★ SV UU Suspect Process Round 10 - Pop Goes the Weasel

[Lizzie]

Is that not the point of the game? To make progress? Or do people win based on whose Pivot has regenerated the most HP? It's not something that should be held against Weavile. Surely it's not this trait that makes a Pokemon problematic...right?

to be blunt i dont understand why youre pretending that weavile is limiting volt turn. The reality of pokemon is that the harder it is to check something defensively the more your gameplan shifts towards limiting its opportunities to come in which promotes pivoting. And of course its far easier to get weavile on the field by pivoting. The problem with weaviles brand of progress making is that all of its good checks can only switch in once pretty much.

The reason i brought up tera electric isnt that its some crazy set that breaks it but because im seeing people playing in a ladder environment thats pretty hostile to weavile saying it feels mid when theyre presumably winning games by exploiting the passivity of mons like pex and defensive quaquaval and even like skarm and stuff. Main reason i would use it outside of a ladder setting is that koing offensive quaq with a spike up is pretty valuable on some teams i feel but if you want a weavile set that feels outrageously broken to ladder with then this is the one. I dislike tera hog as a term in this instance though because its not like youre thinking "oh no i have to tera weavile to okho this pex," if youre teraing its normally very advantageous and it doesnt have to tera to be a threat.

People give it extra moves because you have to account for those moves when building your team. Weavile teraing is like slightly less of an issue in some ways but if it does interfere with your revenge killer you're kinda just completely screwed a lot of the time. Call it the nature of sv if you want but the faster a mon is the more toxic this becomes.

i could keep going but ive already gotten sidetracked like a million times and im sick of posting in these threads, presumably i said something relevant at one point or another though.

 

[Queen of Bean]

Quick post to chip in on the ban weavile argument

Every check weavile has can be invalidated by a coverage move such as tera blast elec low kick or upper hand. The mon creates guessing games and a pokemon that can just win if the weavile check you decided to bring is the one they decided to tech for. Even without the aspect of coverage moves, like punny said alot of the checks to weavile are just not very good answers to it and the ones that are like tinkaton (which is kinda bad) can be easily worn down with knock off and spikes untill weavile wins the game. The aspect of tera types like ghost to allow it free setup opportunities on a scarf dogi or mono body press skarmory just gives it more options. In my opinion this is a very unhealthy part of the metagame and i will be voting ban on the evil weasel.

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

Btw, weavile doesnt really reveal much about its set, ice shard is smth it clicks rarely, and low kick is smth u assume it has before u throw out ur cobalion face first into it (either way tera ice can really t axel it into range of itself)

Weavile also can afford SD because since you do not know much it is hard to assume what it is running. Sure if it swapped out vs ur 50% coba you might be skeptical but also SD -> +2 axel i think just kills it

Ice shard is also a move i found i dropped sometimes and ur not gonna leave in your teal pon or maybe send in your hoopa worn down by spikes to test the theory

Weavile is just able to play safely, wear down its checks, and use its threat of its 4 moves against the opponent by making them assume it may have moves it doesnt and maybe reveal SD late game

 

[haunted paper]

These are solid points (imo) for Do Not Ban on Weavile.

Knock Off + spikes is really good, but I agree with the op that most of the spikers don't have great synergy with Weavile, since they cannot by themselves give Weavile opportunities to click.

Against offence it doesn't get the time to SD and with boots is not strong enough to trade.

On offence it's not that broken either because without the benefit of The Pivots (which are the actual mons that have the tier in a chokehold) it doesn't get enough chances to get in the game to clean house.

Weavile cleaning through the entire metagame with 6 moves at its disposal. Tera Elec + Tera Ice + Ice Shard + Tera Blast + Knock + Low Kick + Swords Dance and whatever else gets tacked onto the list.

There are many good Weavile checks that handle some Weavile set or the other that can organically fit on to teams because they happen to check the other great dark types we have in the tier too. Does Weavile have its way around them? Sure. Can any one set find its way around all of them? Definitely not. Every set has manageable drawbacks. For example, Elec Tera is a tera hog and vulnerable to priority, non upper hand is revenged by lokix, non ice shard is revenged by priority, non low kick can be checked by cobalion etc. The way the ban weavile camp has been phrasing its ability to 'annihilate the tier' you'd think they'd have never won a game against weavile with any reasonably built team.

Most teams are not going to have one mon that is a 100% counter to every weavile set that will exist. I think that is just an unrealistic expectation to have in gen 9.

current rising star and the single absolute best check to weavile available. resists all of its moves, kills it with ease, and can take advantage of forcing it out pretty easily to boot. getting knocked does suck but you're still threatening post-specs and still do your job of checking the weasel extremely well, they just can not SD if you're present because they're only one vacuum wave away from getting owned.


grouping these four together because they all generally do the same thing, defensively are extremely annoying for weavile to deal with and can kill it in return with ease. tinkaton and cobalion are rather prone to getting overwhelmed but are still incredibly consistent in what they aim to do (eat hits and then harass the weasel or kill it outright). quaquaval has loosely the same defensive matchup as keldeo but trades some consistency in dealing with weavile in return for threatening to snowball. dogi can check weavile in a multitude of ways, either just buffering through the hit and killing back or revenge killing it with scarf.


reliable revenge killers that hurt weavile very badly.


resists ice, doesn't really give a fuck about knock unless spikes are up (spikers are hard to fit with weavile anyway), has haze to stop SD shenanigans from getting too out of hand, toxic is overall a Pretty Bad Time for weavile. taking advantage of it for being passive isn't really an option since without boosts you're doing zero.


not really as much of checks as the above for a multitude of reasons but can all act as stopgaps and generally give weavile a hard time.

i think we're also vastly underestimating how difficult it can be for weavile to get an SD off and get actual value from it without eating shit and dying. in matchups where multiple checks are present there are several turns where clicking knock off is genuinely the only option available, and while this isn't a terrible situation, you are still making good progress, you're also not really unlocking the power you need to break through things without significant chip beforehand. most things that are neutral to your moves, more specifically your ice STAB, don't really give a shit about the damage you're doing until you hit +2. even things like slowking and sinistcha that are weak to knock can take an unboosted hit just fine. your bulk is also pretty bad and any stray hits put you at a much greater risk, especially when you're weak to u-turn and the three most common types of priority in the tier.

These are solid points (imo) for Ban on Weavile.

What does it bring to the tier?

Why would banning weavile do more harm than good? is there smth in the meta that is so held back by weavile being here that we cant go "well we will deal with this stuff after weavile"

you are likely then presented with the issue of what to switch into knock off and trying to be cute and pivot around it isnt exactly in your favour when its as fast as it is. So broadly speaking in order to account for sd stabs + ice shard you are reliant on defensive counterplay which can vary in how sturdy it is and how good it is in the meta, ideally with priority to help shore up the mu.

The next problem you encounter is that there are ways around this defensive counterplay. Low kick is common enough that coba has pretty much switched to always being chople

keldeo does not enjoy knock either and hardly ever makes progress without an item, skarmory loses its helmet to knock so it cannot punish weavile

Scizor and lokix dont want to come in on knock off and while yes, they could be considered good rkillers, you are not considering an important factor. Weavile isn't alone, there are five other pokemons that are either enabled by weavile or that enable it to do its job even better.

From what I gathered on all these posts, Weavile capitalizes on the old problems (prior to last shift). I think Weavile isn't the only problem and a question others might want to consider asking themselves is this: Is Weavile the main problem or is what's behind Weavile the main problem? Maybe the answer to that question will determine if it really is broken or not.

It seems as though hazards and regenerator mons are big issues and enjoys having a fast knock abuser. Which is why it seemed like people prior to the last shift were talking about Choice Scarf Hoopa-Unbound being broken or not. Weavile looks to be an upgrade from Hoopa-U with its' superior speed tier (so no relying on scarf), better secondary STAB in ice, better utility in SD and Ice Shard, as well as pairing up with regen mons easier (like Slowking).

A lot of the times, Weavile doesn't seem to need to go for SD; having boots to be immune to hazards and partnering up with regenerator mons and hazards users to wear down the opposing team seems like the way to go more often times than not. Spikes are huge and being immune to them is bigger, honestly reminding me of gen 3 super man teams. Weavile has ice moves for flying mons, knock for Latios and boots abusers, and SD to muscle past regen mons. So, it seems like Weavile is great on these kinds of teams and great against them as well. But without being on these kinds of teams, what does Weavile accomplish? Cynde experimented and saw mixed results, and Cynde is a good player.

So I dunno. It's hard (for me) to see if its' broken or not. Hopefully, this post helps some users out with their decision.

 

[Moutemoute]

I'm too rusty to write a long ass post so I'll be brief. After playing around I would say +/- 100 games in the current metagame, I strongly believe that Weavile should be banned. Its speed tier allowing it to safely run Boots makes it super tough and annoying to deal with. Sure we have checks such as Rotom-Wash, Skarmory, Cobalion, Tinkaton or things like Quaquaval or Okidogi but I feels like, in the long run, it's most of the time to the Weavile's player advantage. Being able to force that much switch-outs while being a strong user of Knock Off is pretty deadly imo and quite tough to manage. If Weavile is able to keep its Boots (which is quite easy because you can't really Knock Off it and Pickpocket is quite rare), it's really oppressive and it can chip its checks during a game and still muscle threw them in the endgame.

I have been messing with SD Tera Fire with Koff / Triple Axel / Low Kick and its checks are so limited it's really annoying. On the other hand, I felt it was also tough to handle opponent's Weavile even with 1-2 checks to it. I really feel like you need to overprepared to be able to manage it in the long run, it also abuses so many common staples such as Tornadus-T, Clodsire, Hydrapple, Latios, Thundurus-T, Slowking, Sinistcha etc..which often forces the player which is facing it to burn Tera to be able to beat Weavile, which then open doors for its teammates. I feel like Boots Weavile is the best set by far because it does a lot of progress across a game and even this set has quite a few variants which are all really nasty in their own way. SD Tera Blast Electric is able to beat Skarmory and handle Bullet Punch for Scizor, Tera Ghost allows it to lure Fighting-types and punish them while Tera Fire does the same vs WoW users and Flame Body Heatran. Like even Tera Ice is legit to be able to muscle threw some Pokémon with a boosted Triple Axel.

Overall I don't think Weavile leaving would hurt the tier that much and I actually believe it would be a good thing for its development.

 

[correcthorse666]

Anyway, I just got reqs for the first time, so I figured I'd post my thoughts on Weavile. First off, I don't think Weavile's broken. It's pretty borderline, but I think it has just enough answers that it's just barely fine in the tier. Additionally, pretty much every mon in the tier can severely threaten Weavile, so greedy SDs/mispredicts/Triple Axel misses are quite easy to punish, and pretty much every speed control option we have revenge kills it just fine. In my experience, Weavile really only runs away with games when you can use teammates to beat down shared checks and then tera to dodge the revenge killer.

All that being said, I'm voting Ban. Weavile along with Okidogi and especially Hoopa-U push the limits of what this tier can handle. It makes it quite difficult to answer everything, especially when you take into the account the many other less broken but still restrictive threats in the tier like Latios, Cornerpon, Greninja, Lokix, etc. While Weavile isn't my first choice to ban (that would be Hoopa-U), it is my opinion that we don't need another borderline broken threat stressing the builder, and banning Weavile will help ease some of the strain on the builder (eg freeing up Rotom-W to be SpDef) so I'm voting for it to go.

 

[swankykong316]

I don't know if I needed to put a long description, sorry if I did need to, but I vote Ban.

 

[timeflow]

I don't know if I needed to put a long description, sorry if I did need to, but I vote Ban.

this thread is mostly for discussing arguments for and against banning weavile, if you're looking to actually vote you need to first meet the suspect requirements laid out in the op and second show evidence that you reached those requirements in this thread. the actual voting process happens much later in a side thread that you'll be notified of if you meet the requirements.

