Announcement np: SS OU Suspect Process, Round 12 - Monster Mash

[Iodyne]

tldr do not ban

Just wanted to link Porydex since some people are unaware of its existence and many might appreciate seeing the usage stats while they read these.
https://www.porydex.com/stats/2022-08/gen-8-ou/1825/pokemon/melmetal <-- August
https://www.porydex.com/stats/2022-09/gen-8-ou/1825/pokemon/melmetal <-- September just dropped; interesting stuff
(Notably the only real difference is Melmetal from #14 to #5, Clefable from #3 to #10, and Toxapex from #9 to #12, everyone else just staying in the same order as last month. Corv did drop a bit, interestingly.)

This is my first time qualifying for a suspect vote, as such I don't want to overstay my welcome by padding my post while others above have said the same things I would. Primarily, ironwater touched on nearly every direct reason why Melmetal is not too powerful that it needs not to be banned. And he neither mentioned the massive amount of chip it takes from any mon with rocky helmet nor crippling effects of inflicted status. Next I want to thank Storm Zone, who I've gotten to know better in the high ladder thanks partially to Melmetal (as a member of my main team), as he details the biggest issue with banning Melmetal: the leftover power vacuum that would be filled by what would be much more broken mons, particularly Weavile, Tapu Lele, Tapu Fini, and Dragapult (IMO Clefable has always sucked but certainly it doesn't need to see more use in Mel's potential absence). Mimikyu Stardust also details a few more examples of would-be broken mons, hinting at what I believe to be Melmetal's best role in this meta: a last resort defence against already-set-up mons.

Aside from Pult's darts (which can't hit fairies), DIB is the only multi-attack in OU that can be used reliably to break through substitute and still deal some decent damage. This makes Melmetal vital for shutting down any substitute spammers (save VinCune) and focus sash abusers (namely Polteageist). On the other hand it also makes Melmetal uniquely susceptible to rocky helm/iron barbs/rough skin. While the usage of these mons/items/abilities may, as Mimikyu Stardust points out, be more common because of Melmetal's presence, it nonetheless shows that a multitude of counter-strategies exist. A pokemon should only be banned when there exists very few counterplay options, regardless of how well they work. Phys-def Volcarona was a near-perfect counter to Pheromosa but that certainly did not mean it should not have been banned. With Snorlax on my main I didn't even notice Spectrier, yet I can understand the desire there was to have it banned (though it was not nearly as bad as Pheromosa or DarkShifu). I can go on, but the point is that Melmetal has at least a dozen potential counters in the meta. The main reason for this is Melmetal's lack of versatility, but NOT from four-moveslot-syndrome. Rather, it is the choice of item and EV spread that really strenghtens and weakens aspects of its profile. I'll go through them just briefly.


Banded Melmetal hits very hard, but even with SpD investment, it can only take 2–3 hits from a neutral special attacker, and can easily get OHKOd if super-effective. It still takes quite a bit of damage from physical attackers as well. Not hard to revenge kill, and very easy to chip with rocky/barbs/skin. Some checks/counters that come to mind:
- Defensively: Ferrothorn, Heatran, Slowbro, Magnezone, Toxapex, Buzzwole, Volcarona, Corviknight...
- Offensively: Blacephalon, Tapu Lele, Heatran, Victini, Volcarona, Volcanion, Regieleki...
Obviously some of the aforementioned checks and counters can take serious damage if Melmetal picks the right move, but even non-choiced attacks can be easy to predict for any 'good' player.

Assault Vest Melmetal obviously takes special hits much better. I have seen max HP / max SpD sets that take hits quite well. But still can be 2HKOd by some of the common special attackers. It can seem a little broken on paper, just barely living an overheat from timid specs Blacephalon or two fire blasts from timid specs Dragapult, and with a very small chance (~6%) even a specs/flashfire eruption from post rock damage Heatran. But of course these are ridiculous situations that only go to show the interesting potential Melmetal has. Full health versus full health noone would stay in on these unless the team was designed to make one think Mel wasn't running an AV set. AV Melmetal (especially this full HP/Spd I used for the calcs) doesn't hit much hard. Even slightly defensive fairies can likely tank a DiB if necessary. And the rocky/barb/skin counters don't even take much punishment for tanking a hit, especially if Ferro has lefties or throws leech seed.
- Offensively, the aforementioned mons may not be able to OHKO as often or chip as much but usually 2HKOs still 2HKO and by no means threaten Melmetal any less.
- Defensively, counters are much more common (especially with rocky helm); in addition to the aforementioned a few that come to mind:
-- Zapdos, Suicune, Rotom-Wash, Swampert/Gastrodon, Scizor, Skarmory, Tangrowth, Torkoal, Umbreon
-- (surprisingly I havent seen Rotom-Heat but it would work quite well too)
- Some other mons like Kommo-o and Kartana are good checks but even more so can often set up on AV Mel.
- Additionally, if a significant chunk of EVs aren't taken out of power or bulk to give to Melmetal some speed, mons like Hippowdown, Tangrowth, and Corviknight can more easily threaten Melmetal without fear of flinch. And if Mel is given speed then obviously it hits less hard and/or gets hit harder.

Rocky helm is probably the biggest counterplay to Melmetal, but it certainly isn't the only. DIB can be easily Pressured away with Corv and Suicune, and as ironwater points out, Iron Defense metal birds can even further tank these hits, especially from AV sets of course. Other mons like cosmic power Mew can also often counter non-banded Mel. Then of course there's status, the second biggest counterplay. I've seen a surprising lack of will-o-wisp these days, save on the resurging Rotom-Wash wherein it is especially unpredictable (and/or can also dish out thunder wave). (A defensive Rotom-Wash can take 2 banded max atk thunder punches without fainting and can nearly return a KO with 2 hydro pumps). But the biggest use of status currently is passive, through static or flame body. Obviously burn is a major cripple to Melmetal, save an ultra-effective EQ or thunder punch it might try to dish out as a last resort. But also paralysis can be an easy way for Zapdos to find an out with Melmetal. While an adamant Melmetal can potentially 2HKO Zapdos with ice punch, to correctly pick earthquake and ice punch as Zapdos roosts and doesn't roost is essentially a coinflip, all the while risking or already dealing with paralysis can be tough (this isn't the basis of my argument, fyi ban hysterics). Lastly, Melmetal often overlooks physical threats due to its natural bulk (and tendency to not invest further therein), and after having been unavoidably chipped through some means, can often be checked by common mons such as Garchomp, Weavile, Buzzwole, Kartana, Urshifu, Tyranitar, and Barraskewda. One of the biggest counters Melmetal faces is magnet rise Magnezone, which is indeed likely prevalent because of Melmetal's ubiquity, but I find to be an annoying yet welcome set. (It may very well be more for Ferrothorn to be honest.)

Lastly is prot pads Melmetal, which tries to deal with these big issues. Of course now it doesn't hit any harder than adamant AV Melmetal (while I detailed the unreferenced AV calcs with max HP and SpD, I considered max Atk when discussing counters/checks). This brings the number of checks/counters down a bit but still most or nearly all of the aforementioned mons can work effectively. They just have to actually attack and can't just be used as a pure pivot. Scald from Pex and Cune, and status-ers like Rotom still threaten it considerably. This doesn't even mention that its far easier to kill with special attacks. Modest Zapdos easily 2HKOs Mel with heat wave, and the list of true OHKOs or OHKOs after even a little bit of chip is too long to detail.

Lefties, quick claw, and other sets pretty much suffer from all the negative aspects of each of the sets above, without any of the benefits save a small amount of increased survivability. IMO this would only be interesting on a stall team where 'RestMetal' is used to dish out status. Even then it sounds pretty sub-meta.

Personally, I use the following set for Melmetal:
Melmetal @ Assault Vest
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 232 Atk / 132 SpD / 144 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Double Iron Bash
- Earthquake
- Thunder Punch
- Ice Punch
I may make a RMT before gen 8 ends wherein it would be featured and explained to a greater detail. But using this set I certainly can dish out on fairies and unsuspecting glass cannons, but it is not hard for my opponents to counter Mel. I can't even recall Melmetal having been a wincon or finishing 1-0 in any of my games; Melmetal is a way to add general bulk to a team but in its own right is hardly hyper offensive. The mons and sets that counter my Melmetal one can piece together from the information above, but Weavile, Lele, and Dragapult often get KOs and are my no means countered by Melmetal. (And this is by no means a bad example of a good Melmetal; I've gotten to 1872 with the team that includes this set and it could easily break 1900.)


