Would we want a Stealth Rock suspect test? [Read #196]

[Soul Fly]

In my opinion, banning SR is not the solution. We have to find a way to make SR higher risk. One way to do this is to ban it in all ways save leveling up: this would force players to utilise mons like Steelix if they want SR that desperately, equalizing the risk-reward ratio.

Wut? No. That's a very subjective and a pointless restriction. Not to mention Smogon doesn't advocate complex bans like this.

 

[dice]

Ubiquity is not the reason primary reason that Stealth Rock is being discussed as a possible suspect. Simply stating that Stealth Rock is competitive due to the fact Scizor is common as well yet not broken is rather moronic logic. Genesect had a ridiculous amount of usage until it was banned, but with your logic you could claim that it wasn't broken due to the fact that Ferrothorn was common as well yet not broken.

We ban / test elements that are uncompetitive or largely restricting to our metagame. There's nothing uncompetitive about SR - in fact, SR is an exemplar of tactical play in Pokemon.

This is quite an oxymoron in itself. Stealth Rock is often a very restricting move when regarding teambuilding. It's the reason that Sun and Hail are rare in competitive play. If using a Volcarona, for example, one must run a Rapid Spinner, Magic Bounce, or several Taunt users (think: French Orgy of Belzebuth). The latter option isn't even reliable either. This restriction applies to practically all Stealth Rock-weak Pokemon. If you do not believe Stealth Rock causes restrictions in teambuilding, then you may need to play some more on the ladder. I can just predict your rebuttal in an instant, Pocket. I imagine that you would like to say something around the lines of "Stealth Rock isn't he only restriction in teambuilding. Strong Pokemon like Keldeo and Terrakion require a teamslot to help check them." The problem with this argument is that the list of viable spinners is incredibly small. Starmie, Forretress, and Tentacruel are the Top 3 spinners in OU. The first can only beat Jellicent with Life Orb and Thunder and easily revenge killed so you cannot spinner. The second loses to both common spinblockers and is slow. The last beats both spinblockers; however, it requires rain support which is even more restricting to your teambuilding. Due to this, using non-Stealth Rock weak Pokemon is often what most players do, and this inhibits teambuilding in itself. A metagame without Stealth Rock is an intriguing concept, and I do not believe you are giving SR enough credit. Not only this, but often checks to Pokemon can perform many roles on a team while spinners do not check as many Pokemon. Using Starmie as your sole Keldeo counter nowadays is a shaky strategy since 252 HP / 40 Def Starmie has the same exact bulk as Keldeo showing how piss frail it is.

Saying that Stealth Rock is not a risk-free move is nonsense. You just need one free turn which is easily gained. Say you switch Landorus-T into Terrakion. You can set Stealth Rock since Terrakion is not breaking Landorus-T easily. The same applies to Specially Defensive Tyranitar switching into Latios. Several situations give you a free turn as your opponent is forced to switch and you gain a free Stealth Rock turn. It is not as hard as you make it out to be. Dedicated leads give you Stealth Rock early unlike Pokemon like Landorus-T (unless you can switch in Turn 1). This is because some teams are so offensive that they want Stealth Rock early for certain KO's. You make it seem like Stealth Rock is all suicide leads do. They often have a Focus Sash or Sturdy, so they can do more than just set Stealth Rock. Azelf and Skarmory both have some way of self-spinblocking while Terrakion can threaten spinners with its monstrous STAB's. If your team is built well and can maintain high offensive pressure, your opponent will not be spinning easily. If you are Rapid Spinning, you are a turn behind your opponent with an offensive team. Sometimes you can afford the luxury of losing a turn. Think of Limitless's BW1 team. If you tried to Rapid Spin, you'd be met with a Swords Dance or Dragon Dance and you're fucked. A spinblocker is not necessary to try and keep Stealth Rock on the field. It is not significant support.

