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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 3 - So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
- Thread starter reachzero
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You may have a point when it comes to typing and stats being invariable across all pokemon of the species, but parts of the movepool are every bit as limited as ability. A blissey without wish may never learn wish. A Conkeldurr without mach punch may never learn mach punch. If you allow banning abilities since a blaze blaziken may never become a Speed Boost one; then if Salamence with outrage is not broken, then why not only ban Outrage Salamence, since this gen, if Salamence does not already have Outrage, it can never learn it.
@the crazy SD empy guy
1) Blaziken does not switch in on something that may OHKO it coming in.
2) Gastrodon does nothing to Blaziken; it is easily OHKO'd by a +2 HJK
3) Blaziken never runs thunderpunch (is it even legal with speed boost?)
All right. I see your logic. I'm still not totally convinced that in some cases a Pokemon+ability ban might not be worth the exception, though.
It might be in some cases. Though, why bother? If the pokemon is broken then ban it. It is a combination of typing/moves/stats/ability etc that makes a pokemon broken. If it is the ability that is coherently broken on all the pokemon that use it then ban the ability. Why bother with a complex ban of a Pokemon+ability.
blaziken can be dealt with by the following pokemon
kabutops sd+aqua jet
empoleon sd+aqua jet
samurott sd+ aqua jet
as idiotic as it may seem a dragonite who runs ddance and aqua jet yes u read correctly would decimate blaziken.
theres no reason for blaziken to be uber
if thats the case of pokemon becoming threats due to ablity then yanmega should be ubered away.
yanmega base 116 spatk and base 95 speed. with access to two great stabs in bug buzz and air slash. not to mention hidden power fire to take care of nasty steel types
after a turn or two this thing outspeeds every thing and considering which item u decide to run life orb or choice specs this thing is way more threatning than a blaziken u can play mind games with .
for example blaziken is in a does his little speed boost + swords dance routine
then u PREDICT a hjk and switch to ghost and blaziken gets major recoil damage then u switch to a flash fire ability pokemon. stay in next turn because a knowlegeable player would overpredict a switch back to ghost type . then next turn switch back to ghost and tada blaziken is done in done .
kabutops sd+aqua jet
empoleon sd+aqua jet
samurott sd+ aqua jet
as idiotic as it may seem a dragonite who runs ddance and aqua jet yes u read correctly would decimate blaziken.
theres no reason for blaziken to be uber
if thats the case of pokemon becoming threats due to ablity then yanmega should be ubered away.
yanmega base 116 spatk and base 95 speed. with access to two great stabs in bug buzz and air slash. not to mention hidden power fire to take care of nasty steel types
after a turn or two this thing outspeeds every thing and considering which item u decide to run life orb or choice specs this thing is way more threatning than a blaziken u can play mind games with .
for example blaziken is in a does his little speed boost + swords dance routine
then u PREDICT a hjk and switch to ghost and blaziken gets major recoil damage then u switch to a flash fire ability pokemon. stay in next turn because a knowlegeable player would overpredict a switch back to ghost type . then next turn switch back to ghost and tada blaziken is done in done .
Since blaziken is coming in and setting up, you won't be able to SD, so all those SD + aqua jet things aren't any good. They can do half-70% I guess, but that isn't a OHKO.
Espeed has the same power as aqua jet vs blaziken from dragonite.
Yanmega lacks power, due to no way to boost his sp atk and lower BP moves.
The only commonly used flash fire pokemon is heatran, although arcanine and chandelure do have their niches. Not every team wants to run one of those three, nor do they want to have to run a ghost as well. And if one of those two have been eliminated (ghosts are nice and pursuit weak too), blaziken wins. or if blaziken just correctly predicts you once out of those 4 turns (HJK baiting is kinda obvious with team preview).
Espeed has the same power as aqua jet vs blaziken from dragonite.
Yanmega lacks power, due to no way to boost his sp atk and lower BP moves.
