FlacuSkye Posted January 29 Posted January 29 What's this? Lucario is one of the many Pokemon included in the release of BL1 to UU. Enough time has passed to look at what the metagame has evolved into and the effect Lucario has in it. This thread has the purpose to help determine whether Lucario is banworthy under the unhealthy characteristic or not. Overview Lucario's strengths, checks and counters and more basic information can be found here. It still sits at the top of UU usage, and the metagame finds itself in a very critical situation due to the amount of threats that need consideration at the moment of teambuilding. There's essentially a feeling of fake diversity, where people are forced into a reduced number of Pokemon if they want to have a chance against all of these threats. This ultimately leads to very similar teams being used over and over again. An unhealthy Pokemon is one that satisfies the next definition: "Things that restrict the metagame in ways which are unfavorable for an evolving competitive metagame". In the current metagame, Lucario holds immense value. So much value that it can be said it's too good to not use, easily fitting in almost all kind of teams. Its versatility, speed and access to priority overshadows the plethora of other fighting types in the tier, since there's little reason to use them over Lucario. It also requires various answers in a team, heavily restricting the teambuilding aspect of the tier. Do you think a Lucario ban would open up the tier, redirecting the tier into a healthier state? Or is Lucario not the problem, but rather another element in the metagame? Feel free to discuss. VadimEmpoleon, GautSam, bobliu and 6 others 8 1
gbwead Posted January 29 Posted January 29 Lucario is fine. Please not this again. If you have a problem with Lucario, you should have used the stability policy to keep Tentacruel in the tier. bobliu, LeJovi and Razachu 1 1 1
Scootter Posted January 29 Posted January 29 It's alot to handle in the builder, and the fact that 3 NU mons (rotom, mantine, slowbro) have risen to UU shows that people are searching for any option to handle it. +2 espeed handles anything faster that can possible revenge kill it mantine risks losing if its tpunch, doesnt get the scald burn, or doesnt hit the hurricane slowbro loses to NP and +2 crunch variants...etc sure it cant run 7 moves, but in the builder you have to prepare for every possible scenario, which makes it overbearing for the tier terrencelo, Imperial, Sargeste and 14 others 17
GautSam Posted January 29 Posted January 29 Yeah pls ban this. We already know it's too good of a mon to ignore. It's been used in almost every team. You can see weathers with luca, you can see balanced with luca, you can see BO with luca. Also both physical and special lucas are great. We sadly always need 1-2 checks in teams for luca (offensive or defensive) because we are always gonna face it. Also it's very easy to just use Banded Luca and change outcome of the match completely with only 1-2 good turns/predictions. So yeah nothing more to say about it and I think most of us thinks the same about it. 👍🏼 Razachu, Imperial, RysPicz and 14 others 17
VadimEmpoleon Posted January 29 Posted January 29 I believe Lucario is unhealthy for the tier and needs to be banned to BL. I already commented about it in the UU discussion thread and I believe the TC already read it but I will leave it here too so everyone can see it: Spoiler UU is in the worst state it has ever been due to a big amount of relevant threats that require specific answers, this makes teambuilding very restricted and hard. The power creep in every tier is getting bigger and bigger, to deal with this the criteria for a ban should be lower, if we let every unhealthy/overpowered mon stay in the tier because some answers to them exist then problems like this will happen. I believe everyone or mostly everyone will agree that Lucario is not an offensive uber in the tier but it's definitely unhealthy, depending on its set many mons can counter it which includes Gligar, Mantine, Sableye, Hippowdon, Rotom, Cofagrigus, and more. The problem is that every single one of them can fail if Lucario has the right moveset, this encourages running more than one mon to counter Lucario, sometimes this won't even be enough because CB variants exist and can have coverage for multiple Lucario counters. After playing and watching UU duels I can't say there's a most common Lucario moveset because I have seen it running Ice Punch, Meteor Mash, Crunch, Thunder Punch, Flash Cannon, Dark Pulse, Mach Punch, Extreme Speed regularly. Of course you can just bring some offensive answers to revenge kill it if the counter you brought for it wasn't the correct one but the mons that can do it are not many because most mons dislike an Extreme Speed or a Vacuum Wave at +2, many will fail if they lost some health even if they are at 80% HP. I am not sure if a Lucario ban will be enough to make the tier great again but I believe it will definitely cause a big impact and that this needs to be the first ban to happen. GautSam, Queza, Sargeste and 11 others 14
