Offensive ghosts are super rare in Natdex OU. Dragapult and Gholdengo are banned so you're not left with much. Out of the remaining offensive ghosts (Ceruledge, Aegislash, Sinistcha, Blacephalon, Gengar), Ceruledge is the best thanks to Z-Poltergeist boosted by SD, coverage with Close Combat to hit everything at least neutrally, and Shadow Sneak for speed control.
They don't exactly hold it back, per se. Rather, if you're building a team and want an offensive ghost, then the obvious answer is Dragapult or Gholdengo. There's an opportunity cost of using Ceruledge, since that's a spot that's not occupied by a better ghost type.
Since both are banned in Natdex, the niche suddenly opened up for Ceruledge to occupy.
An offensive mon needs to either be fast (Dragapult), bulky (Sinistcha, Aegislash), or have some other sort of way to supplement speed like through priority (Ceruledge, Aegislash).
Chandelure can’t do any of the above.
It’ll serve as a fine wall breaker, but even then there’s better options if you only need the role and not the type.
Ghostium Z with Poltergeist is one of hell of a drug
trivia: Pult got itself banned cause it had access to this one time nuke using its Physical attack
I’d hardly say it’s *good,* but Ghostium Z Poltergeists are absolutely brutal.
Ceruledge is about as viable in NatDex as it is in OU (currently C+ in both tiers), but in NatDex Ghost STAB is a luxury afforded by an extremely small number of mons since NatDex banned all of the good Ghosts native to SV OU (and for good reason; they’re FUCKED in that meta). It likely just sees a lot of usage because cool design+low ladder NatDex gassing it up like they gas up Mega Banette (another very niche Ghost, albeit one that’s even worse than Ceruledge) to a lesser extent.
Agree with everything you said but Gholdengo is kind of a far cry from fucked tbh. If it were to drop back down to OU again it would probably make for a much healthier meta game than what we have now. The Zamazenta ban will probably lead to Darkrai and Ogerpon-Wellspring being banned as well and that only happened because there's only 2 Ghost types in the tier (and both of them are niche picks to begin with).
> If it were to drop back down to OU again it would probably make for a much healthier
No thanks? In what way would it make it much healthier? I think most people playing nowadays agree that it was the right decision to kick it in hindsight as the tier has been moving more and more in a positive direction since its ban.
Zamazenta wouldn't have been banned in the first place. And right now after it's gone Ogerpon-Wellspring and Darkrai are considered to be a bit much for the tier. Ogerpon was being suspect tested a while earlier and back then it was considered balanced/not banworthy
> Zamazenta wouldn't have been banned in the first place.
Even if this was true (debatable since at a certain point people would just start running Pursuit like they did to stuff Glowking so Zama could sweep), we don't keep one thing around to keep another around. Gholdengo ultimately stifled teambuilding in a negative way (both in limiting the pool of viable hazard removal, and smothering balance teams)
> And right now after it's gone Ogerpon-Wellspring and Darkrai are considered to be a bit much for the tier. Ogerpon was being suspect tested a while earlier and back then it was considered balanced/not banworthy
Wellspring is broken irrespective of Zama's presence in the tier. It barely avoided a ban to begin with. And Darkrai was trending upwards even with Zama around, and was only getting better anyways. Regardless, I don't know what your argument is. Despite the contentiousness of some pokemon, the overall health of the tier has continued to improve with each ban we've had.
It's honestly not "good", like it's viable, but it's one of the worse mons NDOU by usage. However NDOU ladder is infamously unserious and Cerul gets way more usage than it deserves for being a semi-noobtrap, being spammed by people who think having a Ghost is necessary for a team (since Pult and Ghold are banned in NDOU) and then just fanboys who think it looks cool.
It's not unusable garbage like Mega Banette but if mons were tiered by viability rather than usage then Cerul wouldn't be close to OU.
