On determining what is most simple and logical in regards to banning Pokemon vs Pokemon + Ability

[Oglemi]

So we might as well hash this out sooner than later.

In the other thread starting here http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/separate-tiering-of-mega-pokemon.3546062/page-7 I explained our current tiering philosophy in that we ban what is most simple, logical and effective, as well as here http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/prefer-banning-pokémon-instead-of-items-abilities.3500294/#post-5250718. These are some of the more poignant examples from XY and ORAS thus far:

In dealing with Blaziken (and Greninja), possible bans included:
- Blaziken as a whole
- Blaziken + Speed Boost
- Speed Boost

In dealing with Mawile (and Gengar), possible bans included: (example subject to change in regards to the other thread)
- Mawile as a whole
- Mawile + Mawilite
- Mawilite

In dealing with Aegislash, possible bans included:
- Aegislash as a whole
- King's Shield
- Aegislash + King's Shield

In each of these, how we determined what was most simple and logical boiled down to what caused the least amount of collateral damage while also being the most straightforward ban possible.

In the Blaziken case, it was determined that banning Speed Boost was not an option as it has been proven that not all Pokemon that receive Speed Boost are broken (ie Sharpedo and Yanmega are not broken with Speed Boost), therefore banning Speed Boost was not what was most logical. Banning the combination of Blaziken + Speed Boost created what we define as a complex ban (banning a part of two elements to create a whole ban), therefore banning the combination was not what was most simple. This forced us to conclude that the most simple and logical ban was to ban Blaziken.

In the Mawile case, it was determined that banning Mawile was not an option as it has been proven that Mawile alone is not a broken Pokemon, therefore banning Mawile was not what was most logical. Banning the combination of Mawile + Mawilite created what we define as a complex ban (banning a part of two elements to create a whole ban), therefore banning the combination was not what was most simple. Mawilite was proven to be broken on the only Pokemon that can make use of it (electing to ignore that it has no effect on any other Pokemon that may hold it), therefore this forced us to conclude that the most simple and logical ban was to ban Mawilite.

In the Aegislash case, it was determined that banning the combination of Aegislash + King's Shield created what we define as a complex ban (banning a part of two elements to create a whole ban), therefore banning the combination was not what was most simple. It could not be proven that King's Shield alone was broken, as it does not include the forme change that it does with Aegislash on the other Pokemon that receive it (Smeargle), as well it could not be proven that the Attack forme or Defense forme of Aegislash is what was broken, but rather the fact that it could change formes to be both offensive and defensive, therefore banning King's Shield was not what was most simple or logical. This forced us to conclude that the most simple and logical ban was to ban Aegislash.


Now, where this thread comes in is to address what we determine as most simple in regards to the Blaziken example. Do we want to change our tiering policy to conclude that banning the combination of a Pokemon + Ability is more desirable than concluding the most simple and logical ban to be the Pokemon as a whole? This would mean we would change our tiering policy to conclude that we should ban Blaziken + Speed Boost, rather than Blaziken. As well, we would conclude that we should ban Greninja + Protean as opposed to Greninja, and other examples could include Landorus + Sheer Force (and Excadrill + Sand Rush in BW, ignoring the recent BW tiering changes).

My personal opinion is that we should continue to strive to be most simple, as well Zarel made it clear that complex bans are undesirable in implementation.

PS: Any "slippery slope" arguments will be deleted on sight.

 

[p2]

Is there really any need to bring this up because you've pretty much covered the main issue already, it's not simple and it's not as easy to implement.

Complex unbanning has never been a great idea, but I only think it should be looked at when the meta is in an undesirable state where it can use the extra mon, ie BW was full of Spike stacking and bringing down an extra spinner adds more variety to the tier while also reducing total domination by hazards (I believe this is the main reasoning behind the Exca unban, if its not feel free to correct me.)

But right now as it stands, the last thing that should be considered is complex banning unless the meta is in such a state that it needs specific Pokemon + ability back, but really, if a meta is at that point, you should be looking at the factors causing the meta to be at said point because complex banning is really unnecessary.

No complex bans are also useful for newer players so they don't need to go through and remember a bunch of them, making it less appealing to learn the tier.

 

[blarajan]

Uh. No?

Attaching the arbitrary assumption that banning the ability + Pokemon in lieu of the Pokemon allows for even further, unnecessarily complicated subjectivity in our tiering system. Why is it necessarily the ability that we ban? Blaze Blaziken and Speed Boost Blaziken are the exact same Pokemon. Assume Pokemon X with three abilities: Huge Power, Speed Boost, and Keen Eye. Assume Pokemon X is broken with the former two abilities and not with Keen Eye. Do we include two additional provisions to allow its use in the metagame? What if it is clearly broken with Huge Power, but it is only arguably broken with Speed Boost. Do we quickban the former combination yet suspect test the latter? Conditionally banning Pokemon opens significant logistical and theoretical problems with the suspect process, and similarly inevitably leads to discussion of "Why not ban Greninja with Life Orb?" and "Why not ban Aegislash with King's Shield" (as presented in the OP). The slippery slope argument is absolutely relevant as there is no objective difference in assuming ability + Pokemon and move + Pokemon when considering what aspects make it broken. Items would inevitably be considered in the same way.

