Gen 4 DPP Latias Test (Latias is now OU)

[ABR]

I've been playing more on ladder and honestly as time goes by the more skeptical I become of this test as a whole.

Alluding to my previous post, I stated that the logical support for an unban must relate to a concrete and positive impact on the metagame. I don't believe anyone disputes this point. The issue is, the current ladder is nowhere near adequate enough to determine such a nuanced thing. I, for one, have just been using a team from WCoP with 0 edits (resttalk rotom, scarftar, skarm, clef, milo, glisc) to great success. I myself don't even feel educated enough to gauge Latias' impact - no one can. To put it simply, we don't have the resources (people, activity, time) to be fair judges of the metagame impact.

The ladder is also inadequate because it's relatively dead. If you check the ladder peaks of gen 1-6 OU you'll notice DPP's is the second lowest, only ahead of BW. I say it's dead because it can take quite some time to get games, even at regular hours, and I've also had plenty of games with a >200 ELO difference between myself and my opponent. Of a shallow 1580 peak, 200 is a large difference.

All that said, it isn't too late to forget this ever happened. The actual suspect test didn't start yet, and it never has to. I hope the dpp council is mature enough to accept the illegitimacy of this movement and put an end to it here.

 

[Excal]

PDC, ABR, and marcop have all made wonderful posts. I have nothing fruitful to add on, but I just wanted to say that I fully support these posts (and both of ABR's) and, most importantly, I support putting an end to the expected suspect test on November 15th. I think it will reflect very badly on the DPP Council if they decide to move forward with the suspect test.

 

[Teclis]

What is you guys opinion? Do this this Pokemon is too good or will it stay? pls Answer?

At that point of the debate the question is not whether it is too good or not ; more like whether we should launch Suspect Tests to have Pokémon descending from Ubers in a 8 yo metagame just to shake it a little bit. I am not a DPP player by any means, but if I had to express the problem in simple terms : Latias may not be broken in the current DPP OU metagame ; however (and as far as I know), Pokémon should descend from Ubers to Overused only if they have a positive impact on the said OU metagame.

No one can prove that for Latias right now (maybe it because ladder is not an adequate environment in the first place, or because it is simply not the case), and this Test is based on the statement that "Latias may not be broken, so she should not be banned ; let's give her a try", which has nothing to do, at a a glance, with improving the DPP OU metagame.

So we can hardly answer you right now, because it has turned to a policy question and Latias' legitimacy in the DPP OU metagame is not really the matter anymore. If I had to pick one it would be : she is not necessarily too good, but that fact alone does not mean she will be unbanned because of the problems described above/the precedents she may create(and God knows precedents can be used in every way possible here :p).

(sorry for paraphrasing pretty much all the recent posts, I'm just trying to summarize all those textbooks in simple terms, both for his sake and mine )

 

[Ojama]

i’d extend this specifically to ojama (as i was even asked to post this on behalf of certain users not wanting to do it themselves) as i give bkc the benefit of the doubt in the purity of his drive to ‘fix’ dpp. but in the unbanning of latias, we finally reach the absolute peak of favorable tiering and will reach a bw-esque cycle of favoritism towards trends and patterns. we get bored with a metagame, we seek to alter it in the only way we can: ban or drop mons over and over until we move so far away from the original intent of the metagames crafters.

as far is im concerned PDC im not a dpp/bw2 council member. i have as much power on this community as you or any regular user. ive made threads to suggest potential suspect tests in tiers that had been slowly deteriorating over the years once they were no longer the main tier because i thought it was necessary, and that's all ive done. correct me if im wrong but i dont think i can launch a suspect test or have a pokemon get unbanned/banned just by snapping my fingers. maybe thats the way you feel about me but i have never forced anyone to do anything, not that i can anyway. you could even take a look at my post regarding the last bw2 suspect and see that i suggested an option that i think was a lot better than just "outright banning sand rush" and that i strongly believe would make the tier steadier. i wouldnt be so opposed to the senior levels of smogon (tds, council, etc) and the way they handle things if i had the ability to get everything that i want.

it is true that i have been consulted by ppl among the old gen councils but thats about it. in the end, i usually am the one who ends up making the first move and post the thread, which is why you probably think that im the mastermind behind every old gen suspect but you're entirely wrong. you gave bkc "the benefit of the doubt in the purity of his drive to fix dpp" whereas the threads that mdragon and i posted were approved and in part wrote by bkc himself. but he sure can get the benefit of the doubt, but i cant? you have to understand something palkiadialgaclash, if after all these years and several attempts to get excadrill banned it is still allowed in OU, with the support of some of the best bw players and a large majority against its ban, then maybe you should consider the unthinkable: you are not right?

back to the main topic. i could dig up a bunch of quotes of me saying that this idea of suspecting latias on the dpp ladder for 2 weeks is an heresy but again, i dont get to decide you see? ive said it plenty of times but the only way, and the best way in my opinion, to suspect latias would be to allow it on the big stage: spl. but tds themselves are strongly opposed to using an official tournament as a mean to suspect a pokemon, despite being the only way to have an accurate idea of what a latias metagame would look like. thats their choice, not mine, not ours, but it is entirely wrong to throw the stone at us and claim that we rushed this just to get it unbanned in spl. unbanning latias in dpp has been a redundant discussion for years, so it was definitely not rushed. you should also define what "rushing" means in your thought process because if you think your way of handling such a suspect is ideal then you're out of your mind. it may look nice on paper but unless you're completely lying to yourself and has been living on a lost island for years, hosting a bunch of non official tournaments with latias allowed for months/years would be completely irrelevant and would be an as accurate picture of the latias metagame as the current one on the dpp ladder. this is what smogon is in 2018. if you want ppl to care and be invested, make it official or else they wont bother.

the real issue with DPP right now is that a wide majority of the players who have been playing dpp for the past couple years started playing dpp very recently and have no idea what the mence-latias metagame looked like and i think this is something one cannot ignore. yes things have changed a lot since then, but i think that if someone like earthworm/atticus/panamaxis etc were to give their opinion about the impact of latias on the tier, a guy who has only been playing for 2 years with jirachi-starmie-breloom-zapdos doesnt carry much weight dont you agree? i know this is unpopular opinion because truth hurts sometimes, but the dpp playerbase has been the weakest of the old gens by far for years because all its top players stopped playing it and got bored of it, or just quit. i don't have anything against ppl who want to learn a new tier, but i hate it when ppl claim to main a tier they dont know shit about just because they have won a few games with paraspam and stolen teams. im not talking about 1 player in particular, this applies to a lot of the so-called new dpp players. if you cannot make your own teams and just have been spamming the most standard/broken archetypes of the tier for a couple years, im sorry but your opinion doesn't mean much to me and shouldnt mean much for such a controversial suspect test.

to end this post, and because it never hurts to remind it: stop treating old gens as locked tiers. they are still actively played and if the community of a certain tier feels like suspecting a pokémon/an ability because they believe it's necessary, why you care? after all that's their tier and they are well placed to know whether something should get banned or not, don't you think?

edit: at first i thought you were banned or couldnt post because you thought it was a PR thread but then i realized it was not the case because it's on the RoA subforum. so you want us to believe that u "quit" and dont log in anymore but u still check smogon 120 times a day and care so much that u decided to type the longest post ive seen in a long time and had someone else post it just because you want to keep that mysterious image of yourself you've been trying to build lmfao. how to discredit an entire post.

 

[M Dragon]

First of all, sorry for not answering earlier, it has been a busy week for me.

It seems like some players like PDC or ABR completely missed the point of this suspect test (or why this is happening).
The reason of this suspect test is NOT that we think that the metagame is too stale or boring. Those are not and will never be reasons to bring back something from ubers. So no, things like "lets bring back hoopa to ORAS" or "lets bring back thundurus to BW" will never happen.
So... why Latias? Why bringing back Latias to DPP OU?
There are 3 main reasons why I think Latias deserves at least a suspect test

1) Latias was voted OU in 4 suspect tests and then she got banned in another close voting, and never had another chance to come back
Latias was originally unbanned and allowed into OU in early 2009 by a great majority, while other suspects like Latios, Manaphy, Garchomp, Deoxys-Speed or Skymin were voted Ubers.
However, they all had a new chance in a new suspect test process that included every tested pokemon (also Latias, even if was voted OU). At the end of every suspect test in that process, every suspect was banned to Ubers, included Latias even if people had voted OU 4 times.
This basically meant that every suspect had 2 chances in 2 different suspect tests except for Latias, who was banned in 2 very close votings at the end of the suspect process.

2) Salamence
Some people who wanted to ban Latias thought that the presence of Latias overcentralized the metagame between dragons and steels and was not a healthy presence in the metagame.
However, the banning of Latias didnt change anything. In fact it became worse, and the reason was Salamence (Latias was useful when dealing with Salamence, because she is a faster dragon).
Salamence was banned 2 months later with nearly unanimity. However, Latias never had a chance to be tested in a metagame without Salamence, who was the real reason.
This is a very similar scenario than BW Chlorophyll, an ability that was banned because people thought it made Sun broken. However the problem continued until Dugtrio was banned in a recent suspect test. For that reason, I think that ability deserves a retest (and will probably eventually have one)

3) We believe it will be a healthy addition to the metagame
Alright, that point is subjective, even if there have been Latias tournaments in the past, where Latias was not an overpowered or an unhealty presence to the metagame.
This point alone doesnt justify a suspect test alone, but it is a necessary point, since we would never be suspect test something that we think is clearly broken or that would not be a healthy addition to the tier.
We understand that it is very hard to test something new in an old tier, and that is why in case Latias gets unbanned in the first voting, there will be a new voting several months after the first one to reevaluate its effects in the metagame, so if it becomes an unhealthy presence in the metagame, it can be banned.
I will make a new post about my opinion at DPP latias metagame after playing a lot of games in the ladder and watching replays of past latias tournaments, but the fact that a lot of reliable pre-latias teams are succesful only means that Latias at this moment is far from being an unhealthy element in this metagame, while its presence adds a new great switching to very annoying stuff like Infernape, Zapdos or Breloom while resisting some big types like Fire, Water, Grass, Ground and Fighting, which is a big help to both offensive and defensive teams, while also being able to be a great revenge killer, heavy hitter or late game sweeper.

