Balanced Hackmons Suspects and Bans

[nyan kat]

One thing that makes me reluctant to ban manual MGar is that it gains very little. Sure it gets a better premega ability and moves, but it already had most of the moves it needed/wanted (taunt, Psong, its stabs) and everything can theoretically defeat it. In order to avoid trapping, you need one of 5 things: Shed Shell, a pivot move, a ghost typing, Soundproof, or offensive presence. The second option stops it from beating balance, the 5th from beating most offense, the 3rd from trapping 2 of the greatest bulkmons (aegislash, Giratina) who are also some of its biggest targets due to being weak to its stab. Even on other playstyles, you can escape by sacrificing a movelot, item, or ability. It might be uncompetative, but to me it seems like confuse ray in standard- unquestionably noncompetitive, but just not good enough for a ban.

⠀⠀While it is true that lots of things can't be trapped by Shadow Tag Gar, it doesn't have to kill the entire team. Not every Pokemon in a team can afford to run one of the aforementioned options, and it is these that are the main targets. Although this isn't as much of a problem for more offensive teams, removing just one wall from a balance or stall team can make it fall apart. For example, if the opposing team uses a Poison Heal Audino to block sleep and a Fur Coat Chansey as an Ate counter, trapping and killing either of these with Mega Gengar would let me abuse sleep or -Ate afterwards due to the hole created. The main issue I have is that there is nothing the opponent can do to stop this. I could literally switch in Mega Gar every time I see Fur Coat Chansey, and all it can do is U-turn out every time or die. Unlike other stallbreakers, there is no opportunity for the opponent to choose to sack something else instead and revenge or switch to a counter. This is why I find Shadow Tag Gengar so uncompetitive.

⠀⠀Something interesting to note is that even Soundproof isn't a perfect counter to this strategy. Like what would have happened in the replay I posted earlier, had I not frozen and killed Steelix, you can actually deplete a Soundproof user's Recover PP using 5-6 Encores. Locking them into another move like Stealth Rock or Metal Burst can kill them as well if you carry an attacking move. I've already addressed in my previous post things like Shed Shell, pivoting, and offensive presence, but I'll reiterate them and expand a bit here.

Again

Shed Shell: As Knock Off is omnipresent in the current meta, you are forced to play extremely safely if Shadow Tag Gengar is on the opposing team, scouting for random Knock Off and being unable to come in on Knock Off users. This can be a large burden, reducing the usefulness of it in the match. (For example, Mega Audino can't counter Mega Tyranitar anymore or it will be able to be trapped.) Also things like Chansey or Poison Heal users can't afford to hold Shed Shell, and normal things greatly appreciate opening up an item slot so they can run Safety Goggles or Leftovers.

Pivot Moves: Pivots, like any other wall, still need to Recover after taking damage from attacks and hazards. It is impossible to always be using a pivot move, since pivots naturally take damage after switching in. Eventually they need to Recover, and this leaves them vulnerable to Shadow Tag Gar. Even things like Regenerator pivots become almost useless, since if they pretty much any move other than U-turn Gar can trap them. This means that Regenerator Registeel can't Metal Burst and kill Specs Mega Rayquaza, or it dies as well afterwards.

Offensive Presence: It is perfectly correct that things faster than Gengar (and Ghost types) cannot be trapped and killed. However, currently there is a large reward for using bulky attackers like Mega Tyranitar. While Gengar cannot safely switch in directly, there are ways to circumvent this using slow pivots. Even bulky attackers often like using moves like King's Shield, Stealth Rock, and Recover, so with predictions or slow pivoting Gengar can still trap and kill these. The two experimental sets I posted earlier also bypass this weakness somewhat, and I'm sure there are other unexplored ways to deal with this.

⠀⠀On a side note, it may seem as if Shadow Tag Gar only gets certain kills like any other wallbreaker, but there are still other unexplored options. Running a boost passing set with Encore could mean that instead of Fur Coat Chansey dying and Aerilate Ray's main counter gone, Ray could just power its way through the whole team instead. Again, Shadow Tag Gengar is still currently very underused, so I highly recommend that you all try it out and explore new options instead of having me tell how it goes. I agree that some other issues like -Ate are more pressing currently, but I just wanted to get all this out there and have people thinking about it.

 

[CallMeLefty]

I think we have all been waiting for this debate to start since protean ban, so I am going to throw my thoughts over -ates out there. For clarity sake, I will designate the ability by “-ates” and the users of said ability by “-aters”:
-ates have been consistently depicted as game breaking, some saying it was even more so than protean. I am of this opinion.

-aters are Pokémon using Aerilate, Pixilate, or Refrigerate as their ability. While those abilities are not always inherently broken, they tend to be extremely powerful (see AAA). BH also allows Flying, Fairy and Ice type mons to get extremely powerful STAB in Boomburst and great priority in Extreme Speed, meaning that the best wallbreaker (Specs Mega Ray) and the best revenge killer (Fakespeed Mega Diancie) are both -aters.


If we were to conclude that -aters are indeed broken, the first argument is whether or not it is the abilities that make it broken, over say, Extreme Speed, Boomburst, Mega Ray or Mega Diancie. Extreme Speed, while being great, is not that strong without STAB, and the best users of it outside of -ate, Slaking and Regigias, are far from overwhelmingly powerful. Boomburst also has great wallbreaking potential, and protean probably wouldn't have been banned without it (as it allows good walls, such as Magic Guard Ho-oh). Yet, there is a lack of Pokémon that can really abuse a STAB Boomburst. Mega Ray, while being a great Pokémon, has many non broken sets (such as gale wings or prankster), and banning it would change the metagame way more than banning -ates. Mega Diancie in itself isn't that good without Pixilate, as its only viable set right now is a mixed magic guard set with Headsmash and Light of Ruin (although it is probably barely even B rank worthy). Thus, it is indeed banning -ates that would be the best option to remove the issue with -aters while having the least impact on the rest of the metagame.

We can now discuss the core of the question: are -aters broken? To me, there is three main reasons that justify qualifying -aters as “OP”:
They are overcentralizing. High ladder, a total of 67% teams run an -ater, only counting M-Rayquaza, M-Diancie, Kyurem-Black and Mewtwo mega X (I am thus ignoring simply Boomburst -aters like M-Latios). The only sets that are as common in any metas are things like stall mons (recovery) and hazard controllers. The only comparison to -aters in term of centralization are thus either Stall and Stealth Rocks. This is not directly proving how unbalanced -ate are, it is proving how metagame defining they are: ability to 2HKO (to bypass walls) and SR weakness are two huge factors regarding the viability of a Pokemon, offensively and defensively.
The comparison to Stealth Rocks also let's you understand the difference between centralization and brokenness. SR are defining, but they affect all playstyles in almost the same way (just like imposter and Shedinja, justifying them not being OP). On the other hand, -aters really put a dent on offense due to their ability to revenge kill any frail mons, explaining why things such as Hyper Offense are non existent in competitive play(the most offensive core I have found to block -ates are bulky M-Tytar and Ho-Oh, both of which lack true offensive power). On the other hand, balance and stall can afford to run things such as Fur Coat Chansey, Registeel, RegenVest Regirock, Flash Fire Aegislash to wall Boomburst, and thus neuter the threat. Thus, -aters are so centralizing that they greatly hamper a complete playstyle, offense.
An other reason to ban -ates is their ability to kill creativity by overshadowing many potential threats. A metagame without -aters would have a greater number of threat, with things such as Skill Link Water Shuriken Mega Gyarados, Technician MMX, Sucker Punch M-Tytar being able to fill the loss, and sweepers such as Belly Drum Ho-oh, Shift Gear users, finally getting the opportunity to shine. Fakespeeding -aters are comparable to imposter Chansey while teambuilding: adding one of them allows you to compact a check to several sets: it is a tool so convenient that it is probably the main reason Specs M-Rayquaza is so rare, by stopping you from using such a tool. Thus, -aters promote teambuilding laziness, both offensively and defensively (“I'll just splash a Chansey on the team”).
Consequently, -aters are OP because they overcentralize the metagame in a way that makes offense unviable and relieves the need for creative teambuilding. Removing -aters would enrich the metagame with multiple new sets due to the gap created and the newly usable offense playstyle and its suicide leads, late game sweepers… roles that do not currently have viability.

The last discussion point is whether refrigerate is ban-worthy or not (I have heard that E4 Flint was against it). In my opinion, refrigerate is less powerful due to the lack of good mixed users of it, but its ability to greatly pressure offense is still too strong to stay. However, there definitely is more of a case to be made here.

Tl;dr: -ate abilities prevent the existence of offensive teams, and nullify many creative sets by just being more convenient to use. Thus, they should be banned, including refrigerate. In any case, they deserve a suspect, even more so than protean.

 

[morogrim]

I think we have all been waiting for this debate to start since protean ban, so I am going to throw my thoughts over -ates out there. For clarity sake, I will designate the ability by “-ates” and the users of said ability by “-aters”:
-ates have been consistently depicted as game breaking, some saying it was even more so than protean. I am of this opinion.

-aters are Pokémon using Aerilate, Pixilate, or Refrigerate as their ability. While those abilities are not always inherently broken, they tend to be extremely powerful (see AAA). BH also allows Flying, Fairy and Ice type mons to get extremely powerful STAB in Boomburst and great priority in Extreme Speed, meaning that the best wallbreaker (Specs Mega Ray) and the best revenge killer (Fakespeed Mega Diancie) are both -aters.


If we were to conclude that -aters are indeed broken, the first argument is whether or not it is the abilities that make it broken, over say, Extreme Speed, Boomburst, Mega Ray or Mega Diancie. Extreme Speed, while being great, is not that strong without STAB, and the best users of it outside of -ate, Slaking and Regigias, are far from overwhelmingly powerful. Boomburst also has great wallbreaking potential, and protean probably wouldn't have been banned without it (as it allows good walls, such as Magic Guard Ho-oh). Yet, there is a lack of Pokémon that can really abuse a STAB Boomburst. Mega Ray, while being a great Pokémon, has many non broken sets (such as gale wings or prankster), and banning it would change the metagame way more than banning -ates. Mega Diancie in itself isn't that good without Pixilate, as its only viable set right now is a mixed magic guard set with Headsmash and Light of Ruin (although it is probably barely even B rank worthy). Thus, it is indeed banning -ates that would be the best option to remove the issue with -aters while having the least impact on the rest of the metagame.

We can now discuss the core of the question: are -aters broken? To me, there is three main reasons that justify qualifying -aters as “OP”:
They are overcentralizing. High ladder, a total of 67% teams run an -ater, only counting M-Rayquaza, M-Diancie, Kyurem-Black and Mewtwo mega X (I am thus ignoring simply Boomburst -aters like M-Latios). The only sets that are as common in any metas are things like stall mons (recovery) and hazard controllers. The only comparison to -aters in term of centralization are thus either Stall and Stealth Rocks. This is not directly proving how unbalanced -ate are, it is proving how metagame defining they are: ability to 2HKO (to bypass walls) and SR weakness are two huge factors regarding the viability of a Pokemon, offensively and defensively.
The comparison to Stealth Rocks also let's you understand the difference between centralization and brokenness. SR are defining, but they affect all playstyles in almost the same way (just like imposter and Shedinja, justifying them not being OP). On the other hand, -aters really put a dent on offense due to their ability to revenge kill any frail mons, explaining why things such as Hyper Offense are non existent in competitive play(the most offensive core I have found to block -ates are bulky M-Tytar and Ho-Oh, both of which lack true offensive power). On the other hand, balance and stall can afford to run things such as Fur Coat Chansey, Registeel, RegenVest Regirock, Flash Fire Aegislash to wall Boomburst, and thus neuter the threat. Thus, -aters are so centralizing that they greatly hamper a complete playstyle, offense.
An other reason to ban -ates is their ability to kill creativity by overshadowing many potential threats. A metagame without -aters would have a greater number of threat, with things such as Skill Link Water Shuriken Mega Gyarados, Technician MMX, Sucker Punch M-Tytar being able to fill the loss, and sweepers such as Belly Drum Ho-oh, Shift Gear users, finally getting the opportunity to shine. Fakespeeding -aters are comparable to imposter Chansey while teambuilding: adding one of them allows you to compact a check to several sets: it is a tool so convenient that it is probably the main reason Specs M-Rayquaza is so rare, by stopping you from using such a tool. Thus, -aters promote teambuilding laziness, both offensively and defensively (“I'll just splash a Chansey on the team”).
Consequently, -aters are OP because they overcentralize the metagame in a way that makes offense unviable and relieves the need for creative teambuilding. Removing -aters would enrich the metagame with multiple new sets due to the gap created and the newly usable offense playstyle and its suicide leads, late game sweepers… roles that do not currently have viability.

