Gothitelle / Shadow Tag Suspect Test

[dEnIsSsS]

I think the comparison between Gothitelle and Wobbuffet is unfair since both work differently (oh really...). I mean, saying that Goth is broken, but Wobb isn't is not right imo (maybe broken is not the most appropriated word, I think "uncompetitive" sounds way better). Gothitelle's full potential, as it was already pointed out by everyone, is only noticed on that same standard full stall team, because of how it is supported by entry hazards prevention and removal, Aromatherapy (it is nice since Rest sucks sometimes) and it has extremely sturdy teammates on the back to handle boosted sweepers (ie +3 Manaphy locked in Scald). Wobbuffet, on the other hand, doesn't even need team support at all because of how much bulkier it is, and also not relying on Choice Scarf and access to Encore means it will never be used as a set up bait unless the opposing threat has Taunt or the ability Magic Bounce, so it basically fits in any play style. As WCAR had pointed out in his last post, Wobbuffet can easily dismantle defensive cores with Encore, Tickle, and Pursuit, and it also punishes choice locked mons severely, without counterplay involved at all. It does fare against offense way better than Gothitelle because it can just click Mirror Coat or Counter and something dies, and there are a lot of Pokemon that lacks Taunt + status inducing moves or Baton Pass/U-Turn/Volt Switch! So all of them can be potentially murdered / crippled, which may be extremely valuable for a teammate, opening a hole for a possible sweep. The lack of recovery outside of Leftovers/Sitrus Berry argument is also invalid because Wobbuffet doesn't even need it x__x Just because this Pokemon is not being used much right now, doesn't mean it isn't good or broken.

Lastly, the "smart switching" argumentation as counterplay to Shadow Tag pretty much annoys me. Team preview makes everything easier, since the Shadow Tag player can just focus on trapping a specific threat, and that's it. Avoiding Pursuit trapping (which should be only the Gothitelle's case, considering that Wobbuffet is bulky enough to survive a Dark-Type attack and retaliate back with Counter if it is still healthy, and don't forget that Colbur Berry, an underrated item, can increase Wobbuffet's winning chance against said Pursuit trapper) is also possible, as long as the specific target is dead, or crippled, the Shadow Tag user succeeded in its mission, and does all teams need a Pursuit trapper to stand a chance against Shadow Tag based teams? Shadow Tag just worsens the matchup issue, and I don't think those 5050s scenarios are healthy since one misplay can lead to someone's loss.

 

[shrang]

Ah yes, the "ban Shadow Tag because it is uncompetitive™ or lacks counterplay" argument again. Keep in mind I have no stakes in this because I don't play OU, but purely from an academic perspective, have we even got a proper meaning for the word "uncompetitive" yet? It just seems to be a word that everyone decides to use for things they don't like but can't actually tell you what it means from a competitive battling standpoint. Yes, I'm aware we DID have one for OU (which I'm only familiar with because our dear MM2 quoted it a million times in the Ubers S-tag suspect), but we all know that definition is bullshit. I mean come, "uncompetitive to the point where it is uncompetitive"? Yeah no.

I know Ubers and OU have very different banning criteria and I'm certainly not going to argue for/against in any way, but please don't turn this into a lynchmob like what happened in Ubers. I started a thread ages ago trying to suss out the meaning of the word "uncompetitive", but I don't think you guys care anyway.

 

[jpw234]

^ see shrang's thread, chaos' response, my response, Kristoph's response here

 

[Ciele]

A ladder in which tournament players are regularly laddering and playing both with and against the team? If anything that's the largest sample size you could get as players are playing far more regularly than twice a week for what, 7 games at max? If this was regular ladder I'd agree with you but ABR qualified with the team in cycle 1, arguably the most competitive cycle possible as everyone wants to qualify early and have the "bragging rights" of saying they did it in the first cycle. I dislike the easy way you just trash arguments by saying it's only the ladder during the time when an official tournament aimed at raising the quality of ladder play is running. I don't actually have much to say on goth that hasn't already been said but I just wanted to express that I feel the experiences users have had on ladder with and against this mon, paticularly recently do have some value into providing arguments for and against.

It stands to reason that ladder play is of a lower standard than tournament play. A large portion of ladder battles are between mentally fatigued players, as unlike in tournaments, ladder sessions often consist of a huge number of games in a short period of time. The way people usually try to circumvent this is to "autopilot" their games which tends to lead to predictable and/or formulaic play.

More on topic, the stats used in the op's argument are very misleading. A 70% win rate seems impressive until you realise that it just means 23 wins from 33 games. Included in these 23 wins is a turn 1 forfeit and an end-game forfeit of a battle in which the Gothitelle player would have otherwise lost. It's also worth noting that it had a negative win % in Battle City as well as a neutral win % in WCoP. It also had a negative win % a few months back in both Smogon Tour 19 and SPL 6.

I also feel the need to address this supposed OLT dominance. For all the talk of OLT players spamming it, replays show that of the 12 players to have qualified so far only one used it regularly. If you want to be generous you can make it two with Omfuga using it early on before switching to something else. There's a couple of high ranked players in this cycle who are using it, but right now we're talking 1 or 2 out of 12. If people really are using it as much as it's claimed then this number is simply atrocious.

As PttP pointed out, just four weeks ago stall was being called "unviable" and now it's apparently broken. Metagross and Altaria were also considered broken at different points this year and now they're not even considered top 5 mons. More recently there was the Hoopa-Unbound hype which has already died down a ton. Things change over time and there's a good chance that the metagame will adapt to this just like it did to these other mons.

 

[Clair]

Ah yes, the "ban Shadow Tag because it is uncompetitive™ or lacks counterplay" argument again. Keep in mind I have no stakes in this because I don't play OU, but purely from an academic perspective, have we even got a proper meaning for the word "uncompetitive" yet? It just seems to be a word that everyone decides to use for things they don't like but can't actually tell you what it means from a competitive battling standpoint. Yes, I'm aware we DID have one for OU (which I'm only familiar with because our dear MM2 quoted it a million times in the Ubers S-tag suspect), but we all know that definition is bullshit. I mean come, "uncompetitive to the point where it is uncompetitive"? Yeah no.

