Strategy PokeBeach's Official Sixth Generation Ban List (OU)

thegrovylekid said:
I'm going to back @King Arceus up on this one. Hoopa-U strikes many similarities with Mega Mawile, especially in the power vs. speed department. Both of them had hilariously high attack power, with a weaker defense [though flipped between the two, Mega Mawile struggled with special attacks and Hoopa can't take physical attacks very well] and are quite slow. Though, if you take the hit [or, in Mega Mawile's case, use Sucker Punch on an attack] you're almost garunteed to knock something out. Hoopa-U takes it a step further by having amazing coverage and very powerful special attack, as well as the ability to hold an item other than its megastone. Well Mega Mawile relied on it's insane attack stat with Huge Power to shred anything, Hoopa can just hit you for weakness, and has a STAB move that goes through protect, meaning nothing is safe.
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That's a very good point about Mega Mawile although I still find Mega Mawile quite different from Hoopa-U in terms of defensive typing. Fairy/Steel is one of the best defensive typing in the game. Additionally, The fact that Mawile requires a Mega stone can work as a benefit. You cannot remove the Mega stone by Knock Off.
Mega Mawile's special defense is quite low (50/95) but you cannot compare it with Hoopa-U's physical defense (80/60) along with its weak typing.
The great defensive typing of Mega Mawile had allowed it to be a great force in OU before its ban, despite its low special defense stat.
Hoopa-U, on the other hand, has no resistance at all with only one immunity (Mega Mawile has 9 resistance and 2 immunities). It is weak to the very common U-Turn and extremely weak to Fairy attacks. This along with its poor defensive stat and its low speed is what I think keeps it in OU.

King Arceus said:
My point is if you don't have a Pokemon that can defeat Hoopa out when it comes out, it becomes a question of "Which Pokemon can I afford to lose to get in a better position?". Life Orb variants do an incredible amount of damage. To give an idea of just how much power it has, Adamant Life Orb Ice Punch actually OHKOs 4HP Multiscale Deragonite 25% of the time keeping in mind this isn't even a STAB move. I don't feel it is healthy for the metagame in that regard. If a Pokemon is boosted, I could justify a switch causing you to lose this kind of HP, but not when its unboosted.
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While it's true that you cannot switch anything against Hoopa-U and be sure to not get 2HKO'ed, I don't feel like this is enough to ban Hoopa in light of its major problems.
If Hoopa had some resistance, a little more speed and bulk, I would agree on that with no doubt. Even with that major power to 2HKO the entire metagame, Hoopa-U fail to limit teambuilding. No player necessary needs to consider Hoopa in building a team since almost any team nowdays has already at least one faster Pokemon/U-Turn user/priority user.
Other than these common options, many teams also has pursuit users and Fairy types which are not designed only to check Hoopa-U.
The major ability of Hoopa-U to 2HKO the entire metagame is scary and overpower on paper, but in practice, I feel like Hoopa-U has just the right amount of problems in order to be safe in OU.
 
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Hoopa-U is an offensive powerhouse, but it's not the only one in the metagame, and probably not even the most threatening. BST is irrelevant in cases of such glaring weaknesses. Look at Kyurem-B. It's bulkier and faster than Hoopa, but it still fell in OU and never recovered, mostly due to shallow movepool and being part Ice. Hoopa-U obviously has a way bigger movepool than Kyurem-B, and the ability to go mixed makes it offensively better, but that's about it. Its Speed is way below average for an offensive Pokemon and the only way it has to make up for it is Choice Scarf, since it doesn't get Sucker Punch. Combine that low Speed with a horrible defensive typing combination that resists absolutely nothing and only has a rather irrelevant immunity, below average HP and non-existent Defense and you've got a slow glass cannon. Sure, it's a pretty big cannon, but it's still made of glass. It's hard to switch something into it, but it's also nearly impossible to switch it into anything. Even sending out against a good number of mons after a KO will end up badly. Hoopa simply can't capitalize as well as it would want to on its pros, because the combination of its cons make for very nasty trouble.

Mega Mawile is only similar to Hoopa when referring to its insane attack power. Otherwise, they're completely different. Mawile's bulk wasn't excellent, but it was better than Hoopa's, and it was backed by an amazing defensive typing. That alongside Sucker Punch allowed Mawile to easily bypass its most glaring weakness, its horrendous Speed. To top that off, it was a mon that could go all-out attacker, SubPunch or setup sweeper with SD, whereas Hoopa is either an all-out attacker or a Choice Scarf user, and both of these can be exploited. Hoopa is probably A+ or S-rank worthy, but I don't consider it banworthy.
 
So smogon ha scanned Shadow Tag (thank god) from OU and Sablenite has remained OU in an extremely close vote. Will we be following suit?
 
Awesome! I didn't know they were suspect testing Sablenite. Honestly I am kind of disappointed that it wasn't banned in the end. It has been a pain for many of my teams from its first introduction to OU.
 
