Hey, it's me! I'm going to complain about a pokemon I would argue is even more of a cucklord in the BW OU Metagame, Reuniclus! This gummy bear jelly baby... thing... is able to completely take over games with only a bit of chip on the opponent's pokemon (most commonly achieved through hazards namely spikes as well as the sand and hail teams it features on) with just one moveset, tech not even needed: calm mind, recover, psychic/psyshock, and focus miss. And as an additional note, pretty much everything I talk about in this post (and the follow up one I made after the fact) is focusing on
physically defensive calm mind Reuniclus, as shown below, not any other set.
Reuniclus @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
- Calm Mind
- Psychic/Psyshock
- Focus Blast
- Recover
Part 1: How it in itself is very difficult to consistently hold back
This pokemon is able to sponge practically any physical attack, even the absolute strongest one that will at least semi-regularly appear: It will always live Choice Banded Kyurem-Black's Outrage
from full,
which is a 120 base power move with STAB coming off a base 170 attack stat and an adamant nature that gets a 50% boost on top of that.
Very few physical attacks can actually damage reun as much as this, meaning it will have plenty of time to completely shrug off any damage with recover. Furthermore, thanks to broken magic guard, just like alakazam, it takes no passive damage whatsoever, whether it be toxic, burn, sand, hail, hazards, contact punishing, etc., making it even more difficult to kill. Hell, it absolutely LOVES using these things to its advantage, as if it gets burned or poisoned it will be completely immune to thunder wave or the odd freeze meaning it will no longer have turns potentially wasted, and it can abuse the same hail and sand to chip the opponent, have its teammates' hazards chip the opponent, etc, even to the point where a decently common alternative item on this set is rocky helmet, for all the aforementioned reasons. This is even to the point where some teams deliberately go out of their way to run worry seed on ferrothorn (and very very rarely pheal loom) just to kill reun after it's been hit by a toxic, which means they can no longer run a more consistently useful move like gyro ball, stealth rocks, or thunder wave.
Part 2: How it exacerbates its teammates
I'm sure as many, many people know, the strongest and most consistent teams in BW OU have been (and for quite a long time) sand balance, often featuring reuniclus, as well as pokemon that very often choose to make its acquaintance, such as alakzam, latios, ferrothorn, skarmory, gliscor, and landorus-therian. Not only can reuniclus itself boost up and attack the opponent and heal off hits and just in general be a nuisance that gathers chip, but the chip that reuniclus gathers by doing what it does is massively important for teammates such as latios and alakazam (the most notable ones). The biggest example I have of this is Tyranitar and how reuniclus affects its EV spread. But first, we have to look at alakazam and more important latios. As Samu77 mentioned in his alakazam section, one counterpoint to alakazam being "dumb" or "broken" or whatever is Tyranitar, and he disputes that by mentioning Tyranitar already has its hands full dealing with latios and shutting down rain (as well as reuniclus but we'll get to that in a moment). Very often, this heavy chip latios gathers on tyranitar by having spikes and rocks up and hitting it hard with surf or draco meteor potentially boosted by a calm mind or choice specs will result in it dropping to very low health, usually enough for alakazam to put it down the next time Tyranitar comes in to try and stop its shenanigans. Alternatively, hazards will be stacked and then zam comes in to kill something and then when Tyranitar comes in to kill it, Alakazam will just focus blast Tyranitar and after the chople berry it carries a vast majority of the time, it will be in range of dying hazards the next time it wants to come in and maybe an attack. Both of these scenarios Reuniclus can exploit excellently, as it will start boosting up with calm mind, become unkillable, and win the game from there. But what if Tyranitar manages to stay alive or even decently healthy to deal with Reun? This is where I can bring up the EV spread altering I talked about briefly. Tyranitar would love, and I mean LOVE to be able to run max special defense with a careful nature so it can better deal with latios while more consistently dodging death from Zam's focus blast after a chople. However, Max Sp. Def Tar fails to consistenly 2hko reuniclus after leftovers, in fact only a 4.7% chance with 8 attack evs. This means that Tyranitar has to pick a side, fail to kill Reun or fail to live both two Latios draco meteor's and an Alakazam focus blast after rocks, and very often it chooses the former because of how common it is for reun to threaten a game-ending sweep, meaning that not only does it have to give up 80 special defense evs but also run an attack boosting nature instead of a special defense boosting nature. This goes full circle, as now without the max sp. def it would love to have it's so much harder for it to stave off latios and alakazam, thus resulting in overall profit for the reuniclus user. Of course, this fails to mention that many teams nowadays that stack multiple of the psychic types only choose to use 2 in order to not swing too hard left or right on the rock-paper-scissors dynamic that emblemizes the tier. But even without alakazam or latios (more commonly choosing to pair with only the former rather than only the latter), these teams (for example the very common Tar Skarm Gastro Gliscor Reun Zam 6) can very easily force chip on and blow past Tar.
