On The Radar Vol. 2 [See Post #336]

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Somehow darm best check is another broken , Eject button pex + Scarf Stone Edge Duggy (go ahead and cry if you miss ) , Suspecting Gdarm is a mistake in the same way suspecting Dina was over straight quickbanning it , for god sake qb the ape and add Duggy as the third passenger into the Ban-Train thanks .
Here’s a fun fact actually. Scarf Adamant Dugtrio Stone Edge actually only OHKOs Darm-G 50% of the time so you actually need to chip it a bit first for it to actually be a “consistent” (lol 80% accuracy) answer.

252+ Atk Dugtrio Stone Edge vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Darmanitan-Galar: 322-380 (91.7 - 108.2%) -- 50% chance to OHKO
 
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cityscapes

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alright lets talk about the whole galarian darm vs gorilla tactics thing, addressing the arguments one at a time
-Since Gorilla Tactics is the signature ability of Galarian Darmanitan and Galarian Darmanitan only, there is 0 collateral damage done by a flat ban on the ability itself unlike Speed Boost Blaziken or Gen 6 Protean Greninja.
Let's take Blaziken, a mon that is only really broken because of speed boost. One could argue banning speed boost from it sounds like a slippery slope, but this is technically only the case because there are other mons who have the ability speed boost. The ability is not broken on them, so Blaziken has to be the actual culprit and deserves to be banned.
Likewise, moves are also similar to this logic, because technically Smeargle can learn mostly any move. Moves like thousand arrows, king's shield, and Dark Void (pre-nerf) are not broken when Smeargle uses them, so it has to be the mons themselves abusing them (as silly as that sounds).

I personally side with the idea of inclusivity. If a mon can be included in OU without conflicting with tiering policy, then all the better I say. And if another mon eventually came around that had gorilla tactics and proved to be not broken, then G-Darmanitan as a whole could be suspected instead in the future.
If we can avoid banning a Pokemon with the already low options of available Pokemon then we should try to preserve the Pokemon.
Gorilla Tactics is what makes GDarm broken I believe and he is the only one with the ability.
In this unique situation, I would err on inclusivity, since there is technically no tiering policy being broken and no precedent being disregarded.
the whole inclusivity argument seems to be popular, but maximum inclusion is not the goal of smogon's tiering. instead, our goal is to ban the root of the problem.

banning protean instead of greninja in oras, for example, would promote inclusivity. greninja lacking protean objectively adds more to the metagame than protean kecleon. you could argue for similar cases such as banning sheer force instead of lando-i, banning flyinium z in uu to let in dnite/mence/gyara, and others. sure, there's collateral, but the point is that the metagame gains more viable things than it loses.

there's a reason why we don't do this. if something isn't inherently problematic, we don't ban it.

gorilla tactics is undoubtedly one of the things that makes galarian darmanitan so powerful. but this is where the huge power argument comes in. we had several huge power/pure power users in the oras and sm metagames that were perfectly fine and encouraged competitive play. huge power isn't inherently problematic, so how can you argue that gorilla tactics is?

alright now lets talk about shadow tag!
I’ve seen a lot of people say “Gorilla Tactics isn’t OP by itself so G-Darm must be the problem; ban G-Darm.” Let me present a hypothetical scenario in response:

Let’s distribute Shadow Tag to a bunch more Pokemon: Caterpie, Weedle, Ledyba, Snom, Magikarp, Unown, Feebas, and a bunch more super weak mons.

In this scenario, do we ban Shadow Tag? I don’t think so.

Shadow Tag was banned because it’s broken/uncompetitive on all its users, so banning the ability itself was a simple solution (that also preserves other Gothitelle variants). But in our hypothetical world, Shadow Tag by itself obviously isn’t the problem, and banning it also prevents a bunch of obviously weak Pokemon from using the ability. Given that the OU Council prefers to avoid complex bans, including banning specific Pokemon/ability combinations, I imagine we would have ended up banning the Gothitelle line and Wobbuffet.
-There is precedent for banning broken abilities over the abusers themselves: Shadow Tag, Power Construct and most recently the re-ban of Moody come to mind
there was some policy review thread a while back that said "shadow tag wouldn't be broken on a pokemon with 10/10/10/10/10/10 stats, but this is the wrong way of looking at it", i have to agree here.

weak mons with shadow tag wouldn't be problematic, but they also wouldn't be in the metagame.

the issue with shadow tag is that whenever a user of it is at all viable in the metagame, it is used only for "shadow tag things", meaning removing a select group of pokemon with no counterplay. we have deemed this to be uncompetitive.

in the same way, all viable pokemon with moody use the same strategy of clicking sub+protect until they hopefully get enough boosts to 6-0 the opposing team. this is also uncompetitive.

(power construct isn't really comparable here, it was more about banning zyg-c)

i can argue that if rillaboom got gorilla tactics, it would be completely fine in the metagame, viable but not broken or uncompetitive. the same can't be argued for shadow tag or moody.

this is a rly weird topic and my understanding of it is decent at best, but hopefully i was able to get my points across well enough
 
banning protean instead of greninja in oras, for example, would promote inclusivity. greninja lacking protean objectively adds more to the metagame than protean kecleon. you could argue for similar cases such as banning sheer force instead of lando-i, banning flyinium z in uu to let in dnite/mence/gyara, and others. sure, there's collateral, but the point is that the metagame gains more viable things than it loses.
There's a pretty big leap between some collateral and no collateral whatsoever which is why Gorilla Tactics is being brought up as often as it is. Your examples are pretty bad and illustrate how a GT ban is arguably preferable when compared to previous bans. Kecleon wasn't a major player but it was a contender in lower tiers. You wouldn't get a true +1 in inclusivity by banning Protean. You'd cut both Greninja and Kecleon in half. Cool, that's +1 I guess. But to get that you have to smack Kecleon which did literally nothing worthy of nerfing like that which adds collateral making it a sloppy decision. It sounds silly because it is silly and that silliness is why banning GT, which hits nothing else, while still keeping Zen Darm is so appealing compared to the previous cases of mons pushed over the edge by their abilities. A better example would be Power Construct. Should Zygarde and Zydog have been banned because they were necessary to bring out Complete? Was the Power Construct ban more palatable because there was a visual shift associated with the ability making it seem like a new mon when in reality it was a Zygarde with a second HP bar?

