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

[Ibaragi]

Ok, so I'm kind of conflicted now. I won't deny I was waching this suspect kinda from the side, since I didn't intend to get reqs, but now that I got them (still in shock, btw), I really don't know what to do.
On one hand, I do think we have the options to face threats like Roaring Moon, but are underrun due to the state of the game. Which in turns mean that it's mostly an adaptation problem, and that whenever the meta appreciates/goes back to being able to use defensive options on non-stall teams, Roaring Moon will be barely within reason.
On the other hand, Taunt or EQ is a 50/50 you have to take when trying to check it, as things that check the former, struggle with the latter. Without taunt, you can't break past defensive behemoths like ID or BU Corviknight, ID or Curse Garganacl, Tera Skeledirge, etc. Without EQ or Brick Break, you insta-lose against non-tera Kingambit, which is probably the last mon you want to insta-lose against right now, and generally struggle to OHKO bulky things that resist Acrobatics (Knock Off is strong, but often not enough, specially when the opponent doesn't have or has already consumed their item).

BUT to that dilemma, I have to add the council's stance of "tiering for the meta as it is today", ignoring all future context. Roaring Moon is most definetely not healthy RIGHT NOW. I think the meta could shift into a form where RM is not broken enough without banning him, but I also think banning him would be good for the tier today.

Honestly, I don't even know if this all means I'm pro Ban or No Ban right now. Open to interpretations. Might end up deciding last second.

 

[COALLA]

BUT to that dilemma, I have to add the council's stance of "tiering for the meta as it is today", ignoring all future context. Roaring Moon is most definetely not healthy RIGHT NOW. I think the meta could shift into a form where RM is not broken enough without banning him, but I also think banning him would be good for the tier today.

I think this is the main point of all this. The meta is fluid and always open to future suspects and reintroductions when the time comes. I mean even Chien-Pao got another shot once HOME dropped. And Volc got banned far after the generation started. Things happen in the meta and things shake up. DLC1 dropped a lot of things that seem to now be making an unhealthy meta game. I won't get into all the other things that need looked at as I'm sure most everyone here knows the list of questionable mons/items/mechanics, but Roaring Moon is certainly among the problems, like you said, RIGHT NOW. Maybe if the future when other actions are taken it'll be an environment where the council feels in could be brought back and monitored.

Anyway...congrats on reqs and happy voting!

 

[Pais]

I must admit, after getting into VGC because of the poor state of SV OU, I believe not much has changed in these past months. I didn't use Roaring Moon during my suspect run and also didn't have much trouble facing it at high ladder levels. Obviously, banning Roaring Moon would be the logical move, but personally, I won't vote for a ban. It's not the only threat in the metagame, and its increasing usage indicates deeper issues, such as the Tera mechanic, which becomes increasingly broken as the number of threats grows. Also, I disagree with banning Roaring Moon because we are stuck in a loop where there will always be a dominant, centralizing Pokémon. Banning Roaring Moon would just make room for other threats, many of which can still greatly abuse Tera in the meta.

Furthermore, suspecting Roaring Moon before dealing with Booster Energy was a significant oversight. Nothing has been done about Kingambit either, so I don’t see why Roaring Moon should be the one to leave the tier. We are in a tier where almost everything is overpowered, and overpowered beats overpowered. I don’t claim that my opinion is the absolute truth, but I’d like to consider the root causes of the meta being so horrible, unbalanced, and requiring little skill. In a serious metagame, Roaring Moon should leave the tier, but Tera is making not only Roaring Moon but also many other threats like Sneasler, Kingambit, and Valiant absolutely broken. So, I really don’t see a point in banning Roaring Moon without addressing a lot of other Pokémon. It's time to face the consequences of a metagame with Tera. Don't forget that Roaring Moon was UU not long ago; it rose in usage as the tier became overly centralized around threats like Kingambit, Gholdengo, Ogerpon, etc. While Tera was somewhat acceptable before, now with the inevitable increase in the number of threats, this mechanic will become even more unbalanced.

