Announcement RBY UU Dragonite Suspect Test [Dragonite remains UU]

[Plague von Karma]

Approved by Lutra a while ago

This thread is to run parallel with the RBY UU Dragonite Policy Review thread. Post here if you can't post in Policy Review, we'll monitor both threads!

 

[AM]

Posting here cause PR Forum attracts policy junkies that dont play the "insert format being discussed" who are super annoying lol. Hopefully that trend can end by the end of the year.

Not sure what I'll be voting I'm of the camp Wrap as a move is really lame in this metagame contrary to Shellnuts post in the main RBY UU thread supporting it and would've preferred action towards AgiliWrap in a perfect world where complex bans are more encouraged. Banning Dnite is a simpler solution which I think should be encouraged as opposed to complex bans though, but agree with phoopes point in the PR thread that losing a counterplay to Dugtrio would absolutely blow. Dnites only an issue due to AgiliWrap otherwise it would be fine in the metagame, providing a dugtrio check and counterplay, Agility cleaner to provide more variety in teambuilding, etc. It's not even as much of a threat without Wrap in comparison to things like Tenta, Hypno, Dug, Persian, Articuno just to name stuff more consistent from what I've used and seen during my UUFPL games, the games I've seen (I try to watch all the replays in uufpl to study the player pool), and casual games I'll play here and there.

The only thing I didn't really agree with in Phoopes post in the PR thread is the justification of not banning it cause of a poor win rate. There's so many factors that can justify a poor win-rate such as a player using it terribly, Dragonite missing Blizzard then getting killed, missing Wrap and then getting killed with Blizzard, bunch of paras in a row, bad sequence of plays, etc. I think the win-rate argument only works in ladder setting if there's a high volume of games like CG OU gets or over longer periods of time if it's being consistently played in tournaments.

Maybe I'll have a more concrete choice later idk yet. We'll see.

 

[juoean]

an aspect to bring up imo that hasnt rly been discussed, is uncompetitiveness of agiliwrap from the point of view of the dnite user.

this is particularly true when the opponents response is pp stalling, as except when wrap misses the dnite user only has two legal plays, either continue wrapping or switching out. switching out is rarely even a consideration since u lose your setup. so the player in the likely advantageous position also has no control / skill involved.

a +2 dnite actually hands control almost entirely to the other player, as to how to try to mitigate the damage. if fishing for wrap misses, there is arguably greater decision making from the dnite user as to when to continue using wrap vs go for a different move (but outside of the risk of hyper beam if that move is ran, dnite's best play is usually pretty clear), but on the other hand that is the most rng dependent situation and if the 'defending' player doesnt get wrap misses in time they instalose; while pp stalling is less rng dependent (u can semi-estimate how much damage 32 wraps might amount to) but has almost no skill from either side outside of the specific turns when wrap misses letting dnite click something else, and to some extent the choice of which mons to use to pp stall but thats often a pretty straightforward decision also.

this aspect of uncompetitiveness is entirely nonexistent for wrap users without agility, as pivoting out is always a consideration (even if eg u have a tenta against an entirely slower team.) maybe somewhat less so for swords dance tenta.
wrap pivoting is entirely competitive, agiliwrap is very uncompetitive and in terms of the 'types of choices' normally available every turn it effectively removes at least one of those from *both* players indefinitely ('defending' player loses the choice to use any move, agiliwrap user in practice loses the choice to switch)

complex ban sidenote

i know its not up for vote but i also far prefer agiliwrap ban to dnite ban. i also maybe agree with volk that a ban on dnite but not agiliwrap could make certain things *worse*, particularly in the teambuilder. if dnite is banned, it is eg maybe not worth running toxic on dugtrio, sub + slash will help more often and if u only face dragonair say 5% of matches u might choose to accept that weakness in exchange for a more effective dugtrio the other 95%. and that creates a lot of undesirable randomness, right now u can pretty much assume all dug have toxic (or sand attack) bc dnite is very common, if dnair were the only agiliwrap user u maybe dont know whether opposing dug has toxic or not (obv unless the set is sufficiently revealed), so how do u decide whether to bring dnair in and try to set up on dug? unless u think u can somehow tell dug's 4th move from the rest of its team/gameplay, its j a random guess. games in which dnair is used become very impacted by whether or not someone happens to be running a move dedicated to preventing its setup

in terms of the 'complex ban' concern, there is maybe some comparison to the sleep trap ban in gsc, where there is no defensive response and also creates a sort of uncompetitive state where the sleep trap user is almost never switching out and play on both sides is nearly predetermined. obv very different in other ways, and sleep trap ban is usually justified as an extension of sleep clause not by uncompetitiveness, but if that 'comparison' is maybe useful for ppl to consider idk