Announcement np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 7 - Fly Me to the Moon [ Council announcement Post #2 ]

[shawk*+:)]

i think gliscor is busted in a gholdless meta too and should be suspected before ghold. plenty of successful teams have been run with gliscor and no ghold.

whatever your feelings are on ghold you have to admit that banning gliscor would relieve hazard pressure

I would like to disagree, personally. As i’m pretty sure the opposite would be true.

Not to drive the main focus of this thread away, I feel like the hate for gliscor is unwarrented. Gliscor got buffed this gen, yes. But I think that it’s primarily gholdengo that’s causing it to be spammed to the moon & back. Gholdengo alone enables every single hazard setter to become “overbearing” this gen. It’s making Ribbombee of all things viable this gen for crying out loud. When the game first game out, people were complaining about every hazard setter. First it was glimmora and garchomp, then it was ting-lu, & now they’re focusing on gliscor. Now, if I may, ask yourself this: “If we ban ONE of the many hazard setters that pairs well with gholdengo, then whose to say that the playerbase won’t move onto other one?” I feel like it’s this reasoning alone is why we’re suspecting Moon first, as it’s an incredible spikes abuser. Also idk about you, but i’ve seen Gholdengo FAR more often then gliscor.

 

[658Greninja]

i think gliscor is busted in a gholdless meta too and should be suspected before ghold. plenty of successful teams have been run with gliscor and no ghold; i ran one during my bloodmoon suspect run and almost actually got reqs, which is proof of how hard gliscor carries (and waterpon, and bloodmoon, and gambit). i'm becoming more and more on the fence about ghold and i think it deserves a suspect, but i'd still rather suspect ghold after everything else—since it's the most contentious topic, we should strive to create the most balanced environment to suspect it in, and whatever your feelings are on ghold you have to admit that banning gliscor would relieve hazard pressure

Well just saying, if you ban Ghold, Corv can easily 1v1 it and defog its spikes away cause of Pressure. Corv itself already beats most of the top hazard setters, so why not?

 

[Naraku Kirigiri]

managed to get reqs but idk what to vote, i havent experienced this mon that much, so i flipped a coin and called heads so im voting ban

#freespec
#unbanspectralthief

 

[shawk*+:)]

Well just saying, if you ban Ghold, Corv can easily 1v1 it and defog its spikes away cause of Pressure. Corv itself already beats most of the top hazard setters, so why not?

^ Also this.
To follow up my post, if you ban ghold: corv becomes far more viable and a better defensive wall. As most sets corv has can beat both gambit and waterpon.

 

[Corazan]

Hey I wanted to give some quick opinions on this, might not be relevant coming from me but I really feel like something isn't right with this tier.
I encourage people to vote ban on the Roaring Moon Suspect.

I casually watch my friends playing the tier and noticed something wrong, but I got really tilted when the semis finals of OLT were up between 4 of the greatests players and didn't want to miss the games.... how big of a disappointement it was. Games were one sided, ended by turns 1-3, where it was just about a "I kill you, he's revenkilling me, now his turn to revenge kill" loop, like most of my friends games. It is clear that something isn't right but what motivates me writting this is that nothing big has yet to happen in this tier.

To me Tera is the biggest deal but nothing has been done about.

No tera ban. No tera preview. No tera blast ban. And there is nothing wrong with that. There are some good arguments from both sides so I can understand those still being here.

However if you do that, you have to take some severe actions regarding certains pokemons that clearly seems to be unbalanced.
Roaring Moon, Iron Valiant, Sneasler, Kingambit... I've never seen mons as dumbs as those in a very long time, not to mention that they become beyond broken with tera as if they weren't already. Between the mechanic and those pokemons, there is too much brokenness in one tier and I don't know how it's possible. I don't want to criticize today's council but I'm almost certain this would've never been allowed with Sun & Moon Council back in the days for instance.

So to go back to the Roaring moon case, It's not about finding the very few arguments to prove it's not completely unbalanced anymore. It's about getting rid of things ASAP to have a more playable tier.

Nothing about the mechanic has been done, Kingambit's ban failed and now Roaring Moon's ban could fail too. So that would mean that people think the tier is perfect as it is ? If so I might be delusionnal and would like people to enlight me.

 

[Firer4]

I admittedly haven’t read every post in this thread but I think I’ve gotten a solid grasp of the arguments being thrown around and would like to give my 2 cents.

I think what the problem with roaring moon boils down to isn’t that it’s impossible to prevent it from sweeping your team after a DD albeit it undoubtedly requires significant consideration during team building. Instead the problem as I see it is that it’s nigh impossible to deal with this mon without saccing a mon and a lot of more balanced team structure can not afford to do that without running into trouble later into the the battle.

