Metagame RU Stage 14 - Tiny Tim (Blastoise Suspect Test)

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RU Leader
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blame Master Chief for this
:blastoise: :blastoise: :blastoise:
​
Here we are again

Hi everyone,

The RU council has discussed the current state of HO and have decided to suspect test Blastoise!

Blastoise is one of the most threatening sweepers in the tier. After a Shell Smash boost, Blastoise effectively outspeeds the entire metagame, and having access to STAB boosted Surf / Hydro Pump + Ice Beam lets Blastoise outright OHKO most non Water-type Pokemon in the tier. With Tera Electric + Tera Blast, Blastoise also beats Water-types such as Slowbro, Volcanion, and Suicune. Blastoise can also run a mixed set with Tera Ground Earthquake, which hits Goodra-Hisui, Muk-Alola, and Volcanion. These two sets require different counterplay, as bulky Water-types such as Slowbro can potentially beat the mixed set, but it has no way of knowing what set Blastoise is running. Moreover, Blastoise is a very important Pokemon for HO teams, and performs as one of the best cleaner of the archetype. This usually means that Blastoise has an easier time cleaning once the opposing team Terastallizes defensively.

Blastoise does have some flaws; specially defensive Pokemon such as Umbreon, Muk-Alola, and Milotic can take a hit and cripple Blastoise. Tera Fairy + Dragon Tail Cyclizar and Tera Water Fezandipiti can also check Blastoise, although they are unreliable if Blastoise Terastallizes.

Suspect information:
  • All games must be played on the Pokémon Showdown! RU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "RUTU (nickname)”. For example, RUTUBE SUBSCRIBE or RUTURTLE.
  • You have to reach a COIL of 2800 in order to get reqs. For reference, the B-value for this suspect will be 7.
  • 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.
  • Any form of voting manipulation will result in swift and severe punishment. You are more than welcome to state your argument to as many people as you so please, but do not use any kind of underhanded tactics to get a result you desire. Bribery, blackmail, or any other type of tactic used to sway votes will be handled and sanctioned.
  • Do not attempt to cheat the ladder. We will know if you did not actually achieve voting requisites, so don't do it. Harsh sanctions will be applied.
  • The suspect test will last for 14 days, ending on Friday, Aug 16. 23:59 GMT -4


GXE = Games Required
71 = 343
72 = 173
73 = 116
74 = 88
75 = 71
76 = 59
77 = 51
78 = 45
79 = 41
80 = 37
81 = 34
82 = 31
83 = 29
84 = 27
85 = 25

/!\ 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 DM me or TheFranklin.
 
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Fwiw I voted for Armarouge suspect for a few reasons - stupid breaker, setup is actually crazy good and not that hard to pull off because again stupid breaker - but even without it being suspected I am unsure I would have gone for Blastoise personally.

I already posted about how I think HO needs a serious nerf, but I don't really think Blastoise works that way and would like to see why others believe so! It can certainly clean a game, which is evident with any shell smash mon that offers some good characteristics within a metagame - The way Barbaracle is historically good in RU, whereas Huntail isn't - and for sure Blastoise has good qualties for the meta. Mono-Water is always a good typing, with fairly limited weaknesses that you can easily sidestep in order to setup, and considering the tier, Blastoise has more than decent bulk and good speed. So sure, there's no real reason why another shell smash mon would be preferred right now.

But Blastoise is weak, and that's a major issue. For Blastoise to effectively break, it requires a ton of support because its one unique strength prior to tera is getting into torrent water stab. It can break sometimes, like Bouff recently did so he could win a tour game with tera Bisharp - which likely could have won anyway but the Blastoise slot did make things easier - but it doesn't do so very reliably. This puts it more into the cleaner category, and I am unsure it's the way to go about tiering HO. Revavroom, Armarouge, Maushold, even Yanmega can all clean, but more importantly they offer more limited counterplay because of their power and tricky attributes. In my opinion, they influence the course of a game against HO far more than Blastoise does. Outside of torrent, the main breaking option Blastoise gets is tera earthquake, which is certainly good - also stops prankster twave so that's nice - but every other move, even after a stab, is just too weak, and tera eq has some issues getting past CM Slowbro which is a little unfortunate.

The other weak point for me is that Blastoise got to be top turtledog because of its good neutral bulk. Which sure, but it also makes it annoyingly reliant on White Herb to preserve it. Smash mons are always a tad weak to priority, and its often why they eventually stop being considered broken and fall back in line. Blastoise doesn't have much in terms of priority checks, as Ice Shard and Bullet Punch are fairly rare here, but First Impression / Espeed / Shadow Sneak / Mach Punch can all hit it fairly hard if it doesn't activate White Herb. This makes it an option that does force some micromanaging, but unlike Yanmega, this micromanaging doesn't actually make it stronger. Both issues kinda overlap because Blastoise would really like a way to get a small power boost, but unfortunately cannot afford it much. Same reason why you can't really run Modest on it.

