SwagPlay, evaluating potential bans (basic definition of "uncompetitive" in OP)

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This doesn't address the main problem of swag play being luck dependent and uncompetitive at all. I wish people would stop bringing it up because it makes about as much sense as saying "since you can only have 1 mega, it's all right for them to be OP"
I though the whole reason for megas was to make them OP enough to help certain mons become relevant, how else would you explain the +100 BST. (Granted Garchomp, Mewtwo and Blaziken shot holes into that idea).

On-topic. I still think a complex ban (Pranster + Swagger and/or Fowl Play) would be the best choice at the moment.
 
I looked into this a bit and dumbguyfin is right. There are nearly no Pokemon that use swagger without using it for swagplay and banning klefki is wrong as klefki has other niches outside of being a swaggy prick. Swagger itself is a purely luck based move when being used on Pokemon like klefki anyway. The whole community seems to be in agreement that if you are lucky enough you can win with this strategy unless a team is specifically prepared to counter it. Relying completely on luck, not requiring skill, dragging out battles and being annoying seems to be enough of a reason to just frikkin Ban Swagger.
 
I'll ask you guys something: in some hypothetical world, there exists two ways to play some shooter game. One way is to win a super involved gunfight that requires you to be a good aim, know your terrain, be able to make snap decisions, etc. Maybe there's a small amount of unavoidable "luck" in there, but winning is an accomplishment regardless. The other way is by playing a Russian roulette simulator but with two revolvers: yours has four loaded bullets, the opponent's has two. Of course, you win if you manage to not shoot yourself in the head.

Which way would you rather play?

Anyway, I would skip all the complex bans and just outright ban Swagger. Trying to go for all of these complex bans won't actually nip the problem in the bud because all of them are just "selectively banning" Swagger, and that simply doesn't remove all of the unhealthy possibilities.

Ban Prankster + Swagger? Guess what? Nearly every Pokemon in the game can learn Swagger, and a lot of them not only have access to TWave/Foul Play, but they also have a high speed stat. As a result they're more than capable of the same coinflip to kill yourself strategy. Alakazam and Thundurus are completely capable of mimicking SwagPlay while being faster than a majority of the metagame, and many others can create speedy parafusion (which IMO is the real problem) including Deoxys-S, Lati@s, Jolteon, Starmie, Azelf, Frosslass, etc. There are even more speedy mons who can use Swagger + Foul Play, but I think you get the idea.

Other complex bans similarly don't help because banning combos of moves/abilities doesn't remove all of the possibilities. Banning Swagger + Foul Play doesn't ban the combo of Swagger + TWave and vice versa, and all of the other complex bans mentioned in the thread have the same problem. Therefore, even though you do lose some small things by just outright banning Swagger, the metagame will likely be healthier when it's gone.

Again, ban Swagger

edit: grammar
 
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I understand Jukain's stipulation about the complete lack of skill. But I ask you: is it really so much more skilled to lead with a Politoed in BW1, switch to a Kingdra, apply a Dragon Dance, and Waterfall away? Is it really so much more skilled to lead with a Hippowdon or a Tyranitar in BW1, switch to an Excadrill, and spam Iron Head or Earthquake? I thought it was almost hyperbolic to even list the Choice Scarf as an example, but I did so precisely to make clear the point that I did appreciate Jukain's stipulation about no skill being required to use SwagPlay: there can be no less skill involved than slapping a Choice Scarf onto some slow but powerful creature and saying "GO FORTH AND DESTROY!"

