Rework of the weather + Speed boost ability ban in BW OU.

[Caetano93]

Approved by dice.

One of the more traditional complex bans of the Pokemon history, alongside Baton Pass clauses, is the permanent weather introducer + a respective speed boosting ability in the same team. However, with the 2018 ban of Sand Rush, we are locked into a bizarre situation with Swift Swim and Chlorophyll being complex banned while Sand Rush is a traditional ban. Why not simplify this by just banning Swift Swim and Chlorophyll all together, and nuke this complex ban?

The purpose of this thread isn't just to argue for simplification of the current ruleset by banning out right Swift Swim and Chlorophyll, but also to lift one of the bans by retesting Chlorophyll + a permanent sun setter. Chlorophyll's re-introduction is at a glance less threatening in the current meta due to the complete ban of two of its greatest enablers (Sleep and trapping abilities like Arena Trap). Its re-introduction also from a theory-mon perspective, would enable a play style and re-emphasizes BW OU's identity as a weather tier while giving more options to players in the teambuilder. This will open new structures and breathe life to a style of play that has been absent from competitive play. Chlorophyll's addition would disrupt the sand / rain hegemony and add diversity to the tier. Though this may mean “more threats”, it also means more viable options to explore to beat beating these threats; only time will tell if it breaks the tier or not. Truly, we may not know what the meta will shape up to be, but an extended ladder set up will help shape opinions and give a thorough look into the potential direction the meta will head with Chlorophyll re-introduced. We should approach this test with caution and conduct it in a two-step method, similar to how sleep was handled in December 2019.

The looming question over the re-introduction of sun offense in BW OU is if more diversity is a good thing. Will the update of a playstyle cause immense restrictions to other playstyles insofar that you have to run very specific Pokemon in order to not forgo getting run over by a Chlorophyll's sun structure? Will Chlorophyll restrict the flexibility of players to innovate with current team archetypes such as sand and rain? Would a change to the rule-set for Chlorophyl have the power to be viable, but not so strong that players feel it is uncompetitive? We can and have spoken about how it will change the meta, but we are confined to only theorizing on the potential effects. But that's what’s nice about a suspect; you don't have to have the answers when proposing a change, but a given long enough suspect period will answer them. Giving players more options and tools to innovate is always better as long as a new addition doesn’t restrict pre-existing styles / archetypes / playstyles in a greater and negative capacity. If sun offense can be played without it there being a severe restricting other styles options, then there is no reason to not change the rule-set.

 

[Finchinator]

I’ve always disliked complex bans and, as a direct extension of that, preferred BW doing away with the complex bans. My ideal solution is just reverting them to banning Sand Rush, Swift Swim, and Chlorophyll in BW under the logic that these abilities invalidate offensive counterplay to their abusers. The OP touches on this nicely. Kingdra and Venusaur types of Pokemon are not particularly viable right now regardless, so there is no real collateral.

I would be tolerant of retesting Chlorophyll from there if there is support, but I remain very skeptical as to if it will be balanced and if it will improve the metagame.

PS: We should ban King’s Rock and I plan on posting a thread on it after this is handled one way or another.

 

[Myzozoa]

I don't follow, although I haven't played BW in recent memory, when I did play I loved setting rain dance manually with Kingdra. And having swift swim kingdra take advantage of an opponents permanent rain. Do people consider manual rain dance swift swim kingdra broken or restrictive? More so than drizzle? How has an ability which requires a move to be used, and this gives up a free turn, become more restrictive than permanent weather on switch in? This seems like an overreach made for the sake of superficial simplicity. Even if there is no 'real collateral' now, there may be in the future.

PS: please ban King's Rock in all tiers.

 

[Finchinator]

Kingdra’s viability in BW has fallen off almost entirely. It has not been used in SPL since 2018 (meaning 3+ seasons without it) and it is barely ranked on the VR. Omastar has made a few sporadic appearances and seems to be promoting Eeveeto to Angry react, but ultimately the impact of these two Pokemon is almost nonexistent and the OP’s proposed change leads to better tiering practices, so it seems worthwhile to me.

