phoopes
I did it again
This thread is to run parallel with the RBY UU Agility + Partial Trapping Policy Review thread. Post here if you can't post in Policy Review, we'll monitor both threads!
It's Agility + Partial Trapping, not the latter.So is it for Agility + wrap/clamp/spin ban, or speed manipulation + wrap/clamp/spin ban?
Because if it's the former I'd think a Dnite/air might opt for a Plan B of dropping Agility for Thunder Wave. On one hand this would probably give it an immensely poor matchup against Dugtrio who is immune, outspeeds and would punish with Rock slide. But on the other I wonder if this could lead to some poor future if that strat gained steam and made every UU team have to run a mandatory Duggy out of phobia to that interaction.
I'd say in short, community consensus. Last year, when Dragonite was being suspected, the community wasn't necessarily happy with that. It was a compromise decision made with tiering leadership at the time to suspect Dragonite instead of APT. The promise was that APT as a whole would be suspected only if Dragonite was banned first, but that never came to pass since Dragonite remained unbanned. The feeling among a lot of the community is that without APT Dragonite is a strong but healthy force in the metagame; it's only with APT that it becomes a problem.Why, specifically, is the route being taken a complex ban of this nature? Is it solely because the Dragonite suspect failed to ban Dragonite last year? It seems like a complex ban such as this should be discouraged over straight banning the problematic pokemon in question, which here, is Dragonite.
Dragonite is the major player here, with Dragonair being a distant second. Moltres is used probably as much as if not less than Dragonair, and Fire Spin's PP and accuracy make it not nearly as good. Any other Fire-type with AgiliSpin sees no play in the tier. I thiiiiink that most people would say Dragonair with AgiliWrap or Moltres with AgiliSpin wouldn't be problematic if Dragonite were no longer in the tier, but I can't speak for other people.Do other pokemon cause issues in RBY UU with agility + partial trapping moves? For example, is Agility + Fire Spin Rapidash seen as problematic in the tier? If that example is too silly, what about Moltres? Would it be problematic in the tier if Dragonite was no longer in the tier?
Forgive me on this because I'm not an expert on other gens' tiering decisions (yet anyway, haha) but from my understanding banning X "broken" combo on Z mon here to keep X mon in the tier doesn't seem all that different to me than later gens jumping through hoops to keep Baton Pass around with all the conditionals that have been tried and everything. Again if I'm way off base here let me know, that was just the first "complex ban" that came to mind. I would say the train of thought here isn't "we want to keep Dragonite in the tier because we like it," but moreso "we want to ban an uncompetitive strategy from an otherwise healthy metagame presence."I know that some say Dragonite is otherwise healthy if not for the APT. But what makes that any different from banning X "broken" combo on Z mon instead of banning Z mon? Is it because we just want to keep Dragonite in the tier, and if so is this train of thought the way these decisions should be made?
I kind of accidentally already answered this one oops. But to reiterate, Dragonite was tested last year first because the community wanted an APT ban but the tiering leadership at the time didn't want a complex ban. So there was a compromise made to test Dragonite instead, with the condition that if Dragonite was banned, an APT test would be on the table that would return Dragonite to the tier if it went through. So yes, if Dragonite had been banned, we would have (probably already) have tested APT.If the problem really was APT and not Dragonite, then why was Dragonite even tested last year first? Would you be testing APT right now (again, since other mons get it), if Dragonite ended up being banned last year?
I don't want to speak for the council entirely here, but when I asked if they wanted to have suspect live tours like there were for the Dragonite suspect test, the response was either "no" or kind of lukewarm from everyone. I think this is because this suspect test has been coming for a long time due to community opinion and they wanted to serve the community better by suspecting APT as quickly as possible. I'd like for a council member to step in and correct me I'm wrong though.The RBY UU tier/community seems to be growing/changing/evolving very well and constantly. However the voting requirements for this suspect seem to be very rigid and based on past tours. Why wasn't there a suspect tour this time around for newcomers to the tier who only recently started getting into it?
I wanted to comment on this about going against tiering guidelines. As far as I know, tiering guidelines have been set in the Tiering Policy Framework thread and I want to go over it to defend the council's decision (and my approval of their decision) to go for an APT test (spoilering because you didn't actually ask this question and this section is turning out to be a little long):For the record I don't have a strong opinion on actually banning APT, if the RBY UU council seems to think it's dumb then they probably have the right idea. But I am extremely curious about the answers to these questions, as it seems to be mostly going against tiering guidelines.
It's Agility + Wrap/Fire Spin, given legal combinations. Agility is the only speed-boosting move, and only Wrap and Fire Spin are possible alongside it; Rapidash, Moltres, and Dragonite are what's affected. Dragonite's Dugtrio matchup would be largely unaffected because Blizzard just kills it. There are Dragonite sets that don't use Agility already, this set is just egregious.So is it for Agility + wrap/clamp/spin ban, or speed manipulation + wrap/clamp/spin ban?
