Manaphy in ranked PVP

[Baganha]

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.

Edited March 20, 2019 by Baganha

[Imtrippin]

1. AV tangrowth does not stop it from setting up if it's at max health and it tail glows on your switch.

 

2. If you're playing against a manaphy in a rain team that uses rest then it's just really easy to abuse how slow it sets up and the lack of moves.

 

3. AV goodra is utter garbage and does not counter anything, especially since it has no recovery so go ahead if you want to rely on something like a wish alomomola to make it playable. Unaware clef is not a reliable check either as it easily gets worn down by hazards and toxic (even if they're supposed to run heal bell). Spdef ferro also gets worn down, especially if burned on a scald switch. If you want to run chlorofyll Venusaur it means you have to run a sun team so don't even bother if you want to beat anything else other than Manaphy as sun is trash.

 

Anyway I agree that it ruins pro meta even if I haven't played the game for a long time. It needs to get banned and not even just because of how strong it is, but I can imagine people are just spamming hyper offense with a bunch of voltturn cores in a game where u-turn and volt switch don't even work properly or complete/semi stall. Not a very enjoyable meta since most people are just too dumb to outplay the manaphy. You seem like you can be good for the community in the future though since you can become experianced in pvp and you don't seem toxic like me. Please hurry up and become staff so you can influence them into not making terrible decisions. I'm rooting for you since I'll be back in summer. Have a good 1 :)

[Baganha]

1. AV tangrowth does not stop it from setting up if it's at max health and it tail glows on your switch.

 

2. If you're playing against a manaphy in a rain team that uses rest then it's just really easy to abuse how slow it sets up and the lack of moves.

 

3. AV goodra is utter garbage and does not counter anything, especially since it has no recovery so go ahead if you want to rely on something like a wish alomomola to make it playable. Unaware clef is not a reliable check either as it easily gets worn down by hazards and toxic (even if they're supposed to run heal bell). Spdef ferro also gets worn down, especially if burned on a scald switch. If you want to run chlorofyll Venusaur it means you have to run a sun team so don't even bother if you want to beat anything else other than Manaphy as sun is trash.

 

Anyway I agree that it ruins pro meta even if I haven't played the game for a long time. It needs to get banned and not even just because of how strong it is, but I can imagine people are just spamming hyper offense with a bunch of voltturn cores in a game where u-turn and volt switch don't even work properly or complete/semi stall. Not a very enjoyable meta since most people are just too dumb to outplay the manaphy. You seem like you can be good for the community in the future though since you can become experianced in pvp and you don't seem toxic like me. Please hurry up and become staff so you can influence them into not making terrible decisions. I'm rooting for you since I'll be back in summer. Have a good 1 :)

 

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.

[Sujay532]

I agree with you.

[Imtrippin]

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.

 

I've laddered in both OU and UU a few times since you were wondering. Regarding the unaware clef, it gets worn down by the hazards and will just end up being a free switch for other offensive threats such as zone, bisharp etc.

 

Why I quit the game was mostly because I am busy irl and I only played this boring game because I was addicted. But it is also true that pvp is trash in this game as it's basically a bunch of uu or lower tier mons with a few ou powerhouses that are being used. We don't have the option to get all the trio legends either which doesn't help. Sadly the playerbase is really dumb in general as well and even when I played against "good" ladder players there were only a handful of decent/good players so it is definitely a problem when you got a competetive ladder that isn't competetive. I'll return in the summer to hope both the game and the playerbase has improved by then and also because I'll have a lot of free time.

[Iceflake]

i dont really agree with this for 2 reasons. Theres not alot of manaphies in pvp right now. I know at least 3 people not including myself who use her(and only 1 godly hp fire one). Second i think it breaks the monotony of ranked nowadays since most you see is Rain and sand, it might make room for more non weather dependent teams to get into pvp. I think its pretty good for the meta to shape around what people are using and countering said thing.

[Baganha]

i dont really agree with this for 2 reasons. Theres not alot of manaphies in pvp right now. I know at least 3 people not including myself who use her(and only 1 godly hp fire one). Second i think it breaks the monotony of ranked nowadays since most you see is Rain and sand, it might make room for more non weather dependent teams to get into pvp. I think its pretty good for the meta to shape around what people are using and countering said thing.

 

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.

[Iceflake]

You Say theres no "True Counter" To Manaphy. This is immpossible since Pokemon is all about types and coverages. A kinda Checks and balances. one of the Biggest counter is by far Unaware clefable being able to tank scalds/surf and have enough to wish stall it. There are also scarf users being able to easily revenge kill manaphy, or even since base 100 speed isn't that hard to outspeed. Since Manaphy can only really run 2/3 attacking moves since it most always has Tail glow/rest/calm mind its all about what counters it. If it doesn't run Energy ball but instead ice beam/psychic along with surf/scald that means other bulky waters will give it trouble without setting up tail glows. another true counter is sun teams just reck manaphy. Ninetales (timid) alone can 2hit ko manaphy with solar beam while manaphys scald only does around 43%. Venasaur sets up on it then paseed to sweep. Victorybell ohko's it with either Leaf blade/solar beam (even if sun isnt up victorybell can live a ice beam). Sp saying theres no true counter to manaphy is a large overstatement.

[Cobramk]

Breloom sash is not commun but its op here, can pass Manaphy with Spore+Bullet Seed.

 

This pokemon is not really strong here.

 

Gen6 meta add some Pokemon, if PRO was in gen5, we will be banned from OU but its not.

[Baganha]

You Say theres no "True Counter" To Manaphy. This is immpossible since Pokemon is all about types and coverages. A kinda Checks and balances. one of the Biggest counter is by far Unaware clefable being able to tank scalds/surf and have enough to wish stall it. There are also scarf users being able to easily revenge kill manaphy, or even since base 100 speed isn't that hard to outspeed. Since Manaphy can only really run 2/3 attacking moves since it most always has Tail glow/rest/calm mind its all about what counters it. If it doesn't run Energy ball but instead ice beam/psychic along with surf/scald that means other bulky waters will give it trouble without setting up tail glows. another true counter is sun teams just reck manaphy. Ninetales (timid) alone can 2hit ko manaphy with solar beam while manaphys scald only does around 43%. Venasaur sets up on it then paseed to sweep. Victorybell ohko's it with either Leaf blade/solar beam (even if sun isnt up victorybell can live a ice beam). Sp saying theres no true counter to manaphy is a large overstatement.

 

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.