Merp Merp Meow
There was an another person arguing for imp ban and Tea responded with valid points so you might wanna read.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/balanced-hackmons.3710859/post-9664539
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BH Balanced Hackmons
- Thread starter Tea Guzzler
- Start date
There was an another person arguing for imp ban and Tea responded with valid points so you might wanna read.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/balanced-hackmons.3710859/post-9664539
Bro the remark i made on my experience in Ubers/AG was just to clarify am not your average low ladder player with no clue about what hes saying, not to compare the 2 metagames in any way at all. Am very much aware theyre completely different metas and i certainly am not worried about imposter's utility as a universal revenge-killer here where it can so many better things than that, thus why i explained why i think imposter is much more problematic here than it ever could possibly be in a tier like AG. Also speaking about the complexity and chaoticness of the 2 metas if you really wanna compare them, i would argue AG didnt lag too far behind in that regard considering literally all kind of stupid shit was allowed here (evasion, baton pass, ohko, no sleep clause), all stuff that is currently banned in hackmons (obviously for very good reasons), making it not such an easy task to consistently win in a tier with so many uncompetitive/sacky strategies allowed, but that is AG so you know what youre signing for if the defining trait of the meta is "there are no bans", point being i certainly wouldnt have been able to climb that high on that ladder and get a consistent win rate if i didnt get creative and experiment with teambuilding like i stated before. I did the same here in BH as i never stated i dont run imposter, on contrary i couldnt imagine a team without eviolite imposter chansey and the utility it offers rn, and yes i already "imposter-proofed" my team and setup sweepers and may i add i did a good job at that as some won games facing it have proven, like i did at securing the "evoboost go brr baton pass +2 to everything" would be a guaranteed one-sided slaughter the way i liked it with or without ditto back then in AG. Despite that, despite being fully aware of the counterplay avilable, the layers of complexity and unconventional ideas the "imposter-proofing" may enable having experimented and ran it myself, i still think the game would be more diverse, fun and better off without such an overcentralizing presence. You realize saying "the first requirement for a team to be good and first step in approaching teambuilding in BH is imposter-proofing" is akin to saying "the first requirement for a team to be good and the first step in approaching teambuilding in Nat Dex Ubers is shaping your team to effectively being able to deal with Miraidon"? Now what do the previous statements have in common? They both imply there is a thereat/asset available in that tier that is so good, so widely used, so defining in the meta, that first and foremost the basic requirement for any team is being able to counter A SINGLE SPECIFIC MON (or ability in this case) else its a bad team period. That is true for Imposter in BH as it was for miraidon before it was righfully kicked out of Ubers. However much fun you may genuinely have in coming up with creative ways of dealing with imposter, or creative sets in ubers that turn to the tables on an unsuspecting miraidon, at some point you (at least i) get kinda bored of that being the first thing you gotta think about every time you wanna build a team, and maybe there are times where you wish you could make a team without your first thought being "okay we cookin now do how do we impoproof this bomb". Anything, be it a pokemon, ability, move that mandatorily requires you have a countermeasure to it as first approach to teambuilding in that meta, can be defined as "overcentralizing" and "meta-warping to too high of an extent", qualities that got pretty much everything that displayed em eventually banned in any tier so far so.
Anyway ill now read the posts you guys linked because am genuinely curious as to what arguments could be made in favour of imposter that i didnt already addressed/though about, thank you both for providing me with different points of view in this debate :)
Imposter is once again a subject of debate on the Balanced Hackmons meta discussion thread.
Imposter is absolutely a centralising aspect of BH, to the point I wouldn't blame anyone for considering it overcentralising. However, mere centralisation isn't grounds for something being unbalanced. Tiers that people generally consider balanced like oldgens OU have extremely centralising mons and mechanics (Snorlax in gen 2, Lando in gens 6 and 7. Permanent sand in gens 3 and 4). It seems like the main argument here, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't that Imposter is bad because it's too meta shaping, but instead that the effect it has on the meta is negative. The meta would be better without Imposter (after the bans of setup stuff that consequently becomes broken).
So let's look in to what playstyles and strategies Imposter harms and which ones it benefits.
Offense & Balance
"Imposter prevents you from playing hyper offense, SMH smogon always favors stall"
This is partially true. Imposter definitely makes building a hyper offense team far more challenging in BH than it is in other tiers. Whereas in most tiers i'd say beginners can pretty easily build a functional, if not viable, HO team that will function on ladder. BH generally is known for massively favoring balance over all other playstyles.
However, Imposter doesn't deny the use of HO. Several powerful HO teams have been built that rely on tech like screens, Tera selfproofing or niche improofs for mons that deal high damage to Imp on switchin. HO simply has a much higher skill floor to build in BH than other tiers, since slapping on strong mons without too much thought to synergy will never work out with Imposter in the meta.
What Imposter does fully deny, or at least limits extremely strongly, are unwallable sets.
Most often an unwallable set will be something along the lines of "lol simple setup power trip" but these aren't at all the only kinds of unwallable sets.
Take this for example:
Rayquaza @ Life Orb
Ability: Aerilate
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
- Boomburst
- Extreme Speed
- Headlong Rush
- V-create
Ability: Aerilate
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
- Boomburst
- Extreme Speed
- Headlong Rush
- V-create
However, due to the need to be able to Improof your own sets, this set becomes a teambuilding liability. You can absolutely still use it, but you'll need to waste a team slot on something like levitate Coalossal or soundproof Dondozo to Improof it, which is kind of a dead slot since the mon clearly isn't doing much against common meta threats. This means it gets a lot to hold on against the opposing team for long enough to position your breaker correctly.
Unwallable sets therefore have very high opportunity cost, as you will be spending multiple teamslots to make them work. This ensures games don't just come down to throwing breakers at the wall, you need to be careful and position these high-investment mons properly.
However, it should be noted that many of these breakers aren't at all fodder for Imposter, Imposter will often need to pivot in or come in after losing a mon. Every attacker needs to be improofed, but most of the good ones don't actually lose momentum from Imposter.
Iron Valiant @ Life Orb
Ability: Pixilate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Boomburst
- Close Combat
- Steam Eruption
Eternatus @ Choice Specs
Ability: Beads of Ruin
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dragon Energy
- Earth Power
- Sludge Bomb
- Volt Switch
Regieleki @ Choice Specs
Ability: Hadron Engine
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
IVs: 0 SpD
- Rising Voltage
- Volt Switch
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
Landorus-Therian (M) @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Precipice Blades
- Glacial Lance
- Tidy Up
- Strength Sap
Ability: Pixilate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Boomburst
- Close Combat
- Steam Eruption
Eternatus @ Choice Specs
Ability: Beads of Ruin
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dragon Energy
- Earth Power
- Sludge Bomb
- Volt Switch
Regieleki @ Choice Specs
Ability: Hadron Engine
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
IVs: 0 SpD
- Rising Voltage
- Volt Switch
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
Landorus-Therian (M) @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Precipice Blades
- Glacial Lance
- Tidy Up
- Strength Sap
Hitting Imposter with super effective stab moves, 4x effective coverage moves, or lowering the defense EVs of frail pokemon to enable them to do more damage to Imposter. All of these allow offensive mons to bypass Imposter without having to be perfect selfproofs like Spooky plate Arceus-Ghost.
Now, I'll admit that Imposter using Tera can allow it to beat these, but the same applies to attackers becoming selfproofed and personally I think Tera is a broken mechanic. So it shouldn't be too strongly considered here.
As such, Imposter forces offensive teams to make sacrifices in how many threats they can realistically fit on one team, or otherwise forces them to use suboptimal strategies to ensure everything remains improofed. In a tier where everything has access to extremely potent offensive tools, this ensures offense can never become too dominant. I'd argue that this doesn't reduce the creativity of teams, in fact it makes things way more interesting. You can try to force as many diverse breakers as possible to be improofed by a single hyper-niche mon, or perhaps try to make all your breakers improof each other through type advantage and primal weathers acting as offensive and defensive abilities simultaneously. Instead of having a braindead structure of 3+ breakers and some countermeasures to opposing setup sweepers like prankbond, you're forced to create a unique team to complement your choices of offensive mons. This also ensures variance in defensive cores on balance as anti-meta breakers will require off-meta walls to improof them.
Stall
Imposter's effect on stall, and to a lesser extent on balance is pretty clear. It prevents sets from being too passive. allowing Imposter to heal for free or waste PP is devastating for a team that relies on chip and PP stall to win. If Imposter weren't present, stall teams would be able to run the fattest sets with no downsides and offensive teams would basically win or lose on matchup depending on if they had the right tools to bypass the walls. Imposter allows offensive and balanced teams to hold their own in a stall war against a poorly prepared team. Stall teams need to make use of trapping, healing denial for moves like sap or even just extreme chip with hazards, salt cure and toxic.
The most impactful effect of this is with Regenerator, an ability that has proven itself meta defining in nearly every tier is honestly somewhat niche in BH, since Imposter can just keep healing off it for free.
I don't actually think I need to argue the point here because i've yet to see a stall player say Imposter is unbalanced despite how strongly the mon impacts what they're able to do. For some reason the only people complaining about Imposter are HO players...
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RE: the post that was made as i was writing this.
So it really is about overcentralisation? what?
Anyways my point about imposter actually increasing diversity stands. If you don't like improofing play another tier just like how if you don't like sand don't play gen 3, it's part of the tier's identity. Things aren't banworthy just cause they're centralising or else zane's shitpost about switching would actually have a case given how downright centralising that mechanic is. (ok that's maybe a bit far but again, look at oldgens, everyone thinks those are balanced yet they're overcentralised as hell)
Your suggestions for bans show your inexperience in the tier despite how good at ubers you may be. Shift gear has no tangible difference from Dragon Dance except on specifically Hoopa (Caly is too slow for either). Speed boost has never been a concern in a tier where max evs exist meaning speed without offense is useless. Simple isn't actually stronger than offensive abilities outside of power trip. NR on non-ghosts would still be bad because it traps you and prankster haze exists.
TLDR Egg is cool, Tera is bad, Learn the tier before complaining that one of it's most fundamental aspecs was clearly broken all along and the people doing tiering for the past however many years are either incompetent or malicious for letting it stay.
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Merp Merp Meow
Thank you for taking the time to provide me with more material/points of view on this debate, i read that post and i see the main points being made in favour of it are 2:
1)"Imposter is, and has never been, a godmode option that'll make you win every game; you have complete agency over what the Imposter user is capable of doing to your team, and half-decent teams are going to build such that they minimize this capability while also having strong options into everything else in the meta (which really isn't that hard)."
I never said it is, never said it doesnt have reasonable counterplay and/or is an autowin button, thats not what i believe the issue with it to be, i think the issue of imposter is its extremely dominant usage rate (like 75% someone pointed out in a recent post if i recall correctly), and its, imo way too defining/centralizing presence in this meta. Now the user here also says "imposter is not overcentralizing" and i beg to differ as i believe something with 75% usage clearly could be defined as such (for reference great tusk in OU is like what 42 if i recall?). Or, if we really wanna go into semantics here, maybe "overcentralizing" isnt the right word as much as "predominant/overly defining", concepts that still imply redundance and less diversity than youd expect in team building, traits that many people, me included dont consider healthy in a metagame. While yes it is true you can build a good team without imposter, why in the hell would you do so when its so crazy good and offers so much utility in a single slot, and over 75% of players seem to agree with this reasoning. Funny enough, Great Tusk, which i used as reference for usage before, is a perfect example of something extremely similar in AAA before it was banned precisely for the reasons i advocate imposter should be. If you go back enough in that thread to check why great tusk was banned, youll see it wasnt because it was broken/didnt have counterplay/warped the meta too much, but rather simply because the utility it could offer in a single slot (mainly regenvest, as that was by far the best set, there rarely was a good reason to run another), was so great literally every team or 80% of em had one as it was so good there was no reason to miss on the support and utility it could offer all by itself. That created a lot of redundance in teambuilding and contributed to such a wide dominance of regenvest tusk that it was eventually banned simply because it seems to be quite a widespread opinion that if you see something pretty much everytime it becomes quite boring/diversity-killing and therefore arguably unhealthy for the meta.
2)"Also, keeping Imposter is crucial for 2 reasons - keeping offensive demons in check, and keeping defensive do-nothings in check. The former is accomplished by Imposter's giant bulk preventing the opponent from spamming the same mindless setup sweepers and brute-forcing through any defensive option, forcing both players to, y'know, play the game - no Imposter removes by far the best check to these, and as a result of BH being inherently biased to offensive options, creates a terrible meta where the only consistent way to not get swept is to yourself sweep, but faster. The latter prevents incredibly bulky teams from just sitting there and doing nothing, leveraging insane longevity to eventually win but only after creating a complete slog of a game."
Now again, that is a point i really dont like and hardly disagree with, as i stated many times before, justifying the presence of something that is clearly centralizing/too defining and widespread than anything has any right to be just because it keeps other unhealthy shit in check is not the right approach to make a meta as diverse and enjoyable as possible, if other shit would be problematic once that is banned, the easy and right fix is just to ban that other problematic/bound to become centralizing shit as well. People in AAA argued that "but if we ban great tusk and gholdengo despite 90% of teams being them and then 4 other mons, we also have to ban baxcalibur and other stuff that would become too strong" and guess what? Yea bax and other crazy offensive threats that could no longer reliably checked got fired as well and the metagame emerged as much more fresh, fun and diverse from those decisions. So i dont see why it would be possible to nerf both crazy offensive demons (ban simple, speed boost, boomburst, astral barrage, no retreat, shift gear, victory dance, and every stupid setup move that would overshadow any other), and obnoxious defensive shit that would take over (nuzzle, strength sap, salt cure, good as gold, magic bounce, fur coat, ice scales and i dont know what other defensive sacky bullshit could become problematic as i havent ever played against a prevalently defensive/stall team yet, so this is just my assumption about what could be problematic but still), and then if something else eventually arises as problematic after that, you just ban that too, ive always be strongly opposed to the idea of using a specific clearly broken thing as a universal glue to prevent all the tier from collapsing to all the other broken shit when you can just get rid of all the broken shit period.
Shift gear may push some setup sweepers over the edge as a +1 or +2 in speed is a much bigger deal that it could seem at first glance, as for dragon dance most ridicolous ubers that would benefit the most from it do already get it in regular play anyways and theyre not overtly broken because of it so i doubt they would be in hackmons. That aside, i strongly recommend you read my latest post where i explain why i dont like the concept of a "universal centralizing glue being thougth of as a necessary evil to keep in check the spawn of satan that would otherwise sweep the land leaving nothing in its wake" and also how you could fix many of the issues youre using as an example to why imposter should stay by simply banning other clearly broken shit that would be problematic and eventually overcentralizing (see boomburst about which i already spent a few words in my first post on this topic). Now that said, if the unanimous consensus is "lol noob why u tryna question one of the pillars and absolute dogmas of our metagme, you clearly dont know what youre talking about and if you have an opinion that doesnt reflect the general one then you clearly are misinformed or unwilling to learn the gospel and should just play something else" then alright ill take the verdict lol idgaf at the end of the day, i just wanted to express my personal thoughts on something that makes playing this OM which am fond of less enjoyable for me to see if maybe i was not the only one and a constructive debate could sprout from em, but if that isnt the case and questioning the role of imposter here is akin to blasphemy, then i feel no regret knowing i at least tried to voice my opinion on the matter :)
It's not like the same things haven't been said, but at the end of the day, it's up to the people in charge of the tier. I'm somewhat used to Imposter now, so the familiarity makes me less opposed to its presence. Additionally, the tier has made it to a place of balance despite what some may see as a convoluted teambuilding style.
With that out of the way, I suppose the real argument that would need to be addressed is this idea that Imposter is necessary for the tier's balance. Things like FC, Ice Scales, Unaware, Prankster + Haze / Destiny Bond all exert significant pressure on setup sweepers.
