Maybe if blissey didnt had 10 base def it could be a top tier wall again. Power creep happened, having a gigantic defensive stat and the other being pathetic isnt cutting anymore. The lack of ''flawless'' defensive pokemon hurt stall viability as you can always exploit a weakness and get through that pokemon with easy. You cant do that with offensive pokemon. Whats the flaw with keldeo, terrakion, garchomp, salamence, landorus etc? Nothing. They have excellent movepools, offensive stats and stabs. You are forced to either revenge kill them or hope one of your pokemons can barely take a hit and retaliate. Then go check the defensive ones. Jellicent physical bulk is terrible meaning that it either invests in that or it will fall to physical attacks easily. And even if it does its still far from ideal. We also have ferrothorn with a ridiculous exploitable fire weakness and i dont think skarmory requires any explanation. The terrible distribution of recovery moves is simply laughable, as is the lack of defensive based items. Its simple, the metagame has become offensive because offensive threats are superior to defensive ones. They require much less support and have better tools to do their jobs. This is a problem that no ban or clause can solve.
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What's wrong with the metagame?
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I don't completely agree with either of these posts, but they do highlight something that I believe too. I think the decision to ban a huge chunk of Pokemon at day 1 from a metagame we'd hardly even played was a bad idea. The only good thing about the idea was that it potentially saved time and allowed people to start off with an "OU" that somewhat resembled the Gen IV OU that they were used to.
But maybe the fact that we took short-cuts and "guessed" what would be broken might be part of what is wrong with the metagame now. For all we know we could have ended up with a completely different ban list for OU if we did it the more thorough way.
Blissey had terrible defense in Gen III too, and was easily beaten by most physical sweepers back then. It doesn't need high defense to be a speical wall, most special sweepers don't use physical attacks (back in Gen III some used Focus Punch to dent Blissey (and Regice) switch-ins, but they don't need to do things like that anymore). Now Blissey struggles against special sweepers. Something with Cresselia's stat spread in Gen III, I can't even imagine!
I agree with most of the rest of what you say though.
Another noteworthy mention is the increasingly high number of mixed offensive pokemon that put pressure on defensive ones. Why is ferro so successful? I has good typing and is a mixed wall.
The requirements for a good defensive pokemon are getting higher and higher.
Why is Keldeo so good? Simply because it is a mixed sweeper relying on a single stat. It also happens to have it's stab physical attack super effective against the best special wall.
I do not think that having an offensive metagame is bad, and I don't see where people get the notion from that stall MUST be an apparent strategy. If the metagame revolved around defense, it would be BORING, plain and simple.
With that said, though, even my very limited experience is enough to note the differance between an "Offensive Metagame" and what exists now. Offense is facillitated by not only a huge range of ridiculously powerful pokemon with ideal base stats and movepools to back them up, but also the evidence of weather (really, I don't get the point of sneaking around it. Abstract or specific, the point is still the same, though being direct is obviously the more efficient mode of communication. I do understand your point that tagging along weather will invite preconceptions, but that will happen whether or not the topic of said conceptions is stated explicitly) which boosts water and fire moves respectively a further 1.5x their base power. If Keldeo uses hydro pump in the rain, even resists are taking essentially a 120bp move AFTER the fact, and that is absurd. Though water is the more ideal offensive type, the same applies with things like Victini's V-Create: resist or not, something is taking a 180bp attack (if not double that if the switch in does not resist). These are absurd damage outputs for such a small and almost integral amount of support and so I feel as if weather is the most dominant force in facillitating the less than desirable metagane that currently exists.
Another issue that spawns from the difficulty in walling the aforementioned attacks is the infamous reliance on match-ups. While I have virtually no experience playing in OU, in the many battles I watched the results were almost predictable from team preview, and this is not a good sign in what should be a skill-based game. Yes, some archtypes will always fare well against others, but why are we facillitating this even further by allowing weather to thrive? With weatherless teams matchup is still apparent, but it isn't as easy as "x beats y." It's moreso "team 1 is somewhat weak to pokemon x but it can be played around by keeping y and z healthy," etc. and this in itself is placing more of a reliance on skill.
