Shuckle: An Analysis of its effect on the MnM Metagame
For a long while now, Sticky Webs has been known to be a very effective playstyle, with a few players spamming it in the Seasonal tournaments to great effect. However, with OMPL finally settling into a balance metagame with defined threats, it’s time to discuss why there could be a ban case for Shuckle, as the most dominant Sticky Web setter.
- Hazard setting capability
Due to the heavy prominence of Magic Bounce from Sablenite, counterplay to hazards is quite different in Mix and Mega in comparison to other metagames. In Mix and Mega, Stealth Rock setters are quite hard to find as they need to be adequately offensive to pull off the role of a Stealth Rock setter, or be difficult to punish by Sablenite users, and very few Pokemon fulfil this role. For example: Defensive Primal Groudon in recent times has started to lose effectiveness as a Stealth Rock setter due to its weakness to the common Magic Bouncers in the metagame, Mandibuzz, Blissey and Slowbro. These three form a very tough to bypass core that no single hazard setter can avoid – with two exceptions: Shuckle and Toxapex, being viable with a Mold Breaker stone. Both of these, due to the unique way they set hazards and their difficulties at dealing damage, form their own unique playstyles that require careful building around them. However, due to how punishing these styles are on the metagame due to the lack of viable removal (for Toxapex, lacking Poison types), the threats these teams can support become significantly stronger and better at disrupting bulky teams, like the ones in the metagame right now.
Again, due to the common usage of Sablenite, Taunt has dropped off significantly as a counterplay option to both Stall (easily breakable due to the insane power some breakers have in this metagame) and for hazard setters. The only common users of which are Terrakion, Zeraora and Noivern, the latter two primarily used for their great offensive matchup. Not much of the metagame outside of those two fast and Flying-type either, which can make it infuriating to prep for Shuckle due to the lack of those in the metagame, ever since the Landorus-Therian ban, which also helped Sticky Web playstyles greatly by providing an alternate Stealth Rock setter. In recent times, there have been new preps for these sorts of threats – Lunala has popped up as a generally solid threat and happens to be excellent at providing 50/50s against Terrakion on lead. As well as this, a very recent development of Manectite Xurkitree has also popped up which uses the two best Flying-type counterplay as somewhat setup fodder, even if it does mean giving it vulnerability to –ateSpeed along the line. If these don’t work, one could question – why not use a defensive playstyle to wall these threats? Unfortunately in Mix and Mega, the metagame almost entirely revolves around threats trying to overwhelm the lack of defensive targets in the metagame, making it very difficult to wall things for long without specific prep for some Pokemon (see: Palossand for Terrakion), and that makes it very easy for the user to stack multiple threats cornering these playstyles into corners where they are forced to compress, part of a reason why Manectite Magearna is so incredible right now. A niche form of counterplay in Ditto has also been employed by stall teams due to the incredible threat of the majority of the physical attackers in the metagame and how most of them aren’t improofed. However, Stresh’s sample webs team is one example of how this counterplay can be avoided by using slightly different threats like Red Orb Mew and Primal Kyogre to break through whilst still having them give some form of defensive utility.
One of the issues with the Sticky Web playstyle is that it has the capability to control both of these matchups, with incredibly strong Pokemon with near exclusive offensive counterplay like Eruption Primal Groudon, Lucarionite Tapu Lele, and again, the mentioned Manectite Xurkitree. Other speed control options, like DIancite Tapu Lele and Darkrai, which can outspeed some of the slower threats even when slowed down by Sticky Web, are taken on by Pinsirite Magearna, a mon that has seen almost exclusive usage on Webs right now for its great defensive capabilities and ability to severely chip or remove a mon entirely with Explosion, whilst also threatening the capability to sweep. Often times this mon is also paired with Kartana, which means that standard counterplay to it often requires two checks instead of one check + a revenge killer – usually because of how their checks overlap. Recently this webs tactic however has been in decline for favour of more specially based strategies, although Pinsirite Magearna is still used very heavily on webs because of its other synergy with Lunala, potentially forcing Mandibuzz and other Dark-types out of the game, as well as using Blissey as setup fodder.
- Abusers that could be broken?
I think that this point isn’t too relevant right now because two Webs threats have already been banned for how influential they were both on and outside of webs in succession, but if we were to preserve webs, the threats that I’d think are broken are:
Primal Groudon – the early lead of the Webs team often gets a kill or two because of how difficult it is to revenge kill whilst Sticky Webs stay up. One could also argue its centralization outside of Webs is also what makes it broken, however it also falls into the same trap that both the last two have, in that it’s manageable outside of webs but is only buffed to a potential ban by it. Whilst I could definitely argue that the first two were also broken, Primal Groudon is not despite its versatility, and is only buffed by Sticky Webs to be difficult to deal with. In recent times, Sticky Web builds have started to go without Primal Groudon as well in favour of some other abusers and Red Orb breakers, which I’ll go into later
Xurkitree – not broken outside of Webs at all, but in Webs it’s probably the one thing that would be the reason why this call for a suspect is happening. Xurkitree not only is very tough to check after a boost but even uses common webs control as setup fodder. The issue with this is that Xurkitree warps the matchup so much that it becomes near impossible to beat Sticky Webs without a few designated mons that have a greater matchup against it, thus jarring the matchup against balance teams. So, this one is also off of the table.
