Metagame np: PU Stage 1 - LA Devotee (Thievul Banned)

[Parvi]

Time to talk about one of my more fun pokemon lately. I used a simple set of
Gastly @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Sludge Bomb
- Shadow Ball
- Substitute
- Pain Split
The set has its stabs and sub+ pain split. I also use sludge bomb over sludge wave due to its higher poison chance. Using its very low hp stat in combination with lo, rocks and sub, this pokemon can often do 60 % with a pain split. But the life orb isnt just for recoil, it is actually very powerful(only 5 sp.A less than mane) with its lo and high damage stabs. It also has easy entry against fairy types and most defensive pokemon using toxic. On top of that all, its also a spinblocker and survives one flamethrower from carkol and takes the hp right back whilst damaging carkol. I also found very interesting that it basically checks some silv ground sets with sd, multi attacl, utrn and defog.

 

[Akir]

Noctowl, Silvally-Ground, and Silvally-Fire are now banned from PU!

 

[termi]

umm ok then. i can see why the silvally-ground was banned, its a mini groudon. I cannot see why firevally was banned, it was my favorite mawile check. This sounds awfully similar to RU here, where the council is banning things that check their favorite pokemon of the tier. In RU's case it's Salazzle, here, its Mawile.

if you disagree with a ban, you are free to provide arguments as to why you think silvally-fire is manageable in the teambuilder and during play. you already could have made an anti-ban post earlier since silvally-fire only barely dodged the quickban last time and was certainly due for another round of voting, so if you wanted to change people's minds on it you had the opportunity. complaining about a ban after the fact and not even providing an argument beyond "it checked mawile" + some vague accusation of a conspiracy among council members is a good way of ensuring no one will take your posts seriously, judging by the amount of laughing reacts on your post. if you want to participate in the community in any meaningful sense i suggest you start taking the opinions of those who have spent more time and energy in the tier seriously and you start actually talking to them, im sure there are plenty of people on this forum and in the pu discord server who are more than willing to help you understand the tiering process and why pokemon are or are not banned. welcome to smogon!

 

[Checklad]

Noctowl I'm not surprised about at all, once it's got a nasty plot it really has no issue dunking our favorite PU pokemon's faces into the toilet.

Silvally I feel is fair but I'm also sad about, perhaps it's because I doubled down on dealing with several of its forms with semi-supportive Leafeon for ground; eviolite resttalk Brionne for fire and defensive mawile for dragon respectively. It seemed to work well to keep them from dominating my team, but then again, I chose these three specifically to deal with them and that seems rather excessive. But I also had the luck I never encountered a Silvally ground or dragon with flamethrower.

There's barely any ground types around, what's left? Drilbur and Wishcash? Raichu will have a lot of fun, and Manectric too I guess, but Raichu is really slept on at the moment I feel: Surf, Nuzzle, Knock off...

Also please people, have at least one pokemon with knock off on your team. There's going to be more and more eviolites running about as we go down stage 1.

Edit: one day Silvally poison will be the best Silvally left and then I'll be glad for it.

 

[Mango Smoothie]

I wouldn't be surprised if Silvally's make up most of the suspects here, high-powered STAB + enough coverage + good all-around stats could be too much to deal with. On that note here's the Silvally set I've had most fun with before the other Silvally's get bopped.

Silvally-Dragon @ Dragon Memory
Ability: RKS System
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Multi-Attack
- Flamethrower
- Swords Dance
- Whatever you like really

Flamethrower on SD Silvally-Dragon is cool for a lot of reasons. Primarily, as a physical dragon-type Mawile likes to come in except it gets really badly chunked by Flamethrower. Secondly, it lets Silvally act as a more reliable answer to sun sweepers thanks to them all being grass-types. Plus, thanks to Silvally's solid special attack (and the lack of special defense on most of the things you want to hit), you can 2HKO most targets with out resorting to a defense lowering nature, preserving your bulk. Last slot is filler because lets face it you're not clicking much besides the Multi-Attack given we have all of 2 things that resist it in the tier right now and its basically a drawback free Draco Meteor.

