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

Status
Not open for further replies.
Glare is 100 percent accurate as of Gen 6. It has low distribution, though - the most common user is Zygarde.
Ah, then Glare seemingly is a good candidate for this argument as well. But the low distribution hurts more than likely.
 
I think that both the combinations of Prankster and Swagger, as well as Foul Play + Swagger should be banned. The uncompetitiveness of Prankster Swagger has already been thoroughly explained by other users, but from my experience facing Swagplay teams, I have generally found Swagger followed by Foul Play to be what makes the strategy broken. Foul Play makes a large majority of common Swagger users much more uncompetive, as a majority of common Swagger users can break through the opposing team much easier than they normally could. Swagger's confusing effects already grant the Swagger user free turns to do whatever the hell they want and the attacks boost means that Foul Play is going to do a Shiton of damage and limit the amount of turn the Pokemon affect by Swagger has to react in the situation.

Also, Haunter , I was wondering if these bans are going to apply to the 5th generations as well.
 
I think that both the combinations of Prankster and Swagger, as well as Foul Play + Swagger should be banned. The uncompetitiveness of Prankster Swagger has already been thoroughly explained by other users, but from my experience facing Swagplay teams, I have generally found Swagger followed by Foul Play to be what makes the strategy broken. Foul Play makes a large majority of common Swagger users much more uncompetive, as a majority of common Swagger users can break through the opposing team much easier than they normally could. Swagger's confusing effects already grant the Swagger user free turns to do whatever the hell they want and the attacks boost means that Foul Play is going to do a Shiton of damage and limit the amount of turn the Pokemon affect by Swagger has to react in the situation.

Also, Haunter , I was wondering if these bans are going to apply to the 5th generations as well.
I know the response to this will be "Why should we implement such a complex ban?", but last month Smogon implemented a clause that banned an item in combination with 2 moves. The clause was simplified, but even now the ban boils down to item + move/ability.

If we banned only Prankster + Swagger, we could always expand the rule later.
 
The strategy of swagplay generally isn't good unless you're up against klefki. Klefki is uncompetitive due to its ability to set up 3 layers of spikes, and have ridiculous typing, twave, and screens.

Swagger isn't broken on any other pokemon, even prankster pokemon. It's a viable strategy.

The rest aren't broken with it, and not even half as effective.
 
Yeah, I agree that it was really Klefki that pushed this strategy over the edge. Honestly, the only thing I can really think of that can beat Swagger Klefki (and all of the others save for maybe Sableye) almost 100% is Chansey/Blissey (use 0 AtK IVs). Everything else gets hit with something like 20-40% minimum with Foul Play at +6, which will very easily add up when you inevitably get haxed 2-3 turns in a row.

Chansey/Blissey's reliability does need to be acknowledged, though I think this case is similar to Mega-Kangaskhan. Kanga had a basically 100% counter before in Sableye, and yet it was banned because having one counter isn't really enough. But I will note that last gen, Swagplay was never as overwhelming as it is now. I think the root of its recent popularity lies with Klefki. Perhaps just banning Swagger on Klefki would be the least intrusive solution.
 
Yeah, I agree that it was really Klefki that pushed this strategy over the edge. Honestly, the only thing I can really think of that can beat Swagger Klefki (and all of the others save for maybe Sableye) almost 100% is Chansey/Blissey (use 0 AtK IVs). Everything else gets hit with something like 20-40% minimum with Foul Play at +6, which will very easily add up when you inevitably get haxed 2-3 turns in a row.

Chansey/Blissey's reliability does need to be acknowledged, though I think this case is similar to Mega-Kangaskhan. Kanga had a basically 100% counter before in Sableye, and yet it was banned because having one counter isn't really enough. But I will note that last gen, Swagplay was never as overwhelming as it is now. I think the root of its recent popularity lies with Klefki. Perhaps just banning Swagger on Klefki would be the least intrusive solution.
Tornadus and Thundurus are 100% counters since they can just Taunt it, but neither can switch into Swagger.
 
