Announcement SV RU Suspect Process Round 13 - Perfect Illusion [Zoroark-Hisui Banned]

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feen

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:zoroark-hisui: :zoroark-hisui: :zoroark-hisui:​


Welcome to the first suspect test in 2025! After Mamoswine entered the tier at the start of the year, we have not seen any changes in SV RU in 2025 yet. The tiering council was waiting for the April shifts to see if anything changed, but yea well that was an illusion. Recent trends in ongoing tournaments, mainly RUPL, made us decide to take immediate action and suspect Zoroark-Hisui! While Zoroark-Hisui started off slow in usage when it was introduced into the tier, it has quickly established itself as one of the most dangerous Pokémon in the tier. Especially recently in RUBD, RUPL and winter seasonal Zoroark-Hisui sees a ton of usage. Thanks to its unique Normal/Ghost typing, strong 125 Special Attack, amazing speed tier and access to STAB Hyper Voice and Shadow Ball, it is already a potent offensive threat. However, what truly sets Zoroark-Hisui apart is its ability, Illusion, which allows it to disguise itself as another Pokémon on its team. This mechanic creates constant mind games, forcing opponents into uncomfortable positions where they might misplay or lose key defensive pieces, making Zoroark-Hisui one of the most unpredictable and oppressive forces in the tier.The most common set by far is Choice Specs, which takes advantage of Zoroark-Hisui's high special attack stat to hit extremely hard. With its excellent neutral stab coverage (only missing out on neutral STAB versus bisharp and itself) and ability to bluff other Pokémon, Zoroark-Hisui can easily trick opponents into making the wrong play. Focus blast gives coverage for otherwise good switch ins such as Umbreon, Goodra-Hisui, spdef Empoleon, AV Cyclizar, Wo-Chien, and Chansey. Lastly Trick gives it a tool to cripple defensive counterplay.

However, Choice Specs is not the only viable set. Nasty Plot Zoroark-Hisui is another good option, enabling it to break past its usual checks with boosted attacks in combination with Tera. The ability to disguise itself makes it extremely difficult to pin down and predict, allowing it to set up Nasty Plot at unexpected moments. Furthermore, Scarf and Band sets are also possible. Choice Scarf Zoroark takes advantage of its high 110 Speed to be the fastest common scarfer in SV RU, while still hitting fairly hard. Even Focus Punch Zoroark can be used to OHKO one of the most common switch ins in Cyclizar. Choice Band takes advantages of Zoroark being specially oriented most of the time to lure in special walls, while still hitting hard with 110 Attack and Poltergeist as stab, and U-turn for momentum. This unpredictability, both in sets as in disguise, makes it incredibly difficult to counter reliably.This deceptive playstyle is further amplified by the presence of strong physical and special attackers. For example, Zapdos-Galar pairs incredibly well with Zoroark-Hisui. By disguising itself as Zapdos-Galar, Zoroark can bait in traditional Zapdos checks such as Slowbro, Hippowdon, and Weezing-Galar, only to KO them with a Specs-boosted Shadow Ball or Hyper Voice, and freeing up the way for its partner. This is not only limited to Zapdos-Galar, other great partners include Mienshao, Basculegion-F, Entei, Mamoswine, Slither Wing, and Volcanion.

On the other hand, Zoroark-Hisui is extremely frail with 55/60/60 for defensive stats. Faster pokemon can easily revenge kill it, while non ghost or normal priority moves can pick it off as well. As mentioned before there are a decent amount of speciall walls that can come in on most moves as well: Umbreon, Goodra-Hisui, spdef Empoleon, AV Cyclizar, Wo-Chien, and Chansey. Zoroark-Hisui requires some skill to use as well. Disguising it as the right pokemon and bringing it in at the right time isn't always easy, especially when hazards are up which might give away its true identity.Ultimately, Zoroark often leaves the players guessing who is who, thinking about one threat, only to be caught off guard later. This guessing game is in favor of the Zoroark user, as losing the wrong defensive piece can open up the opponent to another offensive threat. This, together with its ability to overcome its checks in deceptive ways, leads the tiering council to deem Zoroark-Hisui worthy of a suspect test.


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

The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:

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

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2800 with a B-value of 7. The deadline for getting requirements will be Monday, April 14, 23:59 GMT -4. Good luck to all!


Disclaimer: The suspect is real. One-liners and irrelevant posts will be deleted and potentially infracted.
 
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I'll start this post by saying that this is by far the most distance I've ever felt between the community and the council. There was not a single survey done that led to this outcome, and almost every post on Smogon and Discord was aiming towards another mon getting banned.

Knowing all of this, the council still decided to go ahead and just waste everybody's time by doing a 2-week suspect that will end in one of the most obvious outcomes in history: a no ban. The main key points used to vouch for a ban focus on so many hypotheticals of “this set can be good,” when literally nobody really ventures out of Scarf Zap. Non-choiced Zap sets are good, but that was never the reason this mon got the usage it gets. This is just a massive reach to completely alter the narrative.

