Suspect SS AAA Suspect #9: Burning Red (Genesect)

[DeepFriedMagikarp]

"Too much Variety"

Just putting out there that the sheer variety of Genesect moves/sets is overstated. There's really only like 2 categories of sets which all share the same overlap of checks, and play the same. To claim the sets in the same category are so wildly different (or different at all) is a bit wrong imo.

1: Special biased Mixed
Genesect @ Life Orb
Ability: No Guard / Sheer Force / Magic Guard / Primordial Sea
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 32 Atk / 252 SpA / 224 Spe
Mild Nature
- Leech Life
- Zap Cannon / Thunderbolt
- Blizzard / Ice Beam
- Shift Gear
- Energy Ball / Flamethrower / Techno Blast / Steel Beam / etc.

Now thats a lot of sets and options in the first set already but if you look at it deeper they all homogenize. The standard no guard set is the template, special sheer force is the same exact set, with no real differences in its mu's.
Magic guard can reveal itself early with rocks, and is very often missing crucial coverage. Especially when most of Genesects checks and scouting pivots resist steel, and all of its other moves do less damage than other sets, this one also just gets blanketed by the same things (Heatran, fire punch Jirachi, flamethrower blobs, etc). It also does less damage.
Primordial Sea is often spoken of as the heatran answer, beating genesect's best check, but the set reveals itself immediately, does poor damage compared to the others, again is missing crucial coverage, and the coverage it does have no longer gets the same rolls without life orb (ice beam doesnt kill zapdos anymore, etc). It also loses to desolate land Heatran which is Heatrans most popular set.

The moves you can tech onto these sets to spice them up, don't really get you much further? Energy ball hits exactly Swampert which you already beat*. Flamethrower looks really good and can snipe some things but it still fails to kill a lot of the steels that check you. And again each move you drop for these makes the set considerably weaker. The sets are all just kind of worse than standard no guard and don't beat no guards checks. But no guard Genesect is pretty good though


2: Physical
Genesect @ Life Orb
Ability: Tinted Lens / Guts / Sheer Force / ExtremeSpeedi-ate / Serene Grace (lol)
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Shift Gear
- Leech Life / Iron Head
- Iron Head / Blaze Kick / Gunk Shot
- Explosion / Blaze Kick / Facade / Thunderbolt / Extreme Speed

Now these sets are all very scary but very similar. They primarily play off of bluffing the No guard set, to gain a more advantageous position. Once revealed, they all get checked by physdef walls. Also these physical sets a lot of the time are walled by zapdos, when they try to experiment too much with other moves.
Guts is very powerful and can pull off sweeps, but its the one of the only sets that immediately reveals itself, leaving much more room to counterplay and much less sacked special walls.
Tinted lens is THE actual set that beats heatran, however it needs to explode on it. This is also exclusively an HO pick and it cannot sweep if it has to trade itself for heatran. A lot of mons can pull off this kind of explosion 1:1 trade bait set. In general this set does worse damage even with tinted (steel bug are not great stabs), so its generally less of a threat.
Sheer Force (phys/mixed) Is a strong midground option that can most of the time* snipe heatrans. Its powerful, but falls under 4mss often and needs to decide if it wants to go mixed, and then the ev's also get spread thinner.
Extreme Speed(refridgerate/galvanize/pixilate) It already outspeeds everything after a boost, again coverage issues, unboosted doesn't hit thaat hard and this is more for defensive utility than anything.

All of these sets are very dangerous because they work off of your assumption that its No guard, but once revealed are manageable. Despite having blaze kick, Intimidate Corviknight is still a solid check into these sets. Their main difference is the fire coverage given by Blaze Kick. so various fire immunities can also handle them sometimes. But Heatran still lives every blaze kick easily if its not Desolate Land, and still is only a roll to die vs some sets with the Sun boost. These sets also fall to chip damage much quicker, as they thud into rocky helmets a lot more often compounded with life orb damage. Some sets even have to drop leech life making them especially prone.

3: Miscellaneous

Genesect @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Regenerator
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 192 HP / 120 Atk / 36 SpA / 160 Spe
Hasty Nature + Other sets
- Gunk Shot
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
- Flamethrower

I dont even know what other sets there are that dont fall into the above 2 categories, but the rest are here. Already any set without shift gear is not threatening at all, ie choice'd sets. This set however, is probably its most viable set and its a purely defensive mon. This set does like 0 damage to everything even on super effective hits, it only does just enough vs the specific mons its supposed to check (Lele, Koko, etc). This set also funnily checks and beats any non-fire move Genesect. Maybe thats broken that Gene checks itself idk. But it would be a shame to lose this very neat bit of defensive utility in the tier.
Isaiah in the post above already went over how many different mons in the tier can check/help check Genesect, so i wont go over those. Keep in mind a lot of the time you are simply not getting more than 1:1 for your Genesect if it gets hit while setting up, its definitely something you can limit in gameplay.

Also, more than half of the sets i mentioned in this post see like, negative usage (for a good reason). Mentioning that Genesect can run sets like "Magic guard" doesn't matter if the set is mostly entirely existent in only in theory. And if your team was getting swept by a Primordial Sea Genesect or something, that team was getting swept by standard No guard anyways. The moveset variety is in the same vein as well, although this one can actually be more impactful. However, every deviation away from the standard opens you up to a much much wider range of pokemon that beat you right after in exchange to Fish one Matchup, and at that point the Genesect shouldn't have gotten more than one kill. Which fine, sometimes that happens in Pokemon.

This all being said, i am not staunchly DNB against Genesect, the effectiveness of its No guard/Physical mixup on the first shift gear is pretty scary, and can blow holes through a team, but honestly there is some level of outplaying the Genesect user has to do to, to do so. And tbf it can just sweep fairly easily if its check(s) are weakened

Just saying the Mon only has like 2.5 actual sets (+ regenerator). Its not thaat much set variety
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[Hera]

It's absolutely insane the amount of Devil's Advocates there are for an unambiguous MU fish that provides a net negative value to the tier, as well as the oversimplification of Genesect's sets from 7 to 2/3. No, not all physical sets lose to the same things (see: Galvanize), and no, not all special sets lose to the same things (Energy Ball anyone?).