Ultimately there aren't many examples like GT. The only one I can really think of was Politoed's big Drizzle adventure. Since Politoed was the only legal user of Drizzle and it was completely unremarkable without Drizzle the ability was suspected instead of the mon in gen 5. Drizzle was also suspected this way in UU and the comparison between how Drizzle and Drought were handled there is an interesting look at how a good ability ban compares to a bad one. Drizzle being banned was obvious and close to what people are asking for with GT. It hit nothing in lower tiers and solved the issue of Politoed bringing major issues to the tier without removing Politoed itself or impacting lower tiers. No collateral since no other Drizzle users were legal in UU and below. Drought was weird and controversial for good reason. The Drought ban affected lower tiers and multiple mons. Drought was only broken because it made Mega Houndoom too good. So they preserved Ninetales and Mega Houndoom by banning Drought which wasn't actually broken, causing RU to break away from the ruling. Mega Houndoom was the issue but because of preferential rulings Houndoom stayed and Drought left which dinged the non-at-all-broken Ninetales and Sun strategy. Honestly the Drought comparison is kind of a tangent but it still helps to illustrate how how weird ability bans can get and how clean a GT ban would be in comparison given its distribution and direct link to Darm's unhealthy role in the metagame.

tl;dr: Banning Gorilla Tactics instead of G-Darm is like banning Drizzle in UU. Removes the issue caused by a single legal mon while causing no collateral damage.

p.s: Huge Power argument is migraine-inducing for how much I have to contort my brain to make sense of why it was ever brought up. It having wide distribution kills the argument before it leaves the "but what if what I'm saying is actually stupid and irrelevant to the discussion at hand" stage of reasoning. Second, If nothing that has the ability is broken there's no negative influence on the metagame by its inclusion. It's a weird hackmons argument that somehow found its way into a standard metagame.

p.s.s: lol darm is dumb do something about this sick ape i don't care what
 
I don't think anyone is arguing that Gorilla Tactics as an ability is as unhealthy as Moody or Shadow Tag. That part is very clear. Any mon that is as trash as Gothitelle or Glalie would still not tear apart OU with Gorilla Tactics. It's obviously just the fact that they gave this very ability to a mon that was a) already a generally decent mon and b) whose two best sets have always been and likely would still be the two sets that are not affected by Gorilla Tactic's intended drawback at all.

I think the argument people are making right now is that because there is zero collateral damage, there is no apparent drawback in allowing Zen Darm, while banning Sheer Force, Protean or whatever would affect other things that weren't problematic.

I've been thinking this thing needs to go right from the beginning. As many have said, it's not that it can't be killed or that you'll always lose on team preview when you see it. It's the fact that it's unhealthy for teambuilding. When people are building teams for a certain tier they often start by looking at the viability rankings, pick out a few cool mons to build around and then fill up the remaining slots. With Darm and Dracovish in the tier this simply doesn't work. If you want to check a certain offensive choice mon reliably, you're mainly looking at something that resists their spammable move and isn't 2HKOed by any coveage move it might be running. Even for things like Specs Ash Greninja there was a pretty decent list of things already viable in OU that could take its spammable move, and many of them could take its coverage with certain EV investments too. For Darm it's coverage moves are so powerful and have such great typings that anything that could switch into its spammable move will be 2HKOed by its coverage from the CB set, with no exceptions. And for Dracovish its spammable move is so insanely powerful that the list of pokemon who can take it is reduced to vey low numbers, and it just so happens that none of those pokemon can take banded Outrage twice either. Maybe it would be less of a problem if Ferro or Pex had Water Absorb, though that would still mean that it's super over-centralising because everyone would have to run one of them.

Having these mons in the tier reduces the skill-intensivity as well. If a nerwomer asked me how they could win games without understanding anything about competitive pokemon I'd tell them to slap CB Vish and CB Darm on a team with Tailwind and click buttons. In fact, I'd argue you could accumulate a surprising amount of wins on the OU ladder by using a team with just 10 actual moves among your 6 pokemon. CB Darm with Crash, Vish with Rend, plus the best 4 Tailwind mons you can find with Tailwind plus U-Turn/Teleport/Memento as their only moves, such as Xatu, Mandibuzz, Pelipper and Whimsicott. In fact I might try that later just for science.
 
By all intents and purposes, it is strictly worse than an ability that has zero reason to be banned.
Fairy Aura and Dark Aura are strictly worse than Adaptability in singles, but manage to be stronger abilities in practice. Same for Arena Trap vs Shadow Tag in gen 5 -- the former was banned, but Shadow Tag is still legal. This has never been a problem for tiering policy, because distribution is an aspect of the ability, and being given to better Pokemon is something that makes an ability better. We ban things because of the actual problems they present in this metagame, not because of the problems they might theoretically pose if they had better distribution. It makes no sense to insist that OU uses Balanced Hackmons tiering policy, because we aren't playing Balanced Hackmons.

(For another, admittedly very facetious example: we don't ban Primordial Sea in tiers where Drizzle is banned "just for consistency" if nothing in the tier actually gets it. We accept that banning Primal Kyogre in UU accomplishes the same thing in practice.)


