Gen 6 Swagger Clause?

[Disaster Area]

This is just like the OU discussion, with how you have 90% of the community with varying levels of pro-ban and hatred, then you have 5% against a ban because they're pretty conservative in their banning habits (more true in ubers actually) (although most of the more conservative banners seem to be pro-this) and u have like 3% who don't understand why it's bad, 1% who genuinely think it's good, 1% who are trolling the discussion.

Hopefully this means that with that sort of balance, this thing should be banned. It's uncompetitive, doesn't require much work to read what your opponent is doing (and thus is not very skill-based), and I think everything that needs to be said has aleady been said.

 

[Subject 18]

I find it funny that this community cries and bans something just cause they dont like battling it. Its part of the game, dont blame a move for your loss blame your skills not being up to par and not running a few checks.

Moody and Sleep are part of the game, are we going to unban those and say "don't blame your loss, blame your skills." Swagger is just as uncompetitive as any of the things already banned. It's not like it takes skill for someone to click Substitute then Swagger repeatedly and force your opponent into a 50% chance of hitting through Confusion. Then you basically have to break out of confusion multiple times to prevent Sableye or Klefki from getting getting up a free sub.

You say swagger is uncompetitive, and based on luck? Yet regard the randomness and luck based game of pokemon argument irrelevant. If thats the case then ban para flinch shenanigans, lame stall teams and boosting. This is a mean game with lame messed up tactics. Just cause one comes around thats messed up that you guys dont like, you start to whine and cry because its actually hard to beat and you cant land your random crits or boost your way to victory.

We all know Pokemon is a game full of luck, no one said it wasn't. The difference with ParaFlinch is there are actually ways to deal with them. faster pokemon, Ground types, Choice Scarf user are all viable ways to deal with ParaFlinch. I dont see how you can say Stall teams are an issue when you skillful play, taunt, Mega Gengar and Mewtwo exist. Boosting?? Really?? I'm not even going to touch on that because for several reasons.

Strats thats so broken that its the best of the best. Swagplay is one of the best strats in the game of pokemon right now. I enjoy fighting it even if I dont have a swagplay team. Because its good and playing good stuff is how I enjoy playing games.

Okay then...

I just want to say that I'm not barely an Ubers, I mainly play OU and recently started learning Ubers. It's already been banned from OU and it's the same exact thing here, you're forced into games where you are statistical disadvantage, taking skill completely out of the game and leaving players with very few ways to "outplay it" and be able to win. Unlike team matchup, you can be a matchup disadvantage and play well and still be able win, SwagPlay doesn't allow you to do that.

To the few people who say that don't want to ban Swagger, how exactly does it differ from Moody and Sleep clause? If we Ubers is meant to be as pure as possible we should remove those clauses and tell people to just deal with them.

This needs to be banned.

 

[Disaster Area]

Maybe we should have a tier 'above' ubers just called like XY or something with all the clauses removed so people can play with their minimize drifblim swagkeys, 6 pikachus, and not impact on the actual metagame of Ubers?

Idk that might be a really stupid idea but still

 

[Minority]

Maybe we should have a tier 'above' ubers just called like XY or something with all the clauses removed so people can play with their minimize drifblim swagkeys, 6 pikachus, and not impact on the actual metagame of Ubers?

They do, its called hackmons. The funny thing is that Swagg sucks there with all the Magic Bounce EKillers and Lum No Guard Deo-S with Sheer Cold.

 

[Disaster Area]

No I meant where you still had to stick to the game mechanics, hackmons is obviously hackmons.

 

[DoABarrelRoll]

I don't think Swagger should be banned from Ubers. Yes, it's annoying, but shouldn't we ban paralysis too because you won't be able to move 25% of the time? If anything, I would just ban the combination Swagger + Foul Play on the same Pokemon (but not on the same team) if so many people would ask me to nerf Swagger. Most Ubers (notable exceptions: Extreme Killer Arceus, Groudon, Mega Scizor, Mega Mewtwo X, Mega Scizor, Mega Lucario and Mega Kangaskhan) invest in their Special Attack and use a Timid/Modest nature, so they won't be hindered too much by Swagger in comparison to, say, Confuse Ray.