I am obviously very new here and have done virtually no competitive battling, but from the months I've spent lurking and watching battles, these are the observations I have made, so take them as you will.
In response to those who believe that too many threats, not weather or other offensive aids, are responsible for the poor metagame, I have to disagree. Take out the controversial support options and what do we have? A specs keldeo? A scarf salamence? A rock polish Landorus? Keldeo, with such a large damage reduction, can be easily handled by just a couple resists. Once the need to deal with weather boosted attacks is diminished, we no longer have to run 4 water resists, so we are able to consider pokemon that check the other large threats, such as the two pokes mentioned. As Princess Bri noted in her thread, redundancy should be avoided if we hope to check as much as possible, and with the NECCESARY redundancy of having so many water resists out of the way, we are able to check even more, helping to diminish the issue of team matchup, among others.
With that said, though, even my very limited experience is enough to note the differance between an "Offensive Metagame" and what exists now. Offense is facillitated by not only a huge range of ridiculously powerful pokemon with ideal base stats and movepools to back them up, but also the evidence of weather (really, I don't get the point of sneaking around it. Abstract or specific, the point is still the same, though being direct is obviously the more efficient mode of communication. I do understand your point that tagging along weather will invite preconceptions, but that will happen whether or not the topic of said conceptions is stated explicitly) which boosts water and fire moves respectively a further 1.5x their base power. If Keldeo uses hydro pump in the rain, even resists are taking essentially a 120bp move AFTER the fact, and that is absurd. Though water is the more ideal offensive type, the same applies with things like Victini's V-Create: resist or not, something is taking a 180bp attack (if not double that if the switch in does not resist). These are absurd damage outputs for such a small and almost integral amount of support and so I feel as if weather is the most dominant force in facillitating the less than desirable metagane that currently exists.
Another issue that spawns from the difficulty in walling the aforementioned attacks is the infamous reliance on match-ups. While I have virtually no experience playing in OU, in the many battles I watched the results were almost predictable from team preview, and this is not a good sign in what should be a skill-based game. Yes, some archtypes will always fare well against others, but why are we facillitating this even further by allowing weather to thrive? With weatherless teams matchup is still apparent, but it isn't as easy as "x beats y." It's moreso "team 1 is somewhat weak to pokemon x but it can be played around by keeping y and z healthy," etc. and this in itself is placing more of a reliance on skill.
I am obviously very new here and have done virtually no competitive battling, but from the months I've spent lurking and watching battles, these are the observations I have made, so take them as you will.
In response to those who believe that too many threats, not weather or other offensive aids, are responsible for the poor metagame, I have to disagree. Take out the controversial support options and what do we have? A specs keldeo? A scarf salamence? A rock polish Landorus? Keldeo, with such a large damage reduction, can be easily handled by just a couple resists. Once the need to deal with weather boosted attacks is diminished, we no longer have to run 4 water resists, so we are able to consider pokemon that check the other large threats, such as the two pokes mentioned. As Princess Bri noted in her thread, redundancy should be avoided if we hope to check as much as possible, and with the NECCESARY redundancy of having so many water resists out of the way, we are able to check even more, helping to diminish the issue of team matchup, among others.
Yeah, that's true. Plus Life Orb was a godsend in that sense. I think maybe LO was more stall-damaging than the Choice items.
When it comes to trapping, there is very little skill involved. Steel vs Magnezone is pretty much a 50:50 every turn - Scizor vs Terrakion + Magnezone is a relatively common example. This is another example where prediction is really overly glorified; most of the time it is just educated guesswork and in this scenario it is just guesswork. Removing the ability to switch is an inherently uncompetitive aspect to this game.
Just because you think Sun needs to run Dugtrio to remain viable doesn't mean Arena Trap has a place in OU. You can't argue that Dugtrio on weather teams isn't a massive contributor to team match-up wins, which again is an inherently uncompetitive aspect of the game at the moment. Gothitelle may be rare but it removes a large chunk of skill from the game by simply existing. See above: playing around trappers is a lot less skill-based than you are attempting to make out.
How does a "ban ban ban mentality" ruin a meta? Everyone recognizes that this meta is potentially the worst we've ever had, surely the best thing to do is remove what people think is ruining it?
