Banning philosophy revisited a.k.a. return of the revenge

[Scorpio]

This post is probably irrelevant but here's my two cents:

I think that the only complex banning that should take place is Pokemon + Ability, and I personally would only limit it to DW OU right now, or when everything 'significant' comes out.

If it has overpowering stats, BAN IT.

If moves break it, BAN IT.

However, if it is only broken with an ability, ban the use of that ability on that Pokemon if it's perfectly fine otherwise.

That's what I think.

 

[Arcticblast]

One broken ability is still an attribute of that Pokemon. If any attribute is broken on a given Pokemon, the entire Pokemon is broken (see: Speed Boost Blaziken, Sand Rush Excadrill). For example, allowing Blaze Blaziken in OU is like allowing Mewtwo in OU, but only with moves that have 60 BP or less.

Parappa Da Sneak, that was beautiful.

 

[Parappa Da Sneak]

people who say complex bans will open doors to stuff like letting lvl 37 groudons in OU sound like those ppl who say gay marriage will open doors to marrying pigs.

 

[No Luck Involved]

people who say complex bans will open doors to stuff like letting lvl 37 groudons in OU sound like those ppl who say gay marriage will open doors to marrying pigs.

Complex bans could lead to lv37 Groudons like gay marriages could lead to gay divorces. It follows the same line of logic through to conclusion.

Gay marriage leading to marrying pigs is like saying complex bans will lead to Master Chief being banned from OU. Two completely different and unrelated things.

 

[AJC]

For example, allowing Blaze Blaziken in OU is like allowing Mewtwo in OU, but only with moves that have 60 BP or less.

NO WE DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO AND NO IT IS NOT FUCKING EQUAL ANYONE CLAIMING SO IS FUCKED UP IN THEIR HEADS.

god damn it people we do not have to do that anyone who says we have to do that if we allow ability+mon bans needs a kick in the throat for being so idiotic to even fucking think about comparing that it's NOT equal it will NEVER be equal and it SHOULD never be thought as equal.

arguments against it with stupid comments like these are why i want more complex bans because this overly simplistic thinking is terrible and a plague to the metagame.

 

[Raikaria]

NO WE DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO AND NO IT IS NOT FUCKING EQUAL ANYONE CLAIMING SO IS FUCKED UP IN THEIR HEADS.

god damn it people we do not have to do that anyone who says we have to do that if we allow ability+mon bans needs a kick in the throat for being so idiotic to even fucking think about comparing that it's NOT equal it will NEVER be equal and it SHOULD never be thought as equal.

arguments against it with stupid comments like these are why i want more complex bans because this overly simplistic thinking is terrible and a plague to the metagame.

It IS the same.

By banning a specific ability of a pokemon you are changeing the pokemon.

By that logic, if it is OK to ban Speed Boost on Blaziken ONLY, then it's OK to ban specific things on specific other pokemon, like Sand Veil on Garchomp, or Dark Void on Darkrai, or hell, Rest on Manaphy. The snowball continues. In both cases of banning an ability on a specific pokemon, or banning a move on a specific pokemon, you are doing the fundamental thing of changeing the pokemon.

It is the same thing. Admittedly the argument Articblast used was extreme, but it's correct. It's not equal, because Artic's argument is the end of the slippery slope, and the oh so common 'Speed Boost Blaziken' is the start of it. If we start banning specific parts of pokemon, where does it end?

Drizzle + SS is not banning a specific part of any pokemon, before anyone brings it up. No Swift Swimmer can have Drizzle at the same time, so technically, you are not changeing any pokemon with that ban.

If a pokemon is broken to the point where people consider banning a specific part of it, you ban the pokemon. Banning a specific part of a pokemon leads to a snowball effect, and you're not even using the pokemon anymore, technically. You're using something slightly different.

Personally, I'm fine with the current ban system, with the exception of the complex ban on Drizzle + Swift Swim. Especially as even after that ban, rain has led to the banning of Manaphy, and contributed to the banning of Thunderus, and is STILL a dominant force. After the complex ban and 2 other major bans against it, I think Rain should have just be outright banned in the first place, instead of making bans to keep it. [Not to mention we have something as awful as Gastrodon in OU because of rain]

That's the stance I had since Round 2 though. I was always anti-Alderon Proposal.

