Gothitelle / Shadow Tag Suspect Test

[Finchinator]

"if done right" is the keyword and saying that there's absolutely no counterplay to stag (or goth in particular) is giving the ability (pokemon) an extremely facile and one-sided look.

No, it (saying there is no counterplay) is not (giving Gothitelle an extremely one-sided look). Once you switch Gothitelle in to something, there is no switching out. Therefore, there is no counter play until your [insert trapped pokemon] is already crippled or killed. In fact, saying there is no counterplay to trapping with Gothitelle is entirely true unless you want to resort to the argument of double switching into Gothitelle each and every time, but that requires spot-on prediction and prediction's a two-way-street, so that's not a valid argument whatsoever, in my opinion, although it does have some practical applications.

(Goth) isn't super threatening to teams that aren't exceedingly passive (extreme full stall that should normally be packing tar for it anyway), it kinda dies if you bring it in on the wrong turn, it's dead weight in quite a few matchups and you shouldn't really be leading with your breaker that beats your enemy's entire team anyway which is how a lot of people seem to get trapped in these replays that "prove that it's broken"

Actually, Goth may not technically be "threatening" to offensive teams, but it is able to neuter a threat to stall teams (i.e: TWave or Mirror Coat Mega Gardevoir - I encountered both of these in cycle 2, Trick Manaphy, Trick or TWave Hoopa, etc. - just three commonly recited and seen examples, comparable lines of logic can be applied to Goth v [insert stallbreaker] almost all the time!) and subsequently make it either a challenge or impossible for someone to break stall. This actually ties directly into a point Reymedy brought up:

Stallbreakers :
We got a lot of them that can beat Stall teams.
We got some of them that can beat Stall and still be somehow viable outside of this matchup.
We got very very few of them that can beat Stall, still be somehow viable outside of this matchup, and not be totally ruined by a Scarf Gothitelle using Trick or Thunder Wave.

Gothitelle makes it so that breaking stall is a lot more challenging; even if there are a plethora of stallbreakers, there are a small amount of ones that can do much after Gothitelle is through with it. So yea, just because Gothitelle is a mediocre pokemon outside of its ability and that it lacks a presence to individually do work, it can be a nasty presence on stall that makes breaking it borderline impossible at times.

-----

With this said, pretty much every other OU player that posted has been in favor of some sort of ban, so I'm going to get into how I believe this should be handled instead of if anything needs to be done or not as that's the pressing issue at the moment.

One thing that I find interesting is the fact that (from what I've been told), a suspect (or whatever you'd like to label this thread as) wasn't taking place for this until Gothitelle saw significant usage and success in tournaments (which it did in SmogTour, week 1) despite it being dominant and a major nuisance on the ladder (see: Gothitelle / Mega Sableye / Chansey / Quagsire / Skarmory / Amoonguss or filler stall archetype popularized by BOF and specifically ABR). Now I question why we would suspect Gothorita or the whole evolution line without them seeing any usage. If you're going to make an argument to suspect more than Gothitelle, then the argument is to suspect Shadow Tag as an ability, not to suspect the whole evolution line like some have been saying, in my opinion. With this said, I think that a sole suspect of Gothitelle would be the solution the the problem now as Wobb still hasn't proved itself in any setting (ok, it has seen a small amount of usage on the ladder and can be an irksome presence, but it has no tournament representation, which Gothitelle needed for this to be investigated in the first place, and the representation on the ladder from Wobb is much less practical and directly beneficial than Gothitelle's). I'm not gong to write some essay (sorry to all of my fans) on what we should do as I'd be fine with seeing Shadow Tag going at some point or another, but given the line of logic applied to form a pre-requisite for this suspect to be put in place, I think that getting rid of Gothitelle only right now and then dealing with potential future problems (be it Gothorita or Wobb) when they come up is the optimal route.

 

[Shaka Brah]

No, it (saying there is no counterplay) is not (giving Gothitelle an extremely one-sided look). Once you switch Gothitelle in to something, there is no switching out. Therefore, there is no counter play until your [insert trapped pokemon] is already crippled or killed. In fact, saying there is no counterplay to trapping with Gothitelle is entirely true unless you want to resort to the argument of double switching into Gothitelle each and every time, but that requires spot-on prediction and prediction's a two-way-street, so that's not a valid argument whatsoever, in my opinion, although it does have some practical applications.

