More Thoughts on Stealth Rock

Do you support the testing of a Stealth Rockless metagame?


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This iz stupid, Stealth Rock is a vital move on pokemon, it iz stupid to even run a 'ban-a'move' test soley on the move.

The reasonz why it shouldn't even ban, because i have deepest love and affekshun for the move.
Stealth Rock is among the list of suspects that they will test on the Smogon Server. The reason they are going to test it, is because they will want to see what the metagame would be like without it. Remember, there will be people that will vote, so don't complain that Stealth Rock will be banned for a certainty. Even then, when the testing comes just play the standard ladder. That's a depressing arguement. Just because you love it? Let me tell you something; you can't always have things that you love in the world. Listen, I'm teaching you a life lessons throughout here. :P

You could counter SR:

-Taunt the move
-Rapid Spin
You cannot effectively stop Stealth Rock that way. Scenario: Your Tyranitar is countered with Swampert. You cannot do anything to it or your face an Earthquake. You switch to your "tuanter" out while they Stealth Rock. So what must you do now? You go to your rapid spinner, Starmie. They'll switch out for their Rotom-H/various ghost. Problem? Yes. Rotom-H threatens with either a scarf Thunderbolt/trick or you just being walled. Let me ask you a question. How much rapid spinners do you see on shoddy lately? Close to none from what I've seen. Reason: Rapid Spinning is becoming futile in some people's eyes. Two reasons that are not fully backed up could not explain to the thousands of Smogonians why Stealth Rock shouldn't be banned.



I don't see why doing this makes sense, I know it dealz plenty damage to the OU pokemon. It dealz plenty of damage to them, SR provides support and damage to the most kommon pokemon that could potentially hurt the team..

-Zapdos
-Salamence
-Yanmega
-Fire Typez
-etc.

If Sr was banned, Focus Sash iz going to be popular and these pokemon will be harder to take down. These flyerz don't stand a chance against Spikes, given that the only way to break their sashez is through 'Weather teamz'
and statuz.

Banning SR is ludakriz.
Your grammar is horrible. You don't need to talk like a "street person" when your on the computer. It is not like your talking on the street. Few will take you seriously here on Smogon. Reason: Your grammar shows that you have few acknowledgement for words. You cannot go to a business meeting and talk that way. You would be thrown out.
 
add Fake-out to the counter-arguments against SR's ban, as that also works to break Focus Sash... as do Spikes, etc.
The focus sash argument can not be so easilly dismissed. How many Pokemon can successfully use fake out? Not a lot. And those who do use it can't switch in on something freely to stop it as they are usually to frail to do so (Ambipom, Technitop, Persian).

The same with Spikes and weather. Only 3 pokemon in the entire game (not counting NFE of course) are automatic weather starters. While they may be decent Pokemon, they don't fit on to everyone's team. Spikes is a move that a very limited number of Pokemon can use well. And even if spikes is in play levitating and flying dangers (Salamence as a big example) will still have advantage of focus sash.

I hope this rekindles some intelligent discussion after haterman or whatever his name was.
 
The focus sash argument can not be so easilly dismissed. How many Pokemon can successfully use fake out? Not a lot. And those who do use it can't switch in on something freely to stop it as they are usually to frail to do so (Ambipom, Technitop, Persian).

The same with Spikes and weather. Only 3 pokemon in the entire game (not counting NFE of course) are automatic weather starters. While they may be decent Pokemon, they don't fit on to everyone's team. Spikes is a move that a very limited number of Pokemon can use well. And even if spikes is in play levitating and flying dangers (Salamence as a big example) will still have advantage of focus sash.

I hope this rekindles some intelligent discussion after haterman or whatever his name was.
Don't forget that priority can ruin sashers that can't OHKO the priority user, and the same goes for anything faster than the sasher. Yes, we'd see sashes on more than just leads and Shedinja now, but we don't know if that by itself is really broken. Further, using a sash user is still risky. Not every team will have a spiker/weather changer, but a lot already do, and if your opponent does your sash is now worthless.
 
I'm going to play devils advocate for both sides.

