Metagame np: SM UU Stage 10.5 - Water Me (weather test)

[Mangrovius]

First of all I have to give a shoutout to Estarossa. After this man railed on me for a solid 5 minutes for using the "unset" that is Scarf Infernape (right after I smoked him with it of course), he had a small change of heart. He's a sucker for Sand and he was just tired of all the Sunburns and Rain washing away his sandcastles. He loaded me up with some classified (and kinda gross) stall to get my reqs and end this weather war. I'm here to do my part.

Banter aside, I've played a variety of archetypes and tried my hand on some Sun and Rain teams myself. Since their inception I have become slightly less adamant about removing them from the tier. Useable and very creative answers to the weather have surfaced and I feel like playing Sun or Rain is no longer as free now people are more prepared for it. With stall Rain was rarely an issue, and with HO I could generally get around Sun (speed tiers being slightly but impactfully below the ones in Rain). I will however vote ban on both Drizzle and Drought for the following reasons:

-I feel like UU (pre-weather) was actually a very reasonably balanced tier. The best pokemon in the tier are excellent in their own right, but they definitely have well defined solid answers that don't strain teambuilding a lot. Enter Rain/Sun. You now have less than a dozen necessary pokemon to pick from and you need multiple to even play the game, let alone win it. Building a team of 6 pokemon that has a reasonable matchup spread against the whole tier is hard enough without the weather. So it's not that you need to account for many more factors, but they just can't be ignored because if you do you lose at team preview. Then when you're not facing weather, you're stuck with your AV Goodra and wonder why you even decided to queue up for a game in the first place.

-How strong these teams are without deviating from the main formula. Take a pokemon like Latias. One of it's defining factors in making it such a big threat is the amount of sets it can reliably run. Once you know it's set it's a lot easier to work around. With these weather teams, sets are borderline set in stone and they STILL are a menace to deal with. They also force more generic answers, as stated in the previous point.

-Most of all, even though this is a somewhat personal point, I just thought UU was a lot of fun the way it was. In OU every other game is decided by whether Ash-Gren Dark Pulse flinches you or not and you need 9 mons just to break down Toxapex. Now UU is all about dancing around your opponent (or vica versa) for 7 turns and hoping you have enough pieces left to play the game after. I feel like UU will grow into a very "matchup dependent" state, and I don't think that will be good for the tier. I feel like everything else has already been said on the subject.

It's a ban for me.

PS: Scarf Infernape actually outspeeds Modest Venusaur by 1 point and OHKO's both Venu and Houndoom reliably. Unviable probably, but even when weather leaves us, Scarf Ape is here to stay ;)

 

[illuzionist]

Good evening, i tested rain for a few days , still not sure how i feel about it, kingdra is definitely too fast to hit so hard but alot of bulky wather/dragons and the lack of ferro to stop them keep him from sweeping easely.

this is a funny team i used to get reqs: https://pokepast.es/49ecafecabda08c1

i will use the nxt days of suspect left to test sun as deep as i can.

reqs:

 

[Hogg]

Please post your reqs here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sm-uu-stage-10-4-voting-identification-thread.3653546/

 

[Railgun]

Hi people, i'll made the reqs with this team and it really works well for the current metagame, here I leave the team in case anyone needs to do the reqs in the remaining time.

team: https://pokepast.es/b0b6ccacc235d83b

In my opinion the climates are broken, the sun has a venusaur + Houndoom + Healing Wish user and it is difficult to deal with them on some occasions.
The rain has several mons who abuse it such as Kingdra, Tornadus, Seismitoad, Belly Drum Poliwrath (i got to give some problems btw), well, in my opinion i feel that they do not fit in the metagame and it was good to make a suspect test, i hope many people vote and analyze everything well, i hope and serve them the team that i gave them, luck with the reqs people

 

[Hogg]

Voting thread is up! https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usum-uu-suspect-process-stage-10-5-voting.3653693/

 

[Hogg]

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usum-uu-suspect-process-stage-10-5-voting.3653693/

Drizzle and Drought will both remain UUBL! Thanks to all for participating in this suspect.

 

[Clefable]

An argument for multitesting.
As Gen 7 comes to a close, the health of the UU metagame is still in question. Weather, Scizor, and Altaria have all been tested, but potentially unbalanced threats still remain. I think it would be prudent to take inventory of the next potential suspect candidates as we make efficient use of the little time we have to make UU the best tier we can.

In no particular order:

1. Latias

Latias is a mon which has been a cut above the rest of the tier since the very start of Gen 7, and the key to Latias's viability is its versatility. It is able to run Scarf sets, CM sets with Z-move, LO sets with STAB moves, BoltBeam sets, and more recently we have seen Specs sets make appearances in tournaments. Support options it is able to run include Defog and Healing Wish, and thanks to its bulk and resistance to common types, it helps provide a defensive backbone to offensive teams.

Latias counterplay comes in few forms. Mons like Sylveon and Scizor stop some sets while losing to others. The most reliable answer to Latias is Pursuit trapping in the form of Scarf Krookodile and Mega Aerodactyl. The usage of Scarf Krookodile in particular has led to some funny adaptations such as Adrenaline Orb Latias seeing tournament play.

Much of what has been said about Latias has been said about other S ranks. Latias has a high BST, a ton of options, and a great typing, and while reliable counterplay to it does exist, it is one-dimensional and leads to a centralized metagame. Whether removing it from the tier would result in a healthier metagame or not can only be determined by suspecting it.

2. Terrakion

Since Gliscor was banned, Terrakion has always been close to the top of the list for potentially unhealthy UU threats because it is extremely difficult to switch into. Terrakion is an efficient breaker that hits hard with almost-unresisted STAB and a good speed tier.

Terrakion's presence in the tier poses a large building constraint on defensive teams. Balance teams use Slowbro or options that may be suboptimal outside of the Terrakion matchup, like Doublade and Palossand, because without these mons the whole team is 2HKO'd. Stall too can suffer, with SD Z-move sets beating Alomomola and Choice Band sets muscling past Quagsire.

Terrakion plays linearly and forces overpreparation from defensive teams, and I think it is reasonable to hold it to a suspect.

3. Blissey

Stall has long been known to be one of the strongest playstyles in UU, and this is due in no small part to the blanket special wall that is Blissey. The backbone of stall is the Bliss/Mola/Quag core, with Blissey generically checking shtuff on the special side and Alomomola and Quagsire handling most physical threats.

The presence of Blissey is certainly felt in the tier. Special breakers have evolved to be mostly ghost or fighting type mons like Infernape, Gengar, and Lucario, the main exception being Latias which can hit Blissey's squishier physical side with Psyshock.

Would banning Blissey ease teambuilding strain on the tier and lead to a healthier metagame? Stall magnate and ladder omnipresence pokeisfun has expressed this opinion, and I agree with him. It is believed that UU is hesitant to suspect unhealthy defensive mons while jumping to suspect offensive threats, so a Blissey suspect would be a chance to challenge that notion.

4. Regenerator

Another tool which allows defensive teams to excel in UU is the Regenerator ability. Alomomola uses Regenerator on stall to be an effective Wish passer as well as a scout. What may push Regenerator from strong ability to broken ability is the way multiple Regenerator mons can be used on balance teams to form a core that is difficult to wear down.

These multiple regen balances have seen a reasonable amount of tournament success, and have also led to some of the longest games. The regen balance mirror matchup as well as the Regenerator vs. stall matchup frequently leads to a stalemate, where neither side can wear down the other thanks to the infinite HP gain afforded by switching two Regenerator pokemon in and out.

Is keeping Regenerator worth allowing endless battles? The 1000 turn rule was implemented in part to deal with Regenerator stalemates, but I think it is better to simply ban the offending ability than allow for drawn out games.

5. Leftovers/Black Sludge

Just like Regenerator allows for infinite recovery through switching, Leftovers allows for infinite passive recovery, which can also lead to scenarios where expending PP to attack does not wear down the opposing team. Defensively oriented teams clearly rely heavily on the item as a major part of their strategy, as stall and bulkier balance will often have 5 or 6 pokemon with lefties/Black Sludge.

The stall mirror matchup is heavily influenced by the presence of Leftovers, as drawn out games offer more opportunities for passive recovery. Many stall teams use the move Knock Off to get the edge over other lefties-based teams. Even if Stealth Rocks remain up, many stall v stall games even without regenerator mons will still go to the 1000 turn limit because rock-resistant pokemon with Leftovers cannot be worn down by entry hazards.