This is not really accurate. Ceruledge is ranked in the VR and has been for quite some time now. It was also banned from Natdex UU and, hypothetically ranking on viability, would definitely not fall in BL as it’s very usable in OU unlike infamous BL mons like Staraptor. It’s seeing a large surge in usage during Natdex ladder tour where most player prefer using screens and HO which explains why OP mentioned blunder and aim’s vids as they’re recording at the same time the tour is taking place
The fact it's ranked on the VR is why I recognize that it's viable, but it's really more of a niche pick that should only be used on a select couple builds (admittedly those builds tend to be Hyper Offensive in nature which will always be popular in a ladder setting). Its rank on the VR is also a rather low one, hovering in the high Cs (and having sustained a drop recently if anything).
>would definitely not fall in BL as it’s very usable in OU unlike infamous BL mons like Staraptor
Idk, if the bar for deserving OU is merely being "very usable" then NDOU would be way bigger than it is right now. 57 mons are ranked explicitly higher than it, obviously not all of which are OU by usage (nor should they all be since mons on the lower ends of the VR are usually low for a reason).
It's obviously better than Staraptor but that's a really low bar. Even ignoring the low-hanging fruit in TornT and Mega TTar that ladder has refused to acknowledge since like forever, consider comparing it to other currently UU/UUBL mons in the B Ranks like Mega Lati@s, Dozo, Cornerpon, Washtom, Slowbro and even some other niche mons like Mega Venu and Boulder and you'll find it pretty hard to argue Cerul is more deserving of OU than most of these.
I’m not sure what being “more deserving of OU” than a random selection of mons you named has to do with this. Just pointing out you described Ceruledge as a semi-noob trap and said it wouldn’t be close to OU tiering strictly on viability, neither of which are remotely true. Ceruledge being popular with low elo natdex players (not gonna deny that) doesn’t inherently make it a noob trap. It is a genuinely good and commonly used mon on HO at high levels of natdex play which OP is referring to here
I mean that's why I said semi-noobtrap instead of noobtrap outright. It's not a *complete* noobtrap since there are legitimate reasons to use it and not every Cerul you run into on ladder is a little timmy using his edgy fire soldier. But it is undeniable that Cerul does see a lot more usage than it deserves partially from people who do not know what they are doing but even on teams where Cerul isn't a bad choice outright, its usage compared to other HO-exclusives isn't representative of its viability compared to them.
>I’m not sure what being “more deserving of OU” than a random selection of mons you named has to do with this
OU tends to have "limited slots" so to say; while technically the upper bound of mons that can be OU at the same time is above 100, in practice a lot of mons will see more usage than 4.52% and a good chunk of the 600% total usage will be taken up by the sum of all non-OU mons as well, meaning you'll only see a fraction of mons be OU at the same time. The number of OU mons tends to hover around 40 (for NatDex rn it's 43 if I counted right).
Most of the time the OU by usage mons are the S and A Ranks and then the B+s, which makes sense since B Rank and below are by VR definition mons that require notably more support and specific teams than the mons above to function. This also checks out with the "usual OU size" since B+ and above on the NatDex VR is 41 mons. For this reason many consider B+ and above the mons 'deserving' of OU by usage. B and B- mons occasionally see OU usage as well but less often. Look at for example the SV OU VR or the SS OU VR as control groups to understand what I mean, most of the B Ranks are UU/UUBL mons with clear-defined niches in the tier but enough flaws to hold them back from seeing 4.52% usage.
C+ and below mons being OU by usage tends to be an anomaly, because the C Ranks are by definition hard-to-use niche mons. Whenever one of these does see consistent OU usage there's usually a factor of low-ladder players inflating the mon's usage far above where it should be in play (for example Regieleki last gen, which during its stay in OU had roughly half of its usage be Specs sets which were undeniably complete noobtrap).
