np: UU Suspect Test Round 2 - Cold As Ice

I'm not convinced it's Froslass because it's not anywhere near broken outside of Hail. When I argued to ban Froslass last gen, it was debatable when out of hail and hands down broken with hail. This is a different scenario in which only hail is broken. Seems obvious that's the culprit here.

This is akin to the Garchomp scenario in 5th gen, where it was banned mainly for the abuse of Sand Veil for aided sweeping ability. Froslass is obviously not sweeping teams, but at the same time, Hail gives it free Spikes, Thunder Wave, and the ability to whittle down even defensive Pokemon (without insane Sp. Def + recovery) with Blizzard. I'd say Froslass is the real threat through its support value alone.

If it had to come down to it though, I would not ban Snow Warning. Walrein is the same as it's ever been, annoying but beatable, and Abomasnow itself is much the same way. But Mamoswine and Froslass getting free turns just wins games. If not Froslass herself, I'd say a Snow Cloak ban is acceptable.

I believe there would be a smaller collateral damage if we removed Froslass rather than Snow Warning. Seriously, would Hail still be broken without Kyurem (allegedly broken without Hail), Mamoswine (OU due to usage), and Froslass (Hail Abuser) out of the tier?

If the methodology is to separate the two factors (Froslass and Hail) and see if they are broken on their own, then I think Hail deserves some testing / debate over it's performance without Froslass as well. Tbh if hail were unable to spinblock/spike/blizzspam with the same pokemon it would probably neuter it badly. Walrein is okay but Froslass is really hail's ace in the hole. I'm not going to say that no good hail teams can exist without lass, but I know I'm not the only one who's experienced that a match goes from close to lost when an attack misses Froslass or Mamo. I ran a really stupid Blizzspam team for a bit and Sub T-wave Lass could hax it's way out of almost any situation. I'll admit that I haven't used hail without Froslass before, but if, for the sake of argument, Hail was not broken without Froslass, I think a Snow Warning + Snow Cloak ban would make much more sense than banning a pokemon.

I would rank the possibilities like this:

1. Combo ban
pros: Hail remains usable, non-hail retains a valuable spiker
cons: combo bans are icky and people on certain servers will bitch about how authoritarian smogon is.

2. Froslass ban
pros: Hail remains usable
cons: Froslass is no longer usable even outside of hail. Fewer options for spin blocking and spikes.

3. Snow Warning ban
pros: Froslass is usable
cons: Hail is no longer usable. A major playstyle is completely gone.

Obviously these pros and cons are based on my previous assessment of hail and of froslass, for instance if hail were broken without lass then "hail remains usable" isn't a pro.

@breludicolo: because Froslass doesn't have another ability and cursed body isn't released yet. It would essentially be a Froslass ban (and beartic, lol).

Why not just ban snow cloak? Nobody will be unhappy about that, I presume. I don't think anybody cares about not being able to use Beartic.

Breludicolo said:

Why not just ban snow cloak? Nobody will be unhappy about that, I presume. I don't think anybody cares about not being able to use Beartic.

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You know, the reason for banning snow cloak is also because Froslass has it. Cursed Body isn't released yet, and frankly I'd rather not lose Pain Split just because we don't want to Combo ban.

I really like the combo ban idea, seems to rectify the problem completely.

Breludicolo said:

Why not just ban snow cloak? Nobody will be unhappy about that, I presume. I don't think anybody cares about not being able to use Beartic.

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Because Snow Cloak alone isn't the problem.

OK, we ban Snow Cloak. Then Cursed Body is released, and Frolass comes back.

We still have to deal with sets like this:

Froslass @ Life Orb

Blizzard
Shadow Ball
Destiny Bond
Filler

It's Froslass which dosen't look as much like Jirachi.

Or, we could still have fun with:

Froslass @ Choice Specs

Blizzard
Shadow Ball
Trick
Whatever you Feel like

Spikes are not the issue, the issue is that it's stupidly easy for Froslass to secure at least one KO, if not through power, through Destiny Bond.

And with that out of the way, things such as Mamoswine, Lapras [BTW, why dont more people use that thing? It's pretty bulky and has a decent movepool], Rotom-F and Glaceon to still deal with.

As well as things like StallRein and SubSeed Abomasnow. All of which are major threats, especially if Froslass takes your check down with it.

The way I see it, banning Snow Cloak is futile, because Blizzspam is just too strong for the teir right now. I'd suggest banning Froslass [Because of Trick/Destiny Bond/Status screwing over checks] or Hail outright to kill Blizzspam.