The only commonly used flash fire pokemon is heatran, although arcanine and chandelure do have their niches. Not every team wants to run one of those three, nor do they want to have to run a ghost as well. And if one of those two have been eliminated (ghosts are nice and pursuit weak too), blaziken wins. or if blaziken just correctly predicts you once out of those 4 turns (HJK baiting is kinda obvious with team preview).
Why the fuck is Blaziken even switching into Empoleon? Do you switch your Salamence on ice-type pokémon too?
If they both come in at the same time, Blaziken has no reason to protect; it can just HJK Empoleon to hell.
Wait, so the situations you have described, seem to assume Blaziken has switched in on these pokemon. Which would assume he dodged a Water-attack on the way in anyway.
Obviously, they can't be switching in on Blaziken, otherwise, Blaziken would already be at +1 speed, and would OHKO Samuwott, Kabutops, and Emploeon.
Same story for Dragonite, really. He can't risk Stone Edge.
Oh, and what if the Sun is up? Blaziken has effectivly lost his Water weakness. Even Azumarill can't OHKO Blaziken under the sun.
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So, Blaziken is OU when:
You require a Ghost type/something with Protect
You require a Flash Fire pokemon as well.
You need have perfect prediction
You might as well say that everyone has to run Mamoswine, or Scarfed Froslass, and make Rayquaza OU.
Yeah... next argument.
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Yanmega is Uber due to Speed Boost? LOLNo.
Bug Buzz is nowhere near BP 130. Nor is Bug anywhere near as good an attacking type as Fighting
Same for Air Slash
And HP Fire? BP 70? It'll probobly stuggle to OHKO Ferrothorn, let alone Jirachi or Skarmory. There's also this pokemon called Heatran.
Aka: Yanmega may outspeed the whole game after 2 turns. But it's FAR from O/2HKO'ing the whole game. Like Blaziken did.
Also, please it may help your case if it didn't take 5 mins for me to decipher your post, due to the bad grammar.
Lax Incense was banned without being tested. I think they just banned it on a whim.
And we did nerf Pokémon to keep them OU, with the Drizzle+Swift Swim ban. It may not have been the same in execution, but it had the same result: an otherwise Uber Pokémon was nerfed to prevent it from going to Ubers. If it is "against Smogon policy" to do this for Blaziken, then, by Smogon policy, Kingdra should be Uber. Well, if you're going to say what's against Smogon policy, then maybe you should tell us what, exactly, IS Smogon policy. And source.
Also, not all Blaziken use Swords Dance. There are plenty of mixed Blaziken out there.
And we did nerf Pokémon to keep them OU, with the Drizzle+Swift Swim ban. It may not have been the same in execution, but it had the same result: an otherwise Uber Pokémon was nerfed to prevent it from going to Ubers. If it is "against Smogon policy" to do this for Blaziken, then, by Smogon policy, Kingdra should be Uber. Well, if you're going to say what's against Smogon policy, then maybe you should tell us what, exactly, IS Smogon policy. And source.
Also, not all Blaziken use Swords Dance. There are plenty of mixed Blaziken out there.
what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now im blown away. not like someone is gonna make u tell them the items u have b4 battle.
What do those pokemon's items have to do with countering blaziken at all? No Item will save them except for a Choice Band.
TorchicBlaziken said:
As has been mentioned time and time again Aldaron's proposal was an exception. It was not done for the benefit of a single pokemon or even multiple pokemon. It was implemented because Rain as a playstyle was overpowering the metagame.
And it doesnt matter if not all Blaziken are Swords Dance variants. As we have seen before, it only takes one broken set to break a pokemon.
EDIT:
Why should we ban Speed Boost Blaziken and keep Blaze Blaziken. That will mean that they are two separate pokemon. Blaziken 1.0 which is a UU wallbreaker and Blaziken 2.0 which is an Uber Sweeper. Why complicate things to the point that we have to split a pokemon into two beings. What if Blaziken got a third ability later on, would we then argue for one to be UU,OU and Uber at the same time. This is not a precedent we want to set.
