OU Someone refresh my memory

Do they make Explosion teams stronger? I disagree wholeheartedly.
explain.

explosion teams with a drill peck zapdos or a crunch raikou IS weaker. how much weaker is be debatable, but it's certainly weaker. in fact, every single team as a whole gets weaker. hp legends are just a powercreep from their non-hp counterparts. in no way shape or form am i saying banning hp legends will completely destroy explosion teams, but it'll be a hit that's quite hard to recover from because like you said, zapdos is just an incredible pivot mon that's braindead to use.
 

M Dragon

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explain.

explosion teams with a drill peck zapdos or a crunch raikou IS weaker. how much weaker is be debatable, but it's certainly weaker. in fact, every single team as a whole gets weaker. hp legends are just a powercreep from their non-hp counterparts. in no way shape or form am i saying banning hp legends will completely destroy explosion teams, but it'll be a hit that's quite hard to recover from because like you said, zapdos is just an incredible pivot mon that's braindead to use.
As I already said, there are strong alternatives to HP in both electrics, and boom teams do not need electrics at all.
Those are 2 different things, HP electrics have 0 impact in boom teams, it would only make ground mons more used (and maybe Jolteon).
Standard boom teams are common because it is "easy to use" for new players (although using them well is much harder), and it is a team based around Zapdos. If you ban HP electrics, then standard boom team will change, but that will not change how good or bad boom teams will be.
Explosion will always be one of the best GSC moves because of the huge impact it can have in a game (removing the Starm for Machamp, or Raikou for Zapdos, etc), but it also has a big risk. Knowing when you have to use it is not easy. If you randomly boom you will not be consistent.
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
explosion teams with a drill peck zapdos or a crunch raikou IS weaker. how much weaker is be debatable, but it's certainly weaker. in fact, every single team as a whole gets weaker. hp legends are just a powercreep from their non-hp counterparts.
We can make arguments for HP legends being broken or not all we want, except Snorlax is OU so good luck contextualizing it. The fact that HP legends are purely a power creep from the non-HP previous standard makes this discussion unique because we need to no longer speak in terms of "is this broken" but rather in terms of "what do we want".

On that note, I want a slower meta. I explained why in an earlier post.

royal flush can you tell me why Ho-oh isn't broken? I know nothing about it in terms of practical application to OU, but Sacred Fire looks insane. Seems like unbanning it would mandate a Suicune on every team (which further slows the meta, hmm)
 

Jorgen

World's Strongest Fairy
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Sacred fire isn't really that bad; 8PP royally sucks. Just Rest stall it with ST CurseLax. EZ. All it really means is you can't go in guns blazing with your Tyranitar to shoo it away.

The real problem with Ho-oh is that it's unkillable. Common offensive dudes like Nidoking, Exeggutor, and Gengar? Yeah, they don't really exist with Ho-oh ready and willing to eat their attacks whenever, wherever. Ho-oh can Recover stall Zapdos Thunders if need be, too.

I guess if you really want a slower metagame, letting Ho-oh and Celebi down isn't bad for that...
 
"slower" isn't the best word i think. i just don't like explosion. if you can end a game in 50-60 turns with dnite wak and nido, i'd love that meta.
 

Disaster Area

formerly Piexplode
well this is all a mess then
some of you want a slower meta
some of you want explosion teams nerfed or adjusted
some of you want hp legends banned
some of you want celebi/ho-oh to drop
and of course snorlax is a giant elephant in the room
n_n seriously guys how are u gonna agree on what you all want lmao
 

Sapientia

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well this is all a mess then
some of you want a slower meta
some of you want explosion teams nerfed or adjusted
some of you want hp legends banned
some of you want celebi/ho-oh to drop
and of course snorlax is a giant elephant in the room
n_n seriously guys how are u gonna agree on what you all want lmao
The best solution to address all of these issues at once is to unban both Celebi and Ho-oh, and possibly even Mewtwo, though the latter would defy the purpose of nerfing Explosion teams.

Celebi is incredibly hard to kill and Ho-oh enforces the frequent use of Rest due to Sacred Fire. Ho-oh lures in Snorlax just to burn it and therefore slows it down. Celebi can use its own Curse, Psych Up or even Defense Curl to wall Snorlax without Belly Drum, assuming LK has already been used. As an added bonus, it doesn't care about HP Electrics, therefore giving a major incentive to resort to Drill Peck/Crunch.

All 3 are more likely than not to survive most explosions at 100%, not to mention the ease of keeping them at full health with 32 PP recover.
Exeggutor Explosion vs. Celebi: 348-410 (86.3 - 101.7%) -- 12.8% chance to OHKO
Exeggutor Explosion vs. Ho-Oh: 379-446 (91.3 - 107.4%) -- 46.2% chance to OHKO
 
Celebi can use its own Curse, Psych Up or even Defense Curl to wall Snorlax without Belly Drum, assuming LK has already been used.
Look. This is what I'm referring to: this would be a completely unthinkable statement to make in a meta where Drumlax is the dominant lax. Drumlax is just like hp fire egg or body slam steelix now, and I don't like it!
 