I think the real reason people want this banned is Klefki. I agree that thing's the best SwagPlayer in the game, but really, is that what pushes Swagger over the edge? Steel/Fairy is a great typing, yes, but Klefki's defenses pale in comparison to most Ubers, and there are some Pokemon that can completely stop it and possibly even reverse a sweep (especially at late-game), such as Lum Berry Groudon/Landorus-T/EK Arceus. Also, Zekrom can defeat Klefki with a +2 Bolt Strike and doesn't fear paralysis.

Ubers is where the "broken" stuff goes, and I doubt SwagPlay is as broken as Moddy or OHKO moves. The point of the Uber tier is that it's designed for people to throw OP Pokemon and broken strategies against one another. There's no purpose in further restring it. If a strategy is constantly defeating you, find a way to counter it.

Ultimately, Pokemon is still luck-based sometimes. Evasion moves aren't banned in Ubers, and yet a 100% accurate move only has a 60% chance to hit a Pokemon with a +2 evasion boost. So, in my opinion, Swagger should not be banned from Ubers.

 

[Haruno]

I don't think Swagger should be banned from Ubers. Yes, it's annoying, but shouldn't we ban paralysis too because you won't be able to move 25% of the time? If anything, I would just ban the combination Swagger + Foul Play on the same Pokemon (but not on the same team) if so many people would ask me to nerf Swagger. Most Ubers (notable exceptions: Extreme Killer Arceus, Groudon, Mega Scizor, Mega Mewtwo X, Mega Scizor, Mega Lucario and Mega Kangaskhan) invest in their Special Attack and use a Timid/Modest nature, so they won't be hindered too much by Swagger in comparison to, say, Confuse Ray.

I think the real reason people want this banned is Klefki. I agree that thing's the best SwagPlayer in the game, but really, is that what pushes Swagger over the edge? Steel/Fairy is a great typing, yes, but Klefki's defenses pale in comparison to most Ubers, and there are some Pokemon that can completely stop it and possibly even reverse a sweep (especially at late-game), such as Lum Berry Groudon/Landorus-T/EK Arceus. Also, Zekrom can defeat Klefki with a +2 Bolt Strike and doesn't fear paralysis.

Ubers is where the "broken" stuff goes, and I doubt SwagPlay is as broken as Moddy or OHKO moves. The point of the Uber tier is that it's designed for people to throw OP Pokemon and broken strategies against one another. There's no purpose in further restring it. If a strategy is constantly defeating you, find a way to counter it.

Ultimately, Pokemon is still luck-based sometimes. Evasion moves aren't banned in Ubers, and yet a 100% accurate move only has a 60% chance to hit a Pokemon with a +2 evasion boost. So, in my opinion, Swagger should not be banned from Ubers.

what the fuck.......................... your conception of banning and/or brokenness is completely wrong. Neither moody nor ohko clauses were broken by definition, but they were uncompetitive as fuck due to adding in a unnecessary luck factor to the game. Sure we all know pokemon is fucking chess with coinflips tossed in but throwing in swagger into the mix is essentially adding an additional dice roll to the already "skill" based game of pokemon. Hint, ohko clause and moody weren't broken as shown during the suspect test, but they allowed absolute shit teams to beat "good" players if you have enough luck, swagger is no different in that sense. Swagger essentially allows you to replace skill with luck to win and remember that at its core, a better player is more often than not, supposed to beat a player that is worse than them. Swagger throws this out the window by allowing a worse player to spam an initial 45% of survival into constant luck fests that are undeniably in the users favor. As Haruno stated before Lady Gaga played stone cold in OST R1, "your odds of winning against stone cold are much higher if you use swagplay since your skill/knowledge of the ou metagame is nonexistent and this allows you to replace skill with luck." And indeed optic did by using swagplay to beat stone cold in OST much to everyone's shock and 92-1 odds. I don't mean to call anyone out in particular but I had to bring up optic since he was the one that showed ou that swagplay was uncompetitive as fuck as opposed to the occasional laddertard gimmick that everyone thought it was.

