Metagame SS OU Metagame Discussion Thread v7 (Usage Stats in post #3539)

So you say how magnet pull is fine not because of its sample size but "how it is forced to operate", but then talk about how it has to specialize and remove only a few threats, and that's kind of match-up fishing. I think you understand how it comes across when you say it's not the trapping pool, and then talk about how the trapping pool holds magnet pull back. Furthermore, you then talk about how magnezone's stats and movepool play into it being fair. Conveniently in your post you don't give shadow taggers and arena trappers the same treatment. Trapinch had to specialize to remove toad, had to be healthy to do it, and unlike magnezone can't switch directly into what it is trapping. The way you talk about how for the AV set magnezone needs to be healthy to even pull that off, trapinch literally has the exact same issue because of its speed stat and horrible bulk. You guys refuse to address the other more limited trappers honestly because they make your argument around keeping magnezone really weak.

I've personally given up on smogon's logical consistency because it has always struggled with it, and people don't particularly care if they are at the end of the day, but I think it makes smogon look horrible to pick and choose what it likes and doesn't like instead of having a logically consistent banlist.
Dugtrio,trapinch and Digglet can't switch into the thing they want to trap but they don't need to,with the amount of pivot moves around their teammates can easily get them on the field to remove their targets you might say they are support reliant and thats true but the reward is huge for the Arena Trap User(The same goes for Shadow Tag) since they can trap almost any type except for Flying and Ghost Types.Magnet pull can be useful to remove certain steel types but thats basically the only thing it can trap unlike the other trapping ablilities
 

Finchinator

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Conceptually speaking, there is a very strong argument to ban Magnet Pull (not Magnezone necessarily). In practice, it falls off a bit, but I do find it hard to make a legitimate argument as to why it is allowed when certain other trapping things are banned.

I feel this issue stretches far further than OU and is more a general tiering philosophy one, so I have not brought it up here before, but I get the argument. I do not think Magnezone is outright broken necessarily, but I do think an argument for it being uncompetitive can be made. This is the same basis as other trapping abilities really: switching is a fundamental part of the game and limiting it can be overbearing. At the end, it is up to the community to decide if Magnet Pull is restrictive enough to act on — and so far, the sweeping consensus has been that it is not for a number of generations.
 
this is more of a question of do we ban all trapping or are we gonna look over it case by case and just ban what is op (so shadow tag and arena trap banned but not magnet pull) i personally am fine with trapping unless it becomes to overbearing, and the limiting ability of being magnazone and only trapping a few month makes it fine imo. but i understand why people might find trapping uncompetitive. and if we ban magnet pull we should probably just ban all forms of trapping (which im not a supporter of).
 
Dugtrio had to specialise to trap different threats using sets like Choice Band, Choice Scarf, Z-Crystals (in gen 7) and Focus Sash, and it couldn't directly switch in to most of the Pokemon it wanted to beat, so I don't see why that is different to Diglett and Trapinch.
EXACTLY! You are right on the money my man. And my point is exactly that. At least with the arena trappers you had to only predict one time, i.e. do I switch my tran in to this sweeper, or do I stay in to dodge the duggy? Magnezone is worse versus things like skarm and ferro because they lose to it even if it switches directly into them, so if I am playing against magnezone and have one of these mons, I have to predict zone coming in every turn I switch to ferro, and every turn have ferro on the field. I am trying to highlight the same obnoxious fifty-fifties that zone forces are not very different at all than the ones arena trappers could force. Which is why it can be even worse than something like a trapinch.

Dugtrio,trapinch and Digglet can't switch into the thing they want to trap but they don't need to,with the amount of pivot moves around their teammates can easily get them on the field to remove their targets you might say they are support reliant and thats true but the reward is huge for the Arena Trap User(The same goes for Shadow Tag) since they can trap almost any type except for Flying and Ghost Types.Magnet pull can be useful to remove certain steel types but thats basically the only thing it can trap unlike the other trapping ablilities
Remember that we have to talk about what it can effectively trap, not just what it technically does. Trapinch can only come in on a very limited number of pokemon due to its speed and horrible bulk, even if its ability says it traps everything that is grounded. So I can literally say the same thing you did for zone for trapinch: Trapinch can be useful for removing certain ground weak walls, like toxapex or heatran but that's basically it because it gets ohko'd and outsped by almost everything.

As JoJonaseh says, we have to either look at each trapper on its own or say trapping as a whole is uncompetitive. Either option is honestly okay with me but I just want it to be consistent so we can truly say we make tiering decisions objectively. Personally, I would say wobbuffet and diglet may deserve a suspect, and trapinch, gothita and wynaut definitely would in the scenario where magnet pull is kept. I say deserve because they weren't given a fair shake in OU with previous tiering decisions if we decide trapping as a whole is not uncompetitive.

