BW2 Suspect Proposal

[Lavos]

I don't understand why you delved into semantics at all, I'm fully aware of the difference. Except you're missing the point of trappers and why they're clearly competitive. Even if I'm bringing Dugtrio and my opponent has a Tyranitar that I aim to trap, I don't just get that scenario for free, especially with the advent of team preview in 5th gen. I have to do significant work to get to the favorable scenario that you claim makes them uncompetitive. Counterplay is possible and it's the reason why bringing a team of exclusively trappers + sweepers isn't an autowin in every theoretically favorable scenario. That's where actually playing the game has to be taken into account.

Yeah, when my opponent makes a great double switch and now their Specs Gothitelle is in on my Hippowdon, I'm fucked. It's not interactive for me because he clicks Grass Knot and I die. (Believe it or not, limiting interaction is a viable strategy - see Spore and a million other examples). Except you leave out the multiple turns preceding that scenario, turns that are the essence of a competitive battle, and turns that you intentionally omit to make your argument sound pretty.

In regards to a trapper's sole purpose being to exert control over the match, isn't that what every single Pokemon aims to do? Whether it's a weather setter, hazard setter, choiced damage threat, setup sweeper, what have you, the point is to create pressure and force unfavorable scenarios for your opponent. The fact that Pokemon like Dugtrio and Gothitelle disable your opponent's switches is offset by the tradeoff in their poor movepools/base stats/external viability. Which is also why we banned Mega Gengar, because it's strong as shit even without ST and thus there's no tradeoff.

I see absolutely zero solid foundation for any of your arguments. You make a lot of bold claims and back them up with nothing. By your logic, we ban Pursuit, hazards, and phazing along with trapping, even though all of these strategies have viable counterplay which tests the skill of both battlers. Solely because they have the potential to exert too much control? Sounds like shrouded whining to me. Especially in a meta like BW OU, I'm in full favor of the complexity which trappers bring to the table.

 

[Jibaku]

Don't exaggerate my intent here. I'm merely agreeing that we could look at trappers instead because it's a mechanic that has been the root of many players' frustrations, and that multiple issues have been caused by its presence that would not exist otherwise. I'm aware that in the bigger picture there's a whole game to play out instead of a single particular scenario, and you explained it very well why I didn't support the Tag ban in Ubers (although I fail to see how hazards and phazing fall into this - they are far easier to manage).

 

[MMII]

fuck shadow tag

 

[McMeghan]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-world-cup-of-pokémon-x-format.3538087/page-5#post-6235204

 

[Inspirited]

I am still going to bring up the Excadrill + Volcarona thing again since the more I think about it, the less there is to handle the two. I must exaggerate that Excadrill is not the problem here, but it is making am extremely good mon even better. I'm sure this has been thought about since the idea was seeded, but if you could enlighten me on what teams will do to keep Volc in check with Excadrill's spinning ability being present, that would be amazing. The removal of Chlorograsses (mainly venu) hurts Volc since it basically puts the sun arch down the drain, but Volc might just find its new and better life here; ruining teams that fail to keep SR up against Excadrill.

 

[BKC]

Excadrill is not gonna have an easy time spinning against common SR dudes though! Garchomp, Hippowdon, Landorus-T and Ferrothorn are four of the most common setters and Exca is not switching into them. You could argue that Volcarona can come in before SR is laid back up, and then you remembered that sending Volc in on the first three with thoughts of setup is suicide. Heatran is another very common setter, and while he sure as hell isn't coming into Drill, mole isn't switching into him willy-nilly either.

 

[Sapientia]

I don't play BW so I can't really tell if that's good or bad. But I don't really understand why we never tested this (It's >1 month since this thread got posted) and didn't take any action just to implement this rule in an official tour out of the blue. Also this thread showed, that this is such an obvious as it has to be, to change a tier just for an official tour.
World Cup of Pokemon should not be a testing field for tier changes and we should not adjust our tier for official tours, just because some profilic players prefer the tier an other way. We also aren't playing DPP Cup with Latias, even though guys like BKC would like to see it unbanned.
Additionally we are setting a pretty stupid precedent, since now we could just change any tier right before official tours start for not very obvious reasons.

