Examples and getting to the point about things being unreasonable to deal with in NU The way I see it, there are a lot of Calm Mind Psychic type pokemon in NU (Uxie, Musharna, Xatu, etc.) and generally, they are checked and countered by the same things (barring an offensive Uxie with a funky coverage move or something similar to this). Because of this, you usually only have to bring one "stop" (Eviolite SD Sneasel with hazard removal (takes Signal Beams and can set up a countersweep), Liepard (more of an offensive answer), Klinklang (tanks anything and can set up a countersweep), etc.) to these pokemon and you're usually able to handle them without too much trouble. This is how things normally go - you don't have to compromise too much in your team to keep things in check and you're able to run offense without being blatantly weak to something or forced to run a very specific pokemon/set.



Another common sight in NU is Specially Offensive Fire types (Typhlosion, Mega-Camerupt, Magmortar, Pyroar, and (lol) Simisear in a rough order of viability and effectiveness). While for the aforementioned Psychics, you only needed to really carry one pokemon to keep them in check, this is rarely the case for fires; in fact, I'd say that it's an unwritten rule of NU teambuilding to carry multiple fire resists / checks unless you have one the very few full-stops to most of the fires and a lot of priority of pressure being applied on fire types conssitently, which is still a risky way to go. While there are plenty of individual pokemon who can claim to check Typhlosion (AV Hariyama, SDef Seismitoad, Bulkyish Mega Camerupt, Bulky SR Rhydon, Lanturn, Prinplup, Mantine, etc.) or Mega Camerupt (AV Hariyama, SDef Seismitoad, Prinplup, Mantine, Pelipper, etc.), a majority of them either lack survivability/recovery, cannot check all of the fires (or even multiple), don't fit onto offensive teams, and/or have other crippling flaws which make dealing with fire types a major limitation on teambuilding due to their nature in NU and the nature of their checks/counters, too. With this being said, unlike the compared Psychics, something could be done to weaken this and help free teambuilding and the tier in general IF (!!!) there is a fire type or multiple fire types that stand out as specifically hard to deal with and there can be a case made to suspect/ban them. This leads to the third question: are there fire types in NU that are suspect or ban worthy?

Some Specs Typhlosion Calcs Note: the spreads were mostly taken from the ps calc as I'm not an avid user of pokemon such as Lanturn or Prinplup and you have to take into consideration the fact that these pokemon are vulnerable to all hazard / status / other residual damage and lack recovery outside of leftovers



252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 200 HP / 56 SpD Seismitoad: 191-225 (47.6 - 56.1%) -- 25.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 200 HP / 252+ SpD Seismitoad: 140-165 (34.9 - 41.1%) -- 69.7% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 40 HP / 216+ SpD Lanturn: 144-170 (35.9 - 42.3%) -- 92.6% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 196 HP / 0 SpD Lanturn: 204-240 (46.3 - 54.5%) -- 59% chance to 2HKO

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Eviolite Prinplup: 135-159 (40.6 - 47.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Prinplup: 93-109 (28 - 32.8%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 248 HP / 96+ SpD Mantine: 102-121 (30.6 - 36.3%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 240 SpD Eviolite Rhydon: 137-162 (33 - 39.1%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO

252 SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. 0 HP / 128 SpD Assault Vest Thick Fat Hariyama: 136-162 (31.7 - 37.7%) -- 90.8% chance to 3HKO [the spread I used for this has less SDef than I usually put for some reason, so should do a few % less normally]

Mega Camel calcs

252+ SpA Sheer Force Mega Camerupt Earth Power vs. 0 HP / 212 SpD Assault Vest Hariyama: 172-204 (40 - 47.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252+ SpA Sheer Force Mega Camerupt Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 96+ SpD Mantine: 88-104 (26.4 - 31.2%) -- 16.3% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

0 Atk Sheer Force Mega Camerupt Rock Slide vs. 248 HP / 164 Def Mantine: 180-212 (54 - 63.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery [Camerupt is a bit bulkier and easier to predict with than Typhlosion because it isn't locking into a move, so I'll post this despite it being hard to nail Mantine much and Rock Slide not being a staple on Mega Camerupt - it's still a solid move on it]

252+ SpA Sheer Force Mega Camerupt Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Archeops: 196-231 (67.3 - 79.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Sheer Force Mega Camerupt Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 8 SpD Pelipper: 184-217 (56.9 - 67.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ SpA Sheer Force Mega Camerupt Earth Power vs. 200 HP / 56 SpD Seismitoad: 268-316 (66.8 - 78.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ SpA Sheer Force Mega Camerupt Earth Power vs. 200 HP / 252+ SpD Seismitoad: 196-232 (48.8 - 57.8%) -- 55.9% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery​





