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Gen 6 np: XY Ubers Gengarite Suspect Test - In The Shadows [READ POST #71]
- Thread starter Hugendugen
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This is true, but in a way, it also kind of promotes high-level play. You'll need to be able to double accordingly and just simply play around the opponent unit you find an opening to take out Mega-Gengar. It'll make switches even more important and a player would have to be able to wield that tool well and use it appropriately.
The problem with Gengarite, and Shadow Tag in general, is that no play is good or bad when it threatens the Pokemon you have out or the one you need to bring in to stop a threat. When no play is better than the other, the turn is transformed into a coin flip. You can choose heads or tails, but the probability of either outcome is equal. The problem with Shadow Tag users is that they bet on the coin flip in an unfair fashion. If you lose the flip, a keystone Pokemon on your team will meow than likely be lost and you will lose the game when whatever this Pokemon was stopping comes in again. If you win, you are safe until the Shadow Tag user is once again relevant and you are forced to participate in another coin flip again. (This does not promote higher level of play is what I am getting at) You could win a coin flip with a Pursuit user which I will break down for all 3 Tag users:
- Mega Gengar: Pursuit from standard Tyranitar will never OHKO Mega Gengar unless it is switching which means even Chople Berry Tyranitar can be destroyed by 2 Focus Blasts while Tyranitar only has 1 turn to get its move right. Crunch / Payback or Pursuit are TTar's options and if it gets it wrong, Gengar is free to trap and KO something else in the future. Aegislash is in a similar boat. Since they can't fit both Pursuit and Shadow Sneak on the same set, Gengar can tank a Pursuit if it doesn't switch, Taunt Aegislash so it can't Kings Shield the next turn, and destroy it with Shadow Ball while Aegi is in Blade forme due to Taunt. If course, Aegislash can switch out vs Mega Gengar and any Shadow Tag user but if Aegislash is your Mega Gengar answer, your next Pokemon to come in will be trapped with no way of getting Aegislash back in against Gengar (unless it's another Shadow Tag mon, U-Turn or V-Switch user, or a ghost). Spiritomb does beat Mega Gengar no matter what.
- Gothitelle: All Pursuit users bar Aegislash beat Goth and Aegislash can freely switch out against it anyways.
- Wobbuffet: It can Counter Tyranitar into oblivion but it is beaten by the other 2 since Counter doesn't effect Ghost-types. Spiritomb can beat this thing with its eyes shut.
I can make comparisons to other clauses based on the initial coin flip I talked about, but I won't for now as this post is long enough. I will should you need more convincing down the road.
For those of you who don't know, my stance, right now, falls under Melee Mewtwo's "Re: Suspecting Gar and not Tag as a whole".
I'd like to throw in my 2 cents even though I might not be as 'skilled' as some of you here. I am a person who likes playing ubers and has done so for quite some time but not someone who roams around the top of the ubers ladder.
Now, I might have a different opinion on this than some of the more experienced players here have but in my eyes this planning can not be done by someone not experienced with the ubers metagame. Only people with a strategy, people who can think turns ahead and are able to adapt to the current game will be able to see when a 'gengar sacrifice' is most needed in order to remove that one wall/threat that is stopping your sweeper from doing its job. It is not a pokemon that you can just switch in on a mawile in order to remove it for xerneas later. Something else needs to have died on your team to get it in. For gengar to really strike it needs 1 normal-gengar turn where its speed stat leaves a lot to be desired and where it can't trap anything and after that also a free switch.
This planning is the exact opposite of what people are making gengar out to be: a pokemon that can easily remove a threat to its liking and then one afterwards all of the cost of just your gengar. Of course a good double switch at the right time will send your gengar in to that one threat but this is not without risk: if the prediction is wrong then you're in with one of the frailest pokemon in ubers against a monster.
However, this gengar strategy is actually I've really started to like. It's one less mon on your team that can wall a threat but at the same time when you do trap that one wall you feel like you've captured a marshal with your spy.
