Seeing a lot of people ask "Why don't they just ban Tyranitar?" Tyranitar is not OP whatsoever there are many ways to check and counter it. Permanent sand has a positive effect on the metagame overall by punishing defensive Pokemon. Watch any sandless high level game and you'll understand To ban Tyranitar would uproot the entire metagame and probably ruin it. Just to preserve an extremely niche choice that you would rarely ever see? Banning Sand Veil makes way more sense in every way Modding the game just so Cacturne can use no ability so we can preserve Cacturne is also an insanely drastic measure just for Cacturne If you want to use Cacturne so bad just play Gen 3 NU or UU where its not only legal but more viable than it would be in OU
Smogon is stubborn and extremely bias? By banning all counters. Whats the point in even allowing any creativity? Just make a single pre built team everyone must use. And if they are so hell bent over luck based strategies then just make a separate format for it. Clearly the problem is tyranitar and zapdos.
@@mycatsnameisdash Gen 3 OU has plenty of creativity and rarely bans anything. Tar and Zap are not a problem at all. This ban was 4 years ago, did you play back then during the Cacturne meta? Do you have an informed opinion with experience? I played during that time and Sand Veil stacking was seriously obnoxious, it was ruining the game for everyone
People often forget one of the main reasons Garchomp was banned in Gen 4 and the first third of Gen 5 was due to Sand veil doing its goofiness to let it setup, so attempting to do that with other mons in other gens makes sense.
Garchomp probably would have been banned in generation 4 even if it had a different ability cause it's speed tier and coverage was too much. Salamence was also banned that generation with dragon dance and having similar coverage but yes garchomp felt that much more problematic with sand veil added to it.
Garchomp was way stronger than cacturne though. It's typing and stats made it the single strongest pokemon ever made until that point. he probably wouldve been banned without sand veil. I think a lot of people forget that garchomp for some unholy reason has 2 more base speed than every other major threat in the game. Meaning it will always outspeed
What makes the Cacturne story so hysterical is that there were some sand teams that used Cacturne alongside its pre-evolution, Cacnea. I believe it was used to make a point of Sand Veil’s uncompetitiveness, similar to how Diglett was used to make a point about Arena Trap.
Not really sure how Diglett made Arena Trap unviable. The thing about Dugtrio is that its stats are good enough to punish a Pokemon stuck by Arena Trap. Diglett's speed, while relatively good, isn't good enough to outspeed the glass cannons and its attack stat falls short to threaten anything with moderate bulk. If you can hit it neutrally, it will fall and ground doesn't resist much. Cacnea at least gets the necessary tools to replicate Cacturne even if a single stage of evasion is really a mild inconvenience.
@@PIKMINROCK1Diglett would be used either to trap 4x Ground weaks and still 1 or 2HKO them with Focus Sash or do things like Protect and Focus Sash to stack turns of Toxic damage. It could guarantee four ticks and switch to an appropriate defensive wall. It was basically trading Diglett for whichever mon of yours that got Poisoned.
You forgot to mention the best part: people weren’t just using teams with gligar and cacturne. They were even using CACNEA of all things, and it was actually working. Triple sand veil was all over the ladder and I’m pretty sure it was even brought to tournament at least once
Evasion is just a such an unfun mechanic in Pokemon. It feels like a holdover from the series' design conception as a single player game, having to pray that your auto-crit Slash will strike some rando trainer's Grimer before you get whittled down by repeated weak attacks and status. When 2 players are playing against each other, it simply serves as a means to introduce additional luck into the equation, and in a way which will inherently make the losing party feel aggrieved and unjustified. I have no issue with accuracy-affecting moves, since there is simple, universal counterplay in switching. I also take less issue with the "Obscured" mechanic from Legends Arceus, since it last for a timer of a reliable 3 turns for most normal moves, and 4 turns for some signature moves. There are no stage modifers beyond the first stage, and casting it again simply resets the "Obscured" turn count. It's not my favorite mechanic, but if Game Freak replaced evasion and accuracy modifers with "Obscured", then I would take less issue with evasion. I might even be okay with allowing it into competitive formats, even if it does go a little against the spirit of the game.
@@nathanpapp432 Taking a quick look at the list of moves that don't check accuracy, none of those are any good. They are either status moves like confide that won't help you make meaningful progress against evasion stalling, have low BP (all in the 60s before smart strike), are conditional (Blizzard/Thunder in specific weather, Body Slam's unique interaction with minimize), or require you to waste entire turns (mind reader/lock on) and therefore losing to evasion staples like substitute. Attempting to make this argument reveals that you are either ignorant or acting in bad faith.
You’re a legend jim, also rip the cactus 🌵, his downfall must have been orchestrated by one of iron mugulusis’ travels to the past, where he removed cacturne’s other ability, rough skin
I mean they both can't take any hits. Rough skin makes more sense on Sharpedo though, since that's exactly what sharks have in real life. They should give cacturne a spikes equivalent of toxic debris. @@santasangre996
Check out our Gen 3 OU Commentary at Revival Tournaments: www.youtube.com/@RevivalTournaments/videos Outro Music by Pete S - open.spotify.com/track/1x5XyA7jac3Hv8ha0ra76G?si=6aZiwsiVSPSCP1-Bq89b-w Jim's Good Mugs - jimothycool.com/
Every passing video from Jimothy Cool gets even more ridiculous. Can’t wait for the video where he explains how Constrict was banned in generation 2 CU.
