Banning Broken Pokemon or preserving our metagame?

[astrohawke]

No. The goal of Pokemon is to win. Being able to counter threats doesn't make you able to win automatically. Offensive teams are not able to counter everything, so should we just not play them and see BW OU reduced to the stallfest that is DP OU?

We're not talking about the goal of pokemon. We're talking about the goal of the metagame. When I say counters, I mean counters and checks. An offensive team does not need to counter everything, but they should have answers for everything. Most of the time that means bringing in a faster stronger sweeper than so and so threat to revenge kill it. If they can't, then they get swept the same as any stall team that can't wall so and so threat.

When you just ban the broken pokemon, it leads to a rise in stall teams, just like in DP OU. It won't.

So you're saying "don't ban the broken pokemon" because we don't like stall? Please think before you type. DP OU isn't even that stally compared to ADV because stuff got banned.

When there's an offensive threat that is faster than everything else in the game (ala blaziken, excadrill), you don't build more offensive teams because none of those offensive pokemon would be able to touch these threats. You fall back to using great walls to stall them. The metagame essentially becomes the threats + the things that wall the threats.

So in fact, the opposite of what you're saying is true. Offensive teams are actually more prevalent as the huge overpowering threats get banned. Compare the stall metagame that was gen 3 where none of the top OU mons were banned to a less stall metagame in gen 4 where some of the top threats were banned.

 

[Pocket]

As far as RSE, it has gone stale in its final years, and people were complaining about it. I don't think suspect process would have necessarily resulted to any bans (other than perhaps Ingrain Smeargle). The difference from RSE to more modern gens is that there is MUCH LESS threats, such that a suspect process was not really needed imo.

I am in same wavelength with astrohawke... but I have to ask if we are at this point with Excadrill. Can an offensive team not be able to find an answer to Excadrill? Is Gliscor and Skarmory the only counters to Excadrill? Tangrowth and Slowbro has no problem absorbing +2 LO Adamant Return and has a high chance of surviving an X-Scissor, too. Same with Bronzong. With LO recoil and maybe even entry hazard damage, I feel like there are plenty of priority users that can wipe out weakened Excadrill. And there is always Scarf Excadrill if you really want that revenge killer (and why not?). Isn't there enough variety in dispatching Excadrill?

 

[November Blue]

I don't agree that smogon is ban happy. We have our fair share of whiners and bandwagoners in the suspect thread, but the voting pool is pretty good. I don't think that things are banned unnecessarily in most cases.

Reuniclus is a good example here. All it took was one person to mention it, then everyone was complaining about it. The voters decided not to ban it, thank god, and it hasn't been mentioned since.

 

[SlimMan]

Slim, none of us said you had to counter EVERY threat from NU to OU (well, I didn't). We just said we needed to respond to the top 53 or so threats in OU, and the many UU pokemon that are commonly seen in OU as well. In a team of 6 pokemon, that's, as RocketSurgery said, about 10-15 pokemon for each. Can each of your team members handle that many?

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Actually, people were talking about counters, including you:

I feel that with 6 teamslots, it's very difficult to counter every set of every threat but ultimately, the goal of a good metagame should be to
a) Allow a team to counter as many threats as possible
b) Allow for many variations of teams to achieve this

Let's say in a metagame where the top 10 threats each only had 1 counter where none of those counters were shared. The game would basically be pick a team of 6 counters out of 10. This is a bad metagame because not only is there no possibility for team diversity, you can only cover 6/10 of the top threats at any given time. While maybe not as extreme as this, this is where our metagame is at at the moment because some of our top threats have very few counters and checks.

Now if say we were to get rid of these 10 threats. The next 10 top threats to emerge all have 10 or 20 counters/checks each and a lot of those DO overlap. There are infinitely more combinations available for teambuilding and it's up to each individual team builder to find the right combination of 6 pokemon to cover as many threats as possible. A very good team builder might be able to cover 9/10 threats. Another might be able to cover 8 and yet another might be able to cover an entirely different 8 threats. That's the type of metagame we should be aiming for.

my point is...one Pokemon can counter MANY foes...I'm sure that teambuilding in Gen4 was difficult when the threat list came out originally, but as people adapted, it became easier to check and counter many prominent threats.

I don't see Gen5 being any different in this respect. Once we get OU stabilized and the rules basically set, we can see everything calm down, and more Pokemon will be countering more threats.

The best counters for Reuniclus are Scizor, T-Tar and Sp.Def Jirachi, but they probably wouldn't be able to take on a Celebi anyway. T-Tar switches in, gets Leaf Stormed. Scizor, HP Fire, Jirachi, Earth Power / HP Fire. Celebi can run Nasty Plot, Tinkerbell, CM or even Swords Dance, in comparison to Reuniclus, who only has OTR and CM to choose form.

The best Blaziken 'counter' is Slowbro, who gets murdered by Infernape's +2 Grass Knot as he switches in on the NP and gets outsped.

Threats can be similar, but they aren't all necessarily countered by the same pokemon, as shown by the examples above. I'm just hoping that in a few years, GF increases the team size to 7 or 8.

Wouldn't you say that something that can counter Deoxys-S can also counter Espeon, Alakazam, and any other fast, frail psychic? How about using a Deoxys-D counter as a Renunculus counter, or a Celebi counter? I bet that anything that can counter Blaziken could also counter Infernape...I'd even go as far to say that some things that can counter Zapdos could also be used to counter Thundurus.

This is why I wonder how many threats a team can reasonably counter, and whether or not that number can be maximized by removing some threats.

----------
Anyway,
The thing is that, you don't need to prepare for all of those individual Pokemon. If I'm prepared against Excadrill, I'm probably good for Landorus and Terrakion. If I'm ready for Thundurus, I'm probably gonna do fine against Tornadus and Zapdos. Furthermore, not all 60 or 70 Pokemon could sweep you if you're not prepared for them. If I ignore Forretress during teambuilding, my team won't be ruined the minute that I encounter one. If I forget about Swampert or Bronzong when making my team, it's not the end of the world. You only need to prepare for what's most common, because they are, gennerally speaking, the best at their role. So if you encounter another, supposedly lesser, Pokemon doing that same role, you should be able to handle it. Teams can't take care of everything, but you can minimize the number of things you aren't prepared for, and you can make the things you aren't as insignificant as possible. That's what teambuilding is now, and banning things, as said before, is not gonna change a thing about it.

I meant that each of those threats had their own 10-20 (this is a random number btw) counters and checks where some of those might overlap. They wouldn't all have the same 20 checks. Say starmie might be used to check mixmence, gyarados and heatran. Three very different pokemon. Where one person might choose to use a starmie to cover these 3 pokemon, another might choose to use mixape to check mence, heatran and blissey. They would obviously need something else for gyarados just as the starmie user would need something else for blissey but that's where team diversity comes in. You could have 6 entirely different pokemon covering the same threats. There are so many more possibilites whereas now it's basically gliscor for excadrill, ttar/scizor for latios, jirachi/blissey for thunderus etc. I hope you understand what I'm trying to get across because it's difficult to express this eloquently.

