• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

np: UU Suspect Test Round 2 - Cold As Ice

Status
Not open for further replies.
Another problem, Aldarons proposal was specifically meant to be a one time occurrence, and not to set a precedent. Users have attempted to use that same logic several times with OU nominations and have been shut down each time.
 
i find it interesting that starraptor is once again in the bl.... that guy is a beast... this place is littered with legendaries and staraptor gets banned... Just goes to show u how powerful he is...



One problem... snow cloak + snow warning isnt the same as doubling speed, and gaining another stab boost on water attacks.
And I'd hate to pound this emphasis into the ground again, but this really affects only one Pokemon. There has to be some pretty darned good excuse as to why we should go this far to preserve Froslass and prohibit other Pokemon who aren't nearly as effective with this ability.

Also, refer to what TCL said. We realize how drastic the Swift Swim + Drizzle ban (I am not calling it Aldaron's proposal, it was a community's decision) was, but the best we can do at this point is to keep anything like it from happening again so that we don't stray away from traditional methods of balancing the game and make the rule set overly complicated. Balance one, and you gotta balance them all.
 
Just ban Snow Warning and Sand Stream from UU. Auto-weather in general, just in case Politoed drops to UU (lol!).

Boohoo we destroy a whole playstyle! We're not just banning a whole playstyle, we're banning a whole broken playstyle!
 
I'd like to point out for the nth time that what happened in OU does not influence UU's method of banning. It may give us ideas but it is not a matter of policy. Drizzle + Swift Swim may have set a precedent for OU testing, but that does not mean UU needs to follow it. In the same vein, just because Drizzle + Swift Swim may have meant to be a one time thing (which is absurd, if it's actually the case but I digress) does not mean UU can't use a similar way of banning to solve a complicated situation. I mean just think about last gen - not following the OU methods of testing was one of the best decisions Jabba + Reach could have made. We would still be testing otherwise.

Once again, I find it ironic that people arguing for a "simpler" ban of just Froslass seem to forget the simple purpose of banning in the first place: to remove only what is broken.

Over simplifying the ban is far worse then over complicating it - the metagame is more negatively influenced by it.
 
You guys are kidding yourselves if you think Froslass is the only thing wrong with hail. I know i've been salted out by hail enough times, and it was primarily due to Hail being such an easy to use, clear advantage type weather that had little to no drawback. Mamoswine (yes I know it's going to OU, but for now we still have to deal with it!) Rotom, a dozen blizzspamers, stall teams and the like get a heavy boost in hail. I'm agreeing with Heysup, sure we can ban Froslass, Mamo(?), Rotom and a couple other hail abusers, or we can cut to the source and ban hail as a whole. The latter is a lot easier / less messy / more ideal.
 
Here's the thing about hail. It's not unbeatable. Some teams and mons can really give it trouble even, but in my experience the cost to execute a hail strategy is much lower than the cost to counter hail. In other words you must work much harder to make a team that can reliably beat hail than to make a reliable hail team.

Think about it this way:

When building a hail team:
I know that I can beat any team that just can't handle hail very easily, but even teams that can handle it are still at least even matches, if not a little in my favor. In very rare cases there may be a team that is very focused on beating hail abusers that I am at a disadvantage.

98% of the time is at least even, many matches are nearly a free win.

When building a non-hail team:
If I don't build around beating hail, i'll be beaten by hail. If I do build around hail I won't be able to check as many non-hail threats and I'll lose some matches because of it.

I can't build a team that gets at least even matches most of the time because I must choose between unfavorable matchups vs hail or unfavorable matchups vs other threats (which threats depends on my team). Even if there is some non-hail team that can hold its own against hail and check the majority of major threats in the metagame, there aren't many such possible teams and building such a team would be extremely difficult.

I think hail is broken because over the course of many matches Hail is always more advantageous than not Hail. There is no reason not to use hail because using hail will give better odds of victory 90% of the time. When you're laddering for rank being better 90% of the time is a huge advantage.
 
Is UU really Hail-dominated? According to August stats, Abomasnow is at around 7%. The latest stats for DPPt OU have Tyranitar sitting at ~19%, but no one ever said that DPPt OU was dominated by Sand.