Moreover, it defeats the purpose of a "Tier" in general. If a pokemon is assigned to a higher tier then it is not allowed in any of the lower ones. Allowing Blaziken to bend the rules will lead to many more arguements for other pokemon to be accepted in OU or UU or etc.
While those are all effective uses of it, they don't have anything to do with brokenness. I realize you didn't say they did, but clearly 50% of the voters did or they thought something completely different which hasn't been brought up yet.
Free entry hazards are highly useful, but not broken in the slightest. And if dual screens make Gorebyss broken (which they don't), ban Gorebyss. Deoxys-S isn't the only Pokemon capable of setting up dual screens; it may be the best, but that doesn't make it the issue here.
OHKO moves, Evasion moves, and Evasion items are all uncompetitive.
That's all we currently have to work with as far as definitions go.
We would have to do no such thing.
Movepool, typing, and base stats are inherent parts of a Pokemon and cannot be changed, short of changing forms, which are already considered separate Pokemon. The stats and moves any individual set a Pokemon may use are a combination of many different factors - six stats that can each hold 63+ different values, and four moves out of a movepool that for some Pokemon, consists of as many as one hundred moves.
Abilities are separate from all of these. You take a Pokemon with 2-3 different abilities and you divide them according to those abilities, and you have 2-3 different forms, all distinct in isolating the key factor of abilities. You want to try to cut down Rayquaza's movepool by dividing it into forms based on its movepool? Gen 4 Rayquaza can learn 81 different moves. That's approximately 40,000,000 possible movesets it's capable of running. And they're not all distinct. Say you want to address sets that can learn Dragon Dance, and you've still got 500,000 of them. But what about other sets that can set up and wreak havoc? Another 500,000 have Swords Dance, and another 500,000 have Bulk Up. But what if the Swords Dance sets are only a problem if you also run Extremespeed, and the Dragon Dance sets are only a problem if you also Outrage, and the Bulk Up sets are only a problem if you also run both? And maybe one or more of those sets are only broken if you have enough coverage moves, so then you have to wonder if they could be allowed if the last slot is empty. But putting a move like Twister in the last slot isn't any different from having an empty slot, right? What about moves that get some coverage, but not enough, like Crunch?
You can see the issue here. Getting into movepool-involving bans results in millions of possible combinations, and for some Pokemon, you may have to sort through through thousands of them to figure out what's broken and what isn't. That just isn't reasonably possible, and that is why complex bans involving movesets should always be avoided.
On the other hand, dealing with just abilities avoids all of those problems. As I explained above, a Pokemon only has 3 possible abilities at most (4 for Basculin), and none of them ever influence one another. There are serious issues with complex bans involving stats and moves; there are no issues involving certain complex bans involving Pokemon + Ability combinations. That's all the difference you need, and all it takes is a vote from PR to make that difference official.
Although separate ability forms and bans aren't the only way to deal with this. We could, rather than changing the tier of anything, add a "Dream World Clause", which would be standard for ladder battles, and would ban the DW versions of any Pokemon included under the clause. At present, that would include Blaziken, and could be expanded to include other Pokemon, such as Chandelure, if necessary.
Not all Blaziken use Protect, either. I bet nobody actually tested Brightpowder or Lax Incense; they just did it on a whim. WIM.
And maybe they got haxed by Brightpowder once or twice, but Lax Incense? Never tested. Ever. How can it be uncompetitive if no one's ever used it?
And if +2 Blaziken is so strong, obviously it has to use Swords Dance sometime. So why is no one attacking Blaziken? Has everyone suddenly forgot the fact that Blaziken has 80/70/70 defenses, which it never invests anything into?