Okay, now it makes a lot more sense. I thought you meant that they all shared the exact same set of checks and counters. My b.
Those examples you used made it sound a lot like Gen4 OU, but I know it was unintentional. I just wanted to point out that other people might use the "You're trying to make 5 into 4" argument.

Stability is a factor that comes with time as people adapt to the threats whether they are overpowered or not but we can have a stable metagame that isn't very good. Ubers is a pretty stable metagame because everything is allowed and nothing changes. But it doesn't mean it's a good metagame because everything is centralized around the most powerful pokemon and only a few OU pokemon have any viability in that environment.

Well, some people would argue that Ubers is a good metagame, but that's beside the point.

I would say that it's also possible to have a balanced metagame that isn't very good, but I don't really wanna get in on this. I'd say to take it up with mien.

Stability should come second to balance. I asked what mien's idea of balance was.

Again, that's arguable, but it's still not my problem, nor any of my business.

 

[Zephiel]

We're not talking about the goal of pokemon. We're talking about the goal of the metagame.

The goal of the metagame is to let people have fun (by winning). I assure you that the majority of people prefer an offensive metagame rather than a metagame filled with stall, as in DP OU.

An offensive team does not need to counter everything, but they should have answers for everything. Most of the time that means bringing in a faster stronger sweeper than so and so threat to revenge kill it. If they can't, then they get swept the same as any stall team that can't wall so and so threat.

The point of an offense team is to sweep before you get swept / stalled out. Offense teams too have the option to use broken pokemon, so it's not as bad as you make it sound. I agree that if games just come to one pokemon (such as Gen 4 Garchomp and Kyogre) it's too broken to be OU, but there isn't a single situation in this generation like this that I can think of right now.

So you're saying "don't ban the broken pokemon" because we don't like stall? Please think before you type. DP OU isn't even that stally compared to ADV because stuff got banned.

No, I'm not. Read my post before even telling me to think before I type. I said banning things wouldn't lead to variation because there'd mainly be stall teams.

Jeez, you're telling me to think before I type? Look at the horrendous, asinine logic in the bolded part of the quote. Let's look at the Pokemon that got banned:

Wobbuffet (massive aid to offense teams, wrecks stall)
Garchomp (massive aid to offense teams)
Manaphy (massive aid to offense teams)
Deoxys-S (bigger aid to offense than to stall)
Salamence (since Salamence is going to stall)
Latias (arguable, Wish Latias could be useful for stall teams, but she was useful for offense as well)
Latios (offense)
Shaymin-S (since Shaymin-S can stall, right)

You need to think before you type, because you just ended up typing the most ignorant, stupid thing I've ever seen.

By the way, remember teams like Obi Stall, Kevin Garrett stall, imperfectluck stall and Earthworm stall? The best way to get to the top of the ladder was to use stall.

When there's an offensive threat that is faster than everything else in the game (ala blaziken, excadrill), you don't build more offensive teams because none of those offensive pokemon would be able to touch these threats. You fall back to using great walls to stall them.

No you don't, you end up using those threats + using walls.

The metagame essentially becomes the threats + the things that wall the threats.

In your desired metagame, it's just "the walls". No threats.

So in fact, the opposite of what you're saying is true. Offensive teams are actually more prevalent as the huge overpowering threats get banned. Compare the stall metagame that was gen 3 where none of the top OU mons were banned to a less stall metagame in gen 4 where some of the top threats were banned.

Gen 3 wasn't much of a stall metagame. People had little options when running a stall team, so it usually consisted of Zapdos + Blissey + Skarmory + Claydol/Donphan + Suicune/Swampert + Dusclops, so it's not like it was impossible to counter. Furthermore, people were stuck with only Spikes (no SR or Toxic Spikes) so any levitating/flying Pokemon had a significant advantage. There are notable stall counters, such as Boah and CM Jirachi.

There were plenty of groundbreaking offensive teams. 2 from VIL, arguably the best battler in RSE come to mind: his Golden Girls tourney team (I think?) and his Sandstorm team.

 

[Pocket]

obi stall existed since Garchomp was around, so it doesn't really help your case. Stall teams existed in every phase of the metagame. In addition, DPP does not lack in offensive teams, I don't recall it being a stallfest.

astrohawke has a point. Offensive teams must execute their offensive plans, but they must also maneuver around the top threats. Whether that be clever use of checks or having a solid counter is the player's choice. So yes, the mission of an offensive team is to sweep hard and fast, but they still need answers to common threats or otherwise gets swept effortlessly. An offensive team getting swept by Volcorona is not a good team.

His argument is that threats such as Excadrill forces people to use Gliscor, since there are no reliable answer to this threat with the doubling of Speed. Using Gliscor effectively halts the offensive momentum that may be hard to recover for offensive teams. I must say, bulky balanced team are the norm now, which may be due to only tanks being able to deal with Excadrill. Astrohawke is claiming that removing Excadrill would actually give offensive teams more room to execute their offensive schemes without being swept by Excadrill or other "manageable-but-forces-the-use-of-walls" threats.

So yes, if he is indeed true about Excadrill then offensive teams would prosper with its elimination.

 

[Zephiel]

obi stall existed since Garchomp was around, so it doesn't really help your case. Stall teams existed in every phase of the metagame. In addition, DPP does not lack in offensive teams, I don't recall it being a stallfest.

Granted, but DPP is far more stall than ADV ever was, while he was arguing for the opposite. Can you honestly tell me a successful, well known stall team in ADV, as successful as the ones I mentioned above?

Offensive teams must execute their offensive plans, but they must also maneuver around the top threats. Whether that be clever use of checks or having a solid counter is the player's choice. So yes, the mission of an offensive team is to sweep hard and fast, but they still need answers to common threats or otherwise gets swept effortlessly. An offensive team getting swept by Volcorona is not a good team.

But it's not impossible to find answers to common threats in this gen (with the exception of maybe Blaziken). Excadrill, Garchomp, Thundurus, Reuniclus, Latios and whoever else I'm forgetting can be dealt with. The only reason people want to get rid of these threats is because they're relatively more powerful, even though they can be dealt with.

The point of Pokemon is it's variety - there are 649 pokemon, the fully evolved ones we can take advantage of and use - this is the reason why it's so popular, other than that it's just a typical Japanese RPG. Considering this, it is silly to assume that a team will be able to counter every single Pokemon in the OU metagame.

His argument is that threats such as Excadrill forces people to use Gliscor, since there are no reliable answer to this threat with the doubling of Speed.

Dugtrio + Politoed / Ninetales sounds reliable to me, actually, but nevermind.

Furthermore, it doesn't force people to use Gliscor. There are several ways one can deal with Excadrill, other than Gliscor: Skarmory, Bronzong, Hippowdon, Heatran with Balloon, Conkeldurr, Azumarill, Politoed, Ninetales. I'm sorry that I'm talking about Excadrill (since mods don't want us to), but it is necessary to prove my point and we cannot avoid talking about it because it's so crucial to this topic.

