Justice
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OU BW OU Hub
- Thread starter LuckOverSkill
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I don't get why you delete my post. Anyway i will write It again.
Unban everything but trapping.
You know what beats Spikes + Psyspam? Landorus-Incarnate.
What beats Landorus-Incarnate? Fast offense like Rain Team with Kingdra and/or Ludicolo. What can allow them to not dominate the meta? Other Speed abusers.
The solution is to unban things from 0 and then check what will be broken.
The job was done poorly before: there is no agency for spikes team.
Now you either ban all the pseudo broken things or you don't ban anything and you need Tyranitar/Jirachi/Blissey in every team
Unban everything but trapping.
You know what beats Spikes + Psyspam? Landorus-Incarnate.
What beats Landorus-Incarnate? Fast offense like Rain Team with Kingdra and/or Ludicolo. What can allow them to not dominate the meta? Other Speed abusers.
The solution is to unban things from 0 and then check what will be broken.
The job was done poorly before: there is no agency for spikes team.
Now you either ban all the pseudo broken things or you don't ban anything and you need Tyranitar/Jirachi/Blissey in every team
I didn’t delete your post, but this won’t happen. Landorus-I with Sheer Force is staying Uber and DrizzleSwim isn’t going to make the tier better ever.
As a half-player (ladder rat), half-spectator (doesn't win tours lmao), I do like the "lol unban stuff at this point" attitude because I do think the community was overly ban-happy when it came to Volc and Cloy. The players that voted had a clear stance, though, so I'm not complaining. It just means that maybe when people suggested allowing ChloroSaur with no Dug, it's not actually that much of a meme in the eyes of some.
My serious take is that nothing needs to be banned or unbanned. You can hate Rain. You can hate Keldeo. You can hate Latios. You can hate Cloyster. The "adapt bro" argument gets clowned on because no one really agrees with it ever when it has to come up. Right now, though, it actually does. BW is always on delicate balance because everything's broken. The tour scene has been fun and interesting ever since Gems were banned: we don't need to bitch and moan about nitpicks from people that don't play the tier.
SPL 2023 had a surge of HO after the community was convinced HO was dead, as well as a Mamoswine uptick, and now in 2024 there's some real variety to the top players' brings. Some trend offensive, and some trend fat. That's healthy in my opinion. It's what 2022 had but with the weird power trip that Gems added to the tier so Volc/Cloy/Loom dominated everything.
My serious take is that nothing needs to be banned or unbanned. You can hate Rain. You can hate Keldeo. You can hate Latios. You can hate Cloyster. The "adapt bro" argument gets clowned on because no one really agrees with it ever when it has to come up. Right now, though, it actually does. BW is always on delicate balance because everything's broken. The tour scene has been fun and interesting ever since Gems were banned: we don't need to bitch and moan about nitpicks from people that don't play the tier.
SPL 2023 had a surge of HO after the community was convinced HO was dead, as well as a Mamoswine uptick, and now in 2024 there's some real variety to the top players' brings. Some trend offensive, and some trend fat. That's healthy in my opinion. It's what 2022 had but with the weird power trip that Gems added to the tier so Volc/Cloy/Loom dominated everything.
I get that there are those right now who like the place the tier is in currently and that's great for them, but that doesn't change that the majority of people have at least one major thing that they dislike. Asking people to adapt is like telling them to tweak their Reuniclus set to where it's even more nonsense to get rid of along with all of the spikes. Adaption has happened but that doesn't change the fact that the public perception is still relatively comparable to three years ago when Dice made their post
I appreciate the reply, but the reason public perception is low is because they choose to avoid the tier as it is, which is fine. DPP and ORAS are similar-ish tiers individually and have a more favorable "perception history" than BW. I find BW more fun than those, though, so I play BW mainly.
I also like the use of the metaphor, but I don't think the example you gave is actually that crazy. Excadrill is widely considered a decent Reun soft-check with Sand support. If a Reun lacks a fighting move, Drill is a tough nut to crack, and if it goes Psy-Focus, then there are subtle half-measures like Dragon Tail Slowking.
More generally, I think some Pokemon are "battle scares" whiles others are "builder scares". The trio of Latios/Keldeo/Thundurus is like the "ok this is stupid" category while the Reuniclus/Alakazam/Volcarona trio is the "oh wow my teams are so bad against this" category.