In conclusion I do not think that gengar makes this game uncompetitive at all. Gengar is a great pokemon to break through a wall in the opening of the game but on the other hand you can also switch your scarf kyogre in at a time where the gengar switch is very obvious to leave the opposing team with a big hole in it. Mega gengar brings a lot more prediction into the game and I absolutely love that. Why not let gengar create a bit of a different metagame? Nobody cared when BW said goodbye to mew in uber just because there were so many more powerful and better threats. Why not let gengar drive the pink blobs out of uber for fresh meat and force stall teams to run one or two pokemon that can surprise kill gar?
Now, I might have a different opinion on this than some of the more experienced players here have but in my eyes this planning can not be done by someone not experienced with the ubers metagame. Only people with a strategy, people who can think turns ahead and are able to adapt to the current game will be able to see when a 'gengar sacrifice' is most needed in order to remove that one wall/threat that is stopping your sweeper from doing its job. It is not a pokemon that you can just switch in on a mawile in order to remove it for xerneas later. Something else needs to have died on your team to get it in. For gengar to really strike it needs 1 normal-gengar turn where its speed stat leaves a lot to be desired and where it can't trap anything and after that also a free switch.
This planning is the exact opposite of what people are making gengar out to be: a pokemon that can easily remove a threat to its liking and then one afterwards all of the cost of just your gengar. Of course a good double switch at the right time will send your gengar in to that one threat but this is not without risk: if the prediction is wrong then you're in with one of the frailest pokemon in ubers against a monster.
However, this gengar strategy is actually I've really started to like. It's one less mon on your team that can wall a threat but at the same time when you do trap that one wall you feel like you've captured a marshal with your spy.
In conclusion I do not think that gengar makes this game uncompetitive at all. Gengar is a great pokemon to break through a wall in the opening of the game but on the other hand you can also switch your scarf kyogre in at a time where the gengar switch is very obvious to leave the opposing team with a big hole in it. Mega gengar brings a lot more prediction into the game and I absolutely love that. Why not let gengar create a bit of a different metagame? Nobody cared when BW said goodbye to mew in uber just because there were so many more powerful and better threats. Why not let gengar drive the pink blobs out of uber for fresh meat and force stall teams to run one or two pokemon that can surprise kill gar?
The free turn isn't as hard to get as you think...you need to make sure to pretty much never KO an opposing pokemon with one that has a bad matchup against Gengar or else, boom, there's the free turn.
On the topic of game design as a whole, I feel like gengar (well, all shadow tag users, really, but since this is just about gengar I will try to not mention the others much) removes meaningful choices, not just interesting or uninteresting choices. Gengar removes a players ability to make an impact everytime it switches in while already Mega Evolved. Yes, you still have choices, and perhaps even interesting ones (how much would this attack do to Gengar? I've never used it versus him so I don't know, for example), but certainly not meaningful ones. Ones that can advance your position or give you the upper hand. That's what Gengar does when it traps something with Shadow Tag. It takes away all meaningful and skilled choices to leave you with unskilled and irrelevant choices. The only relevance to the choices left are which can possibly hax their way past (more of a Gothitelle thing than a Gengar thing)...and that's not exactly skilled, that's relying on pure RNG and luck because you literally have no other meaningful options.
I hit requirements last night, and my opinion on the matter has changed through my laddering. While I found Gengar to be less common than I expected, the laddering reinforced my opinion that Gengarite should leave. Even discounting the other Shadow Tag users (Gothitelle scared me a lot more during my ladder time), I feel Gengar creates situations where you feel hopeless and helpless too often.
I will be voting to ban Gengarite.
On the topic of game design as a whole, I feel like gengar (well, all shadow tag users, really, but since this is just about gengar I will try to not mention the others much) removes meaningful choices, not just interesting or uninteresting choices. Gengar removes a players ability to make an impact everytime it switches in while already Mega Evolved. Yes, you still have choices, and perhaps even interesting ones (how much would this attack do to Gengar? I've never used it versus him so I don't know, for example), but certainly not meaningful ones. Ones that can advance your position or give you the upper hand. That's what Gengar does when it traps something with Shadow Tag. It takes away all meaningful and skilled choices to leave you with unskilled and irrelevant choices. The only relevance to the choices left are which can possibly hax their way past (more of a Gothitelle thing than a Gengar thing)...and that's not exactly skilled, that's relying on pure RNG and luck because you literally have no other meaningful options.