 

[Lily]

PS: We should ban King’s Rock and I plan on posting a thread on it after this is handled one way or another.

this would have immeasurable ramifications on the metagame.

anyway in order to avoid being yelled at for memeing in policy review, I don't really feel like Chlorophyll has a place in BW OU as it stands and it feels more like an over-the-top reaction to the meta shifting towards hyper offense. disclaimer, I don't play this tier all that seriously and usually just stick to seasonals/ladder, but I think counterplay to venu in permasun is still just as lacking as it always was and in a metagame with such dangerous threats that are already only soft checked (and arguably quite poorly at that) I don't think releasing another monstrously powerful & fast one is a good idea. not opposed to it getting a retest on principle, everything deserves a shot, but I think it'd ultimately be a waste.

on the topic of simplifying the banlist, I think it's not really a good idea even tho it should've been that way from the start. It's not particularly easy to explain it to new players but there are strategies, however niche they may be (RD kingdra, the infamous omastar, manual sun w/ venu etc - they don't see tour use but I still run into them a fair amount on the ladder at least, they're all hovering around 1% usage-ish at 1500), that would be removed for the sake of simplifying complex bans that have been in place for many years at this stage. ik finch says they're not really viable right now and one look at spl usage backs that up, but I don't think the meta has to cater to the top playerbase in this case because the current ruling isn't harming anyone - you all know the ruleset regardless. if you still want to retest chlorophyll you can rework the clause to just be a swift swim + drizzle ban rather than a speed-boosting abilities + weather ban. normally I'm all for formal & clean tiering processes but when it comes to old gens like this where the ruleset is already highly complex, I think they should only be cleaned up when it has literally 0 cost on the rest of the metagame, which is not the case here.

 

[Eeveeto]

If you want to make Bans consistent, I don,t get why BP is still allowed in 3 different Gens and Arena Trap is allowed in Adv. Just saying that, won,t enter the discussion for now as I have better things to do and am not the best one at arguing.

 

[Myzozoa]

Sure, but in the first place the complex ban has two parts, auto-weather+speed abuser. Why are we focusing on simplifying the second part when the first part is obviously the more powerful part, if we really dislike complex bans so much (and why do we hate them so much? complexity is a part of life, have we just become simple minded for its own sake?)? If Omastar is being used thats good enough to show that there is some sort of interesting counterplay to weather styles in being able to set weather manually with a +speed sweeper. I played BW when it was the main OU tier, and I think the integrity of the tiering decisions made at that time should be respected to the extent that changes to the ruleset need much more substance than just 'no one is using it rn and we want a simpler ruleset'. It isn't like a complex ban is really that difficult for someone to wrap their mind around.

 

[FNH]

people who played 0 bw games in their life once again feeling compelled to let their opinions show in policy threads

 

[Excal]

I echo Finch's thoughts pretty much. I've always seen BW as a chaotically balanced tier where tons of pokemon are pretty broken and they kind of balance each other out, but I strongly think that unbanning Chlorophyll would add difficulty to the already tough task of building a team in BW while simultaneously accounting for as many threats as possible. I think BW is in a wonderful place right now and do not support a Chlorophyll retest.

I disagree with Lilburr's post for the most part, as I doubt Chlorophyll's reintroduction is at all motivated by the recent usage of HO (it definitely shouldn't be) and I think in this case a simplification of the current ruleset would be beneficial overall.

 

[LuckOverSkill]

I support the proposal.

It's mostly theorymon at this point, but the issues that plagued Sun then are still present. In fact, they're exacerbated by the lack of Dugtrio and sleep moves.

Venusaur without Sleep Powder is not as powerful as you think. To enable a Venusaur opening you have to:

• Have Sun up (a tall task without Dugtrio, since Ninetales is terrible at playing weather wars)
• Have Rocks up (which, surprisingly, isn't that easy, because few rockers reasonably fit on Sun)
• Get multiple free turns, which involves keeping Sun up, getting to +2, and not dying in the process
• Have the right coverage to do any damage. If you've used Volcarona you know how miserable it can be. Venusaur is a bit better in this case because it's at least a capable revenge killer, but it also needs Sun up

Victreebel is a worse sweeper, but it's a better cleaner thanks to its access to superior coverage in the form of Weather Ball. Unfortunately, it's even worse defensively (Venusaur has ok Special Defense and HP), so it can be used exclusively as a glass cannon.

Lilligant is hard walled by half of the meta. Its okay vs certain Rain / Sand structures purely because of how strong Quiver Dance is. It's an extremely niche option.

I don't know if Shiftry is viable, its never been used. It has interesting coverage, but that's about it. It can be fun to run every once in a while.

Sawsbuck is the most interesting Sun sweeper to me. You can trap its counters (mainly Skarmory and Ferrothorn) with Magnezone, and it's decently fast outside Sun.

As for thinking unbanning Chlorophyll is an answer to the "recent surge of HO teams", it's not. Not only this suspect was in the talk before SPL started, which already invalidates the hypothesis, but Chlorophyll isn't any better at dealing with HO teams compared to other archetypes.

Sure, Cresselia + Chansey will stop most weatherless teams, purely because they are so hard to get past without weather, but they already do it now, and if you add a Pokémon like Scarf Victini to your team you're going to put a full stop to anything that resembles Smurf.

