Deoxys-Speed has long garnered large community support, as SV OU unbanned it in December of last year and it remains legal to this day, even dropping to Under Used occasionaly. Alongside this, Kingambit, Gholdengo, and Terapagos were unbanned immediately following the ban on Terastalization. These Pokemon are important as they are extremely powerful assets in answering Deoxys-Speed's offensive sets, both defensively and offensively.
Despite these additions, Deoxys-S' plethora of coverage moves still position offensive sets as an elite presence in the tier. It is able to use Nasty Plot + Z Move sets to devastating effect, with a powerful STAB Psycho Boost helping to patch up its unimpressive base Special Attack, complemented by coverage moves such as Focus Blast and Shadow Ball targeting defensive answers such as Kingambit, Ting-Lu, Melmetal, and Gholdengo. Additionally, an all-out attacker set is able to make excelent use of Deoxys-S' physical coverage options, such as Knock Off, Fire Punch and Superpower targeting Gholdengo, Mega Scizor, Ting-Lu and Kingambit, while also being a more immediate threat thanks to Life Orb boosting all of its moves immediately and not requiring a free turn to set up with Nasty Plot, while also fully leveraging its colossal speed stat to outspeed and threaten most offensive Pokemon. Suicide lead variants of Deoxys-S forfeit its offensive presence completely in favor of a support role, having more freedom to invest into its defenses to live certain hits and allow it to set up Stealth Rock, Spikes, Light Screen, Reflect, or Taunt an opposing suicide lead to benefit its teammates. The addition of Gholdengo to the tier is a significant boon for this set, since Good as Gold is able to completely negate opponents' attempts to remove Deoxys-S' hazards via Defog, and its Ghost typing allows it to naturally deny any Rapid Spin attempts.
Despite all of this, Deoxys-S needs a Speed boosting nature and near maximum Speed investment to outspeed many of these common Speed control options such as Kartana, Urshifu-R, and Iron Moth, heavily punishing the use of a Attack or Special Attack boosting nature to boost its mediocre offensive stats. Additionally, while it is not paper thin, its defensive stats leave much to be desired, leaving it vulnerable to most decently strong supereffective hits, such as Knock Off from the likes of Ferrothorn and Great Tusk, or Earthquake from the likes of Ting-Lu and Landorus-T, or strong neutral hits such as Raging Bolt's Thunderclap, Mega Scizor's Bullet Punch, and Terapagos' Tera Starstorm. This is all before taking into account the strong supereffective attacks that are commonplace in the tier, such as Sucker Punch from Kingambit and Hisuian Samurott and Shadow Ball from Gholdengo and Dragapult. It is also worth noting that many of these attacks are priority moves, bypassing Deoxys-S' unmatched speed tier and allowing for easy revenge killing by exploiting its weak defenses. This presents a problem for Nasty Plot sets as it is dificult for them to find a good set up opportunity, and Life Orb's recoil damage only serves to emphasize Deoxys-S' vulnerability to priority moves. Lead Deoxys-S is limited directly by the elite Rapid Spin users, Terapagos and Great Tusk, both being able to threaten Gholdengo and thus facilitating their attempt at removing hazards. It is also limited indirectly by many teams electing to not run any form of hazard control, instead opting for the use of Heavy-Duty Boots on most of their Pokemon, alongside Pokemon such as Gliscor and Clefable that are largely unbothered by hazards being stacked. Alternatively, more offensive can also opt out of hazard removal, and aim to either win the game before hazards become overbearing or simply match opposing hazards with their own, limiting both teams equally.
Due to all of this, we believe there is a good chance that Deoxys-Speed will be a tolerable and healthy presence in the National Dex OU tier.
The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:
- Create a new account OR use an existing one with no SV National Dex OU games played (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played National Dex OU before the test, full stop.) You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in National Dex OU before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements.
- 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.
- If you want to double check your account eligibility after following these instructions; play at least 1 game on the account, then run the /rank command on that account. You should see a field on the far right that reads "Suspect Test Eligible?"
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- If this field says "No" then you have either not set up the account correctly or need to use a different/new account. You do not need to complete your entire reqs for this field to say "Yes"
- After you believe that you have achieved reqs, double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact Kyo, sealoo, or a member of staff.
- If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me or post here!
- Laddering with an account that impersonates, mocks, or insults another Smogon user or breaks Pokemon Showdown! rules may be disqualified from voting and infracted.
- We will be using the regular National Dex ladder for this suspect test, and Deoxys-Speed will remain legal throughout the entire suspect test.
- Any form of voting manipulation will result in swift and severe punishment. You are more than welcome to state your argument to as many people as you so please, but do not use any kind of underhanded tactics to get a result you desire. Bribery, blackmail, or any other type of tactic used to sway votes will be handled and sanctioned.
- Do not attempt to cheat the ladder. We will know if you did not actually achieve voting requisites, so don't do it. Harsh sanctions will be applied.
- The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2950. The suspect test will go on for roughly two weeks, lasting until December 22nd at 11:00pm GMT -5, and then the voting thread will become available on Smogon, where you will be tagged with a link.
- No unhelpful one liners nor uninformed posts;
- No discussion on other potential suspects;
- You are required to make respectful posts;
- Failure to follow these simple guidelines will result in your post being deleted and infracted without any prior warning.
- Please also take a moment to read over some suggestions from the National Dex Council and the National Dex Moderation team for posting in this thread; adhering these will help out our time moderating the thread and present your arguments better and more educated.
- You do not need a boatload of experience to have an informed opinion, but please try to minimize the hypotheticals and use your experiences watching and playing. Playing some on the ladder before posting is plenty if you're concerned about this.
- Do not flame, belittle, or be disrespectful to users in this thread. While not everyone will read this post in its entirety nor will everyone have informed opinion, please be sure not to be disrespectful. If there's an issue, bring it up to a moderator.
- Do not use the argument of broken checking broken. Should your argument rest on your opinion that banning the Pokémon or mechanic being tested in this suspect test will make a Pokémon or mechanic broken, overpowered, and/or uncompetitive; don't. If something needs to be banned because of the result of this suspect, then so be it. "I told you so" arguments on their own also contribute little to the discussion without supporting evidence and are rather unwelcomed.
- This is not the place to complain about the suspect process. Please PM Kyo or sealoo if you have any questions regarding this, and any broader questions about this test.
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