Robofiend

Well, we could just ban Chansey too. I'm actually almost more in favor of that than just bringing Gengar back. Also rolf at "get rekt by +2 psychic" +2 252 SpA Espeon Psychic vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Chansey: 148-175 (45.3 - 53.6%) -- 2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery I'll take my 98% to live the 2HKO and let Toxic/ST/whatever wear you down.

alright so Arguments for banning Gengar: 1. It's super centralizing. In my view, this is almost not debateable: Gengar's really good and a well-designed team has to bend over backwards to fully cover all of its sets. When you combine great sweeping potential with pro support and defense, you get Gengar, and there's some reason to believe that it prevents the game from growing. Arguments against: 1. Gengar prevents two undesirable tactics from being too important: Stall & Trapping. Without Gengar it's pretty easy to run Mag/Normal Spam and get away with it. Additionally, without Gengar there's less punishment for running Spikers and spinners, creating a ton of gameplay around keeping/preventing Spikes from forcing the match. Special walls like Chansey are extremely viable without Gengar (who can otherwise stall it to death or pair with Ursaring to break stall) and there are a lot of reasons to run Dugtrio in an attempt to stop stall/balance as well. The ultimate problem with all of this is that it seems that matchup can play too large a role in determining the outcome. 2. Stall is balanced with other playstyles even with Gengar in the meta (as evidenced by Stall players winning tournaments pre ban) so it's not like removing Gengar changed playstyle diversity for the better. In fact, it's reasonable to say that the lack of Gengar makes offense totally unviable, while before it was mildly useful in part because Gengar could Taunt/PainSplit/Focus Punch/Perish Song opposing, unruly walls. Idk what the point is here, just trying to get the debate going

rofl at this calc madness I think it's safe to say that Dugtrio doesn't reliably live two Ice Beams without investment, can we leave it at that?

0 SpA Porygon2 Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Dugtrio: 114-136 (108.5 - 129.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO wat hmm seems odd but I guess it could work. Honestly Dug's so frail it seems like a waste to do anything but Jolly

0 SpA Porygon2 Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Dugtrio: 220-260 (109.4 - 129.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO not seeing it

I'm not saying the combo's broken, I'm saying both are unhealthy in their own rights and their high usage (~enough in UU to ban them from NU) speaks to their individual power, not just their usefulness as a core.

Well the thing is that this thread has been open for a long time and we've been trying to dig up counters for Amphy in hopes that one of them really takes off, but part of the problem (I've pointed this out before) is that anything that checks Ampharos outside of Roselia lets Blastoise into play, which can be a big pain to deal with since Blastoise has few checks/counters outside of Ampharos. The Nidos in particular have this problem. So there aren't a lot of viable alternatives as far as I've seen that can stop Amphy/Blast from being really effective - the fact that they are the top two most used pokes says a lot about how good they are. Idk maybe it is a moot point since it looks like it'll be moved up by usage but that's the reasoning.

1. Piloswine also is a bad argument, just cuz i missed that =), but you're right that Flareon counters Amphy reasonably well. 2. Hitmontop is almost always +def from what I've seen, although I'll accept the possibility of people also using spdef because it can be good. 3. Do you usage stat bro? Nidoking/queen were combined 13% usage 4. Camerupt is also 7% usage, not to mention that it dies to HP water, which has already been pointed out here 5. Swalot 2% usage kek

You may not realize this but all of the Ampharos counters (bar Shedinja) that you mentioned are not viable/used in NU because they just aren't useful. I see Sandslash from time to time, but I just don't see it sweeping teams too often or even being that useful when you have to deal with Ampharos+Blastoise on a lot of teams, especially when Amphy almost always has a HP to hit Sandslash.