What are some sets that would be deemed too difficult to stop without Imposter?
If anyone wants to argue that Imposter is necessary for the tier's balance rather than a matter of preference, they would need to present concrete examples of strategies that would be overpowered. If we have to choose between Imposter and certain abilities/moves, which moves/abilities would be removed, and why?
From what I can tell, the main beneficiary would be mixed attackers, who can set up and then sweep teams. However, I fail to see how a lack of Imposter would open pandora's box, as it seems like there are ample options already for imposter-proof setup sweepers. Perhaps someone more experienced can enlighten me.
With that out of the way, I suppose the real argument that would need to be addressed is this idea that Imposter is necessary for the tier's balance. Things like FC, Ice Scales, Unaware, Prankster + Haze / Destiny Bond all exert significant pressure on setup sweepers.
What are some sets that would be deemed too difficult to stop without Imposter?
If anyone wants to argue that Imposter is necessary for the tier's balance rather than a matter of preference, they would need to present concrete examples of strategies that would be overpowered. If we have to choose between Imposter and certain abilities/moves, which moves/abilities would be removed, and why?
From what I can tell, the main beneficiary would be mixed attackers, who can set up and then sweep teams. However, I fail to see how a lack of Imposter would open pandora's box, as it seems like there are ample options already for imposter-proof setup sweepers. Perhaps someone more experienced can enlighten me.
Ok now stop there. I don't play BH, but let's not carried away using AAA as an example and reference point here. I will make two things clear, 1. BH and AAA are absurdly different metagames. We do not have V-Create on every mon, we do not have as many abilities freed or as many mons and we do not have Tera. Perhaps, it is far too much of a cost to the diversity within the metagame to ban Impostor given the sheer amount of threats, abilities and mons given the tools by BH comparative to the downside of using your brain when building.
Two, Great Tusk was extremely broken, and centralising in different ways. It very often could win games just from preview when your own opponent didn't bring their own Great Tusk due to the setup sets it could possibly run, or just win long-term nearly guaranteed due to its immense bulk and utility. You were practically forced into bringing your own Great Tusk + extra and many games were forced into Tusk wars. AAA is also, again, different. Due to 1AC, Great Tusk was even more centralising as it had a strangehold over the "Regenerator" slot on nearly every team, something non applicable here.
Impostor on the other hand you do not need to bring on every team. I have played and seen enough to know there are many BH teams that are viable without Impostor. On the other hand, I was one of the few if the only person who was building teams without Great Tusk during that period.
Banning Gholdengo/Great Tusk also, from what I can tell, has far less of an impact than getting rid of Impostor. It was quite the change for the meta but I don't think anyone really argued about what would be far worse the threats would be without them. Bax was already an unholy broken mon with or without Gholdengo so that example is void. On the other hand, that list looks absurdly long compared to like nothing getting banned because of Gholdengo/Great Tusk being gone. A better example may be Fur Coat / Ice Scales suspect, but that is a whole different thing (and in that case I disagreed with the "centralising" effect of FurScales being unhealthy, most people really banned it due to the absurd setup it enabled anyway....)
Yea my man thats precisely the point i am trying to make, if imposter clearly creates a lot of redundance and lees diversity in teambuilding by virtue of being so crazy good albeit not mandatory, why not just ban it to improve the diversity of the tier and its strategies and lower redundance in teambuilding?
--->Imposter's presence is necessary to prevent some strategies from completely taking over and making the tier a dumpster fire
So why not just ban all those problematic strategies alongisde it, therefore getting rid of all the obnoxious shit period instead of keeping some bullshit just so you can keep other bullshit? Like i said do you really like simple no retreat/victory dance or aerilate/pixilate boomburst so much youd rather keep imposter than banning it? So much for me supposedly being the HO apologist here lol
--->Imposter is not mandatory, not overcentralizing nor constraining on teambuilding as you can perfectly build a very good team without it
If that is the case:
1)then why does it have such a ridicolously high usage rate?
2)the point made before as to why its presence is strictly necessary would be invalid since you can apparently build all sorts of perfectly viable teams without it with no opportunity cost of sorts, but since for some weird reason i cant even begin to phatom people like slapping a 255 base hp eviolite holding mon with imposter than can 1v1/softcheck/safely scout any opposing mon not specifically built for that matchup, its kind of bad to see this much redundance when theres no reason to have it and the tier's diversity could be improved a lot without its balance being tilted in the slightest right?
Imposter doesn’t exactly create less diversity in teambuilding, in most cases it promotes diversity, in fact. For example, if you want a wallbreaker that can break through common cores that can’t actually be improofed with a common wall, you’ll have to get creative for options. Imposter simply just limits having 6 of those wallbreakers coming in blindly, and winning or losing games instantly on the matchup.
I’m pretty sure this goes against general tiering policy - banning something that’s maybe broken, then ban all the problematic issues that arise with it. The problem here, as people have already told you, is that Imposter really is not broken. It’s just so happens that Imposter can check those problematic strategies you’ve mentioned (not like there weren’t any counters anyways).
I’d also like to quote Greybaum here: “What do you want your opponent to do? Have a wall for each of your attackers?”
Ah, here we go again. This has already been explained, multiple times, in many formats. I’ll just get straight to the point here: High usage rates =/= Overcentralizing/broken. What’s next, you want to ban Primal Groudon from Ubers because it’s used a lot? Not even to mention, you’re literally an Ubers/AG player, you should be the last person to make this point.
Imposter can’t exactly 1v1/softcheck most threats in the meta - they either threaten it with pure damage, item removal, status, or straight up removing it with trapping. If you’re using a mon that can’t beat an Imposter, doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s just that it would need more support.
Also, how hard is it really to slap on your mon a move that can hit itself? Let’s say you don’t meet an Imposter - it’s still useful for the mirror match, no?
Well, I personally think the tier is very diverse, even with the presence of Imposter, and the builder is already feeling a lot of constraints with all the dumb stuff we have right now. Should we ban Imposter, there opens about a billion new threats that can efficiently be utilized without the difficulty of improofing - sure. But, what this also does is that it makes every single game into a matchup fish, as there are so many things to prepare for you simply just can’t actually prepare for all of them.
So, I’d like your opinion on this: Do you like coming off of every game, knowing you at least tried to win a difficult match, or do you like forfeiting on preview because the matchup is literally unplayable?
Now first thing id like to clarify is i am aware of how vastly different the 2 metas are having mainly played AAA shortly after gen 9 dropped and being ranked quite high there, so i witnessed all of its history, from fur coat and ice scales (both of which i absolutely loathed and wanted banned for the same reasons i advocate imposter should be banned here, overcentralization and the lack of diversity they caused in building given how they overshadowed any other defensive ability by such a degree that there was no valid reason to run any other outside of em tho i know what finally opened everyone's eyes about how disgusting they were is setup sweepers abusing em rather than walls), to tusk and ghold, bax, hands, houndstone (about which people told me "bro just build ur team not to lose to it lmao its not that broken" only to then get banned for requiring a slot in building to be at least partly dedicated to not autolose to it just in case, go figure) and now sneasler and enamorous, so i know what i am talking about when i speak of AAA although i agree that of tusk wasnt as fitting an example as scales/coat would be, however what i said multiple times i believe the fault to be in the common opinion on the topic of imposter here, lies in this period
"Perhaps, it is far too much of a cost to the diversity within the metagame to ban Impostor given the sheer amount of threats, abilities and mons given the tools by BH comparative to the downside of using your brain when building."
1)quite the opposite, i believe banning imposter alongside all the ridicolous offensive threats that would run rampant without it would make this a much more diverse and creativity-enabling metagme, given that if what everybody knows to be the best/most ridicolous shit gets banned, then people will really have to use their brain to create a good team without relying on crazy wincons and just building the team to support em (-ate boombursts, simple setup sweepers, ghost no retreat+barrage/victory dance/shift gear setup sweepers, unbreakable stall walls and the nasty moves and abilities they would rely on, coat/scales and the demons they enable are just some examples)
2)so wait if the only justification for the existence of something clearly redundant and diversity-killing in the meta is that it has too wide a pool of crazy threats, abilities and moves that it singlehandedly checks, again, isnt it healthier to just reasonably cut shit we already know to be conceptually and fundamentally broken out of said pool so there would be no need to keep carrying around a scarecrow whose pumpkin face one gets quite tired to see everytime after a while only cause it keeps birds away from the harvest when you could just put a little bit more effort in building a greenhouse that would keep birds out in the first place and definetly be a much healthier long-term solution for the well-being of the harvest? Funny how some accuse people of being lazy and not wanting to use their brain when teambuilding to get around imposter and other stuff when from what i can see, the only apparently valid reason to keep imposter around despite the redundance and lack of diversity it causes is that it saves the mods a lot of headaches in tiering action
My opinion on this is very simple and straightforward: prevent the conditions for such an environment (one where you just matchup fish and could very well forfeit in preview) from being met in the first place. How do you do that? I know it may sound wild but actually banning a bunch of other broken shit that would be enabled even more by an imposter ban alongside imposter itself may go a long way to help. I already postulated my hypothetic banlist after an imposter ban (simple, speed boost, no reatreat, victory dance, shift gear, transform, nuzzle, boomburst, astral barrage) but it could and probably should be very well extended to cover any ridicolous offensive and/or stally shit that may eventually arise as problematic
Also side note, for the record i did think primal-groudon was AG worthy alongside mega ray back when i played gen 6 ubers lol, one of the top 5 most ridicolous mons ever made hands down, in the olympus alongside zacian-c, megaray, miraidon and caly-shadow imo
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I think I am in the minority when I say I partially agree with this, but I disagree with your opinions about Imp. As someone who has played through every stage of BH this gen I can certainly say that the reason Imp is broken is Tera. As Tera allows Imp to escape stuff that should beat it such as Trappers, as well as allow it to check other wallbreakers with stuff like Tera Steel/Ghost. Tera is also a contributing factor in why PHeal was banned this gen ( while it might not be balanced without Tera, RIP Spectral and Core) it was one of the key things used to beat Imp. Recovery nerf is also pretty releavant since offensive set-up sweepers can just attack walls until they run out of PP which, obviously isn’t an issue for Imp. Finally, Topsy-Turvy and Spectral are not here at the moment which makes punishing set-up really hard. Since now your options are: 1- Haze, which can be Taunted and doesn’t punish the opponent for setting up. 2- Heart Swap, move doesn’t really stop set-up as your opponent can keep on setting up unless you can really hurt them and can be taunted.
I’ll explain why it needs to stay later, I’m on phone.
TLDR: Chans good, Ban Tera, anti-setup, set-up that beats Chans and Trapping dexited, inconsistent or banned.
Edit: Grammar
this thread is all over the gaff lmao
Some of these posts have awful formatting which makes them severely hard to follow, so forgive me if i've missed some points. But here's some things of note:
"We shouldn't keep Imposter around to check brokens, because we can just remove Imposter and then ban those brokens"
This is normally a thing that goes ahead in other more standard tiers, because broken-checking-broken metas are usually not very fun. However, there's 2 main points that separate BH from this argument: one is that the amount of "brokens" you can classify under this is absolutely absurd (which makes it practically unfeasible to tier around in the long term), and the other is that the meta afterwards might just... not be better. Gen 9 BH is already pretty cursed with the severe lack of mons and moves central to old gens, and so banning a large amount of core options because they run dumb sets without caring for Imposter is likely to significantly harm the tier, outweighing any potential benefits of no Imposter.
"But you can preserve the Pokemon by banning the stuff that makes them dumb"
This is pretty unlikely. As a tiering council we aren't allowed to ban one thing to nerf something else; we weren't allowed to ban Hadron Engine to make Miraidon fine, Guts to make Slaking fine, Well-Baked Body to make Zacian-C "fine", etc. The tier offers so many ludicrous options that we're inevitably going to have to pick off mons at some point; common ground that sets will run to be broken, like Fillet Away or Victory Dance, will eventually just run out.
"Imposter is everywhere"
Handily enough, the usage stats for June just came out. For high ladder, Chansey is at 70% usage, and for everywhere, it's at 26%. Bear in mind that these numbers will be a little skewed; Ladder is inherently going to make Imposter more common, as the propensity for random BS is higher, meaning Imposter feels more necessary than in friendlies/tours. Additionally, not all of these Chanseys are Imposter; Imposter Chansey specifically has ~51.48% usage in high ladder and ~17.76% usage in low ladder. While this is still the highest usage in the tier (for high ladder at least), it's by no means "on every team", and claiming so is not accurate. Also as stated above, high usage does not mean something necessarily has to go; it tells only one of the many, many pieces needed to decide if something as complex as Imposter is broken.
"Imposter-proofing your team leads to suboptimal Pokemon into everything else"
Not true. There are only a few instances where this is the case, and it's almost exclusively when you're using one of the "brokens" that only Imposter can feasibly check. This is most notably Desolate Land Arceus-Fire in SV (Rayquaza has a similar effect, but Imposter-proofs to it are generally much more flexible), and in older gens, Shift Gear Kyurem-B in SS (you check it with Imposter or, in the rare instance it's got no Reflect support, PixiSpeed Xerneas; Imposter-proofed by Dual Screens Suicune or Coalossal depending on coverage) and various Shell Smashers/Drummers in SM. For basically every single other Pokemon, you're able to weave in Imposter-proofs with very few compromises if you're willing to stray away from the hardest meta options; straying further away from the meta -> having a harder time with consistency is nothing unique to BH. This really is not a hard thing to get a grip on after a small amount of teambuilding.
"But AAA did this thing and Ubers did that thing and ..."
BH is nothing like any other meta, even other hacked ones like PH. As such, tiering is going to work completely differently; examples of tiering in non-BH tiers tell basically nothing of value for the sake of tiering BH.
Some of these posts have awful formatting which makes them severely hard to follow, so forgive me if i've missed some points. But here's some things of note:
"We shouldn't keep Imposter around to check brokens, because we can just remove Imposter and then ban those brokens"
This is normally a thing that goes ahead in other more standard tiers, because broken-checking-broken metas are usually not very fun. However, there's 2 main points that separate BH from this argument: one is that the amount of "brokens" you can classify under this is absolutely absurd (which makes it practically unfeasible to tier around in the long term), and the other is that the meta afterwards might just... not be better. Gen 9 BH is already pretty cursed with the severe lack of mons and moves central to old gens, and so banning a large amount of core options because they run dumb sets without caring for Imposter is likely to significantly harm the tier, outweighing any potential benefits of no Imposter.
"But you can preserve the Pokemon by banning the stuff that makes them dumb"
This is pretty unlikely. As a tiering council we aren't allowed to ban one thing to nerf something else; we weren't allowed to ban Hadron Engine to make Miraidon fine, Guts to make Slaking fine, Well-Baked Body to make Zacian-C "fine", etc. The tier offers so many ludicrous options that we're inevitably going to have to pick off mons at some point; common ground that sets will run to be broken, like Fillet Away or Victory Dance, will eventually just run out.
"Imposter is everywhere"
Handily enough, the usage stats for June just came out. For high ladder, Chansey is at 70% usage, and for everywhere, it's at 26%. Bear in mind that these numbers will be a little skewed; Ladder is inherently going to make Imposter more common, as the propensity for random BS is higher, meaning Imposter feels more necessary than in friendlies/tours. Additionally, not all of these Chanseys are Imposter; Imposter Chansey specifically has ~51.48% usage in high ladder and ~17.76% usage in low ladder. While this is still the highest usage in the tier (for high ladder at least), it's by no means "on every team", and claiming so is not accurate. Also as stated above, high usage does not mean something necessarily has to go; it tells only one of the many, many pieces needed to decide if something as complex as Imposter is broken.
