sure he's strong, but in this metagame i'd hate to run a choiced electric move. That's just begging for dugtrio to come in. Although if you can somehow lure it out...
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
NP: UU - Zero to Hero
- Thread starter JabbaTheGriffin
- Start date
- Status
I've been playtesting Dusclops recently, and it's been doing nicely. It makes a great wall.
Yeah we're just waiting on a few situations. What a terrible time for the tier lists to be released and hera to drop huh? -_-
Yeah but there's a UU tournament going on right now that I had the (guts / foolhardiness) to sign up for, and I need somewhere or someone to test my teams on >_<
Not broken. Sure, it's great, but it can easily be beaten.
Agreed. alot of people think differently though.
I found this line surprising, because as I understand it Scyther's biggest non-SR counters are Steelix and Registeel, neither of which wall Heracross. Since those two survive +2 Brick Break, they'd survive CB U-turn even better. Furthermore, my understanding of Heysup's team is that it's meant to spam Pursuit, eliminating Ghosts, allowing Heracross to Close Combat without fear afterwards. Maybe that's why I don't get Heysup's team lol.
Otherwise I think the arguments against banning are quite ... threadbare. It might be personal bias, but statements like "it's not really more threatening than Rhyperior or Torterra" are too subjective to be meaningless, while one argument against banning is that Heracross doesn't really sweep goes directly against one argument for banning, which is that Heracross doesn't really attempt to sweep. Also if Heracross gets a KO and switches out then it would've done quite well already @_@ Like I said, it could be personal bias, but I think the arguments against banning are quite weak.
Finally if I'm not mistaken, opinion on Heracross isn't split very evenly, but is rather skewed towards it being BL. I don't have the numbers, but judging from responses in this thread and in the UU tournament registration thread, I'd hazard about 75% of players think Heracross is BL.
The thing with Heracross is that it lacks the type affiliated bulk to sweep effectively. The best sweepers in UU either have a good typing, are amazingly fast or have bulk backed up by resistances which it can use to set up.
Heracross is immune to nothing. It is weak to fire and flying two common types in UU. It is neutral to Water and weak to psychic. All those things mean that its defensive stats count for very little unlike Rhyperior and others who resist the more common attacking types. Add to that its unfortunate speed tier where everything that can take a hit from it is slower and everything that can ohko it is faster. In addition to this its best STAB option lowers both its defensive stats which doesn't help it deal with its speed stat.
That is basically why it isn't broken in a nutshell. I could easily expand on that but you get the gist of my arguement.
Heracross is immune to nothing. It is weak to fire and flying two common types in UU. It is neutral to Water and weak to psychic. All those things mean that its defensive stats count for very little unlike Rhyperior and others who resist the more common attacking types. Add to that its unfortunate speed tier where everything that can take a hit from it is slower and everything that can ohko it is faster. In addition to this its best STAB option lowers both its defensive stats which doesn't help it deal with its speed stat.
That is basically why it isn't broken in a nutshell. I could easily expand on that but you get the gist of my arguement.
Even better then, since this gives Heracross a free switch in and a chance to wreak havoc.
Also, Scyther also lures out other stuff, like intimidate Arcanine and Scarf Rotom, and U-turns on them which ensures that they can't be used effectively against Heracross.
And I found that opinion is split evenly, it's just that the pro-ban people are a bit louder.
Yeah it's not like Rhyperior is weak to like... what... 6 types... I also don't quite get any of your other points, as none of those have ever come close of being arguments for ban, but I digress.
Basically Heracross isn't broken because it is too easy to kill. One could argue that things like Swellow are also easy to kill but that if you have something that can actually hit it. Heracross is weak to common attacking types AND doesn't have amazing bulk to shrug them off, nor does it have the speed to not care such as rhyperior for the first category and swellow or scyther in the second.
Does that make what I am trying to say clearer?
Does that make what I am trying to say clearer?
How can you be so narrow-minded... Of course Rhyperior has better physical bulk than Heracross, but I wanna see it take a Surf, an Energy Ball, a Power Whip, a Focus Blast and so on. Those are all things Heracross can do, so as long as we are comparing two completely different pokemons and their typings, I don't think we'll get somewhere. And I was so sure being able to take attacks and / or outspeed good part of the top 10 didn't demand spectacular amounts of bulk or speed (Porygon-Z anyone?)...
