Gen 6 np: XY Ubers Shadow Tag Suspect Test - Stuck In The Middle With You

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Focus

Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
This has all been an interesting process to be sure. Since this may be the last Ubers suspect test for a long time, let me just conclude by expressing some things I've learned from the last two suspect tests.
  • Gothitelle surprised me by the amount of work it puts in. It has the capacity to screw over certain Pokémon, and more importantly certain teams, in a serious way. Few things control the flow of games more than Gothitelle when given the chance. It's hardly a shitty gimmick; it's the real deal. If you see a Gothitelle on the opposing team, you need to be extra careful not to be trapped after a double switch or revenge kill, or else you could be in for quite the uphill battle.
  • Gengar is great as a stand-alone Pokémon, but Shadow Tag sends it through the roof. It's fast, it's powerful, it has a very annoying and flexible movepool, and this thing overall demands a serious level of preparation and prediction to play against. It is a great revenge killer, mid-game wallbreaker, and late-game cleaner. Even better, it is almost uncounterable thanks to its controversial ability and disruptive movepool. Gengarite is more than deserving of the Uber title.
  • It's disingenuous to speak of 50/50s with Shadow Tag; taking away the opposing player's ability to switch is huge and is not to be understated. The thing with Shadow Tag is that if you are switching around as part of a typical match and end up on the losing end of a bad matchup against Mega Gengar or Gothitelle, they are in control of the matchup for as long as THEY choose. If they choose to switch out to an even better matchup, they can do so. If they choose to simply dispose of your Shadow Tag-weak Pokémon, then there is nothing you can do about it at that point. Yes, Shadow Tag can be counterteamed as much as the next dangerous strategy (do not understate this point either), but overpreparing for this threat is just as dangerous as underpreparing for it.
  • As dire as things may seem, losing or winning any particular Shadow Tag matchup is not the end of the world. There are countless times I've lost a key Pokémon due to stag or otherwise and bounced back. Of course, I have also lost games I thought were practically won. It's amazing just how far a clutch late-game decision (or also hax) can turn the tide of a match. Many people might hate this, but I see the capacity for an interesting match even when the outcome looks all but inevitable as a crucial part of a healthy metagame.
  • Team matchups are brutal. Team-building seems to be at the same time more restrictive and yet more difficult to get right in XY. Xerneas, Mega Gengar, Mega Mewtwo X/Y, and Mega Kangaskhan are all serious threats on their own. But adequately preparing for all of them while at the same time not getting wrecked by the classics like Arceus of every flavor, Kyogre, and Ho-Oh? Now that's rough. The plan of attack I've had the most success is to execute my plan before the opponent executes theirs. HO just gets better and better. With ORAS just weeks away, this trend looks like it won't be changing any time soon.
  • "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." When it comes to major decisions such as electing your representatives crafting the future of Ubers with a consistent and fair ideology, the suspect testing process is looking more and more like a waste of everyone's time. Ubers is my favorite tier (yeah, I said tier) precisely because of how elegant its ruleset has been in the past and hopefully in the future. However, it does zero good to say that only stuff that makes the game uncompetitive shall be banned when there are hundreds of different voices each pulling in their own direction, each with their own interpretation of "competitive" vs "uncompetitive". I'd be sad to see these kinds of tests go away completely from Ubers, but every member of the voting pool should have a good understanding of what they are doing, and why they think their decision is best for the metagame and tier as a whole. I am grateful for filters on the votes via reqs and paragraphs, but this process has still felt like a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth" lately.
Again, this has all been a thrilling experience. Thank you to the leaders who put up with a lot these last few months, and thanks especially to all the new faces who have put the time into learning this great tier. If we do this again sometime, I will surely be there!
 

Inspirited

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I am going to throw out my stance one last time before the vote happens just to allow people to give there responses. I am interested in what will be said about this and, who knows, a response or two could make me change my mind.

Ubers as a tier has always been slightly more uncompetitive than others due to our allowing of the most destructive mons in the game. This is something I, and many others, find fun about the tier that other tiers disallow since it makes team building more of a challenge and amplifies the importance of key plays and Pokemon. This is what Shadow Tag takes advantage of is because of the heavy, but not certain, reliance on key Pokemon. In my eyes, this is a very overpowered and unbalanced form of support, or something that Ubers should preserve rather than ban. Although "preparing" for it will never completely solve the issue, this is a testament to how good Shadow Tag is and believe me when I say that I think Mega Gengar is probably the most broken Pokemon to enter Ubers, besides RBY Mewtwo, purely due to its versatility of what it can support and how well it executes its supportive duties. Gothitelle performs similarly but with far less Pokemon it can support, it makes up for this with much greater sweeping potential than Mega-Gengar has since it will be at +6 SpA and SpD and at full health after it has removed what it has needed too if played correctly. Gothitelle also has a flaw of being stopped cold by Dark-types when it attempts to sweep but these will rarely hinder its ability to support due to Shadow Tag being Shadow Tag. As of right now, I am under the impression that Shadow Tag is purely broken and unbalanced which does make it uncompetitive to an extent, but it is an extent we will not ban for... usually.