While I was writing this, Baloor made another big point I wanted to make. While I haven't seen every meta, I have been playing pokemon for at least 15 years and competitively since the end of gen 5. Some people say the meta now is a bit boring, and I will admit its not as proliferative as a time DLC1 was for unique sets, but it is by far the most stable meta gen 8 has seen, which provides a stability that I think allows setmakers to feel comfortable exploring untried but true sets and teams. We are less than a month away from gen 9, and I have heard it may bring big changes to the way battles work; to this end, while gen 8 will no doubt decrease drastically in usage and moderation, it may stay a popular alternative to gen 9. A surprising number of people are arguing that one can't predict the meta in a mon's absence, which of course to a specific degree is true but only bad players will say that you can't make estimations. Nonetheless I am not overtly worried about Lele, Kart, or Clef, moreso Weavile and a specific Dragapult set which shall not be named. If Melmetal is to be banned I absolutely would like a soon after suspect on Weavile, which I have been arguing is the most toxic mon in the teir for the past year or so (though lately the meta has balanced and is fine, but certainly won't be without Melmetal). In general, any suspect will cause a large change for the meta, and I would like to urge the council and ban voters to consider waiting until December to repoll for suspect testing.

With all this under consideration I am voting to not ban Melmetal.

Little rant:
I know there are always pro-banners that will combine arguments, i.e. pretend that Melmetal can act as a banded set, an AV set, and a prot pads set all at the same time. This is how they think, and it has been an issue every time a ban has been discussed this gen. Another issue is when an unconventional counter to a suspect mon is brought up, its unconventionality will be referred to as "bad." I.e. discussing the Spectrier situation, apparently Snorlax is a "bad mon" simply because its unconventional. If a mon has a use case, however niche, it doesn't make it bad; in fact the contrary. I don't deny it can be tiered by its versatility, but this sort of mindset, which only comes from low- to mid-level players, needs to stop. And to say its not reinforced by the council would be a lie. Another issue with the braindead council is their inability to enact even the most basic, 'complex' bans. This is referring to the inability to make contextual bans, such as banning a specific item on a specific mon, rather than the item or mon as a whole. The only logical defence I've heard is the confusion it would cause for new players, but there's already this in droves that setmakers will notice, i.e. the confusion even earlier in this thread about WishPort Blissey. (The technical ban of Articuno was also braindead; we should have just been able to use it without an ability). I can also understand not wanting to start going down a rabbithole as more and more complex bans would be enacted, but I don't see this being an issue if it was approached with equal or more scrutiny than the way this suspect is being carried out right now. I wonder how many people would have rather banned boots on Cinderace than Cinderace as a whole.

On boots:
I know Storm Zone wants boots to be banned as a whole, but I can only assume that part of that reason is that Cinderace otherwise likely would not have been banned (or would hence be unbanned). I do like hazard strats (I wish steelspike was a regular move), but I also hate rocks in particular and I'm glad some mons like Rotom-Heat, Volcarona, and some flying types like the legendary birds are able to be used to a more interesting fashion. Defoggers are typically flying and that makes for painful hazard removal without boots. Especially with mons like Forretress and Gliscor being unavailable, hazards would probably be the entire meta if boots weren't around. I do hate the use of boots in the context of stall-based teleporting/regenerating mons that aren't even weak to rocks, but hazards still deal a lot of damage to the rest of teams, and there are enough wallbreakers (Melmetal included) that help balance this out right now. DIB's flinch is a major reason why stall teams aren't as prevalent as they have been. And yet they still are as annoying as ever; Melmetal isn't an oppressive force. It's not overpowered.

Post scriptum:
I hope my post is well-recieved; I don't want to start any unhealthy argument over the suspect or the council in general but as Storm Zone notes above there is a lot of weird defences and dumb reasoning people use in their arguments and it is frankly annoying to constantly hear. Feel free to let me know if you think I made a weird defence or dumb argument.

 

[Nish the Great]

Little rant:
I know there are always pro-banners that will combine arguments, i.e. pretend that Melmetal can act as a banded set, an AV set, and a prot pads set all at the same time. This is how they think, and it has been an issue every time a ban has been discussed this gen. Another issue is when an unconventional counter to a suspect mon is brought up, its unconventionality will be referred to as "bad." I.e. discussing the Spectrier situation, apparently Snorlax is a "bad mon" simply because its unconventional. If a mon has a use case, however niche, it doesn't make it bad; in fact the contrary. I don't deny it can be tiered by its versatility, but this sort of mindset, which only comes from low- to mid-level players, needs to stop. And to say its not reinforced by the council would be a lie. Another issue with the braindead council is their inability to enact even the most basic, 'complex' bans. This is referring to the inability to make contextual bans, such as banning a specific item on a specific mon, rather than the item or mon as a whole. The only logical defence I've heard is the confusion it would cause for new players, but there's already this in droves that setmakers will notice, i.e. the confusion even earlier in this thread about WishPort Blissey. (The technical ban of Articuno was also braindead; we should have just been able to use it without an ability). I can also understand not wanting to start going down a rabbithole as more and more complex bans would be enacted, but I don't see this being an issue if it was approached with equal or more scrutiny than the way this suspect is being carried out right now. I wonder how many people would have rather banned boots on Cinderace than Cinderace as a whole.

I think your post was very nice, but this rant is just.. really weird.
Point 1: Pro banners think Pokémon can run 5 different sets at once
While it’s true that 4mss and choosing between sets can make a Pokémon significantly worse than on paper, it’s important to know that counterplay is much more limited when you can’t tell which one of your Pokémon actually beats the opponent. Not the most disagreeable, but your wording is really strange
Point 2: Unconventional mons are a legitimate reason against banning
The probable with relying on unconventional mons to beat threats is that it really restricts team building to have to be fighting 5.5 v 6 vs any team without the broken Mon in question. Obviously that is something that you can absolutely do, but it’s not fair to throw a massive wrench in teambuilding because snorlax can technically beat spectrier
Point 3: Complex bans are fine
Smogon tries to stick to simple mechanics as much as possible, and generally “broken with boots” means it’s plain broken in a metagame with boots, just like how “broken with Libero” means broken for a mon that has libero. Wishport blissey is literally unobtainable in Pokémon, so by rule smogon has to not allow it (Side note, Sleep clause has been a cartridge mechanic in the past, by the way, and it’s kinda become tradition enough to the point where it’s brought into new gens). While stuff like articuno is kinda dumb, it’s generally preferred to axe a Pokémon with a 0.001% use rate than to, as you suggest, let a Pokémon have no ability, which is literally impossible in cartridge, which eliminates it from any consideration.

 

[Iodyne]

I think your post was very nice, but this rant is just.. really weird.
Point 1: Pro banners think Pokémon can run 5 different sets at once
While it’s true that 4mss and choosing between sets can make a Pokémon significantly worse than on paper, it’s important to know that counterplay is much more limited when you can’t tell which one of your Pokémon actually beats the opponent. Not the most disagreeable, but your wording is really strange
Point 2: Unconventional mons are a legitimate reason against banning
The probable with relying on unconventional mons to beat threats is that it really restricts team building to have to be fighting 5.5 v 6 vs any team without the broken Mon in question. Obviously that is something that you can absolutely do, but it’s not fair to throw a massive wrench in teambuilding because snorlax can technically beat spectrier
Point 3: Complex bans are fine
Smogon tries to stick to simple mechanics as much as possible, and generally “broken with boots” means it’s plain broken in a metagame with boots, just like how “broken with Libero” means broken for a mon that has libero. Wishport blissey is literally unobtainable in Pokémon, so by rule smogon has to not allow it (Side note, Sleep clause has been a cartridge mechanic in the past, by the way, and it’s kinda become tradition enough to the point where it’s brought into new gens). While stuff like articuno is kinda dumb, it’s generally preferred to axe a Pokémon with a 0.001% use rate than to, as you suggest, let a Pokémon have no ability, which is literally impossible in cartridge, which eliminates it from any consideration.

Well I'm glad it was appreciated, thanks.
My wording might be a bit weird, yeah. Perhaps it's because most of the discussion I've had was not on the forums.
Obviously if you just replace Snorlax with Blissey on a team its 5.5, but one shouldn't just expect to insert cut-and-paste sets. One should make a team that works synergistically around its members. You can easily make a full 6.0 with Snorlax if you give more than a college try. Besides in the case of Spectrier literally any normal or dark type with any spd at all could handle it.
I know the difference between WishPort being a literal inability, but my point is the existence of features in the builder that newbies would consider confusing. The nature of banning at all (not that im against it, I'm glad Ubers exist and we aren't all playing doubles VGC) is obviously not cartridge; the line Smogon draws isn't as clear as they try to make it seem is my point.

 

[Iznamakin]

While I think Melmetal is a very powerful Pokémon on its own, does it deserve a ban ? I genuinely don't think so.

Melmetal is basically the definition of the hard hitter that has the ability to take on almost any Pokémon of the tier, beating them without getting 1 hit-KO'd even with little defensive investment. To name a few, Garchomp, Landorus, Blaziken (sometimes), Heatran (if it's AV), Dragonite, DD Dragapult, +2 Cloyster (Shell Smash users) all lose to Melmetal and so on. I get from where from people find it banworthy. Individually, yes, Melmetal may be broken. But we have to look at the metagame as a whole and what contribution does Melmetal brings to it. Melmetal glues together of a lot of Balance/Offense teams that would otherwise get swept by things like Tapu Lele or Specs Dragapult. Just take a look at how these teams benefit from Melmetal being around.

