Banning Broken Pokemon or preserving our metagame?

[alphatron]

Now that I've got your attention, I would like to ask a relatively simple question that came to me just now.

How do we, as a community decide what gets banned and what doesn't get banned? Are we banning or nominating pokemon that are actually broken? Or are we merely getting rid of pokemon in OUR metagame, a metagame in which we do not care to adjust to solely for the purpose of handling an obnoxious threat.

Now, I have trouble getting my points across when arguing about stuff like this, so let me try to clear up any misunderstandings with this hypothetical scenario.

A group of users states that Ho-oh should be tested in OU to see whether or not he'd be broken in the fifth gen metagame and they give their arguements for it. Any arguement on why Ho-oh shouldn't be OU is countered. Ho-oh has no counters? Nothing can switch into him? Not having counters doesn't mean the pokemon is broken. Ho-oh has a multitude of OU viable checks to him such as Excadrill, terrakion, infernape, virizion, scarf tyranitar, gyarados, landorus, etc. Ho-oh can simply switch out of his checks and come back in later? Plenty of things already do that, such as latios and thundurus. Ho-oh can simply run coverage moves to surprise and remove his checks/counters? Once again, plenty of pokemon in OU already do that and are not broken for doing so, such as landorus, tyranitar, and rotom-W.

Eventually, Ho-oh just gets tested and the metagame adapts to him. Ho-oh is everywhere and is a very present threat, but this no longer matters since nearly everybody now carries a check to Ho-oh or a pokemon that can abuse his presense and use him as setup fodder. A team is no longer a "good" team if it doesn't carry a counter/check to Ho-oh. By the time the suspect round ends, the majority of the people who have made voting requirements do not have trouble with Ho-oh. As such, Ho-oh is voted OU and is now accepted into a metagame that no longer finds him broken, because it has adapted to him.

Ignoring the part where said pokemon was formerly uber, this has already happened with a number of pokemon in Gen 5's lifetime. Excadrill was considered broken, but then the metagame adapted to his presence. Sand teams now commonly carry a gliscor, an already worthy OU pokemon, non weather teams now commonly carry a gliscor, and other players simply change the weather to remove his advantages or rely on revenging him. The problems people had with excadrill have vanished for the most part.

Latios was considered broken, but then the already popular OU pokemon such as Tyranitar and Jirachi adopted sets that would make him seem like a non factor. Other teams try to sacrifice something to draco meteor as the abuse his special attack loss, and others try to predict around what he'll do when he attacks. The metagame has adopted to latios for the most part-tyranitar's most popular set was created for the sole purpose of keeping latios from being a problem.

Then there's blaziken. The metagame failed to fully adapt to the threat of speed boost blaziken. Although some players dedicated team slots to pokemon such as CB Extreme Speed dragonite, CB Azumarrill, Gliscor on rain teams, and Slowbro, not enough people bothered to do this. So when voting time came around, of course blaziken got the boot-the majority of the voters were still having issues with him.

Now, I am not saying that any of the above pokemon deserve their ou or uber status. Those are simply examples to show what I'm getting at. If the majority of players in the metagame adapt to a threat and prepare for it accordingly, then is that threat really no longer broken? And if the metagame decides not to fully adapt to another threat, and therefore sends it to ubers, then is does that pokemon truly deserve it's uber status? I sometimes joke about how a pokemon, no matter how strong otherwise, can't be regarded as uber if tyranitar (the #1 most used pokemon in the game as we know) can counter it. Sadly, there is some slight truth to these words. When talking about shadow tag chandelure, many posters have said that he is far from broken. Other posters on smogon and other websites have even said that he sucks. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.

"Because he revenges one pokemon and then gets revenged himself by pursuit tyranitar"

What about the people who aren't using tyranitar or snorlax? Obviously, they probably have trouble with shadow tag chandelure, and will not agree with that statement at all.

I don't want to make this post too long so I'll end it here. I've already said what I needed to for the most part.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

EDIT-- Ehhhh nevermind, that was the point of your thread lol

See, this is also related to what is already in the metagame. Had Tyranitar always been Uber and only now had we tried to unban it, I doubt we would vote it OU that easily, simply because the metagame wouldn't merely have it added, but have it as a dominant force, and then people "wouldn't bother" trying to adapt.

