Shaymin-S Vote

[imperfectluck]

Wall of (mostly) off-topic text warning.

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

It's a game of statistical management. It is a game of how you manage statistics. Don't try to overcomplicate it by saying it has some "magical" properties to it. If chess can be programmed to beat grandmasters then I'm sure people can emulate a game like Pokemon.

Colin once made a pokemon playing program called Fred. Fred had a certain OU team programmed in, and was able to use Super Effective moves, switch for type advantages, and do a few things randomly for an "element of prediction." Fredbot also had an atrocious winning ratio. Chess is a game with zero luck involved and a game of perfect information, Pokemon is a game of imperfect information with luck involved and a prediction factor no computer will ever be able to imitate. Who's the one oversimplifying things rather than overcomplicating it?

And I'm pretty sure I'm one of the users who tried to make use of the usage stats so "you're whining at the wrong person"

Yes, and our conclusions after looking at the statistics are quite different. See where I'm getting at?

Giddie. It was up on the Shoddy connecting message iirc.

About as many people read a connecting message as they read the TOS for any website they sign up for.

Yeah and I bet Voltaire said that to a misinformed little child who obviously have no idea what they are talking about.

Democracy requires education. Something that is obviously lacking nowadays I'm afraid :(

Ok then, I guess democracy in your eyes isn't the best way to solve things then! Take that up with the system, don't criticize the voters?

And my response to you is "what point" because you really don't have one =)

Rather than make snide comments here about how you express your opinions of my posts as "rofl," I'll leave it up for other readers to judge for themselves whether my "nonexistent point" was valid or not.

Then if Shaymin S is "uber" as everyone else is saying they wouldn't have such good records!

Just saying =)

Way to completely ignore the psychological aspect of not wanting to use Shaymin-S, just like Wobbuffet and Deoxys-S! As "uncompetitive" as it is in your eyes, it's still a factor in all this, just saying =)

As this is starting to head off into an off-topic endless argument irrelevant to Shaymin-S itself, I'm going to stop here for the evening and go to sleep. Look forward to seeing your post in the morning. =)

[Philip7086]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

I'm not even talking about bias, weeding methods, or anything. You would have known if you actually read my post.

Nice strawman.

My apologies. For some reason, I assumed I was talking to someone with enough intelligence to be able to connect my points to the ones originally made in the post I was responding to. Let me try to help walk you through simple logic:

In your previous post, you accuse me, and others, of voting when we should not have.

The reason we should not have voted, according to you, is because we had no intention of testing in the first place. However, this line of logic alone is not a sufficient reason to discredit our votes. The implied reason here, is because our votes are somehow uninformed or biased, due to us not using the suspect personally. Do not try to deny this, because unintentionally attaining voting qualification is not a reason to reject opinions alone; someone who is all-knowing who unintentionally qualifies to vote still has a valid opinion, no?

This is where my "straw man" (two words, by the way, not one) argument comes in. Let me quote it for easy referral:

Originally Posted by Fat Philip7086

First of all, bias exists in all polling processes, there is no way to eliminate it. However, certain weeding methods could have been put in practice to keep the biased and uninformed votes to a minimum. You can refer to my previous posts for that though. Reiterating things previously said is such a drag, so go at least skim through posts next time you want to jump in and throw your 2 cents.

Here, I am taking your implied reasoning for why we should have not voted (biased, and uninformed), and explaining that a poll in which all votes are unbiased and well-informed is impossible. After this, I refer to my previous posts about how to minimize bias in these voting processes.

Yes, you did not talk about weeding methods in your original post, however for the sake of advancing the debate to a more solution-based one, rather than a blame-based one, I brought it up.

Again, I apologize for assuming you had the intelligence to follow simple logic. Next time, remind me to break down all of the steps in my reasoning so that you do not wrongfully interpret my response as a straw man argument.

[Jumpman16**]

Originally Posted by Fat Philip7086

The reason we should not have voted, according to you, is because we had no intention of testing in the first place. However, this line of logic alone is not a sufficient reason to discredit our votes. The implied reason here, is because our votes are somehow uninformed or biased, due to us not using the suspect personally. Do not try to deny this, because unintentionally attaining voting qualification is not a reason to reject opinions alone; someone who is all-knowing who unintentionally qualifies to vote still has a valid opinion, no?

