Would banning Garchomp from standard play even solve the problem?

[Jumpman16]

I don't exactly have to link to the Stark Mountain topic since it's pretty much on the first page all the time, nor do I necessarily want to. We do need to talk this though and see if we can make any heads or tails of this issue.

Mekkah has correctly stated that, no matter what, there will never be 100% consensus or agreement on the tiers, and I think that is something we should keep in the forefront of our minds when considering this issue. Should we start from scratch, or is there something that we can take from prior discussions, both in the aforementioned thread and elsewhere?

For what it's worth, my heart tells me that it's funny that we're considering taking this kind of action. It seems to me that Gamefreak dared us to consider this pokemon standard by adding two more Base Speed points and an annoying ability, and it is my personal inclination to defy Gamefreak's taunt and use Garchomp as it was intended. That doesn't really hold much water as an argument but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. I'm not sure I have quite the competitive experience with Garchomp to weigh in on this issue as I'd like to, but I have not ever been swept by it in the times it's been used against me.

I'd love it for the battle-tested Policy Reviewers to sound off here.

 

[Mekkah]

It seems really ridiculous what is going on at the moment: on one hand, we want to move down Pokemon we thought of as uber to the OU tier, or at least give them a chance. On the other hand, we seem to think that some OU Pokemon are more centralizing. Of course "we" is not the community as a whole wanting to both ban and unban (as I said, no 100% concensus is possible even among the reasonable group of Policy Review or the staff). There's people who would just like to leave stuff as it is because we won't agree on everything either way (X-Act) and there's people who wish to give many things a chance, using the fact that Garchomp here is allowed as an argument to justify the testing of things that would be below even him, Wobbuffet and Deoxys-Suck being the prime examples, but I've also seen Kyogre clamoring (I'm talking to you Obi).

Indeed, don't kid yourselves: if Garchomp goes, something else will make fun of standard. Considering the turn of events, the most likely candidate for that seems either Salamence, Lucario or perhaps Togekiss (Heracross not so much because Gliscor is there as a pretty much 100% counter).

We really, really, really need that clear definition of what is uber, draw that line and sort the Pokemon out. Preferably something that is as objective as possible, preferably something that can be pointed out with maths and statistics rather than logic, comparisons and points of view. Then Garchomp will fall right into place.

 

[X-Act]

I'll say first that if we start from scratch with separating Ubers and OU, then UU will have to wait until OU is a little bit stable again, which would render at least one of the other threads in this subforum moot.

Yes, Garchomp is centralising, but who cares? There would always be Pokemon that centralise a metagame, even if Garchomp is banned... and even if we start afresh and try to find a "balanced" metagame (which attempt would fail, as no metagame is balanced!). You either prepare for Garchomp in your team building, or use it yourself, or... even better, do both. I'm sure there are overcentralising forces in RBY OU, GSC OU and ADV OU as well... maybe even more so than in DP.

My answer to the question "Would banning Garchomp from standard play even solve the problem?" is thus a resounding "NO".

As an aside, I regret saying this, but it's impossible to judge a Pokemon 100% objectively. Consider just Sand Veil: an ability that renders a Pokemon invulnerable 20% of the time when under a certain weather condition, which weather condition can be summoned by two other Pokemon or via the usage of a move which could be used by maybe another Pokemon, even your foe's. How can you provide something resembling a formula that tells you how good Sand Veil is? Or Intimidate? Or Own Tempo? Or Hypnosis? Or Power Trick? ... See how complex it is?

 

[Cathy]

I don't have anything to say about Garchomp, but I'd like to respond to this:

no metagame is balanced

How do you define "balanced"? I define it such that a metagame is balanced if the number of viable pokemon exceeds a certain critical threshold. Many metagames are balanced by this definition. I suggest making the critical threshold around 50, so indeed the current standard is balanced. But can we achieve a balanced game with a shorter ban list? If we can, then it is preferable, because it will allow the lower tiers to contain more pokemon, so that there is a higher chance that a given pokemon will be viable in some metagame.

