Hello, the tiering OU Council has decided to test Sablenite and Shadow Tag this round.
Mega Sableye, with Magic Bounce, paired with its typing, its good utility movepool (Recover, Will-o-Wisp, Calm Mind, Knock Off, Foul Play), and the defense stat boosts given by its Mega Evolution, Mega Sableye has become a centralizing force in the OU metagame that is not easy to take down.
Being the only bulky Magic Bounce Pokemon in existence, Mega Sableye makes it extremely difficult to set-up any sort of entry hazard once it has Mega Evolved. Only a few Pokemon can afford the luxury of setting their hazards against Mega Sableye without sacrificing viability. This issue makes it extremely difficult for anyone to beat a defensively oriented Mega Sableye teams. Due to Mega Sableye's presence, setting hazards up and pivoting until a hole is created is nearly impossible now when it used to be one of the most efficient ways to break defensive play styles.
By making pivoting impossible and increasing difficulty to break defensive teams, Mega Sableye forces the use of specific Pokemon or specific sets that have the ability to beat almost every form of stall team that were not commonly seen before the rise of Mega Sableye stall. Togekiss and Mega Pidgeot are two examples. Most of these Pokemon / sets find their usefulness against and only against these teams archetypes. That means using them is definitely risky because they can be absolute deadweights against any other type of team (ex: Mega Pidgeot against offense). Without the use of these specific breakers, making every right move and prediction is not enough, the chance of winning is non-existent or very slim.
We are not saying that it is impossible to beat a good team based around Mega-Sableye, but the fact that this Pokemon forces the use of specific Pokemon or specific movesets to beat the team archetypes in which it works best creates a massive both teambuilding and metagame development restriction. We believe the centralization it brings to the tier is worthy of a suspect test.
Shadow Tag has been identified by both tournaments and ladder players as an issue. This ability denies the opposing side one of the key elements in Pokemon; switching. There are a few exceptions to this, such as Ghost types and opposing Shadow Tag Pokemon, but only four Pokemon are remotely viable in OU.
The most popular abuser of the ability is Gothitelle, which gets Trick, Rest, Calm Mind, Thunder Wave, and other viable moves. Gothitelle has the ability to give its item (typically a Choice Scarf) to a Pokemon that cannot kill it, forces it to lock itself into a move, and then proceed to a PP stall until the Pokemon dies by using Struggle. The only way a trap from Shadow Tag can be avoided is continuously double switching until the Shadow Tag user dies to hazards (that means hazards have to be on the Shadow Tag user's side of the field) or giving a Pokemon Shed Shell, which only has one very niche use.
We decided to not suspect Gothitelle because we think Shadow Tag is the main part of the problem. Gothorita has the same trapping abilities as its evolution, and thus could also become an issue should Gothitelle be banned. We also think Wobbuffet and Wynaut, despite being quite unseen and less effective than Gothitelle, are problematic, as they can punish the opponent by trapping a target and create a hole and punish the opponent with little to no counter play.
Due to the fact that the ability works extremely well with a Mega Sableye stall team, we have decided to only ban Sablenite from the Suspect Ladder. Then, the voters will vote on Sablenite and Shadow Tag. That way, if they think Sablenite was the only issue, they can remove it and only it. If they still think Shadow Tag is the issue even without Sablenite (based on the ladder experience, where it will be allowed even without one of its main supporter, Mega Sableye), they can vote to boot it out while keeping Sablenite. Obviously, the voters will have the option to boot both of them or neither of them.
For this round we are going to have two alternative ways to qualify for voting:
- Laddering: you will need to achieve a COIL rating of 2700 (or more) in a /!\ game limit of 75 games /!\ on the OU Suspect Test Ladder (in which Sablenite will be banned, but not Shadow Tag), that will be implemented very soon.
- Suspect Tours: check McMeghan's thread.
The suspect test will last for approximately 2 weeks and will end on Wednesday 9th December. The vote will take place in roughly one week after that.
Use this thread to discuss the suspect and your thoughts on the suspect metagame. If you have any questions, then feel free to contact AM, boudouche, M Dragon, McMeghan, PDC, TDK or Tesung through a PM. These threads tend to get derailed so please make extra effort to stay on topic. Future suspects need not be discussed in this thread.
Keep in mind that, as usual, it's going to be up to the playerbase to decide the outcome of this test. Good luck and have fun laddering!
/!\ Rules for posting in this thread /!\
- No one liners nor uninformed posts;
- No discussion on other potential suspects;
- No discussion on the suspect process;
- You are required to make respectful posts;
- You are required to read this thread before posting.
Failing to follow these simple guidelines will result into your post being deleted and infracted without any prior warning.
Antar's edit: as with the previous OU tests, the B value for this test is 17.0. To figure out how many battles you will need to have in order to achieve reqs, first determine your GXE (shown on the ladder and when you type /rating) and plug that into the following formula:
N=17.0/log2(40*GXE/2700)
(Google calculator is awesome for this kind of thing).
Here are some sample values:
Code:
GXE N
100 30
90 41
85 52
80 70
75 112
70 324
. Thanks for reading !
