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

[SanjiWatsuki]

All this is besides the point.

This data ultimately doesn't matter at all, one way or another because your argument in this post is off-basis.



% chance of victory does not determine level of control removed. "level of control removed" is not just about luck and percentages, and is something judged by player experience.

Your simulations ultimately mean nothing, because we are not making tiering decisions to "match certain numbers." We are making tiering decisions in order to improve the level of competition in battles, and to improve player experience.


It is player experience and not game mechanics that is the variable that determines tiering/regulation decisions in all cases-- including uncompetitiveness.


You're wrong. We don't lack sufficient data-- we have more than enough data on community consensus; which is the more important factor. Though if you really wanted to do analysis-- the more useful one would be based on community opinion research, not simulation. No simulation will make a player better informed than one thing: Actual battle, and the opinion formed from his own experience (because "player experience" is the target parameter, while "% chance of win" is not even a good substitute).

Because player experience is what we're looking to cater too, not raw #'s that mean nothing without human opinion attached.

In turn, it is the tiering leaders who will ultimately make a decision on this-- and dare I say they're more than well enough informed to make a good decision about this.



Now I must say, it's ridiculous for one user to think that tiering decisions should wait or be determined based on his analysis. Don't make me laugh.

1. If community consensus is the guiding factor, I concede the point. A majority of the community is against SwagPlay, and that's easy to determine from this thread without even digging into numbers.

2. I disagree that simulation is useless in this particular instance. The formulaic nature of SwagPlay inherently lends itself to a formulaic counter play. In most other situations, pure formula isn't much of a factor. That said, if community consensus is the guiding factor, I concede the point as irrelevant to the conversation.

3. I believe we are working on fundamentally different ideas of removal of agency. I'm approaching it from an outcomes based approach, you are approaching it from a player experience approach. Since we have a fundamental opinion difference, we should agree to disagree because we are arguing different points. I was working under the definition that we define competitiveness as the ability for a decision to affect the outcomes, whereas it looks like the definition you're working under is that a player's individual actions are unable to take effect.

4. If player experience is what you're catering to and what you're trying to find out, not anything about luck reliance or competitiveness, then make that explicitly clear in the OP. I requested a change about competitiveness in the OP because I thought that it was a primary driving part of this entire discussion. So much unnecessary debate could have been avoided if this had been made explicitly clear that this is for research into the community's opinion and that actual technical merits made in the topic were irrelevant. Uncompetitiveness wasn't even in the OP for the longest time, for example, yet it became a huge part of the debate and now you're making it sound like it's not what the mods were even looking for with this topic. If I am understanding you correctly, I believe the moderators insufficiently guided the discussion, and it has resulted in much talk without any substance or relevance to the topic.

5. After reading your post, it's clear that I never understood the goal posts for this topic to begin with. I believed this was a discussion on luck-reliance and removal of player agency in the decision making process. You've made it clear that this is a discussion on player experience and community opinion aggregation. If you recall, the topic at hand was luck reliance and uncompetitiveness when I made that post with the black box outcomes approach of certain match-ups. As you've pointed out now, though player experience is the guiding factor and target parameter and community opinion research is the key. With those parameters in mind, yes, my analysis is meaningless and I'm unhappy that this was not made explicitly clear in the OP as removal of autonomy was listed as the "key to an uncompetitive tiering decision" even though you've said it to be community opinion.

Any rebuttal to the arguments in the first part of the post are meaningless given the new information.

 

[Punchshroom]

What is the point of banning an important, legit, and counterable strategy? Only because it's "not fun"? Sure, let's ban paralysis. And crits.

Also, magic bounce HARD COUNTERS it...

Magic Bounce may stop Prankster Swagger alone, but Espeon and Mega Absol take a ton from Foul Play, and can't even take on Klefki without a special Fire move. Thundurus can run Thunderbolt to fry Xatu while Liepard can use Snatch to steal Xatu's Roost to deny its recovery, putting them at a stalemate. The Whimsicott I posted earlier is an example on how the Prankster users can easily adapt to each potential counter. Even if say, Own Tempo Avalugg (imo the best response for pure SwagPlay) becomes popular, the Swagger users can just have Thundurus run Focus Blast or have Klefki use Flash Cannon to circumvent it and continue Swaggering away. There are no true stops to Prankster Swagger, mainly due to how much options the Prankster users have.

 

[Alejandro36]

It is player experience and not game mechanics that is the variable that determines tiering/regulation decisions in all cases-- including uncompetitiveness.

Chou Toshio is basically confirming the point I made 40+ pages ago, namely, that people want prankster + swagger banned because it is annoying and not because it is particulary overpowered.

If this is the case then there is really nothing to argue. It is clear form this thread that the vast majority of people would prefer this strategy to be banned, even if it is not broken. So by that criteria it should be banned. But this would set a new precedence from smogon: We will ban anything as long as enough people complain about it. Great. I guess that if stall becomes good at some point and players start complaining about battles taking too long, stall will be banned too.