0- SpA Silvally-Dragon Flamethrower vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Mawile: 178-210 (58.7 - 69.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0- SpA Silvally-Dragon Flamethrower vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mawile: 180-214 (74.6 - 88.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0- SpA Silvally-Dragon Flamethrower vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Leafeon in Sun: 236-278 (87 - 102.5%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO

(Click on the sprites for importable)
Not a super heat team (besides Seismic Toss Raichu) but its definitely one of the better ones I've come up with. Beheeyem softens up things with Future Sight and has decent bulk to eat a hit and then teleport. Mawile is here for rocks and stopping things like most physical Silvallys and Leafeon. My own Leafeon is Scarfed for speed control, and likes Silvally messing up Mawile so it has an easier time cleaning. Throh is balky and can partake in shenanigans with Beheeyem. Raichu rounds out the team with a volt-switch stop, pivoting to complement Beheeyem, and providing special breaking. Some moves might be questionable (3 Knock Off users + Seismic Toss Raichu), so tweak as you'd like and let me know if you find stuff that works. If you like Musharna it can slot in for Beheeyem (also gives you Healing Wish), but I don't trust Moonlight as recovery + its a bit passive.

 

[MZ]

​

The next major thing the council wants to tackle is Sun. For those of you who have not seen, Sun is an extremely powerful playstyle that has far exceeded its "annoying matchup playstyle but unreliable and not a big issue" status of the last generation. Leafeon was already quite difficult to stop with the Grass-checks in this tier and that's before it got +2 Speed and the ability to drop Weather Balls on Pokemon that would otherwise counter it like Mawile. Ivysaur's powerful Grass/Poison/Fire coverage makes for an extremely solid secondary sweeper that can also play Growth vs Sleep Powder vs Synthesis (or some combination of the three) mind games to boot. Then there's Vulpix. PU has never had an auto-setter for Sun before, the ability to just switch in and get Sun going for 8 turns has always been banned by a higher tier prior to us needing to do anything about it.

The issue with handling Sun is that, although a majority of the council agrees something needs to be done, it's harder to tell what that is. Maybe we ban Leafeon and Ivysaur+Maractus is still too much. Maybe we ban Vulpix (or Drought, effectively same result) but manual setting remains broken because of our crazy sweepers. Maybe we ban Heat Rock and 5 turns is still too much. Maybe we need to ban Vulpix+Heat Rock, or some other combination of factors. Really old people might remember when we had a Sun slate in XY PU. After voting on whether to ban Victreebel, Heat Rock, Chlorophyll, Sunny Day, or Nothing, the council+rotating council decided to ban Victreebel. What we're looking at doing here is something similar, a vote on figuring out exactly what the best way to neuter this playstyle is.

This would be a great time to post if you're looking to contribute to/influence PU tiering before we move into regular suspect tests. It's not easy to get an overarching view on removing what element would properly nerf a playstyle. This is something the council is going to try to figure out as best we can to both cripple the playstyle and avoid unnecessary tiering cost, but any and all perspectives on Sun would be extremely welcome. I encourage people to play with it to understand why we see it as broken, but also play with Sun without one or more of the things I mentioned we might ban (Vulpix/Drought, Heat Rock, Leafeon, some combination, possibly Chlorophyll but probably not given the number of non-broken users we'd be nerfing) and posting about your experiences. These calls to action rarely get a large response, but at the very least now you guys know where the council is at.