 

[mael]

the only thing ppl ever bitch about regarding dpp are clefable / jirachi twave teams and now u wanna make those stronger by dropping latias, which makes a mon like rachi almost mandatory and considerably drops the viability of mons that dealt with those types of teams (loom / nape). why are u messing with this tier after it's been doing more than just fine over the last few years? this is an inept attempt at making changes for no clear reason other than nostalgia and a weird and unjustified sense of "what could've been". dpp is great the way it is. don't fuck with it, especially if u cannot realistically come close to having a grasp on the effects a change would have. u do not have the playerbase willing to play million games and not the time to wait for the metagame to settle before it's next involved in a big tournament, because the only tournaments the tier is played in are big ones. u r experimenting with something that u practically cannot test outside of major tournaments. that is not very reasonable and far from any idea of competitiveness (which i always hoped smogon is trying to achieve). remember what happened last time we unbanned an ubers mon in an old gen (excadrill)? the "fixes" to the metagame got unfixed just recently and we had to put up with bullshit for what feels like a decade. i do not see neither the incentive nor the reasoning behind this potential suspect, especially since it only amplifies the aspects of the tier ppl complain the most about.

 

[Triangles]

People... This is 1 (one) Pokemon. And it isn't even that good...

 

[undisputed]

I support the Latias test.

The basic principle behind tiering in competitive Pokemon is we ban what's broken and we don't ban what's not broken. Simply, if Latias isn't broken in DPP, it shouldn't be banned.

As the DPP Council has indicated, there's at least a reasonable case that Latias isn't broken and consequently shouldn't be banned. When there's a reasonable case for a Pokemon to be banned or unbanned in any gen, the council's role should be to facilitate an answer to that question. A Latias test is one good way to answer that question.

Anyone who feels strongly enough about the test should get reqs and vote. Voters do not need to justify their vote. They can vote based on brokenness, personal feelings, flipping a coin, "concrete and positive impact on the metagame," and "once a metagame is settled and finished unless an exceptional circumstance arises no new bans / drops should take place."

I think we can trust the voters to make an educated and worthwhile decision here.

 

[august]

hi all, sorry im a bit late getting around to answering some of these posts. i've just had a shoulder reconstruction surgery so typing is not exactly the easiest thing in the world. here are my opinions on some of the recent discussion.

to preface these opinions, i'd like to ask a question first. what exactly is wrong with changing an "old" metagame? smogon strives to be the best community for competitive pokemon, and it is my personal belief that we should try to keep the metagame healthy no matter how far removed we are from "when it was current gen". a lot of the posts in various places and opinions that people post on discord make me think that people are more concerned with changing an old metagame than they are with how it will affect/improve the meta. it is very natural that dpp and bw have been the first to have these changes proposed, as that is when smogon underwent an exponential increase in player base compared to past metagames. there has never been a strict rule or a "time passed under no changes can occur" in tiering policy before - in fact the other 2 metagames that have been replaced as the current gens after smogons exponential user increase have had post hoc changes made.

before i actually get into the meat of this post and the serious arguments, i’d like to talk about how outright silly one of the noted arguments is. a completely separate thread in an actually privated forum should be made for real discussion, as the public one in RoA is absolutely ridiculous.

we were asked to post a thread to gauge public opinion, which is awfully hard to do in PR. dont blame us for that one

on everybody preferring the current (the whole week of it) metagame to the one prior

if you actually believe that “preference” holds any weight in tiering of ANY generation or should, then you’re completely missing the point and should be thrown out of any tiering discussion, period. attributing a metagame’s health or viability to its enjoyability is absolutely out of the question for any tiering regime that wishes to posit itself as genuine or competitive. i developed this opinion after my retirement as TL as i realized just how dangerous a capricious council is to the integrity of any competitive game. i have a very strong suspicion that many of you are confusing metagame health with the rush of fun you get when you include latias into your teambuilder and get to use it on some ladder. metagames should be completely predicated on strict criteria developed in order to manifest the ‘best’ metagame possible. by best, i mean the elimination of everything we deem ‘broken’ or ‘unhealthy,’ terms that i may define later to avoid further conflation with ‘fun.’

these criterion are great in theory, but what actually measures them? what measures a specific, single, broken pokemon? i am much more concerned with existence of "optimal" strategies, and i think that dpp only has one robust optimal strategy (stall). if you dont agree, i suggest reading panamaxis post in "On the current state of dpp", as he said it well enough there and provided empirical evidence (not just theory on why stall is best in dpp, but i would be more than happy to explain why i think so for anyone interested). my views DO NOT necessarily respresent the views of the entire dpp council

ii. on the current state of dpp ou and the public’s response to it
dpp has, for some, reached its logical maxim in its current state. clefable, dugtrio, breloom, ttar, jirachi, para-spam, whatever. dpp has for many grown stale and reflects a metagame which has been dried up of innovation and represents a finished state. whether this is true or not, it seems to have entered even the highest players’ discourse. as per my last post, i don’t care in the slightest if dpp has become a stale, dead, terrible, unplayable, whatever metagame if it is not because of some broken pokemon / mechanic promulgating it. the final form of a metagame is supposed to be its most boring, as the stages it goes through are exhausted and the ability to push the metagame forward is mostly left to a circular diagram of specific counter-teams to the reigning paradigm looping back into a slight modification / tech and then going back to the reigning paradigm. let us assume that for the moment, dpp has reached its conclusion.

dpp’s staleness is not an excuse for modifications of tiering. a metagame can be completely unenjoyable and be the absolute paragon of what should be sought after in a competitive game. the angelicizement of dpp has probably contributed to this backlash at least in part. outsourcing to a theory posited by bkc, the obsession with 2007-2010 as smogon’s golden age and dpp’s hailing as the greatest metagame possessing the highest tier of skill has inevitably contributed to its own destruction. oversaturated with appraise for the past 5 years, dpp has finally reached a point where its late-game metagame sickness is unignorable for the majority -- or maybe the authority’s opinion on the game has just shifted. whatever it is, the desperate grasping for a change in what was previously a publicly celebrated metagame contributes, if not only slightly, to the rush for a change. bw suffered the reverse; instead of being the loved metagame of the masses, it was the one ‘ruined’ by an early tiering decision that essentially doomed the tier to weather wars in its future.

as i said above, i believe that stall has become the optimal strategy in the presence of this maximal state. offensive and balanced teams find themselves hard pressed to cover all of the above threats while still maintaining a consistent plan of attack vs common threats such as zapdos.

THIS is why i think that latias would be a healthy addition to the tier. its strength, role compression (water/fire/elec/grass/fight resist that is ground immune/not affected by spikes and SR) give other teams more freedom to utilize countermeasures to paraspam/stall/whatever, and innovators of the tier will inevitably begin to find ways around "cheese" strategies that emerge (i.e. multiple trappers with latias).

as for the almost certain centralization: i will talk more about this but centralization =/= unhealthy. in fact, dpp is considered to be unhealthy by many at current, despite possibly having the lowest amount of centrality around its "top mons". i'd like to point out that i don't (personally) think that this contradicts my opinions that stall can be considered optimal in some sense. aside from the fact that my opinion is not necessarily shared by others, many sub genres of stall exists (classical hippo skarm bliss, spinnerless, double birds (zap/glisc + skarm), zong, dugtrio stall, spinblocker-less), all of which commonly utilize different cores and thus do not exhibit cluster patterns in usage stats.

so, dpp is inevitably centralized as nearly every metagame is after a certain point of existing. combine the outright massive playerbase of dpp as opposed to gsc / adv / rby in the past few years, it only makes sense that this would occur to this generation first. the freeing of latias, definitely for some, is a wish to free the metagame from centralization by introducing another aspect to it which supposedly...loosens the current controlling core over its direction? here’s a tip: latias will only increase centralization and make the metagame even more oriented towards trapping, paralysis, and multiple steels + ttar per team. latias is a god damn good pokemon, and its inclusion in the metagame only exaggerates these already existing principles. latias is no solution for centralization -- even if some of you really really want it to be.

all healthy tiers exhibit centralization. this can be shown easily with empircal evidence by creating a "centralization metric" based on wcop 2018 stats.

Let C = (# pokemon >= (1/4)% usage) / (# Different Pokemon Used)

I picked 1/4 because it felt "natural" in the sense that, if you were to play 2 games, you expect that either you or your opponent will use one of these pokemon at least 1 time. For the inevitable complaint about the chosen metric: all metrics are arbitrary, and at the very least this has some physical interpretation.

ORAS C = 8/50 = .16
BW2 C = 8/49 = .1623
DPP C = 6/53 = .113
ADV C = 12/31 = .387
GSC C = 8/29 = .275
RBY C = 8/17 =.47

SM was excluded because it has not reached its post CG equilibrium.

there we have it, dpp is actually the least centralized among all past gens metagame, and it is commonly referred to as the "worst" tier (CBB et al Kong, 2018). if increasing the centralization of a tier has the potential to result in a better and healthier tier then i'd at least like to give it a try.

iii. is latias broken?

so...is latias broken? well, at the moment, latias probably is not actually broken -- which may just be due to the absolute force the metagame has shifted towards in responding to pokemon reminiscent of latias’ qualities. steels, ttar, u-turners, etc. all limit latias’ viability in the current metagame. osgoode is correct - latias probably does suck because of the sheer unfriendliness manifested against it in the meta’s current state. people are overpreparing for it like hell, and i am going to extend my own thoughts that this entire ladder phase is unnatural and absolutely useless as a picture into the metagame, as is the latias-centric tournament hosted a few months ago.

yep, both of these isolated experiments are absolutely garbage and worthless. the sample size of players involved in this suspect / tournament are either a) not even using latias-meta based teams in a suspect supposed to test its viability, or b) overestimating / specifically catering to latias’ inclusion in the metagame. unless suspect tests hosted in current gens, in which we get an organic picture of a pokemon’s performance in the metagame, we are instead intentionally gaining a biased picture of how this pokemon will perform in the metagame.

how are you going to comment on the legitimacy of these isolated experiments when you did not participate in the tournament, and are not participating in the test? also, you list this as a reason for the tests being garbage and worthless "a) not even using latias-meta based teams in a suspect supposed to test its viability" when you yourself said in the earlier paragraph "which may just be due to the absolute force the metagame has shifted towards in responding to pokemon reminiscent of latias’ qualities. steels, ttar, u-turners, etc. all limit latias’ viability in the current metagame". you cannot say that a test is not legitimate just because people are not USING latias, the idea of these tests is to get a feel for how the metagame itself will change with latias - and certainly not 100% of teams would be.. using latias? the same point applies to your second complaint, which is that people are overestimating and specifically catering to latias. but you yourself said earlier that the meta has already naturally shifted to a point that latias does not overwhelm the majority of (pre lati) meta teams.