Part of the problem is the extremely two-faced nature of the anti-Swagger users. It looks like some feel like Swagger is an overpowered strategy, while others deride it as a "inconsistent strategy" that screws people over. However, ANY team that gets to 2200+ on the ladder deserves mention. As you know, the Glicko2 system rewards consistency AND wins. Losses against weaker players greatly deminishes your score.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/supreme-swaggotry.3497647/

Is funny that someone would choose a team with only two pranksters as an example of how "broken" prankster teams are, without mentioning the obvious fact that this team included Megalucario, Genesect, and Deo-S, ALL of which were suspected for being too OP and two of which ended up in ubers. Is not surprising that the team did well. Basically any team with Deo, Genesect and megaluke ended up doing well in the ladder in the hands of a decent player. Those were considered the kings of OU at some point. It proves nothing.

 

[TrippingRocks]

Instead of banning Prankster + Swagger, wouldn't it be simpler just to outright ban confusion moves? I fail to see the competitiveness of Swagger, Supersonic, or Confuse Ray on ANY pokemon. Of course, moves such as Hurricane or Water Pulse (who have confusion as a secondary effect) are perfectly fine or even offensive moves such as dynamicpunch that guarantee confusion, but moves that solely operates on confusing the opponent (again... like Confuse Ray, Swagger, and supersonic) essentially rely on flipping a coin to win a free turn or not. Such moves, even if they can be worked around, should be banned for their uncompetitiveness.

Even if there were true stops to Prankster + Swagger, the point isn't that there's a counter to it. The point is that it relies on way too much luck to function. Theoretically, any pokemon is capable of stopping a Klefki behind a sub with Thunder Wave/ Foul Play/ Swagger/ Substitute. Something like M-Pinsir can come in on Klefki and if lady luck smiles enough for you, M-Pinsir can break through confusion multiple times until Klefki doesn't have enough HP for a substitute and takes a straight hit. Conversely, you can have something like a healthy Rotom-W facing off a Klefki with just 1 hp left and you can end up wasting several turns hitting yourself if you're unlucky enough.

While complex bans have been done before (like in the previous generation, there was a ban on Drizzle + Swift Swim), I do not see the point of implementing a complex ban in this case. Just ban non-damaging moves that induce confusion. While prankster users were the biggest criminal of confusion, ANY pokemon can induce confusion and it'll devolve into a coin-toss whether or not you get to make a move. While some people compare confusion to paralysis, paralysis has the distinct difference of having a reliable effect; reducing speed. It has the potential of fully stunning the target for one turn, but paralysis also guarantees that the target moves only at 25% of their speed. While paralysis undoubtedly has some luck-based effect, it's entire effect is not luck-based, unlike confusion. If you're confused, it may have absolutely no effect on your whatsoever. It can also absolutely screw you over. Similar to evasion moves (which are banned), you can get really lucky and break through it, or you can just be utterly destroyed by it.

 

[Punchshroom]

Chou Toshio is basically confirming the point I made 40+ pages ago, namely, that people want prankster + swagger banned because it is annoying and not because it is particularly overpowered.

If this is the case then there is really nothing to argue. It is clear form this thread that the vast majority of people would prefer this strategy to be banned, even if it is not broken. So by that criteria it should be banned. But this would set a new precedence from smogon: We will ban anything as long as enough people complain about it. Great. I guess that if stall becomes good at some point and players start complaining about battles taking too long, stall will be banned too.

I don't think you get how this works: people complaining would only bring the issue into light, but that alone won't determine whether it will be banned or not. We need to evaluate how the issue affects the meta and whether the issue is too unhealthy for it. If a ban ends up being necessary, we still have to assess the ban that would cause the least losses for the meta while maintaining competitiveness, DrizzleSwim being one such ban. Complain count alone isn't going to amount to anything if the ban they suggested is unreasonable. The way you phrased it: "If a lot of people complaining about stall leads to stall getting banned, then what if a greater amount of people start rambling about offense? Are we going to ban everything then?" (Think about how ridiculous your comment sounded when phrased this way) We might as well not be playing Pokemon.

 

[Karxrida]

Chou Toshio is basically confirming the point I made 40+ pages ago, namely, that people want prankster + swagger banned because it is annoying and not because it is particulary overpowered.

If this is the case then there is really nothing to argue. It is clear form this thread that the vast majority of people would prefer this strategy to be banned, even if it is not broken. So by that criteria it should be banned. But this would set a new precedence from smogon: We will ban anything as long as enough people complain about it. Great. I guess that if stall becomes good at some point and players start complaining about battles taking too long, stall will be banned too.



Is funny that someone would choose a team with only two pranksters as an example of how "broken" prankster teams are, without mentioning the obvious fact that this team included Megalucario, Genesect, and Deo-S, ALL of which were suspected for being too OP and two of which ended up in ubers. Is not surprising that the team did well. Basically any team with Deo, Genesect and megaluke ended up doing well in the ladder in the hands of a decent player. Those were considered the kings of OU at some point. It proves nothing.