I think the approach you allude to -- quantifying the quality of each pokemon -- is a dead end. I instead suggest what I have been suggesting consistently: ignoring why the game has become more or less centralised and simply reacting based on whether it has (see also my posts in the other thread).

And I agree that the standard ban list has to be constructed before UU can be.

 

[Great Sage]

I have used Garchomp and/or fought against it for at least half my battles on Shoddy, and while it is annoyingly difficult to face, I don't think relegating it to Ubers is necessary. Assuming that Garchomp is incredibly powerful and hard to counter, one would strike the argument that if banned, something else will replace it, a thought that has been cited numerous times. Basically, it immediately boils down to that banning Garchomp won't solve much or perhaps even anything.

However, that Garchomp is this almost-invincible force isn't quite the case, as Garchomp can be handled pretty well in OU. I have probably used all the standard Garchomp sets, so I can give a decent testimonial as to each set. The most vicious Garchomp sets are probably the Choice Band and SubSalac in Sandstorm sets. However, 102 Speed is great, but still not enough for Choice Band Chomp to pull off a clean sweep; it also strikes the problem of predictability. The standard Life Orb set also suffers in that 102 base Speed isn't that overwhelmingly good, and Scarfchomp is weaker while still maintaining predictability. SubSalac is the scariest in my opinion, but unfortunately doesn't have as much type coverage as the other sets. Sure, it sweeps in the endgame, but there are many other endgame sweepers too.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

I don't know, maybe this is just me. But I really don't understand this "if you ban Garchomp, something else will centralize the metagame" argument. The Pokemon that people generally refer to in this argument (Lucario as the main one) are already being used at high numbers and it's been shown that even though they're very potent Pokemon, they're still reasonably easy to counter. If anything, banning Garchomp will help teams better counter these other huge threats since they don't have to waste at least 2 spots countering Garchomp.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

I agree with JabbaFat on this one. If you remove Garchomp, the game will become significantly less offensive because teams will be able to counter Lucario/Salamence effectively without having to worry about Garchomp.

Garchomp is the reason why these pokemon are so effective. Teams usually have 2 or more counters to Garchomp, but if it wasn't there then these two pokemon/moveslots would be free to stop other pokemon. Garchomp is not like any other pokemon in OU- it HAS to be taken into account or you are going to lose a good number of your matches. If Garchomp was banned, things like Luke and Mence would not magically rise in power, but would be much easier to stop with the wide array of more usable pokemon.

Now, you might be thinking "well if Garchomp really does all of this, it must be centralizing the game so that these other pokemon have the chances that they get". Well, not really. If you consider that Garchomp is on most competitive OU teams, that automatically frees a spot up to stop other pokemon that benefit from Garchomp's presence. Using Garchomp stops the game from slowly spiraling into stall, just as GSC and Adv did before it. This might not seem bad to people who love spending 25 minutes per match, but the "d/p isnt adv 2.0" argument works here just as it did with Deoxys-S and Wobbuffet.

I'm not arguing that Garchomp isn't as good as it's hyped to be- it is certainly a high-class pokemon. What I'm saying is that if it isn't obvious enough that Garchomp is Uber yet, after two years of d/p, there will probably never be enough reason to move it up on the tier list.

If we want a fluctuating, "balanced" game that is fun to play, Garchomp is better off staying in OU. Literally, why fix what isn't broken? If we want GSC with some extra pokemon, let's kick it out!

 

[husk]

I would like to see a "testing ban" on Garchomp that lasts for one month (which I believe was the period given to Deoxys-e and Wobb). It'd probably take more than 1 month for the DP metagame to turn to heavy stall if it were to do so, so it wouldn't really refute jrrrrrrr's point but at least we'd have a chance to see the impact of garchomp on the metagame. Then we can resume debating whether it is uber or not with actual experience.

