Competitive Battling Discussion Of The Week 15
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It forces you to run Gliscor on a rain team, which is pretty silly considering his Water-type weakness, or ScarfPolitoed over SpecsPolitoed, who honestly isn't as good as Specs. It forces you to run Gliscor, Skarmory, or ScarfPolitoed on your hyperoffense team even though they obviously shouldn't be on that team. The only team that is safe from Excadrill's wrath is Sand, but that's only if you run Gliscor or Skarmory, so technically sand isn't safe.
Please tell me that's not overcentralizing.
Please tell me that's not overcentralizing.
Oh what a great day it was today!
I'm not going to talk much about Thundurus. He completely deserved the ban once Garchomp left, as ScarfChomp was his best counter.
Excadrill was bad for the metagame. 604 speed is only matched by Scarf Deoxys, which is incredibly foolish to run. Yes, it was walled by Gliscor, Skarmory and Bronzong (who's really only used as a single check for Excadrill and Landorus). Tell me if any of those Pokemon belong on an offensive team. None of them do. +6 Attack Gliscor fails to reach the 1000 attack mark, while all other offensive Pokemon do. Skarmory... just doesn't fit on offense, and Bronzong is in danger or falling in UU. Excadrill forced teams to be defensive, as offensive teams HAD to sacrifice something to get their Conkeldurr or Azumarill in (And even then, Excadrill can just switch out, and you need to sacrifice something else to get your Conkeldurr/Azumarill in).
Excadrill being banned will increase the number of Rain teams. But Sand teams still have Landorus and Terrakion, who really put the hurt on Dragonite and Volcarona, two of the most prominent threats in the metagame now.
I'm not going to talk much about Thundurus. He completely deserved the ban once Garchomp left, as ScarfChomp was his best counter.
Excadrill was bad for the metagame. 604 speed is only matched by Scarf Deoxys, which is incredibly foolish to run. Yes, it was walled by Gliscor, Skarmory and Bronzong (who's really only used as a single check for Excadrill and Landorus). Tell me if any of those Pokemon belong on an offensive team. None of them do. +6 Attack Gliscor fails to reach the 1000 attack mark, while all other offensive Pokemon do. Skarmory... just doesn't fit on offense, and Bronzong is in danger or falling in UU. Excadrill forced teams to be defensive, as offensive teams HAD to sacrifice something to get their Conkeldurr or Azumarill in (And even then, Excadrill can just switch out, and you need to sacrifice something else to get your Conkeldurr/Azumarill in).
Excadrill being banned will increase the number of Rain teams. But Sand teams still have Landorus and Terrakion, who really put the hurt on Dragonite and Volcarona, two of the most prominent threats in the metagame now.
I think the metagame without Excadrill would be so much better. It will be more offensive and I think we' ll see the rise of choice scarf Pokemon and also Pokemon will more likely run more speed Evs. Excadrill also forces you to run one of those 3 Pokemon. Skarmory can only phaze it and Gliscor and Bronzong can be killed if they are weakened before with Return and X-Scissor respectively. Imagine the scenario when my Salamence gets a Dragon Dance and you switch in your Gliscor which is your physical wall. It takes the Outrage not so well as you would think and KOs with Ice Fang. Then I send my Excadrill who uses SD while you are breaking my Air Balloon. After that I KO Gliscor with Return and Proceed to kill the rest of you team. GG.
If they are still doubts about Exca being banned. I thing Pokebeach should let people who play well decide on banning it.
If they are still doubts about Exca being banned. I thing Pokebeach should let people who play well decide on banning it.
^That's what your opponent gets for using Gliscor as a wall for Salamence.
I'm not denying that Excadrill is overcentralizing and makes hyper offense unplayable, in addition to pure stall. Those aren't the only styles of play. It's not like Excadrill's the only Pokemon who forces you to run a counter to it on every team.
I'm not denying that Excadrill is overcentralizing and makes hyper offense unplayable, in addition to pure stall. Those aren't the only styles of play. It's not like Excadrill's the only Pokemon who forces you to run a counter to it on every team.
