UU Nomination Thread 8

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reachzero

the pastor of disaster
is a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
It's the time you've all been waiting for! The time has come to choose new BL Suspects based on Smogon's criteria for banning Pokemon from a metagame. As a reminder, these criteria are:

Quote:
Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is BL if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is BL if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.

Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is BL if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.

  1. You can nominate as many suspects as possible, provided you give good reasoning. Please Bold the Pokemon you nominate as Suspects.
  2. While we will not be imposing a limitation on the number of Suspects you choose to nominate, we ask you to keep it to a reasonable number of nominations in your post.
  3. Use your own reasoning and not something like "I believe that Cherrim is BL because reachzero says so".
  4. You can't nominate against a Pokemon, that is, you can't say "I don't want Typhlosion to be a Suspect".
  5. Do not reply to other people's posts in this topic.
  6. Depending on the quality of your arguments, your vote might not be counted. However, votes will be evaluated on a less technical, more common-sense basis than in previous Suspect nominations.
  7. Only make one post. Edit all your Suspect nominations into that post.
  8. Any posts that aren't nominating suspects will be deleted.
  9. If you have any questions, please PM JabbaTheGriffin or reachzero.
  10. Votes will not be counted until after this thread is closed.
  11. While any and all users are open to nominations we ask for the sake of the integrity of the process that these votes be based on adequate experience and testing. Unlike previous tests, we will be utilizing Suspect Experience data (SEXP), so please do not attempt to nominate a Pokemon that you have not used or played against.
  12. Don't be afraid to nominate Pokemon that have already been nominated.
  13. It is an acceptable vote to bold vote "no Suspects". If you believe strongly that there are no Suspects in the current UU metagame, you may vote for no Pokemon to be Suspects.
  14. Nominations close July 28th.
 

yond

mitt game strong
is a Three-Time Past WCoP Champion
The metagame hasn't change at all so I'm sticking to no suspects the same as last time.

"no dominant play styles or an overused amount of pokemon to counter 1 mon."
 

Bartman101

Banned deucer.
I play in UU quite often, and I believe that as last time, there are no suspects.

I believe it will stay like that until heracross drops down from OU (If it ever does)..
 

franky

aka pimpdaddyfranky, aka frankydelaghetto, aka F, aka ef
is a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnus
Venusaur under "Support"

Not going to change my mind from the previous rounds. I was initially going to copy and paste the material I had in round 7 which can be found here, but Venusaur did gain one solid check so I am going to change my arguments a bit.

Why is Venusaur suspect?

My reasonings to why Venusaur is possibly suspect are twofold: unpredictability and Sleep Powder. Unpredictability is a major factor to why Venusaur is broken: it can easily bypass its customized counters despite having just two typings for a move (for the most part). For example, you can bring in Chansey on a false Special LO Venusaur, only taking a OHKO the following turn from Power Whip. The same applies to Tangrowth and Leafeon -- both die from Sludge Bomb as they try to switch into a false full-physical variant. Sleep Powder is the other major factor: simply easens predictions and lullabies counters to sleep.

Who can absorb Sleep and fight back reliably?

Thanks to its typing and fantastic bulk, you need a RestTalking Fire-type to have a chance at beating it directly. Weezing is another Rest Talker, but is Sludge Bomb + Will-O-Wisp enough to beat it? Not really, but all it does is tank hits all day. Basically nothing can absorb Sleep Powder reliably. Fire-types yes, but with the omnipresent Stealth Rock around, it is impossible to consistently switch in and absorb the Sleep without taking 25%. I'll say it again: Defensive Fire-types is a simple oxymoron to me; a defensive Pokemon should not be worrying about taking massive damage per switch.

Who can switch in initially on Venusaur?

So what switches into Venusaur safely without being taken to the grave with a surprise Sludge Bomb or Power Whip? Registeel and Specially Defensive Weezing. The latter has been getting much attention lately and has been the best answer to Venusaur this round. But I've talked to Eo, and he does bring up some nice questions: Does it really beat Venusaur? The answer is half and half -- it comes in and resists every single blow and absorbs Sleep Powder like a champion, yes, but it still has a rather difficult time rolling Will-O-Wisp when facing an SD variant (+4 LO Power Whip 2HKOes standard SPD Weezing or +2 LO Return 2HKOes it with a little residual damage). Yes, Weezing is a check but very unreliable for the most part in terms of doing something back to it. If you are not sleeping by your own Rest move (2 turns), Weezing sometimes dies to Venusaur due to the unpredictable amount of sleep turns Sleep Powder can hit Weezing. Registeel was the other Pokemon I mentioned thanks to its typing, but it falls prey to Sleep Powder easily and potentially dies to +2 Earthquake. Again, the unpredictable amount of Sleep is difficult to read and staying in on a boosting Venusaur is risky.

Other reasons:

Synthesis combined with his stellar typing which allow it to switch into omnipresent Water-types makes Venusaur difficult to beat. It will constantly heal itself back to mint health.

How does he fit in support?


I honestly think Venusaur is a mixture of both offensive and support, but I feel like Venusaur can consistently provide opportunities for other Pokemon to sweep. One example I used is luring in stuff like Chansey, Tangrowth, and Leafeon, which can help stuff like DD Feraligatr sweep sufficiently easier. Having that difficult initial switch will often lure in Registeel AND Weezing for the most part, which can consequently allow stuff like Mismagius to sweep easier. Sleep Powder and massive unpredictability is what allows Venusaur to consistently help out a team mate sweep.
 
