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Stealth Rock in the OU Metagame

Blame Game, just because lots of things can be physical sweepers doesn't mean they'll all suddenly become as potentially dangerous as Chomp is/was when or if he's gone. That's the inherent flaw in that logic.

Anyways, I really don't think Stealth Rock is broken. Does it have an effect on the metagame? Yeah. Does Articuno suck because of it? Yes (partially). But just because it does damage to everythnig doesn't mean the metagame falls apart with it.

I'd be interested to see a metagame without it though, no more nerfed togekiss / gyarados. After all, my completely opinionated statement based on no actual experience in an SR-less metagame has really no weight at all. Let's try it out before yelling.
 
Blame Game, just because lots of things can be physical sweepers doesn't mean they'll all suddenly become as potentially dangerous as Chomp is/was when or if he's gone.
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I agree, my point was never that they'd become as dangerous as Garchomp, just that they'd fill his niche.
 
I made a post earlier, but my computer was on the fritz and now I have lost my train of thought...sorry.


I believe what I meant when i was talkign about banning Chomp and SR, I meant that it wasn't about centralization or niches anymore, it was about what the entire community would rather have. Thatr is why we need to test and then have a straight up vote just like Wobby and Deo-E.

I think the 3 best ways to do this would be ban each, seperately and together, and then offer four options in the poll (bold text to be backe dup with reasoning).

1) Ban Nothing more
2) Ban Garchomp
3) Ban Stealth Rock
4) Ban Both

I think we need ot go ahead and tets now, the theorymoning has reached a bit of a dead end.
 
sanjay120 said:
You get rid of Double Team and Minimize and you have what? Acupressure?
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Double Team and Minimize were banned because "luck = bad" or something of the sort. There isn't any similar argument for Stealth Rock, only "it centralizes the metagame... just like everything else." So there is some sort of justification for banning Evasion, a "problem" that isn't shared between everything in the metagame. Even then Evasion is being tested, so, there you go I guess.

I'm sleepy so I hope this post is coherent.



I believe what I meant when i was talkign about banning Chomp and SR, I meant that it wasn't about centralization or niches anymore, it was about what the entire community would rather have. Thatr is why we need to test and then have a straight up vote just like Wobby and Deo-E.

I think the 3 best ways to do this would be ban each, seperately and together, and then offer four options in the poll (bold text to be backe dup with reasoning).

1) Ban Nothing more
2) Ban Garchomp
3) Ban Stealth Rock
4) Ban Both
Click to expand...
This would be extremely time-consuming, and opens up for future tests of Gengar or Blissey or whatever the community decides "should be tested, because it probably centralizes the metagame and I don't like dealing with it."
 
I think that SR should be banned due to it's centralization. In order to make sure that my post is coherent, I'm going to start from the beginning and state some obvious things. Unless the rest of my position doesn't make sense to you, you can disregard the first paragraph. (and I mean this in the least condescending way possible)

What exactly do we want in a metagame? Most people would say that they want a game where the most skilled player wins. Since Smogon is generally acknowledged as the most skilled battling community, that would mean that the preferable metagame would be one that Smogoners win in the most. This means that our supposed skill must be able to overcome any variable factors that could turn for or against us (luck). Most others also want a decentralized metagame, one where more pokemon can be used in a viable strategy to win without relying on luck.



Does centralization of a metagame induce luck? I think that in some cases it does, and others it doesn't. Garchomp is connected to the Stealth Rock discussion not because they are particularly deadly as joint threats. Garchomp also is prevalent and has no 100% counter. Bronzong and Cresselia are about as close as it gets for a Garchomp counter, but both lose to specialized sets which remain viable because they can take out these common Pokemon who can stand up to it. In a similar way, Hp Ice Lucario can beat Gliscor.

