100% Confusion Chance

I'm okay with banning Confuse Ray on like the same grounds as Swagger, but Dynamic Punch should stay. Yes, it is a 100% confusion move, but I would say that the confusion isn't the only reason you would use it over another move. It's still a rather strong and 100% reliable STAB move on Pokemon like Machoke and Machamp. Though the confusion is nice, it's also used over Close Combat because it doesn't drop your defenses and can allow you to stay in for another turn and attack again without the decreased bulk. The argument can be made that Cross Chop is roughly the same, but the only reason to use No Guard Cross Chop over Dynamic Punch is the higher critical hit ratio. Yeah Dynamic Punch can help you cheese through some otherwise decent checks, but like so can hax from anything, it's just that Dynamic Punch has a higher chance of it. The increased critical hit ratio can just as easily help bogus your way through a counter as the actually kind of unreliable confusion.

Also I wouldn't really say the metagame without confusion would be more fun because nobody but low ladder people really uses it because it's kind of a garbage strategy :/
you're completely missing the point. not only would it make zero sense to ban all 100% confusion ones except the most problematic one, but your reasoning on why dynamicpunch should be the exception makes even less sense. the fact that it's a reliable stab move does nothing but make it more of an issue in terms of uncompetitiveness because it just means that it's actually a good option to use unlike confuse ray and friends. The crit rate of cross chop couldn't be less relevant, the only reason it's even being brought up is because it gives machoke and machamp a stab option that doesn't lower their defenses which means that dynamicpunch being banned doesn't "nerf" them.
 
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Acast

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I'm okay with banning Confuse Ray on like the same grounds as Swagger, but Dynamic Punch should stay. Yes, it is a 100% confusion move, but I would say that the confusion isn't the only reason you would use it over another move. It's still a rather strong and 100% reliable STAB move on Pokemon like Machoke and Machamp. Though the confusion is nice, it's also used over Close Combat because it doesn't drop your defenses and can allow you to stay in for another turn and attack again without the decreased bulk. The argument can be made that Cross Chop is roughly the same, but the only reason to use No Guard Cross Chop over Dynamic Punch is the higher critical hit ratio. Yeah Dynamic Punch can help you cheese through some otherwise decent checks, but like so can hax from anything, it's just that Dynamic Punch has a higher chance of it. The increased critical hit ratio can just as easily help bogus your way through a counter as the actually kind of unreliable confusion.

Also I wouldn't really say the metagame without confusion would be more fun because nobody but low ladder people really uses it because it's kind of a garbage strategy :/
It may be a garbage strategy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work at times. And when it does, there is no "strategy" involved. There has been more than one occasion across multiple metagames when a low ladder player defeated me because they were abusing parafusion. Yes, I'm salty and I may even be a bad player, but I can't be the only one who has had that experience and it's a tactic that I firmly believe should not be allowed. Any and all skill is taken out of the equation and it becomes a gamble. As competitive pokemon players, we should not be gambling. We should be strategizing.

I believe this is similar to why the evasion clause and the Moody ban are both in effect. Increased evasion essentially delegitimized any skill and experience either player may have and puts it all in the hands of the RNG. Smogon promotes skillful battling, so why would we want an entirely RNG based tactic in any metagame?
 
So since we've banned machoke, I wanted to try out confuse ray and other confusion inducing moves and have acquired a few replays which can definitely spark some light onto whether confusion is still competitive in our metagame. I don't quite understand how this can be seen as competitive and now machoke is banned, i am still going to argue that 100% confusion inducing moves are no good for smogon and there is no reason as to why it should be kept since it is 100% not competitive.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-407982372
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pu-407446402
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pu-407454783
 
Thunder Wave isn't 100% competitive and it's absolutely needed for that team to work. Scald, Sacred Fire, Body Slam, Iron Head, [insert every single move with a secondary effect] aren't 100% competitive either. By the logic in your post, all those moves, from Thunder Wave to Flamethrower / Ice Beam / Thunderbolt, should be banned for not being 100% competitive.