Shadow Tag is entirely different. Your example is also a straw man. Obviously the ability isn't broken on a Pokemon with a 30 BST and only knows Splash. That's an ABSURD counterargument. Short of an ability that KOs the opponent upon entry, nothing could make such a Pokemon broken. Yet may I remind you that Wynaut, a Pokemon with 93/48/48 bulk and at the time literally only four moves, was banned to Ubers before Eviolite even existed.
So what you're saying is that Shadow Tag is banworthy because it's broken on everything that gets it. This supports my point just as much as it counters it. I'll admit that the existence of a 30BST Pokemon with STag wouldn't mean we had to ban every STag Pokemon because a non-broken instance of the ability existed, though.

I can appreciate the difference between an ability being banned for being uncompetitive vs being banned for being overpowered, but I'm not convinced that it makes a difference in terms of how we should handle it. Generally, the reason we ban uncompetitive abilities outright and not overpowered ones is that their orthogonal angles of attack mean they produce similar metagame problems on their weaker users when the stronger users are removed. Gothita STag and Arena Trap Diglett are good examples of this.

I think your stance is that uncompetitive abilities are disallowable in isolation, but this is not consistent with how we have handled those abilities in the past. Heck, even in this generation, we didn't re-ban Moody just because it is conceptually uncompetitive. We banned it once it started producing regularly good results in high level play with the right roll. In the case of both Moody and STag, we saw the actual material effect on play before making a difference -- something which inevitably takes distribution into account to a degree, because the abilities will obviously only be used on things that can legally get them. In short, I think we have handled uncompetitive abilities differently because they tend to be problematic on every user, not because of a core difference in tiering philosophy.

Gorilla Tactics is just good and fundamentally sound, but too good when paired with every other good thing Galar Darmanitan has.
Conversely, Galarian Darmanitan is good and fundamentally sound, but too good when paired with Gorilla Tactics.

The difference is that Gorilla Tactics is, by current legality, not capable of not coexisting with Darmanitan-G. Darmanitan, however, is capable of not coexisting with Gorilla Tactics, and is probably not overpowered when it does.

the whole inclusivity argument seems to be popular, but maximum inclusion is not the goal of smogon's tiering. instead, our goal is to ban the root of the problem.

banning protean instead of greninja in oras, for example, would promote inclusivity. greninja lacking protean objectively adds more to the metagame than protean kecleon. you could argue for similar cases such as banning sheer force instead of lando-i, banning flyinium z in uu to let in dnite/mence/gyara, and others. sure, there's collateral, but the point is that the metagame gains more viable things than it loses.
I don't think these are good comparisons because none of these things are signature abilities/items. There is a choice between two sets of collateral damage for keeping the ban simple in your examples, and that's not a factor here. There would be absolutely zero difference, other than allowing Zen Mode Darmanitan, if we banned Gorilla Tactics, and I think that makes Gorilla Tactics something of a special case.

The fact that there are zero non-broken instances of Gorilla Tactics is important. Sure, it's that way because only one thing gets it, rather than because it would be broken if other things got it, but it's not at all self-evident to me that tiering philosophy should care *why* it's broken on everything that gets it.

I would also argue that Speed Boost is the root of the problem, rather than Blaziken -- it's inherently a very good ability, whereas Blaziken is a fairly mediocre Pokemon in isolation. Feel free to correct me here, but I think we chose to ban Blaziken because tiering philosophy is to prefer banning Pokemon in cases where conflict between two sets of collateral damage exists. So I think the lack of any collateral damage is important here: it's more like the Mewnium Z ban in UU last gen, which was banned for power level reasons and was banned instead of Mew because the non-broken element could be preserved by a simple ban with zero collateral.

I will accept, in the interests of fairness, that there might be precedent for not banning broken signature elements and banning the Pokemon instead. Marshadow springs to mind, but I don't know if Spectral Thief would have been considered for a ban if it wasn't for Smeargle existing. It probably would have been seen as a pet nerf, even though Spectral Thief offers unique functionality. I feel like moves and abilities/items ought to be treated differently here, but I readily accept that there are grounds to disagree.

Edit: another factor that just occurred to me. We tier certain things differently in order to tier different forms separately, such as banning Power Construct or certain Mega Stones. Is it worth doing the same to *allow* a specific form? Should we be trying to preserve Zen Mode Darmanitan-G as a different form, even if we would not otherwise try to preserve an alternative ability? Or does the fact that the form change is battle-conditional preclude this?
 
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termi

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I'm not sure how accurate my sample size for games is since I've been more watching high ladder games rather than playing them, but the direction the meta has been shifting post-DMax ban doesn't really seem to align with a suspect here. Prior to the ban, it felt like it was obvious that GDarm would be up next, but after the ban teams at top ladder have been looking more and more defensive. I'm seeing a lot more Stall, BO, or Balance teams, and even then, most of those balance/BO teams seem to be forgoing GDarm, although I've seen a few successful ones with it in. If the one of main concern GDarm presents is that it's too hard to defensively answer, there is no evidence of it on the ladder.

If something that's such a huge boost to offensive strategies is banned in a defensively oriented meta, I can only forsee the meta getting worse as a result of the ban. If GDarm's existence isn't enough to shift the meta away from playing defense, I can't imagine it could be called a broken offensive threat. We've seen the effects of ultra-hard-hitters before like Lando-I, the meta should NOT look like this if they're truly dominant and too hard to answer. The best teams in formats with these types of threats has always been HO or screens or something, a team archetype that hinges on abusing the clearly broken power level of their threats to muscle past everything else, with defensive strategies being fringe (or are the bare minimum, not the main strategy on the ladder). I just don't see this effect happening with GDarm, which makes me question if a suspect is really necessary.