Even extremely particular counter picks such as Sticky Barb Clefable die in the process of disabling Moon. The same holds true for fishing for status with moltres or zapdos both of which tend to play a vital role as the defensive backbone of a team. A common way to deal with it is also to bait its tera and then finish it off with Gambit but how do you bait its Tera (and get it to half hp) without losing a mon? Lots of teams in scl have been relying on Dnite to check it but that’s also preceded by saccing a mon beforehand because Moon can just start blasting immediately if it wants to and isn’t required to set up to do work unlike mons such as ID Zam, BD Azu etc. so you can’t just switch straight to your rk‘ing check.

This brings me to my next and also final point. I feel it is overstated how reliant moon is on its booster energy buff. Especially against more offensive structures tactics such as „bait Tera and then rk with gambit“ are extremely prone to just switching moon out after you snack the mon that was offered to you as tribute. This mon is brutally fast and firing off stab acrobatics from that attack stat can very quickly end up with another mon falling 7 turns later when you get it in on their Waterpon / Rillaboom / Dengo / Tusk / Glowking etc. You can see this very thing happening in multiple SCL games and it is often game deciding

I have gotten Reqs earlier and am for the aforementioned reasons leaning towards ban.

What makes me hesitate is that admittedly I haven’t had any trouble with Moon while getting my Reqs but I did have a mon specifically tailored to take Moon down with it and made sure to absolutely preserve its hp and not switch it in under any circumstances against any other mon but Moon which put a significantly higher load on the rest of my team in dealing with the rest of my opponents team. However because of that I will continue to follow the conversation and try to keep an open mind.

 

[RS25802580]

If you look at the OU Viability Rankings, something becomes abundantly clear.

Hazard Management Methods which bypass or otherwise threaten Gholdengo:

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Hazard Management Methods That Lose Outright to Ghold

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* (no Thief)


It's pretty clear to me that Gholdengo is not the issue with the hazard metagame in this tier, and the people who insist it is are probably the same people who leaned on Corviknight as a crutch during Generation 8.

I’ve been seeing this argument pop up a couple times. “Look at this list of removers that can threaten Ghold! Surely this means the cheese stick isn’t a problem?” But I gotta disagree here. The problem with this argument is that it while it’s all fun and good to make a theoretical “X-checks-Ghold” list, it ignores Ghold’s ability to reliably suppress removal in the actual flow of the gameplay.

First let’s get a few things straight. From a realistic perspective, Hawlucha, Cyclizar, and Maushold are gimmicks that are neither readily viable in OU nor splashible as hazard removal. Mandibuzz can’t reliably threaten Ghold since an uninvested knock can’t 2HKO the physdef sets. Glimmora is relegated to a hazards lead in this meta, where it is more likely to be clicking hazards than removing them.

But my main point is that even the mons that can hit Gholdengo for damage still can never click rapid spin safely as long as the cheese stick is in the game. It hardly matters if Tusk can damage Ghold if it can never click rapid spin for fear of a Ghold switchin.

Say your opponent has a Ghold and has set max spikes up on you. You have a Great Tusk. You can’t click spin because Ghold can come in. So you click knock on the balloon Ghold switchin and it eats the hit for 45% because it’s physdef. You go to EQ the Ghold but Waterpon switches in. Or the Ghold stays in and teras Ghost and recovers. The spikes still stay up on your side!

Spinblocking with a ghost type is nothing new. But for the first time, Ghold is a mon that blocks BOTH rapid spin and defog, thereby making it the most spashable mon on hazard stack teams to punish removal attempts. Before Ghold, hstack teams would often run a ghost type and a defiant/competitive mon to punish defog. Ghold is condensing what was traditionally done by two mons into one. All on a fat body with recover and access to tera.

In past metas, the viable/splashable removers are not a long list of mons. Usually, most gens feature somewhere from 3-5 splashable removal options that see a lot of use, and then a long tail of less viable niche picks. It’s the core ubiquitous group that matters and defines the removal scene, not the niche gimmicks. In a gholdless meta, this “core” would be Tusk, Cinderace, and Corviknight which would make up the vast majority of useage among dedicated removers. Ghold blocks removal from 2/3 of these mons.

I think we can all agree that Gliscor has exacerbated the hazards issue, but let’s not pretend that people weren’t complaining about hazards before DC1. If Glisc gets banned, it’ll just be replaced by Ting Lu as a defensive spiker and Hamurott on the offensive side (which bypasses Hatterene). Things will get a little better but I genuinely don’t think a Gliscor ban will move the needle very much with Ghold still in the tier.

 

[Black Hanzo]

the two you mentionned only work 30% of the time, unreliable at best, twave is a different story though, but even then you're sacking zapdos for a para

: Brick Break Ohkos

: not a check? outspeed and ohkos at +1

prediction reliant, ohkos with acro with tera, ohkos with eq without

this doesn't beat tera flying

me when hazards exist

+ ??? easily ohkos rilla and sneasler has no solid way of ohkoing

literally what lol, focus sash isn't used on anything other than leads

....................................................................................................................