In my opinion, if we think Regenerator is unhealthy because it enables drawn out games, we should think of Leftovers the same way. At the very least, this would be an unprecedented suspect test that would really allow us to explore the reasons stall and defensive balance are powerful playstyles in UU.

With so many threats and so little time to sort them out, I think the best course of action is to suspect all of these at once. The weather suspect which just ended involved testing Drizzle, Drought, and Mega Houndoom, and I think those who voted were able to come to a conclusion about which factors were unhealthy, despite all of them being introduced at the same time. In fact, suspecting Rain and Sun together allowed players to compare and contrast the two, and, in doing so, come to a more nuanced opinion about the effect on the metagame.

Multitesting also offers the advantage of a more relaxed suspect testing schedule. Rather than having 3 or 4 accelerated suspect tests right at the close of the generation, we could test all threats at once, give a longer time frame for people to come to a well-rounded opinion about all suspect items, and still have time for an additional suspect test at the end of the generation if new suspect-worthy items come up.

With the precedent set for multitesting, I think we should take the next step towards making a better UU and test and test everything.

 

[pokemonisfun]

Let's suspect Blissey or Regenerator now. Two major claims lead me to this: 1) stall is overwhelmingly powerful right now and 2) we can target the Alo/Quag/Blissey core without eliminating stall.

I'm going to do four things in this post. First, I'm going to analyze six replays from this past SPL, UUPL and Grand Slam to show how stall is overpowered in UU and how Alo/Quag/Blissey form the heart of UU stall. Second, I'll give more context and analyze stall's place in the metagame. Third, I'm going to list some pros and cons of a Regenerator suspect vs a Blissey suspect. Fourthly, I'll explain why at this very late stage in our metagame, this is our best bet instead of other suspects that have been floated around, such as Latias or Terrakion.

Tournament Replays

I choose to use tournament replays only not because friendly or ladder matches or other games are not as high quality but because in tournaments, the stakes are higher purely because of spectators and the winner take all nature. The elitists have been telling us tournaments are where it's all at, so let's be generous and analyze their games to see how people play.

Stall never loses except when badly misplayed or against a horrendous match up in tournaments. If this is true, then any reasonable player would want to nerf stall - Pokemon simply isn't a game where a play style should have a near 100% win rate considering the importance of luck and match ups. So the question is - is pif's claim true?

Let's look at two games from last SPL.

I analyze them here and here. In the first game, the stall player unecessarily loses Moltres which causes huge problems down the road versus Chesnaught. In the second game, the stall player unecessarily burns a Facade Altaria and loses an otherwise very comfortable position because of that. Both games the stall player lost but because of clear and unforced mistakes. So they support my argument overall stall never loses except when misplayed, haxed, or given a huge MU disadvantage.

Let's move on to UUPL.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-439262

The stall player lost this. But why? On turn 6, you know the stall player didn't watch Pak vs Rob (the second SPL replay) because that's exactly how Pak lost his great position - by burning an Altaria. Fortunately for the stall player, this doesn't hurt him since Altaria did not switch in. But there were two other issues: 1) on turn 4, the stall player should have immediately went Alomomola to Protect against Cobalion on the Future Sight and 2) on turn 13, Gligar was unecessarily sacrificed - Future Sight was a guranteed KO from that point. I think it is fair to say the stall player made huge mistakes in this game.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-440103

Again - how did the stall player lose this one? Turn 3 was slightly inaccurate by the stall player - why not just get free chip damage on Steelix? Turn 6, the stall player could have just Roosted since Moltres cannot KO from there, avoiding the double switch. Turn 9 you have to compliment the stall player for predicting Z Stone Edge and saving Gligar. Turn 18 was absolutely crazy by the stall player and I suspect a misclick - Gligar had no business switching in when Quagsire was healthy. He gets a bit unlucky on turn 32 with the flinch and probably could have set up SR on turn 48.

However, the big idea is this: the stall team got predicted in basically every important turn except turn 9 and still had good chances to win. There was no hugely glaring mistake unlike the two SPL games and the other UUPL game where important mons just died for nothing, however, it is really obvious in this one the stall player just didn't make enough predictions to give himself a better chance.

Now let's look at the ongoing UU Open. If there are replays of stall losing, please post them and we can analyze together. Frankly, I am not aware of any past round 7 (arbitrary cut-off, if there are good games in round 6 or earlier by all means show them).

However, there is one replay I would like to analyze, of a stall team versus a seemingly very difficult MU - the opponent has two well known stall breakers in Haxorus and NP Celebi. Furthermore, the stall player loses Alomomola early on, which isn't needed to wall or pivot anything like CB Terrakion, but still I think it's fair to say it's a tough start for the stall player.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-453572

It wasn't a clean and safe win for the stall team. For example, on turn 58, a U-Turn could have lost the game for the stall player but King of Crimea didn't want to take the risk. And if Gligar constantly roosted to higher health, it could have won without a crit at the end. However, the final turn crit probably did not matter as Power Gem was likely a roll in Nihilego's favor plus Gligar was lucky to not get Scald burned earlier.

I'm not a result oriented person - I believe we should analyze turn by turn instead of focusing on the final result. It's why I hate using records to compare people since you can play well for 40 turns and get haxed on turn 41 - records don't reflect that. Nevertheless, King of Crimea had a dream match up with very anti-stall Pokemon a and a great start killing Alomomola. But as tiny inaccuracies crept in - perhaps he didn't get maximum returns with Haxorus - he still managed to lose a hard fought game.

This game should shock us all. How has stall become so powerful? How is it possible, as my evidence strongly suggests, that we have managed to create a monster of a play style that only loses in very unlikely circumstances?

I've been showing you stall losses mainly. Let me show you a SPL game where stall is played normally versus a normal looking team.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-426501

Complete cock block. The stall player always had the option to sacrifice Pokemon to relieve pressure since he didn't need, for example, an Altaria to counter Crawdaunt. The combination of Blissey and Alomomola was far too much for Kyurem to handle.

I won't analyze this game in depth but just to show stall's power, look at the sequence where the stall player keeps SR off with Defog Gligar as the opponent tries to stall out Defog with Kyurem and double switches (turn 26). The opponent has to predict perfectly turn after turn while one misprediction could spell major disaster as Cobalion has no recovery and a Toxic is a death sentence for Kyurem. All these predictions only to get SR up, which doesn't even give the opponent an advantage, but barely gives him a narrow path to victory.

Again: How has stall become so powerful? How is it possible, as my evidence strongly suggests, that we have managed to create a monster of a play style that only loses in very unlikely circumstances?

Stall in Context and how the metagame got here

I want to be very clear, stall is disgustingly obscene, by far the strongest playstyle in the tier and dominating the metagame to an extent that none of us has ever seen in previous UUs back to generation 3, which is all I can speak to. It only loses tournament games when unquestionably misplayed. Trust me when I say I can completely strangle the ladder with it - if other players think consistently 94-97 GXE with Elos 100-200 higher than anyone else is a fluke, go try it yourself without stall. People who berate the ladder without trying to perform on it in my opinion don't have the evidence to make any strong claims.

Let's look at one my stall teams and see what beats it in the metagame: https://pokepast.es/85beb6ceb761cd23

For the S rank threats, Scizor is cleanly countered by Scizor and Quagsire and Pyukumuku. Latias is countered by SpD Pyuk, Mega Altaria, and Blissey. Altaria is countered by Quagsire and Scizor.

For stall breakers, Celebi is countered by Blissey, Scizor and Pyukumuku (Scizor can run 32 SpD to guarantee +2 Z Psychic does not OHKO after SR and Leftovers). Lucario and Infernape are countered by Gligar and SpD Pyukumuku. As are Togekiss, Chandelure, and Pidgeot. Scizor and MAlt counter Haxorus. Trappers are countered by Pyukumuku, Altaria, and U-Turn Scizor. Crawdaunt loses to Altaria.

There are still a few threats but they aren't from dedicated stall breakers - notably Mega Sharpedo abuses the lack of Alomomola although can be surprised by Quagsire's Counter and has to deal with Scizor and Altaria. Toxic Spikes is a big problem too, especially from Ice Beam Nidos. Combinations like Beedrill plus Magneton are also problematic.

In no other tier or generation can we create stall teams that cover practically the entire metagame. There is not a single meta stall breaker that by itself gives a favorable match up versus this team, unless you make specific counter teaming that is bad overall for the metagame, such as HP Grass Scizor.