unlike excadrill which ran through multiple spl seasons, multiple smogon tours, multiple official circuits, and multiple side tours which contributed to a holistic picture of its unbanning, the latias ladder is hopelessly biased and proves absolutely nothing about its entrance into the metagame. latias’ is it / isn’t it broken status contributes to this ambiguity -- nobody is really quite sure how to approach it. people are intentionally manipulating latias’ presence in the metagame, and there is absolutely nothing anybody can do about it unless this little test is extended to an incredibly grand scale. you want to prove latias isn’t broken and actually organically test its viability? test it en masse over the course of thousands of tournament games over a circuit of about a year (because it isn’t the main metagame anymore) and then get back to me on whether latias actually is / isn’t broken. this isolated ladder test is garbage. all it tells me is that people want latias to be unbanned because of the obvious bias towards its existence in the metagame. people can’t really help this, of course, as the metagame is so small and isolated in building and testing that its a natural occurrence for a pokemon being retested or dropped down.

this would have been great if it were realistically possible. this idea was only able to get traction recently, and we were given instructions from SS on how to carry out the test (if we were to carry it out at all), none of which included these as options. if it were possible to do the test in this manner then we would have

if the dpp council actually wants to be credible, unban it based upon your own lengthy hypotheticals and personal experience than letting this sham of a test actually play out.

this "sham of a test" is how SS wanted it to be handled if latias were to be suspect tested. dpp council proposed using a tournament like spl to test latias (see Earthworms pr post for more info), but this was shot down.

so...is latias broken? if the metagame evens out and takes a turn away from its current stance - which i don’t see it doing anytime soon - then latias may still possess some incredibly powerful qualities. the main argument for latias’ innocence is that its banning was unjustly conflated with the impact of a stronger threat in salamence, which possesses qualities that allow for the absolute destruction of teams that otherwise would wall latias heavily. this also brings up the question of is latias only not broken because the entire metagame is catered towards it specific faults? eh, who cares.

not much to respond to here, i agree

iv. latias being broken doesn’t matter

this is the real part of the argument: latias’ brokenness doesn’t matter at all and the judgment of latias now is inevitably opposed to what we considered broken in the past; our judgments don’t matter, dpp is a finished metagame except for anomalous circumstances such as baton pass which threaten the competitive integrity of the game itself.

each person is entitled to an opinion on tiering, and ours are different. i would prefer to tune and refine. there is a democratic nature to tiering decisions and the potential alteration of metagames (suspect testing), and i believe that the public should be allowed to choose. despite the overall negative response displayed in this thread (which COULD (i am not saying it necessarily is) be due to response bias), there IS public interest demonstrated by the polling thread, where testing latias sits at a 60% majority at the time of this post.

as for ABR's post, i think i have given a response to the core points in his post as well, and would be happy to elaborate on anything else.

if you've read this whole post, thx for taking the time to look at my opinions. if i seemed harsh or brash, i did not intend to be. i have friends on both side of the latias spectrum and would hate to be ostracized because of a post on my tiering policies.

 

[Astamatitos]

Usage Stats to mark the 10th day Latias has been released to the ladder.
It may not be millions but 13310 games should be substantial enough to get some insight as to shifts occuring within the metagame.


DPP Latias - 1st of November - 10th of November:

Hide

Total battles: 13310
Avg. weight/team: 0.273
+ ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon            | Usage %   | Raw    | %       | Real   | %       |
+ ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- +
| 1    | Tyranitar          | 49.99889% | 10531  | 39.560% | 8556   | 38.970% |
| 2    | Latias             | 42.27161% | 8141   | 30.582% | 6474   | 29.487% |
| 3    | Heatran            | 37.82056% | 7842   | 29.459% | 6648   | 30.279% |
| 4    | Jirachi            | 35.35634% | 6500   | 24.418% | 5446   | 24.805% |
| 5    | Starmie            | 25.48514% | 6230   | 23.403% | 5108   | 23.265% |
| 6    | Scizor             | 21.47322% | 5463   | 20.522% | 4538   | 20.669% |
| 7    | Gyarados           | 20.44658% | 4789   | 17.990% | 3982   | 18.137% |
| 8    | Flygon             | 18.58892% | 4313   | 16.202% | 3593   | 16.365% |
| 9    | Skarmory           | 17.15803% | 3245   | 12.190% | 2901   | 13.213% |
| 10   | Dragonite          | 16.96560% | 5070   | 19.046% | 3854   | 17.554% |
| 11   | Breloom            | 16.51771% | 4385   | 16.473% | 3377   | 15.381% |
| 12   | Rotom-Wash         | 15.20688% | 3164   | 11.886% | 2637   | 12.011% |
| 13   | Machamp            | 15.05442% | 3638   | 13.666% | 3280   | 14.939% |
| 14   | Metagross          | 14.45652% | 3821   | 14.354% | 3335   | 15.190% |
| 15   | Bronzong           | 14.35439% | 3042   | 11.427% | 2819   | 12.840% |
| 16   | Rotom-Heat         | 14.13166% | 2415   |  9.072% | 2011   |  9.159% |
| 17   | Infernape          | 13.73293% | 4679   | 17.577% | 3842   | 17.499% |
| 18   | Gengar             | 12.94871% | 3999   | 15.023% | 3073   | 13.996% |
| 19   | Kingdra            | 12.83672% | 3069   | 11.529% | 2401   | 10.936% |
| 20   | Magnezone          | 12.70875% | 3395   | 12.754% | 2718   | 12.380% |
| 21   | Zapdos             | 12.69985% | 2814   | 10.571% | 2397   | 10.918% |
| 22   | Swampert           | 11.55123% | 2912   | 10.939% | 2684   | 12.225% |
| 23   | Lucario            | 10.74212% | 2680   | 10.068% | 2026   |  9.228% |
| 24   | Gliscor            | 10.60471% | 2835   | 10.650% | 2420   | 11.022% |
| 25   | Dugtrio            | 10.05631% | 1898   |  7.130% | 1464   |  6.668% |
| 26   | Azelf              |  9.96768% | 2912   | 10.939% | 2623   | 11.947% |
| 27   | Suicune            |  9.12503% | 2358   |  8.858% | 1832   |  8.344% |
| 28   | Clefable           |  7.75176% | 1405   |  5.278% | 1199   |  5.461% |
| 29   | Empoleon           |  7.44315% | 2125   |  7.983% | 1882   |  8.572% |
| 30   | Celebi             |  7.36991% | 1762   |  6.619% | 1454   |  6.622% |
| 31   | Blissey            |  5.67175% | 2346   |  8.813% | 1861   |  8.476% |
| 32   | Roserade           |  5.28488% | 1796   |  6.747% | 1533   |  6.982% |
| 33   | Nidoqueen          |  5.09170% | 859    |  3.227% | 800    |  3.644% |
| 34   | Aerodactyl         |  4.88383% | 1682   |  6.319% | 1573   |  7.164% |
| 35   | Shaymin            |  4.26142% | 838    |  3.148% | 657    |  2.992% |
| 36   | Uxie               |  3.50069% | 528    |  1.983% | 519    |  2.364% |
| 37   | Mamoswine          |  3.33807% | 1108   |  4.162% | 909    |  4.140% |
| 38   | Tentacruel         |  3.32734% | 990    |  3.719% | 804    |  3.662% |
| 39   | Hippowdon          |  3.23500% | 1106   |  4.155% | 1007   |  4.587% |
| 40   | Weavile            |  3.16120% | 1428   |  5.364% | 1136   |  5.174% |
| 41   | Forretress         |  2.63855% | 1910   |  7.175% | 1682   |  7.661% |
| 42   | Abomasnow          |  2.48182% | 507    |  1.905% | 449    |  2.045% |
| 43   | Cresselia          |  1.84769% | 389    |  1.461% | 317    |  1.444% |
| 44   | Vaporeon           |  1.77645% | 949    |  3.565% | 757    |  3.448% |
| 45   | Snorlax            |  1.67342% | 984    |  3.696% | 791    |  3.603% |
| 46   | Rotom-Frost        |  1.46228% | 262    |  0.984% | 244    |  1.111% |
| 47   | Milotic            |  1.34245% | 538    |  2.021% | 413    |  1.881% |
| 48   | Jolteon            |  1.29399% | 983    |  3.693% | 763    |  3.475% |
| 49   | Dusknoir           |  1.23808% | 681    |  2.558% | 553    |  2.519% |
| 50   | Rotom-Mow          |  1.23634% | 322    |  1.210% | 274    |  1.248% |

DPP Ladder Pre-Latias - 1st of October - 31st of October:

Hide

Total battles: 19988
Avg. weight/team: 0.225
+ ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon            | Usage %   | Raw    | %       | Real   | %       |
+ ---- + ------------------ + --------- + ------ + ------- + ------ + ------- +
| 1    | Tyranitar          | 47.46596% | 11729  | 29.340% | 9425   | 28.935% |
| 2    | Jirachi            | 36.51934% | 8839   | 22.111% | 7333   | 22.513% |
| 3    | Starmie            | 33.90614% | 11297  | 28.259% | 8842   | 27.145% |
| 4    | Heatran            | 29.36091% | 10730  | 26.841% | 9032   | 27.729% |
| 5    | Dragonite          | 25.67819% | 8042   | 20.117% | 6039   | 18.540% |
| 6    | Breloom            | 23.91481% | 7450   | 18.636% | 5796   | 17.794% |
| 7    | Flygon             | 20.92031% | 5889   | 14.731% | 4846   | 14.877% |
| 8    | Infernape          | 20.85266% | 8918   | 22.308% | 7108   | 21.822% |
| 9    | Rotom-Wash         | 20.35380% | 4140   | 10.356% | 3482   | 10.690% |
| 10   | Scizor             | 19.93589% | 7423   | 18.569% | 5941   | 18.239% |
| 11   | Zapdos             | 18.12352% | 5368   | 13.428% | 4559   | 13.996% |
| 12   | Kingdra            | 17.90750% | 5469   | 13.681% | 4330   | 13.293% |
| 13   | Gyarados           | 17.77613% | 6961   | 17.413% | 5783   | 17.754% |
| 14   | Swampert           | 16.52951% | 4830   | 12.082% | 4337   | 13.315% |
| 15   | Rotom-Heat         | 16.31929% | 3570   |  8.930% | 2974   |  9.130% |
| 16   | Metagross          | 15.51906% | 5693   | 14.241% | 4927   | 15.126% |
| 17   | Gengar             | 15.07554% | 7848   | 19.632% | 6169   | 18.939% |
| 18   | Skarmory           | 14.51507% | 4314   | 10.791% | 3798   | 11.660% |
| 19   | Azelf              | 14.02662% | 5194   | 12.993% | 4775   | 14.659% |
| 20   | Lucario            | 11.86409% | 4580   | 11.457% | 3429   | 10.527% |
| 21   | Machamp            | 11.55860% | 5511   | 13.786% | 4797   | 14.727% |
| 22   | Suicune            | 10.91772% | 4021   | 10.059% | 3069   |  9.422% |
| 23   | Bronzong           |  9.71331% | 4102   | 10.261% | 3566   | 10.948% |
| 24   | Magnezone          |  8.20481% | 2965   |  7.417% | 2323   |  7.132% |
| 25   | Celebi             |  8.19067% | 3385   |  8.468% | 2757   |  8.464% |
| 26   | Clefable           |  7.77673% | 1732   |  4.333% | 1394   |  4.280% |
| 27   | Blissey            |  7.03092% | 4562   | 11.412% | 3566   | 10.948% |
| 28   | Roserade           |  6.65115% | 2382   |  5.959% | 2025   |  6.217% |
| 29   | Nidoqueen          |  6.12640% | 930    |  2.326% | 858    |  2.634% |
| 30   | Empoleon           |  5.43940% | 2125   |  5.316% | 1746   |  5.360% |
| 31   | Tentacruel         |  5.27746% | 1737   |  4.345% | 1327   |  4.074% |
| 32   | Gliscor            |  5.09112% | 2871   |  7.182% | 2455   |  7.537% |
| 33   | Shaymin            |  4.82990% | 1408   |  3.522% | 1108   |  3.402% |
| 34   | Hippowdon          |  4.55551% | 1828   |  4.573% | 1721   |  5.284% |
| 35   | Forretress         |  4.06437% | 2466   |  6.169% | 2182   |  6.699% |
| 36   | Jolteon            |  3.99519% | 2168   |  5.423% | 1690   |  5.188% |
| 37   | Weavile            |  3.93819% | 2871   |  7.182% | 2230   |  6.846% |
| 38   | Dugtrio            |  3.75145% | 1851   |  4.630% | 1418   |  4.353% |
| 39   | Aerodactyl         |  3.70764% | 2223   |  5.561% | 2046   |  6.281% |
| 40   | Raikou             |  3.59204% | 1277   |  3.194% | 941    |  2.889% |
| 41   | Snorlax            |  2.77133% | 1916   |  4.793% | 1555   |  4.774% |
| 42   | Mamoswine          |  2.53780% | 1723   |  4.310% | 1427   |  4.381% |
| 43   | Vaporeon           |  2.32072% | 1515   |  3.790% | 1297   |  3.982% |
| 44   | Milotic            |  2.11515% | 1014   |  2.537% | 826    |  2.536% |
| 45   | Uxie               |  1.76123% | 477    |  1.193% | 448    |  1.375% |
| 46   | Abomasnow          |  1.60476% | 1023   |  2.559% | 924    |  2.837% |
| 47   | Togekiss           |  1.50472% | 1776   |  4.443% | 1386   |  4.255% |
| 48   | Donphan            |  1.41948% | 469    |  1.173% | 402    |  1.234% |
| 49   | Cresselia          |  1.38189% | 730    |  1.826% | 533    |  1.636% |
| 50   | Rotom-Mow          |  1.36508% | 571    |  1.428% | 485    |  1.489% |

Trending Upward:

4 (29%) -> 3( 38%)

10 (19%) -> 6 (21%)

32 (5%) -> 25 (10%)

21 (12%) -> 13 (15%)

23 (10%) -> 15 (14%)

38 (4%) -> 25 (10%)

Trending Downward:

5 (26%) -> 10 (17%)

12 (18%) -> 19 (13%)

14 (16%) -> 22 (12%)

11 (18%) -> 21 (13%)

6 (24%) -> 11 (17%)

8 (21%) -> 17 (14%)

Personal Notes:

- Latias is the 2nd highest used mon with a staggering 42% usage. It's specs set seems to be the most popular amongst the playerbase, with recover sets following closely.


Common Latias Sets:

Hide

+----------------------------------------+
| Latias                                 |
+----------------------------------------+
| Raw count: 8418                        |
| Avg. weight: 0.377486280208            |
| Viability Ceiling: 91                  |
+----------------------------------------+
| Abilities                              |
| Levitate 100.000%                      |
+----------------------------------------+
| Items                                  |
| Choice Specs 42.439%                   |
| Leftovers 33.506%                      |
| Life Orb 11.092%                       |
| Choice Scarf  7.368%                   |
| Light Clay  1.965%                     |
| Other  3.630%                          |


+----------------------------------------+
| Moves                                  |
| Dragon Pulse 64.190%                   |
| Draco Meteor 62.548%                   |
| Surf 58.258%                           |
| Calm Mind 37.657%                      |
| Trick 33.724%                          |
| Recover 31.583%                        |
| Thunderbolt 15.089%                    |

Common Latias Teammates:

Hide

+----------------------------------------+
| Teammates                              |
| Dugtrio +7.308%                        |
| Magnezone +5.155%                      |
| Skarmory +2.948%                       |
| Tyranitar +2.625%                      |
| Rotom-Wash +2.240%                     |
| Scizor +2.179%                         |
| Hippowdon +2.155%                      |
| Gyarados +1.615%                       |
| Aerodactyl +1.510%                     |
| Heatran +1.285%                        |
| Gliscor +1.211%                        |
| Celebi +0.915%                         |

- Dugtrio seems to be trending heavily upwards rising from just about 4% to 10% usage, predominantly owed to Latias pairing. (Heatran trapping could also be a factor since Heatran is arguably the biggest benefactor so far)

- Heatran seems to be enjoying the metagame at the moment. Heatran gains a good typing synergy partner in Latias, while the surge of steels caused by the injection appears to benefit it a lot (it itself being one as well).

- Scizor's usage is more or less unaffected, albeit its ranking has increased 4 points. This would suggest more even spread amongst higher used pokemon.

- Gliscor has doubled in usage. A good pair with Latias as seen above, thanks to the latter's water resistance. If you consider Uturners would be on the rise you get whats very good defensive synergy. Gliscor is perhaps a measure to deal with defensive builds outside of the more conventional breakers.

- Dragonite and Kingdra seem less used. This could be a combination of having Latias in the builder making these two less easy to fit defensive-wise, in addition to Latias posing an offensive check.

- Zapdos has shifted down 10 slots! Breloom and Infernape are also hampered to a lower extent.

- Nidoclef/Blissey seem largely unaffected. Skarmory has shifted to 9th Pokemon used from 18th (usage shift is 3%). This would suggest Skarmory is starting to find place in teams outside the previous norm.

 

[Sam]

If the main reason to add Latias is to disrupt stall...isn't it doing a poor job of that? Breloom and Infernape usage will naturally go down with Latias in the tier, and isn't a metagame without those two much more friendly to stall?

Applying modern tiering standards to DPP in order to address stall by suspecting a stall mon itself, instead of dropping something that (imo questionably) harms stall. See Sableye in ORAS, or Dugtrio in SM.

 

[MANNAT]

If the main reason to add Latias is to disrupt stall...isn't it doing a poor job of that? Breloom and Infernape usage will naturally go down with Latias in the tier, and isn't a metagame without those two much more friendly to stall?

Adding Latias to the tier gives offensive teams more flexibility, as they have an easier time blanket checking threats like the aforementioned Breloom and Infernape, thus they can afford to open up more teamslots for breakers like CBTar and other stuff that breaks past stall teams. Also, Infernape and Breloom aren't even hurt that much by Latias being allowed into the tier, as Tyranitar has been approaching 50% usage and can easily trap Latias. Breloom being able to sleep Latias on the switch just opens a door to it being Pursuit trapped by Tyranitar and Infernape has a similar relationship with Latias when paired with Tyranitar, being able to straight up U-turn into Tyranitar. A large reason for the reduced usage in Infernape and Breloom on the ladder following Latias being freed is more an overreaction by the playerbase rather than them really declining in viability to be honest. On top of that, Gliscor's usage has doubled, and Taunt Gliscor is significantly more effective at being able to break stall than the aforementioned fighting types. Additionally as august said in his post:

many sub genres of stall exists (classical hippo skarm bliss, spinnerless, double birds (zap/glisc + skarm), zong, dugtrio stall, spinblocker-less), all of which commonly utilize different cores and thus do not exhibit cluster patterns in usage stats.

There isn't any particular element of stall that we can suspect to lessen the problem, as there hasn't been any 1 singular stall team that has stood out as dominant, because there's so many good styles, so freeing Latias to help out vs stall as I mentioned earlier is our best option.

 

[Sam]

Anyway, some full remarks on the thread. I get the sense overall that there's not a lot of trust in this process, whether that be the suspect process itself or the justifications for dropping Latias.

People have a natural hesitance to touch old gens because these metagames have centralized around whats available. Especially with DPP, there's a history that people are familiar with that gets changed with such a drastic addition. So yes, the standards to undo a change of 8 years are going to be different from implementing changes in a current generation. It's very much a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" type deal. Which leads me to...

Justification of a "broken" metagames has been pretty lackluster. Which, again, is more of a justification that is required for this type of test. I'd originally suggested a discussion on the state of DPP to happen after SPL, while running Latias tournaments. I think the decision to try to rush this before SPL was a poor one.

I'm not against ever making changes to DPP. But to a lot of people, this was just thrust upon and there's a lot of hesitancy with making a meta-defining change on an old gen with such a short time to decide and evaluate the meta. I think it's a good idea to let the lati meta "settle" with time, again with tournaments, discussion, and an active ladder in the meantime. This should be revisited after SPL.

EDIT: Discussion on Latias can continue but I don't foresee the timetable being changed.

 

[Philip7086]

Man, where do I even begin? I asked others in the DPP Council to take the lead here, since I knew I was going to be too busy to actively "own" this initiative, but this process has been so bizarre, I feel like I have to jump in.

First and foremost, I'd like to see more public posts from the Senior Staff which explain why testing prior to SPL is not going to happen, since to me it seems like 2 months is ample time to fully test something (in fact, we've been given guidance from Hogg on a testing timeframe which puts us well within range of getting this done prior to SPL). I don't believe that we'll glean any new insight 6 months from now that we won't have discovered in 2 months time. I keep hearing about anonymous "people in power" opposing this, but nobody is actually saying why.

Regarding the test itself, I'll be the first to admit that I haven't had a chance to play yet, so I don't feel I have an informed opinion on how good or bad the Latias metagame is. As a general principle, though, I think it's in our best interest to always strive for the most diverse, balanced metagames possible, even in old generations. There seems to be some sentiment from a select few that it's best to not touch old generations, especially if they have "stabilized," but I couldn't disagree more. If people feel a Pokémon was incorrectly banned, we should remedy that. I'm not saying Latias is incorrectly banned, but I do think that it's questionable enough to merit a test and re-evaluation.

So far, the most compelling argument I've seen against testing Latias is one of fear that if unbanned, there's a possibility that it becomes centralizing and/or overpowered over time. To be afraid of that is to distrust the tiering process itself, which is a whole other conversation completely. If we put in place this tiering process, then we need to trust that the results will have a positive impact on our metagames.