Even if the story is that GDarm is an extremely broken threat but there's not enough offensive mons to make teams like HO or screens a real team, I think that means GDarm should probably still stay. If the meta is currently equipped to handle it, and even leans defensively despite its existence, then it's fair to keep even if its disproportionately powerful compared to other offensive Pokemon currently available.
or maybe the influx of bulky teams is a result of people attempting to prepare for gdarm and struggling to do so without relying on fat cores with several potential defensive checks. keep in mind, with its solid speed tier (way better than that of typical breakers like dracovish and toxtricity) and the ability to still hit hard as fuck while carrying a choice scarf, darm is at least as problematic for more offensively oriented teams as it is for more defensive teams. the concern that gdarm is what is keeping offense viable is based on pure speculation and not even particularly likely speculation at that. offense that a: has enough firepower to break through opposing teams and b: doesn't get cleaned by scarf darm lategame is currently very difficult to build without tending towards a more bulky offensive/balance style. bulky rotom sets are currently extremely common among top tier players from what ive seen because they can check darm without killing momentum, but the problem is that these are easily worn down, especially if they have to keep coming into rocks + darm's powerful u-turn (cb darm's u-turn hits harder than mega beedrill's, just a fun fact), so u probably need a secondary ice resist or at least reliable hazard control or wish support, which means ur probably gonna end up with stuff like corviknight and wish clefable and oh look it's a balance team. darm enables these building patterns moreso than it does anything to combat them, because checking darm reliably while still accounting for other threats in the meta is very difficult to pull off without resorting to the cookie cutter defensive cores that we've been seeing a lot of in this meta. this doesn't mean more overtly offensive playstyles are impossible, but they're a lot more risky to pull off so anyone who wants consistent success will be more inclined to opt for these types of balance/stall teams that create 200+ turn games whenever they face off against each other.

furthermore, the entire "we should keep the broken threat because it keeps the meta from becoming a stallfest" argument is bullshit even if we were to concede that darm makes offense more viable. if stall becomes too dominant, actions can be taken against it. however, i imagine that we do have enough offensive threats to keep stall at bay, and in fact, mons that are high in breaking power but low in defensive utility such as the aforementioned dracovish and toxtricity might be a lot easier to fit on teams when ur not preoccupied with trying to make your team darm-proof.

ending this post on the note that a quickban is the best way to go about this. when the meager opposition to a gdarm ban consists of people who think it's "broken but healthy" and people who consider it broken but would rather see gorilla tactics go* i think it's safe to say that a suspect test would be nothing but a formality, and unlike the dmax ban this would not be such a controversial decision that it warrants a suspect test for PR reasons.

*oh yeah and the gorilla tactics ban argument is stupid btw, there is literally no precedent for this. the major ability bans of past and present usually happened because they were deemed inherently uncompetitive (arena trap, shadow tag remove ability to switch, moody turns the game into a game of chance, same goes for gen 5 sand veil/snow cloak). gorilla tactics is objectively not broken or uncompetitive and even if banning it would avoid a minor amount of "collateral damage," it seems like a bad idea to go completely against our general tiering philosophy just to keep one single mon in the meta. i swear sometimes it seems like you people start arguments just for the sake of starting an argument
 
I'm more a casual player, but i wanted to give my opinion about Gorilla Tactic. I don't think it's a good idea to ban Gorilla tactic tbh, i think that smogon should ban broken stuff and ability are rarely broken by themselves. Unlike pokemon, an ability is just an ability, without stat, movepool and typing, it's nothing more than a flavour text. Sure Shadow tag, Moody and Power Construct was banned, but i think there is big difference between these three and Gorilla Tactic :
- Power construct was the only way to ban Perfect Zygarde, a better version of Zygarde
- Moody is uncompetitive and rely on luck.
-Shadow tag is very strong and uncompetitive, supbar pokemon become good with it. Prevent switching is a very powerfull mechanic in itself especially when it's an ability
I think that it's important to remember why these 3 ability was banned. None of them was ban to preserve a pokemon.

Now the question : If Gorilla tactic is only on Darmanatan, why it's a bad idea to ban it ?
The first thing to see imo, it's what will happen if Game Freak add an other pokemon in the next complementary version with Gorilla tactic ? What will happen if Passimian get it by event ? etc. We can't ban Gorilla tactic even if it's signature ability because we can't know if it will still be a signature ability at the end of the generation.

An other thing to keep in mind : The effect this ban will have on the ban policy. I mean, since we ban Gorilla tactic to preserve Darmanitan, what the difference between this and banning Fishious Rend ? Fishious Rend is the reason that make Dracovish played rn, a stab 190 is very powerfull by itself. Arctovish can learn it too, but it's not a very good pokémon, and it will prevent it to being broken in lower tier. And like this, Dracovish is still playable. The argument we use to ban thing are important, they will have an importance in other suspect test too. Rn people want to ban Gorilla tactic because there is precedent, abilities were banned ! Mew Z was banned and not Mew !

That's why we need to draw a line in the sand, smogon should ban broken stuff before anything else and if Darmanitan is the problem because of his mixture of stat/Movepool/ability, he need to be ban, not gorilla tactic.

(Also sorry for my english)
 

termi

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Weather abilities in UU.
i was referring to ou's tiering history in particular, but fine, i'll entertain you. weather abilities sometimes get banned in lower tiers because the alternative is to ban all abusers that make it overwhelming (vastly more collateral than banning one single pokemon) or the weather setter itself, but since the weather setter isn't broken by itself (unlike gdarm) it is a lot more plausible that the ability itself is the problem. drizzle was a problem despite the fact that a shitmon like politoed got it, gorilla tactics is only a "problem" because its sole abuser is an already good pokemon that has the ideal stats and movepool to take advantage of it.
 