Well, Tyranitar was a good Pokemon whether your team wanted a sand streamer or not, which is why it was used so much. The sand just comes with Ttar, whereas in UU you might say Abomasnow comes with the hail. If you're using abomasnow, it's to set hail. Period. Most people wouldn't say sand dominated DPPt OU because honestly, it didn't do nearly as much as hail does in UU. It was more present, but not accomplishing nearly as much most of the time. There were few viable "abusers" unless you count pokes that don't take the 6% damage every turn. Sand Veil Gliscor, Cradily, I suppose you could call Tar itself an abuser... I'm sure I'm forgetting something but w/e. !_! Also, the abusers didn't benefit nearly as much from the weather in most cases.

Abomasnows usage... well, it's shockingly low, seeing as the top of the ladder is ~40% hail teams with like the same six mons and maybe one (RARELY) two variations therein. -_- It really is just a case of mostly only good players using it. The only reason I'm not using it is because I'm mostly playing to test shit atm and seeing what team compositions counter hail while still being effective against other teams. If I had to bet my life on a BW UU match, I'd sure as shit be using hail. But it's just... so boring. @_@

That said, I haven't faced a hail team without thinking "wow, this would be 1000x more manageable without froslass on the other side." I don't think it's fair that we remove snow warning without getting rid of froslass first.

On a semi-related note I'm curious to hear why anyone thinks sand is broken or even deserving of suspect. ?_? I haven't noticed anything overwhelming about it besides good players using it.
 
Once again, I find it ironic that people arguing for a "simpler" ban of just Froslass seem to forget the simple purpose of banning in the first place: to remove only what is broken.

Then you should be agreeing with me that Frosslass + Snow Warning is the best course of action, and then banning Froslass. Snow Cloak + Snow Warning is restricting non-broken threats unnecessarily; you're removing MORE than what is broken.

PK Gaming said:
I'm agreeing with Heysup, sure we can ban Froslass, Mamo(?), Rotom and a couple other hail abusers, or we can cut to the source and ban hail as a whole. The latter is a lot easier / less messy / more ideal.

I think you misunderstood Heysup. From what I understand, he wants to keep Hail and complex ban to keep Froslass in UU (but out of Hail).
 
Pocket, I understand your good intentions, and I agree with you to one point. Why do you only want to stop froslass from abusing free hax but allow glaceon to still? (beartic is shit). Glaceon is a legit hail support pokemon (at least from my success of using her), and wish protect, heal bell, etc sets benefit a lot from free misses. I've fought hail teams before with glaceon and have been stalled to death on last pokemon against glaceon because it kept using wish protect and hail hax misses.
 
Pocket, I understand your good intentions, and I agree with you to one point. Why do you only want to stop froslass from abusing free hax but allow glaceon to still? (beartic is shit). Glaceon is a legit hail support pokemon (at least from my success of using her), and wish protect, heal bell, etc sets benefit a lot from free misses. I've fought hail teams before with glaceon and have been stalled to death on last pokemon against glaceon because it kept using wish protect and hail hax misses.

Legit is not the same thing as broken. People (not just you) have to understand that being viable is certainly not the same as being broken. Unless you actually think that glaceon is an unmanageable threat that deserves just as much attention as frosslass, then that wasn't really that relevant.

I apologize if I offended you, but the majority of that comment was for the people against hail. Yes hail is good, there are a lot of abusers and some are difficult to manage.

But are they impossible to manage? Do you need to specialize just to stop it? That's where the real question lies and I don't think that hail is any of those things to be honest. If your team is well made then you shouldn't have trouble beating it (unless the opposing team is good too but that is irrelevant). Yes you have to keep it in mind when making a team but that is definitely not a reason to ban it.
 
Thanks for responding. I'm not offended at all, your post is very helpful because I can explain myself further.

Glaceon is not broken with Snow Cloak, very true. But a miss can cost you a vital turn with glaceon being a support pokemon (or it having a very strong blizzard). What I'm saying is, missing a move due to nothing but snow cloak is very unfair and uncompetitive. I believe that it should be snow cloak+snow warning ban as I said in my previous post. This is not because of it breaking pokemon (however froslass is certainly a wonderfully devious bitch with it), but because of the hax it introduces into the game. My standpoint on the evasion clause is that although double team and minimize, and the two items were banned, Sand Veil and snow cloak did not get banned. I do not want them only taken out for consistency (although it would be nice to follow the rules we set completely), but because both respective abilities give the user a ONE in FIVE chance of completely dodging a move for essentially free, only weather is needed on the field. I've heard of some mystical team in OU that ranked high on the ladder using Sand Veil Cacturne and Gliscor of all things. Glaceon is a much more competant pokemon than cacturne in my opinion, arcticuno (unreleased yet) could be VERY difficult to deal with, and mamoswine pretty much murders things with it's stabs if you don't kill it, and missing a move is fatal (I have almost lost due to snow cloak mamo hax). (Note that it no longer applies to mamo in UU as it is OU I believe). But I hope you understand where I am coming from if nothing else was gained from this post. That's my standpoint. Yes, froslass in hail is decidedly broken, but not out of hail (as previously established), so the real culprit is merely the hax of snow cloak misses.
 