The big exception here is OHKO clause which has its extremities when compared to Shadow Tag. They are similar in that they manipulate switching only Shadow Tag stops it, creating a coin flip when deciding whether to bring in the venerable mon or not, whereas OHKO moves created another game of chance in deciding to safely blast whatever is in front of you with a good STAB or coverage move, or use an OHKO move to attempt to KO the usual switch in (this isn't quite a 50 / 50 imo since an OHKO move can KO an opponent that stays in also). OHKO moves have much less opportunity cost since they allow a Choice Scarf Kyogre, for example, to potentially KO its switching while still being able to sweep later. The detail here is this only takes one team slot where Shadow Tag requires 2 to be effective: the Shadow Tag user for support and the Sweeper being supported. Even though Shadow Tag users essentially choose there match ups initially, they do have solid checks that can come in after the target falls. With OHKO moves, the user of them can also have their own dangerous sweeping potential i.e. Choice Scarf Kyogre mainly. The only downside to OHKO moves is their terrible accuracies, but 30% is only a theoretical value and we all know how drastically different the empirical value for accuracy can be. OHKO moves were definitely more broken than Shadow Tag is, and therefor that much more uncompetitive.

The point is that the bar that helps decide what we ban and what we don't will be lowered here should the Shadow Tag ban take place. That is something I cannot bring myself to vote in favor of.
 
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Okay want to keep this relatively to the point.
The ubers tier is full of semi-broken and absolutely powerful pokemon you have things like scarf kyogre, geo xern, Mm2, Choice Band Ho-oh et al. In teambuilding for the ubers tier you have to be concious of all the threats and create a team that can take on these threats. One such threat are shadow tag users, the can have a wide variety of roles such as gothitelle trapping support mons and setting up cms, wobbufet trapping and killing offensive threats and Mega Gengar doing a bit of both. Shadowtag is a very notable ability in the fact that it prevents one of the most basic actions of the game: Switching (unless you are a ghost or have shed shell). So obviously if you do not prepare for the threats and you leave in the wrong mon at the wrong time you can get set up on, or lose a crucial check or even have a powerful offensive threat be taken out.

Sure shadowtag is hard to prepare for so if you dont have a pursuit user/kill the gengar before it MEvos/kill the wobbofet by out playing it then you are going to inevitably get into 50/50s and this is a problem many users seem to have with shadow tag the fact that it creates 50/50s where "Bad" players can beat out "good" players therefore making it uncompetitive. However the thing that needs to be remembered about 50/50s is that they are in your favour just as much as they are in their favour so in the end it comes down to who can make the best play. If your opponent has played safely all game then you can be pretty sure he will go for taunt before d-bond (etc) or maybe he will go for d-bond first you have to be able to predict correctly if you want to come out best in the situation and that is what pokemon is all about predicting what your opponent is most likely to do and chosing the action that will result in the best set of probabilities for you. There are many more 50/50s in pokemon outside of the ones shadow tag creates.

Now with all this being said shadow tag is a huge threat and it can be hard to play around, and it does tend to slightly favour the stag user in the 50/50s so they arent exactly even however it is important to remember that YOU CAN USE SHADOW TAG AS WELL. Sure this will centralise the meta alot more but ubers is a heavily centralised meta nayway with only a handful of pokemon being viable.

Personally i rarely have trouble against the main shadow tag users
  • Wobbufet- I can play around and make predictions on the counter/mirror coat or encore
  • Gothitelle- Can be extremely dangerous if it comes in on a suppourtceus, klefki, lugia etc. But it is not as bulky as you tend to think and can be worn down by hazards and attacks
  • Mega Gengar- Obviously the scariest Stag threat i usually dont let if mevo for free and just outplay my opponent by doubling into a check
tl;dr
  • Play around it
  • You can use it as well
  • 50/50s are part of the game
So yeah NO BAN
 
Eh if you have e.g. Mega Gengar in against Blissey or Gothitelle in against support Arceus (without anti-Goth moves) you aren't in a 50/50, you're in a 100/0 situation since the other guy can't switch out. The 50/50 happens only when trying to Pursuit a STag user, and whether to double switch out of the predicted incoming STagger.