I'm going to once again give the example of Yache Garchomp to show how much the community changed. It took months for people to ban a Pokemon with no checks or counters (maybe except Trick Cresselia).

Just look at Excadrill's analysis:

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, there is quite a substantial list of Pokemon that adequately check Excadrill.

The community looks an excuse to ban for anything slightly broken, it's the truth and you can't deny it. Just look at the freaking suspect thread: someone suggested banning Rotom-W, for crying out loud.

I must say, bulky balanced team are the norm now, which may be due to only tanks being able to deal with Excadrill.

How is one pokemon responsible for this? This gen is known as the offense generation for a reason - plenty of insanely strong pokemon have been introduced. Excadrill is far from the sole reason for this.

 

[Sensei_Bobbilytus]

Any decently beefy water with Aqua Jet can take out an Excadrill, so let's please not discuss him. Sorry I'm so late to the party; I really enjoy the OP and the premise of this topic (and how many noobs rushed into "OMG, Ho-oh is beefy, do not want" and missed the point. They make me lul).

I think my biggest personal issue at stake here, is classifying how manageable a pokemon being unbanned is by how good it's counter/checks are. Sure, you don't need to counter everything, but let's face it, shall we take a walk in the opposite direction? Did you know Magnezone is banned from UU? The UFO is a decent OU steel-counter just because he's the best Magnet Pull poke there is (I think his only competition is Mariopass). I have reason to believe that if trapping steel types wasn't such a big deal, he's be stuck in UU due to his lackluster speed and poor typing (He has a huge number of resists, but he's double-weak to ground and still neutral to fire and fighting, all types that a large steel-presence keep fairly common offensively).

What's my point here? Magnezone is only good because he has a niche in OU, and this usability keeps him from even being able to be played in lower tiers. He is elevated in status so he can check/counter specific pokes. What would happen if, say, there were some obscure theoretical pokemon in UU that could counter Ho-oh perfectly every time? Would it be okay to make both of those pokes OU so they could properly do battle? Or is the idea of adapting the metagame just an extended ploy to control what's on "standard" teams, what's in high-usage and should stay that way, by trying to water every team down to the same thing with little variety? I hate T-Tar. I've always thought it should be Uber. We have Hippopodope for perma-sand.

In my understanding for most competative games, banning threats is based on the fact that something is "unhealthy for the format". The concept of a single pokemon dictating what should and shouldn't be used is pretty unhealthy I think. See Garchomp for example. I'm sure it's been mentioned, but the damage T-tar does to the format is signifigant. Look back to when he was introduced. Psychic went from the most over-powered type to a check for fighting-types, and a bad one at that. Because of Steel and Dark types, psychics got a severe shaft and now fighting types dominate because of how many types they can bend in half. Most psychics that do see use MUST run Focus Miss just to be competitive.

Let's not forget how the internet views Smogon; We'd so much as ban Delibird if it got a lucky kill on a Garchomp. I am always in favor of any choice that allows more variety in teams, not less, and I feel like unbanning a lot of threats and this notion of "adapting the metagame" has little to do with pokemon actually being broken or not, and more to do with people's willingness to run the same pokemon over and over on every team. Are pokemon like Magnezone or Mamoswine really worth running, just because they stop some potent big-guys? Or do we put up with a couple of bigger guys just because lesser pokes like these have a single advantage to stop them? Is the requirement then FOR banning that a pokemon is near-unstoppable? Or should we try and maintain a healthy format and try and ban threats that warp and shape formats around themselves like Tyranitar? I know I can't say.

 

[Aleva]

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Actually, people were talking about counters, including you:
Not really, I was responding to someone else's idea about counters overlapping not being necessarily true; it didn't have anything to do with my own point.

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Anyway,
The thing is that, you don't need to prepare for all of those individual Pokemon. If I'm prepared against Excadrill, I'm probably good for Landorus and Terrakion. If I'm ready for Thundurus, I'm probably gonna do fine against Tornadus and Zapdos. Furthermore, not all 60 or 70 Pokemon could sweep you if you're not prepared for them. If I ignore Forretress during teambuilding, my team won't be ruined the minute that I encounter one. If I forget about Swampert or Bronzong when making my team, it's not the end of the world. You only need to prepare for what's most common, because they are, gennerally speaking, the best at their role. So if you encounter another, supposedly lesser, Pokemon doing that same role, you should be able to handle it. Teams can't take care of everything, but you can minimize the number of things you aren't prepared for, and you can make the things you aren't as insignificant as possible. That's what teambuilding is now, and banning things, as said before, is not gonna change a thing about it.
If you're prepared for Excadrill, that's no guarantee that you'll be prepared for Landorus and Terrakion. Especially if they're on the same team. Scizor checks Terrakion, but does it check Excadrill? What if Landorus runs HP Ice to get past your Gliscor that beats Excadrill?

You tell me that you only need to prepare for the most common, or the best at their role, but isn't that what OU is? You also said later in your post that OU is 'the best of the best'. This means you'd have to prepare for every offensive threat in OU.

Also, you might say that multiple threats can be similar, but the reason why they're still OU is because they have variation. Look at Scrafty, Conkeldurr, and Toxicroak, who can all use Bulk Up. Hell, even Gallade. Even though they use the same moveset, they have different answers to them because of things like typing and movepool. DDMence and DDNite might be different as well, because Nite has the extra bulk that lets him set up more.

Yes, you do need a way to deal with DDMence (as an example). But it doesn't have to be a counter, which I was pointing out in my post.

Anyway, I think people are failing to realize something. There can only be so much usage, because each team only has 6 slots. OU can only grow so big due to these usage constraints, and I personally think we're near that mark. OU will consist of what is considered the best of the best, and that group of "the best" won't keep growing forever. For instance, OU only grew by 5 Pokemon this Gen. Why is it that it was fine with 48, and not with 53?
It was fine back then because the number of UU pokemon that were still potentially viable in OU was minuscule, maybe nonexistent. Not to mention the fact that the Five Rotoms were almost the same thing and pokemon like Weavile and Electivire were horrible. It's different now because even though there's only 53 OU by usage, there are still, like I said, many pokemon that are still perfectly viable in OU and just failed to make the cut by about 0.1% usage.
Furthermore, suppose that OU would keep growing, suppose that the usage restraints didn't exist. Those are future generations, and should in no way influence our decision-making now.

@Zephiel

Of course the only pokemon to be banned were offensive ones. It's much harder to justify the banning of a defensive pokemon, because while they stop the threats, there's little they do to win the game (apart from stall with Toxic and residual damage). All defensive pokemon have their own weaknesses anyway. The only way a defensive pokemon would be banned would be if no one, literally NO ONE could kill it, no matter what they did. No one would want everyone in the metagame running Perish Song.

 

[astrohawke]

Zephiel do you even read what you type or read what I type or do you just try and find fault with everything and argue for the sake of arguing?

So I said when certain threats outspeed everything else, you're forced to use walls to stall them to which you responded with:

No you don't, you end up using those threats + using walls.

Ok, fair enough. But that's exactly what I wrote right afterwards:

The metagame essentially becomes the threats + the things that wall the threats.

