Metagame Metagame Discussion Thread!

[Rowan]

For anyone planning to participate in the LC tournament over Wi-Fi this week
I have a question about how to build a team with a limited selection of Pokemon

I have

Chinchou
Abra
Houndour
Mankey
Taillow
Shellder
Slowpoke
Omanyte
Piplup
Torchic
Bulbasaur
Carvanha
Zigzagoon
Totodile

Hi welcome to LC - this question is probably more suited to the simple question, simple answer thread (also stickied). As for your question, it seems the options you have aren't the best at synergising and some mons aren't that great at all. I'd probably go for some kind of balanced team with Chinchou, bulbasaur, and houndour in a FWG core and sash abra just for a check to lot of things (since you don't have many options), and idk about the rest. Be sure to check out smogon's analyses for these mons, and use resources such as the viability rankings or teambuilding compendium on this forum

 

[Shrug]

Let me start this by saying: I do not think Abra is "broken" in the sense that it is overpowered. My main contention is Abra is a combination of skill and game-mechanic reducing as well as something that is constantly irksome to the enjoyment of the metagame; i will sum these together as something "unhealthy" for the meta. This is the point of Amaura and Gangsterish - Abra sucks in part because it is a shitty thing to fight against. This obviously isnt a banworthy criterion, or else a bunch of things would be banned that shouldnt be, but it does factor in to the grander point. The main contention is the adverse affect abra has on the meta, mainly, but not entirely, by vitrue of Focus Sash + Magic Guard. Therefore, people are questioning the idea of examining Abra's other strengths - why look at life orb sets when the main uncompetitive aspect is fs + guard. However, arguing a pokemon concept unhealthy is impossible in a vaccum - a concept's effects (and thus its import) are only present in the meta in which it is played. therefore, it is impossible to discuss the unhealthy nature of Abra's Fsash + Mguard without alluding to the power of the mon itself. Think of it like this: Sand Veil was banned in Gen 5 OU because specific pokemon (namely Gliscor and Garchomp) used its effects to create unhealthy (here, read as "too luck reliant") situations where a user is trying to easy pop the other team after a cheap miss. However, the gamebreaking nature of a Sand Veil miss is only present because of the power of Gliscor and Garchomp - if those two were replaced in the Sand Veil roster with Sunflora and Mightyana, there is likely to be no gamebreaking nature to misses. It is fallacious to entirely separate pokemon and ability.Therefore, even though nobody is claiming "Abra too op", we need some discourse on the way Abra itself exploits the possibly-unhealthy game mechanic of sashguard, as it is clear Soliosis is not tearing down the walls with the combo.

If anyone wants to pitch a fs + mguard combo ban that'd be fine but in accordance with what i said earlier, Abra seems the only potentially hazardous user, so i'd prefer it suspected tbh.

With my brief policy discourse over, i turn to answering some points posed by Rowan and fatty
w/o quotes to start because this is quick:
- fatty i may have misworded the end to my post, i dont think this lc meta is stale i thought the lc forums were dead and thus i posted this.
- yes hp ground is fake that was an obscure example to show countering abra is a difficult proposition if the user REALLY wanted to make it hard, that wasnt a true true argument.

ok now for a more specific / important time:

if i'm abusing a set up sweeper, why not add another so that abra can only reliably beat one? or add a pursuit user to ensure i don't have to deal with it? this is teambuilding 101 - lure / weaken counters to open up the opportunity for another pokemon to flourish. this also makes me want to address you comment about offense having a tough time vs abra. yes, you will not be able to pull off a sweep right of the bat, but if you're truly running offense, with multiple win conditions, what do you care? as soon as abra's sash is used up trying to counter one mon, the opponent has just opened themselves for one of your other offensive mons to do work.

Vs. offense, like fatty said, it can stop one pokemon really. Offense is a playstyle designed to wear down counters, and running for example 2 wincons can easily beat abra, and can sometimes take advantage of the fact that the opponent is using abra to check things. Waterspam cores are amazing at this, e.g. Carv+Tirt, Binacle+Tirt etc. Offense will break through abra, usually at the cost of sacking something, but offense is a playstyle necessary to sack things.

