np: OU Suspect Testing Round 4 - Blaze of Glory

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Virizion said:
People are rather willing to ban Blaziken outright than to take a tiny bit more of their time to implement a complex ban that only disallows the use of the ability that made Blaziken broken. Why not only ban SB Blaziken if it's the only thing about it that is broken? It's surely not too difficult to tell people "You can use Blaziken, but only with the Blaze ability." and I'm 100% certain that it's not difficult for a player to remember that.
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GameFreak has defined what a pokemon is. We are breaking game mechanics if we ban 1 ability on one pokemon. I'm tempted to say you're a Blaziken fan who is sore about Blaziken being banned, but then you'll only reply to this part and ignore the previous sentence. (Straw man, anyone?)
Difficulty of remembering is irrelevant. This complex ban is literally nerfing a pokemon to make it OU. This has been against Smogon's philosophy since the beginning. It's not a question of laziness. It's a question of principles.
If you argue that this is an exception because Blaziken was UU before and Uber now, then I really having nothing more to say but quote this:
ballabrown24 said:
hey shithead have you even been trying to read any of the other posts? they have you clearly outmatched and you just put up shitty points against them. i wouldnt be surprised if those people just stopped posting because of the lack of brain you show. blaziken was too overpowered because of speed boost. you want to ban speed boost + blaziken (which by itself is just stupid), to make blaziken weaker, and thus uu. what if starmie was for some reason, much weaker with illuminate than natural cure and made it uu. would we also make an exception for starmie, and the other 30 ou pokes that could be brought down solely because of a complex ban? you just take stupidity to a new level. a eo ut mortus level.

and if you really need blaziken to beat chansey or kyurem you are a really shitty uu player.

but of course what did we expect from a wifi player with 0 po experience
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Woodchuck said:
GameFreak has defined what a pokemon is. We are breaking game mechanics if we ban 1 ability on one pokemon. I'm tempted to say you're a Blaziken fan who is sore about Blaziken being banned, but then you'll only reply to this part and ignore the previous sentence. (Straw man, anyone?)
Difficulty of remembering is irrelevant. This complex ban is literally nerfing a pokemon to make it OU. This has been against Smogon's philosophy since the beginning. It's not a question of laziness. It's a question of principles.
If you argue that this is an exception because Blaziken was UU before and Uber now, then I really having nothing more to say but quote this:
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Elaborate on "breaking game mechanics" - just because Game Freak allows/says something doesn't mean Smogon has to. Game Freak is completely fine with Double Team, Quick Claw, Sheer Cold, etc.; but Smogon disallows all of those. Game Freak bans Phione and the 600-BST pixies, but Smogon allows them. Why not ignore what Game Freak has said yet again? And FYI, I've actually never used Blaze Blaziken before - but Smogon has banned something that isn't broken, only because we're not willing to find a better answer to solve the problem.

I'll have to agree with you on the "nerfing" part - and I'm well aware that last Gen's tiering has no effect on this Gen's tiering (except for the obvious Ubers if you want to look at it like that). And, please don't quote that obvious troll.
 
Argueing "oh if you where to ban certain abilties on certain pokemon," that might lead to banning moves or items on certain pokemon," is honestly silly. As I noted before, slippery slope arguements are pointless as you can make key seperations in choices to prevent a whole system from falling down. Just becuase your banning abilties, does not mean you can extend that to anything else. You can see this everywhere in the way people make politic desicions in the real world.

Also to people pointing out random pokemon in OU and saying if you where to ban X ability, could be used in OU, thats also a bit silly, as you would only ban abilties, not tier them, a Dragonite is a dragonite, it stays OU. The only flaw people have pointed out in that logic is an Uber is an Uber, which I happen to disagree with, but since I have no arguement for seperating Ubers at this time, I can't pursue this further.
 
it really doesnt matter hell i could apply that to staraptor last gen. it was too strong for uu so it got banned to bl. lets say without intimidate and no ability it was ok for uu. even with that possibility it would just be dumb to let it back in bl as you could apply the same to the rest of the bl products. that same argument transitions into this gen with blaziken.


xDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
 
As a reply to the notion of it leading to banning movesets; it would be the second step. Drizzle+Swift Swim was the first step. It is untrue to think that it would become a slippery slope to banning movesets, as many of us are so adamant about this, when we got to the part about banning movesets or items, none of us would even let it be brought up. Natural Cure doesn't really help Starmie at all, and thus Illuminate wouldn't bring it into UU. If we were to hypothetically bring Blaze Blaziken down, that could very well be regarded the same way as Drizzle+Swift Swim is: reluctance to go any further, but since we did it twice, it would be even more so. I can probably count using only my digits how many OU Pokémon could go down with a different ability, and I can count with my fingers how many would actually stay there. I no longer say that it would be a definite good idea, but it's not going to go that road like you think.

Also, even though he's inexperienced and you're right in the gist of it, that post puts Smogon to shame, and can and will be quite easily quoted for all to see how the people at Smogon act, although it won't be me who does it.

(Personally, I don't think that simulators are very representative of metas. Remember how Landorus almost went Uber because of a mistake? You know how many perfect IV'd, Seismic Toss, perfect nature, Wish Chansey you see on Wifi? Zero. You don't even see perfect IV'd Wish Blissey, even without Seismic Toss, on Wifi. This is especially true since Smogon servers are an obsolete version.)
 
Virizion said:
As Wynaut has cleverly stated, Blaziken's case isn't tiering by ability; his case is banning by ability. Dragonite/Starmie aren't broken, so we wouldn't ban them. And, Ubers isn't a tierlist.
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Reread the original post that started this imbicillic shit storm, that ballabrown has conveniently quoted for you.

Notice how absolutely NO ONE said anything about banning Starmie and Dragonite. They used an analogy of letting OU Pokemon into UU. If you think that they were saying that Starmie and Dragonite are broken then you have the reading comprehension of a squirrel on meth.

Also, we don't ban Speed Boost + Blaziken because we aren't the game designers. Our goal is not to try and nerf the Pokemon into balance, our goal is to ban the ones that are imbalanced to find a balanced meta-game. If that means banning a Blaziken who has only one set that's imbalanced, then so be it. We aren't reinventing the wheel here, just improving it.
 
ballabrown24 said:
it really doesnt matter hell i could apply that to staraptor last gen. it was too strong for uu so it got banned to bl. lets say without intimidate and no ability it was ok for uu. even with that possibility it would just be dumb to let it back in bl as you could apply the same to the rest of the bl products. that same argument transitions into this gen with blaziken.


xDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
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It's impossible for a Pokémon with one ability (4th Gen Staraptor) to have an alternate ability. Please make a valid argument.

Also, Intimidate was a bonus, it wasn't what defined Staraptor since hopefully you know that it's a sweeper, not a wall/tank.
 
truevillany said:
Ryu and Ken have the same movepool. Do they play the same way? No. Granted, entirely different game and genre and stuff, but that is not the point. I cannot agree with this statement @ all. There is a clear difference between reg blaziken and sb blaziken. I think we all agree on this. How then they are the same pokemon when one has a golden ability and another has a copper one is really REALLY wierd. Feels like I am in the Twilight Zone almost, because you guys obviously know what you are talking about, but then again in statements like this, it seems as if you do not.
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Ryu and Ken are also different characters as defined by the game developers.
Blaziken and Blaziken are not.

Poison Heal Gliscor functions differently than Sand Veil Gliscor. Are they Different Pokemon? No.

Kingler functions similarly to Feraligatr. Are they the same Pokemon? No

It is not our job to divide Pokemon. It is to put them in the right tier. Blaziken will always just be Blaziken, no matter what set it runs.
 
I think Blaziken without Fire Blast wouldn't be broken cause then I could check Blaziken with Hippowdon. So I think Blaziken should be allowed in OU with a complex Blaziken + Fire Blast Ban. But then Blaziken without Hi Jump Kick wouldn't be broken because it obviously wouldn't have a strong fighting STAB. So a complex Blaziken + Hi Jump Kick ban would be acceptable too.
So ummm my proposal is that Blaziken should be allowed in UU as long as it doesn't have Fire Blast or it doesn't have Hi Jump Kick.
SSBBM's Proposal: Ban Blaziken + Fire Blast or Hi-Jump Kick from OU, but allow it in OU otherwise.
 