Have mistakes been made in the past? Maybe. People bring up Excadrill as an example of a poor tiering decision, but let me explain something that I don't think is considered enough when discussing our tiering policy.

Smogon is a fan site. The rules that we play by are imperfect and completely subjective. Currently, ban lists are determined by whoever happens to be active at the time when votes take place, and then new players are expected to uphold those decisions years later. But the fact of the matter is that metagames shift considerably over time, and so do the active players. With this being a fan site with rules made up by people who are playing the game, we should be more comfortable with the notion that ban lists aren't exactly always black and white, and that people who are currently playing the game should be able to have some authority over how they're playing it.

Should we re-evaluate a decade old ban list, even though the metagame is stable? If the current active player base thinks so, then I would say absolutely, yes. What if, in 5 years, the active players think that was a bad decision? Then they should feel empowered to re-evaluate it as well, and construct the metagame they feel is the most varied and balanced.

 

[Lavos]

I want to share some of my thoughts about the ladder metagame since the test began. I've played about 150 games in the last week, taking alts into account, and I've managed to get my rank up to the top 10 with a great GXE, so you know I'm not talking out of my ass. Honestly I think you shouldn't be posting about the health of the tier unless you've been participating on the ladder or following it closely. It's been a radically different experience than what I was led to expect.

Ok, first things first, on my main account I haven't been using Latias. I'm swapping between three teams and none of them use Latias, two of them were built years ago before this discussion even existed. And I'm not using Latias because it's really kinda bad. I accept there's some validity to the argument that people are currently overpreparing for Latias and bringing double Steels and Pursuit Tar to every match, but for the most part that hasn't been what I've seen, it's just that Latias isn't threatening enough to destroy a team singlehandedly, and it's unnecessary to overload your team with countermeasures because a lot of the standard meta stuff that was around before the unban can handle it no problem. I did try out a couple Latias teams on alt accounts, two of them were Specs and another was the Safeguard + CM set that osgoode posted a while ago. I've also used CM + HP Fire but it's quite weak. Every time I send it out I'm using it as a pivot to bait out the Tar more than anything, you can't send it in on a free switch and fire off a Specs Draco because you WILL get stuck and fucked by the lizard. I feel like even once the metagame settles down a bit and we stop seeing so much Latias usage, it still won't be particularly strong. I like it a lot as a defensive option to hold teams together against myriad threats, its typing is really nice and helps handle stuff like Nape and Loom as a secondary check, but it doesn't hit quite hard enough to warrant being the centerpiece of any team. To people screaming their heads off that it's "centralizing" I'd just ask why that matters in the slightest. Even if it turns out to be true and Latias is top 3 in usage for however long it's allowed in OU, I fail to see how that equates to it being unhealthy. As the lovely AUGUST demonstrated, DPP is actually the most diverse old gen and yet it has a terrible reputation these days compared to ADV and GSC, which are far more centralized and yet through their centralization find stability and huge potential for skill expression.

I think Magnezone + TR Zong is insane right now. There's a pretty high Skarm usage which is usually the only thing stopping Zong from sweeping through otherwise overly SpDef oriented semistalls or straight up fast/frail offenses. On the rare occasion that the opponent's packing a Pert, Grass Knot Rachi has been great, everyone expects the physical 3 attacks set or WishTect and thinks they're safe to get up rocks. CBTar obviously shines in tandem, too. Empoleon's been picking up steam as a lead, I can see the Agility set making a triumphant return if you can find some way to get rid of Clef. Speaking of which, multiple well-known players are still spamming the same old Clef/Skarm/bulky Rotom cores and having plenty of success, stall remains at the top. There's one user in particular making creative strides with Latias as a key player in a stall-ish core and I need to steal his team, it's really great. In fact I'm pretty sure Latias is going to open more doors than it closes in the long run because it can fulfill so many roles at once. Like I said, I'm mostly using old teams with a few tweaks to tech against what I'm running into, but I've been experimenting with some Smeargle HO because Taunt leads have dropped off completely, so I'm excited to try that on my main. Also, Quagsire kicks ass with no Breloom around to render it helpless.

The Latias metagame is still in its early stages, so it would be irresponsible to draw any sweeping conclusions at this point, but my preliminary experience has been truly enjoyable. DPP had always been my least favorite old gen until now, and whether or not this test ends up pushing through the many layers of bureaucracy and skepticism to see the light of day in an official tour, I can say that it's rekindled my interest for the first time in half a decade. At the end of the day, what's the point in fighting over tiering precedent and timeframes? I'm having fun, and I plan to keep playing.

 

[Hogg]

So I've got a lot of thoughts about this ladder/suspect, some of which are regarding Latias and its effects on the metagame and some of which are regarding the ladder itself. It's a bit awkward because we've got threads pertaining to this here, in Policy Review and now in the poll as well and I don't really want to break all my thoughts into multiple threads, so I guess I'll put it all here. Sorry for the length.

I'll start with Latias itself. As a caveat I'm not a huge DPP player; it's up there with GSC as the gen I play the least. I do enjoy watching games, though, I always try to stay active with the meta, and I follow all the major tours and try to keep an eye on the RoA circuit. This month I've messed around a fair bit with different teams on the ladder and in the various roomtours that have been ongoing, and made a point of watching as many games as I could. I've tried a few different offensive teams, used some old DPP stuff from my builder, etc. That said, my most successful team has been standard Clef hazard balance/semistall, often dropping Nidoqueen in favor of a bulky Roar Latias. I've messed around with a few variants of this, including a Duggy version that I want to explore a bit more, but the most consistent by far has been a bog standard Clef/Jirachi/Skarmory/Rotom/Latias/Ttar team. Anyhow, here are my thoughts.

I definitely don't agree with the people who have been calling Latias really bad, just because it doesn't just power through teams. Its effect on the metagame certainly is not minimal, and the stats pretty clearly reflect this; even taking new toy syndrome into account, you don't sit at roughly 40% usage while having minimal effect on the game. That just doesn't happen. You can also see it with the dramatic decrease in usage of previous top threats Zapdos and Breloom. Neither are unusable, and I suspect Zapdos in particular will end up adjusting back up a bit as time goes on, but that's speculation. As of right now Latias has definitely had a dramatic impact.

What I think Latias does most of all, though, is reinforce meta trends that were already growing strong in the past couple of years. In particular, I'm thinking of bulky Jirachi balances and Clefable semistall/whatever the fuck you want to call it, both of which fare really well right now. In fact, I'd say they are better than ever, thanks primarily to Latias having such a dramatic impact on Breloom usage. I also think that we're going to be seeing a continued rise in trappers. Trapping on offense isn't bad but I doubt DragMag is ever going to be anything more than a somewhat niche offensive option unless suddenly people start using Scizor as their sole Steel in a fit of nostalgia. But with Tyranitar, Heatran and Jirachi all cementing themselves as being even better in this meta than before, I expect Dugtrio will start popping up a bit more on bulkier teams.

So yeah, I don't know that Latias is individually broken or anything. But based on the ladder trends, the games I've seen/played and everything people have said both on this thread and elsewhere, my biggest issue with it is that it seems like it's just reinforcing the heavy centralization that got people to complain about DPP being a stale metagame in the first place. Right now of course it's making some changes to the current status quo, and I'm certainly not going to complain about seeing Breloom diminish, but I don't really think that the commensurate increase in viability of Jirachi/Clef/trappers is all that worthwhile.

Regarding the suspect itself, as Phil mentioned, I did help create a set of guidelines under which a suspect could be administered. That doesn't mean I love the idea of the suspect test, mind. I'm actually not a fan of re-tiering old gens except when there are serious balance issues at stake. But if a suspect was happening, I did want to help out and also to ensure it was done properly.

I also am strongly opposed to the idea of using a major tour as a de facto suspect test. A lot of people have mentioned the idea of a ladder being insufficient as a way to test things out, and that we won't really see the full impact of Latias until it appears in something like SPL or Classic. I really dislike the idea of this approach on a lot of levels. I'm sure there'll be a bit of hype around the idea of getting to see what ways top DPP players will find to innovate the Latias metagame, but in the end the best games and the best tours occur when we have stable metagames. Look at the SM OU games from SPL 8 compared to SPL 9, or the UU games from the first Snake (which happened during a very volatile period in UU's history) versus the second. There's a reason why UU tries its best to time any suspects around the major tours, and why I've been pushing the idea of locking lower tiers, who by their nature fluctuate with every tier shift, in major tours. If people are saying that the current Latias metagame is still too raw and unexplored, then yeah, I have issues with allowing it for SPL in hopes of forcing it to develop. I know that SPL 9's DPP games got a bit predictable this year, but I just do not see a raw metagame as a viable alternative.

I also think that tiering changes and adjustments should always be as infrequent as possible. This applies to current gens too, but I think it should apply doubly to old gens. Don't unban something just because, eh, no biggie, you can always re-ban it later if you were wrong. A stable tier shouldn't be constantly banning and unbanning things, and so as a general rule you shouldn't unban something unless you're fairly confident about its impact over the longer term. The more stable and established the tier is, the more true this is: that's why OU should be a lot less likely to test something down from Ubers than a lower tier, and why I think old gens should be most wary of all of going down this route.

So yeah. Even assuming you agree with the idea of unlocking old gens and all that comes along with it, I guess the big question for me becomes whether or not this suspect alone is sufficient to determine how Latias stands in DPP OU and how it will impact the metagame over the long term. While I respect that a significant number of prominent DPP players want to move forward with this as planned, a fair number of people have raised real concerns over things like the level of activity on the ladder or the amount of time it will take for the metagame to truly adjust to such a significant change. If the general feeling is that there is a strong understanding of how Latias will shape DPP OU and that a proper test can be run accordingly then sure, run the test; I still don't like the idea of fiddling with old gens just to shake things up but if both the council and the community at large disagrees with me, go for it. But if the general opinion is "hey, let's go ahead and run the suspect now and if the DPP games in SPL X/Classic/insert upcoming tour suck as a result then whatever, we'll just re-ban," then yeah, I have a big issue with that.

 

[Finchinator]

Posting on behalf of BKC.

BKC here. Forgive the log format, I don't have time to make this look pretty right now and time is of the essence.

