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I've voted ban in the earlier suspects, I stood by the ban for the longest time, and during this suspect I was convinced that the right thing to do is vote unban instead.
Vullaby in the meta this time around still exerts great pressure in both the builder and the games, but because several HO threats like Scraggy, Sticky Web, Zigzagoon, have been banned since, it's easier to prepare for it while not feeling overloaded and unprepared for many other teams. So yes, Vullaby does in fact not feel as broken as it once did.
I really don't think anything else should be relevant for the suspect, but being able to pressure fake outs and stray uturns is nice I guess.
For those players who did not play the metagame where Vullaby was available, I strongly advise you to read the old posts on the Metagame thread at the time during Vullaby's suspicion that led to his ban, so that you have the exact ins and outs. (it will be obviously a bit outdated, but to be honest I think it aged quite well)
I'm not criticizing the players who never thought Vullaby was broken even though I absolutely do not share their opinion. On the other hand, I think that people who think Vullaby is unhealthy / broken but still consider voting Unban because they hate the current metagame are making a big mistake. The pokemon should be judged for what it is, not for the metagame changes it can or might cause. And this reasoning also applies to bans : if a pokemon is extremely centralizing and we are afraid to ban it to avoid unbalancing the metagame, then the metagame is probably already flawed.
"Vote unban because it will reset so many of the ugly trends that have plagued the tier for the past year"
For instance, I find this sentence extremely problematic. Yes, the suspect will not give most players unfamiliar with Vullaby the keys to fully grasp it, but quite frankly this sentence is too much. In a few days Vullaby will solve world hunger. It's counterproductive to go overboard and it's misleading people. Deliberately ignoring the fact that pokemon will bring other problems is not informing people.
Truth is, I don't think it's even necessary to think about the question "is the vullaby meta better than the current meta", the only question seems to me to be "do the metagame changes justify that Vullaby is not banworthy anymore ?" Some will say that he never was, but I would especially like to hear from those who were once pro-ban and then changed their minds.
There is, however, one argument on which I agree with the pro-vull people: that the suspect format seems to me to be very ill-suited to unban issues in LC, and particularly in the case of Vullaby. The teams that we can see on the ladder now will probably not reflect reality in a few months (NP Vullaby is way too common for instance and it's definitely very tricky to deal with it for the newcomers). Perhaps the system could be improved in some way?
Didn't really want to make a long post but need to weigh in given my heavy involvement in pushing for Vull to be banned last time around.
It's difficult to say Vull isn't still broken in the traditional sense, due to its centralization. However, it's also difficult to say that several mons in the current meta - Mienfoo, Grookey, even Koffing - aren't extremely centralizing. Mienfoo has reached peak Vull numbers. We could close our eyes to the longterm trends in LC and just blindly ban each centralizing mon as it comes, or we could face an increasingly important question: can LC remain a competitively viable tier if we continue to ban the most centralizing mons in every meta? It cannot, and this past year has been evidence.
As most should be aware, LC's inherent mechanics make the tier extremely limited in terms of team composition. Scarcity of viable mons means the pool of usable mons, outside of cheese ct type picks, is minor. This gen has been particularly egregious in that the only real variation in viable mons has come from niche cheese builds designed to succeed in bo1 situations. Every time a consistent 1/2 turn set up sweeper has shown up, it's quickly looked banworthy, from Scraggy to Zig to today's Tyrunt and Magby, even if they are inferior versions of their predecessors.
How does this tie into unbanning Vull? First, the current meta is not in fact diverse in a manner more significant than Vull meta. The major shift has been a slight adjustment in team composition, because the only viable flying is now Natu, which isn't quite as splashable as Vull. Fighting checks have grown weaker so Mienfoo's looked stronger. Optimal modern "standard" team compositions have subsequently become extremely reliant on speed ties, particularly foo v. foo, due to the reduced amount of viable paths. SS LC's general tendency towards centralization due to mechanical differences has exacerbated these trends.
