Implemented Revisiting XY DOU

[zee]

Volcanion is by all accounts one of the best Pokemon in modern XY DOU, dominating tour usage and topping the viability rankings, but recently the playerbase is starting to feel like its omnipresence is starting to feel restricting in the builder and in practice. XY is a tier that's all about trading, since a lot of the super safe switches that exist in later gens aren't available to you here. That means for every turn, a lot of progress is generally made and the games are about pushing harder than you're being pushed.

Volcanion has strong matchups against all of XY's top threats. Even Choice Banded Landorus-T can't OHKO Volcanion but easily picks up a revenge KO with Steam Eruption. Mega Gengar, Thundurus, and Kyurem-B struggle to deal considerable damage to it. This means Volcanion gets multiple turns to sit on the field and click Heat Wave and Steam Eruption and fish for burns, which are huge in a 1/8 burn gen, no 50%, no misty terrain, and a tier where very little top Pokemon run recovery moves.

Truthfully Volcanion has no hard counter. The closest thing we're seeing in recent XY is Porygon2, which can chip it with Thunderbolt (bulky P2 thunderbolt @ +0 is a miniscule chance to 4HKO btw). But even that's prone to getting Trapped, Seismic Tossed, Slept, or Set up on. Gastrodon is already a fringe Pokemon at best, but AV (or even non AV) sets can pretty freely run HP Grass to 2HKO it while not taking too much damage in return.

Its presence also harms meta diversity, and while that should never be a forefront of tiering, having megas like Charizard-Y and Gardevoir be more playable would certainly benefit the health of the tier as we can move away from so many Gengar and Kangaskhan mirrors/face offs.

The last point I'd like to bring up in the OP is that Volcanion isn't really necessary for checking anything. I bring this up because a lot of the time people ask for significant reason to alter old gen metas, but trust that Volcanion is one Pokemon the tier can do without. Anyone remember Heatran btw?



Much to Memoric's dismay, I am also taking the time to make this post about Mega Salamence. While I wasn't around during Salamence's suspect/banning, it would be an understatement to say this decision is controversial among the modern community, so much so that we hosted a XY + Salamencite tour in the Doubles forum earlier this year. One thing that's different now compared to 2014 is that the tier no longer has Jirachi to support it, which is huge for it to lose a Fairy/Ice-resistant redirection user.

While I didn't play the free mence tour, from what I can gather it seems like the reception was that it wasn't breaking the tier or anything like that. Just going by the common mons in the tier, there are plenty of reliable checks/counters like Mega Manectric, HP Ice/Wow Mega Gengar, Thundurus, Landorus-T, Kyurem-B, Porygon2, Cresselia, physdef Sylveon etc.

Admittedly I don't have much else to say about Mence which is why I'm hoping opening up more discussion can help us determine how to proceed, if at all. Some more points in its favor are the aforementioned Mega diversity = meta diversity claims and another Pokemon that seemingly helps check Volcanion (though I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it'd start running HP Ice but I digress).

So how do we proceed? Similar to what's happening with ADV UU right now, I'd prefer if these votes be staggered if we decide to take on action on both. However, by no means am I saying that action must be taken or anything, but I think it'd be really nice to start the discussion here.

Tagging the following users, which could serve as a potential voting list. (22/26 total)

ORASPL DOUers: stax umbry Shadowmonstr7 Arcticblast zee Toxigen Grandmas Cookin Tenzai SingleThunder Akaru Kokuyo Memoric

XY Cup Top 8: Fangame10 Amaranth Yuichi txitxas Mishimono

DPL XYers: qsns JRL KyleCole Voltix miltankmilk

XY Council: SMB

Free Mence Tour top 4*: Actuarily Yoda2798 Spurrific DaAwesomeDude1

* the free mence tour was an unofficial forum tour but given these are some of the only players that have won multiple games with mence included it felt appropriate to include them as well.

 

[Actuarily]

Thanks for posting this, whether or not Mega-Mence should be freed in XY has been something DOU has been informally discussing a while, and it’s time to formally discuss it. Volcanion being suspect-worthy is fairly new, and I’m of the opinion we should look at suspecting Mence first, and then if Volcanion still is seen as an issue moving to that. As such below I’m gonna talk about Mega-Mence, especially since I am much more opinionated on that.

