★ 1v1 Suspect #3 - Hoopa-Unbound

[clerica]

​

Following the the recent On The Radar discussion the 1v1 council held a couple votes on the mons featured in the discussion

Votes

bans require a 5/7 vote	smely	deg	bo	lumii	Drip	Delemon	Litt	Total
Hoopa-Unbound	Ban	DNB	Ban	Ban	DNB	Ban	DNB	4 Ban 3 DNB
Greninja	DNB	Ban	DNB	Ban	Ban	DNB	DNB	3 Ban 4 DNB
Gholdengo	DNB	Ban	DNB	DNB	Abstain	DNB	Ban	2 Ban 4 DNB 1 Abstain

With Hoopa-Unbound narrowly avoiding a quickban, the 1v1 council has voted to suspect Hoopa-Unbound afterwards.

Hoopa-Unbound was a mon with high expectations going into the Home metagame. This was its first time in a meta without mega evolutions and a lot of the powerful attackers that made it more difficult to run in previous generations, and it definitely hasn't disappointed so far. With insane offensive stats, decent enough speed, and a solid movepool with moves like Hyperspace Fury, Gunk Shot, Trick, and a variety of coverage moves Hoopa-Unbound has a great matchups spreads against a large chunk of the tier. This causes it to be extremely threatening on preview and more often than not a 2-1 matchup. There isn't much that can stand up to the raw power Hoopa-Unbound can put out, and even without much offensive invest, Hoopa-Unbound can hit extremely hard which allows it to invest heavily in its defenses and can make it quite versatile with the spreads that it can run as well.

Of course this does not make Hoopa-Unbound unbeatable. Counterplay like Band Haxorus, various bug types like Slither Wing and Scizor, Regidrago, Scarf Meowscarada, Landorus-Therian with an item that boosts the damage of U-Turn, speed boosted Roaring Moon, and Megahorn Iron Treads all exist thanks to Hoopa-Unbound's mediocre defense stat and 4x weakness to bug. However, many of the counters to Hoopa-Unbound require significant investment which sacrifice other matchups and cause the meta to warp around Hoopa-Unbound in an way many people find unhealthy for the meta. It might not be as difficult to cover as let's say Greninja, but it has a much greater effect upon the meta than Greninja does currently. As such the 1v1 council has voted to suspect Hoopa-Unbound to see if it is currently too much for the meta to handle.

For this suspect test, we will be using the regular 1v1 ladder, so you must create a new account that begins with 1HOOP to qualify. Hoopa-Unbound will be legal on the ladder. The Deadline for the Hoopa-Unbound Suspect is Thursday, June 22nd, 11:59 PM EST GMT-4

This suspect shall be reusing the sliding scale system from the prior suspects, being:

Minimum Games Needed

GXE	Minimum Games
73.5	50
73.8	49
74.1	48
74.4	47
74.7	46
75.0	45
75.3	44
75.6	43
75.9	42
76.2	41
76.5	40
76.8	39
77.1	38
77.4	37
77.7	36
78	35

The way this works is that the minimum game requirement is reduced by 1 game for every 0.3 GXE you have above 73.5 GXE, down to a minimum of 35 games with a GXE of 78 or above, with the absolute minimum GXE requirement being 73.5%, with at least 50 games played.

As always the normal rules of suspect tests apply. You must use a fresh account registered after the posting of this thread for your reqs. This alt must begin with 1HOOP, ex: 1HOOP smely. Disallowed behaviors include things like boosting other accounts, attempting to vote with multiple accounts, intentionally losing against suspect participants, coercing an opponent to lose, playing games in a voice call, sharing accounts, and trading/buying/stealing/selling/giving away suspect ladder accounts. Cheating will not be tolerated and anyone caught cheating will be disqualified and potentially infracted.

Additionally, we will be implementing a procedure used by other tiers where suspect reqs will be verified by the 1v1 Tier Leader / forum moderators. With this in mind:

• DO NOT LOAD UP MORE GAMES AFTER GETTING REQS UNTIL YOU HAVE BEEN VERIFIED!
• Once verified, your post will be edited with you being notified of the verification.
• If you load up more games before being verified and end up losing your qualifying GXE, your post will be deleted and you will have to qualify again.