SoftCreamyFluff Posted January 29 Posted January 29 (edited) Its crazy that people are justifying Lucario referring to mons that can be safely OHKOed after one Swords Dance. For me Lucario restrains alot of creativity in teambuilding and makes it a gamble, cause it can beat every of its would-be checks potentially and sweeps after. No Mon in the tier has comparable power. Ban it finally. Edited January 29 by SoftCreamyFluff Queza, VadimEmpoleon, JurassicMick and 10 others 13
Subnori Posted January 30 Posted January 30 so, i not have much abilitis, but i have been long enough time on this game to give my opinion. lucarios is too good in UU reaches the point of being unfair. not only for it´s mammoth move pool and versatility, also priority moves, tipes and the resistences these give it, making it more difficult the options of revenge killer, to say nothing of that trying to resist of it´s blow is already almost imposibble. Ban to Lucario GautSam, terrencelo, javitodesm88 and 3 others 6
CarolML Posted January 30 Posted January 30 I personally feel offended that you make a Lucario thread and always ignore how broken Jolteon is in UU #KeepLucario #BanJolteon #DropChandelure FlacuSkye, Edstorm and LaMikotoMisaka 2 1
JurassicMick Posted January 30 Posted January 30 I'm salty since I lost Rotom Base and Slowbro in NU mostly due all this Lucario fiasco. But now seriously I think recent tier shifts are a great indicator about what's going on in this current UU meta. If Lucario is limiting the whole building process forcing you to run more than one slot dedicated for it (when the tier already has a good number of threats to take care of) or it's having a heavy centralization where even lower tiers are suffering its presence in UU then yeah: we might have a problem. I think we had really strong Pokémon in UU before with their own flags and pros (looking at Crawdaunt) but they were limited by their move pool or their stats allowed us to easy revenge kill or play around it in multiple ways. Lucario is exactly the opposite as some of you stated before, you can just select which counters/checks you're willing to face and cover those through your building process. #BanLucario #SlowbroPlsComeHomeIMissYou🥲 Subnori, LiveLaughHate, GautSam and 4 others 6 1
Queza Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Please remove Lucario from UU so we can get back on track with a healthier meta, it's a small stepping stone in the right direction which will then reveal the actual problems for the tier instead of this overwhelming monstrosity. Was in UU once in the past and barely lasted long enough due to dominating the tier and honestly doesn't look much different from back then with defensive/offensive checks, you would be a fool if you think otherwise when it clearly has uber offensive characteristics to be BL. terrencelo, javitodesm88, LiveLaughHate and 2 others 5
javitodesm88 Posted January 30 Posted January 30 (edited) the fact that 3 pokemons (slowbro, mantine, base rotom) They have gone up to UU just because Lucario. shows who the problem is in the tier. Obviously Lucario doesn't cover everything, but you're never safe with anyone, since you have to figure out which variant it's going to be since they're all useful. I understand that in the UU there is a lot of wall. but lucario is not a sweeper, he is unfair. Even being fighting/steel it has entry to set up in so many pokes (especially umbreon) And he has double priority moves to deal with revenge killers too Please make a "healthier" UU and get rid of that broken shit Kindly: wickedwanga Edited January 30 by javitodesm88 LiveLaughHate and GautSam 2
MrBoyy Posted January 30 Posted January 30 The fact that Lucario is sitting at the top of pvp usage (at least when i checked yesterday) for UU should say something, honestly I'm amazed it's been sitting in UU for this long. It can run physical, special, or mixed sets, and there is nothing that can tank all 3 of those sets, so basically if you guess which set is being run and switch into the wrong tank, you are down a mon. also having access to priority with such high atk/spatk stats is kinda a crime in itself, especially considering it can run either physical or special priority. seems pretty evident to me that it is too strong to be in UU GautSam, javitodesm88 and LiveLaughHate 3
CaptnBaklava Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Keep Lucario in UU so we can have a NU tier with out Rotom. Thanks
DoubleJ Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Just to set a precedent, having Pokemon move up a tier and become viable does not indicate how broken something is. Being broken would mean there are no answers. Certainly something that is checked by NU 'mons should not be considered broken. It just shows that Pokemon that were used less are now being used more. The real issue is that everyone and their mama relies on Lucario, which means rarely any other fighting types are being used. Machamp is buried at 8%, and it's basically Conkeldurr in UU, and Poliwrath is at 6% only because it has a niche Rain presence. Lucario's versatility, ability to sweep, priority, and unique resistances make it absolutely exceptional. From my standpoint, the question is whether it's unhealthy or not.
