np: USUM UU Stage 6.2 - Reggaetón Lento

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For my entire run for reqs I was using the very same Stall team I was using last suspect test, a team that was made by Hikari and consists of Mega Altaria, Moltres, Registeel, Blissey, Alomomola, Quagsire. I did make some adjustments so I could deal better with not only Mega Slowbro, but also with the rise in usage of Grass-, Dark-, and Electric-types. Mega Slowbro wasn't a problem because it was always stalled out by Toxic, even if the opponent had a cleric; Toxic has more PP than Heal Bell.

After I got reqs, I went on my way to build a Mega Slowbro Bulky Offense team, which is the archetype, I feel, that compliments it the best. Mega Slowbro is a really good Pokemon that helped me tremendously by pivoting into threats to Offense, such as Mega Aerodactyl and Azumarill. Furthermore, it served as a really good wincon and has won me games.

However, the fact that basically almost every relevant pivot, for example, Mega Manectric and Scizor, threaten it out. As a result, Slowbro is heavily pressured by common VoltTurn cores. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, it really hates Toxic, and Toxic has more PP than Heal Bell. Rest Slowbro variants are too passive, and even if they deal with status ailments better, they are easily set-up on.

All in all, I find Mega Slowbro a healthy presence in the tier, in a way that it provides the tier with a pivot that is capable of pivoting into wallbreakers, such as Azumarill and Terrakion, which really helps out Bulky Offense - not in a broken or unhealthy way. Hence, I will be voting Unban.
 
Got my reqs in 40 games 33-7 80.3 GXE, now for my thoughts on the lawd Mega Slowbro:

So yeah, I initially thought this mon would be highkey broken as shit... after using Mega Brodie the whole way thru this suspect tho I think it is p balanced. I fuckin hate Azumarill with a passion breh, like deadass I've wanted that mon banned for a minute now, but Mega Brosif def helps a bunch, it's prolly the most consistent switch in we got to azu since the shroom takes like 75 from Ice Punch and Volc takes like 60 from Knock Off.

Mega Russell Westbrook's bulk is fuckin absurd, like no shit... 180 Def is beyond stupid and any physical attacker is p much at it's mercy. However, it struggles a lot with shit and is p m/u reliant in my experiences with it. This is the set I was running:
Slowbro @ Slowbronite
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 216 Def / 32 SpD / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Psyshock
- Calm Mind
- Slack Off
Things like Alomomola actually completely dick this set over by just clicking Toxic due to Alo being a defensive mon and not taking much from Psyshock, and Scald is a resisted 80 bp atk on a mon that's uninvested in SpA... honestly clicking Toxic is pretty free on this set and forces it out 9/10, or at least stops it from just sweeping ur team... it rlly isn't difficult lads. On top of this, there are mons like Hydreigon, Mega Sharpedo, and Crawdaunt that actually just fuck this set over completely, it's a turrible m/u, espec since shit like Daunt and Mega Shark murder the shit out of Mega Broham despite it's absurd 180 Def stat.

Things like Rest can rlly help the whole Toxic problem, but it also just lets shit whale on u for 2 turns for free. Using Ice Beam > Pyshock is cool too to hit dragons, but then makes the Blissey and Alo m/u much more difficult. Every set has it's own issues... shit my friend used OTR Mega Broccoli and that shit was ass. Each set w/ my experience isn't too too difficult to deal with, and since theres so many bulky waters in the tier already, it's not like it'll put much of a damper on building in the metagame, if you're prepared for bulky waters, you're prolly at least somewhat prepared to face the beast that is Mega Brockhampton.

I think Mega Bronchitis is pretty healthy for the tier, I also just hate Azu, so I think i'll prolly be leaning towards unban.
 
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I don't have as much time as I wanted, so I'll try to keep this short and concise.

Initially, even before I started laddering for reqs, I thought that unbanning Mega Slowbro would be healthy for the tier. On paper, it wasn't overly powerful and served as a good check to CB Azu, so I was ecstatic to try it out.

My laddering experience started off well - I went 26-2 with Aero BO on the first day that I started laddering, but I felt like I wasn't really understanding the impact of Slowbro on the tier by not using it. The second day I decided to use a Mega Slowbro team and struggled quite a bit due to hax + it seeming that every single team was heavily prepared for it with Serp / Mane / Zor / Loom / status. I still thought that Mega Slowbro was not too powerful of a force with the vast majority of teams carrying the tools necessary to handle it.

After getting reqs, I started reading through the posts in this thread + the UU room on PS and spectating other "high" ladder games during the suspect test. I saw Mega Slowbro more frequently - quite a bit actually. I stumbled upon Mega Slowbro stall and my mind started to change. As it is, stall is annoying to face, and the addition of Mega Slowbro in the tier will, in my opinion, only make it stronger. This is something that I don't really support as a whole, as I'm usually an advocate of a faster paced metagame.

