Announcement LC Suspect - Still into You

[Fiend]

And even after all this time... I'm into you...​

Vullaby was the defining Pokemon of this generation until it was banned in a second suspect test. The combination of its powerful mixed set and the Nasty Plot sweeper set left many frustrated by the limited counterplay available. Vullaby paired with many other strong Pokemon, such as Abra and Porygon, to create offensive synergies which bulldozed through Pawniard and other shared checks. This issue led to the second suspect of Vullaby last July, where it was banned in a tight suspect. Below examples of Vullaby's sets can be found. I recommend importing these into the damage calc as Vullaby will be legal on the LC ladder during the suspect.

sets

Vullaby (F) @ Berry Juice
Ability: Weak Armor
Level: 5
EVs: 236 Atk / 76 Def / 196 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- Knock Off
- U-turn
- Defog

Vullaby (F) @ Berry Juice
Ability: Weak Armor
Level: 5
EVs: 156 Atk / 76 Def / 76 SpA / 196 Spe
Serious Nature
- Brave Bird
- Knock Off
- Heat Wave
- Defog

Vullaby (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Weak Armor
Level: 5
EVs: 116 HP / 236 SpA / 116 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Roost
- Air Slash
- Heat Wave
- Nasty Plot

Vullaby (F) @ Berry Juice
Ability: Weak Armor
Level: 5
EVs: 76 Def / 236 SpA / 196 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Air Slash
- Heat Wave
- Endure

What has changed since the suspect test which banned Vullaby? Over the last year, the tier has banned Sticky Web and two dominant sweepers in Scraggy and Zigzagoon. Removal options have remained limited, allowing for Spikestack to return in full force. Carvanha, Natu, and Tyrunt have risen in usage and become key Pokemon in the current metagame. Immediately after Vullaby was banned, the 17 Speed tier became a core aspect of matches, with Speed ties between Grookey, Mienfoo, and Natu being frequent. Further, Defensive boosting sweepers such as Shellos, Cosmic Power Natu, and Curse Munchlax gained a foothold in the metagame.

There has been quite the conversation about what to do to address the problems of the metagame. Opinions vary here, but the most supported choice available is to retest Vullaby. Arguments range from Vullaby having never been broken and thus should not have been banned to Vullaby being healthy for the metagame and should not have been banned based on its high usage. Still, some see Vullaby as broken or unhealthy. Others simply would not want to have yet another controversial suspect in this generation.

All said this retest of Vullaby is the most supported tiering action in the community. A short write-up of our latest tiering survey can be viewed here. I highly urge everyone who has an opinion on our metagame to obtain reqs and cast their vote. I expect this to be a tight vote yet again.

The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 78 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 82. As always, needing more than 50 games to reach 78 GXE is fine.

minimum games needed

GXE	minimum games
78	50
78.2	49
78.4	48
78.6	47
78.8	46
79	45
79.2	44
79.4	43
79.6	42
79.8	41
80	40
80.2	39
80.4	38
80.6	37
80.8	36
81	35
81.2	34
81.4	33
81.6	32
81.8	31
82	30

For this suspect test, we will be using the regular LC ladder, so you must create a new account that begins with "vslc" to qualify. When you have reached the requirements, click here to post your proof. Vullaby will be legal on the ladder until the suspect is over. The suspect period will end on Sunday, July 10th, at 11:59 PM EST. Thursday, July 14th, at 11:59 PM EST.

When posting in this thread, please keep in mind these rules:
1. No one-liners or uninformed posts.
2. No discussion on other potential suspects or the suspect process.
3. Be respectful.

Your post will be deleted and possibly infracted if you fail to follow them.

 

[wesh papillon]

**opinion**

I'll be honest I dont get the appeal of vullaby personally, I think its ugly , I think its unfun to play with, I think the meta with it is just worst, less expressive and more limited. I have no clue why ppl seem so attached to it. It seems like ppl just have a bad case of nostalgia glasses or something.

I'll be honest I think the meta as it is now is just fine, however it seems like ppl have collectively forgotten that you are in fact allowed to use more than the just the same 6 pokemon on every team. For some reason ppl think that the solution to make the tier more fun is to add one more obligatory mon!!! Sure Is great that we've had current meta for only a short period of time, and yet ppl fuckign refuse to innovate or do anything new with it. Im sorry if im ranting but like holy shit how fucking hard is it to use a fuckign b tier mon????????? I think ppl are out of there fuckign mind if you really think that somehow making the format more restrictive somehow helps make it more fun or more competitive. Also, reminder to ppl that if u absolutely need vullaby you **are** allowed to play sm, oras and bw in the current year.

**opinion over**

Facts very influenced by feelings:

ok so lets talk about vulla for a sec, my girl has fuckign 2 whole checks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pawniard: if you intending to use a pokemon that is able to check litteraly anything else in the tier, you will want to use pawn, which is prob why pawn had way higher usage than onix before vull. Its a "check" in the sense that you can beat it if it doesnt have heat wave. If it does then ur shit out luck lol.

Onix: a great vulla check until u get trapped by trapinch

oh sorry, its because im bad, you see, your actually supposed to use your own vullaby to check opposing vullaby!!!! If this doesnt scream overcentralising idk what does.

Contrary to what my passive aggressive writing would have you believe. I think this in it of itself doesn't make vullaby that bad. It makes it way worst than what we currently have, but the tier would be plenty playable. In therms of violation, vullaby would simply be a very strong overcentralising pokemon, without being degenerate.

Unfortunetaly, we also have the batshit crazy most plot set to contend with. In therms of "I win lol" mons, it is simply unmatched in the current meta. at +2 spa and speed theres not a lot that can handle this mon lol. Oh also yeah it can just tank ur fake outs and ur first impression with endure sorry. Oh and did I mention how often this mon can flinch?? Its the nail in the coffin lol,

**the meta**

Vulla seems to make a lot of already good mons amplify in strength.

Porygon: man imagine if pory was paired with a mon that could reliably force in pawn and knock it off then like heat wave it with super little counter play man I wonder where ive herd that

abra: same deal with pory, u need to run fairy coverage but like who cares ur cracked af lmao

staryu: u know the drill blah blah pawn

at least this makes pony-g usable ig woo win for vulla

I think its fair to say that Vulla also completly invalidates a large portion of the nicher mons. A lot of the recently "discovered" fight and psy checks and completly worthless in a vullaby meta. Forcing you into an even stricter mold then u did before, as you now have 4 required mons, (the poison and steel are even more restrictive now too!), making the last 2 slots really the only flexible and expressive slots in 90% of cases (the pool for that one is also reduced woo)

Conclusion:

I will vote ban without a doubt, I dont understand why ppl think this meta is any better. Also yeah if u want to know more, feel to read the posts that were writing about a year ago, as the reasonings that ppl had back then is prob still valid today, yet this has somehow escaped the minds of a lot of ppl :/

 

[Albi]

Also yeah if u want to know more, feel to read the posts that were writing about a year ago

Gonna help with that, discussion starts from this post

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/metagame-discussion-thread.3656348/page-13#post-8730391

Nothing changed from then, if vullaby comes back the meta would be exactly the same as it was before, only thing that changed from these posts is that woobat was still around so some posts mention that.
Scraggy, zig and webs being gone really change nothing when it comes to vullaby, as they were just things that were kept in check by the bird, not things that made it better or more broken (aside from webs which made every mon better).
Nothing to add to pap's post other than that, i think it reflects the opinion of every ban voter.

 

[LilyAC]

I think ppl are out of there fuckign mind if you really think that somehow making the format more restrictive somehow helps make it more fun or more competitive.

First I want to address this. It's absolutely possible for there to be a restrictive meta that's more fun/competitive than a diverse one, because the restrictive meta can be better in other aspects. The current meta is plagued with speed ties, flame body burns, and, in my opinion, generally less flexible play. This makes the skill ceiling noticeably lower, and for me, it makes the meta less fun.

Of course some people will value a higher skill ceiling more than others. Personally I would trade away a bit of diversity for a higher skill ceiling in a heartbeat. Others may prefer the diversity and that's fine too. But to say a more diverse meta is always objectively better is fundamentally wrong.

But my 2nd point is that the Vullaby meta actually wasn't less diverse. Vull certainly kills the usage of some Pokemon (e.g. Natu) but it creates as many strategies as it kills. For example it lets you run fighterless teams, Foongus becomes more viable, G-pony gets better now that it doesn't have to worry about Natu, etc.

And this can be demonstrated with stats. I've taken the usage stats from weeks 1 to 4 of LCPL X (pre vull ban) and the stats from the latest LPL to create a graph.

On the x-axis you have every Pokemon ranked by usage, i.e. #1 in the vull meta is vullaby, and #1 in the current meta is foo. And on the y-axis you have the Pokemon's usage.

In a more diverse meta you would expect the line to have a less steep decline, because there would be a more balanced spread of usage across the Pokemon. But the lines are actually super similar, meaning diversity is almost the same, and so it is not a valid argument against the Vull meta.

 

[wesh papillon]

First I want to address this. It's absolutely possible for there to be a restrictive meta that's more fun/competitive than a diverse one, because the restrictive meta can be better in other aspects. The current meta is plagued with speed ties, flame body burns, and, in my opinion, generally less flexible play. This makes the skill ceiling noticeably lower, and for me, it makes the meta less fun.

I disagree with the premise that introducing vullaby is an inherently skillful pokemon despite its flexibility. It def changes how positioning works, and how u gameplan, but saying that the current meta is lacking in those skills would be a sus take.

Speed ties are an issue tho I think they are overblown. Theres essentially 3 problematic speed ties, foo vs foo, foo vs natu, natu vs grookey. In my opinion tho, there enough options of pokemon that are much faster or check multiple of these that its reasonable to play around it.

U mentionned flame body burns? wut? thats an issue with current meta? I mean arent vulla supporters the biggest fans of "just dont hit it with a physical move?". Except theres like 3 ppl that use larv and pony only takes like 2 hits a game.

Less flexible is reasonable between 2 standard team but imo is compensated by more options to build with, speaking of which:

But my 2nd point is that the Vullaby meta actually wasn't less diverse. Vull certainly kills the usage of some Pokemon (e.g. Natu) but it creates as many strategies as it kills. For example it lets you run fighterless teams, Foongus becomes more viable, G-pony gets better now that it doesn't have to worry about Natu, etc.

And this can be demonstrated with stats. I've taken the usage stats from weeks 1 to 4 of LCPL X (pre vull ban) and the stats from the latest LPL to create a graph.

On the x-axis you have every Pokemon ranked by usage, i.e. #1 in the vull meta is vullaby, and #1 in the current meta is foo. And on the y-axis you have the Pokemon's usage.

In a more diverse meta you would expect the line to have a less steep decline, because there would be a more balanced spread of usage across the Pokemon. But the lines are actually super similar, meaning diversity is almost the same, and so it is not a valid argument against the Vull meta.

uh excuse me? those are not the same graph? The post vulla has a much less steep decline in the 1 to 11 range, where as the vulla has a super steep drop off after the top 3-4 mons, and then has a plateau from 5-11, Which tbh is about what you would expect?