I know Ubers and OU have very different banning criteria and I'm certainly not going to argue for/against in any way, but please don't turn this into a lynchmob like what happened in Ubers. I started a thread ages ago trying to suss out the meaning of the word "uncompetitive", but I don't think you guys care anyway.

You experience "uncompetitive" every time you use a relatively passive team against a Gothitelle. Unless you have Pursuit, you simply lose. There is no counterplay. None. If uncompetitive has a definition, then being rendered completely and unavoidably helpless would be it.

So either defensive teams are just bad, or Gothitelle is uncompetitive.

Note that while all defensive teams will lose at team preview to some threats, every single defensive team loses to Gothitelle unless they carry Pursuit - and even then, Gothitelle can PP-stall numerous passive threats without exposing itself to Pursuit.

I'm not arguing that we have to ban Gothitelle (although that's certainly my preference). But we do need to settle whether we're gonna try to protect defensive playstyles or not, so we can get some consistency and precedent in decision making.

 

[-Tsunami-]

I'm not arguing that we have to ban Gothitelle (although that's certainly my preference). But we do need to settle whether we're gonna try to protect defensive playstyles or not, so we can get some consistency and precedent in decision making.

First of all, I would like to point out that Gothitelle helps defensive teams a great deal more than it hurts them; all of this OLT "domination" and such that people are attempting to use to justify a ban have been by stall teams with Gothitelle, so that point is invalid.

Anyway, now that I have replied to that, I might as well state my thoughts. I don't consider myself "good" in ORAS OU by any stretch of the imagination, but I have played enough games on the ladder and seen enough of this annoying Gothitelle stall team to understand why people want a suspect test / quick ban for it. First of all, a quick ban is honestly ludicrous considering the amount of time Gothitelle has existed in the metagame without posing a major problem; quick bans have been reserved for Pokemon that have been recently introduced into the metagame and can almost unanimously be considered "broken." This is true across all tiers, and quick banning a Pokemon / ability that has existed for the entirety of the XY / ORAS metagame without being considered "broken" until OLT doesn't make much sense at all.

So, is Gothitelle / Shadow Tag deserving of a suspect test? I will agree with others and say that the answer is no as of now, simply due to the constantly shifting OU metagame. I might be wrong about this, but I am pretty sure the majority of tournament players wanted Mega Metagross banned a couple of months ago; it's not even close to being the best mega Pokemon in the game right now. It's amazing how much the metagame can shift within a couple of months, and because of this, I don't think we need to suspect Gothitelle / Shadow Tag. As far as I can tell, Gothitelle has literally only been relevant enough to deserve attention during OLT, and the dominance it has had in those battles isn't enough to justify a suspect test, in my opinion. If Gothitelle was so good all of this time, why did it not have a great deal of success in World Cup, a tournament people pour their hearts and souls into innovating teams and abusing all of the broken threats possible? The only "evidence" that there is of Gothitelle / Shadow Tag being a relevant enough threat to warrant a suspect test is the ladder, a place where people constantly rage, get tired, play multiple games at once, and can sometimes just be too lazy to think through how to defeat a stall team. Let's face it: there's nothing more infuriating than tilting on the ladder and then playing a Gothitelle stall team, especially if multiple people find your game and proceed to spam meaningless words harassing you for your supposed ineptitude for continuing to play while you're "on tilt." I don't think a couple of weeks of "ladder domination" is good enough to justify suspect testing something. If Gothitelle dominates ORAS OU Smogon Tour, then that would give me more reason to believe it is worthy of a suspect test. As of now, though, I feel as though more time needs to pass and the metagame needs to be given more time to adjust before we all start screaming that it and Shadow Tag are broken.

 

[Clair]

First of all, I would like to point out that Gothitelle helps defensive teams a great deal more than it hurts them; all of this OLT "domination" and such that people are attempting to use to justify a ban have been by stall teams with Gothitelle, so that point is invalid.

No. Gothitelle enables two or three specific stall teams. This is not the same as helping defensive teams. The reason that you missed this distinction is because non-Gothitelle stall is almost non-existent at the moment, because it auto-loses to Gothitelle stall, because Gothitelle destroys defensive teams.

"that point is invalid"

If Gothitelle was so good all of this time, why did it not have a great deal of success in World Cup, a tournament people pour their hearts and souls into innovating teams and abusing all of the broken threats possible?
...
If Gothitelle dominates ORAS OU Smogon Tour, then that would give me more reason to believe it is worthy of a suspect test. As of now, though, I feel as though more time needs to pass and the metagame needs to be given more time to adjust before we all start screaming that it and Shadow Tag are broken.

Gothitelle is a Pokemon used to break defense and/or cripple other breakers; in an offense-dominated metagame its net results are going to be bad. That doesn't necessarily preclude it from being broken.

Let's imagine a simplified metagame with just three teams: Offense, Gothitelle, and Defense. Offense usually beats Goth, Goth always beats Defense. Offense vs Defense is a tie and comes down to player skill.

Now let's look at a different metagame with just two teams, Offense and Defense.

The first metagame, with the Gothitelle team, will eventually become pure Offense (in the real meta, of course, offensive teams have to strike a balance between beating offense and stall, so stall retains a niche in beating anti-offense offensive teams). The second metagame will be 50/50 Offense and Defense.

However, the metagame with Gothitelle will either be regularly lost or won on matchup, or will become almost 100% offense. In the metagame without Goth, player skill is the only determining factor in who wins, and you have an even spread of teams.

Obviously there's a lot more nuance to the situation than this, but the fundamentals are the same. A metagame with Gothitelle may be "balanced" (lol this is such a stupid term), and inevitably Gothitelle itself won't be used much. However, it is a worse metagame than the one without it.

All this is without looking specifically at the combination of Gothitelle and stall, which may just be too strong.

 

[Shaka Brah]

Gothitelle is a Pokemon used to break defense and/or cripple other breakers; in an offense-dominated metagame its net results are going to be bad. That doesn't necessarily preclude it from being broken.

Let's imagine a simplified metagame with just three teams: Offense, Gothitelle, and Defense. Offense usually beats Goth, Goth always beats Defense. Offense vs Defense is a tie and comes down to player skill.

