SwagPlay, evaluating potential bans (basic definition of "uncompetitive" in OP)

[Nix_Hex]

Magnezone with magicoat does the job http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-92628180

Some one off example of a player who clearly doesn't know what he's doing does not help the contraban side. It is honestly pretty easy to beat a magnezone with the usual sub/swag/wave/play (I know from experience), slightly less hard than to beat charizard-y. However that Klefki ran Spikes / Swagger / Protect / ? Which without t-wave can't speed control, without sub can't fish for confusion damage,and without Foul Play cannot actually damage stuff. How does that replay even contribute to the discussion? That's a rhetorical question, don't answer.

 

[Third]

I don't think that the move Swagger or any move should be banned, because that will facilitate more bans on other moves, like Stealth Rock. I think the best way to go with this is to ban Swagger and Foul Play in conjunction with the ability Prankster. Swagger and Foul Play by itself is easy to deal with, but when you throw in Prankster, it becomes pretty annoying. Give it a Substitute to sit behind and paralysis, and it becomes extremely frustrating to deal with. I understand that running multi-hit moves will break through this, but how many multi-hit moves can really damage something like Klefki or Thundurus? Plus, all the multi-hit moves I can think of either have a small pool of Pokemon that can learn them or aren't actually that effective in terms of type advantage against the two most common SwagPlay Pokemon. Priority moves won't even do much to them, especially if they're hiding behind a Substitute, or worse, you hit yourself or paralyze.

Also, when talking about Infiltrator or sound moves and Magic Bounce, I don't want to run an Infiltrator, sound move, or Magic Bounce on every single team. There are better abilities that might fit my team better. Plus, the sound moves or Infiltrators that penetrate Substitutes are still affected by paralysis and Swagger, still leaving them a low chance of attacking on that turn. I'd rather not leave everything up to chance when I want to attack, and I think a what I think is 37.5% chance of attacking is a bit low for me to control. With Magic Bounce users, the only three Pokemon that fall under that category are Xatu, Espeon, and Mega Absol. Barring Mega Absol, the other two have a weakness to Foul Play, which will do tons of damage to both of them even without any attack boosts at all. With Mega Absol, it already has abysmal defenses and no recovery moves, leaving it to be a bad candidate to counter SwagPlay.

Last, I think SwagPlay almost defines an uncompetitive scene for Pokemon. Granted, Double Team and Minimize were much more infuriating than SwagPlay, but I still think SwagPlay isn't competitive. I see many posters discussing about how weaker players can beat more skilled players through this, and while this is true to an extent, I don't think that's the main reason it's not competitive. I think the main reason it's uncompetitive is because it makes you rely on luck instead of skill to make a move.

Overall, SwagPlay is far from a win-all and a strategy without counters (Numel anyone?), but I certainly think it's a brainless, uncompetitive strategy that I believe isn't healthy for the metagame.

 

[noobcubed]

After facing three swagplay teams in a row, I can now say that it shouldn't be banned. I preceded to destroy all of them with Chansey, Rotom, Sylveon, and even freaking Garchomp. Plus I barely see these teams being over centralizing in the slightest and there are only a handful of these teams on Showdown and PO. Oh and Lum berry completely screws them over. Also make sure all your special attackers' attack IV is 0.

1) Just looking through that team, it seems like you are highly overprepared for swagplay and are probably opening yourself up to other weaknesses in the process. If during the Mega-Khan discussion someone had piped up "well I run Sableye, Skarmory and Terrakion so it's not a big issue for me", would you have listened to them?

2) Three matches is not really a representative sample size. Besides, even if swagplay could only win a player 10% of matches, the fact that it could enable a player to win matches without any skill is still unacceptable.

3) You may have been fighting three not-very-good swagplay teams. The best swagplay teams generally have three swagplay users, a couple of mons to deal with whatever else there is (and, incidentally, the Pokemon that deal with swagplay best are generally ludicrously easy to switch into and force out) and a Ditto. A team made of six swagplayers can still win matches, but is far more match-up dependant.

