np: BW OU Suspect Testing Round 6 - Enter Sandman

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A complex ban does solve the problem. There is nothing uncompetitive about using Sand Veil Garchomp without sand, and your opponent having Tyranitar or Hippowdon to activate it. This is just simple risk/reward like Surf vs. Hydro Pump. Under a complex ban, they will be literally the exact same situation. You can't get the benefit of rain without the risk that your opponent will use 5 Swift Swimmers. This can be the same for sand too.

The bullshit uncompetitive part about Sand Veil is that you have absolutely no control over whether your 100% accurate move hits or not. However, under a complex ban, if you miss against Garchomp with a 100% accurate move, it could've been avoided if you just didn't bring your own sand. This isn't even including the possibility that people will choose the effects of Rough Skin, such as combating VoltTurn, over a Sand Veil that they can't even experience the effects of in most of their matches since they can't set up sand themselves.

So yes, the main reason for a Sand Stream + Sand Veil ban would be to preserve the viability of Pokemon such as Cacturne. However, you can't really argue that Sand Veil is 100% bullshit even under a complex ban, because if you've read the rest of my post you'll know that it's not.
 

voodoo pimp

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Isn't OU supposed to have priority over all the other tiers? Why is Cacturne even relevant? I'm not entirely ignorant of the tier; losing Bullet Seed & Encore sucks but changes in the higher tiers have a constant effect on lower tiers; this isn't anything new.
OU only has priority in the sense that bans in OU carry down to other tiers. It's still expected that any decisions take lower tiers into consideration when possible.
 

Stone RG

Megas are broke
I like the idea of a band on Sandstream+Sand Veil.
Being a SubSD Gliscor user, I can vouch for the ridiculousness of it. I've come back from a 6-2 defecit, and swept with him for the win.
As pocket said, if someone wants to run the risk of using a SV pokemon on their non sand team, by all means let them run it. It's more situational at that point, and more often than not, will be a waste.
Ok so according to your point then Sand has absolutely NO meaning in OU whatsoever.

A complex ban is something Smogon tries to evade (see what i did there) at all costs, this is no exception, plus the arguments everybody is using are weak in my opinion. First of all, Cacturne has near no use in OU, and him loosing some of its moves won't affect us in the slightest, and we should be discussing OU not NU. Then, are you really going to make the PERFECT counter to sand stay in OU? I would really rather Cacturne loosing a bit of its movepool.

The most important fact, however is that we would be letting in the best counter to sand as i said, because most players will be discouraged to use the weather if they know the best dragon in OU demolishes every well-made sand team with or without hax.

And btw, Sand Veil is broken on its own, if Gliscor (a okemon that doesn't have too much offensive pressure) turns Rotom-W, something that is supposed to be a hard counter, to set-up fodder, something is worng. Generally speaking, if we want to reduce the hax as much as possible we shouldn't even be TESTING Sand Veil.
 
I really feel that banning Sand Veil is just a way so that a heavily favorited Pokemon can be used in the OU tier once again. I have used both Sand Veil Gliscor and Sand Veil Garchomp and I can easily say that Sand Veil Gliscor is far inferior and incomparable to Sand Veil Garchomp as a single free turn with Gliscor is not going to be able to sweep your team. Sure, if you have the proper support and the opponents team has been weakened, Gliscor can wreak havoc on the opponents team, but the same can be said for Terrakion; so comparing Gliscor and Garchomp and saying that Gliscor, as other Pokémon with Sand Veil, are also bullshit Pokémon is really a moot point. While Rough Skin Garchomp is not nearly broken as its evasive brothers, as it has many counters that can reliably revenge kill it, it is clearly not the same as Sand Veil Garchomp where you revenge killing attempts can be foiled by an untimely miss.

The majority of complaints that Sand Veil Garchomp gets are from the relatively conservative players – the players that use so called “safe” strategies such as volt-turn. These players think that it is unfair that hax can affect their game, such as a Scald burn, or paralysis caused by Thunder. Unfortunately, this is Pokémon, there are going to be situations where you are going to think “bullshit, Starmie just froze my Calm Mind Latias” or “OMG, Terrakion just landed a critical hit on my Poison Heal Gliscor.” But the hax factor is really not the only reason that Garchomp gets a bad name. Garchomp also get ridiculed that Substitute Garchomp is really easy to abuse. A player with lesser skill level can beat a more skilled player using Garchomp because there are no perfect counters outside otherwise undesirable strategies like Icicle Spear. When we banned Garchomp in the first place we decided that it was better for a more skilled player to reliable win against a less skilled player, than a less skilled player to have a greater chance for winning against a more skilled player using a simple strategy with a high success rate that was reliant on hax.

