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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v3
- Thread starter TPP
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Proud of this community
Sorry, my fault
I just wanted OU Bronzong
Like seriously though, who at gamefreak thought it was a good idea to give it moonlight and calm mind on top of that busted move and ability, it was already strong enough
BRO HAVE YOU EVEN SEEN UBERS!??!!? That tier is full of brokens, brokens that make our brokens look absolutely weak in comparison.
Its like comparing Kingambit to Koraidon/Miradon, its absolutely no contest.
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Oh, hey. Maybe this community is willing to ban things that are heinously beyond broken.
Great Tusk 
to me is starting to feel less and less like the flawless mon it once was in early 2023. Like months ago Tusk felt like this insane source of role compression, but now running tusk seems harder and harder
You have to run ice spin, and perhaps knock off to try and catch ghold or gliscor on the switch in (though knock off distribution is better now; tusk still likes it). EQ is a very exploitable stab now which it wasnt much pre home, with the genies and the legendary birds easily switching in, Moltres in particular punishing contact with knock off or cc anyways. Tusk rarely uses cc now, as the defence drops are bad when you’re using defensive tusk to check stuff like kingambit. Defensive tusk cannot OHKO kingambit pre tera without EQ either, and kingambit knows this, and a fallen 5 +2 kingambit can very easily clean off a tusk with sucker
Tusk lacks the recovery or the hazard sprrading that gliscor has, too, and is very weak to status like sleep and toxic and burn. Gliscor, meanwhile, is status effect immune due to its toxic heal ability (when its activated), making it immune to the burn damage drops. Will-o-wispers had always been present in the metagame from the start e.g washtom, pult etc, but its gliscor who can ignore these without tera which makes it more appealing to me. Furthermore, the fighting secondary typing to me is becoming more and more of a hindrance to tusk, making it weak to fairy and flying (though the dark resistance is good against gambit, many can just tera blast fly or fairy to beat you)
It still has its merits tho, dont get me wrong, gliscor just does a lot of what it does better, with better healing and special defence. Its attack and physical bulk are still insane, I just think its not the titan that it used to be
to me is starting to feel less and less like the flawless mon it once was in early 2023. Like months ago Tusk felt like this insane source of role compression, but now running tusk seems harder and harderYou have to run ice spin, and perhaps knock off to try and catch ghold or gliscor on the switch in (though knock off distribution is better now; tusk still likes it). EQ is a very exploitable stab now which it wasnt much pre home, with the genies and the legendary birds easily switching in, Moltres in particular punishing contact with knock off or cc anyways. Tusk rarely uses cc now, as the defence drops are bad when you’re using defensive tusk to check stuff like kingambit. Defensive tusk cannot OHKO kingambit pre tera without EQ either, and kingambit knows this, and a fallen 5 +2 kingambit can very easily clean off a tusk with sucker
Tusk lacks the recovery or the hazard sprrading that gliscor has, too, and is very weak to status like sleep and toxic and burn. Gliscor, meanwhile, is status effect immune due to its toxic heal ability (when its activated), making it immune to the burn damage drops. Will-o-wispers had always been present in the metagame from the start e.g washtom, pult etc, but its gliscor who can ignore these without tera which makes it more appealing to me. Furthermore, the fighting secondary typing to me is becoming more and more of a hindrance to tusk, making it weak to fairy and flying (though the dark resistance is good against gambit, many can just tera blast fly or fairy to beat you)
It still has its merits tho, dont get me wrong, gliscor just does a lot of what it does better, with better healing and special defence. Its attack and physical bulk are still insane, I just think its not the titan that it used to be
Mandibuzz getting easily folded by toxic does not remove the fact that it would still be able to get rid of hazards with defog. Spikes take 3 turns to get up for them to be very impactful. If you spend 3 turns getting up spikes, just for me to use 1 turn to remove spikes, you're giving me a lot of free turns to do whatever I want with. Even if Gliscor technically still 1v1s mandibuzz, it doesn't really matter if Mandibuzz is still able to accomplish its goal and remove the hazards. This would then make it easier to switch into your gliscor answer as it doesnt have to worry about spikes nearly as much after a defog. The same goes for weezing or other defoggers Gliscor would theoretically 1v1. It doesnt matter if its not able to keep up spikes. And if I keep mandibuzz healthy I can keep removing spikes wasting even more of the turns you go for spikes and giving me free turns in return. Loses you so much offensive pressure if I'm actually able to remove hazards without ghold.
