Previously Banned Pokemon with Alternate Abilities

[kd24]

your argument is only supported by the platform that your opinion is right. you have no right to be the judge of what is and isnt an entirely different story. i agree with you, i feel abilities are "different" to moves but there are still the make up of a pokemon and you're cherry picking the one that bests support your belief when you break it down. you're entitled to your opinion but so is eo to say "if groudon was level 90 it would be perfectly viable and not broken". a pokemons level is just a specific thing that can easily be altered to allow a mon into ou!

its all opinion

 

[alexwolf]

i explained the logical fallacy behind your slippery-slope "if this happens, a thousand catastrophes will immediately follow" argument. if you actually read the parallel i drew out for you, you'll see the similarities i'm talking about. don't automatically dismiss it because it has the word "government"...

You didn't explain anything. Here is what you said:

and i responded to that by questioning why the tiers are going to have a major overhaul in the first place...because we bring blaze blaziken down from ubers, suddenly every single pokemon is now being judged on abilities and move combinations for their tiering? that's a slippery slope fallacy if i ever heard one.

So you basically ask me why should we judge every Pokemon based on abilities after judging a Pokemon based on its ability. Should i even explain why this is wrong? If you introduce a new mindset (different abilities make different Pokemon) then of 'course you are going to apply it to every Pokemon, not just what you want...

And Pocket i still don't see your point. Just because Blaziken belongs in a banlist and the Pokemon in normal tiers don't means that we should treat them differently when it comes to tiering? Why? Why can we judge Blaziekn based on its abilities and not any other Pokemon?

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Okay let's make my point clear and simple. Speed Boost is an inherent part of Blaziken. Speed Boost Blaziken and Blaze Blaziken are not distinct Pokemon, they are both Blaziken.

We tier Blaziken.

 

[Lavos]

your argument is only supported by the platform that your opinion is right. you have no right to be the judge of what is and isnt an entirely different story. i agree with you, i feel abilities are "different" to moves but there are still the make up of a pokemon and you're cherry picking the one that bests support your belief when you break it down. you're entitled to your opinion but so is eo to say "if groudon was level 90 it would be perfectly viable and not broken". a pokemons level is just a specific thing that can easily be altered to allow a mon into ou!

its all opinion

yeah. yeah, it is all opinion. i already agreed with you. the op is my opinion. i think that, because blaze blaziken and sand force / mold breaker excadrill aren't uber-level pokemon, they shouldn't still be in the uber tier. that is my opinion. i back it up with my experiences and some reasoning and syllogisms for your reading pleasure that will hopefully convince people that my viewpoint is the correct one. this whole thread is opinion. the tiering process is opinion. what's your point? as for me having "no right" to judge what is and isn't a different story, once again, that's my own opinion and i'm not forcing it upon anyone, i'm just putting it out there to be read and thought about. i don't know why i have "no right" to express my own opinion in a thread and see how the community responds to it. that's the point of these sort of threads.

texas, my response to that is to direct you to the garchomp suspect test where chomp was allowed in ou but sand veil was kept banned. i know it's not a perfect comparison but it's as close as you're going to get, and we'd be doing the same thing here: ban the broken part of the pokemon, and allow the rest to reside in its rightful tier.

 

[kd24]

Okay let's make my point clear and simple. Speed Boost is an inherent part of Blaziken. Speed Boost Blaziken and Blaze Blaziken are not distinct Pokemon, they are both Blaziken.

We tier Blaziken.

that's a very narrow way of looking at things considering one of them is uber and the other would be RU, its fine to make the distinction between the 2 blazikens, the point is you can't legitimately ban that part of it because its as much as a part of blaziken as it's levels or its moves. again, its his opinion that abilities should be banned to let mons into OU, and its his right - but its another persons right to say a level or move should be decreased/removed respectively in order to allow that mon into OU.

your statement is incredibly dull and short-sighted but maybe thats just me

@ lavos

i'm not attacking you for your opinion. but if you're going to legitimately propose it or ask why, then i explained why it wont fly. i dont know what in my post gave off the idea that only council should be allowed to give their ideas - but it seems to be you're actively pushing this idea as a proposal. if you cant accept criticism then i guess hurr durr great idea lavos!!!!!!

 

[Lavos]

@ lavos

i'm not attacking you for your opinion. but if you're going to legitimately propose it or ask why, then i explained why it wont fly. i dont know what in my post gave off the idea that only council should be allowed to give their ideas - but it seems to be you're actively pushing this idea as a proposal. if you cant accept criticism then i guess hurr durr great idea lavos!!!!!!

so your opinion of my opinion is that i can have my opinion, but i can't do anything about it? for example, i can think "gosh i sure wish blaze blaziken wasn't uber" but i can't come right out and say it? that makes no sense at all. what's the point of having an opinion if i can't express it? besides, as i already stated, all the ou tiering process really is can be broken down to:

1. the ou council reaches a consensus on their opinion of what should be the next suspect, and puts it on the table
2. the people who qualify to vote do so based on their opinion of the suspect, and whoever has the majority wins

so you're criticizing me for expressing my opinion in a system that is built upon the premise of people expressing their opinions...

 

[RBG]

No, he's saying that you can express your opinion, but if it goes against a point of view the majority have, don't expect to get much done in convincing others.

There are valid reasons on each side, but the prevailing view is that we don't want to have Pokemon+Ability bans.