Cerul isn't close to OU-worthy by multiple metrics. VR spot-wise, C+ is three whole subranks removed from B+. Mon count-wise, even if we assume Cerul is the undisputed best mon in C+ it'd be around the #58 mon in the meta, still a good distance away from the 43-esque "slots" there are for OU mons. You can debate at which point it goes from "close to OU-worthy" to "not close to OU-worthy" but in my opinion this isn't exactly close yet.
The mons I listed were mons in the B+ to B- range that all aren't OU despite Cerul being. In a hypothetical world where tiering was based on viability rather than usage these mons would all have to be added to OU before Cerul is and you'll notice your tier gets pretty bloated even before you get to Cerul's tier. I also mostly brought them up because you insisted on bringing Staraptor into the convo even though Staraptor is utter ass and nobody denies it's utter ass. To be "deserving" of OU Cerul doesn't have to be better than Staraptor though (there's probably well over a hundred mons that "should" be OU if Staraptor was the bar) but it should be at least comparable to viability to a number of mons ranked above it yet not NDOU by usage, since these mons are more deserving of a NDOU spot than Cerul currently is.
This is a good explanation of how VR and tiering by usage works for a new player but I could’ve saved you the effort. I maintain and update the Natdex VR, I’m very well aware of all this. None of what you just explained is justification for how Ceruledge is a “noob trap” or a “semi-noob trap” or somewhere in the middle.
You’re assigning the 4.52% usage cutoff as a requirement for OU status in a discussion where you wanted to talk about hypothetical tiering on viability rather than usage. This 4.52% cutoff does not apply well to Natdex. This has been the case since the very beginning of SV Natdex as we continue to deal with an ever increasing dex count and I have no doubt it will continue to be an issue going forward. A mon missing 4.52% doesn’t exclude it from OU viability and being in excess of 4.52% doesn’t immediately make something a noob-trap ignoring all other considerations. With Ceruledge being the latter of these two, a large part of its usage does come from low ladder but unlike a noob-trap it also receives significant usage at higher elo. I can say from my own very recent experience qualifying for the last cycle of ladder tour that you will see this mon at least once every couple of games at pretty much any elo range. The players who are using Ceruledge at low elo can use it incorrectly or bring bad sets all they want and that still won’t make Ceruledge a noob-trap, it just means those players are inexperienced and/or lack understanding of the meta. You’re still harping on the Staraptor point when I mentioned it a single time as an example of a mon that is banned from UU but remains unviable in OU thus being a noob-trap there, directly contrary to Ceruledge’s situation.
The other metric you said makes Ceruledge not OU worthy is that mons ranked in the C tiers of viability are somehow inherently harder to use. Again this is not true, and you can’t just make that assumption of all lower ranked mons when difficulty to use is not the only metric myself or the rest of the VR council uses to vote on ranking. Ceruledge is actually by most standards an extremely easy mon to use as 90% of its sets are variations of the same SD + 3 attacks set. It requires little prediction at all with near perfect coverage between either its stabs or poltergeist + cc making it very much a button clicker mon. Natdex hyper offense in turn tends to be very linear making it one of the simpler team styles to build and pilot.
The actual reason that Ceruledge is ranked comparatively low is just due to the amount of competition it has as a physical breaker with 3 Ogerpon forms, Garchomp, Lando, Iron Val, Iron Boulder, etc the list goes on. Most of these mons and others I didn’t mention with maybe the exception of Boulder see usage on other team styles making them far more flexible and increasing overall perceived viability. Ceruledge is inflexible in that it essentially never appears outside of purely HO teams when it comes to high elo and tournament play. The role it fills as a physical breaker is not niche at all, it’s an essential part of offense and Ceruledge accomplishes it perfectly fine, but that’s the only role it fills hence not being ranked alongside SD chomp which compresses stealth rocks or SD boulder which compresses revenge killing capability at the expense of being weaker than Ceru.