At the end, it is up to the community to decide if Magnet Pull is restrictive enough to act on — and so far, the sweeping consensus has been that it is not for a number of generations.
If it is how restricting the trapping is, it isn't trapping, it is the mon. I appreciate the understanding of my argument, but acting on it shouldn't decide on whether magnet pull is restricting enough because the point of a magnet pull ban would be to keep logical consistency, not because it is broken. If we are concerned about the restrictiveness of the trappers rather than trapping as a mechanic, then we should look at each of them, not the abilities.
 

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If it is how restricting the trapping is, it isn't trapping, it is the mon. I appreciate the understanding of my argument, but acting on it shouldn't decide on whether magnet pull is restricting enough because the point of a magnet pull ban would be to keep logical consistency, not because it is broken. If we are concerned about the restrictiveness of the trappers rather than trapping as a mechanic, then we should look at each of them, not the abilities.
We have Arena Trap and Shadow Tag banned despite never going through a period this generation where the NFE Pokemon were allowed. We would stay consistent and tackle the ability here surely (if we were to act on anything -- which is far more a thought experiment than a reality right now).
 
The idea of banning trapping is kind of ridiculous imo. Yeah, switching is a ‘fundamental’ part of the game, but so are status moves, and I don’t see anyone arguing Taunt should be banned because it blocks them. Abilities are also a ‘fundamental’ part of the game, so should we ban Neutralising Gas because it makes them useless? Switching and trapping have both been around since Gen 1, so it isn’t as if one is ‘fundamental’ and the other isn’t. The main reason Arena Trap and Shadow Tag were banned was because they made crap like Diglett usable in OU, like how Moody makes Octillery viable. The point is that even though Arena Trap and Shadow Tag users might have to specialise to remove specific targets, they have many more options than Magnezone because they have the ability to trap so many more mons, whereas Magnezone can only trap a few. It’s this kind of flexibility, coupled with the fact that even switching an Arena Trap or Shadow Tag mon in against something that they can’t beat prevents the opponent from double switching, that makes these abilities so much better than Magnet Pull. Arena Trap traps everything EXCEPT Flying-types and Levitate, Shadow Tag traps everything EXCEPT Ghosts, but Magnet Pull only traps a mon IF it’s a Steel. Magnet Pull isn’t broken, and it traps so few mons that it isn’t uncompetitive, because the skill lies in not getting trapped in the first place. It doesn’t even warp teambuilding, Skarm, Corv and Ferro are all great picks even though they get destroyed by Magnezone. If people really want to start banning every way of trapping for ‘consistency’, then we’d better ban Whirlpool and Fire Spin too, even though they‘re crap. It’s stupid because trapping isn’t RNG based like evasion or something, so we don’t need to be ‘consistent’. Just ban the stuff that’s broken and don’t ban the stuff the isn’t.
 
:diglett::trapinch:

I agree that Arena Trap is the correctly banned element making these two mons broken, but I don't know how you can present the logic that Magnezone is objectively worse for only being able to trap three Pokemon. In practice, these two only trap three mons reliably- tran, pex and ttar (if that counts as relevant). diglett especially can struggle to find enough power to muscle past pex. I understand that it has added utility of trapping low health mons, but in most games your trapper will be saved for a single target in order to ensure consistency.

tl;dr how can you say that trappers that trap the same amount or fewer pokemon in practice than magnezone deserve to be banned while zone doesn't simply because it has a small number of targets?

Also comparing trapping moves like mean look/ fire spin/ whirlpool isn't really relevant. Intrepid sword is one of the best abilities in the game, but howl is a terrible move even though they have the same effect. The opportunity cost of the moveslot and a turn to set it up make it a completely different scenario that allows counterplay besides shed shell. No player with adequate metagame knowledge will allow their mons to be trapped by anything besides heatran, and heatran is very clearly a combination of many good traits and is not solely good due to magma storm.
 
We have Arena Trap and Shadow Tag banned despite never going through a period this generation where the NFE Pokemon were allowed. We would stay consistent and tackle the ability here surely (if we were to act on anything -- which is far more a thought experiment than a reality right now).
What I am trying to say is there are two avenues:

1. We decide trapping isn't uncompetitive as a whole, and magnet pull is allowed. In this case, we must go and retest trappers that have a chance of being balanced if we want to stay consistent, it is the scope and other attributes of the trappers, not trapping as a whole that is broken. Largely the reason trappers like trapinch, gothita, wobbuffet and wynaut were banned was because trapping is uncompetitive, not just the fact that the other trappers (dugtrio, diglet, gothitelle, gothirita) were broken.

2. We decide trapping is uncompetitive. Here magnet pull is banned, because it is the abilities that are enabling trapping that are uncompetitive, not the trappers themselves.

