Announcement Secrets (Your Fire) - Magby Suspect Test

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Coconut

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LC Leader
"I don't wanna feed more oxygen to
Your fire...Your fire"

:sv/magby:​

Magby, a once forgotten baby monster for generations became a titan of hyper offense in Little Cup for what is now the second generation in a row. While it has fallen in and out of favor over the generation, Magby has become an essential threat to account for on every team. With its blazingly fast speed stat, capping it at the second highest unboosted speed tier in the metagame, along with a stellar set of offensive stats, and a ridiculously strong offensive typing in Fire, Magby has all the tools it needs to become a presence in the metagame. So how did we get here?

Magby was largely ignored for years, being typically outclassed in just about every role it did. Offensive sets were overlooked by stronger and faster pokemon. Belly Drum sets were largely outclassed by Zigzagoon. But when Sword and Shield Little Cup banned Zigzagoon, Magby became the premier Belly Drum sweeper. The set was well-known for being something that could automatically win a game given the right support and proper setup. Providing Fire Punch for primary damage, Thunder Punch for coverage, and Mach Punch for priority, Magby ended up being the last ban of SWSH LC.

With the beginning of the new generation, many people expected Magby to reprise its previous role of being a Belly Drum sweeper. In reality, it was overlooked at the beginning of the generation by the litany of very powerful mons that SV LC had to deal with. Hisuan-Growlithe comes to mind, becoming extremely popular at various times of the metagame, as a fast, extremely powerful Fire- and Rock-type wallbreaker and sweeper. Magby was largely overlooked, with people attempting to throw the Belly Drum sets on random hyper-offensive teams, but it was more often than not a wasted slot.

As many Pokemon got banned across SV LC towards the end of the generation, players discovered the Special Attacking set. With the meta shifting, as per usual, to physically defensive walls, Magby's oft overlooked Special Attack stat, combined with a Life Orb, became the premier Magby set. Then it became the premier special attacking fire-type. And then the premier special attacker. Magby only really needed Fire Blast, along with coverage in Psychic, to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting player. Will-o-Wisp, Protect, and Substitute, were typically the filler options, to keep Magby safe or to potentially cripple a threat to make the winning lines easier to play to. And while people typically relied on Terastallization to cover Fire Blast and catch Magby off-guard, Magby became more adaptable and ran Tera Grass to check the Tera Water users. So people began to pack a Tera Dragon user to ensure they didn't instantly lose to Magby. So you'd think the natural reaction would be to run Tera Ice or something...not quite. Magby's Belly Drum set was the next major development, forcing players to choose how exactly they wanted to check Magby. Blowing your defensive tera to a set that loses to Tera Fairy Belly Drum was simply too much of a risk for players to take. Magby's variety of sets, along with the ability to cripple a key threat if you guess wrong, creates a difficult divide for players to properly juggle everything Magby can do.

While the Live Coal Pokemon (seriously? he's supposed to be coal?) does warp things around it, there are ways to properly handle it. Tera water and dragon are easy to slap onto a random pokemon and suddenly Magby has his own guessing game of whether or not you will Tera. While he can scout this with protect, it's a losing battle for Magby eventually. Magby also still has a rocks weakness, which means losing 1/4th of its health if you manage to keep hazards on the field. This vastly limits Magby's longevity and usefulness for the majority of a game. There's also Pokemon such as Mudbray, Growlithe-H, Glimmet, Shellos, and Chinchou who can do some very significant super effective damage to Magby if he fails to score the knock out.
...

NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!

The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:


  • Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in LC before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played LC before the test, full stop.)
  • At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
  • Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact myself, ghost, or a staff member.
  • If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me/ghost or post here!


The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2800 with a B-value of 7.

The suspect test will be ending on Sunday, March 16th at 9:59 pm (GMT -5). Have fun laddering!