I am going to disagree with the above posters and say that these bans (Excadrill in particular) were bad for the metagame. Without Excadrill, sand really has nothing going for it (Terrakion's coverage is meh, as is his typing, and its the same with Landorus) which means it will fall dramatically in usage. With one less type of weather to contend with, you'd by lying if you told me rain wasn't going to get way better. Thundurus's banning actually helped rain in two distinct ways. First off is obviously, it can't be used against rain. As a fast, powerful, electric type it could handle waters with ease and unlike other electric types it could defeat Ferrothorn with Focus Blast. Thundurus's theorized "replacements", Zapdos and Raikou, don't have access to Focus Blast (Raikou has Aura Sphere, but that forces it to have the Rash nature, and it makes it have to forego Sub or CM, so I think few people will run Aura Sphere) and have to run HP Ice for coverage so they can't run HP Fighting. Zapdos has Heat Wave, but in rain that isn't killing Ferro anyway. Also, Starmie will fall in usage, as its claim to fame was being the only Pokemon capable of revenge killing Thundurus without a Scarf, now that Thundurus is banned its usage will decrease. Its also very good against Rain, being able to hit water types with Thunder(bolts) and non-waters with STAB rain-boosted Surfs. Without it being used very much, rain now gets that much better. Don't get me wrong, I fully support Thundurus being Uber, but rain is also the most dominant force in the metagame and Thundurus's banning helped it significantly, and removing its next biggest enemy (Sandstorm) is just going to make it even more overcentralizing. I predict that soon we will either have Excadrill unbanned (Is this possible? I'm not familiar with Smogon's suspect process, even so it seems unlikely) or we will have some rain-related bans, even Politoed himself.
In short, I think that they should have waited for us to have a while to play around in a Thundurus-less meta and compared the usage and viability of sand and rain then before banning Excadrill. I think that if that had happened they may have reached a different conclusion.
In short, I think that they should have waited for us to have a while to play around in a Thundurus-less meta and compared the usage and viability of sand and rain then before banning Excadrill. I think that if that had happened they may have reached a different conclusion.
Ecxadrill was already bad for the metagame as it overcentralized it. You were forced to run one of its counters on your team no matter how bad it went with the team, scarf Pokemon were completley irrelevant, and it ruined so many playstyles. We're not going to keep it just because you think sand should be better than rain, or you want to play around with Excadrill more ... because that would be silly. We would just be wasting time, and be back to here again later.
If you have trouble dealing with change, then I have this to say:
If you have trouble dealing with change, then I have this to say:
I don't think sand should be better than rain, I don't play either very much anyway (I think I've played sand in 2-3 battles in Gen 5, and rain even less). My point was there is basically nothing left in the meta that puts up a fight against rain, and that is going to lead to rain bans. As to having to run counters to Excadrill, you have to run a counter to every sweeper. Excadrill actually has more, not less, counters than stuff like Volcarona, Dragonite, Salamence, Latios, you get the point. I'm just not getting why Excadrill was banned when there are other Pokemon in OU more potent than it that weren't even considered for banning.
While I understand that Excadrill was overcentralizing the metagame, I don't understand why people use the "You have to run one of it's counters on your team" excuse. Is this not true for every single Pokemon in existence? I also don't understand why you would use Gliscor in rain to counter Excadrill when you have rain...
Why would you send out a non scarf Politoed into +2 Excadrill. To take a Earthquake?
Just for reference, I went through the list of currenly OU Pokemon. Out of 46 (47 if you count Excadrill) 12 of them can counter or check Excadrill (I may be off by one or two since I didn't run calcs, but that wouldn't apply for more than 2 of those Pokemon). That is more than 25% of the Pokemon in OU, and you mean to tell me that is overcentralizing while something like 2 or 3 Pokemon counter Volcarona...?
I get the oddest feeling that someone is going to make me look like a fool in their next post. Hmmm...
I get the oddest feeling that someone is going to make me look like a fool in their next post. Hmmm...
Why would my opponent send out Excadrill when there is no sand. And if keeping the rain up is so easy against a sandstorm team nobody would run SS teams. TTar can easily switch to something like Zapdos, Jolteon and Raikou to get the sand up.
/me is going to enjoy this
So, here we are. Thundurus and Excadrill got banned, possibly the most two powerful sweepers in the Over Used tier. Rain and Sand lost their most valuable offensive Pokes, although sand arguably got hit the hardest, since Excadrill can't function in other weather. I'm pretty sure that nobody here has any qualms with Thundurus getting banned. Being able to take down more that half of your opponent's team, along with the criteria stated above, is more than enough reasons to send his sorry cloud-thingy to ubers. Excadrill is the controversial ban here, ladies and gentlemen. As soon as Exca was released, teams were already trying to find ways to counter the guy, and thus, Pokemon like Gliscor, Bronzong, and Skarm were hastily added to teams in an effort to stop it, turning the meta into a more defensively-paced one, at least when it came to countering weather. Rain stall was one of the machinations created in an effort to stop it. Now, any smart player will know that Excadrill was bad for the metagame. You had to run the defensive walls mentioned above, or sand was going to wreck you. Simple as that. It's debatable as to whether being bad for the meta is a reasonable ground to banish a Pokemon to Ubers (where Excadrill is going to do bad anyways, not that that should be took into consideration when banning a Pokemon anyways), but the meta was shifting around these Pokemon, for sure. For example, Gastrodon. A Pokemon that had never seen any competitive play whatsoever now began rising through usage stats like it was nothing, all in a effort to counter one, single, Pokemon. Now that I've thought about it, both bans were reasonable. I really don't want to play a game where if you use just 1 out of 2 things on a team, and not even using skill, you can still win. I think we'll be seeing much more varied teams now, and hey, maybe even some new creative sets. Excadrill and Thundurus centralized the metagame, and if you can't realize that, you really should be spending more time around here and not on the smogon server.