The idea of banning trapping is kind of ridiculous imo. Yeah, switching is a ‘fundamental’ part of the game, but so are status moves, and I don’t see anyone arguing Taunt should be banned because it blocks them. Abilities are also a ‘fundamental’ part of the game, so should we ban Neutralising Gas because it makes them useless? Switching and trapping have both been around since Gen 1, so it isn’t as if one is ‘fundamental’ and the other isn’t. The main reason Arena Trap and Shadow Tag were banned was because they made crap like Diglett usable in OU, like how Moody makes Octillery viable. The point is that even though Arena Trap and Shadow Tag users might have to specialise to remove specific targets, they have many more options than Magnezone because they have the ability to trap so many more mons, whereas Magnezone can only trap a few. It’s this kind of flexibility, coupled with the fact that even switching an Arena Trap or Shadow Tag mon in against something that they can’t beat prevents the opponent from double switching, that makes these abilities so much better than Magnet Pull. Arena Trap traps everything EXCEPT Flying-types and Levitate, Shadow Tag traps everything EXCEPT Ghosts, but Magnet Pull only traps a mon IF it’s a Steel. Magnet Pull isn’t broken, and it traps so few mons that it isn’t uncompetitive, because the skill lies in not getting trapped in the first place. It doesn’t even warp teambuilding, Skarm, Corv and Ferro are all great picks even though they get destroyed by Magnezone. If people really want to start banning every way of trapping for ‘consistency’, then we’d better ban Whirlpool and Fire Spin too, even though they‘re crap. It’s stupid because trapping isn’t RNG based like evasion or something, so we don’t need to be ‘consistent’. Just ban the stuff that’s broken and don’t ban the stuff the isn’t.
In my personal opinion, trapping has the same problem in singles as things like dynamax. Where if you are a wall facing down an offensive mon, the burden of prediction becomes so ridiculous you are just guessing, and if you guess wrong, you lose on the spot. Take the example of a choice locked darm-g, the toxapex can eat up the icicle crash but dies to max quake, now as the pex player I have to predict if he will max and break choice lock and or switch or stay in and crash again if I fear the max quake. If the pex player predicts wrong and loses pex, darm can clean up because its wall is removed, or icicle crash gets a free kill.

In the magnezone scenario, I have to guess if his sweeper will attack, in which case I go skarm, or if he doubles into magnezone, in which case I can't go skarm. If the skarm player guesses wrong, he probably loses a mon. Even worse, anytime skarm goes for a move I have to do the same thing, do I spike or roost on this pokemon, or do I predict the double to magnezone? I guess it's technically prediction, but if we are all being honest this is all just guessing on the part of both my opponent and me in this scenario.

Edit: The part about the scope of arena trap and shadow tag have been address a hundred times already, even by the guy who just posted above me, so once again, trapinch isn't ever trapping everything that is grounded, even if its ability says it does.
 

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EXACTLY! You are right on the money my man. And my point is exactly that. At least with the arena trappers you had to only predict one time, i.e. do I switch my tran in to this sweeper, or do I stay in to dodge the duggy? Magnezone is worse versus things like skarm and ferro because they lose to it even if it switches directly into them, so if I am playing against magnezone and have one of these mons, I have to predict zone coming in every turn I switch to ferro, and every turn have ferro on the field. I am trying to highlight the same obnoxious fifty-fifties that zone forces are not very different at all than the ones arena trappers could force. Which is why it can be even worse than something like a trapinch.
Magnezone can't adapt in the same way Dugtrio could because its movepool is so barren: you can run Choice Specs, Choice Scarf, Iron Defense + Body Press, or maybe Substitute + 3 attacks similar to generation 7. Between them, they have four attacking moves that can actually trap the relevant Steel-types: Thunderbolt, Body Press, Rising Voltage (which mandates Tapu Koko but was occasionally used to deal with Magearna and with a Choice Scarf outspeeds and does decent damage to Heatran), and Volt Switch to chip down Steels when Magnezone can't yet KO them. You could argue for Assault Vest Mirror Coat, I suppose, too. In contrast, let's see what attacks Dugtrio can use:

Earthquake: main STAB move. I don't consider it different enough to justify another place, but High Horsepower is not weakened by Grassy Terrain, unlike Earthquake.
Stone Edge: does decent damage to some Flying-types that are immune to Earthquake.
Sucker Punch: can pick off a weakened Dragapult that thinks it outspeeds and KOs.
Sludge Wave: A bit niche, but if Tapu Bulu, a would-be counter, has taken a small bit of chip damage, Dugtrio can KO it.
Beat Up: Can somewhat make up for Dugtrio's horrible Attack by using its teammates' attack stats, helping against Psychic and Ghost-types.
Reversal: Beats Blissey if at low enough HP.

While Magnezone has only two types of usable attacks to help with Steel-types, Dugtrio has at least five different ones. Trapinch has Giga Drain to help with Seismitoad in the Dracovish meta, First Impression to revenge kill anything weakened without priority, and it beats Ferrothorn and Chansey with access to Superpower.

Also, let's see what Magnezone does in a matchup where there is nothing for it to trap: with Iron Defense you can do a bit of chip, spread Toxic or paralysis, maybe check Tapu Koko. Choice Specs hits hard but is easy to wall once locked into a move and super slow. On the other hand, Dugtrio can set Stealth Rock, and Memento cripples just about anything for a teammate to get a free switch and set up, so it will almost never be pure deadweight in a battle.
 