 

[obi]

If your argument is "Something will just take Garchomp's place", then you'd think such people would not be at all averse to allowing all Pokemon, because such an argument rests on the implicit assumption that all Pokemon are equally centralizing, in a sense.

The fact of the matter is that some Pokemon, such as Garchomp, have such offensive power that you simply cannot stand in its way. Few Pokemon have this power. The Pokemon that take its place in terms of usage won't take its place in terms of ability to overpower.

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

Banning it isn't going to do shit.

I also think we should just lock that topic cause every other idiot's argument is "well if in late game and they take this out and that out then how would you stop Garchomp?" Well gee really user Random123456, who would have thought? All those newbies are talking about is paper Pokemon too. Sure theres a lot of reasons that make it good, but seriously, if those idiots get beaten so easily by it, and uses it themselves, that's just a testament to their battling skills and therefore opinions hold invalid. But that's just what I think and I am a narcissitic coincieted condescending individual, so whatever.

 

[Bologo]

Banning it isn't going to do shit.

I also think we should just lock that topic cause every other idiot's argument is "well if in late game and they take this out and that out then how would you stop Garchomp?" Well gee really user Random123456, who would have thought? All those newbies are talking about is paper Pokemon too. Sure theres a lot of reasons that make it good, but seriously, if those idiots get beaten so easily by it, and uses it themselves, that's just a testament to their battling skills and therefore opinions hold invalid. But that's just what I think and I am a narcissitic coincieted condescending individual, so whatever.

Yeah, I agree with this. That thread is seriously not getting anywhere. Whenever someone mentions a way to beat Garchomp, I always see someone spouting "OVERCENTRALIZING" comments, which is unbelievably annoying.

Very few super-experienced people have said that Garchomp is too much, it's all been newbies, so yeah. I really do agree with this.

 

[Brawley]

Well even if we do remove it we still have to deal with DDnite, who is really countered by a lot of the same stuff, also all the dragons are getting harder to use because of the increased usage of Mamosiwne....
Another thing is that a lot of people rely on just out speeding and killing to counter pokes these days, so you can just do that to Garchomp.

Just saying, and these topics never get anywhere.
=/

 

[Jumpman16]

"These topics" are necessary if we want to get things done, otherwise you can just sit on the sidelines and watch and complain that things never get done like the rest of Stark. The reason I posted this thread was to try and uncover something that may have been lost in the mounds of posts in the Stark thread.

MoP, your post isn't very helpful and I expect a lot more from you being one of the better battle tested players on Shoddy. Because trust me, I have no problem just saying "Garchomp isn't uber and never will be and arguing about it is now an infractable offense" so people can shut up about it. If you guys don't want to weigh in on this or don't think anything more can be added to the discussion, a decision has to be made so 30-page threads don't clutter up Stark and people can accept that Garchomp isn't going anywhere and deal with it.

 

[Deck Knight]

Garchomp is just exceedingly annoying. I've used Scarfchomp on several teams (it's my favorite set) and people could take it out most times. Powerful as it may be, Garchomp can get hit hard by prediction, especially on the Outrage using sets.

There's also the aforementioned Mamoswine, whose place in a team isn't exactly a huge price to pay for being able to counter 4x weak Dragons. In fact, Mamo and Chompy have the same high-powered Earthquake. Mamo also threatens Tyranitar and Metagross with his other STAB.

Garchomp also doesn't really boost anything except for Luke. Salamence is defeated by much the same method as Garchomp, Lucario is completely different. Actually I'm finding Lucario more difficult to take out than Chompy these days.

Even assuming Garchomp gets banned, I don't see anything rising in its place. Worst case scenario is people start seeing what a monster Lucario is and how it's like some kind of twisted stat-upping version of Gengar. Nothing else really has Garchomp's characteristic massive attack and unblockable STAB. The only pokemon that resists both Outrage and Earthquake are Bronzong and Skarmory, and they hate Fire Blast.