I'd like to have physical Shaymin-S unbanned. It has a great Swords Dance set that's horrible in Ubers but could actually have an interesting impact on OU with Shaymin-S's blistering 127 base Speed (and 103 base Attack isn't bad for a Swords Dancer). It would be interesting to see how OU deals with this threat.

I'd also like to have Mewtwo unbanned at a lower level. Mewtwo is one of my favourite Pokémon - hell, I'm sure it's in the top 10 of just about everybody here - so I definitely think that this is a worthy endeavour assuming that we're fine with nerfing species to fit into the metagame.

See what I'm doing here? No, this is not different from banning an ability from a Pokémon; changing even one move from a set can change how it functions completely, so naturally removing the entire special movepool from Shaymin-S will effectively make it a "different Pokémon". And I can argue that lv ?? Mewtwo can be thought of as a pre-evolution (since that kind of thing is irrelevant to competitive battling). A lot of suggestions that we can currently write off as retarded would be easily justifiable if we allowed Pokémon+Ability bans... unless somehow it is a justifiable exception as Aldaron justified the Swift Swim + Drizzle combo ban.
 
Fudamentally, Blaziken with either ability is the same pokemon, I will not deny that, and that is why I would be opposed to tiering pokemon by ability. I mean who honestly wants to play with illuminate Starmie? But its a diferent case with banning, one has the chance to keep a pokemon in a metagame, and make it a viable pokemon, by taking the bite out of the pokemon, while still keeping it good. I Believe limiting this process to only abilties is perfectly justifyable, because of the key diferences in playstyle that each ability comes with, without getting into frankly ridiculus un-bannings like choice band Kyorge at level 75 or something. And you can logically limit this to only abilties, without some sort of crazy slippery slope.

Some of my comments are in hindsight to some comments I know will appear soon, so don't attack me for discussing things that haven't even been brought up. (wow they already started pouring in)
 
Except you won't limit it to just abilities. In fact, these exceptions shouldn't have happened in the first place. Eventually some idiot will come along and propose complex bans on moves and items for the sake of balance like you are right now with abilities. You act as if you can draw a line here but you simply can't, and you're demonstrating this right now perfectly.

To put it even further in to perspective, when Aldaron made his proposal (which is what started this entire mess I might add), he explicitly stated that his proposal would be the single and only exception; there would be no following of complex bans, and that it was merely a temporary measure until a solution could be found and the metagame stabilized.

And look at where we are now. We have people suggesting more complex bans, this time on Pokemon + Ability, rather than Ability + Ability.

I don't understand how you people can be so blind to what is blatantly obvious and right in front of your face.
 
This thread is the shits. I mean its also shit, but it is really the shits. Great stuff ballabrown!

On Blaze: If you seperate SB from Blaze you allow it an exception by removing a part that makes it broken. From that:
a) what is stopping us from going further with that, eventually getting to slim's scenario of Mewtwo w/o special attack in OU?
or
b) Why should Blaze get special treatment?

If you can refute/argue successfully against either of those questions then your argument might have some merit.
 
Ulevo said:
Except you won't limit it to just abilities. In fact, these exceptions shouldn't have happened in the first place. Eventually some idiot will come along and propose complex bans on moves and items for the sake of balance like you are right now with abilities. You act as if you can draw a line here but you simply can't, and you're demonstrating this right now perfectly.
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Why must you limit moves/levels when it's not necessary? Everyone knows it's a stupid idea, and everyone is well aware that moves/level are NOT the same things as abilities. You don't need consistency like everyone complains about. Just ban something that is broken, and if there is a completely unchangeable quality about that Pokémon (You can change its moveset, level, and EV's, you can't change its ability once it exists) that is not broken, then I don't see why you wouldn't allow it to be used as long as it doesn't have the ability that IS broken.