My main worry is that Mega Slowbro is heavily prepped for right now because there's a whole ladder dedicated to it. Others before me have pointed out that all its sets have adequate answers, but if Mega Slowbro were to get unbanned, these answers might not be seen on every team. The opportunity cost of giving up another mega like Mane / Aero / Pidgeot to run Slowbro is something that works against it, but something that can also work for it. This can make Mega Slowbro harder to prep for and/or deal with, because its amazing physical bulk coupled with 130 SpA mean that you can't just slap on a Scizor/Serp (i.e) and be done. If you have Toxic to deal with CM + Slack Off, you risk running into CM + Rest, and so on. These are the main points keeping me from voting unban.

Azu checks are always cool, but I'm not convinced Mega Slowbro is ultimately healthy for the tier. I'm not sure I want to introduce a Pokemon that will possibly give stall more versatility, hinder offense with its 180 Def + 130 SpA, and be a CM sweeper capable of carrying Slack Off/Rest. For the reasons mentioned above, I'm going to be voting BAN as of now. My mind isn't 100% made up, however, and hopefully more people will post here before the deadline for more discussion on it.
 
Primarily being an offense player(both HO and BO), I only used OTR M-bro and 3 atks slack off which were both decent but nowhere close to broken. When I tried using CM bro, I always got beaten by toxic anyway and there are too many mons which switch in and beat it that is really wasn't worth it. I faced 4 to 5 bros during my run for reqs but none of them mega because they wanted regen and bulk of non mega bro is not that good anyway. So I'll be voting unban.
 
Hello, I'm a bit new to this tier but as somebody who used Mega-Slowbro the entirity of my climb on the ladder to reqs, I figured I've gathered enough info on it to give a solid opinion on whether or not I believe Mega-Slowbro is unhealthy for the tier or not.

Now on paper, the bulk on it is insane, along with a great set of abilities in Regenerator --> Shell Armor. Being able to set up with Calm Mind and spread burns with Scald on top of this makes Mega-Slowbro a lot to handle. I've found 3 attacks and Calm Mind + Slack Off is too greatly threatened by Toxic, so I'm going to speak mainly on Calm Mind + Rest, since it's actually handled in a similar manner to Mega-Slowbro's other sets anyways.

My main takeaway from this set was how easily it is to be pressured. Pokemon such as Calm Mind Latias and Serperior can simply use it for free setup, and other things like Hydreigon are easily invited in to pick up momentum. Throughout a battle I'd usually find myself switching Slowbro in to cover many opposing Pokemon, and in order to keep some sort of momentum up myself, I would usually not Mega-Evolve until late game, but even then, I would oftentimes have to Rest and give up a free turn or two for my opponent, opening setup, bringing in a wallbreaker, etc. While using Mega-Slowbro, I never found an occasion where Slowbro was simply too much for an opposing team to handle. There were always plenty of outs to deal with it, and its main role throughout games was checking big-named threats like Azumarill.

Now, I believe the good Mega-Slowbro brings to the tier outweighs the bad. Being a check for the otherwise very bothersome Azumarill and Gliscor works wonders for the tier in my mind. I'm also seeing some people say that Mega-Slowbro adds another Pokemon to use on stall possibly making it too strong of a playstyle, which I disagree with. I believe stall is pretty set in stone on the Water-types it uses, being Alomomola for Wish support, Azumarill for the Grass-type immunity, and Quagsire for Unaware. I think Slowbro adds a nice choice for balance and semi-stall, however, keeping aforementioned Pokemon in check. As for offense, VoltTurn cores such as Mega-Manectric + Scizor are a perfect example of Pokemon that are able to keep Mega-Slowbro in check, making it nowhere near too much to handle, in my opinion.

So in conclusion, I believe an Unban would be the best option for the tier.
 
I'm hovering around 75% GXE annoyingly so won't be able to vote, but I'm using a Mega Slowbro with Scald/Psyshock/Slack Off and Calm Mind I think this is the reason I can't break 80. He's just not that good. If your team lacks a special Dark/Electric/Bug/Grass, doesn't have a toxic user or isn't a VoltTurn team, then who the heck is on your team...
 
I've used CM/Iron Defense Mega Slowbro in OU to pretty good success, so when it dropped down to UU I couldn't resist trying it out. Didn't originally intend to get reqs but found that I was 5 games from qualifying when I checked my Elo, so why not?
UU Megabro Reqs.png
Some thoughts on this thing:

Mega Slowbro, like M-Gyara and M-Sharpedo, is one of the few Megas that really wants to stay in its base form until it absolutely needs to Mega Evolve. That makes it a lot more dynamic than Mega Beedrill or Aerodactyl, and more fun IMO. OU has a ton of physical threats so I tend to need to evolve it quite early there to soak a hit, whereas in UU I find myself holding onto the evolve until I'm going for game.

I tried 3-4 different Mega Slowbro teams on the road to reqs, and had some mixed results. Initially I tried putting it on balance teams as a physical wall and wincon once Scizor, Hydreigon, Manectric and Serperior and Alomomola had been removed from the battle. It performed pretty well here, since I had Empoleon to deal with Scizor and Scarf Latias w/Healing Wish to deal with most offensive threats and heal up Slowbro if needed (pulled off a Healing Wish on my 2% Megabro and the opponent forfeited next turn, very nice feeling!). Overall it felt kind of like a mix between Amoonguss and Mega Aggron due to its bulk and access to easy recovery. Very fun, but very heavily pressured by wallbreakers.

