Metagame USUM Memetagame Discussion was a mistake

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Sigh. . . "Protected".

I'm getting tired of this "hurr durr, they want to protect stall/Landorus T/balance/Offense/whatever the fuck is hated by a fringe portion of the community at the time" nonsense.

There's nothing wrong with Landorus-T, no one is shielding their precious Pokemon from the big bad people that want it banned. It isn't broken, it isn't overcentralizing, and it has reliable checks/counters that don't restrict team building.

I get it, it's extremely prominent in the meta, why people think that is a bad thing is beyond me, but there's nothing wrong with it to warrant a ban or suspect, at least not yet.
Being so good that there's basically no reason not to use it is the definition of over centralizing. It DOES restrict team building in the sense that it has such incredible utility and versatility that almost any good team of any playstyle will find a use for it.

Why is this a bad thing? Are you kidding? Landorus eliminates choice and diversity, creating a stagnant metagame that revolves around it. That's the WORST thing.

Just think about OU without Landorus for a second. Think how different it would be. That should give you an idea of the stranglehold this thing has on the meta.
 
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Restricting teambuilding means that you have to prepare your team to that threat. The fact that you can put that threat in your own team does not correspond to this definition.

And landorus-t clearly is in the second case, not in the first. Of course most teams need a ground immunity, but that's not only for landorus: there is also garchomp scarf, etc. Landorus does not force you to run random shit to counter it (as did naga).
 
Restricting teambuilding means that you have to prepare your team to that threat. The fact that you can put that threat in your own team does not correspond to this definition.
That is ONE way in which a mon can restrict team building.

The other way, which I clearly outlined, is being so good that you're basically forced to use it if you care about winning. Or being so good that it can just be lazily slapped on any team to fill whatever gap it can fill with its plethora of uses.
 
Except you're not "basically forced" to run it. You're really stretching here.

There are plenty of teams, cores, and archetypes that do not utilize Landorus T and are successful. If you're going to take a stance for something to be looked at, don't stretch as far as you are. It takes away from anything you're trying to say.

And of course it would be different, it's an extremely versatile Pokemon in the metagame. That's like saying imagine an Ubers without an Arceus. Obviously it would be a completely different metagame with one of the most versatile Pokemon in the metagame removed.

That isn't a point in your corner like you and many others seem to think.
 
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What you are talking about right here is more "role compression" than restricting teambuilding. The fact that a mon is often seen doesn't mean that mon is broken. It can mean that it is "too good" at what it does as you suggest but it can also mean that it has several roles possibles and that there are a lot of teams where at least one of these roles would be profitable. That doesn't mean that this mon is broken.

Anyway, I don't know if that's really the topic here, if you really want a lando suspect I guess the best idea would be to pm a OU council member.
To go back to the topic: did anybody try focus punch Bulu ? I didn't see anything about it (but maybe I missed it :/) and it seems rather good. No attack/def drop, more power than superpow, and that's not as if sub couldn't be played on bulu. I think a SubPunch set could be nice, with something like Choice band tyra to catch flying types if needed.
 
This man's avatar is a Slopoke for a reason.

There are plenty of teams in which Lando isn't a necessity. Lando's strenght is (as everyone and their mother stated, but the pro-lando suspect do not seem to understand) is role compression. Why run a multitude of mons that put up rocks, have a ground immunity, an electric immunity, may run defog if the want, can run scarf and be defensive while not being passive? Welp, why use Ferro + Steela + Hippo in my offense when I can just use a single mon.
It's not offensively broken.
It's not defensively broken either, nor difficult to wear down as it's role as like 3 to 4 mons compressed in one forces it to switch in a lot on the field and be worn down.
I hope I made this very redundant point clear. I hope to never see a pro-lando-T suspect test post EVER again. Please. Be respectful of your own intelligence.

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What you are talking about right here is more "role compression" than restricting teambuilding. The fact that a mon is often seen doesn't mean that mon is broken. It can mean that it is "too good" at what it does as you suggest but it can also mean that it has several roles possibles and that there are a lot of teams where at least one of these roles would be profitable. That doesn't mean that this mon is broken.

