Baganha

Really cool guide, overall it had a great organization and was very entertaining to read. I think its got great reading value even for the most experienced players which is good, the explanations and terminologies were pretty well put and didnt give a feeling of it being dumb down when i read it, so many guides like to take it to such a simplicity level its cringy at times. The only nitpick i have is that maybe you should provide with a full team with each playstyle giving a quick description of how they function, the common cores you provide for every playstyle is great as it is but a more general rundown can give better clues as to how these builds work for less experienced players, but i understand if the goal here is to encourage them to build on their own without just handing everything to them. Nice work.

I guess ill make a quick update here since pro introduced new things such as weakness berries and gems, these berries, while a pretty neat addition, dont give much to stop manaphy's desctructive capabilities, it would only further its centralisation by making mons like slowbro, amoonguss or even rotom-w sacrificing their items for this weakness berry only to just pseudo-check it. As for gems i've also found nothing that revolutionary that would keep manaphy on its toes, but hey if there is anything regarding this or manaphy in general you want to bring up for discussion, feel free to do so.

Start bid for scizor at 150k. Edit: I believe i won the offer for scizor as 48 hours have gone by since my first offer, pls contact me here or in the game if possible to get this deal done.

I've been having pretty conflicting opinions in regards to conk in this meta. When i first got in this meta i thought it was for sure broken, a pokemon that 2hkos everything besides sableye is nothing to take lightly so i understand its influence on the meta, being one of the top mons in usage (maybe number1?) and also being a great switch to ferro (as long as it doesnt predict and leech) a status absorber and a check to dark types like weavile and bish thanks to its priority also complement him pretty well. Its natural bulk even allows him to 1v1 mons like dd dnite(non outrage variants), clef, rotom, non colbur slowbro etc. As far as other sets go, i dont believe much could be used over guts, sheer force is interesting, boosting elemental punches but guts 2hkoing the meta makes it kind of obsolete to begin with, a bulkier conk with av is interesting, being able to take its natural bulk and make it better whilst also having offensive pressure but again passing on the immediate firepower with guts isnt worth it. My opinion as of today changed about conkeldurr, while i obviously cant deny it has amazing wallbreaking power, its 45 speed maskes him very vulnerable against faster threats, and by faster i mean relatively anything with base 60+ that isnt weak to mach punch; azu, zam, gengar, latis, mew, staraptor, togekiss, ss kingdra, cloro venusaur check him relatively easy. Another downside that i believe is a bit overlooked is the recoil it takes, making conk even more easier to revenge kill it, i know it has drain punch with its semireliable recovery but its definitely not enough when every target that switches into it being rocky helmet tang/slowbro or even chomp in conjuction with burn damage conk takes massive recoil, giving it very limited amount of switching/playtime, not even including things like hazards and/or sand. Idt i would vote a ban on conk but i would like to see how the meta would change without its presence giving how massive its usage is, when megas come along i would definitely drop him again if it got eventually banned.

+1 The idea of a council should've been sparked since the beginning of pvp or at least when it got its first fundamentals as a meta, competitive pokemon needs consolidation for it to work and prevail through the future of its meta, in the case of pvp, the potential release of new legendaries/new gen mons/megas, in conjuction with power creep as any competitive pokemon meta goes through. As pvp stands, i believe much can be done to make it a more competitively positive experience, as well as more welcoming, especially for those who are tired or never been interested of the current pvp meta. This will probably be a bit of a controversial opinion to some of you, but i believe those who think the community as a whole can come to terms and decide whats best for the meta is absolutely laughable, to think that every person's opinion's about competitive mons should be regarded the same for everyone is pure idiocy. The fact is, some people are clearly more informed and qualified than others, the problem worsens when you come about hearing some of these members opinions. Regarding a thread i made about manaphy i definitely sense a lot of inexperience towards them, not so much about pvp but more so on mons in general (shaky/incorrect definitions of a check or counter, bad communication/terminology which is a sign of little experience in discussions weather it be participating or simply viewing them, use of fallacious arguments, more popular ones being the use of false equivalencies to prove their arguments right and the anecdotal fallacy making them only regard their personal experience towards a general topic). That is why i believe a "pseudo authoritarianism" would be the best for the future of pvp, there is just simply too much discrepancy from all the members' competitive experience in this game, obviously the rest of the community would still get their influence on suspect tests as long as they meet requirements of course, (which is another topic that i feel should be discussed in the future as well). Also for those who took the authoritarianism bit a little too seriously, calm down this is only about a game lol. The only problem that concerns me is who to exactly trust for the council, this might be a smaller problem than i make it out to be just because i dont know a lot of people here, however it is for sure something to take note, abuse of power can be very detrimental and potentially harmfull enough so a pvp council would be revoked, never to exist ever again.