Then again, "we have to draw the line" somewhere. Tyranitar is OU for so long that I feel it is the line, so anything that changes the metagame more than Tyranitar would if it were Uber and then got unbanned, or anything that changes the metagame to something detrimental to Tyranitar (so the "old metagame" falls apart due to Tyranitar not balancing it anymore) is thought to be Uber. I don't believe Tyranitar is Uber by any means (see?), but it makes you think when people say Latios is OU because it has Tyranitar as one of its (only) counters and then, when people find out even it falls, the anti-Latios movement becomes stronger.

 

[B-Lulz]

yeah, no.

 

[Nanoswine]

Do any of the Pokemon listed have ridiculous SpDef coupled with a powerful STAB move with a 50% chance to burn? Go ahead and switch in Scarftar just to have it crippled for the rest of the game. Oh yeah, it also has great offensive stats.

There's a reason putting Ho-oh in OU is a joke to most people.

 

[alphatron]

Do any of the Pokemon listed have ridiculous SpDef coupled with a powerful STAB move with a 50% chance to burn? Go ahead and switch in Scarftar just to have it crippled for the rest of the game. Oh yeah, it also has great offensive stats.

There's a reason putting Ho-oh in OU is a joke to most people.

Aside from the diliberately misleading topic title, this topic has absolutely nothing to do with Ho-oh. Read the first post again please. Or just read Mario's post, as it sums up my thoughts pretty well.

 

[Matthew]

I'd like to see if this will go anywhere, so I re-opened it. If any other DT mod feels that the quality it has brought was negative then feel free to re-close and delete it.

 

[Blue_Tornado]

You claim people will adapt to Ho-Oh during the suspect test itself, which isn't an impossible claim based on past suspects. You seem to be missing out on something, though, which happens to be the reason why Ho-Oh is Uber- it's just too powerful. How can you honestly say that people will carry 'checks' to it to eliminate it as a threat when such threats don't exist even in Ubers? Ho-Oh, like a few other Ubers, simply cannot be 'checked' and 'dealt with' in the OU environment. This is why the Uber tier exists, and that is why they are Ubers.

If you feel like I'm wrong and Ho-Oh 'checks' do exist, go ahead, prove me wrong. If not, this thread serves no purpose.

 

[Woodchuck]

I love the attention-grabbing title, but as you can see, you already have one poster who didn't read anything but the title, and I'm suspecting that the mod who locked/deleted it may have just looked at the title and went "another dumb thread".
No offense to any mod :/
anyways alphatron it wouldn't be a bad idea to make the title less immediately lock-drawing while still being attention-grabbing

 

[breh]

The problem I see is that Ho-oh is fucking strong. The moves it runs are not shitty coverage moves (aka it doesn't have to run HP ice for gliscor like... for example, mienshao does), but two idiotically powerful STAB moves, a powerful coverage move in EQ, and either Flame charge (which can be very effective for sweeps) or roost. Either is a natural move that has great potential. Hell, if you're talking about OU use, why not just use subroost? you can stall out stone edge, roost up, then sacred fire everything. The metagame cannot adapt to Ho-oh except by running gimmicky shit like Rock Blast Rhyperior. and that's just, frankly, stupid.

Plus, please remember that Sun is available in OU. Granted, it's nowhere near as good as groudon is, but if you get sun up and tar is dead or out of stone edge (not too hard to accomplish; all you have to do is hit it on the switch with EQ twice or sub once on the switch vs. scarf and then roost as it stone edges, then switch), the opposing team is screwed. not much can handle a +2 pokemon with 130 base attack with a sun boost and a STAB move that has no recoil and a half chance to burn.

I'd suggest you choose a better example pokemon if you're going to argue this.

also I agree with woodchuck; I see this thread title and immediately think "wut" lol

 

[Prankster]

Lets make an example. Latios forces every team to run tyrannitar or scizor to counter it. A team without either has trouble with it. this was fourth gen. In fifth gen, people created new sets such as spdef jirachi and stuff that countered it, so it was easier to fight it. Remember latios was banned before soul dew. If people ran these sets in 4th gen, would latios be ou before soul dew?
Oh, and HO-OH will force people to run more than one counter to him or you are screwed. the metagame is not prepared to deal with HO OH in the sun, rain teams, latios, and other threats all in one sitting.

