np: OU Suspect Testing Round 5 - Sandstorm (Excadrill/Thundurus Banned)

[SJCrew]

Tangible benefits? 1)Increased variety in the metagame

No. This is a fucking terrible argument regarding not only any sort of this ban, but this specific case. Swift Swimmers are mostly redundant Water-types that will see no use outside of their desired weather effect. "Metagame variety" is not high priority when we already have hundreds of different competitive Pokemon to choose from with vastly different typing and movepools. There is very little variation between the Swift Swimmers until you get to the Big Three, who have just the right stats, movepools, and typing to do what they do so well. The rest are mini-versions of them who, while frankly not as good, will still sweep your average team with minimal effort.

Golduck, for example, is basically Kingdra without its Dragon typing. It still has decent bulk, an even better movepool (Focus Blast for Ferrothorn :O), and Calm Mind, which says "fuck you all night" for even trying to stop it. I mean, shit, I'm getting scared just thinking about Choice Specs.

Gorebyss, Huntail, Carracosta, and Omastar all have Shell Smash. Nowhere near worth testing.

Floatzel is getting lower, but still incredibly powerful to the effect of Excadrill where we really want to argue “why the fuck do we want another one.” Bulk Up is not even the only dangerous set it can run; a simple Choice Band set is going to send us clamoring for our Tangrowths and Slowbros pretty quickly. Even if it’s not 100% unequivocally broken, we’re just adding another humongous threat to the metagame for the tier to centralize around, and making a bigger mess of the supposed balance we’d already have achieved by this point.

If what you’re suggesting doesn’t help balance the tier in anyway, then what's the point? Irrelevant hypotheses shouldn't compromise the health of competitive Pokemon.

And you said my argument was falling apart.

Quoting me out of context? Cool. But let's give this a little perspective:

The answer right now is that we don't. Even if you tell us that we don't know whether or not something like Floatzel is broken

We don't really need to know. The same way we don't need to know whether or not Sheer Cold Glaile is a big enough problem to bring back. Overhauling the policy at this point is fruitless because quite frankly, it works. Even if it's not logically sound to ignore certain non-broken sets on Pokemon who can abuse broken aspects of game, the blanket ban guarantees we don't have to waste time scrutinizing certain aspects of the game we're just not that concerened with. Your policy is guaranteed to take us a lot of time for something that's not going to help the state of competitive Pokemon.

Let me repeat this because it's the driving point of the entire discussion: your policy proposal does not help the state of competitive Pokemon. It helps you understand whether or not certain Swift Swimmers are broken. This is not a cause worth supporting for the collateral damage it's bound to cause. Evasion moves are banned, OHKO moves are banned, and now Drizzle + Swift Swim is banned. Every one of these bans make Pokemon a better game. Keep them that way.

A lot of people think Excadrill's broken, what's your point?

Let's add three or four or five Excadrills to fix a problem that doesn't exist (not enough fish in OU, I think that was your argument).

Do you really think Luvdisc, Beartic, and Armaldo will ruin balance in the metagame?

Beartic or Armaldo? Who knows, they only have massive Attack power, Swords Dance, and Jolteon Speed to outclass most of the tier in sweeping ability. All I know is that once again, you're avoiding the affirmative to tell us why having them in the tier is a good thing that should be promoted. "OU needs more sweepers?" "OU needs more fish?" No, we don't need either of those. We just need to stop listening to people like you for good so that we can make reasonable decisions for a game we can all enjoy.

 

[Stratos]

The difference, IcyMan, is that the SwSwers clearly WEREN'T broken outside of rain, which is why we didn't combo-ban the other two: they still were.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

The consequences are that Gorebyss, Huntail and Floatzel would be banned from all tiers. That alone should be reason to just stick with Aldaron's proposal as it currently is.

Furthermore, I suppose Rain Dance teams are still usable (in theory???) and this would spell the end of that playstyle. Even if they are virtually unseen, it doesn't seem right to kill off a playstyle in a metagame that is already struggling with diversity, just for the sake of having a slightly less complex rule.

Scarfwynaut is a silly man, what he meant was that Swift Swim would be Uber and thus, any Swimmer would only be allowed in Ubers... unless you mean that those three would be soft-banned? Not really, DW Clamperl and Buizel have been released already.

