np: XY OU Suspect Testing Round 5 - Ghost of Perdition

[GloriousGore]

I'm bringing back a suggestion from a few pages back, which I think some people disagreed with but it wasn't officially shot down (sorry if it was).

Ban King's Shield. Or at least make it an option.

First, a lot of people here have said that King's Shield forces 50/50s. It does. Imagine a situation I was in a couple days ago, a Weavile with Swords Dance and Knock Off, vs Blade Aegislash with Sacred Sword and King's Shield. This is literally the perfect example of an unhealthy 50/50, and it's far from the only scenario. If they both attack or both don't, Weavile wins, and if one attacks, Aegislash wins. It's that simple. If you like this kind of thing, go play professional rock paper scissors. I know it's pokemon, we all know Aegislash isn't the only cause of this. This is a replay of my Starmie beating a Sucker Punch Bisharp for the win (go to turn 40, because I know this thread is moving fast) that I did not deserve. Really, these 50/50s mostly aren't uncompetitive enough to justify a ban on their own, but Aegislash combines it with the power to punish pokemon that can't guess it (fuck the word predict, and many other people here have explained why in this case it doesn't take skill to play around KS), and I think most of us agree that an Aegislash played with perfect King's Shield prediction is super borked. It can shrug off any hit at -2, and nothing besides dedicated tanks/walls will be able to shrug off one of its attacks. King's Shield also happens to screw over choice attackers, who also happen to be the only things that can OHKO Aegislash, outside of ~5 others.

We also know that an Aegislash without King's Shield is a lot easier to handle. It basically just got 2 more weaknesses, since no one was using physical fire or dark attacks on it (bar Bisharp) without having to worry about King's Shield. It also can't sit there throwing out attacks all day, because permanent blade form makes it basically like Rampardos. Eviolite Doublade can kinda take over some of the tank/defensive sets anyway. So there's no reason to ban Aegislash without King's Shield, and it's viable enough to still be the counter to Gardevoir, Medicham, Terrakion, and a bunch more dangerous pokemon people argue Aegislash keeps in check.

Now I know some people have argued against that last point, that we shouldn't keep a broken pokemon around just because it checks other broken pokemon. But isn't that a metagame? Imagine the slippery slope really happens, and every OU pokemon ends up banned. There is no OU any more, just Ubers, BL, and UU. We have a pretty big BL list right now, a list of pokemon too broken for the UU tier. But then someone wisens up, and says that we can unban a bunch of pokemon to get todays OU, yes there's a bunch of broken crap, but they all check each other. The pokemon in BL are not broken in today's OU, because a bunch of other stuff considered broken for UU is in OU to check them.

As for actually implementing the ban, it's not a complex ban. It's just banning a move, like we do to Swagger or Double Team. And it obviously has no collateral damage. People say that if a Pokemon is broken, that we should just go all the way and ban it, that Smogon doesn't nerf, but I think that's more because we don't want our banlist to be cluttered with, "Arceus without Extreme speed and no type plate, or Spooky Plate+ Recover+ will-o-wisp, or a shitton other things, you get the point". Look at any of the banned Megas. Mega Lucario was only broken when it's allowed to use its mega stone, so we ban the mega stone, effectively removing some of its sets to nerf and make Lucario manageable in OU, and it worked.

So with that in mind, I would like to see Ban King's Shield an option in this suspect test, because I know a few people in this thread would like some middle ground.

Tbh, banning ks is stupid as hell coz aegi is the only mon to get the move. And banning ks for what? As if youre promoting all aegi teams to use offensive lo set, which is very very scary. Ban aegi instead imho.
And yes, the 50/ 50s are very annoying since a wrong predict can cost you the match etc etc srsly I hate aegi goddamn get this possessed sword thingy out of ou ^.^

 

[The Shortest Path]

Aegislash does not have a BST of 720. If you're going to spout ignorant drivel, at least make sure it's not blatantly incorrect first.

 

[Zebstrika]

Banning kings shield is stupid as that's not what makes it over powered. Kings shield can be correctly predicted, then used for your own advantage, eg you can set up, or use a status (status goes through it).
The banning of the mega stones were because the mega was brocken, the move 'kings shield' definately isnt, it has a chance to lower your attack if you hit with a contact move, which only affects physical attckers, which leaves you vulnerable to set up or status. I know it lets it switch forms, but i dont think banning it makes sense.

Also, what i dislike about this, it can lead to stupid people saying stupid things like 'allow xerneas but it cannot use geomancy or a STAB move'.

King's Shield is what makes Aegislash overpowered. Aegislash with King's Shield is (arguably) overpowered, Aegislash without is definitely not. Lucario with Lucarionite is broken, Lucario without it is not.