Anyway, this is mostly to offer a counterpoint to Blastoise and get some people to talk about why this suspect is ongoing for them. In my eyes, it's not exactly a waste because Blastoise does offer things in the tier, it wouldn't be on most HO teams otherwise! But I'm not really sure we're fixing anything, and if we have to do another suspect on HO like two weeks after, this might get a tad unserious fast.
 
EviGaro said:
Anyway, this is mostly to offer a counterpoint to Blastoise and get some people to talk about why this suspect is ongoing for them. In my eyes, it's not exactly a waste because Blastoise does offer things in the tier, it wouldn't be on most HO teams otherwise! But I'm not really sure we're fixing anything, and if we have to do another suspect on HO like two weeks after, this might get a tad unserious fast.
Click to expand...
I think my thoughts on blastoise and the mon picked for this suspect in general is just, there was no right answer here. I don't think any 1 single ban was going to be enough to sufficiently nerf HO. Maushold was not doing it, Blastoise was never going to do it, Yanmega wasn't going to do it, etc. I've always felt like we would need atleast 2 bans to be sufficiently capable of restricting HO. That's neither here nor there though. While we can go on all day about the discussion of what was the correct answer, sadly we can't, not here anyways. (Personally my sweet spot is Blastoise + Yanmega, but I'm not really decided yet)

As for blastoise... it's pretty dumb. I think it's the least "unique" pick out of every bag of tricks HO has to offer, but it's also the most annoying in 1 way. Whenever blastoise loads a set that wins vs whatever it loaded into, it's ANNOYING. Whether it's tera ghost into conk, tera blast ghost into slowbro, EQ into H-Goodra, Dark pulse tera dark into slowbro/thundy/bisharp, it has a set for pretty much every scenario. And while it rarely would land it, odds are you need to invest multiple things into checking it on the off-chance it IS that worst case scenario. Sure, sometimes it thuds into things like Gastrodon or Umbreon, or isn't the tera type it wants for Thundy-I Twave, but when it lands the right set into the right mu, it's definitely the most broken mon in the tier, and the victim didn't do anything to deserve what happened to them, they just gotta hold that. For that reason alone i'm voting ban.
 
Hej! Since my vote was the tiebreaker between a Blastoise and Armarouge suspect test, it's only fitting to share my thoughts on HO. The fuss about HO isn't butthurt balance/BO mainers' crying about how they can't mindlessly load balance/BO into 90% of the meta for the 10th year in a row. No, most can swallow playing in a tier with HO as one of the strongest and most consistent playstyles. So, there are two main issues with HO. First, HO is strong, secondly, within HO, it's heavily centralized. There's a world of difference between a meta dominated by HO teams but none are alike and a meta dominated by a single HO; the second points towards something rotten. These two issues stem from the same source: the "unrevenge-killables", Armarouge, Blastoise, Yanmega, and Revavroom (SAVE THE CAR). They are impossible to revenge kill without priority or living the hit and KOing back, which forces the same structures on offensive teams. Not to speak to their effectiveness and synergy, so rarely, if ever, do you drop them.

EviGaro said:
"But Blastoise is weak, and that's a major issue." ...
Click to expand...
I agree with you fully; however, this is solely from a balance/BO perspective. If you instead look at the HO mirror, suddenly +2 Blastoise isn't looking too weak against the squishy HO team. Only a handful of HO staples OHKO Blastoise with unboosted damage, so you can't entirely rule it out by saying "Oh, I'll prevent it from setting up in the first place, I'll be fine!". What does this leave us with? A ton of Red Card Mimikyu and Bisharp usage; further restricting the variety of HO options.

(Also, side note, Evi I think it's here where your argument against Tera, regarding HO, ultimately falters. If you look at the list of past and current RUBLs: Hawlucha, Iron Jugulis, Iron Leaves, Goltres, Polteageist, Thundurus-T, and Zarude, what do each of these have in common? They are all unrevenge-killable! All outspeed the vast majority of the boosted metagame, leaving you with very few offensive options to deal with them.)

So, Blastoise. A Blastoise ban would open up a lot of HO's options. The Shell Smashers Tort/Drednaw/Cloyster and offensive Waters Feraligatr/Gyara that compete with Blastoise no longer have to. But, wouldn't this lead to an oversaturation of threats? No, all but Drednaw are outsped by our Choice Scarfers with Drednaw having its flaws. Diversifying HO with weaker options is the best approach to take. We can't ever outright remove HO as a main player. That's how SV is. But, at least we don't have to face the same obnoxious-to-play-against 'mons each time we play against HO.

Banning the other 3 doesn't achieve this to the same degree and as directly as a Blastoise ban. Armarouge, Revavroom, and Yanmega are all unique in what they can achieve. I agree with LBN that a Blastoise ban isn't the final solution, as HO will likely carry on to devolve into just Arma/Car/Yanmega teams rather than new ones with stuff like Cloyster. However, a Blastoise ban would be a first step towards a healthier place for HO, where it's varied but not overwhelmingly strong.
 