 

[Arcticblast]

I never said that Blaze Blaziken was like 60 BP Mewtwo, I said that they were similar. The idea behind each is the same. I had a short paragraph here, but Raikaria said everything I was going to say much better.

Also, unrelated, but there is no good abbreviation for Blaze Blaziken. That saddens me.
Anyway...

-> What is your opinion on adhering to game mechanics? I honestly think that we should adhere to game mechanics as closely as possible.
- Player-controlled elements - Sleep, OHKO, Pokemon bans, etc. - These elements are, obviously, up to the player. This is where we can be the most critical - these can be removed from the game without altering game mechanics. Even Sleep Clause is possible ingame, although it changes tactics a lot. I won't express my opinions on individual bans/clauses here. If an element of the game that is completely controlled by the player is broken, it should not be allowed here.
- Uncontrolled elements ("luck") - Freeze Clause, critical hits, etc. - We can't control these at all. As it stands, there's no way to manipulate Freeze. Sure, it happens. But we can't control it. Critical hits are the same to a degree. While we can manipulate critical hits (High CH moves, Super Luck, Frost Breath) this is most of the time a lost cause - High CH moves are still rarely critical hits, Frost Breath and the Fighting version of it are rather weak, and Super Luck's distribution is low and has been shown before to not affect the game too much (see GenIV UU). If we change or regulate things that are almost entirely beyond our control, we alienate ourselves from the original game. Therefore, these elements should be left alone.
-Evasion (including Moody)- This is a tricky one. While we can control our own evasion through moves and abilities, we have no real control over how effective it is. Boosting evasion through moves would, in my opinion, fall in line with the player-controlled elements. Despite the still-resent luck element, we can control, to some extent, how often our Pokemon are hit. Moody can be abused to gain these boosts. Boosting evasion through abilities would fall under the uncontrolled elements. Sure, we can do it once. Sure, TTar + 5 Sand Veil Pokemon is annoying. But we can't change it beyond its basic level.

I am personally against Brightpowder, by the way, but would not object to it too much. I use it in the GBU so I can't really say.

-> How do we ensure that we give consistent treatment to all aspects of the game? Does it even matter? I honestly have no idea.

-> How do we ensure that the ruleset is independent of hypothetical small changes to gameplay? Does it even matter? Again, no idea. Maybe I'll figure these two out some day, but for now I'm leaving them blank.

-> How do we even know if we're actually improving the game? What do "fun" and "skill-based" mean, anyway? We will never truly know everybody's opinion. However, what we know is the general community consensus - for example, that the OHKO Clause is necessary. Whether or not we are improving the game is up to our community. If an overwhelmingly large part of our community rejects a decision, said decision needs to be rethought.

 

[bubbly]

Instinctively I want to say, it should be possible to ban one ability on a Pokemon, but not a certain set of moves or items etc. But it isn't easy to explain why - the point is, I guess, that banning the ability alone is relatively simple, whereas cherrypicking allowable moves is not. Moves also are a much less fundamental part of the pokemon and banning them feels silly.

Also, can we just stop with these ridiculous "slippery slope" bs arguments? That isn't even an argument. Raikaria, when you touch yourself at night I'm sure you don't think to yourself "Okay I think I'd better stop now, if I keep this up I won't be able to stop myself"? Sorry for the creepy example, but the answer is No. People can actually use logic to determine the cut off point for any "slippery slope". As long as the process we use to decide the bans works adequately I don't want to see anyone just saying "slippery slope, slippery slope".

 

[Lucario_Guy]

I never said that Blaze Blaziken was like 60 BP Mewtwo, I said that they were similar.

I hope you're being sarcastic, because I'm pretty sure "like" and "similar" are synonyms.

And bubbly I couldn't agree more with your second paragraph. ^_^

 

[Woodchuck]

slippery slope

Aldaron's Proposal has not led to more illogical complex bans. Another ban that the majority of us find logical will not lead to more illogical complex bans.

And honestly, I think some of you are being too idealistic about the tiering system. Ultimately, we are creating a metagame that we want to play. The purpose of this thread is to figure out what kind of metagame we do want to play.

I'm actually surprised that this thread hasn't been brought up yet (as far as I know). I agree with most of the 'characteristics' enumerated.

Competitive
The metagame should encourage players to play to win.

This one seems obvious, but it's NOT about eliminating luck -- it basically means we shouldn't care about things being 'cheap' or 'lame' in the metagame as long as the metagame is balanced.