One final note- it's totally possible you've played plenty of Sun and don't think it's an issue at all, and in that case I just want people to recognize it can still be a very matchup-based playstyle. If the only team you ever run has, idk, Hippopotas+Silvally-Poison or Overcoat Vullaby+Ice Shard Glalie or something else along those lines, you may not have had the same issues with Sun most people do. But while the level of preparation needed for Sun might be easy for any one team, it's certainly not reasonable to expect of every team that doesn't want to immediately lose to Sun. I can personally say playing with a decent Sun team was a very extreme matter of winning or losing purely based on matchup, certainly not in a way I can really consider healthy, but I never found it much of an issue before using it myself because I tended to have pretty solid Sun matchups with plenty of defensive Noctowl and priority spam and Silvally-Fire to go around.

 

[Pabloaram]

​

The next major thing the council wants to tackle is Sun. For those of you who have not seen, Sun is an extremely powerful playstyle that has far exceeded its "annoying matchup playstyle but unreliable and not a big issue" status of the last generation. Leafeon was already quite difficult to stop with the Grass-checks in this tier and that's before it got +2 Speed and the ability to drop Weather Balls on Pokemon that would otherwise counter it like Mawile. Ivysaur's powerful Grass/Poison/Fire coverage makes for an extremely solid secondary sweeper that can also play Growth vs Sleep Powder vs Synthesis (or some combination of the three) mind games to boot. Then there's Vulpix. PU has never had an auto-setter for Sun before, the ability to just switch in and get Sun going for 8 turns has always been banned by a higher tier prior to us needing to do anything about it.

The issue with handling Sun is that, although a majority of the council agrees something needs to be done, it's harder to tell what that is. Maybe we ban Leafeon and Ivysaur+Maractus is still too much. Maybe we ban Vulpix (or Drought, effectively same result) but manual setting remains broken because of our crazy sweepers. Maybe we ban Heat Rock and 5 turns is still too much. Maybe we need to ban Vulpix+Heat Rock, or some other combination of factors. Really old people might remember when we had a Sun slate in XY PU. After voting on whether to ban Victreebel, Heat Rock, Chlorophyll, Sunny Day, or Nothing, the council+rotating council decided to ban Victreebel. What we're looking at doing here is something similar, a vote on figuring out exactly what the best way to neuter this playstyle is.

This would be a great time to post if you're looking to contribute to/influence PU tiering before we move into regular suspect tests. It's not easy to get an overarching view on removing what element would properly nerf a playstyle. This is something the council is going to try to figure out as best we can to both cripple the playstyle and avoid unnecessary tiering cost, but any and all perspectives on Sun would be extremely welcome. I encourage people to play with it to understand why we see it as broken, but also play with Sun without one or more of the things I mentioned we might ban (Vulpix/Drought, Heat Rock, Leafeon, some combination, possibly Chlorophyll but probably not given the number of non-broken users we'd be nerfing) and posting about your experiences. These calls to action rarely get a large response, but at the very least now you guys know where the council is at.

One final note- it's totally possible you've played plenty of Sun and don't think it's an issue at all, and in that case I just want people to recognize it can still be a very matchup-based playstyle. If the only team you ever run has, idk, Hippopotas+Silvally-Poison or Overcoat Vullaby+CB Ice Shard Eiscue or something else along those lines, you may not have had the same issues with Sun most people do. But while the level of preparation needed for Sun might be easy for any one team, it's certainly not reasonable to expect of every team that doesn't want to immediately lose to Sun. I can personally say playing with a decent Sun team was a very extreme matter of winning or losing purely based on matchup, certainly not in a way I can really consider healthy, but I never found it much of an issue before using it myself because I tended to have pretty solid Sun matchups with plenty of defensive Noctowl and priority spam and Silvally-Fire to go around.

