And by sand, im talking about the whole archetype Gigalith / Stout / Sandslash / eject button stuffs / fillers). I feel as though people have overstated sands potential. Sure, Weather will always have a natural advantage vs your typical Offense settup, but Offense definitely has ways as a countermeasure to Sand. We could go full BW and run teams with specific Sand countermeasures. By this I mean Vanilluxe / Aurorus / Abomasnow all have the ability Snow Warning, and thus the ability to neuter Sand at any given moment. Of course, Gigalith can just switch back in after taking a Blizzard from the first 2 and set sand back up, however Giga itself has very much so the same switchins as Stoutland / Sandslash, so the opportunitys to get in ur sweepers will be few and far between, which is why I believe that Eject Button has really hit it off with this style of team in particular. Almost instant access to your sweepers is super good, but a reliance on Eject Button as a means by which to get ur sweepers in is extremely risky and inconsistent. This is because your dependent on your opponents clicking patterns, and they are not always predictable as I'm sure everyone has experienced by now. I guess my whole point talking about this is, Offense has these counter-plays to give it opportunity of Victory vs this style of team, add to this the fact that some Pokemon can use Z-Rain Dance or Z-Sunny Day too, so you can within reason fit 2 different absolute counterplays to Sand using Offense, and with this in mind I believe that Sand isn't overly broken vs Offense. You could equally counter-argue that what I've said centralises Offense around the Sand Archetype, and that isn't fun for meta development, which is a completely valid way of looking at it, however, it probably needs a bit more time to see which way the tables are tipping in terms of Offense vs Sand.

Now ill analyse Sands matchup vs Bulkier archetypes, and I definitely feel as though this is much more clear cut. The most common balance core in the meta at the moment is the Steelix+Slowbro core. Together they check almost all of the Physical metagame, and with Sand depending on the use of Physical Attackers (Stoutland and Sandslash) its clear to me that, vs the typical balance team, Sand has a much more troublesome match-up than previously vs Offense. Sand's main out vs this core is SD Groundium Sandslash but my main argument with this is that, how quickly you manage to convert Giga switching in for Sand Stream into a +2 Sandslash is very much so dependent on how the Opponent decides to play around the gigalith and how he decides to pressure it. For example, in the scenario where Sandslash is in vs a Slowbro, its self evident that Sandslash cannot reasonably settup and would therefore need to go out into a different Pokemon until the opportunity is correct. If you extrapolate this argument, where does Sandslash reasonably get this Swords Dance? And its very difficult to find a scenario in which it gets it for little to no sacrifice. The only really common scenario is vs Steelix which often carries Roar, Toxic and Heavy Slam which can nab a 2HKO 90% of the time vs a Sandslash that has taken SR damage, and vs Birds by which I mean Xatu, Golbat, both of which can also hit it for a reasonable amount of damage. Add into the equation that there are several Pokemon in the tier which completely neuter Sandslash (with Tangela really rising to prominence of the back of its utility to take on Sandslash with ease but not forgetting that Gourgeist is super under explored as a pokemon also) and the fact that a good few Pokemon can revenge kill Sandslash either via priority (think Sneasel, Aqua Jet mons), tanking one hit and crippling it (think Mesprit, Rotom, Uxie, etc) I feel as though Sand lacks the sufficient devices to reliably break Balance. The key word here is obviously reliably since I think if Sand could manage to rid the one thing that has plagued Weather teams in the past, which is reliability vs any team, it would be Broken in my eyes, however, im yet to be sufficiently convinced that this is 100% the case. To summarise, the previous 2 paragraphs, Sand doesn't bring to the table much more than what a Rain / Sun manual weather team already does, apart from the potential of a more stable backbone in exchange for a bit of the lethality that the sweepers have. Its matchup vs Offense is clearly good, but there are ways to circumvent that, and vs Balance, I feel like in a practical sense it will be diffcult to break rather than looking at it from the perspective that Sandslash will always have a swords dance under its belt, cant be revenge killed until sand is done, and have its groundium in tact at all moments.

Ill be a bit more brief with the second question, since its really personal preference. I personally believe that if anything should be touched, I think that a Gigalith suspect should ensue, rather than the banning of any abilities or items. The reason I believe this is two-fold. A.) Smogon in general prefers to ban Pokemon rather than specific items / abilities. and B.) Because it could be an appropriate showing of whether the Sand archetype without the Gigalith is just as good. If it is just as good, its clear that one of the sweepers is the problem or maybe the abilitys / items. If without Gigalith, sand falls apart again with Hippopotas, then its clear that I think Giga is the one thing that pushes Sand over the edge if indeed its deemed broken and some countermeasure needs to be performed.

tl;dr: i think sand isnt that broken, all archetypes have ways of taking it on reliably, and that in my opinion, the most appropriate counter measure would be to ban gigalith rather than look at specific abilities / items as per smogon philospohy and to truely judge if the sand team that remains with hippopotas is just as good or worse than it was with gigalith

 

[LanstarA]

Yes by itself Gigalith isn't broken, but the fact that it dropping is what caused Sand to be a hard to play against archetype proves that it is the issue.

