-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Announcement np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 3 - Sleepwalking
- Thread starter Finchinator
- Start date
- Status
Hello. Some info dumping from this SPL week to see how Walking Wake works in practice. Granted many teams are prepping for it so an "amazing" performance shouldnt be expected. Please let me know if I wrote an incorrect fact somewhere. Also emphasis on me not including offensive answers.
Walking Wake on this week of SPL:
Walking Wake on this week of SPL:
- KOed a 22% Baxcalibur which was being used as sack. KOed a 4% Garchomp. Lost
- In sun, leftis and proto SpA. Switched in against an unboosted Volcarona, 2HKOd Rotom-W as it switched in. Dragapult came in to revenge; Walking Wake Tera Steel and used Agility as Pult used Sub. Next turn WW broke the sub as Pult used Tera Ground and KOd WW with Tera Blast. Lost
- Clicked Hydro Steam twice against Slowking. Was used to take a Hydreigon Dark Pulse and a Future Sight. Tried to double against it but the play did not work out, was sacked the turn after. Lost
- Choice Specs in sun, proto SpA but it wasn't used. Used to switch into a Great Tusk EQ on Sun. OHKOd a Dragonite and damaged a Quaquaval. Lost
- Proto Speed Choice Specs Tera Water in sun. 2HKOd Roaring Moon that tried to switch in. Heavily damaged a Dragapult. Lost
- Choice Specs Tera Water (was in a sun team but wasnt used under sun). Traded with a Tera Fairy Garganacl. Lost
- SpA Booster Energy. Was used to switch into Specs Talonflame and got 2HKOd. Won (but was against another Walking Wake team)
- Was is a rain team but wasnt used under rain. Revenged a mid health Great Tusk and Kingambit late game. Was scared out by a Dragonite both times. Lost
- Specs Proto Speed in Sun. Came to scare out a Garchomp and an Iron Valiant. Damaged a Gholdengo and OHKOd an Iron Valiant. Won
- Specs (was in a sun team but wasnt used under sun). Scared out an opposing Walking Wake. Heavily damaged a Kingambit and KOed a 30% Hatterene. Was up against a Slowking but still did decent damage against the team thanks to positioning against Slowking when it was weakened. Lost
- Proto SpA. Weakened a Hatterene, a Ceruledge, KOed a Torkoal and a Walking Wake. Was used to switch into Torkoal and Ceruledge. Won (but against another Walking Wake team)
- Leftovers. Was used as a sack. Lost
- Switched in against a Slither Wing and weakened it, was forced out by Dragapult. Missed a Draco Meteor against Dragonite and got KOed. Lost
- Slowking had way more usage than any other week sitting at ~6 uses compared to its 1-2 uses in previous weeks.
- Toxapex had ~7 uses which is also a lot more than its 2 uses in each of the last couple of weeks; granted this is also due to an increase on stall teams.
- No Gastrodon.
- Clodsire had slightly more usage than previous weeks sitting at ~5.
- Other Pokemon like Azumarill had around the same usage as always.
when HOME releases? what are you even waiting for, a ferrothorn shadow drop? i don't think anything HOME will be releasing is enough to keep walking wake in check in OU, which is why i believe it should be banned.
its complete lack of defensive answers in the limited SV pokedex makes it very hard to switch into when you take its near perfect coverage, high firepower and the many options it has to bolster wake's breaking power even further. under sun, it's literally impossible to check defensively without burning tera on water absorb clodsire, which generally isn't something you're always going to want to opt for, considering how valuable tera is as an option for most other pokemon. don't get me wrong, terastallizing clodsire is by no means a bad option, it's just not a particularly good option and terastallizing it isn't always ideal. so you either burn tera on clod or you sack a team member and bring in one of its few revenge killers, which is another reason why i think wake should be banned; its general lack of offensive answers.
its limited offensive counterplay is not as egregious as its limited defensive counterplay but it is still very apparent and definitely worth mentioning. wake's amazing speed tier allows it to outspeed the majority of the unboosted metagame, such as garchomp, volcarona, hydreigon, baxcalibur, and many other offensive threats, only being outsped and threatened by iron valiant, roaring moon and dragapult. but what makes matters even worse is that it can very easily opt for an EV spread to gain the proto boost on its speed, allowing it to blow past them with ease, be it under sun or with booster energy. and even without sun support or booster energy, it can still utilize terastallization to its advantage, something it's very good at abusing effeciently. wake can opt for a wide variety of tera types to pick off revenge killers, like tera fairy to beat opposing wakes, moon and pult or tera steel if you want to beat them as well as valiant, to say nothing of other tera options you could use. you could even tera into a water type to gain an extra boost on hydro steam and shed the dragon and fairy weaknesses against the aforementioned revenge killers, making use of its excellent natural bulk. this allows it to easily survive any hit thrown at it and give it the opportunity to fire back with a powerful attack in return. its bulk is yet another reason as to why it's so hard to check, especially in tandem with its typing. walking wake easily survives neutral hits from the likes of meowscarada, scarf gholdengo, kingambit, greninja, dragonite (if not running outrage) and any other revenge killers and kills them in return, and its resistances to common moves means it can easily come in to fulfill its role immediately.
it's just an incredibly suffocating force when you take all of this into account and i think it's unhealthy as a result. i don't have time to even try and obtain reqs on this suspect test (and i haven't adapted to wake yet so i probably wouldn't obtain them regardless) but i'd certainly vote ban if i did.
Game Freak should rename him as Walking Fraud.
Got reqs a day ago, after playing more with it, against it during my reqs run and seeing it used by top players I'm still on the do no ban side.
On the calc this thing is scary but in the battle it is meh, outside sun this thing has not a real niche, its stabs aren't that spamable, the special attack drops and the high usage of tera fairy even before WW appeared can be used to take advantage of it, while there are several water resists on the tier that can do the same. Really can't think a justification to use it when stuff like Valiant as cleaner or Bax as wallbreaker exist and do a better job.
On sun it is better, but sun teams suffer a lot to keep the momentum, specially since Wake hates any kind of chip damage or switching in into anything. With proper positioning WW can't get into the battlefield as much as he wants and gets forced out a lot because again, its stabs aren't that spamable specially if it is choice locked. Vert made a great post about this focused on the defensive counterplay, where I would like to highlight the advice about using tera early if you plan to use it defensively, it is far more consitent that rely on the surprise factor. Offense really doesn't have much issues against it, it isn't fast enough and even with the speed boosting sets most wll built offense teams have a sort of speed control to check it and not for WW itself but for booster Valiant or have something to tank a hit at full (since not proto +special attack loses a lot of damage) to OHKO back with hazards damage or put in range of priority, again, it is a matter of positioning.
It is a good mon under the right circunstances? yeah but it is far from broken in my opinion and it really doesn't feel as restrictive as a lot of people tries to sell it.