I feel like people are too focused on Genesect sets in a vaccum. Yes, Tinted Lens is manageable. So is No Guard, SFLO, Scarf, Guts, PSea, MGLO (Steel Bean or Blaze Kick pivot), Galvanize, and whatever other set I'm forgetting. In a vaccum, they all have rigid counterplay that's easy to fit. The main issue is actually sitting down and preparing for them all of them (or at least the most common ones, trying to prep for every Genesect set is impossible and ill advised) without falling into the same structures. The three most common routes I see are CorvBlissPert, MandyPex + Steel that isn't weak to Electric, and Heatran. The first core is hilariously passive and is only really good for soft checking most top tier breakers, but can't actually do shit vs nicher stuff like Hydregion and Volcanion, to the point where they're 6-0ed by said mons. The second core is a bit outdated but a lot more solid into a wider variety of threats. Unfortunately, it loses to any Genesect running Flamethrower, which kinda shows that Genesect can just tech itself to beat whatever it wants. Heatran is the most consistent method of dealing with Genesect (trading vs TL nonwithstanding), but if you're running Heatran on every team so Genesect doesn't 6-0 you, then maybe Genesect isn't balanced?

This popularity of these cores/mons in question is what makes AAA so matchup fishy right now. It is extraordinarily easy to run 1 random breaker + 1 speed control pivot + 4 defensive mons (at least half of them pivots) and just win as long as you get a good MU. I've done with numerous times with mons like Tyrantrum, Hydregion, Inteleon, and yes, Genesect. This is a boon and a curse for AAA. Boon because the ease of building and piloting these types of teams leads to a lower skill floor, which increases the play base of the tier and allows for more metagame development; curse because these teams being so easy to build and pilot means that the tier becomes infested with them, and this leads to the matchup fishyness of the tier. Do you have the defensive tools to deal with random breaker #46? Good, then you win. What's that? You don't? Okay, you're getting 6-0ed. This is not an overexaggeration. Look at games like this, this, and this and they all go the exact same way; random breaker loads into a team with little/no defensive counterplay for it and wins as long as the player has more than 2 brain cells to rub together.

Apologies for the tangent. My point is that Genesect is the fishiest of matchup fishes. If you don't prep for a set, you get 6-0ed; if you do, you don't. It's as simple as that. Combine that with the sheer set versatility of Genesect, the ban of Magic Bounce allowing Spikes teams that heavily support Genesect and the ultra-broken Blaze Kick MG set to show up on more teams, and the already existent strain that the amount of powerful breakers puts on teambuilding, and you have a mon that, in tandem with other broken shit like Terrakion, Koko, and ZyDog (no one's ready for the ZyDog conversation yet though), constrains teambuilding to an unhealthy extent that forces teams to either specifically prep for 2 or 3 Genesect sets and conveniently forget about the rest only to lose to it anyway, or run the same defensive cores on every team and have glaring weaknesses to other threats. It's simply not really fun building in the meta unless I'm using shit like Duraladon in part of the constraint Genesect forces on it. If people enjoy a meta where you can load into a mon with near infinite set possiblity, are forced to make suboptimal decisions in builder and play to manage it, and randomly lose because you didn't prep for a specific set of it (btw I forgot to mention but Genesect is like the only mon that can do this, ZyDog gets close but it has considerably fewer sets), then okay, I understand the DNB position. But personally, I don't enjoy this aspect of AAA, and would like to see it diminished as much as possible.

 

[The Number Man]

I also wanted to address a little bit of Genesect counterplay as well. To make it as straightforward as possible, I'll literally just go down the VR and mention common mons. If you are reading this and are like "Well, that mon's just bad anyway", then I personally think you're probably missing out on the scope of teambuilding options in AAA--all of these mons are either consistently viable or each have a relevant niche even outside of Genesect, but this isn't a viability rankings nom so I won't get into the meat of that argument. Also keep in mind that these are all assuming it's setup Genesect since while regen Genesect is really good, it also probably has the most straightforward counterplay ever: pivot around it lmao.

Pokemon
Choice Scarf /// - Threaten trick and/or fire move
- Definitely not a counter, but it can at least Taunt on Shift Gear, or do > 50% with Pixilate Facade, or even fish for para with Discharge (don't do this unless you're desperate LOL)
(DesoLand, Regen, Magic Guard, whatever you like tbh) - Can eat pretty much any hit from Genesect even after it gets a Shift Gear and OHKO it back (I don't rate flash fire genesect because come on now, you KNOW you aren't putting that on a team in any serious capacity LOL). Even without regen, you can keep your heatran relatively healthy with leftovers + slow pivoting into it very reasonably -> I'm not even good but I can at least recognize that much.
- Whether it's Unaware or not, Chansey can Thunder Wave -> Teleport to something to kills Genesect
- Volt Absorb bulk up can deal with boltbeam sets, flash fire works vs the facade + gunk shot + blaze kick set that Laxpras mentioned (Flash Fire Steels are literally fine in Heatran meta btw, that mon is bonkers)
- Doesn't necessarily "win", but knocking LO and/or Leech Seeding on the Shift Gear can be good for pivoting around to teammates like Swampert and whatnot to wear Genesect down
- Beats purely physical genesect with Dauntless Shield or Unaware and puts it to bed with Foul Play (Also lives the electric move from full more than 80% of the time lmao)
- Isn't setup fodder bc it outspeeds and OHKOs
- Isn't setup fodder bc it outspeeds and OHKOs
- Doesn't OHKO but does loads of damage so you can capitalize on weakened Gene w/ teammates
- Isn't setup fodder bc it outspeeds and OHKOs
- Isn't setup fodder bc it does 99.6% min if adamant, 90% min if jolly so you can capitalize on weakened Gene
- Isn't setup fodder bc it outspeeds and OHKOs
- Other than Thunder Wave -> Teleport, even BLISSEY can get licks in vs Genesect by opting to run Flamethrower (or Fire Blast) instead of Seismic Toss to abuse the Shift Gear turn or just plain eat any unboosted hit and cook it in return.
Extremely good mon already, also has the "niche" of OHKOing Genesect with fire moves
- you're dead if they use their brain and attack instead of trying to setup lmao, but you still prevent the setup turn bc poltergeist OHKOs if CB, almost OHKOs if LO and then you just GGlide after
- Isn't setup fodder bc it outspeeds and OHKOs
- Similar to ferro in that it doesn't necessarily win, but can run fire punch to do a ton then play around the weakened Genesect until it dies.
- Honestly depends on the set, if it's physical you can rocky helmet + body press to squeak out the win, if it's mixed then No Guard Blizzard only has a 6% chance to OHKO max HP + 40 spdef Kommo-o, meaning you can rocky helm + body press and capitalize on weakened OR triage drain punch and do the same
- Scarf Aerilate can Body Slam/Explosion, Scarf Regen/AV Regen can EQ and capialize on weakened w/ teammates
- Frankly I don't think Latios is A- to begin with, but even HERE if it's tinted Latios it isn't setup fodder and OHKOS, and even if it's any other set you do a million damage and capitalize on weakened w/ teammates

All of these are Pokemon I'd say are collectively very common and not unreasonable to build with (none of them are currently lower than A-), and this doesn't even include more generalized plans like having cores that do well into Genesect or other mons like Volcarona and Swampert that can OHKO or Roar it out. And before the argument of "why do you need multiple forms of counterplay for one Pokemon" come out, let's not pretend as though we don't already do that for just about every strong attacker or setup mon in the tier (Zapdos-Galar, Terrakion, Heatran, Tapu Lele, etc.)