I do think Garchomp is a powerful prick that limits the availability of other pokemon by its sheer ability to slaughter things that don't resist Outrage, but Garchomp is a known quantity whose biggest set variation is whether it has Swords Dance, Sub, or Draco Meteor. I do wish Gamefreak made low-level pokemon like Hippowdon or Abomasnow that had Drought and Drizzle, though.

 

[Boa1891]

Very few super-experienced people have said that Garchomp is too much, it's all been newbies, so yeah. I really do agree with this.

I'm not what you'd call "super-experienced"; I haven't even battled competitively for a few months. But I have never had a problem with him. He's just like any other high-class stat-upper: Let him get set up when you don't have a counter, and you are dead. Period.

At the same time, people saying the Garchomp is too predictable are wrong. A majority of the time, it's predictable, yes. But I, personally, run an odd set: Swords Dance (just for when I see a shot), Earthquake (impossible to take off), Dragon Rush (flinchax olol? I love this move.), and Fire Blast. I also use it in conjunction with Gravity and Sandstream, increasing its deadliness about 20x in exchange for that 20% evasiveness, and when it wears off he can abuse the evasiveness.

People still have no problem taking it down. And I've never had a problem tackling Garchomp before. To say that Garchomp is too powerful is wrong. Overcentralising, perhaps, but there will always be something that is extremely centralized.
In my opinion, the splitting of tiers can never remove centralization, it just limits it, splits it, and gives the other Pokémon a fighting chance- Centralization will always exist.

In closing...
My opinion is that Garchomp is fine where it is. Not because I use it, not because I can handle it, but because there are a lot of Pokémon that hit up a majority of teams similarly.
Just because most teams have a Blissey counter without trying (Anything physical, at all), does that mean you could win if your team can't take down a Blissey?

 

[Jumpman16]

Blissey is nowhere near the offensive threat Garchomp is, and that makes all the difference in the world. I have always kind of cringed at that argument because Blissey doesn't centralize the metagame as much as it prevents the metagame from being overcentralized around a myriad special threats.

 

[Bologo]

Ok, well now that the other thread is locked, I'm going to go ahead and give my opinion in this thread.

I feel that Garchomp is really not that big of a deal besides Sand Veil. Yes, Sand Veil is annoying, but it still only has a 20% chance of activating. This can be compared to Psychic's chance of lowering special defense, which happens quite rarely in my experience.

There's really not much of a reason for people to complain about the subbing versions of Garchomp when Skarmory and Bronzong are so common. It still needs to sacrifice two of its moveslots for Sub/Swords Dance, which make it easily walled by those two.

The regular Swords Dance version isn't that bad either since it can still only hit with a non-STAB Fire Fang against Skarmory and Bronzong. It's screwed by anything that's faster and has Taunt/Encore/Sleeping move. If the opponent has Haze (which has perfect accuracy no matter what), then he loses all the boosts he just worked for and he's back to square one, making him a lot easier to take down.

For Chain Chomp, it's basically screwed if it's already used Draco Meteor on something and didn't kill it. The reason is that you can just bring out a Ground immunity, which are quite abundant in OU, and Garchomp is basically forced to switch out, or be hitting for extremely small amounts of damage.

The Choice Garchomps are taken down just like any other Choice user since they're locked into one move.

There's also the fact that Garchomp has very few resistances to come in on, and only one immunity that people are going to be skeptical about using, especially if they know he's on the team. With that said, his defenses are good, but he still takes quite a bit of damage from neutral attacks, and most attacks are neutral against him...

Really, what I'm saying, is that while Garchomp in general has no clear cut counters pokemon-wise, each set does, and Garchomp in general has several clear-cut counters tactic-wise.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

There's really not much of a reason for people to complain about the subbing versions of Garchomp when Skarmory and Bronzong are so common. It still needs to sacrifice two of its moveslots for Sub/Swords Dance, which make it easily walled by those two.

