Active Recent Smogon Bans! Mega Salamence and Mega Rayquaza!

[Matt_192]

By now, most of you have heard that the Salamencite has been banned from Smogon OU play. However, new developments have started today involving the tiering of Mega Rayquaza...

Smogon is to create an "AG" tier, or "Anything Goes," where the only clause is Endless Battle Clause. This means that all other clauses, like Sleep, Evasion, OHKO, etc, will not exist. It will be impossible to use Mega Rayquaza in Ubers, and I will now outline the ban.

As for this AG tier, here are the classifications of how a Pokemon gets banned from the Ubers metagame:

• This Pokemon/ability/etc unreasonably raises the volatility of Ubers. Think Moody or OHKO spam.
• This Pokemon is ~unreasonably~ centralizing. Think 70%+ usage. Even Xerneas was (I think) ~45% usage.
• Related to the above point: This Pokemon is obviously in a different power bracket than most of the other Ubers. I argued earlier that M-Ray was in a different power bracket because it is the first ~800 BST Pokemon with a useful ability and unrestricted item.
• It is no fun to play or watch matches with this Pokemon/ability/etc (henceforth just Pokemon) allowed. Having this Pokemon in Ubers makes me want to play some other meta. I would be bored as f**k to watch a match with this Pokemon allowed. This is a subjective criterion, but an important one I think: if everyone hates Ubers, then why have it? It is our obligation in such a case to try to fix it.

As for the ban of mRayquaza, I feel it is quite simple. Mega Rayquaza gets a total of 800+ BST, with an access to a large movepool and extreme stats. 180/180 attacks backed up with 115 speed AND ExtremeSpeed to utilise is one hell of a Pokemon, and it's defences aren't exactly bad either. If that wasn't bad enough, it is also the one mega that can also hold an item. Here are some quick calcs, again, taken from Smogon, to outline this monstrosity.

• 252 Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Dragon Ascent vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Palkia: 328-386 (101.8 - 119.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO - speed creeps palkia by 1 point and just out right kills it without any boosts
• 252+ Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Dragon Ascent vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Arceus: 308-363 (80.8 - 95.2%) -- 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock - 50% chance to kill standard Jolly Ekiller after rocks unboosted
• +1 252+ Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Arceus: 460-542 (103.6 - 122%) -- guaranteed OHKO - set up a dragon dance which outspeeds arceus and support without any defense dies
• +2 252 Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Primal Groudon: 372-439 (92 - 108.6%) -- 50% chance to OHKO - groudon gets outsped at +2 and just dies
• 252 Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Dragon Ascent vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Mewtwo: 356-421 (100.5 - 118.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO & 252 SpA Mega Mewtwo Y Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Delta Stream Rayquaza: 266-314 (75.7 - 89.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO - lives an ice beam from this thing and sets up or kills
• +2 252 Atk Life Orb Mega Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Mega Mewtwo Y: 389-458 (109.8 - 129.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO - ^
• +2 252 Atk Life Orb Mega Rayquaza Rayquaza Dragon Ascent vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Lugia: 390-460 (93.9 - 110.8%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO - people say Lugia is its 'best counter' and well look at this, consider on an well built hyper offense team the other team struggles to defog so rocks are up
• +1 252+ Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Brave Bird vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Lugia: 321-380 (77.3 - 91.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery - even at +1 the 'wall' dies shows you that Lugia is forced to whirlwind away whilst taking all this damage in the process as it cant really thunder-wave due to if rocks /are/ off then getting followed up b - +2 252+ Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Brave Bird vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Multiscale Lugia: 214-252 (51.5 - 60.7%) -- 94.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery - which leads to you following up the ko with espeed next turn - +2 252+ Atk Life Orb Rayquaza Extreme Speed vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Lugia: 191-225 (46 - 54.2%) -- 5.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery = dead lugia

So, Smogon are now classifying Ubers as a tier, not a banlist - this shall be called AG. So what do you guys think? Do you think Mega Rayquaza will be banned from Ubers on PerfectPokemon? Do you think that the AG banlist will come here as well? If so, which other Ubers do you think have a chance of being banned? See you next time.