Metagame NP: RU Stage 6: Tunak Tunak Tun (but faster) [Sharpedo Banned]

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Shurtugal

The Enterpriser.
is a Tiering Contributor
Hey!

Since I achieved requirements, I will be sharing my thoughts on the suspect.

Sharpedo is very on-the-edge for me. It does not feel particularly overpowered in the grand scheme of the tier as its really quite useless against stall teams or against certain Pokemon like Milotic.

However, I really feel like Sharpedo is quite ridiculous for offense to check/counter. There is no way to prevent Sharpedo from clicking protect, allowing it to become faster than the majority of offensive Pokemon in the tier. Once it has accumulated it's boost, you're left wondering if it's physical, special, or God-forbid mixed. It's ability to hit from any spectrum really limit counterplay as each set has a different set of checks for offense.

In the end though, I'd say another thing that makes Sharpedo feel busted is that either Sharpedo set can just cheese past some offensive counter/check though Dark Pulse/Waterfall flinch, and since it outspeeds everything (potential double protect for what little couldnt outspeed it, and assuming it doesn't just kill smthn like Nidoqueen and accumulate +2 anyway), there is always that 30% chance that you just straight up lose anyway. There's no counterplay other than praying you don't get flinched.

Sharpedo takes minimal effort to setup win conditions for when playing against offense. In fact, in my personal experiences, I saw many passive teams that just slapped on Sharpedo as their only offensive counter, because Sharpedo can handle offense in one Pokemon slot. I think that alone can speak volume.

For these reasons I will be voting ban.

EDIT: For those saying Sharpedo doesn't make Spikes good -- Sharpedo single-handedly threats out the tier's best hazard controls: defog gligar, rapid spin donphan, magic bounce xatu/espon, defog flygon, etc. Yeah I know I'm missing a few that might be good against Sharpedo (Empoleon??) But it simply cannot be ignored that the person using spike stacking is going to want pokemon that threaten hazard control, and not only can Sharpedo threaten virtually every haz control in this tier, but it is also the best abuser of hazards also well.

(Sorry for the short post, I'm on my phone. I think I covered mostly everything though.
 
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FlamingVictini

FV - msg on discord FlamingVictini#3784
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most people feel that sharpedo is unhealthy, so how in the world is that a tough position to argue?
This was outlined in the Tiering Policy Framework, but unhealthy can be very subjective, and an unhealthy ban hadn't occured at the time that the framework was written (not sure if it has happened after that). As our responsibility is to make the most informed and thoughtful decisions, it's important that the side arguing to change the status quo (aka Ban Sharpedo) offers very convincing justification as to why Shark is unhealthy and concretely show how it is negatively affecting the tier.

not only is webs an unarchetype, but sharpedo can be very threatening to webs if it's able to pick off a mon like nidoqueen (which would be on every webs team if these teams existed).
I agree that webs isn't the strongest form of offense rn, but it's still definitely effective if done well, and webs definitely helps to handle shark. Also you need to get off your high horse if you think Nidoqueen would/should be on every webs team. Lol.

the problem with the tier rn is that we have no hazard control LOL. if you look at snake not every p2/milo team has a gligar or a xatu and that's because they can be difficult to fit on teams, and they only work in certain matchups. xatu essentially wins vs regi/ches teams, has decent mu vs queen/ches teams and rhyp/ches teams, but it has terrible mu vs teams with rhyp/rose, nido/rose, nido/froslass etc. gligar is similar in that it struggles to defog vs all of these teams while still being able to check the mons it needs to.

lack of reliable hazard control is the only reason this suspect is happening. if we had good removers more defensive balance teams would make shark much less effective.
I agree with the last statement there, and I also agree that hazard control is not easy rn. However I think this isn't necessarily a bad thing as now the hazard control options people are using are more and more creative, and we've also had some realignment with which hazard users are seeing use. For example, Rhyperior seemingly dropped off for a while, but its seeing more use now because its more effective at setting up rocks than registeel. Still, it's silly to pretend like we have no good forms of hazard control and that the issue of matchup is black and white.

