Implemented DPP Snow Cloak

[Excal]

Current DPP evasion ability policy is complex banned in an unintuitive and suboptimal manner. In order to preserve Froslass, a not very good Pokemon, we have Sand Veil fully banned and Snow Cloak banned on Pokemon who don't have it as their only ability. This means while Mamoswine can't use Snow Cloak, Froslass and Glaceon can. This ruling has caused confusion for new DPP players and it doesn't make sense to uphold anymore. We should fully ban Snow Cloak, which should be lumped in with evasion clause. I feel we should act for the following reasons:

1. There is still cheese potential with Froslass hail teams, using movesets like Sub/Twave/Confuse Ray/Ice Beam or Spikes > Confuse Ray, which although very far from broken can take games out of players' hands in an unhealthy way
2. The current rules are nonsensical and set a bad precedent. We should not have the luxury to maintain flawed rulings yet be extremely rigid with retroactive old gen tiering changes
3. Similar to Baton Pass, people will always be able to exploit unhealthy/cheesy mechanics to larger extents as time passes. I believe this can happen with Snow Cloak, as hail teams have had significant optimization in recent time and will continue to become more popular

Tagging OGC Leaders + DPP Council: august Star M Dragon DeepBlueC BIHI mael

 

[ABR]

There is no upside to preserving lass yet tons of downside - both by rules and actual gameplay of the tier. Please do the good thing and remove it.

 

[BIHI]

skill issue

 

[johnnyg2]

The best solution is just to mod the game so that snow cloak doesn’t have an evasion boost but still blocks hail damage so you don’t have the nonsensical solution of banning Froslass and glaceon. Cleanest solution. Note that no Pokemon are vulnerable to hail that have snow cloak, but cacturne could be allowed under the same idea.

(I’m not naive enough to believe that y’all could actually do this, but we can’t have nice things)

 

[Eeveeto]

I prefer to go the opposite way and allow Cacturne, Gabite and Sandslash to be used in DPP OU, just like Froslass and Glaceon.

 

[Laurel]

As discussed on discord, I’m against this ban. Froslass fulfills a niche as a suicide spiker — there are not many spikers in DPP to begin with. Jirachee used a team that showcased Froslass’s ability just a few years ago.

While Froslass’s niche is small, it is more commonly used as a spiker or even trick lead than as a cheese mon. Not to mention with the popularity of Tyranitar and Hippowdon, Snow Cloak is hardly a problem.

I believe Froslass is also the only ghost-type with access to spikes, and as spin is the only way to remove hazards in DPP this is a very interesting niche.

 

[mael]

not posting as the council, just my personal input

i have no strong opinion (yet) but saying that there is no downsides to it is wrong, considering that froslass provides something really unique outside of hail as a ghost spiker with decent speed and people have been utilizing that. we saw froslass as a spikes setter at least in the last 2 spls and it is used outside of hail on ladder and other tournaments too. there's some really fun ways to tweak super offensive teams with froslass and it patches up a thing or two quite nicely. i'm generally in favour of getting rid of uncompetitive nonsense but this here does come at a cost and hail has not proven to be a problem (yet).

also you must consider people really stupid if you think that for anyone "snow cloak is banned on pokemon that have other abilities" is too complicated to understand. if someone genuinely has problems with that then arguably they should have more problems playing a game as complex and cognitively challenging as pokemon.

 

[awyp]

as someone who's played dpp ou 13-14 years ago I have an opposing opinion. I think the rules should stay as is, to say froslass is just cheese tactics and not that good is just cap. as mentioned above frosslass is the only ghost mon that learns spikes (it's a very good suicide lead).

simply put its not hard to beat cheese tactics with frosslass, sandstorm is extremely popular with ttar and hippo. frosslass can't do much to an opposing ttar who has access to pursuit. if you wanna talk about "flawed ruling" lets ban jirachi lol, no but srsly there's other things in dpp ou that should be looked at. I dont think this is an issue.

