The fact that people were advocating for putting an LC mon in the same tier as mega-raquaza just shows how far gone pokemon democracy is.
-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Metagame np: Ubers Stage 1 - Into The Unknown
- Thread starter Nayrz
- Start date
- Status
This is one of the worst arguments ever. Quagsire was actually used in DPPT ubers (it even has a smogondex page), solrock is kind of used in AG, being a tier D pokemon in the viability rankings. Even pyukumuku in USUM OU found its way into OU teams, while being a PU mon.
You must contextualize, and because of that this argument holds no meaning. It’s not about gothirita’s tier, it’s about why she’s used and why she’s good in what she does amongst ubers.
Just told you that goth is bad against balance and you now tell me that goth invalidates balance by himself ??
Nice kekker
All righty since so many people want an anti-ban Goth argument, I will make an exception and contribute to the discussion for once. Let me preface this post by establishing that I have solely based my opinions off Ubers tournaments – ladder has had no influence on me whatsoever before and after the suspect test.
The Goth family is an anomaly when it comes to suspect tests on Smogon; usually tiers elect a mon that is either too centralizing (Garchomp Gen 4 OU), far too strong for any playstyle to handle (Breloom UU) or enforces a particular playstyle that is essentially broken (Gigalith sand NU). Although I understand that Uber’s suspect policy “detaches” itself from these principles, Ubers has also conducted tests / bans previously based on this ideology. Mega-Rayquaza was quick banned because of how easily it tore teams apart, Mega-Gengar, a powerful, overcentralizing Pokemon was suspected because of how slapable it was on teams in XY and Baton Pass was banned because of its ability to cheese through any team. On the other hand, Gothitelle deviates itself from these qualities by having poor usage across ladder and tourments (4.73% cumulative UPL) and also poor win rate in touraments (28.57% win rate in USUM UPL, worse than any other Pokemon). One should definitely ponder why such a persistently frustrating Pokemon in the eyes of the Ubers community has consistently performed poorly across all facets of the tier. My own personal experience with Gothitelle in Ubers was versus Terracotta, where I brought Gothitelle in game 2 and he brought Gothitelle in game 3 (spoiler: it lost both times). I remember attempting to build around Gothitelle and struggling to role compress well enough to conceive a team that did not submit to any offense as well as other playstyles. With Gothitelle on one’s team, one is left susceptible to a variety of Pokemon that can manipulative Gothitelle’s one-dimensionality. In fact, even though Terracotta was able to utilize Gothitelle efficiently to eliminate my Dusk-Mane Necrozma in game 3, I was still able to capitalize and win my game (his mis-click did not change the outcome of the game).
I will reply to some posts, but I've read everything past post #26 so if you haven't received an individual reply just read below.
Thanks for posting your thoughts Blim, your reasoning covers a lot of good points and tempted me to reply in the first place. One thing that distinctly caught my eye in your post was the phrase “guessing game”. Technically, are we not playing a guessing game by running Gothitelle? You are either leaving a hole on your team versus a particular playstyle or attempting to wield an advantage against another playstyle. The reality is that the Ubers tier is essentially a guessing game. It is far too difficult to build a team that effectively covers Dusk-Mane Necrozma, all Primal-Groudon sets, Primal-Kyogre, Marshadow, SD Arceus, CM Arceus, Zygarde variants, Ho-oh and stall. You are either rewarded by preparing against your opponent well enough or punished for bringing linear builds constantly. I personally do not see a problem with having a Pokemon that would punish someone who likes to run bulkier teams every week. Frankly, I think it is very competitive if you can correctly use Gothitelle against someone and obtain a favourable match-up, such as what Orch did in ORAS UPL. Usually though, such endeavors have failed as I have personally experienced.
Although you said, “personal opinion”, “mons becomes a clicking game” isn’t a real argument. In that sense we should just ban stall because it leads to a clicking battle.
I urge you to be as unbiased in your pro-ban argument, as clearly you have exaggerated the degree of Gothitelle’s coverage colossally. Gothitelle only traps Choice Specs Xerneas / Yveltal if you’re able to fodder something first to allow a free switch-in, moreover, stating “not locked into specs moonblast or a dark type move respectively” is essentially like saying “I can beat Dusk-Mane Necrozma with Xerneas after Geomancy if they don’t run Sunsteel Strike.” You are mentioning situational scenarios which should not be used as your rudimentary argument. If you are worried about being trapped by Gothitelle with bulky Dusk-Mane / bulky Ho-oh, a simple fix to this would be running a Z-move on them. Gothitelle is not the reason Blissey, Skarmory and Toxapex run Shed Shell, it is in fact Gengar-Mega, since the latter actually receives formidable usage in the Ubers metagame. The only Pokemon Gothitelle traps that have an impact on the metagame are support Arceus, Lugia and Ferrothorn. Although from your post, I am made to feel that Gothitelle is this superpowered overlord that eradicates numerous Pokemons’ viability – unfortunately, statistics have shown the exact opposite.
Regarding the suspect: as aforementioned in my introduction, Gothitelle’s suspect reasoning is disparate from the norm, which is why ladder was absolutely incorrect method to suspect it. A non-Ubers player would enter the suspect without knowing the Goth family’s effect on the tier and leave without knowing the Goth family’s effect on the tier. Even though Ubers is moving in an optimistic direction, the reality is that the Ubers authority were unable to envisage the inevitable failure of this suspect test. I do not want to be harsh, because I definitely would make mistakes as well if I were given an authoritarian stature, but it is important that a council is established that can discuss these sorts of circumstances to improve efficiency. The council of active players should be in charge of deciding suspects, contemplating the method of implementing a test and any other activities as demanded by the tier. As for this suspect, I personally feel the test should have been directed similar to how old generation OU suspects are conducted: elect tournament Ubers players and administer a vote between them. I’m positive this would engender a huge fuss from outsiders about Ubers’ elitism, especially those convinced on deleting Ubers from all competitive play, but it was definitely the right way to go for this particular suspect. However, I’m not convinced if the outcome would have been different as shown by the votes.
TL;DR: According to me, Gothitelle isn’t uncompetitive, it takes a lot of skill to build a good enough team around Gothitelle that fares well versus non-bulky teams. I have not seen a team published yet that accounts for Gothitelle’s viability in the tier, probably why the mon has low usage and win rate in tournaments. My philosophy is that Ubers is a guessing game until match-up and that there is nothing wrong with attaining an advantage over your opponent that consistently uses passive bulky builds while possessing an equal chance to be punished for running Gothitelle. One may say I’m leaning more towards an offensive metagame rather than one that favors all playstyles, but people have complained about stall being overwhelming during SPL 8 (early S&M) and I feel Gothitelle incentivizes players to reduce the passivity of their sets. As shown in tournaments, the negative connotation attached to Gothitelle of “invalidating playstyles”, “6-0ing teams after support Arceus is removed” (apparently Gothitelle + Marshadow is a potent core that is extremely usable), “zero counterplay” (it removes one Pokemon or two maximum, if it can remove more you should reconsider your team) is more theoretical than practical. It would be foolish not to consider usage statistics whose sole purpose is to gauge the player base, and the player base seems to have concluded that the risk of running Gothitelle is a lot higher than the reward.