this team was a great counterystyle build for what i had been using recently, but from my experience ho is near impossible to have consistency with as long as shark in the tier. this isn't because shark is simply broken, but it is because of how shark affects teambuilding. the team you're referring to gives gligar a defog with 5/6 pokemon, so i really don't see it doing well against teams with one. idt it really matters wether you use omastar, froslass, or even some wild shit like accelgor; ho is just not a consistent playstyle in the current meta.
Just a heads up, I didn't make this team specifically to match up well vs you. I made it to be generally effective and I would have stopped using it and not given it to aim if it wasn't consistent - I had also made two other offense teams when I made this one, and while both were good, they weren't consistent enough for me to feel fully comfortable with. The team i'm referring to barely cares about gligar because it is a) it doesn't rely on hazards, b) gligar is rarely seen right now, c) everything can potentially set up on it, d) it doesn't get any free momentum vs the team and is easily overwhelmed, after which there tends to be a gaping hole in the opponents team. If you don't think offense can be consistent in the current meta I can't forcefully change that perception, but I think you (and many others) are wrong about that.

thank you for bringing this up because this is my main problem with the current metagame. this is a statement i 100 percent agree with, but it also applies to many other pokemon/playstyles. ru currently has way too many threats to build teams that give you a decent chance to win in every matchup. before queen, decidueye, abomasnow, and camel dropped it was somewhat feasible to check everything/not lose to a random few mons, but now it's near impossible. mu's obviously influence games, but if you do play well enough then you can win versus any type of team. even with that being said, i believe many games are being too heavily influenced at team preview to call this meta anything other than unbalanced or unhealthy.
I don't think the tier is too heavily influenced by matchup. I build a variety of teams and have fun with this tier by trying things that I haven't used before regardless of how strange they are. If I find that a team has too difficult of a matchup vs something, I try to do something about it to make my team better; I don't cry that there are too many threats to handle and give up. Sometimes this means reworking a team or simply making small tweaks, or just accepting the weakness because it's to something incredibly uncommon and still possible to play around.

However, I really feel like Sharpedo is quite ridiculous for offense to check/counter. There is no way to prevent Sharpedo from clicking protect, allowing it to become faster than the majority of offensive Pokemon in the tier. Once it has accumulated it's boost, you're left wondering if it's physical, special, or God-forbid mixed. It's ability to hit from any spectrum really limit counterplay as each set has a different set of checks for offense.
While I understand and appreciate the sentiment of this, there are a few things here that are objectively wrong, but not always. For one, sharpedo can be punished for clicking protect, whether that be through a Z-Move or some nondamaging move (sub, boost, switch, w/e). Second, some pokemon that are fairly offensive such as Kommo-o, Abomasnow, or even Offensive CM Cresselia to name a few, can check sharpedo regardless of what set it's running. Furthermore, in the flow of an offense game, it's not unreasonable to be in a situation where you can afford to learn what the shark set is and respond accordingly. That being said, Sharpedo definitely has a favorable matchup vs offense thanks to speed boost. Personally I think this is a good thing as it prevents offense from being too lazy about handling stuff that can be dangerous to it.

In the end though, I'd say another thing that makes Sharpedo feel busted is that either Sharpedo set can just cheese past some offensive counter/check though Dark Pulse/Waterfall flinch, and since it outspeeds everything (potential double protect for what little couldnt outspeed it, and assuming it doesn't just kill smthn like Nidoqueen and accumulate +2 anyway), there is always that 30% chance that you just straight up lose anyway. There's no counterplay other than praying you don't get flinched.
Firstly, its a 20% chance. Second, I don't really agree with the sentiment that the possibility of a sharpedo haxing through makes it more broken - to me that's just a testament to the fact that shark not always capable of sweeping and sometimes needs to rely on significant luck to pull that off. Flinching while generally moving first is definitely an extra boon of shark, but I'd argue that with such low odds of it occuring (not too infrequently shark would need more than a single flinch to break through), it shouldn't be considered a quality of sharpedo that adds to its supposed "brokenness." If in a hypothetical we were talking about Jirachi which is more likely to flinch with iron head or not, or even shaymin which also gets sdef drops very frequently, then that's a more fundamental quality of the pokemon that should be taken into account.

Furthermore, the argument can go both ways. Sharpedo's strongest Water STAB, Hydro Pump, also has a 20% chance of missing, and has no chance of flinching. Sharpedo's strongest Dark STAB, Physical Crunch, also gives up the chance of flinching, and going mixed to try to get the best of both worlds loses power (and defenses). Regardless of the moveset, there will always be a tradeoff between accuracy, power, coverage, and ability to hax through. Shark can't get the best of everything.

