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

[atomicllamas]

Simple fix. Allow only 1 or 2 prankster pokemon per team. This is the best solution for all.

I don't get why people who are anti swagger prankster ban keep suggesting this, since it literally does not address people's concerns with this at all, and imposes an unnecessary team building restriction that does not address the problem. By insinuating the number of prankster swagger users that should be allowed on a team be limited, you are essentially agreeing that it is an uncompetitive strategy. However there is nothing inherently uncompetitive about using Klefki, Sableye, Thundurus, and Tornadus on the same team, so your ban eliminates legitimate competitive strategies as well as failing to address the uncompetitiveness that goes in hand with prankster swagger.

stuff above

No one wants to remove all elements of chance from the game of pokemon, no one has even argued that. People have a problem with people using a "strategy" of introducing as much luck into the game as possible, a series of coin flips, in order to beat the other player. In games without prankster swagger I would say the player that exhibits more skill wins ~ 75% of the time, in a game with prankster swagger where it is almost completely up to chance, this is not acceptable in a competitive game. Prankster Swagger removes a large portion of the element of decision making that differentiates competitive pokemon from games of pure chance like roulette and candy land. Neither of those games are competitive, and neither is prankster swagger, so a competitive pokemon university should attempt to remove this "strategy" from the meta game.

 

[Kairyu_Gen1]

Many of the people supporting a proposed ban of Swagger (or, more broadly, all status-category moves which induce confusion) keep suggesting that:

1. Elements of chance are uncompetitive.
2. Elements of chance therefore have no place in a competitive game.

I'm going to have to disagree with the second assertion. There are many popular games which are highly competitive but involve varying degrees of elements of chance. Some of the most well-known examples are poker and mahjong. (Not Solitaire Mahjong. Real mahjong.) These games are enjoyed by millions of players all over the world, have professional circuits and organizations, and host regular tournaments which attract the best of the best. Suggesting that chance has no business being in a competitive game is to suggest that mahjong or poker should not even exist. "I should be able to know what you have in your hand. That I have to guess is unfair. It reduces the game to a coin flip." That's essentially what you guys are saying.

There are also many popular games which are highly competitive and have little element of chance. Two well-known examples are chess and Go. These games are likewise enjoyed by millions of players the world over, have professional circuits and organizations, and host regular tournaments which attract the best of the best.

Pokémon, as it exists and was created by Game Freak, is a game that has more in common with poker than it does with chess. There are many elements of chance built into the game.

• Do you attack this turn despite being asleep / paralyzed / confused / attracted / frozen?
• Does your attack hit?
• Does your opponent stay put or switch?
• Do you land a critical hit?
• Do you outspeed your opponent?
• Which ability is your opponent running?
• Which moves is your opponent running?

Heck, before Team Preview was standardized in Gen 5, one of the biggest elements of chance in the entire game was not knowing what creatures your opponent had until they were sent out.

Therefore, it seems to me to be somewhat absurd that the disaffected vocal minority who want to see Pokémon transmogrified into PokéChess should get their way. You may be tempted to tell the rest of us that if we like elements of chance then we should go play some other game instead ... but I feel like it's we who should be telling you that. ^^; If elements of chance are anathema to your enjoyment of competitive play, then perhaps you should seriously look into playing some other game besides Pokémon. It clearly wasn't designed for you, from the ground up. The accusations that elements of chance have no place in competitive play are patently false given the widespread enjoyment of competitive games with elements of chance built into their very foundations. I mean, heck: if the enormous popularity of the Random Battle format doesn't prove to you that many fans like an element of surprise and uncertainty in their Pokémon, then I don't know what does. Yes, this is OU, not RandBats. We makes rules that suit the needs of OU and OU players here. But to suggest that elements of chance have absolutely no business being in OU is simply ludicrous.

First, let me emphasize that pokemon is NOT mahjong.

Okay. Now, while I don't disagree with your overall sentiment, I will say a few things.

The 1st, 2nd, and 4th items on your list have been discussed and suggested to be withing the "acceptable variation from a skill centrality" (with a possible exception of confusion, which is what is being discussed).

The 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th all have little to do with chance and more to do with strategy and skill, and therefore don't really support keeping luck based items in the game at all.