I also see people complaining about Gliscor, one of the few Pokémon able to avoid being one-hit KOed by the insane power creep of this meta. Like, seriously? Is this even a topic in the surveys? Just get better, I guess. Lol.

tl,dr:

1. Ban Booster Energy.
2. Ban Tera.
3. If the first two are banned, then we can talk about “balancing” the meta and potentially discussing a COMPETITIVE meta. This meta is anything but competitive (please, don’t bring up the consistency argument; good players will be good even in a chaotic meta).

This is just my opinion; you don’t have to agree with me. I apologize if this post sounds "rude" or anything else, but I really wanted to express my thoughts since it's sad for me to see the tier in such a terrible state.

 

[TheTraininator]

Ok, I’ll bite. If Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle are broken even without Booster Energy, (since their Booster Energy sets weren’t even the ones that got them banned for the most part, especially not with Bundle who got banned for Specs), and no other Booster Energy Pokémon has gotten banned, why do people want to ban that item? It sounds like to me that it’s just an attempt to nerf Roaring Moon specifically, but this is one case where the collateral damage is so inherently obvious across multiple other tiers that I’m shocked that the suggestion has had as much traction within this thread as it has. You guys realize that excluding the 2 banned paradoxes and Moon, there are 13 other users of Booster Energy, right? It’s not just Moon and Valiant. And there are currently only 5 Paradox Pokémon in OU, meaning 9 booster energy users are UU or below since none are in UUBL right now. A Booster Energy ban would have a massive ripple effect that would shoot its way across all the tiers. It’s super impractical and unfeasible. If you think Booster Energy should be banned, I think you really ought to just vote ban on Roaring Moon, because what you’re saying actually is “Roaring Moon abuses this item to an unhealthy degree”, which is true.

 

[Srn]

About that reqs run...

Me trying to use my own balance team (that brought me up to top 50):

Confronting reality with a good player :[

Me when I give up and use xavgb balance

I will be voting Ban on Roaring Moon

As many others have described in the thread so far, the counterplay in teambuilder barely exists. You are basically stuck with Helmet Corv, Idef Foul Play Mandibuzz, Dondozo, and Tera Normal Espeed Dnite as reliable answers in my experience. Any team without these must outplay heavily to not get swept. I've seen a lot of nonsense like "Just use hazards, status, and priority!" "Don't let it set up!" "Use better positioning" etc and none of this qualifies as real counterplay to Roaring Moon, or anything else lol. If hazards/status/priority was good enough, chien pao would still be in the tier.

It's hard to say anything else new about why Roaring Moon is broken and banworthy, but that is the only important standard that needs to be discussed and reached here. I'll dip my toes into weaker arguments like "Why Roaring Moon doesn't improve the meta" and "The meta outlook moving forward"

Weary emoji

It's a dark type that can't really be relied on to check ghosts, and thus brings very little defensive utility to the table in that respect. By ghosts, I mean dragapult+gholdengo, and if you can't 1v1 both of those pokemon, you're not a ghost check. Usable ghost checks in my book include Ting-Lu, Kingambit, and Garganacl. Outside of those, you need to get more creative (like Mandibuzz+Milotic) to cover all bases.

As a dragon type, I don't really count on it for water types either. Walking Wake goobs u with dragon stab, manaphy could be acid armor, Rain threats like Floatzel will easily punch through your middling defense. You're not even a switch-in to Waterpon bc that can just U-turn or Play Rough.
Can't count on it for fire types like Heatran or Cinderace either, both can wisp you, Iron Moth can dazzling gleam, Skeledirge wisps you too, etc. You're not really checking grass types either, breloom has mach punch, meow is faster with protean u-turn, Base ogerpon will u-turn, so will Rillaboom, etc etc.