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

People, I think this could potentially be an interesting discussion, but please lets not discuss Ho-oh. This is NOT what the thread is about. Just an example to illustrate a point.

I agree mostly with what Mario With Lasers said tbh.

 

[Cherub Agent]

how about eventually testing zekrom in ou? Sure it's got a massive BST, but let's be realistic.

- Zekrom has next to no coverage outside of his STAB
- many, many Pokemon in the OU tier are immune to his electric STAB, and can outspeed the dragon, killing it with EQ
- i'll stress it again: quite frankly, Zekrom is slow by OU standards, and has three weaknesses to very common moves
- he's walled by the most used pokemon in ou
- technically, he's like a bulkier (ok, much bulkier) but slower Haxorus, who isn't THAT common

Basically my point is that Zekrom can be both countered and revenge killed by Pokemon in the OU metagame.

 

[Pika25]

can you make a case about Chomp? The metagame did not adapt to Chomp very much either. No common Pokemon were hard counters to all Chomps in gen IV. (Was Bulky Scarf-Cune a common set to anyone playing gen IV? 'Cause that was the only universal hard counter I could think of.) A team might have had to sacrifice fair few 'Mons just to finish off Chomp, especially if the finishing move is a priority attack (as in Mamo Ice Shard). But the rest of the team would be elated that Chomp pulled off a sacrificial romp, so that after Chomp faints the score would be, say, 5-2 in favor of Chomp's Trainer.

Edit: Excadrill may chance Rock Slide against Ho-Oh in sand, but Ho-Oh wants to switch out of Sand Rush Excadrill in the Sandstorm anyway, unless Ho-Oh is its Trainer's last 'Mon or just wants to be sacked. Unfortunately for Excadrill, RS does not have perfect accuracy.

 

[Pocket]

I don't quite agree with MWL. There was actually a debate of Ttar being uber material at the introduction of DPP with the Sandstorm buff. We didn't say, "oh T-tar has been OU since GSC, so T-tar would stay OU." No, we actually considered about its impact on the metagame, and realized that it was perfectly manageable (it's more tanky now, but it needs to sacrifice offensive presence in exchange for it).

Excadrill is considered non-uber for the past rounds due to 2 reasons:
1) Jolly Balloon was underwhelming in terms of offensive presence
2) OU mons can deal with it

Once people are forced to utilize "less useful" monsters to counter a specific mon, or when a certain threat requires a more specialized counter / check / consideration, then it is questioned to be uber material (it promotes 'overcentralization,' it is 'overpowering, it is 'unhealthy' for the metagame). I believe that the currently banned suspects indicate this trend.

There is also the luck factor, where an amazing monster mixed with a little luck = bullshit (see Shaymin-S and Garchomp).

 

[alphatron]

^Just how much less useful do these pokemon need to be though? This is why I'm quite worried that thundurus is getting the boot, what with the counters to his common 2 movesets being about four UU pokemon.

The way I see it, as long as the pokemon can be taylored do work in OU and accomplish more outside of being a counter, then it has a use and isn't a gimmicky strategy. In the case of blaziken, slowbro and azumarrill both fit this bill. But not too many people considered them worth it.

No, I am not contesting blaziken's uber status. As for the Ho-oh thing, I used Ho-oh because I wanted to use a pokemon that wasn't already tested and brought down. If this were fourth gen, I probably would have used deoxys-D instead. Either way, Ho-oh is not the point of this thread. I do not want to discuss bringing him down to OU at all.

 

[VaporeonIce]

This seems like a decent description of the testing process...is your argument that the metagame can adapt to anything? I mean, that's theoretically true, but no one wants to let Kyogre into OU and turn it into the "Kyogre and its checks" tier. Generally, a Pokemon is Uber if its power is ripping teams apart, even against good players, or people have to run one of a handful of overspecialized checks to get rid of it. When that's the case, the community as a whole decides it's Uber.