 

[Catcus]

Got reqs so I thought I'd share a free team

fairly simple HO, but it works well.
- still the best HO lead. Colbur is kinda hard not to use in a meta with so many fast strong knock users, works great with will-o-wisp to bait and ruin mons like hoopa and weavile. I also EVed to outspeed harc since ladder still loves that guy and it's on a sample.
- Y'all were so right about sd kix. This mon is great. black glasses boosted dark stab is devious and breaks through a ton. having some priority in the back is also great to have on HO.
- I've liked this mon for a while and works super well now. Setting up on problem mons for HO like Scizor and excadrill while outspeeding the scarfers and shrugging off most priority moves like first impression, bullet punch, and triage draining kiss is so valuable. It can run away with games easily and it always contributes anyway.
- Best Spinblocker. EVed to outspeed adamant base 80 scarfers with the rest dumped into bulk. Nothing special here, just good.
- Originally put on the team since I thought I'd run into a lot of skarm on ladder but I didn't actually see that much Its still pretty great though. Nasty plot is almost unwallable and rips through most mons. Psychic lets it remove dogi for quaq and hit water absorb clod. It's also pretty good for stall.
-Quaq is one of the best anti-bs mons for ladder. It beats so much random nonsense you'll face it's great. I like lum berry over leftovers since it lets you walk all over slowking and leftovers isn't usually helping your longevity that much. It's also one of the only mons that help against weavile(though it loses to tera electric).

Anyways, I'm voting ban. I already posted here about it but I didn't really go into specifics about why. Other's have already posted about why weavile is broken so I want to mention why I think Weavile is also unhealthy for the meta.

Weavile is the biggest false promise ever. When it dropped people seemed excited since it could threaten regen/volt-turn cores. Now honestly Idk why that was a big deal. We have plenty of mons that can punish these cores like dogi plus you could generally play well to beat them and they hadn't really been a major concern for a bit. It was cool to have another mon to threaten them though i guess. The thing is that weavile didn't end up nerfing these strats. Weavile essentially ended up limiting Offense more imo. HO is fine since they can deal well enough with weav, but other offenses struggle to beat weavile since it can out-offense most threats. Weavile honestly beats so much of the meta that it kinda incentivizes regen volt-turn cores over most other options since at least they can limit entry points(honestly even they struggle against weavile). This has kinda pushed the meta even more into bulky offense and pushed out a lot of offensive threats meanwhile weavile has continued to feel super threatening and awkward to check. It doesn't feel good and makes the tier feel worse to play, So I will be voting Ban.

 

[Mossy Sandwich]

Gonna try to make this brief cause I'm not really in the mood for arguing too much this week, but I think Weavile is extremely manageable in practice and has healthy aspects that we should consider and I think banning it now would be hasty.

Weavile in practice doesn't have a particularly easy time both hitting the field and getting good clicks. While it can definitely come in from pivots, it can't really do so on any pokemon it doesn't kill and those are actually rather limited as they need to be already chipped or weak to one of its STABs for them to be realistically forced out. We have like 5-6 mons in the A ranks 1HKO'd by Weavile with pretty much all of them threatening to tera out of their weakness and potentially 1HKOing back and even when chipped, some mons can still be particularly hard to come in on. Then, when it does get its somewhat limited entries, it has a hard time making the most of it with how good its clicks need to be in order to get through even the softer checks like Okidogi. You often have to choose between clicking Triple Axel, Knock Off or Swords Dance all of which can end up being pretty bad clicks if your opponent has mons like Heatran, Cobalion, Keldeo, Tinkaton, Quaquaval, Rotom-W, Scarf Dogi, Scizor and more as clicking Taxel into a Helmet, Flame Body or resist is often poor, Knock can get fairly little damage on certain checks with tools like Pickpocket potentially crippling you further and Swords Dance risking an instant RK. So you either play Weavile extremely risky or you take the safe route and get just decent progress. While a lot of these checks are very short-term, this metagame is currently extremely fast and, in my experience, most checks will last you long enough into the game that Weavile won't really properly break you. It's also worth noting that reactive tera is very effective against Weavile, especially with how common Tera Water, Steel and Fairy are. It's often worth going for with how much value mons like Torn-T, Latios, Hydrapple, Skeledirge and so on can get out of their new typing for the remainder of the game while you can also take Weavile out of the game.

Anyway, so you have to go through some effort for Weavile to get a kill or generally high value. This is unlike something like Hoopa which can force out pretty much anything with a mediocre defense stat and can just spam Hyperspace Fury. Anyway, after you've gotten your value with Weavile, you often just get forced out anyway. It's very vulnerable to the best Scarfers in the tier, Hoopa, Dogi, Gardevoir and, if you stretch it, Quaquaval and Excadrill as well as Priority from Scizor, Lokix and, once again stretching it, Keldeo. In that sense, I find it kinda similar to Serperior where you have to go through a lot to get into a position to become dangerous, but then immediately get forced out of that position. Obviously, Weavile is much better than Serperior, but I think it's worth noting that the reward for getting through Weavile's flaws is pretty minor provided the opponent has existent revenge-killing options.

On the other hand, Weavile brings an extremely reliable fast option to the tier in that it's pretty much the only mon besides Hoopa that can properly outspeed and 1HKO Torn. I consider this niche incredibly important and I think cutting out Torn's breathing room is one of the best things that can be done for the tier. As a whole though, it provides a reliable revenge-killer that can do Lokix-esque things thanks to Knock and I consider it an incredibly nice addition to the tier. While it does apply some pressure in the builder, I think Weavile actually eases building with the doors it opens.

So basically, Weavile just has a very hard time getting enough value to be considered broken unless it's played very risky. It has a ton of checks that can pretty realistically be stacked and that work fine due to the fast-paced nature of the tier. In a pinch, you can make great use of tera against it and, even if it does kill something, the tier has extremely good revenge-killing options for it. On the other hand, keeping it in the tier gives us another mon that can force out Torn which I think is hugely important. Weavile is obviously very good and quite threatening, but I wouldn't jump to calling it broken currently.

 

[Notily]

just finished getting reqs, and contrary to what seems to be most people's experience had a generally good time doing so. i'm leaning towards do not ban, the main valid argument i see on the pro-ban side is how capable it is of picking and choosing it's checks on paper. in my experience using weavile vs competent teams on the ladder though i think i only had one game where i had the exact weavile variant that beat the two forms of counterplay my opp brought (which is anecdotal ig but thats the experience i had). while building i've found it pretty doable to bring like defensive check + offensive check + reactive tera check, most of the time i feel like i have 2 of those before i even start to consider weavile counterplay anyways.

as for the weavile vs hoopa comparison, i honestly prefer dealing with weavile most of the time as i think knock is a much more interactive move than hyperspace fury defensively. knock's damage reduction after being clicked opens up more possibilities for playing around weav through smart pivoting or tera usage, where as you get 1, maybe 2 pivots into hyperspace before you have to start sacking guys or burn tera.


this is the team i used for most of my run. general idea is that turbo skarm can trade more effectively vs most bu dogi, tran, and sciz so that weavile can clean. the speed buys you some extra mu's where u can get another spike up before dying as well. amoonguss is maybe a weird choice rn but i thought its resist profile worked really well into the stuff skarm + weav usually struggled with (mainly scouting into choiced okidogi and keld, non-psychic thundy as well). most other options i explored forced me into using av torn which would mean removal, which i really dont have space for. amoong evs let it live 96 SpA modest tran magma storm from full i think. knock gard is able to cover both av torn and tran for itself as long as you can keep hazards up, but if you're really scared of tran you can just do focus blast > knock. coba can also just run the attack invested set if you'd rather roll that way, taunt is interchangeable with stone edge if you do that. the team requires you to make some reads on what sets you're opponent has but assuming you can do that somewhat reliably i found it pretty consistent.

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

Weavile in practice doesn't have a particularly easy time both hitting the field and getting good clicks. While it can definitely come in from pivots, it can't really do so on any pokemon it doesn't kill and those are actually rather limited as they need to be already chipped or weak to one of its STABs for them to be realistically forced out. We have like 5-6 mons in the A ranks 1HKO'd by Weavile with pretty much all of them threatening to tera out of their weakness and potentially 1HKOing back and even when chipped, some mons can still be particularly hard to come in on.

This is strange at least because weavile does do a lot of progress by even hitting the field, stuff like slowking, hydrapple, torn-t, thundy-t, serp, latios, cornerstone, SD zarude, dirge, gastrodon, gligar, etc dont really wanna stay in...

Even mons that may want to switch out but threaten tera in return, i feel that is good for me if you tera to try to kill weavile because on the off chance you predict wrong and i switch out you are way further behind now, if you do land it on weavile it can make it much easier for my other mons to make progress without worrying about a potential tera pop

So you either play Weavile extremely risky or you take the safe route and get just decent progress. While a lot of these checks are very short-term, this metagame is currently extremely fast and, in my experience, most checks will last you long enough into the game that Weavile won't really properly break you. It's also worth noting that reactive tera is very effective against Weavile, especially with how common Tera Water, Steel and Fairy are. It's often worth going for with how much value mons like Torn-T, Latios, Hydrapple, Skeledirge and so on can get out of their new typing for the remainder of the game while you can also take Weavile out of the game.

This meta is sure fast, but weavile is also very fast and can often get many clicks throughout a game and can click multiple times per turn especially with its threat level, and many teams are not packing stuff like tinkaton who many people quote as a mon who got worst post shifts, smth like heatran loses a lot of utility by losing its lefties and is smth I do not like how you rely on luck as a form of counterplay

On the other hand, Weavile brings an extremely reliable fast option to the tier in that it's pretty much the only mon besides Hoopa that can properly outspeed and 1HKO Torn. I consider this niche incredibly important and I think cutting out Torn's breathing room is one of the best things that can be done for the tier. As a whole though, it provides a reliable revenge-killer that can do Lokix-esque things thanks to Knock and I consider it an incredibly nice addition to the tier. While it does apply some pressure in the builder, I think Weavile actually eases building with the doors it opens.

I think this is dumb, we have had mons that benefit the tier in some way shape or form and we just booted them out anyway because thye are that broken, idt torn-t is that much of a problem esp since we have stuff like idk rhyperior who can come in on 90% of what it throws and slap mons around, sandy shocks, bellibolt, h-arc, clodsire, gastrodon, etc

Pre shifts idt torn-t was ever a problem so this is a take that weavile is that beneficial against torn-t that we should keep it, nor did we really have a problem with revenge killing stuff

So basically, Weavile just has a very hard time getting enough value to be considered broken unless it's played very risky. It has a ton of checks that can pretty realistically be stacked and that work fine due to the fast-paced nature of the tier. In a pinch, you can make great use of tera against it and, even if it does kill something, the tier has extremely good revenge-killing options for it.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798740?p2 - eifo has like no counterplay to weavile clicking t axel, and unless they were gonna use rotom-w its not gonna be a fun time for the team either, the team just kinda dropped if weavile came in more often (it couldve considering they risked mamo on scald and tore a hole in the opponents team)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224222777-tcon220wdbdtammqh35z3bozsjvmlmupw - thunder's team was def clapped by weavile, nothing liked taking t axel + knock on the team and keldeo losing specs is soo shit for it that idk

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799163 - and pickpocket tink recieves a cb... lovely, either way tink is getting so shit on in the uu cord that i think it will drop in the next slate esp with heatran, skarmory, and other mons shitting on it

Sure there are replays of weavile not doing much but by that point i think its less weavile's fault and more so "the game was alr over" and "no pokemon wouldve recovered from that anyway"

just finished getting reqs, and contrary to what seems to be most people's experience had a generally good time doing so. i'm leaning towards do not ban, the main valid argument i see on the pro-ban side is how capable it is of picking and choosing it's checks on paper. in my experience using weavile vs competent teams on the ladder though i think i only had one game where i had the exact weavile variant that beat the two forms of counterplay my opp brought (which is anecdotal ig but thats the experience i had). while building i've found it pretty doable to bring like defensive check + offensive check + reactive tera check, most of the time i feel like i have 2 of those before i even start to consider weavile counterplay anyways.

