Metagame XY Shaymin-Sky Suspect!!!!!!!!!!

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Stratos

Banned deucer.
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:bw/shaymin-sky:​

As you all know, the ban threshold in DOU suspects is 60%. With one exception: Shaymin-Sky was banned in 2015 with only 55% of the vote. This has been a common subject of both lengthy forum posts and jabs at Arcticblast on Discord. Now, Skymin is getting the second look that has been talked about (mostly by myself) for years.

While this suspect is mostly because of the aforementioned clerical error, there are many top XY players (some even aren't me) who think that Skymin would be fine in the current metagame. It's countered by omnipresent Thundurus, has only inaccurate single-target moves and mediocre bulk, and simply trades with most top Pokemon—if it's lucky.

Its detractors have two main points. Its 57% fast Air Slash flinches are simply too good of disruption support, making it difficult to have robust gameplans. Additionally, 68% Seed Flare drops devalue defensive switching and, while not literally Shadow Tag, practically force you to trade with it when it comes in, rather than go straight out to the counter.

Well, the goal of this suspect is to turn all of this theorymon into factmon. We will be running a single elimination XY forum tournament (i.e.: weeklong rounds) with Skymin legal, and, at its conclusion, be holding a vote. I'll post signups for the Skymin Suspect Tour this weekend and link them in this thread. Additionally, we will be hosting roomtours with Skymin freed daily in the DOU room so people can get more Skymin experience. The exact timing of the vote is dependent on the number of tour signups and such, but we expect it to be about 2-3 months from now. We want to take our time and get this one right. If you want more resources about XY DOU, check this thread.

Despite Skymin's abnormal ban, this is a normal unban suspect, so we will require a 60% majority of Unban to free him. There's no ladder, of course, so reqs are the following:
  • Enter and play at least one round in the Skymin Suspect Tour AND
  • Demonstrate top-level experience in recent XY DOU
    • Top 8 in the last XY Cup OR
    • 3+ games of XY in DPL5 OR
    • Top 8 in the Skymin Suspect Tour
Notice the AND. Current req qualifiers are the following:

stax memoric stratos yoda2798 spurrific kiichikos smb yobuddy qsns level 51 arcticblast marilli daawesomedude1 charlotte human kaori majorbowman

but even if you are on this list, you must enter and play in the Skymin Suspect Tour to vote.

In the mean time, feel free to use this thread to discuss whether this cute little hedgehog deserves the death penalty. We're pretty set on how we're running this suspect, but if you have problems with the methodology, please post that in the thread too. Lastly, please feel free to post memes in the thread as long as they aren't interrupting real discussion.
 
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With out Jirachi to redirect Skymin's extremely powerful and fast hax moves, I think Skymin is much better now than when it was banned. Also Jirachi was a good resistance to both of its attacks and could Hit it with Icy Wind or set Trick Room to deal with its incredible base speed.

So if you where on the fence about it before, you should be strongly supporting a ban now that there is one less main check to it.
 
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reposted from the XY thread, edited to look less like victorian literature and for relevant parts only:

My tiering philosophy is when we drop Pokemon from DUbers to DOU, what we should consider is not the possibility of it being a healthy addition to the metagame, but rather whether or not it can exist in the metagame without being unhealthy and thus deserving of being in DUbers in the first place. The rhetoric, while pragmatically similar, are different in essence, as instead of tackling why it fits in DOU, what I am presenting is reasons why a Pokemon should not be in DUbers, my take of DUbers being a repository for Pokemon that bend the "health" of the standard metagame one way or another. Therefore, what's important to note is whether or not Skymin's qualities render it a possibly unhealthy presence; I am not discounting what Stratos has presented here, as they are also evidence of Skymin being "not unhealthy" through inference, but rather what I shall present is a different framing of a shared conclusion.

As I can remember it, Skymin wasn't actually particularly sinister as a threat; if anything could have been a measure of it being unhealthy, it would have been its flinch rate. For full transparency, this is core to the argument for why I voted to ban it back then, but my stance has since changed as I feel it was too shortsighted. Skymin, as a threat, is simply a fast attacker with a nifty speed tier, strong single-target STABs, average bulk, an a nifty ability to break a foe special defensively; nothing here actually screams broken to me, as it's pretty much a high-speed damage trader with a bonus. Is it strong? Probably, but not really something that I could reasonably say unhealthy.