This is not Baton Pass which reduces Pokemonmatches to Match Up coinflips

 

[Slimmer]

I agree with Sapientia. It would have been more understandable if this testing ban was occurred during smogon tour seasonal weeks (like Garchomp unban years ago), but official tournaments should not be played with testing tier changes also because they involve consequences more or less relevant for the whole tier, which means a lot of testing (done until now) wasted, several builds wasted, tier preparation to be re-done. And we're not even sure whether this tier change will make the tier better or not (I guess it does, a lot of people guess this, but we need facts, and more time to adapt the tier to this). Baton Pass would be a thing, because nobody want to see wcop games decided by those kind of playstyles (in the past there was more skepticism in relying on these matchup coinflips, now it seems people changed mind...), but this kind of test ban is not fine for an official tournament (and I'm in favor of this ban, but not now)

 

[Aldaron]

Mcmeghan will be hosting a bunch of live tours previous to WCOP to test this specifically.

As with anything, nothing is particularly set in stone, so don't worry about the change being implemented in WCOP 100%. If you want, just take it as an announcement to let you prepare for something that we (the TDs) feel highly likely to happen. If the live tours show the change is bad, we obviously won't implement it in WCOP.

There will be two weeks or so of live tours, and then we'll vote whether to continue the change in WCOP and the tier overall.

The announcement was just made because we recognize the highly likely probability of the vote going a particular way.

The vote for WCOP will be done after the live tours by the TDs; the vote for the tier overall will be done by a to be determined group of people.

(though I have to admit that the implication that a few weeks (even if it was 4 or 5 instead of 2) live tours of a suspect for a past gen mean _anything_ from a statistical perspective (considering the total number of battles will be like 1000 or something in that realm, whereas a standard ou suspect ladder has hundreds of thousands of battles) and therefore would give us some magical stronger foothold to make a decision is hilarious, but hey, if ya'll want it, it shall happen)

 

[Meru]

You really think it would be 1000? What exactly is going to be the enticement of these live tours that McMeghan is going to host? I know it's a totally different tier, but the live tournaments for the lower tier series haven't exactly been yielding an insane amount of activity and those tournaments actually come with rewards. Or is that not a concern?

 

[Sapientia]

If there will be a vote, why do you announce the result of the vote before the vote took place? Ok, it's most likely to happen. But you could still just say, that you will test this tier change with some suspect tours before WCoP and then decide. This would give people enough time to prepare, we don't have to tell them the result before it happens.

After some internal discussions originally sparked by Ojama, we have decided that a a weather ability alongside a speed boosting ability on the same team will be BANNED from BW OU for the duration of this World Cup.

This sounds for me pretty much like set in stone.

Don't get me wrong, this change is probably the right one, especially since most of the people seem to like it. But the communication was / is not very good and should be better next time. Because right now it looks like some people (esp. ojama) don't like the tier and therefore it will be changed for this tour to increase their chances. And the first post after the announcement being a TD (who was eligible) being happy about the change, because he will be "invincible now" isn't a very smart move PR wise either. It totally shows how unbiased this vote was / will be.

People anyways always complain about us banning everything we don't like and we shouldn't support that image proactively. It's not too hard to post something like "We will test the following tier change during the next two weeks by hosting X suspect tours. After them the TDs will vote on wether implement it for WCoP or not. The suspect tours will take place at date #1, date #2, etc."
It has no disadvantages, but there will be a significant less amout of players being pissed, because of an arbitrary tiering decision made behind of locked doors.

 

[Aldaron]

read and understood

 

[Holiday]

Is this thread solely for BW OU suspects? I know a bunch of LCers want to suspect Murkrow and Misdreavus for BW2 LC, so sorry if I'm in the wrong place ;-;

 

[Nails]

they (lc tiering dudes) were retarded for undoing the bans on those pokemon, but yes this thread was just a proposal for the one suspect test in ou.

 

[BKC]

I would like to propose that Reuniclus is added to this suspect. For the past few months, bulky spiking Reun teams have been the unquestionable best team style in the metagame because of how absurdly easy it is to 1) set up a sweep with it due to its immense bulk and hazard immunity and 2) how effortless wearing out its few checks is since they're all hazard weak, hazard bait and physical attackers, meaning Garchomp, Ferrothorn and the occasional Rocky Helmet Skarmory/Landorus-T chip away at them even more quickly. The exception of course is Sableye but he has glaring issues of his own. It's gotten to the point where some teams are using ridiculous amounts of speed creep and Life Orb on their Reun to counter others (this is honestly the best/most practical/consistent one too seeing as it lacks the flaws that kill the others) and there have been several high level games recently that everyone knew would inevitably come down to a Reun CM war right from team preview. Even if Excadrill is unbanned, giving us some recourse against the six billion spikes we see in every battle nowadays, it won't do much to help against Reun's immense power, not to mention it wants nothing to do with most hazard setters so we will most likely see a repeat of BW1 where hazards get spun and re-stacked multiple times a game, with the hazards usually outlasting the spinner.