Overall swagger isn't broken, it's just uncompetitive as fuck by adding in an unnecessary luck element to the game with low risk and absolutely massive returns. Also as far as your "reverse" sweep is concerned, swagger is usually accompanied by scarfed ditto explicitely for the reasons you listed lol.

 

[AM]

So I'm all for banning Swagger or at least doing something about it. It's pretty outrageous when I have to lose to a Swagger Klefki simply because luck wasn't on my side (Forgot to save the replay, maybe next time). In any other scenario I can either win or lose due to my own skill or the opponent's skill and it can be considered an actual match-up. Sure you can bring the argument that it's high risk high reward but what reward can be given when every coin flip is against you. Even in the case that you do get an optimal result from the confusion, oh big surprise they're probably behind a substitute, let's rinse and repeat with Swagger.

If a strategy is constantly defeating you, find a way to counter it.

Yeah I would not rather to resort to using something like Espeon to counter something that's really not one bit competitive in the first place. There's a difference between something that's broken competitively that is brought to Ubers and something that is broken simply because it's luck based everywhere. I don't want to argue the whole counter and check argument though cause I know the OU threads had that with BP and it got a bit outrageous. Those are just my thoughts on swagger in Ubers.

 

[RotomPoison]

The point of the Uber tier is that it's designed for people to throw OP Pokemon and broken strategies against one another. There's no purpose in further restring it. If a strategy is constantly defeating you, find a way to counter it.

If you honestly believe this what are you doing here? I'm sorry I don't find my Arceus hitting itself in confusion all the time to be fun, but you clearly know how to lead a tier. Verlisify alts need to stop. If Mega Lucario is constantly defeating me in OU, do i find a way to counter it?

 

[8-BIT Luster]

I don't know what I have to add that hasn't already been said, but Swagger should be banned. It creates a less favorable metagame for players, and has a ridiculous advantage against HO teams. The only true way to counter it is to use Magic Bounce users (or Numel, but even still it dies to foul play) but neither of those options are very viable.
Another thing to consider: most users of Swagger have the ability Prankster, so even if you have, like a Lum Berry to counteract the effects of swagger, it only works once. So this still leaves you vulnerable to another Swagger user.
In addition, nearly every Pokemon gets Swagger, so you don't always know that Pokemon is running Swagger until you've died from confusion.
Swagger takes really no skill to use, and it ruins the fun of battling. It's completely luck-based. Most people would rather forfeit than have to deal with the utter bullshit of Swagger teams. Justifying Swagger as a "legit strategy" is total shit. That's essentially saying that flipping a coin is a "legit strategy" for things.

So unless Magic Bounce or Numel suddenly becomes viable again, Swagger has to go.

 

[UXQ MegaMan775]

SwagPlay is a mindless, unskillful, and disrespectful way to battle in a tier that requires skill. It needs to be banned. It is making the most intense and fast paced metagame into a joke, and it is slowly beginning to ruin the competitive aspect of Ubers. I AM A VICTIM

"Disrespectful"
Uhh, Swagger sucks, yeah, but it's not really "disrespectful."

 

[iampie]

SwagPlay is a very luck based, unintelligent, and disrespectful strategy to use. Not only does swagger make it a 50 50, but after twave, there is only a 37% chance for you to move and then after throwing subs in, it can be very, very annoying. It is very disrespectful too opponents as well, because everybody is trying to have the same fun you do, trying to play a game to enjoy yourself, then you bring in something that wants to make their head explode just for your entertainment and ladder points. Yeah, that's disrespectful. Not only this but swagplay is also very hard to counter if played right, yes there are the things that beat it (lum groudon, bulky grounds) but not even magic bouncers can because foul play is super effective to both espeon and xatu. The thing that is most bad about this, is that it is basically turning a competitive game of pokemon into a coin flip which is just not good. Some players just bring it to tournaments or the ladders thinking "oh, so I probably wont win, ill just bring swagplay, yeah" and then they destroy everything. A good example of that is Fixed (who can win otherwise but made it to the top so its a good example) , who made a team entirely based off swagplay and got to #1 with it under the alt of smart strategy-- this in itself shows how unintelligent, luck based, easy to use, and disrespectful to other people swagplay can be so therefore it deserves a BAN