@ Texas
Blaziken should get "special treatment" as it's the ONLY Pokémon in Ubers that is there because of its ability that also has a second ability that shows that it isn't broken without the benefitting ability (Speed Boost).
 
Virizion said:
Why must you limit moves/levels when it's not necessary? Everyone knows it's a stupid idea, and everyone is well aware that moves/level are NOT the same things as abilities. You don't need consistency like everyone complains about. Just ban something that is broken, and if there is a completely unchangeable quality about that Pokémon (You can change its moveset, level, and EV's, you can't change its ability once it exists) that is not broken, then I don't see why you wouldn't allow it to be used as long as it doesn't have the ability that IS broken.
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Yes, you do need consistency, just like everyone complains about.

Please explain to me how banning interchangeable abilities is any different than banning interchangeable moves, all for the sake of balancing a Pokemon?

You don't pick and choose the attributes of the Pokemon you want to keep; you ban it or leave it legal. Otherwise you lead the example that this can be done in any instance as long as it abides by the correct justification like "making the metagame more competitive" and then everything goes to shit.
 
What do you mean you can't draw a line? You can always draw a line. Without some midigation, everything in real life would be polarized, a country would have to choose between ararchy or tyrancy, odviously neither is a good option so you draw a middle ground, this can be shown litterally everywhere in real life, just becuase you can kill other soldiers in war, you don't outright kill criminals, you drew a line. I could go on and on about diferent lines in real life that have been drawn, but I believe you get the point. And saying Smogon isn't a society is foolish, it has higher population base then some states and provinces in real life, I believe that alone justifies one being able to draw lines under the basic laws of a society.
 
Texas Cloverleaf said:
This thread is the shits. I mean its also shit, but it is really the shits. Great stuff ballabrown!

On Blaze: If you seperate SB from Blaze you allow it an exception by removing a part that makes it broken. From that:
a) what is stopping us from going further with that, eventually getting to slim's scenario of Mewtwo w/o special attack in OU?
or
b) Why should Blaze get special treatment?
Click to expand...

Quoted for such an obscene amount of truth it should get censored by the FCC for excessive truth.

Look, we need to get away from the notion of Blaze Blaziken and Speed Boost Blaziken. It's Blaziken. They're not like different formes of the same pokemon, they're the same pokemon. In Pokemon, the Smogon procedure in handling things is to ban broken things, not nerf them into OU. If one aspect of a Pokemon makes it broken, then it's broken. We shouldn't be separating Pokemon from their abilities, at least not on an individual basis.

We also need to rid ourselves of the preconceived notions of tiering. Just because Blaziken's never been Uber doesn't mean that it can't be Uber this gen. Just because Politoed's been crap for three generations, doesn't mean it can't be Uber this gen. We need to blindly look at the merits of each pokemon, not say "toed sux so ban dryzl duh!"
 
Scarfwynaut said:
What do you mean you can't draw a line? You can always draw a line. Without some midigation, everything in real life would be polarized, a country would have to choose between ararchy or tyrancy, odviously neither is a good option so you draw a middle ground, this can be shown litterally everywhere in real life, just becuase you can kill other soldiers in war, you don't outright kill criminals, you drew a line. I could go on and on about diferent lines in real life that have been drawn, but I believe you get the point. And saying Smogon isn't a society is foolish, it has higher population base then some states and provinces in real life, I believe that alone justifies one being able to draw lines under the basic laws of a society.
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There's so much in here that screams idiot I don't know where to start. That said, I'll ignore about 99% of it, since there's only one thing you said that is actually pertinent to anything we were talking about.

Scarfwynaut said:
What do you mean you can't draw a line? You can always draw a line.
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How do you draw a line? Just declare it so? Last I checked, Aldaron did this when he made his proposal regarding his complex ban. Go read it. And yet here we are, discussing more complex bans.

Do we make it a policy? Creates some rules? Or just accept it as members of Smogon society?

No, those don't work. I'll tell you what you do. You don't light the match and start the fire in the first place. Leaves less people like you walking around.
 