I feel that the situation that we have right now is similar to the situation when we first banned Blaziken. When Blaziken was banned there was uproar from many parts of the UU community that said Blaze Blaziken was not broken and it was only the very limited distribution, Speed Boost Ability that was the cause for his ban. We did not give into the pleas of these people as one of the cornerstones of Smogon is to make the bans as simple as possible; we would not make a Pokémon + Ability ban, because if we go as far as that, why don’t we allow level 70 Mewtwo in OU.

I feel that the situation that we have now is a way to get around the Pokémon + Ability ban idea, and to ban Sand Veil as a whole as it has limited distribution and most of the Pokémon that have this ability can be doing better things. But we will still be banning more things than just simply Garchomp. Yes, Garchomp is one of the coolest Pokémon out there; who cannot resist that sleek and badass design, that awesome offensive typing with nearly no resists, and raw power? But when we make this decision whether or not to ban Sand Veil, I ask you to consider why are we doing this? It is to make a better, more balanced, and more fun OU, or is it just to use you favorite Pokémon? Personally, I have nothing against Garchomp; I, like most of you, think that he is a really cool Pokémon to use. But I still cannot get beside the fact that we doing this testing just so we can use a “cool” Pokémon. When deciding whether or not to ban Sand Veil, I ask of you to decide either to ban Garchomp as a whole, or to live with Sand Veil Garchomp in the OU tier. It’s your pick.
 

Aldaron

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BTW, when you guys hit requirements, be sure to screenshot them and message one of the council members with the appropriate information.

You don't have to maintain it till the end (decay on showdown is pretty extreme), so be sure to do this once you hit them.

It's up to whether or not you want to keep playing, but note the requirements might change (read: rating req gets higher, deviation req gets lower).
 

Joeyboy

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man, I was really amped to partake in this suspect test and then remembered why Sand Veil is so lame.

I've been running teams tailor made to beat down Garchomp, I'm talking 3-4 checks at least. I've only done maybe a dozen battles and have already 4 because of Sand Veil; 2 of which I lost massively right when Garchomp reared it's evasive little head. I was up 5-2, and 4 of my pokemon could've beaten Chomp 1v1 but it dodged everything I threw at it, my opponent would fish for a miss, and he'd land a beaut' whenever he needed it.

#sandveilneedstogo
 
A complex versus simple ban argument that's concerned with assigning predetermined merit to one or the other without considering the situation at hand is mostly pointless IMO. Sleep clause is complex. But it was Nintendo's idea and it allows us to use sleep without abusing it too much. (Along the same lines an even more "complex" Drizzle + Swift Swim ban that limits the number of accompanying SSwimmers to 1-2 could probably work and bring more variety esp. in an Excadrill metagame). So, AFAIAC, absent extreme expository difficulty or real technical issues with the implementation of a ban the idea that it's "complex" shouldn't be a reason to shoot it down.

In the end you're disallowing something. Who cares if you have to describe that something with a phrase rather than a single word. As long as we don't start banning Pokemon for which a half their BST is a prime number, I think we'll be fine...lol
 
OU only has priority in the sense that bans in OU carry down to other tiers. It's still expected that any decisions take lower tiers into consideration when possible.
Sand Stream is banned in UU and below, so Sand Veil is a non-factor in those tiers. The only tier that needs consideration is OU, and Cacturne and Sandslash are not relevant, and Gliscor usually takes Poision Heal, especially with PH no longer being illegal with Stealth Rock in B/W2.
 
Sand Stream is banned in UU and below, so Sand Veil is a non-factor in those tiers. The only tier that needs consideration is OU, and Cacturne and Sandslash are not relevant, and Gliscor usually takes Poision Heal, especially with PH no longer being illegal with Stealth Rock in B/W2.
Some members are worried about Cacturne losing Bullet Seed and Encore because it can't use Sand Veil. So it is a factor, technically. I would also argue that Cacturne can be OU relevant, as some members mention how someone got to the top of the ladder with one.