[11:43 PM] Kevin: the first thing is
[11:43 PM] Kevin: the breloom misconception
[11:44 PM] Kevin: i hate seeing this so much
[11:44 PM] Kevin: everyones like "lol thank god looms dead"
[11:44 PM] Kevin: loom is just as good as it was before
[11:44 PM] Kevin: latias is hardly a roadblock
[11:44 PM] Kevin: breloom is amazing bc unless youre running a specific gliscor set (and something still has to take sleep beforehand), its counters are weak to very common, easy to use, powerful things - sr, sand, uturn, pursuit
[11:45 PM] Kevin: latias is sr neutral but unlike gliscor its wrecked by all of the other 3
[11:45 PM] Kevin: breloom is still amazing and its only peoples perceptions being off
[11:45 PM] Kevin: like "ape will be cb now"
[11:46 PM] Kevin: cb/scarf were the main sets anyway, mix sets are more situational than ever, with nidoqueen being so good against it and totally thudding against starmie (calc grass knot, and also think about how you cant run lo if you wanna win unless youre using weatherless and theyre gonna have sand anyway...)
[11:47 PM] Kevin: zapdos uses uturn a lot anyway, latias cannot stand discharge paras from even physdef sets, sdef/light screen/toxic variants of any kind wreck most of it...
[11:47 PM] Kevin: and then theres the old shaymin (who incidentally leech seeds it to high heaven esp spdef variants)/ape argument
[11:48 PM] Kevin: "if latias is such a roadblock to ape/loom/shay/zap/whatever, then just pursuit it, which is stupidly easy, and then your poke should be all set to terrorize it"
[11:48 PM] Kevin: that was not a super widespread mentality back then
[11:48 PM] Kevin: it is now
[11:48 PM] Kevin: which is one of many many reasons we are much ebtter equipped at handling lati now
[11:49 PM] Kevin: so basically my point is
[11:49 PM] Kevin: I definitely don't agree with the people who have been calling Latias really bad, just because it doesn't just power through teams. Its effect on the metagame certainly is not minimal, and the stats pretty clearly reflect this; even taking new toy syndrome into account, you don't sit at roughly 40% usage while having minimal effect on the game. That just doesn't happen.
[11:49 PM] Kevin: i dont agree w this at all
[11:49 PM] Kevin: i think its people being stupid, or to be kinder, people not realizing that very little changes here
[11:50 PM] Kevin: its kinda like in oras
[11:50 PM] Kevin: when everyone was like
[11:50 PM] Kevin: "omg i have to run pursuit for this"
[11:50 PM] Kevin: then it was banned
[11:50 PM] Kevin: and every team contineud to have
[11:50 PM] Kevin: scarftar or weavile
[11:50 PM] Kevin: because yeah thats kinda something you tend to do
[11:51 PM] Kevin: im not saying pursuit is required, far from it and im backed up on this many ways over, but it is one of the biggest ways of dealing with several threats and i do not believe latias is spcial beyond being new
[11:51 PM] Kevin: whatsoever
[11:52 PM] hogg: I am not saying you can hard switch lati into loom all day long or that loom is unviable, but lati specifically shores up one of the fairly prominent flaws on common balance teams
[11:52 PM] Kevin: i disagree entirely
[11:52 PM] Kevin: if a balance team is weak to breloom its unusable currently
[11:52 PM] Kevin: and latias does nothing to help that
[11:53 PM] Kevin: its basically a counter to breloom
[11:53 PM] Kevin: in the same way
[11:53 PM] Kevin: latios counters keldeo in oras
[11:53 PM] Kevin: it switches in once and dies
[11:53 PM] Kevin: and ask any decent oras player if you can use latios to counter keldeo by itself and get away with it(edited)
[11:54 PM] Kevin: i mean hell, if youre not running sleep talk specs (which is great but makes it even MORE pursuit vulnerable) then something else gets spored first
[11:54 PM] Kevin: im not saying its not nice to have as an option
[11:54 PM] Kevin: but i am confident that the idea that it is warping the metagame to such a degree where breloom isnt around anymore
[11:54 PM] Kevin: is sorely misjudging the situation
[11:55 PM] Kevin: am i making sense
[11:56 PM] hogg: You are
[11:56 PM] Kevin: basically the idea that latias makes any of these pokemon less viable - or hell, even change anything from their standard sets now - is just wrong
[11:57 PM] Kevin: same principle behind "if youre really weak to latias you are almost certainly incredibly weak to another big threat in the meta"(edited)
[11:58 PM] hogg: I think you’re underselling lati and I do believe that it will have an overall impact on loom
[11:58 PM] hogg: Again I don’t mean to imply that breloom is bad now, just that we’ve added a new and fairly prominent check to it
[11:59 PM] hogg: And while I expect lati usage to dip a bit as the meta settles I would be pretty surprised to see it drop out of the top 10 in usage, even in tour play
[11:59 PM] Kevin: i dont think it being high in usage is an argument against it at all although im not saying youre saying that
November 14, 2018
[12:00 AM] hogg: I mean I don’t have a crystal ball, and I know you’re more familiar with the meta than I am
[12:00 AM] Kevin: lemme put it this way
[12:00 AM] Kevin: latias is a worse breloom check than zapdos
[12:00 AM] Kevin: and zapdos is a great breloom check
[12:00 AM] hogg: Hm
[12:00 AM] Kevin: i know latias does more things but the point is that you can very easily have a horrific time against it w breloom, just like it can also win
[12:00 AM] hogg: I’m not sure I agree just bc of rocks
[12:00 AM] Kevin: (which is a good thing, thats how pokemon should be)
[12:01 AM] Kevin: you say rocks, i say physdef and not pursuit weak
[12:01 AM] hogg: But that’s quibbling
[12:01 AM] Kevin: anyway my point being is that its another dynamic but "its clearly warping the metagame" is wrong
[12:02 AM] Kevin: i dont think the offensive threat-checking is whats going to be the most shifting about lati
[12:02 AM] Kevin: its going to be how defensive teams USE it
[12:02 AM] hogg: It’s certainly warping the ladder meta right now
[12:02 AM] Kevin: thats the only change we're going to see
[12:02 AM] Kevin: if people are silly enough to not use breloom (and mdragon and i, and i think ojama, at least, have)
[12:02 AM] Kevin: is that latias' fault?
[12:02 AM] Kevin: or an argument against it?
[12:03 AM] hogg: I mean from there we kinda fall back into a weird question re tiering
[12:04 AM] Kevin: do we?
[12:04 AM] hogg: I think so
[12:05 AM] Kevin: ive seen so many trends in dp throughout the years like this
[12:05 AM] Kevin: "oh man, x threat is really dominant rn"
[12:05 AM] Kevin: (or team or style)
[12:05 AM] Kevin: "well you know those teams get rocked by y, right, and y is really good"
[12:05 AM] Kevin: "yeah but y isnt being used"
[12:05 AM] Kevin: example 1
[12:05 AM] Kevin: x = stall
[12:05 AM] Kevin: y = breloom
[12:05 AM] Kevin: (lol)
[12:05 AM] Kevin: y could also be clefable
[12:06 AM] hogg: If the question was “Latias is legal, should we ban it?” I would almost certainly say no based on the last two weeks of games
[12:06 AM] Kevin: x could be infernape/stall and y could be starmie
[12:06 AM] Kevin: What I think Latias does most of all, though, is reinforce meta trends that were already growing strong in the past couple of years. In particular, I'm thinking of bulky Jirachi balances and Clefable semistall/whatever the fuck you want to call it, both of which fare really well right now.
[12:06 AM] Kevin: i could also go so far as to say
[12:07 AM] Kevin: well i guess its a reiteration but pokemon handled similarly to latias have converged into this meta strongly
[12:08 AM] Kevin: i have used ape and loom in a lati meta enough to know its not a problem
[12:08 AM] Kevin: in fact
[12:08 AM] Kevin: its almost more welcome than a lot of their checks
[12:08 AM] Kevin: not even almost in a lot of cases
[12:08 AM] hogg: Brb driving
[12:09 AM] Kevin: sure
[12:09 AM] Kevin: I expect Dugtrio will start popping up a bit more on bulkier teams.
[12:09 AM] Kevin: already has
[12:09 AM] Kevin: a while ago, actually
[12:09 AM] Kevin: a loooong while ago, even
[12:10 AM] Kevin: also
[12:10 AM] Kevin: That said, my most successful team has been standard Clef hazard balance/semistall, often dropping Nidoqueen in favor of a bulky Roar Latias. I've messed around with a few variants of this, including a Duggy version that I want to explore a bit more, but the most consistent by far has been a bog standard Clef/Jirachi/Skarmory/Rotom/Latias/Ttar team.
[12:10 AM] Kevin: this insistence on using latias because its supposedly so great
[12:10 AM] Kevin: opens tons of holes
[12:11 AM] Kevin: you get a few nice bonuses the team doesnt need
[12:11 AM] Kevin: in exchange
[12:13 AM] Kevin: you become much more brutally weak to lucario, machamp, uturn ape... ttar getting poisoned by tspikes makes sub tran a real pain in the ass... more pursuit vulnerable... no real tangible benefits not already covered
[12:13 AM] Kevin: its the same idea as balance teams suddenly feeling more secure vs breloom when theyre just asking for some guy to show up like "you realize this doesnt change a thing"
[12:14 AM] Kevin: I don't really think that the commensurate increase in viability of Jirachi/Clef/trappers is all that worthwhile.
[12:15 AM] Kevin: a) if a pokemon is making you weak to certain things... dont use it (and its not like latias is offering some irreplaceable defensive value that you need)
[12:16 AM] Kevin: b) a pokemon with the strength and versatility of latias is a pretty great option to screw those teams somehow if theyre oh so predictably just bending you over and treating you like a victim (and its not overpowering in this way)
[12:16 AM] Kevin: in any way, its just another pokemon to play the game with
[12:16 AM] Kevin: just like ok its not going to get loom + tar/jira shit on every game sometimes the latias guy will take initiative
[12:17 AM] Kevin: comes down to teambuilding (not counterstyling big dif) and planning and playing
[12:17 AM] Kevin: sounds good to me
[1:05 AM] hogg: Sorry back now
[1:05 AM] hogg: Playing catch-up
[1:12 AM] hogg: fwiw I don't have a problem with clef btw
[1:12 AM] hogg: re-reading my post I think I make it sound like clef is some toxic element in dpp
[1:14 AM] hogg: I also think that even before this suspect jirachi was probably the best mon in dpp
[1:34 AM] hogg: Idk I don’t think I disagree with anything you’re saying except that in my experience lati has been quite good despite a fairly stacked meta
[1:35 AM] hogg: I fully admit that my fears of it leading to a more centralized, stale meta down the road is just conjecture at this point
[9:43 AM] Kevin: yeah basically i wanted to make sure it wasnt a metagame argument
[9:43 AM] Kevin: bc it isnt

[9:44 AM] Astamatitos: breloom is down in usage
[9:44 AM] Astamatitos: but naturally every top 10 is down in usage since latias occupies a pokeslot 40% of the time
[9:45 AM] Astamatitos: they only go up if they are correlated to latias (ttar dug)
[9:45 AM] Astamatitos: so a rise in usage is way more significant than a drop
[9:45 AM] Astamatitos: brelooms and zapdos's drop in usage was pretty natural
[9:45 AM] Kevin: it isnt reflective of "latias is way too good" is all

This test isn't "just to shake things up" and I resent the offensive implication that this is done out of boredom and wanting to spark things up. It's potentially righting a wrong and potentially adding something of enormous value without being anywhere near overpowered. "Yeah maybe that shouldn't be the case. Oh well." There is always going to be an official tournament around the corner. There are trends that change the metagame to near-unrecognizable levels all the time, and Latias is hardly more than one of those (and in fact it's incredibly in line with the meta as it stands now and has stood for a long time).

