Unaware Dialga sounds cool but the other dialga sets are generally better, such as offensive dd, defensive dd, or regenvest. The main problem with dialga (and some others) is they have one bulk that is pretty mediocre, and they don't resist the moves that beat unaware (sungeist geyser and stored trip). Arceus is different because 120 120 120 bulk is really good and being only weak to fighting means that it can check many set up sweepers.
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BH Balanced Hackmons Suspects and Bans Thread
- Thread starter E4 Flint
- Start date
- Status
Champion Leon
Banned deucer.
I’ve seen long posts of yours too... also your point doesn’t matter if you consider the coverage moves on -ate users. That was my reason for replying.
I agree, but it does resist Stored Power, Photon Geyser, Sunsteel Strike... and has only 1 more Weakness than Arceus. Do it’s other resistances not make up for its lower HP and SpD?
I didn’t mean to come across as overbearing, just acknowledging the selling points, as all of the other options he tried didn’t fit his team, according to his post so I thought “well, this might be an option if all of the other options have been tried and didn’t work out.”
I know Dialga is not popular as an Unaware user, but it came to me as a backup that might work as a last resort for his team.
So far I am also significantly annoyed by Set-Up Spam, especially when I am not running many defensive mons but IMO Scarf Imposter is a pretty good check to set-up spam as the expect the speed tie except you always outspeed (unless unburden but that is why you spam core enforcer and spectral thief). If you have a little more space you can afford to have a better defensive core but if your team is pretty offensive then Scarf Imposter is a pretty good glue, also can be useful in defensive MU by coming in on the opponents imposter and switcherooing, giving you the eviolite (hopefully opponent isn't running scarf too!) which will be far more useful in the MU. Also consider Mold Breaker + Priority which is usually Gigas/Slaking.
@above not resisting Power Trip as an Unaware is pretty bad, yeah Arceus doesn't resist but meh I don't like unaware arceus.
TBH Shell Smash maybe deserves a suspect because all of the other set up doesn't give you an immediate boost to Stored Trip (Belly Drum has a drawback of cutting health and no speed gain and if you are running Sitrus Unburden then you get rked by priority. While Prankster Haze is a thing Im sure people can keep on innovating to bypass that (also b/c prankster haze is passive af unless you are running spec thief but you run into 4mss since you want dbond haze recovery and generally pivot move).
@above not resisting Power Trip as an Unaware is pretty bad, yeah Arceus doesn't resist but meh I don't like unaware arceus.
TBH Shell Smash maybe deserves a suspect because all of the other set up doesn't give you an immediate boost to Stored Trip (Belly Drum has a drawback of cutting health and no speed gain and if you are running Sitrus Unburden then you get rked by priority. While Prankster Haze is a thing Im sure people can keep on innovating to bypass that (also b/c prankster haze is passive af unless you are running spec thief but you run into 4mss since you want dbond haze recovery and generally pivot move).
Champion Leon
Banned deucer.
Don’t forget Geomancy, that with Simple can make Stored Power quite powerful. Plus, it can be used with either Fairy Z Crystal, or Power Herb. I used to like Meloetta for its immunity to Spectral Thief, and STAB Boomburst + Stored Power.
Imprison seems to be only way to stop both Imposter and Haze, I’m sure we will see it eventually if Haze and Imposter are the only thing besides Perish Song and Destiny Bond standing in the way of a set up sweep.
Perhaps Dazzling + Shell Smash, Sunsteel Strike, Haze, Imprison Slaking/Regigas or other normal types holding Safety Goggles will start being the way to bypass anti-setup checks.
Not an ideal use of moves since they lack stab, but certainly something that doesn’t get stopped by the regular checks.
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Rumors i think that you have a flawed mindset regarding teambuilding in that you see setup as a whole as something to try and check with a mon, instead of looking at the individual setup mons. what i mean by this is that by using multiple pokemon, you can prevent most setup sweepers from sweeping your team without having to fill up your team with guaranteed setup checks.
as an example, let's say you start your defensive core off with unaware zygarde-c. you ruled this out in your post because of its weaknesses to moves like light of ruin from shell smash mg diancie, draco meteor from contrary sceptile, and others. but what if we paired it with flash fire magearna? even though magearna is usually only used to cover stuff like -ate and isn't really a "check" for setup in general (+2 mmx smashes it with close combat), it covers zygarde's weaknesses pretty well. after that, you can add something like triage mega rayquaza to cover drummers (and imposter-proof it with zyg as a bonus).
another example: sturdy shedinja would go together well with that unaware mega scizor set that loses to contrary. shed covers poison heal xern/kyogre and common contrary mons like mega sceptile (moongeist is uncommon). it loses to physical power trip/sunsteel strike users but scizor's got you covered in that department.
ok right now i want to talk about dqm.
dqm is (are?), in my opinion, the next thing we should be suspecting.
these abilities aren't broken by any stretch of the imagination. anyone who's used them knows that a dazzling user can't sweep defensive teams very well without an ability boosting its damage. their banworthiness, i feel, lies in their effect on teambuilding.
whenever i'm building a balance team, i can never just slap on mega diancie or something and say "this is my revenge killer". instead it has to be something like prankster registeel, which has none of mega diancie's offensive pressure, or scarf imposter, which is basically a dead slot vs balance and stall unless you can trick something.
something funny is that i think banning dqm would actually nerf stall (which everyone seems to complain about during suspects). making proactive counterplay to setup more viable increases the amount of pressure your average balance team can exert.
this is because teambuilding is a lot more freed up with dqm out of the picture. having mons like kyurem-b and mega heracross (he's back baby) with unavoidable priority attacks available immensely helps balance teams in the teambuilding stage. suddenly 3 mon offensive cores are not just viable, but good.
so tl;dr if we ban dqm, we can create more variety in teambuilding by actually letting people have designated revenge killers that can't just fail against random sweepers. these revenge killers free up teambuilding because they can play multiple roles unlike stuff like prankster registeel.
as an example, let's say you start your defensive core off with unaware zygarde-c. you ruled this out in your post because of its weaknesses to moves like light of ruin from shell smash mg diancie, draco meteor from contrary sceptile, and others. but what if we paired it with flash fire magearna? even though magearna is usually only used to cover stuff like -ate and isn't really a "check" for setup in general (+2 mmx smashes it with close combat), it covers zygarde's weaknesses pretty well. after that, you can add something like triage mega rayquaza to cover drummers (and imposter-proof it with zyg as a bonus).
another example: sturdy shedinja would go together well with that unaware mega scizor set that loses to contrary. shed covers poison heal xern/kyogre and common contrary mons like mega sceptile (moongeist is uncommon). it loses to physical power trip/sunsteel strike users but scizor's got you covered in that department.
ok right now i want to talk about dqm.
dqm is (are?), in my opinion, the next thing we should be suspecting.
these abilities aren't broken by any stretch of the imagination. anyone who's used them knows that a dazzling user can't sweep defensive teams very well without an ability boosting its damage. their banworthiness, i feel, lies in their effect on teambuilding.
whenever i'm building a balance team, i can never just slap on mega diancie or something and say "this is my revenge killer". instead it has to be something like prankster registeel, which has none of mega diancie's offensive pressure, or scarf imposter, which is basically a dead slot vs balance and stall unless you can trick something.
something funny is that i think banning dqm would actually nerf stall (which everyone seems to complain about during suspects). making proactive counterplay to setup more viable increases the amount of pressure your average balance team can exert.
this is because teambuilding is a lot more freed up with dqm out of the picture. having mons like kyurem-b and mega heracross (he's back baby) with unavoidable priority attacks available immensely helps balance teams in the teambuilding stage. suddenly 3 mon offensive cores are not just viable, but good.
so tl;dr if we ban dqm, we can create more variety in teambuilding by actually letting people have designated revenge killers that can't just fail against random sweepers. these revenge killers free up teambuilding because they can play multiple roles unlike stuff like prankster registeel.
oh and while we're talking about balance teams can people STOP BRINGING BALANCE TO EVERY SINGLE TOURNAMENT GAME i mean seriously over 50% of the moves in every game are u turn???????? whenever i'm watching these games it's really exciting WHO WILL HE U TURN INTO NEXT ???????????? that was mostly satire but i would like to see some variety
About Unaware users discussions: Not gonna get into all that about Dialga and stuff. I'll just say, if you want to know what I did with Arceus in-depth, I have the details down in the "toxic" RMT in my signature, since I used it on that team.
Gurpreet Patel (Sent you a Friend Request) Yes and no, kinda sorta. A good Unaware who covers a lot of common set-up sweepers works wonders as part of a solid defensive core, with the other Pokemon acting as strong enough checks/counters to the things that beat it up keep the Unaware safe. For example, Magic Bounce Yveltal would pair well with Unaware Cresselia, since it can come in on nearly any Gengar set to force it out or Knock Off its Spooky Plate/outright KO it. Cress, meanwhile, walled most everything that beat Yveltal.
As for your Zygarde/Marg suggestion for set-up Diancie, that combo falls apart completely if they run Precipice Blades, as even unboosted 2HKOs Marg. And before anyone says "nobody runs Precipice!" I do for that reason and its not really hard to imposterproof. Without moldy moves, Shedinja could be used against Diancie. Diancie might not use the moves directly, but it seriously benefits from them keeping Shedinja out of the meta.
