Metagame National Dex Monotype Suspect 1: Damage

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Suspect Test Reasoning
Despite its base 90 Attack, Dracovish has cemented itself as a fearsome wallbreaker thanks to Strong Jaw and signature bite move in Fishious Rend. Due to the way Fishious Rend works, doubling in power if it lands the first attack that turn, it allows Dracovish to easily break past slower Pokemon such as Celesteela and Mega Sableye with a powerful nuke. Dracovish also has excellent supporting coverage; Outrage enables it to hit slower Dragon-types like Dragalge and Water-immune Pokemon like Gastrodon, Stone Edge specifically targets Mantine, and Psychic Fangs hits Mega Venusaur and Toxapex. It can also utilize Crunch to hit Jellicent or Leech Life to target Celebi.

Naturally, these coverage moves make Dracovish hard to check defensively given its decent Speed stat, allowing it to outpace many walls. This means many teams will have to rely solely on offensive teammates to take care of Dracovish. Dracovish can easily be taken advantage of by faster wallbreakers such as Urshifu-S, Tapu Koko, and Kyurem. While this seems like it should be enough to check Dracovish, it certainly is not a reliable means of checking it. Due to its decent 90 / 100 / 80 defenses, the attacks need to be reasonably powerful to revenge kill it from full or super effective, or it needs to have been chipped before it can be revenge killed.

On top of that, each time Dracovish is safely brought in against a defensive Pokemon, it can claim a KO. This is especially apparent in National Dex Monotype. As balanced teams are common, allowing Dracovish to thrive in a slower metagame.

However, that does not go without saying that Dracovish can be checked by every type utilizing their different common offensive Pokemon or status conditions such as burn or paralysis. Both of those status conditions severely affect its ability to properly wallbreak.

List of common Offensive strategies that Check Dracovish

If something is slanted, it means it checks Dracovish but is not a Pokemon.

Bug- Volcarona, Mega Pinsir, Buzzwole, Ribombee, Sticky Web
Dark- Greninja, Urshifu-S, Hydreigon, Zarude
Dragon- Dragonite, Kommo-o, Mega Altaria
Electric- Tapu Koko, Alolan Raichu, Zeraora
Fairy- Mega Diancie, Tapu Lele, Mimikyu, Tapu Bulu
Fighting- Kommo-o, Urshifu-S, Buzzwole, Mega Gallade
Fire- Cinderace, Mega Charizard X & Y, Blacephalon
Flying- Dragonite, Mega Aerodactyl, Mega Charizard Y, Landorus
Ghost- Mimikyu, Spectrier
Grass- Rillaboom, Whimsicott, Celebi, Zarude
Ground- Excadrill, Landorus, Garchomp
Ice- Alolan Ninetales, Galarian Darmanitan, Weavile, Kyurem
Normal- Ditto, Mega Lopunny, Porygon-Z
Poison- Nidoking, Nihilego
Psychic- Mega Gallade, Tapu Lele, Latios
Rock- Mega Diancie, Terrakion, Nihilego, Sticky Web
Steel- Jirachi
Water- Greninja, Tapu Fini, Urshifu-R

While all these Pokemon can offensively check Choice Band Dracovish, some of them, such as Nidoking, lose to Choice Scarf variants. The downside to using Choice Scarf variants, however, is that common defensive walls such as Toxapex and Ferrothorn wall it more easily. Due to all these reasons, the National Dex Monotype council has voted to suspect test Dracovish.

Suspect Test Information

• This suspect test will count towards the new tiering contributor badge!
  