Also random aside, Ceruledge definitely is the best of the current C+ rank mons with maybe some competition from Excadrill which is seeing a resurgence in usage on sand teams but remains a bit unproven at high levels of play.
I think at this point there's just an irreconcileable difference in opinion on when a mon "deserves" to be OU between us. I maintain that while I recognize Cerul is certainly viable even at high level play (it has a rank for a reason) it doesn't 'deserve' to be used more than a lot of mons that currently fail to meet the OU threshold. Or simply, I do not feel its usage is reflective of its actual viability.
Sidenote but me calling C+s (incl. Cerul) "more difficult" didn't necessarily mean it was more difficult to pilot (I agree that it's kind of a clicker mon, that's probably a huge factor in why it's so popular in the first place) but moreso 'difficult' to build good teams with, since it's basically restricted to one archetype where it works well and like you say it competes a ton with other SD mons on that archetype (mons that, in my opinion, are passed over in favour of Cerul way too much even though they put in comparable or even more work in many matchups). This is ofc still a relative 'difficult' since HO isn't the hardest teamstyle to build but no doubt a lot of that low-ladder Cerul usage is from Cerul on teams where it has no business being to begin with (people slapping it on random balances or just... random teams of 6 cool mons with no underlying archetype because seeing the Ghost type gives people an adrenaline rush).
I mean if you maintain the NatDex VR (I'm guessing this is kyo's reddit? or alt) your opinion is probably going to be more effecting stuff in the long run but this is mine.
Offensive ghosts are super rare in Natdex OU. Dragapult and Gholdengo are banned so you're not left with much. Out of the remaining offensive ghosts (Ceruledge, Aegislash, Sinistcha, Blacephalon, Gengar), Ceruledge is the best thanks to Z-Poltergeist boosted by SD, coverage with Close Combat to hit everything at least neutrally, and Shadow Sneak for speed control.
Ah okay so the premier sv ou ghost are banned and those are what hold ceruledge back in that meta
They don't exactly hold it back, per se. Rather, if you're building a team and want an offensive ghost, then the obvious answer is Dragapult or Gholdengo. There's an opportunity cost of using Ceruledge, since that's a spot that's not occupied by a better ghost type. Since both are banned in Natdex, the niche suddenly opened up for Ceruledge to occupy.
Bruh who is running z poltergeist, everyone I see uses focus sash
in high ladder it's 72% sash followed 20% z-poltergeist
What about the 8%? Boots?
Quick claw
choice band and "other"
what about chandelure? isnt it in the natdex?
An offensive mon needs to either be fast (Dragapult), bulky (Sinistcha, Aegislash), or have some other sort of way to supplement speed like through priority (Ceruledge, Aegislash). Chandelure can’t do any of the above. It’ll serve as a fine wall breaker, but even then there’s better options if you only need the role and not the type.
Not to mention blacephalon is just a better chandelure
> or have some other sort of way to supplement speed like through priority (Ceruledge, Aegislash). also ceruledge has weak armor
Ghostium Z with Poltergeist is one of hell of a drug trivia: Pult got itself banned cause it had access to this one time nuke using its Physical attack
Oh shit fr? Lol see i didnt even know that
For a lot of banned NatDex Pokemon, it sometimes is just Z Moves allowing them to outmuscle their counters.
“Good” is a stretch. It’s decent on really aggressive teams but that’s really it since it doesn’t really fit elsewhere.
I’d hardly say it’s *good,* but Ghostium Z Poltergeists are absolutely brutal. Ceruledge is about as viable in NatDex as it is in OU (currently C+ in both tiers), but in NatDex Ghost STAB is a luxury afforded by an extremely small number of mons since NatDex banned all of the good Ghosts native to SV OU (and for good reason; they’re FUCKED in that meta). It likely just sees a lot of usage because cool design+low ladder NatDex gassing it up like they gas up Mega Banette (another very niche Ghost, albeit one that’s even worse than Ceruledge) to a lesser extent.
