U turn Scizor, Parting shot Incineroar, any good ghost type, volt switch magnezone, rotom formes and many more counters Big G easily.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
This is flatly untrue in practice. Goth is able to come in and trap whatever has just KOed another Pokémon on its team, because obviously real battling is done in Set Mode. If you have one or even two Goth answers on your team like Scizor and Incineroar, the presence of Goth in team preview still forces you to only KO opposing Pokémon with those direct answers to Goth. This puts you at a huge disadvantage since your opponent can KO your Pokémon with whatever Pokémon they have without having to worry about that.
Shadow Tag isn't broken on paper, but is absolutely broken in practice. That Gothitelle, which has pretty awful stats, is legitimately viable in ubers more than proves that. A counter is worthless when you can't switch it in.
You don't send a trapper against Pokémon that are expected to be able to avoid being trapped.
The thing about Wobbuffett is that because of how 90% of Offensive Pokemon work, the odds of it KOing an attacker is virtually assured since most Pokemon will only run Physical or Special moves anyway (not to mention if Choice items are a factor). If it tries to set up to ensure an OHKO, Encore locks it in and means you have at least one free turn after switching out to a more effective counter play, and if the mon is defensive, Encore accomplishes the same thing while limiting their options on the field (i.e Recovery in the face of an attacker, Phazing or Hazards to punish allotting it free actions, etc.) A lot of this applies to Wynaut, because other than HP, most of their stats don't matter to how they function as Trapper removers.
The gimmick works significantly better in Competitive Singles where the pace is breakneck, switching is an extremely basic component of strategy, and Pokemon builds are "good" enough to focus on their strong suits, which also makes them significantly more predictable for the Trappers to exploit. I remember when Dugtrio got Suspect Tested in Gen 7, people on the Suspect Ladders were trying out Diglett and Trapinch, and despite their even-more-garbage stats, managing to get many of the same jobs done because removing the ability to switch altogether neuters almost every playstyle on principle.
I'm amused that they cite Gothitelle as targetting and exploiting defensive Pokemon, followed by half of your citations leaning much closer to Offense than Defense in their team role (High Tiers have basically no defensive Ghosts, Magnezone is himself a Trapper so pivoting himself out is not frequently a productive use if that's what he's being forced into anyway). Also, how are these Counters getting in front of the Shadow Tag trapper since Switching isn't allowed?
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Aw man you brought to mind the glorious days of Giga Drain Trapinch... It was that cool.
I miss Pursuit forcing Specs Shadow Ball spammers to show some fucking respect.
I think it's that the shadow is the one doing the tagging.
Alternatively, since the Japanese name is "stepping on shadows", this suggests that the user is somehow "pinning down" the shadow of a physical being and preventing it from fleeing. Since Ghost-types are incorporeal, they can't be trapped in this fashion.
Decidueye does that too with Spirit Shackle (Shadow Stitching in Japanese, to quote Bulbapedia, a fabled ninja technique that restrains a target's movements by pinning their shadow with a kunai or shuriken.), it fires an arrow at the target’s shadow, pinning the shadow and by extension the target to the ground. Also in the animation the arrow foes a fancy little loop to physically hit the opponent before circling around to hit the shadow.
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Some opinions are unpopular for a good reason.
Also, saying Gothitelle only works against HO teams betrays a fundamental lack of understanding on how it was actually used. I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe anyone could have played during Shadow Tag meta at any reasonably high level of play and come to the conclusion that Gothitelle only puts in work against offensive teams.
Remember when Pokemon mostly used berries as their fictional foods? How every berry had a description of an either unexpected taste or unusual feature, especially for a fruit/vegetable?
Remember when berries were also stand ins for vegetables?
now we have realistic apples and potatoes
woot -_-
Remember when berries were also stand ins for vegetables?
now we have realistic apples and potatoes
woot -_-
Reminds me of Big Yellow's video about banned strategies in past Pokémon gens (I think?), where he said Sand Veil was so busted in Gen 3 that people used Cacnea alongside Cacturne. Thank dog there are no longer any Pokémon whose only ability is Sand Veil/Snow Cloak.
Shadow Tag and Arena Trap are abilities that are more broken the higher your creativity is. When they were legal, I didn't think much of them since Gothitelle and Dugtrio are such underwhelming Pokemon on their own + I thought they were useless outside of their highly specialized use cases. However, in a game of inches like Pokemon, death being completely inescapable for the other Pokemon is such a powerful tool. You basically put the opponent's Pokemon in a major checkmate position in many scenarios, not just the highly specialized use cases you may be using it for. Sure, the sash Dugtrio your running might mainly be used to take out Heatran and Tyranitar, but you can just as easily use it to take down a weakened Garchomp or Politoed. There are a lot of oppurtunities that arise in a match where you can abuse Shadow Tag and Arena Trap's ability to limit the opponents options to effectively guarantee outcomes in your favor rather than play the same guessing game that many other Pokemon face. That's what makes it gamebreaking
Also debuffs become ridiculously busted w/ Shadow Tag / Arena Trap. In VGC / FFA random battles, when the opponent has one / two Pokemon remaining, I normally spam it with as many debuffs as I possibly can because there is no possible way for it to recover from that even if it somehow wins the current match up its in. Now, debuffs aren't exactly OP in the same way as they are in those formats / conditions, but they might be even worse. Due to the high PP of Confide + Rest wasting turns, Goth is basically able to Stall out most defensive Uber Pokemon's PP by continually debuffing them and Resting afterwards .