I will not be replying to anyone. I feel I have covered all aspects of a no ban argument, but please bear in mind that it is obviously subjective. If I feel that I missed anything out, I’ll edit it into this post. Also, I urge all the other established tournament players that voted no ban to impart their reasoning too. Unless your reasoning is that you do not want to play stall at all, which I’m sure is the reason a lot of players voted no ban.
The Goth family is an anomaly when it comes to suspect tests on Smogon; usually tiers elect a mon that is either too centralizing (Garchomp Gen 4 OU), far too strong for any playstyle to handle (Breloom UU) or enforces a particular playstyle that is essentially broken (Gigalith sand NU). Although I understand that Uber’s suspect policy “detaches” itself from these principles, Ubers has also conducted tests / bans previously based on this ideology. Mega-Rayquaza was quick banned because of how easily it tore teams apart, Mega-Gengar, a powerful, overcentralizing Pokemon was suspected because of how slapable it was on teams in XY and Baton Pass was banned because of its ability to cheese through any team. On the other hand, Gothitelle deviates itself from these qualities by having poor usage across ladder and tourments (4.73% cumulative UPL) and also poor win rate in touraments (28.57% win rate in USUM UPL, worse than any other Pokemon). One should definitely ponder why such a persistently frustrating Pokemon in the eyes of the Ubers community has consistently performed poorly across all facets of the tier. My own personal experience with Gothitelle in Ubers was versus Terracotta, where I brought Gothitelle in game 2 and he brought Gothitelle in game 3 (spoiler: it lost both times). I remember attempting to build around Gothitelle and struggling to role compress well enough to conceive a team that did not submit to any offense as well as other playstyles. With Gothitelle on one’s team, one is left susceptible to a variety of Pokemon that can manipulative Gothitelle’s one-dimensionality. In fact, even though Terracotta was able to utilize Gothitelle efficiently to eliminate my Dusk-Mane Necrozma in game 3, I was still able to capitalize and win my game (his mis-click did not change the outcome of the game).
I will reply to some posts, but I've read everything past post #26 so if you haven't received an individual reply just read below.
Thanks for posting your thoughts Blim, your reasoning covers a lot of good points and tempted me to reply in the first place. One thing that distinctly caught my eye in your post was the phrase “guessing game”. Technically, are we not playing a guessing game by running Gothitelle? You are either leaving a hole on your team versus a particular playstyle or attempting to wield an advantage against another playstyle. The reality is that the Ubers tier is essentially a guessing game. It is far too difficult to build a team that effectively covers Dusk-Mane Necrozma, all Primal-Groudon sets, Primal-Kyogre, Marshadow, SD Arceus, CM Arceus, Zygarde variants, Ho-oh and stall. You are either rewarded by preparing against your opponent well enough or punished for bringing linear builds constantly. I personally do not see a problem with having a Pokemon that would punish someone who likes to run bulkier teams every week. Frankly, I think it is very competitive if you can correctly use Gothitelle against someone and obtain a favourable match-up, such as what Orch did in ORAS UPL. Usually though, such endeavors have failed as I have personally experienced.
Although you said, “personal opinion”, “mons becomes a clicking game” isn’t a real argument. In that sense we should just ban stall because it leads to a clicking battle.
I urge you to be as unbiased in your pro-ban argument, as clearly you have exaggerated the degree of Gothitelle’s coverage colossally. Gothitelle only traps Choice Specs Xerneas / Yveltal if you’re able to fodder something first to allow a free switch-in, moreover, stating “not locked into specs moonblast or a dark type move respectively” is essentially like saying “I can beat Dusk-Mane Necrozma with Xerneas after Geomancy if they don’t run Sunsteel Strike.” You are mentioning situational scenarios which should not be used as your rudimentary argument. If you are worried about being trapped by Gothitelle with bulky Dusk-Mane / bulky Ho-oh, a simple fix to this would be running a Z-move on them. Gothitelle is not the reason Blissey, Skarmory and Toxapex run Shed Shell, it is in fact Gengar-Mega, since the latter actually receives formidable usage in the Ubers metagame. The only Pokemon Gothitelle traps that have an impact on the metagame are support Arceus, Lugia and Ferrothorn. Although from your post, I am made to feel that Gothitelle is this superpowered overlord that eradicates numerous Pokemons’ viability – unfortunately, statistics have shown the exact opposite.
Regarding the suspect: as aforementioned in my introduction, Gothitelle’s suspect reasoning is disparate from the norm, which is why ladder was absolutely incorrect method to suspect it. A non-Ubers player would enter the suspect without knowing the Goth family’s effect on the tier and leave without knowing the Goth family’s effect on the tier. Even though Ubers is moving in an optimistic direction, the reality is that the Ubers authority were unable to envisage the inevitable failure of this suspect test. I do not want to be harsh, because I definitely would make mistakes as well if I were given an authoritarian stature, but it is important that a council is established that can discuss these sorts of circumstances to improve efficiency. The council of active players should be in charge of deciding suspects, contemplating the method of implementing a test and any other activities as demanded by the tier. As for this suspect, I personally feel the test should have been directed similar to how old generation OU suspects are conducted: elect tournament Ubers players and administer a vote between them. I’m positive this would engender a huge fuss from outsiders about Ubers’ elitism, especially those convinced on deleting Ubers from all competitive play, but it was definitely the right way to go for this particular suspect. However, I’m not convinced if the outcome would have been different as shown by the votes.
TL;DR: According to me, Gothitelle isn’t uncompetitive, it takes a lot of skill to build a good enough team around Gothitelle that fares well versus non-bulky teams. I have not seen a team published yet that accounts for Gothitelle’s viability in the tier, probably why the mon has low usage and win rate in tournaments. My philosophy is that Ubers is a guessing game until match-up and that there is nothing wrong with attaining an advantage over your opponent that consistently uses passive bulky builds while possessing an equal chance to be punished for running Gothitelle. One may say I’m leaning more towards an offensive metagame rather than one that favors all playstyles, but people have complained about stall being overwhelming during SPL 8 (early S&M) and I feel Gothitelle incentivizes players to reduce the passivity of their sets. As shown in tournaments, the negative connotation attached to Gothitelle of “invalidating playstyles”, “6-0ing teams after support Arceus is removed” (apparently Gothitelle + Marshadow is a potent core that is extremely usable), “zero counterplay” (it removes one Pokemon or two maximum, if it can remove more you should reconsider your team) is more theoretical than practical. It would be foolish not to consider usage statistics whose sole purpose is to gauge the player base, and the player base seems to have concluded that the risk of running Gothitelle is a lot higher than the reward.
I will not be replying to anyone. I feel I have covered all aspects of a no ban argument, but please bear in mind that it is obviously subjective. If I feel that I missed anything out, I’ll edit it into this post. Also, I urge all the other established tournament players that voted no ban to impart their reasoning too. Unless your reasoning is that you do not want to play stall at all, which I’m sure is the reason a lot of players voted no ban.
Last edited:
I don't care what you told me, Goth is devastating to balance, even if its running specific shit to counter it. Supportceus, Scarf Xern/Yveltal, Ho-Oh, even certain Mence sets are all staples of balance that lose to Goth.Just told you that goth is bad against balance and you now tell me that goth invalidates balance by himself ??
Nice kekker
I was just wondering as an outsider that if the Ubers metagame is already very offense centric following marshshadow’s release and goths staying in the tier, is Mega Rayquaza ever going to be re-suspected? There was tremendous power creep this gen, I guess I’m asking what would the necessary conditions be for it to be looked at?
