[BW2] Landorus-I Suspect Discussion

Breloom is only broken because sleep is broken, don't mess Breloom around like Rain has been. Sleep already has a nerf (sleep clause) so look into revising sleep clause > banning Breloom.

As for Landorus. It just seems that the metagame can't cope with the only viable special attacking ground type sweeper thing (Gastrodon is slow, go home). Not taking Life Orb recoil and having monstrously high power is pretty good and it's counters are quite easy to kill (and lure out). It's speed after a rock polish makes it faster than everything and the U-turn set has more than enough speed to break teams down.

I don't see how it 'definitely isn't broken'

And I don't like the argument that it's only overpowered against bad players? It just sounds a bit 'elitist' this game isn't just for the top10 battlers and pokemon already has one of the smallest competitive communities I've ever been part of. I wouldn't be surprised if more people play Jojo's Fashion Show >_< Back on topic, it either wins too easily or it doesn't. The ladder already has an element of pawn the noobs and conducting reductio ad absurdum no one wants to play who can abuse Landorus the most to get to number 1.

 

Actually the metagame can cope fine with it. Even all out hyper offensive teams have some bulk - if you don't, then that's bad teambuilding. Generally anything that can take a hit and hit Landorus back hard can revenge it pretty easily. When I tested it out, very rarely did it ever sweep whole teams. It was deadly late game, but to be honest pretty much all of OU's sweepers can boast that as well.

What makes a Pokémon broken?

Overpowered - sure Landorus is strong, but 115 special attack isn't that high. There are more powerful Pokémon around, and Landorus has a lot of Pokémon immune to its STAB so you can't just spam Earth Power. You're also acting as if it can always set up Rock Polish with ease - it can't. Due to its lack of resistances and frailty, strong neutral moves take a big chunk of its health off. This isn't theroymonning - I've been using Rock Polish special Landorus, and it really isn't as powerful as the broken camp are all screaming.

No counters and very few checks - While it has no sure fire counters since it can run physical or special sets, it actually has quite a lot of good checks and depending on set some counters. Rock Polish special - bulky Dragon Dance Gyarados. Even with Stealth Rock in play, it can switch in on anything it does and OHKO with Waterfall with no fear of being 2HKOd in turn. U-Turn special attacker - Keldeo can come in on anything and OHKO with Surf (bar the rare Psychic). Choice Scarf - Skarmory walls it to hell and back and can stall it out with Toxic.

Unbreakable - N/A

Can always get hazards up - N/A

Overcentralising - No. Any Pokémon that can take an Earth Power and dish out a powerful hit in return can revenge kill it fairly easily, and all teams need bulk.

OK, so since Landorus isn't overpowered, overcentralising, impossible to check, unbreakable and can't always get multiple layers of hazards up, how the hell is it broken?

 

The sleep clause can't possibly be changed to nerf breloom and the fact sleep is broken means breloom is broken, that's like saying sheer force is broken so make a clause on that instead of banning landorus, also comparing breloom to rain is just stupid.

and my point with landorus only gives the average/worse players problems is just a statement to say that it's not broken and it shouldn't be banned just because worse players are getting caught by it that's not how balance works.

 

Actually in games such as COD and Starcraft2 where they are balanced by professionals that's exactly how it works.

Sleep can be further nerfed e.g. you can only use a sleep move once per match.

That's like saying Azumarill sucks because it has base 50 attack. With Sheer Force Factored in Landorus has the equivalent of base 165 special attack, which is pretty high :P

 

1. Azumarill is average at best.

2. Banning landorus opens up other flaws in the meta.

3.^ i agree, his special attack is irrelevant because of sheer force but his typing is pretty bad and idk he just isn't ban worthy he is strong 100% (also if you nerf sleep like that then you might aswell delete breloom and amoongus)

 

Landorus is an amazing pokemon with many Viable sets from Ebelt to Scarf to Rock Polish. Many of the checks that people have been listing have fail to notice that depending on which set they run your “check/counter” is no longer that. Chansey, Celebi, [email protected], Rotom Wash, Skarmory, Gyara etcetc are all Ohko’d/2hko’d with the right set. Gyarados is 2hko’d by Stone Edge. Celebi and [email protected] are 2hko’d with U-turn so they can’t switch in. Rotom Wash and Skarmory are 2hko’d with Focus Blast. Jellicent is 2hko’d with earth power after rocks. EVEN Chansey the blob that everyone hates to play against, is could 2hko’d with focus blast (Rocks). Beating Chansey and or Jellicent is harder since you only have a slim chance to ko but its still a chance for it to ohko/2hko’d its counter. I understand that many of you say stuff like you have Mamoswine with Ice Shard Weavile or Scarf Keldeo outspeeds. When such a big threat to your team which can destroy/cripple at least half your team its pretty weird to sac something with so much value. I know everyone here would say “oh but it can’t run so many set at once.” Yes it cannot. However you have to scout to see its moveset. What can switch into a pokemon, which could possibly use Earthquake. Earth power. Stone Edge, Uturn, Hidden Power Ice. Focus Blast, and sometimes even Psychic. The fact that it can destroy its so-called check/counters is unreasonable which is why I believe it should be banned.

