np: Doubles OU Stage 3 - Hate to Love You - SKYMIN HAS BEEN BANNED

[P is For Penguin]

Why do so many people seem to think this? Hax is a perfect reason to ban something because the more hax we have in the game, the less competitive the game is.

yet people are opposed to swagger ban

 

[megacyber]

yet people are opposed to swagger ban

by people do you mean iliketrains11 ?


BUGEDIT: no he means like 80% of the council smh

 

[Derivatives]

The council said no because of a few reasons, some stated in Stratos' post, some stated by KyleCole council members about Swagger on Lum.

Personally, VGC allowing something isn't enough to make me think it's balanced, it's only good if you screw up a ton and think you still deserve a win.

 

[P is For Penguin]

The council said no because of a few reasons, some stated in Stratos' post, some stated by KyleCole council members about Swagger on Lum.

Personally, VGC allowing something isn't enough to make me think it's balanced, it's only good if you screw up a ton and think you still deserve a win.

if you seriously think that the little good that can come from swagger outweighs the bad, then idek how to comment back to this. Swagger is so rarely used in a way to positively affect the game. Majority of the time it is just used to "hax" or luck your way to victory.

But this is getting off topic so just going to drop it

E: How swagger is really used http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/doublesou-257397557

 

[Lord Death Man]

I'm going to preface this by saying I really disagree with the deservedness ban argument - which you can see made throughout the thread. I strongly believe that, since Air Slash's flinch rate exceeds 50%, if anything, they deserved to get the flinch and randomly attempting to flinch things you can't just was and is the right play. And that's my issue with Skymin; hax is always in it's favor and there's not all that much counterplay to that specific strategy - similar to Togekiss/Jirachi except, like, worse (and to be fair I have a serious problem with Jirachi in the meta right now as well, though I'm not a big doubles player so maybe I'm missing something). Seed Flare, Earth Power are incredible coverage moves and really limits a lot of skymin counterplay. While it does have checks in mons like Thundurus, I still think that Skymin represents something that really makes a meta unhealthy even when manageable - and I don't believe it is always, or even, often manageable without severely constrained team building.

While I agree that some strategies, such as Tailwind, Thunder Wave, and redirection, can absolutely tear apart Skymin, these are available to Skymin's team as well and Skymin excels just as strongly under these as any other powerful mon with amazing coverage, with Thunder Wave enhancing it's already significant ability to create "free" turns for it's partners. Skymin's own ability to feel inconsistent doesn't really make it not broken either, in my opinion.

I may be biased, but I also find Skymin incredibly annoying to face, which I think is also true for many other mons that are both ban worthy and manageable.

Skymin is an excellent mon with incredible luck manipulation, so I'm leaning heavily towards ban.

 

[TSR]

Not relevant at all
(was an edit from previous harsh post)

Arctic edit: damn the original post was a little rude

Sorry, I tried to get across my opinion in a dumb way. Instead of saying the variation of "the SpDef drops and flinches turn hax in your favor" I tried making some evidence, but yeah I thought it was relevant because of testing certain situations me and frens were doing. As I said earlier, I'm pretty new to OU doubles, but I did get the reqs for voting. I kinda know what I'm doing, but I don't yet have a refined opinion, I think. I didn't find Skymin to be a huge threat, but this is the ladder were talking about.

So let me try to get the right point across; it's not what Shaymin directly does, but what it lets its teammates do in conjunction with its attack. Why I included Hoopa of all things, idk. I don't really know as much as everyone else haha. I actually decided to hop on the ladder to decide if I would do worse at NU Open or Doubles Open, and I ended up being pretty good lol. I'll try formulating better sentences for my opinion next time :]

 

[Arcticblast]

guys I forgot to make a real post about this before so IF YOU WIN ONE OF THESE LIVE TOURNAMENTS YOU GET THE EQUIVALENT OF LADDER REQS

Sunday Aug 9 8:00 PM EDT
Tuesday Aug 11 8:00 PM (no Skymin allowed)
Thursday Aug 13 8:00 PM
Saturday Aug 15 10:00 AM (no Skymin allowed)
Sunday Aug 16 2:00 PM

 

[Haruno]

guys I forgot to make a real post about this before so IF YOU WIN ONE OF THESE LIVE TOURNAMENTS YOU GET THE EQUIVALENT OF LADDER REQS

Sunday Aug 9 8:00 PM
Tuesday Aug 11 8:00 PM (no Skymin allowed)
Thursday Aug 13 8:00 PM
Saturday Aug 15 10:00 AM (no Skymin allowed)
Sunday Aug 16 2:00 PM

nice timezones m8 i r8 8/8

 

[Audiosurfer]

I'd like to push back against what I feel is a common misconception in this thread which is that Skymin is worthy of a ban because it uses moves with high hax rates and is thus uncompetitive. In my view if you are voting ban the only reason you should be doing so is because you think Skymin is broken, aka that there are not enough viable means of counterplay to it in the metagame (which I'd disagree with but is at least a legit ban argument).

Hax in and of itself isn't a bad/uncompetitive thing. Pokemon is different from games like chess in that there are few if any guaranteed good moves. Instead, players that are successful primarily rely on the concept of risk vs. reward to guide their decision-making. Simply put, risk vs reward, as the name implies, is about assessing the potential downside of a given move and comparing it to its potential upside, and involves a strong grasp of prediction skills and the ability to analyze the odds of a given occurrence. This is a skill that all high-level players have a strong mastery of, and is the reason why 'playing the odds' (as Stratos mentioned in an earlier post) can often be a sign of skill.