Last edited:
I didn't vote in this suspect test. But if I were to get reqs, I'd probably have voted to not ban Gothitelle anyway. And my biggest reason for this - and a reason I know a lot of people are going to get really annoyed about, given what the attitude towards this suspect's outcome from the pro-ban crowd appears to be - is twofold:
First, Gothitelle has a very favorable matchup against playstyles that simply aren't particularly strong in this current metagame. That isn't to say that Balance and Stall are bad playstyles, of course, but Ubers is a relatively offensively-inclined metagame. That also doesn't mean that Smeargle/Deo-S Hyper Offense is a particularly viable playstyle, either: it isn't. But Gothitelle's winrate and low usage in Ubers is a bit of a testament to how absurdly matchup-dependent it is: if it isn't facing a team it thrives against, it faces a team where it's more or less a wasted teamslot instead. Thus, I feel that suspecting Gothitelle in particular isn't really going to solve many if any problems. The brute force and sheer attacking power delivered by some of the tier's most dominant threats isn't going to magically get any worse because something a particularly annoying mon in this tier did in the past cannot be done anymore. To put it simply, Gothitelle isn't "the problem," if that makes any sense.
This segues into my second point, and definitely the one that's going to make a lot of people very angry with me:
"The problem" is not something that can be easily fixed. Even though Ubers is trying to become more tier-like than before, as made evident by the banning of Mega Rayquaza in OR/AS, the idea of banning things that aren't half as unhealthy for a tier as Mega Rayquaza was just doesn't sound very appealing to myself and, I'd imagine, a lot of other people who did participate in this Suspect Ladder. "The problem" seems to be more along the lines of "Offense is really, really good in Ubers right now and Gothitelle just puts the nail in the coffin for teams that Offense can already break through with relative ease." And the idea of suspect testing in Ubers worries me.
With Mega Rayquaza, I felt that its ban was fully justified for an array of reasons, including but by no means limited to: its fantastic offensive spread that gave it top-tier physical and special offenses, its good bulk that was furthered by a downright broken ability that gave it more than its fair share of free turns to just go to down on the opponent, its good Speed-tier by Ubers standards, outpacing all the base 90s/95s/99s/100s, its access to reliable setup moves in Swords Dance for sheer breaking power or Dragon Dance to outspeed (and still break) most of the tier, its access to a ludicrously strong Extreme Speed that could OHKO many of the faster, frailer threats that would otherwise potentially revenge kill Mega Rayquaza, or its status as a Mega with none of a Mega's typical flaws, making the opportunity cost of running something that wasn't Mega Rayquaza disproportionately higher. This behemoth was an exception to such a rule to such an extreme degree due to its ability to often break the "rules" (if it's super strong it trades its bulk or speed to hit hard, if it can set up it can't be too immediately powerful before setup, etc.) that it deserved to be an enormous exception to the rules we've seen in Ubers. Ubers is the broken tier but this was so broken it was too broken for the broken tier because it actually didn't have proper counterplay.
Given my stance on Gothitelle (it not being "the problem") I'd argue that very little in this tier being suspected and banned would have the intended effect: if Offense is "the problem," a lot more than just one item or one particular mon would need to be suspected to adequately deal with it. If, hypothetically, Primal Groudon were to be suspected and banned (please do not suspect this thing, btw), Primal Kyogre would lose one of its few consistent answers while already-powerful threats like Xerneas and Dusk Mane would get better. If Primal Kyogre becomes too dominant, it could share Primal Groudon's fate. If the Red/Blue orbs got banned we'd start seeing a resurgence of old-but-gold threats like Scarf/Specs Kyogre, Palkia to deal with that, etc. If Dusk Mane were to hypothetically go - a lot of people seem to have problems with the Z-move variants due to their sheer breaking power - then Xerneas would lose its most consistent check. And so on.
Now, that scenario I presented is extremely hypothetical at best. I highly doubt any of what I listed there would warrant a suspect or a ban. But the problem with suspect testing in Ubers is that these sorts of things have a "butterfly effect" where one ban leads to a whole new assortment of problems, and some of those problems may need to be dealt with via a suspect or ban as well. In other tiers this would be a "broken-checking-broken" argument that would fall flat on its face; imagine if I told you that Breloom was one of Offense's few consistent answers for keeping Stakataka in check in UU and that it shouldn't have been banned as a result of that because Stakataka is a fantastic lategame cleaner with a fantastic matchup against frailer, more offensively-inclined teams. However, that isn't the case in Ubers: if Ubers started banning things on a more consistent basis, outside of Mega Rayquaza as a clear exception to the rule or Smogon-wide clauses like Sleep Clause, Infinite Battle Clause, etc. it would eventually lose its identity as, well, a banlist-gone-tier. If too many things are "too strong" for Ubers then what's the point of Ubers in the first place?
Anyway, apologies once again for some of the potentially-controversial stuff I've said in this post. But I feel that what I had to say here needed to be said, since I really wasn't on-board with this suspect test and probably won't be on-board with any suspect test of this nature in Ubers.
First, Gothitelle has a very favorable matchup against playstyles that simply aren't particularly strong in this current metagame. That isn't to say that Balance and Stall are bad playstyles, of course, but Ubers is a relatively offensively-inclined metagame. That also doesn't mean that Smeargle/Deo-S Hyper Offense is a particularly viable playstyle, either: it isn't. But Gothitelle's winrate and low usage in Ubers is a bit of a testament to how absurdly matchup-dependent it is: if it isn't facing a team it thrives against, it faces a team where it's more or less a wasted teamslot instead. Thus, I feel that suspecting Gothitelle in particular isn't really going to solve many if any problems. The brute force and sheer attacking power delivered by some of the tier's most dominant threats isn't going to magically get any worse because something a particularly annoying mon in this tier did in the past cannot be done anymore. To put it simply, Gothitelle isn't "the problem," if that makes any sense.
This segues into my second point, and definitely the one that's going to make a lot of people very angry with me:
"The problem" is not something that can be easily fixed. Even though Ubers is trying to become more tier-like than before, as made evident by the banning of Mega Rayquaza in OR/AS, the idea of banning things that aren't half as unhealthy for a tier as Mega Rayquaza was just doesn't sound very appealing to myself and, I'd imagine, a lot of other people who did participate in this Suspect Ladder. "The problem" seems to be more along the lines of "Offense is really, really good in Ubers right now and Gothitelle just puts the nail in the coffin for teams that Offense can already break through with relative ease." And the idea of suspect testing in Ubers worries me.
With Mega Rayquaza, I felt that its ban was fully justified for an array of reasons, including but by no means limited to: its fantastic offensive spread that gave it top-tier physical and special offenses, its good bulk that was furthered by a downright broken ability that gave it more than its fair share of free turns to just go to down on the opponent, its good Speed-tier by Ubers standards, outpacing all the base 90s/95s/99s/100s, its access to reliable setup moves in Swords Dance for sheer breaking power or Dragon Dance to outspeed (and still break) most of the tier, its access to a ludicrously strong Extreme Speed that could OHKO many of the faster, frailer threats that would otherwise potentially revenge kill Mega Rayquaza, or its status as a Mega with none of a Mega's typical flaws, making the opportunity cost of running something that wasn't Mega Rayquaza disproportionately higher. This behemoth was an exception to such a rule to such an extreme degree due to its ability to often break the "rules" (if it's super strong it trades its bulk or speed to hit hard, if it can set up it can't be too immediately powerful before setup, etc.) that it deserved to be an enormous exception to the rules we've seen in Ubers. Ubers is the broken tier but this was so broken it was too broken for the broken tier because it actually didn't have proper counterplay.