The Pokemon you listed are most certainly viable, but aren't seen as often because they require heavy support due to the crippling Stealth Rock weakness. Using a Stealth Rock weak Pokemon means that you are restricting your teambuilding by using means to keep Stealth Rock off the field which you specifically said is broken, so is it broken? If you don't have means to keep hazards off the field, you're at a disadvantageous situation since your Pokemon will be losing HP very easily and will be easy to kill. Using Team Preview is helpful in deciding how to go about keeping Stealth Rock off the field, but prediction is a two-way street which makes your argument petty. Toxic Spikes and Spikes require far more turns to set up while the former has several immunities and a few common absorbers (think: Scizor, Venusaur, Jirachi, Landorus, Latios, Amoonguss, Rotom-W, etc.). Spikes requires 3 turns to get up all 3 hazards which is hard to achieve. On top of this, there are several immunities as well. Stealth Rock requires one turn and has no immunities. The best you can do is take 3% chip damage, but the most common by far is 12%.

Overall, I didn't agree with several of your points, Pocket. I still don't think we have enough time to test Stealth Rock + the ramifications of the removal of it; however, your reasoning wasn't sound in my opinion.

 

[Laga]

In my opinion, banning SR is not the solution. We have to find a way to make SR higher risk. One way to do this is to ban it in all ways save leveling up: this would force players to utilise mons like Steelix if they want SR that desperately, equalizing the risk-reward ratio.

Why would smogon ever make such a complex ban? Banning a move from being used on pokemon that learn it through some things, yet other pokemon may use it if they learn it through level up? A ban like that would be even more complex than bringing Blaze Blaziken to UU/RU or whatever tier it may be. No one wants to make complex bans like that, because it confuses newcomers, and generally looks stupid on paper :|

 

[Shined0wn]

BW w/o SR it's too much broken doods, u can't think it seriusly o,o

But if SR was banned, moltres can be a motherfucking god in bw. Oo

3. There's a thing called Spinner that has a move called Rapid Spin and another thing called Spinblocker. If you have problems with Stealth Rock use a Spinner, It's easy.

Fixed

 

[Pocket]

Bri, not all teams require Rocks to be removed - there are plenty of Pokemon not weak to SR to form many viable teams - there's no enormous restriction there. Even if you add a Pokemon that is weak to SR, this Pokemon does not necessarily need SR off the field to contribute significantly in a match if it is played judiciously. The very few teams that require SR's removal (Ninetales, Volcarona) do have means to retard or remove SR. Even if these rapid spinners or magic bouncers are limited in their capacity, they are viable, and preventing SR off the field is a big enough of a role to warrant an entire teamslot for certain teams. This is why Ninetales, Volcarona, etc are viable in OU, despite the presence of SR

Suicide leads do really just set up rocks and die, though. Sash Terrakion aint doing much else against a Landorus-T or Azelf against a TTar, etc. It's more often than not trading off one Pokemon in exchange for rocks, and losing a Pokemon is a big risk itself. If I am facing a heavy offensive team, I probably wont bother spinning, since matches are too short for SR to have too much of an effect, and the enemy's offense is too fierce to afford spinning. I'd just focus on neutralizing the opponent's sweeper / facilitating my own sweep in these games.

You can design your team in a way that SR isn't inflicting too much damage to your team. However, typing does not matter with Spikes - if you are grounded, you'll lose 12.5% minimum. Add 2 layers and that's 18%, etc. Sure it takes work to set up more than 1 layer, but the potential to lay down 2 or 3 layers to inflict 18-25% to ALL grounded mons is more dangerous than a single SR, imo. Same with Toxic Spikes - not all teams pack Poison-types to eliminate it.

I believe we are saying the same things, but we view things in a different perspective - we can agree to disagree ;)

 

[vyomov]

Wut? No. That's a very subjective and a pointless restriction.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but saying it's pointless without backing up your statement with logic is ironically itself pointless. By imposing such a restriction, we would still keep the metagame relatively close to the current one, but it would be more diversified, SR would be harder to set up and would have equal risk for the reward.

Not to mention Smogon doesn't advocate complex bans like this.

Exceptions have been made, and although it's HIGHLY advised not to make complex bans, if there is a necessity it is still an option. Notice though I'm not ADVOCATING the option, just stating it - there are a lot of other possible ways to deal with SR IF the community and the council determine it as broken(and that's IF it gets a suspect test - which at this point seems unlikely given the resistance to change)

 

[dice]

The point is that you often have to run teams that aren't weak to Stealth Rock to succeed without a Rapid Spinner or (lol) Magic Bouncer. This in itself is extremely limiting which you specifically stated was broken.

