Actually, the least likely scenario that people are assuming (without going into the territory of using useless things like Regice / Registeel for the purposes of countering Shaymin-S) is 27%, which is a far cry better than a critical hit.
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Now batting in the World Series of Pokemon Suspects: Shaymin-S!
- Thread starter Jumpman16
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Well considering the amount of pokemon that existed in OU that could do this before Skymin even existed, better, I'm not sure how much weight this argument holds. If you think this luck is too much, then you would also have to ban a ton of other things =\. Togekiss' paraflinchhax, Scope Lens Super Luck Focus Energy'd Absol using Night Slash, moves that cause Freeze and Paralysis as a side effect. Discharge has a higher rate of Paralysis every turn than Skymin has of beating Blissey over 3, is that not a lot of hax?
It's different than OHKO moves, because there are legitimate defenses and checks against Skymin that exist already. The only checks to OHKO moves are Sturdy pokemon, which are extremely rare and not usually able to switch in because of their various weaknesses and low SpDefs. If you attempt to beat a Blissey with an attacking Skymin, you are making very poor choices since the odds are so stacked against you. I'm not sure why everybody is painting Skymin as an unhittable flinch machine, after the first turn the probability is in your opponents favor. Skymin isn't getting many free turns because of its piss-poor typing, low defenses and lack of a support movepool. Using Skymin is not a free spin of the wheel like OHKO moves usually are. I'll refer you to my "Water Absorb Sheer Cold Lapras comes into Suicune" example where there is no risk at all for the Lapras user, since no Sturdy pokemon will be coming into a pokemon with special Water STAB and the Suicune will obviously be switching out. With Skymin, if you stay in over the course of FOUR TURNS to risk it, you are making a huge gamble. The risk is really great, you will lose Skymin if it gets hit.
Oh, and there is the fact that it is susceptible to the ever-so-common priority move and the OTHER fact that it is outsped by every single choice scarfer except Tyranitar. Skymin gets hit, a lot, and its defenses are not great. Have any of you guys actually learned how to play against Skymin yet or am I the only one who managed to figure it out? Now if only I could stop getting so unlucky, I could fly higher on the leaderboard with my newfound knowledge...
Um, Abomasnow's defences are nowhere near bad lol.
DarknessMalice-- I find it odd you keep talking about this "greater than 50%" argument. You are aware that if you're always making decisions that have a 57% chance of winning, you won't make it very high on the leaderboard.
IE-- If I won only won 57% of my matches, I'd have a relatively shitty win ratio.
A team that wins is a team where the members have a very very high chance of doing what they're meant to do.
IE-- If I won only won 57% of my matches, I'd have a relatively shitty win ratio.
A team that wins is a team where the members have a very very high chance of doing what they're meant to do.
Actually, Specs Skymin only 2HKOs 232 HP / 0 Sp. Def Scizor with Seed Flare, and you'll need a Sp. Def drop in the first turn, plus SR. Life Orb Skymin doesn't even 2HKO in this case (although you could just go with Air Slash...). If it has a Scarf/Leftovers... well, it's a 3HKO even with a Sp. Def drop in the first turn, while 6 HP / 0 Def Skymin eats 39.77% - 47.37% from Bullet Punch (WITHOUT a Life Orb). Needless to say, it's a 2HKO either with Life Orb/Band, or Stealth Rock. While Scizor does risk itself in the first scenario, has a high chance of being killed in the second (as the Skymin user could just use Air Slash in the second turn instead), it laughs at the third (which is the most common), and Skymin itself risks its health to take out just one pokémon. There's no "big risk" to Scizor that isn't also faced by Skymin. Both sides are pretty much equal in this case, I think.
Oh yeah, if Scizor comes first and is the Light Screen variant, Skymin is fucked. Even Air Slash is a 3HKO. But it's just too much theorymon, right.
REMINDER:
Testing ends in 10 days on November 29th. The guidance for voting requirements has been altered to a rating of 1655 and a deviation of 65. All voters who attain that level are guaranteed the right to vote regardless of how many people reach that level.