So many things listed as not setup fodder etc in this post dont really capture the actual ingame dynamics of gene - its not about unboosted gene, its about boosted gene and how easily it gets that one boost imo.

Going over the list everything besides tran, ace, rachi and terrak loses to sflo gene after SG; everything besides mandi, intim corv, kommo loses to physical gene after SG.

So the question becomes whether genesex sets up easily enough that for the purpose of discussion we should take it as a given that it will inevitably set up, therefore evaluate the threat of gene at 1+/+2, rather than unboosted gene. I think the answer is yes, at which point it becomes apparent how little counterplay there actually is. I think this sentiment is at the core of the "ban" movement. And it is this sentiment that should be adressed.

It's clear that unboosted gene is not that much of a problem, the problem is SG makes it significantly more threatening and finding opportunities to set up is not hard enough given the strength of boosted gene.

If anyone manages to consistently win games without giving genesect any free turns, then congratulations, you're a godtier player. I think it's the opposite, you need to kill stuff to win the game, at some point you'll likely be forced to lock into a move or switch into a passive wall that lets genesect SG up for free - that's where the threat of gene comes from.

So yeah, I think Err0r Mobutt unironically put it best when in his Genesect post in the main AAA thread he said: "Your team won't beat all Genesect sets, but it's beating most of them, and they're only running one".
The issue with genesex is revenging it after a sg. which is why i dont think pointing out (for example) scarf latias carrying myst fire counts as counterplay, once a choiced mon has locked a move that lets gene set up, you're basically eliminating all offensive cplay. Gene is only coming out when its in a good position, its not like your opp is gonna throw it away.

You don't know which set it is, are you gonna throw your dauntless mandi/prankpex in front of unrevealed gene to check the physical ones when there's a zarude in the back? Are you gonna hard switch into your cinderace/heatran when there's a likely triage lele/kiss in the back and the genesect could be tinted boom? Gameplanning vs unrevealed gene is very hard, you could easily make the wrong switch and give up an extra kill for free etc.

Not participating in sus cause i dont have time for reqs, but id vote ban if i could.

 

[Mada]

proof

s/o UT for his team

 

[hayedenn]

so I have thoughts, although I'm not making an argument it's more just food for thought.

An issue I have is that the primary argument that there seems to be in favor of banning Genesect is the idea that it is too "matchup fishy". There are a wide variety of sets that generally have different counterplay and having to prepare for them is too much of a constraint on building and it leaves you open to auto-losing to any of the sets if you happen to load into it.

My primary issue with this argument is that, well, that's generally all of AAA? Generally speaking any of us that build this tier recognize that there are a fair amount of B/C tier threats that we are not well-prepped for and we accept losing to them as part of the tier. Well, maybe we would prefer the tier not be that way but none of us seem to be clamoring for banning Mamoswine, MGLO Volcanion, CM ID Koko, Chandelure, offensive Unaware/Mold Breaker breakers, etc. My point is, the chance of us running into these 100/0 Genesect matchups is generally as common as running into any of these MU fish breakers, but we treat them very differently. Perhaps it's the commonality of seeing Genesect on 40% of AAA teams this World Cup, and 0% Mamoswine that leads us to look at these very differently, but I do not see this matchup fishiness of Genesect playing out that often.

AAA has always been a tier of praying that your defensive core matches up well into your opponent's offensive core, for better or for worse. This idea that Genesect is more of a problem than any other fish in the tier hasn't really been demonstrated consistently, and it isn't helped when people bring stall and fail to prep for NG Gene. A decent amount of this I consider to be a skill issue, but there is an argument that I am sympathetic to that it is a bit too much of a pain to beat everything consistently. The issue is though, as I said, we do this all the time with any other niche breaker. No shade to TNM but he was fine just auto-losing to HO with the teams he brought in PL (this is genuinely not shade ilysm) and that was something we generally accepted when we built teams together. I am generally fine with my teams losing to shit like Trick Room or Mamoswine or Unaware SD Chomp and let me tell you Guts and Tinted Genesect are just barely more common than those mon's usage. The fact that people who support a Genesect ban admit that this will not fundamentally change things about the tier I think shows that Genesect really is not something that will significantly help AAA (or really not at all). I guess it'll be nice sleeping easier at night knowing you won't need an NG Zap Cannon sack but like seriously, you sometimes just have to accept that you're going to lose to some niche stuff; it's never going to go away.

Like after a certain point I think this just comes down to delusion and an inability to be capable of building good teams. I consistently see people roll up with like no BoltBeam switch-in or no no Fire + Elec switch-in and then complain when Genesect dices their team apart. If you bring an offensive team and play poorly, giving the opposing Genesect an opportunity to click Shift Gear, you are going to lose. So much of this comes down to just playing better. Losing to Genesect does not always mean that it's broken. The amount of games I see where someone brought a very good team and just got obliterated by Gene fish is like, less than 5% of games I see. And as I said above, that literally happens with half of the B and C tier mons (where I see a good team just get absolutely obliterated by a mu fish). It literally just happens sometimes. There are some arguments I am very sympathetic to regarding how it is absolutely painful to lose like that sometimes but some of the arguments I've read in this thread and on Discord are really bad, and most of them are from people who consistently build poor teams and complain when they lose to shit like TC Zapdos (which by the way is MUCH more constraining on building than Genesect).

Anyways I don't think I'll get reqs but I just had a lot of thoughts thanks.

 

[Hera]

An issue I have is that the primary argument that there seems to be in favor of banning Genesect is the idea that it is too "matchup fishy". There are a wide variety of sets that generally have different counterplay and having to prepare for them is too much of a constraint on building and it leaves you open to auto-losing to any of the sets if you happen to load into it.

My primary issue with this argument is that, well, that's generally all of AAA? Generally speaking any of us that build this tier recognize that there are a fair amount of B/C tier threats that we are not well-prepped for and we accept losing to them as part of the tier. Well, maybe we would prefer the tier not be that way but none of us seem to be clamoring for banning Mamoswine, MGLO Volcanion, CM ID Koko, Chandelure, offensive Unaware/Mold Breaker breakers, etc. My point is, the chance of us running into these 100/0 Genesect matchups is generally as common as running into any of these MU fish breakers, but we treat them very differently. Perhaps it's the commonality of seeing Genesect on 40% of AAA teams this World Cup, and 0% Mamoswine that leads us to look at these very differently, but I do not see this matchup fishiness of Genesect playing out that often.