Anyway, I don't know if that's really the topic here, if you really want a lando suspect I guess the best idea would be to pm a OU council member.
To go back to the topic: did anybody try focus punch Bulu ? I didn't see anything about it (but maybe I missed it :/) and it seems rather good. No attack/def drop, more power than superpow, and that's not as if sub couldn't be played on bulu. I think a SubPunch set could be nice, with something like Choice band tyra to catch flying types if needed.
I swore to myself to try it when Naga was gone; I have yet to fully develop a team with it but seems FLAMES. Still wish it got Knock tho. Or Fire Punch.
 
This man's avatar is a Slopoke for a reason.

There are plenty of teams in which Lando isn't a necessity. Lando's strenght is (as everyone and their mother stated, but the pro-lando suspect do not seem to understand) is role compression. Why run a multitude of mons that put up rocks, have a ground immunity, an electric immunity, may run defog if the want, can run scarf and be defensive while not being passive? Welp, why use Ferro + Steela + Hippo in my offense when I can just use a single mon.
So what you're saying is, Landorus can be the hazard setter, check physical threats, fire off powerful STAB earthquakes, gain momentum with U-turn and give you a ground and electric immunity all in one. And that says nothing of what item it takes. It says nothing of what EV spread you choose. It says nothing of the 4th move you select.

Don't you think doing all that by virtue of three moves and its typing/ability alone is TOO strong? 40% usage says yes, it is. It does all that. All those things that every team wants. And it still has room to do more depending on what your team needs.

And you says this isn't over centralizing? It's not broken offensively or defensively, but it is top tier in both regards. What's really broken is the utility that all that "role compression" provides. As I said earlier, team building often consists of choosing 5 mons and then choosing your Landorus set. YES, you can be successful without it. But the fact that it finds itself onto so many teams is not healthy for a metagame that values variety in any capacity.

STAGNATION IS BAD.
 
And you says this isn't over centralizing? It's not broken offensively or defensively, but it is top tier in both regards. What's really broken is the utility that all that "role compression" provides. As I said earlier, team building often consists of choosing 5 mons and then choosing your Landorus set. YES, you can be successful without it. But the fact that it finds itself onto so many teams is not healthy for a metagame that values variety in any capacity.
Top tier =/= broken

STAGNATION IS BAD.
And so is being stubborn when almost 6 pages of topic proved your logic flawed.
 
Top tier =/= broken



And so is being stubborn when almost 6 pages of topic proved your logic flawed.
Please learn to read.

Top tier offensively and defensively. Broken utility.

Mega Steelix was not broken in RU. Not at first glance. It didn't wall everything. It didn't kill everything. It just provided so much utility that there was basically no reason not to use it. And this was deemed unhealthy for the metagame.

Landorus is this for OU, times a hundred.
 
Can we please move on from the Lando discussion? If it keeps up, the thread is probably gonna be locked. No one is seriously considering banning Lando-T, so just stop. Anyway, I think Gliscor is really rising in viability right now due to the presence of Toxapex. I personally run an EQ Ice Fang Defog Roost set with Toxic Orb, this is just a great set. It's a fantastic switch-in against Garchomp, utterly murders Blacephalon, and just generally bugs Toxapex a lot.
 
Can we please move on from the Lando discussion? If it keeps up, the thread is probably gonna be locked. No one is seriously considering banning Lando-T, so just stop. Anyway, I think Gliscor is really rising in viability right now due to the presence of Toxapex. I personally run an EQ Ice Fang Defog Roost set with Toxic Orb, this is just a great set. It's a fantastic switch-in against Garchomp, utterly murders Blacephalon, and just generally bugs Toxapex a lot.
Beat me to it but to echo stfu please. one random troll ranting about Landorus-T shouldn't spawn a page of reponses


