Pokemon specific bans in OU

[gvmgvm40]

I'm all for it, but before we ban something we need to clearly determine the culprit. In Latias and Misdreavus (GSC) cases, the culprits were evident.

Banning SD on Garchomp off the bat, for example, would cause ScarfChomp to dominate, and the metagame being even more centralized as every team would need a steel and so forth and so on.

 

[PK Gaming]

I'm all for it, but before we ban something we need to clearly determine the culprit. In Latias and Misdreavus (GSC) cases, the culprits were evident.

Banning SD on Garchomp off the bat, for example, would cause ScarfChomp to dominate, and the metagame being even more centralized as every team would need a steel and so forth and so on.

Scarf Chomp wasn't really broken though and it was a valuable asset to DD mence. I mean scarfchomp was a staple in early OU and it wasn't even heavily steel dominated.

 

[spweasel]

Personally, I think that nobody at all understands the metagame well enough to always perfectly figure out exactly what makes a Pokemon Uber. Thus, there could easily be several misses, meaning that there would need to be several different attempts to find exactly what set of clauses would make any given Pokemon fit for OU play.

Trying to put an Uber Pokemon into the OU metagame is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Sure, with enough sanding you can make it work, but it may never be a perfect fit. Best case scenario, all you end up with is another (slightly deformed) peg in the OU metagame. More likely, you push one or more Pokemon out of the metagame, which leaves you in roughly the same spot as you started.

I personally think that the small reward of successfully reintegrating a Pokemon into OU isn't worth the amount of work required to make it possible. If the metagame is healthy, bringing stuff down from Ubers can only improve the metagame a little bit, while it also runs the risk of re-breaking the metagame. If the metagame is not healthy, the best these Pokemon can do is to serve as a band-aid solution to greater problems.

On a more personal level, though, I really dislike this sort of banning. Competitive Pokemon already has a remarkably high barrier to entry; adding more complex appendices to the rules makes getting into the game even harder for new players while providing only minor benefit.

Tier lists might be hard to memorize, but at least you can tell what tier a Pokemon is in by a glace at the Pokemon lists. The Soul Dew clause might have been a corner case, but at least it was applied to all Pokemon equally (and can easily be summed up by a simple, self-explanatory "Soul Dew is banned").

Elegance really should count for something. The fewer corner cases something has, the easier it is to understand. While it is easy enough to make a rule saying "Salamence cannot use Outrage", it is also perfectly easy to make a rule saying "a team cannot contain both Skarmory and Blissey" or even a rule simply saying "female Pokemon are banned on Thursdays". Any of those rules could possibly make the metagame better, but they all are arbitrary and inelegant.

Note that while tier distinctions are also inelegant, the tier lists themselves aren't. The average player has absolutely no need to remember how tiers are determined, only what Pokemon are in OU.

Instead of Pokemon specific bans, perhaps a more elegant, non-Pokemon-specific ban could be found. Alternatives to "Salamence can't have Outrage" might include:
- Outrage is banned on all Pokemon
- Outrage is banned on all Dragon types
- All Move Tutor-only moves are banned on Pokemon with a BST of 600 or more

While the last one is slightly more specific than I personally would like, it covers enough that it could possibly make more than one Pokemon OU appropriate again without resorting to calling out specific Pokemon for nerfing.

 

[QibingZero]

If we're truly worried about the diversity of OU (and I've always argued that we should be), it's best to focus on the single greatest threat to diversity that Pokemon has in 4th gen - High Base Power STAB-backed Dragon-type moves. When you have 120-140BP STAB moves which are only resisted by one type being thrown around by pokemon with high attacking stats, things get centralized very quickly. The 'only resisted by one type' part is especially important, as it's why Salamence using Draco Meteor is gamebreaking while Roserade using a 'stronger' Leaf Storm is not.

Yeah, we've been over the Dragon-Steel thing many times, but there is just nothing in the game that compares. The resistance problem here is just ridiculous. Even a pokemon as strong as Kyogre has extremely solid switch-ins that aren't even Uber pokemon - all despite it's Water Spout being much much stronger than any unboosted Draco Meteor or Outrage. You can't say the same thing about Salamence - a pokemon it seems people are finally (a couple years later) tired of 'playing around' every time it comes out.

Let's be honest with ourselves: there was never a reason to have to outplay opposing Salamence, and it's entire existence has been based off of the most simple formula ever, which anyone can pull off. Threaten dragon move nothing short of a steel can take --> fill movepool with moves to hit any steel type super-effectively --> cause prediction nightmares to the point that it becomes more guesswork than anything.


I'm not going to beat the horse any longer, though. So, searching for a solution...

