The odds of a Swagger team winning depend not just on a dice roll, but on the makeup of the opposing teams. Some teams are vulnerable to SwagPlay, and some are not. For instance, stall teams usually take nothing from Foul Play, and SwagPlay Pokemon almost never run Taunt since they can't give up Substitute/Thunder Wave/Foul Play.
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SwagPlay, evaluating potential bans (basic definition of "uncompetitive" in OP)
- Thread starter haunter
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I was about to make a post myself, but this one hit on pretty much every point I thought to make. I agree with those who say the match turning into a coin flip is the core point; if you're not addressing that issue, you're missing the point of this argument in the first place. From the pages I've read through thus far, I've seen virtually no compelling arguments from the anti-ban side.
People told me it destroys set up
but yeah they can still foul play thanks to Twave
If I were in direct control of SwagPlay's hax, I would be able to sweep an entire team with JUST Klefki, because the opponent would always hit themselves. ALL hax are under the RNG's control. Some have higher chances than others.
The fact that confusion is 50/50 is stupid, imho. Game Freak should have altered it to 40/60 to have the odds favor the person under the effects of confusion.
If Smogon were to ban Pokemon like Klefki, Liepard and Murkrow to Ubers that would just be ridiculous. Banning the combination of Prankster, Swagger and Thunder Wave would be reasonable as priority of those moves can hurt your chances at ever winning the game, as the combination of confusion and paralysis equates to a 25% chance of actually attacking. Banning the move Swagger altogether would fix all those problems, and I believe that would be the right thing to do right now, as in my experience, it is VERY annoying.
Lots of legitimate strategies are annoying. Gliscor is annoying to me, but it's not broken. What matters, and what we're debating, is whether Swagger teams are competitive or not. How easily can SwagPlay teams be defeated, and what is the opportunity cost of running counters to it?
Why would it be better to deny an entire playstyle?
Kyurem-Black? Did I hear generation 5 calling again?
"Winning at a coinflip" is not "denying" anything. If anything, you could be facing a +2 Mega Mawile behind a Sub instead.
You could say that Moody "denies" HO by encouraging stalling with Sub and Protect until your Bidoof gets +6 in Atk, it doesn't matter. Counterplaying HO implies that you're using skill against it, and Swagplay doesn't. It's all luck-based.
Out of those choices, I'm in favor of banning Swagger alone. Confuse ray I'm not quite so worried about, for a couple reasons, perhaps the biggest being that only Sableye and Murkrow can actually have both prankster and confuse ray (if you don't count illumise and volbeat), whereas at least 6 pokemon can have prankster+swagger.
Swagger also has very little use (or at least, usage) outside of prankster mons, given that you don't really want to give anything that can outspeed you +2 in attack since eventually it will get a guaranteed +2 hit.
If you ask me why I'm in favor of banning swagger (as a way to get rid of swagplay) instead of just "putting on my big boy pants," I'd say because it turns the game into pure coinflips. Not just a few turns like with paraflinch, the entire game. Minimize is banned, and that just causes you to MISS, not smack yourself in the face. Yes, minimize affects the opponent and you can switch out to undo confusion, but given the strategy uses prankster, that's not much of a consolation considering unless you have a faster prankster mon or faster priority (good luck against Thundy or Liepard), you're getting confused again before your switch-in can do anything anyway. Not to mention a single minimize only takes the opponent down to 60% and then 42.8% accuracy, whereas swagger takes you down to 50%, and then 37.5% accuracy after thunder wave.
Swagger also has very little use (or at least, usage) outside of prankster mons, given that you don't really want to give anything that can outspeed you +2 in attack since eventually it will get a guaranteed +2 hit.
If you ask me why I'm in favor of banning swagger (as a way to get rid of swagplay) instead of just "putting on my big boy pants," I'd say because it turns the game into pure coinflips. Not just a few turns like with paraflinch, the entire game. Minimize is banned, and that just causes you to MISS, not smack yourself in the face. Yes, minimize affects the opponent and you can switch out to undo confusion, but given the strategy uses prankster, that's not much of a consolation considering unless you have a faster prankster mon or faster priority (good luck against Thundy or Liepard), you're getting confused again before your switch-in can do anything anyway. Not to mention a single minimize only takes the opponent down to 60% and then 42.8% accuracy, whereas swagger takes you down to 50%, and then 37.5% accuracy after thunder wave.
Basically this. Baton pass is annoying too, but at least it has a fairly surefire counter in whirlwind and taunt (putting Espeon aside for a moment). And the only way Baton Pass can succeed aside from decent team building is with good predictions (e.g., knowing when to use baton pass or go for another boost or set up aqua ring or...). Similarly, beating Baton Pass is a matter of predicting the opponent's moves and responding. Beating swagplay is a matter of winning a 37.5% coin toss over and over.