However after all the replays and stuff on the last few pages showing Gothitelle at her best I'm going to link this one to illustrate just how useless she can be:

Also another argument raised against STag is that it leads to team matchup advantage, yet edgar lost to team matchup in the semifinals of a tournament in which STag was banned, so I fail to see how STag is different from what we already have: http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...mifinals-post-124.3519505/page-6#post-5833510

This isn't fingering edgar or anything he's obviously a very good player, but I feel the argument behind banning STag are not very strong.

Also Melee Mewtwo I know this isn't the thread to vote in and I'll prove it by linking the last voting thread http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/xy-ubers-gengarite-suspect-voting.3516477/ but nonetheless I want to know, is this "paragraph" good enough or not or should I write something else?

As I wrote earlier in this thread I'm somewhat confused over what the suspect actually is, so I'm going to address all three of them in turn.

If the suspect is Shadow Tag:

1) STag has been around for a while. It's actually been nerfed recently to allow ghost types to switch out of it. Why ban only now? If the argument is that all the STaggers sucked dick in the past, that's not true since Wobbuffett was a legitimate threat since it was introduced.
2) There are similar abilities to STag. Arena Trap is one. Even if we agree that the Arena Trap users all suck dick, there are also things that remove the opponent's ability to do things, like Levitate.
3) Taking this even further there are things like Ghost types being immune to normal and fighting moves and Flying types being immune to ground moves, which both take away the opponent's ability to do things. Some people will say "But you can Earthquake a Pokemon with Levitate, you can't switch out of a Pokemon with STag. There is a difference", but suppose STag were changed such that you can switch out of a Pokemon with STag, however if that Pokemon stays in, your attempt to switch fails. Then it becomes the same as using Earthquake on a Levitating Pokemon. Would this change make STag competitive in the eyes of the people who currently call it uncompetitive? I doubt it.

It's fair to say that if you only switch out of an advantageous matchup if you are predicting your opponent's switch, and STag means your opponent can't switch, so you have no reason to switch out. So there is a difference. On the other hand I don't think this difference is large enough to make it uncompetitive. If you got EKiller in against Blissey, you can safely set up because you know he will have to switch. If you have Blissey in against EKiller, you have to switch, but that doesn't mean EKiller should be banned because it's removed your options to attack.

#1 is also an important objection. I don't see any explanations to that other than this test being a hidden attempt to ban Gothitelle and Mega Gengar for being too strong.

If the suspect is Mega Gengar:

1) Mega Gengar has already been tested and the decision was "no ban".
2) Team preview warns you if there's a Gengar on the other team so you can hopefully double switch out of it successfully.
3) Mega Gengar takes a turn to mega evolve. Since Mega Gengar is very frail, this is something not easily done.
4) Mega Gengar is a Mega Pokemon, which means no Mega Blaziken, MMX or MMY, etc. These are all good Pokemon.
5) Mega Gengar can only trap certain Pokemon. To lure those Pokemon in and then get Mega Gengar in without the opponent switching out takes skill.
6) Lots of the Pokemon that Mega Gengar traps can run moves that beat it.
7) While it's true that Mega Gengar can often Destiny Bond something even if it fails to trap things, that's not much of an achievement because you would be playing rather like a 5v6 game, since Mega Gengar has meager defensive value. It's not exactly the same, but there is an opportunity cost.

In a way Mega Gengar is similar to Specs Kyogre or LO Deoxys A. If they get in safely with 100% HP, the other team is in trouble. But it's not easy to do that. Mega Gengar can kill certain targets so teammates can sweep, but then other wall breakers like SD Ray can also do that.

If the suspect is Gothitelle:

1) Gothitelle is very uncommon. I didn't see a single Gothitelle while laddering (aside from my own Gothitelle). If it were really so good I don't see why it should be so rare.
2) Gothitelle has little defensive use. Unlike Mega Gengar, which is fast + attacks hit pretty hard, Gothitelle doesn't do anything else other than trap stuff. It doesn't have any useful resistances either. A major case of playing 5v6 while waiting for that one key moment, unlike the real titans of the tier e.g. Kyogre which can switch into Ho Oh's Sacred Fire or Xerneas which can switch into Yveltal, even if they are running offensive sets.
3) The Pokemon that Gothitelle traps can usually run something to beat it, e.g. Roar on Arceus. Support Arceus has major 4MSS, but it is still possible. If support Arceus has Roar then Gothitelle becomes pretty useless. Oh yeah and Roar beats the stupid Baton Pass teams out there.
4) Team preview warns you if there's a Gothitelle on the other team so you can hopefully double switch out of it successfully.
5) Gothitelle has 100% counters even if it gets to +6 and has TR up.