I see what you're saying in the sense that good offensive teams pack multiple setup mons, but the problem is they arent all used to take down Abra. First, if i were say playing either of you, i doubt you'd let me set up multiple mons for free - offensive pressure is real and not too hard to apply. Also, Abra usually isnt a team's sole check to setup mons, meaning even if you do get a mon up to speed, it might easily be checked by something else on the team; carv is fine to beat abra until the other team has a Gunk, meaning one of your mons has no value in outspeeding abra. This is sort of what i mean by playing with seven mons - in an offense vs. offense matchup, people usually trade deaths, and a guaranteed survive on an extremely potent mon is superb in that regard, essentially a 7th mon where a normal one would have been ko'd. My one critique vs offense is when it encounters a team with say 5 mons that check things and abra, it can do a masterful job opening holes for any of its mons to sweep, but regardless of that mon you free up, Abra will probably revenge it, rendering that setup useless and sort of denying the work you did in weakening other counter for sweeps to occur. These factors - Abra not needing to check everything, and when you do outplay the opponents checks in any regard, they have abra as a backup, combined with sweep difficulty on account of the opposing team's offensive pressure - means Abra is more hindering to true offense than you might have made it seem.

your mentioning of 50/50s when dealing with abra is an entirely misplaced use of the term. dealing with it comes down to good plays and good teambuilding. yeah, if you have something like scarf pawniard, you're going to have to be careful for fear of hp fighting. this just means you have to pivot and only bring in pawniard when the time is right, just like most switch-ins in lc.

Pursuit is dandy, but there are some issues to using it that arent brought up much. First is the difficulty of getting non stunky or lax users of the move in. Lets say you're packing a common one, Scarfpawn. If it's his Abra vs your Mienfoo, a guessing game ensues: go straight to pawn? Pivot around an HP Fight? etc. lets say you go straight to Pawn on the Psychic. You click pursuit and bring it down to Sash while it Ko's with HP Fighting. This is the same concept as the 7 mons thing - you take a mon who you have dead to fucking rights (slow weak dying to pursuit whether switch or stay) and it kills you in exchange for the mere opportunity to try and kill it again in a way that would have worked on any mon that is not Abra. That's... shitty.

the whole "it's two different sets share completelely different counters" thing doesn't work here. abra's still running the same set except different items, meaning lo is just going to smack fat shit harder. it's not a case of "oh i guessed wrong, now i lose". no, if you get nuked by lo psychic, guess what? you just found out that your sweeper has nothing to fear for setting up. if you're running a more defensive team, you're bound to and better have at least two mons that can take a hit and probably ko back due to abra's frailty. both sets are still going to have problems with fat mons, pursuit, and fast mons / priority.

Celestavian said something to refute this, I'll try to explain the rationale too. As I said before, sometimes you dont want your offensive counter to Abra going in v Abra because you know the sash establishes a guaranteed kill somewhere. You want something you're sure will soak the hits with ease. LO completely prevents that - shit that is considered an Abra fucker like Pump-ubergrande with max hp / max SpD + is 2HKO'd by nopredicts Psychic with Rocks up, goddamn. The response cant be "every team should run Stunky" which is the sure stop. The problem with the argument "oh once it's LO you can sweep with ease" ignores the fact Abra's teammates can suck up a sweep themselves - Abra is not used exclusively for sash revenge killing

Against bulkier offense/semistall, abra has a hard time as well, as without LO it's not very good at breaking through bulkier cores, especially things like PorySpritz, abra actually doesn't do very well here. LO does have a nice time against these teams, but that can be said about any wallbreaker (e.g. skrelp, vulpix) but because it's so frail priority it's easy to take it down, sometimes you need to 1v1 but if you're running a bulky team, lots of things can take at least a hit

It is of a similar power to Skrelp / Vulpix vis a vis smashing walls down, but with Skrelp the opportunity cost is: you're slow as hell and thus more likely to get donked by offense. Abra is still running the same crisp speed of 19, faster than all the fuckers; still bluffing sash and scaring out the things that dont want to go death-for-bring-to-sash; still forcing switches. Once you know it's LO it's easier to kill, but keep in mind both the fact you've given it a free presumably strong hit on a mon that was supposed to tank and will be giving another as you pivot out again - or let your mon die. The argument again is not "abra itself is broken" the argument is "abra is unhealthy", and the unhealthy Sash set is aided by the surprise power of the LO donkset. LO abra isn't broken, but it's something to considere when looking at fs + mguard abra as a whole bc it is important to its place in the meta.

your mentioning of 50/50s when dealing with abra is an entirely misplaced use of the term. dealing with it comes down to good plays and good teambuilding. yeah, if you have something like scarf pawniard, you're going to have to be careful for fear of hp fighting. this just means you have to pivot and only bring in pawniard when the time is right, just like most switch-ins in lc.

