Metagame RU Stage 10 - Monkey Wrench (Zarude Suspect Test)

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EviGaro

EviGaro

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:zarude: :zarude: :zarude:
​
Hlelo, following the qualification phase of the RU Ladder Tour the RU Council has decided to put Zarude up for a suspect test.

Zarude has long been controversional following its unban from rubl as DLC waves hit us, with plenty believing that its attributes easily kept pace with the stronger power creep of the metagame, or even still exceeding it. Its buffs from gen 9, from SD to Trailblaze to Drain Punch to Knock Off, are all great boons that have been on display during RULT.

Speaking of, the qualifying phase has been a major reason why this suspect is happening. Over the four weeks, we've seen some bans, but still a major representation of Hyper Offence teams across the top ladder, which trickled to seasonals as well. Zarude was a major component of those teams, where its SD set shone in how expeditive it can be due to a lack of major checks. But people have noticed more and more the rise of a more defensive Bulk Up set, with Jungle Healing for some survivability. Even ID Cobalion, as sturdy as check you can find against Zarude, can easily lose to this when tera is factored in and prevents Body Press from getting through.

Speaking of, Terastallization is, of course, a major reason why this talk is happening. Zarude almost exclusively use tera as a defensive option, but they are multiple and offer different qualities. Fire has been a bit down but avoiding wisp and adding resistances to its great bulk are nice. Poison, especially on Bulk Up, avoids Toxic and offers fairy + fight resists. Ghost, a tad more cteamy as its very targeted to ID BP Cobalion but it's been spammed a lot on ladder and is obviously very good due to how easily it is to find yourself relying on that set to prevent Zarude shenanigans. Zarude benefits strongly from them, and doesn't lose any offensive output since it hardly ever relies on Tera Blast to get past defensive checks.

This now makes it the community's call! Tagging dhelmise and Marty to announce it on the RU ladder, thank you both.


GXEminimum games
7850
78.249
78.448
78.647
78.846
7945
79.244
79.443
79.642
79.841
8040
80.239
80.438
80.637
80.836
8135
81.234
81.433
81.632
81.831
8230

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! RU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "RUZ0 (nickname)”. For example, RUZ0 Dada or RUZ0 SUSPECTTERA.
  • 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 two weeks, ending on Sunday, March 17th. 9:59pm - 4
/!\ NOTICE /!\ RU 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 Feliburn .
 
I have been pretty vocal in the RU Discord (if you're not in it, you should be) the past two months regarding RU Tiering actions and believe this to be an awkward half-step towards making the tier better...

:sv/zarude:
Zarude has gone through three stages since being released from RUBL back in January;

Stage One - In mid-to-late January, Zarude was THE predominant threat to build around and often won games singlehandedly. There were multiple sets that people used but the more common version was the Tera Fire set with Knock Off / Trailblaze / Tera Blast / Swords Dance. Not much could eat a +2 hit from this and you were very susceptible to getting reverse swept if Zarude got a single turn to setup.

Stage Two - In early February, a TON of stuff dropped and made Zarude take a bit of a break as the meta-defining staple offensively. While HO ran rampant with the litany of options (most of whom have since been banned, like Comfey, Manaphy, Iron Jugulis, Hydreigon and Haxorus), Zarude was still a very nice pick for teams as a Scarfer (THE_CHUNGLER) or a Bulk Up Tera Poison set with Jungle Healing. No longer the S tier threat it was before, it was still an A/A+ level weapon capable of winning games.

Stage Three - Mid-to-Late February into March has once again returned to Zarude being THE defining threat. While a few things can 'answer' Zarude's more common Tera Poison set (Taunt Cobalion, Enamorus-Therian... to a lesser extent), this monkey returns to former S tier glory. We've seen in Winter Seasonal and throughout RULT Cycle 3 / 4 that many games have been defined by who wins the Zarude vs Zarude interaction, and many more have been defined by someone not loading Zarude and losing in preview.

