Balanced Hackmons Species Clause Vote

[verbatim]

The idea of introducing Species Clause to Balanced Hackmons was introduced to me earlier this year by several competitive players. While I normally tend to shy on the side of leaving questionable things unbanned in BH as to not crowd out newcomers with many rules, Species Clause is something that is default on almost every other metagame, and something that could be included without much confusion if found to be desirable. That being said, I haven't been as active in BH recently as I have in the past, so I don't want to do something that could alter the metagame without hearing from all sides. Please note that this poll is meant to gauge the opinion of part of the Balanced Hackmons community and won't necessarily reflect the final decision regarding Species Clause.


So... do you think that Balanced Hackmons should introduce a Species Clause (as in you can only have one pokemon of any given dex number, i.e., only one mewtwo).

 

[Halliday]

Yay, thanks for posting this

 

[xJownage]

For the Record....

Species Clause should limit 2 of the same pokes to a team.

 

[jrm115]

imo there should be a limit to one per evolutionary family because double imposter is still scary. blissey+chansey may not be a huge threat but it feels like one

 

[Klang]

I voted no because I find that if the limit is one as opposed to two it just nerfs things like double imposter, imposter + unaware/bounce Chansey, Sturdinja + Scrapdinja and MM2X + MM2Y for no reason.

Species clause with a limit of 2 fixes the actual problem, which is mewtwo spam, without damaging other viable stuff.

 

[Halliday]

jrm, if we do that, people will start using wailord and wobbuffet. Lol

 

[Rumors]

For the Record....

Species Clause should limit 2 of the same pokes to a team.

Species clause has never worked like this though. Ability clause we went with two because there was no precedent and having two of the same ability on a team is possible in virtually every tier. The only other tier I'm aware of that allows multiples of the same species is plain Hackmons.

 

[Klang]

Species clause has never worked like this though. Ability clause we went with two because there was no precedent and having two of the same ability on a team is possible in virtually every tier. The only other tier I'm aware of that allows multiples of the same species is plain Hackmons.

We have no need to keep the precedent, and we should do what is in the best interest for the tier. BH having a slightly differing species clause really isn't the end of the world, and hurting viable stuff just to keep the precedent is a pretty lazy way to go about it in my opinion.

 

[skies]

I'm voting no because, to put it bluntly, I do not think it is a problem at all. I hate Imposter itself, that's the key issue, it is not two Chansey's. Plus, most teams of six Pokemon are seriously bad, the most common being MMX. MMX in itself is fucking insane and it is just wowsers. But, in general, it's not a huge concern and I don't think anyone's ever seriously gotten to the top of the ladder with a whole team of the same Pokemon. Sure, they're annoying, but everything has a counter. Plus, I don't agree with limiting BH anymore than it already is. So my vote goes to NO.

 

[Rumors]

We have no need to keep the precedent, and we should do what is in the best interest for the tier. BH having a slightly differing species clause really isn't the end of the world, and hurting viable stuff just to keep the precedent is a pretty lazy way to go about it in my opinion.

Double Imposter, and Imposter + non-Imposter Chansey are barely hurt by standard species clause because Blissey. So your opponent knows one of your Imposters isn't holding Eviolite? Big deal, they probably knew that whenever they saw two of them anyway. And regardless, your Imposters are going to be major Knock Off targets regardless of whatever they're holding. Sturdinja + Scrapinja is a gimmick I've not even seen since last gen (heck, Scrapinja period I've not seen since last gen).

As for XYtwo, forcing players to choose between the strongest attackers in the tier (by raw stats) is more interesting than being to have both without a care, IMO. And it also potentially opens the field for other Pokemon to see more usage.

 

[Ranger Mike]

For the Record....

Species Clause should limit 2 of the same pokes to a team.

This is how I felt when ability clause was a thing in voting but not anymore. As E4 Flint said ability clause did not do much because it does not really stop you from running dual kyube dual mewtwos dual chansey etc. I mean it just isn't a healthy meta without species clause I will play some games on the ladder and elaborate on my experience in a little bit.

 

[WoodCarboncle]

What is the argument for this clause again?

 

[Halliday]

It allows basically mindless teams of mons to run multiple sets that break past various specialized counters until a team has no remaining answers left, and at that point the opposing team loses. That was the principle I based my mega gengar team on, and it worked well due to being able to break past the various different counters to mega gengar.

 

[Halliday]

Sorry about double post, but I want verbatim to see this: could you add in an option for limiting to two per species so that if people want that, they can vote for that? Cause honestly, that's what I would vote for given the option.

 

[Rumors]

What is the argument for this clause again?

I'll try to list the arguments for and against that I've seen. I'm going to try to do this as neutrally as possible and keep my opinion out of this list. I may miss a few arguments for both sides since I'm going off memory here.

For Species Clause

-Let's people spam the same Pokemon to eventually overrun the opposing team. Basically as BK said above. You have a Pokemon that can check and remove Ytwo without much risk to itself. So you KO the opposing Ytwo. Another shows up. You KO that one and are now pretty worn down. Another shows up. Your check is too weak to handle it and you have no remaining checks, so the remaining four Ytwos sweep your team. (Or in other words, bad for the same reason why running, say, 6 Aegislash or 6 Talonflames in OU would be bad.)

-Makes team building less interesting. Aka, why run multiple species of Pokemon when you can just grab the one with the strongest stat you like and spam it? Removing that ability would force players to think more about their team choices.

-Lack of the clause is unhealthy for the meta-game.

-Lack of the clause is unfair to certain playstyles. HO claims it's unfair because double Eviolite Chansey and similar. Stall claims its unfair because multiple XYtwo/Lati@s/Kyu-both/etc.

