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Following Terrakion's quick retest into ban confirmation vote, the NU council has decided to suspect test Chandelure next!
Chandelure has been on the radar of the council and community for quite some time now, but it is only being acted on now for a few reasons. For starters, Chandelure has a very noted entry hazard weakness in a tier where hazard removal isn't so good. Thus, the frequently cited Choice Specs set isn't so simple to claim KOs with because you have very limited chances to hit the field. Furthermore, when you mispredict when using this set, you're often giving away a lot of momentum to your opponent even if you get great damage on a foe. Additionally, the tier is very clearly favoring offensive builds currently. This isn't so good for Chandelure because it's mainly looking to find slow balance teams. Such builds cannot reliably offensively pressure it, and Chandelure's ridiculous strength typically gives it easy 2HKOes with hazards support there. Lastly, our faster offensive threats en masse do a fantastic job of beating it down, such as Flygon, Paldean Tauros-W, Barraskewda, and Cinccino, as well as NU's common priority users being very effective against it.
On the other hand, Chandelure is arguably the reason offense is king. While our offensive structures would be perfectly fine and still great without it, it's hard to justify slower builds of any sort right now because Chandelure as a wallbreaker puts a chokehold on how varied you can be with them. We have great pieces for such teams--such as Meloetta, Scrafty, Incineroar, and Goodra--that can come in on Chandelure's STAB attacks and force it out, but inevitably you have a checklist to fill out when building these teams. Chandelure being as strong as it is and being rather low drawback as a Choice item wallbreaker makes it quite tough to do so successfully. Compare it to Choice Specs Toxtricity, for example: Toxtricity is always locking into a move with an immunity to it, whereas Chandelure doesn't face that same issue and has Trick as a midground play. Lastly, despite Chandelure having next to no SCL success, it's been very solid in tournaments overall as shown by its winrate being the highest amongst top-20 used Pokemon.
NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!
The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:
Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in NU before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played NU before the test, full stop.
At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact myself, etern, or a member of staff.
If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me.
The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2800. The deadline for getting requirements will be Sunday, November 2nd at 11:59pm GMT+11.
ooh Chandelure! ye I remember when Muk and gastrodon left people started realizing that Incineroar, Altaria, Goodra, and P2 were the only true resists to this guy. P2 has become quite niche as a special wall and doesn't have a whole lot other than Thunder Wave and attacking to do once its in and Altaria doesn't fit on every style of team. I do agree with what a lot of people say that Specs is the true threat with Shadow Ball midgrounding basically everything and Overheat straight up nuking neutral targets and doing a solid 30-40% to SpDef Incineroar meaning in the long run, you can wear it down until it can't switch into you no more. With Cincinno and other removal being more common, it's easier than ever to keep rocks off so that Specs has as many chances to come in and do this as it can get as well. Of course, we also have Scarf to always respect lest it grab surprise KOs that your other team mates can abuse or boots calm mind that can take advantage of forced switches to break.
Chandelure is a fun reference point for brokenness because I think it draws a line between broken and strong but fair very well. I believe its weaknesses are both profound enough to limit its effectiveness with proper play but capable of being supported to preserve Chandelure's strength through a battle. With that said, I'm firmly DNB on Chandelure.
Most people reference Choice Specs Chandelure when labeling it OP because you can post plenty of damage calcs showing OHKOes or 2HKOes that seem unreasonable. I will always push back against this line of thinking because it 1) lacks context beyond "haha funny wallbreaker go brrr" and 2) assumes the Pokemon will always get the ideal scenarios to achieve such feats. Chandelure has some very noted weaknesses that contain it as a wallbreaker despite its absurd strength, the foremost of which being its entry hazard weakness. Chandelure has limited switch-ins to actually capitalize on its power if Stealth Rock ever gets set, and it's on the Chandelure user to either remove Stealth Rock or simply make the most of these turns and predict properly each time. If you fail at the latter, then you're going to give up a lot of momentum to the opponent in a metagame where doing so is pretty crippling.