If my opponent is using a set designed to lure specific pokemon X, and my opponent knows from the offset that they win if they lure and KO pokemon X, what exactly is my fault here? Is it because I didn't teambuild well enough to handle his specific combination of CBTar + EBelt Keldeo + RP Landorus-I? (bear in mind this is nigh-impossible from a defensive standpoint lol) As soon as a trapper or lure Pokemon hits the field and does what it is meant to do, the game is completely taken out of the hands of the opposing player regardless of their skill. This is basically the definition of winning on "team match-up". They have a combination of Pokemon that ultimately overcome mine out of little fault of my own - attempting to scout for these lures results in making very very subpar plays that could potentially lose me the game if they aren't using Hidden Power [Bug] Keldeo etc.
Team Preview obviously goes both ways, but it gives a distinct advantage to teams with trappers and lures, which ultimately support the most broken Pokemon in the game. Do you think Landorus-I would be as outright broken if Tyranitar didn't have Pursuit? Do you think Volcarona would be such a huge issue for sand balance if Dugtrio didn't exist? My personal opinion is that behind most of the Pokemon that people are considering "broken" at the moment, there is a distinctly uncompetitive supporting Pokemon (i.e. Pursuit Tyranitar for Landorus-I) that is actually doing all the heavy work to execute that sweep, and team preview gives teams with Pursuit, Arena Trap, Magnet Pull, Shadow Tag, EBelt Keldeo, U-turn Landorus etc an almost insurmountable advantage against the Pokemon that they are designed to beat. In my mind, Trapping abilities / moves + Team Preview cannot exist together in a competitive environment.
I don't really want to get into the "we can't ban team preview" argument because it doesn't have a place here at all. All I want to say is that the decision to continue playing by complete cartridge mechanics is pretty arbitrary at this point given we already deviate from those with sleep mechanics. Not to mention Smogon barely associates itself with the WiFi metagame, and having been a WiFi player on-and-off up until 2 years ago, I can safely say most of the WiFi players don't want to be associated with Smogon anyway, why should Smogon continue to support a community that widely dislikes us, especially when the cost of doing so is making our own metagame worse (at least in my opinion).
The comparison between banning Team Preview and banning Critical Hits is bad. Critical hits have been around since the start and are a core mechanic. Team Preview was added only this generation and has partially contributed to this generation being the worst we've had so far - it is not a core mechanic, and even if we ban it, we are still playing Pokemon.
As someone who actually prefers to play defensive/Stall teams, this hyper offense metagame is BORING, plain and simple.
another thing is the false idea of all things being equal.
there's a lot of talk of "if both players being equal" in discussions when the reality is the chance of that is very slim like the fact team preview gives the both players a chance to plan ahead but it doesn't remove the fact the team with the better overall match up still has the better overall match up and no amount of foreknowledge will remove or negate that advantage completely it's still a up hill battle for the disadvantaged player.
literally the best teams don't care about team preview has long has they have the advantage in match up.
there's a lot of talk of "if both players being equal" in discussions when the reality is the chance of that is very slim like the fact team preview gives the both players a chance to plan ahead but it doesn't remove the fact the team with the better overall match up still has the better overall match up and no amount of foreknowledge will remove or negate that advantage completely it's still a up hill battle for the disadvantaged player.
literally the best teams don't care about team preview has long has they have the advantage in match up.
All of this is probably off-topic at this point but whatevs
@Trapping and Team Preview: I've never played past gens (or well, none with trappers) so I can't really talk much about this but there is one thing that bothers me. Wouldn't Team Preview help you avoid getting trapped? If TP wasn't around, couldn't you just stash you trapper and whip it out when the target comes in. This seems a lot easier to pull off than what we have now because the victim can't possibly assume that there is always a trapper on the other side and still play a good game. I think the problem lies with the trappers themselves. Even with lures, you could argue that seeing the rest of that players team makes it easier to guess if they are running a lure set on one of their mons to bypass an otherwise gaping hole. I guess TP still just boils down to surprises vs clear game plan. I think overall it is still relative to the metagame and therefore there are other ways to remove this problem without messing with these game mechanics. (I know trappers are currently worthless in Ubers and there isn't many problems with lures, if any.)