 

[Progeusz]

I suppose I should've added that:
Even if we banned Drought, we would still have to ban Blaziken, so simply banning Blaziken was good decision. The same story with Garchomp.
Swift Swimmers without Drizzle are UU, not Uber like Blaziken without Drought. Complex ban was fair enough for them. We shouldn't compare these situations, they're completely different.

...Or, you could just ban Politoed due to Drizzle being the common factor among all said threats

I'm fine with it if Drizzle is still that much of a problem. Simple ban, only one Pokemon goes to Ubers, no problem. We would probably have to ban Excadrill shortly after that but whatever.
On the other hand I don't think Drizzle will be considered broken after banning Thundurus (still not lifting AP of course).

Edit: metagame as it is now but without Thundurus and Excadrill seems perfectly balanced to me.

 

[Ewil]

without Thundurus & Excadrill the metagame will still dominated by Sun & Rain and Sand & Hail are used to be anti-weather.
Supposing that bans, drizzle becomes even more broken, that's the fact. In every way you look, drizzle continues to be the strongest and most broken weather in the meta.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

And I have no fear for Kingdra, I understand your stance. I know that if an element is broken we ban it to Ubers. But /my/ stance is that having ANY swift swimmer on a Drizzle team is more likely than not to upset the fragile balance that is weather, and we'd just end up banning all of them. Or at least, all of the ones that are on the "decent swiftswim" list from a page or so back. And then we're stuck with eleven pretty crappy Pokemon in the Uber tier wondering what the hell happened, when we could instead let people still use them while maintaining a non-broken meta.

Huh. This simply doesn't make sense. If they were crappy, they wouldn't be Uber. If they are broken, they shouldn't be allowed in the metagame by any means. There's no reason to let a "decent swimmer" in OU if it's considered broken unless we ban Drizzle instead.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

Holy shit this prompted a lot a discussion. To be honest I kinda gave up on this after Lee's post. I am surprised it went any further. I don't even know if rain dance is a useable part of UU, and I only overheard that it might be broken in RU, but I don't give a shit about OU though, its just not viable there.

Can we get any UU and RU players here to verify if or if not its brokenish in those tiers?

 

[Progeusz]

without Thundurus & Excadrill the metagame will still dominated by Sun & Rain and Sand & Hail are used to be anti-weather.

So what? Gen V is Generation with weathers. Just like Gen II was Generation of stall. New style of play isn't a bad thing. Let it be dominated by weather. There's no problem if skill is what's the most important. Weather isn't bad itself. Just ban broken sweepers* and we'll be fine.
*as of now, Thundurus. After he disappears, I'm almost sure Excadrill will become broken because of rise of usage of Sand teams. When Excadrill will get banned as well... it will be okay. Rain, Sand and Sun will become equal. hail will still be a gimmick.

 

[ITSU]

I'll try and get to 1450, although i doubt i will make it lol.

 

[sarkhan666]

quite a heated discussion we have going on here. honestly, if we voted drizzle + swift swim a combo ban, then why don't we also do sand stream + sand rush and drought + chlorophyll? takes care of the excadrill problem and "uncentralizes" drought teams before it even happens (we all know it would eventually). by doing this, we do the same thing that the drizzle + swift swim combo ban did, by allowing the pokemon to still be used. maybe im an idiot but this makes sense to me.

as a side note which isnt really anything other than stating my opinion, im a sand player and i want excadrill gone. think about it.

 

[Nkululeko]

Just ban broken sweepers* and we'll be fine.*

This is the last time I shall bring this up. My idea was to test individual swift swimmers because I fully agree with banning one or two sweepers if under a weather effect (which is fairly easy to induce) it is broken. I think Progeusz' logic in this quote is perfectly fine. However, at the moment we have essentially banned some would be sweepers that aren't broken. My idea, which isn't or only mine, was to allow some of those into OU because they're not broken. I'm fine with banning broken pokemon, not sure about Blaziken but I'm fine with banning broken pokemon. For the sake of future quotes out of context by SJ Crew: Luvdisc and Beartic would not be broken considering other weather effects exist (namely Sand). Just saying my piece.

as of now, Thundurus. After he disappears, I'm almost sure Excadrill will become broken because of rise of usage of Sand teams.

Ttar's over 20% of the metagame right now. If Sand teams rise any more in usage we might need Kingdra to add more balance. JK, that should never happen, but something would need to be done or investigated if over a third of the metagame was a single weather pokemon.

When Excadrill will get banned as well... it will be okay. Rain, Sand and Sun will become equal. hail will still be a gimmick.