If you have achieved the voting requirements, CLICK HERE

When posting in this thread, please keep in mind these rules:
1. No one liners or uninformed posts
2. No discussion on other potential suspects or the suspect process
3. Be respectful

Your post will be deleted and possibly infracted if you fail to follow them. Good luck and have fun!

Tagging Kris to implement the suspect please!

 

[DEG]

HOME metagame has been out for a few weeks as a ladder, and like 2-3 rounds of Majors, LT, and some NJs rounds and honestly I'm not really impressed. There was a wave of sets propaganda scaring us from the monster but they've mostly been a miss in practice. Sure this Pokemon is broken on paper but that doesn't really mean much if we're not seeing it. ngl It's a great Pokemon that belongs to the A-A+ ranks but other than that, it's not really broken. I think there's a lot of other pressing matters like Gholdengo and Meloetta but that shouldn't be the focus of this post.

Hoopa-Unbound has a lot of opportunity cost in its sets so sometimes it loses matchups it really shouldn't have lost, if you throw a lot of EVs in its defenses it might fail to outspeed/KO a threat, if you make it offensive it might lose to heavy hitter. Its typing and defense stats aren't particularly impressive so it can fall to coverage moves or mons with actually good offensive sets. There's a lot of mons that might be able to beat the sets that are commonly run, such as Lando-T, Moltres-G, Slither Wing, Volcarona (Can run charti cause usually has a free item slot and its fine for rock coverage), Regidrago, Roaring Moon, Haxorus, Scizor, Scarf Meowsquarda, Iron treads, Ursaluna, Kingambit, Tinglu, Shifu etc... there's also some mons that win but might lose to other common sets like Greninja, Baxcalibur, Non Scarf Meow, Arcanine Hisui, Reg Arcanine etc... Now I might have stated some erronous matchups and apologies if I did. I'm not taking into consideration the shit sets like tanga or w/e people are trying to cook to prove hoopa can beat every mon. In tournaments play, Hoopa-U encourages non lazy building, ofc it can counter you if you use the same mons but if you use different checks it'll have a harder time to adapt and be cornered using the basic sets. It is good to note that I'm not saying that Hoopa-U will NEVER be broken or that it can't become restricting during PL or later but right now? It has failed to keep up its momentum.

I do feel that Pokemon like Gholdengo, and Meloetta for example restricts both building and preview more than Hoopa-U and their presence is what limits the meta alongside Hoopa-U not the mon itself. As of now, I will be voting DNB on Hoopa-Unbound and will encourage tiering action on Gholdengo.

 

[DripLegend]

Nobody else has really been too vocal about their opinions on Hoopa yet besides DEG so thought i could contribute as someone who's been on the fence (and honestly still is) about this thing. It has very strong STAB and coverage that lets it have a great matchup spread throughout the whole tier. It uses all choice items really well and has other options that give it the ability to be deceiving on preview. A lot of support i have seen for Hoopa deserving a ban is due to the fact most of it's "counters" are investing a ton into bulk or using suboptimal coverage like U-turn in order to fully account for it. While this is true in terms of getting some mons to beat Hoopa, this isn't the case for every mon that beats Hoopa. Examples include Meowscarada and Regidrago. I can't gloss over the fact that Hoopa is a good pokemon right now and has presence in every preview, but that being said I haven't seen Hoopa being clicked or winning a ton of games in recent tournaments despite the fact that many people are saying it is broken or whatever. The two aren't mutually exclusive of course, but it would make a lot more sense to see Hoopa performing well while people think it could be banworthy. I'm not personally declaring an opinion for myself yet, and I don't think anyone should really without putting proper effort or thought into this. I've seen a lot of close-mindedness happening around this mon which is really annoying to see since neither side is looking to learn anything from anyone with a different opinion. Everyone expressing an opinion has mainly been sticking with their own and it defeats the purpose of opening discussions in the first place. If every claim or opinion falls on deaf ears then there's no point of doing action outside of the council (which i think is the last thing anyone wants to happen).

 

[Murm]

I would like to refute some of the common arguments I have seen about keeping Hoopa-Unbound in the tier. I believe 1v1 should ban Hoopa-Unbound, due to its ability to counter its checks, its sheer flexibility, and the stranglehold it has on building SV 1v1.

