Data Candles of Known Brightness: OU edition

[Age of Kings]

Light Metal Scizor is the ability of choice on the first set in the OU Analysis, I don't really know why though.

Because when it holds Scizorite, it reduces damage from Low Kick before it Mega Evolves which is actually fairly common.

 

[atomicllamas]

Are people actually saying that pressure Bisharp isn't a candle, lol, maybe this is better off in VR.

 

[Jukain]

This is one of those "really bad, not candle" things. You can bring Inner Focus Alakazam in on something like a min SpA Togekiss and hit through flinchhax.

I think that there's a divide here between people looking at "fucking terrible" (there's a virtually limitless supply of this) and "literally useless." Antar's metric is "literally useless."

If that's the metric, then this entire concept is dumb.

Just saying.

 

[Hidious]

Are people actually saying that pressure Bisharp isn't a candle, lol, maybe this is better off in VR.

Not just people, the creator of the thread

 

[TROP]

itt: we justify terrible sets you should never be using/only the low ladder uses with terrible excuses "but but it has a niche"

quoting myself because i can
and because some players are bad enough to justify bad sets with even dumber reasons

 

[TROP]

Also, eviolite slowbro is not useless because if they trick the mon who used trick get a useless item instead of lefties/vest
pls remove

 

[Shiruba]

You could just have no item on the Slowbro, right?

 

[Hidious]

Also, eviolite slowbro is not useless because if they trick it they get a useless item.
pls remove

Huh? Why not then just use something more useful to trick like specs or lagging tail?

 

[TROP]

You could just have no item on the Slowbro, right?

giving the opponent a useless item is better than giving them no item

 

[Afti]

For what it's worth, I'm going with what was laid out in the OP, but I'd be fine with raising the bar and saying that super-situational shit like Water Shuriken or Electivire or whatnot are candles, given that they're the sorts of things that are viable in OU only in the most tortured of thought experiments.

 

[Imanalt]

giving the opponent a useless item is better than giving them no item

agreeing, added knock off damage could be important

 

[Agent Gibbs]

Huh? Why not then just use something more useful to trick like specs or lagging tail?

Who cares if it's good? All that matter is it's functional.

To be clear, I personally think that the criteria should be expanded to include unviable albeit functional things, but a discussion like that would probably be a lot more subjective and detailed and would probably belong in Policy Review or Victory Road.

 

[TROP]

Huh? Why not then just use something more useful to trick like specs or lagging tail?

Because lagging tail won't stop pranksters from crippling my team

 

[Hidious]

giving the opponent a useless item is better than giving them no item

You use trick to cripple the opponent with an item they would hate to have not just to take away their item. If slowbro is using trick, he will trick a choice specs because it fucks up walls by licking them into 1 move. Losing lefties for eviolite cripples them no more than taking a knock off

 

[Age of Kings]

@people bitching: Honestly, I'm unsure what the metric is. I agree with Afti's post, no one argued that those things were good or that we would run them so fucking chill lol.

The idea is basically to identify things in the usage stats that have absolutely no place in the metagame, that is, moves, abilities and possibly Pokemon that have zero competitive use, not even as gimmicks.

Most of what was mentioned are gimmicks, but this definition allows for situational things.

Note that in order for a Pokemon to whole-hog classify as a candle, it must be out-classed in each and every way by another Pokemon. It can't just be "X is a better spinner than Y," it has to be "X runs every move that Y can run, has better typing and better stats all around."

Very few things fit this definition imo, many of the things discussed fit the sentiment of statement A ("X is a better spinner than Y") but not statement B ("X runs every move that Y can run, has better typing and better stats all around").

Effective candles will be things that appear fairly frequently among newer/less competitive users but not at all at the upper echelons.

However, this is the thing that confuses me most. Going from the statements above, statement A applies more often than B. For this reason, I'm not sure what we're trying to determine.

 

[Jukain]

I'm posting way too much but umm

The point of using 1760s was to get good stats. Not a baseline of 'competitive' vs 'noncompetitive'. The fact is that this, which just encompasses literally the bottom of the bottom, entirely contradicts that decision. The possibility to use this as our weighting baseline legitimately scares me.

 

[TROP]

You use trick to cripple the opponent with an item they would hate to have not just to take away their item. If slowbro is using trick, he will trick a choice specs because it fucks up walls by licking them into 1 move. Losing lefties for eviolite cripples them no more than taking a knock off

Slowbro is the one getting tricked, not the opponent

 

[Antar]

I'm sorry, what is the point of this thread? It seems like we're listing things that zero use but to what end?

Try reading the OP and the thread linked to in the first sentence.

Jukain, if there were a shortage of crap stuff used on the ladder, I'd be going for the niches. But the case is that as long as Limber Ditto is around, there's no need to worry about Water Shuriken.

Folks, I love you all. I cannot believe how many responses I got in such a short period of time. I'll be choosing maybe a half dozen candles from this list, so at this point I think I have enough responses that I can lock this thread. Stay tuned for the UU and Doubles versions!

And no, Jukain, the purpose was to determine a baseline of what's competitive vs. noncompetitive. See my responses in the other thread. If you want to argue, argue there.