Don't say that predicting is a legit way to get past King's Shield. Status is, I give you that. But it's like saying you can get past Swagger by not hitting yourself. And you can get past King's Shield by guessing correctly that Aegislash is or isn't using it. And you can always win rock paper scissors if you correctly guess what the sign the opponent is making.

Finally, there are stupid people in every suspect test. We ignore them as usual. Stupid people who bring up something's unviability in Ubers. People who point to a counter, and say, look it's not broken. We should really make it in the op not to post these arguments, because they waste everyone's time every thread.

 

[Lucario1313]

Serious question: Why is Aegislash banned for its suspect test? I *think* that was standard last gen, but last gen didn't you need to get to a certain rank in regular OU (with the mon) and suspect ladder (without it)? The deos were allowed in their tests, and that was last week.
Also, King's Shield is not a 50/50. Confusion is a 50/50. You can correctly predict around King's shield based off of other moves you opponent has made in the battle, or simply play the battle in such a way that the result does not come down to one King's Shield prediction.
People have been spamming EQ and Fire Blast for as long as I can remember. That isn't because of Aegislash. It's because those are two of the best attacking moves available.

 

[GloriousGore]

Aegislash does not have a BST of 720.

It technically doesnt have a bst of 720, but you get my point that at one's click of a button the thing switches from deo d like defenses then to deo s like offenses vice versa. I hope you get my point, coz aegi si literally the perfect ou pokemon. It is the meta :((

 

[The Shortest Path]

Aegislash without King's Shield is pretty much worthless in OU, so banning it doesn't actually accomplish anything that just banning him wouldn't.


Saying that he forces physical attackers to run Earthquake is dumb, because physical attackers should be running it most of the time anyways. It's the strongest no-drawback physical move in the game that isn't a signature, and has one of the best offensive types.

 

[Arkrusicks]

Alrighty, I'm not your typical forum user, but this suspect test is something big that I feel I need to address.
[VIP: Very Important Paragraph]
From here is how people's viewpoints on 50-50s differ. I enjoy the mindgames that this brings, I don't see it as being luck-based as some people have claimed it is. The 50-50 situation is not luck. Luck is inherent only in multiple King's Shield uses, or % chances on moves, Confusion, Paralysis, etc, which get relegated to Hax. Luck is when the random number generator is used. Two players picking two moves based on what they think their opponent will do is not luck. Aegislash's effectiveness depends on its user's capability to next-level your opponent. This capability isn't just restricted to Aegislash, there are predictions in every part of competitive battling, why is this any different? I fail to see how predictions are a negative influence, as predictions are a form of next-leveling your opponent. This aspect of X/Y actually made it more fun for me, especially in the Aegi mirror, of which I've won nearly 90% of the time when both players stayed in 'til a KO (I started keeping track after it became fairly common). The consequences may not appear be what everyone is used to, though tempo loss/changes in expected damage dealt/immune moves etc. have all already been experienced by players in one of almost limitless scenarios.

"This pokemon gets dramatically more powerful when you choose correctly" is a pretty good description of basically every Pokemon though.

50/50 decisions are the core of Pokemon, but most of the time those decisions are 65/30/10/5% decisions where you have multiple choices of unequal risk/reward you have to balance out, and you're able to play a game of outguessing them. The issue isn't that predictions are in Pokemon, people aren't saying that. The issue is that with perfect 50/50s that King's Shield brings up, you've got two choices that are almost equally good, and that either way the choice has an inordinate impact on the rest of the match. You need to have a LOT of different scenarios where players interact via predictions in a game of Pokemon to reduce the inherent variance.

Let's assume there's a player A who wins the guessing game with his opponent, Player B 60% of the time. If he and his opponent played 1000 matches, he'd be guaranteed to win a majority of them, his decision making in Pokemon is overall just plain better.

Thing is, if there's only 2 really pivotal decisions a match that Player A has to beat Player B in, and if one of those was a pivotal game breaking decision involving Aegis that made the other decision irrelevant because the Aegis decision ended the game, then there's a problem.

The problem people describe is partially the small number of decisions you're making, and partially that King's Shield related decisions don't require a brain because the decision tree is so small. The interactions with Aegislash where you either click King's Shield, or you click the move that gets them if they don't click King's Shield, and give the player a set of choices that are very very close to a 50/50 do come up a LOT when you play with it. And if a correct click gets you enough of an advantage to win the battle with the advantage swing it gets you, that's a problem.