Magearna – one could argue the utility this mon provides for Sticky Webs makes it difficult to deal with but it isn’t too hard to wall on Sticky Webs due to general adaptations against it, being Manectite Magearna and Pinsirite Zeraora, but it is worth noting how much it enables other mons to break through harder in the current metagame. Outside of Sticky Webs it recently has had a downfall but that isn’t mainly due to the effectiveness of it going down but more the effectiveness of Manectite sets being so high.
Lunala – this one has a legitimate argument for being banned outside of Webs for how constraining it is with its checks but rather I think that on Webs it’s not even that much harder to deal with and can potentially let in defoggers such as Mandibuzz get an emergency Defog off and make it harder to sweep. However, it still does claim multiple mons if this happens, and that is what potentially makes it broken. To me, banning Lunala is more of the other option when it comes to centralization as if Webs is banned there is much more opportunity for Lunala checks to fit on teams, as constraining as they are.
- Determining Shuckle’s healthiness on the metagame
So, it’s been noted that Shuckle is both constraining to the metagame because of the threats it amplifies and the radically different counterplay it has to the rest of the meta. Are there any other reasons to have Shuckle around? Well, apart from diversity of playstyle, I would argue no. Shuckle is a broken mon because of how it constrains balance and supports its other teammates, none of which are really broken outside of Webs. So, to me, it seems fairly obvious that Shuckle has no place in Mix and Mega and due to how unhealthy it is at constraining teams it should be banned.
- Could there be any other Sticky Web setters that are broken?
To put it bluntly, no. There is no other mon with both the bulk and movepool to pull off a successful Sticky Web set properly and not get wrecked by a lead such as any –atespeed user or a Sablenite mon if it isn’t running Mold Breaker.
I would also like to put other suspect ideas out there that don’t make the cut over Shuckle, but have rather alerted me as
potentially unhealthy for Mix and Mega:
Terrakion
Terrakion has been seen consistently over the past two years defining physical counterplay and has been consistently adapting to the forms of checks that it has. Whilst this mon isn’t broken with the form of counterplay we have right now, it has been a major influencer on every playstyle as letting it in can severely impair a team’s defensive backbone as the checks that are used to deal with it like Altarianite Zygarde, Manectite Magearna + Lunala, and Arceus-Fairy are all heavily chipped by its STABs and with the correct play can even be removed from the game by a Taunt or predicted coverage move. It is also a fairly big reason why this next mon is centralizing at the moment:
Lunala
Lunala can be seen as unhealthy due to its radically different checks in the metagame and how it has somewhat forced the balance metagame because of the best checks being a pool of 4-5 mons that are heavily exploitable by the metagame’s big breakers (see: Terrakion / Zygarde). However, banning Shuckle would likely make the slot for this easier to fit despite the lacking amount of checks, and potentially open up more playstyles that can properly deal with it. To me, Lunala’s biggest issue is how it specifically has the matchup against these more offense inclined teams and the lack of resists that can be fit onto these teams, and lack of revenge killers. But, I do think that this is adapatable to, and thus it is a lower threat level than Shuckle and Terrakion imo.
Magearna
Probably won’t be a good idea to remove this mon now but it also has a similar effect on the metagame as Lunala does due to how it either forces an offensive playstyle that can avoid having to deal with it too much or forces Primal Groudon / Arceus-Ground as a voltblocker to avoid having the opponent lose too much momentum against its main and centralizing set in Manectite. Outside of this it also has some variations that can catch people off guard – Pinsirite is the main one of these which needs to be checked unlike the others due to how it can threaten a sweep easily on common counterplay options (like Arceus-Ground) and sometimes even set up on mons that could heavily dent offensive variants otherwise, like Altarianite Zygarde. However, it is far from unbeatable, and common resistances / one time checks can be employed on a team to deal with it. Offensive pressure is also a fine strategy against the other, more uncommon Calm Mind + Pain Split variants, like Latiasite and Cameruptite, which can get a matchup on these specific balance builds. Certainly not broken but something to think about having a healthy presence when it forces this sort of counterplay.
Primal Groudon
Definitely not a fun mon to remove for reasons above but also a big threat right now due to its Eruption set being very difficult to defensively deal with and the fact that Webs amplifies this to even be able to outspeed most speed control options. It can also use Rock Polish sets and other, lesser seen sets to catch people off guard and for these reasons it is often required that two or three Primal Groudon checks should be on a team and some offensive presence should be applied if an Eruption resist is not present. Centralizing due to this but in my opinion it isn’t exactly hard to fit a check if you’ve prepped for most of the metagame, it’s just finding the others that will fix up the matchup, just like with the other mons mentioned.
Zygarde
Altarianite Zygarde is a big factor on why offensive Dark types aren’t very good in the metagame and has been quite the healthy presence outside of this. But, if the alternate pathline was taken where Zygarde was banned this meta would have taken a much different turn and would be less centralized (obviously, doing this should also mean that Terrakion, by extension should be banned). Aside from this, its set duality can be quite constraining, especially with Lucarionite Zygarde’s tendency to act like a battering ram against most checks. Overall, just a small thing to think about with the meta in its current state but something to at least think ‘What if the meta took another turn?’
With that, I close my thoughts on the current metagame. I hope the last few months of this generation help to make Mix and Mega the most stable metagame it can be, as I’ve had fun all the way through. Rank Talonflame btw.