np: UU Suspect Test Round 2 - Cold As Ice

[PK Gaming]

I'm 99.9% sure the BP/LI ban was brought out because of Chomp. It wasn't relevant in any of the other rounds because he wasn't used nearly as much.

Oh and you misunderstand. Froslass is in a league of its own, but i'm just saying that if it ended up getting banned, hail teams would have no problem converting Deoxys-D if they wanted a spiker because its damn effective at what it does.

 

[Ninja_13]

Oh and you misunderstand. Froslass is in a league of its own, but i'm just saying that if it ended up getting banned, hail teams would have no problem converting Deoxys-D if they wanted a spiker because its damn effective at what it does.

You are the one who seems to be misunderstanding, as evidenced by the bold. It wouldn't be "no problem" because Deoxys-D cannot spin-block for himself; therefore, not only is he getting his Spikes spun if he tries for more than 1 layer without switching to a spinblocker (assuming spinner is sent in ASAP here), but the player now has to adjust their team to add said spinblocker onto their team, and since Froslass is the only spinblocker immune to Hail iirc, they have now added 2 Pokemon that are affected by the player's own weather as opposed to 1 Pokemon who isn't. This makes it harder to play around your opponent as compared to with Froslass, who just sits in their faces and laughs. Maybe there are other extenuating circumstances (I don't play stall so I don't really know), but that doesn't sound like "no problem" to me.

As for the evasion abilities, I don't believe that something which is uncompetitive needs to be broken to be removed from a competitive metagame, since being uncompetitive is the very antithesis to competition. Therefore, aspects of the game that are reliably (odd when considering the subject, but necessary to not include things such as Acupuncture which are not reliable) uncompetitive and can be removed should be so without question. The banning of BP/LI and the complex banning of Evasion-boosting abilities within their respective weathers seems to be the ideal method of doing so, imo.

Note that this is an opinion that I'm not really going to argue about, mostly cause I don't like arguing in the first place. Feel free to agree or disagree (more likely the latter lol), I'm just stating it.

 

[Scoopapa]

Brightpowder / Lax Incense were banned in Round 3 of OU suspect testing.

From the voting thread:

Please note that if Bright Powder + Lax Incense were to be banned, it would be an extension of Evasion Clause. In other words, they would be banned across all metagames which use Evasion Clause. You might note that Sand Veil + Snow Cloak did not pass the nomination phase. This was a difficult decision for us to make. The bottom line is, none of the nominations for these evasion abilities even mentioned the fact that it would result in a soft-ban for multiple Pokemon. Nominations are not to be taken lightly; if you want something to be put on the ballot, cover all your angles when nominating things. We simply could not accept such an incomplete nomination.

It sounds to me like SC / SV were nearly nominated in OU already, and the only reason these weren't accepted is that nobody mentioned the "collateral damage" it would create. That's pretty much exactly what it says. It also sounds to me like if we made a movement to do this that it would potentially be accepted if we did make up for this one shortcoming they mentioned.

From the nomination thread:

warning this is really long

zapzap29

Bright powder / Lax Incense- I think these items violate the spirit of evasion clause and only serve to make the game a little less skill based.

Eo Ut Mortus

Brightpowder / Lax Incense - These items should be banned under Evasion Clause since they provide passive evasion boosts. Based on principle alone, I think this is enough to warrant a ban on them; however, based on their merits alone, I still believe they introduce an undesirable aspect of luck into the game. I do understand that Pokemon should allow for a reasonable degree of luck to exist; however, passive evasion boosts undermine the concept of skill, another important facet of Pokemon, far too much. There is little practical risk in using evasion boosting items, yet the reward of a miss is immense in comparison.

Sand Veil / Snow Cloak - These abilities should be banned based on the aforementioned reasoning.

dbolt

Brightpowder/Lax Incense: Missing one move because of these items can cost you the game. Should be banned under Evasion Clause.

JabbaTheGriffin

Sand Veil/Snow Cloak (copied): just lumping snow cloak in there for posterity. sand veil is the real culprit. there's a reason evasion moves are banned. evasion is retarded. getting automatic evasion in the sand is ridiculous. i always felt we should have done something about this in gen 4. if you use a 100% move on a pokemon, that move should hit. simple as that.

Requiem[9]

Brightpower / Lax Incense: I'm not sure why these aren't banned already, since they don't have the slightest positive effect. The only reason they would ever be used is to steal undeserved games, much in the same way as Inconsistent. I wasn't playing BW when Inconsistent was being tested but from what I understand, the only reason it was used was to randomly take one game in four or five, regardless of skill. While neither of these items is quite as powerful and play still requires some degree of skill, the principle is the same.

Sand Veil / Snow Cloak: I'm not entirely sure about a blanket ban because of how many sets are taken from the metagame, but these abilities are incredibly stupid -- significantly worse than Brightpowder -- and something should be done. It should be up for discussion at the very least.

Arc Tech

Sand Veil/ Snow Cloak/Brightpowder/Lax Incense Evasion Clause.

Thorhammer

Brightpowder / Lax Incense

I nominate these items to be banned under Evasion Clause. Their only purpose is to increase luck through Evasion, something that is inherently undesirable for the metagame, as evidenced by the broad bans of evasion moves already existing under Evasion Clause. Luck is not a bad element of Pokemon, but more luck through Evasion is not something we need, or ever want.