Furthermore, this team isn't "tight" as in sets can be changed easily. For example, Mandibuzz can easily be run over Gligar to improve the Celebi match up, stall match up with Taunt, and Toxic Spikes match up. Gligar is not needed to counter anything as Terrakion for example is countered by Scizor, Altaria, and Quagsire.

This is one of literally over a dozen stall teams that I have that have similar match ups versus the metagame. It's not my best team. By itself, this team isn't broken. But when you consider that teams mainly prep for the Alo-Quag-Blissey stall using things like NP Infernape instead of Magneton + Beedrill, you begin to realize not all stalls can be prepared for. And still, this team is so overwhelming and just steamrolls through typical teams unless specifically prepared for it.

How did we get to a point where stall can do this? I suspect two reasons - the slow introduction of Mega Pokemon throughout the generation made our tiering system worse this generation - it was designed to create a balanced metagame quickly by banning everything potentially broken first but Nintendo ruined it by slowly introducing potentially broken Pokemon through out the generation which constantly shook our metagame. We were focused on banning clearly broken threats like Jirachi and Manaphy and didn't properly notice that stall was creeping up on us. To solve this issue, we should create a history of UU tiering ASAP, with every single council and public decision recorded in a public space (this forum) and we should have a community discussion ASAP on how we want to tier in the future, to be improvised as new information is released.

Furthermore, the culture of stall players is lazy. People who follow competitive Pokemon know that stalls are associated with a player, one team is known as KG stall or obi stall or Pearl stall. That's ridiculous, there's no reason why people should stop at one stall. That's why I've been pushing constantly new teams and posting them everywhere I get the chance to. I've been trying to ring the alarm bell but now I'll say it as clearly as I can - stall's ability to so consistently execute such a powerful strategy make it broken. We must stop the problem now before it's too late - either through banning Blissey or Regenerator.

Why Blissey? Why Regenerator?

Banning Regenerator is the better option if we care about the health of the metagame. The only reasons to consider banning Blissey instead for PR reasons and if you want to actually kill the play style instead of just nerfing it, which I think is extreme and wrong and not even certain to happen. Oh and by the way, nobody has produced evidence as far as I know that banning abilities is bad PR. If you want to use this argument, show us the evidence.

First of all, Regenerator wars are the heart of most endless battles which I find just horribly uncompetitive (and probably bad for PR too!)

Second, the ability of Alomomola mainly but also Slowbro and Amoonguss to pivot around threats like CB Terrakion without being punished is also uncompetitive, unfun, and most importantly makes people need to use truly dedicated stall breakers like Infernape instead of softer ones like CB Terrakion. So in this sense, it's a heavy building restriction.

Third, we would obviously target the core of Alo-Quag-Bliss - I have shown this is not the only stall core available so stall will survive. Stall could innovate without strangling the metagame.

Fourth, we could stick it to the elitists who insist on Pokemon bans for...no competitive reason as far as I can see.

Are there other ways to nerf stall? Obviously, yes. But nothing stinks of uncompetitiveness like Regenerator. We could ban Quagsire but you can actually play around Quagsire and Pyukumuku's presence might mean it might not be enough.

Is there collateral damage? Yes Amoonguss is extremely important glue for our metagame, I won't deny that. Other things might become broken, I don't deny that. In my opinion, we should focus on what is clearly broken - stall - and fix that issue. Then we fix the collateral damage.

Or, we could ban Alomomola by itself, but that might not fix the endless battle issues. Any of these suspects is preferable to continue to let stall dominate.

Why not Latias? Why not Terrakion?

First of all, I think suspecting Latias and Terrakion is preferable to doing nothing, so I think these actions are okay even if I prefer to nerf stall.

I know there is some discussion on Latias and Terrakion. But I have a very straightforward reason why my proposal is better - stall is more important overall than either of these two Pokemon. I'm talking about a playstyle that I just demonstrated to basically never lose if played well in tournaments. So presumably, the fall out is bigger so we want to deal with that first.

Equally important, nerfing stall hasn't been on the radar of players. This is as much as a plea to nerf stall as it is a public service announcement that by the way, a playstyle has been warping UU and nobody has done anything about it.

Competitive Pokemon isn't easy. I've tried hard to come up with evidence that stall is too powerful in the metagame. To anyone who participates in the UU community, please think carefully about what you want for our tier and think for yourself if my arguments are convincing.

 

[Smallsmallrose]

I know everyone is looking to Terrakion or Stall or w/e but I think I'd like to readdress the big red elephant in the room once more for people in the back.

Indigo Plateau addressed this at the end of Mimikyu suspect, but a Latias suspect probably really would help the tier. The post I linked made a few good points, but I do have some points of my own that I figure I'll put down and I'll try not to echo points already made too much.

Latias is extremely bulky for how effective it breaks
Latias is a unique problem because it's extremely bulky and a good breaker. If something else had Latias' speed tier and power but died to a single Scizor Bullet Punch or something, no one would bat an eye. But Latias can be hard to deal with because it's bulk makes it extremely difficult to KO in one hit. Common pokemon that are used to revenge kill Latias like Scarf Hydreigon, Scarf Krookodile, and Aerodactyl, none of these pokemon can guaranteed KO Latias from full. Of course, they aren't the only Latias revenge killers, but they are some of the most prominent. And the fact that teams that use these pokemon to take Lati down are often pressured to put damage on Lati first to make them effective is a bit to ask, especially when nearly all of the tier's other common breakers have consistent revenge killers outside of super niche options. (This is also one of the main reasons I think Latias is more of a problem than fellow big 4 breaker Terrakion, as Terrakion's typing, slightly lower speed tier, and less bulk than Lati make it much easier to revenge by common scarfers, fast megas, and priority users. Terrakion is usually hard stopped if it tries to get anything rolling while it's revenge killers remain. Very few revenge killers can save you from a decently healthy Latias.) And even looking past how Latias' bulk makes it extremely difficult to revenge kill with consistency, lets not forget how effective this bulk is at letting it set up. I'd argue that Latias is debatably better at setting up than even king Scizor, let alone anything else in the tier, because it's bulk and typing let it take advantage of such a massive chunk of the tier. Grasses, Fires, Waters, Grounds, Electrics, some Fightings, most of it's fellow Psychics, if these pokemon don't carry Lati-specific coverage moves that can do a decent chunk or just plain carry toxic, then they're essentially giving Latias a completely free opening to run right over your team. With a lot of breakers, its a matter of if they can set up safely, with Latias, it's just a matter of when.

Latias has extremely niche/specific counterplay and forces a lot of unhealthy meta trends.
Latias is extremely difficult to build around. It forces steels onto teams as is (Since it's the only Dragon in the tier that is completely unfazed by fairies that aren't running specific coverage moves for it, the fact we're making Sylveon, a pokemon with 110 attack run physical moves exclusively for Latias should be telling of how its influence is bordering on unhealthy.) and a trend is starting where the steels have to be even more specific ones because of the Electrium-Z set from hell. You're forced into a corner when teambuilding where you either have to put a steel that beats the Dragonium set AND a secondary pokemon like Rotom-H or Mamoswine that can beat the electrium variant, essentially forcing you to run 2 pokemon for Latias, or you're forced into running a very specifically small group of steels that can handle both variants, such as Bronzong, super Bulky Scizor variants, Steelix-Mega, Assault Vest Bisharp, etc. And that's not even mentioning the fact that some teams may require pursuit as well, since a lot of Latias answers are lacking in recovery (This is especially prevalent when playing Lati into mega steels, who don't even have leftovers) and are thus pressured to remove Latias from the game completely so it doesn't just play patiently and crush these teams in the lategame. Speaking of Mega Steels, specifically Mega Steelix, I'll also note that Latias has forced some rather unhealthy/unorthodox teambuilding trends over the course of gen 7, Steelix itself being a primary example of this. Mega Steelix started off this gen floating around the C-ranks and was generally considered garbage in comparison to fellow Mega Steel Aggron outside of specific situations. Then Electrium Latias comes along and we flat out steal it from RU as it jumps all the way up to A- rank and is generally considered the superior choice by a slight margin, almost exclusively because of Latias. Sure, it can do other things in it's slot like checking Altaria-Mega, the occassional Scizor, etc. But not really anything that Mega Aggron wouldn't be doing if it took Steelix's place on it's teambuilds. Steelix is considered better because of one set on one pokemon that can be difficult to build around otherwise. And don't even get me started on Assault Vest Bisharp. This set would not have been born if Latias didn't strangle the metagame. More consistent than Alolan Muk at trapping Lati because it doesn't need to run Focus Punch just to discourage Terrakion from mounting it, doesn't lose to +1 dragonium after just a couple rounds of rocks, and has sucker punch to still threaten Lati in the worst case scenario where it does get chipped into range. What does AV Bisharp do other than check Lati, you may be asking? Well, checking Celebi I suppose, but the set was made for Latias and I think most people I've talked to can agree this set wouldn't exist from Celebi's presence alone. AV Bisharp is an extreme example of a pokemon doing something it wouldn't normally be doing just for this one extremely difficult pokemon to build around and deal with. Crunch Krook is no better, sacrificing Stone Edge, Superpower, or many other 4th slot moves that open up Krook to revenge killing or handling more things just to KO Latias and Latias alone. (Again, people argue Celebi, but I think the Celebi argument is even weaker here than it is with AV Bisharp since Krook still needs Celebi chipped to kill it with a crunch.) And the fact Scarf Krook in itself could be argued as a much more long term effect of what Latias has done to the tier. (It's flagship set in ORAS was band, but that set is more or less unviable now because Krook sets that don't bring anything to the Latias matchup puts too much pressure on teambuilding. The rocks set gets a pass since it's becoming harder to keep them up against defensive teams, but outside of the teams that appreciate those rocks, Krooks are absolutely running scarf for Latias.) I could name sets all day that got birthed into existence or at least explored because of Latias. Scarf/AV Scizors, Ice/Fairy/Dark/Ghost moves on random mons that Latias would normally wall, Physical moves on special attackers that don't want to be used as CM fodder, aforementioned Assault Vest Bisharp, and I'm sure Latias at least had some part in the birth of that dang spdef Pyukumuku. Not to mention Latias has also ranked some pokemon on it's own. (Silvally-Steel and Ferroseed, While they do check some other important things and do things outside of checking Lati, they probably wouldn't have received as much exploration as they have if Latias pivot wasn't also on their resume. Hell, you could probably get anything ranked these days by marketing it as a consistent Lati check/pivot.)