Nobody even said “yeah this makes sense” when Feen said the most likely suspect would be Zapdos, like come on ROFL. Just two and a half weeks of playing the tier in RUPL and every single new tour player can tell you the mon they hate the most is Zoroark-Hisui, which is also the reason why Zapdos feels so annoying to some. It’s hard to go into your Zapdos counter when it gets bopped by a Zoroark.

Everybody who participates in this suspect just for the sake of it, please try to read some of the posts that will come after mine. I can assure you that you might feel like Zapdos is great cause you're seeing it everywhere, but there's more nuance to the issue than that.

With that being said, I hope we can go back to the full transparency processes we had a few months ago, to avoid situations like this one, where it feels like the council and the community are playing two separate metagames with no communication at all.
 
Operating under the (admittedly frail) pretense that this is a legitimate suspect and isn't a boring April Fool's thing...

I agree with Feliburn and the majority of users in RU Discord on this matter. Galarian Zapdos is a very boring threat that fulfills one role, the Choice Scarf pivot/breaker, on basically every team it's used on. Occasionally you will get hit with the Protective Pads sets that can disrupt your gameplan, but that isn't close to warranting action on either. Choice Band doesn't really see much play because it doesn't do a lot besides catch an opponent by surprise when their Slowbro isn't able to switch into it well, but you're sacrificing so much by not running Choice Scarf given its mediocre Speed tier otherwise - it isn't a really common set, with 16% usage on ladder in March and zero brings in RUPL to my knowledge.

As somebody who has built a lot (too many probably) teams for RUPL thus far, I feel comfortable saying that the general metagame is fine as-is; maybe Hisuian Zoroark and Volcanion are worth looking at because of their ability to blow shit up like few others can, but to me they're borderline. Galarian Zapdos isn't on my radar given the plethora of defensive counterplay we have available, like Slowbro, Galarian Weezing, and Hippowdon (which are all solid mons you should be using anyway!). It is a standard, fast and strong breaker that dies in the process, taking Stealth Rock chip over and over while pivoting around on top of recoil from its most spammable STAB in Brave Bird. This thing has mediocre results across the board with sub 50% winrates in RUPL and RUBD - sure, the mirrors make this worse, but it loses A LOT outside of mirrors, too, obviously.

With regards to the council being separated from the community; you know my thoughts on this. Council has just been a rotating cast of the person who had the best record in the most recent tour lately, which, sure, good players should be valued... but good players who don't do anything most of the time besides show up for RUPL/SCL aren't fixing things when they don't vote on these suspects or elaborate on why they voted ban/dnb in their chat. We have a history of inactivity in council and the recent departures, and subsequent replacements, haven't done anything to remedy this. My commitment to this tier as a contributor has waivered a lot over the past year because my desire to help make positive changes is met with resistance or silence. Such is mons.
 
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Feliburn said:
I'll start this post by saying that this is by far the most distance I've ever felt between the community and the council. There was not a single survey done that led to this outcome, and almost every post on Smogon and Discord was aiming towards another mon getting banned.

Knowing all of this, the council still decided to go ahead and just waste everybody's time by doing a 2-week suspect that will end in one of the most obvious outcomes in history: a no ban. The main key points used to vouch for a ban focus on so many hypotheticals of “this set can be good,” when literally nobody really ventures out of Scarf Zap. Non-choiced Zap sets are good, but that was never the reason this mon got the usage it gets. This is just a massive reach to completely alter the narrative.

Nobody even said “yeah this makes sense” when Feen said the most likely suspect would be Zapdos, like come on ROFL. Just two and a half weeks of playing the tier in RUPL and every single new tour player can tell you the mon they hate the most is Zoroark-Hisui, which is also the reason why Zapdos feels so annoying to some. It’s hard to go into your Zapdos counter when it gets bopped by a Zoroark.

Everybody who participates in this suspect just for the sake of it, please try to read some of the posts that will come after mine. I can assure you that you might feel like Zapdos is great cause you're seeing it everywhere, but there's more nuance to the issue than that.

With that being said, I hope we can go back to the full transparency processes we had a few months ago, to avoid situations like this one, where it feels like the council and the community are playing two separate metagames with no communication at all.
Click to expand...