Ultimately, I will probably try for reqs again because I'd like to continue contributing to the tier, but this monkey has been a large part of me avoiding RU for the past few weeks. I don't think the tier is particularly healthy right now and this suspect running until mid-March means other tiering action is likely to be put on hold until late in the month (stuff like Iron Leaves, Hoopa-Unbound, Enamorus-Therian, Thundurus-Therian, etc.). I think this should have been banned long ago and the decision to approach this through a suspect test is kind of baffling given the amount of attention it has received from the community. I look forward to April hopefully being the month that corrects the meta... but am also concerned given recent trends such as this.
 
1709587033972.png

confirming as ruz0ciel
 
It feels like everything to be said on zarude has already been said in the metagame discussion thread or just in salty discord rants. This thing is just too much for the tier, its attacks too strong, if it teras it can just remove all hope from your body and while bulk up with jungle healing has become the defining set, the fact that it still has other sets that can whop alleged counters to that set like SD trailblaze is just even more reason to ban it.

However, there is one thing that I feel has gone understated, and that's how even zarude's supposed counters can just be worn down until they don't function. THE_CHUNGLER recently made a post in the metagame discussion thread saying enamorus is an underrated answer to zarude, but that's only true until it gets knocked, and then it becomes hard to switch into the monkey while enamorus just gets slowly whittled down. The same thing goes for cobalion, once it gets knocked off then it's on a limited timer and every time it switches into an attack from zarude, that timer shrinks. And something that most of these pseudo-counters to zarude like bisharp, enamorus, cobalion and even the only actual zarude counter in chesnaught have in common is that they can't really touch moltres at all. All Zarude needs to just wear down its answers is a teammate that can switch into fighting attacks. I've seen mons like glowbro, moltres and fezandipiti be used for this role, they all have great synergy with zarude. The monkey is just able to beat most of its counters through attrition before taking the game, and that is one of many reasons why it needs to be banned IMO.
 
Zarude takes little skill to use. Turn 1 Tera Poison Bulk Up + Turn 2 Trailblaze 6-0 Kleavor / Araquanid HOs (even at high ladder) and Red Card Mimikyu is unreliable as the item does not activate when it gets Knocked Off. Trailblaze is the last straw that broke the monkey's back because other than Scarf Mienshao / Infernape / Gengar / Azelf, there is little offensive counterplay. Versus bulkier teams, gameplay is reduced to whoever can safely setup with Zarude and often results in Zarude mirror matches. Amoonguss is also a shaky check as Jungle Healing is still very much viable even though Zarude runs Drain Punch nowadays.

On a side note, I am actually rather surprised that Zarude is suspected instead of quickbanned given the large community support for its departure. Moreover, the fact that the OP is supposed to be neutral but yet failed to give any counter-arguments explaining why Zarude may be balanced only further highlights its brokenness. I will be voting ban.
 
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Sup y'all, I'm relatively new to the RU scene, I really only started playing near the beginning of February/ladder tour, but since then, I've experienced an obscene amount of RU, again thank you ladder tour, and so I did want to give my own opinions before we decide on the monkey. I will also preface these comments with the fact that I was not around when Zarude was first legal so I can only speak on what I've seen the past month.

Personally I'm in favor to see the monkey leave. He simply does too much, hits too hard, sponges hits too easily, and with access to tera (btw I think it'd be reaaaaaaaaaaally super cool if we looked at that too at some point) can flip his would-be checks/answers into setup fodder far too easily. His role as a setup sweeping tera abuser is specifically what I think pushes him over the edge. Having access to tera, a naturally superb defensive line (105/105/95), fantastic setup moves in Trailblaze, SD, or BU, and access to recovery in the form of Drain Punch or Jungle Healing, the latter of which also acts as a refresh for himself, gives Zarude unmatched utility in the breadth of mons he can comfortably setup on within the tier. All of this while also sporting an offensive line of 120/105 meaning that when he does decide to hit you he hits incredibly hard and is difficult to revenge with a non-scarfer since he also boasts one of the fastest natural speed stats in the tier.

