Metagame NP: RU Stage 14: Black Metal Terrorist (Stakataka Banned)

[feen]

Blame col49 for the music
​

Welcome back, the RU Council has decided to suspect test Stakataka.

Stakataka's OTR set allows it to completely threaten offensive-oriented teams, as they do not have a proper check to it. This makes preparing for Stakataka very limited, and with a high Defense and good typing, it can set up on a variety of choice-locked Pokemon, such as Gardevoir, Noivern, Salazzle, making it relatively easy for it to set up. Apart from sweeping, its breaking capability is high enough to the point where it's almost difficult to work back from. Overall, its ability to completely sweep teams late-game while having very limited checks warrants a suspect test.

There will be no suspect ladder. Instead we will use the normal RU ladder which will remain open for the duration of the test. A message will pop up at the beginning of ladder games to indicate that the suspect is going on (Tagging Marty to implement, thank you!). Anyone who wishes to participate in this suspect test will use a newly-made alt with a suspect-specific tag to indicate that you are trying to achieve reqs. The requirements for this suspect test are the following:

• All games must be played on the Pokemon Showdown! RU ladder on a new alt with the following format: "RUSS (nickname)" For example, I might register the alt RUSS Feen to ladder with.
• Do NOT impersonate other people in your ladder alt, do NOT use any usernames which are offensive, flame-baiting, or targeting specific users, and do NOT use usernames which could be interpreted as breaking any of the username rules on Pokemon Showdown! Failure to abide to this will result in you being barred from voting in this suspect, and potential infractions.
• To qualify for voting, your alt must play either minimum 40 games with a minimum GXE of 80 or 35 games with a minimum GXE of 82

The suspect test will last for 10 days, ending on Saturday the 2nd of February at 23:59 EST.

/!\ NOTICE /!\ RU will not be tolerating any form of voting manipulation. Any attempt to manipulate votes can result in an infraction, loss of eligibility to vote in the current test, and loss of the Tiering Contributor badge. While we won't necessarily enforce super strict punishment, this won't be tolerated and will be handled accordingly. Voting manipulation can simply be described as attempting to get people to vote a way on the test in inappropriate manners. Bribing with teams to vote a certain way, directly messaging people to vote a certain way, publicly announcing "vote this way" all fall under voting manipulation. For more query feel free to PM me.

 

[Wolf]

Hello fellow RU'ers,

So I got the reqs today (huh Im the first one, that quite an accomplishment lmao). I remember when Stakataka came out in gen7, i was really excited about using it.

I used a team that features OTR Stakataka in todays suspect marathon, and even tho he's pretty lethal in the end game, im pretty unsure about what Im voting. Even tho he can sweep unprepared teams, i feel like the "4 moves syndrome" keeps him away from being broken, altho he doesn't need any other moves to be pretty good, but its easy to read which move he's doing every turn.

Ill stick around on this thread to read people reasoning about ban/not to ban, so i can develop my own decision. Feel free to hit me with an pm on Smogon if you need a team to get this suspect done, and i will gladly help as much as possible!

Peace

 

[Alpha]

First time posting my thoughts here regarding a suspect, so please don't be harsh on what I'm going to say. This is purely my personal opinion.

I got reqs yesterday and I've used a full trickroom team to ladder. I wanted to give a try to big boi Stakataka. Since it has dropped from UU, we knew this Ultra Beast was going to be extremely good, if not broken, in the current metagame. Despite it suffering from the 4-move-syndrome, Stakataka doesn't need any other move to clean or even sweep opposing teams. Access to STAB Gyro Ball, Stone Edge (which doesn't have a 100% accuracy, but you can bypass that with Continental Crush), and to a coverage in Earthquake makes it barely impossible to counter. If necessary, it can set its own Trick Room to end the match. Its set is predictable, yet very difficult to deal with. While teambuilding, you need to put a mon or two able to at least check or counter it. So far, we've seen the core Bronzong + Registeel (despite the latter being susceptible to Earthquake, but can stall Trick Room turns with Protect), Palossand (which has a reliable recovery in Shore Up and can threaten it back with STAB Earthpower), Unaware Quagsire (with Recover and either Scald or Earthquake to threaten it back), and to some extent Rhyperior (despite the Choice Band is booped by Gyro Ball after some chip damage (assuming Stakataka doesn't have any boost in Attack), the defensive set with Steal Rock can tank its hits and revenge kill with STAB Earthquake) and Metagross (Shuca Berry set). You can see my point here. Unprepared teams will face a true power of nature if they don't have at least one of these Pokémon, and I honestly think that the fact people are running that double core + niche Pokémon like Palossand or even Quagsire, makes Stakataka an unhealthy Pokémon for the tier.