Sand Veil + Sand Stream
Snow Cloak + Snow Warning

I also nominate these two combinations under Evasion Clause. A 20% Evasion boost without any action is a substantial advantage that can easily be abused, and is not something that is desirable in this metagame. This problem could be solved by banning Sand Veil and Snow Cloak entirely, but that would result in the banning or restriction of usage of Garchomp, Cacturne, Sandslash, Glaceon, Froslass, and Beartic from all teams. That would be an undesirable ban, as none of those Pokemon are broken at present. Of those six, the only two viable in OU are Garchomp and Froslass, but the rest have the potential to be viable in lower tiers. Given the near-nonexistence of the moves Sandstorm and Hail in competitive battling, at least on teams designed to make actual use of that weather condition, this limited version of the ban would remove all real potential for a player to get an Evasion boost from these abilities without resulting in a complete ban of the Pokemon themselves from other teams, in any tier. This nomination is only if additional nominations of a combination of a weather inducing ability and a weather abusing ability are accepted. If not, I will not replace this with another nomination.

PKGaming

BrightPowder/Lax incense(copied): Non-competitive. Nobody likes facing Pokemon who hold these items and turns matches into a crapshot. It should be banned for breaking evasion clause anyway.

PDC

Bright Power / Lax Incense(copied): Non-competitive. Nobody likes facing Pokemon who hold these items and turns matches into a crapshot. It should be banned for breaking evasion clause anyway.

hobo bob

Brightpowder- I'm surprised this didn't get banned in earlier generations. It really serves no competitive purpose and turns every game into a dice roll. Sure, sometimes it does absolutely nothing, but all it takes is one lucky miss and it can turn the game completely around. While it may not be "broken" in traditional terms, it should be banned for the same reason Double Team/Minimize was banned.

badabing

Sand Veil/Snow Cloak: You know the deal. Evasion clause should be extended to cover this as well as Brightpowder/Lax Incense. These items and abilities serve no constructive purpose other than creating free misses, which are often game-breaking in the case of Chomp. Maximizing hax disrupts competitive play.

Other than that, it's shaping up to be a very nice meta, though it's tough to gauge whether Latios and Rankurusu belong in OU when such drastic adaptations have been made to handle them. Admittedly great pokes, they do have some hard counters right now and don't possess the versatility to work around them.

Texas Cloverleaf

Brightpowder/Lax Incense

Viewing it the way Evasion Clause should be worded imo, Brightpowder and Lax Incense should be banned because they`re only purpose is to directly induce evasion, as with Double Team et al.

Abilites
No suspects.

I have given my reasons for this in the Sand Veil thread but Sand Veil does not actively induce hax, it is simply a byproduct or a weather and as such, neither violates Evasion Clause, nor is broken.

Death Phenomeno

Sand Veil / Snow Cloak / BrightPowder / Lax Incense - Thanks to the Dream World, now the whole argument that said something like "we can't ban these abilities since certain Pokémon have it as their only ability!" is no longer valid. Thus, we can have a complete Evasion Clause. As for the items, I personally feel that there's a double standard for them, but that's just me. The only problem with this would be having to say goodbye to Froslass, Beartic, Sandslash, Cacturne, and Garchomp until they get released. Also, their movepools (and Glaceon's as well) would have to be trimmed. This "hax" can be completely averted so, as someone who has lost many battles due to a 100% accurate move missing by something completely avoidable, I believe it should.

AlphaSpade

Brightpowder / Lax Incense:I'm willing to say that these two items should be molded into evasion clause. Sure, Sand Veil/Snow Cloak have 2.5x the evasion boost, but you can't put those abilities on any pokemon now can you. I really don't think the abilities should be banned, since Hail is almost non-existent, and Sand Veil only has one common "abuser".

Maniaclyrasist

Brightpowder / Lax Incense: These items do not promote competitive play in any form, break the evasion clause and is all around just a part of the game that I'm sure no one can agree to keeping around with good reason.

Sir Azelf

Sandveil/Snowcloak/Bright Powder/Lax Incense under evasion : Yeah, we have enough luck in the metagame. If you outplay your opponent the whole match, this can still cost you, that really should not be the case. Its my own fault if my Fire Blast misses, i but cant do anything to stop this. It adds nothing viable to the game skill wise and when you have crap like Sub Chomp subbing down fishing for misses you know its broken. There was a reason evasion was banned and its to stop stuff like this ridiculousness.

symphonyx64

Sand Viel and BrightPowder: This ability and item should be banned under Evasion Clause. I use 100% accurate moves a simple reason: guaranteeing I will land x attack on my opponent. It disgusts me as I watch my opponent use substitute four consecutive times hoping he/she will be graced by the god of luck so he/she can get a free Swords Dance in then proceed to sweep the rest of my team. I've even lost in the finals of an LNT because of BrightPowder Garchomp... on the last turn.

Now there are a few mentions of Garchomp, but it's hardly the panicked response PKGaming has made it out to be. The majority of nominations don't mention it. There are many more examples that site "evasion clause" or general principle. There's also what seems to be posts that do mention some of the pokemon who would be soft banned (contrary to what the OP of the voting thread said), but I guess they weren't accepted for other reasons.

Fast-forward to round 4 and mentions of Sand Veil and Snow Cloak have mostly (but not entirely) petered out. However, from reading the comments, most people have abandoned the cause in favor of going directly for either Garchomp or the auto-weather inducers. The non-pokemon suspects that made it to voting that round were Sandstream, Drought, and Drizzle. Note that this is when Garchomp gets banned, one round after BP / LI get banned.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that what we've been discussing here is hardly new to gen 5 suspect voting. Lets ditch the attitude that this problem is too big to tackle, or that it would ruffle too many feathers. We didn't care about ruffling feathers when we banned staraptor (ok that was bad).