For instance, imagine a bulky Thundurus at mid-health is against a full health Mega Aerodactyl. If the Thundurus used Thunder Wave, got the full para, and then KOed Mega Aerodactyl the next turn with Thunderbolt, an undiscerning player without an understanding of risk vs reward might think that full paras are an instance of negative/uncompetitive hax because the Mega Aero would've killed without the fp and thus the best player has just been cheated out of a win. However, if one keeps in mind that a good player is just one who consistently makes good plays (and through that puts themselves in the best position to win) and that a good play is the one that makes the most sense using risk vs. reward analysis (keeping in mind the information they have at their disposal at the time) then the player using Thunder Wave made a good play and is thus a good player who is as deserving as their opponent of a win. They recognized that Thundurus would die to Rock Slide / Stone Edge that turn bar the attack not landing, and thus knew they needed this to happen to win the game since Aero outspeeds Thundurus. They then recognized that using Thunder Wave adds the risk of a full para onto the risk of a normal miss by Aero, thus increasing their odds of survival as compared to using Thunderbolt and hoping for just a miss. This play had less risk than their other options and reaped the same reward. Thus a good play, thus a good player. They both made the best play available to them in that turn and let the game take care of the rest. This is certainly less definite than the world where there was no chance of a miss or fp, but it is clearly no less skillful.

The only time in which luck-based strategies are uncompetitive is when they (and here I use my definition of uncompetitive, which you may not agree with but I feel is accurate) deliberately seek to avoid interacting with the opponent's strategy, thus circumventing the normal flow of prediction, risk vs. reward, etc and making the game less skillful as a result. An example of this would be a full-on swagger spam team. This team does not seek to react to or engage with the moves the opponent is making because it is designed to play exactly the same every game with no consideration of changing conditions. It tries to remove basic tenets of competitive play from the game and is thus uncompetitive.

In short, an ability to use odds to guide decision-making is a sign of skillful play and a perfectly valid part of the game. It should only be treated as negative when it tries to get around the decision-making processes that make up skillful play.

 

[realiti]

I don't think Skymin is banworthy. Air Slash flinches are very annoying, and happens more likely than not, but reading through the thread, it's like people assume Air Slash will flinch like 90% of the time which is just untrue, to the point where I feel like they would get mad when it doesn't flinch more than it does. A good player would try to find himself/herself in situations where you can spam Air Slash without many drawbacks. However, I find that this is kind of tough to do. Skymin's bulk is subpar, and it can't really switchin. Unlike mons like Keldeo or Talonflame, I feel like most of the time the only situation where I can safely get in Skymin would be when one of my mons dies. I find this a huge issue when using Skymin, when I just can't send it in and tank even a neutral hit, and it's definitely one of the reasons why I'm opposed to a ban. Also, while it is fairly strong, Skymin doesn't have immediate insane power like Kanga or Mence has. Seed Flare drops are very common, and yes this makes it a lot harder to switch in to Skymin. I don't think that this really limits teambuilding as much as people are stating; most of the time, when I build a good team, it naturally has switchins to Skymin; it's not like I have to go back and change 2 mons just to beat Skymin, or that its counters are extremely rare, like Mega Salamence did. It's also necessary to keep control of the field when using Skymin; once Trick Room and Tailwind are up on the other side, Skymin has a much rougher time; its frailty really shows when these are set up. Thunder Wave also cripples Skymin for pretty much the entire game.

Keldeo + Skymin is a very well known core. But I don't really see how we can justify Skymin broken because these two mons are powerful together. It's like saying Mence is broken because of how it complements Jirachi nicely. We're not judging how broken Keldeo + Skymin is; we're judging how broken Skymin, an individual mon, is. It makes teambuilding harder, but not impossible. Skymin isn't extremely hard to support, but it still needs some before it can show true potential; Mence barely needs any. There are also more counterplays to Skymin than Mence, and like stated before, it could be a hassle to get Skymin in safely sometimes, which is why I think it doesn't put too much of a teambuilding constraint as other broken mons (in general, not compared only to those mons).

I agree with Audiosurfer on the luck factor. Sometimes fishing for flinches or SpDef drops are the best plays you can make; people complain about them all the time, but what they don't realize is from the other players PoV, it's the best play to make, while at their point of view, they just got lucked out. We all have to accept that there are factors outside of our own play that could cause a game to change. All you can do is play your best and put yourself in the best position to win. Hax happens, and we all have to deal with it. I'll post some more when I'm not so tired, but right now I don't feel like Skymin warrants a ban

 

[ForgottenOnes]

Alright. I'm almost at reqs. I posted earlier, when I just started laddering, about my stance on Skymin. I argued against banning it due to its frailness, and how easy it was to counter it. After playing ~75 games, I can say that I was wrong. Although I'm still not 100% convinced that Skymin should be banned, I am heavily leaning towards pro-ban. As many people have said above, the main arguments for Skymin is that
a) This skymin thing is quick, and thus annoying. With sash, it has an extra chance to do more damage.
- Skymin's damage output is crazy.
- Yes its frail; however, Skymin isn't designed to switch into anything. Your supposed to just put it in, click a couple of moves, and win.
b) Along with its speed, it has Secrene Grace + Air Slash. Skymin is like a Togekiss, but faster, a bit frailer, and a lot more powerful.
c) Alright, yes. To thus far, Skymin may seem powerful, but what puts it over the edge is the other moves Skymin has >.>. Seed Flare is way too powerful. With 120 BP, and 80% chance to lower the foe's SpA by 2. OP.
d) If I were to teambuild, Skymin would defs be on my mind. I would probably throw in a couple mons to specifically counter Skymin due to its OPness.

tl;dr: Skymin is too fast, strong, and has too many gud attacks along with Secrene Grace. Its good things outweigh its negatives by a substantial amount. Thus I am leaning towards banning Skymin.

 

[tehy]

I'd like to push back against what I feel is a common misconception in this thread which is that Skymin is worthy of a ban because it uses moves with high hax rates and is thus uncompetitive. In my view if you are voting ban the only reason you should be doing so is because you think Skymin is broken, aka that there are not enough viable means of counterplay to it in the metagame (which I'd disagree with but is at least a legit ban argument).