If you aint running stone edge on Lando T that's on you tbh

 

[Just A Shroom God]

despite what the usage stats say defog corv is infact bad in this metagame and always has been, though im sure everyone here knows that. even then running defog corv means you just lose to roaring moon, sneasler, SD valiant, ogerpon, zamazenta, etc etc. and dont actually do your job of checking them very well, if at all. if youre running defog corv to check roaring moon, youre doing something wrong. if youre using defog corv at all, youre doing something seriously wrong.

So your point was that Corv checks RM effectively with ID/BP sets.
Then DaddyBuzzwole points out that Corv usually doesn't run those sets using pikalytics data
Your response is to say "well defog corv sets are bad"
If those other sets are so bad, why are they getting used 80% of the time to check the myriad?

enam invites itself in and does....what exactly? if its the sub + CM set you dont do anything back to it and even if its running mystical fire corv still comfortably takes it in a pinch and can easily roost the damage off when it next comes in. and if all else fails then enam is most certainly not stopping it from u-turning out into a faster threat. mana is threatening, yes, and so is giving it a free turn to set up. but again youre not stopping it from gaining momentum and bringing in something like pult or waterpon to pick it off. ghold and moth are both fair points but both mons still have plenty of switch-ins corv can fall back on. and while the meta is hostile to it, yes, it doesnt make it unviable. its sitting at a very respectable B+ rank on the VR. it has its own struggles, as does every pokemon. this does not discredit it as a viable physdef wall and check to roaring moon

"yeah I recognize that every single pokemon you listed at the very least beats corv 1v1 but that's OK because each one of them have their own checks and counters (read: the criteria for being NOT BROKEN) that corv can fall back on!"

standard dondozo does admittedly struggle more against tera flying moon w/ proto attack but if you adapt to it by running avalanche and/or curse then your matchup becomes significantly better. but this 1v1 MU does indeed get weird sometimes. if youre running the right options that allow you to consistently threaten it then moon is a non-issue for dozo. without them you can blanket check it but its not the usual brick wall it usually is against most other physical sweepers. id still say its not a matchup RM particularly enjoys but teams relying on dozo as their primary physical wall should adapt their dozos set to match up better into moon, in which case answering it becomes much more consistent



i will admit that i was wrong in thinking standard dondozo is a foolproof answer to RM, its not. with the right options it becomes much more consistent as an answer to moon however, but without them it gets more volatile

read Inv4lidUser's post about this; essentially, if it chooses a niche move to hit RM it loses out on Ghold or Ogerpon, both of whom are very important to check. Let's also not act like using curse or avalanche eliminates the danger of getting its item knocked, which softens it up for it to sweep later.

the calcs just prove my point, at best it has a 1/8 chance of OHKOing bulky zap after a boost

Really....... I thought your point was this-

considering moon usually isnt 2HKOing defensive variants of zapdos and moltres at +1.

which is the whole reason I responded with that in the first place

quite a few variants of bulky zap/molt commonly run thunder wave and will-o-wisp anyway just in case. so you live the hit, if static/flame body procs immediately then great, if it doesnt then moon still has to fear getting hit with thunder wave/will-o-wisp.

The point i was making was that a statused Moon is not a dead moon, since Zap/Molt can't effectively actually KO it, you still have to deal with either a moon with x2 attack or a moon with x2 speed.

• yes, 60% obviously isnt 100% but its an interaction that is quite favorable for the zap/molt user.
• this one is fair, they absolutely do not like losing their boots. it is still important for them to slow down any progress RM makes, however, so losing their boots in exchange for crippling moon, while certainly not ideal, is not a bad trade so to speak
• running taunt just means they can fish for hurricane confusion instead (and discharge para for zap) and doesnt stop moon from risking static/flame body procs, roost doesnt even stop moon from risking itself getting hit by status and i have not seen sub or stone edge on moon at all when getting reqs. where did either of those sets come from? not even trying to be condescending i genuinely have never seen them.
• yes but a burned/parad RM is significantly easier for teams to handle, defensively and/or offensively.
• both still have quite a lot of positive traits in this metagame. they may not be as common anymore but they still have a place on bulkier teams and are very reliable as checks to some of the powerful threats (both old and new) that have risen in usage as of late

We end up at the same conclusion with difference philosophies. Defensive Zapdos and Defensive Moltres are shaky, very specific checks that can't actually KO the moon, often die in the process of simply hindering it, and that Moon can run techs to beat. The disagreement is whether this makes Moon banworthy, which from my end it most definitely does.

Your point about not seeing sub or stone edge on RM actually supports my point because it shows that Moltres and Zapdos are not common enough or good enough at beating it for the techs to be worth running, but my point was about it having the OPTION to beat them if they ever become actually viable, which is never a good thing for your sweeper to be able to do.

are we acting like burning tera on the best late-game sweeper, tera abuser and best mon in the game period is....a bad thing? if gambit teras then it gets a free turn to do whatever it wants right in front of moon, set up an SD, attack, all while living whatever you try hitting it with. if you predict the tera and switch then you either give it an even more free SD or risk switching in on a powerful hit and potentially losing your mon. what a great trade!

