Rejected SM ZU Swanna

[Tuthur]

SM ZU's balance has been often put in question for years. The community has long been divided around some of the biggest threats in the tier. Even with Shiftry and Exeggutor getting suspect tested and then banned (the former a couple weeks before Sword and Shield's release and the latter some months ago), some complains about the state of the metagame remain. In order to put its finger on which tiering action to take, the SM ZU council has hosted a tiering survey some weeks ago. The results are detailed at the bottom of this post.


Swanna stand out in the survey as a concerning element in the metagame. It is only the Pokemon that received a majority of support for a suspect test (both from the overall playerbase and the qualified playerbase) in the tiering survey. This is nothing new as it has been brought up for a suspect test since the end of ZUPL I, three years ago, and considered for a suspect test alongside Shiftry. Swanna is mainly used as a breaker or cleaner with its Z-move sets. On the one hand, Z-Rain Dance boosts its STAB moves (Surf's power and Hurricane's Accuracy), allows it to outspeed the most common Choice Scarf users like Electivire and Rotom-Fan, and counter status thanks to Hydration. On the other hand, Z-Mirror Move basically gives Swanna a Sword Dance boost on top of using a Z-move attack, letting Swanna break through teams with its unresisted STAB combination and STAB priority Aqua Jet. Scouting Swanna's set without using very passive and fat Pokemon, usually exclusive to stall teams, like Dusclops, Lickilicky, and Pyukumuku can be really rough as Swanna can use special sets just like physical ones, and checks to them are different. However, without Exeggutor and Shiftry in the metagame anymore, there has been more room to build around Swanna. Checks like Rotom-Fan, Silvally formes, and Mareanie are still common, and while no perfect answers can often keep Swanna in check until the endgame. For instance, specially defensive Wishiwashi has emerged as a great stop to special sets of Swanna, that fits well in most bulky offensive teams and can generally reliably scout Swanna's set. Furfrou also rose as a staple in these teams that can easily revenge kill a Z-Mirror Move boosted Swanna. For these reasons, the playerbase has been pretty split on Swanna.

This thread will close in two weeks, on Sunday 23rd October, and will be followed by a suspect vote on Swanna. The requirements to vote are based on post-Exeggutor's ban tournaments performance and include users who made semi-finals of the latest SM ZU Cup and ZUPL IV players who played at least 3 games of SM ZU and won at least one of them.

list

btboy (SM Cup)
czim (SM Cup)
Danny (SM Cup)
Elfuseon (SM Cup)
Huargensy (SM Cup)
TheFranklin (SM Cup)
MZ (ZUPL)
pokemonisfun (ZUPL)
Greybaum (ZUPL)
Finchinator (ZUPL)
EviGaro (ZUPL)
gum (ZUPL)
Quagg (ZUPL)
Xayah (ZUPL)
ayevon (ZUPL)
Plas (ZUPL)
Chokepic (ZUPL)
Dj Breloominati♬ (ZUPL)
Medeia (ZUPL)
LPY (ZUPL)
tlenit (ZUPL)
Clementine (ZUPL)
RawMelon (ZUPL)
sasha (ZUPL)
wooper (ZUPL)

Survey results

Here you can find the results of the first and lattest SM ZU survey. The voting pool was separated into players who played SM in ZUPL IV or reached semi-finals of the lattest SM ZU Cup, and the other ones.

The average grade is 7.35, and 7.00 for the qualified playerbase. This means that players overall enjoy playing SM ZU, even if there is room to improve.

The average grade is 6.61, and 6.13 for the qualified playerbase. This means that a significant part of the playerbase doesn't find the tier competitive, even if a majority of the voters don't have a problem with the competivity of the tier.

Stats for the qualified playerbase are 7.14%, 35.17%, 28.57%, and 28.57% ranging from entirely balanced to broken, excluding the Abstain vote. This means that a majority of voters take issue with Swanna in SM ZU and would support a suspect test.

Stats for the qualified playerbase are 26.67%, 46.67%, 26.67%, and 0% ranging from entirely balanced to broken, with no abstention. Some discussions about suspect testing Electivire had taken place in the ZU server during ZUPL, however only a small portion of the voters actually support it being suspect tested.

Stats for the qualified playerbase are 7.14%, 64.29%, 21.42%, and 7.14% ranging from entirely balanced to broken, excluding the Abstain vote. Simisage has rose as one of the best wallbreaker in the tier in the post-Exeggutor metagame, leading to some users questioning its balance. While, it is generally seen as more problematic than Electivire, the majority of the voters doesn't support a suspect test for Simisage.