For everyone down here saying "Why don't you just use Aerial Ace/change weather with a move?" or even thinking of adding to the pile of idiots saying it: This is why you're either stuck at
@FF8IrvineFan Can you come up with a solution proper or are you just going to spout some more unskilled player platitudes? Don't talk about comp if you don't play it.
Jimothy, please never change your highly characteristic way of speaking, it's like 30% of the reason I enjoy your content so much. The super exlicit over-explaining of things you bring up is fantastic "a pokemon introduced in the generation 2 video games"
Thank you! Some people in this comment section have been saying that anyone stuff along the lines of "Anyone who suggest using aerial ace is an idiot who doesn't know what competitive playing is." which is so uncalled for. If they don't want to use aerial ace that's fine, but saying that anyone who suggests using is an idiot is just stupid. Who are they to tell you how to play? Besides, dugtrio ran aerial ace to hit breloom and heracross anyway so it's not like dugtrio could hit cacturn through double team.
@@Dazzalingfossil6040 The issue is that dugtrio is the only mon that can viably run aerial ace. Every other mon that can learn it has multiple options that are better 99% of the time with cacturne in the tier. It also doesn't help that ariel ace from dug doesn't ohko Cacturne even if it doesn't invest into defense, with bulky Cacturne even avoiding a 2hko. Add on lefties, giga drain, and possibly leech seed if it had a sub up and suddenly dug doesn't even do much of anything before getting ko'd itself. Also uninvested zapdos and moltres also fail to ohko cacturne(and actually deal a lot less damage then dug). Heck, nothing in OU actually ohkos cacturne outside of CB mence, and that's not even guaranteed.
A lot of the “I don’t play Smogon Competitive” people complain whenever they see a ban without even understanding how bans work and why bans happen lol. They just brag how they can just “check” it with random bs just like how they do in their game cartridge against an AI player.
OMG i watched your roselia video earlier today, and when you mentioned cacturne was banned i got ultra curious!!! I didnt expect this vid to come out so fast, thanks!!
We should allow Cacturne with the ------- ability. This is an ability you can get via glitches on a Pokemon that only has 1 ability. Gen 3 and 4 LC Metas require glitches, make g3 ou do it.
That's a drastic measure just to preserve a mostly irrelevant niche Pokemon And it opens up a can of worms, what if Slaking could use the same glitch. Would certain Ubers be OU level without their abilities? Preserving Cacturne just isn't that important imo
So in other words, Sand Veil is BANNED, and Cacturne's ONLY ability is Sand Veil. Sand Veil is basically getting a free Double Team in Sandstorm, and it was getting so out of hand that just to prove a *point* even Cactnea and Gligar were being used just to show that it's not the Pokemon that's the problem, it's the Ability,.. It just so happens that unfortunately it's Cacturne's only ability.
I think it's always important to highlight that trying to abuse evasion is not only an annoying, non-skill based strategy, it's also generally a very poor performing one. To rely on evasion strats is to basically tie your entire strategy to at least 1 coin flip level (or often worse) roll of the dice. +1 evasion is not significant enough to be relied on. +1 evasion turns 100% accurate moves into 75% accurate moves. It's still more likely that your opponent will hit you then miss you. Typically evasion abusing strats are highly dependent on dodging multiple attacks and chaining evasion boost, but this all falls appart if rolls that are usually not in your favor (because you are only boosting 1 stage of evasion at a time) dont fall your way at the start of the chain. Every evasion strat basically starts by relying on bad odds falling in your favour. Not only is it subjecting your opponent to frustrating gameplay, it's probably not even going to work. That a huge factor in why it deserves to be banned. Just look at the scenarios in this video. 75% of the time Moltres lands the flamethrower and sand veil Cacturne achieves nothing, or 25% hax allows the cacturne user free spikes. It's bad gameplay either way, and one player actively chose to force it to be that way. I'm not saying that evasion cant be abused, it certainly can. What I saying is that there is a reason why you never see evasion strats in VGC despite there being no such bans. It's a bad strategy that not only turns the game into an rng fest, but barely even works in your favor.
Evasion would be a lot better in Singles than in VGC. You can create multiple chances to miss with Substitute, you can't get double targeted, even if they hit you can stall with Substitute until Sandstorm chip brings them into KO range, you can Leech Seed to gain back Substitute health... Hell, just the concept of forcing a switch with a counter makes Evasion more valuable.
Cacturne evasion was seemingly not only annoying, but actually good. It saw a lot of high-level use. Also, in BO1 VGC events, Alolan Muk sometimes appears as an evasion abuser.
Fun fact: Cacturne was a perfect counter to Dracovish rampant in gen 8, thats a shame that it was not present in the game and only was possible in Showdown stuff like national dex.
Was not expecting a Glidus shoutout in this video but he deserves it. One of the few Game of Thrones / ASOIAF RUclipsrs that gives me hope in that cesspool of a community
Evasion isn't the one thats not competitive, it's more so the lack of good no miss moves even in current gen. In other non pokemon competitive games, evasion is very much viable and not broken
I remember in Diamond when I almost got swept by a wild Cacturn. Had I not had revives and a Snowver I was training, or if I knew Sand Viel was a thing and switched to Snover from the start. I forgot how much of my main team I had that time though.
