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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 5 - Sandstorm (Excadrill/Thundurus Banned)
- Thread starter JabbaTheGriffin
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I guess we could say Kingdra would be auto-banned because quite frankly, I haven't seen anyone ever doubting its broken status under Drizzle.
I remember ice man last round pushing for this exactly.
I agree with Pocket!There should be a cap to how many individual SS users we will ban,and i think that half of the SS pokes is a good mark.
If the number of the SS pokes that are banned exceeds half of the total avialble SS pokes then we should bring back aldaron's proposal...
To everyone saying that drizzle is already good enough no reason to make it better i have to say this:
We are going to bring the SS pokes back to test them!
This means that any of these pokes that is too good will just get banned!
Also when you say that drizzle doesn't need to get better i have to say this:for a SS user to be used it has to be better than the drizzle abusers that we have right now,meaning Starmie,Thundurus,Toxicroak,Tornadus,Gyarados and some more that i may forget.
Do you actually think that the inferior Swift Swimers will see more use than the OU pokes that work very good even outside of rain?
In round 2 we didn't see any of these pokes because the main rain abusers were overshadowing them...But now that we know the potential of these pokes they won't get replaced so easily by some ok rain sweepers that are useless outside of rain...
@SJCrew
Except pure theorymon do you have any other proof?
Saying 115 speed,105 attack,double stab,bla bla bla is pretty scary but we all have seen from JT Swift that some pretty sentences are not good enough to prove a point that requires actual playtesting!
And anyway let's see you arguments...
You say that Floatzel after 1 Bulk Up can 2hko Ferro and doesn't get ohkoed by it in return...So what???
How will it find this free turn?It is pretty frail as you already know...
Also even after Bulk Up,Rotom-W counters him every day...Also Bulk up variants get completely stopped by RestTalk Gyarados,Whimsicott,Jellicent,Starmie,T-Wave or Thunder Dragonite with its ability active,gets phazed by Skarmory,and gets walled even by Bulk Up Toxicroak...
So you say that after 1 free turn he becomes very threatening,and i ask you which decent sweeper doesn't?Which are you more afraid of Nasty Plot Thundurus or Bulk Up Floatzel?
SD Doryuuzu or Bulk Up Floatzel?
CM Reuniclus or Bulk Up Floatzel?
BD Volcarona or BU Floatzel?
DD Haxorus or BU Floatzel?
I think you get my point...Every sweeper which wants to call himself good has to be threatening after 1 free turn...!
And anyway i showed you how Floatzel isn't so unstopabble by showing you 4 solid counters and 4 perfect checks!
So pls stop overreacting and start thinking logically...
Start thinking what will happen if the inferior Swift Swimmers come to ou...
Start asking yourself:'Is Floatzel and Quilfish going to break ou?Or are they actually going to provide some more variety to drizzle teams?
Maybe with the SS pokes Thundurus will get checked more easily and will continue being ou...
And anyway my point is stop being so biased and open up ypur mind a little bit...It doesn't hurt...
If the number of the SS pokes that are banned exceeds half of the total avialble SS pokes then we should bring back aldaron's proposal...
To everyone saying that drizzle is already good enough no reason to make it better i have to say this:
We are going to bring the SS pokes back to test them!
This means that any of these pokes that is too good will just get banned!
Also when you say that drizzle doesn't need to get better i have to say this:for a SS user to be used it has to be better than the drizzle abusers that we have right now,meaning Starmie,Thundurus,Toxicroak,Tornadus,Gyarados and some more that i may forget.
Do you actually think that the inferior Swift Swimers will see more use than the OU pokes that work very good even outside of rain?
In round 2 we didn't see any of these pokes because the main rain abusers were overshadowing them...But now that we know the potential of these pokes they won't get replaced so easily by some ok rain sweepers that are useless outside of rain...
@SJCrew
Except pure theorymon do you have any other proof?
Saying 115 speed,105 attack,double stab,bla bla bla is pretty scary but we all have seen from JT Swift that some pretty sentences are not good enough to prove a point that requires actual playtesting!
