Metagame np: SS PU Stage 10 - Ice Cream (Scyther BANNED)

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termi

bike is short for bichael
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There is a misconception that bro ban players are unwilling to use offense / lazy builders who just want to use fat. This is just wrong, at least for users such as Chloe stresh and myself (excal too but fuck that guy amirite). I personally love to use offense and HO, and I think both play styles are underrated and that we have the tools to make them good in the current meta. That being said, I believe that Vanilluxe is vastly underrated against more offensive teams. People post as if Vanilluxe shits on Gigalith fat and that's all it does, but it's simply not true. Against more offensive teams Vanilluxe can bare minimum go 1:1, and this is GREAT for a quote on quote "slow frail breaker". For the record, Vanilluxe is actually quite bulky, bulkier than Dragapult if we want to use an example. Not many faster pokemon can actually OHKO it and it can OHKO a lot of things back.
One user posted the replay of Jon filch vs the Franklin. If anything, this showed that Vanilluxe IS bulky. It lived a +2 moonblast from a Ribombee, which although it's a roll the fact that it can live at all is amazing. It also 1v1d the Ribombee despite the Bee getting a quiver dance off while Vanilluxe switched in. The fact that people continue to call Vanilluxe frail just means they are uninformed or they are doing so in bad faith.
I think this is a good point and I would like to add to this that even if it were true that offenses handle Vanilluxe better, the fact of the matter is that right now it is exceedingly hard to build an offense team that can achieve consistent results vs all the top threats in our tier. For a while now, we've had a meta where there's a whole slew of threat that you more or less just lose to if you do not have reliable long-term counterplay. Things like Charizard, Scyther, BU Scrafty, Coil Conda, QD Ribombee, these aren't things you're fine against as long as you have something that can switch in once or twice the way it might have been last gen. You need reliable, durable counterplay for such threats, and for many of these threats, the kind of counterplay that exists is quite slow and/or passive and quite easily forces you into the mold of fat balance. People like to focus on Scrafty apparently, but I would argue Coil Conda is a much bigger offender in terms of building constraints that prevent reliable offenses from being created. Reliable counterplay is very limited because our pool of viable Grass-types that can reliably beat Conda is very small - Eldegoss obviously does, Tangela does but is a little harder to fit in general, Whimsicott does but gets whittled very easily - and in terms of Water types you can try to hold it off with Jellicent (who's been falling out of favor as of late) or Wishiwashi who relies on Rest. In many cases, if you actually want to keep such a threat from just steamrolling your team, you will be forced to run Eldegoss for the sake of role compression, but this mon is awfully passive and leaves you open to such threats as Scyther and Charizard. These threats in turn force other slow things with recovery onto your team, you will also need a cleric to keep your counters healthy, et cetera, and whoops there you have it, fat balance. Your alternative is running Whimsicott, a generally pretty mediocre mon (admittedly a little better with Toge usage down) which can only suffice as your Conda/Scrafty check as long as you don't have things on your team that let said mons in more or less for free.

This is obviously not a diatribe to get Sandaconda banned or whatever, although I think the fact that we can even make Sandaconda seem like the problem should clue you in on what has already been established in i.e. the pre-drops poll in which a bunch of our biggest building constraints were on the chopping block and none of them had even 50% support for a suspect test. Depending on your angle, several threats in our tier could be construed as broken, but simultaneously none of them are obviously problematic enough to where people can easily say "this is the problem" (bar Scyther imo, that mon is insane in the current meta). What's more, a lot of these centralizing mons also offer useful utility to the tier and banning any of them could have negative downstream effects. This is why it is more fruitful at this point to tackle not those first-order threats but to look into threats that exploit the defensive structures we are often forced into, Vanilluxe being the most obviously problematic (again bar perhaps Scyther) because of how freely it spams Blizzard against the majority of teams and because of how it forces things like Rest Gigalith to become standard, further driving teams into a corner of passivity.

People can say "just build more creatively/more offensively" all they want, or even suggest that Vanilluxe is a healthy presence by supposedly forcing people to build more offensively, but you can't just do that and expect consistent teams that don't have one or another fatal weakness that you can barely even play around. Plenty of people in PUPL have been running things that deviate from boring GigaBlade balance structures, but quite a lot of those teams have very problematic structural flaws. Much like some of the council members mentioned in pix's post here, I also like to use more offensive teams (Tflame PU was my favorite PU and probably the most offensive the tier has been this gen), but the fact of the matter is that I also favor consistency and very rarely do I find my attempts at offense to be satisfactory in terms of them both handling the tier's top threats sufficiently while also having the right offensive structure to actually break through our common fat balance structures. Fact is that the defensive cores of more offensively inclined teams are essential to their functioning and we do not at the moment have the right gluemons to make offense stick in my experience. The result too often just looks like an awkward balance that ends up failing both on the offensive and defensive side of things. It is idle hope to think that the meta will magically become more offensive if we continue letting Vanilluxe run roughshod in the tier - not only because Vanilluxe is a major threat to offense anyway, but also because any offensive balance/offense of the non-cheese variety requires certain preconditions to be good, and said conditions are currently absent.

I think unironically the most serious proposal for people who find the current meta boring and bad would be to unban Virizion/Espeon/Guzzlord at the same time, since these combined would definitely allow for better offenses to be built (Virizion for reliable offensive Conda check, Espeon for offensive hazard control + Virizion check, Guzzlord for an offensive tank against Espeon, Zard etc). On the other hand, it is pretty likely that one of the former two threats would be overwhelming in such a meta, but I'd at least entertain the thought. As it stands though, we simply have to deal with the fact that we have a meta that tends towards fat balance and as such we should eliminate threats that too easily blow past such teams. Vanilluxe is easily the biggest offender in this regard, spamming Blizzard with great ease (not requiring much if any prediction unlike many other breakers), possessing a good speed tier for such a powerful breaker, and not finding it especially difficult to come in despite being an Ice type.
 

Chloe

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Hi everyone. I've made it no secret that I'm very positive that a ban is the right course of action on Vanilluxe. It's an incredibly strong breaker, one capable of dealing more damage than our current defensive Pokemon can handle. I've in the past made the argument that teams aren't able to run Togedemaru or Aggron because of Vanilluxe, and Gigalith's usage has skyrocketed because of it. Even if this is remarkably true, I don't really see this as an adequate ban argument anymore. Whether Gigalith being used on the majority of teams is healthy for the metagame or not is not something I really want to argue going forward, especially because we have no hard proof Vanilluxe's departure would cause this to decline.

I am incredibly passionate about my belief that Vanilluxe is too much for the tier, and I'm willing to spend hours trying to convince you of this. The reason for a suspect test is not to "shake up the metagame" or to establish change for a tier we don't really enjoy (I actually enjoy SS PU quite a fair bit right now for the most part), it is to deal with potentially broken threats. Vanilluxe is one I believe fits this criteria.

Vanilluxe is an insanely powerful breaker capable of dealing insane damage to anything that switches in. It is faster than the majority of our defensive glue Pokemon and is substantially more powerful and more difficult to wall than any other Pokemon we have in the tier. This should for the most part go without saying. If we are unironically considering Pokemon like Flareon (a completely unviable Pokemon I will elaborate on further later) and Walrein just to deal with Vanilluxe, then that should alone speak so much as to how potent it really is.

But regardless of the Flareon arguments and posts, and the people who will compare it to Gallade, there are significant counter-arguments to be made. I do find them to pale in comparison to all the pro-ban arguments I've seen however. I hope I don't come off as a broken record in this post, but Vanilluxe is just an insanely powerful breaker. One that is too much for the tier to handle. Gigalith deals with it to an extent, but even this can be overwhelmed fairly easily.

Of course, it's really easy to make these claims and I hope for the most part they have been established through the previous pro-ban posts. This post alone will be focused on specifically refuting points made by DNB arguments that I just simply don't agree with. I hear the same talking points repeated a lot and it's not too difficult to debunk a lot of them. I hope you'll find my arguments compelling and I hope for the best outcome for the tier to occur.