BKC always advocates for eliminating the former while the player-base tends to talk about the latter more. My tentative take on the latter is that if you over-prep for them, you lose overall win%, so it's important to pick your poison (lol) when building and just try to find outplay potential in your builds for the inevitably rough match-ups you may load into. The former just are constantly avoided topics (somehow), but I wouldn't really advocate for bans on them either: I've just meekly accepted them as annoying entities that exist and should be made use of.
Hello. I wanna give my take based on numerous discord conversations, what I have personally seen and just for interest in the tier.
Having watched BKC:s video with Peng, I do think it outlines the tier pretty well right now and what is even on the table. It very clearly shows that we have 3/4 real bans to keep the status quo, after that we are breaking the fundamentals. I am of the stance that the current tier we have is very good as a base, and we should focus on keeping the tier largely as is instead of going for a true game changers.
I think there are only 3 mons that are even on the table, even if the tier discussion post says otherwise. These mons are Cloyster, Reuniclus and Thundurus-Therian, in that order. Anything else feels way too out of reach for the current moment, stuff like Latios and Excadrill are a waste of time even discussing when without at least a big tour without one, there is not a large enough push to ban either of these mons. I also do think banning 2 of the mentioned list earlier will already lessen the brutality of Latios and Excadrill, which I am going to explain below.
Let's start with the mon that is probably going soon already and isn't changing the tier largely: Cloyster. Cloyster represents cheese in the BW OU tier. It is the ''mu shell'', sometimes it does a lot and sometimes it's useless. When the original suspect was done, Cloyster was mainly a physically oriented mon, but with the discovery of Mixed cloyster, it lost one of it's biggest true counter play measures, as you can't reliably counter the thing with something like a Jellicent anymore. Even the mighty Keldeo is prone to dying to Cloyster after it's chipped
+2 252+ SpA Expert Belt Cloyster Hidden Power Grass vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Keldeo: 326-386 (100.9 - 119.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
So yeah, cheese is bad in a game of competitive pokemon and Cloyster should go outright for these reasons.
(Just wanna post this here for shits and giggles
+2 252+ SpA Cloyster Surf vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Reuniclus in Rain: 415-490 (97.8 - 115.5%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO)
Then, let's start with the actually broken one: Reuniclus. Reuniclus is historically infamous for being dependant on it's environment. It becomes way less used at times, only to come back again next year in SPL when the meta favors it, becoming an absolute demon once more. Reuniclus issue is it abusing every single factor about BW OU perfectly. It is a spikes immune, paralysis abusing fighting resistant bulky Calm Mind setter with a movepool from gods and set variety making it hard to actually prepare for. Reuniclus has recently shifted into a more Calm Mind focused role due to the meta around it, but Trick Room or Life Orb 3 attacks are still potent in their own right and have their own use cases. All of this is good and all, but Reuniclus has 1 thing pushing it over the edge and which is why I do believe in it's ban: it's bulk. Let's go over some calcs, shall we?
+2 252+ Atk Dragonite Outrage vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Reuniclus: 381-448 (89.8 - 105.6%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Teravolt Kyurem-Black Outrage vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Reuniclus: 340-402 (80.1 - 94.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Reuniclus: 393-463 (92.6 - 109.1%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
(To note, Specs Latios isn't even that used as of now over something like Colbur Berry)
Yeah. Reuniclus eats offensive threats like it's nothing. Part of the fun also comes from doing some move guessing. Yes, usually Recover and Calm Mind are a given, but the coverage this cell blob has is a pain in the ass to guess. It effectively has something that no mons of this caliber should have: options. Reuniclus is also a massive benefitter of the recent shift in how Latios is used. Latios instead of being the main man with Reun/Latios, has come to find a supporting role along side it which I find baffling. This speaks to the volume of Reuniclus itself, where the mighty Latios is used as a supportive offensive threat / para spreader to aid Reuniclus do it's job of killing everything alive.
Thundurus-Therian is very weird one to me right now. It is objectively fucking monsterous. With modest and 48 evs in Special attack, it already has the highest base special attack in the entire tiers. Combine that with 120 bp Thunders and a really good movepool, we have an extremely strong special breaker in Rain, which with Agility can win a stupid amount of endgames on it's own. All of this has been stated so many times before, where I don't wanna repeat other greats 2 million times. But yes, Thundurus-Therian is bonkers.
