Smogon University PO Statistics — April 2012

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First, while I haven't played in a month or so, it's good to see people discussing Terrakion finally. Personally, I think it would be wise to wait and see what goodies B/W 2 bring us before making a verdict, but again, I haven't played enough recently to give a strong opinion either way.

Second, obligatory "ZOMG Virizion is so low" comment. Also interesting to see people are still sleeping on Wobb. He was banned two gens in a row for a reason. I'm not saying he should be blowing up the usage stats, but lower than Smeargle, Flygon, and EVire? Dang.
 
The thing about Terrakion that makes it managable is that it only really gives a crap about 2 moves (Stone Edge and Close Combat) so prediction is key. Most Terrakion are choiced anyway, and thinking about relative power, it really isn't that much more hard-hitting than other things, despite the excellent dual STAB.

Also, just because something cannot switch in does not mean that the Pokemon is impossible to counter, as row power doesn't mean ALL that much. For example, in NU we got out buddy Charizard with Sun Boosted Solar Powered Fire Blasts that, with Specs, 2HKOs all but 2 Pokemon in OU (Eviolite Muchlax and Snorlax) that aren't immune without changing the weather, including Chansey, Milotic, Blissey, and even Kingdra (4x resistant!). However, he is NU (though there are other reasons, it still is a point). Latios's Draco Meteor is almost impossible to survive without a Steel type/Special Wall, he isn't weak to Stealth Rock AND is immune to Spikes. Haxorus, Salamence, Dragonite, Tyranitar, Rhyperior, Darmanitan, and others stand out as Pokemon in OU or UU that hit very hard as well. Even then, a lot of those Pokemon have counters that cannot switch in, but instead have to revenge kill them (try to switch a Mamoswine into a Haxorus's Choice Banded Outrage; it doesn't work). Terrakion's power is comparable to these Pokemon, but none of them are being called broken.

Scizor's Bullet Punch can OHKO it and it is hit hard by rain-boosted moves, too, which are two SUPER common things in the tier. Gengar with disable also walls most Terrakion cold. Latios with Psyshock always KOs Terrakion. If it is Choiced, a resistor like Jellicent, Breloom, Starmie, or Gliscor can easily come in and since Terrakion CANNOT switch moves, it has to leave (Scarfed Versions are weaker than that). Toxicroak restists its dual STABs and can outstall it in the rain. In lower tiers, Tangrowth, Slowbro, Golurk, Nidoqueen, and Claydol are great at it too. There are other ways of dealing with it too. Really, Terrakion is a scary offensive force, but it can really only do one thing well and it is not versatile at ALL and can potentially be revenge killed, since its Speed has its limits too.
 
Fried Rhys said:
sandstorm up omg slowbro loses!!
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I'm commenting to this to say that this isn't a well though out post, to be honest. Slowbro is a fantastic counter to Terrakion, sand or no sand. Only a Banded X-Scissor is going to hurt it (If it can take a Megahorn from a BandedRhyperior, it can DEFINENTLY take one of those). It doesn't really need to switch in, but it is really bulky, gets regenerator, Slack Off and it can burn Terrakion with Scald potentially (which rips apart Terrakion, along with Thunder Wave). I'm pretty sure Slowbro is a counter.

Also, I'm not getting how a Rock gem can all of a sudden make Terrakion broken. One 1.5 Power boost isn't changing the fact that Scizor or something can still revenge kill it, and now it lost all of its boosts. Granted, it is super powerful during that one hit, but Choice Scarfers hurt it a little bit more, and Starmie can force it out all the time, etc. Its suprising, yes, but not really broken IMO.
 
Swamp-Rocket said:
The thing about Terrakion that makes it managable is that it only really gives a crap about 2 moves (Stone Edge and Close Combat) so prediction is key. Most Terrakion are choiced anyway, and thinking about relative power, it really isn't that much more hard-hitting than other things, despite the excellent dual STAB.