I hit requirements last night, and my opinion on the matter has changed through my laddering. While I found Gengar to be less common than I expected, the laddering reinforced my opinion that Gengarite should leave. Even discounting the other Shadow Tag users (Gothitelle scared me a lot more during my ladder time), I feel Gengar creates situations where you feel hopeless and helpless too often.
I will be voting to ban Gengarite.
In Aim's video you guys don't really bring up anything relevant at all. Basically for thirty minutes you explain why Mega Gengar and Goth are so good and why they are broken; we know this already and it doesn't matter because this is Ubers. It doesn't matter that Mega Gengar restricts team building or centralizes the metagame, this is not OU and it never will be. The only talk about how uncompetitive Mega Gengar can be was when Blim briefly mentioned the coinflips Mega Gengar causes. I've already talked about how coinflips are possibly the most destructive elements to the Ubers metagame and also how prediction coin flips can't really be eliminated either because they can be caused by basically any Pokemon. I was expecting a great half-hour discussion about why the elimination of switching is uncompetitive but instead I got told that Goth can set up to +6 against a Klefki and then sweep a team, something that I have not only seen several times, but Kebabe has done to me in a tourney round one.
Also someone lower Problem's taxes, either his mic or his connection were ass.
Also someone lower Problem's taxes, either his mic or his connection were ass.
You've got to realize that most of the Youtube audience doesn't really know what's going on and they don't play Ubers everyday as you do. We didn't make this video to post it in this thread and seem like we know better than everyone else does, we simply did it because we thought the Youtube audience deserved to know what was going on with the biggest Ubers suspect test ever done. You can't expect every viewer to know about this suspect test, I'd like to say Joey's channel is more focused in the OU metagame than anything else. I could easily have hosted this on my channel (my viewers are more familiarized with Ubers since it's the only thing I upload) but, we wanted to reach a rather large amount of people. Sorry if this video wasn't of your appealing.
Problems' quality is bad because he's a chav, not really much that can be done.
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confirmo on everything edgar has said and that problems is a chav.
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yeah, i have to agree that gengars speed increase can make it threatening, but other mons can also do the job. A fast scarf user like kyogre or dialga can knock it out easily.
I believe you mean by "speed increase" that its speed increases after mega evolving? But I don't clearly see how fast scarfers can deal with it as you won't be able to switch to one because of Shadow Tag, and let's say that you switched to your scarfer in its mega evolving turn and MGengar used Destiny Bond? You won't be able to switch, you'll have to attack it and your scarfer will go down along with MGengar. Clearly there are better solutions but the one you mentioned isn't that good.
I did the reqs for that suspect some weeks ago then forgot to post here something so Ill do it now. TBH i don't play ubers often but from what Ive seen in my little experience in XY ubers I have to say that Gengarite is probably broken and deserves a ban from Ubers as well. Shadow Tag is an incredible, unhealthy ability and because of that it should be banned. Using Mega Gengar needs 0 skills and you can just it with the right move in a certain team to trap and kill some mons and then sweep with pokèmons that would struggle otherwise against them. Do you need Scizor to be out of the game? Just HP Fire. Do you need Landorus-T to be out of the game? Just Icy Wind. I think that this is really ridiculous and makes the metagame unhealthy. Also Gengar unlike other Shadow Tags users like Gothitelle, is extremely fast, powerful, and has Destiny Bond to revenge-kill lot of threats as well. Shadow Tag on a already very good mon is too much imo, the trait itself is something rly stupid for any tier and metagame but when combined with an actually good mon, it imo needs to leave. For the reasons I explained I will vote ban.