You know, there were a lot of people that wanted Kyurem-B banned from 5th Gen OU. We just ran out of time before XY came along and didn't have enough time for a real suspect test. Besides, "playstyle revenge" is not a legitimate reason to ban or not ban something.
Regarding confusion (not confuse ray, not swagger, but the pseudo-ailment):
1. Banning confusion as a whole is just another way of Fox only, no items, final destination. Seriously, let's just create a no-ailment metagame if we're at it.
2. Unlike evasion, it can be easily taken care of by switching out, substitute, and taunt. You also have a 50% chance of bypassing it every turn, unlike 6 double teams.
3. Unlike evasion, sleep, and other annoying mechanics, Confusion is pretty restricted (Hurricane is only used by less than 10 mons or so, and even the has a shitty accuracy; DynamicPunch is exclusively used by Machamp and lolGolurk, etc)
Priority Swagger however, makes the game a solely luck-based scenario where your opponent gets punished by being unlucky and hitting itself stupidly hard 50% of the time. Not to mention, you can always spam Prankster Subs until you manage to score a miss or a parahax.
tl;dr I'm all for a complex ban on Swagger + Prankster.
1. Banning confusion as a whole is just another way of Fox only, no items, final destination. Seriously, let's just create a no-ailment metagame if we're at it.
2. Unlike evasion, it can be easily taken care of by switching out, substitute, and taunt. You also have a 50% chance of bypassing it every turn, unlike 6 double teams.
3. Unlike evasion, sleep, and other annoying mechanics, Confusion is pretty restricted (Hurricane is only used by less than 10 mons or so, and even the has a shitty accuracy; DynamicPunch is exclusively used by Machamp and lolGolurk, etc)
Priority Swagger however, makes the game a solely luck-based scenario where your opponent gets punished by being unlucky and hitting itself stupidly hard 50% of the time. Not to mention, you can always spam Prankster Subs until you manage to score a miss or a parahax.
tl;dr I'm all for a complex ban on Swagger + Prankster.
It forces people to use more balanced team setups, which make the game more fun.
But they still fear it, and that denies those teams from even being fully heavy offense. My point being, I'm seeing more balanced team setups this gen than I have ever seen before, and to me, it's fun battling teams that aren't just stallstallstallstall or attackattackattackattack.
I'm attacking the relevance of your arguments not because I know I'm wrong (and opinions can't be wrong), but because they are irrelevant and you and I both know that. Actually suggesting to use Numel, a pokemon who is barely viable in LC and absolutely useless in OU, is ridiculous and you know that just as well as anyone else in this thread. I'm going to be completely honest, I used to hate Smogon. I thought it was stupid how they banned things from a game that they didn't create. But now that I've come to understand why they banned those things, like Double Team and making a Sleep Clause, I came to appreciate the things that they've done for the game. As for constantly modifying something that is imperfect, isn't that what people do all the time? The first airplane was refined, the first car, the first skyscraper, etc. Attempting to perfect things is human nature, and that's the whole point of this community. In regard to you saying that I don't enjoy the game, would I be here if I didn't enjoy the game? Why would I devote time to contributing to something I don't like? And as for fixing my strategy, people said the same thing about Mega Kang. All the people who were against banning her came up with plenty of ways to get past her. But we still banned Mega Kang. Why? Because the meta was getting too centralized. Everyone would have been forced to run a counter to Kang on their team, limiting the creativity of teambuilding. If a strategy such as SwagPlay causes us to do the same thing, why should we have to put up with it? Now we can either continue this petty argument and eventually grow to hate each other, or we can just agree to disagree about how to deal with this strategy.
So it sounds like it's Prankster + Swagger that is truly broken, not Swagger alone. Any Swagger user without Prankster can be outsped and KO'd rather than being forced to rely on a coin flip. Even stuff like Deoxys-S and Electrode will fall to priority.
That's true, I was just thinking simpler bans are better than complex ones. Let me rephrase: I'm in favor of banning at least swagger, if not swagger+prankster.
Confusion aside, how is swagplay luck? It's a valid strategy.
Boost attack stat, then use foul play.
Especially on things like umbreon who other wise wouldn't have much of anything.
I can still use Foul Play with out swagger, the stat boost is just nice.
Switch into someone DD/SDing and it's the same thing with out the confusion.
I can see the annoyance with prankster, since it's priority.
But how is this any more luck than T-wave not letting you move on a turn?
Or waiting to see how long it takes for sleep to wear off.