 

[jc104]

Honestly, I really do believe stealth rock deserves to be banned. That doesn't mean I agree with everyone's reasoning, however.

I don't understand why we seem to have this idea that every pokemon somehow inherently deserves to be used. I mean, look, we've created all these tiers just so someone can find a use for freaking Charizard. (I get it, some of them are fun, but I just don't understand the principle behind usage based tiers). So what if moltres isn't the best choice for your OU team? Although apparently it might restrict your teambuilding options, I expect that in reality, something else will simply take the place of the SR-crippled Pokemon.

No, my problem with Stealth Rock (and to a much lesser extent spikes) is that it just does way too much damage to pretty much everything. Even 6% per switch to everything, and I reckon people would use it. And the effect of doing all this damage every time someone switches is largely to drastically shorten the game. And the shorter the game gets, the more it comes down to guesses, and random chance. And clearly, the more offensive the game gets, too. With stealth rock on my side of the field, it's much harder for my defensive pokemon to switch into powerful attacks, and with so many offensive pokemon running around, I just find it really difficult to cover everything with only 6 pokemon. Pretty much whatever I do, there's going to be a relatively rare sweeper that just cleans my team up. Ultimately, this is just introduces another form of luck that we don't need.

So basically, I think SR is strongly contributing to an excessively offensive metagame, where I can't even realistically have one answer to every single attacking threat, and games regularly come down to whether I correctly guessed which of Hydro Pump or Secret Sword to use, and whether the move actually hit.

I guess maybe that's just BW.

edit: saying that I'm not sure banning now is remotely practical.

 

[Soul Fly]

You are certainly entitled to your opinion but saying it's pointless without backing up your statement with logic is ironically itself pointless. By imposing such a restriction, we would still keep the metagame relatively close to the current one, but it would be more diversified, SR would be harder to set up and would have equal risk for the reward.

BS. Banning a move depending on Learnset source is a shitty precedent that offers no major advantage. Google subjective and pointless.

Exceptions have been made, and although it's HIGHLY advised not to make complex bans, if there is a necessity it is still an option. Notice though I'm not ADVOCATING the option, just stating it - there are a lot of other possible ways to deal with SR IF the community and the council determine it as broken(and that's IF it gets a suspect test - which at this point seems unlikely given the resistance to change)

Cut the plural hero. The one and only time it has happened was Aldaron's Proposal, and even that was dealing with an ENTIRE playstyle, and not just a Pokemon or move.


I do not want to press this, but that was very ill informed.

 

[Slimmer]

I made a WoT and the forum crashed, so I'll explain shortly why I put the fourth answer

1-Sashers: w/o SR game will be a sort of "kill -> rkill -> rkill/trap/setupfodding" increasing the already high offence in this mg. Not only rkillers can keep a Focus Sash: think about stinky threats as QuiverPass Venomoth.
There are also Spikes to prevent it... Seriously dudes? Only few spikes setter are good in OU and Honestly I don't wanna see a BW2 focused on the Spikes setting.
I don't want explain better cuz I've already done it and site crashed, so frustrating....

2-Volcarona(&friends): a lot of Pokémon with x4 SR weakness should be free w/o this EH (Volcarona as first, Moltres, Ninjask, Charizard) and that's not really fair, cause they are all so annoying or dangerous threats

3-Dragonite: it's the real problem. Flying type will ensure it an unbroken multiscale, with Ddance it can surely boost one or two times , with access to main STAB, a perfect Priority and a very good coverage move

And think about also at other Levitaters or Flying (perfect example: Sturdy Skarmory)

All of you said SR is increasing the power creep of this metagame, in my opinion it is PREVENTING it, so I say no, it's not broken and it shouldn't get banned.

At last, XY will become the main mg in 5-6 months (considering the time to studying it) so let keep a balanced bw metagame before that.

 

[vyomov]

BS. Banning a move depending on Learnset source is a shitty precedent that offers no major advantage. Google subjective and pointless.

As I said, while I maintain the utmost respect for your right of opinion, using ad hominem to support your argument does reflect upon the quality of your argument. You claim that it would be a "shitty precedent that offers no major advantage". Yet oddly enough, you do not refute my points - using inflammatory language does not make you right - back up your point of view with solid logic rather than just claiming it is "shitty".