Gurpreet Patel (Sent you a Friend Request) Yes and no, kinda sorta. A good Unaware who covers a lot of common set-up sweepers works wonders as part of a solid defensive core, with the other Pokemon acting as strong enough checks/counters to the things that beat it up keep the Unaware safe. For example, Magic Bounce Yveltal would pair well with Unaware Cresselia, since it can come in on nearly any Gengar set to force it out or Knock Off its Spooky Plate/outright KO it. Cress, meanwhile, walled most everything that beat Yveltal.
As for your Zygarde/Marg suggestion for set-up Diancie, that combo falls apart completely if they run Precipice Blades, as even unboosted 2HKOs Marg. And before anyone says "nobody runs Precipice!" I do for that reason and its not really hard to imposterproof. Without moldy moves, Shedinja could be used against Diancie. Diancie might not use the moves directly, but it seriously benefits from them keeping Shedinja out of the meta.
Correct, BH is about breaking through cores and not single pokes.
Every poke has counters but countering a core is a more dynamic process.
Shedinja is the prime example for this, yes Shedinja can be 1HKO by Sunsteel and Moongeist.
However its mostly within a core which can take unboost hits and counteract boosted.
I have lost couple days ago to the defensive Shedinja, Audino, Giratina, Chansey Quad Core.
Many top players like Ducky and Shed use this core, it remembers me of the CHALK core in VGC Gen 6.
Every core has a magic key to perfectly open it. In BH its mostly a semiviable defensive poke.
The irony of a defensive key is the result of Imposterproofing.
Any immunity ability can work in your favor, M-Ray can be either Dazzling or Soundproof to be a hidden -ate check.
Obviously the player using it will know for sure, the attacker can only guess the odds of a gambit.
Usually people understanding 1on1 metagames tend to be the most intelligent ones.
Many players underestimate the power of switching, its your 5th move with unlimited PP.
Old Fighting Games had 1 Fighter in the beginning, later ones allowed to have a second (or more)
for insta switching between each other, pokemon 6vs6 plays in a similar matter.
This is why im so sensitive about triples missing in Gen 7,
Its a step back and i want to see the way going forward.
I consider U-Turn weak, the only time i did use it cost me a tournament. Against MAMP i have used U-Turn cuz
"U-Turn is a good move", but it was a wrong guess and it resulted in giving away a win.
Unaware Dialga does not work cuz it has no niche, Fur Coat is better against physical and Assault Regenerator against special attacks.
Arceus is immune to Spectral Thief and Moongeist Beam plus being faster than all -ate pokes.
Every poke has counters but countering a core is a more dynamic process.
Shedinja is the prime example for this, yes Shedinja can be 1HKO by Sunsteel and Moongeist.
However its mostly within a core which can take unboost hits and counteract boosted.
I have lost couple days ago to the defensive Shedinja, Audino, Giratina, Chansey Quad Core.
Many top players like Ducky and Shed use this core, it remembers me of the CHALK core in VGC Gen 6.
Every core has a magic key to perfectly open it. In BH its mostly a semiviable defensive poke.
The irony of a defensive key is the result of Imposterproofing.
Any immunity ability can work in your favor, M-Ray can be either Dazzling or Soundproof to be a hidden -ate check.
Obviously the player using it will know for sure, the attacker can only guess the odds of a gambit.
Usually people understanding 1on1 metagames tend to be the most intelligent ones.
Many players underestimate the power of switching, its your 5th move with unlimited PP.
Old Fighting Games had 1 Fighter in the beginning, later ones allowed to have a second (or more)
for insta switching between each other, pokemon 6vs6 plays in a similar matter.
This is why im so sensitive about triples missing in Gen 7,
Its a step back and i want to see the way going forward.
I consider U-Turn weak, the only time i did use it cost me a tournament. Against MAMP i have used U-Turn cuz
"U-Turn is a good move", but it was a wrong guess and it resulted in giving away a win.
Unaware Dialga does not work cuz it has no niche, Fur Coat is better against physical and Assault Regenerator against special attacks.
Arceus is immune to Spectral Thief and Moongeist Beam plus being faster than all -ate pokes.
It might be a little too soon to call for a suspect, but I think it's time we looked at Illusion.
As a preface, let's take a look at what this ability does. Illusion lets you disguise yourself as any Pokemon as long as said Pokemon is in the last slot of your team, for as long as you don't take damage. Another one of its properties is that it prevents Imposter from transforming in front of you while Illusion is up. An Illusion user using a Z-Move will also break an Illusion. Finally, the other meta relevant property I believe it has is that if a Pokemon with Illusion undergoes Primal Reversion or Mega Evolution while the Illusion is up, the Illusion will stay up until you switch out, as your native ability replaces Illusion so it doesn't actually mind the chip damage.
So how does this look in the metagame? Well, for starters, Illusion can be used on anything, and you have no indication of if it's present on a team. While you can narrow down the abilities a Pokemon has at team preview, you definitely can't look at a Pokemon, say "Oh look, this is definitely Illusion" and play around it as such. Therefore, when the game starts, you're either forced to play under the assumption that every Pokemon that hasn't altered their HP can potentially be an Illusion Pokemon, or you're completely ignoring the possibility. While the game runs its course, you can pick up hints that state that an Illusion is present - Mainly looking at interaction with hazards (25% and immunity to Toxic Spikes can tell you it's a Rayquaza, 6% can tell you it's an MMX or a Garchomp, etc) and also looking at when they send their Pokemon out (bringing their Diancie in on your Flash Fire Registeel when it's a perfect opportunity for them to send in their Choice Band Gliscor or some shit) but the thing is that this careful playing creates a multitude of of opportunities for them to punish you if you misplay once. Yes, misplays should definitely be punished - That is how this game works, but it should almost never punish you hard enough for you to lose the game unless you like harded your Giratina into an obvious Diancie Boomburst while they still had their KFC or some shit.
The presence of Illusion forces you to play defensively which is actually perfectly fine by itself, but there's also the issue it creates once Illusion is revealed. If you have an Illusion Pokemon that's disguising as something at an identical HP percentage (This is assuming that Illusion is revealed so you really should be playing on exact recorded HP values) or at max, then it creates a 50/50 assuming you're using Illusion properly. "This can be a Pixilate Diancie and I could switch in my Ho-Oh, or this could be that Illusion Band Ray and I could risk losing my Ho-Oh to it, so maybe I should click my Fur Coat Giratina..." As in, you're playing 4d chess while the Illusion user is sitting there enjoying the results of their (arguably low risk high reward) teambuilding.
I'm also gonna say that Illusion is very splashable - The two S ranks can use it effectively, Kyogre, Gengar, and MMX can use it effectively (and hell Illusion Diancie-Mega doesn't even sound that bad but let's ignore it for now), Groudon and Kangaskhan can use it effectively. That's pretty much every notable offensive Pokemon in S and A, and when you look at the guidelines (they're guidelines btw, not a rule,) splashability is one of the guidelines for a potential ban.
The other guideline is extreme augmentation - Yes, I do believe Illusion is impossible to solidly counter because you don't know what has it in the first place. Every attempt to counter once you know something has it is a 50/50, assuming that the Illusion is played well - HP values can give an Illusion away, so that's still a drawback. And before that? You don't even know it's on the field, so how're you supposed to counter something you're unaware* of? (*also not an Illusion check.) And yes, the power does originate from the ability. Choice in Pokemon is ideally offensive, but otherwise it's irrelevant. Choice in item is irrelevant, though you could argue a Z-Move Illusion plays differently than a non Z-Move Illusion but that doesn't necessarily have to be true amongst all Illusions, Z-Move or not. Choice in moveset depends on the Pokemon but no move is necessarily required to use Illusion effectively.
I'll just say here that I don't think Illusion is broken - I eat teams with it for breakfast pretty often since not many people use Illusion well right now (there are some though) but I do think it's uncompetitive and the more it's allowed to fester in the meta the more it could potentially become an issue.
That's pretty much all I had to say I'm aware I prob missed a lot of shit like how Z-Move use breaks the user's Illusion can be/is also a disadvantage but reply to those on the thread (or don't bc I kinda wanna keep my activity on here low, I'm that cool guy who influences stuff from the sidelines and off the thread. I'm literally an ice kyub.)
Contrary is broke as fuck btw but that's a story for later haha!
As a preface, let's take a look at what this ability does. Illusion lets you disguise yourself as any Pokemon as long as said Pokemon is in the last slot of your team, for as long as you don't take damage. Another one of its properties is that it prevents Imposter from transforming in front of you while Illusion is up. An Illusion user using a Z-Move will also break an Illusion. Finally, the other meta relevant property I believe it has is that if a Pokemon with Illusion undergoes Primal Reversion or Mega Evolution while the Illusion is up, the Illusion will stay up until you switch out, as your native ability replaces Illusion so it doesn't actually mind the chip damage.
So how does this look in the metagame? Well, for starters, Illusion can be used on anything, and you have no indication of if it's present on a team. While you can narrow down the abilities a Pokemon has at team preview, you definitely can't look at a Pokemon, say "Oh look, this is definitely Illusion" and play around it as such. Therefore, when the game starts, you're either forced to play under the assumption that every Pokemon that hasn't altered their HP can potentially be an Illusion Pokemon, or you're completely ignoring the possibility. While the game runs its course, you can pick up hints that state that an Illusion is present - Mainly looking at interaction with hazards (25% and immunity to Toxic Spikes can tell you it's a Rayquaza, 6% can tell you it's an MMX or a Garchomp, etc) and also looking at when they send their Pokemon out (bringing their Diancie in on your Flash Fire Registeel when it's a perfect opportunity for them to send in their Choice Band Gliscor or some shit) but the thing is that this careful playing creates a multitude of of opportunities for them to punish you if you misplay once. Yes, misplays should definitely be punished - That is how this game works, but it should almost never punish you hard enough for you to lose the game unless you like harded your Giratina into an obvious Diancie Boomburst while they still had their KFC or some shit.