And anyway let's see you arguments...
You say that Floatzel after 1 Bulk Up can 2hko Ferro and doesn't get ohkoed by it in return...So what???
How will it find this free turn?It is pretty frail as you already know...
Also even after Bulk Up,Rotom-W counters him every day...Also Bulk up variants get completely stopped by RestTalk Gyarados,Whimsicott,Jellicent,Starmie,T-Wave or Thunder Dragonite with its ability active,gets phazed by Skarmory,and gets walled even by Bulk Up Toxicroak...
So you say that after 1 free turn he becomes very threatening,and i ask you which decent sweeper doesn't?Which are you more afraid of Nasty Plot Thundurus or Bulk Up Floatzel?
SD Doryuuzu or Bulk Up Floatzel?
CM Reuniclus or Bulk Up Floatzel?
BD Volcarona or BU Floatzel?
DD Haxorus or BU Floatzel?
I think you get my point...Every sweeper which wants to call himself good has to be threatening after 1 free turn...!
And anyway i showed you how Floatzel isn't so unstopabble by showing you 4 solid counters and 4 perfect checks!
So pls stop overreacting and start thinking logically...
Start thinking what will happen if the inferior Swift Swimmers come to ou...
Start asking yourself:'Is Floatzel and Quilfish going to break ou?Or are they actually going to provide some more variety to drizzle teams?
Maybe with the SS pokes Thundurus will get checked more easily and will continue being ou...
And anyway my point is stop being so biased and open up ypur mind a little bit...It doesn't hurt...
I feel this is a bad example. I could easily put in any other offensive pokemon here, with a respectable move pool, list one of its common counters and how a specialized move can beat it. For example Infernape is commonly countered by Gliscor, but Infernape can run HP-ice, this makes Infernape not counterable? Heck no, heck even if you do run HP-ice, most gliscors have protect, they scout, or out predict, and stop you. I think you have said before, that prediction is a 2 way street. A good player should be able to know when his pokemon is set up fodder, and switch to a counter to a pokemon that he predicts will come in. Of course they could never switch in the first place, but that’s where pure skill comes in.
Your right, although I really don't feel like going into the depths of Infernapes versatility right now.
As usual, alexwolf, your posts are a trainwreck.
Anyhow, I'll respond to this:
And I honestly hope you don't.
While I do understand the importance of testing, and as a matter of fact because I do, we can't just go testing things willy-nilly. Drizzle without SS is still pretty fucked, putting back even one SSer that isn't complete garbage (as SJCrew pointed out) will definitely worsen the problem.
(I'm assuming Jolly, but if SJCrew's set was Adamant even better.)
Skarm takes 61.4 - 72.8% from +1 Waterfall in the rain, so no.
Jellicent I'll give you. Rotom-W I haven't checked how much damage +1 Return does. Whimsicott can probably keep him from setting up with the threat of an Encore, but +0 Ice Punch still 2HKOs 252/252 Bold Whimsi (50-59.3%).
Also, just because a Pokemon has perfect counters doesn't mean it isn't broken. Zekrom is walled by Steelix, Ho-Oh and Lugia hate Tyranitar, Rayquaza hates CB Mamoswine/Weavile, and so on and so forth.
Don't even mention Qwilfish. T-Spikes absorption + insanely fast Destiny Bond is just...
Anyhow, I'll respond to this:
Do you want to playtest Rayquaza? Or Ho-Oh? Or Zekrom?
And I honestly hope you don't.
While I do understand the importance of testing, and as a matter of fact because I do, we can't just go testing things willy-nilly. Drizzle without SS is still pretty fucked, putting back even one SSer that isn't complete garbage (as SJCrew pointed out) will definitely worsen the problem.
If Ferro's STAB SE Power Whip doesn't outright maim Floatzel at +1, a lot of lesser attacks probably won't even at +0. Floatzel isn't gonna die to random hits, because SS means he can invest in much-needed bulk.
