Shadow Tag is constantly degenerate. Clever players will find ways to drown out competitiveness and force us to play an awkward metagame if included. Save us months of stupid countermeasures (we don't even have pursuit anymore!!) and just ban the ability. Some esoteric idea of what we should stick to should absolutely never take precedence over making a good metagame. This ban was almost universally supported and there's no serious reason we should even think about trying a different route.
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Shadow Tag subthread
- Thread starter teal6
- Start date
The leaders Discord got a 700-line argument over this "universally supported" ban, and literally zero of them thought Wobb was broken. Martin's post against the ban has 74 Likes, and chaos himself wants a complex ban instead of your "universally supported" ban. Can you stop trolling?
The philosophical underpinnings of our formats matter, opinions outside your friends in the tournaments community matter, not sure what else to say. I think "tournament players like the ban as currently stated" is a perfectly legitimate & reasonable point, but can be expressed without the condescension (as I just did).
Things are tense because of the sleep clause fallout. Zarel wasn't sure if it was actually trolling or not, and asked the leaders discord for a second opinion. Myself and others responded that teal's post was in good faith, which is why it was not edited. I do acknowledge that there was no way for you to know that.
Likes are a pretty terrible metric from that thread honestly.
First off the majority of the "Likes" are Haha reacts, myself included. I'm not making this post to be a complete ass, but I Haha reacted to the post for a few reasons:
* The post was made in extremely poor taste against the council. I don't mind constructive criticism, but the "callout" was arguably just as degenerate as Shadow Tag.
* Very few people who play competitive Pokemon care about Wobbuffet banned, if any at all. I don't get how suddenly we feel Wobbuffet is innocent in all of this when it was the original abuser of the ability. Gen 3 it created an infinite loop, Gen 4 Tickle + Pursuit was arguably one of the dumbest things to face, and it's not like it hasn't had its shared flaws in 5-7. I get that Gen 8 Wobbuffet has been nerfed in a couple of ways (no Tickle, no Pursuit, Dynamax mechanical make some Encore scenarios awkward but you could argue that forcing a defensive Dynamax has advantages), but it's still a Pokemon that doesn't have real counter play either. It still comes in on Pokemon like Ferrothorn and locks it onto an attack. If the attack is a Counter / Mirror Coatable attack, it's basically trapped and dead. If it's locked onto Spikes or Leech Seed, a setup sweeper could be switched in instead like Reuniclus and start freely Calm Minding.
I can get where banning a Pokemon might be more ideal under some circumstances, but abilities like Shadow Tag have proven time and time again to be broken under multiple Pokemon within the OU tier. We also ban Pokemon before abilities at times if we believe the culprit is the Pokemon itself and not the ability - taking Blaziken as a popular example for this. We have banned Blaziken (and its Mega) for 3 generations straight (2 for Mega), and while it's a ban many people inside understand, it's a constant mockery from the outside because "Blaze Blaziken isn't broken you fucking idiots why do you ban the whole Pokemon and not just complex ban the ability and mon!?!" A complex ban simply adds more confusion to the scenario. I'm not opposed to allowing things like Blaze Blaziken, but that particular example reinforces that we ban the Pokemon in a similar vein to what is being suggested in the OP anyway.
Tl;dr of my post:
* Likes (especially Likes that are borderline ironic / Haha reacting) are a terrible metric to judge something like this
* Very few competitive players (especially at tournament level) disagree with the ban, or they simply don't care enough about Wobbuffet to defend it.
* OU already approaches most of its bans like this where we experiment with whether the ability (like Zygarde's ability in SM) or the Pokemon (like Zygarde eventually was in USUM) is what the problem is, and then take action on what exactly is uncompetitive about the Pokemon before approaching banning the ability or the Pokemon itself.
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I question as to how this was looked into again, but I'll be willing to bite. Surroundings have changed for one, and there are definitely different reasons as to why the clauses that we had implemented in the past could be changed, for better or for worse. However, I don't think there's much of an argument for this one in my opinion.
I'd like to throw everyone back to the Dugtrio suspect test in Sun and Moon. This test was rejected (albeit by a narrow percentage) because stall teams were continuing to use Diglett to a similar effect, a Pokemon that is considerably weaker than it in multiple different ways. Now I don't know if that says anything about the metagame itself but I would tend to agree that the ability to globally trap Pokemon aside from a few exceptions is fundamentally broken and the people playing that metagame would have agreed so. This ban has thus extended to ORAS and BW for similar reasons and I think it was a major realization in what we would consider banworthy as an outright ability.