 

[Epsilonsama]

Im more of a lurker around here but I want to say my piece about this ban. All this talk of bans in ubers goes against the spirit of it. From what I can read of many of the people here, it seems you are treating Ubers like OU. Ubers is not OU, OU is a balanced metagame with rules in place to make sure nothing is broken. Ubers on the other hand is inherently broken. Ubers is a ban list first and a tier second, meaning that the purpose of Ubers is not necessary to have a balanced metagame in place. Any perceived balance in Ubers comes from the beasts that lie in it. So even if 95% wants to ban Swagger from Ubers I dont think it should be banned because it goes against the spirit of Ubers. If you want balance, go to OU. If you want to experience the purest form of battle play on Ubers.

 

[Haruno]

OU is a balanced metagame

How can we take you seriously when you say things like this?

 

[Disaster Area]

At least he understands that part of the heart of this discussion is what a ban like this would mean in the context of the ubers ethos.

 

[Millky95]

How can we take you seriously when you say things like this?

The concept of OU is to obtain an as balanced metagame as possible with no broken elements and each play style is equally valid. Hence why things such as Moody, Mega-Gengar, Swagger and now Baton Pass chains are banned/getting banned.

Whilst I don't battle much anymore and even less of it is Ubers, I have to agree, Ubers is a ban list. Just like BL. You can play BL as a tier but it is a ban list first and for most.

 

[Aquaslash]

If any of that junk were truly the case, then they'd be allowing moody and not have a sleep clause. Since both of those clauses are in place, a swagger clause isn't too farfetched. In fact, there is literally nothing gained by allowing Swagger to remain as is. All of the arguments against it have been "we shouldn't ban cause Ubers is a banlist lololol". Folks are just disregarding that it literally pisses off the overwhelming majority of the player base and just saying "lol stop being butthurt and git gud".

People at least want to have fun in this metagame, and swagplay is getting in the way of that. When you lose to swagplay, there's never a feeling of "oh man, I got outplayed" or "I should have built my team better". It's so easy to win with swagplay, a caveman could do it. You can't even brute force it like you can baton pass because there's a strong chance that you'll never get to do anything at all. It's one thing to get 6-0'd cause you let Ekiller or Geoxern set up. At least those are quick and you had a chance to stop them. In the case of Swagplay in ubers, it's literally hoping that you get to move and KO the swagger ASAP. In fact, let me reiterate that last point.

You can do everything you should do against a swag mon and still lose.

 

[Nayrz]

Ubers is a ban list first and a tier second

Let me stop you right there. Ubers is regarded as a tier these days, its played in official tournaments just like OU, and is therefore considered a "balanced" metagame (or else it wouldn't be in tours). While it may seem to OU players that this is just a banlist that nobody gives a shit about, its played as a tier, and actually has the second largest playerbase right behind OU. People say this ban is against the "morals" of Ubers - I ask you this: What about Moody? What about OHKO moves? What about the Endless Battle Clause? If Ubers should ban absolutely nothing then I implore you to explain those bans to me. If you can't without mentioning "uncompetitive" in some way, then your current argument is invalid.
Here is a quote from the Smogon Mentorship Primer:
"Ubers was initially simply a banlist of all Pokémon that were deemed too powerful for Overused, Smogon's standard metagame. But it's now evolved into a tier of its own where Gamefreak's most powerful creations duke it out, and considered by many to actually be the most balanced metagame Smogon has to offer, in which nigh any teamstyle is viable, from Hyper Offense to Stall."

"Ubers is just a banlist" Is an old way of thinking about this, and no longer applies. We still do things different from OU by banning nothing, but this proposed clause falls under the same mentality as Moody and the rest of the clauses Ubers already follows.

