OU Is Snorlax Banworthy in GSC OU?

[Funbot28]

Is Snorlax Banworthy in GSC OU?

With the recent insurgence of possible ban implementation is other past gens, such as the weather+speed boosting ability in BW2 OU, and the potential banning of Huntail in ADV NU, I think it is possible to at least suspect one of the major problems in GSC OU currently.

Since it's conception, GSC OU was and still is considered to be a "stally" tier filled with bulky mons, which are hard to take down due to the lack of items such as Choice Band and Life Orb, and Leftovers being practically everywhere. Some mons such as Blissey and Milktank have an easier time on walling certain mons due to these limitations.

It's no doubt that Snorlax has always been the "cream of the crop" in GSC OU, thanks to it's high HP stat and relatively good special defense coupled with it's above average attack. One set in particular makes him truly menacing to face, which is it's CurseLax set:

Snorlax @ Leftovers
- Double-Edge/ Body Slam
- Curse
- Rest
- Sleep Talk/ Lovely Kiss/ Fire Blast/ Earthquake

This set is extremely hard to take down, due to the rise in it's Def, with already high HP and SPDef, while all in the same time increasing it's Atk. It is almost required to carry a phazing move such as Roar or Whirlwind, or carry moves such as Perish Song and Charm to neuter it's capabilities.

Snorlax can be considered to be a brainless addition in any GSC OU team, due to the lack of "skill" it would require to use it. It is always needed to prepare for it, and extremely over centralizes the GSC OU meta.

The question is, should it be banned? I would like to get a community input, to see if anything should be implemented

​

 

[Disaster Area]

no

 

[Disaster Area]

read this http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/someone-refresh-my-memory.3530916/

 

[Funbot28]

Oh didn't see that thread, thanks for linking

 

[froggy25]

http://pokemon-online.eu/threads/snorlax-suspect-discussion.20381/

Everyone knows that Snorlax is broken, but the metagame is probably better with it.

 

[Disaster Area]

i don't think it's broken + the way GSC works mechanically it's pretty expected to be fairly focussed around one Pokemon, and the way Snorlax does it is fairly healthy. But yeah this is not the first time it's been brought up, hope that it's the last though!

fwiw I don't rly play the meta too much (not stally enough for me!) so I'll leave a fuller explanation to someone called Not-Me.

 

[Ortheore]

While Snorlax is undoubtedly broken (just because you always find a way to manage it doesn't mean it isn't), at this point there's no way that it's getting banned- doing so would change GSC so much as to be unrecognisable, and for this reason I'd oppose it and I imagine it'll be unpopular with a lot of other people. This is really a big deal, the stability of past gens is quite important so creating an entirely new meta is not something that should really be done.

Not to mention that I personally quite like a centralised meta.

Your comparisons to other past gen tinkering can also be debated- Adv nu is a meta that's barely explored afaik and it hasn't seen any sort of tiering process before. As for BW2 OU, it's both a much more recent gen, and its banlist is subject to an entirely different philosophy, one which is more active in the banning of broken elements than GSC/RBY

 

[no longer here]

Leave Rby and Gsc alone with these stupid bans

If you really want to talk about GSC, let's talk about HP Legend question

 

[Funbot28]

Leave Rby and Gsc alone with these stupid bans

If you really want to talk about GSC, let's talk about HP Legend question

I just wanted to know the community's input on the matter that's all, maybe HP legends is a more pressing issue?

 

[Disaster Area]

You should lurk more and read the older threads (like the one I linked you) and speak to people on IRC, PO, PS, etc. before coming in and making such a sweeping question.

Asking to suspect something without having some authority on the subject in the first place just gives people a negative impression of you.

 

[Kingler]

Gsc's been around for a long while and reading through the linked thread, it seems like a non-lax meta wasn't any better; to change a tier as old as gsc it should drastically improve/help the meta which it does not; nor is lax inherently competitive or completely "broken"; it has commonplace checks. It does kinda define the meta too lol and is a big part of why GSC (regarded as the "best tier" by many) is the way it is.

Also, you should probs get these threads approved from RoA mods; just a sidenote.

 

[no longer here]

I just wanted to know the community's input on the matter that's all, maybe HP legends is a more pressing issue?

surely has more importance than snorlax, which is good in the tier and has no reason at all to be banned since everybody have at least two way to stop it in a team

 

[Borat]

i'm not sure why my thread was linked. jorgen's the guy you're looking for. "why snorlax ought to be nixed" i believe. mine was about hp legends? and it was mostly due to lack of activity + boredom. gsc is fine the way it is. i wish there would be some big sweeping changes in the form of a new pokemon coming to light, but i don't see that happening ever.

