Metagame np: DOU Stage 4 - Galaxies

do you guys mind looking at vr / any tournament replays really before posting here? if only scarfers / tr users were checking deo it would actually be a problem

this has much more counterplay than some of the more commonly used mons like zapdos (5 checks), kingdra (6 checks) or marsh (only softchecks). also theres a couple ways of softchecking it with things like hail, vest kyub or bulu and pheramosa. you can make a case against deo and im not fully on board with it myself, but come on, think for a sec before you post here.
First things first, I keep updated on tourneys and the vr rankings, so dont give me that shit. I've been playing dubs for like three years now on and off, so I don't think my opinion is coming from a place of ignorance.


As for the argument you posted:
if you want to check it with something like celesteela, per your example, it will either:

A.) be running thunder if its on rain
B.) just dunk ur other mon

and this tends to be true for the other checks you posted as well

The thing is, deoxys will almost always be paired with a partner that is capable of putting on a lot of offensive pressure as well, if it's on a well built team. Trying to switch in to deoxys with your deoxys check often means taking like 50% from a psycho boost, or putting yourself in the way of a superpower, if you're switching in a dark type. This makes it really difficult to check a deo late into the game if you dont have a way to outspeed it, because there are so few mons that can actually switch in on deo more than once. This issue is amplified when deo is on psyspam, because the same checks often have to tank lele hits as well.
 
yo this has nothing to do with deo but for real, time to chill.

More than half of these posts range from condescending as frick to confrontational. I get that sometimes you need to show the world how good you are at Pokémon but take it easy.

Edit: the irony of taking shots in a calm down post is not lost on me, but the point still stands
 
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GenOne

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I know a fair bit about Psyspam and what it's capable of; if I wasn't the first one to come up with Deo-A + Lele back in January, I was definately the first one to post a rain psyspam team:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-ou-team-bazaar-sample-teams-here.3590987/#post-7166026

I basically came up with the idea for "BrainStorm," as I called it, while I was battling Lolk who was using Lele and rain. I realized that Lele blocking priority was a huge win for rain teams, which used to be plagued by stuff like Thundurus's Thunder Waves and strong priority attackers. Then I thought "hey, Deo-A also benefits from this, and Psycho Boost would probably be really strong."

The golden age for this build was probably in early January during the np: DOU Stage 0 era. Magearna and Zygarde-Complete had just been banned. People still thought Tapu Fini was the worst Tapu (lol) and quite a few people were hyping up Lele or saying it was broken. Nobody was yet adapting to or considering Deo-A an implication to their teambuilding. Yes, it took an L to Trick Room, Ferrothorn, and sometimes Jirachi, but for a while bringing this team basically meant risking a coinflip weighted in your favour.

To this day, I think that's why most people who hate Deo-A, hate Deo-A; it's not broken competitively per se, but it imposes coinflip matchups that prevent certain builds from thriving.

On another note, I forget when Matame's Froot RMT and Kamikaze's Sun Psyspam team with Milotic were created, but those teams deserve a s/o too as some of the first Psyspam builds.


Eventually, during np: DOU Stage 1, Trick Room became more popular, people were coming up with sets like bulky seismic Kangaskhan, Zapdos/Fini cores, CurseLax, etc. etc. and eventually we reached the point where bulky offense became the new meta. Psyspam was still potent and annoying to face up against, but setup-oriented builds were a lot safer and more consistent to use. I had moved on at that point.


Stratos / Kamikaze / Blood Totem brought back Psyspam rain in April, and the archetype gained more mainstream recognition because more high-level players were using it. The important development here was that Deo-A was using Choice Specs, not Focus Sash, and was doing like 80% to Ferrothorn inside of Psychic Terrain which was insane. People began realizing that Psychic Terrain let Deoxys-A get away with riskier, more offensive sets.

However, non-Sash Deoxys-A is only good until people start expecting you to not be running sash. It's a set that plays on people's conventional expectations of needing to play around a Sash, so you can bust out a wild set and score an OHKO that your opponent didn't expect to be possible. Once you knew [insert username here] liked using Specs Deo, you were able to play around it and sometimes even exploit it, and I feel most people that were using specs eventually stopped using specs.