The problem is that you are FORCED to commit to this tera when normally you'd want some Tera flexibility, while RM doesn't have to Tera to threaten it. Also, King has to be at 3 allies fainted for Iron Head + Sucker Combo to kill, so take that as you will.

 

[viivian]

So your point was that Corv checks RM effectively with ID/BP sets.
Then DaddyBuzzwole points out that Corv usually doesn't run those sets using pikalytics data
Your response is to say "well defog corv sets are bad"
If those other sets are so bad, why are they getting used 80% of the time to check the myriad?

for one, ID is seen on 35% on corviknight sets in high-ladder and BU is seen on 17%, which means 52% of all corviknight are running boosting moves to check roaring moon. and for another, am i wrong on defog corv being its worst set? have you actually seen corv be able to consistently remove hazards? setup corv is just far more reliable as a physical wall and is generally making far more progress than defog corv ever could

"yeah I recognize that every single pokemon you listed at the very least beats corv 1v1 but that's OK because each one of them have their own checks and counters (read: the criteria for being NOT BROKEN) that corv can fall back on!"

should mention that enamorus can very well lose to corviknight 1v1. theres a pretty big difference between bringing up gholdengo who endlessly walls it and can attack/setup/recover right in its face and bringing up enam who either gets roost stalled out of mystical fire PP or gets 2HKOd by brave bird

with that minor critique out of the way, what point is this supposed to prove? what i was trying to say is the presence of common offensive pokemon that take advantage of corv is not something that is exclusive to it, given how its a struggle most every wall faces. your initial point was essentially like if someone said gliscor was a great sneasler check and i disagreed because gliscor loses to air balloon gholdengo or sub enamorus. is it true? yeah, without knock it is completely walled by balloon ghold, and enam running sub easily takes advantage of scor. but does this make scor unreliable as a sneasler check?

Really....... I thought your point was this-which is the whole reason I responded with that in the first place

i misspoke. i meant to say moon usually isnt OHKOing bulky zap/molt at +1. even if it knocks them off on the switch, it cant even guarantee the 2HKO on zap and molt is never getting 2HKOd by unboosted moon. i will admit that my point was misconstrued as something else given how poorly i worded it then

The point i was making was that a statused Moon is not a dead moon, since Zap/Molt can't effectively actually KO it, you still have to deal with either a moon with x2 attack or a moon with x2 speed.

except its much easier to handle, obviously. cutting into its damage output or speed broadens offensive and/or defensive counterplay against RM, or any pokemon for that matter. thats just how burn/para works

The problem is that you are FORCED to commit to this tera when normally you'd want some Tera flexibility, while RM doesn't have to Tera to threaten it. Also, King has to be at 3 allies fainted for Iron Head + Sucker Combo to kill, so take that as you will.

i think giving kingambit a free turn to do anything it wants right in front of RM thus putting the roaring moon user in an extremely bad and disadvantageous position is more than ideal in exchange for losing some tera flexibility. even if you know what tera it is you still gave yourself a free turn to either attack it to get some big damage on it or to setup and sweep the rest of moons team (especially if its sustained enough chip to be +2 sucker range). low kick and tera blast fairy variants also easily destroy RM anyway

if i left out some of your other arguments then that means i actually agree w/ you on them and dont feel any need to respond to any of them. this will probably be my last response to you since im starting to see your point (and because writing all this out gets tiring) so respond as you will. happy laddering

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Then DaddyBuzzwole points out that Corv usually doesn't run those sets using pikalytics data

slight correction, it was the official smogon stats page, not pikalytics. pikalytics deals primarily with vgc and cartridge play and doesn't have relevance here

for one, ID is seen on 35% on corviknight sets in high-ladder and BU is seen on 17%, which means 52% of all corviknight are running boosting moves to check roaring moon. and for another, am i wrong on defog corv being its worst set? have you actually seen corv be able to consistently remove hazards? setup corv is just far more reliable as a physical wall and is generally making far more progress than defog corv ever could

i notice you conveniently left out the fact that 57% of corvs in high-ladder play are running defog, more than iron defense and bulk up combined. and the fact that only 7% of people in that level of play are running corv anyway, and that number's likely to drop when this month's stats are out. and the fact that i was using the mid-ladder stats where the vast majority of battles take place, which we use for tier shifts and are the best representative of the site as a whole, and you switched to the high-ladder stats that just so happen to match your point better. and the fact that you're the only one in this thread who brought up corv as a roaring moon answer—if it were as consistent and common as you say, surely more than one person would mention it. instead we have a bunch of people (including finch at one point) saying moon has no true answers and one person named "real corviknight" with a corviknight profile picture advocating for corviknight

 

[viivian]

i know i said i wasnt going to say anything else regarding this but i should mention a few things, one of them being that the corviknight username/profile pic is outdated and i dont know how to change that or if i even can change that!!!!