Sapientia

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using celebi is every bit as braindead as explosion, if not more.
Yet Celebi and Explosion are two quite different stories.

Explosion has a high variance of performance: It can either take out pivotal team members (e.g. Cloyster blowing up Starmie for Machamp) or completely fizzle out (e.g. hitting ghosts or Skarmory). As as bonus it often enforces suboptimal plays, whenever you try to avoid having such key members take an explosion and switch your Normal resistance/a less meaningful Pokemon into another damaging move, having erroneously expected an explosion. Add the fact that it's one-time-use and you got a strategy, which a) depends on mere guessing ("luck") rather than informed decisions ("skill") and b) enables the slightly-above-average player to beat top level players at times, and you have the perfect recipe to get people pissed off.

On the other hand Celebi has an extremely narrow set of options, which are rather supportive than actually threatening. It is very reliable at the few things it does, but will neither contribute much to the win of a battle nor end one without having done anything at all. It performance is rather stable and doesn't vary all that much. And while its use doesn't exactly put any demands on a player's skill, it doesn't "defy" skill either.

But I guess you could transfer the braindead reproach to a lot of gsc Pokemon: Snorlax (those without Belly Drum and possibly LK), Zapdos, Suicune, Umbreon (not the ML version though) and Miltank being the prime examples.

You guys have to decide: Do wish to have your set of rules a) benefit your preferred style of playing or b) create the most reasonable tiers?

For the first option, good luck with finding a consensus on what is an enjoyable metagame...

In the latter case Ho-oh and Celebi, both of which are undisputedly (Does anyone disagree??) less broken than Snorlax, shouldn't be in ubers while Snorlax is not. And for the sake of parsimony: If anything, either the two Electrics or Hidden Power as a whole should be subjected to a ban, but not the combination of a Pokemon and a move. Then again, what use are sound rules, if nobody cares to play due to a lack of enjoyment?
 
agree w/ conflict, have read all of this discussion and it looks more like players needing to be less lazy and figuring out how to renew the meta - all the tools are there. Explosion teams are nasty but i don't think they need to be nerfed in the ruleset. anyway these are all natural consequences of gsc being a dead metagame which is only played situationally (spl)
 
I don't play GSC competitively, I just read about it, and I have maybe a stupid question but I am legitimately curious - why not just ban Hidden Power altogether? It gets rid of the "complexity" element of the HP Legends, and it kind of makes sense: I've always thought Hidden Power was just a really weird move. Giving a solid coverage move of any type to any Pokemon seems like the kind of gimmicky thing that sounds like a fun, random move in-cartridge but kinda broken and not too terribly fun/interesting competitively.
 
I don't get this '4 booms is not GSC' logic

GSC is whatever it can be. Just because people didn't always play boom heavy doesn't mean that's not GSC. It just means that for whatever reason, people arbitrarily decided to develop a slower meta in the early days (when a faster one was clearly viable) and now think anything different to that is not GSC.

Imagine if the game had originally developed as 4 booms and no one used curse and phazers. These same people would say 'it's not GSC' if other people recently started trying to slow down the meta with curse and phazing.
 

gorgie

formerly Floppy, now Rock hard
re-read spies + conflict's posts a million times dudes.

you're all just feeding into the ban mentality because that is what the current "trend" is and it's the easiest way of dealing with "things you dont like".

the metagame is perfectly fine and has been perfectly fine for a very, very long time.

most of you are just too bored and/or lazy.
 
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Mr.E

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This post is turning out to be more rambling than anything but whatever. Feel free to glaze over half of it... In fact, I'll break it up in hide tags. So at the top here, I'll just re-state I like GSC OU the way it is.

I could take or leave Celebi and Ho-oh. I personally prefer to keep them banned because I'm a sucker for tradition while admitting they're probably not better than Snorlax. I don't think it's an absolute, as they're certainly both a match for it, but nonetheless it means they're certainly less dangerous than Lugia and Mewtwo. *shrug* And I've no idea what to think of Mew, don't forget the little cat.

also what Conflict and floppy said, particularly regarding present-day Smogon's BARN ALL attitude
Even an Explosion team (and I still don't think "Explosion" counts as a team category in and of itself) is far slower in GSC than any sort of heavy offense in Gen 4+. Am I the only GSC dood that is fine with the pace of the game? It's still by far slower, less luck-based more skill-based due to a dearth of "absolute win conditions," etc. than any other generation of mons.

Maybe I just don't click the button willy-nilly enough? :[ I mean, it's not like you just spam Explosion and win. Normal resists are a thing and "stall" teams are far more likely to have multiple mons that can survive Explosion at that, which aren't necessarily even resistant. It's far easier in GSC than future gens to remain at full HP and also recover from low HP once tanking something for not-100% of your HP.

