Unless BL battles start picking up (I don't think anyone wants to use Kyurem against UU pokes that badly) then competitively speaking banned pokemon are essentially forced into a higher "usage tier." Therefore, banning (by nature) has a direct effect on a pokemon's tiering in the context of actual use in the competitive metagame. I meant to point out that banning is simply a method of tiering pokemon based on what tiers they're to good for. In conclusion, banning/tiering are two sides of what is basically the same thing.
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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 5 - Sandstorm (Excadrill/Thundurus Banned)
- Thread starter JabbaTheGriffin
- Start date
- Status
I don't mind the stigma against complex bans because the suspect voters have consistently gone against banning this Gen (and lets be honest, complex bans are just a method to prevent something being outright banned). After 4 rounds not much has been banned that wasn't absolutely necessary. The only things complex bans have saved are Swift Swim Kingdra/Kabutops/Ludicolo and even then it just made them borderline unusable, which makes some people (like me) apathetic to the stigma against them.
Btw, I say No Suspects this round and bring back Lax Incense/Brightpowder because it's not as if anybody has ever been so outrageously haxed that they knew the opponent had to be running one of them. Nothing is broken since everything has counters and/or a healthy number of checks for the metagame.
Stratos
Banned deucer.
Sake of simplicity. That was one of the points of a desirable meta and the main opposition to Aldaron's proposal, so I don't see a reason to break precedent now.
Why do people want that shit back anyway? really what's the point. (besides secretly wanting to abuse it or some garbage)
Thundurus in rain is pretty brutal. It's thundur can nearly OHKO 252/224 calm Jirachi and the fact that Jirachi needs to rely on 60% body slam (not to mention not being para'd by thunder) due to many carrying sub or taunt. Drill checks it in the sand, but it is pretty much bye bye to something if sand isn't up. scarfers can "check" it, ie eat a priority twave or just have them switch out to ferrothorn and make them sac another poke to bring in the scarfer. Scarfers are incredibly predictable; you see them bring in terrakion or rotom to check it, chances are they are going to ferrothorn.
Thundurus in rain is pretty brutal. It's thundur can nearly OHKO 252/224 calm Jirachi and the fact that Jirachi needs to rely on 60% body slam (not to mention not being para'd by thunder) due to many carrying sub or taunt. Drill checks it in the sand, but it is pretty much bye bye to something if sand isn't up. scarfers can "check" it, ie eat a priority twave or just have them switch out to ferrothorn and make them sac another poke to bring in the scarfer. Scarfers are incredibly predictable; you see them bring in terrakion or rotom to check it, chances are they are going to ferrothorn.
Because we don't ban things that are not problematic. Brightpowder is a nuisance at best, and it will be an inferior item choice >90% of the time. The ban is as obscure as banning Quick Claw, which we haven't banned because it's not game-breaking and has virtually no impact on the metagame.
If we ban things because of mere annoying luck, that would certainly justify other unnecessary bans such as Serene Grace, Super Luck, and Sand Veil / Snow Cloak, lolz. If we want to adhere to the rules of banning, we should lift the ban on brightpowder / lax incense. The ban was a side product of Sand Veil Garchomp anyways.
If we ban things because of mere annoying luck, that would certainly justify other unnecessary bans such as Serene Grace, Super Luck, and Sand Veil / Snow Cloak, lolz. If we want to adhere to the rules of banning, we should lift the ban on brightpowder / lax incense. The ban was a side product of Sand Veil Garchomp anyways.
It's already been answered twice but I might as well respond anyway. Brightpowder/Lax Incense are not broken and aren't very uncompetitive either. They boost evasion slightly, big woop. They weren't a problem last Gen and they aren't a problem now. The only reason we even banned them was because some people felt like expanding the Evasion Clause and frankly it's hypocrisy that we've banned two items for doing what Sand Veil and Snow Cloak prove isn't broken at all but they were banned. It's pointless.
As items they kinda suck. By kinda, I mean really. At their best they are outclassed (SDChomp with Brightpowder vs Leftovers) and aren't broken but represent a panic among players wanting to stick to a once necessary but now simply traditional clause. I want it unbanned because I think that banning it was a waste of time and the result in a mass witchhunt on all hax. The point is that the ban made no sense and should be removed for the sake of consistency.
Do I really have to explain this again? BP/LI actively manipulate evasion by being attached to the pokemon. They are active effects, therefore they violate evasion clause.
SV/SC manipulate evasion clause by being present on a pokemon in a specific weather. Their effects are a factor of that weather. THey are passive effects, and therefore do not violate Evasion clause.
Hopefully this clears things up.
Uh, what?
Not only is your definition of "active" really liberal ("being attached" = "active"?), but that has nothing to do with the evasion clause; all of those existed in 4th gen and none of them were under evasion clause, "active" or not.
They're under the evasion clause because we voted that way. There's no ulterior reason why they count and Sand Veil/Snow Cloak don't aside from the fact that we voted to ban the items and haven't voted on the abilities.
If we decide to bring the items back into OU suspect, and they get voted back in, the "active" and "passive" explanation is completely null, because they were never banned due to being "active" in the first place.
Solution to all of the evasion effects: Ban all auto-weather.
realistic solution to all of the evasion effects. Ban sand veil/snow cloak.
pokemon affected by this idea:
Sandslash
Dugtrio
Cacturne
Garchomp
Gliscor
Glaceon
Mamoswine
Frosslass
Beartic
pokemon unusable with this idea
Sandslash
Cacturne
Garchomp
Frosslass
Beartic
at least until they have dream world abilities released.
these would not be the first abilities to be banned by smogon.
