My Theories about Banning

[kd24]

we dont ban things for centralizing anyway so that entire point is moot. i don't think anyone competent is saying blissey doesn't centralize the metagame as much as mence, hell mence really didn't.

despite blissey shutting a lot of pokemon down, there are still tons of viable pokemon and blissey herself isn't broken so...i'm not really seeing the point of any of that. so blissey centralizes more than other pokemon? yeah, but why should that be discussed and how exactly would you fix it?

 

[Away]

I think you're all harping on the first point of his post, and completely ignoring the second.

People who say blissey doesn't centralize the metagame more than salamence does are out of their minds. With salamence gone, how many major tier placements change, that weren't caused by latias? Scizor? Flygon? Basically top 15 stays top 15.

If blissey was removed, the ENTIRE METAGAME would shift over to faster, special attackers. Zapdos and shaymin would surge. Porygon-z would immediately come to OU again with choice scarf. Gengar would be broken. Togekiss and specsluke would rise tremendously as well. Empoleon would skyrocket and would have only 2-3 counters w/e toxic spikes. Raikou would instantly be OU.

The point ofc isn't that blissey should be banned, it's that blissey centralizes infinitely more than salamence could ever hope to. While salamence's dragon-fire-ground hits everyone for at least neutral, blissey indiscriminately walls special attackers without any consideration of typing at all.

Centralization wasn't the only reason Salamence was banned. When Blissey comes in, it's not taking out a pokemon. The worse it could be doing is T-Waving. Blissey doesn't present the same offensive threat that Salamence has. When Salamence comes in, something is dying or getting severely damaged. Although, Blissey does wall pretty much the entire Sp.Atk-ing side bar Explosion Heatran etc., like I said, it can't do anything back besides T-Waving a switchin.
Besides, if you get rid of the Blissey with a physical attacker(if it even stays in on one) or if you're running some sort of weirdo set, it's likely that a Sp.Atk-ing team can now walk all over them now.
If you managed to defeat Salamence, you already lost one or more pokemon in the process of taking it down.

 

[Jah.Anon]

@akarias

As said before Blissey can't do anything back also if you remove Blissey the metagame would be overcentralized to special attackers so that the remaining special walls usage would skyrocket and would be a must to a team. The whole metagame would pretty much be whoever gets a nasty plot up first.

 

[mtr]

Blissey doesn't wall the entire SAtk-ing side of the metagame by a longshot.

Azelf: Explosion
Electivire: Cross Chop
Empoleon: Walled
Gengar: Focus Punch, Explosion, Pain Split
Heatran: Explosion
Infernape: Close Combat
Jirachi: Sub/CM, CM/Wish
Jolteon: Walled
Magnezone: Explosion
Rotom: Trick
Starmie: Walled
Suicune: CM/Rest
Togekiss: Walled, though wins with some hax
Zapdos: Walled

Blissey will never be taken out of OU simply because it's a necessary check on the litany of Special Attackers in the metagame. Without it, things would become an orgy of Nasty Plotters, Calm Minders, and Scarfers. Besides, using Blissey comes with the downside of suffering against Physical-attacking teams.

As for the OP's argument, I disagree. No Pokemon can perfectly replicate what another Pokemon does, and consequently no Pokemon will achieve the same level of centralization. Dragonite will never do what Salamence managed to do, despite being fairly similar. Just like Flygon and Gliscor could never replace Garchomp.

 

[Ace Emerald]

@akarias

As said before Blissey can't do anything back also if you remove Blissey the metagame would be overcentralized to special attackers so that the remaining special walls usage would skyrocket and would be a must to a team. The whole metagame would pretty much be whoever gets a nasty plot up first.

There are some decent special walls other then Blissey I think you are exaggerating.

 

[Intro1827]

Lucario is countered by Gliscor, Gyarados. Scizor is covered by an array of things, Gyarados 100% counters just about every set. Heatran is stopped up by Blissey, bar Explosion. Scarf Cress ?__?