The problem with anecdotes is that there isnt much credibility from them to begin with, you can say "ive never lost to a team with manaphy" but what exactly does that bring to this discussion? We dont know how skilled your opponents were, if they had a good set, if they had a pvpable manaphy, or even if you're telling the truth (not saying you werent but you understand my point). Its a very shady argument that cannot be taken with a lot of weight.

Mind if i ask you were you got this information from? or is it just personal experience? regardless, nothing should be considered balanced/not broken just because its usage is low, if a pokemon has very little counterplay and is potentially unhealthy for the meta, it doesnt matter that few people are using it. Just like when lando-I got banned from oras OU, its usage wasnt stellar by any means (i believe it was around 3 to 6%) but it was still considered to be broken in the OU tier and eventually banned from it. PS: Are you pif from showdown/smogon?

Just like a pelipper wouldnt stay in front of an electric type, the same would be from a torkoal/ninetales to a volcarona, letting it setup qds if youre not hypnosis/yawn/roar is just and im sorry for the vulgar expression, plain stupid. Again you're using anecdotes with "Ive tried it before" to prove your point on a general topic, that is worthless information that should easily be neglected. Chansey is definitely NOT the only counter to rain as basic balance cores between chansey/phys def tang or options like tentacruel, mantine, slowking are all great against rain, ive told this before, i dont know why you're ingnoring it.

until you face the one in a million hp fire manaphy!!!!

You saying rain's secondary effects doesnt really make them more broken, everyone is aware of all of this. Just like sand and sun have it as well. I do agree that rain is the best weather but im not gonna write my opinion again ( you can check out prior convos if you want to see it).

Youre not being very fair to the other weather's at all, saying just use eq to deal with sand is ridiculous, the same can be said for rain then, just use electric move on pelipper and its all good, also ferro isnt really a switchin to excadrill at all, adamant +2 soft sand eq does 75% min to max def ferro and the best it can do is leash off a power whip or lecch seed + tect, either way hes getting about 60% at best hp off of drill, not countering it at all. How does volcarona deal with sun at all? Volc gets ohkod by entei banded sacred fire and darm's scarf flare blitz, not to mention that heatrani is definitely easy to deal with between these same pokemon's coverage with stomping tantrum and superpower respectively. Kingdra does have safe switchins to it, chansey is probably the best, spdef ferro actually deals with it, unlike excadrill, and even options such as av azu, slowking, mew and mantine are all good examples

If it was up to skill, id argue more than half of all playstyles should be considered to be banned, how much skill does it take to use sun? or any HO team for that matter? You say manaphy isnt a problem under rain but i still havent been convinced from that, when there is literally 1 safe counter to it (3 loose counters if you wanna get analytical about it), it should show you how unbelievably broken it is, in fact i even tried to explain to you why rain might be a big problem for you (without manaphy) and you didnt deny those things, maybe you do but you didnt explain to me why that is, on the other hand there is so much manaphy can do outside of rain that you seem to neglect, like before mentioned, screens is a great way for manaphy to take advantage of its high bulk and make it even harder for your opponent to deal with. Any hazard stacking offense would welcome manaphy in all of their teams as a primary wall/stallbreaker for the rest of the team to cleanup. There is a lot manaphy can do outside of rain. If you want rain to be banned thats fine, while you can argue its overcentralising, banning it wouldnt do much for the meta unless a whole lotta of things would go as well. With rain gone, it would only be natural for things like sun and sand to be popular and take over, it would be a slippery slope from then on. Manaphy on the other hand is just a pokemon and not an entire playstyle, it would nerf rain stallbreaking potential, giving more chance for bulkier teams to take place in the meta, bulkier teams whom of which would ease up the pressure and increase the stability and diversity for the meta, it wouldnt be perfect of course, rain would still be very popular obviously, however, unfortunately, there isnt much that can be done about that, there is always gonna be a centralising force in the meta, that in a way keeps it from collapsing even vgc and smogon are guilty of this.