BU Floatzel has Ice Punch for D-Nite, which will KO him even at +0. You can't always assume Multiscale because hazards ruin it, so no.
(I'm assuming Jolly, but if SJCrew's set was Adamant even better.)
Skarm takes 61.4 - 72.8% from +1 Waterfall in the rain, so no.
Jellicent I'll give you. Rotom-W I haven't checked how much damage +1 Return does. Whimsicott can probably keep him from setting up with the threat of an Encore, but +0 Ice Punch still 2HKOs 252/252 Bold Whimsi (50-59.3%).
Floatzel has good STAB neutral coverage, is fast as hell and harder to revenge than most of them.
Also, just because a Pokemon has perfect counters doesn't mean it isn't broken. Zekrom is walled by Steelix, Ho-Oh and Lugia hate Tyranitar, Rayquaza hates CB Mamoswine/Weavile, and so on and so forth.
I know, instead of banning Garchomp we might as well have brought Rayquaza down so that he can't pull off that hax BS.
Don't even mention Qwilfish. T-Spikes absorption + insanely fast Destiny Bond is just...
Protip: never try to be sarcastic in a language you suck at.
Stratos
Banned deucer.
Someone should start looking past the grammar in alexwolf's post and actually read his POINTS
Because he makes a good one.
When Floatzel has +1 defense he eats 85% damage or so from Ferro's Powerwhip. He 2HKOes in return with Low Kick. Does anyone remember Ferrothorn's ability? Oh, yeah, whoops. He's also useless outside of rain, completely.
I'm not saying that SwSw should be retested one-by-one in OU (It'll just contribute to the Weather Wars) but at least /respond to the points/ instead of attacking the poster and setting up bullshit straw men, and this goes to both sides!
I've been struggling with thundurus. I really have no idea where I stand on it. That being said, I can't help but agree with you here. Thundurus is a problem. It's dangerous because of it's unpredictability, which makes it hard to counter until you know what it's running. It's kinda in the same boat as gen 4 salamence IMO. I really don't want us to have to resort to a ban, but we really need to think of something. Has lightningrod zapdos been released? I'd imagine that it's a pretty good counter.
Pockets, I had a look at the list of swift swimmers up there, and I think that almost all of them would be broken. Kingdra, kabutos and ludicolo are the "broken trio" and would be banned instantly if this were to be implemented, and the other eight seem just as overpowered.
Take gorebyss for example. Decent bulk, shell smash and baton pass. It's a huge threat on it's own, but it can also smashpass to something else. Some people already think that gorebyss is too much, but giving it a double STAB boost and swift swim? Oh, ad it's speed! Modest 252 speed gorebyss reaches 812 speed after a smash. Not even scarf deoxys-s can beat that.
Bar baton pass, omastar is just as good if not better than gorebyss. Huntail and carracosta don't see much use, so I'm not sure about them.
Floatzel, golduck and qwilfish? I have no idea. Poliwrath is a monster though. Water / fighting STAB, 90 / 95 / 90 bulk, hypnosis and belly drum. After one turn of setup wrath has 524 speed, 1076 attack and double STAB waterfall. Belly drum is risky, but you can always use hypnosis to score a free turn.
I think that almost everyone agrees that drizzle is still broken. The problem is, how do we fix it? Which aspect of drizzle overpowers it? Banning it isn't the best answer, so the next step is to nerf it further. Nobody seems to have any qualms with rain stall, it's the offensive sweepers that cause trouble. There are plenty of fast, powerful water types that don't need swsw to excel (specs starmie, gorebyss.) Then there are the non water sweepers like tornadus and dragonite.
Maybe the best solution is another conditional ban. For example:
A maximum of two water types may be used alongside politoed on a team.
A maximum of pokes from a list of rain abusers may be used alongside politoed on a team.
The list would include water types, stuff like tornadus that abuse hurricane/thunder, pokes with rain based abilities (rain dish, hydration) but maybe with some sort of distinction for non water types like hydration accelgor.