I’m almost always in favor of doing a suspect if enough prominent voices are calling for one, as there isn’t much cost for doing one. So I’d be in favor of suspecting Mega-Mence, and like your outline for doing so with the qualified voters you suggested.

As for whether Mega-Salamence is ban-worthy, I don’t think it is. As I see it, there’s two reasons people may think something should remain banned in an oldgen:
1. We don’t want to shake up an older metagame too much
2. It’s broken.

As for 1, while XY is a centralized metagame, it’s also a rapidly changing metagame. XY today looks extremely different than when it was current gen, and even over the last few years it’s changed a lot. There’s been rises of team structures like hyper offense with Deoxys-a and Bisharp, Volcanion has surpassed Heatran & Talonflame as the dominant fire type, Kang used to be the consensus best Mega, then Gengar, and now who knows, etc. Teams from two or three DPLs ago often don’t work in today’s XY DOU. All this to say, we wouldn’t be adding a new element to a stable metagame that nobody builds for anymore.

That leaves us with #2, whether or not Mega-Mence is broken or not, and I don’t think it is. Mence is typically running one of three options:
A) Double edge physical attacker
B) Mixed attacker with Double Edge and Hyper Voice
C) Special attacker with Hyper Voice and coverage.

Versions that run physical attacks struggle with the omnipresence of Landorus-T’s intimidates in the tier, and also take heavy recoil from Double Edge + the often held Rocky Helmet. Special Attacker’s with Hyper Voice don’t hit nearly as hard, and there’s a lot of specially bulky Pokémon in the tier. For instance, Hyper Voice does not OHKO Amoonguss, so it can Spore Mega-Mence back. On the other hand, Double Edge does OHKO Amoonguss, but at the cost of 50% of Salamence’s hp (recoil + Rocky Helmet).

Stealth Rocks are also extremely common in the tier, which neuters arguably Mega-Mence’s best trait, it’s ability to switch in due to its good typing and Intimidate before mega-evolving. Alongside this, because flying types are already common in the tier, ice moves are on just about every team, and sometimes you don’t know where an HP ice is coming from.

Salamence isn’t even that good into the current VR, here’s the top 3 tiers and how it fares (obviously this is just my 2 cents):


>>Tier 1<<
Landorus-T - Good, trades intimidates but special Mence gets off good damage.
Thundurus-I - Bad, resists flying and often runs HP Ice.
Volcanion - Good, but AV can just start running HP Ice.

>>Tier 2<<
Amoonguss - Good but see above regarding how special Mence does not ohko.
Mega Gengar - neutral
Mega Kangaskhan - Neutral
Kyurem-B Bad.

>>Tier 3<<
Bisharp - Bad. activates Defiant.
Deoxys-A - Bad, dies to Psycho Boost
Diancie - Bad.
Heatran - Neutral
Politoed - Bad.
Porygon2 Bad.
Mega Swampert Good (but could run ice punch)
Sylveon - Bad
Talonflame - Neutral
Tyranitar - Bad

As you can see, it’s good into 4 mons, bad into 9 mons, and neutral into 4. Many of the mons it is “good” into also can just add an ice move if necessary and suddenly the tables turn. While this is obviously not a sweeping analysis, you can see that there’s many tools already available to teams to deal with Mega-Mence.

What mega-Mence does do is give teambuilding a little more flexibility. While it doesn’t do exactly what Landorus-T does, the role are similar of ground resists that intimidate, so using Mence instread of Landorus-T opens up the teambuilder a little more. I won the Mega-Mence tour using Excadrill Sand, which hasn’t really been popular in XY recently as most teams would run Landorus-T as their ground type. Here’s a replay showing Mega-Mence into a standard XY team from that tournament:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen6doublesou-1602007557

As you can see, Mega-Mence wasn’t too great into my opponents team, so I elected to just use it to get chip on Volcanion. I think this is what Mence does well, spreading around damage with Hyper Voice. But even then, commentators were talking about how bad Mega-Salamence seemed.

tl;dr, XY can handle adding Mega-Mence, and it isn’t broken.