On the contrary, the BW Shadow Tag suspect was a bit of an odd one and in some cases lies in favour of this new look, but the main reason as to why it was allowed in BW was because none of the abusers were initially broken in the first place. I clearly don't think this is exactly the case in SwSh - whilst there have been more offensive Pokemon introduced and the defensive options for Pokemon cut, thus prioritizing offensive counterplay, Shadow Tag continues to be a major issue in the front of teams because of how much people can compress offensive cores with Dynamax, often pushing through immediately through the three turns that they are given. Sizable holes are made just by clicking a button out of the blue and thus begins an unhealthy cycle of balance where players continue to try and guard Dynamax mons with defensive Pokemon that are just too passive in reality. Whilst this is an issue in its own, Gothitelle, Gothorita and to an extent Wobuffet all make this an issue because of Shadow Tag, simply because it further forces an advantageous position for a player and continues to limit viable Pokemon choices. Dynamax is another issue for another day but I do believe we need to take this into account looking into future iterations of not only OU but the entire Smogon tiering system.
I'd like to throw everyone back to the Dugtrio suspect test in Sun and Moon. This test was rejected (albeit by a narrow percentage) because stall teams were continuing to use Diglett to a similar effect, a Pokemon that is considerably weaker than it in multiple different ways. Now I don't know if that says anything about the metagame itself but I would tend to agree that the ability to globally trap Pokemon aside from a few exceptions is fundamentally broken and the people playing that metagame would have agreed so. This ban has thus extended to ORAS and BW for similar reasons and I think it was a major realization in what we would consider banworthy as an outright ability.
On the contrary, the BW Shadow Tag suspect was a bit of an odd one and in some cases lies in favour of this new look, but the main reason as to why it was allowed in BW was because none of the abusers were initially broken in the first place. I clearly don't think this is exactly the case in SwSh - whilst there have been more offensive Pokemon introduced and the defensive options for Pokemon cut, thus prioritizing offensive counterplay, Shadow Tag continues to be a major issue in the front of teams because of how much people can compress offensive cores with Dynamax, often pushing through immediately through the three turns that they are given. Sizable holes are made just by clicking a button out of the blue and thus begins an unhealthy cycle of balance where players continue to try and guard Dynamax mons with defensive Pokemon that are just too passive in reality. Whilst this is an issue in its own, Gothitelle, Gothorita and to an extent Wobuffet all make this an issue because of Shadow Tag, simply because it further forces an advantageous position for a player and continues to limit viable Pokemon choices. Dynamax is another issue for another day but I do believe we need to take this into account looking into future iterations of not only OU but the entire Smogon tiering system.
I could not agree more with the OP.
Wynaut, Wobb, Gothita and Trapinch with their respective trapping abilities are not ubers-worthy. If you really think they are, ban them - but don't dump the baby out with the bathwater. I have never bought that trapping is inherently uncompetitive, especially when Dugtrio is an integral part of the Adv metagame even today and Wobbuffet saw virtually no use in BW before the Shadow Tag ban.
I feel like this applies mainly for the trapping abilities, even though it applies to others as well, and it does get inconsistent at times (we ban Drizzle in some metagames to keep useless Politoed around, but ban Blaziken outright)... Just ban the Pokemon.
EDIT: My one caveat is abilities like Sand Veil / Snow Cloak.. Keep those complex banned please.
Wynaut, Wobb, Gothita and Trapinch with their respective trapping abilities are not ubers-worthy. If you really think they are, ban them - but don't dump the baby out with the bathwater. I have never bought that trapping is inherently uncompetitive, especially when Dugtrio is an integral part of the Adv metagame even today and Wobbuffet saw virtually no use in BW before the Shadow Tag ban.
I feel like this applies mainly for the trapping abilities, even though it applies to others as well, and it does get inconsistent at times (we ban Drizzle in some metagames to keep useless Politoed around, but ban Blaziken outright)... Just ban the Pokemon.
EDIT: My one caveat is abilities like Sand Veil / Snow Cloak.. Keep those complex banned please.
Stratos If the discussion is just "how best to express a given ban", I don't have a strong opinion, as it ultimately results in the same metagame.
I'm not sure that is the point of this topic though? I think the question is: what is the best way to express a complex ban in terms of a simple ban? The ban reasoning for Wobbuffet centered entirely on Goth + Shadow Tag. So, do you ban the Goth line, or do you ban Shadow Tag? Zarel is arguing the former, OU council went with the latter.
All else equal I prefer to maximize the # of Pokemon that have a tier they can shine in. I have no idea what Gen 8 Ubers is like, but maybe Goth can find a niche there. If STag Wobb isn't broken it can probably find a home; without STag it is worthless. And in the event that Wobb is deemed broken it can just be banned. So I suppose I agree with Zarel.
I'm not sure that is the point of this topic though? I think the question is: what is the best way to express a complex ban in terms of a simple ban? The ban reasoning for Wobbuffet centered entirely on Goth + Shadow Tag. So, do you ban the Goth line, or do you ban Shadow Tag? Zarel is arguing the former, OU council went with the latter.
