Retesting Latias in DPP OU

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ojama

Banned deucer.
Approved by BKC, leader of the Chicken McNuggets

Hey0! After years of fruitless conversations about a potential retest of Latias in DPP OU, I have decided to make the first move and start a discussion about the matter. Before listing the arguments in favor of an unban of Latias, I'd like to mention that this thread is supported by most people among the DPP Council, one member of which approached me the other day to make the thread. It's very important that you all understand that it is going to be very hard to objectively test Latias' impact on the metagame with a Suspect Ladder given how inactive the DPP Ladder is, which means that this discussion will be extremely subjective and based off a lot of theorymoning, so keep it friendly and keep in mind that this whole conversation will be relatively subjective and a way to survey the general opinion about a potential unban of Latias in the tier. Whether your arguments are in favor or not of an unban, make sure to elaborate.

First of all, I personally think that Latias should have never been banned in the first place and was wrongly banned because Salamence skewed things entirely. Latias was banned before Salamence for reasons I don't really understand, but in the end Salamence got still banned 2 months later because it was the real problem, banning Latias didn't make any changes. Salamence was so overpowered that it required different ways to check or "counter" its various sets, which opened people to be weaker to Latias which was back in the days on almost every team for her defensive features. Therefore, Latias was seen as an unstoppable weapon offensively (the Specs set mainly) when in reality it was Salamence's fault.

Second of all, I think the game has changed a lot ever since Latias got banned and it's pretty clear that the way we would handle Latias today would be radically different from the one we used before. Some sets were unknown or never used, and some Pokémons weren't as often used as they are now (Zapdos and all its sets, Offensive Suicune, Offensive Starmie, CBApe...) because of Latias and Salamence when it reality Latias is nothing more than a check to all these threats, which only shows that Latias would have a defensive role, more than an offensive role, like she always has had in the different tiers in which she is used. What's the difference between BW2 OU and DPP OU? Ferrothorn. Besides it, the Latias counters are the same: Tyranitar, Jirachi, Scizor, Blissey, SDef Heatran, Bronzong, SDef Skarmory... And let's be honest, we are all afraid of Latios in BW2 OU, not of Latias. Let alone the fact that Ferrothorn isn't their best counter when HP Fire is a thing, unless you're in rain.

Right now the tier is going around in circle and I think re-adding Latias would have nothing but a positive impact on it, without drastically changing things. Offensively-wise, there are much stronger threats than Latias' Draco Meteor, such as Dragonite, Heatran, Zapdos... Latias would be a great add for the defensive balance of the tier because right now some stuff are extremely hard to handle like Infernape. BKC hosted a DPP Latias Tournament and told me that there weren't much changes with or without Latias, because in the end, the stuff you'd use to check or counter Latias are in almost every team right now. For sure unbanning Latias would change something, inevitably, but I don't think it would be that big of a change, and I'm sure it would be nothing but positive. Latias' defensive characteristics would foster a more offensively oriented metagame because we wouldn't need to use 3-4 different Pokémons to check certain threats when Latias can do it on her own (more or less), and this is something we should encourage.

The only negative aspect of a Latias unban would be the Dugtrio + Latias core than can be relatively hard to beat. Maybe the issue lies somewhere else.
 
Last edited:

Texas Cloverleaf

This user has a custom title
is a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Would you kindly justify for us the reason why we should be making a change of this magnitude for a tier that is almost 4 generations old and that has, to date, only seen tiering changes for things that are fundamentally noncompetitive (I.e. sand veil). Why should this change (and by extension other such tiering changes in other generations) be considered when past administrative decision has been to leave old tiers locked in stasis once they had concluded (excluding BW sun and excadrill which was much less outdated at the time than this decision would be)?

I have no particular horse in this race, but this question is one you must inevitably answer before a discussion such as this can take place.
 