Also my argument isnt really backed or debunked by the graph. My point is that you can functionally get away with running nicher mons in the obligatory spots, these mons arent that used tho so they prob slide in somewhere with the other niche mons. Afaik they prob get lost in the data, mixed in with niche 2-3 last mons slots/ self contained archetypes.

Most ppl still do use pretty standard teams but if ur a weirdo you can get away with slightly more of the wall without being a self contained cheese archetype

 

[Éric]

Many of us who played both vull and foo meta already have our minds made up about our opinion on whether or not we should have the bird back, but some of the others don't, so I'm making this post to give my opinion on why we shouldn't unban Vullaby, since maybe this will help newer players who aren't so sure about it or maybe even convince some vull-bring-backer person.
I think the reasons why we shouldn't bring the bird back comes down to this 3 points (keeping in mind that it's not that the metagame we have will adapt but rather that it certainly will come back to how it was when we banned it, aka no natu no pony no carv etc):

1. It is necessary in every team: If you think having Mienfoo at 100% usage is overbearing, you don't wanna have Vullaby in the tier. Vullaby was the best mon in the tier, in the eyes of everyone and by a huge margin. Why is that? Well, it was the single best offensive mon in the tier, meaning the Pokémon that was able to deal the most damage in every single game, for reasons I'll explain later. What's more, it did also have an incredibly potent defensive profile as well. Its typing granted it resistances to grass and ghost moves, while giving it immunities to ground and psychic. This means it checks a lot of Pokémon like Abra, Diglett or Grookey, which in turn means it is given many more turns to hit the field than most other Pokémon. In short, it was a mon that every time it hit the field it hit like a truck, while being one of the easier to hit the field at the same time. It doesn't help either that its natural bulk is so high it didn't even need Eviolite to survive any neutral attack, sometimes even after rocks. Every single team had a Vullaby, it offered too much. Also, it was the premiere defogger of the tier, which was another reason to use it in your team.
2. Too overcentralizing:
   DISCLAIMER

   idk what you guys were talking about before in discord that mienfoo meta is more centralized because it has less viable mons or whatever? thats not how centralization works, or how much better is one metagame to another. if a meta is centralized, it revolves around a mon or a mechanic. being centralized doesnt have to be a bad thing, just look at the two best metas on smogon (generally agreed upon) adv and gsc ou. theyre centralized, one by sand and spikes and the other by lax, and that necessarily isnt bad. its when it becomes too much, when every single interaction is influenced by the centralizing presence, that it becomes a problem. and this has nothing to do with the amount of viable pokemon LOL)
   since Dark and Flying are so strong a typing combination, very few Pokémon were able to stand it. In fact, only two were used to do so: Pawniard, because it resists both its STABs, and Onix, because it resists Flying, checks Weak Armor (more on that later) with its own, and is physically bulky enough to withstand Knock Off. Don't make the mistake to think you were safe by using one of these two tho: Pawniard lost to the very common coverage move Heat Wave (investing just a bit on special attack allows you to KO it after Knock), and Onix, while it didn't lose to any coverage move outright, could be worn down with U-Turn, or simply get U-Turned on to Trapinch or even Diglett to get rid of it and win later. Still, if you didn't bring one of these two you outright lost to the bird, so they were a must on balanced teams. This, coupled with the obligatory Vullaby, fighter, fighter check and psychic check created a teambuilding dynamic of having 4/5 fixed mons, and only 1/2 of leeway. To its merit, even if mon wise it was a fixed meta, EV and set wise it was super customizable, which made for an interesting teambuilding part nonetheless. Still, having to use Onix or Pawn in every single team to not outright lose to one mon, and losing anyway because it had the coverage it needed was not good (in short, Pawn is not a check, it can even make you lose to it by procing Weak Armor LOL). The whole tier revolving about winning with your Vullaby before the other one beat you. This also created incredibly tough to check combinations, coupling Vullaby with Abra and/or Porygon was massively difficult to check, which actually is what ultimately made us suspect the bird a second time (that and HW 12 spatk vull).
3. Too unpredictable: so far I've only been talking about regular balanced teams with standard physically offensive Vullaby, or even mixed. But that one wasn't its only set: it could use just as well use a Nasty Plot set, which turned one of its two checks (Pawn) into food. Outside of HO teams (where you expect it, and faired really well too), it was very easy for you to lose because the Vull you thought you beat just plotted on your face and swept you. Sometimes it could be easier to identify non Defog Vulls (not meaning NP necessarily), like when there was a Staryu, but that could simply mean it had another unexpected move while being physical. And sometimes it wasn't possible to recognize it was NP at all, which made it much more frustrating.
4. Weak Armor + Endure: this wasn't talked about that much iirc, but it was one of the points that I hated the most. Basically, Vull is threatening enough at neutral, but giving it +2 speed, unless you had a healthy Onix, was a death sentence. Basically, your ways to check Vull usually came down to setting rocks with your Vull check hoping it hadn't U-Turned to Mienfoo, and never hitting it with a physical attack, or maybe just putting it in range to do so while killing it (for example, two rocks + HJK from Foo killed it). What made this even worse? Endure. There is no worse feeling than High Jump Kicking a 56% Vullaby thinking you've won the game just for it to click Endure and not only be at full again, but +2 speed too. Endure wasn't even the most common move in its slot either, so you always had this mindgame on whether or not you'd kill or lose the game on the spot, even if it didn't have it, you didn't know. This created a lot of unnecessary mindgames, which could be compared to the 50/50s people say every game in Mienfoo meta comes down to (which I don't agree with at all ftr, they're easily avoidable or not true 50/50s at all), and I couldn't understand at the time (and still now) that this wasn't talked about as much.

I think it's pretty clear my stance on Vullaby and whether or not it should be allowed again in the tier, but nonetheless I think the mon had some merits, which I will adress now:

• It made the metagame more skill based: I actually agree with this take that Vull meta both had no relevant ties (other than +2 Vull vs +2 Vull LOL) and the better player was usually the one ending up on top (obviously this is Pokémon, crits, burns, freezes etc happen always). Vull, similarly with Mienfoo, gave you a lot of options to both play with it and around it, which is what made good players win most of the time. Some say this is what we ultimately want in a metagame, and I agree with that too (obviously), but this is also achievable without having to have this broken, overcentralizing mon in the tier, without the proper tools to handle it. This is what tiering is for, this we can get many other ways. I made a post about this, so I won't much more in depth about it here.

TL;DR: Vullaby is fucking broken, it creates more problems than it solves, please don't bring it back. And, even if it comes back, for the love of god DO NOT UNBAN SCRAGGY AND/OR ZIGZAGOON. No skill mons, win on their own, nothing to do with Vull, broken as fuck.

 

[ACNT]

I respect the desire of some players to want a retest of Vullaby, but I will also vote ban without hesitation.

That said I think that instead of asking whether the meta would be better with Vullaby or not (personally, I suspect it would be worse), we should also ask whether the pokemon is broken or not, rn we are mostly discussing the consequences of a possible unban on the metagame and Vullaby being unhealthy or not.

And if some feel that it isn't, let the Vullaby defenders justify why unban it now. In two possible ways.

- Justify that Vullaby's problematic traits that led to its ban are now no longer valid due to metagame changes (good luck with that)

- Explain that the ban made no sense by addressing point by point the elements that Vullaby was accused of before his ban.

I see absolutely no point in bringing back a pokémon without discussing whether it's broken or not just because a bunch of players (even very good ones) think the meta would be better with it. In this case I don't see the point of having a tiering policy.

For my opinion on vull: I think it's not fun to play, it's excruciatingly centralizing and I question the idea that it increases skill ceilling. The problem is that pokémon is horribly versatile in both its spreads and sets, each main set has a myriad of sub-sets and spreads. Most of its sets does not need a lot of support, and you cannot gather informations easily from the team preview because Physical and Special Vullaby can fit in the same offensive cores. The problem is that being wrong about the opponent's Vullaby set often means taking a huge disadvantage, because both special weak armor an physical weak armor are great, even one turn wasted is too much. As a result, the decision process to make in many cases (especially against Vullaby NP) is more a matter of dice rolling than skill. The Nasty Plot set is particularly infamous: rather simple to place, do not need a lot of support to work well, can KO its checks at +2 thanks to flinches, can play Endure to block Fake Out, can play Berry Juice, can play Eviolite to place itself on a wider range of pokémons, can play Sub to end the game if the opponent sends a death fodder after a Fake Out and for status... I'm pretty sure you could also run 2 or 3 others moves in tours just for NP, and same for the spreads (you can afford to trade some speed in the NP set for some extra bulk in HP / Def or even Sdef, a real plague for calcs because your gameplan vs np vull can fail just because you calced the wrong spread. And while you can guess the HP investment, it's way more difficult to guess a possible def / sdef cheese spread until it's too late.)

 

[Drifting]

Hey, after just finishing my reqs and having played a shit ton of games with a lot of different teams in the last couple days I have some thoughts about Vullaby.

THIS SHIT IS BROKEN

I mean seriously, what has really changed that made anyone think that letting this goofy ahh bird back into the tier was gonna improve things? The main arguments seem to be that either:

* (a) Vullaby was never broken

* (b) Vullaby is broken but reduces variance in the tier, increases skill expression/fun, etc.

I think (a) is just straight up obviously wrong so I'll talk about that quickly first. This mon gets 100% usage and has no counters. Pawniard (a mon that already has its hands full with corny-ass Porygon) gets chipped and completely bopped by heat wave sets. Onix is a complete disgrace of a pokemon that loses to everything, gets trapped easily, can't hard switch into Vull because U-Turn, can't heal, basically is a waste of space apart from dealing with the bird. Vullaby does not count as a Vullaby counter. How do you know what set Vull is running and if your mon can check it? Well unless you can mindgame your opponent into typing !showteam, you don't!


This shit is obviously broken and I can't believe that isn't obvious to some people. Also, this is only the standard Vullaby, we'll talk about Nasty Plot later.

(b) Vullaby is broken but reduces variance in the tier, increases skill expression/fun, etc.

This is the one I see more people using but I don't even think it's that true.

Off the bat, obviously ladder games aren't the best source of getting a feel on a new meta but this shit is not fun at all. Along with Vullaby comes more Porygon, Abra, Foongus, Onix and Trappers, mons that I would describe as anything but "fun". Obviously the current meta is flawed and has frustrating aspects (I supported a Foo test for the record), but it really was a lot of fun building with all kinds of zany mons, the standard team structure had enough leeway that you were able to try things and still have a solid structure to fall back on. Even the player-base at large was starting to innovate, imo people are really catching onto mons like Morelull and Drilbur, among some others.

