ginganinja
It's all coming back to me now
Recently in the OU forums, the community has been discussing the suspect status of certain moves in the metagame. These discussions have been “unofficial” in nature; however both the OU staff and the Suspect Council have been watching these threads progress, while discussing the topics themselves over IRC. With these discussions going on, I think it necessary to open up the floor to members of Policy Review to discuss suspect testing moves, especially if it ever becomes relevant to Gen 6 suspect testing.
This proposal is a controversial one since it steps outside the traditional suspect testing process of simply banning the pokemon. For example, I have talked with many people that are naturally concerned that targeting specific aspects of pokemon, ie abilities and moves, can lead to a slippery slope. More than once, people in the various suspect threads have accused us of “lazy” banning, claiming we are banning because we just don’t want to adapt and while I don’t personally subscribe to this view, it has to be said that targeting certain moves in our suspect process does need serious consideration.
We have banned moves before, with Evasion Moves and OHKO moves being the obvious examples. Obviously, those moves were deemed to be uncompetitive, such as removing skill from a matchup, thus tilting the metagame in favour of the more “lucky” player, and taking skill out of the equation.
Scald is potentially one of the best examples of a move worthy of suspect testing. I refuse to name drop here, but I have talked with many battlers that I respect, and there is a strong opinion that the move itself is extremely stupid (putting it mildly) while at the other end of the spectrum, others believe it’s just flat out broken.
For those that are unused to OU, the main reason why Scald is so frustrating is because there lacks any decent counter play towards it. Your best defence, against Scald, is to use Dry Skin / Water Absorb / Storm Drain / Natural Cure mons, of which there is a limited number, or simply pray you don’t get screwed over by an untimely burn, which simply happens more often than not because it is very easy for Rain teams to use the move, consistently spam it, and get the burns required.
In regards to the move itself, it has average base power, it gets boosted by the ever common rain, it has no shortage of abusers (ie pokemon that can rely upon it as a general STAB move), it has a 30% burn rate, and it is just so spammable which makes switching in exceptionally difficult. Often, I can bring in my Tentacruel, my Jellicent, my Politoed, and literally 90% of the time, spamming Scald is always the best option because I can a) get good damage on something, and b) have a 30% chance at crippling the best switch-ins to Scald. Ferrothorn for example, cannot switch in on Tentacruel, heck, Tentacruel often switches in on Ferrothorn, simply because it can and will burn Ferrothorn thus crippling it for the rest of the match. Even Latias and Rotom-W hate getting burnt, because that residual damage, along with the ever common Stealth Rock (for instance), just pushes them into KOs from other high powered sweepers such as Keldeo.
I should be clear here, that the purpose of this thread isn't to bitch and moan about Scald. I am merely illustrating Scald as the perfect example of a move that many believe is suspect worthy, and that discussing suspect testing moves is something we ought to do. So please, when replying keep in mind that Scald is merely one example, and that the real focus of this thread is to look at our banning philosophy in regards to suspecting moves. Discussions about suspecting moves have been brought up before, such as Spore and Stealth Rock, but I don’t want to dwell upon these as one example is enough. I do think that we need a firm policy in regards to suspecting moves in general, and we might as well do this now rather than wait till Generation 6 to make any changes (if at all) to our suspect test process.
This proposal is a controversial one since it steps outside the traditional suspect testing process of simply banning the pokemon. For example, I have talked with many people that are naturally concerned that targeting specific aspects of pokemon, ie abilities and moves, can lead to a slippery slope. More than once, people in the various suspect threads have accused us of “lazy” banning, claiming we are banning because we just don’t want to adapt and while I don’t personally subscribe to this view, it has to be said that targeting certain moves in our suspect process does need serious consideration.
We have banned moves before, with Evasion Moves and OHKO moves being the obvious examples. Obviously, those moves were deemed to be uncompetitive, such as removing skill from a matchup, thus tilting the metagame in favour of the more “lucky” player, and taking skill out of the equation.
Scald is potentially one of the best examples of a move worthy of suspect testing. I refuse to name drop here, but I have talked with many battlers that I respect, and there is a strong opinion that the move itself is extremely stupid (putting it mildly) while at the other end of the spectrum, others believe it’s just flat out broken.
For those that are unused to OU, the main reason why Scald is so frustrating is because there lacks any decent counter play towards it. Your best defence, against Scald, is to use Dry Skin / Water Absorb / Storm Drain / Natural Cure mons, of which there is a limited number, or simply pray you don’t get screwed over by an untimely burn, which simply happens more often than not because it is very easy for Rain teams to use the move, consistently spam it, and get the burns required.
In regards to the move itself, it has average base power, it gets boosted by the ever common rain, it has no shortage of abusers (ie pokemon that can rely upon it as a general STAB move), it has a 30% burn rate, and it is just so spammable which makes switching in exceptionally difficult. Often, I can bring in my Tentacruel, my Jellicent, my Politoed, and literally 90% of the time, spamming Scald is always the best option because I can a) get good damage on something, and b) have a 30% chance at crippling the best switch-ins to Scald. Ferrothorn for example, cannot switch in on Tentacruel, heck, Tentacruel often switches in on Ferrothorn, simply because it can and will burn Ferrothorn thus crippling it for the rest of the match. Even Latias and Rotom-W hate getting burnt, because that residual damage, along with the ever common Stealth Rock (for instance), just pushes them into KOs from other high powered sweepers such as Keldeo.
I should be clear here, that the purpose of this thread isn't to bitch and moan about Scald. I am merely illustrating Scald as the perfect example of a move that many believe is suspect worthy, and that discussing suspect testing moves is something we ought to do. So please, when replying keep in mind that Scald is merely one example, and that the real focus of this thread is to look at our banning philosophy in regards to suspecting moves. Discussions about suspecting moves have been brought up before, such as Spore and Stealth Rock, but I don’t want to dwell upon these as one example is enough. I do think that we need a firm policy in regards to suspecting moves in general, and we might as well do this now rather than wait till Generation 6 to make any changes (if at all) to our suspect test process.