Also noteworthy of mention is Zarude's new access to Knock Off in gen 9. Being able to remove items has always been valuable from a team support standpoint but for Zarude, gives him an interesting niche as a setup sweeper that facilitates his own sweep. Like Sneaky mentioned above, taking out a would be answers item such as HDB for Enamorus or Lefties on Cobalion ensures that while Zarude may not be able to immediately setup and sweep on them, it makes their jobs harder to act as checks for him in the long term. Having to deal with repeated hits from Zarude, plus whatever entry hazards might be in play means that these mons can very quickly find themselves getting into the range where they no longer function as suitable answers for the monkey.

In conclusion, Zarude feels a liiiiittle too good at what he does and I think we should probably throw him in RUBL jail
 
I pretty much agree with all the points that have been said. Zarude is too overbearing, it's honestly way too broken and overbearing for the tier and it makes the tier a lot worse to play in. I also agree with the thought that it should have been banned via council vote, since I can very much see the tier becoming a lot worse with it being gone, since by the time the suspect ends and it's banned, we'll be done with half the month, and then have to deal with a chaotic tier being terrorized by hoopa-u's and thunderus-therians. But overall, Monkey broken, tera poison is busted and gives it free set-up oppertunities that gives the zarude user a free-setup turn that can be capitalized on with the zarude player holding back on clicking the tera button (eq into a zarude, Psychic into the zarude, etc), sometimes it hits you with the toxtricity and does something that beats your counter, etc etc.

HOWEVER, I COME TO YA WITH AN IDEA
I've been experimenting on ladder (albeit low-ladder since I've been in an elo funk due to the mid-ladder curse) with a certain pokemon, one who I think y'all should try out. And I'm not the only one who's made this call before, in fact I think this pokemon is one of the most "Potential Man Girl"-esque pokemon in the whole RU tier, right behind Toxicroak. In fact, there's probably something to be said regarding offensive poison types in the tier and being good in theory and tournament play and then not getting any ladder showings due to being hard to pilot, but regardless, I present to you, in my non-high-level-player opinion...



Salazzle!
:pmd/Salazzle:
The opposing Cresselia used Calm Mind!
Cresselia's Special Attack rose!
Cresselia's Special Defense rose!
Salazzle used Encore!
The opposing Cresselia received an encore!

~Turn 18~

Salazzle used Toxic!
The opposing Cresselia was poisoned!
The opposing Cresselia Used Calm Mind!
Cre

:sv/Salazzle: <(" :3 ")​

There are THREE big things that make Salazzle worth choosing in today's unstable meta, and put her a cut above the rest:


NUMBER ONE- Fast Speed Stat

NUMBER TWO- Valuable Targets

NUMBER THREE- Utility Options


SPEED
:sv/Salazzle: :sv/Azelf:​
The first major thing that makes Salazzle appealing is her speed. There are a lot of naturally fast Pokemon in the tier now, and it just so happens that Salazzle's base speed of 117 puts her above a lot of important mons, only being outsped by Cyclizar and like Minior and all of the faster 120+ mons. However, this means one of two things.
1. That Salazzle will almost always be moving first against non-priority attacks
2. Salazzle outspeeds pretty much every relevant RU threat, aside from the above mentions
I will also say that in terms of relevant speed, Salazzle with STAB is a pretty decent special attacker. Sure there's Azelf who might seem much more appealing at first, but if you run the calcs most of the time Salazzle does more damage thanks to STAB. And there's more to it, but I'll get to that