The Bug Move Argument:

Let’s start with the big argument I’ve heard primarily from newer players: that Hoopa-Unbound is balanced due to its 4x Bug weakness. There have been many Pokemon in the past that have had very detrimental 4x weaknesses, like Tyranitar, Volcarona, and Charizard. Hoopa-Unbound, however, is very different for a multitude of reasons. To start, Hoopa-Unbound only has two weaknesses: Bug and Fairy, while most other 4x weak mons have more (Volcarona having three and Tyranitar having a whopping 8). This by itself isn’t that big of a deal, but Bug is a much better type to be quad weak to than Fighting and Rock, since the distribution of Bug moves is much worse and Bug as a coverage option is generally less useful. This doesn’t matter much if Hoopa couldn’t deal with its other weaknesses, but Hoopa-Unbound has extremely positive matchups against all of the fairies in the current metagame, with the combination of its massive 160 Attack stat and its access to Gunk Shot, a 120 power Poison move. This forces Pokemon like Sylveon and Azumarill, very strong fairies that just happen to be slower, to run Kebia Berry to even stand a chance against Choice Band or Life Orb variants. Even then, bulkier Hoopa sets like Assault Vest and Roseli Berry can counter these counters. Faster fairies like Enamorus have similar issues, but are also forced to be scared of Choice Scarf Hoopa. Even Iron Valiant, who is faster than even Choice Scarf Hoopa-Unbound with Booster Energy, cannot OHKO many Hoopa variants and can struggle to lock Hoopa into a move to Disable when it can alternate between Gunk Shot, Psychic, Psyshock, or Zen Headbutt. Since Fairy types don’t match up particularly well against Hoopa, Bug types are your best bet, but there are not many good Bug types in this current meta. The only really good Bug type Pokemon is Volcarona, though you can technically count Greninja and Meowscarada with Protean U-turn. However, even though there aren’t many good bug types, there are many Pokemon with good bug type moves. Pokemon like Great Tusk and Iron Treads get Megahorn, Haxorus gets First Impression, Sneasler gets X-Scissor, and Greninja, Meowscarada, Urshifu, Annihilape, and many others get U-Turn. The issue with these is that they often need to run very specific sets in order to reliably win. Naturally faster Pokemon like Great Tusk and Meowscarada are forced into running Choice Scarf so they do not lose to Choice Scarf Hoopa, and Pokemon like Urshifu have to run items like Chople Berry to live a hit. The biggest issue with all of these however, is the existence of Tanga Berry Hoopa-Unbound.

Tanga Berry

Hoopa-Unbound @ Tanga Berry
Ability: Magician
EVs: 244 HP / 72 Atk / 116 Def / 32 SpD / 44 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Hyperspace Fury
- Rock Tomb
- Gunk Shot
- Ice Punch

This example set is bulked for Life Orb Timid Volcarona Bug Buzz and Life Orb Jolly Greninja U-turn, outspeeds Landorus-Therian after a Rock Tomb, and the rest is put into Attack. This set is a good example of how Hoopa can tech its counters. Random Bug coverage isn’t enough to stop Hoopa-Unbound.

The Defense Argument:

Many people have brought up Hoopa-Unbound’s admittedly mediocre base 60 Defense, along with its base HP of 80. On paper, this makes Hoopa quite frail and susceptible to the many strong physical attackers in the tier, like Ursaluna and Great Tusk. However, Hoopa can quite easily run max Physical Defense investment to be able to tank the majority of physical hits coming its way. This works extremely well alongside Knock Off to remove slower Pokemon’s Choice Band or Life Orb. Now at first this seems like it would come at a massive cost, as you wouldn’t be investing in any other stat. However, Hoopa-Unbound’s base stats are so high, that even uninvested, they eclipse many of the big attackers. For example, Hoopa-Unbound without any Special Attack investment hits a stat of 376, which is higher than even 252+ Special Attack threats like Greninja (335) and Iron Valiant (372). It can also tank many strong Special Attacks even with only 252 HP investment, like max Special Attack Sylveon’s Pixilate Hyper Voice. A good example is Landorus-Therian, a Pokemon with a base 145 Attack stat, using U-Turn, a 4x Super Effective move on a fully defensive Hoopa, needs to run an Adamant nature to be able to sometimes KO Hoopa (252+ has a 93.8% chance to OHKO). This might not seem bad on paper, however it also needs to both run enough Speed to outspeed max Speed Hoopa (168+ investment) and enough bulk to live any Choice Scarf Hoopa hit (56 HP to live Jolly Hoopa, 184 HP to live Adamant Hoopa). Since it cannot run all of these EVs, it has to sacrifice its item slot to be able to do enough damage without the maximum Attack investment it wants. Another example is Chien-Pao, a Pokemon with a base 120 Attack stat and an ability that lowers the opponent’s defense by 25%. With maximum Attack investment with an Adamant nature and a Choice Band, an item that boosts its Attack by 50%, Giga Impact, a 150 base power move, has only a 50% chance to OHKO maximum Defense Hoopa. If this wasn’t enough, Hoopa-Unbound can also run the rarely used move Wonder Room, which swaps every Pokemon’s Defense and Special Defense stats. This move allows Hoopa to beat pretty much every single physical attacker slower than it, especially with Special Defense investment. These examples show how much Hoopa forces specific items and EV spreads just to beat it. Hoopa-Unbound abuses its obscene stats to be an unhealthy presence.