 

[FlareBlitz]

ANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD i'm telling you, tying SC/SV to evasion clause is never going to stick. Neither of those abilities are broken on the majority of the Pokemon that have them, and deeming the ability "uncompetitive" is just subjective.

It's not subjective. It's what evasion clause actually is. Did you not see jabba's post two pages ago?

at the end of the day its the ability + pokemon combination that matters, at least imo. (Moody being the one and only exception) really, if I thought hail weren't broken i'd be up for banning Froslass as a whole (no johns)

Double Team isn't broken on Spinda, but you still can't use it on the ladder. Swift Swim isn't broken on Luvdisc when used in Drizzle, still can't use it on the ladder.
Once again, the point isn't about "broken". Both snow cloak and sand veil cause a pokemon's evasion to be automatically boosted in a weather condition without any action taken by the opponent, which fits pretty squarely under the conditions of the evasion clause. If you have a problem with the evasion clause, bring it up in PR (good luck, it's already been tried) but until then if we're hoping to be at all consistent in our tiering process we should get rid of evasion-boosting abilities as soon as possible.

Deo-D has no problem dropping a Night Shade on either of their asses as they desperately try to spin. I do understand that Froslass is significantly better in hail, and even outside of it synthesize laying spikes AND spin blocking, but honestly I think Deoxys-D I find is a decent enough replacement on hail teams.

I don't know what to say here. I'm telling you that Froslass' primary niche on offensive teams is speed, decent power, and spinblocking capability, and you're saying "okay so deo-d has none of those things but it's still a good replacement". Really? You could have at least mentioned Roserade, which would be a much better replacement for Froslass than Deo-D....
Ultimately though my point is that hail teams can't get easy spikes without Froslass abusing evasion/twave/sub, which is something no other spiker can do. So maybe fixing Froslass would fix a lot of perceived problems in hail.

 

[Pocket]

It's not subjective. It's what evasion clause actually is. Did you not see jabba's post two pages ago?

The only thing Jabba said 2 pages ago was that IF we were to ban Snow Cloak under Evasion Clause, then we would have to ban Sand Veil as well. He didn't express his agreement if this is the best measure to go - that's up to the voters.

Thus, Sand Veil / Snow Cloak does NOT have to fall under the Evasion Clause if the voters find it ridiculous (I do).

I don't know what to say here. I'm telling you that Froslass' primary niche on offensive teams is speed, decent power, and spinblocking capability, and you're saying "okay so deo-d has none of those things but it's still a good replacement". Really? You could have at least mentioned Roserade, which would be a much better replacement for Froslass than Deo-D....
Ultimately though my point is that hail teams can't get easy spikes without Froslass abusing evasion/twave/sub, which is something no other spiker can do. So maybe fixing Froslass would fix a lot of perceived problems in hail.

Aren't we banning Froslass because of its unique niche in Hail as a dual Spiker / Spin-Blocker? Yes, PK Gaming's wrong that Deoxys-D would FULLY replace Froslass, but isn't that a good thing? Otherwise, we would have to ban Deoxys-D, too. If we remove Froslass, and if there is no equal replacement to it, then isn't the mission of managing Hail accomplished?

@Scoopapa:

Yea, all those nominations for Sand Veil & Snow Cloak / Brightpowder & Lax Incense were the results of Garchomp abusing Sand Veil and Brightpowder. It's analagous to PK Gaming's argument for Hail. He states that banning Froslass would only remove the symptoms without treating the cause (Perma-Snow).

In the case of OU R3, banning Sand Veil / Brightpowder was merely banning a symptom without removing the cause (Garchomp). Snow Cloak and Lax Incense were lumped together "on principle," as you like to call it. OU players realized their shortsightedness during R4, when Lefties + Sub Garchomp still terrorized the OU scene (hell, it's even better). Which is why we banned Garchomp in the end.

Many people have been arguing to remove the Brightpowder ban, because it is honestly silly, but according to Jabba in the OU suspect thread, it's not worth the hassle.

So Brightpowder ban does not really provide any credibility to your arguments for extending Evasion Clause to EVERY SINGLE EVASION BOOSTING CASES. How does a circumstantial Snow Cloak / Sand Veil boost compare to Double Teams / Minimize (+2 Evasion each use) / Moody?

Other than the Brightpowder ban, our bans eliminated broken aspects of the metagame. If we go with your line of reasoning, Serene Grace is on the chopping block, increasing secondary chances to gross levels :/ Let's not cross this line, where we end up banning stuffs that are perfectly manageable.

 

[breh]

pocket, as I stated above, serene grace is not the same thing as froslass. serene grace allows togekiss to flinch things. on the flipside, hail gives froslass a nice ability activation for which it does nothing, an ability that facilitates its setting up of spikes, and also gives it a nicely powered STAB. That ability can be abused with substitute to get a GUARANTEED FREE TURN where froslass can do anything it wants. Instead of being forced to attack, like togekiss, it can get a free layer of spikes off or even get some damage. They're not the same things.

 

[Scoopapa]

@Scoopapa:

Yea, all those nominations for Sand Veil & Snow Cloak / Brightpowder & Lax Incense were the results of Garchomp abusing Sand Veil and Brightpowder.

Really? You must be going off of something other than what they posted in their nominations, because as I pointed out, only a few of them discuss Garchomp and even those that do site evasion clause as well. Garchomp is only listed as an example (as I would cite Froslass as an example were I nominating Snow Cloak / Sand Veil).