Yes, high level users like qsns players still whip out items like Specs, Z moves and Life Orb in important matches like Snake, lategame seasonals, etc. but again, these sets mainly work by challenging people's expectations of a mon. It's also worth noting that B01 team tours like Snake, SPL etc. are much more encouraging of obscure and innovative sets that only need to catch people off guard for one important match, and even B03 tours can foster this type of building when it's two experienced users facing each other. It's no different than Chase's infamous Linoone team, etc. etc. but the thing is a good tournament team isn't necessarily the same as a good all-purpose team where you want consistent results over time.

Arguably, Sash is still the most consistent item for the long haul, but from time to time people will pull out other items because they know they can.


^ This guy tho




Was Deoxys-A's dream come true.

Deo rain now had an actually good fighting-type to break Ferro, and Marshadow's role as a fast attacker with perfect coverage was the perfect addition to almost every Deo-A hyper offensive team that already existed. Furthermore, Marshadow dropped the viability of both Trick Room teams and many of the bulkier setup balance builds that Deo-A hated. We're talking about Deo-A again because Marshadow made it good again.

And to be fair, we were so sick of the setup meta at this point that a lot of us welcomed Marshadow with open arms, even though we knew it was potentially dangerous for the meta. And I mean, I was one of those people even though I didn't vote in np: DOU Stage 3 - the setup-heavy meta got pretty trash after a while and I think I still enjoy the current meta more. But Deo-A isn't broken because Deo is Deo. Deo is broken because we created an environment that has limited strategic options for gaining the upper hand over the opponent, so now we're turning to: Deo-A, Stealth Rocks, and setup sweepers like Mega Scizor that are more resilient to Marshadow.

Fwiw though I laddered a bit with Rain Psyspam during DLT and found it to be one of the least consistent builds, followed by Sun Psyspam. People generally know what it does and know how to play it, imo. Sand, stealth rocks, and hail really are a pain for it too. But yes it is annoying to fight and very effective against the right matchup.

But tbh, I really don't care if Deo-A gets banned or not, because...



Deo-N can just fill the void. I'm not going to lie, the 30 bst drop to both Psycho Boost and Superpower matters more than I initially thought. The Atk drop is especially bad when you're trying to hurt bulky steels like Ferrothorn. But, under Psychic Terrain Deo-N almost as potent as Deo-A as far as I can tell based on initial tests. There's also Deoxys-S which, while a much weaker mon, is a mon that actually outspeeds Scarf Jolly Lando, has the bulk to pull off an offensive item like Life Orb, still hits like a truck under Psychic Terrain thanks to an OP Psychic STAB, and has the bulk to set Stealth Rocks -- akin to the SR deo-a set Miltankmilk likes to bring :)

There is probably a subset of people that think that the power nerf to Deo-A is enough to balance things out. If that's your view and that's all you want - that's great! Most mons we suspect don't give us the option to just slightly nerf it, but we can do that here.

However, if you hate Deo-A because of the coinflip matchups it imposes, please realize that Deo-A is not the reason Psyspam archetypes are thriving right now - that's on Marshadow breaking down the fat setup teams and breathing new life into offense.

One interesting idea I've heard a few people toss around is that we keep Deo-A, keep Marshadow, but also free Jirachi into this meta. Jirachi was one of the best Deo-A checks before, it can probably run some sort of Kasib Berry set in response to Marshadow, and breath a bit of fresh life into setup and Trick Room without OP'ing it like it was before.

I'd want to play this hypothetical meta for a few weeks first to test it before buying into it, but I think it's a really interesting idea.
 
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there is no fucking way you people think deoxys is the problem. forgive me, im not as active of a dou player as i used to be, but i sure as hell know this is wildly incorrect. i *assume* this suspect is being done instead of lele bc lele by itself isn't a super great pokemon, so you think you're dealing with the problem by dealing with deo-a. deo is not a great pokemon, certainly not as good enough for a suspect, without tapu lele. i for one have not seen deo on very many successful teams that don't also include a lele. i've been a proponent of a tapu lele suspect literally since we started playing SM and this is just... wrong. there's no other way to put it. i really think deo is not the problem. i will absolutely vote no ban and then go to majorbowmans apartment and throw tapu lele plushes at his window until he convinces the rest of you of how bad a decision this is.