As said, its set is very predictable, so you'll most likely know how this Pokémon is going to act turn by turn. Moreover, it needs the support of its teammates to properly sweep. However, its ability to be extremely good late-game after its checks have been sufficiently weakened is the main reason that makes me voting ban.

 

[Umbra Soul]

So this ended up being a difficult suspect to do, not because it was particularly hard getting reqs (just had to go through 4 alts because I get haxed near the goal line, and just going further would be more tedious than starting a new alt), but mostly because it was actually really hard to assess Staka's influence on the metagame as it stands.

Through 4 alts and roughly probably 150 or so games both playing with Staka and without, for the most part almost every team I ran into either almost had mons that had a dedicated coverage move for it, like almost 4 or 5 mons on a team would have access to a Fighting or Ground move that could potentially one shot Staka, or would have their own super effective STAB against Staka. Or in the case of bulkier teams Slowbro / Bronzong cores or at least 100% Slowbro because Bro wins out against OTR Staka literally every time unless a Crit happens in Staka's favor, and whittling down a Slowbro is probably one of the more annoying aspects of the game. While saying that having almost an entire team having a slot for dealing with Staka might be overkill, most of the teams were comprised of top rated RU viable mons that just so happened to carry them in general in their movesets, so it was hard for me to determine if this was just over-preparing for Staka or just making teams that had the widest general coverage for similar threats.

This left me realizing that the pool of Pokemon that Staka can set TR up on to be a generally smaller than I thought, and that you need to keep it in reserve most of the time if you want to fully sweep and make the most of its absurd bulk, only trying to set up when you sacrifice something to bring it out safely. I think this is what the biggest problem in having an offensive mon like Staka around is that it can very easily punish you for using a necessary kind of pokemon (in this case choice users) and for getting a kill and then proceed to almost entirely sweep a team, both balance and hyper offensive teams without a single chance of fighting back as most of these teams tend not to be able to stall out the entire TR and suffer heavy losses for it. And even in the case of carrying a mon who can help stall it with Protect, everything practically drops to Gyro or Z-Stone Edge so accumulating a boost isn't hard and without careful planning Staka could be in position to set up another round of TR. There is also the case that Staka doesn't necessarily need to try and sweep and can just inflict heavy damage to remove a mon (maybe something trying to stop it from TR sweeping with Taunt in which case pretty much any Mon trying that is almost guaranteed to die to Staka choosing to click Gyro Ball), and hope that maybe later it can try to set up TR for a sweep or get another kill off something else.

I've also found success with it using a set of SR / Gyro / Protect / Toxic basically to try and lure out mons like Tangela and Slowbro who more or less can stop the OTR set and that teams started to gravitate toward using (ok people are still sleeping on Tangela, but Slowbro is becoming ever more common). Honestly I like this set as an alternative since people just see staka and think OTR, so you can easily lure in some threats get either a powerful toxic or gyro off, scout their next move with protect if needed, and then make the appropriate switches. It might kind of a poor man's Regi in this regard, but being able to put an f'in dent in anything with Gyro is a really nice thing as opposed to the damage that Seismic gives and how teams can be prepared to abuse the fact Regi is passive about what it can do. It really let me take advantage of Mons that would give me a hard time while giving me a really nice answer to some mons that do not want to be pressured by excess damage.