I wonder how many of Wake's checks are getting high usage because of Wake only. There definitely seems to be a lot of overpreparation for this.
With that being said, Wake definitely has adequate amount of counterplay (both SpA and Speed boosting variant with Specs, idk about Booster Energy). But it's hard to build a team while taking both SpA and Speed into account
However, it's definitely no Chi-Yu or Chien-Pao. Especially Chi-Yu which 2hko even dedicated checks like a breeze
2 weeks ago walking wake sun was 80% of teams. now its on maybe 25-30% of teams I come across. Rarely lose to it either because if you keep the pressure up it has a rough time switching in. Seriously wake needs both sun AND its item to cause trouble. chilly reception. knock off. alternative weather.
Heres a creative set:
252 SpA Choice Specs Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Tyranitar in Sand: 122-146 (30.1 - 36.1%) -- 52.4% chance to 3HKO
yes thats CHOICE SPECS SUPEREFFECTIVE hit. for whatever reason people are either lazy or stubborn theres a hundred and one ways to tackle this thing. BOOHOO i cant use the pokemon that smogon teambuilder told me were OU worthy.
That zero attack tyranitar can 2hko back with dragon claw or assurance. Or run ice beam for when they switch great tusk into it. Dont give walking wake a free switch. thats your fault for letting your guard down, plenty of other pokemon can run away with the game if you give them a free turn. WW is no different.
Heres a creative set:
252 SpA Choice Specs Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Tyranitar in Sand: 122-146 (30.1 - 36.1%) -- 52.4% chance to 3HKO
yes thats CHOICE SPECS SUPEREFFECTIVE hit. for whatever reason people are either lazy or stubborn theres a hundred and one ways to tackle this thing. BOOHOO i cant use the pokemon that smogon teambuilder told me were OU worthy.
That zero attack tyranitar can 2hko back with dragon claw or assurance. Or run ice beam for when they switch great tusk into it. Dont give walking wake a free switch. thats your fault for letting your guard down, plenty of other pokemon can run away with the game if you give them a free turn. WW is no different.
i know 2 tapus who are going to give that thing grief. Alolan ninetails resets weather and immune to dragon. Primarina. Mantine if youre desperate. none of these pokemon are deadweight even mantine can learn defog and roost
I think walking wake has not proven itself to be Broken or Overpowered yet, and thus shouldnt be banned.
Why walking wake isnt Overpowered and deserves to stay
a good starting point is to read this post by njnp on how some mons have the illusion of broken-ness
Walking Wake is a good pokemon, its suited for sun teams where it can run choice specs, choice scarf, life orb or Dragon Fang/Mystic Water. It's a fast and also strong special sweeper under sun with water stab and good defensive typing, it can either boost special or speed depending on what the trainer wants. Outside of sun, it still has some great sets, Agility Booster Energy, Sub Roar, Choiced or if you're insane, Dragon Dance. All of those are great sets, However,
People are OVERRATING how powerful it is,
It's no doubt powerful and can destroy unprepared teams, but it is also not difficult to check for many teams. Here are a list of Counters and checks.
Counters: Slowking, Clodsire, Gastrodon, Azumarill
Checks: Corviknight + Water, Gholdengo + Dragonite, SpDef Corviknight, SpDef Garg + Fairy/Water Resist (depending if you are tera water or fairy on garg), Roaring Moon + Iron Valiant, Amoonguss, SpDef Rotom-Wash
Heres Counterplay for Specific Playstyles:
Hyper Offense/Heavy Offense - You don't really need much for walking wake, you can easily out offense and HO usually has 1 fairy and 1 water resistant mon.
Ex.: Iron Valiant + Meow, Iron Valiant + Dnite, Grimmsnarl + Roaring Moon, Meowscarada + Fairy Iron Moth, Gholdengo + Roaring moon, Iron Valiant + Roaring Moon, Azumarill
Bulky Offense - Harder to fit and is the playstyle Walking Wake destroys most, but i find just a spdef water + a fairy type mon or tera works, or just a fat steel.
Ex.: Toxapex + Fairy Garg, Corviknight + Rotom Wash, Iron Valiant + Rotom Wash, Slowking, Amoonguss, Corviknight + Toxapex, Azumarill, Gholdengo + Clodsire
Balance - You usually have 4 fats 2 generalist, so u have a lot of options for anti wake techs.
Ex.: Toxapex + corviknight, Clodsire + Iron valiant, gastrodon,florges, Amoonguss, Slowking, Gholdengo + Clodsire
Stall - Team dependant but stall teams will find a way to counter everything. if it doesn't, its objectively a bad stall team.
Those are a lot of counters/checks, it is not unreasonable whatsoever to have something that beats walking wake, the 2 best counters are slowking and clodsire which are good mons anyways, and you can check it with some bulky spdef mons, even spdef tera water garganacl can handle it pretty well. If you are running a more offensive team, its easy to overwhelm walking wake since its not that fast compared to the other offensive threats of the tiers.
To show, here are some replays with teams that only has checks to walking wake beating walking wake sun with ease:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1813956072-tjgu2b4jghcm6tp63ea4cs27koziia1pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1814477803-q2y5miufwajydu53cfyp5nqndbl0udgpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1814426594-p4esk09hgx9s6lz6vkltsnqjdax52hwpw
And these replays here also convinced me to 100% certainty of DnB, as Ox the Fox and Vert post says, it relies on sun to be broken, which is very exploitable, and even then it can still be walled by pokemon like clodsire, slowking or something niche like gastrodon (which is pretty good) quite hard (unless they run modest which misses out on a lot of threats with that speed tier like hydreigon and garchomp). but even with sun, it is still managable with mons like Clodsire or out offensing with mons like iron valiant.
The Damage isn't even as crazy as some people make it out to be. Even SpDef Garganacl can sometimes wall it. I've seen people post calcs which looks scary on paper but in games are not, for example Vs Clodsire. Under sun, it can 2hko Clod but it comes with a lot of costs. Vs Offense, SpA boosting Walking Wake can easily be outsped and beaten by faster offensive mons, vs Balance where clod is your only answer, you can add a steel type or fairy type to help check it.
Now on paper looking at those damage, its very strong, but the one thing that keeps walking wake being balance is that you not only need sun, walking wake is very prediction reliant. It's stabs get resisted by a lot of common OU pokemon, and walking wake needs to play correctly to get the most out of it. If wake clicks the wrong move it can easily be healed off or punished, if wake is running a non choiced item wake wouldn't be doing enough damage or have enough speed to do what wake is amazing at doing.