Focus sash pokemon aren't nearly as great some people think. They're difficult to switch in, since they absolutely must take no damage coming in in order to protect the sash, which means it has to switch in on an immunity, on a non-attacking move, or after a sacrifice. And even if a pokemon does manage to get on the field with the sash intact, it can still be nulled by weather and entry hazards. Secondly, there seems to be a misconception that pokemon with a sash will automatically get a kill or even two kills either because of a monstrous attack power or from Counter/Coat. While there are certainly a bunch of pokemon with high attacks can fill the first role described, at least half of those pokemon can do better with a different item because they will lose the extra power and sweeping ability they can get from a Life Orb or a Choice item which often make the difference from a OHKO to a 2HKO to a 3HKO. In addition, Counter/Coat and other sash sets rely on surprise and unpredictability in order to beat an opponent. Ironically, it is Stealth Rock which keeps sash usage rare and gives the surprise that makes these sets work. If Stealth Rock is removed, I'm sure competent trainers would be more careful around pokemon with full HP and adjust their playing style to work around these sets.

On the other hand, while Fake Out can indeed break a sash, it requires prediction like any other move to use effectively. If you do use Fake Out, you're assuming that the other trainer is not going to switch. And if the opponent does switch a different pokemon into your Fake out, the incoming pokemon just got a free switch. D: I dunno, just because there are ways to beat Focus Sash doesn't mean these ways are gonna be used. Very few pokemon can actually use Fake Out effectively, and most people wouldn't consider using a spiker unless they were using a stall team. Sandstorm, while effective because Tyrannitar is such a strong pokemon, does not hit everything. Heatran, Scizor, and Lucario are all high-usage pokemon that can sweep and are immune to Sandstorm (Though I wouldn't necessarily recommend using sash on any of them except maybe Reversal Lucario, and even that is beat by priority).

In the end I think both factors should balance each other out pretty well, and might even promote a more balanced metagame from the offensive one that we have today. Testing is needed, discuss.
 
So, I thought that I would argue my... statement (?) that SR needs testing by testing it myself in Shoddy. To do this, I devised a team that would really almost solely on SR to do damage. This team consists of...

Starter
Azelf @ Focus Sash

Leads it off, SRs then U-turns or blows up in their face. Then, I go too....

SleepRoarer
Heatran @ Lefties

Roar, Rest, Sleep Talk.

Yes, that's it. I'll explain later

RoostWinder
Skarmory @ Leftovers

Whirlwind, Stealth Rocks, Roost

Dug...trio?

EQ, Aerial Ace, Sucker Punch, Stone Edge

To sweep

Teh Assassin
Yanmega @ Expert Belt

Airslash, Bug Buzz, Protect, HP Ice

Bulky Roar
Swampert @ Lefties

Surf, Roar, Rest, Sleep Talk

That's the team. My plan was to use the Damage of SR against mine enemies. To do this, I wanted to rely almost SOLELY on the damage from SR. Yanmega and Dugtrio are simply for sweeping an annoyance off the field, so I can go Roar some more. I kept the Movesets simple to show that all I was doing was Roaring, and not using the power of the Roarers to sweep, rather their bulkiness to roar. My results?

I did 5 unranked battles and won 4 of them. Every fight I averaged almost 250% done with the use of SR alone. One battle I did 301% with Stealth Rocks. That's the equivalent of killing 3 pokemon with just SR. And the great part is that the team I faced had NO pokemon that took 50% damage from SR. Most took 12%, one took 25%. I'm going to contiue to tweak this team to bring out it's full potential, but currently, my results have been pretty impressive. 301%. Think about it.

EDIT: I would also like to point out the team took 30 minutes to construct and the matches took under an hour altogether with tweaking and the likes. So, basically this team could be constructed much better and deal much more severe damage if given the right movesets and pokemon to do the job.
 
300% spread out damage over who knows how many turns is not "the equivalent of killing 3 pokemon with just SR."

I'm not really sure what you're trying to prove by going into unranked matches and giving us statistics on a gimmick team, and without even giving us any logs. Even from the perspective of people who think "calculating average SR damage per match will give us an idea of whether SR's broken" I'm not seeing how this helps.
 
300% damage is the equivalent of killing three pokemon. Each Pokemon has 100% and taking that away 3 times makes 3 deaths. Sure, it was spread out across every Pokemon, but it is damaging.

