Gen 3 ADV NU Suspect Discussion

[Disaster Area]

On the request I guess of my bud [who wishes to not be spotlighted here] I'm opening up a discussion for any suspects in the tier. He and others feel that Sableye and Huntail may be banworthy, whilst my personal stance is the metagame is still far too underexplored to really be in sufficient agreement with that stance.

 

[ThinkNice]

Pretty sure metagames from past gens remain untouched when a new generation rises? Well, you could argue the BW discussion about weather I guess, but that seems as an reasonable exception because it's not a very old metagame and it's an Overused tier. I have never played or seen ADV NU, but I'm simply asking if a suspect like this would be even possible.

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Inb4 I'm missing an inside joke here

 

[Disaster Area]

Sure it's possible, some Pokemon were dropped into the metagame originally after the whole thing was untouched for years. Ultimately, it's Pokemon, we can do what we like.

 

[Bughouse]

I haven't played ADV NU really since Sableye was forcibly dropped by some kind of tyrant, but I gotta say watching the ADV NU battles in NUPL, it seemed pretty clearly centralizing. It singlehandedly made stall really, really good.

Ultimately depends if you think that's desirable. I personally don't and I'd like to see it banished again.

 

[Raseri]

I've been playing quite a bit of ADV NU lately, and I'm really not a fan of how Sableye and Huntail shape the tier. Huntail I think is just straight up broken, in one turn it becomes by far the most deadly Pokemon in the tier, and has few reliable checks (although some do exist like Kecleon and other bulky normals), but other than that and Lombre, which Disaster Area can confirm I use, there really arent a lot of ways to handle it.

idk if Sableye is "broken" but to me it really makes the meta unfun, reliable recovery on a Pokemon with no weaknesses, immunity to the #3 Pokemons STAB (hitmonchan), and a boosting move is just really hard to take down without dedicated counters.

I'm all in favour of removing Huntail, but Sableye im a little torn on.

 

[Disaster Area]

In my view with huntail:
Counters: Dewgong, Lombre, Bulky Bellossom [Dewgong the only one also immune to freezes however]
Checks (of varying quality): Kecleon, Roselia
+ lots of Pokemon can avoid being set up on it, or failing that, there's a large portion of the tier (most stuff w/ some decent special bulk and no water weak/4x electric/ice weak) that can switch in on the rain dance and do heavy damage (or explode, like swalot, wailord, others..) [I could write a pretty full list if you want !]

With sableye, it's still pretty big spikes bait, and mawile bait, although the CM+taunt/fire punch set remedies this somewhat, and with spikes it's very easy to turn 3HKOs (such as CB Hitmonchan's EQ) into 2HKOs.

 

[The Quasar]

I have played too few match in ADV NU (I remember an old Tour in 2012, Back to the Future, do you remember @Raseri?) and I think I can't help you around. But we could organize a mini or otherwise live tour to have comparable data from replays.

 

[Triangles]

Huntail is OP, say no more. Ban it
Sableye is strong, but people need to build with more measures against stall. I wouldn't say it makes the meta 'unfun' either, it just gives it more strategical depth. The stronger stall is in a tier, the less it becomes button mashing. Don't ban it

 

[Disaster Area]

I personally feel the fact that you get a free turn when huntail actually needs to set up rain makes it a lot easier to check, it's not hard to fit a couple or even most of your mons to not be huge set-up bait for it, specially defensive bellossom beats it very consistently, and a couple of other things can reasonably switch in and either force it out or prevent it from being such a threat, such as kecleon.

I'm willing to side with banning it but I personally don't find it that big of a deal.

 

[ThriceElite]

Keep in mind that Sableye is going to be even more of a pain in the ass to deal with if Huntail is banned. Unlike a lot of other walls, Sableye is immune to boom. It also packs Recover, lacks weaknesses, has moves like Calm Mind, Taunt, Counter to fuck over things that would normally check it, etc. What that means is: why does it even matter that you can "take advantage of it"? If you can't kill it with anything resembling reliability, what does it matter? So what if you get 3 layers of Spikes up on it? If you can't kill it, it doesn't fucking matter. First you have to force the damn thing out. And there's only a limited selection of mons in this tier that can accomplish even that. Remember that Sableye is this annoying check-all mon that you shove in front of your opponent's attacker that walls shit with ease. It's not easy to force out that damn thing. Agreeing with Bughouse on this. Sableye should be banned.

Sableye remaining unbanned probably won't make things strategic. All you'll get is a huge upsurge of stall, since Sableye is so easy to use. Sableyes, Vigoroths everywhere. I guess Pikachu and Plusle too.

Also keep in mind that this is ADV NU. All of the good boosting mons have been stolen by the higher tiers. So you're left with things like Hitmonchan and Chimecho, who Sableye is EVed to counter. So what you're left with is what, Vigoroth?