Luck is and should be tolerated to a certain degree, but it seems that once the game reaches a point where skill is second to luck in determining a winner, few people will stand for it

 

[blazeVA]

For the sake of argument, I would like people to look at http://veekun.com/dex/moves/swagger . Veekun allows you to sort by speed, and I do ask that people do so, because it essentially proves that Prankster isn't the problem. Why?

Look at all the Pokemon that get Swagger. The fastest Pokemon in the game get Swagger. So how will banning Prankster + Swagger actually fix the issue? It won't.

 

[Sinning]

Many of the people supporting a proposed ban of Swagger (or, more broadly, all status-category moves which induce confusion) keep suggesting that:

1. Elements of chance are uncompetitive.
2. Elements of chance therefore have no place in a competitive game.

I'm going to have to disagree with the second assertion. There are many popular games which are highly competitive but involve varying degrees of elements of chance. Some of the most well-known examples are poker and mahjong. (Not Solitaire Mahjong. Real mahjong.) These games are enjoyed by millions of players all over the world, have professional circuits and organizations, and host regular tournaments which attract the best of the best. Suggesting that chance has no business being in a competitive game is to suggest that mahjong or poker should not even exist. "I should be able to know what you have in your hand. That I have to guess is unfair. It reduces the game to a coin flip." That's essentially what you guys are saying.

There are also many popular games which are highly competitive and have little element of chance. Two well-known examples are chess and Go. These games are likewise enjoyed by millions of players the world over, have professional circuits and organizations, and host regular tournaments which attract the best of the best.

Pokémon, as it exists and was created by Game Freak, is a game that has more in common with poker than it does with chess. There are many elements of chance built into the game.

• Do you attack this turn despite being asleep / paralyzed / confused / attracted / frozen?
• Does your attack hit?
• Does your opponent stay put or switch?
• Do you land a critical hit?
• Do you outspeed your opponent?
• Which ability is your opponent running?
• Which moves is your opponent running?

Heck, before Team Preview was standardized in Gen 5, one of the biggest elements of chance in the entire game was not knowing what creatures your opponent had until they were sent out.

Therefore, it seems to me to be somewhat absurd that the disaffected vocal minority who want to see Pokémon transmogrified into PokéChess should get their way. You may be tempted to tell the rest of us that if we like elements of chance then we should go play some other game instead ... but I feel like it's we who should be telling you that. ^^; If elements of chance are anathema to your enjoyment of competitive play, then perhaps you should seriously look into playing some other game besides Pokémon. It clearly wasn't designed for you, from the ground up. The accusations that elements of chance have no place in competitive play are patently false given the widespread enjoyment of games with elements of chance built into their very foundations. I mean, heck: if the enormous popularity of the Random Battle format doesn't prove to you that many fans like an element of surprise and uncertainty in their Pokémon, then I don't know what does. Yes, this is OU, not RandBats. We makes rules that suit the needs of OU and OU players here. But to suggest that elements of chance have absolutely no business being in OU is simply ludicrous.

I completely agree with you. Pokemon, in it's purest sense, is not a competitive game. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't make a great competitive game if a few issues were ironed out.

If we like elements of chance in pokemon, however, then we should remove evasion clause, sleep clause, and all of our other arbitrary rules that we've created for the sake of a fun and fair game, and get back to playing pokemon in it's truest form. I, for one, would much rather not do that. Suggesting that elements of chance have no place in the metagame is not ludicrous. It's anything but ludicrous.

If we want to create as competitive of a gamestate as possible, these kinds of things are necessary. We must remove strategies that promote little to no interactivity between players. We want players to play against one another - that is competition, which is vital in a competitive environment. When you allow things like Minimize, OHKO moves, Spore spamming, and Swagger + paralysis to exist, it does not promote competition. It promotes a coin-flip meta, in which whoever is more lucky is going to succeed. When superior play is not awarded the win, or when superior play has become the less optimal way to play, in favor of strategies of luck, that is a non-competitive game. Allowing Swagger + Thunder wave + Prankster is allowing a non-competitive strategy to exist within the metagame.