Weatherless HO might be one of Sun Offense teams' worst matchup out of every style. Weatherless teams pack strong priorities, and no sun sweeper can survive Extreme Speed from Dragonite + Bullet Punch from Scizor. Unsurprisingly, it's a matter of who plays better. Not a hard concept to grasp.

It's very hard for Sun to stop weatherless teams from keeping rocks up, because they'll never give your spinner free turns, and Xatu doesn't stop Rocks from Aerodactyl, Garchomp, or Terrakion. Spinning vs Jellicent with offensive Sun teams is impossible without awkward sets.

Of course I might be horribly wrong, and Sun will take over the tier. That's a fair concern to have, which is why this is a suspect test. We test Chlorophyll and see what happens. There's no other way to tell if Chlorophyll is currently broken.

I can't prove Chlorophyll is broken.

I can't prove Chlorophyll isn't broken either.

Nobody can. Let's retest it. Hopefully, with open ways to get reqs and vote.

The voter pool must have demonstrable experience playing with / against Chlorophyll, something that can't be guaranteed in any other way. I trust the brilliant minds on this website who are used to crunching numbers to come up with reasonable requirements for the suspect test.

See you on the ladder fellas.

 

[SoulWind]

10 years have passed and you still haven't learnt that permaweather + speed boosting abilities are broken.

I seriously don't know what else to add to this thread, other than to say I wish it stops existing. Stop trying to make stupid changes to tiers that are already stablished. This tier reached its zenith with the sleep ban, and any changes from there are just going to make it worse.

 

[BKC]

This kind of debate is always argued between two sides. The first is the side that considers the competitive integrity of the tier to be most important, i.e. being able to reasonably build teams that can cover the majority of the metagame without extreme matchup guessing games. The second is the side that cares more about having the widest variety of toys to play with. I am firmly on the first side.

I do not understand why these "diversity" arguments hold any water. They are not competitively-minded in the slightest. I thought our goal was to make the most competitive metagame possible.

Furthermore, if you really care about that kind of thing, the current metagame has a ton of options for diversity - all of sand / rain / weatherless have several distinct subsets, and even hail has been used successfully. There are plenty of unexplored / lesser-seen strategies out there. I would recommend fully exploring these options if you are bored with the current metagame. The solution to your boredom is not to introduce a new archetype; it would eventually inevitably become optimized, as tends to happen with archetypes, and the metagame would once again become "stale." But hey, at least there would be a short time period before it became optimized, and that would be fun. Guess we'll just have to eternally continue artificially changing the metagame so we don't get bored with it. Seriously, if there aren't enough options for diversity in the current metagame enough for you, I don't know that you'll ever be satisfied.

The metagame as it stands right now already has trouble with its matchup balance. Sun only serves to exacerbate this dynamic. It does not contribute anything positive; it only makes it even more difficult to build effective teams. I realize that some people don't really care about this, but I'm still operating under the assumption that our goal is to make the most competitive metagame, so I don't think that line of thinking ought to be taken seriously.

Finally, the ladder is an incredibly poor tool to gauge the impact Chlorophyll would have on the metagame. You will not get any sort of understanding of just how much more constraining the extra threats will be until you have to build a team for a high-pressure tournament like SPL. I am not inherently opposed to using high-level tournaments as a testing ground for a potential new unban / ban - I've supported it before. However, in order to do so, there should be solid theorymon that such a change would be competitively beneficial (such as the sleep ban). This is not the case for Chlorophyll; all it has going for it is "diversity," which is completely irrelevant against the negative competitive consequences its addition would cause.

 

[FNH]

I'll be brief. Given the discussion here and on discord, there is a rather firm opposition to the re-introduction of chlorophyl. The discussion has been had and the majority seems to oppose this proposition. So then, why not move in the reverse direction of what has been proposed and remove Chlorophyl, and Swift Swim for that matter, from the tier completely? This move would be largely to simplify the rule set which was the aim of this thread. Chlorophyl an ability that is largely absent from any competitive play in the tier. Sun itself is a rather fringe style, since Arena trap's and Sleep’s removal from the tier, making only minor and occasional appearances in SPL so there is no use for chlorophyl as a counter style build. Chlorophyl + Sunny Day also remains a non-existent strategy in OU play. Why don’t we just nuke it from the tier further simplifying the ruleset by removing altogether a complex ban? The same reasoning applies to Swift Swim as well. It's role as a counter style to rain is non existent. Both abilities are removed from competitive play. Let’s simplify the rules by banning Swift Swim and Chlorophyl completely.

 

[Eeveeto]

I am eating my breakfast and have to go to work soon, so I will rey to not be too long.

If symplifying the rules was the goal to begin with, Excadrill should have never been unbanned in 2015. It was a broken Pokemon with Sand Rush and its still not clear that he is healthy without it.