The regular Swords Dance version isn't that bad either since it can still only hit with a non-STAB Fire Fang against Skarmory and Bronzong. It's screwed by anything that's faster and has Taunt/Encore/Sleeping move. If the opponent has Haze (which has perfect accuracy no matter what), then he loses all the boosts he just worked for and he's back to square one, making him a lot easier to take down.

Out of everything you said I have the biggest problem with these statements.

First of all, in response to the sub SDer, Bronzong loses if it misses once or twice, an experience I've dealt with several times. So "easily walled" is just a bit of a stretch for Zong (not to mention it has no form of recovery, so chomp only has to wear it down). Skarmory on the other hand is a surefire counter to the sub SD set. So only a single 100% counter, how nice.

The normal SD chomp on the other hand has 0 counters. Your only safe move is a revenge kill, which 20% of the time will miss and rest of the time you more than likely will not kill due to the now common Yache Berry Chomp (a setup I personally feel is completely broken). You say that Zong and Skarmory still wall the set, but when they're 2hkoed by a Swords Dance Fire Fang I'm pretty sure that's a far way from walling it. I've never had a battle against a Yache Chomp where it hasn't taken down 2-6 members of my team and this is including battles where i've used both Skarmory and Mamoswine on the same team.

 

[Bologo]

Out of everything you said I have the biggest problem with these statements.

First of all, in response to the sub SDer, Bronzong loses if it misses once or twice, an experience I've dealt with several times. So "easily walled" is just a bit of a stretch for Zong (not to mention it has no form of recovery, so chomp only has to wear it down). Skarmory on the other hand is a surefire counter to the sub SD set. So only a single 100% counter, how nice.

The normal SD chomp on the other hand has 0 counters. Your only safe move is a revenge kill, which 20% of the time will miss and rest of the time you more than likely will not kill due to the now common Yache Berry Chomp (a setup I personally feel is completely broken). You say that Zong and Skarmory still wall the set, but when they're 2hkoed by a Swords Dance Fire Fang I'm pretty sure that's a far way from walling it. I've never had a battle against a Yache Chomp where it hasn't taken down 2-6 members of my team and this is including battles where i've used both Skarmory and Mamoswine on the same team.

Heh, I never said that Skarmory and Bronzong could "wall" the second set at all. I just said that they can only use Fire Fang against it.

The normal SD Chomp still has a very hard time switching in y'know, especially since it's neutral to so much and takes boatloads from Specs hits. You can't just assume that the opponent is the one switching into Garchomp every time, because you could honestly say that about any fast stat-upping pokemon and say that they're broken. It can switch in easily on defensive pokemon, but a lot of teams are offensive these days, so it's not as easy as it used to be. You could say the same thing about SD Lucario, but even Lucario actually has a lot of resistances to come in on at least. I don't see what's so much more threatening about Garchomp than there is for Lucario, other than the Sand Veil.

Also, about your statement for the SubSD Chomp. Skarmory is a 100% counter right, and there's only one? Yeah, so how about Heracross and his only 100% in Gliscor?

 

[husk]

The normal SD Chomp still has a very hard time switching in y'know, especially since it's neutral to so much and takes boatloads from Specs hits. You can't just assume that the opponent is the one switching into Garchomp every time, because you could honestly say that about any fast stat-upping pokemon and say that they're broken. It can switch in easily on defensive pokemon, but a lot of teams are offensive these days, so it's not as easy as it used to be.

I agree. If my opponent just throws Garchomp into neutral choiced moves they probably won't sweep my team with it. But then again "You could say the same thing about SD Lucario" or any other pokemon for that matter.

Also, about your statement for the SubSD Chomp. Skarmory is a 100% counter right, and there's only one? Yeah, so how about Heracross and his only 100% in Gliscor?

That's a pretty terrible comparison.


