Saturday, April 18, 2015

Aegislash being re-tested in OU

One of the recurring themes of the April Fools Giratina-O test and its aftermath was "why not Aegislash?" After all, Aegislash is kind of a chibi version of Giratina-O in many ways, though it doesn't work with numbers quite as ridiculous, and if Giratina-O is less broken than previously thought, then what about Aegislash? Well, we're about to find out. The best part is that there's virtually no consensus, so it really could go either way. The main complaint that keeps coming back is, believe it or not, that the OU tier is TOO VARIED, and thus it's impossible to cover everything with just six Pokémon, making many battles won or lost before a single turn is played. Aegislash would be a fix to that, because how long is the list of Pokémon that are totally Aegislash's bitch? Have you even SEEN the amount of previously unusable stuff that became good once Aegislash was gone? Yes, we're now at a point where a Pokémon could be unbanned BECAUSE it's overcentralizing. Goddammit, Smogon, can you just figure out what you want already? Then there's the outstanding matter of Aegislash featuring unparalleled synergy with Landorus-I, probably the most dangerous Pokémon at the moment.

Yeah, usually I try to recognize both sides' arguments because there are people much better and more knowledgeable than I am defending them, but I imagine you all figured out I clearly have all my chips in one pile this time around.

10 comments:

  1. Um...Last I checked, it was a good thing that there's more than one major threat. If Aegislash gets un-banned, people will just want it banned again because it overcentralizes OU. Maybe they expect Sableye to be able to stop it?...

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    1. There's also Mega Lopunny, I guess, thanks to Scrappy + STAB Fighting. It's also immune to Shadow Ball/Sneak.

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    2. But Aegislash can learn Sacred Sword, and King's Shield alleviates the High Jump Kick thing...

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    3. Yeah, Aegislash beats Mega Lopunny, not the reverse. It's really well equipped to deal with things you'd think would beat it.

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  2. Maybe they're thinking it will fill the role Scizor used to in gen 4, as a lynchpin that holds the metagame together and checks all kinds of threats, but isn't strong enlightened on its own to be broken? But Aegislash is a lot more threatening than Scizor ever was...

    Besides, it's been impossible to cover "everything" on one team for a long time. That's part of the challenge and fun of the game. I thought that was why we ban certain things in the first place.

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  3. Can I just say that I love that Aegislash is a gimmick Pokemon that actually ended up being great? I was excited about the thing when it was first revealed, but then it came out that it had a gimmicky ability, and I almost completely wrote it off. But it's awesome now!

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    1. This is what makes me so sad that it's blatantly OP: it's not only a gimmick Pokémon that works, it's also one of the coolest gimmicks they've ever come up with.

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  4. And this week's PotW is Scizor, Aegislash's less broken predecessor in terms of what some people want Aegislash to be. Tell me if you guys see any major errors...

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    1. Well... they recommended X-scissor as another option when Scizor would almost never carry it. Technician Bug Bite is stronger AND easily available now while U-turn has great scouting ability.

      And apparently... Scyther can learn Fury Swipes according to the writers. Two problems.
      1) Scyther CAN'T learn Fury swipes
      2) Even if it could, Fury Swipes is useless outside of LC Aipom
      I think they meant Bug Bite with that.

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    2. It's probably a copypaste job gone wrong, they do that sometimes.

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