I loved Gliscor last gen and I'd like to be able to use it more now. I don't really see what's changed with USUMO though to make it viable. Garchomp sees less usage then ever. This move set is just a sort of less strong Lando set, Gliscor just doesn't hit hard enough to warrant two moves. It is nice to have status immunity though but with the burn nerf even that isn't as useful as back in ORAS
 
So we call people trolls now because they have an opinion that opposes the norm that people will just echo off of a sheep mentality? Good to know.
In 17 posts there were 7 different people arguing anti-ban and 1 lone person arguing for ban over and over again providing no actual evidence in calcs or replays for his points. After, one, two or even three posts I'd say he's just providing opinion but after five posts it gets to a stage where it's just riling people up and ruining the thread. Landorus-T does many roles very well, but compare to Naganadel, it did only one SET, but that set was sufficiently broken enough to warrant a ban.

Lines like “please learn to read” and saying that supporting Landorus-T isn't broken is “sheep mentality” is unnecessarily provocative. Everyone says Landorus-T isn't broken because
It isn't
 
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In 17 posts there were 7 different people arguing anti-ban and 1 lone person arguing for ban over and over again providing no actual evidence in calcs or replays for his points. After, one, two or even three posts I'd say he's just providing opinion but after five posts it gets to a stage where it's just riling people up and ruining the thread. Landorus-T does many roles very well, but compare to Naganadel, it did only one SET, but that set was sufficiently broken enough to warrant a ban.
What I saw is a dude getting clowned on for his opinion with valid points with context about centralization and teambuilding constraint because of his slowpoke avatar and being told corny shit like "respect your intelligence." Then the pack of posters that typically hound on one different opinion in an attempt to invalidate it. This looks incredibly whack especially when the guy made no indication of actually trolling and fighting an uphill battle against the toxicity of this thread. How many replays and calcs would you want when his point is predominately based on usage to begin with. Like come on be real here.

Edit: his learn to read statement was justified because again you're asking for calcs for a point based on overcentralization and its easy to make a somewhat emotional statement like that when you get hounded with the same opinion told in 10 different ways.
 
What I saw is a dude getting clowned on for his opinion with valid points with context about centralization and teambuilding constraint because of his slowpoke avatar and being told corny shit like "respect your intelligence." Then the pack of posters that typically hound on one different opinion in an attempt to invalidate it. This looks incredibly whack especially when the guy made no indication of actually trolling and fighting an uphill battle against the toxicity of this thread. How many replays and calcs would you want when his point is predominately based on usage to begin with. Like come on be real here.
Dude, of all the people in this thread I'd think you'd know Lando-T isn't broken. It is meta glue. Without it, stuff like Mega Gyarados and Mega Pinsir would be broken as shit. I bet one day until this thread gets locked at this rate.
 
Dude, of all the people in this thread I'd think you'd know Lando-T isn't broken. It is meta glue. Without it, stuff like Mega Gyarados and Mega Pinsir would be broken as shit. I bet one day until this thread gets locked at this rate.
That's not the point and that's legitimately one of the worst things you could say as an argument against a Lando ban. A theoretically broken mon should not be kept in the tier due to its utility in checking other theoretically broken mons. That's Smogon's policy.

Personally, I don't think Lando should be suspected, but do there really need to be 15 posts saying the same thing?
 
What I saw is a dude getting clowned on for his opinion with valid points with context about centralization and teambuilding constraint because of his slowpoke avatar and being told corny shit like "respect your intelligence." Then the pack of posters that typically hound on one different opinion in an attempt to invalidate it. This looks incredibly whack especially when the guy made no indication of actually trolling and fighting an uphill battle against the toxicity of this thread. How many replays and calcs would you want when his point is predominately based on usage to begin with. Like come on be real here.

Edit: his learn to read statement was justified because again you're asking for calcs for a point based on overcentralization and its easy to make a somewhat emotional statement like that when you get hounded with the same opinion told in 10 different ways.
I wouldn't blame anyone who locks this thread but at the end of the day we are discussing the most controversial Mon in the meta so I get why it has gone this way.

