Taking a moment to breathe after laughing at the entry hazard nom. At least it wasn't actually Rain Dance like I was expecting...
Seriously, the notion of Dugtrio for BL is just UU's love letter to Registeel. If you don't want your precious Regi to get ganked by Dugtrio, put a Shed Shell on it. SHAZAM! You win! If it's choiced, you have free reign to set up or lay spikes or put up screens or question your opponent's sexual orientation or do whatever else your team needs to gain momentum. If it's LO, well, it's got Base 80 attack, no defense investment, and 211 hitpoints. We're talking about a pokémon that makes a Moltres that just switched into SR look like a tank. And there you have it. The momentum is yours.
But you don't want to put a Shed Shell on your Registeel? Too bad. The argument against Dugtrio is largely focused on its ability to take out Registeel, and its ability to take out Registeel is almost entirely dependent on whether or not Registeel runs Shed Shell or Leftovers. So what we're really saying is that Dugtrio ruins the metagame by making the God-Emperor of Stall, the all-holy Registeel, either lose its 6% a turn from leftovers or get taken out by a fairly popular pokémon. Heaven forbid we adjust to the current trends. It's not like people have run a Scarfed Primeape to beat RP Torterra or used Hypno to counter Venusaur or used Golduck and Gardevoir to counter rain teams.
Oh, wait...
I am quoting this because it is a very good post and also because it made me laugh. It worries me how often this subforum seems to take the approach of "I'm entitled not to have to adapt for some reason, let's change the system to better suit my current position!" Rain dance is a good example, as are the upper reqs for that matter. Dugtrio is maybe the more ridiculous case, but they all seem to boil down to people wanting to be able to keep doing what they've always done and being fairly unwilling to react when there are plenty of changes they could make to continue being successful.
Part of me is just content to ignore the Dugtrio bandwagoning since I think trapping is a really poor game mechanic. I don't think it's a good thing for a game that in theory relies mostly on prediction for choice to be taken away too much - at least with pursuit, it isn't usually killing Pokemon if you choose not to switch, so there's still some prediction involved (although Mismagius and Alakazam might disagree with me on that). I hated Dugtrio in Advance OU (and to a lesser extent Magneton) for a lot of the same reasons people have posted here, though back then we didn't even have the option of Shed Shell and it
still wasn't ever even considered for Uber by anyone who wasn't a joke. There was a hell of a lot less priority then, too, and the walls were largely the same Pokemon they are in DPP UU. Magnezone in DPP OU is a good example, too, and I sure can't imagine it ever getting removed.
I'm still pretty unimpressed by Raikou. I think there are some arguments for it being BL I would disagree with but tolerate, but the extent to which its power is exaggerated in this thread is ridiculous. I think I feel comfortable saying I did pretty adequately this period playing offensively inclined teams exclusively, never used Registeel, Chansey, or anything else that is listed here as a "counter" (including Toreterra, Steelix, Rhyperior, Quagsire, etc. The closest I had to a "counter" was a Venusaur with no defensive investment, which I didn't switch in to a Raikou at any point this period since it would still have been suicide), and it was fairly rare I had significant issues with it, though obviously my team would have been better not having to worry about it due to the general lack of good options to deal with it. However, I will not be voting it BL just because I would be better off without it, which seems to be the modus operandi of some of the voters.
Damp Rock for BL still makes me laugh (though it hasn't been nommed yet), especially this period when so many people were running anti-rain - I would love to see someone get to the upper reqs using rain exclusively.