Sharpedo takes minimal effort to setup win conditions for when playing against offense. In fact, in my personal experiences, I saw many passive teams that just slapped on Sharpedo as their only offensive counter, because Sharpedo can handle offense in one Pokemon slot. I think that alone can speak volume.
I'm not sure what you mean by "offensive counter" here, but i'll presume you mean a revenge killer or reverse cleaner since that's the role sharpedo might be able to fit into. Sharpedo simply cannot handle good offense by itself, so I'd argue that those teams were suboptimal. But if I experienced that myself I would probably jump to the same conclusion even if it resulted from me using poor teams, so I can't really say much about it. I appreciate you explaining your personal experiences and reasoning behind deciding to vote ban though, rather than just throwing out blanket statements that simply aren't always true like some others have been doing.
 

Ajna

i tell my ppl i don't need love but
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Two-Time Past SCL Champion
FlamingVictini
Also you need to get off your high horse if you think Nidoqueen would/should be on every webs team. Lol.
what correlation does me being on a "high horse" have with thinking that webs teams would need to have nidoqueen? lol.
I don't cry that there are too many threats to handle and give up.
when did i cry or give up? i simply stated my opinion on the state of the metagame.
the team i'm referring to barely cares about gligar because it is a) it doesn't rely on hazards, b) gligar is rarely seen right now, c) everything can potentially set up on it
a) every ho team relies on hazards, b) even with its decline in usage gligar is still a solid mon that can't just be ignored, c) how do scarf durant or zoroark set up on gligar?
If you don't think offense can be consistent in the current meta I can't forcefully change that perception, but I think you (and many others) are wrong about that.
it's fantastic that you feel this way, but if ho was a consistent playstyle it would get far more usage in high level games.
Still, it's silly to pretend like we have no good forms
we have 2 good forms of removal, maybe 3 if you count scarf flygon. idk how i'm pretending here.
 

FlamingVictini

FV - msg on discord FlamingVictini#3784
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FlamingVictini
what correlation does me being on a "high horse" have with thinking that webs teams would need to have nidoqueen? lol.
It's ridiculous to me that you think teams using sticky web also need nidoqueen to be effective. Even if nidoqueen was the best abuser of webs in the tier (which it is far from) that statement would still be wrong. Please just stop throwing out absolute blanket statements because even if that's the trend, there will almost always be exceptions.

when did i cry or give up? i simply stated my opinion on the state of the metagame.
Ok perhaps the imagery there was a bit too strong. Clearly none of us are crying and giving up. But I clearly disagree with your sentiment, so it would be a lot more helpful if you could substantiate some more evidence to back up your claim that team matchup is influencing games too heavily right now, rather than just saying it without support.

a) every ho team relies on hazards, b) even with its decline in usage gligar is still a solid mon that can't just be ignored, c) how do scarf durant or zoroark set up on gligar?
a) blanket statement lol. you're wrong, webs teams generally rely on webs, but general offense doesn't always rely on rocks or tspikes (or spikes, but my oma isn't running that) to be effective, it just helps in certain mu's and improves outplay value. Also the presence of gligar or other hazard removers doesn't mean i'll never get hazards up; i'm not forced to suicide my omastar if I don't want to. I have played double defog teams with gligar and gotten up my hazards and kept them up. b) I never said gligar was being ignored, it's mainly just a nuisance that can be dealt with and isn't serious enough (by virtue of it not being too annoying and also me rarely facing it) that there's no good reason to change or not use the team because of it, c) I assumed you understood that durant doesn't have a set-up move and thus isn't going to be setting up on it. Zoroark can bluff another mon to gain setup, and at worst take an eq and remove the eviolite while dealing about 50% with knock, basically taking out glig for the rest of the game, d) oh wait you ignored this point didn't you!

it's fantastic that you feel this way, but if ho was a consistent playstyle it would get far more usage in high level games.
When HO is consistent, that means that it is good enough that the user has outplay value to beat nearly any matchup. I've found in my experience good HO teams are rare in almost every tier, and in RU very few players that can comfortably and consistently pull it off vs high level opponents. HO is a tough style to use at a high level, and that's not a symptom of shark.

we have 2 good forms of removal, maybe 3 if you count scarf flygon. idk how i'm pretending here.
I like how you think "no good forms" and "2 or 3 good forms" are equivalent statements. We also have more than 3 decent forms of hazard control, especially if the only main concern is spikes. Furthermore if you consider it more broadly, there are other ways to pressure opposing hazards rather than simply removing/preventing them with defog, rapid spin, or magic bounce at every opportunity. You're acting like there's literally no room to deviate hazard control and spikes are simply too strong, when in reality the more varied strategies you use the more often they tend to be effective (unless your strategy is like defog beautifly or something).