Also you assure me that people prefer an offensive metagame to a stall one? Sorry but I wasn't aware that you had done a survey on this or that you represent the views of the community.

Most of the top ladderers have always used stall or semi-stall to get there because when it comes to laddering, stall offers the most consistency. Keep your walls alive, counter what the opponent throws at you. When you battle over and over again, that's the best strategy to use. But if you think the DP metagame in general was more stall based than ADV, then I have news for you. It isn't.

The top used pokemon in DP were all offensive.

Hide

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78421

Look at the top used pokemon and of those 2 maybe 3 of the top 15 were used defensively. I obviously can't get usage stats from netbattle but anyone who's played ADV at all knows skarm, bliss, zapdos, suicune, celebi and pert were pretty much everywhere. What certain battlers made famous is irrelevant compared to what was actually played by most people at the time.

To prove my point further that overpowering threats actually cause stall to be more prominent, I will use an example from the NU ADV metagame on the PO server. Up to about a month ago, their NU metagame allowed NFEs. As a result, offensive threats such as haunter, pupitar and vigoroth were extremely powerful. Every team consisted of flareons to wall haunter, tangelas to wall pupitar etc. The metagame was extremely stale and stally because every team was made up of these threats and the things that walled these threats. The threats couldn't get past the walls and the walls obviously couldn't do much to the walls either.

Then they got banned and suddenly, offensive teams started popping up. Firstly, these new offensive pokemon didn't have to worry about being outsped and killed by haunter and co before they can do anything. Secondly, teams no longer needed to be bogged down by flareons and tangelas to wall haunter and co so they now had room for more offensive pokemon. The metagame is now far less stally.

To relate this back to the discussion at hand (as this is getting slightly off topic), pokemon like haunter were perfectly manageable in the metagame because every team adapted to an overpowering threat and carried a flareon. Now replace haunter with excadrill or latios and flareon with gliscor or TTar and you have BW OU. Get rid of the threat and you will see more offensive teams pop up, not less. I guarantee it.

 

[Nkululeko]

@Zephiel

Of course the only pokemon to be banned were offensive ones. It's much harder to justify the banning of a defensive pokemon, because while they stop the threats, there's little they do to win the game (apart from stall with Toxic and residual damage). All defensive pokemon have their own weaknesses anyway. The only way a defensive pokemon would be banned would be if no one, literally NO ONE could kill it, no matter what they did. No one would want everyone in the metagame running Perish Song.

The main thing keeping defensive pokemon from getting banned is that they rarely have a reliable means(if any) of getting past their counters. The ability to consistently beat the only "counters" an offensive pokemon has leads to it being banned. That's why Excadrill may never be banned, at the end of the day Gliscor still exists.

@the OP, I gues I'll echo the sentiment that this raises a really good point. Even though it is technically posssible to adapt to every threat in the Dex it's not practical to need to adapt to certain ones (hypothetically speaking, like a Ho-Oh in OU because doing successfully adapting to it would likely render your team overspecialized and largely useless otherwise) and we ban the pokemon that introduce that particular dilema into the metagame. However, we've seen a rise in (don't quote me outside of the thread on this bs phrase) what I'll call selective countering for now. Players have risen to the occasion of countering very powerful threats (like Latios, Thundurus, Excadrill, Reuniclus, etc.) but in some cases just refuse to counter others like Blaziken (Aqua Jet anyone? Azu counters a lot of things and Jellicent walled that thing to hell and back, esp in Rain which is a respectable 10+% of the time)and Garchomp ( seriously some people acted as if all weather not named Sandstorm vanished when 'Chomp came on the field and nobody had reliable Ice moves or EQ switch-ins). Whereas some pokemon likely will never be retested in OU (in the current climate, everything that would need a retest to be in OU) there's a case to be made when players refuse to be bothered with adapting to the metagame and want something banned purely because they crap their pants when they see it in Team Preview.

Props to alphatron for making this thread so I can get this off my chest and I want to clarify that even though there is the legitimate argument that competitively viable teams shouldn't be forced to use one or two pokemon or be swept by a common pokemon every time I feel that it's an equally legitimate argument in saying that there should be an effort on everyone's behalf to adapt to certain threats in the metagame instead of running to the Suspect Thread and spamming OMG EXCADRILL'S UBER, or something to that effect when our time and energy would be better spent seeing if countering a poke leaves too many holes in your team.

Edit:Blaziken gets Shadow Claw but you get my point right?

 

[Zephiel]

By the way, good job ignoring most of my post.

Zephiel do you even read what you type or read what I type or do you just try and find fault with everything and argue for the sake of arguing?

It's really amusing how you have to resort to childish, inane statements like "do you even read what you type" just to make yourself look right and not stupid. Too bad the rest of your content is completely logically lacking.

Ok, fair enough. But that's exactly what I wrote right afterwards:

I am well aware of that. I was simply trying to make you aware of a self contradiction you made in your post. In order for you to understand, let's look at the first part of the post and then the second:

When there's an offensive threat that is faster than everything else in the game (ala blaziken, excadrill), you don't build more offensive teams because none of those offensive pokemon would be able to touch these threats. You fall back to using great walls to stall them.

The metagame essentially becomes the threats + the things that wall the threats.

You state that offensive teams cannot be built. However, you also state that you make stall teams to counter these threats (remember, it's not usually a good idea to carry a sweeper in a stall team because you need to lure the sweeper's counters with other sweepers). So why would Excadrill and Blaziken even be used if stall teams will dominate the metagame, and offensive and balanced teams cannot be built? They can be, and people did/do build them, and they always will be built. You state, at the same time, that these threats will be used and at the same time that offensive/balanced teams cannot be built. I suggest that you read your own posts before posting as a piece of advice, because unlike you, I don't have to resort to immature statements to make myself look correct.

Also you assure me that people prefer an offensive metagame to a stall one? Sorry but I wasn't aware that you had done a survey on this or that you represent the views of the community.

It doesn't take a 5 year old to understand that the majority would prefer a fast-paced metagame over a stallfest, which is simply boring and has no excitement in terms of predictions. Games simply come down to who can get the critical hit first.

Most of the top ladderers have always used stall or semi-stall to get there because when it comes to laddering, stall offers the most consistency. Keep your walls alive, counter what the opponent throws at you. When you battle over and over again, that's the best strategy to use.

It completely depends on the metagame. Smogon has desperately banned every single truly dangerous offensive threat.

Again, it doesn't take an idiot to understand that a metagame with all the good offensive threats banned will predominantly have stall. Anyone can tell that a Gen 4 metagame with Deoxys-S, Manaphy, Shaymin-S, Garchomp etc. would simply wreck stall. These threats can easily overpower stall.

As it completely depends on the metagame, one can easily say that the fourth gen no longer has any truly dangerous offensive threats, and it is a stall metagame.

But if you think the DP metagame in general was more stall based than ADV, then I have news for you. It isn't.

The top used pokemon in DP were all offensive.

