Round 4 OU B/W suspects

[Dark Azelf]

Ok the nominations are in from smogon;

The non-Pokemon Suspects this round will be Sand Stream, Drizzle, and Drought.

The Pokemon Suspects this round will be Deoxys-e, Latios, Garchomp, Thundurus and Excadrill.

Please be aware that if Sand Stream is banned, Excadrill will be taken off the ballot. In addition, if Drizzle is banned, Manaphy will be added to the ballot.

While I recognize that there was significant support for a ban of Shell Smash + Baton Pass ("SmashPass"), I am adamantly opposed to the institution of another complex ban. We considered adding Gorebyss, Huntail and Smeargle to the ballot, but ultimately were uncomfortable with putting Pokemon on the ballot that were not specifically named in the nomination thread.

Discuss ?

 

[Vrai]

Deo-s and Latios are stupidly good. They get their jobs done and the only thing that like checks Latios is SpD Jirachi (Bliss loses to a well-timed Psyshock) and even that is stuffed by Trick. Scarfchomp and Ice-type priority are like literally the only other ways to force it out and those are insanely easy to see coming. Deo-s is just impossible to prevent from setting up - Prankster Taunts are obvious and it gets done what it needs to get done.

Sand Veil is the only broken thing about Garchomp. Thundurus isn't broken, it has plenty of reliable checks etc. Plus priority rages it. We've already discussed how broken Excadrill is not. I don't see how people keep nomming it suspect, lol.

Weathers are a little more disconcerting, but I honestly believe that Drizzle is broken and Drought would be for sure if left to its own devices (ie no other weathers), plus it eats up most non-weather teams anyway. Sand Stream...

 

[Dark Azelf]

I fail to see how weather is broken honestly. Especially Sandstream lmao. :\

Im currently using a non weather team to mess around with and you know, it hasn't lost once out of about 25 ladder games and ive beaten a few top ten players with it in addition. Its not even anti weather for christs sake.

So im pretty much going to go out on a limb and say people basically cannot team build at all. If im winning with non weather...then wow, just wow lol.

People need to stop voting for Excadrill also. SHUT UP ITS NOT BROKEN, IT NEVER EVEN HITS LIKE 40% MAJORITY WHEN VOTED ON AND ITS NOT GOING TO BE BANNED WHILST WE HAVE GOOD PLAYERS VOTING. -_-

I also love the double standards and "Oh no we cannot do more complex bans even though a crap load of people voted on it."

That being said, if alot of these pass (mainly weather) im just going to play ubers/uu/ru. OU and its suspect tests are a utter total mess.

 

[Vrai]

I also love the double standards and "Oh no we cannot do more complex bans even though a crap load of people voted on it."

That being said, if alot of these pass (mainly weather) im just going to play ubers/uu/ru. OU and its suspect tests are a utter total mess.

tbqh i'd rather see smashpass banned > weather :/

 

[Spinosaurus]

Banning weather is ridiculous imo. Idk and idc about Drizzle and Drought but Sand Stream is not broken. At all.
Despite how much I fear it, I don't think Exca is broken. We got some reliable checks like Rotom-W and Conkeldurr.
Like Vrai said, the only thing broken about Chomp is Sand Veil. :\

 

[altaria221]

I'm with you Azelf. I'm able to take down a lot of weather teams pretty easily, and i don't like using weather in the first place. Whenever i do happen to use weather (Rain team seeing as i've failed to make a successful Sun or Sand team) the main reason i win is people are unwilling to switch around to really counter and get set up on.

Excadrill is surprisingly frail, seeing as Sucker Punch from my Bisharp is normally able to take care of it after a little prior damage (with SD's up of course.) Lets not mention the other pokemon that can easily handle it...Landorus, Balloon Heatran, Conkeldurr, Gliscor, etc.

Rain is sometimes a little trickier considering there are more than just one speed doubler thanks to the abundance of Swift Swim and Hydration on Vaporeon and Lapras. But one well played Gyara can even rip through these guys, not to mention grass and electric types can typically cause havoc.

Sun is the easiest to counter, so i won't go into talking about it.

Deoxys-E? I don't have too much trouble with it, mainly because the majority of my teams don't have a big fear of hazards. But I would agree, it is really good and always capable of getting its job done.

Latios..I've countered plenty of these before, but lately they seem to be getting harder and harder to counter. 130 Sp Atk, and 110 Sp Def and Spd stat is pretty hard to counter.