Variety
The metagame should have the widest possible variety of playing options and strategies that are viable and competitive for knowledgeable players.

It seems to be a general consensus that the more options a player has, the more fun a game can be. Consequently, words like "overcentralization" quickly pop up in reasoning over whether a Pokemon should be banned for restricting variety. However, this is possibly the most difficult characteristic to work with -- banning Rain might help other weathers be more viable, but one of those weathers may end up being more dangerous than Rain ever was!

Balance
All viable playing options and strategies should be as competitively balanced as possible, in relation to each other.

This is another obvious one, and is significantly tied to "Variety". We simply don't want to play a metagame where Garchomp sweeps everything to the point where you're running Scarfed Machamp to kill that dodging motherfucker. It also relates to playstyles -- a metagame completely dominated by Stall, to the point where every team has to run crap like Taunt SD Gliscor or Mean Look Perish Song Misdreavus, is not a fun metagame to play in either.

Stability
The metagame should have stable content that is consistent over time.

We don't want to just be changing the metagame on a whim. Therefore, it should be relatively difficult to ban things (though easier, imo, to unban things) in order to prevent us from just impulse-banning things we don't like without giving the metagame a chance to stabilize. It's not possible to adequately analyze a metagame that hasn't stabilized.

Adherence
The metagame should adhere as closely as possible to the rules, mechanics, and spirit of the actual Pokemon game.

This one... is a sticking point. I'm in favor of bans of only one entity: banning entire Pokemon, or entire abilities on every Pokemon that get them. In fact, I want to remove Aldaron's Proposal and test all of the Swift Swimmers individually: Moody was banned because it was broken on pretty much any Pokemon possible. It was broken on Bidoof. Swift Swim, on the other hand, is clearly not broken on every Pokemon possible. See: Magikarp, Luvdisc, Armaldo... Removing Aldaron's Proposal would give us more consistency in our tiering system and also possibly net us a cool Spiker in Qwilfish or fast spinner in Armaldo. :X

Skill
The metagame should require knowledge and practice to become an expert player and to achieve consistent success at the highest levels of play.

Yeah, we don't want an 'easy mode' game where you can win every game via Smashpass.

Luck
The metagame should allow a reasonable degree of chance to affect all facets of gameplay and game outcomes.

This was the one I was iffy on. In my opinion, the main place that luck has is in the tradeoff of Power vs. Consistency -- aka are you willing to run Fire Blast over Flamethrower and accept the misses in return for increased power. Also, strategies like parafusion is another tradeoff -- you are gambling a moveslot/Pokemon that the luck will go your way. At the same time, luck shouldn't allow a player to win a game against another player far more skilled than he/she is. Also, things like Paralysis and Confusion can be countered by Ground-types/Rest-Talkers and Own Tempo/switching respectively. On the other hand, Minimize can't be countered without Haze, Lock-On, or Unaware (or being lucky...).

Efficiency
The metagame should be as efficient as possible in execution of gameplay and resolving outcomes.

We should keep the rules as simple as possible. Nintendo isn't going to pull random crap like move restrictions on individual Pokemon, and neither should we. The game should be relatively simple to pick up with a banlist of Pokemon and maybe a few abilities.

...and that's my piece.

 

[jas61292]

Also, can we just stop with these ridiculous "slippery slope" bs arguments? That isn't even an argument. Raikaria, when you touch yourself at night I'm sure you don't think to yourself "Okay I think I'd better stop now, if I keep this up I won't be able to stop myself"? Sorry for the creepy example, but the answer is No. People can actually use logic to determine the cut off point for any "slippery slope". As long as the process we use to decide the bans works adequately I don't want to see anyone just saying "slippery slope, slippery slope".

As Acritter talked about on the last page, the slippery slope is not a "bs argument." It is a legitimate problem, and is very much different than the slippery slope fallacy that people love to try and counter it with. A slippery slope does not mean you won't stop, but that you have no logical reason not to allow more. I don't want to reiterate his entire post, but basically, there is no inherent difference between one complex ban and any other, so if we allow one, we have no logical reason not to allow others. You state that we can just use logic to determine the cutoff point, but I can think of no logical axioms that would make such a determination. I think what you are trying to say is that we can use common sense. However, that is subjective and has no place in a strict banning process. Now I am not saying that having this one complex ban will mean we will allow any others, but then, if we allow one, but don't allow others, then we are not being consistent. As I addressed in my first post, consistency is incredibly important for us to have. If we are not consistent in our policies, then why should anyone believe in the way we do things?