@ ScarfWynaut: And how many people are able to draw that line? While there may be some who on your side of the argument who could, they would still be drawn along in the tide of those who are unable to draw the line themselves. The only way such a line could be effectively drawn would be if reach were to "put his foot down", as Phillip once did, which is far too pointless for no gain.
@Virizion. Smeargle/Glalie/Bidoof/Bibarel/other Moody users would be in Ubers had we not decided to ban the ability itslef. in this case it isn't the ability that is broken it is the pokemon with the selected ability as part of its package. Abilities are part of pokemon. if it is broken on a single pokemon it does not merit a ban on its own.

As said it opens up far too graet a slippery slope. If you look at the previous ability bans, Moody and DrizzleSwim, you will notice that they are ubiquitous bans. We do not discriminate for specific pokemon.
 
capefeather said:
I'd like to have physical Shaymin-S unbanned. It has a great Swords Dance set that's horrible in Ubers but could actually have an interesting impact on OU with Shaymin-S's blistering 127 base Speed (and 103 base Attack isn't bad for a Swords Dancer). It would be interesting to see how OU deals with this threat.

I'd also like to have Mewtwo unbanned at a lower level. Mewtwo is one of my favourite Pokémon - hell, I'm sure it's in the top 10 of just about everybody here - so I definitely think that this is a worthy endeavour assuming that we're fine with nerfing species to fit into the metagame.

See what I'm doing here? No, this is not different from banning an ability from a Pokémon; changing even one move from a set can change how it functions completely, so naturally removing the entire special movepool from Shaymin-S will effectively make it a "different Pokémon". And I can argue that lv ?? Mewtwo can be thought of as a pre-evolution (since that kind of thing is irrelevant to competitive battling). A lot of suggestions that we can currently write off as retarded would be easily justifiable if we allowed Pokémon+Ability bans... unless somehow it is a justifiable exception as Aldaron justified the Swift Swim + Drizzle combo ban.
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Thank you. There was already a thread either here or in PR about tiering by abilities and I'm kinda surprised it came here considering the result was about the same. This is tiering by abilities, and it's lame to try and nerf pokemon until they fit into OU/UU. We're not dealing with "different" pokemon, it's still the same one regardless of ability.

Now that that's out of the way, let's be honest, this came up because of SB Blaziken, who was somewhat controversially banned(people disagree with it making it "controversial") because Blaziken was found to be too powerful for OU. If Blaziken was banned b/c of Speed Boost, then why wasn't Yanmega? It's because the combination of it's typing, powerful stabs, stats, movepool, and ability were found to be too powerful for OU. That means the pokemon was deemed broken, period. Blaziken was banned, not Speed Boost, not Hi Jump Kick, but the combination of that, and other factors, all in Blaziken.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but by allowing Blaze Blaziken into UU or OU we would be setting the precendent of nerfing pokemon into tiers. That would justify lvl ? Mewtwo or Specs Groudon, Physical Skymin b/c that would also be nerfing into specific tiers based on reducing effectiveness of pokemon so they won't break OU. Pokemon can have different abilities, but pokemon bans work somewhat like the Species Clause, a pokemon isn't tiered by it's alternate abilites, but by it's index number and the potential the colorful sprite with that number holds.

Edit: Abilities are manipulable factos in a pokemon's set, just like moves and Ev's. If we can change that one factor and clear it for OU, then why don't we have Ho-Oh minus Sacred fire and Brave Bird in OU?
 
Texas Cloverleaf said:
@ ScarfWynaut: And how many people are able to draw that line? While there may be some who on your side of the argument who could, they would still be drawn along in the tide of those who are unable to draw the line themselves. The only way such a line could be effectively drawn would be if reach were to "put his foot down", as Phillip once did, which is far too pointless for no gain.
@Virizion. Smeargle/Glalie/Bidoof/Bibarel/other Moody users would be in Ubers had we not decided to ban the ability itslef. in this case it isn't the ability that is broken it is the pokemon with the selected ability as part of its package. Abilities are part of pokemon. if it is broken on a single pokemon it does not merit a ban on its own.