Even if Garchomp brought the issue to their attention, when it came down to justifying their position officially they decided not to mention it. Why would that be? Why not post something like "Ban these items and abilities because that way Garchomp won't be broken". Where's the post that says that? The closest thing too it is a post that first mentions evasion clause and then sites Garchomp as an example! Every single post mentions something along the lines of "it takes skill out of the game" or "on general principle" (as they liked to call it) or "they increase luck" or "they steal undeserved wins", and yet a few mentions of Garchomp leads you to believe that they only wanted to nerf Chomp....

...seriously I posted all that shit so I wouldn't have to spell it the fuck out. Thanks for completely ignoring it.

In the case of OU R3, banning Sand Veil / Brightpowder was merely banning a symptom without removing the cause (Garchomp). Snow Cloak and Lax Incense were lumped together "on principle," as you like to call it. OU players realized their shortsightedness during R4, when Lefties + Sub Garchomp still terrorized the OU scene (hell, it's even better). Which is why we banned Garchomp in the end.

It's true that in the end Garchomp got banned, and that many people who nominated it said they thought it was the better choice than Sand Veil. There are also many people who are simply frustrated and have decided to go for Garchomp because (and they say this) such a nomination is more likely to succeed where the Sand Veil one failed. Still others don't want to ban Sand Veil because they instead want to ban Sandstream (don't forget Sandstream got nominated). One of the "unban hax items" people even justifies it saying he doesn't see the point without Sand Veil being abusable. I'd say there are as many who simply decided to go for a different strategy as there are who decided nominating SV / SC was the wrong move. Should we be surprised that the failure of evasion abilities to be successfully nominated took the wind out of the sails of the 'ban evasion abilities' camp?

I'm not going to go through the round 4 thread and post every relevant sentence here. If you want to see what happened do that yourself. There was only one post in that thread I want to post here. This one really sticks out as perhaps the only one in the thread that takes the tactic "Sand Veil and Snow Cloak didn't get banned but damnit I'm going to try again". Seriously, this guy supported that view when most of the others had given up on it.

post

Pocket

So there has been lots of Garchomp nominations as of late. I have been thinking recently, and I believe that we should honestly try out banning Sandstream + Sand Veil (Complex Ban) or have a blanket ban on the ability Sand Veil (Simple Ban).

Yes, I understand that Sand Veil did not break any of the other monsters, such as Sandslash and Gliscor, which is why I initially supported the ban on Garchomp rather than a ban on Sand Veil. However, once I started reading about the Moody ban in Ubers and Chou Toshio's rational in banning based on 2 reasons - for uncompetitive or overcentralising reasons, I began to see the issue in a different light.

Sand Veil is not just an Ability that "pushes Garchomp over the edge," as many people puts it, while other Pokemon possessing the same ability are harmless; it is uncompetitive by definition. Everyone in the nomination thread are complaining about the drastic 20% reduction in all of the move's accuracy. I have to say that this is a problem about the uncompetitive nature of the ability rather than the combination of Sand Veil + Garchomp itself. I am pretty sure if Hail ever becomes popular, people will complain about Snow Cloak Mamoswine and Glaceons. It is not an isolated issue, the evasion-boosting abilities are the culprit, not the Pokemon unfortunate to receive these abilities.

For such reasons, I will be nominating Sand Veil + Sandstorm or simply Sand Veil for nominations, due to the "Moody" factor - it adds intolerable amount of luck into our match.

Garchomp could use a second chance (or a return to OU once Rough Skin is released) without the evasion nonsense. Arguably it was the exploitation of Sand Veil that has led to the overcentralization around Garchomp, and I believe without Sand Veil, we would not have to face this issue anymore with any other monsters as well.

By extension, I will be nominating Snow Warning + Snow Cloak or simply Snow Cloak for the same reasons; because the evasion has the potential to rob the would-be winner the victory.

Many people have been arguing to remove the Brightpowder ban, because it is honestly silly, but according to Jabba in the OU suspect thread, it's not worth the hassle.

So Brightpowder ban does not really provide any credibility to your arguments for extending Evasion Clause to EVERY SINGLE EVASION BOOSTING CASES. How does a circumstantial Snow Cloak / Sand Veil boost compare to Double Teams / Minimize (+2 Evasion each use) / Moody?

So because some people (unsuccessfully) tried to nominate an unban of evasion items, there is no longer a precedent set by the (successful) banning of them? Hell, at least SV / SC got a big mention in the voting thread. Unbanning BP / LI didn't get shit.

Other than the Brightpowder ban, our bans eliminated broken aspects of the metagame. If we go with your line of reasoning, Serene Grace is on the chopping block, increasing secondary chances to gross levels :/ Let's not cross this line, where we end up banning stuffs that are perfectly manageable.

If we go with my line of reasoning, I have mentioned every time I posted my own opinion that SC / SV are uncompetitive in part because they are passive abilities. Serene Grace requires you to attack, it doesn't allow you to set up a substitute or spikes or have been switching in. If we go with my line of reasoning then the precedent set by the brightpowder ban has nothing to do with secondary chances rising to "gross levels". Look, that's all the time I have, but if you want to know more you should have a discussion with that Pocket guy I quoted, he seemed to agree with me on a lot of stuff.

 

[Pocket]

Really? You must be going off of something other than what they posted in their nominations, because as I pointed out, only a few of them discuss Garchomp and even those that do site evasion clause as well. Garchomp is only listed as an example (as I would cite Froslass as an example were I nominating Snow Cloak / Sand Veil).

Even if Garchomp brought the issue to their attention, when it came down to justifying their position officially they decided not to mention it. Why would that be? Why not post something like "Ban these items and abilities because that way Garchomp won't be broken". Where's the post that says that? The closest thing too it is a post that first mentions evasion clause and then sites Garchomp as an example! Every single post mentions something along the lines of "it takes skill out of the game" or "on general principle" (as they liked to call it) or "they increase luck" or "they steal undeserved wins", and yet a few mentions of Garchomp leads you to believe that they only wanted to nerf Chomp....

