Hi everyone, the OU tiering Council has decided to test Hoopa-Unbound this round.
With its incredible offensive stats, an extremely spammable STAB, and access to a diverse physical and special movepool, Hoopa has risen to become a dominant force in the metagame since its release last year. Hoopa, with its versatile movepool, can viably run physical, special, and mixed sets, making it even more difficult to switch into if the set hasn't been revealed. Hoopa even has access to an extremely powerful Dark move, Hyperspace Fury, allowing it to hit through both Protect and Substitute.
Thanks to its stats and movepool, Hoopa has virtually no safe switchins. Hoopa is more than capable of nailing common Dark resists, such as Clefable and Keldeo, and removing them from the picture with the appropriate move. Even incredibly bulky Pokemon such as Hippowdon, Mega Scizor, and Assault Vest Tornadus-T, are all unable to switch into Hoopa due to its sheer power. Even Pokemon such as Klefki and Mandibuzz, which can shrug off both of Hoopa's STAB attacks, can't take two hits with the appropriate coverage.
Common Pokemon that can shrug off attacks on the physical end, such as Garchomp and Landorus-T, aren't capable of taking repeated hits from Hoopa, making them nothing more than a one time switchin. Hoopa is also often seen running Dark Pulse, thus making both Garchomp and Landorus-T wary of switching in on a possible Choice Specs/Life Orb Dark Pulse.
Hoopa most commonly runs a specially oriented set nowadays, mainly with Choice Specs. Special Hoopa, unlike physical, is capable of nailing both physically and specially bulky Pokemon, thanks to Psyshock. Between Hoopa's two STABs alone, virtually every non Dark-type will either get knocked out in one or two shots. Specially bulky Pokemon such as Chansey and Tornadus-T aren't able to take Psyshocks from Hoopa, due to Hoopa's tremendous power and their frailty on the physical end.
Although Hoopa has plenty of huge advantages, it has some fatal flaws. Its sits at a poor speed tier for a Pokemon with such frailty on the physical end, thus making it highly susceptible to common priority users and many fast physical attackers. Hoopa's weakness to U-turn also poses a huge issue, as every possible U-turn user either KOs Hoopa or gets a free switch as Hoopa is forced out. Pursuit users, such as Tyranitar and Weavile, also are quite a nuisance to Hoopa, either trapping Choiced sets or forcing a prediction with non-Choiced sets.
Although it has its flaws, Hoopa-U is quite capable of overcoming them. Pursuit users can't safely switch into Hoopa and also will struggle to trap non-Choiced sets. Although Hoopa will be forced out vs U-turn Pokemon, there are plenty of teammates for Hoopa that will let it come back in again safely and net another KO. Hoopa, even with its poor speed and defense, is more than capable of pressuring even fast paced teams.
Hoopa is a huge restriction in terms of teambuilding; considering that not only the fact that there are very few reliable Dark resists, but also the fact that none can safely switch into Hoopa. Hoopa lacks any true counters, making it impossible to prepare for and thus worthy of a suspect test.
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 70 games /!\ on the OU Suspect Test Ladder (in which Hoopa-Unbound is banned), 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 Monday April 11th. 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, and/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