All else equal I prefer to maximize the # of Pokemon that have a tier they can shine in. I have no idea what Gen 8 Ubers is like, but maybe Goth can find a niche there. If STag Wobb isn't broken it can probably find a home; without STag it is worthless. And in the event that Wobb is deemed broken it can just be banned. So I suppose I agree with Zarel.
Here is why I thought it was trolling:
- "Universally supported" is a lie, as far as I can tell. Even if you tell me the Like counts were the wrong thing to look at, I saw Martin in disagreement, I saw chaos in disagreement, and I saw many other people in the Smogon Leaders Discord in disagreement.
The Leaders Discord clarified to me that he actually meant "universally supported by tour players", but even this is dubious to me, because:
- He's arguing for Shadow Tag being a better ban because Shadow Tag is always bad. And yet, literally zero people think Wobb is broken this gen. I consider it a bad faith argument if your response to "let's change the rules" is "Shadow Tag is always bad, even on Wobb" when literally no one thinks Wobb is broken.
- He mentions Pursuit being gone as a reason to ban Shadow Tag, but everyone else is telling me that Wobb is nerfed by Pursuit being gone this gen.
So that's three things he's, if not lied, at least tried to intentionally mislead me about, and I get the impression he did it because a reader who doesn't actually understand the metagame might believe the idea that e.g. Pursuit's removal is an argument against, not in favor, of a Wobb ban.
I think trying to get a reader to believe something that isn't actually true, because it supports his point, is trolling. Or should I call it gaslighting instead? That's why I didn't edit my post even after the Leaders Discord told me that conflating "tour players" with "everyone" was not an intentional lie.
I'll be honest, you're the first person I've seen argue that Wobb is broken, and I asked a lot of people about it before posting this thread. I'm legitimately interested in hearing your thoughts on why Wobb is broken, although Martin's thread is probably a better place for that.
chaos I will respect your wishes because you've always been cool to me but just saying posts like this are incredibly blood boiling. I do know that Zarel generally means the best and has issues with tone at times but it's incredibly hard to read this and think he's being serious and not flat out insulting me.
Zarel I'll write out as clearly as I can here and I assure you I say everything with complete sincerity:
Those of us who have played the game at a very high level for a long time now have opinions that, while reflexive, can be considered nuanced and considered. Shadow Tag is an ability that we've spent several years in both XY and SM dealing with that constantly created metagames that were not terribly fun to play. In the age of information on Smogon I will give credence to those that build the first teams (usually an ABR or ben gay type) but it's simply too easy to use a degenerate (in the FGC sense) strategy once someone has pioneered it. Dawdling or worrying about process with something like this means that our tournaments, particularly SPL which is on the horizon, will suffer should a team be found that abuses a strategy that forces us to rehash the same arguments we have had for over half a decade at this point.
I understand that there are other groups at play in Smogon. However, with no ego influencing me saying this at all, I truly wish that those arguing for us to disregard our years of learned experience would trust the tournament community. We spend, more than anyone else on the site I figure, a disproportionate amount of time on Pokemon and particularly competitive Pokemon. The state of a tier is incredibly important to all of us. This is why I do not, as a reflex, give as much credence to posts that are as patently absurd as Martin's was. I have quite literally no idea who is saying that Pursuit being gone means Wobb should be in the tier but after hundreds of games at a notable level I cannot see the correlation there.
I am in a unique position here being central to some of these debates while also having been in the SS discord for a long period of time. While I trust the leadership capabilities of those that post in that discord and have the discussions that you keep alluding to, I genuinely do not trust the competitive capabilities of those members whatsoever. I do not think this is a controversial thing to say. SS has plenty of hard working folks who keep great sections of the website functioning well, but by and large there are only a handful of members who I would give a sincere thought to should they present an argument that falls wildly outside what my experience is. That isn't to say I would dismiss it outright, but I and many other tournament players have lived experience playing these tiers for hundreds and thousands of hours that I don't think is replicated among the SS staff.
On a last note I'll loop around to my comment directed toward Chaos above. I can 100% assure you that if I wanted to troll you or SS in some sense I would do it in a much more efficient and funny way. Writing a billion words about the state of the tier is leagues away from what I want to be doing with my time. Anyone that knows me well can attest to that. To be accused first of trolling then of lying thereafter is incredibly frustrating, though I know I cannot make the same accusations back. Should you wish to continue this conversation I'd ask that you treat me with a little more respect and I'll continue to return it.
I've edited this into my response as I am assuming you are sincere.
