np: OU Suspect Testing Round 4 - Blaze of Glory

[charizard24]

I really can't. As I have been saying, we can't know what will counter it without letting it happen first. However I do know many current highly used Pokemon can't, which was the main point of that statement. People get attached to their Pokemon and will oppose a change like this if only because they don't want to have to adapt. People hate change. It's unfortunate, but true. But it is only after we change that many of these things can be discovered.

People might be against change, that part is true. However i doubt that they wouldn't use a pokemon that would help them to counter a popular strategy if they had to. The examples are plentiful. Azumarill's usage shot up once we found out it could counter Excadrill very well. So did Slowbro's when we found out it was a solid Blaziken check. People will run them if they have to. Only Bad players would stick to their so called "good" pokemon if there were better ones at hand.

If these pokemon truly existed, then why weren't they discovered in Round 2 when Drizzle+SwSw was running rampant. People were experimenting with tons of things back then and nothing seemed to work at all. If your going to blame the Big 3 for that then you are wrong. Their power level isn't far from some of the SwSw's below them.


Bottom Line: If these strategies and pokemon did exist we would have found them already. Ergo, they don't exist.

 

[Benlisted]

Bottom Line: If these strategies and pokemon did exist we would have found them already. Ergo, they don't exist.

The meta is young, don't think that because we've begun testing means that all possible sets and strategies have been discovered. New sets were being created at the end of DPPt for instance, so there's doubtless more waiting to be worked out.

That said, if there is a pressing threat in the meta then sets to counter it do tend to develop quite quickly, more so than just other generic useful sets.

 

[jas61292]

People might be against change, that part is true. However i doubt that they wouldn't use a pokemon that would help them to counter a popular strategy if they had to. The examples are plentiful. Azumarill's usage shot up once we found out it could counter Excadrill very well. So did Slowbro's when we found out it was a solid Blaziken check. People will run them if they have to. Only Bad players would stick to their so called "good" pokemon if there were better ones at hand.

If these pokemon truly existed, then why weren't they discovered in Round 2 when Drizzle+SwSw was running rampant. People were experimenting with tons of things back then and nothing seemed to work at all. If your going to blame the Big 3 for that then you are wrong. Their power level isn't far from some of the SwSw's below them.


Bottom Line: If these strategies and pokemon did exist we would have found them already. Ergo, they don't exist.

I must disagree. Now, I'm not going to lie, I wasn't really around for much of round 2. However if you think there isn't much of a difference between the top SwSwers and the rest you are sorely mistaken, if only due to typing. Pure water, as most SwSwers are is vastly inferior to the great typing of Kingdra, or the Secondary STABS any of them get for water resisters. Some of the others may be good, but they are not nearly THAT good.

Also, if you think Slowbro came into usage solely because of Blaziken, then why is he still so popular now. He is just good, so that really is not that great of a comparison.

 

[Nkululeko]

Surskit FTW!! But in all seriousness, I can't really say. Maybe some of the other SwSwer will be overpowered, and maybe we have to ban more than just 3 Pokemon. But even then, no I do not think as a team it would be overpowering. Maybe it would be to commonly used teams now, but as I have said over and over, the metagame that this team would be in would be different, and people wouldn't be using the same Pokemon. As long as there are many different Pokemon being used, it doesn't matter who they are.

IMO, if SwSwers are overpowered it's because perma-rain, right now only found on Politoed, keeps boosts there indefinately. I'm normally against outright banning but would support banning Politoed over banning 3 more pokemon and swswers b/c the only thing I see "breaking" them is drizzle's holder, Politoed.

Personally, I think that people's biggest fear is having to use "bad" Pokemon to counter rain, without taking into account that if rain does dominate those Pokemon won't be bad at all. Just because some of the most commonly used Pokemon aren't Garchomp and Heatran does not make the Pokemon who are used any worse.

Good point. Rain's prescence has made pokemon like Ninetails better than they would otherwise be b/c they can check rain. Even Cloud Nine Golduck and Altaria have a niche value for checking weather, meaning there is evidence that taking off perma-rain makes a poke more competitively viable in this meta.

