Metagame LC Suspect - Diglett (not banned)

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Merritt

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Sure, Diglett is annoying. But it isn't dominating anything, or shaping the meta around it any more than other top tier threats. Diglett isn't even unique in what it does, if one really wanted to, Trapinch could be used to secure a KO on many of the same things Diglett can (Including Diglett, humorously enough). Diglett does not require particular attention when teambuilding, since checks to Diglett are rather common. While it does mean that some pokemon are basically unusable while it is alive, this is no different than the effect that Dugtrio has, and Dugtrio chills at RU despite this trick. Really, that's all Diglett has going for it. A trick. If properly prepared for, it is really no more of an issue than, say, a Sturdy+Berry Juice trick, or a standard weather team. It has a trick to disarm before you can get at the squishy center.
So I'd like to address this part. While I'm also anti-ban, I do appreciate the arguments of the people who are asking for Diglett to go, mostly that Diglett has a huge effect on teambuilding. There are many Pokemon that are just flat out unusable on certain team types (mostly balance cores) due to how Diglett can disarm them incredibly effectively. Say you wanted to make a Ferroseed and Skrelp core for your team. Unfortunately that Mienfoo you switched to Skrelp from Ferroseed on just used U-turn and now half of your core is dead at basically no cost to your opponent. And even then Diglett doesn't give away momentum since it honestly is fairly powerful and has a good movepool. What this does is push the metagame towards offense, which some people do dislike and feel that the (more stally from what I've seen) Digless metagame which has 'more' diversity is better.

The numerous checks to Diglett is a kind of irrelevant point. Sure, it's really easy to check, but the thing is that Diglett usually gets to choose when it comes in. I hope you weren't expecting your non-flame charge Ponyta to actually get any kills during the match. The way that Diglett requires attention in teambuilding is virtually the opposite of almost any other kind of threat - instead of saying "oh shit fletchling runs over me I need to add a counter" it's more "oh shit Diglett literally kills two members of my team and I can barely do anything about it, better replace at least one of those", it restricts your teambuilding not by forcing you to run something in one of your six slots but instead causing you to not run something in a slot.

The effectiveness of Dugtrio shouldn't really be considered. Dugtrio has, relative to its metagame, much lower attack than Diglett and even less speed, which is compounded by the higher bulk of level 100s (yes even without Eviolite). Diglett is able to trap and kill many more targets in LC than Dugtrio can in RU or OU. Besides, fully evolved forms shouldn't really be a factor for their base stages: see Gothita who has exactly the same "trick" as Gothitelle did. And on that note, trivializing it as a trick is kind of understating it. It's a "trick" maybe, but it's a damn effective one. Previous banned Pokemon also had a 'trick' like Yanma's Compoundeyes Hypnosis or Swirlix's boosting sets. Sure, Diglett won't exactly be sweeping full teams, but it's a support Pokemon, which is kind of a hard concept to grasp in comparison to previous suspects.

Diglett is effective. FletchDig, DigFloon and ShellDig teams have been proven quite successful. I'm anti-ban because I don't think that these cores are overwhelmingly effective to the point of very limited counterplay, and I don't think that banning for diversity's sake is necessary here since Diglett isn't wrapping the metagame around itself and causing a much more limited number of Pokemon to be viable. With the sheer amount of innovation that has been displayed by LC players in the post-Misdreavus metagame I'm not sure you can really say that this metagame is limited with Diglett in it. From what I've seen on the ladder, there's honestly not that much more diversity, in fact I haven't seen anything even slightly new other than bad sets like Scarf Machop and SubSeed Leftovers Cottonee. This contrasts to my experience in the last test, where sure I saw a whole bunch of Diglett and Gothita but I also saw some really cool stuff like Bulk Up Rufflet. What the ladder has shown me has been actually against what I halfway expected, to my partial relief, the metagame without Diglett is not overflowing with way too many threats. In fact what it's shown me is a lack of diversity; Diglett leaves and about five Pokemon become significantly more viable which results in many less established things being left by the wayside. Yes this is a ladder for reqs, so it's not the most accurate picture of what it could become, but that has been my experience with the ladder.
 
I'm curious to see all the posts here that have named problems of how well diglett works with volturn and means you have to reevaluate your team building but I think this is a trait that other trappers carry just as much (for me in particular, pancham's parting shot together with bulky trick scarf goth dismantles so many defensive cores but noone cares about stall so maybe this is a moot point).