Hax in and of itself isn't a bad/uncompetitive thing. Pokemon is different from games like chess in that there are few if any guaranteed good moves. Instead, players that are successful primarily rely on the concept of risk vs. reward to guide their decision-making. Simply put, risk vs reward, as the name implies, is about assessing the potential downside of a given move and comparing it to its potential upside, and involves a strong grasp of prediction skills and the ability to analyze the odds of a given occurrence. This is a skill that all high-level players have a strong mastery of, and is the reason why 'playing the odds' (as Stratos mentioned in an earlier post) can often be a sign of skill.

For instance, imagine a bulky Thundurus at mid-health is against a full health Mega Aerodactyl. If the Thundurus used Thunder Wave, got the full para, and then KOed Mega Aerodactyl the next turn with Thunderbolt, an undiscerning player without an understanding of risk vs reward might think that full paras are an instance of negative/uncompetitive hax because the Mega Aero would've killed without the fp and thus the best player has just been cheated out of a win. However, if one keeps in mind that a good player is just one who consistently makes good plays (and through that puts themselves in the best position to win) and that a good play is the one that makes the most sense using risk vs. reward analysis (keeping in mind the information they have at their disposal at the time) then the player using Thunder Wave made a good play and is thus a good player who is as deserving as their opponent of a win. They recognized that Thundurus would die to Rock Slide / Stone Edge that turn bar the attack not landing, and thus knew they needed this to happen to win the game since Aero outspeeds Thundurus. They then recognized that using Thunder Wave adds the risk of a full para onto the risk of a normal miss by Aero, thus increasing their odds of survival as compared to using Thunderbolt and hoping for just a miss. This play had less risk than their other options and reaped the same reward. Thus a good play, thus a good player. They both made the best play available to them in that turn and let the game take care of the rest. This is certainly less definite than the world where there was no chance of a miss or fp, but it is clearly no less skillful.

The only time in which luck-based strategies are uncompetitive is when they (and here I use my definition of uncompetitive, which you may not agree with but I feel is accurate) deliberately seek to avoid interacting with the opponent's strategy, thus circumventing the normal flow of prediction, risk vs. reward, etc and making the game less skillful as a result. An example of this would be a full-on swagger spam team. This team does not seek to react to or engage with the moves the opponent is making because it is designed to play exactly the same every game with no consideration of changing conditions. It tries to remove basic tenets of competitive play from the game and is thus uncompetitive.

In short, an ability to use odds to guide decision-making is a sign of skillful play and a perfectly valid part of the game. It should only be treated as negative when it tries to get around the decision-making processes that make up skillful play.

(note: from what i've calced, bulky thund KOing M-aero may be a roll. This is irrelevant to the actual argument at hand, so I'm ignoring it-if i were a roll, then Audio could just bring up some 'mon on which it wasn't a roll.)

I think a discerning player can still say that's an instance of negative hax. For starters, it's not like the thundurus user was super skilled and made a good play. He merely made the optimal play. Which is to say, it didn't really require any thought or prediction, because the only counterplay / consequence are scenarios so unlikely and stupid i feel ashamed even acknowledging their existence.

However, the mega aerodactyl player may have outplayed his opponent significantly, making plays that weren't obvious, either predictions, or predicting the opponent's sets, or just creating a deep strategy, in order to put himself in this favorable position.and yes, he is put in a favorable position as a result. but at the end of the day, he may still get boned by a t-wave full para. is this situation really a good thing? I submit that it isn't-in fact, any situation where the less skilled player wins is a bad one. The more this happens, the worse its initiator is.

of course, he put himself in a bad position by also using inaccurate moves, but at least he has pre-battle control of this. not so for the opponent hitting him up with a dose of yellow magic. I think people go overboard saying 'well he chose to use this inaccurate move so it's on him'; sometimes a team needs, say, an alakazam on it, and that alakazam needs focus blast to be effective, so it's not some totally open choice. but it's still under the player's control to a fair degree.

and again, this is only the best scenario of Thunder Wave usage. what about when the Thundurus user makes a mispredict, or just a plain misplay, and gets bailed out due to a timely paralysis proc?

i'm not calling to ban Thunder Wave, mind you. I just think it's an undeniably negative force in the metagame. Even in the best scenarios, like one you described, it can remove good play with luck, and it can certainly validate bad play as well.

Stratos , I think your point is that it takes a fair amount of skill to even get into a situation where Skymin can apply its luck, and even then you're more likely than not to get it and usually able to minimize the downside of not getting that luck via skymin's sash; also, this luck can be skilfully minimized. But I don't think it is ridiculous for me to say that Skymin doesn't take enough skill to balance out its judicious application of RNG-decision.

edit:

at below: well, t-wave only causes the better player to lose 25% of the time, and only prankster t-wave at that. but if something causes the better player to lose a lot more of the time, isn't that potentially banworthy? you say there is nothing that could be done, but this whole thread is proof that there is, in fact, something that can be done.

 

[realiti]

(note: from what i've calced, bulky thund KOing M-aero may be a roll. This is irrelevant to the actual argument at hand, so I'm ignoring it-if i were a roll, then Audio could just bring up some 'mon on which it wasn't a roll.)

I think a discerning player can still say that's an instance of negative hax. For starters, it's not like the thundurus user was super skilled and made a good play. He merely made the optimal play. Which is to say, it didn't really require any thought or prediction, because the only counterplay / consequence are scenarios so unlikely and stupid i feel ashamed even acknowledging their existence.

