Bring-6-Ban-1
Metagame Premise: With the newly added Open Sheet feature to Showdown, you can view your opponent’s team and ban them from using one of their Pokemon.
Example: Say your opponent is using this team;
In this meta, you can choose say Kingambit and your opponent no longer can use Kingambit.
Potential Threats and Bans:
Before I name some buffed mons, I do have to say that a lot more Pokemon are nerfed than buffed. If a Pokemon is a massive threat to a team, the opponent can just ban it, which is something to keep in mind.
Defoggers rejoice as you can now ban Gholdengo from appearing what so ever. That’s one of the biggest buffs actually.
Heatran benefits from the ban mechanic because it can ban massively threatening Water or Ground types like Ogerpon or Gliscor and additionally can provide a team with a second hazard setter.
??As mentioned before, a lot more Pokemon are gonna be nerfed than buffed, and Houndstone definitely got nerfed. Biggest part of the nerf is that Last Respects maxes out at 250 BP now, but more importantly you can now ban Tyranitar, Tailwind setters, and even Houndstone itself, which means its much harder to sweep with Houndstone that has Last Respects. Will it still be banned? More than likely, but it’d be interesting to see if it actually was manageable if you could ban it or its partners who now have to be a functional team on their own.
Questions:
- Honestly I got nothing. It’s really straight forward.
:tauros-palde-aqua:
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Protect becomes immensely more useful here, as being able to either stall out a Singles turn or Doubles turn can turn the tides quickly.
Fake Out can quickly and easily stall out a turn, being able to force a mechanic shift reliably while also preventing the target from moving if they lack a Covert Cloak. Feint also gains a lot more viability due to it mitigating Protect.
Leech Seed and similar effects still harm inactive Pokemon if they were set beforehand, so it is possible to stall out turns like this to slowly whittle down and recover HP targets while being untouchable yourself.
Intimidate is fantastic as it is still able to affect inactive Pokemon. Defiant and Clear Amulet also gets an indirect buff from this, but Clear Amulet is decently niche and all the good Defiant Pokemon are already known.
Covert Cloak is able to ignore Fake Out and similar effects without giving up much utility, which is amazing on a wide variety of Pokemon. I expect this to be a possible staple.
Tailwind is all-around nerfed badly. While some dedicated Tailwind setters like Murkrow and the rare Talonflame are only affected minimally, more often than not the offensive Pokemon are setting Tailwind themselves. This means that either their partner or themself will often be the one unable to do anything the next turn, and the few times the setter is the only one active will likely be spent using Protect or inerting less passive pressure. Tailwind effectively being active for 3 turns doesn't help much, either.
Spread moves like Rock Slide and Earthquake receive a substantial nerf, as the single-target effect only comes into play when there is only one target on the field and not when there are two effectively non-existent Pokemon. This is especially the case for opponent-only spread moves, as half the time only one Pokemon can be hit while still receiving the 0.75x damage boost.
Weather being harder to abuse means that setters will have to be careful with what they choose. Torkoal is likely to be an exception to this rule, however, as it tends to fair well alone in Doubles environments, both offensively and defensively.
It's hard to predict if Screens/TR setters will gain a buff or nerf from such a mechanical change. On one hand, its much easier to set them up from the Singles-Doubles turn shifts, while on the other it becomes a lot easier to stall out said turns (and in the case of TR the support Pokemon are unable to support for half the duration).
Being able to both offensively and defensively support its ally really helps in almost every situation, as removing 25% of your opponents' defense will always be incredibly strong.
While a lot more manageable in Doubles, Iron Bundle is no stranger to tearing apart Singles formats. Having Icy Wind and Encore are nice bonuses too, although rarely will Icy Wind be doing any notable damage.
This menace is free to do stuff, although it cannot fit Drain Punch, Taunt, and Protect in two slots so Bulk Up sets are a little more manageable.
Fake Out can quickly and easily stall out a turn, being able to force a mechanic shift reliably while also preventing the target from moving if they lack a Covert Cloak. Feint also gains a lot more viability due to it mitigating Protect.
Much like the above case, the ability to avoid Fake Out and Feint is incredibly notable while still retaining the ability to hit hard with mostly neutral STAB coverage.
Weather is much better here, as it is very easy to switch in a weather setter like Torkoal and Pelipper on a Singles turn while reaping the rewards on a Doubles turn. Screen setting is the exact same, except the setters can do it safely without the constant threat of two attackers at once.
Tailwind is all-around nerfed badly. While some dedicated Tailwind setters like Tornadus are only affected minimally, more often than not the offensive Pokemon are setting Tailwind themselves. This means that either their partner or themself will often be the one unable to do anything the next turn, and the few times the setter is the only one active will likely be spent using Protect or inerting less passive pressure. Tailwind effectively being active for 3 turns doesn't help much, either.
Status effects and other damaging effects like Salt Cure and Fire Spin do not activate during inactive turns and so are much worse in practice. That being said, the trapping move timer does not decrease at the end of an inactive turn.
Intimidate does not affect inactive Pokemon and therefore has to be played with acknowledgement of this. This is also the case for other on-entry abilities like Hospitality and the Ruin abilities.
Imagine Arena Trap in Singles but its reliant on trapping during the first turn, loses 99% of the time to Protect, and is completely useless otherwise. That is Arena Trap here.
It's hard to predict if Trick Room will gain a buff or nerf from such a mechanical change. On one hand, its much easier to set them up from the Singles-to-Doubles turn shifts, while on the other it becomes a lot easier to stall out said turns. Support setters like Cresselia and Indeedee also do nothing but sit there for at least one turn, if not two.
Gravity Sleep Clause in a half-Singles metagame is incredibly threatening, and needs testing in of itself. However, the widespread use of Safety Goggles in Doubles already paired with the relevance of Tera Grass makes this less of an issue, hopefully.
Previously banned from DOU but stuck in UUBL, Cocaine Bear is a nightmare to deal with in Trick Room and just a slow attacker out of it. Whatever comes of it is hard to tell.