Also, just because something cannot switch in does not mean that the Pokemon is impossible to counter, as row power doesn't mean ALL that much. For example, in NU we got out buddy Charizard with Sun Boosted Solar Powered Fire Blasts that, with Specs, 2HKOs all but 2 Pokemon in OU (Eviolite Muchlax and Snorlax) that aren't immune without changing the weather, including Chansey, Milotic, Blissey, and even Kingdra (4x resistant!). However, he is NU (though there are other reasons, it still is a point). Latios's Draco Meteor is almost impossible to survive without a Steel type/Special Wall, he isn't weak to Stealth Rock AND is immune to Spikes. Haxorus, Salamence, Dragonite, Tyranitar, Rhyperior, Darmanitan, and others stand out as Pokemon in OU or UU that hit very hard as well. Even then, a lot of those Pokemon have counters that cannot switch in, but instead have to revenge kill them (try to switch a Mamoswine into a Haxorus's Choice Banded Outrage; it doesn't work).

Scizor's Bullet Punch can OHKO it and it is hit hard by rain-boosted moves, too, which are two SUPER common things in the tier. Gengar with disable also walls most Terrakion cold. Latios with Psyshock always KOs Terrakion. If it is Choiced, a resistor like Jellicent, Breloom, Starmie, or Gliscor can easily come in and since Terrakion CANNOT switch moves, it has to leave (Scarfed Versions are weaker than that). Toxicroak restists its dual STABs and can outstall it in the rain. In lower tiers, Tangrowth, Slowbro, Golurk, Nidoqueen, and Claydol are great at it too. There are other ways of dealing with it too. Really, Terrakion is a scary offensive force, but it can really only do one thing well and it is not versatile at ALL and can potentially be revenge killed, since its Speed has its limits too.
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While you have points, you can't just go and ignore the downsides to your comparisons. It doesn't work that way.

Charizard is NU due to having a crippling 50% weakness to Stealth Rock on top of being EXTREMELY reliant on Sun being up. Add that to not being very bulky and losing another 12% each turn its in the Sun just to maintain its power...yeah.

Latios is different just on the fact that it can't keep up its Offensive Momentum. It has to switch out after one or two Draco Meteors. Terrakion doesn't have to switch out for anything other than its checks.

I'm not saying that Terrakion is OP or anything, as I don't have enough knowledge of the game to accurately assess that, you picked very...particular comparisons that honestly, don't work very well.
 
I agree with the idea of testing Terrakion. But not now - with BW2 on the horizon, we're probably going to see some pretty huge metagame turmoil, especially with Keldeo supposedly being released side-by-side with the new games.

I probably only agree with it because every team I've ever made has a Terrakion weakness though.
 
Saitsuofleaves said:
While you have points, you can't just go and ignore the downsides to your comparisons. It doesn't work that way.

Charizard is NU due to having a crippling 50% weakness to Stealth Rock on top of being EXTREMELY reliant on Sun being up. Add that to not being very bulky and losing another 12% each turn its in the Sun just to maintain its power...yeah.

Latios is different just on the fact that it can't keep up its Offensive Momentum. It has to switch out after one or two Draco Meteors. Terrakion doesn't have to switch out for anything other than its checks.

I'm not saying that Terrakion is OP or anything, as I don't have enough knowledge of the game to accurately assess that, you picked very...particular comparisons that honestly, don't work very well.
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I agree with you that my comparisons kind of sucked, but I was just giving an example of raw power, which is what people are mainly giving as their argument for banning Terrakion: it is too hard to switch into. Although these Pokemon are VERY different and I am well aware that they present problems they need to fix, switching into them is a lot harder than Terrakion, so that point of the argument just seems a little bit bit iffy to me.

A choiced Terrakion will also swap out eventually due to a bad matchup it got after it killed something or Close Combat makes it really frail, unless it is cleaning up the field.
 
In order to shed some like on the Terrakion issue, I'd like to make a rather different argument than what I've seen thus far.