Shadow Tag Wobb will retain the same trapping abilities as it has in gens past. This is, of course, theorymon, but again that is what I and a lot of other players spend a lot of our time doing. Wobb's capability of trapping and either eliminating specific threats outright on an almost uncontested basis (anything choice locked for example) or providing unparalleled access to free set-up turns (encoring anything less than a very direct and aggressive mon) means that the strategies that can be built around it fundamentally differ from more or less any other game we would play. There may be some countermeasures to this (say for example having Ditto to copy a mon that sets up in the wake of a Wobb trap) but this streamlines teams immediately and makes the metagame overcentralized and frankly boring.
We've seen the same pattern repeat in past generations with any Shadow Tag mon where the very presence of them is so fundamentally outrageous that teams have to consider them to a wildly disproportionate degree when building AND when playing. Shadow Tag mons invalidate strategies so blatantly that the metagame becomes way more narrow as a result. Stall would struggle with Wobb as would Offense. Instead of having a plague like that on the metagame to start with, I would prefer to save us the months of testing and just get rid of it from the start.
Note that even those basic ideas are one that I can come up with. I'm not a terribly creative or notable builder myself, and people that ARE more creative than I will likely come up with other strategies that make use of the same core function of STAG in an even more devastating way.
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I want to start off by saying I'm sorry. I was frustrated by your short dismissal in your first post, but now that I understand your viewpoint better, I see that I was completely wrong to call it trolling.
To be clear, I 100% trust tour players when it comes to metagame knowledge. I had only ever heard tour players say that Wobb wasn't a problem, and the Shadow Tag ban was about simplicity in banning Gothitelle and Gothorita. I wouldn't have said what I did if I realized most thought Wobb was broken.
I did in fact talk to tour players. I don't want to name them because I think calling them out would make things worse. But they told me Wobb wasn't the problem, and I believed them. I'm sorry.
I'm going to add some following context to this post because I feel like whilst I do not have enough experience in OU specifically to tell if some of these mons are outright broken I do have enough experience in bans in differentiating abilities from Pokemon in this section.
Hello, I'm Chazm, and I come from the Other Metagames room. From my experience being a longstanding council member of the metagame Mix and Mega I've been part in a few controversial discussions, mainly involving the banning of the Pidgeotite stone, Shadow Tag, and Shuckle from holding stones. From my experience of the Pidgeotite stone ban, we had already banned three Pokemon because of it and were on the verge of banning two more just because of its existence. For me that was the thing that pushed the stone over the edge personally - and in this case, we're asking to ban effectively four Pokemon because of one ability. They aren't really that relevant outside of that either but the point stands that the ability is the broken aspect and not the Pokemon itself thus it should be banned as a result. There have been plenty of arguments in AAA about Magnet Pull and vice versa for BH and they've generally resulted in bans because of how limiting they are for teams, even if said mon can trap only a handful of Pokemon they're all very powerful tools and when used intelligently they can effectively make for easily broken synergies, which was why these abilities were banned in the first place.
So going from this I would like to state a few things:
1 - Some of the arguments in this thread do not seem very logical from multiple perspectives.
First things first - I'm going to dissect the 'likes mean important things' argument by mostly quoting Colonel M on this one - 37 of the 84 'Hahas' were ironic, and yet this ignores the larger posts outside that thread, namely ABR's announcement, which had obtained 181 adamantly positive reactions. One thing that I think is worth mentioning about this is that Ojama's post hit somewhere around 400 likes before being rudely deleted because it influenced a member to resign, presumably. From this I think we can consider that likes, let alone reactions are a poor way of judging something's validity on a thread, but rather its influence, without looking into the positive or negative side of it. In other words, demand is short by proof, and just looking at likes from a standpoint of that (without even looking at the larger picture) shows a very clear majority that wish to agree with ABR's decision to ban Shadow Tag, as has been the case for past generations (looking at you, ORAS). To claim something is not unanimous in this case - rather, it is a large enough majority for it to be considered bannable under all suspect conditions, including the requirements required for Ubers suspects (which I believe is 66%).
As for what matters in the case for these Pokemon rising to Ubers, it doesn't really make sense when at the end of the day these Pokemon are usable in Ubers in the first place. Yes, I understand the post is about freeing Wobbuffet, but I'll get into why I adamantly disagree with that later. It is more important to preserve any instance of viability to me that a Pokemon could have outside of their main surroundings by banning obviously broken abilities. That might not have been the case for these Pokemon in the past few generations, but you also have to consider the decreased power level and the fact that Gothitelle now gets Nasty Plot, which could deal with an issue it has continually had in past generations.
2 - Wobbuffet can actually show that it's broken for multiple reasons, and I'm sure multiple people, albeit not showing direct support, have expressed concerns over Wobbuffet and what it can do in the metagame.