However, the mega aerodactyl player may have outplayed his opponent significantly, making plays that weren't obvious, either predictions, or predicting the opponent's sets, or just creating a deep strategy, in order to put himself in this favorable position.and yes, he is put in a favorable position as a result. but at the end of the day, he may still get boned by a t-wave full para. is this situation really a good thing? I submit that it isn't-in fact, any situation where the less skilled player wins is a bad one. The more this happens, the worse its initiator is.

of course, he put himself in a bad position by also using inaccurate moves, but at least he has pre-battle control of this. not so for the opponent hitting him up with a dose of yellow magic. I think people go overboard saying 'well he chose to use this inaccurate move so it's on him'; sometimes a team needs, say, an alakazam on it, and that alakazam needs focus blast to be effective, so it's not some totally open choice. but it's still under the player's control to a fair degree.

and again, this is only the best scenario of Thunder Wave usage. what about when the Thundurus user makes a mispredict, or just a plain misplay, and gets bailed out due to a timely paralysis proc?

i'm not calling to ban Thunder Wave, mind you. I just think it's an undeniably negative force in the metagame. Even in the best scenarios, like one you described, it can remove good play with luck, and it can certainly validate bad play as well.

Stratos , I think your point is that it takes a fair amount of skill to even get into a situation where Skymin can apply its luck, and even then you're more likely than not to get it and usually able to minimize the downside of not getting that luck via skymin's sash; also, this luck can be skilfully minimized. But I don't think it is ridiculous for me to say that Skymin doesn't take enough skill to balance out its judicious application of RNG-decision.

There is a possibility that the aero player played better than the thundy player, and he did get boned by the full para. But it's been a part of the game since Pokemon has been created; many battles have been lost to hax, and while it isn't really a good thing, there is nothing we could do about it. Yes the thundy player would probably be called out and be mocked, but given the current situation, what other play could be made? Going for Tbolt, not trying to fish for the full para and the win? Unfortunately the more skilled player lost the game, but there's nothing that could have been done. Maybe he could have preserved something else that countered thundy 100%, or who knows what else. He put himself in a position where he would have lost to a full para, and unfortunately that happened. You can't really blame him for that, but what happens happens, we just have to move on and play to the best of our ability, trying to eliminate hax as a possibility of us losing a game. But I agree with you on the Alakazam point; sometimes you have to rely on unreliable moves to cover weaknesses on your team. It's impossible to cover every threat in the metagame, and in the teambuilding spectrum it is his choice of whether to put focus blast or not; but in the actual game, hax happens, and we can't do anything about it

 

[Stratos]

"Only the guy not using twave could possibly have made good plays to get himself into that situation" - tehy

I mean it's not like skymin's air slash takes no skill to use. You have to get into a position where the air slash flinch's free turn will matter, but where it not getting a flinch (43% chance!) won't screw you, where skymin can use itself and its partner to keep itself safe, etc. even in the replay totem linked where he just flinched my entire team to death (with infernape partner), he legitimately outplayed me. If you want to ban things that let the worse player win at least crusade against rock slide since it can like 1v4 an opponent, skymin can't even do that.

 

[Audiosurfer]

(note: from what i've calced, bulky thund KOing M-aero may be a roll. This is irrelevant to the actual argument at hand, so I'm ignoring it-if i were a roll, then Audio could just bring up some 'mon on which it wasn't a roll.)

I think a discerning player can still say that's an instance of negative hax. For starters, it's not like the thundurus user was super skilled and made a good play. He merely made the optimal play. Which is to say, it didn't really require any thought or prediction, because the only counterplay / consequence are scenarios so unlikely and stupid i feel ashamed even acknowledging their existence.

However, the mega aerodactyl player may have outplayed his opponent significantly, making plays that weren't obvious, either predictions, or predicting the opponent's sets, or just creating a deep strategy, in order to put himself in this favorable position.and yes, he is put in a favorable position as a result. but at the end of the day, he may still get boned by a t-wave full para. is this situation really a good thing? I submit that it isn't-in fact, any situation where the less skilled player wins is a bad one. The more this happens, the worse its initiator is.

of course, he put himself in a bad position by also using inaccurate moves, but at least he has pre-battle control of this. not so for the opponent hitting him up with a dose of yellow magic. I think people go overboard saying 'well he chose to use this inaccurate move so it's on him'; sometimes a team needs, say, an alakazam on it, and that alakazam needs focus blast to be effective, so it's not some totally open choice. but it's still under the player's control to a fair degree.

and again, this is only the best scenario of Thunder Wave usage. what about when the Thundurus user makes a mispredict, or just a plain misplay, and gets bailed out due to a timely paralysis proc?

i'm not calling to ban Thunder Wave, mind you. I just think it's an undeniably negative force in the metagame. Even in the best scenarios, like one you described, it can remove good play with luck, and it can certainly validate bad play as well.

Stratos , I think your point is that it takes a fair amount of skill to even get into a situation where Skymin can apply its luck, and even then you're more likely than not to get it and usually able to minimize the downside of not getting that luck via skymin's sash; also, this luck can be skilfully minimized. But I don't think it is ridiculous for me to say that Skymin doesn't take enough skill to balance out its judicious application of RNG-decision.

edit:

at below: well, t-wave only causes the better player to lose 25% of the time, and only prankster t-wave at that. but if something causes the better player to lose a lot more of the time, isn't that potentially banworthy? you say there is nothing that could be done, but this whole thread is proof that there is, in fact, something that can be done.

Ok, how can the better player have lost if they both made perfectly good plays? There's nothing uniquely skillful about clicking Rock Slide against Thundurus if you have a Mega Aerodactyl so clearly it's not that the Mega Aero player is tapping into some high level of prediction. They're just making the "optimal play" as you so put it (although I don't understand why this does anything but further cement the skill of both players, as good players aim to make the optimal play every turn).