Sorry to hear you feel this way. I want to begin by stressing that we will necessarily disagree sometimes about what is to be done. Ultimately, tiering decisions are bound to be somewhat subjective, for the simple reason that people have different preferences. In other words, what you see as a good tier and what I see as a good tier need not cohere with each other. Some of us may want the tier to be dominated by offense and fast-paced games, others may prefer tiers where bo and balance are dominant, a third group may prefer slow-paced, chess-like gameplay, and yet another group may define a good tier as a tier in which all kinds of styles can thrive. This, in itself, is a direct source of disagreement about what is to be done. For even if we see the tier in the same way, we may disagree about the right thing to do if our normative understanding of what the tier ought to be like is in contradiction. Furthermore, our underlying preferences are also likely to affect our building patterns, which in turn shapes how we understand the tier. For instance, a person who prefers fast-paced gameplay will be likely to mostly use offense, while a person who prefers slower gameplay will likely tend towards using fatter teams. Since fast-paced teams struggle with different mons and cores than slow-paced teams, these two players may end up viewing the tier in radically different ways. As a result of this, we can never please everyone, and someone is always bound to be disappointed.

Secondly, I want to be transparent about the nature of the council and how we see our own role. The way we see it, it is unproblematic if the council and the player base are not always in alignment. To begin with, there would be no need for a council if we believed that the player base as a whole was capable of democratically deciding on all matters. The reason why we have a council is because we believe that having a group of especially qualified people guide tiering decisions will, on aggregate, tend to promote better tiering decisions. That being said, we do not just take into account our own, personal preferences when making tiering decisions. We also try to be sensitive to the preferences of the masses, hence why we do not simple rule by decree - or shall I say rule by QB - but rather gather data about how people feel through surveys and seek to involve all qualified people in tiering decisions through holding suspect tests. Of course, we can have reasonable agreements about the extent to which the council should do as it pleases versus the extent to which it should be beholden to the preferences of the masses. Personally, I think that it would be an issue if the council systematically has different preferences from the majority of the player base, since this will likely produce frustration, anger, and dissent on the part of the player base, which is both bad in itself and which also undermines the legitimacy of the council. Consequently, when you say that the council is out of sync with the player base, I take this very seriously. Please know that I am always eager to hear people's perspectives, to ensure that people are being heard and seen, even if everyone cannot always get their way.

Finally, as you are well aware of, we did do a survey a couple of months ago. The survey indicated that both the general player base and the qualified player base were fairly satisfied with the state of the tier, and that no single mon was viewed as overwhelmingly unhealthy, hence we did not feel the need to act. As you may recall, Gapdos did not receive a particularly high score on this survey. On a scale from 1-7, it received an average score of 3.00 from the general player base and 2.53 from the qualified player base. Moreover, other mons like Armarouge (4.21 general, 3.79 qualified) and Bisharp (4.05 general, 4.16 qualified) both received significantly higher scores, while Pom-Pom (3.62 general, 3.42 qualified) received a marginally higher score. As such, I can understand why some may be slightly confused at the choice of Gapdos, in particular. The reason for this is the recent rise of Gapdos + Zoro. This core was already a thing back when we conducted the survey but its usage has risen tremendously as of late. It is extremely effective and very difficult for the opponent to handle, irrespective of how good they are, given that in the early game, before you know whether it is Zoro or Gapdos that you are fighting, you have to account for both. This is incredibly difficult to do reliably unless you lead off with a sash or protect mon to scout. By contrast, no other mon pairs as well together with Zoro as Gapdos. Zoro + Mamo or Zoro + Shao just isn't as difficult to handle. So, by removing Gapdos, we can neuter the frankly unhealthy Zoro + Gapdos core and make the tier better.

I hope this clears things up. I strive to be transparent, so let me know if anything is unclear. Here is the link to the aforementioned survey btw:
TheFranklin

Announcement Post in thread 'RU Community Surveys & Results'

A week has passed and we got almost 80 repsonses on the survey. time to see the results!
Keep in mind everything is on a scale from 1-7.

Overall Enjoyment
General: 5.09
Qualified: 5.58

Overall Competitiveness
General: 5.03
Qualified: 5.26

Relatively similar to last survey results.

:bisharp:
General: 4.05
Qualified: 4.16

:armarouge:
General: 4.21
Qualified: 3.79

:mamoswine:
General: 4.66
Qualified: 3.95

:oricorio-pom-pom:
General: 3.62
Qualified: 3.42

:volcanion:
General: 3.34
Qualified2.37

:zapdos-galar:
General: 3.00
Qualified: 2.53


Out of the pokemon listed there...
  • Like
  • Sad
  • Love
 
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I actually cannot believe this is real? Even from playing the tier from a distance it's so obvious that zoro is the problem. Gapdos is one dimensional, has multiple checks and counters, and lacks any sort of support from the wider community. Zoroark enables multiple problematic interactions, far beyond Gapdos, on mons that scored significantly higher on the survey.

It's actually pretty ironic that this happens right in the middle of other transparency problems on Smogon. If councils opinion differs this much from the community then it indicates that the council is pretty much inept. Maybe FlamPoke was onto something, stop promoting the person with the best record in the most recent tour (who's 0-3 now btw LOL), and actually get some active council members who are in touch with the playerbase.

