Suspect Re-Evolution Suspect: Barraskewda

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KaenSoul

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:ss/Barraskewda:
The Re-Evolution council has decided to suspect test Barraskewda. It has been a controversial Pokémon since the beginning thanks to the big boost it receives in this mode with an excellent base 183 Atk and an incomparable speed tier at 206, with both its power and speed being boosted even further under rain. It has become the face of Rain teams, as it is way beyond the power level of the other swift swimmers, with the next in line being Drednaw with 166 Atk and only 104 Speed.

With its stats, Barraskewda can even work outside of rain, as it naturally faster than all the relevant threats including Dragapult and Noivern, a Jolly nature even allow it to outspeed niche options like Jolteon, this heavily limit the options offensive teams have to revenge kill or pressure at all Barraskewda.

While there are multiple defensive answers to Barraskewda, most of them can be easily wear down by Barraskewda itself as long as they aren't immune to Water by spamming Flip Turn and then sending a proper answer, like a Fighting-type against Ferrothorn, Heliolisk against bulky waters or a Flying-type like Pelipper or Noivern against Golisopod and Grass-types like Tsareena. Forcing them back to repeat the process until they are in range to die to some of Barraskewda's coverage moves or Liquidation. As far as Water immunities go, not all of them are effective at checking Barraskewda, Heliolisk dies to Close Combat and lacks the bulk to switch into neutral hits, Toxicroak can take on anything but Psychic Fangs, but most others can take on it fairly easily, among them there are Gastrodon, Mantine and Jellicent.

Yet, Barraskewda is far from being the perfect Pokémon, is dangerously frail for the tier, uninvested Golisopod has a 12% chance to OHKO Barraskewda after SR damage with First Impression. It can't stay on the field if it can't ko the opposite Pokémon, as is in danger from being beaten by a neutral hit in most cases. It also lacks power outside of rain, as the tier is quite bulky for it to break with an 85 base power STAB move.

Suspect details: During a Suspect, each player must climb the ladder until they've acquired the GXE necessary to participate in the voting. Primarily, everyone that participates needs to make an alt account following these guidelines:
  • Every game must be played on the official Pokemon Showdown site and on a new account (creation date no earlier than today, August 8th, 2022) with "REBA [Nick]"--for example, I could create one called "REBA Kaen" to ladder with.
  • To qualify for voting, your alt must play a minimum of 25 games, and you must have a minimum GXE of 75.
  • Barraskewda will be allowed on the ladder during the suspect.
  • The suspect test will end on Tuesday, August 23st @ 11:59pm (GMT-4).
  • When posting proof of meeting reqs, feel free to use this thread as a means to civilly elucidate any topical opinions regarding whether or not Barraskewda should be banned (Optional).
  • It is mandatory to provide proof of ownership of the alt account as well. (Post a picture of your reqs with your smogon name featured).
As usual, the actual voting will take place in the Blind Voting Forum, so posting anything other than proof of reqs and discussion isn't necessary.
 
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Barraskewda didn't seem like a problem at all to me during the whole run. This tier has plenty of awesome Water-resistant pivots, including BST behemoth like Noivern and Golisopod and especially 4 Regenerator pivots (Tangrowth, Slowbro, Toxapex, Amoonguss) that can scout Barraskewda's moves and negate the damage from Flip Turn. I have found Darmanitan to be a much more threatening offensive pivot than Barraskewda and it seems like the ladder agrees with me seeing I only faced a couple Barraskewda while Darmanitan was easily one of the top 5 mon I encountered. The only mon that felt broken during my run was Polteageist. It forces the same centralization as Calyrex-Shadow, and should be banned just like it.

:ss/cinderace::ss/hippowdon::ss/noivern::ss/slowking::ss/tangrowth::ss/togekiss:
That's the team I used, I do not advice it because it has some huge weaknesses to most sweepers like Frosmoth, lacks a Toxic immunity, and struggles into Darmanitan, Noivern, and Fairy-types.
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I had a much better GXE before losing to Togekiss getting 8 flinches in a raw while critting twice, and then losing to an extremly lucky Belly Drum Quick Claw Clefable getting the right crit, freeze, dodge, and quick claw activation.
 
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Yooo, I'm finally done, was fun, Byleth killed my first alt in like the first battle and after that had to try with a few more, still day one reqs despite being out most of the day.
Could have been a perfect score, but someone with a lucky ancient power togekiss dropped my gxe a lot, later certain Fire emblem character got a sand castle to stop my toxtri, and finally a NP Hydrei ate my Umbreon in one hit, forgot how strong it can be. And I'm totally forgetting about another lose.
barra reqs.png
The team
:ss/togekiss: :ss/toxtricity: :ss/golisopod: :ss/garchomp: :ss/umbreon: :ss/tsareena:
https://pokepast.es/77964205abf9f5e3
 
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s/o to KaenSoul for cteaming the hell out of me and claiming 2 of these L's to the point where I had to change my team im still salty
:chansey: :palossand: :corviknight: :clefable: :mandibuzz: :toxapex:
Stall team that originally was quag/ spdef hippowdon but toxtricity 2hkos every ground w boomburst so palossand is there and uh ur mu vs togekiss depends on if they flinch corv enough or not and run twave so goodluck!

pasting from reevo discord:
i run fat so i may be biased but skewda struggles to break teams with a solid resist and a lot of the resists have regen so its stuck looking awkward
slowbro, pex, tang for examples
offensively its a beast although this is not so much different from standards outside of the fact that non rain skewda is super fast however without rain it lacks breaking power as noted in the OP
cores like ferro slowbro or pex ferro or as mentioned in a post earlier offense can utilize stuff like the very popular noivern and golisopod are/can be reasonably common and not forced which those types of cores usually irritate skewda a lot to the point where it doesnt make much progress, if and when i get reqs ill probably vote no ban /reiterate this argument
unexpected suspect but I can sorta see why it was chosen
-end of paste


I think skewda is tame and there are a lot of water resists in the tier to back that up but there are a lot more different mons I'd like to look at such as toxtricity, who has no switchins bar healthy ferro outside of niche silly ones like palossand (but this might just be me coping bc i run stall) or toxapex (?) since its a lot stronger due to the glowking ban however people have been using both slowtwins with future sight to pressure it okay enough really just more problematic things other than skewda rn. On another note my god the amount of stupid wish cleric eevees on ladder i want to pull my hair out...
 
