Metagame np: SV DOU Stage 2: Dance Monkey | Annihilape Banned

[Actuarily]

I said oh my God I see you walking by
Take my hands, my dear, and look me in my eyes
Just like a monkey I've been dancing my whole life
But you just beg to see me dance just one more time ​

It's time for the next step for S/V DOU! After the Flutter Mane suspect, the next pokemon on the radar is Annihilape, who has been dominant in Flutter Mane's absence.

Annihilape is the best set up threat in the tier due to its solid bulk, great offensive typing, two great abilities, and access to Rage Fist, a move that gains 50 BP every time Annihilape is hit. Terastallilization further benefits Annihilape, allowing it to change its type to a more defensive one. In conjunction with Terastillization, Annihilape's abilities can neuter its counters. Tera Fire can prevent burns, Vital Spirit can prevent sleep, Tera Water gives Annihilape arguably the best defensive typing, and Defiant can't be Intimated or Parting Shotted without further boosting Annihilape's attack.

The Bulk Up set has given rise to common support cores such as Annihilape, Grimmsnarl, and Amoonguss, where many games follow a predictable path: Grimmsnarl's Fake Out, screen setting, and Parting Shot utilized with Amoonguss’ Ragepowder allow Annihilape to get off Bulk Ups, and Drain Punch as well as Amoonguss' Pollen Puff are able to heal off any damage Annihilape has taken. If Annihilape takes any hits during this set up, it will only further power up Rage Fist. These teams centered around Annihilape can be found all over the SV Kickoff and the Doubles World Cup of Pokemon tournaments. Games have often devolved into comical mirrors based around who can better set up their Annihilape: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-666588

In order to counter Annihilape, teams often must go to extreme lengths as many typical countermeasures don't work. Moves like Dragon Tail and Clear Smog just end up powering Rage Fist more, even if they do remove Annihilape's boosts. Roar/Whirlwind can move it out, and Haze can remove its boosts, but Annihilape can often just get into position and set up again. Teams have been trying solutions such as Toxic on Pokemon like Amoonguss, which does limit Annihilape's longevity (https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9doublesou-667437). Otherwise, teams often just have to rely on running the few spread attackers in the tier to make sure you can damage Annihilape enough before its able to set up (https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9doublesou-1757239955).

As usual, 60% of the vote must be in favor to ban Annihilape.

Important: For this suspect, there will be two ways to qualify. The first is the typical laddering period, where players must reach the minimum GXE. The second is by winning a live suspect tournament, to be held in the Smogon Doubles Room. You may compete in the suspect tournament on any account, and will need to post proof of you winning the suspect tournament on the voter ID thread.

There will be three live suspect tournaments:

Suspect Tournament Times
Saturday, January 14th at 12:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5)
Sunday, January 15th at 4:00 PM Eastern time (GMT -5)
Saturday, January 21st at 12:00 PM Eastern time (GMT -5)

The laddering period will last for a total of nine days.

Laddering Period
Start: Friday, January 13th at 8:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5)
End: Sunday, January 22nd at 8:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5)

All games must be played on the Pokemon Showdown! Doubles OU ladder on a fresh alt with a prefix of the form “DOUBU [Name]”. For example, I might use the account "DOUBU Actuarily" to ladder.

To qualify to vote, you must achieve a minimum GXE of 80 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may subtract 1 game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 80 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 84. As always, needing more than 50 games to reach 80 GXE is fine.

Minimum Games Needed

GXE	minimum games
80	50
80.2	49
80.4	48
80.6	47
80.8	46
81	45
81.2	44
81.4	43
81.6	42
81.8	41
82	40
82.2	39
82.4	38
82.6	37
82.8	36
83	35
83.2	34
83.4	33
83.6	32
83.8	31
84	30

Annihilape will be legal during this suspect.

 

[GenOne]

Ban Ape Yacht Club

 

[xqiht]

ban ape

 

[Mota494]

Annihilape on itself is not a problem, rage fist is the real problem, but banning just rage fist would be dumb because it's a tool unique to that pokemon and what makes that pokemon unique and taking that way but mainting the pokemon would be super dumb.
With that said, ban ape.