I actually see this as a huge problem (too). I think what will/could likely happen is that a lot of users who have not played ubers a lot before get to vote. This is very bad. I guess you can blame that on a couple things, mainly the reqs being lax as you need only 2400 coil, no gxe limit/bottom (even something low as 70 would help) and we get an entire month to get reqs, which means you can take your time and losing lots doesnt matter too much as you have enough time to make up for it. You could say the same for other suspects, but lets take RU and OU as example here (note: I'm NOT comparing the suspected mons, just the concept behind the test itself). OU has much more difficult reqs, 2700 as opposed to 2400 and 2 weeks to complete it. RU also requires 2400 coil, but only 2 weeks to get them.aim said:
Now outside of these reqs being 'too ez', as some (including me) say there is another (more important point). This suspect requires more insight on the subject, ban or no ban megagengar is not at all related to its strengths and downfalls, in this aspect this suspect is much different from mmawile or yanmega/zoroark. Its about if gengarite is uncompetitive or not. Now to truly understand if it is or not you must know how this pokemon affects the tier and how it does so, and then form a solid opinion about what role shadow tags plays in this and if you find what this mon does troubling to the point that it could be considered uncompetitive or not. I'm sure we have all read the suspect discussion thread and saw a lot of people write paragraphs about how "broken" it was "and how it forces 50/50's, thus this is ban-worthy" and "how it can be pursuited because it needs a turn to mevo". Now, there arent a too many posts saying just this in five lines, but a a lot of posts, when you read them trough and slightly analyse them you will usually see it has on of these arguments/statements as the core of the whole post. Once again, these are irrelevant. If you want to ban it, you need to ban/not ban it based on (un)competitiveness, and on nothing else.
With all these less-experienced users getting to vote (point 1) that are informed too little about the subject and are voting based off of bad arguments, or some/a lot of them at least, (point 2). For this reason I hope that whoever will be filtering these paragraphs wont be too lax with doing so. The ideal situation for me would be: both mm2 (pro-ban) and hugen (anti-ban) filter posts (as to avoid bias), and also take into account poor reasoning/understanding showed in the suspect discussion thread (the person not getting a different stance/argumentation based on some counter-arguments (people saying his "its broken" argument isnt right")). Thats needed so you cant just summarize some meaningful posts in the suspect thread. Of course there are only so many arguments, so you cant go around blaming everyone, but when they showed poor understanding thats seems rather negative to me. If someone hasnt participated then you can only base "allowed to vote: y/n" off the paragraph I guess. When both are adamant on filtering out bad argumentation posts it should be fine, I have little trust in the results otherwise.
PS: Moved this from the the alt-confirmation thread and deleted the now irrelevant parts, as it was deleted for being out of place there, but still wanted to share it because this is how I feel.
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I mostly skimmed that post but a key thing to keep in mind is that this suspect test is not meant to be exclusive. Hugen wanted a suspect test in the first place so that it was the community that helped make this choice and not him alone so setting "difficult" reqs would be counter productive. The reqs themselves and the paragraphs are the filters used to avoid abuse.
PROBLEMS
AHEAD OF HIS TIME
my thoughts on Mega Gengar for something i had to write;
1) Do you feel Gengarite should be banned from Ubers? If so, why, and if not, why not?
Yes, I feel that Gengarite should be banned. This is due to it giving users from what I feel is an unfair advantage in being able to 'choose to remove' a pokemon on an opponents team ( not to mention Mega-Gengars flawless and quite amazing stats) and deal with them by outspeeding the majority of the Pokemon in the whole of the game while doing an enormous amount of damage or even taking them out. This means Mega-Gengar considerably limits team building within the tier as you're restricted on what you can use the majority of the time as you're always worrying about the opponent using a Mega-Gengar, this is due to it as I said being able to trap these things also not to mention Gengars excellent typing in the first place which is perfect for the current metagame (due to the amount of fairys) its not even bulky but it still gets a lot of free switches and effectively 'picks them off' just 'take them out of the game' as most things can't afford to run a 4th move just to cover for it for example a few standard things in clefable/arceus support forms/chansey etc. Now, I know people run the argument that 'there's things that can handle with Mega-Genger that can comfortable come in and trap it like Tyranitar/Scizor/Aegislash' this is
now only depending on what coverage moves the Mega-Gengar has as you've no real way of knowing what It can hit you with as people run;
Hidden Power Fire for Scizor = Dies
Shadow Ball for Aegislash = Easy two hit and 50/50 mindgames are needed as predicting Shadow Sneak (Which most don't even carry) and the pursuit, also pursuit doesn't even 1 hit Mega-Gengar if it stays in
Focus Blast = Kills Tyranitar or does 90%+ Damage (without Copple obviously, which most don't run)
So this means that theres not actually nothing which 100% deals with it which means its obviously far too broken and powerful to have around. Not to mention it can effectively in tandem with other Pokemon 'Trap' things which would normally be used to stop them for example if it was a sweeper from sweeping other players teams, for example a common pairing with Mega-Gengar is Xerneas as a majority of walls for example like; Chansey/Blissey (which are forced to run shed shell just so that this doesn't happen or even a move) /Clefable/Scizor (talked about this)/Klefki and more which are needed on a team due to Xerneas's share overpowering stats and coverage anyway after a Geomancy for them not to get swept in the first place. This is an unfair advantage as it simply gives people an considerable advantage over alot of builds as you've got a more then effective way of countering building styles and as I said earlier limiting building itself.
