Thanks for the quick votes. Mimikyu is officially unbanned from UU!
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...stage-10-4-voting.3652762/page-3#post-8192909
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...stage-10-4-voting.3652762/page-3#post-8192909
We should not test mega pinsir because it has literal no counterplay.
I Think I Speak On Behalf Of The Vast Majority Of UnderUsed Players When I Say Thank God The Fear Mongering Did Not Work And Mimikyu Is Unbanned. I Predict This Sewage Boy Will Drop to RarelyUsed In The Next Tier Shift So It Can Join It’s Spirit Trash Brothers Flygon And Virizion In Their Even Trashier Tier.
If We Have To Rank The Viability Of This Thing I Think An Initial B- Or B Will Suffice. Trash Niche Mon That Might Sweep Low Ladder And Annoy Less Skilled Players In The Upper Ladder.
Great Suspect Test Everyone Bring On Mega-Pinsir... An Actual Pokemon...
There is a plethora of Pokemon which are waiting before a potential Mega-Venusaur suspect test.
I think there are a number of Pokemon on the current list that could use a possible test (not re-introduction) into the UU metagame, even if theory-craft says that they're completely broken in the tier (which sometimes may not be the case). .
The more I think about it, the less I'm even liking the idea of retesting Drought. It just feels really redundant since the issue is apparent: MDoom is fine, Drought is fine, MDoom + Drought = HOLY FUCKING SHIT EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE. I guess we could test rain simultaneously, but I worry that the tier will just turn into Great Value Gen5 with Toed, Tails, and Torkoal on every other team. Maybe testing both will cancel each other out enough to make things not awful (since rain is def the better of the two overall), but eh...Drought one a bit more iffy since we don't know if we're keeping Mega-Houndoom to try Drought
a metagame with less Fairy in it is a quality metagame btwMega-Venusaur's metagame was disgusting as hell.
Like? I honestly only suggested MVenu because I'm operating under the assumption that there isn't anything else currently in BL worth testing (sans Drought and Drizzle, I'll get to them in a sec). Maybe Weavile or Thundy-I (the latter much less so), but everything else in BL looks obviously broke and shouldn't see the light of day.
To my knowlege smogon will have main tiers with mons that are ONLY in swordshield, and will also have a tier with every single pokemon, this was confirmed on smongons twitter. I'm not exactly sure about UU, ubers, RU etc... maybe lower tiers for both but not sureI have an honest to goodness question about the state of the tier.
What happens with Sword and Shield? They are legit dropping mons. How will Smogon as a whole handle that? I know we go close with how the game works, which is why we have team preview, despite protests. But this...is such a game changer I couldn't reasonably predict.
I know UU has been having its fair share of suspects lately, and weather is most likely next (which I heavily disagree with), but I've been doing a LOT of thinking on the metagame lately and wanted to share why I think the correct step would be suspecting Latias.
I really don't need an extensive explanation of what Latias does in the tier at this point. Base 110 Speed coupled with Calm Mind is absolutely absurd especially when you take Z-Crystals into account. Running Pursuit is necessary on a vast majority of teams solely because of Latias; in fact, it's why Scarf Krook became so popular in the first place. At +1, this thing is nuking almost the entire tier with Electrium Z, and one misplay with your Krookodile can cost you the game. CM Latias is capable of beating fat teams entirely by itself if the appropriate mon is weakened (think Mega Steelix, Krookodile, Diancie, Blissey). That's only talking about CM, but now you need to factor it running sets like LO, Specs, etc... This monster is just as versatile as Scizor and I highly recommend you take a look at Pearl's post here to see just how influential Latias has been and still is.
However, I wanted to dedicate this post more so to theorize about what a meta without Latias would look like and why I think it's a step in the right direction and better than what we have right now, even if Latias isn't "broken".
1. No necessary Pursuit
--> No Latias means that teams won't be forced to run Pursuit anymore. This obviously doesn't mean that Pursuit can't / shouldn't be used, since it's still good for things like Celebi, Starmie, Gengar, & just picking off weakened mons in general, but now you have more liberty for things like: SR Krook, which is a fantastic setter against stall / bulky teams in general with a free last slot if Taunt isn't needed, a potentially free slot in Aero if you opt out of Pursuit, etc. Ghost-types and Psychic-types (Celebi, Starmie, Gengar, etc) become better, which will help balance out the (probably) increased usage in Fighting-types (see #3). SR Krook will also hopefully see more usage and it's a fantastic setter that has a really good matchup against the very strong archetype that is stall rn.
2. Water-types become more popular
--> No Electrium-Z means that Water-type Pokemon won't be complete setup bait against Latias. Tentacruel becomes a better hazard remover, Slowbro becomes a better to check Fighting-types, Starmie becomes much better as a remover & check to Fighting-types, and I'm not gonna explain all of them but you have Suicune, Volcanion, Jellicent, Empoleon, and any others I might be forgetting. Increased usage in Water-types means that checking Scizor becomes easier since most of these help vs it.
3. Fighting-types become more popular
--> Latias is a very popular answer against the Fighting-types in the tier. With it gone, Infernape, Terrakion, Cobalion, and Lucario get better. 3/4 of these help soft check Scizor on offense. Infernape and Lucario also have a decent matchup against stall which is at an incredible state in the current meta. Cobalion could potentially also start running CM sets more viably since Latias won't be able to switch in and CM on Cobalion freely.
There's also other smaller points that I won't bother expanding on as much as the ones above:
1) Bulky Fairy-types like Sylveon and Florges also get better now that Latias doesn't beat them 1v1 and become reliable checks to Dragon-types on balance.