...seriously I posted all that shit so I wouldn't have to spell it the fuck out. Thanks for completely ignoring it.

I have read those nominations that you hid in tags, and I've read them before. You have to understand the context behind those nominations, which is more important. The only relevant monster in OU that was abusing Sand Veil / Brightpowder was Garchomp (if you had been reading the OU suspect thread, you would know). These pre-conceptions about the "uncompetitive" nature of these evasion-boosting moves were based off of one abuser. If it wasn't for Garchomp abusing Sand Veil + Brightpowder to the max, people wouldn't have bothered requesting such a nomination.

It's like the people who are nominating ALL auto-weather abilities and baton pass in the current OU suspect round. Just because Drizzle + Excadrill is "overcentralizing," they hastily concluded that ALL weather must be unhealthy for the metagame. Similarly, some people assumed that since Baton Pass is broken in BP chain teams, then it must be broken in ALL situations. If Sand Veil Garchomp is broken, can we conclude that ALL Sand Veil users would be unhealthy for the metagame?

If Snow Cloak Froslass is overpowering, does that imply that ALL Snow Cloakers are over the top?

nice digging, Scoopapa. Now you understand why I am personally opposed by this ban. I once supported a ban on Sand Veil / Snow Cloak to keep Garchomp, arguably the only relevant abuser of these abilities in OU, out of Ubers. Yes, other mons would be affected negatively by this ban, but Garchomp is the only relevant monster in OU. I personally thought it was unfair to ban Garchomp, when it's only banned because of Sand Veil hax. Same line of reasoning as we see from anti-Snow Cloak people here.

However, as I mentioned earlier, that Sand Veil Gliscor and Cacturne proved themselves to be viable sweepers in OU sand, albeit not even close to broken. Thus it was wrong of me to assume what monsters are relevant to the metagame or not. By banning Sand Veil, I would've affected the viability of 2 good, but not broken Sweepers in OU. Thus, it was more appropriate to ban Garchomp, who was broken with Sand Veil, rather than banning Sand Veil that hasn't proven to be broken on other mons.

Apparently, my stance on this issue has changed over time. I am a minimalist by nature, and I would like to make a ban that leaves the least impact to the original tier. Initially, I thought banning Sand Veil would leave the least impact, since Garchomp remains OU, but I was wrong - loss of Sand Veil would have affected the viability of 2 non-broken Sweepers in OU without justification.

 

[Heysup]

I thought this was the UU thread? I keep clicking on it but I seem to get transferred to the OU round 3 thread every time....

Pocket I think it would be better if you read their post as a whole before responding to it one part at a time because you are sort of agreeing and understanding then completely disregarding what they're saying.

You said in one of your previous posts that you understood (but didn't agree) with the concept of banning something based on the fact that it's dealing with Evasion and that doesn't seem fair to some people. Then you start forgetting that this is a "principle" argument altogether and in your next segment talk about viability of Pokemon.

 

[shrang]

I'm not sure you've ever faced hail if that's how you describe it.

I've faced hail and I've used it plenty of times as well. Yes, I've had my fair share of misses as well. They were annoying and I hated it, and I felt sorry for my opponent every time I used it, but the number of games that absolutely depended on whether a move hit or not were rare.

I hear this a lot but Rotom-F isn't even that commonly used on hail teams (it should be, I guess) and it's definitely not the "best" hail abuser. Sure it hits hard enough but it's not that fast and Snorlax walls its face. I think Froslass or even Abomasnow are the best hail Pokemon. Abomasnow is often ignored because hail teams have to use it but man fuck that Abomasnow is incredible. High Attack, Special Attack, HP, Leech Seed, dual 120 BP Stabs. Oh I'm so sorry that hail has to use this mon.

Then how about consider banning Froslass and Abomasnow, like what we did last gen? Firstly, with Abomasnow gone, you're forced to run Snover for permanent hail, who is pretty terrible, even with Eviolite. Sure, Froslass and annoying Pokemon still exist, but having to run Snover is a pretty massive handicap. If you want something to compare to, look at Drought in OU, which is arguably, the worst out of the three dominant weather conditions in OU. The abusers are actually really, really, good, with either overpowered Fire STABs or double Speed in Chlorophyll. However, it's not as good as the other weather effects because of Ninetales and Ninetales alone. While this is no certain way of making sure that we'll get a "balanced" hail with Abomasnow banned, it would definitely nerf Hail. A lot.

Back to my "ban Abomasnow and Froslass" sentiment, we did it last gen, and it worked. Sure, Hail now has Rotom-F, which in my opinion, is nowhere near as good as PK is spouting (no offense PK, I'm just disagreeing). The metagame has gotten bulkier, which goes both ways, bulkier in that Hail teams become harder to break, but it's harder for them to break other teams as well. Why not do something that has proven to work?

 

[Raikaria]

Then how about consider banning Froslass and Abomasnow, like what we did last gen? Firstly, with Abomasnow gone, you're forced to run Snover for permanent hail, who is pretty terrible, even with Eviolite. Sure, Froslass and annoying Pokemon still exist, but having to run Snover is a pretty massive handicap. If you want something to compare to, look at Drought in OU, which is arguably, the worst out of the three dominant weather conditions in OU. The abusers are actually really, really, good, with either overpowered Fire STABs or double Speed in Chlorophyll. However, it's not as good as the other weather effects because of Ninetales and Ninetales alone.

Uh, no.