There's to mention there are answers out there for Staka like Slowbro, Tangela, CurseLax, Bronzong (Staka can't touch this mon, god F bronzong), and generally 85% of viable mons in this tier can offensively pressure it because apparently they all learn a damn Fighting or Ground move. For the most part having a partner like Drapion or Sneasel who can Pursuit trap Zong while also hitting Knock Off for threats, let me handle most of what Staka can't take out on its own. However, I feel that Staka's ability to turn a match up around when a player gets a proper kill from necessary Mon usage (choice locked mons that are in a move that can't kill Staka) into an reverse sweep to be a fairly unhealthy element for the tier. I don't think it's really a teambuilding restriction, it's one that you really can't screw up in a match otherwise Staka just gets to run all over you without almost a chance to fairly retaliate against it. I think a vote to Ban Staka now will prevent it from being a detriment down the line as mons won't have to entirely worry about needing to run coverage for it and can expand and safely run sets that specialize in helping a team focus on more specific threats.

 

[termi]

There hasn't been a lot of discussion so far in this thread and I can't say that either of the pro-ban posts should give anyone reason to believe Stakataka is an overbearing presence on the metagame rather than one in a long list of fairly threatening, but ultimately manageable sweepers. First of all, the notion that you need to run obscure mons like Palossand and Quagsire in order to deal with Stakataka is outright false: viable defensive Pokemon like Milotic, Slowbro, Vaporeon, and Porygon2 can come in as Staka sets up its TR and can recover stall the TR turns, same goes for more niche but still viable Pokemon like Torterra, Gastrodon, and Tangela. Then there are several good SR setters that can take one or two hits from Stakataka and KO in return (or simply stall out TR turns) such as Seismitoad, Registeel, Rhyperior, Donphan, and Bronzong. More offensive teams that can't afford to run some of the more passive options listed here can still opt to run stuff like Shuca Berry Metagross (hell, even non-Shuca Meta can win vs Staka if it's healthy enough), EQ Forretress (ok this one's not great), Bewear, I've even seen a Shuca Staka being used.

In addition to the fact that there are a lot of potential Staka answers, it should be addressed that unlike a lot of our previous suspect tests (including previous suspect candidate Meloetta) there is very little room for variation, or at least very little has been displayed thus far. Staka doesn't have a lot of coverage options outside of the standard three attacking moves it runs and it desperately needs all of them, so when you run a certain Pokemon meant to check Staka, there is no risk of it getting taken aback by an unexpected coverage move. ToxTect sets are possible and as I mentioned you can run Shuca Berry instead of Rockium Z, but both come with clear disadvantages that make them less ideal options on the bulk of teams, with ToxTect relying on the surprise effect and obviously lacking the ability to sweep (which is why Staka is being suspected to begin with) while Shuca can deal with certain answers slightly better, but loses the ability to nuke stuff like Mega Blastoise and other bulky waters.

Stakataka does not appear to be overwhelming during teambuilding since you don't have to dedicate two slots to it, but of course this would be a moot point if it's capable of wearing most of its checks down very easily. It is true that Staka's Gyro Ball is strong enough that most checks without reliable recovery don't want to come in on it lest they lose the ability to check it when it sets up, but this would only be a major issue if Stakataka can easily come in several times over the course of a match. The fact of the matter is that a solid portion of the tier already has ways to offensively threaten the box due to some very painful common weaknesses. How many Pokemon can it really claim to set up on "for free"? Florges comes to mind, Noivern and non-FP Mandibuzz come to mind (although they can still click Taunt), Cresselia, certain Choiced mons locked into the wrong move, but a lot of Pokemon can at least do enough damage to Staka to prevent it from coming in more than once, twice tops. Now it just so happens that most of these specific mons can be paired up pretty easily with a bulky Staka answer that doesn't get chipped very easily, and the "necessary mons" such as Scarfers generally do not have to come in very often throughout the match and do not necessarily give Stakataka free switchins anyway. In a sense, Staka is good for the tier in that it may just kill the "slap a Scarf Garde on my team and call it a day" mentality some people appear to have in teambuilding. Basically, if your team is designed in such a way that you give a top threat free turns and do not have a reliable answer to said threat, the problem might just lie with your team and not with the mon in question.