My last and most successful team (going 15-1 or so) was CM Mega Slowbro stall. I ran across a standard stall team on the ladder and realized how good Megabro would be over Mega Steelix + Alomomola, so I took my UU stall team from several months ago and revamped it into this: https://pastebin.com/SetFVqPv

The goal was to wear down threats to Gliscor and Slowbro via a combination of hazards, toxic and Seismic Toss, then steamroll through everything once Megabro could no longer be threatened. Quagsire gave me an answer to opposing SD Gliscor and Scizor, Clear Smog Amoonguss dealt with the SubSeed Serperior present in literally every other game, and Mantine gave me a secondary special wall and defogger.

In practice, however this almost never played out. Mega Slowbro lacked the damage to rip through teams without CM boosts, and lacked the durability to survive hits like Hydreigon's Specs Dark Pulse or Manectric's Thunderbolt at +1 SpDef. Due to the omnipresent special threats in UU, Iron Defense also went unclicked most battles as people defaulted to special attackers over physical Super Effective hits. Games generally boiled down to Blissey/Amoonguss/Gliscor walling everything, Gliscor getting a SD boost off an enemy switch and then Facade/Earthquaking through the enemy team.

That's not to say Megabro was useless, however. I frequently swapped it into Latias to scout for Trick or Scarf (Dragonium doesn't OHKO and I've yet to see someone Electrium Z on the switch since nobody expects the Slowbro to come in, and I can switch to Blissey next turn knowing that Trick isn't coming), and when I pulled it off Megabro then proceeded to kill 2-3 Pokemon and pretty much win from there. It also baited Toxic which gave Gliscor a free switchin and SD boost. When I ran it with Psyshock over Iron Defense, it also swapped into Vincune and Crocune and got that juicy free boost as it forced the Suicune out.

Overall I felt that Megabro stall was significantly less passive than Alomomola stall and a lot more flexible as a result. Megabro tanked everything Alo would be expected to, posed an offensive threat and could serve as a wincon against opposing stall. The tradeoff was the lack of Mega Steelix/Aggron, which I don't think is that big a deal since I hate unreliable recovery on stall.

I didn't feel that Mega Slowbro was particularly broken or centralizing in the tier. Sure, it could destroy teams if you let it set up, but the presence of so many offensive threats that can easily OHKO or 2HKO it even at +1 SpD means that its role is highly limited as a set-up sweeper. Moreover, it also provided much-needed checks against some of UU's crazier physical attackers (looking at you, Azumarill!) and provides a more interactive, aggressive archetype for stall which I don't think is much better than standard Alomomola stall. It's looking like a decent, but not fantastic addition to UU and may very well improve the metagame going forward.

I'll probably be voting unban in the suspect test.
 
Already over twice the amount of voters compared to the previous reqs. In addition to discussing Slowbro, I highly advise us players to talk about the requirements if you want to effect any change or keep it as is. We can't just complain privately (not saying that all or even many of us are) while doing nothing!

Personally I think, without knowing the results, the huge increase in voters is absolutely fantastic for the tier and helps add legitimacy to our votes on a website traditionally seen as elitist and arrogant.
 
I fully agree with pif. In my opinion, I think the current req system is fine. While it's very easy to get reqs this time, as pif said, the increase of voters can really help shape the people's opinions. In previous suspects, only about 20-30 people got reqs. I've watched about 10 people get reqs, and it was interesting to see what kind of teams people came up with for this suspect. One flaw with this system is that there is hardly any Mega Bros on the ladder, making it hard to justify an opinion on the mon that's being suspected. Despite this, the reqs system is great. Keep the reqs system.

Skip the elitists!
 
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I unfortunately won't be making reqs for this suspect; like someone earlier I got caught stuck around 75% GXE on a couple different account attempts, but I think I've played enough to offer my two cents on the new suspect format and M-bro as a whole

1) the new suspect format: I actually quite like this new method. Specifically, I like how having no maximum cap but still a respectably high GXE requirement to get into the suspect reqs benefits both those who are the elite of the elite who would make suspect reqs anyways and those who have either bullshit luck (hi) or are not elite players (also hi), but are willing to put in the effort to try to enhance their skills and thereby learn how to play and look at the tier more competitively (which normally I am, but this was conveniently the week where my boss gave me a new supervisor and threw a new slew of experiments at me, so sleep deprivation has been a major factor to my performance I believe).