Latias is unnaturally versatile.
Now I understand versatility is the flagship of S-rank pokemon in UU, what with Hydra previously holding the S-rank, and Altaria and Scizor currently holding it and all of them having many sets. But the amount of things Latias can do even in comparison to them is obscene. One thing I've seen people use to address to address the stall problem Pif brought up in this same thread is a Stored Power refresh Latias to stick it to Spdef Pyukumuku and pretty much body any stall that doesn't have a dark or bulky Scizor. I've also seen people seriously discuss Z-water moves to stick it to steels almost as bad as the electrium set, but just with the added bonus of handling one of the best Latias counters in Steelix-Mega and the admittedly uncommon now Stakataka. It also has choice sets as any pokemon with decent offenses does and these sets in themselves have quite some variety, having free reign of picking coverage moves and/or utility moves. I've seen plenty of variations on calm mind/3 attacks variants as well. During Scizor suspect ladder I got bodied by an Electrium Latias with Dual Stab and no recover, which seems a suboptimal set if you know it's coming, sure, but it sure as hell caught me off guard and lost me a vital pokemon when I thought it was just standard boltbeam after popping electrium. Someone also submitted a Fire/Ice/Electric coverage Latias to break one of my teams on the Break This Team thread. (Again, not the most optimal set, but a good example of the fact Latias has access to this much coverage, which opens too much creativity for sets in my opinion.) Latias has one of the most expansive movepools in UU and while it does have some standard sets that are generally considered the best, it can also do whatever the hell it wants if the team has room for it. And frankly, there's no one, or maybe not even any 2 or 3 pokemon that can prepare for literally everything a Latias could feasibly do at team preview. Its even more versatile to an even more unhealthy degree than King Scizor I'd argue. While Scizor has a strong movepool, it's generally limited to moves of the same 4 or 5 types (Steel/bug/fighting/dark/normal) Latias has an entire rainbow by comparison and generally all it's viable moves are harder to cover in one slot than Scizor's.


TLDR:
Latias should be tested because it is far too restricting to teambuilding, forcing what would normally be niche pokemon or sets onto teams just to deal with it consistently, and/or forcing teams without its small pool of sturdy checks to stack checks just to make sure it's dealt with. It forces trends and warps the metagame in a way that no other pokemon has enforced at it's level, being far more difficult to answer consistently than any other dragon or psychic type. Its extremely difficult to revenge kill compared to pokemon with similar breaking power and it's bulk makes it super oppressive to common trends in general. It's versatile, massive movepool also allows it to find new sets at the drop of a hat to counter the metagame's answers to it or just generally mess with teams that become dependent on one of it's answers and overall is forcing the meta to keep finding more and more convoluted answers to it.

 

[Mysil]

Let's suspect Blissey or Regenerator now. Two major claims lead me to this: 1) stall is overwhelmingly powerful right now and 2) we can target the Alo/Quag/Blissey core without eliminating stall.

View attachment 191305

I'm going to do four things in this post. First, I'm going to analyze six replays from this past SPL, UUPL and Grand Slam to show how stall is overpowered in UU and how Alo/Quag/Blissey form the heart of UU stall. Second, I'll give more context and analyze stall's place in the metagame. Third, I'm going to list some pros and cons of a Regenerator suspect vs a Blissey suspect. Fourthly, I'll explain why at this very late stage in our metagame, this is our best bet instead of other suspects that have been floated around, such as Latias or Terrakion.

Tournament Replays

I choose to use tournament replays only not because friendly or ladder matches or other games are not as high quality but because in tournaments, the stakes are higher purely because of spectators and the winner take all nature. The elitists have been telling us tournaments are where it's all at, so let's be generous and analyze their games to see how people play.

Stall never loses except when badly misplayed or against a horrendous match up in tournaments. If this is true, then any reasonable player would want to nerf stall - Pokemon simply isn't a game where a play style should have a near 100% win rate considering the importance of luck and match ups. So the question is - is pif's claim true?

Let's look at two games from last SPL.

I analyze them here and here. In the first game, the stall player unecessarily loses Moltres which causes huge problems down the road versus Chesnaught. In the second game, the stall player unecessarily burns a Facade Altaria and loses an otherwise very comfortable position because of that. Both games the stall player lost but because of clear and unforced mistakes. So they support my argument overall stall never loses except when misplayed, haxed, or given a huge MU disadvantage.

Let's move on to UUPL.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-439262

The stall player lost this. But why? On turn 6, you know the stall player didn't watch Pak vs Rob (the second SPL replay) because that's exactly how Pak lost his great position - by burning an Altaria. Fortunately for the stall player, this doesn't hurt him since Altaria did not switch in. But there were two other issues: 1) on turn 4, the stall player should have immediately went Alomomola to Protect against Cobalion on the Future Sight and 2) on turn 13, Gligar was unecessarily sacrificed - Future Sight was a guranteed KO from that point. I think it is fair to say the stall player made huge mistakes in this game.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-440103

Again - how did the stall player lose this one? Turn 3 was slightly inaccurate by the stall player - why not just get free chip damage on Steelix? Turn 6, the stall player could have just Roosted since Moltres cannot KO from there, avoiding the double switch. Turn 9 you have to compliment the stall player for predicting Z Stone Edge and saving Gligar. Turn 18 was absolutely crazy by the stall player and I suspect a misclick - Gligar had no business switching in when Quagsire was healthy. He gets a bit unlucky on turn 32 with the flinch and probably could have set up SR on turn 48.

However, the big idea is this: the stall team got predicted in basically every important turn except turn 9 and still had good chances to win. There was no hugely glaring mistake unlike the two SPL games and the other UUPL game where important mons just died for nothing, however, it is really obvious in this one the stall player just didn't make enough predictions to give himself a better chance.

Now let's look at the ongoing UU Open. If there are replays of stall losing, please post them and we can analyze together. Frankly, I am not aware of any past round 7 (arbitrary cut-off, if there are good games in round 6 or earlier by all means show them).

However, there is one replay I would like to analyze, of a stall team versus a seemingly very difficult MU - the opponent has two well known stall breakers in Haxorus and NP Celebi. Furthermore, the stall player loses Alomomola early on, which isn't needed to wall or pivot anything like CB Terrakion, but still I think it's fair to say it's a tough start for the stall player.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-453572

It wasn't a clean and safe win for the stall team. For example, on turn 58, a U-Turn could have lost the game for the stall player but King of Crimea didn't want to take the risk. And if Gligar constantly roosted to higher health, it could have won without a crit at the end. However, the final turn crit probably did not matter as Power Gem was likely a roll in Nihilego's favor plus Gligar was lucky to not get Scald burned earlier.