Our end goal shouldn't be nerfing playstyles to be balanced in OU. Smogon shouldn't make policy with the only goal in mind being ensuring the weathers are equal. Besides, Ninetails already assured that wouldn't happen.

 

[Kefka Palazzo™]

You know, when I read about the requirements and stuff for this round and it said about no more +15-15 battles....I was thinking....when did we have those?!!?
We haven't had them since Round 2 IIRC.
In Round 3 - 4(IIRC), the rating difference was stuck at 200 and now it's stuck at 400.
So, wtf happened to my non-existent +15-15 battles? >:(

 

[Stratos]

No, kefka, in round 3 (idk if it was in 4) the voting reqs were determined by 15+15. What this meant was top fifteen players and anyone within 15 points of them, now it's at a static 1450 rating.

@ Mario with Lasers:

My point was that anything that was good enough with SwSw to be worth allowing back into the meta would disrupt the fragile balance of weather, so all that would be let back in would be Beartic and Luvdisc. Who cares about Beartic and Luvdisc enough to fuck around with the tiering systems for a month doing Nkululeko's plan.

 

[IcyMan28]

I don't understand this concept of "nerfing" a playstyle... By your logic, banning Garchomp and Blaziken effectively nerfed Sand and Drought Teams, so your argument doesn't really work.

Aldaron's Proposal is actually doing the same exact thing as banning Garchomp & Blaziken - getting rid of the most powerful threat (Swift Swim under Rain) under a particular weather. Unlike Sand and Sun, where we can pin point an individual Pokemon, there are multiple Pokemon that are arguably overwhelming with Swift Swim. We could either then ban individual Swift Swimmers, which would take some time and would need support. Or we could stick with Aldaron's Proposal, which has in essence banned the most powerful threat of rain. Either solution ultimately achieve the same thing with variations in casualties. Banning Drizzle would have the most casualties of all, which is why we are so reluctant in taking that drastic step. Imagine Banning Sandstream because of Garchomp, Excadrill, and Landorus.

Banning Garchomp and Blaziken was not a nerf to those respective weathers, you know that isn't what I meant. They did, however, abuse the weather in addition to their success outside of it, and thus were banned.

The same case can be made for rain. If Kingdra abuses rain to the extent that it becomes broken, and rain is a significantly common enough battle condition that it can be classified as "minimal support," then ban Kingdra. If a string of pokemon begin to become broken (again, I'm really not seeing this happen but it may), then we need to either ban each individual abuser or the condition that makes them all so broken.

You'll note that I don't clamor for Drought or Sand to be banned because, well, they don't provide that super support that Drizzle does. We aren't seeing Blaziken -> Volcarona -> Heatran -> Infernape -> Venusaur, etc becoming broken. It is because Drizzle pushes what are arguably already the best pokemon in the game to a new level (Latios, Steels, Thundurus, Kingdra) that it stands out as the only weather condition deserving of a ban. At least as of now.

For the record, banning Drizzle would result in 1 casualty: Politoed.

I'll just end on this note - I personally think Drizzle is broken. I disagree with the fact that we are judging it based on the nerfed version we have created rather than judging it as a whole (equivalent to judging the brokenness of Garchomp based on ScarfChomp alone, rather than considering the overall brokenness of SubChomp/BandChomp/SDChomp/ScarfChomp/etc combined). Even still, it remains a point of contention, with votes divided roughly in half.

If we are going to actually carry out the suspect process, we need to judge everything on an equal scale each time rather than changing up the rules for suspects that we may want to keep in the metagame for "diversity's sake."

EDIT:

My point was that anything that was good enough with SwSw to be worth allowing back into the meta would disrupt the fragile balance of weather, so all that would be let back in would be Beartic and Luvdisc. Who cares about Beartic and Luvdisc enough to fuck around with the tiering systems for a month doing Nkululeko's plan.

There is no rule that states Beartic and Luvdisc must be viable in OU. There is also no rule that states OU must consist of a fragile weather balance. Why we are adamantly arguing that OU will degenerate if we disrupt it is beyond me - it will simply be a different metagame. Not better or worse, different.

 

[Yoshiken]

honestly, if we voted drizzle + swift swim a combo ban, then why don't we also do sand stream + sand rush and drought + chlorophyll? takes care of the excadrill problem and "uncentralizes" drought teams before it even happens (we all know it would eventually). by doing this, we do the same thing that the drizzle + swift swim combo ban did, by allowing the pokemon to still be used. maybe im an idiot but this makes sense to me.