If 50% chance of getting lucky is where we draw the line of "too haxy to allow", then all these moves need to go: Charge Beam, Crush Claw, Diamond Storm, Fiery Dance, Luster Purge, Mist Ball, Octazooka, Poison Fang, Razor Shell, Rock Smash, Sacred Fire, and Serene Grace boosted Air Slash and Iron head need to go. Some of them aren't common, but some of them have significant tournament and ladder presence, and have won tons of tournament games.

Speaking of tournaments, can you post replays of Confuse Ray winning Grand Slam games? Because if we are going with random ladder replays as evidence, I'm sure that in a couple hours I can "prove" Metronome is broken. If these confusion moves are as uncompetitive as you claim they are, they should at least reliably win serious games like Swagger and Baton pass did.

"Confusion moves do nothing but hax!"

Don't ignore that they force switches (hazard damage, scares away setup mons, etc) and help some Pokemon setup. If you ignore Thunder Wave lowers speed, it does nothing but introduce hax to the game!!!
 
Confusion is a lot different to the side effects shown in your examples. Moves like confuse ray where their sole intention is to cause confusion and force a 50/50 - which can last for up to 4 turns, where is this competitive? What is the difference between swagger and confuse ray apart from the attack bump.
I appreciate it's "not the most relevant strategy" and forces an entire 50/50, but what do we lose by banning confusion inducing moves? How will it not do anything but improve the competitive aspect of battling?

I'm not against banning moves like hurricane or flamethrower which have the small percentage side effect, but a move combination like dynamic punch + no guard or confuse ray + prankster are completely different when there are options available that do the exact same thing without the side effect and can make a game 100% more clean.

I am not saying side effect moves are uncompetitive, i am stating that confusion is uncompetitive as a mechanic and if a team built solely around confusion and the luck aspect of 50/50's can win fairly consistently (i'm 4/5 with that shit stain of a team, no I haven't brought it to any slam games) then it is a problem.

And if we were to use your logic, why not unban swagger since it forces switches and add's an attack raise, not just forces confusion? or is it because swagger was used in tournaments which makes it bannable, i'm not sure where the difference is. As far as I see it, it's a small ban that can affect all tiers in a positive way, especially PU, and there will almost be 0 negative repercussions.
 

Nails

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Recently I laddered to 1750 (55-14, 15th place, 1st was ~1820) on the VGC ladder in a night with a Vanilluxe. Vanilluxe has nearly no redeeming qualities and was used as a meme. I beat more worlds qualified players than i lost to on my run. My reason to mention this aside from fellating myself was that ladder play means nearly nothing in terms of determining how strong something is.

Probability management is a skill. Sableye can use confuse ray as a panic check for a +4 volcarona to give its teammate a 50% chance of revenge killing it when no other move will do. You can use it to allow your teammate to set up more easily, it can mess up baton pass (confusion gets passed!), it has legitimate applications. I'm not going to say it's good like swagger is, it's not banworthy, but it has utility tied to the forcing of 50/50s. Not every 50/50 is created equal, the risk and reward of 50/50s can be very heavily skewed in the favor of one player or another. I've hit on these points earlier in the thread but I felt like repeating them.
 

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
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Probability management is a skill. Sableye can use swagger as a panic check for a +4 volcarona to give its teammate a 45% chance (counting accuracy) of revenge killing it when no other move will do. You can use it to allow your teammate to set up more easily, it can mess up baton pass (confusion gets passed!), it has legitimate applications. I'm not going to say it should be unbanned like confuse ray is, but it has utility in forcing 45/55s.

The point Teddeh was trying to make was why do we ban one over the other when the consequences of confusion are similar? Is it because of tournament presence? Will we only ban it if people start using confuse ray in official tournaments? Will we not reward the player who played in a way to get a volcarona to +4, and instead reward the player who played in a way that let their opponent get a +4 volcarona with a coinflip that is not even under their control? Is that competitive?
 
Probability management is a skill. Sableye can use swagger as a panic check for a +4 volcarona to give its teammate a 45% chance (counting accuracy) of revenge killing it when no other move will do. You can use it to allow your teammate to set up more easily, it can mess up baton pass (confusion gets passed!), it has legitimate applications. I'm not going to say it should be unbanned like confuse ray is, but it has utility in forcing 45/55s.

