BH BH7 Suspect #3: Trapping - Voter Identification & Discussion

[RNGIsFatal]

Here is my req if you couldn't tell, and

A metagame has to be what it is, Joey.
Can't break the competitiveness.
There's no competitiveness with the Gengarite.
There's no going back once you are Encored trapped.
Right or wrong, Gengarite's bad.
A badness that sticks.
Now you run on home to your 'mons...
you tell them everything's alright.
There are no more Gengarite in the Pokemon Showdown. ​

- Laura from <Logan> RNGIsFatal from <Salt>

Guys, lets get this junk out of here.

Edit: I never said anything about Magnet Pull yet.

 

[highlighter]

reqs

 

[QY_CS]

The shadow tag argument has been going on for weeks or even months now, with many compelling points pointing at uncompetitiveness, unfairness, removal or player decision, unbearable teambuilding strain, spawn of skewed predictions and win-win situations, making the hazard game completely one sided, removing an entire section of viable mons, lack of viable counterplay and lowkey denying player interaction from the game.

The reason I'm saying this is because most of the no ban arguments I see have either already been addressed multiple times in the past or are just stupid (aki0s, QY_CS). The community decision seems unanimous at this point and I doubt it'll change which is why I'm not gonna waste time reiterating the same points that, again, we've literally argued for months. But if you're confused there's some reading you can do to inform yourself.

About the points you give, the exact same reasoning can lead to "Ubers pokemon restrain people from using OU pokemon, lets ban them in BH" or "magic bounce removes so many viable status moves, lets ban it in BH" or "Spore gives such an unbearable teambuilding strain lets ban it in BH" or even "Freeze is so uncompetitive it should be banned"
Just coz u can't counterplay doesn't mean other people can't. I wouldn't be calling other people stupid because they are not afraid of some gimmicky child's play.

 

[Scarf]

About the points you give, the exact same reasoning can lead to "Ubers pokemon restrain people from using OU pokemon, lets ban them in BH" or "magic bounce removes so many viable status moves, lets ban it in BH" or "Spore gives such an unbearable teambuilding strain lets ban it in BH" or even "Freeze is so uncompetitive it should be banned"
Just coz u can't counterplay doesn't mean other people can't. I wouldn't be calling other people stupid because they are not afraid of some gimmicky child's play.

What he meant to say was that the points you were making were flawed, not necessarily that you're stupid for believing what you believe. Having said that, to address what you've said, Shadow Tag, and to an extent Magnet Pull, as abilities offers little counterplay by definition as once a key mon has been trapped there's nothing you can do. Pokemon like Zygarde, Audino, Registeel and other such bulky things are perpetually at risk of being trapped for every turn they spend out in use. Like others have said, the fact that you can slow pivot out on key targets and punish them for staying in is ridiculous. It's a lose-lose situation, all thanks to the pressure Gengarite generates.

You say: "Just coz u can't counterplay doesn't mean other people can't", but what can you really do? You can run Shed Shell but that's a worthless item against anything not named Gengar. Other than that, once you're trapped you're done for. The burden of outplaying is on you at all times just because of the match-up, and this could all be invalidated if they get off a slow U-turn and switch in Gengar safely (which requires little thought or skill to perform). Counterplay is extremely limited, and according to BH's banning philosophy warrants a ban. Read:

An Ability should be considered for ban based on:
The capabilities of the 'mon it is on that the set in question are difficult or impossible to check or counter.

 

[QY_CS]

What he meant to say was that the points you were making were flawed, not necessarily that you're stupid for believing what you believe. Having said that, to address what you've said, Shadow Tag, and to an extent Magnet Pull, as abilities offers little counterplay by definition as once a key mon has been trapped there's nothing you can do. Pokemon like Zygarde, Audino, Registeel and other such bulky things are perpetually at risk of being trapped for every turn they spend out in use. Like others have said, the fact that you can slow pivot out on key targets and punish them for staying in is ridiculous. It's a lose-lose situation, all thanks to the pressure Gengarite generates.