The thing is, Swift Swim's so widespread that it was a big problem. Chlorophyll has two sweepers, one on each side (phys/spec), and Sand Rush has one. In those situations, if the Pokemon are broken, it's more effective to just ban the Pokemon, honestly, so as to avoid too many complex bans. (as seen in Garchomp > SS+SV ban)

Also, this topic is making me die a little inside again. Before we try improving the metagame by bringing things back in, can we try to fix what's already here? I'm with Nkululeko on waiting for a non-suspect round before trying to bring things back down. SJCrew, the aim isn't to just have a balanced metagame, it's to have a balanced metagame without unnecessary bans. We can reach a balance, sure. But we should be trying to have a balanced, fun and varied metagame at the same time, and that means pushing the boundaries on what's banned and what isn't. So no, I don't think we should just stop once we reach a no-suspect round.
Thundurus is staring a ban in the face, people are still complaining about Excadrill and Latios, and weather is weather is weather.
Let's just look at what's already here for now, please? There's no point trying to empty the water from a boat without fixing the holes first.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

I was thinking, the main problem with outright banning swift swim, is that in other tiers rain dance might not even be broken or even a threat. So how about we don't, we would just ban swift swim only in OU. This would not be a complex ban either, as its just banning one thing, in one tier. We where able to possibly ban damp rock in UU last gen, I don' see the difference. The only people who lose from this are crazy people trying to rain dance in OU, and that’s not really that big of an issue. I think it’s a pretty sweet idea to get rid of the “complexness” that currently Aldaron’s proposal has. Although I am just throwing the idea around, give me some feedback.

 

[alphatron]

I may be switching my opinion on latios soon if things continue the way they are going. It seems as though people have finally begun to realize that choice specs is not his only set. To begin with, life orb latios was already enough of a dick. But drizzle team latios is an even bigger pain in the ass.

Living through a choice specs draco meteor is not all you have to worry about. But maybe I'm just overreacting due to the sheer amount of dragon fucking I've been recieving today (from just about all of the OU dragons save hydriegon). Screw dragonite taking less than 10% of his health from a max sp. atk swampert ice beam.

As far as Excadrill goes, I still have no problem with him since I play sun. Having sunlight up isn't even the reason I handle him so well. Nasty Plot Vacuum Wave Infernape works wonders.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

I was thinking, the main problem with outright banning swift swim, is that in other tiers rain dance might not even be broken or even a threat. So how about we don't, we would just ban swift swim only in OU. This would not be a complex ban either, as its just banning one thing, in one tier. We where able to possibly ban damp rock in UU last gen, I don' see the difference. The only people who lose from this are crazy people trying to rain dance in OU, and that’s not really that big of an issue. I think it’s a pretty sweet idea to get rid of the “complexness” that currently Aldaron’s proposal has. Although I am just throwing the idea around, give me some feedback.

The difference is that Damp Rock would be banned in NU; any ban in a certain tier applies to lesser tiers.

And I guess I have said it once but I'll say it again: if Swift Swim is a problem in OU, where Drizzle is a common battle condition, and if the problem with Swift Swim isn't necessarily X or Y Swimmer, but how they all are redundant in their roles as Swimmers and etc etc, then Swift Swim, the ability, is broken. Soooo, it deserves to be banned everywhere, because it's broken in OU, which is the standard tier, and a banlist for the lesser tiers. There's no reason not to ban Swift Swim if that's the case, It's broken, it's Uber, end of.

Screw dragonite taking less than 10% of his health from a max sp. atk swampert ice beam.

what the flying fuck

As far as Excadrill goes, I still have no problem with him since I play sun. Having sunlight up isn't even the reason I handle him so well. Nasty Plot Vacuum Wave Infernape works wonders.

I never have problems with Excadrill since I run Virizion... and Hippowdon. But no Excadrill. Kind of ironic...