Lastly, how would you all feel about allowing non water type swift swimmers on drizzle teams? I'm talking about stuff like beartic and armaldo. They don't run water moves, which seemingly tones them down.
EDIT: AsynchronousIO, how about you leave Alexwolf alone? His post was actually quite good.
This is an important issue. When it stops being "we cannot ban X and Y and Z because that will make the whole metagame unbalanced, as they are vital pieces of the metagame and also help checking each other" and becomes "lol Ubers check Ubers"? Ubers has shit like Arceus allowed and yet it's a highly competitive metagame, but there's a reason it's not Standard even though it's the first playable/competitive/etcetera metagame with the fewer bans we can have. That's what we have to bear in mind when deciding whether we keep or bring down a certain pokémon; SS Seismitoad probably fucks Thundurus sideways, but would having Swift Swimmers allowed be really beneficial, or centralize everything even more around Drizzle and other "borderline broken" elements of the metagame?
Interesting idea. If that many Swift Swimmers were broken then we could easily justify banning all of them, but we should at least test them one at a time.
Really? You were pretty pissed off last night over it.
When Sand is over 20% of the metagame and your only set is clearly specialized to take out a single pokemon for your example, no I don't think it's broken. It's good, not even as powerful as Excadrill which is clearly staying OU. And every bulky pokemon? How is that set doing against Reuniclus? It can't counter it and your set has to run Ice Punch or it gets trolled by Dragonite. Either way, Rotom still walls it.
No it's not. It's saying that Ferrothorn is heavy, steel type, and you're using Low Kick against it. Conkeldurr can give Ferrothorn headches too, is he broken? The tough guy act is getting old, and you can't prove anything from theorymon alone. That's why I proposed a test when we get to a round without Suspects.
You never know, most of Smogon is more open-minded than you are.
Mario With Lasers answered this perfectly. Nobody actually wanted to bring Kingdra in so stop using that as an example. Things like Kingdra are why we want to test Swift Swimmers that wouldn't be broken or are outclassed by Kingdra in Rain abuse. People will complain about anything. Remember how many people complained about Smashpassing? Where are they now that it's so rare it's RU? Probably still complaining. Everybody has a complaint about something and people were complaining about the Aldaron Proposal, and look where we are now.
Minor nitpick, Drizzle is not a pokemon. It isn't a he or she. And I want to ban pokemon that are broken, not just good. Adding non-broken Swift Swimmers wouldn't be terrible and to reiterate, even though I probably spelled that wrong, It's Only A Test. At that, only if we get to a round WITHOUT SUSPECTS.
Sometimes slippery slope related arguements have there merits, any system must have a way to deal with things getting out of hand, and it indeed is relivant to talk about them.
When did i imply this?
We have enough real experience as to why Zekrom,Ho-Oh and Rayquaza are not OU material 'cause we play with them in ubers.
Of 'course ubers is not the same with ou but sometimes when something is too obvious like uber beasts with huge attacking stats,huge defensive stats for ou standarts,nice typing,huge movepool and near perfect coverage with just stabs you can know that they will be overpowered in ou.
But don't tell me that you put Floatzel in the same category...Floatzel is just a good sweeper and that's all so i don't know why the thought of playtesting him scares you so much...
How do you know this???
How are expecting to convince anyone with zero experience on said sweepers?
Floatzel,Qwilfish and the other SSers are not near as good as Kingdra,Kabutops and Ludicolo so why are you refusing to test them if ther power level is so debatable,in contrary to the ubers that you mentioned which are obviously broken in ou?
Floatzel will still die to every special electric or grass attack(and any strong special attack in general) and gets screwd by every type of status.The fact that Ferro doesn't ko Floatzel doesn't mean anything when you can just ko him next turn with any priority user due to him having 10% life left.
Factor in SR and iron barbs and leftovers and you will see that Floatzel will be killed in the procces of killing fero assuming that it goes like this:
Floatzel switches in for free after something faints,takes SR damage and Bulks Up as the opponents switches to Ferro.You are now left with 93,75 life after lefties.