The Opportunity Cost Argument:

To go along with Hoopa’s stats, its movepool allows it to handle an unhealthy amount of matchups. For attacking moves, it has access to Hyperspace Hole, Knock Off, Dark Pulse, Zen Headbutt, Psychic, and Psyshock for STABs, and it has a copious amount of coverage between Drain Punch (Goodra-H, Chien-Pao), Fire Punch (Scizor), Focus Blast (Urshifu, Iron Treads), Gunk Shot (Fairies, Meowscarada), Ice Punch (Landorus, Garchomp), Rock Tomb (Volcarona), and Hyper Beam (strongest special attack). It also has a surprising amount of useful status moves, like Calm Mind, Nasty Plot, Substitute, Taunt, Trick, Skill Swap, and Wonder Room. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean it can always beat the entire metagame, as it can only run four of these moves at once. However, many of these moves, like its STABs and Gunk Shot, beat a large portion of what you would already want it to beat. This goes for its EVs as well: investing a lot into stats like Speed or Defense gives Hoopa a lot of matchups, allowing it to cover whatever chunk of the metagame you need. All of this set variation makes Hoopa an extremely difficult Pokemon to counter, since you have to be able to defeat not only both physical and special sets, but also both bulky and fast sets. This leads many Pokemon like Regidrago and Landorus-Therian needing to run a weird mix of bulk, speed, and attack in order to optimize the Hoopa-Unbound matchup, which leads them to losing other important matchups, like Gholdengo. Hoopa-Unbound’s sheer number of strong options eclipse everything else in the tier.

Conclusion:

For all of the reasons I’ve shown above, I will be voting to ban Hoopa-Unbound. I have already gotten reqs, and I encourage everyone reading this to do the same if you haven’t already. With Premier League VII coming up very soon, I hope we can get this Pokemon out of the metagame for a healthier meta, both for this tournament and for the future. Thank you so much for reading, have a good day.

 

[Marshme1to]

252 SpA Choice Specs Pixilate Sylveon Hyper Beam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Hoopa-Unbound: 314-372 (86.2 - 102.1%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO

Ban hoopa I brought him against my friend now he has been missing for 3 days :(

 

[Lucario]

I heavily agree with everything Murman said and they said it really well, please read their post (this one will be a lot shorter).

1v1 is the metagame we all know and love as you only have one Pokemon on the field. With this knowledge you would think that some moves, like Healing Wish, are unviable, and you would be absolutely correct. This also applies to U-turn as pivoting doesn't exist-- except U-turn... does have a niche? Hoopa-Unbound, with its monstrous base 160 Attack and 170 Special Attack often doesn't have to run any offensive investment and can invest heavily into Defense. Even with 80 HP and 60 Defense, max/max is decently high and forces an extra turn of damage to KO. Thanks to Hoopa-U, some Pokemon are forced to run U-turn over a much more useful move, this leads to them sacrificing some matchups. Not only are Pokemon running the relatively weak U-turn, some even run X-Scissor, Lunge, and Pounce. While Bug coverage can be niche for Greninja, Meowscarada, and Meloetta, they all have ways to counteract that coverage (Protean and Relic Song, and Meloetta can tank most supereffective hits with some bulk investment due to it's high HP).

Hoopa-U also has insane coverage, being able to run both Physical and Special moves on one set to beat whatever it wants to. On top of it's Dark- and Psychic- STABs, it can run Ghost, Fire, Fighting, Rock, Electric, Ice, Poison, Grass, and either of Giga Impact or Hyper Beam. Overall, as long as I stop getting slept by Dire Claw, I will vote ban should I get reqs.

