Blaziken

Status
Not open for further replies.
As you all know, Blaziken was a borderline viable Pokemon since it's inception, up until gaining Speed Boost in BW. At that point, it was pretty much instantly quickbanned without giving it much of a chance.

Pretty much everyone agreed with it, bar the purists who opposed simply because it was a starter. And in all honesty, in BW, the ban is probably legitimate and justified (I don't play enough BW to confirm myself). However, it stayed banned in the transition over to XY, and later to ORAS, without having its legitimacy in standard brought into question. Everyone just seemed to assume it was borked AF enough to where even considering dropping it was ludicrous.

Reincarnating the blazin' kickin' chicken might not be as far out there as it would seem at first. Sure, Speed Boost + Swords Dance along with a powerful Flare Blitz and decent offensive typing make it look like the 6-0er of legends, but after re-learning the metagame after taking a small break, I noticed that the meta appeared surprisingly accepting for something considered an Uber.

(If Punchshroom can ask for an Arceus-Bug suspect, then I can ask for a blaziken suspect. At least I think it works that way.)

Looking at the current OU VR, I'm seeing a decent amount of Pokemon that would be able to match up well versus the bird. In terms of counters, I'm seeing Azumarill, Tankchomp, Landorus-T, Rotom-W, Mega Latias, Slowbro, Mega Altaria, Hippowdon, Starmie, and Mega Slowbro, all in the A ranks. Some of them can be lured with the correct Hidden Power, such as HP Elec for Azu/bro/mbro, HP Grass for Washtom, HP Ice for tankchomp/landog, but with all of these counters being pretty popular picks in certain playstyles bar Mega Altaria, Blaziken is going to get itself hardwalled by something.

For the checks, you have Keldeo, Mega Diancie, Latios, Manaphy, Talonflame, Mega Pinsir, and Mega Venusaur (dies to sludge bomb + FB recoil) within S/A, with some of them assuming that said Pokemon are at full health. Talonflame in particular becomes highly relevant, as Blaziken's presence would drop Tyranitar's usage and therefore freeing up Talonflame teams a ton.

Obviously, there are other checks and counters with lower rankings - Gyarados comes to mind - but I'm emphasizing the high-level checks and counters simply because they're more likely to be used. I'm trying to make the point that the metagame is already prepared enough to keep Blaziken from being completely bonkers, without hyperspecializing it, and metagame shifts to cover it would be bite-sized, although the overall metagame impact would be too broad to speculate on bar a suspect test.

One last thing to mention is just how easily Blaziken gets worn down. With the combination of Life Orb, Flare Blitz, and entry hazards, as well as its general frailty, Blaziken has a hard time simply keeping itself alive long enough, meaning it will most likely be used almost exclusively by Hyper Offense. The necessity of running Protect also gives the opponent a strong chance to bring in a check or a counter while Blaziken is protecting, sometimes putting Blaziken in a lose/lose situation if the opponent played well enough. Speaking of which, Blaziken has some pretty bad 4MSS - it ABSOLUTELY NEEDS protect if it wants to do anything vs. offense, and it wants dual stab, knock off, Stone Edge, Poison Jab, HP Ice, HP Elec Swords Dance, etc. It doesn't help that it has an extremely hard time setting up a Swords Dance - to put it in perspective, Mega Absol has a better chance of setting one up, since it at least has priority and magic bounce on its side.

Lastly, I will have to say that since there is no evidence to back this up and that this is complete theorymonning, it's possible I could be blatantly wrong about this entire thing, and ends up being the most broken and terrifying thing to roam the tier since the likes of Mega Salamence. But there's no real way to get reliable metagame information outside of suspects, as custom games would be more heavily biased than any suspect ladder. A tour might work, but it would be a small sample size and still slightly more biased. And at any rate, I'm not in any position to host a tour myself, so it would have been basically impossible for me to get any reliable evidence to support my claim. If anything, I want a suspect test more to get the necessary data to come to a solid conclusion.

Suspect testing, if it ever happens, would obviously come after a decent cooldown period after the current hoopa suspect, probably a good chunk longer if it actually does get banned so the metagame can settle.
 
Okay, sorry for leaving you guys in the dark after AFD. I was going camping and thought I would have service, which I obviously didn't. On phone rn so ill elaborate later, but this was half april fools joke (first letter of each column) and half serious. Some serious discussion would be nice, even if it's all completely debunking my opinion. I figured I was missing some key points in the first place anyway.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

This user has a custom title
is a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Okay, sorry for leaving you guys in the dark after AFD. I was going camping and thought I would have service, which I obviously didn't. On phone rn so ill elaborate later, but this was half april fools joke (first letter of each column) and half serious. Some serious discussion would be nice, even if it's all completely debunking my opinion. I figured I was missing some key points in the first place anyway.
The fact that there isn't any discussion, that you have 60+ likes, and that a post from an OUTL saying they'll consider this has 30+ should tell you that people are on board with this and wondering why no one thought to do it sooner.
 