Stats for the qualified playerbase are 28.57%, 50.00%, 21.42%, and 0% ranging from entirely balanced to broken, excluding the Abstain vote. Just like Simisage and Electivire, the majority of the voters, qualified or not, is opposed to a Combusken suspect test.

 

[Xayah]

I'm not gonna make this post too long because people know what I think of Swanna pretty well, but I do think it's a pretty unique case. In a vacuum, I don't necessarily think Swanna is broken. It has its answers and those answers are viable in the meta. The problem is that, in the context of SM, it is simply too much. SM ZU is plagued by having a myriad of offensive threats with not enough solid defensive checks to all of them, which heavily stifles teambuilding and leads to the meta being very offensively inclined, with defensive playstyles that aren't outright stall being extremely hard to build. As such, I believe that one (or more) of the most oppressive offensive threats should be banned, and in my view Swanna is the best candidate.

As for Swanna itself, I think Tuthur laid out its situation quite well, though he failed to mention its Defog set (Hurricane/Surf/Defog/Roost with Flyinium Z) which offers nice utility. Overall, its the fact that it has 3 sets that are all top tier that make it so dangerous. There's a few pokemon that answer all of them at least somewhat reliably, like Haze Mareanie and SpDef Wishiwashi, but the real result is that every bulky team uses one of those two and likely some other emergency check like Scarf EVire in case they get overwhelmed.

I'm not interested in writing too much here, really, but I'd like to note that out of the 4 suggested tests, Combusken is the only one I considered to be fully balanced. I don't think Simisage is broken, but would still welcome its removal as an offensive threat from SM. Electivire, meanwhile, is probably overpowered, and where Swanna forces a few very specific water resists, EVire forces one very specific electric immunity (Golem). They are, in my view, very similar in stifling defensive builds, and I consider it important to remove Swanna from the metagame to give those builds more breathing room.

 

[Greybaum]

I do not see Swanna as banworthy. There are two different arguments being raised; "Swanna is broken", and "Swanna is a symptom of a bigger issue".

Scouting Swanna's set without using very passive and fat Pokemon, usually exclusive to stall teams, like Dusclops, Lickilicky, and Pyukumuku can be really rough as Swanna can use special sets just like physical ones, and checks to them are different.

There are far more Pokemon that can scout Swanna than "Dusclops, Lickilicky, and Pyukumuku" with balance having various options like Wishiwashi, Bronzor, Wiki Berry Rotom-S, Mareanie, and various niche (but still viable) Pokemon like defensive Silvally-Water, Corsola, Metang, and bulky Silvally-Electric, all of which can scout both sets and react appropriately.
Swanna's Z-Mirror Move set has a healthy amount of offensive counterplay between Furfrou, Simisage, Gourgeist-Small and various Choice Scarf users with the most common of course being Electivire. I favour this set over Z-Rain Dance because even though these Pokemon answer Z-MM effectively, you can still position Swanna to win in the late-game with strong enough play. Z-Rain Dance on the other hand admittedly has little offensive counterplay but in return it's a +0 Pokemon with base 87 Special Attack reliant on Rain boosted Surf (and Hurricane) to sweep - I find it to be embarrassingly underwhelming against specially defensive mons like Komala, Wishiwashi, Muk etc. despite how much people insist on talking about it. This isn't to say it's bad by any means, but it's hardly a world beater especially when you can stall out rain turns to make it a non-issue or, even in a worst case scenario where Choice Scarf Electivire is truly your only counterplay... you can still live a boosted Surf after rocks.

Swanna lacks the traits of any Pokemon that was banned prior - Shiftry had a huge number of entry points both directly into defensive Pokemon and as an offensive check to nearly everything else. Shiftry also forced the use of suboptimal Pokemon (Shiinotic) and suboptimal sets (SpDef Mawile, the use of Z-Crystals on defensive/utility Pokemon like Altaria, Rotom-S and Rapidash) all on its own. Exeggutor had the bulk to trade with virtually everything in the tier while also OHKOing the majority of it.
Swanna is powerful, but it's far more reliant on Z-Moves to break and has poor bulk compounded further by a vulnerability to Stealth Rock, making otherwise very strong alternative sets like Life Orb and Choice Band virtually unseen in the tier. More than anything else, it's a late-game one-pump chump, very much not the case for other banned Pokemon like Exeggutor and Shiftry that were threatening at any and all points of a game. Swanna only gets one opportunity to use Z-MM or Z-Rain Dance and if it doesn't win off that one opportunity it's realistically not finding any room to exert any kind of offensive pressure from that point onwards because of the fast-paced nature of SM ZU.