The last discussion point is whether refrigerate is ban-worthy or not (I have heard that E4 Flint was against it). In my opinion, refrigerate is less powerful due to the lack of good mixed users of it, but its ability to greatly pressure offense is still too strong to stay. However, there definitely is more of a case to be made here.

Tl;dr: -ate abilities prevent the existence of offensive teams, and nullify many creative sets by just being more convenient to use. Thus, they should be banned, including refrigerate. In any case, they deserve a suspect, even more so than protean.

All of that.

 

[Lcass4919]

i think we have this all wrong, ates shouldnt be suspected first, because moody wouldnt be a suspect in the first place, it would be quickbanned. its better to look at moody first because moody is a argument of uncompetative+a clause we avoided having. which means the process could easily take less then a week to finish. whereas suspects will usually take a month or 2 at least. id rather get the uncompetative stuff gone first, then go onto the more "focused" issues.

with that said, i personally feel ates should be looked into before gengarite, as its the more pressing issue out of the two. not that gengarite ISNT an issue...but if theres a person 40 km away trying to shoot you with a gun, and a person 30 km attempting to attack with a knife, which is more of a threat?even though gengarite seems to be very scary, ates are a WAY bigger impact then gengarite is atm. its rare to find a team without one. just because of how well it limits offensive pressure. even if the person with the knife is closer, better to take out the person with the better range. if you get what im saying.

as for ates, i agree with call me lefty, however i do NOT feel like refrig should be suspected at the same time as pixi and aeri, but have a "immidiate" follow up if the two get banned. refridgerate is on a complete different level then the two, due to its bad defensive typing it hinders its users with.and the users atm not being even slightly as powerful as diancie or ray. as they lack the speed, typing, and mixed offenses the two have.do i feel refrig should be looked at, but looked at AFTER the two more serious problems are gone. as the fact that "its not used because pixie and aeri are better" justifys this logic as well. if we do not know how good refrig is, (except pre oras, which as being one of the few who battled in that meta, i can guarantee it wasn't nearly as big of an issue.) we cannot have a accurate portrayal of how refrig would fare in the metagame.

 

[sin(pi)]

Just wondering (and maybe this isn't the best place to ask, but we're talking about -ate here and it seems relevant). Are there any other good users of Aerilate or Pixilate, other than Diancie/Ray (disregarding things like Pixi Lati@s which are cool but fill a different role)? The next best users appear to be regular Ray, Ygod, Mmence/Pinsir; and Xern, respectively. I'm not convinced any of these (possibly excluding regular Ray) are broken with -ate - notably I don't think any can 2HKO FC Chansey without boosts. Pinsir can't go mixed, and the rest cap out at 145 which is more manageable.
Would it not be more appropriate to suspect MRay and MDiancie?
I'm not sure if this goes against BH ban philosophy (especially on the side of Diancie - Ray has a shitload of sets which are all fairly good, if geared towards offense, for example the GW/Prankster sets). But I wanted to bring it up at least.

I'd type up more but I'm tired so this'll have to do

 

[Rumors]

Refrigerate absolutely should be suspected with Pixie and Air. It has already been suspected once and went through the same ban as the other two with the -ate clause. It's already restricted and the trio is proving a bit much, so why keep it in? Sure, walls would be a bit stronger with just Fridge around since Kyurem can't run mixed as well, but everything else without a type-resistance still suffers. Especially frail offensive threats who can't take the Fakespeed regardless of which -ate is firing it.

Futhurmore, the "Refrigerate has a worse defensive typing" is, to be blunt, pretty much false. Diancie's Rock typing gives it critical weaknesses to Ground, Water, and Grass, the first of which is extremely common and the second of which isn't so much, but means Diancie struggles with stuff like Kyogre. It also has a 4x weakness to Steel, meaning it drops to nearly any stray anti-Diancie Steel move floating around. The only boon it has is its Rock-typing lets it take Flying-typed attacks (because it sure as heck doesn't have the bulk to survive V-Creates and stuff from the tier's premiere Fire-STAB users), letting it check Mega-Ray. ...which will be kinda irrelevant if both Pixie and Air are banned. Mega-Ray has a plethora of weaknesses and a serious lack of bulk. Fairy weakness means it dies to common Fairy coverage, 4x weakness to Ice means pretty much anything can just Ice Shard it into oblivion, weakness to Dragon isn't as big of a deal, but means it can be bopped with surprise Draco Meteors and the like. It has nice resistances to Water, Fire, and Ground, but Kyogre and Gyarados can still cause it significant pain, it's sure as heck not taking any real Fire-attacks, and Thousand Arrows is a giant middle finger to its immunity. Plus Flying is the worst coverage of the three -ates anyway, Mega-Ray just gets by because its sheer power.

Meanwhile, Kyurem's Ice-typing isn't as exploitable as you'd think. The only weakness it has it doesn't share with Diancie or Mega-Ray is... Fighting. Which is not common outside STAB and Gengar. It also lacks any 4x weaknesses. Fairy weakness would become a hell of a lot less relevant without Pixilate to force it out since Kyu-B can easily Fakespeed Diancie out of the picture and Xerneas has to go defensive if it wants to take it, and even then Kyu-W just bops it with Boomburst anyway (sure, you can't have both, but unless you run two Xerneas, it won't be prepared well for both). And Audino, meanwhile, is simply too passive. Not that it matters is, because unlike its competitors, Kyurem sacrifices speed and power for actual bulk. Like, it can actually take hits, even super-effective ones from some potential attackers, and even has the defenses to effectively run recovery moves if it so wishes or take a hit or two to set-up some boosts. The drop in speed is kinda eh, but does it really matter when Kyu-B is at +2 priority and strong enough that faster, offensive stuff can't take it on anyway? Kyu-W cares some, but it can still run Extreme Speed effectively enough to pick-off whatever manages to survive a Boomburst. I mean, just look, it's actually stronger than Gigas with similar investment!

0- Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-W Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Arceus: 102-120 (26.7 - 31.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

0- Atk Regigigas Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Arceus: 100-118 (26.2 - 30.9%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-W Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Arceus: 151-178 (39.6 - 46.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ Atk Regigigas Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Arceus: 144-171 (37.7 - 44.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Not representative of actual sets. Real world case would likely be the first Kyu-W calc vs the second Gigas calc. Which is still scarily close considering negatively invested special attacker with 40 less base attack vs fully invested base 160 physical attacker.



Yeah, Kyurem isn't the mixed attacking terror Diancie and Mega-Ray are, but they're harder to kill and can still be just as oppressive to offense as the common -ates are. And Kyu-W's Boomburst is still powerful enough to utterly shred teams that aren't carrying a dedicated check or counter, so we'd still be pretty much forced to run Registeel to deal with all this. Or you could finally use Soundproof Mega-bro again, but then Kyu-W just Seed Flares it and laughs.



Unrelated, but...

but if theres a person 40 km away trying to shoot you with a gun, and a person 30 km attempting to attack with a knife, which is more of a threat?

The guy with the knife is the bigger threat. The world record for the longest sniper kill is about 2.5km (slightly shorter, but rounded numbers are nicer). The average human walking speed of 5 km/h. So, if we assume the guy with the gun has both the skill and right weapon to pull off a world record kill on you, the guy with the knife will still reach you about about an hour and a half quicker than the guy can get in range to take a shot at you. Therefore, the knife man is the more immediate threat and has to be dealt with first.

Math is fun.




Edit:

Just wondering (and maybe this isn't the best place to ask, but we're talking about -ate here and it seems relevant). Are there any other good users of Aerilate or Pixilate, other than Diancie/Ray (disregarding things like Pixi Lati@s which are cool but fill a different role)? The next best users appear to be regular Ray, Ygod, Mmence/Pinsir; and Xern, respectively. I'm not convinced any of these (possibly excluding regular Ray) are broken with -ate - notably I don't think any can 2HKO FC Chansey without boosts. Pinsir can't go mixed, and the rest cap out at 145 which is more manageable.
Would it not be more appropriate to suspect MRay and MDiancie?
I'm not sure if this goes against BH ban philosophy (especially on the side of Diancie - Ray has a shitload of sets which are all fairly good, if geared towards offense, for example the GW/Prankster sets). But I wanted to bring it up at least.

I'd type up more but I'm tired so this'll have to do

-ate Xerneas and Yveltal pretty much dominated the meta towards the end of X/Y. Especially before -ate clause. Xerneas is currently a less powerful but bulkier alternative to Diancie while Yveltal is a bulkier alternative to Mega-Ray with access to a more useful Dark-STAB that lets it beat some Mega-Ray checks, like Aegilash or Soundproof Mega-Bro. They're less powerful, sure, but only very bulky stuff can still withstand their Boombursts and they were strong enough to help get ate-clause set in the first place. They're perfectly viable now even, just not as common because people want more smash instead of safety.

Ho-Oh is also a viable -ate user, being able to bypass all non-Flash Fire Steel types quite easily and can check Diancie lacking Rock/Thousand Arrows coverage. Heatran was also a common Imposter-proof Pixilate/Refrigerate user until Thousand Arrows arrived onto the scene. Xtwo also sometimes runs PixieFridge. Zekrom was an option for teams who needed Fridge but struggled with Kyogre and needed one Pokemon to do both, since Boltbeam is still amazing coverage. Regular Ray runs Air well, but not as effectively has Mega-Ray. Pinsir is inferior to Kyurem due to bulk and coverage, but can avoid using up an -ate slot. Mega-Mence is a bulkier alternative to Ray, though it can access Airelate without using up the -ate slot.

There's more, but I don't recall them all. But there's still plenty of viable -ate users. It's just most of them lack the HULK MIXED OFFENSIVE SMASH Diancie and Mega-Ray have, but they're still downright oppressive otherwise.

 

[nyan kat]

⠀I absolutely agree that Refrigerate with Kyurem Black is as banworthy as the other -Ates and should be suspected as well. Ice is almost as good offensively as Fairy, with the downside of not hitting Dark types and Mega Mewtwo X. Its resistances are much rarer and harder to find than both Flying and Fairy, since things like Primal Groudon, Ho-Oh, and Tyranitar exist. The only usable Ice resists, barring Steel types since they're resists for all the -Ates, are Kyogre and Mega Slowbro, the first of which has a lacking Defense stat and the latter of which has a despicable Special Defense. The lower Special Attack for Kyurem Black isn't that big of a deal for it since it can deal with most of the meta just going Physically due to its monstrous Attack stat. Most Physical walls are weak to one of either Ice or Ground, like Groudon, Giratina, and Regirock/TTar. Others like Mega Audino usually are unable to wall mixed Boomburst+Extreme Speed.

⠀I'm not convinced, however, that Refrigerate is broken on things other than Kyurem-B. The devastating thing about most -Ates is the ability to go mixed, which is something Kyurem White can't do well due to its lower Attack.
252+ SpA Kyurem-W Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 144-170 (39.5 - 46.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Kyurem-W Precipice Blades vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Registeel: 174-206 (47.8 - 56.5%) -- 31.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Kyurem Black's low Special Attack is more excuseable thanks to the presence of Boomburst and its ridiculously high BP, but Kyurem White's Fake Speed just isn't powerful enough to kill things that would otherwise kill it like Mega Mewtwo X. Refrigerate has practically 2 viable abusers, one of which is iffy, and for this reason it should be suspected separately from the other two.