This is where my "straw man" (two words, by the way, not one) argument comes in. Let me quote it for easy referral:

first of all it's either, way to be pretentiously semantic about something and still be wrong

second, his implied reason is correct as far as the suspect test process is concerned. you cannot even begin to argue that a refusal to use a suspect in a suspect test means that you will have less experience with how the suspect fares in standard play. you can't. i don't care if you faced it in every battle on your way to making your 1655/65 marks—your experience with how the suspect fares in standard play is going to be less than it would have been otherwise. while we have not and probably will not make an explicit rule mandating the usage of the actual suspect on the suspect test ladder going forward, this is not what we were looking for. you can smugly state that "hey not my fault there was a loophole in the process, i made the marks thats what matters" and i can just as easily call you an insult to what this community stands for, so let's not go there.

Again, I apologize for assuming you had the intelligence to follow simple logic. Next time, remind me to break down all of the steps in my reasoning so that you do not wrongfully interpret my response as a straw man argument.

fantastic idea dude lets all just fling shit around like monkeys

[Tangerine]

Here, I am taking your implied reasoning for why we should have not voted (biased, and uninformed), and explaining that a poll in which all votes are unbiased and well-informed is impossible. After this, I refer to my previous posts about how to minimize bias in these voting processes.

I'm saying you shouldn't have voted not being you were biased and uninformed, I'm saying you shouldn't have voted because you clearly undermine the assumptions behind the test (that people will be competitive, regardless). This is why your arguments are a strawman - the bias/misinformed does not occur in the voting phase (nor "does it matter", at least in my opinion anyway), but in the testing phase. Nice attempt at a shot at me though.

Of course,we can also suppose that you "didn't" undermine the test, and that you actually were competitive. Then if you were a competitive player, then you were clearly successful in winning games, without the use of Shaymin. This implies that following

1) Shaymin S is not "broken" enough to be the dominating strategy. The successes of you and other players who "refused" to use Shaymin and still got to the top shows this - considering Shaymin was clearly OU and used frequently.

2) Your team was not overwhelmed by Shaymin S at all - meaning that Shaymin S is not broken, and you were able to deal with it just fine.

So you can accept one of the following conclusions.

1) The players are NOT competitive, and therefore undermines the test, and should not have voted.

2) The players are competitive, but have no idea what they are talking about, and have an alternate agenda they wish to fulfill even though it is not the most competitive decision. This also implies that Shaymin S is clearly not uber, since by your actions you have shown to us that Shaymin S is not uber by anymeans but perfectly viable and there are a good chunk of players who do not need to use Shaymin to find themselves successful within the metagame.

By offering 1 as the solution, I was being nice, considering I rather claim that you guys are lazy and not working to your full potential rather than calling all of you ignorant and not informed and promoting a uncompetitive spirit overall despite you guys being "competitive". I offered the solution where all of you who "didnt use shaymin" and "voted uber" were not blatantly wrong about all of this.

[Philip7086]

Originally Posted by Fat Jumpman16

first of all it's either, way to be pretentiously semantic about something and still be wrong

second, his implied reason is correct as far as the suspect test process is concerned. you cannot even begin to argue that a refusal to use a suspect in a suspect test means that you will have less experience with how the suspect fares in standard play. you can't. i don't care if you faced it in every battle on your way to making your 1655/65 marks—your experience with how the suspect fares in standard play is going to be less than it would have been otherwise. while we have not and probably will not make an explicit rule mandating the usage of the actual suspect on the suspect test ladder going forward, this is not what we were looking for. you can smugly state that "hey not my fault there was a loophole in the process, i made the marks thats what matters" and i can just as easily call you an insult to what this community stands for, so let's not go there

Well considering the main point of my most recent post was to point out that I did not present a straw man argument, thank you for confirming that he did indeed have an implied reason in his post, which I directly responded to. As far as your point of views on one's experience with Skymin, I am not about to deny them. In fact, I have already stated multiple times that I feel the same way about getting a better understanding of a Pokemon though personal usage.

