Why did Quagsire drop to PU?

It was like uu is gen 7, and is well known for unaware. But, in gen 8, it drops down to not ru, or even nu, but PU. The lowest tier besides unteired and fell so far. I mean yes, there’s rillaboom now but there was kartana in gen 7, which was probably more threatening thanks to beast boost, allowing it to sweep a team after ohkoing it. So why quagsire suddenly drop tiers?

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

First, here’s why Quagsire was good in gen 7 UU.

Quagsire’s ability Unaware coupled with its decent physical bulk, reliable recovery, and fantastic defensive typing allows it to check boosting threats such as Mega Aerodactyl, Cobalion, and Scizor. Because of Unaware, Quagsire fills a crucial role and fits comfortably on stall teams as a complete stop to most physical boosters. Its typing gives Quagsire key resistances to Fire, Electric, and Rock, allowing it to completely stop certain Electric-types such as Mega Manectric if they lack Grass-type coverage.

sourceOf the 4 specific Pokemon mentioned in this overview, 3 of them are banned in gen 8 UU. (Cobalion is still allowed) So there’s no rule saying Quagsire can threaten only those 4 Pokemon, right? Why can’t Quagsire check any of the new threats in gen 8 UU? The overview says Quagsire can generally threaten electrics and physical boosters.

/ds7 uu,electric type:Magneton, Manectric-Mega, Rotom-Heat, Zeraora/ds uu,electric type:Rotom-Mow, Rotom-Wash

sourceAs you can see, these are completely different sets of Pokemon. (technically they both include Rotom, but the forms and types are different) Quagsire resists every STAB attack from every common electric in gen 7 UU, and every common electric in gen 8 UU has a STAB attack that Quagsire doesn’t resist. So Quagsire is much worse at checking electrics in gen 8 UU.

About physical boosters, the average team in gen 8 UU contains 0.48 physical boosters (ie. Pokemon that often know physical attacks and swords dance, curse, or shell smash).sourceBefore gen 8 was released, swords dance alone was used by about 0.92 of all UU teams.sourceThis ratio would be even higher if I included the other physical attack raising moves. (note that these areVERY ROUGH ESTIMATES, but they’re probably good enough for this answer) So in gen 8 UU, less Pokemon use physical attack raising moves and are affected by Quagsire’s unaware.

Tldr Quagsire threatened Pokemon were common in gen 7 UU and are now banned in gen 8 UU, and they were replaced by Pokemon that can hit Quagsire with STAB attacks and are not affected by unaware. That’s why Quagsire is worse in gen 8 UU.

Possibly because it was now starting to get rarely used, possibly outclassed by other stallers that are immune to Quagsire’s Toxic and can Toxic it back such as Toxapex and Amoonguss, which are both in OU. Its usage stats started to get lower too, as people find OU mons like Rillaboom and Amoonguss defeating it with their STAB grass type moves. Where did I know its usage stats dropped? Well, its here:

Once upon a time an OU Pokémon by usage, Quagsire has experienced anextreme drop in usage throughout the last year. During the finalusage-based tier update of Generation VI, Quagsire dropped to PU.

Source if you want to read the complete article at Smogon.

Although there will be a suspect test for Quagsire in PU, I’m pretty sure it won’t get back to OU. It gets wrecked easily, getting Taunted by Mandibuzz and Mew, as back in the good old days where no one knew how to counter Quagsire’s Curse+Toxic+Recover stall, but nowadays, its easy to predict its a staller set.

A large number of the common stallbreakers that the PU tier has tooffer happen to be Pokémon that require boosting moves in order toperform their role. Quagsire is the only PU viable Pokémon with accessto Unaware, an ability that allows it to reliably handle a number ofcommon boosting Pokémon such as Swords Dance Pawniard, Calm MindDuosion, and Substitute + Swords Dance Bouffalant. Quagsire’sintroduction to the tier has severely constricted the pool of viablestallbreaking options, making stall much more difficult to beatbecause it limits the number of Pokémon that are able to do so.Quagsire’s ability to blanket check such a wide range of stallbreakersworks fantastically with other, more passive Pokémon such as Muk orBronzor, which can be fantastic supportive Pokémon on defensivebuilds, but can otherwise suffer due to their innate passivity. Thisfurther accentuates the matchup problems, as it means that there is aseemingly larger number of games coming down to whether the stall teamcan handle whichever stallbreakers are present in any given matchrather than how well they play.

This is the pro-ban argument from a Smogon article. But Quagsire dominates the PU tier, at least its what they’re trying to say. So, putting it in PUBL or NU is what might happen if the pro-ban argument wins. If the usage stats get higher, Quagsire would probably place his comfortable butt on RU’s chair.

Source at the same article as above.

Now, who won?Quagsire’s not gonna be in PU anymore, since 30 out of 49 voters voted BAN.

With over 30 of the 49 eligible voters voting ban, Quagsire’s stay inPU proved to be short lived, as it was swiftly banned.

Source is the also the same as above.

In my conclusion, it was just because there were many mons that make easy of Quagsire, as mentioned above. But soon, Quagsire won’t be in PU anymore, as people said it was too broken to be in the PU tier. Or, what I mean by broken is too OP.

Here’s a PU set most people use when playing with a Quagsire:

Quagsire @ Leftovers Ability: Unaware EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpeRelaxed Nature- Scald- Earthquake- Curse- Recover

There’s an explanation for it and everything, but since I’ve come to my conclusion, these are the reasons why Quagsire went down to PU, but soon not anymore.

Hope this helps:)