OU Freeze Clause

[Jellicent]

I've seen this come up a few times recently, and it's something that I'm not even 100% sure on when it comes to GSC rules. I'm pretty sure Freeze Clause does not exist in standard GSC, but respected players have told me both ways. There doesn't seem to be a complete consensus on this, but regardless of whether or not Freeze Clause is the official standard, we should decide if it's something we want.

Currently, the only other gen with Freeze Clause is RBY, where you can't thaw out randomly and there are no cleric moves. That said, freezes are arguably a lot more devastating in GSC's defensive metagame than later gens, and they're mechanically harsher because you can't attack on the turn you thaw. The question is whether or not it's worth breaking cartridge mechanics to prevent concurrent freezes in GSC.

I'm gonna tag a few peeps that'll probably be interested in discussing this, sorry whoever I miss / if I tagged you and you don't care~

Bedschibaer Lutra Isa McMeghan M Dragon Oglemi Vinc2612 Aldaron Ciele Jirachee Zebraiken Eo Ut Mortus idiotfrommars Lavos Spawn Colchonero giara Mr.E Conflict Earthworm d0nut Picollo Veteran In Love jira Borat Joim papai noel Jorgen

 

[idiotfrommars]

Even if Freeze Clause is not part of the official rules in GSC, I still always challenge with it on. Getting one Pokemon frozen can be devastating enough as is, especially if you don't have a cleric on your team, but getting multiple frozen is game losing. With the slow game play in GSC, it is possible to fish for freezes as a win condition if the match is stalling out. I would rather matches get decided by the skill of the player as much as possible, as opposed to players rolling multiple 10 percent chances that pretty much take a Pokemon out of the match. One freeze is enough to deal with, we don't need the the possibility of more as it takes things out of the hands of the player. I would support the inclusion of freeze clause in the official rules, but I would like to hear what others have to say about it.

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Stadium 2 had Freeze Clause for the Cups like the original, right? I forgot if it did.

 

[M Dragon]

Gsc should have freeze clause

 

[Jellicent]

Stadium 2 had Freeze Clause for the Cups like the original, right? I forgot if it did.

Yeah, Prime Cup has Freeze Clause (though it has Self-KO Clause as well).

 

[elodin]

i think freeze clause is necessary in gsc, even if it's breaking cartridge mechanics.

 

[Isa]

I mean I don't think it is necessary per se, but I would prefer to play with Freeze Clause active. So, yeah.

 

[Picollo]

haha yeah please keep freeze clause also i think defrost was lower than in future gens (10% 20% ? ) and with that slowpaced game fishing for freezes is too bad i mean its not like GSC has enough problems with para-spam anyway.

 

[Borat]

i think netbattle started off having sleep/freeze as one clause? or maybe that was gsbots.

either way, i remember seeing some real bullshit with it off though. 2 freezes in a row is auto-win.

 

[Jorgen]

So it's always been customary to have it on, at least as long as I've been around (which isn't terribly long). In that sense, standard tournament GSC has Freeze Clause. Removing it from the GSC ruleset is a pretty recent phenomenon stemming from retroactively applying new-gen rulesets to older gens.

I've always ceded to mechanical purists on this one because I don't think it's really necessary. Multifreeze can be annoying but I never really thought it was especially likely or devastating compared to the plethora of other crazy ways one could get luckfucked by Pokemon.

At least in GSC. RBY needs it tho.

EDIT: to clarify my position: objectively, the standard GSC ruleset has Freeze clause. If asked to opine on whether it should remain as such, I'd vote no.

 

[Earthworm]

I am rule minimalist so I prefer not to have it. It virtually never comes up and is thus unnecessary. I haven't seen a team that is able to take advantage of lack of freeze clause before (i.e. a team designed to use Ice Beam a lot) nor do I think it is a viable strategy in OU or Ubers. Maybe someone can prove me wrong and use a freeze-oriented team. In RBY, however, it is a perfectly viable strategy!

re ifm: It takes skill to analyse the game to the point that you can create a situation in which you can win by getting a freeze, critical hit, etc, then executing that strategy. Pokemon is all about the player creating favourable situations for themself. Every time you use a move with a secondary effect (that can be applied to the enemy) you have given yourself a chance to establish a greater advantage over the opponent. I don't think it is fair to say that it takes no skill to win this way. Attacking a lot, and creating opportunities to attack a lot, often will lead to secondary effects and critical hit activations. I was criticised in my last SPL game because I didn't take some of my opportunities to attack and instead (in a way that appeared futile) tried to create opportunities in other ways. Maybe I would have won if I took more of those chances.