 

[JMach]

Forget the long paragraphs, SwagPlay tactics are cheap, unfair and boring. Anyone trying to defend them needs to stop what they're doing and sit on the naughty step forever. BANPLZ

 

[Suisho]

No one wants to remove all elements of chance from the game of pokemon, no one has even argued that. People have a problem with people using a "strategy" of introducing as much luck into the game as possible, a series of coin flips, in order to beat the other player. In games without prankster swagger I would say the player that exhibits more skill wins ~ 75% of the time, in a game with prankster swagger where it is almost completely up to chance, this is not acceptable in a competitive game. Prankster Swagger removes a large portion of the element of decision making that differentiates competitive pokemon from games of pure chance like roulette and candy land. Neither of those games are competitive, and neither is prankster swagger, so a competitive pokemon university should attempt to remove this "strategy" from the meta game.

The problem is that the people I am describing are calling for confusion's head on a silver platter rather than addressing the real problem at hand. The problem isn't confusion. The problem isn't Swagger. The problem isn't even Swagplay, uncompetitive though many may feel it to be. The problem is that Swagplay is easily copied and pasted and that, owing to the nature of how it works ...

• doesn't want the user to get hit (most users are fragile)
• always goes first (courtesy of Prankster) when setting up
• strikes behind the safety of a sub, confusion, paralysis, or any combination thereof

... these copied-pasted sets are effectively making the Pokémon functional clones of one another. In other words, Liepard = Murkrow = Klefki. There's no meaningful difference between them (because of the moveset + ability) and so we may as well be describing a team which has three, four, or six Liepards rather than one which has three, four, or six Pranksters of different species.

The problem isn't the moveset: the problem is the de facto evasion of Species Clause. Banning Swagplay is a temporary measure to nip this one annoying archetype in the bud, but there's a much greater problem facing Smogon as we move forward: Game Freak's willingness to create functional clones of Pokémon. Parafusion Prankster seems to be the first of this that we're seeing but it almost certainly won't be the last. Rather than dismantle the moveset, I think the staff should be focusing on dismantling the team itself. And you dismantle the team by restricting how many copies of this otherwise-legal creature can be run.

 

[Timpsu]

For the sake of argument, I would like people to look at http://veekun.com/dex/moves/swagger . Veekun allows you to sort by speed, and I do ask that people do so, because it essentially proves that Prankster isn't the problem. Why?

Look at all the Pokemon that get Swagger. The fastest Pokemon in the game get Swagger. So how will banning Prankster + Swagger actually fix the issue? It won't.

Regardless of how fast a Pokemon is, it can always be revenge-killed, for example, with a Scarf. And there is no such thing as a Scarfed Swagger, or if there will be, then well, sounds awkward. I know revenge-killing does not usually count as an argument in these, but I guess we can make an exception since this is not a usual suspect discussion, let alone suspect discussion at all.

 

[Karxrida]

Many of the people supporting a proposed ban of Swagger (or, more broadly, all status-category moves which induce confusion) keep suggesting that:

1. Elements of chance are uncompetitive.
2. Elements of chance therefore have no place in a competitive game.

I'm going to have to disagree with the second assertion. There are many popular games which are highly competitive but involve varying degrees of elements of chance. Some of the most well-known examples are poker and mahjong. (Not Solitaire Mahjong. Real mahjong.) These games are enjoyed by millions of players all over the world, have professional circuits and organizations, and host regular tournaments which attract the best of the best. Suggesting that chance has no business being in a competitive game is to suggest that mahjong or poker should not even exist. "I should be able to know what you have in your hand. That I have to guess is unfair. It reduces the game to a coin flip." That's essentially what you guys are saying.

There are also many popular games which are highly competitive and have little element of chance. Two well-known examples are chess and Go. These games are likewise enjoyed by millions of players the world over, have professional circuits and organizations, and host regular tournaments which attract the best of the best.

Pokémon, as it exists and was created by Game Freak, is a game that has more in common with poker than it does with chess. There are many elements of chance built into the game.

• Do you attack this turn despite being asleep / paralyzed / confused / attracted / frozen?
• Does your attack hit?
• Does your opponent stay put or switch?
• Do you land a critical hit?
• Do you outspeed your opponent?
• Which ability is your opponent running?
• Which moves is your opponent running?

Heck, before Team Preview was standardized in Gen 5, one of the biggest elements of chance in the entire game was not knowing what creatures your opponent had until they were sent out.