Remember ORAS's Get Backer game? The one where multiple Shadow Tag users just shut down an entire team by force and completely ruined the competitive aspect of what this site ends up doing? Yeah, that's toned down significantly when you limit it to just one Pokemon, but even then, Wobbuffet still traps a large majority of defensive Pokemon which would rather not deal with a potential punish from it. For one, it traps:
This is already a large enough section of the threat list alone for it to be disgustingly overcentralizing even on paper, and even with Dynamax. Most of these mons don't want to avoid it using Dyna, and the elimination of this allows it to be incredibly restricting when built with this properly. I believe on a fundamental scale that this is broken enough to warrant a ban of Wobbuffet if Shadow Tag were to be freed, which I straight up don't believe should be true, as I have stated earlier.
On a last note:
3 - I feel as some users are being treated unfairly in this thread / opinions are being locked out just because they oppose the OP.
As much as Zarel's apology has made up for this I do feel like people who have tried to make an argument for Shadow Tag being universally banned have been locked out of discussion by this thread by PS auth - for one the responses on both ends have been quite aggressive, and that has caused some censorship about tournament play in basis for opinions, etc. This is the part I disagree with the most on this thread, and I hoped it wouldn't have come to this really.
Aside from that short note, I do hope that this gets considered in favour of the original rules. These were debated in SM quite heavily and I feel like these still continue over to a fundamental aspect of the metagame as a whole. As long as there are multiple strong abusers of an ability which would be very strongly hindered without it, I feel like the ability is at fault for buffing these Pokemon to insanely powerful levels for that - and to boot, they don't really add anything competitive to Pokemon as a whole. And isn't this what tiering is supposed to be about? Making a competitive metagame out of the errors that GameFreak continue to leave in for the competitive community?
Hello, I'm Chazm, and I come from the Other Metagames room. From my experience being a longstanding council member of the metagame Mix and Mega I've been part in a few controversial discussions, mainly involving the banning of the Pidgeotite stone, Shadow Tag, and Shuckle from holding stones. From my experience of the Pidgeotite stone ban, we had already banned three Pokemon because of it and were on the verge of banning two more just because of its existence. For me that was the thing that pushed the stone over the edge personally - and in this case, we're asking to ban effectively four Pokemon because of one ability. They aren't really that relevant outside of that either but the point stands that the ability is the broken aspect and not the Pokemon itself thus it should be banned as a result. There have been plenty of arguments in AAA about Magnet Pull and vice versa for BH and they've generally resulted in bans because of how limiting they are for teams, even if said mon can trap only a handful of Pokemon they're all very powerful tools and when used intelligently they can effectively make for easily broken synergies, which was why these abilities were banned in the first place.
So going from this I would like to state a few things:
1 - Some of the arguments in this thread do not seem very logical from multiple perspectives.
First things first - I'm going to dissect the 'likes mean important things' argument by mostly quoting Colonel M on this one - 37 of the 84 'Hahas' were ironic, and yet this ignores the larger posts outside that thread, namely ABR's announcement, which had obtained 181 adamantly positive reactions. One thing that I think is worth mentioning about this is that Ojama's post hit somewhere around 400 likes before being rudely deleted because it influenced a member to resign, presumably. From this I think we can consider that likes, let alone reactions are a poor way of judging something's validity on a thread, but rather its influence, without looking into the positive or negative side of it. In other words, demand is short by proof, and just looking at likes from a standpoint of that (without even looking at the larger picture) shows a very clear majority that wish to agree with ABR's decision to ban Shadow Tag, as has been the case for past generations (looking at you, ORAS). To claim something is not unanimous in this case - rather, it is a large enough majority for it to be considered bannable under all suspect conditions, including the requirements required for Ubers suspects (which I believe is 66%).
As for what matters in the case for these Pokemon rising to Ubers, it doesn't really make sense when at the end of the day these Pokemon are usable in Ubers in the first place. Yes, I understand the post is about freeing Wobbuffet, but I'll get into why I adamantly disagree with that later. It is more important to preserve any instance of viability to me that a Pokemon could have outside of their main surroundings by banning obviously broken abilities. That might not have been the case for these Pokemon in the past few generations, but you also have to consider the decreased power level and the fact that Gothitelle now gets Nasty Plot, which could deal with an issue it has continually had in past generations.
2 - Wobbuffet can actually show that it's broken for multiple reasons, and I'm sure multiple people, albeit not showing direct support, have expressed concerns over Wobbuffet and what it can do in the metagame.
Remember ORAS's Get Backer game? The one where multiple Shadow Tag users just shut down an entire team by force and completely ruined the competitive aspect of what this site ends up doing? Yeah, that's toned down significantly when you limit it to just one Pokemon, but even then, Wobbuffet still traps a large majority of defensive Pokemon which would rather not deal with a potential punish from it. For one, it traps:
Clefable
Corviknight (assuming no U-turn)
Ditto (under a Choice lock, one can viably trap their own Imposter, leading to a very simple Dynamax sweep from the opposing side)
Ferrothorn
Hippowdon (doesn't like taking Earthquakes that much but it's very simple to Encore and at least punish it very heavily)
Quagsire
Reuniclus
Seismitoad
Toxapex (although they can viably run Shed Shell to get around this issue)
and likely a few other offensive threats.