SS OU - "Gangsters" - Beat Up Weavile Offense (1700+ ELO so far)
SS OU - Rate my first team : F-Sight Lele + Banded Shifu Balanced (+1800 ELO)
Momentum is key (pokepast.es)
SS OU - NASTY PLOT ROTOM WASH OFFENSE PEAK 2049 ELO #3 ON SS OU LADDER
SS OU - TAPU BULU BO– peaked #96,1850+ (anti rain, anti stall, anti landorus-t!)
Choiced Demons (pokepast.es) from Blimax but turned Banded Melm into AV
SS OU - [1820+ 82,7% GXE ] Terrakion got dat drip

What would these great teams be without Melmetal ? This Pokémon literally glues these teams so that they don't get completely shred by Tapu Lele or Dragapult. On top of that, Melmetal is one the only offensive Pokémon that can live some setup sweepers (Shell Smashers comes to my mind) and kill them back. As Mimikyu Stardust and Storm Zone said above, Melmetal prevents Clefable, Tapu Lele, Tapu Fini, Weavile, DD Dragapult (whose only other counters would be like Full HP Ferro/Fini, Clefable or Unaware Quagsire) from being unhealthy while compressing roles of physical breaker/tank/utility, which is very important for the health of tier, given the fact there aren't many Pokémon capable of doing what it is doing.

If I am being honest, I am surprised it even got suspected. The only thing problem with Melmetal I would say is the ParaFlinch set, which can be very annoying to deal with because it is able to flinch down its checks and beat them with ease without taking any recoil damage due to Protective Pads. If anything, this set should be suspected (maybe make Thunder Wave not compatible with Protective Pads I guess) in my opinion because DIB's 51% chance to flinch plus paralysis makes it almost impossible to deal with it sometimes cause it's forcing you to have a Zapdos/Rotom-Wash.

Melmetal is not necessarily forcing restrictive teambuilding since there are ways to play around it depending on the set whereas something like Toxapex or Clefable is forcing restrictive teambuilding as it is impossible to win if you do not have a powerful Psychic/Electric/Ground Pokémon for Toxapex or Steel/Poison Pokémon for Clefable. Sometimes, your win condition is that specific Pokémon that can beat certain walls to open up for another one and if it has no reliable recovery (like Melmetal), it becomes hard to pave your way to the win. Again, there is a reason why things like Tapu Lele are so prominent in the current metagame (defensive juggernauts like Toxapex force them to be here, which force things like Melmetal to be here, holding the metagame and preserving its harmony). As Storm Zone said, too much breakers are getting banned one after the other (Cinderace/Dark Shifu/Kyurem) which is making the tier balance/stall friendly, which is bad for the metagame considering it shouldn't be all about balance and stall but about all playstyles. It's like it's always the fault of breakers, never the fault of defensive juggernauts that force some of them to be omnipresent. Not enough action is being taken on defensive Pokémon like Toxapex/Clefable that are annoying to deal with because even switch into Lele on Pex or Melm on Clef is risky cause it might get knocked off/toxic/paralysed/burned. In my opinion Toxapex and Clefable should at least be suspected.

In conclusion, I stand with Storm Zone's point of view and I would like Melmetal to stay in the tier. It is very healthy for the tier as explained above. I think the problem lies within defensive Pokémon with abilities like Regenerator or Pokémon like Pex/Clef that are very very annoying to deal with it and forcing you to run certain wallbreakers if you want to have at least a chance of winning.

TLDR : DO NOT BAN MELMETAL

 

[Spyro]

Definitely will vote no ban on Melmetal. People are really overselling this thing. It can't run everything it wants in one set. It is too prediction reliant and It is too slow and easily checked. Even if Urshifu or whatever doesn't knock it out with a Close Combat and dies to Thunder Punch the next Pokemon that comes in will either kill it or force it out. Good luck bringing back a low health Melmetal to do some work with that trash speed lol. It is pretty much useless once it gets down to a little under half it's health. So no it doesn't matter if it's so bulky it can't be OHKOd. Not to say this mon isn't amazing because it is. I get it's obnoxious with Grassy Terrain support. But a lot of Pokemon are amazing with the right support. Thats what makes them win games. The entire point of the game. You DO have to prepare for Melmetal but the Pokemon that do good against are already good OU Pokemon in general. I'm more afraid of hard hitting Pokemon that are actually fast or have a way to boost their speed like Weavile, Garchomp, Dragapult, Swift Swim, Slush Rush, etc.

I honestly really like Melmetal in the tier because of it's defensive utility more than anything. It blanket checks a good amount of Pokemon in the same way Landorus Therian and Heatran do. It's one of those glue mons that hold the tier together. It's very healthy for the meta. Do not ban if you care about this tier.

 

[Originality56]

I am going to vote on do not ban on Melmetal

First, I just want to sort things out before going into why I think its not banworthy.
Melmetal is without a doubt in my opinion a top 5 pokemon in the metagame. It is simultaneously one of the best offensive and defensive pokemon in the tier having an incredible attack stat, amazing coverage and an ability that boost not only its stab but coverage moves that it regularly uses like Ice Punch and Thunder Punch. Steel typing with outstanding physical bulk due to its 135 HP stat and 143 Defense makes it almost impossible to kill on the physical side unboosted even if the move is supereffective. While its special is a below average 65 Mel's enormous HP and steel typing makes up for this main weakness and you can patch it with items like assault vest. With all this bulk and power its one of tiers best checks to some of the most dangerous pokemon in the tier like Weavile, Clefable and Tapu Lele. Weavile imo is the most important thing it checks because an SD Life Orb Weavile against a team without melmetal or itemless pex is almost impossible to stop it from picking up multiple kills or even outright sweeping if you don't have the right mon to revenge kill it.

Going over sets there are a lot to chose from:

Melmetal @ Protective Pads
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 40 HP / 252 Atk / 104 SpD / 112 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Double Iron Bash
- Superpower
- Thunder Punch
- Thunder Wave

Melmetal @ Choice Band
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 32 HP / 252 Atk / 224 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Double Iron Bash
- Earthquake
- Superpower
- Thunder Punch

Melmetal @ Assault Vest
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 128 HP / 116 Atk / 252 SpD / 12 Spe
Careful Nature
- Double Iron Bash
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Thunder Punch

Melmetal @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Fist
EVs: 252 Atk / 244 SpD / 12 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Protect
- Double Iron Bash
- Earthquake
- Toxic

I believe that set that gives players the most success has to be either the toxic protect set or protective pads. Leftovers is a really handy item to keep Melmetal alive and keep it from letting pokemon like Scarf Lele get out of hand. Also this set if paired with Magnezone can be really difficult to switch into to. As for protective pads its a really great option especially when your opponent has pokemon with the abilities static, flame body, iron barbs, rough skin or items like rocky helmet. It gives Melmetal the freedom to attack without worrying about chip damage just for making contact or getting an unlucky status condition (especially burn) as you can sometimes get around the paralysis since Melmetal is already slower than almost every other pokemon in ou but it can definitely be irritating to get the unfortunate 1/4 chance to waist a turn. Despite these sets imo being the most usable this doesn't mean that you should underestimate the others as CB Melmetal's damage output is simply breathtaking and the specials attacks that av mel can take is pretty great as well.

A few calcs:
252+ SpA Charcoal Heatran Eruption (131 BP) vs. 128 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Melmetal: 356-420 (80.3 - 94.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

+1 252+ SpA Volcarona Fire Blast vs. 128 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Melmetal: 384-452 (86.6 - 102%) -- 25% chance to OHKO


+2 252 SpA Volcarona Flamethrower vs. 128 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Melmetal: 380-450 (85.7 - 101.5%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO


+2 16 SpA Volcarona Flamethrower vs. 128 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Melmetal: 320-378 (72.2 - 85.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO


252+ Atk Choice Band Iron Fist Melmetal Double Iron Bash (2 hits) vs. 252 HP / 136 Def Garchomp: 378-446 (90 - 106.1%) -- approx. 87.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

252+ Atk Choice Band Melmetal Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Rotom-Wash: 218-257 (71.7 - 84.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery



252+ Atk Choice Band Melmetal Superpower vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Rotom-Wash: 218-257 (71.7 - 84.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Now getting into why I don't think Melmetal should be banned imo is that its a really healthy presence for the tier. I know I'm gonna sound like a broken record but I think Weavile would honestly become even more banworthy than what it already is right now (yes even with melmetal in the tier I think its extremely broken). With sets like cb beat up stacking physical attackers with it and sd life orb tripel axel traditional answers like toxapex and buzzwole aren't enough as they can easily get overwhelmed by both sets. And while yes melmetal is probably worse at checking than the previously mentioned pokemon because of its vulnerability to knock off but its one of the only steel types in the tier that can come into it with confidence and unlike tapu fini toxapex and buzzwole it fits on a wide variety of teams then all three, resist stealth rock and checks other pretty insane pokemon like tapu lele. Also despite Melmetal the calcs shown above Melmetal is not the hardest pokemon to handle defensively in the tier. I wouldn't say it has any true counters but because of how slow it is it can't wallbreak as easily as it would like too. Pokemon like Slowbro, Tangrowth, Corviknight, Skarmory, Rotom-W, Ferrothorn, Toxapex, Buzzwole and Zapdos are pokemon that don't hard counter every set but they can keep it in check due to their physical bulk and either having regenerator to scout it out, reliable recovery, or resistance to most of coverage. Also some of the pokemon I mentioned like zapdos are a complete hard counter to the protective pads sets. Also even if you can't fit some of these defensive pokemon on more offensive teams offensive mons like Urshifu, Volcanion, Volcarona, Landorus can help pivot around with their natural bulk, ability, recovery moves or resistance to its coverage and ability to threaten it out with supereffective coverage. Overall I think Melmetal is a key pokemon in the metagame and holds the tier together against many of its powerful threats and this is why I will be voting do not ban.

