Announcement NP ZU Stage 19: KILLSHOT - Clawitzer Suspect Test

Tuthur

Tuthur

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:sv/clawitzer:​

Clawitzer has been at the center of discussions for a while, due to its wallbreaking capacities with its Mega Launcher Choice Specs boosted attacks; mainly Water Pulse, a STAB move, and Dragon Pulse, a move with little natural resists and that usually profits from Tera Dragon. The last two moves are usually Aura Sphere and Sludge Wave to target Steel- and Fairy-types respectively, but options like Dark Pulse and U-turn are possible too, the former having no immunities and great neutral coverage, while the latter lets it pivot and not commit to locking itself into an unfavorable move while retaining momentum.

Dragon Pulse is an extremely powerful move that can 2HKO almost anything slower and OHKO almost anything faster, with only Stealth Rock up. The only Pokemon ranked above C ranks on the Viability Rankings able to avoid the 2HKO from Dragon Pulse are Assault Vest Perrserker, Whimsicott, Specially Defensive Orthworm, Eviolite Magneton, and Careful Glastrier; beside Glastrier, they all are OHKOed by coverage moves, and all beside Whimsicott are 2HKOed by Tera Dragon Dragon Pulse. Also these Pokémon usually struggle to even win their 1v1 versus Clawitzer beside Whimsicott and Magneton, and can get tricked by Tera Dragon flipping its Electric and Grass weaknesses into resistances. While tera Fairy and tera Steel are an options on multiple Pokémon, they are usually not the preferred defensive typings for Tera as it exposes the users to other threats such as Venusaur, Toxicroak, and Charizard that you don't want your special check to get weak to. Clawitzer's Speed and bulk, while not amazing are all it needs to easily find opportunities against common walls such as Sableye, Sandaconda, Regirock, and Weezing. Clawitzer's moves also have no drawback, they are perfectly accurate non contact moves without negative secondary effect, meaning it can't be played around as easily as Basculin's Wave Crash or Alolan Exeggutor's Draco Meteor for instance.

All of Clawitzer's most common moves have immunities, among the best Pokémon in the tier such as Toxicroak, Whimsicott, Spiritomb, and Magneton. This means that even if Clawitzer's moves have no inherant drawback, they can still be taken advantage of in some situations. While Clawitzer is strong and not all that frail and slow, it doesn't stand a chance against faster attackers and can find itself be a liability against offensive teams, which are dominating the tier.

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 ZU 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 ZU 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 me, sleid, or a member of staff.
  • If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me or post here!

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2920. For reference, the B-value for this suspect will be 4. The suspect test will go on for about 14 days, lasting until <t:1776564000:R>.

This thread will be open to allow all users to share their thoughts on this suspect test and discuss with one another their thoughts. Should you have any questions about the suspect test, feel free to message me or anyone else on the ZU council. Keep in mind that our suspect tests are decided by the community; anyone who achieves voting requisites is allowed to vote. The outcome is up to you. Happy posting and laddering!

Avoid posting one-liners or posts that do not contribute to any discussion. They will be deleted.
 
Mon definitely feels really strong, especially in a 1v1 scenario, but the speed feels like a huge hindrance. You definitely want specs for the damage, and so you're stuck choosing between an EV spread that maximizes bulk or one that lets you outspeed a few uninvested mons. The natural bulk (and the solid mono Water defensive typing) is really nice, but it feels like it's generally easy to 2HKO with 2 strong attacks from most offensive threats in the tier.

From my experience, it seems most effective as a one-time breaker rather than a continuous threat you can bring in over and over again. After some chip from rocks/damage from U-Turns from faster mons, it becomes fairly easy to revenge kill with most of the tier's wallbreakers (around 60% HP or so). If you try saving it for later, you are forced to sacrifice momentum when facing a revenge killer with volt switch/u-turn, of which there are plenty, or even risk giving free setup to mons that can take advantage of the move you've locked yourself into. And Clawitzer itself isn't that good at revenge killing due to its speed stat, so you primarily want to switch it in when facing a passive mon to exert pressure and abuse the fact that almost nothing switches into it safely.

While Tera Dragon is really strong, almost any mon with spdef investment/AV can still take at least 1 and get in some crucial chip that puts it into the aforementioned HP range. And with Tera being so important for most breakers in the tier, I've often found it a waste to use it on Clawitzer, which will in turn get at most 2 KOs (at least from my experience, both using and facing it). So definitely oppressive offenses, but feels manageable with smart positioning.
 
Got reqs. Barely saw Clawitzer on my run, to be quite honest. I will be voting do not ban.

I thought Claw was potentially broken before the test via a couple of ZU Open replays and myself using it on high ladder, but I feel like we've been over relying on Snorlax to check this thing. We have a couple of other brutal slow wallbreakers in the metagame, with Alolan Exeggutor coming to mind thanks to its Dragon STAB and much wider movepool, but I also noticed the metagame is now significantly faster than the pre-April one. This is obviously bad news for Claw since it's more or less a one trick pony (no please do not use AV that item sucks lol).