I was a bit hesitant to post my thoughts in this thread but screw it why not. Like others have said, I do not believe Magnezone/ Magnet Pull should be banned. First, someone made a great point that in the 10 years since BW that we've had zone, it hasn't been shown to be problematic, especially during times where it had stuff like HP Fire making it a better trapper than it is now, so idk it might just be me but if this mechanic is really "that broken" I think it would've been tackled earlier. But anyway that's besides the main point. The big idea comes down to this: near universal trapping versus specific ones. We don't need to follow any consistency since these 2 are vastly different. The reason Arena Trap was banned was because dugtrio had a wider range of targets to trap and invalidated any Pokemon that was slower and could be trapped by it. Its the reason we saw toxtricity, a Pokemon that destroyed the common core of corv/clef/toad/rotom heat/ at the time, fall to UU. Zone traps 3 pokemon reliably with its main set, being skarm, corv, and ferro. It doesn't warp teambuilding and hasn't invalidated any of them, with all being amazing picks in the OU meta with even 2 of them being A+ on the viability rankings. On the other hand, something like dugtrio had PLENTY of targets to choose from, including but not limited to terrakion, toxapex, tyranitar, excadrill, cinderace, toxtricity, melmetal, bisharp, jirachi, clefable, kyurem, and cinderace. This is quite literally 4 TIMES the amount of stuff zone traps and could remove. The big thing is this- the reason dugtrio was a problem and zone isn't is that duggy can trap nearly everything and remove it, while also causing the stuff it could trap to significantly drop in usage and even drop to a lower tier. Zone doesn't do that, it doesn't restrict building and only traps a select few Pokemon. I'd argue zone is a healthy presence in fact, it adds a bit of strategy so I cant just blindly through out skarm onto rilla and have to play smart with it so i dont risk getting trapped.

It really comes down to this idea- do we want to ban trapping as a whole or look at it down to the specifics since its very different. Duggy restricted teambuilding to mons that didn't get affected by it trapping and could trap a wider range of targets. Zone can only trap 3 Pokemon reliably with its iron defense set, with corv having the ability to speed creep and not be compromised as a wall as much, not to mention it doesn't restrict teambuilding to where anything that gets trapped by it gets seldom use. There was a reason zone fell to RU from UU, its near useless if it cant trap anything due to the limited range of its targets. Zone trapping 3 pokemon doesn't make it uncompetitive, we need to stop looking at consistency and look at zone in a vacuum. If your line of defense solely skarm or corv to keep your team being 6-0d by rillaboom, I hate to say it but you've built a shitty team and the problem is you not zone. Its also quite hard to use zone due to its weakness against common types like ground, fighting, and fire while having low speed. Yeah you can argue dugtrio is frail, but equipped with a choice band its more than enough to trap and remove some key Pokemon. Zone also ends up being deadweight at times in matchups without the steels it traps while duggy could almost always put in work due to all the different things it could trap. All in all magnet pull isnt a problem. The big issue with dugtrio was not how it could trap and remove things, but it was HOW MUCH OF THE META IT COULD TRAP AND REMOVE. It trapped far more things than zone ever will and invalidated pokemon. zone doesn't restrict teambuilding, zone doesn't invalidate anything, zone barely traps shit, in my eyes and the eyes of many other players zone/magnet pull isn't uncompetitive
 
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Zneon

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To give my own personal thoughts on the discussion, while you can definitely make the argument that Magnet Pull is uncompetitive / unhealthy I personally don't see it. But I want to say first of all that, trapping as a whole really isn't uncompetitive in my opinion. Shadow Tag and Arena Trap are because they are abilities that take trapping to an extreme, Magnet Pull doesn't.

Magnezone is really the only viable Pokemon with this ability and it has a lot of issues that make it more matchup fishy than anything else I feel. Magnet Pull only affects Steel-types and Magnezone cannot really trap all of them, which is what it's supposed to do. It can trap a pretty solid amount of Steel-types but not only can it trap those and literally nothing else, it's really only effective at trapping a certain pool of them, Skarmory and Corviknight are obviously examples, Ferrothorn if it's ID + Body Press but stuff like Heatran or Bisharp can easily beat it and prevent it from trapping them, which is where it's niche lies. There are a few reasons, but the main ones are the fact that it is extremely slow and only has a few moves to work with, which really hurts in its ability to trap more than a few Steel-types and do it consistently give how linear of a Pokemon Magnezone really is.

Let's compare this to Arena Trap and Shadow Tag and the two noteworthy abusers of them, Dugtrio and Gothitelle. Arena Trap traps such a huge portion of Pokemon outside of Levitators and Ghost-types and Dugtrio has the Speed tier to abuse its ability to an impressive extent. However the main problem here is of course the ability for trapping such a huge portion of Pokemon in the first place means that can trap as many Pokemon as it really needed to.