Now let's look at a different metagame with just two teams, Offense and Defense.

The first metagame, with the Gothitelle team, will eventually become pure Offense (in the real meta, of course, offensive teams have to strike a balance between beating offense and stall, so stall retains a niche in beating anti-offense offensive teams). The second metagame will be 50/50 Offense and Defense.

However, the metagame with Gothitelle will either be regularly lost or won on matchup, or will become almost 100% offense. In the metagame without Goth, player skill is the only determining factor in who wins, and you have an even spread of teams.

Obviously there's a lot more nuance to the situation than this, but the fundamentals are the same. A metagame with Gothitelle may be "balanced" (lol this is such a stupid term), and inevitably Gothitelle itself won't be used much. However, it is a worse metagame than the one without it.

All this is without looking specifically at the combination of Gothitelle and stall, which may just be too strong.

What exactly backs up this hypothetical? Is it all speculation? Another Q: does this hypothetical have any relevant application?

 

[Tele]

If Gothitelle was so good all of this time, why did it not have a great deal of success in World Cup, a tournament people pour their hearts and souls into innovating teams and abusing all of the broken threats possible?

lol ok. let me disagree with that

all of the links below are from the world cup replay thread (meaning everybody has access to them)

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-70259
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-72207
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-72819
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-74599 same team concept (basically used volcarona instead of talonflame)
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-72055 same team concept (basically used rhyperior instead of hippowdon)
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-74809 (extremely similar team concept)
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-70883 (extremely similar team concept)
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-69685 (extremely similar team concept)

list could go on but those were the most fitting examples. that team (essentially consisting of starmie, talonflame and sableye-m) was rated here on smogon last february and since then it saw a lot of action both in tournament and ladder environment

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-72129
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-70890
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-72228
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-73737 same team with amoonguus over cresselia

although this team hasnt been rated on smogon by anybody, most players recognize it as one of the most dominant ladder team in the oras era

so, as you can see, there wasnt much innovations in world cup, with many people opting for mainstream teams like these replays show, thus wcop doesnt really exemplify the metagame like you said (or proves that something is broken)

The only "evidence" that there is of Gothitelle / Shadow Tag being a relevant enough threat to warrant a suspect test is the ladder, a place where people constantly rage, get tired, play multiple games at once, and can sometimes just be too lazy to think through how to defeat a stall team. Let's face it: there's nothing more infuriating than tilting on the ladder and then playing a Gothitelle stall team, especially if multiple people find your game and proceed to spam meaningless words harassing you for your supposed ineptitude for continuing to play while you're "on tilt."

let me disagree with that, too. You are overgeneralizing. "people constantly rage, get tired, play multiple games at once," well this might be true in your case, since it is widely known that you played over 800 games in 1 week during last year's OLT, but it might not be true for everyone! "there's nothing more infuriating than tilting on the ladder and then playing a Gothitelle stall team," again, havent you thought that this might be your own personal thought? for example, i know for sure that some people try to make some adjustments to their team after each loss, they try to understand what went wrong, they dont just mechanically look for a battle or randomly click buttons like you said. from your words it looks like you have some resentment towards the ladder, while you consider tournaments the perfect environment where the metagame is exemplified at his best? well i dont agree with that at all. Maybe you have a higher consideration towards tournaments because you mostly play with your friends there (and you can have fun with them from time to time), while on the ladder you often get to face people you dont know (and thus might be slightly less funny)?

anyway, i highly disagree with a gothitelle or a shadow tag suspect. Like I said on other occasions, the presence of manaphy in the metagame (together with his access to tail glow) is one of the biggest reasons (if not the only one reason) to why gothitelle stall is being abused (although many people, pdc clearly being one of those, still need to acknowledge that). If Gothitelle or shadow tag gets banned, then we might as well stop considering stall as a usable playstyle in oras ou, since no defensive pokemon can beat all of manaphy's offensive set.

edit. for the record, gothitelle did have some kind of success at worldcup

 

[dice]

just because certain individuals resorted to tested waters in regards to teams doesn't mean you can discredit the tournament as a form of metagame maturation.... there were some cool teams and techs presented and cherrypicking logs is hella silly... it's also equally silly to posit the belief that stall dies with gothitelle's ban. who knows what creative ways people will come up with to handle manaphy for example. shake certainly used hyperbole in regards to lower quality on the ladder, but that doesn't change the fact that tournament play is most certainly higher quality. that's just a definite truth.

this is completely tangential to his main point regardless, so why even discuss it? you equally overgeneralized as much as you accused him of doing so.

Clair how much viability does stall need? why does non gothitelle stall have to be viable? why can't stall players adapt? this thread came about due to the dominance of one stall team.

 

[p2]

I'm gonna go more in depth about goth instead of saying "wow busted i almost won an ou room tour without making the shittiest choke ever" because it's not just a case of that.

the effect goth has on the meta right now is retarded. There is no true way to beat current goth stall other than overloading your team with stallbreakers or using dumb shit like Shed Shell on your stallbreakers. This gives your team a much worse matchup v offense. point is, gothitelle is taking matchup and exacerbating it a fucking ton because its so difficult to have that perfectly good team that shits on stall and doesn't get floored by offense right now. You need a stallbreaker that can handle Chansey/Skarm/Quag/Amoong/MegaSab/Goth, which isn't exactly hard to find until you realise that Gothitelle shuts out nearly every viable Stallbreaker, you can use the likes of Mega Garde with Healing Wish but you do realize that this forces Latias/Shaymin/Celebi onto teams and for the likes of Latias, uses up that vital moveslot it desperately needs, HW means it can't Defog or Roost, meaning that you need to put more into hazard removal or beating Keldeo+Zard Y. Gothitelle makes teams use up too much slots to handle it, which gives them a bigger and harder to patch weakness against offense and other threats in general. tl;dr Goth is restricting teambuilding way more than people think and it enforces a really shitty matchup based meta where if you lack enough firepower, you get shut down by Stall and if you put too much into breaking Stall, you lose against offense and the worst part is is that there is NO middle ground here.