 

[Punchshroom]

I see some players saying that Chansey, Slowbro, Rotom-W, etc...happen to be the best SwagPlay checks. Now note that the multiple Leppa Berry complex bans came about due to the "creative dickishness" of players. In this case, Swagger players may soon resort to this:

Whimisicott @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
Nature: Bold / Calm
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def or SpD / 4 SpD or Def (whichever, really)
- Swagger
- Substitute
- Leech Seed
- Taunt

...while leaving their general game plan intact. It can easily put the pressure on those bulky sponges and deny their recovery, sapping their health away without relying on Foul Play, then proceed to Swagger all over the place anyway. It also isn't farfetched for Thundurus-I to run Thunderbolt to fry Slowbro.

While this Whimsicott is technically a pro-ban argument, it is also a classic example on how it doesn't manage to abuse Prankster Swagger to the absurd degree we are all familiar with (and loathe). This is arguable proof that Prankster Swagger itself is not necessarily the issue to address, but since it still technically leaves the game up to chance, the verdict would still highly subjective.

Prankster confusion by itself is pretty annoying at worst, but there are a good number of moves that can easily take advantage of this to put the confusion users in a somewhat unfair (again, subjective) advantage over the victims, who usually has little to no say in whether or not they want to participate in these games of pure luck. Let's say both players play a game where they may only use moves that can miss (or hell, Metronome battles). It leaves the game up to chance also, but at least both players signed up for it, which is what makes the element of chance fun. The problem starts when the element of chance is forced onto other players, like evasion boosting (this is different from lowering the opponent's accuracy, since the opponent can choose to either switch or stubbornly break through the hax). Players are not saying it is unbeatable (the fact that it has the tendency to work is another story altogether), but it removes their choices in battle. Now I know not all Prankster Pokemon can make use of Swagger as effectively as some others, but the same can be said about Double Team (the best users have recovery and a degree of bulk). Prankster Swagger will likely have to be banned on the same grounds as Double Team, even if it does hurt Pranksters that are more reliant on just Swagger to succeed with it.

 

[Hclegend]

Three Words:
Espeon
M-Absol
Xatu

I'm done here.

Brought up before. Two of them take x2 damage from Foul Play. And the other takes up a Mega slot and isn't THAT viable
Shitty argument is shitty. NEXT

 

[hodges]

I dont know if this is an option perhaps banning substitute with swagger. At least then if you get past the confusion you actually do damage instead of breaking the sub and being unlucky. Yes it doesnt take away the luck but at least can backfire for them

 

[haunter]

Brought up before. Two of them take x2 damage from Foul Play. And the other takes up a Mega slot and isn't THAT viable
Shitty argument is shitty. NEXT

Funnily enough, Mega Absol takes almost as much as 252 HP Xatu from Foul Play:

4 Atk Klefki Foul Play vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mega Absol: 87-103 (32.1 - 38%) -- 94.6% chance to 3HKO

150 base Atk and 60 Def are sub-optimal statistics to counter Foul Play users.

 

[Exclaimer]

I dont know if this is an option perhaps banning substitute with swagger. At least then if you get past the confusion you actually do damage instead of breaking the sub and being unlucky. Yes it doesnt take away the luck but at least can backfire for them

Yeah, but the whole strategy in itself can backfire all on its own even if there is Substitute. It makes it slightly more managable but not any less of a major annoyance and frustration.

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

It really doesn't matter how Swagger matches up against other playstyles. Ofcourse Stall will fair better against Swagger than Hyper Offense. That's not an argument for or against a Swagger ban, because it's completely beside the point. The point is that Swagger is not a legitimate strategy.

Nobody should be forced to adapt to a strategy that relies solely on luck.

 

[JuliAnn]

1) Just looking through that team, it seems like you are highly overprepared for swagplay and are probably opening yourself up to other weaknesses in the process. If during the Mega-Khan discussion someone had piped up "well I run Sableye, Skarmory and Terrakion so it's not a big issue for me", would you have listened to them?

2) Three matches is not really a representative sample size. Besides, even if swagplay could only win a player 10% of matches, the fact that it could enable a player to win matches without any skill is still unacceptable.