Despite having a non phys def skarm, coba, rotom-w you still def can be clapped by smth like SD weavile esp since coba is often tasked with eating chip dmg and a weavile can get an SD up vs a choice locked gard, ur own weavile by threatening low kick, amoonguss (not wanting to die to triple axel) can can tear ur team a new one by being brought in mid game and just threatening an ohko on skarm after like 5% chip, an ohko on rotom-w after any form fo chip, and wearing down cobalion by the fact its tasked to deal with many mons and is unlikely to be at full, either way weavile can chip it down with knock + hazards

+2 252 Atk Weavile Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 60+ Def Rotom-Wash: 243-286 (79.9 - 94%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252 Atk Weavile Triple Axel (120 BP) (3 hits) vs. 252 HP / 28+ Def Skarmory: 250-297 (74.8 - 88.9%) -- approx. 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252 Atk Weavile Triple Axel (120 BP) (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 252 Def Cobalion: 123-144 (38 - 44.5%) -- approx. 3HKO after Stealth Rock

 

[Twilight]

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798740?p2 - eifo has like no counterplay to weavile clicking t axel, and unless they were gonna use rotom-w its not gonna be a fun time for the team either, the team just kinda dropped if weavile came in more often (it couldve considering they risked mamo on scald and tore a hole in the opponents team)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224222777-tcon220wdbdtammqh35z3bozsjvmlmupw - thunder's team was def clapped by weavile, nothing liked taking t axel + knock on the team and keldeo losing specs is soo shit for it that idk

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799163 - and pickpocket tink recieves a cb... lovely, either way tink is getting so shit on in the uu cord that i think it will drop in the next slate esp with heatran, skarmory, and other mons shitting on it

Sure there are replays of weavile not doing much but by that point i think its less weavile's fault and more so "the game was alr over" and "no pokemon wouldve recovered from that anyway"

I'm mostly curious about what point is trying to be made here by linking these replays because Weavile doesn't exactly do much in any of them. It isn't even sent out in the second replay. You have made these statements about how this team gets destroyed by Weavile clicking X and Y and that just isn't how the games played out. You're making assumptions that in the perfect scenarios, Weavile gets in for free, clicks the right move, or gets to SD, and gets to dismantle these teams. You mention how in the second game the team would have folded to Weavile but there is a Keldeo, Sand Rush Excadrill, what I assume is Bullet Punch Metagross, and access to defensive tera. Would it have been threatening? Sure, but they did not simply ignore it in the builder. Either way, I don't see how presuming that Weavile would have won these games shows anything. They played out differently and the match was decided through other factors. To me, it just feels like you are providing evidence to Mossy's point idk.

Despite having a non phys def skarm, coba, rotom-w you still def can be clapped by smth like SD weavile esp since coba is often tasked with eating chip dmg and a weavile can get an SD up vs a choice locked gard, ur own weavile by threatening low kick, amoonguss (not wanting to die to triple axel) can can tear ur team a new one by being brought in mid game and just threatening an ohko on skarm after like 5% chip, an ohko on rotom-w after any form fo chip, and wearing down cobalion by the fact its tasked to deal with many mons and is unlikely to be at full, either way weavile can chip it down with knock + hazards

+2 252 Atk Weavile Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 60+ Def Rotom-Wash: 243-286 (79.9 - 94%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252 Atk Weavile Triple Axel (120 BP) (3 hits) vs. 252 HP / 28+ Def Skarmory: 250-297 (74.8 - 88.9%) -- approx. 6.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
+2 252 Atk Weavile Triple Axel (120 BP) (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 252 Def Cobalion: 123-144 (38 - 44.5%) -- approx. 3HKO after Stealth Rock

Again, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Notily is just stating that from their experience they have enough flexibility in the builder to account for Weavile (I feel the same way). Personally, Amoonguss is the only thing potentially giving Weavile a free SD vs that team because how often does Gardevoir actually lock into anything but Moonblast? Even then there is more than enough defensive counterplay which your calcs essentially show. I feel like you are trying to disprove an argument that isn't even being presented here.

I will be voting for DNB as of now. From my experience, Weavile has felt manageable to deal with. To me it feels more like an 'on paper I kill everything mon' and then in reality it is possible for me to keep it in check either through tera, defensive counterplay, or revenge killing means. I don't think the pro-ban arguments are wrong as it is just personal opinion at the end of the day so I can understand wanting it gone. I do personally agree with Mossy about it being good for the tier to keep Tornadus-T in check, which imo is a stupid Pokemon but I doubt people will be as inclined to suspect it given the defensive qualities it brings to the tier.

So far I have only had one experience of Weavile just 6-0ing me and it was against a Tera Electric set but tbh that was just my fault for not calcing while laddering as Cobalion could have just tanked it at +4. I used a BO team from ThatOneApple which I won't share in case they don't want me to but that had quite a few mons that let Weavile in for 'free' and I still felt sufficient enough against it. I then used a HO by Notily, which is a playstyle that naturally does not let Weavile easily set up so that felt fine enough too. I can't say I have experience using balance/stall against it so I won't comment on that. Those are just my thoughts, vote for what you want

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

I'm mostly curious about what point is trying to be made here by linking these replays because Weavile doesn't exactly do much in any of them. It isn't even sent out in the second replay. You have made these statements about how this team gets destroyed by Weavile clicking X and Y and that just isn't how the games played out. You're making assumptions that in the perfect scenarios, Weavile gets in for free, clicks the right move, or gets to SD, and gets to dismantle these teams. You mention how in the second game the team would have folded to Weavile but there is a Keldeo, Sand Rush Excadrill, what I assume is Bullet Punch Metagross, and access to defensive tera. Would it have been threatening? Sure, but they did not simply ignore it in the builder. Either way, I don't see how presuming that Weavile would have won these games shows anything. They played out differently and the match was decided through other factors. To me, it just feels like you are providing evidence to Mossy's point idk.


Again, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Notily is just stating that from their experience they have enough flexibility in the builder to account for Weavile (I feel the same way). Personally, Amoonguss is the only thing potentially giving Weavile a free SD vs that team because how often does Gardevoir actually lock into anything but Moonblast? Even then there is more than enough defensive counterplay which your calcs essentially show. I feel like you are trying to disprove an argument that isn't even being presented here.

- Just because it wasnt sent out doesnt mean it wouldnt have done its job, its smth any person can really se how weak the team is to weavile esp with keldeo being like the one mon who absorbs it and its been known for a while how shit specs keld is a knock absorber (just like how smth like ur scarfer being a knock absorber is).
- I think ive gone over this before but just because smth didnt happen doesnt mean it couldnt. So what if weavile wasnt brought out, they won without it and when your one weavile answer is basically trying to pivot around it to hope to get your meta in to BP it out or get keldeo in on a t axel, it doesnt sound fun. This feels... very rough and smth ive seen a lot of people dont like to have to do in a battle, when your answer is "pivot and get this mon on x move" it def feels shaky esp with sand, rocks, and weavile's buttons doing a lot to keldeo, i doubt keldeo is able to answer weavile well esp since vacuum wave gives free entry to torn, or slowking

- Just because smth isnt "free" like gholdengo vs clef doesn't mean it cant happen... sure apperantly weavile vs torn-t isnt free, but the odds are very in your favor to win, not only is that rotom-w not physically bulky, that skarm is also not physically bulky, weavile lacking low kick means it is forced out which means that this team kinda gives opportunities to smth it def does not want to. If it is low kick as a 4th then coba drops, if it is ice shard as a 4th which can pick off gard after some chip (2 rounds of rocks is alr making it a roll and considering how often gard comes in and out of battle i bet you can get 3 rounds of rocks)
- This is odd? because the argument that weavile does not do much in practice compared to on paper is an argument that was posed, or how weavile has to take risks to make stuff happen which isnt uncommon even for other pokemon who are suspect worthy as if you are clicking into what is in front of you then you aren't gonna make stuff happen.
- Arguing points that dont exist? Idk what makes you think im arguing for the sake of arguing, maybe explain on it more? because the points about it have certainly been talked about and its not smth that is just made up on the spot for the sake of trying to argue

I have had my team be called ursaluna weak, but despite that i dont think i was swept by a single ursaluna during my suspect runs for it. Does that mean ursaluna doesn't sweep my team or force progress? maybe, but maybe not.

Either way people are prepping by brining way more mons to just deal with weavile and this was apperantly a problem with hoopa and having to slot 2 dark resists but isnt a problem with weavile? Like people are calling tink utter ass but people are slotting tinkaton just to deal with weavile despite that mon deserving much less than it is being used rn
-----------------

Actually smth else....

People complain about weavile, dogi, hoopa u, or at least a combination of them being in the tier... we do not lose anything by booting them out and it can make people look at smth else instead.

I feel booting weavile out at worst allows the meta to push forward. People havent really liked the meta, often times you can hear how miserable ladder is or how unfun it is to ladder which compared to other metagames, you often dont find it to be the case, I feel keeping weavile doesn't really do much for the tier rather than just make the focus of what is broken 3 diff mons that many people ive seen cant really agree on. For many next is dogi, maybe its hoopa u, and you still have a fair amount of Ban voters on weavile

 

[Magcargo]

I'm intending to vote DNB based on my experience while laddering.

Since the new drops I have primarily ran this bootspam hazard stack team with a few adjustments here and there (some slightly different Teras, Gastrodon was Clodsire at one point, etc). I built this team based off of some of Xavgb's bootspam builds that I saw in OU, which is also why I have the Cobalion to sort of "replace" Zamazenta. In previous metagames, such as the pre-tier shift meta, such a team likely would've have been unusable due to the general pressure level of the offensive threats + a mon like Tornadus-T invalidating many of its defensive checks long-term with with Knock + Regen. While it could be argued that this team still isn't good + too passive, I found it much easier to pilot in this new metagame. Skarmory and Weavile are such nice additions to this type of team, with skarm compressing a lot of utility as a Knock absorber, chipper, phazer, and check to a few Key Pokemon like Okidogi, while Weavile makes great use of the support that Skarmory provides it. Reuniclas was a pretty cool mon I made use of that could serve as a decent wincon + Weavile lure thanks to Colbur Berry & gastro winded up doing pretty well despite being a bit passive, being easily able to set up Rocks + halt setup from a few annoying Pokemon I faced like Skeledirge and Polteageist, while also providing a lot of utility with Tera Fairy against Latios, putting it in an awakward 50/50 position. Team could certainly be improved, but it was good enough to get reqs. What more could a guy ask for?

As an aside I enjoy this metagame. Its not perfect, but feels much more fun and varied than the Zapdos metagame we had before, where almost every team was some form of Volturn. While Volturn is still strong, Weavile and Skarmory's presence have opened up a lot of new structures IMO that we never saw in the prior formats & make the metagame feel a bit more diverse.

