There is no mon that can avoid the 2HKO from the wrath of a specs Indeedee, bar one, which gets 3HKOd, and has no reliable recovery. Indeedee has free psychic terrain on entry, allowing it to be a great revenge killer with a scarf, with its power and ability to not be hit with priority moves. Yet Indeedee still has more to offer. Healing wish is a godsend on offensive teams, allowing a sweeper, or wallbreaker a second chance to sweep/break the opposing team, especially against tough bulky match-ups. Trick allows it, and its teammates to easily break through walls that they would normally struggle with. In conclusion, Indeedee has 0 counters.
Yet still, I believe that Indeedee-F is not broken due to it's frailty, lack of speed without scarf, lack of power with scarf, low base power on its coverage, and the sheer amount of soft checks to it. Stakataka walls every single set, (barring the specs set) and considering it's an S rank mon, that gives indeedee a really solid check on every team. Even while on paper it may seem that specs indeedee-f has 0 switch ins, it's usually manageable with the sheer amount of mons that are faster and can OHKO it, especially with its paper thin physical defence stat. Frankly, I believe that the posts above are overstating the threat of indeedee in a game situation.
The team I used to get reqs, includes staka, mudsdale, vileplume, scarf indeedee, mantine and sylveon. 5 mons on this team can't switch into specs indeedee, and the last as staka, and it's problems are quite apparent. Yet still, I have never had trouble with indeedee, because it has such a hard time switching in. Even when it does switch in, staka can still switch in and threaten indeedee out. Even if the opposing player decides to switch, it's not hard to wish pass to stak, or even get lefties recovery with protect. Stakataka is also an incredibly threatening mon, even with its defensive set, which makes it undesirable to switch around. Hence, specs Indeedee players get button mashy, click expanding force and lose their wallbreaker. My team is an exceptionally bulky team, having 0 wallbreakers and 1 speed control mon, yet still, specs indeedee, a mon designed to break through walls, has never broken through my team.
This is glossing over the fact, that most offensive and even balance teams can play offensively, to not let indeedee in. You might think that offensive teams would get smashed by scarf indeedee, but no. AV Copperajah is a solid mon, that can easily eat mystical fires all day long, and is a pillar of the offensive teams in the meta game. Yet, if one desires to not use copperajah, they still have options. Drapion absolutely abuses scarf indeedee, taking a pittance from its moves, and being able to threaten the other team hugely after a SD boost. Articuno-G is a fantastic switch in to Indeedee, and creates huge momentum for its team, with its u-turn. The sheer amount of mons that can eat one hit from scarf indeedee, and kill back, is far too much for indeedee to be relegated to more than a role of a revenge killer, or a utility mon (with it's healing wish/trick). This list, of mons that can eat one hit from scarf indeedee, and OHKO back includes: Sivally-ground (after rocks), specs sylveon, eggy, snorlax, tsareena, aero, decidueye, dhelmise (after rocks), exploud, araquanid, golurk, the list just goes on.
TLDR: Specs is too threatened by balance, and offence teams to work, because everything outspeeds it and can OHKO it, and scarf is too weak to bulky teams, and can't even do too much against offence teams, due to the sheer number of mons that can eat one hit, and kill it back in return.
However, that doesn't mean nothing relating with Indeedee needs to be banned. We all know 'em, we all hate 'em, psychic terrain teams, with its prime sweeper being the absolutely monstrous sceptile. I've seen the above posts, by lucario, pokeslice, and pika134 all discuss about sceptile, and how hard it is to deal with it. The question I bring up is, when sceptile is the hard to deal with factor here, why is sceptile not banned? Pokeslice clearly mentions, and I quote "What pushes it over for me is terrain offense and sceptile." From this quote, what I infer (and I may be wrong) is that sceptile is the broken factor. Lucario similarly mentions how easily it can get a swords dance, and they aren't wrong. With unburden, sceptile doesn't need any speed investment. This allows it to run max hp, eating a comical amount of hits, especially with psychic seed boosting its special defence. Like this thing takes a poison jab from SD drapion. It also matches up incredibly well against the meta. To go by the viability rankings, rotom-c is set up fodder, staka dies to +2 low kick, mudsdale gets OHKOd by +2 leaf blade, Silvally-ground also gets OHKOd by +2 leaf blade, vileplume dies to +2 acro, and so on. Even mons that can take a hit, such as sylveon, mantine, xatu, escav, garticuno, can't actually deal with it. Sylveon does 30%, mantine has a 15% chance to 2HKO with hurricane, excluding hurricane accuracy, xatu does a pathetic 20%, escav can't kill sceptile without megahorn, and even garticuno fails to OHKO sceptile. Now sure, checks like talonflame, or wisp rotom-c exist, the second tflame gets knocked, and takes rocks, it dies. It also needs to be higher than 80%, to make sure it lives +2 acro. Wisp Rotom-C is also very, very niche. The highest mon on the viability rankings that can actually beat sceptile, is weezing. If weezing misses its wisp (or the sceptile user is running Lum like an absolute chad), sceptile wins the match-up, and possibly sweeps. Weezing is also a B+ mon, and makes lots of teams lose a lot of momentum, making it hard to fit on teams. Other checks, like braviary, arcanine, or even garbodor do exist, but they're literally in C+ or B-. They all suck, and can be taken advantage off. Garb has 0 reliable recovery, braviary and arcanine are very weak to toxic and knock off, and arcanine needs to hit it's wisp (or run flare blitz) to deal with sceptile, similar to the weezing complex. Sceptile does not have any counters, and all of its checks, are generally bad Pokemon in the meta game, and sceptile can overwhelm them with extreme luck, or with a good player.