3) You may have been fighting three not-very-good swagplay teams. The best swagplay teams generally have three swagplay users, a couple of mons to deal with whatever else there is (and, incidentally, the Pokemon that deal with swagplay best are generally ludicrously easy to switch into and force out) and a Ditto. A team made of six swagplayers can still win matches, but is far more match-up dependant.

I only run one of these Pokemon on my teams not all of the ones I listed. I do agree with your other points but I still feel neutral about this topic. It's hard to choose which side to be on. I barely encounter these teams on a daily basis and even then I have at least two Pokemon that can handle it without overpreparing my team only for just swagplay teams. Either way I wouldn't mind either a complex ban or just no ban at all.

 

[Alphanex20]

What's obvious is that:
a) There is a lot of pro-ban sentiment
b) Amongst pro-ban, there are also users who feel strongly about "Swagger Ban" v. "Swagger + Prankster Ban" which they are entitled to
c) There are many pro-ban users who don't really care which it is as long as it gets banned, and ideally-- gets banned sooner. This too is a fine sentiment.


I've been avoiding posting my own opinion (since I already did in the Badge-user-only thread), but I'll post it here hoping it gives some users guidance.


Since taking the time to suspect Prankster-Swagger is highly undesirable and testing "Swagger Ban" v. "S+P Ban" would be both unproductive and likely vague (the difference between the two metagames would be SO hard to distinguish...) I propose we just ban S+P as it has the least effect-- and if non-prankster Swagger or Prankster+(other confusion Moves) is still an issue afterwords, we can always just quick-ban it then.

However, I would not be opposed to a full Swagger ban-- whatever we can agree on to do faster.



To be perfectly honest (as an OU mod), it's clear that this thread has served it's purpose and is becoming worse and worse in content.

As to why it's not closed yet-- well, I'd close it right now if I had the authority. Until the tiering leaders decide that this thread is finished, it will have to remain open.

You mention banning just swagger, but the strategy still works without swagger, Sableye can do it with confuse ray against something paralyzed (to give an example), but swagger individually really deserves the ban because of how it interacts with confusion and foul play. That is, it increases the damage you hit yourself with and from foul play, unlike its counterparts flatter and confuse ray by raising your attack stat. Furthermore it has the most distribution (it's a TM I think and literally EVERYTHING gets it). I would prefer a general confusion ban, but swagger is worthy on its own, TBH.

 

[SanjiWatsuki]

The key to uncompetitiveness is taking away the enemy's ability to respond through decision making-- and doing it to a degree that's considering a severe problem to the competitiveness of the game.

I agree fully with this key! I also believe it fits in with the anti-ban argument.

I believe an insufficient level of analysis has been done to make a quick ban on SwagPlay, however! As outlined in http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...ompetitive-in-op.3500620/page-63#post-5271166 , there is a certain level of computational analysis that should be done to determine how reliable SwagPlay counters are AND how common they are, not how reliable the strategy is. If we can determine that certain Pokemon very consistently beat SwagPlay, then how is player control being removed? A decision that the player DIRECTLY made (i.e. which Pokemon to use and what attacks they use) has resulted in them winning the match-up.

It is also possible that the analysis determines that luck dominates even many of the favorable match-ups, in which case I would concede my case. The fact remains however that we lack sufficient information to make an informed decision about the ban of SwagPlay.

I believe that the decision making of the opponent to respond to SwagPlay is moved into the macro, rather than the micro turn-based scale. Furthermore, any bans should be postponed until AFTER analysis has been done.

 

[Karxrida]

I agree fully with this key! I also believe it fits in with the anti-ban argument.

I believe an insufficient level of analysis has been done to make a quick ban on SwagPlay, however! As outlined in http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...ompetitive-in-op.3500620/page-63#post-5271166 , there is a certain level of computational analysis that should be done to determine how reliable SwagPlay counters are AND how common they are, not how reliable the strategy is. If we can determine that certain Pokemon very consistently beat SwagPlay, then how is player control being removed? A decision that the player DIRECTLY made (i.e. which Pokemon to use and what attacks they use) has resulted in them winning the match-up.