Also next time you quote me can you not cut out parts of sentences or paragraphs? Just mark the text you're replying to with B, Underline, or color if you really just want to ignore some of the points I make.

e: also i'm not gonna bother responding to anything more as I think we've started to reach the end of decent discussion and there have been like only 5 diff ppl talking in the thread, and I feel if I continue fighting this nearly lone battle the argument will just devolve into getting mad at each other. I'm prepared to accept the fate of shark either way but I did want to attempt to convey my opinions as clearly as possible. Sorry if anything I said was a bit too strongly worded or "know-it-all ish," my intention was only voice my thoughts and opinions as I felt the anti-ban side wasn't seeing much representation.
 
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Shurtugal

The Enterpriser.
is a Tiering Contributor
Hello!

Now that I am finally off from work & am sitting at my computer, I can attempt to make a more thorough post explaining my position upon Sharpedo. Warning: this post will be long, but I will try to use HIDE tags to make it easier to digest.

FlamingVictini I know you said you didn't wish to continue discussion, but I feel obligated to address some of the points you made from my posts so I hope you will bare with me here.

Before I get into all of the nitpicky things, I'd like to talk about the reasoning behind banning Sharpedo. At the core, from what I've seen, your argument is that Sharpedo is not broken and therefore should not be banned. I feel it is respectable to believe that Sharpedo isn't broken; after all, it does have counterplay and it doesn't fit the parameters of "broken" to its extreme degrees. However, we do not only ban things solely on the premise of them being broken or not, and our definitions of broken have changed over time.

My argument is that Sharpedo possess some broken capabilities in its regards against offense, but my overall reason for wanting to ban it from the RU tier is that it brings nothing constructive or healthy to the tier.

You say that Sharpedo is healthy for the tier because "it prevents offense from being lazy" but I'd really wish you'd dig deeper, as I feel like Sharpedo is simply way too much for offense to handle (which I'll explain more on later).

But first, I'd like to qualify why I feel as though Sharpedo isn't healthy: it takes zero skill to use to virtually invalidate offense as an entire playstyle.

Allow me to explain further: you say that Sharpedo cannot handle offense by itself, and I fully agree. HOWEVER, with that said, I said earlier in my post that "setting up the wincond for Sharpedo takes minimal effort." The reason why I pointed this out is because it is a direct reference to our tier guidelines as proof of why something should be banned. Let me verify my statement further: Sharpedo does not take much support in order to effectively 6-0 offense.

Assuming Sharpedo is against Heavy Offense, it will not be running into its typical checks & counters (Chesnaught, Milotic, Registeel, etc.) and will instead be facing Pokemon such as Salazzle, Feraligatr, etc. in lieu. The aforementioned Feraligatr can somewhat check Sharpedo as it can live an attack and KO with Waterfall after 2 rounds of LO + SR damage.

However, one of the issues with Sharpedo is that one of the things that makes it too powerful is hazard support. SR + 1 Spike turns many 2HKOs into OHKOs. However, as you've pointed out in your other posts, this could be said for many different Pokemon in RU. While I do agree with this... IMO you're missing a huge boon in using Sharpedo with Hazard Stack though.

As a teambuilder, if I'm going to use a team that hazard stacks, I'm going to want to use Pokemon that pressure the tier's common hazard controls. Off the top of my head, these Pokemon are: Gligar, Flygon, Donphan, Espeon, Xatu, and to a lesser extent: Blastoise. I might be missing some, but the thing is this: Sharpedo OHKOs the majority of hazard control tech in this tier, and as such, it is arguably one of the best Pokemon to use for solely this purpose. Not only can Sharpedo abuse hazard support like crazy (being able to OHKO many Pokemon that would otherwise check it) but it can also prevent Pokemon from removing them off the field. It even gets an advantage to where if you switch Sharpedo at the same time the opponent brings out their hazard removal, you can remove the hazard control & accumulate a speed boost with hazards on the field. GG.

