LiveLaughHate

IGN: LiveLaughHate Time Zone (UTC Format): +11 Discord: julesanon Preferred Tiers: OU/UU Fluff: Been playing this game for about 3 months now and have already won a few community combats, reached main tour finals and high ladder OU in December and am currently decently high in UU. Considering it took a while to adjust to the unique meta this game has I'd say if you wanted a good shot in the dark I'm not a bad shout. Donation: Lets see

Dugtrio is quite an interesting pokemon. It enables an almost completely unique playstyle that is not seen with other team archetypes. Just based on its usage I think it is fairly hard to establish whether or not it is actually broken or if its winrate is simply inflated by the only players using it being higher ladder players; ergo likely higher winrates in general. Regardless it having a low usage cannot be a serious argument for a ban; are we going to ban quagsire next? It is sitting at a 56% winrate in OU and currently sports a wopping 1.25% usage making it unreasonable to team build for so obviously it too needs to be removed since its hard to plan around. Rather than brokenness, the crux of the argument around dugtrio is whether or not it is "uncompetitive" or not. The uncompetitive debate is a tough one since by definition it just means that the pokemon is unfair to use. Switching is a universal game mechanic in all pokemon games and dugtrio with arena trap subverts that mechanic. Does that make it uncompetitive? Well by definition I'd say no since it is a part of the original pokemon games specifically designed to stop the switching mechanic it is just deemed uncompetitive by many due to the value we have placed on switching. There was a comparison drawn between dugtrio and king's rock but I personally find these to be completely different circumstances. For starters, usage and fairness are not correlated. I will state that I personally fall heavily on the side of king's rock being a more unfair item due to it introducing significantly more RNG into a game already riddled with it, as well as the inability to actually ascertain whether or not the pokemon actually has king's rock until it flinches. Dugtrio does not hide its cards like that and it is not RNG reliant. When you see dugtrio on the opposing team you know exactly what it can and will do which should in theory enable you to play around it. I'll briefly touch on the dugtrio/espeon/shedinja team since that seems to be a prevalent topic in the replies. For starters and this is a biased opinion but I think that team has many flaws and is weak to a plethora of common threats, most notably the recently added zapdos almost 6-0s that team just from preview. I will also add that simply having a dugtrio doesn't stop tyranitar from being a hinderance to shedinja as you can still make predictions yourself. You aren't forced to bring tyranitar in on the obvious espeon baton pass into dugtrio, instead set up sand prematurely and then apply pressure while sand is up to stop them from going to shedinja. Going back to the uncompetitiveness debate, just from the replies it seemed almost like shedinja was the biggest reason the team was uncompetitive as it was what was stopping alot of pokemon being able to break the team. Now I'm not going to advocate for a shedinja ban it's just food for thought. I will say though that I believe alot of people are severely underestimating just how many pokemon dugtrio can trap. Basically any slower choiced pokemon is trapped. Most offensive pokemon with a little bit of chip such as garchomp, gallade, scizor, starmie, breloom, volcarona etc can be trapped if played correctly. With swords dance it can also trap many of the bulkier pokemon like non tp chansey and with a bit of chip porygon2, ferrothorn, even suicune if you can catch it on the turn it clicks rest. It seems bizarre to me that dugtrio seems to be almost exclusively used on gimmick teams when its true strength is found in removing the single biggest threat to your team. Historically in generation 6 and 7 which is what I am most familiar with; dugtrio was almost exclusively used on stall teams with its purpose mostly being to trade 1 for 1 with your opponents biggest threat to your team and relying on your 5 stall mons to be able to beat your opponents remaining 5. I personally think this is where dugtrio truly shined but as stall has been significantly nerfed post gen 9 and this game applying those nerfs; combined with dugtrio stall having basically 0 usage I cannot verify if it is in the same broken state from gen 6 and 7. I think it would be more interesting to cover this debate again later with the avent of further hidden abilities like regenerator alomomola or slowbro which with combined with dugtrio might actually make for an overpowered combination. While this is obviously very impressive I do believe it comes with a bit of a caveat. For a lot of these pokemon dugtrio needs to maintain it's focus sash; this means having to potentially over index into keeping hazards off the field and potentially suffering because of it. For some pokemon you can hard switch in to trap but many you either have to pivot in or come in on a sac to trap the pokemon. For the sac argument that already requires you to have lost a pokemon and with dugtrio being unable to ohko most of the tier you will also be left with it on most likely 1 hp. This might actually be a worthwhile trade if the pokemon you are removing is the biggest threat to your team but it is pretty clear that this outcome might not be without its drawbacks. I personally think the pivoting argument doesn't hold much water. There are not many pokemon that can pivot and even less on teams that dugtrio is built around. If you get caught by a teleport or a baton pass from a pokemon into a dugtrio it might sound harsh but I believe that you need to learn how to predict a bit better. I will agree that pelipper u-turn with rain dugtrio is harder if you have to go into tyranitar to deny rain but I'd argue that if your team is so weak to rain you need to make such a forceful play then it is just an unfortunate match up and having bad match ups happens all the time. I personally think that the unique playstyle dugtrio adds is incredibly interesting and at least right now definitely warrants keeping around. I think the constant mindgames about when the dugtrio will go for a trap makes for an interesting game. Both you and your opponent know what dugtrio is trying to do and there is a constant tug of war to find the right moment to bring dugtrio in. If you get the turn right you can be greatly rewarded but due to dugtrio's frailty if brought in at the wrong time it becomes dead weight to the team. An example would be a match I literally had earlier today. I was using dugtrio and our match was becoming closer and closer. My opponent had life orb excadrill which was a huge threat to my team. Unfortunately coupled with the rest of his team I could not simply sacrifice a pokemon to bring in dugtrio and trap it as being down 1 of my other pokemon would mean being unable to hold back the rest of my opponents team. Eventually I tried to bring dugtrio in on what I hoped was an earthquake but since my opponent saw I had dugtrio and was also jostling for position, correctly predicted it with a rapid spin which both broke the focus sash but also increased its speed basically rendering dugtrio useless. This might be a stupid example and maybe I am just bad at pokemon but I think this kind of interaction is so unique and I think it would be a shame to remove it. Sorry about the essay feel free to skip it but I think it covers most of my thoughts and might be a good perspective for those that aren't as familiar with dugtrio outside of the one espeon shedinja team. My opinion is fluid, if dugtrios usage increases and appears on a higher variety of teams and it becomes apparent that it is too overbearing for our meta I'd be more than happy to switch sides but for now I would definitely say DO NOT BAN.