Probably the most annoying thing about Gothitelle is how long it actually takes to kill stuff. So long it might as well violate endless battle clause. But I do not find it broken.

In my laddering experience Mega Gengar (can't speak for Gothitelle since I never played against one) is a dangerous Pokemon that I'm afraid of and treat seriously, but it is manageable. There are better things to ban. If we are banning a Pokemon then ban Xerneas and possibly Arceus, since Geo Xern and EKiller are super strong and kill everything with appropriate sets. If we don't ban Pokemon then there's still evasion and Baton Pass that deserve more attention than STag.
 
Haven't had the time to ladder so I won't be voting but here are my thoughts on this. I'm very against banning a Pokemon from the Uber tier. Yeah we would only ban Gengarite but it's pretty much like banning a Pokemon. I like Ubers because it's the tier where you can use any Mega and Pokemon you want, some abilities are banned yes but any Pokemon is still able to be used. I also agree with others that the ability is overpowered rather than "uncompetitive" I also feel like people want to ban the ability because they want certain Pokemon and play style to be more viable which is just ridiculous. This is the broken mons tier... if Pokemon get easily trapped by Gengar or Gothitelle than either don't use them and use a more offensive type of team or try to play around it with smart switching.
 
I guess I'll lay out my thoughts here.

First off I didn't see a single Gothitelle getting reqs, so I feel as if this is really just a second attempt at banning Gengarite. That said, I don't think Gothitelle is bad in any way. I feel like some people just don't understand how it really functions. Gothitelle is an insanely powerful Pokemon, setting up on so many pokemon like SpDef Sylveon, Blissey, Support Arceus and others. If played right, it will easily sweep your team.

More on to Shadow Tag as a whole, I think it's a very good ability. Like others have stated in this thread, however, I feel like ubers should be a tier where I can use anything I want. Nonetheless, Shadow Tag is amazing for its ability to remove one threat that may block your one Pokemon from sweeping. For example, if someone's only reliable check to Kyogre is Palkia, If I remove that with shadow tag, I'll have an insanely easy time picking off the rest of your team with Kyogre. The ability to choose one pokemon and essentially remove it from play is incredible.

However, it is extremely easy to predict a shadow tag pokemon. If I have my blissey in, and you have a gothitelle, 90% the time you're switching in your gothitelle, and I know that. I'm going to take advantage of that and switch into a favorable matchup for Gothitelle, or Mega Gengar even.

All in all, Shadow Tag is a really good ability, really solid. But in the end I do not think its game-breaking. It's really easy to beat with hyper offense, easy to predict, and, It can effectively be detrimental if your opponent has a really well built team. I just don't think it should be banned, really. Feel free to argue this.
 

jrp

Banned deucer.
I feel like people severely underestimate what Gothitelle is capable of. It's definitely more prevalent in tournaments than it is on the ladder (I'm pretty sure the only time I've ever faced a Goth on the ladder was against MM2 about 6 months ago), but it's definitely capable of tipping the scales in the favor of the user if it comes in on the right pokemon. Being able to set up to +6 with Double Team and Calm Mind practically effortlessly (again, against the right pokemon) is amazing, and it's a sign of the mistake we made when we unbanned evasion last gen, but I digress.

After doing a bit of discussion, I'm heavily leaning towards the ban side. I said in my earlier post that I am not a fan of Pokemon that remove important mechanics from the game. Being able to switch out to a favorable matchup is a fundamental part of the game, and I do not agree with being able to take that away from the game. Being able to make a Pokemon that might present a problem to your team moot by simply trapping it is unacceptable in my view.

I'm still not 100% convinced on how to vote right now, but I am definitely leaning towards voting to ban right now.
 

SparksBlade

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While it has been stated that we've to stick to what STag does, and not what MGar and Goth do, we can't distinguish STag from Arena Trap w/o noticing how the wielders of the 2 distinguish in the capability to use their respective abilities. And the fact is that Arena Trap wielders are very weak in w/e they should be doing, while STag wielders have got the right tools to be a threat.


