Announcement SV National Dex UU Stage 2: Solar Power (Garganacl, Manaphy and Xurkitree quickbanned)

[Niadev]

The council just conducted its second vote, and the results are in. Without further ado… Garganacl, Manaphy, and Xurkitree are all banned from National Dex UU effective immediately.


Garganacl

Garganacl is an incredibly effective defensive setup sweeper, with an ability that negates status (a common way to deal with most defensive sweepers) thrown at it, a STAB that inflicts a constant 1/8th the opponent’s health every turn (1/4th on Steel and Water types), and the ability to Terastalize into another type to negate would be breakers. After an Iron Defense, there is little stopping Body Press and Salt Cure from sweeping most teams, other than Covert Cloak on Pokemon that more often than not had no business running the move, or specific Whirlwind users such as Ting-Lu and Skamory who could only delay the inevitable.

Add in Terastalization options such as Water, Fairy and Ghost, and reliably answering Garganacl is pushed from difficult to outright unreasonable. It could also utilize a Stealth Rock + Protect set, though this wasn’t seen as much despite having the benefits of being able to maximize Salt Cure’s utility within a game.

Overall, its oppressive nature on the teambuilder and ease of sweeping has resulted in our decision to ban it from the National Dex UU tier.


Manaphy

Manaphy wasn’t seen much early on outside of rain teams due to the relatively fast state of the early metagame, but that all changed once shifts dropped and the tier began to settle into its more complex phases. With the extra breathing room for Manaphy’s surprisingly level of offensive diversity in mind, it quickly jumped to the frontlines, being one of the most offensively extreme examples with the power to practically 2HKO the entire metagame after a Tail Glow boost. Water + Grass coverage was all Manaphy needed to blast through many of the defensive answers that would otherwise be immune, after all.

To add onto this, Manaphy was no one-trick pony or offensive glass cannon either; Various offensive options, such as Wacan or Rindo Berry, various Tera types, Z-Moves, and the continued prevalence of Rest + Hydration sets on Rain, on top of Screen Teams to bolster its already naturally high defenses and great typing, all proved to be viable options at Manaphy’s disposal which could be used to complicate the plethora of offensive answers centered around it, exacerbating the aforementioned ability to nigh-effortlessly claim at least one KO on top of these options even more, if not multiple against a slower team.


Xurkitree

Xurkitree does most of the same things it did last gen - fish for a Z Hypnosis hit and go for the sweep. The sudden decision to ban it from the tier was primarily due to the uncompetitive nature of this, as if it hit and the opposing grounds (assuming they could answer it to begin with) took more than a little bit of chip, it cleaned most teams on its own with the free Tail Glow it got afterwards. Even if it missed Hypnosis the first time, it was not unfeasible for it to try to hit Hypnosis a second time if it did not die following the first miss as it often did, especially if it was behind screens, one of the more common archetypes it found itself on. This left games up to a 60% roll in the Xurkitree’s favor an unreasonable amount of times.

In addition, with the previous shift we lost the majority of our good choice scarfers that outsped it, namely Kartana and Tapu Lele, as well as our best priority option to deal with it in Rillaboom, though running a bulkier Xurkitree set to get around these revenge killers was a possibility while still wiping out the majority of teams with its boosts. The newly gained Blissey and Chansey also struggled to actually deal with it, as they were only able to Toxic it or chip at it for a priority user to kill it, while Xurkitree already 2HKOd at +3 in the case of Blissey or could simply Tail Glow again and 2HKO Chansey.

Though it also had some breaker sets that were virtually unwallable, these largely struggled to set up reliably, were easily revenge killed, and were difficult to build around due to its nonexistent defensive presence. Regardless, it was still worth noting as teams prepared to sleep sack something were often greeted with a +3 Xurkitree poised to obliterate something anyways, often guaranteeing it at least one kill anyways thanks to its +3 Gigavolt Havoc vaporizing anything that isn’t a Ground-type.

In the end, even the few checks to a boosted Xurkitree were considered far too stretched for it to be a healthy presence in the metagame, and it was banned from the National Dex UU tier.


The full voting list can be found here:

	Aegislash	Garganacl	Gyarados	Kommo-o	Kyurem	Manaphy	Victini	Weavile	Xurkitree
Arishem	Suspect	Quickban	Do Not Ban	Suspect	Do Not Ban	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Abstain
sanguine	Suspect	Quickban	Do Not Ban	Suspect	Do Not Ban	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban
lupla	Suspect	Quickban	Do Not Ban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban
MudkipBeans	Suspect	Quickban	Do Not Ban	Quickban	Suspect	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban
N_Mareanie	Suspect	Quickban	Do Not Ban	Quickban	Abstain	Abstain	Abstain	Abstain	Quickban
Niadev	Abstain	Quickban	Do Not Ban	Abstain	Abstain	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban
Pubo	Suspect	quickban	Do Not Ban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban
Ryuji	Suspect	quickban	Abstain	Quickban	Suspect	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban
Outcome	Suspect	Quickban	No Action	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban	Suspect	Suspect	Quickban

The following watchlist will remain as follows:

Aegislash
Blaziken
Kommo-o
Kyurem
Weavile
Victini

Special attention will be given to Victini and Weavile, followed by Aegislash, as they were generally considered to be the most pressing out of the rest. All three in particular were given near-unanimous votes for a Suspect test, so said advancements are likely to be continued down the line, assuming nothing else in the metagame changes with upcoming shifts.

Blaziken was also brought up as a possibility for tiering action, but the council decided to keep an eye on it for the time being, hence it will be on the watchlist.

This vote was meant to be out before the end of Beta but was delayed. Regardless, we are officially out of Beta now, so hopefully more suspects and less quickbans, so stay tuned.

In addition, we are moving discussion of new stages into the Metagame Thread to avoid spreading out discussion too much, so this thread will be locked.

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Tagging Kris to implement this. Thanks.