I don't think it's fair to say that trapping is inherently broken as it is entirely dependent on the pokemon boasting the trapping ability (point in case being trapinch). What I do think diglett quite clearly promotes is lazy team building for offense teams. You might be weak to say LO aipom or LO abra or Ponyta, so long as you sac something correctly, diglett will kill it for you. This element of lazy building is certainy not exclusively related to diglett, mienfoo is the poster boy of lazy team-building (and lazy play tbh, knock off and u-turn are so safe the only way to have a chance really to punish those plays is flame body which is pretty ridiculous) and likewise scarfpawn carries out trapping duties of mons problematic for offense better than diglett in many cases (LO abra and gastly for instance) so if we're going to say diglett is "uncompetitive" in the sense that it can do its job too easily, then we need to reevaulate how far this actually extends to the other best mons in the tier.

I do think it is understated that diglett has to have no hazards on its side to actually be able to switch in which is already a fair amount of support particularly given that hazards need to be constantly off if you want to be able to threaten the switch in throughout the game. In practice, I don't think diglett is that bad. Sure, it sucks that fletch can u-turn out of your chinchou and hence trap it but honestly running fletch checks that don't always lose to diglett isn't that difficult tbh (endure mag, archen and scarfpawn come to mind).

Diglett is annoying and I agree that LC probably would be more fun if it was banned but I can think of loads of mons that promote lazy building or produce incredibly safe and effective plays at nearly no opportunity cost who's banning would also make LC a lot more fun so we need to find different grounds other than "it traps gud" and "it makes for lazy building" that actually puts it above said other threats.
 
I didn't feel like posting, and I didn't feel like getting reqs but I think I have to. I don't have an insane amount to say because I think Diglett is extremely broken but I want to address the point people are making about Diglett often being useless in games or not hard to deal with in battle...

Who cares?

If Diglett is useless in battle that means it did its job. Diglett's job isn't to get six kills a game. Diglett's job is to remove your Magnemite for Drifloon, your Chinchou for Fletchling, your Skrelp for Mienfoo, etc. Diglett WILL do that if you're playing correctly. If it doesn't do that...that means you aren't running those Pokemon! Because the fear of Diglett made you not use them on your team! Which means Diglett's role on your team, to remove problematic Pokemon, was already satisfied before the battle begins! It doesn't matter if you're playing five Pokemon + useless Diglett if Diglett's job is already done, because you built your team so the other 5 Pokemon wreck shop. If Diglett has a Pokemon it needs to trap, it will trap it if you aren't horrible. If you can't trap it, that means Diglett scared your opponent so much they didn't use it to check the threat it was supposed to anyways, so who cares. If Diglett doesn't have a Pokemon to trap, that means your opponent doesn't have the scary Pokemon that threaten your remaining 5, so you win anyways so who cares.

Diglett doesn't have to do an insane job every battle for it to do its job. Its job can be satisfied before the battle begins due to the effect it has on teambuilding, or it can be satisfied in battle when it traps whatever it has to without effort since it's fast as fuck, strong as fuck, and has an easy STAB to spam.

Diglett sucks please ban it
 

Star

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I didn't feel like posting, and I didn't feel like getting reqs but I think I have to. I don't have an insane amount to say because I think Diglett is extremely broken but I want to address the point people are making about Diglett often being useless in games or not hard to deal with in battle...

Who cares?

If Diglett is useless in battle that means it did its job. Diglett's job isn't to get six kills a game. Diglett's job is to remove your Magnemite for Drifloon, your Chinchou for Fletchling, your Skrelp for Mienfoo, etc. Diglett WILL do that if you're playing correctly. If it doesn't do that...that means you aren't running those Pokemon! Because the fear of Diglett made you not use them on your team! Which means Diglett's role on your team, to remove problematic Pokemon, was already satisfied before the battle begins! It doesn't matter if you're playing five Pokemon + useless Diglett if Diglett's job is already done, because you built your team so the other 5 Pokemon wreck shop. If Diglett has a Pokemon it needs to trap, it will trap it if you aren't horrible. If you can't trap it, that means Diglett scared your opponent so much they didn't use it to check the threat it was supposed to anyways, so who cares. If Diglett doesn't have a Pokemon to trap, that means your opponent doesn't have the scary Pokemon that threaten your remaining 5, so you win anyways so who cares.