In summation, if banning either of these guys creates a more fun game to play, then I am all for it. Now I'm sure there are some holes in my argument, because you guys know I'm not good at making these ridiculously long posts. But this is my opinion on the matter, and I don't think it's really going to change, although I'd love to listen on the input on what I've had to say. And LOL to Volcarona, Deoxys, Mence, Dnite, or Latios centralizing the meta. That's just laughable.
Welp, that's all I have to say. Thanks for reading this giant wall of text.
So, here we are. Thundurus and Excadrill got banned, possibly the most two powerful sweepers in the Over Used tier. Rain and Sand lost their most valuable offensive Pokes, although sand arguably got hit the hardest, since Excadrill can't function in other weather. I'm pretty sure that nobody here has any qualms with Thundurus getting banned. Being able to take down more that half of your opponent's team, along with the criteria stated above, is more than enough reasons to send his sorry cloud-thingy to ubers. Excadrill is the controversial ban here, ladies and gentlemen. As soon as Exca was released, teams were already trying to find ways to counter the guy, and thus, Pokemon like Gliscor, Bronzong, and Skarm were hastily added to teams in an effort to stop it, turning the meta into a more defensively-paced one, at least when it came to countering weather. Rain stall was one of the machinations created in an effort to stop it. Now, any smart player will know that Excadrill was bad for the metagame. You had to run the defensive walls mentioned above, or sand was going to wreck you. Simple as that. It's debatable as to whether being bad for the meta is a reasonable ground to banish a Pokemon to Ubers (where Excadrill is going to do bad anyways, not that that should be took into consideration when banning a Pokemon anyways), but the meta was shifting around these Pokemon, for sure. For example, Gastrodon. A Pokemon that had never seen any competitive play whatsoever now began rising through usage stats like it was nothing, all in a effort to counter one, single, Pokemon. Now that I've thought about it, both bans were reasonable. I really don't want to play a game where if you use just 1 out of 2 things on a team, and not even using skill, you can still win. I think we'll be seeing much more varied teams now, and hey, maybe even some new creative sets. Excadrill and Thundurus centralized the metagame, and if you can't realize that, you really should be spending more time around here and not on the smogon server.
In summation, if banning either of these guys creates a more fun game to play, then I am all for it. Now I'm sure there are some holes in my argument, because you guys know I'm not good at making these ridiculously long posts. But this is my opinion on the matter, and I don't think it's really going to change, although I'd love to listen on the input on what I've had to say. And LOL to Volcarona, Deoxys, Mence, Dnite, or Latios centralizing the meta. That's just laughable. Welp, that's all I have to say. Thanks for reading this giant wall of text.
Politoed isn't going to enjoy taking stab attacks from Ttar ever since the MixTar set is not so popular anymore and Scarf and Band versions are more popular. Also a good Sand team always has a good rain counter like Rotom-W, Jellicent, Gastrodoon or Ferrothorn which are present on 99% of sand teams.
Shall not post a TL;DR.
Okay, to start off Excadrill completely overcentralized the metagame. First off, It made scarf Pokemon completely useless since nothing could reach Excadrill's speed. You basically have all of these Pokemon sitting around the 346 to 352 speed stat, and then there's Excadrill sitting at his impossible to reach 604. Nothing can get to that point other than ScarfPolitoed by removing the sand, Deoxys with a scarf (lolololol), and Priority and the only things that can OHKO Excadrill at 100% with priority is Azumarill (99% of the time, the other 1% it'll live with like 1 HP), and Guts boosted Conkledurr ... all of which you need to sacrafice something to bring in, whereas Excadrill can just switch out like no man's business.