 

[Moyashi]

I NEVER said it was broken to begin with, people are indirectly saying its broken, its not even broken checks broken, its "ARGUABLY healthy pokemon is preventing another pokemon from being broken because its a counter" ,the reason a pokemon is broken is because it doesnt have counters,

This is pretty much the one thing i will give you. Melmetal is innocent until proven guilty. It isn't broken unless proven otherwise. This is a fair statement. With that being said,

I admire your skill and building. I respect your playing ability and creative thinking. And i appreciate the contributions you have made for the community and the game. But i have no love for the condescending and self aggrandizing attitude that is present at points, even one where you seem to dismiss those with differing opinions as just less experienced and "wrong".

talking as someone who builds roughly 5-6 teams a day and with the most experience in the tier, i know there are almost hundreds of ways to handle melmetal, people just can't innovate because they choose not to look into other pokemon,

so i urge the balance and stall players to look into other mons and innovate more, that will open your eyes and make you see its really not broken, you just did not know how to handle it.

I don't think making the assumption that because people find Melmetal problematic, that they simply don't look into other pokemon is fair at all. It isn't some black and white scenario.

Notice how the last time a defensive pokemon was banned was the very end of gen 6, there are many defensive pokemon i stated that needs to be looked into, and yes this INCLUDES toxapex, pex is not good right now because everybody is checking their team to have 2-3 pex counters just to keep it in check, what if they just built a balance without that consideration?, they would realise and say "hey! pex was holding back so many pokemon, i was just too blind to see it because teams r focused on having a pex check). They are blinded by offense so they dont realise that defense has restricting capabilities.

You know Weavile is arguably overprepared for in this meta but its usage or performance hasn't exactly dropped off like you'd think it would've. The fact it is still so potentially threatening is a testament to its effectiveness (when triple axel isn't deciding to be a troll). Toxapex os a very good defensive pokemon, but it isn't the best defensive water type in the tier. You certainly have to prepare for it, having ways to deal with.it. But broken? I'm sorry but I cannot see it.

And in my opinion anybody who thinks toxapex is fine and healthy does not have enough teambuilding experience or ladder experience/tier experience to realise these in depth and specific teambuilding measures that they are unconsciously taking to keep toxapex in check. Remember it boils down to experience and tier knowledge here, pex is considered broken because they are trying to run down its usage by specifically preparing for it more than other pokemon, and that gives the illusion that its not good because everybody is overpreparing for it.

This is my biggest gripe with your entire response. It feels so self aggrandizing and condescending. People who don't agree that Toxapex is broken, and they think it is overall balanced, they just don't have " enough teambuilding experience or ladder experience/tier experience"? Would you seriously say that to a high level player who felt Pex was fine? I don't think anyone doesn't think about how they are dealing with Pex in the builder. A prominent defensive pokemon deserves respect in the builder.

hope this makes a good lecture and sheds light on those who responded to me

And finally, this is just needlessly patronizing.

Defensive archetypes need to be looked at too, which includes Toxapex and Heavy-Duty Boots. I and many of my friends have placed these points into surveys and they are never addressed.

If they aren't addressed they probably aren't a widespread concern across the general playerbase.

A surprising number of people are arguing that one can't predict the meta in a mon's absence, which of course to a specific degree is true but only bad players will say that you can't make estimations.

I thought your post was fine overall, and I appreciate seeing people give their honest opinions (it's great for discussion), though i didn't really agree with some points. However calling players with the mentality of "you can't predict how a meta will be in a mon's absence", many good players think so and it isn't unfounded. An example would be when ZacianC was given the boot this gen, there were people predicting things like less need for a specific core or that ZacH would be much worse. And... That proved completely wrong.

I want to also discuss your rant because i feel it detracts from your overall post quality and i want to tie some points to melmetal specifically.

1. Pro Ban side thinks X mon can run multiple sets

This has always been a misunderstanding since... Forever it feels like. It isn't that X mon can run all sets at once, but that the threat of each set can be restrictive and counterplay doesn't always overlap. The other reason is that some restrictive pokemon, if scouted incorrectly, can give a disproportionate advantage to the opponent. Kyurem was a great example of this. Melm actually doesn't have this problem of being overly punishing, though it is still awkward to scout.

2. Using unusual or conventional pokemon to handle broken threats

Innovation is always nice when it leads to cool stuff. But using mon who is almost solely used to answer a broken threat, is generally placing extra burdens on building that isn't reasonable. The fact thes

3. Complex bans

For the record calling the council "braindead" is pretty shitty.

Complex bans need to be really exceptional cases or else they are just arbitrary. You can't really argue there is a good reason for example to ban King's Rock on X mon(s) instead of banning it outright, when the item only sees use on those mons.

I just will close the rest of this out with this: suspects are an opportunity to really discuss things in an engaging way. Let's not devolve into personal attacks or the like, yeah?

 

[Iodyne]

This has always been a misunderstanding since... Forever it feels like. It isn't that X mon can run all sets at once, but that the threat of each set can be restrictive and counterplay doesn't always overlap. The other reason is that some restrictive pokemon, if scouted incorrectly, can give a disproportionate advantage to the opponent. Kyurem was a great example of this. Melm actually doesn't have this problem of being overly punishing, though it is still awkward to scout.

The whole point of creative sets is to use something unpredictable or unfamiliar. The inability to scout a mon's set is the entire reason for the existence of mixed attackers. Sure it can be incredibly annoying on the losing end to not expect something, especially when you are running stall (not that I condone it), but IMO it is the only thing that keeps the meta fresh and the game fun.

Innovation is always nice when it leads to cool stuff. But using mon who is almost solely used to answer a broken threat, is generally placing extra burdens on building that isn't reasonable. The fact thes

If we're still implicitly referencing my Snorlax example; it (along with other insert example mons) certainly can not be said to be solely useful against a single mon. I used Snorlax before Spectrier, during, and have continued to use it since to a great degree of success. (IMO its a better Blissey.) Not sure what you were going to continue with...

For the record calling the council "braindead" is pretty shitty.
Complex bans need to be really exceptional cases or else they are just arbitrary. You can't really argue there is a good reason for example to ban King's Rock on X mon(s) instead of banning it outright, when the item only sees use on those mons.

Perhaps its not the council itself but the vast majority of people in the rooms who defend them when bans are being discussed. "One-dimensional" might be a better word; I can understand their perspective on why they avoid complex bans, but I still disagree. Obviously sometimes it's easier to ban just the item as a whole, especially if tier specific, but ubiquitous items like boots would be a huge thing to ban from OU tier; certainly not the same.

 

[Pais]

Hello guys, I don't want to bore you very much so I'll try to be short and concise about what I think on Melmetal suspect and why I'll vote NO BAN.
I'm not gonna lie, I think the suspect itself is absolutely legitimate, I would like council to make suspect tests more often but If it's allowed to make some criticism (I don't want to disrespect the council work obv) I think the timing is wrong and as aggravating the council focused more on finding bizarre solutions like the famous Zamazenta-C test and after the Kyurem test (thanks god kyurem is banned) we had a lot of months to see the metagame without Melmetal and other centralizing threats (yes, remember that Melmetal is not the only centralizing mon of the meta or the only one mon to be potentially broken). SS OU is near to its end and from what I've seen from previous gens like ORAS and SM it's really hard to see the council proposing new suspect tests, in fact SM OU is the most iconic example of a metagame with poor suspect tests. Melmetal is for sure a centralizing mon in the meta but it has counterplays (I won't repeat in this post every counterplay since Storm Zone and Mimikyu Stardust in previous posts made a good summary) but at least it stops other centralizing mon like weavile, fairy types, physical wallbreakers and more balanced/stallish team to be problematic or more centralizing (I bet nobody wants the meta to return in a boring shape like the wcop meta, but this is just an example) considering obv that it's 100% sure that nothing will be done after this suspect test independently from the outcome of the suspect to change the state of the metagame at least if we should look to the management of previous gens like ORAS and SM. To conclude, I think everyone who plays tournaments or high ladder can confirm that the metagame is already adapting to the common melmetal archetypes and players should just focus more on exploring new ideas for their teams since there is potential of innovation for a lot of playstyles, melmetal offense/bulky off teams are not the only viable playstyles and I don't think that high caliber players play teams with 0 counterplays to melmetal or that it's necessary to be overprepared vs melmetal.