Personally I think Weavile (specifically Boots Weavile) is net positive presence to the tier, offering nice Speed Control + Priority utility, Knock Off Support, and some situational defensive utility (Shadow Ball Resist, Luster Purge Switch-in, Knock Off switch-in with Pickpocket) while helping keep a few other Pokemon like Torn-T and Hoopa-U in-line with its Ice STAB / Priority Ice Shard. It certainly is an extremely powerful offensive piece, especially when paired up with Spikes support from Skarmory & Thunder Wave / Stun Spore Support, but I feel like such power is warranted in this case when one is providing it with this much support. I personally did not struggle with Weavile myself too much while laddering, as I had a few swaps + even "free" match-ups could threaten Weavile in some way (whether it be Sinistcha with Stun Spore, Reuniclus with Colbur Berry Focus Blast, even T-Wave on ID Coba vs Tera Ghost Weavile). This made it very hard for Weavile to ever get a "Free" SD vs my team. Some games did come down to speed ties, I will admit, but I feel that is inevitably going to be the nature of the game on some level when dealing with top threats like Weavile, as we see in OU with things like Dragapult Speed ties or Booster Iron Valiant Speed ties. I don't find this a great reason to ban anything.

I feel that Weavile's ability to threaten Tornadus-T is a very positive quality. Many players disagree with me, but while Torn-T offers the tier some defensive stability, I find it borderline unhealthy give how easily it can make progress by Knock Offing Boots -> healing it all back with Regen, leading to most defensive answers failing to check it long term as they get shredded by hazards (which are also very difficult to spin). I think Weavile's presence as a threat to Torn-T helps many of these healthy defensive Pokemon like Gastrodon or Sinistcha, as well as other healthy Pokemon like Keldeo and Latios, since they can actualy make progress against Tornadus-T. Weavile's Ice Shard is also very nice to check Hoopa-U, another Pokemon I find very a bit problematic. Because Weavile is frail, I also think Temporary counter player like Colbur Berry Psychics work fine against it compared to Hoopa-U (while having other applicable uses against Pokemon like Lokix). As I mentioned earlier, Colbur Berry Reuniclus worked fine from my experience against Weavile and I've heard other users have success with Colbur Berry Mew to cripple and burn it. I think some more expirementation could be developed on this front, but is somewhat bottlenecked by Hoopa-U's presence.

I do think this tier needs a handful of bans, but Weavile wouldn't be one of them. I feel the better course of action would be to go after Hoopa-U (which I once thought was balanced but have since changed my mind on), Tornadus-T, or Okidogi. Hoopa-U I feel gets too much reward while also being too fast with its Scarf set and its incredibly special bulk + consistent Power of Hyperspace Fury can make it more difficult for some of the more niche counterplay or tech to handle it. Tornadus-T is borderline, but I feel its progress making / denying capabilities are too great and invalidate too many Pokemon in the format. Okidogi is a Pokemon I see many players want banned given that its answers aren't amazing in the format, which I somewhat agree with. I feel its still too early to truly determine if Weavile is broken and think it could be rexamined later if its still determined to be a problem.

 

[Monky25]

I wasn’t sure whether to do a replay analysis of Weavile in the current metagame for this thread, but I eventually felt I’d regret it if I didn’t make a post about it at the least, where here I will take a look at all of Weavile’s showings in UU Homefield and SCL. To preface this post I am voting Do not Ban because I find defensive and offensive counterplay alike exists for Weavile and can be reasonable to fit but also primarily because I think most of the arguments the ban side has made ultimately fails to be shown in practice as evidenced below, thus considering them “invalid” so to speak:

Pdt’s Weavile takes out Reina’s Thundurus before being taken out itself by Enamorus’s reactive Tera Water. Reina’s Weavile works in tandem with Grasspon to overwhelm Tera Fairy Hydrapple at the end. I hear people say that Reina was forced to Tera Enamorus because if Weavile was Tera Ghost + Low Kick, Cobalion dies and pdt’s Weavile wins, but my honest opinion? I just think the team wasn’t prepared that well for Weavile, like if you load mono Weavile check Cobalion that’s not a good idea. I will address the argument that there’s too much to account for and thus a Weavile weak team had to be run later in this post:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798012
Punny’s Weavile loses to an Okidogi and doesn’t get a single kill, notably because it presumably dropped Triple Axel to fit both Ice Shard and Low Kick. Meanwhile, the other Weavile just gets 1v1d by a Necrozma:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798356
Eifo loaded mono Weavile check Cobalion; this is not enough counterplay because typically for a top tier you need 2 different checks barring hard counters (think like Hydrapple and Enamorus) which Cobalion is not. This isn’t a Weavile issue and the same is true for like every A rank threat. Hydrapple is the one who takes over this game anyway, but my point still stands this team just doesn’t account for Weavile and Eifo even admitted it:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796445?p2
Weavile gets one kill and then dies. This replay is interesting because Punny’s earlier point of Flame Body Heatran punishing revenge killing attempts is demonstrated here, but it doesn’t sway the game in a way that showcases Weavile’s prominence. Someone in the discord yesterday mentioned that the fact Weavile got a kill into Skarmory + Scizor + Keldeo is concerning, but that just doesn’t make sense really because it’s a good Pokemon and it’s doing its job as a Wallbreaker. Weavile is evidently an A+ Pokemon and it wouldn’t be ranked that high if it wasn’t able to put in value each game. That’s not overpowered, that’s just being a top tier: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-800621
Weavile dodges Wisp twice but also just doesn’t do anything noteworthy really:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219574426-3bhlpota8v3nqnkao3srw9na8am8rsdpw
Binary’s Weavile kills Slowking but is then revenge killed by Choice Scarf Excadrill. Meanwhile, Mindnight’s Weavile drops Mew after letting it get free setup rather than click Wisp and for some reason Lokix is binned to it. Weavile doesn’t come in again though:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219562150-2otmo6p200rnxg7ulb5z9a36asl97y4pw?p2
Weavile clicks Knock Off into Manaphy and fucking dies:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221290629-wln7gg3egxwwab3xn80c97mgmma0oa9pw?p2
H>L’s Weavile gets burned by Heatran but still manages to exert a bit of pressure on Lily’s team. Lily’s own Weavile ends up overwhelming Cobalion but not really taking the game over after that. H>L himself says he played like dogshit so take it what you will. I think this is more of a contentious Weavile showing, but is this a common theme? We will see as we go into more replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221127414-91a2xxa8z7vtuaw3giei2if5p7710m6pw?p2
Weavile fails to KO Heatran after a Knock Off crit into Low Kick. Maybe it was a roll but I cannot say for sure because I do not know the ev spreads:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796564
Liam’s Weavile Crits Mew and for some reason Bullet Punch was not clicked, allowing it to get Scizor down to 1%. Guest’s Weavile takes out a 10% Rotom-Wash and is kept in line between Skarmory and Tera Sinistcha:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2218148721-q40vc1c8x1k4ftv4337yjwinoj520ozpw
Pak’s Tera Poison Skeledirge beats out NDK’s Weavile. Here, we see Pak’s Weavile overwhelm Cobalion and clean late-game, also being able to clean due to Azumarill being taken out:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796326?p2
Weavile is kept in check by Rotom-Wash the entire game:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221131014-0ztnfpto16igclwgtwm2gl2hvyossp6pw
Weavile loses to the sand duo of Excadrill and Tyranitar:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798740?p2
Weavile fails to KO Tornadus with Knock and opens up Quaquaval to put a hole in Rasche’s team, ending up doing not much really:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799159
Weavile ends up being harded into Tyranitar’s Knock Off, losing its item between that and Pickpocket from Tinkaton, and sand chip takes it out:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799163
I honestly wasn’t paying attention too much but Weavile kills Heatran and gets revenge killed by Choice Scarf Hoopa so not a crazy showing I guess. This is the most Skarmory has ever clicked the move Whirlwind:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799531

Moreover, here are games where Weavile appears but should not be counted due to very bad hax that discounts the replay from being used or another pokemon like Manaphy or whoever just goes in badly. I still felt they should be included on this post just for the sake of reference
Epic Manaphy sweep: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-797093
Reina got haxed while the other Weavile was binned by switching into Serperior Glare for no reason: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-800393
Weavile just doesn’t hit the field, pretty crazy Okidogi performance tho:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796493
Weavile gets owned by KM teapot:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799056?p2
Weavile literally doesn’t do anything:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224222777-tcon220wdbdtammqh35z3bozsjvmlmupw
Epic Hawlucha sweep:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224234231-5bt9pzpj1sxauutxcdzpk0o4p19iihlpw
Maybe Wild Charge is the secret tech to make Hisuian Arcanine a good Pokemon:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799344
Choice Scarf Okidogi cleans late-game and Weavile cannot do anything:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799524?p2

Ok, are you all still with me? Excellent. After looking at these replays, it’s pretty clear Weavile is not broken, nor unhealthy even. At most, there’s two games where it does manage to overwhelm the Cobalion but it’s not like it takes over the game once that’s gone and I arguably believe that it is a skill intensive Pokémon that can be alleviated by decent playing. The most common ban argument is that a lot of the checks it uses are “fake answers that get broken past” like Rotom-Wash, Heatran, Skarmory, and Cobalion, but they are what actually keep it in line in-game, so while on paper they seem awkward, actual in-game evidence is clearly there and you can’t argue with that. Weavile struggles to get both entry and setup opportunities and no matter how good it seems on paper, it’s not like that in practice, and I thought we moved past looking at on paper stuff this generation. We are not seeing players have to resort to awkward shit like fully defensive Quaquaval or Comfey to beat Weavile. The ban argument keeps saying “Weavile can overload its checks” but that’s just not what is happening. We don’t just ban Pokémon who are very powerful paper. Greninja owns most of the tier with the right click, but it hasn’t done that in practice, hence why it’s balanced and allowed. Ogerpon-Cornerstone literally doesn’t have any counters and isn’t stupidly slow yet nobody actually thinks it’s overpowered. I am not saying Weavile will forever be fine but the lack of showing is insanely prevalent to where you just cannot label this Pokémon as broken. It’s not lasting forever, it’s not killing everything, and it’s not winning games. What makes Weavile unhealthy if what I just said doesn’t apply? Because it clicks Knock Off??? This isn’t like other pokemon in the tier, who I will get to next. Innocent until proven guilty is how we should tier and Weavile is 100% innocent.

There is only one argument I can see the ban side making now that I’ve disproven the claim that the common answers to it are not good into it when they very evidently are is that there is too many threats to account for, which while I feel sympathetic with, I do not understand why banning a clearly balanced Pokémon is the decision we are choosing to make. Both Okidogi and Hoopa-U are clear suspect candidates and are a lot more uninteractive in their capabilities and I don’t think I am alone in this take, but I also do not want to hijack the thread on these Pokemon so I won’t go into them much further. To publicly announce this as a council member, regardless of the Weavile result, Okidogi will be suspect tested shortly afterward. Just wanted to put that out there if anyone has any questions on what’s next. Like I said earlier, I get it, it’s frustrating to play a metagame in which you feel there is too much to account for, but tiering takes time and we shouldn’t ban something balanced for the sake of decreasing the threat load when there are Pokémon that taking action on will also achieve the result AND are a lot more justified. Can you actually say honestly that Weavile is more oppressive than some other Pokémon going around and if so do you have any evidence? To me, Weavile is a lot less problematic than other pokemon in the tier both in game and in the builder, being checked by numerous Pokemon such as Rotom-Wash, Cobalion, Skarmory, Heatran, Tinkaton, Keldeo, Lokix, Scizor, Okidogi, Gardevoir, the sand duo, numerous reactive Tera users, and more that fit on a variety of archetypes, whereas stuff like Okidogi and Hoopa feel a lot more limiting in the builder for more justifiable reasons imo. After all I mean, we had a metagame (pre shifts) where both Hoopa and Okidogi were criticized, and without Weavile, we return to something similar with Heatran traded for Zapdos mainly. Wouldn’t it be fair to evaluate Weavile in a potential metagame without those two considering with or without Weavile they were deeply disliked?