Because if it's the former I'd think a Dnite/air might opt for a Plan B of dropping Agility for Thunder Wave. On one hand this would probably give it an immensely poor matchup against Dugtrio who is immune, outspeeds and would punish with Rock slide. But on the other I wonder if this could lead to some poor future if that strat gained steam and made every UU team have to run a mandatory Duggy out of phobia to that interaction.
It's because of the strategy itself being notorious for screeching games to a halt for what can be a very long time. It's considered to be unhealthy and uncompetitive to an extreme degree: nobody actually likes this strategy. This is the basis for the suspect test. Its brokenness is completely RNG-centric, and while it's mathematically improbable for it to actually go the full stretch, the damage it deals on average is usually way too much for what can be just a single, seemingly inconsequential turn, in a metagame that often lasts an upwards of 50 turns. I agree that only Dragonite is viable out of these, but we're treating this like a Brightpowder situation: nobody likes to deal with it, it adds nothing but bother to the tier, let's remove it.Why, specifically, is the route being taken a complex ban of this nature? Is it solely because the Dragonite suspect failed to ban Dragonite last year? It seems like a complex ban such as this should be discouraged over straight banning the problematic pokemon in question, which here, is Dragonite.
I've used Rapidash and Volk has used Moltres. Here's my Rapidash team with a lead set, which can be improved upon. They're not broken, but Moltres is certainly viable and has been ranked before.Do other pokemon cause issues in RBY UU with agility + partial trapping moves? For example, is Agility + Fire Spin Rapidash seen as problematic in the tier? If that example is too silly, what about Moltres? Would it be problematic in the tier if Dragonite was no longer in the tier?
I just wanted to touch on this point because I probably know far more about Moody than most and was an infamous moody/minimize abuser and have been called an unskilled player many a time for abusing such strategies. I wrote in 2018 about Moody Glalie in BSS, talking about in particular its consistency over long stretches of time and that the ability is actually a lot less dependent on RNG than you think:"This can be probability management issues; think OHKOs, evasion, or Moody, all of which turned the battle from emphasizing battling skill to emphasizing the result of the RNG more often than not."
Max PP ups is required in cart battles as well. This is just a clause that we dont bother to talk about on the sim because its enforced by default.i think another very important thing to note here, and maybe this should get its own post, is that if the claim that agiliwrap isnt uncompetitive is based on the option to pp stall wrap for counterplay, this is counterplay that is completely impossible on cart, it exists on the simulator solely due to the fact that the sim requires using full pp ups to be used on every mon. (i assume bc it wouldve been extra labor in programming to let u choose max pp and that it was assumed not to matter, outside of rby).
u cant really stop ‘taking advantage’ of incorrect sim mechs, but i think to decide not to ban something solely on the basis of a strategy that doesnt exist on cart, is something else entirely.
Tiering decisions happening during tours isn't exactly abnormal and doing so allows for the result to see tournament play immediately. Additionally, APT's presence in these tournaments - and many prior - has garnered criticism from insiders and outsiders. It is more efficient to move with a potential ban immediately and make use of the experience players have been having. RBYPL running would have made no difference as to whether we would run the test, we are not trampling on anyone here. Note that a significant portion of the council who decided to run this test are actually playing in the tournaments: this decision was not made lightly. The benefits to running it at this point seem superior to waiting until after, seeing another potential tournament, and shelving this yet again with some stupid "we'll do it tomorrow" mentality.1) The timing is just terrible. There's currently an RBY Invitational Tour ongoing, and even though it's not "technically" a Smogon tournament, this suspect test is allowing players from the LCQ bracket to vote, so it's clearly important enough to garner attention and making a large tiering decision before it's complete seems a bit unfair. In particular, the meta will change with Dragonite no longer able to agiliwrap, and not all participants in that tour are builders and will not be able to adjust as quickly as others who have been around the tier for a while. If you think this is insignificant, I can assure you it is not, and any slight advantage in knowing now what your Dugtrio/Persian should run, how your Dragonite should look, etc., is more easily achieved by those who have been writing RBY UU VR posts for 2 years than someone who picked up the tier in January. I understand that this tour has been going on for 100000 years but it seriously is going to be over soon I promise.
In addition, UUFPL is also still ongoing. While that is a farm team tour, it again has shown it is important enough to allow people from last year's UUFPL to vote in this suspect. The same reasoning applies to this in why it creates a bit of a fairness issue. Also, I doubt that if RBYPL was ongoing that this suspect would happen, and that is actually mostly skilled RBY UU veterans playing. It would wait until it was over most likely. I think the same consideration should be given here for these tours.
