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A Plea For Less Conservative Suspect Testing
- Thread starter MikeDawg
- Start date
Is this more clear? I never said there was no precedent. Pwnemon already summed up what I was trying to say.
Excadrill and Blaziken's case doesn't quite parallel with Garchomp's. Garchomp's ability, Sand Veil, was banned so Garchomp, who many considered wouldn't be a problem without Sand Veil, was effectively put in Ubers until it had another ability, Rough Skin. Excadrill and Blaziken themselves were banned because their abilities themselves were not broken/uncompetitive, but that they were able to abuse those abilities in a way that was broken. I'll stop discussing this now since complex bans aren't the purpose of the OP, but I just wanted to clear that up.
We are doing pretty much our last suspect tests atm with landorus/keldeo. Excadrill, blaziken and friends will most likely be retested in gen 6 though.
This is silly as no matter how much you want to twist it, if Garchomp didn't have sand veil as an ability, sand veil would never (well, not in the foreseeable future) have been banned.
It's always combinations of things that make something broken. Sand veil isn't broken without Garchomp to abuse it. Blaziken isn't broken without powerful STAB and speed boost on it. etc.
Banning abilities (aside from moody as that's obviously extremely troublesome) isn't a good path to go down imo. I mean we've done it with sand veil and essentially swift swim, though at least swift swim had multiple abusers.
Banning moves gets into the, how much are we modifying the game? How much is justified?
I mean we've changed the way sleep works in the simulator (there's no way to emulate that in the games, you'd just get automatically DQ'd if you accidentally sleeped a second pokemon after they switched out their not natural cure blissey), maybe that signals that banning moves isn't too ridiculous of a possibility, idk.
Though imo, bans should stick to specific pokemon (yea I'd ban politoed, not drizzle + swift swim. You can try and say it's the rain politoed brings that's broken, not him, but that's like saying it's the entry hazards Deoxys-D brings that's broken, not him. Overpoweringly strong team support is still overpowered). It's a lot simpler that way.
yes we can embrace this and bring back blaze blaziken if we're willing to unilaterally ban speed boost on all pokemon ¬_¬
oops i did mean tests, thank you for pointing that out. I'm really not unhappy with what's been banned or not banned given the suspects we've had, but i wish we'd had different suspects.
I don't remember any of those being OU suspects? (Unless it was during BW tests 1-5, where like everything was a suspect lol). And I agree, as I said in my last post, that there has been some precedent for testing competitive moves and abilities. To stop beating around the bush: I just wish the council would be less reluctant to do it again (with Drizzle and Drought).
Our metagames are no joking matter :jump::jump::jump::jump::jump:
Regarding Excadrill and Blaziken, is it a "the metagame would be better / this allows a good precedent for unbanning things" or "I wanna use Excadrill and Blaziken" sort of thing? Because I don't really see the point in adding another complex ban, which some people are against, just for something as subjective as "it'd be funny to use them". It could be interesting to have them back, but just how much would Blaziken contribute? Excadrill would be interesting as a spinner, but other than that, just how well would he do in the current metagame? Weaknesses to Water-, Fighting-, and Fire- types moves, not to mention a fairly poor 88 base Speed, mean it won't contribute all that much, in my opinion, in the current metagame. IMO, it'd just set a shaky sort of precedent.
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Another question that's been brought up: Do we ban for the sake of a better metagame, or do we just ban things that are broken? To be honest, I think the second is more preferable to me. I'd rather we rid the OU tier of broken stuff (as that'll take us awhile anyway) than ban ban ban things that we dislike, as "good metagame" is fairly subjective, even with the "Characteristics of a Good Metagame" thread, as what's wanted in a metagame will always differ from person to person. It'd be nice to keep Smogon's rules as similar as possible to what's given to us by Nintendo, though this is just a personal preference. I prefer bans that stamp out hax and overpowered stuff to bans that just get rid of inconvenient stuff (sort of like Scald). Lastly, I think that we could stand to be a little bit less conservative, but more towards the things that drastically shape the metagame, such as weather. Stealth Rock, U-turn, and the rest, I'm fine with and I see few problems with.
I am trying to figure out how this thread derailed into a complex banning discussion...
Anyway, I agree with MikeDawg's sentiment, I feel that we need a swifter suspect process and that Pokemon should be banned a bit more 'freely.' I don't want our meta to be a ban hammer fest though, so I do think a certain reasonable level of conservatism is good. In particular, I think we should have a very active suspect testing process that isn't directly connected with banning things, and more aimed at looking at what the metagame would look like with X banned or unbanned, without us immediately going to the voting booths. I am thinking of a sort of 2 step process, where a suspect metagame is swiftly tested out and voted on to see if it is acceptable, and only then do we go into an official suspect round.