All in all, I truly hope this post was able to change at least one mind that Weavile is not banworthy Pokémon. I strongly believe it would be a hasty ban to take out something that really has not demonstrated itself to be all that in replays and take the blame for the issues other Pokemon seem to be causing in the tier instead. My own personal tiering action would be to keep Weavile and take action on Okidogi and maybe Hoopa as well for a better UU. Weavile getting banned would be an extreme shame and I hope we avoid making this mistake.

Monky Out

 

[ThatOneApple]

I'm probably gonna vote ban, not because I have any particular hate towards Weavile alone but because I think the tier is kinda crammed with offensive threats we don't have the tools to properly account for. The main 3 suspects of this to me are Weavile, the current target, Hoopa, and Okidogi. Primarily because all 3 of them tend to require multiple forms of counterplay on a team while also outrunning the whole meta, meaning that the "multiple forms of counterplay" usually just boils down to multiple switch-ins or just not using anything they can threaten from full, which is a massive pain in the builder. Okidogi can also run other sets to great effect but he's not the current subjust rn so ill just wait for his suspect to get into detail on him. Now, Weavile is probably the one that does the whole "not using anything it threatens" thing the least because its not super strong initially at least compared to the other two, but it makes up for it with the fact that it can run boots while outrunning everything, meaning you cant just vomit up hazards and just kinda hope it dies. The fact that its not running a choice item also means it can switch moves, meaning that once things like Heatran and Cobalion are in low kick range, it can just go for it.

Other than that I kinda just agree with some of what these posts say

The issue is a ton of these supposed checks are not good pokemon. First of all, id actually like to asses that most of the mons mentioned in the other posts are NOT good answers to weavile. Rotom/keldeo/skarmory/scizor/lokix are not good weavile switch-ins. Rotom takes a huge amount from knock off and does not have reliable recovery (also highly prefers running spdef these days for stuff like greninja), keldeo does not enjoy knock either and hardly ever makes progress without an item, skarmory loses its helmet to knock so it cannot punish weavile and gets abused by everything else in the meta, same for toxapex. Scizor and lokix dont want to come in on knock off and while yes, they could be considered good rkillers, you are not considering an important factor. Weavile isn't alone, there are five other pokemons that are either enabled by weavile or that enable it to do its job even better. What happens if your opp has weavile with flame body tran behind? You'd get burned and then you would not be able to rkill weavile anymore. Quaquaval and tinkaton are probably the best checks mentioned as they resist all of weaviles moves quite well, and would only lose to a tera blast set. Don't rly feel like mentioning that possibility though, as weavile definitely doesn't need it. That is because those two pokemon mentioned match-up pretty bad against a great portion of the tier (excadrill/rotom/heatran for tinka, torn/rotom/slowking/enam/apple for defensive quaquaval), so they can be easily taken adventage of.
Its best checks are by far cobalion and heatran, latter being actually really good at handling it considering weavile needs low kick to beat its def set and that it can still get burned while killing it. Issue at that point is to beat weavile either one of those two things happen: you use your tera on heatran to tank low kick, you die to low kick but you get the burn. Losing tera would 100% put you at a disadvantage, so lets consider the latter, which is definitely a good enough solution to handling weavile. But what happens if the opponent has a scizor or zarude or whatever behind to abuse heatran being gone? The issue with no ban posts ive seen thus far is ppl who posted seem to think a mon is broken only when unbeatable and sweeps almost every game. Spoiler: a mon does not need to kill al six pokemons to be actually broken. And thats what happens here imo. We don't need a mon whose defensive utility is approx 0 and that enambles a ton of 5050s and rng turns (flamebody), ban this thing.

Streets are saying weavile is not broken and thus i am posting again. To begin with we should establish that weavile essentially mandates running a pokemon that resists both dark and ice. You can maybe circumvent this somewhat if you have kix or scizor meaning your revenge killers arent worried about ice shard (although sciz getting chipped into range isnt completely inconceivable), but you are likely then presented with the issue of what to switch into knock off and trying to be cute and pivot around it isnt exactly in your favour when its as fast as it is. So broadly speaking in order to account for sd stabs + ice shard you are reliant on defensive counterplay which can vary in how sturdy it is and how good it is in the meta, ideally with priority to help shore up the mu.

The next problem you encounter is that there are ways around this defensive counterplay. Low kick is common enough that coba has pretty much switched to always being chople, and while this does slow weavile down you get knocked and youre no longer a switch in to low kick weavile. Theres also the issue that weavile can tera, with ghost having been common punishing fighting moves while ive been shilling tera electric tera blast all day, which will beat coba switching in on sd 1v1 always (tera blast 2hkos as coba fails to ko and cant even twave now). Both of these have the added benefit of giving weavile more oppurtunities to guarantee an sd, while flipping the mu vs many of its checks. The way around this is basically having lokix or a scarfer, or never allowing weavile to get a "free" sd so that you can rely on certain weaker forms of priority.

I think that overall you can look at this and make an argument that this mon is manageable, its not that unreasonable to fit all this stuff, many teams already did. The problem comes from the fact that you can have good counterplay and weavile is still broken because clicking its stabs basically makes infinite progress, especially with hazards up. When you look at the checks cited, only quaquaval and toxapex have recovery and the reality is that theyre just not very good and arent used very often for a reason, and in quaqs case dont even like running recovery, while the more splashable checks this mon has like coba and tink are pretty susceptible to hazards and being chipped down by the volt turn cores that are supposedly the real problem.

Weavile is broken just by clicking taxel and knock and then it gets to sd and run another attack for funsies. Even in the event less splashable counterplay options like pex and quaq really start to take off tera elecs oppurtunity cost really isnt all that and it becomes increasingly incentivised to be used. When i was getting reqs i used tera blast electric and vs offense i honestly just... threw out attacks a lot. Tera blast okhos quaq with a spike up which resulted in a lot of favourable positions for me, and i never felt like i missed shard or low kick. Vs fatter stuff id normally blow through pex with tera blast and my opponents teams would just kind of fall apart vs it. I think ice shard is missed a bit vs more bo style teams but its knock off is still crazy.

Ultimately i wish this mon wasnt broken cos if it was balanced itd be a great addition to the tier but unfortunately it is not healthy please ban it thx besties

Now i kinda wanna address the whole "weavile has been struggling in practice" thing a little.

To me at least, it seems that a lot of these games Weavile is struggling in are as a result of teams spamming the ever loving hell out of revenge killers like keldeo and Sciz while also not using things that are threatened by Weav (and they do, the weav weak mon tends to eat tera). Now to be perfectly fair i didnt give these games a thorough analysis because I have a bunch of schoolwork im catching up on and classes to do so i dont rlly have time but i do feel as though the whole "builder constraint" point is justified to a degree. Manaphy has been claiming some games because, to me, teams simply dont have room to fit counterplay.

Now is this specifically a Weavile thing? Not really, but I do think one or two of the Weav Hoopa Dogi trio need to go and dont have any particular qualms with who so if Weav is first Weav is getting a ban vote from me. Sorry for the rather low effort I just wanted to get a post in while I had the headspace for it.

 

[Moutemoute]

I wasn’t sure whether to do a replay analysis of Weavile in the current metagame for this thread, but I eventually felt I’d regret it if I didn’t make a post about it at the least, where here I will take a look at all of Weavile’s showings in UU Homefield and SCL. To preface this post I am voting Do not Ban because I find defensive and offensive counterplay alike exists for Weavile and can be reasonable to fit but also primarily because I think most of the arguments the ban side has made ultimately fails to be shown in practice as evidenced below, thus considering them “invalid” so to speak:

Pdt’s Weavile takes out Reina’s Thundurus before being taken out itself by Enamorus’s reactive Tera Water. Reina’s Weavile works in tandem with Grasspon to overwhelm Tera Fairy Hydrapple at the end. I hear people say that Reina was forced to Tera Enamorus because if Weavile was Tera Ghost + Low Kick, Cobalion dies and pdt’s Weavile wins, but my honest opinion? I just think the team wasn’t prepared that well for Weavile, like if you load mono Weavile check Cobalion that’s not a good idea. I will address the argument that there’s too much to account for and thus a Weavile weak team had to be run later in this post:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798012
Punny’s Weavile loses to an Okidogi and doesn’t get a single kill, notably because it presumably dropped Triple Axel to fit both Ice Shard and Low Kick. Meanwhile, the other Weavile just gets 1v1d by a Necrozma:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798356
Eifo loaded mono Weavile check Cobalion; this is not enough counterplay because typically for a top tier you need 2 different checks barring hard counters (think like Hydrapple and Enamorus) which Cobalion is not. This isn’t a Weavile issue and the same is true for like every A rank threat. Hydrapple is the one who takes over this game anyway, but my point still stands this team just doesn’t account for Weavile and Eifo even admitted it:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796445?p2
Weavile gets one kill and then dies. This replay is interesting because Punny’s earlier point of Flame Body Heatran punishing revenge killing attempts is demonstrated here, but it doesn’t sway the game in a way that showcases Weavile’s prominence. Someone in the discord yesterday mentioned that the fact Weavile got a kill into Skarmory + Scizor + Keldeo is concerning, but that just doesn’t make sense really because it’s a good Pokemon and it’s doing its job as a Wallbreaker. Weavile is evidently an A+ Pokemon and it wouldn’t be ranked that high if it wasn’t able to put in value each game. That’s not overpowered, that’s just being a top tier: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-800621
Weavile dodges Wisp twice but also just doesn’t do anything noteworthy really:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219574426-3bhlpota8v3nqnkao3srw9na8am8rsdpw
Binary’s Weavile kills Slowking but is then revenge killed by Choice Scarf Excadrill. Meanwhile, Mindnight’s Weavile drops Mew after letting it get free setup rather than click Wisp and for some reason Lokix is binned to it. Weavile doesn’t come in again though:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219562150-2otmo6p200rnxg7ulb5z9a36asl97y4pw?p2
Weavile clicks Knock Off into Manaphy and fucking dies:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221290629-wln7gg3egxwwab3xn80c97mgmma0oa9pw?p2
H>L’s Weavile gets burned by Heatran but still manages to exert a bit of pressure on Lily’s team. Lily’s own Weavile ends up overwhelming Cobalion but not really taking the game over after that. H>L himself says he played like dogshit so take it what you will. I think this is more of a contentious Weavile showing, but is this a common theme? We will see as we go into more replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221127414-91a2xxa8z7vtuaw3giei2if5p7710m6pw?p2
Weavile fails to KO Heatran after a Knock Off crit into Low Kick. Maybe it was a roll but I cannot say for sure because I do not know the ev spreads:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796564
Liam’s Weavile Crits Mew and for some reason Bullet Punch was not clicked, allowing it to get Scizor down to 1%. Guest’s Weavile takes out a 10% Rotom-Wash and is kept in line between Skarmory and Tera Sinistcha:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2218148721-q40vc1c8x1k4ftv4337yjwinoj520ozpw
Pak’s Tera Poison Skeledirge beats out NDK’s Weavile. Here, we see Pak’s Weavile overwhelm Cobalion and clean late-game, also being able to clean due to Azumarill being taken out:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796326?p2
Weavile is kept in check by Rotom-Wash the entire game:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221131014-0ztnfpto16igclwgtwm2gl2hvyossp6pw
Weavile loses to the sand duo of Excadrill and Tyranitar:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798740?p2
Weavile fails to KO Tornadus with Knock and opens up Quaquaval to put a hole in Rasche’s team, ending up doing not much really:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799159
Weavile ends up being harded into Tyranitar’s Knock Off, losing its item between that and Pickpocket from Tinkaton, and sand chip takes it out:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799163
I honestly wasn’t paying attention too much but Weavile kills Heatran and gets revenge killed by Choice Scarf Hoopa so not a crazy showing I guess. This is the most Skarmory has ever clicked the move Whirlwind:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799531