On another note, I am personally not having too much trouble with Chompy, running 60% win rate against it. But I personally believe if someone has to go it is him.
 
To all the people who say that Sand Veil wouldn't be a big deal without the SV user having their own sand summoner, you're wrong. I just had a game against a fellow who was using a Rain team with Garchomp; I was using a Sand team. I killed his Toed and won the weather war; later, I had Heatran out against his Genesect and predicted the Chomp switch but I missed Will-o-Wisp. A few turns later, I tried to Dragon Claw it with my own Garchomp, but missed and got myself killed. Had either of those moves hit, I won, but my own Sandstorm fucked me over. Just in case someone tries to say "you should've let him keep his rain then", not only is that stupid but it also would've left me open to getting smashed by Specs Keldeo. The point of this post is to prove that just because you don't have your own Sand Streamer doesn't mean you can't BS someone with Sand Veil, and therefore a SS + SV complex ban would be of minimal help [why do we need to preserve two moves on Cacturne, anyway? It can still use Seed Bomb for Grass STAB and losing Encore kind of sucks but isn't its main purpose to Spike or SD?]. Of course, Rain teams have to deal with potential Swift Swimmers, but they're different because they don't rob you of games you should've won. Losing to luck should not be a risk a Sand team's user has to take just for using sand.
 
I can argue that I lost to luck because my opponent had a SS Kingdra when i used a drizzle team :/. The random match ups RNG screwed me over and gave me an opponent that had something that hard countered my place style! I know it is not 100% the same but still is close. Also btw Sand Storm teams can still lose to luck without Sand Veil, crits, random burns/freezes. Yeah, I really don't see what you can complain about.
 
I don't mean luck as in a bad match-up where you bring rain and your opponent happens to have Kingdra for the purpose of nuking the type of team you brought. I mean luck as in I have the game won and then my 100% accurate moves become Stone Edge and lose me the game because my opponent's Garchomp's Sand Veil exists to do nothing but alter the result of a game through luck, or maybe hax is a better term so you don't go confusing it with things that have nothing to do with it [unless you consider a bad match-up hax, in which case lol]. Swift Swim and Sand Veil's only similarity is that they're weather abusing abilities but that's it -- SV is hax and nothing more. Of course any team, not just Sand teams, can lose to crits and the like, but those have nothing to do with Sand Veil, and unlike SV, they're out of the player's control, so I have no idea why you brought them up.
 

Pocket

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BKC, Wisp is not exactly known for its superb accuracy lol - you could've simply missed because Will-O-Wisp sucks. Also unless you were using a ScarfChomp (in a sand team? I doubt it), you could've lost because of a speed tie. Yes, in actuality you lost because of a DClaw miss; but you also could have lost to a speed tie loss. So no, you SHOULDN'T have won the match, cuz it could have went both ways.

The past Rough Skin Garchomp release has proven that Garchomp isn't broken without the guaranteed 20% increase in evasion. SV Chomp without Sand is a lesser Garchomp ~85% of the time. Sure, you can opt to use SV Chomp for that 16% chance that you face a sand team so you can troll them 20% of the time. However, I'll go for the Rough Skin Chomp for the added chip damage on the likes of Skarmory to land KOs more easily. Relying on luck is not a consistent way to win, especially if it's not reliably reproduced.

If SV Chomp without Sand still ends up being "too much," I think that's a STRONG indicator that Garchomp needs to go. You don't see many people packing SV Gliscor in their BW1 Sun teams just to troll sand, do you?
 
Hax is a negative way of putting bad luck. They are one and the same. The only thing about SV that is in either players control is the creation of Sand, otherwise it works like any other luck based element. There almost no difference.......
 
BKC, Wisp is not exactly known for its accuracy lol - you could've simply missed because Will-O-Wisp sucks. Also unless you were using a ScarfChomp (in a sand team? I doubt it), you could've lost because of a speed tie. Yes, in actuality you lost because of a DClaw miss; but you also could have lost to a speed tie loss. So no, you SHOULDN'T have won the match, cuz it could have went both ways.
I was running ScarfChomp [...what's wrong with running ScarfChomp on a balanced sand team like the one I'm using?] while his was CB. So yes, I SHOULD'VE won that match.