Shadow Tag is even worse, literally only being prevented by Ghost-types and fucking Shed Shell. Gothitelle being able to trap literally anything outside of those two really means that its job would never end. Magnet Pull isn't like this, only trapping Steel-types and the fact that Magnezone can only trap a small portion of them because of its issues makes me convinced that Magnet Pull isn't unhealthy. As a trapper Magnezone is really just ok which is pretty underwhelming given how outside of being a trapper it isn't all that good. While Gothitelle and Dugtrio can trap multiple Pokemon at a time, Magnezone being able to trap a grand total of 3 or 4 Pokemon.
 
Magnezone can't adapt in the same way Dugtrio could because its movepool is so barren: you can run Choice Specs, Choice Scarf, Iron Defense + Body Press, or maybe Substitute + 3 attacks similar to generation 7. Between them, they have four attacking moves that can actually trap the relevant Steel-types: Thunderbolt, Body Press, Rising Voltage (which mandates Tapu Koko but was occasionally used to deal with Magearna and with a Choice Scarf outspeeds and does decent damage to Heatran), and Volt Switch to chip down Steels when Magnezone can't yet KO them. You could argue for Assault Vest Mirror Coat, I suppose, too. In contrast, let's see what attacks Dugtrio can use:

Earthquake: main STAB move. I don't consider it different enough to justify another place, but High Horsepower is not weakened by Grassy Terrain, unlike Earthquake.
Stone Edge: does decent damage to some Flying-types that are immune to Earthquake.
Sucker Punch: can pick off a weakened Dragapult that thinks it outspeeds and KOs.
Sludge Wave: A bit niche, but if Tapu Bulu, a would-be counter, has taken a small bit of chip damage, Dugtrio can KO it.
Beat Up: Can somewhat make up for Dugtrio's horrible Attack by using its teammates' attack stats, helping against Psychic and Ghost-types.
Reversal: Beats Blissey if at low enough HP.

While Magnezone has only two types of usable attacks to help with Steel-types, Dugtrio has at least five different ones. Trapinch has Giga Drain to help with Seismitoad in the Dracovish meta, First Impression to revenge kill anything weakened without priority, and it beats Ferrothorn and Chansey with access to Superpower.

Also, let's see what Magnezone does in a matchup where there is nothing for it to trap: with Iron Defense you can do a bit of chip, spread Toxic or paralysis, maybe check Tapu Koko. Choice Specs hits hard but is easy to wall once locked into a move and super slow. On the other hand, Dugtrio can set Stealth Rock, and Memento cripples just about anything for a teammate to get a free switch and set up, so it will almost never be pure deadweight in a battle.
Nobody is asking for duggy to get unbanned, we are talking about other trappers being suspected if trapping as a whole isn't uncompetitive. If we are seriously pretending that trapinch is gonna be better in a match-up where its trapping isn't useful than magnezone, I don't know how we can have an honest conversation about tiering consistancy.


I was a bit hesitant to post my thoughts in this thread but screw it why not. Like others have said, I do not believe Magnezone/ Magnet Pull should be banned. First, someone made a great point that in the 10 years since BW that we've had zone, it hasn't been shown to be problematic, especially during times where it had stuff like HP Fire making it a better trapper than it is now, so idk it might just be me but if this mechanic is really "that broken" I think it would've been tackled earlier. But anyway that's besides the main point. The big idea comes down to this: near universal trapping versus specific ones. We don't need to follow any consistency since these 2 are vastly different. The reason Arena Trap was banned was because dugtrio had a wider range of targets to trap and invalidated any Pokemon that was slower and could be trapped by it. Its the reason we saw toxtricity, a Pokemon that destroyed the common core of corv/clef/toad/rotom heat/ at the time, fall to UU. Zone traps 3 pokemon reliably with its main set, being skarm, corv, and ferro. It doesn't warp teambuilding and hasn't invalidated any of them, with all being amazing picks in the OU meta with even 2 of them being A+ on the viability rankings. On the other hand, something like dugtrio had PLENTY of targets to choose from, including but not limited to terrakion, toxapex, tyranitar, excadrill, cinderace, toxtricity, melmetal, bisharp, jirachi, clefable, kyurem, and cinderace. This is quite literally 4 TIMES the amount of stuff zone traps and could remove. The big thing is this- the reason dugtrio was a problem and zone isn't is that duggy can trap nearly everything and remove it, while also causing the stuff it could trap to significantly drop in usage and even drop to a lower tier. Zone doesn't do that, it doesn't restrict building and only traps a select few Pokemon. I'd argue zone is a healthy presence in fact, it adds a bit of strategy so I cant just blindly through out skarm onto rilla and have to play smart with it so i dont risk getting trapped.