Yeah, I agree that it was really Klefki that pushed this strategy over the edge. Honestly, the only thing I can really think of that can beat Swagger Klefki (and all of the others save for maybe Sableye) almost 100% is Chansey/Blissey (use 0 AtK IVs). Everything else gets hit with something like 20-40% minimum with Foul Play at +6, which will very easily add up when you inevitably get haxed 2-3 turns

Chansey/Blissey's reliability does need to be acknowledged, though I think this case is similar to Mega-Kangaskhan. Kanga had a basically 100% counter before in Sableye, and yet it was banned because having one counter isn't really enough. But I will note that last gen, Swagplay was never as overwhelming as it is now. I think the root of its recent popularity lies with Klefki. Perhaps just banning Swagger on Klefki would be the least intrusive solution.
just saying oblivious mamoswine and Lum berry chomp counter paraswag
 
Toljik said:
Tornadus and Thundurus are 100% counters since they can just Taunt it, but neither can switch into Swagger.
Tornadus and Thundurus can't recover health. If they try to Taunt and are using a Swagplay set, Chansey/Blissey will just pound at them with Seismic Toss. (Blissey is the best here because of Leftovers).
 
Yeah, I agree that it was really Klefki that pushed this strategy over the edge. Honestly, the only thing I can really think of that can beat Swagger Klefki (and all of the others save for maybe Sableye) almost 100% is Chansey/Blissey (use 0 AtK IVs). Everything else gets hit with something like 20-40% minimum with Foul Play at +6, which will very easily add up when you inevitably get haxed 2-3 turns in a row.

Chansey/Blissey's reliability does need to be acknowledged, though I think this case is similar to Mega-Kangaskhan. Kanga had a basically 100% counter before in Sableye, and yet it was banned because having one counter isn't really enough. But I will note that last gen, Swagplay was never as overwhelming as it is now. I think the root of its recent popularity lies with Klefki. Perhaps just banning Swagger on Klefki would be the least intrusive solution.
Why are you staying in when swagger has you at +6 and you're eating foul plays? Lots of teams have a Rotom-W, who can't get paralyzed and has volt switch. Eat one swagger (or three, however many it takes), then pivot out to a ground type and now you threaten Klefki who 1) doesn't have a sub and 2) is facing a non-confused mon that he can't paralyze and who also has a super effective move. Klefki will likely swagger, and if you hurt yourself, swap back to Rotom and repeat the process until that fucker goes down. If you don't hurt yourself, congrats, dead Klefki.

Teams with stuff like Suicune, Chansey, Zapdos, etc are at even more of an advantage because they can safely stall out all of Klefki's PP, but none of those are used as much as Rotom so I'll stick with him.
 
Only if you are sufficiently lucky. At some point to beat a swagplay team you WILL have to hit the opponent while confused. This alone wouldn't be so bad, but for every turn you hurt yourself in confusion, your opponent gets another chance to hide behind a Substitute, meaning you will have to hit him AGAIN through confusion. You CANNOT beat a swagplay team without some luck.
Again, all it takes is 1 simple Substitute user on your team and you can avoid ALL of this. The only time you have to be lucky is laying the initial substitute, after that you are golden.
Thundurus doesn't even have to be lucky in doing that since he can just prankster the substitute then sweep your whole team.
 
Why are you staying in when swagger has you at +6 and you're eating foul plays? Lots of teams have a Rotom-W, who can't get paralyzed and has volt switch. Eat one swagger (or three, however many it takes), then pivot out to a ground type and now you threaten Klefki who 1) doesn't have a sub and 2) is facing a non-confused mon that he can't paralyze and who also has a super effective move. Klefki will likely swagger, and if you hurt yourself, swap back to Rotom and repeat the process until that fucker goes down. If you don't hurt yourself, congrats, dead Klefki.

Teams with stuff like Suicune, Chansey, Zapdos, etc are at even more of an advantage because they can safely stall out all of Klefki's PP, but none of those are used as much as Rotom so I'll stick with him.
This guy has the right idea and is saying what I've been saying this whole time. The only luck involved is that which you force upon yourself, barring just a few turns, and if you have a special attacker with attack IV set to zero (you should), then eating confusion damage won't even matter.

