Kyogre / Rayquaza "suspect" test

[obi]

I was talking to Chris a few minutes ago in the Shoddy chat when he recommended putting an obviously uber Pokemon through the test. The purpose is not to check whether something like Rayquaza or Kyogre is not uber, but to give a baseline data point to see what the effect of a single uber Pokemon is on the tier.

/edit: Chris as in Chris is me, not any of the other 50 billion Chrises we have here.

 

[Great Sage]

I recommend Rayquaza; Kyogre supports certain types of teams much better than others, which might cause error.

 

[Colonel M]

Rayquaza would be a Pokemon worthy of "testing" (if I want to say that word). Pokemon such as Kyogre and Groudon would cause a contriversy because of the other Pokemon that work well with it. And if this is for individually, Rayquaza would fit the bill better on top of others (Dialga, Palkia, etc). At least I think that's what you're mentioning right?

 

[Jibaku]

I recommend Rayquaza for "suspect". Kyogre's auto Drizzle, as stated before, is massive team support and the outcome from this Pokemon is fairly obvious considering its ability to most things in the game with Specs Water Spout, forcing every team to have Ludicolo, Special Defensive Kingdra or Quagsire to stop it. The former two benefits from rain as well.

Rayquaza, on the other hand, is fairly similar to Salamence in a way (except with higher stats, bigger Special movepool, Air Lock, Swords Dance and ExtremeSpeed), so the impact is probably less pronounced than Kyogre's "testing", and will probably be more interesting as well.

 

[Jumpman16]

I agree with this and further support Rayquaza as the "test dummy" for reasons already stated. The best thing about this is that it doesn't have to get in the way of other Suspect tests as we could make a separate ladder for it instead of either waiting months to see what its impact is or squeezing it in next on the Suspect Ladder when we put it back up after Skymin's been processed.

 

[obi]

Goldfan brought up a good point to me in PM:

Hi There,

I say your thread in the Policy review thread, and what I have seen is that people are saying that Rayquaza should be put up for testing, because it won't shake up the Metagame as much with it's ability, but I would like to have the argument for Kyogre heard. People have said that Kyogre will "overcentralise" and make a lot of sets "too broken" which I believe is exactly the point. The point is to put something that will break the game is too see the effects of it, not put something slightly less UBER in that won't break it as much. We need to truly see the effects of a broken Pokemon in the Metagame and I believe that Kyogre will definately allow us to see this better than Rayquaza. If I were badged I would have posted this myself, but I hope that you can pass this message on, I think the posters so far a being a little closed-minded and aren't seeing both sides of the argument.

Thankyou very much for your time.

 

[RBG]

Lets compare the two:

Kyogre: Provides massive team support with its ability. And it is very strong by itself.

Rayquaza: Is a menace by it self, does not necessarily support the team as much with its ability.

To me, the key point would be what kind of Pokemon are we testing?

Lati@s, Mew, Deoxys-D, Manaphy

3 of those are good because of what they do by themselves. 2 are good because they provide Team Support.

I would prefer a Kyogre test, cause it fits both.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

A part of me is disagreeing with this because it may put some kind of bias in the polls. What if we tested Wobbuffet right after we tested Kyogre? The first thing that would come to my mind is "wow, Wobbuffet is NOTHING compared to how beastly Kyogre was!". What about Garchomp? "Wow, SDYacheChomp takes a whole turn to set up lol, im just going to use scarfogre's water spout and tear through everything!"

I just think that this may put the wrong image of an "uber" into peoples minds. All of the pokemon that are obviously Uber are on the "obviously Uber" list already, there is very little argument to be done with things that aren't on the suspect list. The suspect tests may shift towards "is this pokemon as good as Kyogre?" and not "is this pokemon overpowering in OU?". Using something that we agree is "too broken" and putting it on display is just going to make everything that isn't as broken (basically everything) look much worse, especially from a competitive standpoint. "I dont think Deoxys-Speed looks like much of a threat after seeing Kyogre run around! I vote OU!"

I think if we are actually that interested in a dry run, we should put a pokemon that doesn't just have the sheer power that Kyogre has, but is still "clearly uber". I would suggest something like Lugia that isn't going to ingrain the "an Uber is an unstoppable offensive behemoth with 150 base spatk and the best ability in the game" idea into peoples heads, but will still get the same point as the one Obi is trying to express across.

Although that is not to say I don't support a dry run...we should certainly try this before the proposed UU test.