Evasion is annoying, but I think we can all agree it's not the sole problem, and the only thing it's breaking is Froslass. Mamoswine and Glaceon are not broken, except as part of Blizzpam, backed up by Froslass spreading Paralysis and Spikes like they're Christmas presents.

People who supported Garchomp's ban last gen (the majority) over Sand Stream + Sand Veil combo ban would not support this.

That's because the only thing that ban is really saving is Froslass. You're hindering other mons potential, such as Beartic, in order to keep one mon in UU. Yea, you may snicker Beartic, but you may be surprised.

I nominated Sand Stream + Sand Veil combo ban last OU suspect round in an attempt to keep Garchomp playable in OU, since it seemed like Sand Veil was the only reason it's getting banned. So why not drastically minimize the chance of its activation by preventing the coupling of Sandstream and Sand Veil? Sand Veil Gliscor and Sand Veil Cacturne would be hampered by not being able to be used in sand, but those are obscure pokemon rarely seen on OU, so it was worth the risk. It's not like they are getting banned or anything.

But boy was I wrong. Eo's team succeeded to show that Sand Veil Gliscor and Cacturne can work in a sand team. Thus, by banning Garchomp instead of the ability combination, two pokemon were made viable in OU thanks to its ability.

Thus, I changed my mind. No matter how obscure the threat is, these ability combination ban should not be used to save ONE mon. Noticed how I emphasized the singularity. Aldaron's proposal is justified for me, because MULTIPLE swift swimmers were made overwhelming, not just one individual sweeper.

Pocket said:

People who supported Garchomp's ban last gen (the majority) over Sand Stream + Sand Veil combo ban would not support this.

That's because the only thing that ban is really saving is Froslass. You're hindering other mons potential, such as Beartic, in order to keep one mon in UU. Yea, you may snicker Beartic, but you may be surprised.

I nominated Sand Stream + Sand Veil combo ban last OU suspect round in an attempt to keep Garchomp playable in OU, since it seemed like Sand Veil was the only reason it's getting banned. So why not drastically minimize the chance of its activation by preventing the coupling of Sandstream and Sand Veil? Sand Veil Gliscor and Sand Veil Cacturne would be hampered by not being able to be used in sand, but those are obscure pokemon rarely seen on OU, so it was worth the risk. It's not like they are getting banned or anything.

But boy was I wrong. Eo's team succeeded to show that Sand Veil Gliscor and Cacturne can work in a sand team. Thus, by banning Garchomp instead of the ability combination, two pokemon were made viable in OU thanks to its ability.

Thus, I changed my mind. No matter how obscure the threat is, these ability combination ban should not be used to save ONE mon. Noticed how I emphasized the singularity. Aldaron's proposal is justified for me, because MULTIPLE swift swimmers were made overwhelming, not just one individual sweeper.

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Just because X occurred and Y happened, doesn't mean if A occurs, Y will happen also.

That is an illogical conclusion since it isn't an analogous scenario. Hail is very different from sand. Froslass is very different from Garchomp. And most importantly UU is very very very different from OU. There is no UU Gliscor for Hail coefficient. There is no UU Cacturne for Hail coefficient. I'd prefer if we kept this irrelevant garchomp comparison out of the UU thread because it's only going to induce silly arguments that don't matter.

We try to ban the culprit. We don't ban a Pokemon if the Pokemon isn't broken. We don't ban the ability if the ability isn't broken. If it's purely the combo that's broken, then let's just ban the combo. Simple.

I'm all for banning Snow Warning together with Snow cloak, since that's just Evasion Clause. I really don't want froslass banned though, since i use her all the time on my non-hail team as a bulky spiker, and she's amazing.

Snow cloak ban is a complex ban though. I already got into an arguement with making blaziken OU again as to just ban SB, but nooooooo. SB ban is a complex ban so I can't do it.... That's a load of crap. IMO complex bans should be aloud. Heck, we've already got SS drizzle ban, so why can't we do the same to garchomp, blaze, and snow cloak? Is cacturne broken because of sand veil? I think not.

So there is very clearly something wrong with Snow Cloak Froslass in Hail. To fix this problem, we could ban Snow Warning, Froslass, Snow Cloak, or any combination of these three. Banning Snow Cloak makes little sense because Froslass' other ability Cursed Body is unavailable indefinitely. Nobody is complaining about Snow Cloak Glaceon or Beartic at the moment, so the problem does not lie with the ability, but rather with Froslass itself.