Ojama

Banned deucer.
The Old Gen Councils were created for this specific reason, making changes when necessary. Old Gens have been constantly evolving over the years because they are still played in most of the Official Tournaments, and by a major part of the Smogon Community. Claiming that an Old Gen is locked and should no longer be modified is a rather old mentality and an outdated vision of the game. Maybe this was the main opinion in 2010, but Smogon has changed, a lot. Back in the days, such discussions were unbelievable because nobody cared about the Old Gens, nor played them. And I've explained several times how much I hate that we call them "Old Gens" when they are stil being actively played by a huge part of the community. We should consider every generation equal and treat them on the same level of importance, because this is what Smogon is in 2018.
 
The "necessity" comes from things not being banned if they don't need to be. The argument is that Latias does not need to be banned, it was in the metagame with Salamence which made it feel overwhelming, we have a lot of tools that weren't really used back then, Latias' Specs set was discovered and it was banned off of that but it's pretty likely we would be able to handle it nowadays. Maybe call it a somewhat premature ban. (I have the utmost respect for the suspect testing process, those who ran it and the voters from back then, btw. Things just change sometimes.) Thus, arguments should be more like "I agree, Latias is handled by what are already the best Pokemon and we know BW Latios is not exactly invincible" or "I disagree, Latias' typing and speed and power is too much for the metagame, it's too strong with too many options against too many Pokemon."

Obviously it's not easy to overturn a meta that's had minimal changes on the surface for 8 years. That's also what this thread is for, it's unfortunately not purely a metagame thing. However, there's no harm that can come from threads like this; we have processes for a reason, and things can get overturned if they're found to not be the right ones (this one goes both ways).

Also the council is currently focused on BP for the next few days so I'll refrain from posting my indepth dissertation on Latias (it's already mostly been covered) but please, I encourage people to post their hearts out. Latias yes/no, changing old meta to this degree yes/no (yeah, there's a subjective line that we'll almost never be able to find - we don't want unnecessary bans but we don't want to mess with old metas too much etc etc where do you draw it), ideas about Latias + Dugtrio (as a guy who loved Latias myself, this one really concerns me, alongside the whole feasibility of uprooting the meta) and how to feasibly test this. We're not operating completely in the dark here, which helps.

I'll be keeping a close eye on this thread and whatever other discussion elsewhere, looking forward to it
 
Last edited:
Second of all, I think the game has changed a lot ever since Latias got banned and it's pretty clear that the way we would handle Latias today would be radically different from the one we used before. Some sets were unknown or never used, and some Pokémons weren't as often used as they are now (Zapdos and all its sets, Offensive Suicune, Offensive Starmie, CBApe...) because of Latias and Salamence when it reality Latias is nothing more than a check to all these threats, which only shows that Latias would have a defensive role, more than an offensive role, like she always has had in the different tiers in which she is used. What's the difference between BW2 OU and DPP OU? Ferrothorn. Besides it, the Latias counters are the same: Tyranitar, Jirachi, Scizor, Blissey, SDef Heatran, Bronzong, SDef Skarmory... And let's be honest, we are all afraid of Latios in BW2 OU, not of Latias. Let alone the fact that Ferrothorn isn't their best counter when HP Fire is a thing, unless you're in rain.
I'm not strongly opinionated on this issue (and the idea does interest me, in fact), but to play devil's advocate, there is another difference: Team Preview. In BW2, you know from the start that you have to keep your Latias answers healthy. You can argue that good players should be able to deduce their opponent's team composition and plan accordingly, but it is possible that the re-introduction of Latias could place undue strain on that process and reduce overall reward for skill (i.e. "Either I play around this group of metagame threats or I play around Latias. Hope I don't lose the coinflip.") . Your concerns about Arena Trap also play here, as having your Heatran or Tyranitar randomly sniped by a Dugtrio you didn't know was there (and hadn't had the turns needed to scout yet) could be game over in a rather unsatisfying fashion.

That said, this doesn't strike me as a factor that comes remotely close to a disqualification. I would just say the test isn't innately risk-free, and that perhaps you might be underestimating Latias's potential impact.

Edit: Another thought occurs to me. You said yourself that most every team used Latias when it was legal. Would there be good reason to not run Latias if it was legal now? Are you comfortable with the possibility that 75% of teams (or some other arbitrarily high percentage) might end up running Latias just because of its combination of stats, typing, and role-compression?
 
