Metagame SS Monotype Suspect #4 - Aegislash

[mushamu]

​

Hey everyone, the Monotype council has chosen to suspect Aegislash this time around. Aegislash has been a dominant force from the start of its release. Aegislash's main claim to fame alongside being a great Pokemon in itself is that Steel is a fantastic typing which results in it already improving one of the best types in Monotype, while not being too strong on Ghost due to lack of synergy. Steel teams traditionally revolve around a sturdy defensive core consisting of Ferrothorn, Celesteela Corviknight or Skarmory, Heatran, and Aegislash which covers weaknesses from all ends.

Aegislash has a combination of traits in its amazing typing, mixed stats, and unique ability which make it a huge threat in Monotype. Ghost is an excellent typing both defensively and offensively, providing Steel teams with a Fighting immunity and a spinblocker for a type that is centered around hazard stack while hitting a majority of the metagame for neutral or super effective damage. Aegislash has the ability to run multiple sets, ranging from Swords Dance, Choice Specs, Choice Band, Weakness Policy Kings Shield, and last but not least, the infamous Substitute + Toxic set that many Steel teams use to hold the type together. The main question to be answered when going through this suspect is whether or not Aegislash makes Steel too strong. On Ghost, it does not have the necessary team support that would make it anywhere near dangerous compared to Steel, which has many Pokemon that synergize with Aegislash both offensively and defensively, which calls into question whether or not Aegislash pushes Steel over the edge and makes it too hard to take on.

In order to cast a vote in this suspect test, you must participate on the [Gen 8] Monotype ladder in which Aegislash will continue to be allowed. You must make a new account to ladder with. This account's registration date must be at earliest the day this suspect begins. You must prefix your account name with the tag: ASG8 in order for your account to qualify.

Acceptable:
ASG8 Decem

Unacceptable:
Decem ASG8

The requirement for qualification is at least 82% GXE and at least 45 games played. The suspect test will last two weeks until Wednesday June 23rd at 11:59 PM EST. You will then have three days to cast your vote. Aegislash will require a 60% majority of voters in favor of banning it in order for it to be banned from Monotype.

Upon meeting the requirements, you must post proof of the qualification in the Voter Identification thread, which is separate from this thread and will be created closer to the end of the suspect. Do not post your proof in this discussion thread.

You may use this thread to discuss this Aegislash suspect or ask for clarification for any questions you may have.

You may not use this thread to post one-liners or discuss topics unrelated to this specific suspect, such as possible future suspects.

Please stay respectful when you post and follow all Monotype forum rules. Please also make sure to follow the Monotype tiering philosophy found here.

 

[mushamu]

Voter identification thread: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...egislash-voter-identification-thread.3685929/

 

[Aeran]

I'll be voting do not ban for aegislash.

I want to be focusing mostly on the support aegislash provides with substitute + toxic since that is the most common set on steel aside from choice specs and swords dance variants which have many issues like being hard walled by some of the most common physically defensive walls in the game like toxapex and mandibuzz outright KOs with foul play if aegislash is in blade form on top of being revenge killed relatively easily thanks to aegislash's low base speed stat of 60. Additionally all of the sets that run an item aside from leftovers are susceptible to being chipped and worn down far easier than sub toxic.

Substitute + Toxic is by far aegislash's strongest set with it being able to come in on choice locked fighting type moves and being able to substitute and spread toxics freely while recovering hp behind King's shield, or at the very least forcing "50/50s" which can really be avoided in the teambuilder for the most part, but there is counterplay in many of these situations partially thanks to the recent bans that we've seen.

With Urshifu gone now we've seen the rise of substitute moltres-galar on both flying and dark which poses the threat of cleaving through steel while aegislash is in and going for a substitute on the toxic, or a substitute on ferrothorn's leech seed, heatran's stealth rock or toxic, etc. This is also true of a larger trend that we've seen is that many "steel breakers" like hydreigon, the before mentioned moltres galar, volcanion, bulk up landorus (to a lesser extent but it still applies), nidoking, blacephalon, victini (and kyurem can pp stall mons like celesteela, not quite as much of a steel breaker but still should be considered helpful in the matchup) can run substitute and shut down most of steel's antics or claim one or two crucial KOs and they usually have solid team support to make that happen. Barring pokemon like victini and maybe nidoking (which honestly doesnt need to run it), most of these pokemon will still be running substitute even after an aegislash ban because they have utility against bulkier playstyles as well.