IMO, hazard support is so easy and brainless to provide to Sharpedo, and due to Sharpedo removing most effective hazard control, it doesn't take much skill to effectively use it. Thus why I said "it takes minimal effort to set up Sharpedo's wincond against offense." However, it doesn't really stop there. Yes, Sharpedo isn't going to 6-0 offense from Turn 1; but consider: Sharpedo is normally used to win at the lategame against offense. Earlier you said that Sharpedo can "reasonably" be scouted for its set, but if it is brought out during the endgame, you effectively don't know anything. If Sharpedo is brought out earlier, then the user probably is only using Sharpedo to break things down for something else to win, and Sharpedo can easily break down everything you have as you sacrifice 1-2 Pokemon in order to learn its set. Even if Sharpedo dies in this situation, it is easily able to pull off its job. Once again, this takes no skill from the Sharpedo user as the opponent is forced to respect Sharpedo's ability to hit from either spectrum + diverse movepool, which has nothing to do with the player but with Sharpedo itself as an entity.

For the cherry on top, Sharpedo also gets access to Destiny Bond, which allows it to lure out and defeat anything on offense that was going to beat it, since it effectively has the fastest DB in the tier. Hooray for more aids.

I brought up flinching not as a reason to ban it, but to further qualify how braindead & devoid of skill it can be against offense. A similar situation would be Mega Metagross in OU, how Zen Headbutt allowed it to bypass Defensive Tang with flinch or Meteor Mash gave it the attack boost; or how BW2 Tornadus-Therian could Hurricane Confusion right past SDef Rotom-W and SDef Zapdos respectively. It is a trait it shares with other Pokemon that have been banned, and as such, I felt it was worth noting.

Hitting from both spectrum reminds me greatly of OU's Genesect as well.

For offense, Sharpedo can be nearly impossible to revenge kill either. Its typing makes it naturally resistant to Aqua Jet, Sucker Punch, Ice Shard, Shadow Sneak, and Bullet Punch, which happen to be RU's most reliable priorities out there.

Also, as someone who has used Gluttony Wiki Berry Sticky Webs Shuckle in RU for quite sometime, I'd like to comment that Webs really hates facing Sharpedo and doesn't handle it very well at all.

Web teams speed tiers are very wonky in what numbers they have to hit, but to make a long story short: a good chunk of the team is jumped by neutral Sharpedo, and the rest are all beat from +1, meaning if Sharpedo comes in and removes something like Hoopa, Nidoqueen, etc. it can get the necessary boosts in order to beat Web-based teams. This isn't including the possibility of double protect absolutely invalidating Webs as a whole. I'd argue that Webs doesn't handle Sharpedo well at all and prevents Webs from being as good as it could be.

Now to address what you said specifically:

While I understand and appreciate the sentiment of this, there are a few things here that are objectively wrong, but not always. For one, sharpedo can be punished for clicking protect, whether that be through a Z-Move or some nondamaging move (sub, boost, switch, w/e). Second, some pokemon that are fairly offensive such as Kommo-o, Abomasnow, or even Offensive CM Cresselia to name a few, can check sharpedo regardless of what set it's running. Furthermore, in the flow of an offense game, it's not unreasonable to be in a situation where you can afford to learn what the shark set is and respond accordingly. That being said, Sharpedo definitely has a favorable matchup vs offense thanks to speed boost. Personally I think this is a good thing as it prevents offense from being too lazy about handling stuff that can be dangerous to it.


Hmm, I suppose you are right in regards to Protect, but I would still argue that counterplay is extremely limited -- I was aiming to qualify that you cannot stop Sharpedo from gaining +1 speed, and thus outspeeding the majority of the metagame. I really wish you would expand about this being healthy for offense, as I believe Sharpedo is a lazy way to handle offense & centralizes offensive teambuilding way too much. I'd also like to throw in that I did use a Heavy Offensive team for my requirements in RU (it doesn't have Sharpedo on it). However... um... my team uses some really weird/odd tech, so not sure if I would use what I made as an testament of offense being good vs Sharpedo. (I could expland on what I used in PM if you really wish to know.)

