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OKAYYYYYY a bit funny after i post about the bear it gets nuked, anyways, following up on lbns post, i also want to share my disapproval for the ban + how it was handled. No hate to the council at all, I know its hard and were all humans and make mistakes, but I really think this was a horrible way to go about handling these mons. Before I go in about the mon itself. I want to address some tiering issues mentioned / that i realised before this that can cause issues while handling this. I know home came at a horrible time smack dab before ndwc playoffs, and that is Not Good for everyone involved having the meta be potentially extremely volatile with the new mons, as well as NDLT starting up this weekend (why is it during wc playoffs??? last year i checked it was a week after wc ended, really weird timing lol) so i understand it being a bit hard doing the quick ban -> suspect thing that ubers is doing with caly s, and i understand that you guys must have had a lot of pressure to make a decision about these mons quickly, but I really think that this could have been done much better regardless.
About the mon itself:
Ursaluna @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Facade
- Headlong Rush
- Fire Punch
This set or some variation of it was cited as an issue in the post, and really the only set ive seen being mentioned overall lol so thats only what im going to talk about (bu luna is the best set guys….). Ursaluna itself is a powerhouse of a mon, absurd 140 attack further boosted with guts and flame orb as well as Tera, it is pretty much impossible switching into this mon safely assuming it gets the turn correct…. and this is where the issue lies. Both of ursa’s STABs (and really if im being honest the only two of its moves which are scary even on neutral hits, as its coverage isnt that hard without the tera/stab/high bp that its stab moves have) have extremely common immunities in the tier, with ground immunes mandated on every single good team, and ghosts itself are very common mons both in ladder and tour play:
Last Months usage:
| 5 | Dragapult | 17.39838% | 236177 | 12.654% | 171964 | 12.227% |
| 6 | Gholdengo | 16.56718% | 175493 | 9.403% | 129778 | 9.228% |
Both Pult and Ghold are really popular on ladder, and I expect this number to rise slightly with Luna introduced, and Ghold even more with sneasler existing, so definitely common mons.
NDWC:
W1-
| 5 | Gholdengo | 11 | 21.15% | 63.64% |
| 7 | Dragapult | 10 | 19.23% | 40.00% |
W2-
| 2 | Dragapult | 12 | 25.00% | 66.67% |
| 10 | Gholdengo | 7 | 14.58% | 42.86% |
W3-
| 4 | Gholdengo | 11 | 23.91% | 54.55% |
| 7 | Dragapult | 9 | 19.57% | 44.44% |
W4-
| 5 | Gholdengo | 12 | 26.09% | 50.00% |
| 7 | Dragapult | 11 | 23.91% | 45.45% |
Some other ghosts have been used as well scattered throughout the week, a quite few skeledirges, some sableyes / blacephs / mimikyus / aegis / hizoros. Pult and Ghold are definitely top tier mons in the tier, based on the top 10 usage consistently every week (with solid winrate), and same on ladder, and other ghosts definitely still are used, and with the new mon additions i wouldnt be suprised if ghost usage rate in total surpasses 50%. Ghosts are prevelant on most good teams in the tier, just because of how good they are as mons. However, it isnt just Ghosts, as a lot of bulky Steels are commonly physically defensive and take unboosted normal stab well, skarm, ferro, mzor, bulky fog kart (this set is real here too dont forget him), so its not like its limited to immunities. Ursaluna is an incredibly predict heavy mon, especially considering it is constantly being chipped down by flame orb (which stacks up super fast btw), so its not like it can keep dancing around, it needs to gets turns right, and with tera being a thing as well it gets even harder, need to get the 5050 switches right AND potential tera ghosts/flyings to mess it up even more (which i expect will be even popular in the future with more play)
Ursaluna’s reliance on trick room is an extremely huge burden as well, since our setters are quite easily taken advantage of and easily pressured + as well as being super predictable, outside of trick room luna is a liability in my eyes, its bulk is good but with hazards and orb and trying to hard switch on things it in practice is much worse than its bulk lends it to be. Luna’s power is scary in comparison to most mons but compared to other trick room mons it is not that special imo, and most of the tera arguments can be applied to other breakers y under trick room. Furthermore, needing a turn for flame orb to proc (unless slow pivoted into) is super detrimental to trick room as you waste a turn where you at best can swords dance, making the playstyle even more linear if it wants to function well. Trick Room itself is a matchup fishy playstyle and the addition of luna does not change this, it hasnt become some super consistent powerful playstyle, u still fish for slower bulkier teams, witf faster structures you can generally out offense if and stall out the turns / break the setters.