We don't ban everything the community bitches about. We might test it, but that doesn't mean it gets banned. Regardless, we are not saying that SwagPlay is broken, we are saying it is uncompetitive for forcing battles into Luck-Based Missions.

 

[Seiterman]

1. If community consensus is the guiding factor, I concede the point. A majority of the community is against SwagPlay, and that's easy to determine from this thread without even digging into numbers.

2. I disagree that simulation is useless in this particular instance. The formulaic nature of SwagPlay inherently lends itself to a formulaic counter play. In most other situations, pure formula isn't much of a factor. That said, if community consensus is the guiding factor, I concede the point as irrelevant to the conversation.

3. I believe we are working on fundamentally different ideas of removal of agency. I'm approaching it from an outcomes based approach, you are approaching it from a player experience approach. Since we have a fundamental opinion difference, we should agree to disagree because we are arguing different points. I was working under the definition that we define competitiveness as the ability for a decision to affect the outcomes, whereas it looks like the definition you're working under is that a player's individual actions are unable to take effect.

4. If player experience is what you're catering to and what you're trying to find out, not anything about luck reliance or competitiveness, then make that explicitly clear in the OP. I requested a change about competitiveness in the OP because I thought that it was a primary driving part of this entire discussion. So much unnecessary debate could have been avoided if this had been made explicitly clear that this is for research into the community's opinion and that actual technical merits made in the topic were irrelevant. Uncompetitiveness wasn't even in the OP for the longest time, for example, yet it became a huge part of the debate and now you're making it sound like it's not what the mods were even looking for with this topic. If I am understanding you correctly, I believe the moderators insufficiently guided the discussion, and it has resulted in much talk without any substance or relevance to the topic.

5. After reading your post, it's clear that I never understood the goal posts for this topic to begin with. I believed this was a discussion on luck-reliance and removal of player agency in the decision making process. You've made it clear that this is a discussion on player experience and community opinion aggregation. If you recall, the topic at hand was luck reliance and uncompetitiveness when I made that post with the black box outcomes approach of certain match-ups. As you've pointed out now, though player experience is the guiding factor and target parameter and community opinion research is the key. With those parameters in mind, yes, my analysis is meaningless and I'm unhappy that this was not made explicitly clear in the OP as removal of autonomy was listed as the "key to an uncompetitive tiering decision" even though you've said it to be community opinion.

Any rebuttal to the arguments in the first part of the post are meaningless given the new information.

I don't see how you read that post and got the idea that community consensus is the guiding factor here. There's a big difference between community consensus and player experience. While I believe Chou said that community opinion research is valuable information, in no way did I see the implication that it was the guiding factor to the debate. (By the way, how the hell is this thread still going? Have we not exhausted potential angles from which to view the issue?)

I also don't see how you can think those simulation numbers in any way constitute a valid argument against the removal of agency. The problem here is that your approach is, plainly, wrong. First off, the simulation doesn't account for a lot of important variables. The lack of Thunder Wave (as pointed out by Haruno,) skews results away from the SwagPlay user in several cases. There's also the matter of Klefki not being the only SwagPlay user and the tiny group of Pokemon not being a very accurate representation of the metagame as a whole. Yeah, the numbers will look nicer if you take offensive Pokemon with SE STAB moves and a few lesser-used defensive Pokemon. The fact that the Pokemon with "good match-ups," have significant chances of losing anyway just makes things worse.

The bigger issue with the numbers is that they fail to answer the question you specifically wanted to answer. Does SwagPlay remove player agency? Well, when each individual non-switching move has a 50% chance of screwing you over (or, in some cases, at least robbing you of your turn while causing self-damage,) then yeah. Some Pokemon will have better chances of beating the "strategy," than others, but several other Pokemon are not so lucky. Those that aren't so lucky can't exactly switch freely because, as has been said an incredibly number of times throughout the thread, it's easy to punish those switches. On the micro-level, agency is absolutely hurt.

As for the macro-level you argued about earlier, there are a few ways to argue against the idea that there's macro-level agency. The first, and most obvious to me, is that there's no way you can have macro-level agency without micro-level agency. If your individual actions don't provide sufficient agency, how can they do so when put together? A series of coin flips is just as bad as a single coin flip. Next, there's the matter of the numbers you posted doing little for your cause. Slowbro beats SwagKey roughly 7/10 times. Neat. How does he fare against 6 of them in a row? Or against any other number combined with something meant to take out those defensive Pokemon? You could honestly slap a wallbreaker onto a team of 5 SwagPlay users and get past a lot of the mons you listed anyway.

There's no "new information." There's just you missing the point.