I'm not a result oriented person - I believe we should analyze turn by turn instead of focusing on the final result. It's why I hate using records to compare people since you can play well for 40 turns and get haxed on turn 41 - records don't reflect that. Nevertheless, King of Crimea had a dream match up with very anti-stall Pokemon a and a great start killing Alomomola. But as tiny inaccuracies crept in - perhaps he didn't get maximum returns with Haxorus - he still managed to lose a hard fought game.

This game should shock us all. How has stall become so powerful? How is it possible, as my evidence strongly suggests, that we have managed to create a monster of a play style that only loses in very unlikely circumstances?

I've been showing you stall losses mainly. Let me show you a SPL game where stall is played normally versus a normal looking team.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-426501

Complete cock block. The stall player always had the option to sacrifice Pokemon to relieve pressure since he didn't need, for example, an Altaria to counter Crawdaunt. The combination of Blissey and Alomomola was far too much for Kyurem to handle.

I won't analyze this game in depth but just to show stall's power, look at the sequence where the stall player keeps SR off with Defog Gligar as the opponent tries to stall out Defog with Kyurem and double switches (turn 26). The opponent has to predict perfectly turn after turn while one misprediction could spell major disaster as Cobalion has no recovery and a Toxic is a death sentence for Kyurem. All these predictions only to get SR up, which doesn't even give the opponent an advantage, but barely gives him a narrow path to victory.

Again: How has stall become so powerful? How is it possible, as my evidence strongly suggests, that we have managed to create a monster of a play style that only loses in very unlikely circumstances?

Stall in Context and how the metagame got here

I want to be very clear, stall is disgustingly obscene, by far the strongest playstyle in the tier and dominating the metagame to an extent that none of us has ever seen in previous UUs back to generation 3, which is all I can speak to. It only loses tournament games when unquestionably misplayed. Trust me when I say I can completely strangle the ladder with it - if other players think consistently 94-97 GXE with Elos 100-200 higher than anyone else is a fluke, go try it yourself without stall. People who berate the ladder without trying to perform on it in my opinion don't have the evidence to make any strong claims.

Let's look at one my stall teams and see what beats it in the metagame: https://pokepast.es/9ff998b10f9a2457

For the S rank threats, Scizor is cleanly countered by Scizor and Quagsire and Pyukumuku. Latias is countered by SpD Pyuk, Mega Altaria, and Blissey. Altaria is countered by Quagsire and Scizor.

For stall breakers, Celebi is countered by Blissey, Scizor and Pyukumuku (Scizor can run 32 SpD to guarantee +2 Z Psychic does not OHKO after SR and Leftovers). Lucario and Infernape are countered by Gligar and SpD Pyukumuku. As are Togekiss, Chandelure, and Pidgeot. Scizor and MAlt counter Haxorus. Trappers are countered by Pyukumuku, Altaria, and U-Turn Scizor. Crawdaunt loses to Altaria.

There are still a few threats but they aren't from dedicated stall breakers - notably Mega Sharpedo abuses the lack of Alomomola although can be surprised by Quagsire's Counter and has to deal with Scizor and Altaria. Toxic Spikes is a big problem too, especially from Ice Beam Nidos. Combinations like Beedrill plus Magneton are also problematic.

In no other tier or generation can we create stall teams that cover practically the entire metagame. There is not a single meta stall breaker that by itself gives a favorable match up versus this team, unless you make specific counter teaming that is bad overall for the metagame, such as HP Grass Scizor.

Furthermore, this team isn't "tight" as in sets can be changed easily. For example, Mandibuzz can easily be run over Gligar to improve the Celebi match up, stall match up with Taunt, and Toxic Spikes match up. Gligar is not needed to counter anything as Terrakion for example is countered by Scizor, Altaria, and Quagsire.

This is one of literally over a dozen stall teams that I have that have similar match ups versus the metagame. It's not my best team. By itself, this team isn't broken. But when you consider that teams mainly prep for the Alo-Quag-Blissey stall using things like NP Infernape instead of Magneton + Beedrill, you begin to realize not all stalls can be prepared for. And still, this team is so overwhelming and just steamrolls through typical teams unless specifically prepared for it.

How did we get to a point where stall can do this? I suspect two reasons - the slow introduction of Mega Pokemon throughout the generation made our tiering system worse this generation - it was designed to create a balanced metagame quickly by banning everything potentially broken first but Nintendo ruined it by slowly introducing potentially broken Pokemon through out the generation which constantly shook our metagame. We were focused on banning clearly broken threats like Jirachi and Manaphy and didn't properly notice that stall was creeping up on us. To solve this issue, we should create a history of UU tiering ASAP, with every single council and public decision recorded in a public space (this forum) and we should have a community discussion ASAP on how we want to tier in the future, to be improvised as new information is released.

Furthermore, the culture of stall players is lazy. People who follow competitive Pokemon know that stalls are associated with a player, one team is known as KG stall or obi stall or Pearl stall. That's ridiculous, there's no reason why people should stop at one stall. That's why I've been pushing constantly new teams and posting them everywhere I get the chance to. I've been trying to ring the alarm bell but now I'll say it as clearly as I can - stall's ability to so consistently execute such a powerful strategy make it broken. We must stop the problem now before it's too late - either through banning Blissey or Regenerator.

Why Blissey? Why Regenerator?

Banning Regenerator is the better option if we care about the health of the metagame. The only reasons to consider banning Blissey instead for PR reasons and if you want to actually kill the play style instead of just nerfing it, which I think is extreme and wrong and not even certain to happen. Oh and by the way, nobody has produced evidence as far as I know that banning abilities is bad PR. If you want to use this argument, show us the evidence.

First of all, Regenerator wars are the heart of most endless battles which I find just horribly uncompetitive (and probably bad for PR too!)

Second, the ability of Alomomola mainly but also Slowbro and Amoonguss to pivot around threats like CB Terrakion without being punished is also uncompetitive, unfun, and most importantly makes people need to use truly dedicated stall breakers like Infernape instead of softer ones like CB Terrakion. So in this sense, it's a heavy building restriction.

Third, we would obviously target the core of Alo-Quag-Bliss - I have shown this is not the only stall core available so stall will survive. Stall could innovate without strangling the metagame.

Fourth, we could stick it to the elitists who insist on Pokemon bans for...no competitive reason as far as I can see.

Are there other ways to nerf stall? Obviously, yes. But nothing stinks of uncompetitiveness like Regenerator. We could ban Quagsire but you can actually play around Quagsire and Pyukumuku's presence might mean it might not be enough.

Is there collateral damage? Yes Amoonguss is extremely important glue for our metagame, I won't deny that. Other things might become broken, I don't deny that. In my opinion, we should focus on what is clearly broken - stall - and fix that issue. Then we fix the collateral damage.

Or, we could ban Alomomola by itself, but that might not fix the endless battle issues. Any of these suspects is preferable to continue to let stall dominate.

Why not Latias? Why not Terrakion?

First of all, I think suspecting Latias and Terrakion is preferable to doing nothing, so I think these actions are okay even if I prefer to nerf stall.

I know there is some discussion on Latias and Terrakion. But I have a very straightforward reason why my proposal is better - stall is more important overall than either of these two Pokemon. I'm talking about a playstyle that I just demonstrated to basically never lose if played well in tournaments. So presumably, the fall out is bigger so we want to deal with that first.

Equally important, nerfing stall hasn't been on the radar of players. This is as much as a plea to nerf stall as it is a public service announcement that by the way, a playstyle has been warping UU and nobody has done anything about it.

Competitive Pokemon isn't easy. I've tried hard to come up with evidence that stall is too powerful in the metagame. To anyone who participates in the UU community, please think carefully about what you want for our tier and think for yourself if my arguments are convincing.

Amen

 

[Moutemoute]

Couldn't we just enjoy for the few months left our tier without extra suspect test ?

 

[Freeroamer]

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-433305

This is another replay from UUPL involving stall, this time the stall player loses a game in which they really had little to no chance due to the particular Reuniclus set used, which would seem to fall into line with pif’s statement of stall only losing in tours due to extreme matchup disadvantage or being heavily misplayed. It should be noted that this particular Reuniclus set has little reason to be used other than to handle stall, as Psychic/Grass is pretty awful coverage in a tier that includes Scizor and Latias as S Rank Pokemon, and where Celebi and Hydreigon also see significant usage.