 

[Yoda2798]

Congratulations to Xrn for winning the first suspect tour! He will now qualify to vote as a result. Finals replay, semis 1 replay, semis 2 replay.

Bracket (30 Participants)

 

[Sandy Master]

ring target population bomb rage fist Annihilape is too broken. Send it to ohio, ban ape

 

[GenOne]

ring target population bomb rage fist Annihilape is too broken. Send it to ohio, ban ape

fwiw you can just run beat up Maushold to achieve the same thing without giving anni a sub-optimal item since rage fist caps at 350bp (6hits) anyways

the realest people run bullet seed amoonguss though ;)

 

[qsns]

Ape is broken because you need immediate counterplay to 18,000 different permutations of its set, and the normal counterplay of "damage the Pokemon until it has 0hp" is ineffective because of Rage Fist. If you hit it to the brink of death but your opponent manages to get a redirector or damage mitigation in, it has a 150-200bp move it will take immediate kills with. On the ability side, sometimes it switches into your Amoonguss and starts setting up, sometimes your Wisp Arcanine gives it an attack boost. Arcanine Wisp gets beat by Tera Fire. People have started using Toxic Amoonguss almost entirely for Ape, but Tera Steel shuts that down. Critting through its defense boosts with Flower Trick gets beat by Tera Fire or Steel and gives it a Rage Fist boost. Tera Water gives you a resistance to Rain teams trying to brute force you with Pokemon like CB Palafin.

This list of Ape being able to worm its way through attempts to counterplay it can go on forever. Its initial typing, STAB combo, bulk, abilities, and Rage Fist are all too much, and this is the only Pokemon IMO that abuses Terastallizing to an unhealthy degree.

I don't think there's many reasonable arguments to keep this considering how strong and warping it has been during WCoP. Annihilape is dumb. Please get this out of the tier.

 

[MoonEevee]

Ban the ape.

 

[Yoda2798]

Congratulations to fespy for winning the second suspect tour! He will now qualify to vote as a result. Finals replay, semis 1 replay, semis 2 replay.

Bracket (29 Participants)

 

[fespy]

Controversial take but don't think ape should be banned. Opinion isn't strong enough to write a post though and not a mountain I'm willing to die on.

Edit: it would be nice if the OP (or another post) could talk about the decision to suspect Annihilape over Rage Fist.

 

[ELPOSSUM]

As much as i do love the angry monkey it is a need that we do ban Annihilape and while i have not seen Annihilape being such a issue i feel like they might as well need to be banned as its basically hell let loose.

 

[jcortiz64]

Hi all. Once GXE requirement is met, how do you place your vote? First time for me.

 

[qsns]

Hi all. Once GXE requirement is met, how do you place your vote? First time for me.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...er-identification-thread-read-the-op.3714415/

Post proof of meeting the requirements in that thread before the suspect ends. When it ends next Sunday, you'll be tagged in a thread where you can post & cast your vote. Welcome to Smogon :)!

 

[RelicanthPrimal]

im not sure ape is broken yet because it isnt solved yet. i do think theres a good chance it is broken tho, something like 70%

the most common ape strat atm is screens with grim, which is just bad, offense with screenbreakers own. often seen with arc too, running both on a team is extremely passive unless your arc set isnt the standard stally stuff (band epic).

theres other ways to use it like scarf rage revive, and other damage mitigation for bulk up ape like psyseed, ruin mons, maus. av might work too.

ofc theres also the final gambit set but no need to talk about that cuz its not broken.

so fundamentally i think its too early to do this suspect, though i think theres decent chance ape is broken.

 

[Nephtyrix]

I'm asking the ban since D1 before tatsu/dodonzo or FM (I think The Ape is better than FM)

Vital spirit + lefto or Defiant + goggles with Fire/Water Tera just crush all. Suspect done with ape without screen, cause screen is bad.

Obviously I will vote ban.

 

[choicebadkyurem]

Originally I thought Ape was just a meme, but after using it shits disgustingly good and is absurdly suffocating especially because it keeps Rage Fists enhanced power when Revived through Blessing so please nuke Ape.