It is also possible that the analysis determines that luck dominates even many of the favorable match-ups, in which case I would concede my case. The fact remains however that we lack sufficient information to make an informed decision about the ban of SwagPlay.

I believe that the decision making of the opponent to respond to SwagPlay is moved into the macro, rather than the micro turn-based scale. Furthermore, any bans should be postponed until AFTER analysis has been done.

The problem with the Pokemon that "consistently" beat SwagPlay is that they fall into one or more of the following catergories:
1.) They're complete shit (Numel)

2.) They have better abilities to run that give them their viability in the first place (Slowbro and Slowking would rather have Regenerator)

3.) They only fit into a very specific team styles (Chansey and Blissey don't work on Hyper Offense)

They can also still be haxed by Parafusion, Toxic Stalled to death if they barely take anything from Foul Play, and Taunted.

 

[SanjiWatsuki]

The problem with the Pokemon that "consistently" beat SwagPlay is that they fall into one or more of the following catergories:
1.) They're complete shit (Numel)

2.) They have better abilities to run that give them their viability in the first place (Slowbro and Slowking would rather have Regenerator)

3.) They only fit into a very specific team styles (Chansey and Blissey don't work on Hyper Offense)

They can also still be haxed by Parafusion, Toxic Stalled to death if they barely take anything from Foul Play, and Taunted.

Small note: Regenerator is actually one of the most optimal abilities to combat SwagPlay. Switching to remove confusion, attack boosts, and heal in the same turn is a really great play against it.

Do we really know that? I don't feel like anyone has done formal analysis of Pokemon outside of this scope.

My gut-feeling is that Pokemon like Rotom-W, who is everywhere, beat this strategy consistently as well. Without analysis or significant play testing, we can't know for sure. From the playtesting of SwagPlay given in this thread, for example, Rotom-W has often been cited as a Pokemon SwagPlay has troubles with.

As for the hax, there is an acceptable level of hax that removes player control in OU right now. For example, Ice Beam freeze hax. The counter-argument often made is that teams aren't made around freeze hax -- which is fair enough. But if we can prove that a large subset of Pokemon beat SwagPlay more often than Ice Beam freezes, then isn't SwagPlay more competitive than Ice Beam?

 

[Karxrida]

Small note: Regenerator is actually one of the most optimal abilities to combat SwagPlay. Switching to remove confusion, attack boosts, and heal in the same turn is a really great play against it.

Do we really know that? I don't feel like anyone has done formal analysis of Pokemon outside of this scope.

My gut-feeling is that Pokemon like Rotom-W, who is everywhere, beat this strategy consistently as well. Without analysis or significant play testing, we can't know for sure. From the playtesting of SwagPlay given in this thread, for example, Rotom-W has often been cited as a Pokemon SwagPlay has troubles with.

As for the hax, there is an acceptable level of hax that removes player control in OU right now. For example, Ice Beam freeze hax. The counter-argument often made is that teams aren't made around freeze hax -- which is fair enough. But if we can prove that a large subset of Pokemon beat SwagPlay more often than Ice Beam freezes, then isn't SwagPlay more competitive than Ice Beam?

Confusion
50% to hurt yourself and cost you a turn. Has a couple moves that have a 100% to inflict it.

Freeze:
You pretty much can't do anything until you thaw (don't know the thaw chances off the top of my head). Has no moves that have a 100% chance to inflict, only a 10% chance. It is entirely possible to thaw out the same turn it was inflicted on you.

CLEARLY they have the same success rate.
#SwaggerTotallyNotUncompetitive

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

Do we really know that? I don't feel like anyone has done formal analysis of Pokemon outside of this scope.

My gut-feeling is that Pokemon like Rotom-W, who is everywhere, beat this strategy consistently as well. Without analysis or significant play testing, we can't know for sure. From the playtesting of SwagPlay given in this thread, for example, Rotom-W has often been cited as a Pokemon SwagPlay has troubles with.

As for the hax, there is an acceptable level of hax that removes player control in OU right now. For example, Ice Beam freeze hax. The counter-argument often made is that teams aren't made around freeze hax -- which is fair enough. But if we can prove that a large subset of Pokemon beat SwagPlay more often than Ice Beam freezes, then isn't SwagPlay more competitive than Ice Beam?