The past Rough Skin Garchomp release has proven that Garchomp isn't broken without the guaranteed 20% increase in evasion. SV Chomp without Sand is a lesser Garchomp ~85% of the time. Sure, you can opt to use SV Chomp for that 16% chance that you face a sand team so you can troll them 20% of the time. However, I'll go for the Rough Skin Chomp for the added chip damage on the likes of Skarmory to land KOs more easily.
Rough Skin Chomp isn't close to broken, I agree with you on that. However, just because you personally wouldn't use SV Chomp without Sand doesn't mean that there aren't other people out there who would. The match I mentioned was against a high-ranked fellow who's well-known as a very accomplished battler [won't alt reveal], but he's not the only one, as I've had several matches today against weatherless teams with SV Chomp for the sole purpose of lucking their way through sand teams. Why are we bending over backwards to keep two moves on Cacturne that barely see any use, anyway?

If SV Chomp without Sand still ends up being "too much," I think that's a STRONG indicator that Garchomp needs to go. You don't see many people packing SV Gliscor in their BW1 Sun teams just to troll sand, do you?
As you said yourself, Rough Skin Garchomp isn't even close to broken. Sand Veil is the culprit here, not Chomp, since it also makes Gliscor and sometimes even Cacturne winners of games that should've been lost, and unfairly punishes users of Sand teams. Without SV, if you lose to these mons, you lost legitimately. And yes, I did see a fair amount of non-Sand teams with AcroScor in BW1.


Hax is a negative way of putting bad luck. They are one and the same. The only thing about SV that is in either players control is the creation of Sand, otherwise it works like any other luck based element. There almost no difference.......
I'm sorry but I cannot take you seriously when you're saying that a bad match-up is hax. I'm one of the biggest haters of BW team match-up you'll find but I would never refer to it as hax in the slightest...
 
The point is, LUCK IS EVERYWHERE! All you guys are trying to do is call one source of luck is "hax", and trying to use a word that means that same thing to remove it from the game. Which to me is just wrong, SV is NOT broken. 1/8 final stages being broken with it does not equal broken. (or 2/8 is you want to count Gliscor...)
 
I don't mean luck as in a bad match-up where you bring rain and your opponent happens to have Kingdra for the purpose of nuking the type of team you brought. I mean luck as in I have the game won and then my 100% accurate moves become Stone Edge and lose me the game because my opponent's Garchomp's Sand Veil exists to do nothing but alter the result of a game through luck, or maybe hax is a better term so you don't go confusing it with things that have nothing to do with it [unless you consider a bad match-up hax, in which case lol]. Swift Swim and Sand Veil's only similarity is that they're weather abusing abilities but that's it -- SV is hax and nothing more. Of course any team, not just Sand teams, can lose to crits and the like, but those have nothing to do with Sand Veil, and unlike SV, they're out of the player's control, so I have no idea why you brought them up.
I also don't see how this an argument against a complex ban. If anything, it's an argument for one. When you're using Rain, your punishment for a bad team matchup isn't having to fight through Sand Veil hax, your punishment is dealing with this impossibly fast, ridiculously powerful pokemon that's probably going to sweep you because there's no way you can offensively check Kingdra in rain and there's only one good way to defensively check it. If we're willing to let people use Swift Swim Kingdra, which is otherwise horribly underpowered for BW OU, as a way to strategically shore their team up against Rain, I don't see why we wouldn't let people use Sand Veil for the some purpose.

I'm sorry but I cannot take you seriously when you're saying that a bad match-up is hax. I'm one of the biggest haters of BW team match-up you'll find but I would never refer to it as hax in the slightest...
Getting paired against the guy who decided that today was not his day to lose to Rain is getting unlucky as much as getting your key pokemon crit. For the guy with Kingdra on his team, getting paired against any other kind of team is getting unlucky. There are all kinds of luck, and team matchup is definitely one of them, and managing your team matchups is definitely a skill. Good players will rarely use Kingdra -- at least not on the ladder -- because it's very mediocre against the vast majority of teams, but if your team is amazing against every other type of team and horrible against Rain, using Kingdra and trying to get lucky with it is a strategic decision. And when you use an offensive Rain team, you're strategically accepting that you'll lose to Kingdra on occasion. It's the same situation with Garchomp and Sand. For instance, with a complex ban, just having a sand team would encourage you to use a pokemon like Skarmory to mitigate the hax from Garchomp.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of either of these being the case since weather is such an integral part of the BW metagame. It's not like Magic where it's your own fault for playing Dredge when you lose to Leyline of the Void; you almost have to run some kind of weather, and the fact that teams have access to several pokemon that randomly punish you for your particular weather isn't healthy.