:magby:
"You think you know me
Wanna show me that you're super in the know!"​
 
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I think Magby is too much for the metagame we have to handle.
It has three main sets, those being special attacker Life Orb, Belly Drum and Eviolite Will-O-Wisp. All these sets have vastly different counterplay, and oftentimes guessing them wrong costs you the game.
The main set is the special attacker, let's call it lo magby. This set only needs two moves to break, Psychic and Fire Blast, so it has a lot of freedom for its last 2 moves. The combo of Psychic and Fire Blast is impossible for teams to switch into, unless they are packing a Shellos (I'm a Shellos believer but it has a lot of issues, you can't simply spam that mon to beat lo magby). Thus, most teams feel really restricted to be using tera types such as Water or Dragon to handle it. This is where the first issue lies: building restriction. The metagame is already limited, you want tera types to cover huge threats such as Shellder, Vullaby, Mienfoo and Chinchou. Having to add this I think is too much and most of the times you end up sacrificing in the builder. It doesn't end there tho, because this is where lo magby's 2 other slots come in handy. Is it really a problem that mons use tera water when you simply can use Terablast Grass/Fairy/Ice to beat them? Of course, a set with Protect and Subsitute (incredibly good to scout teras and cover for switches/sacrifices, flipping games entirely) can already beat tera water foo/foongus/dragon vull with a simple tera boosted Psychic. Point is, defensive counterplay is incredibly limited, not to say inexistent. Offensive counterplay is scuffed too, as few scarfers are viable, and lo magby can scout their choice of move with Protect and tera into a resistance to beat them. And that's just for one set.
In any given game, while you are busy trying to decipher you will beat the lo magby, preserving health on your Chinchou or whatever, it can just pop a Belly Drum set (lets call it bd magby) and win the entire game on its own. There are some bd magby combinations that have simply no resist, like terablast fairy + tpunch + flame charge or most notably terablast ghost + mach punch + fire punch (temper flare). No one Pokémon naturally resists Terablast of choice and the punch of choice, and faster mons will die to priority/flame charge. The counterplay to this set is usually faster mons that dont die (like Elekid or a tera scarfer like Growlithe), unreliably switching Vullaby into a Weak Armor activation and using Tera Ghost and playing in a way that doesn't let it set up. This is completely different from how you play against lo magby. What's more, you can't even tell from team preview which set it is most of the time, with bd magby fitting in balanced teams (see this lcbc game) and lo magby fitting into HO, like here.
The third set it runs, evio magby, is not a Pokémon that will win games on its own (it can but it's rare). Rather, it's a mon that sets up wins for its teammates. I'm in top 12 of seasonal currently, and most of my games I've just been exploiting wisp evio magby coupled with sweepers like Shellder and Nasty Plot Vullaby. Magby is super effective at forcing switches and capitalizing off of them via wisp, which will ultimately make it easier for the setup mons to both set up and sweep. A burned Vullaby isnt effective at all at beating Shellder because it can't Endure effectively, and a burned Mienfoo turns from a mon you have to play around into a set up opportinity for np vull.
I believe this set variety, knowing how utterly effective at winning the game both sets are, and the third one capitalizing off that to help its teammates, makes Magby too much for SV LC, and I think it deserves to be banned. Life Orb + rocks weakness hasn't proved in LCBC games to be an effective way of stopping it.
 
Polish_20250302_120506011.jpg
 
Magby to me is broken. It 2 shots almost any non resist with its STAB, has great ways around speed control with sub/protect, and has great coverage making it very consistent even vs bulky fire resists. I've not played a lot vs the drum sets, but in games I have played and replays I've watched its an incredible game ender and takes advantage of the threat of its other sets really nicely. Magby is good at finding entry using pivots or switching into Foongus, so denying it entry is not consistent with the most popular teams. I believe it needs banned because the offensive threat it poses is too overwhelming and versatile.
 
I wanna thank lc council cuz they are doing amazing calls to make this metagame better, im really happy with their work in this gen.
Personally I will vote ban for magby, its versatility is broken and annoying to face and guess his set in game.

I already explained the reasons in metagame discussion thread, this post was made especially for underlying the great work lc council is doing.
 
Re: Fire-resist in SV LC​

I swear fire resist in this tier are almost non-existent. This has been my biggest issue in this metagame since DLC1, , but there wasn't any good Fire-type back then to abused that until DLC2 with Magby and Torchic's return as well as Dog's unban. The good list consist of... Mareanie and Chinchou, and... that's it (I would count Glimmet, but it can't check Fires that well, moreso when its trying to check Vull at the same time). Other would-be good fire resist are either have serious issues or are not that easy to fit onto teams. Trying to switch in on a Fire STAB alone is already hard because of how little the "good" fire-resist options are, and its so low that you would just end-up resorting to Tera Water/Dragon on whatever mon on your team. Bfore going for Magby, let's talk about 3 other Fire-type Attacker

:sv/growlithe-hisui:
Ever since it was unbanned, Scarf Dog has been spamming Flare Blitz like 80% of the time bc Fire resist option is just that bad, and if you think this mon is good mainly bc of Head Smash, then you're wrong. First off, Mienfoo is on almost every team, second Mudbray is very common, third both are used in tandem, so it is almost impossible to shred teams by just spamming Head Smash. I wouldn't mind getting the Fire-resist mon destroyed by Head Smash, bc a Dog locked to it is extremely easy to deal with than a Dog locked to Flare Blitz.