I would be silly to not mention the other MG Psychic, Alakazam, who I won't deny can be pretty ridiculous as well but its lack of hard-to-stop gradual setup brought about by a lack of insane bulk (meaning Pursuit and U-turn are actually good weapons against it) as well as its dependence on speed (so paralysis and Scarfers, tools you're likely to already have, can actually be of use) make it not quite at the same level as fetus, although I totally understand those who find it equally terrifying since it's got a few tricks up its sleeve that you can't really expect with Encore being the biggest.

Thanks for reading, please take this into consideration as I and many other BWers feel this is the main issue holding the tier back right now.

 

[Slimmer]

Can I just ask why are we considering to testban stuff on an "old" gen in an official tournament just right before less than a month before the start of this? Regardless of how good and approved this ban will be, I think it's not the right way to do things. I'm sure a lot of people will agree with this proposal suggested by Ojama and other players but:
1- One thing is suspecting stuff in a context like ladder, where the "testban results" will affect just ladder players who are not competing for a trophy but they are just getting reqs in order to vote, and one totally different thing is suspecting stuff in a tournament, especially if this tournament is official (which usually should be played with confirmed and settled tiers) and one of the most important teams tournament like the WCoP.
2- Did you ever think that banning/unbanning stuff in old gens tiers causes several changes that need a specific time to bring them back to a balance? You can say now "isn't the same thing with the current gen?" No, because current gen is played by way far more people in a lot of different tournaments, very much more than every old gen. Does this matter? Yeah, because the process to let the tier adapting to the ban is way far faster. How can we say what this ban could change in the tier (and HOW could change the tier) with a bunch of live suspect tours? How the metagame will be? Do we really want to go almost "blind" to a wcop? I don't. Even if I consider this ban right (this is just not the right moment to do this... it had to be done much earlier, or just later this tournament)
3- Just what Sapientia said here:

If there will be a vote, why do you announce the result of the vote before the vote took place? Ok, it's most likely to happen. But you could still just say, that you will test this tier change with some suspect tours before WCoP and then decide. This would give people enough time to prepare, we don't have to tell them the result before it happens.

I know most people won't even read this post just because I'm a "random" but I think to not be the only one to be really disappointed by how this decision (in regard of WCoP) has been made and conducted (respecting TDs' job in general though). I can also guess that it shouldn't be easy to consider a rectification (especially for a big and appreciated decision like this) but I think that allowing an official tournament to be a testing ground for tiers which used to be unlikely subject to changes could turn out to be worse as a record for official tournaments as whole than a little accident regarding rectifying the announcement. Please just reconsider the moment in which to do this suspect, thank you.

 

[Oglemi]

Prague Kick you do realize that BW OU is featured as a tier in official tours year round right? (Tour, Classic, WCoP, Tour, SPL) When exactly is it not going to be "right before an official tour starts"?

 

[Lavos]

presumably when you make WCoP all ORAS OU like it's supposed to be lol

edit: i like that it has old gens because then i get to play but when i joined it was the one and only exclusively "current OU" team tournament and i think that's pretty cool.

 

[Slimmer]

This is not the point, I mean that old gen tiers are used to be not subject to changes and makin a change just before the start of WCoP is not too appointing. Ok, after WCoP there will be Tour, then SPL, etc, I get it, but the impact on a tour like WCoP will be more concentrated due to the lower amount of battles to do (3 for every player, and every of them is really important in order to get past First Phase; then just 1/week). Doing this test during Tour isn't the same thing as example, because there are many more battles and many more shots (2/3 every week, which are 3 for BW, not even considering other gens) to get past the weekly stage. There were also offseason weeks in the past (good testing ground). It could be announced earlier, at least.
Doing a suspect (ladder or live tours) during WCoP without affecting WCoP (and being effective for every other subsequent tour) would've been fine imo.

 

[McMeghan]

Allow me to shed some lights regarding the BW decision and some other things.

Regarding the BW decision itself

We agreed to suspect/implement a weather + speed ability based on this thread's discussion as well as IRC conversations. It's a decision a lot of players agreed with, even a good part of the one who are displeased with the way we implemented it. We (the TDs) don't plan to overturn this decision, unless Excadrill proves to be overpowered in BW based on the Live Tours we'll host and the WCoP (something I very much doubt).