It really comes down to this idea- do we want to ban trapping as a whole or look at it down to the specifics since its very different. Duggy restricted teambuilding to mons that didn't get affected by it trapping and could trap a wider range of targets. Zone can only trap 3 Pokemon reliably with its iron defense set, with corv having the ability to speed creep and not be compromised as a wall as much, not to mention it doesn't restrict teambuilding to where anything that gets trapped by it gets seldom use. There was a reason zone fell to RU from UU, its near useless if it cant trap anything due to the limited range of its targets. Zone trapping 3 pokemon doesn't make it uncompetitive, we need to stop looking at consistency and look at zone in a vacuum. If your line of defense solely skarm or corv to keep your team being 6-0d by rillaboom, I hate to say it but you've built a shitty team and the problem is you not zone. Its also quite hard to use zone due to its weakness against common types like ground, fighting, and fire while having low speed. Yeah you can argue dugtrio is frail, but equipped with a choice band its more than enough to trap and remove some key Pokemon. Zone also ends up being deadweight at times in matchups without the steels it traps while duggy could almost always put in work due to all the different things it could trap. All in all magnet pull isnt a problem. The big issue with dugtrio was not how it could trap and remove things, but it was HOW MUCH OF THE META IT COULD TRAP AND REMOVE. It trapped far more things than zone ever will and invalidated pokemon. zone doesn't restrict teambuilding, zone doesn't invalidate anything, zone barely traps shit, in my eyes and the eyes of many other players zone/magnet pull isn't broken.
Once again, nobody is galking about unbanning duggy, or goth, they were absolutely overbearing. If we are concerned about scope of trapping, and not trapping as a whole, we should look at mons like trapinch, who are incredible limited on what they can actually trap and kill with their stats and movepool.


To give my own personal thoughts on the discussion, while you can definitely make the argument that Magnet Pull is uncompetitive / unhealthy I personally don't see it. But I want to say first of all that, trapping as a whole really isn't uncompetitive in my opinion. Shadow Tag and Arena Trap are because they are abilities that take trapping to an extreme, Magnet Pull doesn't.

Magnezone is really the only viable Pokemon with this ability and it has a lot of issues that make it more matchup fishy than anything else I feel. Magnet Pull only affects Steel-types and Magnezone cannot really trap all of them, which is what it's supposed to do. It can trap a pretty solid amount of Steel-types but not only can it trap those and literally nothing else, it's really only effective at trapping a certain pool of them, Skarmory and Corviknight are obviously examples, Ferrothorn if it's ID + Body Press but stuff like Heatran or Bisharp can easily beat it and prevent it from trapping them, which is where it's niche lies. There are a few reasons, but the main ones are the fact that it is extremely slow and only has a few moves to work with, which really hurts in its ability to trap more than a few Steel-types and do it consistently give how linear of a Pokemon Magnezone really is.

Let's compare this to Arena Trap and Shadow Tag and the two noteworthy abusers of them, Dugtrio and Gothitelle. Arena Trap traps such a huge portion of Pokemon outside of Levitators and Ghost-types and Dugtrio has the Speed tier to abuse its ability to an impressive extent. However the main problem here is of course the ability for trapping such a huge portion of Pokemon in the first place means that can trap as many Pokemon as it really needed to.

Shadow Tag is even worse, literally only being prevented by Ghost-types and fucking Shed Shell. Gothitelle being able to trap literally anything outside of those two really means that its job would never end. Magnet Pull isn't like this, only trapping Steel-types and the fact that Magnezone can only trap a small portion of them because of its issues makes me convinced that Magnet Pull isn't unhealthy. As a trapper Magnezone is really just ok which is pretty underwhelming given how outside of being a trapper it isn't all that good. While Gothitelle and Dugtrio can trap multiple Pokemon at a time, Magnezone being able to trap a grand total of 3 or 4 Pokemon.
Once again, I think you guys are completely missing the point we are trying to make. Nobody is saying zone is equivalent to goth or duggy at all. But you could definitely make a fair comparison to something like trapinch which is very limited in what it can effectively trap. You even say in your post the two noteworthy abusers because the other ones aren't nearly as good or versatile.

Here is a problem with many of the pro-magnet pull arguments:
You guys talk about how even though zone traps all steels, it is really just 3 technically 4, which I totally agree with. But then you guys say:
Arena trap is a problem because it traps every grounded mon. Does trapinch really trap and kill every grounded mon? No, it doesn't but you guys don't give the same treatment to things like trapinch that you do zone, because people like zone.
 
I don’t think the current status quo makes much sense. If trapping isn’t uncompetitive across the board then I unironically think Wynaut, Gothita and Diglett should be suspected. It’s pure theorymon to say something like Gothita (BST 290) is broken with ST. I firmly believe that if Trapping abilities are deemed to not be uncompetitive on their face then every mon needs to be evaluated individually. (Or just ban magnet pull :psycry:)
 
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Arena trap is a problem because it traps every grounded mon. Does trapinch really trap and kill every grounded mon? No, it doesn't but you guys don't give the same treatment to things like trapinch that you do zone, because people like zone.
I agree that diglett and trapinch should be unbanned and then suspected, banning the ability is not the right choice.

This reminds me when the move baton pass has been completely banned, the poor shedinja became quite useless (it had a niche in stall teams as baton pass pivot before).
 
Nobody is asking for duggy to get unbanned, we are talking about other trappers being suspected if trapping as a whole isn't uncompetitive. If we are seriously pretending that trapinch is gonna be better in a match-up where its trapping isn't useful than magnezone, I don't know how we can have an honest conversation about tiering consistancy.