:sv/torchic:
You could argue this mon is only good bc of Tera. I'd say half, imo being a Fire-type attacker by default in a tier with very little Fire resist is a huge advantage, and that also makes it a great user of Tera.

:sv/vulpix:
Counted this one bc its interesting. At first glance, it should be an easy unban bc Heat Rock got banned a month ago, so Sun shouldn't be that threatening with only 5 turn, but nope its still banned. Magby and Torchic are already abusing the sheer lack of Fire resist in this tier a bit too much, so its not a great idea to add another Fire-type attacker back to the tier (Sun-boosted Fire move from Vulpix alone just shreds this meta)

:sv/magby:
Lastly, Magby, and Oh, boy, does this mon abused this issue too much. First, it gets Psychic as coverage, which hits literally 2/3 of Fire-resist in Mareanie and Glimmet, and doesn't rely on Tera to do so unlike Torchic. Due to that, Fire Blast + Psychic becomes hard to switch into and it leads Magby to freely pick whatever moves on the last 2 slot (Grass Tera Blast, Wisp, etc.). I'm mainly focusing on Special set bc its the most broken one. I personally don't think Belly Drum set is that broken, but the fact it can get away with getting a Belly Drum up without relying heavily on Screen or Memento support bc people mistook it to the far dangerous Special set (Really, If Magby only had Belly Drum as its only viable set, then i wouldn't say that its super broken)

I would vote ban on Magby most likely.
 
Honestly, I don't really feel too strongly about the results of this suspect. I think banning Heat Rock was certainly a step in the right direction, and I think that magby is a pretty stereotypically broken mon in this metagame. I think suspecting Magby here is still correct. It doesn't really have safe swaps, and the few safe swaps it have get pummeled by literally the entire metagame. With this being said, I also don't really think banning Magby helps with a lot of what I consider the core issues of the metagame. Those being:

A) How holy restricted this meta is. Mienfoo, Vullaby, Vullaby Answer, Posion/Fight Resist, Speed, Filler. Deviating from this is usually a bad idea unless you are commiting to just hard fishing. A lot of these teamstyles still manage to struggle vs common mons and despite the restrictions in the dex there isn't really anything close to a safe six which feels incredibly matchup fishy to me. You could argue that banning Magby would make it a lot less pressuring with options, but I would honestly argue that it takes away a lot of your ability to be able to manage a lot of metagame threats.

B) We shouldn't just ban all of our fast offensive threats. Alolan Diglett, Elekid, and Stunky do all exist. However, they all have a ton of individual problems that they deal with. 15 defense Foongus becoming a common set in the metagame has certainly impacted Alolan Diglett's viability alongside it being very prediction reliant on stuff like Mienfoo Vullaby interactions, having to Iron Head toedscool on swap, etc. It is of course still a fine mon especially when you pair it with Knock Off support, but it is not very splashable and is far from a consistent piece in the metagame. Wingull and Elekid are stopped quite well by Chinchou, which is another one of the most ridiculously hard to answer mons in the meta right now. I would definently describe Stunky in Voltorb meta as incredibly consistent, but I think a lot of the effects of its ban has hurt it quite a decent amount with grounds notably being a lot better. This admitedly isn't a great argument and I wouldn't actually reccomend anyone else use it but it is part of how I feel.

C) We're just gonna have to ban more stuff after. This itself is fine. I subscribe to just ban something if its problematic after something else is banned. However, I also subscribe to tiering to acheive a good metagame. I feel like the majority of LC players are like weirdly attatched to some things for no reason. If we ban Magby, our only Spore immunes are going to be Foongus, Toedscool, and Elekid. None of these Pokemon besides Foongus itself actually switch into it well.

We can go back to Magby itself now though. Its special sets are great and you have to basically build all of your teams in a way where you don't just crumble to it offensively. I don't think the current meta is great in this regard and I don't overly enjoy it but its managable in this aspect. I think what has caught a little more traction and makes more people be inclined to vote ban though is Belly Drum. You setup on the swaps you force and try to win the game. Alternatively, you pair like a Memento Stunky with it which I would say is quite obvious that you need to be very careful. I think there are a lot of Pokemon around that are all equally threatening as the special set, and there are some sweepers nearly as dangerous as the Belly drum set all sitting around which I would not vote ban on.