It all depends on luck. Even pokemon like Rotom-W can die to a couple of confusion hits and repeated Foul Play's while not being able to do anything. Or at least be significantly weakened while trying to break the Substitute, before the Swagger user switches out to something that deals with Rotom-W appropriately. The problem with this scenario is that it depends entirely on luck. That's literally all that matters. While the odds are clearly more in Rotom-W's favor than something like Deoxys-S, luck is still the only factor to decide the outcome of the duel. That's why Swagger is considered an unfair strategy that should be banned.

Also, you can't compare moves like Ice Beam or Scald to Swagger. Confusion and Freeze or Burn are not the same thing. They affect the battle in completely different ways than Swagger does.

 

[Sinning]

Small note: Regenerator is actually one of the most optimal abilities to combat SwagPlay. Switching to remove confusion, attack boosts, and heal in the same turn is a really great play against it.

Do we really know that? I don't feel like anyone has done formal analysis of Pokemon outside of this scope.

My gut-feeling is that Pokemon like Rotom-W, who is everywhere, beat this strategy consistently as well. Without analysis or significant play testing, we can't know for sure. From the playtesting of SwagPlay given in this thread, for example, Rotom-W has often been cited as a Pokemon SwagPlay has troubles with.

As for the hax, there is an acceptable level of hax that removes player control in OU right now. For example, Ice Beam freeze hax. The counter-argument often made is that teams aren't made around freeze hax -- which is fair enough. But if we can prove that a large subset of Pokemon beat SwagPlay more often than Ice Beam freezes, then isn't SwagPlay more competitive than Ice Beam?

No. Once again, as nice as it would be to be able to argue this with the use of numbers, the argument has nothing to do with whether counters exist (they do) or how effective they are at keeping you in the game.

This is a problem that can only be argued through subjective reasoning, since our grounds for a ban as laid out in the OP are "is it uncompetitive or not?" We then are given the definition of uncompetitive, and are left to determine which degree that removal of autonomy is acceptable. Not whether counters exist or how effective they are.

The anti-ban side is missing the point when they try to argue over counters and effectiveness of them. What the anti-ban side should be arguing, then, is whether swag play removes autonomy to an acceptable or unacceptable degree.

 

[SanjiWatsuki]

No. Once again, as nice as it would be to be able to argue this with the use of numbers, the argument has nothing to do with whether counters exist (they do) or how effective they are at keeping you in the game.

This is a problem that can only be argued through subjective reasoning, since our grounds for a ban as laid out in the OP are "is it uncompetitive or not?" We then are given the definition of uncompetitive, and are left to determine which degree that removal of autonomy is acceptable. Not whether counters exist or how effective they are.

The anti-ban side is missing the point when they try to argue through the use of examples of pokemon that can "counter" this strategy and how effective they may or may not be. The argument is purely a philosophical one, and cannot be argued with numbers.

I disagree.

The crux of the question is whether or not player agency has been removed to an unacceptable degree. To determine if this is true, we need to look into if player agency is actually removed.

The player makes a decision to switch Pokemon. The player makes a decision if they choose to attack or switch. The player has a strategy that they use, even if their individual actions may be negated by confusion or paralysis.

This is a form of agency. The player is actively making decisions which have an impact on the game. We need to determine if this agency is reliable or not, which requires number crunching.

If this form of macro-agency is reliable, then SwagPlay is competitive because we have proven that (a) SwagPlay reliably generates free turns and (b) opponent counter-play reliably beats the strategy.

If (a) and (b) are both true, how can you argue that it isn't a competitive strategy? It's less about the existence of counters, it's whether or not it can be reliably and properly played against.

 

[Sinning]

I disagree.

The crux of the question is whether or not player agency has been removed to an unacceptable degree. To determine if this is true, we need to look into if player agency is actually removed.

The player makes a decision to switch Pokemon. The player makes a decision if they choose to attack or switch. The player has a strategy that they use, even if their individual actions may be negated by confusion or paralysis.