You people are the craziest thing on earth if you ban Swagger. This is the easiest piece of crap to counter ever since pokemon was created. If a Prankster-user switches in, just switch the hell out, lol. There is no auto-Swagger if Liepard switches in - if you stay in and try to Quake it, you're ignorant and it's your freakin' fault.
Come back in or switch in a Pokémon with a less ATK.
Come back in or switch in a Pokémon with a less ATK.
I don't think it's wise to say "You suggested a terrible counter as a Pokemon, which proves that this strategy is broken". It can be true, but it's easy to make a strawman out of it.
For instance, if I was in favor of the ban, I could pretend to be anti-ban, suggest Simple/Unaware Eviolite Bidoof, and watch the thread jump on me for suggesting something so stupid and use it as proof of SwagPlay's ban-worthiness.
I think people that want to ban all confusion moves really aren't thinking logically. Swagger is an annoyance because it increases both the damage that confusion does to you and it increases the damage of foul play. Confuse ray and flatter do neither, and flatter can actually be beneficial since it's a stat boost without the added confusion damage. I wouldn't ban either of them because they aren't broken individually. Swagger is only really broken in conjunction with foul play, and that is what makes it truly annoying.
It is not broken the way a mega-khan was, but I would argue that it is a toxic element in the meta, especially in the lower tiers.
It is not broken the way a mega-khan was, but I would argue that it is a toxic element in the meta, especially in the lower tiers.
crits are competitive we dont disable them. Why? Because its an inescapible part of the game. Swagplay is something that you need to account for in team building much like aeigislash or any other threat. Any decent team builder accounts for this. Dont ban this simply because you were annoyed by it. Face it this whole game involves luck.
I believe that with iterated analysis we can see that SwagPlay, in its purest form, is not purely a luck-based shit strategy. People suggesting that you use a Magic Bouncer/Magic Coat/whatever are indeed flawed in their arguments, but it is a fact that Pokemon that are not heavily effected by Foul Play will win the iterated coin flips if they can do a pittance of damage to the SwagPlayer. You don't need to build your team differently, most standard teams are fully capable of being SwagPlay with intelligent switching, risk avoidance of high attack boosts, and using the turns gained in the coin flip far better than a Foul Play is against yourself.
Pure SwagPlay (http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/it’s-swaggerificc.3499572/) struggles to get past 1400-1500 in the ladder. Improved SwagPlay (http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/supreme-swaggotry.3497647/) is capable of reaching 1800-1900 when you address SwagPlay's weaknesses and strengths as a strategy.
To a certain degree, it is luck-based, yes. But it is no more luck based than Focus Blast. Your concerns about the people building the term are irrelevant to the discussion on whether or not it should be banned, as it doesn't have any technical merit for the actual viability of the strategy. Appealing to authority in terms of tournament players is also irrelevant. We are tackling whether or not it is TOO luck reliant to be on the ladder, according to the opening message, rather than just general opinion, and that should be tackled with facts.
I agree, that's a poor argument. Nobody expects you to run Swagger teams out via PP draining. There are more reliable methods.
I believe it is a legitimate strategy because, not only does it become reliable with iteration (apparent in both theoretical analysis and also in the relative success of the laddering teams), but it also has an entire strategy based around it. SwagPlay, in its purest form, beats people that stay in and just try to fight through it. Therefore, it can induce many switches and cause a reliance on hazards. Unlike Mega-Gengar and other bans, there isn't an overcentralization of the metagame as a result of SwagPlay.
Many of your arguments are countering poor anti-ban arguments which are easy to counter without any analysis or effort. Could you post an analysis on the usage of Swagger to prove your point that it is inherently luck-based over the sample size of a typical match?
So the opponent can Swagger the switch-in AND get behind a Substitute before you can start attacking it (or possibly start attacking yourself)?
Examples of situations akin to a coin flip scenario:
Using Stone Edge.
Using Hydro Pump.
Using Thunder when it's not raining.
Switching out.
Using Hypnosis
Using Paraflinch
Using Swagger on a physical attacker
Using Twave on something that can OHKO you
Setting up hazards when the opponent has a magic bouncer
Setting up hazards/using status moves when the opponent has someone who can use Magic Coat
To name a few. These things are all based on luck, as is being confused.
Using Stone Edge.
Using Hydro Pump.
Using Thunder when it's not raining.
Switching out.
Using Hypnosis
Using Paraflinch
Using Swagger on a physical attacker
Using Twave on something that can OHKO you
Setting up hazards when the opponent has a magic bouncer
Setting up hazards/using status moves when the opponent has someone who can use Magic Coat
To name a few. These things are all based on luck, as is being confused.
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