Again this is assuming that currently gholdengo isn't blocking spin from rapid spinners. Not only would I say that the rapid spinners that exist in OU are OU because of their matchup vs ghold (potentially opening the door for more spinners that dont have as nice a matchup vs ghold), but honestly decent ghold playing can simply be just sacking it, letting tusk or treads or whatever take it out in exchange for keeping up spikes, then going into your tusk/treads answer and keeping up offensive pressure from there. Ghold very much does prevent rapid spin removal.
Dragapult yeah exists but not only is it not quite as versatile and easy to slot into teams as Gholdengo, it can take a lot less hits potentially as opposed to ghold which can be run defensively and/or with recover. Dragapult also has a worse defensive typing than ghold opening it up to being hit harder with a number of other moves (ice/fairy/dragon/flying/rock/steel/psychic/ even potentially posion). Its defenses are not good so its easier to just walk over Dragapult. You can also status dragapult by putting it to sleep or thunder waving it. In general you're also getting a worse matchup vs stall. Yes it will block spin in the same way, but I really feel like Hazard stack HO teams would be severely hurt by being forced to run Dragapult where they were running ghold.
Great Tusk
You have to run ice spin, and perhaps knock off to try and catch ghold or gliscor on the switch in (though knock off distribution is better now; tusk still likes it). EQ is a very exploitable stab now which it wasnt much pre home, with the genies and the legendary birds easily switching in, Moltres in particular punishing contact with knock off or cc anyways. Tusk rarely uses cc now, as the defence drops are bad when you’re using defensive tusk to check stuff like kingambit. Defensive tusk cannot OHKO kingambit pre tera without EQ either, and kingambit knows this, and a fallen 5 +2 kingambit can very easily clean off a tusk with sucker
Tusk lacks the recovery or the hazard sprrading that gliscor has, too, and is very weak to status like sleep and toxic and burn. Gliscor, meanwhile, is status effect immune due to its toxic heal ability (when its activated), making it immune to the burn damage drops. Will-o-wispers had always been present in the metagame from the start e.g washtom, pult etc, but its gliscor who can ignore these without tera which makes it more appealing to me. Furthermore, the fighting secondary typing to me is becoming more and more of a hindrance to tusk, making it weak to fairy and flying (though the dark resistance is good against gambit, many can just tera blast fly or fairy to beat you)
It still has its merits tho, dont get me wrong, gliscor just does a lot of what it does better, with better healing and special defence. Its attack and physical bulk are still insane, I just think its not the titan that it used to be
Defensive Tusk was terrible since always, it should have never have gained usage in first place, outside of some Stalls.
Offensive Tusk is almost as great as it has always been, maybe not Top 1 Mon but almost there. Its just a little more limited now, due to Gliscor existing, the set is now stacked with Spin, Knock, Headlong Rush (or EQ) and Ice Spinner. Before it could run CC or Stone Edge, but now 4 moves are pretty much forced.
At least it still has many viable Tera types.
i think that gliscor is severely warping the tier and singlehandedly (or singleclawedly i guess) dictating the usage statistics and viability of a substantial number of mons. it's just straight-up not healthy for the meta. not to mention that it's annoying as fuck to face because it just lives forever without even needing actual recovery. that being said, we have bigger fish to fry—manaphy keeps coming up with new sets and each one is more bullshit than the last, waterpon continues to have like three consistent answers that aren't even actually answers, kingambit's best answer just got banned, and iron valiant is iron valiant. we should test all those mons before gliscorGreat Tusk
You have to run ice spin, and perhaps knock off to try and catch ghold or gliscor on the switch in (though knock off distribution is better now; tusk still likes it). EQ is a very exploitable stab now which it wasnt much pre home, with the genies and the legendary birds easily switching in, Moltres in particular punishing contact with knock off or cc anyways. Tusk rarely uses cc now, as the defence drops are bad when you’re using defensive tusk to check stuff like kingambit. Defensive tusk cannot OHKO kingambit pre tera without EQ either, and kingambit knows this, and a fallen 5 +2 kingambit can very easily clean off a tusk with sucker
Tusk lacks the recovery or the hazard sprrading that gliscor has, too, and is very weak to status like sleep and toxic and burn. Gliscor, meanwhile, is status effect immune due to its toxic heal ability (when its activated), making it immune to the burn damage drops. Will-o-wispers had always been present in the metagame from the start e.g washtom, pult etc, but its gliscor who can ignore these without tera which makes it more appealing to me. Furthermore, the fighting secondary typing to me is becoming more and more of a hindrance to tusk, making it weak to fairy and flying (though the dark resistance is good against gambit, many can just tera blast fly or fairy to beat you)
It still has its merits tho, dont get me wrong, gliscor just does a lot of what it does better, with better healing and special defence. Its attack and physical bulk are still insane, I just think its not the titan that it used to be
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I still think Tusk is a great addition on non-Boots teams. Being the best spinner in the tier is never something to scoff at in this meta and while it doesn’t have a safe way to switch directly into Gliscor, it can exploit it when it gets in and more with Substitute.