 

[Gondre19Wedj]

Edit: it would be nice if the OP (or another post) could talk about the decision to suspect Annihilape over Rage Fist.

I do not have a degree in Smogon law by any means, but I will try to explain best I can why this is. If someone smarter than me finds an error in my explanation, please correct me.

There are 2 focuses when it comes to deciding what to ban: precedence and simplicity.

Simple bans in Smogon have been the best course of action for the most part in deciding how to act on issues in the meta-game. A lot of people will remember in pain the complex ban in Gen5 OU about rain that led to thousands of issues and, from my understanding, is considered the least fun metagame in Smogon history. This has made voting for complex bans less desirable. Banning Rage Fist instead of Ape would be considered a complex ban. It is easier to just get rid of the Pokemon than try and figure out a way for it to stay in the tier.

Precedence I think is more important in this situation. The idea that has been used in the past is that if only one pokemon has a certain attribute, we cannot officially decide if that one aspect is broken. For example, I think that if Rage Fist was given to a Pokemon who was more of a glass cannon, it would not be nearly as effective as a move. Only surviving one or two hits does not make the move nearly as problematic as with Primeape who, in the right circumstance, can live 3 or more. However, because we only really have Ape who has this move, we don't know for sure. In this same generation, in OU, Houndstone was banned because it was the only Pokemon with Last Respects, which made it too much, so Houndstone was banned (though this may change if Basculegion gets it if it gets in with Pokemon Home). Shed Tail, on the other hand, has 2 users, Cyclizar and Orthworm. Cyclizar is a much more effective shed tailer, and so Cyclizar was banned instead of shed tail.

I hope this answers your question. Feel free to ask for clarification if something doesn't make sense.

 

[GenOne]

Edit: it would be nice if the OP (or another post) could talk about the decision to suspect Annihilape over Rage Fist.

The tl;dr is that when possible Smogon bans the problematic mon, not the move or ability, if it's only available or perceived to be a problem on one mon. This is why OU banned Houndstone and not Last Respects for example, even though they'll probably have to revisit all that once Basculegion becomes available. Same logic too for why DOU (somewhat controversially) banned Tatsugiri instead of the ability Commander.

I don't exactly love or understand Smogon tiering policy on some of these issues. However in the case of Rage Fist, the other mon who gets it is Primeape...you can replicate Annihiliape-tier bulk somewhat with Eviolite (you lose a recovery item though) and on paper run a similar bulky setup set, but without Ghost STAB Rage Fist is going to be 50% weaker on a mon with slightly lower base Attack too, so I think in this case banning Annihilape and not Rage Fist makes sense.

Fwiw I think I posted "suspect Rage Fist not Annihilape" in an earlier NP thread before correcting myself, so by no means am I a staunch defender of Smogon tiering policy as a whole lol.

 

[smixx]

Honestly, I think ape as a whole is a bit too much for the tier. Final Gambit isn't very threatening, but Drain Punch + Bulk Up + Ghost STAB feels like too much even if the Ghost STAB isn't Rage Fist. It takes very specific setups to kill smoothly without losing a significant number of your mons, esp with Fairy Tera. It's felt more oppressive to me since Day 1 than almost any of the other mons in the tier (excepting Flutter Mane which was quickly banned). I don't usually go for suspect reqs, but I think I will for this vote because I'm sick of it in the tier.

 

[elaine7]

calling the Ape too OP is just a skill issue tbh. Either kill its partnering maushold as quick as possible, use a fire move on him when he teras (they usually go steel in preparation for the population bomb hits), or just OHKO him with a ghost mon. He's pretty slow, so this stuff isn't impossible.

If you let Rage Fist power up enough to one-shot you, that's on you and not the fact that ape is OP.

 

[Fangame10]

calling the Ape too OP is just a skill issue tbh. Either kill its partnering maushold as quick as possible, use a fire move on him when he teras (they usually go steel in preparation for the population bomb hits), or just OHKO him with a ghost mon. He's pretty slow, so this stuff isn't impossible.

If you let Rage Fist power up enough to one-shot you, that's on you and not the fact that ape is OP.