"Imposter-proofing your team leads to suboptimal Pokemon into everything else"
Not true. There are only a few instances where this is the case, and it's almost exclusively when you're using one of the "brokens" that only Imposter can feasibly check. This is most notably Desolate Land Arceus-Fire in SV (Rayquaza has a similar effect, but Imposter-proofs to it are generally much more flexible), and in older gens, Shift Gear Kyurem-B in SS (you check it with Imposter or, in the rare instance it's got no Reflect support, PixiSpeed Xerneas; Imposter-proofed by Dual Screens Suicune or Coalossal depending on coverage) and various Shell Smashers/Drummers in SM. For basically every single other Pokemon, you're able to weave in Imposter-proofs with very few compromises if you're willing to stray away from the hardest meta options; straying further away from the meta -> having a harder time with consistency is nothing unique to BH. This really is not a hard thing to get a grip on after a small amount of teambuilding.
"But AAA did this thing and Ubers did that thing and ..."
BH is nothing like any other meta, even other hacked ones like PH. As such, tiering is going to work completely differently; examples of tiering in non-BH tiers tell basically nothing of value for the sake of tiering BH.
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Hello everyone! like the omfl arrive at the end for my team, (if it's not the case i will edit this post ;) ) i will share the 3 teams i used.
1: https://pokepast.es/74ba715643a57182
this team is a team of Quantum Tesseract (thx to him to gave me this team :D). This team is based on arceus-fairy boomburst with saltcure to weaken the differents steel walls like corvi or dialga. with an ice scale eternatus to surprise the opponent fluttermane and 3good bulky mons like ting lu , dondozo and corvi who are there to pivoting and tank as many attack as possible.
2:https://pokepast.es/571dd06227e35618
team by me with the help of qt
as u can see, this team have 2 sweeper mons, the first one is arceus-ghost with a classique set of no retreat, judgment, combat torque and an healing moove (here it's jungle heal to remove the statut). the other one is zama with gigaton hammer to hit problematics mons like flutter man or poison mons (bad mu against ghost-arceus). the fourth last mons are classics, a prankster dondozo who is for me essential in this meta, a fur coat groundon to clean the hazard, but with rspin instead of tidy up to don't clean our hazard, cause like zama have magic bounce in the majority of the time we will stack the hazard in the opponent side. An ice scale dialga and imposter chansey.
3:https://pokepast.es/540253eeec83c248
by me with the help of qt and Chessking345
this team is really based on ting lu power trip, with an arceus-ground fur coat with the meadow plate! to surprise and weaken groundon or dondozo fur coat.with 4 bulky mons, the concept of this team is to tempo a maximum and weak (with hazards or chip damages) diferents bulky mons like zacian/groundon/zama/dondo/corvi/ect... to clean at the end with ting lu. the positive point with this team is even if you are losing, u can eazy comeback with ting lu or arceus if the physical walls are weakens.
ty again to qt who really help me for create this 2 teams and chessing for the last one ;)
1: https://pokepast.es/74ba715643a57182
this team is a team of Quantum Tesseract (thx to him to gave me this team :D). This team is based on arceus-fairy boomburst with saltcure to weaken the differents steel walls like corvi or dialga. with an ice scale eternatus to surprise the opponent fluttermane and 3good bulky mons like ting lu , dondozo and corvi who are there to pivoting and tank as many attack as possible.
2:https://pokepast.es/571dd06227e35618
team by me with the help of qt
as u can see, this team have 2 sweeper mons, the first one is arceus-ghost with a classique set of no retreat, judgment, combat torque and an healing moove (here it's jungle heal to remove the statut). the other one is zama with gigaton hammer to hit problematics mons like flutter man or poison mons (bad mu against ghost-arceus). the fourth last mons are classics, a prankster dondozo who is for me essential in this meta, a fur coat groundon to clean the hazard, but with rspin instead of tidy up to don't clean our hazard, cause like zama have magic bounce in the majority of the time we will stack the hazard in the opponent side. An ice scale dialga and imposter chansey.
3:https://pokepast.es/540253eeec83c248
by me with the help of qt and Chessking345
this team is really based on ting lu power trip, with an arceus-ground fur coat with the meadow plate! to surprise and weaken groundon or dondozo fur coat.with 4 bulky mons, the concept of this team is to tempo a maximum and weak (with hazards or chip damages) diferents bulky mons like zacian/groundon/zama/dondo/corvi/ect... to clean at the end with ting lu. the positive point with this team is even if you are losing, u can eazy comeback with ting lu or arceus if the physical walls are weakens.
ty again to qt who really help me for create this 2 teams and chessing for the last one ;)
I would like to start my reply by thanking you for really being the only person that managed to make some kinda sound points in favor of imposter so far and elaborated in a much better way than others tried to, now to address those points:
1) "The amount of "brokens" you can classify under this is absolutely absurd (which makes it practically unfeasible to tier around in the long term), and the other is that the meta afterwards might just... not be better. Gen 9 BH is already pretty cursed with the severe lack of mons and moves central to old gens, and so banning a large amount of core options because they run dumb sets without caring for Imposter is likely to significantly harm the tier, outweighing any potential benefits of no Imposter."
While it is true that in a meta with hacked mons where everything can run anything the amount of shit (mons, moves, abilities and in some cases specific combinations of those) that could be classified as broken is naturally much bigger than it would be for any other meta, i still think it is not really hard to pinpoint some key stuff as conceptually and fundamentally broken even for hackmons, regardless of which mons ideally would run it. I already gave a few examples in No Retreat, Shift Gear, Victory Dance, Boomburst, V-Create, Astral Barrage, Simple, Speed Boost, Good as Gold, Magic Bounce, and after thinking about it a lil bit more i also would add Fur and Scales (only once all the other broken shit goes that is) and maybe even Rising Voltage and Expanding Force but nah on second thought at least those have natural immunities with no need for specific immunity abilities as counters. If "core options" is to be read as "mons" here, then no, i never argued any specific mon should be banned, only moves and abilities that we all know are fundamentally dumb to give to any pokemon. Whether or not the tier will emerge as better from these changes i am not arrogant enough to say i know for sure, but one thing id bet on is we would see a lot more creativity/new gimmicks/diversity than we currently have, with what could be argued is the "best shit" gone the meta would be at the very least purged from a lot of the staleness by which it is currently a lil plagued imo.
2)"But you can preserve the Pokemon by banning the stuff that makes them dumb"
This is pretty unlikely. As a tiering council we aren't allowed to ban one thing to nerf something else; we weren't allowed to ban Hadron Engine to make Miraidon fine, Guts to make Slaking fine, Well-Baked Body to make Zacian-C "fine", etc.
I completely agree with the overall philosophy here, you should ban specific moves or abilities just because they break 1 or 2 specific mons, when you can just ban those and keep the banlist slimmer while keeping more available options for the builder. However at this point i have to ask, why ban last respects only cause its broken on strong physical mons/ghost types? I bet sunflora would be completely fine with it so why not just ban those rather than banning last respects to nerf em? Why ban orichalcum pulse when say lucario would be strong but not broken with it? Just ban every fire type with a decent attack stat or tera fire right? Why ban Huge Power when you could just ban every mon with more than 100 base attack? Obviously the preoposterousness of those points is readily apparent, as is the answer even an idiot could grasp "if something breaks only 1-2 specific pokemon than clearly that/those are the problem and you should ban it/em cause u shouldnt ban something to nerf something else but get rid of the problematic interaction directly, however if something is broken on a plethora of mons then clearly that thing is the problematic one and you shouldnt ban mons to nerf it but ban that directly".
So now who wants to argue a +1 (+2 in the case of simple) omniboosting move with no drawback isnt broken on pretty much every good ghost type? Or that a 140 (really 168 since it will always be used in tandem with -ate abilities) BP special move with 16 pp and no drawback whatsoever and in-built infiltrator isnt broken on pretty much any good mon that can make good use of an -ate ability? If only at best punk rock meloetta could use then it may be fine but we all know its gonna be ridicolous on stuff like rayquaza, mane, regieleki, hell even bundle with refeigerate so... why not just get rid of it if its obviously fundamentally stupid on its own? Somebody wants to argue a 180 BP Physical Fire move with negligible drawback isnt fundamentally broken by itself to give to literally any mon? Or an ability that straight up doubles any stat boosts you get? Or a move that is bulk up and trailblaze/flame charge at the same time? Or a move that gives you agility+band boost in one shot? Isnt all this shit obviously gonna create a lot of instances of dumb sets and not break just 1 or 2 mons? Where i am getting at, is that point is invalid and non-pertaining to the argument since they clearly wouldnt be bans to just nerf some mons in particular but to remove really stupid/obvious pick options entirely. Every example presented to me so far of stuff only imposter could feasibly check includes some of the dumb shit i advocate should be banned since its fundamentally too broken to give to any mon as it also overshadows any other option for that slot not encouraging creativity and diversity in sets at all;
Arceus-Fire with desoland i bet runs what as a fire stab mmm help me there Z Generate? Or some shit like that i dont recall rn
Kyurem Black runs what particularly broken move that makes it so hard to check after only 1-2 turns that imposter is the only solid option against it outside of niche specific sets? Swift Spear i believe? The rayquaza set someone posted that is supposedly uncounterable without imposter ran that stuff Spoonthrust or whatever? Various shell smashers/drummers in SM required imposter to check em i see thats wild, now what did they do exactly? Would they bounce on the spot if i called the OSFBMAP (One Specific Fundamentally Broken Move Abuse Police)? Also why are those banned rn? Would it be wild to think those moves are fundamentally broken and encourage redundance in teambuilding overshadowing any other option regardless of imposter? Now thats a reasoning i think can very well be applied to all the other stuff i listed and honestly, no i dont think "broken checks broken=flawed logic is generally correct for any other tier but not this one cause here it would be too much of a tiering pain to really balance stuff out" is the right approach to try and make the hackmons really balanced, also may i point out that crazy powerhouses that will singlehandedly fold all of your team if you dont have a proper counter will always exist regardless of the tier or OM youre playing, using AAA as an example again, if you dont pack a well-baked body or primesea youre more than likely to be done in by band desoland Cinderace
(for reference: 252 Atk Choice Band Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Garchomp in Harsh Sunshine: 212-250 (50.4 - 59.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Garganacl in Harsh Sunshine: 162-191 (40 - 47.2%) -- 46.9% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock)
or specs engine/beads/desoland moth
(252 SpA Choice Specs Iron Moth Overheat over 2 turns vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Toxapex in Harsh Sunshine: 248-292 (81.5 - 96%) -- 56.3% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock)
or if regenvest meloetta is your omni special check and the opponent runs specs mega launcher hydreigon/chi-yu youre most likely fucked
But this is just an example to postulate that every team no matter how solid or well-thought has that 1-2 mons/sets its particulary weak to/helpless against, no team has a universal band-aid check to the supermajority of threats nor should that be a thing precisely for the reasons i stated above about teambuilding creativity and diversity (right high hp imposter mon???), does that mean you should forfeit in preview like someone postulated? No of course not, it just means you know you have a bad matchup against that team and youll try to play at the best of your capabilities regardless, and if you end up losing because of that, well, you wont feel that bad knowing it was very much an uphill battle from the start. To sum this up: what am saying is not "we should ban all mons that can run super strong breaking/bulletproof defensive sets" but "we should ban stuff we all in our right mind know is fundamentally broken to give to any pokemon even for hackmons, cause we know if that is legal it will be likely to overshadow all other options for that slot thus not contributing to a diverse and healthy format and/or worse requiring the presence of other specific obnoxious/extremely redundant shit to justify its existence and availability".
Also on a side note (didnt feel this post was long enough), i spoke with some of my oppos while playing and i have encountered more than one person completely agreeing with me on how imposter is really unhealthy and makes the tier a lot less fun when you have to work with just 5 mons in the builder as one "has" to be an imposter cause its the only generally consistent check to whatever unexpected dumb setup shit your opponent may be running, and because of this i suggest a survey/suspect test be made on imposter, i mean if the outcome is obvious and every good hackmons player here has completely accepted our lord and saviour imposter as the only one truth and the only one way why not humor fools such as myself and humble them with the overwhelming evidence the supermajority thinks its fine and wouldnt wanna try a meta without it and the dumb shit that inevitably would be banned after? :)
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Alright so I'm not gonna be getting involved in the Imposter "debate" anymore cause I don't think anyone is gonna be changing their mind LOL.
However I'd like to evaluate your suggested banlist because doing so could help clear up a couple misconceptions about what's actually broken in the tier. Many of your suggestions for what would need to be banned in a no-Imposter meta are things that have nearly no chance of ever being broken in BH.
No retreat
No retreat is a setup move with a lot of advantages but also a lot of drawbacks. An omniboost is good, obviously, however it can't fit easily on anything but ghost types. Ghost types generally don't have enough mixed offenses to make a SNR set any more interesting than a Speed Boost Nasty Plot or Tidy Up set (note that defense boosts, while nice, are less important in BH given that defensive answers will always have recovery and disabling status moves, meaning that their ability to kill you isn't as relevant). The exceptions are Giratina-O and Arceus-Ghost, Arceus Ghost has always had an overwhelmingly good matchup into Imposter, as such, banning Imposter would have little to no effect on SNR Arceus-Ghost's viability and would likely decrease it, with teams more often running anti-setup options other than Imposter. Giratina-O is generally just a bad mon and having a powerful setup option won't make a tremendous difference given dragon stab is useless into common Fairy-Type special walls and otherwise the mon doesn't outclass Arceus-Ghost.
Non-Simple NR sets are generally ineffective because, outside of jaw lock shenanigans, you can't boost multiple times using No Retreat, and ghost types generally lack the explosive damage output to make a single +1 boost sufficient to break (no ghost types have incredibly high offensive stats and ghost tends to hit common ice scales mons for neutral damage).
In a no-Imposter meta, dedicated Tera Ghost No Retreat mons might be broken, but that is an issue with Tera.
Shift Gear
Shift Gear wouldn't be broken because the move is functionally identical to Dragon Dance for the vast majority of users. It is nearly always outclassed by Tidy Up given the latter clears hazards. Should you prefer to keep your own hazards up, it is likely not significantly better than Dragon Dance and may often prove worse because it has less PP.
Why is +2 over +1 speed irrelevant?
A) The boost is only relevant for 4 rarely seen mons. base 90 or higher (the speed tier of every viable physical attacker besides Calyrex-Ice and Hoopa-U) is sufficent for +1 to let you outspeed all common mons in the tier. +2 would only help against Zacian-Crowned (an extremely rare mon given it lacks an item and an ability) and Regieleki (a generally niche pick).
B) Choice Scarf is a bad item in BH and speed evs are always maxed out on mons that want to be fast. Due to maxed out EVs, Choice Scarf is an exceedingly niche item in BH. Afaik it was not used a single time in OMPL so far, It's only use is on some Eternatus sets (thanks to gambit) and on dedicated gambit spam teams. Because of this, outside of boosting, speed tiers are very predictable in BH and having more speed than necessary isn't useful.
Victory Dance
Yeah this would probably be broken.
Astral Barrage
Why is this move any more broken than Glacial Lance or Precipice Blades or Dragon Energy or Armor Cannon or any of the other moves that are strong. Ghost is a good offensive typing but it is also an awful coverage typing so this has a pretty limited pool of users. Imposter already doesn't switch in to Ghost types so having it gone doesn't change much of anything. Ghost types don't have stellar offensive stats compared to other exellent typings like Ground or Dragon.
Boomburst
This move isn't broken without -ate because Normal is a shit type, especially in BH. There are no good normal special attackers.
-Ate boomburst isn't broken because the users are either slow or weak and every -ate type is resisted by Steel (galvanize is unviable because there are no good users and Hadron Engine is better).
Ateburst has a base power of 168. Any 120BP base power move with a Ruin ability gets up to 160 base power. It's not that much stronger than other options and doesn't boost coverage.
Tera -Ate Boomburst is broken but that is an issue with Tera.