2) M-Bro: Much of it has already been said, but to summarize my experience: I tried using M-Bro on xMarth and KingUUs team, as well as on a TR team I designed, with xMarth's team being generally the most successful for my games. I also saw M-bro on either similarly designed teams or on stall, and overall saw 3 sets

a) The CM/SO + Ice beam and Scald on the more offensive teams
b) CM/SO + Scald and Psyshock on Stall teams
c) CM + ID + Echoed Voice + Rest/SO on meme teams

In all three cases, I observed that M-bro was the wincon for that team in different situations, and the type of support it had determined what it would have to be wary off/what had to be removed from the opponents team in order to activate the wincon. For the offensive teams, lack of status clearance meant it had to be wary of Toxic. On stall, it was most afraid of being caught in the VoltTurn vortex, requiring the user to make good predictions and weaken the enemy team before even attempting to setup. Both variants had the large slew of major checks detailed earlier that it had to be wary of before even attempting to setup the wincon (most notable checks I've seen/used include Hydreigon, Serperior, M-Manectric, +2 Scizor, and Breloom). Notice I didn't say counters, however: the way M-bro is played as a wincon makes it so it stays in its base form and uses regenerator to recover health BEFORE going for the setup. Because of this, I don't interpret M-bro as having any "counters" by the traditional definition due to its unique strategy, but it has many viable checks and a plethora of counterplay options for the opponent.

So to sum up, while M-bro has the potential to become an unstoppable wincon given the right conditions and team composition, there are MANY factors that must be overcome no matter what the variant is before the wincon is met when applied to an actual game. Because of this, I don't see M-Bro as broken and, if I could git gud, would be leaning toward UNBAN
 
I think PIF has raised a really interesting point here. This was the first time I got reqs in any UU suspect (imo, this wasn’t due to a relaxing of the standards as my record woulda made the cut in any of the other ones) but I am not the only first time voter. This is why I think it is vital to the success of this suspect that we maintain the quality of this thread, so as not to confuse anyone or allow anyone to be swayed by ‘meme’ sets or what have been, frankly, some not great posts. This is by no means intended to single out anyone, just a comment on the overall quality of the thread so far.

Moving on to my opinions on the suspect itself, I’ve found Mega Bro to be rather lacklustre in the current UU metagame. The most effective sets, in my experience, are the CM/2 attacks/Rest set, which puts in work vs bulkier teams and the 3 attacks set on I’ve found myself slapping onto BO builds to force mindgames vs more offensively oriented teams. The reason I’ve found Slowbro so ineffective is due to the way it can be covered quite easily in teambuilding. Toxic is a hard stop to all sets lacking rest, which itself just gives free setup/a free switch into a breaker and Slowbro’s checks and counters are at the center of the metagame. Scizor, Loom, Serp, Lati, M-Mane and Hydreigon are some of the best Bro answers around, and they’re all A+/S. Azu can even lure it with PerishPool, and BD OHKOs at +6. Current meta trends also don’t help the Bro, with Loom dropping recently, Hydreigon running specs over scarf more often, CM Lati coming back in force after the domination of scarf/LO/Soul Dew sets early USM, even Celebi preferring more offensie NP sets and of course, stall being everywhere. My only concern is that I, and the rest of the ladder have been over-prepared for the Bro, but honestly 99% of teams from before the suspect cover Bro pretty well and I don’t see that changing any time soon. To sum up, Slowbro functions as a bulky wincon in most instances, but it needs considerable support to function in the metagame (see xMarth’s team for an excellent example of this support) and I am currently of the opinion that it is not too much for UU to handle, so I will be voting Unban.
*insert change my mind meme here*

Finally, on a personal note, I’ve found it somewhat difficult to formulate an opinion on Mega Bro during this suspect, more so than during the last few. This is likely due to the small sample size of games I have played against it. In roughly 100 games up and down the suspect ladder, I’ve only faced about 10 of the things. This is why I would love to have more of the council give their views on Slowbro, just not for my own sake but for the many new/less experienced voters that could do with hearing the opinions of the players they look up to and respect.
 
As a long-time player and first time voter (from early BW to now, with some year-long breaks in the middle), I really like the changes to the voting requirements. In the past I've avoided suspect laddering because of the high game requirement and pressure to maintain a very high winrate in order to keep a high COIL. Relaxing the requirements so that players can achieve that GXE with a lower number of games at a high winrate or a higher number of games at a lower winrate gives players more room to experiment with different teams and playstyles rather than just beelining for reqs, which in turn leads to a broader understanding of the meta. The fact that more players can give their opinions on the tier is also a good thing, I think.

I mentioned in my first post that I pretty much accidentally got close to reqs (1450 Elo, 80 GXE in ~35 games) and I'd like to elaborate on it a bit more here. I got back into Pokemon about 3 months ago, played until mid-February, mostly in the Shared Power OM, and then quit again until 3 days ago. I've played nothing but UU for the last three days, and managed to ladder pretty smoothly with a combination of Mega Slowbro and Mega Manectric teams. I didn't realize I was anywhere near suspect reqs until I saw someone post reqs at only ~20 Elo higher than me, because it's been ingrained in me that laddering for suspect tests takes a hell of a lot of time and skill; and indeed, per the old requirements I would've needed another ~40 games to qualify which would have put me off going for reqs. So it was a nice surprise to finally be able to contribute to the UU tier for once.