The misconception I think most people have (I know you don't tehy, and I'll get to your belief in the end of the post) is that the player with the best odds of having a favorable outcome in a turn is somehow deserving of having that outcome take place, and that if this does not occur, luck has somehow screwed that player out of a well-earned victory. To put it simply, while this makes a lot of intuitive sense, it makes no logical sense. Luck is not screwing anyone; every turn involves luck in some way, shape, or form, whether it's obvious stuff like misses or crits or secondary effects or even less visible stuff like damage rolls over the course of a game. The way these things are meted out is completely random.

Furthermore, and more importantly, having the best odds of a positive outcome doesn't entitle you to having that outcome take place. Simply having the best odds on that turn is its own reward, regardless of that turn's outcome. The way one knows that this is true and not complete garbage is that in the situation that I present, while the Mega Aero player may lose that individual game, if you were to run a bunch of simulations with the same moves in that scenario they would come out on top in a majority of them. That odds advantage is thus not some theoretical mumbo jumbo but something with a clear value. Thus something like "yes, he is put in a favorable position as a result. but at the end of the day, he may still get boned by a t-wave full para." isn't true since their reward has already been reaped simply by having better odds than their opponent.

Also to "However, the mega aerodactyl player may have outplayed his opponent significantly, making plays that weren't obvious, either predictions, or predicting the opponent's sets, or just creating a deep strategy, in order to put himself in this favorable position": this may have been true, that's correct. It also may have been completely false. What if the Thundurus player's team was just naturally weak to Mega Aero and they in fact played far better, but just not well enough to overcome this natural team advantage? (You could argue that this is a sign that they should teambuild better but every team has weaknesses, even very good ones). What if the Mega Aero player got some fortunate rolls on the opponent's main Mega Aero checks? The fact is that there's a lot of stuff in the game that neither player has any control over (what stuff their opponent brings, the rolls they get, etc.) which affects their odds and some of it has nothing to do with skillful play. Saying that a player has better odds on a given turn and thus they're a better player or they played better in that individual game just isn't something you can prove (and is overly simplistic), and is thus not something worth acting on.

Which brings me to my final point to those who /really/ hate hax, this one meant for tehy in particular but others might benefit too: if you really hate hax that much, play a different game. I know it sounds like I'm being facetious and overly dismissive but hear me out: the reason I say this is that attempting to weed out all hax (or even most of it) constitutes an overreach of our authority since we aren't actually the designers of the game. Now here you might be saying 'but we ban stuff all the time, we're Smogon!' which is correct. However, the bans that take place on Smogon are based on the idea that the game isn't balanced well in its default state so the best way to experience it competitively is with an outside banlist.

This differs from bans on stuff like luck, where we would instead be saying that the game isn't designed well, period, and would meaningfully change its mechanics, something we don't do since it's not our game. This sort of adjusting could lead to any number of changes based on what people think makes the most sense (why isn't psychic SE on ghost? psychics dispel ghosts in real life), and goes more into the territory of OMs or game mods than normal tier changes. That's why there is often an emphasis on whether a given tier alteration is actually possible in cartridge play. The only reason this sort of change would be somewhat worth it (and even then it's still bad) is if an element of the game is somehow preventing people from making skillful plays on a turn-by-turn basis, which isn't the case here. Thus, I'd urge you to make peace with this hax discomfort as it isn't something we can or should try to alter.

 

[GhostSword]

OK, let me begin by saying serene grace air slash flinches are far easier to deal with than rock slide flinches. Granted, Serene Grace has a higher flinch chance, rock slide is impossible to predict and protect against since it hits both your pokemon. Nor is air slash any worse/better than swagger which is essentially a coinflip which is boosted by prankster. If you want to complain about "hax" there are other issues and shaymin isn't the biggest of them.

The reason it was suspected is that the flinch chance combined with such an amazing pokemon may be too much to handle. During laddering I found it a little annoying but it was not too difficult to play around since the target is usually obvious and you can protect from it. Another thing to note is that sash shaymin (the only set I saw on the ladder) is really underwhelming damage-wise and you can't air slash your way to victory, just like you can't win by rock sliding/ swaggering etc. Air slash doesn't OHKO any major threats that are not 4x weak to it or named mega beedrill. Seed flare is the move that can pick up knock outs especially with its -2 drop that happens as often as (or more often than) a Rotom-W Hydro Pump. It works well with a spread move user too. However, unlike singles, you don't switch in to stuff too often which makes seed flare a lot less of a problem. Earth power hits the rest and rounds off its coverage.

Few people above me stated this but Shaymin does not usually give wins when you don't deserve it. It may flinch once, twice but that will not win a game for you. I am not sure if this has been covered before but spamming air slash has a huge oppurtunity cost of one pokemon giving up big damage for a 57% chance to flinch. Posters say that you have to play assuming that you will flinch, but isn't it equally risky for the shaymin user to click air slash? If he doesn't get the flinch he loses his Shaymin. He (if he is a good player) must play assuming he won't get a flinch or he puts himself in a bad position.

Air slash is not a reliable flinching move like fake out and should not be treated as if its a 100% flinch chance. 57% is not 100% and flinching to air slash, contrary to many believe is not "hax". Hax is when you get burned by a flamethrower or frozen, not getting flinched by a move that is more likely than not going to flinch you. Another balancing point is that Air Slash is single target. Unlike rock slide you can't BS a game and it requires good prediction to use and believe me, unless you attack the right target, you would end up in a worse position even if you do get a flinch. To give an example, lets say I have two big threats on the field. If you air slash into a protect, you lose. Just like thunderbolt, like ice beam, like hyperspace fury. It needs a certain amount of skill to use and it does not make the game uncompetitive.

The final, rather obvious, point I want to bring up is that Shaymin is weak/crippled by common moves. Icy wind, tailwind, thunder wave, trick room; one of which is on every competitive team. It is also weak to the omnipresent rock slide which can also stop it from moving for a turn. Its moveset and item are extremely predictable and if they do happen to deviate from standard it puts the odds against them. These are a few factors that keep it balanced in this metagame.

