Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Iron Moth has been a contentious Pokemon for a LONG time, with the last suspect test on Iron Moth being in 2023. In that time, quite a bit has changed; at the time of Iron Moth's last suspect test, its most popular set was Booster Special Attack + Agility, and we had two fantastic counters in Mega Tyranitar and Ting Lu. Now, nearly two years later, Ting Lu is OU and Mega Tyranitar is banned. With two major obstacles to Iron Moth out of the way, it only makes sense that it would return as a cornerstone of the problematic Hyper Offense archetype that has been performing incredibly well across all levels of play. Other threats that could once check it, like Iron Hands, Cinderace, and Latios have also been banned, not only removing options that helped handle the Moth but also reshaping the metagame into one less apt at handling it. Lets take a look at the arguments for why it is problematic.
The core issue of Iron Moth is its potent Booster Energy: Speed set. Always packing Fiery Dance and Sludge Wave, it has fantastic Neutral coverage that comes with the significant upside of being able to boost its attacking stat while attacking. Fire and Poison coverage are walled by Rock-types, but that's where Iron Moths coverage comes in; Energy Ball can chip Tyranitar, and more importantly, Discharge shocks the Mega Aerodactyl that has risen to become the new king of the tier. In fact, the discovery of Discharge is what helped in part facilitate Iron Moth's rampage, as Morning Sun's longevity is no longer needed in a more offensive metagame. Alongside its boost to Speed, leaving it outsped only by the fraudulent Booster Speed Iron Boulder and Sand Rush Excadrill, Iron Moth is ruthless in cleaning up teams weakened by the entry hazards set by its partner, Suicide Lead Mew.
Mew isn't the only partner Iron Moth has, however. Other options like Moltres-Galar, Blacephalon, and Z-Celebrate Victini work exceptionally well alongside Iron Moth. Moltres is notable, sharing the same two checks in Tyranitar and Aerodactyl as Iron Moth, and so they work efficiently in tandem to wear them down to sweep late game. Blacephalon is similarly useful, using its significant power to break these foes, while Z-Celebrate Victini shares checks like Slowking and Garganacl to let Iron Moth sweep. In fact, this dynamic on HO is what forces many teams to run the classic Tyranitar + Excadrill core, in order to handle the Special attacking side of Hyper Offense teams. However, this leads to an alternate issue, where Sand teams are often unable to handle other powerful offensive threats like Bisharp or Okidogi, which was exemplified by Tyranitar's subpar 30% winrate in NDPL.
Of course, Iron Moth doesn't only run Booster Speed. Sets with Heavy-Duty Boots and a combination of Fiery Dance, Sludge Wave, Energy Ball, Morning Sun, and U-Turn often crop up, also being difficult to deal with as they often force many switches. Teammates like Rillaboom are especially notable because it loves entering on Hippowdon, Tyranitar, and Slowking while also enabling Iron Moth’s Energy Ball to actually KO Tyranitar. However, these Iron Moth variants are much more exploitable, often being forced to always click U-Turn in fear of a Pursuit-trap from Tyranitar and Mega Aerodactyl.
Despite its terrifying power, Moth is not always the sweeper it wants to be. It is held back most by its one-shot nature alongside the fact that Fiery Dance only has a 50% chance to raise its Special Attack. Without the raise, Iron Moth often falls shy of the KOs it needs to grab, even with hazard support. This often leaves both the Iron Moth user and the opponent praying for a favorable Fiery Dance, with one boost often being the difference between winning and losing a game. With the rise of Mega Aerodactyl, Iron Moth is also often forced to run Discharge, meaning that Chansey and Blissey are able to effectively wall it. Other options like Mega Latias, Goodra-Hisui, and Specially Defensive Hippowdon can check Iron Moth as well, though the former and latter are susceptible to chip from Iron Moth's partners and Goodra-Hisui cannot beat Iron Moth without using Earthquake, which significantly limits its ability to be a threat. Ultimately, Iron Moth is too much of a strain on the teambuilder and a coinflip during the battle, which is why the council has decided to suspect Iron Moth!
Suspect Test Information
The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:
Create a new account OR use an existing one with no National Dex UU games played (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played National Dex UU before the test, ever.) You do not have to follow any specific naming rule but your suspect account must have never played a game in National Dex UU before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements.