As you can see, Camel does quite a bit of damage and is hard to counter although it can be checked when you have the appropriate pokemon and play it properly. I'd say it's a bit less suspect worthy than Typh by virtue of it having so low speed, but I'd like to see them both suspected and there's nothing to lose from doing that (I wouldn't outright say I'm pro-ban on either, I'd be on the fence and interested to see what people have to say).​

The current state of the NU metagame is still unbalanced, in my opinion. It is true that the last suspects' outcome propelled NU from being entrenched in an abyss filled with limitations in building, due to some of the controversial threats, to an improved state, but I think there's a bit more to be done before a so-called "balance" is reached (I'd say feel free to disagree with this assessment of the metagame, but it appears as if the heavy majority of posters want a suspect of some sort, so odds are the general consensus is that another suspect should occur).When anyone with a sufficient amount of experience in NU plays, they can undoubtedly come to the conclusion that there isn't one pokemon that is as dominant and consistently effective as something like Mega-Steelix was in the past, nor is anything as conveniently uncounterable by most things as Heliolisk was. This makes things a bit more challenging as there's no "obvious" choice for a potential suspect, but something doesn't need to be blatantly overpowered (like Heliolisk was, imo) or too good not to use on many teams (like Mega Steelix was, imo) to be suspect worthy. A pokemon that simply lacks a "fair amount" of counters or is dominating the tier to a lesser extent can still be deemed banworthy if people believe it is harmful to the state of the tier and can justifiably advocate it's suspect/ban. With this being said, the logical question that comes to mind is: what pokemon lacks a "fair amount" of counters or is dominating the tier to some extent?Well, in my opinion, the generalized "specially offensive fire type" group comes to mind as you need to go out of your way to cater to these pokemon on every team (which makes things like AV Hariyama far more common than it otherwise would be on offense/balanced and Mantine more common in general). This brings another question to mind: how can one differentiate the normal, expected use of checks and counters to threats that are common in the metagame from unreasonable, being forced to go out of your way use of checks and counters to threats that are common? It's hard to put this in words, so I'll use an example or two.After going through the examples in the hide tags and thinking about the meta, the two most dominant fire types (by far) and (not coincidentally) the two most controversial pokemon in general, imo, are Typhlosion and Mega-Camerupt.Typhlosion is generally seen running a Specs or Scarf set. The former is potent beyond belief, 2hko'ing pretty much the entire unresisted metagame and doing a fair chunk to most resists, too. The latter (scarf) set is still effective and can be seen on many teams, but it is a bit easier to take on and doesn't have the ability to eventually overpower opposing threats without support and being forced out multiple times in the process of doing so. Taking this into consideration, I'll focus more on the Specs set and how it can potentially be seen as a bit too strong for the tier as it's really the only thing that may break Typhlosion. It generally runs Eruption, Fire Blast, Focus Blast, and either Hidden Power Grass or Extrasensory (depends on team, but I believe HP Grass is more common and hits more pokemon). Most of the time, however, it is just spamming Eruption if it's near full and Fire Blast otherwise as these specs boosted STAB attacks do a ton. Normal stops to offensive fire types like Seismitoad, non-rest Lanturn, Prinplup, Rhydon, Hariyama and non-rest Mantine are easily worn down to the point that they can no longer stop Typhlosion after taking a hit or two, leading to the notion that you need multiple fire checks (which I touched on in the hide tags) and the fact that this thing is arguably overpowered. With this being said, Typhlosion isn't the easiest thing to switch in and it is weak to stealth rock, so it does have cons and doesn't stand out too much as being blatantly broken.Not going to include calcs of coverage moves because that requires Typhlosion to predict the opponent's switch-in perfectly and this is mainly meant to show the power of spamming STAB Eruption and how these pokemon can't switch in multiple time given their lack of survivability and Typh's strength.Mega-Camerupt, on the other hand, isn't able to abuse fast, specs boosted attacks, but still deals a lot of damage off its sky-high special attack and with Sheer Force as its ability when mega evolved. The lack of speed and poor defensive typing can come back to hurt Mega Camerupt, but good bulk helps remedy this, so this isn't too backbreaking of a con, but it's still worth noting. Anyway, checks and counters to Camerupt are sparse, moreso than Typhlosion I'd say, but it is easier to revenge, soft-check, or at least force out Camerupt due to its lack of speed. The best answers are Mantine, Hariyama, Archeops, and Pelipper, I'd say, give or take a pokemon or two. It threatens so many teams off-the-bat upon switching in, it's not too hard to get in thanks to its bulk, and like Typhlosion, it can wear down Hariyama / non-rest Mantine / others pretty easily, but they at least have the ability to outpace and always force Camel out assuming they can pressure it offensively. Again, I'll post some relevant calcs.