gbwead Posted January 30 Posted January 30 (edited) A few months ago, UU had like 6 active bans, 4 suspect threads opened at the same time and on top of that the mons that were simply dropping to UU by usage were regarded as problematic before they even had a chance to enter the tier. At some point, TC should simply disregard the herd of weak minded individuals that always need an excuse to justify their shortcomings. Lucario is not difficult to stop or teambuild against. It's just a good pokemon. You know the kind of good pokemon people need to see banned because they refuse to teambuilding against it. How could Lucario be unhealthy when the alternative is going back to chain banning everything that dares forces players to adapt? Enough with the temper tantrums after every defeat. Stop playing the same generic garbage non stop while expecting different results. If you guys are too lazy to step outside of your comfort zones and just spam the same blissey/hippo core, don't go crying about lack of creativity in UU and Lucario being too centralizing when you didn't put forward any effort to adapt in any meaningful way. It's seriously embarassing how fragile the mindset of lower tier players is when facing any kind of adversity or change. Edited January 30 by gbwead Whated and agncunhass 2
TohnR Posted January 30 Posted January 30 What a surprise ! It's as if unbanning all the BLs was maybe a bad idea in the first place. Once Lucario will be gone for long enough yall will eventually request to ban P2 or Blissey. Can't wait ! Huargensy, terrencelo, PoseidonWrath and 4 others 7
JurassicMick Posted January 30 Posted January 30 1 hour ago, DoubleJ said: Just to set a precedent, having Pokemon move up a tier and become viable does not indicate how broken something is. Being broken would mean there are no answers. Certainly something that is checked by NU 'mons should not be considered broken. It just shows that Pokemon that were used less are now being used more. This is kinda a fallacy. We could say Conkel is easily checked by Golbat so does that makes Conkel less threatening to the whole OU metagame? The moves are relevant to this topic since most of them are coincidentally defensive answers to certain Pokemon. Mantine we could argue it was due to rain, but since rain started being a thing to this UU metagame its usage wasn't high enough and I don't think we got more rains teams in ladder overall to justify the jump. Same with Slowbro, I think it does great within UU since it's able to check Machamp, Medicham, Rhyperior and Kabutops but is the the reason behind its spike in usage over the last month?. Rotom base is kinda the same, great utility mon and really versatile; a great answer to Machamp and maybe Togekiss (Cmind/Nplot sets can certainly win this 1v1 unless you're running a choice sets) but does this all justify how all of them make their way to UU back to back? There's certainly a common factor. Druddigon it's also having more usage since BL1 reset started (from 1.81% pre reset to 3.26% this last month). And again a defensive physical answer. If something becomes a trend there's certainly something happening. It's been a few months and if we are just getting more centralization over the same mon and we keep having this discussion then maybe it's time to do something for good. Either ban it unless there's enough changes within UU or keep it over this premise of ppl just not adapting enough to something that's already taken at least two slots to check ONE or TWO variants (while we have at least four sets running free atm) Luke 1
gbwead Posted January 30 Posted January 30 On 10/15/2024 at 9:23 PM, gbwead said: @LiveLaughHate Quoting you here in order to go back to the UU thread to talk about UU. I understand there isn't a definition for centralisation, but a t-test will only show that the two months are different, not that one is more centralized than the other. I don't think looking only at the top 10 is a good measure of centralisation, but let's say that it's a good start for the sake of this discussion. I decided to follow your lead and look at what the top 10 looked like for the past 6 months: May June July August September October (15 days) Salamence 31.39% Salamence 30.52% Entei 34.21% Salamence 34.90% Salamence 34.16% Lucario 36.95% Bronzong 24.93% Bronzong 22.91% Salamence 33.37% Entei 27.16% Entei 23.11% Salamence 27.74% Machamp 19.54% Entei 21.89% Blissey 20.83% Blissey 23.81% Blissey 22.68% Raikou 23.48% Entei 19.36% Machamp 18.01% Ninetales 19.16% Hippowdon 18.43% Hippowdon 18.80% Hippowdon 21.05% Donphan 16.79% Ninetales 16.91% Bronzong 18.40% Bisharp 17.87% Bisharp 16.97% Blissey 20.17% Umbreon 16.02% Crobat 16.50% Donphan 17.63% Tentacruel 16.54% Poliwrath 15.68% Staraptor 19.10% Ninetales 15.23% Umbreon 16.11% Bisharp 17.46% Poliwrath 16.43% Tentacruel 15.63% Sableye 17.58% Bisharp 14.86% Donphan 15.09% Tentacruel 17.34% Rotom-M 16.11% Bronzong 15.45% Tentacruel 16.85% Tentacruel 14.64% Jellicent 14.70% Venusaur 17.25% Donphan 15.53% Ambipom 13.19% Entei 15.90% Crobat 14.30% Tentacruel 14.41% Ambipom 16.76% Bronzong 13.42% Machamp 13.09% Togekiss 15.07% Top 10 Average 18.71% Top 10 Average 18.71% Top 10 Average 21.24% Top 10 Average 20.02% Top 10 Average 18.88% Top 10 Average 21.39% Assuming a high Top 10 Average implies higher centralisation than a low Top 10 Average, we can see that October has the