Yeah it was one of the closer votes I've seen. It kind of makes sense though. A lot of the discussion was whether Sablenite was broken, or whether it was the combination of shadow tag + Sablenite. So for now at least, we'll get to see how the meta game develops with only mega sableye in it. I'm happy they banners shadow tag because shadow tag stall was an appalling thing to face.
 
An interesting ban, we shall see how centralizing Mega Sableye is now, although I can't really say he's as good as people make him out to be, my teams have never had a problem

Edit: I missed the other ban, what were they thinking? They should've just banned Gothitelle, NOT Shadow Tag, Wobbuffet really isn't that great, unless you trick choice items on before hand
 
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updated the op.

mfw my best teams from this and last gen used shadow tag as the main strategy

VJM71A5.gif
 
Equinox said:
An interesting ban, we shall see how centralizing Mega Sableye is now, although I can't really say he's as good as people make him out to be, my teams have never had a problem
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It's a weird scenario with Mega Sableye. It's not necessarily that he's "OP" or that he "Walls a huge portion of the metagame" or anything like that, it's more that he just makes hazards completely irrelevant. Ferrothorn, Skarmory, Hippowdon, and most other hazard setters become completely useless. The only real ones I can think of that can actually still set up Stealth Rock are Clefable and Diancie. Pair this with a heavy stall team and the advantage is tipped pretty heavily in their favor since they don't have to worry about residual damage for the most part, while they can set up hazards at will. (unless of course they're facing another mega sableye, lol.) Pokemon like Dragonite or Volcarona become much better behind mega Sableye as well because of how difficult it is to get Stealth Rock up, but that's much lesser of a concern really. It's mostly the stall team thing. It's always difficult to see how "OP" a pokemon is (or isn't) when the main premise is the "support" category that smogon has set up because it isn't the sableye itself that's causing all of the problems usually, it's the fact that it supports the teammates behind it so incredibley well.

However, with Shadow Tag removed, this might be much less prominent. A huge problem was that defensive teams would essentially have freedom to not worry about hazards AND your opponent would be fighting you without their team's biggest stallbreaking threat, because Gothitelle or Wobbuffet + Pursuit would neuter it completely. Now at least you have the chance to set your stallbreaker up, so it might not be as big of a threat as it seems. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose.
 
One Approved said:
It's a weird scenario with Mega Sableye. It's not necessarily that he's "OP" or that he "Walls a huge portion of the metagame" or anything like that, it's more that he just makes hazards completely irrelevant. Ferrothorn, Skarmory, Hippowdon, and most other hazard setters become completely useless. The only real ones I can think of that can actually still set up Stealth Rock are Clefable and Diancie. Pair this with a heavy stall team and the advantage is tipped pretty heavily in their favor since they don't have to worry about residual damage for the most part, while they can set up hazards at will. (unless of course they're facing another mega sableye, lol.) Pokemon like Dragonite or Volcarona become much better behind mega Sableye as well because of how difficult it is to get Stealth Rock up, but that's much lesser of a concern really. It's mostly the stall team thing. It's always difficult to see how "OP" a pokemon is (or isn't) when the main premise is the "support" category that smogon has set up because it isn't the sableye itself that's causing all of the problems usually, it's the fact that it supports the teammates behind it so incredibley well.

However, with Shadow Tag removed, this might be much less prominent. A huge problem was that defensive teams would essentially have freedom to not worry about hazards AND your opponent would be fighting you without their team's biggest stallbreaking threat, because Gothitelle or Wobbuffet + Pursuit would neuter it completely. Now at least you have the chance to set your stallbreaker up, so it might not be as big of a threat as it seems. We'll have to wait and see, I suppose.
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Ok, this explains why I've never had a problem, because I don't feel so inclined to get up entry hazards asap, that and I usually use Heatran / Excadrill / Umbreon /Mew, the former being able to put status on it and the latter being able to Synchronize WoW and effectively cripple it for the game. I'm just ready to see what we get with Volcanion and Z
 
Hoopa-U is being suspect-tested ! That's kind of a surprise, I really thought we have been over with this guy, although I feel it will be a good thing for stall teams. What do you think?
 
scattered mind said:
Hoopa-U is being suspect-tested ! That's kind of a surprise, I really thought we have been over with this guy, although I feel it will be a good thing for stall teams. What do you think?
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I stand by my decision before that it needs to go on the previous page. It is just too powerful to remain in OU.
 
While my teams have never had much of a problem with it I can understand and agree that it should be banned. No safe switch-in, and even Persuit users can't safely Pursuit it unless it is Choice locked, which is situational and not always guaranteed. Ontop of that in order to understand what you even have to check it you have to scout the moveset, which can be hard if the opponent knows how to bluff it.
 
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Hoopa Unbound has been bound! I mean.. banned!
With 61 percent majority. A little less majority than Aegislah ban, iirc.
 
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