Again, it's a question of what happens at the highest level of competitive play. That's a fair concern for people to raise, it's not out of line, and it's something that can only be addressed by the actual high level competitive players looking at whether Aegislash's decision trees make the OU metagame worse at the highest level, not so much the dross of a Smogon brain bleach thread arguing about how many hard counters Slash has.

 

[Lucario1313]

Aegislash does not have a BST of 720. If you're going to spout ignorant drivel, at least make sure it's not blatantly incorrect first.

I feel you. The only way to get back to having 150/150 defenses is to spend a turn that you can be burned, para'd, switched out on, or set up on.

 

[mertyville]

I am thinking about it what would happen if King Shield would be banned instead like Zebstrika suggested.

A lot of sets are threatening just because people think about King Shield. In other words, you don't need King Shield to make Aegislash effective but I wonder if it isn't effective just because it MIGHT have King's Shield.

The only set that can still be threatening *just theorimoning here* might be the SubToxic Set with any offensive move after a King Shield Ban, simply because you can change to A-Mode and then switch out and have your D-Mode back...the question is, is it really needed when you got your sub, killed 1 threat, toxic another mon and then be "forced" to switch out?

At the end banning the whole Pokemon might be the easiest way to not deal with those problems.

 

[GloriousGore]

Serious question: Why is Aegislash banned for its suspect test? I *think* that was standard last gen, but last gen didn't you need to get to a certain rank in regular OU (with the mon) and suspect ladder (without it)? The deos were allowed in their tests, and that was last week.
Also, King's Shield is not a 50/50. Confusion is a 50/50. You can correctly predict around King's shield based off of other moves you opponent has made in the battle, or simply play the battle in such a way that the result does not come down to one King's Shield prediction.
People have been spamming EQ and Fire Blast for as long as I can remember. That isn't because of Aegislash. It's because those are two of the best attacking moves available.

Wtf are you talking about lol.
KS almost always force a 50/ 50, an example would be you're a weavile and your opponent is aegi, you have sd and knock off and you know that opposing aegi has ks and ss and is atm blade form. What do you do now, it's either you set up and get smashed by sacred sword or try using knock off then basically be crippled with -2. So you see it now? The 50/ 50s it can produce, the sheer guesswork is here is unreal tbh.

So as if you're saying that crunch lucario is optimal and that fb is optimal on heatran just to ohko aegi where it can choose to use lava plume instead to cripple a ton of pokemon.

 

[Sergeant Spooky]

Sure there are better, more favorable match ups, but every poke has its share of those, and Slash has its share of bad ones.

In these bad match ups, a situation where any other pokemon would either need to switch out or sac themselves, Aegislash has a chance to completely turn the tables and get a free turn or eliminate its check. That's the issue here.

But people shouldn't be focusing on the 50/50's KS makes. Aegislash's godly bulk/power/typing/versatility, and most importantly, huge influence on the meta, is what should be discussed. Is a meta without Aegislash more favorable? Will Gardevoir spam Fae Scream of Death freely and have everything fall before her its feet? Is Close Combat Pinsir way too hard to handle? iunno. That's why the ladder was made.

 

[Rotosect]

All right let's correct three wrong assumptions about Aegislash:

1. Aegislash does not have an effective BST of 720. To state the opposite means that Aegi never, ever gets hit in its blade forme. This is outright false, as it does happen on every level of skill. Your opponent could be deliberately letting you do that, or he could lose King's Shield mindgames - the cause is irrelevant.

2. Aegislash's type is not "godly". It's weak to 4 extremely dominant offensive types, the very same Jirachi and Metagross are weak to and the reason they fell in UU. The only advantages over them are Normal and Fighting immunities. Considering Steel/Psychic is now considered a mediocre defensive type, these two immunities are not enough to turn it into "godly". It's a good type but not nearly as good as some people claim.

3. King's Shield mind-games are not 50/50, but they're always in your opponent's favor. KS doesn't block status moves for starters, so any opponent that carries them automatically has the advantage. Besides that, there are situations where Aegislash must either use KS or switch out (example: against SpDef Hippowdown who switched into a predicted Sacred Sword), giving the opponent a free turn to do whatever he wants. In reality KS mindgames are closer to 75/25, where it is the opponent to have the advantage. The metagame has adapted to this move and it's very uncommon to find an opponent who is completely helpless against it.

Been said that I'm strongly against banning Aegislash. I don't find it broken at all (in fact I'd argue it doesn't even deserve its S rank) and I'm confused at why it was even brought up before things like Landorus-I.