V-Create
There would be a decent argument for V-Create being broken in prior gens but that is not really the case anymore. There are no viable Fire-Type attackers other than Arceus. Arceus comes with high opportunity cost and without Orichalcum Pulse doesn't actually have the power to beat what it needs to.
252+ Atk Life Orb Arceus-Fire V-create vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Ghost in Harsh Sunshine: 208-246 (46.8 - 55.4%) -- 68.8% chance to 2HKO
Given V-Create gives a speed drop, you'll always get outsped when the defensive mon tries to heal.
Tera V-Create may be broken but that is an issue with Tera.
Simple
Simple is a bad ability outside of Power Trip and mixed No Retreat users.
Simple is flat out outclassed by other abilities.
For dragon dance users, +1 with a 1.33x boosting ability (like Sword of Ruin) is an equal boost to +2. However with Sword of Ruin you still have a power boost when not set up.
For swords dance or nasty plot users, you generally already have the power needed to kill anything with either +2, or +2 and a boosting ability like Beads of Ruin (which allows you to set up easier by being threatening without setup). Simple would have a niche as an extra high damage option but Mold Breaker, Ruin abilities, a defensive ability or Speed Boost would generally be preferred.
Speed Boost
For the same reasons as choice scarf, Speed without power, especially without an ability slot to amplify your power, is not viable.
Speed boost therefore only functions on setup sets, where speed boost Swords Dance is just worse than Sword of Ruin Dragon Dance. The only use case is on special attackers and even then, they are losing their ability slot and have no offensive presence at +0. The only mons that currently see use with Speed Boost are Gholdengo and Palkia-O.
Good as Gold
How does Imposter being banned affect this? (TBF this might be broken anyway)
Magic Bounce
How does Imposter being banned affect this?
Fur Coat
How does Imposter being banned affect this?
Ice Scales
How does Imposter being banned affect this?
Bh will always be at a power level where FurScales is healthy. I don't see how an Imposter ban would require the power level to lower drastically, bans would mostly be to prevent stuff that is stronger but can't be used because of Imposter. Stuff like Choice Beads of Ruin or Choice Sword of Ruin mons still need FurScales to check them.
Good as Gold and Magic Bounce will always be balanced on defense because defensive mons without FurScales are vulnerable in such a high power metagame. If you lose to Magic Bounce that is a skill issue. Good as gold has shown its power on offensive mons, but many of these are self-Improofed already, so any potential action on Good as gold wouldn't be based on Imposter.
Rising Voltage
This isn't broken, we would ban Hadron Engine first if it were.
Tera Rising Voltage may be broken but that is an issue with Tera.
Expanding Force
lol
What might actually need to be banned if Imposter were gone?
Tera, Victory Dance, Fillet Away, Taunt, Power Trip. Maybe other stuff but there would be absolutely no way to throw out huge banlists like that in advance.
Imposter isn't getting banned anyways but this was interesting to think about.
I guess my last take on Imp is that I don't think it's really even necessary to argue that Imp is a "necessary evil" for the tier. I don't actually think that much would need to be banned. Imp is legal because it's balanced. It creates fun games and allows flexibility and creativity in teambuilding by forcing you to consider how your mons synergise together.
However I'd like to evaluate your suggested banlist because doing so could help clear up a couple misconceptions about what's actually broken in the tier. Many of your suggestions for what would need to be banned in a no-Imposter meta are things that have nearly no chance of ever being broken in BH.
No retreat
No retreat is a setup move with a lot of advantages but also a lot of drawbacks. An omniboost is good, obviously, however it can't fit easily on anything but ghost types. Ghost types generally don't have enough mixed offenses to make a SNR set any more interesting than a Speed Boost Nasty Plot or Tidy Up set (note that defense boosts, while nice, are less important in BH given that defensive answers will always have recovery and disabling status moves, meaning that their ability to kill you isn't as relevant). The exceptions are Giratina-O and Arceus-Ghost, Arceus Ghost has always had an overwhelmingly good matchup into Imposter, as such, banning Imposter would have little to no effect on SNR Arceus-Ghost's viability and would likely decrease it, with teams more often running anti-setup options other than Imposter. Giratina-O is generally just a bad mon and having a powerful setup option won't make a tremendous difference given dragon stab is useless into common Fairy-Type special walls and otherwise the mon doesn't outclass Arceus-Ghost.
Non-Simple NR sets are generally ineffective because, outside of jaw lock shenanigans, you can't boost multiple times using No Retreat, and ghost types generally lack the explosive damage output to make a single +1 boost sufficient to break (no ghost types have incredibly high offensive stats and ghost tends to hit common ice scales mons for neutral damage).
In a no-Imposter meta, dedicated Tera Ghost No Retreat mons might be broken, but that is an issue with Tera.
Shift Gear
Shift Gear wouldn't be broken because the move is functionally identical to Dragon Dance for the vast majority of users. It is nearly always outclassed by Tidy Up given the latter clears hazards. Should you prefer to keep your own hazards up, it is likely not significantly better than Dragon Dance and may often prove worse because it has less PP.
Why is +2 over +1 speed irrelevant?
A) The boost is only relevant for 4 rarely seen mons. base 90 or higher (the speed tier of every viable physical attacker besides Calyrex-Ice and Hoopa-U) is sufficent for +1 to let you outspeed all common mons in the tier. +2 would only help against Zacian-Crowned (an extremely rare mon given it lacks an item and an ability) and Regieleki (a generally niche pick).
B) Choice Scarf is a bad item in BH and speed evs are always maxed out on mons that want to be fast. Due to maxed out EVs, Choice Scarf is an exceedingly niche item in BH. Afaik it was not used a single time in OMPL so far, It's only use is on some Eternatus sets (thanks to gambit) and on dedicated gambit spam teams. Because of this, outside of boosting, speed tiers are very predictable in BH and having more speed than necessary isn't useful.
Victory Dance
Yeah this would probably be broken.
Astral Barrage
Why is this move any more broken than Glacial Lance or Precipice Blades or Dragon Energy or Armor Cannon or any of the other moves that are strong. Ghost is a good offensive typing but it is also an awful coverage typing so this has a pretty limited pool of users. Imposter already doesn't switch in to Ghost types so having it gone doesn't change much of anything. Ghost types don't have stellar offensive stats compared to other exellent typings like Ground or Dragon.
Boomburst
This move isn't broken without -ate because Normal is a shit type, especially in BH. There are no good normal special attackers.
-Ate boomburst isn't broken because the users are either slow or weak and every -ate type is resisted by Steel (galvanize is unviable because there are no good users and Hadron Engine is better).
Ateburst has a base power of 168. Any 120BP base power move with a Ruin ability gets up to 160 base power. It's not that much stronger than other options and doesn't boost coverage.
Tera -Ate Boomburst is broken but that is an issue with Tera.
V-Create
There would be a decent argument for V-Create being broken in prior gens but that is not really the case anymore. There are no viable Fire-Type attackers other than Arceus. Arceus comes with high opportunity cost and without Orichalcum Pulse doesn't actually have the power to beat what it needs to.
252+ Atk Life Orb Arceus-Fire V-create vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Ghost in Harsh Sunshine: 208-246 (46.8 - 55.4%) -- 68.8% chance to 2HKO
Given V-Create gives a speed drop, you'll always get outsped when the defensive mon tries to heal.
Tera V-Create may be broken but that is an issue with Tera.
Simple
Simple is a bad ability outside of Power Trip and mixed No Retreat users.
Simple is flat out outclassed by other abilities.
For dragon dance users, +1 with a 1.33x boosting ability (like Sword of Ruin) is an equal boost to +2. However with Sword of Ruin you still have a power boost when not set up.
For swords dance or nasty plot users, you generally already have the power needed to kill anything with either +2, or +2 and a boosting ability like Beads of Ruin (which allows you to set up easier by being threatening without setup). Simple would have a niche as an extra high damage option but Mold Breaker, Ruin abilities, a defensive ability or Speed Boost would generally be preferred.
Speed Boost
For the same reasons as choice scarf, Speed without power, especially without an ability slot to amplify your power, is not viable.
Speed boost therefore only functions on setup sets, where speed boost Swords Dance is just worse than Sword of Ruin Dragon Dance. The only use case is on special attackers and even then, they are losing their ability slot and have no offensive presence at +0. The only mons that currently see use with Speed Boost are Gholdengo and Palkia-O.
Good as Gold
How does Imposter being banned affect this? (TBF this might be broken anyway)
Magic Bounce
How does Imposter being banned affect this?
Fur Coat
How does Imposter being banned affect this?
Ice Scales
How does Imposter being banned affect this?
Bh will always be at a power level where FurScales is healthy. I don't see how an Imposter ban would require the power level to lower drastically, bans would mostly be to prevent stuff that is stronger but can't be used because of Imposter. Stuff like Choice Beads of Ruin or Choice Sword of Ruin mons still need FurScales to check them.
Good as Gold and Magic Bounce will always be balanced on defense because defensive mons without FurScales are vulnerable in such a high power metagame. If you lose to Magic Bounce that is a skill issue. Good as gold has shown its power on offensive mons, but many of these are self-Improofed already, so any potential action on Good as gold wouldn't be based on Imposter.
Rising Voltage
This isn't broken, we would ban Hadron Engine first if it were.
Tera Rising Voltage may be broken but that is an issue with Tera.
Expanding Force
lol
What might actually need to be banned if Imposter were gone?
Tera, Victory Dance, Fillet Away, Taunt, Power Trip. Maybe other stuff but there would be absolutely no way to throw out huge banlists like that in advance.
Imposter isn't getting banned anyways but this was interesting to think about.
I guess my last take on Imp is that I don't think it's really even necessary to argue that Imp is a "necessary evil" for the tier. I don't actually think that much would need to be banned. Imp is legal because it's balanced. It creates fun games and allows flexibility and creativity in teambuilding by forcing you to consider how your mons synergise together.
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Completely agree with Akira here. Some parts of Dr.Void's arguments I actually agree with and some parts I find nonsensical. A lot written here the past few days, and I don’t really have the time to get into the details. While I won't pretend Imposter isn’t extremely annoying at times, especially in the late game, I’m not too keen on banning it entirely. Maybe nerfing it by getting rid of Chansey, but I wouldn’t even favor that too much since non-Imposter Chansey is a viable pick this generation for the first time in a while if not ever.
Aside from the fact that Improofing isn’t the hardest thing to do in the world once you get the hang of it, I actually think it has made this gen and prior gen's BH a lot more interesting to watch because I’ve seen some highly creative Improofing methods to not only stuff out but outright remove Imposter entirely. Examples include the Rocky Helmet Coil + Population Bomb Meloetta-P used by Ren/pdt for OMPL. Orichalcum Pulse (Dland in the current case) Grassceus with VC, Solar Beam, Glance, Growth and Tera Fire by Onyx in their sample (the only thing I like about Tera btw). The PSea + mono-Fire Dland breaking duo I passed to Quo for OMPL. A cool SD + Outrage Koraidon set I saw a random HO ladderer run to lock Imposter should it choose to KO so that Flutter could get the guaranteed RK. Eternamax Beam + Fire-immune Steel-type to trap and kill Imposter used by City. Many, many more.
Would certainly want tiering action on Tera and maybe even Good as Gold before any tiering action on Imposter. I already expressed my thoughts on Tera in an earlier post. Would agree that GaG could be a problem with Imposter around regardless, and I secretly believed so ever since those GaG Zacian-C sets started popping up towards the end of its tenure. Was very difficult set to beat and what pushed the mon over the edge for me since its counterplay was completely different from those of its GT sets. Imposter isn’t a good answer to it because 1. if the GaG user sets up Substitute before Imposter comes in, you must break the Sub first, which Chansey cannot do, 2. the GaG user has passive recovery via Leftovers; Imposter does not, and 3. the GaG user can defensive Tera to sponge Imposter's attacks if necessary (Zacian, Steels with Salt Cure typically). Not sure I’d say it needs tiering action as much as Tera currently does quite yet, but it's definitely a pain in the ass to account for with how much they deny/nullify the already-limited forms of anti-setup counterplay. Marshadow really couldn’t come soon enough.
Aside from the fact that Improofing isn’t the hardest thing to do in the world once you get the hang of it, I actually think it has made this gen and prior gen's BH a lot more interesting to watch because I’ve seen some highly creative Improofing methods to not only stuff out but outright remove Imposter entirely. Examples include the Rocky Helmet Coil + Population Bomb Meloetta-P used by Ren/pdt for OMPL. Orichalcum Pulse (Dland in the current case) Grassceus with VC, Solar Beam, Glance, Growth and Tera Fire by Onyx in their sample (the only thing I like about Tera btw). The PSea + mono-Fire Dland breaking duo I passed to Quo for OMPL. A cool SD + Outrage Koraidon set I saw a random HO ladderer run to lock Imposter should it choose to KO so that Flutter could get the guaranteed RK. Eternamax Beam + Fire-immune Steel-type to trap and kill Imposter used by City. Many, many more.
Would certainly want tiering action on Tera and maybe even Good as Gold before any tiering action on Imposter. I already expressed my thoughts on Tera in an earlier post. Would agree that GaG could be a problem with Imposter around regardless, and I secretly believed so ever since those GaG Zacian-C sets started popping up towards the end of its tenure. Was very difficult set to beat and what pushed the mon over the edge for me since its counterplay was completely different from those of its GT sets. Imposter isn’t a good answer to it because 1. if the GaG user sets up Substitute before Imposter comes in, you must break the Sub first, which Chansey cannot do, 2. the GaG user has passive recovery via Leftovers; Imposter does not, and 3. the GaG user can defensive Tera to sponge Imposter's attacks if necessary (Zacian, Steels with Salt Cure typically). Not sure I’d say it needs tiering action as much as Tera currently does quite yet, but it's definitely a pain in the ass to account for with how much they deny/nullify the already-limited forms of anti-setup counterplay. Marshadow really couldn’t come soon enough.
For some of these options, which by themselves are in no way problematic (the only ones you could really make a case for are Good as Gold and V-create; the first is fair enough, the second has had a little support ever since Gen 7 but it's never really got anywhere), I don't really see the value in pointing at these as the source of Pokemon in a no-Imposter meta being broken. The "standard" option is to ban Pokemon, as this removes the broken threat but also limits the amount of collateral damage; the reason why Hadron Engine is still around is that banning it to limit Miraidon would have bad spill-over effects into legit Hadron users, and it's also why AAA hasn't banned Triage when three mons now on the banlist (Hariyama, Ursaluna, and Iron Hands) are there due to Triage (the first 2 solely, Hands has Triage as a contributing factor but is also just a demon by itself). It doesn't help that crossover between problematic attackers is, at least right now, limited to basically just Boomburst on the special side and Victory Dance on the physical side (and for the latter you can attribute it more to Good as Gold than VD). The point i'm making is that bans like these take out far too many legitemate options to nerf stuff that Imposter already keeps in check (including legitemate options on the mon being taken out), to the point where it severely disrupts the meta in a negative way. In the end, this ends up as just BH but with a lower power level, which both detracts away from the identity of what BH is, and as I said above, might just not be any better.
Also a note on these, but "core options" here is to refer to anything integral to the meta. Kicking out any core option will cause disruption, regardless of whether it's a mon, move, or ability.
I see where you're coming from with the banlist reasonings. The difference between banning moves in BH and standards is that in standards, almost all fully evolved Pokemon needs to be broken with the move to justify banning it; this is why Last Respects and Shed Tail got the boot from OU, as all owners are capable of breaking them. In BH, this falls through because everything gets everything, so the questions then become "Can you feasibly counter this move? How much does it warp teambuilding in order to weave in said counterplay? Is it broken on multiple relevant things?". Just reading off the list, it looks like you're going off of the ones above, and there's no real way to put it other than "these just aren't problematic":
- No Retreat is very good on Ghost-types. Problem is, there's only 2 Ghost-types that are actually going to use it (Arceus-Ghost and Giratina), and Arceus-Ghost is almost just objectively better unless you're going for Final Gambit strats (no Dragon, unknockable Plate). Even then, this is nowhere near broken; SNR absolutely loathes Parting Shot, severely struggles into non-Fighting-weak special walls (which are easily the most common option), and this also doesn't really have anything to do with Imposter to begin with, as they already run Spooky Plate Judgment and would reasonably continue to do so.