To conclude, I believe Shaymin should not be banned at present because its presence does not make the meta "unhealthy" as many said and rather takes some actual skill to use unlike something like minimize or heck even swagger. Unless some new arguments convince me otherwise this is my stance.

 

[tehy]

"Only the guy not using twave could possibly have made good plays to get himself into that situation" - tehy

However, the mega aerodactyl player may have outplayed his opponent significantly,

i think the word MAY rather speaks for itself. Obviously, one player outplayed the other or neither did. Since M-aero vs. Thundurus is a sort of (stress sort of because your M-aero is crippled, and can miss or get fucked by t-wave) favorable situation, it's fair to assume the M-aero player outplayed the Thundurus player more often, but i don't even care about this.

My point is, you've got a whole set of situations where the better player had his skill circumvented by luck. Meanwhile, the only thing skill-based here was the optimal play being made. And to me, that's a really low baseline of skill, because both plays were really, really obvious. Like "Use the move that KOes Thundurus" and "Accomplish something before I die"

personally, i had considered pointing out that sometimes the M-aero user won't have played better. but really, i don't want to make my posts too long and full of every single hedge and tangent that I can find, because there sure are a lot, and they don't tend to matter (also, i think they bore people?). So i try to keep it on the subject matter - namely, all the situations where the better player lost.

Yeah, audio, having the best odds is its own reward, and I do this every time I maximize my odds lategame (or even midgame / earlygame, but usually predicts matter more then). but at the end of the day, you can't deny that, the more haxy a given situation is, the higher the odds the better player will lose. Isn't that a bad thing, and one we should strive to change? Obviously there's certain thresholds of reasonability - i don't want to ban, say, thunder wave, or waterfall. but if something has high odds of causing the better player to use, i'm going to be on that shizz.

as i said to you on ps; if you really don't mind luck that much, playing a different game's an available option to you as well, right? unfortunately mons is a very unique game and there is no easy replacement, hax-free OMs being both free of all luck entirely (thus removing some risk/reward) and of any kind of a userbase. and i think there are clearly a lot of people who really dislike luck (or, more accurately, really dislike it when it causes them to lose, then sort of forget about it the rest of the time)

Stratos; like I said, I think Rock Slide is an issue that needs tackling. But like I also said, it's an insanely thorny issue, whereas this is more clear-cut. Removing Rock Slide from the arsenal of, say, Terrakion, or DD MegaTar, or Mega Aero, lowers their effectiveness heavily even without taking into account the lack of a flinch chance, because it's still a really great STAB. Then, there's the fact that it just gets replaced by Stone Edge. This also strips people of the choice to use a weaker but more reliable STAB / coverage move, which is a shame. If I could remove Rock Slide from the metagame by removing 1 single mon (don't ask me how this is possible), then of course I would consider it, and I bet most others would too.

in short : free serene grace Rock slide...

 

[Audiosurfer]

My point is, you've got a whole set of situations where the better player had his skill circumvented by luck. Meanwhile, the only thing skill-based here was the optimal play being made. And to me, that's a really low baseline of skill, because both plays were really, really obvious. Like "Use the move that KOes Thundurus" and "Accomplish something before I die"

I don't know what other definition you're proposing. Make the flashiest coolest plays that wow your audience? Convince your opponent of your skill through a series of elaborate plays? None of these things have anything to do with winning, which is what makes good players good. Often making the optimal play is a good deal more complicated than the scenario I just described too, so it's hardly a low baseline of skill. But yeah it's the only definition that really makes sense.

Yeah, audio, having the best odds is its own reward, and I do this every time I maximize my odds lategame (or even midgame / earlygame, but usually predicts matter more then). but at the end of the day, you can't deny that, the more haxy a given situation is, the higher the odds the better player will lose. Isn't that a bad thing, and one we should strive to change? Obviously there's certain thresholds of reasonability - i don't want to ban, say, thunder wave, or waterfall. but if something has high odds of causing the better player to use, i'm going to be on that shizz.

Yes, I can deny this because I've already proven that this isn't happening. A good player puts themself in the best position to win at the end of the game that they can through a series of optimal plays. As such, there is no such thing as "the more haxy a given situation is, the higher the odds the better player will lose". The odds of a player losing are determined by the odds of a favorable event occurring, which it is the job of a good player to manage to the best of their ability. What you're actually arguing is that the fact that the outcome of a given scenario has some uncertainty somehow makes it so that skilled play is devalued. I've already disproven this in earlier posts so I won't go too far into it, but if it's not stopping you from playing skillfully or denying you the reward of skillful play (you concede in this post that the skillful player has gotten their reward) then it's not an issue.

The main issue I have with your argument is that you're grounding your opinion in your own idea of what constitutes a quality game or skillful play, yet you aren't rooting your objections in any logical arguments concerning how competitive battles work. I've already shown how my position ties in with our understanding of how competitive battling takes place. If you aren't able to do the same, I strongly urge you not to vote on your arguments, which are less about logical assessments of battling fundamentals and more about your personal preferences.

 

[Derivatives]

By no means does it not take skill to use Skymin's Air Slash flinches but it's broken in the sense that you can abuse those flinches in scenarios you aren't meant to. Literally stack your team with things that hit hard and Skymin's Air Slash has a great chance to let you get a free turn to switch in what you need. I don't see any reason in particular why it should be as simple as clicking Air Slash to let in something that could dominate a situation, not to mention that putting Kyurem-B on any team with Skymin makes rain and sun far less threatening, which are probably some of the best ways to get rid of Skymin, not mentioning that Landorus-T already faces off well against sun and Skymin can do ok against rain still. If you are going to say that Skymin has a good amount of counterplays look at Kyurem-B, Mega Kangaskhan, Talonflame, Latios, Hydreigon, Heatran, your own Charizard, Lapras (which, for some reason, people think is better than fucking Cresselia), Landorus-T, and the god of all of these Perish Song Mega Gengar (which is so underutilized despite it literally taking out two huge threats at the same time very easily), or even standard Mega Gengar, and tell me rain and sun are solid checks to Skymin. Not to mention the fact that almost all of those get benefits of Seed Flare. This little flying fairy dog has been wreaking havoc since the XY days but we can stop it now, literally vote ban and everything will be okay.