@Banning Philosophy: I don't think DJD's list is outdated, it's based on fundamentals and not any particular metagame or generation (in fact, you could take these very same principles and apply them to a completely different game). I think that problem is that people spend more time counting counters and trying to portray something as the near perfect 6-0 Pokemon more than actually considering how it affects the metagame. They basically reduce their banning criteria to solely consider Balance with a sort of "if you can kill it, don't ban it" mentality and vice versa. I feel this is too shortsighted and doesn't address the actual issue, does this element hurt or help the metagame? This then piles on top of the immense tangle that we got for OU in this generation. People are willing to resort to radical/extensive bans in the hope that things somehow get better along the way. In response, we have those who are afraid of just how far this ban crusade will take them and would rather simply justify the status quo. In the end, I'm afraid we might be spending more time on witch hunts and cutting Hydra heads than dealing with the actual problem. This is why I wanted to start this thread, to see what everybody else felt and what mentality they have when participating in suspect tests. (instead it became another rant about X in OU topic, should have worded things differently I guess)
@Trapping and Team Preview: I've never played past gens (or well, none with trappers) so I can't really talk much about this but there is one thing that bothers me. Wouldn't Team Preview help you avoid getting trapped? If TP wasn't around, couldn't you just stash you trapper and whip it out when the target comes in. This seems a lot easier to pull off than what we have now because the victim can't possibly assume that there is always a trapper on the other side and still play a good game. I think the problem lies with the trappers themselves. Even with lures, you could argue that seeing the rest of that players team makes it easier to guess if they are running a lure set on one of their mons to bypass an otherwise gaping hole. I guess TP still just boils down to surprises vs clear game plan. I think overall it is still relative to the metagame and therefore there are other ways to remove this problem without messing with these game mechanics. (I know trappers are currently worthless in Ubers and there isn't many problems with lures, if any.)
@Banning Philosophy: I don't think DJD's list is outdated, it's based on fundamentals and not any particular metagame or generation (in fact, you could take these very same principles and apply them to a completely different game). I think that problem is that people spend more time counting counters and trying to portray something as the near perfect 6-0 Pokemon more than actually considering how it affects the metagame. They basically reduce their banning criteria to solely consider Balance with a sort of "if you can kill it, don't ban it" mentality and vice versa. I feel this is too shortsighted and doesn't address the actual issue, does this element hurt or help the metagame? This then piles on top of the immense tangle that we got for OU in this generation. People are willing to resort to radical/extensive bans in the hope that things somehow get better along the way. In response, we have those who are afraid of just how far this ban crusade will take them and would rather simply justify the status quo. In the end, I'm afraid we might be spending more time on witch hunts and cutting Hydra heads than dealing with the actual problem. This is why I wanted to start this thread, to see what everybody else felt and what mentality they have when participating in suspect tests. (instead it became another rant about X in OU topic, should have worded things differently I guess)
That's why Wobbufet was Uber in Gen 4 and BL in this Gen.
FINALLY. I'm glad people get it.
Fundamentals are NEVER outdated.
If you have a steel type and you know theres a magnezone on your opponent you have to play more carefully. If you predict a magnezone switch in on your bullet punch just u-turn out, whirlwind it, volt switch or whatever steel type youre using. The moment you setup rocks is the moment dugtrio becomes useless because goodbye focus sash. Its not even that hard to do. Theres always air baloon too. Gothitelle inst even OU to begin with so theres no point in discussing about this. The decision to play by cartdrige mechanics is because we are attempting to simulate them. Team preview, critical hits, status, 6 team slots, 4 moveslots are core game mechanics that cant be messed with. Sleep clause is present in some of the 3D games in case you didnt know. It has nothing to do with ''communities''. We are simulating an existing game, not creating our own.
But... You ignored the second half of that post. You know, the one that acknowledged that this metagame is not a healthy form of offensive.
Just as a side note (and this is certainly not directed at only you, cornburrito), i have found that an outstanding number of posts replying to various arguments throughout nearly EVERY thread on Smogon are based off ignoring the entire post and then arguing against some miscellaneous line that adds virtually nothing to the main argument anyway (the more renowned users are less guilty of this of course).
