I think because in the end most people just end up regurgitating the same points throughout the whole suspect. and by the point this suspect came around, lots of people had already made their decision and there wasnt much real discussion going on. however, I would really like to see posting reqs back if possible
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np: Doubles OU Stage 4 - Infamous | Jirachi (Stays in DOU) | Swagger is Banned
- Thread starter Arcticblast
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I think because in the end most people just end up regurgitating the same points throughout the whole suspect. and by the point this suspect came around, lots of people had already made their decision and there wasnt much real discussion going on. however, I would really like to see posting reqs back if possible
If we're wanting to weed out the people that don't really care about this metagame, the 2 part suspect tests with a tighter time window is usually a good way to deter people. The more difficult and time-consuming the test, the less likely someone is to do it for their TC badge.
Sources:I grinded suspects for TC
Sources:I grinded suspects for TC
alternative suggestion: remove TC
disagreeing with drop suspects of mence and zekrom
mence was like 80% ban in the last test so it seems like a waste of time.
zekrom doesnt have like any problems at all that i feel would make it fit in to the tier, its every bit as powerful as a mega without the opportunity cost. you cant say "i want to unban a thing because it would be good in meta" like yeah no shit it would be good it has 680 bst with a sweet typing
edit: oh dawg's post was just him being salty, jirachi is nothing like zekrom you nerd
disagreeing with drop suspects of mence and zekrom
mence was like 80% ban in the last test so it seems like a waste of time.
zekrom doesnt have like any problems at all that i feel would make it fit in to the tier, its every bit as powerful as a mega without the opportunity cost. you cant say "i want to unban a thing because it would be good in meta" like yeah no shit it would be good it has 680 bst with a sweet typing
edit: oh dawg's post was just him being salty, jirachi is nothing like zekrom you nerd
Ancient Smogon debate. I think the consensus (highlight think here) is that paragraphs are so easy to copy, bullshit, or cheat on that it doesn't indicate whether or not you actually have an understanding of what makes something broken or not. Since the amount of people "phased out" are limited the paragraphs become extra work with little gain. I believe the DOU suspect process once had public paragraphs as a requirement which are even easier to bs than private ones.
Edit: I am personally down for a Salamence retest but my main, personal reasoning was that I didn't participate in the first.
The main reason all these unexperienced players were able to vote is obviously how easy it was to get regs. The ladder itself is probably the worst one of all Smogon tiers (maybe alongside with Ubers, not sure how good or bad that one is nowadays tho), a lot of established players use weird teams not able to beat standard stuff and after most of the experienced players got their regs, pretty much anyone was able to perform a 20-0 ladderrun just by having Kanga on their team.
I noticed this during my ladderrun: I didn't play Dubs for a long time before that, just brought a team that looked fun, lead Scrafty + Gardevoir in every single game and even tho the team just lost to shalk, I felt it was way too easy to get regs. Looking at most other peoples' results, this applies to nearly everyone (I've actually had one of the worse results compared to other runs).
Analyzing a doubles-metagame is way harder than a singles one. While saying "xy is impossible to counter" as a valid argument for a ban in the latter, the former doesn't even have something like "countering". You need to have put a lot of thought into doubles in general until you understand how it works and then do the same with the meta you're looking at atm. The dynamics are completely different from what people know from Singles which is why I think there are very few people that are actually good in the two main doubles metas that are out there, being SDubs and VGC (definitely not counting me as one of them). Now, some people have spent a lot of time trying to fully understand this sensible meta, which is why it's a shame so many "j4f-voters" are disrupting the result. My suggestion would be to only do regs-tournaments in order to get the voting rights and, same as TFC said, exclude people from voting if it's obvious they don't know what's going in the meta / suspect test.
I noticed this during my ladderrun: I didn't play Dubs for a long time before that, just brought a team that looked fun, lead Scrafty + Gardevoir in every single game and even tho the team just lost to shalk, I felt it was way too easy to get regs. Looking at most other peoples' results, this applies to nearly everyone (I've actually had one of the worse results compared to other runs).