Deleted User 229847

Banned deucer.
It's really curious how for quite a handful of people balancing is done in order to prevent one legitimate playstyle (stall) to succeed in the meta, as if it's deemed uncompetitive or broken. When we had the dragmag shitfest in BW everything was kinda fine, but god forbid if the meta slows a bit and stall starts to be a good and legitimate option. Lol

It's not like with dracovish and the plethora of new NP users, stall would be in good shape.
 
It's really curious how for quite a handful of people balancing is done in order to prevent one legitimate playstyle (stall) to succeed in the meta, as if it's deemed uncompetitive or broken. When we had the dragmag shitfest in BW everything was kinda fine, but god forbid if the meta slows a bit and stall starts to be a good and legitimate option. Lol

It's not like with dracovish and the plethora of new NP users, stall would be in good shape.
I'm kind of curious how the absolute fuck a Darm ban would prevent stall from being viable when a) stall doesn't run Darm and b) banning something that basically can't be walled would only make stall better.

People have also talked a lot about Dracovish and I suspect his time on the chopping block isn't too far off in the future.
 

GMars

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The level of discussion regarding banning the banning of the ability vs the banning of the Pokemon is abysmal. The council understands the arguments and will decide accordingly if and when something is done. The main point of this thread right now is to determine if there is a problem and how it should be handled (suspect, quickban, or nothing -- not how through what should be banned); let's stick to that please.
Galarian Darmanitan is problematic enough to warrant a quickban. External perception would likely prefer a suspect given that in the dynamax ban reasoning, darm was cited as one of the more problematic abusers of the ability to break its choice locks and it may seem counterintuitive to some to ban it right after “nerfing” it. However, from firsthand experience in both using it and playing against it, it is certainly unbalanced enough to quickban and I believe this would be the best route to go. Whatever post is made should simply include the explanation of how the inability to dynamax to live a hit from darm is a significant buff it receives that results in no true counters existing for it.
 

Scribble

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Galarian Darmanitan is problematic enough to warrant a quickban. External perception would likely prefer a suspect given that in the dynamax ban reasoning, darm was cited as one of the more problematic abusers of the ability to break its choice locks and it may seem counterintuitive to some to ban it right after “nerfing” it. However, from firsthand experience in both using it and playing against it, it is certainly unbalanced enough to quickban and I believe this would be the best route to go. Whatever post is made should simply include the explanation of how the inability to dynamax to live a hit from darm is a significant buff it receives that results in no true counters existing for it.
I don’t think this post really says anything. If I just change some words, then the argument stays just as strong arguing against a quickban. Nothing against you in particular and you’re definitely a well-qualified player, but I don’t like this argument.

Galarian Darmanitan is not problematic enough to warrant a quickban. External perception would likely prefer a suspect given that in the dynamax ban reasoning, darm was cited as one of the more problematic abusers of the ability to break its choice locks and it may seem counterintuitive to some to ban it right after nerfing it. From firsthand experience in both using it and playing against it, it is certainly not unbalanced enough to quickban and I believe this would be the worst route to go. The inability to Dynamax to live a hit from darm is a significant buff, but is outweighed by being constrained by choice lock and becoming extremely vulnerable to revenge killing.

I’m not convinced a quickban is a good idea and I strongly encourage against it.
- Darmanitan is not on the same level as Pokemon that have previously warranted a quickban. In SM OU, the initial quickbans were Power Construct, Aegislash, and Lando-I. I think everyone at least agrees that Darm is not on the same level as Power Construct or SM Aegislash which were broken and centralizing offensive and defensive threats. Lando-I is more debatable, but that at least wasn’t weak to Stealth Rock, had an amazing typing, could set up Stealth Rock, and wasn’t forced to choice lock itself to get its power.
- People are arguing that a suspect test would be a formality or a waste of time when we could likely predict the results, which is a horrible way of thinking about suspects. Suspect tests allow for more community input in a game where community input is lacking, and more time for the meta to develop. They are never a waste of time. If we can reasonably predict the outcome of a suspect test, that doesn’t mean we should just skip it. If it can be accurately shown that a majority of the communtiy wants a quickban, then I would concede, but I at least would not be a part of it.
- Most of the counter play options against Darm are not shit mons and would likely see some use even if Darm would get banned. The post-Dynamax meta is still young and developments are still being made. I’d like to highlight Vaporeon as a fairly new discovery that can counter scarf Darmanitan and still provide valuable team support in the form of a fat Wish, Yawn, and being immune to Fishious Rend. This isn’t a shitmon, it is an innovation within the limited dex. One might just say “But Band,” but Vaporeon at least has reliable recovery and Darmanitan just needs to hit one attack for the opponent to determine its set, and band is much easier to check offensively.
 
It's really curious how for quite a handful of people balancing is done in order to prevent one legitimate playstyle (stall) to succeed in the meta, as if it's deemed uncompetitive or broken. When we had the dragmag shitfest in BW everything was kinda fine, but god forbid if the meta slows a bit and stall starts to be a good and legitimate option. Lol

It's not like with dracovish and the plethora of new NP users, stall would be in good shape.
Np rest Rotom-h stall does perfectly fine in the meta right now , 1800's is a fat fest mirror everygames thanks to Duggy being more of a problem than Gdarm , if you go through the list of what fk up stall depending on which Duggy set it runs the amount of breaker is very thin , (SD daunt loses to sash for example ,curseslax to screech ) , so far bold cm psychoc hat is kinda annoying , Np gengar hitting focus miss a+2 , 48speed full bulk np-rest rotom-h (gotta be tbolt) and .... that's all the rest is quite easy to check or trapped by duggy .
 