Edit:

I obviously knew this was a joke
 
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Very funny joke, RU council. Very, very funny...

...NOT....lmao
​
But I will always appreciate an April fools' joke. The joke here, as always, is the rest of the community..

Everyone thought I got caught...
They saw my post thought “Oh okay, if Feliburn thinks it’s real I’m good to post too.”
They felt like they weren’t alone in this likely ruse.

And that’s exactly what I wanted.

1351234830246875137.webp

My post? That wasn’t a moment of weakness. It was a calculated strike disguised as trust, camouflaged by my legacy.

I didn’t fall for anything.

I didn’t join the masses in confusion

I simply threw wood into the fire, then I lit a beacon so everyone could run full speed into it.

Then, the council pulled the rug and I smirked
giphy.gif


I didn’t say anything after this post confirming I believed it because you did it for me, and the best part? The final flourish? The twist of the dagger?????

Go back. Read the post again.

1743544658922.png

I... K.... N.... E.... W..... Hold on....

I K N E W

I KNEW​

You thought I fell for it? Nah. This was a social experiment wrapped in a joke. A prank about a prank about a prank.

1743544798175.png

Maybe next year I slip. Maybe someone else gets the last laugh. Who knows ROFL frick Zoroark & Oricorio.
 
Feliburn said:
Very funny joke, RU council. Very, very funny...

...NOT....lmao
​
But I will always appreciate an April fools' joke. The joke here, as always, is the rest of the community..

Everyone thought I got caught...
They saw my post thought “Oh okay, if Feliburn thinks it’s real I’m good to post too.”
They felt like they weren’t alone in this likely ruse.

And that’s exactly what I wanted.

1351234830246875137.webp

My post? That wasn’t a moment of weakness. It was a calculated strike disguised as trust, camouflaged by my legacy.

I didn’t fall for anything.

I didn’t join the masses in confusion

I simply threw wood into the fire, then I lit a beacon so everyone could run full speed into it.

Then, the council pulled the rug and I smirked
giphy.gif


I didn’t say anything after this post confirming I believed it because you did it for me, and the best part? The final flourish? The twist of the dagger?????

Go back. Read the post again.

View attachment 728139
I... K.... N.... E.... W..... Hold on....

I K N E W

I KNEW​

You thought I fell for it? Nah. This was a social experiment wrapped in a joke. A prank about a prank about a prank.


Maybe next year I slip. Maybe someone else gets the last laugh. Who knows ROFL frick Zoroark & Oricorio.
Click to expand...
I literally told you about the joke 3 days ago....
 
Lovely to see all this engagement by the way! I've been yearning to act on Zoro-H for quite some time now. I find Illusion to be a fundamentally uncompetitive ability and will be happy to see it gone. While I acknowledge that there is some skill involved both in using Zoro-H and in playing versus it, I believe that it, on aggregate, across a large sample of games, tends to increase the amount of guessing games and thus decrease the amount of skill involved.

PS: I don't think Gapdos is an issue. To the extent that it is problematic, it is solely because of Zoro. We have more than adequate counterplay for this mon, so it is a healthy addition to the tier imo.

PSPS: I meant what I said about the preferences of the council versus the preferences of the player base. Ideally, I'd like to see Smogon become even more democratic - it would, for instance, be cool if council members were elected rather than promoted - but in the absence of this I think it is important that the council involves the masses by using suspects, rather than council votes, as much as possible, and that we should be actively listening to what normal people have to say, rather than merely talking with each other. I know that I don't post as much on forums anymore as I used to, but I do lurk and read what you write. I will also try to post a bit more often not just on discord but also on forums, going forward.

Happy voting:)
 
i just wanted to say i don't think illusion is inherently bad, mindgames are an important part of the game and i'm tired of people treating it as a pure negative, it's a skill to anticipate well your opponent's choices and for me, is part of the fun, things like guessing your opponent's moveset or what they're gonna click are inherent part of the game that makes it what it is, Illusion is no different, not to mention there is counterplay to it, hazard damage can give away the illusion, Stealth Rock breaking illusions of mons weak or resisting rocks such as Bisharp and Armarouge and Spikes/Tspikes giving away flying types and levitate users like Zapdos Galar, if you're affraid of your opponent leading zoroark disguised as something else before you get to setup your hazards and all, Protect can still easily scout which mon is which, bulky wallbreakers such as Volcanion can threaten both Zoroark-hisui and pretty much everything it may be disguised as, if you want to avoid illusion mindgames there are ways
 
GUess who's back b*tches (please don't infract me for this i promise i'm going to make coherent points). Also prefacing this whole post with the note that I really don't have any knowledge of whatever the modern tiering philosophy is + started learning this gen this past friday, so there are almost certainly mechanics that I'm not totally familiar with, but it shouldn't affect much in my thoughts here.

