Partial-Trapping Moves in RBY

Hello all. You might know me as that guy who uses Cloyster a lot and is consequently a massive hypocrite for bringing this subject up, but I feel that someone has to. SPL's right around the corner, so I feel that putting this topic on the table sooner rather than later is important.

I think that partial-trapping moves (Wrap, Fire Spin, Clamp, etc., on Dragonite in particular) are unhealthy for the RBY metagame, not only from a competitive perspective, but from a spectator's viewpoint as well. I know that meddling with old gens' rulesets is a messy debate, but I think that these moves are egregious enough to merit discussion.

-Uncompetitiveness. Partial-trapping moves (Wrap on AgiliNite in particular) are difficult to interact with favorably, and rob the opponent of much of their agency in decision-making. There is often little opportunity cost to using a partial-trap move against a slower target, promoting repetitive use of such attacks for free chip damage that accumulates very quickly. This puts significant pressure on the opponent, as they will often find themselves stuck in a situation where their best option is to hope for a miss, and the racked up damage rapidly drives their Pokemon into KO ranges of other attacks. Even if they do have a faster Pokemon, switching into a trapping move is still a toss-up, since if the attack doesn't end on that particular turn the trapper can simply abuse a free switch and maintain an advantage and momentum. PP stalling is also unfeasible, since the trapper moves only consume 1 PP per cycle.

Partial-Trapping moves place an unfair onus on the person subjected to them and give unfair tactical advantages to the person using them. Compare them to Swagger in later gens and I think you'll agree that these are much worse. They can be played around to an extent, yes, but they only provide narrow windows for maneuvering that can still be punished easily. I'm hard-pressed to think of an argument as to why these moves should continued to be allowed beyond maintaining the status quo, which I find to be a very poor reason.

-Spectator Issues. Watching one person spamming Wrap for twenty to thirty turns on end is really, really, boring. Being subjected to it is much worse. Wrap play patterns are lengthy and uninteresting, and actively detract from how enjoyable RBY battles are to watch. I know that this is far less significant than accusations of uncompetitiveness, but it's still a factor to consider for a team tournament, where spectator turnouts are high.

I believe these moves to be a detriment to the health of the RBY metagame, and I encourage any who share this opinion to voice it, as well as any who would argue against.
 

Nails

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I'm pretty new to rby (doing my best to learn though) but I wouldn't oppose a manager vote on it for spl. I'd like to hear from a larger number of informed players before making official tiering changes but from my limited rby experience I wouldn't be opposed to their banning.
 

bruno

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Completely agree with this. Trapping moves are uncompetitive and can be huge aspects on tons of games. There's no real way to stop it outside of counterstyle through teambuilding, and it makes games long and stressful due to the dude being unable to do anything until the move finally misses or gets pp stalled(which takes a long, long time).
 
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Nothing hypocritical about using Cloyster a bunch, just means you're more informed than you otherwise would be!


I don't know how I would construct an argument (that works within the tiering policy framework) in favor of a partial trapping ban. Nothing about it stands out above the rest of RBY. This is a game where Blizzard effectively OHKOs 10% of the time and Tauros can just critmurder an entire team. Lead stuff with Gengar/Jynx can be super super swingy, etc, that's just how RBY is. All of those things are way more prevalent than any partial trapping Pokemon.

The spectator issues are real to say the least, but we're no longer talking within the tiering framework at that point. I do like Zarel's suggestion though.

I don't know if there are lots of serious RBY heads with access to PR so I think it might be worth taking a look at some of the Ruins of Alph discussions that have happened on this subject (i swear there was at least one other one)
 
The main thing is how boring and stressing they are to play against especially considering how both you and your opponent are often just hoping for a miss/not to miss and, depending on your team structure, there is often nothing you can do about it. They are obviously not impossible to deal with but, considering they are luckily not common sight (I've faced 1 or maybe 2 in my rby cup run to finals and 1 in RoA major league), its also not uncommon to be caught unprepared. I don't think skipping the animation helps in any way since people usually spam skip turn anyways during that so getting rid of this would make RBY a bit better for everyone
 
After some of the most recent PR decisions, I think we are now looking at every single straw we could possibly pull up to re-examine. Sure, partial trapping moves are annoying, but they are not impossible to counter-play against and trappers like Cloyster and Dragonite still lack consistency issues.
 