Corviknight (assuming no U-turn)
Ditto (under a Choice lock, one can viably trap their own Imposter, leading to a very simple Dynamax sweep from the opposing side)
Ferrothorn
Hippowdon (doesn't like taking Earthquakes that much but it's very simple to Encore and at least punish it very heavily)
Quagsire
Reuniclus
Seismitoad
Toxapex (although they can viably run Shed Shell to get around this issue)
and likely a few other offensive threats.
This is already a large enough section of the threat list alone for it to be disgustingly overcentralizing even on paper, and even with Dynamax. Most of these mons don't want to avoid it using Dyna, and the elimination of this allows it to be incredibly restricting when built with this properly. I believe on a fundamental scale that this is broken enough to warrant a ban of Wobbuffet if Shadow Tag were to be freed, which I straight up don't believe should be true, as I have stated earlier.
On a last note:
3 - I feel as some users are being treated unfairly in this thread / opinions are being locked out just because they oppose the OP.
As much as Zarel's apology has made up for this I do feel like people who have tried to make an argument for Shadow Tag being universally banned have been locked out of discussion by this thread by PS auth - for one the responses on both ends have been quite aggressive, and that has caused some censorship about tournament play in basis for opinions, etc. This is the part I disagree with the most on this thread, and I hoped it wouldn't have come to this really.
Aside from that short note, I do hope that this gets considered in favour of the original rules. These were debated in SM quite heavily and I feel like these still continue over to a fundamental aspect of the metagame as a whole. As long as there are multiple strong abusers of an ability which would be very strongly hindered without it, I feel like the ability is at fault for buffing these Pokemon to insanely powerful levels for that - and to boot, they don't really add anything competitive to Pokemon as a whole. And isn't this what tiering is supposed to be about? Making a competitive metagame out of the errors that GameFreak continue to leave in for the competitive community?
I'd like to tackle a few points here.
For one, I entirely respect Zarel's take in the opening post and can get behind the logic. I have no qualms with the fact this thread was made or the argument presented. Pokemon bans, when applicable, are much preferred over any other kind of ban. However, things don't work as simple as the OP is saying. As it currently stands, we have multiple clauses that don't show up in the teambuilder. OHKO clause, Moody clause, Evasion moves, Species clause, and Sleep clause (lol). The average user isn't going to know about any of these while they are in the teambuilder creating their teams. But, should we decide to ban the Gothitelle family, they would see Gothorita and potentially even Gothita in Ubers, alongside behemoths such as Ultra Necrozma, Zacian-Crowned, and Zekrom, they would question the legitimacy of our tiering process and website as a whole. I believe seeing Gothita in Ubers alongside actual Uber Pokemon is more of an issue than someone being upset they aren't allowed to use Wobbuffet.
I would also like to say that people are really, really underselling Shadow Tag as a whole. Obviously, with it banned, it's mostly theorymon without having something to show for it or giving people an idea and having them test it out themselves, so this may not have the same kind of weight as a bunch of replays showing why xyz is broken. But I think Shadow Tag in its entirety is broken. People bring up Pursuit being gone, which "makes Wobbuffet bad", but there's two huge factors that are being painfully neglected.
Even if Wobbuffet isn't straight up "broken" like Gothitelle may be labeled as, it's still dumb. Shadow Tag is a stupid ability that takes a core mechanic out of the metagame with the only exception being Ghost-types, most of which beat all Shadow Tag, with the exception of Scarf Gothitelle having the potential to trap Gengar should Ghost-types be trapped. Switching is an integral part of competitive Pokemon. Let me ask you this; if every game came down to a 50/50, would you say the game is competitive? With Wobbuffet allowed, it creates many scenarios where games simply come down to a single "prediction", which is hardly such because one side has the luxury of having a no drawback prediction lest they get predicted ever turn. An example; say your only means of revenge killing a Dragon Dance Tyranitar is your Choice Scarf Keldeo. Should the Tyranitar be paired with Wobbuffet, you have to switch out to not get trapped, but you also have to attack should the Tyranitar stay in. The Keldeo user is at a massive disadvantage over a prediction that has no "skill" involved. Now, I for one fully believe that this isn't a sign of bad teambuilding, because 1) is your full on counter really a counter if it gets trapped? Does anything that has the potential to be trapped by Wobbuffet / Gothorita "counter" anything if it can also get trapped? 2) A single "prediction" in a scenario like this shouldn't be the defining moment of multiple games. Obviously, there are games that come down to 50/50s, there are games that come down to predictions, there are games that come down to odds. But this isn't the same thing; losing on the spot to something you are prepared for because if you click a move you lose on the spot is just dumb. There's no way to punish Wobbuffet either, because Pursuit is gone and it isn't trappable. I think these kinds of situations should be avoided. Again, I'm not arguing that Wobbuffet, under this mindset, is "broken", but rather leads to uncompetitive games and metagames surrounding by an extreme lack of skill, which is something we should avoid when tiering.