Next turn you attack,losing 12,5%,and you also take 70% minimum from fero.So now you have 16,5% life left after lefties.
Next turn you kill Fero and then you are left with 4% after iron barbs life,10% life after lefties.You can easily die if ferro rolls 75% or more with power whip after you kill him from iron barbs!
I didn't assume that dragonite will always have it's ability that's why i called him a check!
A +1 return against standart rotom-w does:
508 Atk vs 250 Def & 269 HP (102 Base Power): 149 - 176 (55.39% - 65.43%)
Even with life orb it doesn't ohko and Floatzel always gets ohkoed back!
Skarmory still reliably phazes floatzel with lefties since it only deals:
508 Atk vs 394 Def & 339 HP (80 Base Power): 166 - 196 (48.97% - 57.82%)
Jellicent is golden as you mentioned!
Starmie is also perfect as without return,Floatzel doesn't ohko with any attack and gets ohkoed in return.Also ice punch is what almost every Floatzel will be using due to the dragons in ou.Also what's the point in running return when it can't even ohko your biggest nemesis,rotom-w?
Also RestTalk gyarados is still golden and perfectly counters floatzel as well as bulk up toxicroak which uses floatzel as setup fodder(return-less variants)!
So again with all these checks and counters i don't see floatzel breaking ou anytime soon...
Floatzel also has piss poor defences,struggles to find turns to setup,doesn't have enough power to ko what he wants to and doesn't have a good movepool to abuse.
Did i tel this???
I stated clearly 4 counters and 4 checks!And i am sure that there are more...I also told you how floatzel lack initial power(unlike zekrom fe),lacks bulk,and finally the moves to do his job so good to be called broken...I gave you a lot of reasoning!So i don't really get what are you trying to prove with this bold statement of yours...
Nice reasoning behind this one!
Yes sure everyone here would agree with you!
T-spikes are the most used aspect of the metagame right now so a t-spikes absorber is perfect!
Also when Ferro can setup on you with spikes or sr and gradually kill you with leech seed yes destiny bond is great...And if you tell me about taunt then i will tell you about the laughable coverage of qwilfish which is using 2 slots for taunt and destiny bond...If he has 2 attacks his attack power is laughable,and if he has SD his coverage is laughable!So yes everyone here can understand how broken Qwilfish would be...
I din't use any sarcasm..I just told him to try to be more open minded!
Yes i know it wasn't a very good argument but i am just trying to show to people that it would be good to test the SSers in ou(except the broken trio) so we can judge them with actual experience and strong examples not posts like SJCrew's who makes Floatzel seem better than arceus on paper...
Stratos
Banned deucer.
Alexwolf it's tearing me up inside because on the one hand you're being teamed up on by all these people misrepresenting your point and on the other I don't agree with you.
While I think that there is definitely a chance for some SwSw to be not broken in OU, I don't like the idea of making Drizzle more powerful in general. It would get it banned overall almost for sure, and then where would we be? Even if it doesn't happen, it would just make weather wars even more centralizing, which isn't what we need. I just don't like the idea of upsetting Aldaron's proposal, period.
anyone who goes "lol complex bans" should read this post
While I think that there is definitely a chance for some SwSw to be not broken in OU, I don't like the idea of making Drizzle more powerful in general. It would get it banned overall almost for sure, and then where would we be? Even if it doesn't happen, it would just make weather wars even more centralizing, which isn't what we need. I just don't like the idea of upsetting Aldaron's proposal, period.
anyone who goes "lol complex bans" should read this post
Weather is as easy to deal with as Garchomp. What, are you just gonna start banning everything that's "hard to beat"? I've seen plenty of teams prevail without weather, so there's no need to take it away.
Discuss.
I'm going to stop trolling this thread with skymin stuff, so my posts are all worth reading now. Please don't skip over them.