At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
After you linked your account, if you play one game with the alt, you have to play at least one game in order to verify and then do /rank in order to see the "Suspect Test elligible" message
[*]If this field says "No" then you have either not set up the account correctly or need to use a different/new account. You do not need to complete your entire reqs for this field to say "Yes"
After you believe that you have achieved reqs, double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact Danbear02, Niadev, or any staff member.
If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me or post here!
Laddering with an account that impersonates, mocks, or insults another Smogon user or breaks Pokemon Showdown! rules may be disqualified from voting and infracted.
We will be using the regular National Dex UU ladder for this suspect test, and Iron Moth will remain legal throughout the entire suspect test.
Any form of voting manipulation will result in swift and severe punishment. You are more than welcome to state your argument to as many people as you so please, but do not use any kind of underhanded tactics to get a result you desire. Bribery, blackmail, or any other type of tactic used to sway votes will be handled and sanctioned.
Do not attempt to cheat the ladder. We will know if you did not actually achieve voting requisites, so don't do it. Harsh sanctions will be applied.
The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2900 with a B-Value of 3.
75
62
76
45
77
35
78
30
79
25
80
22
81
18
82
16
[*]
The suspect test will last until December 8th 11:59 PM GMT -8.
For those of you wondering about the Suspect Tours, due to limited interest and player quantity, we will not be continuing with these Tours.
This post is strictly my opinion, and is not representative of the views of the council. .
Warning: This post contains yap. Proceed with caution.
If we were just talking about Booster Moth on any old team, I'd doubt it would be getting suspect tested - It'll function sometimes if you slap it on Sand BO #452, sure, but when its opponent faces it on BO/Balance, most of Moth's checks can stay healthy and rocks can be kept off well enough to the point it's hard for it to take off when put on a typical BO or Balance team. This makes Moth kind of weird from a tiering perspective, but...
HO Moment
... The problem with Iron Moth comes from Booster Moth HO, which has been making a significant splash in tours, backed up by Iron Moth's extremely impresive W/R in NDPL of 72% even at #7 in usage, no doubt in part thanks to its even more impressive W/R when paired with common HO mons (see Spoiler), with which it was paired with over half the time. In total, it eclipses even other contentious poison type Okidogi in winrate despite the latter being used 3 more times than it and being just as problematic as Moth itself (council vote was 50/50 between the two icl). Of course, winrate isn't everything and doesn't tell the whole story (shoutouts that one time in gen 8 Mega Bee had a 100% winrate despite doing diddly squat those games when you actually checked the replays), but cases like this with high usage mons stick out like a sore thumb. That said, Swampert also has the same usage and winrate, and I don't think anyone is seriously arguing Swampert is broken, I think that's more of a product of Swampert being on the rise and people not having quite adapted to it yet, or perhaps just emblematic of BO's general success than anything. Nor am I saying that Moth's high W/R is a reason to ban it - this is just pointing out its success in high level tournament play.
Many of the other prevalent HO mons, such as Autosteela, Golt and Blace share a lot of checks with Iron Moth, enabling Moth by overwhelming said shared checks. More than that, they can maintain pressure against those checks well enough that they don't have the room to heal out of +1 Discharge or EBall range. It doesn't help that most of Moth's more common and splashable checks really do not need much chip to just up and die to +1 coverage. Check one of Moth's teammates and take like 30% in the process, suddenly you're in range of Moth itself. Plus, HO more or less negates the one-time Booster Energy issue, as it's not reliant on Moth to do much other than be the wincon in the back and you can just sack a mon to bring it in for near-free.