The one and only time it has happened was Aldaron's Proposal, and even that was dealing with an ENTIRE playstyle, and not just a Pokemon or move.

In OU, yes, but as a smogon community, we have done it in other tiers before like banning SmashPassing in the lower tiers, so there is a precedent.

I'd kindly request you back up your opinion with logic so that we can have a fruitful debate rather than you resorting to ad hominem(which lists as second-worst in Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement).
The advantages of banning the move except by Learnset is twofold - it makes other mons more viable(both mons weak to SR as well as mons that learn the move by levelling up) and at the same time ensures that an integral part of the metagame as we see it today isn't completely eradicated, allowing us to still keep relatively close to the metagame.
It cannot be emphasized enough though, that this is all hypothetical - a lot of the users are resistant to change and hence the likelihood of SR actually getting a test is very low. Nevertheless, it is quite interesting to postulate how a metagame without SR might look like.

 

[cjrocker]

I’ve always wondered what a metagame without hazards would be like. Spinning and spinblocking would be useless; which Pokemon would rise and which would fall? It would be really interesting to watch the metagame transform, not that I necessarily think it would be a better one. Who knows? Personally I think a metagame like this one would be right at home in the Other Metagames forum.

Now, I don’t think SR should be banned or even tested. 4-5 months is not nearly enough time to implement such a drastic change AND deal with the consequences. But what if there were an OM ladder identical to the OU metagame, but with Stealth Rock banned? On paper it’d be no different from a suspect test, except people aren’t playing to get reqs, there’d be no reqs at all. It’d just be an experiment to see what a metagame without SR would be like, and hell if that’s the metagame people want to play then go for it, this way it’s just not being forced upon the OU ladder. I honestly don’t see the harm in having an experimental metagame like that. Isn’t that what OM is all about? Of course, this idea isn’t foolproof; I’m just throwing it out there.

Also, and this is just an observation of mine, but I remember during the Garchomp suspect test there was a small outcry concerning the OU ban of Sand Veil and it’s implications on the lower tiers. It was concluded that OU takes precedent above the other metagames, so whether or not Cacturne would remain viable in NU after a Sand Veil ban would not be a concern. I agree that OU should take precedent in these situations, but it strikes me as odd that so few have thought about the enormous impact an SR ban would have on the lower tiers. Yes, OU should still take precedent, but you can’t compare the above situation of banning an uncommon ability to banning one of the most important moves in the game. I don’t have a conclusion to draw from this, just food for thought.

 

[Houndoomsday]

I just don't see stealth rock as a problem- while has some effect on the metagame, so do a variety of other factors and I simply feel like banning it will not have a significant benefit as opposed to leaving the metagame as it was. The last thing we need is another complex ban.

Basically I feel like SR does not have a large detrimental impact on the current metagame, and especially keeping in mind the remaining time in BW2 OU, any fix will not last a significant amount of time.

 

[Wizarus]

I have to agree with KurashiDragon on this point; SR is the metagame. It dictates which weather is dominant and to what degree, which pokemon is suspect worthy and which pokemon is not ban worthy, and how much support a pokemon needs and whether or not that pokemon is even viable. Suspecting it would be the equivalent of erasing BW2, and starting off completely from scratch. I just think its too late, even though I do think that SR is broken. This is something you do in the beginning to early middle of a generation.

 

[pharaohcalvin]

Time should not be an issue. If something is broken in our meta, we need to remove it. 5th gen will be played well after 6th gen is out. Just like 4th is still played. As far as arguments of but Vol or D-night will be broken without it. We don't leave broken things in the game to check other broken things. If they are broken without rocks, then they are broken. I personally don't know how I feel about rocks being broken or not, but the anti-ban side has always gave poor arguments in my opinion about the matter. So test I vote, so we can see how this actually plays out instead of just theories.

 

[vyomov]

Now, I don’t think SR should be banned or even tested. 4-5 months is not nearly enough time to implement such a drastic change AND deal with the consequences. But what if there were an OM ladder identical to the OU metagame, but with Stealth Rock banned? On paper it’d be no different from a suspect test, except people aren’t playing to get reqs, there’d be no reqs at all. It’d just be an experiment to see what a metagame without SR would be like, and hell if that’s the metagame people want to play then go for it, this way it’s just not being forced upon the OU ladder. I honestly don’t see the harm in having an experimental metagame like that. Isn’t that what OM is all about? Of course, this idea isn’t foolproof; I’m just throwing it out there.