We are shooting for a total voter pool of 75-100 individuals. If not that many people attain the 1655/65 threshold, we reserve the right to relax the guidelines until we reach the desired population of voters.
As with previous suspect tests, I will accept applications for special permission after 11/29 if you have extenuating circumstances. Very, very few of these are granted, so don't bank on it.
If you have questions for me, PM or IRC is the best method for contacting me.
Testing ends in 10 days on November 29th. The guidance for voting requirements has been altered to a rating of 1655 and a deviation of 65. All voters who attain that level are guaranteed the right to vote regardless of how many people reach that level.
We are shooting for a total voter pool of 75-100 individuals. If not that many people attain the 1655/65 threshold, we reserve the right to relax the guidelines until we reach the desired population of voters.
As with previous suspect tests, I will accept applications for special permission after 11/29 if you have extenuating circumstances. Very, very few of these are granted, so don't bank on it.
If you have questions for me, PM or IRC is the best method for contacting me.
Are you sure relaxing the threshold to get a "desired" population of users is a good way to go about doing things? It's rather unfair to those who actually do take the threshold to heart and attain it. You don't see them lowering the voting age because of a poor turnout of young people, do you?
I can tell you now you won't get the 75 voters you're looking for. I actually see little wrong with the pool sizes we've had until now.
OK Darknessmalice, it has become obvious that you lack the reading comprehension to understand what I said, so I am going to stop posting in response to what you say. Every time I refute one of your arguments you come back with an asinine theorymon situtation that nobody would ever find themselves in that is irrelevant to what I said. You basically took random words out of my post and replied to them instead of actually understanding the point of my post and responding to that. Who cares if Skarmory has Sturdy, are you really going to send it into Lapras (a known user of Thunderbolt)? Who cares if Donphan has Sturdy, Gliscor beats it 1-on-1 anyways due to Roost and Donphan's lack of recovery. I already addressed this point but you completely ignored it (along with most of the rest of my post).
You said it yourself, this is what YOU said when talking about Skymin vs. Blissey:
So even though there is a small chance that Skymin users can win...if the best move is to switch out, then it doesn't matter. What you are arguing for Skymin being Uber is advocating making bad moves.
Despite everything you said, you never actually proved anything against my argument. LonelyNess' comparison to OHKO moves is not legitimate. It takes one turn to launch OHKO moves, and they are FREE turns. You aren't risking anything when you use an ohko move on the switch. If you keep spamming ohko moves while they have a counter in, you are making a bad choice. Just like if a Skymin user stays in against Blissey, you are making a bad choice. Skymin never has the luxury of free turns, it always has to predict what attack to use or start setting up its Growths/seeds. Bad choices get rewarded with losses in pokemon. What is so hard to understand about this? I don't see how losing is banworthy, maybe someone can enlighten me.
...and people accuse ME of bitching about luck...
Oh and even though I am not against a small voting pool size, I think that bigger is better. We want a more accurate sample size. Anybody that has learned anything about statistics will tell you that a larger sample size is always better. Either way, I like how its being handled...by scaling the requirements AFTER the deadline you make people want to get the guarantee instead of hoping that we need to lower the requirements.
You said it yourself, this is what YOU said when talking about Skymin vs. Blissey:
So even though there is a small chance that Skymin users can win...if the best move is to switch out, then it doesn't matter. What you are arguing for Skymin being Uber is advocating making bad moves.
Despite everything you said, you never actually proved anything against my argument. LonelyNess' comparison to OHKO moves is not legitimate. It takes one turn to launch OHKO moves, and they are FREE turns. You aren't risking anything when you use an ohko move on the switch. If you keep spamming ohko moves while they have a counter in, you are making a bad choice. Just like if a Skymin user stays in against Blissey, you are making a bad choice. Skymin never has the luxury of free turns, it always has to predict what attack to use or start setting up its Growths/seeds. Bad choices get rewarded with losses in pokemon. What is so hard to understand about this? I don't see how losing is banworthy, maybe someone can enlighten me.