 

[AM]

Was able to get a replay to provide some proof of the nonsense that is swagger. Excuse the low ELO, had a bad tilt these past two days.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-130529822

 

[Epsilonsama]

Some of you still have the OU mentality regarding Ubers. Any perceived balance in Ubers is accidental, Ubers is not supposed to be inherently balanced. If you want to build a balance meta-game go to OU or lower tiers. Ubers should always be the place where everything but the kitchen sink is used. If you ban swagger because it's "uncompetitive" then that opens a can of worms in banning other "uncompetitive" moves or strategies. This sort of dialogue shouldn't be part of the Ubers mentality, because in the end that will turn Ubers into OU+.

 

[RotomPoison]

Some of you still have the OU mentality regarding Ubers. Any perceived balance in Ubers is accidental, Ubers is not supposed to be inherently balanced. If you want to build a balance meta-game go to OU or lower tiers. Ubers should always be the place where everything but the kitchen sink is used. If you ban swagger because it's "uncompetitive" then that opens a can of worms in banning other "uncompetitive" moves or strategies. This sort of dialogue shouldn't be part of the Ubers mentality, because in the end that will turn Ubers into OU+.

Let me stop you right there. Ubers is regarded as a tier these days, its played in official tournaments just like OU, and is therefore considered a "balanced" metagame (or else it wouldn't be in tours). While it may seem to OU players that this is just a banlist that nobody gives a shit about, its played as a tier, and actually has the second largest playerbase right behind OU. People say this ban is against the "morals" of Ubers - I ask you this: What about Moody? What about OHKO moves? What about the Endless Battle Clause? If Ubers should ban absolutely nothing then I implore you to explain those bans to me. If you can't without mentioning "uncompetitive" in some way, then your current argument is invalid.
Here is a quote from the Smogon Mentorship Primer:
"Ubers was initially simply a banlist of all Pokémon that were deemed too powerful for Overused, Smogon's standard metagame. But it's now evolved into a tier of its own where Gamefreak's most powerful creations duke it out, and considered by many to actually be the most balanced metagame Smogon has to offer, in which nigh any teamstyle is viable, from Hyper Offense to Stall."

"Ubers is just a banlist" Is an old way of thinking about this, and no longer applies. We still do things different from OU by banning nothing, but this proposed clause falls under the same mentality as Moody and the rest of the clauses Ubers already follows.

 

[Alert to Sounds]

Epsilonsama, you're coming across as arrogant tbqh. You used your first and second posts to tell all the regular players and posters that they don't understand the tier they spend so much time playing & theorizing about. I know you mean well, but I really don't think these people are lacking in perspective; they've considered your perspective, and many of them reject it.

 

[Rotosect]

Was able to get a replay to provide some proof of the nonsense that is swagger. Excuse the low ELO, had a bad tilt these past two days.
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-130529822

I don't see how this replay supports the "pro-ban" side, if anything it's the opposite. Full PranksterSwag teams are complete trash anyway because they have no win condition.

 

[AM]

I don't see how this replay supports the "pro-ban" side, if anything it's the opposite. Full PranksterSwag teams are complete trash anyway because they have no win condition.

I was making the point that people legitimately try to ladder with this and it's utter nonsense that you can lose or win simply due to pure luck. I'm fully aware that better swagger teams have win conditions and are built so that they can use the swagger boosts to their full advantage. Just making the point that if we're going to treat Ubers as a legitimate tier we should be able to address an issue such as this.

 

[Haruno]

I was making the point that people legitimately try to ladder with this and it's utter nonsense that you can lose or win simply due to pure luck. I'm fully aware that better swagger teams have win conditions and are built so that they can use the swagger boosts to their full advantage. Just making the point that if we're going to treat Ubers as a legitimate tier we should be able to address an issue such as this.

Please, luck isn't much of a factor for swagger teams since the luck is so heavily in favor of the user it's irrelevant, and i fail to see why you bring this up when people are also willing to make suspect reqs with lol stall. Also ladder is kinda terrible in case it wasn't obvious.