 

A lot of Pokémon can beat their checks with the right move or set. Heatran checks Jirachi, but offensive Calm Mind can OHKO with a +1 Water Pulse (in rain) or HP Ground. Skarmory checks Salamence and Dragonite but Salamence can cleanly 2HKO with Fire Blast (OHKOs in sun) or Hydro Pump (in Rain). Dragonite can 2HKO with a +1 Fire Punch, or Thunder from the mixed set. And it's nowhere near as hard to check as you guys make it out to be. Physcial sets: Skarmory. Special sets: Bulky Dragon Dance Gyarados. And it usually reveals its set pretty quickly anyway. The only ambiguous moves are U-Turn and Hidden Power Ice. And you can usually tell by the damage they do what set it's running.

Question for the people claiming it's broken: have you actually tried testing it? I'm not being cruel, a lot of things can seem broken on paper but when you actually try using them you discover they're not. Breloom looks incredibly broken on paper, but in practice gets smashed by most of OU's Dragons.

 

Landorus-I is checked by pokemon like Balloon Jirachi, Latias, Latios, Gyarados, Rotom-W, specially defensive Politoed, Vaporeon, Balloon Tentacruel, Mamoswine, Bronzong, Cresselia, Chansey, Jellicent, Scarf Keldeo, CB Scizor, Gengar, Weavile, Celebi, Azelf, Slowking, Uxie, Alakazam and Misdreavus/Mismagius.

Surely a pokemon with that many checks/counters can not be broken.

 

First off, Marth is a horrible troll.

Secondly,

Half of those Pokemon either don't ever get used in OU (Uxie, Missy, Baloon Tenta, etc.), don't counter/check Landorus (Vaporeon, Politoed, Scizor), or are warn down easily / beaten by u-turn Landorus (Celebi, Latias, Latios.)

That isn't a good list, at all.

Also, Pokemon like Excadrill were deemed broken in OU. However, Breloom, Gliscor, Skarmory, Slowbro, and others checked/countered it. If a Pokemon has enough power, coverage, niche, etc it can be broken even if it has a few answers.

 

I agree that a lot of those Pokemon are a rare sight in OU. Some aren't even viable. But it doesn't stray from the fact that there are still perfectly viable checks for it. I don't really consider having Air Balloon on something as check worthy. People should stop bringing it up. There is a fine line between Gimmick and Viability, I suggest people don't stray between that just for the sake of proving a point. I did joke around with Shedinja being immune to all special sets but I was kidding around (well for some of my other teams it actually is viable when I don't have immediate team disadvantage).

This should go for both sides of the argument. You will not run something completely overshadowed in the tier solely to check/counter one Pokemon in the same reason you won't run Psychic over U-turn or RP just to hit those Gengar and stuff.
Also unlike Landorus, Excadrill was immune to both Thunder wave and Toxic. Had high speed off the bat to quell any scarfers that planned on revenge killing and had enough attack to match up what Landorus can deal had with Swords Dance to boost it with.

I disagree with Marth that Landorus' typing is bad. Ground is an amazing offensive type considering Earth power is the only stab you'll ever need. But a big problem for Landorus is that the movepool is extremely difficult to work with.

Running Focus Blast means you have to risk the accuracy. That's 50% chance to hit both iirc, and that's not perfectly ideal to rely on when you rely on momentum or cleaning up.

Your best coverage against dragons is HP Ice and Life Orb takes a way a bunch of your HP. There are lot of switch ins that can take both an HP Ice as well as sponge an earth power and KO back. Switching out means taking the LO damage and possibly taking SR damage making it more difficult to keep Landorus healthy.

Another big issue I see with Landorus is it's having difficulty switching in. 89/90/80 defenses are sub par in OU. Everything is a threat. Even switching in to resisted attacks already take off a huge chunk of your HP with no means of regaining it back thanks to LO. You could argue to use a slow volt switch and U-turn to ease him in, but that would mean having dedicating a support to easing entry and sweep for a certain Pokemon. Which is foundations for most sweepers, if my logic and memory serves correct.