Team I used for suspect (s/o Storm Zone & Pinkacross, that's a rly based team)

 

[Hiko]

As ironwater, Storm Zone and Mimikyu Stardust pointed out above, melmetal do have answers. Even tho it's difficultly manageable due to all its potentials sets (Twave/Toxic/Banded), there is still some counters as well as a good number to checks to the first two and the last one relies on prediction to cause significant damage. The thing that makes Melmetal out of the pool of the others breakers is its amazing bulk, which makes it hard to revengekill despite its slow speed and almost impossible to OHKO. These defensive abilities can be reinforced by the AV to cover the weakness of its poor SpDef. However, Melmetal can't get its hp back apart from leftovers (rest has no usage), and in the AV case, none. This lack of recovery means that every chip damage (especially rocky helmet or iron barbs) matter in taking care of it on the long run. Furthermore, Melmetal also have checks which represents offensive threats to its team such as heatran, Urshifu or Volcarona (which can also flame body it). On the top of that, Melmetal is really useful by helping to keep in control very dangerous mons like Weavile or clefable.
This is why I vote DO NOT BAN.

 

[TLPenn]

Aside from Pult's darts (which can't hit fairies), DIB is the only multi-attack in OU.

I think you're forgetting Urshifu-R's Surging Strikes

 

[Arissi]

I think you're forgetting Urshifu-R's Surging Strikes

and taxel lol?

 

[berunka]

and taxel lol?

and scale shot.....

 

[Rogue786]

and scale shot.....

And Icicle Spear and Dual Wingbeat
**although less significant than the ones already mentioned

 

[Bruhsters2.0]

is this seriously a post- well, two now- from a top player that basically boils down to complaining about stall? yes, it is. this feels so hastily and like.... desparately? written? you're talking about a bias towards balance and stall, but i don't really see that anywhere. this gen has favored BO and HO way more in recent times than it did at the start. besides, melm is a mon that fits perfectly on balance. also, u say that speed is a must for a pokemon to receive a suspect after you just said it was insane that toxapex didn't receive a suspect before melmetal.

then u say that the offense playerbase is being disregarded, which, what? how? people are here to suspect melmetal because it's something that's been in high demand and an idea of contention for the whole generation, not because they hate a particular playstyle. they wanna see how the meta will develop and continue to thrive after a decision gets made.

if you took off the storm zone label i would think that this comes from a 1200 elo player who just absolutely hates running into mons that they think are Stall because they hate playing a game that's more than 20 turns. you probably think stall is more dominant because you hate it so much that it lives in your head! maybe u could even like, look around and enjoy the interactions that a well-built stall team can bring- they're super fun to build, seriously, and i wouldn't even mind a meta that favors it more. you're being very mean to this playstyle much more than you claim offense is being unfairly treated! stall has been a genuine part of the game we play for eternity, get over it <3

but anyways, melm isn't the only thing that would keep stall in check. you yourself said that weavile and pult would go crazy and honestly, yeah. but that's not a reason i wouldn't want it gone!

tl;dr lol

anyways vote ban bc its fucking ugly and i hate seeing it on my screen its a got damn eyesore

Alright I've read all the posts. First, don't diss him. He's cool looking. Second, I'm not that big of a player in OU, but let me go on record and say Melmetal should not be banned. Yes, we know it's tanky and has too much bulk. Yes we know it has a good offense on top of that. But like other people have said, there are ways of checking and reducing it to the point where it's useless. Will-O-Wisp, stacks, Thunder Wave, etc. In my experience, usually these are enough to deal with Melmetal. If you stack Swords Dance on Blaziken, then yeah Melmetal is dead. I could name a decent amount of Pokemon who check Melmetal. My point is, if you're really considering banning Melmetal because of how tanky he is, then yeah get the hell away. As for offense, hes too slow to out speed anything, as such you can land a burn and literally kill him, or a Knock Off to reduce his potential. Because of the way the metagame is, these solutions are always gonna be here. The only reason why the ban was brought up was because people wanted to get rid of one of the only good checks to stall and balance teams. He's a healthy presence, and even with stall and balance teams there are ways of checking him. So once again, DON'T BAN HIM.
Note: I do not mean any offense to the council or anybody who wants to ban Melmetal.

 

[Lily]

This post will primarily be structured around the Leftovers set(s) since imo they're the best by far, I acknowledge that pads/av/cb/etc are all viable and have their place but I do not find them to be anywhere near as centralising or concerning.



One of the interesting things to me about how Melmetal plays is that it's an extremely overpowered offensive Pokemon that rarely gets to flex those muscles because of how important it is to use it for its defensive qualities. As some other posters have mentioned, Melmetal can and does 1v1 pretty much everything - there are very few mons that can OHKO it, and even fewer that can do that while avoiding a KO from it. In a sense, that could make it broken under a typical angle; when using Melmetal, things are almost always in Melmetal's favour, but I'm not sure that necessitates a ban.

Take a matchup where you're playing against both a Dragapult and a Weavile, for example, and you're using the standard Leftovers + Protect Melmetal set. Should you need it to, Melmetal can check either of these Pokemon and trade with them in return; it will sacrifice a large amount of its HP to do so, but it will get the job done. From here, it's not super likely your Melmetal is high on HP anymore (and has probably lost its Leftovers if you used it against Weavile), and as such its usefulness is somewhat limited; on a free turn it can still get a good hit in, and if you play well it can potentially get a lot of HP back with Leftovers + Protect if your opponent has a fodder like mono-Moonblast Clefable. We've seen this occur in tournament games for sure, but the more common scenario is that Melmetal trades 1 for 1 or 1 for 2 before going down. That's something it's very good at; Melmetal is the trade king of the tier and will almost never lose a 1v1 against anything.

To me, though, this is something that could be worth preserving; Melmetal rewards smart gameplanning and encourages its user to identify what it should be used against - a smartly played Melmetal is possibly the best Pokemon in the tier, but a recklessly played Melmetal is often useless. In this it's unlike "mindless" Pokemon like Dragapult, Blacephalon, Tapu Lele, etc. - you can get mileage out of those even with subpar play due to how little prediction and gameplanning they require. Melmetal does maintain a skilled element of the game and opens up teambuilding by providing a useful catchall to many Pokemon, preventing you from shoehorning yourself into using specific checks to everything and opening up unique offensive structures.


It is pretty centralising, though, and it doesn't really have many hard counters; depending on its coverage it can kinda bop everything, though between stuff like Buzzwole, Rotom-W, Landorus-T, Zapdos, Slowbro, Toxapex, Ferrothorn and Corviknight (likely more I'm forgetting, too, this is just off the top of my head) there is a lot of room to play around it defensively - it can catch any of these with the right move, but the punishment for mispredicting can be quite severe (helmet, barbs, static, etc). Pads does dodge this issue but is also harder to fit due to its inability to do much in a long game compared to the immortal Leftovers set.

I dunno what I'd vote should I choose to get reqs. I can definitely understand the argument that Melmetal is just too good at what it does when it comes to forcing trades and outlasting answers, but I'm not sure how much I agree with them. I think Melmetal's natural amazing stats and typing bring a lot to the tier, and I'm unsure if removing it is better for SS OU in the long run; I don't think there are any overarching structures being held down by Melmetal's presence right now unlike previous bans like Urshifu-S and Spectrier, so it's kinda tough for me to form an opinion. Maybe I'll feel stronger after laddering with it. This post isn't really supposed to be supportive of a ban or do not ban argument, so I guess it's kinda pointless in some ways, but I hope it's at least a decent amount of food for thought for anyone else who's not really sure one way or the other.

 

[Magma boii]

I feel melmetal should not be banned due to its counters like burn, fire moves, ground moves.melmetal counters a lot of defensive pokemon

 

[zaydapoketrainer]

There are a lot of reasons for why I wouldn't ban Melmetal (if I was good enough at ladder). I haven't read any other threads that much, so sorry if I repeat points, as I'm just going to try and provide my view on this.