Are you saying that rain is the reason why manaphy is as good as he is, or is rain the one you consider broken?

Im not sure if youre saying that manaphy isnt broken or simply explaining how you deal with it but in case its the first, then im sorry but that argument is completely fallacious, using anecdotes to justify something from only your personal experience and not looking at an objective pov is just wrong, i dont feel like i need to explain why that is.

im guessing this was an ironical comment.

Ive been pvping for about a month and a half or so and from that experience i can say that rain has never been too much of a problem for me, with the exception of manaphy rain teams, im guessing the type of team you tend to use more is geared towards the hyper offense level, which then i can understand your MU struggle, with the lack of bulk in the team and kingdra outspeeding most if not everything on the team, its definitely going to get some easy kills and not giving you an easy time. However more bulky designed teams like balance and stall do not have such a hard time with it, most of these teams carry chansey which is pretty much the best switchin to kingdra and finish the defensive backbone with mandibuzz or physdef tang to ease up MUs like conk/kabutops/bish etc... i agree with rain being a pretty easy playstyle to use and id argue that is why its one of the main reasons why is used a lot instead of its "broken level", it gets you fast games regardless of the MU, its easy to use and even grinding for pvpable pokemon like pelipper and kingdra are one of the easiest and potentially least time consuming in this game. I dont believe this is near the same level of stat passing, being one of the best antimeta playstyles whilst being incredibly easy to use. In no way manaphy can ever be compared to things like conk lucario or volc, yeah these mons can be pretty hard to handle, but at least you dont have to go out of your way and say things like spdef unaware clef to actually counter it or weather abusers to check it.

Pretty good points, probably the most important being that manaphy wipes out anything kingdra/kabutops cannot which after that becomes extremely hard to deal with one or both of these mons. Screens seem pretty effective as well, even something like safeguard could be considered for extra longitivity for matchups like chansey or status mons like amoonguss/clef

That is a good point, given that rain offers so much for manaphy and checking it would eventually be much easier without it, although i have to say that rain, while pretty good, just doesnt have the edge to be considered broken without manaphy imo but i do understand the predicament here. I'd prioritize banning manaphy over rain for sure and if it were up to me, i would only ban drizzle if anything, setting up rain dance has its costs and would make the playstyle a bit more constricted but still somewhat usable, the thing is, how much influence would sun/sand teams have after that nerf tho?