"If you need Arcanine to check something, it's broken" - Lucario, 2021
TLDR: Indeedee-F is not broken, however, it enables a broken threat, sceptile, and rather than banning indeedee (which enables sceptile), it would be wiser to ban sceptile, as it seems to be the issue, while indeedee is a healthy presence in the tier.
PS: Can someone pls send the link to put reqs, Idk where it is, tysm
My position on Indeedee
Let me start off by saying that I will be voting ban. This will not be the focus of my post, but for the sake of transparency this is what I believe in very brief terms:
- I do not think that Indeedee is uncompetitive - i.e. that it reduces "the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that more skillful play is almost always rendered irrelevant."
- I do not believe that Indeedee is broken - i.e. that it is "too good relative to the rest of the metagame such that more skillful play is almost always rendered irrelevant"
- But I do believe that Indeedee has an unhealthy effect on the meta - i.e. that it has an "undesirable effect on the meta" such to the extent where it "inhibits skillfull play to a large degree".
The purpose of this post: the issue of incoherent arguments
With that out of the way, I want to focus on something slightly different: incoherent arguments. I think many posts suffer from a lack of coherence. Many users have a tendency to go off on tangents and lose track of their thoughts, which in turn results in them presenting fallacious arguments. The most typical mistake is to draw conclusions which do not naturally follow from the premises that have been presented. People are particularly prone to making this error when they make longer posts. The result is that it is difficult for the reader to follow the argument, thereby weakening the argument and making it more difficult to engage with. However, in most cases this could be solved quite easily if the posters were made aware of this tendency.
The purpose of this post is thus to make users aware of this tendency to make incoherent arguments. My hope is that this will enable us all to make posts that are coherent and thus easy to understand. To this end I want to focus on the arguments presented by Kingo. Let me preface this by saying that I appreciate the effort that Kingo put into their post. I think such high-effort posts are valuable, and I hope that you and other users continue to make them. This is also part of the reason why I picked this post. I think it is decent, but some things remain unclear, and I think it could be improved significantly with a few small changes. Thus, without further ado, let us take a closer look at the main arguments that Kingo makes:
Main Argument 1: "Specs Indeedee is too threatened by balance and offence to work"
Premise 1: Specs Indeedee has no counters.
Premise 2: Specs Indeedee has many offensive checks - many mons outspeed it and ko it.
Premise 3: I have always beaten Specs Indeedee with my own slow balance team because my opponents started mashing buttons.
Premise 4: Offense and balance can play aggressively to prevent Indeedee from getting in.
Conclusion: Specs Indeedee is too threatened by balance and offence to work.
My critique
This argument is arguably based on true premises - at least if we add some goodwill. Most people would agree that it has no true counters, but that we do have access to many offensive checks (mons that beat it 1v1). Granted, you might be slightly overstating how many mons outspeed Indeedee, as it does outspeed the majority of the metagame. Anyway, it is also true that offense and balance can play aggressively to prevent Indeedee from getting in position to claim a kill - at least to some degree. This is admittedly easier for offense to do, as it tends to have plenty of mons that outspeed Specs Indedee, whereas balance typically only has one or two mons that outspeed it. Moreover, offense can take advantage of choice-locked Indeedee to set up and make progress or sweep, whereas balance is not as good at punishing choice-locked Indeedee. Nevertheless, the premise can still be said to be true (or at least partly true) if we add some goodwill. Further, it may well be true that you have always beaten Specs Indeedee with your balance team. Granted, I would probably leave out the part about how your opponents got frustrated and started mashing buttons since this leaves the reader with the impression that you only won those games because your opponent played poorly.