Although Melmetal seems broken on paper, the metagame is prepared for it. There will be checks to mons on most good teams. There will be ways to deal with Melmetal. Fire moves and coverage for steels overall is everywhere. Rocky helmet, iron barbs, rough skin all chip down Melmetal. Sure, you can predict these mons, but lele can predict a steel, annihilate it with focus blast, and now lele takes a kill everytime it comes in. The point is, a good player can predict and kill a mon instantly, but that doesn't mean that that mon is overpowered. Lele might not have switch ins, but it needs prediction to do well, and one wrong predict can really cost a lot.
Another thing is that Melm only has 4 move slots. It can't run each set at once, and it has to pick one. Each of these sets has a weakness, and its easy to figure out a Melm set just by the item.
Melm also gets chipped down very hard. The above mentioned thinks, along with Melm practically always going last, so it often has to tank a hit. It doesn't have reliable recovery, as leftovers is its only option for recovery (gterrain too, but that really only works well with lefties protect). Spikes also eat away at its health very fast. Although its immune to toxic and resistant to stealth rock, it isn't immune to burn, which can cripple its offensive potential and chip away at its health even more.
Another thing is the havoc banning Melmetal can cause to the tier. It checks a lot of mons, and if its gone, weavile and lele amongst others will be broken, and with the generation coming to an end, we won't have the time to ban all these threats and make quick decisions.
Melmetal is also one of the best stallbreakers, yet stall is still a decent playstyle. If Melmetal is gone, then stall will thrive, and no one wants to play a stall meta.
Also, pressure corviknight cuts away at DIB's pp very fast, as DIB only has 8 pp.
Overall, these are my reasons for why Melmetal should not be banned. Fun mon, helps the meta stay balanced, and has its checks.

 

[shawk*+:)]

I would like to state more opinions about this suspect and address some obvious critics,

1. First thing's first, when did people start disregarding the broken checks broken argument?, that is mind blowing to me, for one, if you ban something's counters, of course it is going to become broken, its broken BECAUSE you banned its counters LOL. That is a bit ridiculous let me give an example, heatran and dragonite checks volcarona, you banned heatran and dragonite, of course it becomes broken, say garchomp has weavile and buzzwole as counters, of course if you have those two leave the tier garchomp would become broken, so u see this argument is immediately valid unless we control the tier based on bias and not in general, and lean toward balance and stall players, essentially leaning immediately towards what the ban supporters say. I NEVER said it was broken to begin with, people are indirectly saying its broken, its not even broken checks broken, its "ARGUABLY healthy pokemon is preventing another pokemon from being broken because its a counter" ,the reason a pokemon is broken is because it doesnt have counters, it has a counter that some people want to ban. Very simple, it has counters, you just decide to ban it because some people THINK its broken


2. Second thing i would like to address is the bias towards balance and stall players, notice how certain people say just because it hurts offense more than fat which is untrue to begin with cause if melmetal has the right set it can beat balanced or fat teams better than it beats offense, basically labelling melmetal broken because it can punch enough holes in teams to force progress, something this tier is lacking, someone mentioned other breakers like blaziken and crawdaunt, so what differs them from melmetal? Its bulk alone, people don't know how to handle and manuever around melmetal, they know how to handle blaziken and crawdaunt, talking as someone who builds roughly 5-6 teams a day and with the most experience in the tier, i know there are almost hundreds of ways to handle melmetal, people just can't innovate because they choose not to look into other pokemon,
A pokemon with that much counter measures doesnt even warrant a discussion, it should be A rank at best Leaning towards A+. The entire community should be happy with the suspect test outcome, not leaving several unhappy (the entire offense playerbase being disregarded for so many years) , so i urge the balance and stall players to look into other mons and innovate more, that will open your eyes and make you see its really not broken, you just did not know how to handle it.

3. The gen is ending it could have been suspected sooner, 2 years melmetal was in ou, people didnt care to look into it because the meta teams handled it well, now towards the end of the gen the metagame is detereorating and melmetal is beating a dead meta's teams, when you could have reused the same teams from a year ago to handle melmetal just fine, the gen is about to end, but smart changes should be made, melmetal completes and balances out this meta very well and since the gen is ending, the last thing we want is a past gen unstable meta with more threats unleashed because of an unnecessary suspect.

4. Notice how the last time a defensive pokemon was banned was the very end of gen 6, there are many defensive pokemon i stated that needs to be looked into, and yes this INCLUDES toxapex, pex is not good right now because everybody is checking their team to have 2-3 pex counters just to keep it in check, what if they just built a balance without that consideration?, they would realise and say "hey! pex was holding back so many pokemon, i was just too blind to see it because teams r focused on having a pex check). They are blinded by offense so they dont realise that defense has restricting capabilities. And in my opinion anybody who thinks toxapex is fine and healthy does not have enough teambuilding experience or ladder experience/tier experience to realise these in depth and specific teambuilding measures that they are unconsciously taking to keep toxapex in check. Remember it boils down to experience and tier knowledge here, pex is considered broken because they are trying to run down its usage by specifically preparing for it more than other pokemon, and that gives the illusion that its not good because everybody is overpreparing for it.

5. Remember, as i stated above, stall and balance do not make a metagame, all playstyles contribute to and play an important role in the metagame, so please don't be biased toward stall and balance.


I hope this makes a good lecture and sheds light on those who responded to me (directly or indirectly), remember folks i state a third time because i am DEFIANT about this, every playstyle makes a metagame, not just stall and balance.

First of all, well done on making a detailed argument. I agree with almost everything here, now onto some points that I wanna echo for the people in the back rq:

so i urge the balance and stall players to look into other mons and innovate more, that will open your eyes and make you see its really not broken, you just did not know how to handle it.

As someone who frequently builds both balance and offense, this point cannot be stressed enough. What A lot of casual players need to understand that you cannot rely on a single defensive core throughout an entire metagame. The metagame will adapt to defensive cores that are popular at that specific time. For example, you don’t really see G-Corsola anymore as you once used to because of Metagame changes. You need to adapt and build your teams using other defensive Pokémon to check what Offensive Pokémon are popping off in the metagame and vice versa. Even if it’s a lower tier pokemon, that doesn’t mean that it is completely off the table. An example to this is when Volcanion first came onto the OU scene due to how difficult its Specs and Boots sets were to handle. After sometime people realized that Gastrodon is an excellent counter to it and many other threats in OU and now Gastrodon is now the new defensive ground type in the tier.

if you took off the storm zone label i would think that this comes from a 1200 elo player who just absolutely hates running into mons that they think are Stall because they hate playing a game that's more than 20 turns. you probably think stall is more dominant because you hate it so much that it lives in your head! maybe u could even like, look around and enjoy the interactions that a well-built stall team can bring- they're super fun to build, seriously, and i wouldn't even mind a meta that favors it more. you're being very mean to this playstyle much more than you claim offense is being unfairly treated! stall has been a genuine part of the game we play for eternity, get over it <3

but anyways, melm isn't the only thing that would keep stall in check. you yourself said that weavile and pult would go crazy and honestly, yeah. but that's not a reason i wouldn't want it gone!

tl;dr lol

anyways vote ban bc its fucking ugly and i hate seeing it on my screen its a got damn eyesore

If i’m being quite frank, this mindset is why we’re having a suspect test in the first place.
Not to say that you’re wrong, but I think you might fail to understand that Gen 8 has been favoring defensive cores ever since its introduction. That’s why whenever a new archetype of HO is introduced, it makes a bigger splash then it would in previous Generations. To echo what SZ had said, the reason why Melmetal is being suspected now is because players have adapted over the years and found new sets to beat pre-existing defensive cores. Defensive cores, in which players have relied on for years and haven’t adapted to the metagame because they had no reason to. You can also say how this is also how the offense player base is being “punished” of some sort.

Melmetal isn’t the only thing keeping stall in check sure, but it’s possibly the best answer to it right now. Pokemon like Specs Lele have incredible breaking power yes, but skilled stall players will more likely than not exploit its vulnerability to chip damage. Melmetal really doesn’t have vulnerability to chip as it only needs to fear spikes. Which even then a lot of Melm sets run lefties and if you allow someone to get up layers of hazards without doing anything about it (especially on a hazard weak team) then you need to play better to alleviate that weakness.

you yourself said that weavile and pult would go crazy and honestly, yeah. but that's not a reason i wouldn't want it gone!

Pult and Weavile are two of the best Pokemon in the meta right now, what Melmetal allows a lot of Offensive/Balance teams to do is offer a reliable check to them. Let it be known that Melmetal is a fantastic glue pokemon because of this. With Melm gone, Weavile’s and Dragapult’s odds of being suspected will more likely go up, which will more than likely punish offensive players further.

tl;dr
This post wasn’t made to be ‘bitter’ as many people exclaim, Everyone’s giving their honest opinions right now, including me. Among all of my opinions, Melmetal is fine.

 

[its zxc]

Melmetal is one of the most interesting Pokémon in SwSh OU. It's a great physical attacker that can dish out huge amounts of damage. But it's very slow, and has no recovery options, so good players will be able to play around it.
First off, Melmetal is not unhealthy for the tier. It doesn't dominate any particular matchup, nor does it have any glaringly broken moves or abilities. In fact, its biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: its massive size makes it incredibly slow, meaning that faster Pokémon can easily take it down before it has a chance to attack.

Second, bans like this shouldn't happen so close to the end of the generation. Melmetal is an iconic Pokémon that has shaped the metagame, and this ban would make the tier very different for people who come to revisit it in the future.

