This is a post containing personal thoughts about some mons. nothing more, nothing less.
Miscellaneous
I'm actually content with their presence in the tier, unlike a good portion of the playerbase. While yes, I do agree that it breaches cheese territory, the fact that their existence encourages the use of 1 Rocky Helmet is a good thing overall and anything that disincentivizes 6 Boots spam is a positive in my book. Whether their almost exclusive presence in HO is due to the mons themselves or the HO elements surrounding them, I do not know and I would like some of your input on that, people.
As a Moltres enjoyer, I really don't like this thing. I don't wanna roll the lottery on which move it's gonna click. That's it. I wouldn't be as mad if Amoonguss wasn't so mid, then I wouldn't have to try to justify using a subpar mon for 1 specific niche mu. Fortunately, it's not the best into BO, but as a Balanced enjoyer, I shit myself a little when I see it at preview.
My goat. Lots of variety in Tera, moveslots, Nature and EV spreads lets it cover anything you need, Flame Body is an amazing ability that lets Moltres act as a Maushold/Cinccino/Triple Axel punisher among the dozen of applications it has. imo a top 5 mon rn.
Overrated. It's great against ladder bullshit but gets abused to no end against actual good teams. It sucks, as a ladder warrior I feel obligated to put it in my teams and I love it until I face a good player and it just acts as a glorified momentum absorber in a pinch that just serves as prime setup bait against the most dangerous high-level setup sweepers like Ghost IDBP Coba and fat BU Oki.
Broken bullsh*t !
Hoopa-U is getting a lot of talk, but this right here is my number 1 choice for a suspect test. It threatens entire Balance cores just by existing and doesn't even need a damage boosting item to do so, it can run Boots and still threaten anything and everything while having a clean 101 Speed tier allowing it to outspeed the sea of 80 and 85 base speed mons in the tier. The only thing keeping in from being quickban material is AV Cyclizar + Scarf Gardevoir cores which can play mindgames around it kind of reliably, but even that is a maybe since Sludge bomb hits both and you REALLY don't want your Cyclizar to get poisoned from that. Add to this the unpredictability of the sets, between Boots pivot, Specs and Nasty Plot, all with different Teras, AND its ease at making progress thanks to Knock Off + Taunt + Volt Switch AND its specific but great defensive profile thanks to an immunty to Ground and Electric, and you have one of the most dominant and influential Pokemon in the tier. It made Electrics disappear from RU and if bulky waters are largely extinct (outside of Empoleon but that's really because it's a Steel-type, the Water part of it is not what makes it popular), it is because of it and Iron Leaves's presence in the tier. Thundurus-T can be played around and there is counterplay, but he absolutely 100% deserves to be the next suspect test. Speaking of suspect tests...
Suspect worthy... after a few other bans. Overrated rn, ppl would make you believe it's some kind of almighty god who 6-0s teams. Really, it's a Speed problem. I do think that a suspect test for Hoopa-U is also 100% warranted but in my mind, it's just not to the level of Thundurus-T. Teams are already forced to play aggressively because of the threat saturation to where we play as to not lose first, which is the exact opposite of what Hoopa-U wants. I already covered Hoopa-U in one of my previous posts on here, feel free to read that for my opinion on Hoopa-U. This is my number 4 contender for a suspect test. Moving on to my number 2 suspect contender...
I have been on the no ban camp for a while when it comes to Iron Leaves, but I recently (finally) changed opinion. It is my contender for suspect number 2 for the following reasons:
- Teambuilder constraining
- Shaky counterplay Iron Leaves can work around
- Deceptively tanky despite susceptibility to hazards and questionable defensive typing
- Gatekeeps too much
- Gets too strong too fast
In this case, teambuilder constraining stems from the limited pool of defensive play. Moltres is its best answer but Tera Fire quickly makes it a 50/50 on whether you hit Hurricane. Outside of this, Iron Leaves forces Tera out of the defender so Hippo can Whirlwind/Amoonguss and Wo-Chien can Foul Play.
Deceptively tanky is self-explanatory. 90/88/108 is good bulk for a quick setup sweeper like Iron Leaves and it even runs some HP EVs due to Quark Drive math. Its Grass/Psychic typing also means that it resists both Crawdaunt's Aqua Jet and Breloom's Mach Punch, which makes it that much harder to revenge kill.
The gatekeeping part is also quite simple to understand: It makes any scarfer under 105 base Speed difficult to justify.
Thanks to Booster, Iron Leaves only needs 1 turn to Swords Dance and get to +2/+1, making defensive counterplay that much more difficult to pull off.
I believe that if RU wasn't such a threat-saturated tier, prepping against Iron Leaves would be a reasonable goal; However, in a tier where it is next to impossible to have tools for every situation to a reasonable extent, having to dedicate multiple slots and Teras specifically for Iron Leaves adds just enough pressure on the builder that I would call it unhealthy. Oh well, I actually liked playing with and against this mon, but... even I cannot cover its ass anymore.
The faces of HO. Revavroom singlehandedly makes playing against HO miserable, cannot be outsped after a Shift Gear, then the game becomes fuckin dnd: just roll 5 dice and see what happens. It might just hit every Gunk Shot and flinch on every Iron Head and might run the coverage move and Tera that beats your answer to it. It's not as pressing as my first 2 suspect candidates but Revavroom definitely deserves its place of number 3 suspect contender.
Will become broken when the tier eventually slows down after some bans. Games are just a little too fast for it right now.
Top 10
I'm interested in what everyone's ordered list of what they believe the top 10 mons in the tier are (Cyclizar not included). I'll post mine to start things off:
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elec-ant u r idot