Diglett doesn't have to do an insane job every battle for it to do its job. Its job can be satisfied before the battle begins due to the effect it has on teambuilding, or it can be satisfied in battle when it traps whatever it has to without effort since it's fast as fuck, strong as fuck, and has an easy STAB to spam.

Diglett sucks please ban it
Well if Diglett cores were as dumb as you make them out to be, you'd think it'd have at least a 50% win rate in SPL. The issue with claiming that Diglett is broken is that it really isn't; yes, if there's nothing to eliminate on the opposing team, then it's already 'done its job', and now your other five Pokemon can 'wreck shop' if every single one of their checks happens to be Diglett weak (and the opponent doesn't have Trace Porygon), but there are some extremely relevant threats that can win against diglett cores - as in, they cover two mons in a single slot, so it's not like you're getting a bad deal out of using them somehow. Even though Diglett is good at eliminating what it wants to eliminate, it's quite simple to build a team that isn't weak to Diglett and can still check other things. It's outright false to claim that Diglett 'traps whatever it has to without effort' because in addition to being fast and decently strong, it's also frail enough to really struggle to get into play except with extremely bulky slow U-turn users (Volt Switch not really because the Diglett targets can block it). Diglett being match-up based and deadweight against specific teams should absolutely be cared about because we could just as well claim that other metagame-defining Pokemon are broken because they've already 'done their job' if they're underwhelming in a specific match-up. Now, Diglett does have to be dealt with differently than other Pokemon in the teambuilding stage if you insist on using one slot to cover each type, but it doesn't limit the diversity of the mons available for use in the sense that Diglett-weak Pokemon tend to either be able to adapt well enough (Ponyta, Chinchou) or simply not care enough about getting revenge-killed since they've already done their jobs by then (Pawniard, Abra) that they're still readily available for use and even quite good, just not for very specific roles like checking Mienfoo + Diglett (but they can still check Timburr or Drifloon, for example, because those mons don't have a way to get Diglett in safely). I think this facet of the argument was addressed in more detail on page 2 - my point is just that Diglett really isn't overwhelming at all once the battle begins.
 
I still don't think this is a healthy discussion. Star and Balarajan's posts aren't necessarily disagreeing with each other if you take a step back. Yes, Diglett has the effect it has (we have all read enough posts discussing why it's good) but it's not going to convince anyone new that it's necessarily broken due to its various limitations.

Of course, if you think it's broken, you think it's broken. But particularly if you don't, I think the question is: should we have to deal with it?
 
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sam-testings

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Fucking Smogon keeps deleting my drafts pls.


So I'm pretty neutral but im going to play devils advocate to what seems to be the majority opinion.


1. Diglett does its job extremely well and that makes it way to useful in the metagame

I’m going to compare Diglett to a pokemon that shares many traits with it, Mega Gengar. They were both fast enough to outspeed all unboosted mons and they both did their job quite effectively, which was to get rid of other mons that hindered others from sweeping. As blarajan said above, it has gotten to the point where people rarely use certain mons due to diglett being everywhere. Doing some research on Ubers definition, I found this one which most of us probably agree on.

Support Characteristic

A Pokemon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other Pokemon to sweep.


This definition fits Diglett quite well as it can quite consistently set up situations that make other pokemons lives much much easier. [insert list of diglett cores that have been listed already]. Not only does it get rid of mons very well, it also gets two of the best support moves in the game, memento and stealth rock. You can run memento to get a mon in safely and set up, and you can run stealth rock to break sturdies and get nice chip damage in. You can life orb for more damage and guaranteed kills on certain mons, and you can run life orb to make sure you live one move to do whatever you want. While Diglett certainly has some flaws, it is still extremely easy to use to set up another mon for success which brings me to my second point…


2. Diglett is too easy to use

“But Sam Diglett is too frail you can’t switch into anything”

Well fuck you

The thing is, that's how it works in theory. In practice, getting diglett in is a lot easier than expected. From U-turn, Volt Switch, to straight up sacking a mon, getting Diglett in to kill something off that needs killing is a lot easier than how it goes in your head. In my personal experience, Diglett makes the game way too easy. At least 80% of my games end in Diglett using memento on some random mon, bringing something in, setting up and then sweeping. And this is true for a lot of games these days on ladder, Diglett killing something, sweeper comes in, and sweep occurs. Diglett is literally the best support mon in LC right now and is very unhealthy for the metagame.