You're right in my usage of "50/50" to describe pivots into Abra being problematic. While sometimes it is a true 50/50, mostly it comes down to good predicts and plays and that is my bad. The other three uses still stand though I believe. Sucker vs. Pursuit and other such shenanigans are often luck based, the forcing of 50/50 setups vs. each other made possible by abra support is luck based, the bringing of a fatmon sash beater vs. a fast LO beater is still usually a guessing game. Sorry bout being unclear in the one part, my bad.

To conclude, given these ideas:

I am unsure as to whether or not removing Abra from the metagame is beneficial, and this is where I believe our suspect testing system fails: it doesn't remove the suspect from the metagame to see what it is like without having to play with that suspect. I can't find any posts about why this is so from the tier leaders who have implemented this policy, but I feel like it has worked for the other suspects, and I am not criticizing the system from Misdreavus back to Tangela and Yanma. Every Pokemon banned in that period was a cut above the rest; in a sense, they were "obviously" broken. I know there was some debate about Misdreavus, Yanma, and Meditite being banned and some calls to test them again, but you can't deny these Pokemon were above the rest in the metagames they were allowed in. Abra is not like that, which is why I feel there is such a stigma against banning it. Even I myself feel like banning Abra is silly sometimes just because it isn't the "best" Pokemon in the metagame. That is why suspecting Abra while keeping it available to use will not work, because we have already laddered with Abra for so long that we are blind to the idea of it possibly being uncompetitive or restricting teambuilding. I feel that if we were to suspect Abra, we would have to remove it from the meta to get an accurate picture of its effects, because that isn't as clear as the other suspects.

I agree with this. A lot of the shit i've been saying (and the other people with POVs similar to mine) is very conceptual and may just be specific to my experience in general, but i know other users agree and see this too, so a more concrete test (by removing abra) seems a helpful way to do show the points ive made

With that out of the way, to put into perspective in the best way I can my point of view, I believe that Abra is in the same lines as Yanma was back in Tangela+Yanma. Yanma was banned mostly because of its ability to just run Compoundeyes+Hypnosis along with U-turn, gaining free momentum and crippling 1-2 Pokemon along the way before it died, IF it died. Abra does something similar, which Celestavian talked upon. It basically gives teams free momentum, which can quite honestly make or break the game depending on how it is used. Yes, it is a revenge killer and will never switch in. However, once its in against normal teams its guaranteed SOMETHING, be it a OHKO, 2HKO, whatever. Unless your team is basically Ferroseed / Vullaby / Spritzee / Porygon / filler / filler, you will be hardpressed to find a safe switchin, providing correct prediction. That's the part that I find the worst, is that its so safe and forces a ton of stress onto the other player. You can say "get good" all you want, I don't think that prediction should be a precedent for determining a Pokemon's healthiness, as it basically turns away from the tried and true "risk v reward" and instead creates coin flips.

this is good shit too

no

badge this lady immediately

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Hi welcome to LC - this question is probably more suited to the simple question, simple answer thread (also stickied). As for your question, it seems the options you have aren't the best at synergising and some mons aren't that great at all. I'd probably go for some kind of balanced team with Chinchou, bulbasaur, and houndour in a FWG core and sash abra just for a check to lot of things (since you don't have many options), and idk about the rest. Be sure to check out smogon's analyses for these mons, and use resources such as the viability rankings or teambuilding compendium on this forum

So after selecting Chinchou, Houndour, Bulbasaur and Abra. The one I feel is kind of weak would be Bulbasaur and I want to probably have a Defog user or a Rapid Spinner as well as a Stealth Rock setter.

What god options would cover that role? I want to use Taillow for Defog and maybe Omanyte for Stealth Rock but I dont know if they would fit well along Chinchou, Houndour and Abra.