I think a Magby ban's initial impact on the tier would be us feeling good about it for a while. However, I think that its impact as for having a good metagame longterm wouldn't be living for near as long. I felt great about the meta going towards the end of SCL, but it now feels solved and I think this would lead to a similar result. With this in mind, I am honestly leaning more towards Do Not Ban. I wouldn't horrifically mind if Magby got banned because I think I would be better at that meta, but I just don't think it would benefit the tier.
 
time and time again, people vote basing their decision on the future they dont know, thinking they do, and time and time again they are wrong. you should vote to ban or keep magby just based on magby alone. maybe the metagame will be bad or whatever in the future? maybe. maybe it wont? maybe. you cannot know that. i will forever remind everyone of the time when one pro vullaby argument in ss lc was that mudbray and grookey would become broken too. come on.
this honestly also leads me to rant about lack of creativity. and i do not mean this in a “people only use the same 20 mons” way, spamming shitmons is not creativity. however, i am 100% positive this is not a metagame where all teams need a mienfoo, a vullaby, a mienfoo switch or a (sturdy) vullaby check. for the latter two, we have had major teams in past sv lc iterations without either foo switch (that one famous bray glim stunky voltorb foo vull team which got spammed into oblivion) or hard vull switch (those chou + shrew cores from now comes to mind). smart building can make up for a lot, vull and foo also have weaknesses and ways around them other than resists. in that same vein, i have never seen vullaby as a must in building, and definitely didnt expect to read that today. i dont know what to say really, it is not a special mon that fills this incredible defensive niche nor is it so offensively potent that all teams crumble to it. lots of teams do fine without it, we have other ground resists than it, like toedscool, and other darks like stunky. its not like vull beats the grounds anyway, its always nice to have the immunity for mindgames but vull isnt filling any one super important niche. and for the elephant in the room, i just dont think mienfoo fills any super important defensive niche either. yes, it is good, it 1v1s almost everything. but how many times have you thought “you know what will patch this teams weakness to (redacted) up? mienfoo”? never. in past lc metas, we had threats like ferroseed and especially pawniard who mandated the use of a fighter if you didnt wanna absolutely crumble to them. there is no such thing in svlc, and thus i find mienfoo to obly be an addition to teams because its good, its easy. lc players dont even think about it, mienfoo is in the game therefore it must be the best and used on every team. i just dont think that is the case, since i dont see any particular niche it feels, i do totally believe that you can absolutely build teams without it, it is not mandatory, and it having 100% usage is mostly due to lazy building.
tldr ban magby, if you think its broken nothing else should matter
 
I do think Magby is broken and want it to be banned, Special Life Orb made us use mediocre Pokémon like Shellos and arguably Chinchou, it is an awesome tera user, since it can kill its checks with a Tera Blast Grass while also having arguably the strongest STAB move in current Little Cup meta + nice coverage in Psychic.

Belly Drum sets are the most broken ones in my opinion, specially Tera Ghost + Mach, since it can insta win if the opponent doesn't have something faster that lives mach (Scarfers and Elekid are uncommon), is unable to pivot Vullaby in Tera Blast to get its weak armor triggered and click Tera Ghost on mach, or wins a single 50/50 against Stunky's Sucker Punch.

Éric said:
bray glim stunky voltorb foo vull team
Click to expand...
As the person who built this, this team got bad the moment people started running offensive Mienfoo, being it Choice Scarf or Swords Dance with 17 Atk. It also had problems with Toedscool getting popular but it was mostly offensive Mienfoo.
 
I agree with Hacker's opinion on the major metagame flaws, but I also agree with Eric saying that we should only be focused on magby in the context of this suspect test. Magby is also broken to me. I think the team-building examples used by Eric were bad, as the glimmet mudbray vull torb Foo stunky team became bad fairly quickly because it lost to offensive foo, and the chinchou alolashrew teams are trying to stack vullaby checks to maintain flexibility because the only sturdy vullaby check is tinkatink, who is passive and has bad weaknesses. I think its telling that stacking vullaby switch ins is very popular, because 1 isn't dependably effective even short term.

Mienfoo is both more broken and interesting to me, because its best counter Foongus gets to Spore and very few things can contest that, and most of them need foongus wars to assist positioning. Magby in general has amazing matchups vs Mienfoo Foongus teams, but in spite of this those teams are still the best teams because Mienfoo and Foongus are that forcing. Magby is broken vs most of these teams, and the metagame lacks tools to safely adapt and not just lose to standard. I think Magby is broken and should be banned in the current metagame, but this is because the teams it beats are overwhelming vs most other opinions that would be better vs Magby, and so its best to not change the basic structure that is weak to Magby anyway
 
Hacker said:
Honestly, I don't really feel too strongly about the results of this suspect. I think banning Heat Rock was certainly a step in the right direction, and I think that magby is a pretty stereotypically broken mon in this metagame. I think suspecting Magby here is still correct. It doesn't really have safe swaps, and the few safe swaps it have get pummeled by literally the entire metagame. With this being said, I also don't really think banning Magby helps with a lot of what I consider the core issues of the metagame. Those being:

A) How holy restricted this meta is. Mienfoo, Vullaby, Vullaby Answer, Posion/Fight Resist, Speed, Filler. Deviating from this is usually a bad idea unless you are commiting to just hard fishing. A lot of these teamstyles still manage to struggle vs common mons and despite the restrictions in the dex there isn't really anything close to a safe six which feels incredibly matchup fishy to me. You could argue that banning Magby would make it a lot less pressuring with options, but I would honestly argue that it takes away a lot of your ability to be able to manage a lot of metagame threats.