Last edited:

panamaxis

how many seconds in eternity?
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Two-Time Past SPL Championis a Three-Time Past WCoP Champion
From memory, the problem with latias back in the day was that it was really centralising on the meta - although, as said, some of this may have been attributable to salamence as well. Latias is not like salamence, and it's definitely not uncounterable. It's rare that you'll straight up lose from guessing the wrong set if you are well prepared. But latias just fits amazingly on every team archetype. Offense loves latias, for obvious reasons. It checks a bunch of stuff, has great speed, excellent resistances and bulk and hits like a nuke with LO or specs DM. But Latias is just as good, if not better, on balance and stall teams as it gives them a win condition, checks a lot of offensives threats, can revenge kill, phase...etc. From an offensive perspective, yes, the main difference between DPP and BW is ferrothorn. But the bigger difference is latias naturally checks so much of the DPP meta defensively compared to the BW meta, even when it's not running a defensive set. So why wouldn't you run this thing on most of your teams?

Maybe things will be different now from back then. The meta has shifted a lot, and people have a lot more experience in playing against Latias nowadays than we did back then. I do think introducing latias would have some positive benefits on the tier (a new ape/loom check is a godsend). But i also think Latias will be extremely centralising on the tier, and many strategies will revolve heavily around Latias, either abusing it yourself or playing against it. My experience from years ago was that it was VERY common to see latias + 2 steels (or 1 steel + tyranitar) + XXX type teams and it was almost mandatory that you had to run at least 1 steel or tyranitar on every team. Of course there are some teams that could get by without, but these were the exception, not the rule.

Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it isn't. I see Latias as kind of like a much worse GSC snorlax. The meta probably could and would adapt around it. So sure, re-testing it might be worth a shot (and I say this as someone who originally voted to ban latias, from memory). But I do think the meta will become a lot more centralised. Whether that's a net positive gain or not is debatable.


Whatever the decision with this, I agree that Salamence skewed the Latias test. But I don't think Latias was wrongly banned, at least at the time.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
Latias is better than Salamence, better than Garchomp, and arguably better than Latios.

That is all. (Tyranitar is the most broken POS if anything, permasand is bullshit and so is its effective BST in a world before we started putting shit like Kyurem-B in OU.)

also free garchomp (and stop changing past-gen OU metagames)
 
Last edited:
Zokuru asked to post

Well, I'm not a DPP expert, I just know the tier from what I played back then it was the main tier, I also played it a bit in early BW and more recently. Also, I watched many replays, from SPL and Wcop, involving DPP, and read many resources, mainly RMT from the old time.

The first thing I want to start with, we all (bar Mr.E) agree with the fact that Latias isn't broken, and that she won't break the entire tier if she was released from Ubers. What have been stated too, is that Latias is a really strong Pokemon that could potentially ... well no, she will, almost certainly, centralize the metagame. Then I'll argue on that point, is Latias centralising the metagame a problem ?

There're many metagames that are centralised around some Pokemon, or even one. I immediatly think about GSC, Snorlax being used nearly 100% of the time, but there's less excessive example, SM OU showing a Landorus' usage near around 50%, or Tyranitar in BW, DPP and ADV being used more than 50% of the time. So yeah, we can't argue that centralisation is an issue unless we're open to rework basically every OU metagame, bar maybe RBY. Now let's answer the question, is Latias being the crux of DPP OU a problem ?

To answer this question I'll just take the usage stats from the on-going Wcop, these are Round 1 usage.
In the top 5, composed with 6 Pokémon, there's 3 counters (Tyranitar, Jirachi, Heatran) to Latias and one check / revenge killer (Rotom-A if scarfed, it can check if EV'd for that too I guess
And if we look at the top 10 there's one more counter, Bronzong.
Also there's Flygon that can apply pressure on Latias by Revenge Killing it and even grab momentum on it due to U-Turn, Metagross could be a good check/counter if it carries pursuit, Gengar can tie with Latias or Revenge Kill her if she's HP Fire, Magnezone could be a check too, Scizor can trap her if she's not carrying HP Fire, and even if she does have it there's still a 50/50 between switch and Hp fire vs the banded set in a certain range.