With 72 HP evs, Tusk’s Sub can eat an EQ from Gliscor. Then you can either threaten with Ice Spinner or Spin its hazards away. Substitute also has additional benefits like easing the 50/50 with Ghold and abusing its high offensive profile, cause with just EQ and Ice Spinner off its high atk stat, it still hits a majority of the tier for neutral or SE damage. It helps that it doesn’t necessarily need much to succeed. There are much more Knock users now, BU is nice but you’d rather just Sub against Gliscor, and you’re not hitting anything with BP or CC unless it’s Washtom. So the opportunity cost of running Sub isn’t high.
Eeveeto may have alot of controversal takes, but he’s right about alot of things, like Defensive Tusk is complete ass.
What are you walling with Tusk? You have plenty of other better physical walls in the tier now including OU king Gliscor and you’re only hindering your matchup against spike stacking even further. Trust me on this. Run offensive variants.
With 72 HP evs, Tusk’s Sub can eat an EQ from Gliscor. Then you can either threaten with Ice Spinner or Spin its hazards away. Substitute also has additional benefits like easing the 50/50 with Ghold and abusing its high offensive profile, cause with just EQ and Ice Spinner off its high atk stat, it still hits a majority of the tier for neutral or SE damage. It helps that it doesn’t necessarily need much to succeed. There are much more Knock users now, BU is nice but you’d rather just Sub against Gliscor, and you’re not hitting anything with BP or CC unless it’s Washtom. So the opportunity cost of running Sub isn’t high.
Eeveeto may have alot of controversal takes, but he’s right about alot of things, like Defensive Tusk is complete ass.
What are you walling with Tusk? You have plenty of other better physical walls in the tier now including OU king Gliscor and you’re only hindering your matchup against spike stacking even further. Trust me on this. Run offensive variants.
i don't think comparing bloodmoon to the darkrai, deo-a or skymin suspects is very useful because all of those were back in a time when tiering methodology was very different (those initial banwaves would likely be by council decision nowadays) and the voting population was much smaller (51 people, less than half of the number of bloodmoon voters). it's better to compare it to mega lucario, which was ahead of bloodmoon by 1%, and calyrex-shadow, which fell behind by 0.12%
Unpopular opinion: gliscor without roost/having to use protect for additional recovery is honestly worse (to deal with) than if it did have roost.
Without roost, many more people will obviously default to protect as a main go-to option for gliscor; after all, the move has incredible synergy with the mon, safely activating its orb, letting it get back 12% hp with no risk, and also increase toxic's timer on the opponent (and also waste more pp on the opponent I guess). This also creates an incredibly nasty amount of mindgames when up against the mon; yes, it will basically always protect turn 1 to safely activate your orb/scout your intended move of choice against it, but...then what? Now the ball's on the opponent's court, and it's up to you to make sure you can maintain the pressure after; yes, you could double switch against the mon gliscor will be switched out for to try and maintain the matchup advantage, but what if they predict this and instead throw off another layer of spikes/a toxic? And even if you switch out on the first turn that it protects, the move will simply fail for it and it can click it again next turn to do the same thing. Now this doesn't seem so bad, it's now protect with fat mons works after all....except as many people have noted/brought up as a subject of complaint in many previous pages, gliscor is not a mon that you can afford to give so many potential free turns to; it heals for twice as much as leftovers, while having immunity to all other forms of status, and exploiting its weaknesses is now harder than ever; with bax gone to heaven now, the number of ice types in ou is basically nonexistent barring weavile (still finding its footing), alolatales (veil bot), frosmoth (niche sweeper on veil+snow) and....yeah. still waiting for someone to show off if beartic/cetitan can replicate even a shred of bax's former glory. Water types are better on this regard with rain in general, manaphy (s/o to hydration in rain letting it basically counter the mon fully barring getting its leftovers knocked off), greninja and waterpon (though the latter doesn't actually ohko from full, so it too has to face the aforementioned dilemma), but there's still not that many options on this front either, making bursting past the mon without random tera blast ices an ordeal not easily achieved this gen (this isn't taking (defensive) tera into account which opens up a whole new can of forms better left untouched for now).