Not trying to argue here, but the way I see it, the fact that you can load into random breakers and auto-lose with such consistentcy is a bad thing. As you say, there are plenty of B/C breakers that just fish for good MUs and win, but in other tiers I've played, I've never really experienced a MU with a good team where I legitimately have no counterplay to a specific threat. Mamoswine, MGLO Volc, Chandelier, and etcetera are good mons, but lack the consistency of breakers like Koko, Terrakion, and Genesect, so they're not prepped for as often, which leads to shit like Tyrantrum auto-winning games. This is an issue to me because of how the top threats in the meta necessitate specific answers that struggle to cover much else beyond what they're supposed to answer. I want the MU issue to disappear, so I don't really see the point of banning the random breakers in question because they're only a symptom of the issues some top-tier breakers put on building.

This idea that Genesect is more of a problem than any other fish in the tier hasn't really been demonstrated consistently, and it isn't helped when people bring stall and fail to prep for NG Gene.

Idk how you thought this was stall but it's not. I don't think it was revealed but Duraladon was actually a MGLO set with BPress/Steel Beams/TBolt/DPulse, while Barraskewda was Mystic Water. I actually was prepping for a shit ton of things in the NE server and I believe NGLO Genesect was one of the things I listed. However, in order to make the team work, I had to conviently forget that NGLO Genesect, along with other mons like Dhelmise, existed. You can call this bad building if you want in order to make an assmon work, but I feel like it's telling that players have to consistently forget (completely viable!) breakers exist when building a team, intentionally or unintentionally. There's just too much shit to feasibly cover in the meta, and when you do forget something and load into it, you're probably losing.

The fact that people who support a Genesect ban admit that this will not fundamentally change things about the tier I think shows that Genesect really is not something that will significantly help AAA (or really not at all).

Disregarding that one person does not speak for the whole pro-ban side, I thought we weren't suspecting things based on whether they're going to fundamentally change the tier, but whether or not the mon/ability/item is banworthy. Just because Genesect isn't going to change the tier down to its core doesn't make it not banworthy. Beyond that, as I've stated before, I believe the issue is not solely Genesect, but rather a handful of very good breakers that centralize the meta in an unhealthy way, and I think a majority of pro-banners agree with me on that. Genesect is the biggest one imo, but there are various others I believe to contain degrees of unhealthyness (Koko, Terrakion, ZyGod/ZyDog) that I would love to see suspected later on down the line. So I'm all for Genesect being banned, especially if it's followed up by further tiering action.

Just to add some of my own thoughts, in a sense I do believe Genesect will fundamentally change the tier, but indirectly rather than directly. Basically, there are two directions tiering action could go in at this point.

A. We accept the tier as it is, flaws and all, and continue to experience matchup fishing issues that plague the tier for the rest of its lifespan while conducting no more suspects.
B. We decide that, no, maybe loading into Mamoswine and auto-losing because you needed to prep for 30+ other things is a bad thing, and strive to change that by suspecting some top-tier breakers.

This all precipitates a decision on Genesect. If it stays, we take Route A. If it leaves, we take Route B. Once either of these routes are taken, they're pretty much nothing stopping them from ever changing.

This is a mild oversimplification but I feel like it shows where the tier is at right now. We're at a fork in the road so to speak. I think this is why various people, including myself, get so heated about Genesect; it not only is an argument about the direction of the tier, but about our core values as people and what we see in mons, or at least want to see in mons. Personally, I've been in Group B for a while now. I'm tired of the status quo and want change, preferably by banning Genesect. I'm not gonna say bullshit like "for the health of the tier we should ban Genesect", but I truly and wholeheartedly believe that AAA with mons like Genesect, Koko, and Terrakion would be better than AAA with them.

 

[DeepFriedMagikarp]

One thing to note is that every team is like Mew Chansey Corv stuff with very limited room to offensively outplay/limit, it doesn't have to be all teams bordering on stall that randomly lose to tyrantrum because none of the blobs resist rock and give it 70 turns to work with. Tyrantrum, crawdaunt, etc theoritically ohkos/2hkos pretty much everything in OU too

 

[UT]

quick points

the fact that you can load into random breakers and auto-lose with such consistentcy is a bad thing

I think we need to be very careful about the distinction between "having a bad matchup against" and "auto-lose to." It is absolutely possible to build a good team that struggles against Dhelmise, Mamoswine, etc but still has outs and counterplay against them. This is a normal part of teambuilding. Most of our breakers have key weaknesses that can be exploited, like common immunities, being slow, venerable to chip damage or priority, etc. If you have a team that legitimately gets 6-0ed by Mamoswine, that is a bad team. If you have a team that has a hard time switching in and will lose if it gets in free 37 times, then have hazards/revenge killers/pivot/etc to put pressure back on them. Soft checking threats is much easier in AAA, in large part thanks to Regenerator cores.

Tyrantrum, crawdaunt, etc theoritically ohkos/2hkos pretty much everything in OU too

DFM already touched on this, but yeah, random breakers wrecking defensive cores is not unique to AAA. If you have no active way of pressuring your opponent and are trying to wall all however-many hundred pokemon there are passively, you will always lose to something, and that is okay.

Just to add some of my own thoughts, in a sense I do believe Genesect will fundamentally change the tier, but indirectly rather than directly. Basically, there are two directions tiering action could go in at this point.

A. We accept the tier as it is, flaws and all, and continue to experience matchup fishing issues that plague the tier for the rest of its lifespan while conducting no more suspects.
B. We decide that, no, maybe loading into Mamoswine and auto-losing because you needed to prep for 30+ other things is a bad thing, and strive to change that by suspecting some top-tier breakers.

This is a deliberate straw man. Tiering action will always be ongoing as long as the metagame is active, please don't set up false comparisons. Regardless of whether or not Genesect gets banned, we will keep looking at necessary tiering action and act on it as needed. If Genesect does not get banned, then a large portion of the playerbase thinks it is fine, but we will keep looking at other possible issues. Probably not Terrakion, since it was already suspected, not banned by a comfortable margin, and nothing has really changed to make it better, but Koko, Magic Guard, etc are all under consideration.

I would like to focus the conversation back on Genesect itself, and try to not get distracted by meta-metagame discussion and making this bigger than it is. The question we need to answer is, is Genesect broken and/or uncompetitive? I would submit that Genesect is not broken, but may be uncompetitive.