It's incredibly reductionist to ignore the fact that most breaker vs. gothitelle battles actually do involve pressuring goth around with hazards and either switching until it cannot feasibly trap your breaker or just killing it when it comes in on the wrong turn; if you're playing intelligently against goth stall they're never going to be able to trap your wincon simply by playing it safe and switching goth in the turn after your breaker comes in, and it's on the offense player to make sure that they're able to do so - meaning stall has to make agressive plays to trap the breaker. Not exactly a fool-proof way to win if your opponent can read it. When your arguments ignore actually playing the game they shouldn't really hold water in a serious metagame balancing discussion.

Actually, Goth may not technically be "threatening" to offensive teams, but it is able to neuter a threat to stall teams (i.e: TWave or Mirror Coat Mega Gardevoir - I encountered both of these in cycle 2, Trick Manaphy, Trick or TWave Hoopa, etc. - just three commonly recited and seen examples, comparable lines of logic can be applied to Goth v [insert stallbreaker] almost all the time!

Sure, you're right. That's its job - to cripple breakers. But it isn't anything exceedingly game breaking against a well-constructed team. For your examples in particular, I'm especially sick of seeing this "goth twaves garde making it useless" shit spammed in goth discussions because it completely ignores the fact that Garde is most commonly and optimally run alongside a healing wisher in this gen in order for it to actually be able get kills against less passive teams - take damage, healing wish, repeat. And you can HWish off a twave just as easily, also pretty much killing goth as it goes to T wave you, freeing you to break or whatever. If Goth has Mirror Coat it's not going to be able to use it on Garde unless you either sack something (which means Garde has already broken the Stall core) or coming in on a predicted Psyshock (Great play.) Standard Mana sets are total Goth bait, but mana completely shits on stall without Goth existing so it's more or less balancing the matchup (until people start running u-turn or shed shell mana which is popping up more and more on the ladder) which is a good thing in my eyes. LO Hoopa (its breaking set) doesn't even give a fuck about getting T Waved or tricked by goth - its stats and flagship stab are so strong that it can still feasibly pressure and break teams after Goth dies, either being slowed by T wave or being locked into a certain move like Hyperspace - and it also rarely gives goth a chance to even ~come in~ because its most spammable moves are dark type, which means that trapping it in that manner relies solely on prediction - which, as you say, is a two-way street - or sacking another mon, which means you basically get a 2-for-1 trade with your Hoopa and can still use it to pressure the rest of the team. Doesn't sound very game-winning to me.

Sorry if you have trouble understanding any of what I just said, I normally avoid these discussions because I'm not really an eloquent typer. Just a player with a lot of experience actually playing both with and against Gothitelle. It's hard for me to get my point across like this. The point I've been trying to make all thread is that Goth is a really versatile "swiss army knife" that helps certain team types stay viable but it isn't really the breaker-raping jesus that most people give it credit for.

Also, your stance on banning Gothitelle but not Gothorita kind of reflects poor metagame knowledge, because Gothitelle can do all of the things you just listed in your post except probably running Mirror Coat to kill Garde, and traps almost every relevant breaker that Goth beats in a similar manner.

 

[chimpact]

You can't pressure Goth with hazards because Sableye is commonly used with Gothitelle. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a gothitelle get hit by more than 2 stealth rock switch ins.

Theres only a few common viable that can set up rocks against sableye: Heatran, Clefable, Mold Breaker Excadrill. Heatran and clef both get PP stalled (unless its LO clef, in which case lol you're using LO to counter the trick so Gothitelle can't avoid the 3hko) and Excadrill gets burned. There's very little counterplay against that core. Even if you get hazards up it's not hard for skarm to come in and defog those hazards away.

I think a Gothorita suspect would be fine as well. I don't think it's as "detached" as Gothitelle because of the lack of bulk it has and its inability to be able to trap Keldeo. 4 SpA Heatran Lava Plume vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Gothorita: 124-147 (38.2 - 45.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Not sure how much bulk you really want to invest in it, but you can still get a few high rolls to 3hko if you invest a significant amount in SpD.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-268084893 Heatran and Starmie proceed to get PP stalled out of Scald and Lava Plume neutering any offensive pressure from those two mons. Gothitelle essentially knocks out two pokemon without any set up or prediction involved.