...and people accuse ME of bitching about luck...
Oh and even though I am not against a small voting pool size, I think that bigger is better. We want a more accurate sample size. Anybody that has learned anything about statistics will tell you that a larger sample size is always better. Either way, I like how its being handled...by scaling the requirements AFTER the deadline you make people want to get the guarantee instead of hoping that we need to lower the requirements.
I also understand statistics, but wanting a larger sample size has more to do with a sample. There's nothing random about this process. We're not taking a random sample, we're sorting.
Right now we're taking the gyarados because our goal is to find out about the gyarados from the stream. Having more gyarados would be great, but if you've already caught all the gyarados, even if you throw out a bigger net, no matter how many magikarp you get they won't tell you anything more about the gyarados.
What I'm saying is that those users who made the requirements-- I don't see them as a sample, I see them as the population, a population we defined when we defined the requirements. If you've got a population of only 30, than you don't need more data, you already know everything about the population.
Right now we're taking the gyarados because our goal is to find out about the gyarados from the stream. Having more gyarados would be great, but if you've already caught all the gyarados, even if you throw out a bigger net, no matter how many magikarp you get they won't tell you anything more about the gyarados.
What I'm saying is that those users who made the requirements-- I don't see them as a sample, I see them as the population, a population we defined when we defined the requirements. If you've got a population of only 30, than you don't need more data, you already know everything about the population.
I agree. That's why most people who have a very high ranking don't have Skymin. Rather, it's that lower ranked people us it, Skymin's luck gives it victory against a higher ranked person, and eventually, the gap between the very good and other players lowers, as loss due to luck is more common.
It's the population of the higher ranked people. Technically, it's not a ranking, but it excludes beginners to the metagame (I fought a Giratina using Hyper Beam on my Blissey), which is a good thing. It's probably better this way. And I agree with Jrrrrrrr that the more people voting, the better (without including the beginners).
Garchomp territory was "You need to sacrifice a pokémon to beat it." Swapping out is not sacrificing.
The most important rule in pokémon competitive play is to have a team that is actually a team. Y'know to cover each other's weaknesses. With Garchomp that's not so easy getting slapped in the face by a strong Earthquake or an Outrage.
With Skymin you don't have to make that sacrifice because you have so many pokémon that can take the hits and kill it in return.
I am not even using Stealth Rock and I am not having much of a hard time against it.
If you want to negate the luck factor use something faster. Over the long run the luck factor is unreliable I mean that's why you don't see paraflinch Togekiss or parafusion Lanturn on every team.
With such a limited movepool you can tell what is coming, so you can make a safe assumption on what would be sent out with taking the least damage possible.
Even if you have to deal with an odd Hidden Power you know that it is usually at the price of perhaps Subsitute or one of its trademark moves, so you can predict around it.
339 SpcAtt Skymin's Air Slash, without an item boost, does 141-166 damage to 0 SpD neutral nature Scizor. That's a 2HKO to 4 Hlth Scizor without SR support, and a likely 2HKO to 252 Hlth, 4 SpD Scizor with SR damage.
LO Air Slash can even 2HKO 176 Hlth, 176 SpD, Adamant Scizor, the most specially defensive Scizor you should find, without SR damage. The 2HKO is guaranteed with SR damage. Seed Flare with SpD Drop + Air Slash does more than 2 consecutive Air Slashes.
So in short, Scizor has a hard time swapping in on Skymin (the same can be said for Skymin swapping in on Scizor). Light Screen Scizor won't find the time to set it up even if Skymin swaps in after a pokemon is KOed.
Very few faster things can swap in safely. ScarfMance loses over 50% of his health to LO Air Slash, plus SR damage, then Skymin swaps out and Salamance will die from another SR swap in. So he can't swap in on Air Slash or Substitute. Crobat, as discussed many times before, suicides with Brave Bird on LO Skymin if he swaps into Air Slash (or Substitute) and can't Roost off damage thanks to Earth Power. Scarf Heatran can't swap in on Earth Power (or Substitute). They can work, but they face a large risk, swapping into 2 out of 4 of Skymin's possible moves is bad.