I did too (eventually I voted against it) but the test is at least a good verification of your original arguments. You'd have to be a bit blind (imo) to look at the current OU meta and say "yeah that's healthy" - although Gengar at 50% usage is a bit troubling. Also @JJ pls don't do the "OU will never be healthy" thing, I know it's tempting but we gotta have hope

>why I never log in

Implying Psychic/Drill Peck isn't super effective anymore: 0 SpA Slowbro Psychic vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Hariyama: 102-120 (40.6 - 47.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO 0 SpA Slowbro Psychic vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Machamp: 116-140 (58.8 - 71%) -- guaranteed 2HKO 0 Atk Skarmory Drill Peck vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Machamp: 90-108 (45.6 - 54.8%) -- 45.3% chance to 2HKO 0 Atk Skarmory Drill Peck vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Hariyama: 216-254 (43.9 - 51.6%) -- 9.4% chance to 2HKO That doesn't take Bulk-Up boosts into consideration, but it should show you that fighting types can't just "nuke their way" through Slowbro. Marowak is good, especially against Slowbro, but it notice that: +2 252+ Atk Thick Club Marowak Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 184-217 (91 - 107.4%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO +2 252 Atk Thick Club Marowak Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 168-198 (83.1 - 98%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery So Marowak has to be Adamant, meaning it doesn't have the speed to beat Venusaur or take advantage of other slow pokes. Like the other attackers, it seems like Marowak also has trouble switching in and staying healthy with Spikes, a lack of resistances and no reliable recovery.

It could work, but Ursa just takes so much damage from common walls, not to mention without passive recovery spikes just become a huge liabilty to protect against.

Ursaring was my hope for stallbreaker of choice.. but it seems like it just can't clean out a stall team without taking life-ending amounts of damage in the process, especially if it takes status or has to work around spikes.

It appears OU is all stall, ew

He's not an overseeing member but that's just me nitpicking Otherwise full support

K, fair enough. I would advise learning some other metas tho - it's interesting and it definitely shows you how different the game can be (personally, i prefer later gens to MMO, but oh well). I know "close enough" is tempting, but I feel like a lot of the time the reasoning behind that is "Yeah, Amphy might be broken but the meta's not that bad and I already spent all this time getting Ampharos and building teams against it etc." not actually wanting the best game possible. As for: "when to stop with the bans?" - this is a different scenario than OU was: we have already seen a good, relatively balanced version of NU pre-last usage shift. At the very least, we'd know that banning Blastoise, Xatu, Haunter, Aggron, etc. would give us a pretty good tier so the bans wouldn't "need" to expand beyond that. But if you're going to give me the "there's always something that's too good not to use" logic and say that I'm suggesting an endless ban chain then I can't really argue against that - because neither of those are legitimate arguments against a ban. I originally requested you to show me ways Ampharos is forcing ingenuity, diversity and competitiveness. While you might have had success running two Amph checks on a team, it appears other players either aren't as good as you or that those pokemon aren't as viable as they were during that tournament, because very few people run Camerupt/Whishcash. Furhtermore, just because I can run those two pokemon - does that mean I should have to if I want to be successful against Ampharos, who is on 50% of teams. Zebra has made this point before, but if Fearow was banned for having few viable counters and being centralizing, it's hard to see why Ampharos isn't at least being test banned. That said, I'd still prefer to see Blastoise go first.

Not to cherry pick you super hard here, but the bold part is just plain untrue. In a balanced metagame there is nothing that you look at and go "holy shit, I need that or else I'm going to lose" or "wow, when I don't use X my team feels really underpowered". Ideally, a balanced metagame should have so many good options that you almost feel overwhelmed in trying to pick a team: it should be hard to cover all the bases and no one pokemon should be more important to that goal than another. I'm not sure where you got this wacky idea about tiering from, but it's patently against everything else that mainstream pokemon tiering holds dear. The very opposite of what you said is true: in a balanced, competitive metagame, there is never anything that is too good not to use. Just because our other tiers lack this characteristic doesn't mean that's the way it should be or that this is a state of nature - it just shows that you don't know what a balanced metagame is or haven't played competitive pokemon outside of MMO. For the record: some of your other points are good, but you're still suggesting I run not-that-viable stuff to deal with Ampharos and I'm not sure why I would do that.

