Cetitan has been a fairly controversial Pokemon since it dropped to PU this month. It's become a staple of offense in PULT in and outside of Snow teams. It's ability to flip matchups with Tera causes it to become an unpredictable thread in conjunction with its high bulk, abilities and access to priority Ice Shard.
While usually relegated to Snow teams, Cetitan has been able to form a part of HO teams without Snow, that utilize Thick Fat in conjunction with Tera options to eat hits and muscle through it's checks. While Tera Ghost is its usual set, other options such as Dark and Water allow it to set up on and/or heavily damage threats such as Rotom-Heat, Bronzong, Slowbro Galar, while Tera Ice +6 Ice Shard is able to OHKO most offensive Fire-types in the tier.
There are some situational answers to Cetitan however: Tauros-Paldea-Aqua and Tauros-Paldea-Blaze are both able to Intimidate it and often have an easy time playing around Cetitan's setup moves. The tier also has a number of decent anti-setup options such as Encore from Pokemon such as Scream Tail, Salazzle and Delphox, Clear Smog from Gastrodon, Roar from the likes of Houndstone and Mudsdale, as well as a decent amount of Toxic users such as Slowbro-Galar, Bellibolt and Gligar. More than half of these will probably struggle taking a boosted hit prior to Tera, but are otherwise able to neutralize the threat of Cetitan or put it on a timer. It is also worth mentioning that outside of Snow, Cetitan is decently slow and relies on boosted Ice Shard to do any meaningful damage or be threatening. Stealth Rock also are naturally detrimental to it due to its reliance on Belly Drum.
With all of that out of the way, its up to all of you to decide the fate of this Pokemon in the very first (real) PU suspect test of the gen!
The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 78 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 82. As always, needing more than 50 games to 78 GXE is fine.
| GXE | minimum games |
| 78 | 50 |
| 78.2 | 49 |
| 78.4 | 48 |
| 78.6 | 47 |
| 78.8 | 46 |
| 79 | 45 |
| 79.2 | 44 |
| 79.4 | 43 |
| 79.6 | 42 |
| 79.8 | 41 |
| 80 | 40 |
| 80.2 | 39 |
| 80.4 | 38 |
| 80.6 | 37 |
| 80.8 | 36 |
| 81 | 35 |
| 81.2 | 34 |
| 81.4 | 33 |
| 81.6 | 32 |
| 81.8 | 31 |
| 82 | 30 |
Suspect information:
- There will be no draws allowed for any potential qualifiers. If you qualify with draws, your suspect requirements will not count, and you will not be allowed to vote. There is no way to actively enforce ties to prevent abuse, so they will be disallowed. Use stall at your own risk.
- All games must be played on the Pokémon Showdown! PU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "PUCT (nickname)”. For example, PUCT asa or PUCT shitar.
- Do NOT impersonate other people in your ladder alt, do NOT use any usernames which are offensive, flame-baiting, or targeting specific users, and do NOT use usernames which could be interpreted as breaking any of the username rules on Pokémon Showdown! Failure to abide to this will result in you being barred from voting in this suspect, and potential infractions.
- The suspect test will last for 13 days, ending on Saturday, April 27th 11:59pm -6.
/!\ NOTICE /!\ PU will not be tolerating any form of voting manipulation. Any attempt to manipulate votes can result in an infraction, loss of eligibility to vote in the current test, and loss of the Tiering Contributor badge. While we won't necessarily enforce super strict punishment, this won't be tolerated and will be handled accordingly. Voting manipulation can simply be described as attempting to get people to vote a way on the test in inappropriate manners. Bribing with teams to vote a certain way, directly messaging people to vote a certain way, publicly announcing "vote this way" all fall under voting manipulation. For more query, feel free to PM me or asa.
hot take but i think this is THE most broken thing in the tier rn. yes, more than cetitan. it's just the best offensive enabler in the tier that isn't a ho lead like lycan or fros. illusion is a bs ability that allows you to play overly aggressive earlygame and get away with it cause checks to most mons rn are extremmely linear and can't afford to lose hp. you can just send out zoro early disguised as your raptor/bruxish/flamigo/toxt/whatever other offensive mon you're running and either claim kills or put yourself in an amazing position. if that wasn't enough, even if you do know the mon in front of you is zoro, you have no clue if its sd or band or np or specs, all of which have different checks and ways around their different checks (e.g +2 tera dark lo knock does nasty numbers vs our phydef mons and its last move being either aerial ace or low kick changes a lot of mus, specs and band just uturn or trick their checks, np can tech to tera blast whatever it wants). it's super good against balance and still solid vs offense cause offense can't afford to just click when the mon sitting in front of it could sd up and start killing. i've been kinda annoying about this in discord but that's because i really do not like this mon and think the tier is worse with it legal.
honestly this thing has been really annoying to deal with lately, np 3atks and np 2atks encore are both great sets that you have to respect in builder. only things i can think of that beat it consistently are heatproof bronzong and uxie, both of which don't feel like ideal picks in a meta where golurk is also pretty busted. salazzle is also annoying but at least it's frail with a bad typing, delphox's natural special bulk is pretty solid and typing + speed lets it come in on most stuff that isn't a ground. then again i pretty much never use grounds on my builds, so maybe i'm biased?
speaking of golurk idt we're in the stage where we can afford to run itemless ground immunes, and even if we were, lo and spell tag are the only two good sets anyway, so it can just click heat crash or cheese past you with dynamic punch. only real counterplay rn is just out-offensing it, which isn't difficult, but as the tier slows down i can see golurk becoming a major issue since it's one of the best button clickers behind physical waters.
if you're looking for a sleeper pick think about using bruxish, it has a lot of offensive role compression between being a priority check, a fire check that doesn't instantly lose to delphox, and a waterbull check. physical waters are also really good rn (go use tera water cb waterbull and tell me it isn't easy af to use) and bruxish being an immediate threat with mystic water wave crash + psychic fangs is helpful. also no one ever goes their water immune/resists into physical waters cause they all die to the other stab they use, which is especially good in bruxish's case cause a +2 psychic fangs that could be twisted spoon + strong jaw should ohko most of our water checks.
also broken. if you're not facing ho you're constantly making 2 for 1 or even 3 for 1 trades in your favor. rocks have been on the rise recently but unless it's regirock then your rock still gets 2hkoed by tera flying cb brave bird after any small chip or cc after no chip. if you support it decently enough (read: run specs zoro with it), it's really hard to beat with balance. offense does fine against it but scarf also gives offense trouble as well. i feel less strongly about this than other broken mons but it's still very easy to win with, especially once cetitan goes, removing a great offensive check to it.
ladder, please stop using these mons as spinners. they're not good at it. coal i can see the reasoning behind cause it offers a lot of role compression and the two wish users running around let it stay healthy, but these don't beat any of our relevant spinblockers and leave themselves open to most of our offensive mons rn. just run a defogger or something.