 

[CallMeLefty]

Just to adress two little things:

Suspecting gengarite is pretty useless. A suspect is meant to see the impact of the suspected on the metagame, and determine how negative it is. Yet, gengar's impact on teambuilding is pretty minor, and if we were to do a suspect, I would say that we should at least wait for it to be more used, as right now it only is on less than 2% of the team. None prepares for it (and the only preparation is basically shed shell or fast pivoting). The set has not been fully explored yet(things like spiky shield diable might work to prevent pivoting) so I'd say either wait to ban it for brokenness, or ban it for being uncompetitive right now. In either case, suspecting it today seems too costly compared to the waste of time. Bringing OU shadow tag as an example of something uncompetitive that was suspected isn't really relevant, due to how much it defined an entire playstyle at this moment, which is far from the case for gengar.

About -ates, I realized something recently about the reason why they are so broken: they have no checks. Don't get me wrong, they do have counters. Yet it is impossible to run anything for them that is not fully EVed and equipped for it. The only exception would be M-Metagross, but I have found it to be quite bad offensively due to its poor typing, need for recovery or lack of offensive presence when using regenvest. Having no checks implies that offense is pretty much forced to run something for it that is not offensive.

 

[HailFall]

The idea that we shouldn't ban something as disgustingly uncompetitive as a shadow tag abuser (not a half bad one at that) just because it doesn't see a ton of usage is kinda ridiculous to me just saying.

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

i think we have this all wrong, ates shouldnt be suspected first, because moody wouldnt be a suspect in the first place, it would be quickbanned. its better to look at moody first because moody is a argument of uncompetative+a clause we avoided having. which means the process could easily take less then a week to finish. whereas suspects will usually take a month or 2 at least. id rather get the uncompetative stuff gone first, then go onto the more "focused" issues.

with that said, i personally feel ates should be looked into before gengarite, as its the more pressing issue out of the two. not that gengarite ISNT an issue...but if theres a person 40 km away trying to shoot you with a gun, and a person 30 km attempting to attack with a knife, which is more of a threat?even though gengarite seems to be very scary, ates are a WAY bigger impact then gengarite is atm. its rare to find a team without one. just because of how well it limits offensive pressure. even if the person with the knife is closer, better to take out the person with the better range. if you get what im saying.

as for ates, i agree with call me lefty, however i do NOT feel like refrig should be suspected at the same time as pixi and aeri, but have a "immidiate" follow up if the two get banned. refridgerate is on a complete different level then the two, due to its bad defensive typing it hinders its users with.and the users atm not being even slightly as powerful as diancie or ray. as they lack the speed, typing, and mixed offenses the two have.do i feel refrig should be looked at, but looked at AFTER the two more serious problems are gone. as the fact that "its not used because pixie and aeri are better" justifys this logic as well. if we do not know how good refrig is, (except pre oras, which as being one of the few who battled in that meta, i can guarantee it wasn't nearly as big of an issue.) we cannot have a accurate portrayal of how refrig would fare in the metagame.

I mean, this doesn't make it bannable, though. Usage doesn't really support how broken something is- specs hoopa was barely used, double team isn't really even good, just luck reliant, protean wasn't the most used ability or ability+mon... If your reasoning is that too many people are using them, then that's fine, but it's not exactly evidence.

Even leaving aside what Rumors said, against the guy with the gun all you need to do is get behind cover- he's not coming in close to get killed. The guy with the knife, meanwhile, can't be stopped by staying behind trees- you have to run away or fight him. To stretch the metaphor, the same could be said of BH- there are many common and viable protean walls, from registeel to aegislash to fc chans to ttar to regirock... the point is that it can viably be stopped, with very little risk, and if he makes a mistake you can just take him out. Vs MGar, however, you need to either be able to run away or be able to fight him off even with the knife, which vastly favors offense.

Just wondering (and maybe this isn't the best place to ask, but we're talking about -ate here and it seems relevant). Are there any other good users of Aerilate or Pixilate, other than Diancie/Ray (disregarding things like Pixi Lati@s which are cool but fill a different role)? The next best users appear to be regular Ray, Ygod, Mmence/Pinsir; and Xern, respectively. I'm not convinced any of these (possibly excluding regular Ray) are broken with -ate - notably I don't think any can 2HKO FC Chansey without boosts. Pinsir can't go mixed, and the rest cap out at 145 which is more manageable.
Would it not be more appropriate to suspect MRay and MDiancie?
I'm not sure if this goes against BH ban philosophy (especially on the side of Diancie - Ray has a shitload of sets which are all fairly good, if geared towards offense, for example the GW/Prankster sets). But I wanted to bring it up at least.

I'd type up more but I'm tired so this'll have to do

Well, first off there is MMX- it already uses refridgerate/pixilate, so it's not a stretch. Ho-Oh used to be a decent -ate, I suspect landot could probably make something work, McharY could probably spam boomburst Maero is an ate that beats other aerilate... Other than those and yours, that's a complete list.

⠀I absolutely agree that Refrigerate with Kyurem Black is as banworthy as the other -Ates and should be suspected as well. Ice is almost as good offensively as Fairy, with the downside of not hitting Dark types and Mega Mewtwo X. Its resistances are much rarer and harder to find than both Flying and Fairy, since things like Primal Groudon, Ho-Oh, and Tyranitar exist. The only usable Ice resists, barring Steel types since they're resists for all the -Ates, are Kyogre and Mega Slowbro, the first of which has a lacking Defense stat and the latter of which has a despicable Special Defense. The lower Special Attack for Kyurem Black isn't that big of a deal for it since it can deal with most of the meta just going Physically due to its monstrous Attack stat. Most Physical walls are weak to one of either Ice or Ground, like Groudon, Giratina, and Regirock/TTar. Others like Mega Audino usually are unable to wall mixed Boomburst+Extreme Speed.

⠀I'm not convinced, however, that Refrigerate is broken on things other than Kyurem-B. The devastating thing about most -Ates is the ability to go mixed, which is something Kyurem White can't do well due to its lower Attack.
252+ SpA Kyurem-W Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 144-170 (39.5 - 46.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Kyurem-W Precipice Blades vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Registeel: 174-206 (47.8 - 56.5%) -- 31.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Kyurem Black's low Special Attack is more excuseable thanks to the presence of Boomburst and its ridiculously high BP, but Kyurem White's Fake Speed just isn't powerful enough to kill things that would otherwise kill it like Mega Mewtwo X. Refrigerate has practically 2 viable abusers, one of which is iffy, and for this reason it should be suspected separately from the other two.

Fridge also misses out on other fridge, which is fairly minor as things go, and the insanely useful target of Ogre. Unless you run bolt strike, there is finally an -ate that this Pokemon can not only avoid rking from, but also set up on. Even if you do run bolt strike, you are still heavily reliant on not getting burned/ks. More importantly, however, is that a lack of boomburst really sucks. No more beating FC/PH Maudino, no more bypassing a Ray's sub, no more ohkoing PDon after chip... To make matters worse, it is now outspeed by non -ate fake speeders like Slaking. Not only is megabro's spd unimportant due to soundproof, cube can't even bypass it with techno blast.
Just as a question, why does your Kyuw have no boosting item? A LO, for instance, would net it those KOs.
Forthermore, Boomburst on Kyub doesn't get the kills it needs to do while keeping fakespeed useful. For instance, 4 SpA Life Orb Refrigerate Kyurem-B Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Mega Audino: 183-216 (44.6 - 52.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery. FUr Coat Maudino solidly walls, as do other FC walls like Chansey. Heck chansey on stall walls every viable set without even needing to resist: 252+ Atk Life Orb Refrigerate Kyurem-B Thrash vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Fur Coat Chansey: 294-347 (41.8 - 49.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Just to adress two little things:

Suspecting gengarite is pretty useless. A suspect is meant to see the impact of the suspected on the metagame, and determine how negative it is. Yet, gengar's impact on teambuilding is pretty minor, and if we were to do a suspect, I would say that we should at least wait for it to be more used, as right now it only is on less than 2% of the team. None prepares for it (and the only preparation is basically shed shell or fast pivoting). The set has not been fully explored yet(things like spiky shield diable might work to prevent pivoting) so I'd say either wait to ban it for brokenness, or ban it for being uncompetitive right now. In either case, suspecting it today seems too costly compared to the waste of time. Bringing OU shadow tag as an example of something uncompetitive that was suspected isn't really relevant, due to how much it defined an entire playstyle at this moment, which is far from the case for gengar.

About -ates, I realized something recently about the reason why they are so broken: they have no checks. Don't get me wrong, they do have counters. Yet it is impossible to run anything for them that is not fully EVed and equipped for it. The only exception would be M-Metagross, but I have found it to be quite bad offensively due to its poor typing, need for recovery or lack of offensive presence when using regenvest. Having no checks implies that offense is pretty much forced to run something for it that is not offensive.

Er, do you know what a check is? If something has counters, it has checks- all counters are checks, by definition, with the possible exception of things like PDon/Primsea ray. That being said, -ate does have legitimate offensive checks. For instance, then Lati twins check MRay, and do a decent job of taking on diancie/cube when carrying kings sheild. Tyranitar beats both MRay and Cube. Ho-Oh takes on Diancie, as do PDon and Dialga. Yes there are plenty of things that don't check ate, but if -ate couldn't beat anything it wouldn't even be run.
Strictly speaking, this isn't true. Specs hoopa-U was discovered and banned on brokenness within a month, for instance.

 

[MAMP]

hey yall i got some things to say

As I made clear in my post on the first page, I am entirely in favour of a suspect on the -ate abilities (but I would like to see Refrigerate suspected seperately - more on that later).

Futhurmore, the "Refrigerate has a worse defensive typing" is, to be blunt, pretty much false. Diancie's Rock typing gives it critical weaknesses to Ground, Water, and Grass, the first of which is extremely common and the second of which isn't so much, but means Diancie struggles with stuff like Kyogre. It also has a 4x weakness to Steel, meaning it drops to nearly any stray anti-Diancie Steel move floating around. The only boon it has is its Rock-typing lets it take Flying-typed attacks (because it sure as heck doesn't have the bulk to survive V-Creates and stuff from the tier's premiere Fire-STAB users), letting it check Mega-Ray. ...which will be kinda irrelevant if both Pixie and Air are banned. Mega-Ray has a plethora of weaknesses and a serious lack of bulk. Fairy weakness means it dies to common Fairy coverage, 4x weakness to Ice means pretty much anything can just Ice Shard it into oblivion, weakness to Dragon isn't as big of a deal, but means it can be bopped with surprise Draco Meteors and the like. It has nice resistances to Water, Fire, and Ground, but Kyogre and Gyarados can still cause it significant pain, it's sure as heck not taking any real Fire-attacks, and Thousand Arrows is a giant middle finger to its immunity. Plus Flying is the worst coverage of the three -ates anyway, Mega-Ray just gets by because its sheer power.

Meanwhile, Kyurem's Ice-typing isn't as exploitable as you'd think. The only weakness it has it doesn't share with Diancie or Mega-Ray is... Fighting. Which is not common outside STAB and Gengar. It also lacks any 4x weaknesses. Fairy weakness would become a hell of a lot less relevant without Pixilate to force it out since Kyu-B can easily Fakespeed Diancie out of the picture and Xerneas has to go defensive if it wants to take it, and even then Kyu-W just bops it with Boomburst anyway (sure, you can't have both, but unless you run two Xerneas, it won't be prepared well for both). And Audino, meanwhile, is simply too passive. Not that it matters is, because unlike its competitors, Kyurem sacrifices speed and power for actual bulk. Like, it can actually take hits, even super-effective ones from some potential attackers, and even has the defenses to effectively run recovery moves if it so wishes or take a hit or two to set-up some boosts.

Mega Ray does not have a 'serious lack of bulk'. It has 105/100/100 bulk, which is about on par with Mega Venusaur, a Pokemon used in BH solely for its defensive capacities.

0 Atk Mew Double-Edge vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Venusaur: 73-86 (24.2 - 28.5%) -- 97.5% chance to 4HKO
0 Atk Mew Double-Edge vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Rayquaza: 86-102 (24.5 - 29%) -- 99.7% chance to 4HKO

It's also pretty strange that you've claimed that Mega Ray is frail while also praising Kyurem-Black's defensive capacity, seeing as they have very similar bulk.