 

[Emeral]

you def dont get my support for that

 

[SFG]

Strongly against this ban too, agree with what Mael / Laurel said

 

[Le Don]

When you're forced to use 2 Ice types that take *2 on rocks and one or two spinners, imo you're already throwing in the builder. Dugtrio isn't even anymore in the tier to remove these annoying bulky Steel types for Froslass. The Ice Queen is already hard to make work as lead so leave it alone.

So :

 

[Conflict]

LEAVE FROSLASS ALONE!!!

 

[mael]

Given that Froslass outside of hail is healthy and has a legitimate niche and Hail is not a common problem as of now the council has decided to take no action. Additionally, based on the feedback of the community, it appears that the majority are strongly in favour of not taking any action on Froslass. Should Snow Cloak become a problem we will revisit the topic.

 

[Excal]

hi, would like to revisit this since it's been a few months. i've laddered quite a bit yesterday with froslass hail and i'm convinced that snow cloak should be banned beyond speculation that it can be effectively abused.

this is the main froslass team i used: https://pokepast.es/2ca49690d3ef3653

azelf: starts the offense, spreads para, gets up, and attempts to boom on ttar/a steel. hitting ttar can pay off huge dividends, hence the max atk, and guarantee permahail early in the game

gyarados: broken sweeper you can use before you set hail, continue the paraspread and break early. can force metagross's hand and provides strong defensive utility

latias: lum healing wish set with twave and hp fire to hit steels like meta/sciz and also pack loom coverage

aboma: fling light ball, which often targets steels for froslass. offensive to threaten clef and break skarm with blizzard. eq an a different item, like focus sash, can be considered on aboma over fling + light ball

froslass: sub twave cray ice beam with power and enough hp to sub 5 times from full. while swagger would have made this more busted, confuse ray still excels against phys offense in particular, which is one of the most effective styles in current meta

machamp: abuses froslass twave + cray and gets easy entrances, turns the tides on ttar, helps to break fat with healing wish support. machamp in hail is a huge nuisance too, bc skarm jira etc have a harder time switching in

combining froslass, machamp, and abomasnow on an offensive team gives a lot of disruption and maximizes the mu fish/hax abusing elements of each pokemon. it's difficult enough to account for the large variety of azelf teams in current dpp. adding this hail offense to the mix and having to account for snow cloak dodges, confusion hax, and pure bullshit makes things much more unpleasant. i encourage everyone to try this team for themselves and see if they think snow cloak is bad enough to not warrant tiering action.

here are some example replays showing the team in action:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007627290-k0a3rqy7phvw49a1yfi58xhaoj46tcepw - vs johnnyg2 who was on a 24-0 streak. he loaded a sashloom sandless offense team style, which was used this past spl finals, and lost to froslass on the spot. you will see tons of paras, confusion hax, and a fire blast dodge as froslass spams sub and twave soloing the whole team. johnny's team wasn't bad, but happened to land a rough matchup. froslass's speed, access to confuse ray, ability to abuse hail, and to further this with snow cloak giving it potential setup out of thin air can excel strongly against offenses that don't have non-scarfers to outspeed lass.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007624411-zp8myedn815qib05qgzlnrl1ek0cgfspw - vs mbh, dpp ladderer who has had high peaks and played for a long time. this game shows the team's strengths outside of lass cheese potential, against bulky offense (anti's week 1 spl team)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007534170-5lphgu2iufwq3yu33hzk63fbs207ynopw - vs cubic skunk, froslass gets easy entry into a mach punch to rkill azelf, and cubic tries to spore the lass assuming it's spikes (+ icy wind). after subbing up (which it could easily get by threatening ice beam), tyranitar enters and proceeds to be 1v1d in sand, prompting a forfeit

others:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007471244-viuu77m64452bq3hxazqeokl7agluw2pw - shows lass ability to clean endgames vs weatherless offense (i believe this was in le don's teamdump?) froslass defensive profile walls non-bp luc (the most common), and twave + sub combo gives very strong odds for lass endgame, prompting a forfeit

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007473563-kw70jcgd3mhxc4qj3rw0yrbfvsbfyxzpw - same guy, using aero ho, froslass pivots into espeed under hail, and forces ttar line. froslass breaks infernape and cripples ttar enough lategame for aboma clean