The presence of Illusion forces you to play defensively which is actually perfectly fine by itself, but there's also the issue it creates once Illusion is revealed. If you have an Illusion Pokemon that's disguising as something at an identical HP percentage (This is assuming that Illusion is revealed so you really should be playing on exact recorded HP values) or at max, then it creates a 50/50 assuming you're using Illusion properly. "This can be a Pixilate Diancie and I could switch in my Ho-Oh, or this could be that Illusion Band Ray and I could risk losing my Ho-Oh to it, so maybe I should click my Fur Coat Giratina..." As in, you're playing 4d chess while the Illusion user is sitting there enjoying the results of their (arguably low risk high reward) teambuilding.
I'm also gonna say that Illusion is very splashable - The two S ranks can use it effectively, Kyogre, Gengar, and MMX can use it effectively (and hell Illusion Diancie-Mega doesn't even sound that bad but let's ignore it for now), Groudon and Kangaskhan can use it effectively. That's pretty much every notable offensive Pokemon in S and A, and when you look at the guidelines (they're guidelines btw, not a rule,) splashability is one of the guidelines for a potential ban.
The other guideline is extreme augmentation - Yes, I do believe Illusion is impossible to solidly counter because you don't know what has it in the first place. Every attempt to counter once you know something has it is a 50/50, assuming that the Illusion is played well - HP values can give an Illusion away, so that's still a drawback. And before that? You don't even know it's on the field, so how're you supposed to counter something you're unaware* of? (*also not an Illusion check.) And yes, the power does originate from the ability. Choice in Pokemon is ideally offensive, but otherwise it's irrelevant. Choice in item is irrelevant, though you could argue a Z-Move Illusion plays differently than a non Z-Move Illusion but that doesn't necessarily have to be true amongst all Illusions, Z-Move or not. Choice in moveset depends on the Pokemon but no move is necessarily required to use Illusion effectively.
I'll just say here that I don't think Illusion is broken - I eat teams with it for breakfast pretty often since not many people use Illusion well right now (there are some though) but I do think it's uncompetitive and the more it's allowed to fester in the meta the more it could potentially become an issue.
That's pretty much all I had to say I'm aware I prob missed a lot of shit like how Z-Move use breaks the user's Illusion can be/is also a disadvantage but reply to those on the thread (or don't bc I kinda wanna keep my activity on here low, I'm that cool guy who influences stuff from the sidelines and off the thread. I'm literally an ice kyub.)
Contrary is broke as fuck btw but that's a story for later haha!
Bad pun
As an avid user of illusion, this interests me and while I take my time to consider how competitive it is I will outline some of illusion's weaknesses. First and foremost, Baneful Bunker truly holds up to its name in the wake of illusion, not only scouting for their attacks but also crippling physical illusion users like MMX, revealing whenever it is being used and slowly eating it's health. A great example is Zygarde, who is a prime target for special attackers which help in keeping the illusion mon poisoned. Poisoning defensive mons isn't too much of a problem since the only potential user for illusion that can ohko it would be big Ray himself using specs Draco Meteor however you'd still be able to scout out that Draco and react knowing that it's locked into that move because any illusion mon that isn't choiced is significantly weaker and typically less useful as illusion gives you plenty of opportunities for choice items (you usually don't want to stay in after you've used your attack anyways).
Regenerator mons like Giratina, Pogre, and Zygarde can potentially scout illusion mons as well, avoiding ohkos from Specs sets and caring very little for moves that they can heal most the damage of.
The biggest drawback of illusion however, is the mind games that occur:
-before your big reveal as you may sometimes need to get the ohko before you get found out.
-the countless predictions that follow since most of the time you are using the same move repeatedly, which usually has only 8 pp.
Despite all this, illusion is still one of the best abilities right now as there is very little counterplay for it since most teams don't have effective scouting moves and tend to rely on playing based off of what you can infer from the team preview, which if you think about it, seems silly to do in a meta where any pokemon can run a variety of sets, like mistaking a setup sweeper for a wallbreaker and then being forced to spend another turn trying to deal with a +2 Magic Guard life orb MMX when you just sent out a Fur Coat Giratina.
Oh yeah and it's really annoying when you're not disguised as the right mon lol
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Champion Leon
Banned deucer.
Necrozma DM/DW also can abuse Illusion if it becomes its Ultimate form, since that transformation works the same way as Mega/Primal.
Also, because 2 different Pokémon (forms) are literally able to become the same Pokémon, from the exact same item mind you, it’s not a dead giveaway like Kyogre or Groudon due to weather, or Megas due to the item being listed (even Megas from Charizard and Mewtwo list their items).
Just wanted to throw that in there. Also using Light that Burns the Sky, like all Z-moves, breaks Illusion.
I would like to discuss sleep in BH, more specifically a possible suspect on Lovely Kiss.
Free turns are extremely powerful in every Pokemon metagame as they allow you to do things such as set up, estue prediction, or wear an opponent down without resistance. The most common and reliable way to get these in BH is via Sleep moves. With the lack of a sleep clause, it's not enough to have a single dedicated sleep absorber like it is in standard metagames, and most BH teams bend over backwards to ensure that sleep won't be the end of them.
If we treat "sleep" as a move, then I can argue that it MIGHT be worthy of a ban based on the ban criteria (remember these aren't totally set in stone).
here is a list of ways to combat sleep in BH, ordered roughly from most to least feasible/viable on any team:
As you can see, there are a fair amount of ways to deal with sleep. Long time bh players have built their teams so that they can handle the most common Sleep users, but these users are quite varied, requiring a defensive core to handle. Most people are running Safety Goggles on various walls in order to stop Spores from Regigigas, Xerneas, Mega Gengar, Mega Rayquaza, etc, but the use of Lovely Kiss totally invalidates this strategy. This leaves us with only the abilities or terrains to deal with Lovely kiss users, and the move can totally invalidate otherwise reliable checks.
Another reason Lovely Kiss is suspect worthy is that its 75% accuracy is too reliant on chance to be competitive. For the Lovely Kiss user, getting a crucial sleep off can mean successfully sweeping or being KOed. For the defender, they have to treat Lovely Kiss as if it has 100% accuracy while not having an item that is guaranteed to block it. Then there is also the randomness of sleep turns: the difference between a 2-turn and a 3-turn sleep is often monumental. The combined amount of rng that both players are banking on when using Lovely Kiss, and then hoping that the sleeping Pokemon will or won't wake up, is huge.
Ok, so why not the other sleep moves? Sleep Powder is just a less accurate spore, and is also blocked by Safety Goggles. Hypnosis is 60% accurate, and the difference between 60 and 75% is quite noticeable. Players won't be spamming Hypnosis unless they also have No Guard, Compound Eyes, or Gravity support, all of which have substantial opportunity costs which would balance out the boon of running them. Sing and Grass Whistle, by virtue of being sound moves, can go through substitutes, but they both require No Guard to be useful.
In Conclusion, the Safety Goggles item keeps Spore from being an overpowered move. The rising popularity of Lovely Kiss can invalidate many Safety Goggles users, and many of the ways to combat sleep rely on the correct Pokemon being targeted by the sleep move. I would rather not implement a Sleep clause because I feel like preparing for sleep is a necessary part of BH, but I would rather it be less subject to the whims of RNG.B
Free turns are extremely powerful in every Pokemon metagame as they allow you to do things such as set up, estue prediction, or wear an opponent down without resistance. The most common and reliable way to get these in BH is via Sleep moves. With the lack of a sleep clause, it's not enough to have a single dedicated sleep absorber like it is in standard metagames, and most BH teams bend over backwards to ensure that sleep won't be the end of them.
If we treat "sleep" as a move, then I can argue that it MIGHT be worthy of a ban based on the ban criteria (remember these aren't totally set in stone).
"• An attack with either no counters, or unreasonably niche or unusable ones e.g. OHKO Moves":
See the "ways to combat sleep" hide tag below. Though it really says something that Safety Goggles is such a common item, even with the availability of things like Poison Heal, Terrains, and Magic Bounce. You may argue that Safety Goggles is the most universal way to combat sleep, and that without sleep, there would be no use for safety goggles at all. Then again, you can also argue that magic Bounce is universal enough that it can combat sleep.
"• A move (attack or status) that removes the emphasis on skill, planning and/or preparation and moves the outcome to forces not in control of the player": We can say this about the less accurate sleep moves such as Lovely Kiss that go through Safety Goggles. I discuss that below.
See the "ways to combat sleep" hide tag below. Though it really says something that Safety Goggles is such a common item, even with the availability of things like Poison Heal, Terrains, and Magic Bounce. You may argue that Safety Goggles is the most universal way to combat sleep, and that without sleep, there would be no use for safety goggles at all. Then again, you can also argue that magic Bounce is universal enough that it can combat sleep.