 

[Khreep]

I don't claim to have followed metagame trends very closely this generation, but here's what I think. First -- the gen 5 metagame is exciting. It involves way more thinking and planning in both team building and gameplay as one or two wrong moves can result in a loss due to an overall increased power in sweepers. It is way different from the FWG teams found at the end of the watered down gen 4 metagame. In short, "excitement" is formed from the strategic emphasis of the current game.

Generation 5 is not Generation 4. Maybe permanent weather should be embraced as a new era in pokemon battling as opposed to being viewed as a potential game breaker. This statement begs the question, "What exactly is the end result that smogon has in mind with this testing?" The very definition of a suspect needs to change given the new weather abilities. (I won't dig into that as the discussion is irrelevant to the thread... though the answer is completely appropriate) Weather has brought viability to many more pokemon that can play more comfortably against these so-called "suspects". For example, in rain, a pokemon like starmie can pose a considerable threat to those listed in the OP (barring that monster scarf latios)

I think the drizzle + swift swim ban is an example of a "correct" suspect test/ban because there were too many strong swimmers (coupled with hydration manaphy) that boosted rain to an obviously higher position over the other two weather effects. Now that swift swim is no longer allowed with drizzle, rain is a more strategic effect (boosting water moves, halving fire type attacks, increasing certain moves' accuracies) where abilities such as hydration, rain dish, and dry skin can be used effectively but can still be overcome.


Shellsmashing is very broken but I'm not sure I agree with cries to ban (excuse me, "test") that specific combination. I think, however, that white herb could be safely removed from play (meaning other strategies would not be affected) making shell smashing riskier and easier to overcome.

No longer is pokemon about finding the biggest and baddest monster and abusing it until it is banned. Weather provides a serious checks-and-balance system for this metagame and it should not be removed.

 

[Ooka]

I think they should just ban a combination of Chlorophyll and sun, as they did with rain. Sand Rush pokemon aren't that great anyways aside from Excadrill, who is pretty easily beaten, so sun would be my only complaint. once Venu gets a growth in, with it's pretty good coverage and the speed, it can tend to do quite a number to me, and the game shouldn't suck for me (Or anyone else) just because I (Or again, anyone else) don't have top par team building skills. :/

Haxchomp is too much imo. same goes for Latios and Deo-S (Only due to it's movepool, imho). Thundurus is just fine

 

[.Aero]

The only things I want to see gone are Deo-S and Latios. The Garchomp ban is laughable, and I'm betting the only reason they nominated him was because he's the butt end of SmashPass teams all too often, along with the fact that subbing and getting lucky misses due to sand veil can be annoying. Don't ban Garchomp. Ban Sand Veil if you have to. :/

I agree. Excadrill has hit this point where I want to know who is nominating him. ~__~ He's not that good. Hell, Slowbro can beat him with Scald/Surf after taking a +2 X-Scissor. I think people need to start preparing for threats like Excadrill and realize that just because you have to prepare for him doesn't mean he's centralizing (sounds contradictory, but let me finish). By preparing for Excadrill, you'll be preparing for quite a few other top-tier threats. Slapping Aqua Jet on a pokemon lets you handle Volcarona, Landorus, etc with ease. Mach Punch needs no explanation if you ask me. With Drizzle/Sun you shouldn't have to really worry about Excadrill if you're smart enough to not ditch your weather starter at the beginning of the match. It's just bothering me. Leave him be. V_V

Thundurus...ehh...I'm not too sure anymore. He's a scary sweeper after an NP and quite literally nothing can wall him, except like...Blissey. The only hope of beating this guy is a revenge killer like Mamo it seems, except they sometimes carry a priority Thunder Wave that can knock your scarfers around and make them useless. Despite this though, I've never really had problems with him when I spent enough time constructing a team, so if I had voting rights, I'd probably refrain as all my opposition to him spawns from theorymon, and not from experience.

 

[Ooka]

Yeah, I would agree more with a Sand Veil chomp ban, as he isn't scary at all without it.

 

[Cycle]

sand veil chomp means banning chomp though because he doesn't have a dw ability yet lol.


Anyways, I really only want Thundurus to be banned, np is crapping all over my team and I cant do anything to it. >_>

tbh I think smog needs to let the metagame stabilize and stop banning everything

 

[Ooka]

I'm just honestly curious what the B/W metagame would be without weather. Just kind of takes the fun out of it when you see basically the same 18 Pokemon (6 each time obviously) in each battle. :/ But at the same time the high power is pretty fun, and I think we'd lose a lot of that with losing weather.