 

[Lucario1313]

Wtf are you talking about lol.
KS almost always force a 50/ 50, an example would be you're a weavile and your opponent is aegi, you have sd and knock off and you know that opposing aegi has ks and ss and is atm blade form. What do you do now, it's either you set up and get smashed by sacred sword or try using knock off then basically be crippled with -2. So you see it now? The 50/ 50s it can produce, the sheer guesswork is here is unreal tbh.

So as if you're saying that crunch lucario is optimal and that fb is optimal on heatran just to ohko aegi where it can choose to use lava plume instead to cripple a ton of pokemon.

If you're going to have a debate with me, could you please use full words and sentences? I'm sorry, but it's annoying to try to read your post. Be intelligent.
If, in the scenario you describe, it's turn one, then it's a 50/50. However, if it's near the end of the battle, you should have a pretty good idea what your opponent's play style is and be able to predict from there. Just because there are two outcomes does not make it a 50/50 chance.
And I don't see where I said running a crunch lucario or a fire blast heatran is optimal. Please point out that post to me :]

 

[GloriousGore]

In these bad match ups, a situation where any other pokemon would either need to switch out or sac themselves, Aegislash has a chance to completely turn the tables and get a free turn or eliminate its check. That's the issue here.

But people shouldn't be focusing on the 50/50's KS makes. Aegislash's godly bulk/power/typing/versatility, and most importantly, huge influence on the meta, is what should be discussed. Is a meta without Aegislash more favorable? Will Gardevoir spam Fae Scream of Death freely and have everything fall before her its feet? Is Close Combat Pinsir way too hard to handle? iunno. That's why the ladder was made.

The 50/ 50s is a legit argument tho, as explained on the weavile vs aegi situation. I guess a meta without aegi is better, as this gives off more diversity and gives psychic types a chance to shine again. Aegi is holding the whole typing from shining IMHO, and stuff are forced to run obscure shit just to get past this thing

 

[GloriousGore]

If you're going to have a debate with me, could you please use full words and sentences? I'm sorry, but it's annoying to try to read your post. Be intelligent.
If, in the scenario you describe, it's turn one, then it's a 50/50. However, if it's near the end of the battle, you should have a pretty good idea what your opponent's play style is and be able to predict from there. Just because there are two outcomes does not make it a 50/50 chance.
And I don't see where I said running a crunch lucario or a fire blast heatran is optimal. Please point out that post to me :]

I dont need to write my opinion in full sentences coz I'm p sure that you understand it anyways.
My thought is that eq and fire blast are not optimal on all mons, and some pokes like terrak are forced to run it just to damage aegi.

 

[Lucario1313]

I dont need to write my opinion in full sentences coz I'm p sure that you understand it anyways.
My thought is that eq and fire blast are not optimal on all mons, and some pokes like terrak are forced to run it just to damage aegi.

Alright, well I'm not going to continue this conversation if you're going to make me work to understand your points out of pure laziness.

 

[raddaya]

Obscure shit? Give me an example, because I don't think there's any move that neutralises Aegi yet has absolutely no use outside of that.

By the way, please don't expect other people to decipher your argument in order to read it: I could also type in Hindi and say "Go Google Translate it, you understand it anyways" but I don't because I don't expect other people to do my work for me.

Continuing on the train of thought, then: What does it take to beat Aegislash? It's weak to Ghost, Dark, Fire, Ground. The most common moves that you'd use to take it out don't get borked by King's Shield- namely Earthquake, Earth Power, Dark Pulse, Shadow Ball. A few examples of common moves that are borked by King's Shield includes Knock Off, Crunch(I think), Pursuit, etc.

That's not a list that'd make me think "Wow you need to run obscure stuff to get past this pokemon." That's a list that does make me think "That's a pretty strong pokemon." But it's going to be pretty difficult to convince me, at least, to think that Aegi's strong enough to deserve a ban.

 

[GloriousGore]

Landorus I is "obscure shit?"
Nice.

I'm not saying it's obscure by any manner .-. Some teams need to run pokemon that's not fit in their palystyle just so they can alleviate a degree of weakness from aegi.
And even if you run counters for it. They're close to faltering on their jobs to 'counter' aegi, and please lando-i is not obscure. Get your terms straight and since when did the lando formes in general became obscure

Edit: I'm referring to pokemon running obscure moves wtf.

 

[The Shortest Path]

The 50/ 50s is a legit argument tho, as explained on the weavile vs aegi situation. I guess a meta without aegi is better, as this gives off more diversity and gives psychic types a chance to shine again. Aegi is holding the whole typing from shining IMHO, and stuff are forced to run obscure shit just to get past this thing

Aegislash isn't holding back Psychic as a type. What's holding that back is the massive buff that Ghost and Dark moves got in this generation, as a whole. Aegislash certainly contributes to that, but there are plenty of other Pokemon that can Knock Off / Shadow Ball / etc. and OHKO most psychics while still hitting most other switch-ins for solid damage.