- Boomburst is a good move. Again, not broken; removing it completely guts 2 of the biggest breakers in the tier (Rayquaza and Iron Bundle), and it forces Flutter Mane into basically one set (Flare Boost), in order to remove something that is just another STAB that things click. Again, this also doesn't pertain much to Imposter at all; it's never switching in on any of these unless you're losing and it has to, as the former two deal absurd damage, and the latter can both deal hefty damage and generate free momentum off of you with Specs Volt Switch.
- Funnily enough, not a lot actually uses V-create right now. The big physical breaker (Koraidon) already has STAB Close Combat, which is the same damage but doesn't drop Speed, Groudon already has same-powered Ground STABs (and also likes scaring out offensive stuff after a Tidy Up), and Hoopa-U only uses it so Fairies can't just bully it on account of not having a good Psychic STAB. Point here is that physical Fire just doesn't hit a ton for super effective damage, which means the stat drops, shoehorned Imposter-proofing, and the fact that the damage increase over things' normal STABs is marginal at best make it not broken. Only exception is Arceus-Fire, but this is why we have Imposter.
- These setup moves / Simple just aren't issues either. Simple attackers have to contend with Haze forcing them to have low-ish damage unboosted, and the cost of not having an ability like Speed Boost or Mold Breaker. The physical boosting options just actually aren't problematic.
The difference between the options you've brought up here is that the banned ones (Shell Smash and Belly Drum) create significantly more variance that you're just not able to prep for; not even Imposter is a good countermeasure against these. For something like Boomburst, you always know what's going to be using it viably, and they follow a linear playstyle of get pivoted in -> Boomburst or pivot -> get out and wait for the next window. With the banned ones, literally anything can run the dumb setup move and just decide to beat your defensive core because you loaded the wrong one. Being unable to answer every offensive mon isn't an alien concept here, it's just that the ones we have now have actual predictability in that you know what it's almost always going to do. Having Shell Smash and Belly Drum legal also opens up the possibility of Smash Spam and Drum Spam teams, which the other stuff simply cannot replicate due to Species clause (believe me, Smash Spam and Drum Spam is not a fun experience). This even applies to the Cinderace example you give; you always know on preview that 95% of the time it's MGLO or Desolate Land, meaning you know you need to preserve your Fire switchin, so you'd be pretty annoyed if it randomly decided to set up on your WBB Mon and OHKO it right? Again, I don't really see your point, given the stuff you've mentioned will not be being the problematic things.
This is another one of those things that I don't get why people do, being claiming that "all of us in our right mind would do this" on the evidence of "trust me bro some guy on ladder said so". Imposter does not fit this category, nor pretty much any of the options you've listed above.
There is zero reason that Imposter is necessary on the team. Dumb setup stuff will always exist until we're out here banning Bulk Up; who cares, there are anti-setup things that aren't Imposter that, surprisingly, actually work! Haze, offensive pressure, status, hazards, phazing, priority, the list goes on. You can even just ask BH players outside of ladder games and the overwhelming majority, including tournament players, think an Imposter ban would be a terrible mistake.
TL;DR Imposter is nowhere near as mandatory as you make it out to be. The "problematic elements" you've listed that we could ban to balance out the removal of Imposter barely relate to the matter at hand, as they both wouldn't be broken without Imposter and don't really interact with Imposter to begin with.
You know what, I'm just gonna say it. This is very low level gameplay that doesn't demonstrate a foundational understanding of the game. Pokemon battles, as an imperfect information game, partially relies on predictions and mind games. An example I would nitpick in your battle is the interactions between your Ursaluna and the opponent's Gholdengo and Moltres where they kept switching in and out. You, too, can try to predict their switches as well, which is important to becoming a more seasoned player.
Something I've learned along the way is that people have different battle styles. Some people are more straightforward, some people are more strategic (like switching in) and yet other people are keen on predictions. Amnael, for example, is pretty straightforward. When in battle, they are most likely going to choose the move that deals damage at the moment rather than predicting a switch. It is only in the late game will they start taking risks and getting spicy.
I am finding it very hard to read all these posts. Not only due to the sheer volume, but also because, ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention to formatting and don't ramble like a 5 year old.
The main problem with this is that, although imposter prevents sets from being too passive, it also does not reward aggressive players. The only benefit Imposter has on the meta is fearmongering to proof your sets. There are rarely cases where a Pokemon can deal with an Imposter version of itself (ignoring self-improof, which is a completely different story). That is, it is hard for non-Imposters to deal significant damage to an Imposter. For example, before Zacian-C was banned, V-Create/Headlong Rush did not come even close to threatening Imposter, but it did threaten Zacian-C. With Eviolite, V-Create did around 50% (not fact checked) to Imposter while incurring a major defense and speed debuff. Thus, the most common response was to switch to a physical wall and do a little repetitive song and dance. This is a detriment to non-Imposters because they are wasting PP while Imposters usually get out of the situation with minimal damage.
This means that Imposter counters (again, besides self improof which is a completely different story), requires at least 2 different Pokemon to take out consistently. We have one that applies a debuff via Item/Status Condition and then the other to deal the actual damage.
Alot of the major threats that may be become relevant in the case of an Imposter ban rely on a bit of setup to get going. The easiest way to counter setup is through Haze which is normally countered via Imprison+Haze. Realistically, such a meta would be possible under an Imprison ban. This would revert to something similar to G7BH, where Prankster Haze Giratinas were very commonplace.
TLDR: Egg is cool, Tera is bad, Imposter is the itch you can't scratch so you just learn to live with it, and PLEASE learn how to play BH before complaining about it. I'm glad BH is getting more traction
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So i'm out of OMPL and thought I would do a teamdump here. I've only built 3 teams prior to this week, so it won't be substantial.
vs XxLazzerpenguinxX - Explosion Enamorus
The goal of this team is pretty simple. Iron Bundle excels at harassing teams without a good special wall, so Enamorus is there to eliminate them with Explosion. The rest of the team is a simple defensive core, with Toxapex and Arceus-Fairy being the only really necessary options (to Imposter-proof Enamorus and Bundle respectively). Regenerator Chansey was chosen to be both a secondary special wall and a pivot to get the two breakers in safely, although a RegenVest user could do a similar job. Iron Moth + another special wall is a horror matchup, as this prevents you getting the Explosion off, and Moth + Scales Zacian is just a forfeit at preview. Toxic Groudon is also really annoying.
vs quojova - Rayquaza + Choice Specs Flutter Mane
This is just a really basic pivotspam structure with 2 wallbreakers. Rayquaza is broken and Imposter-proofing it is the reason why Arceus-Electric is here, which does that and exists to be annoying with Thunder Cage and Mortal Spin; it's not the bulkiest, however, meaning Specs breakers with entry hazard support can potentially beat it. Fur Coat Groudon also comes with the standard drawbacks like being weak to Palafin and Arceus-Fire.
vs Leru - Koraidon Fat
Similarly basic like the above, but more defensive and (shocker for me) doesn't use Fur Coat Groudon. Koraidon is an all-around good offensive option that can only really be properly checked by Fur Coat Dondozo, and Rayquaza is here to take advantage of that via Koraidon's Flip Turn. Arceus-Electric is here to Imposter-proof Rayquaza again but uses the Arceus-standard CM/STAB/Mortal/Recovery set, which excels at dissuading Imposter from entering and can severely annoy opponents with Thunder Cage (or at the very least force poison on their Ground-type). I don't actually remember what Toxapex is for; I think it's for Pixilate Arceus-Fairy and as a backup check to Iron Bundle and Flutter Mane, but there might be something else i'm missing. Struggles heavily with Rocky Helmet FC Dondozo and SpDef Corviknight.
vs pdt - Mold Breaker Eternatus Fat
The Ting-Lu is built with Fillet Away stuff in mind, as that's what I expected from them. Unaware aims to shut setup stuff down and Bulk Up in their face, scaring out with a surprisingly-strong 110 Attack Earthquake with boosts. SNR was purely from me noticing he does not have consistent answers, but in the game, I didn't end up sweeping with it (out of fear of PrankBond). Mold Breaker Eternatus is a very annoying attacker that excels at harassing defensive cores, with Torch Song boosting creating an unsafe spiral that puts opposing walls into a chokehold and forces them to predict to survive; Draco Plate is for general damage, but doesn't get any relevant calcs on full targets. Dondozo looks weird, but is basically a spin on the standard Mortal Spin set; Heart Swap and Tidy Up were basically pure paranoia, attempting to negate Imprison Haze and Mortal Blocking respectively. Toxic Spikes is a weird choice, but I had a spare moveslot and wanted something to annoy offensive teams that lack Boots. Would recommend changing Dondozo to a more standard set and fitting better hazard removal before trying to use consistently.
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Now, onto something else. It's pretty clear that BH isn't in a great spot at the minute; this can be seen through numerous community complaints and the lack of tiering. I've even had senior staff asking me what's going on with BH ladder plays being at seemingly an all-time low. I thought I might as well be transparent and explain how we can try and recover from the current situation. Do note that this is my own personal view, meaning it doesn't reflect the rest of the council, and we are bounded in what we can do as certain things that would fix the meta are down to Game Freak to add in with DLC.
What is wrong with this meta, and how do we fix it?
Key problem 1: The meta is too matchup fish-y.
There are a lot of things in the tier to have to account for in the builder; this isn't anything unique to BH or any tier, this is just something that needs to be done. The problem here is that either accounting for all relevant threats is too constraining, or there just aren't good countermeasures for them at all. This essentially leads to many teams ending up as "which threat do you want to half-ass check and probably lose to on preview", which is fine if that threat is niche and can be outplayed, but this generally isn't the case for SV BH.
Here's a list of all the things you want to account for in the builder (in no particular order):
So what can be done about this? There's a couple of options. The first and easiest is to ban Tera - this would give many of these breakers less instant power, and so forces their team to provide better long-term support to get them to win, meaning that the window to outplay them is much larger than just "pick a sack if they have rocks up". While this might make some threats potentially stronger at preview, like Palafin-H or Simple Arceus-Ghost (as you can now no longer Tera to a random defensive type to beat them), it also means these are less capable of punching past would-be checks. An additional side effect is that, while these offensive threats might be less potent, they'll be more consistent for the above reason; the potential to lose to a random Tera Type on a defensive threat no longer exists. A second option would be to remove some of these threats, thereby meaning there's simply less to account for; the trouble here is that no one threat in particular (aside from maybe Rayquaza) is individually banworthy, meaning that tiering around them is subjective at best.
Key problem 2: It's just not fun.
Fun is obviously subjective. However, people are generally going to play the meta because it's fun, and so simply lacking fun might explain why the ladder has comparatively low activity. There's a few potential reasons for this:
There are likely some other problems, but I struggled to really come up with good reasoning as these are more subjective and delve more into individual playstyles; points like "Defensive options are too centralized" and "Entry hazard removal is really annoying" come to mind here. This is what I wanted to bring up, since it at least provides a benchmark for the direction to move in, and helps open up community discussion on how to move forward.
vs XxLazzerpenguinxX - Explosion Enamorus
The goal of this team is pretty simple. Iron Bundle excels at harassing teams without a good special wall, so Enamorus is there to eliminate them with Explosion. The rest of the team is a simple defensive core, with Toxapex and Arceus-Fairy being the only really necessary options (to Imposter-proof Enamorus and Bundle respectively). Regenerator Chansey was chosen to be both a secondary special wall and a pivot to get the two breakers in safely, although a RegenVest user could do a similar job. Iron Moth + another special wall is a horror matchup, as this prevents you getting the Explosion off, and Moth + Scales Zacian is just a forfeit at preview. Toxic Groudon is also really annoying.
vs quojova - Rayquaza + Choice Specs Flutter Mane
This is just a really basic pivotspam structure with 2 wallbreakers. Rayquaza is broken and Imposter-proofing it is the reason why Arceus-Electric is here, which does that and exists to be annoying with Thunder Cage and Mortal Spin; it's not the bulkiest, however, meaning Specs breakers with entry hazard support can potentially beat it. Fur Coat Groudon also comes with the standard drawbacks like being weak to Palafin and Arceus-Fire.
vs Leru - Koraidon Fat
Similarly basic like the above, but more defensive and (shocker for me) doesn't use Fur Coat Groudon. Koraidon is an all-around good offensive option that can only really be properly checked by Fur Coat Dondozo, and Rayquaza is here to take advantage of that via Koraidon's Flip Turn. Arceus-Electric is here to Imposter-proof Rayquaza again but uses the Arceus-standard CM/STAB/Mortal/Recovery set, which excels at dissuading Imposter from entering and can severely annoy opponents with Thunder Cage (or at the very least force poison on their Ground-type). I don't actually remember what Toxapex is for; I think it's for Pixilate Arceus-Fairy and as a backup check to Iron Bundle and Flutter Mane, but there might be something else i'm missing. Struggles heavily with Rocky Helmet FC Dondozo and SpDef Corviknight.
vs pdt - Mold Breaker Eternatus Fat
The Ting-Lu is built with Fillet Away stuff in mind, as that's what I expected from them. Unaware aims to shut setup stuff down and Bulk Up in their face, scaring out with a surprisingly-strong 110 Attack Earthquake with boosts. SNR was purely from me noticing he does not have consistent answers, but in the game, I didn't end up sweeping with it (out of fear of PrankBond). Mold Breaker Eternatus is a very annoying attacker that excels at harassing defensive cores, with Torch Song boosting creating an unsafe spiral that puts opposing walls into a chokehold and forces them to predict to survive; Draco Plate is for general damage, but doesn't get any relevant calcs on full targets. Dondozo looks weird, but is basically a spin on the standard Mortal Spin set; Heart Swap and Tidy Up were basically pure paranoia, attempting to negate Imprison Haze and Mortal Blocking respectively. Toxic Spikes is a weird choice, but I had a spare moveslot and wanted something to annoy offensive teams that lack Boots. Would recommend changing Dondozo to a more standard set and fitting better hazard removal before trying to use consistently.
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Now, onto something else. It's pretty clear that BH isn't in a great spot at the minute; this can be seen through numerous community complaints and the lack of tiering. I've even had senior staff asking me what's going on with BH ladder plays being at seemingly an all-time low. I thought I might as well be transparent and explain how we can try and recover from the current situation. Do note that this is my own personal view, meaning it doesn't reflect the rest of the council, and we are bounded in what we can do as certain things that would fix the meta are down to Game Freak to add in with DLC.
What is wrong with this meta, and how do we fix it?
Key problem 1: The meta is too matchup fish-y.
There are a lot of things in the tier to have to account for in the builder; this isn't anything unique to BH or any tier, this is just something that needs to be done. The problem here is that either accounting for all relevant threats is too constraining, or there just aren't good countermeasures for them at all. This essentially leads to many teams ending up as "which threat do you want to half-ass check and probably lose to on preview", which is fine if that threat is niche and can be outplayed, but this generally isn't the case for SV BH.