 

[infamy]

why are you all talking about abra when its obvious that baton pass is the real problem?
#truth #batonpissed

real talk though, abra is really splashable and it effectively gives every team an emergency check to every pokemon not named shellder. however, its really not "broken pls nerf" level good. offense has tons of priority to beat it, balance can take a hit to break the sash in most cases plus they often have prio, it cant ohko stallmons usually. plus, it cant switch in on anything. basically, just because you have to prepare for a threat doesnt make it broken. sorry for bad grammar and skimming over stuff but im on mobile and it doesnt like me posting walls of text :[

 

[Shrug]

I do not think Abra is "broken" in the sense that it is overpowered.

LO abra isn't broken, but it's something to considere when looking at fs + mguard abra as a whole bc it is important to its place in the meta.

. Abra is not like that.

Infamy i was unaware it was possible to post something whose every sentence brought up an idea that I had already argued or else ignored the entire point of the debate, guess i learned

 

[apt-get]

Infamy i was unaware it was possible to post something whose every sentence brought up an idea that I had already argued or else ignored the entire point of the debate, guess i learned

your points are irrelevant to his opinion. If he does not think sash is broken, then saying we need to look at a complex ban doesn't matter

I personally never had any issues with Abra. Honestly, this sounds like a dumb suspect idea, as Abra still has a ton of offensive checks, including every scarfer in existence. Being able to take a hit isn't really relevant when you're too weak to OHKO things like timburr and basically every frail attacker ever, while LO has tons of troubles with revenge killing and setting up once you know that it can do jack shit vs you. Shared checks are also a thing

I also don't feel like reading a wall of text, I'm sure you've probably addressed these points in your post, but experience is always better than theorymonning, and my experience tells me that abra is easy to deal with most of the time

 

[Shrug]

your points are irrelevant to his opinion. If he does not think sash is broken, then saying we need to look at a complex ban doesn't matter

I dont think Abra is broken either. that was the first sentence i wrote in my wall of text. My contention is "the explotation of sash + guard by Abra and its strengths as a mon is not too powerful for the meta, but does have an adverse effect that we need to look at". So that's more the debate

 

[kingmidas]

I dont think Abra is broken either. that was the first sentence i wrote in my wall of text. My contention is "the explotation of sash + guard by Abra and its strengths as a mon is not too powerful for the meta, but does have an adverse effect that we need to look at". So that's more the debate

So you're hiding behind a backdoor of ruining abra, in return for not just flat out banning it. A rose by any other name is just as sweet, and ruining abras main niche is the same as banning it, its the same as trying to get a complex ban of chlorophyll + drought so vulpix could've stayed in gen 5 lc. If everyone knew abra was LO, it'd be seriously restricted, I guess scarf becomes relevant but I mean that shit is weak because you lose out on abusing coverage options. If you don't think its broken, no point to have a suspect, you just danced around the point so someone else would cover you.

 

[Shrug]

I'm on mobile rn so I can't quote but read paragraphs 1 and 2 of the wall post, I want an abra ban, the REASON is bc it is unhealthy not bc it is broken

 

[tcr]

So you're hiding behind a backdoor of ruining abra, in return for not just flat out banning it. A rose by any other name is just as sweet, and ruining abras main niche is the same as banning it, its the same as trying to get a complex ban of chlorophyll + drought so vulpix could've stayed in gen 5 lc. If everyone knew abra was LO, it'd be seriously restricted, I guess scarf becomes relevant but I mean that shit is weak because you lose out on abusing coverage options. If you don't think its broken, no point to have a suspect, you just danced around the point so someone else would cover you.

He doesn't think its broken, he thinks its unhealthy. The best comparison i can think of to that is, a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Being Broken is equivalent to being unhealthy, but being unhealthy is not the same thing as being broken. For starters you can be a shitter like Yanma, who was nowhere near as broken as Pokemon like Tangela or Murkrow, instead was banned bc Compoundeyes + Hypnosis was considered unfun to play against and was too easy for little risk involved.