I think in the best ban is chlorophyll, most of the problematics sun abusers have this ability.. leafeon and maractus has a rol without sun in the metagame (leafeon has a swepper/scarf/Band, and maractus a spike lead, outclased by roselia in PU)

 

[Specs]

I think in the best ban is chlorophyll, most of the problematics sun abusers have this ability.. leafeon and maractus has a rol without sun in the metagame (leafeon has a swepper/scarf/Band, and maractus a spike lead, outclased by roselia in PU)

This suggestion on paper makes sense to me, since sun is only ever as good as it's sweepers. However a goal I want to have after the voting is to have sun still be a fine option to bring sometimes. Chlorophyll being gone would make sun absolutely terrible, and I can probably speak for most other council members in saying that we don't want that. After any of the options in Zard's post, sun is heavily nerfed but would still have the tools to function well enough. Without Chlorophyll you would be left with Heatmor (which honestly doesn't gain that much from sun in reality), Charmeleon which isn't that good of a pick in my opinion anyways, and Raboot/Torracat(?). Really digging the bottom of the barrel there. Again I don't want sun to have little to absolutely no semi viable way of being ran

 

[Pabloaram]

This suggestion on paper makes sense to me, since sun is only ever as good as it's sweepers. However a goal I want to have after the voting is to have sun still be a fine option to bring sometimes. Chlorophyll being gone would make sun absolutely terrible, and I can probably speak for most other council members in saying that we don't want that. After any of the options in Zard's post, sun is heavily nerfed but would still have the tools to function well enough. Without Chlorophyll you would be left with Heatmor (which honestly doesn't gain that much from sun in reality), Charmeleon which isn't that good of a pick in my opinion anyways, and Raboot/Torracat(?). Really digging the bottom of the barrel there. Again I don't want sun to have little to absolutely no semi viable way of being ran

No chorolopyll means a huge nerf.. but what would you ban instead ¿Drought? ¿Vulpix? Banning autosetter abilities will make sun a rain counterplay.. you would need a sunny day setter like onix plus a prankster setter

 

[zioziotrip]

No chorolopyll means a huge nerf.. but what would you ban instead ¿Drought? ¿Vulpix? Banning autosetter abilities will make sun a rain counterplay.. you would need a sunny day setter like onix plus a prankster setter

Yes that’s how it’s always done. The ability is banned as clearly Vulpix is not the problem. Weather ran w/o Drought relies on a manual setter such as Liepard, Meowstic, or Onix. This makes sun wayyyyy more manageable as most setters are exploitable and frail, the issue w/ Drought is that all you have to do is be on the field to set up sun for 8 turns. I’d have to agree w/ Specs that a chlorophyll ban is kinda odd as it heavily removes and potential usefulness of sun. Sun will always be fine as its abusers are just incredibly good, so a Drought ban is the right move for making it more manageable.

 

[Teddeh]

Banning chlorophyll isn't the best option due to the complex nature of the ban. Not everything with chlorophyll is broken, hence we can't ban it. I think personally there are 2 potentially causes to what makes sun so broken.
1) Drought - aka vulpix. Having auto-sun when it switches in, if you can get sun for absolutely free, it's disgusting.
2) Heat rock - aka having an extended number of turns to stall out, giving ivysaur / leafeon more free turns to just spam stabs or weather ball without much thought or prediction due to the very very limited number of switches for these mons in the tier.

How do we best address the issue? I am honestly not sure, however I know these two factors are definitely a problem and I think going forward, banning either of them may not be enough. However I am very much open to hearing any opinions if people disagree with me.

 

[TTK]

I was going to make a Silvally post, discussing how I think the remaining formes are going to be in the meta but council announcing that sun is getting looked at, I had to scrap that but either way, time to look at sun and how I think sun is pretty stupid right now as a playstyle.


Firstly, I would like to note that I've already seen some people's thoughts on how sun is a problem. Leafeon's the problem, Ivysaur's the problem, Drought's the problem etc. However, the real two problems are most definitely the ability Drought and the item Heat Rock, not said individual sun sweepers themselves outside of Leafeon tbf since that can just beat down its checks like Gourgeist and Mawile quite easily with Weather Ball.