In play tests I've conducted with Swagplay teams, I have found that they require more skill than many of their most ardent detractors are implying they require. They're good, certainly, and they're very easy to pick up and learn. Certainly they require less skill than the very best stall teams of Generation 4. And they have an enormous advantage over teams that lack defensive cores with low attack. But these SwagPlay teams do not guarantee victory, and they come nowhere near guaranteeing it against teams with able defensive cores in competent hands. The SwagPlay player must know when to switch and when to stay put; and if he should stay put, he must know whether to go for a sub, go for an attack boost / restore confusion, or go for a Foul Play. These may sound like simple concerns, and they are! But they're no more simple than the ordinary decisions we make when deciding what to do with our Pokémon most of the time. That's the problem I have with many of the detractors' attitudes in this thread: they are deliberately misrepresenting SwagPlay as some unholy guarantee of victory for the user the likes of which the community has never seen.
Even if for the sake of argument we do grant that SwagPlay is a "skilled" strategy,it is nevertheless irrelevant. SwagPlay is a degenerate playstyle by definition- it reduces the match into a giant game of probability where the luckiest player generally wins. Just like Moody and Double Team, this "strategy" is detrimental to a healthy meta because it removes control from the players; the entire match is decided by the RNG.

I would like to ask SwagPlay advocates why they want to keep this play style legal. What purpose does such a play style have in a competitive environment? Why is it so appealing to win solely through luck, rather than through your own skills? The reason I feel I have to ask these questions is because there has been an alarming increase in SwagPlay teams on the ladder recently. I realize it may be fun to play around with SwagPlay once or twice, but I am now observing people ladder solely through Swagger antics. These people fail to realize that they are not only wasting their opponent's time , but they are also robbing themselves of experience by relying on luck to win. It is truly awful to want to test out an idea I had for a team, only to face several SwagPlay teams back to back. I just don't understand the appeal.

If people are so fond of abusing this strategy then I say let's just ban Swagger and get it over with. Complex bans may sound nice at first but I think they should generally be avoided. Just look at what happened after Alderon's proposal - people wanted to start making complex bans for as many situations as possible (Speed Boost + Blaziken was one of the most popular suggestions I seem to remember)
 
Swag play turns Pokemon into a RNG coinflip fest. Competent swag play teams should carry an imposter Ditto in case the strategy backfired, so you'll get the added attack and 1.5 speed with choice scarf.

Banning swagger makes sense.
 
For me, the best thing to do is to ban the combo of Swagger+Foul Play, just like what smogon did with the Endless-clause or what most people say ban Swagger. I am completely against the idea of the Confusion Clause, if that were to happen, pokemon like Machamp would loose it's niche.
 

Lee

@ Thick Club
is a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnus
I agree with the above post. Prankster+Swagger isn't really the culprit here at all. It actually has some neat uses, as I said in this post.

As I said earlier, the complex ban is too broad. If you're going complex then you may as well go all the way and nail the precise problem. We neglected to do this with Aldaron's proposal and ended up banning Beartric, Floatzel, Qwilfish and other non-broken 'mons out of sheer laziness/time constraints. It was a regret many expressed at the end of Gen V.

For example, I sometimes like to use Encore/Leech Seed/U-turn/Swagger Whimsicott in combination with Ditto. It's not an unskilled, luck-based playstyle; it's quite the opposite. I'll often sac Whimsi against a threatening physical sweeper, putting it up to +2 and then countersweeping out of nowhere with Ditto. Confusion is an afterthought, I was looking solely to boost the foe's attack. No other move can do this (Flatter, I guess) and it's an interesting application of a unique move (as is the Foul Play synergy). Broken? No. Luck-based? No. Banworthy? No, but it's gonna get caught in the crossfire.
That's a legit strategy that involves Prankster+Swagger. I'd rather the ban was more specific and stopped this trolly playstyle without ruining some other neat options. How about...?

a) ban Swagger + Foul Play
b) ban Prankster + Swagger + Foul Play
c) ban Prankster + Swagger + TWave
d) ban Prankster + Swagger + Sub

Personally, I think all of the above are more precise bans than Prankster + Swagger.
 
Priority confusion is annoying but the real problem is hitting itself with a +2atk just to recive an additional +2 foul play: it's really frustrating.