1) Do you feel Gengarite should be banned from Ubers? If so, why, and if not, why not?
Yes, I feel that Gengarite should be banned. This is due to it giving users from what I feel is an unfair advantage in being able to 'choose to remove' a pokemon on an opponents team ( not to mention Mega-Gengars flawless and quite amazing stats) and deal with them by outspeeding the majority of the Pokemon in the whole of the game while doing an enormous amount of damage or even taking them out. This means Mega-Gengar considerably limits team building within the tier as you're restricted on what you can use the majority of the time as you're always worrying about the opponent using a Mega-Gengar, this is due to it as I said being able to trap these things also not to mention Gengars excellent typing in the first place which is perfect for the current metagame (due to the amount of fairys) its not even bulky but it still gets a lot of free switches and effectively 'picks them off' just 'take them out of the game' as most things can't afford to run a 4th move just to cover for it for example a few standard things in clefable/arceus support forms/chansey etc. Now, I know people run the argument that 'there's things that can handle with Mega-Genger that can comfortable come in and trap it like Tyranitar/Scizor/Aegislash' this is
now only depending on what coverage moves the Mega-Gengar has as you've no real way of knowing what It can hit you with as people run;
Hidden Power Fire for Scizor = Dies
Shadow Ball for Aegislash = Easy two hit and 50/50 mindgames are needed as predicting Shadow Sneak (Which most don't even carry) and the pursuit, also pursuit doesn't even 1 hit Mega-Gengar if it stays in
Focus Blast = Kills Tyranitar or does 90%+ Damage (without Copple obviously, which most don't run)
So this means that theres not actually nothing which 100% deals with it which means its obviously far too broken and powerful to have around. Not to mention it can effectively in tandem with other Pokemon 'Trap' things which would normally be used to stop them for example if it was a sweeper from sweeping other players teams, for example a common pairing with Mega-Gengar is Xerneas as a majority of walls for example like; Chansey/Blissey (which are forced to run shed shell just so that this doesn't happen or even a move) /Clefable/Scizor (talked about this)/Klefki and more which are needed on a team due to Xerneas's share overpowering stats and coverage anyway after a Geomancy for them not to get swept in the first place. This is an unfair advantage as it simply gives people an considerable advantage over alot of builds as you've got a more then effective way of countering building styles and as I said earlier limiting building itself.
i'm not going to be assed to reply to all the posts but i would just like to pose a question:
do you really think that the doubling that gengar causes is skill?
prediction is glorified guesswork. the reason that the "best" players are seen as being hard to beat (see: frontier records for an ou example) is not because they make Next Level Plays and just double on you all day, but can factor in risk vs reward efficiently and make safe plays which can benefit them if correct and not hurt them to a point they cannot recover from if they're wrong. i only "predict" if i am in a situation where i am drastically behind. otherwise, i am simply relying on a well-built team and safe, smart plays to wear down my opponent.
so please, less of this fallacious "gengar allows for High Level Prediction And Skill" because it is: bullshit
do you really think that the doubling that gengar causes is skill?
prediction is glorified guesswork. the reason that the "best" players are seen as being hard to beat (see: frontier records for an ou example) is not because they make Next Level Plays and just double on you all day, but can factor in risk vs reward efficiently and make safe plays which can benefit them if correct and not hurt them to a point they cannot recover from if they're wrong. i only "predict" if i am in a situation where i am drastically behind. otherwise, i am simply relying on a well-built team and safe, smart plays to wear down my opponent.
so please, less of this fallacious "gengar allows for High Level Prediction And Skill" because it is: bullshit
PROBLEMS
AHEAD OF HIS TIME
so i cant inform people on the real reasons why it cant be banned and proceed to put up with these flawed arguments instead which wont help either case on banning or noban? these are the things people need to know aswell to back up statements on why it should be banned from Ubers in the first place.. but okay you're all the experts!