Also: yes, it is broken. Literally would be a Tier 2 Pokémon before Serene Grace flinches and Serene Grace Seed Flares just because it supports Keldeo so well in terms of beating its checks, despite still having two solid counters in Thundurus and Talonflame (newsflash: Landorus-T is the most popular Pokémon in Doubles OU! Read all about it!) and slight trouble with rain. After you factor Serene Grace flinches and Seed Flares, now you practically win lots of 2v2 situations you don't deserve to win. You can freely let anything switch in by Air Slashing the biggest threat to it. Sure it's a reward to players who keep the momentum in their favor but it's hard to pick up any momentum in the slightest against Hyper Offense unless you're fortunate enough to either be facing an idiot or you can set up Trick Room, so what kind of point are you trying to make? If you find the time to make the correct prediction about who comes in next, guess what? You won't be able to make the good play because the tyrant of a Pokémon Skymin literally breaks the meta game.

Literally no reason to vote do not ban at all. Probably the most banworthy thing in the meta game, yet people think that things like sun and rain are fucking counters to this. I couldn't disagree more with this, far too many dragons and complete weather stops in this meta game for them to be that viable. Ban af

 

[tehy]

I don't know what other definition you're proposing. Make the flashiest coolest plays that wow your audience? Convince your opponent of your skill through a series of elaborate plays? None of these things have anything to do with winning, which is what makes good players good. Often making the optimal play is a good deal more complicated than the scenario I just described too, so it's hardly a low baseline of skill. But yeah it's the only definition that really makes sense.

probably the definition of : a combination of outplaying (i.e. predicting your opponent's moves), making plays that are arguably optimal and not just 'this is so obvious it hurts', and predicting your opponent's sets.

Yes, I can deny this because I've already proven that this isn't happening. A good player puts themself in the best position to win at the end of the game that they can through a series of optimal plays. As such, there is no such thing as "the more haxy a given situation is, the higher the odds the better player will lose". The odds of a player losing are determined by the odds of a favorable event occurring, which it is the job of a good player to manage to the best of their ability. What you're actually arguing is that the fact that the outcome of a given scenario has some uncertainty somehow makes it so that skilled play is devalued. I've already disproven this in earlier posts so I won't go too far into it, but if it's not stopping you from playing skillfully or denying you the reward of skillful play (you concede in this post that the skillful player has gotten their reward) then it's not an issue.

i concede that they've gotten the reward of 'winning more often'. but that doesn't change the fact that, in certain scenarios, the more skilled player is still losing ?_?. I understand fully what you mean-to a true pro, the reward is knowing you had the better chance to win. but the better reward is just winning, period, instead of having to accept the fact that you played better, but still lost. if i lose a tournament finals to this situation, i know it's no blemish on me and I can accept it, in fact, i'm happy that I maximized my chance at victory...but also, i didn't get to win the tournament. that sucks for me personally, and it sucks because the more skilled player should win the tournament. that won't always happen, but i would like to try and ensure that it does happen a reasonable amount of time as much as I can. this doesn't mean banning t-wave because that has a host of legitimate uses and isn't -that- haxy, but I see tournament players call t-wave a 'broken move' all the time, and they're only half kidding.

there is absolutely such a thing as 'the more haxy a given situation is, the higher the odds the better player will lose'. in fact, that's just absolute fact.

obviously the player is going to try and manage the situation so that he can, say, revenge Thundurus with a Rhyperior or something. but against a fairly skilled player, you can't always maneuver so perfectly that luck ceases to matter, right? and therefore, we now have obvious situations where the skilled play IS in fact devalued-i got into a position where I had a 75% chance to win, but whoops, I got unlucky.

The main issue I have with your argument is that you're grounding your opinion in your own idea of what constitutes a quality game or skillful play, yet you aren't rooting your objections in any logical arguments concerning how competitive battles work. I've already shown how my position ties in with our understanding of how competitive battling takes place. If you aren't able to do the same, I strongly urge you not to vote on your arguments, which are less about logical assessments of battling fundamentals and more about your personal preferences.

listen man, i said very clearly what skillful play is, and that's absolutely how must people believe competitive battling to work. if you only make the most optimal play each time, you will probably get slaughtered, because the other guy will predict your move. so you probably make 'optimal' plays that actually go deeper and factor rough chances of predictions, but already this takes skill, because a prediction doesn't have a literal percentage chance so much as an estimated one. and even if you do this, it's still not that hard to take you to the cleaners with some nice predictions, so now you have to predict right back to have a serious shot of winning.

optimal plays are usually ~fairly obvious, so I view prediction as a larger test of skill in most instances. not always, there are times (especially in doubles) where the optimal play is unclear. but just like in your M-aero example, there are times when it's ridiculously obvious, and i will not say 'that's a skilled play, so he deserves to win' or anything.

 

[Bughouse]

By no means does it not take skill to use Skymin's Air Slash flinches but it's broken in the sense that you can abuse those flinches in scenarios you aren't meant to.

What the hell does "meant to" mean? I was unaware that you, or any of us, were the arbiter of when RNG is supposed to go favorably or not.

Turning to the broken argument btw, Skymin compiled a 23-18 record in the winter seasonal (from top 32 on). While that's above .500, it's hardly outstanding. Here's some other common Pokemon that had high usage and even better records: Diancie went a comparable 17-13, Amoonguss went 32-23, Heatran went 32-24, Kyu-B went 27-19, Lando-T went 61-45. And no one is calling on any of these (except Kyu-B) to be broken. There are plenty of other ways you could show that Skymin is not in fact broken, but I think the simple fact that its results are not abnormally good is pretty decent evidence that it's not broken.