The metagame could "adapt" to Ho-oh, but in all honesty, I think it would be the deciding factor in most games. Latios isn't that bulky and relies on a single move to clear things out. Blaziken was voted Uber because it can go on a killing spree with one turn of set-up. Ho-oh can murder most Pokemon with no turns of set-up. If you're not using a Rock move, you're probably not killing it in one hit (unless you're boosted). Let's say you have something in that you don't particularly want to die a horrible death, like, say, non-Scarf Tyranitar. So you switch it any one of the checks you mention, or you just switch to some death fodder. Ho-oh can set up a Sub on that free turn, and you will almost definitely have two dead or extremely crippled Pokemon because of it. Part of that is because, unlike Blaziken, Ho-oh doesn't have to give up coverage on one check to beat another check. It only needs three attacks: Brave Bird, Sacred Fire, and Earthquake. With that turn it used to set up a Sub, it can now hit your check with any one of those three moves. While you have to spend a turn breaking its Sub (and possibly getting outsped; base 90 isn't fast, but it still outspeeds every slow Pokemon by a lot), Ho-oh gets to either KO your check if it has a supereffective move, or it gets to aim for a 50% burn chance (while still hitting you with a 100 BP STAB move off of 130 base attack; even if it's resisted, it can still do some respectable damage). Rotom-W is the one Pokemon in OU that isn't either outright murdered by one of Ho-oh's attacks or crippled to the point of near-uselessness by a burn. I guess Gliscor can fit the bill too if it's poisoned, but it takes an average of over 50% from 252 Adamant Life Orb Brave Bird.

There are examples of Pokemon that initially seem overpowered, but become manageable as the game settles down into something enjoyable, and something that doesn't seem like it's entirely built to deal with that Pokemon. Ho-oh is not one of those Pokemon. It's insanely bulky and it kills or cripples every Pokemon but one or two with just three attacks. The only type that can really take it down in one shot (since physical Water and Electric moves are rare, bar Gyarados, who is outsped and neutered by Sacred Fire) is Rock, and no useable Rock moves have over 90% accuracy. Remember Garchomp's Sand Veil? Yeah, killing Ho-oh is kinda like that. It's a pity...your original post was making a decent amount of sense, and would've been a good description of how not everything that initially "seems" Uber really is. But then you went and you tried to apply that logic to Ho-oh. Ho-oh. The "Which Pokemon should I sacrifice now?" Pokemon of the Uber tier. If you really don't see the difference between Ho-oh and Thundurus (who is considered near-Uber himself), I'm not sure I can help you.

Edit for tl:dr; I agree that some Pokemon are not as Uber as they seem, and maybe we should test more Uber Pokemon than we do. There is a reason that a lot of formerly Uber Pokemon were tested in Gen 5. But Ho-oh is not one of those Pokemon, and I honestly think that the tiering we have now is appropriate, possibly excluding Deoxys-N, and assuming that we don't mind a "weather wars" metagame.

 

[Deaga]

I honestly think Smogon should go back to its elitist roots. It's the only way to stop these bullshit ideas.

 

[alphatron]

When I get on my computer, I'm going to edit out Ho-oh in that scenario and replace it with a made up pokemon named FISH instead. It wasn't meant to be an arguement for Ho-oh in any way, shape, or form.

 

[Gerard]

If you wanted to give a example you could have used UU, like Deo D, he was Uber last gen, just becose of the Deo part of it's name, but he was a lot more manageable to beat than many OU pokes, right now is great in UU (which kind of resembles gen 4 OU) and it's great, but then you think how stuff like tyranitar, gengar or scizor whould have done for him and it, he was less bulky than cresselia with a better movepool, so where could that like be