The reason why Drought is seen as a problem is pretty obvious. Not wasting a turn to set up sun just gives sun teams an easier time to get in and start doing what they do. In conjunction with Heat Rock, you get 8 sun turns by virtue of switching in Vulpix, potentially sacking it there and getting in stuff like Leafeon and Ivysaur to kill things. I am in complete agreement with Teddeh here, it's pretty dumb and you can see why this combination is disgusting.


Heat Rock on the other hand is what makes Drought and sun dumb imo. We already have limited answers for sun abusers (spdef null can be 2hko'd by the likes of LO +2 Maractus what else is switching in?). People may say sun is manageable because it's matchup reliant (other weather teams can beat it etc) but when it does have the matchup, Heat Rock eliminates any sort of counterplay so you have no chance of winning against sun because your team has no switchins defensively and you can't always outspeed the sun abusers. Leafeon cannot be outspeed under any circumstance and the only viable scarfers that are able to outrun +2 Ivysaur and Maractus are Linoone, Mane and Meowstic so if you don't have any of those scarfers, just say gg. It's not healthy at all.



Now I've explained the two problems of sun teams, I'm going to present some different scenarios about how we can deal with sun effectively.

1. Banning Drought but leaving Heat Rock​

This has been an idea that some people have definitely thought about but in the long run, sun is still going to be dumb. Removing instant sun is probably going to be a major blow to the playstyle but things like Suicide Lead Onix will get 8 turns sun and that won't change the fact that the sun abusers will still eat certain teams alive so I think this definitely isn't the way moving forward.

2. Banning Drought and Heat Rock

​

Imo this is the better way to go than method #1. Reducing the turns of sun while at the same time removing the ease of just setting the sweepers up via Drought, sun will become a much less unhealthy playstyle in the meta. I believe some people may think that the ban of these two elements is going to kill the playstyle and whatnot but Trick Room still manages to put in some work with 3 turns instead of the 4 turns most of the time so I think sun should be fine with 4 turns (removing the turn of setup). It makes the sun sweepers much easier for teams to handle and actually have some sort of counterplay to handle them.

3. Banning Leafeon
​

Most people are in agreement that Leafeon is the most dangerous abuser of sun. Having blazing speed so nothing is unable to outspeed it, doing high damage at +2 Attack with Solar Blade and Weather Ball to beat down standard checks like Shiinotic, Mawile and Gourgeist-XL, Leafeon definitely looks like the lynchpin that carries sun teams heavily. If Leafeon were to get banned, that would leave us with Maractus and Ivysaur as the Chlorophyll sweepers and they are definitely easier to handle because they can be outspeed by Scarf Mane (which is actually common) and because they are specially orientated (this tier is in no decline of good spdef walls), I think there is sufficient counterplay to handle them effectively and this choice does not dead the playstyle in anyway, just brings it down to a healthy level.


As of now, those are probably the 3 best options to deal with sun. I could've suggested banning Ivysaur possibly but it's really Drought + Heat Rock combo and a bit of Leafeon that are the main issues, not really Ivysaur. Thanks for reading!

 

[Leni]

Giving my two cents about sun. I dont think it's needed to go through why sun is under the radar, so I will go straight to the businees how I think it should be handled:

PU is still living early meta stages and every move made will affect the meta and tier itself a lot. Therefore I would personally like to see this case be handled in a baby steps. First step for me would be dropping Vulpix out. Why when the problem is the ability, not he mon? Banning Vulpix would leave a backdoor open for other mons to drop into tier with ability of Drought later. I am not biggest believer of retests and with this we would avoid doing so, if something more manageable happens to join our tea party down here while Vulpix banned - releasing it wouldnt be a big of a deal. Autosun is arguably the most ridiculous thing in terms of sun teams and the movepool of Vulpix is fully supporting it. If sun ever manages to be okay in theory in PU (lets say in 4months for example), re-valuating Vulpix's situation with it's role would be understandable.