You need time to scout your opponent's team and figure out possible win-cons, in addition to playing it correctly to blow up the proper targets due to the risk and finality of the decision to Explode. By the same token, you're granted the time to formulate a plan thanks to your mons not all dying in two hits max. Seems pretty skillful to me. *shrug*
I continue to maintain that GSC doesn't have the same spectrum of "hard stall to heavy offense" that later-gen players use anyway. Hard stall simply cannot exist insofar as there's a severe lack of passive damage in GSC: no WoW and Toxic resets to regular Poison on switch, a lone entry hazard, no weather abilities. At some point, you actually have to mount some sort of direct offense. By the same token, Marowak is the only thing that even somewhat resembles an all-encompassing offensive threat. So everyone ends up with mostly the same teams within some limit rather than the RPS-like thing that later gens have with team matchups, which again requires more skill because that means (almost) every game is reasonably winnable from Turn 1. Not quite chess but much closer than future gens, while refining or fixing most of RBY's stupid shit.

The "standard Boom team" doesn't even have to use Explosion most of the time either. Like okay take my ol' standby Zapdos / Cloyster / Eggy / Snorlax / Machamp / Gengar. Cloyster having Explosion is kind of a given because it doesn't actually get any other notable moves, so can you really blame me? But Eggy I don't even use Explosion half the time because Leech Seed is also really good at creating momentum without having to kill myself. Boomlax is pretty rare since Lax is generally defense first on teams. Gengar sometimes uses Destiny Bond if its purpose is to protect against sweeps more than open up holes... Hell, Gengar can do whatever it wants.

I mean yeah, if after 30, 50, 100 turns of scouting my opponent's team out and noting that Starmie is the only roadblock to Machamp sweeping and they just let me blow it up with Cloyster... sure, I'll take it. That's just playing the game. But I don't play from Turn 1 with the express written purpose of "blow up everything that beats Machamp" (or Marowak or T-Tar or...). You can win with Zapdos because, you know, Zapdos is really fucking good. Snorlax is always a potential win-con. Sometimes Gengar just getting a 2-for-1 and grinding out the 5v4 advantage is enough.

Identifying the best way to win the game, and then slowly nudging the game toward that direction, takes a ton of skill. On the other side, your opponent isn't too bright if they allow you to blow up their only good defense to Mon X. Everything in GSC has multiple answers, and most of them heavily overlap due to the still relatively small pool of viable mons in the metagame (more than RBY but less than future gens). It's not Explosion being too powerful, or Zapdos being too powerful defensively to glue those teams together. That's just poor play on the opponent's part. The game doesn't need to be changed to accomodate that.

All the bitching is mostly just Borat crowing about how specifically HP Zapdos is too good anyway, while readily admitting it's still not even better than Snorlax. ;[
 
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All I got from this is to unban Celebi, uban Hypnosis Misdreavus and then maybe unban Ho-Oh or some other big legend.
 
Hp legends are centralizing the meta, and this is the most important fact. Why have i to run dp zapdos or crunch raikou when hp ice is just better?
And so on: the boltbeam coverage can hit hard kinda every pokemon i face, so i haven't definite zapdos counters except for raikou/blissey (though blissey kinda sucks) or my own snorlax (which isn't even sure of swithing in if damaged cause of parahax); the only other way to kill zapdos is by exploding on it, and trying to take advantage of the play with a final vaporeon cleaner.
So you can face hp legends in these 3 ways: hard walling them with your own raikou, exploding on them or sending out your snorlax (which kinda counters/checks everything :P), also hp legends can be used on every fuckin team because they can fit every empty space due to their smartness, and all this leads to standard teams with almost the same pokes with the same sets.

tl;dr = hp legends kill the fantasy

So the question is: how would a hp legend-less metagame be? I am a newgen player who comes from bw2, so i haven't lived the hp ban-unban passage, but i can sum up my speculative conclusions with borat's ones. Would this imply a better metagame? Of course yes, if you want a more thoughtful game, which is the reason i gave up oras (shitty metagame) trying to improve on gsc.
 
this is hilarious. It's like everyone has these bottled up strong feelings towards the rules of this gen and the idea of them being changed even though no one barely battles anymore is like rewriting the bible to christians.

I mean I checked this forum a few months ago and there was nothing, then in like 2 weeks there's this much discussion.

Face it, everyone arguing for hp legends either uses them, or began playing this game when they were unbanned.

Everyone else played when they were banned or are too in love with their nidoking or rhydon.

The arguments are just bs to cover these truths.

This metagame was more fun with them banned. More pokemon were used = more fun.

sincerely, 03-05 rhydon user.
 
the stall is what makes gsc though....it's supposed to be very difficult to get the first kill. gsc is all mind games.

celebi got banned because it's annoying and never dies. Not the best grounds to ban it but it happened. Ho-oh ban is a mystery but it probabaly has something cheap that it exploits. off the top of my head earthquake, sacred fire, curse, recover could be pretty damn annoying to deal with on those stats. might bring back more starmies and suicunes though which could be cool.
 

Jorgen

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Ho-oh can Recover stall Starmies and Suicunes, and it can run Thunder, too. Waters aren't how you beat Ho-oh; Snorlax and your own Ho-oh are how you beat it. Zapdos too, kinda, but Fire Blast hurts.
 

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