One may be inclined to then ban Mienfoo and anything that shows up after, but considering the scarcity of mons in LC and the limitation on viable items, recovery, and other such concerns (which could span a post of their own) this solution just creates more problems. Banning each centralizing mon will just lead to a tier with new centralizing mons, each time with reduced pathways of play. As we have experienced in the year since the Vull ban, standard v. standard largely revolves around speed ties, barring exceptional matchups. A player is punished for not going for the speed ties because the opportunity cost of each turn in LC is so high that you simply cannot afford to avoid them.
Unbanning Vull is a huge step in righting this ship. I freely admit that I did not envision the meta to lose so much competitive viability subsequent to the Vull ban. In fact, I was on the fence until I spent some time playing in Vull meta the past couple weeks and it's truly night and day compared to current SS LC. There are significantly greater pathways and games predominantly turn on who played better rather than who won a 50/50 and a speed tie.
As a competitive pokemon tier, competitive viability is the most important factor, not just adhering to policy. LC has cemented it is not a tier that can afford to follow traditional ban procedures. The tier is too limited, the mons are too scarce, and the mechanics favor offense far too much to have a playable meta no matter what mon gets removed. We do not have the luxury of not considering what a metagame will look like. In this test, I urge players to consider how many more options they had on a turn by turn basis with a Vull team. I urge players to consider whether the games they won and lost were due to speed ties or due to their good or bad play.
We cannot afford to let LC continue shifting away from a competitive tier with a high skill ceiling into a tier largely decided by functional coinflips, matchup, and 1 turn sweepers. Even if it may only fix the tier partway, it is to the benefit of the tier and the players to take that chance. We must unban Vullaby.
We could close our eyes to the longterm trends in LC and just blindly ban each centralizing mon as it comes, or we could face an increasingly important question: can LC remain a competitively viable tier if we continue to ban the most centralizing mons in every meta? It cannot, and this past year has been evidence.
Like, how exactly do you know that, how do we know we can’t fix or whatever this tier at all ever?
LC is no different than any other Smogon tier in this regard, it has a set of legal Pokémon, a smaller set of viable Pokémon and, inevitably, one (or a few) that come on top of the rest. To prove that LC is not inherently unbalanced or whatever you might think, we can either look at old gens metas that are just fine (as far as I know, since I don’t play them much enough to form my own opinions but BW, but the general consensus is positive): DPP, BW and ORAS LC are all fine metas, which of course have one better mon than the rest, but are still well balanced metagames. We can also look at SS LC low tiers if we want, LC UU is super well balanced too. Obviously nobody really cares about LC UU, but my point I think is being made clear here: LC isn’t inherently unbalanced, its mechanics don’t differentiate it from other tiers in that sense.
I’m all for the debate on whether or not Vullaby is broken/healthy/whatever, even if I’ve made my opinion clear in this thread, but I think we just can’t say that metagames are unfixable and therefore we can afford having broken Pokémon. That is simply not true, and we have lots of Smogon metagames, both under the LC rules and outside of them, to prove that wrong.
I initially was going to make a much lengthier post than this about this test, however, its become apparent how redundant it is to make a post in this thread as a relatively new LC player as evident from discord as well as posts in this thread. While I have spent time playing this ladder as well as reviewing replays from the last Snake Draft to help me come to my conclusion, the fact I did not play LC consistently during the original SS Vullaby meta makes my opinion itself irrelevant and my vote is the only thing that matters. This idea that "you didn't play during the original vullaby meta, so you're opinion doesn't matter so just vote unban" is completely ridiculous, no matter how nice you try to word it. This is a toxic mindset and reflects poorly on the playerbase. If you're a top player in this metagame and you're using this as a sort of "argument" to bring back Vullaby, you need to get over yourself. Bringing back Vullaby now is completely different case than the initial test that lead to its ban, while pulling out information from back then can be used as a good point in your argument it shouldn't be the entire main point you're trying to sell over. Acehunter1 makes a good post where he weighs out the arguments on both sides. While I personally disagree with his conclusion, it's a post not written wearing rose tinted glasses and mostly focuses on Vullaby now rather than clinging on to things in the past. That said I have been playing this tier for a while now (even though its not OG Vullaby Meta levels of old), watched old snake replays as well as played on this vullaby ladder on my alts using a variety of playstyles so I'm going to briefly mention my opinion anyway as I originally did take a lot of time to plan out a bigger post.