Lucario OHKOs Gliscor with HP Ice, Scizor U-Turns out of anything and thus isn't countered, Heatran, as you pointed yourself, can Explode or just SubTorment.
ScarfCress was the argument used by.. uh, Setrack I think it was, to debunk the 100% counter argument and/or to troll on the GameFAQs board some months ago (As I said, it was more of a joke than anything)

 

[SJCrew]

@ Alan: 100% counters is not important. What's important is that every Pokemon has a reasonable list of viable checks and counters to keep it at bay if you really need a counter for it. It has been brought up time and time again that Gengar has no counters but is not Uber, which totally disregards the fact that Gengar is primarily a special attacker and anything EV'd in Sp. Def can take it down without fail.

We already know you can't counter everything with a team of six. That's a given. But so long as you have those options and each of those options are viable in their own right, it can never truly overpower the metagame.

And please don't say stupid stuff like "Gyarados counters Lucario" unless you enjoy eating Stone Edge. I guarantee if you face me thinking that, you're going to lose your Gyarados every single time.

 

[Sandstreamer]

Blissey doesn't wall the entire SAtk-ing side of the metagame by a longshot.

Azelf: Explosion
Electivire: Cross Chop
Empoleon: Walled
Gengar: Focus Punch, Explosion, Pain Split
Heatran: Explosion
Infernape: Close Combat
Jirachi: Sub/CM, CM/Wish
Jolteon: Walled
Magnezone: Explosion
Rotom: Trick
Starmie: Walled
Suicune: CM/Rest
Togekiss: Walled, though wins with some hax
Zapdos: Walled

Blissey will never be taken out of OU simply because it's a necessary check on the litany of Special Attackers in the metagame. Without it, things would become an orgy of Nasty Plotters, Calm Minders, and Scarfers. Besides, using Blissey comes with the downside of suffering against Physical-attacking teams.

I loled.
I suppose you're not being serious when you tell me that "Blissey doesn't wall the special side" and then you list TWO pokemon that beat Blissey using special attacks (and that after a ridiculous amount of setup which is only going to happen when Blissey is your opponent's last pokemon).
Also, in which way would the "orgy of Nasty Plotters, Calm Minders and Scrafes" be any worse than the "orgy of Sword Dancers, Dragon Dancers and Scarfers" we have right now?
This whole argumention just proves what I've been saying on the last page: Blissey is VERY unbalanced, it just had the advantage that every battler "grew up with it".

 

[Z3ph]

Damn I seriously agree with sandstreamer after reading that... Perhaps bans should be made on over centralization rather than strict opness

 

[Chameleon]

Even though Blissey walls like there's no tomorrow, gamefreak has balanced this centralization against special attackers with numerous factors. Burn status cripples physcial attackers and intimidate instantly reduces their effectiveness. Nothing of the sort exists for special attackers. If not for huge "mega-walls" like Blissey and maybe snorlax, like others have said, special attackers would run rampant. Not to say that I don't think Blissey is going overboard with bulkiness, but whatever.


I also like the icecube metaphor, and even though I've only been lurking smogon for about a year, the UU/BL process irks me in a similar way. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it like this:

1. UU is formed. There are a few big ice cubes and they are removed to balance the metagame.
2. The metagame is balanced with medium ice cubes dominating and little ones fitting in. Nearly every time a big ice cube drops down from OU, it is removed because it is the only big ice cube in UU.
3. Tons of ice cubes are gradually moved to BL, one or two at a time, until BL is 1/5 the size of UU. These pokemon fall into relative disuse.

If we moved all of BL into UU at once we might keep the decentralization sought by banning pokemon, with the big ice cubes replacing the medium ones and balancing each other, the mediums replacing the smalls, and the smalls falling into NU, which is better than having tons of pokemon sitting in BL. And NU is becoming more popular. This could increase variety without excessive banning. Especially since the purpose of banning is to promote variety itself.