While I surely don't have anything to add to what others have said, I'll just let my opinion be known while I wait for the voting to start(when does it start btw?). STag removes the option to switch with few exceptions. Unless you're running HO, there is a very high chance that there's something on which Goth can set up. Double switches are an option, but what when your opp has a burned scarf/specs Kyogre at 12%, and only Blissey/Chansey can take the hit. You can't switch out after Kyogre faints, and your opp sends in their Goth and sets up while you die to Struggle recoil or w/e. You couldn't have done anything else there, but you lost. STag, while not luck reliant, doesn't create an equal atmosphere in the battle imo. You may make mistakes, but you can make up for them by playing better later, while STag doesn't give you that much chance at that. It seems to be a badly worded para, sorry for that.

I'm for ban.

edit: seems like " " don't work in hide tags, but i couldn't think of anything else.
 

shrang

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Being able to set up to +6 with Double Team and Calm Mind practically effortlessly (again, against the right pokemon) is amazing, and it's a sign of the mistake we made when we unbanned evasion last gen, but I digress.
Just a heads-up to everyone else, I know you've noted that Evasion is a problem and I also know that's not your key point, but I really hope people don't use Double Team S-taggers as an example. It just confuses the situation when you bring something that (IMO) is more uncompetitive to justify S-tag as being uncompetitive.
 
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Evasion just makes blatant what already exists as an issue. It's a terrible strategy and only works in overkill scenarios. Sadly, all most folks understand about a game is whether or not a setup sweeper pushed their shit in. There's a reason everybody's tune suddenly changed on the subject one generation later, despite the direct nerfs it received.


People started using Baton Pass and Shadow Tag.


Just a little fyi.
 

Ares

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So I haven't had as much time to be as involved with this suspect test as I was with the Gengarite suspect test, so unfortunately I didnt get as much time to ladder. During my time on the ladder I did not once run into a single Gothitelle which made deciding on whether or not to ban incredibly hard. I used the same team with Mega-Gengar and this time around I ran into a couple of stall teams which I almost lost to, I had to make some key double switches to trap a wall with Mega Gengar to be able to win. Those switches didnt work out for me every time though, as some of them were quite obvious and the opponent was able to predict them and play around them accordingly; this however, brings up the point that if the opponent mispredicts then they are in a worse position than if I mispredict with my STag user. A very valid point, but the same can be said about multiple situations in Ubers when facing Pokemon that can set up or have great coverage. I dont know if removing the ability to switch is enough to warrant a ban because you still had the ability to make choices that could remove yourself from the situation of being trapped.

Seeing as I wasn't involved in this suspect and didn't see enough of Gothitelle on the ladder to form a solid opinion, atm I am going to abstain from voting, unless I read an argument that sways me one way or the other.

On a side note; its really off putting when users who are known big players say, "Oh if you dont play Ubers regularly than you shouldnt be in this vote" or "users who aren't regular Ubers players are here just for the badge cause they are badge hungry". This kills any real want for a new user to want to get into the Ubers tier and can limit the playerbase. I myself am mainly not an Ubers player, but from the time I've spent laddering I've really enjoyed playing the tier. Seeing as I already have the TC badge I can't really be told that I'm badge hungry for wanting to participate in the vote so hopefully this doesn't fall upon deaf ears. You guys have a really fun tier here and suspect tests can be a good time to get into the tier, dont push away new users just because they don't have as much experience as you do. (A little bit of a rant, sorry lol)
 

shrang

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Evasion just makes blatant what already exists as an issue. It's a terrible strategy and only works in overkill scenarios. Sadly, all most folks understand about a game is whether or not a setup sweeper pushed their shit in. There's a reason everybody's tune suddenly changed on the subject one generation later, despite the direct nerfs it received.


People started using Baton Pass and Shadow Tag.


Just a little fyi.
Actually, how do you justify that over "Shadow Tag makes blatant what already exists as an issue (Evasion)"? The way I see it, Evasion has always been an issue, purely because of how we define things to be uncompetitive. Well, we did have a Suspect test back in gen 5, but with the amount of uproar it's causing now, you can almost count that test to be moot at this point. We could get into another massive debate about which one is more uncompetitive, but that would just sidetrack us again (we could if you want, but that's your decision, don't complain and censor shit when the thread gets derailed again). The point was that we're here to argue whether S-tag is uncompetitive or not, and bringing in Evasion just complicates the issue, so it's best we not go there.
 