Some personal thoughts:

Diglett is a mon that is very easy to use and makes my life on ladder much easier. Nearly all my teams before suspect had Diglett on it, and I went from a mediocre player to a better than average player. If ladder did not have Diglett banned, I would probably have reqs by now provided I don’t get fucking crit freezed by porygon tri attack twice in a row. Do I think that Diglett should be banned? I am conflicted a bit. I love Diglett less ladder, it allows for a lot of innovation and is generally more fun than seeing Digfloon every other game. On the other hand, I do a lot better on ladder with Diglett. So take what you will from my post, and good luck to everyone still trying to get reqs =D

Edit: Fucking Heysup why do you have to post right before me. Do I think we have to deal having with Diglett in LC? Again, I am conflicted for reasons stated above. I believe that Diglett is quite unhealthy for the meta. I may have overexaggerated a bit saying Dig is literally everywhere, but you cannot deny that its presence is the healthiest thing for the meta. Its high speed tier in combination with its annoying ability do not make it a good mon to have around, evidenced by severaly tiers suspecting trapping abilities. Again, take what you will from this post as i'm not the best player nor am i getting reqs any time soon =(

Sources
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-definition-of-uber.3460453/
 
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Corporal Levi

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The argument that Diglett is broken regardless of how it performs in a given match-up because either way it does its job strikes me as odd. This argument sort of implies that match-up will somehow cease to exist if we ban Diglett, but we have more than six Pokemon available, so that's not going to happen. If a Pokemon isn't useful in a given match-up, there isn't a whole lot more to it. This is an extreme example, but if Pawniard matches up against a mono-Fighting team, we don't have a case of Pawniard 'already having done its job' because anything not a Fighting-type is weak to Pawniard; we have a case of Pawniard not being useful in the match-up. Yes, Diglett does influence the metagame. No, Diglett is not the only Pokemon influencing the metagame. To say that Diglett influences the metagame differently than the other big names is fair, but to claim that Diglett is broken solely because it affects metagame trends doesn't seem right.

We keep on managing to wander off topic, but I think that Heysup is right in saying that this really just boils down to how Diglett influences the metagame and whether it's worth dealing with. Nothing in the metagame has changed since the last suspect to suddenly make Diglett 'broken', and we collectively decided that Diglett was not broken last time, so why suddenly consider it to be broken this time? The suspect ladder has done a pretty good job in showing that Drifloon is ridiculously good regardless of Diglett's existence; it being far better able to adapt to the metagame shifts than the other birds has only cemented its niche in the Digless metagame. I'm willing to regurgitate the arguments brought up against Diglett being broken the last time if need be, but I think some of them have already been mentioned here, and even outside of that, everything from usage stats to win rates points to Diglett not being broken.

So I'll try to answer Heysup's question. I believe that we should have to 'put up' with Diglett (although I personally love what it brings to the metagame) because I do not it believe it limits the metagame any more than other significant threats. I would like to stress that although Ponyta and Croagunk and Magnemite are hindered if the opponent has a Diglett on their team, they are still generally excellent Pokemon that are able to perform important roles outside of beating, say, foodig specifically, so Diglett really does not limit diversity, or cause Diglett-weak Pokemon to disappear from existence. I can understand where the statement that Diglett is 'subtractive' in the building stage is coming from, but I think that the extent to which it differs from accounting for other Pokemon is being exaggerated. Running multiple Diglett weak Pokemon is similar to running multiple, say, Mienfoo weak Pokemon in that you'd better include an extra solid check in the last slot for the threat in question. In the case of Mienfoo, you might go with Spritzee; for Diglett, you would choose Trace Porygon. If Croagunk is your primary Water check, there's nothing preventing you from making sure your secondary Water check isn't weak to Diglett; that doesn't mean you have to get rid of Croagunk. If your other Water check is also Diglett weak, then you would want to account for your Diglett weakness just like you'd want to account for a Fighting weakness. For Diglett, this would be by running something that can counter-trap Diglett, like Porygon, or something that could make Diglett enough of a liability to make the Diglett user second guess sending it in, like Snivy. (Now, if Croagunk is your only Water check, then your team probably has more issues than Diglett. Like Water spam.)