Also, I went into unranked to test it out. I just started this today for an hour. I left the logs out because they're boring and space consuming. One I start ladders I'll post the logs here. And how doesn't this help. I'm using a team built by a novice battler (me) who has only really battled with gimmick teams to begin with, and have still won using 2 sets that use Rest and Sleep Talk to roar away Pokemon, and a Rooster who Whirlwinds.

As I said, if this team was tweaked and pushed along by a more experienced battler who stuck to the same idea of SRing and roaring, it could be pretty damaging. And, again, the point of this team was to rely solely on SR to damage enemies and see how well I fair against them.
 
For loads of fun, try using a Bulky Aerodactyl with Rest/Sleep Talk/Roar/Whirlwind. Sleep Talk ignores priority, so you'll probably outspeed and force the switch before the opponent can even act. And you've got a 2/3 chance of picking a phaze move.
 
Pink said:
300% damage is the equivalent of killing three pokemon. Each Pokemon has 100% and taking that away 3 times makes 3 deaths. Sure, it was spread out across every Pokemon, but it is damaging.
Sure, but saying it like that makes it seem like Stealth Rock just lays absolute waste to opposing teams, when there is leftovers recovery and even moves like Roost/Recover/Wish that need to be taken into account, on top of how long the match itself lasted.

And how doesn't this help. I'm using a team built by a novice battler (me) who has only really battled with gimmick teams to begin with, and have still won using 2 sets that use Rest and Sleep Talk to roar away Pokemon, and a Rooster who Whirlwinds.
If you can work your way up the ladder and make an impact on other players with this type of team, then we'll be getting somewhere. Until then I'm not expecting much
 
Azelf laying down Rocks needs to be Scarfed for it to really be fullproof.

I've been using an Iron Head Scarf Jirachi and it stops those Azelfs most of the time anyway.
 
That's the team. My plan was to use the Damage of SR against mine enemies. To do this, I wanted to rely almost SOLELY on the damage from SR. Yanmega and Dugtrio are simply for sweeping an annoyance off the field, so I can go Roar some more. I kept the Movesets simple to show that all I was doing was Roaring, and not using the power of the Roarers to sweep, rather their bulkiness to roar. My results?

I did 5 unranked battles and won 4 of them. Every fight I averaged almost 250% done with the use of SR alone. One battle I did 301% with Stealth Rocks. That's the equivalent of killing 3 pokemon with just SR. And the great part is that the team I faced had NO pokemon that took 50% damage from SR. Most took 12%, one took 25%. I'm going to contiue to tweak this team to bring out it's full potential, but currently, my results have been pretty impressive. 301%. Think about it.
If anything, I'm surprised that it's that low, given that all your focus was on switching. Besides, others have observed that the amount of damage in reality doesn't mean a lot - you can do 1000% damage to walls like Blissey and not come even close to killing them, after all
 
Do you think Ho-oh's usage would increase in Ubers without Stealth Rock?

Its important to discuss these things (it is mentioned in the first post), since not many people use Ho-oh due to Kyogre, and Dragons resisting its STAB.

I am just wondering if SR really makes a difference. In Adv, without SRock, Ho-oh was still rarely seen...
 

Darkmalice

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Do you think Ho-oh's usage would increase in Ubers without Stealth Rock?

Its important to discuss these things (it is mentioned in the first post), since not many people use Ho-oh due to Kyogre, and Dragons resisting its STAB.

I am just wondering if SR really makes a difference. In Adv, without SRock, Ho-oh was still rarely seen...
Yes, Ho-oh's usage will definitely rise; it gains much more potential as Groudon's ally, and it can wall Scarf Palkia/Dialga's Draco Meteor/Spacial Rend/Dragon Pulse. However, the rise will lower over time, as its increase will be partially due to hype.
 

cim

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There's more going against Ho-oh than Stealth Rock, though yeah of course anything will rise if a counter is banned. Heatran anyone?

Anyhow, the "300% damage is like killing 3 Pokémon with one move!" thing is a load of shit. Let's look at one of our favorite items, Leftovers. Heals 1/16th per turn. Let's put Leftovers on everything and see what happens.