Some more thoughts on Megabro now that my life story's out of the way:

I don't like the Rest sets. I get that Regenerator mons don't need 50% per turn recovery moves, and being able to clear status is amazing, but you give up so much for it. There are many Pokemon in this tier that force out Slowbro even after one CM, and if you're forced to Mega then you're too vulnerable to chip without Slack Off. I'd much rather just pair Slack Off sets with cleric or Healing Wish support.

Mega Slowbro performs quite different on Bulky Offense vs Stall, I find. I've used CM/Iron Defense mono-Scald in OU as a Stall wincon before, but the threats in UU force it to perform a more traditional defensive role on Stall since it doesn't get too many opportunities to set up. Bulky Offense or OTR turns Slowbro into a Reuniclus-style sweeper but with significantly more bulk in exchange for a vulnerability to status, which can be very strong situationally.

As a final note: To echo what others have said, I've not been seeing much Mega Slowbro on the ladder. It's heavily pressured by top-tier UU threats and is slow(bro?) as hell so I can see why people are shying away from it. Maybe down the road someone will find some super good set for it and it'll become FOTM, but for now it doesn't look like it'll be too good for UU. Again, probably voting unban.
 
After playing a bit more, I have come to the conclusion that Mega Slowbro is definitely not healthy for the tier. Between the options that it brings to an already-overpowered playstyle (stall, due to how utterly ridiculous USUM's Defog distribution is), its versatility and ability to remove its own answers, and its sheer physical bulk, it places too much pressure on teambuilding. It's nowhere near as passive as people claim: it forces its offensive checks (Pokemon like Mega Manectric, Hydreigon, Serperior, Latias, and Celebi) to come in as soon as it gets on the field, because it threatens to sweep unless immediately pressured out. This kind of forced response is easy to exploit with a single Ice Beam (or Scald/Psyshock in the case of Mega Manectric), at which point Mega Slowbro has weakened its offensive check to the point where it can just Calm Mind and win the next time it comes in. It can be argued that this is simply a matter of prediction, but the skewed risk/reward the situation offers is the problem: players are forced to risk being caught by coverage because if the opponent simply sets up, the game is over. Others have covered the rest of the salient points regarding Mega Slowbro, and I will be voting Ban.

That said, I do wish to somewhat indirectly address Pearl's discussion of future suspects earlier in this thread. I should've made my stance more clear during pre-suspect discussions among the council, but I suppose doing so late is better than never doing so at all. As of now, I am strongly against dropping anything from BL into UU. I feel that the tier is too heavily saturated with threats to introduce more of them (I've generally been pretty conservative about dropping things from BL throughout my involvement with council, even if I didn't necessarily vocalize that stance). Various council members, other notable players, and the playerbase at large have voiced concerns about several Pokemon in the tier (Breloom, Azumarill, Scizor, Gliscor, etc.). I can understand the approach that leads to testing Mega Slowbro in an attempt to provide more counterplay to some of these problematic Pokemon, but I consider that approach to be a mistake (I'm more accepting of the "test because it might not be broken" school of thought). I would much prefer to test problematic elements currently in the tier than introduce new ones. I don't see myself supporting any drops from BL without a significant restructuring of the meta (for what it's worth, I think Z-moves and Defog's current distribution create far more fundamental problems for the tier than any single Pokemon and would much prefer to address that. The saying "treat the cause, not the symptoms" seems particularly apt here).
 
Late to the party as usual haha

First off, regarding the whole suspect test as a whole. Full disclaimer that this is my own personal opinion and not that of the entire council: I like that this new system that doesn't use COIL allows for more people to vote, but at the same time I feel like it was too easy this time and didn't provide enough of a challenge to people looking to vote, even with a mediocre W/L. Of course, this is taking into account the fact that using GXE would make things less dependent on an early streak. Right now, the system itself works well, so the best course of action to take imo is to adjust the GXE requirement here and there until we hit the sweet spot where we provide enough of a challenge such that you'd need a pretty good threshold of playing competence to get reqs without cutting off 90% of the community, or as some like to call it, being "elitist". I obviously can't speak for the TLs, but I do hope people don't think it's a slight towards them specifically if the GXE requirement or something else does change next time, and they can't qualify as a result. To me, a single suspect test really isn't enough to judge whether what we have currently is the best. I'd also like to point out that the GXE of a lot of people this time tanked because of the ladder's update issues for 2 days, so without it, it's likely that there'd be a lot more voters and the current voters would've had much higher GXEs (I took a glance over people's records corresponding to it and a lot of those really didn't add up under normal circumstances).

