BurntZebra

playing in 10 vs fab

The problem with this argument is that we have already been banning other LC mons too. Should we artificially change scyther/sneasel etc to be balanced in LC too? I already don't really like the whole thing that is going on in OU to avoid any bans from occurring but that's an argument for another day. Balancing LC is even more difficult because gamefreak doesn't really consider LC very much when adding new mons/adding new evolutions to existing mons. Pretty much all of the LC ubers pool are mons that originally did not evolve, but gamefreak added an evolution later on, so they became legal in LC as a result, even though they were originally added in the game as a non evolving entity and the base stats typically show that (yanma, tangela, sneasel, scyther, misdreavus). Base stats and individual stats matter a lot more in LC than other tiers, as the low level and eviolite bonus, and how the damage calculation works can change damages drastically. 1 extra point in defense can result in damage rolls changing by 4 points of damage, which can be a 20% hp difference. Some mons are sort of exceptions when it comes to base stat totals/balancing, like ponyta and onix. Ponyta typically has one of the highest BSTs in LC metas, but it's rarely seen as a super dominant force, as it is pure fire type, which leaves it weak to stealth rock/other hazards, leaves it prone to being trapped by trapinch/diglett, and generally doesn't resist enough common attacks in LC to be a good defensive switchin to things. Onix, while initially being a mon that doesn't evolve, has maintained balance as 42% of its BST is from defense alone, and has pretty terrible hp/sp def/attack, which limits how useful it actually is at checking defensive threats outside of physical flying/normal moves. As for misdreavus, I think the best option is to just ban it. Prior to nasty plot access, misdreavus was already too good not to use, and the usage showed that. A BST of 435, supported by 3 immunities, 19 speed to outspeed everything besides scarfers and diglett, and a decent amount of support moves in its movepool. The only answers were porygon and munchlax (both of which, could be handled various different misdreavus sets, but these sets were less good vs other threats in the meta, so it was sort of fine from a balance standpoint). Now with nasty plot, misdreavus doesn't have to run sub optimal sets to deal with porygon and munchlax, as it can break past both of them, being able to go +2 sp atk in one turn and threaten them much more quickly than before. I understand the desire to keep misdreavus around to be a fast utility mon that can help deal with fighting types, but from a tiering perspective, misdreavus is not too different from tangela or sneasel. So in my mind, it doesn't make sense to complex ban an element of misdreavus to keep it free in LC, but keep tangela/sneasel in LC ubers. Based off my understanding, the devs want to avoid stuff ending up in level 50 ubers, as those mons are then only usable in doubles and PvE, but with LC ubers, those mons are still usable in level 50s formats. Sneasel, tangela, and scyther have all seen usage in NU. Misdreavus has a smaller niche in NU, as mismagius still exists there, but it can still be used if you are looking for a bulkier version of mismagius while foregoing some speed/leftovers recovery.

won gg

beep bop boop

i won both very skillfully

IGN: BurntZebra Time Zone (GMT format): -5 Tiers: LC, OU, UU, NU

I'm not really sure if I agree with your arguments here. I agree that if the managers are selected, and 7 of the 8 are top tier players and 1 is terrible, then yeah, that one manager is probably at a disadvantage, but at the same time, not allowing managers to play either decreases the pool of good managers to choose from, or it decreases from the quality of the player pool, both of which we have seen in the past seasons. One potential option if this were an auction format is to have managers price each other and decide if they want to purchase themselves to play, the caveat being that they can play in any tier, not just a manager vs manager tier. This option is typically seen in the lower level smogon leagues that have a smaller playerbase, where if the managers didn't play, there would be a severe skill gap in the player pool. I'm not sure if this is really feasible in a snake format since each manager pick is essentially the same value, unlike the auction where one manager could be valued 5k more than another manager. Ultimately, allowing managers to play allows for the greatest selection of managers to choose from, since you no longer need to decide between getting to play or just managing, especially considering having 8 top players not being able to play can dramatically affect the overall skill level of a certain tier or just general skill level overall. As for the Snake vs auction discussion, I think it's sort of silly to pretend that the unique thing about PSL is the auction. At the end of the day, SPL and Snake Draft are not terribly different outside of having different tiers to play. PSL in PokeMMO is unique because it is one of the only long-term team-based tournaments and is probably the only truly competitive one, seeing as World Cup had a myriad of problems that made it not competitive. The difference between auction and snake is usually the auction allows for a larger variation in the skill levels of players, e.g. buying 2 players for 30k each and then buying 8 players for 2-4k each, while snake *should* have a steady decline in the skill levels of players as rounds progress of the draft. Snake is also typically a tad bit more exclusive, but that really depends on what the rules are that Coolio comes up with. We have also had a snake draft in the past (season 7/8 I believe) for the first 2 rounds, and then had auction for the rest, so there is some precedent for a draft already. I haven't read the OP since reading rules is for chumps.

