SS suspect (Expirement)

The plan:

Use two teams, a regular average balanced stall/wall team. And a super shell smash max power abuse team. See who wins the fastest, safest, and if it really is broken.



The teams:



The regular: Designed to be very exploitable, and just generally all around weak to any good player with strong offensive presence.

Contains:

- Fur Coat Eternatus, dynamax canons and knock offs.

- Fur Coat Melmetal, the standard.

- Poison Heal Reshiram without shellsmash.

- Ice Scales umbreon, the myth, the legend, with knock off and fishious rend.

- Prankster Snorlax without any status infliction, and no defogging or hazard removal, just haze, healbell and Recover with U-turn in case I'm taunted.

- Imposter Wobbuffet. Choice scarfed.



As you can tell. Any special attacker or it's mother or any phsyical attacker with mixed capability can blow through this team. Reshiram, Kyruem Black/White, literaly even seismitoad if it had fishious rend and Earth power, Mewtwo's stored power if snorlax is down, Obstagoon, the list goes on. We wouldn't be here if smash wasn't so applicable to alot of pokemon, after all.



The Mother of all smash:

- Reshiram, Life orb, Desolate land, Dynamax, Blue flare, Bolt beak, smash.

- Mewtwo, Focus-sash Simple, Stored power, Moonblast, Blueflare, smash.

- Necrozma Dusk mane,Focus-sash Dazzling, Sunsteel, Photon, Blueflare, smash.

- Zekrom, Intrepid sword, Life orb, Dragon darts, bolt beak, recover, smash.

- Darmanintan, Intrepid sword with focus sash, Standard Vcreate icicle earth closecombat.

- Zamazenta, Furcoat rocky helmet rapid spin and anchor shot.



If your mind didn't already figure out how this team handles practically every situation, allow me to enlighten you.



Reshiram's desolate land allows it's blue flare to 70% literaly everything who's name isn't Primarina, and if primarina is sent out, well, you know what's about to happen. If Reshiram is prankster cucked with haze, the hazer will die, allowing the rest of my team to go wild thanks to the Dragon's pure raw blue flare power. Dynamax at x2 also takes care of any primodial abusers, Ferrothorn takes 55% and above, being unable to switch in, maximizing the claim of "You'll have to lose some pokemon to defend against it". All around generally undefendable, even with "Really hard to play against" unaware type-null.

Whatever that abomination is supposed to be.



252+ SpA Life Orb Reshiram Blue Flare vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Type: Null in Harsh Sunshine: 253-298 (64.2 - 75.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO.


There is no escape.



To not make this post too long, Mewtwo kicks any Ice scales/unaware with it's ability to power through everything.



+4 252 SpA Mewtwo Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Type: Null: 717-844 (181.9 - 214.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+4 252+ SpA Mewtwo Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Unaware Type: Null: 262-310 (66.4 - 78.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO



+4 252 SpA Mewtwo Stored Power (260 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Ice Scales Primarina: 513-605 (140.9 - 166.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO


It's not even a close range, it just demolishes things. And if there's a dark type, click moon blast. If the dark type is also a prankster, and also specially defensive, you can even run secret sword if you're just that type of guy.



Zekrom destroys any attempts at stalling by recovering, boltbeaking through common walls and dragon dart pressuring any other attempt at focus sash setup.



Necrozma takes care of priority and smashes through furcoat/Photon geyser, enough to kill any fur coat eternatus or unaware pokemon, as Photon bypasses unaware.



Darmintan is just there for raw V-create spam, and it's also wobbuffet turn 1 bait, as it lives, and kills right back with a max quake.



You get the point. It's a good team, abuses what it does best.



The results:

Dimrahsmash was me using the average team, as you can see, I only really lost once, and that's because I accidentally clicked the wrong team to go into battle with. I already claimed the reqs are too low, so I'm not really surprised, but looking at the reqs of everyone else in this thread, I think the point is clear. Despite the shellsmash spam and hundreds of attempts at exploiting this team. All I need to do is just play well. But just bare with me, atleast, as far as my reqs will show. Anything that shell smashed I could defend against, so as long as I didn't play badly.