My question to the community is why isn't Politoed getting banned? It has been the behind many suspect nominations but it seems we're only going after drizzle. It seems like a round-about way of going after it b/c no other poke in OU has drizzle to my knowledge and it's support effects are very centralizing and IMO "break" other pokemon. The extra stab for water type moves, nerfing fire type moves(making steel types like ferrothorn and jirachi that much more powerful), and adding in status boosts, like swift swim/rain dish support, so powerful that a restraining order was placed on them(Aldaron's proposal). I don't see another pokemon contributing as much to the debate about bannning and broken pokemon as Politoed. It is so effective at its job that pokemon cancel out it's weather effects(Cloud Nine for example but to a much larger degree other weathers) grew in prevalence just to counter it. Drizzle as an ability makes the toad set up offensively and defensively just by switching in, making it one of the better boosts in the game.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

I sPolitoed on its own broken? No. Is rain on its own broken? No. Is POlitoed+Rain broken? No.

Thats why it hasnt been banned.

 

[Ulevo]

Huge post.

I know you said it wasn't directed at me in particular, I just wanted to note for people who seem to have misinterpreted my post; I was using satire. I don't promote the ban on any of those I listed.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

Another reason to ban Swift Swimmers / Genies / etcetera instead of Drizzle is that we usually ban pokémon, not the battle conditions (specially "common" ones) in which they're broken, as doing so would seem as if we wanted to nerf the pokémon instead.

 

[jas61292]

Another reason to ban Swift Swimmers / Genies / etcetera instead of Drizzle is that we usually ban pokémon, not the battle conditions (specially "common" ones) in which they're broken, as doing so would seem as if we wanted to nerf the pokémon instead.

Exactly. That is why I am advocating lifting the current SS + Drizzle Ban and banning individual SwSw users. If something isn't broken, don't ban it. And unfortunately for a large number of Pokemon, they have been banned simply because the are associated with Pokemon who are broken.

 

[Ulevo]

They weren't banned though. There isn't a Pokemon with Swift Swim currently that doesn't have an alternate ability available.

 

[jas61292]

They weren't banned though. There isn't a Pokemon with Swift Swim currently that doesn't have an alternate ability available.

You know what I mean. Crippled, not banned. Pokemon like Floatzel who would by no means be broken but could totally be OU with SwSw are given no chance to be good because guys like Kingdra were broken. Why should the (over)power of Kingdra and a few other hinder anyone but themselves?

 

[ginganinja]

Garchomp

Last gen, Sand Veil was "the icing on the cake." This gen, Sand Veil is the whole issue for banning it. Don't even try to use the "oh but this is a new gen" argument because that is entirely unrelated in this case. The standard for banning something is seeming to progress from "its broken" to "I don't like this," and this is the flagship example.

Garchomp's power is manageable and on par with the rest of the metagame. Sand Veil is a 20% chance to take effect. Stop getting pissed off so easily when you fail to execute a flawless game every now and then. What's more, Sand is no longer the only weather like it was last gen - Drizzle and Drought (though I don't like Drizzle, myself) can always render Garchomp with what is essentially no ability. The number of faster threats is much larger this gen - even if your Virizion misses that HP Ice, you have Latios waiting in the wings to Dragon Pulse it back to hell.

I haven't seen any arguments arguing Garchomp's power to be the cause of its brokenness, and if I missed one or two its because they were overwhelmed by the Sand Veil bitching and lost in that shitstorm. I have lost to Garchomp's Sand Veil. I have also won against Garchomp's Sand Veil four times as often.

EDIT: Moreover, Sand Veil hax happens to EVERYONE. It happens to me, it happens to every person reading this post. So the overall effect on people's ratings compared to one another would not be any different than without Sand Veil, in 99% of cases.

Just picking this line out of that post

Stop getting pissed off so easily when you fail to execute a flawless game every now and then.

I can tell you that no-one gives a shit about executing a flawless game. Its the fact that you can have a won game, Garchomp comes in (on something that it can force out) gets a Sub up and SV activates, it gets to +6 and sweeps. Despite me having multiple methods of revenging Garchomp there have been matches where pretty much every attack missed, where it fucking haxxed its way past max/max impish SKARMORY of all things (yes I even had Whirlwind). Looking at a list of currently OU pokemon not much outspeeds it all while the stuff that goes (genies, Lati@s Terakion/Virzion) don't particually enjoy taking a Dragon Claw or Earthquake to the face. Even if you do survive (and hit) Garchomp switches out and can start it all again. Basically you have to sac something to break the Sub and then bring in something faster to revenge while hoping to god it
A) stays in
B) Your attack actually hits. Basically if the move is 100% accurate you are looking at using a move with the chance of hitting that same as Hydro Pump or Stone Edge (which got called something like StoneMiss towards the end of Gen 4)

The mere fact that (with Sand Veil) Garchomp can get past an average counter like Gliscor (which also means Chomp + Excadrill is a bitch and forces you to basically not use Gliscor to counter it for fear of Excadrill sweeping) speaks volumes on how frustrating it is to deal with. Lastly, (though this probably applies more to PO's rating calculations) its more frustrating facing Garchomp where some less skilled player (who you would normally beat) can hax you with Chomp and you lose 20 points just like that.