With that said, I'm still fully behind the idea of a quickban (or even a temporary ban until OLT is over then suspect testing it) in order to improve ladder quality as soon as because having this bullshit running among the olt ladder is not needed and it saves cheesers autopiloting through to qualify easily, see Get this Money for example, he's sitting at #1 and all he is doing is laddering with that disgusting stall.

edit @ below: no i'm not trying to imply hes bad or anything. as somebody who talks to gtm often, i have no doubts on him as a player but we both agree that goth stall is really dumb right now. it came off as really shitty and sounding like an ass though, i cant disagree with that

 

[Mazinger]

ok I'm not involved in this but did you really just call out a specific person as too bad to compete with real strategies in an attempt to get something banned

 

[ABR]

It's important to note that it's not just one player, and idk about right now (or whenever someone sees this), but at some point last night 4 of the top 6 olt players got there with Gothitelle. Just food for thought to all those saying its a trash mon or irrelevant.

Also, I think the people who criticize the "hype ban mentality" but don't play ORAS OU cannot accurately depict Goth's effect on the metagame. I cannot stress enough how much Goth restricts teambuilding when preparing for stall, and how it severely exacerbates matchup issues because of this. Most of that which Reymedy and fleggumfl stated in their posts sums up my thoughts on Goth's effect on the metagame and team matchup in general. Even casting this aside, the raw nature of Shadow Tag is uncompetitive and unfit for a simulator that calls itself a home to "competitive pokemon".

I believe there are enough members of the community who feel strongly about this issue to warrant a suspect test, and this longing for the suspect isn't even "hype" or spontaneous because Gothitelle has been a plague to the ladder for a long time now. Most of the anti-ban/suspect posts I see are just people expressing their dislike for suspects in general, and don't really address actual reasons to keep Gothitelle in the metagame. And hey, if you like Goth in the meta, vote to keep it! At least give us the right to vote on a subject that is highly disputed. If the current system is designed to have people vote on potential outcomes, then I see no reason to not just start this suspect and let the voting outcome speak for itself. Until there is a formal change to the system we have, we shouldn't be denied the right to have an influence on the metagame we play. If the higher ups on Smogon don't want just any person voting, then just do council votes only. That is absolutely better than being given the false sense of importance and influence when it comes to tiering. At the very least be transparent about your agenda.

 

[dice]

Even casting this aside, the raw nature of Shadow Tag is uncompetitive and unfit for a simulator that calls itself a home to "competitive pokemon".

this always seems to be the case in threads like this. this is such disgusting logic (or lack thereof) and your whole post consists of circular reasoning that has been covered in detail in many other posts.

we don't just suspect to suspect. suspects have been proven to be pokemon that have affected the general metagame in an arguably unhealthy manner for a set period of time. logically, it is smogon's paramount aim to create the best metagame possible. to do this, we need time. even leftiez admitted that until a little less than two months ago this strategy was hardly seen. until olt, ladder play is hardly quality. have the biggest metagame shifts ever occured from the ladder? have the bw sd + acrobatics scizors, the sd + roost talonflames, the offensive mega scizors, the hp grass keldeos, etc. ever spawned from ladder play? tournaments are the core of metagame developments. your 8 months of ladder play hardly see much development compared to a world cup or spl of games. mega metagross was seen as overpowered by many for several months until the council decided to suspect it. this gave the metagame time to adapt and finally it was voted ou. i'm not suggesting all pokemon can be handled since that's preposterous, but it's far too soon to villify gothitelle from your anecdotes and inability to adapt thus far. the general population doesn't have much of a say in the metagame... you can chirp chirp, but you are by no means deserving of a right to vote. what are you even talking about?

suspecting can be a dangerous praxis. some people itt are just wanting to toss out shadow tag willy nilly. this can completely shape a metagame and sets a very poor precedent. let's not venture into ill-founded suspect testing based in a reactionary stance to ONE TEAM. i would have no problems if gothitelle is still causing a ruckus in a few months, but take a step back for a moment.

 

[Aldaron]

The quoted post rambles on a bit, but I'll try to respond point by point.

It's important to note that it's not just one player, and idk about right now (or whenever someone sees this), but at some point last night 4 of the top 6 olt players got there with Gothitelle. Just food for thought to all those saying its a trash mon or irrelevant.

Where did someone say Gothitelle was trash or irrelevant in this thread? The only one I remember is SIU, and he specifically mentioned since a particular time, implying it was relevant after that point. He also clearly meant relevance in the context of a potential suspect, not actual utility relevance. I don't think anyone thinks Gothitelle is a "shitmon" or "trash"; it is clearly on the mind of both regular ladder people and tournament folks. Even if someone else did say those things, they are clearly mistaken and you don't need to respond to them. The fact that Shadow Tag is a "thing" and Gothitelle is causing "issues" is why we are having this conversation.

Also, "4 out of the top 6" doesn't actually...mean anything. Why did you choose top 6? Is there something about the top 6 that is special? 4 out of the 6 doesn't provide much useable information considering it is a snapshot in time. Tell me some high percentage out of some top X and justify why that percentage and that top X number are important. Tell me that this is a repeatable, consistent pattern (and try to prove it).

That would mean something. Just telling me "4 out of the top 6" in some arbitrary snapshot in time doesn't tell me anything.

Also, I think the people who criticize the "hype ban mentality" but don't play ORAS OU cannot accurately depict Goth's effect on the metagame.

I feel you are making this personal at this point and should take a quick step back and look at the situation. Yes, someone who does not play ORAS OU actively cannot give judgment calls or make generalizations on the tier. This does NOT mean that they cannot ask for real, actual justification to generalizations made by those who do play. We don't have formalized definitions of uncompetitive, but people are using it...so define what that means and argue how Gothitelle fits into that particular definition of uncompetitive. Then we can talk if your perceptions on uncompetitive are logical and reasonable or not. However, if you just toot your own horn and say "I play ORAS OU and Gothitelle makes it retarded / uncompetitive / <insert adjective>", you aren't actually saying anything.

I cannot stress enough how much Goth restricts teambuilding when preparing for stall, and how it severely exacerbates matchup issues because of this.

Like I stated previously, please state what "restricts teambuilding" and "exacerbates matchup issues" (your talking points) mean and afterwards please state how they break or satisfy your defined version of uncompetitive.