 

[Mr_br_kill]

Why does everyone hate swift swim plus drizzle so much?
I do argree that when there are no suspects, we should look at the swift swimmers again, but untill then i don't think any action is needed.

but as alpatron said, i think latios has to go. Not only doe sit have the amazing power of choice specs set, the fact all his checks but (heatran) are crippled by a choice specs and all barring heatron, t-tair and blissey/chansey are weak to fire, and for t-tair and tran he gets surf and for blissey/chansey he gets psyshock. I know he can only pick 4 moves, but much like salamence of gen 4, he can easily get a kill as you figure out what coverage moces he has. But as fearsome this set is, he has a another much better set; life orb calm mind. It can easily sweep teams because unlike the specs set, he can swith moves and have great power. He has really good specal bulk, so he can easily get a calm mind, has the speed to out speed pretty much everything, an the ability to hit that ferrathorn with hp fire when he comes in on your dragon pulse. He also gets recover/roost to heal himself! So everyone, please stop using specs latios and use latio's set thats equivalent to sub chomp: the calm mind sweeper.

 

[Fuchsia]

Holy shit this prompted a lot a discussion. To be honest I kinda gave up on this after Lee's post. I am surprised it went any further. I don't even know if rain dance is a useable part of UU, and I only overheard that it might be broken in RU, but I don't give a shit about OU though, its just not viable there.

Can we get any UU and RU players here to verify if or if not its brokenish in those tiers?

I play RU, and rain dance is strong, but nowhere near broken. I'm 9th on the ladder there and I see a good number of rain teams, but haven't lost to one in a while. The only extra attention i pay to rain teams is that i run sunny day on my ferroseed.

 

[Mazz]

Taking Drizzle from the metagame, in my opinion, is very stupid. It, as mentioned, causes an imbalance between the weathers. Rain isn't even all that much of a threat anyways. If it's Swift Swim you're worried about, just all out ban it. I like the suggestion of only banning a few Swift Swimmers, but there will still be people who complain. Politoed being an Uber is a joke too. It lacks everything to be an Uber. Maybe it has the defenses, but it's just a VERY underrated Kyogre. If you ban one weather, you might as well go the unbiased route, and ban them all, or just make a separate tier for the weathers. It's a newly improved mechanic of the fifth generation, and why it's being banned baffles me. Like, with talk of the banning of Thundurus is one thing, cause let's face it, he was the biggest threat on any rain team. Aside from boosted Surfs or more sturdy Ferrothorn, I see no reason to ban it. It's just a gesture to show that sand and sun teams are the Smogon favorites, and hail teams are still useless. Like, aside from Swift Swimmers and Thundurus, what other threats are in rain teams? If the perma rain is a problem, then perma sun, sand, and hail should be.

Just my two cents, but I believe that Sand Stream should be more likely to be banned. The abilities that come out of that can wreck teams, such as Sand Veil, Sand Rush, or Sand Throw. I figure that Sand Rush should go for the same reason Swift Swim did. It's the exact same effect, with a little bit more damage added onto the side. Sand Veil is a dirty ability, but thanks to the banning of Chomp, we won't be seeing it as frequently. Sand Throw is meh, but the effects still can cause hell for a team, especially if they go unchecked.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

The difference is that Damp Rock would be banned in NU; any ban in a certain tier applies to lesser tiers

I actually did not know that, that punched a big whole in my theory then.

Also I really don't care what think about drizzle and if its broken. I am trying to see if there would be a way to save it, without a complex ban.

I play RU, and rain dance is strong, but nowhere near broken. I'm 9th on the ladder there and I see a good number of rain teams, but haven't lost to one in a while. The only extra attention i pay to rain teams is that i run sunny day on my ferroseed.

Thank you.

 

[phoenixflamexxx]

I hope we can stay as close to in-game Pokemon as we can. Also, I think that we should keep Drizzle+SwSw because most of the complaints are not about SwSw Pokemon.

 

[Bobmonkey07]

the only reason i don't want swift swim tested is because i really don't want ludicolo banned.
with swsw, he MIGHT be banned, and with the policy that smogon has where banning a pokemon+ability isn't permitted, i wouldn't get to use the mexican pineapple... :(

 

[Mario With Lasers]

the only reason i don't want swift swim tested is because i really don't want ludicolo banned.
with swsw, he MIGHT be banned, and with the policy that smogon has where banning a pokemon+ability isn't permitted, i wouldn't get to use the mexican pineapple... :(

?__? You would be allowed to use Ludicolo and any other pokémon which has access to Swift Swim... You just wouldn't be allowed to use Swift Swim. Same thing with the Moody ban (and now, Moody Clause); no pokémon can use the Moody ability, and yet you are allowed to use Suction Cups Octillery.

(In case you forgot, Ludicolo has Rain Dish and Own Tempo)