ok, maybe i came off a bit mean. i just would rather see lele done than deo. i agree that it is a good mixed strong thing but it has always been that. i dont think z-moves have made it suspect worthy.
I definitely respect you as a player and respect your input, but I really have to disagree with the sentiment here that Lele is the problem. I know Psychic Terrain definitely make Deoxys-A much more of a threat, but as you said, Lele itself is not THAT great. IMO banning something because it makes another 'mon way better, seems a little backwards. As it stands now I'm undecided on how I'm going to vote on this one.

so basically the problem with deoxys is that the counterplay is pretty much limited to bulky trick room users and really fast scarfers
You do have weather, Tailwind, Sash, Follow Me, Terrain swapping + priority, and well timed Protects to work with as well.
 
ive been thinking about this deo thing for a while, and i think that marshadow is actually the problem here. Pretty much any defensive answer to deo gets ganked by marsh. I'm not sure how im gonna vote on deo-a, but after this suspect i think we ought to have another marsh suspect, marsh seems to be the main factor in pushing this meta really far in the direction of hyper offense.

tl;dr
ban marshadow
 

MajorBowman

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Been trying to decide how I feel about Deoxys but I'm still really not sure. On one hand it's incredibly threatening in the right hands, and the item can make a huge difference when playing either with or against it. If the Deo player gets a turn or two right, Deo is likely getting a kill or two per game without much resistance. However, the same is true in the other direction. If the Deo player gets a turn wrong suddenly they're using a 5 mon team. This is especially true with non Sash sets, which are much more powerful but also much less forgiving. Most of my Deoxys experience is playing against it as it's not really a mon I like using very often, but hopefully my suspect ladder games will help me form a stronger opinion.

I also wanted to address a couple things. It seems like the council is taking a lot of heat for deciding to suspect Deoxys, and I really don't understand it. This has been something the council has been discussing as early as March, and we made the decision based on a number of people outside the council suggesting it. It also has literally nothing to do with qsns beating me down with Deo in Snake, so please stop blaming the suspect entirely on that one game. If you're one of the people saying "lol i haven't heard anyone calling for a deo suspect," I really don't know what to tell you. We aren't lying to you, there really are people that have opinions other than yours. Suspecting Deoxys isn't the council coming out and saying "Deoxys is broken," it's identifying a potential problem within the metagame and seeing how the playerbase feels. It's absolutely 100% ok if you don't think Deoxys is banworthy, that's why the "do not ban" vote and this discussion thread exist. I just ask you to respect this suspect test and take it as seriously as any other, even if you wouldn't have picked Deoxys as the target. I will admit that the council could have been a little more transparent on our suspect plans, but aggressively targeting us for a decision that really is pretty reasonable is just unnecessary.

Happy laddering everyone, hope to see some more good discussion.
 
I am honestly torn between whether this should be banned or not. I've read through everyone's posts at least a couple times now, and can easily see both sides of the argument. Initially I was a definite no ban, but Specs and Z moves take care of many "counters" to this thing. However I also do think that smart players can guess based off the opponents team what kind of item the Deo has and make the proper adjustments (protecting or switching into immunties on zmove sets.) I do believe the strain on teambuilding is the biggest factor here. But do I think this strain is any greater than the strain of Marshadow? That is the real question here. Given its track record in circuit tournaments, I think it needs more time for people to wake up to how good it truly is, but the suspect is now, so it is a very tough question to answer.

However, hypothetically I do believe bringing back Jirachi would bring back a good balance between set-up and balance. With Marshadow as popular as it is, it would be very interesting and something worth looking into.

So the final verdict for me? I think its a bit too early. Players were always aware of how strong this mon could be, but with the new adaptations such as specs/zmoves and Jirachi disappearing, we are only realizing now how good it can really be. I am very curious to see what others think of possibly bringing Jirachi back.
 