2) Mienshao also becomes an effective pivot on balance and offense vs Dragon-types, can be used on more offensive teams that can find fitting a Fairy-type pretty awkward (i.e. VoltTurn), & also helps vs stall thanks to Knock Off + Regenerator (OU folks, think Torn-T).
3) Celebi definitely gets better as it loses one of its best offensive checks. Some might think Celebi will be too good (it very well could be a nuisance to check), but I think it'll be more of an early hype thing since it can still be checked by Infernape, Mienshao, Scizor, scarf Hydreigon, etc. Celebi also helps vs stall; did I mention stall was extremely good rn?
Terrakion might be too good to the point it'd need a suspect afterwards, but even if it's suspected/banned, it might be better for the tier anyway lol. There easily could've been things that I forgot to mention, but I encourage everyone to at least ponder about a metagame without Latias. I think there's potential for a few mons that can't shine now to have a better chance at doing so w/o Lati. Would the tier be better? I honestly think so. Even if people disagree, I hope this post at least sparks some interesting discussion, because I think that testing drizzle/drought would just be a waste of time right now; can't see how drizzle would be balanced with stuff like SD Kabu or how drought + Houndoom, or just drought w/o it, would help the tier much.
I know UU has been having its fair share of suspects lately, and weather is most likely next (which I heavily disagree with), but I've been doing a LOT of thinking on the metagame lately and wanted to share why I think the correct step would be suspecting Latias.
I really don't need an extensive explanation of what Latias does in the tier at this point. Base 110 Speed coupled with Calm Mind is absolutely absurd especially when you take Z-Crystals into account. Running Pursuit is necessary on a vast majority of teams solely because of Latias; in fact, it's why Scarf Krook became so popular in the first place. At +1, this thing is nuking almost the entire tier with Electrium Z, and one misplay with your Krookodile can cost you the game. CM Latias is capable of beating fat teams entirely by itself if the appropriate mon is weakened (think Mega Steelix, Krookodile, Diancie, Blissey). That's only talking about CM, but now you need to factor it running sets like LO, Specs, etc... This monster is just as versatile as Scizor and I highly recommend you take a look at Pearl's post here to see just how influential Latias has been and still is.
However, I wanted to dedicate this post more so to theorize about what a meta without Latias would look like and why I think it's a step in the right direction and better than what we have right now, even if Latias isn't "broken".
1. No necessary Pursuit
--> No Latias means that teams won't be forced to run Pursuit anymore. This obviously doesn't mean that Pursuit can't / shouldn't be used, since it's still good for things like Celebi, Starmie, Gengar, & just picking off weakened mons in general, but now you have more liberty for things like: SR Krook, which is a fantastic setter against stall / bulky teams in general with a free last slot if Taunt isn't needed, a potentially free slot in Aero if you opt out of Pursuit, etc. Ghost-types and Psychic-types (Celebi, Starmie, Gengar, etc) become better, which will help balance out the (probably) increased usage in Fighting-types (see #3). SR Krook will also hopefully see more usage and it's a fantastic setter that has a really good matchup against the very strong archetype that is stall rn.
2. Water-types become more popular
--> No Electrium-Z means that Water-type Pokemon won't be complete setup bait against Latias. Tentacruel becomes a better hazard remover, Slowbro becomes a better to check Fighting-types, Starmie becomes much better as a remover & check to Fighting-types, and I'm not gonna explain all of them but you have Suicune, Volcanion, Jellicent, Empoleon, and any others I might be forgetting. Increased usage in Water-types means that checking Scizor becomes easier since most of these help vs it.
3. Fighting-types become more popular
--> Latias is a very popular answer against the Fighting-types in the tier. With it gone, Infernape, Terrakion, Cobalion, and Lucario get better. 3/4 of these help soft check Scizor on offense. Infernape and Lucario also have a decent matchup against stall which is at an incredible state in the current meta. Cobalion could potentially also start running CM sets more viably since Latias won't be able to switch in and CM on Cobalion freely.
There's also other smaller points that I won't bother expanding on as much as the ones above:
1) Bulky Fairy-types like Sylveon and Florges also get better now that Latias doesn't beat them 1v1 and become reliable checks to Dragon-types on balance.
2) Mienshao also becomes an effective pivot on balance and offense vs Dragon-types, can be used on more offensive teams that can find fitting a Fairy-type pretty awkward (i.e. VoltTurn), & also helps vs stall thanks to Knock Off + Regenerator (OU folks, think Torn-T).
3) Celebi definitely gets better as it loses one of its best offensive checks. Some might think Celebi will be too good (it very well could be a nuisance to check), but I think it'll be more of an early hype thing since it can still be checked by Infernape, Mienshao, Scizor, scarf Hydreigon, etc. Celebi also helps vs stall; did I mention stall was extremely good rn?
Terrakion might be too good to the point it'd need a suspect afterwards, but even if it's suspected/banned, it might be better for the tier anyway lol. There easily could've been things that I forgot to mention, but I encourage everyone to at least ponder about a metagame without Latias. I think there's potential for a few mons that can't shine now to have a better chance at doing so w/o Lati. Would the tier be better? I honestly think so. Even if people disagree, I hope this post at least sparks some interesting discussion, because I think that testing drizzle/drought would just be a waste of time right now; can't see how drizzle would be balanced with stuff like SD Kabu or how drought + Houndoom, or just drought w/o it, would help the tier much.