Being spikes-bait and Mawile-bait is irrelevant. Any stall team worth a damn has a bulky Spinner and Wish Flareon. The latter is already annoying enough on its own and shitstomps Mawile, the former you won't be able to keep Spikes down because Haunter is not a good spinblocker because fraility. Only spinblocker really is Sableye, which means we're just going to see that damn thing everywhere.

I am neutral on Huntail. Despite its power, I've never been swept by one, though I can see why people want it banned. Again, I reiterate that Huntail being banned will make Sableye even more of an annoying shit.

Triangles If there's ever a time that both of us unretire, I'd like for us to play ADV NU if/when my interest in it comes back up.

 

[Disaster Area]

CB Mawile works as a lure to curbstomp those teams, as does baton pass into diglett, it's not too hard to pressure chan into not being able to spin, and it's pretty easy to pressure since like any Special Attacker with uninvested base 80 SpA + STAB 2HKOs non-CM variants (and it's not that much worse vs CM ones, since there's lots of access to stronger attackers). Being hazard-bait is a huge issue even if spinblocking isn't fantastically well done in the tier (remember that chan also loses to the most common non-lead spiker, roselia, 1 on 1, generally [or at least will be crippled, depending on the set - but really you must fit something like synthesis or stun spore or whatever])

 

[Oglemi]

Huntail is probably broken. It's the only Pokemon in the tier that can so completely and effortlessly sweep with a single turn of set up, and there exists only 1 really good counter with only a few good checks.

That said, I think it adds an almost necessary offensive presence that would be sorely missed in the tier, which as pointed out in the OP, largely hinges on Sableye.

I do not think Sableye is broken, but I do think it would be broken without Huntail in the tier, as the tier would then shift largely to favor Sableye-centered stall.

Because this is just a tier I kinda made for fun and dropped some Pokemon in, I'm totally ok with just giving both Pokemon the boot and going from there. I think the tier is pretty balanced even with them in the tier though and have fun playing it, but I can see the issues with them and am willing to try and make the tier better for all.

 

[rural]

im pro-ban on both just because i think huntail is ridiculous and because sableye stall: the meta doesnt sound too fun to me

 

[Disaster Area]

Should we have some sort of vote/suspect test or do you wish to just make an executive decision? I think I may be the only one with much desire to keep huntail, but a couple of people seem to wish to keep sableye if it goes (or are unsure).

My personal stance is that even with huntail you're perhaps overrating sab, i mean most of what it counters can be fairly well handled when chipping at it with spikes and hitting it with the right attacks to force it out.

 

[ThriceElite]

I'm all for getting rid of Sableye. Sableye being so dominant is part of the reason I quit the tier, and I'd love for it to get the boot. You can try all you like to justify Sableye in a Huntail-less ADV NU with your fancy dancing around it, but at the end of the day it's still a MASSIVE pain in the ass to deal with without something that can hose it down and force it out like Huntail, and Sableye gives the stall player an unreasonable advantage. You all saw how obnoxiously good Sableye was in NUPL. Without Huntail, and even with, Sableye is unreasonably centralizing. Disaster Area, you can say run CB Mawile and Spikes and etc. as much as you want, but at the end of the day if you're forced to run something slow and easily chipped down as CB Mawile, then that only proves how unhealthy Sableye is for the tier.

Sableye and Huntail are stupidly easy enough to use that they shouldn't be allowed in official tournaments. If you're that desperate to use Sableye and/or Huntail in an ADV NU game outside of an official tour, just request that you can use them in a game when you request a game via PM with the person you're asking. Hell, you can even request that you can use Persian or Girafarig or shit if that tickles your fancy. I mean, Django would probably LOVE to use Girafarig, but that's enough of that.

Point is, Sableye and Huntail should be banned so that official tours aren't fucked up by their presence. If anyone wants to use Sableye and/or Huntail out of tours (which most ADV NU matches are anyways), just request that you can use them by PM since private messaging how most ADV NU matches are started anyways.

 

[Disaster Area]

well I just used it as an example of a lure that works to break that core. Sableye's hard to lure but by no means impossible. You could run Hypnosis Haunter for example (like they do with Gar in OU), and the fact that it's pretty huge mawile and spikes bait unless it's the offensive CM set (which means it's not walling CB Chan! - EQ should 2HKO at least some of the time) so it should be abusable on pretty much every team, so long as you think about it in preparation instead of just throwing attackers at it and realising you can't just break through it thoughtlessly. It's a really damn good wall but it's bait for a handful of top tier mons in the tier and can be broken down by the stuff it's supposed to wall against if it prevents itself being hazard bait - if it's hazard bait, you just beat it in the longer run instead.