Because of Garchomp's ability, Sand Veil, when combined with the everpresent Sandstorm, it means that attacks that were guaranteed to hit now have a 20 % chance of missing. Stealth Rock, on the other hand, doesn't increase luck. It is too hard to tell whether the extra damage from Stealth Rock would, in the long term, increase the value of given luck (such as Critical Hits) or if it would decrease said values.

There is also another side to centralization- prevalence. Garchomp appears on about 25 % of teams according to one of X-Act's usage statistics threads. Stealth Rock, on the other hand, is much more common. I would guess that at least 75% of teams use Stealth Rock.

The opportunity cost of using Stealth Rock isn't very much: as mentioned before, quite a few OU pokemon learn it and can utilize it well, and only one moveslot is given up. Garchomp, on the other hand, is one Pokemon on a team of six, with four moveslots. There isn't much to give up from using Stealth Rock, and there is a lot to gain. The only move that can get rid of it, Rapid Spin, is granted to a whole 15 pokemon out of 493, 11 of which are UU. Even Rapid Spin can be foiled by a Ghost type.

Now, to the point. Stealth Rock prevents certain Pokemon from being effective in the current OU metagame. It also prevents certain walls, which would have otherwise been useful, from being able to wall said threats. Some of these pokemon include Yanmega, Charizard, Moltres, Regice, Articuno, and Cloyster. Moltres, Regice, and Articuno could be fantastic walls; without Stealth Rock, Moltres is about the best Mixape counter ever created. Regice takes special hits on a Blissey-like level. Cloyster can defeat nearly every Garchomp variant bar Chainchomp. Charizard OHKO's almost every pokemon after a Belly Drum. Stealth Rock makes all these Pokemon less effective to the point where their usage is remarkably low (with exception of Yanmega, but presence of Stealth Rock means that if he is used, it is as a lead most of the time). And this is a move that takes one turn to set up and has only one counter, a counter that doesn't even work 100% of the time. Thus, THERE IS NO REASON not to use Stealth Rock on a team whose goal is to win as many matches as possible. However, Stealth Rock-weak Pokemon will not necessarily become centralizing without Stealth Rock. Gyarados is still countered nearly all the time by Celebi, Skarmory, and Tangrowth, not to mention Scarf Starmie. Yanmega is still countered by Blissey and Heatran without Reversal. Charizard still has problems with Suicune, etc.

tl;dr: Stealth Rock overcentralizes the metagame and I think it should be banned. Not because it induces luck, but because it nerfs several otherwise viable Pokemon and makes others more threatening to the point that it has no counters. How many times do you hear: "a 2HKO with Stealth Rock" ?
Many threats of today are such because they have the ability to 2HKO their counters, all because of Stealth Rock. (And Stealth Rock is superior to Spikes because Spikes isn't as ubiquitous and reliable as Stealth Rock. It isn't a given on most teams, plus some Pokemon are immune [to Spikes]).

The more threatening a threat is and the more threats there are for a given team to account for, the lower the viable combinations of Pokemon for a winning team. This is why Stealth Rock centralizes.



I hope I didn't lose anyone here.
 
Your argument isn't really new, 7-8 pokemon aren't really important enough, I believe, to ban a move. Yanmega, Weavile, Togekiss, Salamence, Gyarados, and Zapdos show that Stealth Rock doesn't just eliminate pokes from contention.

And to be honest, I think it's pretty neat that SR counters that Bellyzard set, and Rapid Spin is a 100% counter, it removes Stealth Rock. It isn't as easily dealt with as spikes, you gotta think a little bit. You spin, are they just going to send out their Steatlh Rocker to set up again? Tada, send in something that can mess with it.

If you don't have something that's a threat to Bronzong, Skarmory, or Forretress, you really aren't building a team too well anyways. And those are the 3 that stick around for a while. In a metagame full of suicide pokes that specialize in just setting up SR and dying an attack or two later like FS Azelf, Aerodactyl, and Deoxys, the concept of "kill the SR-user then spin" is not that crazy. Yes, many pokemon are capable of using Stealth Rock, but no one's really going to try using it on Garchomp or Metagross. They do other things too well. Heck, I don't even think "a lot of pokemon learn it" is a very good point to support anyways.