Personally I will be voting ban. I will briefly skim over my reasonings but in the grander scheme of things Éric and Corporal Levi have made some good posts that pretty much cover everything I'd extent a bigger argument into, wesh papillon has a decent post as well, however, the informality of it makes less "believable" than the ones I listed before. I find adding a broken pokemon into the metagame for the sake of a "higher skill ceiling" incredibly counter productive and a step backwards. You're forcing the metagame to centralize one pokemon offensively and defensively so you don't automatically lose to it at preview, using up multiple slots on your team just for that one pokemon. At least we fixed the speed tie problem, I guess? I don't find this type of pokemon beneficial for any metagame, unlike stuff like Landorus-Therian or Mienfoo where the meta is centralized these pokemon but more in a utility sense. Where Vullaby is different from other centralizing pokemon is that it warps how the metagame plays around it for the reason that if you activate weak armor vullaby will proceed to make insane progress on your team. Only way this is remotely balanced out is because both players will likely bring a Vullaby. I wouldn't even consider the weak armor interaction skill based, as this only really happens if your opponent makes a bad play then you're laughing in Vullaby. Just because you're opponent is playing bad doesn't mean you're playing better. Onix is much more manageable as a Weak Armor mon due to counterplay being more widespread after the boost. Don't get me started on NP Sets, these are extremely cheese and can just win games a lot of the time. The vull checks aren't even that good and a ton of them are pretty fake, forcing you to over prep for it in builder and invalidating a ton of fun options in the tier, coming back to the overcentralizing point of my post. Some good players are convinced that Vullaby adds more options to the tier as well, which just doesn't make sense to me. Sure Onix (always been good but lol), Pony-G (cool ig) and spiritzee (lol?) will rise but I wouldn't consider these really groundbreaking creativity wise. The same people are convinced the only recent innovations made to the tier are Larvesta cores and Carv though, as well as the fact they've been running the same 5 mons + filler for months. Don't get me wrong, I find the speed ties pretty annoying at points but I find a lot of people on the unban side are really overexaggerating about the current state of the metagame. Unbanning a blatantly broken Pokémon that centralizing the entire tier around itself just to fix a speed tie issue really does not make sense to me and there's likely better avenues to go down. Completely fine if you disagree with me as we are all entitled to our own opinions and we all have our own take on the meta, however, just because your tenure in the tier is greater than mine doesn't mean I'm incapable of thought.
I made the top team day 1 of the vullaby suspect out of the OG canadian spikes paste and edited it to fit a vullaby metagame. Smoked pap in his first ladder game, gave him the paste, then he sent it to everybody on the planet. Got annoyed playing my own team over and over again so I added the onix to cteam the dwebble lead as well as ease some other match ups I was playing against at the time. Here's the paste to the onix version as I like it a lot better and you probably have the dweb version already, good luck to everybody trying to get reqs on these last two days.
in my opinion, post-Mienfoo LC in every gen is better competitively and more fun to play when we have a strong bird. One of the core interactions I've felt missing since Vullaby left originally was the Fighting-Flying-Rock/Steel dynamic. It was really fun to have that back as I was laddering!
For my run, I ran this team from the sample teams thread. You'll notice that I don't appear to have much in the way of NP Vullaby stops. But between Mach Punch, Sucker Punch, First Impression, and forcing opposing Vullaby into Foongus Spores via proactive Timburr/Pinch doubles into Ferro/Pawn, I managed to avoid losing to a single NP Vullaby over the course of my 50-game run. I even got flinched once, but prio-stack pulled through. Maybe it's just the way I build/play, but I never felt that Vullaby was supremely oppressive in the builder or in preview before, and my ladder run did little to change my mind.