 

[fenyxofshadows]

Honestly, I can still argue that it's Klefki and Thundurus that are the ridiculous ones, not the strategy as a whole. Most other Pranksters are Dark-type, and while Fighting has fallen out of favor, the introduction of Fairy, which is neutral towards just as many things and is even more easily spammable due to lacking any immunity against it, scares away a lot of the Pranksters. Where Sableye could wall most Fighting revenge killers, it cannot take a Moonblast.

That being said, Fairy priority is nonexistent outside of Baby-Doll Eyes and Pixilate Quick Attack, and Sylveon isn't a physical attacker. So you can't just Conkeldurr them out of the way.

Either Prankster + Swagger or Swagger + Foul Play should be banned IMO. It does not get rid of the strategy entirely, and does not take away otherwise fair and useful moves, only allows revenge killing (P+S) or increases lifespan and therefore decreases reliability (S+F). The strategy is standard annoyance stun strategy, and has always seen use. It's the fact that it's so difficult to get over right now because of a 'perfect storm' of sorts that is the problem, not the Confusion mechanics in general (why do people even suggest banning Confusion in general when Paralysis is just as bad if not worse?)

But I still see no reason why this thread should continue. The OU council should just lock the thread, make their decisions and reasoning (the reason is more important than the actual decision due to precedents and calling into question other moves and strategies), and be done with this. We have nothing more we can really say here without beating the dead and bony horse into powder.

 

[rob.]

When you play pokemon you get rekt by swag/play
When you get rekt by swag/play, you get angry
When you get angry, you rage spam the lobby chat
When you rage spam the lobby chat, you get banned
When you get banned you hurl your textbook across the room
When you hurl your textbook across the room, you hit a bully in the face
When you hit bullies in the face, you get wedgies everyday around 3 o clock
Don't get wedgies everyday around 3 o clock .. ban swag/play

 

[Chou Toshio]

Just understand why it's player experience that drives decision on "degree of uncompetitiveness" as well as "over-powered"--

No matter what the numbers say, if player experience is still bad-- we still have a problem. Tiering exists to address these problems, so tiering must address player experience.

Discussion can change or move opinion, and facts and numbers can sway opinion-- but it is ultimately opinion (subjective thought) that drives every tiering decision. Objective data can sway subjective opinion, but it's the opinion (not the data) that makes tiering decisions.

1. If community consensus is the guiding factor, I concede the point. A majority of the community is against SwagPlay, and that's easy to determine from this thread without even digging into numbers.

2. I disagree that simulation is useless in this particular instance. The formulaic nature of SwagPlay inherently lends itself to a formulaic counter play. In most other situations, pure formula isn't much of a factor. That said, if community consensus is the guiding factor, I concede the point as irrelevant to the conversation.

3. I believe we are working on fundamentally different ideas of removal of agency. I'm approaching it from an outcomes based approach, you are approaching it from a player experience approach. Since we have a fundamental opinion difference, we should agree to disagree because we are arguing different points. I was working under the definition that we define competitiveness as the ability for a decision to affect the outcomes, whereas it looks like the definition you're working under is that a player's individual actions are unable to take effect.

"Competitiveness" is not a perfect opposite of "uncompetitiveness" and is a much more complex concept.

"Uncompetitiveness" as used in tiering IS strongly tied to the degree of decision to affect outcomes (or lack of rather).

However, that "degree" is something decided not by numbers, but by player experience-- it is subjective. This could have been made more clear in the OP, but was something I stated in an earlier post. However, it was never the responsibility of an individual moderator to define uncompetitiveness because:

4. If player experience is what you're catering to and what you're trying to find out, not anything about luck reliance or competitiveness, then make that explicitly clear in the OP. I requested a change about competitiveness in the OP because I thought that it was a primary driving part of this entire discussion. So much unnecessary debate could have been avoided if this had been made explicitly clear that this is for research into the community's opinion and that actual technical merits made in the topic were irrelevant. Uncompetitiveness wasn't even in the OP for the longest time, for example, yet it became a huge part of the debate and now you're making it sound like it's not what the mods were even looking for with this topic. If I am understanding you correctly, I believe the moderators insufficiently guided the discussion, and it has resulted in much talk without any substance or relevance to the topic.

Whenever we have competitive discussion here at Smogon, it is assumed that users have a thorough understanding of tiering concepts and philosophy-- or assumed that if they don't have a thorough understanding, that they won't or shouldn't post. (You'll notice much less confusion as to the "definition" of "uncompetitiveness" in the posts of badged and more experienced users...)

Rather, it's the responsibility of us moderators to delete and moderate posts that do not show a thorough understanding; however it's not our responsibility to educate. There is a lot of "literature" and "history" to the tiering process, and not every single tiering thread can start with an explanation of that entire history. Good tiering contributors are members born through experience from first observing, and later participating in tiering tests and discussion.

That's why we mods hand out so many "lurk more" warnings and deletions-- because in order to be a good contributor, you really should be an educated one first.