 

[kingmidas]

He doesn't think its broken, he thinks its unhealthy. The best comparison i can think of to that is, a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Being Broken is equivalent to being unhealthy, but being unhealthy is not the same thing as being broken. For starters you can be a shitter like Yanma, who was nowhere near as broken as Pokemon like Tangela or Murkrow, instead was banned bc Compoundeyes + Hypnosis was considered unfun to play against and was too easy for little risk involved.

unhealthy is simply a buzz word, a mon can be incredibly good in a metagame, but it cannot really be unhealthy, if it were it'd be ban for being broken in the sense it breaks the game, it doesn't need to be an overwhelming diverse mon to be broken. Yanma was also "broken" with compound eyes + hypnosis in a sense, it was incredibly hard to stop from doing its job, as it outpaced the entire unboosted tier bar the other irrelevant 20s in that metagame, and has an accurate sleeping move, meant it could continue to keep sleeping, + it had u-turn and sub sets to abuse the momentum, it also hit decently hard and has a speed boost set that seemed to be overlooked for no reason when it did some damage.

 

[tcr]

unhealthy is simply a buzz word, a mon can be incredibly good in a metagame, but it cannot really be unhealthy, if it were it'd be ban for being broken in the sense it breaks the game, it doesn't need to be an overwhelming diverse mon to be broken. Yanma was also "broken" with compound eyes + hypnosis in a sense, it was incredibly hard to stop from doing its job, as it outpaced the entire unboosted tier bar the other irrelevant 20s in that metagame, and has an accurate sleeping move, meant it could continue to keep sleeping, + it had u-turn and sub sets to abuse the momentum, it also hit decently hard and has a speed boost set that seemed to be overlooked for no reason when it did some damage.

actually Moody and OHKO moves are both perfect examples of something that is "unhealthy." Gen 5's BW OU Sand Veil + Snow Warning ban was also labeled "unhealthy." None of those were ever "broken." They each pretty much relied on luck, turning the game less away from the better player and more to a coinflip, and I would argue that Abra can do something similar. As I stated before, a good Abra player basically forces the other player to predict correctly. There are very few hard counters to Abra, as even things like Porygon and Vullaby can be 2hkoed, Vullaby doesn't even need to be hit by a Life Orb boosted attack. Yeah, every game requires some form of prediction to win, however the main difference is that they also require risk v reward scenarios. Using Abra literally takes no risk involved for such a potent cleaner / wallbreaker, bar taking up a spot on your team. This is what I think truly sets Abra above other random sweepers, its ability to almost always guarantee a kill or severely weaken a Pokemon to the point where its useless for anything but fodder, without any risk involved, and this is why I think its a shitter to teambuild against. Call me bad at playing or whatever, but those are my thoughts.

 

[Rowan]

some thoughts

abra isn't broken, everyone agrees

unhealthy = too luck reliant, e.g. evasion, moody

abra isn't luck reliant it's not a random strategy that lesser players can hax the shit out of better players with, how is it unhealthy?

As I stated before, a good Abra player basically forces the other player to predict correctly. There are very few hard counters to Abra, as even things like Porygon and Vullaby can be 2hkoed, Vullaby doesn't even need to be hit by a Life Orb boosted attack. Yeah, every game requires some form of prediction to win, however the main difference is that they also require risk v reward scenarios. Using Abra literally takes no risk involved for such a potent cleaner / wallbreaker, bar taking up a spot on your team

This seems to be arguing that abra is broken, since you're saying it's basically too strong for the metagame to handle. I would disagree with this as shown in my posts that Abra is possible to handle and it's just simply a good mon. It's not risk vs. reward, the risk is that it can't switch in whatsoever so you're essentially playing with 5 mons, and once it has taken a hit, it's so easy to get round.

 

[kingmidas]

Js, I said mon=pokemon not ability or moves, but evasion/moody did break the game as it eliminated the need for non-luck based play for both sides.

 

[infamy]

Infamy i was unaware it was possible to post something whose every sentence brought up an idea that I had already argued or else ignored the entire point of the debate, guess i learned

SORRY WHAT DID YOU SAY I COULDNT HEAR YOU OVER ALL THOSE SHOTS BEING FIRED
legimately, there was nothing wrong with my post. i have a responsibility as a member of the community to state my opinion and make it clear that you are, in fact, the only person who supports an abra ban and as such are only a vocal minority. all these walls of text youre posting arent doing anything but showing that no one supports you on this.
oh, and if youre having problems with abra, try building better teams.
/drag

 

[Shrug]

unhealthy = too luck reliant

Defining unhealthy like this would exclude Abra from the definition, but i dont think that's neccisarily the only one. other ones might include:

From Blarajan in suspect thread 4:

Is Misdreavus / Fletchling making Little Cup not fun?

there is a legit argument for that w/r/t Abra, Gangersterish / Amaura etc have made it, and I agree.

in terms of being luck based:
- what i said about incentivizing 50/50 cosetups (i can throw it back to a formerly-Hawkstar post explaining as much)
- what celestavian said bout the LO / Sash guessing game being suuuuper influential on battles - and you have no way of telling which is which until your "counter" is 2HKOd
- the fact the 50/50 prediction game to get at Abra is super important and even "winning" that 50/50 means your check gets bodied while Abra lives a hit w/ sash and kills. Summed up by Amaura like this:

Abra player basically forces the other player to predict correctly.

to which you said that it seemed the argument is Abra is overpowered, which we all agree it is not. I disagree with your interpretation though; I think predicting correctly every time to have a shot at beating Abra is unhealthy. Abra wouldn't run through a team of Abra checks like an overpowered mon might, but it could take out a couple simply by virtue of prediction, prediction that: a) is only vital to you and not the Abra user, as Sash exists and b) even if you win, you still might end up with a check being bodied as you take Abra to the Sash. Like amaura gets to later, the 50/50s are entirely biased in favor of the Abra user.

and related: the lack of oppertunity cost for Abra. if you get it in against something it outspeeds and threatens out (theres on on every team), it is getting two hits for free vs any team coming from some of the highest SpA and Speeds of any mon in the metagame, and there is literally no way to prevent it. Combine this with the fact it 2HKO's the meta and you have a serious issue. This is unlike other offensive mons which fear prio / pursuit etc, which Abra does only in select few cases (as it bodies shit that uses these moves).

So if you expand "unhealthy" to include some of the stuff above, you're looking at a mon that very clearly has a negative impact on the meta. I understand fully if we're going to stick to "bans are for overpowered or luck-inducing things"; that is reasonable. However, if we do look at things for making the meta shittier (more luck-based less skill-intensive etc), Abra has a strong case to go. Lc is a less matchup-reliant, more balanced tier than some of the more played ones. However, the thing that drives people away is the so-called "lc bullshit", and i think Abra is a part of that. Idk just things to consider. If we do it - for a a trial - removing it would be best as was proposed earlier.

SORRY WHAT DID YOU SAY I COULDNT HEAR YOU OVER ALL THOSE SHOTS BEING FIRED
legimately, there was nothing wrong with my post. i have a responsibility as a member of the community to state my opinion and make it clear that you are, in fact, the only person who supports an abra ban and as such are only a vocal minority. all these walls of text youre posting arent doing anything but showing that no one supports you on this.
oh, and if youre having problems with abra, try building better teams.
/drag

i would have offered a line-by-line rebuttal to your post but i literally already had before you posted it - the post you criticized (ignored is a better word) contained responses to all of your opinions that are oh so vital to the lc community. Im p sure there are other users who support an Abra suspect but ik you cant tell what they were saying because their posts contain more than 50 words. I know an Abra suspect would be tough for you because you cant build teams without gaping holes and need your omg winstopper but people who can leverage abra effectively can do it to a debatably unhealthy degree. If you can read you know stunky is the sole sure stop for Abra prediction bullshit. Basically I consider it a greater community responsibility to actually understand the discourse instead of saying "omg abra not broken tehehe" as literally no one said it was and yet that was the crux of your post.

 

[tcr]

SORRY WHAT DID YOU SAY I COULDNT HEAR YOU OVER ALL THOSE SHOTS BEING FIRED
legimately, there was nothing wrong with my post. i have a responsibility as a member of the community to state my opinion and make it clear that you are, in fact, the only person who supports an abra ban and as such are only a vocal minority. all these walls of text youre posting arent doing anything but showing that no one supports you on this.
oh, and if youre having problems with abra, try building better teams.
/drag

- the post you criticized (ignored is a better word) contained responses to all of your opinions that are oh so vital to the lc community.