i notice you conveniently left out the fact that 57% of corvs in high-ladder play are running defog, more than iron defense and bulk up combined. and the fact that only 7% of people in that level of play are running corv anyway, and that number's likely to drop when this month's stats are out. and the fact that i was using the mid-ladder stats where the vast majority of battles take place, which we use for tier shifts and are the best representative of the site as a whole, and you switched to the high-ladder stats that just so happen to match your point better. and the fact that you're the only one in this thread who brought up corv as a roaring moon answer—if it were as consistent and common as you say, surely more than one person would mention it. instead we have a bunch of people (including finch at one point) saying moon has no true answers and one person named "real corviknight" with a corviknight profile picture advocating for corviknight

yeah defog still has quite a lot of usage on corviknight, that is something i made no attempt at denying. but what i have stated and will reiterate is that defog having high usage on corv doesnt offset the fact that it is no longer consistent as a defogger given the dominance of gholdengo, not to mention running defog on corv also substantially worsens your matchup into pokemon like sneasler, ogerpon and of course, roaring moon

as for some of your other points, i used high-ladder stats for my argument because thats the ELO range where most of the qualified playerbase usually tends to hover around, rather than to intentionally skew the results in my favor, though i do understand why you had used mid-ladder stats. and to respond to your last point more seriously, im not sure why corv isnt being brought up as an RM answer given how it completely walls moon after one ID?

 

[Ibaragi]

Corviknight with set-up doesn't wall just Roaring Moon, but also Ogerpon, Kingambit, physical Dragapult, Dragonite, Offensive Great Tusk, Sneasler and Rillaboom. He also has a favorable match up against Zamazenta due to having reliable recovery.
But it's still not brought up because as things are now, when you try to check something defensively, you lose anyway. Which is also why defensive staples of pre-DLC meta like Garganacl, Clodsire or Skeledirge are now UU. It's not that we don't have mons that can reliably answer our threats, is that there being mons that can answer those threats has somehow become not enough.

 

[Just A Shroom God]

yeah defog still has quite a lot of usage on corviknight, that is something i made no attempt at denying. but what i have stated and will reiterate is that defog having high usage on corv doesnt offset the fact that it is no longer consistent as a defogger given the dominance of gholdengo, not to mention running defog on corv also substantially worsens your matchup into pokemon like sneasler, ogerpon and of course, roaring moon

So it comes down to this: are you smarter than the general qualified playerbase? Because you are saying that Defog Corv is bad. The qualified playerbase are using Defog Corv 50% of the time. Do you think they just stupid, and that you are the only one who actually knows how to use Corv?

 

[viivian]

So it comes down to this: are you smarter than the general qualified playerbase? Because you are saying that Defog Corv is bad. The qualified playerbase are using Defog Corv 50% of the time. Do you think they just stupid, and that you are the only one who actually knows how to use Corv?

i did not have any intentions of insulting the intelligence of the qualified playerbase or that im simply better than them, it was not meant to come off that way. but i do have to call into question why its being used, given how flawed corv is as a defogger now. i genuinely do not know what merit that set has over setup variants and would like insight from qualified players on what it does in this gholdengo-infested meta

though if this is derailing the suspect thread then a DM explaining why from anyone in the know would be appreciated. because i genuinely do not know what defog corv is supposed to do

 

[kd458]

Regardless of if Corvi is good or bad in the meta, does ID-Press not lose to Taunt? An unboosted BP is doing 15.3 -18.2% to a Tera Flying Moon and it can set up to a point where it OHKOs Corv with Knock Off, and ID + Brave Bird is absolutely not a real set unless you're running it with no Defog/U-turn. Like yeah, not every Moon is taunt, but if you're packing ID Corv as your RM answer you'll be in for a pretty bad time when they have taunt (if we are using Pikalytics, 39% of sets last month). Bulk Up has a 6.3% chance to 2HKO with an unboosted Brave Bird, which makes it enough to beat it 6.3% of the time if they DD on the switch-in and Taunt into a Brave Bird (+1 Knock kills Corvi in two), but even this involves a Taunt mindgame since if they just spam Knock and you don't attempt to Roost/BU they always win and if they catch a Roost with Taunt (which will likely be unrevealed until they click it) they always win. ID Corviknight is definitely not a consistent Taunt RM answer, it beats other sets but the matchup is straight up losing into Taunt Tera Fly, and Bulk Up also usually loses, even if you call the Taunt and attack instead of Bulking Up.

 

[Carkoala]

Hello! I usually don't give my opinion on the state of the metagame, but I feel like it can help the discussion not only towards Roaring Moon, but about a deeper problem we are facing.

First about Moon, I will personally be voting ban. Taunt is the best set, being able to shut down common counterplays like status spreaders is huge. To top it off, Acrobatics + Knock Off is sufficient to break down almost every defensive core. Coverage options like brick break can even help against Veil and Kingambit. Even if you will not see Moon cleaning every single game, the immediat progress it provides to any offensive team is not negligeable, and opens paths for way too much threats.