0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 97-115 (27.6 - 32.7%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 106-126 (27.1 - 32.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO


0 Atk Mew Zen Headbutt vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Rayquaza: 87-103 (24.7 - 29.3%) -- 100% chance to 4HKO
0 Atk Mew Zen Headbutt vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 87-103 (22.2 - 26.3%) -- 13.2% chance to 4HKO


I also disagree that Kyurem-B doesn't have a weaker defensive typing. While it is true that Kyu-B's defensive typing is equal to Ray and Diancie's when looked at purely in terms of weaknesses, you also have to consider its resistances. Mega Ray has very notable resistances to Fire, Fighting, and Water, and an immunity to Ground which is a primary factor in the reason that Thousand Arrows is as popular as it is. Diancie's set of resistances is phenomenal, sporting useful resistances to Normal, Dark, Flying, and Fire, while also having a very handy Dragon immunity. By comparison, Kyurem-B has only 1 relevant resist: Water. It's only other resistances are Grass and Electric, which are extremely rare.

I'm in favour of a seperate Refrigerate suspect test, primarily because Refrigerate isn't nearly common enough in the current meta to accurately judge whether or not it's banworthy, and without Aerilate and Pixilate in the tier to restrict teambuilding as they do, Refrigerate would likely be far more manageable. The Kyurems' lesser ability to go mixed makes them far less threatening to all playstyles, and makes the impact of Refrigerate on the meta incomparable to that of Aerilate or Pixilate, and thus its banworthiness cannot be judged alongside Aerilate and Pixilate.

gonna give my thoughts on moody and gengarite later bc im too tired to do so rn

solidly walls

(44.6 - 52.6%)

???

walls every set

(43.2 - 51%)

???????

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

Mega Ray does not have a 'serious lack of bulk'. It has 105/100/100 bulk, which is about on par with Mega Venusaur, a Pokemon used in BH solely for its defensive capacities.

0 Atk Mew Double-Edge vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Venusaur: 73-86 (24.2 - 28.5%) -- 97.5% chance to 4HKO
0 Atk Mew Double-Edge vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Rayquaza: 86-102 (24.5 - 29%) -- 99.7% chance to 4HKO

It's also pretty strange that you've claimed that Mega Ray is frail while also praising Kyurem-Black's defensive capacity, seeing as they have very similar bulk.

0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 97-115 (27.6 - 32.7%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 106-126 (27.1 - 32.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO


0 Atk Mew Zen Headbutt vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Rayquaza: 87-103 (24.7 - 29.3%) -- 100% chance to 4HKO
0 Atk Mew Zen Headbutt vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 87-103 (22.2 - 26.3%) -- 13.2% chance to 4HKO

MVenu isn't used for it's bulk, it's used for it's typing, so MRay being nearly as bulky doesn't mean its setting records. Still, MRay has the bulk it needs to do it's job

calcs

252+ SpA Kyogre Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 254-300 (72.7 - 85.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
4 SpA Mega Mewtwo X Draco Meteor vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 272-322 (77.9 - 92.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Spooky Plate Mega Gengar Judgment vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 240-283 (68.7 - 81%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Slaking Facade (140 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Rayquaza: 294-346 (84.2 - 99.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Mega Mewtwo Y Psystrike vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Rayquaza: 289-341 (82.8 - 97.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Pixilate Mega Diancie Fake Out vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Rayquaza: 283-338 (81 - 96.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0 SpA Xerneas Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 258-306 (73.9 - 87.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

I also disagree that Kyurem-B doesn't have a weaker defensive typing. While it is true that Kyu-B's defensive typing is equal to Ray and Diancie's when looked at purely in terms of weaknesses, you also have to consider its resistances. Mega Ray has very notable resistances to Fire, Fighting, and Water, and an immunity to Ground which is a primary factor in the reason that Thousand Arrows is as popular as it is. Diancie's set of resistances is phenomenal, sporting useful resistances to Normal, Dark, Flying, and Fire, while also having a very handy Dragon immunity. By comparison, Kyurem-B has only 1 relevant resist: Water. It's only other resistances are Grass and Electric, which are extremely rare.

I'm in favour of a seperate Refrigerate suspect test, primarily because Refrigerate isn't nearly common enough in the current meta to accurately judge whether or not it's banworthy, and without Aerilate and Pixilate in the tier to restrict teambuilding as they do, Refrigerate would likely be far more manageable. The Kyurems' lesser ability to go mixed makes them far less threatening to all playstyles, and makes the impact of Refrigerate on the meta incomparable to that of Aerilate or Pixilate, and thus its banworthiness cannot be judged alongside Aerilate and Pixilate.

To add on to this: Kyurem-B is also rocks weak over Diancie, stopping it from painlessly revenge killing. Furthermore, while dragon type attacks are rare they are far from unheard of, and having an immunity makes it that much easier to switch in. Even Kyub's resistance comes at a cost- all common water moves can burn it, which it hates, and water types wall it besides. Even then it's largely a worse MRay in typing, with not being weak to ice as it's only saving grace. While these don't necessarily make cube not broken, it's definitely much less so.

???

guaranteed 3HKO

???????

Yeah, wrong calc- I meant to CP this one, but it autoset because of damage and I wasn't paying attention. Ty for catching- idt I'd have ever checked that.
252+ Atk Life Orb Refrigerate Kyurem-B Thrash vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Fur Coat Chansey: 294-347 (41.8 - 49.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Still, the fact is is that even with the most powerful attacks it can possibly run (I'm not going to touch viably, because HJK/CC aren't) it still can't win with any reliability, seeing as crits are more likely than those rolls. To make things worse, those calcs were against a mixed wall, not a physical one.

 

[CallMeLefty]

Er, do you know what a check is? If something has counters, it has checks- all counters are checks, by definition, with the possible exception of things like PDon/Primsea ray. That being said, -ate does have legitimate offensive checks. For instance, then Lati twins check MRay, and do a decent job of taking on diancie/cube when carrying kings sheild. Tyranitar beats both MRay and Cube. Ho-Oh takes on Diancie, as do PDon and Dialga. Yes there are plenty of things that don't check ate, but if -ate couldn't beat anything it wouldn't even be run.
Strictly speaking, this isn't true. Specs hoopa-U was discovered and banned on brokenness within a month, for instance.

I guess, if i was precise, I should have said "a check that is not a counter". What I mainly mean to designate by check is the mons that can switch in a couple time into particular attacks (preferably the one the checked mon is meant to spam)to take it on. For example, OU tytar is a good check to talonflame, and BH Pdon without synthesis is a good check to PH Tytar. The entire definition is here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ou-checks-compendium.3565962/#post-6686641
Let's not start getting in the "do you even know what is a check", because the last similar argument was stale and toxic.

However, the lati twins, when run offensively, are both close to OHKOed by Sky plate Ray Espeed, and kube 2HKOes offensive PH tytar after rocks:
252 Atk Sky Plate Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 286-337 (95 - 111.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-B Extreme Speed vs. 128 HP / 0 Def Mega Tyranitar: 160-190 (42.8 - 50.9%) -- 96.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
So... those are not checks at all according to the definition. Additionally, tytar loses to any rayquaza variant running physical coverage, be it PBlades or CC. It only beats magma storm/spore variants(it is really hard to have any move usage stat regarding how common they respectively are, due to other sets "polluting" the stats). I have myself tried to build offense, I ended up with an unaware tytar-MG Hooh-Kyogre core to check -ates that was often to weak to particular rayquaza, and was already pretty passive for the first two members.

Mega Ray is by far the strongest -aters, and diancie is a great revenge killer. However, kyube remains super strong, as it is better than diancie when running fully physical thanks to a stronger PBlade(which is admittedly niche, diancie is way better overall). Considering the important discussion over refrigerate, I believe a three phase suspect might be good(or do we really need a suspect to realize how much -aters already impact the metagame?)

On a side note, Hoopa-u was used on 10% of the team, and while its specs set put it over the top, it was its general set unpredictability that made it bannable. And it is way easier to sense the impact of something that you have to prepare for than to feel the change induced by a rare mon that is almost impossible to prepare for outside of chosing particular playstyle. If we ban gengarite now(which i support) it is out due to being uncompetitive, not because it is broken(although it may be), because the metagame isnt adapted to gengar at all right now, greatly increasing its efficiency.

 

[Rumors]

MAMP The primary difference is standard Kyurem tends to fully or near-fully invest in HP while standard Ray and Diancie tend to invest fully in offense in and speed. So, in reality, the calcs look something more like...

0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 97-115 (27.6 - 32.7%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 106-126 (23.3 - 27.7%) -- 76.6% chance to 4HKO

Or if we want more relevant...

252 SpA Spooky Plate Mega Gengar Judgment vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 262-309 (57.7 - 68%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Spooky Plate Mega Gengar Judgment vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 240-283 (68.3 - 80.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Aka, in this example, Kyu-B soft counters Gengar lacking King Shield since it can manually switch into rocks + Judgement 100% of the time and win with Fakespeed. Ray only checks because it cannot switch into rocks + Judgement safely. And this is swapping into one of the harder hitters in the tier. And this isn't the only case either. Mind, when I'm saying Kyurem is bulkier, I'm saying its standard spreads lets it take hits and return the favors that would force out the others, not wall stuff like a Chansey. It's not a huge difference, but it's significant.

Also...

252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie: 135-159 (56 - 65.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0 Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie in Harsh Sunshine: 224-264 (92.9 - 109.5%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
0 Atk Primal Groudon Sacred Fire vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie in Harsh Sunshine: 124-147 (51.4 - 60.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Ho-Oh Sacred Fire vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie: 83-98 (34.4 - 40.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Two of those resists look not particularly helpful. Dark I'll give you since most run Knock Off, which will have pitiful power after removing Diancie's item. And Flying because the main user is Mega-Ray, who Diancie checks or soft counters anyway depending on Ray's coverage.

Additionally, because you brought up E.Speed Normals...

252+ Atk Regigigas Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 168-198 (37 - 43.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-B Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Regigigas: 211-249 (49.7 - 58.7%) -- 99.6% chance to 2HKO

Kyu-B still wins, hands down, barring KS from either side, despite being slower. Slaking would have very similar numbers since its pretty much interchangeable with Gigas.



Quantum Tesseract Those calcs are not walls. Just shy of a 2HKO means they're pretty much stuck locked into recovery after one hit if they stay in and they lose after any prior damage, such as Stealth Rock. For something to be a wall against something, in my opinion, it needs to only take around 33% max from the strongest move so it has time to do something other than spam recovery. And I say 33% so it can survive with some prior damage.

Also... why do you say Kyu-B running Bolt Strike for Kyogre is a bad thing? It's one of its main moves on its standard sets and Kyogre can't take it except with Fur Coat.

252+ Atk Kyurem-B Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Kyogre: 294-348 (72.7 - 86.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Except for Mega-Bro, Water-types are a non-issue to Kyurem-B unless it's not running Bolt Strike for some reason.

 

[Lcass4919]

I mean, this doesn't make it bannable, though. Usage doesn't really support how broken something is- specs hoopa was barely used, double team isn't really even good, just luck reliant, protean wasn't the most used ability or ability+mon... If your reasoning is that too many people are using them, then that's fine, but it's not exactly evidence.

"just because of how well it limits offensive pressure." i wasnt stating usage=banworthy. i was saying its used so much because of how good it limits offensive (and defensive) answers, which can be arguably broken-and thus, is why a suspect should occur.
if you were referring to kyurem, i simply meant we cant determine if its banworthy if something is just outright better AND used more. it would be like banning imposter chansey + blissey. even though blissey like...never gets high ladder spotlight. which is why i feel a suspect should come AFTER. as its the "underdog" of the trio. pixies abusers type might be subpar, BUT its still "usable", diancies typing isnt "bad" by any means. sure, ground, water, and steel weakness sucks...but id take those three (all three of which are either used on mons diancie doesnt wanna face anyways, or arent used often enough to be scared of, and has some niche immunities/ resistances like fire, dark, dragon, bug, and flying some of the best offensive typings in the META...and bug type. you know what ice/dragon is weak too? fighting, rock, dragon, fairy, steel. all common move types. want to know what it resists? electric and grass. two typings RARELY used. diancies typing isnt "bad" its not amazing, but its not bad. defensively, kyurems typing is perhaps one of the most trashy in the meta. theres absoloutely NO contest. both pixie and refri are just as threatening offensively so theres no need to compare...pixie struggles with gar, and kyube struggles with kyogre...only real notable difference. this wasnt really aimed at you quantam, but someone (cough cough) seriously tried to state that fairy/rock is as bad of a typing as ice dragon. no offense to you-know-who. this is "stab vs stab" obviously, and you have to take into account coverage...but even then...kyurem is picked off by WAY more common coverage moves then diancie is.