Making an account 5+ mins ago just to say we have a skill issue is kinda

Maushold is a fast pokemon so you have a limited amount of pokes actually ohkoing it before it uses beat up (not to mention many ape teams don't really even run maushold)

And maushold should be using beat up to proc it not pop bomb since rage fist caps at 350BP (and also u dont need to terra for it to hit)

Most good ape sets run either terra water or fire to counter pokes like chi yu

Apes usually ev in sp def which most SE attacks that hit it are so it usually is never ohkod even by something like gholdengo

Not to mention team support including screens from grimmsnarl and amoongus redirection and spore make ape increadibly more difficult to ko than you think it is

Here is our annihilape sample team if u wanna get a good idea for how its used https://pokepast.es/917b3f0b23939768

mish

 

[AIRedzone]

calling the Ape too OP is just a skill issue tbh. Either kill its partnering maushold as quick as possible, use a fire move on him when he teras (they usually go steel in preparation for the population bomb hits), or just OHKO him with a ghost mon. He's pretty slow, so this stuff isn't impossible.

If you let Rage Fist power up enough to one-shot you, that's on you and not the fact that ape is OP.

The teams that use Maushold to power up Annihilape are very much in the minority of Annihilape teams. Ape invests in HP and SpDef to avoid being OHKOd, and there's typically one or more forms of damage mitigation on the rest of the team to make sure it can keep taking hits. This thing can sit on the field forever and incentivize you not to hit it, giving it free turns to boost or attack, so simply facing ape is a lose-lose situation (for the opponents and the poor spectators who are bored out of their minds seeing Ape set up for 4 turns).


Even teams built specifically to deal with Ape, like fast offense teams, don't always have the tools to break through all the support options that keep Ape propped up. Saying "skill issue, just use fire/ghost move" shows a lack of understanding about the meta, but then again your post seemed to be intentionally incendiary, so good job I guess.

Edit: Mish

 

[elaine7]

Making an account 5+ mins ago just to say we have a skill issue is kinda

Maushold is a fast pokemon so you have a limited amount of pokes actually ohkoing it before it uses beat up (not to mention many ape teams don't really even run maushold)

And maushold should be using beat up to proc it not pop bomb since rage fist caps at 350BP (and also u dont need to terra for it to hit)

Most good ape sets run either terra water or fire to counter pokes like chi yu

Apes usually ev in sp def which most SE attacks that hit it are so it usually is never ohkod even by something like gholdengo

Not to mention team support including screens from grimmsnarl and amoongus redirection and spore make ape increadibly more difficult to ko than you think it is

Here is our annihilape sample team if u wanna get a good idea for how its used https://pokepast.es/917b3f0b23939768

mish

Just commenting based on how I've seen it used, lol. I don't have one on my team.

 

[GRAND EMPRESS]

calling the Ape too OP is just a skill issue tbh. Either kill its partnering maushold as quick as possible, use a fire move on him when he teras (they usually go steel in preparation for the population bomb hits), or just OHKO him with a ghost mon. He's pretty slow, so this stuff isn't impossible.

If you let Rage Fist power up enough to one-shot you, that's on you and not the fact that ape is OP.

My friend. Even though I'm on the fence about Ape myself, this just ain't it.

Firstly, wasting your Tarastal just to stomach Pop Bomb is just that. A waste. Beat Up will accomplish the same thing and get you to your capstone immediately. And while not a bad mon at all, most Ape teams I've seen are straying away from Maushold nowadays in favor of either better complimentary offense or superior/non-redundant support options like Palafin, Chien-Pao, your own Gholdengo, or even things like Rabsca/Pawmot.

Additionally, there's far better Tara options like Fire, Normal, and Water, that let you sponge hits better or give you better utility against common threats and not allow you to just open yourself to others for no reason.

Lastly, banking on just brute forcing your way through the myriad of support layers they come stacked with while either ignoring Ape itself and letting it infinitely setup on you or just feeding it RF boosts is a death sentence in itself. Nothing about this is a "skill issue". This is a "Pokémon is clearly better than everything around it" issue...

Please try a little harder next time or just say this is satire. Because this feels like a massive troll