It was more the fact that the majority of what you said could be pretty much applied to any pokemon in Ubers, as thats why they are in Ubers. The point of this suspect test is whether or not you think Mega Gengar is uncompetative. Like the move Swagger or the ability Moody. That is what you should be focusing on when you make a decision on whether or not to ban Mega Gengar from Ubers.
So, I don't think that the doubling is "skill" and I have witnessed (and executed) a lot of doubling while getting reqs so it's pretty obvious Gengar causes doubling.
However, causing doubling doesn't remove skill since the majority of switches in a game are not double switches and, as you said, double switches are already a part of the game. Granted, you might prefer a metagame that has less double switches. However, the removal of Mega Gengar will not remove double switches from the game. So, I don't think we can really focus on that point regardless doubling's impact on the game.
Instead, you have to factor in the scenarios where Mega Gengar prevents switches since that creates a section of the game where skill is entirely removed. Those are the situations we have to be concerned about (as Melee Mewtwo stated earlier I believe.) I'm still not entirely convinced past my anti-ban stance just yet since Mega Gengar doesn't remove interesting choice/skill/insert buzzword here from the entire match. Just from a moment.
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my post was referencing many posts stating that the doubles shadow tag causes creates a cutthroat, competitive environment full of Skill. it's not skill.
obviously there are going to be double switches. the fact you even said that is baffling and you completely misinterpreted my post. my implication was that gengar both removes skill and forces players to blind double which bastardizes the competence of the game. your post was completely and utterly redundant.
obviously there are going to be double switches. the fact you even said that is baffling and you completely misinterpreted my post. my implication was that gengar both removes skill and forces players to blind double which bastardizes the competence of the game. your post was completely and utterly redundant.
The Blind Doubles that you're referring to are irrelevant to the argument. The removal of skill only occurs during the turns which you can't switch. Or, perhaps I'm misinterpreting the difference between a Blind Double and a Double because they seem like they're the exact same thing if a Double is glorified guesswork.
time to post my thoughts i guess
gengar: good typing and good movepool. gengar is really versatile (it can perish trap, reflect type, taunt dbond, hp fire, etc), meaning that you can pmuch make it beat everything you want. the only downside of Mega Gengar is that it has to take a turn to Mega Evolve, so it can't trap stuff immediately, but it is not that hard for Gengar to Mega Evolve with that typing and that nice base 110 Speed before the MEvo. While I didn't face it a lot during my laddering, I have seen it used in SPL, POWC, and UPL (i am still waiting on my ribbon btw), and I can easily see how centralizing Mega Gengar can be.
Now I know this is ubers and everything is overcentralizing and broken, but I really feel like Shadow Tag makes Mega Gengar a bit too good lol. So yeah, I personally think that banning gengarite will make teambuilding more fun and make ubers a bit more 'healthy'
gengar: good typing and good movepool. gengar is really versatile (it can perish trap, reflect type, taunt dbond, hp fire, etc), meaning that you can pmuch make it beat everything you want. the only downside of Mega Gengar is that it has to take a turn to Mega Evolve, so it can't trap stuff immediately, but it is not that hard for Gengar to Mega Evolve with that typing and that nice base 110 Speed before the MEvo. While I didn't face it a lot during my laddering, I have seen it used in SPL, POWC, and UPL (i am still waiting on my ribbon btw), and I can easily see how centralizing Mega Gengar can be.
Now I know this is ubers and everything is overcentralizing and broken, but I really feel like Shadow Tag makes Mega Gengar a bit too good lol. So yeah, I personally think that banning gengarite will make teambuilding more fun and make ubers a bit more 'healthy'
The thing is, the presence of Gengar encourages double switches that skew the risk/reward scale normally associated with doubling. It forces players into situations that aren't reliant on skill more than they are on 50/50s, so I believe Dice's argument about blind doubles has merit.
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