 

[qsns]

I don't have a strong opinion on Volcanion. It's definitely the best Pokemon by a wide margin in the current metagame cycle but XY has been extremely adaptive over the past few years. The AV set has only been seeing tournament popularity for a year or so and I'd want to give the metagame more time to develop before seriously considering tiering action. For instance, I think most Landorus-T are more defensive than they have to be, seeing as though Intimidate doesn't do much against Seismic Kanga and the other notable physical attackers of the tier have been whittled down to Bisharp and Diancie, both having abilities that ignore the Attack Drop. Sets such as CB, or god forbid, Landorus-I, could be considered to have a stronger matchup against Volcanion with SR on another team member. I think giving the metagame a chance to course correct on team tempo, most teams being either HO (can't OHKO AV Volcanion and get OHKO'd back) or a very bulky offense (can't win trades), will make Volcanion less of a headache to deal with.

I strongly believe Mega Salamence would be a Tier 3 Pokemon in current XY, Tier 2 at best. As Actuarily explained, it has mediocre matchups into many Tier 1 and 2 Pokemon that you don't want to be giving free turns. Intimidate is relatively very weak in the metagame and doesn't hold a candle to Gengar's Shadow Tag or Kangaskhan's ability to universally trade. It does open up some really cool options, such as Mence/Exca Sand that was popular in VGC '15. I genuinely don't see any downsides to freeing this.

 

[KyleCole]

Even Choice Banded Landorus-T can't OHKO Volcanion

Truthfully Volcanion has no hard counter.

With regards to the first point 252+ Atk Choice Band Landorus-Therian Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Volcanion: 372-440 (102.1 - 120.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO.
You won’t always get there vs Def Volcanion but you’re looking pretty good with CB.

With regards to the second point, I’m sure you could find a scenario where these don’t 100% work, but as far as beating volcanion reliably goes, p2 —which you mentioned—, Kyurem-B, and Kingdra are about as dependable as you can get for answers in XY. There’s also Hydreigon and Latios…

Bulky thundurus (both forms) and chansey are right behind them, and I think Mega Swampert, Mega Kangaskhan, and Mega Manectric all are at least mostly positive (but I’m getting into the weeds now).

The point to all of that was to illustrate why I believe banning volcanion or even suspecting it right now is premature. The thing which needs doing is the long anticipated Mega Salamence suspect, ideally before DPL.

If mence is freed I am of the opinion it will be pretty firmly in the high end of tier 3, but even if the most pessimistic estimates are correct, it will still shake things up enough that some cooling time will be needed before another suspect.

If mence is not freed, then I guess you’ve got your opportunity to look at Volcanion, but let’s go one step at a time.

 

[Arcticblast]

Since people are mostly talking about Salamence, I'll talk about that first.


I don't think I'd call Mence broken. As Actuarily says, it doesn't have great matchups into most of the current VR. I do think that it's not a very wise unban, because I think we should be looking for more reasons to unban something than whether or not it's broken. The most common team archetype of genies / Volcanion / grass / genie check plays just fine against Mence. The problem is everything else. Double-Edge puts a ton of pressure on teams without an immediate response, and I think Mence's threat level pushes teams further towards the top 10-20 Pokemon and stifles some of the less-used Pokemon that don't show up in a ton of games already. Most of its best answers are already good, and Mence getting unbanned would really only prop up a couple more answers that already see fringe play anyway.

The one thing I'll give Mega Salamence is this: another strong Mega Evolution definitely helps break the grip Kangaskhan and Gengar have on the format. That's a good thing.


While I think the genies would still be very common if it was gone, I think Volcanion is the top Pokemon around by a long shot. Zee put it best, so I won't repeat it here, but I think "anyone remember Heatran btw?" is the real talking point here. Volcanion is the best Fire type AND the best Water type around in a single slot, and every single other Fire or Water is ultimately compared to Volcanion. I'd love to see stuff like Heatran, Rotom-W, Milotic, Keldeo, Charizard-Y, and even Arcanine running around, but why use any of these when you can use Volcanion on 90% of teams and get away with doing what those Pokemon want to do? I think without Volcanion around, not only would you see more of these, but you'd see a higher diversity of other Pokemon that no longer have to meet the power bar that Volcanion sets. I actually think a lot of the best answers to Mega Salamence are Pokemon that can struggle to deal with Volcanion, like Tyranitar and Diancie, who can check it in the right circumstances but are very vulnerable outside of those.

Despite Volcanion being dumb, I think XY is in a good place right now. Even with the meta revolving around it, we still see new Pokemon and new takes on old strategies pop up frequently.

