np: UU Suspect Test Round 2 - Cold As Ice

[Erebyssial]

So like I said earlier, Hail being broken without Froslass is a load of garbage.

Froslass is the only reason Hail is so dominant, since it gives you a Spiker, spinblocker, hail abuser AND Fighting immunity in one teamslot, all of which are incredibly important to hail. Without Froslass you need to either sacrifice some of those roles or spread them to multiple slots, and once you do that, the team has too many problems. I mean, Abomasnow + 2 hail abusers means your team has atrocious synergy to begin with (3/3 SR, Rock, Fire and Fighting weak pokes, yeah good luck). Any half-decent player can exploit these kinds of weaknesses no trouble at all.

IMO the best solution is with 2 simple steps:

1) Ban Froslass. Everyone agrees that Froslass is broken under hail, so ban that first.
2) If Hail is deemed broken that round even without Froslass, ban Snow Warning entirely and unban Froslass.

What would you guys think of that?

 

[SJCrew]

Yeah, I'm not buying the whole deal of Hail being inherently broken either. Froslass is really the only deterrent from Heracross or Stoutland getting in and just closing shop on all Hail teams within a five-mile radius. It's bad enough having to deal with Victini, but there are a lot of other major threats Hail has to consider to the point where it has to go very minimalist on the abusers and devote literally every other slot to utility/counter. (EX: WhiteQueen's RMT team)

For all this work you're putting in, it's still not an easy win, as your opponent might be running a Sand team, Kingdra (or anything) with Rain Dance, a Baton Passing strategy, or just a regular team with better synergy and superior offensive pressure. You are relying on one of the worst defensive types in the game to do your dirty work, after all, and in order to get the most mileage out of it, you have to overlap on weaknesses. Really bad ones at that. (SR, Fire + Fighting)

They way I see it, banning Froslass is the safest option. It's indisputably broken under Hail, which has very little clout of its own without a get-out-of-jail-free card. If you want to prove Hail itself is unbalanced, do it sans Lass over the next suspect period. She is the major determining factor in what it's doing now, and there is no way to get this kind of data while she's around. Another round of Hail won't hurt us more than another round of Froslass.

Also, bear in mind that she basically hold two teamslots for Hail teams now: Spiker and spinblocker. Your hazards will easily be spun away without a Ghost, and with no Spikes, it's very hard to stall opposing teams out or keep any offensive pressure on your side. You would essentially have to replace her with two entirely different Pokemon.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

Snow Warning + Snow Cloak is an option yes. It'd have to be banned for being broken in UU and not simply under evasion clause though.

 

[charizard24]

Also this would sum up my opinions on Hail pretty well:

IMO the best solution is with 2 simple steps:

1) Ban Froslass. Everyone agrees that Froslass is broken under hail, so ban that first.
2) If Hail is deemed broken that round even without Froslass, ban Snow Warning entirely and unban Froslass.

 

[alexwolf]

ANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD i'm telling you, tying SC/SV to evasion clause is never going to stick. Neither of those abilities are broken on the majority of the Pokemon that have them, and deeming the ability "uncompetitive" is just subjective. (there are dozens of abilities that are cheesier) Its the same thing with the people OU who want to ban Speed boost to preserve Blaze Blaziken, its just contrivances for the sake of 1~ pokemon (or in this case a play style)

Sorry if what i say is a little bit irrelevant but i am going to say it!
If the bolded sentence was true then we wouldn't have banned Minimize and Double Team.
Those 2 moves were never tested and were not banned because they were broken on the majority of pokes that get it but because they took the battle out of the player's control.
Anyone who argues that they were broken just speaks random therymon as they never had a proper test.
Furthermore if you examine the moves a little more you will see that they more likely wouldn't be broken in the majority of the pokes that use them if they were allowed.
Why do i say this you are gonna ask?
It has been proved statistically that stacking evasion boosts is not worth the turns that you spend trying to do so.
Spending 2,3 or 4 turns to become near invincible is not worth it 'cause more often than not you are going to be either dead or crippled badly(or setup-on in Blissey's case for example).
Only the first use of the evasion raising moves is worth it.
After the first use you are better of raising another stat or straight up attacking,or setting hazards.

So for me it is fairly easy to assume that these moves were banned for making the game uncompetitive.Less-skill based and more luck based.

Now let's look at the evasion raising abilites.
There are SV and SC.Both of these abilites give the same evasion boost as Double Team gives but without the need of spending one turn.And i have already explained why the only evasion boost that is statstically worth it is the firts one.
So the 2 evasion raising abilites give the best part of the evasion while not needing any turns to do so,unlike Double Team.
The only downside to these abilites is that their respective weather must be up in order for them to work.

That's why the proper solution to me seems a combo ban of Sand Veil + Sandstream and Snow Cloak + Snow Warning.It gets rid of the uncompetitive factor without any negative affects other that the complexity of these kind of bans.

But why is only Double Team banned and not these abilites in conjuction with their weather?
Espcecially when you consider that the abilites give the biggest benefits.
So the lesser evil of evasion is banned when the bigger evil is allowed in play?I don't really get it...
It is clear that Smogon doesn't want evasion screwing our metagame.That's why these kind of moves were banned.So why are the evasion raising abilites still unbanned when their benefits are even greater of those that the banned moves offer?

Finally before anyone tells me that we cannot do the combo ban because not all pokes with evasion raising abilties are broken i have to say this:
Were all the pokemon that can use the evasion raising moves broken with them?
I believe that not.
So to me it seems that these moves were not banned due to brokeness but for making the game less skill based.And this is exactly what the evasion raising abilites do!
So why are they free???