I might add a more detailed turn by turn analysis later, but the overall game generally seems well played by the stall player, they’ve knocked off Gligar and Scizor while turning the hazard game in their favour at relatively little loss to themselves. Quagsire has revealed Haze, so as long as the Reuniclus doesn’t have Grass coverage their manoeuvring around it so far seems fine. However it turns out to be Psychium Z Reuniclus with Energy Ball as coverage, the absolute worst matchup for this team. What follows is a pretty brutal dismantling from the Reuniclus, the stall player could have gone for the freezes straight away following the Quagsire KO to improve their odds, but in any case this was bleak for them.

The real interest to this particular replay though is that it shows stall’s ability to adapt and improve against threats. I’m not sure if it was in direct response to this game or a more natural progression, but Blissey on stall builds have been seen a lot more with Confide recently which would’ve been a huge boon in this matchup and helps in some others too. This shows that even while some stall teams consist of the same 6 Pokemon they did months ago, they can always be refined and perfected to handle more threats and/or better fit the current metagame, making them even harder to prepare for.

I think when you read pif’s points and just think about the incredible winrate and variety of stall in tours, it does become evident that it’s becoming too strong in this tier and we should be looking at ways to pull it back. I’d definitely love to see a Regenerator suspect if that’s at all possible, I think it provides the best means of handling this issue and is in itself an element that allows lazy play, instead of the skilled play that we surely try to encourage.

 

[Estarossa]

I wanted to talk about the potential nerfing of stall and the regenerator suspect. Had a discussion with Jacobikko and Smallsmallrose about the idea of banning regenerator, and a regenerator suspect would really just severely hurt balance far more than it affects stall, as plenty of stalls are already shying away from alomamola, with quagsire + pyukumukku stalls tending not to run alo for instance, while both amoongus and slowbro are fairly influential to balance.

A potential solution me and jacobikko discussed would be a complex ban however, which I know are typically avoided, but it would not impact balance in anyway. The basic idea would be to ban running 2 unaware mons or 1 unaware mon + 1 regenerator mon at the same time, which would disallow you from running quag + pyuk or quag + alo. This would kill these problematic to break through cores, without killing stall stone dead like a blissey suspect, and stall still has other ways of working around this, but stops them being so oppressive.

 

[Smallsmallrose]

I'm a little unsure about hitting regenerator. It does seem like one of the better options for hitting stall on paper without outright killing the archetype, but pokemon like Amoonguss and Slowbro losing regenerator basically kills every non-stall fat archetype (making it not much better than banning Blissey, really) since those two use regenerator to act as major gluemons for non-stall bulky builds such as balance. Not only would these builds get much worse but it'd open up more Pandora's Boxes than it'd be closing, there's definitely a few things that'd be suspect worthy right off the bat with a regenerator hit on top of other individual problem mons that already need addressing while regenerator is still here. I do agree that stall needs addressing and there needs to be a ban found that can slap it on the wrist without killing it, but I think regenerator is the wrong path to take. A lot of balances and balance-like builds need regenerator to survive more than stall does and while I'm not sure what the correct path is to dealing with stall, I can say for a fact this one isn't it chief. I think we've learned from the past that this tier tends to get into really toxic states when we don't have full power Amoonguss and while I'd love to live in a world where we don't have to rely on that stupid shroom and the annoying regen to keep the tier in a stable state, balancing the tier without it would probably last into gen 9 let alone gen 8.

 

[Stoward]

Alright I might as well drop my 2c here. I've been pretty involved in UU since the Sableye suspect, but I've been on and off with this tier since alpha and I've been into ubers since ORAS and honestly I'd like to say I'm quite happy with the state of the underused metagame right now.

Sure we've got pif spamming stall and talking about how broken it is, but we also have misa and viv building screens Hyper Offense teams and having great success with them. Then we have a mid ground with "brainless VoltTurn teams with Scizor, Hydreigon, Mega Manectric, Rotom-W etc doing extremely well. I can't help but think that people can't actually see a balanced metagame when they see one.

pokeisfun argued in his post earlier that no individual Pokemon could beat the stall team he posted without being completely unviable in other matchups. Fortunately, no team is composed of a single Pokemon. While some teams have better matchups against stall than others. The idea behind stall is to try and defensively check as many Pokemon as possible and to not have counterplay options against viable threats in the metagame is a sign of a badly constructed stall team. While some people could argue that stall only loses if the player screws up, that can also be argued for plenty of matchups. That certainly isn't a trait exclusive to stall.

I'm not well versed in smogon tiering philosophies as to what constitutes as "broken", but I'm not too sure if regenerator meets that category. I'm sure we all find Pokemon with that ability to be annoying to face. I've personally found Stall to be the biggest haters of Regenerator as they're going to struggle or find it nearly impossible to beat a team with 2 regenerator Pokemon unless their team has some sort of offensive measure such as pursuit.

Blissey is certainly irritating, however it's a blatant lie to say that it doesn't have counters to it that people have on their teams naturally. I've seen a number of teams where I think their matchup against stall as a whole is shaky, but I'm yet to see a well constructed team where I think that it has a bad matchup against Blissey Specifically.

As for Latias, that Pokemon has been around since the beginning and I've seen many competent players argue that it's worthy of a suspect. Especially due to the versatility of sets it can run thanks to electrium-z, meaning that it has the potential to muscle through many of its standard checks if it opts to run different sets. That said though, there are plenty of viable Pokemon that find themselves quite naturally fitting on teams that can check Latias. It's certainly a threat that people should consider when building teams, but I do not believe that it's banworthy.

While I'm certainly an advocate for continuous improvement in a metagame, I'm not too sure if we're currently in a position where something is too powerful for UnderUsed.

 

[N_Mareanie]

That said though, there are plenty of viable Pokemon that find themselves quite naturally fitting on teams that can check Latias.

Could you give some examples though? Smallsrose gave some examples like AV Bish in the post, but that was more to show how impactful Lati is in teambuilding and being pretty restrictive.

 

[Stoward]

Latias Checks and Counters

Steel-types: Though they must be mindful of Gigavolt Havoc, Steel-types wall Latias's STAB combination and are generally bulky enough to do so consistently unless they are heavily weakened or Latias has the appropriate coverage. Klefki, Mega Aggron, Bronzong, Empoleon, and Scizor are all capable of forcing out or crippling Latias in some capacity, either with status, Pursuit trapping, or strong attacks. Scizor must be careful, though, not to be put in KO range of a boosted Z-Move. A special mention goes to Mega Steelix, which is immune to Gigavolt Havoc on top of its resistance to Latias's STAB moves and only has to watch out for Life Orb Hidden Power Fire.

Dark-types and Pursuit: Dark-types are immune to Latias's Psychic-type moves and can heavily damage or eliminate it with their STAB moves. Though uncommon, Umbreon in particular counters all Latias variants unless it is given a Choice Scarf with Trick. The tier is also littered with Pursuit trappers, Dark-type or otherwise, capable of putting Latias in a checkmate position. Such Pokemon include Choice Scarf Krookodile, Mega Aerodactyl, Scizor, and Alolan Muk.

Status: Though Latias doesn't care much about burn, poison and paralysis both ruin its day: the former greatly limits its longevity and threatens to put it in range of opposing attacks, and paralysis leaves it outsped and eliminated by the majority of the tier. Toxic poison ruins any chance Latias might have at cleanly sweeping, though it can easily switch in and out to minimize poison damage racking up.

Revenge Killers: Latias's Speed tier is above average, but it's not enough to prevent it from being greatly threatened by faster offensive threats. Mega Aerodactyl, Mega Sceptile, Mega Beedrill, and Choice Scarf users such as Krookodile and Hydreigon are capable of outspeeding and eliminating Latias with little to no chip damage regardless of Calm Mind boosts. It is also vulnerable to three of the most common priority moves in the tier in Scizor's Bullet Punch, Bisharp's Sucker Punch, and Mamoswine's Ice Shard, taking super effective damage from the latter two.

Special Bulky Pokemon: Even with boosted Psyshock, Latias struggles to break through most special walls without significant chip damage. Blissey is never 2HKOed by anything except +1 Life Orb Psyshock and can hit Latias with Toxic, but be wary of being given a Choice Scarf with Trick, however, as this will cripple it almost entirely.

Source: smogon.com/Dex/sm/Pokemon/latias

Also BP mon scizor is on virtually every team, choice scarf Hydreigon is everywhere. Blissey and Mega Aggron are staples on defensive archetypes.