"• A move (attack or status) that removes the emphasis on skill, planning and/or preparation and moves the outcome to forces not in control of the player": We can say this about the less accurate sleep moves such as Lovely Kiss that go through Safety Goggles. I discuss that below.
here is a list of ways to combat sleep in BH, ordered roughly from most to least feasible/viable on any team:
1. Safety Goggles: protects one user from powder moves, which includes spore and sleep powder. It can be knocked off, but the extra turn required to do that often costs the sleep user a fair amount of momentum. He loses even more if he tries to spore without realizing that the Goggles user is wearing that item and not something else, so the goggles user essentially gets a free turn. Safety Goggles does not protect against other sleep moves such as Sing or Lovely Kiss.
2. Magic Bounce: most teams in BH except the hyperest of hyper offense have a wall, and Magic Bounce can fit on most of them. Sleep moves targeted at a magic bounce Pokemon are bounced back to the sleep user, and many of these will run Safety Goggles, Poison Heal Toxic Orb, or Substitute to prevent a bounced Sleep move from affecting them. Mold Breaker users ignore Magic Bounce, making them really annoying if you rely on Magic Bounce to prevent sleep.
3. Poison heal: You can't be slept if you're already poisoned. Poison Heal users such as Regigigas and Xerneas are good status absorbers, but they don't protect the rest of your team from offensive sleep users because they can't switch into most of them, for fear of being 2hKOed. Poison Healers are also susceptable to ability removal, and the loss of momentum can be devastating for the PH user if they lose their ability at a crucial moment. Plus, the opponent knows that he now has a fairly reliable switchin to the Poison heal Pokemon once it is forced out.
4. Misty/electric Surge: Electric Surge prevents you from being slept for 5 or 8 turns, and powers up Electric moves. It's fairly splashable, but you lose a whole ability slot to it. The opportunity cost of that ability slot can be high. Misty Surge prevents grounded Pokemon from being statused for 5 turns (8 with terrain extender). This is not as splashable because it prevents you from using your own status moves, weakens the damage of Dragon moves against any grounded enemies, and worst of all makes it harder to reliably activate Poison Heal teammates. Terrain is extremely reliable though, as nothing can get through it while it's up.
5. Substitute: If you can get your substitute off before the Sleep move, you are at a huge advantage. However, it costs 25% of your hp and a valuable move slot.
6. Comatose: you're asleep all the time and immune to status. Unfortunately, that's the only boon to the ability, and you are hit by Hex at 130 BP with nothing to do about it. I am not a big fan of Comatose Giratina for that reason, though it does prevent Poison Fang from poisoning you, and the ability cannot be removed which means you counter Normalize, both Entrainment and Skill Swap variants, at the same time.
7. Heal Bell/aromatherapy: If you can manage to fit this onto one of your other mons, it can wake up all sleeping Pokemon. You lose a huge amount of momentum switching into your Heal Bell user, Heal belling, and switching out though. You also hvae to be very careful with any Poison heal Pokemon on your team, that their items don't get knocked off.
8. Safeguard: usually ran on Shedinja, it keeps your whole team safe from status for 4 turns. I don't know why it's not ran more often, maybe because you lose a whole turn on it and there's no duration boosting item, but that might be something to explore if you're really having trouble with sleep.
9. Sleep Talk: Choice item users sometimes use this to absorb sleep for the team and surprise the sleep user, but it's unreliable if you are running 3 other moves. Plus, there's always some other move that you would want to run rather than Sleep Talk.
10. Insomnia: Now we're getting into the realm of total unviability. Insomnia immediately wakes you up if you are asleep, which means that not even Mold Breaker can prevent it from doing its job. The main difference between this and Comatose is that you aren't asleep. Still, it's a huge opportunity cost.
11. Natural Cure: If you switch out, you wake up. Again, wasting the ability slot on this isn't worth it.
If there are other ways to combat sleep i'd like to hear about them. I didn't include Uproar because it locks you in, or Lumb Berry because it only blocks sleep once unless you use Harvest or Recycle, neither of which are viable except Recycle on Shedinja.
2. Magic Bounce: most teams in BH except the hyperest of hyper offense have a wall, and Magic Bounce can fit on most of them. Sleep moves targeted at a magic bounce Pokemon are bounced back to the sleep user, and many of these will run Safety Goggles, Poison Heal Toxic Orb, or Substitute to prevent a bounced Sleep move from affecting them. Mold Breaker users ignore Magic Bounce, making them really annoying if you rely on Magic Bounce to prevent sleep.
3. Poison heal: You can't be slept if you're already poisoned. Poison Heal users such as Regigigas and Xerneas are good status absorbers, but they don't protect the rest of your team from offensive sleep users because they can't switch into most of them, for fear of being 2hKOed. Poison Healers are also susceptable to ability removal, and the loss of momentum can be devastating for the PH user if they lose their ability at a crucial moment. Plus, the opponent knows that he now has a fairly reliable switchin to the Poison heal Pokemon once it is forced out.
4. Misty/electric Surge: Electric Surge prevents you from being slept for 5 or 8 turns, and powers up Electric moves. It's fairly splashable, but you lose a whole ability slot to it. The opportunity cost of that ability slot can be high. Misty Surge prevents grounded Pokemon from being statused for 5 turns (8 with terrain extender). This is not as splashable because it prevents you from using your own status moves, weakens the damage of Dragon moves against any grounded enemies, and worst of all makes it harder to reliably activate Poison Heal teammates. Terrain is extremely reliable though, as nothing can get through it while it's up.
5. Substitute: If you can get your substitute off before the Sleep move, you are at a huge advantage. However, it costs 25% of your hp and a valuable move slot.
6. Comatose: you're asleep all the time and immune to status. Unfortunately, that's the only boon to the ability, and you are hit by Hex at 130 BP with nothing to do about it. I am not a big fan of Comatose Giratina for that reason, though it does prevent Poison Fang from poisoning you, and the ability cannot be removed which means you counter Normalize, both Entrainment and Skill Swap variants, at the same time.
7. Heal Bell/aromatherapy: If you can manage to fit this onto one of your other mons, it can wake up all sleeping Pokemon. You lose a huge amount of momentum switching into your Heal Bell user, Heal belling, and switching out though. You also hvae to be very careful with any Poison heal Pokemon on your team, that their items don't get knocked off.
8. Safeguard: usually ran on Shedinja, it keeps your whole team safe from status for 4 turns. I don't know why it's not ran more often, maybe because you lose a whole turn on it and there's no duration boosting item, but that might be something to explore if you're really having trouble with sleep.
9. Sleep Talk: Choice item users sometimes use this to absorb sleep for the team and surprise the sleep user, but it's unreliable if you are running 3 other moves. Plus, there's always some other move that you would want to run rather than Sleep Talk.
10. Insomnia: Now we're getting into the realm of total unviability. Insomnia immediately wakes you up if you are asleep, which means that not even Mold Breaker can prevent it from doing its job. The main difference between this and Comatose is that you aren't asleep. Still, it's a huge opportunity cost.
11. Natural Cure: If you switch out, you wake up. Again, wasting the ability slot on this isn't worth it.
If there are other ways to combat sleep i'd like to hear about them. I didn't include Uproar because it locks you in, or Lumb Berry because it only blocks sleep once unless you use Harvest or Recycle, neither of which are viable except Recycle on Shedinja.
As you can see, there are a fair amount of ways to deal with sleep. Long time bh players have built their teams so that they can handle the most common Sleep users, but these users are quite varied, requiring a defensive core to handle. Most people are running Safety Goggles on various walls in order to stop Spores from Regigigas, Xerneas, Mega Gengar, Mega Rayquaza, etc, but the use of Lovely Kiss totally invalidates this strategy. This leaves us with only the abilities or terrains to deal with Lovely kiss users, and the move can totally invalidate otherwise reliable checks.
Another reason Lovely Kiss is suspect worthy is that its 75% accuracy is too reliant on chance to be competitive. For the Lovely Kiss user, getting a crucial sleep off can mean successfully sweeping or being KOed. For the defender, they have to treat Lovely Kiss as if it has 100% accuracy while not having an item that is guaranteed to block it. Then there is also the randomness of sleep turns: the difference between a 2-turn and a 3-turn sleep is often monumental. The combined amount of rng that both players are banking on when using Lovely Kiss, and then hoping that the sleeping Pokemon will or won't wake up, is huge.
Ok, so why not the other sleep moves? Sleep Powder is just a less accurate spore, and is also blocked by Safety Goggles. Hypnosis is 60% accurate, and the difference between 60 and 75% is quite noticeable. Players won't be spamming Hypnosis unless they also have No Guard, Compound Eyes, or Gravity support, all of which have substantial opportunity costs which would balance out the boon of running them. Sing and Grass Whistle, by virtue of being sound moves, can go through substitutes, but they both require No Guard to be useful.
In Conclusion, the Safety Goggles item keeps Spore from being an overpowered move. The rising popularity of Lovely Kiss can invalidate many Safety Goggles users, and many of the ways to combat sleep rely on the correct Pokemon being targeted by the sleep move. I would rather not implement a Sleep clause because I feel like preparing for sleep is a necessary part of BH, but I would rather it be less subject to the whims of RNG.B
IMO, I'll just be direct: if we're going that route, suspect all sleep, suspect sleep clause, or nothing at all. No half measures. If you ban Lovely Kiss, people will just flock to the next best thing (Hypnosis, Yawn, No Guard Sing, etc.), which is exactly what happened with the Dark Void nerf. And while I know decisions should not be made on future speculation, considering five out of seven generations have added new sleep moves and they've been tweaked numerous times (Hypnosis was 70% accuracy once, for example), banning one sleep move for 75% accuracy but not others for different accuracy seems like a poor decision long term.
