Metagame Gothlett Suspect Discussion thread

[Heysup]

ha ha damn sometimes when i play this game i forget that switching my counter into something it counters is a bad play ha ha. Next time I just won't use Larvesta at all, since switching Larvesta into Mienfoo is a poor play ha ha. Ha ha I guess I should just get good instead of actually playing safe and correctly right? I guess from now on suspects should be held to Murkrow's level of brokenness you know? We'll treat Diglett like its job is solely meant to sweep through teams and just ko teams by existing ya? Who even cares about the trapping part right? thats irrelevant xP. I still don't get your argument about Diglett not gaining momentum. With Diglett its a streamline process to win. 1) Identify the one or two mons keeping X mon in check (CM spritz, Pawniard, Mienfoo, etc). 2) Lure them in. 3) kill them. 4) get x mon safely in and win. That's literally all you have to do. You say its a loss of momentum but if i remove the one thing keeping a teammate in check then I win. Sorry bud, but Pokemon doesn't work where you can just slap a magic team of 6 onto a team and check every single threat in the metagame. with 130+ mons in LC, its extremely hard to have a dedicated answer to every single threat in the game. I really didn't think I would have to type that out, but whatever. At best teams will have 2 good checks to something really potent in the metagame, like CM spritzee or Fletchling. No team is going to run 6 fletchling checks and still be a viable team.

I was going to point out that your first point was a strawman until I realized it would be more efficient if I just pointed out that this entire paragraph is one. I'm certain you don't know what that means, so I'll elaborate.

Let's say you're driving home. If I say don't turn left on main street during rush hour because it will take too long, someone with your logic would answer with "OK so I'll never turn left on main street" - which is not what I said, at all. Similarly, I said "switching Larvesta into a Mienfoo's most common early game low-risk move that will get you KOed by Diglett is a bad play". That does not mean "don't use Larvesta ever" or "you should never use Pokemon weak to Diglett" (I use a shit load on all my teams, plz don't cteam me). Or how I said "don't just use one Diglett-weak check for a Pokemon" and you, predictably, responded with "no team is going to run 6 fletchling checks" as if I remotely suggested that.

So, thankfully, your arguments are irrelevant and lack substance and there's nothing else to actually to respond to.

I mean if you're trolling, 10/10 but it sounds like you aren't.

ha ha same xP if you use mons that counter other mons, but yknow, they're diglett weak, thats my fault for using diglett weak mons right xP oh yeah but diglett isn't broken tho! Nah, the pressure it puts onto teams and the pressure it puts onto the opponent to perform at god tier level of predictions is completely normal for pokemon right? RIGHT? I guess teh question is, if I lose my Ponyta to Diglett because Mienfoo U-turned instead of Drain Punching, does that make Ponyta a shit mon, or me a shit player? xP

The fact that you can't even wrap your head around adapting to Diglett is telling enough. You should be able to build a team that's good enough to lose an early game prediction and still win. It's hard, I know, to really actually think for a minute and use Snubbull or Spritzee if you are a team that has 5 mons that lose to Mienfoo instead of using Larvesta or Ponyta. Or, you can use Ponyta and Larvesta but not have them being the only things that can switch into Mienfoo early game? I know, it's really really really complicated.

Your argument holds water if Diglett is actually vulnerable to other setup sweepers. But it isn't. In fact the only things it fears are: Snivy, Corphish, Carvanha, Tirtouga (a 50/50 essentially), Pawniard (again a 50/50), 14 Speed Scarvers, Fletchling, and various little mons that are all rolls (namely Zigzagoon). Every other Pokemon is simply bopped with Memento and unable to actually do anything. Agility Bunnelby isn't exactly scary when its -2 Attack.

Hint, you can switch out of Memento early game. If you get swept after it's 5-4 by something then, yes, once again, do I even need to say it anymore? You're bad at team building. It is your fault. It's the same way for a lot of wall-breaker / sweeper combinations. If your only Fletchling counter is Archen and its also your only Fire-type counter, then you get it burned and beaten by Ponyta, you're bad.

Except you are forced to use Ponyta / Larvesta / Trubbish etc as your mienfoo counter. Your only other option are things like Spritzee or other various bulkymons. And even then they're easily worn down and trapped and killed.


Looking at the list of viable Pokemon that counter Mienfoo alone, from top to bottom: Abra, Spritzee, lolevio Archen, Ponyta, Snubbull, Vullaby, Cottonee, Foongus, Larvesta, Skrelp, Hippopotas, Croagunk, Tentacool, Koffing, Shellos, Trubbish

Half of those aren't even counters, because they simply get Knock Off'd and U-turned on (namely things like Snubbull, Tentacool, Croagunk, Hippopotas, etc). Abra, Ponyta, Snubbull, Larvesta, Skrelp, Croagunk, Tentacool, Trubbish are all trapped and killed by Diglett.

You can use them successfully. If your opponent is using a Diglett, you have other opportunities - it's one less counter for something you have to deal with and you just need to play more carefully with your own Pokemon. Furthermore, it's still a guessing game for the Diglett person. You can double-switch into Mienfoo and Diglett can't fucking switch in, that's for sure. You can use anything to tank a U-turn.

I think it's hilarious that you think Snubbull is trapped and KOed by Diglett because the base spread on the calc says it can. It's the same as that ridiculous Magnemite + Diglett vs Mienfoo example. You can, gasp, EV it to survive and better yet, trigger Berry Juice.