TARGETS
:sv/cobalion: :sv/Zarude: :sv/Revavroom:​
The second major thing that makes Salazzle valuable is the mon's she's able to take out consistently.
I can name 3 of em right of the bat, and this is not an exhaustive list: Zarude, Cobalion, and Revavroom.
Those are the big 3 that Salazzle can hit for a decent chunk (if not OHKO outright as I'll display soon), but Salazzle's type coverage of Fire + Poison is a great offensive typing that easily allows Salazzle to hit pretty much the entirety of the metagame for at least neutral damage.
Behold, what Salazzle is able to do:

252 SpA Salazzle Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Filter Revavroom: 333-393 (110.6 - 130.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Salazzle Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Cobalion: 422-498 (130.6 - 154.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Salazzle Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Zarude: 336-396 (95.7 - 112.8%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Salazzle Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Tera Poison Zarude: 168-198 (47.8 - 56.4%) -- 84.8% chance to 2HKO

The main reason I go with Fire Blast is honestly kinda cause Salazzle needs the extra firepower to be able to take KOs, and it makes all of the Zarude and Revavroom calcs much easier; in the sense that Revavroom becomes a roll to OHKO, and Zarude becomes a 2-3HKO depending on Tera (2HKO pre-tera, 3HKO-post)

A big thing that also makes Salazzle good is the fact that she's not a tera-sink at all, and can function perfectly fine in an endgame post-tera, so you can save your tera for a Zarude or Cobalion sweep without worry.

UTILITY
:sv/cresselia: :sv/enamorus-therian: :sv/Zarude: <("i sure love winning endgame scenarios")​
And finally, the last piece to the Salazzle puzzle, it's the two empty moveslots after you put on Fire Blast and Sludge Bomb. Salazzle, at least in this meta, has around 7 useful utility moves: T-Wave, WoW, Encore, Disable, Toxic, Toxic Spikes, and Taunt.
The two moves that I recommend you slot on are Encore and Toxic, as this allows you to stop slower set-up sweepers (aka trailblaze-less Zarude, Cobalion, the list goes on), and Toxic lets you punish them regardless of how many boosts they have.
Toxic, additionally, with always proc due to Corrosion, so Salazzle against slower opponents is able to pretty much always able to force progress in some fashion. If you don't want to do Toxic, and want to have her be more of an early game pick, then T-Spikes is the way to go, and the rest of the moves all have their own caveats, and if you need them, you can fit em.
I neglected to mention one specific thing, which is Nasty Plot. Right now, Salazzle is honestly just too frail to actually do much, even on a resisted hit, so I always drop the Nasty Plot, since you really aren't trying to sweep with Salazzle. But, the option is there if you want it.



And so there ya have it. Why I think Salazzle has a decent niche in the tier right now, and is a pretty decent meta-call to what's popping.
"But Elec-ant!" I hear you saying "Salazzle's frail and has trouble switching in! How can I make consistent progress against these targets?"
Well I'll tell ya.

Deoxys-Defense.

Teleport lets you ensure Salazzle is always able to get in safely, and allows you to ensure that you know what you're going to encore. It's a completely safe switch, and the only issue is if they dragon dance or raise speed, of which you should fit on bulkier mons that can deal with threats like that. This does mean that Salazzle requires you to play reactively, so make sure to build your team around balance more than anything and make sure you can handle most metagame threats as well.

Hope y'all liked this, I've been cooking it up for a while, and will try to continue to use Salazzle to make sure I'm not just flapping my mouth!
Have a great day! :sphearical:
 
I spent some time this week getting my Zarude reqs (I played 5 games a day until today where I played 10 to finish it) and want to share my thoughts regarding Zarude after using the HO built by eifo.