Also, please explain the transition logic between restricting teambuilding -> increasing match up issue. An outside individual reading Policy Review would see these two statements side by side and be confused as to what you mean. They would ask, for example, if team building is restricted and therefore you use less things, would this not in fact reduce the team match up issue? Is not the team match up issue a direct result of too many options, not fewer options? I think I know what you mean but even I can't be 100% certain, and I've been involved in suspecting for a long ass time now.

Most of that which Reymedy and fleggumfl stated in their posts sums up my thoughts on Goth's effect on the metagame and team matchup in general. Even casting this aside, the raw nature of Shadow Tag is uncompetitive and unfit for a simulator that calls itself a home to "competitive pokemon".

Again, you're hounding on people getting upset at the "ban happy mentality" and throwing shots about not playing ORAS OU, but you aren't even providing definitions for your main talking points. Don't just say something is uncompetitive and then throw out a potshot at Showdown and competitive Pokemon. Give me (us) a detailed, thorough definition of what uncompetitive means to you.

I believe there are enough members of the community who feel strongly about this issue to warrant a suspect test, and this longing for the suspect isn't even "hype" or spontaneous because Gothitelle has been a plague to the ladder for a long time now.

It should be noted that suspects aren't determined by "enough members of the community feeling strongly." We who have overseen this process have seen plenty of examples of reactionary raging from the community to know that there has to be solid, thorough reasoning for a suspect. The best examples of this are both BP (the post aim tournament battle in insidescoop that Eo called out for) and Mega-Metagross (that a bunch of tournament players wanted gone and...was voted to stay and now barely anyone, including those same tournament players, believes is suspect worthy).

Most of the anti-ban/suspect posts I see are just people expressing their dislike for suspects in general, and don't really address actual reasons to keep Gothitelle in the metagame.

You are aware that the onus is on the the ban / suspect side to prove why Gothitelle is suspect worthy right? Not vice versa? The ban / suspect side is the one that needs to show what they feel is an acceptable definition of uncompetitive, discuss it with everyone, and assuming everyone accepts this, then show how gothitelle satisfies that definition of uncompetitive.

And hey, if you like Goth in the meta, vote to keep it! At least give us the right to vote on a subject that is highly disputed. If the current system is designed to have people vote on potential outcomes, then I see no reason to not just start this suspect and let the voting outcome speak for itself. Until there is a formal change to the system we have, we shouldn't be denied the right to have an influence on the metagame we play. If the higher ups on Smogon don't want just any person voting, then just do council votes only. That is absolutely better than being given the false sense of importance and influence when it comes to tiering. At the very least be transparent about your agenda.

This whole paragraph is just a ramble and I have no idea where to start to respond to it. How do you know this is highly disputed? What population is this highly disputed in? How did you determine that? Why is something that is highly disputed immediately deserving of a suspect? You are aware we don't just suspect things willy nilly right?

And what the fuck are you on about regarding transparency? chaos (who isn't on the ou council) stated his concern (that is called transparency). I (as the head of the ou council) asked people to respond to relevant points (again, that is called transparency) and no one has actually bothered to do so in any reasonable manner. Where is the definition of uncompetitive? Where are the arguments that argue, line by line, that Gothitelle breaks this definition of uncompetitive? How the FUCK are we not being transparent lmao? We are literally sitting here, in this topic started by an OU Council member asking the opinions of the community (again, this is called transparency), asking you to respond to points and stating how we feel.

I think you need to look up what "transparent" means because you are clearly grinding an axe in this paragraph and you mean to use some other word for whatever your agenda is.

 

[Bedschibaer]

A proposal for a suspect test based on one single team dominating the ladder is a little bit rushed. Especially since, as usual, it's not exactly Gothitelle that's the problem, here it is the combination of certain components that makes for a (seemingly) broken or uncompetitive team.

First of all I do agree with Harsha on the word uncompetitive being thrown around here. I think it's pretty obvious that the real problem here is that that certain team is rather easy to play. Stall in oras has become ridiculously passive, you barely have to make any decisions if you follow through your plan and know what to do in certain matchups because those teams aren't built around keeping up pressure with hazards or status, the objective is often to have a longer duration than your opponent. By that I mean it's going more into the direction of "not losing" instead of "winning", when it comes to your gameplan. Gothitelle efficiently removing many threats that hinder you from doing exactly that makes the team pretty much an autopilot for a good player. All you got to do is identify the one or two things that stop you from "not losing" and kill them off with Gothitelle, which is so much more convenient than your everyday lure. Is it therefor any more uncompetitive than the stall teams before? Hard to say, it's easy to play and that's what's generally considered as "cancer", "gay", not real grounds to ban something though.

The structure of those teams is always the same, at least what I think, makes the team what it is is the combination of Mega Sableye, a defogger (usually Skarmory), and Gothitelle. The rest of the team is somewhat interchangeable, but Mega sableye and Skarm make it incredibly hard for the opponent to even apply pressure onto the team. Gothitelle, from what I can tell from all the battles I've spectated in the last couple of days, is mostly there to abuse exactly that. If there is something that could apply pressure it has to be afraid of being trapped in most cases. What's so interesting to me is how Gothitelle is barely even considered good outside of exactly that role. I haven't seen anyone complaining about trapping based offense since ages. I haven't seen another top tier team with Gothitelle lately either. Gothitelle just enables this ability to play passively on autopilot, but instead of blindly banning Goth, which doesn't really perform in a problematic way on other teams, maybe asking the question if Gothitelle is actually the main offender here would make sense. I'm not implying that Mega Sableye is broken, I haven't followed or played OU alot lately, but to me it's the combination of Sableye and a defogger, or a spinner for that matter, that creates this "cancer" and "gay" way of playing the game. Sableye is really restricting in terms of the hazard game, which is an essential part of this game after all, Gothitelle just makes those restrictions even more abusable.

It's hard to say what really brings that team over the top, assuming it is there, and giving it some time to see if the metagame adapts would make alot sense. I feel like if there would be a suspect test right now most of the people would ban Gothitelle on the grounds of "I don't like playing against stall" and "might as well because stall is gay cancer" rather than looking at actual balance issues that might or might not be there, and since the quality of suspects has been a complaint lately forcing exactly that seems kinda counterintuitive to me.