Terrakion is not really overpowered in the strictest sense. Many common scarfers, pokemon that outspeed it, and common priority users can all revenge kill it. The list is quite large compared to things like Excadrill, whose counters could be counted on two hands. However, there is one key difference that leads me to believe that Terrakion is actually a greater threat to a healthy metagame than Excadrill was. Although Terrakion has a large number of things that can at least somewhat check it, it must be noted that they are all offensive pokemon.

For the sake of this argument, I'll consider the (arguably) most threatening set that terrakion has to offer; the rock gem sub SD set. There are few defensive pokemon in OU that can switch into this terrakion without prompty being OHKO'd. Max defense gliscor can do it with decent consistency, but survives with ridiculously low HP and any prior damage + SR will guarantee that it is KO'd.

But what's the problem? You can just send in your scizor or choice scarf landorus to revenge kill it! That's exactly the problem. Revenge killing is pretty much the only answer to rock gem sub SD terrakion without resorting to niche counters like quagsire or nidoqueen, which not every team has room for.

The problem is not that terrakion has no answers, but that it is decisively problematic for an entire playstyle: Stall. As a stall player, both sub SD and choice banded terrakion are at the forefront of my considerations when building a team. Yet, I am often forced to simply accept the fact that I'll either need to have a fast/priority using pokemon that can revenge kill or flat out lose every time I see a rock gem terrakion. Neither of these things are something I really want to rely on.

Stall is already a minority playstyle. According to the PO statistics, only 10% of the teams are stall. terrakion does not help this issue as it seriously threatens the diversity and general viability of stall.

Of course, Terrakion is still massively threatening to offensive teams as well or he would not be so popular.

Terrakion's harm to the metagame is somewhat similar to excadrill. While excadrill had far fewer checks overall, stall teams could easily fit in a skarmory or gliscor into their teams because of how useful they are to begin with. Although things such as conkeldurr and azumarill are good pokemon, it limited the diversity for offense teams much more than it does for stall.

Short version:
Terrakion (sub SD in particular) is overly threatening to stall and is detrimental to diversity in the OU metagame.
 
Also, I'm not getting how a Rock gem can all of a sudden make Terrakion broken. One 1.5 Power boost isn't changing the fact that Scizor or something can still revenge kill it, and now it lost all of its boosts. Granted, it is super powerful during that one hit, but Choice Scarfers hurt it a little bit more, and Starmie can force it out all the time, etc. Its suprising, yes, but not really broken IMO.
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Just pointing out that Rock Gem is commonly seen on Sub SD Sets which mean that Scarfers and Scizor won't really work. Typically, Terrakion switchs in on something it forces out, sets up a Substitute on the switch, and suddenly your starme cannot revenge without dying, Scizor gets crippled by CC and Slowbro proceeds to get nuked by a +2 Rock Gem Stone Edge so long as its taken some minor residual damage. What makes Sub SD Terrakion so tricky is that its exceptionally difficult to find out what set it actually is (it could easily fake a scarf) and once it gets that Substitute up, almost certainly something is dying to break that sub, and then Terrakion can switch out afterwards, still at 75%, still with decent speed and power, still a threat, and it eliminated a pokemon with no problems. Again, not calling this broken but I can understand people arguing over that nasty Sub SD set.
 
If Rock Gem SubSD is broken, then why are only 10.3% of Terrakion using Rock Gem, and 25.8% using SD? Not like the ladder is the centre of amazing battles, but when word gets out that something is 'broken', then usage of it always increases significantly. Regarding the set itself, there's a reason why most people use choiced Terrakions - like Lee said, it's difficult to set up when many, many pokemon can hit it with a super effective move. It has limited opportunities to set up, and even if it does, it's only taking out one pokemon at most unless you have a poorly built team. If Terrakion was as big as a problem as some people are making it out to be, then we'd be seeing Claydol and friends in OU, but we don't so this seems to me like some people are trying to find an answer to a problem that doesn't exist.

And there's also common sense which says why even test/retest anything with BW2 around the corner.
 
