Well seeing as this is rarely discussed among the general population of battlers I figured I might as well give it a go.
If I hear another "I'm just so glad Garchomp is Uber" or "no way, we have to retest it when Platinum comes out" I'm going to beat you down with a spatula. We just voted the thing Uber, so I really don't want to get into another discussion of that. People tend to think on both sides and get very zealous of saying one thing or another and I don't want to deter this thread into another one of those tl'dr ones that are just plain boring, so without further ado...
Based on the dussion of this thread I am going to make a poll that'll have the potential suspects discussed here and then we can see which potential suspects people see the need to be tested or banned.
Suspects that I think need to be tested or banned:
1. Deoxys-S: This is the fastest Taunter, Spiker, Screener, etc. in the whole game. If you want to strike first you need to use a priority move.
There is a lot of uncertainty of what to do against it because of its massive movepool. Its HP is abysmal, but it makes up for that with its other slightly above average stats (for OU). You can EV it to outrun most Choice Scarf users and Dragon Dancers. After one DD Deoxys-S can kill Gyarados, Salamence, Dragonite, etc. with one Thunderbolt or Ice Beam.
My favored strategy has it receiving Nasty Plots from Togekiss. If you can get a couple Nasty Plots to it D-S pretty much becomes like a pseudo Garchomp.
With a +SAtk Nature, 216 EVs in SAtk, Life Orb, and two Nasty Plots passed to it Psychic will 2HKO a 252 HP/4 SDef Blissey (Damage: 380 - 448). With Superpower that's achieved with less setup, but then you can pretty much just sweep the rest of the team with the Nasty Plots passed to you.
My suggestion: Get this thing to Uber ASAP
2. Stealth Rock: This move is the only move in the whole game that can hit anything (except Magic Guard Clefable) with 100% accuracy. There is some way to avoid damage from any other move in the game.
This is pretty much common knowledge now, but:
Spikes and Toxic Spikes take three and two turns respectively to setup and do not hit Flying types and Levitaters, but it only takes one turn to get Stealth Rock up to damage the opponent.
Many well built teams have Taunters or Ghost types to prevent the removal of Spikes in general, so good luck trying to not take damage from it.
Let's take a different perspective to this:
Let's say I have 2 pokémon that are neutral to it, 2 that are weak, and 2 that resists it on my team.
If I do not switch unless my pokémon are knocked out, I don't get rid of SR and one of the pokémon that is neutral to Rock is out when SR is first thrown into play.
Okay, obviously we know that there's a lot of switching in this game, so let's say that whole team gets hurt by SR twice.
It isn't uncommon to switch a good 20 times within a battle and let's say the damage taken on average was neutral and you couldn't get rid of Stealth Rock. 12.5% * 20 = 250% unavoidable damage.
That's like killing nearly half one's team.
In Ubers this greatly hinders Ho-Oh's usage and hurts Rayquaza as Deoxys-A can set it up without a problem holding a Focus Sash.
In Standard a vastly majority of teams carry this move forcing pokémon such as Charizard and Moltres to not see much usage.
In Underused Areodactyl easily sets down SR with its base 130 speed.
The usage of Stealth Rock encourages the usage of the few pokémon that can use Rapid Spin, which encourages the usage of Ghost types, discourages the usage of pokémon most affected by itm etc. In short I believe it is over centralizing the metagames.
My suggestion: A Stealth Rockless metagame needs to be desperately tested.
That's the two biggest concerns of mine and I am interested on hearing what your suggestions and thoughts are.
If I hear another "I'm just so glad Garchomp is Uber" or "no way, we have to retest it when Platinum comes out" I'm going to beat you down with a spatula. We just voted the thing Uber, so I really don't want to get into another discussion of that. People tend to think on both sides and get very zealous of saying one thing or another and I don't want to deter this thread into another one of those tl'dr ones that are just plain boring, so without further ado...
Based on the dussion of this thread I am going to make a poll that'll have the potential suspects discussed here and then we can see which potential suspects people see the need to be tested or banned.
Suspects that I think need to be tested or banned:
1. Deoxys-S: This is the fastest Taunter, Spiker, Screener, etc. in the whole game. If you want to strike first you need to use a priority move.
There is a lot of uncertainty of what to do against it because of its massive movepool. Its HP is abysmal, but it makes up for that with its other slightly above average stats (for OU). You can EV it to outrun most Choice Scarf users and Dragon Dancers. After one DD Deoxys-S can kill Gyarados, Salamence, Dragonite, etc. with one Thunderbolt or Ice Beam.
My favored strategy has it receiving Nasty Plots from Togekiss. If you can get a couple Nasty Plots to it D-S pretty much becomes like a pseudo Garchomp.
With a +SAtk Nature, 216 EVs in SAtk, Life Orb, and two Nasty Plots passed to it Psychic will 2HKO a 252 HP/4 SDef Blissey (Damage: 380 - 448). With Superpower that's achieved with less setup, but then you can pretty much just sweep the rest of the team with the Nasty Plots passed to you.
My suggestion: Get this thing to Uber ASAP
2. Stealth Rock: This move is the only move in the whole game that can hit anything (except Magic Guard Clefable) with 100% accuracy. There is some way to avoid damage from any other move in the game.
This is pretty much common knowledge now, but:
- 1/4 Rock Resist: 3.125% damage
- 1/2 Rock Resist: 6.25% damage
- Neutral to Rock: 12.5% damage
- 2x Rock Effectiveness: 25% damage
- 4x Rock Effectiveness: 50% damage
Spikes and Toxic Spikes take three and two turns respectively to setup and do not hit Flying types and Levitaters, but it only takes one turn to get Stealth Rock up to damage the opponent.
Many well built teams have Taunters or Ghost types to prevent the removal of Spikes in general, so good luck trying to not take damage from it.
Let's take a different perspective to this:
Let's say I have 2 pokémon that are neutral to it, 2 that are weak, and 2 that resists it on my team.
If I do not switch unless my pokémon are knocked out, I don't get rid of SR and one of the pokémon that is neutral to Rock is out when SR is first thrown into play.
- 2 Resistant to Rock gets switched in once = 6.25% * 2 = 12.5%
- 1 neutral = 12.5%
- 2 weak = 25% * 2 = 50%
Okay, obviously we know that there's a lot of switching in this game, so let's say that whole team gets hurt by SR twice.
- 2 Resistant to Rock each hit by SR twice = 25% damage
- 2 netural each hit by SR twice = 50% damage
- 2 weak each hit by SR twice = 100% damage
It isn't uncommon to switch a good 20 times within a battle and let's say the damage taken on average was neutral and you couldn't get rid of Stealth Rock. 12.5% * 20 = 250% unavoidable damage.
That's like killing nearly half one's team.
In Ubers this greatly hinders Ho-Oh's usage and hurts Rayquaza as Deoxys-A can set it up without a problem holding a Focus Sash.
In Standard a vastly majority of teams carry this move forcing pokémon such as Charizard and Moltres to not see much usage.
In Underused Areodactyl easily sets down SR with its base 130 speed.
The usage of Stealth Rock encourages the usage of the few pokémon that can use Rapid Spin, which encourages the usage of Ghost types, discourages the usage of pokémon most affected by itm etc. In short I believe it is over centralizing the metagames.
My suggestion: A Stealth Rockless metagame needs to be desperately tested.
That's the two biggest concerns of mine and I am interested on hearing what your suggestions and thoughts are.