i suck at title case someone help me
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Well, in case you haven't noticed, Excadrill and Thundurus were both banned in Round 5 of Suspect Testing. How do you think these bans will affect the metagame?
My opinions are strongest about Excadrill so I'll post mainly about that.
Most of the reasoning for an Excadrill ban was posted in the Suspect Nominations thread, but as that's gone I'll try and make a recap.
Excadrill completely wrecked hyper offense. Let's face it, all of the weather starters suck in hyper offense, so unless you carry something like a Scarftoed or a priority user (one of two, I should say) Excadrill is steamrolling you. The fact was that Excadrill could just revenge everything hyper offense could bring out. Yes, there are select sweepers that had a shot against Excadrill, such as NP Lucario or SD Virizion, but... you couldn't really stop Excadrill revenging the rest of your team with impunity. Gliscor is also pretty poor on a hyper offense team as it gives free switches to the majority of the meta and it hits like a Spinda on steroids. Which is to say not very well.
And then there is the way Excadrill screws over stall. You cannot spinblock Excadrill. At all. You can bring in your ghost but it's going to be at risk to a +2 Earthquake (unless it's Gengar, but that dies to Rock Slide). Or, you can bring in Gliscor and get your hazards spun away and have Excadrill switch out into something that doesn't fear Gliscor (read: the majority of the metagame). Now, Gliscor is actually viable on stall teams, so you can switch into Excadrill just fine. But it's still wearing stuff down, spinning out your hazards... it doesn't help that it's immune to two of the most common statuses in OU.
With Excadrill gone, how will OU change? Hyper offense, I think, is going to be a dramatic presence in OU. Deoxys-S + 5 sweepers basically can tear anything up, and without the ever-present Excadrill to stomp on them, the metagame won't be so reliant on bulky offense.
Then there's stall. Jellicent has just gotten tons better, now being the best spinblocker and basically safely switches in on almost all spinners. Stall can also now afford to run a physical wall other than Gliscor -- I see Skarmory and Slowbro both being superior walls (Slowbro, for instance, can actually hit things).
I could also see a lot of boosting sweepers coming back, though this ties in with the earlier point about hyper offense. Metagross had almost vanished from OU, Excadrill easily switching in on Steel-type attacks and Earthquaking it to oblivion. Metagross couldn't even outspeed Exca after an Agility. Now that Excadrill is gone, I could see Agiligross coming back. Swords Dance Lucario is also tons better, with Excadrill gone and Gliscor usage probably falling as its main purpose is gone.
EDIT: Ooh, scarfers are a big one. Scarfers are now basically the premier revenge killers again. Scarftran is pretty meh this gen but what about other possible new ones? Almost all of the viable ones so far have been Earthquake-immunes.
Well, what are your thoughts? Not just on Excadrill, but on Thundurus as well.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a discussion thread on your opinions of the bans. I do not care about whether you thought Excadrill should or shouldn't have been banned. Neither does anyone else.
edit: I posted mostly about Excadrill because I felt it had a far larger effect on the metagame than Thundurus.
...
Well, in case you haven't noticed, Excadrill and Thundurus were both banned in Round 5 of Suspect Testing. How do you think these bans will affect the metagame?
My opinions are strongest about Excadrill so I'll post mainly about that.
Most of the reasoning for an Excadrill ban was posted in the Suspect Nominations thread, but as that's gone I'll try and make a recap.
Excadrill completely wrecked hyper offense. Let's face it, all of the weather starters suck in hyper offense, so unless you carry something like a Scarftoed or a priority user (one of two, I should say) Excadrill is steamrolling you. The fact was that Excadrill could just revenge everything hyper offense could bring out. Yes, there are select sweepers that had a shot against Excadrill, such as NP Lucario or SD Virizion, but... you couldn't really stop Excadrill revenging the rest of your team with impunity. Gliscor is also pretty poor on a hyper offense team as it gives free switches to the majority of the meta and it hits like a Spinda on steroids. Which is to say not very well.
And then there is the way Excadrill screws over stall. You cannot spinblock Excadrill. At all. You can bring in your ghost but it's going to be at risk to a +2 Earthquake (unless it's Gengar, but that dies to Rock Slide). Or, you can bring in Gliscor and get your hazards spun away and have Excadrill switch out into something that doesn't fear Gliscor (read: the majority of the metagame). Now, Gliscor is actually viable on stall teams, so you can switch into Excadrill just fine. But it's still wearing stuff down, spinning out your hazards... it doesn't help that it's immune to two of the most common statuses in OU.
With Excadrill gone, how will OU change? Hyper offense, I think, is going to be a dramatic presence in OU. Deoxys-S + 5 sweepers basically can tear anything up, and without the ever-present Excadrill to stomp on them, the metagame won't be so reliant on bulky offense.
Then there's stall. Jellicent has just gotten tons better, now being the best spinblocker and basically safely switches in on almost all spinners. Stall can also now afford to run a physical wall other than Gliscor -- I see Skarmory and Slowbro both being superior walls (Slowbro, for instance, can actually hit things).
I could also see a lot of boosting sweepers coming back, though this ties in with the earlier point about hyper offense. Metagross had almost vanished from OU, Excadrill easily switching in on Steel-type attacks and Earthquaking it to oblivion. Metagross couldn't even outspeed Exca after an Agility. Now that Excadrill is gone, I could see Agiligross coming back. Swords Dance Lucario is also tons better, with Excadrill gone and Gliscor usage probably falling as its main purpose is gone.
EDIT: Ooh, scarfers are a big one. Scarfers are now basically the premier revenge killers again. Scarftran is pretty meh this gen but what about other possible new ones? Almost all of the viable ones so far have been Earthquake-immunes.
Well, what are your thoughts? Not just on Excadrill, but on Thundurus as well.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a discussion thread on your opinions of the bans. I do not care about whether you thought Excadrill should or shouldn't have been banned. Neither does anyone else.
edit: I posted mostly about Excadrill because I felt it had a far larger effect on the metagame than Thundurus.