I've been resorting to Shed SHell Hoopa / Manaphy so that I don't get trapped by Gothitelle. It's just like Baton Pass where there was no interaction unless you had obscure moves like Haze to deal with it. Now you have to run deficient items. Shed shell on steel types is fine because Magnezone doesnt trap everything and it has plenty of switchins.

pls quickban

 

[Shaka Brah]

There are a fair amount of rockers you missed that can also get rocks on Sableye or make the game play out in a way that pressures Sableye, eventually making killing it or getting rocks feasible: Bulky u-turning lando, lum rocks chomp (sd or nah), the list can go on. If you're going to flat out say that it's impossible to pressure the 'mon with hazards then you haven't won against the team much, it really isn't as good as you're hyperbolically stating it to be. In the replay you linked, the Goth user doubled into goth on a sciz on turn 1, which I'd call a predicton, but it wasn't a prediction in your eyes I guess. Xray failed to crit goth once with 24 lava plumes and even after goth killed both Starmie and Tran there was still a feasible chance for Xray to win if he was able to take out Chansey with either a freeze or a Fusion Bolt crit - Kyu-B would kind of have won there.

About the deficient items: For one, Hoopa doesn't really need a shed shell because it really really isn't bothered by goth to that degree, as I explained earlier, you definitely mostly want LO on a stallbreaking Hoopa, but yeah, you're gonna need Shed Shell on Mana or something, not that it's even that deficient on a TG rain dance or CM rain dance rest set (it'll improve your consistency against stall amazingly in the long run, and lefties is rarely relevant in offense vs. offense matchups.), both of which have their way with stall teams if they can't get trapped by goth and have a fair amount of utility outside the matchup. Since Mana normally absolutely shits on stall and doesn't give it much of a chance to react to it I don't see why its teambuilding interactions with goth are unhealthy on the metagame in any way.

Probably gonna be my last post in this thread because the arguments are getting really circular and it's pissing me off. I've said all that I have to say.

 

[Reymedy]

There are a fair amount of rockers you missed that can also get rocks on Sableye or make the game play out in a way that pressures Sableye, eventually making killing it or getting rocks feasible: Bulky u-turning lando, lum rocks chomp (sd or nah), the list can go on.

Is this a list that goes on with other things unable to touch Skarmory at all ?

 

[Slimmer]

I think that getting rid of Gothitelle only right now and then dealing with potential future problems (be it Gothorita or Wobb) when they come up is the optimal route.

Why would we have to treat STag stuff in the same way as we treated Baton Pass? We all know what the issue is, it's useless turning around that just to "prevent" ban of apparently less troublesome mons, when this issue will likely recur w/Gothorita, Wobb etc. Just get rid of the root of the problem which is Shadow Tag, in order to minimize time and effort on useless things such as suspecting Gothitelle first, suspecting Gothorita and then Wobbuffet (with related amounts of discussion with players debating about "stag is the problem" "no its gothita" "lol gothita u gonna ban a nfe get good" etc)

 

[ABR]

So I decided to test out Gothorita over Gothitelle on that stall (Sab/Goth/Skarm/Chans/Quag/Amoong), and I must say it should undoubtedly be tested/banned alongside Gothitelle. During my tests, I used the following set:

Gothorita (F) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Shadow Tag
EVs: 248 HP / 32 SpD / 228 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick
- Psychic
- Thunder Wave
- Rest

This is the same set that Gothitelle runs, except with max bulk to tank moves such as (the less frequent) modest Gardevoir's Hyper Voice (252+ SpA Pixilate Mega Gardevoir Hyper Voice vs. 248 HP / 32 SpD Gothorita: 277-327 (85.7 - 101.2%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO) and enough speed for Garchomp. I have a few replays to support my case.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-270940714
Gothorita Twaves the Skarmory and later tricks it to allow myself to permanently keep rocks. If Skarmory does anything besides defog, then obviously rocks stay, and if it does defog, then Gothorita can just PP stall it out to get rocks at that point (which I did). Gothorita also breaks the Amoonguss in this game (although with a tiny bit of hax), but it surely shows just how much Gothorita can do to a team.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-270945610
Gothorita pulls off the usual tanking Hyper Voice and Twaving back strategy, which is generally a very reliable way of handling Gardevoir. It is known that Healing Wish + Gardevoir generally breaks this team, but this just goes to show what an inescapable Twave can do for an otherwise horrible matchup.