On specific points, out of all of that, it boils down to this from what I can understand: "Spore has perfect accuracy and is blocked by Safety Goggles, so it's fine. Lovely Kiss doesn't, so its not fine."
On Safety Goggles, mind that they are ONLY used because of Spore. The move is so powerful players gladly spring for an item that has near zero use beyond blocking one specific move. The only Pokemon in the entire meta looking at Safety for any other function is Shedinja. And then there's knock off, which you argued is a momentum drain and stuff but, let's be real here: some Pokemon do not drain momentum with Knock Off (hello T-Tar). And losing safety Goggles can cripple a strategy, such as Simple Smash Spore user being Imposter-proofed by an Unaware Safety Goggles user, or turn a counter into a joke (PH Spore Gigas can bypass most of its checks/counters if they are not sleep immune. Also, not to mention, in any match of reasonable length, those Safety Goggles are coming off sooner or later. Offense vs offense is about the only match-up you could expect for them to stay intact all game.
On accuracy.... how... how is perfect accuracy "more healthy" or "less broken" than lack thereof? Ever? If you're not sleep immune, Spore lands, period. You can't even decide to make the risky play and hope for the miss. It lands and you're asleep. (Wonder Skin aside, but who runs that?) Likewise, if you're not sleep immune, the Spore user makes no real risk clicking the move, whereas Lovely Kiss has the 25% chance to miss and give the opponent a free turn (which, as you said, is "extremely powerful"). But, really, here's the bigger thing: if we ban Lovely Kiss because of lower accuracy, that sets a really bad precedent. Where do we draw the line? Are 70% moves broken? 65%? Is 50% still okay or is it ban worthy? Do we ban moves like Blue Flare because they're only 85% accurate? Do we ban Frustration because "it causes variance?" Are Scald and Steam Eruption ban-worthy because of the 30% burn? Sacred Fire for 50%? Ice Beam for 10% Freeze, which is usually worse than sleep? Teeter Dance for causing Confusion and 50% chance to not move? That's dangerous ground I really think we ought to not tread.
IMO, all or nothing on sleep, or go for sleep clause, if we do that route over my suggestion for Mold Breaking moves or the Illusion suggestion or any other suggestions I forgot. Bypassing Safety Goggles isn't enough on its own to "remove the emphasis on skill, planning and/or preparation and moves the outcome to forces not in control of the player", especially considering you listed ten other options of varying viability that could be used. Meanwhile, Lovely Kiss gives free turns to the opponent 25% of the time with its accuracy so... I don't see how that makes it so much stronger than Spore who can give free turns on Safety Goggles. And banning for inaccuracy seems like really dangerous territory to venture into.
Edit: If anyone gets/remembers the Frustration reference there, you get 100 bonus points.
On specific points, out of all of that, it boils down to this from what I can understand: "Spore has perfect accuracy and is blocked by Safety Goggles, so it's fine. Lovely Kiss doesn't, so its not fine."
On Safety Goggles, mind that they are ONLY used because of Spore. The move is so powerful players gladly spring for an item that has near zero use beyond blocking one specific move. The only Pokemon in the entire meta looking at Safety for any other function is Shedinja. And then there's knock off, which you argued is a momentum drain and stuff but, let's be real here: some Pokemon do not drain momentum with Knock Off (hello T-Tar). And losing safety Goggles can cripple a strategy, such as Simple Smash Spore user being Imposter-proofed by an Unaware Safety Goggles user, or turn a counter into a joke (PH Spore Gigas can bypass most of its checks/counters if they are not sleep immune. Also, not to mention, in any match of reasonable length, those Safety Goggles are coming off sooner or later. Offense vs offense is about the only match-up you could expect for them to stay intact all game.
On accuracy.... how... how is perfect accuracy "more healthy" or "less broken" than lack thereof? Ever? If you're not sleep immune, Spore lands, period. You can't even decide to make the risky play and hope for the miss. It lands and you're asleep. (Wonder Skin aside, but who runs that?) Likewise, if you're not sleep immune, the Spore user makes no real risk clicking the move, whereas Lovely Kiss has the 25% chance to miss and give the opponent a free turn (which, as you said, is "extremely powerful"). But, really, here's the bigger thing: if we ban Lovely Kiss because of lower accuracy, that sets a really bad precedent. Where do we draw the line? Are 70% moves broken? 65%? Is 50% still okay or is it ban worthy? Do we ban moves like Blue Flare because they're only 85% accurate? Do we ban Frustration because "it causes variance?" Are Scald and Steam Eruption ban-worthy because of the 30% burn? Sacred Fire for 50%? Ice Beam for 10% Freeze, which is usually worse than sleep? Teeter Dance for causing Confusion and 50% chance to not move? That's dangerous ground I really think we ought to not tread.
IMO, all or nothing on sleep, or go for sleep clause, if we do that route over my suggestion for Mold Breaking moves or the Illusion suggestion or any other suggestions I forgot. Bypassing Safety Goggles isn't enough on its own to "remove the emphasis on skill, planning and/or preparation and moves the outcome to forces not in control of the player", especially considering you listed ten other options of varying viability that could be used. Meanwhile, Lovely Kiss gives free turns to the opponent 25% of the time with its accuracy so... I don't see how that makes it so much stronger than Spore who can give free turns on Safety Goggles. And banning for inaccuracy seems like really dangerous territory to venture into.
Edit: If anyone gets/remembers the Frustration reference there, you get 100 bonus points.
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Champion Leon
Banned deucer.
To be fair, Safety Goggles helps Shedinja against weather as well... Sandstream Tyranitar, Aurora Veil Snow Warning users...
If we bother to mention Insomnia (which seems only viable on Simple Shell Smash Mewtwo Mega Evolving into MMY), then we should also add in Flower Veil for some Grass Types like Venusaur-Mega. Mold Breaker does ignore it though (I.e. Sacred Fire), but unlike Comatose, it also prevents Grass Types from having their Stats lowered (King’s Shield, Parting Shot, etc.)
We should also mention that Lovely Kiss doesn’t just bypass Safety Goggles, it also bypasses Grass Type’s Immunity. Kartana is a huge threat, in part, because it cannot be poisoned, or Spored.
Nuzzle and No Guard Zap Cannon are used because some Pokémon are carrying Safety Goggles or are Grass Types, otherwise Spore or No Guard Sing would be 100% better all the time (except vs Soundproofers). I guess Sap Sipper Swampert-Mega is another reason to not use Spore, but it isn’t common enough to be a major reason.
Also, a bigger reason to justify a sleep clause is the move Knock Off. If all we need to do against a team is use Knock Off, then I guess that means we can spam Spore and get easy wins. They cannot rely purely on having Safety Goggles, and if you have No Guard Sing, then Grass Types, Safety Goggles, and even Substitute will fail to work.
I guess we would have to see if a No Guard Sing user that is too fast to be Taunted (Deoxys-S) can abuse Sing. Add in abilities like Bad Dreams and suddenly Sleep feels like Freeze+Poison as a Status, if teammates can come in and abuse their automatic damage.
I have seen teams of that in the past, but Misty Terrain/Electric Surge, Poison Heal, Comatose, and Magic Bounce all help. Albeit most teams rely on Grass Types and Safety Goggles instead...
If we bother to mention Insomnia (which seems only viable on Simple Shell Smash Mewtwo Mega Evolving into MMY), then we should also add in Flower Veil for some Grass Types like Venusaur-Mega. Mold Breaker does ignore it though (I.e. Sacred Fire), but unlike Comatose, it also prevents Grass Types from having their Stats lowered (King’s Shield, Parting Shot, etc.)
We should also mention that Lovely Kiss doesn’t just bypass Safety Goggles, it also bypasses Grass Type’s Immunity. Kartana is a huge threat, in part, because it cannot be poisoned, or Spored.
Nuzzle and No Guard Zap Cannon are used because some Pokémon are carrying Safety Goggles or are Grass Types, otherwise Spore or No Guard Sing would be 100% better all the time (except vs Soundproofers). I guess Sap Sipper Swampert-Mega is another reason to not use Spore, but it isn’t common enough to be a major reason.
Also, a bigger reason to justify a sleep clause is the move Knock Off. If all we need to do against a team is use Knock Off, then I guess that means we can spam Spore and get easy wins. They cannot rely purely on having Safety Goggles, and if you have No Guard Sing, then Grass Types, Safety Goggles, and even Substitute will fail to work.
I guess we would have to see if a No Guard Sing user that is too fast to be Taunted (Deoxys-S) can abuse Sing. Add in abilities like Bad Dreams and suddenly Sleep feels like Freeze+Poison as a Status, if teammates can come in and abuse their automatic damage.
I have seen teams of that in the past, but Misty Terrain/Electric Surge, Poison Heal, Comatose, and Magic Bounce all help. Albeit most teams rely on Grass Types and Safety Goggles instead...
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- Illusion: Probably suspect. It's not a problem as long as it is used as a pre-mega/primal ability, as you can instantly see which mon is hidden behind the disguise, but when it is used on often choiced breakers such as Garchomp-Mega, it is uncompetitive, as you don't know which mon in fact is that thing in front of you, and you don't even know wether the opponent even runs illusion or not until you fell for it or scouted successfully.