But manual setters does the job at least as well? This argument for me is very hard to believe. Manual setters like Liepard/Onix are forced to spend a turn to set up sun. This leads opponent to do for one turn whatever they like to. If you are not capable of recognizing the sun team your opponent brought - I dont know what to say. The one turn setting sun means you're capable of making your own counter play to it eg. killing the setter itself and cutting them down by one, setting urself up.

If sun still turns out to be a very problematic with heat rock provided 8 turns of sun, I would move to the next step: dropping heat rock off. This would lead us into a position of sun being up maximum of 5 turns. I think this would cool things down a lot for pu to solve itself and create more staple meta. I really want to stress that new drops are coming again in two weeks, we just banned three mons (probably more silvallys getting banned later?) so this really needs to be taken into account. Meta will definitely be shaken by those. Five turns of sun sounds very reasonable to handle as well.

But why not first heat rock? I personally think dropping heat rock out first is a bit rushing ahead of things. Its like trying to find quick fix for the problem we are facing and putting the long term fix aside. I see drought being a bigger overall problem than a heat rock itself - also if I need to decide, would I ban mon, item or ability - I would rather ban the mon in this scenario always first.

If nothing above fixes chlorophyll users abusing the provided sun - then i would prefer to get rid off entire sun itself. In this case I think sun would have had enough time to prove to be counter playable without being over powered. I hope we can avoid this kind of situation. Banning sun abusers can not be even put on the line in my opinion. The main abuser Leafeon is very solid overall mon that can be used in multiple different roles, but nothing even close to be broken without sun (at least for current meta).

Anyway, everything above said I would:
A) Ban Vulpix, if this doenst help,
B) Nerf heat rock and make sun last max 5 turns and last,
C) To not allow sun go up at all, which hopefully never needs to be even considered seriously.

Again, I hope the upcoming changes in the tier due drops will be taken in account and what those could provide for the tier whenever the voting day gets closer.

Cheers!

 

[iLiekMudkipz_]

Here's my idea for the Sun Slate that may or may not happen. Either way, I think this is a smart slate.

1: Ban Drought
2: Ban Drought + Heat Rock (complex)
3: Ban Heat Rock
4: Ban Leafeon
5: Ban Chlorophyll
6: Ban Drought + Chlorophyll on the same team
7: Do nothing

 

[MZ]

Silvally-Flying, Drought, and Heat Rock are now banned.

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

What is banned when? On showdown we can use all these banned mons still, what is and isn't tournament legal? I've checked to O.P. and saw nothing.

 

[MZ]

What is banned when? On showdown we can use all these banned mons still, what is and isn't tournament legal? I've checked to O.P. and saw nothing.

The 3 things that just got banned need to get implemented on server, it won't happen immediately (hopefully within a day). They're still legal for this round of the kickoff tour because bans that happen mid-round never take effect until the next round. They will be illegal for round 3 and onward.

 

[frog_fucker]

I agree with the council's reasoning and think that sun was definitely overpowered, but I think quick banning sun after a simple council vote is wrong. The council should be much more democratic with these votes and should consider a longer deliberation process or even a suspect test. I wasn't even aware Silvally-flying was on the radar and would've appreciated more transparency. (Now it's time for Silvally-D to go lol)

 

[rien]

I agree with the council's reasoning and think that sun was definitely overpowered, but I think quick banning sun after a simple council vote is wrong. The council should be much more democratic with these votes and should consider a longer deliberation process or even a suspect test. I wasn't even aware Silvally-flying was on the radar and would've appreciated more transparency. (Now it's time for Silvally-D to go lol)

1. mz talked about the intention to vote on flyingvally among other mons right here, and while it referred to the previous voting slate, the meta hasn't really changed to a point that a lot of the mons mentioned in the post are no longer considered to be potentially unhealthy or banworthy. also the thread was open for discussion for quite some time and there was also extensive public discussion on sun in the pu discord so i don't really see how council wasn't transparent or "democratic" here.
2. suspect tests are done only after the meta stabilizes and pu leaves the beta stage, until then quick measures have to be taken and all quickbans are done via council votes.

