Suspect SS AAA Suspect Test #2: Magearna

[Jrdn]

After giving the metagame time to settle post new DLC and an Urshifu quickban, the AAA council has decided that it's finally time for Magearna to fall under the microscope for examination. Its combination of versatility and power make it particularly formidable at team preview. With newly acquired access to Trick, it's able to permanently cripple many of its would-be counters. With Regenerator + volt switch, it's able to take advantage of its excellent defensive typing repeatedly in the same match, while being virtually immune to chip damage. That aside, Magearna's setup options such as Shift Gear and Calm Mind put together with its great offensive coverage make it a threat to behold. This ability to capitalize on opportunities and turn them into victories has made Magearna ripe for a suspect test.

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 18th) with "MAAA [Nick]"--for example, I could create one called "MAAA REEP" 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.
• Magearna will be allowed on the ladder during the suspect
• The suspect test will end on Tuesday September 1st (11:59 pm EST)
• 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 Magearna 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)

With that all of that being said, it's time to get the gears turning (or grinding, if you're particularly eager) on this suspect! 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.

 

[PandaDoux]

1st for this suspect ^^

 

[Jrdn]

 

[Derpeddeath]

 

[Isaiah]

The team: https://pokepast.es/20675bf74c1aded8

 

[Andyboy]

Haha funny Jrdn meme

You might be wondering how I lost my 1 game. Was I outplayed? Have bad match up? Haxed perhaps? Alas you would be wrong, because didn't lose a single match. I was cruising and halfway through I wanted to check my progress.... and there was my 1 loss, just chilling there, completely uninvited to the party. Truly unfortunate way to miss out on the 25-0, but thems the breaks.

 

[TeddiursaYoshi216]

name is inspired by chandelure but I never used chandelure during the suspect....

 

[aesf]

predlc team i used for ~5 games (not posting other teams i used bc idt they're great): https://pokepast.es/e1eb479f74df1887

civil elucidation of my topical opinions

Im leaning do not ban for this one (despite my suspect alt!!). I like that you can kinda slap a triage mage on some builds and have a nice soft check to a lot of very powerful threats that forced you to run passive things (noivern and weavile esp but also stuff like zam, terrak, and hydra too) while its an additional momentum grabbing regenvester that covers a ton of threats in a meta where you really have to maximize your efficiency in covering the big threats. Meanwhile yeah i guess mage has a lot more sets now but it lost the hardest set to wall in the generation shift (fairium z tinted sg/cm (in fact losing z in general is huge)), and theres regenvest (and/or corvi pex) on just about every competent team now so other old sets like specs adapt arent getting kills on every switchin. When trying to build or look for teams to use in this meta I had a lot lot more trouble coming up w builds that didnt lose to say, volcarona, prima, snorlax, terrak etc than builds that didnt lose to mage, my point being that it's not the most stressing on the teambuilder either. Maybe it'll be broken in the future but the current meta is not nearly as kind to it as last gen was. I personally believe theres other deeper problems w aaa (magic bounce mainly, maybe regen) and banning mage probably wont move the meta in the right direction

 

[Atha]

 

[LorisMasta17]