 

[TorchicBlaziken]

Cacturne can do the exact same thing, and is specialized to do this. And it has Focus Punch and Sucker Punch. So let's ban Cacturne! (joke)

 

[Recoil]

If rain in Gen IV was perfectly fine (and actually pretty balanced, I believe I can say), why not just continue using that formula? Drizzle gives permanent rain with no set up, that's great, but did OU really need it? Is Wet Rock + suicidal Electrode (or Prankster user!) just not enough these days?
Just my rather useless two cents.

As for what may or not get banned, all I'd like to see gone are Latios and Deoxys, screw them so hard. Sand Veil is really annoying, but I don't think it's annoying enough for Sand Stream + Sand Veil to get a ban not unlike Drizzle + Swift Swim.

 

[ginganinja]

Cacturne can do the exact same thing. So let's ban Cacturne!

Cacturne is Slower and far less bulky. It also lacks Chomps excellent Dual STAB. Please do not compare the two

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

They weren't banned though. There isn't a Pokemon with Swift Swim currently that doesn't have an alternate ability available.

Like it or not, you have effectively banned pokemon from the metagame that are not broken, yes you can use other abilties, or not use politoed at all, but you have infact banned the combination of of swiftswim and drizzle on all pokemon. I honestly still don't see why we still haven't allowed a magority of pokemon to use it, I guess its a victimless crime that no one really cries about.

It should be noted that far less pokemon have speed boost then swimswim. Infact the ratio of broken pokemon with speed boost to the total pokemon with speed boost (1 to 8), while with swift swim (about 4 to 38 or 1 to 9.5). And that same can be said for Yanma, who the hell cares about that? So under the logic of simplicity, we should of banned speed boost when Blaziken was broken. You don't group pokemon together like that, and ban them all, when only a few are actually broken.

 

[XienZo]

If rain in Gen IV was perfectly fine (and actually pretty balanced, I believe I can say), why not just continue using that formula? Drizzle gives permanent rain with no set up, that's great, but did OU really need it?

As it turns out, we didn't NEED anything in the 5th gen, because everything in Gen IV was perfectly fine.

There's no such thing as OU NEEDS something. Something is OU, or it's not. We don't say, "Look, pokemon X, you're perfectly balanced, but we can't let you in OU since that'll make us go over our quota."

 

[Lightning Tiger]

People still talking about bring back swift swimmers? come on people Drizzle is already teh most powerful weather easily, adn you wanna bring back the swift swimmers. Youl break the metagame. I dont want to see Caracostra shell smashing his way through anything.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

So you ban the possibly broken pokemon, with swift swim and drizzle, its not that hard.

 

[XienZo]

People still talking about bring back swift swimmers? come on people Drizzle is already teh most powerful weather easily, adn you wanna bring back the swift swimmers. Youl break the metagame. I dont want to see Caracostra shell smashing his way through anything.

How is bringing back Huntail and suspect testing Tornadus and Thunderus going to help rain teams?

 

[Nkululeko]

People still talking about bring back swift swimmers? come on people Drizzle is already teh most powerful weather easily, adn you wanna bring back the swift swimmers. Youl break the metagame. I dont want to see Caracostra shell smashing his way through anything.

People are arguing that the metagame is broken without the swift swimmers. That's why people want swift swim back, since unbroken pokes were seriously nerfed and the real problem, Politoad's Drizzle, is staying.

So you ban the possibly broken pokemon, with swift swim and drizzle, its not that hard.

I agree about the part about Drizzle, but Pokemon aren't broken with swift swim and rain dance.

 

[XienZo]

I agree about the part about Drizzle, but Pokemon aren't broken with swift swim and rain dance.

They aren't broken while holding an Iron Ball. They aren't broken if they don't carry any water moves. They aren't broken if they're level 50.

And we DON'T care.

If they're broken with ANYTHING, they're broken. Bye-bye. No one cares if they AREN'T broken with something, if they ARE broken with a certain setup, that's all we need to know.

 

[UltiMario]

People are arguing that the metagame is broken without the swift swimmers. That's why people want swift swim back, since unbroken pokes were seriously nerfed and the real problem, Politoad's Drizzle, is staying.

