Welcome to our first suspect test in... a while! Lilligant-Hisui was very recently the subject of a quickban vote from the RU Council, and only barely survived, with one vote keeping it RU. Therefore, we judge it appropriate for it to be suspected immediately.
Lilligant-H was until recently banned from UU, dropping alongside others with the inevitable power creep gifted to us by the DLCs. And so far, it's mostly done what it used to above. As a threat, Lilligant-H is, at first glance, extremely linear. Its movepool is fairly bare, heavily relying on its good but awkward stab combo alongside sometimes Ice Spinner, but more often Tera Blast, and more on that in a bit. What makes it cause so much ptsd to any long term RU player is the two traits we have been very familiar with: Victory Dance being essentially the same as Quiver Dance but boosting physical stats instead of specials, and Hustle boosting its power even further. But those would admittedly, probably still be ok if it was not for tera options. Because Lilligant-H, in its very short time in the tier, has shown way too many options there and it makes its supposed predictability far harder to handle. Tera Rock is fairly formidable offensively, pairing nicely with grass/fighting coverage, and has some defensive utility due to a flying resist. Tera Electric works similarly but also prevents twaves. Tera Fire allows you to boost further on Talonflame - the premier check to it that dropped at the same time - as unlike with rock you don't actually fear a burn. Tera Ground hits poisons way harder than anything else. Tera Steel and Tera Fairy are other good defensive options, though less good offensively and so you get a bit less from tera blast, but Tera Steel comes with the added bonus of preventing Fezandipiti shenanigans. Finally, this is a lesser point but with sun getting a boost from Ninetales dropping, Lilligant-H also established itself as a premier sun sweeper, with access to Chlorophyll boosting its speed higher than pretty much the entire tier. While it does lose a bit of power that way, Solar Blade's bp over Leaf Blade compensates for this, with Tera Blast Fire also getting a boost from the weather. For the ban sentiment, Lilligant-H just gets way too many options from Tera for a mon that already has excellent offensive stab moves and an even sillier setup move. In high stakes games, this lead to incredible variance on a mon that then does not need consistency at all, similarly to how Moltres-Galar dominated the one week it was allowed in SCL, as it had similar issues yet did not particularly cared about them in that context.
And yet, despite the ridiculous setup move and the multiple guessing games that comes with its tera options, Lilligant-H was not quickbanned. The others can feel free to add to why they voted that way, but I thought long and hard about my own vote on that one for a few reasons. First, Hustle is not a good ability. Yeah, I know, it does more damage. But missing safe moves is brutal, and Lilligant-H simply does not have the bulk to setup AND miss moves, even with a good defensive tera. This makes Wide Lens an almost must on it, despite still being somewhat unreliable, and that then makes hazards very annoying, or a bad scald, or just lacking the chance to have more power with a life orb or muscle band. Secondly, it's a hustle mon with very bad coverage. If you compare it to RU Favourite Durant, Durant could afford to run multiple sets and fit multiple archetypes with them, because it had really good coverage outside of its stabs - and in gen 8 First Impression for NO REASON - which allowed it to have more roles than simply setting up. But Lilligant-H has no real reason to run CB, because its stabs are very middling. You can run Healing Wish on Scarf, but that would realistically never be considered broken as a set, and an unreliable scarfer is a pain for multiple reasons. So it's mostly stuck with Victory Dance + tera, and that last part is, imo, very important. Lilligant-H fits way more on hyper offence teams that allow it to tera fairly regularly, because without it it runs a high risk of being extremely useless. For example, if you tera something else and the opponent still has a bulky poison, or the ability to tera a bulky water into poison, your sweeper is terrible. This is also somewhat true if you have the wrong tera for a matchup, but that always has more potential to be outplayed by the Lilligant-H user. So you can reasonably argue that Lilligant-H crosses the line from being tera reliant to flatout tera dependent, and whether or not that is enough to make it stay RU is up to you.
Anyway, if there's more to it, let us know in the comment section, but I was trying to bring a more balanced view of the issues surrounding that mon. So up to the community now! Tagging Kris and Marty to announce it on the RU ladder, thank you both!
| GXE | minimum games |
| 78 | 50 |
| 78.2 | 49 |
| 78.4 | 48 |
| 78.6 | 47 |
| 78.8 | 46 |
| 79 | 45 |
| 79.2 | 44 |
| 79.4 | 43 |
| 79.6 | 42 |
| 79.8 | 41 |
| 80 | 40 |
| 80.2 | 39 |
| 80.4 | 38 |
| 80.6 | 37 |
| 80.8 | 36 |
| 81 | 35 |
| 81.2 | 34 |
| 81.4 | 33 |
| 81.6 | 32 |
| 81.8 | 31 |
| 82 | 30 |
Suspect information:
- There will be no draws allowed for any potential qualifiers. If you qualify with draws, your suspect requirements will not count, and you will not be allowed to vote. There is no way to actively enforce ties to prevent abuse, so they will be disallowed. Use stall at your own risk.
- All games must be played on the Pokémon Showdown! RU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "RUL2 (nickname)”. For example, RUL2 Durant2 or RUL2 STOPMISSING.
- Do NOT impersonate other people in your ladder alt, do NOT use any usernames which are offensive, flame-baiting, or targeting specific users, and do NOT use usernames which could be interpreted as breaking any of the username rules on Pokémon Showdown! Failure to abide to this will result in you being barred from voting in this suspect, and potential infractions.
- The suspect test will last for two weeks, ending on Thursday, November 16th. 9:59pm - 5
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