-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
More Thoughts on Stealth Rock
- Thread starter MythTrainerInfinity
- Start date
- Status
That's why there has to be something else for determining the "ideal" number if you're looking for something like that.
Some Current Statistics:
9 out of 18 fully evolved Steels are OU.
3 out of the 5 OU Bug type pokémon take neutral damage from SR.
Only 2 (Weavile and Mamoswine) out of 14 fully evolved Ice types are OU, 4 are only BL or higher.
No Fire types in OU take 25% (2x weak) Stealth Rock damage.
Despite being weak to Stealth Rock 8 out of 10 OU Flying types take 25% or more from SR. Ninjask and Yanmega are the only ones who are 4x weak and still are overused.
I think we can all agree at least that SR has a tremendous impact on the metagame. If something impacts the metagame so heavily (see Garchomp and Deoxys-S) why not test it out?
9 out of 18 fully evolved Steels are OU.
3 out of the 5 OU Bug type pokémon take neutral damage from SR.
Only 2 (Weavile and Mamoswine) out of 14 fully evolved Ice types are OU, 4 are only BL or higher.
No Fire types in OU take 25% (2x weak) Stealth Rock damage.
Despite being weak to Stealth Rock 8 out of 10 OU Flying types take 25% or more from SR. Ninjask and Yanmega are the only ones who are 4x weak and still are overused.
I think we can all agree at least that SR has a tremendous impact on the metagame. If something impacts the metagame so heavily (see Garchomp and Deoxys-S) why not test it out?
The question is: when?
We have quite a bit on our plates already (see the Order of Operations). The biggest culprit to conducting this kind of test is probably time. It is possible that we may not have the time to properly test everything.
How high a priority is this test? Is it necessary to test this ASAP? Yes, it impacts the metagame, but do we prioritize this over other issues that arguably will be easier to decide on?
We have quite a bit on our plates already (see the Order of Operations). The biggest culprit to conducting this kind of test is probably time. It is possible that we may not have the time to properly test everything.
How high a priority is this test? Is it necessary to test this ASAP? Yes, it impacts the metagame, but do we prioritize this over other issues that arguably will be easier to decide on?
Because there's no good reason to ban it.
If it is a clear "yes, we should test it" I think we should prioritize it to be something very soon. There is no doubt that it will make tiers shift at least a little and it could potentially make us retest every other suspect because of viable sets and usage.
If we were to retest all that and Stealth Rock did get banned...all of that testing for other suspects could go to waste.
Care to elaborate?
Let me make it clear again... The poll is to test a ban, not outright ban this move.
Although I voted for it not to be tested, I'd like to change my PoV. The big issue is priority is Stealth Rock important enough to test over things like Lati Twins, Shaymin-S, or Manaphy looking at past bans on moves OHKO moves and Evasion moves the answer is obivous Stealth Rock is of very low priority to test, Evasion was a potentially game breaking deal along OHKO tatics, but Stealth Rock has more benfits than draw backs.
Stealth Rock is more about pokemon usage rather than, the game itself and should be treated as so, or in other words very low priority.
Hypothetically we ban Stealth Rock, but honestly do you think it will result in huge wave of Moltres usage? I'm not saying im for keeping the OU teir very limited, but I do support keeping the game balanced and thats exactly what Stealth Rocks does.
Stealth Rock is more about pokemon usage rather than, the game itself and should be treated as so, or in other words very low priority.
Hypothetically we ban Stealth Rock, but honestly do you think it will result in huge wave of Moltres usage? I'm not saying im for keeping the OU teir very limited, but I do support keeping the game balanced and thats exactly what Stealth Rocks does.
Let me ask again those against Stealth Rock's testing:
Why are you against testing Stealth Rock AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BEEN TESTED?
That's all I am asking for, mainly because I want to see what happens as a result.
Why are you against testing Stealth Rock AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BEEN TESTED?
That's all I am asking for, mainly because I want to see what happens as a result.
I dont think there is enough justification to test Stealth Rock as a suspect. "Hey, let's ban stealth Rock because I keeps me from using my favorite pokemon Charizard!"
Stealth Rock doesn't prohibit you from running any kind of team. It is a vital part of the metagame that is necessary for keeping Focus Sashes from running rampid.
Not only that, but there are more important things that need to be tested. Stealth Rock should be dead last if you ask me (personally, I dont even think it needs testing).