No miss moves are weak and would only be used for those pokemon, ontop of most of the mons that have it already wanting to run 4 other moves. As for changing weather, you generally need to build your team around that, with such teams also being geared to take out Ttar.
I never play competitive, but wouldn't Salamance or about any flying pokemon with aerial ace completely wall it? Spikes would have no effect, flying types would resist or at least be neutral to grass, and AA would eliminate the "priblematic" evasion. After looking at what can learn AA practically every flying type and several physical non-flying types can learn it Sounds like to me people just didn't plan enough? What am i missing?
@namelesscage issue with that is Aerial Ace isn't a move you want taking up a moveslot on those Pokemon in any other situation. If there's a Pokemon that's forcing you to run suboptimal sets just so you don't get destroyed by it, then there's a big problem with that Pokemon because you're hurting your matchups against those that aren't using Cacturne.
@@CaptainJLinebeck me personally I would just land the hit because I, some random guy on the internet you've never met, is absolutely the most skilled pokemon player ever
@@namelesscageExcept Cacturne isn't actually an offensive threat, it abuses subseed, so just resisting grass doesn't actually help much. Being immune to spikes does help, but sand and toxic hurt most of those mons and none are immune to subseed. Not to mention aerial ace is just too weak to work on non 4x weaks.
It's banned from the higher tiers, so it never rises out of RU, and thanks to the ancient paradox form of Gholdengo called Old Money buying out the RU council, this clearly-way-too-strong meta-defining threat is allowed in RU anyway. It should really be in OUBL.
I dont want gen 3 videos but you connecting the roselia (my favorite pokemon) and catcurne story was so amazing and even this videos title is interesting. Do you usually connect other stories like this also?
It would be interesting to see how good Cacturne would be if the evasion aspect of sand veil was removed but the immunity to sand chip was kept. I don't think Smogon would do this, but it would be cool to see what niche he could fill.
He already well showed what it was doing / could do in the first half of the video. It doesn't take much imagination to see how valuable and viable it would be if one's familiar with the metagame, especially if one already has experience/knowledge of non-OU spikers in OU.
First Cacturne and then Gligar... I shudder to think what kind of havoc Iron Glidus, the future paradox form of Gligar, could wreak on the OU metagame. I hope Jimothy Cool will shed light on this impending threat to our world.
Sandslash is banned in Gen 3 OU for the same reason. If Sandslash had Rough Skin instead of Sand Veil, might it have a role in Gen 3 OU as a defensive Rock resist?
Thank you for following up after the Roselia video you posted yesterday. After you dropped the bombshell of Cacturne being banned I've been going crazy wanting to know why.
I imagine there would’ve an upsurge of sets running aerial ace or faint attack right or something to change the weather. I don’t see how it Cacturne itself was hard to counter. Gligar on the other hand is different.
1. Aerial Ace is weak. Without STAB, its 60 BP won’t even deal much against the Cactus. 2. Faint Attack is irrelevant. Dark type is not effective. 3. Changing the weather sounds fine until you realize that Tyrannitar can just come back later.
It's really a shame. I remember CALLOUS posting his Cacturne team, and he had a cool niche of stall and winning free turns with Needle Arm and Sand Veil. Absolutely annihilated stall teams.
It's alright guys, Mug doesn't have stab on scald and we can band together like a falinks and tank a neutral hit. We just have to pray it doesn't have any priority or we're done for
Cacturne has been my favorite since i was a kid and i've spent years believing that its almost unusable in just about every format, so this was crazy for me to learn about.
I'm impressed with how the main strategy linked to Cacturne fits with its theme. Even though it's very annoying to face and then receive a well-deserved ban, I'm happy when it happens.
I’m kinda bummed that you didn’t mention Cacnea’s usage. To emphasize how absurd Sand Veil was, teams would run both Cacturne and Cacnea on the same team to abuse sand veil shenanigans. Btw what is the music used at 0:23?
Tyranitar is so prevalent that constant sand is nearly guaranteed unless you are actively working against it as part of your win condition. Wouldn't help very much and would turn Cacturne into a bit of a matchup fish on top of an evasion abuser. That's my guess at least, as a very much non-expert/spectator.
Gen 5 had Sandstorm + Sand Rush complex banned in order to unban Excadrill. This resulted in Rain teams slotting in Excadrill to capitalize on enemy Tyranitars and destroy the Sand matchup. The same would happen in your scenario, especially with how ubiquitous Tyranitar is in Gen 3.
I’m proud of my Cactus boi. Cacturn was always one of my favorite Pokémon on an aesthetic level, it kind of sucked that he wasn’t very useful in a fight. It’s pleasing to hear that despite poor stats he beat the odds and proved to be such a nuisance that competitive play banned him.
Man, that background music's changing constantly. Outro music sounds familiar, too... Which game was that, I can hear the original song in my head as I'm typing... Oh yeah! Verdanturf!
Cacturn got jailed for the sins of the resident sand dinosaur that is a fixture of the OU landscape, swap the bans. Free weather support abilities, Ban Permanent weather creators
Sandstorm is a staple in the Gen 3 OU metagame, and Tyranitar is extremely popular. They aren’t going to ban Ttar just so the stupid cactus can cheese the tier.
Absolutely the correct take. Or ban running Ttar alongside Sand Veil, like they did in later gens as well. Then the opponent shoots themself in the foot by running ttar, which takes down its popularity a little.