Code:
252+ Atk Choice Band Technician Scizor Pursuit vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 236-278 (78.4 - 92.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Technician Scizor Pursuit vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Latias: 236-278 (65 - 76.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Choice Band Technician Scizor Bullet Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 177-208 (58.8 - 69.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Technician Scizor Bullet Punch vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Latias: 177-208 (48.7 - 57.3%) -- 93.4% chance to 2HKO
Also it's still nicely lured by a Scarf set that can just grab momentum / do heavy damage.

Code:
252 Atk Scizor U-turn vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Latias: 252-296 (69.4 - 81.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Scizor U-turn vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Latias: 252-296 (83.7 - 98.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
SpD Skarmory is a good check too, Standard Clefable (at least the set I have in my builder) can tank 2 DM from LO Latias factoring Leftovers recovery and cripple CM sets with Thunder Wave and / or Knock Off.

Code:
252 SpA Life Orb Latias Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 104+ SpD Clefable: 235-277 (59.6 - 70.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
-2 252 SpA Life Orb Latias Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 104+ SpD Clefable: 118-139 (29.9 - 35.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

252 SpA Life Orb Latias Psychic vs. 252 HP / 104+ SpD Clefable: 151-178 (38.3 - 45.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Psychic does 0 too, but then Clefable is in DM range, that's worth noting.

Haze Milotic, Blissey, and Cresselia are also some less used but really good Latias beaters.

That alone is not enough to state on that topic, we should only let Latias centralise the tier if we can take some benefits out of it.

Breloom, Machamp, Infernape and Lucario. How many checks exists to those Pokémon ? Not many, it would be really good for the tier to add one in my opinion, and it would slow down the tier, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Why does slowing down the tier would have benefits on DPP OU ?

Well, there's no team preview in a fast paced tier. So what happens ? You often have to sacrifice things before you get to scout enough of the opponent team, which forces you to guess and gamble, and while it's a skill, I don't think that's the best thing we can do with DPP OU, so a slower tier could lead to less guessing, which means more constancy in players' winrate (DPP is more like a Teampreview tier in that regard than non-teampreview tiers according to SPL9 records stats, which is weird, although there's other things to take into account, like SR / Scarf / Life Orb being introduced in Gen 4). So let's jump into the last topic, Latias + Trappers.

I'll be quick with Magnezone, as it only traps Scizor (which can trap Latias before), some Jirachi, and Skarmory (which can be played with Shed Shell if needed).

Now let's take a look at choice band Dugtrio. It can, most of the time, beat Blissey and Clefable (without Ice beam or Knock Off), it beats Heatran and checks things like Magnezone, or some weird Leftovers Metagross, but this set would do its job (trap lati with pursuit) before getting trapped himslef. Also Dugtrio can become a setup fodder for Rock Polish Shuca sets. It also traps Tyranitar and Jirachi without the Shuca.

Milotic, Bronzong, Cresselia, Scizor, and offensive coverage and pressure are still really good ways to beat Latias even if it's paired with BOTH trappers.
Jirachi / Tyranitar with Shuca and BoldWish Jirachi still have a shot with both trappers involved in the game, and trappers teams are usually weak to setup mons, so ... not a big deal in my opinion.

That's why I think that Latias should drop from Ubers to Overused.
 
I'm not going to say that an over centralized meta is a bad thing because thats opinion based, but Latias is a failsafe check all just like Aegislash was. Breloom, CM Jirachi, Zapdos, three of the most potent threats in DPP, are easily checked by Latias. In a metagame where Flygon is OU because of resistances and dragon-typing, I really don't think we need Latias, a pokemon that is completely viable on all types of teams; offense, balance, stall. Latias provides everything you want in a mon with no real drawbacks outside of being weak to pursuit.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
I didn't say Latias was broken, I said it was better than multiple other pokemon which are also banned. :blobshrug: And that just seems silly to me. If you're gonna unban stuff, unban the weaker stuff first. If some of this group of fairly redundant mons (they're all Dragons yo) has to be banned for the sake of preventing the metagame from devolving into DragMag spam or whatever, it should be the strongest ones. Latis are better than the pseudos and, though most would say Latios is the better half, Latias is hardly outclassed between the two. The only reason Latias is the unban candidate here is because that metagame used to actually exist in the past.