EDIT: I don't mean to imply that luck is universally bad, either. I wouldn't actually mind a complex ban in the case of Garchomp, because Sand Veil is relatively manageable and it's much less scary when you can't build a team with the intention of abusing it or taking advantage of abuse in mind. Probably because I'm old, I'm still not convinced on the availability of Kingdra though.
 
You're right that Swift Swim abusers are ridiculously hard to beat with rain teams, but that's part of team match-up, not hax. You can have the game won and then Sand Veil robs you of it; Swift Swim doesn't work like that. There's a difference between bad team match-up [rain vs. a SS mon] and hax [a sand team getting robbed of its win because Chomp decided to dodge everything in sight]. I agree that team match-up is way too big a factor in BW but this isn't the thread for that...

Again, this point seems to be getting ignored so I'll repeat it: is it really worth bending over backwards for a SS + SV ban in order to preserve 2 moves that are barely used on an NU mon that barely sees any usage? That's the only argument I see against a full Sand Veil ban and I honestly think it's not even close to worth it.
you almost have to run some kind of weather, and the fact that teams have access to several pokemon that randomly punish you for your particular weather isn't healthy.
I actually agree with this 100% and I would love to see a weather-less metagame but right now I think Sand Veil is the more immediate, pressing issue.
 

Pocket

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You're not seeing the bigger picture, BKC. Yes, perhaps SV Chomp on a non-sand team may prove effective in the suspect ladder, where the usage of sand is bloated to ~35%. However, that is the direct result of releasing SV Chomp. Complex ban SS + SV, and I doubt we'll see as much sand teams as we see now, and far fewer SV Chomps will be rewarded over RS Chomp. The usage of sand team in the RS Garchomp phase was far less inflated than what the suspect ladder is witnessing now.

The question is not "why SS + SV ban," but "why NOT SS + SV ban?"

With the complex ban, Sand usage will not be as bloated as we see now. SV Chomp's effect would thus be minimal. There's no more "misses outside of our own control," because now you CAN control whether to risk the Sand Veil hax or not. With SS + SV ban, there will be no casualties to non-broken mon, such as Cacturne, and SV hax would just be another minor luck element of Pokemon (as pharaohcalvin have put it).

It doesn't matter if the victim is Cacturne or Gliscor or Latios; what matters is that a ban should NOT negatively affect the usage of non-broken mon, whether they are viable in OU or not. There's absolutely NO reason to nerf them, so why should we?

In my eyes, we're actually bending over backwards to allow a borderline broken Pokemon back into OU to spice things up. ONLY Garchomp is broken with Sand Veil, so banning Sand Veil only benefits Garchomp. I'm open to allowing Garchomp in and have less hax factor in our metagame, but NOT at a cost of nerfing a perfectly non-broken mon who sees significant usage in the lower tiers. Especially not for a ban on something that's not even inherently broken like Moody.
 
After playing over 100 games on Showdown's suspect ladder I've noticed Sand balance is by far the effective playstyle in BW2. Not just because of Garchomp, but because Rain / Sun / Deo-D offense / Weatherless weather counter teams can all be mostly countered in one package, Heatran can get you the advantage against Sun / Gene / Deo-D teams with the Scarf set, Rain just needs water resists, Torn-T counter and Latias for Thund-T and weatherless teams aren't going to be stronger than yours. The problem with Rain is that it's incredibly reliant on the weather and Genesect weak, Sun gets 6-0ed whenever someone runs Shed Shell Tran or Tar and Deo-D offense gets destroyed by modern Rain / Sun. Weatherless teams don't counter other weathers as well as a team with Tyranitar on it.

The two builds I see as viable are Tyranitar / Jellicent (so sun dies to rocks) / Steel / Lati@s / Heatran / Filler and Hippowdon / SpD Rotom-W / Lati@s / Steel / 2 picks between Stoutland / Landorus etc. I see no reason to run anything other than one of those besides Baton Pass lol.
 
