Regarding Vigoroth: it is a very dangerous sweeper which has to be played carefully, and does require strain when teambuilding, however it does have many ways to stop it from setting up/after it has set up. I dont want to make a big post regarding this, but i will say now that I highly doubt we will do a suspect before the tier shifts, as there will be several big additions, including stuff like pawniard and primeape which can check vig (and might be broken themselves @_@). Instead, I will use this post to talk about the metagame, as that is the point of this thread.
Firstly, I have been playing with defensive teams a lot more, and I currently feel that the biggest problem to these teams is Roselia. The reason Roselia is so amazing in this tier is due to its ability to take advantage of passive things and easily set up entry hazards. This is a huge issue for bulkier teams as often 4 or so members don't have a way of offensively pressuring roselia which allows it to easily set up many hazards, which ultimately leads to the defensive backbone falling to offensive pressure. Obviously a way around this would be hazard control, however that can be counterproductive with the teams own Roselia, and is also not as easy as to put on a defog user then defog stuff. Vullaby is significantly the best defogger, imo, due to its nice bulk and typing, however that dislikes taking a poison from sludge bomb due to lack of lefties, and it also struggles to pressure back if not running knock off (or even brave bird if ur that kind of person). Pelipper and Vibrava are the other Defog users, and the former is quite passive and it struggles with every hazard setter, whereas Vibrava is fairly frail and very weak. Avalugg is an alright Rapid Spin user but it applies almost no pressure and cannot get momentum with u-turn unlike all the defoggers. Despite all their flaws, defensive teams should really be running some sort of hazard removal, or at least a way to bait or pressure Roselia so it cannot set up too many hazards.
Unrelated to my last paragraph, but recently I have noticed that balanced is becoming the main (well more popular) playstyle. These teams are mostly just several defensive Pokemon to try to cover the metagame (Stunfisk, Roselia, and Relicanth are the most common), along with the standard offensive ones (Floatzel, Zebstrika, etc). Balance teams do have a similar issue with hazard stacking that more defensive teams do, as with several layers of spikes stronger mons can easily break through, however these teams do not rely on bulk as much so even if their defensive part of the team breaks, they can still win with offensive Pokemon. Balance teams do have better ways with dealing with Vigoroth slower wallbreakers like Stoutland, as wallbreakers are revenge killed easily, whereas Vigoroth can be dealt with by Chatot or a fast Encore, etc. The most frustrating thing for me when trying to build balance, is that I can never manage to check everything that I want to without resorting to a really fat team. For more offensively based balanced teams often players will use 'blanket check' Pokemon, ie ones that can check pretty much every common physical or special attacker, such as Grumpig, rather than more specific pokes, like Metang which is more used for checking Normal and Psychics. Also I have noticed that pretty much every balanced team has a Roselia, as Spikes are just that amazing (also walls a decent amount). Currently I prefer using more offensively based balance teams, as having many ways to pressure the opponent is really nice.
Also remember that this thread isn't just for discussing suspects, so please talk about the metagame here!