Moreover, here are games where Weavile appears but should not be counted due to very bad hax that discounts the replay from being used or another pokemon like Manaphy or whoever just goes in badly. I still felt they should be included on this post just for the sake of reference
Epic Manaphy sweep: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-797093
Reina got haxed while the other Weavile was binned by switching into Serperior Glare for no reason: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-800393
Weavile just doesn’t hit the field, pretty crazy Okidogi performance tho:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796493
Weavile gets owned by KM teapot:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799056?p2
Weavile literally doesn’t do anything:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224222777-tcon220wdbdtammqh35z3bozsjvmlmupw
Epic Hawlucha sweep:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224234231-5bt9pzpj1sxauutxcdzpk0o4p19iihlpw
Maybe Wild Charge is the secret tech to make Hisuian Arcanine a good Pokemon:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799344
Choice Scarf Okidogi cleans late-game and Weavile cannot do anything:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799524?p2

Ok, are you all still with me? Excellent. After looking at these replays, it’s pretty clear Weavile is not broken, nor unhealthy even. At most, there’s two games where it does manage to overwhelm the Cobalion but it’s not like it takes over the game once that’s gone and I arguably believe that it is a skill intensive Pokémon that can be alleviated by decent playing. The most common ban argument is that a lot of the checks it uses are “fake answers that get broken past” like Rotom-Wash, Heatran, Skarmory, and Cobalion, but they are what actually keep it in line in-game, so while on paper they seem awkward, actual in-game evidence is clearly there and you can’t argue with that. Weavile struggles to get both entry and setup opportunities and no matter how good it seems on paper, it’s not like that in practice, and I thought we moved past looking at on paper stuff this generation. We are not seeing players have to resort to awkward shit like fully defensive Quaquaval or Comfey to beat Weavile. The ban argument keeps saying “Weavile can overload its checks” but that’s just not what is happening. We don’t just ban Pokémon who are very powerful paper. Greninja owns most of the tier with the right click, but it hasn’t done that in practice, hence why it’s balanced and allowed. Ogerpon-Cornerstone literally doesn’t have any counters and isn’t stupidly slow yet nobody actually thinks it’s overpowered. I am not saying Weavile will forever be fine but the lack of showing is insanely prevalent to where you just cannot label this Pokémon as broken. It’s not lasting forever, it’s not killing everything, and it’s not winning games. What makes Weavile unhealthy if what I just said doesn’t apply? Because it clicks Knock Off??? This isn’t like other pokemon in the tier, who I will get to next. Innocent until proven guilty is how we should tier and Weavile is 100% innocent.

There is only one argument I can see the ban side making now that I’ve disproven the claim that the common answers to it are not good into it when they very evidently are is that there is too many threats to account for, which while I feel sympathetic with, I do not understand why banning a clearly balanced Pokémon is the decision we are choosing to make. Both Okidogi and Hoopa-U are clear suspect candidates and are a lot more uninteractive in their capabilities and I don’t think I am alone in this take, but I also do not want to hijack the thread on these Pokemon so I won’t go into them much further. To publicly announce this as a council member, regardless of the Weavile result, Okidogi will be suspect tested shortly afterward. Just wanted to put that out there if anyone has any questions on what’s next. Like I said earlier, I get it, it’s frustrating to play a metagame in which you feel there is too much to account for, but tiering takes time and we shouldn’t ban something balanced for the sake of decreasing the threat load when there are Pokémon that taking action on will also achieve the result AND are a lot more justified. Can you actually say honestly that Weavile is more oppressive than some other Pokémon going around and if so do you have any evidence? To me, Weavile is a lot less problematic than other pokemon in the tier both in game and in the builder, being checked by numerous Pokemon such as Rotom-Wash, Cobalion, Skarmory, Heatran, Tinkaton, Keldeo, Lokix, Scizor, Okidogi, Gardevoir, the sand duo, numerous reactive Tera users, and more that fit on a variety of archetypes, whereas stuff like Okidogi and Hoopa feel a lot more limiting in the builder for more justifiable reasons imo. After all I mean, we had a metagame (pre shifts) where both Hoopa and Okidogi were criticized, and without Weavile, we return to something similar with Heatran traded for Zapdos mainly. Wouldn’t it be fair to evaluate Weavile in a potential metagame without those two considering with or without Weavile they were deeply disliked?

All in all, I truly hope this post was able to change at least one mind that Weavile is not banworthy Pokémon. I strongly believe it would be a hasty ban to take out something that really has not demonstrated itself to be all that in replays and take the blame for the issues other Pokemon seem to be causing in the tier instead. My own personal tiering action would be to keep Weavile and take action on Okidogi and maybe Hoopa as well for a better UU. Weavile getting banned would be an extreme shame and I hope we avoid making this mistake.

Monky Out

Just would like to point out that I dislike the fact that you're ignoring than in most of those games, the team are overprepped to deal with Weavile so obviously it's not able to fuck everything (if it was the case, this thing would have been banned already). I mean, Heatran is currently running more physically defensive spreads because it allows it to mess with Weavile.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798012
Cobalion on both sides. Scizor acts as a revenge killer and soft check on the other hand, Tera Water Enamorus just lures in Weavile and punishes it (same applies to Tera Fairy Hydrapple).

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798356
Okidogi + Heatran on both teams.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796445
Cobalion on one side, Tera Fairy Hydrapple, Quaquaval and Heatran on the other.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219574426-3bhlpota8v3nqnkao3srw9na8am8rsdpw
Cobalion + Scizor. On the other side, it's a HO which most of the time are tradding with Weavile even tho some recents variants are quite weak to it.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219562150-2otmo6p200rnxg7ulb5z9a36asl97y4pw
Hydrapple (we don't know the Tera) + Heatran. On the other side Quaquaval + Scizor (since it's a HO I wouldn't count Lokix because most of them do not run First Impression on HO).

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221290629-wln7gg3egxwwab3xn80c97mgmma0oa9pw
Okidogi + Scizor and Quaquaval + Scizor on the other team (see above for why I don't count Lokix).

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221127414-91a2xxa8z7vtuaw3giei2if5p7710m6pw
Okidogi + Cobalion vs Heatran + Quaquaval.

etc.. etc..

I'm too lazy to count and do the list for every replays but almost every single team listed above is filled with checks to Weavile (tons of Okidogi, Quaquaval, Cobalion, Scizor (and it's not only linked to the rise of Zapdos), Rotom-Wash, Heatran etc..) or Pokémon which can use Tera to flip the match-up (such as Skeledirge or Hydrapple). I won't say it's not because those Pokémon are not great on their own, but I trully think Weavile's presence impact those usages. The rise of Tinkaton once again or Keldeo is linked to Weavile to a certain extent too (the first one handle almost any variants of Weavile while the other checks Weavile while enjoying a shit ton the fact that Weavile put pressure on some common checks like Tornadus-T, Slowking or Hydrapple).

 

[Lily]

Gonna push back on the idea that people are intentionally overloading on Weavile checks bc I find it kind of crazy that we're saying stacking mons like Cobalion (A+), Rotom-W (A), Scizor (A), Tera Fairy Hydrapple (A + most common Tera-type pre-Weavile drop), Tera Poison/Fairy/Dark Skeledirge (A- + common Teras already), Okidogi (A+), Lokix (A+), Quaquaval (A-), Tinkaton (B+) etc... is a result of Weavile's dominance. Like no. This is how teams were built before Weavile dropped, solid Dark resists + good priority has been a thing for months atp with Hoopa being as good as it is & Weavile doesn't move the needle heavily here, other than promoting physdef Heatran as a way to punish contact moves... which is a spread it'd prefer to run on that moveset anyway to give it better odds of checking Scizor / trading with Cobalion etc. compared to SpDef which doesn't really check much beyond Latios.

I'm not absolutely convinced one way or the other right now on Weavile but it's maaaaaajor cope to say that these mons which have been good for literal months (some even years!) are only getting run because of Weavile or that we have to stack too many of them. Literally any analysis points to the contrary as you can see here, here, here, here, here, and here, where you'll see tons of Dark resists, priority mons, fat regens, and Tera flippers all stacked together... and this is not cherrypicked, it's from one single week of UUBD.

The simple fact of the matter is that Weavile - or at the very least, boots Weavile - does not threaten things immediately enough for the argument of "people are overstacking on checks and avoiding mons weak to it" to be truly convincing. If you look at the VR, it can threaten an unboosted OHKO on few Pokemon with its STAB moves from S to B+ (Tornadus-T, Hydrapple, Latios being the main ones) and essentially every single one save for Gastrodon threatens it with either an OHKO, huge damage, or immediate debilitating status. Nothing has truly been kept down as a result of Weavile's presence - Hydrapple and Slowking are even better than before, and even Latios is making a comeback - so I don't really buy the idea that teams are being forced to overprep for it right now, at least not for the reasons given.

 

[Mossy Sandwich]

I'm probably gonna vote ban, not because I have any particular hate towards Weavile alone but because I think the tier is kinda crammed with offensive threats we don't have the tools to properly account for. The main 3 suspects of this to me are Weavile, the current target, Hoopa, and Okidogi. Primarily because all 3 of them tend to require multiple forms of counterplay on a team while also outrunning the whole meta, meaning that the "multiple forms of counterplay" usually just boils down to multiple switch-ins or just not using anything they can threaten from full, which is a massive pain in the builder. Okidogi can also run other sets to great effect but he's not the current subjust rn so ill just wait for his suspect to get into detail on him. Now, Weavile is probably the one that does the whole "not using anything it threatens" thing the least because its not super strong initially at least compared to the other two, but it makes up for it with the fact that it can run boots while outrunning everything, meaning you cant just vomit up hazards and just kinda hope it dies. The fact that its not running a choice item also means it can switch moves, meaning that once things like Heatran and Cobalion are in low kick range, it can just go for it.

Other than that I kinda just agree with some of what these posts say




Now i kinda wanna address the whole "weavile has been struggling in practice" thing a little.

To me at least, it seems that a lot of these games Weavile is struggling in are as a result of teams spamming the ever loving hell out of revenge killers like keldeo and Sciz while also not using things that are threatened by Weav (and they do, the weav weak mon tends to eat tera). Now to be perfectly fair i didnt give these games a thorough analysis because I have a bunch of schoolwork im catching up on and classes to do so i dont rlly have time but i do feel as though the whole "builder constraint" point is justified to a degree. Manaphy has been claiming some games because, to me, teams simply dont have room to fit counterplay.

Now is this specifically a Weavile thing? Not really, but I do think one or two of the Weav Hoopa Dogi trio need to go and dont have any particular qualms with who so if Weav is first Weav is getting a ban vote from me. Sorry for the rather low effort I just wanted to get a post in while I had the headspace for it.

This has been addressed by monky in the latter part of this post, we're suspecting dogi next and, most likely, hoopa afterwards regardless of what happens. Banning something for the sake of lowering threat count is just impatient, we're gonna get to these other threats soon, so why rush things and risk removing something that shouldn't be removed?

Just would like to point out that I dislike the fact that you're ignoring than in most of those games, the team are overprepped to deal with Weavile so obviously it's not able to fuck everything (if it was the case, this thing would have been banned already). I mean, Heatran is currently running more physically defensive spreads because it allows it to mess with Weavile.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798012
Cobalion on both sides. Scizor acts as a revenge killer and soft check on the other hand, Tera Water Enamorus just lures in Weavile and punishes it (same applies to Tera Fairy Hydrapple).