To get to the point, I do not think Luna (at least this set) is in any way broken, very easy to dance around and out offense, and we had barely any time to adapt to it. Personally talking to people in the natdex room about this set who initially had issues with it quickly realised luna’s faults and how to adjust around it through play or build. I dont think Luna is more than a standard trick room attacker, until theres more development this mon is solely relegated to trick room and does not make the playstyle too hard too deal with.
About how the voting was done, I think it was done very poorly, with anything that isnt as outwardly broken as calyrex s or arceus should always have some form of community input, either by a survey or a thread or a suspect, hell, even just basing it on posts made lol. This decision feels very not thought through, barely anyone has complained about this publically and there is no public evidence that would even warrant a slate being done. I really hope the council rectifies this by setting up a suspect date, potentially during ladder tour playoffs (scheduled so that ban result is announced at start of last week so it wont have to be freed during the tour) or really just unban it now imo for the ladder tour (if playoffs is such an issue idk keep it banned lol). There has been less than a week of development, and barely any public outcry about luna, although i wouldnt even support an outright quickban like this for sneasler lol who i think is miles more broken. Please respect the playerbase and treat this fairly, home released at a terrible time but it isnt an excuse to jump the gun on decisions like this so quickly.
@ other people on discord and ps who have voiced their disagreement there please post here as well so your voices get heard
e: i mentioned this on discord already but i the reasonings of “ou did this too why is this an issue” is a very, to put it nicely, out of touch and disingenuous , response. Since home release, ou has had FIFTY NINE PAGES of responses in their metagame discussion thread. to put that in perspective we barely have 15 pages in ours and ours was from the start of sv??? thats how much community input ou has had lol. another funny comparison, since home released, luna was only mentioned 3 times in this thread (before the ban) and one of them was me talking about bulk up and av. luna was mentioned 20+ times in less than half a day in the ou metagame discussion thread (midnight to 10am mine when i counted). while ou may not have done a proper survey or a suspect, they sure did get a fuck ton of community opinion lol, hundreds of times more than what we did. they also didnt ban the mon, which is another distinction, part of which i would assume comes with the fact that the mon is completely new and they might be giving the tier a chance to adapt to it, so i really really really would appreciate it if no one brings this argument up since it is not a valid reason and quite insulting.
e2: ou also had the funny mon magearna at the time! the one that actually made trick room broken. a lot of the sentiment around it was also blamed on mage boosting tr too, and a lot (at least on smogcord who i had this discussion with) agreed that with mage gone tr wouldnt be that big of an issue and neither will luna, and agreed on letting mage go first then only reevaluating luna.
anyways have a nice day !
About the mon itself:
Ursaluna @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Facade
- Headlong Rush
- Fire Punch
This set or some variation of it was cited as an issue in the post, and really the only set ive seen being mentioned overall lol so thats only what im going to talk about (bu luna is the best set guys….). Ursaluna itself is a powerhouse of a mon, absurd 140 attack further boosted with guts and flame orb as well as Tera, it is pretty much impossible switching into this mon safely assuming it gets the turn correct…. and this is where the issue lies. Both of ursa’s STABs (and really if im being honest the only two of its moves which are scary even on neutral hits, as its coverage isnt that hard without the tera/stab/high bp that its stab moves have) have extremely common immunities in the tier, with ground immunes mandated on every single good team, and ghosts itself are very common mons both in ladder and tour play:
Last Months usage:
| 5 | Dragapult | 17.39838% | 236177 | 12.654% | 171964 | 12.227% |
| 6 | Gholdengo | 16.56718% | 175493 | 9.403% | 129778 | 9.228% |
Both Pult and Ghold are really popular on ladder, and I expect this number to rise slightly with Luna introduced, and Ghold even more with sneasler existing, so definitely common mons.