It's not our job to teach/re-teach the concept of uncompetitiveness, because a good contributor is someone who knows what it is, and a good future contributor is one who knows he should NOT comment, and should lurk until he does understand the basic concepts/philosophy of tiering.

Opinions not grounded or guided in those concepts are frankly-- irrelevant to discussion.


You seem like an intelligent poster who can take the time to learn, so I look forward to your future postings.

 

[the-bumper-car]

Klefki and Thundurus are probably a large part of what makes SwagPlay ridiculous, but I think the strategy is going to be just as luck-based even if they were out of the picture. I also believe that both Klefki and Thundurus fill important and unique roles in the meta outside of Swagplay that banning them is an even bigger collateral damage than just banning Swagger outright.

(Also, it gives me a secret thrill to have all the people bringing Swagger to get automatically shunted off to Ubers.)

 

[Chou Toshio]

Dragontamer

How many times do I have to repeat myself-- whether or not a problem with player autonomy exists is something that is subjective and based on personal experience.

And to be fair, while irrelevant to the defining a "degree of uncompetitiveness" (which is not something measurable), that data was interesting--

Because, as stated in my earlier posts, the numbers reflect that the uncompetitiveness of the strategy is very significant in all the stats but Blissey's. This is what I mean by subjective. We can all look at the data, but it's people that interpret it for decision making. Gliscor or Heatran getting a 10% chance to beat klefki is more than effective enough to be concerned about uncompetitiveness. Aegislash having only a tiny chance to win absolutely disgusting. Slowbro has a 30%+ chance to lose? wtf?

The data shows that the removed control had a very significant affect on matchups against all those Pokemon except Blissey.

As they stand, those numbers support a ban more than anything else.




I personally would like to see a simulation and the data against all S-A- Pokemon; it just won't prove what he intends for it to prove-- and can't take the role his post intended to. That's what I meant by irrelevant. That doesn't mean the data's not interesting and can't give insights.

 

[Eievui-Nymphia]

Various things into consideration:
Some claim for Ice Beam hax. There was a clause in Gen IV (and before) named Freeze Clause, that works like Sleep Clause. The main (and possibly the only reason) it's not implemented now is because in Wifi there's nop possible to implement the clause unless you declare a loses if you freeze two pokemon at a time, which makes more haxy (10% of lose when Ice Beam/Ice Punch/Ice Fang/Blizzard/Freeze-Dry) than the Freeze clause per se. If the freeeze Clause works like in simulators (having a 0% chance of Freeze it you have aanother frozen pokemon), it will still be implemented on them.

Confusion is generally not broken because even though it has a nasty effect of bringing down physical sweepers, the risk using it is usually high that's not worth using it the majority of time. Having a limited turns (1-4), having a 50% chance of happening, and giving low damage to walls and many special attackers and not being a permanent status*.

*The Confusion status is almost unique that even though it's not a permanent status condition, it's cured by Full Heal, Full Restore (both in-game only), Lum Berry, it's cured by Aromatherapy, Heal Bell and Refresh?, and can be prevented by Safeguard like a permanent status.

The problem of Swagger is that is uncompetitive . Not only brings confusion into the table, but also +2 attack making the strategy more haxy, making any attacker taking double damage with confusion. The problem is that vs physical attacker with "not great" defense, is very uncompetitive because Swagger means:
50% of taking confusion damage that in thius case it's ridiculous high, or taking a full boosted attack at +2 while giving a boost to Foul Play. And add to prankster , making that you have to use Priority to deal with it, the Prankster mons that has priority in any move except Foul play makign almost guaranteed to hit first regardless of Speed and have the luxury of invest in bulk. (A big deal for Klefki and Thundurus)

 

[Dragontamer]

Chou Toshio

Ah, seems like you saw my post which was poorly timed. I was deleting it because I saw you posted another thing that addressed some of my issues. I'll pick it up here.

How many times do I have to repeat myself-- whether or not a problem with player autonomy exists is something that is subjective and based on personal experience.

And some of us would like to see a stronger measure of that. Hard numbers that quantify the results. Personally speaking, 10% hax are about standard measure in this game. Furthermore, your post innately assumes that those pokemon should always win against Klefki. Its an innate bias that assumes that SwagPlay ought to always lose, for some reason.

Anyway, as stated before in this thread, when you get below 10% "hax" numbers, weird things start to happen. 9% is roughly the same chance that Togekiss Flinches you 4 to 5 times in a row.

252+ SpA Togekiss Air Slash vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Thundurus: 76-90 (25.3 - 30%)

Thats a guaranteed 5HKO from Scarf Togekiss. Do you believe Scarf Togekiss should be able to beat Thundurus by Air Slash flinching him to death? The degree at which autonomy is "removed" at the 9% point is equivalent to many other aspects within the game already. This is why I like hard numbers. We can objectively quantify the argument. We can directly measure "autonomy" thanks to the magic of statistics. We can compare it to other elements of this game.


