More Thoughts on Stealth Rock

[Setrack]

in previous generations when there has been a "strategy trend" people just found ways to counter it and then these new ideas helped the metagame to evolve. but in this generation when new and apparently dominating sets/pokemon and a way to counter it is discovered people just scream OVERCENTRALISING and ban the pokemon from OU.

 

[ViVi]

IIRC Weavile with Fake Out/Ice shard/Dark Attack/something and a Sash. It Fake Outs to break the sash, then Ice Shards things like Aerodactyl and Night Slashes/whatever Azelf, since it outspeeds. It's really rather gimmicky, and isn't very helpful late-game in my experience.

So its like a anti-suicide suicide lead that doesnt set up rocks?

 

[TVboyCanti]

I'm going to try to elaborate on what punishability means and how it applies to a pokemon battle. That way everyone can see clearly that Stealth Rock is just much harder to punish than all other attacks in the metagame, and this creates the overcentralization that is symptomatic of a broken tactic.

In fighting games, and make no mistake, pokemon is a turn-based fighting game, punishing a move means you negate that move by initiating your own move that is faster or as fast. Thus you stop your opponent's initiative while maintaining your own. You cannot punish by blocking unless the blocked attack damages the user or the attacker becomes vulnerable if blocked, because blocking does not create initiative. Blocking is equivalent to protect and detect (you cannot block and take initiative at the same time but you can take initiative while a sub is up).

Punishing in pokemon means negating an attack's effects or damage(whichever is the player's goal in using that attack) in as many or less turns than it takes for that attack to be effective(all attacks in pokemon take 1-3 turns to implement). Meaning that you are able to make a change from the last turn to the current one, while your opponent has accomplished nothing with their turn. If a move doesn't punish 100% of the time it's used against it's intended target, then it's called a soft punish or soft counter. For strategic discussion I'll only be talking about hard counters, as there are huge amounts of soft counter such as critical hits, para hax, freeze, etc.

I'll list some common attacks in pokemon and list ways they can be punished:

**note**If faster, spore and fake out+knock out are universal hard counters to every attack. So if I forget to list them under a move, know that they're supposed to be there.

straight damage(flamethrower, earthquake etc.)/1turn:
switch to an immune poke/1turn
use a recovery move/1turn
switch to a resistant poke/1turn
KO with faster speed or a priority move/1turn
Use reflect/light screen/1turn

thunder wave/1turn:
switch to a ground type/1turn
switch to volt absorb/1turn
switch to motor drive/1turn
switch to quick feet/1turn
Lum berry/0-1 turn
if faster:
Substitute/1turn
Taunt/1turn
Safeguard/1turn

substitute/1turn:
if slower:
break the sub/1turn
Roar/1turn
Whirlwind/1turn
if faster:
Taunt/1turn
Substitute/1turn
Spore/1turn

spore/1turn:
Lum berry/0-1turn
switch to insomnia/1turn
switch to vital spirit/1turn
if faster:
Taunt/1turn
Subsitute/1turn
Safeguard/1turn

toxic spikes/2turns:
if faster: Spore/1turn
switch to poison type/1turn
switch+Rapid Spin/2turns
(safeguard and Heal Bell are not punishes because toxic spikes will still be active while safeguard is up, meaning their effect is not negated).

Rain Dance:
Taunt/1turn
switch to Sand Stream/1turn
switch to Abomasno/1turn
switch to Cloud Nine/1turn
switch to Air Lock/1turn
if slower:
Sandstorm/1turn
Hail/1turn

Trick/1turn:
Substitute/1turn(requires predicting two turns ahead if they are scarfed)
switch to sticky hold/1turn
switch to poke with same item/1turn in wi-fi this would be a net loss of 1 turn for the trick user since they are forced to switch, but there is no turn lost on shoddy. Many people on the forums say this makes trick even more broken than stealth rock.
switch to Lolpunny/1turn

Stealth Rock/1turn:
if faster:
Taunt/1turn
Spore/1turn
Fake Out+KO/1turn?