 

[Vrai]

Slapping Aqua Jet on a pokemon lets you handle Volcarona, Landorus, etc with ease.

Actually in sun a bulky variant of Volcarona can take Aqua Jets easy and Morning Sun off the damage. ;x

Also the only reason Garchomp is up is because of Sand Veil. Literally everyone who nommed him was like "ya good and all but Sand Veil pushes him over the edge" etc. Otherwise there's -nothing- broken about him imo.

 

[wolf]

I'm just honestly curious what the B/W metagame would be without weather. Just kind of takes the fun out of it when you see basically the same 18 Pokemon (6 each time obviously) in each battle. :/ But at the same time the high power is pretty fun, and I think we'd lose a lot of that with losing weather.

if i recall correctly it was the same in 4th gen, with heatran, scizor, tyranitar, shaymin, starmie, dragonite, etc being all very common and usually always on every team. and that was with no weather abusing at all, bar the uncommon rain or sand teams. i'm sure it would be like this regardless if weather was banned, or really anything. in every metagame there will be those popular pokémon that everyone constantly uses (correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't remember 4th gen uu/nu being much different).

 

[Vrai]

if i recall correctly it was the same in 4th gen, with heatran, scizor, tyranitar, shaymin, starmie, dragonite, etc being all very common and usually always on every team. and that was with no weather abusing at all, bar the uncommon rain or sand teams. i'm sure it would be like this regardless if weather was banned, or really anything. in every metagame there will be those popular pokémon that everyone constantly uses (correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't remember 4th gen uu/nu being much different).

the trick is to be imaginative and find creative ways to break the norm. ;) there are always pokemon that are consistently good like wolf said but there are always creative people that come up with interesting ways to win, and i guess that's what competitive pokemon is about - using a mix of creativity and consistency to make a team and then simply be able to outplay everyone else.

at least right now we have variety between the weathers even though ninetales sucks and drizzletoed/ttar dominate and abomasnow is derp. ;x

 

[champagnepapi]

I think Garchomp should be taken off of the ballot as well as Excadrill, if Sand Stream is to be banned. It's not the sheer power of it that's hated, it's the fact that Ice Beam doesn't confirm Chompy's death, because it may miss. I'm hoping Deoxys-E is banned, same goes for Latios. I don't mind the former as a lead, but it's deadly, late-game.

 

[Vrai]

I think Garchomp should be taken off of the ballot as well as Excadrill, if Sand Stream is to be banned. It's not the sheer power of it that's hated, it's the fact that Ice Beam doesn't confirm Chompy's death, because it may miss. I'm hoping Deoxys-E is banned, same goes for Latios. I don't mind the former as a lead, but it's deadly, late-game.

yeah, but they won't do that as excadrill is mediocre outside of sand whereas garchomp is still actually very very good. and deo-s is still stupidly good as a lead

 

[flamehaze94]

Dude, Manaphy in OU again would be killer. Though I'm really in the "Don't ban anything" boat, I'd love to abuse +3 Surfs even without Rain.

 

[Skip Shot]

Ok why all 3 weathers are in suspect.... ummmm no lol.

Also I seriously seriously am shocked that people are still voting for Excadrill for suspect. We've kinda shut it down 3 times now, guys, it's not going anywhere. (Smogon should seriously make a rule: ok if it goes down twice in suspect voting within one gaming era [aka when the next new games come out same gen or not] it can't get voted on till the next era).

To be honest I don't actually see the suspect viability of a lot of these pokes, they mostly are defeatable in wifi. Deoxys would be the only thing I would want to see banned because of its ridiculous power/speed/ ability to do whatever it wants lol.

Ok why Thundurus? It's pretty defeatable, I mean seriously it can Taunt or it has its Nasty Plot set and that's pretty much it. Nasty Plot is beatable and Taunt set even more so lol.

Garchomp... um yea its pretty checkable and with all the steels in the metagame and balloons and stuff it makes it harder for it to accomplish things with Outrage.

And... why would Manaphy be added to the suspect list if Drizzle is banned? wouldn't it be able to accomplish less because it loses a constant source for Hydration and boosted Surfs and stuff?

 

[Dark Azelf]

Reach apparently leaked on the server that all of the weather stays (thank god), but we'll have to wait to see if this is true lol.