I agree with the rest.
How is being able to come in on Seed Flare and do ~50% with Bullet Punch "not able to switch in"? It can do the same for Earth Power or HP not-Fire too. Obviously it isn't the "best" paper counter or whatever, but to say Scizor has no business coming into Skymin isn't necessarily true.
Well, scizor's certainly a better switch in than ttar, who's already a pretty good switch in by my book. >>
Chris, I somehow feel it's not even worth replying to dark's posts anymore. The requirement deadline is next week, and we'll see what people think soon enough.
Even though I've never felt impressed at all by darknessmalice's posts, after being this noisy about how uber skymin is, the fact that he's making some excuse to not vote (whether that be because of a lack of computer access or because in reality he can't make the requirements, whatever the reason) is honestly disappointing.
Chris, I somehow feel it's not even worth replying to dark's posts anymore. The requirement deadline is next week, and we'll see what people think soon enough.
Even though I've never felt impressed at all by darknessmalice's posts, after being this noisy about how uber skymin is, the fact that he's making some excuse to not vote (whether that be because of a lack of computer access or because in reality he can't make the requirements, whatever the reason) is honestly disappointing.
Seed Flare with SpDrop, followed by Air Slash is a 2HKO. If he comes on Substitute or Earth Power, he is fine. And I never said Scizor has no business coming into Skymin, I just said a hard time, which you would understand if you had any English skills.
Considering that a 252 Hlth, 4 SpDef neutral nature Ttar takes 80-94% from LO Seed Flare, and Skymin will even outspeed Jolly Scarf Ttar, Ttar is a horrible switch in.
lol
Perhaps for a second when we name switch ins you might stop and think to yourself "Hmm... I'm sure that because they didn't say "counter" they didn't mean every move on the set... I better not reply by pointing out the obvious move that they can't switch in on because that's missing the point of the switch-in."
This is completely ignoring little things like Scizor having priority to get around being 2HKOed if Skymin is sufficiently weakened (SR + Life Orb, for example) or Tyranitar being mostly a switch in for the Scarf / Specs set.
This is completely ignoring little things like Scizor having priority to get around being 2HKOed if Skymin is sufficiently weakened (SR + Life Orb, for example) or Tyranitar being mostly a switch in for the Scarf / Specs set.
Skymin isnt too much of a problem, if you can anticipate it on the switch in its easyto deal with. Registeel is also an awesome counter, and with spin supposrt Regice works as well.
Does the minimun thing mean the CRE or the two numbers under the CRE?
Does the minimun thing mean the CRE or the two numbers under the CRE?
Though it's a bit outdated, darknessmalice should refer to my signature for why his arguments aren't being received well.
No doubt if Skymin is sufficiently weakened, than Scizor can OHKO with Bullet Punch. Such an argument works both ways, that Skymin with residual damage is prone to a Scizor or Metagross swapping in, whilst a Blissey with residual damage is likely to be KOed if swapping in Blissey.
And yes, Ttar can swap in on a Choice set, but that argument can be applied to every pokemon in the metagame - Heatran can swap in on Outraging Salamance, Blissey can swap in on Heatran locked in any attack save Explosion etc.
With Seven Deadly's Sins signature, I only consider SR (damage to Skymin and others), because it is usually set up in a match, as most teams have it. I don't consider Spikes and Tspikes, as they're uncommon (which is probably worse for Skymin, as she is immune to them and doesn't fear them, unlike Blissey, Ttar and others). Calculations should be done including and excluding SR.
Just a question. Any notes for my comments on Jrrrrr's argument - the reply before MythTrainerInfinity's (I quote Chou and Jrrrrr, mentioning Sturdy pokemon swapping in on OHKO moves)? I find it a little odd why that was ignored and everything else I said wasn't.