Deleted User 229847

Banned deucer.
Np rest Rotom-h stall does perfectly fine in the meta right now , 1800's is a fat fest mirror everygames thanks to Duggy being more of a problem than Gdarm , if you go through the list of what fk up stall depending on which Duggy set it runs the amount of breaker is very thin , (SD daunt loses to sash for example ,curseslax to screech ) , so far bold cm psychoc hat is kinda annoying , Np gengar hitting focus miss a+2 , 48speed full bulk np-rest rotom-h (gotta be tbolt) and .... that's all the rest is quite easy to check or trapped by duggy .
I agree that trapping is a problem and dugtrio should be either quickbanned given his history in past gens, or directly suspected after whatever happens with g-darm. Once it's banned, stall should not be the source of all player frustration though. It's just a playstyle like the others.

I'm kind of curious how the absolute fuck a Darm ban would prevent stall from being viable when a) stall doesn't run Darm and b) banning something that basically can't be walled would only make stall better.

People have also talked a lot about Dracovish and I suspect his time on the chopping block isn't too far off in the future.
That's what I am saying, for some people darm shouldn't be banned because it hinders stall to the point where it's a good pokemon for the meta.
 
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Why are some people acting like Darmanitan is a healthy Pokemon or at least shouldn't be banned on the basis of "stall would be too strong if it was banned" or whatever. For one, no, stall wouldn't be broken if we banned Darmanitan, there are plenty of good breakers in this tier and stall itself doesn't even have the same tools and role compression it had last gen. For another, even if stall were to become too much somehow, it wouldn't be because Darmanitan is banned and it would be because of a different issue. We shouldn't be using a broken checks broken argument in all of this. Also, while I agree Dugtrio is for sure problematic and should be looked at as quickly as possible, let's figure out Darmanitan first seeing as this thread is about it and it's a Pokemon the majority of those who play tournaments are calling for the ban of. On top of this, as I've said earlier, the majority of good players are pretty unanimous on GT Darmanitan being broken and needing action immediately so let's figure that out first before having mass hysteria over stall or Dugtrio or whatever as they'll be handled accordingly.
 

GMars

It's ya boy GEEEEEEEEMARS
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I don’t think this post really says anything. If I just change some words, then the argument stays just as strong arguing against a quickban. Nothing against you in particular and you’re definitely a well-qualified player, but I don’t like this argument.

Galarian Darmanitan is not problematic enough to warrant a quickban. External perception would likely prefer a suspect given that in the dynamax ban reasoning, darm was cited as one of the more problematic abusers of the ability to break its choice locks and it may seem counterintuitive to some to ban it right after nerfing it. From firsthand experience in both using it and playing against it, it is certainly not unbalanced enough to quickban and I believe this would be the worst route to go. The inability to Dynamax to live a hit from darm is a significant buff, but is outweighed by being constrained by choice lock and becoming extremely vulnerable to revenge killing.

I’m not convinced a quickban is a good idea and I strongly encourage against it.
- Darmanitan is not on the same level as Pokemon that have previously warranted a quickban. In SM OU, the initial quickbans were Power Construct, Aegislash, and Lando-I. I think everyone at least agrees that Darm is not on the same level as Power Construct or SM Aegislash which were broken and centralizing offensive and defensive threats. Lando-I is more debatable, but that at least wasn’t weak to Stealth Rock, had an amazing typing, could set up Stealth Rock, and wasn’t forced to choice lock itself to get its power.
- People are arguing that a suspect test would be a formality or a waste of time when we could likely predict the results, which is a horrible way of thinking about suspects. Suspect tests allow for more community input in a game where community input is lacking, and more time for the meta to develop. They are never a waste of time. If we can reasonably predict the outcome of a suspect test, that doesn’t mean we should just skip it. If it can be accurately shown that a majority of the communtiy wants a quickban, then I would concede, but I at least would not be a part of it.
- Most of the counter play options against Darm are not shit mons and would likely see some use even if Darm would get banned. The post-Dynamax meta is still young and developments are still being made. I’d like to highlight Vaporeon as a fairly new discovery that can counter scarf Darmanitan and still provide valuable team support in the form of a fat Wish, Yawn, and being immune to Fishious Rend. This isn’t a shitmon, it is an innovation within the limited dex. One might just say “But Band,” but Vaporeon at least has reliable recovery and Darmanitan just needs to hit one attack for the opponent to determine its set, and band is much easier to check offensively.
The argument is not that a suspect is a formality, the argument is that Darm, like Lando-I, is unwallable and possesses a good enough speed tier in the meta to make that unwallability extremely problematic and unhealthy for the tier. Just because it cannot set rocks does not somehow set it far below it. I’m not trying to make an objective argument that Darm must be quickbanned, I’m simply giving my opinion as a player. You can take anyone’s opinion and add a “not” before it, but people assign weights to opinions based on the actual person giving them.
 

Scribble

formerly Dartrix - Joker
is a Contributor to Smogon
The argument is not that a suspect is a formality, the argument is that Darm, like Lando-I, is unwallable and possesses a good enough speed tier in the meta to make that unwallability extremely problematic and unhealthy for the tier. Just because it cannot set rocks does not somehow set it far below it. I’m not trying to make an objective argument that Darm must be quickbanned, I’m simply giving my opinion as a player. You can take anyone’s opinion and add a “not” before it, but people assign weights to opinions based on the actual person giving them.
None of this is what I said? You might have misinterpreted my post.

One of the arguments I've seen in this thread is that a suspect is a formality or a waste of time for something that isn't on the same level as past quickbans, and that shouldn't be our line of thinking when this is still a very new meta. This isn't the heart of the argument, but I'm concerned that people were thinking this way.

I didn't only mention how Lando-I could set up Stealth Rocks and I didn't even say Darm was "far below" Lando-I. I listed several other substantial advantages it had. Regardless, I don't want to derail the thread by having a back and forth about Lando-I so that's all I'll say about it.