Here come the famous however. Under any other circumstances, Thundurus-T would have been banned ages ago, with right now, it is the only reason why Rain is still prevalent in the current meta. Without it, the entire playstyle kind of dies of. There has been experimentation with Tornadus-I recently, and while with it's benefits, like outspeeding Latios, it lacks the same way of umpf like Thundurus does. For these reasons, I would not focus on Thundurus right now, as there are more immediate matters to discuss.
On Latios and Excadrill, the arguments for an Excadrill ban are absurd to me. While absolutely busted, SD Excadrill requires ParaSpam to really make it's mark against faster teams. I also do believe it's fine to have a breaker of this caliber in the meta especially with Reuniclus still existing. Should Excadrill ever have been unbanned? I don't think so. Should it stay as of now? Yes, we need a spinner like it.
I am hesitant like most of touching Latios right now. Latios has adapted in recent years, going away from the absolute power of Specs Dracos and instead going for longevity with Colbur Berry, be it a para supporter or a Calm Mind user. I am interested to see a metagame without Latios though, ie would Latias do the defensive role Latios does right now and would there be a better metagame after it's leaving. However, we need proof for this. Finchinator discussed a potential tournament with some cash on the line with Latios banned, which I would push for right now. Until this happens, discussing a Latios ban seems like a waste of time to me, because the push for it is not simply there among top players.
In conclusion, action of order in my opinion should be banning Cloyster, banning Reuniclus and then seeing how the meta evolves after it. Look into Thundurus-T more so we have more action taken before to see if rain comes back up more after Reuniclus is banned. On the bigger changes, I would push for a tournament with Latios banned to see would the meta turn out better after. The Excadrill shouts are a waste of time to me, don't focus on that when we need it's spin in the current meta. Thank you.
Having watched BKC:s video with Peng, I do think it outlines the tier pretty well right now and what is even on the table. It very clearly shows that we have 3/4 real bans to keep the status quo, after that we are breaking the fundamentals. I am of the stance that the current tier we have is very good as a base, and we should focus on keeping the tier largely as is instead of going for a true game changers.
I think there are only 3 mons that are even on the table, even if the tier discussion post says otherwise. These mons are Cloyster, Reuniclus and Thundurus-Therian, in that order. Anything else feels way too out of reach for the current moment, stuff like Latios and Excadrill are a waste of time even discussing when without at least a big tour without one, there is not a large enough push to ban either of these mons. I also do think banning 2 of the mentioned list earlier will already lessen the brutality of Latios and Excadrill, which I am going to explain below.
Let's start with the mon that is probably going soon already and isn't changing the tier largely: Cloyster. Cloyster represents cheese in the BW OU tier. It is the ''mu shell'', sometimes it does a lot and sometimes it's useless. When the original suspect was done, Cloyster was mainly a physically oriented mon, but with the discovery of Mixed cloyster, it lost one of it's biggest true counter play measures, as you can't reliably counter the thing with something like a Jellicent anymore. Even the mighty Keldeo is prone to dying to Cloyster after it's chipped
+2 252+ SpA Expert Belt Cloyster Hidden Power Grass vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Keldeo: 326-386 (100.9 - 119.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
So yeah, cheese is bad in a game of competitive pokemon and Cloyster should go outright for these reasons.
(Just wanna post this here for shits and giggles
+2 252+ SpA Cloyster Surf vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Reuniclus in Rain: 415-490 (97.8 - 115.5%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO)
Then, let's start with the actually broken one: Reuniclus. Reuniclus is historically infamous for being dependant on it's environment. It becomes way less used at times, only to come back again next year in SPL when the meta favors it, becoming an absolute demon once more. Reuniclus issue is it abusing every single factor about BW OU perfectly. It is a spikes immune, paralysis abusing fighting resistant bulky Calm Mind setter with a movepool from gods and set variety making it hard to actually prepare for. Reuniclus has recently shifted into a more Calm Mind focused role due to the meta around it, but Trick Room or Life Orb 3 attacks are still potent in their own right and have their own use cases. All of this is good and all, but Reuniclus has 1 thing pushing it over the edge and which is why I do believe in it's ban: it's bulk. Let's go over some calcs, shall we?
