Recent bans and their effects on the metagame

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Woodchuck

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Well, in case you haven't noticed, Excadrill and Thundurus were both banned in Round 5 of Suspect Testing. How do you think these bans will affect the metagame?

My opinions are strongest about Excadrill so I'll post mainly about that.
Most of the reasoning for an Excadrill ban was posted in the Suspect Nominations thread, but as that's gone I'll try and make a recap.

Excadrill completely wrecked hyper offense. Let's face it, all of the weather starters suck in hyper offense, so unless you carry something like a Scarftoed or a priority user (one of two, I should say) Excadrill is steamrolling you. The fact was that Excadrill could just revenge everything hyper offense could bring out. Yes, there are select sweepers that had a shot against Excadrill, such as NP Lucario or SD Virizion, but... you couldn't really stop Excadrill revenging the rest of your team with impunity. Gliscor is also pretty poor on a hyper offense team as it gives free switches to the majority of the meta and it hits like a Spinda on steroids. Which is to say not very well.

And then there is the way Excadrill screws over stall. You cannot spinblock Excadrill. At all. You can bring in your ghost but it's going to be at risk to a +2 Earthquake (unless it's Gengar, but that dies to Rock Slide). Or, you can bring in Gliscor and get your hazards spun away and have Excadrill switch out into something that doesn't fear Gliscor (read: the majority of the metagame). Now, Gliscor is actually viable on stall teams, so you can switch into Excadrill just fine. But it's still wearing stuff down, spinning out your hazards... it doesn't help that it's immune to two of the most common statuses in OU.

With Excadrill gone, how will OU change? Hyper offense, I think, is going to be a dramatic presence in OU. Deoxys-S + 5 sweepers basically can tear anything up, and without the ever-present Excadrill to stomp on them, the metagame won't be so reliant on bulky offense.

Then there's stall. Jellicent has just gotten tons better, now being the best spinblocker and basically safely switches in on almost all spinners. Stall can also now afford to run a physical wall other than Gliscor -- I see Skarmory and Slowbro both being superior walls (Slowbro, for instance, can actually hit things).

I could also see a lot of boosting sweepers coming back, though this ties in with the earlier point about hyper offense. Metagross had almost vanished from OU, Excadrill easily switching in on Steel-type attacks and Earthquaking it to oblivion. Metagross couldn't even outspeed Exca after an Agility. Now that Excadrill is gone, I could see Agiligross coming back. Swords Dance Lucario is also tons better, with Excadrill gone and Gliscor usage probably falling as its main purpose is gone.

EDIT: Ooh, scarfers are a big one. Scarfers are now basically the premier revenge killers again. Scarftran is pretty meh this gen but what about other possible new ones? Almost all of the viable ones so far have been Earthquake-immunes.

Well, what are your thoughts? Not just on Excadrill, but on Thundurus as well.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a discussion thread on your opinions of the bans. I do not care about whether you thought Excadrill should or shouldn't have been banned. Neither does anyone else.

edit: I posted mostly about Excadrill because I felt it had a far larger effect on the metagame than Thundurus.

 
I personally have thought that after exca got banned that choiced users would have a higher presence in the metagame. I definitely saw that agiligross disappeared once exca became the premier sweeper, spinner, revenger.

EDIT: Thundurus' ban was overshadowed by excadrill's but I don't think he'll have that big of an impact on the meta except not being a definite choice on rain teams.

But as you said, only the next few weeks can tell.
 
my option was suspect test was a utter sham and a joke and proven it's only good for banning things and not unbanning things and is too corrupted by bias to be a valid policy making thing.

and that people need to man up and deal with the game has it's given to them and not how they want the game to be.
 
Agiligross is cool. That said, I can't see Gliscor usage dropping that dramatically. SD Luke will probably still run Ice Punch often enough, and Gliscor is a decent answer to several other Fighting types as well as some other Sandstorm Pokemon outside of Landorus or... Ice Fang Hippo.

Wouldn't Slowbro be a good Excadrill check though? Take a +2 Earthquake and KO back?

Thundurus' banning seems like it'll have a few more straightforward repercussions:
-One of Scarftar's favorite targets gone, reducing that set's usage even more.
-Gastrodon has less utility but will probably remain popular as a Rotom-W counter.
-HO and Stall profit from this as well, the priority Thunder Waves and Taunts that proved so obnoxious will be much rarer.
-Offensive Zapdos gets his niche back (although in a diluted form).
 
I don't know too much about the 5th gen metagame, so I'm hoping I don't shoot myself in the foot, but here I go...

I pretty much co-sign what you said about Excadrill, Woodchuck. It had a HUGE influence on the OU metagame. It was something you had no choice but to prepare for and there were limited options. The comments people are saying outside the Smogon community (and some are even in the community itself) that are against the bans(particularly Excadrill) are laughable IMO. They have no solid argument, but that's not what this thread is about.

IMO, Thundurus needed to be gone as well to really open the floodgates for the Pokémon in the base 100-110 speed tier since Thund trolled all of them, not even including Prankster in the argument. Even base 100's are usable again as Choice Scarfers, if nothing else.

With those two guys in the environment, you either play weather or some form of bulky offense. And that's pretty much the OU meta. You could only check Exca in the sand at best, which isn't great. Almost nothing outspeeds it(Agility Lucario did after a boost, but there's the power issue and getting it in safely).

My 2 cents until I find 2 more on the street ;/
 
No wonder I just played like 9/10 rain teams. No more Excadrill for sh!tty nubs to fall back on. Good ban. I'm guessing that's why 90% of the teams I face now carry Breloom. Nubs need another cheap tactic to fall back on, and they found it in the form of Spore.


I've never had any trouble with Thundurus so I guess I'm not really seeing why it got banned. I mean, yea, I can see why it got banned, but also feel like it's kind of pointless.
 
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