Notice that while most attacks have 4+ punishes or can be punished with a net turn gain, Stealth Rock only has three hard punishes, two of which are universal punish moves and none result in a net turn gain. Rapid Spinning the rocks away results in a net turn loss and therefore is not a punish. This lack of punishers is equivalent to a pokemon that lacks solid counters, and shows why stealth rock is used so much and why in my opinion it is a cheap move.

If anyone wants me to elaborate further on how attack punishability works in pokemon, let me know and I'll probably create a thread dedicated to the concept.

 

[migas140]

Honestly I think that Stealth Rock is a very powerful move, but I think it balances the metagame.
Think about Gyara/Mence/Zappy. They already are being used a LOT, so without Stealth Rock it would just centralize them more. Of course, no one knows exactly what will happen when the rocks are gone, but I can see Moltres, i.e., becoming used a LOT more.

All in all, I think that we should test Lati@s and Manaphy before SR.

 

[TVboyCanti]

Honestly I think that Stealth Rock is a very powerful move, but I think it balances the metagame.
Think about Gyara/Mence/Zappy. They already are being used a LOT, so without Stealth Rock it would just centralize them more. Of course, no one knows exactly what will happen when the rocks are gone, but I can see Moltres, i.e., becoming used a LOT more.

All in all, I think that we should test Lati@s and Manaphy before SR.

If Kyogre or another obvious uber was legal in OU right now, I could use the same argument you gave to argue that Kyogre should remain in OU. "Well Kyogre should stay OU because it checks a lot of pokemon that would become a lot more powerful if Kyogre was gone". Do you see how that's not really a good argument for not banning something?

I'm not trying to attack you personally, it's just that the argument you just made has been made a lot by many others before and it really doesn't hold water, just as the anti-stealth arguments that SR should be banned becaue it neuters certain pokemon should be avoided as well. I want to just be able to make a team without having to include stealth rock on the team, the way we all had to include garchomp or 3 garchomp counters on our teams pre-chomp ban.

Also, I don't understand why it's more of a priority to add potentially centralizing pokemon to the metagame than it is to remove obviously centralizing things.

 

[migas140]

If Kyogre or another obvious uber was legal in OU right now, I could use the same argument you gave to argue that Kyogre should remain in OU. "Well Kyogre should stay OU because it checks a lot of pokemon that would become a lot more powerful if Kyogre was gone". Do you see how that's not really a good argument for not banning something?

I'm not trying to attack you personally, it's just that the argument you just made has been made a lot by many others before and it really doesn't hold water, just as the anti-stealth arguments that SR should be banned becaue it neuters certain pokemon should be avoided as well. I want to just be able to make a team without having to include stealth rock on the team, the way we all had to include garchomp or 3 garchomp counters on our teams pre-chomp ban.

Also, I don't understand why it's more of a priority to add potentially centralizing pokemon to the metagame than it is to remove obviously centralizing things.

Garchomp and SR are different factors. And we can make a team without SR, it just isn't as powerful as it would be with it. It's the same with a team without EQ, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt. A team without those moves isn't as powerful as it could be (I know that it's different, since SR is support and EQ, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt are attack moves, but you can understand my logic).

And Stealth Rock doesn't overpower the meta as Rayquaza/Mewtwo/Kyogre would do.

 

[Objection]

Another thing about saying SR keeps Gyara/Mence/Zappy/whatever in check is that SR is not the only way of keeping them in check.
All in all, I think that a SR-less metagame will heavily affect players who use suicide leads to set up SR, but will have less of an effect on players who set up SR later rather than sooner. For me, it won't have much of an effect at all since I don't use SR on my team.

 

[TVboyCanti]

Garchomp and SR are different factors. And we can make a team without SR, it just isn't as powerful as it would be with it. It's the same with a team without EQ, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt. A team without those moves isn't as powerful as it could be (I know that it's different, since SR is support and EQ, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt are attack moves, but you can understand my logic).