The point Teddeh was trying to make was why do we ban one over the other when the consequences of confusion are similar? Is it because of tournament presence? Will we only ban it if people start using confuse ray in official tournaments? Will we not reward the player who played in a way to get a volcarona to +4, and instead reward the player who played in a way that let their opponent get a +4 volcarona with a coinflip that is not even under their control? Is that competitive?
Primarily because Swagger can be abused with considerably fewer risks / higher rewards with Choice Scarf Imposter Ditto. Choice Scarf Ditto is a major factor behind why SwagPlay teams were even a problem in the first place, because being able to Swagger a Pokemon like Bisharp (or whatever was common in early XY) and abuse the boosts of the opponent (in the case, the Bisharp) was primarily what made Swagger much more uncompetitive than it could with SwagPlay alone (not that SwagPlay wasn't uncompetitive, Ditto just made Swagger far worse).
 
Probability management is a skill. Sableye can use swagger as a panic check for a +4 volcarona to give its teammate a 45% chance (counting accuracy) of revenge killing it when no other move will do. You can use it to allow your teammate to set up more easily, it can mess up baton pass (confusion gets passed!), it has legitimate applications. I'm not going to say it should be unbanned like confuse ray is, but it has utility in forcing 45/55s.

The point Teddeh was trying to make was why do we ban one over the other when the consequences of confusion are similar? Is it because of tournament presence? Will we only ban it if people start using confuse ray in official tournaments? Will we not reward the player who played in a way to get a volcarona to +4, and instead reward the player who played in a way that let their opponent get a +4 volcarona with a coinflip that is not even under their control? Is that competitive?
Because the consequences aren't similar. The +2 boost makes the 50% much riskier, Foul Play becomes a real offensive option, and Scarf Ditto threatens to sweep even if you hit through confusion. It's not a coincidence that one was used to win official tournament games and reliably get high peaks / reqs on every singles ladder from LC to Ubers, while the other is being used to cheese PU ladder games.

Despite that Swagger is much better than Confuse Ray, and was proven to be reliable enough to do well on the ladder and tournaments, the ban was controversial. Not only that, the pro-ban side also wants to get rid of Dynamic Punch (+ No Guard), which hasn't been a problem in any tier aside from PU and is commonly seen and accepted in DPP OU, BW UU, BW RU, BW NU, and ORAS UU.

Posting a handful of cherrypicked replays and repeating "50/50" on every single post isn't enough justification to make some extremely controversial bans

And since we are replacing words

Will reward the player who gets a Def boost with their Diancie, preventing it from getting revenge killed by X Pokemon?
Will we reward the player who burns the RD Swampert / DD Gyarados with Entei to avoid getting swept?
Will we reward the player whose Volcarona got out of control because of Fiery Dance?
Will we reward the player who 1v1s a healthy Mega Metagross with Scarf Jirachi?

"is that competitive?"
 

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
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And since we are replacing words

Will reward the player who gets a Def boost with their Diancie, preventing it from getting revenge killed by X Pokemon?
Will we reward the player who burns the RD Swampert / DD Gyarados with Entei to avoid getting swept?
Will we reward the player whose Volcarona got out of control because of Fiery Dance?
Will we reward the player who 1v1s a healthy Mega Metagross with Scarf Jirachi?

"is that competitive?"
In my opinion it's not really logical to compare a move that causes the 50/50 as the primary effect with moves that have a 50% secondary effect. Sacred Fire, Diamond Storm, and Fiery Dance are all fantastic STAB moves that are used with the intent of dishing out damage, meanwhile Confuse Ray has no other purpose but to throw the game under the RNG bus. Sure Sacred Fire burns change games but there are far greater competitive applications to that move than "You better switch out and take hazard damage or risk flipping a coin lol".
 

Nails

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In my opinion it's not really logical to compare a move that causes the 50/50 as the primary effect with moves that have a 50% secondary effect. Sacred Fire, Diamond Storm, and Fiery Dance are all fantastic STAB moves that are used with the intent of dishing out damage, meanwhile Confuse Ray has no other purpose but to throw the game under the RNG bus. Sure Sacred Fire burns change games but there are far greater competitive applications to that move than "You better switch out and take hazard damage or risk flipping a coin lol".
Did you read my post at all? You responded to it so I think you did. I literally told you what the competitive purpose of confuse ray other than "throwing the game under the RNG bus" was 10 hours ago. Please reread my previous post until you can comprehend what I said.
 