The tier feels really close to being great. ZoroH is kind of obviously busted. I think a decent chunk of the OP is sorta contrived (NP sets are mediocre, band and scarf are fun curiosities that don't synergize particularly well with Gapdos), but honestly specs just kind of bops everything. I also think the OP kind of understates the large degree to which ZoroH impacts gameplay. Thinking players aren't just sending ZoroH in t1 and hoping for the best -- they're avoiding chip damage and letting the threat of a potential ZoroH exert massive pressure at key inflection points in the game between its offensive presence + subtly excellent normal, ghost, and fighting immunities . I know I'm gonna come across as a huge oldhead with this take, but matches this gen really feel like they balance on a knife's edge constantly b/c of how a well-timed tera can just immediately end a game, and ZoroH just compounds that kind of uncertainty a really unpleasant degree. At some point it just forces players to decide between playing suboptimally (i.e., not playing around stuff that can just end games immediately) and trying to play around everything and ultimately making no progress because they're forced into taking ultra passive lines.

Anyway, tl;dr pretty open and shut, I'll be voting ban unless some really compelling points against are made. Hope y'all can suspect Megaman next though that thing is also awful.
 
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I usually don't like to write long texts about this but I'd like to point some things on this because all my friends know how much I love Horoark.

First of all, I do think Horoark it's in fact, a good pokemon. Excellent typing overall, and Illusion mindgames can usually break defensive cores very well, since most part of the time you can disguise yourself as a physical breaker or wall for example, and just burst a powerfull stab. My favorite example of this was building teams with Horoark + Gapdos or Mamoswine, since their usual checks are G-Weezing or Slowbro, and both of them suffers a lot from a Specs Shadow Ball/Hyper Voice. I'm writing this and I'm still doubtfull if i'm going to vote ban or not, because I really like to play and build with this mon.

With that in mind, i've been spamming this mon in a lot of teams since December. In the last Jan week I created an alt called "fuckslowbroRU" and played 255 games on ladder JUST testing horoark teams and all the possible illusion strategies. Turns out I do have some considerations about it:

  1. Players should be more careful when facing it.
    Hate to use the argument "it's good, but not unbeatable", because this can be true to almost every single wincondition. This time only, I guess the hardest part of facing Horoark is you need to be constantly aware of game information because he messes with some of showdown's previews. Hazzard damage can be easily point out if the mon is disguised or not in some cases, but the game messes with this information and usually points out the last mon horoark disguised itself as the mon. Most part of the times I break through someone team with Horoark, the fact he was disguised was already obvious but people didn't realize it, so I guess this mon demands the opposing player to be constantly aware. I also agree with Cannard point about protect. I really don't like other sets despite specs, but most part of the special walls (Umbreon, Fezand, Sylveon, Chansey, Muk-A) on the game can handle horoark pretty easily. Sands damage can also help in these situations.

  2. Despite my previous point, I had some games where Horoark was a threat even if not disguised.
    I don't think this was discussed yet, but sometimes Specs Horoark it's a threat because 350 Sp.Atk + Choice Specs with powerfull ghost stabs + normal ones (which recently I discovered that can be Tera Blast as well) is threatening enough to 2/3 of the tier.
  3. 0 Atk Cyclizar Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Zoroark-Hisui: 204-240 (81.2 - 95.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
    lmao, of course this is a joke because I know this mon can Focus Blast or Tera Fairy and just destroy cyclizar, but sometimes the #2 mon in the tier can be a great pivot to scout some of horoark moves.

  4. For conclusion, I do have some mixed opinions. Some games Horoark breaks defensive cores very easily while disguised making the easiest matchup of your life, other games he's literally deadweight. I really would like to see someone (I'm lazy af to do it LOL) post replays where this mon have been used in official game tournaments and/or ladder to see if he's really that threatfull to finish my conclusions.
 
I wanted to give my thoughts on Zoro since this is the first time I've ever achieved reqs and I felt pretty strongly at the announcement of this suspect, being in favor of a ban. Although, as I laddered throughout the week my feelings changed on the mon and especially its ability, which to me, seems to be the main point of contention among the player-base regarding the suspect.

Firstly, Illusion is a great ability in a vacuum and is only exemplified by Zoro's excellent defensive typing. However, hazards and residual chip like sand, rocky helmet, and status stymie Illusion to essentially make it redundant. My point is that Zoro's ability can be actually easy to exploit aside from lead. And this is where I think Zoro is most dangerous in the median player's hands. Being able to pair Zoro with a mon that can really take advantage of the metagame and force a difficult prediction extremely early to gain momentum on is what extracts the most value out of Illusion. Pivoting mons that threaten switches or Knock-Off like Gapdos, Bike, and Slither Wing are some of the best at this, basically forcing a switch to a mon in preparation to tank a soft pivot or knock only to have hole punched through them with Specs Shadow Ball or Hyper Voice. Beyond this though, I can't see Zoro doing enough to call for it to be banned. Most good teams will have an answer to the spam-able ghost type attacks, be it a normal, dark, or even a bulky steel type type that will also do well into Hyper Voice. And being fundamentally item-locked into Specs or Scarf cripples Zoro by having predictable counter-play after one attack fired off. Ultimately, Specs Zoro is the best option for brokenness, whereas Scarf just doesn't capitalize enough with damage imo and Nasty Plot/Throat Spray take an extra turn to setup and can't output damage on a consistent rate, and revenge killers just come in afterwards and force a switch/kill.