jrp

Banned deucer.
Actually, how do you justify that over "Shadow Tag makes blatant what already exists as an issue (Evasion)"? The way I see it, Evasion has always been an issue, purely because of how we define things to be uncompetitive. Well, we did have a Suspect test back in gen 5, but with the amount of uproar it's causing now, you can almost count that test to be moot at this point. We could get into another massive debate about which one is more uncompetitive, but that would just sidetrack us again (we could if you want, but that's your decision, don't complain and censor shit when the thread gets derailed again). The point was that we're here to argue whether S-tag is uncompetitive or not, and bringing in Evasion just complicates the issue, so it's best we not go there.
regarding posts about evasion, I (and I hope that the other voters that voted to unban it) regret making that decision, and while evasion is something that should be looked at down the line, the fact is that evasion is something that Gothitelle is able to abuse in current circumstances using Shadow Tag. Certainly, we can argue that evasion is the issue here rather than shadow tag, but shadow tag is the thing enabling Goth to set up Double Team in the first place by trapping something incapable of harming it. Other Pokemon that could feasibly run an evasion move typically get forced into a bad matchup with whatever comes in, and are forced out, or simply get ko'd through evasion (assuming that they are not able to successfully set up whatever they're attempting to do).

I do feel that discussions involving evasion here are relevant due to Gothitelle's unique ability to easily set up evasion, unlike other Pokemon in the tier.
 

shrang

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The problem is that Evasion is a problem in its own right. Shadow Tag enables the Pokemon to set up Double Team, sure, but how do you show that if say, a Calm Mind/DT Gothitelle ended up sweeping your team because let's pretend... your Giratina couldn't Dragon Tail it out because it kept missing (after it got to +6/+6/+6 and killed the mon that it trapped), which would have meant that you could have another look at the game? Is it the fault of Shadow Tag in this situation which allowed the Gothitelle to set up, or was it the fault of Evasion that you couldn't get another chance in the game? You really can't tell. You can take away Shadow Tag in this situation and run a Double Team Gothitelle and potentially get the same result (lets just pretend Dragon Tail had 100% accuracy here for simplicity). I'm not disagreeing that S-tag makes it easier, but what is really the problem here? Personally, I think Evasion is a bigger problem since it affects pretty much everything, but like I said before, I don't want to derail this thread with Evasion vs S-tag arguments because frankly, that's not why we're here.
 

Jibaku

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(Disclaimer: I remain neutral on whether I think Tag should or should not be banned. Just throwing some philosophical stuff out there)

If Shadow Tag is the common denominator in these abuse cases (bypassing DT's limitation of taking time to set up, and essentially bypassing Sleep Clause with HypnoGar, as mentioned on IRC), then it would make more sense to ban Tag than the above two. Without Tag, Evasion would not be an issue (just an annoyance), and Sleep Clause would be functioning properly.

(lmk if evasion becomes a notable issue outside of tag).

I see Pokemon as a game of tradeoffs and with that I think evasion being around is justifiable as long as it has significant tradeoffs (and it does) to prevent it from being a strong force. The tradeoff to sleep is that it can only Sleep one target at a time so the user must choose its target properly to prevent that sleep move from being a wasted moveslot. If Shadow Tag can bypass these tradeoffs to create very strong results, the problem seems to be with Tag, assuming Tag already causes major issues outside of these abuse cases.

Unless you prefer banning Sleep entirely and reinstating Evasion Clause while leaving Tag open.
 

Minority

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What I really would like to see is an argument from the pro-ban side minus all the fluff and irrelevant bs before voting begins; i.e. the closest an argument about Tag can get to a mathematical proof. Its not too hard to transfer concise thoughts from sentences to bulletpoint steps in a logical series of progression.
 
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Okay here's my two cents on shadow tag.
Shadow tag does take out certain parts of skill and can if used correctly completely flip a match by trapping a pokemon with no offensive moves or a mon that can't hit it. However most things in the ubers tier can also flip a game with the correct play and . What shadow tag does is prevent a person from switching things out. The ability to remove that choice from your opponent is extremely powerful and can make a battle very one-sided if your opponent isn't ready for it. Stopping your opponent from switching out is not to be underestimated and is a central part of the meta-game and without it there is a clear advantage to the s-tag user. If you trap a check to one of your other pokemon then you can get rid of it fairly consistently. Which gives you an advantage. However now that I've played using varying shadow tag strategies a large amount I have found that it is not unfair or because there are ways to beat and check it. With mega-gengar you can catch it on a switch, stop it from evolving in the first place or KO it after predicting what it will do. You can also predict switches to catch wobbuffet and gothitelle negating them as threats. Mega-Gengar can stop a sweep or remove a threat with taunt+destiny bond but it goes down too which is a 1 for 1 trade. Gothitelle is very situation and can't stand against most mons 1v1 and I didn't see a single wobbuffet out off over 153 battles so I don't think it's prevalent enough to be a factor in deciding the ban but if it prevalent enough darkrai would easily counter it with dark pulse since it can't hit back with psychic type mirror coat.