 

[Rumors]

First, Lcass4919, if you're going to address my arguements and points, have the respect to address me by name, please.

Second, your logic of "we can't suspect Kyu-B because it's not as common" is pretty, well... I'll be blunt and say bad. Most other -ates are not common either. Since Diancie and Ray are the only common ones... should we suspect the Pokemon instead? Heck no. Additionally, we already have precedent for suspecting the weaker of a suspect trio at the same time. Specifically, when Mega-Rayquaza was suspected along with Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre, but was not banned while the others were. And finally, before those two arrived on the scene, Kyurem, along with -ate Xerneas and Yveltal, were dominating the X/Y meta before ORAS. Considering the only thing that's changed, and remained unbanned, for Kyurem, in ORAS outside those two are Mega-bro and Mega-Audino, neither of which are really enough to change its impact on everything else It basically just means you can use something other than Furcoat Chansey or Registeel to wall them. But, considering Mega-Bro can't handle Kyu-W (Boomburst if not Soundproof, Seed Flare if it is), you pretty much only have Mega Audino, who I have doubts would be able to handle the more flexible movesets of Kyurem since it's not forced to run Fake Out + Extreme Speed + Boomburst on standard sets. Hence, there's little reason not to suspect along with the others, despite Refrigerate being "less common" or "weaker".


And third, Fairy/Rock is a pretty bad typing. Seriously. Here, lemme run numbers on the two using Diancie's resists. I'll be accurate and use standard Diancie and standard Kyurem-B, as listed by Smogon itself. (Not calcing Kyu-W since it doesn't have a listed standard, although I suspect it's running similar EVs when not using a Scarf set.)

So, let's first compare Fire using the premiere Fire-type attacker.

252+ Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie in Harsh Sunshine: 318-374 (131.9 - 155.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B in Harsh Sunshine: 619-729 (137.2 - 161.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Neither survive, of course, but very little does to Groudon's V-create. But either way, those numbers are curiously close, huh? And, seems Diancie's resistance to Fire is pretty useless. So, let's move on to Normal!


252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 150-177 (62.2 - 73.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 294-346 (65.1 - 76.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Nope, both a guaranteed 2HKO with standard Kyub taking a whopping 3% more damage. So, Diancie's resistance to normal doesn't save it against one of the best Normal-type attackers. What about Dark?


252+ Atk Mega Tyranitar Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 106-126 (43.9 - 52.2%) -- 15.6% chance to 2HKO

252+ Atk Mega Tyranitar Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 207-244 (45.8 - 54.1%) -- 50.8% chance to 2HKO

That 40% more likely chance to get KOed here looks frightening but... Knock Off, so the next hit is doing pitiful damage to both. Crunch, Dark Pulse, and Night Daze would do more but, in my experience, almost all offensive Dark-types run Knock Off as their only Dark-STAB. Either way, a whopping 2% difference here! So, Diancie's Dark-resistance is kinda meaningless. Flying?


252+ SpA Mega Rayquaza Oblivion Wing vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Diancie: 84-100 (34.8 - 41.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ SpA Mega Rayquaza Oblivion Wing vs. 240 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 201-237 (44.5 - 52.5%) -- 20.7% chance to 2HKO

Here it actually kinda makes a difference. But what gives? I'm running Hasty Diancie, Naive is also standard as well, which would add a bit wider, but not big difference, to Diancie's above damage values. (Would avoid a 2HKO from T-Tar guaranteed if it somehow got another item.) Kyu-B is also a little less bulky specially. Converserly, however, Kyu-W swaps Kyu-B's defense and special defense, so, if I were to compare Kyu-W, the values would be closer. Even still... an 11% difference on a resisted vs neutral hit is pretty much crap for the former. (And regardless, it's kind of a wash since both Diancie and Kyu-B utterly murder Mega-Ray, Kyu-B especially even if Ray has King's Shield.)

Not doing Bug because Bug-STAB doesn't really exist in BH except maybe for the rare U-turning Scizor. Nor Dragon since immunity is immunity. Not going to compare Kyu-B's resistances to Diancie since that's a little unfair. Also, as we can see, Diancie would be struggling to survive neutral hits that Kyu-B could shrug off.


As for the raw typings itself in a vacuum against BH...

Rock/Fairy
Resists: Normal, Flying, Bug, Dark, Fire - Four of these are pretty relevant to BH.

Immune: Dragon - Relevant, but, oddly, not a lot of Dragons actually use their Dragon-STAB. It's more Contrary-proofing than actually dealing with Dragons. Ray and Kyu-B need other coverage, except the very rare Technician Kyu-B who might run Dual Chop. Latis run it, but both Diancie and Kyu-B check them pretty hard. Palkia, Reshiram, and Sceptile like Dragon-STAB on some sets, but they're not common. Dialga usually goes Imposter-proof with Doom Desire, AFAIK

Weak: Ground, Steel (4x), Water, Grass - Ground is a big one, and Steel being 4x means some stuff is running random Steel moves just to bop Diancie since it can't survive any of them. Water, while more restricted, means Kyogre can punish this type hard with a single shot, and a failure to KO Gyarados or Palkia in one shot means they'll be destroying Diancie. Grass is rare, but some Pokemon, like Kyu-W, like running stuff such as Seed Flare to snipe Kyogre and Mega-Slowbro. Sceptile likes using Grass too, especially on Sheer Force and Contrary sets.



Ice/Dragon
Resists: Water, Grass, Electric - Between Water-resistance and Bolt Strike, Kyurem is pretty much a giant middle finger to Kyogre and can be comfortable dealing with Gyarados and some Palkia sets. Grass, again, is rare, but it helps Kyurem switch into opposing Kyu-W coverage and deal with Sceptile. Electric isn't overly common, but less damage from Volt Switches is always handy, especially since it's likely to do a little more damage than U-Turn since people aren't zeroing out their Special Attack to minimize stray confusion and Foul Play damage.

Weak: Fighting, Rock, Steel, Dragon, Fairy - Fighting isn't too relevant to the tier, being basically the domain of Xtwo, Gengar's coverage, and the stray Low Kick. It hurts when it's there, but it's not all that common. Some Contraries run Close Combat, but most don't have room for it. Rock is more relevant to Stealth Rock, and is a shared weakness with Mega-Ray. Some stuff run random rock moves for Mega-Ray, which will hurt Kyurem, but aside from Stealth Rock, it's not all that common. And for SR, standard Kyu-B runs HP EVs that let's it switch in 4 times while still having HP left, which is worth noting. Kyu-B shares a Steel weakness with Diancie, but it's only half as weak, so it tanks the hits a heck of a lot better. It can still hurt though (looking at you, Dialga). Dragon is relevant but, as said above, outside of Contrary, not many Dragons actually run Dragon-STAB. Typically only things that have a bad STAB-combo anyway, like Lat@s or Sceptile. Of these, Fairy is the biggest one because of Pixelate. But, if Pixelate is banned, this weakness will become a heck of a lot less detrimental since it no longer needs to fear Fakespeeds or Boombursts. Rather... Moonblast, Light of Ruin, and the stray Play Rough, all of which are sigificantly weaker and can be Fakespeeded over (except bulky Xerneas, though Kyu-W can still probably just Boomburst that to oblivion.)


Basically, in a vacuum, Diancie's resists are a bit better, but Kyu-B's are by no means bad. Immunity is an immunity and is the major advantage. Kyurem has one more weakness, but Diancie's overall are a lot more common as coverage and a lot more crippling since it has a 4x weakness. But out of the vacuum, Diancie's weak bulk, made worse on its standard sets by its Nature, means it gets bopped pretty badly by just about anything regardless, with its resists pretty much meaning "oh hey, it's something I don't get OHKOed by!" All it really has in practice is a Dragon-immunity to protect it from significant damage.


And finally, as I showed in my last calc above, Kyurem doesn't struggle with Kyogre. Rather, Kyogre struggles to survive a Bolt Strike without running Fur Coat.

 

[Lcass4919]

First, Lcass4919, if you're going to address my arguements and points, have the respect to address me by name, please.

Second, your logic of "we can't suspect Kyu-B because it's not as common" is pretty, well... I'll be blunt and say bad. Most other -ates are not common either. Since Diancie and Ray are the only common ones... should we suspect the Pokemon instead? Heck no. Additionally, we already have precedent for suspecting the weaker of a suspect trio at the same time. Specifically, when Mega-Rayquaza was suspected along with Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre, but was not banned while the others were. And finally, before those two arrived on the scene, Kyurem, along with -ate Xerneas and Yveltal, were dominating the X/Y meta before ORAS. Considering the only thing that's changed, and remained unbanned, for Kyurem, in ORAS outside those two are Mega-bro and Mega-Audino, neither of which are really enough to change its impact on everything else It basically just means you can use something other than Furcoat Chansey or Registeel to wall them. But, considering Mega-Bro can't handle Kyu-W (Boomburst if not Soundproof, Seed Flare if it is), you pretty much only have Mega Audino, who I have doubts would be able to handle the more flexible movesets of Kyurem since it's not forced to run Fake Out + Extreme Speed + Boomburst on standard sets. Hence, there's little reason not to suspect along with the others, despite Refrigerate being "less common" or "weaker".
no, we cannot suspect kyurem YET. without accurate results, we are only banning because of our "personal bias" and not factual laddering. kyurem isnt nearly used as much as the other two, so suspecting it is pointless in terms of getting RESULTS. we dont ladder during suspect tests solely to show off how much better we are, its so we can "Test the suspect" which is pointless when the current meta spams ate as it is, and kyurem does NOT get as much usage. not nearly enough to get accurate results. if we suspect the three togeather, we are just bandwagoning refridge. when we should focus on the two "bigger ones" in terms of usage/better abusers, THEN look into the "younger brother". nowhere have i said not to suspect it because its not as common. my point is if we are going to suspect refridgerate, i want to actually see people USE REFRIDGERATE. which next to noone will, since this is PROVEN IN THE META. im sorry for accidentally jabbing you, but i was literally trying to explain this very misinformation in that exact post your arguing.

And third, Fairy/Rock is a pretty bad typing. Seriously. Here, lemme run numbers on the two using Diancie's resists. I'll be accurate and use standard Diancie and standard Kyurem-B, as listed by Smogon itself. (Not calcing Kyu-W since it doesn't have a listed standard, although I suspect it's running similar EVs when not using a Scarf set.)

So, let's first compare Fire using the premiere Fire-type attacker.

252+ Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie in Harsh Sunshine: 318-374 (131.9 - 155.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B in Harsh Sunshine: 619-729 (137.2 - 161.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Neither survive, of course, but very little does to Groudon's V-create. But either way, those numbers are curiously close, huh? And, seems Diancie's resistance to Fire is pretty useless. So, let's move on to Normal!
stab v-create from sun boosted pdon ohkos diancie...wow...its not like it 2hkos giratina too or anything right? right? 150/120/120 bulk 2hkoed. yup. this calc shows a lot in terms of fire type moves diancie can tank...like rays magma storm upon switchin. but no, diancie HAS to get nuked by pdon and its nuke-create. im sorry for sarcasm, but seriously?

252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 150-177 (62.2 - 73.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 294-346 (65.1 - 76.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Nope, both a guaranteed 2HKO with standard Kyub taking a whopping 3% more damage. So, Diancie's resistance to normal doesn't save it against one of the best Normal-type attackers. What about Dark?


252+ Atk Mega Tyranitar Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 106-126 (43.9 - 52.2%) -- 15.6% chance to 2HKO

252+ Atk Mega Tyranitar Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 207-244 (45.8 - 54.1%) -- 50.8% chance to 2HKO

That 40% more likely chance to get KOed here looks frightening but... Knock Off, so the next hit is doing pitiful damage to both. Crunch, Dark Pulse, and Night Daze would do more but, in my experience, almost all offensive Dark-types run Knock Off as their only Dark-STAB. Either way, a whopping 2% difference here! So, Diancie's Dark-resistance is kinda meaningless. Flying?