Anyway, I agree with MikeDawg's sentiment, I feel that we need a swifter suspect process and that Pokemon should be banned a bit more 'freely.' I don't want our meta to be a ban hammer fest though, so I do think a certain reasonable level of conservatism is good. In particular, I think we should have a very active suspect testing process that isn't directly connected with banning things, and more aimed at looking at what the metagame would look like with X banned or unbanned, without us immediately going to the voting booths. I am thinking of a sort of 2 step process, where a suspect metagame is swiftly tested out and voted on to see if it is acceptable, and only then do we go into an official suspect round.
So you want to randomly take things out the metagame and then decide if we like it or not? Then vote on it? I don't get it. I don't get this thread. What are we doing here? If you feel that something is broken then make a case for it. There is no reason to rattle off random moves like SR, pursuit and u-turn without giving any explanation. This is an extremely low quality thread. This post and others is the reason why we have a council in the first place.... The freely ban anything attitude is not going to create a better metagame. TBH it is too late to create a good OU metagame because we already created an indefinitely (weather is never going to be tested again) unstable metagame based on team matchups. If nothing is broken and the broken things arent going to be tested why should their be a suspect test ? After keldeo and landorus-i gets banned which pokemon is going to go next? After that? Then after that? When do we stop banning or unbanning things? Suspect test should be carefully thought out not a game where we just randomly choose which metagame we like best.
Remind me how many times Excadrill came up on the chopping block, before it was finally beheaded
Just because Drizzle faced a suspect in early BW1 and we all settled with aldaron's proposal doesn't mean it can't come up for retesting if the majority of the community feels unhappy about it.
Yes, I know we are pressed for time with XY round the corner but it would have been very interesting in this settled and developed BW2 meta compared to the nascent BW1 meta.
No one said anything about suspecting/banning things randomly. We would only be suspecting things that are debatably detrimental to the health of the metagame. The point of this thread is to get the point across that banning pokemon (which has been our primary focus), is simply not enough anymore to create a competitive metagame. Moves, Items, Abilities, etc should be given equal attention to pokemon when it comes to suspecting, since clearly banning mostly pokemon hasn't allowed us to even approach a desirable metagame (assuming a metagame where skill is the most significant determining factor in who wins any given match is desirable, of course).
Well personally I don't want them in my team(s) but I'm sure someone will find uses for them, even in OU. Blaziken with Blaze and sun support sounds interesting to say the least.
SR isn't random, lot's of people have complained about how OP it is with just one turn of set-up and great distribution (which RS lacks). Yet as far as I know we never tested a move per se in this gen so far.
We are still engaged in what truly defines a pokemon and how "far" bans should go. I think this is the exact thing we should be worrying about, we have a whole new gen coming with a clean slate, and as you can guess people weren't 100% happy at the way Gen 5 has progressed, this is a chance for a fresh start.
Though you did raise an excellent point, when does it stop? We have banned things in top of the pecking order but all that does is push second to first and third to second and so on.
What is a balanced metagame?
Responses in bold.
@Below Post.
Again, he did not say ban U-Turn and Pursuit, he just used examples -_-.
Exactly what authority do you have to say that with? Your whole post makes us sound like a bunch of butthurt newbies who've never played competitive pokemon in our lives. Your attitude is very poor, and you seem to have been opposed to the whole idea of this thread from the get-go.
Evidence to back my above statement. No one in this thread is arguing either of those points. You are taking two small examples and blowing up them up as if they're the basis of his argument, and at the same time degrading everyone else for "entertaining" this thread which you, one person out of most people here who are at least impartial, say to be of "extremely low quality." Also thought I should add that the basis of both your posts is mainly your opinion of the people here and what they are saying. For you, in the two posts you have made, the idea of less conservative testing=noobs crying for everything they dont like banned without any reason.
It is enough... We don't need to ban moves (yeah i know ohko clause)... Why would you ban u-turn and pursuit? Do we need a pursuit clause? If the pokemon that uses these moves are overpowered then the system in place will ban those pokemon. Abilities have already been banned.... items have been banned... so what is the point again? You lost to a pursuit tyranitar and now you want pursuit banned? You got out predicted and got u-turned on? It is just unbelievable the stuff people come up with. If you have a problem then gather some good battlers that think like you do and make a logical thread pleading your case (like SR but that didn't really work) so you can maybe get a suspect test. The problem is so many pokemon are so good that it would take a decade to ban everything down to the way the end of DPPT was. But it would help if we didnt allow strong things to become even stronger on purpose.