To qualify to vote, players must have performed in SM ZU Cup or ZUPL IV. Swanna has a winrate of 44.44% (40% if limiting to Semi-Finals onwards) and 40.91% respectively in these tours. While I do not believe these win-rates are accurate enough on their own, I don't believe anyone has shown sufficient evidence of Swanna being broken, particularly in the post-Exeggutor meta where Wishiwashi has since risen from B- to A+ on the Viability Rankings and these stats back up that claim.

In a vacuum, I don't necessarily think Swanna is broken. It has its answers and those answers are viable in the meta. The problem is that, in the context of SM, it is simply too much. SM ZU is plagued by having a myriad of offensive threats with not enough solid defensive checks to all of them, which heavily stifles teambuilding and leads to the meta being very offensively inclined, with defensive playstyles that aren't outright stall being extremely hard to build.

To quickly get that last bit out of the way - some of the best SM ZU players have primarily been using BO, between quagsgone, Durza, Ho3n, and I'd like to think myself. Claiming it is "extremely hard to build" defensive teams that aren't stall is outright false and I can't see it as anything but personal conjecture when it differs from the experience of every successful player in the tier's recent history.

I want to respond to your post in particular because it centres around a few arguments that have been bugging me for some time now. I'll start by running down a few of my own points:
- Balance has, off the top of my head, three answers to Simisage that can switch in more than once between Silvally-Poison, Muk, and Alolan Grimer, and of those only Alolan Grimer can offer direct counterplay to its hit & run approach. It's not broken because you can limit its turns, it's easily forced out after clicking Leaf Storm, and is vulnerable to offensive pressure/various tanks that can just live a hit and fire back.
- Electivire's access to Ice Punch makes Golem and Sandslash the only consistently good volt blockers in the tier, but you can use sturdy Pokemon like mixed defense Bronzor or Gourgeist-Super paired with a deterrent like Raichu or your own Electivire to sufficiently ward it off instead. You can limit its offensive opportunities by giving your Mareanie or Corsola enough bulk to live a Wild Charge, or force a trade with any sufficiently bulky Pokemon.
- Every offensive Pokemon has access to Z-Moves, and all of them are used to limit the pool of defensive answers in some way. The only reason Combusken was considered broken by anyone in the first place was because of the burst damage potential of Z-Flare Blitz or Z-Sky Uppercut, but people still manage to find counterplay despite Wishiwashi getting OHKOd by a Z-Sky Uppercut at +2. Swanna, Torterra, Chatot, Raichu, Simipour, Leafeon, Simisage are some more offensive Pokemon that can opt for a Z-move to burst down a huge amount of their traditional defensive answers with very little drawback, and that's without stretching to lures like Z-Wild Charge Rapidash that can end a game turn 1 if not scouted properly.
- Stall is bad, and the tier's best "walls" (Bronzor, Gourgeist-Super, Mareanie) have clearly defined vulnerabilities and give up enough momentum that every balance team instead becomes reliant on tanks like Golem, Wishiwashi, Silvally-formes, Furfrou, Komala etc. to function efficiently.

To get to the point here: if your aim here is to "free up team building" then you will never 'fix' SM ZU. ZU by nature has a limited pool of defensive options and a larger than average number of offensive threats, and this is true of both BW ZU and DPP ZU as well. Positioning and health management are vital skills in this tier and you should be actively working towards your own win condition just as much as you are preventing your opponent from reaching theirs instead of expecting every offensive mon to have to come in 4 times per game to make enough progress to win. Banning Swanna does not make team building easier but instead only shifts the conversation onto other Pokemon like Simisage.

Some people don't like SM ZU in its current state, but I hope those players sit down before voting Ban and think about what they actually want from the tier, and how they think we can get there. I consider Xayah's viewpoint of "Ban Swanna, Electivire, and Simisage" to not only be an extremely dangerous mindset when it comes to the future of the tier but also inadequate for what he actually wants from it; nothing short of a mass exodus of 20+ Pokemon will get you to a point where Mareanie semi-stall becomes viable and to be blunt you're better off playing a different tier. You realistically will not get to a point where balance in SM ZU feels comfortable to you before you instead reach a point where there's nobody left to play it.

I'll be voting Do Not Ban.

 

[MZ]

I know I hadn't played much SM ZU for maybe a few years prior to ZUPL, but as someone who did play a lot, watch every game, have a good record, etc. this thread and those survey results are incredibly surprising to me. What's the impetus here? Do we have winrates or usage from ZUPL that suggests this is an issue? Skimming the ZUPL replays & stats thread doesn't suggest much. My playing experience was like, okay this is annoying but so are Evire and Tspikes and Combusken and stall. The OP just feels like a big oversell, and nothing I saw during the entire tour suggests the tier should be touched further.