AM

is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
LCPL Champion
The fact that there isn't any discussion, that you have 60+ likes, and that a post from an OUTL saying they'll consider this has 30+ should tell you that people are on board with this and wondering why no one thought to do it sooner.
or people realized it was an april fools joke and played along with it.

PDCs statement is more of a consideration than any sort of confirmation so I'd take it lightly.
 

tennisace

not quite too old for this, apparently
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Researcher Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnus
or people realized it was an april fools joke and played along with it.

PDCs statement is more of a consideration than any sort of confirmation so I'd take it lightly.
don't joke about shit like this, especially in a post with no indication it isn't serious. don't give me that "hurr durr check the date" shit either; this is a serious forum and should be treated as such (even more than insidescoop).
 

Texas Cloverleaf

This user has a custom title
is a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
or people realized it was an april fools joke and played along with it.

PDCs statement is more of a consideration than any sort of confirmation so I'd take it lightly.
Yes, I would have thought that him using the word "consider" meant that it was being "considered" as opposed to "confirmed."

That being said, it does suggest that people realize that it makes a certain degree of sense and the quick post would suggest that it's a reasonable suggestion to consider.

Besides, April Fools joke or not if the shoe fits...
 

AM

is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
LCPL Champion
don't joke about shit like this, especially in a post with no indication it isn't serious. don't give me that "hurr durr check the date" shit either; this is a serious forum and should be treated as such (even more than insidescoop).
Ok relax it was an April Fools joke evident by the post itself so I don't understand why you're getting riled up. If this is a serious forum it should've been deleted in the first place even on the day of the thread itself being posted. Don't pin the blame on me when I just specifically said it was something brought up amongst the OU council, in a serious manner mind you, and I think the comments after it treated the thread as a joke along with PDCs largely vague comment without any clarification after that.
 

tennisace

not quite too old for this, apparently
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Researcher Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnus
Ok relax it was an April Fools joke evident by the post itself so I don't understand why you're getting riled up. If this is a serious forum it should've been deleted in the first place even on the day of the thread itself being posted. Don't pin the blame on me when I just specifically said it was something brought up amongst the OU council, in a serious manner mind you, and I think the comments after it treated the thread as a joke along with PDCs largely vague comment without any clarification after that.
I'm not pinning any blame on you. The thread is written seriously enough to where it wasn't totally ridiculous to assume it was legit. If the OU council is willing to seriously discuss this then it should stay open, if not then it should be closed with reasoning why.

edit@below: ok, then lets actually discuss it then
 
Last edited:

AM

is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
LCPL Champion
Talenheim

I'd be ok with this if we there weren't other issues people want to arguably suspect and see removed before any sort of retest. I also think the system in its current state is really flawed to be endorsing a suspect these days let alone a retest, which is where some of my hesitations come from every time we go for a suspect test. The OU community tend to have a pretty negative mantra associated with retesting at sort of the "wrong time" I guess you would call it. Aegislash is an example of the wrong time in a state of the metagame where Landorus was more or less slated to be suspect and removed out of the tier. Then there's the whole STAG + M-Sableye drama (and we're still dealing with people complaining about M-Sableye granted it's a minority). We sort of just got to the point where Hoopa-U maintained enough presence in the tier to entertain a suspect based on gaining more tournament usage and relevancy. I think Blaziken falls under that "wrong time" picture as well because there's been complaints about a variety of stuff and the last thing I want to be doing is retesting stuff when debatably broken or unhealthy (subjective I know) stuff is in the tier. OU suspects a hold a pretty high amount of scrutiny already and I don't feel comfortable doing re-tests such as Blaziken at this point in time.

That's my opinion on this subject at the moment, and yes people bring up Blaziken a lot for more or less the reasons that was mentioned in the serious parts of this thread, so this isn't exactly a new thing other than it's now being more open to public interpretation.
 

Reymedy

ne craint personne
is a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
Pretty much everyone agreed with it, bar the purists who opposed simply because it was a starter. And in all honesty, in BW, the ban is probably legitimate and justified (I don't play enough BW to confirm myself). However, it stayed banned in the transition over to XY, and later to ORAS, without having its legitimacy in standard brought into question. Everyone just seemed to assume it was borked AF enough to where even considering dropping it was ludicrous.
Well, that's obviously a joke, however I just wanted to point out that this was a wrong statement. Blaziken-M was allowed in OU for some time (just like Gengar-M, Kangashkan-M or even Salamence-M). So yea, it's not even true to say that this has not been given a slight chance.
And yes it was broken, haha funny!

edit: and half of your "counters" are not counters so
 
Last edited:

Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
is a Site Content Manageris a Battle Simulator Administratoris a Programmeris a Pokemon Researcheris an Administrator
Creator of PS
This is a whole lot of unnecessary discussion about whether or not this is serious.

Okay, here's the plan: I close this thread, and if someone makes a new thread on Blaziken, everyone agrees that posts in that thread will be 100% serious, and Likes will be counted as non-joke Likes. Cool?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top