Analyzing a doubles-metagame is way harder than a singles one. While saying "xy is impossible to counter" as a valid argument for a ban in the latter, the former doesn't even have something like "countering". You need to have put a lot of thought into doubles in general until you understand how it works and then do the same with the meta you're looking at atm. The dynamics are completely different from what people know from Singles which is why I think there are very few people that are actually good in the two main doubles metas that are out there, being SDubs and VGC (definitely not counting me as one of them). Now, some people have spent a lot of time trying to fully understand this sensible meta, which is why it's a shame so many "j4f-voters" are disrupting the result. My suggestion would be to only do regs-tournaments in order to get the voting rights and, same as TFC said, exclude people from voting if it's obvious they don't know what's going in the meta / suspect test.
I think we should look at Azumarill, given in it you have a pokemon with a solid typing (threatening popular things like Lando-T, Heatran, Keldeo, etc), good stats (factoring in Huge Power anyway), and the ability to set up to +6 while packing a priority move with STAB (which is probably the actually notable issue imo). I mean it's literally a threat that got talked about a ton in this last suspect, so I don't see why not.
Diancie-Mega could also be looked at, though I don't feel like it's really that big an issue.
[insert joke about legalizing Mollux here]
As for the topic of reqs, I have discussed before that I feel the suspect process needs changes given the differences between Singles in comparison to Doubles people have mentioned above. This being said, discouraging newer players from voting seems very much like the wrong way to go. I don't really understand why exactly posting requirements weren't in place (I was under the impression they were as usual), but I think its worth noting that when someone says their opinion and a lot of people disagree they do end up getting some heat for it, which imo intimidates some newer people into not wanting to post. I guess if that's what you want you could go for it, but it doesn't seem to address issues that I think are more important, including the facts that many people came into this suspect already decided on what to vote (which honestly defeats the point of it being a suspect test), the fact that many people are more or less posting nonsense like "its hella annoying ban it" or "I really hate it let's ban it", or even "I like it so we voting no ban" and the fact that the ladder doesn't reflect the metagame that well, which thus means it contributes to the suspect discussion very little apart from running into other people laddering for the suspect reqs. Heck, I'm looking over the Jirachi suspect discussion as I am writing and I see people shit-talking each other, like can we not.
If I had any suggestions, I wouldn't try to make ladder reqs that big a deal and instead try to focus on making discussion better and more open-minded, since that's where the most important stuff happens (seeing people posting replays against other accomplished players to strengthen their points and more ideas being thrown around would be great imo since it shows a lot more thinking is going on in the discussion). Less theory talking and more in-battle examples would do a lot of good as well, considering how often in the suspect I saw posts discussing all these odd and confusing scenarios without just visual demonstrating them in a realistic environment. People should do that more please. I wouldn't recommend forcing discussion posts to get requirements though because if anything it encourages everyone just saying the same thing to get their reqs in without having to put in the actual thought around whether a threat needs to be banned or not.
If we were to do anything about the issue of people who don't know the meta changing votes I would recommend some sort of requirement for how long you have been involved in Doubles discussion on forums and such, since that would mean someone couldn't just suspect ladder out of nowhere, get reqs, and then vote with minimal tier knowledge. That is imo the compromise that off the top of my head is most inclusive towards new players, though like I have said the more notable players would need to be friendly and encouraging if this were to work out. It also kinda feels a bit elitist to restrict a suspect like this to begin with, so I can't say I would push for anything like this.
Diancie-Mega could also be looked at, though I don't feel like it's really that big an issue.
[insert joke about legalizing Mollux here]
As for the topic of reqs, I have discussed before that I feel the suspect process needs changes given the differences between Singles in comparison to Doubles people have mentioned above. This being said, discouraging newer players from voting seems very much like the wrong way to go. I don't really understand why exactly posting requirements weren't in place (I was under the impression they were as usual), but I think its worth noting that when someone says their opinion and a lot of people disagree they do end up getting some heat for it, which imo intimidates some newer people into not wanting to post. I guess if that's what you want you could go for it, but it doesn't seem to address issues that I think are more important, including the facts that many people came into this suspect already decided on what to vote (which honestly defeats the point of it being a suspect test), the fact that many people are more or less posting nonsense like "its hella annoying ban it" or "I really hate it let's ban it", or even "I like it so we voting no ban" and the fact that the ladder doesn't reflect the metagame that well, which thus means it contributes to the suspect discussion very little apart from running into other people laddering for the suspect reqs. Heck, I'm looking over the Jirachi suspect discussion as I am writing and I see people shit-talking each other, like can we not.
