I feel like the level of confusion towards this suspect and perhaps the general lack of understanding as to why it is Gigalith, what this suspect means, and why it is taking place to begin with is significantly higher than normal levels, especially for non tier-mains. This is entirely understandable seeing as despite its effectiveness, Sand has not been particularly common until recently and people who do not frequently play the metagame may not be familiar with the archetype's outlook, let alone how it functions. In addition, Gigalith itself clearly is not a broken Pokemon standalone. Therefore, I will be making a post to not only answer the three pressing questions I pose above, but also back my opinion on Gigalith being banworthy that I briefly touched on in my initial post.
For those of you that do not know, Gigalith was introduced to NU a couple months back due to it having minimal usage in RU. Prior to this point, Sand based teams never saw use in serious settings, Stoutland was unviable, and Sandslash was only viable in the Alolan form as a utility Stealth Rock setter or Rapid Spinner. Upon the introduction of Gigalith, people started to use teams based around Sandstream Gigalith and Sand Rush users such as the two aforementioned Pokemon, Stoutland and Sandslash. While initially it was mainly a ladder phase which people such as Meeps took advantage of to obnoxious extents (using a Triple Sand Rush team that a lot of people used for suspect reqs back during the Venusaur test and around that time in May), it has seen more widespread, consistent usage as time elapsed and June came around while maintaining and even seeing increased usage in a ladder setting, too.
Gigalith was the subject of this suspect because it represents and holds together this archetype of team. Before Gigalith's drop to NU, Hippopotas was NU usable for the entire existence of the tier, but never once saw usage on a serious, viable Sandstream based team like this. Gigalith allows these teams to get seven turns of Sand with Smooth Rock, sets up Stealth Rock reliably, and has the ability to be a defensive sponge with Sand up (85 HP / 130 Def / 80 SDef with the boost in Sand) while hitting quite hard with base 135 Atk. Yea, Gigalith itself is just a good Pokemon, nothing broken -- that's not what anyone should be looking at. What we should be looking at is if the archetype revolving around it is broken as we are merely using Gigalith as the element that makes it broken, which is clearly the case given the timeline and usage patterns I mentioned above. A lot of people wonder why it is not Sand Rush and the general council response to that likely would be that this was not an issue before Gigalith entered the metagame and suspecting a Pokemon outright, as opposed to an ability, is much more concrete and better overall. It is true that suspecting Sand Rush would have less collateral and for a while I believed this was the best option myself, as you can see by my post
here, but over time I have changed my mind and I personally stand by the tier leaders's decision to make it a Gigalith suspect. Regardless of this, people should not be thinking if the Pokemon Gigalith is broken or not per se; rather, they should be determining if the archetype Gigalith is the glue of is not competitive or simply banworthy or not. I understand why this may be confusing or out-of-the-ordinary to those who have not been in the loop for the last while seeing as it is not necessarily a "normal" suspect, but I hope this increases general public understanding on the matter. Now, I would like to transition more into my own personal thoughts on the suspect itself.
Personally, I have been using
this team for the past while and I have had ridiculous amounts of success in tournament play and ladder play with it. Yes, it is, more or less, glorified "cheese" for those familiar with the term. However, the rate at which it is effective and has a favorable match-up is insanely high compared to that of other "cheese" (i.e: Webs, Screens, and even Stall teams, which are probably the main other type of cheese that people even see at the moment). The fact of the matter is that unless you go out of your way to use some combination of durable resists/immunities to Normal/Grounds (Tangela, Palossand, Torterra, Golbat, Weezing, and Gourgeist can be issues to break as you have to outplay them consistently and force them in to Knock, chip, etc. if they are played properly), Protect Pokemon that are not entirely passive (Xatu most notably, but Vaporeon can help if you do not give Sandslash a free turn switching it in and Blastoise with Protect has been a slight cockblock in some of my experience, too), or other niche defensive elements, then you're either going to pretty much outplay the entire game or be incredibly vulnerable throughout. In addition, it is worth noting that none of the aforementioned means of stopping this team are particularly viable on offensive teams, which brings me to a point I will expand upon a bit later about the Sand archetype lacking offensive counterplay.
To expand on how this team should be used and its history as to give some backing to my argument and assertions throughout this post, I will provide some tournament and ladder replays showcasing it. The best example comes in HPL finals against Starmaster, which went like
this. The team ideally functions in a way where you set Sand and perhaps get Stealth Rock up and then proceed to safely get Sandslash or Stoutland in -- usually the former to break holes for the latter or at least claim a kill or two. From there, you make progress with the momentum and speed you have acquired naturally at that point and then the game should break down fairly clearly from there. This match is obviously an extreme because Sandslash straight-up won, but Starmaster was using a pretty standard team for the time (yea, it was Venusaur metagame, but that does not impact Sand's viability whatsoever and if it does, then it helps it as that is one less thing to prepare for) and there are often very similar outcomes against other offensive teams as the metagame has little room to adapt in this regard to the archetype, thus part of why I deem it very banworthy. A similar game to this one happened in NUPL when Meeps used his original variant of the team that mine is based off of and it can be found
here -- his opponent had an offensive team and it was very clear that he had no shot whatsoever at winning this game given the way it played out.