If I had to rank the possible courses of action, I'd probably list them as follows:
1: Test Volcanion after ORASPL, test Mence after DPL
2: Test Volcanion after ORASPL, no action on Mence
3: no action at all
4: Test Mence after ORASPL, test Volcanion after DPL
5: Test both simultaneously (I just don't think this actually helps us figure out if either change is good or not)

tl;dr I think Mega Salamence exacerbates the existing flaws in the XY meta that Volcanion perpetuates. Volcanion's presence is a bigger issue than the presence or absence of Mega Salamence in my eyes, and as a result I'd really like to see action on Volcanion first.

 

[Bughouse]

old fart who hasn't played xy seriously in a while coming in. I largely agree with qsns on what actions to take today. But I also found the OP a bit odd in some places so I wanted to add some ancient history for context.

Volcanion being really good - probably the best water type and the best fire type - really isn't anything new. Volcanion was originally usable on PS! based on the game data before being removed until its actual release later on. When it was then officially revealed in December 2015, I messaged the council chat to bring up what to do depending on when it dropped - would we potentially want to quickban it so as to not mess with the meta right before a major tournament like SPL. I described it as follows:
"It's a pretty game changing mon that can function more or less like a better subtran. Alternatively, it's good at blocking both Sun and Rain. I expect it to have less impact than mega diancie but more impact than hoopa unbound. Certainly enough to potentially shake up a meta at its most important time of the year."
I then advocated for a quickban in the event that it dropped at an inopportune time (ultimately not relevant, since Volcanion wasn't released until just after SPL finals several months later). We've always known it would be a meta defining threat. For a long time we also were optimistic that even though it was going to be very good that it might be a positive for the tier, given how directly it addressed Azumarill + Jirachi/Amoonguss builds.
That's not to say there haven't been other meta shifts since 5+ years ago or whatever, but to me it's surprising to hear anything here as indicating Volcanion is a hugely different meta threat today than its always been. It may have gotten somewhat better in recent months/years, but I don't personally think it's plausible that it has risen to the standard where it should now be retroactively banned from an old gen. Even if it's centralizing and even if it tends to trade positively, I think it would be very strange to ban something from DOU that is simply a generally strong and bulky Pokemon with a lot going for it. But it's not a sweeper in the traditional sense, It doesn't have any cheesy strategies, and it doesn't offer traditional team support like Follow Me or Fake Out or speed control, etc. Yes - it's a very good Pokemon, and Pokemon whose best checks are themselves are rarely super healthy for any meta. But still - we're talking about what I think is a pretty borderline case, not a slam dunk, in an old gen. If it has started to dominate, I would say let the meta adjust more to it. Others in this thread have suggested ways to do that.

Salamence getting a retest post-jirachi ban - probably something that should have happened a while ago. Mence more so than most sweepers really benefitted from the Jirachi pairing (and also had Icy Wind Jirachi as one of its best checks). The meta Mence played in therefore was so Jirachi-reliant that it likely could/should have been retested several years ago as soon as Jirachi was gone. I will note that plenty of people did not use Jirachi alongside Mence back then - you could absolutely get by using other redirection or no redirection at all. It's an independently great mon. But its most deadly pairing was with Jirachi, and we've never really seen what Mence meta without Rachi looks like. Azumarill certainly got a lot worse without it. No reason to think that might not also be true for Mence. Don't see a huge problem at least trying it out now, and it's probably a few years late really. I know I repeatedly shot down KyleCole, among others, about retesting Mence during current gen when the meta was always shifting and people had other priorities of things they wanted to test for bans, but I agree with him now. Especially if Volcanion is currently the best Pokemon in the tier, Mence would be one more option to help shift that.