As for future suspects, I'm more or less on board with testing stuff in the tier right now as opposed to freeing more things. If anything came the closest to warranting a suspect imo, it'd be Azumarill. I don't think it's broken, but there's enough talk about it combined with how borderline it is to get me to agree with taking a look. Not much else to say there.
___

For Mega Slowbro, as many people have brought up, it's not a bad Pokemon at all, but the opportunity cost as a Mega Evolution made me hesitant on using it on a team. Plenty of times I just wish I could use something else. If I'm not building specifically to utilise it, I'd rather use regular Slowbro tbh. The standard CM 2 attacks set is massively overprepared for. I'm talking teams with like 2 Toxic users and a Breloom or something, so while it's not bad now, there's literally no way to tell how viable this set is outside of the suspect. CM + Iron Defense + Rest was the fun set I used early on, and it basically destroys a lot of balance teams that rely on Toxic to beat threats like this. I'm talking teams that make use of some sort of Empoleon + Ground-type core (primarily Gliscor). The issue is that against most offensive teams, it's really hard to get the proper initiative going to the point it becomes threatening. Even if you manage to get up a boost or two, the Rest turns leave you incredibly vulnerable without more boosts. You also get walled by Amoonguss completely, but honestly, you'd wanna run minimum two Amoonguss answers if you're using this set or some sort of lure like All-Out Pummeling Breloom to KO it after a little bit of damage. Against stall, you can probably annoy it a little but overall it isn't gonna break the team, and if it's Pyukumuku stall, your Slowbro is gonna get PP stalled out of Rests.

I tried using Mega Slowbro on stall too. As Pearl mentioned, not being able to use one of Mega Aerodactyl, Altaria, Steelix, and Aggron is a huge pain, since each of those provides a ton of utility, more so than Slowbro imo. I also found that using Mega Slowbro makes it hard to fit a Wish passer on the team without sacrificing the ability to deal with some massive threats. Alomomola is by far the best Wish passer you can ask for, but having both that and Slowbro on a team is asking for trouble, especially with either a Quagsire or Pyukumuku too. Granted not every stall team needs a Wish passer, and I'm not the best stall builder ever, but it's highly appreciated especially with mons like Amoonguss that would have to rely way more on Regenerator, and running Synthesis on it can be a pain when it's already pretty strapped for moveslots in this meta. I will say that Mega Slowbro does ease pressure from physical attackers better than Alomomola does, but the issue with that is that I found myself not really willing to Mega Evolve at times because Regenerator is just that good. For the record, I didn't use CM but a Scald, Ice Beam / Counter, Toxic, Slack Off set; Slowbro is pretty damn good at spreading Toxic.

Overall, I just think Mega Slowbro is a really good mon if the player knows how to be smart with it, since it's not something that should be winning super easily. With that same thought, a smart player with a decent team should not have issues dealing with the different sets since the countermeasures aren't hard to fit on a decent team. Having a subtly versatile mon isn't anything new to the tier anyway. I don't mind being proven wrong though since I acknowledge its potential, but I'm voting unban for now.
 
On the suspect system and GXE requirement:

I did not originally plan on getting voting requirements - memories of 80 games with a consistently high win-loss rate and an early streak were enough to put me off. However, this time I noticed 1) a very achievable GXE requirement and 2) a low amount of games required. I think I squeezed my laddering into a few hours, playing multiple games at a time and playing the first 30 games on autopilot. Nevertheless, I qualified. I used mainly two teams - one I built a long time ago and one provided in this thread by Kink. They both had appropriate checks to Mega-Bro, LO/Specs Hydreigon and Scizor namely.

Just as a bit of background knowledge of myself: I play a game or two on the UU ladder on most days, and I've been around since beginning of BW UU, making reqs when attempting to with one exception (Breloom). While I admit I was ill prepared and didn't build a high-quality team, this did raise my concern, especially with 20ish voters.

In my opinion the former system with COIL and a maximum amount of games was unforgiving, and getting unlucky once in a while made it even more difficult, especially in the case of Breloom suspect. Based on experience, 40-60 games allows for forming an opinion of a suspect, especially if you use it yourself. I would not mind a slightly higher GXE requirement, but I do feel like this is something for the council to decide. Currently we have around 60 voters, and I find it to be an improvement from 20ish last time around.

As for Mega-Bro, looking at my teams most have a way of dealing with it without adjustments. I only crumbled to it once, after misplaying horrendously. I do feel like most has been already been said, and even if the suspect ladder was well prepared to beat Mega-Bro, I voted unban this time.
 
Now that we've gone through our first suspect with the new reqs, I'm interested to hear Tier Leader responses about how effective they think it was. There is (as usual) some sort of dissent following the relatively contested decision, and I am wondering what you all think could be done to further streamline the system, or if you don't think there is anything left to be done explain why that is. Do you think 80% GXE was an effective cut off? Are there ways to incentive people to use the Pokemon being suspected more?

One potential idea I have is to require people to play a portion of their games with the Pokemon being suspected. I am not quite sure about the numbers but if you forced a simple minimum of ten games played with Mega Slowbro out of your 40+, I believe it would help inform people's decisions on what to vote. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this and what I said earlier.
 