You say: "Just coz u can't counterplay doesn't mean other people can't", but what can you really do? You can run Shed Shell but that's a worthless item against anything not named Gengar. Other than that, once you're trapped you're done for. The burden of outplaying is on you at all times just because of the match-up, and this could all be invalidated if they get off a slow U-turn and switch in Gengar safely (which requires little thought or skill to perform). Counterplay is extremely limited, and according to BH's banning philosophy warrants a ban. Read:

What about Safety Goggles? Is it that useful to be immune to sandstorm and hail damage? People still use it only because of Spore. If Spore is not broken nor shall STag be, as you can run Shed Shell.
Gengar user cannot be safe as it can be hit by Magic Bounce users as well. How will the opponent know whether u had Magic Bounce on this pokemon?
These are just some thoughts that can almost for sure counter Gengarite.
Quick edit: One or two Safety Goggles in team is enough to counter Spore. Spore users can always bring knock off. On the other hand, not all walls need Shed Shell as you can simply bring a move to kill Gengar (such as the common Spectral Thief and Moongeist Beam).

 

[ElMustacho]

Reqs.
Ban Gengarite.
Don't ban Magnet Pull.
While I do have an opinion on this, I lack the time to do so at the moment.

 

[Pikachuun]

What about Safety Goggles? Is it that useful to be immune to sandstorm and hail damage? People still use it only because of Spore. If Spore is not broken nor shall STag be, as you can run Shed Shell.
Gengar user cannot be safe as it can be hit by Magic Bounce users as well. How will the opponent know whether u had Magic Bounce on this pokemon?
These are just some thoughts that can almost for sure counter Gengarite.
Quick edit: One or two Safety Goggles in team is enough to counter Spore. Spore users can always bring knock off. On the other hand, not all walls need Shed Shell as you can simply bring a move to kill Gengar (such as the common Spectral Thief and Moongeist Beam).

Uh... Spore can be dealt with by other methods too besides just an item? You can run Poison Heal, which is already a good ability as is, Comatose, which is Poison Heal's brother that frees up an item slot instead of providing healing but lets you be immune to a few other nice things, and Magic Bounce as you brought up when dealing with Shadow Tag, to name the more common ones. If you really want you can be niche with your choices (Electric Terraiiinnnnn) or run some other item (Chesto/Lum Berry, to name 2) but you have a lot more options to deal with Spore.

With Shadow Tag, and to a lesser extent because of its Steel focus Magnet Pull, the only thing you can do is run a few certain abilities, ghost types, an ability suppressor, or 1 practically useless item and even then it's not guaranteed you can deal with it. Magic Bounce sets can be dealt with just by running the appropriate coverage move on Gar, anyway. You can even run Imprison + (switch move) if you really wanted to on Gar but I don't recommend this. Some teams I've seen also run another Gar alongside it, so on those teams you can't even risk sending the ghost in on a switch. Ability suppressors require prediction which both players can get wrong. Hell, Magic Bounce sets in general can still be trapped and killed as shown by the replay with me vs Quantum Tesseract (I did it twice, the first on a Yveltal of all things and the second requiring me to sac MGar to get rid of the Imposter chans copying my M-Aud, but it was worth it), so saying that things can "almost for sure counter Gengarite" is really not a good idea. There aren't any true counters in BH for the strong threats like this, please keep in mind that anything can run almost anything. And since you can't really switch out of Gengarite to go to your dedicated counter... the strict definition of a counter doesn't really apply to it regardless.

So what about Spectral Thief and Moongeist Beam? They're common after all, and super effective, so MGar should definitely be taken down if you just click them against it, right?
252 Atk Zygarde-Complete Spectral Thief vs. 248 HP / 252 Def Gengar-Mega: 150-178 (46.4 - 55.1%) -- 63.7% chance to 2HKO
Realistically, this would be the strongest Spectral Thief that can be used against a Mega-Gengar by a wall, and yes, it can 2HKO, but if Gar's running +Def (mines does for this explicit reason) this is a non-issue.
252 Atk Zygarde-Complete Spectral Thief vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Gengar-Mega: 136-162 (42.1 - 50.1%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO
And remember, this is the strongest one that would realistically be used in this situation, because Zygod has the highest Attack out of the walls you'd send Gar in on. And it needs 2 high rolls to 2HKO. Say Gar has recovery (mines does). What then? You're gonna get locked and waste your Spectral Thief PP, only to run out of it and get Perish Song'd as you would've before. This gets even worse with Strength Sap because your Attack gets dropped, making Spectral Thief even weaker. Sure you drained a lot of Encore's PP too, but that doesn't mean Gar still can't pick off your wall. Of course, this is also a non-issue if you don't click this move in the first place, Gar just locks you into whatever else and picks you off. Really, the one wall that would be the most threatening is Gyarados-M simply because of its offensive capabilities and Knock Off being as strong as it is + getting STAB, but that's it, honestly.