 

[Disaster Area]

I just linked the first thing that I could find that discussed GSC bans.. i mean lax is probably discussed in it somewhere but.. someone somewhere in here will probably tell you more about why we keep lax.

 

[Borat]

on the topic of snorlax i think i've literally run out of things to say that haven't already been said. this is probably the 4th ban snorlax thread, since seeing a pokemon with 100% usage rate NOT banned is strange for new gen players. but that's gsc for you.

the topic of banning criteria is pretty controversial though. it's pretty clear "power" isn't the only thing that matters, which is what the hp legends topic touched on. i'm on the side of skill cap, which is a bit elitist and not at all the absolute truth. i believe things shouldn't be both easy to use and powerful, which hp legends/curselax/celebi fall into. so if these things were banned, i actually wouldn't be against it. but again, people seem to be against "complicated bans", because the concept of move+pokemon is too much? something like that.

EDIT: so basically, to clarify, my preference is this:

banning specifics moves > not banning anything > banning snorlax/electrics (don't do this)

so unless we're specifically taking away curse on snorlax, i think he's better off untouched. but a curselax ban is something i can stand behind and understand fully.

 

[Funbot28]

I would not mine banning curse on Snorlax either, as I believe that what makes it broken. I never played a meta without HP Legends however, so I cannot make points on that just yet, but I wouldn't want to just ban electrics, as there properties without HP don't make them broken to say the least.

 

[Disaster Area]

I don't know why we can't just keep this untouched and learn the game to new depths. And if you still want to play GSC but aren't feeling like this metagame, try BL or UU or Ubers or something!

 

[Borat]

it's pretty much this. even though it's probably something i can back, i can't say without a shadow of a doubt it'll actually improve the metagame -- it's pretty close. there isn't enough activity [between players i trust] left to even try and do any sort of suspect testing. everything that can be said is still ultimately speculation.

 

[froggy25]

A few no-lax tournaments have been played in the past, so there's some data on the subject at the very least

 

[Vryheid]

Borat do you think that GSC without snorlax would make the tier even more stally than it already is? From what limited experience I have in the tier Snorlax is one of the best ways to pressure common stall cores, without it I'm not sure if offense can really be up to par with the usual suicune/blissey/skarm shenanigans.

 

[Borat]

yes, but again i think a big part of the equation are credible players. iirc the cliffs from m dragon: gsc is stallier without snorlax, blissey is the better beller because electrics. no other conclusions were drawn. that alone doesn't give enough information to make a decision.

again, tournaments are not nearly long enough to capture trends. players play like 4 matches. isn't current suspect testing like months at a time across thousands of players?

 

[Funbot28]

That is the thing with this, is that since there isn't a huge playerbase, all we can do is just theorymon the future of the metagame without CurseLax or HP Legends...

 

[Disaster Area]

Well.. take a look at what's happening with BW OU's method of suspect testing. That could work but idt that people would want lax banned etc. At least, not the majority of GSC players.

 

[Lavos]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/snorlax-ought-to-be-nixed-no-im-serious.3483658/

6 pages of actual discussion

meanwhile can we argue about something that stands a chance of happening e.g. ban hp legends??

 

[Borat]

honestly nothing is very likely. arguments tend to be on the grounds of being against the concept of banning altogether, rather than the actual bans at hand. there is some level of merit in that. unless there's a clear advantage to change, we should always favor things staying the way it is. because arguments for change are only ever strong enough with actual evidence, then it's very difficult to overcome the notion that change = bad.

the hp legends thread basically boiled down to that.

hp legends are not better than snorlax, so it can't be banned on grounds of power. (irrelevant actually, keep reading)
it's unhealthy, but can you prove it? only speculation.
what does "unhealthy" even mean? braindead gsc. again subjective.
explosion skillful or not? unhealthy?
overcentralizing argument doesn't work. see snorlax.
"complex bans are dumb"... this statement is actually just retarded. frick you for being so god damn dense.
"stop banning things and just learn to deal with it"

honestly, being "broken" isn't even a criteria for banning. because we have snorlax. so clearly we all have this idea of what gsc is "suppose to be", and we agree near unanimously that snorlax is central to this "idealized gsc". and that seems to be what matters above all else. and even among the best players, we have a different view of how gsc is meant to be. that's why change is impossible.