In short, it's slow banning not taking into account already banned pokemon that is annoying.

 

[HiThere]

Are you suggesting we move pokemon such as Staraptor and Yanmega deemed too powerful for UU back into UU?

Because that sounds like loads of fun.

 

[capefeather]

Why did I think to read responses to this again...

Seriously? Blissey? Blissey walls about half the threats in OU. OK. A lot of Pokémon 2HKO about half the threats in OU, if not more. A lot of other Pokémon are even technically uncounterable like Lucario, Gengar, lead Azelf, etc. None of them are broken. Pokémon like Salamence and Latias, on the other hand, potentially screw over the entire tier just by running minor variations of one set. Virtually nothing can avoid taking ~40% at least after Stealth Rock damage. They are, whether they were justly banned or not, in a different league from Gengar, Infernape and Lucario (thanks for telling me your Lucario has Stone Edge btw, SJCrew ;) ).

tl;dr Blissey isn't even uncounterable in the technical sense, which is far from enough to be broken. Stop talking about it as if it's some kind of unassailable monster that beats every special attacker.

 

[Alan]

Lucario OHKOs Gliscor with HP Ice, Scizor U-Turns out of anything and thus isn't countered, Heatran, as you pointed yourself, can Explode or just SubTorment.
ScarfCress was the argument used by.. uh, Setrack I think it was, to debunk the 100% counter argument and/or to troll on the GameFAQs board some months ago (As I said, it was more of a joke than anything)

Gliscor used Outspeed and OHKO with Earthquake.

@ Alan: 100% counters is not important. What's important is that every Pokemon has a reasonable list of viable checks and counters to keep it at bay if you really need a counter for it. It has been brought up time and time again that Gengar has no counters but is not Uber, which totally disregards the fact that Gengar is primarily a special attacker and anything EV'd in Sp. Def can take it down without fail.

We already know you can't counter everything with a team of six. That's a given. But so long as you have those options and each of those options are viable in their own right, it can never truly overpower the metagame.

And please don't say stupid stuff like "Gyarados counters Lucario" unless you enjoy eating Stone Edge. I guarantee if you face me thinking that, you're going to lose your Gyarados every single time.

Gyarados counters most Lucario because Stone Edge isn't all to common.

| Lucario | Move | Stone Edge | 9.3 |

not that common.

I loled.
I suppose you're not being serious when you tell me that "Blissey doesn't wall the special side" and then you list TWO pokemon that beat Blissey using special attacks (and that after a ridiculous amount of setup which is only going to happen when Blissey is your opponent's last pokemon).
Also, in which way would the "orgy of Nasty Plotters, Calm Minders and Scrafes" be any worse than the "orgy of Sword Dancers, Dragon Dancers and Scarfers" we have right now?
This whole argumention just proves what I've been saying on the last page: Blissey is VERY unbalanced, it just had the advantage that every battler "grew up with it".

He said 5/15 were walled by blissey. Just because they dont kill blissey with a special attack doesn't mean anything. He is saying that the list of special attackers have moves in their arsenal to beat blissey.


also, not to minimod or anything, but this thread is really just bickering between each other and not much of a discussion.

 

[Intro1827]

Gliscor used Outspeed and OHKO with Earthquake

Outspeeding on a switch-in? I thought only scarf Deoxys-e could do so

 

[EpicTurtle]

Saying that luke has a 100% counter is absurd because it doesn't. It has some extremely good checks that can come in on 3/4ths of its attacks but it doesn't have 100% counter. But if we were to ban pokemon without 100% counters than a huge percent of the metagame would be gone. Of course if you think about it for a second, the reason why a lot of offensive threats do not have 100% counters is because they often dedicate a moveslot or a set to counter there counters, which means that the pokemon shoudn't be broken because it makes a set for it's self for the pure fact of defeating a counter. That's just like saying a wall investing a certain amount of EVs to wall a certain pokemon. If we were to ban a pokemon that has a set to counter it's counters making it's counters not 100% counters than the ice cube tray would slowly fade away since the pure fact that a pokemon is OU is because of it;s good typing, stats or move pool and since a lot of pokemon have large move pools than they could easily use a move slot to deal with counter.