Don't do this. It stunts discussion because the only proper reply is "That wasn't my argument..."
All of these are close to "coin-flip" predictions. If you have Scizor out vs CB Terrakion and you don't Bullet Punch as it stays in, you will lose Scizor. If you are using Forretress (probably on stall or on spikes-dependent balanced teams) then by Volt Switching "predicting" the Magnezone switching you're being forced not to set-up hazards and ultimately, thats probably what the Magnezone user wants. Ultimately, the presence of a trapper on the opposing team forces situations where the risk vs reward is roughly equal for multiple options, resulting in turns which just end up being coin flips. I feel even the presence of a trapper on the opposing team is bad enough for the game, let alone when they actually successfully trap something. I said it before and I'll say it again; you are massively overstating how big a part prediction plays when you are up against a team with trappers.
Hence why most Dugtrio Rain teams have Tentacruel, and a lot of Dugtrio Sun teams have Forretress / Xatu. If Stealth Rock was enough to make Dugtrio bad then nobody would be using it. That clearly isn't the case - its a staple for a lot of sun teams (although they can work without it) and its just as viable on Rain to 100% win vs Sun (and help a lot vs Tyranitar Sand too). Air Balloon is inconsistent and terrible on anything but offensive Heatran (where its still not great imo), and is hardly a reliable way of preventing Arena Trap when Heatran is relied on heavily to switch-in on basically everything on Sun.
Feraligatr isn't OU either and it recently won OST. Don't rule out Gothitelle just because its BL (which just means its too good to be used in UU but doesn't have the usage to move into OU). I'm sure any decent player will tell you Gothitelle is just as viable, if not more viable, than a ton of the Pokemon we have in low OU. Its a Pokemon that can trap anything and has a wide enough movepool that you can tailor it to beat almost anything you need it to. Just because it isn't seen on Showdown's ladder doesn't mean it isn't a damn good Pokemon. It definitely has a place in this discussion.
This doesn't make any sense. I know where Sleep Clause comes from. Sleep Clause only exists in the home console games like Stadium, Colosseum and PBR, and we are meant to be simulating Black and White 2. Therefore, we are already picking and choosing specific rulesets from different games and different generations in our simulation of BW2. What is the difference between choosing to simulate Sleep Clause from home console games, and choosing not to simulate Team Preview (like in every portable console game up until 3 years ago)?
We've already added Sleep mechanics on our simulators that are impossible to replicate on BW2 cartridges, so I genuinely cannot understand the argument that we need to keep Team Preview around in order to replicate the cartridge mechanics.
PenguinX said:
Look. Dude. Here's the Scene.
The Sleep Clause was originally intended as a gentlemen's ban, because it was considered unfair to put more than one of your opponent to sleep, but unfortunately it's ridiculous to expect everyone to follow this rule and no other way to enforce it. Hence the 'clause'
it's no different from the 'drizzle+swift swim' clause
or the 'OHKO' clause
or the 'Evasion' clause
or the 'Ubers' clause
or the 'Species' Clause
The in-game WiFi cannot do anyone of those.
that's why clauses EXIST. to enforce a rule. To make sure people DON'T BREAK THE RULES.
The phrase you used, ' impossible to replicate on BW2 cartridges' apply to each and everyone of them.
Does sleep work as it should?
Yes it does.
Does it randomize sleep turns the way it does on cartridge?
Yes it does.
So I fail to see how we're altering a core mechanic, and I genuinely cannot understand the point you're trying to make.
The main issue of contention with simulator sleep mechanics is that if you put something to sleep already, you literally can not choose the sleep move. In a real battle, you would be perfectly able to do this for whatever reason, whether it be PP stalling, or taking the risk to put something to sleep right after it wakes up if you are slower, even if you risk losing if you put something else to sleep. This debate has occurred easily a dozen times on smogon over the years, if you are curious as to why simulator mechanics are the way they are, I suggest you do a little more lurking.
1- Coin-flip predictions. Thats why wobbufet is no longer uber. You CAN overpredict trappers now. Its a 50/50 chance, which is fair enough for both players.