And Stealth Rock doesn't overpower the meta as Rayquaza/Mewtwo/Kyogre would do.

Except that it is overpowering the metagame the way that those pokemon would. A team without stealth rock is extremely rare and probably only done for the novelty factor.

And by the way, the reason people call stealth rock suspect and not EQ..etc. is because EQ, IB, TB, FB etc. are all variations of the same strategy, which is attacking directly. There is no other move/strategy in the game that damages all OU pokemon upon switching. There are plenty of moves that deal direct fire damage or direct Ice damage etc. We call that diversity, and stealth rocks unpunishability denies us that.

 

[sbc]

If we are testing stuff like the Latis then I don't see why we shouldn't test Stealth Rock if we are going for the most inclusive possible metagame as there is no doubt that SR is holding quite a few pokemon back, I'm not just talking about x4 weaks like Moltres (who by the way would be a great pokemon to have checking the likes of heatran, scizor, lucario and nape) but pokemon like regice, houndoom and honckrow who are limited through the presence of SR.

And if you can't entertain the possibility of SR being slightly broken when people are willing to sacrifice pokemon to get it up and stop it being set up and that a 680 BST uber with 130 Atk and Sacred fucking Fire is talked about as being demoted to OU then you are missing something.

The claims that Zapdos, Gyarados, Mence etc will become broken without SR sounds like plain scaremongering to me as said pokemon probably be abused a lot more with anti-SR measures. They will become harder to stop but not most likely not broken; only mence out of that list is really a pain with without SR anyway. Didn't mythinfinity post a team the other day without SR that got to 4th in the ladder? I doubt s/he had massive troubles with those pokemon.

 

[Objection]

Houndoom is a bad example of a pokemon that can't be OU due to SR. Houndoom is also let down by its lack of speed and defences. All OU sweepers are either faster (such as Infernape) or bulkier (such as Machamp).

 

[gorm]

uh no offense but "punishability" still seems completely arbitrary and not applicable to anything. by what measure do you determine whether your index makes something suspect or not? Recover isn't easily "punishable" either, an how do you measure punishability of a pokemon?

it seems like it's just set up to take in a stealth rock input and output "overpowered"

not to mention this really vastly oversimplifies things, such as what if you switch your spinniner in on another pokemon that it walls and then spin, does it still count as 2 turns? "turns" are rather large instances as far as moves are concerned, i don't see why you would be using them as a basis for what move is uber

all in all i don't think it's a useful parameter to define, and another problem i have with it is it's "essentially theorymon" (if this happens this happens) instead of actual data (this happened, that happened) which we do have an I'm not sure why we would use the former over the latter.

I don't think anyone itt is arguing that SR is "in no way broken", what we are saying is that "it is not demonstrably broken" and therefor as of right now it _does not merit testing_

 

[TVboyCanti]

Gorm, what evidence could I show you that doesn't prove something arbitrarily?

And that list isn't a list of theorymon, it's a list of options. If I wanted to stop my opponent from using thunderwave on me, those are the options available to me. What I'm trying to show with this list is that there's not much options available to me if I wanted to stop my opponent from laying down SR(or remove it from the field). Your example about switching a spinner in as a sponge and then spinning to prevent the net turn loss of switching and spinning was theorymon. What if the oppurtunity to sponge in never arises? I'm not doing a very good job of negating the enemy's stealth rocks if I let them sit there while I wait for a chance to switch my spinner in.

Anyway the point wasn't what a player will do when confronted with stealth rock, it's what a player can do if they want to keep their opponent from setting up stealth rock, and those options are pretty limited and poor compared to other moves.

 

[gorm]

And that list isn't a list of theorymon

theorymon is hypothesizing instances in an isolated battle situation to make an argument about things involved in that instance.