I really don't feel the need to elaborate any further on my arguments. Just because I could strengthen them by adding more examples and calcs doesn't mean I should be required to.

Every high ranked Pokemon has an "impact on teambuilding". That's part of what makes them metagame defining by design. If every team had to run AV Bisharp to be able to counter Latias, then maybe we'd have an argument, but until then, I'd say the metagame is fine as it is

 

[spuds4ever]

I personally don't think blissey should be banned as it serves an important role in the metagame, not only in preserving stall as an archetype, but in probably being the closest thing possible to making latias and primarina be dead slots. Why is this important? Because these two pokemon I think in particular have so many positive traits (bulk, typing, movepool and offensive stats) that they are never not worthwhile in any other match up.

Banning Blissey would skew team building so that these two mons in particular would have so little reason not to be used because there are no match ups where they can't do a good amount of work. Even scizor has match-ups where it will be essentially a dead slot, namely magneton+eject button teams and to a lesser extent moltres teams. Altaria, while having more sweeping potential with DD, requires more support with its BP weakness and the fact that it can't just chunk stuff like mega aggron for 60% at +1 like latias can.

Essentially, if blissey goes, what do teams do to actually have a good prima/latias match-up? Furthermore, it's not even as if blissey fully stops these two. Latias gets psyshock and I actually lost a tournament end game when I had blissey because my opponent had teched echoed voice primarina. I know lots of teams can still win against these mons without blissey but the fact that it just exists means that they can't be as mindlessly slapped on to teams with 0 match up repercussions.

On a side note, I also don't think stall is broken and if anything regenerator is a good measure against it as well as for it. Don't wanna just keep yapping about my tourney games but I played p bad with a drag mag team that wasn't that teched against stall but still won because I managed to keep hazards off and mola+amoongus regen allowed me to stall out articuno freeze drys and eventually roosts so that status moves eventually won me it.

 

[Freeroamer]

Pif took the time to back his claims up with analytical and practical evidence and it’d be nice to see the same from the other side of the argument.

If you think there are good and viable options to prep for various stall builds then give us some examples, if you think the statement “stall only loses when badly misplayed or at obscene matchup disadvantages” is a false one then show some replays proving it so those of us that do think stall is problematic can actually learn something!

 

[Adaam]

I wanted to talk about the potential nerfing of stall and the regenerator suspect. Had a discussion with Jacobikko and Smallsmallrose about the idea of banning regenerator, and a regenerator suspect would really just severely hurt balance far more than it affects stall, as plenty of stalls are already shying away from alomamola, with quagsire + pyukumukku stalls tending not to run alo for instance, while both amoongus and slowbro are fairly influential to balance.

A potential solution me and jacobikko discussed would be a complex ban however, which I know are typically avoided, but it would not impact balance in anyway. The basic idea would be to ban running 2 unaware mons or 1 unaware mon + 1 regenerator mon at the same time, which would disallow you from running quag + pyuk or quag + alo. This would kill these problematic to break through cores, without killing stall stone dead like a blissey suspect, and stall still has other ways of working around this, but stops them being so oppressive.

Regenerator is a brainless ability that promotes lazy gameplay. It requires no skill to use and there is no counterplay to Regenerator besides hitting really, really hard so that Slowbro is at 70% next time it comes in instead of 100%. If we truly believe Regenerator is broken, then we shouldn't keep it just so balance teams don't also get nerfed. It's not like removing Regenerator means Slowbro cannot check Terrakion anymore, it just has to actually burn a turn to recover. The proposed complex bans are tiering nightmares and are not really feasible for us to do.

Alright I might as well drop my 2c here. I've been pretty involved in UU since the Sableye suspect, but I've been on and off with this tier since alpha and I've been into ubers since ORAS and honestly I'd like to say I'm quite happy with the state of the underused metagame right now.

Sure we've got pif spamming stall and talking about how broken it is, but we also have misa and viv building screens Hyper Offense teams and having great success with them. Then we have a mid ground with "brainless VoltTurn teams with Scizor, Hydreigon, Mega Manectric, Rotom-W etc doing extremely well. I can't help but think that people can't actually see a balanced metagame when they see one.

The HO teams and VoltTurn teams aren't peaking with 97 GXE, and nobody is spamming those archetypes to get to the finals of UU open. There is empirical evidence, both in ladder and in tours, that stall is stronger than other playstyles right now. If you think otherwise, please show some evidence supporting this instead of a general claim of balance.

pokeisfun argued in his post earlier that no individual Pokemon could beat the stall team he posted without being completely unviable in other matchups. Fortunately, no team is composed of a single Pokemon. While some teams have better matchups against stall than others. The idea behind stall is to try and defensively check as many Pokemon as possible and to not have counterplay options against viable threats in the metagame is a sign of a badly constructed stall team. While some people could argue that stall only loses if the player screws up, that can also be argued for plenty of matchups. That certainly isn't a trait exclusive to stall.

Stall is exclusive in the sense that so, so many teams are beat on preview by the simple Alo/Bliss/Quagsire core. Mysil brought this up a while back but there is an incredible amount of high-level games where players bring auto-lose to stall teams and pray for the best. Here are some replays I ripped from UU open:

Pak vs Corazan I can safely say both teams will never break stall, Corazan can at best draw with infinity Regenerator (which again, shows how this ability is broken). Trick Togekiss can maybe cripple something, but is useless in the Aero matchup or Aggron matchup.

Adaam vs Christo Yup that's me. I can probably break through a stall with a lucky crit or Sharpedo defense drops, but otherwise Blissey walls 4/6 members while Alo/Quag wall my Sharpedo and Scizor. Christo's entire team loses to Alo/Bliss/Quag.

Pearl vs Flawless Nazgul Here we see Pearl easily win with his stall build. Automatically he has hazard advantage because Nazgul had the audacity to use a rocker that loses to Gligar + Cuno. Tentacruel/Gligar/Kyurem are liabilities, while Confide Blissey + Aero wall the potential breakers in Togekiss and Latias. Maybe Nazgul would have a better stall MU vs other teams, but like pif said, how can you cover every stall variant?

These are all high-level replays where stall dominates or would dominate. It is unlike other playstyles, as you never see teams that auto-lose to Hippo/Guss/Aero balances or Sharpedo offenses (at least not in the same frequency as stall).

I've personally found Stall to be the biggest haters of Regenerator as they're going to struggle or find it nearly impossible to beat a team with 2 regenerator Pokemon unless their team has some sort of offensive measure such as pursuit.

If anything that should be evidence towards Regen being broken. Why are we okay with mindless switching back and forth to force a draw?

That being said, banning Blissey is tough, because as spuds4ever it offers a ton on non-stall builds where I think it's quite good and healthy. If you know me, you know I hate Primarina and that thing becomes free to spam Specs without Blissey. Same with a bunch of other Specs breakers like Moltres or Kyurem. I think Blissey is necessary to keep these all in check. That's why suspecting Regenerator is the best choice I think, but I don't know what tiering roadblocks there are in banning an ability, especially such a pervasive one. Doing so will at least make preparing for all stall variants easier as you don't need to worry about Alo keeping everything at 100% for free.

 

[justdrew]

I read Pif’s post and I agree with a lot of his points. I support a Regenerator ban in theory because it will, for the most part, eliminate Alo from stall teams. Stall is very good in the meta right now and has tournament success to prove it. Pearl has been using the same stall team for much of his UU open run having a very good record. When it comes to bans I always concern myself with the after effects. Huge bans like Scizor or Malt would leave a sizable chain reaction that would warp the tier significantly. I’m wondering what the chain reaction would be for Regen. The targeted Pokémon are Alo, Amoon, and Slowbro. However, I’m mainly concerned with Alo because with this ban, it seems the main target is stall. Alomomola besides being stalls primary switch in to Choice Band Scizor is useful because it pretty much blanket checks the entire tier. It safely switches in on many things because with Regenerator it is hard to punish. Take away Regen and Alo is pretty much useless taking away stalls safety net. I’m not a fan of stall myself because I find a lot of stall games to be unfun and uncompetitive. But as someone who wants to see this tier succeed, I can’t agree to wipe out a viable play style just because it’s annoying. I am not certain whether it worthy of a ban or not but I agree that Regenerator is worthy of a suspect. I want to be able to test stall without Alomomola and see if the archetype is able to survive in the meta.