 

[Derivatives]

What the hell does "meant to" mean? I was unaware that you, or any of us, were the arbiter of when RNG is supposed to go favorably or not.

Turning to the broken argument btw, Skymin compiled a 23-18 record in the winter seasonal (from top 32 on). While that's above .500, it's hardly outstanding. Here's some other common Pokemon that had high usage and even better records: Diancie went a comparable 17-13, Amoonguss went 32-23, Heatran went 32-24, Kyu-B went 27-19, Lando-T went 61-45. And no one is calling on any of these (except Kyu-B) to be broken. There are plenty of other ways you could show that Skymin is not in fact broken, but I think the simple fact that its results are not abnormally good is pretty decent evidence that it's not broken.

What do you mean "what the hell does it mean"? I'm sorry but that should be the most obvious part of my post, "meant to" refers to literally everything slower than Skymin bar priority users. It has a very good 57% chance to just let things switch in for free, and, like I said, you may be rewarded for keeping the momentum on your side with good RNG but how in hell do you manage to attain momentum against a Hyper Offense team unless you're running Hyper Offense yourself? Literally like less than 4 ways EDIT: Unless you're fighting somebody bad.

Also the Seasonal stats for Skymin are very different. Using the argument "nobody thinks any of these Pokémon with better records than Skymin are broken except one Pokémon with a slightly better w/l" doesn't make sense, not to mention both Skymin and Kyurem-B are on the very first sample team.

 

[Stratos]

shoutouts to haruno for using a suspect thread to gripe about personal grudges instead of discussing shaymin-sky, you've been infracted and deleted. your points weren't even right lmao

as for tehy, you still stubbornly cling to the idea that the player who has less than 50% odds of winning just fucked around all match and somehow found themselves with a chance of victory, as if you've never played in your entire life in such a way that you had a less than even chance of winning but it was your best bet—or even made a play/prediction with the idea that you could use thunder wave to hedge your bet if you lost. Gengar955 has a fantastic post about Shaymin-Sky and luck and I recommend everyone to read it, and that's all i have to say on the matter.

However, Gengar955 and anyone else, keep in mind that we're not suspecting Shaymin-Sky because it's uncompetitive. There is the concern that Skymin is too good at creating free turns vs slower teams and makes the matchup between a slower team and a faster team nearly unwinnable for the slower one. Not to mention that Seed Flare devalues the idea of defensive switchins so Skymin can too easily break down teams that use defensive rather than offensive synergy. This is a reasonable argument, unlike the one that Skymin is uncompetitive, and deserves consideration before the vote. I plan to post on it soon, hopefully tonight, after i gather my thoughts and throw out this damage control post. I really wish we could stop arguing about hax and discuss this, which is the meat of the suspect test.

As to bughouse's arguments about seasonal stats: Charizard has like 20% win rate in summer seasonal but I'm pretty sure most people think it's still good. Weird things can happen with small sample size; I wouldn't take those stats (as good as they are for following meta trends) as proof of anything.

 

[tehy]

as for tehy, you still stubbornly cling to the idea that the player who has less than 50% odds of winning just fucked around all match and somehow found themselves with a chance of victory, as if you've never played in your entire life in such a way that you had a less than even chance of winning but it was your best bet—or even made a play/prediction with the idea that you could use thunder wave to hedge your bet if you lost.

Stratos, do you really think in all these years that i've never done these things?

my point is precisely that this best bet, optimal play, etc, being 'hope for luck' is bad for the game. I acknowledge that it's the right thing to do-don't hate the player, hate the game-and i want to change the game as a result of this. When I won based on some random crit, or on some miss, or some shit...sure, i played skilfully in determining what I needed to win. But not skilfully enough to really deserve winning, and yet I did.

i think that's absolutely bad for any competitive game. Now, risk management is absolutely a skill, so i don't want to get rid of any luck-based anythings ever. But significant luck-based interactions are things I am very interested in getting rid of.

skymin's a bit different because, if you fucked around and still got a 57% win chance, that means you ~outplayed your opponent (or, got lucky, had a better team, got matchup). fair enough, but it still puts games in the hands of the RNG far too often, and can still be used to, say, flinch multiple times and allow the worse player to win again.

 

[n10siT]

sorry for being late to the party and for posting in the middle of this grand argument.

Whenever I see Shaymin-Sky opposite my mons, I'm always grumbling to myself. I always pay more attention to it more than I do a lot of other mons, because its offensive presence is very high. Seed flare hits hard (and drops sp. def often, more on that in a second), the skymin+keldeo core covers everything except dragons, and has the second chance perk with focus sash, able to make a final attack before being killed. None of what I mentioned here, however, makes the mon uncompetitive, broken, or at all over the top. It just means we have a very good mon.

I really do think that the Air Slash flinch chance and the Seed Flare drop chance make it uncompetitive though. When played correctly you have over a 50% chance to stop a mon from moving that turn, and Seed flare gives you almost a 70% chance to force a switch on a mon that should otherwise be able to stay in. Obviously Serene Grace doesn't make Rachi + Togekiss broken, because they aren't already great mons to begin with. But skymin forces you into non-optimal situations just because of two moves paired with it, and that seems unhealthy to me. I agree with players making plays to put themselves in the best position to win is good, but this seems like too much to me.

It is, however, very beatable by common things. Talonflame, Landorus-T, Thundurus, Mega Kang FO + Sucker, to name a few, all take care of it just fine. Slow skymin is no skymin, so if you get TR up, you're also in the clear.

So basically there's this moderately uncompetitive mon out here that is checked by common threats and I'm emotionally confused about it.