Bedschibaer

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This post might contain the strong use of subjective opinions. You have been warned.

There's two "issues" here, the one that actually relates to the tier and the one that's about a spectator perspective. Let's just start with the first one. When I think of the sentence "this is what's wrong with RBY" the partial trapping moves (referred to as "wrap" in the following) are nowhere near the top of the list of things that would come to my mind. Over the years wrap has just not proven to be overpowered, overcentralizing, unbeatable or hugely problematic. It is seen as a gimmick by the vast majority of the playerbase. Wrap is actually a very versatile move on paper. You can use it to force a free switch, you can sweep a slow and paralyzed team with it in the endgame and you can use it to do chip damage on the opposing team and the best thing is that you are in control of when you do what. The drawback for that is that you are using actually pretty bad mons in that slot that (with the exception of cloyster) will not contribute alot to your team otherwise or would be outclassed by other mons in the tier.

The way I think about it is that most of the time is that the upsides of wrap are nice and all, but they don't really do alot more than pretty much any other mon in that slot could accomplish in a shorter period of time. The chip damage is really not much compared to what a heavy hitter with the same support could do, and the opponent can control better where that damage goes when playing against wrap. Wrap does have insane sweeping potential, but only in magical christmas land where all relevant pokemon are paralyzed (by that point the wrap player probably outplayed you enough that he would win the game regardless most of the time) and wrap never misses. Even in that scenario you need to weaken the opposing team enough to actually not get stalled out (which is actually not as tedious as before with the pp counter where you can prevent the rollover glitch). Can you gain big advantages in a game with a correctly played wrapper? Yes, definitely, but think about it that way, you can also gain big advantages in a game with a correctly played psychic, a correctly played lapras, a corretly played amnesia mon, a correctly played tauros, a correctly played electric.. you get the point. This is where the issue most tourney players have with using wrap - it's hugely inconsistent. There is a reason why it's actually barely at all seen in tournament play. Wrap just doesn't perform consistently whereas its alternatives do. I see wrap as a surprise tactic that you can whip out against an unprepaired opponent, not as one that can wrap the whole metagame around its finger (HA). AgiliWrap is actually alot better than casual wrap obviously and I could see how someone could make a case for it being too good, I personally do not think it is though since it suffers from all the problems I just mentioned too, with the exception that it actually needs a turn to set up and there are very little mons that it actually can set up on completely unpunished.

The only issue I have with wrap is that it's tedious to play with and against. Apart from the shaky pseudo uturn it really doesn't do anything that all its alternatives wouldn't have done, but it takes up like 30 turns per match doing so. You could argue that wrap barely brings anything good to the metagame, but then again, you could argue that for many of the mechanics of that generation. Last time I checked banning things on the grounds of it being "gay boring aids" wasn't really according to smogon ban policies and unlike most of the gay boring aids things that got banned in the past years I don't think rby wrap is centralizing, I don't think it makes the worse player win more than he should. Heck I don't think it's problematic in any way. If a player wants to use the shaky uturn at the cost of a very inconsistent pokemon he should feel free to do so, it is a valid strategy after all, despite being rather niche.

On the spectator issue:
Watching one person spamming Wrap for twenty to thirty turns on end is really, really, boring. Being subjected to it is much worse. Wrap play patterns are lengthy and uninteresting, and actively detract from how enjoyable RBY battles are to watch.
I really like how you can apply that logic to so many things. I don't really think oras stall vs fat balance is very interesting to watch, it has lengthy play patterns and the battles are often decided by some sort of luck simply because of the amount of turns they have where luck can occur. I don't really enjoy watching two fat gsc teams crashing into each other, I am sure most spectators didn't really enjoy me clicking struggle for several hundred turns straight vs Tiba last spl, right? I don't really like watching swampert being worn down over like 40 turns in adv so someone can sweep with rock slide. I don't really like watching someone not being able to break a reflect chansey in rby.
The concept of enjoyment is always subjective, from both a player and a spectator perspective here. I don't think banning something on such subjective grounds is really worth it, especially when it affects an issue that is not one of the main issues with the tier.
 