I did call Tyranitar broken.
 
Last edited:

august

you’re a voice that never sings
is a Community Leaderis a Tiering Contributoris a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis the 8th Smogon Classic Winnerwon the 5th Official Smogon Tournamentis a Five-Time Past WCoP Champion
OGC Leader
alright, time for me to throw my 2 cents in on this. gonna first reply to some posts then give some opinions

Would you kindly justify for us the reason why we should be making a change of this magnitude for a tier that is almost 4 generations old and that has, to date, only seen tiering changes for things that are fundamentally noncompetitive (I.e. sand veil). Why should this change (and by extension other such tiering changes in other generations) be considered when past administrative decision has been to leave old tiers locked in stasis once they had concluded (excluding BW sun and excadrill which was much less outdated at the time than this decision would be)?

I have no particular horse in this race, but this question is one you must inevitably answer before a discussion such as this can take place.
latias was banned around the same time as salamence. salamence (as much as it hurts me to say) was extremely broken AND also used in tandem quite often with latias (KG and my RMT Kevin, please come home shows an early example of double meteor dragons which had a big meta impact). salamence amplified the effect that latias had because it forced an unhealthy amount of steel types because you have not one but 2 110 base spatk dragons that are free to spam meteor at their hearts desire, have instant recovery, and one of them also happens to have 135 base attack, dragon dance, and a 120 BP stab move. edit: shrang is right though, ive become senile in my old age.. latias was banned quite a bit before mence, tho i still believe that mence amplified the effect latias had (scarf lati revenge killed ddmence and could come in on 3/4 of mix mences moves as well, making it a very common check)

Maybe things will be different now from back then. The meta has shifted a lot, and people have a lot more experience in playing against Latias nowadays than we did back then. I do think introducing latias would have some positive benefits on the tier (a new ape/loom check is a godsend). But i also think Latias will be extremely centralising on the tier, and many strategies will revolve heavily around Latias, either abusing it yourself or playing against it. My experience from years ago was that it was VERY common to see latias + 2 steels (or 1 steel + tyranitar) + XXX type teams and it was almost mandatory that you had to run at least 1 steel or tyranitar on every team. Of course there are some teams that could get by without, but these were the exception, not the rule.
i think that the current metagame shift is actually pretty bad for latias. tyranitar runs as rampant as ever, jirachi is arguably more common now (and with more varied sets), and knock off + twave clefable has recently seen an uprising. if anything, i think latias would be slightly worse in this meta.

Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it isn't. I see Latias as kind of like a much worse GSC snorlax. The meta probably could and would adapt around it. So sure, re-testing it might be worth a shot (and I say this as someone who originally voted to ban latias, from memory). But I do think the meta will become a lot more centralised. Whether that's a net positive gain or not is debatable.
i can't argue that it wont become lati-centric, but i think that its already centralized to begin with. this is really hard to avoid though - every generation from 1-5 has at least 3 mons over 40% usage in the most recent world cup stats. latias will certainly see a ton of usage on every play style, but with the top 2 mons in the tier being the most solid 2 checks i think that we are "safe" barring some big meta shifts (which ill talk about in a bit)

I'm not going to say that an over centralized meta is a bad thing because thats opinion based, but Latias is a failsafe check all just like Aegislash was. Breloom, CM Jirachi, Zapdos, three of the most potent threats in DPP, are easily checked by Latias. In a metagame where Flygon is OU because of resistances and dragon-typing, I really don't think we need Latias, a pokemon that is completely viable on all types of teams; offense, balance, stall. Latias provides everything you want in a mon with no real drawbacks outside of being weak to pursuit.
latias is a failsafe but i dont think the comparison to aegislash is relevant. latias is pursuit weak (with no kings shield counterplay), not immune to toxic, and his main move on an offensive set has a huge drawback.

lastly:
Latias is better than Salamence, better than Garchomp, and arguably better than Latios.

