Battling Skill:
I gtg so I won't have time to get into this yet, but I might come back later to address this.
Ok so I didn't get to this before because
a) I was rushing to get to work and
b) I wanted to at least try to be more thorough here, so I'm not just blowing past a bunch of valid pro-Marshadow points that were made.
I participated in a few of the scheduled roomtours to middling success at best, generally facing Marshadow teams that were better than mine. I also laddered with Marshadow for the first half of my reqs laddering before switching to a comfort team I knew well.
Recently though, I came up with a really fun
hyper offensive team using Marshadow that I genuinely enjoyed using, which I didn't expect to happen. I also joined a few impromptu roomtours using this team, and having read people's arguments in this thread, to help round out my opinion.
So I want to preface this post by saying I gave Marshadow at least one solid shot, and don't aspire to be the loudest opinion in the room either way. I can see things both ways and just want to give my honest opinions here about how Marshadow influences battling skill in a game -- I might get some things wrong and am open to being corrected.
Battling Skill - the part of skill involved in actually battling
Picking the Right Lead (net neutral)
Marshadow typically isn't an ideal lead since it's so easy to Intimidate and it probably won't be able to OHKO anything or do worthwhile damage so early in the game without risking itself.
Of course, in some situations Marshadow is actually a great lead (e.g. if you want to pressure Incineroar early on or if you're faced vs a Trick Room setter and fear Fake Out).
So really, the decisions involved with leading with Marsh aren't any different from most other Pokemon. No negative effects to the battling aspect of the meta here.
Recognizing the Win Condition (net negative, but only slightly)
Eh. So I can see this one both ways. If you're pro-Marshadow, the strongest arguement I can envision is that using Marshadow still requires you to identify any strong win conditions on the field and preserve Marshadow to deal with them at the right moment. For example, you don't autowin vs Mega Latias just by bringing Marshadow, because if you don't deal with the opposing intimidate cyclers, redirectors, etc. first, Mega Latias can still live a hit and Psyshock the Marshadow.
In my segment about teambuilding skill, I noted that Marshadow discourages win conditions at that stage. Using Marshadow in practice still requires you to recognize opposing wincons and preserve your answers accordingly, however.
The one thing about Marshadow though is that it is equipped to shut down a lot of different types of win conditions in one slot, to a degree of role compression that no other Pokemon offers. Examples of Win Conditions (or just good positions) that Marshadow can negate include:
- Substitute
- Stat boosts
- Fast lategame sweepers via priority
dI can provide more examples if needed, but here's one replay that stood out to me, where in one single game Marshadow bypassed a Substitute Aegislash, shut down a +1 Volcarona mid-game despite Volcarona having a speed advantage, then clipped that same Volcarona in the endgame despite getting back up to +1:
Having Marshadow in the back generally means that, on average, you'll have to think a bit less about which other 5 Pokemon need to be preserved for specific win con threats because Marshadow is a blanket panic button against all of them. This hampers the amount of skill needed to win a match, if only slightly.
Picking the Right Move (net negative)
Marshadow very rarely has to worry to much about picking the right move, at least compared to a lot of other Pokemon. Its strong + fast Ghost coverage hits the majority of the metagame satisfactorily, so you're never punished too hard for failing to predict a switch if you click this. Close Combat punishes Spectral Thief's switch ins for huge damage (both Normal-types and Dark-types take x2), so Marshadow is always in the driver's seat in terms of which move is best to click.
Additionally, Marshadow gets access to a strong, Technician-boosted priority move to help take the guesswork out of matchups versus faster attackers.
It isn't skill-less to pick which move to click on Marshadow, but the risk:reward ratio is skewed far higher towards "reward" on Marshadow compared to most other mons, which can easily waste a turn if they click into a resist.
The one exception to this is Marshadow mirrors. In a vaccuum, if you mirror versus a Marshadow, you are forced into a speed-tie gamble where you're either forced to:
- click shadow sneak to risk the speed tie
- Protect the Marshadow
- predict the opponent not to risk the shadow sneak and go for a stronger attack
However, Aurarayquza brought up some great points about the dynamics behind speed ties, and to be honest I agree with most of what he said. If you haven't read his points please read them
here. Tl;dr though is I think it's oversimplistic to say that Marshadow speed ties are _always_ skill-less; in the right contexts they absolutely can be skillful.