"rabia, it doesn't matter if I mispredict. Chandelure is so strong that I still am doing stupid damage to whatever comes in." This is a pretty fair assessment of Chandelure at its optimal performance; it always uses the correct move based on the switch-in, and frankly I will cede that Overheat is often a fine move to lob off at a moment's notice. Yet, this still comes with opportunity cost: Chandelure is not lacking switch-ins it cannot 2HKO, even on the bulkier builds that struggle in this metagame. Incineroar, Rhyperior, Cramorant, Altaria, Vaporeon, and Goodra are some options that make simply spamming your Fire-type move pretty unreliable. The vast majority of them also have recovery moves to prevent Chandelure from simply getting that 2HKO the next time it comes in too.
What if you mispredict? Chandelure is a Pokemon that wants to make the most of its turns. Spamming the same move every time doesn't do that. And, we've seen Pokemon like Meloetta, Brute Bonnet, Cinccino, Incineroar, Wo-Chien, Goodra, and Scrafty all increase in usage at least in part because they can catch Chandelure on its mispredicts. Are these all hard counters designed to beat Chandelure in every instance? God no, but that's not the point. Rather, the point is Chandelure does actually have to get turns correct to do the silly things people claim it Always Does.
Entry hazards aren't even the only way to effectively neuter it. The metagame is naturally really offensive right now, and although some would attribute that to Chandelure itself, that's quite shortsighted. Terastallization pushes metagames to be more offensive in general, and we've seen two generations in a row now where because of the reduced Pokedex size, there simply are fewer great defensive tools in lower tiers like NU. Naturally, this too swings metagames towards offense. Putting the blame at Chandelure's "feet" is just not rooted in reality, and metagames where offense is the best archetype are, contrary to NU Discord's belief, accepted in the tiering framework. As a result of this offensive metagame, teams really naturally have Chandelure answers. NU's common fast Pokemon like Flygon, Flamigo, Munkidori, Cinccino, Barraskewda, Raikou, and many more beat down Chandelure pretty easily, although some need Stealth Rock to hit Chandelure once to do it. Additionally, our common priority users like Shadow Sneak Houndstone, Aqua Jet Basculegion, and Sucker Punch Brute Bonnet help contain it too.
I've seen people note that Chandelure can use Terastallization defensively to get rid of its Stealth Rock weakness. While this is true, that defensive use often is more offensive than anything and fails to help it against common revenge killers outside of Flygon really, which still favorably OHKOes Chandelure at +1 unless it's Tera Grass. These more defensive Tera types (think Ground / Fighting here mostly) also fail to give the comical calcs from doing nothing but spamming STAB attacks, meaning Chandelure, yet again, proves not so simple to wallbreak with.
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I won't fault anyone for thinking Chandelure is OP, and my post doesn't address Heavy-Duty Boots variants at all because I seldom see those even brought up by people wanting a ban. I've seen far more outrage about Choice Specs variants and believe many of the arguments to be a bit shortsighted.
I love balance centered metagames, but balance is clearly struggling in the current SV NU. While chandelure is certainly powerful and one of the most prominent factors to the decline of balance, I believe that there are many factors which contribute to this decline, and that banning chandelure alone would not restore this archetype back to what it was when a-muk was still around.
Building balance teams are incredibly challenging right now. The sheer amount of threats in the tier give balance a lot of boxes to fill, to the point where its impossible to account for all of them.
- For example, some of the main special breakers in the tier (chandelure, toxtricity, basculegion, meloetta) complement each other very well. While you only occasionally see these breakers together on the same team, it is basically impossible for balance to account for all of them without being seriously weak to a lot of the physical pivots/breakers paired alongside them, such as flamigo, physical basculegion, or tauros.
- Balance now also has to ensure a good terrain matchup due to its incredibly high usage rates currently. This further adds on to the number of checks balance has to consider, especially given how versatile terrain teams can be.
- The next reason is that certain types such as ground, steel, and dark are often mandatory on balance teams. There are zero viable pokemon which can cover two of these types in one, and every viable ground, steel, or dark type bar flygon is slow (and scarf flygon is mid). There are also zero pokemon within these types that have any reliable recovery bar rest talk strategies, which may not fit the pace of balance. This means that to have your immunities and ghost resist in place, you often have to use half your team slots full of slow pokemon which cannot reliably heal themselves. Then, you still have a lot of boxes that you would like to fill: Speed, a breaker, possibly removal, a check to waters and fighters, something with longevity...the point is you always have to sacrifice something to the point where you're likely better off building a bulky offense at the very least. There are some ways to try and compress these roles such as using cinccino, but I personally believe it to be a really poor fit on balance; its much better at clicking tidy up once and making some progress as a support on offense.