My biggest problem with blastoise is it feels like it's teras are more relevant than other ho mons. You need something to deal with tera ghost, dark and electric, because they both beat so many of the mons that would counter the other one. So you end up needing a lot of answers, or one answer that exists only for blastoise. If I see armarouge, I'm fine because I added sucker punch bisharp. If I see yanmega, I'm fine because I added specially bulky goodra. If I see maushold, I'm fine because I added a rocky helmet mon. But with blastoise, I need multiple mons, because of how unpredictable it is. Bisharp only works if I don't send it out for the entire game AND blastoise isn't tera dark. A prankster t wave mon or an attempt to tank a hit with another blastoise only work if it isn't tera electric. It feels too unpredictable that each variation has the potential to win the game and they all have different counterplay. I don't want to run 3 outs for it on every team. ETA: I should clarify that goodra can counter it, but it still feels like it does a pretty weak job when you still want it to counter multiple other ho threats.
 
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Hello ! I've recently wanted to check out suspect tests and this one caught my attention. Here's what I've noticed.

Playing on ladder, tera blast ground earthquake is super niche and barely used since most people just want to click special moves and not have some weird EV spread to hit so and so. Tera blast ground does the same thing as earthquake but it's more reliable since you're using a special attack stat of at lowest 538 (timid) and at highest 590 (modest) instead of 362 attack. It's also there to help 1v1s against opposing blastoise who run tera blast electric and deal with prankster thunder wave phaser thundurus.

In terms of tera inconsistency, I feel like no matter what you do priority and hazards ruin blastoise's defense and teammates to let you bring in mimikyu or bisharp to take a hit then chip blastoise out with priority. Heck, I've seen some people running choice band lycanroc in an attempt to stop it from running down everything. Priority spam may gain traction to counter HO threats like yanmega, blastoise and even maushold. i hate maushold so much

As na-kanon mentioned, it seems to be a good consistent tera user and the adaptations cause misplays if you get the tera types wrong, and you can't get 'em right unless you're lucky and make a good call. But without tera, blastoise stays in check since you can put a max defense slowbro and still win the interaction. Most of its strength comes from using tera to tie up loose ends.

Counters like hisuian goodra get forced out by naturally strong fighting and ground types like gapdos and krookodile, but stuff like tera blast ground can still deal a lot of damage (timid does around 83% at +2 lowest roll on specs set). Hisuian goodra gets forced out by stuff like krookodile and gapdos and if it wants to stay in it takes a ton of damage which isn't worth it it you're trying to catch the turtle clicking +2 surf.

I don't think it needs to be banned ; I think the meta needs to learn to adapt to play better around it and with semi-reliable options in priority and hazard stack it's possible.
 
this is about the fifth post I've written where I talk about why I think blastoise is broken and hopefully the last. Scouting this mon is an absolute nightmare since it only runs one set and three of the same moves with massively different coverage options and teras for the fourth means you are essentially gambling any time you send a defensive mon in that doesn't rely on its own tera. I've seen Teras Ground, Ghost, Dark, Fighting, and Electric just from laddering this past month, both on and off suspect, and Blastoise's naturally very wide gen 1 movepool means it can beat a lot of checks without even having to tera. While toise obviously can't cover everything in one set, it doesn't actually have to reveal what it's trying to lure until it's too late and you're facing it. We thought Hoodra's drop into the tier and the meteoric rise of umbreon was gonna slow it down, but then it started running focus blast to break that common core. EQ/TBlast Ground also drop hoodra if it's not at complete max health and forces Volcanion, one of Blastoise's only actual offensive checks to tera or die. TBlast Electric drops any bulky water looking to check it or forces them to hard read a tera on zero information (And if they do tera they may be neutral to the followup surf). In a lot of situations you are forced to just pray that it's not specifically trying to lure you, which is a problem when it's the single best lure mon in the tier and basically garaunteed to make progress even if it's just destroying one wall for the rest of its team or even just 1v1ing an offensive mon without setting up in unfavorable mus just because it's wildly bulky for a setup sweeper on top of everything else.

While I do think Blastoise needs to be banned, I also do not think Blastoise's ban will instantly fix HO. There's a very good chance we'll be back here talking about like Yanmega in a month or something. That being said, Blastoise is far and away the most versatile setup sweeper in the tier and has almost zero linear counterplay because of it, doubly so since every offensive check to it is relying on a defensive tera to do so (or is red card mimikkyu). Banning Blastoise largely forces HO into mons with much simpler counterplay and linear checks that, at most, only have to account for one tera, which should ease up the strain on teambuilding immensely. Its insane coverage without even having to use Tera Blast if it doesn't want to also can't really be replicated. Things like Hilligant and Yanmega might become harder to fit on a team in a post-toise world since most HO sweepers are very tera reliant for coverage in a way toise just isn't. Other shell smashers and speed boosting waters are in the tier but all of them are much slower than required, to the point where scarfers become viable revenge killers as opposed to packing 2+ priority mons on every remotely offensive team. The combination of just being a broken sweeper and being irreplaceable on HO make it a pretty easy ban here imo.

shoutouts Flabeauf for the team once again
 
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