The above dilemma compounds exponentially once it slaps you with a toxic on the switch, as the room for error now becomes significantly smaller, all the while the ball remains on the gliscor's user's court now, if you can't burst past it fast enough. Which becomes all the more problematic if it does manage to stack multiple spikes on the field, alongside a suitable defensive core in the back, while it itself continues to gradually shrug off damage. No other mon in ou really has such a combination of traits, which is what's gotten everyone to talk about the mon in general these days to the point it's even being used/showcased in UBERS of all places ffs
Now, how would it having roost affect things? Well, a gliscor without protect would be forced out immediately at the sight of a knock off user, lest its orb get knocked off too early; coming back later outside of a sack would also present a greater challenge for it. Further, without protect, most off-the-bat strong nukes would be able to get their strongest moves off against it with significantly fewer mindgames involved; hell, as long as you can outpace 62% healing per turn you could simply stay in and batter away at it if it has to come down to that. As a bonus, roosting would also leave it weak to grass, which is already, ironically enough, one of the stronger offensive types against bulkier teams this generation (though most offensive grass types are faster than gliscor, so this point is unlikely to matter very much).
One could simply claim that all of the above could be rendered moot by simply having gliscor run both roost and protect on the same set for maximum sustainability. The problem with this is that it would have to drop a precious valuable move to do so, which it often can't afford; spikes are what have made the mon as talked about this gen as it is now, toxic is your main way of actually beating bulkier mons like zapdos/bulk up tusk, and eq punishes most mons immune to toxic. This isn't even getting into other possible set deviations, like knock off, u turn, taunt, swords dance or even possibly ice fang for opposing gliscor wow we really have gotten to this point huh which severely limits the mon while increasing its overall passivity.
So...yeah, the mon's gotten some real talk going around it lately, huh. It can come off as rather surprising at first, as the mon's always been just a mon in the meta that's a part of it without standing out too much, but...I suppose making spikes a tm and giving it to every single ground type has really gotten people distraught this gen, eh? For an actual conclusion though, yeah playing around gliscor's protect really does require little to no room for error, especially in the gen where one turn is all that's needed to turn around the tides of a battle. Although the pattern is rather predictable, it doesn't make the mon any less irritating to face. In any case, thanks for reading and have a good rest of your day.
Without roost, many more people will obviously default to protect as a main go-to option for gliscor; after all, the move has incredible synergy with the mon, safely activating its orb, letting it get back 12% hp with no risk, and also increase toxic's timer on the opponent (and also waste more pp on the opponent I guess). This also creates an incredibly nasty amount of mindgames when up against the mon; yes, it will basically always protect turn 1 to safely activate your orb/scout your intended move of choice against it, but...then what? Now the ball's on the opponent's court, and it's up to you to make sure you can maintain the pressure after; yes, you could double switch against the mon gliscor will be switched out for to try and maintain the matchup advantage, but what if they predict this and instead throw off another layer of spikes/a toxic? And even if you switch out on the first turn that it protects, the move will simply fail for it and it can click it again next turn to do the same thing. Now this doesn't seem so bad, it's now protect with fat mons works after all....except as many people have noted/brought up as a subject of complaint in many previous pages, gliscor is not a mon that you can afford to give so many potential free turns to; it heals for twice as much as leftovers, while having immunity to all other forms of status, and exploiting its weaknesses is now harder than ever; with bax gone to heaven now, the number of ice types in ou is basically nonexistent barring weavile (still finding its footing), alolatales (veil bot), frosmoth (niche sweeper on veil+snow) and....yeah. still waiting for someone to show off if beartic/cetitan can replicate even a shred of bax's former glory. Water types are better on this regard with rain in general, manaphy (s/o to hydration in rain letting it basically counter the mon fully barring getting its leftovers knocked off), greninja and waterpon (though the latter doesn't actually ohko from full, so it too has to face the aforementioned dilemma), but there's still not that many options on this front either, making bursting past the mon without random tera blast ices an ordeal not easily achieved this gen (this isn't taking (defensive) tera into account which opens up a whole new can of forms better left untouched for now).