That is all. (Tyranitar is the most broken POS if anything, permasand is bullshit and so is its effective BST in a world before we started putting shit like Kyurem-B in OU.)

also free garchomp (and stop changing past-gen OU metagames)
honest question, when is the last time you even played DPP? i feel like the only reason youre posting is because you want to complain about how tiering is handled now as opposed to how it was handled then.


alright so now that i have those responses out of the way, heres my opinion (its a pretty short one). i think that latias would be a great addition to the meta. it brings a ton of offensive and defensive characteristics to basically any play style. my only worry is severe over-centralization of stuff like latias + dugtrio. when the 2 most common checks to lati are tar and jirachi, its obvious to me that dugtrio is going to become a common partner for latias. i think that all dugtrio teams suffer from the same problem, which is giving free turns to dangerous pokemon. while dugtrio + latias seems a bit clunky to me in theory, it doesn't mean that there will not be viable builds that turn latias into a gigantic headache in the team builder. but then again, i think that if this were to become a problem, perhaps we'd need to take a step back and think about who the real culprit is in the dugtrio + latias duo.

also, heres your response because why the heck not
>resorts to "do you even play" and makes no actual attempt to refute my point
>thinks salamence is better than latias

:smogthink:

Edit: You realize the reason I stopped playing in the first place is because the way "tiering is handled now" is hot garbage, right? I have every right to at least attempt to draw some support for the way I'd prefer things. Even if it is pointless because I already know what's going to happen, as usual.
your "point" being the ordering of currently banned dragons? and its a valid question. if you are going to be contributing to tiering policy you should be actively playing the generation in question, which you (to my knowledge) do not. i won't argue about the ordering of salamence and latias because i dont care and neither does anyone else in this thread.

as for your edit, why dont you try giving alternatives to current tiering policy or offer concrete reasons as to why lati should/should not be retested instead of coming in and saying it was broken before and its broken now? all you have done is compare it to other pokemon that are banned that you objectively believe are better (also with no reasoning). all im saying is that this isnt your first time around the block, but youre acting like it is
 
Last edited:

Texas Cloverleaf

This user has a custom title
is a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
The only thing I want to add here is a request that if we decide to test Latias we make it a thorough test. I don't think it will be possible for people to get an accurate and unbiased picture of Latias and her impact on the meta if we do only a one month test. Often in modern tiers we can because of sheer volume but given the dramatic impact Latias would have on the tier and the sheer number of meta and counter meta adjustments i believe you would need an extended period of time for the meta to settle in order to properly gauge Latias's place and power in it.

I would propose that if we test Latias the testing period is somewhere between 3-6 months (I would suggest three but more could easily be more optimal given the age of the tier and the severity of the change)
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
honest question, when is the last time you even played DPP? i feel like the only reason youre posting is because you want to complain about how tiering is handled now as opposed to how it was handled then.
>resorts to "do you even play" and makes no actual attempt to refute my point
>thinks salamence is better than latias

:smogthink:

Edit: You realize the reason I stopped playing in the first place is because the way "tiering is handled now" is hot garbage, right? I have every right to at least attempt to draw some support for the way I'd prefer things. Even if it is pointless because I already know what's going to happen, as usual.
 
Last edited:

Kevin Garrett

is a competitor
is a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis an Artist Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis the Smogon Tour Season 12 Championis a Three-Time Past SPL Champion
Outstanding post panamaxis.

There’s plenty of revisionist history in this thread. Latias was banned under the justification of the support characteristic. Offense was not the determining factor. Latias condensed the roles of 3-4 essential tasks into one Pokemon that overcentralized the metagame into solved loops with defined outcomes, RNG notwithstanding. That’s the key fact underlying the theory that should be debated.

