Hlelo, following the survey results - apologies for how overdue they were btw, did not expect to be knocked down with three different health things at the same time rip - the Council collectively decided on the next step decided to suspect Iron Jugulis. This isn't exactly a major surprise, as it was already on our voting slate to start the month of November and then scored very high on the playerbase's survey.
Iron Jugulis came back from RUBL and ended up doing fairly similar things it used to do prior to its first ban. Booster Energy with that speed is extremely threatening, as it proceeds to outspeed the entirety of the unboosted metagame and almost all the viable scarfers in the tier. This makes it an extremely dangerous tool against most offensive teams, who will struggle to find checks to its extremely good stab coverage paired with Earth Power - which will often becomes another stab due to tera ground being a strong option - while being bulky enough with a good enough typing to get more than enough opportunities to come in and sustain enough turns to break teams. It's not entirely useless versus more bulky teams either, as the coverage stays excellent, and access to taunt shuts down several wish passers especially, causing severe problems to teams relying on this as both a method of sustain and a way to deal with Jugulis. Charge Beam is also a decent last option, offering Jugulis a way to boost further and push its excellent coverage a notch further. Outside of the booster set, Boots with the Knock Off / U-turn combo has seen some play, but it would be a stretch to define this as truly game changing in the metagame. It is hard to punish with its very good speed and pivoting, but it doesn't take over games in the same way at all.
Booster Jugulis has, in effect, very little downsides, and its usage on several archetypes illustrates how useful it is to make progress and how difficult it is to clearly answer. But its inability to reliably setup further - only possible with the middling Charge Beam really - and reliance on taunt to guarantee success against defensive teams makes it a tiny bit unreliable for what you want it to do. Its weakness to rocks is not insignificant, nor is how difficult it can be to deal with all the priority in this metagame, with Slither Wing and Lycanroc-Dusk being strong options on the teams Jugulis wants to prey on. However, Booster Jugulis isn't necessarily this team cleaner and probably shouldn't be viewed as such primarily. It certainly can be, but it excels as a team player. For example, Yanmega scored fairly highly in the survey for a mon that was not a primary option offered. What you tend to see on ladder is Jugulis being able to effectively break Yanmega answers, be it with Earth Power, Taunting and chipping the bulky special wall or preventing rocks. Something like Yanmega thus gets a lot more leeway than it otherwise would, but we tend to believe the bigger culprit here is the more supportive option that doesn't need its partner anywhere near as much, and like we see Jugulis offers a lot more than simply breaking down for one specific mon.
Anyway, it's now up to the playerbase, tagging Kris and Marty to announce it on the RU ladder, thank you both as always!
| GXE | minimum games |
| 78 | 50 |
| 78.2 | 49 |
| 78.4 | 48 |
| 78.6 | 47 |
| 78.8 | 46 |
| 79 | 45 |
| 79.2 | 44 |
| 79.4 | 43 |
| 79.6 | 42 |
| 79.8 | 41 |
| 80 | 40 |
| 80.2 | 39 |
| 80.4 | 38 |
| 80.6 | 37 |
| 80.8 | 36 |
| 81 | 35 |
| 81.2 | 34 |
| 81.4 | 33 |
| 81.6 | 32 |
| 81.8 | 31 |
| 82 | 30 |
Suspect information:
- There will be no draws allowed for any potential qualifiers. If you qualify with draws, your suspect requirements will not count, and you will not be allowed to vote. There is no way to actively enforce ties to prevent abuse, so they will be disallowed. Use stall at your own risk.
- All games must be played on the Pokémon Showdown! RU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "RUJ3 (nickname)”. For example, RUJ3 Booster or RUJ3 STOPFLINCHING.
- Do NOT impersonate other people in your ladder alt, do NOT use any usernames which are offensive, flame-baiting, or targeting specific users, and do NOT use usernames which could be interpreted as breaking any of the username rules on Pokémon Showdown! Failure to abide to this will result in you being barred from voting in this suspect, and potential infractions.
- The suspect test will last for two weeks, ending on Sunday, December 24th. 11:59pm - 5