highest centralisation. However, we can also see that October is not so different from July which imo is not surprising since both July and October are the first month of a season. This is only the half way point of October, so we can probably come back at the end of the month to see how the tier evolved. Edit: I believe another important measure when it comes to centralisation is the number of mons in the tier above NU/UU cutoff point (4.25% on average). May: 47 June: 44 July: 44 August: 43 September: 46 October: 43 (Note: It was 41 on October 11th) I did this when the BL1 first dropped to analyze centralisation. Today, the metrics look like this: In January, we now have 48 mons above the NU/UU cutoff point (4.25% on average). More mons are playable in UU and the biggest threats of the meta are spammed less than they used to be. There is no question that any UU meta from 2024 is garbage compared to what we have now. TohnR and Munya 1 1
subzi Posted January 30 Posted January 30 (edited) Lucario has greatly affected not just UU, but the NU tier as a result. @Scootter hits the nail on the head here. I would also like to mention that the TC should probably never experiment with the clearly controversial BL mons again. It might be “fun” to release them for a bit, but they ultimately get banned again and impact the tiers drastically. Just keep them locked up for good so 10 additional mons don’t move up and down as a result. Thanks. Edited January 30 by subzi
DoubleJ Posted January 30 Posted January 30 11 hours ago, JurassicMick said: This is kinda a fallacy. We could say Conkel is easily checked by Golbat so does that makes Conkel less threatening to the whole OU metagame? The moves are relevant to this topic since most of them are coincidentally defensive answers to certain Pokemon. Mantine we could argue it was due to rain, but since rain started being a thing to this UU metagame its usage wasn't high enough and I don't think we got more rains teams in ladder overall to justify the jump. Same with Slowbro, I think it does great within UU since it's able to check Machamp, Medicham, Rhyperior and Kabutops but is the the reason behind its spike in usage over the last month?. Rotom base is kinda the same, great utility mon and really versatile; a great answer to Machamp and maybe Togekiss (Cmind/Nplot sets can certainly win this 1v1 unless you're running a choice sets) but does this all justify how all of them make their way to UU back to back? There's certainly a common factor. The difference is that Rotom, Mantine, and Slowbro are all effective and valuable in the UU tier. Rotom is a jack of all trades and compresses roles readily while checking some big threats that you yourself mentioned. Mantine is a great pivot and can even act as a pseudo-sweeper on Rain teams. Slowbro is a fat blob that has amazing typing and is of course able to spam Scald to hinder any Pursuit trappers. Like your example of Golbat in OU, should the three pokemon mentioned above have no role other than to check the overpowered/broken 'mon and they suffered against most other threats, then yea, great example. But that's just not the case here.
JurassicMick Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Rotom is indeed a jack of all trades. Defensive Pivot, Nasty Plot, Offensive Pivot/Speed Control, etc it can compress roles nicely but the tier already has two other forms were did the need for Rotom base started and why? Seismic Toss Blissey check with sub nasty plot? This could make sense but you barely see any Blissey without Psywave or any other coverture and even then with Wish + Protect you most likely are gonna have a hard time breaking through it (since at +6 the roll is around 48-56%). Sub Cmind Spiritomb or HP Mismagius might be better at this. Defensive Pivot is interesting because it means there's something that Mow and Heat are unable to check or switch comfy into it. Offensive Pivot is interesting as well to trick Cmind/Nplot Togekiss but I don't think others forms like Heat aren't able to achieve this as well. Mantine does really fits this meta without Lucario in it? I can think about a lot of drawbacks or Pokemon in a similar role but the only difference is Mantine offers Steel and Fighting resist over those. Unless Brick Break/Low Kick Iron Head Bisharp is really that spammed but even then Hippowdon and Quagsire were able to handle it pre BL1 reset so idk I don't really think that's the case. Slowbro is actually the only one that maybe we can discuss since this might helps against Kabutops and Rhyperior, which I think are huge things in this meta with Togekiss and Kabutops as strong as they are. But overall all the three mons are related to one role. They're great checking two types consistently. And we got the movements consistently over this period of time. Too much casualties imo. Some people above stated it as well but let's just keep in mind that we might have a Pokémon defining the whole UU metagame, limiting the building process for some archetypes and no reliable or consistent answer in most scenarios. As always this is just my personal opinion and I might be wrong but since this thread is exactly to discuss our opinions or impressions about the current status of Lucario within UU PS: Sorry if something sounds weird but eng ain't my first lang so I struggle a lot at times trying to express myself lol GautSam 1