My understanding is that this issue is being considered because a programmatically implemented rule exists in one version of the game and thus we have an opportunity to lessen the effects of a very powerful secondary effect. The question in the OP seems pretty objective but it doesn't seem like anyone answered it (is this breaking cart mechanics?).

Anyway, in the case that it occurs it can very easily mean victory for the non-frozen person. Nobody wants to lose a game to such a low probability effect activation. So, assuming it doesn't break cart mechanics, in the end this just comes down to whether you favour rule minimalism or not.

 

[Mr.E]

Multiple freezes are pretty darned unlikely in the first place and Ice Beam isn't totally everywhere in GSC either, plus the addition of thawing (even at a lower rate than future gens) and possibility of clerics make Freeze Clause seem pretty superfluous to me. If everyone else wants it on, I don't care much either way.

 

[Mr.E]

this is why we need freeze clause http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2ou-117906

oh wait I wasn't frozen that was paralysis

 

[Xeze]

I think Freeze Clause is not necessary in GSC. The freeze chance is low (10%) and there's a chance of thawing out. Plus, as opposed to RBY, in GSC fire attacks are actually used. So if you predict a fire move incoming, you can switch in your frozen Pokémon to thaw it out.

 

[Mirabel_]

I oppose freeze mod's existence in showdown RBY, and I think it's a much worse idea in GSC.

Edit: was freeze a bigger deal during HP legends ban?

 

[Karxrida]

I oppose freeze mod's existence in showdown RBY, and I think it's a much worse idea in GSC.

Edit: was freeze a bigger deal during HP legends ban?

Care to explain why? Freezes are stupid in RBY because the only ways to thaw are to be on the field when Haze is used or getting hit by a Fire move, neither of which are likely to happen. A Frozen Pokemon is effectively dead, and getting it more than once means somebody is getting fucked.


I don't play GSC at all, but from my understanding of the meta I don't believe it is necessary to enforce. Thawing is possible (if not as reliable as later Gens), people actually use Fire moves, and clerics exist.

 

[Jorgen]

Care to explain why? Freezes are stupid in RBY because the only ways to thaw are to be on the field when Haze is used or getting hit by a Fire move, neither of which are likely to happen. A Frozen Pokemon is effectively dead, and getting it more than once means somebody is getting fucked.


I don't play GSC at all, but from my understanding of the meta I don't believe it is necessary to enforce. Thawing is possible (if not as reliable as later Gens), people actually use Fire moves, and clerics exist.

Not him/her, but most likely, the argument is this:
Whether or not it's "stupid" is immaterial as it constitutes a mechanics change. With freeze clause, it's no longer "RBY". Instead, it's our own weird modded simulator game.

 

[Ortheore]

What Jorgen said. Also in my experience, multiple freezes are so rare that such a blatant break from mechanics isn't justified, especially as playing for a freeze tends to come at the expense of other avenues of generating offense. That said, this all needs testing as I'm only making educated guesses here, I have yet to have substantial experience in a freeze clause-less meta

Also obligatory mention that the view held by Mirabel and myself is still easily a minority perspective

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

You really can't use the Mr.E game as an example, the odds of not freezing over 16 ice beams plus the odds of not unfreezing over five turns are almost exactly 50/50.

Any argument for freeze clause basically has to be made on the basis of multiple freezes, anything less is just good luck management.

 

[Earthworm]

Nidoking vs Umbreon and Blissey vs Vaporeon are good examples of times when going for an Ice Beam Freeze is a viable strategy, and I think it takes an amount of skill to identify that (e.g. in the Mr.E vs IFM game, a less experienced GSC player probably would have tried a strategy that was less likely to succeed and possibly lost because of it), but overall the opportunities are highly limited. You can throw out an occasional Ice Beam or Ice Punch and you might get lucky sometimes, but most of the time it doesn't work out well and there is a tradeoff. In the cases where there is not a tradeoff, it probably means there was a team building deficiency against that Pokemon which is being taken advantage of. The fact that these cases exist doesn't really affect Freeze Clause much in my opinion because even in these cases, most of the time there will only be one freeze. The dynamic can change if something becomes frozen and the matchup of, for example, Nidoking vs Umbreon is still present, which is the case that Freeze Clause becomes more relevant in.

Fishing for Ice Beam freezes in the above cases is hardly different to fishing for Critical Hits or Body Slam / Thunder paralysis inflictions. Almost everyone in the SPL knowingly fishes for the latter couple, and all three effects are very powerful. Admittedly, Freeze, when inflicted, is a stronger status effect than anything else in most cases, and this is compounded by the exceptionally low defrost rate. However, as aforementioned it is not well distributed and opportunities to fish tend to be limited, which balances it out to some extent.