Once again, nobody is galking about unbanning duggy, or goth, they were absolutely overbearing. If we are concerned about scope of trapping, and not trapping as a whole, we should look at mons like trapinch, who are incredible limited on what they can actually trap and kill with their stats and movepool.




Once again, I think you guys are completely missing the point we are trying to make. Nobody is saying zone is equivalent to goth or duggy at all. But you could definitely make a fair comparison to something like trapinch which is very limited in what it can effectively trap. You even say in your post the two noteworthy abusers because the other ones aren't nearly as good or versatile.

Here is a problem with many of the pro-magnet pull arguments:
You guys talk about how even though zone traps all steels, it is really just 3 technically 4, which I totally agree with. But then you guys say:
Arena trap is a problem because it traps every grounded mon. Does trapinch really trap and kill every grounded mon? No, it doesn't but you guys don't give the same treatment to things like trapinch that you do zone, because people like zone.
In order to test Trapinch in OU we have to unban Arena Trap and if you unban the ability Dugtrio runs rampant.And no a complex ban wouldn't solve anything
 
The Funky Reason said:
Once again, I think you guys are completely missing the point we are trying to make. Nobody is saying zone is equivalent to goth or duggy at all. But you could definitely make a fair comparison to something like trapinch which is very limited in what it can effectively trap. You even say in your post the two noteworthy abusers because the other ones aren't nearly as good or versatile.

Here is a problem with many of the pro-magnet pull arguments:
You guys talk about how even though zone traps all steels, it is really just 3 technically 4, which I totally agree with. But then you guys say:
Arena trap is a problem because it traps every grounded mon. Does trapinch really trap and kill every grounded mon? No, it doesn't but you guys don't give the same treatment to things like trapinch that you do zone, because people like zone.
I don’t think anyone’s claiming that a single Trapinch/Diglett set can trap and kill every grounded mon, the point is that Arena Trap gives them a lot more options, and they have the movepool options to facilitate being able to pick any 3-4 grounded mons and specialise to trap and beat those mons specifically. Kind of like how some offensive mons can pick and chose their counters. Magnezone, on the other hand, is much more limited since Magnet Pull limits what it can actually trap. You know what it’s going to do from team preview, whereas with Trapinch, you have no idea which mons its set is designed to trap.
 
Correct me if I’m wrong but did we not literally try to do that In gen 7 by suspecting dugtrio individually only to come back to arena trap itself getting banned. So now if y’all REALLY want to test arena trap we have to do it without both dugtrio and diglett, leaving only trapinch. Seems plenty unnecessary to me that we unban arena trap and go through a whole test just to use fucking trapinch in OU
 
In order to test Trapinch in OU we have to unban Arena Trap and if you unban the ability Dugtrio runs rampant.And no a complex ban wouldn't solve anything
It isn't a complex ban you just ban duggy and perhaps diglet and unban arena trap. It isn't at all a complex ban.

I don’t think anyone’s claiming that a single Trapinch/Diglett set can trap and kill every grounded mon, the point is that Arena Trap gives them a lot more options, and they have the movepool options to facilitate being able to pick any 3-4 grounded mons and specialise to trap and beat those mons specifically. Kind of like how some offensive mons can pick and chose their counters. Magnezone, on the other hand, is much more limited since Magnet Pull limits what it can actually trap. You know what it’s going to do from team preview, whereas with Trapinch, you have no idea which mons its set is designed to trap.
What diversity of sets does trapinch have? It used to use giga drain for toad but there isn't any dracovish anymore so no reason too. Probably all of them would runs something like earthquake/horsepower + sucker + first impression + stone edge/quick attack. It's bulk is 45/45/45 (worse than pheromosa) and its speed is so low (10), that unlike duggy it can't even trap low hp walls because they get to recover before it attacks (unless they are really low and drop to first impression)

Correct me if I’m wrong but did we not literally try to do that In gen 7 by suspecting dugtrio individually only to come back to arena trap itself getting banned. So now if y’all REALLY want to test arena trap we have to do it without both dugtrio and diglett, leaving only trapinch. Seems plenty unnecessary to me that we unban arena trap and go through a whole test just to use fucking trapinch in OU
Yeah we did. But we pride ourselves on tiering objectively? If we wanted to leave magnet pull in, why would we suspect trapinch? because if it isn't broken, it shouldn't be banned. People have this incredibly warped perception that some pokemon like magnezone deserve to be OU but trapinch doesn't for some reason? If it isn't broken, it should get a fair shake in normal metas. That includes the babies with trapping abilities like trapinch.

Personally, I don't even want to go through all the trappers again, I would be more inclined for magnet pull to be removed, but any argument you make for magnezone you are also making for something like trapinch being in OU.
 