252+ SpA Mega Rayquaza Oblivion Wing vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Diancie: 84-100 (34.8 - 41.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ SpA Mega Rayquaza Oblivion Wing vs. 240 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 201-237 (44.5 - 52.5%) -- 20.7% chance to 2HKO

Here it actually kinda makes a difference. But what gives? I'm running Hasty Diancie, Naive is also standard as well, which would add a bit wider, but not big difference, to Diancie's above damage values. (Would avoid a 2HKO from T-Tar guaranteed if it somehow got another item.) Kyu-B is also a little less bulky specially. Converserly, however, Kyu-W swaps Kyu-B's defense and special defense, so, if I were to compare Kyu-W, the values would be closer. Even still... an 11% difference on a resisted vs neutral hit is pretty much crap for the former. (And regardless, it's kind of a wash since both Diancie and Kyu-B utterly murder Mega-Ray, Kyu-B especially even if Ray has King's Shield.)

Not doing Bug because Bug-STAB doesn't really exist in BH except maybe for the rare U-turning Scizor. Nor Dragon since immunity is immunity. Not going to compare Kyu-B's resistances to Diancie since that's a little unfair. Also, as we can see, Diancie would be struggling to survive neutral hits that Kyu-B could shrug off.


As for the raw typings itself in a vacuum against BH...

Rock/Fairy
Resists: Normal, Flying, Bug, Dark, Fire - Four of these are pretty relevant to BH.

Immune: Dragon - Relevant, but, oddly, not a lot of Dragons actually use their Dragon-STAB. It's more Contrary-proofing than actually dealing with Dragons. Ray and Kyu-B need other coverage, except the very rare Technician Kyu-B who might run Dual Chop. Latis run it, but both Diancie and Kyu-B check them pretty hard. Palkia, Reshiram, and Sceptile like Dragon-STAB on some sets, but they're not common. Dialga usually goes Imposter-proof with Doom Desire, AFAIK

Weak: Ground, Steel (4x), Water, Grass - Ground is a big one, and Steel being 4x means some stuff is running random Steel moves just to bop Diancie since it can't survive any of them. Water, while more restricted, means Kyogre can punish this type hard with a single shot, and a failure to KO Gyarados or Palkia in one shot means they'll be destroying Diancie. Grass is rare, but some Pokemon, like Kyu-W, like running stuff such as Seed Flare to snipe Kyogre and Mega-Slowbro. Sceptile likes using Grass too, especially on Sheer Force and Contrary sets.



Ice/Dragon
Resists: Water, Grass, Electric - Between Water-resistance and Bolt Strike, Kyurem is pretty much a giant middle finger to Kyogre and can be comfortable dealing with Gyarados and some Palkia sets. Grass, again, is rare, but it helps Kyurem switch into opposing Kyu-W coverage and deal with Sceptile. Electric isn't overly common, but less damage from Volt Switches is always handy, especially since it's likely to do a little more damage than U-Turn since people aren't zeroing out their Special Attack to minimize stray confusion and Foul Play damage.

Weak: Fighting, Rock, Steel, Dragon, Fairy - Fighting isn't too relevant to the tier, being basically the domain of Xtwo, Gengar's coverage, and the stray Low Kick. It hurts when it's there, but it's not all that common. Some Contraries run Close Combat, but most don't have room for it. Rock is more relevant to Stealth Rock, and is a shared weakness with Mega-Ray. Some stuff run random rock moves for Mega-Ray, which will hurt Kyurem, but aside from Stealth Rock, it's not all that common. And for SR, standard Kyu-B runs HP EVs that let's it switch in 4 times while still having HP left, which is worth noting. Kyu-B shares a Steel weakness with Diancie, but it's only half as weak, so it tanks the hits a heck of a lot better. It can still hurt though (looking at you, Dialga). Dragon is relevant but, as said above, outside of Contrary, not many Dragons actually run Dragon-STAB. Typically only things that have a bad STAB-combo anyway, like Lat@s or Sceptile. Of these, Fairy is the biggest one because of Pixelate. But, if Pixelate is banned, this weakness will become a heck of a lot less detrimental since it no longer needs to fear Fakespeeds or Boombursts. Rather... Moonblast, Light of Ruin, and the stray Play Rough, all of which are sigificantly weaker and can be Fakespeeded over (except bulky Xerneas, though Kyu-W can still probably just Boomburst that to oblivion.)


Basically, in a vacuum, Diancie's resists are a bit better, but Kyu-B's are by no means bad. Immunity is an immunity and is the major advantage. Kyurem has one more weakness, but Diancie's overall are a lot more common as coverage and a lot more crippling since it has a 4x weakness. But out of the vacuum, Diancie's weak bulk, made worse on its standard sets by its Nature, means it gets bopped pretty badly by just about anything regardless, with its resists pretty much meaning "oh hey, it's something I don't get OHKOed by!" All it really has in practice is a Dragon-immunity to protect it from significant damage.
its somewhat annoying that your using a -attack and 240 hp variant comparason (even though its justified due to being their main sets) but i will agree that fairy/rock is a bad typing for diancie....but its not a bad typing...diancie is just a glass cannon. the two have no relation whatsoever.

And finally, as I showed in my last calc above, Kyurem doesn't struggle with Kyogre. Rather, Kyogre struggles to survive a Bolt Strike without running Fur Coat.
"this is "stab vs stab" obviously, and you have to take into account coverage...but even then...kyurem is picked off by WAY more common coverage moves then diancie is." i literally addressed this when you said it i mean, diancie beats its checks with tarrows too...so i dont see your point. especially when most run moonblast and 2hko kyurem(since they run speed nowadays) at most, id say it handles its checks no better/efficiently then the other two does.

to be honest, i didnt refer you by name because i forgot who said it, and didnt want to look for it. sorry rumors, meant no disrespect. anyways, bolding since long. seriously though, im not saying refridge shouldnt be suspected. im saying that it would be better to suspect it once the more common two which make kyurem less used are gone first. refri might be "just as good" as the two...but if we cannot TELL due to hardly anyone running it over ray and diancie, then whats the point other then "ban for the sake of bias" which i dont like...because were trying to AVOID that with suspect testing.

 

[MAMP]

guaranteed 3HKO

Haven't I gone over this with you before? If a Pokemon has to be at absolute max HP with no hazards on the field to just switch in, and even then is forced to just spam recover and thus give the opponent a completely free switch, then it isn't a counter. That calc you posted was extremely disingenuous and you know it.

4 SpA Life Orb Refrigerate Kyurem-B Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Mega Audino: 183-216 (44.6 - 52.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Yeah, wrong calc- I meant to CP this one, but it autoset because of damage and I wasn't paying attention. Ty for catching- idt I'd have ever checked that.
252+ Atk Life Orb Refrigerate Kyurem-B Thrash vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Fur Coat Chansey: 294-347 (41.8 - 49.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Still, the fact is is that even with the most powerful attacks it can possibly run (I'm not going to touch viably, because HJK/CC aren't) it still can't win with any reliability, seeing as crits are more likely than those rolls. To make things worse, those calcs were against a mixed wall, not a physical one.

Same goes for this one. If rocks are up, or if Chansey has taken even 10% prior damage, then it can't switch in; it isn't by any means a counter to CC Kyu-B. Also, Close Combat is absolutely a viable option on Kyu-B. It was in XY when Kyu-B was popular and I have no doubt it would be in a post-Aerilate/Pixilate meta as well. Close Combat is comparable to Precipice Blades; it hits Steel and Rock types, but trades off the ability to hit Aegi for the potential to OHKO TTar (Precipice Blades is only a 2HKO), as well as hitting MGyara and FC Chansey.

Rumors I could refute your points but I really don't feel like this debate about Kyurem's defensive capacity is going anywhere and we're getting off topic. The important question to answer is, is Refrigerate close enough to Aerilate and Pixilate in terms of power level and metagame impact that we can consider it equivalent to them in a suspect test? I think this is a question that can't really be answered at the moment; there are no Refrigerate users that are common enough or impactful enough in the meta at the moment that we can accurately judge whether Refrigerate is on the same level as Aerilate and Pixilate. The entire reason for this is that Pixilate and Aerilate so thoroughly outclass Refrigerate that it generally isn't worth using, so I think it's best to wait until after an Aerilate/Pixilate suspect test to suspect Refrigerate.

As for whether we shouldn't just suspect MRay and MDiancie, its because there really isn't any alternative. MRay and MDiancie aren't broken individually, and Flint doesn't want to do ability+Pokemon complex bans.

 

[Rumors]

Lcass4919 and MAMP The thing is, even though it's not as commonly ran, Refrigerate has plenty of past evidence and precedent for its power. Fridge Kyu-B was the goto -ate user until ORAS showed up, and even then it was still a fairly common sight until everyone decided to run the mixed wall breakers. It was everywhere in X/Y and it was one of the major contributors to getting -ate clause to begin with. If memory serves right, we were also discussing suspecting it again, but a combination of ORAS showing up and the extreme slowness of anything getting done about suspects and bans until recently kept that from getting to an actual suspect. Kyu-B might not be a common sight right now, and Kyu-W less so, but it has clearly demonstrated its powerful for about two and a half years. And the only new wall that Kyu-B cares about is Mega-Bro. And perhaps Fur Coat Audino, but I've not run the calcs on that one and don't have time right now. And I'm sure Kyu-W would blow right past those two anyway, especially since, in my experience, it loves its Specs and Q.Dance sets. (And Scarf, but that's not a wall breaker.)

Additionally, removing Pixelate would simultaneously destroy Kyurem-both's biggest offensive checks: Pixie Diancie and Pixie Xerneas. Without that ability, Diancie would just crumple to Kyu-B and Scarf Kyu-W (or any if Kyu-W can take the Moonblast/Light of Ruin) while Xerneas would be more set-dependent, but it'd need to be a bulky one to face them down safely. I mean, there's two big reasons of why Kyurem is used less often: Diancie and Ray have better mixed offense and can be spammed on teams more thoughtlessly. The other being Pixie Diancie is common and wrecks Kyurem except under certain circumstances, specifically Kyu-B safe-switches in and is able to get a Fake-Speed while Kyu-W is set-up with a Q.Dance or two and has King's Shield before Diancie comes in.

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

I guess, if i was precise, I should have said "a check that is not a counter". What I mainly mean to designate by check is the mons that can switch in a couple time into particular attacks (preferably the one the checked mon is meant to spam)to take it on. For example, OU tytar is a good check to talonflame, and BH Pdon without synthesis is a good check to PH Tytar. The entire definition is here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ou-checks-compendium.3565962/#post-6686641
Let's not start getting in the "do you even know what is a check", because the last similar argument was stale and toxic.

However, the lati twins, when run offensively, are both close to OHKOed by Sky plate Ray Espeed, and kube 2HKOes offensive PH tytar after rocks:
252 Atk Sky Plate Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 286-337 (95 - 111.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-B Extreme Speed vs. 128 HP / 0 Def Mega Tyranitar: 160-190 (42.8 - 50.9%) -- 96.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
So... those are not checks at all according to the definition. Additionally, tytar loses to any rayquaza variant running physical coverage, be it PBlades or CC. It only beats magma storm/spore variants(it is really hard to have any move usage stat regarding how common they respectively are, due to other sets "polluting" the stats). I have myself tried to build offense, I ended up with an unaware tytar-MG Hooh-Kyogre core to check -ates that was often to weak to particular rayquaza, and was already pretty passive for the first two members.

Mega Ray is by far the strongest -aters, and diancie is a great revenge killer. However, kyube remains super strong, as it is better than diancie when running fully physical thanks to a stronger PBlade(which is admittedly niche, diancie is way better overall). Considering the important discussion over refrigerate, I believe a three phase suspect might be good(or do we really need a suspect to realize how much -aters already impact the metagame?)

On a side note, Hoopa-u was used on 10% of the team, and while its specs set put it over the top, it was its general set unpredictability that made it bannable. And it is way easier to sense the impact of something that you have to prepare for than to feel the change induced by a rare mon that is almost impossible to prepare for outside of chosing particular playstyle. If we ban gengarite now(which i support) it is out due to being uncompetitive, not because it is broken(although it may be), because the metagame isnt adapted to gengar at all right now, greatly increasing its efficiency.