And if Brightpowder and even Lax Incense is so uncompetitive, then obviously Sand Veil should be, too, considering it gives double the boost that Brightpowder does, and quadruple Lax Incense. But we're not banning Sand Veil because that would give Pokémon with it issues. Well, if you're worrying about that, then what about Blaziken!? If we're not even going to think about saving Blaze Blaziken, then that means it must be harmful to the metagame. And if Blaze Blaziken is harmful to the metagame, then Infernape should be, too. So, if Infernape is harmful to the metagame, then why isn't it Uber? DOES NOT COMPUTE
And maybe they got haxed by Brightpowder once or twice, but Lax Incense? Never tested. Ever. How can it be uncompetitive if no one's ever used it?
And if +2 Blaziken is so strong, obviously it has to use Swords Dance sometime. So why is no one attacking Blaziken? Has everyone suddenly forgot the fact that Blaziken has 80/70/70 defenses, which it never invests anything into?
And if Brightpowder and even Lax Incense is so uncompetitive, then obviously Sand Veil should be, too, considering it gives double the boost that Brightpowder does, and quadruple Lax Incense. But we're not banning Sand Veil because that would give Pokémon with it issues. Well, if you're worrying about that, then what about Blaziken!? If we're not even going to think about saving Blaze Blaziken, then that means it must be harmful to the metagame. And if Blaze Blaziken is harmful to the metagame, then Infernape should be, too. So, if Infernape is harmful to the metagame, then why isn't it Uber? DOES NOT COMPUTE
Have you forgotten the fact that Blazekin can easily force a whole fuck-ton of switches to get that Swords Dance? If we were to try and ban Sand Veil/Snow Cloak, we would be getting rid of Garchomp and I think Frosslass (not sure if her DW ability has been released yet). And stop trying to justfiy that just because we banned Blazekin period, then that Blaze must have contributed to the problem and thus Infernape must be broken.
blaziken has a shallow movepool.
all of the possible threats LIKE I MENTIONED EARLIER can be dealt with
its just that most competitors think that a smogon handbook of tested and retested stratagies will work and result in victory.
however this is not so.
smogon is a guide not a handbook
so just becuase u see damage cal. doesnt account for every perspective in battle for example.
blaziken is more valuable a mid-late game sweeper with the aforementioned speed boost.
HOWEVER one forgets to account for sr and lets not forget what set an opponent is running
blaziken usually runs a basic
flare blitz stone edge
hjk swords dance
but lets see what can take it out
lets say slaking is in play and the turn blaziken switches in is the turn truant isnt active....guess what happens.....u got a ko on blaziken
i can go on and on at how many pokemon find themselves destroying a speed boost blaziken.
all of the possible threats LIKE I MENTIONED EARLIER can be dealt with
its just that most competitors think that a smogon handbook of tested and retested stratagies will work and result in victory.
however this is not so.
smogon is a guide not a handbook
so just becuase u see damage cal. doesnt account for every perspective in battle for example.
blaziken is more valuable a mid-late game sweeper with the aforementioned speed boost.
HOWEVER one forgets to account for sr and lets not forget what set an opponent is running
blaziken usually runs a basic
flare blitz stone edge
hjk swords dance
but lets see what can take it out
lets say slaking is in play and the turn blaziken switches in is the turn truant isnt active....guess what happens.....u got a ko on blaziken
i can go on and on at how many pokemon find themselves destroying a speed boost blaziken.
If we're not even going to think about saving Wishmence in DPPt, then that means it must be harmful to the metagame. And if Wishmence is harmful to the DPPt metagame, then Wishbliss should be, too. So, if Wishbliss is harmful to the DPPt metagame, then why isn't it Uber? DOES NOT COMPUTE
I know you're really mad your favorite pokémon got banned and you love trivia and theorymonning, but we're not going to save X or Y because they're entitled to being used in a certain tier. We only accepted the Drizzle+SwSw ban because Drizzle would be banned (and that's undisputed) without people even considering banning/testing the pokémon/ability instead, and yet people couldn't exactly put their finger on what was the real problem; so, the broken playstyle of "Ultra-Heavy Rain Offense" was banned instead, either because people felt the problem was the HO edge those kind of teams had, or because they believed the combination of Drizzle+SwSw made too many pokémon broken ("unnecessarily", perhaps), and a ban of what was believed to be the driving force behind it, the combination of infinite Rain + Swift Swim, was ensued instead.