The only abilities that have been banned are those that have been clearly uncompetitive and related to evasion. The only item that has been banned is soul dew. The only moves (in OU) that have been banned fall under the OHKO clause. Anything else that exists in the metagame is completely incomparable to those things, and all the OP is saying is that we should be more willing to look more closely at other facets of the metagame that might be worth suspecting. The reason for this is that banning generally only Pokemon has not yielded any significant, positive results. This isn't the thread to point fingers and discuss at length specifically what might or might not be suspect-worthy, so I'm not going to debate you about u-turn, SR, etc.
On a different note, one issue I have with suspecting is that it is, by definition, very time-consuming. This is obviously good in giving us more time to make the correct decision, but it also presents a bit of a roadblock to certain kinds of bans. For example, banning drizzle or SR will never happen (this gen at least) since we all know that if either were to be banned, there would become a whole list of mons that would warrant suspecting. And because everything has to go through the council and there has to be a lot of time for testing and we always have to make sure the community is behind it and...it ends up taking an incredibly long time. Perhaps making something like the rumored SR-free ladder a standard feature could help with this--if we have a ladder up as soon as an issue becomes as potentially worthy of testing as many feel rain is, for example, we could have a ladder for experimenting with that, so that by the time a suspect was being considered we'd already have a ton of data.
Also just wanted to specifically note these "chain-bans" and a problem they create. By "chain-bans" I mean bans of things that are potentially broken but that alter the metagame enough that other things will almost certainly need banning afterwards. Basically only applicable to stuff with a much wider effect than a single mon (weather, SR, trapping). Can a suspect test be done with the caveat that it be followed by several others in the case of a ban? This is partially only an issue due to the time concern above, but because of the gap between suspect tests, people often have a very hard time banning anything that leaves the meta truly "unbalanced", as these chain-bans would. And yet if the meta would be better after the chain of bans...shouldn't we be able to get to that point?
Also just wanted to specifically note these "chain-bans" and a problem they create. By "chain-bans" I mean bans of things that are potentially broken but that alter the metagame enough that other things will almost certainly need banning afterwards. Basically only applicable to stuff with a much wider effect than a single mon (weather, SR, trapping). Can a suspect test be done with the caveat that it be followed by several others in the case of a ban? This is partially only an issue due to the time concern above, but because of the gap between suspect tests, people often have a very hard time banning anything that leaves the meta truly "unbalanced", as these chain-bans would. And yet if the meta would be better after the chain of bans...shouldn't we be able to get to that point?
This is obvious. I said that aside from moody, a clearly uncompetitive ability, no others have been banned. Swift swim + drizzle being banned is a different issue and has nothing to do with what I said. You should seriously take a look at ad think about the things you're about to post before you actually post them. You've consistently done nothing but derail and detract from the discussion. It's not just this thread either.
What did you say? Because It is not a different issue. Those abilities are banned together because they are form an un-competitive duo. The point is everything has always been on the table. If something is breaking the metagame then it gets banned. The reason why it seems that smogon is conservative is because no one can come up with good reasons why things should be banned. The SR arguments ultimately failed because you guys didn't bring up good enough points for the council to put it on priority. If you bring up something else maybe you will have a better chance. No one really knows what a good BW2 metagame looks or feels like... So the instincts of just suspecting everything that moves is understandable. But it is not the correct way of creating a good metagame. Lando and keldeo will probably get the boot.. but then where do we go from there? Are we really in a position where we can just start banning random moves? If you are gonna say "lets ban moves" and then give examples i have a right to dispute them. I like to argue in absolutes not theory.
I am in total agreement with the suggestions for less conservative banning really. One thing that has bothered me is the total centralization of OU that has occurred in BW2; as Chou said before, banning those threats or their moves might not be in the spirit of Pokémon, sure. However, I don't believe every team using 15 "top-level" pokes from a pool of at least 300 usable ones is in the spirit of Pokémon either. Would GF have given us so many choices if they knew that people would only use, like, ten of them?
I am wholly in agreement with this post, again.
I am wholly in agreement with this post, again.
*sigh* They are banned on the same team. They are not banned. Swift Swim is not banned, thus you are allowed to use it on a team that lacks Drizzle. Vice versa for Drizzle. We actually are getting a SR-less ladder to see if that kind of environment would be worth enforcing in Gen VI or not. I'm not going to reply to your posts anymore because you never bring up anything worth noting and derail every discussion you're in. I don't mean to sound offensive, but it's tiring to respond to all of your senseless posts so that some poor soul just starting to read what's going on won't be misguided into thinking what you say is legitimate. You've been told multiple times by multiple users that what you say is generally absurd.