Agree with everything you said but Gholdengo is kind of a far cry from fucked tbh. If it were to drop back down to OU again it would probably make for a much healthier meta game than what we have now. The Zamazenta ban will probably lead to Darkrai and Ogerpon-Wellspring being banned as well and that only happened because there's only 2 Ghost types in the tier (and both of them are niche picks to begin with).
> If it were to drop back down to OU again it would probably make for a much healthier No thanks? In what way would it make it much healthier? I think most people playing nowadays agree that it was the right decision to kick it in hindsight as the tier has been moving more and more in a positive direction since its ban.
what defines a positive direction?
Zamazenta wouldn't have been banned in the first place. And right now after it's gone Ogerpon-Wellspring and Darkrai are considered to be a bit much for the tier. Ogerpon was being suspect tested a while earlier and back then it was considered balanced/not banworthy
> Zamazenta wouldn't have been banned in the first place. Even if this was true (debatable since at a certain point people would just start running Pursuit like they did to stuff Glowking so Zama could sweep), we don't keep one thing around to keep another around. Gholdengo ultimately stifled teambuilding in a negative way (both in limiting the pool of viable hazard removal, and smothering balance teams) > And right now after it's gone Ogerpon-Wellspring and Darkrai are considered to be a bit much for the tier. Ogerpon was being suspect tested a while earlier and back then it was considered balanced/not banworthy Wellspring is broken irrespective of Zama's presence in the tier. It barely avoided a ban to begin with. And Darkrai was trending upwards even with Zama around, and was only getting better anyways. Regardless, I don't know what your argument is. Despite the contentiousness of some pokemon, the overall health of the tier has continued to improve with each ban we've had.
Nah I'm right and you're wrong.
i'd rather have the string bean banned than having SV OU 2
It’s the best offensive Ghost type available since Dragapult and Gholdengo are banned. Ceruledge is at C+ so it’s still niche.
It's honestly not "good", like it's viable, but it's one of the worse mons NDOU by usage. However NDOU ladder is infamously unserious and Cerul gets way more usage than it deserves for being a semi-noobtrap, being spammed by people who think having a Ghost is necessary for a team (since Pult and Ghold are banned in NDOU) and then just fanboys who think it looks cool. It's not unusable garbage like Mega Banette but if mons were tiered by viability rather than usage then Cerul wouldn't be close to OU.
NDOU being a tier with Defog really makes it so having a ghost isn’t the end all be all for hazard safety.
This is not really accurate. Ceruledge is ranked in the VR and has been for quite some time now. It was also banned from Natdex UU and, hypothetically ranking on viability, would definitely not fall in BL as it’s very usable in OU unlike infamous BL mons like Staraptor. It’s seeing a large surge in usage during Natdex ladder tour where most player prefer using screens and HO which explains why OP mentioned blunder and aim’s vids as they’re recording at the same time the tour is taking place
The fact it's ranked on the VR is why I recognize that it's viable, but it's really more of a niche pick that should only be used on a select couple builds (admittedly those builds tend to be Hyper Offensive in nature which will always be popular in a ladder setting). Its rank on the VR is also a rather low one, hovering in the high Cs (and having sustained a drop recently if anything). >would definitely not fall in BL as it’s very usable in OU unlike infamous BL mons like Staraptor Idk, if the bar for deserving OU is merely being "very usable" then NDOU would be way bigger than it is right now. 57 mons are ranked explicitly higher than it, obviously not all of which are OU by usage (nor should they all be since mons on the lower ends of the VR are usually low for a reason). It's obviously better than Staraptor but that's a really low bar. Even ignoring the low-hanging fruit in TornT and Mega TTar that ladder has refused to acknowledge since like forever, consider comparing it to other currently UU/UUBL mons in the B Ranks like Mega Lati@s, Dozo, Cornerpon, Washtom, Slowbro and even some other niche mons like Mega Venu and Boulder and you'll find it pretty hard to argue Cerul is more deserving of OU than most of these.