 

[Lavos]

that's fine then, of course it's not realistic to expect change when ~70% of people are opposed to my viewpoint and only ~30% are in favor. i didn't know that when i posted the thread (plus it's only been up for a few hours so i'd like to keep it open for a while longer and see how this progresses). regardless, it's a positive experience for the community as a whole when these sorts of thought-provoking discussions occur, because we all gain some greater insight into our own opinions and the opinions of others. some of us even change our opinions. i'm trying to get other people to understand the other side of the issue. they don't have to agree with me, but it'd be cool if i changed some peoples' minds.

 

[Django]

Can we stop comparing Blaziken and Excadrill to Garchomp? We didn't ban Sand Veil Garchomp, we banned Sand Veil itself. There is no precedent to banning Pokemon + Ability, which is what your suggesting. As for the actual proposal, it just adds an extra layer of complexity which is on the whole not necessary. While it is easy for us to understand, it is not for the new user, and having a simple banlist and ruleset makes it much easier for new users to access and get involved with the tiering process.

The slippery slope is also definitely a concern here, since there are more Pokemon this could be applied to rather than just Blaziken and Excadrill, while the lower tiers would certainly suffer with potentially absurd banlists. If we did go through with this, what logical reason would there be for not allowing Damp Politoed in lower tiers, since it gets no usage in OU? Same goes for almost every Pokemon. Everything is much simpler (and the simplest solution is very often the best...) when we stick to tiering just Pokemon, and everything that makes up that Pokemon. Abilities or (I hope this doesn't happen) moves can still be banned if they are actually uncompetitive / broken on everything that uses them, but combining them with individual Pokemon just leads to far too many individual cases to be worth considering.

 

[Jibaku]

Voted to keep both Pokemon completely banned for consistency's and simplicity's sake. We don't unban recovery moves from Lugia or Sacred Fire from Ho-Oh to make them viable in OU. We didn't ban Sand Veil -specifically- on Garchomp to bring him back to OU. Both Speed Boost and Sand Rush are not broken abilities to deserve a global ban either. The way I see it, Excadrill and Blaziken's banning or unbanning must be done in full - if you want Blaziken back in OU you have to deal with it having Speed Boost.

As a sidenote: I have no opinion whether Sand rush exca or SB Blaziken should be unbanned or not.

(I'll end my point here before someone points out Drizzle + SS and makes this more complicated than it has to be)

 

[capefeather]

I don't really care about deliberating on what "is" broken or not broken. As this thread and other discussions have shown, it all comes down to arbitrary opinion in the end. I would certainly agree that a lot of Smogon's rules are, to an extent, arbitrary and even inconsistent. On the other hand, arbitrariness in a ruleset as large as Smogon's is pretty much inevitable. We're always going to end up banning movesets and tactics that are not broken in the slightest. So I'd say, forget about all that. I tend to agree with the side that looks the most practical to me, not just in terms of playing the game, but also in terms of being reasonably enforceable on cartridges, easily implementable onto a simulator, and easy to get into.

Treating a Pokemon as a unit has many practical benefits. With Team Preview, you can immediately tell if an opponent is breaking one of the rules. The exceptions tend to be stuff like evasion and the Drizzle + Swift Swim combo ban. And this is where your analogy to government nitpickers actually works for their existence. Pokemon-as-a-unit is not a hard and fast rule that we defer to no matter what. Drizzle is a team supporting ability, and Swift Swim is on several different Pokemon. The combination resulted in a broken team trope. The combo ban is the most efficient, practical solution to address this specific issue (other than maybe just banning Swift Swim). Unbanning Mold Breaker Excadrill and Blaze Blaziken does not have nearly the same practical benefit as the Drizzle + Swift Swim combo ban.

Slippery slope is not inherently a fallacy. It is a fallacy if it isn't justified, and I think in this case it is. I recall Philip7086's ruling that we should strictly adhere to in-game mechanics and availability (which we now only break with Sleep Clause, again for practical reasons). Despite the Policy Review voters deciding against adhering strictly to game mechanics, obi / david stone came along and demonstrated a potential consequence of not striving to adhere strictly to game mechanics. It wasn't so much that we would try to remove critical hits, but that there was honestly no reason not to do so without deferring to adherence to game mechanics. I don't think anybody likes crits and what they do to the game overall, but we deal with it now precisely because of adherence to game mechanics. I see this as the same deal. It's not so much that we would try to do the same thing with other Pokemon, but that there isn't much of a reason not to do so without deferring to a general agreement to treat a Pokemon as a unit.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Rough Skin Garchomp was only allowed because we banned Sand Veil (as a WHOLE), and banned it for being uncompetitive (evasion clause).

This isn't about Excadrill or Blaziken-- to even try this, you'd have to talk about banning Sand Rush or Speed Boost. Obviously, neither of these abilities should be banned, and a there are several lower tier Pokemon that rely on them.

You can't unban a specific Pokemon with a specific ability, or else we dive into the discussion about "Darkrai without Dark Void", "Shaymin-S without Seed Flare and Air Slash", "How about Level 70 Arceus?" etc. etc.

You have to be able to ban something completely to make a ban-- ban an item (soul dew), ban an ability (Sand Veil), ban a Pokemon. Banning a Pokemon only when it has a specific ability is something I'd rather not have.

 

[Lavos]

okay this thread seems to have served its purpose, i wanted to get a taste of how the community felt on this issue and i believe i have. the poll appears to indicate that about 25% of the community agrees with me that we should unban blaziken and excadrill with their respective "broken" abilities still banned, and about 75% of the community believes that we should keep blaziken and excadrill fully banned. both sides have presented some good arguments but it's clear where the majority opinion lies. thanks to everyone who posted, it was an informative experience.

if someone could lock this i'd appreciate it