Another way it overcentralized the metagame is by ruining so many playstyles. Hyperoffense had nothing that could stand up to Excadrill, other than Conkledurr and Azumarill, both of which you need to sacrifice something to bring in, or ScarfPolitoed, who ruins your chances of running fire-types. Pure Stall is completley screwed by Excadrill:
Pure Stall: "Hey, my name is Pure Stall and I just set up all three hazards"
*In comes Excadrill to spin away your hazards because no spin blocker would dare switch-in on Excadrill*
Excadrill: "Problem stall?"
Excadrill is free to switch-in all he wants on your stall team since he can pretty much live anything you throw at him because he also is pretty bulky. The fact that he can also run Air Balloon to lol at your Earthquakes and get in another SD just makes him even more amazing.
The final way he overcentralized the metagame is by forcing you to run either Skarmory, Gliscor, Bronzong, or Tangrowth on your team to counter it. Of those Pokemon, the latter of which get Stolen by a +2 X-scissor:
+2 252 Atk Adamant Excadrill vs 252 HP / 80 Def Sassy Bronzong (aka standard Bronzong): 47.9% - 56.2%, so you need to keep Bronzong at full health just to counter Excadrill. That's no easy task considering you don't even have reliable recovery.
+2 252 Atk Adamant Excadrill vs 252 HP / 252 Def Relaxed Tangrowth: 60.4% - 71.3%, yeahhhh, so much for that.
The only things that can reliably counter Excadrill is Gliscor and Skarmory. You're pretty much forced to run Gliscor on your rain team, unless you feel like sacrificing one of your Pokemon just to bring in your ScarfPolitoed. Skarmory can't even threaten Excadrill outside of breaking the balloon and phazing it, and it looses if Skarmory is your last Pokemon left. You can't even put Skarmory on a rain team because it gets no gains from it, and it absolutely fears the thought of a high-powered Water-type move. Skarmory is like ocd when it comes to what weather is on the field. Did I mention Gliscor has a Water-type weakness? Because it does and rain just makes it worse.
Have we gone over sun yet? Nope? Okay then, let's just go off and say that sun has only one thing to deal with Excadrill and that is 164 Spe Timid Ninetales who can't even switch in because of that typing. This means you have to sacrifice something just to bring in Ninetales, thus taking in hazard damage. Then Excadrill switches out to lol at your recent move. Now you're loosing because that was the only move you could make to not loose right there.
These are all reasons why Excadrill overcentralizes the metagame, which makes it a textbook definition of being broken. The reason why things like Volcarona, Dragonite, Salamence, and Latios don't overcentralize the metagame is because you don't see them forcing you to run a certain Pokemon on your team, or completely ruining a playstyle just because this one Pokemon exists.
If we keep going like this, I'll have to rename this thread The Blaziken Thread v2. Yes, I will go there.
And an image to go with my post so it isn't all srs srs srs
Okay, to start off Excadrill completely overcentralized the metagame. First off, It made scarf Pokemon completely useless since nothing could reach Excadrill's speed. You basically have all of these Pokemon sitting around the 346 to 352 speed stat, and then there's Excadrill sitting at his impossible to reach 604. Nothing can get to that point other than ScarfPolitoed by removing the sand, Deoxys with a scarf (lolololol), and Priority and the only things that can OHKO Excadrill at 100% with priority is Azumarill (99% of the time, the other 1% it'll live with like 1 HP), and Guts boosted Conkledurr ... all of which you need to sacrafice something to bring in, whereas Excadrill can just switch out like no man's business.
Another way it overcentralized the metagame is by ruining so many playstyles. Hyperoffense had nothing that could stand up to Excadrill, other than Conkledurr and Azumarill, both of which you need to sacrifice something to bring in, or ScarfPolitoed, who ruins your chances of running fire-types. Pure Stall is completley screwed by Excadrill:
Pure Stall: "Hey, my name is Pure Stall and I just set up all three hazards"
*In comes Excadrill to spin away your hazards because no spin blocker would dare switch-in on Excadrill*
Excadrill: "Problem stall?"
Excadrill is free to switch-in all he wants on your stall team since he can pretty much live anything you throw at him because he also is pretty bulky. The fact that he can also run Air Balloon to lol at your Earthquakes and get in another SD just makes him even more amazing.
The final way he overcentralized the metagame is by forcing you to run either Skarmory, Gliscor, Bronzong, or Tangrowth on your team to counter it. Of those Pokemon, the latter of which get Stolen by a +2 X-scissor:
+2 252 Atk Adamant Excadrill vs 252 HP / 80 Def Sassy Bronzong (aka standard Bronzong): 47.9% - 56.2%, so you need to keep Bronzong at full health just to counter Excadrill. That's no easy task considering you don't even have reliable recovery.