"The prevalence of Steel-types and offensive checks to Vanilluxe on ladder didn't allow it to be overwhelming from my experience"
Ktütverde post: 9298769
Ktütverde post: 9299542
This isn't sound logic for a few reasons. We've established repeatedly that PU's array of Steel-types cannot adequately hard check Vanilluxe. This is important because it provides us with a basis for offensive breakers into our balance-oriented metagame. Every other Pokemon in the tier has much more sufficient defensive counterplay. Whether it be Substitute Scrafty, Specially Offensive Charizard, Wallbreaker Jellicent, any variant of Gallade; our tier has options in terms of defensive Pokemon you can repeatedly switch in. Whether or not a team has a Charizard in the back is irrelevant of this fact, as Vanilluxe is a wallbreaker not a cleaner. We are not of the assumption that this Pokemon cannot be revenged, when it very clearly can. Charizard can't even switch in once because it gets clean OHKOd by Blizzard, and most other offensive Pokemon with a type advantage, capable of forcing Vanilluxe after switching in out, get 2HKOd at least.

Whether we have offensive checks to it is not anywhere near as important here, unless you are suggesting we run offense. However, our tier is mostly balance-centric and Vanilluxe should not be allowed to warp the meta to a point where you are forced to run offense to deal with it. It isn't even useless versus offense, and your point revolves around the assumption that you're revenging it with these Pokemon entailing it always gets a kill at least. Unless you build your team to a point where nothing allows Vanilluxe in, just to limit Vanilluxe's offensive prowess. This kind of effect on the teambuilder seems unhealthy to me personally. This is the definition of an unhealthy Pokemon.

"Teams that are Gigalith in addition to five slow Pokemon that get OHKOd or 2HKOd by Vanilluxe are naturally going to struggle against it"
gum post: 9300555

The natural problem with this is that Vanilluxe is really not that slow. The majority of the Pokemon we commonly see in the metagame are outpaced by it. The other blatant issue with this is that Vanilluxe OHKOs or 2HKOs every Pokemon in the metagame bar a few niche ones. Vanilluxe, a single breaker, is somehow forcing us to run Gigalith, its best check, in tandem with faster Pokemon that aren't substantially weak to Vanilluxe. I want to stress how little a pool of Pokemon this is.

But first it's paramount to explain why this isn't an apt solution. Once Gigalith is taken out here, you are continuing to wallbreak, much easier than before. These Pokemon don't stop you, they don't make your life much more difficult. If you're willing to make your whole team outspeed Vanilluxe then maybe then it'd help but otherwise I'm not really sure how you intend to accomplish this. You cannot build a viable team using these parameters. Your matchup is still not great if you run Gigalith + Magmortar. Even so then, this is unhealthy. Why are we forced to run multiple slots just to keep a single Pokemon in check.

Anyway since you insisted, here are Pokemon that outspeed Vanilluxe on the VR, from S to B rank.
Charizard - OHKOd on switchin. A roll to kill Vanilluxe with Flamethrower if it attempts to revenge after a teammate has been sacked.
Ribombee - OHKOd on switchin. A roll to 2HKO Vanilluxe with Moonblast if it attempts to revenge after a teammate has been sacked.
Archeops - OHKOd on switchin. Kills Vanilluxe with Stone Edge if it hits, if it attempts to revenge after a teammate has been sacked.
Gallade - OHKOd on switchin after Hail. Kills Vanilluxe with Close Combat, if it attempts to revenge after a teammate has been sacked.
Scyther - OHKOd on switchin. Can 2HKO Vanilluxe with Dual Wingbeat if it hits both, if it attempts to revenge after a teammate has been sacked.
Articuno-Galar - OHKOd on switchin. Kills Vanilluxe with Choice Specs Hurricane if it hits, if it attempts to revenge after a teammate has been sacked.
Sneasel - 2HKOd on switchin if Vanilluxe doesn't click Flash Cannon. 2HKOs back with Low Kick if it runs it, Vanilluxe will not stay in however.
Gourgeist-S OHKOd on switchin. Roll to OHKO back if it is Choice Band Power Whip. This is an 85% accuracy move on a set that doesn't even see extensive play. Nothing else OHKOs.
Lycanroc - OHKOd on switchin. Can OHKO back with Close Combat, if it attempts to revenge...
Mesprit - OHKOd on switchin after Hail. No set, at all, can OHKO back if it attempts to revenge...
Silvally-Fairy - Roll to be OHKOd on switchin after Hail. Cannot OHKO back with anything other than Explosion if it attempts to revenge.
Magmortar - Consistently 2HKOd after Hail. OHKOs back with Fire Blast if it hits. Can only switch in once obviously.
These Pokemon are all OHKOd with ease. They cannot do much back if they attempt to revenge...

These are for the most part, breakers. They are not glue Pokemon. Most teams will not run more than two of these Pokemon, and will be forced to run several Pokemon slower than Vanilluxe. That is just how it is.

Excuse my abrasiveness here, but I really detest how arguments have devolved into this. Why are we trying this hard to keep an obviously broken Pokemon in the metagame. "An incredibly strong wallbreaker capable of easily overwhelming its best check" should be enough of a reason. You repeatedly state here that this is how any breaker is, and that we have many similar Pokemon that can achieve a similar output. This is just not true. Choice Specs Articuno-Galar, arguably its best comparison, has to contend with its primary clickable STAB having an immunity and its strongest attack missing a lot of the time and having major resistances.

The Pokemon you mention:
Choice Specs Magneton: has this issue too, primary STAB has an immunity and its secondary STAB is easily walled. It requires precise prediction to wallbreak effectively. There's also the minor case that I'd at least like the opportunity to check it with Togedemaru, Lanturn, Quagsire, whatever Pokemon; but obviously I can't afford that opportunity right now. Being forced to run Gigalith is just ass and exacerbates Magneton's potency. Either way, not comparable to Vanilluxe.
Vikavolt: Substantially weaker and slower, as it is forced to run boots, its attacks can be capitalised off of with ease, and actually requires prediction to wallbreak a substantial amount of the time. It is required to click Agility to gain any momentum here, whereas Vanilluxe just clicks Blizzard as soon as it comes in.
Grass/Ghost-types: Their STABs are nowhere near as clickable as Blizzard. Overreliance on Poltergeist means you have to be extremely careful when pairing it with Knock Off, they're both on paper very strong threats; however, we're yet to see them do anything substantial in tournament play, I agree though that they could potentially take off post-Vanilluxe.

You make a valid point that something may come and take Vanilluxe's place once it's gone, if it goes, but this is not how tiering works. If Vanilluxe is broken, then we should ban it. That is all there is to it. That being said, as I've tried to explain here there is no other breaker that has this easy a time getting through its checks. This Pokemon is just too strong.

"The fact that PU has come down to Gigalith or lose is flat-out incorrect"
sensei axew post: 9300805

You're absolutely right here, and me and others have definitely exaggerated how required Gigalith is at points; however, the cold hard truth of the matter is you will have an extremely poor matchup versus Vanilluxe if you do not run Gigalith or one of the more niche checks. I have an incredibly hard time understanding your following point though.

in fact, in week 5 of PUPL we see Gigalith used 17 times and it won… 5 times. Thats not even a third of the games. This is not to say that Gigalith is bad or that it can’t win games, I’m simply just using this as an example to explain how the narrative of either use gigalith or lose is flawed as teams without gigalith can easily pick up wins vs vani or no vani builds.
I think there's been a miscommunication somewhere if this is an argument being made? You don't need to have a Gigalith on your team to win in this tier obviously, the argument we have been making is that without it you are going to struggle horrendously against Vanilluxe. That is obvious enough? I'm not really getting why this was even brought up here.

Gigalith is easily abusable. And the teamstyles people run, especially the common cores people had levitated towards in the earlier rounds of PUPL are falling apart due to people being prepared. Gigalith is facing the brunt of this. "Gigalith was used 17 times and it won 5 times". Okay? How does this say anything about Vanilluxe. All it says is people are running it a very large portion of the time, which while I don't think supports a ban argument necessarily, doesn't aid your point of view whatsoever.

Here are the four times Vanilluxe was used in Week 5:
1. Vanilluxe forces Gigalith Rest by Turn 5 and powers through it later on.
2. Vanilluxe player doesn't run adequate Sneasel counterplay and uses Vanilluxe as a sack to remove Sneasel.
3&4. Vanilluxe vs Vanilluxe; zS's Vanilluxe would have gone in, had he not been forced to use it as fodder once he had gotten poor Rock Blast rolls vs Archeops or had he played that sequence better.

