Manaphy in ranked PVP

[Nakofum]

252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 135-159 (34.2 - 40.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

 

That's all for me.

[Baganha]

252 SpA Manaphy Surf vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Clefable: 135-159 (34.2 - 40.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

 

That's all for me.

 

This exact scenario has already been mentioned but if this is all you need to show, then youd think its healthy to have manaphy in the tier because clef counters it? Then i guess you would agree that something like kyogre shoud be allowed since shedinja and chansey can counter it yes?

 

Also dont run 0 spdef if you really wanna stop manaphy, under the rain its a 2hko after rocks.

[Nakofum]

That's just a typical example to show that manaphy isn't overpowered. You can stop it defensively: Chansey (if not rain dance), Clefable unaware (if rain dance), Gastrodon clear smog (if no energy ball), Calm tentacruel mirror coat, Calm mantine mirror coat. I will not give more example, i think people can think by themselves too.

 

First you are speaking of a specific main play, where rain + rocks are setup, when aurora is setup, when screens are setup etc. But hey, when you're playing against someone, do you let him really put rain, rocks, screen without doing anything ? When you begin a game you fix a gameplan, if you see a rain manaphy against you, and you have an unaware clef, you just have to analyze the gameplan of your opponent that seems pretty logical there, and adapt yours to never let it happen.

That's exactly the same thing, when you'll fix everything to let your last poke sweep. Manaphy is an incredible sweeper, I agree, but manaphy alone, can't do anything against a little prepared team.

 

I think i'll repeat something that people already said, but, if your team is 6-0 Manaphy, your team is bad that's all, the same as if your team is 6-0 Volcarona etc...

When you build you have to check if your team can handle certain menaces, if it can't then you have a problem. Try to anticipate that kind of gameplan where manaphy is under rain, where volcarona is under sun, and see how to react appropriatly.

 

To be honest, I don't even think my opinion will help to convince you about this topic, if 13pages didn't achieve to, I don't think i'll, but hey, if manaphy was really so strong why isn't he played in 100% of the ladder tournament and top ladder teams? It isn't for the reasons I said before.

[Baganha]

That's just a typical example to show that manaphy isn't overpowered. You can stop it defensively: Chansey (if not rain dance), Clefable unaware (if rain dance), Gastrodon clear smog (if no energy ball), Calm tentacruel mirror coat, Calm mantine mirror coat. I will not give more example, i think people can think by themselves too.

 

First you are speaking of a specific main play, where rain + rocks are setup, when aurora is setup, when screens are setup etc. But hey, when you're playing against someone, do you let him really put rain, rocks, screen without doing anything ? When you begin a game you fix a gameplan, if you see a rain manaphy against you, and you have an unaware clef, you just have to analyze the gameplan of your opponent that seems pretty logical there, and adapt yours to never let it happen.

That's exactly the same thing, when you'll fix everything to let your last poke sweep. Manaphy is an incredible sweeper, I agree, but manaphy alone, can't do anything against a little prepared team.

 

I think i'll repeat something that people already said, but, if your team is 6-0 Manaphy, your team is bad that's all, the same as if your team is 6-0 Volcarona etc...

When you build you have to check if your team can handle certain menaces, if it can't then you have a problem. Try to anticipate that kind of gameplan where manaphy is under rain, where volcarona is under sun, and see how to react appropriatly.

 

To be honest, I don't even think my opinion will help to convince you about this topic, if 13pages didn't achieve to, I don't think i'll, but hey, if manaphy was really so strong why isn't he played in 100% of the ladder tournament and top ladder teams? It isn't for the reasons I said before.

 

Firstly, I wanna thank you for going in much more detail on your thoughts regarding this over than just stating that clef counters it.

 

I guess we have diferent views on what overpowered is, to me it takes less than one pokemon to deal with it for it be one, if a meta or more specifically one archtype has to go out of their way to counter this pokemon, id argue it might be a bit unhealthy, spdef clef's main reason its getting popular in stalls is because the way it deals with manaphy in addition to being able to wall np togekiss unless its super lucky with flinches.