Another one is tyranitar, he is great (and i hate him), he has literally transformed the metagame to tyranitar and things that were not tyranitar week, the almost no-precense of psyquic and ghost types in OU is really a testimony of how powerful and centralizing it was (outside of metagross (not pursuit week), the pixies (1 not pursuit week, another with a SE STAB) and gengar (could KO with FB) or Dusknoir) there weren't anywhere, if your team was tyranitar week you could never be in OU, but he was manageable because he had some common counters and checks, he kind of balances everything, imagine a tyranitar-less metagame, Latios & Latias in Uber, maybee reuiniclus too, etc... you need some powerful (almost broken) things to counter the other powerful things, many pokemon are great as counters but suck at everything else, and other are great but people just don't use them, if slowbro was on every team Blaziken wouldn't have been made uber, at the same time if tyranitar is in almost every team things like Latios will at least have a common weekspot, and become manageable, the commonness, reliability and usefulness of a check is what points out how uber is a pokemon

 

[Jonathan]

Ultimately, whether or not the voters (and I say voters because really it is they, and not the entire community, who decide what happens) send something off to Ubers or keep it in OU comes down to personal preference. You can always theorymon arguments for something to stay OU or go to Ubers, and similarly you can always adjust your team to counter something if you want to be bothered to do so.

And your point of view on the above two issues (theorymon arguments for something being OU/Uber and adjusting your team to counter it) really comes down to whether you want to see that Pokemon's face in OU every time you log onto PO. I.e., do you like having Pokemon X in the metagame?

And the results of the voting are just 70 odd responses to "do I want this thing in OU." Is this a problem? No, not in my book. The voters are the people playing the game the most, why shouldn't they get to decide which Pokemon they face regularly?

The bottom line is there is no objective method for measuring whether or not something is "broken." We don't have a metric, something like "if X can 2HKO everything under Y conditions then it's broken," or "X has fewer than Y checks/counters therefore it's broken." Such metrics would be stupid anyway, for obvious reasons I hope don't even need to be gotten into. But my point is that if there is no official metric to determine something's tiering, people will just vote for the outcome they personally want.

Hopefully that didn't stray too much from the question at hand...

 

[Myrmidon]

I doubt it strays too much from the topic if you're not ranting about Ho-oh in OU...

(VaporeonIce: I think that Ho-oh's power is WHY he makes a good metaphor as opposed to, say, Deoxys-D of last gen. But I digress...)

regardless, you're walking a fine line with this argument, alphatron. Loot at this this way:

Heatran was a quantifying aspect of the Gen4 metagame, wasn't he? (by what I've read, he was an amazing check/counter/whatever). But, he wasn't banned, even though every team HAD to have a Heatran check, right?

What I'm basically getting at is: how viable is it to fit in a check/counter to these Pokemon? Isn't the banning of 'Mence last gen just preserving the metagame? a metagame poor Mence was ripping through, but a metagame nonetheless?

I guess what I'm trying to say is; Banning broken Pokemon is a way to preserve the metagame...though it's not always the other way around (*cough*RAIN*cough*). A metagame should be something someone can ease into,get used to, and get better at...not something where someone fights 6 sandstorm-enhanced Garchomps in a row, gets discouraged, and leaves forever. Fine, so the people using said chomps are having fun,, but what about when there's nobody left to play?

preserving a metagame is fine, but as long as it's for the benefit of all, as opposed to the benefit of just the top players...and people need to remember this. If you're finding opponent's that aren't using your team/Pokemon too easy, there's probablya reason why...and you're probably using it...and it just might be a problem.

 

[Glen ^^]

This seems like a decent description of the testing process...is your argument that the metagame can adapt to anything? I mean, that's theoretically true, but no one wants to let Kyogre into OU and turn it into the "Kyogre and its checks" tier. Generally, a Pokemon is Uber if its power is ripping teams apart, even against good players, or people have to run one of a handful of overspecialized checks to get rid of it. When that's the case, the community as a whole decides it's Uber.

Aren't we playing "Ferrothorn and it's counters" already?
I'm not comparing Ferro with Kyogre, but it's common knowledge that if you can't beat Ferro, you lose.
With Blaziken and Garchomp gone there's no reason to not use him as your main steel, and switching the landmine on every single chance you have.

 

[astrohawke]

I think this thread brings up some very valid points of the suspect testing process. Anyone who is even mentioning Ho-oh obviously either didn't read the post entirely or just missed the point completely.