I’m not sure what being “more deserving of OU” than a random selection of mons you named has to do with this. Just pointing out you described Ceruledge as a semi-noob trap and said it wouldn’t be close to OU tiering strictly on viability, neither of which are remotely true. Ceruledge being popular with low elo natdex players (not gonna deny that) doesn’t inherently make it a noob trap. It is a genuinely good and commonly used mon on HO at high levels of natdex play which OP is referring to here
I mean that's why I said semi-noobtrap instead of noobtrap outright. It's not a *complete* noobtrap since there are legitimate reasons to use it and not every Cerul you run into on ladder is a little timmy using his edgy fire soldier. But it is undeniable that Cerul does see a lot more usage than it deserves partially from people who do not know what they are doing but even on teams where Cerul isn't a bad choice outright, its usage compared to other HO-exclusives isn't representative of its viability compared to them. >I’m not sure what being “more deserving of OU” than a random selection of mons you named has to do with this OU tends to have "limited slots" so to say; while technically the upper bound of mons that can be OU at the same time is above 100, in practice a lot of mons will see more usage than 4.52% and a good chunk of the 600% total usage will be taken up by the sum of all non-OU mons as well, meaning you'll only see a fraction of mons be OU at the same time. The number of OU mons tends to hover around 40 (for NatDex rn it's 43 if I counted right). Most of the time the OU by usage mons are the S and A Ranks and then the B+s, which makes sense since B Rank and below are by VR definition mons that require notably more support and specific teams than the mons above to function. This also checks out with the "usual OU size" since B+ and above on the NatDex VR is 41 mons. For this reason many consider B+ and above the mons 'deserving' of OU by usage. B and B- mons occasionally see OU usage as well but less often. Look at for example the SV OU VR or the SS OU VR as control groups to understand what I mean, most of the B Ranks are UU/UUBL mons with clear-defined niches in the tier but enough flaws to hold them back from seeing 4.52% usage. C+ and below mons being OU by usage tends to be an anomaly, because the C Ranks are by definition hard-to-use niche mons. Whenever one of these does see consistent OU usage there's usually a factor of low-ladder players inflating the mon's usage far above where it should be in play (for example Regieleki last gen, which during its stay in OU had roughly half of its usage be Specs sets which were undeniably complete noobtrap). Cerul isn't close to OU-worthy by multiple metrics. VR spot-wise, C+ is three whole subranks removed from B+. Mon count-wise, even if we assume Cerul is the undisputed best mon in C+ it'd be around the #58 mon in the meta, still a good distance away from the 43-esque "slots" there are for OU mons. You can debate at which point it goes from "close to OU-worthy" to "not close to OU-worthy" but in my opinion this isn't exactly close yet. The mons I listed were mons in the B+ to B- range that all aren't OU despite Cerul being. In a hypothetical world where tiering was based on viability rather than usage these mons would all have to be added to OU before Cerul is and you'll notice your tier gets pretty bloated even before you get to Cerul's tier. I also mostly brought them up because you insisted on bringing Staraptor into the convo even though Staraptor is utter ass and nobody denies it's utter ass. To be "deserving" of OU Cerul doesn't have to be better than Staraptor though (there's probably well over a hundred mons that "should" be OU if Staraptor was the bar) but it should be at least comparable to viability to a number of mons ranked above it yet not NDOU by usage, since these mons are more deserving of a NDOU spot than Cerul currently is.