If you hope to remove all sources of "10% hax" from this game, you'll end up banning everything... from Ice Beam (Freeze Hax) to Scald.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Chou Toshio

Ah, seems like you saw my post which was poorly timed. I was deleting it because I saw you posted another thing that addressed some of my issues. I'll pick it up here.

re-stating:

Just understand why it's player experience that drives decision on "degree of uncompetitiveness" as well as "over-powered"--

No matter what the numbers say, if player experience is still bad-- we still have a problem. Tiering exists to address these problems, so tiering must address player experience.

Discussion can change or move opinion, and facts and numbers can sway opinion-- but it is ultimately opinion (subjective thought) that drives every tiering decision. Objective data can sway subjective opinion, but it's the opinion (not the data) that makes tiering decisions.

And some of us would like to see a stronger measure of that. Hard numbers that quantify the results. Personally speaking, 10% hax are about standard measure in this game. Furthermore, your post innately assumes that those pokemon should always win against Klefki. Its an innate bias that assumes that SwagPlay ought to always lose, for some reason.

Anyway, as stated before in this thread, when you get below 10% "hax" numbers, weird things start to happen. 9% is roughly the same chance that Togekiss Flinches you 4 to 5 times in a row.

252+ SpA Togekiss Air Slash vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Thundurus: 76-90 (25.3 - 30%)

Thats a guaranteed 5HKO from Scarf Togekiss. Do you believe Scarf Togekiss should be able to beat Thundurus by Air Slash flinching him to death? The degree at which autonomy is "removed" at the 9% point is equivalent to many other aspects within the game already. This is why I like hard numbers. We can objectively quantify the argument. We can directly measure "autonomy" thanks to the magic of statistics. We can compare it to other elements of this game.

% chance of victory (which is what the simulator shows) is not equatable to "removal of control"

Remember that this concept of uncompetitiveness only even exists because "removal of control" is not the same thing as "low chance to win" (which would be under over-powered).

However to me, a 10% chance to lose for a Pokemon with as many advantages as Gliscor does against Klefki's strategy, is probably related to a very high removal of control (though not proven one way or another in the numbers).

In your example, Togekiss' only way of outspeeding and flinching Thundurus to death would be through Scarf-- which gives it all sorts of weaknesses (being locked into a very low base power move resisted by many top tier threats). Thinking about the problem in a "real game" scenario clearly shows you how irrelevant it is. Remember-- a game characterstic can't be uncompetitive if no one gives a crap about it.



To give an example of this-- try to build a simulation that can calculate the "removal of control" demonstrated by Mega Gengar, who was also banned for being uncompetitive.





Having a 10% chance to win with a Gliscor (if you have one) is not the same thing as having "a fair degree of control on outcome"-- because Klefki also has a greater variety of options (in switching to other teammates) and Klefki's not the only user (and Thundurus-I could one shot Gliscor just by using HP Ice). Also, Swagger / T-Wave / Foul Play / Sub isn't the only potential set. Real games have a far greater diversity of factors.

Real game experience is what matters--

Because no matter what numbers you show, problems for the metagame are problems that result from player experience.

Numbers and facts are always nice to see in an argument, but the question is whether they'll convince the other party of your argument or not. No numbers are going to sway my personal opinion on Swagger-Prankster, and I dare say it's the same for most of the anti-swagger posters here.

 

[Dragontamer]

% chance of victory (which is what the simulator shows) is not equatable to "removal of control"

Having a 10% chance to win with a Gliscor (if you have one) is not the same thing as having "a fair degree of control on outcome"-- because Klefki also has a greater variety of options (in switching to other teammates) and Klefki's not the only user (and Thundurus-I could one shot Gliscor just by using HP Ice). Also, Swagger / T-Wave / Foul Play / Sub isn't the only potential set. Real games have a far greater diversity of factors.

Real game experience is what matters--

Because no matter what numbers you show, problems for the metagame are problems that result from player experience.

And 55%+ players didn't think Mega Gengar was a problem in the metagame. There is a reason why I trust hard numbers over player experience, especially in a ladder today filled with newbies. We're apparently not going to agree on this, so I'll take a pause for now and move to a different issue. Lets look at Thundurus:

Having a 10% chance to win with a Gliscor (if you have one) is not the same thing as having "a fair degree of control on outcome"-- because Klefki also has a greater variety of options (in switching to other teammates) and Klefki's not the only user (and Thundurus-I could one shot Gliscor just by using HP Ice). Also, Swagger / T-Wave / Foul Play / Sub isn't the only potential set. Real games have a far greater diversity of factors.

Indeed. Thundurus. He was deemed Uber in 5th gen, and is likely due for a suspect test anyway. He's got a huge amount of flexibility with Nasty Plot, Swagger, Substitute and so forth. I am willing to at very least concede a ban on Thundurus-I on the support characteristic. With the ability to work as a powerful and fast setup sweeper (Nasty Plot at 111 base speed), and Prankster Swagger as a potential strategy, as well as being the sole counter to many ``mon who perform well against PranksterSwagger (ie: Regenerator Slowbro or Gliscor)... methinks he truly does deserve a ban.