 

[akarias]

My point about centralization is twofold. First of concerning mence (I know he's not gonna get unbanned this is just for discussion), I believe overpowered pokes always will centralize the metagame. It just doesn't make sense for them not to, except in unique cases like Wobbuffet, who is a support poke completely unlike mence. Latias clearly centralized the metagame, with scarftar forced to run on any competent team. Garchomp...yeah. I mean if something's overpowered, you're simply at a disadvantage for not using it, and that just wasn't the case at all for salamence. Yeah mence is taking minimum of 40% with an attack, but keep in mind with SR he's taking 35% just to fire off that attack...

The second point is about what kd24 asked, which is what's the problem with blissey walling 1/2 the sweepers and tanks in the game. Well....I think the question answers itself ;). To encourage a more competitive, and fun metagame you want diversity. These Fire-water-grass cores are simply really boring. Being forced to run at least 2 counters to heatran really limits the creative process. Being forced to carry starmie so rocks doesn't kill me with the 59081304 switches in the game is boring. If blissey wasn't around, I could break FWG with raikou or togekiss or zapdos. If salamence was still around, he could do it for me instead.

 

[kd24]

The second point is about what kd24 asked, which is what's the problem with blissey walling 1/2 the sweepers and tanks in the game. Well....I think the question answers itself ;). To encourage a more competitive, and fun metagame you want diversity. These Fire-water-grass cores are simply really boring. Being forced to run at least 2 counters to heatran really limits the creative process. Being forced to carry starmie so rocks doesn't kill me with the 59081304 switches in the game is boring. If blissey wasn't around, I could break FWG with raikou. If salamence was still around, he could do it for me instead.

what do you think there will be more of if blissey left - FWG. yeah, some stuff like raikou and empoleon would become more viable, but the metagame is shifted naturally towards a more physical mindset along with fwg cores. someone said above, blissey walls 1/2 of the game, but a lot of sweepers can kill 1/2 of the game, making it all really pointless.

 

[Sandstreamer]

He said 5/15 were walled by blissey. Just because they dont kill blissey with a special attack doesn't mean anything. He is saying that the list of special attackers have moves in their arsenal to beat blissey.

You are quite funny, too. If they carry a physical move, they are mixed attackers and should not even be mentioned in that list. And yeah, it means A LOT. Because the definition of a "special sweeper" is "killing stuff with special attacks". It's funny that you do not even recognize that anymore. That's because most pokemon which are stat-wise predestined for special sweeping need to go mixed to do anything in battle. That's exactly the phenomon I'm talking about, you just fell for it.

On I side note: Why do we even discuss a list of "special sweepers" that includes Electivire and Infernape?

 

[Miscellaneous]

centralization for me is quite easy to define:

A pokemon overcentralizes the metagame if relative useages for other pokemon revolve around it, rather than the pokemon's useage being relative to that of the metagame's.

To put that in practice, back when salamence and Garchomp were banned, Weavile was a very good check/ revenge killer. Weavile was not Uber though, because the only reason it was used was because of pokemon like Garchomp and Salamence. This is an example of a pokemon's useage being relative to the metagame, as Weavile is now less used. Weavile does not centralize the metagame.

However, consider a pokemon like Rayquaza being OU. This would centralize, because it's useage would not be relative to that of the metagame (probably, there's never been a Rayquaza test). In other words, if an Uber pokemon is used in OU, people will use it and it will centralize because it is very effective. Even if everyone had 3 or 4 ices on every team, people would still use a pokemon like Rayquaza, and the metagame would therefore be relative to Rayquaza's useage.