Meanwhile my building experience so far has been dull to say the least. Vull just invalidates so much shit and feels very restrictive in general. Natu especially being rendered impotent is sad, Natu is annoying obviously but it gives a lot of freedom for building, allows cooler mons like Larvesta to shine.

But obviously us grizzled Smogon veterans don't care about something being abjectly unfun, we tier based on what allows us to crush our enemies on the battlefield, pillage their crops, etc with the most skill. So let's talk about how Vull affects skill expression.

NP VULL

This seems like an apt time to bring up this guy. The standard Vull is incredible and definitely the best mon in the meta, but the fact that it can also do this is what really breaks it imo. It truly blows my mind that people think the mon infamous for multiple generations of flinching through its checks is good for "skill expression and reducing variance".

This is my preferred Vull and it can do a lot. It sets up on basically every physical attacker, and can run moves to completely invalidate some counters. Endure especially to be immune to Mienfoo is a fun one, and the combination of Dark-Flying-Fire coverage (or even just Dark-Fire for endure sets) is basically unstoppable, just another example of Vullaby's "checks" being moveset dependent, and even if you know what set Vull is running, there being little reliable way to know what moves Vull is running. NP Vull isn't some niche set either, it's pretty common and makes any idea of Vull improving skill expression a joke.

The only real way to stop this mon from setting up to do massive damage is to switch as it sets up to Abra or something, but since Vullaby meta basically necessitates LO Abra (a complete gimmick set) there is nothing stopping the Vull from just deciding to click Dark Pulse and then you lose. Epic 50/50.

SPEED TIES

The current 17 speed bracket is very cringe, this is true, but speed ties aren't solved by Vullaby. Apart from the obvious Vull ties that happen constantly and often have huge impact, and Dwebble v Dwebble games being practically decided at turn 1, the new most notorious speed bracket has to be 19 speed.

This includes:

* Abra
* Ponyta (both of them)
* Staryu
* Some more niche things like Magby, Diglett-Alola and Meowth

Thanks to basically all Abra's being LO now by necessity, these mons basically all one-shot each other. This was annoying before but now with a lot less diversity meaning answers are a lot harder to come by it's kind of absurd now, and I've noticed a lot of games coming down to specifically Abra/Pony/Star ties. I played Bouli a lot on the suspect ladder and our games literally every time would just be based on whether my Magby could thunder punch Staryu. If it did he ff'd and if it didn't I ff'd. I got reqs with HO so I'm sure that might be a "me problem", but it didn't feel like Vull meta made games any less dependent on overweighted speed ties, it just changed which mons were coin-flipping games.

OTHER STUFF

There's some other things about the "skill expression" argument that bother me. For one, I think that half of the skill of Pokemon is not in the game itself but in the builder beforehand, making teams that are cohesive and versatile. Maybe this is a personal gripe, but I love building in a way that feels very authentic to who I am, using a lot of creative sets, flashy plans and cool shit. In a meta this centralised, building "cool shit" is obviously way harder, or at least it has been so far for me.

Another thing I wanted to point out is that it feels like there's a lot of guessing than there was before. With Trapinch now for instance, it's basically a 50/50 whether they have Feint or Giga Drain, and guessing wrong with a protect mon like Abra is obviously miserable and not really based on who the "better player" is.

Conclusion:

Sure, if we were to hold a "dogshit eating competiton", we would be able to objectively tell who has the strongest stomach. But at the end of the day you're still eating dogshit.

Really, at the end of the day, this is Pokemon. If having to deal with some variance in exchange for a more diverse and fun metagame without a blatantly broken, overcentralising bird running around bothers you that much, go play that "No RNG" gamemode and agree to bring the same team as your opponent every game, or if you really love Vullaby that much go play some oldgen. Out of 100+ ladder games I've played in this suspect, dozens of people have complained about wanting this mon specifically gone. Nobody has said anything even slightly good about it yet.

You can go back and read what people were saying about Vull before and it's all still true for the most part. How many times are we gonna go through this before we realise that Vull is just a shitty presence?

tl;dr: This shit is broken and over-centralising, the "skill expression" if there is any it brings doesn't change that, it's blatantly not fun and I will be voting BAN.

 

[Expulso]

i think the current LC meta (without Vullaby) is unjustly hated. there are a number of unique styles and mons that have only recently gotten more exploration; larvesta > poison, slowpoke fightspam, scottie's drilbur + scarf archen, trapper magnemite, and freezai's "crit-me-natu" and shellos teams are a few of the more prominent ones that come to mind. i can think of many others; morelull, fetchd-galar, stunky, wingull, and, uh, binacle? have all seen usage very deep into LC open.

there's a fair number of wincons that provide diversity without becoming overwhelming to account for; shellos, agili/scarf pory, tyrunt, ponyta, grookey, carvanha, and cm natu all come to mind pretty quickly as interesting progress-makers that nonetheless have common checks.

i think reverting to the vullaby metagame would be a big step backwards for all the reasons other posters have mentioned. Vullaby is broken, with multiple sets that are each nearly uncheckable and hard to distinguish at preview. it is also extremely restricting, pushing a tier that already has some very high-usage mons close to RBY's territory.

finally, i think many prominent LC players have been too quick to complain about the current metagame, spending months agitating for a vullaby un-ban rather than making a significant effort to adapt to the SS LC metagame as it is. those who have (scottie and freezai being the 2 most prominent examples) have been rewarded for their efforts and i would encourage others to follow their example. i will not be getting reqs but would 100% vote to ban vullaby if i could. thanks

 

[Corporal Levi]

I'm glad that the OP didn't list a decrease in brokenness from Vullaby's ban among the justifications for this suspect, because it is beyond reasonable debate that Vullaby is every bit as broken as when it was banned. There are no major metagame discoveries or developments that would make Vullaby less powerful than before, and many of them are trends that would cause Vullaby to be even stronger.

While there have been some attempts on topics like speed ties, it seems pretty clear that the push for a Vullaby unban doesn't emphasize the usual conditions of a Smogon suspect test, which are brokenness and competitiveness. Instead, they rest largely upon intangible ideas like the Vullaby metagame being more fun, enough to unban a broken mon. The issue with this is that, unlike brokenness and competitiveness, these ideas completely lack a metric to argue for or against - everything is subjective, of course, but these ideas aren't even debatable. Compared to a claim that Vullaby's supposed flexibility (whatever that entails) makes the metagame more fun, it is just as valid to argue that, say, the post-Vullaby metagame is more fun because it has fewer repetitive Regencore sequences, especially Foongus wars, or even something like the metagame being more aesthetically pleasing. Banning a mon on these arguments could be good for appealing to the immediate playerbase but is wholly short-sighted in every other respect.

To be clear, I do think conducting this suspect was a good idea to flesh out a point of contention, but from a tiering perspective, the act of unbanning Vullaby would be phenomenally poor.

And this can be demonstrated with stats. I've taken the usage stats from weeks 1 to 4 of LCPL X (pre vull ban) and the stats from the latest LPL to create a graph.

On the x-axis you have every Pokemon ranked by usage, i.e. #1 in the vull meta is vullaby, and #1 in the current meta is foo. And on the y-axis you have the Pokemon's usage.

In a more diverse meta you would expect the line to have a less steep decline, because there would be a more balanced spread of usage across the Pokemon. But the lines are actually super similar, meaning diversity is almost the same, and so it is not a valid argument against the Vull meta.

Your interpretation of the graph is unsound. The slopes of the line are always equal between metagames with the same number of mons, including mons with no usage, because usage stats must sum up to 600%. Intuitively, if there were two metagames with 60 mons each, metagame A had 30% usage across 20 mons and 0% for the other 40 (a flat slope across mons with usage), while metagame B had 3 mons with 20% usage, 3 mons with 19% usage, and so on down to 5% usage, would you consider metagame A or B more diverse? You would probably either answer metagame B or ask for more information, because the slope of used mons doesn't provide information on its own. To illustrate, here is a graph of all the old gens from LCPL X, the first 4 weeks of SS from LCPL X, and both SS LC OU and SS LC RU from the most recent LPL:

There is some disparity between the usage stats of the top 1-2 mons, but after that the slopes converge rapidly. All sample sizes are within the same order of magnitude, so this is probably just the expected shape of mons usage in tournaments.

Unless your argument is that all of these metagames are identically diverse, it's safe to say that the correlation between line slope and diversity is fundamentally not meaningful.

A better measure for diversity could be amount of mons that are used over some cutoff for viability. Choosing this cutoff isn't a hard science; OU formerly used 3.41% for the UU cutoff. The fact of the matter is that tournament stats do not have the sample size for this metric to be meaningful. If we look at ladder stats, comparing usage rates for June 2021 and May 2021 (Vullaby meta) to June 2022 and May 2022 (post-Vullaby meta) paints a clear picture of more mons being above the UU cutoff after the ban. I realize that there are a myriad of other factors that may contribute to this, such as the post-Vullaby metagame being massively more popular than the Vullaby metagame, so I won't pursue this line of thought further.

 

[Acehunter1]

Since the suspect was announced, I have been surprised by how ambivalent I am about this vote. I have gone from leaning pro-unban most of the last year to leaning pro-keep banned when the suspect was announced, and now leaning pro-unban again, although this might still change. I think honestly I don't mind that much what results from this suspect, both results have their merits to me. However, I'd like to share my point of view in the hopes that it helps others make a more informed decision, whichever it ends up being.

​

Argument for freeing Vullaby: Competitivity

The main argument pushing for freeing Vullaby, it seems, is how the Vullaby meta we had before its ban was much more competitive and fun to play. This mainly comes from the many speed ties that plagues almost every SS LC game currently. I haven't been a fan of the arguments of Vullaby meta having a higher skill ceiling. However, it definitely has less speed ties, and games are much less often decided by then. I still wasn't convinced until I started laddering for getting reqs. At first, it was definitely the refreshing effect of playing a "new" meta, with some nostalgia too, which made it super fun. I had a blast playing Vull meta on ladder these few days. However, after playing more to get reqs (I played a lot), I realized how, after many months of post-Vull meta, I had completely forgotten just how non-luck-based LC can be. It was kinda subconscious at first too, I was just surprised at the end by how few crucial speed ties there were in games. I still couldn't care less about the "high skill ceiling" argument, but I can definitely say that I've been pleasantly surprised by how much less luck-based and fun Vullaby meta is to play. I've never been a fan of the argument that more competitive necessarily means more fun, but I can't deny that it's really refreshing to do away with all the speed ties, making playing Vull meta much more enjoyable, for me at least.