With Dracovish gone we've seen more teams drop ferrothorn as it has become less necessary to keep the fish in check, usually in favor of mons like magnezone + melmetal. This effects Aegislash heavily in the water matchup where suddenly things like bulk up Urshifu-R can become terrifying under rain and can ignore potential rocky helmet damage from things like skarmory or iron barbs from ferrothorn with protective pads, which can reduce not only those "50/50s" on water's side but make them significantly less risky on rain offense builds. The metagame is still developing because these bans were recent, but the main point is that Aegislash's environment can still be hostile to it if prepped for in the teambuilder.

This is also ignoring types that outright handle steel pretty well as it is like flying, electric, ghost with spectrier and/or blacephalon, and ground and poison which are all common types, with even more anti-meta picks like fire melting steel and ice having the neccesary tools to handle the matchup with the proper team support and Dark having all the options needed to break through the core.

Aegislash is a great pokemon that can definitely make certain matchups more one-sided than others, the worst offense is steel vs fighting or vs psychic. Fighting simply does not have the tools to make it stand out compared higher tiered types and will still be struggling after an aegislash ban. Psychic's access to victini does go a long way, but being weak to Aegislash's shadow ball and letting Aegislash set up a substitute hurts quite a bit, however steel spamming protect is nothing new and the appropriate pivot will be chosen after choiced mons are scouted for regardless of Aegislash, psychic will still have to prepare for steel, it just won't have to worry about being spammed by shadow balls and toxics behind substitute.

I don't think hyper focusing on bad matchups while ignoring all of the other issues that were mentioned gives a good view of steel's place in the metagame as a whole. Is steel a good type? Undeniably, it is a solid type with a lot of options both offensively and defensively. Does aegislash make steel broken, uncompetitive or overcentralizing? No, most of these pokemon will still be using similar sets successfully regardless of aegislash's presence in the metagame. Banning aegislash would be detrimental to the tier in my opinion because handling it and the rest of the steel core is about careful play, proper preparation and respecting the opponent's options and playing accordingly.

TL;DR: Steel isn't broken, Aegislash doesn't make the type uncompetitive, broken or overcentralizing. If anything it certainly hasn't gotten better since Urshifu and Dracovish left the metagame, if not a little bit worse.

 

[AM Tesla]

As I have stood alone on the top of both mono and natdex mono ladders this week I have been deep in introspective thought. While some of those thoughts have centered around my work and family the overwhelmingly vast majority has focused on my disdain for a cartoon ghost inhabiting a set of medieval weaponry. I have listened to the defenses by esteemed users whose names I do not care about. Some of these defenses have included “But I love aegi!”, “wow they want to ban all the cool mons”, “but it's so slow!”, “Tesla you just want to ban aegi because you lose to it”. All of these defenses are of course false. I am obviously known as being extremely humble, thus, I will be the first to admit I get scared when I have to play aegislash even if the user is bad and has an ELO in the 1200s. Here are my arguments for why it SHOULD be banned

• Aegis slow speed is a strength disguised as a weakness. Similar to how aegislash is a tortured soul disguised as floating weapons, its low speed is disguised as a flaw. However. Aegi’s slow speed is a great strength. Due to its clearly overpowered ability, aegislash is nearly guaranteed to tank attacks with the defensive stats that surpass arceus god of pokemon. It is then able to deliver attacks with power surpassing arceus god of pokemon.
• As if this ability wasn't strong enough, it's even more powerful when combined with aegi's other unique weapon: Kings shield. Not only does it switch stats but stops physical attacks while weakening the opponent. This not only allows the freedom for users to invest evs in special defense and ignore defense, but also allows easy swords dance sweeps, as well as healing via leftovers.
• Surely such a clearly overpowered mon must have terrible typing or terrible coverage right? Wrong. It has amazing typing and coverage. Aegislash also has multiple viable sets making it nearly impossible to prepare for. The pokemon that “wall” aegislash like toxapex and mandibuzz as well as the aegislash wall breakers like hydregion mentioned in the above post have one thing in common. There only available in Poison and Dark. Two types that ofc do not fear aegi the toxic staller who is weak to dark type attacks. But for the other 16 types it isn’t so easy.
• I have seen a lot of people arguing that instead of banning aegislash people should just be more creative! This is cute. Especially since steel monos are always the least creative group. I tried to counter aegi. I ran sub heliolisk and eq dracozult etc but at the end of the day the cost of countering aegi makes a team incredibly vulnerable to the rest of the meta.
• Theres a reason steel is the most commonly used type is obvious. Banning aegi will not make it weak. There are numerous other viable options for steel to help vs fighting including klefki, metagross, doublade, and jirachi. Banning aegi would lead to increased competition among types, more diverse steel teams, and less stall. But this isn’t the reason it should be banned. It should be banned because its OP