- The next reason is hazard removal being in a really challenging spot right now. Of course houndstone is problematic for the tiers spinners, but I am mainly referring to duraludon. While something like a weakness policy houndstone can fit well on offense teams, I believe duraludon to be the quintessential steel type for offense due to its sheer damage output, steel overwhelm abilities, good matchup into opposing offense, and utility such as twave or dtail. Now, duraludon is a huge challenge for balance because it 1v1s every removal in the tier. Add on the fact that altaria and tsareena were already struggling due to hyper offense and houndstone respectively, it now becomes very challenging to keep rocks or webs off the field. While balance can resort to boots spam, without removal your options become considerably more selective, making it challenging to check the boxes I previously mentioned.
Therefore, while banning chandelure can remove a pretty big box, there are still so many boxes balance has to check without it. chandelure's box will not entirely disappear either, with underrated threats such as hoopa being able to at least partially take its place. Given this and that chandelure's matchup into offense is quite middling, it pains me to vote do not ban on this matter. Hopefully one day balance will restore itself to its rightful throne in NU (breloom 1v1s).
I'll start this by stating that I am very firmly in the Ban camp and was pushing for a Chandelure suspect for a while. I believe it's had a very warping impact on the metagame forcing it to be extremely offensive and has made building thoroughly unenjoyable. Without Chandelure I believe that more breathing room in the builder will lead to more viable defensive cores and thus slowing the metagame down somewhat. I won't claim that it will fix all our problems, but I do believe banning Chandelure is a sensible next step to take.
I'll talk about two main sets below:
Chandelure @ Choice Specs
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Tera Type: Grass / Fairy
Modest Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Fire Blast
- Trick
- Overheat / Energy Ball
Chandelure @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Tera Type: Fairy
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Shadow Ball / Tera Blast
- Fire Blast
- Pain Split
To start with the obvious, Chandelure murders balance / fat teams. Checking / countering it defensively is essentially impossible, with a combination of Specs and CM sets requiring very different counterplay and Specs itself being capable of muscling through would be checks. SpDef Incineroar is the classic mon slapped onto a team to handle Chandelure. If it runs into Specs sets the following happens:
252+ SpA Choice Specs Chandelure Fire Blast (110 BP) vs. 248 HP / 156+ SpD Incineroar: 135-159 (34.3 - 40.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
So Incineroar can switch in once, the second time around it's getting 2HKOed. If Chand is Timid, Overheat causes the same effect. Alternatively, Flash Fire + Tera Fairy or Fighting CM Chandelures simply use Incineroar as set up bait. This same effect repeats across its checks mentioned above. Rhyperior, Cramorant, Altaria, Vaporeon, Goodra all risk 2HKOs from Specs Shadow Ball, and also fail to properly deal with CM + Tera. Meloetta, Brute Bonnet, Cinccino, Wo-Chien, and Scrafty are all ruined if they get a single turn wrong, and again struggle to answer Chandelure if it turns out not to be specs and instead clicks CM + Tera. For a good example, see this replay.
So when you're building, your best bet to ensure you dont auto lose to Chandelure set is to either build a team with good immunities + resists (i.e. some combo of Normal + Dragon types, or Dark + Water) and then pray it's not CM or pray you click better than them, or to simply build something which has 4 or 5 mons faster than Chandelure which threaten it i.e. build offense. This choice to me is very undesirable because a) it hugely restricts building balance, which is already very restricted as Loocas nicely outlined above, and b) it hugely incentivizes the easier and simpler option - build offense.
Overall this means Chandelure's impact is one that massively speeds up the metagame. I think it's worth referencing the tiering framework here for why I feel this is a problem. I believe Chandelure's impact is one that reduces both team building and battling skill as defined in the framework under the "Unhealthy" definition:
Unhealthy - elements that are neither uncompetitive nor broken, yet are deemed undesirable for the metagame, such that they inhibit "skillful play" to a large extent.