If I had any suggestions, I wouldn't try to make ladder reqs that big a deal and instead try to focus on making discussion better and more open-minded, since that's where the most important stuff happens (seeing people posting replays against other accomplished players to strengthen their points and more ideas being thrown around would be great imo since it shows a lot more thinking is going on in the discussion). Less theory talking and more in-battle examples would do a lot of good as well, considering how often in the suspect I saw posts discussing all these odd and confusing scenarios without just visual demonstrating them in a realistic environment. People should do that more please. I wouldn't recommend forcing discussion posts to get requirements though because if anything it encourages everyone just saying the same thing to get their reqs in without having to put in the actual thought around whether a threat needs to be banned or not.
If we were to do anything about the issue of people who don't know the meta changing votes I would recommend some sort of requirement for how long you have been involved in Doubles discussion on forums and such, since that would mean someone couldn't just suspect ladder out of nowhere, get reqs, and then vote with minimal tier knowledge. That is imo the compromise that off the top of my head is most inclusive towards new players, though like I have said the more notable players would need to be friendly and encouraging if this were to work out. It also kinda feels a bit elitist to restrict a suspect like this to begin with, so I can't say I would push for anything like this.
Maybe require those voting to have a history of actually playing the tier. Say, you have to play for 6 months (two recorded finishes above round 3 in Seasonals is an ide) before you can vote in a suspect test. I don't think people who have zero investment and interest in the tier should be suspect voting, not on "morals" or anything but on principle - you have people who don't know tier progression voting and that's not good at all. You need to at least understand some of the big picture in order to understand if something is broken or not.
I really don't know if the influx of new players affected the vote or not, not going to claim one thing or another, but regardless of that I think it's good to take a look at who you allow to test going foreard. I also think the reqs could be slightly harder, I went 27-3 to start out and I think maybe one or two of those games were ones I had a reasonable chance to lose (yeah, I lost three but iirc two of those had a significant amount of bullshit.) Once I hit like 1450-1500 I started actually getting competitive games and ended up finishing 6-6 at the end, some of my losses were pretty embarrassing since I was using a nobstomp team and faced actually good teams.
Tl;dr look into tightening up suspect voting
I really don't know if the influx of new players affected the vote or not, not going to claim one thing or another, but regardless of that I think it's good to take a look at who you allow to test going foreard. I also think the reqs could be slightly harder, I went 27-3 to start out and I think maybe one or two of those games were ones I had a reasonable chance to lose (yeah, I lost three but iirc two of those had a significant amount of bullshit.) Once I hit like 1450-1500 I started actually getting competitive games and ended up finishing 6-6 at the end, some of my losses were pretty embarrassing since I was using a nobstomp team and faced actually good teams.
Tl;dr look into tightening up suspect voting
Why are people complaining about who voted ban vs do not ban? I glanced over it and plenty of very knowledgeable players voted do not ban. Deo, qsns, kami, majorbowman, biosci, check, etc... as well as some grizzled policy veterans like Pocket, Nollan, Matt, Lolk, AuraRay, and myself.
Get over it. It didn't even get a simple majority and was nowhere near 60%. Removing "bad first time players" or whatever would not have changed that.
Get over it. It didn't even get a simple majority and was nowhere near 60%. Removing "bad first time players" or whatever would not have changed that.
This is bad. Not only is it elitist in that it actually denies people in using a suspect test as a motivation to learn a tier (i know some people don't learn but lol) there are many people who have been on the forums yet I cannot say with good conscience is more informed than any other random out there. Which brings this down to subjective requirements and the whole thing is ruined.
The main gripe i had was that the number of games you had to play against Jirachi. In the first 15~20 or so games, you don't even see a Jirachi, let alone Kangaskhan or any team that tries to actually win. In the next 15~20 or so games against people who try to win, we see that on the ladder Jirachi usage is only 6.22% on the ladder according to May Usage stats. This means that you only probably played against 3~5 Jirachis at most! This is unacceptable. It is very hard to learn anything in 3 games. You can, but it is difficult that we should not ask of everyone by default. In contrast, we see that Jirachi has a very high usage stat on tournaments, such as 30.85% in SPL 7 and a similar figure on DPL. Just letting people play against Jirachi for a respectable number of games would be amazing. 30% of 40 games is 12 games. Much better than 3!