Given my stance on Gothitelle (it not being "the problem") I'd argue that very little in this tier being suspected and banned would have the intended effect: if Offense is "the problem," a lot more than just one item or one particular mon would need to be suspected to adequately deal with it. If, hypothetically, Primal Groudon were to be suspected and banned (please do not suspect this thing, btw), Primal Kyogre would lose one of its few consistent answers while already-powerful threats like Xerneas and Dusk Mane would get better. If Primal Kyogre becomes too dominant, it could share Primal Groudon's fate. If the Red/Blue orbs got banned we'd start seeing a resurgence of old-but-gold threats like Scarf/Specs Kyogre, Palkia to deal with that, etc. If Dusk Mane were to hypothetically go - a lot of people seem to have problems with the Z-move variants due to their sheer breaking power - then Xerneas would lose its most consistent check. And so on.
Now, that scenario I presented is extremely hypothetical at best. I highly doubt any of what I listed there would warrant a suspect or a ban. But the problem with suspect testing in Ubers is that these sorts of things have a "butterfly effect" where one ban leads to a whole new assortment of problems, and some of those problems may need to be dealt with via a suspect or ban as well. In other tiers this would be a "broken-checking-broken" argument that would fall flat on its face; imagine if I told you that Breloom was one of Offense's few consistent answers for keeping Stakataka in check in UU and that it shouldn't have been banned as a result of that because Stakataka is a fantastic lategame cleaner with a fantastic matchup against frailer, more offensively-inclined teams. However, that isn't the case in Ubers: if Ubers started banning things on a more consistent basis, outside of Mega Rayquaza as a clear exception to the rule or Smogon-wide clauses like Sleep Clause, Infinite Battle Clause, etc. it would eventually lose its identity as, well, a banlist-gone-tier. If too many things are "too strong" for Ubers then what's the point of Ubers in the first place?
Anyway, apologies once again for some of the potentially-controversial stuff I've said in this post. But I feel that what I had to say here needed to be said, since I really wasn't on-board with this suspect test and probably won't be on-board with any suspect test of this nature in Ubers.
In my honest opinion, we should just consider looking into Solganium Z and Geomancy. Looking through the complaints and discussion about Necrozma-DM and Xerneas and just the general overload of powerful sweepers, I consider this the ideal choice for two main reasons:
It'll allow the Pokemon to stay in the metagame without gutting them: Ok, this is properly the biggest point of the two, but lemme explain. The way I see it, suspecting or council voting on banning Necrozma-DM or Xern on their own is hopeless, as there is too much of an even divide between the pro and anti ban sides for something like that to go anywhere. Now, let's look at banning their main tools:
-If Solganium Z is banned, not only will Necrozma-DM be able to stick around, but it will also likely remain a top-tier threat that can wield a bajillion sets, hell, it could even try diet breaker sets but with Psychium Z or even regular old Steelium Z this time around. Despite this, its most polarizing and controversial set is now heavily weakened, which in turn allows for builders to better account for Dusk Mane when making their teams. Defensive checks would now be able to run way less bulk considering the pretty significant drop in power from 200 to 180 and the inability to bypass abilities, and those "freed up EVs" could allow them to be customized to handle multiple other threats better, which, again, allows for better role compression and reduces strain on teambuilding, the main concern with all these strong sweepers.
-Banning Geomancy on Xerneas accomplishes basically the same thing. Xerneas will still be an amazing Pokemon with its god-like type and power, and heck, losing Geomancy might not even hinder it that much considering even nowadays more Xerneas are running stuff like Choice items. But without the worries of getting crapped on by Power Herb or Z-Geomancy, teambuilders don't have to ultra-specialize their Xern checks to attempt to beat everything it can run, which once again reduces strain on the builder trying to account for it, Dusk Mane and all the other different threats in Ubers.
Basically, what I'm trying to get at is that if action must be taken against these threats, then banning Geomancy and Solganium would be the best way to go, since it allows the mons to stay in the tier, preventing the "butterfly effect" a lot of people worry about while also removing their most overbearing components, while ALSO not completely rendering these Pokemon worthless.
Now for my next point, which is a little more hard to grasp and admittedly not as strong
It gives the Gothitelle line a little less leverage: Think about it. What was the main argument in the first place for banning Gothitelle and Gothorita? Not because of the trapping itself, but because of the value of said trapping to these powerful sweepers, allowing them to 6-0 once their slow, bulky check is stalled to death by Goth. Now, imagine a hypothetical metagame where GeoXern is not a thing and Z-Necrozma is much weaker compared to what it was. That's two of the biggest threats Goth enables neutered. Now, there are obviously still other sweepers that are unaffected by these bans that Goth can still support well like Double Dance Pdon and Zygarde-Complete. But actual amount of threats that can spiral out of control thanks to the Shadow Tag PP Stall support Goth provides has been reduced, which in turn makes said support less useful to teams and less threatening overall. This is more based on theorymonning, but I hope you get the idea.
It'll allow the Pokemon to stay in the metagame without gutting them: Ok, this is properly the biggest point of the two, but lemme explain. The way I see it, suspecting or council voting on banning Necrozma-DM or Xern on their own is hopeless, as there is too much of an even divide between the pro and anti ban sides for something like that to go anywhere. Now, let's look at banning their main tools:
-If Solganium Z is banned, not only will Necrozma-DM be able to stick around, but it will also likely remain a top-tier threat that can wield a bajillion sets, hell, it could even try diet breaker sets but with Psychium Z or even regular old Steelium Z this time around. Despite this, its most polarizing and controversial set is now heavily weakened, which in turn allows for builders to better account for Dusk Mane when making their teams. Defensive checks would now be able to run way less bulk considering the pretty significant drop in power from 200 to 180 and the inability to bypass abilities, and those "freed up EVs" could allow them to be customized to handle multiple other threats better, which, again, allows for better role compression and reduces strain on teambuilding, the main concern with all these strong sweepers.
-Banning Geomancy on Xerneas accomplishes basically the same thing. Xerneas will still be an amazing Pokemon with its god-like type and power, and heck, losing Geomancy might not even hinder it that much considering even nowadays more Xerneas are running stuff like Choice items. But without the worries of getting crapped on by Power Herb or Z-Geomancy, teambuilders don't have to ultra-specialize their Xern checks to attempt to beat everything it can run, which once again reduces strain on the builder trying to account for it, Dusk Mane and all the other different threats in Ubers.
Basically, what I'm trying to get at is that if action must be taken against these threats, then banning Geomancy and Solganium would be the best way to go, since it allows the mons to stay in the tier, preventing the "butterfly effect" a lot of people worry about while also removing their most overbearing components, while ALSO not completely rendering these Pokemon worthless.
Now for my next point, which is a little more hard to grasp and admittedly not as strong
It gives the Gothitelle line a little less leverage: Think about it. What was the main argument in the first place for banning Gothitelle and Gothorita? Not because of the trapping itself, but because of the value of said trapping to these powerful sweepers, allowing them to 6-0 once their slow, bulky check is stalled to death by Goth. Now, imagine a hypothetical metagame where GeoXern is not a thing and Z-Necrozma is much weaker compared to what it was. That's two of the biggest threats Goth enables neutered. Now, there are obviously still other sweepers that are unaffected by these bans that Goth can still support well like Double Dance Pdon and Zygarde-Complete. But actual amount of threats that can spiral out of control thanks to the Shadow Tag PP Stall support Goth provides has been reduced, which in turn makes said support less useful to teams and less threatening overall. This is more based on theorymonning, but I hope you get the idea.