Here's a list of all the things you want to account for in the builder (in no particular order):
- Koraidon
- Iron Bundle
- Choice Specs Flutter Mane
- Flare Boost Flutter Mane (different checks to Specs)
- Rayquaza (can have coverage)
- Nasty Plot Arceus-Ghost
- Simple Arceus-Ghost (different checks to Nasty Plot)
- Toxic Groudon
- Calm Mind Arceus formes (accounting for the different types and abilities)
- Pixilate Enamorus and Arceus-Fairy (can have coverage)
- Desolate Land Arceus-Fire
- Palkia-O
- Eternatus
- Hoopa-U
- Palafin-H
- Substitute setup (almost always Good as Gold)
- Zacian (both Rusted Sword and Pixilate)
- Random off-meta attackers (Iron Valiant, Gholdengo, Landorus-T, Regieleki, Iron Moth, Fillet Away)
So what can be done about this? There's a couple of options. The first and easiest is to ban Tera - this would give many of these breakers less instant power, and so forces their team to provide better long-term support to get them to win, meaning that the window to outplay them is much larger than just "pick a sack if they have rocks up". While this might make some threats potentially stronger at preview, like Palafin-H or Simple Arceus-Ghost (as you can now no longer Tera to a random defensive type to beat them), it also means these are less capable of punching past would-be checks. An additional side effect is that, while these offensive threats might be less potent, they'll be more consistent for the above reason; the potential to lose to a random Tera Type on a defensive threat no longer exists. A second option would be to remove some of these threats, thereby meaning there's simply less to account for; the trouble here is that no one threat in particular (aside from maybe Rayquaza) is individually banworthy, meaning that tiering around them is subjective at best.
Key problem 2: It's just not fun.
Fun is obviously subjective. However, people are generally going to play the meta because it's fun, and so simply lacking fun might explain why the ladder has comparatively low activity. There's a few potential reasons for this:
- Matchup inconsistency. Discussed above.
- Lack of tiering. This is largely down to OMPL and Tera making tiering a nightmare; aside from the Baton Pass quickban, which was largely inconsequential for the meta stuff, the last major ban was Slaking back in May.
- Lack of good setup control. This essentially forces Prankster or Imposter in any matchup you're not sure about, as Haze is the only consistent option. This constraint on ladder play, where you're routinely not sure what you're running into, may be to blame. Unfortunately, the only feasible action we can take for this one is to ban the setup moves, as nothing on the banlist being freed would help out here.
- Monotone gameplay. Even if the Pokemon being used are different, the gameplay loop may simply be too similar from game to game in order to stay interesting. Bulky balance being far and away the most consistent structure may also contribute to this. Tiering action to make different playstyles more viable is an option here, although freeing dangerour threats to buff offense / HO is unlikely (even with Tera gone, some like Miraidon and Slaking are not clearly balanced).
There are likely some other problems, but I struggled to really come up with good reasoning as these are more subjective and delve more into individual playstyles; points like "Defensive options are too centralized" and "Entry hazard removal is really annoying" come to mind here. This is what I wanted to bring up, since it at least provides a benchmark for the direction to move in, and helps open up community discussion on how to move forward.
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Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about the newest bully on the block, whose rise to power has been unparalleled thus far. Give it up for shield doggo!
While nowhere as problematic as its sword biting counterpart, shield doggo still presents a massive problem in a meta without Spectral Thief and limited healing. Despite losing -5 Def and SpD compared to the previous generation, Zamazenta-C still lives up to its name from G8 as the unpierceable shield with offensive prowess that can't be ignored.
The Battlefield Changes With Every Play
One of the most impactful changes GameFreak made to this game with the release of G9 is the massive healing nerf with all standard 50% recovery moves being decreased from 16PP to 8PP. As a result, this has resulted more teams relying on teammate healing through the use of Wish or passive healing through Leftovers, Leech Seed, Black Sludge, Regenerator etc. The presence of passive healing has been evident since the start of BHG9 which lead to a ban on Poison Heal which healed 12.5% HP per turn. Due to the long battle durations which are common in BH, this passive healing stacks over time, resulting in Pokemon being able to be fully healed by Leftovers alone. This nerf on healing has not been healthy in the type of environment with long battles that Balance Hackmons fosters.
With this lack of healing, a large number of walls have been reliant on Strength Sap to counter the PP nerf. Strength Sap is good in most cases, though it is easily denied through low ATK Pokemon like Flutter Mane or Chansey, both which are all too common to be reliable. GameFreak releasing Good as Good is also an arrow to the knee on top of the healing nerf, since it denies not only one of the most common healing methods but all status as well.
Finally, Spectral Thief has been removed with the absence of Marshadow further increasing the power of setup sweepers. Thus, the only reliable way to remove stat changes is through Haze. Haze has the downside is being extremely passive meaning that there is little a Haze using can do against a setup Pokemon with high setup PP.
Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
Zamazenta was famous in G8BH for its role as a consistent wall. With Flash Fire, Fur Coat, Levitate and Unaware in its inventory, Zamazenta-C reliably ate hit after hit with a 16PP Shore Up to keep it fighting longer. Only on occasion would you see an offensive Zamazenta as there were little moves that served to utilize its typing. Sunsteel Strike had a hard time KO-ing due to it's low coverage, Close Combat incurred Def/SpD decreases, and High Jump Kick had the probability of missing with high recoil.
The biggest change to Zamazenta in G9 is its role being completely reversed from a wall that could play on both Special and Physical fronts to a bulky sweeper. Lets take a look at current most popular Zamazenta set:
Zamazenta-Crowned @ Leftovers
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Ghost
- Victory Dance
- Iron Head
- Substitute
- Leech Seed
This set relies on Zamazenta's sheer bulk to wall a hit and set up substitute. Once it has a few boosts under its belt, it can reliably regain HP with Leech Seed and Leftovers bolstered by the popularity of passive recovery. With both of these combined, Zamazenta can effectively use Substitute for free since it usually regains its lost HP at the end of the turn. Additionally, with most of Zamazenta's threats being physical, Victory Dance gives it a significant advantage in shrugging off V-Create, not to mention Substitute as well. While other Zamazenta sets work, the one above is the most meta-defining, seemingly able to sweep entire teams with an inconvenient flinch. Though a +6 Iron Head on Zamazenta a strong move, it is not scary. +6 Iron Head can easily be shrugged off by Fur Coat walls or other resists in general. Zamazenta, unsuprisingly, is not the only Pokemon who is able to play this role. Other common examples are Iron Treads and Dialga, so we know that Zamazenta isn't the root of the problem.
An Unpierceable Shield?
In order to disable these sets, 3 things must happen. Substitute must be removed so damage can actually be dealt. Healing must be denied through the removal of Leftovers and the negation of Leech Seed. Stat changes must be ignored/removed to prevent Zamazenta from "building back" again. Unfortunately, each of these factors relies on another factor not being present in order to take effect, and even still it's hard to build a workable Pokemon that satisfies these conditions. In order for Substitute to be removed permanently, Healing must first be denied so Zamazenta can't consistently set up again, Stat changes also need to be ignored for effective moves to hit Substitute. For Healing to be denied, Leftovers must be removed, through Trick or Knock Off, and Leech Seed must be rendered ineffective. For Stat changes to be ignored, Unaware of Haze must be used, both suffer from being passive. The ideal Pokemon to threaten this set has Tidy Up to remove Substitute, denies Leech Seed healing while having healing itself, can take multiple hits from +6 Iron Heads and compete with Zamazenta's speed to get a hit in. These absurd conditions hardly exist at once and result in a Pokemon that is ineffective at dealing with anything else.
Some other counters are Infiltrator + Salt Cure, resulting from a Substitute filled meta, and Zamazenta itself, which results in a PP stall between 2 immovable walls.
All That Glitters Is Gold
As The Guzz Man mentioned above, a current threat in the meta is Substitute Setup which usually runs alongside Good as Gold. The biggest difference between Substitute Setup + Good as Gold vs the other threats The Big Guzz mentioned is that there are only 2 semi-viable ways to deal with this set. Substitute and Good as Gold are an amazing pair that mandate direct damage be dealt to the target. There is no way to inflict other damage than brute forcing through Substitute in order to have the chance to trigger any secondary effects that might turn the tide of battle. With the speed boosts gained from potential setup, it's easy for another substitute to be set up again and reset all progress. Tidy Up also works, but suffers as a status move that does not deal damage and users can easily punish an ill-predicted setup to get free damage in. This is not to mention Leech Seed and Iron Head slowly chipping away and with limited healing to keep going. Substitute and Good as Gold deny Strength Sap in an already HP-reliant gamemode.
I strongly urge the council to consider the role of Victory Dance, Good as Gold and Substitute in the current metagame and decide what should be done with each.
Notes: GameFreak did a shitty job balancing and deciding which Pokemon would be in this generation. Almost all competitive play is limited, especially with Terastallization. Hoping DLC will fix these issues but the hopes aren't high.
While nowhere as problematic as its sword biting counterpart, shield doggo still presents a massive problem in a meta without Spectral Thief and limited healing. Despite losing -5 Def and SpD compared to the previous generation, Zamazenta-C still lives up to its name from G8 as the unpierceable shield with offensive prowess that can't be ignored.
The Battlefield Changes With Every Play
One of the most impactful changes GameFreak made to this game with the release of G9 is the massive healing nerf with all standard 50% recovery moves being decreased from 16PP to 8PP. As a result, this has resulted more teams relying on teammate healing through the use of Wish or passive healing through Leftovers, Leech Seed, Black Sludge, Regenerator etc. The presence of passive healing has been evident since the start of BHG9 which lead to a ban on Poison Heal which healed 12.5% HP per turn. Due to the long battle durations which are common in BH, this passive healing stacks over time, resulting in Pokemon being able to be fully healed by Leftovers alone. This nerf on healing has not been healthy in the type of environment with long battles that Balance Hackmons fosters.
With this lack of healing, a large number of walls have been reliant on Strength Sap to counter the PP nerf. Strength Sap is good in most cases, though it is easily denied through low ATK Pokemon like Flutter Mane or Chansey, both which are all too common to be reliable. GameFreak releasing Good as Good is also an arrow to the knee on top of the healing nerf, since it denies not only one of the most common healing methods but all status as well.
Finally, Spectral Thief has been removed with the absence of Marshadow further increasing the power of setup sweepers. Thus, the only reliable way to remove stat changes is through Haze. Haze has the downside is being extremely passive meaning that there is little a Haze using can do against a setup Pokemon with high setup PP.
Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
Zamazenta was famous in G8BH for its role as a consistent wall. With Flash Fire, Fur Coat, Levitate and Unaware in its inventory, Zamazenta-C reliably ate hit after hit with a 16PP Shore Up to keep it fighting longer. Only on occasion would you see an offensive Zamazenta as there were little moves that served to utilize its typing. Sunsteel Strike had a hard time KO-ing due to it's low coverage, Close Combat incurred Def/SpD decreases, and High Jump Kick had the probability of missing with high recoil.
The biggest change to Zamazenta in G9 is its role being completely reversed from a wall that could play on both Special and Physical fronts to a bulky sweeper. Lets take a look at current most popular Zamazenta set:
Zamazenta-Crowned @ Leftovers
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Ghost
- Victory Dance
- Iron Head
- Substitute
- Leech Seed
This set relies on Zamazenta's sheer bulk to wall a hit and set up substitute. Once it has a few boosts under its belt, it can reliably regain HP with Leech Seed and Leftovers bolstered by the popularity of passive recovery. With both of these combined, Zamazenta can effectively use Substitute for free since it usually regains its lost HP at the end of the turn. Additionally, with most of Zamazenta's threats being physical, Victory Dance gives it a significant advantage in shrugging off V-Create, not to mention Substitute as well. While other Zamazenta sets work, the one above is the most meta-defining, seemingly able to sweep entire teams with an inconvenient flinch. Though a +6 Iron Head on Zamazenta a strong move, it is not scary. +6 Iron Head can easily be shrugged off by Fur Coat walls or other resists in general. Zamazenta, unsuprisingly, is not the only Pokemon who is able to play this role. Other common examples are Iron Treads and Dialga, so we know that Zamazenta isn't the root of the problem.
An Unpierceable Shield?
In order to disable these sets, 3 things must happen. Substitute must be removed so damage can actually be dealt. Healing must be denied through the removal of Leftovers and the negation of Leech Seed. Stat changes must be ignored/removed to prevent Zamazenta from "building back" again. Unfortunately, each of these factors relies on another factor not being present in order to take effect, and even still it's hard to build a workable Pokemon that satisfies these conditions. In order for Substitute to be removed permanently, Healing must first be denied so Zamazenta can't consistently set up again, Stat changes also need to be ignored for effective moves to hit Substitute. For Healing to be denied, Leftovers must be removed, through Trick or Knock Off, and Leech Seed must be rendered ineffective. For Stat changes to be ignored, Unaware of Haze must be used, both suffer from being passive. The ideal Pokemon to threaten this set has Tidy Up to remove Substitute, denies Leech Seed healing while having healing itself, can take multiple hits from +6 Iron Heads and compete with Zamazenta's speed to get a hit in. These absurd conditions hardly exist at once and result in a Pokemon that is ineffective at dealing with anything else.
Some other counters are Infiltrator + Salt Cure, resulting from a Substitute filled meta, and Zamazenta itself, which results in a PP stall between 2 immovable walls.
All That Glitters Is Gold
As The Guzz Man mentioned above, a current threat in the meta is Substitute Setup which usually runs alongside Good as Gold. The biggest difference between Substitute Setup + Good as Gold vs the other threats The Big Guzz mentioned is that there are only 2 semi-viable ways to deal with this set. Substitute and Good as Gold are an amazing pair that mandate direct damage be dealt to the target. There is no way to inflict other damage than brute forcing through Substitute in order to have the chance to trigger any secondary effects that might turn the tide of battle. With the speed boosts gained from potential setup, it's easy for another substitute to be set up again and reset all progress. Tidy Up also works, but suffers as a status move that does not deal damage and users can easily punish an ill-predicted setup to get free damage in. This is not to mention Leech Seed and Iron Head slowly chipping away and with limited healing to keep going. Substitute and Good as Gold deny Strength Sap in an already HP-reliant gamemode.
I strongly urge the council to consider the role of Victory Dance, Good as Gold and Substitute in the current metagame and decide what should be done with each.
Notes: GameFreak did a shitty job balancing and deciding which Pokemon would be in this generation. Almost all competitive play is limited, especially with Terastallization. Hoping DLC will fix these issues but the hopes aren't high.
seconding the above. this has been very annoying to counter recently, so i'll share what i've known to work and what doesn't.Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about the newest bully on the block, whose rise to power has been unparalleled thus far. Give it up for shield doggo!
While nowhere as problematic as its sword biting counterpart, shield doggo still presents a massive problem in a meta without Spectral Thief and limited healing. Despite losing -5 Def and SpD compared to the previous generation, Zamazenta-C still lives up to its name from G8 as the unpierceable shield with offensive prowess that can't be ignored.
The Battlefield Changes With Every Play
One of the most impactful changes GameFreak made to this game with the release of G9 is the massive healing nerf with all standard 50% recovery moves being decreased from 16PP to 8PP. As a result, this has resulted more teams relying on teammate healing through the use of Wish or passive healing through Leftovers, Leech Seed, Black Sludge, Regenerator etc. The presence of passive healing has been evident since the start of BHG9 which lead to a ban on Poison Heal which healed 12.5% HP per turn. Due to the long battle durations which are common in BH, this passive healing stacks over time, resulting in Pokemon being able to be fully healed by Leftovers alone. This nerf on healing has not been healthy in the type of environment with long battles that Balance Hackmons fosters.
With this lack of healing, a large number of walls have been reliant on Strength Sap to counter the PP nerf. Strength Sap is good in most cases, though it is easily denied through low ATK Pokemon like Flutter Mane or Chansey, both which are all too common to be reliable. GameFreak releasing Good as Good is also an arrow to the knee on top of the healing nerf, since it denies not only one of the most common healing methods but all status as well.
Finally, Spectral Thief has been removed with the absence of Marshadow further increasing the power of setup sweepers. Thus, the only reliable way to remove stat changes is through Haze. Haze has the downside is being extremely passive meaning that there is little a Haze using can do against a setup Pokemon with high setup PP.
Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
Zamazenta was famous in G8BH for its role as a consistent wall. With Flash Fire, Fur Coat, Levitate and Unaware in its inventory, Zamazenta-C reliably ate hit after hit with a 16PP Shore Up to keep it fighting longer. Only on occasion would you see an offensive Zamazenta as there were little moves that served to utilize its typing. Sunsteel Strike had a hard time KO-ing due to it's low coverage, Close Combat incurred Def/SpD decreases, and High Jump Kick had the probability of missing with high recoil.
The biggest change to Zamazenta in G9 is its role being completely reversed from a wall that could play on both Special and Physical fronts to a bulky sweeper. Lets take a look at current most popular Zamazenta set:
Zamazenta-Crowned @ Leftovers
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Ghost
- Victory Dance
- Iron Head
- Substitute
- Leech Seed
This set relies on Zamazenta's sheer bulk to wall a hit and set up substitute. Once it has a few boosts under its belt, it can reliably regain HP with Leech Seed and Leftovers bolstered by the popularity of passive recovery. With both of these combined, Zamazenta can effectively use Substitute for free since it usually regains its lost HP at the end of the turn. Additionally, with most of Zamazenta's threats being physical, Victory Dance gives it a significant advantage in shrugging off V-Create, not to mention Substitute as well. While other Zamazenta sets work, the one above is the most meta-defining, seemingly able to sweep entire teams with an inconvenient flinch. Though a +6 Iron Head on Zamazenta a strong move, it is not scary. +6 Iron Head can easily be shrugged off by Fur Coat walls or other resists in general. Zamazenta, unsuprisingly, is not the only Pokemon who is able to play this role. Other common examples are Iron Treads and Dialga, so we know that Zamazenta isn't the root of the problem.
An Unpierceable Shield?
In order to disable these sets, 3 things must happen. Substitute must be removed so damage can actually be dealt. Healing must be denied through the removal of Leftovers and the negation of Leech Seed. Stat changes must be ignored/removed to prevent Zamazenta from "building back" again. Unfortunately, each of these factors relies on another factor not being present in order to take effect, and even still it's hard to build a workable Pokemon that satisfies these conditions. In order for Substitute to be removed permanently, Healing must first be denied so Zamazenta can't consistently set up again, Stat changes also need to be ignored for effective moves to hit Substitute. For Healing to be denied, Leftovers must be removed, through Trick or Knock Off, and Leech Seed must be rendered ineffective. For Stat changes to be ignored, Unaware of Haze must be used, both suffer from being passive. The ideal Pokemon to threaten this set has Tidy Up to remove Substitute, denies Leech Seed healing while having healing itself, can take multiple hits from +6 Iron Heads and compete with Zamazenta's speed to get a hit in. These absurd conditions hardly exist at once and result in a Pokemon that is ineffective at dealing with anything else.
Some other counters are Infiltrator + Salt Cure, resulting from a Substitute filled meta, and Zamazenta itself, which results in a PP stall between 2 immovable walls.
All That Glitters Is Gold
As The Guzz Man mentioned above, a current threat in the meta is Substitute Setup which usually runs alongside Good as Gold. The biggest difference between Substitute Setup + Good as Gold vs the other threats The Big Guzz mentioned is that there are only 2 semi-viable ways to deal with this set. Substitute and Good as Gold are an amazing pair that mandate direct damage be dealt to the target. There is no way to inflict other damage than brute forcing through Substitute in order to have the chance to trigger any secondary effects that might turn the tide of battle. With the speed boosts gained from potential setup, it's easy for another substitute to be set up again and reset all progress. Tidy Up also works, but suffers as a status move that does not deal damage and users can easily punish an ill-predicted setup to get free damage in. This is not to mention Leech Seed and Iron Head slowly chipping away and with limited healing to keep going. Substitute and Good as Gold deny Strength Sap in an already HP-reliant gamemode.
I strongly urge the council to consider the role of Victory Dance, Good as Gold and Substitute in the current metagame and decide what should be done with each.
Notes: GameFreak did a shitty job balancing and deciding which Pokemon would be in this generation. Almost all competitive play is limited, especially with Terastallization. Hoping DLC will fix these issues but the hopes aren't high.
tl;dr use torch song steel resists and/or magic guarders that resist steel and bypass/remove sub. tidy up with no leech seed negation is not really reliable.
here's a list of moves that bypass substitute (includes sound moves). of these, most are unusable, either due to being status moves or bad moves. of this list here, basically the only two of use are torch song and boomburst, as eerie spell is unlikely to actually proc on the thing you want it to (plus iron head is hard to stall) and hyperspace hole just isn't strong enough to warrant using.
what the above means is that, if you want to just flat-out ignore the substitute, you're basically left with torch song and -ateburst. the whole victory dance + iron head thing complicates this by meaning you can't just use any old attacker; you need to actually live the iron heads. this basically forces you into just a fire type, as stuff like torch song etern can unironically lose if it has a sub up before etern comes in. infiltrator also technically works but you're also sacking one of your mons' abilities just to counter one mon.
trying to beat the attacker through raw damage is certainly a task, but it is possible. tidy up users that don't fold to iron head are the best candidates here, which basically just limits it to palafin and fur coat groudon. these are able to remove the sub with tidy up, threatening damage on zamac if they don't sub again or switch out. these aren't great honestly; landing a leech seed is mostly going to offset the health zamac expends on subs (and most of the time zamac has speed advantage), one blades miss puts groudon in a very dire situation, and both use strength sap meaning they need to find time to heal against something else. palafin can also branch out with sniper LO to simply ignore the defense boosts, although it needs to conserve PP and just isn't very good otherwise.
probably the most successful answer i've found to this set, however, is magic guard. magic guarders are rare because the moves that make you want to use magic guard (and the mons that want to use them) aren't great, not helped by the lack of mind blown. you also can't just use something like mguard ray because it's just going to die to iron head; you still need to resist steel. this is the best option i've found:
Heatran @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Torch Song
- Steel Beam
- Chloroblast
- Strength Sap
this is quite jank, but it gets the job done and isn't useless otherwise. magic guard, torch song, and a 4x steel resist completely shut gold zamac down, and it's not totally bad outside of this thanks to being a 4x fairy resist, steel-type special attacker, and spatk booster. if you're putting this on a structure it should be to help out another special mon that gets slowed down by scales zacian and dialga-o, which this harasses very well. it can also help with some stuff that wants imp on low HP, as improofing with imp chansey is relatively safe + torch song does noticeable damage to imp.
also footnote but these are always going to be iron head. arrows is a throw because you just lose if they break your sub and switch imposter in (unless they fancy lower PP and throwing away all their victory dances to switch out of imp, idk).
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Some interesting/good sets I've used in OMPL teams. The sets may or may not have been successful in the game they were used in but I think all of these have good potential. You can find the full teams in this post.
Zacian-Crowned
Zacian @ Rusted Sword
Ability: Illuminate
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Gigaton Hammer
- Spirit Break
- Spirit Shackle
- Strength Sap
With variations in moves depending on team requirements.
Zacian-C is a cool hybrid utility mon that provides several useful traits, compared to regular Zacian. A faster speed tier is useful for the rare Dragapult and Spin Rayquaza. The Steel-typing is really useful though, providing a resistance to -ate types and a neutrality to Steel, meaning Zac-C takes the same damage from -ate bursts as Scales Zacian, while also being an emergency Korai check by taking any one move and outspeeding. It also comes with higher offensive presence and a very strong Gigaton Hammer to force some switches. Note that Gigaton means it is not Imposter-proof if Imposter got the ISword proc.
Mortal Spin FC Fireceus
Arceus-Fire @ Flame Plate
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Judgment
- Mortal Spin
- Recover
- Calm Mind
Mortal Spin Desoland Fireceus
Arceus-Fire @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Desolate Land
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- V-create
- Spirit Shackle
- Mortal Spin
- Moonlight
Fireceus is a solid user of Mortal Spin because its strong STAB forces Steel-types out, while Mortal Spin also annoys Eviolite Imposter. Calm Mind makes Judgment somewhat threatening to Dialga-O and is good for the FC set, though FC is a bit insufficient alone due to Flip Turn. Desoland V-create threatens basically all Steel-types while being a great improof to defensive mons utilizing Flip Turn to deny Imposter momentum. Mortal Spin can be swapped for Solar Beam if removal is covered to annoy Dondozo.
Wandering Spirit Zamazenta-Crowned
Zamazenta-Crowned @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Wandering Spirit
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Triple Arrows
- Spirit Shackle
- Mortal Spin
- Strength Sap
I was looking for a set to help deal with and annoy RegenVest mons, and Wandering Spirit is the perfect ability for the set to punish all the contact moves Regen mons use while stealing it for free recovery. Considering at the time the most common Regen mons were Dialga and Ting-Lu a Fighting-type was natural so I went with Zamazenta-C. Triple Arrows is key here as a non contact move to prevent triggering Wandering Spirit, and heavily threatens the Regen mons with its effects. Fighting STAB here helps Mortal Spin do its thing, while Shackle is obv for Imposter, but can also be good against Regen mons to force U-turn. Very often you don't need to click recovery often due to the amount of free Regenerator healing you can steal.
Adaptability Dragapult
Dragapult @ Life Orb
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Astral Barrage
- Poltergeist
- Glaive Rush
- Strength Sap
One of the better mixed attackers in the meta, and only gets much better without Tera. Dragapult is one of the few mons fast enough while having reasonable mixed offenses. Middling offenses are compensated by Life Orb, Adapt, and high BP STABs. With good prediction Pult is capable of 2HKOing basically everything, especially with a hazard up. Pult's speed tier, STABs, and mixed potential also makes it an amazing revenge-killer, capable of OHKOing most offensive threats, notably being a rare RK against Tera Steel Flutter. Poltergeist also can give some information early on. It hates Tera though, both defensively and because Tera Adapt is horrible interaction. Also doesn't do very well into ultra-fat teams due to lacking offensive threats to force switches on. Beware of running Knock Off, as Knocking something like Scales Fairy would leave Pult walled.
Improofs include +Def Ting-Lu, +Def Scales Fairy (or funny Sitrus), +SpD FC Fairy. Keep them at high health if improofing is needed.
Unaware Steelceus
Arceus-Steel @ Iron Plate
Ability: Unaware
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Judgment
- Roost
- Spirit Shackle
Unaware is funny and beats the Tera Poison setup Arceus formes. Also can lure random NP stuff because you take the same damage as Scales against +2. Can also use on Dialga-O but you have worse bulk and speed.
Specs Trick Nasty Plot
Flutter Mane @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Boomburst
- Astral Barrage
- Switcheroo
- Nasty Plot
Can be run on like anything that only need 2 moves to function. Flutter doesn't really need anything other than STABs (Volt Switch is eh) so Trick is great to cripple some threats. Then due to losing Specs the damage output can be quite terrible but Nasty Plot remedies this and can be highly effective with the wall being choice locked.
Support Diancie
Diancie @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Spirit Break
- Roost
- Stone Axe
- Spirit Shackle
Diancie has good typing. Magic Bounce was to improof something on the team and counter Spikes Etern but Ice Scales (or maybe Sand Stream!?) is probably better since it checks Collision and V-create Ray. Really great into Eternatus sets because you are immune to Dragon and resist Torch while being neutral to Poison. Can also run pivoting and improof with Gigaton (I think, 250 150 150 bulk is absurd).
Knock Off Koraidon
Koraidon @ Choice Band
Ability: Teravolt
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Glaive Rush
- Gigaton Hammer
- Knock Off
Tera type should probably be Dragon but this was for no-Tera.
Mold Korai is very effective into Fur Coats, 2HKOing all of them with Dondozo requiring Tera. Thus Flip Turn chip is less useful and instead Knock Off helps remove the annoying Helmet and also Boots. Removing Helmet against something like Dondozo means you can spam both STABs with no repercussions and notably be able to out PP recovery.
Covert Cloak Imposter
Chansey @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Whatever
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Jungle Healing
- Block
- Haze
- Court Change
Eviolite has been the dominant item on Imposter. However, Cloak Imposter, if you can fit it (so like not on offensive teams) by having a solid defensive backbone, is an amazing tool into fatter teams and sets. Cloak denies common utility options in Mortal Spin, Salt Cure, Spirit Shackle, and Nuzzle, completely denying certain Improofing methods. You obviously need to avoid being Knocked (arguably more than Eviolite) but there should always be at least one member of a team Cloak Imp is capable of exploiting hard. You lose some defensive improofing capabilities for stuff like Flutter but in return you can improof Mortal mons and stuff.
"Mixed" Eternatus (I never used it but considered it multiple weeks)
Eternatus @ Toxic Plate / Life Orb
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Shell Side Arm
- Dragon Energy / Something else
- Strength Sap
- Filler
Shell Side Arm is a good move (it does ignore Ice Scales).
252 Atk Toxic Plate Adaptability Eternatus Shell Side Arm vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Chansey: 256-302 (36.3 - 42.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Adaptability Eternatus Shell Side Arm vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Chansey: 278-328 (39.4 - 46.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Metagame thoughts
I feel like the metagame isn't as horrible as people make it out to be. Yes it is more matchup fishy than normal but that is kind of to be expected when there are so many threats that are able to bypass standard blanket checks (read: Imposter). Yes we know the main culprits are Terastallization and Marshadow. But regardless during prepping and building for 7 weeks I didn't really find the meta to be "unfun". There are still plenty of viable innovation possible that is not just straight matchup fish.
BH as a concept is bound to have a lot of viable threats that makes it impossible to cover everything within one team, even stall is not able to reliably deal with every threat. I will say that some specific aspects of this meta (thats not Tera and Spec) are contributing to this. First is the difficulty of Imposter-proofing easily, this forces defensive sets towards a certain way that makes them less effective at checking other stuff since they need to run certain moves to deal with Imposter or Improof a defensive teammate (offensive Improofing is largely the same as before) unlike before where moves like Anchor, Core, Waves served as both strong STAB/coverage options and utility. Second is the collection of changes that reduced the bulk level, with the main two being 8 pp recovery and no absurd wall (read: Zyg). 8 PP Recovery means that unlike say ND, slower wallbreakers are actually viable because you don't just get recovery stalled unless you only have a 8 PP button to click. The effect of the lack of something like Zyg can be seen in ND post Zyg ban, where a whole bunch of offensive wallbreakers are now viable when before they were walled by Zyg (even without Tera). Though this second point is arguable if it is a negative, since it does increase offensive variety.
Solutions? Terastal Clause is a good start, since it helps tone down the power level of threats and help deal with inconsistent defensive stuff against stuff like Steel Flutter. And afterwards? not much is known. Meta without Tera is so radically different (experience from no Tera match with Akira) that there will be some notable shifts, with some possible unbans.
What I find actually more unfun than Tera in this meta though, is the Sub Setup stuff that have been seeing increased usage. This stuff is basically mostly discount Poison Heal with the anti-Imposter, survivability, boosting, and resilience against defensive mons, while even having some advantages over PH. Overall just very difficult to address long term, which is entirely possible because these sets get a ton of opportunities to switch into various mons that get walled. This is probably more unhealthy than Tera tbh. Honourary mention to Fillet o Fish.
The other points Tea has made haven't really been issues for me. Balance has always been the face of BH in any meta that isn't egregiously unbalanced and chaotic. As mentioned, there can also still be good amount of innovation and stuff like defensive cores can vary greatly between teams. Just looking through my 7 teams I have only used FC Dozo 3 times as my repeat on the primary Def mon, and basically didn't repeat any SpD cores. Entry hazard removal also isn't as bad as I felt before, having good removal can be annoying to fit but good removal options are not scarce. Imposter is the more annoying aspect of having removal but Mortal is built in non-Cloak Imp deterrent.
Free Zygod. It will help this meta trust.
Zacian-Crowned
Zacian @ Rusted Sword
Ability: Illuminate
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Gigaton Hammer
- Spirit Break
- Spirit Shackle
- Strength Sap
With variations in moves depending on team requirements.