 

[MZ]

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usage-based-tier-update-for-may-2020.3663457/
+ Appletun, Crustle, Dubwool, Falinks, Hitmontop, Mr. Rime, Galarian Slowpoke
- Hattrem, Liepard, Silvally-Dragon, Silvally-Dark
And Arctovish and Silvally-Fire moved from PUBL to NU so no resuspects for them

This is obviously a massive shakeup. Every single mon that dropped has some major offensive or defensive potential except Slowpoke (seriously, they all massively raise the power level in this tier), and we lost our biggest potentially banworthy mon/suspect candidate in Silvally-Dragon. Feel free to use this thread to talk about all the recent drops and stuff.

 

[Pabloaram]

Nooooooo! I make a team of DragonVally and NU steal him....

About the drops:
-We got more spinners!! Hitmontop is a nice alternative to Throh, in the defensive side have Intimidate and Rapid Spin, and the offensive CC and Techniccian busted priority; Mr Rime is a offensive ice (if we nedeed more) Nasty plot, Rapid Spin, Slack Off (is walled by steel type if not use Focus Blast)
-Also more setup scary swepper :(.... Shell Smash Crustle... No Retreat Falinks.... ID Body Press Dubwool....
-And Aplletun.. good defensive leech seeder or a slow Choice Specs user..

About the rise:
-SILVALLY DRAGON
-DarkVally is stoled of Zu more than Pu.. i think he will rise to Ru bc of Indeedee.. Liepard is about the same thing....
-Hatred is hazzard focus bc of Magic Guard.. idk bc he rise...

 

[SergioRules]

Somewhat bummed by these changes but at the same time I'm super pumped for the drops. So here's my take:

Drops

This thing is a defensive beast. Overall pretty good bulk, reliable recovery, Leech Seed, and a very wide array of offensive moves so that it isn't a totally passive mon. Even a Specs set or a 3 attacks mixed set could work really well due to its really good mixed attacking stats. Apple Acid is a really cool move that can even let it break past specially defensive walls.

Crustle had two different sets last gen and I think it'll keep those similar sets this gen too. You have the Sturdy hazard stack set, which will now be the best mon if you want both rocks and Spikes (sorry Carkol), and you also have the Shell Smash sweeper set which outspeeds the entire unboosted metagame at +2 Adamant and hits extremely hard with dual STAB+EQ. I'm honestly thinking it could be a little much for the tier right now.

I haven't been super impressed with this mon, but in a tier without many Ghost-types, the Cotton Guard+Body Press set is sure to do wonders. Overall don't think it'll be too great but can be a nice physical check to some things with Fluffy.

This is undoubtedly broken imo. A +1 everything mon that can't be phazed, almost relegates every team to running Mareanie, Colbur Gourgeist, or something with Toxic to wear it down. I can't see it staying for long.

I don't know how this will fare considering the meme on how any time PU gets a Fighting-type, it turns out to be too much (see Medicham/Sawk/Gallade from USUM). However in my opinion, I think this could actually fit nicely. While some people will ultimately try the Technitop set with Fake Out/Bullet Punch/Mach Punch, I think a physically defensive set will likely be the best. Also, unlike Throh which has Knock Off and Silvally-Fighting with U-turn, Hitmontop has no real way of punishing the Psychic-types that check Fighting. I think it's a tossup on how good this will realistically be.
e: Technitop gets a strong Brutal Swing, but I don't think it's worth it and isn't comparable to Throh's Knock Off.