Out of curiosity, those of you who don't have trouble with garchomp could you please help me out? It appears I'm pretty terrible at this game since when I lose it is generally to Garchomp. I really think I'm missing something.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

Heracross has plenty of counters besides Gliscor, hell just off the top of my head I used Bulkymence as a Heracross counter for a while and that worked perfectly.

Also you seem to overlook the fact that Garchomp can switch in after a kill. Your opponent just has to wait for the right moment, sacrifice something and then bring in Garchomp to work its magic.

I'm with husk. Can someone please tell me this secret formula that seems to have been created to deal with Garchomp, because right now it seems I'm out of the loop.

 

[Bologo]

Heracross has plenty of counters besides Gliscor, hell just off the top of my head I used Bulkymence as a Heracross counter for a while and that worked perfectly.

Also you seem to overlook the fact that Garchomp can switch in after a kill. Your opponent just has to wait for the right moment, sacrifice something and then bring in Garchomp to work its magic.

I'm with husk. Can someone please tell me this secret formula that seems to have been created to deal with Garchomp, because right now it seems I'm out of the loop.

Well, the for the record, not to go off-topic at all, but Stone Edge still takes a respectable chunk off of BulkyMence from Heracross.

Like it was mentioned before, any high-class stat upper can do what you said in your second statement. Especially SD Lucario.

Each individual team seems to have some way of avoiding a Garchomp sweep. Personally, I use my handy Encore Shuckle to just Encore that pathetic Swords Dance attempt and then Garchomp is completely screwed. Or just use Shuckle to Knock Off that item. If it's already Danced, I still Encore and just switch to something that resists/takes nothing from the next attack. I don't know what other people do, but that's how I deal with Chomp.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

Well, the for the record, not to go off-topic at all, but Stone Edge still takes a respectable chunk off of BulkyMence from Heracross.

Like it was mentioned before, any high-class stat upper can do what you said in your second statement. Especially SD Lucario.

Each individual team seems to have some way of avoiding a Garchomp sweep. Personally, I use my handy Encore Shuckle to just Encore that pathetic Swords Dance attempt and then Garchomp is completely screwed. Or just use Shuckle to Knock Off that item. If it's already Danced, I still Encore and just switch to something that resists/takes nothing from the next attack. I don't know what other people do, but that's how I deal with Chomp.

Well since Mence can outspeed Heracross it can just roost after the initial stone edge, but yeah no off topicking.

Yes every stat upper can come in after a kill and pose a threat, but Garchomp is the only one that poses an uncounterable threat.

I almost feel if I don't have Bronzong or Skarmory then there's no way my team can compete on a consistent basis. And even then I'm not too confident that I'll stop it every time. Like I know if I'm using Gliscor, Heracross poses no threat to my team. It doesn't work this way with Garchomp. There's not a single Pokemon that you can use that will make your team Garchomp-proof.

 

[Brawley]

snip snip.

Can't DDnite come in and pose an uncounterable threat?

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

You don't have to make your team "Garchomp-proof." DP is the fullest extent of "best 6 Pokemons" win. Thats all there is to it. As much as anyone, including myself, preach about team synergy, having a goal, etc, this is all false since I realized any given team can beat any given team. Earlier I spammed 6 random Pokes together and was still winning a high rate. It's just that too many people want to play "paper-Pokemon" with "oh well yeah, all your Pokemon is OHKO'd by Garchomp" but this wouldn't matter if say you had a Weavile, ScarfHeatran, Salamence, Gyarados, Gengar and something else random.

Sometimes you don't have to have a sure-fire counter, cause in DP, it's all about circumstances and situations. You have a Cresselia+Skarmory+Gyarados+Bronzong team? Which is probably the most fullproof Garchomp team you could possibly have, it wouldn't matter if I'm spamming Magnezones and Knock Offers and CBTars around before I bring out Garchomp. This goes with how Pokemon always has been and will be. You take out any 'counters' to anything anyways, and your Pokemon will win. So why do people keep on complaining about "Garchomp having no counter?" Since when does that always guarantee it will win?