If anything, it's easier to deal with Vullaby now that we don't have to concurrently deal with Scraggy, Zigzagoon, Webs, and Woobat. All of those things either took advantage of Vullaby checks to set up (Scraggy), shared Vullaby checks and loved Vullaby wearing them down (Ziggy and Woobat), or made it harder to deal with unboosted Vullaby (Webs).
I was originally no-ban for a lot of similar reasons to these basic sentiments, so I'm happy to have gotten reqs this time to help hopefully unban Vullaby!
I initially was going to make a much lengthier post than this about this test, however, its become apparent how redundant it is to make a post in this thread as a relatively new LC player as evident from discord as well as posts in this thread. While I have spent time playing this ladder as well as reviewing replays from the last Snake Draft to help me come to my conclusion, the fact I did not play LC consistently during the original SS Vullaby meta makes my opinion itself irrelevant and my vote is the only thing that matters. This idea that "you didn't play during the original vullaby meta, so you're opinion doesn't matter so just vote unban" is completely ridiculous, no matter how nice you try to word it. This is a toxic mindset and reflects poorly on the playerbase. If you're a top player in this metagame and you're using this as a sort of "manipulation tactic" to bring back Vullaby, you need to get over yourself. Bringing back Vullaby now is completely different case than the initial test that lead to its ban, while pulling out information from back then can be used as a good point in your argument it shouldn't be the entire main point you're trying to sell over. Acehunter1 makes a good post where he weighs out the arguments on both sides. While I personally disagree with his conclusion, it's a post not written wearing rose tinted glasses and mostly focuses on Vullaby now rather than clinging on to things in the past. That said I have been playing this tier for a while now (even though its not OG Vullaby Meta levels of old), watched old snake replays as well as played on this vullaby ladder on my alts using a variety of playstyles so I'm going to briefly mention my opinion anyway as I originally did take a lot of time to plan out a bigger post.
Personally I will be voting ban. I will briefly skim over my reasonings but in the grander scheme of things Éric and Corporal Levi have made some good posts that pretty much cover everything I'd extent a bigger argument into, wesh papillon has a decent post as well, however, the informality of it makes less "believable" than the ones I listed before. I find adding a broken pokemon into the metagame for the sake of a "higher skill ceiling" incredibly counter productive and a step backwards. You're forcing the metagame to centralize one pokemon offensively and defensively so you don't automatically lose to it at preview, using up multiple slots on your team just for that one pokemon. At least we fixed the speed tie problem, I guess? I don't find this type of pokemon beneficial for any metagame, unlike stuff like Landorus-Therian or Mienfoo where the meta is centralized these pokemon but more in a utility sense. Where Vullaby is different from other centralizing pokemon is that it warps how the metagame plays around it for the reason that if you activate weak armor vullaby will proceed to make insane progress on your team. Only way this is remotely balanced out is because both players will likely bring a Vullaby. I wouldn't even consider the weak armor interaction skill based, as this only really happens if your opponent makes a bad play then you're laughing in Vullaby. Don't get me started on NP Sets, these are extremely cheese and can just win games a lot of the time. The vull checks aren't even that good and a ton of them are pretty fake, forcing you to over prep for it in builder and invalidating a ton of fun options in the tier, coming back to the overcentralizing point of my post. Some good players are convinced that Vullaby adds more options to the tier as well, which just doesn't make sense to me. Sure Onix (awful mon), Pony-G (cool ig) and spiritzee (lol?) will rise but I wouldn't consider these really groundbreaking creativity wise. The same people are convinced the only recent innovations made to the tier are Larvesta cores and Carv though, as well as the fact they've been running the same 5 mons + filler for months. Don't get me wrong, I find the speed ties pretty annoying at points but I find a lot of people on the unban side are really overexaggerating about the current state of the metagame. Unbanning a blatantly broken Pokémon that centralizing the entire tier around itself just to fix a speed tie issue really does not make sense to me and there's likely better avenues to go down.