Side notes- you always run hp on Latias; that TTar is a bit outdated as outrunning MMY isn't important.

First of all, you didn't calc PH on that TTar.
Secondly, TTar gets the OHKO anyway, so it's definitely a check. PBlades doesn't OHKO either, so it's really just CC in terms of ray winning (which even then isn't guaranteed with kings shield).
Thirdly, it also beats Earth Power, Infestation, and King’s Shield variants.

hoopa-u notes

Hoopa u had 10% usage, but specs had 2.4% on it. Furthermore, it was completely specs that got it banned- with the others, it was merely A rank, and the entire thread was about the specs set, as was every pro and anti ban argument.

MAMP The primary difference is standard Kyurem tends to fully or near-fully invest in HP while standard Ray and Diancie tend to invest fully in offense in and speed. So, in reality, the calcs look something more like...

0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 97-115 (27.6 - 32.7%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
0 SpA Mew Psychic vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 106-126 (23.3 - 27.7%) -- 76.6% chance to 4HKO

Or if we want more relevant...

252 SpA Spooky Plate Mega Gengar Judgment vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 262-309 (57.7 - 68%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Spooky Plate Mega Gengar Judgment vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 240-283 (68.3 - 80.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Aka, in this example, Kyu-B soft counters Gengar lacking King Shield since it can manually switch into rocks + Judgement 100% of the time and win with Fakespeed. Ray only checks because it cannot switch into rocks + Judgement safely. And this is swapping into one of the harder hitters in the tier. And this isn't the only case either. Mind, when I'm saying Kyurem is bulkier, I'm saying its standard spreads lets it take hits and return the favors that would force out the others, not wall stuff like a Chansey. It's not a huge difference, but it's significant.

Also...

252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie: 135-159 (56 - 65.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0 Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie in Harsh Sunshine: 224-264 (92.9 - 109.5%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
0 Atk Primal Groudon Sacred Fire vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie in Harsh Sunshine: 124-147 (51.4 - 60.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Ho-Oh Sacred Fire vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Diancie: 83-98 (34.4 - 40.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Two of those resists look not particularly helpful. Dark I'll give you since most run Knock Off, which will have pitiful power after removing Diancie's item. And Flying because the main user is Mega-Ray, who Diancie checks or soft counters anyway depending on Ray's coverage.

Additionally, because you brought up E.Speed Normals...

252+ Atk Regigigas Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 168-198 (37 - 43.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-B Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Regigigas: 211-249 (49.7 - 58.7%) -- 99.6% chance to 2HKO

Kyu-B still wins, hands down, barring KS from either side, despite being slower. Slaking would have very similar numbers since its pretty much interchangeable with Gigas.



Quantum Tesseract Those calcs are not walls. Just shy of a 2HKO means they're pretty much stuck locked into recovery after one hit if they stay in and they lose after any prior damage, such as Stealth Rock. For something to be a wall against something, in my opinion, it needs to only take around 33% max from the strongest move so it has time to do something other than spam recovery. And I say 33% so it can survive with some prior damage.

Also... why do you say Kyu-B running Bolt Strike for Kyogre is a bad thing? It's one of its main moves on its standard sets and Kyogre can't take it except with Fur Coat.

252+ Atk Kyurem-B Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Kyogre: 294-348 (72.7 - 86.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Except for Mega-Bro, Water-types are a non-issue to Kyurem-B unless it's not running Bolt Strike for some reason.

To start with, what Cube runs is completely irrelevant next to the base stats, because MRay could also invest in HP and get the same effect- it's just so much worse. Arguing that cube is bulkier because of it usually runs is pointless.

I’m not going to argue about walls taking 50% ish making them mediocre, because that's totally fair. These walls aren't even resists, though, so it's just mostly showing that you don't need resists.


Cube running bolt strike isn't necessarily a bad thing, until you consider that it could be running something useful like precipice blades or a shed killer. Furthermore, kyogre almost always runs king's shield, and KYub definitely needs to fear being burned.

First, Lcass4919, if you're going to address my arguements and points, have the respect to address me by name, please.

Second, your logic of "we can't suspect Kyu-B because it's not as common" is pretty, well... I'll be blunt and say bad. Most other -ates are not common either. Since Diancie and Ray are the only common ones... should we suspect the Pokemon instead? Heck no. Additionally, we already have precedent for suspecting the weaker of a suspect trio at the same time. Specifically, when Mega-Rayquaza was suspected along with Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre, but was not banned while the others were. And finally, before those two arrived on the scene, Kyurem, along with -ate Xerneas and Yveltal, were dominating the X/Y meta before ORAS. Considering the only thing that's changed, and remained unbanned, for Kyurem, in ORAS outside those two are Mega-bro and Mega-Audino, neither of which are really enough to change its impact on everything else It basically just means you can use something other than Furcoat Chansey or Registeel to wall them. But, considering Mega-Bro can't handle Kyu-W (Boomburst if not Soundproof, Seed Flare if it is), you pretty much only have Mega Audino, who I have doubts would be able to handle the more flexible movesets of Kyurem since it's not forced to run Fake Out + Extreme Speed + Boomburst on standard sets. Hence, there's little reason not to suspect along with the others, despite Refrigerate being "less common" or "weaker".


And third, Fairy/Rock is a pretty bad typing. Seriously. Here, lemme run numbers on the two using Diancie's resists. I'll be accurate and use standard Diancie and standard Kyurem-B, as listed by Smogon itself. (Not calcing Kyu-W since it doesn't have a listed standard, although I suspect it's running similar EVs when not using a Scarf set.)

So, let's first compare Fire using the premiere Fire-type attacker.

252+ Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie in Harsh Sunshine: 318-374 (131.9 - 155.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Primal Groudon V-create vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B in Harsh Sunshine: 619-729 (137.2 - 161.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Neither survive, of course, but very little does to Groudon's V-create. But either way, those numbers are curiously close, huh? And, seems Diancie's resistance to Fire is pretty useless. So, let's move on to Normal!


252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 150-177 (62.2 - 73.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Regigigas Facade (140 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 294-346 (65.1 - 76.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Nope, both a guaranteed 2HKO with standard Kyub taking a whopping 3% more damage. So, Diancie's resistance to normal doesn't save it against one of the best Normal-type attackers. What about Dark?


252+ Atk Mega Tyranitar Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Mega Diancie: 106-126 (43.9 - 52.2%) -- 15.6% chance to 2HKO

252+ Atk Mega Tyranitar Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 240 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 207-244 (45.8 - 54.1%) -- 50.8% chance to 2HKO

That 40% more likely chance to get KOed here looks frightening but... Knock Off, so the next hit is doing pitiful damage to both. Crunch, Dark Pulse, and Night Daze would do more but, in my experience, almost all offensive Dark-types run Knock Off as their only Dark-STAB. Either way, a whopping 2% difference here! So, Diancie's Dark-resistance is kinda meaningless. Flying?


252+ SpA Mega Rayquaza Oblivion Wing vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Diancie: 84-100 (34.8 - 41.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ SpA Mega Rayquaza Oblivion Wing vs. 240 HP / 0 SpD Kyurem-B: 201-237 (44.5 - 52.5%) -- 20.7% chance to 2HKO

Here it actually kinda makes a difference. But what gives? I'm running Hasty Diancie, Naive is also standard as well, which would add a bit wider, but not big difference, to Diancie's above damage values. (Would avoid a 2HKO from T-Tar guaranteed if it somehow got another item.) Kyu-B is also a little less bulky specially. Converserly, however, Kyu-W swaps Kyu-B's defense and special defense, so, if I were to compare Kyu-W, the values would be closer. Even still... an 11% difference on a resisted vs neutral hit is pretty much crap for the former. (And regardless, it's kind of a wash since both Diancie and Kyu-B utterly murder Mega-Ray, Kyu-B especially even if Ray has King's Shield.)

Not doing Bug because Bug-STAB doesn't really exist in BH except maybe for the rare U-turning Scizor. Nor Dragon since immunity is immunity. Not going to compare Kyu-B's resistances to Diancie since that's a little unfair. Also, as we can see, Diancie would be struggling to survive neutral hits that Kyu-B could shrug off.


As for the raw typings itself in a vacuum against BH...

Rock/Fairy
Resists: Normal, Flying, Bug, Dark, Fire - Four of these are pretty relevant to BH.

Immune: Dragon - Relevant, but, oddly, not a lot of Dragons actually use their Dragon-STAB. It's more Contrary-proofing than actually dealing with Dragons. Ray and Kyu-B need other coverage, except the very rare Technician Kyu-B who might run Dual Chop. Latis run it, but both Diancie and Kyu-B check them pretty hard. Palkia, Reshiram, and Sceptile like Dragon-STAB on some sets, but they're not common. Dialga usually goes Imposter-proof with Doom Desire, AFAIK

Weak: Ground, Steel (4x), Water, Grass - Ground is a big one, and Steel being 4x means some stuff is running random Steel moves just to bop Diancie since it can't survive any of them. Water, while more restricted, means Kyogre can punish this type hard with a single shot, and a failure to KO Gyarados or Palkia in one shot means they'll be destroying Diancie. Grass is rare, but some Pokemon, like Kyu-W, like running stuff such as Seed Flare to snipe Kyogre and Mega-Slowbro. Sceptile likes using Grass too, especially on Sheer Force and Contrary sets.



Ice/Dragon
Resists: Water, Grass, Electric - Between Water-resistance and Bolt Strike, Kyurem is pretty much a giant middle finger to Kyogre and can be comfortable dealing with Gyarados and some Palkia sets. Grass, again, is rare, but it helps Kyurem switch into opposing Kyu-W coverage and deal with Sceptile. Electric isn't overly common, but less damage from Volt Switches is always handy, especially since it's likely to do a little more damage than U-Turn since people aren't zeroing out their Special Attack to minimize stray confusion and Foul Play damage.

Weak: Fighting, Rock, Steel, Dragon, Fairy - Fighting isn't too relevant to the tier, being basically the domain of Xtwo, Gengar's coverage, and the stray Low Kick. It hurts when it's there, but it's not all that common. Some Contraries run Close Combat, but most don't have room for it. Rock is more relevant to Stealth Rock, and is a shared weakness with Mega-Ray. Some stuff run random rock moves for Mega-Ray, which will hurt Kyurem, but aside from Stealth Rock, it's not all that common. And for SR, standard Kyu-B runs HP EVs that let's it switch in 4 times while still having HP left, which is worth noting. Kyu-B shares a Steel weakness with Diancie, but it's only half as weak, so it tanks the hits a heck of a lot better. It can still hurt though (looking at you, Dialga). Dragon is relevant but, as said above, outside of Contrary, not many Dragons actually run Dragon-STAB. Typically only things that have a bad STAB-combo anyway, like Lat@s or Sceptile. Of these, Fairy is the biggest one because of Pixelate. But, if Pixelate is banned, this weakness will become a heck of a lot less detrimental since it no longer needs to fear Fakespeeds or Boombursts. Rather... Moonblast, Light of Ruin, and the stray Play Rough, all of which are sigificantly weaker and can be Fakespeeded over (except bulky Xerneas, though Kyu-W can still probably just Boomburst that to oblivion.)


Basically, in a vacuum, Diancie's resists are a bit better, but Kyu-B's are by no means bad. Immunity is an immunity and is the major advantage. Kyurem has one more weakness, but Diancie's overall are a lot more common as coverage and a lot more crippling since it has a 4x weakness. But out of the vacuum, Diancie's weak bulk, made worse on its standard sets by its Nature, means it gets bopped pretty badly by just about anything regardless, with its resists pretty much meaning "oh hey, it's something I don't get OHKOed by!" All it really has in practice is a Dragon-immunity to protect it from significant damage.


And finally, as I showed in my last calc above, Kyurem doesn't struggle with Kyogre. Rather, Kyogre struggles to survive a Bolt Strike without running Fur Coat.

ORAS also added MMeta and PDon, two great checks and situational switchins.

Can't argue with most of this, but KYub doesn't really beat ogre due to moonblast/burns and/or king's shield. Additionally, there is no way Diancie isn't OHKOing MDos, close combat is run on all physical contrary, and most mixed (no room hahahahaha), and rock weakness really sucks vs TTar.