I am completely opposed to banning Snow Warning. Hail needs to remain an option as a playstyle. In a sense, Hail balances out Sand in a sense by changing the weather and bringing some options like Abomasnow for trying to counter Sand teams. Blizzspam is ultimately beatable, as is defensive Hail, so fixing the Froslass situation by eliminating an entire set of strategies associated with Hail is a bad idea. It is Froslass itself that is the problem.

Alternatively, we could ban Froslass outright or enact a combo ban with Hail or Snow Cloak. Currently Froslass’ only ability is Snow Cloak, so a combo ban with Snow Cloak is essentially the same as a ban of only Froslass, but with more collateral damage. As for a ban on Froslass, outside of Hail it is a unique Pokemon; it is the only spiker that can spinblock! I personally have never used Froslass outside of Hail, but it has such a specific niche out of Hail that I would be reluctant to eliminate Froslass from non-Hail teams (unless it turns out to be utter crap out of its favorite weather, in which case I would say BAN FROSLASS).

That leaves the best option in my opinion: make a Froslass+Snow Warning combo ban. This sort of thing has precedent in OU, where Drizzle+Swift Swim is not allowed, and neither is Blaze Blaziken. Granted, a Snow Warning+Froslass ban is more specific and less overarching than Drizzle+SwSw, but that is not really a bad thing. UU has a completely different metagame than OU, and Froslass is not as good on its own as Manaphy or Garchomp, so this case requires a unique solution.

Combo bans are silly, they do not help the competitive environment but rather change it into something completely different. Swift Swim + Drizzle combo ban at best is a duct tape fix, it will not last and only serves to distort the environment into something its not meant to be.

However in this case we're only talking about ONE freaking Pokemon, how hard is it to just ban the thing if you believe a combination of its moves/environment/stats/abilities is causing incredibly unfair advantages. I'd rather UU didn't follow this disturbing trend of a foot half in/out of the door when banning things. Either you follow through completely or don't do it in the first place, its half the reason OU is a mess right now but this is not the place for that topic.

Just ban Froslass or Abomasnow and be done with it, personally speaking I'd prefer its Froslass who gets the boot otherwise I suspect we'd get OU Sand wars 2.0. without Abomasnow to straighten the record.

Honestly the reason nobody says X and Y isn't broken with <insert evasion ability> is because they can't capitalize on their opportunity, Froslass does.

Focus said:

So there is very clearly something wrong with Snow Cloak Froslass in Hail. To fix this problem, we could ban Snow Warning, Froslass, Snow Cloak, or any combination of these three. Banning Snow Cloak makes little sense because Froslass' other ability Cursed Body is unavailable indefinitely. Nobody is complaining about Snow Cloak Glaceon or Beartic at the moment, so the problem does not lie with the ability, but rather with Froslass itself.

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Just saying, but people were complaining about Blizzspam more than Froslass until very recently. Froslass is just uncompetitive in hail (pure chance) and that bothers everyone.

Focus]That leaves the best option in my opinion: make a [B]Froslass+Snow Warning combo ban[/B]. This sort of thing has precedent in OU said:

Combo bans are silly, they do not help the competitive environment but rather change it into something completely different. Swift Swim + Drizzle combo ban at best is a duct tape fix, it will not last and only serves to distort the environment into something its not meant to be.

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Interesting assertion, but what's your reasoning? Who decides what a metagame is "meant to be"?

The combo bans open up a large amount of possibilities to minimize the actual ban's impact. Froslass is NOT broken out of hail. Therefore, Froslass is not broken and should simply not be banned. If any Pokemon is to be banned, maybe it should be Abomasnow for "always" creating a broken scenario with Froslass. But Snover will still exist and people will still complain about Froslass. It's not like last Gen where Snover was useless, this Gen it can use Eviolite and boast some useful defenses. The only way to fix it without banning more than one Pokemon, or banning something that isn't broken, is to use a combo ban.

Forsety said:

However in this case we're only talking about ONE freaking Pokemon, how hard is it to just ban the thing if you believe a combination of its moves/environment/stats/abilities is causing incredibly unfair advantages. I'd rather UU didn't follow this disturbing trend of a foot half in/out of the door when banning things. Either you follow through completely or don't do it in the first place, its half the reason OU is a mess right now but this is not the place for that topic.

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It is counter-intuitive to a competitive community to ban something if it's not broken. Froslass isn't broken. Froslass with Snow Cloak in Hail is perceived as broken.

Forsety said:

Just ban Froslass or Abomasnow and be done with it, personally speaking I'd prefer its Froslass who gets the boot otherwise I suspect we'd get OU Sand wars 2.0. without Abomasnow to straighten the record.