Oh no this again no

It is not OP, especially with that nice PP counter both PO and PS have
Doesn't RBY have a Wrap PP Glitch?

From Bulbapedia:
Damage done by Wrap's continuing duration is done after recurrent damage. If the user switches out before the turn duration ends, the target will be unable to attack during that turn. If the target switches out before the turn duration ends, Wrap will automatically be used against the incoming Pokémon, deducting an additional PP from the move. If at such a time Wrap has 0 PP, Wrap will still be used against the incoming Pokémon. After that use, the current PP of Wrap will roll over to 63, and full PP Ups will be applied to it.
 

M Dragon

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Doesn't RBY have a Wrap PP Glitch?

From Bulbapedia:
The roll over only happens if you switch out to another pokemon after the last Wrap is used. That is why having a PP counter is a big help. You just have to make sure you dont switch out after the last Wrap is used.
 

Zarel

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We use max PP in competitive mons.
Ingame it is trickier I guess
Yes, and you use max IVs in competitive mons, too, unless you can gain a competitive advantage by not using max IVs.

Same thing here, if you can gain a competitive advantage by not using max PPs (such as faking people out about when to switch out for Wrap), there's plenty of reason not to use max PP in competitive mons.
 

HANTSUKI

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I don't know why it's not banned yet Oo

It's totally uncompetitive: if we banned Shadow Tag because it prevents you from swiching and Baton Pass for being that dumb...what about a thing that prevents you from moving at all? You just spend lots of turns switching/praying for a miss while your opponent can just keep clicking Wrap like a retard without thinking about anything till everything is on Hyper Beam/whatever range ._.

Yeah, you can run a Genger to beat Nite, but it's the only real thing you can do (and Genger is a mon that you'll prolly explode during the match while WrapNite comes in the mid-late game). Nite is a bulkymon, only STAB Blizzards can OHKO it and Nite is faster than a lot of important mons (Chonsey, Eggy, Lax) and can even setup Agility.

Also, WrapNite is a thing that you can't really predict that your opponent has. You can just put a WrapNite as your lastmon because you can deal with the entire meta with the other 5 anyway. So we all just have to keep Genger alive the entire match for Nite or maybe Starmie and Genger alive so we'll not lose to either Nite or Oyster/Moltres? So I'll keep my Kazam alive as well so I can Psychic that Victreebel!!! Just need to be a good player, right? ;) .... ._.

Other things are quite bad, but they can be as dumb as a WrapNite, just need a para support/come into a slowmon.

And c'mon, using/playing against Wrap and watching the match is ANNOYING AS FUCK. I watched that 714 Turns GSC matcha from SPL and I think Wrap is worst than it LOL. Like you don't have to think at all, the spectators have nothing to comment till the bullshit ends. The user just have to click the same fucking button for minutes and the opponent has to PP Count/just wait for a miss...like wtf...at least a spectator can just leave and do another thing. But why do a player have to spend some minutes of his life doing literally nothing? Reading papai noel's posts would be more useful than playing a match like that lol

Isn't even like Scald where you know there's a 30% chance of burn and play around it. You can't know when your opponent has Wrap and don't have a way to play around it. You just have 2 fucking options and neither depends on your skill or your opponent's. It's fucking PP Count (where you can't miss or it'll reset the PPs lol) or hoping for a miss in a mon that can do something back to the Wrapper. You can't do anything in particular to stop it. The Nite just come along the game and keep Wrapping everything (or are you all going to use teams where everything outspeeds Nite? oo)

Also, any player can win using this and new players usually go for this "strategy" to win. I played RBY in some team tourneys in the last years and I played against Wrap 4 times: one in SPL against an old player who prolly thought it was fun like people from Netbattle thought (and made him win when it was like 4-2 for me) and 3 on POCL where we had like 4 true RBYers in the tournament, so the newfags just tried to win this way because it can work without you having any skill. Also, remember that SPL match where Pedrock was put to play RBY for the Frogs? !frogs Yeah, Pedrock never had played RBY until that moment and he nearly won the match. Didn't win because LN is a terrible player and gave him a Nite without Agility lol Oo