Next, I think there is more than enough counter-play present in the metagame to deal with Zoro. Going through the VR, Gapdos will always force a switch or kill with Knock, Bish can always switch in, bar Focus Blast, and force Zoro out. Rachi switches in on Hyper Voice and wishes, u-turns, gets rocks, doubles on the switch out, or t-waves. Krook comes in on SBall and gets rocks or knocks, and Volc can always eat an attack and kills with Flame after rocks. AV Bike eats this for breakfast. Empoleon tanks and pivots out or gets rocks, Hoodra similarly except with a free Draco/Knock. Spedef Hippo tanks and gets chip with sand, and of course, Zoro switches into itself exceptionally. All of this is to say that Zoro is not just running teams over, many mons act as great pivots to scout and switch out to a more reliable check, and this is just how down to A-rank deals with Specs, many more mons handle it and Zoro's other sets are much more exploitable imo.

Lastly, I wanted to give some implications of the tier if Zoro were to be banned. In the case of a ban, in my (limited) opinion, I don't necessarily see how this would improve the metagame. I think the best outcome would probably be that you lose out on the annoying 50/50s that Zoro forces out that can still be played around. Furthermore, I think all team structures are in a good place right now, and the ban of Zoro causes balance to lose a breaking option and ultimately all structures get better in not having to deal with cheeky mind games. And I think this is actually the best argument for a ban. Speaking analytically, as of week three in RUPL, Zoro is sitting at tied for 5th most usage with a touch under 25% usage and has a win % just north of 50. This is to say that it has higher usage and solid results, yet nothing overwhelming enough to warrant a ban. Like those who have said before me, this mon requires skill in using it and playing against it, and that the mindgames aren't inherently bad.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I will be voting Do Not Ban, unless I'm convinced otherwise in this thread.
 
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I probably wont end up getting reqs this time due to a mix of exhaustion, work, and just being sick as fuck rn, so I'll make a thread post instead. H-Zoro is dumb as bricks, there's no getting around it. It has a surprising degree of flexibility to it with its sets, and new sets have been popping up. NP Endure Salac Berry, Double Dance with Tera Blast, Agility Throat Spray and others alongside Specs, Scarf and Physical. There's alot of replays where disguised Zoro's just shadow ball into eachother and it looks like a sick joke, and other replays where a disguised Zoro just ohkos or close to it a large centerpiece of the opponents team. I've sent Registeel into a Regidrago and took 85 from focus blast, I've seen slowbro come into gapdos and take 100 from shadow ball, I've seen Cyclizar come into volcanions and take 100 from focus punch. Sure, Illusion has some counterplay like leading Garde and scouting the trace activation, or having like, protect wo-chien (ignoring how wo-chien is a terrible lead 9/10 times otherwise mind you). The most consistent one is hazards and im sorry if you think getting hazards up instantly is gonna happen game to game you're simply naive.

Even beyond disguise, this Pokemon is excellent on its own rights. Shadow ball/Hyper voice spam is unresisted beyond bisharp and that thing is a victim to a ton of flex slots anyways. Focus Blast, Flamethrower, even wisp and trick. Offense is already the forerunner for best team-archetype in the tier, and its because switching into checks is far more risky when it could be an H-Zoro behind the wheel, especially when it synergizes well with alot of Pokemon who also are arguably busted. Bisharp being called broken for over a year now and still gets left alone, Volcanion picks what it loses to for fun, Gapdos is the most splashable scarfer in the tier by a mile and stuff like Regidrago and Mamoswine have very specific answers that don't line up with H-Zoro's checklist besides Umbreon ig. Builder strain is very real right now and having a Pokemon who enables and forces practical guesswork isn't the sign of a balanced mon.