@@11wildy63 then you’ll run into the issue of gen 5 with the complex sand rush ban, where rain teams started running excadrill, where you force sand teams in a catch 22 where they either forfeit the weather war and play with an inherent disadvantage, or you set up sand and get swept by a Pokémon so powerful that they weren’t allowed to use. Only this time that excadrill is a sub-seed staller with a 25% chance to avoid all damage. Not to mention the lack of team preview in gen 3 means you can’t even attempt to play around the cacturne because you don’t even know if it’s on the team. Imagine, if you will, if every single attack against your opponent had worse odds of hitting than stone edge. That’s what sand veil does. And don’t even get me started on aerial ace, being forced to run one shitty move to deal with one shitty strategy and has no real utility outside of that one scenario where you’re better off running literally anything else is not an answer.
Goes to show how dumb the ban is. And it's legitimately usable outside of Sandstorm because it has Rapid Spin, high Defense, and Swords Dance---lots of untapped potential right there just because a vocal minority doesn't want to accept Pokemon is luck-based.
So glad that the scarecrow joke made its way here to the main channel. The other day I woke my dad up laughing about it and told him the joke. He loved it.
Seeing a lot of people ask "Why don't they just ban Tyranitar?"
Tyranitar is not OP whatsoever there are many ways to check and counter it.
Permanent sand has a positive effect on the metagame overall by punishing defensive Pokemon. Watch any sandless high level game and you'll understand
To ban Tyranitar would uproot the entire metagame and probably ruin it. Just to preserve an extremely niche choice that you would rarely ever see?
Banning Sand Veil makes way more sense in every way
Modding the game just so Cacturne can use no ability so we can preserve Cacturne is also an insanely drastic measure just for Cacturne
If you want to use Cacturne so bad just play Gen 3 NU or UU where its not only legal but more viable than it would be in OU
Seeing a lot of people thinking, "Why are we protecting sand teams with a format ban? Just don't put up sandstorm and Cacturne sucks"
I actually really like giving cacturne an option to have no ability for emulator play, tho I'm sure it would set a dangerous precedent
As someone who used to run the Sand Veil cheese, Gligar was a more annoying abuser of it anyway. The problem with Cacturne is its only ability.
Smogon is stubborn and extremely bias?
By banning all counters. Whats the point in even allowing any creativity? Just make a single pre built team everyone must use. And if they are so hell bent over luck based strategies then just make a separate format for it.
Clearly the problem is tyranitar and zapdos.
@@mycatsnameisdash Gen 3 OU has plenty of creativity and rarely bans anything. Tar and Zap are not a problem at all. This ban was 4 years ago, did you play back then during the Cacturne meta? Do you have an informed opinion with experience? I played during that time and Sand Veil stacking was seriously obnoxious, it was ruining the game for everyone
"This absolute prick..."
Tell us how you really feel, Jim.
Pun had to be intended there. It just had to be. I sure got a kick out of it
It sounds like Cacturne was outstanding in his field.
I've commented before the end of the video, folks.
Nice one👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
HE CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!!! THIS IS INSANE!!!
Beat me to it, darn.
Stole this comment from the last video
Cacturne is completely banned from competitive play in Gen3 OU.
Chess jumpscare
what is mr. chess doing here
Thankyou i couldn't read the title so this comment was a life saver
Chesscom?
Which sounds insane
People often forget one of the main reasons Garchomp was banned in Gen 4 and the first third of Gen 5 was due to Sand veil doing its goofiness to let it setup, so attempting to do that with other mons in other gens makes sense.
Garchomp probably would have been banned in generation 4 even if it had a different ability cause it's speed tier and coverage was too much. Salamence was also banned that generation with dragon dance and having similar coverage but yes garchomp felt that much more problematic with sand veil added to it.
Garchomp was way stronger than cacturne though. It's typing and stats made it the single strongest pokemon ever made until that point. he probably wouldve been banned without sand veil.
I think a lot of people forget that garchomp for some unholy reason has 2 more base speed than every other major threat in the game. Meaning it will always outspeed
Along with it using Yache berry too. So even if you managed to hit it with ice beam or something it would survive and KO you
Articuno got banned to ubers in BDSP because of snow cloak being its only ability
Sand veil turned an op beast into a nearly impossible to kill op beast in sand. It’s only checks now have to handle evasive strats
The right amount of deadpan seriousness in the delivery of “gligar is a youtuber that uploads GoT analysis videos”
What makes the Cacturne story so hysterical is that there were some sand teams that used Cacturne alongside its pre-evolution, Cacnea. I believe it was used to make a point of Sand Veil’s uncompetitiveness, similar to how Diglett was used to make a point about Arena Trap.
Not really sure how Diglett made Arena Trap unviable. The thing about Dugtrio is that its stats are good enough to punish a Pokemon stuck by Arena Trap. Diglett's speed, while relatively good, isn't good enough to outspeed the glass cannons and its attack stat falls short to threaten anything with moderate bulk. If you can hit it neutrally, it will fall and ground doesn't resist much.
Cacnea at least gets the necessary tools to replicate Cacturne even if a single stage of evasion is really a mild inconvenience.
@@PIKMINROCK1Diglett would be used either to trap 4x Ground weaks and still 1 or 2HKO them with Focus Sash or do things like Protect and Focus Sash to stack turns of Toxic damage. It could guarantee four ticks and switch to an appropriate defensive wall. It was basically trading Diglett for whichever mon of yours that got Poisoned.