Finally, bans like this limit player creativity. Melmetal is a pokem that can be used in a variety of ways, and banning it would only serve to make the tier less interesting. There's no reason to ban Melmetal, and doing so would only hurt the tier.

Do not ban

 

[Let's go shuckles]

252+ SpA Choice Specs Torkoal Fire Blast vs. 128 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Melmetal in Sun: 420-494 (94.8 - 111.5%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO

Torkoal is incredibly poor answer to melmetal. Due to its abysmal 20 base speed, it gets outsped by melmetal and against banded variants, it gets OHKO'd by earthquake after stealth rocks. Would strongly not recommend specs Torkoal as your melmetal answer.

 

[Scorcha9]

This post will primarily be structured around the Leftovers set(s) since imo they're the best by far, I acknowledge that pads/av/cb/etc are all viable and have their place but I do not find them to be anywhere near as centralising or concerning.



One of the interesting things to me about how Melmetal plays is that it's an extremely overpowered offensive Pokemon that rarely gets to flex those muscles because of how important it is to use it for its defensive qualities. As some other posters have mentioned, Melmetal can and does 1v1 pretty much everything - there are very few mons that can OHKO it, and even fewer that can do that while avoiding a KO from it. In a sense, that could make it broken under a typical angle; when using Melmetal, things are almost always in Melmetal's favour, but I'm not sure that necessitates a ban.

Take a matchup where you're playing against both a Dragapult and a Weavile, for example, and you're using the standard Leftovers + Protect Melmetal set. Should you need it to, Melmetal can check either of these Pokemon and trade with them in return; it will sacrifice a large amount of its HP to do so, but it will get the job done. From here, it's not super likely your Melmetal is high on HP anymore (and has probably lost its Leftovers if you used it against Weavile), and as such its usefulness is somewhat limited; on a free turn it can still get a good hit in, and if you play well it can potentially get a lot of HP back with Leftovers + Protect if your opponent has a fodder like mono-Moonblast Clefable. We've seen this occur in tournament games for sure, but the more common scenario is that Melmetal trades 1 for 1 or 1 for 2 before going down. That's something it's very good at; Melmetal is the trade king of the tier and will almost never lose a 1v1 against anything.

To me, though, this is something that could be worth preserving; Melmetal rewards smart gameplanning and encourages its user to identify what it should be used against - a smartly played Melmetal is possibly the best Pokemon in the tier, but a recklessly played Melmetal is often useless. In this it's unlike "mindless" Pokemon like Dragapult, Blacephalon, Tapu Lele, etc. - you can get mileage out of those even with subpar play due to how little prediction and gameplanning they require. Melmetal does maintain a skilled element of the game and opens up teambuilding by providing a useful catchall to many Pokemon, preventing you from shoehorning yourself into using specific checks to everything and opening up unique offensive structures.


It is pretty centralising, though, and it doesn't really have many hard counters; depending on its coverage it can kinda bop everything, though between stuff like Buzzwole, Rotom-W, Landorus-T, Zapdos, Slowbro, Toxapex, Ferrothorn and Corviknight (likely more I'm forgetting, too, this is just off the top of my head) there is a lot of room to play around it defensively - it can catch any of these with the right move, but the punishment for mispredicting can be quite severe (helmet, barbs, static, etc). Pads does dodge this issue but is also harder to fit due to its inability to do much in a long game compared to the immortal Leftovers set.

I dunno what I'd vote should I choose to get reqs. I can definitely understand the argument that Melmetal is just too good at what it does when it comes to forcing trades and outlasting answers, but I'm not sure how much I agree with them. I think Melmetal's natural amazing stats and typing bring a lot to the tier, and I'm unsure if removing it is better for SS OU in the long run; I don't think there are any overarching structures being held down by Melmetal's presence right now unlike previous bans like Urshifu-S and Spectrier, so it's kinda tough for me to form an opinion. Maybe I'll feel stronger after laddering with it. This post isn't really supposed to be supportive of a ban or do not ban argument, so I guess it's kinda pointless in some ways, but I hope it's at least a decent amount of food for thought for anyone else who's not really sure one way or the other.

I appreciate that you posted this, and from reading, I'll likely vote Do Not Ban on Melmetal. I know you weren't pushing for a specific side, but this really helped me more to understand Melmetal's role in the tier despite me having tons and tons of ladder games in SS OU. I don't necessarily think arguing that things will be broken without the presence of Melmetal is a valid argument, but overall, with the lack of recovery and horrible speed tier, I think Melmetal is a very powerful, but overall fair mon in SS OU. Thanks for posting this again, I think it really helped me decide my future vote.

 

[Tapeworm]

While it would give my post a lot more credibility if I were to have made reqs at this point, I wanted to make it now anyway just to strike while the iron is hot because there's been lots of posts pushing back against some standard suspect convention for very good reasons due to the circumstances and I think this suspect test as a whole sets a very interesting precedent moving forward with things.

I'll start off saying that I do not believe Melmetal is broken. I don't believe any mon in the tier, in isolation, is broken. I think the closest thing to being possibly broken would be Regen, but I'll cover that later, but Melm definitely isn't. I do not believe it is overcentralising as a fair range of counterplay options exist which can fit on pretty much any team structure which neither warps the tier nor invalidates playstyles. It has its advantages, it has its detriments, all of those have been summarised very well already imo (best so in Mimikyu Stardust's post). I believe what makes Melm the most worthy of concern is how it functions as a unit on teams when offering and receiving offensive support; its ability to synergise with potent breakers and sweepers and the direct support it receives from the tiers common trappers allow it to perform significantly well with dismantling cores. A well-built Melm team will rarely ever be a threat, not strictly down to Melm itself though; a scary Melm team could actually be a scary Weavile team or a scary Lele team that just happens to have a Melm on it, but is it Melm specifically which pushes it over the edge? Probably not I wouldn't think, it's a powerful breaker on a team of equally powerful breakers fucking shit up together. All that said though, it does offer uses in its role compression in ways many teams would appreciate, being a powerful breaker which can soft check Weav, Lele, some offensive Ghosts under the right circumstances, other offensive Fairies, etc.
As we're reaching the late stages of the meta and pretty much every mon in isolation is 'handle-able' it really does become an issue if we fail to consider at all the repercussions of its ban. Of course no one can predict the future, and we won't know what a post-Melm meta would look like unless it happens, it settles, and we experience it for ourselves; but we can make reasonable assumptions based on its roles and what alternatives there may or may not be to it. To remove a mon and say 'we'll suspect anything that comes out of the woodwork after' is not all that efficient if doing so results in 3-5+ mons needing suspects purely as a result of one ban, especially a ban of a mon which is not by the purest definition 'broken' as many early-meta mons very clearly were. If people can smell an unnecessary domino effect, it's gonna put people off for good reason.
This is the main reason why copy-pasting the 'no broken checks broken' portion of tiering policy has always rubbed me the wrong way, since despite its importance in preventing needless theorymoning it's also often used to discredit posts with actual merit, and that goes double for a suspect quite like this. I really appreciate that there's been some pushback against this blanket-policy and I'm grateful to the council who, albeit still discouraging such posts, have allowed people to express their views in these circumstances.

Alternatives such as Moistshifu could be worth a consideration down the line, as that thing has very similar functions in its ability to overwhelm its counters with buddies like Weavile, benefiting both from supportive lures to its checks to offering support of its own with Taunt, T-Punch in Terrain, and other more niche sets, as well as receiving very easy support from powerful FS users and other trappers; despite not being broken in isolation by any stretch, the offensive support it offers and receives from the most potent breakers in the tier are second to none. Looking at what it offers the tier beyond that, a soft-check to Weavile who's currently being naturally prepped for in present team structures (and ironically breaks decently through said structures with support from Fu itself), and maybe a revenger for mons such as Blace and boosted Volc thanks to a strong Jet. It's hard to see the drawbacks to a post-Fu meta to the extent that you, or at least I, can for Melm, despite Melm being closer to broken when just viewing them side by side.
I'm not saying any of this to derail the thread into an Urshifu thread, that mon is not a point of actual discussion at all! I'm saying all this to express the point that a suspect test at this stage in the meta requires a lot more nuance than previous ones and consideration for future developments I believe is a must.
By that same token, I'd also like to request of whatever body takes over the tier once Gen 9 rolls around that any bans, this one potentially included, don't end up in a vacuum where they are never considered for review via 'the people have spoken, you voted for this, live with it'. Once again, this tier requires fine-tuning to fix at this stage, we're well past the point of broad strokes and by the same notion that we cannot predict the future, there is 100% a chance that unaccounted for developments do happen as a result of a ban at this stage that would benefit from a review later down the line, or maybe after future bans which shift the meta in a different more accommodating direction.