While Vanilluxe didn't have an excessively prominent performance this week, it is only from a sample size of four games. All over PUPL, we have seen the effect it has had on the teambuilder and how strong it has been in games. You go on to mention Flareon as a potential decent Pokemon which I definitely disagree with. Even the person who built the team tlenit used, Shane, believes Flareon isn't a good Pokemon, and I tend to agree with that sentiment. Flareon walls Ribombee and Vanilluxe yes, but beyond that it is borderline useless. It requires Toxic and Heal Bell to adequately check Charizard, but it can't afford to run that with Wish and Protect taking up its remaining moveslots. It needs an attack or it becomes incredibly passive and remains set up bait for Doublade. A Pokemon checking Ice-types and Fairy-types sure sounds like something our Steel-types should and could be doing if not for the fact they are overwhelmed power wise by Vanilluxe. They would retain this ability if Vanilluxe was gone.

A lot of this is because the main reasons I think Vanilluxe isn’t banworthy is because of how little defensive utility it brings to a team. Vanilluxe checks absolutely 0 Pokemon due to its egregiously bad defensive typing and therefore it is a dead slot if it runs into a bad mu. Its moveset is also completely useless since the only utility it offers is freezes unless youre running boots taunt toxic which is an overall mid set.
I really don't want it to seem like I'm singling out your post because I do really appreciate the amount of effort put in to posting in this thread. But I fail to see how any of this is relevant? It's a breaker, its job is to wallbreak, not have defensive utility. It doesn't need to defensively check anything and the fact that this is being brough up as a DNB argument is very silly in my eyes. Its moveset is not useless. It is a breaker. It breaks things. It is very good at doing this with the movepool it has actually. Blizzard is insanely powerful and Freeze-Dry hits defensive Water-types. There's not really a semblance of prediction needed beyond this. You are not required to be skilful to use this Pokemon. You just click Blizzard and break through the entire tier.

You mention later that it requires an extensive amount of support to bring it in, but we've seen plenty of examples where this isn't the case. There are so many times and opportunities for you to force your opponents Ground- or Grass-type in. A lot of DNB voters exaggerate how difficult Vanilluxe is to get in, but with virtually minimal support you can position it in with ease. The majority of the tier folds to Vanilluxe, and our defensive structures all get overwhelmed by it. You also mention its bulk being appalling here, but I don't think this is the case whatsoever. It has pretty decent bulk all things considered. 71/85/95 is pretty good by PU standards.

I brought up earlier, that it is impossible to build a competent balance team using Pokemon solely faster than Vanilluxe. This is reiterated here. There will always be Pokemon Vanilluxe can benefit off of. You mention that teams with five Pokemon that lose to Vanilluxe cannot be mended by slotting a Gigalith on your team, yes I agree; however, most Pokemon lose to Vanilluxe. It has more than ample opportunity to wallbreak thanks to the vast majority of the tier being OHKOd by Specs Blizzard. How is this any fair? Yea, you bring up Gallade as a similar example but that Pokemon doesn't have anywhere near as prominent breaking power. Most Pokemon can at least live an attack from Gallade. Gallade also has substantial defensive counterplay on top of this. You are not forced to run a single Pokemon and then consider your whole team on top of that.

I also would like to mention how the like between powerful and broken breaker has been completely muddied somehow. Vanilluxe is NOT a broken breaker. A broken breaker has no checks, limited offensive counterplay, and plows through defensive structures. Vanilluxe does not satisfy any of those requirements.
I disagree. I think you're being way too lenient here as to what we should consider a healthy breaker in the tier. A broken breaker does not require ZERO checks that would be outlandish. Let us unban Sceptile right now then, because Weezing checks it? Vanilluxe does have limited offensive counterplay as I've gone into earlier, but regardless this shouldn't matter too much. If a Pokemon has very very little defensive counterplay, that it can overwhelm very regularly, I would consider that broken. I also have no idea how you came to the conclusion that Vanilluxe doesn't plow through defensive structures? Is it the fact that people are running Gigalith + Doublade extensively now and you're yet to see it break through those cores? I have posted counter-examples.

As for defensive measures, I agree they are slightly lacking but once again, they are there. While Gigalith obviously is the best and most meta-orientated defensive check, there are numerous unexplored options that have already seen some success such as Flareon, Coalassol, and Frosmoth. Others include Miltank, Piloswine, Arctovish, and Cryogonal. This is also assuming that Vanilluxe is running Specs because if its not or its knocked pokemon like Togedemaru, Audino, and SpDef Wishi also check it as well. In other words, Vanilluxe does not have much set variability because outside of Specs, it is hardwalled by way too much. This is especially illustrated in the TJ vs crying PU Slam game that happened recently where a scarf vanilluxe did absolutely nothing all game and got hardwalled by three separate pokemon.
I don't think we should be forced to result to Pokemon that barely accomplish anything other than checking Vanilluxe, just to check Vanilluxe. It's astounding to me that this is repeatedly suggested when people were for a long time complaining about Scrafty's impact on the teambuilder or Charizard's impact. Now you want us to run another Pokemon just to check Vanilluxe? Say Flareon, for example. You say it's a defensive answer to Vanilluxe and Ribombee, which I'll give to you. But you are still forced to run a Steel-type or Gigalith on top of this to deal with Psychic-types. You are still forced to run a Charizard check on top of this due to the aforementioned need to run a Fire-type attack on Flareon. You are not compiling any teamslots here, you are not saving space, you have not solved any issue by running Flareon. Piloswine, Arctovish, Cryogonal. When did we get to this point? A wallbreaker should not be forcing you to run this off-meta of answers. Especially because these are incredibly hard to justify over Gigalith at all. If I don't run into Vanilluxe, there was no purpose to running any of these Pokemon in the first place.

You mention the lack of potency from HDB and Choice Scarf sets and I want to reiterate here that the only Vanilluxe set I consider broken is the Choice Specs one. There's of course the ability to outspeed and KO a lot of the suggested "offensive counterplay" with Choice Scarf sets but this isn't an argument I really care for. The Choice Specs set is the broken Vanilluxe.

You go on to conclude that Gigalith's usage spike is not proven to be because of Vanilluxe which I initially said in this post doesn't really matter. As I said earlier, Vanilluxe is not broken because it's caused a spike in Gigalith's usage, it's broken because it is an extremely powerful breaker with a myriad of redeeming features that is able to overwhelm its most "consistent" defensive check.

"Vanilluxe's wallbreaking is in-fact prediction reliant"
cyanize post: 9302003

Vanilluxe does have to click Freeze-Dry to break through Jellicent and Wishiwashi, but beyond this there is absolutely no prediction needed. This is far superior to any other breaker we have in the TIER. No other Pokemon can afford to click its main primary attack with as little drawback as Vanilluxe has. Once it clicks Freeze-Dry on these Pokemon, they can no longer switch into Blizzard anymore. You mention Centiskorch and Coalossal as Pokemon who require you to click Water Pulse, but both get whittled down sufficiently by Blizzard. Centiskorch specifically gets 2HKOd after Hail. In practice, this is rarely ever an issue due to how rarely you're stuck in a situation where Blizzard is not the optimal play.

we all know this already, but what ppl r ignoring fsr is the fact that vani requires specs to achieve its world-busting power - boots sets r lackluster in2 a lot of matchups & only somewhat decent in2 others. so by the very definition of a choiced breaker, it has 2 predict in order to make the progress that is so terrifying - and this often shows in actual matches, for example bush v star, where star correctly guesses water pulse into aggron out of the 3 possible vani switchins on bush's side. (bush then proceeds 2 throw away his remaining ice resist by slow u-turning on eldegoss fnr, which is what allows vani to eventually click blizzard & pick up a single additional ko on the now weakened wishi. i have no idea why he did this when he has zard vs tricked specs gigalith... even if he were scared of say, seeds or stun spore, going hard whimsi would have worked just fine; the whimsi has shadow ball for doublade, & star's zard is at 40% with hail up. idk)
i feel by simply looking at the fact that a team w vani on it won at high level, instead of actually analyzing how it was used & how the match unfolded, ppl are painting an unfair picture of vanis effect on the meta.
I have previously stated that Water Pulse is not a requirement for Aggron which is absolutely the case here. It does 50% damage, with Blizzard. Blizzard is fundamentally as clickable a move as there is in this tier. For the most part, you do not miss out on much by clicking it. Once Wishiwashi comes in on Freeze-Dry once, Blizzard becomes the most spammable move in the game. You no longer have to predict a single thing. Aggron is currently not a good Pokemon, it does not check Vanilluxe well enough and has a hard time justifying itself over Gigalith. Bush was let down in the builder and it's nothing to do with the fact he made a misplay here. Eventually he would have been overwhelmed by Vanilluxe, his team does not have sufficient counterplay for it.