I had blood drawn today. I can confirm that needle arm does in fact have a 30% chance to flinch.
You forgot to mention the best part: people weren’t just using teams with gligar and cacturne. They were even using CACNEA of all things, and it was actually working. Triple sand veil was all over the ladder and I’m pretty sure it was even brought to tournament at least once
My guess: Sand Veil
Cacturne was also discovered to collude with Gligar to create those highly explosive Game of Thrones analyses. That's another reason
Wrong. In the video he says it's because Cacturne means "Son of a dog" in indonesian
He is in fact out standing in his field.
@@santasangre996this is insane
Aerial Ace: my time to shine
Instead of completely banning cacturne, they should have incompletely banned him. its sprite would just be a disembodied set of cactus arms and legs
What a Cacturne of events 😮
I appreciate the joke. Thank you
Cacturne used pocket sand. It's super effective
My guess: He was Outstanding in his field
Edit: This is insane
Classic evasion moment
Evasion is just a such an unfun mechanic in Pokemon. It feels like a holdover from the series' design conception as a single player game, having to pray that your auto-crit Slash will strike some rando trainer's Grimer before you get whittled down by repeated weak attacks and status. When 2 players are playing against each other, it simply serves as a means to introduce additional luck into the equation, and in a way which will inherently make the losing party feel aggrieved and unjustified.
I have no issue with accuracy-affecting moves, since there is simple, universal counterplay in switching.
I also take less issue with the "Obscured" mechanic from Legends Arceus, since it last for a timer of a reliable 3 turns for most normal moves, and 4 turns for some signature moves. There are no stage modifers beyond the first stage, and casting it again simply resets the "Obscured" turn count.
It's not my favorite mechanic, but if Game Freak replaced evasion and accuracy modifers with "Obscured", then I would take less issue with evasion. I might even be okay with allowing it into competitive formats, even if it does go a little against the spirit of the game.
@@BelugaTheHutt Arent there lots of attacks that guarantee hits? Sounds like the pokemon player base is just super whiney.
@@nathanpapp432 Taking a quick look at the list of moves that don't check accuracy, none of those are any good. They are either status moves like confide that won't help you make meaningful progress against evasion stalling, have low BP (all in the 60s before smart strike), are conditional (Blizzard/Thunder in specific weather, Body Slam's unique interaction with minimize), or require you to waste entire turns (mind reader/lock on) and therefore losing to evasion staples like substitute. Attempting to make this argument reveals that you are either ignorant or acting in bad faith.
You’re a legend jim, also rip the cactus 🌵, his downfall must have been orchestrated by one of iron mugulusis’ travels to the past, where he removed cacturne’s other ability, rough skin
That even makes sense for a cactus lil
Finally, a video on this Ubers Level Threat
were you paid by Old Money to say this?
@@sejt23 Gholdengo Investments has never bribed the OU Council of any generation
@@Wing_cap It seems as if Gholdengo’s ability “Good as Gold” has blocked my move “Question”, as it is a status move.
@@Wing_cap as if
shame for having a framed reply
Imagine being a funny cactus but being punished for sins you did not commit of your own volition. This is insane.
Cacturne ABSOLUTELY performed sins bro
Did you see the shit eating grin on cacturnes face, bro absolutely knew what he was doing
I had just watched your Roselia video haha, feels like a treat just for me to catch this as you released it.
I just wish our prickly friend was given an ability other than Sand Veil in gen 3, like if it had Water Absorb that it enjoys in later generations.
Maybe give him just the sandstorm immunity
It should have rough skin.
@@HiddenWendude is ten times spikier than Druddigon but he doesn't have rough skin. Sadge
@@HiddenWenthat would have been cool in gen 3. Good thing they gave it to Sharpedo though, a mon that can barely even take a Tail Whip
I mean they both can't take any hits. Rough skin makes more sense on Sharpedo though, since that's exactly what sharks have in real life. They should give cacturne a spikes equivalent of toxic debris. @@santasangre996
glidus jump scare got me
:0
cacturne's tied for being my favourite pokemon, but it just so happened to commit heinous war crimes in gens 3 and 4
I gather from your profile picture that you are quite fond of cactuses…and I don’t blame you. 🌵
The cactus truly is the greatest of plants 🌵
im guessing maractus is your other favorite?
Check out our Gen 3 OU Commentary at Revival Tournaments:
www.youtube.com/@RevivalTournaments/videos
Outro Music by Pete S - open.spotify.com/track/1x5XyA7jac3Hv8ha0ra76G?si=6aZiwsiVSPSCP1-Bq89b-w
Jim's Good Mugs - jimothycool.com/
Cacturne is completely banned from competitive play, in Gen 3 OU. Which sounds insane
This is a Pokemon ranked in NU
And in gen 3 NU, a format with a lower power level.
Cacturne is perfectly legal and quite commonly seen
Cacturne is perfectly legal and is quite commonly seen
Cacturne is perfectly legal and quite commonly seen
7:29 He did it.
Every passing video from Jimothy Cool gets even more ridiculous. Can’t wait for the video where he explains how Constrict was banned in generation 2 CU.
yes it's ridiculously out of character for Jimothy Cool to make a video pertaining to the gen 3 ou metagame
For everyone down here saying "Why don't you just use Aerial Ace/change weather with a move?" or even thinking of adding to the pile of idiots saying it:
This is why you're either stuck at
@FF8IrvineFan Can you come up with a solution proper or are you just going to spout some more unskilled player platitudes?