Huargensy Posted January 30 Posted January 30 Mantine is very good at UU, please do not speak fallacies about him, thank you CaptnBaklava and gbwead 2
IKoritsu Posted January 30 Posted January 30 12 hours ago, DoubleJ said: Just to set a precedent, having Pokemon move up a tier and become viable does not indicate how broken something is. Being broken would mean there are no answers. Certainly something that is checked by NU 'mons should not be considered broken. It just shows that Pokemon that were used less are now being used more. The problem is that as you mentioned, its dominance in the tier makes it an irreplaceable option which results in a stale metagame. Not to mention how restrictive it is in the teambuilding process. In addition it has also caused considerable checks like Base Rotom and Slowbro to rise in usage in UU which otherwise would not be viable without the presence of Lucario in the tier. People can argue that this is just the natural process of a tier adapting to a prominent threat, but margins needs to be considered to determine whether these changes are justifiably healthy. If such tier movements are forced by a single oppresive force which in this case is Lucario (due to the diversity of its sets and its offensive prowess which indicates that it requires multiple answers) and it still fails to suffice as a reliable answer (Which in this case the addition of Base rotom and slowbro in the tier are only checks to the physical variant of lucario), then its proposed classification as an offensive uber is reasonable; and therefore, it also has weight as an argumentative point that further justifies that Lucario is without a doubt unhealthy. Its incredible how some people tend to ignore the statistics that were available even in the early stages of the tier shift back in late november that remained relatively consistent. Also its extremely obnoxious how biased individuals or perhaps those that lacks experience or knowledge in how a tiering process works can claim with their stickman arguments that Lucario is just a "Good Pokemon" and that advocating for its ban equates to not having the capability to adapt to the changes being implemented. Perhaps its that certain individual that needs to learn how to properly evaluate the consequences of a foreign addition to the tier and how to evaluate the impacts of an existing threat in the metagame before arriving to a conclusion. Lastly even though an argument can be made that it is still possible build a defensive core or to have an offensive counterplay to lucario, that statement is only true if and only if lucario is the only threat that you need to account for. Often, when teambuilding, the amount of defensive checks that are slotted to mainly prevent lucario from making progress will have resulted in a perfect counterplay for lucario and a few other threats that were taken into consideration, but has made the team more vulnerable to other archetypes and offensive threats in the metagame. And this is without taking an offensive core with lucario into account. javitodesm88, GautSam, Queza and 3 others 5 1
Azphiel Posted January 30 Posted January 30 It's crazy to state that Rotom Slowbro and Mantine only rose to UU because of Lucario. As if they would be completely unviable in UU if not for Lucario? As if threats like Togekiss/Entei/rain were not a thing? The fact that these 3 moved up to UU shows that there is indeed room for new ideas and innovations. Lucario is very centralizing, yet I don't think it is necessarily unhealthy. Lucario does not invalidate any playstyle, and it is not mandatory to have a Lucario in your team for it to be viable. It has forced the playerbase to adapt, and from what I can read they are not happy about that. Personally I have enjoyed recent UU much more than pre-Lucario UU. Although I'm not so glad about it it looks like Tangrowth is also about to drop to UU to give yet another Lucario check. There is more than a dozen of them in the tier at the moment. Looking forward to Chandelure dropping in the following months as Heatran's arrival in OU definitely burried Chandelure's viability up there. gbwead, VadimEmpoleon and DoubleJ 2 1
VadimEmpoleon Posted January 31 Posted January 31 (edited) I don't see the point in discussing if Mantine, Slowbro or Rotom rose because of Lucario or not, the problem is how Lucario forces you to run multiple answers for it because Lucario can run many different viable sets, if it happens that you don't have the right checks/counters for the concrete Lucario set you are facing then you can easily end up in a situation where Lucario can sweep everything. Also, let's not pretend that Mantine, Slowbro and Rotom became UU thanks to Lucario's presence, they would absolutely stay in NU if it wasn't because of Lucario. Discussing if Lucario is better than other fighting types is also pointless, other fighting types and sweepers overall are still viable in this metagame, this is absolutely not the problem. Two TC commenting and both ignored the first and main problem people were talking about, how convenient, isn't it? Edit: can any of the people in favor of keeping Lucario in the tier say how exactly Lucario's presence is healthy for UU since you think this metagame is better than the old one? Edited January 31 by VadimEmpoleon LiveLaughHate, GautSam, Scootter and 2 others 5
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