Argument against freeing Vullaby: Diversity

I'm sure many people know this by now, but diversity in a meta is very important to me. I can't stress enough how much I dislike seeing the same few top tier Pokemon being used over and over again in standard structures, without any innovation or creativity. I voted to ban Vullaby last year not because I thought it was broken, but rather because I thought it was restrictive in teambuilding, and I was hoping to see more diversity in the meta with its departure. From what we've seen the last year, the meta that we have today is clearly more diverse than Vullaby meta. The extent of this might be arguable, but I think that definitely many more Pokemon are used at high levels than in Vull meta (I could probably make a list for comparison if necessary). Teambuilding is also now slightly less restrictive, with less mandatory slots. However, banning Vullaby did not completely solve this issue, since the meta is still quite centralized, but around different things, with Mienfoo replacing Vullaby with similar usage levels. Grookey is also in both metas. A meta with Vullaby does allow more flexibility in some aspects, such as Timburr competing with Mienfoo and a Fighting type being much less mandatory in general. Nevertheless, by freeing Vullaby, the meta will definitely be less diverse, and teambuilding at least slightly more restricted overall, at least until potential meta development.

Argument for freeing Vullaby: Flexibility

This point might be a combination of both competitivity and diversity, but one thing I have noticed that I really like by playing Vullaby meta the last few days, is that the games feel less linear. There are way more options open during play. While in the current meta, there are "default" or "safe" options, like switching Poison on Fight, Mienfoo on Steel, or Natu on Ferroseed, with Vullaby in the meta, I have noticed that it is much less clear. As examples, going Vullaby check on Vullaby is not always the default option, since that could be dangerous due to trap. In a Mienfoo vs Mienfoo lead mirror, Fake Out isn't always good because it risks giving Vullaby a boost, but not Faking Out risks getting punished by opposing Fake Out. In a Mienfoo vs Vullaby scenario, Fake Out might or might not be good depending on the sets, Vullaby can click Knock, Brave Bird or U-Turn viably but everything it clicks could be punished severely, and likewise, anything Mienfoo clicks can be rewarding or bad. Switch-ins to Fighting types aren't always the Fight check, since Vullaby is often a good if not better option depending on what the Fighter clicks. Those are only examples, a lot more occurs ingame. You could say some similar things are present in the current meta too, but I feel that it occurs much less often. There are more "free", difficulty punishable moves to click (aka moves that are heavily favored in terms of risk-reward), the options are more 50/50-like (default or not default), and that overall, the current meta is more linear. The most blatant example of this is probably the lead. Playing for the suspect test made me realize how in Vullaby meta, often there isn't an objectively best lead for either player, since any lead could be good or bad against something. This is in stark contrast to the "default" Mienfoo leads and anti-Mienfoo leads we see in the current meta, and boy have I ever said how much I hate "brainlessly" leading Mienfoo in the current meta. In Vullaby meta, I feel like almost anything could be viably led, depending on the opponent's team on preview. This could be a point of a greater diversity or a greater flexibility in plays, but the gameplay being less linear and having more options makes the meta drastically more fun to play, at least to me. This is probably the most important thing I've noticed, and the reason that has helped me the most to come to a decision.

Conclusion

For the aforementioned reasons, I am currently leaning towards voting to Unban Vullaby. I might still change my mind, but this has been my decision-making process thus far. I said in my intro that both outcomes of this suspect are fine to me, but after writing this post, I feel I'd have a preference for freeing Vullaby.

​

Is Vullaby broken?

You might have noticed that I have only talked about the Vullaby meta and the current meta, and haven't even brought up whether Vullaby is broken or not. That is because I do not think that debating whether Vullaby is broken or not is that relevant for this suspect test. I say this because I see this suspect as almost a referendum to decide between two known metas: the meta we have now, and last year's Vullaby meta. The special situation of this suspect is that we know exactly what meta we are getting into if we free Vullaby. We are not resuspecting Vullaby because it has gotten weaker. We are resuspecting Vullaby because a part of the playerbase thinks that there are issues with the current meta, that the Vullaby meta was better, and that reverting to that meta is the best way to resolve these issues. We know full well that Vullaby will be just as strong as before. The current meta and Vullaby meta are also comparable in the sense that both have a centralized meta with an almost 100% usage Pokemon (Vullaby or Mienfoo) that is arguably overbearing (with Grookey still looming behind the scenes). Therefore, unbanning doesn't necessarily mean allowing one more broken/centralizing/overbearing Pokemon in the metagame. This might be slightly subjective, since I personally think neither are broken, but both are definitely very strong and potentially overbearing in their respective metas. Both metas are centered around them, thus why I think it's not an argument about whether Vullaby is broken or not, but really a choice between two metas, both with their strengths and their flaws.

Thanks for reading until this point, I've put a lot of time into this post, and I hope the points I brought up were interesting and will help those still undecided to come to a decision. However, I still encourage everyone, especially to the new players who haven’t played the Vullaby meta last year, to get reqs of course, but also to play more on the current ladder to get their own opinion of a meta with Vullaby, and take whatever they want from what I’ve just shared.


The following will be a note about the other factors that apply only to me, and might or might not factor into my own decision only.

Personal factors

I voted Do not ban in the first Vullaby suspect, and I voted Ban in the second not because I thought Vullaby was broken, but because I found it restrictive and hoped for a better and more diverse metagame. Since then, I've been publicly supporting freeing Vullaby for a long time, ever since SCL last year. Even when the metagame stabilized after the Scraggy, webs and Zigzagoon ban, I was still supportive of a Vullaby resuspect, since a lot of people were complaining about the meta (the current one), and nothing at all was happening for more than 6 months. However, unlike many Vull resuspect supporters it seems, I do not hate nor dislike the meta we currently have. The meta does revolve a lot around speed ties, and is still too centralized to my taste with Grookey in the tier, but I'm pretty sure I'd miss the current meta if Vullaby gets unbanned. That is because almost all of my success, innovations and accomplishments were achieved in this post-Vullaby meta. If Vullaby is freed, this meta will be pushed to irrelevancy, not only making me lose my main playground, but also erasing almost a year of progress entirely. No one will play SS LC in the future and see what we've gone through the past year. This meta will be secluded in the archives, swapped for a meta that, while it might be better than what we have, could be considered a relatively similar version of past generations like SM LC, but worse (especially if Porygon goes next). The current meta without Vullaby gives SS LC a unique identity, distinguishing it from the past two generations, which might be what we want SS LC to be remembered for. Of course, these are my personal thoughts, and should not be treated as arguments to determine your votes. With all this taken into account, I am still leaning Unban Vullaby. Thanks for reading.

S/o Corporal Levi and LilyAC for providing feedback and helping me organize my thoughts for this post

 

[tazz]

Vullaby has always been a borderline Pokémon in both SM and SS, and I can easily sympathize with the people who voted Ban in the original suspect test. I, too, was tempted to do so, just to see what kind of meta was on the other side. That being said, I think that the best way to think about this suspect is to consider Vullaby not in isolation, but for the overall metagame it created.

This gets to a fundamental disagreement I have with some of the Vull-banners. The reason that we ban broken Pokémon is to because they make the metagame uncompetitive in some way; to be broken is to be unhealthy. If banning something makes every subsequent meta worse, that to me is a clear indication that it was never broken in the first place. This is where my thoughts on Vullaby currently stand: while our understanding of its strengths have not changed, we now know infinitely more of its impact from the meta that has developed in its absence. I want Vullaby back because it is clearer to me now that its overall influence was positive.

1. On the current meta

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the current meta. I hoped that it would stabilize to something enjoyable eventually, but we're nearly a year out from Vullaby's ban with no sign of improvement. I'll be echoing the complaints that top players have had with this meta for months.

- The 17 Speed tier is too saturated, leading to frequent game-deciding 50/50s
This continues to be the most infuriating aspect of this meta. Natu/Grookey/Mienfoo interactions are absolutely toxic, as fighting checks often lack the longevity to check the latter two Pokémon long term - leading to situations where each Pokémon becomes an emergency luck-based check for itself and for both other Pokémon (provided Natu/Mienfoo are healthy enough to take a Glide). This wouldn't be a problem if these interactions were avoidable, but in late game scenarios choosing not to risk a speed tie usually means taking huge damage or sacking an entire Pokémon. I can't tell you how many of my games come down to unavoidable speed ties, particularly nail-biters where both my opponent and I are playing well. That is perhaps the most tragic effect of the 17 Spe tier for enjoyability: The closest and most exciting games are the most likely to come down to speed ties in the endgame.

I'll give a quick example of the type of game I'm talking about. Soulwind and I were neck and neck for most of the early game, but a devastating min roll on his Grookey puts me quite behind. My only path to winning became forcing speed ties over and over again. Soulwind attempted to play completely safe by preserving the Mienfoo on turn 24, but ultimately sees that with his koffing down his only Grookey stop is his own Mienfoo, and is forced to go for the Hammer Grookey vs Mienfoo speed tie to win the game. The previous game was almost the exact same story, coming down to a last turn Grookey vs Mienfoo tie. I was looking forward to the series and prepared extensively, but in the end the result of each game felt completely out of my hands. Our team tournaments have similar problems: perhaps the most famous case in SCL was teal6 vs dcae, where dcae was able to deny lucking teal6 by (accurately) claiming that teal6 lost on the spot if he had won the forced Mienfoo tie. I could probably dig up dozens of games decided by forced ties, but their existence is not really in dispute.

- Lack of diversity

I think its fair to say that Vulla also completly invalidates a large portion of the nicher mons. A lot of the recently "discovered" fight and psy checks and completly worthless in a vullaby meta. Forcing you into an even stricter mold then u did before, as you now have 4 required mons, (the poison and steel are even more restrictive now too!), making the last 2 slots really the only flexible and expressive slots in 90% of cases (the pool for that one is also reduced woo)

I fully disagree on this point: one of the big selling points of banning Vullaby at the time was that it was holding back a ton of Pokémon and without it we would get some much-needed diversity, but team structures have remained as rigid as ever. The number of Viable Pokémon has remained virtually unchanged: for every Pokémon freed from Vull's oppression, another has fallen from grace. We gained Natu, Carvahna, and Tyrunt at the expense of Timburr, Onix and Ponyta-Galar (not to mention Vullaby itself and the consequent Scraggy ban). The only reasonable case for the Vull meta being more restrictive is that balance has four required slots (compared to the three we have in this meta: Mienfoo, Mienfoo counter, Steel), but to claim that how you fill those slots isn't flexible and expressive indicates clear lack of knowledge of that meta. The Vullaby meta actually had more viable options within the required slots than we have now: Timburr was a viable second option to Mienfoo, and Foongus and Mareanie were considered just as good as Koffing as fighting checks.

To simplify the building process of pre-Vull and post-Vull to 4 required slots vs 3 required slot is also a gross oversimplification of how building works in LC. This notion of "required slots" is a bit deceptive, as you can't actually just do anything you want with the remaining slots and still have a viable team. You still have to account for the rest of the A rank mons within those slots: usually you need a Koffing check, some sort of priority if you aren't running Grookey, a Tyrunt answer, a Grookey check if you are't running Koffing, etc. An underappreciated aspect of Vullaby was just how much role compression it performed on virtually every team it was on. Even the offensive sets could still double as secondary fighting checks, grookey checks, emergency checks to all kinds of sweepers with endure, hazard removal, and the list goes on. While it is true that Vullaby mandated its own slot (the narrative that it forced two slots is false; steel types and stealth rocks are still obligatory on every team), it freed up remaining slots from having to check a wide variety of offensive threats. As someone who has built extensively in every iteration of SS, I have never noticed any difference in expressiveness as a result of the Vullaby ban.