I will, however, say that speed ties can be annoying more than some people have made them out to be. I have a small sample size to work from but here's a few recent replays where speed ties played a significant role in the outcome of a game I played:
Overall, Marshadow is inherently a Pokemon that simplifies the amount of skill that goes into picking the right move, and no other Pokemon shares the same disregard for the type chart that Marshadow does. But while it has a net negative effect on skill, it's not "skill-less" by any means.
Smart Switching (net negative)
What I said about mirrors above applies here too so I won't repeat.
Mirrors aside, smart switching is an integral part of using Marshadow in this metagame. You want to switch it out of situations where Intimidate prevents it from breaking stuff. You want to preserve it from unnessesary hits so it can clear out the right threats later.
However, switching into Marshadow is a whole different story. You cannot really switch into Marshadow reliably unless you have Intimidate or redirection support. One big skill in gameplay is knowing when to predict and switch resists into attacks to mitigate the amount of damage your team is taking, and Marshadow makes it harder to practice this skill.
Gathering Information and Making Assumptions (net neutral)
I don't think Marshadow has an effect on this either way. Net neutral.
Long-term vs. Short-term Goals (net negative)
Ok so I mentioned this a lot in the teambuilding section of my last post, but Marshadow severely inhibits player's abilities to plan towards long-term goals.
I'm not gonna repeat long text on what what I've already talked about exensively, but Marshadow is just so dang good at shutting down long-term strategies. Even if it doesn't shut down everything perfectly, it makes the whole game gravitate a lot more towards the short-term goal of trading blows with your opponent and _maybe_ getting a Tailwind or Icy Wind up, at the expense of long-term win con strategies which are inherently an important part of a healthy metagame.
Net negative imo.
Assessing Risk (net positive)
Woah, a net positive??
Yeah, I actually do like this aspect of Marshadow. Marshadow's presence heightens the stakes for attempting to prepare a setup sweeper, which I actually think is healthy. Stuff like Volcarona and Kommo-o can be easy to become runaway wincons without proper checks, and Marshadow becomes this element where fast setup can't just mindlessly click attacks once it's in a favourable position.
Using Marshadow overall also requires constant assessment of risk. The main risks it has to assess correctly are Intimidate's potential to prevent it from killing threats, and its fear of taking too much damage before it has a chance to properly deal with opposing threats it needs to be preserved for.
Marshadow mirrors are dumb and an exception to this, but as Aray mentioned in most mirror matchups there are enough healthy play options at hand that this isn't _always_ skilless (even though I think it is skilless in some contexts).
Probability Management (net negative)
Perfect offensive coverage, a multitude of tools to deal with strategic wincons / long-term strategies, and pretty decent neutral bulk mitigate the risk of bringing Marshadow in at any given point during a match, and you're always rewarded in some way shape or fashion for getting it in just because of Marshadow's inherent ability to shut so many things down.
Maybe that's a bit simplistic. There are ways to play Marshadow terribly. Player skill being equal though, using Marshadow requires less probability management that any other Pokemon I can think of.
Marshadow mirrors are Marshadow mirrors - see above.
Conclusion
Yeah so overall, in terms of battling skill, I do think there are some aspects where Marshadow's presence hampers this a bit...but, I'm not sure if it's to the extent where I can consider Marshadow to be unhealthy on the battlefield.
I still don't think Marshadow does anything to boost skillful play though, and its impacts on teambuilding skill are pretty significant imo. Basically what it boils down to for me is that it's perfectly possible to adapt to a Marshadow metagame because, assuming you bring something viable for the meta, there's still decent skill involved with playing the games. The problem is, Marshadow's presence in the metagame heavily discourages creative teambuilding and is a disincentive to long-term strategy, both of which are integral aspects of a healthy metagame.
Some people are of the mentality that they are willing to sacrifice teambuilding skill for a higher ceiling on battling skill.
My stance right now is that one shouldn't be favoured over the other, and that if either are threatened that should be cause for keeping something banned.
Marshadow inhibits teambuilding quite a bit (although not to the point where I won't find new ideas to build) but also doesn't do anything significant to raise the ceiling on battling skill. Therefore, re-introducing Marshadow to me seems like something that would take an already-balanced meta and detract from it.
My stance is subjective, and I'm not exactly rallying that Marshadow
must stay banned. If the majority wants it to be freed, I'll understand it. I just wanted to contribute to the conversation.
Thanks for reading!