Assume a battle goes on for 48 turns. That's totally reasonable. There's 300% damage recovered in that time! That's like 3 free Pokémon! That must mean that Leftovers is completely overpowered. It takes _0_ turns to set up!

Before any of you make a fallacious argument based on my (probably fallacious) argument, I'm definitely not saying that "SR is made up for with Leftovers and thus it's not broken". I'm trying to show that you can't just shout "number is broken because of number".

Unless you seriously want to ban Leftovers, in which case there is no hope for you anyway. There is a difference between good and broken, and "too good" does not equal "great" either.
 
In addition, Leftovers negates the effect SR has on the majority of OU. One takes about 12% damage switching in without weakness, and heals it off within 2 turns. The 300% damage is incredibly deceptive because the very common Leftovers negates a good portion of it.
 

cim

happiness is such hard work
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Not to mention that the 300% is completely uncomparable to anything. What if a Heracross that randomly spammed Megahorn and switched out 8 times (before SR killed it) did 300% average damage? Would that be too good?

It's just a big-sounding number being pulled out to do nothing. I guess I shouldn't have had much faith in the thread as the entire first post is a straw man argument, but meh.
 
A better thing to measure is how many pokémon does it force a KO on (ex. killed on switch or pushed into possible kill range after switch and then KOed).

Much of the other suspects are done based on some preferences of certain people, so I don't see what's wrong with testing this out, since its a pretty hotly debated subject.
 

cim

happiness is such hard work
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The only thing I see "wrong" with testing this is that the test won't show if it's broken. It will show that it defines the metagame and without it, the game will change a lot. That's kind of a given.

Philosophy:
Smogon attempts to avoid bans as much as possible—only when it becomes very apparent that a Pokémon is far too powerful to be in line with a balanced metagame is it banished permanently from the standard arena.
Convince me that the test will somehow conclusively show that it's "far too powerful" rather than just prominent.
 

Aldaron

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Because Doug is obviously busy with the bajillion things he has on his plate, can someone try and write up some stat collection code for Shoddy (obviously I cannot...otherwise I would) specifically for Stealth Rock?
 
The only thing I see "wrong" with testing this is that the test won't show if it's broken. It will show that it defines the metagame and without it, the game will change a lot. That's kind of a given.
And Without Garchomp and Deoxys-S, the game has changed a lot. How is that different from those cases?

Convince me that the test will somehow conclusively show that it's "far too powerful" rather than just prominent.
First of all, that quote was taken out of context (everyone seems to do that). Here is the full paragraph

Another misplaced argument is the opposite—the banishment of lesser legendaries. This is not disputed in the case of monsters like Mewtwo, but for strong yet available choices like Azelf, or even lesser Pokémon like Entei, which aren't even considered standard! The important thought to keep in mind is that all Pokémon are unique, and there is actually a world of difference between, say, Jirachi and Entei—while the former is high-tier and enjoys consistent use, the latter is a forgotten rarity due to a poor stat distribution and movepool. Smogon attempts to avoid bans as much as possible—only when it becomes very apparent that a Pokémon is far too powerful to be in line with a balanced metagame is it banished permanently from the standard arena. Many legendary Pokémon are very balanced within the realm of standards and open up new options for players, who value any option to avoid staleness.
See the difference? Also, the line you quoted mentions pokemon, not moves. Stealth Rock, as you have said, has a big impact on the game, and something with that big of an impact warrants testing. I obviously can't convince you because you (like many others in this thread) believe the Stealth Rock is not broken and a Test would simply be a waste of time. The only way for you to be convinced is to try a Stealth Rock test, that way you can actually say, having had experience in a stealth rockless metgame, weather it is broken or not.
 

Jumpman16

np: Michael Jackson - "Mon in the Mirror" (DW mix)
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yeah so the answer to your first question would be a "no" then. in banning Evasion and OHKO moves we acknowledged from the beginning that "something is wrong with the game that we are currently playing," "Double Team and OHKOs are broken moves, or otherwise prevent us from reasonably deciding who is the better player of this game." Whether or not that is what "we" literally decided as our reasoning (who knows, people back then might have thought "Double Team is just toooo annoying let's ban it!") is in my mind irrelevant, for the very fact that said reasoning did exist so we could justify a "test" (I'm assuming it was in reality just an outright ban)
you are wrong about why "we" banned DT and OHKOes back then. i have tried to subtly hint that i was playing competitively in 2000 and therefore know what i am talking about, but the subtlety seems to be lost on you so i will be blunt: i was playing competitively in 2000 and therefore know what i am talking about. dt and ohkos were banned because they were broken, not because they were annoying.

and the key word there is "were"—today, dt and ohkos are under consideration not because they are possibly less annoying, but because they may not be broken in platinum's metagame.