where the issue truly lies in vanis ability 2 spam uncontested blizzards is often, as gum pointed out, poor choices in building. i'll use jon v thefranklin as an example here
I don't think jon would mind me saying that he didn't play this game that well, he obviously shouldn't have kept Vanilluxe in on Gigalith early and a lot of the plays following weren't amazing either; however, it isn't difficult to see how if this game were played well the Vanilluxe would have continuously come in and repeatedly click the donk move. None of this match says anything about Vanilluxe's potency being overstated. It shows how easily it could have gone in if played correctly. It also showcases Vanilluxe's solid natural bulk, with no investment whatsoever it's able to take a +2 Moonblast from Ribombee.

You go on to compare it to other "slow breakers" and how you don't think they differ all that much from Vanilluxe, despite many relying on prediction, despite many being incredibly less powerful, or much slower, or having substantially more reliable defensive counterplay. I could harp on about this all day but Vanilluxe is an exception here. Vanilluxe is incredibly potent and does not have this adequate defensive counterplay. You link TJ vs crying as an example. This replay shows why Choice Scarf Vanilluxe is not an adequate wallbreaker, but nobody stated it was. You cannot go on to suggest running Gigalith + Togedemaru unironically. This is incredibly unfair from a teambuilding standpoint. We cannot afford to run both, just to deal with the pressure from Vanilluxe. We don't have enough team slots to justify this.

You continue by mentioning Flareon, I've gone on extensively as to why this Pokemon is hot garbage, but just to reiterate. Flareon is being run over a Steel-type/Giga, but you are still required to run a Steel/Giga. It cannot do enough.

despite vanilluxe's flaws, i think u can still make a decent argument for it being "not healthy" as hera said - it's a breaker with absolutely no defensive value or "purpose" other than 2 explode the enemy team, it does force pretty predictable gameplay when it hits the field, & its defensive counterplay is very slim indeed. at the end of the day, i wouldnt be particularly miffed were it 2 leave the tier... but i also find it very odd that a mon that has gigalith as its sole true answer is suddenly problematic when another mon has had the same status for almost a year now? anyways, if u actually read all this instead of skippin 2 the tl;dr ty :)
Which other Pokemon has had the same status for a year now violet? Charizard has so much more viable counterplay that I would much rather run over Gigalith a lot of the time, and in general just a lot more options. It also actually has defensive utility, it is one of our best Defog users and it is, in my opinion, not putting the excessive crippling pressure on teams that you seem to allude to. In terms of breakers though, Vanilluxe is very special. It is incredibly strong, it 3HKOs the Rest Gigalith that it is forcing to become a staple. It destroys the balance teams that have been throughout the meta for ages. People want to go to insane lengths just to keep it in the tier. For what? It is unhealthy as shit.

On a silly side note, I do find it funny that most DNB posts have this one line about not really caring if it left the tier, while most ban voters are incredibly adamant about wanting it to leave the tier. It's just a little funny statement that comes up and up and up that doesn't really mean anything but it is humorous at the very least.

tl;dr vani's ability to punish slow teams is not unique & it doesn't excessively outperform the other numerous breakers we have. it is very strong, but exploitable, and is primarily held back by a non existent defensive profile. its presence is actively causing healthy metagame shifts - offense being good now is not a bad thing. vani is simply riding the wave of ppl having been far 2 focused on other impossible 2 handle threat(s). stop using defog zard, it's ass, 2/3 atks zard is the actual chokehold on this meta - test espeon and/or drampa if we need hazard control that bad. also we might need 2 start looking at scyther harder that mon is a little crazy
Your post doesn't prove this though. Your post doesn't really say anything about Choice Specs Vanilluxe's potency really. It focuses on calling it prediction reliant initially which is easily disproven. Then you comment on jon's game which shows just how easily Vanilluxe can go into teams. Then you go on to mention its inability to break through balances with a Choice Scarf set, which we've established is not the problematic element of this Pokemon. You compare it to much less oppressive breakers, and then you finally compare it to Charizard which does not serve that similar a role. I appreciate the post, and I love the fact you're contributing especially because you are a friend, but this post does unfortunately leave a lot to be desired from a standpoint of content focused on whether Vanilluxe is overwhelming and oppressive or not. I also have a problem with you suggesting three attacks Charizard over running Toxic, something it clearly cannot and should not do, and the mention of "offense being good now thanks to Vanilluxe" but that's a topic for another day.

"The too-frequent assumption that the Vanilluxe player somehow has perfect hazard control."
Gl4ss post: 9302314

As previously mentioned, Vanilluxe is vulnerable to all forms of hazards. Players are under no obligation to simply allows Vanilluxe to switch in over, and over, and over again. One common issue that I've observed is that protecting Gigalith from undue chip prevents players from setting their Rocks in a timely fashion. If that is your problem, I don't particularly sympathize with you. You are perfectly within your rights to pick another Rock setter and take the burden off of Gigalith, who is frequently defensively overburdened even outside of the Vanilluxe threat. If you choose not to, that is a sacrifice that you are making in the name of role compression.
I wanted to address this point specifically in your post because I believe it's the one that holds the most weight and the other two were messily construed in my eyes, and also they've been somewhat addressed throughout my other responses. I appreciate the post though and it's always good to hear more points of view. I believe people kind of hype up how difficult it is to get Vanilluxe in against the team's common balances.

Because of how our meta is forced to be a slow shitfest of Quagsires and Sandacondas and Eldegosses and Weezings, due to balance and bulkier playstyles being the only overtly reliable playstyle, you will always find opportunities to force these Pokemon in. If you pair Vanilluxe with almost any other offensive Pokemon that forces in one of these bulky staples, you will find opportunities to bring it in. People continually exaggerate a little talking about how difficult it is to get this Pokemon in, but there are so many times in a game where your opponent is FORCED to switch into these passive defensive Pokemon. This is just how our meta is.

You make a solid point that Vanilluxe does require removal to repeatedly switch in again and again; however, that isn't so so difficult currently. With the increased prevalence of Sandslash, Charm Eldegoss, and other removal options, Doublade is no longer the behemoth blocker it was in the earlier rounds of PUPL. But even without considering the need for removal, it's also important to note that you're not really switching your Vanilluxe in on attacks. You're switching it in on forced switches, or pivoting it in via Scyther or Wishiwashi, or whatever other pivot you tend to run. It has several opportunities to come in here even with hazards up.

None of this is to assert that Vanilluxe requires some ungodly amount of skill to pilot, but moreso to draw attention to the fact that Vanilluxe punching holes in a team doesn't just 'happen' by sheer unbalanced might. If Vanilluxe thunderc*cks a slow team that is one Freeze away from being swept, I just don't think that's a problem of Vanilluxe as much as it is an indictment of the prevailing teambuilding philosophy currently common in the tier.
I understand this opinion but we have enough examples of Vanilluxe just plowing through teams. No Pokemon effortlessly sweeps through everything in a vacuum, but Vanilluxe, once in, can virtually effortlessly click Blizzard and rip holes through every Pokemon we have pretty much. You mention that we shouldn't dismiss Flareon as unviable, but I hope I have explained to you why it actually is this. There is a case to be made for meta adaptation whenever we're looking at a potentially broken threat but unfortunately Flareon is below mediocre regardless of this. I like being able to justify using new Pokemon to solve a problem I've had while building. Vanilluxe unfortunately extends beyond this. All these Pokemon people mention like Flareon, Lapras, Walrein, Choice Scarf Arctovish, or whatever is just meaningless and impossible to justify over running Gigalith. Vanilluxe is not seeing insane usage, I cannot afford to run these Pokemon just to check this one single threat.