 

[Toothache]

I think you're taking a too simple of a view on this jrrrrrr. Using Rayquaza as a baseline is not to be saying 'is this Pokemon better than Rayquaza?' when we test future suspects, but as a means towards finding a benchmark where we can more easily determine whether a Pokemon is either uber or OU. Also I dont get why you brought up Wobbuffet when that has already been tested and its place has been established.

IMO Rayquaza might be a good place to start, but also consider Ho-oh (which could have its great power mitigated somewhat by the ever-common Stealth Rock in OU), or Wynaut (currently banned, but doesnt have the defences so is not as much of a threat as Wobbuffet). In testing Wynaut, we should also get out of the mentality of treating evolutions the same, since they are different Pokemon in every way.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

I understand that Toothache, I just think that setting the benchmark of what we know to be Uber at "Rayquaza" is too high to be useful when trying to decide on something like Skymin.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Couldnt we use Garchomp or Deoxys?

I mean honestly, I dont really expect much useful information to be gained from allowing Kyogre or Rayquaza.. Obviously they are going to dominate, they already dominate in Ubers. If you are going to test something it should be something that isnt really used much in Ubers..

Have a nice day.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

Yeah Hip, I agree...thanks for getting across what I couldn't quite make clear.

That's why I suggested Lugia, since it won't fail but it won't be quite the dominant force, and its usage is slowly declining due to the offensive nature of the metagame in my experience (there are many ways around it in Ubers now). Even Giratina or Manaphy may also be good candidates..

 

[Jumpman16]

I think a few of you have glossed over the point in Obi's post, and that is to give us a "baseline data point" which I interpret to mean as from a statistics perspective. Testing Rayquaza would not be to necessarily to see "that" it dominates, but "in what ways" and "how much".

 

[jrrrrrrr]

I know, but after seeing the ways that Rayquaza dominates and then looking at something like Shaymin-s, Skymin just suddenly got a lot worse, didn't it?

I'm just saying that the "baseline data point" that Rayquaza or Kyogre would give is not comparable to any of our current suspects and would not actually help us prove a point in any way. Who cares if Rayquaza dominates the metagame "a lot" "by SDing once and then ohkoing everying", because nothing that we are going to test will be producing those results. If anything on our suspect list would provide similar results to Rayquaza, I'm pretty sure it would be banned already.

This test is like setting a Limbo bar at 5' for a party of midgets. Sure, we could see if they passed but you KNOW they will...and the data we get from that will not have any correlation to the data we'd get if we wanted to predict how the "average crowd" would fare under the same limbo bar.

I don't object to a dry run on a separate ladder if people are really interested but I really think that this is a useless waste of time.

edit- I didn't know that we could "post PMs from concerned members" here...I wish I knew that in a bunch of other threads where people brought up legitimate points to me in PM but I either had to ignore them or somehow work them into my discussion =\. He hints at things that Hip and I have already pointed out with his first two points, but then he brings up a really interesting third point that hasn't been talked about yet. Anyhoo, here goes:

I honestly don't see the point of this test.

First, I think the test it self-defeating - it assumes that every Uber has the same type of effect in the metagame. The easiest example is the difference between Rayquaza and Wobbuffet - it is obvious to see what I mean. Of course, even ignoring Wobbuffet who is commonly called the anomaly, we can see how Pokemon like Kyogre and Rayquaza each have their own ways of wrecking the metagame. I don't see how this will be useful at *all* in the suspect test, if that is the purpose behind this to begin with, considering things we are testing are not quite that broken.

We already know what broken is, and how it affects the metagame. You may argue that "we don't have a good definition of a uber", but that's particularly because the LINE of what is uber and what is just "OU level centralizing" is a very very grey line we are experimenting with. The second reason I find this test pointless is that it doesn't solve the problem of where to draw the line of what is "uber" or not simply because every Pokemon has a "centralizing" effect on the metagame to begin with. The line we are skirting around for the test is "at what point is the pokemon centralizing too much"? It doesn't solve the problem at all.

Third reason. The test purposely sets up a non-competitive metagame. The results will be flawed - as there is *zero* incentive to play seriously in this ladder, unlike suspect where there is an incentive involved in the ability to vote. What kind of results will you expect? Will you hold a tournament and hand out trophy badges? Because that is honestly the only way you will generate enough incentive to play seriously within this "ladder". it is a purposely broken metagame - what incentive is there to play competitively, because the user is "bored"? Do we want results that came form a bored user who decided to toy around as an "objective" result from what is uber or not? Creating a new ladder for this will have this exact effect.