Latias isn't screwing the metagame up. That is not an argument. Furthermore, I refer you to the posts made by Ojama, M Dragon, undisputed, august, Philip7086 and Lavos for the reasons why a test should happen. If the community is truly so against Latias, then it won't stand a chance in hell at being voted into OU. I believe we should proceed with the test.

 

[george182]

Having done minimal playtesting and with a very rusty view of DPP Latias doesn't appear to be OP.

It feels like the meta has grown to a point where Latias isn't a big deal. I personally didn't have to change many of my teams to deal with specs Latias, most of them naturally had a way to deal with it. I assume it's the same for other people?

In terms of using Latias I haven't seen anything OP. Gonna play around with Specs Latias + Spikes because that's what people had a lot of trouble dealing with and was a very popular combo when she was originally banned. But not expecting anything meta breaking this time around.

And Latias doesn't really restrict Breloom and Ape usage. If you've got a u-turn Ape and a Breloom on your team, you're not worried about Latias and you don't need to add anything to your team to help remove it. It can only switch into one of them once.

 

[Groudon]

I'd like to echo Undisputed's post on this as I think it hits the nail on the head. We should be looking at whether or not Latias is broken and move on from there. Sounds ultra-simplistic but its simply the best way to make sure the tier is diverse as it should be. I honestly don't get these "Latias sucks" arguments bc a. its simply not true and a result of people overprepping to an almost ludicrous degree and b. not really germane to this discussion at all. As for those who say they do not quite like Lati's impact on the tier, I think that drifts to far into personal preference and should not be a barometer for whether a test is held. A test should be held based on how close a pokemon is to that broken benchmark and all of these other colorful details should be left aside until a test is actually held. When you go to vote is where all of these other details come into play. Finally, to those who think all old gens should be left alone I guess we just fundamentally disagree on that and thats fine. I think all gens should be looked at as "live" so as to constantly improve the metagame. For instance I have agreed with the tests carried out in BW and ultimately think those changes improved the tier significantly.

In terms of a test, from my initial experience w lati in the tour that just took place, I would lean ban. That being said, I think it is close enough to where a test could definitely sway voters one way or another, including myself.

 

[Praised be]

Hello everyone. To introduce myself, I am a French player coming from the PokeMMO community (like for example SweetForU or DeepBlueC), and I reached the top3 of the ladder many times (it isn't an achievement at all since the ladder is kinda dead, and this is not where you can find the really good battles, but it's only to tell you that I have been pretty active on it).
I subscribed on smogon forums today to give my input about the latias pre-test on the ladder.

I do think that Latias should be tested after this pre-test, and stepping forward a bit, I believe it probably shouldn't stay banned after the whole process.

Lookig at usage stats from the previous week, we can see that Latias is highly used. However, from what I saw, it is mainly due to the hype of having a new mon in the tier after years and years, but its usage will drop a lot during the second week. Indeed, players understood that it isn't OP at all. Some of its main counters, Jirachi and Ttar, were the two most used mons before the pre-test, and have the same usage with latias around everywhere.

CM Latias struggles at setting-up in this metagame, because it is easily rk'd by common threats (ttar, scarf flygon, scizor), Jirachi can para it and make it useless (unless it's a safeguard variant that has then a poor offensive coverage), or Bronzong can safely put its rocks and threaten it with Gyroball. Latias + dug isn't even as good as dug + cresselia, because bronzong/scizor/flygon scarf don't fear dug.
Because of that, people tend to play Latias choice specs, but spamming draco meteor is rarely successful before having removed all the bulky steel mons and blissey. Neither magneton nor dug can trap them all, and running both makes your team vulnerable to many other threats. Latias can trick an annoying sp def wall, but always fears a choice user like ttar or scizor that can completly ruins this play. Even if Latias gets a kill with Draco Meteor, it is easily rk'd by a pursuiter.
Finally Latias can be played as a defensive utility mon. It has good arguments for that: mainly twave/wish, but I can hardly see such a set being OP in any kind of way.
Starmie is a must have in many teams, so much that it will often replace Latias, since both don't have a very good synergy together. Starmie is even less trappable, because of his water stab that Latias doesn't have.

I can't see a reason why Latias should stay banned. It has no negative impact on the metagame, and doesn't even drastically change it, unlike we could have expected. Infernape is still good, and can do the right u-turns like he was doing before against his counters. Latias Specs doesn't like taking a simple Close Combat anyway. Breloom will probably drop a little bit since Latias has an excellent typing against it, and it's far from a bad thing considering its spore is broken in DPP. Breloom is still very viable and can threaten Latias in many ways. The subpuncher can fuck a Latias Specs, even the sleep talk variant by putting a sub before doing spore. Facade can also make some huge damage.

We could argue that Latias has even a positive impact on the meta. It makes another good Breloom pivot (something still has to sleep...) that takes neutral damage on rocks and that can put an offensive pressure. It has many useful resistances overall, which lets offensive teams having some more space in the teambuilding process.


Thanks for reading my first smogon post.

 

[Tamahome]

Latias (re)test is up:

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/dpp-ou-latias-retest.3644457/

Thank you all for keeping the discussion alive, and I expect even more from you guys now that the suspect is a real thing!

 

[ABR]

I won't go into the test's very existence as that ship has sailed and it's quite useless to fight it at this point. That being said, can this test be shorter? Whether it be to Friday the 21st or Sunday the 16th, the current one month schedule is really too long. The supporting logic for it is to "ensure activity" but if anything stretching out the suspect spreads out the participants for an overall less competitive ladder. So, even if you want to make it a tiny bit longer than most tests, something like the 16th should really be sufficient. Additionally, it'd be nice for SPL DPP players to know what they're signing up for, and the draft is going to be around the 22nd. It isn't too late to change this aspect.

As for the metagame itself, I'm very confident that Latias has an overall negative impact on it. The theory of it compressing roles for offense and thus creating freedom is not what's practically happening. What's happening is an improvement to already potent strategies, particularly the trap based ones. Nothing abuses dug/mag trapping like Latias does. There's also the fact that it's extremely easy to bypass its counterplay. Specs picks up a KO every time but the CM sets really push it over the edge. Trapping and hazards make removing its answers an easier task, whether its dug trapping rachi, zone trapping zong/sciz, spikes or tspikes wearing down anything, stuff like tar getting roared in, etc.

Any oldgen dropdown is going to be problematic in some form but this test is even worse because Latias only exacerbates the negative characteristics of DPP.

 

[pasy_g]

I've been avoiding discussing this topic for quite some time now, but i think the time has come.

I have quite the history with DPP, when i started to play competitive Pokemon DPP was the maingen, and after BW came out i still regularly played it and it was also the gen i spammed when i got back to the game a year ago. Now when i see people talking about DPP i often times have to scratch my head and can't believe what im reading from time to time. I don't wanna say that i'm a big DPP mastermind, i've clearly seen my skill level decline after not playing it for quite a time. What DPP OU sets apart from nearly every other tier is that you're not allowed to make any mistakes at all. One wrong step can cost you an easy game and vice versa. I think a lot of people don't understand this and just approach it with their SM, GSC, ORAS or whatever "perfect tier" mindset. That's not how it works tho.

Anyway to get to the topic, the Latias suspect test is a great thing and in my opinion it should definitly be freed. Besides some weird opinions we mostly established that Latias is nowhere broken and some people say its too bad to get freed (huh?). This probably mostly comes down to it being very underexplored still, but also to some overprepared teams, even though a lot of the regular dpp ou teams already have a fairly good matchup.

One of the biggest concerns (so it seems to me) apparently are the magdug latias team, which i would call absolute bullpoop. Thats nothing but unreflected theorymoning and those are the type of teams that fall to every proper offense. Your defensive synergy is absolute dig because dugtrio and magnezone cover almost nothing, now you have half a team already. Then you want something that lures Ttar in to trap it with dug and want some sort of revenger (make it rotom to compress both roles right haHAA) then you want rocks and the team is full, you trap the Tar and Dnite dances up on the locked eq or a cbgyara (risk the DD?) destroys you. Hell even an agiligross can set up on a magnezone Tbolt, and have you ever seen what a agiligross can do to a frailass team?

Now what can Latias do? Latias has great tools against what people call out to be bad about DPP. Jirachi the cancermon has a free switch on latias? Maybe one day people will run Twave on latias, huh. Sub bodyslam ihead firepunch rachi gets a specs tricked, great day. Jirachi crippled your keymon with a 100% para bodyslam? We could have a viable offensive Healingwish user poggers. An offensive check to Machamp without a rocks weakness and which can actually ohko it?

Adding to that, from what i have seen on the ladder there are slowly "strategies being explored", like i recently saw the wow rotom + latias, and with time coming im positive there is more to come. Robbing us of the chance to see great things happen and not correcting the wrong that has been done to Latias, by people who seemingly don't understand the way the tier works is disturbing and makes me kind of sad. I probably won't get that much into DPP myself in the near future, but i would absolutly love to see a SPL with great players exploring the tier and giving us something new every week.

A lot of great and active DPP players support the idea of dropping down Latias, and since this is a hobby with no money involved whatsoever, holding this back because of some policies is ridiculous. Also the phrases "it has to be like its always been" "dont touch oldgens" "keep Latias banned ill ladder for you if you vote no unban lolol" often times come from people who say DPP sucks anyway is also weird. You don't always have to state an opinion, especially when you cant have one, and sometimes just let the people discuss who actually know whats going on.