What if the oppurtunity to sponge in never arises?

you're applying theorymon to my theorymon d_d

Anyway the point wasn't what a player will do when confronted with stealth rock, it's what a player can do if they want to keep their opponent from setting up stealth rock, and those options are pretty limited and poor compared to other moves.

you still haven't proved that sr being up is a bad thing/merits testing you've told us that it's hard to remove, which is kind of the raison d'etre of suicide leads (so "we know already")


i have never been 100% opposed to an sr test, i will support it when we figure out our banning parameters/methodoloies for moves, and we haven't even figured those thins for banning pokemon (we're close though)

bottom line:

it's "essentially theorymon" (if this happens this happens) instead of actual data (this happened, that happened) which we do have an I'm not sure why we would use the former over the latter.

 

[cim]

I don't see why people care that suicide leads are "unpunishable". They're punishing themselves by limiting their coverage. That doesn't make them bad, per se, but they're going to huge measures (throwing a whole Pokémon away) just to make sure you can't punish that free turn.

 

[Jumpman16]

something ive been meaning to ask for months but havent and will now direct to anyone who feels like replying:

what if SR did 20% more damage? 15% normally, 7.5% to 2× resists, 30% to salamence and friends, and 60% to moltres and friends. is that "too much" yet? just wondering. (if your instinct is to respond with "yeah but it doesnt" don't follow through with it!)

 

[migas140]

something ive been meaning to ask for months but havent and will now direct to anyone who feels like replying:

what if SR did 20% more damage? 15% normally, 7.5% to 2× resists, 30% to salamence and friends, and 60% to moltres and friends. is that "too much" yet? just wondering. (if your instinct is to respond with "yeah but it doesnt" don't follow through with it!)

Yeah, it would probably be. SR would kill 4X Rock weak pokes after 2 switch-ins, no matter what it's HP is and the 2X weaks, after 1 LO activation/small hit, would be killed after 3 switches.

 

[lilyhollow]

what if SR did 20% more damage? 15% normally, 7.5% to 2× resists, 30% to salamence and friends, and 60% to moltres and friends. is that "too much" yet? just wondering. (if your instinct is to respond with "yeah but it doesnt" don't follow through with it!)

Well nothing about "30% damage to Stealth Rock each switch" or "60% to all 4x weak pokemon!" makes me scream "broken" any louder than I was before (which was not at all). If Stealth Rock OHKOed all flying types, I wouldn't care (ok I'd care, but I wouldn't call it broken) unless the metagame sucked, and by "sucked" I mean "has major competitive flaws when you're actually playing the game," not "I wish I could use flying types."

So there's nothing about the percentages themselves that bother me, it's what the metagame would actually be like. To sort of better illustrate a situation in which I'd say that Stealth Rock would actually be worthy of a ban, let's pretend Stealth Rock did three times as much damage as it does now. At this point you're obviously playing a game that entirely revolves around Stealth Rock. Games will be decided based on who manages to make a couple good moves in the beginning to get SR up for a quick sweep, and that's just way too simple for us to tolerate as pretty much the main objective of the game.

In the end, we're looking at Stealth Rock pretty much being a game mechanic. "If you play correctly, your opponent is now punished for any switch he makes" is pretty huge (or people wouldn't be calling it broken), and I think that it makes the move, to an extent, indispensable for some of the same reasons that people want it banned ("it's unique"). If we could get away with "only" banning a couple of pokemon, and could otherwise keep this mechanic in the game without allowing it to become the main objective, I would rather do that than test Stealth Rock.


So to finally answer your question: with 120% power, the most I would do is call for an Azelf test, see what happens and go from there, if the effects on the metagame were actually really harmful (which I'm not so sure is the case in the first place). I'd trade Azelf to keep (a balanced) Stealth Rock in the game any day. But there's definitely a point at which we'd have to utterly mangle the game to be able to say "hey look... Stealth Rock's balanced!" and at that point I'd be fully supportive of a Stealth Rock test/ban.

 

[MythTrainerInfinity]

Hmm yeah, it would make phazer spike stacker damage teams even more lethal. Basically two switches in would kill something.