The above dilemma compounds exponentially once it slaps you with a toxic on the switch, as the room for error now becomes significantly smaller, all the while the ball remains on the gliscor's user's court now, if you can't burst past it fast enough. Which becomes all the more problematic if it does manage to stack multiple spikes on the field, alongside a suitable defensive core in the back, while it itself continues to gradually shrug off damage. No other mon in ou really has such a combination of traits, which is what's gotten everyone to talk about the mon in general these days to the point it's even being used/showcased in UBERS of all places ffs
Now, how would it having roost affect things? Well, a gliscor without protect would be forced out immediately at the sight of a knock off user, lest its orb get knocked off too early; coming back later outside of a sack would also present a greater challenge for it. Further, without protect, most off-the-bat strong nukes would be able to get their strongest moves off against it with significantly fewer mindgames involved; hell, as long as you can outpace 62% healing per turn you could simply stay in and batter away at it if it has to come down to that. As a bonus, roosting would also leave it weak to grass, which is already, ironically enough, one of the stronger offensive types against bulkier teams this generation (though most offensive grass types are faster than gliscor, so this point is unlikely to matter very much).
One could simply claim that all of the above could be rendered moot by simply having gliscor run both roost and protect on the same set for maximum sustainability. The problem with this is that it would have to drop a precious valuable move to do so, which it often can't afford; spikes are what have made the mon as talked about this gen as it is now, toxic is your main way of actually beating bulkier mons like zapdos/bulk up tusk, and eq punishes most mons immune to toxic. This isn't even getting into other possible set deviations, like knock off, u turn, taunt, swords dance or even possibly ice fang for opposing gliscor wow we really have gotten to this point huh which severely limits the mon while increasing its overall passivity.
So...yeah, the mon's gotten some real talk going around it lately, huh. It can come off as rather surprising at first, as the mon's always been just a mon in the meta that's a part of it without standing out too much, but...I suppose making spikes a tm and giving it to every single ground type has really gotten people distraught this gen, eh? For an actual conclusion though, yeah playing around gliscor's protect really does require little to no room for error, especially in the gen where one turn is all that's needed to turn around the tides of a battle. Although the pattern is rather predictable, it doesn't make the mon any less irritating to face. In any case, thanks for reading and have a good rest of your day.
Damn, it’s gone gone. Guess the tier can finally stabilize a little now and we can refocus on Kingambit.
Guess Gen 9 Blissey’s Linsanity run is over too
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Wow, Bloodmoon 93%
It's more than Pheromosa in both SM and SS OU
It's more than Pheromosa in both SM and SS OU
yeah, i've got to wonder how roost-less gliscor performs in older gens. of course spikes makes it better this gen, but some sets don't even run it and they're still finding success. is it viable to forgo roost in older gens and open up another moveslot? was gliscor without roost always good and we just never realized it, like how we found out last gen that future sight had actually been great for two generations before that?
blissey is going to drop so hard now that blood moon is gone.
I've run into it way back in gen 7 and yeah it was pretty good then even. Toxic Protect Gliscor has always been a menace. It was optionally good for certain teams if you wanted something like lando but able to take shrug off damage more easily. The sets that usually messed me up back then were the ones that didnt run roost and just toxic healed up
It FUCKING HAPPENED GOOD RIDDANCE YOU BITCH
BW1 Gliscor was notoriously quite good even without roost being compatible with Poison Heal, but I genuinely think part of it is just the conditions of the current metagame being so favourable to it tbh.
I'm gonna hop up on my soapbox for a second.