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Discharge vs. 0 HP / 40 SpD Aerodactyl-Mega: 254-300 (84.3 - 99.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (dead after rocks on a set literally invested to check moth a bit better)
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Energy Ball vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Hippowdon: 254-300 (60.6 - 71.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery (it's hippo bruh it's not that hard to put in range)
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Energy Ball vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 192-226 (56.3 - 66.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery (one of the sturdier checks but unlike the first two tar relies on lefties + it's ttar so it'll be in range quickly, also 30% w/r bruh :sob:)
+1 132 SpA Iron Moth Sludge Wave vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Venusaur-Mega: 195-229 (53.5 - 62.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (it's literally mega venu bruh that shit is not staying out of range for long with hazards from Mew up)
You can't even hard in with them half the time since Fiery Dance + boost puts them in range of the coverage, which forces you to sack to the Fiery even if your check is at full, leaving you in a worse position against the rest of the team. Of course, several of these are contingent on it getting a +1 from Fiery, but often the checks take enough from its teammates that it can sometimes fenagle a win anyways. You also can't exactly just outplay the Fiery boost, unless you're a priest at the church of RNGesus, and checks should work reliably even in reasonable worst case scenarios (ie. assuming you don't just give the opp free additional Fiery boosts for some reason or run into particularly unlucky scenarios like getting Discharge parad into paralysis same turn), otherwise we'd probably still have Xurkitree. It's a high enough chance that you really have to put focus on preparing for +1 in the builder, so, 50% or not, at worst it's still putting considerable pressure on the builder.
Regardless, the fact that it doesn't need free turns to set up thanks to Fiery Dance, letting it get going as soon as it's in front of something it can kill + the minimal chip needed for checks to get into range + the aforementioned lack of difficulty wearing down its checks + how easy it is for HO to support it due to the first factor + its ability to open doors for its teammates even if it doesn't sweep is a huge part of why the vast majority of HO rn is Moth HO (as shown by Mew being paired with Iron Moth in NDPL 100% of the time) and why HO as a whole has been a problem at the forefront of the council and community as a whole's minds as a whole for a little bit now, as shown by the survey results.
Oh yeah, let's go back a little there: even if Moth itself doesn't win, it's like I said before - many prevalent HO mons share checks with Iron Moth, so now Iron Moth has opened the door for them to win in kind. 60-80% on a check to you is a godsend for almost any HO mon, effectively trading in the context of defensive check vs HO since you're never getting the free turn to heal up unless you make god plays and they have something you can heal on. 60 on TTar? Great, now Golt, Victini, Blace and EBall Autosteela can win. Hippo worn down? Blace, Victini and Bisharp have you covered, and it's a free in for Autosteela to setup, too. MVenu? Yummy yummy, Azu sweep in my replay. And Bish and Blace etc. etc. Long story short, if you're not stacking 2 checks to these mons, one will open the door for the other sooner than later.
The problem doesn't end with defensive checks, either - you only realistically have two options to RK Booster moth - Sand Rush Exca and CB Bisharp, the former having seen better days what with every team having two+ checks to it naturally, and the latter being difficult to just slap on a team due to being not much realer of a steel than Magnezone and clashing with CB Tyranitar. It also doesn't actually kill moth from full with Sucker, and there are the rare Substitute Booster Moth to worry about too.
But wait, aren't you forgetting some mons?
Yes, Booster Boulder also outspeeds Booster Moth, but Booster Boulder and Mega Beedrill are having a scrap right now to determine which mon is the most do nothing mon in the tier. I legitimately have never seen Booster Boulder do something against a decent team besides RK Booster Moth, other than a frankly pathetic 68% to my full HP Pecharunt with +2 ZH. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen Mega Bee do more than Booster Boulder. Real 'the biggest fraud of today vs the biggest fraud in history' type beat.
Ok, ok, all jokes aside, like my strawman, you've probably noticed some absences from the calc list above: Namely, AV Okidogi, Slowking and Hoodra. AV on Dogi just generally feels like a missed opportunity given how deadly breaker sets are, and the number one reason I've heard people citing their use of this set is just so happens to be Iron Moth. It's not the worst set in the world, also checking Hydrapple and special Aegi while being fairly strong in its own right and maintaining its status as a fighting check is pretty nice, but not ideal either give the opportunity cost of not using the broken breaker sets or even scarf. Hoodra is absolutely a good mon, with a useful niche to boot, and is generally bulky enough to check both Moth and another special HO mon, but it's not a mon you can just slap on any team. Its neutrality to MGarde Hyper Voice, its lack of reliable recovery, and its inability to answer mons steel types are usually depended upon to handle (namely Mega Aero and Enamorus, while only being able to come in on Mega Gardevoir Hyper Voice once, which to be fair is probably enough depending on the comp Hoodra is on) while lacking the utility of Excadrill are all reasons it's not the first choice for a steel on most teams.