I want to elaborate here but yea. I like using uncommon Pokemon a lot, I've done it ever since I started playing competitive Pokemon, ever since 2013. There's something really interesting about finding under the radar cool Pokemon I can justify running just to check certain metagame threats. I'm very aware of the need to adapt to certain meta threats in order to deal with Pokemon, but Vanilluxe's power level is above the threshhold for something where I can consider it healthy adaptation. When I'm being forced to run Articuno on balance (where max SpD isn't even a guarantee to survive the 2HKO from full) or being told to run Flareon on my team solely to have a better Vanilluxe matchup and nothing else, this is beyond the scope of what I'm prepared to do.

"I don't think Banning Vanilluxe will fix any of the issues with the metagame."
ManOfMany post: 9302764
The stale teambuilding with Gigalith/Bee and a rotation of Wishiwashi/Charizard/Doublade/Sandslash on every team doesn't really have to do too much with Vanilluxe. Gigalith is just really damn good and easy to fit on teams because it checks so many special attackers, most of which are more common than Vanilluxe. Ribombee's speed and utility is unmatched... although it can get quite passive as Ktut said. The fact that these types of teams get eaten alive by powerful wallbreakers isn't really too much of an issue, because otherwise there would be no drawbacks to running these teams at all. The best way to limit wallbreakers is with using Offense, and I think we are seeing that with upcoming weeks of PUPL. People are adapting to the meta a little bit, it's not all just predictable Gigalith balance but a mixture of offense, balance, and even stall. (Stall actually has a better matchup vs mons like Vanilluxe because they can afford dedicated counters). This is the signs of a healthier tier coming, and I am optimistic that people will be creative enough to experiment.
This is not the problem with Vanilluxe. Vanilluxe is a broken breaker, it breaks through the entire tier very easily. Gigalith is its only reliable check, and even that is easily overwhelmed. That is why it should be banned. It's nothing to do with "stale teambuilding" or if it will "fix the metagame". You mention people are adapting, but only a small part of this is healthy adaptation. People I've quoted above on the DNB side have mentioned running Gigalith + multiple faster breakers that can revenge Vanilluxe as an adequate tactic but then fail to see how Vanilluxe efficiently breaks through these teams regardless. People want to keep this Pokemon in the tier so bad for no good reason when it's proven time and time again how oppressive of a force it is.

If I were to suspect any one pokemon it would be Scrafty. Scrafty is incredibly limiting to teambuilding because of its various different sets, all of which are very viable. This includes DD with various items, Bulk Up (btw this can run Toxic for Quagsire if you like), Choice Band, even Substitute + 3 atks. It is one of the main why people are running Ribombee on every team, a pokemon that takes 75% + from poison jab ( I've been running DD Life Orb to straight up kill it). Scrafty finds its way into play very easily due to its bulk and typing unlike most of the wallbreakers we've talked about, and the ability to check it often devolves into a few coin flips. That being said, its initial power can often be lacking and all its sets have counterplay because it cannot possibly run both Dragon dance, heal Status, and be super bulky all in one.
Please just engage with the topic at hand. Vanilluxe is an oppressive powerhouse and has virtually no effective counterplay. It adds nothing to the tier on top of this. Compare this to Scrafty, which actually has substantial counterplay, which actually has redeeming features which would give us reason to keep it in the tier. Ribombee isn't as prevalent a check as you believe and genuinely we have a sufficient amount of counterplay in my eyes. Regardless of your opinions of Scrafty, can we please focus on the broken Pokemon at hand. I think the tier would benefit immensely from the departure of Vanilluxe. We can talk about Scrafty after the suspect test's conclusion; focusing on it right now does us no good. It's the same case with Guzzlord. I'd definitely like to resuspect it at some point, but right now my main focus is on Vanilluxe. I would love to have proactive discussions about this after the conclusion of the suspect test.

-

Ktüt had an issue with my previous post where I stated my opinion and then said "I implore people to vote ban if they value metagame health". I'm sorry if this ruffled a few feathers but I am well within my rights to write a post showcasing my opinion as a tier leader. I'm sorry if you think it's influencing the general populace by telling people what I intend to vote. That being said, sorry if you had preferred I phrase that differently, I'll try better in future.

Regardless of my disagreement with a large portion of the posts in this thread, I am incredibly grateful for the responses and activity. I'm glad to see people share their voices instead of just sitting on the sideline and saying "nah not broken". I appreciate the time and effort all of you have gone to. I really hope you'll read through the pro-ban posts and come to a sound conclusion on your own. I am incredibly adamant that this Pokemon is broken. If people do choose to vote do not ban within the coming few days I will obviously do my duty as a tier leader and move on. Thank you for reading.
 

Ktütverde

of course
is a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Former Smogon Metagame Tournament Circuit Champion
1660683764015.png


I think these two screenshots say it all. Do I need to write anything more? Yeah I probably do. Just a little bit though.

So as we know it the current meta is in a horrible place made a bit better by vanilluxe being gone. For those not so much into PU : rest gigalith for charizard in every team, very slow, passive teams all following +/- the same archetype : semistall + breaker (I just gave up on calling it balance because multiple rest users (giga/wishy/scrafty/regirock/...) and aroma (eldegoss, bee, audino/...) is too passive to be named balance I suppose. The only thing stopping the metagame from going fullstall is gallade/centiskorch/magneton, you will always find one of these in most teams atm because otherwise all games would be 200 turns. Problem is, these mons are just not very good. We sort of lack actual reliable breakers with defensive usefulness.

So the main point I wanted to bring to the table is suggesting a virizion suspect. It was considered fine (https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ss-pu-suspect-process-stage-4-voting.3677493/page-2 : virizion suspect ending in dnb) a while ago, and the only relevant differences concerning virizion are the following basically : we had talonflame, aka a viable and faster check. Now we don't have talon anymore but we have doublade, and that, is a safe, very hard check to virizion. Eldegoss and Tangela and Weezing also happen to be viable and good rn and they help a lot vs the horse. I'm 100% convinced it would be very healthy and alleviate some of our pains : a new scrafty check, a fast mon that beats zard and isn't too useless (bee, whimsi, archeops, looking at you).

Raichu... I think it would be a bad mon dropping to ZU. Still, it would be a cool zard check. Can't see pincurchin terrain offense working at all (I tried recently). For sceptile, eldegoss and doublade sort of say it all. Duraludon would be super interesting imo (would get beaten by broken gigalith as usual but hey), new rocker, could wallbreak decently (needs darkpulse for doublade and bodypress for togedemaru so 4MSS I suppose), maybe scarf... I particularly would like a virizion/duraludon retest, these would be great glues (raichu and sceptile have 0 defensive usefulness).

1660684927933.png

I think I already said somewhere but doing it again cant hurt : scrafty is dumb and I wont change my mind in a million years. In addition, using rest gigalith e v e r y w h e r e because it's the only viable counterplay to zard atm sucks (lanturn is just horrible, wishywashy is no switchin unless you are good at dodging moves, archeops -- do you like to roost all day with the frailest mon in history --, and regirock, well, regirock also needs rest x__x). We also have like no offensive counterplay to zard except... scyther or lycanrock or cincinno or galvantula so basically not reliable or not good mons. Oh and archeops, but read the previous sentence and, you know. I'd get rid of these two as far as I'm concerned. Would only sort of miss zard's defog, but I'm not trading that for everything else it does.

That's all for today, just some honest ideas of suspects that would imo be beneficial for the tier. Peace!
 

Attachments

TONE

I don't have to take this. I'm going for a walk.
is a Community Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
To go in a slightly different direction following the recent ban of Vanniluxe, there are other niche options to consider to replace the ice cream cone:

:rotom-frost:

Rotom-Frost @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Blizzard
- Volt Switch
- Thunderbolt

While not having the most accurate Blizzards, Rotom-Frost can apply just as much pressure especially considering its STAB BoltBeam coverage. It's an annoyance for fatter teams to deal with and can essentially claim a kill every time it gets in on a slower mon weaker to its moves. With the likes of Togedemaru and Lanturn being on the decline can see some rising use of Rotom-Frost in the near future.