Firstly, its a 20% chance. Second, I don't really agree with the sentiment that the possibility of a sharpedo haxing through makes it more broken - to me that's just a testament to the fact that shark not always capable of sweeping and sometimes needs to rely on significant luck to pull that off. Flinching while generally moving first is definitely an extra boon of shark, but I'd argue that with such low odds of it occuring (not too infrequently shark would need more than a single flinch to break through), it shouldn't be considered a quality of sharpedo that adds to its supposed "brokenness." If in a hypothetical we were talking about Jirachi which is more likely to flinch with iron head or not, or even shaymin which also gets sdef drops very frequently, then that's a more fundamental quality of the pokemon that should be taken into account.

Furthermore, the argument can go both ways. Sharpedo's strongest Water STAB, Hydro Pump, also has a 20% chance of missing, and has no chance of flinching. Sharpedo's strongest Dark STAB, Physical Crunch, also gives up the chance of flinching, and going mixed to try to get the best of both worlds loses power (and defenses). Regardless of the moveset, there will always be a tradeoff between accuracy, power, coverage, and ability to hax through. Shark can't get the best of everything.


I kinda elaborated on this already above, but I'll restate it a bit: basically, I was on my phone and didn't really write out where all my thoughts were. Sorry about the percentage being off, but I feel my point in this regard still stands. I brought it up because it reminds me of other broken qualities I've seen from Pokemon in OU such as SUMO OU's Mega Metagross, BW2's Tornadus-Therian, BW1's Rock Slide Excadrill, etc. that were already broken, but having the option to cheese wins with potential hax % just made it even more cancerous and unhealthy to their respective tiers.

I didn't mean to imply that Sharpedo can't best everything, but when it comes to offense, it can sort of tailor its set to remove whatever offensive mons you want to remove (especially when we consider Destiny Bond as a move choice).

I'm not sure what you mean by "offensive counter" here, but i'll presume you mean a revenge killer or reverse cleaner since that's the role sharpedo might be able to fit into. Sharpedo simply cannot handle good offense by itself, so I'd argue that those teams were suboptimal. But if I experienced that myself I would probably jump to the same conclusion even if it resulted from me using poor teams, so I can't really say much about it. I appreciate you explaining your personal experiences and reasoning behind deciding to vote ban though, rather than just throwing out blanket statements that simply aren't always true like some others have been doing.


Those teams probably were sub-optimal. This kind of reminds me of Dugtrio Suspect (the first one, not Arena Trap) where people had complained about stall, but then I would run into teams that were all like bulky offensive passive -- they didn't build for stall at all, and got rewarded for it because no one would run stall. This made me quite unsympathetic to them, which was what led me to vote Not Broken on Dugtrio the first time it was suspected. In this case, offense isnt being used a lot, and hazard stack passive teams + slapped Sharpedo is being used because it can lazily defeat majority of offense teams without too much difficulty because not much offense exist anyways + Sharpedo and hazards also break balance & Sharpedo beats hazard control Pokemon, so it won't be deadweight regardless. I feel like it is such a lazy Pokemon that takes zero skill to use.


When I think about Sharpedo, it is a Pokemon that can click Protect, and then from there the opponent doesn't know what set it is (physical, special, mixed) and it can sort of just punish offensive teams for days. It can counter virtually all hazard control in the metagame, so it always has Pokemon it can come into and monopolize.

Overall, I feel it is quite braindead and contributes nothing healthy to RU. For these reasons, I will still be voting Ban on Sharpedo.

However, I respect that you feel differently, and I do wish you can explore more on why you feel Sharpedo is a healthy Pokemon for RU. I do not wish to lie: I am primarily an OU player, and my RU knowledge is limited by only my ladder experiences, and is not as great as some of the people in this thread. I would appreciate it if you told me why Sharpedo was healthy, because from what I can see, it is really cancerous for offensive teams to face.

When it comes to banning a Suspect Pokemon, it doesn't matter to me personally if they're super broken or not more than if its impact is healthy or not. You could argue that Stealth Rock is centralizing and broken, for example, but I personally feel its presence in all metagames is very healthy and would never ban it as a voter.

In Sharpedo's case, I am convinced at this moment that it adds nothing healthy to RU, and removing it can only aid the tier's growth, and that is why I feel I am obligated to ban it.

Thank you very much to anyone and all who have read my entire post!
 
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MrAldo

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Talk about a quality debate exercise, The outcome was better than I could have ever anticipated.

