np: SS UU Stage 12.1 - Fallen Kingdom

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pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
A few of my friends asked me what I posted on the survey so...

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I don't put too much thought into this question as I always enjoy playing Pokemon (it is a game!). But I put it as an 8 last time and I like it more than when I last answered (right before we suspected Goltres). So I'd put it back up one more to a 9.

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More substantively, I find the tier competitive because I can quite comfortably use teams that beat most of the metagame without having more than 1 major weakness AND still have variety.

Another thing, I don't feel this tier is too MU based - that is, I don't think you often have a significant advantage in the match up. There are a few Pokemon like REGISTEEL that I think are massively underrated and can (and have) crushed top tournament teams on preview. But it has also flopped plenty of times too. People who see say "see Registeel is bad" when it does not sweep, I think fundamentally misunderstand it though - it still provides defensive support through the game (stopping Nihilego or Scizor from sweeping for example).

Defensiveness is what sets it apart from the fishiness of Regidrago for example, which can crush in tournament games like my
PSPL win here but Drago completely flops into most Fairies and doesn't provide consistent value like Registeel does.

My main point though, is that even though I find Registeel to be excellent and emblematic of SS UU fishing problems, the simple fact is players have basically relegated to a mid tier threat (never crossed into A- on viability). The metagame has developed in such a way that fishing isn't as common anymore, there is much less hyper offense now in UUSD for example (I hardly remember any).

I believe this is simply a conscious choice though that can change and I do believe in a "meta"game - meta means our game strategy is dynamic. If I was confident that the lack fishiness resulted from the "natural" evolution of the metagame, I'd probably be torn between putting a 9 or 10 on this survey.

But because I believe we could very quickly go back to HO fishing / Registeel fishing / Rain/Trick Room to meme on other offenses, I am more torn between 8 and 9 on this answer and am going to put an 8 (still 1 higher than what I had last time).

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None of these three choices really reflect my opinion actually which is this: I think Scizor should be suspected tested but I am pretty certain I would vote do not ban. So I made the vote that would still, I am guessing, help lead to a suspect test.

Why have a suspect test for something I think isn't banworthy? Three reasons:

  1. I am aware many of my fellow UU players think Scizor is banworthy because it is broken. I want to give them a shot to ban it. If it's not broken (and I don't think it is because we have so many natural checks/counters right now), then I trust people will set prejudices aside and vote do not ban.
  2. As noted above, I am pretty satisfied with the competitiveness of the metagame right now although I do think it's a bit artificial and can swing back any moment. I'd be more interested in retesting UUBL if I thought we were at a truly competitive metagame. But I'd prefer to keep suspecting things currently in UU until we as a community come to the consensus the metagame is balanced.
  3. While I do appreciate my fellow community members opinions as noted in 1., I only would think something deserves a suspect if you could feasibly make an argument that it is broken (or uncompetitive). I don't buy that Scizor is broken because the sheer number of checks/counters/amount of counterplay it has but I still think it's the best mon in the tier (better than Salamence and Cobalion which some others think are the top mon now) because it both has longevity and sweeping potential. The counterplay it does have is extremely abusable (Skarmory is abusable since it usually only runs Body Press to attack) and the other counters like Salamence, Moltres, Rotom-H detest Knock Off.
    • So while I don't think Scizor is broken, I think it feasibly could be argued to be broken.
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To be blunt, I regret voting ban on Goltres.

I know I wrote above that I don't think we should test UUBL until we come to the consensus the tier is balanced, so I don't think we should retest this Goltres thing unless like nobody wants to test anything else in UU.

But a couple reasons stick out to me as Goltres shouldn't have been banned

  1. First of all, why are we okay with Celesteela but not Goltres? Celesteela has a much more broken ability in my view and really the only much bigger issue it has is the inability to flinch down Nihilego nearly as easily since it resists Air Slash. The other issue is Celesteela is slower than Scarf Hydreigon but there are so many benefits of Celesteela like more resistances, Toxic immunity (Hippo), better coverage.
    • Personally, I think we just accept some losses to Celesteela as hax because luck is part of the game and I think we should have accepted that from Goltres
  2. We banned Goltres when people were unsatisfied with the meta (because Aegislash existed) and I think we wanted to take action on **SOMETHING** so we killed the bird. But it wasn't the bird that was broken, maybe it was uncompetitive, but it was clearly Aegislash the one that was broken (Goltres was like A or A- rank, Aegi was consistently S rank), we just couldn't ban Aegislash because it literally was just tested.
So yeah, you might hate Goltres and losing to hax but I really don't think it was broken.