The Funky Reason said:
What diversity of sets does trapinch have? It used to use giga drain for toad but there isn't any dracovish anymore so no reason too. Probably all of them would runs something like earthquake/horsepower + sucker + first impression + stone edge/quick attack. It's bulk is 45/45/45 (worse than pheromosa) and its speed is so low (10), that unlike duggy it can't even trap low hp walls because they get to recover before it attacks (unless they are really low and drop to first impression)
You’ve also got Superpower to beat Ferro and Blissey, Toxic to cripple walls that it can’t beat with First Impression and SubTect to complement that, you can run Banded to OHKO Rillaboom after rocks with First Impression, Evolite to take on a bunch of weaker pivots or utility mons like Zeraora, AV to beat special threats, you can even run Sash Flail if you’re feeling crazy. It’s got a few more options than you’d think.
 
You’ve also got Superpower to beat Ferro and Blissey, Toxic to cripple walls that it can’t beat with First Impression and SubTect to complement that, you can run Banded to OHKO Rillaboom after rocks with First Impression, Evolite to take on a bunch of weaker pivots or utility mons like Zeraora, AV to beat special threats, you can even run Sash Flail if you’re feeling crazy. It’s got a few more options than you’d think.
So running through OU it can take on Ferro, blissey, rillaboom, slowking(G+K) with banded and Zeroara, heatran, slowking, pex with max hp eviolite and you could cover things like bisharp if you go max def instead of HP (hazards need to be off for most of these to work), but then lose out on some special walls. You would never use AV (eviolite is just better), but sash flail does check certain offensive threats assuming hazards are off, so I definitely can agree with this argument actually.

Gothita traps walls like blissey, slowtwins, and toxapex (I think that's all?). So maybe this?

If my history is correct, I think wob was BL in BW until goth got STag banned. The nature of setup sweepers being stronger may make encoring broken but I can't really say for sure.

Either way very interesting point Contrary Servine
 
The main thing making arena trap mons so much better I think is that outside there main trap targets they still CAN trap other mons while magnet pull ONLY traps a few mons. sure its not the ideal trap but they can always trap something while in some games magnazones trapping is just not there.
 

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Dugtrio was a problem, so we tested it and people used Diglett on the ladder to some success. From there, Arena Trap was the subject of the next related suspect test and it got banned. Shadow Tag followed suit in various generations. The current precedent to ban these abilities is clearly effective and there are no plans to touch it. Going through those Pokemon individually would be a large waste of time and resources. Any further speculation of Diglett, Trapinch, Gothita, Gothorita, Wynaut, or Wobbuffet has no place in this thread, much like any other theorymon.
 
Dugtrio was a problem, so we tested it and people used Diglett on the ladder to some success. From there, Arena Trap was the subject of the next related suspect test and it got banned. Shadow Tag followed suit in various generations. The current precedent to ban these abilities is clearly effective and there are no plans to touch it. Going through those Pokemon individually would be a large waste of time and resources. Any further speculation of Diglett, Trapinch, Gothita, Gothorita, Wynaut, or Wobbuffet has no place in this thread, much like any other theorymon.
The main thing making arena trap mons so much better I think is that outside there main trap targets they still CAN trap other mons while magnet pull ONLY traps a few mons. sure its not the ideal trap but they can always trap something while in some games magnazones trapping is just not there.
Very synthetic but effective replies. Magnezone doesn't trap AND ko many things, nor does it enable absolutely broken mons/archetypes.
Shadow tag / arena trap trap so much stuff that even diglett has had success AND we have evidence of even entire archetypes (dugtrio stall) becoming broken due to how restrictive it is for a single mon to trap so many threats at once.
Also, trapping itself only becomes uncompetitive if the pool of victims is extremely large. again, magnet pull is very specific and not even every steel types can be trapped AND ko'd by the magnet pull users we have. Dugtrio and gothitelle can trap way too many threats and, as finch said, touching every single user is not doable and worth the time so evaluating the ability makes no sense in any way.
Plus, little personal rant: we already have lost pursuit in this gen which is bad enough, can we just keep the few tools we have to threaten serious progress on switches if they aren't broken? switching is even more free with teleport, regen cores and HDB for god's sake
 
I wanna talk about :magnezone: controversy, I dont think is an issue because unlike other trappers it only traps steel and it has to customize its sets to trap specifics steels like ferro and tran. Outside specs, most of its sets arent great outside trapping.

The Body press set, this lets zone remove ferro and still traps skarm and corv, though spe def corvi can take a hit easily.

The specs set, well this one is mainly for the birds, but at least it functions as a decent wall breaker out side that, making this set at least somewhat useful outside trapping

The AV set, Unfort I dont have replays of this rn, but its a semi reliable way to remove tran, the only two times I failed, was because magma storm didnt do enough damage to zone, so mirro coat couldnt kill tran, but that can be solve with custom EV. I like to pair this with mons like volc for example. Actually I got inspired by Finch after he made the volc video, so I decided to use the safeguard set. Ask me if someone wants the team I used.
I think those are the targets u want to remove, so stuff like rilla, kart, chomp and even volc can abuse. Zone enable this kind of teams, but well built teams and good play will make sure that this will not become an issue for now
 

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