Cases such as the example you posted are the exception. Only in extremely rare cases do multiple freezes occur in the battles I have watched (I have watched the replays of almost every GSC game this SPL and I don't recall any multi-freezes). Obviously I am not going to say that in that particular game a lot of skill was involved in beating your team, nor will I say that you played particularly suboptimally. I think most players will agree that sending Umbreon into Nidoking to potentially mitigate damage to your less bulky teammates is a perfectly acceptable move in terms of risk, so I will not criticise that choice. However, I also think it is incorrect to say that Tesung was mindlessly spamming Ice Beam against you in order to get the freezes. He probably either identified that going for Ice Beam freeze against Umbreon is a reasonable strategy, or predicted a Zapdos switch (neither of which are mindless) and then merely used it attempting to deal the most damage possible, and happened to get the freezes as a byproduct.

I understand the argument that the freezes (which were a byproduct of using Ice Beam primarily for maximal damage purposes) made the game far too one-sided, and that it would be convenient to prevent such a thing from happening, but because I don't think rules should exist if they are not going to make any difference for 99% of games, I still take the stance that Freeze Clause shouldn't be a part of the standard rule set.

I am genuinely interested to see if a team can be used with Pokemon like Articuno, Dragonite, Suicune, Blissey, and/or Snorlax (with Ice Beam), designed to actually take advantage of lack of Freeze Clause (by freezing more than one Pokemon at the same time), and win with any consistency. Perhaps a Curselax with Ice Beam could get past its stall team counters by freezing them...

 

[cookie]

how is freeze clause different to sleep? Which we already have IIRC.

 

[Royal Flush]

Sleep is just flat-out broken if you could spam it. Freeze is a 10% chance with poor distribution.

All in all, GSC actually has ways and ways to fish for any kind of luck, it's a fair punish game for passive play in general. This is why Body Slam is better than Return, this is why Thunder is better on the long run than Thunderbolt. What happens with freeze is that it has very few viable users. Nidoking is basically the only one, I guess Gengar can use it consistently against teams with Monolax without a Pursuiter (you shouldn't use monolax without pursuit though).

Conflict x Tesung game had first turn freezes which is something that isn't happening again anytime soon lol. We had a bunch of games with Nidoking on this SPL and no double freezes happened iirc. And to be honest, if the Umbreon x Nidoking matchup might end in an eventual freeze, it just proves that Umbreon suffers too much from passiveness despite being a solid pursuiter and general wall, which is why he isn't high tier in first place.

tl;dr don't add a mod clause for something not astonishing broken or with very slim odds.

 

[Mr.E]

Yeah I pulled the Nidoking v Umbreon thing earlier this year in SPL and got an amazing one turn of freeze out of my entire set of Ice Beam PP, so... that's a hilarious game though

Perhaps a Curselax with Ice Beam could get past its stall team counters by freezing them...

Curselax with Ice Beam is a thing but we call that set Porygon2.

 

[-Tsunami-]

Obviously, I am much less experienced in this tier than many of the individuals who have contributed their insights to this thread. In addition, I really did not have that strong of an opinion on this issue before reading this thread; I was just one of the many people who end up spamming the Smogtours chat or the PO game with a chain of laughs in all caps when freezes do occur. However, after reading the various arguments outlined in this thread, I have come to realize that this clause should not be implemented. I agree with the arguments that Earthworm presented, and I do not feel that it is justifiable to implement this clause. If you really want to play with Freeze Clause on, then by all means, do so. However, to make it the standard is illogical for many reasons. People go for luck all of the time; it is literally the only reason Scald is even used in later gens. From what I've noticed in watching many GSC games is that this gen provides a great deal more opportunities to go for luck than other generations, save RBY, due to the defensive nature of the metagame. I think that going for the freeze is a viable strategy in many instances, and if someone manages to get two freezes on you, then I suppose you should just quit this game because you are a very unlucky individual.

Multiple Pokemon freezing in a game is very unlikely as has been pointed out. There are no viable teams in existence that I have seen that are able to just mindlessly spam Ice moves to take advantage of the lack of Freeze Clause, so I don't really see how it is necessary in the slightest. People put themselves in the best position possible by trying to take advantage of every small chance that can go in their favor; getting a freeze is just one of the natural consequences that might occur if someone is able to successfully land a move such as Ice Beam on the opposition. Giving yourself as many opportunities as possible to get secondary effects is unfortunately part of the skill required to do well in this game, and I don't see how implementing Freeze Clause is justifiable because of this. Unless someone finds a way to abuse Ice Beam or something, there should be no reason for the existence of Freeze Clause in this generation.