However, there's still counterplay, which probably is enough to keep Illusion from being broken:
RegeVest Zyg and Giratina can tank almost any hit from Garchomp's banded Precipice Blades to Diancie's specsed Boomburst, so that you can switch them in to scout for an Illusion.
Protect-esque moves can be used to scout for illusion; Baneful Bunker in particular marks physical illusion users by poisoning them if they go for a contact move, and in general, it can be useful to punish those omnipresent Knock Offs and U-turns.
(Prankster) Will-o-Wisp cripples physical attackers, namely Garchomp and renders Illusion useless.
RegenVest Celesteela checks -ate users and can't be lured by an illusioned Garchomp, but is weak to V-create. Soundproof users such as Slowbro-Mega and Zygarde also counter both -ate users (as long as espeed doesn't do too much damage) and the popular Illusion MMX and Garchimp. - Sleep: Suspect all sleep moves or a sleep clause. I totally agree to Rumors here.
- Mold Breaker Moves: Probably suspect them, I'm quite unsure here. I haven't really had problems playing against them - with full stall - since the psysurge ban, but they might be too much, especially considering how many switchins Steelworker Kartana has.
Came back to BH after a two semester long hiatus and was disappointed to find that stuff like sleep and queenly majesty still exist.
I am sick of running fc tina to stop gigas because spore isn't banned yet. Lovely kiss is pretty all around disgusting too. Ig my opinion on sleep is that you should have to be no guard to use it and even then I can see arguments against it. I don't think clause is really enough, best thing would just be to ban all sleep moves with an accuracy more than 60, after that we could look into clauses.
Dazzling just seems so obviously bannable I can't believe it isn't gone already. Honestly all it does is facilitate stupid shell smash stuff and don't tell me you can just haze a mon because said mon has 3 other moves to whittle away your 16 recovery pp while you sit there. Dbond is also not a viable answer to this because what if that person runs 2 smashers and now you don't have a mon with haze? I don't think I would have as many problems with dazzling if stuff like tail glow and smash was gone but since every time I talk about smash people get all up in arms about how skillful it is to click smash and powertrip I don't think that it'll get banned.
Just my two cents
Please don't take away illusion, it honestly can be so fun and hard to use and it only works if youre pretty good. Chomp takes obv damage off SR and as someone who has used double illusion I can definitively say that that was the most difficult team to use I have ever had. Compared to something like contrary it just requires way more skill in the team builder and on the field and is almost always less broken. Ik it looks scary, but it really doesn't deserve a ban
I am sick of running fc tina to stop gigas because spore isn't banned yet. Lovely kiss is pretty all around disgusting too. Ig my opinion on sleep is that you should have to be no guard to use it and even then I can see arguments against it. I don't think clause is really enough, best thing would just be to ban all sleep moves with an accuracy more than 60, after that we could look into clauses.
Dazzling just seems so obviously bannable I can't believe it isn't gone already. Honestly all it does is facilitate stupid shell smash stuff and don't tell me you can just haze a mon because said mon has 3 other moves to whittle away your 16 recovery pp while you sit there. Dbond is also not a viable answer to this because what if that person runs 2 smashers and now you don't have a mon with haze? I don't think I would have as many problems with dazzling if stuff like tail glow and smash was gone but since every time I talk about smash people get all up in arms about how skillful it is to click smash and powertrip I don't think that it'll get banned.
Just my two cents
Please don't take away illusion, it honestly can be so fun and hard to use and it only works if youre pretty good. Chomp takes obv damage off SR and as someone who has used double illusion I can definitively say that that was the most difficult team to use I have ever had. Compared to something like contrary it just requires way more skill in the team builder and on the field and is almost always less broken. Ik it looks scary, but it really doesn't deserve a ban
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First off I don't need any help understanding counters to gigas. I would assume that repeatedly demonstrating the ability to get 94% gxes would command at least enough respect for people to assume that I know how to teambuild. Sorry for the rant but Im tired of being treated as a subpar player.
Now to ur actual points
I can't believe I'm getting into this argument but you can't just assume that you will always nuzzle/outspeed dazzling or whatever. Now I'm going to make a very specific example in order to exemplify how this might work in a real world situation
so say I had a dazzling mewtwo. I wouldn't be setting up on ur mons with glare would I? I would probably force a steel out with some ate mon and then shell smash in front of that. If u stay in, fine. Be prepared to eat a close combat. This obviously is a very specific example, but the general principle of setting up on forced switches and generally not making retarded plays like setting up in front of counters holds true for anything. Obviously dqm has counters. But the issue is that if I'm smart, 0 of those counters will make it through multiple shell smash spammers just because of the passivity of haze, the almost complete annhilation of unaware just from mold moves and general chip due to unaware giving no added defensive presence to a mon and the extreme difficulty of staying at full in a protracted battle. Also sash exists so chansey isn't always an ironclad answer and who the hell runs scarf anyway
I'm not going to touch the keep sleep argument because it's just so obviously bannable for reasons laid out on this thread before
Now to ur actual points
I can't believe I'm getting into this argument but you can't just assume that you will always nuzzle/outspeed dazzling or whatever. Now I'm going to make a very specific example in order to exemplify how this might work in a real world situation
so say I had a dazzling mewtwo. I wouldn't be setting up on ur mons with glare would I? I would probably force a steel out with some ate mon and then shell smash in front of that. If u stay in, fine. Be prepared to eat a close combat. This obviously is a very specific example, but the general principle of setting up on forced switches and generally not making retarded plays like setting up in front of counters holds true for anything. Obviously dqm has counters. But the issue is that if I'm smart, 0 of those counters will make it through multiple shell smash spammers just because of the passivity of haze, the almost complete annhilation of unaware just from mold moves and general chip due to unaware giving no added defensive presence to a mon and the extreme difficulty of staying at full in a protracted battle. Also sash exists so chansey isn't always an ironclad answer and who the hell runs scarf anyway
I'm not going to touch the keep sleep argument because it's just so obviously bannable for reasons laid out on this thread before
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To be fair, I don't think most people keep track of who has what ladder records. Or at the very least, I don't. Especially since not everyone ladders on the same name(s) as they use on the forums. And not everyone ladders seriously to begin with. For example, I currenty don't have enough time to devote to peaking the ladder or playing in most tournaments (at least, not without making every European stay up until their 5 A.M. to play with me, which isn't fair), so I mostly get on to either experiment, play for fun, or dig out old teams to play for nostalgia when I'm on the ladder. But I've been around BH forever so I (feel) I generally know what I'm talking about when I say stuff.
...plus you've been gone for about a year, which in internet time is an eternity. I'm willing to bet a number of new up-and-comers have no idea who you are.
Now, not to be completely off-topic and to be relevant to your suggestion, I see where you're going with a Dazzling suspect, but I feel it's the wrong angle. Dazzle Sashsmash wouldn't be nearly so deadly if the users couldn't use mold breaker moves to casually bypass Shedinja and Unaware, two things that have historically kept such sets in check. I outline my reasons why I feel they should be suspected over, say, Shell Smash and stuff, here.
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Sorry for the double post, it's been a few weeks and I wanted people to get the alert although idm if it gets merged.
Okay so I'm going to talk about why I think Illusion is worthy of a suspect.
A lot of points about this have already been outlined in the post by esteemed user GL Volkner as quoted below, so I'll try not to restate things unless I think they need restating.
That being said, why do I think it might be banworthy? The thing with Illusion is it completely rewrites what it means to play. Normally you look at their current mon, and then the rest of their team, and try to evaluate what the best course of action is that will beat what's in front of you based on the various sets it might be and not leave you open to the other 5 mons, while ideally putting yourself into a stronger position. However with Illusion this isn't what you do; instead you look at the mon in front of you and try to evaluate all the likely sets and then try to evaluate what is going to happen if it is any one of the other mons on their team and decide a course of action from there. The problem with this is unless you happen to have a very specific wall, or their team is terrible (we'll assume it isn't), there isn't going to be anything you can do that will be reasonably safe in both possible situations. Either you play the mon you see in front of you and risk losing something almost every turn until you've revealed most of their sets, you do some sort of hedging your bets which leaves you worse off in every situation or you make some sort of crazy plays going to things that don't check in the hope they're an illusion. And for all of these hypothetical scenarios there's no need for anyone to even have illusion - most of the time you can get by hoping they're not but if they do you'll probably lose.
Of course there is some counterplay to Illusion: get hazards up and look how much damage things take; scout the majority of their sets; get chip on things, to name a few, but all of these take time and will rarely help you for the first few turns.
So here is the core of my argument: it's infeasible to play as if any mon you see could be any other member of their team until you are certain otherwise. As to the problems with facing illusion once you know they have it I think vd summed it up as well as I could.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7balancedhackmons-705152916
I didn't have too much time to look through replays, so here is one from the Open. The only relevant thing in it is turn 1, there's no sign that anything is illusion and Hassin makes what looks like a safe play (spoiler: it wasn't), the point being that the entire calculation of risks and rewards is skewed hugely towards the player using illusion, since not only do they know their sets (which is the information advantage every player has to start with) but they are also the only one who actually knows which pokemon is on the field which massively cuts down any potential "safe" plays that can be made.