I was under the impression that Smogon wished to get rid of the "scrubs" who didn't really know how to battle, which Shoddy has a lot of. It hardly makes a difference, because offense in the 4th gen doesn't have a single dangerous offensive threat. Anyone who wanted to do decently on the ladder would have to use stall, and it doesn't matter what a bunch of scrubs use.

Look at the top used pokemon and of those 2 maybe 3 of the top 15 were used defensively.

You obviously can't play stall. Heatran, Gyarados, Rotom, Tyranitar, Jirachi, Swampert from the top 15. That's already 6 pokemon. Let's look at the top 20. Blissey, Vaporeon and Skarmory. That's enough for a stall team!

but anyone who's played ADV at all knows skarm, bliss, zapdos, suicune, celebi and pert were pretty much everywhere. What certain battlers made famous is irrelevant compared to what was actually played by most people at the time.

How is it irrelevant? The teams that are most successful define the metagame, because people copy them and their strategies, just like stall teams in gen 4. How can you make such ignorant statements?

They were used separately. There were plenty of successful offensive teams.

Let's consider that ADV was indeed, a stall metagame. How do you suggest that VIL did so well with his 2 offensive teams? Furthermore, I recall at one Smogon tournament, there was a final between Noobster (his team being Celebi, Skarmory, Snorlax, Magneton, Salamence and Swampert) and Hipmonlee (I forgot his whole team, but I think it had Regice, Milotic, Tyranitar, Dugtrio, Gengar and something else). Neither of these two had stall teams.

ADV can't even be a stall metagame. The fact that stall teams in ADV had such little variety (they only had Zapdos, Blissey, Skarmory, Forretress, Dusclops, Suicune, Claydol to pick from) proves that they could be easily countered and defeated.

To prove my point further that overpowering threats actually cause stall to be more prominent, I will use an example from the NU ADV metagame on the PO server.

How can you even compare NU to OU? They have completely different Pokemon with completely different types and completely different capabilities. It's like comparing apples and oranges.

We even have a real example: Gen 4 OU. Every single threat that was banned was offensive, and offense teams became so useless that stall teams were easily the most successful ones. Why ignore such a good example when you have one?

Now replace haunter with excadrill or latios and flareon with gliscor or TTar and you have BW OU.

Do you honestly think Gliscor is only used to counter Excadrill? It's also used as a stallbreaker with Swords Dance and Taunt, it has an excellent ability, and it can counter a lot more threats than just Excadrill.

Jirachi isn't only used to counter Latios. It is an excellent pokemon for tanking special attack hits in general and it can support your team with Wish, and even set up Stealth Rock. It can also act as a revenge killer. Iron Head + Body Slam is just cheap.

 

[tehy]

You realize you yourself just proved that powerful sweepers encourage stall?

Look, the fact is, if you want to run a team comprised purely of fast pokemon, excadrill, blaziken, and deoxys can all tear you apart. The only way to stop them is with pokemon like skarmory, hippowdon, and jellicent. And jirachi is a total stall pokemon, stalling you out with iron heads, paralysis, and wishes. Don't even pretend that it isn't. Gliscor is mostly the same, except that he can actually set up SD, although chances are he'll be forced out or killed a second later. The point is, those are walls, used to stall. They are so popular and so used because of great sweepers.

And gyarados was also a dragon dance sweeper, tyranitar was also a powerful hard-hitter used to break stall, and rotom-w was often used as a specially based attacker with a choice item. Same thing for heatran. Jirachi is arguable because back then it could actually calm mind, but i'll take it as a stall pokemon, since it only supports my above theory. Besides, just because they were all used, doesn't mean they were all used together. Skarmbliss might have been a notable combo, but i saw them used individually as well.

As for a lot of the banned things in fourth gen...


Wobbuffet (massive aid to offense teams, wrecks stall)
Yes, being able to trap and kill any pokemon that can break your stall core(infernape for skarmbliss, for example), is definitely not at all helpful to stall teams.

Garchomp (massive aid to offense teams)
Yeah, a scarfer able to revenge anything that can set up on your stall pokemon? Who needs that?

Manaphy (massive aid to offense teams)
A pokemon immune to status with 100% recovery and 100/100/100 base defenses with good typing? Couldn't possibly be helpful to stall.

Deoxys-S (bigger aid to offense than to stall)
The ability almost always set up multiple hazards? Stall couldn't possibly use THAT.

Salamence (since Salamence is going to stall)
Actually, true. Of course, since he rapes purely offensive teams, he kind of forces stall to be used.

Latias (arguable, Wish Latias could be useful for stall teams, but she was useful for offense as well)
Yeah, a pokemon with great base defenses, calm mind, and recover. No way this pokemon could stall anything, or even support the entire team with wish.

Latios (offense)
What did i just say about garchomp? But with the added bonus of not being forced to spam outrage to be incredibly strong.

Shaymin-S (since Shaymin-S can stall, right)
Sub.Seed. And a revenge-killer. And spamming air slash for flinchhax is stally as hell.

What's that? All those pokemon are massively useful to stall or promote its usage?
Nowai.

 

[Zephiel]

Look, the fact is, if you want to run a team comprised purely of fast pokemon, excadrill, blaziken, and deoxys can all tear you apart.

Guess what? All of those pokemon are fast too!!! Omg, you can totally use an offense team!!!

The only way to stop them is with pokemon like skarmory, hippowdon, and jellicent.

Or you can just use, you know, revenge killers like Azumarill, Conkeldurr or CB Scizor, or even your own Excadrill.

And jirachi is a total stall pokemon, stalling you out with iron heads, paralysis, and wishes. Don't even pretend that it isn't.

Haha, what the fuck? Plenty of balanced teams use Jirachi.

http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue15/featured_rmt_ou

Gliscor is mostly the same, except that he can actually set up SD, although chances are he'll be forced out or killed a second later.

http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue15/featured_rmt_ou

The same balanced team with a Gliscor!

Newsflash: YOU DON'T HAVE TO RUN STALL TO USE GLISCOR AND JIRACHI.

And gyarados was also a dragon dance sweeper, tyranitar was also a powerful hard-hitter used to break stall, and rotom-w was often used as a specially based attacker with a choice item. Same thing for heatran.

Guess what? No one cares how else they could be used. He was asking for Pokemon that could be used defensively.

Garchomp (massive aid to offense teams)
Yeah, a scarfer able to revenge anything that can set up on your stall pokemon? Who needs that?

Ignoring my post to support your argument. Read the bolded part.

Manaphy (massive aid to offense teams)
A pokemon immune to status with 100% recovery and 100/100/100 base defenses with good typing? Couldn't possibly be helpful to stall.

Yeah, since stall uses Rain, right? Why use Manaphy when you can use Gyarados with Intimidate and Roar?

Deoxys-S (bigger aid to offense than to stall)
The ability almost always set up multiple hazards? Stall couldn't possibly use THAT.

Do you even know why Deoxys-S got banned? It was because of the Dual Screens set, which was too useful for offense teams. Dual Screens are mostly useless for stall teams.

Read the bolded part.

Latias (arguable, Wish Latias could be useful for stall teams, but she was useful for offense as well)
Yeah, a pokemon with great base defenses, calm mind, and recover. No way this pokemon could stall anything, or even support the entire team with wish.