I made the top team day 1 of the vullaby suspect out of the OG canadian spikes paste and edited it to fit a vullaby metagame. Smoked pap in his first ladder game, gave him the paste, then he sent it to everybody on the planet. Got annoyed playing my own team over and over again so I added the onix to cteam the dwebble lead as well as ease some other match ups I was playing against at the time. Here's the paste to the onix version as I like it a lot better and you probably have the dweb version already, good luck to everybody trying to get reqs on these last two days.
Hey, I agree with this post, and since my last post I have decided to vote ban because in the long term adding a problematic mon that moves the metagame away from more problematic mons and interactions will not solve the meta long term if we want to fix it after the generation ends or if we want to do better than the prior vull meta before the generation ends. I made this post with the intention to give my observations that the people who don't think our opinion is valid most likely simply reached the wrong conclusions due noting that ladder suspects are inherently flawed, and that the vullaby meta they knew is much better than the vullaby ladder rn, but they still want to convince us to vote unban in spite of the admittedly trash ladder. I don't think that that was an intended strategy and certainly the toxicity was not intended (still very real ngl from anyone who cares). I just think that a mixture of ego, ladder suspect flaws, and the fact that not everyone agrees with them spawned the toxicity, not an intentional strategy to emotionally trick voters.
Hey, I agree with this post, and since my last post I have decided to vote ban because in the long term adding a problematic mon that moves the metagame away from more problematic mons and interactions will not solve the meta long term if we want to fix it after the generation ends or if we want to do better than the prior vull meta before the generation ends. I made this post with the intention to give my observations that the people who don't think our opinion is valid most likely simply reached the wrong conclusions due noting that ladder suspects are inherently flawed, and that the vullaby meta they knew is much better than the vullaby ladder rn, but they still want to convince us to vote unban in spite of the admittedly trash ladder. I don't think that that was an intended strategy and certainly the toxicity was not intended (still very real ngl from anyone who cares). I just think that a mixture of ego, ladder suspect flaws, and the fact that not everyone agrees with them spawned the toxicity, not an intentional strategy to emotionally trick voters.
reread that portion of the post myself, I agree with you that its not a "emotional trick". Edited out manipulation for argument. Also edited out a joke about onix being bad as apparently that wasnt clear.
"I wouldn't even consider the weak armor interaction skill based, as this only really happens if your opponent makes a bad play"
If you gain an advantage because your opponent plays poorly, that's a skill based advantage.
I don't mean to dog on baloor, there are plenty of points in posts here I could've picked to argue here on either side, and I completely agree that it's a toxic (and counterproductive) mindset to call the opinion of people who have only started playing after vull got banned not relevant. I also still believe that regardless of this all, vullaby does not feel broken right now at all, if you play around it. If vullaby can't OHKO something after weak armor has activated, it really has to think twice whether it wants to do anything but u-turn, as it often risks death between it's lowered defense and the possible recoil from brave bird. Nobody wants to lose the best mon in the game for just some "good chip", limiting it's massive offensive potential. Meanwhile, some things in the tier hit hard enough to threaten OHKOs on berry juice vull, like life orb abra, scarf magnemite, dwebble with rock blast if it gets enough hits, and stuff like ice punch timburr and reckless hjk mienfoo after rocks. After playing on ladder a bit more I found it's possible to come by pretty fine without any of the two designated vullaby checks in onix and pawniard because of these reasons. I don't feel vull is as broken as it once was, and I don't think it's any more centralizing than other #1 mons in tiers.
I'm voting Ban smh
I actually went and read the old suspect threads when i used to have time
That is still not enough to change my opinion since i consider my own opinion, no matter how "flawed the ladder meta is", to be more important.
I encourage anyone with reqs to vote based on their thoughts, not to be preached about what to vote by someone else.