Hey JTSwift, I think you make threads like these interesting since we have to question our tiers as the game is constantly changing. Honestly though, smogon's already averse to hax and skymin is definitely not coming back. Why not focus on bringing things that are debatable, like garchomp, back into OU? I'm glad you tried to focus this time on a 600 BST pokemon instead of a 680 BST pokemon. Like I said, how about that garchomp.
Nope. Acupressure. I can still screw you over with evasion if I want. Best part, getting evasion hax relies on getting evasion hax. I love it.
Seriously, you want to fix the problem of evasion with 1 ban, try this: Ban users who complain about Evasion without any reasoning other than "evasion causes me to lose battles that I should have won." I have never heard any reason other than that, and frankly, it pisses me off. My team is extremely weak to Rotom-W, I lost many battles that I could have won if not for that. By that same logic I should support banning it. But of course, that is absurd. Just like the reasons to ban more evasion.
If you actually have a good reason, bring it up, but if all you have to offer is complaints because it made you lose, don't bother posting. Why are we even talking about what to ban to fix it when people can't even bring up a good reason to ban anything in the first place.
Think about how ridiculous that would be though, if goddamned Sandslash was unusable except in Ubers, just because of its ability. As I understand it, we banned Blaziken and not Speed Boost because SB doesn't break other Pokemon like Yanmega. Likewise, weather evasion doesn't break anything not named Garchomp, so it's far simpler to just ban Garchomp.
The only ACTIVE (and consistent) means of increasing evasion is using Double Team or Minimize.
Brightpowder provides a passive 10% boost in Evasion to the holder. With your line of logic, Texas Cloverleaf, we would have to ban Sandstream + Sand Veil on the same team, because having Sandstream would be "actively" increasing the evasion of Sand Veil users by 20%. Certainly, this is a needless combination ban, when the only overwhelming Sand Veil hax was observed in an isolated case (Garchomp).
Brightpowder and Lax Incense should be unbanned due to the lack of rational of the ban.
Brightpowder provides a passive 10% boost in Evasion to the holder. With your line of logic, Texas Cloverleaf, we would have to ban Sandstream + Sand Veil on the same team, because having Sandstream would be "actively" increasing the evasion of Sand Veil users by 20%. Certainly, this is a needless combination ban, when the only overwhelming Sand Veil hax was observed in an isolated case (Garchomp).
Brightpowder and Lax Incense should be unbanned due to the lack of rational of the ban.
I think it's actually the opposite. Brightpowder and Lax Incense should not be unbanned because there's absolutely no rational reason for doing so. The unbanning of those two items would have a negative effect on the metagame. Regardless of whether or not that negative effect is reasonably large enough to actually have an actual impact on the metagame, the fact that it's a negative effect nonetheless makes me wonder why anyone would call for them to be unbanned.
Also, we have evasion clause for a reason. The voters found that having an item that affects evasion falls under that clause. I don't think the evasion percentage or whether or not another item would be better are relevant at that point.
I didn't even notice Brightpowder/Lax Incense on the ban list, or I would have mentioned it earlier. You might as well ban Focus Band, King's Rock, and a bunch of other items nobody in their right mind would ever use as well if a 10% chance of something bad happening is so considerable. Life Orb/Lefties/Choice/occasional resist berry or element gem don't really leave much room for 1/10 odds. This Brightpowder ban makes no sense and has no effect on anything, so there's no need for it to be there.
~Uiru
~Uiru
IMHO banning Brightpowder and Lax Incense falls mostly to semantics. Rationally, it doesn't really matter whether they are in the metagame because they suck. However, some people think it's important that they be lumped in with Evasion Clause. :X
I really don't care whether the items are banned as their effects are negligible at best, and I think a lot of people agree with me here that maybe we should move on to something more relevant? >.>
I really don't care whether the items are banned as their effects are negligible at best, and I think a lot of people agree with me here that maybe we should move on to something more relevant? >.>
Well, yeah, but a Brightpowder un-ban makes no sense and has no effect either.
To be quite honest, it really doesn't matter what we do with BrightPowder; we could say it's banned on weekdays and unbanned on weekends/holidays, and it still wouldn't really make a difference.
For 4 rounds now I have been using weather teams. Not been able to make my mind up on SS or Drizzle so I use both. I was really enjoying this meta so far until this round begun. I went onto Smogon server on PO, loaded my SS team and had a few battles. All against Drizzle, it was okay i didn't really notice and so I go to get another battle, and another and another all Drizzle and a rare SS team and then it hit me. I really didn't want to battle anymore. I was completely sick of weather wars. I loaded my Drizzle team just to find most of my battles came down to speed ties. No variety it was just so stale.
I really think it is time to get perm weather out of OU. I think you'd find if we remove 3 weathers from OU we will find ourselves banning a lot less Pokemon and isn't the least bans the better? More variety? Just my thoughts.
I really think it is time to get perm weather out of OU. I think you'd find if we remove 3 weathers from OU we will find ourselves banning a lot less Pokemon and isn't the least bans the better? More variety? Just my thoughts.
You can't ban Brightpowder and then keep other forms of evasion around just because it's related to the ever-wonderful-and-perfect sand teams and my god are you guys going to hold on to Sand as long as fucking possible, we get it now.
It's rather silly. The banning of Brightpowder does nothing to reduce Garchomp as an utter injustice, but does quite alot to make underused pokemon like Cacturne or Froslass and the like far less useful. It's a pretty elitist ban (like most things lol)
It's rather silly. The banning of Brightpowder does nothing to reduce Garchomp as an utter injustice, but does quite alot to make underused pokemon like Cacturne or Froslass and the like far less useful. It's a pretty elitist ban (like most things lol)
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