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007526724-s6vczweohjldxir97k6vnmc3g69rxp8pw - froslass dodges breloom leech seed and cleans 4 pkmn

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007677874-7hvnxhxn6rjf87jx2xslmwnwepbrencpw - didn't play great, but this shows that machamp + azelf can force tyranitar's hand early quite often. froslass put in work against bkc's old screens offense

other potential cheese froslass sets: ominous wind > cray, spikes > cray, mud slap + protect on a tspikes-based team, etc.

obviously this team has its flaws, but i think enough evidence is shown here to point at froslass cheese having the capability to cheese an spl game. although there weren't a lot of snow cloak dodges in these replays, this was just one day of laddering. it's evident from these replays that snow cloak dodges can exacerbate and add more rng to an already unpleasant and viable strategy.

additionally, there are more defensive types of froslass cheese that have been used over the years and still have a lot of potential (osgoode's mud slap froslass tspikes team which was built recently: https://pokepast.es/b215675a0e5427de, emeral's aboma lass defensive paraspam, etc). if the community's viewpoint is that it wants to see sub twave froslass win a game in spl first with good faith reasoning, then so be it. personally, i think snow cloak should be banned before spl for the following reasons:

1. snow cloak is effective enough to be loaded in spl and utilize evasion to take the game out of a player's hands
2. banning snow cloak is largely inconsequential outside of losing froslass, which is not a huge deal. you can claim its niche as a suicide spiker but, let's be real, the pkmn rly isn't great and has a lot of problems compared to skarmory in this role
3. snow cloak cheese is versatile, finding a place on both offensive and defensive teams

 

[TheRealBigC]

hi, would like to revisit this since it's been a few months. i've laddered quite a bit yesterday with froslass hail and i'm convinced that snow cloak should be banned beyond speculation that it can be effectively abused.

this is the main froslass team i used: https://pokepast.es/2ca49690d3ef3653

azelf: starts the offense, spreads para, gets up, and attempts to boom on ttar/a steel. hitting ttar can pay off huge dividends, hence the max atk, and guarantee permahail early in the game

gyarados: broken sweeper you can use before you set hail, continue the paraspread and break early. can force metagross's hand and provides strong defensive utility

latias: lum healing wish set with twave and hp fire to hit steels like meta/sciz and also pack loom coverage

aboma: fling light ball, which often targets steels for froslass. offensive to threaten clef and break skarm with blizzard. eq an a different item, like focus sash, can be considered on aboma over fling + light ball

froslass: sub twave cray ice beam with power and enough hp to sub 5 times from full. while swagger would have made this more busted, confuse ray still excels against phys offense in particular, which is one of the most effective styles in current meta

machamp: abuses froslass twave + cray and gets easy entrances, turns the tides on ttar, helps to break fat with healing wish support. machamp in hail is a huge nuisance too, bc skarm jira etc have a harder time switching in

combining froslass, machamp, and abomasnow on an offensive team gives a lot of disruption and maximizes the mu fish/hax abusing elements of each pokemon. it's difficult enough to account for the large variety of azelf teams in current dpp. adding this hail offense to the mix and having to account for snow cloak dodges, confusion hax, and pure bullshit makes things much more unpleasant. i encourage everyone to try this team for themselves and see if they think snow cloak is bad enough to not warrant tiering action.

here are some example replays showing the team in action:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007627290-k0a3rqy7phvw49a1yfi58xhaoj46tcepw - vs johnnyg2 who was on a 24-0 streak. he loaded a sashloom sandless offense team style, which was used this past spl finals, and lost to froslass on the spot. you will see tons of paras, confusion hax, and a fire blast dodge as froslass spams sub and twave soloing the whole team. johnny's team wasn't bad, but happened to land a rough matchup. froslass's speed, access to confuse ray, ability to abuse hail, and to further this with snow cloak giving it potential setup out of thin air can excel strongly against offenses that don't have non-scarfers to outspeed lass.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007624411-zp8myedn815qib05qgzlnrl1ek0cgfspw - vs mbh, dpp ladderer who has had high peaks and played for a long time. this game shows the team's strengths outside of lass cheese potential, against bulky offense (anti's week 1 spl team)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007534170-5lphgu2iufwq3yu33hzk63fbs207ynopw - vs cubic skunk, froslass gets easy entry into a mach punch to rkill azelf, and cubic tries to spore the lass assuming it's spikes (+ icy wind). after subbing up (which it could easily get by threatening ice beam), tyranitar enters and proceeds to be 1v1d in sand, prompting a forfeit

others:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007471244-viuu77m64452bq3hxazqeokl7agluw2pw - shows lass ability to clean endgames vs weatherless offense (i believe this was in le don's teamdump?) froslass defensive profile walls non-bp luc (the most common), and twave + sub combo gives very strong odds for lass endgame, prompting a forfeit

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007473563-kw70jcgd3mhxc4qj3rw0yrbfvsbfyxzpw - same guy, using aero ho, froslass pivots into espeed under hail, and forces ttar line. froslass breaks infernape and cripples ttar enough lategame for aboma clean

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007526724-s6vczweohjldxir97k6vnmc3g69rxp8pw - froslass dodges breloom leech seed and cleans 4 pkmn

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2007677874-7hvnxhxn6rjf87jx2xslmwnwepbrencpw - didn't play great, but this shows that machamp + azelf can force tyranitar's hand early quite often. froslass put in work against bkc's old screens offense

other potential cheese froslass sets: ominous wind > cray, spikes > cray, mud slap + protect on a tspikes-based team, etc.

obviously this team has its flaws, but i think enough evidence is shown here to point at froslass cheese having the capability to cheese an spl game. although there weren't a lot of snow cloak dodges in these replays, this was just one day of laddering. it's evident from these replays that snow cloak dodges can exacerbate and add more rng to an already unpleasant and viable strategy.

additionally, there are more defensive types of froslass cheese that have been used over the years and still have a lot of potential (osgoode's mud slap froslass tspikes team which was built recently: https://pokepast.es/b215675a0e5427de, emeral's aboma lass defensive paraspam, etc). if the community's viewpoint is that it wants to see sub twave froslass win a game in spl first with good faith reasoning, then so be it. personally, i think snow cloak should be banned before spl for the following reasons:

1. snow cloak is effective enough to be loaded in spl and utilize evasion to take the game out of a player's hands
2. banning snow cloak is largely inconsequential outside of losing froslass, which is not a huge deal. you can claim its niche as a suicide spiker but, let's be real, the pkmn rly isn't great and has a lot of problems compared to skarmory in this role
3. snow cloak cheese is versatile, finding a place on both offensive and defensive teams

This post is a poor argument as to why the combination of Froslass and Snow Cloak is broken/uncompetitive, as none of the numerous replays you've posted actually show the effects of Snow Cloak specifically being broken, and instead show the strengths of parafusion spam under hail. The only actual misses against Froslass under hail in any of those games were Fire Blast and Leech Seed; both moves that can miss anyway and can't be blamed just on Snow Cloak. To me, these replays just show you made a good and creative team that worked in practice, which in my opinion is kind of what Pokemon as a competitive game should be about. I'm honestly confused at what this post is trying to achieve by these replays; are you trying to suggest Froslass itself is broken regardless of Snow Cloak? If you want to argue Snow Cloak has the potential to be uncompetitive, then sure, but right now this argument seems almost entirely theoretical given the "evidence" you have posted. Moreover, dismissing the potential loss of Froslass, a mon with numerous unique niches as a lead that is otherwise perfectly healthy and a overall plays a good role in the tier, as fine because it "rly isn't that great" and competes with Skarmory as a spiker (despite being used in a completely different way outside of this surface-level similarity) is frankly lazy.