The key is switching out to void the confusion status. Simple, easy, and effective.

And the other key that I have been saying this whole time is to use a substitute, which makes you immune to all of this bullshit.
Rest is another great option.
 
I can't believe this thread came up. Granted, it's the community that influenced this, but still...

Yes. Liepard and Klefki are insanely annoying and luck-reliant. I've played enough gen 5 nu (arguably the meta where this was used the most) to know that. People who use it rely on coin flips to get anything done, and are poor ladderers in general. It's probably the most obnoxious strategy you'll see when laddering.

But still. Is it really worth banning such a stupid strategy just because it can cause a coin flip? If we do, where do we stop? Do we ban king's rock Cloyster and Cinccino because it can potentially flinch and 2HKO your counter? Ban Dunsparce, Jirachi, and Togekiss because good paralysis and flinch rolls can potentially sweep your team? There's still confuse ray too, after all.

It's a very slippery slope. You ban one luck-reliant strategy and the community will want another gone because it simply frustrated them. Luck is a part of Pokemon and no matter how many bans are taken to limit its influence it will always play a factor. Some bans like evasion and OHKO moves make sense because they take luck to the extreme. But I think moving on to paraswag is a very bad idea.
 

Rurushu

Sleepless Strategist
is a Past WCoP Champion
idk if this has been suggested yet but limiting swagger to one pokémon per team should be enough. Swagger per se is a legitimate move in many cases and so is Klefki, so it'd get rid of an uncompetitive kind of team while still allowing people to gamble with a move that can backfire (like pretty much everything that has a chance to fail) and preserving a pokémon that can offer much more than brainless swagger spam.
 
effyouzion said:
Why are you staying in when swagger has you at +6 and you're eating foul plays?
Chansey/Blissey having to take a +6 Foul Play is a worst-case scenario, as things like Spikestacking can often prevent just switching around to beat it. And even if they do have to take a Foul Play, Blissey takes only slightly more damage than Leftovers and Chansey takes less than 5% with 4/252 Defenses. The pink blobs are about as reliable as it gets.

I'm not arguing that Chansey/Blissey justify that Swagplay is balanced, I'm just bringing them up to attention, because they are effective against it.
 
Chansey/Blissey having to take a +6 Foul Play is a worst-case scenario, as things like Spikestacking can often prevent just switching around to beat it. And even if they do have to take a Foul Play, Blissey takes only slightly more damage than Leftovers and Chansey takes less than 5% with 4/252 Defenses. The pink blobs are about as reliable as it gets.

I'm not arguing that Chansey/Blissey justify that Swagplay is balanced, I'm just bringing them up to attention, because they are effective against it.
Obviously Chansey is a counter, I even mentioned that myself. The guy I quoted was talking about leaving other mons (not Chansey) in against a +6 foul play.

And if you let someone who has a Klefki stack hazards against you, you're doing it wrong.
 
I can't believe this thread came up. Granted, it's the community that influenced this, but still...

Yes. Liepard and Klefki are insanely annoying and luck-reliant. I've played enough gen 5 nu (arguably the meta where this was used the most) to know that. People who use it rely on coin flips to get anything done, and are poor ladderers in general. It's probably the most obnoxious strategy you'll see when laddering.

But still. Is it really worth banning such a stupid strategy just because it can cause a coin flip? If we do, where do we stop? Do we ban king's rock Cloyster, Cinccino because it can potentially flinch and 2HKO your counter? Ban Dunsparce, Jirachi, and Togekiss because good paralysis and flinch rolls can potentially sweep a team? There's still confuse ray too, after all.

It's a very slippery slope. You ban one luck-reliant strategy and the community will want another gone because it simply frustrated them. Luck is a part of Pokemon and no matter how many bans are taken to limit its influence it will always play a factor. Some bans like evasion and OHKO moves make sense because they take this to the extreme. But I think moving on to paraswag is a very bad idea.
I agree with much of what you said but here is the greater point I've been making;

The only luck factor involved is that which you force upon yourself.