Slowking has a different issue - it clashes far too much with common important defensive water types you want on your team, namely Slowbro, Rotom-Wash and Swampert, all of which you need for the ability to come in on Mega Aero somewhat reliably and keep it from ripping your team to shreds, plus the multitude of other top threats they check. Slowking isn't exactly just checking Iron Moth, given it also checks Enam aside from CM Fairy Z, MGarde, Special Victini, and non CM Megatias short of Toxic Slowking, but compared to how important what the other Waters I mentioned before check, it's thin pickings and often tough to justify over playing to not give those special breakers free ins, RKing with MAero later or pursuiting with TTar (besides Enam), choosing instead to not get shamoned by tier king Mega Aero and the dangerous mons the other waters check. It shows in the NDPL usage, given its 3 uses in the entire tour - Slowking is not a mon people usually want to be running, due to the restrictions it places on building with it, even with Booster Moth dominating the tier and Slowking being the best check to it in the tier.
The point is, none of the three are bad sets/mons, and both check Booster Moth comfortably, but they place restrictions on teambuilding that can make actually fitting them as checks difficult and come with opportunity cost in the case of Slowking and AV Okidogi.
Because I know someone will bring it up, RE: Boots Moth. ... Yeah, I think it's safe to say we've adapted to it by this point. Its days of U-turning on checks over and over and putting them in range of lategame Fiery Dance sweeps are long gone, thanks to Mega Aero all but ensuring that Boots Moth isn't winning any games on its own these days. I don't think anyone is seriously arguing that Boots Moth is the broken set, and this sus would definitely not be happening without Booster back in the equation.
The HO Problem
If I haven't convinced you Iron Moth on HO is a problem on its own, then maybe consider this less an Iron Moth suspect and more of a HO suspect, aiming to put a chill pill on HO by taking out its biggest enabler. And yes, Iron Moth is absolutely HO's biggest enabler - For a while now, Hyper Offense has been generally considered to be problematic and restrictive to prepare for, and, while HO has a decent amount of variety, there is one near-constant - Iron Moth. Refer to my previous statistic of Mew, the premier HO lead, always being paired with Iron Moth in NDPL, for evidence. That, to me, is a smoking gun that Iron Moth is the root cause. I used to be of the opinion that Iron Moth's near-unanimity on HO was more just it enabling other HO mons, but it's now pretty clear to me that it's more the other HO mons are enabling it. We can't even blame teambuilding pressure making it hard to deal with thanks to Okidogi because Moth HO has been a problem for longer than Okidogi has been in the spotlight. Rather, I think it's safe to say that HO is the teambuilding pressure (and Aegi and debateably Hydrapple but idk about that one anymore, ig I'll throw in MAero for completeness too but tbh it also alleviates teambuilding pressure a lot more than the other two).
Not all HO runs Iron Moth - the Z Serp HO in (the very outdated, please go pick up your samples from either the NDPL or NDFL team dump threads instead of those I beg you :sob:) samples was successful for a while and it didn't run Booster Moth, but for a while before people realised Discharge Iron Moth was really good, I distinctly remember HO actually being pretty tricky to build. I might be misremembering, but I think the HO sample was the first HO that had real success for a while (or it might have been the one to make Qua work, I forget). Then Discharge Moth was discovered... Point is, Booster Moth returning to popularity after a year absolutely kicked off the surge in HO and, by extension, the HO problem. If that's not indicative of Booster Iron Moth being the problem, even despite survey results generally seeming to indicate that it's generally agreed upon that it's specifically Moth HO that's the problem, I genuinely have no idea what else could be causing the HO problem besides OU refusing to give us good defensive mons (which we can't really do anything about). It can't be Mew since Exca is also a fairly common HO lead that Moth sees success with too. The only other alternative I can think of is some mass ban wave of Blace/Golt/Victini/Mew/maybe Bish, which is unlikely to be happening this late in the gen.
Conclusion:
All in all, if I remember to get reqs, I'll be voting ban. Moth enables HO far too much and constrains teambuilding to the extent that it leaving can only be positive, and is the tier's best shot at putting the HO problem to bed.