I think that something needs to be changed about what gets banned in Drizzle, but I'm not really sure of how to proceed on this. The Drizzle banning movement gets stronger with each round, and we may very well have a Drizzle suspect watch on our doorstep when the round is over, and a Drizzle ban after the next round. In this case, I do think that the process should just take its course. However, it could also be that Drizzle never gets the ban support that it "needs", and yet people are still searching for alternatives. Scaling back the rule to ban certain Pokémon is going to be more of a hassle than people would like to think, particularly because there's little variety in how each (viable) Swift Swimmer works and how well each works.
I feel that some kind of special vote is needed, at least in the event that the Drizzle banning movement fails. However, there are a lot of factors involved concerning the fairness of how and when each option is presented. I've always believed that "Aldaron's Proposal" is just a byproduct of the limbo state that we're in right now, so I would personally want to convert it into a ban on Swift Swim (the consequences are negligible imo).
I feel that some kind of special vote is needed, at least in the event that the Drizzle banning movement fails. However, there are a lot of factors involved concerning the fairness of how and when each option is presented. I've always believed that "Aldaron's Proposal" is just a byproduct of the limbo state that we're in right now, so I would personally want to convert it into a ban on Swift Swim (the consequences are negligible imo).
You know I have been thinking, this might actually be the way to go here. While rain dance might not be great in OU, in UU is decent and in RU, (as I have heard,) rain dance teams might be actually be broken. It might be in the best interest for the whole metagame, if you just outright banned swift swim in all tiers, with the exception of Ubers which isn't really a tier of course.
The consequences are that Gorebyss, Huntail and Floatzel would be banned from all tiers. That alone should be reason to just stick with Aldaron's proposal as it currently is.
Furthermore, I suppose Rain Dance teams are still usable (in theory???) and this would spell the end of that playstyle. Even if they are virtually unseen, it doesn't seem right to kill off a playstyle in a metagame that is already struggling with diversity, just for the sake of having a slightly less complex rule.
Furthermore, I suppose Rain Dance teams are still usable (in theory???) and this would spell the end of that playstyle. Even if they are virtually unseen, it doesn't seem right to kill off a playstyle in a metagame that is already struggling with diversity, just for the sake of having a slightly less complex rule.
Stratos
Banned deucer.
This is true.
1) The point of banning Pokemon is to limit diversity the least
2) We strive for a stable metagame
based on these two premises, a complex ban's only weakness is actually its complexity. If it's able to keep the meta from going into uproar and preserve a balance of power (thus letting diversity flourish) I see absolutely no reason not to keep it indefinitely.
Also, @ Scarfwynaut, I dabbled in RU a bit and I can say that rain teams are not broken. The four-turn timer is a serious bitch.
Couldn't you have used Damp Rock? I don't know anything about RU
Only Kingdra had ever been considered to be absolutely broken in Drizzle; Kabutops and Ludicolo were notable for being able to take out Kingdra's counters, but they were never sure-fire broken by themselves either.
Given that even those two might have been alright in Drizzle in OU, it's rather ridiculous to state that even inferior swift swimmers would be a certain-ban under Drizzle.
---
Also, it seems the best way to treat the Swift Swimmers as any other suspect pokemon, that is, to not give them any special treatment. Let Kingdra be tested just as Thunderous is, without any "umbrella" clause over random other pokes.
And why the hell would the number of swift swimmers banned matter? If GameFreak suddenly released 40 broken pokemon all with Speed Boost, there's no reason to go, "Oh, there are too many Speed Boost pokemon getting banned, we have to do something else about it!".
If we have to end up banning 5 swift swimmers, that's because we have 5 Uber pokemon in OU right now. Simple as that. There's no reason to stop after the 3rd Uber and go, "Oh, there are 2 more Ubers left, that's too many to remove, let's do some complex ban instead!"
By implementing a Swift Swim ban or keeping Alderon's proposal, all we're doing is letting those Ubers stay in OU by restricting them, which completely goes against Smogon policy.
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