However, even if we grant that the premises are true, this line of argument does not make sense. This is because the conclusion does not naturally follow from its premises. We may have access to offensive checks, we may be able to play aggressively vs Indeedee, and it may be possible to beat Indeedee with a slow balance team, but this does not mean that Indeedee "is too threatened by balance and offence to work." You have not done anything to prove that Indeede does not work. Saying that it does not work indicates that you believe that it is not viable. This is surely not what you meant, and it certainly does not follow from your premises. Hence, it makes no sense to conclude that "Specs Indeedee is too threatened by balance and offence to work."
My proposed solution: The argument could be made logically valid with one simple trick - changing the conclusion. You have done a decent job of providing premises which support the idea that
Specs Indeedee is not broken. You should thus be drawing this conclusion. Further, you could benefit from changing the latter two premises slightly, for reasons discussed above. The argument could thus be made to look like this:
Premise 1: Specs Indeedee has no counters.
Premise 2: Specs Indeedee has many offensive checks.
Premise 3: Offensive teams generally have a decent matchup versus Indeedee.
Premise 4: Bulkier teams struggle with Indeedee, but can win versus it if you pilot them well.
Conclusion: Specs Indeedee is not broken because we have sufficient offensive counterplay.
Main Argument 2: "Scarf is too weak to bulky teams and can't even do too much against offence"
Premise 1: Scarf Indeedee is a great revenge killer.
Premise 2: Scarf Indeedee can use HW to bring back a teammate which may in turn sweep.
Premise 3: Scarf Indeedee can use HW to bring back a wallbreaker to make more progress versus bulkier teams.
Premise 4: Scarf Indeedee can make progress against bulky teams with Trick.
Premise 5: Scarf Indeedee has several decent defensive switchins.
Premise 6: Scarf Indeedee has many offensive checks - many mons can eat a hit and kill in return.
Conclusion: Scarf is too weak to bulky teams and can't even do too much against offence
My critique
Again, your premises are true but your conclusion is fallacious. In fact, the conclusion directly contradicts its premises: you posit that Scarf Indeedee can make progress versus bulkier teams with Trick and help its teammates do so with HW, but you conclude that it is "too weak to bulky teams". In a similar vein, you posit that Scarf Indeedee is a great revenge killer that can help its teammates sweep with HW, yet you conclude that it "can't even do too much against offence". This does not follow. The conclusion is not supported by its premises. You are seemingly pulling it out of nowhere. This weakens your argument significantly.
My proposed solution: Again, I would simply change the conclusion. You have provided premises which support the argument that Scarf Indeede is not broken. Based on your premises, one would be lead to believe that Indeedee is a great mon, but that we have sufficient defensive and offensive counterplay for it (in the form of several defensive switchins and many offensive checks). Your argument would therefore be logically valid if you concluded that "Scarf Indeedee is not broken because we have sufficient defensive and offensive counterplay".
Main Argument 3: Sceptile is broken
Premise 1: Psychic Terrain teams are broken or unhealthy, not specified
Premise 2: Sceptile is what makes psychic terrains teams broken/unhealthy
Premise 3: Sceptile has no counters.
Premise 4: All of its checks are generally bad Pokemon.
Conclusion: Sceptile is broken.
My critique
This argument is almost logically valid. Granted, you merely allude to Psychic Terrain being broken or unhealthy - it would probably be better to explicitly state that you believe it to be broken or that you see it as unhealthy, and to then make the argument in favor of this position. At the moment, you merely take it for granted that Psychic Terrain is problematic in some sense, and then turn towards arguing that Sceptile is what pushes it over the edge. Nevertheless, this argument is much easier to follow than the former arguments.