GenOne

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I won't write a novel this time, but I spent most of my time laddering with Deo-N to see if it was a viable substitute for Deo-A. I was both disappointed and impressed with this mon:
  • The power drop was noticeable - especially on the physical side where Superpower no longer guaranteed a 2HKO against Ferrothorn.
  • However, Psycho Boost still dropped most of what it did before - especially inside of Psychic Terrain where the final damage calc still ends up superior to the Gen 6 Deo-A that had to rely on raw power alone.
  • On the plus side, Deo-N actually lives some weaker hits without sash, such as Tapu Fini's Moonblast and Muddy Water. Once you learn these benchmarks, you can actually exploit them and launch things like Z moves or Specs-boosted attacks and still expect to survive the turn.
  • The loss of Deo-A will be a definate nerf to Deo, and I expect the archetype to become less popular. However, I still think Psyspam with Deo-N will be usable and do a lot of the same things Deo-A does now. I'd even argue that Deo-N is a slightly better candidate for Psychium Z sets because it can actually live things without sash, and 150 SpA with a base 140 STAB move is still OP af.

That said, the suspect ladder also didn't provide a very welcoming or effective testing environment for either Deoxys-A or Deoxys-N, because the majority of teams I encountered were "ladder room" teams like the one above, and for this reason teams oriented around Deoxys don't make good ladder sweepers even though competitively they are quite potent. I laddered with rain psyspam for most of the suspect, but ended up finding balance builds and even full trick room builds to be way more consistent.

It might be useful before the end of this suspect if we host a few live roomtours where people who are aiming for reqs can test deo teams in competitive battles. At the very least, I urge people not to base their opinions just on ladder testing, and try to look through some of the Snake and Seasonals replays of Deoxys teams if you haven't already formed a strong opinion on this suspect.
 
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DaWoblefet

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I really, really hate playing against Deoxys-A. Similarly, I hate using Deoxys-A.

Fundamentally, hyper offense's effectiveness is contingent on being able to maintain momentum; you don't have defensive pivots to switch around and try to claw back from a tough position, so exploiting mistakes or tendencies in the opponent's gameplay is what drives hyper offense forward. Because hyper offense tends to attack first, it is less susceptible to bad luck, because if you KO your opponent, you can't get flinched or critically hit, etc. This positive trait, however, becomes moot when speed control is implemented, so most HO is reliant on the opponent not having some kind of speed control that they can't stop. Deoxys is definitely the poster boy of hyper offense in DOU, relying on Psychic Terrain for both extra damage and protection from the myriad of priority moves that threaten OHKOs. Take its Psychic Terrain away, take its Special Attack away by trying to switch into a resist, take its Speed away, etc. and it is not only deadweight, but frail deadweight. Nevertheless, the positioning this requires often means Deoxys probably takes a KO before going down. At best, it trades itself for 2 Pokemon, but those two Pokemon could be key to fighting the remainder of Deoxys's team.

Deoxys is no gimmick, but I'd nevertheless call some of the sets that make Deoxys annoying to fight gimmicky. Running a Z-move largely depends on the opponent's assumption that Deoxys is holding a Focus Sash, and because it doesn't get any good spread moves, fundamentally Z-move Deoxys should only realistically expect to trade one for one. My lack of tournament play really shows here, because I didn't get the opportunity to fight well-positioned Deoxys-A on the suspect ladder (i.e. not leading it and letting it die to basic counterplay). For example, this is what usually happened when I played Deo Rain; once they lost momentum, like all HO, they couldn't do much to come back. Nevertheless, I imagine at high level, similar to ladder, Deoxys causes a number of 50/50 scenarios both at Team Preview and mid-battle. This is personally why I hate playing with Deoxys. Suppose my opponent has a Dark-type / Psycho Boost "resist" and two Pokemon out that threaten Deo, neither of which are threatened by Deo's partner. If my opponent attacks with both, I can trade 1 for 1 with Deoxys, but if they switch to their resist, it's a biased 50/50 in their favor, because Psycho Boost can miss even if I predict correctly. In the end, Deoxys just really doesn't mesh well with my playstyle at all. Everything Hashtag said I'd like to echo, because quite frankly Deoxys just isn't a good Pokemon in my mind.

