On The Radar

Hi!

With the departure of Hawlucha through the latest Suspect Test and Spectrier rising to OU last month, the National Dex UU metagame has become increasingly more healthy and competitive. Lots of playstyles and Pokémon are usable, even those outside of the Viability Rankings, which is always a great thing to notice. However, the metagame is far from perfect as of now. Two Pokémon have been dominating the metagame pretty hardly lately, and it's time we pick up our magnifying glass and see how we want to handle the following Pokémon in question.

:bw/victini::bw/slowking:
These two Pokémon in particular have been brought up within the council + in the metagame thread itself by users such as I and Niadev, as well as the National Dex UU chatroom on PS!

Quick summary, Victini has mainly been tearing up the tier with its deadly Z-Celebrate set. Every other set is fine, very good, but completely balanced. Z-Celebrate however, such lacks any definitive counterplay. Stored Power / Searing Shot / Energy Ball pretty much sweeps most weakened teams out there, meaning only some niche options like Specially Defensive Whirlwind Mandibuzz, Specially Defense Toxic / Thunder Wave Porygon2 and random Grass-resist berries on Water types can check it. Less niche options, such as Incineroar and Slowking-Galar definitely work, but all around it's agreed that the pool of counterplay is simply too small. Not to mention Z-Celebrate sets have entirely different counterplay than let's say Choice Band sets, making it even more difficult to prep for Victini.

For Slowking I'll just simply copy-paste what I posted in the thread.
Anyways, Slowking has been kind of ridiculous lately. Not Slowking itself, but the already beaten to death discussion about Future Sight + Teleport. Simply put, Future Sight allows so many breakers to have such a better matchup vs such a large roster of their defensive counterplay. Teleport, of course, being -6 priority and thus always going last, gives a pretty much free switch to said breakers, making it extremely easy to abuse said strategy for whatever breaker is coming in. Added onto this, Slowking having great bulk + Regenerator means it's able to pull this off multiple times throughout a match, often times without struggle. This can make it very difficult to prepare for, and makes it extremely hard to stick to standard defensive counterplay in the tier.


The council will without a doubt act on these two Pokémon in the future, but we'd like to think what you guys as community think of these two Pokémon in particular, how you would handle it, why we should ban / why we shouldn't ban etc.

NOTE:
Do not comment about Melmetal or anything else in this thread. If you'd like to do that, post in the Metagame Discussion thread. This thread is simply for Victini and Slowking, nothing else.
 
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As I did with Victini, I just wanted to share some thoughts on Slowing too.

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In my opinion, Slowking has great splashability in all teams. Is that good? Honestly, I do not know. Great special wall + Regenerator and Future Sight + Teleport makes it a great pivot and cornerstone for many teams (Balanced, Bulky Offense and stall at least). If you pair it with some wallbreakers like CB Urshifu and Melmetal which can break through Pokémon that can stop Slowking (other special walls and Dark type ones) then you have a team that work properly for many of the teams you can find during laddering. Moreover, it is a good blanket for scouting some sets of physical Pokémon (like Urshifu) due to Regenerator. One of the only ways of stopping it is running a Pursuit Pokémon that is useful but you would not run it if Slowking was not in the tier.

However, Slowking helps so much these playstyles that otherwise would be down in usage due to the hell of wallbreakers that we have in the tier. Thus, in conclusion, I am not sure if it is broken (and I would like to see it after Victini suspect) but maybe it deserves a suspect.
 
Victini at this point and time has kicked the bucket and left the tier. You love to see it. I've ranted about Slowking enough of Discord, but i'll just make a post about it here just cause!

Reasoning!

:SS/Slowking:
I feel like this one has been beaten to death personally. Slowking is not only splashable, but it is consistent at what it does due to Future Sight, Teleport and Regenerator. These traits allow Slowking to act as the tier's best enabler for the many breakers that roam the tier. Future Sight alone places many teams into extremely unfavorable positions for your team to take advantage of quite easily. Some of these situations can also become extremely tricky to escape, and at times you have situations that are almost impossible to counter even if you expect it due to how pressuring it ends up becoming. This form of play ends up throwing out any form of somewhat competent building the opponent has done to counter specific breakers, say you're trying to build for Protective Pads Melmetal and you're packing Curse Skarm. Well, 252+ Thunder Punch does 36 on the lowest possible roll to max defense Skarm, a single future sight does 20% low rolled aloneand regardless you're put into a position where you're forced to either sac' a mon or let Skarm (the whole counterplay to pads Melm mind you) die to bring in something to threaten Melmetal. This is concerning in my opinion and this alone makes me feel like this is a really unhealthy addition to the tier. This is just covering that part of Slowking alone by the way.

252+ Atk Iron Fist Melmetal Thunder Punch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Skarmory: 132-156 (39.5 - 46.7%) -- 3.9% chance to 2HKO
0 SpA Slowking Future Sight vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Skarmory: 87-102 (26 - 30.5%) -- 0.1% chance to 3HKO
get the lowest roll? Well guess what 26 + 39 is 59 and even if you get another low roll it's 98 meaning with rocks you're in a shit situation. That's IF you get a low roll, if you just get a mid roll you're claiming the soul lmfao.

Regenerator + Teleport allows Slowking to function on teams such as Bulky Offense which at times can't afford to give up momentum. Teleport allows you to consistently keep up momentum and pressure vs the opponent while Regenerator makes it to that ur an extremely sturdy pivot coupled with solid bulk. Being able to scout mons and accordingly adjust during the MU, such as being able to consistently scout U-Turns on Urshifu and Infernape and using the information gathered by the damage to scout if they are Banded or Scarf for example. Even if you're toxic'd or burned it doesn't matter that much because you're capable of getting back a majority of the health lost by switching in and out and effectively resetting a lot of the progress made by that chip damage. I'm pointing these factors out not because they're innately problematic, but on a mon like Slowking that is a very capable enabler with Future Sight it allows it FuturePort more often than you'd like it to during a match. It becomes incredibly problematic for the tier, because it turns otherwise smart teambuilding moot. You're often regulated to trapping Slowking with Pursuit or attempting to making an adjustment if you can predict the Future Sight and making it hard switch or port into a different mon that isn't the breaker (mind you even relatively strong pivots such as Zeraora and Mega Manectric benefit from future sight so them not going into the breaker isn't even that big of a deal if they're capable of making adjustments.)

Tl;dr Teleport, Regenerator and Future Sight make this thing pretty concerning IMO and i'd personally love to see it suspected at some point in the future. But that's just me F
 

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