I think it is pretty evident that we should at least suspect/ban the entire Goth family, if not Shadow Tag altogether.

 

[p2]

I got bored and tried out that stall in an ou room tour and holy fucking shit, get this bullshit out of the tier now because goth just simply cancels out nearly every viable stallbreaker and rips apart slower teams if it gets its scarf back.

Everyone else has pretty much covered everything, but please quickban Shadow Tag, there is literally no need to suspect test it at all when the result is going to be the exact same.

 

[zbr]

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-270937746 <- timeless Zard Y team breaking apart ABR stall xd

On a more serious note, I think that Goth should be suspected rather than Shadow Tag as a whole. Yes Wobb can be pretty aids when you use the whole Tickle + Pursuit combo to break defensively oriented mons as well as utilizing Custap berry to a certain extent to ensure that it gets up to 1 kill per game makes it extremely limiting when we consider that there is literally zero counterplay to this strategy as a whole, however, Wobb is extremely situational and isn't as easy to abuse as compared to the Goth line. Tickletrap wobb works well only when the opponent uses balanced teams which require a defensive backbone to operate while custapbond wobb works best when the opponent is using a team strategy that revolves heavily around offense. This results in Wobb being potentially deadweight. However, due to Goth's access to a wider option of movepool, it is much more easy to abuse and denying the opponent of a counterplay because Goth can literally be tailored to fit the team such that it removes threats that the team doesn't like (see: ABR stall and vinc2612 voltturn HO) makes Goth much more detrimental to competitive play as a whole.

 

[PttP]

I enjoy how in a time span of 3-4 weeks stall has gone from "completely unviable" to being a topic for quickban discussion. I feel as though the topic of quickban should not be discussed seeing as how volatile the opinion of the community is on a daily basis. Who knows, 2 weeks from now stall will probably be seen as unviable again!

 

[dice]

i really think this is silly especially how a main contention the OP provides is using a sample size of 33 games and a 60%+ win rate. that sample size is practically negligible.

 

[DragonWhale]

I think the argument "stall is completely unviable" was silly in the first place. Even after Hoopa-U came out the a majority of top teams on the ladder were at least defensively oriented. It was never unviable to begin with lol.

 

[ABR]

i really think this is silly especially how a main contention the OP provides is using a sample size of 33 games and a 60%+ win rate. that sample size is practically negligible.

Have you been following olt at all? The ladder filled with "tour players" has had 1-3 goth stall users in the top 10 consistently throughout most of olt so far. It has also been a longlasting issue on the ladder before OLT, and that aside, the raw usage of a potential suspect in tournament play is irrelevant if the suspect at hand is uncompetitive. If we are not suspecting anything else at the moment, then there is no reason not to suspect an uncompetitive aspect because it isn't "urgent" or "used a lot in tours". As I and many others have stated though, this is an extremely urgent issue so we should be suspecting regardless.

 

[Harsha]

Please don't call it "uncompetitive" because doing so undermines the very definition of the word "uncompetitive." That word is so misused, and honestly the fact that you use it multiple times in your post makes me question whether you understand the true meaning behind it.

You shouldn't suspect anything just to have a suspect test.

If you would like to know why stall is so high on the ladder – because everyone seems to wonder why this is the case – perhaps you should look at how stall works. Good stall will beat most threats (but will definitely have a few weaknesses which can be exploited). This is why people considered stall bad. There is no way anybody will effectively argue against what I just stated unless they can provide a stall team that has no weaknesses (hint: none exist).

Like I said, good stall will beat most threats. You're not going to see the Pokemon you're weak to every game on the ladder. Statistically speaking, you can predict how often it'll occur given the usage stats. Stall will consistently win on the ladder because egregious weaknesses will not consistently be exploited. That doesn't mean those weaknesses do not exist.

I also hope you realize that stall having 3 spots in the top 10 is not even impressive. There are only a few styles; it's incredibly reasonable that stall will have a spot in the top 10.

Finally, please stop saying that Shadow Tag has no counterplay. It does. Shed Shell is counterplay. Smart switching is counterplay. Pursuit is counterplay. There is counterplay. People are just losing to something off-meta and it bothers them enough to want to ban it.