Don't talk about comp if you don't play it.
Cacturne not having Rough Skin instead of Sand Veil feels like a missed opportunity.
Jimothy, please never change your highly characteristic way of speaking, it's like 30% of the reason I enjoy your content so much.
The super exlicit over-explaining of things you bring up is fantastic
"a pokemon introduced in the generation 2 video games"
I forgot Glidus' actual name because of you and had to go through my subs to find it
Neat fact about Gligar, didn't know that.
Aerial Ace suddenly looking kind’ve attractive again
Thank you! Some people in this comment section have been saying that anyone stuff along the lines of "Anyone who suggest using aerial ace is an idiot who doesn't know what competitive playing is." which is so uncalled for. If they don't want to use aerial ace that's fine, but saying that anyone who suggests using is an idiot is just stupid. Who are they to tell you how to play? Besides, dugtrio ran aerial ace to hit breloom and heracross anyway so it's not like dugtrio could hit cacturn through double team.
@@Dazzalingfossil6040 The issue is that dugtrio is the only mon that can viably run aerial ace. Every other mon that can learn it has multiple options that are better 99% of the time with cacturne in the tier.
It also doesn't help that ariel ace from dug doesn't ohko Cacturne even if it doesn't invest into defense, with bulky Cacturne even avoiding a 2hko. Add on lefties, giga drain, and possibly leech seed if it had a sub up and suddenly dug doesn't even do much of anything before getting ko'd itself.
Also uninvested zapdos and moltres also fail to ohko cacturne(and actually deal a lot less damage then dug). Heck, nothing in OU actually ohkos cacturne outside of CB mence, and that's not even guaranteed.
I can't believe Alt Shift X had a cameo in this video. This is insane
🐴
u have 2 be kidding me
wat da hek
what eclectic tastes you have jimberley
This is insane.
You could say that it is very dark strategy to use a Cacturne
A lot of the “I don’t play Smogon Competitive” people complain whenever they see a ban without even understanding how bans work and why bans happen lol.
They just brag how they can just “check” it with random bs just like how they do in their game cartridge against an AI player.
This is my favorite Pokemon of all time. Thank you for covering him.
OMG i watched your roselia video earlier today, and when you mentioned cacturne was banned i got ultra curious!!!
I didnt expect this vid to come out so fast, thanks!!
We should allow Cacturne with the ------- ability. This is an ability you can get via glitches on a Pokemon that only has 1 ability. Gen 3 and 4 LC Metas require glitches, make g3 ou do it.
That's a drastic measure just to preserve a mostly irrelevant niche Pokemon
And it opens up a can of worms, what if Slaking could use the same glitch. Would certain Ubers be OU level without their abilities?
Preserving Cacturne just isn't that important imo
@@jimothycool yeah I was mostly just shit posting
This is insane.
@@jimothycool i just wanted to say out loud that lc requires glitches lol
That could be a vid..
Why This Pokemon Format NEEDS Glitches.
Game Freak: Samd Veil waspretty cool in Gen 3, why don't we put it on something better?
DP players: Oh god no!
So in other words, Sand Veil is BANNED, and Cacturne's ONLY ability is Sand Veil.
Sand Veil is basically getting a free Double Team in Sandstorm, and it was getting so out of hand that just to prove a *point* even Cactnea and Gligar were being used just to show that it's not the Pokemon that's the problem, it's the Ability,.. It just so happens that unfortunately it's Cacturne's only ability.
I think it's always important to highlight that trying to abuse evasion is not only an annoying, non-skill based strategy, it's also generally a very poor performing one.
To rely on evasion strats is to basically tie your entire strategy to at least 1 coin flip level (or often worse) roll of the dice. +1 evasion is not significant enough to be relied on. +1 evasion turns 100% accurate moves into 75% accurate moves. It's still more likely that your opponent will hit you then miss you.
Typically evasion abusing strats are highly dependent on dodging multiple attacks and chaining evasion boost, but this all falls appart if rolls that are usually not in your favor (because you are only boosting 1 stage of evasion at a time) dont fall your way at the start of the chain.
Every evasion strat basically starts by relying on bad odds falling in your favour. Not only is it subjecting your opponent to frustrating gameplay, it's probably not even going to work. That a huge factor in why it deserves to be banned. Just look at the scenarios in this video. 75% of the time Moltres lands the flamethrower and sand veil Cacturne achieves nothing, or 25% hax allows the cacturne user free spikes. It's bad gameplay either way, and one player actively chose to force it to be that way.
I'm not saying that evasion cant be abused, it certainly can. What I saying is that there is a reason why you never see evasion strats in VGC despite there being no such bans. It's a bad strategy that not only turns the game into an rng fest, but barely even works in your favor.
Evasion would be a lot better in Singles than in VGC. You can create multiple chances to miss with Substitute, you can't get double targeted, even if they hit you can stall with Substitute until Sandstorm chip brings them into KO range, you can Leech Seed to gain back Substitute health... Hell, just the concept of forcing a switch with a counter makes Evasion more valuable.
Cacturne evasion was seemingly not only annoying, but actually good. It saw a lot of high-level use. Also, in BO1 VGC events, Alolan Muk sometimes appears as an evasion abuser.
Fun fact: Cacturne was a perfect counter to Dracovish rampant in gen 8, thats a shame that it was not present in the game and only was possible in Showdown stuff like national dex.