In UU, there are 4 Pokes I think should be OU or BL, but they can still be played in OU either way and honestly wouldn't do that great in OU, so I'm going to vote No Suspect.
 
I am nominating Damp Rock under the support charateristic.

Quote:
Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is BL if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.
Similarly, I would understand that an item is broken if it can consistently set up a situation which makes it ridiculously easy for pokemon to sweep.

The problem with Damp rock supported Rain is that it allows a full 7 turns of pure sweeping, enough to substantially break an entire team down, if not sweep said team altogether. In my experience against proficient players using Rain, (i.e Teifu, Flareblitz), Any playstyle on from balance to hyper offense is insignificant, and it is quite the achievement to put up even a feeble stand vs Rain. The fact that Rain enables otherwise mediocre pokemon to become broken under the offensive Charecteristic is testament enough to its power. 2x STAB attack plus speeds that cannot be bettered set this above and beyond hyper offense. Add in the fact that it can be set up for prolonged periods of time make it impossibly hard for certain teams to do anything.

Realistically, the only thing these teams can do is incur massive damage until the first round of rain ends, before attempting to taunt the Rain Dancer. The problem is that a proficient player will never allow your glass cannon taunter to prevent set up. Even if you could prevent it, your team would be at <50% before your first meaningful attack due to damp rock prolonging its influence.


Even stall teams are incredibly hard pressed to come out on top. Flareblitz can back me up on this. But lets take a look at what Rain produces:

Specs Gorrebys reaches speed of 420+ and SpAtt approaching 800 (when using a STAB attack). This surpasses even Deoxys-A w/ specs.... Chansey, the premier special wall of UU cannot switch in due to being 2hko after entry hazards. I disagree witht he notion that Rain teams should not have hazards. The best teams spike with quilfish in the lead, which make this style even more difficult (if thats possible).

The combination of SD kabutops/ SD ludicolo / SD quilfish all wear down each others counters to the point where sheer force overcomes any resistance. 8 turns of rain is more than enough for this to be easily achieved. Sure, Stall team can survive, but they lack any realistic chance to prevent a second rain period which spells out gg in capitals. GG.



This psychological approach to handling rain, purely "surviving", may cut it against new players hoping to make a name for themselves with Rain, but against better players, its simply asking for trouble. Putting a fast non-RD sweeper as the final member will spell game, with all these pokes severely weakened to the point where it can clean up everything in sight. And that is essentially what you will have, only walls. That is why balance teams fail so spectacularly vs rain, with a lead, and 2/3 sweepers, thats only leaves you with a single physical and special wall to survive 7 turns of rain. It just doesnt happen. Offensive teams are outsped, outstabbed to death, which is where this differs from Hyper offense.
 
No Suspects

After the BL dump into UU it seems pretty futile to try to do anything with UU. While there are overpowered Pokemon there are so many to a point where all of them have reliable checks.
 

Leafeon


Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is BL if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

Leafeon is far more broken than Venusaur due to firstly, its speed. Its already faster than most of the tier and normal grass type checks are outsped from the get go and swiftly destroyed see: Specially defensive Weezing is OHKO'd with Stealth Rock (with just a tiny bit of prior damage) by SD LO Double-Edge (not to mention how Leafeon can pass the swords dance to Arcanine on Weezing too if it wishes, thats not necessary though considering how much SD LO D-E does to it due to the increased usage of sp.def Weezing. No one uses phys def Weezing anymore as it gets owned by Leaf Storms so loses viability elsewhere) and the same goes for even physically defensive Venusaur and Moltres. 252 hp / 120 def Jolly Arcanine aka the utility grass type counter suffers the same fate with Stealth Rock up after intimidate and again, a tiny bit of residual damage and even if it maxes speed it risks a speed tie, Arcanine is easy to overwhelm with SR up basically. Quicker "checks" such as Swellow, well get mauled by Quick Attack and defensive grass types cannot do anything back to it so it can just SD in their faces. Its bulk also nulls priority so ever revenge killing it is horrible. Leafeon also sets up with ease on common Pokemon such as Azumarril, Milotic, Torterra and a whole host of others. To say that this has a lack of checks and counters is an understatement.

Aggron

Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is BL if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.

Head Smash makes it broken basically. Resisting the move really isn't enough considering with SR up and a tiny bit of prior damage CB Head Smash 2hko's the on site Hitmontop AFTER intimidate. Whilst you may say "use more def evs then" that is not my point, my point is "why the hell is this 2hkoing something that resists the move AND has intimidate?". Not only that but the Magnet Rise set totally negates ground type counters. Low Kick/Aqua Tail/Ice Punch also mauls most of its checks to the point that they are in Head Smash range. It doesn't need a Choice Band to remove its ground checks either i.e if a Donphan switches in on an un-choiced Head Smash its in Aqua Tail range for the RP set. The Rock Polish set also owns offensive teams. TL;Dr its versatility + Head Smash makes it fit the support characteristics. Its a wall breaker on crack so even using resistances against it is hard, switching into it is ridiculously difficult. What differs this from Rhyperior ? Firstly Aggron is NOT checked by bulky waters, Rhyperior is. Secondly Aggron has way more resistances and better sp.def so its easier to switch in and arguably better typing, as it has less weaknesses to exploit.
 
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