U-turn sets are probably the biggest tipping factor, but that's more to the disgretion of the user rather than Landorus being broken itself. You simply imply that Landorus can U-turn out of any threat it can't take or immediately KO and come out unscathed. Despite the 101 speed it finds itself lacking in outpacing most OU threats. I've played enough battles to see that OU is becoming a revenge kill metagame. Find Starmie for example, with Analytic and an LO boost you can 2HKO or OHKO the entirety of the Wifi OU tier. Yet you have the burden of switching it in and keeping it healthy, as well as being forced out once a check comes in (despite the ability to do titanic damage, it still has checks).

 

Yes, but Excadrill was highly centralizing and pushed a lot of other pokemon out of OU. Landorus has checks and counters but doesn't push anything out of competition...I still can't wrap my head around why Landorus draws so much hate when we have things like Latios which basically requires you to have Ttr or Jirachi or gtfo >_>

 

After looking at Landorus further, I'm changing my mind to not broken.

The mid-game LO Sweeper with U-Turn takes too much damage before being able to sweep in the end.

I understand the rage about late-game Rock Polish because all counters are weakened/gone, except you can say that about ANYTHING. Some examples include Cloyster, Venusaur, Salamence, even AgiliGross (hey, it's a possibility)

Focus Blast is a terrible excuse to ban a Pokemon

There ARE checks and counters to Landorus, even though some are still a bit shaky, it CAN'T OHKO everything in sight, has problems switching (although admittedly two immunities is nice), and needs a good chunk of support to beat all teams. Factoring all of these in, it isn't independent or overpowered in most cases.

If anything I want it to stay so we have a check for fucking Jirachi >__>

 

Centralization is a garbage term, in my opinion. You have no proof that Exadrill kicked things out of OU. You have no reasoning behind saying every game was centered around beating Excadrill. Sure, it was a great Pokemon. But, the metagame wasn't denied by it. Overcentralising in general is a term I never like using / seeing used unless in extreme circumstances.

Landorus is so huge a threat for a ton of the aformentioned reasons.(see my other posts, lucks, captains, etc.)
It has a U-turn set which isn't as gimmicky as EQ or HP Fighting Latios - and it works very well at defeating its Counters. All in all, it plain lacks the sufficient amount of checks and counters.
Landorus is checked by: Chansey, Blissey, Latias, and few other things depending on the set and such. (Now do you see why we take Landorus suspect so highly?) not to mention they are worn down easily

Landorus is more powerful, has sweeping capabilities(RP), momentum capabilities that also keep Celebi / Latias incheck(uturn), good coverage, and a few other things going for it.

All in all, for the same reasons that Luck>Skill, ZoroDark, Captain, and myself stated previously and again now - Landorus is broken.

Lol

 

No it isn't broken. If having no safe switch ins and being deadly late game made a Pokémon broken, we'd have banned most of the tier's sweepers and wallbreakers. Landorus has plenty of perfectly viable checks, and a few shaky counters. Myself and many other people in this thread have shown that. The Rock Polish sweeper set is also nowhere near as dangerous as the broken camp seem to think. Switching it in in the first place is a tough task, since most strong neutral moves can 2HKO, and then anything that can take an Earth Power and hit back can easily revenge kill it. If you forgo Rock Polish for U-Turn, anything that's faster and packs a powerful attack can OHKO. You also have to use a Naive nature, which gimps both power and special bulk (granted it shouldn't be taking the special hits anyway). I have never had trouble with Landorus, and I suck at OU. Do I have to consider it when teambuilding so my team isn't weak to it? Of course I do, but then there are plenty of Pokémon like that in any tier (apart from battle factory and metronome obv). So if someone When I tried using it on my team, it could be devastating late game but I've had equally good results with Terrakion, Landorus-T, Lucario, Volcarona, Dragonite, Salamence, Gyarados etc...

And also, we have 7 weeks left of Gen 5 (exactly). You've had Sheer Force Landorus in OU for give or take a year now. I think you can live with it for another few weeks don't you? What would be the point of a ban? It'd just come back down in 7 weeks anyway.

Apologise for long post, but really the broken argument holds water like a colander. Try testing it, and tell me just how many teams you sweep 6-0.