Another example of the team being used in tournaments would be Elodin's game against Orphic for NUPL, which can be seen
here. While the non-Sand Rush members of the team do a good job opening the door earlier on in the game due to Eject Button getting Knocked off, Sandslash still manages to pick off four kills (assuming you include the Rotom at the end prior to the forfeit with it being the last Pokemon) against a standard offensive team that even had a Hail setter to remove the Sand temporarily. Elodin did outplay his opponent, but it was a very straightforward, routine, and even systematic win regardless of that so long as he took a remotely optimal approach throughout given the overwhelming presence of Sandslash (and the eventual Stoutland which simply wasn't even needed in this specific game). There are a number of other tournament games in which other Sand teams prove to also have no competitive place in the metagame; I will hyperlink a handful (
1,
2 (this one isn't THAT bad),
3,
4,
5,
6, and
7) that should all display the clear problem, but I want to also get into some ladder examples as well seeing as it is time to get reqs atm.
I personally laddered 80 games with this team on the suspect ladder in order to get my own reqs, prove the point I am making here, and just have more evidence to showcase how ridiculous this archetype is and thus how banworthy Gigalith is. My two alts were
likeagee6 and
driedupblood and I combined for a 69-11 record with about half of those losses being to opposing Sand teams -- i.e:
1 and
2, including my own (most of the others were to dumb shit, too, but that's besides the point). I'm not here to toot my own horn, but through auto-piloting the build I essentially got both alts in the
top 15 and I can imagine that if others took the team and tried to get reqs with it, they could do so quite easily if they understood how to pilot it. This is normally not as easy to attain so easily unless someone is a really consistently good player or they are using stall, which tends to rake in free wins on the ladder. The fact of the matter is that this team really is "cheese" that is borderline match-up proof (yea, there are some defensive cores that prove troublesome, but they're comprised of rare Pokemon and this is not enough to keep it from being broken). I strongly implore people who are uncertain, looking for some examples of how the team is played or why it is effective, and perhaps in need of their daily dose of salty Finch to check out some replays under either of these accounts as I saved every game I remembered to and all of them are public unless my opponent hid them at some point. I will also go through a couple example ones just to further showcase how it performs like I did for the tournament games.
This game shows me playing a fairly standard build and digging a hole for myself early on by making a couple poor plays, but still pulling through with Sandslash sweeping later-on despite facing a Tangela. Usually, Sandslash breaks things open for Stoutland, but the opposite happened here and Sandslash won in a close game by cleaning out over half of the opponent's team.
Here is a replay where my opponent pretty much knew my sets from the start and used a balanced team that had some defensive leverage, but still easily got overwhelmed by the team after losing an early 50/50 between Ice Shard and Pursuit (the game would have been won regardless, but that really opened up the flood gates) -- games like these really show how vital the momentum and pressure of this team comes into play and why it makes the Sand Rush abusers as potent as they are.
Here is another quicky where Sandslash just runs through an offensive team that is actually somewhat prepared for a choiced Stoutland, just showing that offensive teams cannot really be prepared for this stuff even if they have immunes and resists that normal offenses sometimes lack.
Here is a game against a fairly good opponent, actually, who was using a team that had a Steelix, Xatu, Slowbro, and a means of changing the weather to Hail, but the Sand rushers came through in the end despite losing Silvally-Steel to a freeze earlier on -- the tier just does not have sufficient tools to handle the offensive onslaught that these teams pack unless you want to have people overloading on fat shit every single time to be sufficiently prepared. Again, there are dozens of other examples that can be found in the replays of "driedupblood" or "likeagee6" for those that wish to see more and this post is getting insanely long, but the fact of the matter is that this team archetype simply is not healthy in the current metagame.
The presence of multiple effective Sand Rush abusers in a metagame that outright lacks offensive counterplay, which I mentioned I would touch upon earlier, is a clear cause for concern. There are no ways to revenge kill Stoutland and Sandslash in Sand and that is a necessary component of counterplay in a competitive metagame. Weather boosting abilities have proven to be problematic in a number of competitive settings in the past, especially in lower tiers, and this is simply put another classic case of that occurring. If Gigalith remains in the tier, the metagame will be forced to gravitate towards much more dedeicated defensive based teams in order to combat any of these Sands, especially the one I emphasized throughout this post, and that will totally ruin the semblance of balance and widespread viability that our metagame has identified with for so long and that we as a playerbase may take for granted quite a bit, but also enjoy thoroughly as teambuilders and players if we recognize it or not. To me, this is even more clear-cut than Venusaur or any past suspect dating back to the early Quick Bans and Gigalith 100% has to go if we wish to have a stable metagame moving forward.
For those still unsure or who wish to experience things first hand, I advise you to take this team or another proven Sand team (plenty in replays or above or just going around) and ladder for reqs with it -- the playing of it will very likely make the decision quite easy for you from there if you come into it with an open mind. I would be beyond glad to answer any questions about piloting this team or the archetype in general, be it in this thread or in private, so do not hesitate. I really think people need to understand what this suspect is about and how the Sand archetype functions before making a rushed, uninformed decision about this suspect, especially for those that have not used or faced teams like mine a fair amount. I hope that everyone at least skims through this post, watches some replays, and/or tries out the team a bit so that they can see how ridiculously effective it is and we an all come to the conclusion to
ban Gigalith for the sake of the metagame moving forward.