:aurorus:

Just when you thought Snow Warning was in the rear view mirror, there are 2 others to consider, but the main one I want to touch on is Aurorus. Despite the slower speed, Aurorus can function very nicely in this meta, retaining perfect accurate Blizzards + Freeze-Dry, Specs sets can be formidable with proper removal and the added Rock typing aids it in being a soft check to Charizard. Not to mention this also comes with coverage in Earth Power that Vanilluxe lacked, but didn't neccesarily need, being able to punish Steels as well as Rock STAB to OHKO Charizard and Centiskorch. RP sets with Power Herb Meteor Beam aren't off the table as it has the means to setup and sweep under the right circumstances. I'm probably missing some other mons that benefit from the Vanilluxe ban, but for now I'll leave it at this. Thanks for reading.
 

termi

bike is short for bichael
is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributor
Hi! With the end of the generation ahead of us, I wanted to make a post to explore how we can salvage current gen PU to make it not bad by the end of the gen and make people actually want to play it . This post might be a bit rambly since I just wrote it off the cuff and am too lazy to really go over my arguments in more detail than I already did but hopefully I can get my point across.

I think the best way forward for us would be to ban Scyther before SCL starts and to carefully observe during the tournament how the metagame looks and if we're satisfied enough with the state of things to let things remain as they are (bar potential drops in the last shift of the generation of course) or if further tiering action is needed. The way I see it this could go two ways: either we end up having to ban one or two more things that disrupt the meta (i.e. people might find Doublade's presence is too suffocating) or we unban a number of things from PUBL. The latter is something that we should be incredibly careful about, but I have come to find it a potentially appealing option, actually much more so than keeping the meta roughly the same as it is right now. I would suggest if we go down this path to start by unbanning :virizion:, :espeon:, and :guzzlord: together. Why these three? Because I do not think that unbanning any of these mons is a particularly good idea individually, but the combination of these three might allow them to balance each other out and would allow us to increase the viability of offense to such an extent that we would not have to deal with a meta where builds are either stale and predictable (GigaSlash balance, solid on paper but exploitable due to its predictability) or full of holes (most offenses I've seen). To further elaborate on the positive changes we might see in such a meta:
  • Makes offense more viable. As it stands, non-cheese offense really lacks the tools to be consistently good in my estimation because it is borderline impossible to navigate between reliably checking everything you need to check (Scrafty, Zard, Conda, Doublade, the list goes on) and having a coherent offensive structure that can actually break past the defensive meta. I already mentioned Sandaconda earlier in this thread and I think it does a good job of illustrating problems one runs into when building offense. Coil Conda has little in the way of reliable checks in the present meta and many teams that try to not be too passive end up having to check it with something like Wishiwashi, which is very suboptimal because of its slowness and reliance on RestTalk. The easiest way to alleviate a weakness to this threat is by slapping an Eldegoss on your team, one of the few Grass types that can actually beat it reliably while possessing additional utility, but this is a very suboptimal choice on offenses because of its passivity. Immediately you have to figure out how you can run Eldegoss on your team without being too weak to Zard, Scyther (pls ban), Doublade, Centiskorch, etc etc. Here's where Virizion comes in and provides a reliable check for such a threat (at least if running Synth + 3atks) without sacrificing offensive momentum. Espeon complements a Virizion unban well by giving it a threat that can outspeed and KO it, while also providing offense with a much-needed hazard control option that doesn't drain momentum Eldegoss-style. Guzzlord would round it out by adding a check to Specs Espeon as well as an AV or Lefties tank that can eat hits from major threats like Charizard. While individually these mons could be quite problematic in such a balance-heavy meta that provides too many opportunities for them to wreak havoc, together I think they could possibly be quite healthy by diversifying what builds are viable.
  • Could have a balancing effect on presently problematic mons and certain PUBL mons. Currently, there are several threats that are considered overcentralizing and unhealthy by at least a significant portion of the community. We can think of such threats as Scyther, Doublade, Charizard, and Scrafty. I think a core reason why such threats feel so problematic is because people's reliance on slow, passive mons enables a lot of threats to come in many times throughout a match and wreak havoc. These threats could be much easier to manage in the meta I propose here though. Doublade, for instance, can do as much as it does right now because it isn't forced to come in and eat a strong hit very often and can simply use a max HP/max Atk set to eat weaker hits with ease and set up. In a meta with threats like Leaf Storm Virizion and Specs Espeon, however, it'd be much more needed to eat such hits, significantly weakening its potential to cleave through opposing teams. Additionally, it probably would need to invest in Spd to actually come in on sth like Virizion more than once, reducing its offensive potential further. Guzzlord of course is the cherry on top since it can revenge Doublade fairly easily. We can also take Scyther, a mon I think is unquestionably broken in this meta because of how easily it can keep coming in and force progress. Teams that maximally exploit Scyther are often very fat, with Scyther being their fastest mon, and have such tools as Aromatherapy and Wish to keep Scyther healthy and enable it to be played more recklessly. However, can this be achieved in a meta where base 105 is suddently not that amazing of a speed tier? Not only would Virizion and Espeon add threats to the meta that outspeed it and threaten it with a KO, but their presence would also generally speed the meta up, making mons like Archeops and Sneasel much better. Moreover, the greater amount of teams that can keep the momentum up would leave less room for it to come in, not to mention clicking Aromatherapy is a lot harder to do in a meta where momentum is a significant thing. Zard would be easier to handle for similar reasons, too. Even Scrafty wouldn't love this meta since Virizion and Espeon give us more offensive checks to it, meaning you don't need to keep a Ribombee alive throughout a whole match to not get swept by it. Finally, we could look into certain other PUBL mons if the suggested set turns out to be fine. Drampa is a cool mon with nice utility but is just too much in metas where it comes in with ease, however in a more offensive meta it might struggle to get that opportunity. Sceptile and Raichu-Alola are other things I'd be open to in the longer term. The former would probably run either a mixed set a la Virizion (which would make it fine if Virizion were to turn out fine) or an SD terrain set that would struggle much more now than back then because of Doublade's presence. The latter's presence I don't love in any meta per se but I figure we would have the tools for in such a meta, whereas outside of Terrain it would likely be worse than Espeon. In short, a Viriz/Espy/Guzz unban could open a lot of doors for PU.

Of course, the aforementioned benefits are entirely conditional on the assumption that these threats wouldn't end up being broken and that they wouldn't end up constraining the meta too much. It definitely would increase the overall power level of the tier significantly and this is something to be wary of. However, I do think there's a pretty good chance these threats would be fine and wouldn't critically endanger balance teams as such, even if their makeup would maybe have to change somewhat. Virizion definitely doesn't love Doublade's presence and also struggles to break past Poison types like Garb or Weezing unless you drop Synthesis, which to me seems like a shaky tradeoff since it makes its defensive utility much weaker. Our usage of Regen mons like Eldegoss and Tangela also provide us with decent midgrounds to play around Virizion and alleviate the pressure on your main Viriz check somewhat. Espeon of course was only barely banned from PU last time and would find itself in a meta now where there is less opportunity to come in and less reliance on Togedemaru to check half the meta, neutralizing its ability to crumble your entire defensive core by clicking Trick. The addition of Doublade and Guzzlord would also help with checking the Specs set, whereas without Specs it struggles to threaten things out much more. Guzzlord would definitely be fine in such a meta since its slowness would hurt it more in a faster meta, not to mention it'd find itself on teams more as a tanky gluemon (see its role in current RU, a more offensive meta than ours, for example) rather than as an outright breaker. In general, what I'd hope to achieve with such a meta is that there is more room to make actual plays without risking your whole gameplan, a meta where you can actually risk your main check to threat X without instalosing if you get it wrong.