Haven't I gone over this with you before? If a Pokemon has to be at absolute max HP with no hazards on the field to just switch in, and even then is forced to just spam recover and thus give the opponent a completely free switch, then it isn't a counter. That calc you posted was extremely disingenuous and you know it.

4 SpA Life Orb Refrigerate Kyurem-B Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Mega Audino: 183-216 (44.6 - 52.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock


Same goes for this one. If rocks are up, or if Chansey has taken even 10% prior damage, then it can't switch in; it isn't by any means a counter to CC Kyu-B. Also, Close Combat is absolutely a viable option on Kyu-B. It was in XY when Kyu-B was popular and I have no doubt it would be in a post-Aerilate/Pixilate meta as well. Close Combat is comparable to Precipice Blades; it hits Steel and Rock types, but trades off the ability to hit Aegi for the potential to OHKO TTar (Precipice Blades is only a 2HKO), as well as hitting MGyara and FC Chansey.

Rumors I could refute your points but I really don't feel like this debate about Kyurem's defensive capacity is going anywhere and we're getting off topic. The important question to answer is, is Refrigerate close enough to Aerilate and Pixilate in terms of power level and metagame impact that we can consider it equivalent to them in a suspect test? I think this is a question that can't really be answered at the moment; there are no Refrigerate users that are common enough or impactful enough in the meta at the moment that we can accurately judge whether Refrigerate is on the same level as Aerilate and Pixilate. The entire reason for this is that Pixilate and Aerilate so thoroughly outclass Refrigerate that it generally isn't worth using, so I think it's best to wait until after an Aerilate/Pixilate suspect test to suspect Refrigerate.

As for whether we shouldn't just suspect MRay and MDiancie, its because there really isn't any alternative. MRay and MDiancie aren't broken individually, and Flint doesn't want to do ability+Pokemon complex bans.

Is reading comprehension your weak point? Walls aren't counters, at all, and in no way is it getting ohko'd after rocks, so that isn't your problem either. They just have the bonus of being situational switchins.

Lcass4919 and MAMP The thing is, even though it's not as commonly ran, Refrigerate has plenty of past evidence and precedent for its power. Fridge Kyu-B was the goto -ate user until ORAS showed up, and even then it was still a fairly common sight until everyone decided to run the mixed wall breakers. It was everywhere in X/Y and it was one of the major contributors to getting -ate clause to begin with. If memory serves right, we were also discussing suspecting it again, but a combination of ORAS showing up and the extreme slowness of anything getting done about suspects and bans until recently kept that from getting to an actual suspect. Kyu-B might not be a common sight right now, and Kyu-W less so, but it has clearly demonstrated its powerful for about two and a half years. And the only new wall that Kyu-B cares about is Mega-Bro. And perhaps Fur Coat Audino, but I've not run the calcs on that one and don't have time right now. And I'm sure Kyu-W would blow right past those two anyway, especially since, in my experience, it loves its Specs and Q.Dance sets. (And Scarf, but that's not a wall breaker.)

Additionally, removing Pixelate would simultaneously destroy Kyurem-both's biggest offensive checks: Pixie Diancie and Pixie Xerneas. Without that ability, Diancie would just crumple to Kyu-B and Scarf Kyu-W (or any if Kyu-W can take the Moonblast/Light of Ruin) while Xerneas would be more set-dependent, but it'd need to be a bulky one to face them down safely. I mean, there's two big reasons of why Kyurem is used less often: Diancie and Ray have better mixed offense and can be spammed on teams more thoughtlessly. The other being Pixie Diancie is common and wrecks Kyurem except under certain circumstances, specifically Kyu-B safe-switches in and is able to get a Fake-Speed while Kyu-W is set-up with a Q.Dance or two and has King's Shield before Diancie comes in.

Kyuw is easily OHKOd by light of ruin, so scarf it is. Additionally, those two reasons are huge- mixed offense is a huge selling point and is why you can't just wall with FC/Chansey, and ability to fit on teams is one of the biggest concerns in Pokemon. If you can only run it on 1 or 2 archetypes and requires specific team support, it's generally a lot worse. You also missed out on two fairly major points- MRay/Diancie are less predictable, and are much faster. With Diancie, you outspeed slaking and get to fakeburst it while taking only one attack, while with the ice twins it gets off at least a fakespeed pair- and more if it lives a hit.

 

[MAMP]

Is reading comprehension your weak point? Walls aren't counters, at all, and in no way is it getting ohko'd after rocks, so that isn't your problem either. They just have the bonus of being situational switchins.

Ok, I think you're working under a completely different definition of the term 'wall' from everyone else. The term 'to wall', as I and the vast majority of other people understand it, means to be able to be able to easily switch in, take any hit and consistently recover off the damage - a wall for a Pokemon, by definition, is a counter to that Pokemon, and in fact the two terms are often used interchangeably. A Pokemon that takes a clean 50% and is 2HKO'd after rocks is not a wall by the accepted definition of the word.

Cube running bolt strike isn't necessarily a bad thing, until you consider that it could be running something useful like precipice blades or a shed killer. Furthermore, kyogre almost always runs king's shield, and KYub definitely needs to fear being burned.

I'm not trying not to be overly nitpicky here, but this quote really bugged me. Unless I'm misunderstanding you (please correct me if I am), you're saying that running Bolt Strike (a coverage move used to hit a specific set of checks/counters) on Kyu-B is bad because it could instead be running Precipice Blades (a coverage move used to hit a specific set of checks/counters). They are completely different moves used for coverage against completely different threats, and I'm really not sure why you're so adamant that Bolt Strike is bad. If Aerilate and Pixilate were banned, the rise of Refrigerate would undoubtedly cause an upswing in the number of Water-types being run, which would make Bolt Strike a very useful move to have; this was the case in XY, and I've got no doubt it would happen again here. As well, Kyogre only runs King's Shield so much to avoid getting revenge killed by MRay and MDiancie, which would not be a concern for it if Aerilate and Pixilate were banned, and thus the usage of King's Shield could be expected to drop.

 

[CallMeLefty]

Side notes- you always run hp on Latias; that TTar is a bit outdated as outrunning MMY isn't important.

First of all, you didn't calc PH on that TTar.
Secondly, TTar gets the OHKO anyway, so it's definitely a check. PBlades doesn't OHKO either, so it's really just CC in terms of ray winning (which even then isn't guaranteed with kings shield).
Thirdly, it also beats Earth Power, Infestation, and King’s Shield variants.

PH isn't taken into account because it doesn't trigger on first turn, and can be negated by rocks. Consequently, PH tytar is at best a mediocre check, especially if you add something like pdon that forces it out, as if is then at max 86% upon entering (without rocks), so it is just a one time check.Also, without speed and just HP on tytar, uninvested kube does outspeed and 2HKO with boomburst after rocks/turn 1)
0 SpA Refrigerate Kyurem-B Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Mega Tyranitar: 195-231 (48.2 - 57.1%) -- 91.8% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Poison Heal


Regarding Lati@s, they also get blown back by Espeed+Boomburst (or even just ESpeed), even when invested:
252 Atk Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 248 HP / 252 Def Mega Latias: 153-180 (42.1 - 49.5%) -- 87.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
0 SpA Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Mega Latias: 231-273 (63.6 - 75.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock.
You need fur coat, hence a defensive set, in order for latias to reliably switch into it.


Also, to support MAMP and correct your third vocabulary error (At this point, I am kinda done with this, please check what you're saying instead of assuming the opposing side is always wrong):
A counter :"a Pokémon set that has an advantage over another Pokémon set such that it can switch into an attack from that other Pokémon and easily defeat it or force it to switch out."
A wall: " a Pokémon set that, due to its combination of HP and Defense and/or Special Defense, takes a comparatively low percentage of damage from physical moves or special moves or both. Commonly branched into the categories physical wall, special wall, and mixed wall"
(source:http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Appendix:Metagame_terminology#Wall)
In the issue at hand, being a great mixed wall is equivalent to being an -ate counter. A wall is to a counter what a counter is to a check. thus, a wall IS a counter, but a counter isn't always a wall in the sense that a wall is not always requiring something in particular to wall. And it brings us back to my argument, which MAMP let's me make more precise: only walls can take on -aters.
Additionally, MAMP is even more right regarding the every-day use (I am that much of a nerd) of the terms "wall" and "to wall" (there is also a slight meaning difference between the noun and the verb, going in the sense of MAMP's argument).


Finally, on a general note, I think that the argument over refrigerate should simply be dealt with by experimenting, aka suspecting it separately. Arguing over bulk isn't really important as it is -ater's offensive prowesses that make them so good. I do believe that refrigerate should be banned as well, but I don't think it is really possible to be certain without testing. The suspect is a cheap price (one week)compared to the shots that are currently being fired.

Edit: to answer BP Scrub, I am using the check definition as a GSI(guaranteed switch-in), as defined is the link posted in my previous post. You calcs do show that it Latias beats it, but it still means that the player has to sack a mon every time. Even, if according to this definition (which also works), Latias is a check, the point remains unchanged: offensive teams need to sack a mon every time an -ater comes in.

 

[bp scrub]

"Pokémon A checks Pokémon B if, when Pokémon A is given a free switch into Pokémon B, Pokémon A can win every time, even under the worst case scenario, without factoring in hax."

non FC (or refrige/pixilate???) Latias definitely does not counter Rayquaza, but it certainly does check it

252 SpA Life Orb Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. +1 248 HP / 0 SpD Mega Latias: 231-274 (63.6 - 75.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Mega Latias: 242-286 (66.6 - 78.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Meanwhile, Latias obviously ohkos back with a super effective stab move
+1 252+ SpA Mega Latias Spacial Rend vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 570-672 (163.3 - 192.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Latias can definitely be made into a decent Rayquaza counter, but it requires giving up a lot of offensive power obviously, and Fur Coat

0 SpA Sharp Beak Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Boomburst vs. +1 252 HP / 252+ SpD Mega Latias: 142-168 (39 - 46.1%) -- 21.5% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252 Atk Sharp Beak Aerilate Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Fur Coat Mega Latias: 112-133 (30.7 - 36.5%) -- 64.5% chance to 3HKO

Standard Aerilate Rayquaza is incapable of 2hkoing at all if it espeeds on the switchin, and even Boomburst only has a 20% chance to 2hko after rocks.

+1 0 SpA Mega Latias Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Mega Rayquaza: 520-612 (148.9 - 175.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO





Latios is a much shakier check, dying to espeed near 100% of the time after rocks.
Of course, you could put some evs into defense to make Latios a check, but that just makes Latios into a bad Latias

 

[MAMP]

I've been thinking on it a bit, and I think the ideal solution is to have a 3 week suspect test - first week would be the meta in its current state, second week would be with Aerilate and Pixilate gone, and third week would be with -ates banned entirely. Then, users who get reqs get to vote to either not ban -ate, ban Aerilate and Pixilate, or ban all 3. This is a best of both worlds solution, giving us an opportunity to see what the meta is like with just Refrigerate and with -ate gone entirely. This means we can make a decision on Refrigerate based on actual evidence rather than hypotheticals without having to go through the entire suspect process twice. The only issue with this I can see is that making people get reqs 3 times would be a nuisance, perhaps the COIL value could be lowered such that people don't have to play as many matches to get reqs?

On another note, can the tangential debates be kept to a minimum please? We really don't need a discussion on whether or not Kyurem has a better defensive typing than MDiancie or if MLati can check MRay in this thread, and it only distracts from the important issues being discussed. I admit I'm guilty of this too, but I'm gonna stop from this point onwards.

 

[HailFall]

I honestly dont see a reason to do it separately. -Ates are always going to be absurdly broken and overcentralizing. Their presence alone makes offense basically unviable, and as long as any form of -ate + espeed is allowed it's going to stay that way. You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

As was brought up earlier, -ates might become more manageable if we allowed 252 ev investment in every stat, but barring that I don't want to even consider excluding refrig from suspect testing. Allowing 252 EVs across the board, however, could help offense out significantly and diversify the metagame quite a bit so that is something I advocate for regardless of if -ates get the boot. We need more than just walls and nukes. Offensive mons with defensive utility are necessary.