Either way though, everyone (on both sides) really needs to stop dismissing arguments because you just don't like them. That is not a legitimate argument and you just make yourselves look bad.

 

[Acritter]

Aldaron's Proposal has not led to more illogical complex bans. Another ban that the majority of us find logical will not lead to more illogical complex bans.

The reason the Drizzle+Swift Swim ban hasn't led to more complex bans is because it was recognized as a single exception, as a breach of policy. Nobody wanted to do it ever again.

The slippery slope is something very real: I assume everyone here remembers that fracas in PR, where Philip had to lay down the law? The one where he made a poll asking about whether it was okay to mess around with game mechanics for things like bugs and Sleep Clause, and next thing he knew there was a thread about removing critical strikes from the game? This same thing could happen to our banning process. The only reason it hasn't is because so many users are so adamantly opposed to that slippery slope.

 

[Raikaria]

Also, can we just stop with these ridiculous "slippery slope" bs arguments? That isn't even an argument. Raikaria, when you touch yourself at night I'm sure you don't think to yourself "Okay I think I'd better stop now, if I keep this up I won't be able to stop myself"? Sorry for the creepy example, but the answer is No. People can actually use logic to determine the cut off point for any "slippery slope". As long as the process we use to decide the bans works adequately I don't want to see anyone just saying "slippery slope, slippery slope".

Except we HAVE seen the slippery slope.

There was the complex ban on Drizzle + Swift Swim, which opened the floodgates for people to consider bans like Sand Rush + Sand Stream, Blaziken + Speed Boost.

But what is the hard evidence that the slippery slope exists, is Espeon.

We banned the combination of Magic Bounce and Baton Pass on the same pokemon, because Espeon was breaking Baton Pass teams. This was a complex ban, which one effected A SINGLE POKEMON. Thus, it's clearly Espeon that was the broken factor in this.

So why did we make the complex ban? To save Espeon. By all rights, since Espeon has a ban specifically targeted to keep it in OU, Espeon should have been outright banned. We've changed Espeon. Made a ban just for it. The slippery slope already exists. We've made a ban specifically for Espeon, and, technically, this ban sets a precident, for, say, banning Dark Void + Nasty Plot, which may allow Darkrai in OU. Or good old Speed Boost + Blaziken. We've done it for Espeon!

Logically, Espeon is the broken factor, as no other pokemon has the combination. Not to mention if Xatu magically gets Baton Pass in BW2, I doubt it'll be broken with it, seeing it's horrible speed, and lack of offensive presense like Espeon.

When it comes to Moody:
1: No pokemon gets it naturally. It's Dream World Exclusive.
2: Moody is broken on ANYTHING. In itself, Moody is a broken ability. Bidoof can destroy Uber teams with it.
3: Many pokemon have access to it, all of which Moody breaks. This makes it clear the broken factor dosen't come from the pokemon, but from Moody. If everything with Speed Boost was broken, we could blanket-ban Speed Boost.

Thus, I agree with the Moody ban due to the circumstances. It's a blanket ban on the ability.

Also, I'm not just saying 'Slippery Slope'. I'm explaining my reasoning, and giving examples. Meanwhile you, in response, made a totally uncalled for personal insult as the basis of your argument, and called in logic... which my example just here shows isn't working, because logically, since Espeon was the only abuser, or even USER of Baton Pass + Magic Bounce, we should have banned Espeon, instead of changeing Espeon just to keep it in the metagame.

 

[Acritter]

We banned the combination of Magic Bounce and Baton Pass on the same pokemon, because Espeon was breaking Baton Pass teams.

Whoa, whoa, wait. When did THIS happen? I was away from Smogon for a while, and I know I'm not omniscient, but looking at the Espeon OU page I see a BP set listed with Magic Bounce.

Oh, and regarding Moody, it got banned because every Pokemon with it was initially WAY below OU and became broken after Moody was factored in. When an ability makes fucking BIDOOF broken, you know it's the ability and not the Pokemon. If it was the primary ability for some Pokemon or other, well, tough luck. It'd have to make do with a very different movepool.