You say Heracross is easy to kill.
I answer, that you need a SE-Attack together with an Stab/LO and/or many (S)Atk-EV's to have a shot at killing Heracross.
Scarfrotom-HP Flying vs. Scarfheracross: 86.1% - 102%
Scarfrotom-Hp Flying vs. Resttalk-Heracross: 52.7% - 62.6%
I find this pretty impressive.
Heracross is blatantly BL - it limits your Team options dramatically.
Take for example stall: Stallteams now have to run Arcanine + Weezing/Nidoqueen/Golbat/Gligar to beat every Heracross-Set out there. Heracross can beat Weezing/Nidoqueen (Heracross 2-3hkos, whereas Weezing/Nidoqueen only manages a 2hko at best), Gligar (Speedtie...), Golbat (Sub -> SE; or predicted SE/Facade on the Switch). Not to mention that Gligar/Golbar are well... overspecialized counters just for Heracross....
This leaves only Arcanine as an succesful answer to Heracross. And Arcanine suffers from a nasty SR-weakness and cant come into any move (SE).
Oh and you cant run any Status-Moves anymore on a Stall team which hurts you a LOT. If a CBHeracross gets burned you can say "gg" (guts-boosted CB-Megahorn 2hkos nearly everything with SR taken into Account).
I answer, that you need a SE-Attack together with an Stab/LO and/or many (S)Atk-EV's to have a shot at killing Heracross.
Scarfrotom-HP Flying vs. Scarfheracross: 86.1% - 102%
Scarfrotom-Hp Flying vs. Resttalk-Heracross: 52.7% - 62.6%
I find this pretty impressive.
Heracross is blatantly BL - it limits your Team options dramatically.
Take for example stall: Stallteams now have to run Arcanine + Weezing/Nidoqueen/Golbat/Gligar to beat every Heracross-Set out there. Heracross can beat Weezing/Nidoqueen (Heracross 2-3hkos, whereas Weezing/Nidoqueen only manages a 2hko at best), Gligar (Speedtie...), Golbat (Sub -> SE; or predicted SE/Facade on the Switch). Not to mention that Gligar/Golbar are well... overspecialized counters just for Heracross....
This leaves only Arcanine as an succesful answer to Heracross. And Arcanine suffers from a nasty SR-weakness and cant come into any move (SE).
Oh and you cant run any Status-Moves anymore on a Stall team which hurts you a LOT. If a CBHeracross gets burned you can say "gg" (guts-boosted CB-Megahorn 2hkos nearly everything with SR taken into Account).
this.
The thing is, I could probably substitute any of the previous suspects bar possibly the first six or so for 'Heracross' in your last statement, and it would be quite as true. If you can't deal with Raikou, you're bad at teambuilding, etc.
Of course, perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes here. My own definition of a well-built team is one that is built to and succeeds in the metagame it is designed for. With that in mind, many previous suspect metagames spawned successful teams that were both very successful and managed to deal with the suspects at the time. Others may say that a well-built team can adapt to any sort of metagame, and this seems to be the consensus for many of those that want Heracross BL; Heracross constitutes so much of a metagame change that an 'average', middle-of-the-road UU team cobbled together in the no suspects era simply cannot cope.
So what's my opinion on Heracross? Honestly, I cannot say. He almost certainly isn't broken by the 'proper' definition of the Uber Characteristics - but on the other hand, almost nothing that has been banned since they were made actually fit the criteria. Barely any of the suspects could actually sweep teams without overdue support or repeatedly set up a situation where it was significantly easier to sweep. I have the feeling that the way we ban Pokemon now is based more on perceived metagame impact than actual merit - and anything with the word 'perceived' in it is dangerous when it comes to tiering. Have I found Heracross difficult to manage? Not really, but on the other hand this is with a team that has been altered almost incomprehensibly to stop it. I tried an 'average' team a while back, results were mixed. Generally I was winning or losing against the players rather than Heracross itself - a bit like with Garchomp, in a way.
I doubt I'll get a chance to vote. But I'll keep an open mind until the test ends (or even begins), just in case. The only real thing I'm sure on is that for many people, this is going to be a question of how you define suspect rather than how good Heracross itself is. We'll see how that reflects in the polls.
Or you use stall. And we do have some precedent.
- Status