In conclusion I vote to not ban shadow tag due to it not being uncompetitive rather just very powerful. Also there are viable checks to the pokemon that can use and abuse it such as mega-mewtwo X and Y along with the previously mentioned darkrai.
 
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shrang

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(Disclaimer: I remain neutral on whether I think Tag should or should not be banned. Just throwing some philosophical stuff out there)

If Shadow Tag is the common denominator in these abuse cases (bypassing DT's limitation of taking time to set up, and essentially bypassing Sleep Clause with HypnoGar, as mentioned on IRC), then it would make more sense to ban Tag than the above two. Without Tag, Evasion would not be an issue (just an annoyance), and Sleep Clause would be functioning properly.

(lmk if evasion becomes a notable issue outside of tag).

I see Pokemon as a game of tradeoffs and with that I think evasion being around is justifiable as long as it has significant tradeoffs (and it does) to prevent it from being a strong force. The tradeoff to sleep is that it can only Sleep one target at a time so the user must choose its target properly to prevent that sleep move from being a wasted moveslot. If Shadow Tag can bypass these tradeoffs to create very strong results, the problem seems to be with Tag, assuming Tag already causes major issues outside of these abuse cases.

Unless you prefer banning Sleep entirely and reinstating Evasion Clause while leaving Tag open.
This might be true if S-tag was "truly" a common denominator/root cause. It's not. This thread seems to have the trouble grasping the concept that "making things easier/more likely" =/= causation. S-tag is not a prerequite for Evasion to work. Like I said, you can run a CM/DT Gothitelle without S-tag and potentially get the same results. You can stick Double Team on GeoXern and cheese past a number of counters through luck. S-tag is not the problem in those circumstances.

As for HypnoGar, I will concede that point is more blatant than Evasion + S-tag. However, as far why sleep is deemed uncompetitve is something we've gone through already. HypnoGar might represent a case where sleep can potentially render a whole game full of choice moot. However, the main problem here is still clearly Sleep. You can have S-tag alone with no sleep moves and you'd never have this problem. Conversely, you can have sleep and on the majority of cases, it won't be a problem. Sleep is the main problem here because it is the one that is taking away the "choice" here. Again, S-tag takes away the choice to switch out of sleep, but sleep takes away your choice to do everything else, especially attack, which (and this is relevant here) is more fundamental to a game of Pokemon than switching. This may be an actual problem, but banning S-tag is not the answer because:

1) S-tag is not the root cause here, and
2) Banning S-tag/Sleep for this one exception seems overkill.

HypnoGar has it's own problems (60% accuracy is really kind of crappy, if you've seen how many times I get to flinch with Skymin/Jirachi, you know how unreliable 60% really is), but since it's one minor thing, I really can't see why we couldn't just expand Sleep Clause to include trapping moves/abilities (which really is only just Gengar + obscure things like Yawn/Block Gastrodon) and merely that you can't use Sleep and trapping together. The reasoning again, is highlight in the post I linked in te previous paragraph. It'll be just like how we added Sand Veil/Snow Cloak/Brightpowder to Evasion Clause in gen 5.
 

Jibaku

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You can't bring "potential" into this without realizing that CM/DT goth will have virtually no chance of functioning without tag. Yes, it can -potentially- work. Scarfogre can potentially sweep teams by just pressing Thunder and watching things get fully paralyzed. But all of that is irrelevant - we're only talking about what's realistic. And cheesing people with DT Xerneas or Tagless DT goth is nowhere near realistic.
What's realistic is that Goth can abuse everything in her set due to Tag.

Perhaps the combination of trapping + sleeping is an issue. However, complex bans are ineffective at solving issues (because it gives the message that we can chop parts of very specific Pokemon to balance it out), and as I mentioned earlier, Shadow Tag appears to be causing issues outside of these abuse cases. If we put them all together we get one common denominator and thus banning tag would be the cleanest method, if we are to ban anything.
 
You can't bring "potential" into this without realizing that CM/DT goth will have virtually no chance of functioning without tag. Yes, it can -potentially- work. Scarfogre can potentially sweep teams by just pressing Thunder and watching things get fully paralyzed. But all of that is irrelevant - we're only talking about what's realistic. And cheesing people with DT Xerneas or Tagless DT goth is nowhere near realistic.
What's realistic is that Goth can abuse everything in her set due to Tag.