 

[Great Sage]

To Goldfan's PM, he is absolutely misunderstanding why we support Rayquaza over Kyogre. It's not because Rayquaza is "less Uber" than Kyogre, which isn't even true to begin with; it's because Kyogre's ability introduces an extreme bias towards a certain type of team (rain teams) that may cause aberrations and not provide the proper information. Its ability makes it so dissimilar to other Pokemon that it would be impossible to use a Kyogre test as a base point, because the results may not be comparable to whatever suspect we decide to test.

 

[Aeolus]

I'm coming down on the side of jrrrrrrrrr here. I think this will give people the wrong idea. There is a risk that the "baseline data" that you guys want to collect will substitute for the definition of uber that voters use when casting their ballot. Obviously Lati@s and Ho-oh aren't going to have anywhere near the same effect as Rayquaza, Kyogre, or even Lugia. I don't think the potential benefits of this test are worth the risk that it will cloud the already murky waters that characterize the border between OU and Uber.

If we decide to do this, the test pokemon needs to be one that is as similar as possible to the suspects outlined in the priorities list and one that everyone agrees belongs in the uber tier.

 

[gorm]

If we do do something like this i think we need to do it with the support of a clear ubers definition. We can worry about participation later, and odds are "nu u" is gonna happen first, so basically i am agreeing with aeolus at least for now.

looking forward though, As far as kyogre goes, rain dance teams are heavily favoured but how long will a metagame with only rain teams splashing up against eachother last? I'd actually be interested to see what kind of "metateaming" would rise up from such an environment, TS hail teams rising perhaps?... Unless I'm wrong and everyone coinflips with some variation of RL's team, but i still dont feel like it would be an irrelevant baseline like GS is arguing, though i doubt it's an ideal one just because centralization just tends to happen anyways like with garchomp in pre pt.

As far as a "stable baseline" I'd recommend lugia (who along with skarmbliss can pretty much halt the ou metagame bar cbtar)

 

[jrrrrrrr]

This isn't really too relevant, I just want to clear things up about what I said initially.

Lugia's defenses clearly make it Uber, and they may actually be comparable in a potential Deoxys-D test, which is why I suggested it. Lugia isn't exactly overpowering, it just doesn't die. It won't put the "unstoppable offensive machine" image that something like Rayquaza/Kyogre would give, but it is still as close to invincible as it comes in OU.

Oh and @Gorm- Lugia doesn't give a shit about CBTar, lol. Unless Lugia switches into Stealth Rock and CB Stone Edge, Tyranitar can't get around it. Don't underestimate it!

 

[Jumpman16]

If we decide to do this, the test pokemon needs to be one that is as similar as possible to the suspects outlined in the priorities list and one that everyone agrees belongs in the uber tier.

The fact that none of the Suspects yet decided on have had a unanimous "uber" Stage 2 tag placed on them, along with the knowledge that even things like Ho-oh, Mew and Darkrai were or are considered Suspects, should be indication enough that just barely crossing the fine line between perceived OU and uber is not going to be enough here. There are only a few pokemon that we can assume everyone agrees belong in the uber tier, and they are: Rayquaza, Kyogre, Groudon, Dialga, Palkia, Mewtwo, Giratina, Giratina-O, Deoxys-F, most likely Lugia and probably Deoxys. Everything else is, well, suspect, at least in the minds of a few people (even Wobbuffet).

Obi does need to post in this thread again though, as I am under the impression that he's interested in what knowledge we can gain from a statistical perspective, not just a "look how uber this is" one.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

The knowledge we gain from a statistical perspective would be useless, there is no incentive to take this test seriously. I know for a fact that I wouldn't bother making a serious team for a ladder like this, and a few other people I've talked to seemed to be in agreeance.

Not only would there be no reason to take the test seriously, there would be no reason to take the results seriously for reasons that I've already outlined- they will have no relation to anything we are testing. Who cares if Rayquaza is "obviously Uber", that doesn't help us at all when it comes time to test Manaphy or Deoxys-D. The only thing we'll know is "Rayquaza is THIS uber" but we still won't know what the cutoff point of being "too uber" is.

I just think that even though this test has its heart in the right place, its head isn't quite there yet.