Bless You Mekkah. (garchomp ttar discussion)

These things are fucking broken. It is utterly ridiculous.

Not since RBY has any sweeper dominated like Garchomp. I ask Lords for some counters, he suggests the dull options Skarmory, Bronzong and Cresselia. These counters suck..

Bronzong loses to SD Chomp. SD on the switch, then fire fang 2hkos. Bronzongs HP ice only 2hkos Chomp. Mekkah suggests that after you figure out it has fire fang, you would be entirely safe switching to Starmie. So ok, a combination of HP ice Bronzong and Ice Beam Starmie is one legitimate counter for Garchomp.

Provided your opponent doesnt use Magneton, or for that matter Weavile.. Also these calculations are done with Max def bronzong. Which will also be 2hkoed by unboosted Fireblast from Life Orb Chomp..

Furthermore, you cant really use Bronzong to set up stealth rock in this situation, because if you take damage while doing so, your counter to Garchomp wont work..

Everything is basically exactly the same with Skarmory and Starmie, except that Skarm cant 2hko Chomp, which opens up the opportunity for Chomp to Dragon Claw on the switch.

Then there is Cresselia. Which is utterly unuseable. It cant do shit - which is a very bad thing in DP (similar to HP ice Bronzong). But on top of that, it is so easily pursuited it is comical. It also doesnt actually counter SD chomp either, as it cant ohko and is 2hkoed. Then there is Sub Chomp to consider.

The problem with all of these options is they all need to be specialised counters that are kept protected for the sole purpose of countering Garchomp because otherwise they will not work.

Latias is easier to counter than Garchomp.

Latias you can just switch in Tyranitar, and if it surfs, you may be 3hkoed (you can ev it easily to get around this), but otherwise you can pursuit for 2hko ( if it doesnt switch) without fear. Either that or it has specs and you can switch to an appropriate counter. Specs Surf has about a 50/50 shot at 2hkoing (much worse than Garchomp with LO FB on Skarm).

Which brings me to my next point. Tyranitar is fucking broken also. It can switch into a Latias Surf and win for christs sake. I use it as my main water counter on one of my teams. It has the strongest Pursuit in the game, and it has 384 minimum special defense and 404 HP. Then on top of that, it has SS, which by itself could have made Magcargo useable..

Really, the more I battle the more I beleive it, DP would be much better off without these two.

Have a nice day.

Specs Latias?

has a 50/50 shot at 2hkoing ttar?

Have a nice day.

holy rant! I guess I missed the IRC discussion about this.

Granted, TTar and Chomp are potent contenders, but I don't think enough support will be rallied to ban them at least until Competitor is available. I'm undecided I suppose... but I usually have a tendency to vote to allow stuff rather than to ban.

Couldn't have ranted better myself.
I've been trying to tell this since 3 months now.

agreed. admittedly, i am abusing this shit like no other on shoddy, and it's working. i can literally "bank on a miss" as i sd up and give myself a salac. it's almost unbeatable =/

I agree with this topic too.

Sorry for pissing you off, I didn't intend to :(

I still think Cresselia being useless is too much said. It can Reflect and Thunder Wave which make it quite hard to safely Pursuit unless you know it has Rest/Sleep Talk/Ice Beam/Charge Beam or something. It's a viable wall, it just doesn't hurt much.

Nonetheless, however odd it may seem, I think these two (especially Tyranitar's Sand Stream itself, not even the Pokemon) aren't exactly uncounterable, but still good enough to ban and thereby open up the metagame a little more. Having more options available because of not having to fear Tyranitar and Garchomp > being constricted by these two.

Well, some uber Pokemon wouldn't be exactly uncounterable in OU, yet they are banned.

I disagree, but I neither have the time nor the the patience to enter myself in this debate. I guess I'll live with whatever you all decide...

I would have to agree with most of this, especially ttar. However, without ttar, garchomp loses a lot of power. It won't get the sand veil activated as well as the pursuit on cresselia/other things that comes with it. I'm still unsure about garchomp, but I'm all for ttar going into ubers.

SePh said:

I would have to agree with most of this, especially ttar. However, without ttar, garchomp loses a lot of power. It won't get the sand veil activated as well as the pursuit on cresselia/other things that comes with it. I'm still unsure about garchomp, but I'm all for ttar going into ubers.

Click to expand...

I can't believe I'm saying this but I agree with Sefff...

SePh said:

I would have to agree with most of this, especially ttar. However, without ttar, garchomp loses a lot of power. It won't get the sand veil activated as well as the pursuit on cresselia/other things that comes with it. I'm still unsure about garchomp, but I'm all for ttar going into ubers.

Click to expand...

i disagree with the bit about garchomp needing to be paired with tar. i don't think pursuiting cress is even "needed" as it's restalking most the time, which in itself is just asking for garchomp to set up on it with sub and swords dance. plus, hippo is a certainly another viable option who sandstreams.

I've been saying this for a while now, everyone was so quick to ban Manaphy yet most of the teams on shoddy have these broken asshole pokemon. OHKOs aren't even as bad, since you have a 30% chance of losing 1 pokemon as opposed to a ~20% chance of getting swept entirely when your ice beam misses(fuck MoP too).

Agreeing with Roy that banning Tyranitar won't lose Garchomp any power as then people would pair it with Hippowdon.