To Give a clearer picture, Walking wake to me, is comparable to tapu lele, VERY STRONG and with specs can almost beat all of its check and counter except for Jirachi which even then, can be beaten with shadow ball, but it balances out with its easily wallable stabs, sometimes middling speed and missing important KO's just by a few %, Of course it can be remedied like speed with scarf, the KO's with modest but thats sacrificing important speed tiers. Not only that, you NEED to predict correctly with tapu lele, unless you want to keep doing 30% damage to resists as they pivot, or heal those damage off.
I have been laddering even getting top 7 on ladder using my suspect alt for fun, using every team style (except for stall cause it gets kind of boring) and walking wake hasn't been a nuisance, not more than other regular breakers like Iron Valiant.
The only problem i have had with this mon is how its sometimes a hassle on the teambuilder as its very on paper broken, but once you actually just build a good solid team, even with just checks, in practice this mon isn't that much better than every other special attacker in the tier.
And now time to respond.
I've used and fought againts wake sun and while it is an excellent mon, it doesn't make sun broken. The usuals of Iron moth, Dragapult, Dragonite and Volcarona still annihilates sun, one thing this does give sun is a much more welcomed special breaker/speed control/water resist. If sun is still too much for you, its probably a team problem.
Why walking wake isnt Overpowered and deserves to stay
a good starting point is to read this post by njnp on how some mons have the illusion of broken-ness
Walking Wake is a good pokemon, its suited for sun teams where it can run choice specs, choice scarf, life orb or Dragon Fang/Mystic Water. It's a fast and also strong special sweeper under sun with water stab and good defensive typing, it can either boost special or speed depending on what the trainer wants. Outside of sun, it still has some great sets, Agility Booster Energy, Sub Roar, Choiced or if you're insane, Dragon Dance. All of those are great sets, However,
People are OVERRATING how powerful it is,
It's no doubt powerful and can destroy unprepared teams, but it is also not difficult to check for many teams. Here are a list of Counters and checks.
Counters: Slowking, Clodsire, Gastrodon, Azumarill
Checks: Corviknight + Water, Gholdengo + Dragonite, SpDef Corviknight, SpDef Garg + Fairy/Water Resist (depending if you are tera water or fairy on garg), Roaring Moon + Iron Valiant, Amoonguss, SpDef Rotom-Wash
Heres Counterplay for Specific Playstyles:
Hyper Offense/Heavy Offense - You don't really need much for walking wake, you can easily out offense and HO usually has 1 fairy and 1 water resistant mon.
Ex.: Iron Valiant + Meow, Iron Valiant + Dnite, Grimmsnarl + Roaring Moon, Meowscarada + Fairy Iron Moth, Gholdengo + Roaring moon, Iron Valiant + Roaring Moon, Azumarill
Bulky Offense - Harder to fit and is the playstyle Walking Wake destroys most, but i find just a spdef water + a fairy type mon or tera works, or just a fat steel.
Ex.: Toxapex + Fairy Garg, Corviknight + Rotom Wash, Iron Valiant + Rotom Wash, Slowking, Amoonguss, Corviknight + Toxapex, Azumarill, Gholdengo + Clodsire
Balance - You usually have 4 fats 2 generalist, so u have a lot of options for anti wake techs.
Ex.: Toxapex + corviknight, Clodsire + Iron valiant, gastrodon,
Stall - Team dependant but stall teams will find a way to counter everything. if it doesn't, its objectively a bad stall team.
Those are a lot of counters/checks, it is not unreasonable whatsoever to have something that beats walking wake, the 2 best counters are slowking and clodsire which are good mons anyways, and you can check it with some bulky spdef mons, even spdef tera water garganacl can handle it pretty well. If you are running a more offensive team, its easy to overwhelm walking wake since its not that fast compared to the other offensive threats of the tiers.
To show, here are some replays with teams that only has checks to walking wake beating walking wake sun with ease:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1813956072-tjgu2b4jghcm6tp63ea4cs27koziia1pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1814477803-q2y5miufwajydu53cfyp5nqndbl0udgpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1814426594-p4esk09hgx9s6lz6vkltsnqjdax52hwpw
And these replays here also convinced me to 100% certainty of DnB, as Ox the Fox and Vert post says, it relies on sun to be broken, which is very exploitable, and even then it can still be walled by pokemon like clodsire, slowking or something niche like gastrodon (which is pretty good) quite hard (unless they run modest which misses out on a lot of threats with that speed tier like hydreigon and garchomp). but even with sun, it is still managable with mons like Clodsire or out offensing with mons like iron valiant.
The Damage isn't even as crazy as some people make it out to be. Even SpDef Garganacl can sometimes wall it. I've seen people post calcs which looks scary on paper but in games are not, for example Vs Clodsire. Under sun, it can 2hko Clod but it comes with a lot of costs. Vs Offense, SpA boosting Walking Wake can easily be outsped and beaten by faster offensive mons, vs Balance where clod is your only answer, you can add a steel type or fairy type to help check it.
244 SpA Choice Specs Walking Wake Draco Meteor over 2 turns vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Clodsire: 333-394 (71.9 - 85%) -- not a KO
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Walking Wake Draco Meteor over 2 turns vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clodsire: 434-514 (93.5 - 110.7%) -- 62.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 252 HP / 84 SpD Amoonguss in Sun: 202-238 (46.7 - 55%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Walking Wake Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 161-190 (40.3 - 47.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Walking Wake Draco Meteor over 2 turns vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clodsire: 434-514 (93.5 - 110.7%) -- 62.5% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Walking Wake Hydro Steam vs. 252 HP / 84 SpD Amoonguss in Sun: 202-238 (46.7 - 55%) -- 69.5% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Walking Wake Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Corviknight: 161-190 (40.3 - 47.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Now on paper looking at those damage, its very strong, but the one thing that keeps walking wake being balance is that you not only need sun, walking wake is very prediction reliant. It's stabs get resisted by a lot of common OU pokemon, and walking wake needs to play correctly to get the most out of it. If wake clicks the wrong move it can easily be healed off or punished, if wake is running a non choiced item wake wouldn't be doing enough damage or have enough speed to do what wake is amazing at doing.
To Give a clearer picture, Walking wake to me, is comparable to tapu lele, VERY STRONG and with specs can almost beat all of its check and counter except for Jirachi which even then, can be beaten with shadow ball, but it balances out with its easily wallable stabs, sometimes middling speed and missing important KO's just by a few %, Of course it can be remedied like speed with scarf, the KO's with modest but thats sacrificing important speed tiers. Not only that, you NEED to predict correctly with tapu lele, unless you want to keep doing 30% damage to resists as they pivot, or heal those damage off.
I have been laddering even getting top 7 on ladder using my suspect alt for fun, using every team style (except for stall cause it gets kind of boring) and walking wake hasn't been a nuisance, not more than other regular breakers like Iron Valiant.