If you're at the point where you've already completed the team and then realize you have a Diglett weakness, the most likely explanation is that you failed to account for a relevant Pokemon before then, and besides, if you had a weakness to anything else at that point, you'd have to do 'subtractive building' anyways. Now I get that in some cases, there is an important difference here - for example, your other five Pokemon might be extremely Diglett resilient except for your Mienfoo check, which is currently Skrelp - but I think my arguments from the previous paragraph also apply here. In addition, there will usually be a non-Diglett weak Pokemon available; needing something that hard checks Fighting-types and hard checks Fire-types and also soft checks Fairy-types is a pretty specific niche, and although this would be one instance where Diglett's 'subtractive building' would be significant, I don't think this scenario in particular applies any more to Diglett than it does to other trappers or even lures.

Sam-testings
Sorry, but there really is no way to reasonably compare Diglett to anything that has come before it (except the previous suspect test, I guess). It's not even close to Mengar or Gothitelle because those were able to almost completely render their targets deadweight by actually switching into them. Diglett is completely different because it is forced to rely on slow VoltTurns and revenge-kills, the latter which barely even prevents the opposing mon from doing their job. This is before considering how the LC metagame is quite offensive, so losing a single Pokemon rarely means game over unless your team is especially flimsy. You have to keep in mind that most Pokemon in fact do not have a slow U-turn, and even those that do often find it too risky to actually click it because of their frailty.
Also, we don't use definitions of banworthiness from 2012 because, well, they don't apply to ORAS LC; our metagame simply isn't comparable to early BW OU. Take that definition and apply it to every other trapper, every hazard user, or even Drifloon, and you'll see what I mean.
 
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The reason it's different is the way you handle Diglett in the teambuilder than other threats. If you have a Pawniard on your team, and go "oh shit, I'm weak to Fighting-type Pokemon. I'm going to add a fairy!" It's an additive process--because you are weak to something, you add a Pokemon or make an alteration to make you less weak to those threats.

If you are weak to Diglett, you cannot go "ok, I'll add a Grass-type Pokemon, that'll show Diglett!" If you are weak to Diglett, you patch your team in a subtractive way. You have to remove the Pokemon that Diglett is weak to in order to be less Diglett weak, or accept that you cannot fix the Diglett weakness.

This is an entirely different process, and the significance of it cannot be understated. I retain freedom in teambuilding by being able to add Pokemon to patch the problems with my team if I am weak to a particular threat. If I am weak to trappers, I have to remove the Pokemon that the trapper can get rid of, or accept that I am weak to that trapper, outside of small alterations such as using Choice Scarf Chinchou (causing it to be significantly less worse at checking Fletchling, Shellder, etc.), Flame Charge Ponyta (which requires using Flame Charge when you switch it in as opposed to Will-o-Wisp, Morning Sun, etc., making Ponyta significantly less effective in battle), and other similar situations. That is why, with regards to Diglett, if Diglett is worthless in a particular match-up, that means the Pokemon you need Diglett to trap were either removed in the teambuilding process due to the threat of Diglett in battle, or not there at all. If we assume Diglett's only job in battle is to remove particular threats, it is safe to assume its role is satisfied in battles those threats are not present. That's a different mechanism than when comparing it to "Pawniard against 6 Fighting-types."

Now, the above applies to all trappers. The argument to ban Diglett as opposed to Gothita etc. is that 1) the subtractive manner you employ (removing a Pokemon / not using a Pokemon) to avoid a trapper weakness as opposed to the additive manner you employ (adding a Pokemon / making an alteration) to avoid a weakness is unhealthy; and 2) the teambuilding implications for that difference are substantially more significant for Diglett than it is for other trappers (Shadow Tag Gothita, Shadow Tag Wynaut, Arena Trap Trapinch, Magnet Pull Magnemite, and Magnet Pull Nosepass, along with arguably Pursuit users) making Diglett, and Diglett alone, broken.

That is my stance on it. I think the way Diglett requires you to adapt makes it way too effective at what it does, and that its effect on the metagame is unhealthy if not broken. It prevents your ability to compound resistances (such as using Skrelp if you are weak to Fire- and Fighting-type Pokemon or using Ponyta if you are weak to Fighting-type Pokemon and Pawniard), or requires you to use those Pokemon less effectively, such as how I described earlier. It requires the decision to either 1) use something else or 2) accept the weakness and the defensive liability your team has in Diglett games. I think the ability that Diglett has to trap a Pokemon is underrated. If your priority is to remove a particular threat, you WILL get Diglett in, even if you have to sack something to do so. If that is the goal, you will accomplish it. I think the way Diglett traps is significantly worse than any other trapper, with Gothita being the only other possible Pokemon to compare it to. I do not think Gothita is broken, but if the only way to ban Diglett is to accept that Gothita is also broken, then I would advocate for banning both.