Without Thundurus, Prankster Swag teams are solely based on the bulk of Klefki and Sableye. Sableye has better things to do, and all the other SwagPlay users have the defenses of Murkrow or worse. (Murkrow does have Eviolite...). It will certainly hamper the strategy and make it far easier to counter.

 

[lord_of_flood]

So this thread has gone to complete shit. Everything's been stated over and over again with the same damn arguments being exhausted and rebutted. Tiering council should lock the thread and ban something/run a suspect test. It's very clear that something needs to be banned at this point, since it's been established that the strategy is uncompetitive due to near complete reliance on the RNG rather than on the player's own abilities (like was the case for Evasion and Moody), which is unhealthy for the metagame as it doesn't help develop the skills of any players who wish to play competitively at Smogon.

I'll say this again: skip the complex bans and just ban Swagger. Like I said earlier in this thread, one complex ban won't solve everything because of how complex bans work: they ban a combination of moves and abilities which can be worked around if the ban isn't implemented correctly. Example: if I banned Prankster + Swagger, then Swagger + TWave, Swagger + Foul Play, etc. can still be used by a player if they so wished. If I banned Prankster + Swagger + TWave + Substitute, I could still use Swagger + TWave + Substitute so long as it didn't have Prankster. And there are many Pokemon who can do that effectively (Electrode comes to mind; base 140 speed and Soundproof blocks sound moves from penetrating Substitute so it can't be phazed by Roar or damaged by other sound moves). Therefore, if you wanted to start up complex bans, you would need the following bans to completely get rid of the strategy while "preserving" as much as you can:

1) Prankster + Swagger
2) Swagger + Thunder Wave
3) Swagger + Substitute
4) Swagger + Foul Play (this one's kind of optional IMO but still worth consideration)

This would make players unable to use the strategy while allowing players to use Swagger for "phazing purposes". However, this is an extremely complex ban for one strategy. Doing something like this would open the Pandora's Box for more complex bans like these, which would potentially make the game so complex that it is inaccessible to players both new and old. This is why trading card games have never done complex bans (at least to my knowledge), as the barrier of entry would be too high once you introduce too many complex bans.

tl;dr: Complex bans are too complex. Ban Swagger

 

[Chou Toshio]

It's true-- actually the important "active" variable the determines tiering and is valued most by Smogon is not simple "opinion," but "opinion of players who prove themselves in the game" as well as "tiering leaders" who are also decided based on proven prowess in the game and experience in the tiering process.

It's true that this is not a random sample of players, and it "biases" tiering decisions in directions that would not be chosen by the population of "all players."

However, this bias is one that we desire as a community, because it biases towards a more skill-based metagame that also has qualities desirable by top players. Suspect groups are also samples, though not random, arguably representative-- of the true desired population: "those players who are actually good at this game" and the "opinions of those players" that form the data most relevant to the tier making process.

However, judgement calls on these types of decisions are also an important ingredient to building a good meta, and it's for that reason that decision like this are left to tiering leaders.



For my own personal opinion, I would actually also favor a Thundurus-I ban, but based on its power (which is still inferior to many other threats that are even more deserving of an over-powered suspect test and ban)-- and that is neither here, nor there, and unrelated to this subject.

Thundurus-I by itself cannot be given full responsibility for the Swag-Play issue, as it is actually one of the style's lesser-used users, and no one would say it's what keeps it a problem.

 

[HUARGH]

I'm not really sure what more to add to the discussion. I don't necessarily mind confusion (applied through something like confuse ray or what-have-you) because you have multiple ways of playing around it, i.e. by switching in a pokemon with higher defenses than attack.

Confusion in and of itself is noncompetitive because it introduces an element of luck, but there are still ways to play around it. I just mentioned switching in a (physical) offensively weak pokemon so you do not take confusion damage, but you could also swap in a pokemon with the 'own tempo' ability, 'magic bounce', use 'magic coat', carry an anti-confusion berry, use substitute to avoid it altogether and so forth. Sure, some of those options are rather gimmicky (I don't see anyone using a bitter berry and the pokemon that have own tempo are sparse), but they are still there + most of them are pretty good counters. Don't forget that these are ways to avoid the 50/50 and turn it into an advantage - worst case scenario you'll have to play the toin coss (where you still have 50% chance to ignore it). Even if you do get haxed and you hurt yourself in confusion, the damage will usually be less than the opponent could inflict if it had used a damaging move instead of a confusing move so it's not really the end of the world.