Sage of the 6 said:
One potential idea I have is to require people to play a portion of their games with the Pokemon being suspected. I am not quite sure about the numbers but if you forced a simple minimum of ten games played with Mega Slowbro out of your 40+, I believe it would help inform people's decisions on what to vote. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this and what I said earlier.
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Hiya Sage,

Just picking up on the second part of this post as I’m not sure this is the best idea in practice. In requiring players to play a number of games, you artificially inflate the suspect pokemon’s usage. To my understanding, suspect tests are designed to give the players a good idea of what the metagame would look like with/without the suspect subject, and this seems to go against that. Lemme put that in context: if players were required to play 20 games with M-Bro out of a minimum of 40, you artificially increase M-Bro’s usage by a huge amount. Assuming that every ladder player is going for reqs (an unrealistic assumption, but w/e) and each player uses M-Bro in an average of 5 games on their ladder run, then we increase that mon’s usage by 300%. This would create a meta centralized around M-Bro, as it is literally everywhere, due to the condition of playing 20 games with M-Bro. This would mean that players don’t get an accurate picture of the meta with M-Bro, only a meta that has been artificially warped around M-Bro. This would in turn influence the vote and in a sense, corrupt the suspect process. On a smaller note, it would also mean the transition period after a suspect (especially for tour players, think SPL finals and UUPL) is even tougher in terms of adjusting to the meta, as players haven’t had a chance to play on an accurate suspect ladder.

As for the question on GXE requirements, I’d like to give my thoughts here too. While I feel dropping COIL was a good decision, I think the reqs could’ve been a little more exclusive. I feel like it was just a little too easy this time, and I think the tier leaders should bump it up to 81-82% for the next suspect, to improve the general quality of both the voterbase and some of the posts in this thread (as I mentioned in an earlier post).
 
First of all, I'd like to apologize for the delay on this post; I've been wanting to write to the community ever since this suspect test officially ended, but other responsibilities kept me from doing so. With that said, there are two things I want to give my thoughts on at the moment, those being the methods that have been used for public suspect tests up until now and also future plans for the tier.

Regarding the first topic, I personally considered this public suspect test a success, and I'm pretty sure that I've briefly given my thoughts on this topic in the UU room a couple of days ago. I feel like the cutoff allowed us to obtain a good sample of players with enough experience to vote on Mega Slowbro, and while it's still a little too early to tell if freeing it was the correct call, I still haven't seen Mega Slowbro do anything that would make me perceive it as broken, which I suppose must count for something. I've heard some people say that the current cutoff made getting voting requirements a lot easier than it should be, and while I can reason with this statement, I don't see any need in making the process much harder than it actually is, so if we're to ever make any chances to the current format, don't expect it to be extreme at all (for example, a slight GXE increase to 81 or an extra 5 games required to qualify would probably keep things within a reasonable limit, but slightly harder nonetheless). However, I'd also like to note that I still consider myself to be inexperienced when it comes to matters like these, so take my words with a grain of salt.

About the suggestion to force people to use the suspect for at least x amount of games: although I get the idea behind this proposal, I don't think this is as good as it seems on paper. The goal of a suspect ladder is to create an "artificial" environment where it is possible to analyze the impact caused by existence of the Pokemon that is being suspect tested. What I'm trying to get to here is that even if you were to drop the best Pokemon that is currently in the BL list, it is very unlikely that it would be present on 60%+ of the teams used on the ladder, so forcing everyone who is trying to get voting requirements to use a particular Pokemon could potentially disrupt the balance to the point where it becomes impossible to have a realistic-looking metagame. Besides that, it also seems pretty hard to monitor whether everyone actually used the Pokemon in question, and I feel like it would be ludicrous to impose a burden like that on the people in charge of double checking everyone who qualified to vote for a test.

As far as future plans for the tier go, I've already dropped my stance on the state of UU at the moment in this thread, and while I still stand by most of what I said in that post, the truth is that both me and Hogg feel like it's for the best if we take a small break from suspecting Pokemon for now. Between Breloom and Mega Slowbro dropping, the upcoming April tier shifts and the UU ladder tournament (as well as the earlier weeks of UUPL), we've decided that it's for the best if the tier is given some time to adapt to all of these factors. We'll still quick ban Pokemon if anything unreasonable drops anytime soon, but that's the extent of what we're planning to do in the near future. If there's anything you'd like me to clarify regarding this post, feel free to contact me on either Pokemon Showdown or Discord :psyglad:
 
So I'd like to open some topics for discussion regarding some of our newer additions to the tier as well as the possibilities of what the upcoming tier shift might bring. I think this vote on Mega Slowbro will result in prolonging the heavily team match up based meta where we need to use Pokemon that blanket check a significant portion of the tier on all teams. It has been near impossible to properly cover large portions of our current meta without having critical weaknesses to quite a few Pokemon since before USUM. The addition of Z-moves this generation and a plethora of new mons has lead the tier to have to adapt several times since UU beta. Adaptation works in the short term to balance out the tier but I don't think it creates a healthy metagame when we have had to adapt to so many threats this generation. Each adaptation has an opportunity cost and if we continue to adapt I'm sure the gaps in our teams will get much larger.

As for the upcoming tier shift, from what I can tell from last months usage and past metagame trends it is likely we lose two staples of the tier in Gliscor and Amoonguss. In the ou1825 stats each have about 5% usage which is pretty far above the cutoff. Given that in the past the higher rated stats have been an indicator to future metagame trends, I think it's likely that they rise to ou. In this case we might need to rethink some of the recent tiering decisions.