On a semi-related note I'm curious to hear why anyone thinks sand is broken or even deserving of suspect. ?_? I haven't noticed anything overwhelming about it besides good players using it.

I've noticed a trend with auto-pilot style teams and suspect tests. If any specific strategy has somewhat of an easy win algorithm against most teams, they are immediately deemed broken by many. I don't mean offense or stall, I mean like in gen 4 uu was Spikestacking (before slass was banned) and rain.

This is not always true, however, since many easy win teams are simply because people don't bother preparing (see: gen 4 rain).

I'm not saying that neither SS or Hail is outright broken or not here, I'm just being very careful. SS is not really a big issue at the moment it seems (good players are using it as a counter to hail and offense at the same time) but I'm being careful before I deem Hail broken as a playstyle.

Then you should be agreeing with me that Frosslass + Snow Warning is the best course of action, and then banning Froslass. Snow Cloak + Snow Warning is restricting non-broken threats unnecessarily; you're removing MORE than what is broken.

I think you misunderstood Heysup. From what I understand, he wants to keep Hail and complex ban to keep Froslass in UU (but out of Hail).

I've been pretty clear on this, but it depends on what's actually deemed broken. If only Froslass is deemed the only thing broken about hail, then Froslass + Snow Warning makes perfect sense.

If hail as a playstyle is broken, then obviously it makes more sense to ban Snow Warning or Abomasnow (as a two-step ban to see if Hail is still too much for UU with Snover) because banning multiple sweepers is just doing more to accomplish less (and other reasons listed previously).

I'm not sure which I'm leaning to (if any at all), but I am simply creating the much needed "if X, then Y" and "if A, then B" scenario so it gets done correctly, whichever is decided.

I don't think PK misunderstood me, he just thinks hail is broken as a playstyle and is agreeing with my latter scenario.
 
If you guys are serious about Froslass + Snow Warning, surely you recognize the amount of scenarios this can extend to? Pokemon + team member, sweeper + spikes, Stoutland + Sand, etc. We wouldn't be thinking about this if something like this didn't already happen in OU (which is the entire reason it's relevant; the idea of complex banning is out there and it's not going away). We don't have to handle everything the way OU did, but in order to keep the state of competitive Pokemon as healthy as possible, I'd really rather we keep complex banning from taking flagship as an optimal method of balance this gen.
 
If you guys are serious about Froslass + Snow Warning, surely you recognize the amount of scenarios this can extend to? Pokemon + team member, sweeper + spikes, Stoutland + Sand, etc. We wouldn't be thinking about this if something like this didn't already happen in OU (which is the entire reason it's relevant; the idea of complex banning is out there and it's not going away). We don't have to handle everything the way OU did, but in order to keep the state of competitive Pokemon as healthy as possible, I'd really rather we keep complex banning from taking flagship as an optimal method of balance this gen.

It is way more regulated to this specific scenario than you think (namely, Auto-Weather). To use your example sweeper + spikes....well this is familiar isn't it? Spikes + sweeper has very obvious implications as to what part of it is broken. Are the Spikes too strong and easy to set up? How necessary are they? Remember in Froslass vs Moltres, it was not that heat of a topic as to whether or not Froslass was the culprit but whether or not Froslass was broken in the first place. If we removed Moltres, Froslass would still be broken (if/when it was deemed so). When we removed Froslass, Moltres was not broken. As for Pokemon + Pokemon: there is no combination of two Pokemon that is broken that isn't clearly one of them, making the ban much more simple to handle - especially because two Pokemon can't actually be on the field at the same time unlike Spikes or weather. The other reason specification is that those bans did not negatively influence the metagame by leaving an unbroken Pokemon in the metagame.

However with this scenario (and the few like it) there is no reason to ban Froslass because of the above reasons. Let's say Froslass in hail is deemed broken. Then, from my first point, we have the issue that one is not clearly the problem over the other. It depends weather you think the hail is breaking Froslass or whether Froslass is broken in the hail because if its ability. This is an entirely subjective process and there is no right answer. Alternatively, banning one or the other influences the metagame by banning something that is healthy for the metagame (ie something not broken). If we deem hail as a playstyle to not be broken, and we ban it, that doesn't make much sense. If we ban Froslass outside of hail, not being broken at all, that also doesn't make sense.