Also a good chunk of the NUPL replays were pretty average at best, this tier is so damn underexplored still and you guys mostly would rather complain and remove than deal with head on certain problems - obviously not the worst stance and I can empathise with some of the players but my opinion is that the meta is underexplored and there's a lot of ways to break things, especially with good spikers and mediocre spinning (and a spinblocker or TWO that are popular outside of their spinblocking niche (only two if sableye is usable)).

Also I guess I should give myself a pat on the back for finding a Pokemon that Oglemi thought was fairly irrelevant and now everyone's whining about it being banned,, guess u can call me the metagame innovator

e: also good point, worth noting django was using an illegal Pokemon in NUPL and noone batted an eyelid (since he lost + the people who know better weren't on either team anyway) in girafarig, if we're gonna use these tiers in official tours it would be nice if we could agree on the fucking rules!

Not sure what I think about persian (superfast hypnosis worries me, sleep is powerful in the tier anyway), but girafarig is deifnitely not something that should be permitted.

 

[prozac]

#dont ban

 

[prozac]

Neither pokemon is a must have on any team. They can be beaten through team preparedness, and as far as broken, not yet they arent. I cant even believe sable is being called in for suspect as its beaten all over the place, its just good at what it does. Huntail I can see why its being called suspect and it is one of the best sweepers in the meta, but I dont think anyone has broke the meta with it yet. I would like to see usage stats, or success rates with huntail vs no huntail teams. A tour in that spirit would be a fun idea. If a tour were to happen and half the teams brought huntail the other half tried to counter the huntail teams, I think the huntail teams would even lose given the fact that if you expect it, you can beat it. So it comes down to the age old suspect question "will the the meta be better off without it", and I hate that as an excuse to ban a poke because it requires such a subjective answer and it sucks to see a poke get banned because people are too lazy to prepare for a varied meta.

 

[prozac]

Shouldnt the burden of evidence fall on the people who want to change the existing meta? Why not create a huntail/sable team that will annihilate other teams that lack either poke?
Perhaps they should be banned, but it should be proven to a greater degree first.

 

[M Dragon]

Why is sableye NU? Lol

 

[Disaster Area]

Now, onto the point of the thread. There are a few Pokemon not on the above NU tierlist that are currently sitting in UU that I feel should be NU. These Pokemon being extremely useless and, from what I can tell, not even used in the UU environment. The other caveat being that they don't also break the NU metagame. I would like to see the following listed as NU:

Arbok
Dunsparce
Octillery
Sableye
Shedinja
Shuckle
Yanma

Of those Pokemon, the only one I think sees any kind of use in UU maybe is Shedinja, and that's only on semi-gimmick teams since Spikes are everywhere.

Octillery, Sableye, Shuckle, and Yanma don't even provide NU with any kind of niche or usefulness from what I can tell (Octillery being a decent BP receiver I suppose and Yanma having a mediocre Reversal set (it's still outclassed by Raticate and Kingler there)).

http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...-and-a-tiny-bit-of-shuffling-from-uu.3503418/

 

[Django]

why aren't we just using the tried and tested tierlist from years ago from people that actually played this meta? And why are NFE's allowed. Just use this it's a fun and balanced tier: http://web.archive.org/web/20080623024825/http://www.uustadium.com/advnu/nulist/

can we stop fucking around with old tiers that don't need to be changed

 

[Disaster Area]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/nfes-in-uu.43157/
I feel like not allowing NFEs is like the 'legendary' clause and totally arbitary, idgi. I mean I generally approve of avoiding fucking with metas as much as possible. People play the meta now, albeit I guess not as much? We saw pretty good activity in the couple of tours it's been recently featured in.

But yeah imo it makes zero sense to ban NFEs, literally no other generations do it, neither before or after (at least idt GSC does??).

 

[Oglemi]

why aren't we just using the tried and tested tierlist from years ago from people that actually played this meta? And why are NFE's allowed. Just use this it's a fun and balanced tier: http://web.archive.org/web/20080623024825/http://www.uustadium.com/advnu/nulist/

can we stop fucking around with old tiers that don't need to be changed

Except PO and UU stadium in fact fucked with the old tier themselves when they started playing it because it was barely played when Gen 3 was the actual generation of the time. Between UU Stadium, old Smogon, Project NU, and PO there has never been a consistent tier list for ADV NU.

I and others find the current state of NU to be far more enjoyable with NFEs and a majority of the mons I added than without, save for the couple currently causing concern (Huntail, which always existed in the tier, and Sableye, which is borderline but that I added).

Not to mention Project NU, which actually played the tier after UU stadium and prior to PO, used NFEs as well.

 

[Bughouse]

NFEs add substantial creativity to the tier and are some of the best set up mons around (pupitar, fucking abra, for example)

And even if they didn't, there's really no reason to exclude them. No other Smogon tier has ever excluded lower evolutions, afaik.