Last edited:
I feel like this is much the same as the argument you used in OU for keeping an S- rank, and it seems that the crux of both these arguments is an assumption that the title 'Ubers' has some special meaning (like assuming that the title 'S-' has some meaning beyone being a classification). These are just labels that we, the community, apply to help us categorize things.
You are concerned with the idea of maintaining historical standards, when what you should be concerned with is the current play-ability of the tier.
So in answer to your question, while 'the point of Ubers' historically was that it was a banlist for Standard, things have, as they are wont to do, changed.
And what's happening right now is a discussion about how to address these changes. I see this as very healthy. Sticking with the status quo just because its what one is used to or comfortable with is no argument for doing so.
I don't know how I feel about just banning Solgalium Z altogether, and that's because of the other Pokemon that has access to it:
It'd be ludicrous to call Searing Sunraze Smash a suspect-worthy move on Solgaleo, an objectively inferior version of Necrozma-DM in the most crucial ways: worse Attack, no Swords Dance (has to rely on Work Up to boost Attack), no Rock Polish (would have to fit Flame Charge and a Jolly nature [which only weakens its attacks further] if it wants to outrun Modest Scarf Yveltal, and it has no hope of getting past Timid Scarf whereas Dusk Mane can at +2) , no Stealth Rock, and no Prism Armor to weaken opposing super effective attacks during a sweep.
If anything, I think the best way to go about a Searing Sunraze Smash suspect is to just remove it from Necrozma-DM only. We pretty much already set a precedent with banning Hypnosis on Mega Gengar. We didn't ban Hypnosis entirely; just removed it from Mega Gengar's options. I believe that if we were to go about banning Searing Sunraze Smash on just Dusk Mane, not only would it bring about the changes that you listed, but it'd also give Solgaleo something that Dusk Mane would now lack; a 200 base power STAB, but without all of the positives that Dusk Mane brings to the table. In fact, I can see a set of Work Up / Sunsteel Strike / Wild Charge / Earthquake or Flame Charge w/ Solganium Z being an ok breaker/sweeper set for Solgaleo all things considered.
This would be considered banning an element of a Pokémon in an attempt to nerf it, which isn't an option with our ban policy. The only reason Hyponosis is banned on M-Gar is because sleep trap is considered a loophole in the sleep clause.I don't know how I feel about just banning Solgalium Z altogether, and that's because of the other Pokemon that has access to it:
It'd be ludicrous to call Searing Sunraze Smash a suspect-worthy move on Solgaleo, an objectively inferior version of Necrozma-DM in the most crucial ways: worse Attack, no Swords Dance (has to rely on Work Up to boost Attack), no Rock Polish (would have to fit Flame Charge and a Jolly nature [which only weakens its attacks further] if it wants to outrun Modest Scarf Yveltal, and it has no hope of getting past Timid Scarf whereas Dusk Mane can at +2) , no Stealth Rock, and no Prism Armor to weaken opposing super effective attacks during a sweep.
If anything, I think the best way to go about a Searing Sunraze Smash suspect is to just remove it from Necrozma-DM only. We pretty much already set a precedent with banning Hypnosis on Mega Gengar. We didn't ban Hypnosis entirely; just removed it from Mega Gengar's options. I believe that if we were to go about banning Searing Sunraze Smash on just Dusk Mane, not only would it bring about the changes that you listed, but it'd also give Solgaleo something that Dusk Mane would now lack; a 200 base power STAB, but without all of the positives that Dusk Mane brings to the table. In fact, I can see a set of Work Up / Sunsteel Strike / Wild Charge / Earthquake or Flame Charge w/ Solganium Z being an ok breaker/sweeper set for Solgaleo all things considered.
Also, it's worth noting that banning Solganium Z on Dusk Mane but not Solgaleo would be considered a complex ban since you are banning a specific combination of elements, rather than banning a single element outright. We're trying to make ourselves a real tier more in line with the others, and we all know how Smogon at large feels about complex bans.
So much salt in this thread like Jesus just accept Goth is staying and move on lmao
Wondering if those crying have even been a part of a suspect before
Wondering if those crying have even been a part of a suspect before
That's not an argument for banning it. Firmly grasp the English language and respond to what I actually said.
Yep, it really is amazing how people are unwilling to treat this like a real tier and move on.
Ah, thanks for contributing to the discussion by dismissing all complaints and discussion as "salt".
There is a reason why this discussion is being had: even the people who were anti-ban for Goth think this suspect was very rocky and had flaws: Some have considered it an outright failure.
Why is this? Well, if you've actually read any of the posts on here, you would've found a slew of complaints and discussion about the ladder, the validity of the votes, the requirements and more.
Now, maybe this seems like a bad thing to you since you're so used to order and form with these things, but there's a damn good reason why this has happened: Remember this is Ubers' first suspect in years, which in turn is part of a wider effort by the leadership to redefine and reform Ubers to be more in line with the rest of Smogon's tiers.
I am actually quite happy that we are having this talk right now. It's extremely important for this tier's future to learn from this suspect, and see what can be done better to allow for more engagement from the playerbase and make votes more educated and important. Honestly, I think another mistake that was made was making something so controversial be the subject of the very first Ubers suspect in such a long time: We should've chosen something comparatively minor like Geomancy, and saved Goth for the 3rd or 4th test after we had already done some other suspects and used those to discuss and iron out the system.
Last edited:
Dramps i genuinely dont think you play ubers on a consistent basis to make claims of calling people the problem over an opinion and are just rephrasing the same suspect jumbo to have people think you have been engaged in the tier to speak on it the way you are. I didnt see you active when i was playing it before i quit playing mons around the time goth gained prevalence and now are just saying stuff because goth wasnt banned.
Suspect ladders have always been a problem because its based on a hypothetical metagame in a small time frame window that doesnt actually show if a meta will be more competitive, stable, etc. Dont pin the blame on Ubers because of a system thats been flawed with no real good consistent solution for years across most tiers (suspect ladders), its silly.
A better discussion would be where lies the problem in Ubers perception to where its being considered to be dropped as a core metagame removing tournament representation, a big factor as to why this even took place. You’re naive if you think the issue was with Goth in general. Ease of accessibility, community? There’s a number of reasons im sure active main uber players could touch upon productively.
Suspect ladders have always been a problem because its based on a hypothetical metagame in a small time frame window that doesnt actually show if a meta will be more competitive, stable, etc. Dont pin the blame on Ubers because of a system thats been flawed with no real good consistent solution for years across most tiers (suspect ladders), its silly.
A better discussion would be where lies the problem in Ubers perception to where its being considered to be dropped as a core metagame removing tournament representation, a big factor as to why this even took place. You’re naive if you think the issue was with Goth in general. Ease of accessibility, community? There’s a number of reasons im sure active main uber players could touch upon productively.
Looking at the suspect, and the situation at hand...