The only problem i have had with this mon is how its sometimes a hassle on the teambuilder as its very on paper broken, but once you actually just build a good solid team, even with just checks, in practice this mon isn't that much better than every other special attacker in the tier.
And now time to respond.
No it really hasn't, I have forced myself to use every single play style (from HO to Stall) and all of them are viable with a varying amount of viability, but one thing is clear, its definetly not extremes only. What Walking Wake did is shift the meta to account for a very strong special water dragon breaker, On HO with fairies + dragon like hatt + moon, BO with better spdef checks like Slowking or Spdef Rotom + Steel/fairy, on Balance with mons like Gastrodon and Clodsire making a big rise in the meta, and stall.... Highv0ltag3 you answer this one. Wake just shifted the meta into using real water/dragon resists since before this mon, those types offensively aren't the most common.
(Replying to the full Post) It's not completely warped around it, with the release of wake you now have to account for a strong dragon/water type. I have to also disagree with sun not being a commitment, it definetly is still a commitment. Sun is very weak to hazard and unless you are running sun balance with scream tail or garg, you almost always need hatterene to help with hazards alongside tusk and torkoal. Toxic Spikes can ruin sun teams, Rocks and Spikes heavily cuts into their longevity, and Ghosts can spinblock easily because dragapult has a good match up with sun, while gholdengo has a bad match up vs sun, you can make it work by making it the team's spinblocker and only get it in on potential spinners.
I've used and fought againts wake sun and while it is an excellent mon, it doesn't make sun broken. The usuals of Iron moth, Dragapult, Dragonite and Volcarona still annihilates sun, one thing this does give sun is a much more welcomed special breaker/speed control/water resist. If sun is still too much for you, its probably a team problem.
D-Rank in Chien Pao meta, gastrodon is definetly MUCH better in this more specially dominated (dengo, pult, wake, rotom, valiant) meta. Gastro also has good utility moves in clear smog and spikes.
(Replying to full post) I have an awful habit of not saving replays so do take it with a grain of salt, but those Tera Wakes example under sun that you've mentioned, i have beaten them with just tera fairy garg + spdef rotom or just clodsire (tera dark, not even fairy) alone, consistently too. Also, Walking Wake is a weather breaker, weather breakers are notorious for always having ways around its counter, From just putting out damage thats so damn big even resist have trouble like Floatzel, or have ways around with with moves, tera, or set up like Brute Bonnet. So with walking wake teetering on the edge of being broken under sun with specialized movesets isn't that bad.
I have a problem with this statement, Walking Wake and Houndstone are very different. Houndstone and Wake really can't be compared, while the cost may be similar, but the results are not. Houndstone is a pokemon that is very bulky, does a TON of damage without needing +attacking nature or damage boosting items, and can even be run out of sand and still 6-0 teams alone. Walking Wake to reach the broken power, NEEDS sun to be active at all times, and even then it won't be 6-0ing prepared teams on the spot. So this comparison isn't really apt, even an indirect one.
Yeah in hindsight, I don't think Home will release enough counterplay for Walking Wake. As much as I love it's design, this dude needs to go.
This really makes me think that people overreacted by wanting to ban Walking Wake after literally existing for under a week. Do any of these results scream ban worthy to you? We have data from 13 top level games. Walking Wake won *checks notes* 3 times. That's a win rate of 23%. Here's the key:
There's absolutely nothing wrong with an increased frequency of mons like Clodsire and Toxapex that already had a place in gen 9 OU. The meta is constantly evolving; players are adapting and making it apparent that Walking Wake is beyond manageable. I'm not saying that it isn't strong or causing changes in usage, but banning a mon with a 23% win rate in tournament play just seems odd. I'm voting do not ban on Walking Wake.
Last edited:
Yeah, IDK if Gastro is a counter. I've been tryna use Vert's Balance team that he posted early and Gastro gets completely goobed by Specs Draco / Flamethrower depending on whether its Tera'd or not, but more importantly, does absolutely nothing back to Wake bar setting up Spikes (which can be risky given that many Wake structures feature the Hat). Admittingly, I think part of the problem is that Clear Smog lets a lot of stuff in for free + doesn't actually help against Wake, so I swapped to using Sludge Bomb and am gonna see if that fixes this issue (haven't faced any since the switch weirdly). Sludge in general seems like a nice move since its kinda like Scald / Toxic from last gen + goobs various other Gastro switch like Meowscarada and Scovillan.
If Gastro Teras Fairy, it counters Walking Wake, same with Clodsire. Azumarill to my knowledge is the only natural counter (at least in OU) (hence the spike in usage)
Azumarill always comes back during all suspect test, came back when Chi-Yu was running amuck, came back for even Chien-Pao, and now it's back for Walking Wake
PUT RESPEKT ON AZUMARILLS NAME, ITS BEEN CARRYING THE META FOR THE LAST 3 MONTHS (sarcasm)
Nah, Gastro gets completely goobed if it goes Tera Fairy. I think that's better as a potential stop gap measure if the Wake Draco's, but its not ideal since its Flamethrower now completely cooks it and that move isn't as exploitable as Draco.
252 SpA Choice Specs Protosynthesis Walking Wake Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Tera Fairy Gastrodon in Sun: 229-270 (53.7 - 63.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
There have also been multiple games where I've gotten crit by Wake's Flamethrower and lost the game, so I am a bit biased, but I don't think Tera Fairy Gastro is it, esp since the move is riskless to go for vs Corv. IMO, Tera Fairy Garg + Gastro has been the more reliable way of staving off Wake since its forced into make more coinflips and Garg can exploit a choice locked Wake w/ Salt Cure, which very little wants to take.
Azumarill is pretty goated though, I'm actually liking it a lot.
-better offensive typing against major threats in its gen
-no abilities deny ice and there are no immunities, so ice stab spam was safer
-was able to run +atk scarf or +speed band, both of which are more powerful than WW by orders of magnitude
-gdarm's coverage was far more helpful than flamethrower+hurricane. rock slide+eq+fblitz+icicle crash hit half the tier for super effective
-WW is restricted to sun and has to be sent in relatively quickly
-a big part of gdarm's appeal was that it could be send into like half the mons in the tier at nearly any time, which WW can't do
-gdarm outsped much more of the fat SS metagame than WW outspeeds of the speedy SV metagame
-tera blast WW lmfaooooo
"yeah, if this tier is about as powerful as early gen 8" nope. no. stop right there. no
Since I actually bothered this time and got reqs I might as well throw my two cents in here.
I want to preface this with that I have read all of the arguments for- and against banning Walking Wake posted in this Thread and I acknowledge most arguments besides some occasional nonsense some ppl have posted. Either way I think Walking Wake is not inherently broken.