I hope you fully understand that, with great trolling power, comes great responsibility.
I addressed how movepool is not quite immutable as you say it is among the same pokemon species.
And while you claim there are hundreds of thousands of combinations that we would have to sort through, that is simply not true. We are not computers. We can easily laugh aside moves such as twister, fling, and incinerate, making it far less that we need to think about. This is why people can play Go at high levels, while computers can only manage an amateur level.
And I would say banning outrage,draco meteor, dragon claw, dragon pulse, and extremespeed on Rayquaza would make him OU. He is checked by all the other dragons, who can revenge him if he SD's, and even DD's if scarfed, and would need to run ice beam to beat them at all. He has not physical stab outside of fly now, and the only other physical choices would be brick break, waterfall, and crunch. On the special side, it does have Air slash and hp dragon and base 150 sp atk, but chandelure has 145 sp atk and stronger moves. Not as good type coverage or resistances, but it doesn't ohko the game didn't it? Rayquaza would probably have a good but not broken specs/LO set with brick break for blissey.
EDIT: I now see he also gets edgequake, but he's mostly outclassed in that regard, by those who get stab on one of them, and aren't SR weak- Landorus for example.
And species is the only factor which could be said to be special among all the factors. Why? It alone is linked to a list of the other factors (aka blaziken has this movepool, these types, these stats, this abilitypool) while the other factors are linked solely to species (speed boost doesn't have a movepool now does it?).
As such, abilities and moves are both factors, which make a a total pokemon (the species and all the links of other factors it's linked too). Either they are broken alone or the species is broken as a whole. None of this DW forms shit. If you can say different abilities are different forms, you can say different moves are different forms.
Okay. Now, with that definition, how far do we go when banning uncompetitive things? Confusion, Attract and Paralysis all fit the definition of "encourages the players to rely on luck to win." Freeze and Sleep do to a lesser extent.
And we won't even address crits, or non-100% flinch moves.
ThorHammer said:
Evasion items could be disputed as "uncompetitive," considering it was more-or-less a ban on a whim as opposed to "we've tested this and found the evasion boosts from the items caused a loss a significant number of times."
I am curious though, how do you feel about things like King's Rock and Razor Fang? Those two items add a 10% flinch to all moves (minimum) and can give 74% flinch rate on anything with Serene Grace and a 30% flinch rate attack. With paralysis that's 18% chance of getting to make any move.
TheAvenger: My, what intense ad hominems you have! Also, you failed to address their points about their tendency to get hammered by Blaziken instead of doing their intended task.
Also, having an obscure one-trick pony counter does not justify the mon's being OU. Cases in point-Cloyster versus Garchomp in Gen IV, Regirock versus Salamence in Gen IV, Shedinja against various Uber water types, Gen IV Quagsire versus Kyogre, Gen V Gastrodon versus Kyogre....
Not only that, but if anyone is switching Blaziken in on Slaking, it's on the turn Truant activates. Also note that once Blaziken is in, your Slaking can't switch into Blaziken.
Also, having an obscure one-trick pony counter does not justify the mon's being OU. Cases in point-Cloyster versus Garchomp in Gen IV, Regirock versus Salamence in Gen IV, Shedinja against various Uber water types, Gen IV Quagsire versus Kyogre, Gen V Gastrodon versus Kyogre....
Not only that, but if anyone is switching Blaziken in on Slaking, it's on the turn Truant activates. Also note that once Blaziken is in, your Slaking can't switch into Blaziken.