Ignoring my post to make yourself look right, how mature. Read the bolded part.

Latios (offense)
What did i just say about garchomp? But with the added bonus of not being forced to spam outrage to be incredibly strong.

Yeah, since stall teams really love to use Latios, right?

Shaymin-S (since Shaymin-S can stall, right)
Sub.Seed. And a revenge-killer. And spamming air slash for flinchhax is stally as hell.

Shaymin-S is fragile, weak to SR, gets wrecked by Scizor.

You don't seem to understand the point of stall teams. Flinch hax is luck reliant, and stall teams are mainly weak to luck in gen 4. So why would they want to capitalize on the luck factor?

What's that? All those pokemon are massively useful to stall or promote its usage?
Nowai.

What's that? Ignoring my post to promote your argument?
No way.

 

[tehy]

You don't have to run stall to use stall pokemon, but they are stall pokemon. And latios is pretty damn useful on a stall team.
Azumarill is a shitty-ass counter to any of those pokemon, because all it can do is switch in on set-up moves. anyone with a brain will just spam earthquake/superpower/Whatever deoxys is using to demolish azu, then continue. Conkeldurr is better, but still not immune to this. Scizor only stops deoxys, and that's if it doesn't get torched on the switchin. Nice try, but no cigar.

And i read the bolded part. I just reiterated it.

Oh, and as for this

Shaymin-S is fragile, weak to SR, gets wrecked by Scizor.

You don't seem to understand the point of stall teams. Flinch hax is luck reliant, and stall teams are mainly weak to luck in gen 4. So why would they want to capitalize on the luck factor?

Firstly, because just because youre weak to something doesn't mean you can't use it. All offense teams are weak to setup sweepers, and guess what they use? And if scizor tries to come in, HP fire. Then you can continue kicking ass like usual. Or, just use the power of subseed. You can run Hp fire, substitute, leech seed, and air slash and have the set work perfectly.
The stealth rock thing sucks, but it doesn't matter, because it has what i like to call the latios principle. it goes something like this.
"Well, i could switch out what he's going to revenge. Then i could bring in something to tank his attack! Wait, what do i have that can do that? Better just sacrifice my sweeper."

Granted, it's not 100% true. But if this principle applies, skymin needs only one switchin anyways.

Oh, and all the applications of said pokemon i named(The top 15 ones) , except for perhaps jirachi, were the most common ones. To be perfectly honest, those pokemon looked a hell of a lot like an offensive team, except for skarm, bliss, and vaporeon.

 

[Zephiel]

You don't have to run stall to use stall pokemon, but they are stall pokemon.

This just made the rest of your post completely worthless to reply to, and there's no point in wasting time responding to your arguments because you obviously don't even read things. Astrohawke was obviously trying to prove that the metagame would become a stallfest if offensive pokemon were banned.

You can run counters to threats without running stall teams. It's that simple. The people on Smogon are banhappy to such a degree that they'll ban any slightly broken pokemon, even though you can deal with it.

 

[SlimMan]

Not really, I was responding to someone else's idea about counters overlapping not being necessarily true; it didn't have anything to do with my own point.

All I said was that you were among the people discussing counters. I can't understand how it's even possible for you to deny that. It's also beyond my grasp why this turned into an argument about what we did or did not say.

If you're prepared for Excadrill, that's no guarantee that you'll be prepared for Landorus and Terrakion. Especially if they're on the same team. Scizor checks Terrakion, but does it check Excadrill? What if Landorus runs HP Ice to get past your Gliscor that beats Excadrill?

1) Notice the word probably in my post. Probably was in there more than once.
2) But Conkeldurr, with some defensive investment, beats both Excadrill and Terakion. Rotom-W, with some defensive investment, beats Excadrill and Landorus. You chose poor examples.

And even if, hypothetically, I was the one who chose bad examples, my point stands, unless you want to try to argue over the actual point.

You tell me that you only need to prepare for the most common, or the best at their role, but isn't that what OU is? You also said later in your post that OU is 'the best of the best'. This means you'd have to prepare for every offensive threat in OU.

Yes, and teams are capable of doing that. I'm not saying that you can be perfectly prepared against every threat. I'm not saying that it's possible to have 3 or 4 ways to handle each Pokemon once it switches in. But a team can have a method, a strategy for any given threat in OU. For instance, an HO team could lack a good way to stop Thundurus from sweeping after a Nasty Plot. However, that team would most likely attempt to keep the offensive pressure high enough that Thundurus would not get a chance to switch in, let alone set up. Is that team very safe from Thundurus? No. Do they have an action plan for when they see it in Team Preview? Yes.

I said already that a single team can't counter OU. But a single team is easily capable of counering some things, checking a ton of things, and playing around some others. A team can be prepared for these offensive threats, just not in the same way for every one.

And remember, someone's Scizor checks things like Terakion, Tyranitar, Latios (Specs version), Latias (CM versions), Gengar, and so on and so forth. I'm not saying that if you have Scizor, these things will never sweep you. But again, OU is not too big.

Also, you might say that multiple threats can be similar, but the reason why they're still OU is because they have variation. Look at Scrafty, Conkeldurr, and Toxicroak, who can all use Bulk Up. Hell, even Gallade. Even though they use the same moveset, they have different answers to them because of things like typing and movepool. DDMence and DDNite might be different as well, because Nite has the extra bulk that lets him set up more.

Yes. And Hydreigon is different than Haxorus, even though they share the same typing.

You compared Pokemon which quite obviously have different checks/counters/whatever. If you're going to try and use my logic against me, at least do it right.

It was fine back then because the number of UU pokemon that were still potentially viable in OU was minuscule, maybe nonexistent. Not to mention the fact that the Five Rotoms were almost the same thing and pokemon like Weavile and Electivire were horrible. It's different now because even though there's only 53 OU by usage, there are still, like I said, many pokemon that are still perfectly viable in OU and just failed to make the cut by about 0.1% usage.

That first sentence. That was a joke, right? They may not have been as good as the OU 'mons, but most of UU was viable in OU, if you supported them and played to their strengths, etc etc.

Gen4 Weavile=Gen5 Chandelure. Gen4 Electivire=Gen5 Swampert.
We're always gonna have mediocre Pokemon in OU, and those aren't exclusive to Gen4 by any means. Those don't count at all in this.

Jolteon is the only Pokemon that missed out by .1%. Not "many". Don't make shit up please.

There have always been many Pokemon viable. However, each Gen, Pokemon which were previously awesome can become unviable as well. For instance, Raikou was amazing in Adv, and then only ok in DPP. You can't prepare for everything that could sweep you. But you can prepare for everything that actually will sweep you. If my team was weak to Moxie Scarf Heracross, I wouldn't lose sleep over it, because Heracross by itself is rare, let alone that set.

Teams are going to have weaknesses, it's true. But if they had to be completely unguarded against OU things, then no one would make it to the top of the ladder, because everyone would lose the minute they encounter a Terakion, Excadrill, etc. You can make your weaknesses be to obscure things, or you can give yourself many weaknesses, but each one is a very small one. Managing those has become a part of teambuilding. I agree that this "issue" might become a problem eventually, but I disagree that it is one now.