THE TAP DANCER IS HERE! My favorite of the drops by far. So much utility with Rapid Spin, Slack Off, Encore, Trick, Freeze-Dry, along with access to Nasty Plot for a sweeping set, and of course broken Healing Wish. Getting past traditional Ice resists like Klang, Lapras, and Carkol with Focus Blast is super good. I can't wait to use this mon, though I think it might be slightly broken.
lmao

Rises

As much as I enjoy Magic Bouncers, this mon was super annoying and I'm glad it's gone tbh.

Really sad to see this go, I loved the Band set as STAB Knock Off could run through a lot of teams, while also having strong U-turns and Sucker Punches. Also really hurts the rain teams as the only Prankster setter is now Meowstic which has much less utility.

(Dragon)(Dark) Sad to see Dark leave as I never got to use an SD set of it, but I think Dragon being banned was pretty inevitable so it being gone a little early just saved council another spot on the next slate.

 

[PiloswineSarado]

I'm really surprised we got so many mons this time and they all probably gonna be good too!

Bye bye

>Interesting too see silvally dragon rise up, the council was discusing if was banworthy and NU just took
>Idk about much about darkvally, i think we spend more time with the other ones and didnt explore him that much
>Idk about Hattrem either :p

New mons

>I'm really sad Dubwool fall, personally I find this mon really boring it just do one thing. Hopefully I'm wrong and we can find more roles to him... or ban right away >:)
>Falinks is scary, it has defiant, setup, can be scarf.. oof, dunno if PU can handle it
>Crustle can be pretty annoying with sturdy hdb smash for the late game, but I dont think would be broken, also its nice to have more stuff for rocks and spikes
>I like appletun, could be a good defensive mon, has interesting moves dont look broken and stuff
>Mr Rime has a lot of potential, besides NP, slack off and spin, could even use trick to nullify his checks with specs, like type null ig
>Hitmontop its nice too, I feel he could stole the niche of band Grapploct, lacks drain punch tho. Also its another spinner but nearly that good as Mr Rime imo

Overall I liked the drops, we got a variety of things, very excited to build with new stuff

 

[Rubicon]

Well, it's something. But it doesn't seem to make my habit any easier to continue...

 

[MrAldo]

Cool drops. Silvallys leaving the tier, cant see that as a bad thing considering we hardly can keep em at bay, silvally dragon will be missed but at the same time not really. Hattrem is a big one, little thing did a lot with the ability and great support options

Crustle is pretty crazy, hazard lead is as reliable as ever and thankfully it has to pick which hazard to use on an offense if it goes the shell smash route it can get really crazy since it has sufficient coverage to hit pretty much everything neutrally. There is a good amount of scarfers to like revenge kill it and preventing it from setting up sounds plausible but having shell smash sturdy with boots tho... now we are talking danger with that combination since it is having a sash intact at any moment in the match. At first glance it looks super hand to handle but PU shall see.

Falinks... oh boy. Setup sweeper with an omniboost that can decide when to sweep. Lord, you can decide to run shed shell on it to switch out if you dont want to think too much when to no retreat. It even packs a punch with 100 base attack, a good speed tier, and strong coverage moves to hit most of its targets. If you dont have a colbur gourgeist, this is going to punish you heavily. Sounds like way too much to handle right now...

Hazard control options like Hitmontop and Mr Rime are super welcome that isnt freaking Carkol. Good stuff, hopefully Mr Rime isnt too much cause it sounds like it could be problematic but amazing to have none the less. Hitmontop will be efficient for sure, kind of fucked by gourgeist but toxic and offensive brutal swing sets means isnt the end of the world.

Dubwool and Appletun are cash. Appletun is super cute and have great defensive utility with thick fat and apple acid, leech seed, recover and dragon stab make it rather annoying to switch to even so thats pretty cool. Some notorious downsides on its typing make it pretty balanced so we shall see what it can do.

Dubwool be like

Dubwool @ Leftovers
Ability: Fluffy
EVs: 16 HP / 240 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Cotton Guard
- Body Press
- Payback

Or something like that but it could be cool as a defensive wincon.