While a good deal of this post had little to do with Melm as its counterplay and limitations have been thoroughly discussed and I feel I have nothing more worthy of contribution beyond that, I wanted to make it anyway because: 1. People, myself included, will be voting off this principal regardless of whether we're allowed to discuss it in this way or not, so I believe just staying quiet would be disingenuous. 2. This is a very interesting suspect and one that's relatively unique given the timing and how much more of a 'blurred lines' mon Melm arguably is than others before it and I think however this suspect is handled will set the precedent in terms of how future suspects in a meta like this at a time like this can best be handled as well; it'll make a really interesting experience to learn from.
Unpopular opinion but I really like Gen 8, I'll be continuing to play it after Gen 9 drops and I'm very interested personally to see its developments regardless of the result of this ban.
I'm personally not too passionate either way what happens to Melm, but I do think that keeping Melm is healthier for the meta at present than removing it likely would be. When I make my reqs in what little free time I have, I will be voting do not ban.

 

[Iznamakin]

First of all, well done on making a detailed argument. I agree with almost everything here, now onto some points that I wanna echo for the people in the back rq:



As someone who frequently builds both balance and offense, this point cannot be stressed enough. What A lot of casual players need to understand that you cannot rely on a single defensive core throughout an entire metagame. The metagame will adapt to defensive cores that are popular at that specific time. For example, you don’t really see G-Corsola anymore as you once used to because of Metagame changes. You need to adapt and build your teams using other defensive Pokémon to check what Offensive Pokémon are popping off in the metagame and vice versa. Even if it’s a lower tier pokemon, that doesn’t mean that it is completely off the table. An example to this is when Volcanion first came onto the OU scene due to how difficult its Specs and Boots sets were to handle. After sometime people realized that Gastrodon is an excellent counter to it and many other threats in OU and now Gastrodon is now the new defensive ground type in the tier.



If i’m being quite frank, this mindset is why we’re having a suspect test in the first place.
Not to say that you’re wrong, but I think you might fail to understand that Gen 8 has been favoring defensive cores ever since its introduction. That’s why whenever a new archetype of HO is introduced, it makes a bigger splash then it would in previous Generations. To echo what SZ had said, the reason why Melmetal is being suspected now is because players have adapted over the years and found new sets to beat pre-existing defensive cores. Defensive cores, in which players have relied on for years and haven’t adapted to the metagame because they had no reason to. You can also say how this is also how the offense player base is being “punished” of some sort.

Melmetal isn’t the only thing keeping stall in check sure, but it’s possibly the best answer to it right now. Pokemon like Specs Lele have incredible breaking power yes, but skilled stall players will more likely than not exploit its vulnerability to chip damage. Melmetal really doesn’t have vulnerability to chip as it only needs to fear spikes. Which even then a lot of Melm sets run lefties and if you allow someone to get up layers of hazards without doing anything about it (especially on a hazard weak team) then you need to play better to alleviate that weakness.



Pult and Weavile are two of the best Pokemon in the meta right now, what Melmetal allows a lot of Offensive/Balance teams to do is offer a reliable check to them. Let it be known that Melmetal is a fantastic glue pokemon because of this. With Melm gone, Weavile’s and Dragapult’s odds of being suspected will more likely go up, which will more than likely punish offensive players further.

tl;dr
This post wasn’t made to be ‘bitter’ as many people exclaim, Everyone’s giving their honest opinions right now, including me. Among all of my opinions, Melmetal is fine.

In my opinion this is the problem of the tier. A wallbreaker that can beat multiple walls at the same time even if it requires playing well is regarded as banworthy whereas a defensive Pokémon that can wall multiple things and be hard to switch into is almost never regarded as such. In a metagame, you fundamentally want to have breakers that are hard to switch into requiring you to play well (high risk, high reward). Currently, people always use the same defensive Pokémon that rewards you for making safe plays. This tier lacks Pokémon like Melmetal, that rewards you for making risky plays and it is bad for the meta as it favors defensives archetypes such as Regenerator cores. I think some of these common defensive Pokémon should at least be suspected. I may sound bitter, but I think this problem should be addressed.

 

[Moyashi]

To remove a mon and say 'we'll suspect anything that comes out of the woodwork after' is not all that efficient if doing so results in 3-5+ mons needing suspects purely as a result of one ban, especially a ban of a mon which is not by the purest definition 'broken' as many early-meta mons very clearly were. If people can smell an unnecessary domino effect, it's gonna put people off for good reason.

Whether or not Melm is as "broken" as early meta mons isn't relevant here because this suspect is here to judge its impact on THIS metagame and whether it is too strong for the tier. You say having to potentially do more bans because of the ban of one mon isn't effecient, but how is it not? We shouldn't be afraid to ban Y if it becomes broken in the absense of X.

This is the main reason why copy-pasting the 'no broken checks broken' portion of tiering policy has always rubbed me the wrong way, since despite its importance in preventing needless theorymoning it's also often used to discredit posts with actual merit, and that goes double for a suspect quite like this.

I've seen some people in the thread claim if Melmetal goes, Weavile may have to go. If Weavile goes, other threats may have to go. The problem is we can't know that without testing it. And we shouldn't make these kinds of decisions using hypothetical logic as part of it.

This post will primarily be structured around the Leftovers set(s) since imo they're the best by far, I acknowledge that pads/av/cb/etc are all viable and have their place but I do not find them to be anywhere near as centralising or concerning.



One of the interesting things to me about how Melmetal plays is that it's an extremely overpowered offensive Pokemon that rarely gets to flex those muscles because of how important it is to use it for its defensive qualities. As some other posters have mentioned, Melmetal can and does 1v1 pretty much everything - there are very few mons that can OHKO it, and even fewer that can do that while avoiding a KO from it. In a sense, that could make it broken under a typical angle; when using Melmetal, things are almost always in Melmetal's favour, but I'm not sure that necessitates a ban.

Take a matchup where you're playing against both a Dragapult and a Weavile, for example, and you're using the standard Leftovers + Protect Melmetal set. Should you need it to, Melmetal can check either of these Pokemon and trade with them in return; it will sacrifice a large amount of its HP to do so, but it will get the job done. From here, it's not super likely your Melmetal is high on HP anymore (and has probably lost its Leftovers if you used it against Weavile), and as such its usefulness is somewhat limited; on a free turn it can still get a good hit in, and if you play well it can potentially get a lot of HP back with Leftovers + Protect if your opponent has a fodder like mono-Moonblast Clefable. We've seen this occur in tournament games for sure, but the more common scenario is that Melmetal trades 1 for 1 or 1 for 2 before going down. That's something it's very good at; Melmetal is the trade king of the tier and will almost never lose a 1v1 against anything.

To me, though, this is something that could be worth preserving; Melmetal rewards smart gameplanning and encourages its user to identify what it should be used against - a smartly played Melmetal is possibly the best Pokemon in the tier, but a recklessly played Melmetal is often useless. In this it's unlike "mindless" Pokemon like Dragapult, Blacephalon, Tapu Lele, etc. - you can get mileage out of those even with subpar play due to how little prediction and gameplanning they require. Melmetal does maintain a skilled element of the game and opens up teambuilding by providing a useful catchall to many Pokemon, preventing you from shoehorning yourself into using specific checks to everything and opening up unique offensive structures.


It is pretty centralising, though, and it doesn't really have many hard counters; depending on its coverage it can kinda bop everything, though between stuff like Buzzwole, Rotom-W, Landorus-T, Zapdos, Slowbro, Toxapex, Ferrothorn and Corviknight (likely more I'm forgetting, too, this is just off the top of my head) there is a lot of room to play around it defensively - it can catch any of these with the right move, but the punishment for mispredicting can be quite severe (helmet, barbs, static, etc). Pads does dodge this issue but is also harder to fit due to its inability to do much in a long game compared to the immortal Leftovers set.

I dunno what I'd vote should I choose to get reqs. I can definitely understand the argument that Melmetal is just too good at what it does when it comes to forcing trades and outlasting answers, but I'm not sure how much I agree with them. I think Melmetal's natural amazing stats and typing bring a lot to the tier, and I'm unsure if removing it is better for SS OU in the long run; I don't think there are any overarching structures being held down by Melmetal's presence right now unlike previous bans like Urshifu-S and Spectrier, so it's kinda tough for me to form an opinion. Maybe I'll feel stronger after laddering with it. This post isn't really supposed to be supportive of a ban or do not ban argument, so I guess it's kinda pointless in some ways, but I hope it's at least a decent amount of food for thought for anyone else who's not really sure one way or the other.

I actually think Lily's post is one of the best put together so far. Listing both its strengths and weaknesses, the positives it brings to the tier while also acknowledging its centralizing nature, and acknowledging both sides views and concerns.

I also agree with a lot of what was said in it. Melmetal does reward skillful play and its ability to trade with nearly anything is unique. It can act as an emergency check to a large amount of pokemon in a pinch, a useful tool. It anchors many teams and can ease the burden on building. What i DO think is the result will ultimately come down to whether or not people think its ability to make those trades is too good, as just as it can emergency check ans force a trade, it can also trade and open up a path for a dangerous partner more easily.