However, I also wanted to raise an issue that I personally feel is underspoken. Energy booster gives way too much snowball potential and enables HO to run 2/3 booster abusers. Threats like Valiant, Moth and even Tusk to some extent, benefit a lot from this item, making them faster than the whole metagame. You usually try to force them out and your gameplan revolves around 'how can I make them waste their booster?', or maybe revenge killing it. It even snowballs to an extent where people are using Destiny Bond Valiant as fodder, because they’re aware that once Valiant gets out of the field, it ends up being a deadslot. In the case of Roaring Moon and Walking Wake, this item gives them insane wallbreaking abilities, and both having a move to boost their speed makes them able to heavily snowball on small positionning mistakes. Iron Moth even has the privilege to run both options (webs makes spa boost moth even more threatening).

Monotype banned that item because of its potential, we banned gems in BW, and Light Clay was discussed in home (Magearna was still around, but that item still caught some attention). Without energy booster around, those abusers will be more maneageable, and building around them will ask for more game insights than just stacking strong win conditons that can snowball heavily.

Also wanted to quickly touch on hazard stacks. Spikes are adding so much pressure into the builder, we even run teams with 4 to 5 boots users. Vert already pointed out that problem in the Home metagame, and with the addition of the best spiker we’ve ever had in Gliscor, the issue has only grown. Removing hazards is harder than ever, especially with ghosts being so strong and having defog users struggling to pressure Gholdengo. I’m not the most qualified person to speak about this, but keeping an eye on spikes and Gholdengo should be another priority.

Furthermore, some thoughts about tiering in general. Helding surveys is great, asking for the community’s opinion on the metagame points out what evebody finds broken, but it makes decision making as a whole a lot slower. I don’t think we should get rid of surveys, but being able to take initiatives without relying only on survey opinions is important. Blood Moon was obviously broken, but we decided to go throught a suspect instead of a quick ban because surveys didn't point it out as a serious issue.

That's it! Hope everybody is able to reflect on their opinions before voting! Thanks for reading!

 

[Firer4]

i did not have any intentions of insulting the intelligence of the qualified playerbase or that im simply better than them, it was not meant to come off that way. but i do have to call into question why its being used

Don‘t worry - I don’t think anyone who isn’t arguing in bad faith or resorting to ad hominem attacks would actually construe your statement that way. You aren’t incorrect in saying that Defog Corvi isn’t in a great spot right now. However the issue as I see it is that

1. Corvi isn’t in a fantastic spot without Defog either. It really looks better on paper than in practice as it’s forced to Roost a lot as it’s prone to getting 2hkos by lots of stuff he’s supposed to counter after just a little bit of chip whether it’s via rocks or from switching in on a hit. For example you gotta roost every time you switch into a CC from Boots Zam cause it’ll 2hko you otherwise the next time you try to switch into it. The same also holds true btw if a Roaring Moon is on the enemy team cause it’ll 2hko if you take Rocks damage even *once* prior to your confrontation with moon so already you’re in a mind game on whether you roost the first knock off or iron defense on the DD. Lefties or Boots over Rocky Helmet alleviates this to an extent but you’ll still need to roost whenever you switch into any attack.
This very often turns it into a momentum drain instead of actually granting you momentum with uturn like you’d imagine. Combine this with the fact that it invites in a lot of mons that are just not easy to switch into rn such as pult / moth / heatran / dengo and a lot of people choose to resort to mons such as Glowking or Gliscor instead who actually progress your game plan.

2. Corvi isn’t even a reliable Moon counter as it just outright loses to Taunt sets which are becoming popular to make Gliscor set up fodder and have an easier time vs Dozo.

To answer your question as to why youd run Defog I think it boils down to
1. Not every team runs dengo
2. It forces them to preserve dengo
3. It forces to switch in dengo as soon as Corvi comes in. They can’t stay in and hit you again to burn roost pp. They can’t switch to their Iron Moth etc. If you have a mon that wins the matchup vs Dengo and can make progress such as Heatran you can potentially capitalize on that.

However I don’t want to derail this thread to much. I just wanted to give you my 2 cents since you had a very commendable attitude in this matter. Ultimately in regards to this suspect I think the fact that Corvi can’t touch Taunt sets and is highly susceptible to being worn down into KO range if you aren’t saccing your momentum every time you switch it in makes it an unsatisfactory solution although I will concede that it is one of the better solutions we have available at the moment. That alone however already speaks volumes about how difficult it is to deal with for the entire tier rn

 

[FCKNfuego]

However, I also wanted to raise an issue that I personally feel is underspoken. Energy booster gives way too much snowball potential and enables HO to run 2/3 booster abusers. Threats like Valiant, Moth and even Tusk to some extent, benefit a lot from this item, making them faster than the whole metagame. You usually try to force them out and your gameplan revolves around 'how can I make them waste their booster?', or maybe revenge killing it. It even snowballs to an extent where people are using Destiny Bond Valiant as fodder, because they’re aware that once Valiant gets out of the field, it ends up being a deadslot. In the case of Roaring Moon and Walking Wake, this item gives them insane wallbreaking abilities, and both having a move to boost their speed makes them able to heavily snowball on small positionning mistakes. Iron Moth even has the privilege to run both options (webs makes spa boost moth even more threatening).