A meta without Hoopa-U will likely see a rise in more team diversity. Some Pokemon like Regidrago and Gholdengo love being paired with Hoopa-U often cause the other player to overthink the outcomes just to realize they get 3-0d by Hoopa-U. Without Hoopa-U there are more options not only amongst teammates, but individual sets. This is a meta I would like to see.

I do feel that Pokemon like Gholdengo, and Meloetta for example restricts both building and preview more than Hoopa-U and their presence is what limits the meta alongside Hoopa-U not the mon itself. As of now, I will be voting DNB on Hoopa-Unbound and will encourage tiering action on Gholdengo.

I may be wrong, but the way I'm reading this is you want Hoopa-U to stay in the tier because you think other things are broken. Is this really something that should be said in a thread about Hoopa-U, especially by a council member? This thread is specifically about Hoopa-U, not Gholdengo or Meloetta. It's fine to think one thing is broken, but being able to ruin a metagame because you think one or 2 other Pokemon are more broken is just selfish and shows you are blinded by a non-issue.

 

[DEG]

I may be wrong, but the way I'm reading this is you want Hoopa-U to stay in the tier because you think other things are broken. Is this really something that should be said in a thread about Hoopa-U, especially by a council member? This thread is specifically about Hoopa-U, not Gholdengo or Meloetta. It's fine to think one thing is broken, but being able to ruin a metagame because you think one or 2 other Pokemon are more broken is just selfish and shows you are blinded by a non-issue.

I have never said that. Please do not disregard my whole post about why I think Hoopa-U is manageable then focus on one sentence in the end.

 

[fake tom numbers]

While I do like Murman's post from a new player's standpoint, it is incredibly misleading and sometimes just incorrect. Just because the super effective move or the high base stats of a pokemon or the big number move does not win means that Hoopa is broken. As deg said, hoopa encourages good teambuilding so that you aren't slapping a bug move on every pokemon that can learn it. Does maybe beating the entire meta but every set only beats around 15%ish of the meta broken? As with the case of a similar mon, annihilape, ape was viewed as broken by some but had an abysmal tournament win rate. Of course Hoopa is way better than annihilape and potentially could be broken later down the line, but we haven't had any major proof that Hoopa is broken yet, and I feel like it'll go in the same category as ape, IMO.

all the inconsistencies in the post

This example set is bulked for Life Orb Timid Volcarona Bug Buzz

252 SpA Life Orb Swarm Volcarona Bug Buzz vs. 244 HP / 32 SpD Tanga Berry Hoopa-Unbound: 460-541 (127 - 149.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO

unless u are not running sub? scarf hoopa always has rock tomb so sub is the correct play

Life Orb Jolly Greninja U-turn

I think this should be another benchmark?

(252 Atk Life Orb Greninja U-turn vs. 244 HP / 116 Def Tanga Berry Hoopa-Unbound: 276-328 (76.2 - 90.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO way overbulked)

not to mention that 1. there is ZERO reason to use gren over hoopa and 2. rock tomb does not kill so u have to click hf, which also does not kill other gren sets

(72+ Atk Hoopa-Unbound Rock Tomb vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Greninja: 208-246 (72.9 - 86.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO)
(72+ Atk Hoopa-Unbound Hyperspace Fury vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Greninja: 261-307 (91.5 - 107.7%) -- 50% chance to OHKO bruh)

outspeeds Landorus-Therian after a Rock Tomb

? 1. scarf wins 2. band wins (always click eq if u are band btw)

252 Atk Choice Band Landorus-Therian U-turn vs. 244 HP / 116 Def Tanga Berry Hoopa-Unbound: 316-374 (87.2 - 103.3%) -- 25% chance to OHKO 252 Atk Choice Band Landorus-Therian Earthquake vs. 244 HP / 116 Def Hoopa-Unbound: 339-399 (93.6 - 110.2%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO

adamant just kills and 3. if lando has any bulk in defense you roll

-1 72+ Atk Hoopa-Unbound Rock Tomb vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Landorus-Therian: 55-65 (17.2 - 20.3%) -- possible 5HKO
-1 72+ Atk Hoopa-Unbound Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Landorus-Therian: 272-324 (85.2 - 101.5%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO

A good example is Landorus-Therian, a Pokemon with a base 145 Attack stat, using U-Turn, a 4x Super Effective move on a fully defensive Hoopa, needs to run an Adamant nature to be able to sometimes KO Hoopa (252+ has a 93.8% chance to OHKO).

what is the hoopa gonna do back, choice band ice punch???, also you calced choice scarf so u don't need bulk since u outspeed scarf hoopa

-1 4 Atk Hoopa-Unbound Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 96 Def Landorus-Therian: 216-256 (67.7 - 80.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian U-turn vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Hoopa-Unbound: 360-424 (98.9 - 116.4%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO (band kills, plus it doesn't matter since u can just click u turn twice)

Hoopa-Unbound can also run the rarely used move Wonder Room, which swaps every Pokemon’s Defense and Special Defense stats. This move allows Hoopa to beat pretty much every single physical attacker slower than it, especially with Special Defense investment.

relevant examples maybe? only one I can think of is ursaluna

252+ Atk Choice Band Ursaluna Giga Impact vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Hoopa-Unbound in Wonder Room: 339-400 (112.6 - 132.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO

(not to mention play rough wins as well)

Hoopa-Unbound’s sheer number of strong options eclipse everything else in the tier.

this doesn't answer the oppurtunity cost arguement btw. If you are running both STABs then you have 2 moves left, so do you run ice punch? or gunk shot? or drain punch? on paper this seems good because you can adapt with your team, however each of these filler moves only beat one or two mons as you mentioned above, which means that in practice you aren't beating a lot of the metagame.

Not only are Pokemon running the relatively weak U-turn, some even run X-Scissor, Lunge, and Pounce.

who what what dude what who??? also below u mentioned how u turn is niche but used the worst examples, gren does not exist and meow doesn't have a big physical movepool so u turn is very viable

A meta without Hoopa-U will likely see a rise in more team diversity. Some Pokemon like Regidrago and Gholdengo love being paired with Hoopa-U often cause the other player to overthink the outcomes just to realize they get 3-0d by Hoopa-U. Without Hoopa-U there are more options not only amongst teammates, but individual sets. This is a meta I would like to see.

man idk what meta you're thinkin of but it sucks LOL. Gholdengo, Meloetta, Greninja, and many others who were kept in check by hoopa would be running around ruining the tier even more, it does not seem like it would be a diverse meta at all.


This is more speculative more than anything, but I think Chi-yu would be a healthy addition to the metagame. Chi yu would beat Gholdengo, Meloetta, and even some Hoopa sets while losing to many of the new Pokemon like Walking Wake, Greninja, Regidrago, Ursaluna, Enamorus, Urshifus, both landos, Volcanion, Zapdos Galar, Lilligant Hisui, Diancie, Arcanine Hisui, Sneasler, Avalugg Hisui, and Basculegion. Not to mention that it still loses to it's previous counters and can lose to things like Samurott Hisui and Regieleki depending on the set. Most of the Pokemon above barely have any usage at all, so having Chi-yu would give many things a proper niche.

 

[delemon]

This is more speculative more than anything, but I think Chi-yu would be a healthy addition to the metagame. Chi yu would beat Gholdengo, Meloetta, and even some Hoopa sets while losing to many of the new Pokemon like Walking Wake, Greninja, Regidrago, Ursaluna, Enamorus, Urshifus, both landos, Volcanion, Zapdos Galar, Lilligant Hisui, Diancie, Arcanine Hisui, Sneasler, Avalugg Hisui, and Basculegion. Not to mention that it still loses to it's previous counters and can lose to things like Samurott Hisui and Regieleki depending on the set. Most of the Pokemon above barely have any usage at all, so having Chi-yu would give many things a proper niche.

Council already voted on this and the vote was final.

 

[fruan]

252 SpA Life Orb Swarm Volcarona Bug Buzz vs. 244 HP / 32 SpD Tanga Berry Hoopa-Unbound: 460-541 (127 - 149.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Sub volcarona does not win.

-1 4 Atk Hoopa-Unbound Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 96 Def Landorus-Therian: 216-256 (67.7 - 80.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Landorus-Therian U-turn vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Hoopa-Unbound: 360-424 (98.9 - 116.4%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO (band kills, plus it doesn't matter since u can just click u turn twice)

Scarf Landorus does not win if it clicks u-turn.

this doesn't answer the oppurtunity cost arguement btw. If you are running both STABs then you have 2 moves left, so do you run ice punch? or gunk shot? or drain punch? on paper this seems good because you can adapt with your team, however each of these filler moves only beat one or two mons as you mentioned above, which means that in practice you aren't beating a lot of the metagame.