MTI, you make some good points. Yes, Stealth Rock affects the metagame, but why should I ban it??? I don't agree with garchomp but Deoxys-E affected the entire strategy of the game, and the complexity of the battle. Stealth Rock doesn't. If you want to counter and say "what about suicide leads," just think, your starting the battle 6-5!!!!
Stealth Rock doesn't prohibit you from running any kind of team. It is a vital part of the metagame that is necessary for keeping Focus Sashes from running rampid.
Not only that, but there are more important things that need to be tested. Stealth Rock should be dead last if you ask me (personally, I dont even think it needs testing).
MTI, you make some good points. Yes, Stealth Rock affects the metagame, but why should I ban it??? I don't agree with garchomp but Deoxys-E affected the entire strategy of the game, and the complexity of the battle. Stealth Rock doesn't. If you want to counter and say "what about suicide leads," just think, your starting the battle 6-5!!!!
Personally I think suicide leads are a waste of time and Iron Head Choice Scarf Jirachi has plenty a good time with 'em.
The chance at affecting the tiers enough to warrant possible retesting of many things is going to cause a lot of wasted time. I feel it would be best to knock it out of the way now and then we wouldn't have to worry about that in the future.
Have you seen so much rigorous or heated discussion with any other suspect that hasn't been tested yet or is currently being tested?
It prohibts you from using a team that isn't built to take the least amount of damage possible from it or get punished.
Hypothetical situation: Assume SR is up and I am sending a Fire type vs. a Steel and my Fire type takes 25%. The opponent decides they wouldn't want to get Fire Blasted to death, so they switch in a counter. This in turn forces me to switch my Fire type out or get KOed and thus my Fire type is in even greater danger to get KOed later
Besides most Fire/Bug/Ice types do not have many good recovery options, thus limiting the way they are played even more.
It is clear that Regice is one of the best Skymin counters out there, but I cannot play it without a huge amount of risk because I'll be most likely forced to switch in and out before I can KO it and even then I might be pushed into KO range by just switching around and lacking a good recovery move outside of Rest.
You have Spikes, priority moves, Trick, Poison, Burn, weather, etc. that can take on and mess up these Sashed pokémon.
The chance at affecting the tiers enough to warrant possible retesting of many things is going to cause a lot of wasted time. I feel it would be best to knock it out of the way now and then we wouldn't have to worry about that in the future.
Have you seen so much rigorous or heated discussion with any other suspect that hasn't been tested yet or is currently being tested?
It prohibts you from using a team that isn't built to take the least amount of damage possible from it or get punished.
Hypothetical situation: Assume SR is up and I am sending a Fire type vs. a Steel and my Fire type takes 25%. The opponent decides they wouldn't want to get Fire Blasted to death, so they switch in a counter. This in turn forces me to switch my Fire type out or get KOed and thus my Fire type is in even greater danger to get KOed later
Besides most Fire/Bug/Ice types do not have many good recovery options, thus limiting the way they are played even more.
It is clear that Regice is one of the best Skymin counters out there, but I cannot play it without a huge amount of risk because I'll be most likely forced to switch in and out before I can KO it and even then I might be pushed into KO range by just switching around and lacking a good recovery move outside of Rest.
Garchomp and Deoxys-S bans happened because we had legitimate, if possibly inadequate reason to believe that they were broken. I would have voted Deoxys OU, but if it really did "make Gliscor -> Metagross and other passing combinations utterly dominant with lead Dual Screen" and "turn the first couple of turns into 50/50 guessing games that determine the rest of the match," then that's certainly reason to question its tiering right off the bat- we have a history of disliking and banning things for being too luck-based, and having one specific strategy become 100% dominant is pretty much the clearest form of negative "overcentralization" that can possibly exist.
In the end, the logic behind testing no-Garchomp and no-Deoxys metagames was to decide whether the benefits of removing them would be offset by any negative side-effects. Obviously a virtually identical metagame, or especially a worse one, would have driven us to accept that, despite their "overpowered" attributes, they were just an essential aspect of the metagame for whatever reason.
A Stealth Rock test would not be consistent with this logic (not that everyone who wanted to test Garchomp or Deoxys actually followed it in the first place) because we have yet to actually assert that anything is wrong with the current metagame as a more-than-likely direct result of Stealth Rock. "Some pokemon suck against it" applies to everything. "It centralizes" applies to everything.