Ultimately, each Genesect set by itself is manageable with good, common sets that would still be good and common if Genesect was not in the tier. Outside of the No Guard set spreading paralysis, it provides virtually no defensive value, support utility, or speed control, unlike most of our other offensive breakers (I am setting aside the RegenScarf set, as I don't believe anyone views that as problematic). This means that the Genesect player is effectively playing 5v6 until they are able to get Genesect into position, which is a real cost. I think the lack of consistent tour usage and success underscores this; it's not a very consistent wincon, no matter how dangerous it is on paper, and doesn't provide the utility necessary to make up for match ups that it struggles with.

However, I do think there is a stronger argument that Genesect is still uncompetitive enough to be problematic. While most teams carry a way to check all common Genesect set, they may not be able to identify what that check is until it has been chipped enough to no longer be effective. It is true that outside of very dedicated sets like Regen Heatran, most Genesect answers need to be at relatively high health and are vulnerable to getting worn down. There is also the small, but real chance, that you do lose to a niche tech that your otherwise solid team is unable to handle, but it's a subjective question where the line is between that small chance being "it's mons, that happens" and "this is unhealthy for the metagame." This is further complicated by the difficulty in revenge killing Genesect, which has been outlined well.

If I had to vote right this minute, I would be in the do not ban camp; I think Genesect is usually manageable in-game with a well-built team, and that the frequency that you can truly be fished by a random tech set is low enough that your opponent is generally giving up too much in opportunity cost.

 

[Tea Guzzler]

Thought I might as well give my piece on the matter since my only post here is just a shoddy HO and "if it sets up, it wins the game easier".

To me at least, Genesect's main issues come after the Shift Gear, as this is when it's whack movepool and pretty good attacking stats let it cause problems (just saying this now: non-SG sets seem pretty fine tbh). Despite Genesect's frailty and 4x Fire weakness it's not excessively difficult to position well and get the setup turn (basically just echoing TNM but never giving it a chance is not happening), and this mostly leads the argument to "is the tier equipped enough to handle a boosted Genesect, whose set you may or may not know". This is the bit i'm sort of at a barrier with, as i'm not experienced enough to know how easy it is to fit checks in (and the range of sets these cover), if these checks are consistent across checking multiple Genesect sets and how reliably these checks actually check Genesect throughout the game. By the sounds of things, there are checks, however these need to remain at high HP to consistently check Genesect and so if you don't know what the Genesect is then you can get screwed over. Currently i'm slightly leaing towards Ban just because it *seems* like a tall order to both fit checks to relevant Genesect variants and also identify which of these are relevant to preserve in game, however because Gene gets so few chances to gear and with one it *might* win, i can see myself voting no ban too.

 

[astralydia]

WRECKS (reqs)

SUSPECT RUN NOTES:

So, I laddered with my sample, but during that sample I changed one thing - made the Latias 252+ Speed. Too much had I been up against threats that I wouldn't be able to outpace without that (Terrak with no scarf, Polteageist, Barbaracle) and made that final speed jump. Though it does make Latias' physical bulk notably worse, those mons were common enough on ladder to the point where I felt the change was necessary.

THREATS

Kommo-o - Doesn't randomly 6-0 teams without priority anymore, but still was an immensely scary mon on ladder. You have to be on the ball to not lose one to BD - thankfully, most of the time you'll only lose one unless you're up against some wack Dragon Dance set like IceQuake Galvanize, or your opponent is crafty and knows your Zapdos is slower than their Kommo-o. That being said, it's been neutered enough to the point where it's scary and not outright unfun to face.
Cinderace - Probably the biggest threat to my sample. Tinted Lens tends to force a lot of chip damage on Zapdos that can be pretty easily exploited, so you have to make do with "pivots" that aren't really good pivots but preserve Zapdos so the team doesn't get bogged down by a lack of momentum / Heatran resist.
Zapdos - Only really a problem because I had one game where I had 7 different crits in a row and still won - but it's notable as a threat anyway due to my lack of a true switchin to its STAB combo. Trick it with Latias though and it's no longer an issue. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1672839870
And, finally - the threat of this entire suspect

GENESECT

In general, this mon isn't a deadly threat to this team. I do have a complete hard counter in MG Heatran, and some other misc pivots, like Corv for Tinted Lens, but outside of that, there's not really much I have to work with - in many of the games I had, there were cases where Genesect could pretty easily set up on Corv or Latias, and only because I had an unchipped MG Heatran (that could actually hit the opponent) was I able to get out of these situations reliably. Had I been up against, say, PrimSea Genesect, the answers I would have given regarding my team comp might be a little different.

Generally, I think Genesect is very unhealthy from a gameplay standpoint, but from a prep standpoint the mon isn't the worst thing on the list. If you ask me, the hardest mons to prep for are Galarian Zapdos and Tapu Lele right now, both of which have some very specific answers, but because they're slow mons, they don't feel as hard to deal with. Tapu Lele is also a pretty easy mon to juggle imo - you can often use a regenvester to eat one of the STABs, then switch to a target that would otherwise be able to deal with the following hit. As for Genesect in the game, it's an absolute nightmare to deal with. Unless you specifically have something like Regenerator or MG Lefties Heatran, Genesect will likely have a way to win the game from preview, depending on its set. The important thing to note here is from preview - Shift Gear combined with Genesect's great typing and natural resilience to priority moves effectively makes it impossible to outspeed and OHKO, something which very few other mons can say they're capable of.

First off, I have to mention what I think is the most threatening Genesect set by far:


Genesect @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 216 Atk / 68 SpA / 224 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Iron Head
- Blaze Kick
- Thunderbolt
- Shift Gear

It's important to note that running Thunderbolt on this Genesect set eliminates multiple counters from the Laxpras set that are otherwise fairly common (no, FF Steels are not that bad - they're excellent into Desolate Land breakers like Heatran, Cinderace and Moltres, and FF Corv specifically has a legitimate place on many builds for its ability to hard counter and pivot on these mons like they're fodder) - those are FF Corv, Mandibuzz, Prankster Toxapex, DShield Skarmory and Slowbro. It is important to note that you do lose the ability to OHKO Cinderace (without Stealth Rock up) and Zapdos (although Zapdos is not a counter to this set regardless), so if you see those as more problematic, that's fine to go for. Thunderbolt also has 100% accuracy, so many of the other Fire types you'll find yourself up against are easier dealt with as a result. So, let's go by this set alone, and see what counterplay is actually available. I'll be going off of Isaiah's post, as this already has many of the comparisons I'm looking for.

