Stories
I'm mean and I'm evil
I voted BAN on Mesprit and wanted to explain why, along with why I'm a bit disappointed that most others didn't join me.
Pokemon Danny etern GXE Luck Meri Pokeslice Rabia Togkey zS Mesprit BAN DNB DNB DNB DNB BAN DNB BAN DNB
We voted on Mesprit as well. The reasons are: 1) Mesprit got enough consideration in the survey for tiering action, and 2) there is not much time left this metagame cycle to run a suspect test, so it'd be a waste of time. Mesprit only received 3 ban votes to 6 do not ban votes, so it remains NU.
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From here, I want to segue into discussing whatever Pokemon you've had fun using this last month. What's better with the bans NU has done? What's worse? Anything you find swinging really hard into the metagame? I personally want to try using more Coil Eelektross again; the AV set has kind of been picking up use again, but I think Coil should be a lot better with Dudunsparce gone ^^
I think while some Mesprit sets aren't exactly broken, it's the combination of the sheer multitude of options the Pokemon has that all mandate completely unique answers that is broken. Sure you can probably check Calm Mind or Nasty Plot with a bulky Haze user like Cryogonal or Articuno, and Choice Scarf is often dissuaded from using it's Psychic STAB attacks due to the admittedly poor offensive typing, but all of these sets completely dunk on their different checks if the opponent guesses wrong.
Pretty much the only argument brought up in the council that I remember was that most specially bulky Pokemon can simply Tera Steel against Mesprit, namely Haze Articuno and Cryogonal, along with others like Bombirdier and Appletun. My issues with this solution are:
- Being forced to Terastallize defensively every single game when the opposing suspect (Mesprit in this case) isn't even forced to Terastallize in response is extremely toxic and warping. Tera is obviously the most valuable resource one can have at their disposal and forcing it to be burned immediately on a defensive Pokemon without even needing to exhaust your own resource is insane and not a justifiable reason to keep the Pokemon around at all imo.
- Beyond the notion that being forced to Tera Steel is acceptable (it's not), this is also assuming that exhausting your Tera will even guarantee that you beat the opposing Mesprit, which is very far from the truth. The fast Ice-types with recovery, Articuno and Cryogonal, can both consistently Haze and avoid a 3HKO from Mesprit's unboosted Psychic-type attacks, but are quite easily forced to burn through -and eventually run out of- recovery PP against Mesprits that either A) have coverage beyond Psychic x Fairy, such as Tera Thunderbolt or Ground Tera Blast which also hits Qwilfish-Hisui, or B) opt for the bulky Tera Steel + Substitute sets, which while it will struggle to immediately break Articuno and Cryogonal, it can easily set up against them and throw out Psychocks at their lower Defense stat, inevitably winning the PP war, especially against Cryogonal, without being threatened by any damage at all itself. Other Tera Steel users like Appletun and Bombirdier struggle to even do meaningful damage to Tera Fairy Mesprit, one of the most common sets, unable to even fade its Substitute and will simply get muscled past despite the type advantage.
- Bulky Haze users do give Mesprit an ounce of trouble, if that Mesprit is Calm Mind or Nasty Plot. All of these "checks" are virtually OHKO'd by being Tricked a Choice item and attempting to scout against a Mesprit (bulky, fast, strong Pokemon with tons of variance in setup options, item choice, tera type, and move coverage) is more unwise than scouting that of an Oricorio, which we could all agree was a Pokemon that too easily took advantage of its high versatility to take over games.
[USN] GW vs Tuthur [FRA]
In this game we see GW have 2 Haze users; a Tera Steel Cryogonal and a Haze Qwilfish-Hisui. Mesprit still manages to force 5 Recovers to be used on Cryogonal with no expense to its own HP, Cryogonal then switched out because it would lose 1v1 if it continued to stay in. Qwilfish-Hisui got paralyzed earlier in the game, and because it lacks recovery, also lost long-term against Mesprit. Tuthur then easily cleaned up with Dudunsparce because Mesprit completely neutered and weakened the shared checks between them; running the Cryogonal out of most of its Recovers and weakening the Qwilfish-H into range of a +1 attack. You could argue that this is more of a Dudunsparce problem, but this game still showed a Mesprit getting past its best checks without using any funky set or using Tera at all.
[USW] freezai vs Axrtix [EUR]
Here we see two Mesprit against each other, with Axrtix's beating a Haze Articuno 1v1 because this Mesprit had Encore which is a cool tech that works especially well with Tera. Freezai's Mesprit was the only way to force Axrtix's out, bluffing a Trick Scarf, but at this point, Mesprit has weakened Articuno to a point where Scyther can sweep. Freezai admittedly made some questionable plays, his own Specs Mesprit had an absurdly good MU here but he just did not have enough room to work with because of his lines earlier in the game.
[USW] shiloh vs zS [EUR]
No offense to Shiloh but wow this game is just really disappointing. Shiloh has a Tera Steel Mesprit with a Substitute up against a Mono-Boomburst Dudunsparce and Mono-EQ Sandaconda. Instead of setting up in their faces for completely free, Shiloh opts to KO the setup fodder with only one boost, meaning it's unable to OHKO the rest of zS's team when there was really no reason not to. KOing Sandaconda to prevent Rocks when your entire remaining team has Heavy-Duty Boots instead of just clicking the win button raised a lot of eyebrows in the tournament discussion channel. I really see this replay as what could have been the deciding game for Mesprit's fate but I guess we will just let this fester for another 2 weeks.
[USW] skierdude101 vs tlenit [EUR]
Not really much to say about this game; a paralyzed Tera Steel Appletun got a little unlucky against a Choice Specs Mesprit and lost because of it. The lead generated by Mesprit's damage output was too big and Ski ran away with the game at this point super comfortably.
This Pokemon seemed like a very clear quickban to me, and with no time for a suspect test, I truly do worry about the integrity of ladder tour and world cup. Hopefully I'm just being a doomer but this Pokemon really breaks the tier imo.
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