 

[Excal]

This post is a poor argument as to why Snow Cloak itself is broken/uncompetitive, as none of the numerous replays you've posted actually show the effects of Snow Cloak specifically being broken, and instead show the strengths of parafusion spam under hail. The only actual misses against Froslass under hail in any of those games were Fire Blast and Leech Seed, both moves that can miss anyway and can't be blamed just on Snow Cloak. To me, these replays just show you made a good and creative team that worked in practice, which in my opinion is kind of what Pokemon as a competitive game should be about. I'm honestly confused at what this post is trying to achieve by these replays; are you trying to suggest Froslass itself is broken regardless of Snow Cloak? If you want to argue Snow Cloak has the potential to be uncompetitive, then sure, but right now this argument seems almost entirely theoretical given the "evidence" you have posted. Moeover, dismissing the potential loss of Froslass, a mon with numerous unique niches as a lead that is otherwise perfectly healthy and a overall plays a good role in the tier, as fine because it "rly isn't that great" and competes with Skarmory as a spiker (despite being used in a completely different way outside of this surface-level similarity) is frankly lazy.

the context of this thread is that snow cloak is banned on every pokemon except for froslass and glaceon because a complex ban is in place to preserve them. we don't need further proof that snow cloak itself is "uncompetitive". the reason snow cloak on froslass remains unbanned is because there haven't been relevant viable strategies to abuse the degenerate aspects of froslass under hail. the replays i posted show that snow cloak has high abuse potential. i don't need to find a replay of froslass dodging a bunch of random 100% accurate moves to illustrate my point. that information should already be known and understood. with spl coming soon, i felt that this should be highlighted before having to deal with it in prep and ingame in the premier dpp tournament of the year.

 

[johnnyg2]

This post is a poor argument as to why Snow Cloak itself is broken/uncompetitive, as none of the numerous replays you've posted actually show the effects of Snow Cloak specifically being broken, and instead show the strengths of parafusion spam under hail. The only actual misses against Froslass under hail in any of those games were Fire Blast and Leech Seed; both moves that can miss anyway and can't be blamed just on Snow Cloak. To me, these replays just show you made a good and creative team that worked in practice, which in my opinion is kind of what Pokemon as a competitive game should be about. I'm honestly confused at what this post is trying to achieve by these replays; are you trying to suggest Froslass itself is broken regardless of Snow Cloak? If you want to argue Snow Cloak has the potential to be uncompetitive, then sure, but right now this argument seems almost entirely theoretical given the "evidence" you have posted. Moeover, dismissing the potential loss of Froslass, a mon with numerous unique niches as a lead that is otherwise perfectly healthy and a overall plays a good role in the tier, as fine because it "rly isn't that great" and competes with Skarmory as a spiker (despite being used in a completely different way outside of this surface-level similarity) is frankly lazy.

Wanted to reply to this because, regardless of the result of snow cloak in the meta, the reasoning stuck out to me (and your response).

Watch the replay of me and excal again. What exactly was I gonna do against Froslass even if I hit iron head/fire blast a few times? Im eventually gonna full para/hit myself in confusion. That gives it an opening in hail — a rare team style in dpp, but can be effective in wearing almost anything down if given enough free turns. I used (an edit) of a popular team style, I feel like I played the early game pretty good (and didn’t get too many full paras) to neutralize the gyara. Sandless offenses rarely have Pokemon faster than Froslass. The pool of available Pokemon is basically Starmie (who is quite frail) in faster, non Choice Scarfed Pokes who can stop Froslass who of course could just miss. Should we make that a requirement for offenses or else they struggle badly against Froslass, which, despite regretfully losing its niche as a spiker, is pretty rare?

A logical extension of your argument is that any fast Poke could abuse twave + sub to break through teams. We really haven't seen that? Jirachi is probably the closest to it and even then, most teams have adapted to it to the point it’s poor teambuilding not to include a good answer to it (yes I’m plugging my own (and oipon’s) writing). It’s really the combination of hail, sub, para, (insert hax element here), and snow cloak that pushes Froslass to breaking sandless offenses like the one i was using.

Are there answers to what excal was using? Absolutely! If I had a Clefable, a Steel-type with recovery, a way to disrupt Froslass from getting that initial sub behind hail, among others I’d be fine. But should we make this a requirement for offensive teams? Should we limit teambuilding further in dpp? That’s my take from the replay.