I think the pro-ban side unconsciously had an ideological reason in its argument: That Banning the goths would free up other styles of play the goths discouraged, like Balance and Stall. The problem is that many players did not seem to care about playstyle variety much at all in the suspect - given how I've heard about most gameplay being offense there. Thus the "ghost in the room" in gothitelle rarely came out to prove its terror.
I'm kind of wondering about this - and from the Pro and Anti-ban sides:
1. Is there an actual excuse to sparing a common playstyle in this metagame? Like, how important are balance and stall play styles here to the integrity of the tier?
2. Is having just offense a bad thing for this tier? And if so, state the effects it does to playing in it and attracting/discouraging players being in ubers.
Apparently, "playability" was made into an important value to the people of ubers. I think you all should elaborate upon this to the various play styles, too. This I think was forgotten by the quick nature of the suspect.
I think the pro-ban side unconsciously had an ideological reason in its argument: That Banning the goths would free up other styles of play the goths discouraged, like Balance and Stall. The problem is that many players did not seem to care about playstyle variety much at all in the suspect - given how I've heard about most gameplay being offense there. Thus the "ghost in the room" in gothitelle rarely came out to prove its terror.
I'm kind of wondering about this - and from the Pro and Anti-ban sides:
1. Is there an actual excuse to sparing a common playstyle in this metagame? Like, how important are balance and stall play styles here to the integrity of the tier?
2. Is having just offense a bad thing for this tier? And if so, state the effects it does to playing in it and attracting/discouraging players being in ubers.
Apparently, "playability" was made into an important value to the people of ubers. I think you all should elaborate upon this to the various play styles, too. This I think was forgotten by the quick nature of the suspect.
There has been a considerable amount of development in this thread, I wasn't initially going to post here, but I feel like now I should give my thoughts on the aftermath of the recent suspect test.
Despite the result, I think the suspect test was very good for the development of the Ubers and increased interest from other players such as those from the tournament section and this really paves the first stepping stones to bigger developments and progression in the tier; If the end result wasn’t what you expected, you’ve got to understand that the suspect itself will always bring positives regardless.
I do agree suspect tests were definitely there way to go in this situation and Hogg has made an exemplary post highlighting why this is the case. It is very important that tiering decisions of this magnitude have valuable public opinion, it's not a simple ruling such as the previous Sleep-Trap ban, it is the banning of an entire pokemon from Ubers. There could have been a few optimisations made on the suspect test itself arguably, but this has been the first Ubers suspect test in almost 4 years so it is essentially an uncharted territory for the current ubers leadership, but I do think they did a good job with the execution of the suspect test itself and was a good stepping stone for us.
I’ve seen a few posts from participants saying they feel ‘non-mains’ ruined the outcome of the suspect test and I don’t think this is fair to say at all. Not only is there a sense of elitism behind this, everyone who qualifies for the suspect test is entitled to voice their opinion on a tiering decision, also this happens in all tiers, not just Ubers, because the target audience of suspect tests is for the players who want to participate in suspect tests such as tournament players that usually play these tiers at a mid-high level and tend to be somewhat informed of the metagame regardless, therefore these decisions could potentially affect the metagame that they play.
Another point brought up numerous times was the ‘lack of Gothitelle/Gothorita on the ladder’ and it simply being an ‘offense vs offense metagame’ and thus this influnced players decisions of the suspect test. While there was indeed a lack of Gothitelle/Gothorita on the ladder, most players who participate in suspect tests have most likely formulated their informed opinions and decisions before even laddering. Of course there are going to be the odd players who won’t have enough experience with Gothitelle/Gothorita to have a strong opinion and qualify for suspect test requirements but this is far and few between.
The construction of a Ubers Council is an interesting point of discussion I feel, but at the current state of Ubers, I don’t think a council is necessary, this is probably worth looking at in the distant future. I also strongly feel public input is very important, especially in a tier like Ubers, though a council could discuss potential issues such as previous brought up issues like Swagger or Sleep-Trap Ban where community input isn't almost as necessary or doesn't warrant a whole suspect test.
Despite the result, I think the suspect test was very good for the development of the Ubers and increased interest from other players such as those from the tournament section and this really paves the first stepping stones to bigger developments and progression in the tier; If the end result wasn’t what you expected, you’ve got to understand that the suspect itself will always bring positives regardless.
I do agree suspect tests were definitely there way to go in this situation and Hogg has made an exemplary post highlighting why this is the case. It is very important that tiering decisions of this magnitude have valuable public opinion, it's not a simple ruling such as the previous Sleep-Trap ban, it is the banning of an entire pokemon from Ubers. There could have been a few optimisations made on the suspect test itself arguably, but this has been the first Ubers suspect test in almost 4 years so it is essentially an uncharted territory for the current ubers leadership, but I do think they did a good job with the execution of the suspect test itself and was a good stepping stone for us.
I’ve seen a few posts from participants saying they feel ‘non-mains’ ruined the outcome of the suspect test and I don’t think this is fair to say at all. Not only is there a sense of elitism behind this, everyone who qualifies for the suspect test is entitled to voice their opinion on a tiering decision, also this happens in all tiers, not just Ubers, because the target audience of suspect tests is for the players who want to participate in suspect tests such as tournament players that usually play these tiers at a mid-high level and tend to be somewhat informed of the metagame regardless, therefore these decisions could potentially affect the metagame that they play.
Another point brought up numerous times was the ‘lack of Gothitelle/Gothorita on the ladder’ and it simply being an ‘offense vs offense metagame’ and thus this influnced players decisions of the suspect test. While there was indeed a lack of Gothitelle/Gothorita on the ladder, most players who participate in suspect tests have most likely formulated their informed opinions and decisions before even laddering. Of course there are going to be the odd players who won’t have enough experience with Gothitelle/Gothorita to have a strong opinion and qualify for suspect test requirements but this is far and few between.
The construction of a Ubers Council is an interesting point of discussion I feel, but at the current state of Ubers, I don’t think a council is necessary, this is probably worth looking at in the distant future. I also strongly feel public input is very important, especially in a tier like Ubers, though a council could discuss potential issues such as previous brought up issues like Swagger or Sleep-Trap Ban where community input isn't almost as necessary or doesn't warrant a whole suspect test.
Last edited:
A bit late for the memes but eh (I was originally going to be even more insufferable than this but whatever):
Anyway, seeing as we've concluded the Goth test and are talking about other things to test for potential forward mobility of the metagame, I want to talk about Baton Pass and Species Clause. The first one I thought was a bit poorly thought out and lacking evidence and the second is actually quite a big talking point on Discord at the moment so I think we should address it. Note that Nayrz has made it clear that we wouldn't have another Suspect Test until November given tourneys and shit, so this is all just talk atm anyway.
Baton Pass:
Hopefully this clears up BP.
Also fuck this has taken too long. I was originally going to talk about Species Clause in this post too (which is arguably the much more exciting part) but this is so long as is I'll talk about Species Clause another time. For now I'll just leave BP here.
Anyway, seeing as we've concluded the Goth test and are talking about other things to test for potential forward mobility of the metagame, I want to talk about Baton Pass and Species Clause. The first one I thought was a bit poorly thought out and lacking evidence and the second is actually quite a big talking point on Discord at the moment so I think we should address it. Note that Nayrz has made it clear that we wouldn't have another Suspect Test until November given tourneys and shit, so this is all just talk atm anyway.