The system doesn't give your average player trying to get suspect requirements any real way to learn about the metagame, and instead more on learning how Taunt Thundurus stuffs most stupid gimmicks on the ladder. And this heavily puts the burden on the players to go out of their way, get games against strong opponents, ask around. But given the general demographic we're looking at, asking people to be that type of Type-A, social and looking to go above and beyond to seek knowledge on their own without being prompted to, seems too much to ask. It comes down to the failure of the system as a whole.
As braverious says, I know ideally just tighten up suspect test is ideal. But at the same time I am aware that the newer philosophy of suspect tests is to make it more accessible to people, so I know that's not going to be approved. And there's the problem of how do you classify 0 interest / 0 investment? Should people who are genuinely interested but not yet invested be able to vote? If so where's the cutoff? Eventually there's gonna be a grey area of what constitutes interest. What about a guy only plays DOU ladder and no other tier but never posts, never plays tours or at plays at a very high level? Yeah he probably thinks he's surely interested and invested, but some of you may beg to differ. If anything I really like how Doubles brought the frequent tournamenting in form of seasonals and I would love to see you guys try out more frequent suspect tournaments and put more weight in those, ideally in combination with ladder suspect requirements.
edit: i think regardless of this specific vote, not letting people vote if their argument is "i like using it, you can use it too" is good. And I think this can be done without having to rely on subjective requirements like paragraphs.
I don't know if this has ever been suggested or not, but why is there not a second ladder that you must achieve reqs on? If we had a ladder that allowed jirachi and one that did not then you could have an accurate idea of how the metagame might shift. Also the idea of having the first time players or voters removed from voting is ridiculous. Why does someone have to be in the metagame for 6 months or play in seasonals to have a final say on the tier?
having 2 suspect ladders up simultaneously is a no-no, since it splits up the ladder activity. Only more active ladders like OU and maybe UU can afford to have 2 suspect ladders up at the same time. We could have had 2 suspect ladders sequentially, taking one down and replacing it with another.
Even if we discounted the votes of "randoms," the outcome would not have changed, since a good portion of "randoms" also voted Ban.
Braverius, (and Dawgie, MajorBowman, SamVGC, Jamesspeed1, mrbopper, Biosci, TheFourthChaser), as VGC players who have experienced a meta with Azu but without Jirachi, you players bring a unique pov to the discussion - how powerful was BD Azumarill in VGC meta? Granted, VGC and Doubles are two different formats, where a set up like Belly Drum may not be worth the investment in VGC when you only need to knock out four mons and can just inflict damage more quickly with Kangaskhan, Gardevoir, or (Mega) Mence. However, I am still interested in how Azumarill fared in VGC. What usually supported or paired up with it? Was BDrum even the best set for Azu?
#azutestwhen
Even if we discounted the votes of "randoms," the outcome would not have changed, since a good portion of "randoms" also voted Ban.
Braverius, (and Dawgie, MajorBowman, SamVGC, Jamesspeed1, mrbopper, Biosci, TheFourthChaser), as VGC players who have experienced a meta with Azu but without Jirachi, you players bring a unique pov to the discussion - how powerful was BD Azumarill in VGC meta? Granted, VGC and Doubles are two different formats, where a set up like Belly Drum may not be worth the investment in VGC when you only need to knock out four mons and can just inflict damage more quickly with Kangaskhan, Gardevoir, or (Mega) Mence. However, I am still interested in how Azumarill fared in VGC. What usually supported or paired up with it? Was BDrum even the best set for Azu?
#azutestwhen
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Azumarill was primarily stupid in VGC15 because of Smeargle. It's primarily stupid in DOU because of Jirachi. I guess my mindset said Jirachi might be the culprit because of that but hey, maybe Azu is worth a test. I personally wouldn't mind it, but I think there are potentially more pressing issues that should be examined first.
I think Azu got really dumb when we started to see the Lopunny/Smeargle/Tauros/Azu teams, but on standard teams it could be checked by a lot of common Safety Goggles Pokemon like Thundurus, and Amoonguss actually served as a viable Azu check due to the premier redirector not having Safety Goggles as one of its most common items. With DV banned, I think Azu becomes pretty healthy without Jirachi.
Also, I think suspect voting does need revision. Regardless of how this particular suspect worked out, in the future having people that dont even play Doubles voting is pretty dumb. Its less of an issue with singles suspects since metagame comparisons can be made between tiers, but Doubles is completely different. I dont think a 6 month requirement is necessarily healthy, but something like having won at least one set in any doubles forum tour would probably be appropriate. Just something to imply that you've at least played the tier before and aren't just doing the suspect to get a badge.