 

[kokoloko]

hate to say it but i've always been in the same camp as blara regarding this one. this is the one case where i do think slippery slope is a valid argument, given that there is indeed no real difference between banning a mon plus one of its abilities and banning a mon plus one of its moves/possible hold items, etc.

that said, i think the conversation of "are we willing to open up that door and have a conversation as to where we draw the line" is one that will need to happen eventually if we are to keep everyone happy, because eventually we /will/ have to ban non-broken shit just to keep the metagame playable.

 

[Zarel]

You guys have heard my opinion millions of times, but just in case someone reading this is new:

I think we should always ban the pokemon, even if it's the ability that's overpowered, for the simple reason that banning pokemon works with the tier system, while banning anything else works against the tier system. So what is a tier system, anyway?

In games, a tier system is a system that categorizes characters by roughly how powerful or useful they are. If you'd like, you can play games banning characters above a certain tier, to allow characters at a specific lower tier a chance to be viable.

When you tier a character, you tier a character based on it being played the best way it can be played. Obviously, any character will be "low-tier" if used badly, so the tiering of a character is determined by the character's best equipment and best playstyle.​

You often see this applied to, for instance, fighting games, but it also happens to fit Smogon's tier system pretty well.

I just saw a Smog article that mentioned Politoed fell from OU in gen 5 to FU in gen 6. This isn't because Politoed was nerfed that much, it was just because we banned Drizzle in UU.

But the problem is, the Politoed in FU isn't the "real" Politoed; it's not the Politoed people think of when I say "I built a team around Politoed"; it's definitely not the Politoed you see in OU (it gets 2.5% OU usage, if you were wondering). Politoed's power level is way higher than FU; it's actually BL. So what's really going on here is, Politoed and non-Drizzle Politoed have different tiers. But other Pokémon have one tier no matter what their Ability is.

If you only banned Pokémon, you would know the rules for every tier already, and all you'd have to do is check the tier lists. But if you ban Drizzle, you have situations where casual users look at RU and think "hey look, Politoed is legal, I'm gonna build a rain team" and then be in for a nasty surprise. Especially since bans aren't a "happen at a beginning of a gen, done deal" type thing. Bans happen all the time. So if someone hasn't played for a while, they have to recheck the precise rulesets of the tier and every tier above it, when you could have just put Politoed in BL and let the tier lists do their job.

Obviously, some things like Baton Pass Clause or Sleep Clause don't work by banning Pokémon. That happens sometimes. But I think that clauses should be an absolute last resort, and banning Pokémon should be done whenever possible. Especially with things like the Shadow Tag ban discussion. It's not like Gothita is overpowered. And people may make arguments that Gothorita is OU-viable, I don't think we should call it Uber without even a test.

 

[blarajan]

You guys have heard my opinion millions of times, but just in case someone reading this is new:

I think we should always ban the pokemon, even if it's the ability that's overpowered, for the simple reason that banning pokemon works with the tier system, while banning anything else works against the tier system. So what is a tier system, anyway?

In games, a tier system is a system that categorizes characters by roughly how powerful or useful they are. If you'd like, you can play games banning characters above a certain tier, to allow characters at a specific lower tier a chance to be viable.

When you tier a character, you tier a character based on it being played the best way it can be played. Obviously, any character will be "low-tier" if used badly, so the tiering of a character is determined by the character's best equipment and best playstyle.​

You often see this applied to, for instance, fighting games, but it also happens to fit Smogon's tier system pretty well.

I just saw a Smog article that mentioned Politoed fell from OU in gen 5 to FU in gen 6. This isn't because Politoed was nerfed that much, it was just because we banned Drizzle in UU.

But the problem is, the Politoed in FU isn't the "real" Politoed; it's not the Politoed people think of when I say "I built a team around Politoed"; it's definitely not the Politoed you see in OU (it gets 2.5% OU usage, if you were wondering). Politoed's power level is way higher than FU; it's actually BL. So what's really going on here is, Politoed and non-Drizzle Politoed have different tiers. But other Pokémon have one tier no matter what their Ability is.

If you only banned Pokémon, you would know the rules for every tier already, and all you'd have to do is check the tier lists. But if you ban Drizzle, you have situations where casual users look at RU and think "hey look, Politoed is legal, I'm gonna build a rain team" and then be in for a nasty surprise. Especially since bans aren't a "happen at a beginning of a gen, done deal" type thing. Bans happen all the time. So if someone hasn't played for a while, they have to recheck the precise rulesets of the tier and every tier above it, when you could have just put Politoed in BL and let the tier lists do their job.