Personally, I don't like argumentation like this from many of you, as it is overly... For a harsh term, Xenophobic.

When a new Pokemon fully enters a tier, it should not be labeled a foreigner. It is a citizen, more or less like any other Pokemon placed in the tier. Pretend that Sand Stream Gigalith was in the tier for years, and the problem was that Sandslash/Stoutland were RU, and dropped. Would we have banned Gigalith to control this? If we went by the Xenophobic argument, the two sand rushers would have been banned, and Gigalith would stay in the tier.

Don't let the fact that it is 'new' tell you who to ban. Look at the meta as if all Pokemon were there from the start, and see what has really broken it. Yes, many drops from other tiers can be broken on their own. But for ones that aren't broken, yet make others too strong, don't 'scapegoat the foriegner' as a reason to ban it.

 

[Count Riario]

After I've decided to pick up NU again after a while, i came to see i still really enjoy it. The one big thing I noticed throughout my laddering however, was that sand teams are ridiculously good. With gigalith dropping down to the tier, the sand offense has come to shine, and rightfully so. There really isnt a good way to counter sand, as it is able to weaken its checks very easily (I E: Sandslash and stoutland weaken the same physical walls that are the checks to these; steelix, rhydon, slowbro, etc, with slowbro being the best) Besides the fact that the sand makes these pretty strong mons very fast, they're also naturally bulky (especially gigalith of course, but sandslash's defense is quite impressive as well). Rocks are basically guaranteed with gigalith as the rocker, and the momentum isn't a big problem (especially if ran with a volt switcher in rotom or, more likely, heliolisk).

Keep in mind that the prime physical wall of NU, slowbro, which is even talked about going to S+, is 2HKO'd with rocks up by stoutband (with sand up guaranteed, without its a 84% chance to 2HKO):
252+ Atk Choice Band Stoutland Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 165-195 (41.8 - 49.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and sandstorm damage

Now as to how to fix this what I personally see as a problem for the metagame, is not to ban a pokémon. Gigalith on its own isn't broken. Neither are stoutland, sandslash, et cetera. The only problem I see is sand + sand rush. What I'm basically proposing is to suspect test sand rush, so the ladder isn't ran over by sand. That's where I currently stand on it. Let me know your thoughts, I'm open to other opinions!

 

[Yoshi]

@ Life Orb
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Strength Sap
- Sleep Powder
- Leaf Storm
- Sludge Bomb

Hey NU community, to get away from all the sand talk and get some discussion about others parts of the meta, I wanted to talk about Victreebel. Several people in the community have mentioned Victreebel, including ya boi rhydonphilip, and for those who don't know what this does, it's basically a discount Venusaur. Now, at a first glance, it appears that Victreebel is bad and just a slow Venusaur. However, if you analyze all of Victreebel's capabilities, and use it in testing, you'll find it functions well versus slow, bulky teams. Another huge bonus is access to consistent recovery in Strength Sap. Strength Sap is great on a Poison/Grass-type, especially when you're going to be spamming Sludge Bombs and Leaf Storms. It allows you to 1v1 Golbat, as well as some other Pokemon. Like Venusaur, Victreebel has Sleep Powder, which lets it put threatening Pokemon to sleep, like Incineroar (if Adamant). Truly, Victreebel is a pretty powerful Pokemon, although has flaws in that it takes a million from every attack, and is a bit slow. What are your thought on Victreebel?

Here's the team I've been using:

So this is basically a pretty simple team, while not built around Victreebel, is the team I've been using with success using Victreebel. The main idea of the team is to set up with either Incineroar or Klinklang and win. On this team, Discount Venusaur™ acts as an annoying wall breaker, doing a lot of damage to things that don't resist. Like I said, its fairly simple and self-explanatory, so have fun using it, thought I'd finally retire the team (although I have to build a new one lol).

Some replays where Victreebel does (some) stuff:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7nu-762923049
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7nu-759187341
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7nu-759408015

 

[etern]

Hi there, locking this thread because we have a new suspect! https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/np-nu-stage-9-sandstorm.3637061/