This generation has been mismanaged, and it's resulted in as thoroughly unbalanced and 'broken checks broken' meta. I don't blame tier leaders at all, they're doing exactly what's worked historically. They're not doing anything wrong. But that's the problem. Smogon's tiering systems were designed to handle power creep, not power-Usain-Bolt. And there wasn't enough adaption to that fact this generation. They're trying to handle a massive influx of huge problems with the old ways that don't work. There was some adaption, they are definitely freer with the banhammer than they've been in past generations, but that thing should be swinging like a judge trying to restore order.
Usraluna_B never should have been suspect tested. It should have been quick banned. Gliscor too. which is undoubtedly going to be the next suspect test, which is going to eat up another month. It's taking too long to progress through appetizers that should have been quickbanned and re-suspected later. We're almost a year into the generation, and we still haven't moved onto the main entree of Tera/Hazards/Screens yet because we're getting bogged down in stuff that should have be banned months ago. Instead we're progressing one at a time through broken mons praying that enough of the community doesn't fall for the 'broken checks broken' nature of the current format and leaves things legal that blatantly should not be legal.
We still have a massive backlog of mons with no clear counterplay besides 'use this other busted ass mon that also probably should be banned', and the fact that mons like Kingambit are being left in the tier genuinely on the back of 'well we need it to check 2 other things' should be a huge red flag. There are still like 4 mons outstanding that could easily eat quick bans and be retested later, and instead we're going to slowly plow through them one at a time and avoid the main entrees until the next DLC drops and we repeat the cycle all over again.
I feel like the smogon systems need a massive update. There needs to be far more aggressive action taken by the council, and 'quick ban into re-test' should at this point be the norm. I feel like the systems were never designed to handle DLC soft format resets, and it's causing major issues. There's a major aversion to using quick bans to address anything that isn't bannable beyond reasonable doubt, and that needs to change I think. Volcarona's ban was a great demonstration of this - it had huge backlash but it ultimately ended up being a great thing for the format. I think the council learned the wrong lesson from this ban. The lesson they learned was 'test anything even remotely controversial to avoid the community breaking out the torches and pitchforks' when the lesson they should have taken from it was 'we can aggressively create a better format without actually alienating our playerbase'. Because while a lot of people got mad about the Volcarona ban, it settled down after a couple of days, and I think most people now realize it was the correct call.
Suspect test should be used for stuff that barely scrapes over the finish line. If a mon is banned with say 85%+ of votes (arbitrary number ho), then it never should have been suspect tested in the first place. Suspect tests need to be reserved for mons that are 'we're not totally sure this is broken, what do you guys think' not 'we confident this is broken, but we'd like community backing before we act'. I understand why the council likes using suspect tests as reinforcement of their decision (because no one likes doing things then having to extinguish fires for the next 3 days) but at the end of the day, too much stuff is coming too fast for suspect tests to be used as they are now.
At least from my POV, this is where we stand right now
Quickbannable - Manaphy, Gliscor, Ogeron-Wellspring
Could be quick banned and you might get some heat for it but would generally make the format better - Kingambit, Iron Valiant, Gholdengo
Actual mons that suspect testing is fair game - Everything above if not quick banned, Garg, Dracapult (if enough stuff above it catch the ban bus. read - Kingambit), Ursaluna, etc.
System mechanics - Tera, Hazards, Screens.
Not to mention things that probably could be retested or need action if other things leave the tier.
That's 12 separate things that some kind of action needs to be considered on right now. Are we really gonna try to grind through all of them?
This generation has been mismanaged, and it's resulted in as thoroughly unbalanced and 'broken checks broken' meta. I don't blame tier leaders at all, they're doing exactly what's worked historically. They're not doing anything wrong. But that's the problem. Smogon's tiering systems were designed to handle power creep, not power-Usain-Bolt. And there wasn't enough adaption to that fact this generation. They're trying to handle a massive influx of huge problems with the old ways that don't work. There was some adaption, they are definitely freer with the banhammer than they've been in past generations, but that thing should be swinging like a judge trying to restore order.