2- There are several ways to lure in and kill those spinners/bouncers as much as there are several ways to prevent this from happening. Fair enough again.
3- I never said it wasnt good. I use it and its amazing. I just said that theres no point in discussing banning shadow tag in ou since there are no ou users, and therefore its a moot point.
4- Team preview inst a rule or a clause. Its a core mechanics present in the games we are simulating. Sleep Clause is a rule from the console games that was added. Nothing was modified. We are simply enforcing a rule that we wanted. Its exactly like battling someone on the real games and telling them to follow these rules. The difference is that our simulator is capable of enforcing this rule to prevent cheating. Of course we could always change our way of acting with our simulator but for now it should stay in.
Only bothered by a few things.
It is the most stagnant OU metagame in history. I mean, if I make an RMT, and every suggestion is "replace with (one of three top-tier pokes)", then we have a bit of a problem. Really, this can be boiled down to a loss of originality in teambuilding due to the power of Hyper Offense. Nothing against HO, but people, please mix up your teams a little. Dig up gems from the lower tiers. DIVERSIFY.
Also, this is kind of nitpicking, but every team I see has at least two legendaries. Come on. There are 600-something pokes out there, MAKE THEM WORK.
-saxton out.
It is the most stagnant OU metagame in history. I mean, if I make an RMT, and every suggestion is "replace with (one of three top-tier pokes)", then we have a bit of a problem. Really, this can be boiled down to a loss of originality in teambuilding due to the power of Hyper Offense. Nothing against HO, but people, please mix up your teams a little. Dig up gems from the lower tiers. DIVERSIFY.
Also, this is kind of nitpicking, but every team I see has at least two legendaries. Come on. There are 600-something pokes out there, MAKE THEM WORK.
-saxton out.
Seeing as this thread has got kind of distracted, I'll try to answer in accordance with the OP.
The biggest reason this metagame is bad is because 5th gen focused way too heavily on offense, to a point where the OU council could do nothing but damage limitation. Clearly Gamefreak know that their biggest audience is young children. Young children care far more about face meltingly awesome power in their pokemon than solid defensive stats. I mean let's be serious here; of those of you who played BW's story line, who actually used a ferrothorn? I know that is naming something, but it's just an example.
So because of this inherent bias towards offensive power, the 5th generation was doomed from the start to be a crappy metagame. While the OU council has been criticised for being ban-happy, what were they supposed to do about it? They have done, in my opinion, an admirable job of keeping the metagame at the very least stable, if not particularly enjoyable.
I think the way forward is to be a little bit less strict on complex bans. Yes, I know we'll hear all the tired old slippery slope rhetoric, but let's be reasonable here. We are all rational human beings. I think we are capable of using our judgment to tell the difference between a satisfactory complex ban, and a needless complex ban. For example, allowing Excadrill without Sand Rush back into OU would be fine, but allowing Arceus at level 55 holding a Nanab Berry into OU is silly. They're logical equivalents, but our decision making is based on subjective values, in which formal logic bears little weight.
PS: I know we're not supposed to name names, but would it be OK to do so if we're just using them as examples to support a fundamental point? It's a little hard to explain some things without contextualising them, and I'm not criticising specific facets of the metagame.
The biggest reason this metagame is bad is because 5th gen focused way too heavily on offense, to a point where the OU council could do nothing but damage limitation. Clearly Gamefreak know that their biggest audience is young children. Young children care far more about face meltingly awesome power in their pokemon than solid defensive stats. I mean let's be serious here; of those of you who played BW's story line, who actually used a ferrothorn? I know that is naming something, but it's just an example.
So because of this inherent bias towards offensive power, the 5th generation was doomed from the start to be a crappy metagame. While the OU council has been criticised for being ban-happy, what were they supposed to do about it? They have done, in my opinion, an admirable job of keeping the metagame at the very least stable, if not particularly enjoyable.
I think the way forward is to be a little bit less strict on complex bans. Yes, I know we'll hear all the tired old slippery slope rhetoric, but let's be reasonable here. We are all rational human beings. I think we are capable of using our judgment to tell the difference between a satisfactory complex ban, and a needless complex ban. For example, allowing Excadrill without Sand Rush back into OU would be fine, but allowing Arceus at level 55 holding a Nanab Berry into OU is silly. They're logical equivalents, but our decision making is based on subjective values, in which formal logic bears little weight.