There are two issues with a straight Draco Meteor + Outrage ban:

1) These moves are obviously not broken on every pokemon. I would have a hard time arguing this if Flygon and Kingdra were the two strongest Dragon pokemon out there.

2) Garchomp. Even if you remove Outrage and Draco Meteor, and say you know it's set, the fucking thing is still going to beat you when you play it perfectly every now and then due to Sand Veil. It just complicates things since you already have to deal with the fact you have the chance to lose to it on a crit in the first place. Whereas I'm confident in saying Salamence is OU without these moves, Garchomp would definitely require testing.


I don't really like the alternative though, which is to consider each pokemon specifically. Then you have a group of people thinking Salamence is fine how it is, a group thinking it's Uber only with Outrage, a group thinking it's Uber only with Draco Meteor, and another group saying Dragon Dance is the real problem (or DD+Outrage). You can see where this is going. Even if we can eventually agree it's okay without, say, Outrage, is that really the 'best' solution?

I realize that a blanket ban is harmful to pokemon like Kingdra and Flygon as mentioned before - and it's not easy for me to argue that one of my favorite pokemon in Flygon should be gimped like this - but I really think it's both the most reasonable and the most 'elegant' solution. Not only does this buffer OU from the top (with Salamence, Lati@s, maybe even Garchomp being playable again), but it also opens up teambuilding for use of a variety of low-OU and BL pokemon that currently never see the light of day in extremely competitive battles.


(After writing this I realize there is another way, where we would create a seemingly arbitrary cut-off line such as: Outrage and Draco Meteor are banned on all Dragon-type pokemon with at least one base attacking stat over 100.)

 

[Ulevo]

Stuff.

Aldaron, just for the sake of clarity, I'd like to ask. For what purpose are you proposing this for? What is the benefit you envision to come out of this proposition for your loose, conceptual idea?

We can all assume it's to improve the metagame. But how do you believe this will improve it?

Since you're the one begging the question to the community, the onus falls on you of course for the explanation, so I'd just like to know before making any statements, rather than assuming your reasons and addressing comments based on said assumptions.

Let me put it like this: why do you think people don't ban certain moves on certain characters in fighting games?

Fighting game communities don't ban moves on specific characters because it is infinitely more difficult to enforce in a rule set for tournament organizers. You can inspect a Pokemon team prior to a tournament match and be ensured that no unfair play will ensue during the match; such simplicity is not granted in a fighting game. There is no way to remove a characters move set from a game (without altering the game itself, which is an entirely different issue). If the move is used in tournament while a ban is placed on it, it becomes a mess. Did the player intend to use it? Was it an accident? Did it effect the match? So on and so forth.

While discreteness in a rule set for Pokemon is merely to appease the player base, fighting game communities don't have that luxury.

 

[PK Gaming]

Ulevo of the smashboards? The Marth main? Weren't you guy the guy who (somewhat) alleviated the fears of the Ness mains? How ya been?

(After writing this I realize there is another way, where we would create a seemingly arbitrary cut-off line such as: Outrage and Draco Meteor are banned on all Dragon-type pokemon with at least one base attacking stat over 100.)

To stay on topic here, Nintendo needs to decrease Outrage's/Draco Meteor's base power. I don't think it's that simple just outright ban the dragon-type moves especially on something like Dragonite (who isn't broken and could appreciate the extra power)

 

[EpitomeOfFailure]

I´d like to question the need of changing the policy of Smogon. Since this is the midset the whole site is based on, it should be treated with repect, and to break it, one should have serious proof of its benefits.
Since following the UU subforum I heve learnt, that it´s not always as easy to decide, which of all the attributes of a entity makes the entity broken, and should therefore be banned.
And now, for the sake of example:
Look at the whole Moltres is broken vs. Frosslass is broken.
OK, they did settle that one down, Frosslass is now banned and Moltres lives happy ever after. But it took propably hunders of posts, not to mention the hours spent on writing paragraphs about these mons.

The people working on banning and unbanning things have more than enough work to do, so I would suggest everyone to think:
"how about participating in that?"
After then they may have the experience to say, whether it is relevent to add thousands of difficult situations to determine which of the moves or items makes something broken.
And maybe there´s not even right answer. Eg. the Mence broken with Outrage/DD: The blue dragon could definently work within the metagame without Outrage, it always has Dragon Claw to fall back on. And look at all the sets not using Dragon Dance! Surely all those bulky sets and wallbreakers still work. And removing either move would cripple Salamence, that´s for sure. So which of them makes little buddy broken?