NDWC:
W1-
| 5 | Gholdengo | 11 | 21.15% | 63.64% |
| 7 | Dragapult | 10 | 19.23% | 40.00% |
W2-
| 2 | Dragapult | 12 | 25.00% | 66.67% |
| 10 | Gholdengo | 7 | 14.58% | 42.86% |
W3-
| 4 | Gholdengo | 11 | 23.91% | 54.55% |
| 7 | Dragapult | 9 | 19.57% | 44.44% |
W4-
| 5 | Gholdengo | 12 | 26.09% | 50.00% |
| 7 | Dragapult | 11 | 23.91% | 45.45% |
Some other ghosts have been used as well scattered throughout the week, a quite few skeledirges, some sableyes / blacephs / mimikyus / aegis / hizoros. Pult and Ghold are definitely top tier mons in the tier, based on the top 10 usage consistently every week (with solid winrate), and same on ladder, and other ghosts definitely still are used, and with the new mon additions i wouldnt be suprised if ghost usage rate in total surpasses 50%. Ghosts are prevelant on most good teams in the tier, just because of how good they are as mons. However, it isnt just Ghosts, as a lot of bulky Steels are commonly physically defensive and take unboosted normal stab well, skarm, ferro, mzor, bulky fog kart (this set is real here too dont forget him), so its not like its limited to immunities. Ursaluna is an incredibly predict heavy mon, especially considering it is constantly being chipped down by flame orb (which stacks up super fast btw), so its not like it can keep dancing around, it needs to gets turns right, and with tera being a thing as well it gets even harder, need to get the 5050 switches right AND potential tera ghosts/flyings to mess it up even more (which i expect will be even popular in the future with more play)
Ursaluna’s reliance on trick room is an extremely huge burden as well, since our setters are quite easily taken advantage of and easily pressured + as well as being super predictable, outside of trick room luna is a liability in my eyes, its bulk is good but with hazards and orb and trying to hard switch on things it in practice is much worse than its bulk lends it to be. Luna’s power is scary in comparison to most mons but compared to other trick room mons it is not that special imo, and most of the tera arguments can be applied to other breakers y under trick room. Furthermore, needing a turn for flame orb to proc (unless slow pivoted into) is super detrimental to trick room as you waste a turn where you at best can swords dance, making the playstyle even more linear if it wants to function well. Trick Room itself is a matchup fishy playstyle and the addition of luna does not change this, it hasnt become some super consistent powerful playstyle, u still fish for slower bulkier teams, witf faster structures you can generally out offense if and stall out the turns / break the setters.
To get to the point, I do not think Luna (at least this set) is in any way broken, very easy to dance around and out offense, and we had barely any time to adapt to it. Personally talking to people in the natdex room about this set who initially had issues with it quickly realised luna’s faults and how to adjust around it through play or build. I dont think Luna is more than a standard trick room attacker, until theres more development this mon is solely relegated to trick room and does not make the playstyle too hard too deal with.
About how the voting was done, I think it was done very poorly, with anything that isnt as outwardly broken as calyrex s or arceus should always have some form of community input, either by a survey or a thread or a suspect, hell, even just basing it on posts made lol. This decision feels very not thought through, barely anyone has complained about this publically and there is no public evidence that would even warrant a slate being done. I really hope the council rectifies this by setting up a suspect date, potentially during ladder tour playoffs (scheduled so that ban result is announced at start of last week so it wont have to be freed during the tour) or really just unban it now imo for the ladder tour (if playoffs is such an issue idk keep it banned lol). There has been less than a week of development, and barely any public outcry about luna, although i wouldnt even support an outright quickban like this for sneasler lol who i think is miles more broken. Please respect the playerbase and treat this fairly, home released at a terrible time but it isnt an excuse to jump the gun on decisions like this so quickly.
@ other people on discord and ps who have voiced their disagreement there please post here as well so your voices get heard
e: i mentioned this on discord already but i the reasonings of “ou did this too why is this an issue” is a very, to put it nicely, out of touch and disingenuous , response. Since home release, ou has had FIFTY NINE PAGES of responses in their metagame discussion thread. to put that in perspective we barely have 15 pages in ours and ours was from the start of sv??? thats how much community input ou has had lol. another funny comparison, since home released, luna was only mentioned 3 times in this thread (before the ban) and one of them was me talking about bulk up and av. luna was mentioned 20+ times in less than half a day in the ou metagame discussion thread (midnight to 10am mine when i counted). while ou may not have done a proper survey or a suspect, they sure did get a fuck ton of community opinion lol, hundreds of times more than what we did. they also didnt ban the mon, which is another distinction, part of which i would assume comes with the fact that the mon is completely new and they might be giving the tier a chance to adapt to it, so i really really really would appreciate it if no one brings this argument up since it is not a valid reason and quite insulting.
e2: ou also had the funny mon magearna at the time! the one that actually made trick room broken. a lot of the sentiment around it was also blamed on mage boosting tr too, and a lot (at least on smogcord who i had this discussion with) agreed that with mage gone tr wouldnt be that big of an issue and neither will luna, and agreed on letting mage go first then only reevaluating luna.
anyways have a nice day !
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