Monotype banned that item because of its potential, we banned gems in BW, and Light Clay was discussed in home (Magearna was still around, but that item still caught some attention). Without energy booster around, those abusers will be more maneageable, and building around them will ask for more game insights than just stacking strong win conditons that can snowball heavily.

Agreed.

People will try to make the point that Booster is not at fault because it's not individually causing every mon using it to be broken, which technically is true. However, viewing this particular item in a vacuum this way ignores it's broader effect on the meta as well as it being a big enough factor as to why a mon might be banned.

If you take a step back and look at the what this item enables considering it's few drawbacks and it's ability to be easily run in multiples the amount the item contributes to the overbalance of offensive playstyles is pretty concerning and warrants more consideration.

 

[COALLA]

Okay just got confirmed for my reqs and here is my opinion after the climb and this whole time since DLC dropped: I will be voting BAN.

By voting this way, it's not saying that Moon is THE WORST mon in the meta right now, but that it is one of the problems and it is the problem being addressed at this time. I got opinions from most people I faced on ladder and it was a slight advantage people wanted it banned, but what really got me was all the people that said "well you can't ban Moon if Ghold and Kingambit are allowed to stay." You have to analyze this situation on a per mon basis and arguing that there are other problems doesn't mean moon isn't one of them.

My view is this: yes you CAN check Roaring moon, but the counter play is shaky at best often comes down to coin tosses or RNG, both things that are objectively uncompetitive. Also, you absolutely have to factor for it in the builder and more often than not the best bet is to use 2 checks in case one fails.

Pre-DLC Moon was a threat, but one that couldn't decimate your team just by clicking Knock-off after a booster ATK. You could bring your check in...force it out or tank a hit and pivot around to get what you needed. With knock-off being given to it, it makes it almost impossible to pivot around it, you need to get your check in immediately and PRAY it holds up. This doesn't seem like something that is good for the game, regardless of what else may or may not be out there that needs tested in the future.

I have also noticed that the meta has shifted more and more into hyper fast paced, coin-flippy territory and the fact of the matter is Roaring Moon is ONE OF the major contributors to this. The end goal is to make the meta as fun, creative, and balanced as possible and right now it's very limited because of the insane threats and broken things that exist, Moon is one of them.

I appreciate any constructive feedback, agree or disagree, but this is where I stand...firmly.

Take care all and congrats on getting reqs to participate in the vote!

 

[Exotic64]

So it comes down to this: are you smarter than the general qualified playerbase? Because you are saying that Defog Corv is bad. The qualified playerbase are using Defog Corv 50% of the time. Do you think they just stupid, and that you are the only one who actually knows how to use Corv?

genuinely have never seen a defog corviknight since prehome in my life
no one qualified is using defog when gholdengo is around bro trust me
whatever statistics website you're getting this from is prolly outdated/low ladder usage. anyone correct me if im wrong

 

[Gigi 1023]

Agreed.

People will try to make the point that Booster is not at fault because it's not individually causing every mon using it to be broken, which technically is true. However, viewing this particular item in a vacuum this way ignores it's broader effect on the meta as well as it being a big enough factor as to why a mon might be banned.

If you take a step back and look at the what this item enables considering it's few drawbacks and it's ability to be easily run in multiples the amount the item contributes to the overbalance of offensive playstyles is pretty concerning and warrants more consideration.

I messaged Finch about this on twitter out of curiosity maybe 2-3 weeks ago (pre-suspect) because this was where my mind was going to, but I wanted to hear an actual opinion since I think I don't play nearly enough Gen 9 (at least with non T-tar teams in the 1600s) to feel deeply educated.

His response was fair, i.e., you need burden of proof that it pushes all/enough mons (so Val, Moth, Moon) over the edge and that was sort of what I expected to hear but I can't personally shake the feeling that the meta would be so much nicer without Booster Energy (which I know, is a shaky argument).

Booster Energy all but removes Acrobatics from the list of viable moves Moon can use, whilst also suppressing the degree of "I revenge kill -> you revenge kill" feeling that the meta has right now. Valiant becomes more manageable as 366 speed is good but it has general frailty, and maybe loses set-up opportunities a bit more. Moth I'm not sure about really, it just feels like Fiery Dance makes these annoying situations where you end up losing to that 25% chance they got two boosts, but again without BE Moth probably just shifts into a specs nuke? which I feel is easier to play around...

I would personally put $5 towards the implementation of a BE-less ladder but I know that isn't how these things work.

 

[Niko]

On Tera

One premise: I think Tera should be addressed before anything else. It's time for us to have a definitive answer to whether SV OU will ever lose its main mechanic or not, atleast something that gives us some stability for the rest of DLC1 metagame. All these Bans / Suspect Tests are pointless until we don't deal with the most impactful mechanic ever. If you ask any serious player, they will tell you that the mere existence of the Tera Button influences the decision making in every single turn of the game. We can't realistically assume that the impact of a given threat would be the same without Tera and so every Tiering Action fails to result solid.