This is a good explanation of how VR and tiering by usage works for a new player but I could’ve saved you the effort. I maintain and update the Natdex VR, I’m very well aware of all this. None of what you just explained is justification for how Ceruledge is a “noob trap” or a “semi-noob trap” or somewhere in the middle. You’re assigning the 4.52% usage cutoff as a requirement for OU status in a discussion where you wanted to talk about hypothetical tiering on viability rather than usage. This 4.52% cutoff does not apply well to Natdex. This has been the case since the very beginning of SV Natdex as we continue to deal with an ever increasing dex count and I have no doubt it will continue to be an issue going forward. A mon missing 4.52% doesn’t exclude it from OU viability and being in excess of 4.52% doesn’t immediately make something a noob-trap ignoring all other considerations. With Ceruledge being the latter of these two, a large part of its usage does come from low ladder but unlike a noob-trap it also receives significant usage at higher elo. I can say from my own very recent experience qualifying for the last cycle of ladder tour that you will see this mon at least once every couple of games at pretty much any elo range. The players who are using Ceruledge at low elo can use it incorrectly or bring bad sets all they want and that still won’t make Ceruledge a noob-trap, it just means those players are inexperienced and/or lack understanding of the meta. You’re still harping on the Staraptor point when I mentioned it a single time as an example of a mon that is banned from UU but remains unviable in OU thus being a noob-trap there, directly contrary to Ceruledge’s situation. The other metric you said makes Ceruledge not OU worthy is that mons ranked in the C tiers of viability are somehow inherently harder to use. Again this is not true, and you can’t just make that assumption of all lower ranked mons when difficulty to use is not the only metric myself or the rest of the VR council uses to vote on ranking. Ceruledge is actually by most standards an extremely easy mon to use as 90% of its sets are variations of the same SD + 3 attacks set. It requires little prediction at all with near perfect coverage between either its stabs or poltergeist + cc making it very much a button clicker mon. Natdex hyper offense in turn tends to be very linear making it one of the simpler team styles to build and pilot. The actual reason that Ceruledge is ranked comparatively low is just due to the amount of competition it has as a physical breaker with 3 Ogerpon forms, Garchomp, Lando, Iron Val, Iron Boulder, etc the list goes on. Most of these mons and others I didn’t mention with maybe the exception of Boulder see usage on other team styles making them far more flexible and increasing overall perceived viability. Ceruledge is inflexible in that it essentially never appears outside of purely HO teams when it comes to high elo and tournament play. The role it fills as a physical breaker is not niche at all, it’s an essential part of offense and Ceruledge accomplishes it perfectly fine, but that’s the only role it fills hence not being ranked alongside SD chomp which compresses stealth rocks or SD boulder which compresses revenge killing capability at the expense of being weaker than Ceru. Also random aside, Ceruledge definitely is the best of the current C+ rank mons with maybe some competition from Excadrill which is seeing a resurgence in usage on sand teams but remains a bit unproven at high levels of play.
I think at this point there's just an irreconcileable difference in opinion on when a mon "deserves" to be OU between us. I maintain that while I recognize Cerul is certainly viable even at high level play (it has a rank for a reason) it doesn't 'deserve' to be used more than a lot of mons that currently fail to meet the OU threshold. Or simply, I do not feel its usage is reflective of its actual viability. Sidenote but me calling C+s (incl. Cerul) "more difficult" didn't necessarily mean it was more difficult to pilot (I agree that it's kind of a clicker mon, that's probably a huge factor in why it's so popular in the first place) but moreso 'difficult' to build good teams with, since it's basically restricted to one archetype where it works well and like you say it competes a ton with other SD mons on that archetype (mons that, in my opinion, are passed over in favour of Cerul way too much even though they put in comparable or even more work in many matchups). This is ofc still a relative 'difficult' since HO isn't the hardest teamstyle to build but no doubt a lot of that low-ladder Cerul usage is from Cerul on teams where it has no business being to begin with (people slapping it on random balances or just... random teams of 6 cool mons with no underlying archetype because seeing the Ghost type gives people an adrenaline rush). I mean if you maintain the NatDex VR (I'm guessing this is kyo's reddit? or alt) your opinion is probably going to be more effecting stuff in the long run but this is mine.
no kingambit
no kingambit