Suspects & Bans & Bears, oh my!

As this is vital to our competitive community im going to post this thread to keep you all updated on the suspect testing and bans and for some cute discussion.

Phillip7086 of Smogon said:

Drizzle: 24 Bans, 17 Do Not Bans, and 9 Abstains (58.5%)
Inconsistent: 48 Bans, 2 Do Not Bans, and 0 Abstains (96%)
Shadow Tag: 17 Bans, 22 Do Not Bans, and 11 Abstains (43.6%)

Starting next suspect test, Inconsistent will be banned from standard play, Drizzle will be put on notice to be voted on again at the end of Round 2, and Shadow Tag remains free to use however people please. I will be posting the Pokemon suspect voting thread shortly, where every qualified voter should have access (and I won't have to manually do an hour of extra work just to count PM ballots and quote them here -__-).

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Drizzle is still suspect whilst Inconsistent is NOW OFFICIALLY BANNED. Shadow Tag on the other hand is not banned.

Pokemon yet to be voted on said:

Darkrai
Deoxys-A
Deoxys-N
Doryuuzu
Latios
Manaphy
Shaymin-S

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I for one am happy Drizzle didn't get banned, its really not uber lol. :/ I dont particularly care about Shadow Tag untill Shandera is released because well Wob is mediocre anyway with the Encore nerf this gen which stops one of its best tactics, Ticke + Pursuit from working. Custap Berry isnt out yet either so cant even do Custap Destiny Bond so its stuck in mediocrity untill it is released. The biggest one im pleased about is Inconsistent getting banned, took no skill, could bring you back from a 6-1 deficit and just all around didnt add ANYTHING to the game apart from luck. -_-

Discuss ? thoughts ? ^^

I'm hoping dory gets banned, or if they do the whole ability banning thing like I guess they have with inconsistent, I hope the sand throw trait gets banned. With two weather inducers that are much better standalone pokes than Ninetales/Politoed, its way more dangerous than Kabutops. I think its on par with Kingdra in terms of being a threat in weather, but as there is so much more sand around, it is easier for dory to set up and sweep.

I haven't made a team yet without thinking about dory and at least putting a check or revenger (Mach punch/Aqua jet etc), which I dont have to (imo) do for any other one pokemon. Without mole, I think the metagame would be more open and varied, with other pokes having more of a chance to be used, and different styles of teams would be tried out more often.

^ Dory is centralizing basically.

I think Latios and Deoxys N aren't ubers. The rest are.

Thing is though i just dont think dory is uber nor do i see how. It has plenty of things that beat it (just check my threat list, those are just off the top of my head). Also i never got the logic behind saying that you have to put in a check or revenger for Dory. I mean couldn't "Dory" be replaced for anything from Luvdisc to Gyarados lol ?

I kinda think people moaning about Dory is just laziness on the team builders part, i mean for obviously uber things like Manaphy you cant really cover it, but with Dory you can easily on any team style so i really don't get why people moan about it so much. This is not Salamence in gen 4 where it can 2hko everything in the game so i just...dont get it lol

I'm happy that Inconsistent got banned because I lost a battle due to a Smeargle picking up some evasion boosts from it.

Ooka said:

Again, that's my personal opinion, and I'm no expert so it might just be me irritated at a Pokemon, but I feel I have to go out of my way on every team just so I don't get swept by it, especially since sand is my weather of choice.

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You don't carry a Balloon Dory yourself so you can revenge it?

Personally, I feel that there's a wide variety of checks to both types of weather, and I find myself winning against them more often than not (at least, until elf runs one).

Inconsistent ban pretty much made me more keen to play since it sounds like a complete and utter ***** to play against, and as long as it was around I just didn't want anything to do with competitive.