 

[Amaranth]

steamy is fine. it's good but I don't think it's too strong or gamebreaking or anything to the point of needing a ban. arguments in favor of banning steamy sound to me about as valuable as arguments to ban landorus-T in any OU of choice post XY because "it's used too much". like yeah it does things and role compresses in a way no other mon can really do, and as a result it gets used a lot. so what? heatran is outclassed, so what? go play vgc15 or something steamy itself is in no way too much to handle. claims of "no counters" are insane to me. click rocks t1 (you already should be doing this every game). position well. thing's slow as fuck and is weak to stabs of both genies. cant touch dragons or chansey. like this is a totally normal mon with a bunch of very important and common weaknesses. i really dont get this one

mence first and hopefully nothing else, xy dou is fine

 

[Yoda2798]

With the exception of Memoric, it's been widely apparant from the recent tour that Mega Salamence isn't broken. Pokemon / teams which are used right now already match quite well into Salamence, even without it being a consideration. It's also a suspect test that people have wanted for a long time, especially after Jirachi got banned. I won't repeat everything that's been said before but it's a pretty clear decision that it should be freed.

Volcanion is the opposite in many ways, only recently drawing interest, and having far from unanimous support. I don't get the point of "no counters" when, as was said in the post, "XY is a tier that's all about trading, since a lot of the super safe switches that exist in later gens aren't available to you here." So it's not something that uniquely applies to Volcanion, and also Kyurem-B exists. Other Pokemon's counters are also vulnerable to the likes of Mega Gengar, Mega Kangaskhan, and Amoonguss too (those Pokemon are really good for a reason), a Pokemon's counters having their own vulnerabilities isn't unique to Volcanion either. It's also misleading to paint Volcanion's genies matchup as simply positive when it's more complex than that, as Amaranth pointed out. Volcanion definitely does trade well, but its low Speed means it relies on being healthy to do so, and a weakness to Stealth Rock also notably hurts it.

I'm not seeing the meta diversity argument either, XY has long had a reputation for being centralised (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), most of which is from the genies, so that shouldn't really be a factor here. The "anyone remember Heatran btw?" comes from the fact that Volcanion was released and picked up later in the generation; Volcanion is better than Heatran, so I don't see the problem with it taking the other's spot. Much of the variety seen earlier in the tier's history was due to the relatively inexperienced playerbase, just look at how dominant THALK later became and that didn't have Volcanion. A structure of mega / genies (sometimes TR setter over Thundurus) / Fire (Volcanion or Heatran) / Grass (most typically Amoonguss) / filler (often Kyurem-B or Sylveon) is going to be strong either way, the Fire-type would just become Heatran and non-rain Water-types would still be niche, not that it even matters. Volcanion is really good but I'd disagree that we're at the point of saying it's banworthy.

Regardless of current position on Volcanion, it makes much more sense to me that Mega Salamence is suspected first as it's the far more clear cut of the two. Volcanion is more recent and borderline and should be given a chance to see how the metagame evolves, particularly after the inevitable addition of Salamence.

 

[zee]

hi all, it's Monday, 2 weeks after this thread was created (and the Ally Switch test just wrapped up), so I'd like to bump it and push for the following course of action:

Based on the discussion in this thread and #oldgens in the Doubles discord, I think 2 things are overwhelming clear:

-Arctic Memo and I are crazy and bad for thinking Volcanion is banworthy
-Mega Salamence isn't about to break XY and probably deserves to at least be voted on.

If tier leaders agree, the best time to vote on Mega Salamence in my opinion would be after ORASPL ends, where the tier is still fresh in the minds of a lot of people and the tier can maybe see some development before DPL via tests and such.

edit: just to clarify, I think we can leave Volcanion alone for now

tagging tier leaders for a final decision: Actuarily Yoda2798

 

[Actuarily]

From the responses to this post and the general discussion regarding the tier, the path forward seems clear to follow Zee’s outlined proposal of holding a suspect vote for unbanning Mega-Salamance in XY DOU. This vote will consist of the 26 qualified voters outline in Zee’s proposal, and be held after the ORAS PL has concluded, which is the only currently ongoing tournament featuring XY DOU. Instead of having two moving parts at once in an old generation, it would be best to first hold a vote on Mega-Salamence, and then allow some meta development, and if Volcanion is seen as a problem then open the door for further discussion on possibly holding a Volcanion suspect.

 

[Yoda2798]

As planned before, the voting thread for Mega Salamence is now up, using the list of 26 voters in zee's OP (edit: minus umbry as she did not end up playing in ORASPL). ORASPL Finals are already under way so will be unaffected by the result, and this gets the vote out of the way before the release of SV.

 

[Yoda2798]

The vote is now decided, Mega Salamence is now unbanned from XY DOU. Volcanion can be revisited down the line if it's a problem. Locking the thread now.