Another thing; people are disregarding Wobbuffet's Tickle set because Pursuit doesn't exist anymore. Tickle + Pursuit (typically from a Choice Band Tyranitar) allows trapping of many Pokemon that typically aren't trappable (see: Hippowdon and the like). However, people seem to be forgetting that Dugtrio exists. Encore + Tickle + Counter + Mirror Coat on Wobbuffet while paired with Dugtrio has the exact same functions, if not better. The only difference is not being able to trap Pokemon immune to Arena Trap, very few of which, if any, are important to trap for teams that utilize this strategy. Wobbuffet can Tickle into Dugtrio which is honestly a really dumb strategy, and has the same functionality as Gothitelle really, just at the expense of two team slots, when Dugtrio is also a really good Pokemon in its own right and does not need Wobbuffet to be good, and potentially unbalanced.
I don't think Shadow Tag is any less justifiable of a ban as it was last generation, to which it did not receive this kind of negative reception (not that that justifies the decision in the slightest). While Wobbuffet may not be the primary offender here, I think the fact people are writing it off as unviable, bad, irrelevant, or 100% not broken are simply misguided, or flat out wrong. You're welcome to believe the things I laid out are less than accurate, but I think it's undeniable that Shadow Tag offers nothing good to the game, regardless of what Pokemon has it. I don't see any upside in having it around.
I would entirely prefer Shadow Tag not be legal at all, as I think it's an absurdly broken ability that removes skill from the game, which is what we should strive to achieve. This is not me speaking for the entirety of the council; just my standpoint.
For one, I entirely respect Zarel's take in the opening post and can get behind the logic. I have no qualms with the fact this thread was made or the argument presented. Pokemon bans, when applicable, are much preferred over any other kind of ban. However, things don't work as simple as the OP is saying. As it currently stands, we have multiple clauses that don't show up in the teambuilder. OHKO clause, Moody clause, Evasion moves, Species clause, and Sleep clause (lol). The average user isn't going to know about any of these while they are in the teambuilder creating their teams. But, should we decide to ban the Gothitelle family, they would see Gothorita and potentially even Gothita in Ubers, alongside behemoths such as Ultra Necrozma, Zacian-Crowned, and Zekrom, they would question the legitimacy of our tiering process and website as a whole. I believe seeing Gothita in Ubers alongside actual Uber Pokemon is more of an issue than someone being upset they aren't allowed to use Wobbuffet.
I would also like to say that people are really, really underselling Shadow Tag as a whole. Obviously, with it banned, it's mostly theorymon without having something to show for it or giving people an idea and having them test it out themselves, so this may not have the same kind of weight as a bunch of replays showing why xyz is broken. But I think Shadow Tag in its entirety is broken. People bring up Pursuit being gone, which "makes Wobbuffet bad", but there's two huge factors that are being painfully neglected.
Even if Wobbuffet isn't straight up "broken" like Gothitelle may be labeled as, it's still dumb. Shadow Tag is a stupid ability that takes a core mechanic out of the metagame with the only exception being Ghost-types, most of which beat all Shadow Tag, with the exception of Scarf Gothitelle having the potential to trap Gengar should Ghost-types be trapped. Switching is an integral part of competitive Pokemon. Let me ask you this; if every game came down to a 50/50, would you say the game is competitive? With Wobbuffet allowed, it creates many scenarios where games simply come down to a single "prediction", which is hardly such because one side has the luxury of having a no drawback prediction lest they get predicted ever turn. An example; say your only means of revenge killing a Dragon Dance Tyranitar is your Choice Scarf Keldeo. Should the Tyranitar be paired with Wobbuffet, you have to switch out to not get trapped, but you also have to attack should the Tyranitar stay in. The Keldeo user is at a massive disadvantage over a prediction that has no "skill" involved. Now, I for one fully believe that this isn't a sign of bad teambuilding, because 1) is your full on counter really a counter if it gets trapped? Does anything that has the potential to be trapped by Wobbuffet / Gothorita "counter" anything if it can also get trapped? 2) A single "prediction" in a scenario like this shouldn't be the defining moment of multiple games. Obviously, there are games that come down to 50/50s, there are games that come down to predictions, there are games that come down to odds. But this isn't the same thing; losing on the spot to something you are prepared for because if you click a move you lose on the spot is just dumb. There's no way to punish Wobbuffet either, because Pursuit is gone and it isn't trappable. I think these kinds of situations should be avoided. Again, I'm not arguing that Wobbuffet, under this mindset, is "broken", but rather leads to uncompetitive games and metagames surrounding by an extreme lack of skill, which is something we should avoid when tiering.