I'm tired of writing in english, hopefully I don't kaeled too much .kael but that's it: Wrap is just dumb. Ban Wrap. ban scald
 

Bedschibaer

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Actually I realized that Showdown's PP counter doesn't count wrap properly. It counts every instance of the move happening as a used PP, including the second to fifth hits, which it shouldn't. Showdown operates the mechanic properly and uses the PP properly, the display of the PPs (for the opponent) works according to current gens wrap mechanics though. Please fix that, since counting PP is quite relevant in those scenarios and the misleading PP counter is pretty obnoxious when playing against wrap.
 

Zarel

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Actually I realized that Showdown's PP counter doesn't count wrap properly. It counts every instance of the move happening as a used PP, including the second to fifth hits, which it shouldn't. Showdown operates the mechanic properly and uses the PP properly, the display of the PPs (for the opponent) works according to current gens wrap mechanics though. Please fix that, since counting PP is quite relevant in those scenarios and the misleading PP counter is pretty obnoxious when playing against wrap.
In-game, is it possible for the opponent to tell which turns Wrap has its PP deducted? Why or why not?
 

Isa

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In-game, is it possible for the opponent to tell which turns Wrap has its PP deducted? Why or why not?
every switch while wrapped deducts a PP, and every time "Bedschibaer used Wrap!" appears (aka the first turn of a chain), a PP is deducted (because the move was selected). "Bedschibaer's Wrap continues!" during turn 2-5 doesn't deduct a PP.

i'll post here when i'm less busy with school with my own thoughts but it's no secret that i think wrapping moves are the devil.
 

Nails

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In-game, is it possible for the opponent to tell which turns Wrap has its PP deducted? Why or why not?
Every time you switch and every time you have the ability to choose a move after pressing fight as the wrapped pokemon is a turn that will signal the end of a chain of wraps, and the next use will burn a pp.

I'm nearly sure.

edit: or yea isa's works too
 
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Zarel

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Note: on PS, I could do something like skip animation for Wrap turns. Would that help?
So many people Liking this post, and yet not a single person has linked me to a replay where Wrap is used.......
 

Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
is a Site Content Manageris a Battle Simulator Administratoris a Programmeris a Pokemon Researcheris an Administrator
Creator of PS
Actually I realized that Showdown's PP counter doesn't count wrap properly. It counts every instance of the move happening as a used PP, including the second to fifth hits, which it shouldn't. Showdown operates the mechanic properly and uses the PP properly, the display of the PPs (for the opponent) works according to current gens wrap mechanics though. Please fix that, since counting PP is quite relevant in those scenarios and the misleading PP counter is pretty obnoxious when playing against wrap.
Fixed in Smogtours, will be fixed in Main subsequent to its next restart.
 

Jorgen

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In its current state, Wrap in simulator RBY isn't a huge deal. It's annoying to fight because it eliminates options, but it's shaky enough that bad "luck" all too frequently beats it. Sort of like Amnesia Slowbro. There's a lot of little mechanics that make Wrap more broken in-cart than currently implemented on simulators, though.

iirc you can actually enter battles with less-than-fully-healed mons in gens 1 and 2. So really, it's not just a matter of PP ups, you could have Wrap with an arbitrary # of PPs from 1-32. Of course, sim limitations effectively clause this out (RIP non-Endure Reversal Heracross in GSC).

Also there's an issue with the lack of a "fight button" on simulators which is something where I always forget why it's important. It's a minor issue, but in-cart, if you're going to stay in to tank Wraps, then you cannot know when Wrap ends until you press the "fight" button. This means to gather information on whether Wrap is continuing, you need to first risk taking a turn of Wrap damage.

While we're on the topic of RBY, does Smogon clause out Dig and Fly? Or does the simulator not trigger the glitch where being fully paralyzed during the invulnerable turn = permanent invulnerability? Because that's definitely broken.
 

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