 

The problem that i have with the pokemon you show to me that stop manaphy is that they need to be a specific set, or more accurately lacking a move for it to happen. What you said is true chansey deals with manaphy if its not rain dance or in rain teams or gastrodon if its not packing energy ball, but the thing is its not really a counter to the pokemon, but the set its using, its the same thing with zygarde back in usum, quagsire could stop all dd + 3 attack variants but it lost against subtoxic sets, thats what gave zygarde the edge over a lot of team archtypes, some pokemon could stop some of its sets but not all of them and this was enough for smogon to ban it, wether you agree or not zygarde was broken is up to you, but the fact is that PRO takes a lot in consideration to what smogon does regarding their bans and tier management, so the way i see it, its a valid point to say that manaphy has very little counterplay taking all of its sets in mind.

 

I really appreciate what you said on the second paragraph, it might be one of the few instances in this thread where people aknowledge the game outside of a vacuum, it is true there is the fact that the player understands or should understand the position they're in and will play accordingly but if were gonna give cognition to both players we also have to take note that your not just playing manaphy, its not a 6v1 and other variables in the game can happen, if a player needs to weaken tentacruel for manaphy's sake it'll try to force it in and take damage, maybe it will do it sucessfully maybe it wont, it depends on how the game goes, its just that when it comes to manaphy, not much is needed for it to punch a big hole on your team, a lot of balances for example are at the mercy of manaphy as soon as something like ferro is dead or in range of a +3 hit and their main check is dead or doesnt have enough power to beat manaphy. And sure like you said, if a team isnt ready to at least have a chance to deal with a threat as big as manaphy then it definitely needs some fixing but it doesnt mean that because it has certain measure to deal with it wont automatically be good for that MU, like you said you have to take into account a player's need to position themselves to victory and that could mean incapacitate whatever deals with manaphy and try to get an oportunity to setup with it.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7anythinggoes-886631889

Take this game for example, the opponent had a ferrothorn and av tentacruel against a rain team, however it doesnt mean manaphy is completely useless as it takes care of the other 4 mons after a tg, forcing the opponent switching tentacruel multiple times as well as tricking the av made it possible to setup at a point where manaphy could kill it and since after that the only switch to kingdra was ferro, weakening it as much as possible or in this case i kill it, gives a chance for manaphy to setup and beat ferro as well, now to notethere wasnt an oportunity to setup but it shows there are ways to circunvent these things and doesnt turn a pokemon useless if you can play around it.

 

I think you got it all wrong what the objective of this thread is, the whole point of this thread was to discuss manaphy's influence on the metagame, i consider it broken, it doesnt mean others have to and its not my goal to make them think that way. If i see a point i dont agree with, i refute it, yeah im defending the fact why i think its broken but not to because i think im better than others or because my main goal is to get rid of manaphy from this meta but to understand why players think that way and ive learned so much from people on both sides and will never take any interaction i had here for granted. The staff already claimed they're not banning manaphy, if that was all i cared about i wouldnt look at this thread ever again.

 

A pokemon doesnt need to be used all the time for it be overpowered or broken, dugtrio wasnt used by every team on ladder tour was it? Lando-I had less usage than lando t at the time despite being broken.

[Nechrit]

@Baganha

 

Sorry but at this point it feels like you are arguing for the sake of it. You are not bringing anything positive to the table and ask everyone to provide further material to support an overall recognized fact, rather than you giving us clear reasons on why that pokemon is not supposed to be there.

 

You want an aswer? Yes 2 TG bring you to max spatk. Yes 1 can blow away unprepared teams. Yes with aurora veil up, rocks, 3 layer of spikes and webs Manaphy is the best pokemon ever existed in the universe. No, you are not supposed to reach that point in the game given the fact we have team preview. If you do, that's on you :)

 

 

I am out, enjoy your rants.

[Baganha]

I'm not even gonna bother entertaining the response above me as i feel thats what he wants, whoever that person is clearly has some negative bias towards me or this issue, im just writing this to say i have no ill intent ever since i made this thread, this was purely for discussion purposes, as i feel like if we want to promote a better environment for the community we need to talk and discuss, as in REALLY discuss, not take our experience from smogon, if you had any, and run with it, there is a clear diferent identity PRO compared to it. It saddens me that some people see me just looking for someone to argue and not taking anything form it, maybe its my fault not portraying the way i should, like ive mentioned in my previous post my objective was to discuss manaphy in the PRO meta and what the community thought about it, if defending my stance on it and trying to spark more conversation is a bad thing, than im sorry.