Since I both build and play in the Tier frequently I can speak from both perspectives here, fortunately. While on Paper with all the calcs people have been going crazy about I do agree it is very overbearing in the builder at times (just like Garganacl and other Pokemon are, too) but I think defining the supposed brokenness of Walking Wake through mostly calcs is a very one dimensional way of looking at the Situation as a whole and therefore does not convince me fully.
I do actually agree to some extent with some pro-ban arguments which were well-written, though in practice I have found Walking Wake to be manageable overall. As many people supporting no ban already mentioned it can be defensively checked quite well, on top of that it often has to use Terastallization in order to actually achieve its supposed broken Power Level. This means you definitely can and often will break down opposing teams well, but in return often leaves you vulnerable to getting revenged, which is being made easier by the opponent being able to terastallize as well.
Additionally, while Walking Wake has seen creative sets being used I have found playing with and against said sets to be a little underwhelming at times. With (in my opinion) Choice Specs sets under Sun being the strongest u can go back to the argument of Sun being inconsistent more often than not (and yes, I still think it is inconsistent even after the introduction of Walking Wake) which definitely holds up. Though I have to agree with Specs under Sun definitely being a Nightmare for Bulky Teams, there are plenty of ways to check it offensively, too, besides the aforementioned "checks" that depend on the WW sets like
, 
, 
and so on. While this may definitely decrease the Viability of Bulky Teams I do not think a shift to a more offensive and fast paced metagame is necessarily a bad thing in itself. On top of that it seems like Stall still seems to be doing well for some players (Whether you want to count that fact towards WW being broken or not is up to you tho, just wanted to mention that).
Adressing the Walking Wake being centralizing argument I can definitely see where people are coming from but I personally think people make it out to be worse than it is in actuality. Take this with a grain of Salt as it is my own experience and will definitely not be the same as the experience of other people with Walking Wake but I have not seen much decline in creativity as well as a surge in teams having to lean towards fully checking Sun and Walking Wake as a whole, which a centralizing Pokemon should have caused.
I personally think this whole suspect comes down to a little bit of everything. New Toy Syndrome, People losing their mind over Numbers in a damage calculator and so on. Metagames change and people adapt to the things present and I think it is a little too soon to actually form a proper opinion backed with lots of data and replays in how it does in the actual game itself. Also seeing how
as well as 
haven't been getting proper tiering action since the introduction of Gen 9 while arguably being scarier to prep for because of the variety of sets they can run I do think Walking Wake should simply get more time around and get retested at a later point in time, in case new sets are discovered and metagame trends change and it actually shows itself as broken in the end.
In my opinion we shouldn't jump to the ban hammer so quickly in general and rather let the metagame adapt to threats over a longer period of time first before putting out one suspect test after the other. Feel free to disprove the arguments I made as I am happy to indulge in the conversation as a whole, but for now I am voting do not ban. Thanks for reading.
I want to preface this with that I have read all of the arguments for- and against banning Walking Wake posted in this Thread and I acknowledge most arguments besides some occasional nonsense some ppl have posted. Either way I think Walking Wake is not inherently broken.
Since I both build and play in the Tier frequently I can speak from both perspectives here, fortunately. While on Paper with all the calcs people have been going crazy about I do agree it is very overbearing in the builder at times (just like Garganacl and other Pokemon are, too) but I think defining the supposed brokenness of Walking Wake through mostly calcs is a very one dimensional way of looking at the Situation as a whole and therefore does not convince me fully.
I do actually agree to some extent with some pro-ban arguments which were well-written, though in practice I have found Walking Wake to be manageable overall. As many people supporting no ban already mentioned it can be defensively checked quite well, on top of that it often has to use Terastallization in order to actually achieve its supposed broken Power Level. This means you definitely can and often will break down opposing teams well, but in return often leaves you vulnerable to getting revenged, which is being made easier by the opponent being able to terastallize as well.
Additionally, while Walking Wake has seen creative sets being used I have found playing with and against said sets to be a little underwhelming at times. With (in my opinion) Choice Specs sets under Sun being the strongest u can go back to the argument of Sun being inconsistent more often than not (and yes, I still think it is inconsistent even after the introduction of Walking Wake) which definitely holds up. Though I have to agree with Specs under Sun definitely being a Nightmare for Bulky Teams, there are plenty of ways to check it offensively, too, besides the aforementioned "checks" that depend on the WW sets like
, , and so on. While this may definitely decrease the Viability of Bulky Teams I do not think a shift to a more offensive and fast paced metagame is necessarily a bad thing in itself. On top of that it seems like Stall still seems to be doing well for some players (Whether you want to count that fact towards WW being broken or not is up to you tho, just wanted to mention that).Adressing the Walking Wake being centralizing argument I can definitely see where people are coming from but I personally think people make it out to be worse than it is in actuality. Take this with a grain of Salt as it is my own experience and will definitely not be the same as the experience of other people with Walking Wake but I have not seen much decline in creativity as well as a surge in teams having to lean towards fully checking Sun and Walking Wake as a whole, which a centralizing Pokemon should have caused.
I personally think this whole suspect comes down to a little bit of everything. New Toy Syndrome, People losing their mind over Numbers in a damage calculator and so on. Metagames change and people adapt to the things present and I think it is a little too soon to actually form a proper opinion backed with lots of data and replays in how it does in the actual game itself. Also seeing how
as well as haven't been getting proper tiering action since the introduction of Gen 9 while arguably being scarier to prep for because of the variety of sets they can run I do think Walking Wake should simply get more time around and get retested at a later point in time, in case new sets are discovered and metagame trends change and it actually shows itself as broken in the end.In my opinion we shouldn't jump to the ban hammer so quickly in general and rather let the metagame adapt to threats over a longer period of time first before putting out one suspect test after the other. Feel free to disprove the arguments I made as I am happy to indulge in the conversation as a whole, but for now I am voting do not ban. Thanks for reading.
Think I'm definitively voting dnb for Wake, comments above have really helped. Personally finding the pro-ban side quite lacking in replays.
Actually...
This is what I said. So probably don't go making shit up when it's viewable a few comments back. And that's all I'll say to you since you still wanna
Also can we stop with this? Please stop complaining about a lack of Volc or Garg suspects when survey results didn't give justification for either. I also see this weird fixation from some comments on Wake not really having other Uber dangerous sets when... A min doesn't always need many. Sometimes it just needs one (and Wake does have variations on proto between speed and spatk boosts, both equally threatening).Also seeing how
I remain pretty indifferent on my stance on banning wake. My point of I don't think its offensively broken but leads to some pretty boring metagame shifts that I wouldn't really consider healthy long term of the tier (ex. needing to over prep for sun + rise of certain momentum sink mons). That is where I stand in regards to the mon and is why I am in the middle of the two sides.