Might add more later but I'm at work presently.
Also, I think suspect voting does need revision. Regardless of how this particular suspect worked out, in the future having people that dont even play Doubles voting is pretty dumb. Its less of an issue with singles suspects since metagame comparisons can be made between tiers, but Doubles is completely different. I dont think a 6 month requirement is necessarily healthy, but something like having won at least one set in any doubles forum tour would probably be appropriate. Just something to imply that you've at least played the tier before and aren't just doing the suspect to get a badge.
Might add more later but I'm at work presently.
I feel like my post was in the starting momentum of "voting needs to change" sentiment, as far as this thread goes, so I'll respond here. Since I don't care about the result I feel I can say without bias that Smogon in general should take action against voters who freely admit their voting logic is poor. The possibility of the result being largely affected by such faulty decision making is something that should be avoided when possible.
Dude I know '16 has scarred you but do you mean "Amoonguss"? I don't remember Smeargle having much influence in '15 until that dumb Shinon Tauros crap late in the season.
I ran Azumarill a lot in the latter end of '15, Azumarill was a perfect fit on CHALK-esque teams and really didn't look too far off from the DOU Bunnies archetype. My NorCal regionals team (should've won that regional but that's a salty story for another time) was Kang / Azu / Amoonguss / Thundurus / Landorus-T / Aegislash. Getting either PuP or BD boosts was pretty easy to do and it was an archetype that covered just about everything else. Safety Goggles Thundurus was a really cool guy. Certain Rain matchups were annoying and I expected this to be where the meta was going had '16 been a 2013 style metagame.
Not totally against an Azumarill test but I think the argument that things feel more broken due to support Pokemon like Jirachi is a legitimate one. I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of a DPP style suspect test in which we just try out various metagames. What is Megamence or Azumarill like without Jirachi? What is Jirachi supporting without these 2? It may be worth looking in to though considering SunMoon isn't too far off it's fair to say time is too limited.
I'm not sure if such an idea could ever be accomplished but a private ladder for the people that obtained reqs would let other people who aren't entirely familiar with the tier play at a higher level. And instead of achieving coil it would be a point benchmark on the ladder.
what the fuck are you talking about take azelfie lol. "a private ladder for people that obtained reqs" does not let people who arent familiar with the tier play a higher level; how does that logic even make sense? it would make it a much lower level because all of the competent players who already got reqs would be taken out of the ladder and all the shitty ladder players would remain, decreasing the overall quality of the ladder. "instead of coil its a point benchmark" is literally saying reqs should be based off of elo instead of gxe (what coil comes from), which is inherently bad and the reason gxe exists in the first place is to show a ranking system that isnt complete shit like elo.
In terms of Azumarill in VGC 2015, my thoughts have basically already been echoed by Zach and Sam, but they've probably missed something which is worth mentioning.
That is that Mega Salamence was a legal Pokemon in VGC 2015, which made controlling Azumarill a little easier, and vastly limited the teams azumarill had such a positive matchup against.
It's worth mentioning that I don't think mega salamence should be banned in doubles ou, but in the less then optimal format we have now that doesn't include Salamence, Azumarill can Ohko all of the Used Megas, (Kang, Diancie, charizard, Gengar, Gardevoir). (please don't respond to this with bulky kang / charizard y calcs, chip damage isnt hard).
As a result, because the tier is somewhat sub-optimal in my opinion, Azumarill, because of Mence's ban is far more potent then it should be, and as a chain effect of "such a great ban 80% majority omg", we are left with azumarill - especially now with approved Jirachi Support being such a big deal. Azumarill having an archetype it was so poor against (mence / redirection (especially amoongus) / electric type) in vgc 2015, was a large deal. I'm not convinced a comparable archetype Azumarill (especially with jirachi) is that poor against exists in Doubles ou.
My conclusion? I don't think Azumarill is worth a suspect test. However, I probably lean a lot further towards a suspect test as a result of the mence-less metagame, then friends of mine, such as Zach, Jake, Sam, and Blake might otherwise.
That is that Mega Salamence was a legal Pokemon in VGC 2015, which made controlling Azumarill a little easier, and vastly limited the teams azumarill had such a positive matchup against.