TL;DR: fixing a Diglett weakness requires you to remove the Pokemon Diglett trap, reduce the defensive effectiveness and overall viability of the Pokemon Diglett traps to create counterplay, or accept the Diglett weakness and the defensive liability your team has against teams with Diglett. Fixing any other kind of weakness allows you to add another Pokemon or make constructive changes to avoid that weakness, which is an entirely different mechanism. This distinction is significant and makes Diglett broken.
 

Holiday

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There will be a suspect test in an hour on smogtours, odds are it will be the last one of the suspect.
 
what happens if u got reqs already, screened it and then lost another game ? will the reqs still be okay ?
 

Holiday

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There will be a suspect test in an hour on smogtours, odds are it will be the last one of the suspect.
Void won this :)

let me make this not a oneliner and post about my feelings for this test.

tldr: ban diglett

I see arguments about Diglett not winning a majority of its games, or how the cores it makes dont auto-win, you cannot deny that Diglett's support qualities are at least worthy of a suspect. There's not much for me to say that doesn't rehash information, but something blara said stuck out to me: checking diglett is a subtractive method, in the sense that if you're weak to a Pokemon (Mienfoo, for example) you can add something that beats it, while if you're weak to Diglett, you have to remove diglett weak pokemon before it removes them from your team. I also feel like it makes teambuilding pressure. For instance, a few of my teams are Abra weak, and I typically add Stunky to remedy this issue; however, Diglett's presence usually makes me have to drastically reconstruct a team that would work fine should Diglett be banned, but cannot properly function due to its presence (insert build better jokes here) in all honesty I just think the tier is better with Diglett gone, that's my 2 cents sorry it's brief af.
 
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Coconut

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There will be one more suspect tour tomorrow at 8 PM EST. This will also be when reqs ends, so the person who wins this tour will be the last person to get reqs to vote.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
k i got reqs

so far i'm leaning ban for 3 reasons

1) fuck trapping

2) all my dudes (even the female ones) wanna ban it

3) levis post was kinda Smelly (SORRY LEVI BUT, ITS TRUE THOUGH)

i guess the most cogent argument against is that porygon is good. But so are volturn. idk, convince me fam
 
I'm not participating in this suspect, but I'd like to point out that unlike other trappers, Diglett can pretty easily maintain momentum after it gets a kill. Trapping in LC is almost always focused on clearing teams of difficult checks to your win condition(s), allowing players to sweep as soon as possible. However, ordinary trappers are otherwise so awful as standalone mons that they have the drawback of being momentum sinks, thus more often than not putting the player back on the defensive as the opponent essentially gets a free turn to strike back/set up/ whatever.

Diglett turns regular trapping on its head with its access to what I'd argue is the best support move in the game. Memento skirts around the issue of maintaining momentum - not just by providing a free switch, but also a free turn to pretty much do whatever the hell you want. To put it simply, Diglett doesn't just remove the check to your win condition, but in most instances also gives that win condition the opportunity to set up and sweep. There's actually little in the way of counterplay in these sorts of situations. At best one could revenge kill with priority or a more defensive mon, but oftentimes those options are either difficult to guarantee or are just plain easy to take advantage of with other sweepers.

Like this thing is capable of generating stupid amounts of momentum and i think it's criminal that we aren't talking about that lol

Edit: we should also talk about the legend that is Scarf Diggy too. It's nowhere near as reliable as LO, but it's perfect for taking out recent adaptations like Flame Charge Pony and Scarfchou/mite/pawn. Even has a toy in Final Gambit, which just ruins bulkier answers like Trace Porygon and Ferroseed
 
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Jaiho

bandy legged troll
Alright, I believe Diglett should be banned, for a couple of reasons

First off, a tier without Diglett is a tier with greater diversity. On the suspect ladder, Ground and Rock weak mons were naturally far more prevalent, and I saw more than just bog standard ladder teams. I'm of the opinion that a more diverse tier is almost always better than a less diverse one. If diglett wasn't that good on its own, yet still hampered the diversity, I would still believe it should be banned.

But Diglett isn't mediocre, by any stretch of the imagination. People tend to cite its frailty as a reason not to ban, and that somewhat makes sense in theory, but in action it doesn't mean much. Diglett should never be switching into a position where it could get hurt. The proper way to use Diglett is as a revenge killer, and a very good one at that. In the hands of a good player, Diglett should never be in a position where it is vulnerable immediately, because as stated before, it picks its own fights. You cannot counter it as you would other pokemon, because you physically can't bring a counter in. By definition, a counter is a pokemon that can switch into another with impunity. If it can't switch in, then it can't be a counter.