While Ninetails is a contributeing factor, Sun sucks for several other reasons:

Unlike Rain, it's one or the other in terms of benifits. Nothing gets Double STAB AND Chlorophill.

Grass types dislike Fire, which gets boosted. Now random HP Fires OHKO them.

Even with Chlorophill, most Grass-types can be outsped by Scarfers. Exceptions being Victreebel and Shiftry.

Most Fire-types [Includeing Ninetails] are SR weak. Those that are not, get torn apart by the other hazards as well.

They have no reliable way to work around Dragon-types, Rain users often use Ice Beam anyway, and Sand has Excadrill.

They have no 'Game Over' mon. Sand has Excadrill, Rain had Kingdra, Sun has... Venusaur, who's best move is something like 80 BP. And Grass-typed. Volcarona is decent... if it can get in past the rocks, spikes, T-Spikes, and find a turn to set up. Blaziken was broken even without the sun... it's like saying Kyogre's broken by the rain.

It's a lot less flexiable than the other weathers too, because of the aformentioned issue with the power boost and speed, as well as less viable pokemon careing about the removal of a water weakness [Rock and Ground types are not what you would call common... except in Sand].

Still, Sun't better than Hail, and I agree on the ban Abomasnow and Froslass sentiments.

Although I think we only need to get rid of Froslass. That thing's pretty stupid even without the Hail, it's got plenty of other sets to mess people up with, like Trick and Destiny Bond.

 

[Banedon]

I've faced hail and I've used it plenty of times as well. Yes, I've had my fair share of misses as well. They were annoying and I hated it, and I felt sorry for my opponent every time I used it, but the number of games that absolutely depended on whether a move hit or not were rare.

That may be just your playstyle - I've had quite a bit of experience where games depended on whether a move hit or not. Example: my +2/+2/+2 Azelf (passed two Quiver Dances by Venomoth) vs. Froslass. Miss, and I eat Thunder Wave and that's the end of the sweep, not to mention two lost Pokemon. Hit, and a full sweep results. It's not hard to imagine logs where Blastoise for example tries to spin on Froslass, but misses, getting paralyzed and then Sub / TWave stalled. Or Donphan trying to hit Froslass on the switch with Head Smash, which misses. And so on.

Ban Snow Cloak, ban Froslass, ban Abomasnow or complex ban - I'm not really sure, I'm just increasingly convinced that hail needs at least a small hit.

 

[Scoopapa]

@Pocket

This has gotten blown way out of porportion, so I'll try to be brief here.

Take a look at what was said in the OP of the round 3 voting. Clearly the content of the nominations was what determined their success or failure, nothing else. I posted all of the relevant nominations partly to disprove PKGaming's contention that those bans were only passed because of Garchomp (and thus that they couldn't be relied on for precedent). However, what's more important is that it shows that a nomination which is based on competitive principles rather than balance can pass (again, what pk was telling us would never fly). Not only that, but the very nomination many of us are supporting was nearly passed already. The OP was very clear that a SC / SV ban had nearly been accepted for voting and that there was a specific reason why it wasn't. It shows that if those of us who support the SC / SV ban are careful to address the failures we the previous nomination attempt, we could be successful. It doesn't matter if Garchomp was later banned. It doesn't matter if enough hax makes bad monsters viable. What matters is that suspect nominations based on the uncompetitive nature of evasion modifiers have been shown to have a legitimate chance in the suspect process. Those of you who don't like that argument need to address it directly rather than trying to undermine it by claiming that it can't be done.

Edit: music to my ears PK

 

[PK Gaming]

Double Team isn't broken on Spinda, but you still can't use it on the ladder. Swift Swim isn't broken on Luvdisc when used in Drizzle, still can't use it on the ladder.
Once again, the point isn't about "broken". Both snow cloak and sand veil cause a pokemon's evasion to be automatically boosted in a weather condition without any action taken by the opponent, which fits pretty squarely under the conditions of the evasion clause. If you have a problem with the evasion clause, bring it up in PR (good luck, it's already been tried) but until then if we're hoping to be at all consistent in our tiering process we should get rid of evasion-boosting abilities as soon as possible.

Done. We're going to settle this once and for all, in a PR thread. Oh hell yes, its on like butter on marmalade.

I don't know what to say here. I'm telling you that Froslass' primary niche on offensive teams is speed, decent power, and spinblocking capability, and you're saying "okay so deo-d has none of those things but it's still a good replacement". Really? You could have at least mentioned Roserade, which would be a much better replacement for Froslass than Deo-D....
Ultimately though my point is that hail teams can't get easy spikes without Froslass abusing evasion/twave/sub, which is something no other spiker can do. So maybe fixing Froslass would fix a lot of perceived problems in hail.

Yes exactly. Deoxys-D can't spinblock, sub abuse, etc, but at least it can spike + carry a semi ridiculously fast taunt. I've said this again & again i don't think banning Froslass is the right thing to do. Also i disagree with Roserade being on par with Deoxys-D at straight up spiking Froslass, but to each ones own.

 

[Heysup]

I've faced hail and I've used it plenty of times as well. Yes, I've had my fair share of misses as well. They were annoying and I hated it, and I felt sorry for my opponent every time I used it, but the number of games that absolutely depended on whether a move hit or not were rare.

Then you're playing against idiots. Any hail counter strategy is automatically reduced to succeeding a very small % of the time because of Snow Cloak. It's a combination problem. The team itself is so naturally strong so there are few viable counter strategies, and after those have been narrowed down, Snow Cloak comes in and makes them "maybe" work sometimes. If you haven't missed your Stone Edge while Froslass switches in or missed your Foresight / Rapid Spin then again, I feel you haven't played hail enough nor have you played against anyone who uses hail to its fullest.