Everything else, well, I'm fine with testing them tbh but ONLY after we decide UU is balanced. I don't think we're there yet.

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I let my last answer kind of write itself.
 
Now with the council seemingly welcoming suspect tests again, a lot of attention has been focused on Scizor, one of the best mons in the metagame. However, I'd argue that it's actually a slightly less dominant mon that should be suspected first -- Celesteela. I believe the metagame is in a good place for the most part, but I think Steela is an uncompetitive, matchup-fishing mon that forces certain counterplay onto teams, counterplay which it is quite good against. This is mainly on the basis of it's fantastic offensive set, which is as follows:

Celesteela @ Power Herb
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Autotomize
- Air Slash
- Fire Blast
- Meteor Beam

Despite the fact that this only really fits on Hyper Offense structures, every Hyper Offense team, I'd argue, should have Celesteela on it right now. It's limited counterplay, insane natural bulk and defensive typing, and ability to flinch down checks and snowball from that make it an easy pick, and I'd argue it's uncompetitive. It's essentially a slightly better Goltres with a higher flinch chance, a mon I believe was fully justified in being banned.

Similarities between Goltres and Steela:

Extremely bulky (unlikely to be killed before boosting)
Are double dancers
Have great defensive typings
Have access to stab moves with high flinch chances to hax their checks and break through limited counterplay.
Can continually boost their special attack to snowball (goltres gets berserk, steela gets beast boost, so a free boost every kill)
Both have very niche use as glue mons

It's not one of these traits that send these mons over the edge, it's all of them put together that make for an unfair mon. Steela even had the advantage over goltres in some ways. Its defensive typing is better, it gets meteor beam (which may seem worse at first, but I'll go into why I believe it pushes Steela over the edge), it's physically bulkier, and beast boost is better than berserk, and allows for easier snowballing. While steela is forced to use a power herb, meteor beam gives it select advantages that goltres lacked.

Both similarly have small pools of counterplay. Steela gets some bulky waters as unreliable checks, like slowking and resttalk prim (it just needs one flinch to break through them), as well as it's strongest checks in washer, chansey, and nihilego. However, barring rhyperior (a niche mon) that's it. Goltres had nihilego, prim and chansey, as well as it hating electric mons in general. However, thanks to meteor beam, only washer as an electric is really good into steela. Heater loses to meteor beam easily, and if you use as the steela check, allows steela to snowball by continuously clicking meteor beam as heater switches in, and being able to kill it thanks to outspeeding. Thundurus dies to mbeam and gets killed by boosted fire blast. Raikou can weaken it but still gets 1v1d easily. As well, it can flinch down and boost on its supposed checks, limiting counterplay. Here are calcs focusing on Steela's strongest checks, assuming they come in as Steela automotizes:

Nihilego

+1 252+ SpA Celesteela Meteor Beam vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Nihilego: 149-176 (41.3 - 48.8%) -- 17.2% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
+1 252+ SpA Celesteela Air Slash vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Nihilego: 70-83 (19.4 - 23%) -- possible 5HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery
252 SpA Nihilego Power Gem vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Celesteela: 127-151 (37.9 - 45%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Rotom-W

+1 252+ SpA Celesteela Meteor Beam vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Rotom-Wash: 178-210 (58.5 - 69%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ SpA Celesteela Air Slash vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Rotom-Wash: 84-99 (27.6 - 32.5%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
0 SpA Rotom-Wash Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Celesteela: 123-145 (36.7 - 43.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Chansey

+1 252+ SpA Celesteela Meteor Beam vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Eviolite Chansey: 120-142 (17 - 20.1%) -- possible 5HKO after Stealth Rock
+1 252+ SpA Celesteela Air Slash vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Eviolite Chansey: 112-133 (15.9 - 18.8%) -- possible 5HKO after Stealth Rock
Chansey Seismic Toss vs. 0 HP Celesteela: 100-100 (29.8 - 29.8%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