 

[pharaohcalvin]

Whoa, whoa, wait. When did THIS happen? I was away from Smogon for a while, and I know I'm not omniscient, but looking at the Espeon OU page I see a BP set listed with Magic Bounce.

Oh, and regarding Moody, it got banned because every Pokemon with it was initially WAY below OU and became broken after Moody was factored in. When an ability makes fucking BIDOOF broken, you know it's the ability and not the Pokemon. If it was the primary ability for some Pokemon or other, well, tough luck. It'd have to make do with a very different movepool.

Unless I am mistake horribly and missed something with my lurking powers, Magic Mirror + Baton Pass is still allowed.......

 

[GKhan]

As Acritter talked about on the last page, the slippery slope is not a "bs argument." It is a legitimate problem, and is very much different than the slippery slope fallacy that people love to try and counter it with. A slippery slope does not mean you won't stop, but that you have no logical reason not to allow more. I don't want to reiterate his entire post, but basically, there is no inherent difference between one complex ban and any other, so if we allow one, we have no logical reason not to allow others. You state that we can just use logic to determine the cutoff point, but I can think of no logical axioms that would make such a determination. I think what you are trying to say is that we can use common sense. However, that is subjective and has no place in a strict banning process. Now I am not saying that having this one complex ban will mean we will allow any others, but then, if we allow one, but don't allow others, then we are not being consistent. As I addressed in my first post, consistency is incredibly important for us to have. If we are not consistent in our policies, then why should anyone believe in the way we do things?

Either way though, everyone (on both sides) really needs to stop dismissing arguments because you just don't like them. That is not a legitimate argument and you just make yourselves look bad.

Certainly it's a worry worth considering, but I think we can make some logical distinctions, unclear though they may be.

Complex bans affecting abilities affect a small number of pokemon and largely maintain our current tiers. Banning moves or allowing ubers to be played in OU or UU (or OU pokemon in RU) if they are low-leveled completely redesigns the game we play. It would make all tiering-distinctions irrelevant because anything could be played in any tier, supposing it were sufficiently handicapped. The same cannot be said of abilities.

 

[steviestar]

The espeon thing is completely false. However, a true example of the slippery slope argument exists in RU and NU, where Baton Pass and Shell Smash are banned on the same pokemon in order to prevent Gorebyss, Huntail, and Smeargle from being banned.

 

[Blatreutka]

Whoa, whoa, wait. When did THIS happen? I was away from Smogon for a while, and I know I'm not omniscient, but looking at the Espeon OU page I see a BP set listed with Magic Bounce.

Oh, and regarding Moody, it got banned because every Pokemon with it was initially WAY below OU and became broken after Moody was factored in. When an ability makes fucking BIDOOF broken, you know it's the ability and not the Pokemon. If it was the primary ability for some Pokemon or other, well, tough luck. It'd have to make do with a very different movepool.

I'm with pharaphcalvin, I don't think this actually happened. That said, it brings up an issue with the whole slippery slope debate. Even though there haven't been any more complex bans, people have still voted on several and many think that we have implemented more complex bans than we have. For example, after we banned Blaziken a lot of people thought that we only banned Speed Boost + Blaziken, not the entire Pokemon. This comes from continued complex ban nominations and votes (in the old way of suspect testing). Over a year ago, there was a vote held about Baton Pass in ADV, where the options were: 1. Do nothing, 2. Ban the use of BP on more than two pokemon per team, or 3. Ban the combination of Smeargle + Ingrain. In the end, the combination of Smeargle + Ingrain was banned. In RU round 2 (about half a year ago), the combination of Baton Pass + Shell Smash was banned. It has been nominated in I think every other tier as well, but not banned in any besides RU. I'm not saying that the slippery slope argument is right or not (I'm still trying to decide if I agree with it or not), but I find that too many people ignore the facts when formulating their opinion on controversial topics.

edit: half-ninja'd

edit2: not sure if someone else has said this already, but I just skimmed Aldaron's original proposal and didn't find anything about it being a temporary fix. I know there was discussion later on about testing individual swift swimmers later on, possibly in the main suspect thread?

 

[Raikaria]

Oh, that was completely my derp there. I remember a discussion on Magic Bounce and Baton Pass. I think it was back during Round 5, when the discussion was if BP, Magic Bounce + BP or Espeon should be suspect.