Giving your opinion as a player is fine, but wouldn't it be more beneficial to explain why you think the way you do? What exactly have you seen from fighting it and using it that warrants a quickban? You're a respectable player, and articulating why you think a quickban is the best course of action would be valuable, wouldn't it? Just because a respectable player believes something doesn't necessarily mean it's correct. I'm not opposed to a ban, I support a suspect test, but I firmly believe a quickban is too strong of a reaction.

That's all I have to say in this thread, and I hope Darm doesn't get quickbanned.
 
I'm not an experienced player like some others, I'd still call myself a beginner when it comes to playing Pokemon and have been doing competitive on and off for some time. Only recently have I started to consistently play. I've been playing a lot of gen 8 OU and have tried out/played against the big snow papa himself. These are my thoughts on Darm.

With the lack of a lot of defensive mons in gen 8 such as bulky water types like Alomomola. Check that do exist against darmanitan, such as Rotom-H and Jellicent, they have flaws that darm can exploit/teammate can. Rotom-H lacks recovery and Jellicent flat out loses to CBCB Darm. That's the main problem I have with Darm, while yes, it's not an unbeatable mon you're required to run more then one check if you don't want to lose to either CS or CB sets. It constricts teambuilding so that you have to bring pokemon that can be deadweight in games. You also might have to run sub-pair sets in order to beat Darmanitan such as Choice scarf dragapult which can't kill anything, Choice Scarf Hydreigon which while not bad is weaker then Choice Specs and Sub+NP, or scarf Cinderace which removes its niche as a court change pivot mon. With the lack of pursuit in gen 8 it means you can't even punish the opponent for staying in with Darm with things such as Tyranitar and Weavile.

Another annoying thing Darmanitan has is its U-turn which it has access to making you gain momentum while making your opponents come to an absolute halt. Able to force out anything it wants, get solid chip damage on whatever comes in and switch out. Which can further weaken checks and makes you lose momentum while making your opponent have control over the battle making it hard to get back to a favorable position.


G-darm does have cons to using it though, its absolute god awful defense typing and how frail it is means it can't switch into anything without dying, hazards being up means it gets weaker every time it comes in limiting how many times it can threaten the opponent, and the fact that priority absolutely kills this thing all are things to watch out for when using G-darm.


However, I feel as if the pros of Darmanitan vastly overshadow the cons of it. While it being frail and bad defenses are something its always going to have, you're going to have to take out the opponent's hazard removers to make sure your hazards stay up which becomes harder to do in gen 8 due to the amazing item Heavy-Duty boots. Meaning stuff like mandibuzz, or anything else can reliably get rid of hazards without dying to anything. There's a lack of priority in Gen 8 currently since a lot of mons that abused it like Scizor are gone. While it still does exist, such as Mach Punch Conkeldurr absolutely forcing darm out and I've even seen people run first impression durant to OHKO Darmanitan, they're rare from my experience.

All a player needs is one good prediction with Galar Darmanitan to completely change the tides of a battle. While stuff like Dracovish and Dracozolt you could have genuine counters/checks against and they're easy to predict meaning you can beat them with your stuff, Darmanitan doesn't really have anything like it.

I don't believe Darmanitan should be quick banned like some people mentioned, since it does have flaws that tie it down. However I do believe a suspect is needed. G-darm is an amazing pokemon that constricts team building and I believe to be the biggest threat in gen 8 OU.
 

cityscapes

Take care of yourself.
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i guess my points werent articulated well enough, i'll give it another try
There's a pretty big leap between some collateral and no collateral whatsoever which is why Gorilla Tactics is being brought up as often as it is. Your examples are pretty bad and illustrate how a GT ban is arguably preferable when compared to previous bans. Kecleon wasn't a major player but it was a contender in lower tiers. You wouldn't get a true +1 in inclusivity by banning Protean. You'd cut both Greninja and Kecleon in half. Cool, that's +1 I guess. But to get that you have to smack Kecleon which did literally nothing worthy of nerfing like that which adds collateral making it a sloppy decision. It sounds silly because it is silly and that silliness is why banning GT, which hits nothing else, while still keeping Zen Darm is so appealing compared to the previous cases of mons pushed over the edge by their abilities.
let's assume lower tiers are irrelevant here. the point of this argument is that tiering decisions solely for the sake of inclusiveness are a bad idea. we shouldn't avoid banning the root of the problem just to arbitrarily preserve zen mode darm because you want it around in the tier.

i'm really not sure why you're so against collateral here. i agree that it is something that should be avoided if possible, but at some point you really have to ask whether things like irrelevant pokemon, otherwise broken moves on smeargle, or shadow tag on terrible pokemon being unusable has any actual effect on the competitiveness of the metagame.

power construct, again, is an extremely weird case and i don't think it can be used as precedent here.

as for politoed, i believe that was actually drizzle being an inherently broken ability. the whole drizzle + swift swim strategy was seen as too powerful for the metagame, while swift swim was not inherently broken and could still be used competitively alongside rain dance. i can't say for sure, but drizzle would still be extremely strong on most other pokemon, considering something as terrible as politoed was used to create broken teams.

won't address drought because i don't know what you're trying to say with that one`
The fact that there are zero non-broken instances of Gorilla Tactics is important. Sure, it's that way because only one thing gets it, rather than because it would be broken if other things got it, but it's not at all self-evident to me that tiering philosophy should care *why* it's broken on everything that gets it.
the argument here is that darm is what "breaks" gorilla tactics, not the other way around. darm is literally tailored to be a near-perfect user of the ability in ou. its stats, movepool, and typing are all incredible. gorilla tactics doesn't "break" darm any more than all its other traits.
 