These are probably Celesteela's 3 best checks, and even then, I'd call Chansey easily the most reliable among them. While Nihilego and Rotom-W can both 3hko assuming they do not get flinched, both have to deal with switching into a powerful Meteor Beam, despite their Flying resistance, almost taking out half of their health, and leaving them within 2-3hko range for Air Slash (3 for Nihilego, 2 for Rotom-W), assuming (very comfortably) that Stealth Rocks are up. Rotom-W is beaten without flinches, but it has a 30% chance to basically save 1/3 of it's health, which is important for counterplay. With Nihilego, it only needs one flinch out of two attacks, which it has a roughly 40% chance of doing. Once it flinches down those checks, it wins (if the other player has no scarfer or priority, which I'll get too) thanks to Beast Boost further boosting it's special attack. With Chansey, it only needs to flinch it on 2/4 potential Air Slashes before killing it, for which there is around a 20% chance -- which is, admittedly, a decently reliable win for Chansey. These are it's most reliable checks -- it's only real other checks, other bulky waters, don't really perform as well. Slowking and Primarina (the two other main bulky waters in the tier) get beaten in 3-hits by Steela and can't stop it in return, and this is excluding the 30% chance Steela has to deny them from damaging it with flinches. And while switching to other rock resists may seem like a good option to make absorbing the boost easier, the issue is that the most common steels in the tier, Scizor and Cobalion, either don't resist and can provoke Air Slashes from Celesteela or doesn't resist Air Slashes and is also neutrally hit by Meteor Beam, making getting these bulky waters in on fire coverage harder to accomplish. Hippowdon, the most popular rock resist, can't do anything to Celesteela, so it can actually just click Meteor Beam again and get another boost, allowing it to snowball even harder. As well, it handles other common electrics very well thanks to Meteor Beam, allowing it to abuse Rotom-H and Thundurus, as well as 1v1 Raikou. As well, Steela is in a tier with no rock-neutral fire mons, so it beats fire mons in practice, and sacking to get a mon in for free isn't an option because of beast boost.

Once it either overwhelms, with or without flinches, its checks, thanks to Beast Boost, the only real recourse is to have a Choice Scarfed Zarude or Hydreigon in the back, as well as a priority mon. However, thanks to Steela's amazing defensive typing and bulk, this isn't as safe as it seems. The most common priority in the tier, Scizor's BP and Zydog's Espeed, do a max of around 19% to it, because of Celesteela's great steel typing:

16+ Atk Technician Scizor Bullet Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Celesteela: 44-52 (13.1 - 15.5%) -- possible 6HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Zygarde-10% Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Celesteela: 53-63 (15.8 - 18.8%) -- possible 5HKO

This basically means that, unless Steela is sufficiently worn down to very little of it's health, which usually can only happen through getting lucky and avoiding a flinch, the most common forms of priority in the tier can't beat it. This makes things like Scarf Hydreigon and Zarude the next best option, but the issue there is that Scarf Hydreigon has a lot of conflict with other speed control, and Scarf Zarude isn't very good or common. Teams using other forms of Speed Control (Azelf, Zydog, Noivern) don't have a way of reliably revenge killing it.

The priority in the tier that does reliably chunk Steela, Mamo and Conkeldurr, have other issues. While they are able to take a lot of damage off of it, Mamoswine isn't nearly as common as it used to be thanks to Scizor dominating the tier and being able to use it as free entry for Knocking, momentun, or it's own great Priority. Conkeldurr doesn't fit on many structures due to it's awful speed and worse defensive utility than other steels like Cobalion and Keldeo. Neither of these mons are ranked above A-, but this is really one of the only ways for teams to revenge kill Celesteela.

In fact, much like Goltres, Scizor has discouraged a lot of counterplay to Offensive Steela, with Nihilego, Chansey, and Mamoswine not being as good as they used to be in a tier with Scizor on top. I'd argue that this only makes Steela more uncompetitive. And while there is the legitimate counterargument that we need to accept Steela's hax as part of the game, I think that's missing the full picture. The issue isn't just Steela being able to flinch mons sometimes, it's that flinch being able to potentially win it the game no matter what, even when the other team has brought proper counterplay. If Jirachi flinches a mon with Iron Head once, that's rarely going to be a game-winning roll, but with Steela, it's often huge, especially on the structure Steela's on. Steela is virtually always allowed to come in from full, allowed to boost with automatize and mbeam thanks to it's great bulk and typing, and allowed to start flinching down checks due to it's survivability -- it's able to take at least 3 hits from most of it's best checks. This is beyond a lucky crit -- a 30% chance to win the game against some teams when it comes in from full, even higher against a lot of other teams, is absolutely massive, and I'd argue is at least unhealthy, if not uncompetitive.

So, I essentially think Steela should be the first priority mon to be suspected due to it's Hyper Offense set. I'm open to being disagreed with and proven wrong by players with a better understanding of the meta of course. Like I said, I think the tier right now is in a very good spot, I just think that Steela is worthy of at least being suspected.
 
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