I actually like that idea: that way we don't waste time of the OU Council when they would rather be testing Keldeo or Landorus, but at the same time if we see that the metagame is much more balanced and decide to make a push for it later, we actually have something to back up the point that SR is broken rather than just theorymon.
I'll try nominating it as an OM. This should be fun :)

 

[Curtains]

I don't think the pro-ban side gives any good reasons for it to be even worthy of a test. Most of the reasons such as: "SR does X amount of damage per game" are based off of pure assumption about millions of battles. Each battle is different and each battle may or may not even have SR. Also reasons such as: "moltres will be viable" fail clearly to the point that volcarona and other SR weak pokemon are already OU. Volcarona and moltres both are 4x weak pokemon that have roost. Why is volcarona OU and moltres not? Maybe because moltres is a bad pokemon.... Sub toxic sets aren't effective in BW as they were in bulky DPPT. Also moltres has no set up moves and its coverage relies on less accurate moves that need certain weathers to even be able to use them. So the assumption that SR is broken is truly not backed up by any facts or actual game data to suggest that it is worthy of being banned. The burden is on the pro ban side to explain in detail why SR deserves to be banned outside of the aforementioned theories I just busted.

 

[vyomov]

truly not backed up by any facts or actual game data

Exactly, which is why I would propose that rather than actually suspect testing it(which has very little support), we start a non-SR OU as a OM and THEN if we decide it's more balanced and everything, we can go on ahead for a suspect test with EVIDENCE IN HAND.

 

[Stratos]

I can just predict your rebuttal in an instant, Pocket. I imagine that you would like to say something around the lines of "Stealth Rock isn't he only restriction in teambuilding. Strong Pokemon like Keldeo and Terrakion require a teamslot to help check them."

I agree that a lot of people seem to think this way, but it's simply not an accurate analysis of how SR works. People need to stop comparing stealth rock—and whether it's broken—to a Pokemon entirely, for a couple of reasons

1) Spinning isn't countering. I think this is a problem both sides have failed to adequately address. When you switch in a counter, well, their shit is pickled. You get five options for any turn, a move or Switch. Countering is makin the only non-sacrificial option be Switch. I brought in my RainTenta on your MixApe. Now you're forced to switch, an opportunity which i can leverage to do a variety of useful things. SR doesn't work that way. I don't bring in my spinner on my opponent's SR and force a switch. I'm not reducing the options your SR has by bringing in my Spinner. Spinning may be a product of countering—since you need to bring your spinner in on something it counters—but it doesn't actually counter anything. Spinning is simply a move reversing another move. To claim it counters stealth rock is like saying softboiled counters hydro pump.

2) You don't choose who faces SR - What would you describe as a team "Not weak to Cloyster?" I'd say if you had 2 or 3 or maybe even 4 or 5 team members that got entirely shit on by a smashed Cloyster, but your sixth slot was Slowbro with Psychic, that you were not weak to Cloyster. Or if you didn't have any solid cloyster switch-ins, but you had a scarf Starmie (outspeeds +2 cloyster), and he had a fairly difficult time setting up—well, I'd say you weren't weak to Cloyster.

Now what would you describe as a team not weak to Stealth Rock? Don't respond, it's been said many times in this thread. "you don't need to run a spinner. Just use six pokemon who don't care about SR." I'd recommend that people use a solid check/counter for every offensive threat in the OU tier—for the especially good ones, two checks. But only for Stealth Rock is a team described as not being weak against it when NO INDIVIDUAL POKEMON is weak against it. That's because, unlike a Pokemon, SR is always on the field. You can't keep SR at bay with a solid counter, allowing you to bring in your SR-weak Pokemon because switching to SR will be futile while you still have a Tentacruel. SR is already there, hurting your Rock-weak Pokemon. It didn't need to switch in to do it! As such, unlike with Pokemon, who require perhaps a dedicated slot to beat, Stealth Rock affects ALL slots. That's why people call it "extremely centralizing;" good Pokemon are centralizing; you have to run a counter. However, even in Excadrill era, grounded steels didn't suck. They had uses countering other Pokemon and when Exca came in you switched to Gliscor. With SR, that's not true. You'd better be damned amazing if you want people to overlook that Rock weakness—if you can even survive losing 50% of your health to rocks, then you get to worry about the opponent's Pokemom you have to counter.

