Why was Regieleki banned in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet OU within a day?

Some competitive Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players might know that Regieleki was only allowed in the OU tier for nearly a day before getting banned. The reason for its early departure simply lies in a mixture of reasons. It's still blindingly fast, has strong Electric STAB, and can use Tera Blast after Terastallizing to an Ice-Type for phenomenal coverage.

For those unaware, OU is a popular competitive battling tier format in Smogon. In this case, Regieleki was banned from Gen 9 OU, which now places it in Uber. This won't affect VGC matches on the physical cartridge since this limitation is primarily for Showdown bouts. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see how this Legendary became so good with the recent meta changes.

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Here's why Regieleki was banned from Pokemon Scarlet and Violet OU

Pokemon HOME was recently released, allowing several returning Pokemon to be legal in Smogon's competitive scene again. Most transferees didn't cause anywhere near as much trouble compared to this Electric golem. Smogon's OU council held an emergency vote to ban it. All ten members voted in favor of banning this Pokemon from Scarlet and Violet's OU.

Council leader Finchinator states the reason as:

"The combination of Electric STAB and Tera Blast Ice — famously known as BoltBeam coverage — was too much for the metagame. It already boasted amazing strength and unmatched speed, but having perfected coverage made it unfair. People oftentimes used their Terastallization to stop it defensively, but Regieleki even used Substitute on occasion to ease prediction and scout out the line-of-defense against it. Overall, there was very little counterplay to Regieleki and we wanted to remove it before it further inhibited the development of our rapidly moving metagame."

Hardly anything resists Electric and Ice moves simultaneously. For example, Magnezone is one of the few who resist those two types, but it can't do anything of note against the Electric golem in return.

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How good is Regieleki?

There's no denying how good it was in the singles PvP meta (Image via Game Freak)

Many gamers often assume every Legendary is good. However, that's not the case. Many non-box Legendaries vary wildly in terms of competitive efficiency. While something like Landorus is amazing, others such as Regigigas and Articuno have been historically bad in recent generations.

Regieleki was only UU in Gen 8, so its colossal rise to prominence this generation is largely attributed to Terastallization and Tera Blast. Terastallization allows it to change its typing, while Tera Blast is a move whose typing is based on the user's typing that they Terastallized into in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.

It will be interesting to see how this Electric golem fares in VGC (Image via Olm, Inc)

Basically, this Pokemon had Electric and Ice STAB backed by the following base stats:

• 80 HP
• 100 Attack
• 50 Defense
• 100 Sp. Atk
• 50 Sp. Def
• 200 Speed

A base Speed stat of 200 is absolutely massive in the current Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. In fact, Regieleki is the fastest Pokemon without external factors like speed boosts or items. Even so, many Choice Scarf users can't even outspeed it in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.

This Electric golem would be significantly less problematic if Terastallization were banned, but it's too early to tell if that popular gameplay mechanic will be going anywhere any time soon.