[Evilprotagonist]

Well if you look at last season gold pvp ladder. I think there are maybe 2-3 manaphy user, and the only rain user is chaosknight (i think), and im pretty sure he dosnt even run manaphy in his team (i could be wrong, havnt faced him in awhile).

 

And oh yeah here is the link to pokemon usage from oktober season: https://pastebin.com/tXc1aHUq

manaphy sits on number 25 with 7.66% usage, which means there is like 24 more used pokemon on every team, which counter some argument that said manaphy was on every team etc.

Edited December 17, 2019 by EvilProtagonist

[Baganha]

Well if you look at last season gold pvp ladder. I think there are maybe 2-3 manaphy user, and the only rain user is chaosknight (i think), and im pretty sure he dosnt even run manaphy in his team (i could be wrong, havnt faced him in awhile).

[ATTACH type=full" alt="117968]117968[/ATTACH]

 

And oh yeah here is the link to pokemon usage from oktober season: https://pastebin.com/tXc1aHUq

manaphy sits on number 25 with 7.66% usage, which means there is like 24 more used pokemon on every team, which counter some argument that said manaphy was on every team etc.

 

While im not sure who, or if youre talking about me, when i said manaphy is on every team, it is good to know about these usage stats, maybe veil + manaphy isnt getting much usage. Top 25 most used isnt much for sure, and the fact that everyone is not using the same strat means finding information about it is gonna be more scarce, maybe its still too soon to call out how manaphy under veil is, if no one has experience facing it or using it, thank you for briging up this information.

[Evilprotagonist]

naw i just read a some comments on this thread about what people thinks.

For this instance about usage i was responding to this persons comment.

Mostly i responded cause this thread was about disusing if manaphy needed ban right? Well i think the statistics i provided would involve alot more manaphy if it was so op. Just my 50 cent of thoughts <.<

 

PS: ---> every 4th game you encounter a ferrothorn and these are the calcs from sassy ferro vs +6 manaphy

0 Atk Ferrothorn Power Whip vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Manaphy: 246-290 (72.1 - 85%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

+6 252 SpA Manaphy Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Ferrothorn: 233-275 (66.1 - 78.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Edited December 18, 2019 by EvilProtagonist

[Baganha]

naw i just read a some comments on this thread about what people thinks.

For this instance about usage i was responding to this persons comment.

[ATTACH=full]118037[/ATTACH]

Mostly i responded cause this thread was about disusing if manaphy needed ban right? Well i think the statistics i provided would involve alot more manaphy if it was so op. Just my 50 cent of thoughts <.<

 

PS: [ATTACH=full]118038[/ATTACH] ---> every 4th game you encounter a ferrothorn and these are the calcs from sassy ferro vs +6 manaphy

0 Atk Ferrothorn Power Whip vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Manaphy: 246-290 (72.1 - 85%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

+6 252 SpA Manaphy Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Ferrothorn: 233-275 (66.1 - 78.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

Yeah spdef ferro is definitely the boon that holds balance to not get completely destroyed by manaphy, i wouldnt even consider using it if it wasnt for ferro, but thats why i wanted to ask for the opinion of other people in regards to veil, as it does add more oportunity for setup, realistically manaphy is never really gonna be able to setup 2 tgs if you have a ferro at a good amount of hp, however wih screens if manaphy can force the switch to ferro and get a tg up, its possible ferro doesnt beat it, it should give it an oportunity to actually setup 2 tgs and kill it before mana dies.

 

0 Atk Ferrothorn Power Whip vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy through Reflect: 123-145 (36 - 42.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock

 

It could even use something like sitrus to mitigate a bit of the damage ferro has done as well as hail if its up. Tho itll definitely be weakened enough to be revenge killed by something faster.

 

PS: In regards to that guy's response, its clear that is arguing out of emotion and frustration, thankfully q8 responded very well to his post, showing there isnt a omnipresence with manaphy.