I figured I'd take a shot at building a sand team in the current meta. I tried to make it have some unique features to make it stand out from other sand teams that have been made before. https://pokepast.es/1d433f1789fb2e9d -> the team _______________________________________________________________________________________ So you wanted to keep hydreigon, so that was my starting point for the team. I'm no expert on hydreigon sets, so this set can probably be changed if you would like. Focus blast allows you to 2hko blissey with rocks up and kill stuff like porygon2/tyranitar that are able to survive specs dragon pulse easily. U-turn is for momentum vs chansey, since odds are, you won't be able to kill it normally. Next up is the sand component of the team. I wanted tyranitar as the sand setter because it has more offensive potential and has some unique switch in opportunities as well, compared to hippowdon. Fire blast can be used to nail steel types and breloom on the switch. Stealth rock because every good team has rocks. I debated if I wanted crunch or not on the tyranitar, since I wasn't running dark pulse on hydreigon. Without dark pulse on hydreigon, I figured reuniclus might get too annoying, so I stuck with crunch, and added stone edge to round out the coverage and the ability to ko togekiss. The ev spread is slightly random, but it does give you speed to outspeed blissey, bulk to live a +2 aura sphere from togekiss, and enough attack to deal out some damage. I saw another team posted here with chople berry excadrill and I liked that idea, so I went with it here. Chople berry serves one primary purpose, which is to let excadrill survive a mach punch from conkeldurr and then ko with a +2 earthquake. Chople also helps with the special lucario matchup, as excadrill can live a +2 life orb vacuum wave with chople. After adding the first 3 pokemon and seeing they are all weak to fighting, and knowing that sand teams are often weak to rain, I decided to go with a slightly unorthodox choice of slowbro. Slowbro is one of the bulkiest physical walls available still and gives you answers to physical lucario, mamoswine, conkeldurr, and kabutops. Scald and thunder wave try to limit what is willing to come in vs slowbro, and psyshock is just to have some offensive capabilities vs blissey, conkeldurr, breloom, and tentacruel. At this point, I felt the team was quite weak to scizor and excadrill was being completely walled by skarmory, so magnezone seemed like the next logical choice. Scarf magnezone gives the team some speed and will hopefully remove scizor and/or skarmory. Magnezone is also the primary switch in to bulky waters and togekiss. I was looking over the team and realized it was still fairly weak to fighting and had some potential flaws vs scizor still, so I went with salamence. Originally, I was going to do a special attacking defog roost salamence, but I think the physical dragon dance set takes advantage of the team more. Magnezone is able to trap skarmory and allow salamence to do severe damage. Roost seemed like an interesting option, as it let salamence switch into attacks a little more carefree and not have to worry about stealth rock damage as much. If skarmory is trapped, then dragon claw and earthquake have perfect coverage for everything else. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ As for flaws of the team, there are a few that came to mind that I haven't tried to adapt to yet. First is shed shell skarmory. It will evade magnezone trapping and thus will stick around all game to wall both excadrill and salamence. There are a few ways to remedy this. One way would be to drop roost on salamence for a fire move to threaten skarmory more. Another option would be to run a knock off user on the team that can bait skarmory to come in and remove its shed shell so that magnezone can trap it. This is more difficult because nothing on the team learns knock off, so a pokemon change would be needed. The second flaw would be bulky waters. Milotic is very annoying for the team as it is not prone to being trapped and has recovery, which makes it difficult to wear down. Milotic is able to switch in on salamence, slowbro, excadrill, and tyranitar. Remedies for this would be to add toxic on slowbro over thunder wave, so that if milotic comes in vs slowbro, it will be put on a timer and be easier to wear down. This is a double-edged sword since it will make salamence/excadrill do less damage to milotic as well. Another option is to make either salamence or excadrill life orb sets. +2 earthquake from life orb excadrill will ohko milotic, but will make you worse vs conkeldurr. +1 life orb dragon claw from salamence will put milotic in range of being killed off by an excadrill earthquake.