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This is an invalid reason to avoid a ban on Abomasnow for two reasons. First of all, the reasoning is not valid in itself. We do not keep a broken Pokemon around to check other Pokemon. For example, we did not keep Crobat around just because it checked basically every Pokemon in UU. Second, if we ban Abomasnow we still have Snover.

Forsety said:

Honestly the reason nobody says X and Y isn't broken with <insert evasion ability> is because they can't capitalize on their opportunity, Froslass does.

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This is a fair point, but it's just saying the same thing I was just spun around. You say (paraphrasing) "Froslass is broken because it's ability Snow Cloak is broken with hail" while I say "Froslass is only broken with Snow Cloak in Hail". Essentially the same thing and requires the same combo ban because the combo is broken.

Banning Froslass is just a lazy half-assed option it's not as narrow as it could be. An extreme example would be banning all Dragons because Salamence is broken. Not to the same scale, but it's the same illogical reasoning.

@Focus: Unfortunately, I think the only option is to ban froslass to BL. IMO that's the best option. I don't want to ban one ability all together with another one just because one pokemon ruins it. Beartic as aforementioned isn't no froslass. It's not as good as it with snow cloak. In OU they didn't ban sand veil! They banned garchomp who was the best user of it and was "broken". Blaziken was banned entirely because they didn't want another complex ban. So far standing, SS+drizzle is the only complex ban going on. I have mixed feeling even about THAT. If I want to use seaking or beartic in a rain team, I can't because SS is banned. We don't need more complex bans. Meanwhile, snow warning I think we should keep because it brings variety to UU. We only have two weathers in UU and that's perfect for me. Let's try not to complicate things shall we? All in all, lets just ban froslass and get it over with.

Well, I think I summed pretty much everything up. I don't think I left any other parts of the arguement out. Tell me if I missed something will you guys? Then we can get this all sorted out.

Just for the record, the pokemon who currently have Snow Cloak are Froslass, Glaceon, Mamoswine, and Beartic. Mamo and Glaceon both have other abilities they can use, so really banning hail+snow cloak only prevents using Froslass and Beartic in hail. A froslass+hail ban isn't a bad idea either, for now it accomplishes the same thing except it ignores mamo and allows Beartic to stay.

Honestly, I dont see what the big deal with Beartic is, I haven't seen a single one of them except on a lol dw rain dance team. Its got the defences of Golurk without the resistances, less attack, a weaker STAB move, and worse coverage options. It's too slow to abuse substitute with snow cloak, anyway. It doesn't even get Ice Shard, and it can't effectively abuse Blizzard either. In other words, it's perfect collateral damage in lieu of things that actually affect the metagame (like froslass out of hail or hail itself). At this point it's just insult to injury for Beartic, considering that the ability that could actually make him useful in permaweather (swift swim) is already combo banned!

There is the matter of DW Articuno, who could actually be a terror with Snow Cloak and SubRoost. I'm pretty sure it's against site policy to base decisions on unreleased abilities, though, and that makes sense. SC Arti could just as easily end up sucking balls, anyway. Not to mention you can use all your favorite obscure Snow Cloak mons in RU with Snover.

As I experience it, people want to keep weather in UU to abuse it. If you want to play weather, go to OU! UU shouldn't be OU but without Rain and Sun! Weather is really bad for this tier, even if it doesn't double the speed of 4 pokes in a team.

Stoutland fucks up speed tiers, being Excadrill 0.5 but in UU. Luckily it's also weak to priority, but only Fighting-type moves, as it's bulky too. Thank god Stoutland is the only real threat Sandstorm has, as Regirock has poop defensive typing and there aren't really any other sand abusers except Sand Veil Gligar, more about that ability later.

Hail is the real problem here, with a versatile summoner and a lot of abusers. Froslass being the most obviously broken with Snow Cloak, Mamoswine also with Snow Cloak but to a lesser content and possibly OU soon, StallRein being stupidly hard to beat late-game, and other random Blizzard spammers.

Sand Veil and Snow Cloak don't have to go when Sandstorm and Hail go, this seems the easiest way. Fuck killing a playstyle, with banning Hail and/or Sandstorm we open up a whole new metagame! Boohoo, we ban the easiest ways to win! Oh no, now you have to really test and actually put effort in building a competitively viable team!

I really hope there are others high in ranking that agree. In that case, please argue against these people who want to keep stupid weathers in UU!

Agree with mew entirely. It's been a full year now since the beginning of black and white and the metagame is still screwed up. Just ban froslass for crying out loud! That's the best way to handle it. We don't need more complex bans people. I quit OU because of how stupidly common rain teams were. And there isn't any SS'ers in it either! That confused me. If we get too many complex bans, it will get too confusing.