 

[Kristyl]

Why wouldn't we be able to ban Snow Cloak + Hail similar to the BW ban of Swift Swim + Drizzle? Mamoswine could also abuse Snow Cloak if it wasn't banned already on it.

 

[peng]

Independent of whether the Froslass cheese strats are even good or not, the way evasion abilities are handled in DPP is clearly just inconsistent.

Mamoswine with Snow Cloak -> Banned
Froslass/Glaceon with Snow Cloak -> Allowed, as it has no other ability
Cacturne line / Sandslash line / Gible line -> Banned, despite them having no other ability

Is this how we're allowed to tier old gens? Make large-sweeping bans + pick outliers based on competitive value? Clearly this isn't about the "only has one ability" concept as that hasn't applied to Gible of all things, this is a straight preservation of Froslass and using whatever justification possible to do so.

Going deeper, Mamoswine and the omitted Froslass/Glaceon are actually the only fully evolved Snow Cloak users, so in effect the current ban is a ban of the ability Snow Cloak on the Mamoswine family only - ability + pokemon bans are something we have insisted we'd never pursue, for obvious reasons (speed boost blaziken blah blah blah), how did we get away with sneaking this one in? There are 3 potential abusers here but we managed to put in an ability ban + write it in a way to only affect one of them!

If Snow Cloak is abusable then it is tiering policy to tackle that on all the abusers, regardless of what you lose as collateral. BW lost Stoutland strategies with the decision to revive Excadrill, and I am sure Stoutland had infinitely more metagame impact in the years before its effective ban than Froslass.

If Snow Cloak is marginal enough that you can justify keeping Froslass, then is it even that broken an ability to begin with? Did anyone ever have to provide this much evidence to ban SC Mamoswine as people do today for Froslass?

This feels like an open and shut case. A complex ban of Snow Warning + Snow Cloak is clearly the consistent way to implement this and keep Froslass, and its far far less complex than the current implementation of the ban. It would still be weird to tier it differently to the blanket ban on Sand Veil but the odds of counterstyling hail with Froslass are crazy low, at least this route clears up the other inconsistencies

 

[Excal]

upon further thought, i'd like to better communicate some of my points -- TheRealBigC is correct that my post was lazy and people were justifiably getting the wrong idea.

- snow cloak was originally fully banned for violating evasion clause, but retroactively became a complex ban to preserve froslass, with the premise that froslass was a healthy aspect of the metagame. my original post's purpose was to highlight that froslass in current form is not universally healthy, to combat this complex ban from this angle specifically
- while you could point to parafusion being "the problem", no other pokemon can do this because they don't have froslass's speed, hail immunity, and ability
- banning confuse ray/confusion alone does not solve the issue: froslass can still use moves like mud slap and ominous wind, coupled with snow cloak + twave, to take the game out of the opp's hands:
- mud slap lower ladder replay, but illustrates froslass's ability to use mud slap + protect to maximize substitutes and dodges, with hail keeping a sandless team chipped: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2009316764-zgqam7pqoq7d68jkg6t2e8b8ajhatmipw
- mud slap replay against bkc's tyranitar bulky offense, froslass is set up and sweeps through metagross, jirachi, swampert, and latias: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2009356598?p2
- here's a replay (featuring snow cloak procs) against dbc's spl finals team where Froslass breaks through sandless offense using ominous wind > confuse ray, utilizing its ability, speed, and paralysis to fish for ominous boost 8 times: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2008786830-bg30fke370lpz5kjrzfih7exlnx1al6pw. i am happy to answer any questions about this ominous wind replay in particular and defend why it's indicative of unhealthy ingame dynamics
- usage of sub twave confusion spikes vs clef stall, showing froslass utility in a longer game, dodging knock offs and encores from opposing clef: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2009408351-fiur9jtlkbs0j0ivik7uyoxzngu77nzpw
- froslass polarizing mu vs some variants of phys off and especially sandless offense is problematic for the metagame and restrictive enough to pay heed to in preparation. when froslass has a good mu, the opp really can't do much of anything to overcome the odds extremely stacked against them, as viewed in the johnny replay
- you can still build a good team while using froslass, as it has strong natural synergy with some of the metagame's best pokemon (azelf, gyarados, machamp, latias, etc), so you're not purely reliant on froslass executing to win

tl;dr snow cloak should be universally banned as it was intended, but a complex ban was put in place to preserve froslass because it was considered a "healthy" aspect of the metagame. i do not believe it's healthy to have it in the metagame and think the snow cloak ban should be universally applied as originally intended.