Also debuffs become ridiculously busted w/ Shadow Tag / Arena Trap. In VGC / FFA random battles, when the opponent has one / two Pokemon remaining, I normally spam it with as many debuffs as I possibly can because there is no possible way for it to recover from that even if it somehow wins the current match up its in. Now, debuffs aren't exactly OP in the same way as they are in those formats / conditions, but they might be even worse. Due to the high PP of Confide + Rest wasting turns, Goth is basically able to Stall out most defensive Uber Pokemon's PP by continually debuffing them and Resting afterwards .
Is Shadow Tag now baned? That is so sad.
I had a Wobbuffet and a Gothitele with this hability in my team. First go with Wobbuffet for the enemy use some status move, then I use encore. Then I switch to Gothitele with this Shadow Tag and use trick with a Choice Scarf. GG, the enemy is forever locked in a status move. So I used 4 calm mind, Trick Room and start to spawn Psychic.
I had a Wobbuffet and a Gothitele with this hability in my team. First go with Wobbuffet for the enemy use some status move, then I use encore. Then I switch to Gothitele with this Shadow Tag and use trick with a Choice Scarf. GG, the enemy is forever locked in a status move. So I used 4 calm mind, Trick Room and start to spawn Psychic.
Tactics like this are why Shadow Tag was banned. It was considered to lock out fundamental gameplay mechanics to the point of overcentralization and favoring the random match-up between teams vulnerable to Trapping (like Stall or Bulky Offense) rather than the skill of the players building and running a team.
Any good OU team would have 2-3 mons with u-turn, volt switch or flip turn, 1-2 ghost/dark plus if shadow tag is legal, then a shadow tag pokemon. That's atleast 4 mons which Gothitella can't trap. The other two mons u should not put on the field till Gothitella is out.
1) Never sending out 1/3 of your team until Gothitelle is out simply is not an option for the vast majority of teams. There are a ton of threatening offensive Pokemon in the tier, and teams will need to use Pokemon which aren't trap resistant to cover them. Oh yeah, some of those threatening offensive Pokemon can also U-Turn into Gothitelle as you switch into your check to just freely eliminate them.
2) Having a pivot move does not guarantee that you can escape Gothitelle unscathed. Choice locked attackers with pivot moves will be easily trapped if they lock themselves into a non-pivot move that cannot KO Gothitelle quickly enough. Additionally, defensively oriented Pokemon with pivot moves are still vulnerable to the Scarf Trick, as they will be unable to escape before they are given the Choice Scarf. This severely reduces their ability to function defensively and makes it possible to trap them in subsequent switches.
3) CM + Rest often lets it force additional KOs on top of whatever it trapped (which is in pretty much any situation where your opponent doesn't still have a Dark-type). Having a key defensive Pokemon just eliminated for free after a single predict is bad enough; being forced to lose one of more additional Pokemon to remove the +6/+6 Gothitelle is absurdly unhealthy.
Please, for the love of god, actually look at what Gothitelle did in Gens 6 and 7 before it was banned. There's a reason why it was banned before even Dynamax at the start of Gen 8.
Could be worse
Gen 5 eng dub calls literally any obvious fruit a berry, and any obvious vegetable a veggie
I mean A N Y, so apples are berry, carrots are just veggie
Can I ask a serious question? Did you actually play competitively before Shadow Tag was banned or are you theorymonning out your ass right now?
In Gen 6 ubers, Mega gengar was pretty common but i never found it to be OP. I mean it was good but nothing crazy. I never played competitive before gen 6 so probably not.
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I'm not super familiar with Mega Gengar in Generation VI but when trapping a specific Pokémon, you don't leave your trapper to get KOed by an opponent, do you?
When your Mega Gengar faces Primal Groudon, and Primal Groudon's current HP isn't in the range of a guaranteed KO by M-Gengar's moves, what do you do? Stay there and get KOed?
...
Oh crap.
I just remembered this hard-hitting (170 SpA), fast (130 Spe) Mega Evolution also has access to Destiny Bond and Perish Song. No wonder it sees play in Ubers. It's like a faster, less reactive Wobbuffet that deals damage on would-be switch-ins.Mega Gengar/Shadow Tag was also the subject of a great deal of discussion about a potential ban to AG in XY and SM, and Shadow Tag was actually banned from Ubers in SS despite its most threatening user no longer being present. I suspect the lack of bans in XY/SM are owed largely to the fact that far fewer players play old tiers but I'm not an Ubers player so I could be mistaken in that regard. I don't see anything in the reasoning behind the SS suspect that couldn't also be applied to the XY and SM metagames though; nothing fundamentally changed for Shadow Tag and it doesn't seem to me like the SS metagame is somehow more susceptible to it.