I'm posting to encourage people to vote Ban on Roaring Moon. Pretty much everything has been said about why it's broken, this thing just always makes progress and too often wins on its first Dragon Dance. You can read Corazan or Carkoala post, just to cite a couple I read, if you want some more details. What I want to add is that RM also has many more unexplored sets, it has potential to run a bulkier set, any Tera Blast set is nearly unexplored. You only see the standard Acro DD and a niche Choice Band version on Sun, but there is always room for alternative sets especially when people gets used to face the same set everytime. This Pokémon is too much for OU and will only get better as time passes.

On a side note, I would also encourage the council members and the qualified playerbase to be more present both in active (posting) and passive (reading) activities in this thread. These are crucial moments for the development of the tier and as much as I appreciate the engagement these threads have on "casual" players the experience of the navigated playerbase is indispensable.

 

[Magcargo]

On Tera

One premise: I think Tera should be addressed before anything else. It's time for us to have a definitive answer to whether SV OU will ever lose its main mechanic or not, atleast something that gives us some stability for the rest of DLC1 metagame. All these Bans / Suspect Tests are pointless until we don't deal with the most impactful mechanic ever. If you ask any serious player, they will tell you that the mere existence of the Tera Button influences the decision making in every single turn of the game. We can't realistically assume that the impact of a given threat would be the same without Tera and so every Tiering Action fails to result solid.

I'm posting to encourage people to vote Ban on Roaring Moon. Pretty much everything has been said about why it's broken, this thing just always makes progress and too often wins on its first Dragon Dance. You can read Corazan or Carkoala post, just to cite a couple I read, if you want some more details. What I want to add is that RM also has many more unexplored sets, it has potential to run a bulkier set, any Tera Blast set is nearly unexplored. You only see the standard Acro DD and a niche Choice Band version on Sun, but there is always room for alternative sets especially when people gets used to face the same set everytime. This Pokémon is too much for OU and will only get better as time passes.

On a side note, I would also encourage the council members and the qualified playerbase to be more present both in active (posting) and passive (reading) activities in this thread. These are crucial moments for the development of the tier and as much as I appreciate the engagement these threads have on "casual" players the experience of the navigated playerbase is indispensable.

A Tera suspect test rn makes no sense, especially since the fundamentals of Tera will be shifting in the DLC2 meta with the 19th Tera Type. I'd argue regardless of the results of a Tera suspect, it will be revisted immediately in DLC2, which would result in, like 2 Tera suspects within the span of a <4 month time window. I'd say a month into DLC2's meta would be the best time to suspect Tera (once a few unbanned mons get booted out of the metagame of course).

I do agree that moon has some unexplored potential, especially with Tera Blast sets. Been giving Tera blast Ice a whirl to have Baxcalibur at home ands its been working really well vs the likes of Tusk, Zapdos, Landorus-T, Gliscor, etc. Tera Blast Fairy is another set that' I've seen some players expirement with.

 

[658Greninja]

On Tera

One premise: I think Tera should be addressed before anything else. It's time for us to have a definitive answer to whether SV OU will ever lose its main mechanic or not, atleast something that gives us some stability for the rest of DLC1 metagame. All these Bans / Suspect Tests are pointless until we don't deal with the most impactful mechanic ever. If you ask any serious player, they will tell you that the mere existence of the Tera Button influences the decision making in every single turn of the game. We can't realistically assume that the impact of a given threat would be the same without Tera and so every Tiering Action fails to result solid.

I'm posting to encourage people to vote Ban on Roaring Moon. Pretty much everything has been said about why it's broken, this thing just always makes progress and too often wins on its first Dragon Dance. You can read Corazan or Carkoala post, just to cite a couple I read, if you want some more details. What I want to add is that RM also has many more unexplored sets, it has potential to run a bulkier set, any Tera Blast set is nearly unexplored. You only see the standard Acro DD and a niche Choice Band version on Sun, but there is always room for alternative sets especially when people gets used to face the same set everytime. This Pokémon is too much for OU and will only get better as time passes.

On a side note, I would also encourage the council members and the qualified playerbase to be more present both in active (posting) and passive (reading) activities in this thread. These are crucial moments for the development of the tier and as much as I appreciate the engagement these threads have on "casual" players the experience of the navigated playerbase is indispensable.

Again I have said this before, but I think it is best to hold off on a Tera suspect until DLC2 when we have enough time to count all the eggs in our basket and the 19th Tera type. One other user has pointed this out but the Tera suspect ended in an unban cause the meta was in such an unstable state that not only was it easy to ladder with broken mons, but people wanted to focus on other problems at the time like Chi-Yu, Ape, and Shed Tail. The same is going on here but in a less polarizing meta. Right now the targets on everyone’s mind are Moon, Gambit, Ghold, Gliscor, Valiant, Wogre, and Manaphy. I would much rather there be a suspect in a meta with less distractions and more time.