This argument is... bad. How are people complaining that Pokes were unfairly nerfed when banning Politoed would nerf them even more? How is rain too good if you're nerfing Pokemon unfairly? IT MAKES NO SENSE

They aren't broken while holding an Iron Ball. They aren't broken if they don't carry any water moves. They aren't broken if they're level 50.

And we DON'T care.

If they're broken with ANYTHING, they're broken. Bye-bye. No one cares if they AREN'T broken with something, if they ARE broken with a certain setup, that's all we need to know.

See: Sleeparishtrapping (or whatever the fuck it's called) in Gen II. It's a move combo declared extremely cheap and broken when used Together. So, they banned Perish Song, ALL Sleep Moves, AND Perish Song, OR Banned all Pokemon that could do it, right?

WRONG. They banned the combo. This isn't unprecedented you know. When there's a single problem that covers a broad base, it's perfectly fair to do a complex ban, where a complex ban over a single Pokemon set (Such as Gen IV Yache/Haban + SD + Garchomp I guess as an example) wouldn't be tolerated.

 

[Nkululeko]

They aren't broken while holding an Iron Ball .

Didn't say they were. And for the record, Drizzle is way stronger than Iron Ball.

They aren't broken if they don't carry any water moves. They aren't broken if they're level 50..

You're really good at ranting, impressive.

And we DON'T care.

I do. "We don't care" doesn't constitute a strong argument seeing as people are seeing that Drizzle is universally broken while swift swimmers aren't.

If they're broken with ANYTHING, they're broken. Bye-bye. No one cares if they AREN'T broken with something, if they ARE broken with a certain setup, that's all we need to know.

The only thing they're broken with is Drizzle. Banning Drizzle, or Politoad since it's the only poke outside of Ubers with it, would "fix" them. Why say Bye-Bye to several unbroken pokemon when banning a single one would solve the problem? The setup they are broken with is Drizzle and that's what should get banned. Afterall, some of us don't want to ban nerf unbroken pokemon to save one obviously broken Ability.

This argument is... bad. How are people complaining that Pokes were unfairly nerfed when banning Politoed would nerf them even more? How is rain too good if you're nerfing Pokemon unfairly? IT MAKES NO SENSE.

It does make sense. Pokemon with Swift Swim that weren't devastating sweepers were nerfed unfairly and the only "broken" piece of the puzzle is Politoed's drizzle, which is why I suggested banning it. My complaint was that the aforementioned ban is what was necessary as shown by rain's continued dominance and and that Aldaron's Proposal helped the problem but didn't go far enough. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[UltiMario]

Going to repeatedly point out that argument is horrendous again because banning Toed hurts SSers more, now you can't even give them double STAB on one of their weaker abilties, and you can still use Rain Dance + SS if you really want to.

You can't argue that the current system unfairly nerfs unbroken Pokemon, while stating that Drizzle is broken. You just can't. Drizzle can at least help these mons a little bit, but without it they're all completely worthless and banished to the depths of NU, etc.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

Afterall, some of us don't want to ban nerf unbroken pokemon to save one obviously broken Ability.

QFT. Seriously, the point of the Suspect Test is not to "create a balanced metagame", it's to BAN THE BROKEN STUFF. Drizzle and Swift Swim ban NEEDS to go this round to be replaced with either a Drizzle ban or a Drizzle+certain pokemon ban. If Drizzle and Swift Swim were broken, then every Swift Swimmer was broken under Drizzle. That's what being broken means. Obviously, that's not what happened. Only three pokemon might have been broken under Drizzle, and that's Kingdra, Ludicolo, and Kabutops. To perform an effective Suspect Test on Rain and pokemon that benefit from it, we need to ask two questions:

(Note: all of these questions imply the repealing of Aldaron's Proposal BEFORE this Test would take place)

Does the presence of one of the Rain Sweepers break Drizzle?
Does the presence of Drizzle break one of the Rain Sweepers?

If both answers are "no", then Drizzle can exist un-nerfed. If a sweeper breaks Drizzle, then Drizzle goes. If the other way around, the sweeper goes. If both are true, then ban a combo of both together.

Either way, the Sweepers and Drizzle need to be tested individually, as it ensures only the necessary pokemon/abilities are banned.

Aldaron's Proposal was inadequate. It (inadvertently?) assumes that Swift Swim Luvdisc and Magikarp are broken in Rain. Good luck making that case.