The interpretation of all of these graphs looks more or less like a wash. I can believe that the graphs aren't a consistent indication of metagame diversity, but levi's ladder stats are similarly meaningless: I think to use any metric where vhue takes up multiple top places in any good faith argument about LC at a competitive level is ridiculous. Levi is right to point out that LC's current popularity relative to last year further invalidates the statistics, though the implication that that popularity has anything at all to do with Vullaby's ban and not the obvious results of Freezai's success is pretty weak. The metric I've always used to differentiate diversity between generations is amount of mons in A and B rank: it's generally accepted that ORAS is the most diverse metagame we've ever had, and this is directly reflected by that VR having almost twice as many viable Pokémon as the current one. The post-Vullaby VR is, predictably, almost indistinguishable in terms of variety of viable options (the pre-Vull tier list actually has slightly more options in A rank). I think any measurement is likely to be a bit fuzzy on this point (I recognize that using viability, a subjective measure that doesn't account for usage or centralization is flawed), but I think that the other sides abstract claim of diversity has been thus far just as baseless.

2. What Vullaby brings to the table

While most of the newer anti-Vullaby people acknowledge the problems with the current meta, they just don't understand or don't remember why the Vullaby meta didn't have similar problems with speed ties and luck-based interactions. Ace is thus far the only person to note some of the play differences between the metas, and does so well:

Argument for freeing Vullaby: Flexibility

This point might be a combination of both competitivity and diversity, but one thing I have noticed that I really like by playing Vullaby meta the last few days, is that the games feel less linear. There are way more options open during play. While in the current meta, there are "default" or "safe" options, like switching Poison on Fight, Mienfoo on Steel, or Natu on Ferroseed, with Vullaby in the meta, I have noticed that it is much less clear. As examples, going Vullaby check on Vullaby is not always the default option, since that could be dangerous due to trap. In a Mienfoo vs Mienfoo lead mirror, Fake Out isn't always good because it risks giving Vullaby a boost, but not Faking Out risks getting punished by opposing Fake Out. In a Mienfoo vs Vullaby scenario, Fake Out might or might not be good depending on the sets, Vullaby can click Knock, Brave Bird or U-Turn viably but everything it clicks could be punished severely, and likewise, anything Mienfoo clicks can be rewarding or bad. Switch-ins to Fighting types aren't always the Fight check, since Vullaby is often a good if not better option depending on what the Fighter clicks. Those are only examples, a lot more occurs ingame. You could say some similar things are present in the current meta too, but I feel that it occurs much less often. There are more "free", difficulty punishable moves to click (aka moves that are heavily favored in terms of risk-reward), the options are more 50/50-like (default or not default), and that overall, the current meta is more linear. The most blatant example of this is probably the lead. Playing for the suspect test made me realize how in Vullaby meta, often there isn't an objectively best lead for either player, since any lead could be good or bad against something. This is in stark contrast to the "default" Mienfoo leads and anti-Mienfoo leads we see in the current meta, and boy have I ever said how much I hate "brainlessly" leading Mienfoo in the current meta. In Vullaby meta, I feel like almost anything could be viably led, depending on the opponent's team on preview. This could be a point of a greater diversity or a greater flexibility in plays, but the gameplay being less linear and having more options makes the meta drastically more fun to play, at least to me. This is probably the most important thing I've noticed, and the reason that has helped me the most to come to a decision.

Ace captures the more immediate pathing differences between the Vullaby post-Vullaby metas, especially the far less linear early-games of the former. As much as ace talks up the flexibility of the Vullaby meta, I think that this still only scratches the surface of how much more interesting games in it were. For that I will build upon Eric's point about the offensive and defensive roles of Vullaby:

Well, it was the single best offensive mon in the tier, meaning the Pokémon that was able to deal the most damage in every single game, for reasons I'll explain later. What's more, it did also have an incredibly potent defensive profile as well. Its typing granted it resistances to grass and ghost moves, while giving it immunities to ground and psychic. This means it checks a lot of Pokémon like Abra, Diglett or Grookey, which in turn means it is given many more turns to hit the field than most other Pokémon. In short, it was a mon that every time it hit the field it hit like a truck, while being one of the easier to hit the field at the same time. It doesn't help either that its natural bulk is so high it didn't even need Eviolite to survive any neutral attack, sometimes even after rocks. Every single team had a Vullaby, it offered too much. Also, it was the premiere defogger of the tier, which was another reason to use it in your team.

I obviously believe that Vullaby's offensive presence is overstated here, but the basic premise that Vullaby had enormous offensive and defensive roles on every team it was on is correct. What Eric does not capture here is the critical point that it could not perform every possible role simultaneously. If Vullaby had consistent recovery that allowed it to stick around for the entire game it would certainly be broken, but this is not the case: between its rock weakness, recoil from its main STAB move and tendency to want to switch in on Pokemon like Mienfoo, Foongus and Grookey, in practice Vullaby's incredible utility is fleeting. Vullaby may only be able to come in and remain useful a few times per game, and properly choosing when to bring it in is very difficult. This is a huge part of the options that Ace mentions in his post: Vullaby's bulk and pivoting ability opens up an incredible amount of pathing options, many of which are ultimately wastes of Vullaby's offensive or defensive utility.

This is the greatest source of the higher skill ceiling that the Vullaby metagame had. Vullaby both opened up far less linear options in game and was itself difficult to use: inexperienced players had trouble knowing the best time to try to punch holes in the opposing team, or alternatively which Pokemon they should be saving Vull to check in the endgame. I saw this over and over again on ladder: a newer player would lead Vullaby, get knock off on one or two on my Pokemon to get off to a slight lead, but end up with a Vullaby far too weakened to be of any use in the middle or endgame with too little damage on my team to show for it. I encourage those voting in this suspect who weren't around during the Vullaby meta to watch replays and talk with those who were, as I don't think that the ladder is giving you an accurate picture of what it was actually like. The Vullaby meta, much more so than this one, will reward greater understanding of pathing that you will gain over time.

TL;DR: The lack of frequent game-deciding speed ties is the most immediate advantage of the Vullaby meta to this one, but that isn't the only positive aspect to be gained. Less luck is one aspect of a competitive metagame, but so is skill ceiling. Good metas should allow players to express their command over the game as much as possible, and the complex pathing of the Vullaby meta lends itself to this far more than our current relatively linear meta.

I will edit in some responses to some other points in this thread, as there are a lot of misinformed takes here (the argument that the 19 spe tier in the Vullaby meta was anywhere close to as influential as the 17 spe tier is in this meta, for example, is completely detached from reality).

 

[Corporal Levi]

I won't address the first two sections of the post since they’re just putting forth your personal stance on the degree to which ties/diversity have changed and are relevant.

I obviously believe that Vullaby's offensive presence is overstated here, but the basic premise that Vullaby had enormous offensive and defensive roles on every team it was on is correct. What Eric does not capture here is the critical point that it could not perform every possible role simultaneously. If Vullaby had consistent recovery that allowed it to stick around for the entire game it would certainly be broken, but this is not the case: between its rock weakness, recoil from its main STAB move and tendency to want to switch in on Pokemon like Mienfoo, Foongus and Grookey, in practice Vullaby's incredible utility is fleeting. Vullaby may only be able to come in and remain useful a few times per game, and properly choosing when to bring it in is very difficult. This is a huge part of the options that Ace mentions in his post: Vullaby's bulk and pivoting ability opens up an incredible amount of pathing options, many of which are ultimately wastes of Vullaby's offensive or defensive utility.

This is the greatest source of the higher skill ceiling that the Vullaby metagame had. Vullaby both opened up far less linear options in game and was itself difficult to use: inexperienced players had trouble knowing the best time to try to punch holes in the opposing team, or alternatively which Pokemon they should be saving Vull to check in the endgame.

I'd like to briefly address this. Acehunter's argument on the Vullaby metagame being more "flexible" is that, while Vullaby is alive, the options to handle an opposing mon are closer in value (I would say this is simply because Vullaby checks nearly everything), and this makes games more fun. This is a fair train of thought but I personally totally disagree; I feel that when the options get so close in value they start to feel like a guessing game, rather than something that meaningfully correlates optimizing your plays with results, and I don't find that fun. There isn't an outright correct answer to this, though, and the degree to which it's worth considering is also worth debating.

Using this argument to go on and claim that Vullaby increases "skill ceiling" doesn't make sense (Acehunter mentioned this too). A simple thought experiment is to simply extend the idea - do you think a metagame with 6 Vullaby-like mons would be more skillful than both Vullaby and post-Vullaby? Probably not - when a mon is disproportionately strong, it will have disproportionate options, but the rest of the mons in the game will be relatively weaker. Vullaby being worth two mons doesn't make the game a 7v7, it just means that its decisions take up 27% of the game instead of 17%.

While most of the newer anti-Vullaby people acknowledge the problems with the current meta, they just don't understand or don't remember why the Vullaby meta didn't have similar problems with speed ties and luck-based interactions.

---

I encourage those voting in this suspect who weren't around during the Vullaby meta to watch replays and talk with those who were, as I don't think that the ladder is giving you an accurate picture of what it was actually like. The Vullaby meta, much more so than this one, will reward greater understanding of pathing that you will gain over time.

This section is terrible.

The implication here is that if you weren’t a “top player” during the Vullaby meta, then your experiences aren’t valuable to the suspect. You ask that newer voters to base their judgment of the Vullaby metagame not off of what they've seen and experienced, but what other users claim to have seen and experienced in 2021.

Part of the issue with this approach is its failure to take root in reality. It's ridiculous to believe that the playerbase will collectively erase 12 months and totally shift their beliefs back to a previous meta. Not only is the playerbase - and their set of meta views - different, even the list of mons itself has changed. The reason the ladder isn't a "good indication" of what the Vullaby metagame looked like a year ago is because that metagame will never exist again. It will continue not to exist, because SS LC will continue to develop until the gen ends, even if Vullaby gets freed. If the active and/or decent users who have established themselves since then truly believe that a) an increase in speed ties is endemic to post-Vullaby, and b) this warrants freeing a mon they believe to be broken, then I have no issue with that. But it's absurd to diminish their viewpoint because their frame of reference doesn't involve an infatuation with a metagame they will (and in my opinion should) never experience.

I think it’s telling that nearly every user who doesn’t look at the Vullaby metagame with (for lack of a better phrase) rose-tinted glasses considers the idea of finding it non-broken to be ridiculous. This includes not only newer players who either weren't around during the Vullaby metagame, but also those who were around but simply less heavily involved with it, and even former LC mains who stepped back from some LC discussion circles for long enough. It's absurd that you would try to frame a potential lack of that bias as a lack of worth as a voter.