There is no harm in just doing Pokemon + scenario. It doesn't mean we all of the sudden have to ban specific moves from Pokemon instead. It just gives us another option.

I don't even think either are broken.

Maybe the admins will rule combo bans out or something anyway to make this less debatable, who knows.
 
I wanted to play a pretty good number of games before I said this (since I hadn't played in a while), but now that I have, I am going to say that I have no idea why hail is deemed problematic, much less broken.

First, the team I was using: Mew (stallbreaker), Mismagius (SubNP), Escavalier (CB), Cobalion (Swords Dance), Kingdra (RestTalkDD), Rotom-H (trickscarf). If this seems traumatically familiar, it's because this was the team I have been using since round 1 UU. So I did not "overprepare" for hail or anything. My results with it have been consistently good (as always) and I've lost to exactly one hail team so far (out of around 20 battles). Guess why? I'll give you a hint: It starts with "Snow" and ends with a word that rhymes with "Bloke".

I don't know where "hail is OP" came from; I just wanted to ban Snow Cloak on principle, and because it made hail annoying (not broken). People should stop confusing "annoying" and "broken", I think. Or maybe I just haven't played any good hail players, dunno.

I just want to know when round 3 starts so that we can start making metagame decisions based on the strength of a highly competitive ladder. This weird limbo situation is not useful.
 
I'm not sure I understand how that makes it flawed, you basically repeated what I said. To clarify, it's simply to ban what is in fact broken. If Froslass is broken in hail, ban Froslass + Snow Warning. If Hail is broken as a strategy ban Abomasnow (/ Snover).

The bits I've bolded probably make it better.

I'm not sure how long you've been posting here, but the "ban only what's broken" mentality (which I strongly agreed with at the time, and even now I still do) started back in early Generation IV, when we had about 50 Pokemon on the BL list, and some of us (mainly a member called Obi) stopped and thought "Do we need to ban 50 Pokemon to make UU a stable metagame?"

So then we thought we'd unban all the BLs and test the UU metagame and see if any Pokemon needed to be banned, and we had the aim of banning as few Pokemon as we could. Before then, some mods would basically go "Oh, Articuno is pretty strong, lets put him in BL", which looking back now was just stupid. So from then on we all decided we'd only ban Pokemon that are broken.

Back then, I never thought we'd be doing all these complex combination bans or whatever a few years later. And I don't think we need to. As you said, we're basically agreeing with each other. I do think Froslass wouldn't be broken under the circumstances you stated. But I also think all Pokemon wouldn't be broken under certain circumstances, and I think Ban Lists should stay as simply a list of Pokemon. The way we're going, I imagine ban lists in the future being a list of a few Pokemon, and then a massive essay describing combinations of Pokemon and abilities and hold items and moves that can't be used together in the metagame.
 
It isn't black and white with either Hail or 'Lass. Lass is not broken out of hail (you aren't that good if you can't handle a single ice type mon with moderate sp att, seriously just run steels. Or bisharp, he murders her), and hail is not broken by itself. It's the missing from snow cloak that is broken. Enough arguments have been given on that.
 
Just posting to say that banning Froslass + Snow Cloak is totally absurd.This is called playing favourites and nerfing pokes.
If we do this then the next thing we should do so they don't call us hypocrites would be to unban blaze blaziken...

For me the only way to go is either banning Froslass or banning Abomasnow(or Hail in general).

Heysup what if Froslass is broken only inside of Hail?
Blaziken and Garchomp were also broken only inside their respective weathers.Did we make a complex ban?
Also i don't really get why you say that the comparison is not valid.I know that OU and UU are not the same but some principles stay the same.If in one tier we didn't make a complex ban but instead we banned the whole pokemon,because it was broke only inside its respective weather,i don't see how we can make the opposite action in another tier for a similar case and not be called hypocrites.
In both situations we have pokes that become broken under the right WEATHER support!

Finally banning Snow Cloak + Snow Warning is a no,'cause it is too much trouble to save only one pokemon,where aldaron's proposal saved entire playstyles!
 
Lol, and then next we'll complex ban Snow Warning + Blizzard.

It's not mine to decide how far we want to go with complex bans, I just think Aldaron's proposal set a dangerous precedent.
 
tbh I would say sand, but there is a bunch of commotion over hail as well. sand can also concievably beat hail, which is nice.

hail is definitely not bad either.
 