However, this is where we disagree. You feel like people should use a suspect to gain a better understanding of it, and make a more educated vote. Yet for some reason, which I still cannot understand, you refuse to create an environment in which usage is encouraged through a separate suspect test ladder. If someone could just explain to me the reasons why they are against doing something like this, I would greatly appreciate it, because I just do not see the down side.

It's easy to sit back and blame people for exploiting "loopholes," but as I've stated before, why don't we try to make this a solution-based discussion, rather than a blame-based one. And no, a good solution is not to just rely on the general public to take responsibility for their own votes, because as ideal as that is, it's just not realistic.

As per "strawman" or "straw man," I was always taught by my professors that it's two words, and one has explicitly corrected me on submitted papers before. If the one word version is accepted, then I'm sorry for being wrongfully pretentious.

[Philip7086]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

Of course,we can also suppose that you "didn't" undermine the test, and that you actually were competitive. Then if you were a competitive player, then you were clearly successful in winning games, without the use of Shaymin. This implies that following

1) Shaymin S is not "broken" enough to be the dominating strategy. The successes of you and other players who "refused" to use Shaymin and still got to the top shows this - considering Shaymin was clearly OU and used frequently.

2) Your team was not overwhelmed by Shaymin S at all - meaning that Shaymin S is not broken, and you were able to deal with it just fine.

So you can accept one of the following conclusions.

1) The players are NOT competitive, and therefore undermines the test, and should not have voted.

2) The players are competitive, but have no idea what they are talking about, and have an alternate agenda they wish to fulfill even though it is not the most competitive decision. This also implies that Shaymin S is clearly not uber, since by your actions you have shown to us that Shaymin S is not uber by anymeans but perfectly viable and there are a good chunk of players who do not need to use Shaymin to find themselves successful within the metagame.

By offering 1 as the solution, I was being nice, considering I rather claim that you guys are lazy and not working to your full potential rather than calling all of you ignorant and not informed and promoting a uncompetitive spirit overall despite you guys being "competitive". I offered the solution where all of you who "didnt use shaymin" and "voted uber" were not blatantly wrong about all of this.

How convenient of you to state as fact that those are the only situations and conclusions possible. I guess your method of debating is to set up the battle field so that every possibility ends in your favor? Nice try, but you obviously overlooked a few situations. Let me give you my case as an example that does not fit into your scenarios.

When designing teams in this metagame, I made sure to pack multiple Pokemon who can outspeed Skymin with a scarf, use a powerful priority, make sure that SR is somewhere, and resist Skymin's STAB attacks in case of a rare Scarfmin. Was I able to do this successfully, and make a team that succeeded overall? Yes. However, the pool of Pokemon that fit this criteria was so shallow, that I could not vary my teams up much. Having to pack so many fail-safes on one Pokemon is what we call overcentralization. In the Garchomp days, I was rarely seen actually using Garchomp, but I was still successful because I packed enough things to always be able to revenge.

This is still a very viable strategy that players can adopt, and still be considered competitive. Funny that you failed to mention it, though, as one of the scenarios you listed.

[Aeolus]

4 votes left

[Tangerine]

When designing teams in this metagame, I made sure to pack multiple Pokemon who can outspeed with a scarf, use a powerful priority, make sure that SR is somewhere, and resist Skymin's STAB attacks, in case of a rare Scarfmin. Was I able to do this successfully, and make a team that succeeded overall? Yes. However, the pool of Pokemon that fit this criteria was so slim, that I could not vary my teams up much. Having to pack so many fail-safes on one Pokemon is what we call overcentralization. In the Garchomp days, I was rarely seen actually using Garchomp, but I was still successful because I packed enough things to always be able to revenge.

I honestly feel that the only reason it's usage stats were so low, is cause most of us didn't want to waste our time making a team that would turn obsolete (if voted uber)

So why did you make a team that is apparently "built" to counter Skymin if the team becomes a lot less effective when people stop using Skymin? I literally based the battlefield based on your words here, and not much else since you never bothered saying anything else past that =)

How convenient of you to state as fact that those are the only situations and conclusions possible. I guess your method of debating is to set up the battle field so that every possibility ends in your favor? .

