[Borat]

Anyway, here’s me ranting about pokemon. This has been in the works for two years now, so if there’s any incoherence, that’s my excuse. First off, clauses.

HP Legends – Probably the most debated “rule” in all of GSC. Countless arguments have been made about this topic, ranging from “well it’s stupidly hard to attain legendary Pokemon with HP Ice/Water 70”, to which the respondents say “it’s just as hard to attain Pokemon with perfect DVs”. Honestly, if you want my opinion, no Pokemon should be banned based on exclusiveness, stats, or anything objective like that. There’s only one reason stuff should be banned: over-centralizing the game or making the game stupid. HP Zapdos/Raikou forces opponents to run either Raikou and Snorlax, sure, but aren’t those two (especially Snorlax) pretty much on every team already anyway? Unless you get rid of those two, I see absolutely no reason to ban them, since it’s not really over-centralizing the game more than any other set. I would LOVE to see a metagame without Snorlax, Suicune, Raikou, Skarmory, and Zapdos.

NYPC – This was a huge debate, and still is until the death of GSC. Often the target of many heated debates among Pokemon fanatics, definitely up there with HP legends. Arguments once again come mostly in the shape of either “exclusiveness; not many people are able to attain such moves”, or “making sense; Lovely Kiss should come from Pokemon that can actually… kiss, and what the hell is Umbreon doing with the grass exclusive Growth?” Again, I don’t care for these arguments, the only reason something should be banned is for over-centralizing the game. Stuff like LK Nidoking or Sing Pikachu doesn’t really force any team to run a specific counter, whereas LK Snorlax… well, has no real answer. In the case with LK Snorlax, I’ll make a case on it being pretty damn broken (don’t worry guys, I address Hypnomissy later).

1 Legendary – This was more of a gentlemen’s agreement than anything. I don’t think you’ll find in the record books anywhere mention this clause, but this was pretty much the consent amongst most people. Or maybe it was just me. Whatever. Legendaries include the 3 birds, the 3 dogs, and Celebi.

Double Team – This was never that big of a problem to most veteran battlers back then. Given the innate suckitude of all BP Pokemon, the only possible problem that could arise would be from certain last Poke DT-ers, the most famous of these: SHUCKLE. Curse, Double Team, Rollout, Rest. This Pokemon single handedly won countless games for me. For a short stint in ’04, it was my curselax counter, but man was it good at it. It walled and beat all forms of Snorlaxes.

Sleep Trapping – Sure, the ban currently (according to Smogon), is the sleep perish trapping ban. But honestly, what’s the difference between hypnomissy running Hyp/Psong and Hyp/Curse? Not much really. The former is certainly more formidable regarding Misdreavus, but the latter applies to a far greater population. Stuff like Spider Web/Spore Smeargle, LK/ML/Nightmare Jynx run along the same principle. People say Encore zam shuts down hypnomissy, but that’s not true at all. Assume zam comes in on a ML, it’s forced to Encore the Mean Look, whereas missy can either Perish Song OR Protect. And because Encore only has 5 PP (8 with ups), it’ll run out long before missy runs out of Mean Looks. I agree with this ban, but it should be more inclusive, to include all forms of trapping + sleeping (baton pass notwithstanding).

Celebi as an uber – It isn’t. Plain and simple. It has the stats, it doesn’t have the movepool. Think of it as Suicune with Recover and Heal Bell, but without Roar. Well that doesn’t make much sense, but that’s how I see it. It’s annoying sure, hard as hell to kill, but what isn’t? To put forth blatantly: it doesn’t pose much of a threat to any team. It’s just there… always… there.

With that said, Celebi is unhealthy metagaming in its truest form. However, if there's ever one pokemon where just being defensive makes it overpowered, it's celebi (and lugia/mewtwo, but that's beside the point). You can't possibly tell me you have fun playing with it/against it. It's just +100 unnecessary turns, as well as upsetting the current offense vs defense seesaw, which is the closest it's ever been. Shit like Marowak is being used outside of Jolteon teams is "new" (2006-2007; not new to you guys, but to us), Machamp threatening ever team legitmately (as opposed to the pre-2008 of just hitting everything hard, but koing nothing), and Exeggutor rocking up OU the way it's meant to. Blissey and Skarmory has become as unreliable as ever, and Miltank has taken a pretty harsh hit as well. Bellers are becoming the crutch they're meant to be. Celebi needn't come back. And no, "just use HP Bug" isn't a viable counterargument. HP Bug Steelix/Espeon/whatever is far outside the reasonable norm to countering something and arguing it's viability.

Bottomline: It's not uber by way of power, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be unbanned.

More to come.