The impact is negative to many people in that it is "irritating." If you want to prove me wrong then give us something that actually says "our metagame is being screwed over by Stealth Rock," not "what an annoying fucking move!!" Until then, I'll just lump it in with Togekiss and Advance Blissey.Glen ^^ said:
I don't see why we don't just look at Ubers and go from there, considering that it's pretty much the closest possible thing to a "pure" metagame that can still be competitive. I don't mean taking the number of "Uber OUs" and using that as the benchmark for everything else or anything, but it (Ubers) still seems like a logical starting point to me.Obi said:
Because unfortunately, with Stealth Rock making such a huge impact and thus being a pretty "interesting" test, that just won't happen in practice. There's no reason for me to believe that Stealth Rock would suddenly just be put in the back of everyone's minds for months on end while we test other wonderful, fun-filled things like OHKO moves. Stealth Rock is too exciting, and to many people, too "relevant" not to test before at least a good chunk of more deserving suspects/general unsupported bans.CardsOfTheHeart said:
and?
So it's a time issue, then? There's no good time to test it so we shouldn't test it at all--is that your position? Please clarify if I'm wrong.
BTW, I have to disagree with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality when it comes to this. I, for one, would like to find ways to improve the metagame instead of just fixing problems that arise. Granted I believe we should be fixing the problems first, but that's not the only thing we should be doing.
Translation: The game is mean and won't let me use what Pokemon I want. BAWWWWWWWWW.
I voted against it, though I might accept a Stealth Rock test after anything else. (and I mean anything else). I think it's a horrific waste of time that won't really prove anything. So Flying and Fire types are used more and Steels used less? Okay.... so what does that mean?
If we were to make Stealth Rock a suspect, it would get priority over things that are more deserving of being tested. In my mind this constitutes absolutely everything we haven't yet tested in OU but remains banned to this day. Even then, I personally expect that it would get priority over some of things we already have listed as Suspects.CardsOfTheHeart said:
It's not necessarily a matter of time, although that's an element. Possibly more importantly, if we test Stealth Rock first, it could (by which I mean, I do not see how it possibly wouldn't) influence the other tests. "Pfft Stealth Rock is Uber so no need for a Ho-oh test!" is a more extreme example but that doesn't mean I would be surprised to see it.
Very possible. In fact, I'm sure the likes of Jumpman would push for it.
As much as I would rather wait to get more pressing issues settled, it might actually be best to test it now so that there aren't any qualms about the standard metagame when we test the Uber suspects. (unless, of course, we take a serious look at Trick (lol Obi) which I don't see happening)
Absolutely. My biggest worry is that it would sway enough people's opinions on Skymin (assuming that it will ultimately be voted OU) to warrant a change in its decision, but the decision wouldn't be promptly made under our system and the metagame would suffer a little in the meantime.
Of course, I have a tendency to worry too much. XD
First off, I never said bans on Salamance etc, I just said Suspects. If they do get decided to be banned, then that is definitely a factor to help decide if SR isn't broken. But I don't want to say if SR is broken or not; I am undecided. I just feel it's worthy of a test.
You cannot assume that testing SR will not prove that it is broken until the test has been done. That is the purpose of suspect testing - to determine, by actual gameplay experience, if a suspect is broken. Without it, we would be saying on the top of our hats that pokemon are Uber and OU, and that's not what Jump, Aeolus and others want. They consider it running Smogon like a dictatorship, instead of allowing us to contribute to the metagame.
Now of course, we cannot assume everything is broken - a suspect test on Espeon is stupid (nothing against Espeon, it's just an example). Rather, the suspects should be determined by which pokemon is deemed by the most people to be worthy of a test. And considering the large amount of talk about SR, both gameplay and its discussion of being tested, this is more than enough to make SR worthy a test. There's been more discussion on SR and a SR test than discussion about Lati@s, Manaphy, Ho-oh and Garchomp (2nd test).
Because the results would be inconclusive. How are you going to read usage patterns? What constitutes being "broken"? If there are no set boundaries nor a general consensus as to under what circumstances Stealth Rocks would be banned, how will this procedure work? Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, as I am for the methodology, and would like to see some form of testing if it would prove worthy. Right now, however, I am a bit skeptical as to what testing would accomplish.
Why discriminate against pokemon with poor movepools/stats but not with poor typing? All three seem to be pretty much the defining characteristics of a pokemon to me.
...so you think that a fair metagame would cause grass pokemon to be used as much as dragon or steel pokemon? Tell me you're joking.