And holy shit, that post is hella long! Now we just wait for the voting thread to go up... and see what happens. We will work with whatever the outcome of the suspect is, but hopefully it is the one that people want the most.

Good stuff
 

Deleted User 400951

Banned deucer.
Shurtugal is the new corporal levi everyone

but yeah, pretty much what everyone else said. Shark is just far too difficult for offense to handle and that's because priority is the only thing that can stop it, and I don't see how you can really stop it from getting enough boosts to just outspeed everything. I also don't know why people are bringing up Sticky Webs when it's frankly not a good play style in this metagame. Though hazard control is weak, it's not strong enough vs stall and the sort to be good. And if that's the best example you have for offense then it's clear that Shark is just far too restrictive on it. Shark is forcing a bulkier metagame, and if we want a diverse tier we have to get rid of it. I don't have time for reqs but it's clear that the mon deserves a ban.
 

phantom

Banned deucer.
This thing is just so dumb. There's no Pokemon in the tier right now that comes close to exploiting Spikes as well as Sharpedo does. There's other speedy mons that use Spikes decently like Zygarde, but Sharpedo is distinctive in that Choice Scarf users and common priority users are ineffective at handling it. The pressure it also applies in defensive matchups is rather understated as well. A single flinch with hazards allows Sharpedo to bust through every one of its counters and that's assuming Sharpedo is the only mon Pokemon like Milotic/Umbreon/P2 are handling, which is almost never the case. I don't like using hax as an argument, but when you're playing passively against something and have to recover each time you switch into it, it most definitely matters. What makes Sharpedo getting a flinch or a crit a lot more important in contrast to other Pokemon is that its sweeps snowball in a way that makes it very difficult to stop since you're limited to a) specific priority or B) a healthy defensive backup incase your first option gets screwed. Ban this.
 

aVocado

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Mamph is looking like an absolutely extremely worthless & useless piece of shit right now. It literally doesn't fill a single role: it's not strong/fast enough to sweep OR wallbreak, its not bulky or strong enough to be a tank either, and lacks any recovery to do any sort of thing reliably. I'd consider using Vikavolt before using mamphy, at least that thing is immune to ground and has some nice resists while having roost and access to leftovers.

Mega amph is just another mon that kinda lacks any sort of identity, exactly like mega banette and audino. They're not strong enough to be wallbreakers, not fast enough to threaten any offensive team, and not bulky enough to do anything else, especially since they can't hold items. I don't like Pokemon like these and think they're utter trash.

That's my first impressions of this but I'm also willing to change my mind if this actually turns out better than I thought, but from using it for a couple games and theorycrafting it's pretty bad.
 
Mamph is looking like an absolutely extremely worthless & useless piece of shit right now. It literally doesn't fill a single role: it's not strong/fast enough to sweep OR wallbreak, its not bulky or strong enough to be a tank either, and lacks any recovery to do any sort of thing reliably. I'd consider using Vikavolt before using mamphy, at least that thing is immune to ground and has some nice resists while having roost and access to leftovers.

Mega amph is just another mon that kinda lacks any sort of identity, exactly like mega banette and audino. They're not strong enough to be wallbreakers, not fast enough to threaten any offensive team, and not bulky enough to do anything else, especially since they can't hold items. I don't like Pokemon like these and think they're utter trash.

That's my first impressions of this but I'm also willing to change my mind if this actually turns out better than I thought, but from using it for a couple games and theorycrafting it's pretty bad.
Also I rather use Agility/Rock Polish Aggron or Tyrantrum over Agility Giraffe.

(The best thing about Mamph is slow volt turn only resisted by ground-types, bypassing sturdy...or cotton guard meh :/ )

Also wow Mamphi is weak
252+ SpA Mold Breaker Ampharos-Mega Thunderbolt vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Espeon: 202-238 (74.5 - 87.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

I hate this calc: It just shows how "stupid" weak it is, by that I mean it can't OHKO anything bulkier than Espeon: As a side note, 252 SpA Espeon(no item) Dazzling Gleam vs. 132 HP / 0 SpD Ampharos-Mega: 162-192 (45.7 - 54.2%).

Basically Avocado made all the points, I just wanted to provide one unconventional calculation just to prove the point of "it's not strong/fast enough to sweep OR wallbreak" especially with Espeon due to it being a neutral, rather frail Pokemon. Any pokemon bulkier will survive.
 
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