 

[dice]

a few of us have discussed on irc that a major problem with recent banning is that if something seems to threaten the status quo we aim to eliminate it. look at bw sun. it threatened the paradigm of being able to safely use your reuniclus spikes sand shit safely, and we banned it. that seems to be a problem here as well. instead of letting player influence shift the metagame to overcome the threats, we subjugated what endangered the comfortable playstyles. it is lazy. it is complacent metagaming. let's take a step back and not jettison everything that threatens our favorite teams for a second and maybe take some time to see how the metagame shifts. a quickban? seriously? if gothstall has seemingly taken over the metagame by storm so quickly, maybe there's a way to beat it that will parallel in its ubiquity.

gothitelle is a poor pokemon by design. it is slow and is reliant on a choice scarf to threaten things in this metagame (unless you want to argue non scarf goth is super strong and not matchup related!) if a weak pokemon is stunted by these parameters, it is most certainly not So Ridiciulously Overpowered We Need To Quick Ban it. if a stall team is taking up 1-3 spots on the top 10, that means other playstyles are taking up 7-9 spots on the leaderboard as well. is that not good enough?

 

[DragonWhale]

Please don't call it "uncompetitive" because doing so undermines the very definition of the word "uncompetitive." That word is so misused, and honestly the fact that you use it multiple times in your post makes me question whether you understand the true meaning behind it.

You shouldn't suspect anything just to have a suspect test.

If you would like to know why stall is so high on the ladder – because everyone seems to wonder why this is the case – perhaps you should look at how stall works. Good stall will beat most threats (but will definitely have a few weaknesses which can be exploited). This is why people considered stall bad. There is no way anybody will effectively argue against what I just stated unless they can provide a stall team that has no weaknesses (hint: none exist).

Like I said, good stall will beat most threats. You're not going to see the Pokemon you're weak to every game on the ladder. Statistically speaking, you can predict how often it'll occur given the usage stats. Stall will consistently win on the ladder because egregious weaknesses will not consistently be exploited. That doesn't mean those weaknesses do not exist.

I also hope you realize that stall having 3 spots in the top 10 is not even impressive. There are only a few styles; it's incredibly reasonable that stall will have a spot in the top 10.

Finally, please stop saying that Shadow Tag has no counterplay. It does. Shed Shell is counterplay. Smart switching is counterplay. Pursuit is counterplay. There is counterplay. People are just losing to something off-meta and it bothers them enough to want to ban it.

All teams have weaknesses, stall or not. That's not the point. The point is that I have to consider using an otherwise useless item on my manaphy because one pokemon with mediocre stats but a stupid ability has the capability to have their way with my team once they sack something and get a free switch into it. And Goth is not something I would call off-meta btw.

 

[dice]

DragonWhale harsha's point was not that any team was perfect, but instead that stall has inherently less 'wiggle room' due to its design. standard balance with pokemon like charizard-x, latios, etc has offensive pressure and can circumvent weaknesses much more easily due to the fact they have speed and power (aka more outplay potential). if one part of a stall core collapses, the team is much less likely to thrive. offensive and balanced teams don't have such a reliance on individual team members. that's one of the core weaknesses of stall in general, and that was his point.

sidepoint but stall is also much more commonplace possibly since it's a reliable playstyle to grind with. i vastly prefer using stall if i'm against someone who is worse than me (which would be most of the ladder playerbase for any competent player), and hyper offense can be variable in success due to its frailty. what purpose does stall having so many ranks (not that many from ABR 's anecdotal evidence, mind you) serve as an argument? that could simply be a result of the ladder being used as a means of qualification.

 

[DragonWhale]

DragonWhale harsha's point was not that any team was perfect, but instead that stall has inherently less 'wiggle room' due to its design. standard balance with pokemon like charizard-x, latios, etc has offensive pressure and can circumvent weaknesses much more easily due to the fact they have speed and power (aka more outplay potential). if one part of a stall core collapses, the team is much less likely to thrive. offensive and balanced teams don't have such a reliance on individual team members. that's one of the core weaknesses of stall in general, and that was his point.

sidepoint but stall is also much more commonplace possibly since it's a reliable playstyle to grind with. i vastly prefer using stall if i'm against someone who is worse than me (which would be most of the ladder playerbase for any competent player), and hyper offense can be variable in success due to its frailty. what purpose does stall having so many ranks (not that many from ABR 's anecdotal evidence, mind you) serve as an argument? that could simply be a result of the ladder being used as a means of qualification.