Master Win said:

Agree with mew entirely. It's been a full year now since the beginning of black and white and the metagame is still screwed up. Just ban froslass for crying out loud! That's the best way to handle it. We don't need more complex bans people. I quit OU because of how stupidly common rain teams were. And there isn't any SS'ers in it either! That confused me. If we get too many complex bans, it will get too confusing.

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Have you read it entirely lol? I'm pleading for the weathers to get banned, which will get Froslass out of the broken boundaries.

Forsety said:

Just ban Froslass or Abomasnow and be done with it, personally speaking I'd prefer its Froslass who gets the boot otherwise I suspect we'd get OU Sand wars 2.0. without Abomasnow to straighten the record.

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This tbh. Everybody seems to be overcomplicating things. IF there's a problem, let's just ban one of Froslass or Abomasnow.

If there's still a problem after that, we could consider banning the other one of the two that we didn't ban, or maybe even Snover.

Mew said:

Have you read it entirely lol? I'm pleading for the weathers to get banned, which will get Froslass out of the broken boundaries.

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Oops. Forgot to put in the part about weather being banned. I knew I forgot something! Dope. Personally, I couldn't care LESS about weather. If weather is banned, fine. Happy rays of sunshine for everyone.... oh wait, no sun teams. So I guess gray and cloudy normal weather. If froslass gets banned, so what? I've never planned to use her anyway. Ban one or the other. Just no complex bans. Please.

All right then, it sounds like a complex ban is as unpopular as ever. I revise my sentiment to ban Froslass. I never used Froslass out of hail, anyway.

Master Win said:

Oops. Forgot to put in the part about weather being banned. I knew I forgot something! Dope. Personally, I couldn't care LESS about weather. If weather is banned, fine. Happy rays of sunshine for everyone.... oh wait, no sun teams. So I guess gray and cloudy normal weather. If froslass gets banned, so what? I've never planned to use her anyway. Ban one or the other. Just no complex bans. Please.

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Focus said:

All right then, it sounds like a complex ban is as unpopular as ever. I revise my sentiment to ban Froslass. I never used Froslass out of hail, anyway.

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This is a big problem. I'm having trouble even starting to explain the problem here because it honestly baffles me (gen 4 UU thread, 2010).

Why does it matter that you don't use Froslass? What if you did? If you did use Froslass, then all of the sudden "wow I don't want to ban Froslass because I use it" Do you really think that's a valid reason to ban or not ban something? Whether or not you use it? Something inconveniencing you personally should not in the slightest influence your decision on whether or not something is broken. The fact that people are thinking like this concerns me. Ironically, the same people that want a simple ban are overlooking the simple rule of banning: only ban what is broken.

SHUCKLE MAN said:

This tbh. Everybody seems to be overcomplicating things. IF there's a problem, let's just ban one of Froslass or Abomasnow.

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Here's the issue:

Banning Abomasnow + Snover = no hail teams (I'd prefer this option if we had to pick one, since it would solve the problem of Hail being arguably broken in addition to Froslass alone)
Banning Froslass = unnecessary ban of Froslass without hail which is almost unanimously agreed as not broken in the slightest. Not to mention, we still may end up banning Abomasnow/Snover because of Blizzspam being so effective.

where as:

Banning Froslass + Snow Warning = No Froslass in permanent Hail...the only thing that is perceived as broken.

Why are we taking the easy way out? As I said before, we wouldn't ban all dragons because salamence is broken. Just banning Salamence is the correct thing to do because the rest of the dragons are not broken, however banning dragons altogether is far simpler because you don't need to separate each Pokemon, it is over simplified. And just as a reminder, I'm aware that it is not anywhere near on the same scale, I'm just applying the same logic to a larger scale just to illustrate the illogical thinking involved in "simpler bans are better even if they ban things that aren't broken".

I agree with Heysup, that simple bans are NOT always the better solution. See Aldaron's Proposal.

But I believe that complex bans need more significance than keeping one mon in the tier. Seriously, that is why Pokemon + Ability bans are not nominated, since it's only saving one mon, and the complexity is not worth it.

Froslass is clearly not the only thing broken about hail. Lots of pokemon in UU get free hazards, I'd even argue that Deoxys-D is more effective at setting up spikes and keeping them up than Froslass despite the inability to block rapid spin. Hail is broken because it gives you access to some of the best pokemon in the UU tier, like Rotom-F, Froslass, a buffed Mamoswine, and Abomasnow itself. Hail teams are simply superior to non-weather. Banning only Froslass would be banning a symptom of hail being broken, not the cause of it.