Swagger is the problem, nothing else.
Ban Swagger
 
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. Confusion is an inherent mechanic of the game and implementing a confusion clause would be as retarded as implementing a "critical hit" clause. Pro bans are only posting the same 2 replays in where they wreck a sub 1200 ranking guy with a prankster and call it "lol it's OP we gotta ban". Honestly guys, has any of you beaten someone or seen prankster teams in the 1700+ ladder? Own Tempo mons exist. Limber exists. Magic Bounce exists. Defensive pokemon with 0 attack IVs exist. Taunt exists. Hell, even substitute. And if something like garchomp or landorus-t that can't be para'd gets a swagger from, say klefki, and Earthquake hits, Klefki dies. Not to mention that when Landorus/Garchomp snaps out of confusion you're in for a world of pain. It's high risk high reward. If something here gets banned we might consider banning Paraflinch strategies from Jirachi and Togekiss as well under the same logical fallacies people are spewing here.

inb4 quoting with more replays, ad hominem, and not a coherent answer to my argument at all
 
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. Confusion is an inherent mechanic of the game and implementing a confusion clause would be as retarded as implementing a "critical hit" clause. Pro bans are only posting the same 2 replays in where they wreck a sub 1200 ranking guy with a prankster and call it "lol it's OP we gotta ban". Honestly guys, has any of you beaten someone or seen prankster teams in the 1700+ ladder? Own Tempo mons exist. Limber exists. Magic Bounce exists. Defensive pokemon with 0 attack IVs exist. Taunt exists. Hell, even substitute. And if something like garchomp or landorus-t that can't be para'd gets a swagger from, say klefki, and Earthquake hits, Klefki dies. Not to mention that when Landorus/Garchomp snaps out of confusion you're in for a world of pain. It's high risk high reward. If something here gets banned we might consider banning Paraflinch strategies from Jirachi and Togekiss as well under the same logical fallacies people are spewing here.

inb4 quoting with more replays, ad hominem, and not a coherent answer to my argument at all
You are a complete fool. Somebody just posted replays using swag play at 1900 rank. Also everything you put forward in your argument has already been debunked numerous times. Nobody respectable is convinced by your delusional opinion.

Edit: starting to think this could be a joke actually. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
 
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Okay, I'm softening up a bit. I still think these sort of teams are unhealthy but I have realised there have been a lot of very poor arguments for the no-ban side (naming no names) which have tended to obscure the good ones.

I'd really love to see these teams extinguished... but I can't think of a ban that would do so without causing collateral damage to legitimate strategies. Given that there is no perfect solution, maybe it is best just to defer to simplicity of ruleset and have a flat ban on Swagger.
 
Fine, I'll concede. It turns the game into coin flips against any offensive team - though note that I'm not just talking HO, I'm talking any team that's not stall or fully defensive. Is that not still a reason to ban it?
No, because under that guideline, Kyurem-B should be banned, because that thing craps all over stall but struggles against offensive teams due to its poor defensive typing and speed.
 

Rotosect

Banned deucer.
No, because under that guideline, Kyurem-B should be banned, because that thing craps all over stall but struggles against offensive teams due to its poor defensive typing and speed.
Except it doesn't, because any self-respecting offensive team has some kind of pivot like Rotom-W or Landorus-T, both of whom Kyurem-B loves taking advantage of. It just plays differently against offense.

Likewise, any decent Pranksterswag team has something like Conkeldurr that really loves taking advantage of walls and stall teams in general.
By now it should be clear that the real threat here are well-constructed PranksterSwag teams (2 Prankster+Swagger users, Ditto, wallbreaker, lategame sweeper and hazards), not the gimmicky 6x PranksterSwag ones.

Before the Lucarionite+Genesect ban, you have no idea how easy it was to weaken the opposing team with Prankster+Swagger and then come clean house with Mega Lucario once their job was done. In the event Swagger backfired, Ditto would fix the issue. The strategy was extremely consistent and not luck-based at all.

Now that they're gone the next best things are Rotom-W, (Mega) Scizor, Mega Pinsir, Mega Charizard X, Kyurem-B, Conkeldurr, Garchomp and Terrakion. The core strategy is still the same and it works remarkably well even on the high ladder.
 

termi

bike is short for bichael
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Okay, I'm softening up a bit. I still think these sort of teams are unhealthy but I have realised there have been a lot of very poor arguments for the no-ban side (naming no names) which have tended to obscure the good ones.