It's worth mentioning that I don't think mega salamence should be banned in doubles ou, but in the less then optimal format we have now that doesn't include Salamence, Azumarill can Ohko all of the Used Megas, (Kang, Diancie, charizard, Gengar, Gardevoir). (please don't respond to this with bulky kang / charizard y calcs, chip damage isnt hard).
As a result, because the tier is somewhat sub-optimal in my opinion, Azumarill, because of Mence's ban is far more potent then it should be, and as a chain effect of "such a great ban 80% majority omg", we are left with azumarill - especially now with approved Jirachi Support being such a big deal. Azumarill having an archetype it was so poor against (mence / redirection (especially amoongus) / electric type) in vgc 2015, was a large deal. I'm not convinced a comparable archetype Azumarill (especially with jirachi) is that poor against exists in Doubles ou.
My conclusion? I don't think Azumarill is worth a suspect test. However, I probably lean a lot further towards a suspect test as a result of the mence-less metagame, then friends of mine, such as Zach, Jake, Sam, and Blake might otherwise.
Nah, this isn't '16 scarring me, I think Amoonguss + Azumarill was generally healthy and was able to be teched for (god bless safety goggles). Once DV cheese came into play it made it a massive headache, though. I feel like Mew + Jirachi + Azumarill + Kanga generally does the same crap that the Shinon team did and as someone who's had a decent amount of experience using both, I don't think either is really healthy. I learned next to nothing about playing Pokemon when using Smeargle Tauros and similarly learned next to nothing when using "Bunnies". Both are relatively brainless cheese-spam concepts that don't really encourage critical thinking.
Back to the Kang/Azu/Genies/Aegi/Amoong team, though--since I think that was solid. I feel like to ensure you're okay against that team, anything with Goggles + WoW / Taunt / Electric or Grass move or another Amoonguss (or a combination of the two) was plenty to at least let yourself play Pokemon against it. Such techs were also useful in non-Azumarill matchups (Goggles Rotom-W, for example, was often nice vs Amoonguss/Garde/Heatran/Lando-T cores) and weren't chained to one matchup. The team you mentioned itself is also fine even when teched for, as it has enough options to compete even when there's dedicated preparation. That doesn't make it "broken" or anything, just makes it competitive. In the case of the other teams (Bunnies, Smeargle/Tauros), I think the amount of teching required basically was specifically for that team, making them a metagame outlier and nothing but a matchup game. That's the kind of stuff most people really dislike and understandably so.
Yeah I basically agree with what Zach/Sam/Luke said. Standard Azumarill/Kang/Amoonguss teams were certainly a top tier threat in VGC 2015 but weren't unbeatable by any means. This DOU bunnies stuff is much more mindless and takes way more to effectively check, which is a bit concerning.
However, as you could probably tell from my Do Not Ban vote, I don't think Jirachi is the problem. Azumarill is kinda dumb in this format for a few reasons, the lack of Mega Salamence being one of them like Luke said. Not many things resist Aqua Jet, and the stuff that does resist it gets dunked by Knock Off. Support mons like Jirachi and Mew certainly help make Azumarill become the menace it is, but I think Azu is still the root of the problem. I did the vast majority of my laddering for this suspect with bunnies and there's a reason my ID post said "Thanks Azumarill" and not "Thanks Jirachi."
I think redirection is a pretty healthy component of a doubles metagame. It adds another facet to battles that makes them more entertaining and skill intensive, and I think a well played redirection pokemon is a sign of a good player. With Jirachi out, you're mostly just left with Amoonguss, and everyone already runs multiple grass pokemon and/or Safety Goggles on every team so the redirection aspect is sometimes lost there. There's always Togekiss and the Clefs but there's a reason those see pretty limited use - they just aren't great and trying to shoehorn them onto teams is mostly suboptimal. I do agree that parts of Jirachi are stupid, 60% flinch chance with Iron Head is pretty silly, but if that was the only reason people used Jirachi I think you'd see dedicated Iron Head machines like in singles. Jirachi is purely a support Pokémon, so it would take its support being nigh unstoppable for me to think about voting to ban it. The positives Jirachi brings to the table for DOU outweigh the negatives in my opinion, which is why I voted do not ban.