 

[ABR]

Firstly, I apologize for the rant-like and insulting nature of my previous post. Aldaron and others, you are especially right about the need for a more clear definition of uncompetitive in the context of Gothitelle's effect specifically. It is obviously very difficult to use pure language and definitions to illustrate a point, so let me begin with an example scenario of Gothitelle being "uncompetitive" in my eyes.

Let's take the example of a team with Charizard-Y + Goth vs. any team with Chansey. Before I get into this do note that the same logic can generally be applied to a situation where there is an offensive pokemon and a defensive pokemon that checks it. In this case, Chansey is the clear and obvious switchin to Charizard. So let's say Charizard uses a move on the switch and does x damage to Chansey. Chansey is now at a certain and hp and wants to heal so it can come in on Charizard the next time around. Without any skill by the Charizard user, this is a win-win situation (I will explain how this is not ordinary or healthy teambuilding advantage later on). Chansey either heals up and lets Goth trap it, or it switches out leaving it at 2hko range the next time it comes in. The issue is, Gothitelle can do this to a ton of defensive pokemon. The difference between Gothitelle and something like Magnezone though, is that Gothitelle can do this to any non-ghost pokemon, which is a lot more than just a few steels in OU. I believe, in situations like these, Gothitelle is an issue because there was not any real skill involved in wearing down the check or winning the game.

Now I'll explain in more detail how Gothitelle is, in my eyes, uncompetitive in a similar scenario except against offensive threats. Let's say someone is using Gothitelle stall this time, and facing a team with breaker x (Manaphy lets say). So the game can play out normally, except for when Manaphy comes in. Every single time Manaphy comes in, the Gothitelle user can switch freely. The most common exception to this is when the Manaphy user has a Tyranitar, in which case its really just 50 50s (which aren't too competitive either, especially if they occur every time a pokemon comes in, but I can understand a distaste for this logic). So, again, the Gothitelle user does not make any plays or anything "skill-based" to win the game or beat a threat.

Some people may say that this is just Gothitelle having a good matchup, and not some portrayal of uncompetitive play. The thing is, the main way to counteract such Gothitelle play is by running otherwise "unviable/undesireable" sets/teams. An example of this is the recently used shed shell Manaphy/Togekiss, or the need to use more than one pokemon that can threaten Gothitelle stall. What I am saying is, Gothitelle either restricts teambuilding to an unhealthy degree or forces uncompetitive play in the case that the opponent of Gothitelle did not unconventionally prepare for Gothitelle.

Personally, I prefer a metagame where I don't need to run obscure/otherwise unviable teams to beat a Gothitelle. Because if I don't do this, I'm just going to "unskillfully" lose to a Gothitelle due to the nature of Shadow Tag (+ mostly trick in this case).

I know this may not cover all the points in regards to defining uncompetitiveness/unhealthiness, but I hope this is a more clear depiction of what I was trying to say earlier.

 

[Crestfall]

I believe there are enough members of the community who feel strongly about this issue to warrant a suspect test, and this longing for the suspect isn't even "hype" or spontaneous because Gothitelle has been a plague to the ladder for a long time now....And hey, if you like Goth in the meta, vote to keep it! At least give us the right to vote on a subject that is highly disputed. If the current system is designed to have people vote on potential outcomes, then I see no reason to not just start this suspect and let the voting outcome speak for itself. Until there is a formal change to the system we have, we shouldn't be denied the right to have an influence on the metagame we play. If the higher ups on Smogon don't want just any person voting, then just do council votes only. That is absolutely better than being given the false sense of importance and influence when it comes to tiering. At the very least be transparent about your agenda.

lmao @ tinfoil hat theories. Yes it's far more likely that chaos and co. are preventing this suspect from the inside (muh molemen) rather than the OU Council being reasonable and waiting for the metagame to attempt to develop and find answers for Goth.

And no, "popular demand" is rarely how suspect choices go. Yes an overwhelming amount of people constantly bringing up a certain mon will get the attention of council, but like always, they've been chosen because they're trusted to make the FINAL decision on what is suspect-worthy and what isn't. Smogon isn't a true democracy and hasn't been for a while. If it was all the popular users would have Admin and we wouldn't need councils for tiering decisions!
---

Anyways, moving on.
I'll try not to regurgitate the points dice and Ciele made too much. Metagame shifts always happen - in any competitive game where there are multiple choices in a team based environment. In pokemon's case it isn't a team of multiple people but rather a team of 6 "choices."

If the most popular and dominant choices become pokemon that fit onto what we call "HO" then, after some time, usage of the pokemon that fit in the archetype of "stall" would rise. This is the natural flow of any competitive game:

Pick W becomes prevalent > it dominates because no one expected it/was able to.prepare for it > Pick(s) X (Y and Z) emerge to stop Pick W (or to stop the Picks that W enables) > Pick W falls in usage because it struggles against the shift made to counter it > counters to picks xyz emerge etc. etc.

You're basically upset that Goth is SEEMINGLY overpowered right now because it's currently a popular meta choice, that fits onto /at least/ 2 team archetypes with ease, and has a relatively low opportunity cost to use. This does not mean it's broken, it just means people need to stop being stubborn and alter their teams to have a way to deal with goth. At the least let another week of ORAS OU go by in ST if you want to see how strong it really is. I'd love to see the usage it gets there. I imagine not even half of the players advocating for it's removal/suspect in this thread won't even bring it to ST the following weekend. And if smogtour is considered the "cream of the crop" when it comes to OU and fails to see the mon being abused I'd find it hard to believe it's actually broken. Rather, just a mon that people find "annoying" on the ladder. This annoyance is exacerbated by the increased ladder play because of the coming ladder tournament.
---

A single example - Manaphy (one of Goth's favorite targets as it can break stall open by itself at times).