+2 252+ Atk Dragonite Outrage vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Reuniclus: 381-448 (89.8 - 105.6%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Teravolt Kyurem-Black Outrage vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Reuniclus: 340-402 (80.1 - 94.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Reuniclus: 393-463 (92.6 - 109.1%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
(To note, Specs Latios isn't even that used as of now over something like Colbur Berry)
Yeah. Reuniclus eats offensive threats like it's nothing. Part of the fun also comes from doing some move guessing. Yes, usually Recover and Calm Mind are a given, but the coverage this cell blob has is a pain in the ass to guess. It effectively has something that no mons of this caliber should have: options. Reuniclus is also a massive benefitter of the recent shift in how Latios is used. Latios instead of being the main man with Reun/Latios, has come to find a supporting role along side it which I find baffling. This speaks to the volume of Reuniclus itself, where the mighty Latios is used as a supportive offensive threat / para spreader to aid Reuniclus do it's job of killing everything alive.
Thundurus-Therian is very weird one to me right now. It is objectively fucking monsterous. With modest and 48 evs in Special attack, it already has the highest base special attack in the entire tiers. Combine that with 120 bp Thunders and a really good movepool, we have an extremely strong special breaker in Rain, which with Agility can win a stupid amount of endgames on it's own. All of this has been stated so many times before, where I don't wanna repeat other greats 2 million times. But yes, Thundurus-Therian is bonkers.
Here come the famous however. Under any other circumstances, Thundurus-T would have been banned ages ago, with right now, it is the only reason why Rain is still prevalent in the current meta. Without it, the entire playstyle kind of dies of. There has been experimentation with Tornadus-I recently, and while with it's benefits, like outspeeding Latios, it lacks the same way of umpf like Thundurus does. For these reasons, I would not focus on Thundurus right now, as there are more immediate matters to discuss.
On Latios and Excadrill, the arguments for an Excadrill ban are absurd to me. While absolutely busted, SD Excadrill requires ParaSpam to really make it's mark against faster teams. I also do believe it's fine to have a breaker of this caliber in the meta especially with Reuniclus still existing. Should Excadrill ever have been unbanned? I don't think so. Should it stay as of now? Yes, we need a spinner like it.
I am hesitant like most of touching Latios right now. Latios has adapted in recent years, going away from the absolute power of Specs Dracos and instead going for longevity with Colbur Berry, be it a para supporter or a Calm Mind user. I am interested to see a metagame without Latios though, ie would Latias do the defensive role Latios does right now and would there be a better metagame after it's leaving. However, we need proof for this. Finchinator discussed a potential tournament with some cash on the line with Latios banned, which I would push for right now. Until this happens, discussing a Latios ban seems like a waste of time to me, because the push for it is not simply there among top players.
In conclusion, action of order in my opinion should be banning Cloyster, banning Reuniclus and then seeing how the meta evolves after it. Look into Thundurus-T more so we have more action taken before to see if rain comes back up more after Reuniclus is banned. On the bigger changes, I would push for a tournament with Latios banned to see would the meta turn out better after. The Excadrill shouts are a waste of time to me, don't focus on that when we need it's spin in the current meta. Thank you.
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The fact that Thundurus-Therian exists make this metagame faster because nothing can switch on that horrendous pokemon
Just going to preface this and say that I am not the most experienced player, however I did get the requirements for voting on the last suspect and I would like to share my short opinion on what is currently happening with regards to next steps for BW.
Tiering in BW is not easy, you can see from the sheer amount of differing opinions from elite players as to what is bannable/suspectable/busted and what isn't.
However the main thing that absolutely has to get mentioned, and what is frustrating a lot of the players who truly care about this tier and play it often is that we agreed to revisit Cloyster post SPL. The voting format which we had was far from optimal, and even multiple people who wanted to keep Cloyster have changed their minds due to emergence of mixed sets which can OHKO former checks.
It can easily be debated that there are more pressing concerns with the tier, with regards to things like Latios, Excadrill, Thundurus etc. but the fact of the matter is that we should stand by what we said to do.
Tiering in BW is not easy, you can see from the sheer amount of differing opinions from elite players as to what is bannable/suspectable/busted and what isn't.
However the main thing that absolutely has to get mentioned, and what is frustrating a lot of the players who truly care about this tier and play it often is that we agreed to revisit Cloyster post SPL. The voting format which we had was far from optimal, and even multiple people who wanted to keep Cloyster have changed their minds due to emergence of mixed sets which can OHKO former checks.