This is a form of agency. The player is actively making decisions which have an impact on the game. We need to determine if this agency is reliable or not, which requires number crunching.

If this form of macro-agency is reliable, then SwagPlay is competitive because we have proven that (a) SwagPlay reliably generates free turns and (b) opponent counter-play reliably beats the strategy.

If (a) and (b) are both true, how can you argue that it isn't a competitive strategy? It's less about the existence of counters, it's whether or not it can be reliably and properly played against.

While choosing to switch out does, in a way, keep a player's autonomy in tact, the degree of autonomy retained is still far too low, given that due to prankster, the pokemon switching in is immediately forced into a game of chance. This is unreasonable, I'd argue, since there is nothing to actually prevent the pokemon that is switching in being forced into a game of luck (outside of a 10% of swagger to miss, which is a game of chance in itself). Also, keep in mind that due to hazards, and the use of multiple pokemon that can subject the opponent to this type of luck, switching in and out constantly creates unreasonably long games. Prankster, then, in combination with swagger, is a problem.

This is not about whether swag play reliably generates free turns - a strategy does not have to generate free turns in order to be deemed uncompetitive, and attempting to generate "free turns" is a fundamental concept of pokemon. The issue, then, is not the effectiveness of the strategy, but whether or not the strategy is in the "spirit of the game" of our community. Due to the fact that it induces a game state where the game is turned into little more than weighted coin flips, I argue that it is uncompetitive by definition.

 

[NotSoClutch]

Swagplay is competitive (not by the definition in the OP, but in my personal opinion.)and based on skill(for the most part), however I like to compare it to ice climber chain grabbing. Even though you know it is coming and may have a way of dealing with it, at some point your oppnonent will get a grab on you if they are skilled enough or in the case of swag play it will cause one of your pokes to hit itself in confusion and start setting up on you.

 

[Sinning]

Swagplay is competitive and based on skill, however I like to compare it to ice climber chain grabbing. Even though you know it is coming and may have a way of dealing with it, at some point your oppnonent will get a grab on you if they are skilled enough or in the case of swag play it will cause one of your pokes to hit itself in confusion and start setting up on you.

Performing multiple grabs is a legitimate tactic, because at no point is the situation ever turned into a series of coin flips.

" at some point your oppnonent will get a grab on you if they are skilled enough or in the case of swag play it will cause one of your pokes to hit itself in confusion and start setting up on you."

Your opponent finally grabbing you is not left up to chance. Swag Play throws actual tactics out of the window and relies on waiting for the RNG to be nice to you. These are not comparable scenarios.

However, since your position is based on opinion entirely, rather than using the standard set by the definition of uncompetitive in the OP, we cannot argue and will only shit up the thread by attempting to do so.

 

[NotSoClutch]

Performing multiple grabs is a legitimate tactic, because at no point is the situation ever turned into a series of coin flips.

" at some point your oppnonent will get a grab on you if they are skilled enough or in the case of swag play it will cause one of your pokes to hit itself in confusion and start setting up on you."

Your opponent finally grabbing you is not left up to chance. Swag Play throws actual tactics out of the window and relies on waiting for the RNG to be nice to you. These are not comparable scenarios.

It is basically a coinflip on whether you get out or not. Chain grabbing and swag playing both take the skill to understand the strategy and understand how to correctly abuse it. I honestly don't think you have ever seen how ridiculous certain players can make wobbling. But that is neither here nor there. I think you missed the point of my post. Basically, I'm saying that swagplay isn't left entirely to chance. You can swagger a gliscor without a sub up, but that is a dumb play. You can likewise attempt an air grab, but both of these simply waste turns on actions that arent as good in the long run. An intelligent swag play user understands this and plays more intelligently than swag and pray. Likewise grab and pray users generally aren't very good. I think the main problem is that these people can still win with poor tactics if they get lucky. A good chain grabber or swag play user are both good competitively, but it is the users who try to abuse the luck based side of the strategy that cause it to become uncompetitive. I believe it should be banned, but I just wanted to explain my thought process on why it wasn't completely luck based when used correctly (although I apparently did a poor job of this).