Why not bring a shed shell mana? How is running shed shell on manaphy any more restrictive than building a team that doesn't just lose to a +1/1 ZardX? You carry checks and answers for other threats don't you? If your argument against this is "this item is dead weight versus non-goth teams," so what? If it's a threat that can cripple your team it's YOUR JOB to prepare for it - not the council's job to eliminate a mon that bothers you. If you have a team of 5 mons that lose to stall and a manaphy that breaks it, why wouldn't you do everything in your power to make sure manaphy is suited up to do it's job? Habing to bring an item to check a mon is not "unhealthy" as you keep repeating ad infinitum. It's a normal, and healthy part of mons.

If I bring a passho heatran because my team is weak to starmie and I want to lure it - but end up in a situation where I get hit with an EQ or I eliminated any threats with water stab early on that's just mons. It doesn't mean me bringing that berry was wrong, or that it "restricted" my teambuilding. I prepared for a threat accordingly and maybe it didn't work out against a team lacking an offensive water type. Cant expect every single set you run to work versus every single team.

tl;dr of this section - Since adapting is what you seem adamant against doing, it's no wonder you think Gothitelle is uncompetitive.

It's been a month (approximately) of high Gothi usage and you expect the entire OU metagame to have shifted in order to handle it? That's a pretty steep expectation when metagame shifts in some older generations take MUCH longer to materialize! Just like with Mega-Metagross this generation, change will happen. It might come around in an orthodox manner but it'll arrive one way or another. And then the mon you find so "uncompetitive" will have settled down to be a threat to be prepared for, rather than a "win button" for certain teams.

Also on the terms "uncompetitive" and "broken", please don't throw them around anymore. You're employing their usage as a buzzword that seems to fit your argument and makes it easier to the average reader to align themselves with. But this is because you seem unable to explicitly elicit what Goth's broken aspects are.


BIG TL;DR - Patience please.

 

[DragonWhale]

until olt, ladder play is hardly quality. have the biggest metagame shifts ever occured from the ladder? have the bw sd + acrobatics scizors, the sd + roost talonflames, the offensive mega scizors, the hp grass keldeos, etc. ever spawned from ladder play? tournaments are the core of metagame developments. your 8 months of ladder play hardly see much development compared to a world cup or spl of games.

I'm not going to argue that tournament games have better quality than ladder games because it goes without saying, but this honestly kinda bothers me. Are we just going to not acknowledge anything that happens in the ladder because there are people who deem it as not important as tournaments? Just because major developments happen in the tournament scene it shouldn't mean that the ladder is just there for show. There's still a decent level of competition there, but for you to be on your high horse and dismiss them is kinda disturbing. But you are right in that we should see if the meta can shift in response to Goth as it did Meta.

 

[henry]

I'm not going to argue that tournament games have better quality than ladder games because it goes without saying, but this honestly kinda bothers me. Are we just going to not acknowledge anything that happens in the ladder because there are people who deem it as not important as tournaments? Just because major developments happen in the tournament scene it shouldn't mean that the ladder is just there for show. There's still a decent level of competition there, but for you to be on your high horse and dismiss them is kinda disturbing. But you are right in that we should see if the meta can shift in response to Goth as it did Meta.

all he's saying is that tournament play is a better indication of the true current competitive metagame when compared to that of the ladder (he's right), and for a variety of reasons.

 

[jpw234]

A single example - Manaphy (one of Goth's favorite targets as it can break stall open by itself at times).

Why not bring a shed shell mana? How is running shed shell on manaphy any more restrictive than building a team that doesn't just lose to a +1/1 ZardX? You carry checks and answers for other threats don't you? If your argument against this is "this item is dead weight versus non-goth teams," so what? If it's a threat that can cripple your team it's YOUR JOB to prepare for it - not the council's job to eliminate a mon that bothers you. If you have a team of 5 mons that lose to stall and a manaphy that breaks it, why wouldn't you do everything in your power to make sure manaphy is suited up to do it's job? Habing to bring an item to check a mon is not "unhealthy" as you keep repeating ad infinitum. It's a normal, and healthy part of mons.

If I bring a passho heatran because my team is weak to starmie and I want to lure it - but end up in a situation where I get hit with an EQ or I eliminated any threats with water stab early on that's just mons. It doesn't mean me bringing that berry was wrong, or that it "restricted" my teambuilding. I prepared for a threat accordingly and maybe it didn't work out against a team lacking an offensive water type. Cant expect every single set you run to work versus every single team.

tl;dr of this section - Since adapting is what you seem adamant against doing, it's no wonder you think Gothitelle is uncompetitive.

Problem (or rather possible problem) with this reasoning is that it applied almost word-for-word for Baton Pass, but that had people begging for a quickban. We very well could have seen adaptations where people started running Eject Button. Maybe you didn't agree with the BP ban (I didn't); if that's the case ignore me. But if you wanted to ban BP I don't see how this reasoning works here.

Where is the definition of uncompetitive? Where are the arguments that argue, line by line, that Gothitelle breaks this definition of uncompetitive?

A demand like this feels like moving the goalposts mostly because A. there have been people discussing and explaining the problems with Goth/STag (see: PDC's OP, Finch's post, chimpact's post) which you completely ignored, and B. there's no accepted definition of uncompetitive so how can anybody make a post that will satisfy you? But in an attempt to do that, I'll quote a definition of "competitive" (and a justification for it) that I've proposed before:

Here are some statements I'm presuming to come to my definition of competitiveness. I believe them to be axioms, but they are certainly up for debate.
1. A competitive game is played with the goal of determining a winner by testing the skill of the involved players.
- Not by randomness (a drawing) or arbitrary standards (your height)
2. In Pokemon, skill refers to the ability to make the best choices in team-construction and battle situations.
- Each player has the exact same breadth of choices available to them pre-battle (referring to Pokemon, items, EVs, etc.)
- Each player has the exact same breadth of choices available to them in-battle (using one of the legal moves or switching to a non-fainted Pokemon)
- Each choice is equally effective for every player (unlike in athletic events, where different competitors might execute the same choice to different results based on their strength, speed, etc.)
- Players can only differentiate themselves in terms of which choices they make
3. Having more choices better tests skill.
- Presume player A always makes the best choice, and player B selects from the available choices at random. If there are 2 choices, player A will be correct twice as often as player B. With 3 choices, 3 times as often - with N choices, N times as often. The more choices there are, the more likely player A is to be rewarded for being more skilled (which is desirable).
- There is some inflection point where the number of choices becomes overwhelming, but I feel that it is unlikely to be reached in competitive Pokemon
4. Having balanced choices better tests skill.
- If players have N choices that are each the best choice (1/N)% of the time, players will be unable to achieve good results by mindlessly selecting any choice - they will need to use skill to determine which choice best fits a given situation. If a single choice is the best a significantly higher portion of the time, players will achieve good results by constantly making that choice, which decreases the benefits of skill.