• Reading this is mandatory to participate in the suspect test. The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 78 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 82. Also, doing more than 50 games to reach 78 GXE will suffice.
• minimum games needed

  GXE	minimum games
  78	50
  78.2	49
  78.4	48
  78.6	47
  78.8	46
  79	45
  79.2	44
  79.4	43
  79.6	42
  79.8	41
  80	40
  80.2	39
  80.4	38
  80.6	37
  80.8	36
  81	35
  81.2	34
  81.4	33
  81.6	32
  81.8	31
  82	30

• Dracovish will require a 60% majority of voters in favor of banning it in order for it to be banned from National Dex Monotype.
• You must use a fresh account that begins with the given prefix for this suspect test. That prefix is NDMV. For example, I could signup and qualify with the name NDMV maroon.
• You may not impersonate or mock another user with your account name. If there is any slight hesitation, you're probably better off picking a different name. We reserve the right to null your voting requisites if you are found impersonating or mocking another user with your account name. Moderator discretion will be applied.
• If you are found trying to manipulate voting requisites in any way, you will be met with a harsh infraction. Manipulating voting requisites ranges from faking your screenshot to asking another user to forfeit.
• The Pokemon that's being suspect tested, Dracovish, will be allowed on the National Dex Monotype ladder for the next two weeks so that we can properly assess its position in the metagame.
• This suspect test will go on for two weeks. It will last until Monday, February the 22nd at 11:59 PM GMT-5.

 

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Suspect Test Rules

• You are required to make sure that whatever you are arguing for is in-line with the Tiering Policy Framework. If what you're arguing for isn't, there's a very high chance that your post will be deleted.
• No uninformed one liners or posts;
• No discussion on other potential suspect tests;
• No discussion on the suspect test process.
• Your posts are expected to be respectful, please do not insult anyone.
• If you fail to follow these rules, you may be infracted without any prior warning.

If there are any questions, feel free to PM myself or Mateeus. If there are any questions about the moderation of this thread, you should feel free to PM the moderation team.

 

[maroon]

Tagging The Immortal & Kris to implement this on the ladder. Thank you!

This thread will be locked for 24 hours so that everyone can collect their thoughts.

Edit: This thread is now open for discussion!

 

[|Powerman|]

A meme that describes everything.
Not mine btw

 

[R8]

Since still nobody gave their opinion here, I'm going to give mine. But first of all, i need to confess that i don't really play the tier that much (I just did the suspect test), so my opinion is to be taken with a grain of salt.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Dracovish is broken. You probably already saw the billions of calcs showing the raw power of the abomination with a choice band set: even the bulkiests water resists in the game with the absolute maximum physdef and hp investment can't escape the 2HKO from fishious rend most of the time after stealth rocks damages. Toxapex, Ferrothorn, Venusaur-Mega, Tangrowth, they all can die very easily to Dracovish. Therefore, only the mons blessed with a quad resist or an immunity to water can switch into Fishious Rend without being scared for their own lifes. But that's not all about Dracovish, it wouldn't be funny either way! As a matter of fact, those mons able to switch into Fishious Rend are erased from the surface of the planet if they dare to switch into one of the coverage moves, as stated on the op of this thread.
The options against it were already sparse on Natdex OU, so i assume it's even worse in Monotype. Some typings don't even have ways to scout the move, or even tank a single fishious rend.

But then, since defensive stuff doesn't work properly, what about the offensive stuff? Well, Dracovish can use a scarf set to trade off his ability to 2shot the entiere game to be even more threatening against more offensive teams. While his speed tier is far from being outstanding, and still is slower than stuff like dragapult, Fishious rend is still a STAB 170 BP move boosted by Strong Jaw (Or 85 if it moves second, which is far from being weak), and can 2HKO most resists, and take out mons neutrals to it in one hit, and Dracovish still has a good bulk and typing allowing it to take at least one hit from most mons of the tier. Scouting if the fish is banded or scarved also sometimes cost a mon for some teams, and can't be avoided because it's a very important information to know in order to check this thing.


To be frank i don't even know why you would keep Dracovish in any tier meant to be balanced not called Ubers. It doesn't bring that much to the metagame (It just hits extremely hard) and is just restricting for most teams that attempt to adapt against it.

That's it. Have a nice day