In closing: If aegislash didn't have a cool design it would already be banned

 

[Aeran]

As I have stood alone on the top of both mono and natdex mono ladders this week I have been deep in introspective thought. While some of those thoughts have centered around my work and family the overwhelmingly vast majority has focused on my disdain for a cartoon ghost inhabiting a set of medieval weaponry. I have listened to the defenses by esteemed users whose names I do not care about. Some of these defenses have included “But I love aegi!”, “wow they want to ban all the cool mons”, “but it's so slow!”, “Tesla you just want to ban aegi because you lose to it”. All of these defenses are of course false. I am obviously known as being extremely humble, thus, I will be the first to admit I get scared when I have to play aegislash even if the user is bad and has an ELO in the 1200s. Here are my arguments for why it SHOULD be banned

• Aegis slow speed is a strength disguised as a weakness. Similar to how aegislash is a tortured soul disguised as floating weapons, its low speed is disguised as a flaw. However. Aegi’s slow speed is a great strength. Due to its clearly overpowered ability, aegislash is nearly guaranteed to tank attacks with the defensive stats that surpass arceus god of pokemon. It is then able to deliver attacks with power surpassing arceus god of pokemon.
• As if this ability wasn't strong enough, it's even more powerful when combined with aegi's other unique weapon: Kings shield. Not only does it switch stats but stops physical attacks while weakening the opponent. This not only allows the freedom for users to invest evs in special defense and ignore defense, but also allows easy swords dance sweeps, as well as healing via leftovers.
• Surely such a clearly overpowered mon must have terrible typing or terrible coverage right? Wrong. It has amazing typing and coverage. Aegislash also has multiple viable sets making it nearly impossible to prepare for. The pokemon that “wall” aegislash like toxapex and mandibuzz as well as the aegislash wall breakers like hydregion mentioned in the above post have one thing in common. There only available in Poison and Dark. Two types that ofc do not fear aegi the toxic staller who is weak to dark type attacks. But for the other 16 types it isn’t so easy.
• I have seen a lot of people arguing that instead of banning aegislash people should just be more creative! This is cute. Especially since steel monos are always the least creative group. I tried to counter aegi. I ran sub heliolisk and eq dracozult etc but at the end of the day the cost of countering aegi makes a team incredibly vulnerable to the rest of the meta.
• Theres a reason steel is the most commonly used type is obvious. Banning aegi will not make it weak. There are numerous other viable options for steel to help vs fighting including klefki, metagross, doublade, and jirachi. Banning aegi would lead to increased competition among types, more diverse steel teams, and less stall. But this isn’t the reason it should be banned. It should be banned because its OP

In closing: If aegislash didn't have a cool design it would already be banned

I'll skip the theatrics and just get to the meat of the argument.

Aegislash's speed stat is serviceable for what it does, however it leaves it very much open to being revenge killed if the Aegislash is being used as a cleaner late game; the comparison to Arceus seems rather weak even if we were to ignore Arceus having an amazing hp and speed stat, Aegislash can't have both of its offensive or defensive attributes at the same time, which is relevant when many aegislash sets forego King's Shield altogether. If King's Shield is being used on sub toxic sets, fair enough it is very annoying to deal with at times but is almost always mitigated to being max hp max spdef so its offensive capabilities are nowhere near those of swords dance or specs, but the way the post is worded makes me think of SD + King's shield which already restricts Aegislash to using shadow sneak because of that "strength" of having a base 60 speed stat, so it has to choose over a non-stab close combat to break bulkier steels or one of its STAB options like Iron Head, which makes Ghost/Steel relatively easy to wall or play around for most types in the game. King's shield is also not a perfect protecting move, because Aegislash still has to worry about getting statused, leech seeded, encored, etc and there's the possibility of activating defiant on Zapdos or Bisharp, the former becomes far more scary considering that there is the option of bulk up and not locking yourself into a move.

Aegislash's coverage is another point, but you really just see ghost/steel/fighting for the most part. Low ladder players might try doing something with like psycho cut or rock slide but this is hardly what we would consider amazing coverage for a sweeper. While ghost/steel/fighting is solid and covers a good amount, you have to sacrifice something in order to have that coverage, usually in the form of King's Shield, Aegislash can't use all of its tools at once.