Canard said:
i just wanted to say i don't think illusion is inherently bad, mindgames are an important part of the game and i'm tired of people treating it as a pure negative, it's a skill to anticipate well your opponent's choices and for me, is part of the fun, things like guessing your opponent's moveset or what they're gonna click are inherent part of the game that makes it what it is, Illusion is no different, not to mention there is counterplay to it, hazard damage can give away the illusion, Stealth Rock breaking illusions of mons weak or resisting rocks such as Bisharp and Armarouge and Spikes/Tspikes giving away flying types and levitate users like Zapdos Galar, if you're affraid of your opponent leading zoroark disguised as something else before you get to setup your hazards and all, Protect can still easily scout which mon is which, bulky wallbreakers such as Volcanion can threaten both Zoroark-hisui and pretty much everything it may be disguised as, if you want to avoid illusion mindgames there are ways
Click to expand...
Gonna bounce off this one and say sure, there is counterplay to illusion. But it requires ideal scenarios to be online or very specific pokemon to scout the Illusions early game. Tnunes vs Lighthouses is a great example, where Zoro disguised as Gapdos ohkod a Jirachi turn 2. There are countless other examples I could grab but I'm sick so just take my word for it they're somewhere. There's counterplay to everything, but is that counterplay reasonable? In this case, I don't think it is.
 
Trying out new metas as of late and saw this RU suspect was happening, decided to tap in and this format is pretty fun! Got suspect test in a day, although i have to say idk these reqs felt a bit too lenient to reach idk if a player of my caliber should be getting qualified, i went 35-14 and was makign some of the most insane throws :psywoke: Shoutouts to Heatranator Sneakyplanner Lyra, used yalls teams from the RU teambuilding competition thread and they were all really good! Anyway On the topic of Zoro Illusion to me me feels like a fundamentally "uncompetitive" ability, feels like it reduces the game more to mind games which is not really the way i like to play the game and something I am really bad at. Zoro is also just quite strong so even if i figure its there sometimes i feel like i dont have a switch in lol. I dont think its broken per se, just more like i wouldnt miss it if it was gone for the tier. Am still kinda on the fence tho, will definitely be getting more games over the week to see what i think about the mon, have been having some great fun playing the tier! Although ngl suspect oricorio . . . .......
 
:pmd/zoroark-hisui:​
I also like LBN probably won't get reqs (UPDATE: he got reqs) due to a lack of time and a general skill issue (this meta is hellish to build in, idk how y'all do it without just praying you don't run into *insert broken mon or teamstyle here*) but I digress. I think that everyone here (FOR THE MOST PART, CANERD, I'M NOT LETTING "RUN PROTECT ON EVERY MON" STAY BURIED IN THE DISCORD) has put forward some very valid points, but I feel like there's a difference between counterplay that you can do to reduce Horoark's impact and the reasonableness of what can be done, if that makes sense. TLDR, you can do things to beat Horoark out but they usually require changing how you approach the game teambuilding-wise and gaming wise that simply doesn't meld well winning wise with everything else in the game that you have to contend with.

I wanna start off by stating what counterplay does exist, and what you too can do to not get murderated by the foul fox! (kitsune...?) The most obvious thing is to start off by running Cyclizar, that's like layer 0 counterplay to Horoark for obvious knock and normal type related reasons. Additionally, you can reveal Horoark (usually but I'll get into that later) by setting any type of hazards, and getting any damage off on Horoark, which if you can remember every pokemon's damage% on the opposing team, you can always know when Horoark is coming in. Other signifiers such as statuses also help with this job.

However Horoark just kinda... doesn't care sometimes

The most obvious time in the game is at the start. If there's a horoark, you have to contend with the fact that it's just gonna be the lead or second mon sometimes. At MOST hazards only affect the game starting on turn 2, so turn 1 you can pivot or switch out to horoark and the opponent literally can't know. Even if you use gardevoir as a lead, #1 congrats you found horoark some of the time, but #2 garde lead sucks, cause like you lose to any other actual lead, and you put your revenge killer in trouble like no matter what horoark or no horoark, and just lose momentum from switching out, like it's just a bad strategy.

This is further made completely worthless by the fact that Horoark can change who it's illusioned as.

How can this be? Easy, you just switch out whoever is in the first slot with the guy in the last slot, and suddenly a new guy is in the last slot, meaning that Horoark is now illusioned as an entirely NEW pokemon. Now to actually get this off is fairly idealistic, and requires numerous switchs and maneuverings to get right. And in all of this Horoark is vulnerable to hazards and all, yada yada. This effect however can be achieved in an easier way by losing a mon! Because again this shifts around the team order, and a new mon gets into last slot, it means that if you keep up the pressure and offense you can achieve a game state in which you can trick the opponent with Horoark appearing as say a Mamoswine and then become a Gapdos later on and pick up TWO undeserved kills! Of course again, this is an ideal situation that I'm presenting here but the thing is that it's possible. And it can and has happened.


Now lets get into the absolute warcrimes that Horoark is capable to doing, and why I believe it should be banned.

Horoark Fact 1 is that on it's own, it's really just a guy. Gets knocked around big-time by Cyclizar, doesn't really break amazingly when it's not hitting weaknesses, but has some solid coverage between Flamethrower and Focus Blast.