Seeing all this, what makes swagplay so cancerous? To start off, the counters are pretty limited: remember how I said you could swap in a weak physically-offensive pokemon? Not anymore (BAN ME PLEASE), +2 from swagger, meaning that not only you can no longer benefit from the stat increase (as those pokemon will rarely pack physical moves), it is now actually detrimental to you. Additionally, swapping in a physically offensive pokemon can be suicide: sure, you can use the +2 boost, but if you hurt yourself in confusion you're going to take a lot of damage.

And then, the other move: foul play. Excellent synergy with swagger and allows the pokemon using it to bypass offensive stats while still dealing terror damage.

Let us not forget that swagplay is usually ran on prankster pokemon, meaning that other counters I listed ^way above (such as using a substitute) are no longer valid because you will always be moving last unless you are faster + using a priority move. Swagplay users will typically use substitute to put the hax in their favor: get hit? Not very consequential. Don't get hit? You're fucked.

Ban Swagger (only)

 

[haunter]

If it wasn't clear, we're not going to ban Prankster, which is a completely legit ability, to nerf SwagPlay.

 

[HMinnow]

After reading over pages of comments I've seen many different arguments on the subject. Personally I'm not much of an advanced player, nor have I encountered this strategy. I can see the points for the strategy staying. The biggest is its a different strategy to use. I see nothing wrong with a pokemon with this combination of moves. To me it seems like that would be fine to have a Pseudo-Phazer using PranksterSwagPlay. Problem is whole teams doing so. Its the biggest issue here. Or at least multiple pokemon doing it. It leads to entirely coinflip based games. Counterplay means nothing when you have to counterplay entire teams. Its a lot harder to counterplay 6 pokemon without severely crippling your team. Adding the idea that you have to counterplay this strategy isn't a bad thing though. SO after saying that I propose option number 4, Banning the use of multiple pokemon with Prankster+Swagger on the same team or alternatively, if you wanna be a little more harsh but potentially prevent future versions of this issue limit Swagger to 1 user per team. This eliminates the issues of stacking at the very least. Even the use of 1 non damaging confusion move per team instead of specifying swagger. This allows for diversity without cornering the meta and making itself so obnoxious that we have to see the issue ever again.

 

[Ununhexium]

Define important. Just because its viable doesn't mean it shouldn't be banned for being uncompetitive. Mega Lucario, Mega Gengar and Blaziken were all viable does that mean they shouldn't have been banned? No.

Banning Paralysis and crits would mean that we need to alter game mechanics. That is not going to happen.

Magic Bounce doesn't counter it. None of the Magic Bounce users appreciate taking a Foul Play. This has been discussed before, please read the thread.

You fail to understand that confusion and paralysis isnt a problem. People using prankster and relying on it to win is where the problem is.

Also mega gengar, lucario, and blaziken were banned because they were deemed to powerful and just by having them you gained an advantage. Not because they were viable.

 

[Subject 18]

You fail to understand that confusion and paralysis isnt a problem. People using prankster and relying on it to win is where the problem is.

Also mega gengar, lucario, and blaziken were banned because they were deemed to powerful and just by having them you gained an advantage. Not because they were viable.

I'm well aware that Paralysis or confusion isn't problem. It's Prankster + SwagPlay. I'm simply quoting another users argument where he said:

What is the point of banning an important, legit, and counterable strategy? Only because it's "not fun"? Sure, let's ban paralysis. And crits.
Also, magic bounce HARD COUNTERS it...

It is important because it is perfectly viable. It is important because without it, the metagame will change. Maybe only slightly, but it will still change. If we ban confusion it will be even worse.

He also mentioned banning crits and paralysis, which isn't going to happen because that would mean changing game mechanics. I used Mega Gengar, Mega Lucario and Blaziken as a example that these things were perfectly viable in the meta but were banned because they were broken and created and unhealthy metagame. I didn't mean that they were viable and shouldn't, I was refuting this logic.

 

[Yogi Bear.]

If the OHKO moves and Evasion-raising moves can be banned for being a pain in the ass to play against (and thus ruining a person's mood), I think adding Swagger to that list is not a big deal. Ban Swagger.

 

[Xelus Shnider]

Well, there isn't much problem with confusion in general. You don't see riots happening over Machamps Dynamic Punch because he's slow, and even scarfed it loses to priority and ghosts. Which leads me to believe that Priority + Confusion is a problem, how much of a problem? Well who knows. Personally Swagger by itself isn't the biggest problem, using a special attacker in a prominently physical metagame that can dent steel with a coverage move outside of Hidden Power isn't entirely the most common, but even the problem is what is ran with that confusion to gimp you regardless of Swagger confuse hits dealing not too much as well as foul play not dealing much, possibly resisted. What I find a problem is Swagger + T-wave making a parafusion combo, a Clefable with Flamethrower can handle SwagPlay, and even has magic guard appreciating toxic/poison and burns, but Paralysis can cripple the use of Clefable as it wont be able to recover against other walls, is this a huge problem? Possibly, essentially they used a whole pokemon slot for a Klefki that paralyzed and did 20% to your Clefable, it could be worse.