 

[ninjadog]

I was against banning Vullaby at the time and still am now, and whilst I understand newer players not enjoying and judging the Vullaby meta due to the nature of the ladder, I really don't think it's very representative of what it'll be like in tournaments with the very high number of screens teams etc, not to mention it still hasn't really adapted, with very few Onix or Foongus for example, nor is ladder a very accurate representative at the best of times.

One reason that I think Vull is even less broken now than it was prior is the emergence of proactive checks that can actually threaten the opposing team if given free turns, in DD Onix and more importantly Tyrunt. Tyrunt takes little damage from anything Vull does and can immediately DD or fire off an attack to make immediate progress, unlike previously when Onix or Pawn would often struggle to do anything after switching in. I don't really agree with the notion that Tyrunt usage will fall off once if we return to the Vull meta, Timburr usage I'm sure will increase but Psychic Fangs still OHKO at +1, as will Trapinch but I think Tyrunt will adapt by increasingly running Ice Fang to deal with that. Tyrunt being a presence in the meta would also force NP Vull into running Dark Pulse or risk being set up bait the other way, which would make it easier to deal with by lessening its luxury to run Endure/Roost in that last slot.

I think the diversity talk is a bit of a wash and doesn't really change either way, granted I'm someone who very much prefers using standard stuff in either meta but right now we have 4 mons at about 60% usage or over in LCPL which was never a thing in the Vull meta. As others have stated this comes largely from the fact mons like Foongus has been rendered unviable due to the presence of Natu - I also think if Foongus were to come back into the meta it would significantly lessen Grookey's perceived brokenness, given only the grassy seed set wouldn't be hard countered by it. Likewise Ferroseed also struggles massively with Natu. Onix is good against Koffing and Natu though doesn't really do enough to receive use due to how it lets in Grookey/Mienfoo, though I do think the DD set is currently under-utilised. I don't really think the viability in niche stuff is that much different either, I guess defensively you can't use stuff like Morelull (which I think is a good thing the last thing we need is more 30% chances) but offensively there's still a pretty wide range of stuff you can use. Perhaps the formula is more rigid but you can use way more stuff within this formula which I think is a better tier.



some stuff I disagree w

Speed ties are an issue tho I think they are overblown. Theres essentially 3 problematic speed ties, foo vs foo, foo vs natu, natu vs grookey. In my opinion tho, there enough options of pokemon that are much faster or check multiple of these that its reasonable to play around it.

U mentionned flame body burns? wut? thats an issue with current meta? I mean arent vulla supporters the biggest fans of "just dont hit it with a physical move?". Except theres like 3 ppl that use larv and pony only takes like 2 hits a game.

on top of those speed ties (which occur in literally every game bc Foo is >90% usage, Natu >60% and Grookey just under 50% currently) you also have Grookey v Grookey, + Koffing and Pawn tying themselves (though Pawn ties usually aren't relevant yea) given they are also on over half of the teams.

I agree it isn't a major part of the meta but really not sure how Flame Body and Weak Armour are at all a good comparison in terms of physical hits, one is something you know will happen if you hit it physically and the other is a 30% chance, one is something you can plan and play around and the other entirely luck based.

The whole tier revolving about winning with your Vullaby before the other one beat you.

It's very powerful sure but I strongly disagree with this part, what I like about what Vull brings to the metagame is whilst its always going to be useful the role it fulfils changes every battle, sure sometimes it'll be the wincon but others it'll be needed to be kept for defensive purposes for an opposition Abra or Grookey or something, or others it'll play a support role in just knocking stuff and keeping rocks off etc, it was always important to get good mileage out of your Vullaby but I think very rarely was Vull the wincon for both sides.

The only real way to stop this mon from setting up to do massive damage is to switch as it sets up to Abra or something, but since Vullaby meta basically necessitates LO Abra (a complete gimmick set) there is nothing stopping the Vull from just deciding to click Dark Pulse and then you lose. Epic 50/50.

I don't doubt this was your experience on the ladder but this really isn't true, the most common Abra set in the Vull meta was sash by far, my personal favourite being twave. There's also multiple other special attackers like Staryu or Porygon that can OHKO and can live a +2 attack if WA had already been triggered (in Pory's case even Scarf lives +2 from NP Vull).

finally, i think many prominent LC players have been too quick to complain about the current metagame, spending months agitating for a vullaby un-ban rather than making a significant effort to adapt to the SS LC metagame as it is. those who have (scottie and freezai being the 2 most prominent examples) have been rewarded for their efforts and i would encourage others to follow their example. i will not be getting reqs but would 100% vote to ban vullaby if i could. thanks

Truly a bizarre take, we've had this meta for close to a year now (with Vull being gone for a year), not to mention pretty much everyone who was good before is still doing well in either individuals or in SCL/LCWC/LCPL, it's not like people who don't like this meta such as bouli or tazz or myself etc are struggling to win games and have massively fallen off compared to when Vull was allowed, honestly the lazier option would be to keep the current meta where you can just reuse teams and more >50% usage mons exist than ever before instead of opting for a relatively new Vull meta given Scraggy/Webs/Zig all existed before not to mention some current meta trends (Tyrunt, BJ Pawn, evio Grookey) would likely stick around.

 

[tazz]

Using this argument to go on and claim that Vullaby increases "skill ceiling" doesn't make sense (Acehunter mentioned this too). A simple thought experiment is to simply extend the idea - do you think a metagame with 6 Vullaby-like mons would be more skillful than both Vullaby and post-Vullaby? Probably not - when a mon is disproportionately strong, it will have disproportionate options, but the rest of the mons in the game will be relatively weaker. Vullaby being worth two mons doesn't make the game a 7v7, it just means that its decisions take up 27% of the game instead of 17%.

We still disagree on how disproportionately strong Vullaby is, so I don't agree with the premise of the thought experiment. This also misstates my argument: Vullaby doesn't increase the skill ceiling because it is disproportionately strong, it increases the skill ceiling because of its unique offensive and defensive qualities. To counter the thought experiment, if there were a hypothetical fighting resist that was clearly better than every other fighting resist in the tier and accordingly got close to Mienfoo levels of usage, I wouldn't say that it increased the skill ceiling because the options it gives the player are no less linear than our current options. A Pokemon can be strong without adding complexity to the game.

This section is terrible.

The implication here is that if you weren’t a “top player” during the Vullaby meta, then your experiences aren’t valuable to the suspect. You ask that newer voters to base their judgment of the Vullaby metagame not off of what they've seen and experienced, but what other users claim to have seen and experienced in 2021.

Part of the issue with this approach is its failure to take root in reality. It's ridiculous to believe that the playerbase will collectively erase 12 months and totally shift their beliefs back to a previous meta. Not only is the playerbase - and their set of meta views - different, even the list of mons itself has changed. The reason the ladder isn't a "good indication" of what the Vullaby metagame looked like a year ago is because that metagame will never exist again. It will continue not to exist, because SS LC will continue to develop until the gen ends, even if Vullaby gets freed. If the active and/or decent users who have established themselves since then truly believe that a) an increase in speed ties is endemic to post-Vullaby, and b) this warrants freeing a mon they believe to be broken, then I have no issue with that. But it's absurd to diminish their viewpoint because their frame of reference doesn't involve an infatuation with a metagame they will (and in my opinion should) never experience.

I think it’s telling that nearly every user who doesn’t look at the Vullaby metagame with (for lack of a better phrase) rose-tinted glasses considers the idea of finding it non-broken to be ridiculous. This includes not only newer players who either weren't around during the Vullaby metagame, but also those who were around but simply less heavily involved with it, and even former LC mains who stepped back from some LC discussion circles for long enough. It's absurd that you would try to frame a potential lack of that bias as a lack of worth as a voter.

I think you're reading too much into that section. Ladder based retests have a critical flaw that regular tests lack: in a regular test the Pokemon being suspected is well known by the playerbase, and relatively few voters will be forming an opinion off of 30-40 ladder games. This Vullaby retest, by contrast, is releasing an incredibly influential Pokemon onto a ladder and playerbase that doesn't fully remember it, and asking them to form an opinion based on that incredibly flawed metric. I don't think that the experience of new players are worthless, but its hardly radical to ask them to make an effort to understand the Vullaby meta considering some of the understandable yet basic mistakes in metagame knowledge on discord and in this thread. You are correct that the Vullaby meta won't be coming back exactly as it was, but much of the pathing and game experience that Vullaby created is nearly identical. I would take the opposite conclusion from your last paragraph: it is just as telling to me that so many with practical rather than completely theorymonned experience with the Vullaby meta prefer it so drastically.

 

[Colin]

Hey, I am one of the people who came to the tier after Vullaby got banned, and insofar I am unsure about what I will vote. early on when I got reqs (day 2 of suspect) I wanted to vote ban, as my mixed vull + scarf pory team cleaved through every bulky offense that didn't carry onix + ferroseed, and even then since pory and vull are good threats in a vacuum it was possible to force enough trades to get a win. at that time, I was also convinced that vull + pinch beat most onix teams reliably, although now that I have started using more priority/other mons that can trade with vull (fast SpA, timb, etc) I have reached the conclusion that that core is not broken even against onix teams. however, it seems that the only reliable ways to beat vullaby are to run onix + priostack, or a fast SpA biased BO if you dare use Pawniard. HO or other types of very fast offenses seem quite solid and generally not as fishy or 50 50 filled. To me, the builder seems much less diverse due to vull's presence and the fact that you have to include very specific mons (regarding to vull + SpA) to make a good defensive core, and I dislike this aspect of the vull meta as I know it. I do like some aspects of the builder, as the poison slot on a team feels much more customizable, although it can be unfortunate if the opposing timburr has the correct coverage for your core, and the increased diversity for fighting types allowed by having vullaby as a secondary glue and pivot, allowing you to opt for timburr to have a better matchup into chosen defensive cores and having more effective priority for vull/being able to trade better against adamant vull from pristine condition when vull is in range of thunder or ice punch.

Hopefully the above paragraph made it clear that I dislike but do not loathe the builder in this suspect, but from what games I have played in this new meta there have been a lot less speed ties thanks to natu being far less common and evio foo not being required. managing your own vull and forcing chip on other vulls plays skillfully, and the game feels a lot less about raw 50 50's and more about threat pathing to get your threats in as much and as safely as possible, and I find that more competitive than role the dice simulator. I would have rather had this issue be solved a different way, such as by suspecting foo or natu (yes call me insane, but most the toxic interactions of the tier are caused by speed ties/50 50's with natu, or a foo environment caused by natu invalidating every other fighter.), but I enjoy playing vull meta even if not building for vull meta. I loathe NP vull, if you opponent is skilled they can trade enough of your priority away or deny rocks so that your onix has to not get flinched for you to win even if you had a distinctly stronger early game. still, a 70/30 for advantaged is better than 50/50 for "advantaged". also oops your opponent had endure on BJ sets or oops your opponent was dark pulse lol onix.