 

[Excal]

I've been playing on ladder a lot over the past few days, and although I wish this test were not happening, I think the council is at least doing a pretty decent job with facilitating the test. No matter what, given the timeframe this test will be inherently flawed, and as a community it seems we have decided to accept that and take it for what it is, which is fine because the majority of the community seems to support it (the test).

i. Minor test suggestion

The one suggestion I have is to rework the reward for the live tours. I love this idea, but it is unbelievably difficult right now to achieve an 81% GXE with just 30 games because of three reasons: the way GXE works mathematically relative to the ladder, the "dead" nature of the ladder, and also the degree of difficulty to run something consistent right now as builds are currently very unpredictable -- ranging from double trap cheese to irrational sets and move combinations from players who probably have no idea what's going on, and to much more as well. I have many accounts with very high GXEs on the DPP ladder, so I'm not talking from a position where I am complaining about reqs being too hard to attain overall or from a position where I am not capable of attaining them. My suggestion is simply to increase the incentive and reward for the Live Tournaments by slightly lowering the required GXE to something like 78% and 30 games. I don't think achieving 78% over 30 games is that easy to do right now, so I don't think that this reduction will let any "bad players" participate who otherwise shouldn't have anyway. Maybe I'm wrong here. If someone has 30 games played right now and an 81% GXE on a "DPLS" account, please feel free to prove me wrong.

ii. Breloom and Infernape

The community seems to be super divided on these two Pokemon right now. Some say Latias will be a godsend for dealing with these problematic Pokemon; others say Breloom and Infernape are not issues pre-Lati. I think BKC nails addressing these misconceptions. Breloom and Infernape are still amazing, and while Latias provides really valuable defensive features to deal with Breloom and Ape (namely bulkier CM roar sets for loom), Breloom and Infernape have not gotten worse in the meta because they both also can be threatening to Jirachi, Ttar, and Tran, the three most popular Pokemon in the current meta by usage. Since BKC does a great job describing this, the only thing I will add is that it limits Infernape's versatility a bit. At this point, choice band/choice scarf ape is by far the best set. Mixape, one of the best answers to stall, is significantly nerfed because it is easily walled by Latias if it doesn't use u-turn, which reduces its coverage. Breloom will run the same main two sets: subpunch and superpower+mach.

Not having anything directly to do with Infernape + Loom but regarding offense and stall, I wanted to briefly talk about my opinion on the theory august presented: that Latias will give offensive builds more freedom. It's very compelling and makes sense on the surface, but I actually disagree with it for the reasons ABR posted above, but also the issue attributed to needing Latias to fix the "problem". I do agree that defensive builds -- full stalls -- are conventionally the most sound builds in DPP, as they check the highest number of threats typically compared to more offensive builds. However, if this is the case, then why is offense significantly more popular in DPP play than stall? From my experience in tournaments, while stall is amazing and safe, (quoting one of my earlier posts) "the right stall will completely invalidate a decent size subset of offenses, but it's about bringing the right offense for your opponent that will capitalize on their preferences." I personally quite like this dynamic between offense and stall pre-Latias. As I said, I agree that stall at, let's say, the highest level of play is the most potent playstyle in DPP. While Latias could free up some room for some offensive builds, in my opinion it is an even better asset defensively. So I think Latias only makes stall better, making things harder for offense. My most consistent team right now in the Latias meta is a stall build with Latias on it, so I guess that means something.

iii. My opinions thus far

So far, I am really not enjoying the Latias meta. Laddering is a serious pain as is, and it is definitely not fun. I think that there can be a consensus right now that laddering really sucks in DPP -- it's dead, not representative of DPP at a competitive level, a chaotic luck fest with strategies like paraspam that Latias makes better + more popular, etc. But aside from the laddering aspect, I think ABR hits the nail on the coffin when he says that Latias only exacerbates the negative aspects of DPP. Like I said before, it makes the three best mons in the tier pre-lati -- Jirachi Ttar Heatran -- even stronger than they already are, and makes Dugtrio, which has the potential to trap and OHKO all 3, go from a healthy disruptor (I know many people hate Dugtrio pre-Lati regardless, I do not though) into an annoying and even more controversial piece of shit. Beyond the three best mons and dug, Clefable is also even stronger right now from my experience.

I want to specifically shout out double trap (Dug + Mag) with CM Safeguard Latias as absolutely ridiculous. Safeguard is incredibly strong on CM Latias, as osgoode noted, for blocking status from Jirachi as long as it safely switches in. The only Jirachi that can reliably beat CM safeguard Latias (safeguard has 40 PP btw, that's a ton) is scarf Jirachi. But what do you know: it gets trapped easily by Magnezone if it tries to iron head. I also want to reference PDC's post again regarding this, as I think that the "tiering crisis" that he stated may be very true with DPP after Latias is unbanned. My prediction is that it will not be the last change to DPP. I have a feeling that Dugtrio will eventually become overly problematic in the tier and will be suspected in DPP if Latias comes back.

I strongly feel that the metagame has changed significantly since the freeing of Latias. I've heard many people say "Oh, I've barely seen any Latias on the ladder!" I really don't think this comment is insightful or means anything because despite maybe not seeing too much Latias, it is certainly there and influencing players' move choices and selection of Pokemon. Usage stats are pretty accurate to some degree, but also neglect moveset choice and combinations "selection" of pokemon, so that's something to note as well. Latias is certainly influencing the DPP metagame from my experience.

But my biggest issue right now with the introduction of Latias into the metagame is the highly increased barrier to entry for the tier. Old gens right now are difficult enough to get into in my opinion. The playerbases are small and the ladders are pretty dead and not helpful for improvement in the tier (maybe GSC is a decent ladder). What's worse is that those who do not play DPP as their "main" tier, or don't play it too often, will find it very frustrating and difficult to have to tweak their already existing teams that they have used for a very long time (I have talked to a few capable players who have expressed this to me). I feel that because Latias highly influences the way people are thinking and preparing for the meta (it will always because I think it will probably be either #4 or maybe #5 on the usage stats even when the meta has stabilized), people will have to tweak their teams to adjust to this new meta, not even just Latias itself. I understand that people have proposed valid arguments for why Latias is not broken -- I do not think Latias is broken either -- but like I said I strongly feel that most people, myself included, will have to tweak many of their pre-existing builds to suit the new meta over time.

I have discussed this "tweaking builds" issue with some people who feel that any build that has to be adjusted for Latias specifically has some big issues in the current meta. But I think there is a clear distinction between Latias alone and the Latias meta, which is the distinction I'm trying to make. For what it's worth, I feel that I am an extremely capable builder in the tier (I have over 200 builds in my teambuilder that are "viable" pre-Latias), and I know I will have to adjust or even scrap a significant number of these builds.

So I guess the next question would be something along the lines of why do we care about people who don't "main" or devote themselves to DPP and build. I've seen arguments over semantics about what constitutes a real DPPer and what doesn't, which I suppose might be attributed to who's opinion is valid and who's opinion is not, but at the end of the day DPP is still played by many people in the community who are not proficient builders or who don't devote a ton of time into the tier. Fun and popular tournaments that feature all gens like many RoA ones (RoAST, Major League, etc.) and even tournaments like the Smogon Classic will likely have diminished quality due to the revamping of DPP and the increased barrier to entry.

iv. Conclusion

Perhaps it can be argued in the very long run (and maybe even in the short run) that Latias may possibly be a positive edition to the meta. If you think that Latias is a positive influence on the meta, then that is completely fine. I don't mean to come off harshly in this post, but these are my opinions, which are just as valid as yours. The last thing I want to say is that I strongly encourage anybody who cares about the voting decision to ladder for reqs and vote. The voter pool will, like I alluded to earlier, be inherently flawed. Whether it's because very knowledgeable/established DPPers won't ladder for the suspect, or because people who don't play the tier that much or care that much about the vote achieve reqs for some other underlying motivation (like being a tiering contributor for example), we are a small community and every single vote is extremely important for both sides -- those who want lati back in the meta and those who don't. It seems like the community is very divided on this issue overall (although I could be wrong). Also, I have nothing against anybody for wanting Latias back in the meta and if I'm friends with you it should definitely not affect anything having to do with that :P.

I will still be voting to keep Latias banned.

EDIT:

Note: My opinions in this post did not directly reiterate other posts I've made or other posts I agree with on this thread. I tried to just post "new" components to my opinion.

tl;dr (read this anyway as it clarifies a few points I addressed)
- While the test is inherently flawed, there should be a greater reward for live tour finalists.
- Latias only exacerbates the negative aspects of the DPP metagame, like ABR said.
- On top of this, Latias changes the metagame -- which has stabilized for 8 years -- significantly. One of the arguments is that Latias won't change much because it is "not that good".
- I personally lean toward old gens not being modified unless something fundamentally uncompetitive like Baton Pass needs to be removed.
- Latias does not necessarily make things easier for offense because of its incredible defensive value and unparalleled role compression for stalls, as stated by many in this thread. Latias on full stalls allows these types of builds to get even closer to covering everything in the meta (see Kevin Garrett's post in the original policy thread).
- The increased barrier to entry is unhealthy for the metagame relative to the community that plays it -- most DPP games played on showdown are not played at the absolute highest level.
- If you care, get reqs and vote. Because the test is flawed and the community is small, every vote is extremely important.

 

[Tony]

DPP as a metagame has some inherent 'issues' compared to both older and newer gens. It lies at the crossroads of a number of huge changes, and the lack of team preview exacerbates this problem. Consider the significant increase of power via the introduction of Pokemon like Heatran, physical and special attacks splitting from typing to hugely buff Pokemon like Breloom, Dragonite and even Tyranitar. New items like Choice Scarf, Choice Specs and Life Orb, as well as high base power attacks like Close Combat, Stone Edge and Draco Meteor were also introduced. This is without even mentioning DPP's very high variance and the introduction of extremely dominant new entry hazards in Stealth Rock and Toxic Spikes. No wonder people jokingly refer to this tier as 'I hope my last beats his last', right?

Having said all that, I absolutely adore this tier, but I have no problem acknowledging its flaws and shortcomings either. Having to deal with infuriating x2 critical hits, No Guard + Dynamic Punch Machamp, and Serene Grace Jirachi with Iron Head, a move Game Freak shockingly decided to create and give to this menace in this gen by the way, all make DPP extremely frustrating to play at times; these are just some of the frequent complaints that you see flying around all the time when people discuss this tier. Pokemon players by nature love to hate metagames and nobody (other than maybe BKC) will ever unironically say DPP is anywhere close to a perfect metagame, but isn't that fine? New generations come out and improve on the last one. Game Freak introduced team preview, changed critical hits from x2 to x1,5 and reduced burn's damage output from 1/8th of a Pokemon's HP to 1/16th, all of which are awesome changes in my opinion, but not reasons to detract from my enjoyment of DPP for what it is.

Latias doesn't fix any of the aforementioned issues and arguably has an overall negative impact on the metagame if anything, as it highly promotes trapping strategies. Its checks, counters and even itself are all viable targets for Magnet Pull, Arena Trap and Pursuit. I can't help but think this test is fueled by nostalgic old gen players remembering their version of the good old days and that perhaps they're just bored of this stagnant metagame. I'm not going to claim that I believe Latias is broken in DPP, because I'm not sure that it is. I just don't think it matters. Reintroducing Latias doesn't address the issues with DPP; the newer generations that came out after it do.