Breloom and Azumarill are two Pokemon that benefit greatly from Amoonguss' departure in particular. Amoonguss is one of the only reliable checks to both these Pokemon that can actually stay healthy throughout a game thanks to Regenerator. I think if Amoonguss rises there are certainly going to be suspects for these Pokemon and that there is even a case to be made for it now. Azumarill was voted back into the tier by a close 6-5 council vote and was has not yet had a community decision made on it. Breloom was suspected alongside a decidedly more broken Pokemon in Buzzwole and I think it would've been banned on its own. Buzzwole used Breloom as setup fodder which certainly means in a Buzzwole meta Breloom is much less of a problem. Amoonguss also saw a 4% increase from the month prior to that ladder and it actually outnumbered the number of Brelooms which I'm sure impacted the perception of how broken Breloom actually turned out to be.

I'd like to hear some of other players thoughts on our current meta and how it could change with the upcoming tier shift.
 
amoonguss leaving could also cause serp to become more broken as it was one of the easiest hard counters you could fit on ur team while not being obscure/useless. gliscor leaving would definitely throw the meta out of whack since its such a centralizing force but I cant bother to think that much in terms of its specific impacts on mons/meta

def looking forward to more discussion too :O
 
I don't really think Amoonguss leaving would impact Serp an enormous amount. I've seen successful teams of most archetypes that have dealt with Serperior absolutely fine without needing to run an Amoonguss. It gets better for sure, anything will when a good defensive response leaves but it's not like Amoonguss was unbeatable for Serperior especially with the amount of Defense they're running for Azu and Loom these days, I just think the metagame has adapted well enough to it.

Amoonguss leaving definitely impacts teambuilding massively when considering Azumarill responses, as the Z set was one of the few good ways to insure a team against all variants of Azumarill, albeit still not too great in some scenarios (CB Ice Punch, needs to be at max vs BD if SR are up). Take Amoong away and the viable pool of pokemon that can reliably do this falls to a very limited number of pokemon such as Tentacruel. I think this could potentially be hugely limiting on teambuilding as Azu was already the best free turn abuser in the tier, and it just gets better at that. Stall can still deal with Azu using the Alo/Unaware/Fat Fairy resist method, but anyone wanting to build balance and doesn't want to be forced into extremely uncomfortable positions when they load up the bunny is going to find it difficult to get away from using the same pkmn repeatedly.

I think Breloom benefits even more from the Amoonguss loss because you don't just lose a counter from the perspective of preventing you being swept by a boosted Breloom, you lose an option to stop Breloom dropping sleep freely which is definitely going to change how some teams adapt to dealing with it. In general it's pretty obvious that people are going to have to explore different Grass types more often to deal with both this and Azu, but those Grass types either have far more shortcomings in the metagame overall compared to Amoong, or just generally don't deal with these pokemon nearly aswell, especially in the case of Azu because none of them other than Vileplume and Roserade resist Fairy.

Wrote more than I intended on Amoong so I don't have time for Glis right now just to say that I really wouldn't mind it leaving, I think it's been shit to deal with for a while now and just has a combination of traits that makes it undesirable to build for or play against.
 
Freeroamer said:
I don't really think Amoonguss leaving would impact Serp an enormous amount. I've seen successful teams of most archetypes that have dealt with Serperior absolutely fine without needing to run an Amoonguss. It gets better for sure, anything will when a good defensive response leaves but it's not like Amoonguss was unbeatable for Serperior especially with the amount of Defense they're running for Azu and Loom these days, I just think the metagame has adapted well enough to it.

Amoonguss leaving definitely impacts teambuilding massively when considering Azumarill responses, as the Z set was one of the few good ways to insure a team against all variants of Azumarill, albeit still not too great in some scenarios (CB Ice Punch, needs to be at max vs BD if SR are up). Take Amoong away and the viable pool of pokemon that can reliably do this falls to a very limited number of pokemon such as Tentacruel. I think this could potentially be hugely limiting on teambuilding as Azu was already the best free turn abuser in the tier, and it just gets better at that. Stall can still deal with Azu using the Alo/Unaware/Fat Fairy resist method, but anyone wanting to build balance and doesn't want to be forced into extremely uncomfortable positions when they load up the bunny is going to find it difficult to get away from using the same pkmn repeatedly.

I think Breloom benefits even more from the Amoonguss loss because you don't just lose a counter from the perspective of preventing you being swept by a boosted Breloom, you lose an option to stop Breloom dropping sleep freely which is definitely going to change how some teams adapt to dealing with it. In general it's pretty obvious that people are going to have to explore different Grass types more often to deal with both this and Azu, but those Grass types either have far more shortcomings in the metagame overall compared to Amoong, or just generally don't deal with these pokemon nearly aswell, especially in the case of Azu because none of them other than Vileplume and Roserade resist Fairy.

Wrote more than I intended on Amoong so I don't have time for Glis right now just to say that I really wouldn't mind it leaving, I think it's been shit to deal with for a while now and just has a combination of traits that makes it undesirable to build for or play against.
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amoonguss moved up? post link pls
 
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