While this thread has devolved into utter garbodor, I feel like I have something invested in this conversation. The option to ban all forms of confusion is simply an outlandish offense to competitive battling due to the fact that confusion inducing moves are not the problem. Failing to notice the true issue is rather embarrassing as a whole, so let me make this clear. Confusion, used alone, is not only manageable, it is fair. Along with being fair, there are competitive uses. And although smogon may never choose a confusion move as the advertised set, there are reasons to use it. Before I continue, I reaffirm my stance to be that banning prankster/swagger as a combination is acceptable if really needed. However, I will point out in this preceding argument that this is a problem limited to teams that do not focus anything onto their defensive structuring.
The basis of the Pro-ban (All confusion) argument is that battling a swagger team is a coin flip. Not only this, but that coin flip is largely unfair, based towards the opponent. Not only that, but that this strategy is Unfair/uncompetitive. However, most of this is wrong. Confusion is, as we know, a 50/50 move. The power of the recoil from confusion is based on the attack stat hitting the defense stat, hence the larger the attack, the larger the hit. This is obvious and common knowledge. But what it means is that only offensive pokemon take large damage here. SpAtt pokemon are spared a bit, as are almost all strong defensive pokemon.
But, wins based on a coin flip? This is untrue. I can give you a team that is viable that will never, ever lose to a coin flip of Prankster/swagger. The amount of bad luck from a pure swagger team would be unachievable. The team is simply any standard stall team running a fairy cleric or pink blob for a cleric. Which, if you know stall, is essentially all of them. So the easy question of why stall wins is answered with "There is a defensive presence that simply cannot be killed by unboosted attacks". This is generally true of stall. And variant of stall will survive. Many defensive "balanced" teams will win above 70% of the time. The issue lies, as I've stated before, as you go up the offensive hierarchy. Pokemon such as Dragonite, Pinsir-mega and other HO/BO offensive based pokemon simply cannot stand this strategy. The coin flip only exists in the more offensive parts of teams.
I mention this specifically again because of the Kyurem-Black case, where a pokemon KNOWN to be an incredible detriment to a specific style was left in the game. This should be basis enough to recognize that one style being affected by a single pokemon is no longer enough for a ban. Say hi to Mega Garchomp, Kyurem-black and Charizard-Y, pokemon that still exist and can run holes through stall. Say hello to Talonflame, a pokemon that single handedly terrifies hyper offensive teams. And Mega Pinsir, who is probably the best at disrupting the 'cookie cutter' bulky team due to taking out Conkeldurr with ease (among other things).
Is this coin flip unfair? Well, the question of being unfair is much subjective, but I'd say it's no more unfair than me getting frozen on a crucial turn, therefore costing me the game. No more unfair than Jirachi, who could absolutely wreck teams in BW2 with that dreaded para-flinching set. While most people chose to run HO and avoid this issue, I ran stall for most of the generation and faced it endlessly. And certainly, no more unfair than Togekiss is this generation with paraflinching, offering near the same amount of chance for you to move (You have less chance to move under serene grace paraflinch fyi). The argument made, of course, is that in Paraflinch, the opponent has to focus on attacking. That's a drawback, sure. But so is handing the opponent a +2 and them snapping out of confusion. In fact, in terms of consistency, Paraflinch is FAR more consistent. But, we've dealt with "Unfair" parts of the meta for a long time. Evasion was eliminated because there was nothing you could do about it. You can switch out of confusion, cleric off a paralyze. Offensive teams can use ground/electric types.
Is the strategy "Uncompetitive" or even a strategy at all? Well, certainly it is a strategy. As stated previously, in multiple different ways, confusion performs multiple roles. Parafusion is just one of them. Phazing is by far one of the absolute best uses, having no minus priority, possibly causing the enemy to not attack next turn, and giving you free hazard damage/turns. Certainly, this is a strategy. Parafusion on non-prankster pokemon happens to be completely fair, as well. It's easy enough to counter, it serves a purpose, and there's no plus priority to cause every to start FTFO over it. Is a team of PranksterSwagger pokemon uncompetitive? Perhaps it is. But the key word here is PRANKSTERSwagger. This is NOT confusion alone causing the issue, it is the conjunction of prankster and swagger. Is CONFUSION uncompetitive? No, it is not. There are ways to outspeed the large majority of pokemon using confusion, it takes a slot, and it has strategic value.
Regardless of it being a "Normal" move, there is no reason to overextend the banning to confusion inducing moves. How often do you actually see Confusion outside of a prankster pokemon? It most definitely is rare. But not only is it not the reason, Smogon does not justify a ban saying "Well, it's a garbage move anyways, no one will miss it". As long as a pokemon move HAS uses, there will be people using it. And although PranksterSwagger may be seen as rage inducing, it's funny to see people try to wrap their rage on the whole part of Confusion in general. The fact that I can use confusion to phaze is such an undervalued asset to stall. I have a team on record using a confuse ray lanturn, which would not only help make up for lack of recovery, it gave me free hazard damage and time to heal bell. Mismagius, Quagsire, Umbreon and others all have reason to run ConfuseRay/Swagger respectively on teams for a niche role (Mismagius as a cleric, Umbreon as a cleric to take advantage of bulk, Quagsire taking advantage of Unaware).
Lastly, the issue I have, not only with the terrible arguments made on both sides, is the lack of recognizing the root of this issue. When you say "ban all confusion" without supporting, I can't help but feel it is simply a case of "Lol I don't use it, so why bother if I just ban it all?". I'm almost certain that no one runs into confusion outside of prankster on any regular basis. If priority is such an issue coupled with swagger, then take away the issue. There's no reason to ban Serene grace because shaymin-sky is overpowered. Why ban confusion when the issue isn't confusion?