In case it wasn't obvious, I'm pro-suspect. I voted option 3 in the poll but the more I think about it the more I favor #1.

My main complaint with SR is its tendency towards an offensive game. Sure, say whatever the hell you want about Volcarona and Dragonite; if we have to ban them, so be it. At the end of the day, I'm convinced that Stealth Rock's net effect is wearing down switch-ins until they can be 2HKOed, and that removing that can only be good for the meta, increasing the counters list of every "borderline broken" ou threat (of which there are many)

Another complaint, though less major, i have is the move's centralization of the type chart. As I addressed above—there are seven Fightings in OU but that doesn't make Ferro suck. Only Stealth Rock has the power to completely remove the defensive potential of four entire types (unless paired with an SR-resistant secondary typing) (not that ice had much defensive potential anyway but)

 

[x42bn6]

Now, I don’t think SR should be banned or even tested. 4-5 months is not nearly enough time to implement such a drastic change AND deal with the consequences. But what if there were an OM ladder identical to the OU metagame, but with Stealth Rock banned? On paper it’d be no different from a suspect test, except people aren’t playing to get reqs, there’d be no reqs at all. It’d just be an experiment to see what a metagame without SR would be like, and hell if that’s the metagame people want to play then go for it, this way it’s just not being forced upon the OU ladder. I honestly don’t see the harm in having an experimental metagame like that. Isn’t that what OM is all about? Of course, this idea isn’t foolproof; I’m just throwing it out there.

I agree - it's more important to experiment and learn from it. If there is a reluctance to change the Generation V metagame, then it could just be an experiment for Generation VI. That is - if this experiment results in a metagame with desirable characteristics, then suspect it early-on in Generation VI.

After all, for all we know, Game Freak might "rebalance" Stealth Rock (lasts n turns/flat damage/etc.) in Generation VI.

It might be, of course, that it is easy to balance a Stealth Rock-less metagame (I personally doubt it, but it could happen).

 

[Slimmer]

Everyone is saying Stealth Rock helps Offensive playstyles... Are you sure?

I don't think so, think about Offensive threats like Volcarona, MultiscaleDragonite, Moltres, Tornadus, Thundurus-T.. without Stealth Rock they can be even more dangerous they are at the moment. And this would result to decide a ban for some of them in the future (especially for Volcarona and Dragonite). I don't think ban-ban-ban-ban is the way to balance a metagame, or better, if you can avoid this just avoid this!

 

[Prinz]

Everyone is saying Stealth Rock helps Offensive playstyles... Are you sure?

I don't think so, think about Offensive threats like Volcarona, MultiscaleDragonite, Moltres, Tornadus, Thundurus-T.. without Stealth Rock they can be even more dangerous they are at the moment. And this would result to decide a ban for some of them in the future (especially for Volcarona and Dragonite). I don't think ban-ban-ban-ban is the way to balance a metagame, or better, if you can avoid this just avoid this!

aren't things like volcarona, thundurus-t and dragonite common in offensive playstyles?

 

[Slimmer]

aren't things like volcarona, thundurus-t and dragonite common in offensive playstyles?

of course, that's why I'm saying Stealth Rock helps to prevent an even more offensive metagame.

aw and I have forgotten Kyurem-B. Deal with it without SR.

I'm not saying that SR are useless for offensive games. I think everybody know how they are useful to aim some 2HKOs or something like that, but don't confine your mind to this. A metagame without SR could surely be worse, talking about offensive metagame, due to aforementioned reasons. If the aiming of this thread is going to a understand what can balance this metagame, the answer is still in the thread title: SR.

 

[TheArchangle]

No way, banning SR automatically makes Dragonite and Volcarona way too powerful, flying types would also take over the entire OU tier

 

[DrRobotnik]

This is a pretty tough subject. It's not overpowered or even remotely game-breaking IMO, but removing it would make a lot of Pokemon a lot better and I believe that the upsides of banning it would be greater than the downsides. I'll vote for option 2, might as well test it out.

edit: it's an even split between people who want to test it and those who don't, interesting.