Ho-oh was merely an example of how we are already adapting to the borderline uber threats in the metagame and claiming that they are not broken based solely on the fact that we have adapted our teams to deal with them.

I'm sick of people telling me excadrill is crap because everyone and their mother has a gliscor and therefore has no troubles handling him. Well what if I want to make a team without gliscor? So then they list for me a bunch of random pokemon like skarmory (who loses to excadrill like 90% of the time), azumarill and hitmontop (who are UU and not even counters) and say I can use one of those. Fuck no I can't because they're either not very good counters, shit pokemon in general or not counters at all.

So basically it comes down to gliscor being the only decent solid counter. There are shaky counters, checks if you will, like skarmory and bronzong but I'll be damned if I'm gonna rely on a shaky counter when it basically sweeps you once it gets past said counter with no way to revenge kill it since nothing outspeeds.

I don't want to make this post entirely about excadrill but it's pokemon like this that make every team carbon copies of the next one. Adapting to it by using gliscor does not change the fact that it's causing an undesirable metagame by forcing any team that hopes to be decent to use gliscor. We are losing sight of what we're trying to achieve with the voting. Instead of trying to create a more desirable and varied metagame, we merely end up working around these threats and only ban when it proves to be too hard to do so.

@myrmidon I think that the main difference between something like excadrill and gen 4 heatran is what actually counters/checks it. Heatran had a lot of checks/counters such that you could stop it in a variety of ways and didn't restrict team building. Excadrill and to a certain extent latios and thunderus don't. It's either carry X or lose a pokemon every time it comes in or in the case of excadrill it's carry gliscor or face the risk of getting swept entirely. The result is that every team ends up with X for latios, Y for thunderus, Z for excadrill and so on. We would have no troubles with kyogre either. Every team just need to carry a gastrodon like every team carries a gliscor. But that doesn't really make the metagame any good does it?

 

[alphatron]

Ultimately, whether or not the voters (and I say voters because really it is they, and not the entire community, who decide what happens) send something off to Ubers or keep it in OU comes down to personal preference. You can always theorymon arguments for something to stay OU or go to Ubers, and similarly you can always adjust your team to counter something if you want to be bothered to do so.

And your point of view on the above two issues (theorymon arguments for something being OU/Uber and adjusting your team to counter it) really comes down to whether you want to see that Pokemon's face in OU every time you log onto PO. I.e., do you like having Pokemon X in the metagame?

And the results of the voting are just 70 odd responses to "do I want this thing in OU." Is this a problem? No, not in my book. The voters are the people playing the game the most, why shouldn't they get to decide which Pokemon they face regularly?

The bottom line is there is no objective method for measuring whether or not something is "broken." We don't have a metric, something like "if X can 2HKO everything under Y conditions then it's broken," or "X has fewer than Y checks/counters therefore it's broken." Such metrics would be stupid anyway, for obvious reasons I hope don't even need to be gotten into. But my point is that if there is no official metric to determine something's tiering, people will just vote for the outcome they personally want.

Hopefully that didn't stray too much from the question at hand...

I'd say you were right on the money. The banning of pokemon does indeed come down to personal prefernce based on the experiences the qualified voters have had in the metagame, and there is no set rule to dictate what is broken and what isn't broken.

A voter can choose a pokemon who may not actually be broken, but gave them a lot of trouble while they were laddering. But this is fine since the voters are trying to build a metagame that they enjoy, and as they are the ones playing the game the most, it only makes sense that they get to decide this, right?

So outside of the blatantly powerful pokemon whom the community can universally on, there isn't really anything to judge a pokemon's power level outside of, "Does the current metagame handle him well and at what lengths do they have to go through to do it."

I agree that if slowbro and azumarrill were high end OU pokemon, then blaziken probably would not have been taken as seriously.

 

[No Luck Involved]

When I get on my computer, I'm going to edit out Ho-oh in that scenario and replace it with a made up pokemon named FISH instead. It wasn't meant to be an arguement for Ho-oh in any way, shape, or form.

Please do this. The sheer number of people not getting the point and arguing against Ho-Oh is unbelievable. This is a really cool thread and I want to follow this and not have it locked. Or rename Ho-Oh: Uber#9 or something...