Confirming as REBA musint
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Used a pretty standard reevo rain team with drednaw. Already shared the team with quite a few people on discord so you might see this team more. Simple to use, click buttons and do a lot of damage. Use drednaw to overcome traditional rain checks like pex and golisopod. Alternatively spam hurricane with noivern.
:ss/pelipper::ss/barraskewda::ss/ferrothorn::ss/urshifu-rapid-strike::ss/drednaw::ss/noivern:
https://pokepast.es/e218f787ecda3cbd
 
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Confirming as rebarraneedstogo

As one of the only pro ban people, I will have to say that while I didn't encounter it too much on the ladder, Barra is unhealthy for the tier as a whole moreso than it is broken. Base 206 Speed allows Barra to not only outspeed the entire relevant metagame, but with 183 Atk it can also take down a lot of threats despite them being bulkier due to the nature of the meta. 206 Speed in rain coupled with Swift Swim also means that you are forced to take a hit or have priority to KO Barra. While the tier has somewhat adapted to this by running things like Slowbro, Noivern, and Toxapex, which are good on their own while soft checking Barraskewda, or Water immunities such as Heliolisk, Mantine, and so on (again as soft checks), I feel like this is an unhealthy adjustment rather than a healthy one. For Water immunities, they should be able to completely stop Barraskewda's STABs and avoid giving the opponent momentum via Flip Turn but Heliolisk, a really solid Pokémon and what should be a Rain check, dies to Close Combat and more passive answers like Mantine can be taken advantage of. Most teams do want a Water check but some of those checks can't be ran because they will lose to Barraskewda (like Heliolisk). Rain itself is not a super popular playstyle in Reevo; however, it is a deadly one if you aren't prepared for it.

If Barra were to go, Rain would be indirectly nerfed (as they still have an incredible sweeper in Drednaw which personally in Rain this + the phish are ridiculous in blowing up their shared checks/counters so limiting that can help people's matchups into Rain) and more offensive teams would be indirectly buffed because they don't have to worry about boosting to get past Barra or running priority if Rain is up as nothing outspeeds it in rain.

My alt name should say which way I'm leaning.
also first post so s/o to my bully friend UT
 
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Voting Do Not Ban.
Loss Breakdown: 3 to stall, 1 to biggest choke of my life, 1 to a special lucario that ate my ass.

This OM is interesting on paper but has a large amount of issues that overshadow Barraskewda. I ran two types of teams: skewda rain and toxtricity+umbreon bulky offense -- both of which are further up in this thread. Made minor changes to each, but this was my Skewda.

Barraskewda @ Choice Band
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flip Turn
- Liquidation
- Close Combat
- Psychic Fangs

First of all, Skewda struggles massively without rain. While it was never going to be able to dent mons like Goliso and Tangrowth even with it, without it mons like Corv can even set up on it. Psychic fangs were only good for incoming toxapex (didn't fight a single toxicroak in like 50 total games) and even then would only do 50-56% so baneful + recover was able to stall and beat banded psychic fangs skewda 1v1 in one of my games.

Skewda as a physical attacker also faces the issues of rough skin/iron barbs, very often seen together on ferro/chomp, so you can't just spam flip turn to whittle things down in order to KO them later or you'll lose a third or your health to that combo + hazards when you re-enter. Regenerator cores like Tangrowth fully wall and usually run helmet while those like Pex can comfortably eat a psychic fangs and threaten to either retaliate with a scald burn or a more stall tailored set. I also didn't even encounter Jellicent/Mantine/Gastrodon once but those would've annihilated Skewda, too. Didn't feel like people were going out of their way to prep for Skewda with niche mons like that as they really didn't have to -- top moms like Goliso, Ferro (goes down to predicts but guaranteed food chip from rocks and barbs/helmet) and Pex do it well enough.

Playing against Skewda was not overly difficult either; it obviously couldn't do a whole lot without rain and thus the Pelipper switchins quickly became quite choreographed and I could take advantage of them. If something hits back against the fish, it's more likely than not going to die, so while I did get the occasional game on low ladder where I would just liquidation sweep a stupid team of eeveelutions, every other team had a brick wall in the form of a regenerator core with water resistances, umbreon cleric, or just full stall with a pex/tang/giratina lol/dragonite that I couldn't break through.

I really don't think Barraskewda has necessitated this bulky style of teambuilding either, and that it's moreso just a byproduct of re-evolution as a tier -- I only came across maybe 5 Skewda in like 35 games total so I definitely don't feel like it has teambuilding in a chokehold. Toxtricity, on the other hand, was fucking insane and felt like an instant match decider if there was no ground type/once the ground type was killed, which wasn't overly difficult since most of them I went up against were rockers or spinners. And even if they wouldn't die, they still had to switch into an incredibly powerful boomburst. Felt like the only mon that could reliably check it outside of cleric umbreon was palossand.

Overall, the bulky nature of the tier hinders its popularity and Skewda's role of a glass canon not only makes the tier more interesting, but isn't broken because it not only needs rain to have any chance at breaking most teams, but is also walled by a large amount of mons that would be staples of the ladder regardless of Skewda being present or not.
 
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