I also kinda agree with Moute about no more suspects

 

[prikshit]

Just As I Suspected, Both Weathers Have Rightfully Been Abolished To The Eternal Realms Of BorderLine!! I Would Personally Like To Thank All Ban Voters For Voting Correctly In What I Thought Was A Sewage Suspect... Onto The Next One

We Have Heard From Several Users Above What The Next Suspect Test Should Be. Primarily, I Am Of The Opinion That UnderUsed Is In A Somewhat Good Position Right Now And As The Generation Comes To Death, Is There An Argument For Leaving As It Is?

But Then I Read Some Of The Above Posts Touch On A Topic I Have Long Considered - Regenerator Is Broken. In My View, Pokemon Is A Game Of Half Skill And Half Luck. While We Cannot Control The Luck In Some Ways, We Should Reward Skill And The Goal Should Be The Better Player Wins... Regenerator Is As Some Colleagues Above Have Called "Braindead" As It Promotes Low Risk High Reward Plays From Sewage Players. I Also Agree Stall Is Too Strong And Feel As Though A Regenerator Ban Could Target And Remedy This Filth In A Healthy Way.

If We Have To Suspect Anything, Please Let It Be Regenerator. Get This Filthy Dirty Ability Out Of The Pristine Waters That Is The UnderUsed Tier... Hopefully After This We Can Rid Some More Garbage Out Of Our Precious Tier (Let Cobalion And Gligar Fall Into RarelyUsed - Their Tier Is Already Sewage Enough To Host These Pokemon)... Hehe. Or Please, Free Staraptor Finally, There Is First Time For Everything After All...

 

[Yoshi]

I believe suspect testing Regenerator is something that should be avoided if at all possible. There are quite a few Pokemon that utilize Regenerator and aren't coherently broken or unhealthy in UU. For example, I'd doubt that you guys would consider Amoongus, Slowbro, or Mienshao to be anywhere near broken or unhealthy. I get that Mienshao is relatively unuseful, but Amoongus and Slowbro are fantastic Pokemon in the metagame. Targeting Regenerator for a ban does not only target the stall archetype that you guys are working to nerf, but it also directly affects other areas of the metagame, including some of UU's staple Pokemon. If you believe Regenerator is a problem paired with Alomomola, suspect test Alomomla. If you believe Blissey is a problem, eliminate Blissey. It doesn't make sense to directly affect other Pokemon in the tier when there are other solutions that would meet the goal that you seek.

I suppose some people here find Amoongus cancerous to deal with but it still doesn't justify a Regenerator ban when Slowbro is relatively unproblematic. I think the general opinion so far is that Alomomola / Amoongus or Blissey is the problem. Therefore, I'd recommend targeting either Alomomola or Amoongus (not both, or perhaps both if it really warrants it), or Blissey.

 

[EviGaro]

I'm gonna add on Yoshi's post because I agree with the general premise: if Alomomola is an issue, then decide between that and Blissey. We suspected it in ORAS RU for not entirely dissimilar reasons, so there's some groundwork done on how Mola's support could be an issue in a metagame. Banning Regenerator though, is quite simply an horrible idea, and to borrow Adaam's words, a "tiering nightmare". Now this is just my opinion, not necessarily the "RU co-leader"'s opinion and I'm doing guesswork on the other lower tiers, but it's relatively safe to assume a Regenerator ban during snake and right before the last big tour of the gen - circuit playoffs - will be met with either rejection or severe criticism that will take up a ridiculous amount of time in policy review to sort out, which I don't think anybody wants: thus preserving tiering as much as possible through the lower tiers would be by far the best call.

If you look at your typical ability bans in a live gen, you'll notice they - usually - tend to come from OU, and there's generally a good reason for that. OU being the competitive standard will have the benchmarks for what is considered "smogon competitive pokemon" and that's alright. So when OU bans Arena Trap or Shadow Tag, it is in response to OU concerns sure, but through drops those same mons would show up in lower tiers and the same uncompetitive issue would arise, so instead of going through Dugtrio UU or Gothitelle NU, the bans are automatic through transitivity. The other major ability bans from OU in more recent gens were the Swift Swim / Chlorophyll bans in BW, but those don't really affect lower tiers because they're specifically written as to apply with both Drizzle and Drought, so we can still use the boosting abilities in lower tiers because the problem would never arise due to lower tiers having no access to these weather setting abilities. Now, there's some examples that aren't OU - drought and drizzle in ORAS UU. However, unlike BW, these bans are linked to Politoed and Ninetales being available in lower tiers, which still qualifies under the same principle, i.e banning the ability stops the mon from being a problem in lower tiers when it inevitably falls, and thus Politoed / Ninetales are decent mons in ORAS PU.

However, things fell apart during gen 7, due in part to the reversal of the Mega-Houndoom ban in this tier to finally ban Drought. At first you might think it's a similar issue, we have precedent of banning the same ability, we banned drizzle, makes more sense. However, there's an inherent issue that wasn't really there before: RU already had Drought, already had Drought + Chlorophyll, and thus the logistics of the ban not applying made it a far easier call to point out it wasn't in RU's best interests with strong empirical evidence. If the mons that would make drought an issue in RU would drop, they could easily be argued as broken mons without it, such as Darmanitan + Mega Houndoom. Regenerator is far closer to that example, because we have Regenerator in all the lower tiers already and the ability being "uncompetitive" is an obvious no when compared to Arena Trap or Shadow Tag, but it's far more drastic than Drought because it affects the balance of three different tiers here, not one, at a time where all of us are pushing our stable metagames for the last tours of the generation. It's ridiculously unappealing, and stretches the lower tiers tiering to an absurd degree.

This is why, imo, we should always push for pokemon bans, because mons are already banned because of usage, I can't whine about Mola being an issue in UU when I think it would be a cool addition to RU because usage already prevents that from being a valid point. From that point, it's far easier to justify a ban being specific to a single tier because no tier has disagreed with with the usage based system, and there's no argument against it. But when you suggest an ability ban because of specific issues within a single tier, issues that no other can consider valid or would be able to understand because their makeup is completely different, it removes the responsibility towards uniformed tiering and puts into question the very foundation of a transitive tiering system. Suspect Mola, sure, suspect all of them for all I care, or just Blissey, that's your call, but messing with things that are in every tier to make them conform to a single one is spelling trouble.

 

[Hogg]

Agreeing 100% with Evi.

As tiering admin, tier leaders often approach me because they want to ban an ability or a move rather than a ‘mon. In every single instance, I always tell them that before we can even begin that discussion, the tier needs to first demonstrate that it has done everything else it can to deal with the problem through the usual suspect process. If that still isn’t sufficient, they can make a policy proposal to address the issue instead.

And yeah, UU does have a pretty obvious exception, given the recent suspect test: Drizzle and Drought. However, these are the exceptions, not the rule. They felt like “safe” bans because we had similar bans in previous generations. In retrospect, though, they violated our tiering policy, and directly chipped away at the integrity of our tiering process by forcing a situation where tiers below UU were permitted to use something that was banned in UU.*

So from a policy perspective, ability or move bans beyond the ones that have been in place for most of gen 7 will NOT be considered viable options for suspect tests. If you truly believe that Regenerator is inherently unhealthy, that is a policy-level discussion that needs to be handled through the Policy Review subforum and not something that we will be permitted to address in a UU-specific suspect test.

So, if you really believe that stall is unhealthy in UU, the first step would be to look at individual ‘mons such as Blissey, Alomomola or Quagsire. I’m not sure that I would personally support a ban of any of these, but I wouldn’t veto a suspect test if there was strong community support for one.

*This is a whole other can of worms and not really relevant to the current discussion, but if you want to hear me rant about ban transitivity and inheritance, feel free to read:

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When I say it chips away at the integrity of our tiering process, that’s not just hyperbole. Transitivity of bans is important, because each lower tier inherits its usable set of ‘mons from the tier above it. If we don’t have ban transitivity, then we are allowing lower tiers to use things that they did not inherit from the tier above it. If UU unbanned Drought, there’s a very real possibility that Ninetales would not be RU to begin with.

So why did we allow RU to break transitivity in this case? Well, I wasn’t tiering admin at the time, but they made the very compelling argument that UU’s Drought ban was too sweeping in impact to be inherited by all lower tiers. They demonstrated that none of the Drought users were unbalanced in RU, and that therefore the ban was entirely unnecessary and burdensome.

But this is a pretty clear slippery slope. Since the breaking of transitivity, we’ve had numerous requests for tiers to similarly break transitivity for all sorts of reasons, and every single time the Drought issue is brought up to support it. But every single ban like this moves lower tiers further and further away from the fundamental premise they were founded on.