Baton Pass:
As you all know, I'm pretty much against all bans in Ubers and this one while this has some merit, I think it was overkill. Personal opinions and experiences aside, there really wasn't much evidence provided to ban Baton Pass as a whole provided in the original announcement by Fireburn. There were 8 replays, 6 of which featured Evopass, which was the dominant BP strategy at the time, and only 2 other replays that showed Baton Pass used in another way (and none of them showed a BP chain, the most hatest variant!). I'll just quickly go through them:
Anyway, just responding the points brought up in the announcement:
There is a problem to this though. Sure, the sweeper itself does not need to waste the cost of a moveslot (sometimes 2) + a turn (sometimes 2) to set up and get the boosts, but it's not completely cost-free. You can't ignore the fact that instead of using a moveslot you're instead using up a WHOLE Pokemon to make those boosts possible (and in the case of BP chains an entire team!), and most of the time these mons are subpar junk that can't do anything apart from Baton Pass boosts and is literally worse than a dead Pokemon if you're even switched on against their strategy. Given how much of a fuss we made about Goth removing a Support Arceus or anything else it's pretty safe to say sacrificing a Pokemon to use as BP is a very real cost. The highest ranked Pokemon in our Viability Rankings that can BP anything is Mega Scizor in B+ - that says a lot about the cost of making BP work. So no, running BP does not eliminate cost of running set up moves at all.
This is debatable. It takes a certain skill to 1) make a BP chain that doesn't fall flat to common threats and 2) you still need to adapt to your opponent's ability to stop you from executing that BP. As for other simpler passers like Speed Boost passers, Smashpassers and stuff, you have to manage to be able to keep what is normally a pile of crap alive so you can get those boosts passed off in the first place.
I'm not going to bother going into specific BP counterplay and whether they are viable or not because I'm rambling on a lot already, but I'm just going to note the bolded part about brute force. Actually, the best way to beat a BP chain is literally just hit it really hard. Normally setting up with Ekiller turn 1 is a silly move but with BP you literally use that mentality. Essentially, if you give BP no time or put it on negative time you win. I'm simplifying it a lot here, but like if you slap GeoXern turn 1 vs their Scolipede, click Geomancy while they Sub/Protect and then start spamming Moonblasts, what the fuck can they do? They can end up passing Smeargle and putting you to sleep, passing to their SpD passer (which usually ends up using CM), they still die to you if wake up within 2 turns. I've done this to way too many BP chain users to count and sure they can use Roar to get rid of you or use shit like Topsy-Turvy but the fact remains that you have impeded their progress. Like shit if they just Roared you out the only thing they've probably achieved is get to +6 Speed. Keep hitting them really hard and prevent them from getting free set up. Look I know I'm really simplifying this but really, the best way to beat mindless shit like BP is be mindless yourself. I find it ironic that people hate on BP for being mindless when the best way to beat it is to just use that hammer and treat it as a nail.
Or, you can just ban Eevium Z.
Oh come on - now Shedinja is helpless vs Sand. Joking aside, there are still applications of BP that can be productive that aren't bs. Passing 1 or 2 boosts is not broken and adds different strategies to the table. Eg Something like SpD Celebi with CM/BP/GK/Recover is a really good switch-in to Kyogre/Groundceus/Waterceus and can escape Goth if needed. Other things like passing a simple Sub can potentially make the metagame more interesting too. There are probably other ways to use BP that could be good for the metagame but you guys can probably find those better than I can now.
So potential ways of tackling a potential suspect:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ubers-583222793
Gee, talking about scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Thimo's opponent clearly did not know what Volbeat did. Infestation is something new and obviously once Groudon was trapped, sure it was gg. However, Volbeat is a pretty one-trick pony and anyone who knows anything about Volbeat knows that "this thing is going to use Encore to force a set up turn then pass Tail Glow". Lack of knowledge is not valid evidence to show how broken something is.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ubers-263186
So Hack exploded at me when I dared to question his plays in this game, but regardless - this game is hardly good evidence to show how broken/uncompetitive BP is. It pretty much preyed the convenience that no-one uses Reversal Blaziken ever. This is no different to cheesing top level players with some other gimmick tech because it's so unexpected and BP was more of a side note to this, really. If Hack had knowledge of the set or if BP Blaze was a more commonly used set he'd have went to Groudon and Roared the moment Blaziken used Sub and that would have been the end of that - Mazary would essentially be playing 5-6 there.
So out of the replays provided in the announcement 75% of the replays were of Evopass, 12.5% was a clear misplay and the other 12.5% was a gimmick cheese game. On the merit of the evidence given, it is reasonable to say that Evopass is broken and therefore should be banned. There was however absolutely no evidence was shown that BP is uncompetitive/broken in any other way. This is especially shaky when the last paragraph talks about "stopping the chain" and there are no replays to show BP chains being used at all and also the fact that when people bring up about things they hate about BP the thing they're usually thinking about is full BP chains.
Gee, talking about scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Thimo's opponent clearly did not know what Volbeat did. Infestation is something new and obviously once Groudon was trapped, sure it was gg. However, Volbeat is a pretty one-trick pony and anyone who knows anything about Volbeat knows that "this thing is going to use Encore to force a set up turn then pass Tail Glow". Lack of knowledge is not valid evidence to show how broken something is.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ubers-263186
So Hack exploded at me when I dared to question his plays in this game, but regardless - this game is hardly good evidence to show how broken/uncompetitive BP is. It pretty much preyed the convenience that no-one uses Reversal Blaziken ever. This is no different to cheesing top level players with some other gimmick tech because it's so unexpected and BP was more of a side note to this, really. If Hack had knowledge of the set or if BP Blaze was a more commonly used set he'd have went to Groudon and Roared the moment Blaziken used Sub and that would have been the end of that - Mazary would essentially be playing 5-6 there.
So out of the replays provided in the announcement 75% of the replays were of Evopass, 12.5% was a clear misplay and the other 12.5% was a gimmick cheese game. On the merit of the evidence given, it is reasonable to say that Evopass is broken and therefore should be banned. There was however absolutely no evidence was shown that BP is uncompetitive/broken in any other way. This is especially shaky when the last paragraph talks about "stopping the chain" and there are no replays to show BP chains being used at all and also the fact that when people bring up about things they hate about BP the thing they're usually thinking about is full BP chains.
Anyway, just responding the points brought up in the announcement:
There is a problem to this though. Sure, the sweeper itself does not need to waste the cost of a moveslot (sometimes 2) + a turn (sometimes 2) to set up and get the boosts, but it's not completely cost-free. You can't ignore the fact that instead of using a moveslot you're instead using up a WHOLE Pokemon to make those boosts possible (and in the case of BP chains an entire team!), and most of the time these mons are subpar junk that can't do anything apart from Baton Pass boosts and is literally worse than a dead Pokemon if you're even switched on against their strategy. Given how much of a fuss we made about Goth removing a Support Arceus or anything else it's pretty safe to say sacrificing a Pokemon to use as BP is a very real cost. The highest ranked Pokemon in our Viability Rankings that can BP anything is Mega Scizor in B+ - that says a lot about the cost of making BP work. So no, running BP does not eliminate cost of running set up moves at all.
This is debatable. It takes a certain skill to 1) make a BP chain that doesn't fall flat to common threats and 2) you still need to adapt to your opponent's ability to stop you from executing that BP. As for other simpler passers like Speed Boost passers, Smashpassers and stuff, you have to manage to be able to keep what is normally a pile of crap alive so you can get those boosts passed off in the first place.