I'll outline what I see as the obvious counter arguments to try and cut down the initial arguments to deeper ones:
If you lead imposter you don't get bopped turn 1 - this is true (and what I do on ladder) but it would be absolutely ridiculous to suggest everyone should both have an imposter and lead with it. Also this is only useful if they lead illusion, which the person who I think it's fair to say is the main high level illusion user doesn't do.
You can run protect clones on everything to scout - again this is true, but often revealing one move isn't enough to give the game away (at least in the case where one offensive mon is disguised as another) and it has a very high risk associated with giving away a free turn to set up which can often be just as costly as losing a mon to illusion. There's also the cost in teambuilding where literally everything bar maybe specs ray has huge 4mss and the cost of running protect moves is usually to greatly reduce what you can check or what damage you can do.
Just a note on the ban guidelines and how it fits in, I think Illusion definitely falls into the category of Extreme Augmentation ie increasing the capabilities of the mon it is on so that the set is very hard to check or counter. The difference here from previous suspects is the difficulty comes not from "raw power" but from the fact that you are forced to (try to) check multiple things at once, which limits you to the intersection of their checks, or just hope you guessed right. It does say the power has to be independent of the mon or moves used and I believe this is fulfilled by the ability being viable on most of the top tier offensive mons and with a wide variety of moves and a smaller variety of items that can be effective. I say it satisfies this despite clearly being somewhat dependent on other factors because it's obvious it must be: Huge Power isn't broken on a fully special pokemon or on a Nihilego for example.
I'm not the best at putting my thoughts into words so hopefully this is coherent and restarts some conversation.
Okay so I'm going to talk about why I think Illusion is worthy of a suspect.
A lot of points about this have already been outlined in the post by esteemed user GL Volkner as quoted below, so I'll try not to restate things unless I think they need restating.
I'll start out by saying obviously illusion isn't the most powerful ability in a narrow sense since it doesn't increase power like the late and great Water Bubble or Stake Out, so my arguments won't rely on calcs of things doing 58725932%. (Ftr I'm not gonna talk about Illusion don bc it doesn't really fit the same category.)
That being said, why do I think it might be banworthy? The thing with Illusion is it completely rewrites what it means to play. Normally you look at their current mon, and then the rest of their team, and try to evaluate what the best course of action is that will beat what's in front of you based on the various sets it might be and not leave you open to the other 5 mons, while ideally putting yourself into a stronger position. However with Illusion this isn't what you do; instead you look at the mon in front of you and try to evaluate all the likely sets and then try to evaluate what is going to happen if it is any one of the other mons on their team and decide a course of action from there. The problem with this is unless you happen to have a very specific wall, or their team is terrible (we'll assume it isn't), there isn't going to be anything you can do that will be reasonably safe in both possible situations. Either you play the mon you see in front of you and risk losing something almost every turn until you've revealed most of their sets, you do some sort of hedging your bets which leaves you worse off in every situation or you make some sort of crazy plays going to things that don't check in the hope they're an illusion. And for all of these hypothetical scenarios there's no need for anyone to even have illusion - most of the time you can get by hoping they're not but if they do you'll probably lose.
Of course there is some counterplay to Illusion: get hazards up and look how much damage things take; scout the majority of their sets; get chip on things, to name a few, but all of these take time and will rarely help you for the first few turns.
So here is the core of my argument: it's infeasible to play as if any mon you see could be any other member of their team until you are certain otherwise. As to the problems with facing illusion once you know they have it I think vd summed it up as well as I could.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7balancedhackmons-705152916
I didn't have too much time to look through replays, so here is one from the Open. The only relevant thing in it is turn 1, there's no sign that anything is illusion and Hassin makes what looks like a safe play (spoiler: it wasn't), the point being that the entire calculation of risks and rewards is skewed hugely towards the player using illusion, since not only do they know their sets (which is the information advantage every player has to start with) but they are also the only one who actually knows which pokemon is on the field which massively cuts down any potential "safe" plays that can be made.
I'll outline what I see as the obvious counter arguments to try and cut down the initial arguments to deeper ones:
If you lead imposter you don't get bopped turn 1 - this is true (and what I do on ladder) but it would be absolutely ridiculous to suggest everyone should both have an imposter and lead with it. Also this is only useful if they lead illusion, which the person who I think it's fair to say is the main high level illusion user doesn't do.
You can run protect clones on everything to scout - again this is true, but often revealing one move isn't enough to give the game away (at least in the case where one offensive mon is disguised as another) and it has a very high risk associated with giving away a free turn to set up which can often be just as costly as losing a mon to illusion. There's also the cost in teambuilding where literally everything bar maybe specs ray has huge 4mss and the cost of running protect moves is usually to greatly reduce what you can check or what damage you can do.
Just a note on the ban guidelines and how it fits in, I think Illusion definitely falls into the category of Extreme Augmentation ie increasing the capabilities of the mon it is on so that the set is very hard to check or counter. The difference here from previous suspects is the difficulty comes not from "raw power" but from the fact that you are forced to (try to) check multiple things at once, which limits you to the intersection of their checks, or just hope you guessed right. It does say the power has to be independent of the mon or moves used and I believe this is fulfilled by the ability being viable on most of the top tier offensive mons and with a wide variety of moves and a smaller variety of items that can be effective. I say it satisfies this despite clearly being somewhat dependent on other factors because it's obvious it must be: Huge Power isn't broken on a fully special pokemon or on a Nihilego for example.
I'm not the best at putting my thoughts into words so hopefully this is coherent and restarts some conversation.
It's been a while so I thought I'd finally comment on Illusion. The posts by SomeIrish and Willdbeast and others have been good on summarizing both its strengths and weaknesses and pretty much echo my own thoughts on the subject, both arguing for and against its ban. However, the discussion has not been so active so I think I will begin a suspect poll on it (which will be a little more refined this time around to prevent vote rigging i.e. have some component of proving "recent bh activity/experience") where all serious BH players alike can show their stance on the matter. This will probably take place next week, but I will try to get it asap.
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Storm Eagle
Banned deucer.
I've been encouraged to give my thoughts on the matter here. I fully agree with a Illusion ban, but considering I've had more experience with Contrary, I'd like to talk about that right now. There's nothing more I could possibly add to the discussion regarding Illusion anyways.
So, I'm sure Contrary has been explained a dozen times already. Whenever your stats are lowered, they increase instead, and vice versa. This allows people to use moves like Psycho Boost and increase their Special Attack stat actively without taking turns to set up. So, let me go ahead and state what are the main checks and drawbacks to setup sweepers in Balanced Hackmons, and then show why Contrary can beat them.
My main problem is that Contrary allows Pokemon to set up at the same time as attacking. All other setup sweepers have to dedicate a turn to setting up and the main point with that is that taking a turn to set up gives more opportunities to check the Pokemon, while Contrary users are always going to be building stat boosts which makes it 10x harder to check because there's no guarantee the Contrary Pokemon won't have coverage available to beat your would-be setup sweeper check.
I hope that Contrary ends up getting a Suspect Test shortly after Illusion does, if Illusion does get one that is.
So, I'm sure Contrary has been explained a dozen times already. Whenever your stats are lowered, they increase instead, and vice versa. This allows people to use moves like Psycho Boost and increase their Special Attack stat actively without taking turns to set up. So, let me go ahead and state what are the main checks and drawbacks to setup sweepers in Balanced Hackmons, and then show why Contrary can beat them.
- Imposter users, if they can get a safe switch via pivoting or revenge killing, can switch in on setup sweepers and either force them out to an Improof or outright knock them out.
- Imposter users can basically never get a safe switch in on Contrary Pokemon, especially as the current mon will often take a lot of damage or faint and hard switching is basically a death sentence. So often times, in order for your Imposter to switch in, you'll have to take a lot of damage from a bulky pivot or risk losing a ton of health by hard switching in your Imposter. This means that the Contrary Pokemon can come in, put pressure on one Pokemon, hopefully knock it out, then when your Imposter comes in, they'll switch into an Improof for their Contrary Pokemon. They'll repeatedly come in with their Contrary Pokemon during the course of the battle to put on more and more pressure.
- Prankster users can use Haze to reset the stats to 0 for every setup sweeper and then heal the following turn when the opponent is weakened.
- Contrary never gives Prankster users a break to begin with, especially if they have super-effective coverage, and they almost always do. Prankster users can try to use Haze but they'll just end up being at +2 again the very following turn, whereas Shell Smashers and the like have to take the turn to boost back to +2 unlike Contrary which is always going to be +2 at the end of the turn. This means that Contrary Pokemon can break through mons like Registeel, Zygarde-Complete, and Giratina with their coverage because they're constantly getting stronger.
- Okay, so what about Prankster Topsy-Turvy? Well, I think Prankster Topsy-Turvy is an objectively inferior set and should not be run due to it's inherent weaknesses to Dark types like Mega Tyranitar. In running Topsy-Turvy, you're actively making your team weaker unless you're running both Haze and Topsy-Turvy which is really bad. While it's uncommon, and I'm not sure I should even mention it as I feel it might invalidate my argument, I've seen offensive Yveltal with Contrary work in certain circumstances as well, utilizing Dragon Ascent, Power Trip, and generally coverage moves like V-Create or Sunsteel Strike.
- Contrary never gives Prankster users a break to begin with, especially if they have super-effective coverage, and they almost always do. Prankster users can try to use Haze but they'll just end up being at +2 again the very following turn, whereas Shell Smashers and the like have to take the turn to boost back to +2 unlike Contrary which is always going to be +2 at the end of the turn. This means that Contrary Pokemon can break through mons like Registeel, Zygarde-Complete, and Giratina with their coverage because they're constantly getting stronger.