There is a difference between explaining your viewpoint vs suggesting people's experiences are outweighed by what you think is important ,i.e. the previous suspect, no matter how flawed you think the suspect is.
Lastly, i wish the best to everyone still trying for reqs
I'd like to make a follow-up to my last post. Since I wrote that post, I have still been laddering, building and testing this meta with Vullaby. This suspect is definitely a relatively short timeframe to get a good grasp of a whole new meta, but from what I have seen, I am more and more convinced that my decision to vote unban is the right one. There is one point in particular that I wanted to address, and that is how Vullaby affects teambuilding. It was mentioned many times in this thread by many people including myself, and from my experience the last few days, I think that the issue is a little overblown.
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).
I think one stark difference between the current meta and the Vullaby meta is that the current meta is more rigid in terms of checks and counters. Over the past year, we've been getting used to having single dedicated mons to check single things, and check them well (thinking about Poisons vs Fights, Steel vs Porygon, etc.) This is noticeable from the current meta being very centralized around Mienfoo-Poison/Fight check-Steel structures. From what I have seen the past few days, I think that a Vullaby meta isn't necessarily more restrictive in the teambuilder. This might or might not be directly caused by Vullaby, but I've been having fun making new teams and having good success with them on ladder. One of the main aspects in which Vullaby meta teambuilding is less restrictive is, as Éric mentions it, the sets and EVs of each Pokemon. While Pokemon in SS are mostly predictable, very often with one main set and spread, in Vullaby meta, individual Pokemon feel much more customizable. While I agree with Eric on that part, I don't think that the team structures are as rigid as he claims it to be. In fact, I have felt a lot more freedom while building, with each part of the core, or so-called "fixed mons", feeling less mandatory than in the current meta. Fighting-types are not as mandatory, as Onix and trappers can be good enough for Pawniard. Poison types/Fighting checks are not as mandatory, since Vullaby can act as a soft check to Fighting types and Grookey. Instead of having singular Pokemon fit a certain role, I feel that in Vullaby meta, it can be more customizable so that the entire team as a whole can have the tools to deal with those threats, rather than just one member of the team. This is in stark contrast with the teambuilding we've been used to in the current meta, with Mienfoo (and Grookey) forcing rigid Fighting-Poison-Steel structures. To demonstrate this, I'd like to share three teams I built in the last few days, and my thought process behind them.
Btw, before I begin, I'd like to say that from my experience, this doesn't seem to be true at all. Only rarely does Vullaby itself win games, instead it is usually used mid-game to check a variety of stuff and to punch holes in the opposing team. Unless your Vullaby is a dedicated wincon with a Nasty Plot set, in which case you would lose the aforementioned utility that Vullaby would've otherwise provided for your team. Ok anyway, here goes.
I initially had the idea of combining Omanyte with a trapper. Omanyte is a Vullaby check that doesn't fear trapping, since it can OHKO Trapinch and Diglett with Hydro Pump, outspeeding the latter after a Weak Armor boost. Furthermore, I think it synergizes well with Trapinch because it resists both Tri Attack and Ice Beam from Porygon, and while it is weak to Thunderbolt, Trapinch is there to trap Porygon locked into Thunderbolt. Hydro Pump OHKOing knocked Mienfoo is also very cool. I decided to use a Ferroseed with this to cover Abra, and Mienfoo with this to abuse opposing Foongus with U-Turn into Ferroseed. Koffing is used so that this team isn't too weak to Timburr. Vullaby is a pure physical offensive spread, which is used to break as much as possible with the help of trapping from Trapinch, while being a better check to opposing Fighting types, and to opposing Vullaby if the Omanyte-Trapinch vs Pory interaction follows through. The Trapinch set was also customized to drop Superpower, since this team doesn't need to trap Ferroseed that much, for Feint instead to improve the matchup vs Endure Vullaby.