As a sidenote, the Latias on my sample doesn't actually prevent setup very well - Mystical Fire is an OHKO on 0/0 Genesect 18.8% of the time, and most of the time, Genesect is coming in to exploit Latias' choice lock after revenge killing something like SD Garchomp, a very prevalent fit on HO right now.

Choice Scarf /// - Threaten trick and/or fire move

Whilst I'll give credit for Mew (and Fini - Gunk Shot is a rare move on Genesect, but you do have to be wary of that), I can't really say Azelf and Genesect are checks in good faith. Neither of these mons revenge kill Genesect, and are often setup opportunities for them after they've revenge killed something else on HO, or are pivoted into.

(DesoLand, Regen, Magic Guard, whatever you like tbh) - Can eat pretty much any hit from Genesect even after it gets a Shift Gear and OHKO it back (I don't rate flash fire genesect because come on now, you KNOW you aren't putting that on a team in any serious capacity LOL). Even without regen, you can keep your heatran relatively healthy with leftovers + slow pivoting into it very reasonably -> I'm not even good but I can at least recognize that much.

As mentioned by Laxpras, common Desolate Land spreads are somewhat likely to get OHKOd by a +1 Blaze Kick. This is basically the hardest counter otherwise.
+1 216+ Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Genesect Blaze Kick vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Heatran in Harsh Sunshine: 341-402 (88.3 - 104.1%) -- 25% chance to OHKO

- Whether it's Unaware or not, Chansey can Thunder Wave -> Teleport to something to kills Genesect

TWave only really works if you have a Choice Scarf fire move user - Genesect can often just Shift Gear again on the Teleport to outspeed mons like Talonflame, and bulkier Choice Scarf users like Mew and Tapu Fini. It's also worth noting that Iron Head has a small chance to 2HKO Unaware Chansey with no hazards on the field, but this chance is very minimal. So this only really works as an emergency check (though I will admit, it's good into most other sets)

- Scarf Aerilate can Body Slam/Explosion, Scarf Regen/AV Regen can EQ and capialize on weakened w/ teammates

It's worth mentioning that even a weakened Gene can often win if it's at around 20% HP - luckily for this example, my Genesect is Lonely, so I've taken the L to priority in this regard. Though I will give a positive spin on this - AV Regen can actually knock Genesect and etch out a win on Shift Gear, either by living Blizzard or +1 Iron Head - so this is actually a better check than stated!

Swampert is also worth mentioning as it isn't 2HKOd at base by SFLO, so it denies Genesect the ability to set up most of the time (even though it isn't in A-, which it should be, imo).

It's also worth mentioning that even a weakened Genesect is capable of sweeping teams even when teams have priority around. That much could be regarded as a skill issue, but when common forms of priority (Triage DKiss, Grassy Glide) aren't actually doing any more than around 30%, it's not unreasonable to assume that a Genesect can set up on a weakened Zapdos to win the game. Though I have no replays of this actually happening in practice, so assume the truth of this statement at your own leisure.

The second argument to be made for Genesect's banning is its sheer set variety. In many of the cases where soft answers are used on this list, a secondary variant (Tinted Lens, Guts, No Guard, Serene Grace, etc.) can severely punish the check in question. Tinted Lens is notable for a few things - it forces Heatran to be used almost exclusively for checking Genesect (and can be exploded past if Heatran is blocking the way for another mon), and Leech Life making many of the soft checks not really checks at all, and just serve to make them further setup fodder. It's also worth noting that many of the non SF sets have the ability to hax their opponent, meaning that checks like Unaware Chansey and Intimidate Corviknight aren't reliably doing the job they're tasked with. They're also capable of punishing many of the other forms of breakers that can otherwise stop Genesect from setting up, meaning that if you predict incorrectly and assume the wrong Shift Gear set (i.e to preserve Zapdos, you predict No Guard, but it's actually Sheer Force), you can often just lose the game on the spot. This actually makes the amount of counterplay available to Genesect incredibly tight - without a non-DLand Heatran, you're often leaving yourself open to inaccuracies in your predictions, which are extremely strongly punished by having a mon that either sets up in front of you, takes the hits you're throwing out to chip it, and continues to sweep anyway because your speed control doesn't win, or you're throwing in a vital part of your defensive core that gets 2HKOd by Thunderbolt and now you suddenly don't have an answer to their Garchomp or whatever - and in a metagame like AAA, where there's already a lot of very tight windows for defensive counterplay outside of Regenerator (which doesn't tend to be very good at beating SG Genesect), this can often lead to a gamelosing situation, even if it doesn't seem like Genesect is the one that caused it.

EDIT: I missed out Primordial Sea and Flash Fire in this discussion - both of which give Heatran a hard time, but their general countering mechanism is somewhat similar to most of the Special Genesect sets. It's worth noting that these have some frailer soft answers, such as Galarian Zapdos and bulky Tapu Koko, but they are also capable of stopping the Fire-type counterplay from Cinderace, Talonflame and Heatran for Primordial Sea, and in addition for Flash Fire, Moltres and Jirachi. These two are pretty important in the whole "versatility" argument - something that I somewhat disagree with in practice, but it's something that just ADDS to the list of reasons to ban.

I also don't think it's fine to justify Genesect merely off of the fact that AAA is a fishy metagame - matchup variance is an inherently undesirable aspect to a metagame, and missing out on the opportunity to reduce that by a pretty significant margin is something that I don't think really bodes well tiering wise. If the players are unhappy about the metagame, and they call out for matchup fishy mons to be suspected, they should be suspected. This suspect has been a long time coming for many of us, and that is often because Genesect amplifies many of the things that AAA is considered bad for - reducing the matchup fishiness and insane power level that SS AAA is at will at least help the metagame be more desirable to play as an oldgen.

As an aside, pivot Genesects to me are entirely healthy, even assuming Magic Guard is in this list. All of them are limited by their Speed tier not breaking through the ceiling, and the counters listed by Isaiah are often more than enough to beat them. You even have some mons like Regen Garchomp and Tapu Fini who wouldn't usually beat Genesect, but are capable of doing so pretty efficiently for pivot variants, and some of the soft checks become hard answers (Regenvest Landorus-Therian, Swampert, Talonflame in some cases)

My final argument edges on one thing - the fact that none of us have managed to procure any replays showing that Genesect is an immense threat. It's happened a lot in test games, but none of us have actually saved when that's happened, making this a relatively awkward suspect to vote ban for. Never-the-less, with all of the experience I have with Genesect, I find the mon to be too difficult to reliably beat, even just considering a few sets. If this mon did not have Shift Gear, I would not have complained as hard as I did during OMPL X when all of this was happening. In spite of this, however, I will be voting Ban, as this mon is a major amplifier of this metagame's sketchy matchup-reliant building.