Obviously, some things like Baton Pass Clause or Sleep Clause don't work by banning Pokémon. That happens sometimes. But I think that clauses should be an absolute last resort, and banning Pokémon should be done whenever possible. Especially with things like the Shadow Tag ban discussion. It's not like Gothita is overpowered. And people may make arguments that Gothorita is OU-viable, I don't think we should call it Uber without even a test.

Hypothetically, if multiple Pokemon (let's say ten) all had an objectively broken ability that broke each one of them, and they were the only Pokemon with that ability, would you object to banning the ability? If you said that you would ban the ability in the previous example, then in the case of Politoed, even if only one Pokemon has the ability Drizzle but it is theorized to be broken on all Pokemon that would receive the ability, I don't see why you wouldn't consider this ban the same way.

 

[Aldaron]

Not sure how easy it is to set an official policy in place for this kind of a thing.

I mean, I say that assuming the simplest option is the default in like...most things in life in general lol.

We try to make a ban as simple as possible, and if we can make arguments for the metagame being significantly different due to a complex ban, we'll implement it. Ignoring how you feel about the complex rain ban in Gen 5, the argument was that the metagames with Drizzle completely allowed, with Drizzle partially nerfed (the complex ban), and Drizzle banned were all significantly different, so then we had the conversation about how we wanted to approach it.

Remember, we all have limited time / energy / resources to put into this. Do we want to waste our finite resources on potentially trivial matters?

I in over 8 years of Pokemon policy (lol...smh) haven't seen many arguments where even the effort to debate whether Blaze Blaziken or Torrent Greninja being useful additions to the metagame is worth it.

The simplicity in knowing that Blaziken is banned lowers the barrier to entry for new people trying out metagame and the loss of Blaze Blaziken does not in any appreciable manner affect the metagame. Again, I'd argue that the addition of Blaze Blaziken is so insignificant that it isn't even worth the time / effort to have the debate over it.

If people want to take this to the academic extreme, I would say my personal "official" policy is strive towards the simple Pokemon ban. If there is significant traction / substantiation towards a complex ban significantly altering the metagame, discuss the merits of those arguments and then discuss whether the effect will be enough of a net potential positive to be worth the time and effort to do it. Finally, these instances will be taken under consideration on a case-by-case basis and not subject to "precedence" or "slippery slope" concerns.

 

[Zarel]

Hypothetically, if multiple Pokemon (let's say ten) all had an objectively broken ability that broke each one of them, and they were the only Pokemon with that ability, would you object to banning the ability? If you said that you would ban the ability in the previous example, then in the case of Politoed, even if only one Pokemon has the ability Drizzle but it is theorized to be broken on all Pokemon that would receive the ability, I don't see why you wouldn't consider this ban the same way.

I'd say it depends on the number of Pokémon. At ten, I'd probably agree with banning the ability.

On the other hand, closer to three? Or one? Especially in the case of weather abilities: I wonder if Vulpix is really that overpowered in UU.

I bet if we tested Drizzle or Drought or Shadow Tag Shedinja, we'd find it wasn't that overpowered. Eight turns of weather in exchange for a team slot isn't that good... Prankster Rain Dance is starting to outclass it by that point. On the other hand, Wonder Guard would probably be overpowered on any Pokémon other than Shedinja.

So yeah, sorry my answer is kind of wishy-washy. To me, the question is, at what point are we willing to give up on working within the tier system, and add another clause? Ten Pokémon, and yes, clause it. Two Pokémon, and I'd just ban the Pokémon. In between, I'd probably take it on a case by case basis.

To me, it also depends a bit on which tier bans it. If OU does, then it's a standard clause that pretty much every Smogon tier has, so it's consistent. Plus, OU bans get a lot of publicity so they're less likely to catch people off guard. Clauses in lower tiers, on the other hand, make for inconsistent clauses, get less exposure, and you have a hard time arguing an ability or whatever is "categorically" overpowered no matter what if upper tiers don't even ban it.

 

[Saria]

Banning Blaziken is much simpler and practical than banning Speed Boost on Blaziken, and banning Speed Boost alone needlessly nerfs some Pokemon, like Sharpedo, just to allow some subpar version of Blaziken in lower tiers. Additionally doing specific suspects to nerf broken Pokemon, like the previously mentioned Speed Boost on Ken or King's Shield on Aegislash, would be extremely time consuming.

But not all examples are as clear cut as the ones in the op. What's simpler?

- Banning Shadow Tag
- Banning Wobbufet, Gothitelle and maybe Gothorita

Not all Shadow Tag users are broken and all of them are completely irrelevant in UU without that ability. Is banning an ability that doesn't break all its user simpler than banning all the broken users?