As you can see, the checks to opposing Pokemon are quite spread throughout the team: Vullaby or Koffing for Fights; Omanyte, Trapinch or Ferroseed for Porygon; Omanyte or Vullaby for Vullaby.
This team uses the same Omanyte + Trapinch combination, but instead opts for a more offensive playstyle. The Steel type is dropped completely, and instead the core of Porygon-Staryu-Trapinch-Vullaby aims to break down common Special attacker checks. Vullaby now has Heat Wave to remove Pawniard for its teammates, and Trapinch has Superpower again to remove Steels instead of Giga Drain, since removing Onix is no longer important. Without a Fighting type, this team doesn't struggle against Pawniard that much either, since it can be worn down by all the special attackers and Vullaby, and Trapinch can trap it. Omanyte lures in Ferroseed to remove its Eviolite so that Trapinch can remove it more easily. Pawniard could probably be used instead of it or Staryu if preference. This team doesn't rely on Omanyte to check opposing Vullaby; instead, it has mostly special attackers to check opposing Vullaby offensively, with Omanyte only switching into it once or twice if needed. Staryu has Protect to avoid chip and to have an additional way of covering Scarf Mienfoo. Foongus checks Grookey, and Seed Grookey can be checked by a combination of Foongus, Vullaby and Trapinch. Abra and Agility Porygon are the main weaknesses of this team, and would require positioning attention to beat it, but they didn't seem to be that common. As a more offensive team, this team can't cover everything, but a Pawniard could help.
I think this team is an example of how with Vullaby, you can potentially forgo some of the basic structure to make more creative and offensive teams.
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.
This team is built around Tyrunt, but also drops both the Fighting type and Fight-check roles, instead relying on the team as a whole to deal with them. Frillish + Diglett is a similar combination to Omanyte + Trapinch in how it helps check Porygon, resisting Ice Beam and trapping Porygon locked into Thunderbolt. Ponyta and Frillish both have Will-O-Wisp, and Diglett has Memento, to support Tyrunt for it to set up. The team also aims to wear down opposing Onix with Ponyta and max Atk Vullaby, and trap it with Air Balloon Diglett. Tyrunt also benefits from this. Instead of using a Poison type to check Fighting types, this team has a combination of defensive Ponyta, max Atk Vullaby, and Frillish to make life hard for them. Similarly, instead of the usual Fighting type, Ponyta and Diglett deal with Pawniard. Opposing Vullaby is covered by Ponyta, Vullaby and Tyrunt, and the latter can use it as setup bait.
I think this team is the best that I have come up with, and is a good representation of how building is different in Vullaby meta, and in my opinion, less rigid and more fun.
All three teams have done well on ladder against some well known players, and I think they are all pretty solid, despite lacking some of the "mandatory core" that has been brought up a lot.
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.
I myself have brought up the diversity issue before, and while I thought the meta without Vullaby would be slightly more restrictive in terms of viable Pokemon, it doesn't seem as bad as I initially thought. There is still a wide range of options to choose from, rather than the rigid 4-5 Pokemon core that everyone is talking about. I think that set customization is a great advantage for teambuilding in Vullaby meta. Furthermore, I think that the added flexibility in teambuilding, with the dismantling of rigid Fight-Poison-Steel components, replaced by more variable and more abstract components such as Vullaby-checking, Fighting-type checking, Porygon-checking, Abra-checking, etc., allows for actually more freedom in the teambuilder. These roles can be diluted into the team, and can be accomplished in many different ways rather than just having a specific type of Pokemon. The same is, in my opinion, much harder if not impossible to do in the current Vullaby-less meta with a balance team. This is only a very small sample of what Vullaby teambuilding could look like, but I hope that my teambuilding process for the teams shown above demonstrate the above points well enough, and that I have highlighted how the much more customizable sets in Vullaby meta also make a difference.
I therefore think that I am definitely going to vote to unban Vullaby, and I hope my point made sense to you and will help you come to a decision. For those who are still going for reqs, give the above teams a try if you want to, and I hope you get as much fun and success as I did with them :)