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798356
Okidogi + Heatran on both teams.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796445
Cobalion on one side, Tera Fairy Hydrapple, Quaquaval and Heatran on the other.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219574426-3bhlpota8v3nqnkao3srw9na8am8rsdpw
Cobalion + Scizor. On the other side, it's a HO which most of the time are tradding with Weavile even tho some recents variants are quite weak to it.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219562150-2otmo6p200rnxg7ulb5z9a36asl97y4pw
Hydrapple (we don't know the Tera) + Heatran. On the other side Quaquaval + Scizor (since it's a HO I wouldn't count Lokix because most of them do not run First Impression on HO).

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221290629-wln7gg3egxwwab3xn80c97mgmma0oa9pw
Okidogi + Scizor and Quaquaval + Scizor on the other team (see above for why I don't count Lokix).

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221127414-91a2xxa8z7vtuaw3giei2if5p7710m6pw
Okidogi + Cobalion vs Heatran + Quaquaval.

etc.. etc..

I'm too lazy to count and do the list for every replays but almost every single team listed above is filled with checks to Weavile (tons of Okidogi, Quaquaval, Cobalion, Scizor (and it's not only linked to the rise of Zapdos), Rotom-Wash, Heatran etc..) or Pokémon which can use Tera to flip the match-up (such as Skeledirge or Hydrapple). I won't say it's not because those Pokémon are not great on their own, but I trully think Weavile's presence impact those usages. The rise of Tinkaton once again or Keldeo is linked to Weavile to a certain extent too (the first one handle almost any variants of Weavile while the other checks Weavile while enjoying a shit ton the fact that Weavile put pressure on some common checks like Tornadus-T, Slowking or Hydrapple).

Teams are not overprepped for Weavile, just slightly geared towards dealing with it. Sure, it influences people's building choices, but for the most part, checks to it include stuff that's otherwise highly recommended if not mandatory. Fighting-types are already borderline required with Hoopa around, so Dogi and Coba usage is pretty much natural. Same applies to Steel-types like... yeah you usually have Steel-types on your team to deal with stuff like Latios or Ogerpon-C, so slotting Heatran or Scizor is pretty natural. Waters are pretty similar too to deal with Heatran and Greninja, so we see stuff like Rotom-W a lot with Quaquaval as another option that's gotten significantly better. Yes, the metagame has adapted with previously rare mons seeing more usage because they perform better into the meta, but Weavile is pretty easily covered in builder using A+ to A- mons unless you go with extremely standard (and arguably outdated cores) using Excadrill+Regen mons which I'd argue we do not want to encourage anyway as it leads to a much less interactive metagame.


Weavile's good, I don't think anyone's debating that. My teambuilding and playing has changed a little to adapt to it and I've seen some games where it puts in some pretty good work. However, I think this is perfectly fine. I'm not bending over backwards to beat it and it's not taking over games, it's just another mon to be careful of.

 

[ThatOneApple]

Banning something for the sake of lowering threat count is just impatient, we're gonna get to these other threats soon, so why rush things and risk removing something that shouldn't be removed?

I mean as I said I really don't have any qualms with who goes as long as at least one of them does, i dislike all of them so I'm just taking whats available to me at the current moment, you can have a negative opinion of that if you want but its how I'm rolling with it. I think all 3 of them have a net negative effect on the tier so my vote will likely be to ban Weavile.

Literally any analysis points to the contrary as you can see here, here, here, here, here, and here, where you'll see tons of Dark resists, priority mons, fat regens, and Tera flippers all stacked together... and this is not cherrypicked, it's from one single week of UUBD.

I understand the point you're getting at but I feel the main difference here is that some of the dark resists (like Fez and Zarude) dont work super well against Weavile, which is where my point of its effect on the builder comes from. You can't just use any dark resist for it as a good few of them don't take its other moves well (hell some of them dont even wanna take the knock) which kinda stretches the options thin, especially when you end up needing to slot multiple checks.

I dont wanna get too into this so I'll probably just leave it there for my argument. Most of what I've had to say is kinda just personal thoughts anyhow so if anyone disagrees feel free to.

 

[Micciu]

I wasn’t sure whether to do a replay analysis of Weavile in the current metagame for this thread, but I eventually felt I’d regret it if I didn’t make a post about it at the least, where here I will take a look at all of Weavile’s showings in UU Homefield and SCL. To preface this post I am voting Do not Ban because I find defensive and offensive counterplay alike exists for Weavile and can be reasonable to fit but also primarily because I think most of the arguments the ban side has made ultimately fails to be shown in practice as evidenced below, thus considering them “invalid” so to speak:

Pdt’s Weavile takes out Reina’s Thundurus before being taken out itself by Enamorus’s reactive Tera Water. Reina’s Weavile works in tandem with Grasspon to overwhelm Tera Fairy Hydrapple at the end. I hear people say that Reina was forced to Tera Enamorus because if Weavile was Tera Ghost + Low Kick, Cobalion dies and pdt’s Weavile wins, but my honest opinion? I just think the team wasn’t prepared that well for Weavile, like if you load mono Weavile check Cobalion that’s not a good idea. I will address the argument that there’s too much to account for and thus a Weavile weak team had to be run later in this post:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798012
Punny’s Weavile loses to an Okidogi and doesn’t get a single kill, notably because it presumably dropped Triple Axel to fit both Ice Shard and Low Kick. Meanwhile, the other Weavile just gets 1v1d by a Necrozma:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798356
Eifo loaded mono Weavile check Cobalion; this is not enough counterplay because typically for a top tier you need 2 different checks barring hard counters (think like Hydrapple and Enamorus) which Cobalion is not. This isn’t a Weavile issue and the same is true for like every A rank threat. Hydrapple is the one who takes over this game anyway, but my point still stands this team just doesn’t account for Weavile and Eifo even admitted it:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796445?p2
Weavile gets one kill and then dies. This replay is interesting because Punny’s earlier point of Flame Body Heatran punishing revenge killing attempts is demonstrated here, but it doesn’t sway the game in a way that showcases Weavile’s prominence. Someone in the discord yesterday mentioned that the fact Weavile got a kill into Skarmory + Scizor + Keldeo is concerning, but that just doesn’t make sense really because it’s a good Pokemon and it’s doing its job as a Wallbreaker. Weavile is evidently an A+ Pokemon and it wouldn’t be ranked that high if it wasn’t able to put in value each game. That’s not overpowered, that’s just being a top tier: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-800621
Weavile dodges Wisp twice but also just doesn’t do anything noteworthy really:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219574426-3bhlpota8v3nqnkao3srw9na8am8rsdpw
Binary’s Weavile kills Slowking but is then revenge killed by Choice Scarf Excadrill. Meanwhile, Mindnight’s Weavile drops Mew after letting it get free setup rather than click Wisp and for some reason Lokix is binned to it. Weavile doesn’t come in again though:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2219562150-2otmo6p200rnxg7ulb5z9a36asl97y4pw?p2
Weavile clicks Knock Off into Manaphy and fucking dies:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221290629-wln7gg3egxwwab3xn80c97mgmma0oa9pw?p2
H>L’s Weavile gets burned by Heatran but still manages to exert a bit of pressure on Lily’s team. Lily’s own Weavile ends up overwhelming Cobalion but not really taking the game over after that. H>L himself says he played like dogshit so take it what you will. I think this is more of a contentious Weavile showing, but is this a common theme? We will see as we go into more replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221127414-91a2xxa8z7vtuaw3giei2if5p7710m6pw?p2
Weavile fails to KO Heatran after a Knock Off crit into Low Kick. Maybe it was a roll but I cannot say for sure because I do not know the ev spreads:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796564
Liam’s Weavile Crits Mew and for some reason Bullet Punch was not clicked, allowing it to get Scizor down to 1%. Guest’s Weavile takes out a 10% Rotom-Wash and is kept in line between Skarmory and Tera Sinistcha:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2218148721-q40vc1c8x1k4ftv4337yjwinoj520ozpw
Pak’s Tera Poison Skeledirge beats out NDK’s Weavile. Here, we see Pak’s Weavile overwhelm Cobalion and clean late-game, also being able to clean due to Azumarill being taken out:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796326?p2
Weavile is kept in check by Rotom-Wash the entire game:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2221131014-0ztnfpto16igclwgtwm2gl2hvyossp6pw
Weavile loses to the sand duo of Excadrill and Tyranitar:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798740?p2
Weavile fails to KO Tornadus with Knock and opens up Quaquaval to put a hole in Rasche’s team, ending up doing not much really:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799159
Weavile ends up being harded into Tyranitar’s Knock Off, losing its item between that and Pickpocket from Tinkaton, and sand chip takes it out:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799163
I honestly wasn’t paying attention too much but Weavile kills Heatran and gets revenge killed by Choice Scarf Hoopa so not a crazy showing I guess. This is the most Skarmory has ever clicked the move Whirlwind:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799531

Moreover, here are games where Weavile appears but should not be counted due to very bad hax that discounts the replay from being used or another pokemon like Manaphy or whoever just goes in badly. I still felt they should be included on this post just for the sake of reference
Epic Manaphy sweep: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-797093
Reina got haxed while the other Weavile was binned by switching into Serperior Glare for no reason: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-800393
Weavile just doesn’t hit the field, pretty crazy Okidogi performance tho:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-796493
Weavile gets owned by KM teapot:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799056?p2
Weavile literally doesn’t do anything:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224222777-tcon220wdbdtammqh35z3bozsjvmlmupw
Epic Hawlucha sweep:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2224234231-5bt9pzpj1sxauutxcdzpk0o4p19iihlpw
Maybe Wild Charge is the secret tech to make Hisuian Arcanine a good Pokemon:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799344
Choice Scarf Okidogi cleans late-game and Weavile cannot do anything:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-799524?p2

Ok, are you all still with me? Excellent. After looking at these replays, it’s pretty clear Weavile is not broken, nor unhealthy even. At most, there’s two games where it does manage to overwhelm the Cobalion but it’s not like it takes over the game once that’s gone and I arguably believe that it is a skill intensive Pokémon that can be alleviated by decent playing. The most common ban argument is that a lot of the checks it uses are “fake answers that get broken past” like Rotom-Wash, Heatran, Skarmory, and Cobalion, but they are what actually keep it in line in-game, so while on paper they seem awkward, actual in-game evidence is clearly there and you can’t argue with that. Weavile struggles to get both entry and setup opportunities and no matter how good it seems on paper, it’s not like that in practice, and I thought we moved past looking at on paper stuff this generation. We are not seeing players have to resort to awkward shit like fully defensive Quaquaval or Comfey to beat Weavile. The ban argument keeps saying “Weavile can overload its checks” but that’s just not what is happening. We don’t just ban Pokémon who are very powerful paper. Greninja owns most of the tier with the right click, but it hasn’t done that in practice, hence why it’s balanced and allowed. Ogerpon-Cornerstone literally doesn’t have any counters and isn’t stupidly slow yet nobody actually thinks it’s overpowered. I am not saying Weavile will forever be fine but the lack of showing is insanely prevalent to where you just cannot label this Pokémon as broken. It’s not lasting forever, it’s not killing everything, and it’s not winning games. What makes Weavile unhealthy if what I just said doesn’t apply? Because it clicks Knock Off??? This isn’t like other pokemon in the tier, who I will get to next. Innocent until proven guilty is how we should tier and Weavile is 100% innocent.