Aleva, before we continue bickering, let me ask you something. Does this have anything to do with what the OP wanted to discuss? Maybe it's just me, but I feel like we're getting off-track here.

 

[tehy]

This just made the rest of your post completely worthless to reply to, and there's no point in wasting time responding to your arguments because you obviously don't even read things. Astrohawke was obviously trying to prove that the metagame would become a stallfest if offensive pokemon were banned.

You can run counters to threats without running stall teams. It's that simple. The people on Smogon are banhappy to such a degree that they'll ban any slightly broken pokemon, even though you can deal with it.

You know,i was going to walk away from this, but you're just such a moron i couldn't.

my point is that those pokemon ARE stall pokemon, and thus create stallfests, in and of themselves. by using them, you force yourself to use a stally playstyle, at least with those particular pokemon. That doesn't necessarily make you all stall, but it makes you more stally.it forces you to switch out certain, more offensive pokemon(Let's say randorusu) for gliscor, or say, metagross for jirachi. And yes, i know metagross currently sucks ass, but i didn't have a better example.

Oh, and rotom-w is kind of a shaky check to landorus, in my opinion. if it swords dances on the switch, it can probably kill rotom-w with stone edge(Although i could be wrong,tell me if i am?).
Probably you should just use skarmory as this example, although rotom-W does have many things skarmory doesn't.
And terakion can just close combat roopushin on the switchin until it dies, which will probably be after one or two CCs.

I'll give you some credit for roopushin, since it can heal, but can we please stop acting like priority users without healing rape sweepers? They only postpone sweeps.

 

[Zephiel]

Ah, ad hominem. I always think it's a sign of weakness when someone moves on to ad hominem.

That doesn't necessarily make you all stall, but it makes you more stally

There's obviously a massive difference between balance and stall teams. That really, really is one of the most stupid things I've ever heard. I can't believe how daft people can get, it drives me insane. You call me a moron, and yet you give the weakest, most idiotic possible argument. It's just incredible how arrogant people are. I really don't understand it.

 

[astrohawke]

Zephiel, I'm just gonna ignore most of your post again because most of it is either irrelevant to the current discussion, meaningless nitpicking or just your opinion. It's very convenient how you claim DP is more stally than ADV and provide no evidence at all other than it is so because you say it is so. Then when I show usage statistics, you dismiss it as scrubs contributing to all the usage of the top offensive threats.

ADV can't even be a stall metagame. The fact that stall teams in ADV had such little variety (they only had Zapdos, Blissey, Skarmory, Forretress, Dusclops, Suicune, Claydol to pick from) proves that they could be easily countered and defeated.

Tell me, how do you counter a team designed to counter all your top offensive threats, variety or no variety. Just because you know the team is going to have a skarmory, doesn't mean you can go oh hey! let's use starmie to counter it because guess what? In comes blissey. Who do you think is going to win eventually? The walls tanking all your hits and healing off the damage, or the sweepers who can't heal being worn down by sandstorm and spikes every time they throw themselves against an incoming wall?

You can't use offensive pokemon so you use defensive pokemon. But defensive pokemon aren't going to break other defensive pokemon very easily. Hmm, I wonder what that means. Oh yeah...stall. Thanks for proving my point that ADV was a stall metagame.

God I don't know why I'm arguing with someone who things DP had more stall than ADV. Clearly a waste of time.

 

[Zephiel]

It's very convenient how you claim DP is more stally than ADV and provide no evidence at all other than it is so because you say it is so.

wat? How did I not give evidence? I said all the best teams of DP were stall and people tend to copy them and steal them. All of the stall teams I mentioned were top of the ladder, and some successful at tournaments. I then proceeded to mention how all the offensive threats of DP were banned, which gives stall teams an even greater chance to not get overpowered by sweepers.

If that's not evidence, dude, I don't know what is.

Then when I show usage statistics, you dismiss it as scrubs contributing to all the usage of the top offensive threats.

Smogon too acknowledges the existence of these scrubs by denying them entry to the suspect vote. It's the truth.

Tell me, how do you counter a team designed to counter all your top offensive threats, variety or no variety. Just because you know the team is going to have a skarmory, doesn't mean you can go oh hey! let's use starmie to counter it because guess what? In comes blissey. Who do you think is going to win eventually? The walls tanking all your hits and healing off the damage, or the sweepers who can't heal being worn down by sandstorm and spikes every time they throw themselves against an incoming wall?

There's not a single team ever made that can counter everything in the metagame. Stall teams in ADV were extremely weak to CM Jirachi, which can simply set up on Blissey and OHKO a hurt Suicune, then sweep the rest. Stall teams in ADV were weak to Boah, who was built to counter stall. Stall teams in ADV were weak to the Magneton + sweeper combo.

You can't use offensive pokemon so you use defensive pokemon.

wat? Why do Excadrill, Blaziken and Deoxys-S exist if you can't use them?

God I don't know why I'm arguing with someone who things DP had more stall than ADV. Clearly a waste of time.

Why would ADV be considered the best metagame if it were stall?

 

[astrohawke]

wat? Why do Excadrill, Blaziken and Deoxys-S exist if you can't use them?

Did you miss the part where I said the metagame is made up of the overpowered threats and their counters? Flareon walled haunter all day but that didn't stop haunter from being the #1 most used pokemon. Why? Probably because it's overpowered and you could dedicate 5 other members to removing its single counter to allow a sweep.

Here's something to consider. If every single team carries a hard counter for a certain pokemon, why would that pokemon's usage still be so high? Could it be because it's just too good? I mean I would definitely still use kyogre if every team had a gastrodon. Kyogre is pretty godly and I wouldn't mind working a bit to get rid of the one counter on the opposing team.

Why would ADV be considered the best metagame if it were stall?

I dunno. Because people like stall? Nostalgia? Believe it or not, people like teams that counter every single threat and most people will still try to make teams that cover as many threats as possible. Back in ADV it was certainly much easier to do so that's why people like it. Different people have different reasons. Some even think ADV is boring. I know. Blasphemy right? How dare people have opinions that don't agree with you.

 

[RocketSurgery]

I wouldn't count redundancies.

Wouldn't you say that something that can counter Deoxys-S can also counter Espeon, Alakazam, and any other fast, frail psychic? How about using a Deoxys-D counter as a Renunculus counter, or a Celebi counter? I bet that anything that can counter Blaziken could also counter Infernape...I'd even go as far to say that some things that can counter Zapdos could also be used to counter Thundurus.

I don't think you're giving some Pokemon enough credit on their own merits.

Be careful not to misinterpret the numbers I used. I made a rough estimate of how many pokemon a given pokemon on a team of six would have to be able to deal with, on average. The point you bring up addresses a related, but different issue: how many pokemon can a given pokemon actually deal with? My estimate is merely to lend plausibility to the notion that it could be the case that a 6-pokemon team may have trouble dealing with the majority of the commom threats in the BW metagame. It is by no means an answer to the question.