I set up the battle field exactly as your words described and what you have implied throughout the thread that you haven't bothered to correct me. It is not my fault you haven't given me a good case to work with there, so I would prefer it if you didn't have to resort to petty attacks over and over because it's really making you look bad :(

Nevertheless, the point is this. If you and all the others had made this rather decent argument against skymin to begin with, there would be no talk of this to begin with. Your reasoning was poor throughout the thread until your last post, along with your fellow players and this is precisely why I "blamed" the players.

Obviously you show signs of "understanding" the game - I'm shocked that you don't care to use it at all!

Not that I buy the argument anyway - SR is already everywhere in the metagame, there is Mamoswine and Scizor who would be used regardless of Skymin, and Heatran is very popular since it literally glues many teams together. Steel types were popular to begin with, same with Blissey, Zapdos, etc. I mean, if I had to deal with Salamence I'm obviously going to pack SR to try and weaken it, pack a Dragon Resist, carry a fast scarfer/priority to deal with Mence just in case it gets a DD, pack a way to deal with the myriad things mence can do, etc etc etc which only a "very few pokemon" can really handle. Of course, this is just a difference in opinion and I do accept your opinion, despite I don't quite believe that is enough to justify something as "uber" considering that you have shown that it can be dealt with - and if enough players are dealing with it then there are less incentive for competitive players to use Skymin in the long run! You have shown that "it can be dealt with" with Pokemon that are already widely available in OU. Obviously your argument is "this limits my team building options", but I don't think you can say that... quite yet but that's just my opinion overall =)

[Philip7086]

Originally Posted by Fat Serene Grace

I would prefer it if you didn't have to resort to petty attacks over and over because it's really making you look bad :(

I know, but petty attacks are what keep me entertained when writing responses ^_^. They do the same for me that smileys apparently do for you. Yours is a subtle form of being passive aggressive, mine's not =P. Although, admittedly my personal attacks on your intelligence last night might have stepped over the line a bit, so my apologies. I made that post at 5am after kind of a long argument w/ the gf... so that was probably the core of my hostility. However, I still maintain my basic point in that post, I just hope you understand the reasoning for my underlying tone =/

Anyways, we could go into a debate about the differences in preparing for Mence and Skymin, and the fact that Skymin is much harder to because often times it's set up turn consists of Substitute, protecting it from attacks, whereas Mence's set up consists of Dragon Dance, leaving it wide open afterwards, but it's finals week for me, and I've put off studying enough =(. If this discussion is still going on at the end of the week, I'll stop by again ^_^

..my my, it looks like I've unintentionally put up an argument for their differences anyways >_>

[scorchedsky]

Salamence's setup doesn't usually involve a substitute because it's a waste of a turn. He's got better things to do than sub. On average, 2 hits of Salamence's Outrage will do more damage than Skymin's Seed Flare. Mence could just as easily sub before attacking, but he's got a better option in DD'ing. How is that an argument for Skymin being better/harder to prepare for? Skymin switches in, is at 75%, subs and is at 50% behind a sub. Salamence swaps, and you're dealing with a +1 Atk/+1 Speed 75% health Salamence. You're telling me you'd rather face that than a 50% Skymin with a sub up?

[Jumpman16**]

Originally Posted by Fat Philip7086

It's easy to sit back and blame people for exploiting "loopholes," but as I've stated before, why don't we try to make this a solution-based discussion, rather than a blame-based one. And no, a good solution is not to just rely on the general public to take responsibility for their own votes, because as ideal as that is, it's just not realistic.

we already have, there is usually a suspect test ladder but the way the deoxys-s vote unfolded aeolus suggested to me that we just let the test go on the standard ladder since the two ladders would have been identical sicne skymin was already on the standard ladder, and i agreed, neither of us thinking it would make a difference and both of us knowing that'd be the last time we'd do it because for every suspect going forward that suspect would not have been seen in standard play and therefore would require its own ladder.