Regarding its implementation in WCoP

Sure, we could have hosted Suspect Tours prior to announcing the decision to implement it into WCoP, but those will pretty much be a formality, because we're pretty much sure of the decision we'll take (aka: weather + speed ability ban in BW). The Suspect Tours will probably confort us in our decision (unless Excadrill turns out to be really outpowered, which let's be honest, has very little chance to happen) and give people and WCoP players some testing grounds for the tournament itself.

Let's be honest, old gen ladders are dead and this one would be dead as well. People just don't care if there is no reward. More over, Official Tournaments is truely where we get to see the evolution of a tier, and I believe implementing the BW decision for this WCoP will be best to emulate the tier development.

The thing is an old gen tiering decision is gonna affect an official tournament soon or later, and we decided it would in application as soon as for this WCoP, especially considering this thread has been made more than a month ago, so it's not like it's completely out of the blue either. The decision has also been announced 2 weeks in a half before the first round will be up, which is more than enough time to start preparing for the tier changes, especially with the Live Tours to playtest.

I'll also add that this is how we'll work in the future if we decide to implement an old gen tiering change: we will go through some Live Tournaments as well as an Official Tournament ruleset change. We'll use them as the basis for a Official Tiering Change. We feel this is the only way to see the true effects of a change in an old gen.

If you'd prefer an another form of delivery regarding this kind of decision in the future, let us know, but the decision to implement the weather + ability ban in WCoP is final.

Regarding Reuniclus

We'd rather wait for the metagame to settle before considering Reuniclus case. Keep in mind Reuniclus' strengh (and Alakazam to a lesser degree) is its ability to outlive its checks (Jirachi, Scizor, ChopleTtar, Sableye, etc) because it's just so hard, borderline impossible to spin in the tier right now, and Excadrill is supposed to help tremendously in that regard.

We're not completly discarding the idea, we'd rather just go step by step and first see how the tier will turn out with Excadrill in it.

 

[Slimmer]

It's fine. How many BW live suspect tours there will be before the start of first phase of WCoP?

 

[McMeghan]

We'll hold the BW Suspect Tours (Weather + Speed Boosting Ability). It will be on those dates:

• BW Suspect Tour #1: Saturday, June 6th, 6PM Eastern - Jellicent, Terraquaza, Lord Alphose
• BW Suspect Tour #2: Sunday, June 7th, 4PM Eastern - Raseri, Lord Alphose, FireMage
• BW Suspect Tour #3: Saturday, June 13th, 6PM Eastern - Terraquaza, Lord Alphose, FireMage
• BW Suspect Tour #4: Sunday, June 14th, 4PM Eastern - FireMage, Raseri, The Quasar

There will take place on smogtours and the threads will be posted in the Live Tournaments section of the forum.

 

[McMeghan]

So let's talk about this BW decision, shall we?

As many of you know by now, we decided to implement a tiering change in BW for the 10th WCoP. The tiering change being as follow:

• Mold Breaker and Sand Force Excadrill are allowed in the tier.
• Chlorophyll users and Sand Rush users are not allowed in the tier if they're paired with a Drought user (Chlorophyll) or a Sand Stream user (Sand Rush).

Originally, we said the TDs would take a decision regarding whether or not we would make this tiering change final for BW.

Later on, I thought: "We originally applied this tier change because the players heavily requested it, so why don't we let them take the final decision too?". Obviously, we don't have the time to organize a Suspect right now (and Suspects on old gen ladders have their gapping flaws), so we, as in the TDs, started thinking of objective criteria that would create a qualified pool of voters that have proven themselves knowledgable and good at the tier.

After some brainstorming, we came up with this list of criteria:

• The player has reached the final stage of a BW Suspect Tour we held before the World Cup. Top 4 for 64 participants, Top 3 for 48 and Top 2 for 32;
• The player has reached the Semi-Final of the Smogon Classic BW Cup;
• The player was one of the people who collected the most amount of BW Points in Smogon Tour 18 or Smogon Tour 19 (Top 3 amount);
• The player played BW in the 6th SPL, and has at least played 6 BW Games in it (out of a maximum of 11, so at least 50%);
• The player played BW in the 10th WCoP, and has at least played 3 BW Games in it (out of a maximum of 6, so at least 50%).

Some explanations regarding the criteria:

• The Suspect Tours and the WCoP drawed the most players, but we think it is only logical as these players have had first hand experience with the new metagame.
• We requested a minimum of games played in WCoP and SPL because we often see people playing one game in a metagame they barely know just because their team was out at the moment they subbed the player in for example.
• We only took the tournaments that have happened in the past year, as they're the most up to date with the metagame advancement.