Your point is an argument to lend plausibility to the notion that a 6-pokemon team might feasibly be able to contend with such a large number of threats, but like my argument it stops short of answering the question definitively.

I bring up these points because so far it seems like the "if it can be dealt with, why should it be banned?" arguments assume that the fact that a threat can be dealt with in principle means it, along with many other top threats, can all be dealt with using a single team.

Now, maybe it's true, but no one has really given a satisfying argument to demonstrate it. I suppose what I would ideally like to see is some examples of teams capable of dealing with all the common threats of the metagame, as demonstrated by detailed threat lists that show how the teams could handle these threats.

The goal with making such teams would be to create teams that are not necessarily unbeatable, but that require skill to beat, as opposed to being beatable simply due to team match-up. We (presumably) would like to avoid a situation in which team A can deal with team B which can deal with team C, which can deal with team A.

(I realize this is not a trivial task! It might at least be an interesting exercise in theorymoning.)

 

[Aleva]

All I said was that you were among the people discussing counters. I can't understand how it's even possible for you to deny that. It's also beyond my grasp why this turned into an argument about what we did or did not say.
Yes, fair enough. I didn't really care about that anyway.


1) Notice the word probably in my post. Probably was in there more than once.
2) But Conkeldurr, with some defensive investment, beats both Excadrill and Terakion. Rotom-W, with some defensive investment, beats Excadrill and Landorus. You chose poor examples.
I chose pokemon that are in OU, and therefore viable pokemon to choose that you might commonly see on a team. If they're poor examples, how does

And even if, hypothetically, I was the one who chose bad examples, my point stands, unless you want to try to argue over the actual point.
Your point is that you don't necessarily need an answer to everything in the game if you can play around it with your team. I do agree with you, you can do that.

Yes, and teams are capable of doing that. I'm not saying that you can be perfectly prepared against every threat. I'm not saying that it's possible to have 3 or 4 ways to handle each Pokemon once it switches in. But a team can have a method, a strategy for any given threat in OU. For instance, an HO team could lack a good way to stop Thundurus from sweeping after a Nasty Plot. However, that team would most likely attempt to keep the offensive pressure high enough that Thundurus would not get a chance to switch in, let alone set up. Is that team very safe from Thundurus? No. Do they have an action plan for when they see it in Team Preview? Yes.
Yes, I know that players can play around threats that they're not 100% prepared for. If you go back, my original point was that it's getting harder each generation to cover as many threats as possible, and that if it keeps going, eventually the game will be decided on team match-up, and whether or not you can check the threats that each opponent carries.

I said already that a single team can't counter OU. But a single team is easily capable of counering some things, checking a ton of things, and playing around some others. A team can be prepared for these offensive threats, just not in the same way for every one.

And remember, someone's Scizor checks things like Terakion, Tyranitar, Latios (Specs version), Latias (CM versions), Gengar, and so on and so forth. I'm not saying that if you have Scizor, these things will never sweep you. But again, OU is not too big.



Yes. And Hydreigon is different than Haxorus, even though they share the same typing.
Same typing? Since when was Dark/Dragon the same as Dragon?

You compared Pokemon which quite obviously have different checks/counters/whatever. If you're going to try and use my logic against me, at least do it right.
Yes, my point is that they have different checks or counters, which means you need to cover them with more pokemon, not just cover them all with one answer. Eventually, th


That first sentence. That was a joke, right? They may not have been as good as the OU 'mons, but most of UU was viable in OU, if you supported them and played to their strengths, etc etc.
Give me some examples? From what i can see from 4th Gen UU, many of them were just outclassed by OU pokemon. e.g Feraligatr = UU Gyara, Chansey = UU Blissey, Milotic = UU Vaporeon, and so on. I'm pretty damn sure that Celebi is more viable in BW OU than Venusaur was in DP OU, and that Suicune in BW OU is better than Milotic in DP OU.

Gen4 Weavile=Gen5 Chandelure. Gen4 Electivire=Gen5 Swampert.
We're always gonna have mediocre Pokemon in OU, and those aren't exclusive to Gen4 by any means. Those don't count at all in this.
Alright then, so there's a few mediocre pokemon in OU. The total number of big threats is a bit smaller, but still quite large.

Jolteon is the only Pokemon that missed out by .1%. Not "many". Don't make shit up please.
Notice the word 'about'. 0.1% was a bad number to choose though, my fault. Lets say, 0.5? And my point was that they're still viable anyway, despite missing the mark by a little bit.

There have always been many Pokemon viable. However, each Gen, Pokemon which were previously awesome can become unviable as well. For instance, Raikou was amazing in Adv, and then only ok in DPP. You can't prepare for everything that could sweep you. But you can prepare for everything that actually will sweep you. If my team was weak to Moxie Scarf Heracross, I wouldn't lose sleep over it, because Heracross by itself is rare, let alone that set.
Raikou was amazing in Adv, then ok in DPP. Ok =/= Unviable. Only a few pokemon became unviable in DP after RSE, and they were, for the most part, SR weak (Charizard, Regice).
Yes, Heracross is rare, fair enough. It doesn't change the fact that it IS a threat though. It's more of a problem when you can cover most of OU, but you're weak to a few select pokemon in OU that can destroy you (which will eventually happen if OU keeps increasing in size).

Teams are going to have weaknesses, it's true. But if they had to be completely unguarded against OU things, then no one would make it to the top of the ladder, because everyone would lose the minute they encounter a Terakion, Excadrill, etc. You can make your weaknesses be to obscure things, or you can give yourself many weaknesses, but each one is a very small one. Managing those has become a part of teambuilding. I agree that this "issue" might become a problem eventually, but I disagree that it is one now.
Imo, it's starting to become an issue this gen, it'll be worse as we keep going. Teams are being forced to use many of the same pokemon this gen.

Aleva, before we continue bickering, let me ask you something. Does this have anything to do with what the OP wanted to discuss? Maybe it's just me, but I feel like we're getting off-track here.
I told you guys we were going off track a page ago, but you answered me anyway.

All I really said in the beginning was that the number of threats is getting higher and higher as GF introduces new games, and that eventually it'll become a matter of team match-up 'i.e, do you have answers for each pokemon your opponent has', when it'll be inevitable that you won't have an answer for some threats. When that happens, no matter how well you can adapt to the metagame, you'll always be poorly prepared against some big threat.

@RocketSurgery

We (presumably) would like to avoid a situation in which team A can deal with team B which can deal with team C, which can deal with team A.

Seconded. Imo though, the number of threats increasing each gen will make this inevitable in the future. We should be trying to promote a variety of teams that all have a fair chance against each other, but it'll eventually be impossible. I too, would like to see examples of teams capable of dealing with every OU threat atm.

 

[Zephiel]

I bring up these points because so far it seems like the "if it can be dealt with, why should it be banned?" arguments assume that the fact that a threat can be dealt with in principle means it, along with many other top threats, can all be dealt with using a single team.

There are too many Pokemon to really deal with absolutely everything. This would happen even if the top threats were banned.