Also, I think that Garchomp's power doesn't stem only from Sand Veil. If that were the case, then Cacturne would be OU. Garchomp's power stems from a rather huge combination of facts:

1) 108/95/85 defenses AND 102 Speed. I might be wrong, but Garchomp is probably the fastest non-uber with above-average defenses. You don't usually get those defenses on something that fast. Those defenses allow it to not be OHKOed by random Ice Beams and Ice Punches (unless STABbed or Specs'ed). And that is IF you manage to outspeed it, unlike Dragonite, which has similar defenses but only 80 Speed. Hell, even Mamoswine can't OHKO with Ice Shard with 394 Attack and STAB, unless it has a CB. People usually overlook this point, but Garchomp is not that easy to take down, even without Sandstorm.

2) Complete coverage with Dragon/Ground/Fire moves, with STAB on two of those types. The Dragon/Ground combination leaves only Skarmory and Bronzong to fend off in OU, which can be duly done with a Fire move.

3) 130 Attack and Swords Dance with 102 Speed. I feel that this is a self-explanatory point.

4) The introduction of some rather broken Dragon attacks in DP. In particular, I'll mention Draco Meteor and Outrage (jumping from Special 90 power in ADV to Physical 120 power in DP). Dragon can only be resisted by Steel. I'm sure Gamefreak did not consult the type chart when they upped Outrage's power from 90 to 120 and made it physical, and when they invented Draco Meteor. The Dragon type didn't need these broken attacks; it's already a broken type without these two attacks. And Garchomp can use both. Even 80 SpAtk stat is good enough to deal massive damage with Draco Meteor, thanks to STAB.

5) Sand Veil + Sandstorm. Enough was said about this already.

Even if somehow Sandstorm is removed, you still have points 1-4 to take care of.

All of the facts brought up here are correct. Tar can switch into surfs and Garchomp can get a lot of kills but I disagree on moving them to uber only because I, personally, have not had a ridiculous amount of trouble dealing with either. Sure, I have been swept/beaten by both pokemon before, but that is due to my own human errors not because garchomp and tar are uncounterable.

Tyranitar is fairly easy to counter with Gliscor/Hippowdon, although I suppose it can also hit Gliscor with Ice Beam on a switch in. Fighting is also so insanely strong in DP (Lucario, Infernape, Breloom, Heracross, pokemon like Weavile wit hBrick Break) that I really do not see Tyranitar as broken, but I certainly have not battled as much as you Hip, so I may just be less well informed!

I'm going to agree with Husk here, yes Tyranitar and Garchomp are powerful and at times may seem unbearable to face, especially Garchomp with it's annoying Sand Veil trait but personally i havent found them that insanely difficult to deal with.
I find that when i'm swept by them its moreso of my own accord than the fact that the pokemon themselves are broken.

this definitely needs a bump...aeo's assessment that enough support to ban them wouldn't be rallied has proven false in the case of garchomp. since i can't stand 95% of stark posters i'd like to rehash this here cause it's as valid an issue as unbanning wobby and dx-s.

mekkah said that ideally our staff would be playing with these in order to give our discussions more weight but that isn't as viable as we'd like. we are still smarter than the masses and i'd like some more keen discussion on this

i also must say that i was inclined to disagree with hip because well that's what we do with each other's pokemon opinions lol but i will be the first to say "i guess hip was right" in the garchomp regard

In the light of things like Kyogre/Lati@s vs Garchomp/Heracross/Togekiss becoming too arguable to really one-side on, we really need to think this over carefully. I'm currently trying to prove Wobbuffet as an uber by, well, trying to win with it, but luck has already cost my first match.

Anyway, it's wonderfully annoying that the discussion on this is needed and yet the only possible discussions either come from mostly theorycraft or from Stupidity Mountain.

As I've been stressing lately, there is no end-all solution. There won't be concensus on this, and our tiers are fan-made, which means we can't peek on the other side of the page to find the answer and there will always be people opposing the system as we have it, both with good and dumb reasons.

Also the title is really mean.

I just think it is interesting that we are talking about allowing dx-s/wobb/lati@s/kyogre and others while at the same time thinking about banning garchomp.

I think that's happening because people have different goals for the metagame in mind and are drawling the line at different points. It can be compared to political views: people wanting to change the world as it is now to a world as they see it, and because what they want the world to be is different, their points of view are as well.

I think we need to think this over, but, at the same time, I think we shouldn't 'waste time' thinking too much. Right now, our tiers are really shaky and we need to stabilise them, without giving much attention to people who say that our decision needs to be different. After all, no matter what we decide the tiers to be, there will always be people (even among Inside Scoopers I'm afraid) who won't agree with them, as Mekkah says.

Having said that, I am of the opinion that there is no tier system that is 100% balanced, no matter how hard we try. Say we remove Garchomp and Tyranitar... then Salamence and Heracross would be the #1 overcentralising forces. If you remove those as well, you have things like Lucario. And so on. You simply cannot create a balanced metagame. Even the UU metagame has things like Pinsir who probably dominate it (I'm not a UU expert, though, so I don't know for certain). My point is that, wherever you draw the line, the complaint "Pokemon X and Y are dominating the metagame" would still be everpresent.

So it would actually be both better and easier to just play with all 493 (492 if you leave Arceus out) Pokemon and leave it at that.

With the premise that no metagame is 100% balanced, we would indeed only be playing the uber metagame. But I still think that we were closer to that 100% than ever when we just had the tiers as they were when we entered DP...perhaps with Deoxys-E in, even though I loathe to admit it.

Maybe I said that because I come from the TCG world, where, out of around 2000 cards, only around 50-100 are used, without people actually complaining. And "fuck I spent $100 on boosters and found only crap" is certainly a good enough reason to complain!

So okay, let's search where is the proverbial line cutting ubers from OU that would produce the least amount of complaints.