I'm not going to bother going into specific BP counterplay and whether they are viable or not because I'm rambling on a lot already, but I'm just going to note the bolded part about brute force. Actually, the best way to beat a BP chain is literally just hit it really hard. Normally setting up with Ekiller turn 1 is a silly move but with BP you literally use that mentality. Essentially, if you give BP no time or put it on negative time you win. I'm simplifying it a lot here, but like if you slap GeoXern turn 1 vs their Scolipede, click Geomancy while they Sub/Protect and then start spamming Moonblasts, what the fuck can they do? They can end up passing Smeargle and putting you to sleep, passing to their SpD passer (which usually ends up using CM), they still die to you if wake up within 2 turns. I've done this to way too many BP chain users to count and sure they can use Roar to get rid of you or use shit like Topsy-Turvy but the fact remains that you have impeded their progress. Like shit if they just Roared you out the only thing they've probably achieved is get to +6 Speed. Keep hitting them really hard and prevent them from getting free set up. Look I know I'm really simplifying this but really, the best way to beat mindless shit like BP is be mindless yourself. I find it ironic that people hate on BP for being mindless when the best way to beat it is to just use that hammer and treat it as a nail.
Or, you can just ban Eevium Z.
So potential ways of tackling a potential suspect:
Nayrz has already indicated that there are potentially too many variables in a BP re-test seeing as it can be as innocuous as to a full blown chain (which everyone hates, myself included although I never got the broken/uncompetitiveness of it). Where do we draw the line? Well to me anyway, I don't see any form of BP to be uncompetitive or broken so I'd prefer we just leave Eevium Z banned and unban the lot. However I know a lot of people don't see it that way so whatever. The only candidate I can see being potentially broken is Smashpass because something like +2/+2/+2 Dusk Mane or PDon are scary af.
I reckon if we just carry out a general test +/- tourneys. The broken ones will show if we have people exploring them. For the sake of simplicity, I reckon instead of doing complex bans like OU does we should just keep it banned if ANY variant of BP outside of Evopass is uncompetitive/broken, seeing as we have established the potency of Evopass and we can keep Eevium Z banned. We can just suspect test BP with Eevium Z banned and go from there. If Smashpass is too powerful, BP stays banned. If BP chains are indeed uncompetitive, BP stays banned. If no variant of BP is broken/uncompetitive outside of Evopass, we just ban Eevium Z and unban BP entirely. Otherwise this gets too messy.
I reckon if we just carry out a general test +/- tourneys. The broken ones will show if we have people exploring them. For the sake of simplicity, I reckon instead of doing complex bans like OU does we should just keep it banned if ANY variant of BP outside of Evopass is uncompetitive/broken, seeing as we have established the potency of Evopass and we can keep Eevium Z banned. We can just suspect test BP with Eevium Z banned and go from there. If Smashpass is too powerful, BP stays banned. If BP chains are indeed uncompetitive, BP stays banned. If no variant of BP is broken/uncompetitive outside of Evopass, we just ban Eevium Z and unban BP entirely. Otherwise this gets too messy.
Hopefully this clears up BP.
Also fuck this has taken too long. I was originally going to talk about Species Clause in this post too (which is arguably the much more exciting part) but this is so long as is I'll talk about Species Clause another time. For now I'll just leave BP here.
Your BP stance has merit shrang.....last gen. The introduction of dm necro and zyg-c throws a bunch of your hypotheticals out of whack. Mscizor is the highest user in VR that can use baton pass because BP is obviously banned and other users are not viable without it. The only thing you can take from your stance is the last paragraph because everything else mentioned is based on a bunch of throrymon and outdated replays in terms of the metagame.
Edit: BP was terrible to play against and although thats an opinion its a shared one i know for sure and I dont think is going to improve kn competitive merits or make ubers look and feel better from a public perception standpoint.
Edit: BP was terrible to play against and although thats an opinion its a shared one i know for sure and I dont think is going to improve kn competitive merits or make ubers look and feel better from a public perception standpoint.
Of course the replays and stuff are just theorymon at this point given the metagame changes - it kind of goes without saying. If anything it just shows why we need to re-test BP altogether. The criticism of the replays and debunking the arguments in the announcements thread were there to show how flawed the original decision was. I understand the TLs were under a lot of pressure from the community to do something about BP (which mainly stemmed from Evopass) and they were juggling a lot of IRL commitments, but that doesn't take away that it was a rushed decision that was presented well at all. Of course it was met with overwhelming applause given how hated BP was in general but if you really think about it you really start to poke holes. My criticisms of the evidence given are hypothetical now, sure, but that's only because they're long overdue.
So yea - changed metagame + poor/overkill original ban should pretty much = we need to retest BP, no?
So yea - changed metagame + poor/overkill original ban should pretty much = we need to retest BP, no?
I mean it was more rushed cause the conundrum was in the middle of a tournament people were cheesing through (pretty sure it was an Ubers open last year but someone can correct me on that). BP was being used on ladder for awhile but nobody cared until it hit an area where people start to care about wins and losses, evvee pass pushed it over that edge though. You'd have to argue if a re-test is in the actual best interest for the tier because you're fighting for a minimalistic core Ubers approach (or w/e you old heads call it) versus the current culture of today on Smogon where tiers are lowkey but not so much lowkey fighting between each other for tournament representation, espcially tiers that don't really fall into a usage category. You and I have both seen the threads of people going at each other over being part of the main tournament circuits and while there is nothing wrong with the old minimal ban approach for identity and exclusivity reasons, it's a minority philosophy that doesn't translate well today especially when all the other tiers pretty much share the same consistencies in how they approach tier balancing, playability, and competitiveness in hopes for that larger representation. You know this to considering the same threads tiers shit on each other like to throw this around subliminally in a crass way.
So let's remove the opinion part of BP and take those points into consideration since they at least encompass or related to some of the other stuff you said as well like Species Clause.
So let's remove the opinion part of BP and take those points into consideration since they at least encompass or related to some of the other stuff you said as well like Species Clause.
Do BP have the essence of ubers? From my perspective, smashpass is a hallmark playstyle that has been popular since BW2 to the ban of bp. I would like to see it again. However, IMO anything with Eevee family and baton pass does not have the essence of ubers. People call such strategies "cancerous", "uncompetitive", and so on. Yet as shrang notes, the baton pass ban philosophy does not hold up. So, why did it get banned in the first place? I believe that it is because Eevee family-baton pass strategies did not have the ubers essence, so the community turned against the strategy and banned it unjustly. I do like AM's interpretation of tiering for tour recognition. So, we should be asking ourselves: what should be the tiering direction to promote the spectating value of ubers? An advantage of this interpretation is that we would want to increase the ubers essence for the spectators (conveying an ubers experience). A side note: I do find it odd that Gothitelle was not banned despite of it being highly spectator unfriendly. Does the ubers essence of Gothitelle strats outweigh the spectator unfriendliness nature of pp stalling? Do people consider goth as a hallmark of ubers now? I'm not sure.
Removing species clause would be a serious violation against the essence of ubers. However, as AG has demonstrated, the anarchistic tiering leads to efficient team slot selections. Is it worth it though? Or should we just let AG do their thing and develop their essence?
Removing species clause would be a serious violation against the essence of ubers. However, as AG has demonstrated, the anarchistic tiering leads to efficient team slot selections. Is it worth it though? Or should we just let AG do their thing and develop their essence?
- Status