-It glitches battles. PS is programmed to assume you can only have one of each species. Hence if you send out only Ytwos, only two of them will appear on the display for the opposing team, denying the other player information they would otherwise have. (Do they have two Ytwos or more?)

-It'd give some other Pokemon more of a chance to be used. Aka, right now if you need two Fighting types, you use two Xtwos since they outclass everything else. With species clause, you'd have to take something else, like Heracross or Keldeo.

Against Species Clause

-It's too limiting for the tier.

-It wouldn't really do anything to the tier since most people don't use multiples of the same mon, so why bother implementing it? I've not seen this one mentioned this time yet, but every previous time species clause was discussed, this argument came up.

-It's unfair to certain pokemon. Basically, you'd have to pick between Xtwo and Ytwo, Kyu-B and Kyu-W, Darm and Darm-Z, Aegis-S and Aegis-B, and certain mons with viable post-megavolution abilities.

-It hurts certain gimmicks, like double Imposter, Sturdinja + Scrapinja, etc.

 

[Whatwasthatnoise]

Sorry about double post, but I want verbatim to see this: could you add in an option for limiting to two per species so that if people want that, they can vote for that? Cause honestly, that's what I would vote for given the option.

For the record, I'm opposed to this in general (As Rumors said, it's incredibly limiting for a tier that used to be about only banning the absolute most broken things, I think I made a similar argument against the Ability Clause but don't quote me on that) but I would vote for this as a compromise. It still allows one of MM2X/Y, the Kyurems, any viable Megas... heck, even just things that can be varied enough in viable sets to actually fill a whole team. (Xerneas comes to mind).

Two Mega Mewtwo X are not nearly as bad as six are.

 

[CactusCacti]

as much as 2 of each could work, it kinda also feels rather... Silly in a way.
What would it even be called, dubs check em clause?

Eitherway I do not feel that BH needs to be limited in such strong matters such as specie clause.
It seems to be so far rather shallow investigated on the level of brokedness compared to ability clause

 

[Anna says hi]

Please vote no on this. I play BH semi-stall, and this clause would hurt every playstyle. My team revolves around scouting the opponent's sets, making sure they can't scout mine, and using Sturdinja to wall the crap out of the opponent's team while reducing all offensive pressure against my team to abolutely nothing. This is accomplished by a double chansey core, one focused on removing a specific threat that tears my team to shreds, the other being your standard impostor troll. Now, even if species clause was implemented in BH, although my team would in theory not suffer at all, it gains a massive weakness in that the opponent knows that I have 2 Impostors, and they can focus more on identifying which is which. A lot of similarly built teams to mine would suffer massively, and it would create horrible imbalance in the metagame from this set:
Gengar-Mega @ Spooky Plate
Standard EVs with reduced SDef
Don't know the most common nature for it either
Mold Breaker variant of choice
Judgment
Secret Sword
Shell Smash
Filler

This set would force you to throw away your item slot on your impostor or be unable to counter it without Kyub. Having 2 impostors is no longer an option due to the fact that it becomes known to the opponent you can counter sweep them. The proposed addition of the species clause would nerf so many playstyles so drastically. BH is supposed to be a tier to get imaginative. Species clause would prevent that.

 

[Monte Cristo]

This is silly, our current priorities shouldn't be blindly attacking the minority with really little reason to do so. We should be focusing on how mgar kyube and xerneas limit and heavily damage prominent archetypes and are unhealthy for the meta. Compared to the big fish that should be taking priority, this is simply a joke.

 

[Ranger Mike]

Please vote no on this. I play BH semi-stall, and this clause would hurt every playstyle.

Please can we have better arguments, oh no it's my playstyle I run hyper offense and I never run dual mons because I find that a species cause is needed as for the obligatory OH I NEED TWO IMPOSTERS well if you have half a brain you make your team for all imposters to counter don't you?

 

[asterat]

who the heck instigated this?

this is not happening. This is already the same idea as the ability clause, that was more than enough...

 

[verbatim]

Sorry about double post, but I want verbatim to see this: could you add in an option for limiting to two per species so that if people want that, they can vote for that? Cause honestly, that's what I would vote for given the option.

I thought about it, but my initial reasoning behind letting the thread go up in the first place was because it would be similar to other common clauses and not confuse people. Two pokemon with the same dex number is a lot harder to explain to newcomers.

Re the "WTF's". This thread came about following a conversation with some people who felt strongly about it, and the thread was made to see if that view matched the general zeitgeist. Right now the votes are relatively even, so unless yes pulls ahead with a wide margin, I wouldn't worry too much about this becoming a thing.

 

[Boltaway]

Thank God. I definitely don't want this sort of thing to be implemented in BH. It's just an unecessary restriction for the sake of what? All I've heard in this thread are MMX teams and double imposter (which is not that hard to work around). Those two things haven't proven to be broken, centralizing, or uncompetitive. Most well-built teams might have two Pokemon of the same species, but that tends to be it. I've yet to see a serious, solid team with an excessive amount of same-species Pokemon. Also, I don't think having species clause to be "like other metagames" is a good argument.

So, yeah, this restriction would be unnecessary.

 

[Rumors]

I've yet to see a serious, solid team with an excessive amount of same-species Pokemon.

Give me a few days.

 

[Monte Cristo]

Give me a few days.

I bet you if this clause was implemented someone would just take x pokemon and replace it with 2 other subs for it, itself and 3 goodstuffs mons. All your doing is slowing this down, not preventing something. There are things we need to stop outright instead of just nerfing the smaller threats which are more gimmicky atm. Ability clause was good because before you could take 5 good PHers and chansey and call it a team, there was too much variety too handle. Now I feel this is easily a lot more one dimensional and can be treated as such.