Spin and Wish Support, that's what you need.
 
"I would guess" kinda hurts your argument of how common Stealth Rock is.

Also, what happens when you ban Stealth Rock? Stall teams become less viable, and many Pokemon suddenly die in usage. What's the point of running Hippowdon, Bronzong, Swampert, and others without Stealth Rock? Aerodactyl's one chance of OU status goes down the crapper. Your proposition essentially decides to make one small group of Pokemon less viable in order to make another small group of Pokemon more viable. Doesn't make much sense.
 
Okay, I worded that a bit too strongly.

"Hippowdon, Swampert, and Bronzong's main purposes are obselete when Stealth Rocks are gone."
 
Out of those three, only one of them (Bronzong) has Stealth Rock listed as the only option in its given slot in the analysis. Hippowdon doesn't even have SR on any of his standard sets, relegating it to the "other options" section. Also keep in mind that Bronzong has Explosion or either of the barriers to replace the slot used for Stealth Rock.

Honestly? I don't think SR is the main appeal of these guys.
 
Chimera said:
Your argument isn't really new, 7-8 pokemon aren't really important enough, I believe, to ban a move. Yanmega, Weavile, Togekiss, Salamence, Gyarados, and Zapdos show that Stealth Rock doesn't just eliminate pokes from contention.

The Pokemon you listed above are powerful enough to be OU regardless of Stealth Rock. Weavile is a great revenge killer, Zapdos can be a PP Stalling Wall and a Special Sweeeper; Salamence has immense attacking stats with high BP special moves to use; Togekiss is amazingly effective at paraflinching the opponent. Just because some SR weak Pokemon are still effective doesn't mean that other SR weak Pokemon aren't effected worse. All but Yanmega and Weavile are bulky, and Togekiss/Salamence/Zapdos get an instant recovery move. Gyarados has Dragon Dance to boost his stats with. I didn't mention these pokemon as being significantly hampered by SR, I just mentioned the BL ones that are.

If Stealth Rock was removed, however, it wouldn't be too much of a problem since each of them has solid counters (with exception of Salamence), and Blissey/Empoleon can take Specsmence, while all physical versions are countered by what one would use to counter an SD Chomp most of the time.

And to be honest, I think it's pretty neat that SR counters that Bellyzard set, and Rapid Spin is a 100% counter, it removes Stealth Rock. It isn't as easily dealt with as spikes, you gotta think a little bit. You spin, are they just going to send out their Steatlh Rocker to set up again? Tada, send in something that can mess with it.

Please leave the prediction out of theorymoning because it isn't limited to one side. Both battlers can predict; what if I sent in a Ghost Pokemon? Then your Rapid Spin attempt would fail.

If you don't have something that's a threat to Bronzong, Skarmory, or Forretress, you really aren't building a team too well anyways. And those are the 3 that stick around for a while. In a metagame full of suicide pokes that specialize in just setting up SR and dying an attack or two later like FS Azelf, Aerodactyl, and Deoxys, the concept of "kill the SR-user then spin" is not that crazy. Yes, many pokemon are capable of using Stealth Rock, but no one's really going to try using it on Garchomp or Metagross. They do other things too well. Heck, I don't even think "a lot of pokemon learn it" is a very good point to support anyways.
Not only defensive Steels use Stealth Rock. Hippowodon, Gliscor, and even Heatran are other common users of Stealth Rock. Even some Blisseys (albeit poorly played ones) can set up Stealth Rock. True, many Pokemon who learn Stealth Rock aren't the normal users of it. However, novelty sets, if they surprise the opponent, can be sucessful in their mission (to set up SR). And Skarmory and Forretress are not hard to deal with- anything with a special fire attack, even a Fire Blast Machamp, can get rid of these on their switch-in. Bronzong is the problem. But I personally haven't made a competitive team without a fire move, so I never see Bronzong as a problem. Especially since it has no recovery.