Usage doesn't mean something is broken, tiering placement doesn't mean broken and versatitility doesn't mean something is broken. Landorus-T polarises because it has all of these things but at the end of the day as long as you have anything with any sort of reasonable special attack and speed, or a steel/flying type or an Ice move or you can inflict status you can deal with Landorus-T and everyone has maybe all but one of these things. It's checkable without running anything sub optimal other than *maybe* one coverage move.

Edit: I'm guilty of this but at the end of the day all of us here want what is best for the game so talking about posts talking about posts which talk about Landorus-T doesn't help. I think this Landorus-T discussion is done and dead and I don't wanna contribute to talk that isn't about the meta so I'm gonna leave for now.
 
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That's not the point and that's legitimately one of the worst things you could say as an argument against a Lando ban. A theoretically broken mon should not be kept in the tier due to its utility in checking other theoretically broken mons. That's Smogon's policy.

Personally, I don't think Lando should be suspected, but do there really need to be 15 posts saying the same thing?
But it's not theoretically broken. There are plenty of checks to it, and it has multiple sets, none of which are so broken to warrant a suspect. I wouldn't mind suspect testing Lando-T in the future, but as it stands, there's nothing particularly broken about it. Anyway, let's move on to more productive things. How is Mega Venusaur right now? I haven't seen it too much, so I'm curious if it's still viable.
 
Uh, hi, this is my first post on Smogon but let me give the best shot.

Landorus-T can do lots of stuff. (Do I call this having good role compression or whatever?) I have seen it setting Stealth Rock very nicely and as analysis page indicates it can run variety of sets. But something we should keep in mind, is that, it can't run everything at once. I am not sure if this is a valid argument or not but that's what I think. It can't run defensive sets and offensive sets at once. Yes, defensive sets still have some strength because Earthquake coming from that guy hella hurts. But every time I use Landorus-T in defensive form, it is really passive against stuff like Celesteela and Ferrothorn which annoys the heck out of me bc they just spam Leech Seed or whatever. It Landorus-T has moves like Swords Dance, sure, it is a killing machine because most people run Gravity with it. Correct me if I am wrong. But then that is the moment I realize there are some vicious threats like Tapu Lele or Greninja-Ash can easily dispose it, ending its sweep.

Here is something I copied somewhere: I think everyone is adapting to Landorus-T's presence and prevalence. Also it doesn't recover at all as Impish set and if it uses Swords Dance it can be taken out by Water Shuriken and Ice Shard. Mamoswine is better than most of you may think.

I took an hour writing this...
 
Uh, hi, this is my first post on Smogon but let me give the best shot.

Landorus-T can do lots of stuff. (Do I call this having good role compression or whatever?) I have seen it setting Stealth Rock very nicely and as analysis page indicates it can run variety of sets. But something we should keep in mind, is that, it can't run everything at once. I am not sure if this is a valid argument or not but that's what I think. It can't run defensive sets and offensive sets at once. Yes, defensive sets still have some strength because Earthquake coming from that guy hella hurts. But every time I use Landorus-T in defensive form, it is really passive against stuff like Celesteela and Ferrothorn which annoys the heck out of me bc they just spam Leech Seed or whatever. It Landorus-T has moves like Swords Dance, sure, it is a killing machine because most people run Gravity with it. Correct me if I am wrong. But then that is the moment I realize there are some vicious threats like Tapu Lele or Greninja-Ash can easily dispose it, ending its sweep.

Here is something I copied somewhere: I think everyone is adapting to Landorus-T's presence and prevalence. Also it doesn't recover at all as Impish set and if it uses Swords Dance it can be taken out by Water Shuriken and Ice Shard. Mamoswine is better than most of you may think.