In terms of fit to the meta, it doesn't even look like it'll break anything too hard. A slew of threats, such as Scarf Landorus-T, Thundurus, Shuca Tran, Talonflame, and rain... among others, can go toe-to-toe with it handily. By the very nature of how it is as an attacker, it'll also be a bit reliant on trades; if it wants to support with Tailwind, it loses out a coverage move, and even then a fast Tailwinder isn't particularly gamebreaking at all. As Stratos mentioned, the old Sash set it used to run may not be as consistent as it was with SR now a more prominent factor, so it can't leverage that either. It's not going to warp the metagame around it nor is it gonna monopolize a style or role or something; based on my read on it, it'll just be... there, which is honestly a good outcome if ever.

Its ability doesn't seem like it could break it, now that I think about it from a fresher perspective. Its ability to Seed Flare SpDef drop, while powerful, honestly seems like a pretty reasonable niche to me; it wouldn't make noticeable differences every time when paired with already strong attackers and is only really handy for breaking something resisted excessively bulky like a Cresselia. Air Slash flinches on the other hand... while luck-based, they can be taken to a point where they seem fair enough. There's an inherent opportunity cost with attacking due to the nature of being a single-target attacker, and its bulk renders this cost much more apparent; this is something that can be reasonably played around, as a matter of course if nothing else. Meanwhile, both of its STABs also come at the cost of being inaccurate, and therefore unreliable and inconsistent; its nature as an attacker also relegates it to specific team compositions and prey to some others. While the nature of its being attacker has its potential, inherent and external factors will probably stifle Skymin's overt dominance.

Overall, I feel that Skymin should drop to XY DOU.
 
I've played / watched three XY+Skymin roomtours so far. Haven't seen air slash flinches or seed flare drops steal a game yet, but I've seen Thund's T-waves steal multiple /.__./

The first roomtour I played, I didn't bring Skymin at all. I wanted to see if my old teams could handle Skymin just fine. I won the roomtour, but I didn't face a single Skymin, so I'm not sure I got useful data from that. (There were a few Skymin users in it, but they lost early). So in the last two roomtours, I've decided to use Skymin.

For now, I'm just running my THALKS team but with Skymin replacing the Amoonguss. This is the set I'm using:

:bw/shaymin-sky:
Shaymin-Sky @ Lum Berry
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Seed Flare
- Air Slash
- Substitute
- Protect

Sub Lum allows Skymin to finesse past Thundurus with some support. Other than that, this is standard stuff.

Yesterday, I lost round 1 to Memoric running his Rhydon sun. I didn't think to save that replay. Today, I won the roomtour, and here were my games: 1 2 3. Although, I really only faced two teams, and one of them was the mirror lol.

Just like in BW, Skymin really loves Sub+Lum to turn one of its counters into only a check. Although, the surprise value of this set is significant, as I was able to sub in front of Thund in both rounds 1 and 2, whereas if they know it's coming, I can't do that—and Skymin has trouble getting subs, so I think if this becomes the standard, it will be less effective.

Without the safety net of Sash, Skymin is forced to play pretty straight as an attacker—and I don't particularly trust Sash in this meta. I never fished in any of those replays (for drops or flinches) because I risked instantly losing a key piece of my offense basically every turn Skymin was on the field. I did fish when I was losing vs Memoric and I guess in this way Skymin is kind of like Swagger Thund? But even though I got every Air Slash flinch I fished for (2) I still lost the game, which is a reminder that +0 flinch is way weaker than +1 confusion, lol.

Of course this is just an old team with a Skymin slapped on and we've yet to see anyone really try to Activate this mon's potential, but so far, I'm not particularly impressed. Fast strong seed flare makes it a good attacker, but not a broken one yet.
 
Me after voting ban

qtd2avR.png


Memes aside, I wish there was more discussion in this thread. Though the overwhelming majority of people I have chatted with during/after minitour games are in favor of an unban, so maybe that's why there has been no discussion. But I think there's gotta be pro-ban people out there, right? If you are in favor of a ban, please post your thoughts itc

As for the meta, we have been getting some good replays in the Skymin tournament and I encourage everyone to check them out. A few of those replays even have Skymin. I've been testing a few newly-built Skymin teams with Memoric and have been surprised by how resilient my old teams are to the Skymin meta without even trying. As in, I 2-0d his two new Skymin teams with teams I built years ago. It's a decent attacker, but I haven't seen anyone successfully fish with it, and I haven't even really seen anyone try. I feel like the only time Skymin gets a chance to fish is when you are ok with sacking it, but since it's a solid attacker in the late-game, people generally aren't okay with sacking it.