+2 252 Atk Adamant Excadrill vs 252 HP / 252 Def Relaxed Tangrowth: 60.4% - 71.3%, yeahhhh, so much for that.
The only things that can reliably counter Excadrill is Gliscor and Skarmory. You're pretty much forced to run Gliscor on your rain team, unless you feel like sacrificing one of your Pokemon just to bring in your ScarfPolitoed. Skarmory can't even threaten Excadrill outside of breaking the balloon and phazing it, and it looses if Skarmory is your last Pokemon left. You can't even put Skarmory on a rain team because it gets no gains from it, and it absolutely fears the thought of a high-powered Water-type move. Skarmory is like ocd when it comes to what weather is on the field. Did I mention Gliscor has a Water-type weakness? Because it does and rain just makes it worse.
Have we gone over sun yet? Nope? Okay then, let's just go off and say that sun has only one thing to deal with Excadrill and that is 164 Spe Timid Ninetales who can't even switch in because of that typing. This means you have to sacrifice something just to bring in Ninetales, thus taking in hazard damage. Then Excadrill switches out to lol at your recent move. Now you're loosing because that was the only move you could make to not loose right there.
These are all reasons why Excadrill overcentralizes the metagame, which makes it a textbook definition of being broken. The reason why things like Volcarona, Dragonite, Salamence, and Latios don't overcentralize the metagame is because you don't see them forcing you to run a certain Pokemon on your team, or completely ruining a playstyle just because this one Pokemon exists.
If we keep going like this, I'll have to rename this thread The Blaziken Thread v2. Yes, I will go there.
And an image to go with my post so it isn't all srs srs srs
First off, I'd like to say that I'm sorry for discussing Excadrill's ban in a CBDOTW about it. That is extremely noobish of me. Sorry.
All sarcasm aside, nobody uses Rapid Spin on Excadrill. It's pressed hard for X-Scissor or Brick Break in the last slot, both of which are very important, and running neither seems foolish considering most Sandstorm teams don't have a weakness to hazards anyway. Even so, there is now Prankster Sableye, who can switch in on a SB or unboosted attack and hit Excadrill with a priority WoW, allowing it to take hits in the future, cripple Excadrill signifigantly, and get resuidal damage on it, and block anyone silly enough to carry Rapid Spin on an Excadrill. As for hjyper offense, use Scarf Deoxys-S: problem solved. You may argue that you are forced to waste a slot on the team for Deoxys-S, but no one is forcing you to run hyper offense without a single bulky Pokemon. Also, to beat enemy Balloon Excadrill most Excadrill I had seen ran Brick Break, so it fails to 2HKO Bronzong or Tangrowth. Also, physically defensive Rotom-W is okay at handling Excadrill due to being immune to EQ, neutral against everything else, and having decent bulk. Physically defensive Swampert and Suicune can attempt the same, although they won't work quite as well due to not resisting EQ. Also, banning Excadrill basically destroys SS, so banning him doesn't actually give you more types of teams to choose from.
Anyway, I don't particularly like Excadrill. However I prefer it to the 100% rain-dominated format that is about to ensue. Maybe I will be wrong and the amount of people using rain will not skyrocket to over 75%. I sure hope so.
All sarcasm aside, nobody uses Rapid Spin on Excadrill. It's pressed hard for X-Scissor or Brick Break in the last slot, both of which are very important, and running neither seems foolish considering most Sandstorm teams don't have a weakness to hazards anyway. Even so, there is now Prankster Sableye, who can switch in on a SB or unboosted attack and hit Excadrill with a priority WoW, allowing it to take hits in the future, cripple Excadrill signifigantly, and get resuidal damage on it, and block anyone silly enough to carry Rapid Spin on an Excadrill. As for hjyper offense, use Scarf Deoxys-S: problem solved. You may argue that you are forced to waste a slot on the team for Deoxys-S, but no one is forcing you to run hyper offense without a single bulky Pokemon. Also, to beat enemy Balloon Excadrill most Excadrill I had seen ran Brick Break, so it fails to 2HKO Bronzong or Tangrowth. Also, physically defensive Rotom-W is okay at handling Excadrill due to being immune to EQ, neutral against everything else, and having decent bulk. Physically defensive Swampert and Suicune can attempt the same, although they won't work quite as well due to not resisting EQ. Also, banning Excadrill basically destroys SS, so banning him doesn't actually give you more types of teams to choose from.
Anyway, I don't particularly like Excadrill. However I prefer it to the 100% rain-dominated format that is about to ensue. Maybe I will be wrong and the amount of people using rain will not skyrocket to over 75%. I sure hope so.