What I think follows is that because I view hyper offense as an inconsistent strategy reliant on momentum, I dislike Deoxys fundamentally. What doesn't follow, however, is that hyper offense is an invalid strategy or shouldn't be explored. I would love to see it banned so I don't have to play against it, but that doesn't mean it's broken or unhealthy.
 

talkingtree

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As with every suspect, I started out trying to build something around Deoxys-A so that I could get as many games as possible in to be educated on this suspect. Deo-A is something that I very rarely find myself using outside of this suspect because it doesn't really fit my playing style or typical teambuilds, so I was curious to get that extra information and see how it operated on my side of the field. However, as GenOne pointed out, this suspect ladder was quite unkind to typical Deo-A teams and due to that I found myself unable to really get momentum and get used to my team. I changed it up a few different times, but in the end I actually gave up trying to use it and just went with another of my teams that I felt better with.

Consequentially, I'm still feeling pretty conflicted. Deo-A has an unparalleled ability to dictate the flow of a game with its incredible offensive pressure. Normally this dominance would be clearly banworthy, but in order to get the high rewards of using it, Deo-A has to withstand the huge risks of a lack of survivability and reliance on stat-dropping moves. It's this on-the-edge daredevil-ish trait that makes it so hard for me to use Deo-A effectively; regardless, I'm still able to recognize how incredibly threatening it can be.