Horoark Fact 2 is that it's immunities do give it some damage-free entries for the bold, which can allow players who are willing to gamble either through a hard-read or predict based on previous buttons clicked ways to get Horoark in without giving it any damage (aside from hazards) to identify it.

But Horoark Fact 3 is simply:

it has illusion

Like this whole mon is broken through this one ability, let alone the mindgames you can play, and it pushes it SO far over the edge and allows for breaking prowess that mons like gapdos DREAM of being able to achieve. Imagine if, when using say CB Slither Wing half of the time your opponent just wouldn't tera or switch out their Reuniclus. By disgusing as another mon, Horoark gets away with SO much, and even with the counterplay above, there are some definite times when the counterplay simply doesn't matter.
Namely, Turn 1 and 2, where you can bring in Horoark and illusion as ANY mon on your team and get away with it. This means that for HoroGap teams, you can make it so that your opponent has to guess TURN 1 what mon you really are. Say it's Horoark disguised as Gapdos against a Slowbro. Slowbro in this instance would want to do something along the lines of click Scald and punish a stay in or potentially burn whoever gapdos U-turns out to, or click Future Sight or T-wave for a similar effect. However, because Horoark is actually on the field, Slowbro has to make the tough decision to risk switching out to say Umbreon or some other special wall when it could easily actually be Gapdos on the field.

These are not "mindgames", and they do not require "skill" like some of you claim.

It is luck.

It is guessing and hoping you win the coinflip.

And if you EVER guess wrong, say switching in Hippowdon into Gapdos-disguised Horoark, then did you know that Hippowdon becomes INCAPABLE OF SWITCHING INTO GAPDOS, it's ONE trait that makes it so valuable on BO teams.
Like from that point on you need to find a turn of respite to recover, and on Offense teams that Horoark commonly finds itself on, then you simply are not getting that turn to click Slack Off unless your opponent throws.

calced using a min-roll Shadow Ball
252 SpA Choice Specs Zoroark-Hisui Shadow Ball vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Hippowdon: 249-294 (59.2 - 70%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Zapdos-Galar Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Hippowdon: 123-145 (29.2 - 34.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

So I hope that this has elucidated something to some of you, that despite there being "counterplay" and things you can do to reveal Horoark, it's still just plain bullshit at the end of the day no matter how much you downplay the fox. You can scout for horoark sure, you can click protect and play carefully, but having a mon that forces these game-winning 50/50 situations, that forces you to play incredibly passively until you figure out what mon Horoark is, and forces you to try and throw caution to the wind to get up hazards, simply isn't healthy for the tier.

I also want to say that sometimes you just can't get up hazards bro, like you guys make it sound easy but
#1: I'm not taking my physical wall to 20% just for the rocks
#2: dude people with their wack-ass horoark teams on ladder and in tournys like

have hazard removal you know

it's not foolproof



Good Night y'all and have a great day.
 
Got reqs and Horoark wasn't a problem at all but funnily enough, one of my two losses this run was to a Unovan Zoroark so there's that...

As for my thoughts on Horoark in general, I'm not convinced it's outright broken. It's scariest on Turn 1 when there aren't hazards up and you don't know whether to stay in with your Rachi against the potential Horoark disguised as a Gapdos or switch to a mon that can take the incoming Shadow Ball but gets bopped by a Close Combat, sure. (And even then, Gardevoir and sash HO leads don't really care.)

But later on in the game, with hazards up and things like order in which sandstorm damage happens, figuring out whether the mon you're facing is a disguised Horoark is very doable. And if your opponent is able to prevent you from getting hazards up and thus making it impossible to see through Horoark, that's simply proof that Illusion takes skill to maneuver. I also don't think more mons starting to run Protect is a bad thing that only works against Illusion mindgames, leaving you with a bad matchup against the rest of the meta, considering all the Choiced mons running around and the Leftovers recovery that an Umbreon and Hoodra receive from a free turn potentially being the difference between a 1HKO and 2HKO.

That isn't to say that Illusion mindgames don't happen and are completely healthy but 50/50s that determine the outcome of the match are a hallmark of Pokemon and in my opinion, this particular one isn't gamebreaking enough to warrant a ban. I think things like Horoark's matchup into stall is a positive for the meta. Outside of Illusion, the corniest this mon has gotten is when two Horoarks face off and are locked into a STAB move but neither can switch out because none of either opponent's remaining mons can survive a choiced STAB move, leading to Struggle wars.

Side note, can we please get Volcanion and Bisharp out of here next?

TLDR: I'm not convinced this mon is broken and as such, will be voting DO NOT BAN.
 
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The votes are in:

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Rest of the votes will not change the outcome. Therefore, Zoroark-Hisui is now BANNED from SV RU! Tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement this.

Thank you to everyone for participating in the suspect test! If you have qualified for the tiering contributor badge, feel free to DM either me or TheFranklin with a link to your votes.

The results will be up once everyone has voted or deadline has passed.
 
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