The problem with your argument is that we don't know whether Stealth Rock is the cause of why those pokemon are OU. Many of the steel pokemon are good with or without Stealth Rock. By your logic, I could argue that Outrage should be banned, since outrage is only good when STABed, and out of all the fully evolved Dragons, 7 are Uber, 3 are OU, and 1 each in BL and UU.
Edit: Some statistics for you: All the OU Steelx have at least 1 immunity and 1 4x resist. Not counting those, they have an average of 7 resistances and none of them have more than 3 weaknesses. Maybe that's the reason they're OU
If you take a look at the tier list back in R/S, you can pretty much say the exact same thing. It's actually even more "impacted" by Stealth Rock than the current metagame is. Out of 35 pokemon, only six weak to Stealth Rock. There are no bug or fighting pokemon weak to stealth rock in UU, and only one fully evolved Ice type in OU. Ice/Bug/Fire pokemon aren't seeing standard play because they either have a terrible set of weaknesses, a lackluster movepool, or are generally outclassed by other pokemon.
I would agree that SR has a huge impact on the current metagame, but not in the way that you described in the post. Sure, the Moltreses and Charizards out there might see more use, but they were BL in ADV and I see little reason their tiering would go up because of a ban on Stealth Rock. However, with all that said, I do think a SR-free environment is worthy of being tested, if only to appease the people who support the ban.
Skymin isn't uber (may be soon, that's uncertain). And if you want the banned pokemon back in the OU tier, it'll be broken. Plus we unbanned Celebi, Jirachi, Phione and Shaymin-land, which Battle Tower bans.
darknessmalice said:
Actually, RS having no SR makes it all the more relevant. It shows that even without SR discriminating against them, these types are all mediocre anyway, to the point that they aren't being used even without SR. It's because they're bad typings in general, their SR weakness notwithstanding.
The problem is that most Bug/Ice/Fire/Flying Pokemon that are not OU aren't OU for a reason. Let's take a look, shall we?
BL Flying-types:
Charizard: Mediocre in pretty much every way, with the BellyZard set being the most efficient, and even then it leaves much to be desired with unreliable physical coverage.
Crobat: Underwhelming offensive power, Hypnosis nerf makes it even less effective than it previously was.
Honchkrow: Terrible defenses and mediocre speed make Honchkrow generally ineffective and difficult to bring into any non-Psychic-type attacks.
Moltres: Probably the only one I'd call neutered by SR, and even then, Heatran often eclipses Moltres in terms of defensive Fire-types, having better stats in every area except Attack and Speed, the latter of which is patched up often by Choice Scarf.
Staraptor: Above-average attacking stats, Intimidate, and access to Close Combat make Staraptor rather effective, but bad defenses, the existence of strong priority attacks (especiall Ice Shard), and Flying's bad coverage make Staraptor a mediocre striker.
BL Ice-types:
Abomasnow: Decidedly average stats and a bad typing in any case, with a whopping 7 weaknesses, one of which is 4x, makes Abomasnow bad in almost any sense.
Regice: Bad movepool, lack of reliable healing, being completely outclassed by Blissey, and the fact that Ice is an absolutely terrible defensive type makes it unlikely that Regice will break OU even if SR is banned.
BL Bug-Types:
Pinsir: BL Status is determined almost entirely by the fact that Pinsir is outclassed by Heracross in absolutely every way. SR being removed will hardly cause some kind of Pinsir revolution.
BL Fire-types:
Arcanine: Once again, shallow movepool and badly distributed stats for said movepool make Arcanine unable to find any niche, SR or not.
Blaziken: Like Pinsir, Blaziken's BL status stems from the fact that Infernape's presence renders Blaziken's moot, besting it in every single category except attacking stats, which is made up for by the higher Base Power of his offensive moves.
Entei: Think Arcanine, but with everything bad exemplified and everything good diminished. Lack of Intimidate makes its better defenses over Arcanine moot.
Magmortar: Another rare case where SR may make it more effective, but once again, similar to Moltres in that it's outclassed entirely by Heatran except for Attack and Speed. Furthermore, Magmortar use often requires miraculous prediction, which makes it difficult for most players to use, which would restrict its spread and subsequent move to OU.
Typhlosion: One-trick pony in Scarf Eruption, and while it's a scary trick, Heatran largely stops it cold, as well as Blissey. Outclassed largely by Heatran, as the 21 extra base Special Attack bridges the power gap between Eruption and Fire Blast.
Removing SR doesn't somehow miraculously make these Pokemon better or more viable. At the very least, this proves that SR's negative impact on the metagame isn't as massive as people would make it out to be.
- Status