However, as many people have said already, it's pretty apparent that in practice people have overreacted to its effectiveness. I won't write a entire post in regards to this overreaction as many people above have but I just wanted to slightly add onto those arguments. This last week we had a lot of tournaments which included Wake; SPL, Stour and OST all had Wake legal this week. In all of these tournament games, Wake never really felt like the issue with the tier. While there was some games where it popped off there was an equal or more amount of games where it didn't. A lot of people are chalking this up to "overprepping" but if you look at some of these teams, they weren't really overprepped at all and were what I would consider adequately prepped. Lets look at this game between Stresh and FC real quick, stresh is using a BO esque team that does not contain any of the traditional Wake checks but doesn't have any problems dismantling Wake between speed control and water resist dragonite. While this is just one example, its pretty apparent that Wake is just another breaker outside of the sun and can be dealt with pretty easily even without any hard counters. 1 2 3 here are some replays with teams that I would consider are prepped just right for Wake vs Wake sun and as you can see they don't really really struggle to fight Wake and most of the problem here is just outplaying sun itself it minimize its opportunities.
As I previously mentioned if I weren't incredibly lazy I would still likely vote ban just for the fact a meta where clod/scream tail/gastro are popular picks and needing to make sure you have solid/overprepped level of counterplay vs sun doesn't really appeal to me and feels kinda restrictive in builder, but, the claims of Wake being some unstoppable nuke of a mon at this point are disproven and I would suggest conversation shift to if Wakes effect on how the meta will shift is in a healthy direction. To me, there's far greater problems in this tier than Wake and while currently its pretty restrictive in builder there's bigger evils at hand and I'm not exactly sold on banning Wake even if I'm fine with removing it from the meta at this time.
However, as many people have said already, it's pretty apparent that in practice people have overreacted to its effectiveness. I won't write a entire post in regards to this overreaction as many people above have but I just wanted to slightly add onto those arguments. This last week we had a lot of tournaments which included Wake; SPL, Stour and OST all had Wake legal this week. In all of these tournament games, Wake never really felt like the issue with the tier. While there was some games where it popped off there was an equal or more amount of games where it didn't. A lot of people are chalking this up to "overprepping" but if you look at some of these teams, they weren't really overprepped at all and were what I would consider adequately prepped. Lets look at this game between Stresh and FC real quick, stresh is using a BO esque team that does not contain any of the traditional Wake checks but doesn't have any problems dismantling Wake between speed control and water resist dragonite. While this is just one example, its pretty apparent that Wake is just another breaker outside of the sun and can be dealt with pretty easily even without any hard counters. 1 2 3 here are some replays with teams that I would consider are prepped just right for Wake vs Wake sun and as you can see they don't really really struggle to fight Wake and most of the problem here is just outplaying sun itself it minimize its opportunities.
As I previously mentioned if I weren't incredibly lazy I would still likely vote ban just for the fact a meta where clod/scream tail/gastro are popular picks and needing to make sure you have solid/overprepped level of counterplay vs sun doesn't really appeal to me and feels kinda restrictive in builder, but, the claims of Wake being some unstoppable nuke of a mon at this point are disproven and I would suggest conversation shift to if Wakes effect on how the meta will shift is in a healthy direction. To me, there's far greater problems in this tier than Wake and while currently its pretty restrictive in builder there's bigger evils at hand and I'm not exactly sold on banning Wake even if I'm fine with removing it from the meta at this time.
I wanted to write something up earlier, but felt it would only be appropriate if I had the reqs to vote. So, here I am today with my reqs, 5 pages deep into this thread. That being said, I will try not to touch on too much of what was already said. I would like to focus my discussion on the team builder as I feel it is the most untapped part of the discussion.
I want to mention before I begin, that I believe most of us are talking just about Walking Wake in the sun. I don't believe it's worth discussing anything else because, while I believe sunless WW is still good, I don't think it's worth a ban discussion, so I won't discuss it.
Before I begin, I have a small grievance. Firstly, I believe Walking Wake is very good at what it does, and I believe strong wallbreakers are important to the metagame, especially as most of the powerful wallbreakers were (deserving or not) banned. I would also like to remind people that breaking walls is its job, and you can make any good wallbreaker look broken by copy pasting a bunch of calcs in the sun with a choice specs or cherry picking tera types. I don't believe that is enough to warrant a ban alone and while there is a time and place for calculation I do think most of the posts I had read were calculating for calculations sake.
With that out of the way. most Pokemon, even banworthy ones, can usually be prepared for in the builder. So, just because a Pokemon can be prepared for, doesn't mean it is healthy for the metagame. I feel a Pokemon can become banworthy when its presence alone warps teambuilding enough that you must run direct answers to it or, in order to prepare for it, it leaves your team with glaring holes. Many people at the start of the suspect felt this way about WW. However,
I believe most people (myself included) have come to realize that preparing for WW is much easier than thought on it's first release. In fact, many teams were already fairly equipped to deal with it, and often times teams can be altered in a fairly benign way, such as by adding a defensive Tera fairy if you do not already have a fairy type (which is a good idea for more than just WW). "Normal" defensive cores were usually fairly adequate in dealing with it with some pivoting, and some underutilized but very good Pokemon such as Slowking, Scream Tail, Azu etc. were eventually added to the mix of answers to WW which are great against a broad span of Pokemon. Additionally, Protosynthesis Pokemon (which are everywhere) naturally being buffed when vs'ing WW sun definitely takes some strength away from sun teams in general.
Now, I will still admit that WW requires prep, in what feels like an already strained teambuilder. However, the reason I will be voting not to ban walking wake is that, I believe that the strain on the team builder may look like a Walking Wake problem, but it is not. There are more pressing threats that are warping team construction, but since Walking Wake was the most recent Pokemon released, it is getting the blame.
I believe Pokemon such as Volcarona and Garganacl have been far more egregious examples of team warping Pokemon. While certainly less prominent in a post WW environment, the most glaring example was the necessary inclusion of Covert Cloak on a wide number of teams for months. This is textbook team warping behavior, as Covert Cloak is literally only useful against Salt Cure, and no I don't want to hear how great it is for Nuzzle. Having to effectively lose your item slot is a serious disadvantage for a Pokemon you may not even encounter. If not running Covert Cloak, teams have had to compromise their sets with Substitute, or other silly "garg-only" measures not to auto lose when facing it (and would still lose to different sets of Garg anyway). In a similar way, I feel Volcarona has warped team construction drastically due to the pressure brought upon by Quiver Dance, and the multitude of tera types it can safely run to end the game. While WW can run a multitude of tera's as well, with a tera WW, I will often have my check hit, or sometimes lose it, but I can prepare for it going forward. With Volcarona, the game is usually over, so I need to run something very obviously anti-Volcarona. I find myself shoehorning Dirge into half of my teams just to have an answer to it. Now, this isn't supposed to be an anti-Garganacl/Volcarona post (or is it?) but you get the point. In my opinion, every day we are finding new ways to play against WW seamlessly in our builder. Now that the hype has faded, it is mostly an afterthought and I really don't see it as more of a problem than any other good wallbreaker in the tier. I don't know if Garg/Volc should be banned, but my point is that I just can't agree with those arguing that WW requires so much prep in team construction, when we have been dealing with Garg and Volc for months. It's not enough time for me to think it is a hurdle we can't or haven't jumped so I'm voting no ban.
tl;dr: Walking Wake does not put enough strain on the teambuilder for me to consider it a problem. It’s answers are good meta staple pokemon and teras. The same cannot be said about other threats that have continued to exist and have left us in a strained teambuilder where there is more problems than answers.