This feels like an open and shut case. If you want to keep Froslass, fine, but a complex ban of Snow Warning + Snow Cloak is clearly the consistent way to implement this, and its far far less complex than the current implementation of the ban. It would still be weird to tier it differently to the blanket ban on Sand Veil but the odds of counterstyling hail with Froslass are crazy low, at least this route clears up the other inconsistencies

as we discussed on discord, this is a good idea in practice but there are a couple of issues with it:
- the old gen council leadership & tiering admins are extremely unlikely to approve a complex ban that wasn't "grandfathered in" (hence the tiering inconsistencies)
- froslass can still "abuse" evasion clause with manual hail setters (froslass itself has a flexible moveslot) or by being used against an opponent using abomasnow. on principle, even though this probably won't happen in games, this is a violation of evasion clause

are we going to ban manual confusion, mud slap + all accuracy reducing moves, and complex ban snow cloak + snow warning so we can preserve one pokemon that is not very impactful in the metagame otherwise? should we even have that luxury from a tiering standpoint?

i believe that this ban can be summed up simply: snow cloak is a violation of evasion clause, thus it should be banned in full. evasion boosting abilities, items, and moves take away a player's ability to connect a 100% accurate move even if they switch out, regardless of their type or ability (with the exception of no guard). these strategies should have no place in our flagship formats.

 

[Celever]

I'm not a major figure in DPP by any means but I think this discussion should be focused so that we don't do in modern day what one of the IMO biggest crimes of oldgen tiering has been, which is taking tiering action with massive and wide-ranging collateral when the issue was really just one Pokémon. And this is basically parroting what's said above (got sniped by Excal, above them) but going further with it and remediating the past error.

If Froslass is deemed to be an uncompetitive Pokémon, then ban Froslass. Don't ban Snow Cloak, which is banning Froslass but makes Glaceon catch a hardcore stray. If Froslass is only uncompetitive with active Snow Cloak, then do Kristyl's suggestion and ban Snow Cloak + Snow Warning together (you could include Hail, I don't think there's much need to personally), also unbanning it on Mamoswine. Actually it should be unbanned on Mamoswine regardless, because that is a pretty crazy complex ban all things considered. That way all Pokémon can continue to be used in OU, just not with Abomasnow which none of them care that much about (arguably the best way to use Glaceon would be Specs Blizzard in permasnow but considering no one's doing that already it's fine).

If the latter approach is taken, there's very little case to not then implement parity with Sand Veil's tiering status, moving Sand Veil from an outright ban to a ban only with Sand Stream (and maybe Sandstorm). The idea that Tyranitar and Hippowdon are better enough than Abomasnow that it's valid to bring a staller Cacturne to games just in case the opponent brings one of the sand setters is not cogent. If Garchomp is still ban worthy without Sand Veil, which it probably is, then ban Garchomp itself and not its ability which also forces two FE and 4 NFE mediocre Pokémon out of the tier for no reason.

These complex bans between weather abusing and weather setting abilities are very well-precedented and common throughout formats, so if there's a need to apply that evolution of tiering mentality to DPP then there shouldn't be an issue doing so.

 

[Cdijk16]

Froslass has a genuine niche outside of Snow Cloak cheese strats as a ghost type Spikes lead with a fast Taunt. Why don't we just ban Snow Cloak + Hail/Snow Warning in order to preserve non-cheese variants of Froslass?

 

[Eeveeto]

Froslass has a genuine niche outside of Snow Cloak cheese strats as a ghost type Spikes lead with a fast Taunt. Why don't we just ban Snow Cloak + Hail/Snow Warning in order to preserve non-cheese variants of Froslass?