Was not expecting a Glidus shoutout in this video but he deserves it. One of the few Game of Thrones / ASOIAF RUclipsrs that gives me hope in that cesspool of a community
Certified evasion moment
Jim's uncle with the JOKES, folks
Evasion isn't the one thats not competitive, it's more so the lack of good no miss moves even in current gen. In other non pokemon competitive games, evasion is very much viable and not broken
I had all but forgotten about Iron Mugulis, only for him to burn the non subs. Dastardly insane
I remember in Diamond when I almost got swept by a wild Cacturn. Had I not had revives and a Snowver I was training, or if I knew Sand Viel was a thing and switched to Snover from the start. I forgot how much of my main team I had that time though.
2:31 Cacturnedorf💀
Did no one use aerial ace? Or other no miss moves, or just change the weather
No miss moves are weak and would only be used for those pokemon, ontop of most of the mons that have it already wanting to run 4 other moves. As for changing weather, you generally need to build your team around that, with such teams also being geared to take out Ttar.
Iron Mugulis with that 180 base special attack is not to be toyed with. Please subscribe guys.
Shoutout to my old ladder hero Billy Shatner who used to run Cacturne/Cacnea, a pioneer of father/son offense
You missed saying Cacturne was "Outsanding in its field"
Oh shit
As someone who rarely plays gen 3 OU, I think it was clearly 100% absolutely positively a skill issue.
I never play competitive, but wouldn't Salamance or about any flying pokemon with aerial ace completely wall it? Spikes would have no effect, flying types would resist or at least be neutral to grass, and AA would eliminate the "priblematic" evasion.
After looking at what can learn AA practically every flying type and several physical non-flying types can learn it
Sounds like to me people just didn't plan enough? What am i missing?
@namelesscage issue with that is Aerial Ace isn't a move you want taking up a moveslot on those Pokemon in any other situation. If there's a Pokemon that's forcing you to run suboptimal sets just so you don't get destroyed by it, then there's a big problem with that Pokemon because you're hurting your matchups against those that aren't using Cacturne.
@@CaptainJLinebeck me personally I would just land the hit because I, some random guy on the internet you've never met, is absolutely the most skilled pokemon player ever
@@namelesscageExcept Cacturne isn't actually an offensive threat, it abuses subseed, so just resisting grass doesn't actually help much. Being immune to spikes does help, but sand and toxic hurt most of those mons and none are immune to subseed. Not to mention aerial ace is just too weak to work on non 4x weaks.
i've watched so many iron mugulis videos... has it ALWAYS been tiered RU? i always get distracted by the silly stats when it's on screen.
He is completely walled by Mudsdale,so the RU council decided he was okey
@@InkSams9386 that sounds fair
It's banned from the higher tiers, so it never rises out of RU, and thanks to the ancient paradox form of Gholdengo called Old Money buying out the RU council, this clearly-way-too-strong meta-defining threat is allowed in RU anyway. It should really be in OUBL.
Sounds like a meta evolving around permanent sandstorm is more of an issue
it isn't
Sounds like you've never played ADV OU before lmao
Cacturne will always be my favorite gen 3 mon, ever since I was a kid I could never do a hoenn run without my cactus
I dont want gen 3 videos but you connecting the roselia (my favorite pokemon) and catcurne story was so amazing and even this videos title is interesting. Do you usually connect other stories like this also?
Glad Gligar could still function without Sand Veil, as seen by his usage in ADV Revival.
It would be interesting to see how good Cacturne would be if the evasion aspect of sand veil was removed but the immunity to sand chip was kept. I don't think Smogon would do this, but it would be cool to see what niche he could fill.
He already well showed what it was doing / could do in the first half of the video. It doesn't take much imagination to see how valuable and viable it would be if one's familiar with the metagame, especially if one already has experience/knowledge of non-OU spikers in OU.
First Cacturne and then Gligar... I shudder to think what kind of havoc Iron Glidus, the future paradox form of Gligar, could wreak on the OU metagame. I hope Jimothy Cool will shed light on this impending threat to our world.
I wish his signature move was reworked into an accurate grass version of ceaseless edge
"Please"
"Not the cactus"
Thats all you need to know lmao
Sandslash is banned in Gen 3 OU for the same reason. If Sandslash had Rough Skin instead of Sand Veil, might it have a role in Gen 3 OU as a defensive Rock resist?
Why would that have Rough Skin? It's not a shark like Chomp or Sharpedo. Hyper Cutter would be more appropriate. due to its claws.
@Fr0stySn00ze it has a spiny back? Idk maybe poison point, it isn't a poison type but has poison attacks on level up
2:17 It took me a bit too long to remember where this music came from. This Kong really digs this tune!
Thank you for following up after the Roselia video you posted yesterday. After you dropped the bombshell of Cacturne being banned I've been going crazy wanting to know why.
ah yes, the infamous scarecrow that is weak to birds
I imagine there would’ve an upsurge of sets running aerial ace or faint attack right or something to change the weather. I don’t see how it Cacturne itself was hard to counter. Gligar on the other hand is different.
1. Aerial Ace is weak. Without STAB, its 60 BP won’t even deal much against the Cactus.
2. Faint Attack is irrelevant. Dark type is not effective.
3. Changing the weather sounds fine until you realize that Tyrannitar can just come back later.
It's really a shame. I remember CALLOUS posting his Cacturne team, and he had a cool niche of stall and winning free turns with Needle Arm and Sand Veil. Absolutely annihilated stall teams.