 

See just because it was in OU doesn't for most of the meta doesn't mean much since only till recently that its SpA set was used and making it a even bigger threat. Deo-D was UU for awhile i believe and not its Ubers because no one bother to try it till later on. My point is that as of right now in this metagame the fact that landorus makes team building insanely hard and just because a new gen is coming out doesn't mean it shouldn't be ban. Playing in the meta with a pokemon that puts so much stress in teambuilding kills the fun in creativity as you are force to use its counters or struggle against a really common pokemon in the OU metagame. Also its a late game sweeper so you don't 6-0 teams with it to begin with. Even if you placed Kyogre you still don't 6-0 everything because if you do place it in OU, people will be forced to run check/counters. Yes many pokemon can beat check/counters but they have to run unorthodox sets. Thunder Dnite, Ebelt Terrakion Stone Edge Breloom etc but the problem with landorus is that the set beats its counter is completely orthodox.

 

What are you talking about? Its presence does not make it any harder to build teams. Any Pokémon that can take a bit of special punishment and hit back hard checks it well enough. No it doesn't have hard counters, but that's not an exclusive club in OU. What can counter all of Jirachi's sets? What can safely switch into Haxorus when it's at +2 Attack? And how does its presence hurt creativity? It's not like Genesect, which had one good check in specially defensive Heatran. Landorus has plenty of checks (Gyarados, Skarmory, Chansey, Celebi, Jellicent, bulky Politoed, [email protected] etc.) All of those Pokémon are perfectly viable using perfectly viable sets. So your argument of needing gimmicks to counter it is invalid. Also, you're contradicting yourself - you say it discourages creativity and yet surely if its counters are unorthodox that promotes more creativity right? And FYI, people have been using special Landorus ever since Sheer Force was released.

The argument of "It's deadly late game" can be applied to just about every sweeper in the tier. It's not overpowered, it needs heavy support to pull off a sweep, and it has a lot of checks that are all perfectly viable. You can't play it recklessly since Earth Power has many Pokémon immune to it. Focus Blast is incredibly inaccurate and Hidden Power Ice is weak and gives Life Orb recoil.

Not Broken.

 

Did you even play back then? A ton of pokemon either weren't used because Excadrill was just strictly better (Terrakion being UU) and everyone was using Gliscor or Breloom in DW. No proof? Go compare the usage statistics of pre and post ban metagames. It was repeatedly stated during its banning discussion that after Shandera Excadrill was probably the single most format shaping force we've ever had in competitive pokemon, even though I'd argue swift swim may be one upping that slightly. It was simple: you had an excadrill counter/check built into your team from the start or you would lose. Unlike Landorus which is either checked or countered by a bunch of things which have been named by me, Dr. Doom, Aurist and others.

This. 6-0 maybe a hyperbole but it's still true: Landorus doesn't perform wonders. The only reason the Landorus team I made is high on the ladder is because I built around it and had to work to make the thing usable unlike a lot of other pokemon we have either banned or are still in the metagame right now that you can just slap on a team and expect to tear stuff up. It just has too many checks and can't switch in on a ton of pokemon >_>

This sums it up perfectly.

 

Whoever made a comparison between Excadrill and Landorus just don't know the pre-ban excadrill metagame. At the time, u always needed a Gliscor or Skarmory in ur team, otherwise the mole destroyed ur team, and the only thing which skarmory was able to do is phaze him... so no, no comparison.

 

Why do you keep comparing Jirachi to Landorus-I? They're totally different pokemon. Jirachi HAS full counters to all of its sets (Specially Defensive Hippowdon laughs at everything, Gastrodon is in the same boat, and Heatran only fears the incredibly rare HP Ground), and the thing is if you change sets, you'll beat a couple of pokes you normally wouldn't beat but now lose to others. (For example, CM may beat Heatran with a rain boosted Water Pulse, but now loses to Tyranitar).

This isn't the Jirachi Suspect Discussion though. I don't know if you've played with more Defensive inclined teams, but Landorus-I severely limits who they can use. Celebi is incredibly shaky since it loses to U-Turn Landorus-I which is the broken set here. Jellicent will always get 2HKOd after Rocks, unless you run some awful Specially Defensive set. This leaves you with the Latis, but even those are prone to getting caught with U-Turn on the switch-in. If Landorus-I is coupled with a Pursuit user (like it is 90% of the time), you'll lose your Lati the next turn and then Landorus is free to go to town. You can say that this falls under "prediction is not a viable argument" but U-Turn is different. If you mispredict with U-Turn, you'll only lose 10% and still have the momentum. If you predict correctly, you just removed maybe the only check your opponent has for Landorus-I. This is almost a win-win situation.

As far as your other checks and counters go, bulky Politoed is easily 2HKOd as well, even if you fully invest in Special Defense. Chansey and Gyarados are solid checks, but you can't possibly expect to just throw those pokes on a team and hope that it'll work. Same thing applies to Virizion and Cresselia.