To sum up: what is the use of getting a metagame with 70-80 usable pokémon with the price of every one of them having 3-4 banned moves?
That´s where this is going. Now things are tried to drop back to tiers they were originally banned from (Ie. Latias to OU, Raikou to UU), which prevents the metagame from slowly being drained out of options, as people ban and ban and ban things.
With all the work from testing whether a move is banned, how could there be room for this?
Also, from how things are, we cannot determine how things should be.
That leads us to: from how other things are, we surely can not determine how things should be, can we?
Dragging fightning games here seems to be odd, in my honest opnion.
What do they have to do with pokémon, game with entirely different mechanics and characters, other than making characters figth and banning things?
Metagame exists within any game, which is played seriously. Are they all similar to this one? Doubt so.

 

[Relictivity]

Originally Posted by QuiblingZero
If we're truly worried about the diversity of OU (and I've always argued that we should be), it's best to focus on the single greatest threat to diversity that Pokemon has in 4th gen - High Base Power STAB-backed Dragon-type moves.

Yah, the non-diversity of OU has really been one of the reasons I stay out of it mostly. Dragon/Steels I have to agree, are some of the worst parts.

Let's be honest with ourselves: there was never a reason to have to outplay opposing Salamence, and it's entire existence has been based off of the most simple formula ever, which anyone can pull off. Threaten dragon move nothing short of a steel can take --> fill movepool with moves to hit any steel type super-effectively --> cause prediction nightmares to the point that it becomes more guesswork than anything.

Ok, this is where I think we are attacking the wrong problem. The problem is, powerful sweepers win according to a simple formula. The thing isn't Salamence - or Garchomp - in specific. It's simply the entire metagame.... say we were given a Dark type with 150 Base Attack next generation, and decent defensive stats and great speed... and it could wreck the same havoc, even though it isn't Dragon. The real problem is that we don't have 'diversity of strategy'... in other words, most people only run fast sweepers, or stall.

I think perhaps if we can get away from running those two strategies excessively, we will see alot of our Dragon/Steel problems run away from us - 'team synergy strategies' as I like to call them (Trick Room, Rain Dance, etc), are very good at getting past fragile fast sweepers. The question is, how do we encourage people to run strategies that they don't know how to play... we go somewhat into it with the guides, but not enough.

I think we need to run an article on 'Good Setup Leads', so things that help setup the main 'team synergy strategies' and how to run them to set-up on all the common leads. The articles we have now, they are good and all, but they don't go into very much detail as to what sets you can run and why, because many of the 'creative' sets one might run on a lead for a 'team synergy strategy' aren't very common (although they are very successful). And that's something else that needs to be fixed - the guides need to teach people HOW to run these viable strategies. The tutors, yah, they are good, but not everyone can use them, especially if they lack time. We need step-by-step guides on how to set up a successful team like such.

(After writing this I realize there is another way, where we would create a seemingly arbitrary cut-off line such as: Outrage and Draco Meteor are banned on all Dragon-type pokemon with at least one base attacking stat over 100.)

The problem we have here is that 100 is a very arbitrary number. It would be a nice way to cut off the Dragon problem, but what about another powerful move, and where would we stop? There are very powerful strategies out there (take, for example, Guts TO Ursaring with a couple of Ninjask Swords Dances and Speed Boosts behind it, and the thing is, it is actually EASY to set up). Not saying that they shouldn't be banned, but how will we draw the line on other moves that have this problem in the future?

 

[Rhiehn]

Banning Yache Berry/Swords Dance on Garchomp would only cause him to replace Flygon and increase the need for a bulky steel on your team. I could see how banning Outrage/Meteor on Mence/Latias could work and keep them from being broken, but they'd still centralize, because they'd still be the best at what they do. I don't think there's any single thing on these suspects that moves them up to broken status alone, the metagame would still be centralized around the current and past suspects, just this way, they'd be stoppable because of centralization around stopping them, when before, they weren't really stoppable with out bizarre gimmicks on bad pokemon.

 

[Yagami Light]

I have not read the whole topic (read the OP) but this, to me, seems like a solid idea.

The only thing to determine is where the cut-off line should be which is, of course, easier to discuss than to actually implement. Is CBChomp super broken? It's hard to see without using it in game. Would Tail Glow-less Manaphy be fair in OU? Once again, hard to see.

Good idea, regardless. Implementation seems a bit harder to visualize, though.

 

[Ace Emerald]

I say arguing and theorymon is not the way to go here. If someone really cares, they can set up some sort of server to try it out, then send results of playing to admins for consideration. The arguments go back and forth and it isn't getting anyone anywhere. Personally, I'm neutral and really don't care. Someone who thinks this would improve the metagame, go do something then advertise it. Otherwise this thread will stay open until a moderator gets pissed and closes it or everyone forgets it.