Nachos said:
If Rock Gem SubSD is broken, then why are only 10.3% of Terrakion using Rock Gem, and 25.8% using SD? Not like the ladder is the centre of amazing battles, but when word gets out that something is 'broken', then usage of it always increases significantly. Regarding the set itself, there's a reason why most people use choiced Terrakions - like Lee said, it's difficult to set up when many, many pokemon can hit it with a super effective move. It has limited opportunities to set up, and even if it does, it's only taking out one pokemon at most unless you have a poorly built team. If Terrakion was as big as a problem as some people are making it out to be, then we'd be seeing Claydol and friends in OU, but we don't so this seems to me like some people are trying to find an answer to a problem that doesn't exist.

And there's also common sense which says why even test/retest anything with BW2 around the corner.
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Durant and Wobbuffet are clear examples of how usage does not necessarily determine that something is broken - Wobb almost became a RU Poke before his Suspect Test!

And testing/retesting stuff while a game is about to be released happened prior to BW with Heracross. Two months before BW was released in Japan, Heracross dropped to UU only to be shot up to BL.
 
We should save the bitching about Terrakion until Keldeo comes out... Then, something may actually come of the requests. However, right now, I just dont think Terrakion is worth the discussion. We know what it does, what it destroys in the metagame (everything), and how it operates. Once its smashing stuff with a Specs Pony in the Rain, then everything might change.
 
ginganinja said:
Just pointing out that Rock Gem is commonly seen on Sub SD Sets which mean that Scarfers and Scizor won't really work. Typically, Terrakion switchs in on something it forces out, sets up a Substitute on the switch, and suddenly your starme cannot revenge without dying, Scizor gets crippled by CC and Slowbro proceeds to get nuked by a +2 Rock Gem Stone Edge so long as its taken some minor residual damage. What makes Sub SD Terrakion so tricky is that its exceptionally difficult to find out what set it actually is (it could easily fake a scarf) and once it gets that Substitute up, almost certainly something is dying to break that sub, and then Terrakion can switch out afterwards, still at 75%, still with decent speed and power, still a threat, and it eliminated a pokemon with no problems. Again, not calling this broken but I can understand people arguing over that nasty Sub SD set.
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Tis' is why Terra is so dangerous. With a sub up, there's no way to revenge him, and, more often than not, the opponet losses a 'mon trying to break the sub. Around that point is were I would accept fate and say, GG
 
I don't understand the mentality of "BW2 is around the corner. We shouldn't test." We have nearly 2 months of BW1 left. 3 when you consider how long it takes to translate, rip data, and make a completely new version of PO to support the changes. That's basically like saying "A new DW area has been released, cancel everything!" It doesn't work that way; and if it does, it shouldn't.

Absolutely no harm would come from testing Terrakion even if we don't ban it or prolong it's suspect session into the first months of BW2. It's never too late to test and discuss a major threat to the metagame. I'd personally love to see more stickied discussion threads of Pokemon like Terrakion even if not for a suspect test.
 
/B/utterfree said:
Durant and Wobbuffet are clear examples of how usage does not necessarily determine that something is broken - Wobb almost became a RU Poke before his Suspect Test!

And testing/retesting stuff while a game is about to be released happened prior to BW with Heracross. Two months before BW was released in Japan, Heracross dropped to UU only to be shot up to BL.
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Except that I'm not talking about usage of a Pokemon...I'm talking about the usage of individual sets and moves on it instead. If the SubSD Rock Gem set was broken, then it'd be experiencing a higher usage than it is now due to word getting out. Asking for a ban, or even a test on anything which only has 10.3% of it using the 'broken' item is absolutely ridiculous. Rock Gem does experience higher usage on the 1337 statistics yes, but it's still beneath the choice items (combined I should say), and the stats themselves don't give the amount of individual people who used the set - I'm willing to bet it's as similar as the very small amount of people who laddered insanely who contribute towards Latias having the 19th spot on the 1337 statistics, considering it really has no place in the current OU climate and few people use it. Additionally, from what I've seen from tournament games, choice sets are the most popular simply because they highlight what Terrakion is best at - coming in and hitting something hard with a STAB move, plus it can be slapped on any team which you definitely can't do with this set.