I find it difficult to see how we can ban our way out of our long-standing predicaments in PU before the generation's end, and I feel like my proposal is at least worth carefully exploring. I do want to note that I really do mean carefully, because we need to make sure none of these threats end up being overwhelming. This would take a decent amount of practical experience though, and I don't think a suspect test is sufficient in this regard, especially since we're dealing with a set of 3 that I believe need to be freed together in order for any of these unbans to really be sustainable. Therefore, I think it would be worth exploring this hypothetical meta while SCL is going on, perhaps through mini/live tournaments with maybe a little prize, and we could see how such a meta stacks up against the one that will be played during SCL. I would love to hear from people what they think of this proposal, if there is enough enthusiasm for this idea then I propose that we should make work of it. As long as we start exploring this in time and do not rush into a decision one way or the other, the worst case scenario is that it turns out one or more of these threats would actually still be broken and we'll just have to make do with our fat little meta. In the best case though, we get a superior meta that people will actually want to keep playing after the generation is over.
 

Hera

Make a move before they can make an act on you
is a Social Media Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
PUPL Champion
Very against a Scyther quickban for a few reasons.

1. I'm not sure how a mon with only a bit over a third of overall support on tiering action (not a quickban, just general tiering action which includes a suspect) is considered the best option for a quickban. Beyond that, nearly half of the overall voters said they did not support tiering action of Scyther. The justification seems to be that a supermajority of qualified voters voted to take action on it (again, just general action, not necessarily a quickban); however, it also had a substantial number of people vote not to take tiering action on it among the qualified voters, with the exact ratio being 12-6 with 1 being on the fence. Compare that to Doublade, which had a 10-4 ratio with considerably more people on the fence, 5 in this case, while also having an equal number of overall voters wanting tiering action and fewer overall voters not wanting tiering action. To me, it seems like the best course of action based on this data would be a Doublade suspect, as many also cite it as one of the most centralizing forces when building right now due to its splashability, the teams it's good on not having slots for Doublade counterplay, and its set flexibility. A Scyther suspect might be reasonable, but a Scyther quickban is a decision I do not understand.

2. I said this when Guzzlord was quickbanned, but the tier isn't in such a dire state that it absolutely needs quickbans. If a suspect started right now, this would only last into the first week of SCL, and there have been much more egregious cases of Pokemon that have agreed to have been banworthy lasting far longer in team tours (see: Drampa existing for most of SCL I, Eggy-A taking 3 weeks to be banned from the PUPL, even Guzzlord lasting 2 weeks before being quickbanned), so if the reasoning is stability before SCL, then I have a hard time believing it. While we don't have the data from qualified voters from the survey, we can see that on average, people find SS PU to be enjoyable and competitive, with only building teams being mildly difficult (which I agree with), which is a statement that even a majority of pro-ban Scyther people agree with from what I've seen. Surely, based on this data, the meta isn't so dire as to require a quickban.

3. If the reasoning behind a quickban over possible Doublade action is "well it's been broken for about a year compared to Doublade being broken for only 2 months", then that is not very true. Few people were advocating for Scyther tiering action before this iteration of PUPL, and even then, the Scyther complaints only started to ramp up when Guzzlord was quickbanned from what I saw. It seems to me that something similar to what happened with Guzzlord is happening: a mon potentially seen as broken after only a couple of weeks (in Scyther's case it's about a month) of middling to decent overall results gets put on the chopping block.

4. This is a bit more subjective so I understand if people disagree, but I honestly do not find Scyther banworthy; quite the contrary, I find its ability to consistently make progress to be a healthy thing. I think having a consistent progress maker is a good thing because a lack of them would lead to the tier becoming more focused on matchup fishy threats that make progress inconsistently, which I believe no one wants. Beyond that, it seems to me the reason Scyther is seen as broken is because of Doublade. Despite Doublade itself being a pretty solid Scyther check, the types of teams it forces struggle to fit Scyther counterplay, often having to resort to Rocky Helmet Weezing or Garbodor to cover both of them and hope they don't get long-termed by either of them. Again, it seems to me that Doublade is the main culprit of the issues people are experiencing with Scyther, considering that Scyther complaints started to rise around the same time Doublade teams began to be optimized (Week 3) and that a Doublade suspect would be much more beneficial than a Scyther quickban as to solving not only issues with Scyther but also some of the issues people have with the tier as a whole. Quickbanning Scyther would effectively be scapegoating it as the sole issue when there are potentially bigger ones like Doublade causing the real problems.

As an aside, I did not like the "no strong opinion" option on this survey. Despite what I said above, my feelings on Doublade are more mixed than lacking a strong opinion, and it comes across to me as less of an "I'm mixed on this mon" and more of an "I don't care about this mon". I would prefer to see a ranked voting system on the next suspect, with people ranking mons by how threatening/banworthy they perceive them to be, as well as another question asking which mons the voter finds banworthy (ex: I rank Mons A, B, C in the order C, B, A from most to least banworthy, but I only think the first two mons are banworthy), although I understand if Google Forms can't do this and would like to revert to the previous systems of ranking mons from 1-5 if this isn't possible.
 
Very against a Scyther quickban for a few reasons.

1. I'm not sure how a mon with only a bit over a third of overall support on tiering action (not a quickban, just general tiering action which includes a suspect) is considered the best option for a quickban. Beyond that, nearly half of the overall voters said they did not support tiering action of Scyther. The justification seems to be that a supermajority of qualified voters voted to take action on it (again, just general action, not necessarily a quickban); however, it also had a substantial number of people vote not to take tiering action on it among the qualified voters, with the exact ratio being 12-6 with 1 being on the fence. Compare that to Doublade, which had a 10-4 ratio with considerably more people on the fence, 5 in this case, while also having an equal number of overall voters wanting tiering action and fewer overall voters not wanting tiering action. To me, it seems like the best course of action based on this data would be a Doublade suspect, as many also cite it as one of the most centralizing forces when building right now due to its splashability, the teams it's good on not having slots for Doublade counterplay, and its set flexibility. A Scyther suspect might be reasonable, but a Scyther quickban is a decision I do not understand.

2. I said this when Guzzlord was quickbanned, but the tier isn't in such a dire state that it absolutely needs quickbans. If a suspect started right now, this would only last into the first week of SCL, and there have been much more egregious cases of Pokemon that have agreed to have been banworthy lasting far longer in team tours (see: Drampa existing for most of SCL I, Eggy-A taking 3 weeks to be banned from the PUPL, even Guzzlord lasting 2 weeks before being quickbanned), so if the reasoning is stability before SCL, then I have a hard time believing it. While we don't have the data from qualified voters from the survey, we can see that on average, people find SS PU to be enjoyable and competitive, with only building teams being mildly difficult (which I agree with), which is a statement that even a majority of pro-ban Scyther people agree with from what I've seen. Surely, based on this data, the meta isn't so dire as to require a quickban.

3. If the reasoning behind a quickban over possible Doublade action is "well it's been broken for about a year compared to Doublade being broken for only 2 months", then that is not very true. Few people were advocating for Scyther tiering action before this iteration of PUPL, and even then, the Scyther complaints only started to ramp up when Guzzlord was quickbanned from what I saw. It seems to me that something similar to what happened with Guzzlord is happening: a mon potentially seen as broken after only a couple of weeks (in Scyther's case it's about a month) of middling to decent overall results gets put on the chopping block.

4. This is a bit more subjective so I understand if people disagree, but I honestly do not find Scyther banworthy; quite the contrary, I find its ability to consistently make progress to be a healthy thing. I think having a consistent progress maker is a good thing because a lack of them would lead to the tier becoming more focused on matchup fishy threats that make progress inconsistently, which I believe no one wants. Beyond that, it seems to me the reason Scyther is seen as broken is because of Doublade. Despite Doublade itself being a pretty solid Scyther check, the types of teams it forces struggle to fit Scyther counterplay, often having to resort to Rocky Helmet Weezing or Garbodor to cover both of them and hope they don't get long-termed by either of them. Again, it seems to me that Doublade is the main culprit of the issues people are experiencing with Scyther, considering that Scyther complaints started to rise around the same time Doublade teams began to be optimized (Week 3) and that a Doublade suspect would be much more beneficial than a Scyther quickban as to solving not only issues with Scyther but also some of the issues people have with the tier as a whole. Quickbanning Scyther would effectively be scapegoating it as the sole issue when there are potentially bigger ones like Doublade causing the real problems.