Can you guys stop dragging ad hominems into this thread and actually have a formal discussion, especially considering this is the first real discussion in a while. There's no point to shitposting in this thread, go do it in Firebot. Also, I for one, support at the least an Abra suspect, and support Shrug. Regardless, being a vocal minority isn't really an excuse NOT to suspect it, as we lose nothing from testing it. I'm certain there are some users who would like an Abra-less meta. Really, the whole main point of this is defining what is considered "unhealthy" and to what extent a Pokemon can be unhealthy and still be allowed. Rowan already brought up that Unhealthy = too much luck involved, which is certainly true for things like Evasion Clause, CEyes + Hypnosis Yanma, and more. However, I would argue that Abra's position as probably the best momentum-grabber combined with its 19 Speed tier and amazing SpA put it at an unhealthy level, forcing your opponent into prediction. My statement is thus: Abra either forces you to run shitty mons like Stunky that probably would never even exist without Abra's existence, or it completely negates traditional risk v reward. Example, rocks are up, Abra is in, and you have Skrelp or something. You don't know its item. You can switch into your Vullaby and eat a Dazzling Gleam that 2hkoes, you can eat the Psychic. There is no risk verse reward scenario here. It is literally a 50/50, either you win and Abra hits Dgleam or you lose and Vullaby dies.

prediction that: a) is only vital to you and not the Abra user, as Sash exists and b) even if you win, you still might end up with a check being bodied as you take Abra to the Sash.

^thesis

 

[infamy]

we didnt lose anything from retests either but those didnt happen ?_?
cant have it both ways guys

anyway im tired and im bored of shrug being a wannabe heysup so night fam

 

[mad0ka]

people say we lose nothing from tests but then complain about how certain tests like bpass make the community a joke and shouldn't have even happened??? but we lost nothing from the bpass suspect!!
for real an abra suspect would make me quit

 

[RZL]

Honestly, there is nothing to lose when a suspect test happens, but when I find there is nothing that is broken, or should be nerfed, I typically vote, "Ban Leftovers". I do this because I think it would help new players not use leftovers, but there is no reason that it should be banned. How would I argue a ban leftovers, I wouldn't. A suspect test can promote activity, but a suspect test should never been done for that reason alone (If I remember correctly macle or someone posted this a while back). I feel like if we had a suspect test right now, we would get a lot of Assault Vest, Male Combee, and leftovers, among other "joke bans". I doubt Abra would actually be banned as, I honestly can not find a valid enough reason for it to be. It is not unhealthy, it can be trapped, it only has two viable sets, most Pokemon take a neutral hit from it, and it is weak to priority after its sash is broken as, it doesn't not have any of its own. It second set Life Orb is very weak to priority.

I would be disappointed we everyone, including myself for that matter, if an Abra suspect test happened.
tl;dr This is more a rant on why a bad suspect test is still bad, and a little of why I think Abra would be a bad suspect.

 

[kingmidas]

Honestly, there is nothing to lose when a suspect test happens, but when I find there is nothing that is broken, or should be nerfed, I typically vote, "Ban Leftovers". I do this because I think it would help new players not use leftovers, but there is no reason that it should be banned. How would I argue a ban leftovers, I wouldn't. A suspect test can promote activity, but a suspect test should never been done for that reason alone (If I remember correctly macle or someone posted this a while back). I feel like if we had a suspect test right now, we would get a lot of Assault Vest, Male Combee, and leftovers, among other "joke bans". I doubt Abra would actually be banned as, I honestly can not find a valid enough reason for it to be. It is not unhealthy, it can be trapped, it only has two viable sets, most Pokemon take a neutral hit from it, and it is weak to priority after its sash is broken as, it doesn't not have any of its own. It second set Life Orb is very weak to priority.

I would be disappointed we everyone, including myself for that matter, if an Abra suspect test happened.
tl;dr This is more a rant on why a bad suspect test is still bad, and a little of why I think Abra would be a bad suspect.

You do not ban something simply because something is bad, it gives people the wrong idea about bans, and this kind of stuff doesn't hurt anybody to be around other than our eyes.

 

[blarajan]

also yeah I'd probably force macle (I'm shadow leading LC) to threaten infractions for joke votes

Voting in suspect tests is a privilege not a venue for edgy likes

 

[Ray Jay]

And we all know you should never get blarajan started on privilege.