One thing that should really be brought up is that Stakataka relies on two flawed things in order to pull of a sweep: Trick Room and a Z-move. Trick Room, while having the benefit of making it impossible to "revenge kill" Staka by conventional means, only lasts 4 turns, meaning that a clever player may be able to control the amount of damage the box can do by means of pulling off some clever switches, using Protect on certain mons, and baiting the Z-move. Staka can only use its Continental Crush once, meaning that if you have a relatively healthy Mega Blastoise and a random Ground-, Steel-, or Fighting-type (for example), you can get Stoise in and force the Staka user into a 50/50 where they have to choose whether or not to use the Z-move now with the risk of the Stoise switching out into a resist. In other words, even if you let your Staka check get KO'd or weakened to the point where it's not a check anymore, you can still limit the damage to three, two, or maybe only one kill. Although they have their own flaws, some of the speed boosting sweepers in the tier such as Zydog and Barbaracle can actually be more problematic than Staka in this regard, since their setup is not inherently put on a timer.

It's not that I don't find it understandable why one would consider Stakataka broken or unhealthy, but as of right now I simply do not have much of a reason to believe it's that much more overbearing on the metagame than any other offensive top threat. It doesn't force people to run very niche mons that wouldn't be viable if it weren't for this mon, it doesn't force people to run one particular mon on every team to keep it in check either, it can't really circumvent most of its checks, it doesn't force every team to run at least two checks, and from what I've seen it doesn't sweep teams with great ease either. If someone can show me how well-built teams that have seriously prepared for Stakataka consistently lose to it anyway, I'm willing to change my mind, but to my knowledge this evidence does not exist, and therefore I think the RU community should be prudent and vote do not ban.

Also, Staka is a room.

 

[EviGaro]

In a sense, Staka is good for the tier in that it may just kill the "slap a Scarf Garde on my team and call it a day" mentality some people appear to have in teambuilding. Basically, if your team is designed in such a way that you give a top threat free turns and do not have a reliable answer to said threat, the problem might just lie with your team and not with the mon in question.

It's interesting you mention that, since this happened in ssnls: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ru-850763654

Now sure, my team has flaws and everything, especially to flying stuff, but it's not really weak to Staka... In theory. Five mons have a super effective move on it, Forretress when maxed out can reasonably check it, only Garde allows it a setup on that team really.

I still lost three mons in three turns.

And to me that, dangerously, flirts between being good for punishing lazy building and pretty much saying oh btw one of the best scarfers for offensive teams is total garbage now, sorry. Yea I won the game, by guessing right on sucker mindgames and getting a timely crit which is nowhere near as consistent. flcl reused that team here in ru wc, and honestly if it wasn't for his opp clicking EQ over Edge that endgame became extremely dicey (and tbh, that team is largely flawed in terms of forcing a Gardevoir earlier in the game). Again, I can accept a team being flawed, but I find it ridiculous that its revenge killer is also making it lose games not because it can be exploited, but because it's flatout a liability.

Now you mention other options for dealing with it many times in your post, and for the most part I agree, there are tons of options. None of them are for offensive teams though, except like... Shuca Metagross? Hardly gonna stay alive that long, but sure, it's one. I'm not going to run protect for only Staka, and that's a concession that makes no sense. Slowbro offence is a bit clunky, Torterra still takes a whooping 50 and it's not exactly a super spammable mon - losing to Noivern on offence is not cool whatsoever - and I stress this because the first sentence in our reasoning is "Stakataka's OTR set allows it to completely threaten offensive-oriented teams, as they do not have a proper check to it." It's specifically mentioning offensive teams, and I don't really see how your post counters that point very well either. And also, I very strongly disagree that it's a similar case to Barbaracle and Zygarde in any way really. They might be able to boost their speed for more turns, but their speed tier is still reachable, Staka has a speed tier by itself. Staka also resists every form of priority that is common in the tier, Zygarde doesn't, and those that Barb still resist are helped by it dropping its defence to setup, while Staka will always keep that 397 stat. It's a lot easier to build an offence that will have enough tools to prevent them sweeping than we have with Staka, which requires you to consider it and only it because what it does is so utterly different and problematic for the archetype.