Lets talk about Ampharos then: It's got the highest SpA stat in the tier, versatile sets that let it fit onto virtually any team, and doesn't have commonly used checks. It carries Ice/Signal Beam for Grass/Ground types that would check it and Heal Bell to keep itself (and its team) healthy in the face of Toxic Stall. It's ability, Static, gives it massive viability for offense, as it can switch in on priority attacks and flying attacks with ease and paralyze the enemy. Another important problem with Ampharos is the fact that while there are a select few pokemon that counter its sets depending on what HP it has, no one Pokemon performs well against Ampharos - and even the act of scouting it can cause your team serious harm. HP Ice takes care of Gligar, Roselia and the Nidos, Grass covers Whishcash, and Water covers Nidos, Gligar and Camerupt. More importantly, none of the pokemon that can check the "best" Ampharos sets are viable: the usage rates for Roselia, Gligar, Camperupt and the Nidos are so low that we can't really expect players to use them. The problem is that in order to deal with this pokemon you need a strong defensive core that simultaneously guards against the best special attack in the tier (Modest Amph tbolt) while sporting resistances against Bug, Ice and Water and also not being afraid of Toxic. The only pokemon I can think of that meets these qualifications is Ampharos - and from what I've seen it's not uncommon for a player to scout the opponent's Ampharos with their own - a hallmark of overcentralization. It appears that the only way to have some degree of protection against Ampharos is to run a core of resistances (Camerupt + Rose or Nido + Whishcash) which no one does because these pokemon aren't viable. In fact, if you look at the Ampharos checks, you'll find that they all (minus Rose) open the door for the next scariest pokemon in the tier: Blastoise. Essenitally, Ampharos limits the tier a lot because it largely prevents the invention of new sets: nothing stands up to it enough to actually become effective outside of already super-viable pokemon like Blastoise and Grumpig. I believe leaving it in the tier will limit the rise and fall of new strategies and sets - an indicator of a healthy metagame. I'd also like to point out that lacking reliable recovery isn't really a hindrance in NU. Most of the tier's top pokemon (Blastoise, Ampharos, Grumpi, Xatu) lack reliable recovery but are no less the most powerful pokemon in the tier. My question for you is: how do you justify the existence of a pokemon that is on 50% of teams, lacks solid, usable checks and consistently performs so well in battle? How is Ampharos good for the development of the tier and how does it promote diversity, competitiveness, skill and ingenuity? My answer is that it doesn't and that it should be banned. I have yet to hear an answer from the other side of this argument that explains why Ampharos is good, apart from checking other potentially broken, S-rank pokemon (Grumpig, Xatu, Blastoise, etc.).

>more evidence Blastoise should get the boot

hmm i think it's worth more than that

But it also might be the case that Ampharos has become more viable (to the point of being unhealthy) since Blastoise came into the tier. In fact, if you look at the trends in the usage stats, that's exactly what has happened. In the pre-Blastoise meta, Ampharos had a lot more trouble switching in and staying in because of how popular Hitmontop and other relatively weak EQ users were. Now that Blastoise exists as a fairly strong defensive pivot there's punishment for running weak EQ users, especially walls like 'montop.

Don't worry about the roles. You don't need to have walls, sweepers, or tanks necessarily, you just need to be able to win. Check out these articles to get up to speed on how comp pokemon works. The first two are from Smogon, the second two are from here. The Smogon stuff uses different pokemon, but it illustrates the topics in a way that should be relateable here: - Intro to Comp pokemon - Synergy & Teambuilding - Guide to Theorymon - Biggest Misconceptions about Comp

Adamant or Jolly Whishcash? What should the speed tier be?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the best way to lose battles is to be too attached to a pokemon that underperforms in battle. If you go Muk/Gligar/Sneasel you should be running Bulky Gligar/Curse Muk. I'd say you need a good wallbreaker like Zangoose. Haunter's good on your team too, but you might want to pair it with Blastoise or another Water type to stop Aggron from swapping in and dropping RS for free all over everything.