I'd really love to see these teams extinguished... but I can't think of a ban that would do so without causing collateral damage to legitimate strategies. Given that there is no perfect solution, maybe it is best just to defer to simplicity of ruleset and have a flat ban on Swagger.
Name just one legitimate strategy involving Swagger.
 

termi

bike is short for bichael
is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributor
Using it on your buddy with Own Tempo in doubles.

But even then, it's pretty much a waste of a turn.
man you ain't even doing it right. In doubles you do Safeguard first and then Swagger so that you don't have to limit yourself to shitty mons with Own Tempo :o

But yeah Swagger can be legit in doubles and is not nearly as annoying as it is in singles. However, when regarding singles Swagger just has to go, I simply see no reason for it to stay as there are no viable, legit strategies based on Swagger that aren't SwagPlay.
 
Really? ban swagger or prankster(or both together)??? I usually play balanced teams, in the lines of 1 or 2 defensive mons, 1 wall breaker or revenge killer depending on team, 2 sweepers, 1 utility mon...

Let me tell you guys something, i'm not a good player, compared to the experienced ones here, I'm a TERRIBLE player. And I beat swagplay most of the times. Not just by luck, you just have to be a little smart in the beggining, because if he swagplay 2 or more of your mons you are at disadvantage. But if he tries to do that and you send a defensive mon or a special one(or own tempo/magic bounce if you have it) you have good odds os beating. Of course a team FULL of swagplay is a different matter, but it is gimmicky and these teams won't go too far.

If i can beat swagplay contantly, NOT playing stall, and being a relatively BAD player....then i see no reason to ban nothing!!! and the real issue here are some players(maybe good ones) loosing sometimes to luck(it happens guys!!!) and thinking this is a problem that could never happen ¬¬

This is a little luck based game. Paralisys are luck, flinch, confusion is luck, crits happens, High BP moves with chances of missing. If you put luck in YOUR pokemon like evasion, the opponent can't do shit and is a "prejudicial luck to the game" =p But if you put the "luck" on your opponent like confusion, then he CAN do something against it..and so it's in no way game breaking.

Yes, HO is probably going to loose, but so what? Every type of team has bad matchups, and if a type of team has MANY bad matchups in a metagame then you shouldn't play it. Like hail last gen, looses more then wins, so if you want to win everytime, don't play it.

So stop complaining about one bad luck loss. If i don't have a problem a good player shouldn't have too! Just put something useful against it like you use counters to many other things.
 
If you bothered to read the thread you will realize that this thread isn't about beating it. It's about it being utterly uncompetitive.
And I continue with my opinion. I don't think that something you can easily deal with is uncompetitive. It's luck based, but many things are. As i said uncompetitive luck is when you put luck on yourself like evasion and so the opponent can't react to it..he can switch but you still have evasion and nothing changes. Swagplay is not uncompetitive, its a strategy as valid as flinch of T-wave, or even critc boosted moves on super luck mon lol
 
Really? ban swagger or prankster(or both together)??? I usually play balanced teams, in the lines of 1 or 2 defensive mons, 1 wall breaker or revenge killer depending on team, 2 sweepers, 1 utility mon...

Let me tell you guys something, i'm not a good player, compared to the experienced ones here, I'm a TERRIBLE player. And I beat swagplay most of the times. Not just by luck, you just have to be a little smart in the beggining, because if he swagplay 2 or more of your mons you are at disadvantage. But if he tries to do that and you send a defensive mon or a special one(or own tempo/magic bounce if you have it) you have good odds os beating. Of course a team FULL of swagplay is a different matter, but it is gimmicky and these teams won't go too far.

If i can beat swagplay contantly, NOT playing stall, and being a relatively BAD player....then i see no reason to ban nothing!!! and the real issue here are some players(maybe good ones) loosing sometimes to luck(it happens guys!!!) and thinking this is a problem that could never happen ¬¬

This is a little luck based game. Paralisys are luck, flinch, confusion is luck, crits happens, High BP moves with chances of missing. If you put luck in YOUR pokemon like evasion, the opponent can't do shit and is a "prejudicial luck to the game" =p But if you put the "luck" on your opponent like confusion, then he CAN do something against it..and so it's in no way game breaking.