The point is, is that youre bringing checks that arent really that reliable, mainly the weather based ones, giving that manaphy takes advantage of weather itself. Also serperior imo isnt the best example to showcase this, it is much easier to check/counter it than manaphy is and im sure you agree with this as well, for starters serp isnt as reliable on weather as manaphy, making checks like venusaur/kingdra much more consistent compared to manaphy. Its always conflicted in using between hp fire/ground so its always gonna have targets he wont effectively deal with, weather it be ferro/heatran/amoonguss/tangrowth/gengar etc, dimming even more its targets to hit. It has 4mss, giving it a hard time to find consistent sweeping capabilities from various matchups through stall to hyper offense, it could use leech seed+tect to give a better matchup for stall (although not perfect since it cant use sub) or it could have coverage like dragon pulse to deal with dragons like latis or dnite for a better MU in more offensive teams. Manaphy would appreciate all the coverage it could get of course, but giving how much power tg gives him to begin with coverage like surf+ice beam is already insanely good for whatever MU, any ho crumbles to that (as explained in my response to imtrippin), its not perfect coverage but it targets much more than serp would ever do; and while serps bulk is pretty nice, it does not compare to manaphy's which also has a much better typing, giving even more checks to serp such as gengar, scarf medicham, rotom-h, staraptor, dnite etc. and even some hard counters such as goodra, av amoonguss, volcarona, chansey/blissey, the almight spdef unaware clef. These amount of checks/counters do not exist for manaphy, they cannot be considered equivalent in its presence in the meta and like ive mentioned in my post before, i am aware there are things that deal with manaphy, even if they are pretty limited, im just stating that having simply something that can deal with it doesnt make it balanced. While im no master in the "arts" of competitive pokemon, i do consider myself somewhat capable in always geting a game plan for whatever matchup, the thing is, this game isnt just as simply as "beating the pokemon that beats me, makes me victorious", every battle is diferent from each other, thinking of a game plan is one of the most basic things to do in competitive mons, that doesnt mean there arent other variable sn the game tho, your opponent predicting you, using a move you didnt expect, hax etc. ive beaten people with manaphy before, but that doesnt change the fact that it does have very little counterplay. I dont intend to use showdown for pro purposes, mostly because i play pretty diferently on both, giving how shitty the battle UI for pro is (no percentage hp, moves working incorrectly, no number of turns for weather, no logs etc.) (or maybe im just too attached to showdown lol). Like ive said before i dont have the most amount of experience playing pvp, being about a month or so, however it seems to me that i didnt get much wrong regarding manaphy and the state of the current meta, so i dont really feel like i need much practice on showdown, not claiming im really good or anything but i do believe i've caught on the gist of it.

Sash breloom is not reliable whatsoever, because it needs its sash to be intact, so no damage or hazards in the field are a must which is very hard and not consistent, scarf breloom is by far the safer and optimal choice as it ohkos with bullet seed (x3) and always outspeeds it.

The problem with this entire comment is that you are only taking manaphy in the context of an entire meta, if the only thing you had to worry about in a battle was only manaphy then this comment would make sense, but that is obviously not the case, i never said there werent true counters in the game, i said they were pretty lacking, spdef unaware clef is indeed a counter, to which ive mentioned in my original post but that doesnt make manaphy balanced knowing clef can safely counter it, thats like saying kyogre is balanced in this pvp meta since shedinja and chansey can counter it, i shouldnt be forced to run one of these mons everytime so i dont automatically lose to kyogre, its clearly unbalanced. In regards to checking manaphy, i think you are underestimating its bulk quite a bit, as far as scarfers are concern i cant think of many that revenge kill it easily, breloom and serp seem to be the only ones i have in mind. Things like staraptor, gengar, rotom, drill and medicham are some examples of pokemon who cant revenge kill manaphy after sr damage. Things like specs lati, jolteon/raikou and weather abusers like kingdra or venu seem the most effective to check to it. Scouting a manaphy set is very hard for any team giving its offensive pressure, yeah you can try to predict every move hes going for, but at +3, unless youre using stall (which manaphy easily just gets up to +6) everything is going to take a lot of damage, even bulky waters like suicune who cant do much back to manaphy, allowing it to get up to +6 and the only way for suicune to beat it is if rain isnt up, bulky rotom is 2hko by +3 surf after rocks and slowbro is the same thing as suicune and has to hope there isnt rain up. AV azu is an option but gets worn down pretty quickly with hazards/getting chipped from things like u-turn etc. Also its not really worth calling these mons true counters since they do not fully deal with manaphy's options and have to hope something like psychic/energy ball is absent in its movepool to deal with it, which most still do a bad job to begin with. Sun teams do give manaphy a hard time, the thing is its not only manaphy you have to deal with, rain teams automatically give a better MU to manaphy (rain being a great choice for manaphy as explained in the first post), obviously MU like manaphy vs ninetales on the sun is bad for manaphy but with the help from rain, that is patched up very easily, and at this point you are now again pressured by manaphy, and with a potential setup tg against something like a darm or entei etc. makes it very hard for you to deal with, and now at +3 ninetales doesnt deal with it. There is much more context you have to give regarding manaphy, talking as if its a 6v1 against manaphy is obviously easy to point out its flaws but thats is never the case.