Another thing; people are disregarding Wobbuffet's Tickle set because Pursuit doesn't exist anymore. Tickle + Pursuit (typically from a Choice Band Tyranitar) allows trapping of many Pokemon that typically aren't trappable (see: Hippowdon and the like). However, people seem to be forgetting that Dugtrio exists. Encore + Tickle + Counter + Mirror Coat on Wobbuffet while paired with Dugtrio has the exact same functions, if not better. The only difference is not being able to trap Pokemon immune to Arena Trap, very few of which, if any, are important to trap for teams that utilize this strategy. Wobbuffet can Tickle into Dugtrio which is honestly a really dumb strategy, and has the same functionality as Gothitelle really, just at the expense of two team slots, when Dugtrio is also a really good Pokemon in its own right and does not need Wobbuffet to be good, and potentially unbalanced.
I don't think Shadow Tag is any less justifiable of a ban as it was last generation, to which it did not receive this kind of negative reception (not that that justifies the decision in the slightest). While Wobbuffet may not be the primary offender here, I think the fact people are writing it off as unviable, bad, irrelevant, or 100% not broken are simply misguided, or flat out wrong. You're welcome to believe the things I laid out are less than accurate, but I think it's undeniable that Shadow Tag offers nothing good to the game, regardless of what Pokemon has it. I don't see any upside in having it around.
I would entirely prefer Shadow Tag not be legal at all, as I think it's an absurdly broken ability that removes skill from the game, which is what we should strive to achieve. This is not me speaking for the entirety of the council; just my standpoint.
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A lot of people are acting like this is a big case of staff just jumping in and undoing a ban without having any idea what the ban is about, and that's just straight up not happening. Literally no one is saying "the stag ban was bad, undo it" or "Goth and Wobb aren't broken." I've been following all of the threads and active in the discussion in leaders, and no one has suggested that.
The sole issue is that if Wobb IS broken, the actual ban post did absolutely nothing to address that. It focused entirely on Goth. Every single justification for why Shadow Tag was problematic in the ban post involved things that Wobb literally can't do. The same is true for the actual posts in the metagame discussion thread (including my own ban stag post). If we establish that Shadow Tag is fundamentally unhealthy this gen, then it should absolutely go (and I don't particularly care if it goes in the form of an ability ban or of an individual ban of every stag 'mon, the end result is the same and I'll let other people focus on that). But as of right now we haven't done that. "It's always been done that way before" is a weak argument and I hope we're better than that.
So yeah, if Wobb is unhealthy and also deserves to go, that's fine. We just need to make sure that we actually address that alongside the Goth stuff. And frankly if Wobb ISN'T unhealthy this gen, and we can't demonstrate or explain why Wobb also deserves a ban, then it means we probably have a Goth problem more than a Shadow Tag problem.
The sole issue is that if Wobb IS broken, the actual ban post did absolutely nothing to address that. It focused entirely on Goth. Every single justification for why Shadow Tag was problematic in the ban post involved things that Wobb literally can't do. The same is true for the actual posts in the metagame discussion thread (including my own ban stag post). If we establish that Shadow Tag is fundamentally unhealthy this gen, then it should absolutely go (and I don't particularly care if it goes in the form of an ability ban or of an individual ban of every stag 'mon, the end result is the same and I'll let other people focus on that). But as of right now we haven't done that. "It's always been done that way before" is a weak argument and I hope we're better than that.
So yeah, if Wobb is unhealthy and also deserves to go, that's fine. We just need to make sure that we actually address that alongside the Goth stuff. And frankly if Wobb ISN'T unhealthy this gen, and we can't demonstrate or explain why Wobb also deserves a ban, then it means we probably have a Goth problem more than a Shadow Tag problem.
OK I know this is just you being annoyed and hyperbolic so I should just ignore this, but lots of people seem to really believe this is true and not hyperbole. I've been staff for two years and a community leader for longer than that, and this current staff crew is by far more actively involved with and inclusive of prominent players than any other I have ever dealt with. Prominent tour players represent a significant chunk of our community leadership (of the 23 people in the #leaders discord that Zarel referenced, 9 of them played in the most recent SPL or Snake), and staff has been really good about engaging directly with people who are actively involved in the meta. I know it's a common meme that staff don't play the game and don't care about the competitive aspects but it's just straight up not the case right now, and at least during my tenure I think this is the most connected and engaged staff has been with the competitive side.