 

[Tuthur]

I know I hadn't played much SM ZU for maybe a few years prior to ZUPL, but as someone who did play a lot, watch every game, have a good record, etc. this thread and those survey results are incredibly surprising to me. What's the impetus here? Do we have winrates or usage from ZUPL that suggests this is an issue? Skimming the ZUPL replays & stats thread doesn't suggest much. My playing experience was like, okay this is annoying but so are Evire and Tspikes and Combusken and stall. The OP just feels like a big oversell, and nothing I saw during the entire tour suggests the tier should be touched further.

I cannot speak for everyone who answered the survey, but here are my two cents about the current metagame. Since it stopped being the main gen, the SM ZU metagame has devolved into what I think is an unhealthy state. "[Unhealthy] can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity." This perfectly describes the state of SM in my opinion. There are way too many offensive threats in ZU you need to account for in the builder, which leads to matchup being an even bigger factor than ingame plays in my opinion. The problem with a lot of these threats isn't just that they can be particulary tedious to wall, but are also even harder to revenge kill. This includes common threats like Combusken and Leafeon, but also nicher ones like Pinsir, Glaceon, and Bellossom. This is not really new as most of the current SM ZU banlist is composed of Pokemon with similar traits like Alolan Raticate, Carracosta, and Shiftry that were able become almost impossible to deal with offensively alike defensively if given a turn to setup. This aspect of the tier is the main reason why I don't think SM ZU is very competitive (as most voters agreed with) and why a lot of SM ZU games in ZUPL felt inherently unbalanced to me in one player's favor. Swanna is imo the hardest threat to deal with, because it has three viable cleaner sets that all have different checks, forcing you to take into consideration all the possibilities so you don't get swept in late game. Swanna just needs minimal primordial chip damage to beat most of its soft checks like Silvally formes and Rotom-Fan, pivot with no recovery that get quickly chipped by hazard and resisted attacks, Wishiwashi and other special walls lose to physical Swanna, which can also happen to be a Rain Dance one with a Speed boost. I would also like to end the myth that keeping a special wall and a faster Aqua Jet resist for the end game makes you safe versus Swanna, physical Z-Rain Dance is a less common set but is completely viable and can clean through these cores. Banning Swanna would free the teambuilding a lot, as you wouldn't have to account for its multiple sets which all requires different counterplays, three of them being able to easily clean a game.

Some people don't like SM ZU in its current state, but I hope those players sit down before voting Ban and think about what they actually want from the tier, and how they think we can get there. I consider Xayah's viewpoint of "Ban Swanna, Electivire, and Simisage" to not only be an extremely dangerous mindset when it comes to the future of the tier but also inadequate for what he actually wants from it; nothing short of a mass exodus of 20+ Pokemon will get you to a point where Mareanie semi-stall becomes viable and to be blunt you're better off playing a different tier. You realistically will not get to a point where balance in SM ZU feels comfortable to you before you instead reach a point where there's nobody left to play it.

That's some sort of slippery slope fallacy. Banning Swanna won't necessarly result in an Electivire or Simisage ban (fwiw I'm quite opposed to both), even less likely result in +20 bans. SM is inherently an offensive generation due to Z-moves and banning Swanna isn't an attempt to make it more stallish. This is an attempt at making SM ZU more competitive by removing one of the most restricting threats in the tier.

tldr: SM ZU is an unhealthy metagame and Swanna is the most resictring element in it, being arguably broken by itself. Banning it would improve grantly the tier's health.

 

[Greybaum]

I cannot speak for everyone who answered the survey, but here are my two cents about the current metagame. Since it stopped being the main gen, the SM ZU metagame has devolved into what I think is an unhealthy state. "[Unhealthy] can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity." This perfectly describes the state of SM in my opinion. There are way too many offensive threats in ZU you need to account for in the builder, which leads to matchup being an even bigger factor than ingame plays in my opinion.

The Tiering Policy Framework in recent years has mostly only been used opportunistically, cherry-picked, and in lieu of better arguments, and I don't consider this to be an exception.
Immediately after your excerpt, the framework notes the following:

• This is the most controversial and subjective one and will therefore be used the most sparingly. The Tiering Councils will only use this amidst drastic community outcry and a conviction that the move will noticeably result in the better player winning over the lesser player.