PS: I know we're not supposed to name names, but would it be OK to do so if we're just using them as examples to support a fundamental point? It's a little hard to explain some things without contextualising them, and I'm not criticising specific facets of the metagame.
I'm sorry SmashBrosBrawl but it looks like you never played against a trapper.
Your "50/50 predictions" are just the visible part of the iceberg and it seems like you never tried to actually understand PenguinX's points.
Say, I got Lando+Keldeo+Ttar.
You count on Latias or something like that to check Keldeo/Lando.
I got my Keldeo on the field, you switch to Latias to take the hit.
Next turn I attack.
What do you do ? - Switch and let my sweeper free to damage anything coming
- Kill my Keldeo and die as I put Ttar right after
Without any need to outpredict you, I killed the wall I wanted to kill. There was no "skill" involved, I didnt even try to outplay you, I brainlessly applied my team's strategy.
Next step is you saying "it's one for one and I got the momentum".
Wrong, I traded an offensive part of my core made for the wall breaking (and I could have done the same with Lando instead of Keldeo, I chose who I wanted to sacrifice) for one of your crucial defensive threats.
And, it's pokemon's basics that a defensive pokemon has more value in a core than an offensive one (simply, because by luring you, my pokemon did his offensive job, and I can overload your defensive backbone).
It exists since 3G, however it had a lot of weak points (only trapping grounded mons, pursuit users being weak as fuck or unviable). Now, it's up to us to say "there is a line we should not cross".
To me, Shadow Tag is this line. Obviously it is not too present so we don't mind it at the moment, but still, it's uncompetitive in my humble opinion because there is no way you can really play around it, even if you're smarter than its user.
Your "50/50 predictions" are just the visible part of the iceberg and it seems like you never tried to actually understand PenguinX's points.
Say, I got Lando+Keldeo+Ttar.
You count on Latias or something like that to check Keldeo/Lando.
I got my Keldeo on the field, you switch to Latias to take the hit.
Next turn I attack.
What do you do ? - Switch and let my sweeper free to damage anything coming
- Kill my Keldeo and die as I put Ttar right after
Without any need to outpredict you, I killed the wall I wanted to kill. There was no "skill" involved, I didnt even try to outplay you, I brainlessly applied my team's strategy.
Next step is you saying "it's one for one and I got the momentum".
Wrong, I traded an offensive part of my core made for the wall breaking (and I could have done the same with Lando instead of Keldeo, I chose who I wanted to sacrifice) for one of your crucial defensive threats.
And, it's pokemon's basics that a defensive pokemon has more value in a core than an offensive one (simply, because by luring you, my pokemon did his offensive job, and I can overload your defensive backbone).
It exists since 3G, however it had a lot of weak points (only trapping grounded mons, pursuit users being weak as fuck or unviable). Now, it's up to us to say "there is a line we should not cross".
To me, Shadow Tag is this line. Obviously it is not too present so we don't mind it at the moment, but still, it's uncompetitive in my humble opinion because there is no way you can really play around it, even if you're smarter than its user.
There is too much to read it all, but I would like to state my opinion anyway, even if it was mentioned already. This is B2W2 OU, all pokemon but about 25 can be used this tier. The combinations are endless but people always end up using the same f***ing mons every time. Yes, some pokemon are just garbage and can never be used competitively but there are many that can. Therefore, no, I do not think that so many pokemon suck is the reason that this happens. My opinion is that people are scared to take risks. Personally, each time I make is based off a pokemon that is great and can wreck teams that is not getting the usage it deserves. People are afraid of a little failure and that causes us to be playing a stale metagame. Yes, I have had some teams that utterly fail but trying new things is what helps us find the hidden gems of our metagame. This would help vary the metagame and make it more fun to be playing in OU. Every battle, you would have no idea what you could be going up against. I know there is no way to regulate this but I ask that some people do try this. Anyone on my side here?
I'm with you. People refusing to use anything but the top-tier threats is killing the OU meta.