Smogon Band Mons... mostly. If its a broken Mon that is easy to slap into any team (Excadrill, Latios, Snorlax in GSC, etc.) then suddenly the Mon is given privileges over broken Mons that are only viable in specific teams (Chlorophile, Mega Sableye in ORAS, Mr. Mime in Adv, etc).


Blaziken was broken only with Speed Boost, was Speed Boost Banned? No, an ability is only banned if all or almost all its abussers are broken with the ability. Same thing happened with Greninja in ORAS and Cinderace in SM. Why is Excadrill different? Back to Blaziken example, the other fully evolved Speed Boost Mons in BW are Yanmega and Ninjask. Only I sometimes use Yanmega, however Ninjask in the past has been (and sometimes still is) a key member of the infamous (I never considered even full pass broken/unhealthy though, but thats another pointless discussion that I don,t care about) BP chain, that many think its broken. Yet, Speed Boost was never touched.

Sand Rush has the same number of fully evolved users. Unlike Yanmega and post-BP nerf Ninjask, Stoutland and Sandslash, while not common, were considered part of the meta. But no one thought they were broken. Its exactly the same situation than with Sand Rush, 1 abusser is broken, 2 aren,t. Yet the ability was banned in order to preserve a Mon that is not completely balanced even without it.

Regarding Chlorophile, there are many Mons with that ability, but only one was remotely common, Venusaur. All the others have some big issue with them, despite still being viable: Shiftry and Victreebel are too frail, Sawsbuck is not getting past Lando, Skarm or Scizor, Lilligant has no coverage (and not even Sleep Powder anymore), Jumpluff is too weak, EGG and Tangrowth are too slow. So, there isn’t only one potential broken Mon in Sun. If Venusaur and only Venusaur, is a problem, Ban Venu, don,t punish and entire playstyle.

The main argument for unbanning Excadrill I heard was that it would reduce the dominance of Spikes based teams. It didn’t, Spikes are still everywhere in BW. It also isn,t completely balanced, try switching several times Sand Force one without Lando, Skarm or Rotom ( yes, I know those are common Mons). Excadrill didn,t add much to BW when it was unbanned, but it took away tools for weather wars of both Sand and Sun. Lots of Mons were banned to unban JUST ONE.

I know I won,t be getting much support on this, but I think the best course of action is banning Excadrill and Unbanning Chlorophyle and Sand Rush, potentially banning Venusaur too.

 

[ABR]

Hi,

Ban King's Rock and BW OU is permanently solved.

Yours truly,
Breezy

(kings rock, bright powder, and quick claw(?) should be banned from all tiers Hogg TDK TonyFlygon)

 

[McMeghan]

I can't be assed to reword my thoughts that I left in the OGC, so I will just copy-paste them straight up:

@ King's Rock
think its stupid and would always vote ban personally
fundamentally i hate it
realistically idk if it picked up enough to get removed yet but
if fsr nobody bats an eye at a ban, then by all mean let it go

@ keeping Aldaron's proposal vs banning Swift Swim / Sand Rush / Chloro entirely
honestly don't care, don't think casual Swift Swimmers are big enough to save BUT i also don't care about having ~Pretty Tiering Decisions~ because the current way is well established and accepted within the community, and we DID have casual Kingdra/Omastar being used in the past

@ Excadrill
saying Excadrill isnt a limiting factor of hazard stacking is disingenuous, the playstyle clearly had to evolve in multiple ways to adapt to Drill and Drill gives it a fair fight compared to what we had before.

@ Sun/Chloro
why claim diversity as a good thing if the tier is already good as is
also its such a bad starting point
you add diversity when you remove something that was overbearing in the builder or release something that allows for new structures without reshaping the tier
sun is too foreign compared to what we have rn, its not gonna add healthy diversity, its gonna add an entirely new playstyle that would ravage current structures, force building to account for something entirely separate from the current trends
its gonna be unhealthy diversity
just restraining the builder even further if you want to account for everything
if you want to make good teams, that is
ofc there is no strain in building if you just wanna make teams that win bo1s
also from what ive read and gathered, BW is appreciated as is, i dont feel like there is a need to do smth. I think that oldgen tiering has to be done when there is a community demand for it (on top of objective reasons), i feel like reintroducing sun is just making a change for the hell of it
also the tier isnt stagnant, and this SPL proved it

Sorry for the ugly formatting.

I wouldn't mind a suspect if there was a big community push for it or if I felt the BW OU playerbase was dissastisfied with the state of the tier over a long period of time, but I don't think we have either of those right now.

 

[Finchinator]

Given the course this thread has taken, I went ahead and made a thread on King’s Rock for the sake of any future discussion on that topic.

This thread can still be used for normal discussion of the topic in the OP, of course. Not my place to close it at all, but I do not see myself supporting a Chlorophyll test unless something changes. Perhaps others feel differently though.