I guess I will be the first to discuss Magearna as I don't see myself going for reqs.
In my opinion, Magearna 100% should not be allowed in this tier, but I also agree 100% with what aesf said above that this will not improve the state of the tier immediately. I believe a lot of Magearna's brokenness is being hidden by the fact that running a defensive Magearna constantly feels so required. I built a team with Specs Tinted Lens Magearna, and don't get me wrong it's flat out broken, but I having to make up for the fact I didn't have regenvest Magearna put the team at such a disadvantage because I had to account for Noivern, Weavile, opposing Magearna, etc. without it. I hope voters agree with me and hopefully a Magearna ban will serve as a catalyst to remove things like Noivern from the tier as well. (As a side note I just want to mention that the post about pre-dlc meta discussing how the tier is in a terrible position due to the fastest pokemon being the hardest to switch into is probably even more true after isle of armor)
Anyways, why do I think Magearna is broken? Lets start with the SpecsLens sets I mentioned earlier. Only the bulkiest of bulky pokemon can switch into this thing. From using it I think every team that doesn't have a very bulky regenvester + Blissey/Chansey is at very serious risk of losing several Pokemon to it throughout a game. Why do you need both of those things? Well if the regenvester gets knocked off it will get blown away by 2 Flash Cannons after a bit of chip, and the blobs get completely ruined by Trick. So if you only have one of those, then the rest of the team will just get ruined. You need a regenvester to dissuade trick and you blob to cover for if the regenvester gets knocked. Doesn't help that broken Weavile helps enable this set so much by knocking off opposing Magearnas. Two people have posted teams in this thread and just look what Tinted Lens can do to them. First one is just hope Max SpDef Mantine is out of range from the 80-94% roll for 2 Fleur Cannons or just sack a mon and trap it. Seems very fair if trapping is the only option to prevent it from letting it in multiple times and getting a kill every time. Second one is probably even worse, Incineroar takes rocks damage or gets knocked and its fleur/flash cannon city. Or even just takes a few hits already and is chipped, that works too.
Let's talk about regenvest Mag. I feel like anybody who thinks this is healthy for the tier either uses magnet pull a lot, knows a ton of things will be broken without it, or is just used to it being here. It has Chansey levels of impeding progress from special attackers, even moreso with another special wall, but it is actually difficult for a lot of offensive teams to take hits from and keeps momentum like nobody's business. Idk, maybe it would just be replaced by other regenvesters and regenerator is the problem at hand with this specific case, but right now we are suspecting mag and this is just one part of it being broken.
And keep in mind these are only two sets. It has so many other sets that not only can cover for the shortcomings of these sets (for example if you're team is weak to Magnet Pull + Noivern you can just run pain split + levitate or shed shell) and that are extremely deadly on their own, including the multitude of potent set up sweeping sets with so many different options for moves and abilities. A Pokemon that's this good of a breaker, this good of a sweeper, and this good of a defensive pokemon is just too good in my eyes.

 

[Pyroshi]

 

[ThelordofbadRNG]

Confirming as MAAA help. Ignore my losses please

 

[Jrdn]

Hey all,

We're going to run 3 separate suspect tours in the OM room on the following days:

Wednesday August 26th @ 6:00 PM GMT(-4) - Daily tour
Friday August 28th @ 3:00 PM GMT(-4)
Sunday August 30th @ 12:00 PM GMT (-4)

The winners of each tour will have the ability to vote on the Magearna suspect. Furthermore the runners-up may have the ability to vote as long as they win 3 games throughout the tournament.

 

[Ainzcrad]

Confirming as MAAA Ladder

s/o to The Number Man for the team

 

[Deferio]

Confirming as MAAA Yuu

Reqs

 

[LBDC]

Confirming as MAAA LBDC

Team I used -> https://pokepast.es/48b09dda4a3db617 not the greatest team, but it's good for ladder; oftentimes opposing team just don't have a check to either Noivern or Mamoswine

EDIT: I'll edit this post to give my reasoning later

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

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Confirming as MAAA nic. Ty xavgb for the team, you saved me from having to use NoiPull.

 

[ironwater]

Confirming as MAAA mammia

 

[roxie]

got reqs just for Jrdn

 

[Trognon]

Confirming as MAAA Trognon

 

[Jrdn]

The winner of the second AAA suspect tour is xavgb! The runner up was MZ. Since getting to the finals took 3 wins for MZ, both Stresh and MZ will have the ability to vote for the upcoming vote. Congrats guys

Proof

And here's the replay of the Finals https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1177147212.
The final suspect tour will be on the 30th! Hopefully everyone can come out to take part.


For those wondering the first suspect tour yielded no new voters, hence no update post until now.


Finally, the suspect has almost run its course so if you were planning on participating, now would be a great time.

 

[ShinyAzelf]

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thanks Thinkerino for posting their team

 

[MorganORNot]

hide

Surprised no one is talking about terrak

 

[avyrie]

only managed to trap one mage, smh.

anyways, s/o the gvoice man for team and shiny gvoice man for moral support :3

 

[Jrdn]

Apologies for the late reply here. I had an extremely busy day and wasn't able to catch the tournament.

Congrats to Lasen for winning the tournament. Chazm got to the finals with 3 wins so both of you will be able to vote!
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1178137985 here's the finals replay.

The vote will be held in 2 days so if you want to vote, get those reqs!