This mentality that it's better to default to Ban something instead of putting 1-2 more points in defense is really discouraging. Take the meta a bit more seriously than that.

I mean all your three points take place over one turn where mienfoo safely u-turns on, say, pawniard and traps the ponyta switchin, eqing it. There's nothing you can do about that sequence of events after you have switched ponyta in. Also once ponyta does come in, mienfoo still can threaten to U-turn on the morning sun or w/e and go to diglett which STILL traps it. Diglett teams obviously have checks to x setup sweeper that takes advantage of it and it isn't a total momentum suck as is being implied; for example, corphish can be countered by foongus and snivy, snivy with vullaby and foongus, scraggy (which needs to be healthy enough in case diglett user doesn't need it and decides to stay in, btw) by mienfoo/fairy (cm spritzee, for example). The diglett user can literally just switch into these mons and level the playing field again, except he has an important kill under his belt.

Of course, your opponent knows this is a possibility, hence why this is somewhat of a gamble, but the odds are still in the diglett user's favor. This is not to mention double switching to bring diglett in which is also a factor every time your opp switches into larvesta/ponyta/what have you.

Mienfoo U-turning out of Pawniard is much more risky than you are letting on IMO. It's not an easy Pokemon to switch into unless you have Foo + Ponyta or something - but apparently doubling up on checks to common Pokemon is blasphemous so you'll have to excuse me. Even if you DO have Ponyta, getting it Knocked Off is not something it can just shrug off. I makes it that much easier for things like Snivy to get past with a well-timed Glare or Stealth Rock and Hidden Power.

 

[Corporal Levi]

I think this was already addressed early in the discussion, but some of the recent posts have been acting as if Ponyta and Larvesta and whatever else that's supposedly badly hindered by Diglett but is still A-rank are no longer worth using, which simply isn't true, because, going by the Ponyta example, Ponyta has a multitude of uses that I don't think I need to list outside of beating two U-turn spammers. It's not wrong to say that Spritzee can double into Diglett on the, say, predicted Carvanha to Ponyta switch, but there is also the same chance for the Carvanha user to predict the double, click Hail-boosted Blizzard and oh would you look at that, Spritzee won't be doing anything but passing Wishes for the rest of the game. There are exceptions, and obviously this doesn't apply to voltturn, but generally, double switching isn't even a factor when we're discussing whether Diglett is broken because there's just as much a chance that everything goes wrong. And of course, the numbers don't lie - there's the fact that for at least 16 of the ORAS games for LCPL, some of LC's top players decided that the risk of facing the apparent bane of Fire-types (that needs support to even come in on them) simply wasn't enough to dissuade including Ponyta. 16 users might not be indicative of a top tier Pokemon, but it says that Ponyta is still very good, certainly worth using on a fair number of teams. Off topic, but it's not like we need the metagame to be centralized around a Pokemon that relies a good deal on a passive 30% burn, which isn't exactly the pinnacle of skill itself.

This doesn't address the Mienfoo - Diglett combo, but let's stop acting like Mienfoo and Fletchling need Diglett support to be good, or that Diglett taking out a few things that they could already take out on their own by changing their filler moves pushes them over the edge; for all intents and purposes, Mienfoo was probably dominating the gen 4 metagame. Like yea, Diglett makes teammates like Mienfoo and Fletchling better, but this isn't for free, because Diglett simply isn't that good of a Pokemon on its own; regardless of Diglett having all those uses outside of trapping specific mons, if Diglett didn't have Arena Trap, nobody would use Diglett (except for Mambo). Also, it's not like helping teammates get around their checks is something unique to trappers. Lures do exactly that, except they're a bit less obvious from team preview (maybe not by much in most cases though) and don't usually need as much support, as long as you don't make it ridiculously obvious by straight-up switching Timburr into Spritzee. Being able to have Diglett actually come in on things it can beat after a teammate has bravely given up its life to the cause is an advantage for Diglett, but that's not really relevant because nobody is saying Diglett doesn't have a niche. Regarding a lot of the individual cores involving Diglett, a really big flaw for things like Fletchdig is that even though Diglett traps a good number of Fletchling's counters, even if you don't run a single one of Ice Beam Porygon/scarf Pawniard/Archen/scarf Magnemite/scarf Chinchou/Shellder/Hippopotas/ajet Tirtouga/scarf Amaura/Slowpoke/some less used mon like Lileep/some cool kid set like Thunderbolt Spritzee, in which case you should probably reexamine your team regardless, it's not like you need a hardcore counter to Fletchling to not get swept by it. Only extremely frail Pokemon are KOed by an unboosted Acrobatics, to the point where even fastfoo can survive, and most bulky mons that aren't weak to Flying aren't KOed by +2 Acrobatics and can 2HKO in return, meaning if you're willing to sack stuff, it probably won't pull off more than 2 KOs, and that's only if you even give it the chance to set up. That does still mean the Fletchdig user has the advantage, but again, that's your fault for not even bothering to address a relevant core in your teambuilding, just like you wouldn't blame stinky + Timburr because an opponent didn't bother to include Spritzee/Clear Smog Foongus/Cottonee/dbond Drifloon/Skrelp/Croagunk/Tentacool/Sun support + Bellsprout.