B) We shouldn't just ban all of our fast offensive threats. Alolan Diglett, Elekid, and Stunky do all exist. However, they all have a ton of individual problems that they deal with. 15 defense Foongus becoming a common set in the metagame has certainly impacted Alolan Diglett's viability alongside it being very prediction reliant on stuff like Mienfoo Vullaby interactions, having to Iron Head toedscool on swap, etc. It is of course still a fine mon especially when you pair it with Knock Off support, but it is not very splashable and is far from a consistent piece in the metagame. Wingull and Elekid are stopped quite well by Chinchou, which is another one of the most ridiculously hard to answer mons in the meta right now. I would definently describe Stunky in Voltorb meta as incredibly consistent, but I think a lot of the effects of its ban has hurt it quite a decent amount with grounds notably being a lot better. This admitedly isn't a great argument and I wouldn't actually reccomend anyone else use it but it is part of how I feel.

C) We're just gonna have to ban more stuff after. This itself is fine. I subscribe to just ban something if its problematic after something else is banned. However, I also subscribe to tiering to acheive a good metagame. I feel like the majority of LC players are like weirdly attatched to some things for no reason. If we ban Magby, our only Spore immunes are going to be Foongus, Toedscool, and Elekid. None of these Pokemon besides Foongus itself actually switch into it well.

We can go back to Magby itself now though. Its special sets are great and you have to basically build all of your teams in a way where you don't just crumble to it offensively. I don't think the current meta is great in this regard and I don't overly enjoy it but its managable in this aspect. I think what has caught a little more traction and makes more people be inclined to vote ban though is Belly Drum. You setup on the swaps you force and try to win the game. Alternatively, you pair like a Memento Stunky with it which I would say is quite obvious that you need to be very careful. I think there are a lot of Pokemon around that are all equally threatening as the special set, and there are some sweepers nearly as dangerous as the Belly drum set all sitting around which I would not vote ban on.

I think a Magby ban's initial impact on the tier would be us feeling good about it for a while. However, I think that its impact as for having a good metagame longterm wouldn't be living for near as long. I felt great about the meta going towards the end of SCL, but it now feels solved and I think this would lead to a similar result. With this in mind, I am honestly leaning more towards Do Not Ban. I wouldn't horrifically mind if Magby got banned because I think I would be better at that meta, but I just don't think it would benefit the tier.
Click to expand...
Hey Hacker, I want to start off by saying that I agree with pretty much everything you are saying (except the do not ban conclusion) here and love this post. I just had one tiny nitpick and that is that we can also run Overcoat Vull as a Foongus switchin. Yes it is objectively trolling to run that set compared to the better Vull sets but it is still quite a good mon in that role and doesn't get enough love for the rare team that wants a more heavily defensive slot filled by Vullaby.
 
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hey LC,
stopping in to say that i think the meta is really flexible. you can run a lot of pokemon reliably, including those UR on viability. i believe our discourse on SV is prone to negligent exaggeration. nothing is restrictive about this meta except for the mind prison that you construct around yourself.
 
emptywisdom said:
hey LC,
stopping in to say that i think the meta is really flexible. you can run a lot of pokemon reliably, including those UR on viability. i believe our discourse on SV is prone to negligent exaggeration. nothing is restrictive about this meta except for the mind prison that you construct around yourself.
Click to expand...
being forced to run an out for Belly Drum Magby (which there are not many good ones) is fairly restrictive, I think I'd have at least one slot more of freedom when teambuilding right now if Magby didn't exist
 
The results are in!
Verified Voters: 28
Vote Count: 24

Magby: Ban (18/24 = 75.00%)
Magby: Do Not Ban (6/24 = 25.00%)

Even if the remaining users voted Do Not Ban, we would still reach our 60% majority required for a ban. Thus Magby is banned from SV LC!

Tagging Marty and dhelmise, thank you in advance. The vote will be open for a couple more days for the remaining voters to get a chance to vote, thank you to everyone who voted!
 
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