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

Tried doing recs without a real fire resist, that didn’t turn out so well. Once I fixed that it was relatively smooth sailing though. Already gave some of my thoughts before but I’ll expand on them a bit. I’ll be ignoring scarf genesect, which is a great mon and by far genesect’s best set but doesn’t have any unhealthy dynamics.

Genesect is a tough mon to make work. Whatever your opinion on how ultimately broken or not it is, that fact is pretty much undeniable. It doesn’t have no utility, but it’s not far from it, and it’s other traits aren’t too promising. It has only a handful or resistances, a mediocre speed tier, about average bulk for an offensive Pokémon, and it’s not *that* strong off the bat. 120 attack and special attack is far from nothing, but it’s a solid step down from AAA’s other breakers, and on its attacks it can typically choose at most 2 of high BP, ability boosted, and STAB, putting it yet further behind the likes of chandelure. So what makes it worth consideration? In my opinion, the only thing you can point to is shift gear.

At +2 speed, Genesect can outpace speed control, and it resists most priority revenge killers like Zarude or Togekiss. Against an offensive team, this means it will be the fastest Mon on the field and it’s attacks are strong enough to tear into frail attackers. The main problem with this is, however, that Genesecy has to do that setup. It’s also a frail offensive mon that dies to powerful hits. It also doesn’t help matters that shift gear doesn’t boost the damage output in the main attacks genesect wants to lay into it’s opponents with; leech life on no guard and iron head or blaze kick on sheer force are not nothing, but even at +1 they’re not significantly more dangerous than genesects +0 special attacks. Furthermore, while there aren’t that many offensive Pokémon that can live two hits from genesect, there are plenty that can live one and KO it.

What, then, about genesect’s versatility? The problem with all the niche sets is that they suck. Flash Fire, Primordial Sea, energy ball etc might seem cool, but genesect is hard to make work as it is, and with how much worse these sets are the payout is basically never worth it. In 99% of cases, you are better off just running a different breaker or sweeper rather than trying to make niche genesect set #27 not completely terrible. Sure, once in a blue moon you will load the specific counterteam genesect into exactly the right comp, with how narrow the use cases for these things are you would be better off just being honest about your matchup fishing and commiting. There is a reason that there are basically no replays in the thread, and half the ones that are there don’t even have genesect, and that is that it has never actually lived up to its hype in a tour.

 

[lancert]

salut

 

[gostop]

I dont know why I'm always matching into 1400+ players

 

[anaconja]

i am extremely skilled at aaa
shoutout to the real ones, perdemos 3 and Guzma In Real Life

 

[MZ]

reqs

I got crit 1 game away from reqs 3 times and then the 4th time I ran into laxpras, so my first time back on any ladder in over a year is also maybe my worst reqs record ever. But I still pushed through 50 fucking games because Genesect is laughably banworthy and it blows my mind the arguments that people are making about it. If I get really started on Genesect my rant would be way too big and annoying for people to read so I'm gonna bullet point it to force myself to make it readable.

• Debating set variety is generally wrong. It's a big factor but not what pushes Genesect over the edge
• Same goes for trying to list every Pokemon on the VR and going "well this can stop setup sometimes and this OHKOs" etc.
• https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1672966477 here's a ladder game I played vs laxpras
• The issue is not matchup fish Genesect getting to kill my Fini out of nowhere. Happens all the time with other AAA mons, beauts is 100% there
• The issue is that ok... now I lose. Maybe going Corv was the right play, I don't know Laxpras's full lure set. But the option I don't have vs Gene that I do vs Pixi Koko or Gapdos or whatever is to try any kind of offensive counterplay at all
• I kneecapped myself on reqs by not running Tran or Pex just to see how hard it could be. If you honestly think every team should have to run both, good luck to you. I'll fully admit that wouldn't have been so much of a problem had I had a Pex around. But ftr I never faced a full special set and wouldn't complain if that beat me because obviously this team is piss-poor vs it. It's shift gear that holds all my ire
• But I don't think that's what's important here. Something can have a reasonably hard counter and be broken
• The issue is that it removes any reasonable possibility of playing around it
• I played a ladder game where CB Adapt G-Zapdos OHKOd my Garchomp turn 1 and I still won the game because I had other options to try and play around the opposing team offensively. When have you ever gone "ah fuck the wrong Genesect set" and still had a shot? Win or lose is 100x worse because shift gear necessitates defensive counterplay over offensive
• If Genesect gets a Shift Gear which, yes, it can do pretty reasonably vs, say, every non-HO team brought to WCOOMs so far, you have the right thing or you don't but there's also not much chance you get to try your luck at winning anyway. It's ah, gottem, ggs
• It's not hard to make this mon work, it's never useless to have around even if it won't do a full sweep, and when you get the really right matchup things are just done, no second chances
• The opportunity cost for fishing, sorry, is practically nil. If you have the wrong set and run into Pex then maybe Sect is useless but odds are the fish set not running into a Pert or Fini is still bringing utility to the game, maybe picking up a KO before being revenged by a Skewda or something
• All of these traits clearly set Genesect apart from ID Koko or MGLO Volc or whatever other nonsense people wanna claim is comparable. How many times have you seen Mamoswine rip through speed control?
• Yes, banning Genesect fundamentally changes AAA. It removes the best possible fisher that brings no positives to the meta. There aren't good reasons being bandied around for keeping it, only "well is it really as broken as people say"? And like, if something is all negatives for the meta get rid of it idc if we *could* learn to play around it, we've done that for months now and it blows. Terrak isn't like this. Koko isn't like this. Genesect leaving only makes us have more fun

 

[Spoontech]

That being said, I am not sure whether Genesect really is an issue. Maybe I don't play the tier enough (I do play it somewhat often, but maybe not as dedicated as some of you) or the team(s) I use are just incredibly good against the monster that Genesect is, or the people I have played against are just not very skilled with it. For further context, I did not specifically build a team to counter Genesect and just used the most recent team that was in my cache.

I can absolutely see the problems that can arise with Genesect. It's variety of movesets are impossible to know unless it's possibly too late. Iron Head is just crazy good stab and SG is one of the best boosting moves there is. Besides those 2 moves it has access to Leech Life, Blaze Kick, Gunk Shot, U-turn and crazy good special coverage too. Add in some dirty AF abilities and you truly have a crazy monster capable of basically plowing through teams that do not have the correct mon against it.