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
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Did you read my post at all? You responded to it so I think you did. I literally told you what the competitive purpose of confuse ray other than "throwing the game under the RNG bus" was 10 hours ago. Please reread my previous post until you can comprehend what I said.
None of the "competitive purpose" for Confuse Ray that you listed don't involve getting lucky with the confusion coinflip, hence why it's just throwing the game under the RNG bus. If you really think people use Confuse Ray outside the reason of haxing out their opponent, then please by all means prove me wrong.
 

Nails

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None of the "competitive purpose" for Confuse Ray that you listed don't involve getting lucky with the confusion coinflip, hence why it's just throwing the game under the RNG bus. If you really think people use Confuse Ray outside the reason of haxing out their opponent, then please by all means prove me wrong.
If I have a dd mence against a jirachi in a situation where we both 2hko each other with earthquake / ice punch but I'll be revenge killed by their starmie and lose unless I set up a dd first, confuse ray gives me 2 chances to get that free turn i need to get my dragon dance. Yes, each turn is a coinflip. The situation as a whole is skewed in my favor despite each individual turn being a 50% chance because they have to get multiple coinflips to keep themselves in the game. If you consider this haxing your opponent out then I guess we have different points of view on the issue because it's like a 60-70% chance for my salamence to sweep. Similarly, the sableye vs volcarona example is not anyone's main plan for dealing with volcarona. A player might choose to use confuse ray as a filler on their sableye as a move of last resort which gives them a 50% out to situations they didn't want to be in. Just because you want to win the game more reliably than through coinflips doesn't mean that having the ability to force coinflips in an otherwise lost game is not your best play.
 

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
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If I have a dd mence against a jirachi in a situation where we both 2hko each other with earthquake / ice punch but I'll be revenge killed by their starmie and lose unless I set up a dd first, confuse ray gives me 2 chances to get that free turn i need to get my dragon dance. Yes, each turn is a coinflip. The situation as a whole is skewed in my favor despite each individual turn being a 50% chance because they have to get multiple coinflips to keep themselves in the game. If you consider this haxing your opponent out then I guess we have different points of view on the issue because it's like a 60-70% chance for my salamence to sweep. Similarly, the sableye vs volcarona example is not anyone's main plan for dealing with volcarona. A player might choose to use confuse ray as a filler on their sableye as a move of last resort which gives them a 50% out to situations they didn't want to be in. Just because you want to win the game more reliably than through coinflips doesn't mean that having the ability to force coinflips in an otherwise lost game is not your best play.
First of all the odds are not in your favor considering you use one turn to confuse, which results in a 36% success rate of the opponent giving you a free turn as evidenced by yourself earlier in this thread. Even less so if the sweeper in question is something like a Salamence which doesn't have moves to confuse the opposing Pokemon, as you need to either spend another turn to switch or hope they go through their confusion and hit your confuser to get a free switch in to your sweeper.

I'm not arguing whether or not a last ditch confusion of an opponent is the best play. Having a best play =/= competitive. If your only out of a losing situation is getting the four-turn four-self hit confusion, then that is the best play without question. The question that I'm asking is do we give the losing player the option to do so, as the success of the strategy which relies solely on RNG basically nullifies all the wincon management done by the player who is ahead, which in my eyes is not an element of competitive play.
 

Threw

cohiba
It's difficult to argue that confusion isn't uncompetitive simply because of the fact that it truly is a pseudo-status that does nothing but make the game a competition of luck and has no competitive applications otherwise (Thunder Wave forces wasted turns too, sure, but that has competitive use as a move that cuts Speed, and full paras are really just something we have to deal with); however, I strongly disagree with the premise that all 100% confusion moves, including something like Dynamic Punch, are broken. This is because you can make the same argument about Dynamic Punch that you can make about Thunder Wave: as a move that causes damage, Dynamic Punch does indeed have competitive applications - it just happens to have a nasty side effect. If Dynamic Punch were to be banned, it would only be right that we ban Hurricane as well, because even though it only causes confusion 30% of the time, the move is equally RNG-dependent; in other words, whether you're using Hurricane or Dynamic Punch or Water Pulse, whether the opponents hit themselves and lose a turn is entirely in the hands of the RNG and neither player has control over it.