Also, who runs Moongeist Beam on a wall? It wouldn't do much better anyway and because of its lesser PP it'd probably be much easier to stall out...

 

[draegn]

proof

 

[Smogon Genie]

I was chatting on the BH discord when a conversation arose in which the topic was comparing Magnet Pull to the previously banned Chatter. I'll try my best to give my opinion on the suspect while also addressing that topic.
Here is a quote from someone in the conversation (I'll leave there name out of it)

"I view it (Magnet Pull) mostly like I viewed chatter spam in other metas. It's not necessarily hard to deal with, it's just not good for the format and reduces the skill testing involved"

I think the difference in magnet pull and chatter is that chatter can be used on any kind of Pokemon and can instantly put the opponent at a disadvantage where at any moment, you have a 30% chance of not only hitting your self but also being completely immobile for the rest of the turn. On the other side, mag pull can be played around and is generally restricted to mons that can cause heavy damage to steels. Outside of it's ability to remove steel types from the battle, magnet pull offers no value whatsoever to a Pokemon, unlike chatter. Additionally, magnet pull can be counter played through making doubles, using items like shed shell, being ghost type in aeigs case, and having moves like prankster parting shot which is common on things like registeel and prankster solgaleo. Chatter has no switch ins outside of soundproof which is rather niche and rather difficult to just put on a team without restrictions. Furthermore, the presence of Magnet Pull in the metagame alows for a viable counter play to stall while not making the playstyle of stall unviable nor making Offense or Bulky offense particularly too powerful.

Hopefully I included everything I wanted to say, thanks for reading :)

 

[Rumors]

If Spore is not broken nor shall STag be, as you can run Shed Shell.

Uhhh, no. Considering there's already sizable group of players who consider Spore, or sleep in general, to be problematic already (and Spore was recently brought up again in the Suspect Discussion, that arguement falls flat on its face. The only reason why Spore or sleep clause isn't suspected yet is because general consensus was S.Tag was more important and needed to go first.

Besides, the two are hardly even comparable, if at all. This is almost like saying "If Shell Smash is not broken then Water Bubble isn't either." I mean, how in the heck does the brokeness of Spore, or lack thereof, determine the brokeness of anything unrelated?

As for the rest, what Pikachuun said.

 

[MrSoup]

confirming as HavinTrapNameIsDum

 

[sdrumapapere]

What about you just stop arguing and ban the goddamn thing without testing then?
I really found a lot of people here hilarious.
"Oh, so you're voting for no ban. Let me just whine about your arguments being not valid no matter what they are, since I've just decided that I will not accept anything but people that agree with me."

E4 edit: there's no need to play the Martyr, this is just a discussion

 

[Klang]

What about you just stop arguing and ban the goddamn thing without testing then?
I really found a lot of people here hilarious.
"Oh, so you're voting for no ban. Let me just whine about your arguments being not valid no matter what they are, since I've just decided that I will not accept anything but people that agree with me."
Get a hold of yourselves. You're not better than the others. Bye.

(rip this comment, but whatever, until it survives)

Lmao so there can't be a debate or even any remote discussion about the topic at hand then? Nobody is trying to invalidate anyone's votes, people are just trying to convince others to vote for their side. As it should be in any healthy debate.

 

[RNGIsFatal]

What about you just stop arguing and ban the goddamn thing without testing then?
I really found a lot of people here hilarious.
"Oh, so you're voting for no ban. Let me just whine about your arguments being not valid no matter what they are, since I've just decided that I will not accept anything but people that agree with me."
Get a hold of yourselves. You're not better than the others. Bye.

(rip this comment, but whatever, until it survives)

While some people may sound like they are trying to force other people to their side, most of us here are attempting to make the most logical arguments and best decisions. What would be the purpose of the whole suspect and the BH suspect / bans thread (where we decided the suspect is necessary) if no one would ever give a crap about what others say? We talk with different people with different opinions for reasons. You might find this out if you get into this but looks like it is unlikely going to happen judging from your attitude.

Lmao so there can't be a debate or even any remote discussion about the topic at hand then? Nobody is trying to invalidate anyone's votes, people are just trying to convince others to vote for their side. As it should be in any healthy debate.

Adding onto that, even if some jerks are trying to invalidate others' arguments just because they are different, they will need sufficient evidence from replays / general knowledge of the metagame that proves the others' opinions wrong; meaning, they can't just say nonsense like "Well you disagree with Magnet Pull ban but you are wrong because it does this, this, and that. All your points are invalid because your arguments are opposite to what I stated". Who in the world will ever respect anyone who would say stupid crap like this and never listen to what others say? I mean, there is no reason to use forums unless we are ready to accept different perspectives.