Sorry to go a bit off topic, but since I seemed to be in a minority among some of the top players in this suspect I figured I'd give a bit of insight to my opinion. I respect the Ban opinions and I think some of the arguments presented on that side were pretty solid too, I just happen to disagree. But if you voted either way because "Jirachi is annoying to play against" or "I like using Jirachi XD" I hate you and you probably shouldn't vote in suspect tests ever again. As for a potential Azu suspect, I wouldn't be surprised to see one and I'd be more willing to consider voting ban than I was for Jirachi. But first we need to #FreeMegaMence
However, as you could probably tell from my Do Not Ban vote, I don't think Jirachi is the problem. Azumarill is kinda dumb in this format for a few reasons, the lack of Mega Salamence being one of them like Luke said. Not many things resist Aqua Jet, and the stuff that does resist it gets dunked by Knock Off. Support mons like Jirachi and Mew certainly help make Azumarill become the menace it is, but I think Azu is still the root of the problem. I did the vast majority of my laddering for this suspect with bunnies and there's a reason my ID post said "Thanks Azumarill" and not "Thanks Jirachi."
I think redirection is a pretty healthy component of a doubles metagame. It adds another facet to battles that makes them more entertaining and skill intensive, and I think a well played redirection pokemon is a sign of a good player. With Jirachi out, you're mostly just left with Amoonguss, and everyone already runs multiple grass pokemon and/or Safety Goggles on every team so the redirection aspect is sometimes lost there. There's always Togekiss and the Clefs but there's a reason those see pretty limited use - they just aren't great and trying to shoehorn them onto teams is mostly suboptimal. I do agree that parts of Jirachi are stupid, 60% flinch chance with Iron Head is pretty silly, but if that was the only reason people used Jirachi I think you'd see dedicated Iron Head machines like in singles. Jirachi is purely a support Pokémon, so it would take its support being nigh unstoppable for me to think about voting to ban it. The positives Jirachi brings to the table for DOU outweigh the negatives in my opinion, which is why I voted do not ban.
Sorry to go a bit off topic, but since I seemed to be in a minority among some of the top players in this suspect I figured I'd give a bit of insight to my opinion. I respect the Ban opinions and I think some of the arguments presented on that side were pretty solid too, I just happen to disagree. But if you voted either way because "Jirachi is annoying to play against" or "I like using Jirachi XD" I hate you and you probably shouldn't vote in suspect tests ever again. As for a potential Azu suspect, I wouldn't be surprised to see one and I'd be more willing to consider voting ban than I was for Jirachi. But first we need to #FreeMegaMence
As a big user of Azumarill in VGC with me getting through the Worlds Last Chance Qualifier in 2014 and using Azumarill to make Day 2 at U.S. Nationals in 2015, I can say that Azumarill is just a strong and fantastic Pokémon. In my experience, Azumarill has just been a Pokémon that is able to sweep teams if well supported. Looking back at 2015 U.S. Nationals, my team heavily supported Azumarill using Clefairy with Friend Guard and Heal Pulse to keep it around. No matter what format, Azumarill has been good after 6th gen. The reason I didn't ban Jirachi is because in my opinion, it wasn't as different as other redirector users. It has great typing and stats and yes Serene Grace Iron Head but the moves I click on Jirachi are usually just Follow Me and Protect. I think even if Jirachi was banned, we would just see a rise of other redirectors such as Togekiss, Clefable, Clefairy and Amoonguss. In my current opinion, Clefable is better because of its Unaware ability and the fact it is not weak to common spread moves like Earthquake and Heat Wave in a format where Landorus, Charizard, Heatran are popular and the only nice thing is being able to resist Kangaskhan's attacks. Even if Jirachi is gone, players are still going to be able to sweep with Azumarill and other set up mons so getting rid of Jirachi does nothing that would drastically change this tier since there are other redirectors.
I would also like to confirm that I agree with many of these above posts, and voted no ban for Jirachi as well for similar reasons (not really a VGC player but yeah).
To clarify on my previous post, I am not saying I support the logic that inexperienced players were the reason behind the result, I was simply agreeing for my own reasons why I think the suspect process could use some improvement. I kinda regret that last paragraph a bit since it took the focus off of the other things I was saying, such as how discussion could be made more of a thing and how laddering shouldn't imo be as big for reqs as it currently. I definitely don't think this suspect was "illegitimate" in any way.
I definitely support freeing Mega Mence, I just feel like looking at Azumarill first may be better simply because of the fact that Salamencite was the suspect test before this last Jirachi one (iirc) so it would make more sense than kinda just suspecting the same thing constantly.