 

[Pocket]

Heysup, I did read your points, and I have considered them. Ultimately, I didn't agree with what you said. I've talked to people myself, and if it wasn't for Sand Veil, Garchomp would undoubtedly stay in OU. This isn't 4th Gen - it's 5th Gen where Latios is released and where 102 Speed is nothing extraordinary. Don't forget that Excadrill and MultiScale Dragonite are OU, both of them arguably on par / better than Garchomp without its clutch ability.

alexwolf, you're correct to an extent. The primary reason for Evasion Clause is indeed the uncompetitive nature of the moves. However, I also believe that just like Drizzle + Swift Swim, several DT / Minimize Pokemon would overpower the metagame, warranting the ban. Yes, it's theorymoning for the most part, just like Drizzle + Swift Swim, but it's a time issue - we don't have the time to test every Pokemon that are broken by DTeam / Minimize. It's not worth it when in all likelihood we would reach the same conclusion that Evasion moves are inherently broken.

Sand Veil + Sandstream is not as obvious, mainly because of its poor distribution - only a select few monsters can abuse it. You also can't deny the fact that with Double Team / Minimize, a Pokemon can easily raise its Evasion to ridiculous levels if given an opportunity. You can't stack up Evasion boosts with Sand Veil / Snow Cloak.

I also agree with SJCrew that we should test Hail sans Froslass to truly gauge the brokenness of the playstyle. Without Froslass to facilitate Hail-stalling / Hail-Sweeping, other Hail threats, such as Rotom-F and Walrein, may not be too bad.

Either a Frosslass ban or Snow Warning + Snow Veil combo ban sounds more reasonable than an Abomasnow / Snow Warning ban.

 

[Forsety]

IMO the best solution is with 2 simple steps:

1) Ban Froslass. Everyone agrees that Froslass is broken under hail, so ban that first.
2) If Hail is deemed broken that round even without Froslass, ban Snow Warning entirely and unban Froslass.

Just going to quote this along with others because it summarizes everything as concisely as possible that I would agree with and some action would be nice to bring a conclusion to this topic sooner then later as its been months now.

Sides it'd be nothing new seeing Froslass fly off to BL, it managed to make the BL ban twice back in Gen 4 and I honestly don't think Gen 5 has changed in that respect as much as people think if its still doing its job well enough to be a center of discussion and experience counts for something at least.


However some other new topics of discussion I think should be brought up which I feel have somewhat been crushed by the size of this thread.

First is Baton Pass, not sure how many have been following the OU nominations but Baton Pass managed to make the simple majority, is auto-suspect and could see a ban by the next round. Now I know one of the earlier issues for UU discussion was talk of a possible Shell Smash + BP ban but it failed the vote and lost suspect status.

But seems the general consensus has now shifted towards simply Baton Pass being a broken move this gen. This seems to be abit of a conflicting issue to me and I'm curious to know if this ban goes through next OU round would it also have a knock on effect to UU? Also even if it is being voted on in OU, should it be brought back to the plate for voting this round of UU?

Second issue, Mamoswine. It missed the OU cutoff but I know it was discussed more for its offensive prowess and less for hax but that was simply dropped because everyone truly believe it would make OU cutoff. If thats the case wouldn't that mean Mamoswine should be brought back up as a topic of discussion or at least be eligible for a vote?

 

[Blue_Tornado]

So is Hippowdon UU now? If so, this whole issue with hail can be put on hold, unless there will be a suspect test BEFORE the tiers are updated?

 

[Banedon]

O_o

Summary of tier changes from eyeballing -

Celebi went to OU
Gastrodon went to OU
Hippowdon dropped to UU
Chandelure dropped to UU
Machamp dropped to UU
Porygon2 dropped to UU
Whimsicott dropped to UU
Darmanitan dropped to UU
Tornadus dropped to UU

I think the tier changes are significant enough that a completely new round should begin, with no suspects banned this round.

First looks: Hippowdon will significantly buff sand. Chandelure should prove a top-tier Pokemon, but I doubt it'll be overpowered. Machamp ... underwhelming maybe? Porygon2 should be a decent mixed wall, while Whimsicott will be extremely annoying. Darmatian might replace Heracross as the most commonly Scarfed Pokemon, but a weakness to SR hurts it. Tornadus will seriously buff rain teams.

Lots to discover!

 

[blarajan]

The current metagame is changing significantly with the updated tiers. There is no reason to even consider a Froslass ban or a Hail ban or anything of the sort when today's game and yesterday's game aren't even compatible anymore.

 

[Mishra]

Agreed with the above.

I do have an issue though, that I tried to bring up with Jabba, in particular with Celebi and Gastradon. Why should I high usage in OU make decent pokemon in UU and lower move up? Celebi was only #11 in UU, but to go with a less contraversal pokemon, does anyone think Gastradon is too good in UU? I certainly don't, and only the shitty meta of weather wars in OU is causing its shift upward, despite being crap against anything not rain.

 

[CrazyBacon]

Machamp should easily be able run through hail teams with No guard, which makes Stone Edge and, more importantly, Dynamicpunch 100% accurate, which means frosslass cant rely on snow cloak and if machamp holds a lum berry, thunder wave is useless.

 

[Boorego]

Seems like alot of the new dropdowns are going to give hail teams in general trouble, hippowdown gives sand teams a much better weather starter meaning hail will have to compete against other weather teams more, machamp will give the ice types headaches and with no guard even froslass cant out hax him. chandlelure could be an asset to hail teams as well as a new dangerous threat, he is formidable fire type and can inflict massive damage to slowbro, one of hail's standard water types but he could also be a great fire immunity and secondary spinblocker on hail teams. Darmaniation is another feirce fire type that ice-heavy hail teams will have to deal with. They all look like interesting additions to the metagame.