With that being said, let's move on the actual voters pool. With these criteria, here are the players that have been selected (or rather, earned) a pass to vote on this tiering change (on top of the TDs who were initally gonna take the decision after all):

Player List

1. Adversary (WCoP)
2. Aldaron (TD)
3. Asuya (WCoP)
4. babidi1998 (BW Cup / Top 3 Pts ST18)
5. Bad Ass (Top 3 Pts ST19)
6. blarajan (48p Suspect Tour Top 3)
7. Ciele (48p Suspect Tour Top 3 / TD)
8. Conflict (SPL / WCoP)
9. cosine180 (Top 3 Pts ST19)
10. Eo Ut Mortus (TD)
11. Finchinator (64p Suspect Tour Top 4 / WCoP)
12. High Impulse (SPL)
13. Jimmy Turtwig (WCoP)
14. Jirachee (TD / SPL)
15. Karppi (Top 3 Pts ST18)
16. Lavos Spawn (48p Suspect Tour Top 3 / BW Cup)
17. Lightchu (WCoP)
18. M Dragon (TD / BW Cup)
19. Masterclass, aka Sweepage (Top 3 Pts ST18)
20. McMeghan (TD / BW Cup)
21. MetalGro$$ (32p Suspect Tour Top 2)
22. Nova (WCoP)
23. Oglemi (TD)
24. Ojama (SPL / WCoP)
25. Omfuga (48p Suspect Tour Top 3)
26. papai noel (64p Suspect Tour Top 4 / WCoP)
27. PDC (Top 3 Pts ST19)
28. pokebasket (BW Cup)
29. Reymedy (48p Suspect Tour Top 3)
30. Robert. (WCoP)
31. Shoka (32p Suspect Tour Top 2 / SPL / WCoP)
32. Smurf. (WCoP)
33. SoulWind (BW Cup / SPL)
34. Specterito (64p Suspect Tour Top 4)
35. steelphoenix (WCoP)
36. Thatsjustpeachy (SPL)
37. Twin Citiez (48p Suspect Tour Top 3)
38. Vinc2612 (TD)
39. Zebraiken (64p Suspect Tour Top 4 / TD)

How will the vote work?

Each of these 39 players have to PM the SMod Jellicent with one of the following option:

• Keep BW as it was before the WCoP (Excadrill banned).
• Keep WCoP tiering change (Excadrill unbanned, Weather + Weather Speed Abilities banned).

You might wonder why we ask you to PM Jellicent instead of holding a regular Policy Review vote or just PMing a TD. The answer is simple: the TDs are involved in the vote, and we're afraid that with such a small voter pool, someone leaking the voting record (a PR Mod) before it's finished might influence the remaining votes and thus, the final result.

You may NOT edit your vote once it is sent. To make sure this won't happen, Jellicent will immediatly reply to the PM you sent with your own vote.

Finally, for the tiering change to be definitive, a majority of 60% will be requested (as it is the current norm with the OU suspects).

The deadline to vote is 11:59 PM EST, Wednesday the 2nd, September.

For the record, this vote won't count toward the Tiering Contributor Badge .

 

[Jirachee]

Adversary Aldaron Asuya babidi1998 Bad Ass blarajan Ciele Conflict cosine180 Eo Ut Mortus Finchinator High Impulse Jimmy Turtwig Jirachee Karppi Lavos Spawn Lightchu M Dragon Sweepage McMeghan MetalGro$$ Nova Oglemi Ojama Omfuga papai noel PDC pokebasket Reymedy Robert. Shoka Smurf. SoulWind Specterito steelphoenix Thatsjustpeachy Twin Citiez Vinc2612 Zebraiken

hello

 

[Jellicent]

Enough votes are now in to call a decision. With a final count of 24-8, even if the remaining 7 voters were against it, the 60% majority is reached. WCoP format is the new official format, so Excadrill is now unbanned from BW OU and the combinations of Sand Stream + Sand Rush and Drought + Chlorophyll are banned.

Votes for the change: McMeghan, Jirachee, Finchinator, SoulWind, papai noel, steelphoenix, Robert., Omfuga, Smurf., Jimmy Turtwig, Shoka, Ojama, Reymedy, Oglemi, Vinc2612, Bad Ass, Lavos Spawn, Karppi, Adversary, Sweepage, High Impulse, Twin Citiez, blarajan, MetalGro$$
Votes against the change: cosine180, Ciele, Specterito, M Dragon, Thatsjustpeachy, pokebasket, Asuya, Conflict