At this point, I am unconvinced that Deo-A is "the problem". There are definitely issues with this meta as there are with every metagame, and I stand by council's decision to bring up Deo-A as the initial threat worth putting under the microscope. However, though Z-Move Deo sets improve its ability to stay relevant in the meta, I think their fairly recent increase in popularity means it's hard to say whether this is a threat best handled by a ban. Essentially, I'm echoing marilli's sentiment that we're now realizing Deoxys-A is better than it was previously thought to be. I think the increase in popularity, adaptability, and effectiveness has amplified views on Deo-A's current place in the meta and at least for now, we need time to assess whether its trajectory will continue upwards.

~~~~~

Not speaking for the rest of the council here, but I'd be perfectly willing to take another look at either Marshadow or Jirachi next, regardless of the results of this test. I didn't want to retest Marshadow right after it had just been suspected, as that seemed counterproductive to how suspects are meant to be handled. Now, it's been long enough that the meta has changed and re-examining Marshadow's place wouldn't simply be saying that the people who voted No Ban previously were wrong - it's saying that in this new version of the metagame, Marshadow might be too much to handle. Jirachi, on the other hand, isn't exactly something I've been eagerly hoping will return. There are plenty of arguments for giving it another look; it was only banned by one vote, Marshadow's release and popularity gives it a high-profile check, and it can help reel in Deo-A for the people who feel something needs to be done about its reign. Still, the new release/emergence of Mega Diancie, Mega Garde, and AV Kyu-B (which is slower than standard Jirachi) would all be hindered by Jirachi and its return could bring us all back to the setup-heavy mess of a meta before its banning.

The good news is, suspects aren't brought up because the council has predetermined the result of the suspect and everyone on council believes the change being discussed should be made. If Jirachi is resuspected and it is discovered to still be *insert your favorite cliche word for banworthy here*, we just vote to leave it banned. Doubles has had a fairly few number of suspect tests over its years, so it's easy to think that suspect test means it's about to be banned - it's only towards the end of the generation that suspects become more clearly about putting forward the idea that something is on the border, after all the clearly problematic elements are taken care of.

All of this is of course dependent on the effects of USUM, but I felt I should at least say where my head's at.
 

Checkmater

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I haven't been terribly active so bear that in mind but thoughts on deo suspect

Easy points first off:
conversations around deo-normal r literally irrelevant atm. Even if deo-n could function as a deo-a "replacement" you'd still ban deo-a first to figure that out... like hypothetically even IF deo-n COULD replace deo-a that doesn't change whether or not we ban deo-normal, it just means maybe we would also ban deo-normal after banning deo-a if we ban deo-a

basically it's a side tangent (while maybe interesting to some) that doesn't have any bearing on the current suspect. Neither possibility that deo-n can or cannot replace deo-a would (or should) affect your vote, unless you're trying to look for that Goldilocks "nerf it just enough" zone or something I guess?

megacyber you seem to paint HO as OP and having all the choices in the game but a defensive build can better switch around and live hits, and also gets protect and such.
IE My opp has deo-a and tapu lele out vs my gengar + tapu koko or something... I have the options of switching into my hypothetical ferrothorn and maneuvering around my opponent and such
basically I feel your analogies / hypotheticals boil down to mostly "ah fuck deo is fast and hits hard and threatens super hard plus look at all this coverage therefore broken" but you don't acknowledge that being frail and having to capitalize on very fast momentum shifts is difficult and exploitable by good players. Just because Deo-A and its partner are faster doesn't mean they're predicting right every turn, unless you're just a god like qsns

As for "suspect lele instead" there's been more than enough cases showing that deo-a can easily function without tapu lele, also tapu lele is nowhere as good as deo-a since its own damage output is dependent on its own terrain, plus banning a terrain would be a bigger teambuilding restriction than just banning a highly offensive threat that happens to like that terrain

i agree that it is a good mixed strong thing but it has always been that. i dont think z-moves have made it suspect worthy.
this seems to focus on changes from last gen which I'll touch on here

Last gen, we had significant sources of priority, in Talonflame, Kangaskhan Sucker Punch and Fake Out, Thundurus T-Wave... in short it was a very different meta with a myriad of ways to make sure Deo-A stayed tier 2 or wherever it was. Kang's ability to hinder Deo-A's offensive ability shouldn't really be underestimated... being able to have a guarantee of "you can't do anything but espeed or switch" aided the Kang matchup significantly, while also letting it in effect "protect" its partner from deo-a. So the change isn't just z-moves, it's the fact that many of the tools previously used to keep deo-a down don't exist anymore.

As for my own opinion, which I've been talking in circles around, I mostly lean towards no-ban. I feel that it would probably be better to explore options like freeing Jirachi, and I also agree with what other players have said, mainly the hinderance of Psychic coverage, usage of speed control / extra bulky stuff like steels and/or assault vest, protecting the z-move as counterplay, especial vulnerability to trick room.

Marilli's post is a really good rendition of the current meta that's absolutely spot on

I also wanted to address a couple things. It seems like the council is taking a lot of heat for ...
I'm flat-out going to call this out as the most agressive non-apology posing as an apology I've ever seen.

If we can start from the baseline of "council doesn't communicate properly/enough" (which you've conceded in your post) then maybe it's time that council fixes that and starts communicating properly? It wasn't so long ago that I had to basically start a riot because overnight council decided they were going to quickban Jirachi after we'd had a suspect test overwhelmingly in Jirachi's favour, so I don't think it's exaggerating to say that council has lost a significant amount of faith that they should be expected to restore. If you can "admit that the council could have been a little more transparent on our suspect plans", then maybe we can start to see the council fix those issues instead of aggressively defending itself while lashing out at its critics. As marilli and others have said, there's a serious disconnect going on and labeling those who hadn't heard wind of and weren't expecting a deo-a suspect as ignorant of the meta helps no one fix this problem.