Have you ever wondered why Brazil is such a powerhouse when it comes to pumping out world-renowned soccer players and championship winning teams? Why is it that so many amazing soccer talent manages to come out of Brazil, compared to the rest of the world? Well, the reason boils down to a combination of many tings, but there is one little-known factor that can't be denied- and its the popularity of a different, though similar-enough sport: futsal. Futsal is like soccer in many ways, but played on a harder, flat court (similar to a basketball court) and with a much smaller and heavier ball. Many world-renowned soccer players, such as Pele, grew up with futsal, with some never even having touched a soccer ball until their teens. Its been documented how much playing futsal translates into skill on the soccer pitch- perhaps even moreso than practicing *on* the soccer pitch. Futsal is a much more constrictive sport than soccer. As mentioned, the court is cramped, the ball is harder to hit and its weight limits its bounce. There is a wide margin of error, because, unlike in soccer, if you're surrounded by the opposing defense, you can't just kick away the ball. Futsal requires you to hone your ball control skills. Simply, futsal compresses all the skills required in soccer, and when these skills are trained in a more restrictive and less forgiving environment, such as the one bred in futsal, you're going to naturally develop skills faster and deeper than others.
This just reminded me of that new Uzi song

But for real tho: about a week ago I thought that Darm wouldn't be too bad, since the Dynamax ban was coming up, so Darm can't just break out of it's choicelock, and I thought that it had enough counterplay.

But after the dynamax ban, a lot of people ask for suspects and qb's, so I begin to reconsider, and I now kinda understand that this is not oké.

Wouldn't mind a suspect tho, qb seems too irrational.
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
let's assume lower tiers are irrelevant here. the point of this argument is that tiering decisions solely for the sake of inclusiveness are a bad idea. we shouldn't avoid banning the root of the problem just to arbitrarily preserve zen mode darm because you want it around in the tier.
The thing is that, at least the way me and the other pro-GT ban people see it, Gorilla Tactics IS the root of the problem for Darmanitan (the only user of the ability that currently exists) specifically. When forced to use Zen Mode it is not even close to being as overpowering and centralizing as the current Choice Scarf/Band sets are. The near total lack of defensive counterplay, the absurd damage output, that all comes down to Gorilla Tactics. I personally feel that it is far more arbitrary to ban Zen Darm when it is so blatantly not a problem and will be even less so after a GT ban when it won't even be able to use the surprise factor and constant threat of the GT sets to pull off its Belly Drum + Salac shenanigans.

Can we finally get some council members to weigh in on this debate? I think we've kinda reached an impasse and it would be best for them to throw their hat into the ring so we can maybe get somewhere.
 
let's assume lower tiers are irrelevant here. the point of this argument is that tiering decisions solely for the sake of inclusiveness are a bad idea. we shouldn't avoid banning the root of the problem just to arbitrarily preserve zen mode darm because you want it around in the tier.

i'm really not sure why you're so against collateral here. i agree that it is something that should be avoided if possible, but at some point you really have to ask whether things like irrelevant pokemon, otherwise broken moves on smeargle, or shadow tag on terrible pokemon being unusable has any actual effect on the competitiveness of the metagame.
Lower tier precedent is important because it gives a more complete look at the history and methodology of rulings. There are more tiers than OU with just as many valid balance concerns which necessitated bans. I'm against collateral mainly because I play lower tiers. So yes, do think "irrelevant" mons matter in OU rulings. Which is getting sidetracked since the argument here is that there is no collateral with GT. The discussion at hand isn't Protean dinging Kecleon, it's G-Darm being overpowered, GT being what makes it overpowered, Zen not being overpowered, no other mon having GT, and a discussion about a ruling that specifically targets the unhealthy aspect of Darm's role in the meta. People are arguing against this by bringing up Blaze Blaziken (complex), Protean instead of Greninja (collateral), and arbitrary ability power tiers (irrelevant since balance affects what actually exists, not theorymon).

So honestly I'm completely unconvinced by the arguments against a GT ruling. The best counter I can think of is setting a nerf precedent but that falls on its face when you realize the amount of factors that need to be in place for future arguments to gain relevancy like this one. A broken mon would need to have: 1. An ability that adds an extreme power boost, 2. A signature ability that nothing else gets, 3. A secondary ability to make an ability ban not just a mon ban with a different ruling, and 4. An unarguably unhealthy effect on the metagame caused by that ability.

the argument here is that darm is what "breaks" gorilla tactics, not the other way around. darm is literally tailored to be a near-perfect user of the ability in ou. its stats, movepool, and typing are all incredible. gorilla tactics doesn't "break" darm any more than all its other traits.
Gorilla Tactics doesn't exist without Darm, Darm exists without Gorilla Tactics. Darm without GT isn't broken. Therefore GT is the issue. Seems like pretty simple logic. I'm kind of sick of the "inherently broken or balanced" argument. Look at what's actually around, not what could be theorymonned.
 
Gorilla Tactics doesn't exist without Darm, Darm exists without Gorilla Tactics. Darm without GT isn't broken. Therefore GT is the issue. Seems like pretty simple logic. I'm kind of sick of the "inherently broken or balanced" argument. Look at what's actually around, not what could be theorymonned.
Im honestly tired of this argument. The tiering policy doesnt like to ban abilities or moves, but it bans Pokemon with their best possible sets. Abilities or moves are only banned in exceptional cases. This exceptional case doesnt exist here since Gorilla Tactics doesnt interfer with the opponents game mechanics, and doesnt introduce randomness. Its even weaker than existing Abilities that are deemed non-broken, thus further proving that Gorilla-Tactics isnt the problem.
So we look into Darms best possible sets and if those sets are broken, Darm gets banned. It doesnt matter if there are worse set for Darmatian out there.
 
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