I understand that. But can we do? We dont have a problem to focus on. Is it ttar, is it keldeo, is it landorus, is it dugtrio? I just dont know what to do with this meta anymore. Everything is overpowered, removing something just opens up new rooms for something else. Thats why i feel like the influx of offensive threats is so unhealthy for the meta and theres little we can do about that.
I have to agree with Remedy. An ability that completely takes away a user's ability to switch has no place in a competitive metagame. It broke Wobbuffet in Gen IV, and even now, the ability is very potent and easy to use. That Shadow Tag sees very little usage is no argument for not considering all the downsides to having this ability around, and Wobbuffet itself was banned despite in DPP despite being fairly rare.
Shadow Tag itself is kinda broken ,but what you have to understand this is Ou.You have U-Turn and Volt-Switch ,and the only time a trapper can really come in is after one of its teammates have been taken out.Even then you all these powerful pokemon in Ou.Landorus doesn't care if you have Shadow Tag it is just going to destory your pokemon or U-Turn.Scizor for example is weak to a certain trapper with Magnet Pull ,however, Scizor carries Superpower ,so in the end you have to know what move your opponent is going to use.Because if Scizor use Superpower(or U-Turn) then you failed to trap your opponent pokemon.A arena trap trapper is good for taking out heatran for sun teams.Heatran now has to run shed shell or Air balloon to not be trapped.From my post you can see that Shadow Tag(or trapping ability) does Influence the Metagame ,but from actually thinking outside the box people have came up with a way to bypass these abilities to keep the Metagame from banning another poke.The argument is not that great ,but i does explain why the ou metagame is like this.
We never really adapted to the Metagame environment.We just ban and let another threat become the center of the metagame.If we were to adapt it might be the way to stop this cycle.
Hope my argument doesn't suck too bad.
1. Team matchup - You look at Team Preview and see that you have no chance.
2. Too many threats to prepare for - What the team matchup issue stems from. The way the metagame's been handled, it's impossible to make a team that would be prepared for all of them. You are forced to carry specific crap to attempt to counter one threat or playstyle and then another to deal with another. You need two checks/counters nowadays for some of these threats, and when you need to build for more of them, you have no chance to be creative with the team. I'm not saying a lot of threats are bad (it's actually good and makes sure there is variety in the game), but the sheer power of the shit in BW is too much. Look at DP. Very strong offensive threats (and new stuff popping up even now), but you can actually still experiment with a couple creative sets or underused Pokemon in OU.
3. The constant changing metagame - Between official Dream World releases, released Pokemon, event moves, and Smogon's Suspect tests, the games changes way too often to even be called competitive. The metagame is literally different every month. Like Chaos said in the Livecast, the team he made previously was completely obsolete. Not only that, it pretty much demands another learning process of the current meta that takes days to be fully accustomed to. And people are still clamoring for moves to be banned even when XY releases in four months.
2. Too many threats to prepare for - What the team matchup issue stems from. The way the metagame's been handled, it's impossible to make a team that would be prepared for all of them. You are forced to carry specific crap to attempt to counter one threat or playstyle and then another to deal with another. You need two checks/counters nowadays for some of these threats, and when you need to build for more of them, you have no chance to be creative with the team. I'm not saying a lot of threats are bad (it's actually good and makes sure there is variety in the game), but the sheer power of the shit in BW is too much. Look at DP. Very strong offensive threats (and new stuff popping up even now), but you can actually still experiment with a couple creative sets or underused Pokemon in OU.
3. The constant changing metagame - Between official Dream World releases, released Pokemon, event moves, and Smogon's Suspect tests, the games changes way too often to even be called competitive. The metagame is literally different every month. Like Chaos said in the Livecast, the team he made previously was completely obsolete. Not only that, it pretty much demands another learning process of the current meta that takes days to be fully accustomed to. And people are still clamoring for moves to be banned even when XY releases in four months.
4. Game Freak - No names, but let's be honest here. They made this mess to begin with. They were doing good four generations straight, then went "Fuck it." Well, they've always had this vendetta against the game's fans for years, but the changes in BW absolutely made no sense and was completely opposite of what they would have done in previous games.
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