The amount of possible SR users just means that there is a higher chance that it occupies a moveslot on the opponents team. I didn't mean it with that intention. Unlike with Spikes or Toxic Spikes, if you need a Pokemon that can use SR, you have many to choose from. How doesn't this help the argument for Stealth Rock?
Spin and Wish Support, that's what you need.
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Just because you have pokemon that mitigate Stealth Rock through Rapid Spin and Wish (indirectly) doesn't mean that they are common. Out of all the Pokemon BL and above, only Starmie, Tentacruel, Donphan, and Forretress use Rapid Spin. Many of the other Rapid Spinners in UU are weak to Stealth Rock (Torkoal and Armaldo, I'm looking at you). Only Starmie has instant recovery, and he isn't extremely bulky. Compared with the viable options for pokemon that use Stealth Rock, those who can use Rapid Spin are fewer and far between. Instead of centralizing and using one of these Pokemon, quite a few teams don't even bother having a rapid spinner. This is why the FS Azelf with SR strategy works. When facing a heavily offensive team, you don't have time for Donphan/Starmie/Forretress/Tentacruel to switch in, Rapid Spin, then be able to come in again without dying to the barrage of attacks.

Wish would be more viable had Wish+Protect Blissey not been banned on Shoddy. Wish Togekiss is hard to use with its SR weak in my experience. Vaporeon and Jirachi still work well though.

@umbarsc: Yes, I know it weakens my argument. But no-one has solid statistics for something like that, not even Colin or X-Act. I would rather make an ultra-conservative guess that makes sense than a radical guess and act like I'm right because I know more than God, when in actuality I don't even come close.
 
When I used Chomp as an example of "community wants it, so test it, I was thinking b/c of the uproar, whining, and the fact that it is used over 9000 times more thn the next poke on the list, a viable stat to back up centralization. Please dont try to expand that argument by saying "what if (poke) we want to test it?!" Not gonna happen, different circumstances.



Honestly, we are a competitive community with many different opinions and analyses, and the only way to come to a fair, sensible end would be testign followed by a vote. Then we put it to rest once and for all. BTW, I couldn't care less whether we keep SR or not.
 
umbarsc said:
"I would guess" kinda hurts your argument of how common Stealth Rock is.

Also, what happens when you ban Stealth Rock? Stall teams become less viable, and many Pokemon suddenly die in usage. What's the point of running Hippowdon, Bronzong, Swampert, and others without Stealth Rock? Aerodactyl's one chance of OU status goes down the crapper. Your proposition essentially decides to make one small group of Pokemon less viable in order to make another small group of Pokemon more viable. Doesn't make much sense.
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You've got this backwards. If Stealth Rock was banned, stall teams would finally have a chance. The only thing really keeping them in check is their inability to switch freely.

Without an easily set up entry hazard, offensive teams would be way less dominating than they are.
 
COalex said:
You've got this backwards. If Stealth Rock was banned, stall teams would finally have a chance.
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Didn't that guy imperfectluck get like a 90% win rate with his stall team? I've used stall myself in a Stealth Rock metagame with success. I don't see how removing Stealth Rock would make it so "stall teams would finally have a chance". It's not always the team, more often than not it's the ones using it.
 
COalex said:
That was freaking ages ago.

Unless he did it again recently, though I haven't heard anything about it.
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Well he got three accounts to occupy 1, 2, and 3 at the same time as the husk team outbreak. So even with these "dominating" offensive teams, he was able to do extremely well with stall.
 
That was not ages ago. It was when the metagame had developed nearly to the point it is now, it's not like we're talking July 2007 or something.

IIRC it was just a few months ago.
 
stealth rock should only do 25% max
its sooooooooooo unbalanced that most of the pokemon in ou have to have rapid spin
it balances in some cases but its another one of gamefreak's metagame jokes including chomp
 
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