I went ahead and made this team, even though I'm not technically a builder, I think butler said something about TC people getting a free pass. https://pokepast.es/2994c60ce9db5be1 I'll go through my build process. First I went with your taillow set as the starting point of the team. Guts taillow is fairly strong, but it has more trouble getting past normal/flying resists than other flying types, so the team needed some ways to deal with steel types and rock types. Trapinch was the obvious next pick, as it is able to switch in vs onix and magnemite safely vs any attack and ko with giga drain or earthquake respectively. Trapinch also traps tirtouga and pawniard, but it seems that shell smash tirtouga is the more common tirtouga set so trapinch isn't the first switch to tirtouga in a normal game. The next pick for the team is mienfoo, which has been the most consistent LC mon in the past 3 gens of LC, so there's not much surprise here. Mienfoo can tank almost any hit in LC and deal damage between fake out, uturn, and high jump kick. Knock off also makes it easier to break misdreavus / frillish / porygon / vullaby for the rest of the team. U-turn and trapinch can potentially eliminate certain threats that switch into mienfoo. Before I added any more defensive backbone to the team, I figured I should figure out the other part of the bird spam for the team. There are a few choices. Doduo, rufflet, archen, drifloon, etc. I went with drifloon because it has some unique options that no other flying type provides. First, it has unburden, which allows it to outspeed all of the boosted and unboosted meta, after it uses its item. Second, it has many movepool options to break whatever you need. Acrobatics is a given if you're running flying gem. Knock off helps vs porygon/vullaby/flying resists. Thunderbolt hits vullaby / tirtouga / other water or flying types. Shadow ball also gives another stab move. The moveset can probably be changed around. Hidden power fighting can be used to hit pawniard / onix / porygon. Destiny bond can be used to remove any pokemon. Next pick for the team had to be a stealth rocker, since every LC team needs a rocker. The top two choices were tirtouga and pawniard, as they resist ice/normal/flying, and have good overall bulk. I just went with tirtouga because I think it's quite good at what it does and is somewhat underutilized in this pokemmo LC meta. The last pick felt like it needed to be some kind of hazard removal, since there was taillow and drifloon that are weak to rocks. I went with vullaby since it gives an answer to misdreavus and is just bulky overall, while also giving defog to the team. I did make a different version of the team, but I didn't like the feel as much for some reason, maybe because it didn't have a fighting type on it. https://pokepast.es/bd84dc7920ff7287