It can easily be debated that there are more pressing concerns with the tier, with regards to things like Latios, Excadrill, Thundurus etc. but the fact of the matter is that we should stand by what we said to do.
First of all, mewtwo is faster and stronger and bulkier than zam, so it revenge kills just as easily. Second of all, it doesn’t need to rely on focus miss because it has aura sphere and Psy strike to melt physical walls. Not only that, but it can pick and chose between ice beam and flamethrower, meaning it can blow past d nite and sciz. Not only that, but it also gets calm mind and taunt plus recover, which means it can go defensive and stack up boosts to overwhelm a team. Stop trolling. But as for the weather part, Thundy is pretty good on rain, but skarm jelli and special cloy has been taking hyper offense to another level. I do think hail is okay though. (On a side note, have a good day friends!
)
Nah mewtwo completely balanced it only has a bst of 680 rookie numbers can easily be sucker punched.
Yeah about the rain part, its fallen hard mainly because of the rise of the skarmjelli style and reuniclus and a few other blobs being used regularly. Hail is a bit sad really because im assuming its the fact that its hard to build that it doesn't get used too much but it has many viable strategies. Dragmag also I just realised is at a 1.8% usage like bruh i prob contribute to a tenth of that myself.
Another thing to raise awareness about is dragmag, it hasn't got any major innovation since ages, rain has started to get some innovation at a very slow pace rarely when u see the amount of dragon types being used and rewers team in it nowadays but ive been seeing the same group of mons for them both for more then a yr now. Find something new, Ik yeah sand 'better' but at the usage rates its been through the modern history of BW sand is getting much more creativity which is dangerous to other archetypes if they don't even receive anywhere close to that amount of exploration.
As there is a much higher usage rate in things like HO and Sand this means more sets and more innovation will happen at a faster pace to allow it to counter the previous things that kept in check for example skarm jelli and mixed cloy HO. Rain and Dragmag will likely have many strategies that we haven't explored yet because of there less usage rate for example if kyu-b rains were used in a higher amount in the 2020s we would have seen rain as maybe one of the more dominant archetypes. Hail legit just needs more players it requires innovation to build with it in the first place perhaps y it was avoided so much.
Suns at a 3 percent usage which isn't great but i kinda expect considering the removal of everything that made it good. It prob could have some innovation as well i again have only seen the same few set of mons on it apart from some random guy running gyarados on it at low ladder.
So to conclude pls give all archetypes some love as then our metagames sides will all change at the same time allowing one to cope with the other rather then what is happening now. Mewtwo based give it some love too.
Yeah about the rain part, its fallen hard mainly because of the rise of the skarmjelli style and reuniclus and a few other blobs being used regularly. Hail is a bit sad really because im assuming its the fact that its hard to build that it doesn't get used too much but it has many viable strategies. Dragmag also I just realised is at a 1.8% usage like bruh i prob contribute to a tenth of that myself.
Another thing to raise awareness about is dragmag, it hasn't got any major innovation since ages, rain has started to get some innovation at a very slow pace rarely when u see the amount of dragon types being used and rewers team in it nowadays but ive been seeing the same group of mons for them both for more then a yr now. Find something new, Ik yeah sand 'better' but at the usage rates its been through the modern history of BW sand is getting much more creativity which is dangerous to other archetypes if they don't even receive anywhere close to that amount of exploration.
As there is a much higher usage rate in things like HO and Sand this means more sets and more innovation will happen at a faster pace to allow it to counter the previous things that kept in check for example skarm jelli and mixed cloy HO. Rain and Dragmag will likely have many strategies that we haven't explored yet because of there less usage rate for example if kyu-b rains were used in a higher amount in the 2020s we would have seen rain as maybe one of the more dominant archetypes. Hail legit just needs more players it requires innovation to build with it in the first place perhaps y it was avoided so much.
Suns at a 3 percent usage which isn't great but i kinda expect considering the removal of everything that made it good. It prob could have some innovation as well i again have only seen the same few set of mons on it apart from some random guy running gyarados on it at low ladder.
So to conclude pls give all archetypes some love as then our metagames sides will all change at the same time allowing one to cope with the other rather then what is happening now. Mewtwo based give it some love too.
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