EDIT: Earthquake and Fire Blast are not obscure moves in any way, shape, or form.

 

[Lucario1313]

I'm not saying it's obscure by any manner .-. Some teams need to run pokemon that's not fit in their palystyle just so they can alleviate a degree of weakness from aegi.
And even if you run counters for it. They're close to faltering on their jobs to 'counter' aegi, and please lando-i is not obscure. Get your terms straight and since when did the lando formes in general became obscure

Edit: I'm referring to pokemon running obscure moves wtf.

Hello? I'm saying Lando I isn't obscure at all (S rank threat) and it's most common move can ohko it in shield form.

 

[yeaboy12]

Can any mods or staff explain why Aegislash is banned from his own suspect test when last week the deos were running rampant in theirs, and when even further back baton pass was allowed in its suspect?

 

[Durant]

Wow there sure are a lot of suspect tests these days.

Anyway with my limited OU experience I can still say Aegislash is like really freaking good. It can do just about anything, almost every team has it and it can even get past it what would be counter like Mandibuzz with Head Smash. All of this makes Aegislash remind me of generation 2 Snorlax who can also do quite a few things, is literally on every team and can get past it's biggest counters like Steelix and Skarmory with Fire Blast. Now Snorlax isn't banned but there was no denying that it was by far the best Pokemon in the tier. Teams needed at least 2 checks / counters for multiple Snorlax sets just to have a chance aganst this thing. Now Snorlax wasn't banned and neither is Aegislash but generation 2 and generation 6 are really different. With way more threats to prepare for nowadays teams can't afford to run multiple counters for one Pokemon anymore. I mean sure you can have a counter to Aegislash in Umbreon but when you see that it's Subtoxic Aegislash you are pretty much screwed and your only counter to it is gone. The fact that Aegislash is similar to generation 2 Snorlax makes me think it should get banned.

Now obviously Aegislash is not without it flaws like common weaknesses in Fire, Ground, Ghost and Dark and it doesn't have reliable recovery but I still think it should get the banhammer.

EDIT @below: The ladder isn't exactly the best way to see how good a Pokemon is and it also gets a lot of usage in stuff like tournaments.

 

[Lucario1313]

Wow there sure are a lot of suspect tests these days.

Anyway with my limited OU experience I can still say Aegislash is like really freaking good. It can do just about anything, almost every team has it and it can even get past it what would be counter like Mandibuzz with Head Smash. All of this makes Aegislash remind me of generation 2 Snorlax who can also do quite a few things, is literally on every team and can get past it's biggest counters like Steelix and Skarmory with Fire Blast. Now Snorlax isn't banned but there was no denying that it was by far the best Pokemon in the tier. Teams needed at least 2 checks / counters for multiple Snorlax sets just to have a chance aganst this thing. Now Snorlax wasn't banned and neither is Aegislash but generation 2 and generation 6 are really different. With way more threats to prepare for nowadays teams can't afford to run multiple counters for one Pokemon anymore. I mean sure you can have a counter to Aegislash in Umbreon but when you see that it's Subtoxic Aegislash you are pretty much screwed and your only counter to it is gone. The fact that Aegislash is similar to generation 2 Snorlax makes me think it should get banned.

Now obviously Aegislash is not without it flaws like common weaknesses in Fire, Ground, Ghost and Dark and it doesn't have reliable recovery but I still think it should get the banhammer.

It was used 17.2% of the time in OU last month friend :]

 

[BlackBuccaneer]

Can any mods or staff explain why Aegislash is banned from his own suspect test when last week the deos were running rampant in theirs, and when even further back baton pass was allowed in its suspect?

Probably because we've been playing in a meta with Aegislash in it for 8 months now, and if we're going to suspect test it, it makes more sense to see how the metagame changes with it gone and if that meta is more desirable than our current one.

 

[Lucario1313]

The 50/ 50s is a legit argument tho, as explained on the weavile vs aegi situation. I guess a meta without aegi is better, as this gives off more diversity and gives psychic types a chance to shine again. Aegi is holding the whole typing from shining IMHO, and stuff are forced to run obscure shit just to get past this thing

So knock off buff, mega mawile, sucker punch rising in popularity, bisharp usage, and the buff to ghost type aren't what is holding psychic types back, but Aegislash is? Sure, it's a piece of the puzzle, but psychic types have a huge problem this gen. You don't ban one pokemon to make other things viable (as has been stated earlier).