Since the Exeggutor ban in April, there have been zero forum posts about the state of the tier. There has been no big push for a Swanna ban in the Discord either; aside from Xayah, you are the only user who has been vocal about SM being, in your words, a "coinflip meta" and "a joke". There have been two conversations regarding specific Pokemon, with EviGaro referring to Swanna as unhealthy in July (please post) and btboy the same for Combusken in August, but you're putting out inflammatory statements like the below

SM ZU's balance has been often put in question for years.

This aspect of the tier is the main reason why I don't think SM ZU is very competitive (as most voters agreed with)

when neither of these things are true. I'm not content with the number of 6/10 voters on the SM survey for how competitive the tier is, but "most" is a huge stretch and there has certainly not been any outcry that can justify using this bullet of the Tiering Framework to remove Swanna from the tier, especially considering it's an old gen with less frequent metagame adaptation.

Swanna is imo the hardest threat to deal with, because it has three viable cleaner sets that all have different checks, forcing you to take into consideration all the possibilities so you don't get swept in late game. Swanna just needs minimal primordial chip damage to beat most of its soft checks like Silvally formes and Rotom-Fan, pivot with no recovery that get quickly chipped by hazard and resisted attacks, Wishiwashi and other special walls lose to physical Swanna, which can also happen to be a Rain Dance one with a Speed boost. I would also like to end the myth that keeping a special wall and a faster Aqua Jet resist for the end game makes you safe versus Swanna, physical Z-Rain Dance is a less common set but is completely viable and can clean through these cores.

Physical Z-Rain Dance Swanna is a niche set that was brought zero times across SM Cup (a 48-man tournament) and once across ZUPL, where it faced a team using Choice Specs Floatzel as the fastest Pokemon on a team with no priority. It had no easier of a time than either of the other Swanna sets would, and while I can see the use in the set in a vacuum I do not believe it has meaningfully different counterplay to either of the two sets but is instead a largely worse hybrid that loses to counterplay to both sets. I do not believe it is worth bringing up this set in this context considering there are no games demonstrating that it contributes to Swanna's health or lackthereof in the tier.

Banning Swanna would free the teambuilding a lot, as you wouldn't have to account for its multiple sets which all requires different counterplays, three of them being able to easily clean a game.

I would like you to expand on this. As per the start of my post, you must have "a conviction that the move will noticeably result in the better player winning over the lesser player" and I don't believe this one-liner is sufficient evidence.
As mentioned in my last post, the SpDef mons that stall or force out the Rain Dance set, like Komala and Muk, have no type advantage over Swanna but are instead simply the best SpDef mons in the tier. Similarly, Electivire is considered to be not just the best Choice Scarf user but also the best Pokemon in the tier, and Swanna leaving does not do anything to change that. Some Pokemon would certainly get better, such as Choice Scarf Komala, and some would get worse, such as Rotom-S (which, on a side note, used offensive or scarf sets in roughly equal measure to defensive sets in ZUPL), but I do not see any evidence that a Swanna ban would significantly change how the tier is played when all of the best Pokemon, regardless of Swanna's presence, support a fast-paced metagame - Swanna greatly benefits from the metagame being as offensive as it is but I do not believe it is the primary cause of this.

That's some sort of slippery slope fallacy. Banning Swanna won't necessarly result in an Electivire or Simisage ban (fwiw I'm quite opposed to both), even less likely result in +20 bans. SM is inherently an offensive generation due to Z-moves and banning Swanna isn't an attempt to make it more stallish. This is an attempt at making SM ZU more competitive by removing one of the most restricting threats in the tier.

It is not a slippery slope fallacy; Xayah noted that he'd like Simisage to be removed from the tier, and that he believes Electivire to be broken. I was responding to his post and clarifying that, as I said in the paragraph above, I do not believe that SM ZU would start favouring slower, defensive gameplay, even if the three strongest offensive threats were to be banned - the power level would need to decrease far beyond that for his ideal metagame to exist.

As you say, SM is inherently an offensive generation, with lower gens like ZU in particular having a heavy emphasis on the use of offensive counterplay to limit breakers, and there has been no (public) metagame analysis from you or any other Ban voter to support the idea that removing Swanna would make the tier more competitive, nor have there been any Swanna(& others?)-banned tournaments to exhibit this, both of which I believe should be expected when a tier leader considers their tier to be in a state where "team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced". With nothing to suggest a post-Swanna tier would be meaningfully different in play, and with neither of the people pushing for a Swanna ban under the aforementioned guidelines actually considering Swanna to be broken, nor unhealthy, I do not think a Swanna ban can be justified under the given reasoning.
I would much rather hear from people who do consider Swanna to be broken or unhealthy. I very much hope they'll make posts to clarify their reasoning in the next week before the voter thread goes up.

 

[Antares]

yo free shiftry btw totally balanced mon