I built my own first Skymin team in new meta for my set vs dad1. It did win (versus another Skymin team) but it wasn't really that good of a game with some weird bins earlygame from dad1 that kind of sealed it. While building I struggled with how trying to pair Skymin with anything that can abuse Seed Flare drops just makes you so weak to Thundurus, so I basically just decided I would trade with it. That "works" until you FP on the Twave turn, then you're fucked. Maybe the ideal Seed Flare partner is actually offensive Thundurus... hold on don't steal that idea. I'll try building to abuse Air Slash next but I think that's gonna be even less good.
 
I've been a pretty big supporter of freeing Skymin for the longest time. A lot of people have already talked about why Skymin is not broken so I thought I would post my thoughts for the other side of the story. For the record, I still support freeing Skymin; I just wanted to start some discussion.

The only time I have felt that Skymin was overwhelming was when I had bad field positioning and the opponent had a Skymin on the field. At that point, I can't really switch anything in because I'd risk a Seed Flare drop which would put me in an even worse situation. I am also not able to send in Amoonguss, by far one of the best pivots in the game, because it'll get dunked on by Air Slash. Thundurus is another option but it's such a powerful pokemon that I don't really want it to take any extra random damage from Seed Flare drops. Trading your Thund to take out Skymin is just not very good imo. A lot of times, when my opponent was able to get Skymin in for free against something that it can force out, I have found myself sacking something just so I can beat it.

I feel that this is almost on the same level as what Kangaskhan can do. Against Kang, you kinda have to weigh your options on what you want to take ~50% from a S-toss. What separates the two is that oftentimes the thing you switch in against Kangaskhan can either force it out or weaken it (random Helmet mon, ghost/fighting types, etc), whereas Skymin is so fast, you can't really switch anything in and then force it out (unless it's like Talonflame). You have to either risk the drop or just straight up sack something.

That's probably the only time where I thought "wow this Pokemon is really good." If you're in a losing position, Skymin is pretty useless because you can't really capitalize as much on the drops. And as good as the above 50% flinch chance sound, it oftentimes can't single-handedly bring you back into the game. But when you're in a winning position, Skymin can make it so much harder for your opponent to come back since they have to weigh all their options to decide what they need to keep healthy and not take any random Seed Flare drops.
 
I think it's likely that skymin will be unbanned from people I've talked to, but I thought I might as well make a post why I think skymin should be unbanned.

First off is that trick room, whether semiroom or fullroom, is pretty strong/popular right now. Because of this, HO is mostly unpopular. Now you might say "hey skymin is a great trick room check" but Skymin's trick room matchup is pretty bad. Outside of being able to stall with flinches, it provides 0 defensive typing and is easy sweep material for various tr spread sweepers or Kangaskhan. Add onto this the popularity of fake out which'll break the skymin sash and it gets pretty dicey to use skymin vs full/semiroom. Because of this, if you want to run Skymin, you have to run some kind of balance element to the team, with some mons that can sit and tank a few hits. But Skymin's ideal partner is something which benefits from the space that skymin provides, like Keldeo or other fast threats like Mega gar, so it can get awkward when your aegislash can't provide the offensive pressure to protect your skymin like Keldeo or something else can. Previously HO teams would use Jirachi as their defensive pivot, but Jirachi is gone so it's even more awkward to build a HO team that can utilize Skymin and still have a good TR matchup.

Secondly skymin has seen almost 0 usage. I think I built one skymin team I liked, and it seemed the Stratos had a few. But it's a far cry from being a banworthy menace or anything like that.

Why should Skymin be added to the metagame? It provides a diversity of grass-types to choose from and is quite sharply different from Amoonguss, and gives teams more room to build to be more offensive. I like building Skymin, I just don't think it's anywhere near broken and can be awkward to fit in while trying to make a good team.

Overall had a ton of fun playing in the tour and look forward to seeing Skymin in DPL rounds.
 
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