Uh, no.

While Ninetails is a contributeing factor, Sun sucks for several other reasons:

Unlike Rain, it's one or the other in terms of benifits. Nothing gets Double STAB AND Chlorophill.

Grass types dislike Fire, which gets boosted. Now random HP Fires OHKO them.

Even with Chlorophill, most Grass-types can be outsped by Scarfers. Exceptions being Victreebel and Shiftry.

Most Fire-types [Includeing Ninetails] are SR weak. Those that are not, get torn apart by the other hazards as well.

They have no reliable way to work around Dragon-types, Rain users often use Ice Beam anyway, and Sand has Excadrill.

They have no 'Game Over' mon. Sand has Excadrill, Rain had Kingdra, Sun has... Venusaur, who's best move is something like 80 BP. And Grass-typed. Volcarona is decent... if it can get in past the rocks, spikes, T-Spikes, and find a turn to set up. Blaziken was broken even without the sun... it's like saying Kyogre's broken by the rain.

It's a lot less flexiable than the other weathers too, because of the aformentioned issue with the power boost and speed, as well as less viable pokemon careing about the removal of a water weakness [Rock and Ground types are not what you would call common... except in Sand].

Still, Sun't better than Hail, and I agree on the ban Abomasnow and Froslass sentiments.

Although I think we only need to get rid of Froslass. That thing's pretty stupid even without the Hail, it's got plenty of other sets to mess people up with, like Trick and Destiny Bond.

I have no idea what you're trying to say but it has a lot to do with OU and very little relevance to this topic. Don't try to directly compare those OU weathers to UU hail, simple as that.

Yes exactly. Deoxys-D can't spinblock, sub abuse, etc, but at least it can spike + carry a semi ridiculously fast taunt. I've said this again & again i don't think banning Froslass is the right thing to do. Also i disagree with Roserade being on par with Deoxys-D at straight up spiking Froslass, but to each ones own.

I don't quite understand why you keep doing this. You know very well that Deoxys-D is practically useless compared to Froslass. You lose a team slot and you're only 306 Speed. Night Shade sucks ass. Roserade at least has a hard hitting STAB along with natural cure. Deoxys-D is pretty shitty compared to Froslass. So is Roserade for that matter.

You need to separate these arguments. You know why banning Froslass is not the right thing to go, but you need to say it. Saying "Yea Deoxys-D can't do X,Y, and Z, but it still will replace Froslass fine" doesn't make any sense.

Froslass is the wrong thing to go because hail will still be able to Spike and do what it used to, just slightly worse. However, Froslass was never the route of the problem anyway. Things will still come up over and over until we ban every hail Pokemon.

 

[PK Gaming]

Hold up...!

don't quite understand why you keep doing this. You know very well that Deoxys-D is practically useless compared to Froslass. You lose a team slot and you're only 306 Speed. Night Shade sucks ass. Roserade at least has a hard hitting STAB along with natural cure. Deoxys-D is pretty shitty compared to Froslass. So is Roserade for that matter.

You're gravely underestimating Deoxys-D. You really need to give it a proper chance because I stand by all of my posts, its hands down one of the best spike users in the meta.

Having used / played against this team, i can say for a fact that Deoxys-D is highly effective at what it does. Inferior to Roserade? Really? Taunt and way more bulk beg to differ. 306 speed is fast enough to outspeed the majority of the metagame (including the ever popular taunt WoW, defensive Roserade and other pokemon) Deoxys-D can pull off running max speed / max hp because its defenses are naturally through the roof. Snunch put it perfectly its the best suicide lead in UU. (hell it doesn't even need to be used as a suicide lead, it can easily be used midgame too)

Froslass is the wrong thing to go because hail will still be able to Spike and do what it used to, just slightly worse. However, Froslass was never the route of the problem anyway. Things will still come up over and over until we ban every hail Pokemon.

Yeah.

 

[Skytt]

Re-posting what I said in the Sept. 2011 usage thread:

| 55 | Chandelure | 12025 | 3.016% |
| 57 | Darmanitan | 11338 | 2.843% |
| 59 | Porygon2 | 10634 | 2.667% |
| 60 | Machamp | 10565 | 2.649% |
| 63 | Tornadus | 10115 | 2.537% |
| 67 | Whimsicott | 8801 | 2.207% |
+ possibly Swampert (got 3.4% so we'll see)

Metagross, Venusaur and Cloyster stayed above 3.5%, so will likely stay OU. Also, Celebi is definitely going UU (5% June, 7% August and 8% Sept) whilst Mamoswine is under the cutoff so might stay UU a little while longer.

Next test will be so hectic, so many new threats...

 

[Heysup]

Either way, Froslass in hail is light years better. It's not even a contest.

 

[Honko]

Things will still come up over and over until we ban every hail Pokemon.

Every hail Pokemon? Do you really believe that? This isn't Drought, which automatically broke basically every Fire-type and Chlorophyll user. Do people really think a team like Snover / Rotom-F / Deoxys-D / Cryogonal / Arcanine / Suicune would be broken? Not just solid, good, or usable, but broken? And do you believe that so strongly that we should ban the entire strategy without even trying to balance it by removing one or two Pokemon? At best that sounds lazy, and at worst it sounds like people trying to eliminate strategies they don't like. What makes Froslass Outside Hail more valuable to the metagame than Hail itself?

 

[Scade]

Next test will be so hectic, so many new threats...

Not to mention Sableye and Alakazam with their new Dream World abilities, unless I'm wrong in thinking they'll be available from RU and up until the next usage statistics appear.