- Attempt to outspeed the sweeper using very fast Pokemon or priority.
- While this might work for Mega Mewtwo Y, it's generally not going to work for many other Contrary mons, especially considering a lot of them use V-Create, which boosts Speed, making it more difficult to revenge kill without using the likes of Scarf Imposter, and they boost their Defense to very high levels as well which makes priority moves steadily less effective, especially if they continue boosting their Defenses. Fakespeed from Mega Ray and Mega Diancie can KO MMX at 0, but at +1 Diancie can't do it without rocks, and at +2 neither can OHKO, so on, so forth. This is assuming you're using Mega Mewtwo X and not a Contrary sweeper which isn't weak to Fairy or Flying.
- While almost any Pokemon can be an Illusion Pokemon, I also believe almost any Pokemon can run Contrary with decent enough offenses, and there's a lot of stat reducing moves which can allow for it. The fact that even V-Create and the like will increase your Speed will allow even moderately slow Pokemon to gain momentum after enough boosts. At +2, a Pokemon with the equivalent base speed of Necrozma Dusk Mane can outspeed everything including max speed Deoxys-Speed using an Attack boosting nature!
- While this might work for Mega Mewtwo Y, it's generally not going to work for many other Contrary mons, especially considering a lot of them use V-Create, which boosts Speed, making it more difficult to revenge kill without using the likes of Scarf Imposter, and they boost their Defense to very high levels as well which makes priority moves steadily less effective, especially if they continue boosting their Defenses. Fakespeed from Mega Ray and Mega Diancie can KO MMX at 0, but at +1 Diancie can't do it without rocks, and at +2 neither can OHKO, so on, so forth. This is assuming you're using Mega Mewtwo X and not a Contrary sweeper which isn't weak to Fairy or Flying.
- Try to steal the Pokemon's boosts using Spectral Thief.
- While normal setup sweepers aside from Regigigas must be wary of Spectral Thief, Spectral Thief manages to annoy the opposing Contrary Pokemon at best. Unless it's a Mega Mewtwo Y, Spectral Thief won't even do a big amount of damage unless it's from Giratina. This also falls under the same argument as Prankster Haze, because Contrary Pokemon do not need turns to set up again and can passively set up which allows them to break Pokemon trying to steal boosts.
- Use Unaware with Topsy-Turvy to check the setup sweeper.
- Coverage from Pokemon, namely the Mega Mewtwos can both put extreme amounts of pressure on the opposing Pokemon regardless of boosts. Here's some calcs based on the most common Unawares seen in the tier via the usage data.
- 252+ Atk Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-X Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Registeel: 406-478 (111.5 - 131.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
- 252 SpA Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-Y Overheat vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Registeel: 270-320 (74.1 - 87.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
- 252 SpA Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-Y Fleur Cannon vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Zygarde-Complete: 372-439 (58.4 - 69%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
- 252+ Atk Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-X Ice Hammer vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Zygarde-Complete: 577-681 (90.7 - 107%) -- 81.3% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
- 252+ Atk Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-X Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Kyogre-Primal: 289-341 (71.5 - 84.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
- 252 SpA Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-Y Psycho Boost vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Kyogre-Primal: 208-246 (51.4 - 60.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
- 252 SpA Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-Y Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Kyogre-Primal: 257-304 (63.6 - 75.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
- While Leaf Storm is in my honest opinion bad on Mega Mewtwo Y, some MMYs may run it to get rid of Primal Kyogre in specific.
- 252 SpA Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-Y Fleur Cannon vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Yveltal: 367-432 (80.4 - 94.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
- 252+ Atk Life Orb Mewtwo-Mega-X Ice Hammer vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Yveltal: 309-367 (67.7 - 80.4%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
- All of them are either OHKOed or 2HKOed, and most of the 2HKOs don't matter because the Contrary mon generally still outspeeds.
- Coverage from Pokemon, namely the Mega Mewtwos can both put extreme amounts of pressure on the opposing Pokemon regardless of boosts. Here's some calcs based on the most common Unawares seen in the tier via the usage data.
My main problem is that Contrary allows Pokemon to set up at the same time as attacking. All other setup sweepers have to dedicate a turn to setting up and the main point with that is that taking a turn to set up gives more opportunities to check the Pokemon, while Contrary users are always going to be building stat boosts which makes it 10x harder to check because there's no guarantee the Contrary Pokemon won't have coverage available to beat your would-be setup sweeper check.
I hope that Contrary ends up getting a Suspect Test shortly after Illusion does, if Illusion does get one that is.
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Honestly, Contrary is much less of a problem than sleep, moldy moves or Shell Smash.
However, there's one move which should probably get a suspect, and that is V-Create. It is so stupidly powerful, that even without STAB, it OHKOs most pokemon weak to it, allowing stuff like -ate Diancie to easily lure its usual checks.
While Flash Fire steels can be run to prevent easy V-Create kills they lack the additional special bulk AV provides and after some chip damage they might be in 2HKO range of specsed -ate Boomburst. And V-Creae is the only reason to run FF steels, since other mons with fire coverage such as special Contrary abusers with Overheat have much better checks.
Switching in a (Regenvest) steel into a Flare Blitz, Mind Blowm or Precipice Blades hurts too, but those moves are much, much weaker compared to v-create and never OHKO usual steel-types.
In total, I think V-Create is banworthy and probably should be suspected after Illusion (and sleep).
However, there's one move which should probably get a suspect, and that is V-Create. It is so stupidly powerful, that even without STAB, it OHKOs most pokemon weak to it, allowing stuff like -ate Diancie to easily lure its usual checks.
While Flash Fire steels can be run to prevent easy V-Create kills they lack the additional special bulk AV provides and after some chip damage they might be in 2HKO range of specsed -ate Boomburst. And V-Creae is the only reason to run FF steels, since other mons with fire coverage such as special Contrary abusers with Overheat have much better checks.
Switching in a (Regenvest) steel into a Flare Blitz, Mind Blowm or Precipice Blades hurts too, but those moves are much, much weaker compared to v-create and never OHKO usual steel-types.
In total, I think V-Create is banworthy and probably should be suspected after Illusion (and sleep).
Fresh reminder that Contrary being more banworthy than illusion does not mean illusion is not banworthy and should not be a reason to vote no suspect by itself. Be patient and your choice suspect will come in due time.
To re-iterate, it is of course perfectly fine to think it shouldn't be suspected. But saying that is shouldn't be suspected because something else should be suspected instead is missing the point. This may sound obvious but this issue seems to come up often in times of suspect.
To re-iterate, it is of course perfectly fine to think it shouldn't be suspected. But saying that is shouldn't be suspected because something else should be suspected instead is missing the point. This may sound obvious but this issue seems to come up often in times of suspect.
Storm Eagle
Banned deucer.
Contrary is harder to work around than Sleep, Mold Breaker, or Shell Smash. Sleep and Mold Breaker are beaten by Comatose. Shell Smash is still beaten by Prankster Haze.
V-Create is stupidly strong but a lot of mons either resist it or are immune (Flash Fire/Primordial Sea) to it. So I'm not fully sure. The meta is loaded with Dragons and bulky Steels after all. Also unless you're a modest specs M-Ray then you aren't 2HKOing resisted Steels with -Ate. I know this for a fact since I very frequently use Specs M-Ray. And most people run Timid for the speed tie to other M-Rays.
I did say that I believe Contrary should be suspected after Illusion gets the attention it deserves.
Not the suspect I wanted, but I'm not exactly opposed to an Illusion suspect either.
Storm Eagle: Contrary is problematic, but not because of Contrary itself. The fact Contrary can run Mold Breaker moves, like Sunsteel Strike, to bypass abilities is what makes it so strong. Remove those and you bring it and other crap like Simple and Shell Smash back into line like they have been for the past gens. It also brings walls you didn't calc, like Unaware Cresselia* and Lugia, back into viability while also letting you answer with Shedinja, lest they gimp their moveset to deal specifically with the undead bug by using something like Magma Storm or Infestation.
*Cress, for example, can recover Stall vs any Contrary lacking a boosting item except Mega-Blaze's V-Create if Mold Breaker moves are not in play. Or steal a V-Create boost and stall out any Contrary.
Also, you completely forgot about shuffling as answers, such as Whirlwind or Circle Throw. You have to take a hit, yeah, but the Contrary will have to switch back in to try anything again, giving you time to recover and prepare.
Storm Eagle: Contrary is problematic, but not because of Contrary itself. The fact Contrary can run Mold Breaker moves, like Sunsteel Strike, to bypass abilities is what makes it so strong. Remove those and you bring it and other crap like Simple and Shell Smash back into line like they have been for the past gens. It also brings walls you didn't calc, like Unaware Cresselia* and Lugia, back into viability while also letting you answer with Shedinja, lest they gimp their moveset to deal specifically with the undead bug by using something like Magma Storm or Infestation.
*Cress, for example, can recover Stall vs any Contrary lacking a boosting item except Mega-Blaze's V-Create if Mold Breaker moves are not in play. Or steal a V-Create boost and stall out any Contrary.
Also, you completely forgot about shuffling as answers, such as Whirlwind or Circle Throw. You have to take a hit, yeah, but the Contrary will have to switch back in to try anything again, giving you time to recover and prepare.
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