With all due respect, i have to disagree with both points you mentioned, while the presence of manaphy in the tier isnt common by any means, there is no actual reason to not treat it the same way as some other pokemon that are pvp legal, saying something is healthy for the tier because only 4 or 5 guys have this pokemon isnt an argument for the pokemon's "broken level" but for how pro has distributed it, not everyone played the event or got a good enough manaphy for pvp that is true but the ones who did shouldnt be justified just because they are only a few of them. For my experience, manaphy as done nothing but enforce a more monotonous playstyle given that its usage on rain teams is massive (a playstyle you yourself mentioned in your response to be abundant) and while manaphy for sure has its uses outside of rain teams, very little would be changed regarding "shaping a new meta", manaphy only fits on more offensive teams due to its most reliability coming for setup either from tail glow or calm mind, which would naturally put manaphy on one of the most common team archtypes in pvp to begin with, HO or bulky offense. Like ive mentioned in the first post, a big problem with manaphy its the lack of true counters you have at your disposal, pretty much forcing you to run one or more checks to deal with it, which makes it a pretty centralising for the meta, there is a big risk with giving any pokemon a lot time to get their presence in a meta and something like manaphy it would only make it unhealthy, being as its very hard prep for it, which also brings an important conflict i believe the meta has. If you were to ask me, is it worth to prioritize preping for a pokemon like manaphy and leaving yourself weaker against more common MUs like conk, bish, serp etc; i would obviously say no, those MUs are much more common to face in ranked pvp so it wouldnt make sense for me to be vulnerable more often than not but why should i be in a disadvantage against the people who use manaphy, even if they arent a lot? It just seems a bit unfair to me.

Thank you for your response, it makes me happy to know that other people do have an interest for the future of this game, and regarding your thoughts at the end of the post i have to say that i completely agree with you and admit that manaphy isnt the only thing that is affecting the tier in a negative way imo. Im not sure if you were serious about the staff thing lol, its not really my intent to be a staff/coordenator or be a part of the council but more so to raise awareness about this game's competitive meta and how much it could be improved (then again i guess that a bit part of their job lol) i guess what im trying to say is i do want to spark discussion regarding pvp but dont want to have the work/responsabilities of a staff. I guess ill talk about the points you made in the beginning of the comment, first point is 100% correct giving that manaphy is at full hp. The second point i have to disagree in the "slow" setup, unless if you were mentioning cm rest set, while giving up coverage is always tougher for the pokemon to sweep, having rest on manaphy means its living much longer, and with all the ho having the same set of mons in dnite,bish,volc,mamo,conk,gengar etc... scald+ice beam is good enough coverage for all of them and ohkos them after 1 tg, which is why i believe it isnt slow at all, only azu comes to mind that would be able to somewhat deal with the coverage, ignoring the fact that it still gets 2hko'd by +3 surf if its not sitrus, so even then azu would only come out winning in a 1v1 scenario and not switchin from a tg. Regarding the counters ive mentioned, i agree with av goodra being a trash set, however i only mentioned him because he actually gets usage in pvp and for the sake of bringing up something else to the table, it is possible to ev him so it doesnt get 2hko by +3 ice beam and it 2hkos back with power whip (tbolt is only 2hko after rocks LMAO). Mentioning av goodra kinda takes me back to naganadel days (not sure if you played usum OU at that time or at any time at all) where you literally had to slap something like av ttar or max spdef heatran to properlly counter naga since the mons that took hits from it were just too passive and couldnt kill it back, lacking reliable recovery is bad but it does have the tools to kill it back before it dies. Unaware clef is by far the "safest" counter to manaphy, and while pressure between hazards can put it in a tight position something like a calm nature with some investment would definitely help it a lot, enough to the point where it wouldnt get 2hko by surf in rain after rocks and still keep enough phys def evs to deal with things like dnite, non lo chomp for example, also unaware clef tends to be used more on stall teams which have a much better time in removing hazards/keeping them away with magic bounce so it would be pretty hard for clef to be switching in to a field that has more than sr in it. Spdef ferro is kinda similar to goodra in the sense that it actually threaten manaphy back with power whip (if it has it) or leech seed/protect shenanigans. Burning with scald wouldnt be the end of the world unless it is rest manaphy which at that point as long as rain is up, its going to 1v1 it. I do however agree with ferro getting worn down easily since it is a very important "glue" for a lot of teams and mostly being the primary check to rain teams, which in this case manaphy would break ferro up and then kingdra/kabutops just clean the game, which kinda just shows how ridiculous this mon is. Also, if you dont mind me asking, you said you will be back in summer, what made you quit this game? was it pvp related? if so maybe share it so i can have a better undestanding of the metas flaws in hope of a better future for this game. Have a good one as well.