If this is done, the same thing should be done to Sand Veil + Sand Stream for constistency reasons. You want to use S Rank Tyranitar, one of the best Mons of the game? You have to know you might be punished by Sand Veil Gliscor or Cacturne if you do so.

 

[DeepBlueC]

The DPP Council has decided to adopt the current tiering policy framework regarding banning of evasion abilities, and as such, Snow Cloak is now banned. The rationale for the ban is that Snow Cloak is inherently uncompetitive, therefore, it does not matter if only a specific Pokemon is the primary abuser of it.

At the time of the Sand Veil ban, the DPP Council was cognizant of the similarities between Snow Cloak and Sand Veil. However, we decided to not put Pokemon having Snow Cloak as its only ability (e.g., Froslass) under the chopping block because there is only one hail setter (Abomasnow) which is less viable than the sand setters (Hippowdon and Tyranitar), and hail strategies at that time were very much non-existent.

However, we've been apprised of replays (as linked below) that clearly demonstrate how Snow Cloak can be a problem. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2009356598?p2
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-2009316764-zgqam7pqoq7d68jkg6t2e8b8ajhatmipw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-696806

The "TL/DR" for those who have not watched the replays is that Froslass' excellent speed tier allows it multiple opportunities to fish for a miss (under hail), and a single miss can snowball in favour of the Froslass user. We understand that Froslass has healthy aspects that have utility in the metagame, but they pale in comparison to the drawbacks accompanying a Froslass that tries to abuse hail.

Furthermore, to be consistent with the tiering policy framework, a ban on Snow Cloak is the most appropriate course of action.

Kris Marty Please implement this.

 

[Conflict]

Bad decision.

Council banning a fringe barely viable mon (not even considered OU but BL for lile forever) that needs a shitton of conditions (aboma on team; stacking 2 mons w awful ice-typing; having hail up in a ttar-meta) to even do something that might potentially warrant tiering action is not what a council should do.

Citing ladder play by one player as the only evidence for this brokenness is also not enough imo. Excal is clearly a way better player than most other ladder-players so a lot of those wins could just be down to him outplaying.
Not to mention that after watching most of those replays the issue usually wasnt froslass snow cloak Ability but rather its combination with some sort of paraflinch.

Paraflinch teams in DPP are very viable and have been for years - this is nothing new. Not sure gimping ones own team to include aboma and froslass is worth the opportunity cost of foregoing other less demanding abusers of paraflinch (rachi, machamp, breloom - you name it).

Without multiple high level tournament games decided by hail-lass i just don't see any reason to prematurely ban this mon. Banning for what it "potential could do" is a slippery slope and if we do that then we might as well ban the elephant in the room in Jirachi because that Mon has been doing "Froslass"-level of bullshit for years and is basically top 3 in usage. That should be way higher in priority than a lowly BL mon with almost bo usage. (Not that i think that Jirachi deserves to be banned right now.)
Maybe the crux of the matter is also not Froslass itself but paraflinch? Atleast going through the replays Excal provided a large amount of them were lost due to paras rather than misses.
And using SPL teams that autolose vs those froslass teams is also arguing in bad faith because those teams
a) dont always are the most solid but sometimes just finetuned for a specific weeks opponent (bo1 mu fishing!)
b) froslass was on noones radar so ofc teams wouldn't be prepared for it (thats like saying oh no u lose vs this specific uu-mol w this set thats never seen in ou - unviable team!)

Tackling Froslass first just to adhere to a streamlined tiering policy framework is nothing short of lazy and makes 0 sense. Doing so by council decision without a proper suspect test turns a bad decision into a very bad one.
Especially when the pro-ban outcries wherw mostly contained to just Excal and seemed to have little public support otherwise.
It is a shame to lose a cool mon such as Froslass that has other neat sets (spike support as lead for example) just like this.

If Froslass really is DPP's issue #1 rn (its not lets be real) then atleast hold a suspect test for it. Dont use SPL being soon as a cop iut - with sign-ups etc. there is more then enough time still til the start of SPL w1 (3-4 weeks!).

I urge the council to please rethink this decision.