On a serious note to this post: I think an Abra ban is misguided. Not to detract from the very good work done by Amaura and others in their posts, but I think to ban Abra is to eliminate a valid playstyle of LC. Abra is a staple of "safe" teams. Using risky Pokemon is unsurprisingly a risk with some payoff value, which "good" players are frequently able to make use of more than non-good players. Abra is at the other end of the spectrum, and as it lacks this risk factor, it can be used more effectively by a larger percentage of the playerbase. My problem is that "riskiness" seems to me to be a characteristic impossible to quantify, and yet the argument seems to be Abra is beyond x point of safeness and therefore needs to be banned. I'd need to see a more effective argument on how we quantiy "safeness" and why that's actually a bad thing, and how it also doesn't apply to Mienfoo.

 

[tcr]

And we all know you should never get blarajan started on privilege.

On a serious note to this post: I think an Abra ban is misguided. Not to detract from the very good work done by Amaura and others in their posts, but I think to ban Abra is to eliminate a valid playstyle of LC. Abra is a staple of "safe" teams. Using risky Pokemon is unsurprisingly a risk with some payoff value, which "good" players are frequently able to make use of more than non-good players. Abra is at the other end of the spectrum, and as it lacks this risk factor, it can be used more effectively by a larger percentage of the playerbase. My problem is that "riskiness" seems to me to be a characteristic impossible to quantify, and yet the argument seems to be Abra is beyond x point of safeness and therefore needs to be banned. I'd need to see a more effective argument on how we quantiy "safeness" and why that's actually a bad thing, and how it also doesn't apply to Mienfoo.

Personally I would say that it also applies to Mienfoo. I've been pushing for a Mienfoo ban since before Misdreavus was banned, but that's beside the point and a topic for another day.

The "safeness" factor cannot be quantified, in the same way that "unhealthiness" cannot be quantified. To put it into perpespective, the reason Abra is on my shitlist is because of its ability to essentially have two lives. Normal Sash users you break their sash and they can't switch back in bc of hazards, status, weather, w/e. They're at 1 HP, they die. However Abra completely negates that, effectively allowing it to be both a wallbreaker and a cleaner for unprepared teams. And by unprepared, I mean teams that DON'T have Stunky / Vullaby. Since you specified Mienfoo, I'm going to use it as an example (this is not what I think of mienfoo, I actually think its a complete shit and should go). Assuming Mienfoo is a good "safe" Pokemon, we realize these points. 1) It can be OHKOed. By a lot of things (Archen, Fletchling, etc) 2) It can be extremely useless. I.e. it gets burned by Ponyta / Larvesta, and is irrelevant. Essentially fodder for something else. 3) It can be set up bait (BU Timburr, SD Fletchling). However, it is considered "safe" because of its good pivoting abilities along with its moderately strong moves. It checks half of the Pokemon in Little Cup by existing and has great support in luring things in for others to sweep.

Looking at those points from Abra's perspective, it can NEVER be OHKOed, unless it like, switches in on lol Zigzagoon Pin Missile. It is almost NEVER useless, nothing can really switch in reliably except for Stunky and the only status that it minds is Paralysis, which most things don't run Thunder Wave anyway. Lastly, it is not setup fodder. The only true thing that it can really be set up fodder for are things like Spritzee after it has already obtained a boost (Spritzee needs to be at exactly full health with no hazards down to not possibly be 2hkoed). It just carries almost zero risk to actually use it, and will never make your team weak to any specific Pokemon (whereas Mienfoo could make your team weak to say, Fletchling, or BU timburr, or Ponyta).

popping in to say that anyone who thinks Abra is suspect worthy is dumb and should learn how a meta works

Abra has pretty obvious strengths and faults. if you're finding abra needs testing your teams probably blow

Can we stop with the edgy posts? Just because you disagree with something doesn't mean that everyone else is bad, further more your post contributes absolutely nothing other than drivel

 

[Wobbyble]

However Abra completely negates that, effectively allowing it to be both a wallbreaker and a cleaner for unprepared teams. And by unprepared, I mean teams that DON'T have Stunky / Vullaby.

So you're saying if you don't prepare for something then you will get dumped on by it? Alright. I'm sure that Vullaby and Stunky are literally the only two Pokemon in the game that can deal with Abra.

What I don't get is why you're only talking about Abra's strengths. Why don't you focus on the fact that it brings absolutely NOTHING to your team in terms of defensive coverage? That playing around the enemy to keep your Sash intact has an opportunity cost? Or keeping a 1 HP Abra alive also has similar costs?