These are elements that may not limit either team building or battling skill enough individually, but combine to cause an effect that is undesirable for the metagame.
This can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity.
Primarily I feel that Chandelure hugely harms the "Creativity" part of Teambuilding skill, as it massively incentivises a single style (offense) over others. It also reduces the Battling skill, as often the correct line for the Chandelure player is to simply click Overheat / Fire Blast and watch something die. There is no prediction, picking the right move, or assessing risk going on here. So while yes, the tiering framework doesn't mandate that balance be a dominant archetype, I believe the effect we're seeing is still in opposition to how we aim to tier.
With the main crux of my argument out of the way, I think it's worth looking at some common counter arguments I've heard about Chandelure.
Toxtricity / insert other special breaker here does the same thing
Tox definitely is a huge threat, and Specs sets have similarly few counters. However, the key difference for me is that Tox takes a risk everytime it clicks a STAB move, as immunities to Normal and Electric are abundant. Chandelure doesn't carry this same risk as we don't have any viable Fire immunes. A real Flash Fire mon would certainly tip the balance of risk that Chandelure currently carries. Chand also has a better speed tier (admittedly Basc is probably the only real threat sitting between the two). Toxtricity can't run bulky sets and doesn't have the Tera diversity to flip matchups like Chand has. It's more predictable and easier to play around.
It's not getting used at all in SCL, our highest level of play
That's true! It's only been used 3 times across 6 entire weeks. Let's consider what's happening here, and I'm familiar with this having prepped for the whole tournament. Given the effect we see above of Chandelure having an insane matchup into balance and offense being king, when prepping you're likely to prep for the opponent bringing offense. When doing so, you don't often reach for Chandelure because it's matchup into opposing offense is middling at best. It can do pretty well into Grassy Terrain or Sun, but it does leave a lot of holes open for those teams to grab momentum back as well. So, when prepping in this tournament, you're very unlikely to build with Chandelure as the matchups it performs best in simply do not happen very often. Let's look at some stats to back this up. Across SCL the Steel type usage / winrate is probably the best indicator of what is being used:
So, the clear trend here is for anything but Bronzong, the typical Steel on balance who just so happens to let Chandelure in for free. Duraldon and Klefki fit very well on offensive builds, and we see those picking up great winrates. Copperajah meanwhile is a bit of a band-aid Steel for balances and that archetypes struggle is reflected in the winrate. The rise of Duraldon in particular I think is telling as it's the only Steel which outspeeds and threatens Chandelure, and I don't think it's a coincidence that this mon is used so much while still having an awful Munkidori matchup. These stats alone I think tell a big story about just how fast the metagame has become, and Chandelure is a key contributor to that.
It's probably worth touching on the Bronzong winrate, which looks amazing at first glance. Here are the Bronzong replays and what actually happened in them:
So, while the winrate is good, Zong has either been in recycled mirror matchups or landed a very favourable matchup. A cautionary tale of how stats don't tell the full story, and the use for them is better when talking about trends and outliers. The trend to see here is just how far Zong has fallen as a defensive Steel.
Meanwhile, comparing these trends to the ongoing Seasonal tournament is really interesting:
Here Zong is used a huge amount, and Chandelure is brought much more as well. I think what's happening here is people are prepping less intensely than they are in SCL, and in a Bo3 setting balance is being brought more as a midground (which is lazy imo). Regardless of the reason, the result we see is Chandelure gets nearly a 60% winrate in a metagame like this, the highest of anything in the top 20. It's no surprise when looking at this that SCL players then gravitate towards offense. Duraldon doesn't even touch the top 20 here which is crazy.
Sorry for the essay. In summary, Chandelure has a warping (and undesirable according to the tiering framework) effect on the metagame, and we can see that reflected in the stats and trends for SCL and Seasonal. I do agree that Tera and the nature of the SV dex is always going to lead to offense being on top, but right now it feels like we are too far in that direction. Removing Chandelure won't entirely fix this problem, but it does give us more breathing room and open up more options (think mons like Bronzong and Wo-Chien being much more viable). We saw a similar effect when Porygon-Z being banned and the freedom that opened up in the builder. Banning Chandelure would do the same thing now.