By the nature of Paralysis + confusion, you can only be critically damaged if you allow yourself to just sit there eating foul plays at + 4 while hurting yourself.
Why would you ever put yourself in this situation?
If you are dumb enough to leave your physical attacker in for such a situation, then you deserve for it to be 2HKO'd by a klefki who has overwhelming odds in his favor (80% chance of you failing to attack).
A smart player sees the odds of staying in, realizes that the odds are grossly stacked against him, and he switches out.

You do the same thing in any other situation. If he switches alakazam into your fighting-weak pokemon, you know he's about to Focus Blast.
You estimate the odds, see that they are overwhelmingly not in your favor (70% chance of being OHKO'd), and you switch out.

It's only luck-based if you let yourself get narrowed down to a few pokemon that cannot deal with Klefki gracefully.
If you see Klefki on his team, then you should save your zero attack IV special attacker, or your substitute user, or your magic bouncer, or your prankster taunter, or your rest user, or your protect staller, or your dark resist.

If you have none of these left, or if your team didn't even have them in the first place?
Well, you just got outplayed, and you deserve to be subjected to the "coin flip" because the other guy killed your key pokemon and is now acting upon his win condition.
 

BenTheDemon

Banned deucer.
I am in favor of the ban.
There is absolutely nothing competitive about consistently relying on Hax to win.
I don't think it's a broken "strategy", but it's like Double Team, it takes no skill to use, and can cost people games that they deserved to win.
Intentionally turning a game into a dice role has no place in a competitive environment.
 
sorry I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure Lum berry cancels confusion so if you bring in garchomp while he's not swaggering your well off I would think
It can switch into any not-Swagger move, but if you switch in Garchomp to a predcted Swagger and it eats the Lum Berry, it's no longer protected against confusion. Also it works only once, if you're unlucky enough to face that arsehole using 4-6 pranksters.
 
sorry I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure Lum berry cancels confusion so if you bring in garchomp while he's not swaggering your well off I would think
The threat of Garchomp alone makes this strategy less reliant on luck, even if it only works once. Lum Berry Garchomp can wreck your Klefki if you mis-predict, so you need to think instead of mindlessly hitting a move.
 
Something needs to be done about this moronic "strategy" one way or another. Facing it is completely unfun, and the strategy is almost entirely skill-free to use. You're essentially taking the game out of the hands of the players and placing it solely in the hands of the RNG. People who are actually in defense of this stupidity are just talking shit. I'm personally in favour of banning the combination of Prankster + Swagger. Without the Prankster priority, Swagger + Foul Play becomes much more manageable, as you can simply use a fast sub to block it, or scare the offending Swagger user off with a faster poke that can kill it. You don't have to use shitty Own Tempo users, or shoehorn Thundurus onto your team, or slap random Lum berries on everything. Banning Swagger by itself doesn't appeal to me as much - as I've said, it's specifically the priority from Prankster that breaks Swagger, and without that, it can be countered without using niche strategies. Also, banning it would also kill off a couple of strategies that I think are perfectly legit, such as SwagSire and Swagger + Psych Up. However, at the same time if there's a reluctance on Smogon's behalf to introduce a complex ban, then I'm okay with just banning Swagger also, as the only other solution to the problem at hand is banning Prankster, and we'd lose a lot more banning that than banning Swagger.
 
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-91042093
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-91058271

Oh god, this is funny.

Seriously, if swagplay can be checked or countered isent the point.
The question is: why we need it?
Is like Double Team or Minimize.
The only moves the metagame "need" are Tackle and Return. (This needs to be an OMOTM). Nothing is strictly necessary in Pokemon.

Besides, how do you define "SwagPlay"? Swagger + Foul Play? Swagger + Prankster? Any confusion move at all?

If there's going to be a ban, we need to decide on the scope of it.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

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

Top