So im not sure if making a new thread is the best idea instead of discussing it in another thread such as pvp rules but whatever im just gonna do it. The reason im making this thread is to discuss manaphy's place in the pvp ranked ladder and why i believe it should be considered "broken" in the meta. I wanna startoff by saying that i do not have a lot of experience in pvp, there might be some things i get wrong in this post and if thats the case i obviously would appreciate if anyone corrected me/tell me why im wrong. For my experience, manaphy has had the most amount of usage in rain teams, which is fair since it boosts its stab while giving it the ability to not get statused thanks to hydration, with this manaphy 6-0 the vast majority of stall teams and if it doesnt do that it gets minimum 2-3 kills, in rain it 2hko chansey at +6 surf which im sure if you've seen manaphy against stall you'd know how easy it is to get 2 tgs up. The only switchins that would threaten manaphy to not get up 2 tg would be av tang, amoonguss and ferro. To which tang gets 1v1 if its switching on a tg, unless it has leaf storm, which is an ohko after rocks, needless to say leaf storm is very if not completely unused due to its lack of recovery that giga offers and low pp and overall less reliable stab. Amoonguss is ohko'd after +3 ice beam/psychic unless its an av set which again is 1v1'd. This in itself wouldnt be a bad thing if stall/bulkier balances were the only thing manaphy had a good time against, however this is not the case as manaphy has the tools to be devastating against every playstyle. Firstly there is its typing and stats which are fenomenal, 100 across the board means that this pokemon definetely has the bulk to set up tail glow with ease, even against the more offensive threatning mons such as drill, scizor, ttar (unless banded), weavile(unless banded), volc etc and can always take a hit from mons like conk, bish, mamo, shell smashed cloyster, gengar, togekiss and so on. Manaphy is able to put so much pressure to offensive teams that the only way to beat it at that point is mainly with the use of priority between sucker from bish plus espeed from banded dnite or using something like latios that can dish out a big hit in draco meteor and potentially ohko if its specs. While playing against manaphy with offensive teams may not feel as if youre pushed into a corner as if you were using more bulkier teams, its still has the firepower to completely breakdown your team, right now ive only been talking about one set in particular which is tg +3 attacks, and id argue it is for sure the best set, but options like tg + rest on rain teams is also insanely dificult to deal with, more so for offensive teams since it gives much more longetivity to manaphy also it is much easier to setup against chansey with rest, so thats also a bigger issue for stall. Cm rain dance manaphy while a very unpopular set and i honestly dont believe it will have much presence in the meta does have its uses, having some better niches compared to crocune, better speed, better spatk, better recovery, no status etc. In fact i dont see why ho wouldnt want to have this in a team, providing immense wallbreaking power whilst still matchup very well against faster teams. Regarding to actual counters, i believe there is mantine, av goodra, unaware clef and spdef ferro (unless manaphy is hp fire), which is a very limited amount to say the least, also taking into account that spdef ferro is the only rather splashable mon of these three. Checks consist in a bigger number such as serp, latis, cloro venusaur, ss kingdra on non rest variants, and in general if it not at full, mons like gengar and zam. With that i conclude this post (sorry for the walls of text) i do hope to hear the opinions of the community regarding this, if you dont agree with my points you are more than welcome to explain why, i believe discussions like these should be more implemented in this community and with pvp expanding in interest for a lot of players, i think there needs to be a more critical aproach to what people want pvp to turn into and maybe reducing its influences on communities like smogon because they are very diferent metas.

Already got a deal, thread can be closed