Now I'm not even entirely sure if I'm fully supporting the ban, but at the same time I don't really think it's a good thing to have to use really wack answers on a common archetype consistently if you don't want to lose to one single mon. It warps the matchup so badly around it, and really makes games where it's not even there wonky cause both builds are obviously stressed on protecting themselves against such a specific threat and it's slightly concerning.

 

[termi]

It's interesting you mention that, since this happened in ssnls: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ru-850763654

Now sure, my team has flaws and everything, especially to flying stuff, but it's not really weak to Staka... In theory. Five mons have a super effective move on it, Forretress when maxed out can reasonably check it, only Garde allows it a setup on that team really.

I still lost three mons in three turns.

And to me that, dangerously, flirts between being good for punishing lazy building and pretty much saying oh btw one of the best scarfers for offensive teams is total garbage now, sorry. Yea I won the game, by guessing right on sucker mindgames and getting a timely crit which is nowhere near as consistent. flcl reused that team here in ru wc, and honestly if it wasn't for his opp clicking EQ over Edge that endgame became extremely dicey (and tbh, that team is largely flawed in terms of forcing a Gardevoir earlier in the game). Again, I can accept a team being flawed, but I find it ridiculous that its revenge killer is also making it lose games not because it can be exploited, but because it's flatout a liability.

Now you mention other options for dealing with it many times in your post, and for the most part I agree, there are tons of options. None of them are for offensive teams though, except like... Shuca Metagross? Hardly gonna stay alive that long, but sure, it's one. I'm not going to run protect for only Staka, and that's a concession that makes no sense. Slowbro offence is a bit clunky, Torterra still takes a whooping 50 and it's not exactly a super spammable mon - losing to Noivern on offence is not cool whatsoever - and I stress this because the first sentence in our reasoning is "Stakataka's OTR set allows it to completely threaten offensive-oriented teams, as they do not have a proper check to it." It's specifically mentioning offensive teams, and I don't really see how your post counters that point very well either. And also, I very strongly disagree that it's a similar case to Barbaracle and Zygarde in any way really. They might be able to boost their speed for more turns, but their speed tier is still reachable, Staka has a speed tier by itself. Staka also resists every form of priority that is common in the tier, Zygarde doesn't, and those that Barb still resist are helped by it dropping its defence to setup, while Staka will always keep that 397 stat. It's a lot easier to build an offence that will have enough tools to prevent them sweeping than we have with Staka, which requires you to consider it and only it because what it does is so utterly different and problematic for the archetype.

Now I'm not even entirely sure if I'm fully supporting the ban, but at the same time I don't really think it's a good thing to have to use really wack answers on a common archetype consistently if you don't want to lose to one single mon. It warps the matchup so badly around it, and really makes games where it's not even there wonky cause both builds are obviously stressed on protecting themselves against such a specific threat and it's slightly concerning.

I do think your case is really the only valid one as to why Stakataka might be broken, but I still don't think we can say with a high enough degree of certainty that it deserves to be banned. We can both agree that the biggest potential issue with Staka definitely is its matchup vs offense, which fails to check it the way it tends to check other top sweepers (by means of offensive pressure + revenge killing). Still, there are viable mons that can to some degree check Stakataka: aside from Shuca Metagross which you acknowledged, Donphan and Rhyperior are good SR setters that double as Staka checks for offense, with their biggest flaw being that they let Shaymin and Virizion in (Rhyp can run coverage to pressure these tho). Furthermore, Bewear does not seem like a bad mon for offense, but if you have reasons to believe otherwise I'd like to hear more on that. A lot of the other mons mentioned can seem awkward to put on offense, but I don't think they're off the table, especially Slowbro which can run more offensively inclined sets in order to check some big threats while keeping offensive pressure up (for example I've been experimenting with an offensive TR set).