Also, Diglett isn't a RU Dugtrio, or a OU Gothitelle. Those two are both niche mons in their respective tiers, and can only take out a limited few threats. Diglett is different in that it can pull of kills against huge swaths of the tier. Its speed is among the highest of non-scarfed mons, and its attack stat is nothing to sneeze at.

Overall, Diglett makes the life of the mons it supports too easy, and it deserves a ban.
 
I used to think that diglett was incredibly unhealthy and needed to be banned, but after playing a bit of suspect ladder (then getting bored and not getting reqs) I just cannot support that diglett is broken or banworthy. I don't find diglett comparable to other trapping bans, as the mons that it traps aren't nearly as much dead weight as gothitelle/Mgengars victims were. Because diglett cannot switch into the things that it traps, they are not nearly as useless as many say. Yes, u-turn exists, but that involves prediction and risk (your sole mienfoo switchin shouldn't be ponyta anyway).

Diglett is supposed to have a huge impact on the meta, but that is not at all supported by spl usage statistics. If diglett is so influential, why is croagunk used so often? Why doesn't it consistently have a high win rate? Diglett seems broken on paper and in thought, but through using it, facing it and playing without it so often, I just don't find it banworthy.
 
I used to think that diglett was incredibly unhealthy and needed to be banned, but after playing a bit of suspect ladder (then getting bored and not getting reqs) I just cannot support that diglett is broken or banworthy. I don't find diglett comparable to other trapping bans, as the mons that it traps aren't nearly as much dead weight as gothitelle/Mgengars victims were. Because diglett cannot switch into the things that it traps, they are not nearly as useless as many say. Yes, u-turn exists, but that involves prediction and risk (your sole mienfoo switchin shouldn't be ponyta anyway).

Diglett is supposed to have a huge impact on the meta, but that is not at all supported by spl usage statistics. If diglett is so influential, why is croagunk used so often? Why doesn't it consistently have a high win rate? Diglett seems broken on paper and in thought, but through using it, facing it and playing without it so often, I just don't find it banworthy.

The existence of trappers has never been enough to discourage the use of mons trapped by them. I'm fairly certain we've established this in previous discussion. In gen 4, Wobbufett was not enough to deter the likes of Blissey, nor did Scizor ever really impact Gengar's use in the previous two gens. The fact that these Pokemon can be trapped and removed does not outweigh the important roles that they play.

Also SPL offers only a very limited amount of data because it has only a small number of matches. I don't think we should put too much stock in that lol

I forgot to add that Diglett shouldn't need to switch in freely to accomplish its job. Good trapping teams should have VoltTurn support or otherwise use smart switching or sacs. Given that Diglett encourages offensive playstyles (it's easily one of the best HO mons), this shouldn't really be a problem.

For the sake of honest discussion, I'd also like to point out that Blarajan's issue with "subtractive teambuilding" applies to all trappers. It's a good description of how trapping affects teambuilding, but i think that it's the scale Diglett can do this at that makes it broken.
 
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imo Scizor and Wobbuffet aren't really the best comparisons to make. Wobbuffet has the whole uncompetitiveness/shadow tag not cancelling out thing about it that made it dumb. Wobbuffet's problem in the metagame is pretty different if you ask me, since that whole wobbuffet being a common enough poke+shadow tag stalemates is really what pushed it wayyy over the edge to make it broken. Scizor wasn't even banned, and if you wanna pursuit trap something there are more reliable mons like TTar (not saying BW OU Scizor was not a good Pursuit Trapper, but he served more roles on a team than just a pursuit trapper, and preserves quite a bit more momentum compared to Diglett).