I am unsure of what I will vote, but I am leaning unban very slightly. if I am wrong on any of my takes/assumptions on teambuilding I ask you to call me out, because I am a new vull player not an old vull player.

 

[wesh papillon]

on top of those speed ties (which occur in literally every game bc Foo is >90% usage, Natu >60% and Grookey just under 50% currently) you also have Grookey v Grookey, + Koffing and Pawn tying themselves (though Pawn ties usually aren't relevant yea) given they are also on over half of the teams.

I agree it isn't a major part of the meta but really not sure how Flame Body and Weak Armour are at all a good comparison in terms of physical hits, one is something you know will happen if you hit it physically and the other is a 30% chance, one is something you can plan and play around and the other entirely luck based.

The speed ties are easily the worst part of the tier, but I think ppl overblow how important, basically none of these mons ohko without significant prior chip (foo-foo, foo-natu (normal), so its not as simple as lose the tie win the game lol. Lo grook vs natu is an exception tho that one kinda blows.

Grookey v grookey was never that bad unless your both evio or somehow both seed ( ????). Even then the slower one gets a slower turn so its not end of the world. I kinda fail to see this one tbh.

Koffing vs koffing is something that I rarely ever see since you dont hard switch koff on koff unless ur in a dire situation lol. Ig its not impossible for both players to double to it but like its hardly worth complaining about that one.

Tldr: I think this one is a bit overplayed. Even if they happen frequently, they arent as game defining as they may be.

Counter point to myself: Most vulla arguments are also hyperbolized, or at least mine are, and Im aware that my preference for current meta may blind me to some of its short coming.


As for the comparison within weak armor, a common argument for unban player to argue why vulla broken as it may seem, it that ppl with needlessly fake out/ u turn/ other random physical move into it, causing it to be must more threatening then it would be if played cleanly. (this argument is true btw, im not arguing that). My point is that the extent of that also applies to flame body mons, as they think there is significant counterplea in just not hitting it needlessly. Is this a good comparison in a vacuum? Not really, there Is a lot more in both these situations, Its just that I think complaining about flame body is a little disengenuous.

I fully disagree on this point: one of the big selling points of banning Vullaby at the time was that it was holding back a ton of Pokémon and without it we would get some much-needed diversity, but team structures have remained as rigid as ever. The number of Viable Pokémon has remained virtually unchanged: for every Pokémon freed from Vull's oppression, another has fallen from grace. We gained Natu, Carvahna, and Tyrunt at the expense of Timburr, Onix and Ponyta-Galar (not to mention Vullaby itself and the consequent Scraggy ban). The only reasonable case for the Vull meta being more restrictive is that balance has four required slots (compared to the three we have in this meta: Mienfoo, Mienfoo counter, Steel), but to claim that how you fill those slots isn't flexible and expressive indicates clear lack of knowledge of that meta. The Vullaby meta actually had more viable options within the required slots than we have now: Timburr was a viable second option to Mienfoo, and Foongus and Mareanie were considered just as good as Koffing as fighting checks.

I think its funny how you only consider a tier mons and consider the rest to rest to be unusable. timburr and foongus arent good but trying to compare them to natu( not screens) or carv in a vull meta is not exactly a good comparison. A lot of mons are niche but theres a lot more ways to build around them with the added flexibility. Though somehow I think im barking at the wrong tree here.

You still have to account for the rest of the A rank mons within those slots: usually you need a Koffing check, some sort of priority if you aren't running Grookey, a Tyrunt answer, a Grookey check if you are't running Koffing, etc. An underappreciated aspect of Vullaby was just how much role compression it performed on virtually every team it was on. Even the offensive sets could still double as secondary fighting checks, grookey checks, emergency checks to all kinds of sweepers with endure, hazard removal, and the list goes on.

Eh yes, you do need to check a variety of different pokemon, using a variety of different cores, instead of slapping the same mon on every team. Well said.

I think you're reading too much into that section. Ladder based retests have a critical flaw that regular tests lack: in a regular test the Pokemon being suspected is well known by the playerbase, and relatively few voters will be forming an opinion off of 30-40 ladder games. This Vullaby retest, by contrast, is releasing an incredibly influential Pokemon onto a ladder and playerbase that doesn't fully remember it, and asking them to form an opinion based on that incredibly flawed metric. I don't think that the experience of new players are worthless, but its hardly radical to ask them to make an effort to understand the Vullaby meta considering some of the understandable yet basic mistakes in metagame knowledge on discord and in this thread. You are correct that the Vullaby meta won't be coming back exactly as it was, but much of the pathing and game experience that Vullaby created is nearly identical. I would take the opposite conclusion from your last paragraph: it is just as telling to me that so many with practical rather than completely theorymonned experience with the Vullaby meta prefer it so drastically.

The metric is quite bad but It doesnt help that you come across as quite condescending

If with the benefit of the doubt that specific line was a joke( being in reference to tob calling themselves bad). All in all, from most interactions, I dont think Levi is looking too deep into this lol. Wtv, sure is a good thing you didnt help ppl learn the meta you love oh so much. Somehow calling ppl bad and telling them to watch replays from the mysterious golden age of "somewhere in 2021, but not the one with woobat, or the one with webs, or the one with screens" isnt really a good way for ppl to like the tier and actually play it well. Works in my favor tho .

 

[ghost]

I'll be voting to unban Vullaby. I was one of the loudest voices during the suspect that banned Vullaby, and while I believe that it was a worthy experiment at the time, I think we've found that the metas that came afterward were ultimately worse versions of LC. I have extensive team tour experience playing in LCPL, SCL, and LCWC in the post-Vullaby meta, so I feel fairly confident in my level of exposure to Vull-less LC.

As we can derive from usage, LC is not a diverse tier. This was true with Vullaby and it remained true without it. One of the big arguments during the last Vullaby suspect was that Vullaby essentially mandated one of Onix or Pawniard on every team as its designated check, and Pawniard wasn't even particularly effective at that and could be overwhelmed. That's still mostly true, though we've always had ways to soft-check Vullaby, and its nature as a rocks-weak mon that takes recoil limits its presence throughout the match. What we have seen is in its absence, though, is a different lack of diversity. Instead of mandatory Flying-reists, we have mandatory Steels, and Pawniard sees much more use that Ferroseed. Mienfoo is on every good team because Timburr simply isn't good enough any more. Natu is ubiquitous.

Natu, the most easily identifiable hallmark of post-Vullaby LC, is a very restrictive presence in its own right. Nobody would ever argue that Natu is broken, of course (though Cosmic Power sure is a miserable set to play against), but Natu dramatically limits several LC mainstays and contributes to our current centralization. Koffing is the clear best and most-used Poison because Natu renders Foongus almost completely terrible, and Pawniard is the clear best Steel because of how reliably Natu stuffs Ferroseed. Natu has also greatly contributed to Fighter homogenization, as Mienfoo is the only fighter that isn't consistently outsped and therefore it can get into highly skillful and rewarding speed ties which decide entire games. Timburr may lose to Vullaby, but it's much more viable with Vullaby in Natu's place. Natu is a non-factor outside of screens in a Vullaby meta.

Vullaby's best advantage is resolving the aforementioned Speed tie bonanza that plagues the meta. Perhaps these ties aren't as prolific as they were earlier in the meta, but the various crucial ties between Mienfoo, Grookey, and Natu are often game-deciding and lead to multiple crucial coin flips. Vullaby allows for midgrounds and outplays with Weak Armor, and it slides into a relatively empty 15/16 speed tier.

Many of the players who have come up in the post-Vull world will point to new innovations like Larvesta and Eviolite Grookey as evidence of diversity and creatively. This is mostly opinion but I think Larvesta's presence in the meta is pretty lame, as it's fishing for 30% contact burns and is immediately destroyed by Rock Slide Diglett. Other late risers like Shed Shell Abra, a noted 50/50 machine that some have considered broken before, will be forced back into obscurity by Vullaby's return. Tyrunt came on with screens late in the Vullaby meta and it clearly beats Vullaby, so it will assuredly stick around, though the return of Timburr will be a great moderating force against it.

I know that the ladder is not a good environment for evaluating a metagame you've never played before, so I encourage you all not to vote on your experience there. Vote unban because it will reset so many of the ugly trends that have plagued the tier for the past year.

 

[Coconut]

Hi all,

Due to the overwhelming popularity of this suspect, we have decided to extend the suspect for a couple of days in order to give as many people who might have an opinion a chance to get reqs and vote.

The new deadline is Thursday, July 14th at 11:59 PM, Eastern Standard Time.

 

[Shandeur]

Credit to Aleaniled for this

I believe Vullaby is a banworthy Pokemon, and I'll be choosing to vote ban when the time comes.

What makes Vullaby so good?

A few factors make up this reasoning. Dark/Flying Coverage is incredible in Little Cup, with Pawniard, the only Pokemon resisting both, getting packed by Heat Wave. Nothing switches into Vullaby without one of the four applying:
A. Dying
B. Being Flinched by Nasty Plot Variants and Dying
C. Being Weakned by Knock Off or Chipped by Brave Bird
D. In the case of Vullaby's counters, being U-Turned on and trapped by Trapinch/Diglett.

I haven't even mentioned Weak Armor yet, and it's probably Vullaby's most defining trait. The fact that absorbing one Physical Hit (which it can do with ease because of it's great bulk and typing) can now be extremely fast, and you can lose a lot off of trying to force progress. Combine this with Berry Juice, and being able to take a hit and heal to full and now be very fast is incredible Defensive Utility and Offensive Momentum for the Vullaby player. It makes Vullaby very hard to revenge kill. Common Tactics such as Mienfoo's Fake Out and Trapinch's First Impression won't even work if the Vullaby user is using Endure, (albeit this is generally only found on Nasty Plot sets.) and those can just be switched out of if
the Vullaby user isn't running Endure. (Due to Vullaby being immune to Arena Trap.)

Another point against Vullaby is the limited amount of solid counters to it. These "counters" can also be bypassed by simply U-Turning out or just outright killing them in the case of Pawniard.

By far the best Vullaby check is Onix. Onix resists Brave Bird, and can defeat Physical Vullaby one on one. The Problem with Onix is Trappers such as Trapinch, and even Diglett. This isn't hard to achieve, as Vullaby can U-Turn when it switches in. Onix also doesn't enjoy a whole lot of other things in the metagame, most notably Grookey and Staryu and is generally only relegated to staving off Vullaby.

Pawniard is another one of Vullaby's "checks". It resists both stabs, but the problem is the same as Onix and more. It gets trapped by Diglett and Trapinch yes, but what's worse is that it loses to Special Sets, as Heat Wave absolutely melts Pawniard. To add icing on the cake, Pawniard has lately been tasked with Pokemon such as Abra and Porygon, which in combination with each other, can bowl over teams.

