Discussion Omanyte in BW2 LC

[Fille]

After multiple complaints on forums and on discord, LC Leadership is looking to suspect Omanyte in BW2 LC. As the premier Shell Smasher of the generation, Omanyte is left with almost no guaranteed counterplay depending on its moveset. Hydro Pump, Earth Power, Ice Beam, Hidden Power Fire, Hidden Power Grass and Rock Blast grants coverage for the entire tier, essentially making counterplay a guessing game at best. With only Porygon, Lileep and Frillish being guaranteed to tank a hit and having the ability to hit back, Omanyte leaves counterplay either incredibly passive or forcing a Timburr on every team. Furthermore its typing and general bulks leaves it with easy set-up opportunities against multiple top level threats, and the addition of Weak Armor means that even Choice Scarf Diglett will be unable to outspeed and revengekill if procced. Furthermore, its bulk is easily boosted by either Memento support from the everpresent Diglett, or by Sandstorm set up by a Hippopotas, making Omanyte perhaps the easiest and also the strongest set-up sweeper in the tier.

Eligible Voters and Criteria

LCPL players going 2-x or above, BWPL players going 2-x or above, Top 16 BWLC Classic 2026.

Gondra
Fille
hybone
seraphz
fatty
MZ
reggg
Rahul
rarre
Envy
Trawkan
Incognition
SammyCe123
Fragments
Lime
Nu
agenS
Tizio
Vioz
TyCarter
MichaelderBeste2
DD Joe
JustFranco
Novax
tko
Medeia
Edit 1 by Greedy_eb - The following players have been added as eligible voters for going 2-X or above in LCCL I:
Monai
Hacker

 

[Hacker]

I don't really support any possible action on Omanyte, and would be voting Do Not Ban if it came to a suspect test when LCCL gets added to reqs

I acknowledge that Omanyte has a lot of toxic traits largely with just guessing what coverage it has but I do not consider prepping for it to be too much of a hassle. This is because it just cannot hit everything it wants to hit for the ranges you want to be hitting on everything to serve as a reliable win condition. It is hit particularly hard by only being able to have one of Hidden Power Fire or Grass to be able to hit Ferroseed or Staryu/Frillish. Beyond that though, there are some matchup's Omanyte is just not happy to see. The main ones (and some of the best archetypes in the tier) including

• Teams that just naturally have both Ferro and a water. These hazard dependent teams are pretty nice
• It just will blank into Lileep on Sand fat
• Timburr

However, I don't really even think its as clear as you win as Omanyte even if it has the right coverage to play into your team. If you think your team is unusually weak to Omanyte (these usually feel like foo balances) there are a lot of things you can do to try to account for it on these structures. Taunt is a fine 4th move on Mienfoo even if the drawbacks of no Payback are very real. Taunt also could be used on Vullaby or you could use Hidden Power Grass on it to be able to threaten the entire tier well. I cannot really think of anything else that can be easy setup food for Omanyte depending on the gamestate.

Despite all this though its still a good mon and I do use it as a smasher on teams. I just don't consider it more threatening or broken than mons like Abra or Carvanha where it feels like they can close out games on their good matchups way easier.

And short list of other things I like about Omanyte in this tier

• Flying resists are always appreciated for Vullaby
• List of rockers is quite limited. Ferro can't be on every team, Hippo only real on sand, Pawn 4 move slot syndrome, Diglett does not set vs the majority of the tier and can only set on evio anyways. Weak Armor Omanyte is a real and legitimately appealing option in this tier to set hazards

 

[Fille]

Personally I'm leaning ban, but not 100% set yet. While Hacker does make a good point on choosing between Hp Grass and Hp Fire, the truth of the matter is closer to Hp Fire being the correct choice 90% of the time because Earth power is usually sufficient to get through Staryu, is better into Chinchou / Tentacool and is still valuable into Frillish if knocked. Hp Grass has the merrit of turning such MUs on their heads though, when a player attempts to preserve a Water type. In some scenarios, even Rock Blast can be sufficient with higher rolls, example this game from past LCPL (Which, unironically, has all the tools you've listed to be good into Omanyte, and still lost to said Omanyte. Rblast Crit mattered, but mainly because Hydro had already missed.).

I think another issue that is worth discussing is partially connected to it being a good Hazard Setter as well. One simply can't just hard into any solid counter in the back, as it's not unlikely to allow free set-up of scarier Hazards. I think Omanyte is the most prominent when you don't know exactly what it'll do, and you don't know if your counter is good, if it'll work long term or if it'll diminish to Toxic Spikes or other hazards over time. I think the scariest part about Omanyte is how it manages to set up for its own sweep in a similar sense to Specs Greninja with Spikes in gen 7 OU, where you can't really afford to let it click any moves cause you never know if it'll set up Toxic Spikes to improve its own sweep or start sweeping immediately.

Anyways with Memento support, Sand support getting it out of Hp Grass range from literally anything, hazards being so easy to set with the limited spinners we have and how easy it is to bait in and kill the relevant checks for your specific set and the control you as the Omanyte player sit with knowing all that, I'm leaning ban currently.

 

[Hacker]

Just my own analysis on some of the games linked above. I will be looking at these games from non Omanyte pov and looking at how I think it impacted the game on if I think any obvious mistakes were made around it

Fille vs Seraphz
I will be ignoring the opening of this game that completely irritates me to be using this replay for proof of anything. You went Omanyte on a Ferroseed and Seraphz decided he was just gonna sack it to the most obvious Hidden Power Fire in the entire world. You could probably argue about this some with a like what if he went into Staryu and got Hidden Power Grass'd but at that point its just a well played lure nobody in the community actually does. And even then, at the end of the day he could still respond to it and have decent odds of winning this game with the rest of his team. He also decided to dance around it for no plausible reason later in the game instead of just going Staryu and clicking water stab on it while it was taunted. This game highlights more improper play and positioning than anything about Omanyte

Fille vs Pioz
I will nitpick by saying I think the Toxic Spikes variation of sand fat is not the best structure of it because it just makes your winning matchups more winning instead of trying to cover stronger matchup spreads. Pretty clean game overall but even ignoring Tspikes (smasher Omanyte was not gonna do anything into Lileep) this just looks like a simple match where you click hazards with Ferroseed, do numbers with Pawniard and Gastly, and win. I think Omanyte legitimately could have been any pokemon here and you woulda won. This is just Omanyte with Toxic Spikes making a won game more easy to play with Omanyte doing nothing that I think people could really label as broken or unhealthy

Fille vs Akeras
Akeras loaded 5 mons that lose to Staryu unless you use your own Staryu to be able to trap it. This is poor teamchoice getting punished and I would like to believe the 6 they loaded loses to any team that people would bring to tournaments in this meta. There just isnt anything impressive about Omanyte sweeping a team that clearly was not built to even pretend to deal with it

Outside of the replays though I think some things said are understandable like it being easy to set up if you either have Sand or Memento support, but building those teams is quite telegraphed on what your general gameplan is on preview and can be responded to properly. With the replays linked its just people getting punished for either prepping or playing at a clearly unoptimal level with more issues than Omanyte