Although I remember seeing a message saying Magic Bounce + Baton Pass was banned at one point. I dunno, maybe that was on the PO server during the period Smogon went down. That would explain my confusion.

Although, the Shell Smash + Baton Pass case is an example, albeit, significantly weaker, as it was a ban made to save three pokemon, not just one.

Tl;dr: I dun goofed and made a mistake. Still, the slippery slope argument exists with Shell Smash + BP.

 

[Godgers]

I think ability-based complex bans are a good idea but level-based (LV37 Groudon) and moveset-based (restless Manaphy) bans are not good ideas.

Ability bans would probably reintroduce 2 pokemon to standard (Blaziken and Excadrill) and could also send rather annoying things like sand veil gliscor and snow cloak froslass to uber.

But other types of bans could potentially reintroduce the 35 or so ubers, which would be too much craziness.

 

[tehy]

Seriously, though, complex bans just start muddying stuff up. A pokemon is broken or it isn't, you don't cut parts out and say "Oh well now it isn't". Those are my personal feelings.

 

[Acritter]

I think ability-based complex bans are a good idea but level-based (LV37 Groudon) and moveset-based (restless Manaphy) bans are not good ideas.

Ability bans would probably reintroduce 2 pokemon to standard (Blaziken and Excadrill) and could also send rather annoying things like sand veil gliscor and snow cloak froslass to uber.

But other types of bans could potentially reintroduce the 35 or so ubers, which would be too much craziness.

Blaze Blaziken was UU last gen. This gen's UU is much stronger. What you're proposing is tossing RU another Fire/Fighting starter. Excadrill won't get much more either. This is not sufficient compensation for opening up this stupid argument for every Pokemon. "Ban this ability on this Pokemon, ban that ability on that Pokemon." Elegance is a virtue. It's not necessarily a GOOD thing to ensure that the highest number of Pokemon are available in every tier. This idea doesn't offer anything significant to the game, and all it does is make the banning process even MORE torturous.

 

[Machi]

One thing I always considered with complex bans is looking back at the logic behind Aladaron's proposal - as well as several others which also looked at a different way of handling drizzle. That the complex ban was never to save a specific Pokemon but an entire play style that would have huge ramifications to the metagame and avoid a cascade of bans that would result from several suspects of Swift Swim users.

Moody would be at best an extreme example since the ability was just plain absurd and really exemplified where we wouldn't want the metagame to revolve around - namely luck but even past luck it was just absurd in the long run once you acquire one of three appropriate boosts. Besides even if that WAS used as an argument it was the ability itself banned rather than the combination of the mon + ability since it was broken on ALL its users (well except Glalie) and we have UBER logs to show for it XD. Its not like say Speed boost or Sand rush since we know that the other users certainly aren't suspect to it unlike the ones banned precisely because of their unique combination to the ability. So I don't see moody as being a good starting point for ever discussing a complex ban - since further to its ban it would be removed from ubers because of its violation of the evasion clause just goes to show much more broken the ability is. Hence, I don't see them in the same breadth of necessitating a complex ban the way drizzle did - remember proposals weren't just concerned with Swift Swim but all the other Rain play styles which we see heavily used today or team building around the weather.

In any case I never saw complex banning as a way to save or re-introduce a pokemon. It was something introduced not for a specific mon but for an entire play style or at least for an incredibly large scale implication. Neither of which I see with Blaze Blaziken or Excadrill sans Sandrush being of import in the same way drizzle was.

Edit: I guess another thing to consider about the complex ban of drizzle is that it was not just merely a matter of numbers for variety.

 

[X5Dragon]

For example, allowing Blaze Blaziken in OU is like allowing Mewtwo in OU, but only with moves that have 60 BP or less.

Moves never break a or make a pokemon, BST and abilities unfortunately do, that's all that needs to be said about these comedic posts.

You do realize that programming wise according to Aldaron it is just easier to eliminate or ban a pokemon from a tier then allowing one or two abilities to be played in standard and the broken one banished, right?

It was never in support of "if it is broken because of one ability it's broken by itself", it was just easier to implement.

 

[Acritter]

Moves never break a or make a pokemon, BST and abilities unfortunately do, that's all that needs to be said about these comedic posts.

b-ULLshit. Tell me for a moment that Blaziken would be Uber without HJK. Or that Breloom or Scizor would be OU without Spore and Bullet Punch, respectively.

I mean, come on, man.