Usraluna_B never should have been suspect tested. It should have been quick banned. Gliscor too. which is undoubtedly going to be the next suspect test, which is going to eat up another month. It's taking too long to progress through appetizers that should have been quickbanned and re-suspected later. We're almost a year into the generation, and we still haven't moved onto the main entree of Tera/Hazards/Screens yet because we're getting bogged down in stuff that should have be banned months ago. Instead we're progressing one at a time through broken mons praying that enough of the community doesn't fall for the 'broken checks broken' nature of the current format and leaves things legal that blatantly should not be legal.
We still have a massive backlog of mons with no clear counterplay besides 'use this other busted ass mon that also probably should be banned', and the fact that mons like Kingambit are being left in the tier genuinely on the back of 'well we need it to check 2 other things' should be a huge red flag. There are still like 4 mons outstanding that could easily eat quick bans and be retested later, and instead we're going to slowly plow through them one at a time and avoid the main entrees until the next DLC drops and we repeat the cycle all over again.
I feel like the smogon systems need a massive update. There needs to be far more aggressive action taken by the council, and 'quick ban into re-test' should at this point be the norm. I feel like the systems were never designed to handle DLC soft format resets, and it's causing major issues. There's a major aversion to using quick bans to address anything that isn't bannable beyond reasonable doubt, and that needs to change I think. Volcarona's ban was a great demonstration of this - it had huge backlash but it ultimately ended up being a great thing for the format. I think the council learned the wrong lesson from this ban. The lesson they learned was 'test anything even remotely controversial to avoid the community breaking out the torches and pitchforks' when the lesson they should have taken from it was 'we can aggressively create a better format without actually alienating our playerbase'. Because while a lot of people got mad about the Volcarona ban, it settled down after a couple of days, and I think most people now realize it was the correct call.
Suspect test should be used for stuff that barely scrapes over the finish line. If a mon is banned with say 85%+ of votes (arbitrary number ho), then it never should have been suspect tested in the first place. Suspect tests need to be reserved for mons that are 'we're not totally sure this is broken, what do you guys think' not 'we confident this is broken, but we'd like community backing before we act'. I understand why the council likes using suspect tests as reinforcement of their decision (because no one likes doing things then having to extinguish fires for the next 3 days) but at the end of the day, too much stuff is coming too fast for suspect tests to be used as they are now.
At least from my POV, this is where we stand right now
Quickbannable - Manaphy, Gliscor, Ogeron-Wellspring
Could be quick banned and you might get some heat for it but would generally make the format better - Kingambit, Iron Valiant, Gholdengo
Actual mons that suspect testing is fair game - Everything above if not quick banned, Garg, Dracapult (if enough stuff above it catch the ban bus. read - Kingambit), Ursaluna, etc.
System mechanics - Tera, Hazards, Screens.
Not to mention things that probably could be retested or need action if other things leave the tier.
That's 12 separate things that some kind of action needs to be considered on right now. Are we really gonna try to grind through all of them?
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It hasn't even been a month since DLC dropped and people are complaining that bans aren't happening quickly enough?
Yep. Because there is still too much outstanding right now, and the same argument was thrown around pre-DLC and we ended up never addressing a bunch of stuff that should have been addressed. The single biggest question of this entire generation (Tera) is still dodging action because there's too much in the format that's a problem with or without tera that has to be addressed to get a clear picture of the Tera issue.
Adapt or die. Normally banning 3 things inside of a month is a breakneck pace. In almost every other generation, it would be ludicrous. But that's not the world we live in right now. With the speed problems are being thrown around this gen, it's probably not fast enough.
Maybe DLCs should be treated more like game launches than format extensions. 3 Mons catching the bus to ubers inside of a week of a new generation isn't even uncommon. That feels more like the speed in which action should be taken on DLC issues.
Adapt or die. Normally banning 3 things inside of a month is a breakneck pace. In almost every other generation, it would be ludicrous. But that's not the world we live in right now. With the speed problems are being thrown around this gen, it's probably not fast enough.
Maybe DLCs should be treated more like game launches than format extensions. 3 Mons catching the bus to ubers inside of a week of a new generation isn't even uncommon. That feels more like the speed in which action should be taken on DLC issues.
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Hold on, stop reacting laugh emote, this guy is onto something
I agree we need more quickbans instead of suspects and volc quickban was good, but otherwise
Ursaluna isn't even good in the first place and all the quickban suggestions are laughable
So why is it not ok for the playerbase to adapt to the new meta?
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