Houndour is not a good mon in a tier with many good stealth rock setters (onix, tirtouga, ferroseed, dwebble, pawniard) and its immunity to fire is fairly irrelevant. Its usefulness as a psychic answer is not useful considering abra is not as good without magic guard. It also adds to a team's fighting weakness which is rarely good since we're lacking some fighting resists (regen foongus/slowpoke mainly). Murkrow and misdreavus are probably the 2 most banworthy mons that exist in LC currently, so I'd say discussion should be mainly on those for now. Murkrow has insane versatility and great base stats (also hitting 19 speed), which makes predicting what moves it has very difficult. It also has stab sucker punch to ruin the days of any scarfers that try to revenge it. Misdreavus seems slightly more manageable personally. Running knock off on timburr/mienfoo will cripple misdreavus bulk a lot (and knock off is a god move in LC anyways, even with low base power). It also has the trade off of running speed or bulk. Sure it can hit 19 speed, but it'll also be a lot frailer vs scarfers/things that can tank a hit. It also doesn't have nasty plot so its offensive presence is a lot less than what it would be with nasty plot. Another food for thought. Shell smash users. I only watched the finals match of the recent lc tournament so I don't know how much shell smash users were used, but they are quite powerful and difficult to stop. Shellder, clamperl, tirtouga, dwebble are a few that come to mind. Shellder has reasonable physical bulk, which allows it to set up on certain physical attackers, and it has flexibility in its moveset to some extent with its last slot. Clamperl has insane power behind it, but is more difficult to set up/not get revenged by sucker punch etc. Surf+hp fire coverage gives you all the coverage you need at +2 sp atk. Diglett can be used as a support for any shell smasher. It can remove pawniard, a troublesome pokemon for smashers due to its typing and stab sucker punch. It can memento on a threat to allow a shell smasher to set up. It can pick off anything low hp that is slower than it. Diglett will be one of those annoying mons in LC that will be extra annoying without team preview. You'll have to second guess pressing volt switch with magnemite or chinchou, fearing the diglett popping out from its dirt hole. I'm not sure if diglett will outright be banworthy, since it has low power and low bulk, meaning it has very little that it can outright ko, even if it gets in safely. It's definitely something to watch out for in the future, most likely for potentially unhealthy teambuilding constraints, but I guess we'll have to see how the LC meta evolves.

252+ SpA Kingdra Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Lapras: 75-88 (31.6 - 37.1%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery 252+ SpA Kingdra Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Deep Sea Scale Clamperl: 51-61 (35.9 - 42.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO shell armor new meta

I've seen some magnetons lurking around in NU, so escavalier isn't exactly the safest option, even if it decides to run drill run. Escavalier's recovery is pretty much limited to a rest sleep talk set, not sure if people run that or not. It's probably decent but you miss out on pursuit trapping. If it doesn't run rest, then linoone just needs to wait around until escavalier is 50-60% to set up, which is pretty doable. Mismagmius is an option, but it has to be running timid, and it can't be running a sub cm set or else it will lose. Linoone can always run jolly to mess up haunter as well, although I imagine jolly linoone will miss out on some kos. Both ghost types are also prone to pursuit trapping, although not sure how prevalent that is. Defensive normal resists have existed in every meta where linoone was banned, so I wouldn't say that's a compelling argument to me on why it's not overpowered. Crustle/amoonguss/tangrowth/armaldo/golem all fall to the flail set you love so dearly, although flail means you're giving up seed bomb, which probably doesn't matter too much anyways. Sturdy users could work, but unless you have fairly dedicated hazard removal, stealth rock/spikes/toxic spikes will most likely ruin any plans with sturdy. Also it seems like you're forgetting that linoone is usually the last pokemon revealed in the match, late into the game, so the odds of someone keeping a sawk at 100% throughout the entire match on the off chance that the opponent might be running linoone, is pretty slim. My main issue with linoone is that it has a +2 priority stab extreme speed, which makes it very deadly vs an offensive team. You might think, oh if I'm running offense, then linoone won't have a chance to set up, but that's generally incorrect, unless you run 6 things with fighting coverage or strong stab moves. An offense team can't just rely on a priority user or a scarf pokemon to deal with linoone, unlike other set up sweepers, which can be dealt with scarfers or +1 priority. We're probably not going to take any action with NU currently since we're still ironing things out in OU and UU before we really touch NU, so whatever can go wild in NU currently.

252+ SpA Life Orb Blissey Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Conkeldurr: 146-172 (81.1 - 95.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO easy solution

Maybe because no one good plays randoms

well if it isn't craig who isn't a doctor