There have been a lot of good opinions and I will try to avoid echoing anything previously said, so I will try to be brief-ish.
So if you have talked to me at any length about my personal tiering philosophy, you should know that team diversity is top priority for me. That is why I supported the Hariyama re-test honestly: Even though Lanturn and company work fine as Fire and Ice checks, they don't go on every team per se and teams shouldnt be forced to pick from a small handful of mons for a role anyway. AV Hariyama gave teams some extra building room by providing a new alternative that bought new breathing space for teams via role compression and new defensive synergy dynamics, and therefore more team diversity can unfold. In this sense I feel like most people agree: AV Hariyama is good for the tier. It provides more opportunities for more teams to branch out and diversify. It isn't overwhelming and gives me a not-Magmortar option for my offense.
However I am reminded of the Machoke suspect as well. Machoke in ORAS was also beneficial to the tier, but we banned it because of one singular part. It was dpunch in that case, and it is Guts in this case. I am definitely in the camp that believes that complex bans should be avoided when possible, so while the AV set is beneficial in so many ways I have to admit that the Guts set is nothing but damaging and warrants a ban. Ironically enough, the Guts set has the opposite effect of the AV set: it shrinks the number of options available to teams. Weezing goes from a perfectly fine Fighting check to an iffy one, as does Granbull and others. I found that I had to have multiple mons to beat Fighting Types now all because just having 1 made me too vulnerable to Hariyama teams. It is due to the constricting nature that Guts has on the metagame that I will vote ban in the suspect.
To be fair though, Guts does have a lot of drawbacks that have been covered. Guts is not a set for the long-term as it is worn down pretty easily, although you can extend it by sacking a 2nd member of your team for it with a Healing Wish. You do also have to predict heavily if you are the one using Hariyama, as a bad cc almost always forces you out and Hariyama relies a lot on pressing the right attack at the right time. I do offer this counter-argument though: Yes Hariyama is a short-term wallbreaker and is prediction-heavy, but I really only need to get 1 really good hit in most games. In so many of my matches, I only needed Hariyama to break 1 threat, and sometimes 1 attack was enough. Predicting Fighting switchins is also pretty easy, so I just went for the easy Facade/Knock Off and got a kill most of the time...or at least crippled something. This poses a problem for teambuilders: either have a hyper-specific counter (Gourgeist-XL comes to mind) to Hariyama or have multiple answers for 1 single wallbreaker. The repercussions for not doing so is to make your team very vulnerable to Hariyama and, more specifically, the sweeper/wincon that Hariyama is breaking for.
tl;dr: I'm voting ban even though I love AV Hariyama and what it offers to team diversity. The Guts set, even though it has its flaws, is not meant to win games but break walls...and it does so reliably enough that it limits the number of consistent walls and constricts teambuilding more than what AV potentially adds.
So if you have talked to me at any length about my personal tiering philosophy, you should know that team diversity is top priority for me. That is why I supported the Hariyama re-test honestly: Even though Lanturn and company work fine as Fire and Ice checks, they don't go on every team per se and teams shouldnt be forced to pick from a small handful of mons for a role anyway. AV Hariyama gave teams some extra building room by providing a new alternative that bought new breathing space for teams via role compression and new defensive synergy dynamics, and therefore more team diversity can unfold. In this sense I feel like most people agree: AV Hariyama is good for the tier. It provides more opportunities for more teams to branch out and diversify. It isn't overwhelming and gives me a not-Magmortar option for my offense.
However I am reminded of the Machoke suspect as well. Machoke in ORAS was also beneficial to the tier, but we banned it because of one singular part. It was dpunch in that case, and it is Guts in this case. I am definitely in the camp that believes that complex bans should be avoided when possible, so while the AV set is beneficial in so many ways I have to admit that the Guts set is nothing but damaging and warrants a ban. Ironically enough, the Guts set has the opposite effect of the AV set: it shrinks the number of options available to teams. Weezing goes from a perfectly fine Fighting check to an iffy one, as does Granbull and others. I found that I had to have multiple mons to beat Fighting Types now all because just having 1 made me too vulnerable to Hariyama teams. It is due to the constricting nature that Guts has on the metagame that I will vote ban in the suspect.
To be fair though, Guts does have a lot of drawbacks that have been covered. Guts is not a set for the long-term as it is worn down pretty easily, although you can extend it by sacking a 2nd member of your team for it with a Healing Wish. You do also have to predict heavily if you are the one using Hariyama, as a bad cc almost always forces you out and Hariyama relies a lot on pressing the right attack at the right time. I do offer this counter-argument though: Yes Hariyama is a short-term wallbreaker and is prediction-heavy, but I really only need to get 1 really good hit in most games. In so many of my matches, I only needed Hariyama to break 1 threat, and sometimes 1 attack was enough. Predicting Fighting switchins is also pretty easy, so I just went for the easy Facade/Knock Off and got a kill most of the time...or at least crippled something. This poses a problem for teambuilders: either have a hyper-specific counter (Gourgeist-XL comes to mind) to Hariyama or have multiple answers for 1 single wallbreaker. The repercussions for not doing so is to make your team very vulnerable to Hariyama and, more specifically, the sweeper/wincon that Hariyama is breaking for.
tl;dr: I'm voting ban even though I love AV Hariyama and what it offers to team diversity. The Guts set, even though it has its flaws, is not meant to win games but break walls...and it does so reliably enough that it limits the number of consistent walls and constricts teambuilding more than what AV potentially adds.
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