IV.) Unhealthy - elements that are neither uncompetitive nor broken yet are deemed undesirable for the metagame such that they inhibit "skillful play" to a large extent.

• These are elements that may not limit either team building or battling skill enough individually but combine to cause an effect that is undesirable for the metagame.
• This can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity.

 

[zo]

will be voting dnb, heres why

hoopa is a big menace in theory, having access to so many tools, but in practice it just doesnt seem to work out that way. stuff like meowscarada is more likely to be useful in the context of cteaming due to its higher base powers for moves across the board and access to protean, and if you want raw damage things like regidrago are happy to deliver, only missing out on two fairy matchups realistically. hoopa is not the best in any niche from what i can tell, it seems to just be a really good mon that can do many things well but isnt so overwhelming with one set that it becomes silly. i think this is fine for a mon to have as long as its matchups dont overlap too much because it gives it set variety without needing 300 different counters in 3 slots.

another point i would like to bring up despite it being speculative is how much hoopa keeps in check right now, first of all im legitimately shocked how low some of you have gholdengo at, that thing shouldve been banned frame 1 the moment people discovered you can max out one defensive stat and beat almost every pokemon that attacks you on that side of the spectrum. seriously ive seen volcanions lose to this thing with my own eyes and stuff like kingambit almost lose all the same. obviously this post is for hoopa discussion but my main point is that hoopa provides reliable counterplay to the actual problem children of the metagame at least imo. i think its more of a stabilizing force than not because it isnt that overwhelming on preview. ive seen people complain that their teams lose to a hoopa variant or whatever and my response is... build better teams? maybe youll occasionally lose to random tanga berry (which loses to wisp volcarona btw Woohoo) but in my eyes thats more or less the same as losing to random choice scarf regidrago in ss, its just not a viable set outside of the context of cheesing a win lol

i understand the metagame may feel centralized and boring as fuck rn but i dont attribute that to hoopa, i actually attribute it to everything seemingly beneath hoopa, stuff like meloetta and gholdengo is strictly anti fun and while i get a good kick out of cteaming people with the perfect ghold and never being punished ive kinda had enough gholdengo for at least half a year. hoopa is (probably) healthy for the metagame and itll only get worse as you ban the things its keeping in check while simultaneously strengthening its counters.

 

[bo_bobson27]

Ok so I looked at the top 4 mons (hoopa ghold melo drago) by checking their mus vs every mon on the vr. I also looked at volcanion as a more balanced mon for reference. Hoopa was not the most broken of these four, but it was still much better than volcanion. Hoopa sets I considered: band, specs, scarf, max def, skill swap, av, and setup. These sets covered about 80% of the vr. Volcanion covered about 65%.

Hoopa would have been banned within the first week if it had any high bp stab moves, but its bst is so high that it is very strong regardless, even with its mediocre speed and defensive profile. With a relatively deep move pool, it can do nearly anything you want. Hoopa's individual sets are all A to B tier, and its versatility is unmatched. It forces many mons (the majority of its hard counters) to run suboptimal sets. There are more bannable mons in the tier, but Hoopa needs to go.

 

[zo]

not the reasoning i would have used considering the literal point of having high tiers is that they cover decently large swaths of the metagame with their set diversity

its kinda disingenuous to point to how much a mon beats in theory anyway because a) it beats low tier mons by default 90% of the time and b) a LOT of pokemon in much more stable metagames have high tiers who beat that much of the vr in their sets

anyway im still very actively dnb because i somehow dont believe that hoopa is terrorizing the metagame when its good sets are barely 2-1s into competently built teams and its lure sets never get clicked. this mon is inherently limited and if you cant exploit that then its probably a you problem, most definitely not helping that actual problems are still running free though cough gholdengod

im also very interested in seeing a pre-home metagame +hoopa anyway and seeing how much changes because banning basially every top tier from this point onwards inevitably leads back to a fairy-centric metagame which was boring and unfun and probably the reason sv interest died off as soon as it properly settled

 

[clerica]

Hoopa-Unbound has been banned!