Edit: also, to add to the thread more than just a little comparison of somewhat similar things that only slightly pertains to the thread. The counter group to banning should realize that a single swag play klefki could also act as a late game sweeper of sorts. You may not have your mandibuzz or sylveon left. You won't always have two defensive Pokemon to switch into. With so few counters to the strategy an intelligent player could use a lure to get rid of many of these pokes before bringing out their swag play user.

 

[Sinning]

It is basically a coinflip on whether you get out or not. Chain grabbing and swag playing both take the skill to understand the strategy and understand how to correctly abuse it. I honestly don't think you have ever seen how ridiculous certain players can make wobbling. But that is neither here nor there. I think you missed the point of my post. Basically, I'm saying that swagplay isn't left entirely to chance. You can swagger a gliscor without a sub up, but that is a dumb play. You can likewise attempt an air grab, but both of these simply waste turns on actions that arent as good in the long run. An intelligent swag play user understands this and plays more intelligently than swag and pray. Likewise grab and pray users generally aren't very good. I think the main problem is that these people can still win with poor tactics if they get lucky. A good chain grabber or swag play user are both good competitively, but it is the users who try to abuse the luck based side of the strategy that cause it to become uncompetitive. I believe it should be banned, but I just wanted to explain my thought process on why it wasn't completely luck based when used correctly (although I apparently did a poor job of this).

No, I just failed to draw comparisons to the utilization of the tactics. Once induced, they do have similar effects, and you did make a good comparison here. The problem with the comparison is the utilization of the strategy. A player cannot "outplay" the spamming of swagger in a sense, and it is too easy to subject your opponent to a game of chance with this strategy, as opposed to the chain grabbing tactic, where a player could keep their distance or use projectile attacks to respond. Depending on the game, I'm sure there are also reasonable counters built into the game to make chain grabbing less potent. Our options here include Numel, which is not reasonable given the environment in which we play. Also, grabbing serves a purpose - to be able to damage an opponent that just sits there and blocks. This, which is it's intentional purpose, has a place in the game. Inducing more of the element of chance in a game already so heavily swayed by chance, serves no (good) purpose, and is not within the spirit of the game.

There are arguments to be made for whether or not Swag Play is in the spirit of the game or not, but this also brings Evasion back into the question, in my opinion.

 

[SanjiWatsuki]

I did some iterated analysis on SwagPlay using a couple of Pokemon. I'm going to generalize the formula to eventually allow for arbitrary Pokemon based on usage data, but here's my initial findings. I ran 10000 simulations of Klefki vs. <Pokemon> for this data. This is a simplified analysis and doesn't perfectly model an actual battle, but is relatively close.

Assumptions are that neither side switches out, ever, and that they fight until the bitter end. PP is not taken into account.

Pokemon     W        L
Blissey        10000     0
Rotom-W        6255     3745
Garchomp    7343     2657
Greninja    3772     6228
Heatran        9101     899
Gliscor        8907     1093
Aegislash    1486     8514
Slowbro        7128     2872

Leftovers IS taken into account.
Klefki uses the following formula:

def swagplay(me, enemy):
if not enemy.confused:
swagger(me, enemy)
elif not me.substitute and me.hp > me.maxhp / 4:
substitute(me, enemy)
else:
foulplay(me, enemy)

In the final iteration of my program, I will improve this formula to the Swaggerificc formula.

I believe this data will aid us in determining the competitiveness of the strategy, by determining how much each match-up is due to luck.

 

[Dragontamer]

Thanks SanjiWatsuki, for bringing in good data to this discussion.

Can you report standard-error as part of the results? Standard Error for a proportion is simply sqrt(p * (1-p) / n), where n is the number of trials and p is the estimated proportion.

For example, Slowbro's proportion is 0.7128. The standard error is sqrt(0.7128 * 0.2872 / 10000) == 0.0045.

So the standard error for Slowbro is 71.28% +/- 0.45% chance to win (68% confidence interval), or +/- 0.9% (95% confidence interval). It helps remind the fact that these are statistically derived values and have some degree of unreliability to them.