Tyrunt has risen in popularity recently, and can help check Vullaby in a Pinch. Rock Blast destroys the bird, but the problem with Tyrunt is that it's a sweeper rather than a defensive mon, however it can exploit Vullaby's switch out with Dragon Dance. Like the other two, it gets trapped and removed and has better things it should be doing. It doesn't even absorb knock off that well, as it needs it's Eviolite to take priority attacks consistently.

What I believe pushes Vullaby over the edge, however, is it's presence in conjunction with Trappers. If you lose your Vullaby check, you can often lose a game on the spot if the enemy's Vullaby is at full. Trapinch and Diglett enable this insanely well. Working with other Special Attackers, I.E Porygon and Abra, they can form devastating cores.

Some have suggested checking enemy Vullaby with one's own Vullaby. And to that I say that leads to and incredibly centralized metagame, even more so than the rise of Mienfoo. People have been claiming that speed ties completely screw games in the Mienfoo meta, however, this might even more apparent in the Vullaby meta, but even more-so.

The final nail in the Coffin is how it can completely restrict teambuilding. There's nothing stopping people from running teams that are just, quote: "vull / fight / poison / steel / trapper / broken special attacker". Considering the Mienfoo meta as a more centralized metagame would make me just laugh.

For all these reasons, I will be voting ban when the time comes.

PS: Éric also brings up some good points

 

[Kazeiyuu]

I really feel that in this suspect there are people who vote thinking about the meta, and therefore unban, people who vote for what Vulla is in itself, broken, and therefore ban, and people who vote only based on their suspect run (usually people who, like me, started the tier during the Foo meta).
And so, this inexperience made me hesitate a lot about my vote.
However, I have read almost everything that has been said about Vullaby, and therefore think to vote unban, the meta being, according to me, the most important, especially since a broken Pokémon that is beneficial for a meta has, for me, nothing ban worthy.

 

[Roldski32]

I'm not going to get req, as i'm not in fond of playing on ladder in general (and most of my free time were during "dead hours" making finding games awful). But i still had to post my opinions about Vullaby, even if i don't get the req. Even if i did get a req (which is prob unlikely), i'll going for unban Vullaby


For some players who joined here during post-Vull meta and weren't around in Vull-meta, I just want to say that what makes Vullaby really good in Little Cup is its role compression. Tell me, what's a mon that fulfills a pivot, a decent speed control, hazard removal, ground-immune, a soft-check to Fighters, Grookey and other stuff like Abra while still being a solid breaker in one slot? That's right, only physical Vullaby fulfill all these roles in one slot. The sheer utility it provides makes Vullaby extremely easy to fit to the point you need a valid reason not to run Vullaby on your team. That aside, I'm gonna brought up few things from Tiering Policy Framework:

IV.) Unhealthy - elements that are neither uncompetitive nor broken yet are deemed undesirable for the metagame such that they inhibit "skillful play" to a large extent.

• This can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity

This part makes sense if we unbanned Vullaby. The speedties between Mienfoo vs. Natu and Natu vs. Knock Off Grookey (moreso on the former) is not something i'm fond of. I honestly disliked having a point of the game decided by (desperatedly) hoping to win that speedtie. From my personal view, Yes, its great that i won that tie, but at the same time i feel very bad for my opponent to the point i felt like i don't deserve that win. During survey, i did pick "no support" on retesting Vullaby, but I didn't pick Mienfoo sustest nor Grookey sustest as the first option. I did picked second on Foo, then 3rd on Grookey, but i don't fully support the suspect on both, as I personally don't see one of them as broken. I see Mienfoo as the primary root source behind the speed ties at 17 Speed area even in Vull-meta, but despite that, i still don't view Mienfoo as broken, and I don't see Grookey as broken either, which makes "unban Vullaby" path a good decision, as it also fixes the speedtie issues. In terms of diversity, yes Vull-meta has 4 required slot (with one being "Vullaby slot") as opposed to 3 in the current meta, but Vull-meta has viable alternative option on required slot (Fight slot has both Mienfoo and Timburr instead of just only Mienfoo, Fight-check has Foongus being as viable as Koffing, with Mareanie not being far off from them instead of just mostly Koffing and sometimes Mareanie). From my perspective, i see Vull-meta was more diverse than the current meta, albeit very slightly, I also agree with KSG's point that LC is not a diverse tier, both with and without Vullaby. Another point of unbanning Vullaby is the meta development afterward, we're already familiar what the meta looks like with Vullaby around, which makes the meta afterwards a bit easier to stabilized compared to something like banning Mienfoo imo, considering Gen9 is like 4 or 5 months away (i hope we won't repeat with what happened with Gen7 Vullaby discussion)

And about NP Vull...

IV.) Probability management is a part of the game.

• This means we have to accept that moves have secondary effects, that moves can miss, that moves can critical hit, and that managing all these potential probability points is a part of skill.

Yes, it is annoying that NP Vullaby randomly beats its own would-be checks with Air Slash/Dark Pulse flinch ( be it a Spritzee, Staryu, Onix or even random Evio Chinchou you found on ladder) and possibly get swept, combined with the fact every bulkier mon gets 2HKOed by +2 Air Slash/Dark Pulse apart from Munchlax and just like what Eric mentioned, its difficult to properly scout NP Vull on preview unless its on a specific team structure such as Screens HO ( it is really nice they hard-switched Berry Juice Vullaby on your Mienfoo/Timburr and you thought its physical and you switched out in fear of Brave Bird, they revealed NP and your counterplay to a +2/+2 Vullaby is to pray you don't get haxed). I've already experienced this a lot, and i've seen a couple of old LCPL (or other high-level tour) replays where NP Vullaby beats its own check (or a would-be check) with an Air Slash flinch. But this set alone isn't the primary reason behind what makes Vullaby broken. I initially think Vullaby shouldn't be banned during its first suspect until around its second suspect test, where the meta back then had Life Orb Abra and 3 Atk Pony-G on the rise, which forces the usage of Pawniard and Onix getting a very slight decline due to that. Pawniard isn't bad by all means but having it to keep the Psychics in check on top of Porygon and Vullaby was a bit... much, especially the latter can randomly delete it with Heat Wave and Pawniard can't run properly run Berry Juice to keep itself healthy. This overload stuff was why i was convinced why Vullaby should be banned back then, because i was on unban side during its first suspect, the Nasty Plot set has nothing to do with this. ( i didn't vote on both suspect test btw )

Also, i don't think Vullaby is broken solely based off of its usage stat either. Yes, Vullaby has 80ish to near 100% usage when it was around(there was a single week where it actually had a perfect 100% usage), but i mean... look at the usage stat in LCWC III:

SWSH Usage Stat
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokémon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Mienfoo            |  278 |  88.54% |  52.16% |

SM Usage Stat
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokémon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Vullaby            |   70 |  87.50% |  52.86% |

ORAS Usage Stat
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokémon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Mienfoo            |   56 |  80.00% |  50.00% |
| 2    | Pawniard           |   50 |  71.43% |  56.00% |

BW Usage Stat
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokémon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Mienfoo            |   60 |  75.00% |  50.00% |

DPP Usage Stat
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokémon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Gligar             |   72 |  83.72% |  48.61% |
| 2    | Munchlax           |   68 |  79.07% |  51.47% |

Aside from the obvious 80ish Mienfoo usage in this current gen8 meta, every old gen of LC had a no.1 pokemon with 80-ish usage with BW Mienfoo being close to it (i recall it had 80% usage in LPL8), i don't play these metas (only a little bit of gen7 when it was a current gen), but there's absolutely no way they're broken in their respective tiers based off of their usage alone. The point is... there's going to be a mon with a very high usage in LC ( Even if we ban Mienfoo in the current meta for instance, there's going to be someone else who will get very high usage)

This is all my current opinions on why i think Vullaby should be unbanned. Again, i'm not going to vote so...

 

[Kazeiyuu]

I really feel that in this suspect there are people who vote thinking about the meta, and therefore unban, people who vote for what Vulla is in itself, broken, and therefore ban, and people who vote only based on their suspect run (usually people who, like me, started the tier during the Foo meta).
And so, this inexperience made me hesitate a lot about my vote.
However, I have read almost everything that has been said about Vullaby, and therefore think to vote unban, the meta being, according to me, the most important, especially since a broken Pokémon that is beneficial for a meta has, for me, nothing ban worthy.

Alright, time for an update.
As I pointed out in my previous post, Vullaby is broken imo.
Excellent role compression, hits hard, and has almost no switch in, outside of Onix, probably one of my least favorite Pokemon in LC (mostly because I think that it is garbage), Pawniard, in a world where Heat Wave isn't a thing, and also Tyrunt, which isn't that great since it can't absorb koff.
And ALL of those Pokemon are very weak to trapping, due to their ground-weakness.
Overall, I think that Vullaby might just be too much for the tier.
And also, since I'm actually a pretty huge fan of Foo Meta, I see no reason why I should vote in favour of a change.

So, yes, as a result, I'll be voting ban.

 

[DuGuo]

Hi, as a bad player in LC, I have some views on vullaby after completing the requirements of sus.
A month ago, I was definitely a staunch supporter of changing meta. I posted a post in the metagame discussion and mentioned my views, which caused heated discussion. Soon, what I expected happened - LC began to sus vullaby. Btw, I haven't been in contact with vullaby meta before. Facing this new meta, at first I felt strange and excited, but then I gradually began to hate it. First of all, I want to make two questions.
1. Is vullaby broken?
To tell the truth, I don't think vullaby is broken at all, except for this hateful Nasty Plot Set. It is absolutely broken in this meta. And it's too unpredictable what set does it run.
2. What impact will this have on meta?
Before that, I hated too many speed ties and almost the same teams in meta. I thought that the return of vullaby would change all this. I was wrong, lol. Vullaby makes meta more centralized, at least in my eyes, it's more serious than before. Dark and flying are so strong a typing combination, which almost makes the whole meta revolve around it. This makes most Mons, which rank lower in the VR list, useless. So I don't agree with vullaby to make this meta more interesting and competitive. We have made a lot of efforts in seeking diversity, I would never like to see a meta that only revolves around a few top Mons.

After typing the above words, I thought for a long time, but I didn't know what to say, lol. I will vote do not unban. Everyone has said enough about vullaby, so finally I want to say something I want to say.
I am very grateful to the Council of LC. Even though we may not be on the right path, I am still very grateful for all your efforts to make meta better. I love every player who makes LC meta better, whether their views are consistent with mine or not, thank you! I'm just a bad player in LC, not good at English, so there may be many mistakes here. If you can help me correct it lol. I welcome all comments, because anyway, we will become better for this meta.

 

[fatty]

I’m an old dog and don’t rly play this tier anymore but I know bad arguments when I see them. I encourage anyone who is still undecided to reread Corporal Levi posts as I think he outlines exactly why thought processes of vull apologists are so dangerous and why it’s a mistake to turn this into a metagame preference discussion. From my own perspective, many of the metagame arguments presented would even be better addressed by looking at mienfoo anyways but LC has always had an unhealthy connection to Foo and Dig anyways. Hope you guys make the right decision.