Drizzle I'm sorta surprised about, especially after last gen's Lv1 Kyogre being broken (and Lv100 Politoed is far better than Lv1 Kyogre), but oh well. It just means you really need a rain check or two; I'm afraid that 5th gen OU will be like 4th gen UU though. :/

Darkrai
Deoxys-A
Deoxys-N
Doryuuzu
Latios
Manaphy
Shaymin-S

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Of these, Darkrai, Deoxys and Shaymin-s are pretty much easy decisions. Doryuuzu is probably only slightly less overcentralising than Garchomp was in 4th gen OU, so I kinda hope it gets the boot. Manaphy... Well, with Drizzle still around it'll probably get the boot since +3 sweeping with auto-recovery is just too good. Latios isn't half as broken as the rest imo.

I haven't played 5th gen much but that's just some thoughts.

Personally, I don't find Dory scary. I've used it (personally, I don't think of myself as bad) and it's not as threatening as you'd like it if it's not being supported by sand, which my team isn't. If it is, well, that simply makes it a lot more specialised, making it more like Kabutops or Ludicolo than Garchomp :x Whereas Garchomp in Gen IV was deadly outside sandstorm and only got a little harder in it, Dory isn't nearly as scary unsupported. It's only got 88 base speed, after all.

And if you tie Dory closer to Sandstorm, it becomes easy enough to beat. I mean, having team members specially for Dory makes it overcentralisation, but having a pokemon to counter an archetype... :x

Drizzle I'm honestly on the fence about. At least in 4th gen rain wasn't as powerful due to no Drizzle users outside of Ubers and the fact that the rain was limited. Now both of those things have changed. My concerns are that rain is going to become over-centralizing since it's ridiculously easy to use now, and this pretty much forces you to bring at least 1-2 weather counters. As the metagame settles down, it's hard to tell whether it's going to be a problem or not, but rain is definitely going to be used a lot more.

Darkrai
Deoxys-A
Deoxys-N
Doryuuzu
Latios
Manaphy
Shaymin-S

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The first three I definitely support for Ubers. Dory, I haven't really encountered any huge problems with it, and it certainly has many checks. Latios...It's hard to say, they banned Latias last generation mostly due to its Specs set, meanwhile Latios has a significantly more powerful Draco Meteor without even having to be choiced. That said, it can be played around if you know what you're doing. Manaphy, forget it with Drizzle in OU. And Shaymin-S will just do the same crap it did last generation, so it's probably gone too.

Funny how if they ban Dory ill just use Sandslash. LO hits harder than Balloon and im more than content enough with 502 speed (aka lol scarfers) in SS so i mean its not as if people actually gain anything by banning Dory. Slash also doesn't roll over to Mach Punch and has a higher net damage output thanks to Stone Edge.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if all those nominated Pokemon get banned. While I think Latios, Dory and Drizzle aren't as powerful as they are made out to be, last gen has shown that anything put under suspect gets banned, if not now then next round, or the round after.

Though I wouldn't mind playing 5th Gen once the "obvious" ones like Darkrai, Inconsistent and Skymin are banned. After this round , I predict people will nominate Drizzle, Drought, Wobbuffet, Garchomp, Salamence, Latias, Mew, Deoxys-S, Kyurem and possibly Sazandora and Landlos for suspect, and then I'll probably quit for good if that happens as this gen will quickly turn into 4th Gen 2.0. Of course I would completely disagree if any of these are nominated and banned but that doesn't mean I don't see it happening sooner or later.

Wow, I didn't expect Latios and Doryuuzu to not even get a simple majority.

Surprising result.

Sorta surprised about Dory, but the rest I'm not (except perhaps Manaphy not getting the boot straight away).

LOL unanimous on Skymin.

Not too surprised about Dory. It's fairly easy to stop compared the stuff that was voted with super majority.

Live_Wire466 said:

I was surprised to see Latios not banned. It's been awhile, but I always remembered Soul Dew Lati@s (mostly Latios) shredding people. But now I can use it again, so it's whatever.

Also, I didn't see that unanimous vote on Skymin coming, or at least the vote being unanimous like that. I thought there would be a few not bans/abstains in there somewhere.

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Soul Dew is still banned on it just fyi.