Cacturne Sand is simply cool.
Common Glidus Watcher W
👏
If I don't subscribe, I could be in hot water.
Kekekeke, sorry, not sorry.
It's alright guys, Mug doesn't have stab on scald and we can band together like a falinks and tank a neutral hit. We just have to pray it doesn't have any priority or we're done for
Cacturne has been my favorite since i was a kid and i've spent years believing that its almost unusable in just about every format, so this was crazy for me to learn about.
Dont forget the item lax insence or evation band, give 0.9 of aim to the opponent. 😂😂😂😂
Cacturne can lean manual Sandstorm. Lol though I doubt it isn't as annoying as permanent sand from Tyranitar.
Gen 3 meta must be terrible if such a terrible Pokémon is banned on OU.
Yeah.
I still to this day do not understand why they didnt give Cacturne Rough Skin..
ITS A FLUFFING CACTUS!
I'm impressed with how the main strategy linked to Cacturne fits with its theme. Even though it's very annoying to face and then receive a well-deserved ban, I'm happy when it happens.
did not expect the glidus reference in my jimothy content
Did Jimothy just get us to subscribe at scald point?
I’m kinda bummed that you didn’t mention Cacnea’s usage. To emphasize how absurd Sand Veil was, teams would run both Cacturne and Cacnea on the same team to abuse sand veil shenanigans. Btw what is the music used at 0:23?
Apparently, Battle For the Grand Star in Super Mario Galaxy 1.
I was hoping that was a tease for this one, this sounded interesting!
More clearance chocolates and pink-dyed cakes than I wish to admit, Sunny D
Could they have a complex ban of sandstorm + sand veil similar to drizzle + swift swim in gen 5?
Tyranitar is so prevalent that constant sand is nearly guaranteed unless you are actively working against it as part of your win condition. Wouldn't help very much and would turn Cacturne into a bit of a matchup fish on top of an evasion abuser. That's my guess at least, as a very much non-expert/spectator.
Gen 5 had Sandstorm + Sand Rush complex banned in order to unban Excadrill. This resulted in Rain teams slotting in Excadrill to capitalize on enemy Tyranitars and destroy the Sand matchup. The same would happen in your scenario, especially with how ubiquitous Tyranitar is in Gen 3.
Seeing Glidus being mentioned made me weirdly happy, he is my favourite RUclips/horse finder
We watched the False Swipe Gaming video.
I love this, id love a list of other pokemon that are completely overpowered at higher tiers but completely fine at lower tiers
Sand veil sub leech seed is hell
shoutout to the Glidus shoutout
I’m proud of my Cactus boi. Cacturn was always one of my favorite Pokémon on an aesthetic level, it kind of sucked that he wasn’t very useful in a fight. It’s pleasing to hear that despite poor stats he beat the odds and proved to be such a nuisance that competitive play banned him.
When I saw sand veil I instantly knew that would be the problem. This is insane.
At least it finally got a second ability in Water Absorb in Gen 5
Ironically, because of this, Sandslash is ALSO banned from ADV OU.
We need Iron Mugulis in Paris now
I saw the pun coming a mile away, but still laughed. Well done.
Sadly, they also banned his Needle Arm signature move 😢
Man, that background music's changing constantly. Outro music sounds familiar, too... Which game was that, I can hear the original song in my head as I'm typing...
Oh yeah! Verdanturf!
Cacturn got jailed for the sins of the resident sand dinosaur that is a fixture of the OU landscape, swap the bans. Free weather support abilities, Ban Permanent weather creators
Insanely based
Sandstorm is a staple in the Gen 3 OU metagame, and Tyranitar is extremely popular. They aren’t going to ban Ttar just so the stupid cactus can cheese the tier.
Absolutely the correct take. Or ban running Ttar alongside Sand Veil, like they did in later gens as well. Then the opponent shoots themself in the foot by running ttar, which takes down its popularity a little.
@@11wildy63The issue is what happens when you have Ttar when your opponent's running a Cacturne?
@@11wildy63 then you’ll run into the issue of gen 5 with the complex sand rush ban, where rain teams started running excadrill, where you force sand teams in a catch 22 where they either forfeit the weather war and play with an inherent disadvantage, or you set up sand and get swept by a Pokémon so powerful that they weren’t allowed to use. Only this time that excadrill is a sub-seed staller with a 25% chance to avoid all damage. Not to mention the lack of team preview in gen 3 means you can’t even attempt to play around the cacturne because you don’t even know if it’s on the team.
Imagine, if you will, if every single attack against your opponent had worse odds of hitting than stone edge. That’s what sand veil does.
And don’t even get me started on aerial ace, being forced to run one shitty move to deal with one shitty strategy and has no real utility outside of that one scenario where you’re better off running literally anything else is not an answer.
Can’t use Sandslash either due to sand veil being it’s only ability :(
Goes to show how dumb the ban is. And it's legitimately usable outside of Sandstorm because it has Rapid Spin, high Defense, and Swords Dance---lots of untapped potential right there just because a vocal minority doesn't want to accept Pokemon is luck-based.
@@yourdaganSo they should just let blatantly uncompetitive strategies in the tier?
So glad that the scarecrow joke made its way here to the main channel. The other day I woke my dad up laughing about it and told him the joke. He loved it.