I feel like I can rely on this pokemon to check almost nothing, and its only value is offensive. But this tier really doesn't need 1 more overtuned tera abuser with an extremely small pool of reliable answers. We've had enough of that and we need to move towards improving this tier.

OU Council will probably start looking at the hazard landscape after this one. Banning Gliscor will improve the meta, but it won't solve the hazard meta. Banning Gholdengo will improve things too, but it's not a perfect solution either. We probably need to look at banning multiple powerful spike setters and Gholdengo over a long term period to get any meaningful change and improvement, and I don't think it can be done before Christmas. Our deadline, as far as I'm concerned, is 2 months, because there's no way that TPC will miss out on having something for the masses to buy for the Holiday Season.

With all that in mind, what are the odds of us actually banning Gliscor? I am not sure that even Roaring Moon will get banned. If we can't even ban an overtuned sweeper that brings almost nothing positive to the tier like Roaring Moon, then what hope do we have of banning things like Gliscor and Gholdengo? The broken suspects are often obvious and easy to ban, but the unhealthy suspects are much less obvious and need more time for the playerbase to understand that even if pokemon like Gliscor/Gholdengo have counterplay, their effect on the meta is restricting and unhealthy.

Quite frankly, I don't think the playerbase has suffered long enough for a Gliscor or Gholdengo suspect to be successful. But we don't have time to waste either. So I guess we'll just try to ban RM, fail, try to ban gliscor, fail, and then cope for the last month lmao. Apologies for the pessimism but if Kingambit only got 55% ban vote then my hopes simply aren't high for this one. But hey, surprise me and I'll be happy :]

 

[gregdawiz]

Ok, I’ll bite. If Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle are broken even without Booster Energy, (since their Booster Energy sets weren’t even the ones that got them banned for the most part, especially not with Bundle who got banned for Specs), and no other Booster Energy Pokémon has gotten banned, why do people want to ban that item? It sounds like to me that it’s just an attempt to nerf Roaring Moon specifically, but this is one case where the collateral damage is so inherently obvious across multiple other tiers that I’m shocked that the suggestion has had as much traction within this thread as it has. You guys realize that excluding the 2 banned paradoxes and Moon, there are 13 other users of Booster Energy, right? It’s not just Moon and Valiant. And there are currently only 5 Paradox Pokémon in OU, meaning 9 booster energy users are UU or below since none are in UUBL right now. A Booster Energy ban would have a massive ripple effect that would shoot its way across all the tiers. It’s super impractical and unfeasible. If you think Booster Energy should be banned, I think you really ought to just vote ban on Roaring Moon, because what you’re saying actually is “Roaring Moon abuses this item to an unhealthy degree”, which is true.

I feel like what will happen is we ban every pokemon that can viably run booster speed. True Flutter/Bundle didn't use booster speed, but it didn't really need to since theyre base speed outsped everything except dragapult. RM/Val/Moth/Wake all can very viably run speed and use it to become some of the greatest sweepers in the tier. Honestly its just facts that pokemon that are this offensively versatile should not also be able to outspeed everything in the meta even on their first time they come out. Its like running a Choice scarf without being choice locked, way too crazy and leads to what we see now which is a lot of priority and mirror matches. Yeah its not good on stuff like Brute Bonnet or other garbage mons duh but it is the thing carrying RM/Val/Moth from fine to teetering on the edge of ubers and may result in all of their individual bans. Removing Booster would gaurantee being able to keep the mons which may add some amount of health to the meta.

Booster is a stupid item imo but so is protosynthesis in general. I really dont think anything is lost by banning it tbh, even in low tiers. However I think Booster Energy shouldnt be banned either but moreso for the reason of: if we do ban it everyone will just run sun. Easiest way is to just take out the abusers of booster one by one. That requires us to actually remove them though. I don't see roaring moon getting banned based on this thread.