I'm also noticing that since blaze starts out at +0, it can only set up on nattorei, ttar, and various water typpes not including slowbro in the sun, though for the latter, blaze has to take a neutral hit and then be revenge killed with priority like how scizor checked mence in gen 4. Nattorei is useless against sun teams, so you can suicide it and let it possibly set rocks up. Tyranitar should be used in conjunction with scarfchomp or scarflandlos to revenge it. If you sac a poke from ttar to switch it in, you can get dory up too. If it switches out, it has probably taken 50% from rocks and a layer of spikes alone, making it prone to revenge killing(CB azu works here you know). Switching it in will be difficult, but it should be a good standard of teams to have something that won't be 1HKOed by a +0 blaze and outspeeds and kills it. If it uses protect, it probably lacks SD or stone edge so mosst tanks that resist its dual STAB should be able to kill it.
Since Uncanny Luck brought it up, I thought I'd weigh in on the hax items issue as opposed to getting into this boring Blaziken discussion.
The four remaing hax items (as far as I remember) are ones that boost crit rates; ones that boost a chance to flinch; Quick Claw; and Focus Band. Imo, the only two that need to go given our precedent of banning Brightpowder etc are Quick Claw and Focus Band.
The reason for this is twofold. For one, these items offer a chance to simply break two aspects of the game - HP depleting to 0 resulting in a KO, and turn order based on speed. It's less the luck aspect and more that these give the chance to effectively break aspects we all hold to be critical elements of the game that means these should go - more so even than Brightpowder, which breaks the less definite element that 100% moves should always hit.
Secondly, both crit and flinch items do something only affecting your moves directly as opposed to hampering your opponent's. This means that the items can be used strategically and beneficially to suplment existing strategies (as opposed to the aforementioned two which are essentially always used randomly to try and screw over the opponent). Namely - Crit abuse Absol etc, and King's Rock Cincinno, very niche strategies and certainly somewhat unsavoury, but no more broken than FlinchRachi in terms of abusing hax. To an extent the same can be said for BrightpowderChomp - but that does have real similarities to Focus Band anything, so I see why Brightpowder was removed. Also, using either crit or flinch items on anything other than a specifically abusing strategy will essentially be entirely inferior to many other items, and be far less likely to win you the battle - they will not be broken basically, as opposed to Focus Band and Quick Claw which by their nature break the game.
TL:DR - Quick Claw and Focus Band need to be banned no matter what, Crit and Flinch items can have the case made for them but really don't offer good enough benefits to be considered broken as Brightpowder was.
The four remaing hax items (as far as I remember) are ones that boost crit rates; ones that boost a chance to flinch; Quick Claw; and Focus Band. Imo, the only two that need to go given our precedent of banning Brightpowder etc are Quick Claw and Focus Band.
The reason for this is twofold. For one, these items offer a chance to simply break two aspects of the game - HP depleting to 0 resulting in a KO, and turn order based on speed. It's less the luck aspect and more that these give the chance to effectively break aspects we all hold to be critical elements of the game that means these should go - more so even than Brightpowder, which breaks the less definite element that 100% moves should always hit.
Secondly, both crit and flinch items do something only affecting your moves directly as opposed to hampering your opponent's. This means that the items can be used strategically and beneficially to suplment existing strategies (as opposed to the aforementioned two which are essentially always used randomly to try and screw over the opponent). Namely - Crit abuse Absol etc, and King's Rock Cincinno, very niche strategies and certainly somewhat unsavoury, but no more broken than FlinchRachi in terms of abusing hax. To an extent the same can be said for BrightpowderChomp - but that does have real similarities to Focus Band anything, so I see why Brightpowder was removed. Also, using either crit or flinch items on anything other than a specifically abusing strategy will essentially be entirely inferior to many other items, and be far less likely to win you the battle - they will not be broken basically, as opposed to Focus Band and Quick Claw which by their nature break the game.
TL:DR - Quick Claw and Focus Band need to be banned no matter what, Crit and Flinch items can have the case made for them but really don't offer good enough benefits to be considered broken as Brightpowder was.
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