I have no issues with stall as a playstyle. It's a legit playstyle, and it's not like we can ban an entire playstyle. I was merely stating that stall was never an "unviable strategy" using the ladder as a reference. Of course like you said many top players use stall due to stall being more consistent over many matches. I'm not trying to argue that either. This thread is talking about shadow tag, which by itself isn't that bad but when you have a pokemon that can trap you, reach 376 speed, and choice lock you after a free switch, and my only "counterplay" is an otherwise useless item called shed shell if my pokemon doesn't have a pivot move (in which case I'll be locked afterward), there's definitely a problem here somewhere.

 

[jpw234]

Finally, please stop saying that Shadow Tag has no counterplay. It does. Shed Shell is counterplay. Smart switching is counterplay. Pursuit is counterplay. There is counterplay. People are just losing to something off-meta and it bothers them enough to want to ban it.

In what sense of "counterplay" is Shed Shell counterplay to Shadow Tag? Using Shed Shell is a pre-battle decision and it doesn't create "play", it completely nullifies Shadow Tag. The term counterplay does not imply "there exists counters" (in the same way that the existence of Aerial Ace does not constitute counterplay for evasion). Counterplay implies that you have access to in-battle decisions with a standard team to play around a threat. For example, despite there not being any hard counters for LO Kyurem-B, there is counterplay because you can e.g. switch to ScarfTran on a predicted Ice Beam and force KyuB out. Shed Shell/no Shed Shell is certainly not counterplay of any sort that is beneficial to a competitive metagame (you either have to have Shed Shell beforehand or you're screwed?) Similarly, Pursuit is only a way to reactively stem the bleeding, not counter what a STag user is doing.
Smart switching is obviously counterplay, but it seems an awful argument because smart switching is hypothetically counterplay to anything. Smart switching is counterplay to Mega-Kangaskhan if you're smart enough, but at some point the burden becomes ridiculously high, and the defensiveness of typical STag teams usually means that a STag user can cope with their opponent making a couple of good double switches.

 

[dice]

u r focusing completely on semantics and theory and not on the fact that gothitelle really just sucks ass. i mean really. it provides no defensive synergy (NADA ZERO) and only soft checks / attempts to neuter threats. it has terrible stats and there is no convincing evidence to prove that it's overpowered. there's so much bandwagoning going on itc about how it just Destroys your one stallbreaker, but cmon. goth has 4mss, only one consistent item, and can be a liability quite often. the stats presented are meaningless for now, and it's just anecdotal chirp chirping about how it wrecks your squad. we got through bw without goth being an issue. let's just see how the metagame develops and get some more definite, objective baselines before we start the shadow tag theory again. i've already been through it and i really cba to do it again.

 

[Leftiez]

/!\

/!\

Hello, I'm Leftiez one of the current ORAS OU Top 3 and no that's not a censorship on the character it's my real color.
Well I heard of a Shadow Tag Suspect and that's why i'm throwing in my two cents today. Remember 2 months ago when Stall was pretty matchup reliant and risky due to metagame being really aggressive (Manaphy / Gyarados / Gardevoir / Kyurem-B..), now it's kinda different and this only because Gothitelle started to be used, indeed Gothitelle found a great place in stall these days due to its capacity in neutralizing Stallbreaker with efficiency and ease, all you have to do is saccing a pokemon and come in to trap or trick a specific pokemon who can give you troubles, it wouldn't have been an issue if he could do it only one time but the fact that it can easily pp stall his opponent then trick it back in order to regain his item safely make it way harder to beat. We can all agree on the fact that Stall became more than a viable playstyle today due to the lack of good stallbreaker as most of them can be tricked or paralyzed (in case of Mega), however suspect testing Shadow Tag as a whole is not the optimal thing in my opinion, Wobbufet is really subpar and don't have much of a presence in the current metagame in addition to be able to do its job only one time as he doesn't have recovery but i'm ok with suspect testing all the Goth family because i can see it being used over Gothitelle. I won't argue about whether or not it's uncompetitive because both side gave really good arguments but for the moment i find stupid that we have to play at least 2 stallbreakers per team when we all know there are a few bunch.