Best end state imo is seeing every single paradox pokemon short of scream tail end up in a bl where theyre too good for the tier below it but not nearly viable enough to be in the tier above so they see little to no usage

 

[Magcargo]

It's a dark type that can't really be relied on to check ghosts, and thus brings very little defensive utility to the table in that respect. By ghosts, I mean dragapult+gholdengo, and if you can't 1v1 both of those pokemon, you're not a ghost check. Usable ghost checks in my book include Ting-Lu, Kingambit, and Garganacl. Outside of those, you need to get more creative (like Mandibuzz+Milotic) to cover all bases.

As a dragon type, I don't really count on it for water types either. Walking Wake goobs u with dragon stab, manaphy could be acid armor, Rain threats like Floatzel will easily punch through your middling defense. You're not even a switch-in to Waterpon bc that can just U-turn or Play Rough.
Can't count on it for fire types like Heatran or Cinderace either, both can wisp you, Iron Moth can dazzling gleam, Skeledirge wisps you too, etc. You're not really checking grass types either, breloom has mach punch, meow is faster with protean u-turn, Base ogerpon will u-turn, so will Rillaboom, etc etc.

I feel like I can rely on this pokemon to check almost nothing, and its only value is offensive. But this tier really doesn't need 1 more overtuned tera abuser with an extremely small pool of reliable answers. We've had enough of that and we need to move towards improving this tier.

This is something I wanna emphasize. For all the shit-flinging and fingerpointing done at Gambit, I can at least say that it provides valuable defensive Utility to the tier by offering counterplay to Dragapult and Gholdengo, which are different to defensively respond to otherwise. Roaring Moon doesn't do this at all. The closest it does to providing defensive utility is maybe resisting Gambit's Sucker Punch, which still winds up dealing a shit-ton of damage.

From playing the past few days, I've noticed that Roaring Moon's offensive prowess creates many fucked up interactions. For example, Skeledirge and Heatran are often forced to Tera Fairy just to check it, leaving them open for something like Iron Moth to take advantage of the situation, Dozo will lose its boots to Moon's knock making it weaker to hazards, unboosted Corv take a shitton from boosted Knock, making it easier for Gambit to sweep etc. I haven't found Moon to be the one to be sweeping persay, but the damage it deals to the opponent's team is often enough to make it easier for Gambit, Ogerpon, Iron Moth, etc. all to sweep. And after a DD, it outspeeds Iron Valiant, which is the tiers defacto "revenge killer". Knock off is definetly a contributor to creating such interactions, as regardless of what happens, you open up the opponent to taking massive chip from hazards and Roaring moon has the strongest one by far.

Roaring Moon adds nothing to the tier and often makes its offensive partners more broken as a result. There is no reason to keep it in the tier.

 

[Shinto7654]

People who don't play anything but SV OU and other non Smogon formats screaming to have Booster Energy banned and fucking with lower tiers as a result even more, just clown shit all around. Actually ban your broken Mons and stop rushing to pick the options that have the most collateral damage possible lol

 

[CreamyGlasses]

People who don't play anything but SV OU and other non Smogon formats screaming to have Booster Energy banned and fucking with lower tiers as a result even more, just clown shit all around. Actually ban your broken Mons and stop rushing to pick the options that have the most collateral damage possible lol

Most non-pokemon bans are tier independent. So a booster energy ban in OU would not be enforced in other tiers.

 

[Shinto7654]

Most non-pokemon bans are tier independent. So a booster energy ban in OU would not be enforced in other tiers.

Light Clay is literally banned in NU because RU banned it, item bans in higher tiers absolutely have precedent to be applied to lower tiers

 

[artificialdeath]

Most non-pokemon bans are tier independent. So a booster energy ban in OU would not be enforced in other tiers.

This is only true for old gens.

 

[Finchinator]

Vote is live: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-ou-suspect-process-round-7-voting.3730358/

Thanks everyone for participating in discussion.

 

[Finchinator]

Roaring Moon is banned: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-ou-suspect-process-round-7-voting.3730358/#post-9839003