Secondly, Heracross was done because it had been anticipated to fall to UU since Platinum and people were eager to test it, as well as people wanting to give DPP UU a good sendoff - the BWBW2 gen still has 3 years or so. And with no disrespect to anyone, a lot of known good players were asking for it be tested in the thread/discussing it anyway, which isn't the case here.

Katakiri said:
I don't understand the mentality of "BW2 is around the corner. We shouldn't test." We have nearly 2 months of BW1 left. 3 when you consider how long it takes to translate, rip data, and make a completely new version of PO to support the changes.
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Platinum's changes when DP came out were on Shoddy in about a week.
 
SubSD is really good. I don't use it much but when I do it wrecks. I heard some people saying that Terrakion is weak to a lot of types, and it is hard to set up. The thing is, many Pokemon are threatened out and you either get a free sub up or die.
 
The thing is, atleast against stall teams, your going to be phased out after you make your precious sub, and just lose 25%. I am not attacking it though, it seems great against offensive teams and its not like its losing any precious moves.
 
Nachos said:
Platinum's changes when DP came out were on Shoddy in about a week.
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I'd love to be able to guarantee you the same, but it depends on quite a few factors: new TM/move tutor distribution is easy. Formes? Not so much. And God Forbid they introduce a new move mechanic (like the Thunder/Protect thing in DP->Pt)
 
In case everyone forgot, Scizor was on top in Gen 4 as well.. It isn't there just to check Terrakion, it just happens to do that well, giving it all the more reason to use it.

Yeah Terrakion hits like a truck, but he's been here the entire time and.. all of a sudden he's giving people trouble? Sounds more like a "Terrkion is why my team loses, so ban him" type thing. He isn't even close to OP. Lets get real people.
 
rh2012 said:
In case everyone forgot, Scizor was on top in Gen 4 as well.. It isn't there just to check Terrakion, it just happens to do that well, giving it all the more reason to use it.

Yeah Terrakion hits like a truck, but he's been here the entire time and.. all of a sudden he's giving people trouble? Sounds more like a "Terrkion is why my team loses, so ban him" type thing. He isn't even close to OP. Lets get real people.
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Please provide some reasoning behind your claims. He is definitely "close to OP", because if he wasn't, people wouldn't be asking for him to be a Suspect. If you look at his Physical attacking prowess, you'll see that absolutely nothing can switch into all of his sets. Obviously, that's not enough evidence to get Terrakion banned, but it's just plain ignorant to say "he wasn't broken before so don't ban him now".

Personally, I think Terrakion needs to be a Suspect. It's incredibly versatile despite only having three sets that look similar at first. Also, Terrakion's been this bad for a long time, and I've been wanting for him to be a Suspect for the past two rounds. He's more broken than Thundurus was two rounds ago, but that's just my opinion.

What do you do to counter Terrakion? Scizor? OHKO'd by Choice Band CC. Azumarill? Same fate. Skarmory? Loses to the Choice Bander. Slowbro? SD Rock Gem says hi. Tangrowth? SD Rock Gem beats it bad. Gliscor? SD Rock Gem. And don't say that "nobody uses SD Rock Gem", because SD Rock Gem is the most common set on Terrakion when used by 1337 players.

Terrakion gives opposing teams mountains of trouble under common battle conditions (Stealth Rock and Sand support), and is definitely the premier Physical sweeper of the OU tier right now. Dragonite has nothing on it, and neither does SD Scizor.

His powerful sets aren't even his only options. Though it plays completely differently than the CB and SD sets, there's also a Choice Scarf set that gets enormous Speed and attack. Please find one Pokemon that can switch into any Terrakion set and beat it.