Yes, HO is probably going to loose, but so what? Every type of team has bad matchups, and if a type of team has MANY bad matchups in a metagame then you shouldn't play it. Like hail last gen, looses more then wins, so if you want to win everytime, don't play it.

So stop complaining about one bad luck loss. If i don't have a problem a good player shouldn't have too! Just put something useful against it like you use counters to many other things.
It isn't one "bad luck loss." Bad luck is when your opponent wins off of a crit, or freezes your last mon.

"Swag Play" (God this name is so awful, can we call it something else?) is not something that happens on an off chance. It's a strategy that takes luck based things (paralysis, confusion) and stacks them so heavily against the opponent of the strategy so that it isn't luck if you miss your turn or hit yourself - it's luck if you even get a turn. And to allow a strategy that is able to not just create hax, but create it consistently, from the beginning to the end of a match, is no better than removing the evasion clause.

It's outright ridiculous that we ban other strategies that actually have more reliable counters (I'm talking about evasion here, since there are at least moves that will hit even after evasion has been boosted) but we do not ban this. Hell, we even ban more lucky strategies since we ban OHKO moves.

It doesn't really matter if you can beat this lame strategy. I can, and so can any competent player. The point is that we shouldn't have to. There is no good reason to keep the strategy around. It creates an unfair situation in which one player, more often than not, does not get a turn, or is even punished for trying to play the game (in the form of confusion damage). This is simply not fair, nor competitive. Also it doesn't help that one of the best abusers of this "tactic" is a pokemon with the best defensive typing in the game, is allowed to fully invest into HP and defenses, yet still be an incredibly powerful threat, not through it's own stats, but by using the opponent's, thus letting a pokemon, who otherwise would be a fair and still useful utility/support mon, capable of sweeping teams, due to the opponent's ability to even play the game being tampered with.

If Smogon is about making pokemon competitive, we will ban this, just as we have banned evasion and OHKO moves. We will have a huge contradiction between what we allow and do not allow if this is the case. "Swag Play," while not the dominant playstyle, is unfair, just as using double team/minimize was unfair, yet in no way dominated the game, nor did 1HKO moves. Removing it from the game will create competition, removing a tactic that turns the game into a coin flip based game. It will make the laddering experience more pleasant.

I will not spend another second arguing this point when the anti-ban arguments have mostly been "play numel" or "I can beat it and I'm bad so why can't you beat it if you're good?" Those are not arguments for keeping the strategy around. If "Swag Play" offers anything to the metagame, please provide reasons how and why.
 
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. Confusion is an inherent mechanic of the game and implementing a confusion clause would be as retarded as implementing a "critical hit" clause. Pro bans are only posting the same 2 replays in where they wreck a sub 1200 ranking guy with a prankster and call it "lol it's OP we gotta ban". Honestly guys, has any of you beaten someone or seen prankster teams in the 1700+ ladder? Own Tempo mons exist. Limber exists. Magic Bounce exists. Defensive pokemon with 0 attack IVs exist. Taunt exists. Hell, even substitute. And if something like garchomp or landorus-t that can't be para'd gets a swagger from, say klefki, and Earthquake hits, Klefki dies. Not to mention that when Landorus/Garchomp snaps out of confusion you're in for a world of pain. It's high risk high reward. If something here gets banned we might consider banning Paraflinch strategies from Jirachi and Togekiss as well under the same logical fallacies people are spewing here.

inb4 quoting with more replays, ad hominem, and not a coherent answer to my argument at all
Paraflinch however doesn't work on ground types and is easily disposed of by choice scar pokemon. The problem here is that you can be using a Choice Scarfed Deoxys-S and STILL be forced into confusion. Deoxys then has to either switch out or take a +2 SE Foul Play. Deoxys-S is SLOWER than Klefki in this situation.
 
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