So no, based on what you've said so far, there is no precedent for us banning moves purely in the interests of a better competitive metagame. Just for moves that we can firmly establish are either broken, or otherwise pose as a clear obstacle between relative skill and relative ability to win (which I would call different from "broken" most of the time but either way DT and OHKOs at least at one point did fit this description)
the difference between the two is semantic as best, and anything that we have, had, and will have considered will be so considered in the "interests of a better competitive metagame" and nothing else


which part are you talking about? I'm hoping it isn't the one that apparently contradicts like the entire reason behind a Stealth Rock test.

"Smogon attempts to avoid bans as much as possible - only when it becomes very apparent that a Pokemon is far too powerful to be in line with a balanced metagame is it banished permanently from the standard arena."

If you're wondering, yes, this is exactly one of the reasons I asked the initial question of "where the line is." If we're now suddenly removing that little bit of the philosophy and replacing it with "we'll test anything we might be better off without by relative PR consensus" then I want to know why we're supposedly willing to go that far, and not directly into the realm of directly altering game mechanics.

If our goal has become to determine the "best possible OU metagame," then yes, I think a slippery slope is not out of the question at all. Trick has already had its smattering of complaints, after how many weeks of Platinum play? At the very absolute least we are promoting unhealthy "CalmCune is 00ber" type behavior and discussion amongst less experienced/informed players who now think that anything they hate playing against deserves to be tested. In a community where a number of people over a range of skill levels can be convinced that Magmortar is an amazing mixed sweeper, I'm definitely concerned with what could happen over the course of the year, or especially a generation if it comes to that. No I'm not worried about things like Double-Edge, but I fail to see how this isn't at least a somewhat legitimate concern.
its not a legitimate concern because it is not a coincidence that i both created and am heading up the suspect test process—i have been involved with competitive pokemon for over eight years now and have learned, among many other things, not to jump the gun on assessing new pokemon.

you reference "CalmCune is 00ber" (or "Calm Mind Suicune has no weak", depending on who you are), a sentiment which never got any actual wings when it was used in play because people realized it indeed was beatable, contrary to the preemptive theorymon spread by those who value theory over practice.

you reference Trick but yet either forget or are ignorant of the fact that I personally and purposely decided that we should test Deoxys-S before Skymin so people could actually gain some experience with it before crying "uber!", as they largely were in its first week on the standard ladder, much like they are doing with Trick today.

you reference magmortar...are you serious? skiddle himself will be the first to admit that his thread was an utter failure in actually revealing magmortar to be a mixed sweeper and not in actuality a wall breaker. the people that were or are "convinced that Magmortar is an amazing mixed sweeper" are the exact same people who are not going to have any say in the adminstration of these processes until they learn what competitive pokemon is actually all about, like i have, which is the reason you shouldn't be worried.

and finally, you're attempting to tie these three points (calmcune, trick and magmortar) back to the Stealth Rock issue, which does not apply because those three were or are all preemtively judged in mere weeks (or days regarding magmortar) as being stronger than they really are in practice, whereas SR has been used in practice in the metagame for almost 1½ years now and we are therefore going on a wealth of information

Edit: Also, the decision to test Stealth Rock itself could potentially influence votes on other Suspects. This might have more to do with the voting system being questionable at best than anything though.
this is why the suspect test process has three stages, and, further, why we would consider testing SR now, in a metagame with as few stage one or two suspects as possible after skymin is decided on, so we would be testing it as the lone suspect (if skymin is voted ou it is therefore no longer a suspect until stage three), as we do with all the suspects
 
I would like to mention that when I did the damage calculations for SR damage I took the leftovers recovery and factored it back in. I'm not a dumb ass. So, If it did 400% but there was 100% lefties recovery, it turns into 300%. Any healing was taken into consideration.
 
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