While this tier has several supposed answers to Zarude, such as Cobalion, Moltres and Zarude, I think the biggest problem with the funny monkey is the set diversity. While Bulk Up Jungle Healing is the best set in my opinion, eifo's team ran with Lum SD; the idea being you lose JH for a free turn to capitalize on any potential status attempts. I wasn't always the biggest fan of not having Leftovers recovery but it came in clutch a few times when I could safely knock on Moltres without losing a turn to heal.
As I outlined in my previous post on this thread, each individual Zarude set has a different check/counter and it's not particularly easy to predict what Tera or set you're facing in preview. While this is somewhat true for many mons, Zarude has a unique combination of bulk, recovery and immediate power to also enable it to setup and steamroll through teams. Not many priority users outside of Slither Wing can actually threaten it before Tera and depending on the set Zarude can abuse many attempts to revenge kill by recovering faster than you can damage it.

In my 30 suspect games, I comfortably won most of them in large part because of Zarude being able to clean games after I threw the rest of my team at my opponent one after the other. While I also had the benefit of other strong setup options (personally, Blastoise is also kinda crazy), Zarude was clearly the most broken and easiest to cheese wins with mon on the squad for me and I felt like I really only needed to make one or two 'good' plays a game before the mon took over. With Trailblaze and SD you comfortably outspeed and OHKO a huge portion of the tier and the stuff you don't immediately beat aren't doing much back.

Long story short, I really did not enjoy playing RU for my 30 suspect games and am going to vote to ban Zarude. While this isn't going to solve a lot of the issues (sure, Iron Leaves is going to get even more busted, and other stuff like Necrozma and Reuniclus might pick up as well), I think this is a good step in the right direction. HO will get worse without the option of using Zarude, BO will have significantly better matchups into HO, and attempts at fatter teams won't have to worry about the strongest Knock user around that can ALSO ignore status.
 
I decided to play 43 games of RU for some reason to get reqs so I will post my thoughts on Zarude. Mostly that while I totally understand why it was suspected and that the suspect test itself is great, I'm honestly surprised at the tone of some of the discussions in this thread / in metagame thread / on discord.

To be frank, Zarude isn't really that broken, personally, I'm on the fence.

shooting star said:
Zarude takes little skill to use. Turn 1 Tera Poison Bulk Up + Turn 2 Trailblaze 6-0 Kleavor / Araquanid HOs (even at high ladder) and Red Card Mimikyu is unreliable as the item does not activate when it gets Knocked Off.
Click to expand...
This line for example - if this is the case, it doesn't indicate that Zarude is broken, it indicates that whoever is building these teams needs to do a better job at accounting for a top metagame threat in the builder.

I think the best argument that has been made for Zarude being broken in this thread is that it is extremely customizable, accounting for BU/Drain Punch or BU/Jungle Healing doesn't cover the Traileblaze SD set which needs 2 turns of set up and can also run through an unprepared team just as well. Requiring multiple different responses for varying set is a much more convincing argument to me at this point than the brokenness of the BU set by itself. The BU set is one of those sets that's much more broken in theory than action, as you are either susceptible to revenge killing by the best anti-cheese mon in the tier (Scarf Garde), or your most powerful Grass STAB is Trailblaze. Additionally, the mons you beat with Jungle Healing, you don't beat with Drain Punch and vice versa (though Jungle Healing seems much better overall, as Drain Punch is burn bait). BU Zarude isn't running 6 moves.

I think one of the detractions for Zarude is that in spite of its natural bulk and decent resistances, it doesn't actually provide much for a team's defensive synergy as it can't actively switch in without risking (or losing) its ability to sweep. That makes fitting it on a balance team a little bit harder. Zarude's other issue is that the number of things that force it to tera are very common and very good, and once it has tera'd it can be dealt with a lot more efficiently, as a lot of its efficacy comes from the threat of pressing the tera button. Cobalion (gives it trouble even after Zarude Teras), Cyclizar, Fezandipiti, Moltres, Rotom-H, and Slither Wing (also can still counter after Zarude Teras) all force tera out, 4 of those with U-turn to keep momentum. Zarude's main benefit is that it eats passive balance teams that have 1 or 2 Pokémon that let it in for free. A lot of people don't like when Pokémon do that, but those Pokémon aren't automatically broken, and Pokémon that punish passive building are necessary for an engaging tier. Right now Zarude is definitely not the only Pokémon that does that, so I don't think banning it will necessarily be a problem, but it seems to me like a lot of the arguments to ban Zarude are about not liking the way the metagame has developed and less about how Zarude fits in the metagame.