Brokenness is not and has never been the discussion. I don't know why this is continually being brought up when not one person has argued it ever.2) After reading all of the arguments here (I read all of them), it seems clear that APT is not actually broken at all. The problem is clearly Dragonite using APT, not APT as a whole. I have yet to see anyone explain why Rapidash is overbearing, or why Dragonair is overbearing, or why Moltres is overbearing, etc. None of these pokemon seem to cause any issues and using them for APT seems mostly like a meme. In fact, it seems most people want to ban APT agree that none of these pokemon with APT are problematic at all except for Dragonite. So, I don't see how APT is actually a problem at all. Dragonite is the problem, and if there was no Dragonite, then APT would not be an issue. Also, Phoopes has laid out a good argument on how APT does have some competitive value to it, so it cannot be called clearly "uncompetitive". It sure does have uncompetitive aspects to it, but to say it has no competitive value is obviously incorrect since there are many situations where you are using it for positioning in a competitive manner. It's not the equivalent of something like Brightpowder that clearly has no value other than hoping for a lucky miss and nothing more.
Basically, the only argument I am seeing on why APT is being suspected and not Dragonite is that A) the Dragonite suspect failed so APT lives on the chagrin of some, and B) people don't want to let Dragonite go because they find it beneficial. I don't think the B) argument is something to be considered in making a tiering decision like this - there are many "broken" mons that can be beneficial to a tier if you remove their broken aspect (Golduck might be just fine in NU without Amnesia?). And the A) argument is also obviously not a good reasoning for moving forward with this suspect as it opens the door to suspect basically the same thing multiple times until the desired result is achieved.
There's a lot of loaded accusations in this that seem a bit weird, but I'll bite.3) People are downplaying how much of a complex ban this is. I see a lot of comparisons to simple complex bans like Sand Veil, Damp Rock, Luck items, etc., and this is just totally different than that. You are banning a combination of one type of move (trapping move) with another move (Agility) on the same pokemon. The only comparable complex ban that has precedent with this is the multiple failed baton pass restrictions that have been tried over and over again (i.e. no baton passing + speed boosting, or no baton passing + any stat boosts, or only 3 baton pass users per team, etc.). When you combine that with the point above, it seems like such a crazy attempt to keep Dragonite in the tier that you are trying to create a group of moves that you don't like Dragonite using that nothing else has issues with, just so that you can have this ban push through while keeping Dragonite. It just seems contrary to how tiering is supposed to be done. And if this was allowed, then what else are we able to do? Can we decide to ban Amnesia + Hypnosis if people believed it was broken or uncompetitive? I'm not saying it is broken or uncompetitive at all, I'm just saying that, if people thought it was, then would banning that over the only real abuser (Poliwrath) be something to do? What about banning Agility + Fiery Wrath in SS UU instead of banning Galarian Moltres? The problem is very clearly Dragonite, and only Dragonite, and I haven't seen any replays or any arguments that really suggest otherwise other than complaints about APT (which is an artificially created concept/combination) being uncompetitive when Dragonite uses it.
The suspect tours were done to get a higher voter pool due to the initial one being easily swung, as well as add some last-minute tournaments to improve the player pool in general. You can see this in the original PR thread: they were advertised as "for those interested in the tier". The tours themselves, despite an actual week of planning, were panned by participants due to being BO1 Single Elimination - the only way to make them function, mind you - and resulted in a lot of round robin finals that the hosts barely managed to have time for. It wasn't a good experience for anyone participating and any more games would have led to them being 2-day live tournaments instead. Given the increased pool of tournaments now that allows us to have more voters, these uncompetitive tournaments were deemed unnecessary for this test. This does mean we don't have a pseudo-laddering method of participation, but the extremely negative feedback - of which was very valid - made it best to keep these on the shelf. Even the results of these tournaments garnered ire because some of them were quite odd.4) I don't like how the voting list was made, but that's not really that important. I do think there should be live tours, as a suspect test for this type of thing, with no opportunity for anyone to actually try to get reqs to vote on it (e.g. a suspect tour), is just kinda silly for anyone that was hoping to vote in it. I think all of the people on the current list are certainly qualified to vote, but it seems very shut to not allow anyone else to try to get these reqs to vote in any way.
There isn't one. There's separate councils for each RBY tier now, and thus each one would need to decide on a ban. My positions do not reflect the entire council; honestly, I think I'm in the minority with my opinions.If that's the case, what makes the combination unhealthy only in rby UU rather than in all tiers?
There are a couple of problems with this argument.I see Agliwrap Dragonite as healthy part of our metagame, being one of the few punishes to the physical offense spam (mainly khanga+persian) and dugtrio. You could argue that twave Dragonite accomplishes the same thing, but I believe that without Agliwrap Dragonite those same threats would be free to not run toxic and opt instead for coverage, reducing the amount of checks and centralising the metagame further