The Swagger ban happened because it won legitimate games, and on a semi-regular basis; however, the fact that Confuse Ray has yet to do so and perhaps never will isn't really a reason in my mind not to ban it - in fact, it might be more of a reason to ban it, because at least Swagger could be used with some success competitively alongside Foul Play whether or not the opponents hit themselves, while Confuse Ray serves to do nothing but force outcomes based entirely on RNG. In short, I'd say we should just ban Confuse Ray. I strongly dislike this precedent we have of only banning things once they've had negative effects on competition, which is why I think "it hasn't won any tour games yet" isn't a reason not to do it. I see no reason not to take a preventative stance on something that is quite clearly uncompetitive, has adversely affected many ladder games already, and may very well adversely affect tour games someday in the future.
 

Oglemi

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Banning something because "it might become a problem" is terrible logic and terrible precedence and I really hope I don't need to spell out why that it is.

I have no opinion on anything regarding this thread, but I think if you read Nails's posts he explicitly states at least 4 times over that Confuse Ray has competitive merit outside of throwing the game to RNG, and why we shouldn't base our tiering solely on ladder performance and word of mouth. This isn't to say we should base our tiering solely on tournament performance, but something that is "clearly uncompetitive" should at least be affecting tournament games to some degree since that is where the highest form of competitive Pokemon takes place.
 

Threw

cohiba
The examples Nails gave display exactly what I said: all confusion does is force 50/50s in which neither player has control of the outcome. Also, just because something isn't effective and therefore isn't used in tours doesn't mean it isn't uncompetitive; when I build a team for a tournament, I'm not going to use confusion because I don't want to win 50% of the time, I want to try to win 100% of the time. However, it isn't too crazy to think that someone who believes they have no chance against an opponent could use confusion to put himself in a situation where he has a 50% chance to win; why even have that option on the table?

I don't think banning just based on tours is smart either; it's important to keep in mind that the ladder is equally something Smogon should attempt to keep in check, and if something is a problem there that the tournament scene manages to avoid, it should be considered for a ban nonetheless.
 

Sam

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The ladder is taken in to account. What's not taken in to account is a handful of replays. If something is a problem on the ladder then it would spammed and dominate the ladder, which isn't the case at all here. Tournaments are just an easier way to tell when something is too dominant.

The examples Nails gave display exactly what I said: all confusion does is force 50/50s in which neither player has control of the outcome. Also, just because something isn't effective and therefore isn't used in tours doesn't mean it isn't uncompetitive; when I build a team for a tournament, I'm not going to use confusion because I don't want to win 50% of the time, I want to try to win 100% of the time. However, it isn't too crazy to think that someone who believes they have no chance against an opponent could use confusion to put himself in a situation where he has a 50% chance to win; why even have that option on the table?
I mean yes that is possible in an incredibly specific scenario where a player needs confusion on a specific turn to win and otherwise loses (probably a last-mon scenario). In this case, the user had to preserve their mon with confusion and still be in a scenario where they can confuse the mon. Confusion at best gives 50%. Does someone automatically deserve to lose the game if they get it to the point where they need a full paralysis in one of 2 turns to win? That sounds silly but it's the same scenario. And Oglemi is absolutely right that this is not a problem and banning it right now would be silly...ladders have existed for years and confusion has yet to become a problem that has necessitated banning it.
 

Oglemi

Borf
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TBF to the pro-ban side, theoretically you could try to chalk Confuse Ray up to the same "uncompetitive merits" as something like Double Team, and is where I think a lot of the pro-ban arguments are coming from in this thread especially taking Threw's last post into account, but you would have to prove that CRay and the other confusion moves are just as problematically uncompetitive as Double Team and OHKO moves if you wanted to go that route, because right now the "throwing the game to 50/50s" argument isn't wholly convincing (and I think the last time we Claused something similarly was Moody (ignoring Endless Battles), and it was proved beyond a reason of a doubt to be broken/uncompetitive).
 

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