 

[cim]

Glad to see MTI followed through with it :/

something ive been meaning to ask for months but havent and will now direct to anyone who feels like replying:

what if SR did 20% more damage? 15% normally, 7.5% to 2× resists, 30% to salamence and friends, and 60% to moltres and friends. is that "too much" yet? just wondering. (if your instinct is to respond with "yeah but it doesnt" don't follow through with it!)

My instinct is that I have no idea. If this adversely affected the metagame so that, say, defense was completely unviable and sweep-teams always beat walls or some other radically massive game change, then perhaps the SRless game would be bad. I don't think SR is doing that now, though.

Dang, that's a really hard (good) question.

Hmm yeah, it would make phazer spike stacker damage teams even more lethal. Basically two switches in would kill something.

Because teams with just SR and phazing moves are totally useful now. Uh, honestly, name one battler in the top 50 that builds a team entirely around "stealth rock damage".

That reminds me. If SR is broken, why aren't your SR teams higher-ranked than your SR-free team? YOu obviously don't "need it to win", and before you say "I feel it gives me a huge advantage on the other team" keep in mind that it's not only entirely subjective but not backed up by the only numbers we have (ladder rank)

 

[Mekkah]

something ive been meaning to ask for months but havent and will now direct to anyone who feels like replying:

what if SR did 20% more damage? 15% normally, 7.5% to 2× resists, 30% to salamence and friends, and 60% to moltres and friends. is that "too much" yet? just wondering. (if your instinct is to respond with "yeah but it doesnt" don't follow through with it!)

It would be roughly the same, except this time Moltres and Yanmega always die in two instead of 2-3 depending on odd or even Hit Points. I don't think that this slight change to the damage really makes a difference for it to be ou/suspect/uber, it's everything else about it (takes 1 turn, damages all but Clefable).

 

[gorm]

I'm not gonna argue that stealth rock does "enough damage to not be considered broken" because something like that is too difficult to measure by it's description alone. I can say stuff like without SR, moltres would dominate scizor/heatran bullshit and zapdos would dominate moltres/scizor bullshit and etc and etc.. but there are really too many factors at play for us to arbitrarily decide a "breaking point" using the content of the move description when weighed against the factors of an entire metagame.


here's what i am gonna say. without, sash becomes a zillion times more viable as do bullshit taunt/speed/bp/whatever setups made available to sash users. As much as it would be cool for all the nerfed 4x weak mons to get a chance, not having to worry about sash is enough to make me say "ok i don't give a shit about the consequences since we can't measure if they are overall bad or good, i don't like dealing with sash bullshit.

 

[Darkartisan]

I like the way Gorm describes this. I also feel that this would change the metagame greatly (obviously), but in the sense of everything else, what will get a chance? Articuno? Moltres and Charizard? Why ban Stealth rock? To give a couple pokemon the chance to be tested, and be OHKO'd accordingly, that's the answer.

 

[MythTrainerInfinity]

Sash users have a hard time regardless. Hail teams might become a bit more viable, you still got to deal with the ever so common Sandstream team, Spikes, trying to get something in without taking damage on the switch, etc.

I am unsure if any other move or 'mon leaves such an impact on the tier list. The question is not just about making Articuno, Moltres, and Charizard more usable, but will it make even those who take 25% from it more usable?

 

[cim]

Uhh, MTI? That's not it at all. "the question" is "does big impact mean broken?" I don't think it necessarily does, especially for attacks, but that's a point you've continuously ignored throughout the thread, instead pointing out its big impact and how xyz would be OU otherwise.

 

[gorm]

exactly mti. no one is denying that its a big effect, we're just arguing that it isn't necessarily a bad one and it might in fact be beneficial, you can't really "measure" it right now so why push for it being tested?

i can theorymon my way out of sash countering as much as i want too, and ill always believe if sr goes out, someone will find a freaking annoying use for sash.