Perhaps the combination of trapping + sleeping is an issue. However, complex bans are ineffective at solving issues (because it gives the message that we can chop parts of very specific Pokemon to balance it out), and as I mentioned earlier, Shadow Tag appears to be causing issues outside of these abuse cases. If we put them all together we get one common denominator and thus banning tag would be the cleanest method, if we are to ban anything.
now i could very well be wrong, as i don't generally encounter evasion as a strategy, and so i haven't done much research. but the math i just did says that after one evasion boost, a 100% accuracy move has a 65-66% chance of hitting. i find this interesting because in a scenario where goth comes in on something it forces out, even if stag doesn't exist and you can go into a check, if your move is 100% accurate, you only have a 65% chance of hitting. what if your coverage move isn't even 100%? all i'm saying is the comparison of getting a thunder full para (30% chance compounded with a 25% chance, multiple times) enough to hax out an entire team is legitimately damn near impossible. but getting one evasion boost on the forced switch is actually kinda damn reliable (again, if my math is right), and it can easily allow for another boost, or another after that. what if your coverage move can't quite ohko? there are more reliable strategies out there, but stag is definitely not the issue with evasion. evasion can just work. just by getting that one boost under your belt. it has a snowball effect. if you get unlucky once or twice your entire game might just get thrown away (by unlucky i mean missing a 65% accurate move....we've all used focus blast before right? you know, just that 70% accurate move that never comes through when you need it to)

edit: i mean, just imagine if by missing a focus blast, your focus blast became less accurate, and that focus blast user? that was your check. that's sounding like an unreliable response to a boosting sweeper.
 

AM

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You can't bring "potential" into this without realizing that CM/DT goth will have virtually no chance of functioning without tag. Yes, it can -potentially- work. Scarfogre can potentially sweep teams by just pressing Thunder and watching things get fully paralyzed. But all of that is irrelevant - we're only talking about what's realistic. And cheesing people with DT Xerneas or Tagless DT goth is nowhere near realistic.
What's realistic is that Goth can abuse everything in her set due to Tag.

Perhaps the combination of trapping + sleeping is an issue. However, complex bans are ineffective at solving issues (because it gives the message that we can chop parts of very specific Pokemon to balance it out), and as I mentioned earlier, Shadow Tag appears to be causing issues outside of these abuse cases. If we put them all together we get one common denominator and thus banning tag would be the cleanest method, if we are to ban anything.
The logic you're implying is going off of the fact that something overpowered/broken = uncompetitive when that is not always the case, especially in this suspect and tier, and I still don't understand why people are still using this logic. Goth can realistically abuse everything in her set due to Tag but realistically Goth will not just win games by itself 24/7, as such any centralizing or relevant force in any metagame. I understand both sides are trying to pull straws now to describe a relevant argument and I also understand you're neutral on the stance of Shadow Tag. However, why is it being implied that Shadow Tag all of a sudden now complicates more problems? This wasn't even mentioned what so ever pages ago or at least in a thorough format but now we're blaming Shadow Tag for separate aspects unrelated to Shadow Tag? Shadow Tag has nothing do with EvasionPass Teams. Shadow Tag has nothing to do with the factor of sleep that shrang has been describing in regards to comparisons related to uncompetitiveness. The point being is that these are separate concerns with their own individual problems and in no way thoroughly describes if Shadow Tag is uncompetitive or not, it's only drawing comparisons and no real concrete reasoning.
 

Jibaku

Who let marco in here????
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After 1 Evasion boost, you have a 75% chance of hitting. After two, you have 60%. After 3 you have 50%. After 6 you have 33%. Remember that while you're raising evasion, you're not boosting anything else and you've also thrown away a moveslot for these chances.

These are very good odds for you to hit something. That's assuming you even need to hit them. There are direct counters to evasion but most, if not almost all of the time you won't need those.

Enough about evasion.

I am hardly going by the logic of broken = uncompetitive (dear lord this word gets thrown a lot) and in fact I've been trying to avoid that at all costs. However, for something to be banned in Ubers, it needs to make a big impact. Big enough impact that we can actually witness the uncompetitive mechanic tear apart the tier. If Shadow Tag is causing problems outside of these abuse cases and is a common denominator combined with them, then taking out evasion or modifying sleep clause doesn't solve a whole lot. Whether tag is a problem or not outside of dt goth / hypnogar is not something I can answer, though.

tl;dr: killing 3 birds with one stone.
 
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