 

[shrang]

Then you're playing against idiots. Any hail counter strategy is automatically reduced to succeeding a very small % of the time because of Snow Cloak. It's a combination problem. The team itself is so naturally strong so there are few viable counter strategies, and after those have been narrowed down, Snow Cloak comes in and makes them "maybe" work sometimes. If you haven't missed your Stone Edge while Froslass switches in or missed your Foresight / Rapid Spin then again, I feel you haven't played hail enough nor have you played against anyone who uses hail to its fullest.

What? What if I'm not using Rapid Spin? What then? If you really want to know, I'm using Wynaut + Dugtrio + 4 sweepers team. Where do I have room for Rapid Spin, and why should I give a shit? Your Froslass can set up as many layers as it likes, I'm only going to just Sub/CM up on Raikou, and if you dare to Taunt me, I'll just kill you (Sure it might miss, but what the hell is Froslass ever doing to Raikou under a Sub with a Calm Mind up or two?).

First of all (I don't know how anyone could forget this, it was a long and painful process) we did not do that. Abomasnow was banned in r1 because it was too good of a Pokemon in addition to hail being around. Froslass's ban had little to do with hail, it was merely icing on the cake. It was deemed broken without hail when we banned it last gen.

Abomasnow is a good start but Froslass had nothing to do with that ban last gen.

In fact, does no one remember hail still dominating without Froslass later in the game? Hail Stall with Nidoqueen and SpD Arcanine destroying most of the ladder.

That may not have been our intentions, but the end result is the same. We had Abomasnow and Froslass banned, and hail was very manageable in UU. And when did Hail dominate at the end of 4th gen UU? The only team I can think of that was good at using Hail was WhiteQueen's team, and while good, it was overhyped like a second coming of Christ. When did anyone complain about Hail being too strong? I saw more complaints about Venusaur and later Heracross than anything. Hail was solid if used right, but nowhere near broken after Froslass' banning.

 

[Heysup]

Every hail Pokemon? Do you really believe that? This isn't Drought, which automatically broke basically every Fire-type and Chlorophyll user. Do people really think a team like Snover / Rotom-F / Deoxys-D / Cryogonal / Arcanine / Suicune would be broken? Not just solid, good, or usable, but broken? And do you believe that so strongly that we should ban the entire strategy without even trying to balance it by removing one or two Pokemon? At best that sounds lazy, and at worst it sounds like people trying to eliminate strategies they don't like. What makes Froslass Outside Hail more valuable to the metagame than Hail itself?

Honestly that team could easily be just as broken. Who really knows.

Not "every" hail Pokemon, obviously, but a lot of them. If we ban Abomasnow and Froslass that's already banning more "innocent" Pokemon then simply banning Snow Warning (which effectively isn't banning anything at all, it only forces Snover / Abomasnow to run Sound proof).

What? What if I'm not using Rapid Spin? What then? If you really want to know, I'm using Wynaut + Dugtrio + 4 sweepers team. Where do I have room for Rapid Spin, and why should I give a shit? Your Froslass can set up as many layers as it likes, I'm only going to just Sub/CM up on Raikou, and if you dare to Taunt me, I'll just kill you (Sure it might miss, but what the hell is Froslass ever doing to Raikou under a Sub with a Calm Mind up or two?).

What were you responding to exactly? It isn't exactly a relevant response to the part you quoted....

Anyway, (assuming you're using 128 HP Timid HP Ice SubCM Raikou) Raikou is going to switch in and either eat a Thunder Wave or Blizzard which does ~45% with max SpA or ~33% with 0 SpA. Against the former you can't even set up Calm Minds or a Substitute because Blizzard does too much and the latter is a 50/50 toss up with Thunder Wave and Blizzard vs Substitute and Calm Mind anyway. Or he can just use Spikes and switch out to Abomasnow and then you come back in with even less health. You're never going to sweep anyone like that. What one of your four sweepers is going to like taking Leech Seeds / Wood Hammers / Blizzards from Abomasnow?

If you only have one unreliable way of being Froslass you're going to lose against any semi-intelligent person with a Hail team.

That may not have been our intentions, but the end result is the same. We had Abomasnow and Froslass banned, and hail was very manageable in UU. And when did Hail dominate at the end of 4th gen UU? The only team I can think of that was good at using Hail was WhiteQueen's team, and while good, it was overhyped like a second coming of Christ. When did anyone complain about Hail being too strong? I saw more complaints about Venusaur and later Heracross than anything. Hail was solid if used right, but nowhere near broken after Froslass' banning.

You're not quite catching what I'm saying. Froslass was banned without regard to hail. It doesn't matter that hail was really good with it, Froslass was broken outside of hail so we banned it. If it wasn't broken outside of hail and was broken only in hail we would have banned Snow Warning altogether.

The ladder was full of a billion hail stall teams, ~7 of the top 10 were hail teams. Heracross and Venusaur were bitched about too, Heracross was banned. Hail wasn't because Heracross was there.

The standard team was like Snover / SpD Arcanine / Nidoqueen / Hitmontop / Walrein / filler in case that refreshes your memory.

Honestly look at the Froslass / Hail threads if you won't believe me.

 

[Bluewind]

Specially Defensive Arcanine was barely ever used in Hail, if ever. Chansey was much more common, or just Thick Fat Hariyama.

 

[Scoopapa]

Special Defense Arcanine definitely had it's heyday but I doubt it would be used on hail since it relies on Morning Sun for recovery.

 

[Godsend]

Some people used Wisp/Restalk/FB on spd Arc. Not necessarily the best people, but you know.