Part 3: The Game We Play
Now, we finally get to the matchup mock. Something I'm sure is very well known in BW is how team preview frequently gives one player an advantageous situation over the other in BW OU, often referred to as the rock-paper-scissors dynamic because the 3 most prominent team styles in the tier are weatherless, sand, and rain, which
ignoring in-game play will determine who loses or wins in that order (wless > sand, sand > rain, rain >wless as it goes), nearly identical to, well, rock-paper-scissors (as I'm sure I've said enough already). Of course, this only scratches the surface, but it is not rare in any capacity for it to hold true purely going off of win and loss results. And reuniclus is a very notable factor in the outcome of something as old as Politoed having drizzle:
the sand versus rain matchup. Quite a decent amount of the times this matchup plays out and the sand team is featuring a reuniclus, after one calm mind the rain team will no longer be able to break through it and will have to resort to using things like encore (or the very rare perish song) from politoed, trick (and the less often seen but still good roar) from latios, scizor (whether scarf or swords dance life orb), jirachi (usually sub calm mind or the specially defensive with iron head that doesn't show up often on rain) and the above-stated worry seed
with reun already badly poisoned, which is even less common on rain ferrothorn than on sand due to it very commonly running stealth rock so that you aren't forced to run rocks chomp or the (honestly bad) rocks mamo, neither of which is necessarily harmful but regardless rain would appreciate not being forced to use these pokemon to have stealth rock up, and it does. Having there only be 5 options of counterplay on rain for reuniclus doesn't seem that bad at first, but all of these can be played around through switching or gathering chip damage through spikes, stealth rock, and sand. And like I said, once Reuniclus gets a calm mind,
it is often a game ender against rain as every of the relatively few options of counterplay that commonly appear on the team style can be outlasted or switched out of, only for Reun to come in again and dominate.
Last thing I wanted to mention before my overall thoughts, this doesn't particularly go in any of the three sections I separated this into, but 2 times previous throughout BW OU's lifetime there has been a large clamor to ban or nerf reuniclus, neither of which ended up removing it from the tier but the second of which resulted in Excadrill's freedom. While yes these metagames were very different I still think it's a good testament to the broken-ness of this pokemon.
Part 4: Conclusion
What I think of Reuniclus in modern day BW OU: I don't like it that much. Often times it feels unfair to face and difficult to beat, while being not too difficult to use and win games with, and I would not mind at all if it was banned. However, just as Samu77 said, it is not my place to comment on Reuniclus and decide its status, nor should I as I am not the best player ever, I probably got one or two things wrong, and I am not in any sort of leadership place on the tiering council and such.
However, what I can confidently say is this: Reuniclus is a great pokemon and super strong in modern day BW OU, and this is only with the calm mind set that only has to choose between psychic and psyshock as well as leftovers and maybe rocky helmet, completely neglecting that the offensive trick room set and the 3 attacks life orb set with hidden power ice exist.
Also Ban Kyurem-Black it adds practically nothing useful/healthy to the tier (and if anything there's very little), is just another one-for-one trade mon the tier doesn't need, and should have never been suspected and susbequently freed in the first place. Thanks!