I took an hour writing this...
This is a fantastic post and perfectly summarizes why Landorus-T isn't broken. I think we should reevaluate the quality of this thread if a new user who just joined today has made better posts than over half of the rest of the thread.
 
they started with a snide implication that everyone's just arbitrarily "protecting" a pokemon from being banned, they were given explanations as to why they might be wrong along with a reminder that there are a lot of posts explaining this only a few pages earlier, and then their response to these things was to proclaim that it's everyone other than them that needs to read. "being hounded" implies they were an innocent bystander made to look angry, and not someone who started out with that hostility to begin with.

this is a problem that a lot of posts here have, not just in this thread (and not even with unpopular opinions tbh) but throughout OU; someone opts to immediately to judge a decision or potential decision, along with anyone involved with it, before getting all the information needed for a solid argument (or, in one case in this thread, before even bothering to give any argument at all), and when people inevitably respond to that poorly, suddenly everyone's out to get them and this means that all dissenting opinion is being oppressed, somehow.

people like to think that they're hiding their hostility really well within their arguments, but that just results in some really obvious passive-aggressiveness. when you make arguments in bad faith with that in mind, don't act so surprised by the response, especially in a forum where those kinds of arguments happen regularly.
 
"y tho"

I feel like people throw around big words like "uncompetitive" or "broken" without even knowing what the words mean in terms of metagame balance as a whole. I'm going to take the definitions that Smogon has outlined in their OU tiering policy to go over why Lando-T is not uncompetitive, broken, nor overcentralizing.

Also, looking forward to Lando-T of all things being blacklisted from discussion! :D /s

II.) Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant

An example of something being uncompetitive is Arena Trap, which rendered switching out null and thus shutting down too many stallbreakers/walls. You lose the choice to keep key pokemon safe unless you run a very suboptimal item (which falls under "broken", the next section). Lando-T does not reduce the effect of player choice in a game more than latios would in forcing you to not click eq mindlessly with your scarfed ground type, and Lando-T does not render skillful play irrelevant more than another utility/breaker/sweeper pokemon would in comparison to the set you're using.

Therefore, Lando-T is not uncompetitive.

III.) Broken - elements that are too good relative to the rest of the metagame such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant

There are a couple ways to classify how something is broken according to this definition.

One way is to consider a pokemon "broken" is if they almost dictate / require usage, and a standard team facing a standard team with the "broken pokemon" would be at a drastic disadvantage (something that held true for Naganadel). Lando-T's 27% usage according to the most recent usage stats for all of SM OU ladder show that it is not mandatory, along with plenty of team archetypes (semi/hard stall, rain, semi-sand, trick room, hyper offense) proving to be equivalently or more successful without Lando-T.

Other examples of broken pokemon include ones whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily gimmicky Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere. This is a lot of what defines "overcentralizing". Lando-T does not satisfy this criteria either, as it is offensively checked by near every OU special attacker, pressured by a lack of recovery in being forced to take standard OU attacks, and defensively checked by a plethora of mons depending on your set unless you are running Lando-T as your dedicated wallbreaker (which is, again, very easy to offensively check with a plethora of standard threats).

There haven't been any gimmicky answers forced to gain usage in OU specifically for Lando-T, and it's very easily taken care of in the OU metagame with standard threats that competent players will fit several of onto their team very easily to handle a large portion of the metagame, not just Lando-T.

Therefore, Lando-T is neither broken nor overcentralizing.

Tl;dr: Yeah so... it's not uncompetitive, broken, nor overcentralizing.

On another note, Sub-Punch SD Bulu would be so lit if you can get rid of grass/poisons, flying types, and scizor-m reliably. Adamant LO +0 focus punch 2hko's celesteela, ohko's heatran and ferrothorn, skarmory cannot roost up (loses flying typing and focus punch goes at the end of the turn). Sub-Punch Bulu would also love teammates that enjoy the set's targets being weakened or ko'd.
 
it's always a good time when a person/group of people say they don't want a thread shitting up, and denounce a person as a troll, then continue to go after them even when their opinions (opinion, imagine that) have stopped being contested! great!!! even going to the lengths of citing the tiering framework like some like-fiending robot

seriously though people need to realise that not everyone is gonna interpret things in the exact same way they do.
 
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