More thoughts to come at a later time. I am not entirely opposed to the idea of testing Latias again given that Salamence is gone. However, I am opposed to methods for doing so that silently equate to unilateral decisions changing tiers in profound ways that may prove to be detrimental after an initial period of development has stagnated.
 

shrang

General Kenobi
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Just a small note:

latias was banned at the same time as salamence. salamence (as much as it hurts me to say) was extremely broken AND also used in tandem quite often with latias (KG and my RMT Kevin, please come home shows an early example of double meteor dragons which had a big meta impact). salamence amplified the effect that latias had because it forced an unhealthy amount of steel types because you have not one but 2 110 base spatk dragons that are free to spam meteor at their hearts desire, have instant recovery, and one of them also happens to have 135 base attack, dragon dance, and a 120 BP stab move. since smogon was still relatively new to democratic tiering methods, both of them were suspected rather than first suspecting salamence, letting the metagame settle, and then examining the impact of latias. as such, it has not been an uncommon opinion from many people who were active then that latias was banned a bit hastily. this is also certainly not the first time ive heard this brought up either, and have been advocating for a re-test myself for quite a while.
IIRC (correct me if it's not), wasn't Latias banned before Salamence? JS Latias was banned before Mence was.

My memory is probably hazy seeing as I was only starting to play competitive Pokemon then, but I don't remember Latias being banned hastily. This was back in the time where we had a Suspect ladder that was separate to regular OU, and each threat had to either get a supermajority or 2 simple majorities to be banned. It was dropped alongside Latios, Manaphy, Deo-S, Skymin and Garchomp in Stage 3-1. 3-1 saw Latios/Skymin/Deo-S kicked out promptly, Stage 3-2 and 3-3 saw simple majorities for Garchomp and Manaphy, and then 3-4 saw a simple majority for Latias. Then we brought in the council for 3-5 and finally Latias was banned via another simple majority through the council. So yeah, we had like a total of 4-5 looks at Latias (tbf without isolation from Mence or the other broken threats just listed). It wasn't until after that until we finally looked at Mence (and it was banned via a supermajority).

EDIT: Actually it wasn't exactly the same as what I said above (wasn't a council for Stage 3-5 and Manaphy was banned in 3-4), but it's pretty close - https://www.smogon.com/forums/forums/suspect-test-voting-site.74/ - regardless, Latias was banned in Stage 3-5 and before Salamence was.

On the other hand though, I thought Latias was fine back then, but that's probably just me.
 
Last edited:

Delta 2777

Machampion
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis the Smogon Tour Season 10 Champion
First and foremost, I want to challenge the scapegoating of Dugtrio in a lot of these discussions. Even when Latias was allowed in OU, Dugtrio did not see a whole lot of use. Its stats are downright terrible outside of its speed, and it can be a huge liability whether or not it manages to eliminate a Tyranitar/Jirachi/Heatran (note that a CB Earthquake won't even OHKO most sets for the former two, while Heatran also often runs scarf/shuca). It can't switch into anything and is a high-risk strategy to employ on your team, considering the many Pokemon who would love to take advantage of a choice-locked Earthquake. Tyranitar and Heatran are already two of the most common Pokemon in DPP OU, and in spite of this, Dugtrio ended up in UU - it just isn't a reliable 'Mon. Latias on the other hand I can nearly guarantee will be a top-3 Pokemon in usage should it return.

I echo Pana's comments on the rest. Latias wasn't crazy broken back in the day, but it was very centralizing. I personally do not think we should be making such drastic changes to old metagames (hasn't been the official metagame in nearly 8 years lol), considering how dead the ladder is and how it will invalidate many teams that people have been using for years - but that's just me.
 
Last edited:
I don’t know how you can make the argument that Latias won’t be as bad now as it was then. Tyranitar Latias Blissey was incredibly common and checked everything. My point being Tyranitar was popular and Latias was still overcentralizing.

I want to play out what happens if we free Latias.

Take the very standard team of FGW with 2 steels (eg. Zapdos / Breloom / Heatran / Starmie / Jirachi / Tyranitar).

You stack special attackers to lure in and chip Tyranitar then Sub CM Lati can clean. Worst case, you don’t have the option to sweep but you can pivot in your Lati safely on 5 of 6 pokemon.

Now everyone is using Zapdos / Heatran / Starmie etc (special attackers) to get chip damage on Tyranitar. So people start using another special wall so they don’t have to use Tyraniar as their special wall.

What do you know — we get Blissey on every team. We have no reason not to use Latias because its always useful, and we need Tyranitar to kill Latias.

Deja Vu we rolled the clocks back to a stupidly stale and suffocating metagame.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top