I myself disagree with banning Magnet Pull and at least more than 60% of people say "Get Magnet Pull out of my sight". If I do what you said and not listen to anyone while waiting for next 2 weeks for others to accept my opinion, I wouldn't accomplish what I am trying to do. I am pretty sure this applies to anyone in this thread.
I'm not minimoding but please don't say stuff like this in the future and don't judge about the whole picture of the thread and discussion by taking couple seconds of look. No offense but what you said is quite too straightfoward and is quite disrespectful to whomever in this thread, including Kl4ng who were debating upon Gengarite and Magnet Pull. Sorry for too demanding tone, and have a good day.

 

[Rumors]

What about you just stop arguing and ban the goddamn thing without testing then?
I really found a lot of people here hilarious.
"Oh, so you're voting for no ban. Let me just whine about your arguments being not valid no matter what they are, since I've just decided that I will not accept anything but people that agree with me."
Get a hold of yourselves. You're not better than the others. Bye.

(rip this comment, but whatever, until it survives)

I don't mind what people vote. What I mind are arguments like "Unrelated Y is not broken so therefore X is not" or "Stall would be too strong without X" or "I want to ban Z first and then suspect X" or "Ban X because unrelated W is too strong with it around" or "X is fine because you can run A on every Pokemon/team" or "I hate X so don't ban" or "I hate X so ban it" or "BH should never have bans and we've had too many so don't ban X" or, you know, any other similar, faulty reasoning to arrive at a conclusion to ban or not ban. Such faulty arguments, regardless of which side they support, need to be shot down, burned, and buried.

 

[Arctic Weavile]

Proof of reqs is attached below. I am going to vote BAN on magnet pull and shadow tag. The reason Mega Gengar was banned from OU was because of its trapping abilities and Dugtrio moved from I believe NU to OU because of its trapping abilities. Before starting to ladder, I hadn't encountered the two abilities in BH. However, during laddering, I found one thing specifically that changed my mind. It was an imposter Gengar that took the form of Mega Audino, and then trapped me in to encore endlessly as it set up and I had no way to beat it as it won the speed tie with my Imposter Chansey. It was extremely aggravating to face and got me extremely pissed off. It doesn't offer much competitively and is one of those things that takes no skill to use, so for those reasons I'm going to vote BAN.

 

[jrm115]

proof attached. absolutely ban gengarite, on the fence on magpull. there are so many ways of steels getting around magpull without sacrificing all that much that even though its sorta dumb its not busted. with using shed shell, prank pshot/bpass, shed shell and being wary of koff, i think the best comparison for how im feeling about it is that its like sturdinja or imposter? there are things that good teams do to be able to handle it, but if you dont youre sorta screwed. that sounds like something thats a little niche but occasionally pays off big, not some terrible thing that needs to be banned. if i dont edit this post or w/e assume im no ban, but feel free to try to convince me.

 

[Reviloja753]

Why is Magnet Pull even being suspected? Unlike Arena Trap and Shadow Tag, Magnet Pull only traps Steel-types. I don't see how it is even viable let alone bad enough to warrant a suspect.

 

[aki0s]

Why is Magnet Pull even being suspected? Unlike Arena Trap and Shadow Tag, Magnet Pull only traps Steel-types. I don't see how it is even viable let alone bad enough to warrant a suspect.

I'm not voting to ban it, but to answer your question: walls are pretty important in the BH metagame. Losing a steel means that something like pixilate M-Diance / Psychic-surge MMy theoretically have a field day as there is nothing left to check them. In this metagame roles are very condensed into some key pokemon, losing one or two means you essentially autolose. That's essentially why it's being suspected.

 

[jrm115]

Why is Magnet Pull even being suspected? Unlike Arena Trap and Shadow Tag, Magnet Pull only traps Steel-types. I don't see how it is even viable let alone bad enough to warrant a suspect.

almost every good team uses a steel wall to check -ates and generic offense spam stuff. mpull is a guranteed way to get rid of that check and let mega diancie or something run free

 

[Reviloja753]

Oh, okay. I usually run HO so I didn't know that...

 

[Klang]

reqs

 

[E4 Flint]

 

[TheCommadore]

 

[dom]

Hide

6 gengars got me reqs and i only really had like 3 legit losses so yeah that's the actual broken shit

edit: by the way i own the "traps are gay" account i know you wanted.