The idea that toxapex, mandibuzz or hydreigon are only available and viable on poison and dark teams is absurd, if we check the viability rankings all of these mons are relatively high ranked on all of their respective typings, which covers poison, dark, but also flying water and dragon which are some of the most common types in the game. These are only examples that I gave off of the top of my head because I didn't want to write a novel or host a game show on "What can break the steel core? ft. Aegislash". There were numerous other examples that I provided in my first post that spread across most of the viable types in the metagame, but I'll just refer to this post in the metagame discussion thread because it goes through almost every type's options for breaking through steel.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...-discussion-crown-tundra.3672167/post-8885972

This is a far cry from "the other 16 types besides dark and poison struggle against aegislash"

The "just be creative!" argument seems like a strawman or it comes from randos in the monotype chat room. There is a difference between trying sets that only have that one function like you mentioned with like substitute helioisk or dracozolt and using the actual tools that whatever type you're using has to break through the core. If we're looking at electric because thats clearly the type you have in mind, you have so many viable tools to deal with steel, with options like but not limited to: Bulk up Zeraora with knock off + close combat ruins defensive and offensive Aegislash, choice specs and defensive Zapdos (specs being a way worse offender than Aegislash right now), Magnezone on air balloon traps and removes Excadrill and Celesteela and can be EVd to outspeed offensive Aegislash, Rotom wash outright outspeeds and can status Aegislash with will-o-wisp which means it can't recover hp.

The idea that Aegislash is "OP" after not acknowledging the beforementioned steel breakers, viable switch ins, the widespread availability of counterplay, how commonplace that counterplay is while saying that you needed things like Substitute helioisk or EQ dracozolt to win using electric just comes off as being short sighted if not fallacious.

 

[Chaitanya]

quick post, going to hella be voting ban on Aegislash.

Aegislash @ Leftovers
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Shadow Sneak
- King's Shield
- Toxic

(- speed)

Main set I wanna talk about which not many people use. I think sub has nothing on this set. Set imo needs lefties/leech/both ferrothorn to come into pex + spikes help sneak. People talking about dropping ferro are pretty insane - u just auto-lose to water, toxic zone catching pert once like someone mentioned to me once doesn't help anything if your water switch in is corv or whatever.

Anyway, sub gets broken by most common shit and because it's pretty slow and not as strong behind a sub w 1 attack it's kinda pointless do nothing stuff. Aegi's massive bulk lets you take pretty minimal damage from all neutral attacks and lets u take about 70 from something like nidoking which in turn you can do about 55 w sball. sneak after that does about 25 and with spikes and stuff its not a difficult position to chip nidoking into that range. This is obviously just one example but being able to take damage in shield form, attack with base 140 shadow ball and then catch chipped pokemon with a base 140 shadow sneak is unbelievably powerful when you can revert back to shield form with KS. Sneak also catches pokemon that are at low hp and gives you extra recovery, which with paired with kings shield can be almost unbreakable stuff for many builds.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1357260259-zdw5ztjec7jf7air8fkdy6zqen9e3ugpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1357269695-jsluubgvx45vfj7f9ahgjg3n3j688gvpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1357281976-tfrl07wv63k7hlp49mctykknq03o134pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1357311358-w92eoyubd3wjkb5okjekpmwqwqcupispw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1357307008-ffbx39dd2epxg3oljqsu4tqhzdt4nf8pw

Didn't save many but aegi does quite a bit in those, a few show how devastating sneak can be on kings shield.

-

The other thing that is going to make me vote ban are the defensive 50/50s caused by kings shield. Writing this in like 6 minutes don't have time to find more specific ones/go in depth but yea. (turns 12-14)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1350950083

-

sub aegi is also decent but think sneak is miles better. the possibility of 4-5 sets is also something that factors into my reasoning, you can't be prepped for them all, and while they're not all equally popular, they can all def ruin teams.

I ran sub heliolisk and eq dracozult etc but at the end of the day the cost of countering aegi makes a team incredibly vulnerable to the rest of the meta.

idk about those sets really lol but I agree that trying to check/counter aegislash can def make a team vulnerable to other incredibly common threats in the meta, and think it is the biggest reason for a massively centralized meta. hella ban it

 

[Kev]

Aegislash remains in Monotype.