(And yes, I did use "Dimrahsmash" because DImrah likes to play alot of stall)



I DID get bamboozled at times, and was put in a rough spot, for example, I saw a mewtwo had a toxic orb, assumed it wasn't shellsmash, and switched into my reshiram because my reshiram had spectral theif. But then it setup. ANd it killed my reshiram with stored power. And it had secret sword which heavily dented my umbreon. I was in trouble. But in the end, I still won, because snorlax came in, got hurt too, but was able to uturn back out into wobbufet and nab the final needed hit.



Does this mean shellsmash really is broken?



No. I don't think so. Misplaying will end up with you being punished. That's just how it is. I can agree that shell smash's threat was so great, that even 1 turn of misplay warranted the lose of nearly half of my team. That's crazy, almost uncontrollable, if they had 2 mewtwos and I misplayed twice, one could assume I would've then lost. And you're probably right.



The idea is, however, if we do lose shell smash, this early on, without even seeing what the expansion gives will really, really, hurt this meta-game. Shell smash is an important part of not just hyper offense brainless spam, it's just a generally good move for balanced teams, and even some stall teams who like to run backup offensive pressure. But it isn't unstoppable. I may end up being wrong, and I'm honestly, after this expirement with the two teams, as you'll see when I tell you about my run with the shell smash super spam, starting to be undecided. As I can see that it is powerful, I did suffer from it's spam, but at the same time, if it was gone, I think I would've legitmitaley not suffered at all.



Shellsmash is so integral to helping with breaking through teams by causing threat, without it, you'd be left with quiver dance and shift gear. They're both not terrible moves by any means, but you're never gona threaten a team directly by taking 2-3 turns of setup as opposed to 1. It's BH, things move both incredibly slowly in stall games and stupid fast in offensive duels. All I really want is for BH to not die the same way shared power did, with it's 500 turns and really odd core sets that just made you want to forfiet because it feels like a waste of time. Don't get me wrong, I was toping shared power for half of it's life, but I stopped playing it when I realized every other battle is going to be 200 turns. You can make the argument that "Well, BH just may not be the game for you, then." But I really do enjoy the game! It's just that I don't enjoy pointless gameplay all about having to wait 16 to 48 turns for either side to run out of spectral theif or haze so then they could have a small glimmer of hope at punching holes in the opposing team.



As for my shell smash team, It went fast.



The only trouble I ran into was people who expected the shellsmash, pulled out Spectral theif/Haze out of no where (Like spectral theif Eternatus that one time). It highighted to me shell smash's issues, shell smash teams, if brainlessly spamming, are easily destroyed by:



A wobbufet who steals your setup and is choice scarfed. Worse if it stole something like Zekrom, dragon darting and bolt beaking through any single member of your team or focus sash.



Counter-play, counter-setup or just walling. It's only logical, but shellsmash is inheritly weak to itself thanks to it's def drop, so if you get hit, or get setup on while you attempt it, you'll just die. Or as the situation with mewtwo and a dark type above, if the enemy happens to have one of the 17 pokemon that can mess you up, all that momentum is gone and now YOU have to sacrifice a pokemon or two in order to get it back.



Prankster mons are also annoying, unaware a little bit of the same, anything that effictively stops you ruins you. Clicking shellsmash is an easy task, but brainlessly using it won't get you anywhere if the enemy is atleast half-decent.



Sorry for the long rant, but in the end, I really did get two conflicting pieces of information with the test, even when I went as far as 1700 in my previous ladders on BH, before Shellsmash was suspecting, during the dynamax suspect days, my opinion is the same. It's too early for a ban of it, I think it's certainly problematic at most occurrences, and it can warrant misplay, but I think it's too much to lose in the face of what BH may end up as in the future. Good luck, dear meta-game.