The whole argument of "it's hard to switch in" is bullshit as well. Blaziken, Tornadus-T and to an extent Genesect were all much harder to succesfully switch in, and yet they broke the tier. I also fail to see "a lot of checks".

EDIT: By the way, this isn't just about making OU more balanced and enjoyable fro these last 7 weeks. This is about making OU as balanced and enjoyable as possible as a past gen tier for the next generation to come.

 

252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Politoed: 181-214 (47.13 - 55.72%) -- 18.36% chance to 2HKO

Factor in Protect and Lefties and Toed is guaranteed to live two hits. Not that you want your weather inducer to take that much damage, but it can live any hit and easily revenge kill. Politoed might not be at full health all the time, but that applies to any check/counter and is therefore an invalid argument.

Also I don't see how the U-turn set is the most broken set. Unlike Scizor and Rotom-W, Landorus doesn't have the bulk/resistances to switch in and gain priority, it often has to come in when something dies (Electric and Ground immunity are nice in theory, in practice you'll bump into Rotom-W and Mamoswine who destroy Lando regardless). Also, Life Orb + Stealth Rock is 23% damage taken, not 10%. U-turn Landorus can be played around, and is threatened out by many OU pokes like Keldeo, Banded Terrakion, Mamoswine, Latios, Scarf Toed and many other pokes JUST BECAUSE it lacks the speed.

I mentioned a whole list of valid checks to Landorus in a previous post. There's many more but I cba to name them all. Again, not having many safe switch ins does not make a pokemon broken. Hydreigon can easily destroy it's checks and has access to U-turn.

 

Uxie, Misdreavus, and Mismagius are not even viable in NU. Why are you bringing them up? Politoed generally goes Physically Defensive to begin with. Don't mention "checks" if they are not actually viable in the metagame. By that logic, Mantine is viable for checking Keldeo, when you can simply just use Jellicent, Slowking, Amoonguss, or Latias.

 

I'm guessing you meant to say OU there? Just because a pokemon is in a lower tier doesn't mean it can't be viable in a higher tier. Look at Ferrothorn and Forretress in Ubers. Uxie is perfectly viable in OU, Mismagius is also a decent spinblocker with a niche in OU. Also, I mentioned at least 20 other checks. So yeah.

 

Yeah right.

As far as the other mons on that list, both of the Latis need to have some sort of recovery move, and even then they might lose if they get caught with U-Turn. Rotom-W is 2HKO'd by Focus Blast, and it's one of these mons that's incredibly hard to keep healthy throughout the course of the game (at least when I use it, it suffers from residual damage a LOT). Vaporeon only narrowly Mamoswine is a revenge killer, since it can't come in on Earth Power. Same goes with Scarf Keldeo, CB Scizor (who can't even OHKO back so it's an awful "check") and Weavile. Celebi loses to U-Turn variants and Alakazam is a revenge killer as well.

This leaves you with Vaporeon, Gyarados, Bronzong, Cresselia, Chansey, Jellicent, Gengar and Slowking.
Vaporeon, Jellicent and Gengar are always 2HKO'd by Landorus-I, so they're very shaky. As for the others, Bronzong, Cresselia, Chansey and Slowking only have very small niches (hint: that's why they're barely ever usedl). Gyarados will be dead weight unless you really build around it.

I still fail to see how "many checks" is a valid argument to keep Landorus-I in OU.

As for your argument that Hydreigon is like Landorus-I; Hydreigon has to use attacks that'll lower its stats (Superpower, Draco Meteor) which makes it much easier to play around. It'll usually take LO recoil on ALL its moves, unlike Landorus-I who only suffers from LO recoil on its most situational coverage move (HP Ice) and U-Turn. It also misses the important 100 Speed benchmark, and it's weak to Fighting STABs flying around literally everywhere. As Luck>Skill said, it's incredibly hard to make it work even if you give it all the possible support.

PS: Don't say that Uxie or Mismagius are viable in OU when they're outclassed in virtually every single role. It's not helping your point at all and, it's just hurting your credibility.

 

After much deliberation, Landorus-I has been banned from the Wifi Overused tier.

Discussions and points used for the decision can be located within the suspect thread. The decision was left in the hands of a newly formed council that consisted of highly regarded members of the community as well as a few of the best posters within the thread. Both parties had their key arguments as they weighed the impact of the Pokemon on the tier. The discussion led toward a unanimous vote which leaned towards a ban.

This will be the last suspect for the Wifi Overused tier as we pave way for the upcoming 6th generation.

Oak EDIT: Hannah posted this on the OU Leaders' behalf. Thanks Hannah!