Some real quick log of levi saying stuff about scarf diglett, just to summarize things about it
[8:32:42 AM] revi: okay so
[8:32:46 AM] revi: on the topic of scarf diglett
[8:33:11 AM] revi: as the guy who basically lost starm his w5 game by managing to convince him to use scarf diglett
[8:33:31 AM] revi: I can understand why boo might mention it in theorymon, while you can't actually play diglett games, because it seems good there
[8:33:38 AM] revi: like it traps all these cool mons that LO diglett can't
[8:33:49 AM] revi: but in practice
[8:33:53 AM] revi: it's more comparable to like
[8:33:54 AM] revi: gothita
[8:33:56 AM] revi: without coverage moves

Scarf Dig is something you can theorymon, but we should focus on the sets that are really common at hand. Sure, let's say Scarf Diglett and Memento Diglett might be the best thing on earth and turn me into a DOU player (PSYCHE, it already happened, WITHOUT scarf Diglett). We should just focus on looking at sets now, and the impact that Dig has on our meta. Let's try and not take the whole theorymonning too far, and focus on the metagame we have right now. (SPL? I haven't watched too much but its probably p indicative of the meta)
 
imo Scizor and Wobbuffet aren't really the best comparisons to make. Wobbuffet has the whole uncompetitiveness/shadow tag not cancelling out thing about it that made it dumb. Wobbuffet's problem in the metagame is pretty different if you ask me, since that whole wobbuffet being a common enough poke+shadow tag stalemates is really what pushed it wayyy over the edge to make it broken. Scizor wasn't even banned, and if you wanna pursuit trap something there are more reliable mons like TTar (not saying BW OU Scizor was not a good Pursuit Trapper, but he served more roles on a team than just a pursuit trapper, and preserves quite a bit more momentum compared to Diglett).


Some real quick log of levi saying stuff about scarf diglett, just to summarize things about it
[8:32:42 AM] revi: okay so
[8:32:46 AM] revi: on the topic of scarf diglett
[8:33:11 AM] revi: as the guy who basically lost starm his w5 game by managing to convince him to use scarf diglett
[8:33:31 AM] revi: I can understand why boo might mention it in theorymon, while you can't actually play diglett games, because it seems good there
[8:33:38 AM] revi: like it traps all these cool mons that LO diglett can't
[8:33:49 AM] revi: but in practice
[8:33:53 AM] revi: it's more comparable to like
[8:33:54 AM] revi: gothita
[8:33:56 AM] revi: without coverage moves

Scarf Dig is something you can theorymon, but we should focus on the sets that are really common at hand. Sure, let's say Scarf Diglett and Memento Diglett might be the best thing on earth and turn me into a DOU player (PSYCHE, it already happened, WITHOUT scarf Diglett). We should just focus on looking at sets now, and the impact that Dig has on our meta. Let's try and not take the whole theorymonning too far, and focus on the metagame we have right now. (SPL? I haven't watched too much but its probably p indicative of the meta)
I think you misunderstood my post. I wasn't commenting on either Wobb or Scizor's brokenness, nor drawing full comparisons between how those three play. I was simply providing examples of mons that saw plenty of use despite being easily trapped by other common mons. We should not expect perfectly viable Pokemon to drop steeply in usage when they play key roles on so many teams.

As for Scarf Diglett, I concur with Levi's description. I'm not making it out to be an amazing option since more often than not you'll want to run Life Orb. I just believe that the set has some merit, since especially those three mons i listed are increasingly common threats that some teams will want removed.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
K fam I'm finna vote (and I bet a lot of other people are as well) and I personally am undecided. Time for closing arguments.

Pro-ban needs to address that trapped mons are still good (or in the case of trubbish, bad), and 47% SPL winrate

Anti-ban needs to address the fact that Arena Trap has thrice been voted Most Likely To Be An Smod's New Nick. (xd)

Anyhow, winner probably gets my vote.

I want to stress that this isn't some narcissistic 'fight over me' kinda thing. I just don't know what to vote and I wanna know. Best way to do it is by debate. If you are invested in a particular outcome, get at me.
 

Star

is a Tournament Directoris a Member of Senior Staffis a Top Tiering Contributoris a Past SPL Championis the defending RU Circuit Championis a Former Old Generation Tournament Circuit Champion
OGC & Tour Head
K fam I'm finna vote (and I bet a lot of other people are as well) and I personally am undecided. Time for closing arguments.

Pro-ban needs to address that trapped mons are still good (or in the case of trubbish, bad), and 47% SPL winrate

Anti-ban needs to address the fact that Arena Trap has thrice been voted Most Likely To Be An Smod's New Nick. (xd)

Anyhow, winner probably gets my vote.

I want to stress that this isn't some narcissistic 'fight over me' kinda thing. I just don't know what to vote and I wanna know. Best way to do it is by debate. If you are invested in a particular outcome, get at me.
I think anybody not swayed after everything in this thread so far should just abstain.
 
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