There is only one argument I can see the ban side making now that I’ve disproven the claim that the common answers to it are not good into it when they very evidently are is that there is too many threats to account for, which while I feel sympathetic with, I do not understand why banning a clearly balanced Pokémon is the decision we are choosing to make. Both Okidogi and Hoopa-U are clear suspect candidates and are a lot more uninteractive in their capabilities and I don’t think I am alone in this take, but I also do not want to hijack the thread on these Pokemon so I won’t go into them much further. To publicly announce this as a council member, regardless of the Weavile result, Okidogi will be suspect tested shortly afterward. Just wanted to put that out there if anyone has any questions on what’s next. Like I said earlier, I get it, it’s frustrating to play a metagame in which you feel there is too much to account for, but tiering takes time and we shouldn’t ban something balanced for the sake of decreasing the threat load when there are Pokémon that taking action on will also achieve the result AND are a lot more justified. Can you actually say honestly that Weavile is more oppressive than some other Pokémon going around and if so do you have any evidence? To me, Weavile is a lot less problematic than other pokemon in the tier both in game and in the builder, being checked by numerous Pokemon such as Rotom-Wash, Cobalion, Skarmory, Heatran, Tinkaton, Keldeo, Lokix, Scizor, Okidogi, Gardevoir, the sand duo, numerous reactive Tera users, and more that fit on a variety of archetypes, whereas stuff like Okidogi and Hoopa feel a lot more limiting in the builder for more justifiable reasons imo. After all I mean, we had a metagame (pre shifts) where both Hoopa and Okidogi were criticized, and without Weavile, we return to something similar with Heatran traded for Zapdos mainly. Wouldn’t it be fair to evaluate Weavile in a potential metagame without those two considering with or without Weavile they were deeply disliked?

All in all, I truly hope this post was able to change at least one mind that Weavile is not banworthy Pokémon. I strongly believe it would be a hasty ban to take out something that really has not demonstrated itself to be all that in replays and take the blame for the issues other Pokemon seem to be causing in the tier instead. My own personal tiering action would be to keep Weavile and take action on Okidogi and maybe Hoopa as well for a better UU. Weavile getting banned would be an extreme shame and I hope we avoid making this mistake.

Monky Out

Ok its my first time that I'm going to write a long post about meta. I'll directly apologize for my English and the form in which I'll write and expose my examples, I'll try to do my best. As far as I'm concerned, before stating my case, I'll be blunt, Weavile must be banned from the UU. I'll start by talking about the teambuilding that imposes power to counter or power to outspeed weavile. https://pokepast.es/34960e8e7398c403, In the team I used for one week of a tournament for the EPL, I built around Heatran flame body as we used it in ss with flame body to be able to fish burn on triple axel of the one or knoff also to catch a burn against this one. I play a tera that's not too popular on a mon that's not popular and is donphan with the tera water to be able to look for a kill against it. And finally I play okidogi scarf to outspeed and take a kill against vile. You can see that I'm playing tera fairy with my rotom wash to be able to handle the various dark ones that can cause problems including weavile and focus blast torna with the tera steel to have another way of catching him once again. You can see that despite all his countermeasures, I can lose to weavile at any time because he can be played with the tera ghost to resist skarm's body press or okidogi's cc and drain punch, I can miss fb with my torna and if I'm not lucky enough to burn with my tran with his flame body and I lose the strudy with my donphan, he can finish off my team. One of the first things we can observe is that weavile is a headache for building and restrain many a team just by its presence. Another problem with building with this mon is that it forces us to play a scarf like drill scarf, tran or okidogi to be able to outspeed and revenge kill it.

Another problem with weavile is its speed control as I told you above, it forces us to play scarf to be able to outspeed it because it's the fastest pokemon in the tiers, quite simply. To come to the counters of weavile, he doesn't have too many and the counters cobalion or tinkaton style will not hold up in the long term, https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9uu-798012. We notice that in this replay, there are two major counters to weavile and this did not prevent him from finishing the game alone. For others like azu, Quaquaval, keldeo, scizor and lokix that I haven't talked about. This is not going to help maintain weavile in my opinion. One of the best duos that I have been able to test with in this new meta and which is very popular is the slowking + vile. We can therefore counter and pressure with future sight the pokemon which wall weavile therefore pex, Quaquaval or keldeo. So if making the pressure easy that vile puts with greater success, azumarill has difficulty in this meta and I find it too slow and weak at the very popular chance which has in this meta. https://pokepast.es/b8dba3fffaa9b35a, I'm going to tell you about how I built this team for lambovino. You can notice that I play my serp tera water and not elec like the other habits. We are for catching the villain who would like to return and therefore get rid of him through this catch and be able to continue the game without him. And you can see that I play tera ghost on my vile to be able to catch the oki scarf, the coba cc and the skarm body press. I also play Pickpocket on my vile to be able to steal the other viles' boots to always have access to boots to prevent the vile from coming too often. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2220148330, In this replay, we can see that mimilucha will use several means to be able to contain the vile based on scarf drill, oki BU and tinka on the early game and despite the loss of the boots and even if he would not have had the crit on the serp, we can notice that turn 40 if the serp is dead, that vile just has to finish the game because there is a good chance of finishing this match, because the okidogi would be at around 9%, the wash would be at 33% after the sr and dies of knoff, tinka doesn't come to vile after the sr and drill no longer has his scarf. 252 Atk Weavile Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 252 HP / 180 Def Tinkaton: 104-123 (27.8 - 32.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock. Despite all his "check", it could be weavile who went clean without having made too much effort.

For me, weavile should be banned

 

[Lily]

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9uu-2220148330, In this replay, we can see that mimilucha will use several means to be able to contain the vile based on scarf drill, oki BU and tinka on the early game and despite the loss of the boots and even if he would not have had the crit on the serp, we can notice that turn 40 if the serp is dead, that vile just has to finish the game because there is a good chance of finishing this match, because the okidogi would be at around 9%, the wash would be at 33% after the sr and dies of knoff, tinka doesn't come to vile after the sr and drill no longer has his scarf. 252 Atk Weavile Low Kick (100 BP) vs. 252 HP / 180 Def Tinkaton: 104-123 (27.8 - 32.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock. Despite all his "check", it could be weavile who went clean without having made too much effort.

Is there really no better game to showcase Weavile being broken than one where Serperior kills everything for it and it doesn't even get to hit the field itself? If the mon's broken to the point where it takes over games that easily after only small progress is made for it, is there not a better example than this?

 

[haunted paper]

Ban Side

The main 3 suspects of this to me are Weavile, the current target, Hoopa, and Okidogi. Primarily because all 3 of them tend to require multiple forms of counterplay on a team while also outrunning the whole meta, meaning that the "multiple forms of counterplay" usually just boils down to multiple switch-ins or just not using anything they can threaten from full, which is a massive pain in the builder.

The rise of Tinkaton once again or Keldeo is linked to Weavile to a certain extent too

Do Not Ban Side

Gonna push back on the idea that people are intentionally overloading on Weavile checks bc I find it kind of crazy that we're saying stacking mons like Cobalion (A+), Rotom-W (A), Scizor (A), Tera Fairy Hydrapple (A + most common Tera-type pre-Weavile drop), Tera Poison/Fairy/Dark Skeledirge (A- + common Teras already), Okidogi (A+), Lokix (A+), Quaquaval (A-), Tinkaton (B+) etc... is a result of Weavile's dominance. Like no. This is how teams were built before Weavile dropped, solid Dark resists + good priority has been a thing for months atp with Hoopa being as good as it is & Weavile doesn't move the needle heavily here, other than promoting physdef Heatran as a way to punish contact moves

Literally any analysis points to the contrary as you can see here, here, here, here, here, and here, where you'll see tons of Dark resists, priority mons, fat regens, and Tera flippers all stacked together... and this is not cherrypicked, it's from one single week of UUBD.

Solid points that are new and solid (in my opinion). The tour replays seem weird, like the players are trying to feel out how to use Weavile properly since it's still new; which is why there were so many Weavile games, even a few games had a Weavile on both sides. But, I think new sets and more gameplay will improve the way how Weavile matches will go.

I feel that Weavile's ability to threaten Tornadus-T is a very positive quality. Many players disagree with me, but while Torn-T offers the tier some defensive stability, I find it borderline unhealthy give how easily it can make progress by Knock Offing Boots -> healing it all back with Regen, leading to most defensive answers failing to check it long term as they get shredded by hazards

This point reminds me heavily of what Cynde was pointing out in a previous post.

And I think part of weavile's value to the tier is that it actually anyone using the team to play with more of an element of thought. there is no brainlessly pivoting and them playing excessively reactively with their defensive pivots will go punished. That is an interaction I think is a net positive for the tier and is worth keeping weav around for.

Posts like these make me think that offense threats aren't the only issues in UU currently. Even in the Monkey Tournament replays: knock off spam, regen spam, and hazards spam are seen a lot. Even going into Lily's replays of the past meta, same thing.

It seems like this is the point Do Not Ban goes for:

i think we're also vastly underestimating how difficult it can be for weavile to get an SD off and get actual value from it without eating shit and dying. in matchups where multiple checks are present there are several turns where clicking knock off is genuinely the only option available, and while this isn't a terrible situation, you are still making good progress, you're also not really unlocking the power you need to break through things without significant chip beforehand

And I think Ban should reply in this manner:

In a metagame where it is extremely difficult to avoid chip damage, there is no arguing how a mon that is fast and doesn't lock into one move is broken.

It's not like Extreme Speed and Lokix w/First Impression is omnipresent so, it's not like revenge killing Weavile is super easy (not to say that these are the only ways to do revenge kill Weavile, it's just nice to bypass Ice Shard if you're in range). Just like how going for tera to beat Weavile may seem easy, but Weavile going for tera as well can be dangerous too; mainly due to the fact that it seems the Weavile player has more to gain from going for tera because it can lead to a sweep while, the opposing player is just stopping one mon that might not be the game ender (as seen in those replays that monky25 posted). Which correlates with what Punny wrote:

Losing tera would 100% put you at a disadvantage, so lets consider the latter, which is definitely a good enough solution to handling weavile. But what happens if the opponent has a scizor or zarude or whatever behind to abuse heatran being gone? The issue with no ban posts ive seen thus far is ppl who posted seem to think a mon is broken only when unbeatable and sweeps almost every game. Spoiler: a mon does not need to kill al six pokemons to be actually broken.

So, I think if Ban posters lean more along this post, they might sway Do Not Ban posters. But at the same time, a counter argument could be made that might swing voters in their favor instead, but haven't seen a counter argument yet. The biggest point yet to be made from Ban posters is how Weavile exploits the metagame and how that could be perceived as unhealthy. Meanwhile, Do Not Ban posters are capitalizing on teams having natural answers to Weavile. But, the counter to that would be if this was all for Hoopa-U and people were already ready to go suspect test Hoopa-U, and it seems the meta wouldn't change if Weavile stayed and Hoopa-U left, would that not mean Weavile is also broken?

There's a lot more to the metagame and I want to explore this once this suspect is over, so hopefully Okidogi does not get suspected too soon. Honestly, I think it's far too soon for any suspects for the next 3-4 weeks. Experimentations to see the meta fully fleshed out would be nice.

 

[mintwinter]

Pressuring torn seems to be a common anti-ban argument, and while i do understand wanting ways to deal with torn, we would just suspect it if it turns out to be broken, just like any other threat.

Weavile has considerably fewer limitations than something i would consider a balanced progress maker. For example, i feel that knock off thundurus is a good example of a balanced and powerful wallbreaker which still has enough limitations to prevent it from being broken. Using thundy to break requires you to skillfully pivot to create positions where it can actually make progress, as well as pivot to other offensive mons to maintain pressure. On the other hand, weavile can break most defensive teams much more easily, as described in many pro-ban arguments. The point i’m making is, I feel that weavile as a breaker is less skillful than the balance structures everyone for some reason loves to see getting destroyed by it

As for weavile not appearing broken in practice, it’s been sort of touched on, but i’d like to draw more attention to it. This tier favors offense right now, partially because of the threat of weavile. As a result, the negative effects of weavile’s presence definitely aren’t as apparent when you look at ladder matches, which are frequently offense vs offense. Imo, weavile is broken for the issues it causes in the builder with its severely limited defensive counterplay.

This tier isn’t going to improve unless we start banning broken offensive mons, and weavile is certainly one of them