Ban Goth Family!​

 

[Reymedy]

See, you actually don't need fancy words loosely used, or even a good english at all, to say smart things about Pokemon.

 

[Aldaron]

a few of us have discussed on irc that a major problem with recent banning is that if something seems to threaten the status quo we aim to eliminate it. look at bw sun. it threatened the paradigm of being able to safely use your reuniclus spikes sand shit safely, and we banned it. that seems to be a problem here as well. instead of letting player influence shift the metagame to overcome the threats, we subjugated what endangered the comfortable playstyles. it is lazy. it is complacent metagaming. let's take a step back and not jettison everything that threatens our favorite teams for a second and maybe take some time to see how the metagame shifts. a quickban? seriously? if gothstall has seemingly taken over the metagame by storm so quickly, maybe there's a way to beat it that will parallel in its ubiquity.

gothitelle is a poor pokemon by design. it is slow and is reliant on a choice scarf to threaten things in this metagame (unless you want to argue non scarf goth is super strong and not matchup related!) if a weak pokemon is stunted by these parameters, it is most certainly not So Ridiciulously Overpowered We Need To Quick Ban it. if a stall team is taking up 1-3 spots on the top 10, that means other playstyles are taking up 7-9 spots on the leaderboard as well. is that not good enough?

Not relevant to this topic, but wanted to respond to this specifically.

That's...not why we limited bw sun >.>

In fact it isn't even in the top main reasons. One of those was admittedly "having to use a higher probability of gimmicky shit to stop sun" but that had nothing to do with reuniclus spikes sand teams (at least for me). This was a talking point for years before that reuniclus spikes sand team paradigm exploded in popularity.

In fact part of the test was even to bring back Excadrill to have another viable spinner to reduce Reuniclus spikes sand spam so :X

Also note the usage of Reuniclus spikes sand in official bw matches post the limitation and I think you'll see yet another justification for why maintaining the "paradigm of being able to safely use your reuniclus spikes sand shit safely" wasn't even remotely close to the reasoning behind having the limitation.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That said, on topic, while I certainly appreciate (and even to a certain extent agree) with the sentiments of the OP and the anti-shadow tag side, pttp and dice bring up a litany of appropriate points, and before action is taken I'd like each of their points responded to in an intelligent manner.

In that vein, I would also like to reference Eo's posts here: http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...tegies-baton-pass.3537569/page-3#post-6261759

Yes, they were about a different metagame and a different issue, but the base points still remain relevant particularly in terms of being reactionary. For example, some questions include: How can we justify Shadow Tag quickbannings as not being reactionary? How can we justify Shadow Tag suspectings in the first place (remember, specific examples (logs) do little to demonstrate patterns or trends; they are the cherries on top that provide context, not the cake) when we DO NOT suspect merely for the sake of suspecting?

 

[dice]

point taken. although i would contend that this was one of the major voter influences especially considering they didn't have to qualify and were hand-selected via tournament performance. alakazam.. reuniclus.. bulky sand.. i group them all in the same mental subdivision since they all play identically.

but this is not pertinent at all to this thread..

fwiw i'm not completely against a goth suspect if there's more time, but seriously we've hardly seen it in any tournaments and i do not think there's enough usage to judge it. this isn't a mega gengar where the community is going to just all agree on the decision. with uncertainty comes necessity for more data and testing, and OLT 'domination' is not really sufficient evidence given it's the ladder..

 

[Freeroamer]

A ladder in which tournament players are regularly laddering and playing both with and against the team? If anything that's the largest sample size you could get as players are playing far more regularly than twice a week for what, 7 games at max? If this was regular ladder I'd agree with you but ABR qualified with the team in cycle 1, arguably the most competitive cycle possible as everyone wants to qualify early and have the "bragging rights" of saying they did it in the first cycle. I dislike the easy way you just trash arguments by saying it's only the ladder during the time when an official tournament aimed at raising the quality of ladder play is running. I don't actually have much to say on goth that hasn't already been said but I just wanted to express that I feel the experiences users have had on ladder with and against this mon, paticularly recently do have some value into providing arguments for and against.