Zacian-C is a cool hybrid utility mon that provides several useful traits, compared to regular Zacian. A faster speed tier is useful for the rare Dragapult and Spin Rayquaza. The Steel-typing is really useful though, providing a resistance to -ate types and a neutrality to Steel, meaning Zac-C takes the same damage from -ate bursts as Scales Zacian, while also being an emergency Korai check by taking any one move and outspeeding. It also comes with higher offensive presence and a very strong Gigaton Hammer to force some switches. Note that Gigaton means it is not Imposter-proof if Imposter got the ISword proc.
Mortal Spin FC Fireceus
Arceus-Fire @ Flame Plate
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Judgment
- Mortal Spin
- Recover
- Calm Mind
Mortal Spin Desoland Fireceus
Arceus-Fire @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Desolate Land
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- V-create
- Spirit Shackle
- Mortal Spin
- Moonlight
Fireceus is a solid user of Mortal Spin because its strong STAB forces Steel-types out, while Mortal Spin also annoys Eviolite Imposter. Calm Mind makes Judgment somewhat threatening to Dialga-O and is good for the FC set, though FC is a bit insufficient alone due to Flip Turn. Desoland V-create threatens basically all Steel-types while being a great improof to defensive mons utilizing Flip Turn to deny Imposter momentum. Mortal Spin can be swapped for Solar Beam if removal is covered to annoy Dondozo.
Wandering Spirit Zamazenta-Crowned
Zamazenta-Crowned @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Wandering Spirit
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Triple Arrows
- Spirit Shackle
- Mortal Spin
- Strength Sap
I was looking for a set to help deal with and annoy RegenVest mons, and Wandering Spirit is the perfect ability for the set to punish all the contact moves Regen mons use while stealing it for free recovery. Considering at the time the most common Regen mons were Dialga and Ting-Lu a Fighting-type was natural so I went with Zamazenta-C. Triple Arrows is key here as a non contact move to prevent triggering Wandering Spirit, and heavily threatens the Regen mons with its effects. Fighting STAB here helps Mortal Spin do its thing, while Shackle is obv for Imposter, but can also be good against Regen mons to force U-turn. Very often you don't need to click recovery often due to the amount of free Regenerator healing you can steal.
Adaptability Dragapult
Dragapult @ Life Orb
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Astral Barrage
- Poltergeist
- Glaive Rush
- Strength Sap
One of the better mixed attackers in the meta, and only gets much better without Tera. Dragapult is one of the few mons fast enough while having reasonable mixed offenses. Middling offenses are compensated by Life Orb, Adapt, and high BP STABs. With good prediction Pult is capable of 2HKOing basically everything, especially with a hazard up. Pult's speed tier, STABs, and mixed potential also makes it an amazing revenge-killer, capable of OHKOing most offensive threats, notably being a rare RK against Tera Steel Flutter. Poltergeist also can give some information early on. It hates Tera though, both defensively and because Tera Adapt is horrible interaction. Also doesn't do very well into ultra-fat teams due to lacking offensive threats to force switches on. Beware of running Knock Off, as Knocking something like Scales Fairy would leave Pult walled.
Improofs include +Def Ting-Lu, +Def Scales Fairy (or funny Sitrus), +SpD FC Fairy. Keep them at high health if improofing is needed.
252 Atk Life Orb Adaptability Dragapult Poltergeist vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Arceus-Fairy: 205-244 (46.1 - 54.9%) -- 64.5% chance to 2HKO (Glaive Rush stronger)
252 SpA Life Orb Adaptability Dragapult Astral Barrage vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Fairy: 198-234 (44.5 - 52.7%) -- 22.3% chance to 2HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Adaptability Dragapult Glaive Rush vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Ting-Lu: 218-257 (42.4 - 50%) -- 93.4% chance to 2HKO after 1 layer of Spikes
252 Atk Life Orb Adaptability Dragapult Poltergeist vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Tera Steel Flutter Mane: 333-393 (106 - 125.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Life Orb Adaptability Dragapult Astral Barrage vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Fairy: 198-234 (44.5 - 52.7%) -- 22.3% chance to 2HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Adaptability Dragapult Glaive Rush vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Ting-Lu: 218-257 (42.4 - 50%) -- 93.4% chance to 2HKO after 1 layer of Spikes
252 Atk Life Orb Adaptability Dragapult Poltergeist vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Tera Steel Flutter Mane: 333-393 (106 - 125.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Unaware Steelceus
Arceus-Steel @ Iron Plate
Ability: Unaware
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Judgment
- Roost
- Spirit Shackle
Unaware is funny and beats the Tera Poison setup Arceus formes. Also can lure random NP stuff because you take the same damage as Scales against +2. Can also use on Dialga-O but you have worse bulk and speed.
Specs Trick Nasty Plot
Flutter Mane @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Boomburst
- Astral Barrage
- Switcheroo
- Nasty Plot
Can be run on like anything that only need 2 moves to function. Flutter doesn't really need anything other than STABs (Volt Switch is eh) so Trick is great to cripple some threats. Then due to losing Specs the damage output can be quite terrible but Nasty Plot remedies this and can be highly effective with the wall being choice locked.
Support Diancie
Diancie @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Spirit Break
- Roost
- Stone Axe
- Spirit Shackle
Diancie has good typing. Magic Bounce was to improof something on the team and counter Spikes Etern but Ice Scales (or maybe Sand Stream!?) is probably better since it checks Collision and V-create Ray. Really great into Eternatus sets because you are immune to Dragon and resist Torch while being neutral to Poison. Can also run pivoting and improof with Gigaton (I think, 250 150 150 bulk is absurd).
Knock Off Koraidon
Koraidon @ Choice Band
Ability: Teravolt
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Glaive Rush
- Gigaton Hammer
- Knock Off
Tera type should probably be Dragon but this was for no-Tera.
Mold Korai is very effective into Fur Coats, 2HKOing all of them with Dondozo requiring Tera. Thus Flip Turn chip is less useful and instead Knock Off helps remove the annoying Helmet and also Boots. Removing Helmet against something like Dondozo means you can spam both STABs with no repercussions and notably be able to out PP recovery.
Covert Cloak Imposter
Chansey @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Whatever
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Jungle Healing
- Block
- Haze
- Court Change
Eviolite has been the dominant item on Imposter. However, Cloak Imposter, if you can fit it (so like not on offensive teams) by having a solid defensive backbone, is an amazing tool into fatter teams and sets. Cloak denies common utility options in Mortal Spin, Salt Cure, Spirit Shackle, and Nuzzle, completely denying certain Improofing methods. You obviously need to avoid being Knocked (arguably more than Eviolite) but there should always be at least one member of a team Cloak Imp is capable of exploiting hard. You lose some defensive improofing capabilities for stuff like Flutter but in return you can improof Mortal mons and stuff.
"Mixed" Eternatus (I never used it but considered it multiple weeks)
Eternatus @ Toxic Plate / Life Orb
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Shell Side Arm
- Dragon Energy / Something else
- Strength Sap
- Filler
Shell Side Arm is a good move (it does ignore Ice Scales).
252 Atk Toxic Plate Adaptability Eternatus Shell Side Arm vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Chansey: 256-302 (36.3 - 42.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Adaptability Eternatus Shell Side Arm vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Chansey: 278-328 (39.4 - 46.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Metagame thoughts
I feel like the metagame isn't as horrible as people make it out to be. Yes it is more matchup fishy than normal but that is kind of to be expected when there are so many threats that are able to bypass standard blanket checks (read: Imposter). Yes we know the main culprits are Terastallization and Marshadow. But regardless during prepping and building for 7 weeks I didn't really find the meta to be "unfun". There are still plenty of viable innovation possible that is not just straight matchup fish.
BH as a concept is bound to have a lot of viable threats that makes it impossible to cover everything within one team, even stall is not able to reliably deal with every threat. I will say that some specific aspects of this meta (thats not Tera and Spec) are contributing to this. First is the difficulty of Imposter-proofing easily, this forces defensive sets towards a certain way that makes them less effective at checking other stuff since they need to run certain moves to deal with Imposter or Improof a defensive teammate (offensive Improofing is largely the same as before) unlike before where moves like Anchor, Core, Waves served as both strong STAB/coverage options and utility. Second is the collection of changes that reduced the bulk level, with the main two being 8 pp recovery and no absurd wall (read: Zyg). 8 PP Recovery means that unlike say ND, slower wallbreakers are actually viable because you don't just get recovery stalled unless you only have a 8 PP button to click. The effect of the lack of something like Zyg can be seen in ND post Zyg ban, where a whole bunch of offensive wallbreakers are now viable when before they were walled by Zyg (even without Tera). Though this second point is arguable if it is a negative, since it does increase offensive variety.
Solutions? Terastal Clause is a good start, since it helps tone down the power level of threats and help deal with inconsistent defensive stuff against stuff like Steel Flutter. And afterwards? not much is known. Meta without Tera is so radically different (experience from no Tera match with Akira) that there will be some notable shifts, with some possible unbans.
What I find actually more unfun than Tera in this meta though, is the Sub Setup stuff that have been seeing increased usage. This stuff is basically mostly discount Poison Heal with the anti-Imposter, survivability, boosting, and resilience against defensive mons, while even having some advantages over PH. Overall just very difficult to address long term, which is entirely possible because these sets get a ton of opportunities to switch into various mons that get walled. This is probably more unhealthy than Tera tbh. Honourary mention to Fillet o Fish.
The other points Tea has made haven't really been issues for me. Balance has always been the face of BH in any meta that isn't egregiously unbalanced and chaotic. As mentioned, there can also still be good amount of innovation and stuff like defensive cores can vary greatly between teams. Just looking through my 7 teams I have only used FC Dozo 3 times as my repeat on the primary Def mon, and basically didn't repeat any SpD cores. Entry hazard removal also isn't as bad as I felt before, having good removal can be annoying to fit but good removal options are not scarce. Imposter is the more annoying aspect of having removal but Mortal is built in non-Cloak Imp deterrent.
Free Zygod. It will help this meta trust.
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help what are any of you saying I just wanted to know how it works not sus sus amogus
Torch Song, in theory, is great for dealing with GaG setup Zamazenta. However, I recently ran into a Fur Coat Fire Arceus which wasn't able to wall Zamazenta for some reason. I don't know why, mayhaps something to with the stat spread? Arceus's 120 base HP may also factor into Zamazenta's ability to quickly heal.tl;dr use torch song steel resists and/or magic guarders that resist steel and bypass/remove sub. tidy up with no leech seed negation is not really reliable.
trying to beat the attacker through raw damage is certainly a task, but it is possible. tidy up users that don't fold to iron head are the best candidates here, which basically just limits it to palafin and fur coat groudon. these are able to remove the sub with tidy up, threatening damage on zamac if they don't sub again or switch out. these aren't great honestly; landing a leech seed is mostly going to offset the health zamac expends on subs (and most of the time zamac has speed advantage), one blades miss puts groudon in a very dire situation, and both use strength sap meaning they need to find time to heal against something else. palafin can also branch out with sniper LO to simply ignore the defense boosts, although it needs tera water to actually break the sub in one hit of surging strikes.
probably the most successful answer i've found to this set, however, is magic guard. magic guarders are rare because the moves that make you want to use magic guard (and the mons that want to use them) aren't great, not helped by the lack of mind blown. you also can't just use something like mguard ray because it's just going to die to iron head; you still need to resist steel. this is the best option i've found:
Heatran @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Torch Song
- Steel Beam
- Chloroblast
- Strength Sap
this is quite jank, but it gets the job done and isn't useless otherwise. magic guard, torch song, and a 4x steel resist completely shut gold zamac down, and it's not totally bad outside of this thanks to being a 4x fairy resist, steel-type special attacker, and spatk booster. if you're putting this on a structure it should be to help out another special mon that gets slowed down by scales zacian and dialga-o, which this harasses very well. it can also help with some stuff that wants imp on low HP, as improofing with imp chansey is relatively safe + torch song does noticeable damage to imp.
The Heatran set above, though, is viable but it seems only in a very niche situation. The lack of Mind Blown is an impairment to Heatran's utility overall, but Torch Song does have some added benefit of raising SpA. I don't see this Heatran set being commonly used. Its Fire/Steel typing is nice for passively resisting Steel type moves without any other abilities, though the number of viable Steel/Fairy moves is limited to Gigaton Hammer and Magical Torque (and now Iron Head?). On top of that, Heatran's 77 base speed and lack of Quiver Dance means its playing as a slow bulky sweeper but can easily get knocked around by anything faster. Given Heatran's 4 time weakness to Ground and how common Fur Coat Groudons are, this set is immediately threatened by any pivot switch in.
Free Zygod, free edgy shadow child, amen.
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I really hate to post twice in a row, but GaG Zamazenta is getting out of hand.
The only consistent viable counter to GaG Zamazenta is GaG Zamazenta itself. Given a standard moveset of Victory Dance, Iron Head, Leech Seed and Substitute, we are looking at around 70 turns of PP stalling since the set is a wall to itself. The Heatran set Gum Buddy mentioned works and all, but a base 77 Speed is a big nope.
Here's some replays of just the most horrid stall in fathomable BHG9 existence:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-1902670262-viaqu853k2ikqyz2uqkidpa279rwbs1pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-1903338379
I remember Akira and I were fighting one time and we came to the agreement to pretend that both our Zamazentas had fainted because neither of us wanted to play 70 turns of PP stalling. This type of agreement works between people who are higher in the ladder, but for new players it can be really discouraging. Imagine hopping on BHG9 with a Desolate Land + V-Create set thinking "Man, I love this set. I can't wait to sweep everyone!" and some 1100 player comes along and hits you with the 70 turns stall. Not only is this not healthy for the meta, but also the players of BH overall by creating an uncompetitive space.
I cannot stress enough how much of a problem this has become recently. Unless your running Double Steel types with Regenerator/Unaware + Pivot, you're going to have a hard time breaking Zamazenta without whittling down it's PP. Victory Dance, Good As Good or Substitute must be considered soon as they are the keystone in keeping this set alive. Personally, I am in favor of a Substitute suspect/ban because the amount of prolonged battle strategies achievable with Substitute is unreasonable.
Thank you for listening to my rant about the absolute state of Zamazenta. Have a good day and I hope your battles aren't as painful as the ones above.
The only consistent viable counter to GaG Zamazenta is GaG Zamazenta itself. Given a standard moveset of Victory Dance, Iron Head, Leech Seed and Substitute, we are looking at around 70 turns of PP stalling since the set is a wall to itself. The Heatran set Gum Buddy mentioned works and all, but a base 77 Speed is a big nope.
Here's some replays of just the most horrid stall in fathomable BHG9 existence:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-1902670262-viaqu853k2ikqyz2uqkidpa279rwbs1pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-1903338379
I remember Akira and I were fighting one time and we came to the agreement to pretend that both our Zamazentas had fainted because neither of us wanted to play 70 turns of PP stalling. This type of agreement works between people who are higher in the ladder, but for new players it can be really discouraging. Imagine hopping on BHG9 with a Desolate Land + V-Create set thinking "Man, I love this set. I can't wait to sweep everyone!" and some 1100 player comes along and hits you with the 70 turns stall. Not only is this not healthy for the meta, but also the players of BH overall by creating an uncompetitive space.
I cannot stress enough how much of a problem this has become recently. Unless your running Double Steel types with Regenerator/Unaware + Pivot, you're going to have a hard time breaking Zamazenta without whittling down it's PP. Victory Dance, Good As Good or Substitute must be considered soon as they are the keystone in keeping this set alive. Personally, I am in favor of a Substitute suspect/ban because the amount of prolonged battle strategies achievable with Substitute is unreasonable.
Thank you for listening to my rant about the absolute state of Zamazenta. Have a good day and I hope your battles aren't as painful as the ones above.