However, some of the premises of this argument are false. It is not true that Sceptile has no counters. In fact, you name them yourself - Talon, Xatu, Guno, Escav, Arcanine, Weezing, Garbodor, and Arcanine. Talon eats +2 Acro and OHKOs max HP Scept with BB after SR (you may also EV it to KO from full). As for Xatu, it is wrong that it "does a pathetic 20%". Foul Play always OHKOs Scep after Helmet damage, even if it has max HP investments. Foul Play also hits SD Ground/Steelvally, Golurk, and Copperajah for significant damage, so it is by no means a weird move to run. In fact, it is arguably the standard (has seen lots of tour usage). Further, you scoff at the thought of running Megahorn on Escav, but this is unreasonable. If your team is otherwise weak to Sceptile and you happen to have an Escav, why would you not use the move that allows you to beat it reliably? Moreover, Megahorn is a strong stab move which among other things hits Guzzlord, so it really is not outlandish to use this move at all. Indeed, it is arguably one of the best moves on it. As for Arcanine, it does not necessarily need Blitz to beat Sceptile (assuming Low Kick and not EQ). Flamethrower always 2HKOs max HP +1 Spdef Sceptile after SR, while +1 Acro does less than 40 in return. That being said, if you find yourself being super weak to EQ Scep, then there is nothing wrong with using Flare Blitz Arc. Regarding Guno, you claim that it does not ko Scep, but Modest Guno always OHKOs max hp +1 Scep after SR. It also bears mentioning that Weezing is only 3HKOd by +2 Acro after SR, whereas Sludge Bomb 2hkos after Helmet, so it does not necessarily need to rely on Wisp if it has been kept healthy. Finally, it is not true that these mons are bad. Most of them are solid and relatively splashable. I would personally argue that Arc and Garb are the most difficult to fit on teams, but I think we can have reasonable disagreements over the splashability of the aforementioned mons. That being said, you are right to point out that some of the most reliable answers to Scep relies on inaccurate moves: Guno relies on Cane, Escav relies on Megahorn, and Garb relies on Gunk. Still, the argument falls apart when several of its premises are false.
My proposed solution: Firstly, I would specify whether I believe that psychic terrain is broken or unhealthy. Secondly, I would remove the false premises (P3 and P4). We would then be left with the following argument:
Premise 1: Psychic Terrain teams are broken.
Premise 2: Sceptile is what makes Psychic Terrains teams broken.
Conclusion: Sceptile is broken.
This is an example of a logically valid argument. Of course, you would also need to provide some evidence to support the notion that Sceptile is what pushes Psychic Terrain over the edge. In doing so, you should refrain from exaggerating. You might think that this makes your argument more convincing, but the true effect is the opposite.
Main Argument 4: We should ban Sceptile.
Premise 1: Indeedee is not broken - it is a healthy presence.
Premise 2: Indeedee enables Sceptile.
Premise 3: Sceptile is broken.
Conclusion: We should ban Sceptile.
My critique
In this argument you make a new mistake - two of your premises directly contradict each other. P1 posits that Indeedee is a healthy presence, but P2 posits that it enables Sceptile - a mon which you consider to be broken. This is incoherent. If it enables a mon that is broken, i.e. if it is what makes a mon broken, then clearly it is not a healthy presence! You either believe that Indeedee is healthy, or you believe that it enables a broken element. It is logically inconsistent to hold both positions simultaneously.
You also make the mistake of conflating the two terms broken and unhealthy. I am happy to see that you now posit that "Indeede is not broken" (rather than being unable to work), but sadly you jump straight to saying that it is a healthy presence. These two things are not the same! A mon can be either uncompetitive or unhealthy without being broken. In this instance, I personally believe that Indeedee is unhealthy, despite not being broken. Of course, the point here is not that you need to agree with me. You are free to believe that Sceptile is broken and that Indeedee is healthy. But your premises does not support this conclusion!
My proposed solution: I would simply remove premise 2. I would also add another premise - that we should ban broken elements. This is implied, but never stated. But this is arguably just nitpicking. Anyway, if we were to do so, we would be left with the following argument:
Premise 1: Indeedee is not broken.
Premise 2: Sceptile is broken.
Premise 3: We should ban elements that are broken.
Conclusion: We should ban Sceptile.
This an example of a logically valid argument - the conclusion naturally follows from its premises. As such, if we assume that the premises are true, then the conclusion must necesarily also be true. We may then turn towards exploring whether the premises are actually true. Personally I disagree, but that is fine. Disagreement and
constructive engagement is a good thing.
Concluding remarks
The purpose of this post was no to nitpick, but to highlight a very common error. What stood out the most to me were Argument 1 and 2. In these arguments, Kingo took the time to lay forth mostly true premises, but undermined the argument by drawing conclusions which did not follow from those premises. Another thing that stood out to me was the tendency to exaggerate. Kingo could have concluded that "Specs Indeedee is not broken because we have sufficient offensive counterplay", and that "Scarf Indeedee is not broken because we have sufficient defensive and offensive counterplay". However, they instead concluded that "Specs Indeedee is too threatened by balance and offence to work", and that "Scarf is too weak to bulky teams and can't even do too much against offence". In other words, Kingo ended up being tempted into drawing exaggerated conclusions which did not follow from their premises, thereby undermining the argument. This is a common issue on this site, but I hope that my post can be a first step towards dealing with it.