As said it opens up far too graet a slippery slope. If you look at the previous ability bans, Moody and DrizzleSwim, you will notice that they are ubiquitous bans. We do not discriminate for specific pokemon.
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You're acting as if this is a case of Intimidate being broken on 4th Gen Salamence (just an example, Mence's great stats/etc. don't matter in this example - if you want to be an idiot and say "but mence is broken anywayz cuz of stats!!", then pretend that I'm using Mawile as an example instead.), if Salamence would prove to be broken with Intimidate but other users wouldn't, then we'd ban Salamence because that's his only ability. However, in Blaziken's case, he has another ability to use. You don't have to ban him as a whole; just prevent him from being broken by unbanning Blaze.

@ Niku's last paragraph
Deoxys makes a re-appearance.
 
Texas Cloverleaf said:
On Blaze: If you seperate SB from Blaze you allow it an exception by removing a part that makes it broken. From that:
a) what is stopping us from going further with that, eventually getting to slim's scenario of Mewtwo w/o special attack in OU? Or Gliscor in UU without Sand Veil as another example.
or
b) Why should Blaze get special treatment?
Click to expand...

So what if he has another ability? That ability is still a part of him. If you ban ability+pokemon that is tantamount to banning a different single facet such as a move which gets back to the "drawing a line" argumetn discussed a few posts ago.
 
There is a very simple way you "put your foot down," you vote on it and make a consensus with democracy with many people. The reason my Philip's desicion failed it primarily he alone did it, and if you see any case of when a single man has all the power, it always fails to do what people want. And if you try to deny facts from history, and make parrallels to them, then perhaps it is you who is the idiot, and not I. I can not tell you all the wars that have been fought for the same exact causes, that happened in the same exact way, all becuase people refused to look behind them and stop it from happening again.
 
Scarfwynaut said:
There is a very simple way you "put your foot down," you vote on it and make a consensus with democracy with many people. The reason my Philip's desicion failed it primarily he alone did it, and if you see any case of when a single man has all the power, it always fails to do what people want. And if you try to deny facts from history, and make parrallels to them, then perhaps it is you who is the idiot, and not I. I can not tell you all the wars that have been fought for the same exact causes, that happened in the same exact way, all becuase people refused to look behind them and stop it from happening again.
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@ Bolded piece: Did you not read my post? In order to be able to put your foot down the majority of people have to be willing to do so. By the incessant ridiculous nominations here it is clear that very few people are willing to do so thus leaving the only option being "putting ones foot down" a la Phil.

@rest: a) I didnt call you an idiot. b) Irrelevant to anything I said.
 
Virizion said:
You're acting as if this is a case of Intimidate being broken on 4th Gen Salamence (just an example, Mence's great stats/etc. don't matter in this example - if you want to be an idiot and say "but mence is broken anywayz cuz of stats!!", then pretend that I'm using Mawile as an example instead.), if Salamence would prove to be broken with Intimidate but other users wouldn't, then we'd ban Salamence because that's his only ability. However, in Blaziken's case, he has another ability to use. You don't have to ban him as a whole; just prevent him from being broken by unbanning Blaze.
Click to expand...

Sounds good, but first we gotta prevent Shaymin-S from being broken by making it all physical. While we're at it, let us unban Mewtwo by preventing him from being broken by unbanning level 82.

Virizion said:
@ Niku's last paragraph
Deoxys makes a re-appearance.
Click to expand...

It is my understanding that Deoxys is the one and only exception because of stats. Blaze Blaziken and SB Blaziken have the same stats And are different b/c of a niche/Speed Boost. The different stats of the Deoxys Forms make them essentially different pokemon with a similiar sprite b/c the typing and movepool might be identical, but the STATS determine usefulness of sets. Speed form Deoxys' stats are different from Attack Form's. Only one breaks the meta and b/c of the Stat difference they are essentially different pokemon. Besides, never said I supported not banning all formes of Deoxys but b/c of the different STATS and therefore increased/decreased effectiveness or devastating effect on OU, one is broken, one isn't, and Deoxys's formes are too statistically different. It's why Combusken isn't Uber.
 
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