I am aware there will always be more used and less used pokemon. But in an ideal metagame, useage should fluctuate relative to other pokemon's useage (like X useage is high in september and october, then Y useage rises in november to counter, then Z rises and X falls, then x rises again).

Just my opinion on centralization, whether centralization is linked to a pokemon being broken or Uber is another discussion.

 

[Aqueos]

Sandstreamer, its because specially based infernape, and specially based Electivire, can still nail blissey with physical moves and 2hko it without investment. Infernape can also focus blast bold varieties. Arguing that blissey is broken is just stupid, especially considering pokes like substitute calm mind mismagius can just set up on it, and pokes can trick is scarves. Also entry hazards can weaken it enough special attackers can take it down. If we were to remove all slightly defensive stuff, pokemon would be about just mashing super effective moves with very fast pokemon. Doesn't that sound like fun.....

 

[Deaga]

Hey guys, Zangoose isn't outclassed by Lucario (despite running the same moveset with worse stats/typing/movepool), it's actually Hippowdon's fault for being such a fatass!!!

Zangoose actually has slightly more Attack than Lucario and Hippowdon is neutral to both their STABs. Just how is Zangoose any more walled by it than Lucario lol. Sure, Return is weaker than Close Combat, but you can use Double-Edge (lol suicide) if you hate it that much.

 

[Not Scicky]

Who cares about centralization, the point of banning salamence is that no-matter what, you can't really safely switch in to salamence unless he's already killed one of your pokemon. Can you say this about blissey? No, blissey can't really kill anything, and you can easily switch in something and just use ANY PHYSICAL ATTACK EVER (exaggeration but you know) to kill it. Lucario? Gliscor, Gyarados, hell, Crobat only takes 22-26% from Close Combat and CB Crobat can OHKO with Brave Bird (That's not a very good example but my point stands, Lucario CAN die, though it's access to extremespeed makes things a bit hard.)

@Deaga: Are you serious? Yes, let's ignore the fact that Lucario has better typing, better STAB in general, MOTHERFUCKING EXTREMESPEED and is slower with worse defenses.

 

[Sandstreamer]

Sandstreamer, its because specially based infernape, and specially based Electivire, can still nail blissey with physical moves and 2hko it without investment. Infernape can also focus blast bold varieties. Arguing that blissey is broken is just stupid, especially considering pokes like substitute calm mind mismagius can just set up on it, and pokes can trick is scarves. Also entry hazards can weaken it enough special attackers can take it down. If we were to remove all slightly defensive stuff, pokemon would be about just mashing super effective moves with very fast pokemon. Doesn't that sound like fun.....

Thank you, but I knew how Electivire and Infernape work, Sir. And I may repeat: We are not talking about them at all.
No one is arguing that Blissey is broken... (at least not me) >___>
I'm just trying to make people realize how the metagame works and that there always are some few pokemon (or moves or items) that shape it to a great extend. It's just a question of taste which ones you want to shape the metagame and which ones you don't.

EDIT: My objective would be, btw that some people stop telling me stuff like "Lol, XY obviously needs to be banned, because you cannot bla bla bla". That's just bullshit. Say "XY is banned because we didn't like how we needed to play with it" or don't comment at all.

 

[Aqueos]

Deaga was talking about that lucario is walled worse than zangoose by that stuff. Not that it means anything. And yeah ok, but really this "discussion" is more of a stupid argument.

 

[Deaga]

@Deaga: Are you serious? Yes, let's ignore the fact that Lucario has better typing, better STAB in general, MOTHERFUCKING EXTREMESPEED and is slower with worse defenses.

That's exactly the point lol.

OP says Zangoose is worse than Lucario because "lol, Hippo!". I argue that Hippo gives them both the same ammount of problems. Zangoose is worse than Lucario by other reasons: the ones you listed.