I want to mention before I begin, that I believe most of us are talking just about Walking Wake in the sun. I don't believe it's worth discussing anything else because, while I believe sunless WW is still good, I don't think it's worth a ban discussion, so I won't discuss it.
Before I begin, I have a small grievance. Firstly, I believe Walking Wake is very good at what it does, and I believe strong wallbreakers are important to the metagame, especially as most of the powerful wallbreakers were (deserving or not) banned. I would also like to remind people that breaking walls is its job, and you can make any good wallbreaker look broken by copy pasting a bunch of calcs in the sun with a choice specs or cherry picking tera types. I don't believe that is enough to warrant a ban alone and while there is a time and place for calculation I do think most of the posts I had read were calculating for calculations sake.
With that out of the way. most Pokemon, even banworthy ones, can usually be prepared for in the builder. So, just because a Pokemon can be prepared for, doesn't mean it is healthy for the metagame. I feel a Pokemon can become banworthy when its presence alone warps teambuilding enough that you must run direct answers to it or, in order to prepare for it, it leaves your team with glaring holes. Many people at the start of the suspect felt this way about WW. However,
I believe most people (myself included) have come to realize that preparing for WW is much easier than thought on it's first release. In fact, many teams were already fairly equipped to deal with it, and often times teams can be altered in a fairly benign way, such as by adding a defensive Tera fairy if you do not already have a fairy type (which is a good idea for more than just WW). "Normal" defensive cores were usually fairly adequate in dealing with it with some pivoting, and some underutilized but very good Pokemon such as Slowking, Scream Tail, Azu etc. were eventually added to the mix of answers to WW which are great against a broad span of Pokemon. Additionally, Protosynthesis Pokemon (which are everywhere) naturally being buffed when vs'ing WW sun definitely takes some strength away from sun teams in general.
Now, I will still admit that WW requires prep, in what feels like an already strained teambuilder. However, the reason I will be voting not to ban walking wake is that, I believe that the strain on the team builder may look like a Walking Wake problem, but it is not. There are more pressing threats that are warping team construction, but since Walking Wake was the most recent Pokemon released, it is getting the blame.
I believe Pokemon such as Volcarona and Garganacl have been far more egregious examples of team warping Pokemon. While certainly less prominent in a post WW environment, the most glaring example was the necessary inclusion of Covert Cloak on a wide number of teams for months. This is textbook team warping behavior, as Covert Cloak is literally only useful against Salt Cure, and no I don't want to hear how great it is for Nuzzle. Having to effectively lose your item slot is a serious disadvantage for a Pokemon you may not even encounter. If not running Covert Cloak, teams have had to compromise their sets with Substitute, or other silly "garg-only" measures not to auto lose when facing it (and would still lose to different sets of Garg anyway). In a similar way, I feel Volcarona has warped team construction drastically due to the pressure brought upon by Quiver Dance, and the multitude of tera types it can safely run to end the game. While WW can run a multitude of tera's as well, with a tera WW, I will often have my check hit, or sometimes lose it, but I can prepare for it going forward. With Volcarona, the game is usually over, so I need to run something very obviously anti-Volcarona. I find myself shoehorning Dirge into half of my teams just to have an answer to it. Now, this isn't supposed to be an anti-Garganacl/Volcarona post (or is it?) but you get the point. In my opinion, every day we are finding new ways to play against WW seamlessly in our builder. Now that the hype has faded, it is mostly an afterthought and I really don't see it as more of a problem than any other good wallbreaker in the tier. I don't know if Garg/Volc should be banned, but my point is that I just can't agree with those arguing that WW requires so much prep in team construction, when we have been dealing with Garg and Volc for months. It's not enough time for me to think it is a hurdle we can't or haven't jumped so I'm voting no ban.
tl;dr: Walking Wake does not put enough strain on the teambuilder for me to consider it a problem. It’s answers are good meta staple pokemon and teras. The same cannot be said about other threats that have continued to exist and have left us in a strained teambuilder where there is more problems than answers.
Last edited:
I can answer this
The reason Me and some of my friends and others who said this is because.
A. There are no surveys after the release of wake, the survey that happened was EXACTLY after espathra and chien Pao were banned, 2 pokemon that hinders the power of volcarona and Garganacl (tho idt Garg was hindered much by Pao) so there wasn't enough time to even play and see if Garg, shed tail and volc post chienpao or even post wake are broken or not.
B. Garganacl WAS getting looked at, although the votes may not be enough, a lot of people has argued for a suspect and according to finch it was getting looked at, so if it weren't for wake it might've gotten a suspect.
C. The meta was very fresh even before wake came, and after wake was released the meta was barely 5 days old so people complaining about "This happened too fast and other threats became overlooked" I feel is somewhat justified.
In all honesty, this is just a completely strange thread to me.
Let me preface this by saying that I am absolutely not qualified to judge the current state of the tier, I never was a newer gen player, didn't play a tour since 2018 and didn't get reqs on the last two suspects despite trying, so I hope this post isn't going to get me infracted instantly. But just from lurking in the OU forum, I really don't get why we are suspecting a shiny new toy just days after its release.
Obviously whenever a sweeper comes out, everyone on the ladder will spam the same low-effort offense team to test it out, and the tier will in turn become centralised around it and require some specific over-preparation in the short term. But this is not USUM Naganadel, which could 6-0 entire teams that didn't run AV SDef Tar, and neither is it XY Aegislash, where after a year and various meta shifts it was possible to conclude that it would consistently have too much breaking power in any meta. The main two arguments in this thread are 1. theoretical calcs with the assumption that it can always plausibly be +SAtk and +Speed at the same time (which would require both to stay similarly viable in the middle to long term), and that having to guess the variant puts too much of a disadvantage on the opponent; and 2. that the "current meta" is overcentralised by this mon, which in some unspecified way (apologies if it was specified in more detail and I didn't catch that) puts Sun just exactly over the edge. The latter just somewhat fell apart with the first SPL week where Walking Wake was allowed, the great post that SetsuSetsuna compiled above shows exactly one game where it won against a team that didn't have it, without any otherwise unviable hard check like Tauros for Pao rising in usage, or even any meta shifts at all that weren't already happening anyway (as far as I could note, Pex has been rising for weeks).