-EDIT @ below post-
Ah ok nvm then
To clarify on my previous post, I am not saying I support the logic that inexperienced players were the reason behind the result, I was simply agreeing for my own reasons why I think the suspect process could use some improvement. I kinda regret that last paragraph a bit since it took the focus off of the other things I was saying, such as how discussion could be made more of a thing and how laddering shouldn't imo be as big for reqs as it currently. I definitely don't think this suspect was "illegitimate" in any way.
I definitely support freeing Mega Mence, I just feel like looking at Azumarill first may be better simply because of the fact that Salamencite was the suspect test before this last Jirachi one (iirc) so it would make more sense than kinda just suspecting the same thing constantly.
-EDIT @ below post-
Ah ok nvm then
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Skymin was suspected in-between
kinda gives his argument even more weight lol, The last two mons to get banned were Salamence and Skymin, it can be argued that Azumarill being as fantastic as it is should almost have been predictable at that point.
So there's a lot of fantastic comparisons made to VGC 15 in terms of Azumarill but I think a vital element that is missing is the prominence of Talonflame being a huge stop/revenge killer of Azumarill. Being able to outpriority/use Quick Guard, and also slay Jirachi is a pretty big deal in terms of Azumarill's strength. While Azumarill is strong, it's not suspect worthy in any sense. It's got huge difficulties in setting up and is heavily deterred by Talonflame, as well as stuff like Char Y innately murdering Jirachi and halving AJet.
As for some comments on the suspecting process, I know there's some sentiment of too many randoms, make sure the voters are long time members of the community or more restrictive stuff to prevent random new people from influencing the vote but I'm definitely against that. 2600 COIL is fair enough, players essentially have to get a 3:1 win rate out of 60 games, which is difficult if you're completely new to the tier. In addition, I would caution against any kind of subjective conditions because those are dangerous. An easy solution would be to just take away TC points because then you avoid the riffraff who come over just for a suspect, but you can still announce the suspect and attract new players. When I laddered during LC suspect I wasn't like "yo lemme get this TC badge" but I was like "oh hey suspect huh I did have a team I saved from madoka's spl run let's hop on the ladder!".
Please re-suspect Skymin. The vote was literally rigged. DOU should be outraged more than we actually are about the Skymin suspect because it was a goddamn vote just like any other and suddenly on the day before the goddamn ballots were counted it was suddenly announced that we would have a 50% barrier to ban. What the literal fuck. In what goddamn vote would this actually slide? Could you imagine the election system just spontaneouly changing the day before the goddamn vote and then welp Kanye is president. Complete utter bullshit. Resuspect Skymin.
As an additional note Skymin is a huge Azumarill check that would probably resolve concerns about Azu being OP since it shreds it and can 1v1 post-setup Azumarill. Azumarill was like this cute thing that Haruno did all the time but wasn't a big meta threat until we banned Skymin.
As for some comments on the suspecting process, I know there's some sentiment of too many randoms, make sure the voters are long time members of the community or more restrictive stuff to prevent random new people from influencing the vote but I'm definitely against that. 2600 COIL is fair enough, players essentially have to get a 3:1 win rate out of 60 games, which is difficult if you're completely new to the tier. In addition, I would caution against any kind of subjective conditions because those are dangerous. An easy solution would be to just take away TC points because then you avoid the riffraff who come over just for a suspect, but you can still announce the suspect and attract new players. When I laddered during LC suspect I wasn't like "yo lemme get this TC badge" but I was like "oh hey suspect huh I did have a team I saved from madoka's spl run let's hop on the ladder!".
Please re-suspect Skymin. The vote was literally rigged. DOU should be outraged more than we actually are about the Skymin suspect because it was a goddamn vote just like any other and suddenly on the day before the goddamn ballots were counted it was suddenly announced that we would have a 50% barrier to ban. What the literal fuck. In what goddamn vote would this actually slide? Could you imagine the election system just spontaneouly changing the day before the goddamn vote and then welp Kanye is president. Complete utter bullshit. Resuspect Skymin.
As an additional note Skymin is a huge Azumarill check that would probably resolve concerns about Azu being OP since it shreds it and can 1v1 post-setup Azumarill. Azumarill was like this cute thing that Haruno did all the time but wasn't a big meta threat until we banned Skymin.
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