It's not that I believe that these checks are necessarily good enough and that they necessarily fit on offense without causing other problems (although one has to admit that building offense that isn't weak to at least a couple of major threats is already difficult to begin with), but without seeing how exactly Stakataka causes teambuilding problems for offense that necessarily can't be fixed properly, without playing and seeing enough games where Staka easily gets several kills despite a serious effort to keep it from doing that, I just don't believe we have enough grounds to consider it broken. Your replay does show that Stakataka is absolutely a potent force vs offense if there is even one mon on your team that gives it a "free turn," however I think you simply underestimated Staka in building by merely relying on EQ Forretress, a mon that both is easy to chip and can't KO Stakataka without the box having taken a good deal of damage beforehand. This kind of check is insufficient when your revenge killer's STABs are resisted by Staka. Plus, as you mentioned the team also has weaknesses to several other threats that offense has trouble dealing with (Noivern and Z-Celebrate Shaymin with Air Slash for example), so this replay only says so much.

While I do appreciate that the council is taking a proactive stance when it comes to tiering in this new, relatively unstable meta, in this particular case I feel the fact that the combination of the meta still being in the process of taking shape plus the lack of past experience with Stakataka in RU currently makes it difficult to say with certainty that the strain it puts on offense is too great and cannot be properly adapted to, or at least not when presented with the current amount of evidence. If it does get banned I think it would be good to have a resuspect down the line, once the meta has settled a bit more.

 

[EviGaro]

I Still, there are viable mons that can to some degree check Stakataka: aside from Shuca Metagross which you acknowledged, Donphan and Rhyperior are good SR setters that double as Staka checks for offense, with their biggest flaw being that they let Shaymin and Virizion in (Rhyp can run coverage to pressure these tho). Furthermore, Bewear does not seem like a bad mon for offense, but if you have reasons to believe otherwise I'd like to hear more on that. A lot of the other mons mentioned can seem awkward to put on offense, but I don't think they're off the table, especially Slowbro which can run more offensively inclined sets in order to check some big threats while keeping offensive pressure up (for example I've been experimenting with an offensive TR set).

Problem is good stealth rockers = getting chipped easily enough. Donphan and Rhyperior take 50 from Gyro without recovery, so does Bewear, and for mons that you essentially have to switch in to prevent it getting out of control... Well that's absolutely terrible imo. There's no realistic expectation of consistency, Staka isn't just something you setup once in the late game, it can do enough damage in the mid game too, as our game can attest. And sure, you can fit oddball sets to deal with it like TR Slowbro, but that essentially tells you standard offence is almost dead, because of one mon, if we're actually going to condone those things as reasonable counterplay.

Your replay does show that Stakataka is absolutely a potent force vs offense if there is even one mon on your team that gives it a "free turn," however I think you simply underestimated Staka in building by merely relying on EQ Forretress, a mon that both is easy to chip and can't KO Stakataka without the box having taken a good deal of damage beforehand. This kind of check is insufficient when your revenge killer's STABs are resisted by Staka. Plus, as you mentioned the team also has weaknesses to several other threats that offense has trouble dealing with (Noivern and Z-Celebrate Shaymin with Air Slash for example), so this replay only says so much.

ok I'm sorry but that part is kinda bollocks. The only reason I have all these mons to hit Staka for quad effective damage is Staka. That's it. And if you think four offensive checks + a switchin is "underestimating" it... I'm sorry but what? Isn't that actually a sign that it's a little stupid? I'm truly baffled by that part honestly. And yes, there are other weaknesses, but without focusing too much on how my build can suck 1 - I could probably fit something else if I wasn't forced into running a specific mon as an attempt to switch into Staka and 2 - The point is that by any normal measure I'm not actually weak to Staka, yet I still am. Saying stuff have a good matchup is not really super relevant. Like at this point what you're saying is that a standard offensive scarfer like Garde is borderline unviable unless you run a bulky water, which just seems way too far in the opposite direction. And it's not like stuff like Donphan or Rhyperior would help either, as noted they still take all that damage the moment I go Garde to do anything on top of all the chip they take during the game, it's no better than Forretress who at least forces the z-move in order to take 50.

 

[feen]

Stakataka is now Banned!

With this, we will retire the NP threads to only suspect tests.
There will be a Metagame Discussion thread very soon.