Hey, thanks for proving my point for me. When you're trying to argue that there are an impractically small number of checks for something and then say it's just like every other Choiced Pokémon... hey hey, it is.
The fact that you took his signature literally and at face value speaks volumes about your level of understanding.
Oh, also, you completely glossed over another "face value" point that he can't run every move and moveset at the same time. Whoops.
No one's responding to your response to j7r because you missed the point of his post entirely.
I battled darknessmalice on the OU Ladder, and I was not impressed. The same holds for his arguments.
Skymin simply became another offensive threat to take into account and I think since starting the ladder and climbing up, it never did anything significant to my team. Maybe mine was just very well prepared for it, but I don't think Skymin is any more or less threatening than any other offensive threats, and its high usage is due to the novelty factor more so than the actual usefulness of it.
Skymin simply became another offensive threat to take into account and I think since starting the ladder and climbing up, it never did anything significant to my team. Maybe mine was just very well prepared for it, but I don't think Skymin is any more or less threatening than any other offensive threats, and its high usage is due to the novelty factor more so than the actual usefulness of it.
You realize you're comparing the less than three dozen voters we had on Deoxys-S to the millions of young people who vote regardless, right? And that there is more than just the 18-25 demographic that votes, unlike the single demographic (Shoddy battlers who achieve the requirements) we have vote for the Rating/Deviation process? And, most importantly, that you don't see "them" throwing up their hands in frustration that some young voters don't vote precisely because there are several other demographic ready to represent the state or country despite any unwillingness from one single demographic?
Too few people do take the threshold to heart, I'm not sure how you can even make an argument otherwise. This is a problem no matter how you slice it. And you wanna know what's really unfair? The fact that the efforts Aeolus and I have put into making this a fun and fair process where the community gets to decide on the tiering of Suspects has been largely taken for granted. People don't even play on the required Ladder till the final 1-3 days and then complain that they couldn't get their rating up in time or that it was "too hard", even when we make it clear that everyone has a month to do this.
Aeolus and I have jokingly agreed that we wouldn't really have a problem "mandating" a Suspect's tier if the community is going to continue to be this lazy with the chance it has to do something about competitive pokemon. It's not like you guys could do anything about it if I decided to keep Skymin in OU for Stage 2 so we can move on to another Suspect (God knows how much time we have "wasted" considering just four suspects by now), or if Aeolus decided that Ho-oh is uber and will never be tested, no questions asked. But we're not going to do that because we're not dictatorial asses who don't care about the community. The unfair part comes in when the community continues to demonstrate, through increasingly bad voter turnout (from 54 votes on Garchomp to 32 on DX-S), that they are either unwilling or unable to make a difference in competitive pokemon (or both). There are three clear solutions to this:
1) continue to not do anything about what is likely a downwards trend in voter "turnout"
2) scrap the current Suspect Test process altogether and decide to be quicker and more elitist with our Suspect decisions so we can solidify the competitive metagame already
3) decide to increase the number of voters we allow to vote after considering that 1655/65 are relatively arbitrary numbers that are supposed to be a guideline and not a hard-and-fast rule
1 is out of the question if you are even remotely observant and proactive. 2 is seeming like a better and better option with every Suspect, but I not going to do that because I'm not as mad with power as people, from Smogon or outside, may be inclined to think. 3 is the best option when you realize that our efforts to increase voter turnout by clearly stating the requirements and deadlines—because we realize that battling skill correlates rather well with competitive pokemon intelligence and would therefore prefer our voters strive for the requirements or come as close as possible— has not been enough. Unless you'd rather us go back to the bold voting process which definitely had more than 75-100 turnout?
I may or may not be a typical example, but having a minimum rating and deviation to obtain in order to vote on Skymin was one of my major motivations to add laddering to my morning routine. Playing regularly got me onto the leaderboard for the first time (I'm currently at #23), and has pushed me to become a better player. Setting a simple, concrete goal that is not terribly difficult to obtain can easily be the first step to getting started as a serious battler. In this regard, I've found the threshold to be helpful.
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