Heysup what if Froslass is broken only inside of Hail?
Blaziken and Garchomp were also broken only inside their respective weathers.Did we make a complex ban?
Also i don't really get why you say that the comparison is not valid.I know that OU and UU are not the same but some principles stay the same.If in one tier we didn't make a complex ban but instead we banned the whole pokemon,because it was broke only inside its respective weather,i don't see how we can make the opposite action in another tier for a similar case and not be called hypocrites.
In both situations we have pokes that become broken under the right WEATHER support!

Finally banning Snow Cloak + Snow Warning is a no,'cause it is too much trouble to save only one pokemon,where aldaron's proposal saved entire playstyles!

I'm only responding to this because you seem to be talking to me specifically but everything has been said already. You can choose to disagree or (as in most cases) just ignore it.

UU and OU do not follow the same process (until possibly the admins make an umbrella policy about the suspect testing). Last gen showed that sometimes the best decisions aren't always made in OU and we are not obligated to follow their precedents. With Blaziken, banning the whole Pokemon was hypocritical when you consider that they made another decision that completely contradicts it (Drizzle + swift swim). We can logically only follow one of those precedents anyway since they are, in fact, contradictory on the surface (I don't know the exact situation, I can only perceive). The only umbrella rule is that we should ban what's broken, no more and no less.

Another problem is that you somehow, despite all that's been said, still think that there have been similar cases, to Froslass in Hail. There have not been any simply for the reason that they are in two completely different environments.

We need to understand the difference between following a precedent (being able to combo ban) and something being a slippery slope fallacy ("oh no we'll start banning Pokemon with certain EVs and then probably nick names too!!!!! and then after that the world will end")
 
Heysup said:
We need to understand the difference between following a precedent (being able to combo ban) and something a slippery slope fallacy ("oh no we'll start banning Pokemon with certain EVs and then probably nick names too!!!!! and then after that the world will end")

Well then, draw a clear line, get it through policy review and then post it here. Would be very helpful, to say the least.
 
To me, complex bans should only be adopted under special circumstances, and are completely necessary in the lower tiers. Rulesets should be simple and accessible to avoid confusion for new players, but the way Smogon's going, we're just gonna have this huge mess of hidden ban lists. Aldaron's proposal was acceptable because OU is our main metagame, and weather is the #1 influence of 5th gen making it really important to balance it correctly. With UU we can solve everything by only banning one pokemon (don't tell me hail is broken without Froslass, that's bullshit lol) so I really don't see the need for a complex ban. Froslass may be unique and cool to use, but why is it so important to preserve her exactly?
 
I'm only responding to this because you seem to be talking to me specifically but everything has been said already. You can choose to disagree or (as in most cases) just ignore it.

UU and OU do not follow the same process (until possibly the admins make an umbrella policy about the suspect testing). Last gen showed that sometimes the best decisions aren't always made in OU and we are not obligated to follow their precedents. With Blaziken, banning the whole Pokemon was hypocritical when you consider that they made another decision that completely contradicts it (Drizzle + swift swim). We can logically only follow one of those precedents anyway since they are, in fact, contradictory on the surface (I don't know the exact situation, I can only perceive). The only umbrella rule is that we should ban what's broken, no more and no less.

Another problem is that you somehow, despite all that's been said, still think that there have been similar cases, to Froslass in Hail. There have not been any simply for the reason that they are in two completely different environments.

We need to understand the difference between following a precedent (being able to combo ban) and something being a slippery slope fallacy ("oh no we'll start banning Pokemon with certain EVs and then probably nick names too!!!!! and then after that the world will end")
First of all banning Blaziken wasn't hypocritical.
Aldaron's proposal was completely different because it was a solution to save entire playstyles not just a pokemon(like you try to do).

Also you continue telling me that the case is different,but you don't explain me how...I explained to you why i believe that these 2 cases can be compared farily easily(blaziken and froslass) but all you say is that they are different.
Can you please elaborate?

So when i find a poke that becomes broken under curtain circumstancses i can just nerf it by making a complicated ban like you want to do right?
If DW Regice gets released and breaks RU(under Hail of course) we should ban Regice + Snow Warning right?
According to your thinking of course.

Closing this matter i honestly cannot understand how you cannot see the slippery slope that you combo ban creates.
If your ban happens then everyone is going to start nominating pokemon + ability combos and then you will see what a real mess means.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top