As an aside, I did not like the "no strong opinion" option on this survey. Despite what I said above, my feelings on Doublade are more mixed than lacking a strong opinion, and it comes across to me as less of an "I'm mixed on this mon" and more of an "I don't care about this mon". I would prefer to see a ranked voting system on the next suspect, with people ranking mons by how threatening/banworthy they perceive them to be, as well as another question asking which mons the voter finds banworthy (ex: I rank Mons A, B, C in the order C, B, A from most to least banworthy, but I only think the first two mons are banworthy), although I understand if Google Forms can't do this and would like to revert to the previous systems of ranking mons from 1-5 if this isn't possible.
1. The number of player considering that scyther is broken has considerably risen up in the last few weeks. From the "qualified players" form, we learned that 2/3 of tournament players find this Pokémon concerning - a portion of the player base that's just too significant to ignore. As such, the council decided to act on Scyther and not Doublade (where too many people's opinions were on the fence, the ratio could go up to 10-9).
Most of the council is pro-ban because they think that it is impossible to check on the long term, comparing to Doublade which is centralizing but has less longevity and struggles more against specific checks.
Requesting a tiering action leads to a council vote on how to deal with Scyther; it could end up in a suspect, but as most of the council thinks it is banworthy it will probably end up being a qb, and I believe that the council can be trusted on the choice of what should be done here.

2. Having a suspect running at the same time as SCL is a bad idea, imho. A change of meta implies that every team that was built beforehand will have to be altered, so acting as soon as possible, and preferably before the tour starts, is better for the overall consistency of the latter. Drampa existing for a good part of the first SCL was a problem about which many players complained; the tournament wouldn't have been the same at all without that threat. We hope to see the players perform at the best of their abilities, and removing the broken threats is necessary to do so.

3. The reason why so many Pokémon were looked upon in these last weeks is because we have/had a lot of threats, and we're approaching the end of the generation and the last tournaments centred around this tier.
The Vanilluxe, Guzzlord, and Doublade drops have been tier-defining and the metagame lost some of its previous balance. Scyther on the other hand, like Scrafty and maybe Charizard too, have been centralizing for a while, sparking discussions about whether or not they are broken. We clearly don't have the time to suspect every threat that PU presents within the last bit of time we have, even more so considering we want to have a high quality metagame for the competitive tournaments.
The banning of Guzzlord was due to a combinaison of a majority of competitive players finding this threat to be overwhelming, and lack of time to let everyone explore everything it had to offer, as we were in the middle of a tournament. Scyther is in the same spot right now.

4. I believe that the first complaints about Scyther appeared way before the drop of Doublade in the tier. Its ability to get through its checks is, imo, a consequence of the loss of tsareena, which was both the best hazard control we had and a way to pressure scyther's entry on the field. Most of its current checks are weak to hazard stack, and while doublade has indeed something to do with that, its influence on that aspect is in my opinion limited because people have started to adapt to it. But we can't adapt to scyther, because it can beat every check it has with koff + uturn + a bit of patience. I think that scyther presents less of a problem than doublade in the builder, because what we use to check scyther is more commonly used, but the reality is that all of Scyther's checks struggle with long term consistency, whereas Doublade's checks do not.

5. There were some explicit demands to try out the current format. I think it isn't fixed yet so we'll see what people prefer for the next iteration!

PS: thank you Gman for always helping me to write these posts <3
 
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Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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The PU council will be voting on potentially quickbanning Scyther given the vast majority of qualified voters in this survey stating they'd be interested in tiering action, in addition to its more than overwhelming presence in PUPL.
I very much implore you guys not to go through with this, even as someone who wants to ban Scyther.

The tiering process is built on the idea that everyone gets their say. Going off the survey results, not even 35% of participants supported tiering action on Scyther. You then say it's being done because of the qualified voter base, which Lambovino expands upon here:

From the "qualified players" form, we learned that 2/3 of tournament players find this Pokémon concerning - a portion of the player base that's just too significant to ignore.
...but that group doesn't even make up for 20% of the survey respondents. Barely over 10% when going solely off the 12 that support action. You wanna talk about a portion of the playerbase that's too significant to ignore? What about the other 90% of players that responded? Do they just not matter because they're ladder players or what?

On top of that, Scyther has been in this tier for like... at least a couple years at this point? It's pretty insane to quickban it based on that alone, it's not like this is a new drop that just fucked you guys over, it's something that's been around for ages. I'm fully aware it wasn't nearly as prominent beforehand but that doesn't change the fact at hand.

If this is just because of SCL, then ok, fair enough. Quickban into immediate resuspect has its own issues but hey it's been done before. If that was the initial plan, could that please be clarified? Because right now it sounds like this mon's just going straight to the PUBL dumpster which, regardless of whether or not that's where it belongs, is not something that should happen unilaterally.
 

Hera

Make a move before they can make an act on you
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I wasn't going to say anything about it because I wanted to be respectful, but these two recent posts have appalled me over how high-and-mighty they come across as, and it's a trend I've seen since the start of the Vannilluxe suspect. From PU's own tier leader saying not once, but twice, how there are "no coherent dnb arguments" for [Vannilluxe/Scyther], to being told to defer to the opinions of council if I value the health of metagame (which implies that if you don't want these mons banned then you don't care about the health of the metagame, which isn't fucking true), to being told in the most roundabout way possible that my opinion actually doesn't matter unless I went 1-x in PUPL, I feel constantly frustrated with how a certain group of people within this tier phrase their arguments in such a way that to be anti-ban is to be the "bad guy". These are just examples from the past two posts on Smogon; if you look deeper into the thread and Discord, you get things like:

  • A pro-banner picking apart 2 points from a (flawed imo) anti-ban post and dragging on an argument that easily could've taken place on Discord for 6 whole posts
  • The constant deference to authority, which I usually don't mind, but this point is often coupled with the "health of the metagame" argument, implying that agreeing with the council is the best and only way to improve the meta
  • A pro-banner unironically saying that the anti-ban post above them is an "obvious proxy post"
I often feel like we forget this, so let me say it: this is MONS. We play a game where a bunch of hyper-optimized beasts, machines, sentient rocks, and even food clash against each other with fire, water, earth, and everything in between, not only for a bunch of pixels, not only for the occasional chance to get a couple of day's worth of pay from tours, but because we all collectively enjoy this stupid game. There's no need for any of us to act like banning ice cream or a mantis is the "right" or "wrong" thing to do. I firmly believe that Vanilluxe was not banworthy and that Scyther is not worthy of a quickban, but I'm not telling people that not banning these mons is the objectively wrong thing to do (or at least that's not my intent, my wording is usually atrocious imo, so if I never came across as like that, I'm sorry).

I think what would be really helpful for me would be seeing some concerete evidence that Scyther is banworthy, like replays where it singlehandily (or with minimal support) outlasts a counter with Knock + U-turn, or a team forgetting to prep for it and is 6-0ed, rather than pointing to a supermajority of qualified votes requested tiering action (which I clarified above could also mean a suspect test; in fact, the survery itself says that tiering action = suspect test) and saying that it's "obviously broken" on Discord without any evidence. This is not me saying pro-ban arguments are invalid; what I am saying is that I'd like to see more evidence of Scyther being banworthy, because in my personal experience in playing games, I've run into few matches where Scyther simply dominates, and even fewer where it genuinely outlasts a counter. In most of my games, I have found Scyther to be a balanced and healthy force, which is why the annoucment of a quickban slate was so odd to me. If nothing else, I'd love to see a quickban into resuspect in order to give Scyther the due process I feel like it deserves, as well as negating the issue of it being a problem in SCL.

One final thing: I heavily apologize if at any point I came off as disrespectful. I have the utmost respect in all of conucil as well as all PUPL players, and I believe they want to make the tier better, even if I disagree with banning Scyther. I just feel very strongly about what I see as eltism in mons due to my core beliefs and values, and effectively being told my opinion barely matters is frustraing to say the least. I'm on the Discord if you wanna talk more about this (although I wouldn't imagine why you'd want to); I don't wanna clog up the thread with stuff like this.
 

Chloe

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As promised we have voted on Scyther in SS PU.



Scyther has been banned from SS PU. HOWEVER after careful consideration we are holding an immediate retest to determine its impact on the metagame. This is being done instead of a regular suspect test in order to protect SCL. From a ladder perspective, it acts virtually the same way as a regular suspect test. This should hopefully be an agreeable outcome.

Suspect test thread soon!
 
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