Finally, I'm going to input that I think a retesting of Jirachi would work be a good idea, with special attention to a couple things. One, Jirachi was banned before a Kang bang, and it greatly enabled semiroom Kang while also being tested in a very different meta. Two, that Jirachi is a great Deo-A counter, both directly and by enabling semiroom/fullroom to much more options. Three, that Marshadow's release and the ban of swagger both move us away from the "setup-heavy" meta that Jirachi was tested to be broken in, while Marshadow itself is a valuable method of dealing with Jirachi. A lot of the things Jirachi is good against are very good, while things that it's weak against are starting to fall out a little (ie Heatran/Zard), so it'd be cool to see a resuspect occur.
 
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Mizuhime

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Just a quick FYI for all of the people saying the test had never been requested, that's a lie. Just a quick search of the word "ban deo" on the discord server shows discussion on the topic dating back to when pwnemon was still in the server, as well as discussion taking place in early September, and those are just results from the phrase "ban deo". I myself can remember asking the council (in public places) for a test on Deo dating back at least a few months ago.
 

GenOne

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Conversations around deo-normal r literally irrelevant atm...[words]...basically it's a side tangent (while maybe interesting to some) that doesn't have any bearing on the current suspect. Neither possibility that deo-n can or cannot replace deo-a would (or should) affect your vote.
That's a fair criticism. My interpretation of these NP threads was that they are also for discussions around the current metagame (that's what they become after suspects end), and there wasn't a time prior to this suspect where it was timely to mention "hey, there are other glass cannons out there - people just aren't developing them because it's easier to just use Deo-A." I really just wanted to get that topic on people's minds - my intent wasn't to sway people one way or the other and I absolutely agree - don't let the existence of other alternatives influence your stance on Deo-A if you think it should be banned.

I guess I was also just trying to address an impression I was getting from some people that simply they hate Deo-A because of its inherent coinflip-imposing glass cannon nature, and not because they specifically just thought Deoxys-A had OP stats and coverage. Deoxys-N was just my go-to example of an alternative people might turn to - Pheromosa also does similar things, etc. etc. While I highly doubt people would sink as low as using Mega Alakazam, that's also a base 150 Speed glass cannon.

My personal stance is along the lines of "Deo-A is good, people need to prep for it," which other posts have already articulated.
 

Idyll

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Personally speaking, I'm quite torn going into this suspect. On one hand, I find it appalling how Deoxys-A can just easily rip apart teams, resists be damned, by pure overload and sheer pressure; its ability to get KOs on a lot of targets or do a significant portion on whatever play-arounds can be really restricting and, at times, unfair. Like everyone has stated here, Deo can get pretty much a kill or two especially if it's Z, considering a kill also essentially preserves Deo-A in a way as that means one less threat that can actually perform a trade in that given turn. Its ability to overpower with Psycho Boost is nothing new, but Psychic Surge made it more ridiculous in a way that just isn't right, imo, and paired with the existence (possibility) of Z-Moves, Deo-A has, in this generation, become a primed aggresor that's adept at breaking whatever the hell it wants.

On the other hand, Deoxys-A is paper, and it also crumples at whatever speed control and what have you. Though non-TR speed control setters do have a hard time trying to actually set in front of Deo-A itself, the mere presence of it essentially invalidates whatever presence Deo-A can have for a few turns--and, for the teams Deo-A is on, a few turns is likely all that it will take to swing the tides. Various "naturally" faster pokemon such as scarfers in addition to priority users (has to play around Psychic Terrain) also handily render Deo-A ineffective. Even more, with Deo-A being as it is, one small misstep in targeting can prove fatal, though the teams it's on should be naturally adept at applying pressure regardless to back it up in a sense.

Deoxys-A is a very polarizing mon, I feel. It's something that can win a lot value-wise or just do nothing. However, the fact that it's the natural aggressor with its high speed, the advantage is also on Deoxys-A when it comes to dictating the results of a match-up; this fact, in addition to its ability to significantly apply pressure even when counterplay is applied, is what I feel makes Deo-A something that doesn't fit this metagame. I mean, personally speaking, I find it wrong to have my deo-a "switch-ins" take like 60% or something, or my AV Genesect get destroyed by HP Fire, or have the right bulky only for it to get obliterated by a zmove--the onus of a matchup resides with Deo-A, meaning more often than not it's the Deo-A dictating what can happen, and the fact that it can go the distance to an unfair point is, what I feel, makes it something that should go, if only faintly.

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Regarding the Deo-A suspect itself:

We promised back then that we would be more aggressive when it comes to actually getting suspects done, and this suspect Deo-A is us acting out on that. For clarity, us suspecting Deo-A also doesn't necessarily mean that we, the council, think that a Pokemon is banworthy; a pokemon being suspected only means that it is being "put under the microscope" in a sense, its validity and effectiveness being put to question. Deoxys-A didn't come out of nowhere; considering the dissent for Rain HO, PsySpam, and Deo-A itself in general, we had to take action at some point and we determined that a suspect was ideal; we didn't suspect Marshadow because we literally just suspected it the last time, and we didn't do Tapu Lele because it, by itself, was not a meta-breaking force. Jirachi always was in consideration ever since it got to DUbers by 1 vote, but we felt that it was more important to prioritize the current metagame state. Deo-A was simply natural progression in a sense as Marshadow already got suspected, meaning we had to go to the next suspect-worthy threat.
 

Idyll

xD
is a Tutoris an official Team Rateris a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnus
RBTT Champion
Deoxys-A Vote

The following users will vote on Deoxys-A:

If your name is on the list but you dont have posting privileges in this forum by tomorrow, just shoot a PM to kamikaze or I and we'll have you added.

NOTE TO NEW VOTERS: your vote will not show up until the end of the suspect test, even to yourself, so don't resubmit it.
 

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