There's a strong case that Terrakion might be a little too much for the tier. I'm not willing to say "bring the banhammer!" yet, but Terrakion definitely needs to be looked into.

edit: damn tangela is bulky o_O
 
DetroitLolcat said:
Please provide some reasoning behind your claims. He is definitely "close to OP", because if he wasn't, people wouldn't be asking for him to be a Suspect. If you look at his Physical attacking prowess, you'll see that absolutely nothing can switch into all of his sets. Obviously, that's not enough evidence to get Terrakion banned, but it's just plain ignorant to say "he wasn't broken before so don't ban him now".

Personally, I think Terrakion needs to be a Suspect. It's incredibly versatile despite only having three sets that look similar at first. Also, Terrakion's been this bad for a long time, and I've been wanting for him to be a Suspect for the past two rounds. He's more broken than Thundurus was two rounds ago, but that's just my opinion.

What do you do to counter Terrakion? Scizor? OHKO'd by Choice Band CC. Azumarill? Same fate. Skarmory? Loses to the Choice Bander. Slowbro? SD Rock Gem says hi. Tangrowth? SD Rock Gem beats it bad. Gliscor? SD Rock Gem. And don't say that "nobody uses SD Rock Gem", because SD Rock Gem is the most common set on Terrakion when used by 1337 players.

Terrakion gives opposing teams mountains of trouble under common battle conditions (Stealth Rock and Sand support), and is definitely the premier Physical sweeper of the OU tier right now. Dragonite has nothing on it, and neither does SD Scizor.

His powerful sets aren't even his only options. Though it plays completely differently than the CB and SD sets, there's also a Choice Scarf set that gets enormous Speed and attack. Please find one Pokemon that can switch into any Terrakion set and beat it.

There's a strong case that Terrakion might be a little too much for the tier. I'm not willing to say "bring the banhammer!" yet, but Terrakion definitely needs to be looked into.
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Tangrowth is a counter to everything but Band sets, and even against those it can easily take the first CC, losing around 25% after SR and Regenerator, while you can easily bring your fighting resistor/immunity. Btw, just to avoid any random response without facts(not from you, generally speaking), +2 Rock Gem does 74.26% - 87.62% to 252/252 + Tangrowth, which ohkoes back with Power Whip or with Giga Drain outside of SS, and after Terrakion loses 25% of it's health due to sub, and sr damage.

Finally, as i said again, Slowbro is a counter to Terrakion. SubSD cannot ohko with SE after SR and 2 rounds of lefties, as +2 SE does 98% maximum. And if anyone wants to bring ss in the equation, along with SR, which i already factored in, then i can also say that you can easily force Terrakion to waste it's Rock Gem, and then easily counter it with Slowbro...
 
My main issue with this terrakion argument, is why? Terrakion wasn't broken until sombody said it was so suddenly everybody is just like "shit i lose to terrakion, lets ban it". Some solid evidence would be nice instead of wild over-centralization claims.
 
He is a tough pokemon, no doubt. And okay, no pokemon can switch into EVERY set, there are other pokemon that have that same feature. And i'm also not saying he couldnt be suspect, because i'd agree he's probably the fiercest poke in OU at the moment. But I'm saying he definitely SHOULDN'T be banned. And i'll stand by my statement that it isn't close to OP. OP imo would be completely metagame defining. As it stands, I'd say that OU is fine. Terrakion is going to have naturally high usage because it's an awesome pokemon.

EDIT: And if you want a solid counter, 252 HP/ 252 Def Bold Eviolite Tangela takes 75% max from +2 Rock Gem SE. Then can sleep it :)
 
I've actually found it difficult to deal with Terrakion since the begining of BW, and unlike other threats that I learned to deal with or got banned, it still continues to cause me trouble from time to time. Again I am not advicating a banning, or even a real suspect test, it certainly deserves to be talked about and just not "you suck, deal with it." At the very least educate us terrible players on how to deal with Terrakion.
 
Every time my Dark Horse team encounters a Terrakion, something's bound to die. Usually I permit my Parasect to be sac'd so Tornadus or Toxicroak can revenge it. Of course, dealing with some Terrakions generally lends to me getting swept by it.

Of course, if teams have to sac Pokes just to revenge Terrakion, you know it's lethal enough for a Suspect.
 
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