Part of the reason the last sentence feels true to me, is that I think I saw 2 Zarude's that weren't my own during my laddering for reqs, a big drop of from the RULT scene. None were on teams being run by RUZ0 people either.
 
I’m still a bit conflicted about Zarude. I’m going to lay out some of the pros and cons I can see for letting zarude stay in the tier to help me weigh the good it brings and the bad.

Pros:
-Strong knock off allows teams to make progress vs. physical walls (basically Llamas post, very well reasoned)
-Provides useful resistances and immunities when building bulky offense teams (psychic, powder moves/leech seed, water/ghost/dark resist, status absorber)
-Offensive check to slower wall breakers like thundurus and hoopa
-It’s checks are already useful pokemon that fit on teams easily and check other relevant meta threats (okidogi, fezandipiti, enamorus-t, cobalion)
-Common scarfers that are good in their own right can revenge kill Zarude with u-turn (forcing the tera or switch) or a stab move if it has already tera’d and taken some damage.
-Tera reliant to sweep a competent team

Cons:
-Setup sets can setup on even offensive pokemon due to jungle healing/bulk up and absolutely ridiculous defenses.
-Its checks must be able to check it without an item, as a good Zarude player will knock off first and come in later to setup. Moltres and salamence for example are one time checks that are hurt badly by knock. Even though knock off is now weaker, that’s a great trade for the zarude user. Requires Zarude team to keep rocks which isn’t guaranteed.
-Many different options on just the setup sets, pokemon that beat bulk up tpoison can sometimes deal with Tera fire sd if healthy enough, (enamorus, dogi, coba) but you likely need 2 different slots to deal with it on any team (scarfer that revenges tera’d zarude, defensive mon that threatens non tera Zarude and ideally keeps momentum or doesn’t get set up on post tera
-Too many good Tera types to make use of. Poison/fire/ghost/fairy all viable. Defensive answers need to be able to deal with +2 zarude late in the game due to Tera flipping the MU or Zarude needs to be worn down enough for a revenge kill.
-Even sets that are susceptible to status (bulk up trailblaze) may not be status’d until the moveset is revealed, as the opponent would fear jungle healing and essentially wasting a turn while Zarude gets back 25%+maybe lefties and then is forced to switch or sack itself to weaken zarude.
-Item is extremely customizable, lefties/boots of course, but lum berry has made an appearance, again disincentivizing the opponent from clicking status moves.
-Zarude not only forces certain Pokémon on teams mentioned in the Pros section, but forces specific moves on these to deal with Zarude (charm on Fez depending on your revenge killing option, psyfangs/HHP okidogi, taunt cobalion)

I’m still unsure how to weigh all of these factors, and of course you could argue some of the pros as cons and vice versa, but these are what I’ve been thinking about when considering how to vote. I feel that I can deal with Zarude in most matchups if I play well, but one fuck up vs the wrong set and it claims multiple kills.

Thankfully bulk up JH has more hard stops now that I’m prepared for it, so I rarely lose to that outright, and the trailblaze sets are manageable once I see it’s trailblaze, but Tera fire sd feels like rolling the dice a little. Either my check has enough HP to live the+2 tblast and I win the game because of the opponent exhausting Tera, or it kills my check and I probably lose unless I can counter Tera with my own Tera. Maybe that’s just something we have to accept in a Tera metagame.

I will most likely vote Ban, because I think the power level of the offensive threats we have puts a lot of pressure on team building, and I’m hoping that banning one of the biggest offenders will allow some more flexibility.
 
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