Some thoughts on the meta below:

:minior: :veluza: For some reason, people love to spam Minior on the ladder. I personally believe this mon sucks ass. Fails to ohko stuff at +2 and is so easy to telegraph, if it's boosted it dies to priority from the mons below. Veluza is more or less the same, but it's mostly featured on HO

:medicham: :lycanroc: I feel like these two have been getting significantly better in this meta with Passimian leaving. Medi loves this being gone and can now spam Zen Headbutt into ghosts, Lycanroc can set up a swords dance much more easily now. Scarf Primeape is just not as good, it's much more frail, and importantly it doesn't get Knock Off

:mesprit: :skuntank: Mesprit is still probably our best mon, but holy cow does it not appreciate the fall of Skuntank. The latter together with Sandslash or Drifblim can render Mesprit into a liability. I could see Ice Beam Mesprit becoming popular since it covers both and you can slowly chip down Skuntank with U-turn.

As you can see, all these developments are imho leading to a faster metagame which Claw dislikes. DNB
 
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Listen to my opinion because I got reqs for Clawitizer and i don't know shit but want to sound like I do.

:sv/clawitzer:
In my suspect test I didn't know what to think of it. It was like, scary but i think in order for it to start really breaking walls you need to dedicate Tera Dragon to it. I think thats not unreasonable though since Clawitizer likes that defensively as well. If it faces Hyper Offense I feel it doesn't trade very well at all, but for slower teams it can be more of a pain to deal with lately.

Misc.

:sv/skuntank:
I feel like this is easily the best Pokemon available in the tier. It's really nasty to deal with as Knock Off gets rid of items and Aftermath cripples anything that hits it + Rocky Helmet + Sucker Punch and you're basically dead if you aren't Hitmontop with Protective Pads. It isn't always needed to do the same set as well and has some set diversity to it; Banded sounds appealing to have a Banded Knock Off and Gunk Shot flying everywhere doing nasty amounts of damage. Overall, just great.

:sv/eelektross:
Wanted to give a shoutout to this mon lately. With Snorlax and Lanturn gone, I feel like teams are in need of a special sponge lately to soak up some hits, even if its just a few to get the big hitters in. Eelektross has done this quite well for me due to having no weaknesses and acceptable bulk with Assault Vest and Levitate to avoid Spikes. It's pivotting makes it a decent choice for more offensive structures to get in more frail breakers. Pretty nice.

Hail Team

:sv/whiscash: :sv/abomasnow: :sv/beartic: :sv/spiritomb: :sv/hitmontop: :sv/eelektross:

Wow look, it's my old Hail team but it has Eelektross over Snorlax. That's it. It works pretty similar you just don't have Snorlax as another win con but you already have two in Beartic and Spiritomb sooooo. Have fun with it if you wanna.

Also S/O to Scarf Kricketune for lovely team that I used to get reqs with alongside the Hail team, made it a lot less painful yippee
 
Hello all. I have achieved reqs.
First of all, ladder sucks ass. I saw dusclops + dusknoir almost every game, and so much malamar and honchkrow.

Secondly, I barely saw clawitzer throughout the entire process, and it didn’t do much (here is the team for reference (props to zpice for building it): https://pokepast.es/f6944475bbf8e5c8). Samurott was extremely strong, and I believe it’s a great mon rn. Skuntank is also probably the second best mon in the tier.

I have a lack of things to say here because there really isnt much. Clawi isnt broken.

TL;DR: ty Zpice and DNB Clawitzer
 
Not the most knowledgeable when it comes to ZU, but I agree with a lot of what has been said up until now. While yes Clawitzer when it gets the opportunity to, does get to fire off its ridiculously strong attacks which ohko or 2hko most targets, its inability to run much bulk due to its pretty average speed tier necessitating max speed and a hit or nature in the offense match up hold it back.

As an example, I used these two teams during the suspect process:
:mesprit: :whimsicott: :glastrier: :Magneton: :regirock: :hitmontop:
:Lycanroc: :Electivire: :Farigiraf: :Sneasel-Hisui: :Honchkrow: :Jolteon:

The first team provides entry points in the form of regirock, chipped Magneton and chipped Glastrier. While not terrible, being proactive with doubles, keeping these mons in and the usage of of mesprit or whimscott as one time switch ins do make a pretty large difference.

The second team as u can see is an HO team with basically every mon on the team threatening clawitzer.

With all that said, I will be voting DNB as well.
 
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I think it is fair to me, to give my input on Clawitzer. Because I am unable to get the required points, to participate in the suspect. So let me get straight to the point.

Claw has no real place in the current metagame. It is way, way too strong for the tier. Sure its speed is atrocious, but we have enough U-Turn users to bring that crab in safely and once it did switch in, the opponent finds themselves hard-pressed for checks. Its Water/Dark/Fighting/Dragon coverage is nigh un-wallable and while specs does require prediction, it does put some constraint on team building. While it's not that bulky either, its bulk is passable enough to take most hits and most things that do threaten it (e.g. Jolteon, Venusaur etc.) take massive damage coming in. Mons like AV Eelektross can take Claw's hits reasonable well, but then there is the issue of entry hazards in a metagame full of Knock Off Users like Mesprit and Sableye and the confusion chance of Water Pulse.

Before the shift, Claw was checked by both Lax and Lanturn, but since those two are gone, I personally believe it is best to ban it for the sake of a better metagame.

Due to those aforementioned reasons, I believe Claw should be banned, so please consider my opinion at least. Thank you for reading. ^^
 
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