So why is this suspect happening at all? There was a quickban vote prior to this, and it didn't even reach a simple majority. After 5 days, nobody is in the position to make an observation whether the metagame will stabilise in the long term or not, as long as there isn't anything blatantly bulldozing the entire tier Flutter Mane style. Most controversial bans during the last 3 generations were mons that put a similar burden of prediction on the opponent (Band/Specs vs Scarf vs boosting move) where one could eventually conclude that they were too consistent in giving the user a cheap advantage. The recent Chien-Pao suspect is a great example, because even after the initial hype had worn off, it was clear that both Band and SD were still good, and both enabled a lot of pressure with little prediction skill required for the user, and this was also reflected in SPL results. All of these previous bans were very understandable to me, even as a RBY main. This right here? I don't get why we are doing this, and it's worrying me.
Let me preface this by saying that I am absolutely not qualified to judge the current state of the tier, I never was a newer gen player, didn't play a tour since 2018 and didn't get reqs on the last two suspects despite trying, so I hope this post isn't going to get me infracted instantly. But just from lurking in the OU forum, I really don't get why we are suspecting a shiny new toy just days after its release.
Obviously whenever a sweeper comes out, everyone on the ladder will spam the same low-effort offense team to test it out, and the tier will in turn become centralised around it and require some specific over-preparation in the short term. But this is not USUM Naganadel, which could 6-0 entire teams that didn't run AV SDef Tar, and neither is it XY Aegislash, where after a year and various meta shifts it was possible to conclude that it would consistently have too much breaking power in any meta. The main two arguments in this thread are 1. theoretical calcs with the assumption that it can always plausibly be +SAtk and +Speed at the same time (which would require both to stay similarly viable in the middle to long term), and that having to guess the variant puts too much of a disadvantage on the opponent; and 2. that the "current meta" is overcentralised by this mon, which in some unspecified way (apologies if it was specified in more detail and I didn't catch that) puts Sun just exactly over the edge. The latter just somewhat fell apart with the first SPL week where Walking Wake was allowed, the great post that SetsuSetsuna compiled above shows exactly one game where it won against a team that didn't have it, without any otherwise unviable hard check like Tauros for Pao rising in usage, or even any meta shifts at all that weren't already happening anyway (as far as I could note, Pex has been rising for weeks).
So why is this suspect happening at all? There was a quickban vote prior to this, and it didn't even reach a simple majority. After 5 days, nobody is in the position to make an observation whether the metagame will stabilise in the long term or not, as long as there isn't anything blatantly bulldozing the entire tier Flutter Mane style. Most controversial bans during the last 3 generations were mons that put a similar burden of prediction on the opponent (Band/Specs vs Scarf vs boosting move) where one could eventually conclude that they were too consistent in giving the user a cheap advantage. The recent Chien-Pao suspect is a great example, because even after the initial hype had worn off, it was clear that both Band and SD were still good, and both enabled a lot of pressure with little prediction skill required for the user, and this was also reflected in SPL results. All of these previous bans were very understandable to me, even as a RBY main. This right here? I don't get why we are doing this, and it's worrying me.
The tone of this thread has really shifted from its' inception though. A lot of people supported a ban 2 weeks ago. There's still some who do but the last page of people who got reqs have all said DNB. Real_Corviknight said ban but by their own admission they havent played enough to adapt to it yet. Of course to a player whos yet to apadt it'll seem suffocating. Walking wake doesnt run the tier like Chi-yu or Flutter mane, and loses 1v1 to common pokemon unless you give it a free switch. I wouldnt be worried, I think it was jumping the gun on the suspect but the outcome will likely be do not ban.
I'd like to remind everyone that Suspect Tests aren't supposed to be "We want this banned but want public support first." The goal is to make a conclusion as a community, ban or not.
I'd honestly posit that having a Suspect Test going 75% of the time is not a problem, and if anything, the focus on a topic can solidify the view of the active playing community.
While I think the quickban vote was a bit weird, it's a good thing we are having Suspect Tests in this way.
If anything, the worst Suspect Tests I've seen in the last few years is:
-Gen 8 Arena Trap (just quickban)
-Zamazenta Drop Test (facilitated by a Youtuber who admitted it was a meme, completely shaped the tier and made it less fun until the end of its suspect ending in keep in Ubers, completely unnecessary)
If listening to the many experienced players that wanted a Suspect or Quickban does not warrant a thread and public vote, then what does outside of things that should be Quickbanned?
Using prior gens speed as examples is... dumb. Because those bad decisions.
If the direction is Suspect Tests being frequent, and quickbans of obvious things being quicker, how is the direction going wrong? There has been no decision so far that is not rational from a view of the feedback of thousands. Only individual players with individual views.
This isn't a hate post, I've just been stewing on these arguments and critiques of the council for a few days, and wanted to make a post about that from a more understanding perspective. Have a good day, no matter your view!
I'd honestly posit that having a Suspect Test going 75% of the time is not a problem, and if anything, the focus on a topic can solidify the view of the active playing community.
While I think the quickban vote was a bit weird, it's a good thing we are having Suspect Tests in this way.
If anything, the worst Suspect Tests I've seen in the last few years is:
-Gen 8 Arena Trap (just quickban)
-Zamazenta Drop Test (facilitated by a Youtuber who admitted it was a meme, completely shaped the tier and made it less fun until the end of its suspect ending in keep in Ubers, completely unnecessary)
If listening to the many experienced players that wanted a Suspect or Quickban does not warrant a thread and public vote, then what does outside of things that should be Quickbanned?
Using prior gens speed as examples is... dumb. Because those bad decisions.
If the direction is Suspect Tests being frequent, and quickbans of obvious things being quicker, how is the direction going wrong? There has been no decision so far that is not rational from a view of the feedback of thousands. Only individual players with individual views.
This isn't a hate post, I've just been stewing on these arguments and critiques of the council for a few days, and wanted to make a post about that from a more understanding perspective. Have a good day, no matter your view!
I think this whole page should reread these.
- No unhelpful one liners nor uninformed posts;
- No discussion on other potential suspects;
- No discussion on the suspect process -- this includes retesting Walking Wake vs other potential suspects;
Out of curiosity, have you noticed a rise in any mons due to Walking Wake's presence beyond the checks? Like for example, a rise in special walls with recovery like Clodsire for it in turn encouraging Stallbreakers to stop that healing or giving rise to yet other Special attackers that can capitalize on or overwhelm it.
Outside Clod, Pex, Azy and Slowking not much, but I'm seeing more Dragapults are running sub to take advantage of Torkoal.
- Status