anyone who wants to even remotely call us out, aloud or otherwise, on this oversight is a loser btw

also i've suggested in our inside scoop forum that this voting issue could be "fixed" if we deterime to what extent the current voters actually played on the ladder in the last month, something like that would determine who actually participated in the test and would be something doug could look up if we had to

Originally Posted by Fat Philip7086

Anyways, we could go into a debate about the differences in preparing for Mence and Skymin, and the fact that Skymin is much harder to because often times it's set up turn consists of Substitute, protecting it from attacks, whereas Mence's set up consists of Dragon Dance, leaving it wide open afterwards, but it's finals week for me, and I've put off studying enough =(. If this discussion is still going on at the end of the week, I'll stop by again ^_^

..my my, it looks like I've unintentionally put up an argument for their differences anyways >_>

you ignored his last paragraph entirely, that isn't very cool lol

[Aeolus]

This poll will be closed at 9:00pm EST tomorrow night. The four remaining individuals who have not cast their ballot must do so before then. If neither OU nor Uber reaches the 60 votes needed for a majority, then we will proceed from there. Nobody foresaw a situation where it would be this close. Please be patient as we sort out how to proceed.

[Philip7086]

Originally Posted by Fat scorchedsky

Salamence's setup doesn't usually involve a substitute because it's a waste of a turn. He's got better things to do than sub. On average, 2 hits of Salamence's Outrage will do more damage than Skymin's Seed Flare. Mence could just as easily sub before attacking, but he's got a better option in DD'ing. How is that an argument for Skymin being better/harder to prepare for? Skymin switches in, is at 75%, subs and is at 50% behind a sub. Salamence swaps, and you're dealing with a +1 Atk/+1 Speed 75% health Salamence. You're telling me you'd rather face that than a 50% Skymin with a sub up?

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Mence is still vulnerable to a Scarf'd Ice attack, Ice Shard, or something that can potentially Paralyze it. Skymin, on the other hand, is packing enough speed still to outspeed almost everything, and has the protection of a sub up to see if it's opponent is scarfed or not, so it can switch out to come back in the future. Also, with ridiculous coverage, even if something outspeeds it, it will take a ton of damage. Let's not also forget that Skymin can seed that turn, and regain most if it's HP back through Lefties and Leech Seed, then after realizing it's getting outsped, switch to something that resists, which will also heal itself almost back up. Your counter has now lost a minimum of 25%, 32% if it took neutral damage to SR.

Originally Posted by Fat Jumpman16

you ignored his last paragraph entirely, that isn't very cool lol

I know, I'm too crunched for time to respond to all of his points in the last paragraph =/. That's why I'm also going to ignore most of your post... sorry >_>

And for the record, I'm not trying to insult you, or Aeolus, or whoever was in charge. I'm merely stating that in my opinion, a separate suspect test ladder would produce a far better voter pool. I understand the peculiar circumstance of Skymin, but I was mostly advocating it for future tests, so that this same issue does not arise. However, from the sound of your post, it seems like you guys have already resolved to do that, so we all should be happy ^_^

*goes back to studying*

[Syberia]

Originally Posted by Fat Aeolus

This poll will be closed at 9:00pm EST tomorrow night. The four remaining individuals who have not cast their ballot must do so before then. If neither OU nor Uber reaches the 60 votes needed for a majority, then we will proceed from there. Nobody foresaw a situation where it would be this close. Please be patient as we sort out how to proceed.

I assume it's been done already, but if it hasn't, PMing a reminder to these individuals sounds like it's in order.

[gorm]

I think at this point we need to sort through the miasma of the skymin thread and make a well structured op with uber ou arguments tbh. too much repetition and nonsense going on in discussions (here and in stark) and constant redundancy in argument is hardly ever effecient.


as far as the suspect vote process, as jump said if you want to call out the process itself take it somewhere else, the official server maybe. we are doing our best, this is not in idle hands.

[Matty85]

Voted Uber

[fede125955]

wow 1 more vote for uber @_@

[Jumpman16**]

Uber, for now at least. See this thread.

[Aeolus]

It is very important that everyone read the entire OP of the thread Jumpman linked to. The tiering of Shaymin-S will be revisted after Lati@s testing.