I'm on the edge of it and currently leaning towards no-ban, but I'll keep playing the tier this week to see if my opinion will change. LMK if you need the team I used if you're currently leaning pro-ban to see if it can sway your mind. My biggest argument in a pro-ban vote usually is: "Does this mon pretty much force you to run very specific checks against it?", and I don't see that just yet. My scarf trick+wisp Mew is a very good lure for it while also being a rediciulous good fit for the team, and if that doesn't work I often have a fire mon + intimidate/helmet Corvi to do the rest.

Heck, I truly think Polteageist currently is a bigger threat than Genesect if you don't have a Hazer or VERY bulky dark mon, but again, maybe I'm just a relative noob for the tier.

 

[PandaDoux]

when the best check to a pokemon is a pokemon that has to hit magma storm or has to not be paralysed by Zap Cannon i just dont know what to say anymore (and is 2HKOed by Zap cannon no guard / Tbolt sheer force or OHKOed by blaze kick Sheer force after shift gear)
Genesect is the most unhealthy mon in a tier very unstable, yes, genesect is fine in game if you think that "fine" is sacking a whole mon, sometimes 2, at least, vs it
"Just dont let genesect a free shift gear" a genesect doesnt need to setup shift gear to do his job sometimes, you can just click an offensive move vs the defensive core which wont do anything to you depending of the mons, and the offensive mons, well, koko does like 60/70% and is 2HKoed, barra/talon need to not come on tbolt/ offensive zapdos is 2HKOed by tbolt/OHKOed by IBeam and cant kill it barring hax ect, so yes, genesect wont 6-0, but it will trade vs top tier threats like koko, so i think the trade is good for gene anyway + just dont put any mons a bit passive like blissey, or a mon fearing to be OHKOed like ferro the whole game and have fun vs the others breakers

idk what beauts is saying about building good teams thing when their own teams in samples are what they are calling "bad teams", just do some calcs and you'll see that genesect is actually winning vs every mon of your team with a basic set like SFLO SGear Leech Life / Tbolt / Fthrower or IBeam (please dont say, "you cant have these 5 moves" have fun to guess what moves it have without losing any mon)

genesect is broken asf but its really not because of its versatility with sets like serene grace/espeed-ate/guts or whatever, these sets are just big fish

i think people who wants no ban on gene just didnt play gene that much (regenscarf doesnt count) because i really dont understand how you can find a mon like this healthy to the meta but anyway SS AAA is screwed so lets hope SV will be a good generation

 

[pannu]

thank you astralydia for telling me what teams are broken
thank you The Number Man Osake (my aaa senseis)
thank you everyone who votes ban so i can enjoy playing this tier
-cotta

 

[drampa's grandpa]

s/o UT for posting the team I used for 24 battles
s/o to the randpoke function for my first battle's team, it actually wasn't godawful compared to what I usually get (and yes it won)

I remain unconvinced by either side of the argument. I'll try to explain my thinking on both sides of the aisle.

No-Ban:

• I think Genesect's ability to break everything is overstated, as many have said in this thread. It can break anything, but not everything. It reminds me a ton of a more offensively oriented Mew, in that it's flexible, has a set that can blow through just about every team, and is incredibly scary unscouted, but when you use it in practice you rarely get the matchup that you cut through like butter.
• There are checks to Genesect on every decent team. Whether this is because Genesect has warped the metagame around itself or because they're just such naturally good mons, I can't really comment on, but they're certainly not bad or harmful to have on your team. I'm talking about Pokemon like Swampert, Heatran, and... yeah these things have been listed like 10 times in this thread go read someone else's post.
• Any chip damage is extremely noticeable on Genesect, as the sets with any form of semi-reliable recovery are not the ones being discussed as broken. Leech Life is not semi-reliable under any circumstances. I find it usually gets one chance to set up in the entire match, and that chance has to be carefully chosen so that it can take advantage of what makes it so good: its mixed power, movepool, and lack of weaknesses.

Pro-ban:

• In using Genesect for this suspect I was mostly using No Guard Genesect. I noticed something. That something was a lot of battles being decided by multiple turns of paralysis which allowed Genesect to set up or use Leech Life to heal up. Paralysis is a shitty mechanic, and I hate it. Gonna be blunt, I think No Guard Zap Cannon is the culprit of this particular issue, and one of those two things would solve a HUGE problem I have with Genesect. But as of now, they exist in the metagame, and Genesect can abuse them to be uncompetitive.
• Shift Gear removes a ton of the offensive counterplay Genesect has. There is no priority that can really deal with Genesect if it doesn't take a TON of damage as it sets up, and no scarfers that outpace neutral nature +2 252 Spe Genesect unless you're running +Spe Barraskewda or faster... which you're not. This means you need to essentially stop it as it sets up, which heavily restricts what offensive teams can run and what can be good and make it into those top ranks that were so generously laid out and analyzed. It cannot be properly revenge killed, and, as many people have complained about, has a fuckton of power. The Shift Gear sets are pretty undeniably the most broken sets, and if I vote ban, will be pretty much the only reason why.
• What I'm about to say might sound a little weird given what I said above about Genesect only getting one opportunity per match to set up, but I think it still applies. Genesect's set variety is undeniable, and an unscouted Genesect can dent your team greatly, even if it turns out you have the hard counter you need. For example, if you go to a Volt Absorb Corviknight to check Genesect but it turns out Lightning McQueen is rocking Blaze Kick, your Corviknight may have to switch out to some bulky Water like Pex (ew passive core), or even just die. And the notable thing about this is that it does not sacrifice anything besides being unscouted if it is played well. Genesect can break that Corviknight, switch out of Pex, and honestly I sort of lost track of my point here. To put it simply for myself and others, Genesect can act as a breaker early-mid game when it is unscouted, abusing the fact that the opponent will likely use checks rather than hard counters to see what Genesect is running, without compromising its lategame sweeping potential. This means that other mons on your team also get to blow stuff up more easily.
• MZ's post, while being much more strongly worded than I feel, captured a lot of what I feel is wrong with Genesect. I even copied some of his formatting

As of now I'm likely to vote Ban, but that may change. Convince me :)

 

[LoSconosciuto]

 

[psweens]

:)

 

[martinvtran]

4/4 with the flagship, couldn't have done it without you UT

 

[DIYUSI]

S/O UT for the team

 

[Dragonillis]

If you really think genesect is "ok" for AAA, maybe we should freed magearna ?
They both have a lot of same problem for SS AAA.

Of course, I will vote ban

 

[PociekMociek]

confirming as GSAAA uby Enthusiast (rip like 5 aubrey themed accounts )
shoutouts to bestie fluore for keeping my sanity in check while laddering and a certain cord for the team, bug broke - plenty of times i just got a brainless win because i clicked sg and my opponent had no idea what coverage i was and just exploded something nessesary to check some other threat