So, my definition: A "competitive" game element is one that increases the number of balanced choices available to each player. Contrastingly, an "uncompetitive" game element is one that decreases the number of balanced choices available to each player.
Some points in favor of this definition:
- It gives a clear metric by which to measure the competitiveness of game elements, which is good. For example, while appealing to RNG invites debates about whether Hydro Pump is uncompetitive, relying on the number of available choices clearly distinguishes sleep and freeze from other RNG-based elements (since they take away a player's ability to move entirely).
- It is applicable to all types of bans that we deliberate on, as opposed to perpetuating some arbitrary distinction between bans of Pokemon and other game elements. Bans of Pokemon are usually done when it is determined that a particular Pokemon is no longer a balanced choice.

By this metric, Shadow Tag (along with Arena Trap) is uncompetitive because it cuts off the most important choice available to any player: the ability to switch and improve their matchup. This definition has the positive points of also working well with our previous bans based on uncompetitiveness: Moody, for example, reduces the meaningfulness of player's choices by giving random boosts to a Pokemon regardless of choices made; the same goes for OHKO moves and sleep/freeze on more than one Pokemon.
Of course, this is contingent on accepting a definition of "competitive", which is never going to happen and why your post seems like a way of brushing the issue aside.

 

[Aldaron]

A demand like this feels like moving the goalposts mostly because A. there have been people discussing and explaining the problems with Goth/STag (see: PDC's OP, Finch's post, chimpact's post) which you completely ignored

My problem was NOT with statements made regarding the "problems" with Goth/STag, but with how those statements apply to the argument.

Anyone can state Goth reduces team building viability / makes battles match up or 50/50 reliant / Shadow Tag is uncompetitive; actually making statements have MEANING is a different task altogether, and the most important task to do.

To what extent are the problems stated problematic? Why is this a concern? Why should we change the status quo and, as some are asking, do a quickban for it? These are all important questions to as because we've seen what happens if we pander solely to the rage / hysteria that rises up so often in this game.

It isn't enough to just make statements like Kyurem-B destroys all stall in BW; you have to attach relative meaning to it.

Please don't claim someone "completely ignored" posts when he is asking for more thoroughness.

, and B. there's no accepted definition of uncompetitive so how can anybody make a post that will satisfy you? But in an attempt to do that, I'll quote a definition of "competitive" (and a justification for it) that I've proposed before:

Yes, I directly stated that we do not have a definition of uncompetitive that is accepted. I directly asked him to write his own so we could discuss it as well as speak about his statements within the context of his definition of uncompetitive.

Of course, this is contingent on accepting a definition of "competitive", which is never going to happen and why your post seems like a way of brushing the issue aside.

Of course it can happen. It is within the power of the OU Council to vote on a framework for uncompetitive (and leave it somewhat open ended to subjective judgment calls if necessary) whether or not everyone agrees.

In fact, I have already mentioned this on irc, but I am half of the mind to close all the PR topics that are active right now and make settling down a framework (note I keep saying framework because it doesn't have to super specific or even permanent, just logical and thorough in its approach) for uncompetitive the #1 priority for PR, because, atm, it feels like we are putting the cart before the horse.

Also, again, I've responded in this topic multiple times, and not specifically about this particular conversation. I don't know why you think you can claim someone is brushing the issue aside when he is asking for very specific things, but hey, I guess that's your prerogative.

 

[jpw234]

Of course it can happen. It is within the power of the OU Council to vote on a framework for uncompetitive (and leave it somewhat open ended to subjective judgment calls if necessary) whether or not everyone agrees.

In fact, I have already mentioned this on irc, but I am half of the mind to close all the PR topics that are active right now and make settling down a framework (note I keep saying framework because it doesn't have to super specific or even permanent, just logical and thorough in its approach) for uncompetitive the #1 priority for PR, because, atm, it feels like we are putting the cart before the horse.

This is a good idea, I think, since a lot of discussions do kinda hinge on at least a broad understanding of what "uncompetitive" means.

 

[Dread Arceus]

Can we re-ignite this thread? There's not really anything that makes STAG any less broken than it was a month and a half ago. Now that we have this nifty tiering framework:

II.) Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant

specifically:
A.) This can be match up related; think the determination that BP took the battling skill aspect out of the player's hands and made it overwhelmingly a team match up issue, where even with the best moves made each time by a standard team often were not enough.

STAG offers the user the ability to beat a team at team preview by using a mon with scarce checks (Mega Sableye and Shedinja are the most infamous as of late) or a playstyle (stall) with scarce checks, and then trapping and killing the opposing teams counters to that mon which are very hard (and often redundant) to fit on the same team. By doing this, STAG creates a scenario in which you can pretty much just lose or win at team preview.

 

[trc]

Whichever decision you come to (while I believe Gothitelle is fine in OU I couldn't really care), can we say that because Gothitelle itself is such a middling and flawed Pokemon that if it is considered unhealthy in OU, it is solely because of Shadow Tag being unhealthy and not because of Gothitelle's specific traits in additiona to Shadow Tag? I'd rather PU be able to keep a perfectly viable Pokemon than lose it because Gothitelle is considered "so absolutely broken but the reasons why it is suppposedly broken don't apply to other Shadow Tag users" which is obviously untrue. What I'm saying is, either ban Shadow Tag or don't, but don't just halfway solve the 'problem', because the aspects which make Gothitelle potentially 'broken' (being able to trap and remove Pokemon without the opponent being able to switch applies to all Shadow Tag Pokemon, while their methods of trapping are different the same result is achieved. Also I honestly think in some tiers trapping is unhealthy but in OU I kind of think it leads to a larger divide between 'good' players and 'average' players which I think is a good thing.