Who's to say that Cacturne's usage would be affected negatively, if at all, by a full Sand Veil ban? Also, is losing Bullet Seed / Encore really big enough a deal to be considered a nerf? I've used Cacturne myself before and never once have I even considered those moves, it's always been a toss-up between Substitute / Swords Dance / Seed Bomb / Sucker Punch / Drain Punch / Spikes.

Also, there is very good reason to ignore the "nerf" on Cacturne:
http://www.smogon.com/philosophy ctrl + f "OU metagame"
It pretty much says that OU is the main metagame. Anything from the lower tiers should not have any impact on OU's tiering whatsoever.

We're not bending over backwards to allow Garchomp back in the meta. We've just finally realised how bad Sand Veil is for the metagame in general, and by getting rid of it, Garchomp is no longer broken. Why would we complex ban when we don't have to and are needlessly potentially punishing sand teams by doing so? You shouldn't need to risk getting haxed out of a win just for using Sand, last time I checked it's not so overpowered that it needs to get haxed for it to lose against other weather.

Also, for what it's worth, I'm in a battle right now and the dude I'm playing has a sun team with SV Chomp.
 
To all the people in favor of sand veil + sandstream complex ban, i just dont see how that can even be made a case for. It's a much different scenario than aldarons proposal which bans swift swim + drizzle. why should someone be punished for using a perfectly viable team style because of some stupid evasive increasing ability that should be banned on principle for being blatantly uncompetitive. All sand veil does is add yet another luck factor to an already luck infested shitfest of a game and in no way does it make it better. Also, contrary to popular belief, sand veil is definitely inherently broken and missing a move or two on pokemon like gliscor and cacturne CAN cost someone a game unless they are running something extremely specific to combat these (ie. Skarmory in the case of those two mons.) Ban Sand Veil as a whole. My two cents.
 

jake

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Who's to say that Cacturne's usage would be affected negatively, if at all, by a full Sand Veil ban? Also, is losing Bullet Seed / Encore really big enough a deal to be considered a nerf? I've used Cacturne myself before and never once have I even considered those moves, it's always been a toss-up between Substitute / Swords Dance / Seed Bomb / Sucker Punch / Drain Punch / Spikes.
I have little to say about Sand Veil itself as I don't play the OU metagame much, but I would like to clarify that Encore (and Bullet Seed, to a lesser extent) is central to Cacturne's viability in NU and is one of its largest advantages over its fellow Spikes users. It would very much be a nerf to Cacturne if it no longer had access to these moves.
 

Pocket

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BKC, you still don't get it - Why ban more than we need to?

SS + SV ban solves the problem, Sand Veil is not inherently broken, lol. Otherwise we wont have this conversation, because Cacturne would be broken with Sand Veil, just like how Moody broke Bibarel and Octillery.

No, Sand Veil is conditionally broken. It's conditional, because it's brokenness is dependent on the relative predominance of Sandstream inducers. If the Sandstream inducers are relatively weak and can't get the sand up reliably, than this strategy just becomes a liability.

Look at UU; Abomasnow was a more powerful weather inducer than Hippopotas, making sand and sand veil a non-issue; Snow Cloak was actually the bigger issue in UU, lol. Then comes the ban on Snow Warning, and the complaints of Sand Veil hax gradually appears.

And no, you guys are wrong. Bans taking place in the higher tiers must not ignore their impact on the lower tiers. In fact, they need to take extra responsibility in their bans, because of the impact it may cause in lower tiers. I warned the UU council the same thing when they were vying to ban Sand Veil (fortunately, they banned Sandstream instead), that they need to be responsible for their bans, because banning Sand Veil would've meant a soft-ban on Sandslash and Cacturne (since their hidden abilities were not available at the time).

We treat all tiers equally. That's why OU is not the only main forum anymore; all tiers have their own forums. We now have Grand Slam, recognizing players who master all non-OU tiers of BW. Yes, they are important. Those who say otherwise should not be making tiering decisions.

EDIT: I remember PKGaming bringing up Gothitelle, but it's irrelevant. Gothitelle WAS broken in UU, so it was banned, regardless of Gothi's role in the lower tiers. Sand Veil ISN'T broken in OU, it's only "uncompetitive," and only in conjunction with a reliable source of Sandstream. Thus banning Sand Veil and inadvertently nerfing the performance of lesser used mons is absurd when it can be avoided.
 
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