Therefore, it seems to me to be somewhat absurd that the disaffected vocal minority who want to see Pokémon transmogrified into PokéChess should get their way. You may be tempted to tell the rest of us that if we like elements of chance then we should go play some other game instead ... but I feel like it's we who should be telling you that. ^^; If elements of chance are anathema to your enjoyment of competitive play, then perhaps you should seriously look into playing some other game besides Pokémon. It clearly wasn't designed for you, from the ground up. The accusations that elements of chance have no place in competitive play are patently false given the widespread enjoyment of competitive games with elements of chance built into their very foundations. I mean, heck: if the enormous popularity of the Random Battle format doesn't prove to you that many fans like an element of surprise and uncertainty in their Pokémon, then I don't know what does. Yes, this is OU, not RandBats. We makes rules that suit the needs of OU and OU players here. But to suggest that elements of chance have absolutely no business being in OU is simply ludicrous.

There's a problem here with your comparison. I'm just going to talk about Poker since I don't know anything about Mojang.

Poker is a heavily luck-based game slightly influenced by skill, i.e. bluffing.
Pokemon is a heavily skill-based game slightly influenced by luck, i.e. crits, status, and secondary effects.

Assuming neither player folds, skill means nothing if you end up with a hand of junk and your opponent gets a Royal Flush. It's all luck.
Assuming neither player forfeits, the more skilled player will probably win unless they get haxed to death 10 turns in a row, i.e. SwagPlay.

Ban Prankster + Swagger on the same Mon.

 

[TheNewLegendTrio]

I would definitely ban it in a complex ban format. Having a combination of swagger and prankster isn't only putting the game to luck, but wouldn't be fun to some users. Banning Pokemon would be a bad Idea all in itself, some highly used competitive Pokemon would be unusable (Thundurus, Tornadus, etc.). Banning swagger would be easier but would take the user that use swagger for other reasons, as to actually set up a sweep, wouldn't be able to. So my personal opinion is to ban swagger and prankster combination.

 

[Lulz. N3CR0M4NC3R]

Banning Prankster won't help much, seeing as Thundurus and Liepard, the most common users of SwagPlay, are already sitting at base 111 and 106. All it will do is make sure that the strategy will not work against other Priorities or Pokémon with more than base 111 Speed.

 

[Aasgier]

Pokémon, as it exists and was created by Game Freak, is a game that has more in common with poker than it does with chess. There are many elements of chance built into the game.

Good lord, poker players will be insulted. Poker, especially Texas Hold'em, is actually more skill-based than chance based - the better player has a 96% chance to win.
That chance is actually pretty similar compared with chess in that regard.

The fact that you can throw away your hand (called folding) with Texas Hold'em is very convenient, because you can play around bad draws that way, provided you are skilled enough.

Also, with Texas, 1vs1 is more skill-based than when eight players duke it out.

 

[KztxL7]

• Do you attack this turn despite being asleep / paralyzed / confused / attracted / frozen?
• Does your attack hit?
• Does your opponent stay put or switch?
• Do you land a critical hit?
• Do you outspeed your opponent?
• Which ability is your opponent running?
• Which moves is your opponent running?

What makes Confusion coming from Swagger/Flatter/Confuse Ray completely different from these, particularly when used in conjunction with Prankster, is that you are forcibly putting your opponent into a 50/50 (way too high) situation by your own will.

Half of those are self-ingrained version of luck or personally choosing a risk/reward situation.

Good lord, poker players will be insulted. Poker, especially Texas Hold'em, is actually more skill-based than chance based - the better player has a 96% chance to win.
That chance is actually pretty similar compared with chess in that regard.

All you need is a Queen.

Heh.

 

[Kairyu_Gen1]

Regardless of how fast a Pokemon is, it can always be revenge-killed, for example, with a Scarf. And there is no such thing as a Scarfed Swagger, or if there will be, then well, sounds awkward. I know revenge-killing does not usually count as an argument in these, but I guess we can make an exception since this is not a usual suspect discussion, let alone suspect discussion at all.

Reveng killing has a place in this argument because of the nature of confusion. You don't have to lose a pokemon to "revenge" kill a swagger inducer. Prankster swagger on the other hand can't even be revenge killed effectively, so there's obviously something wrong with this picture

 

[Toljik]

For the sake of argument, I would like people to look at http://veekun.com/dex/moves/swagger . Veekun allows you to sort by speed, and I do ask that people do so, because it essentially proves that Prankster isn't the problem. Why?

Look at all the Pokemon that get Swagger. The fastest Pokemon in the game get Swagger. So how will banning Prankster + Swagger actually fix the issue? It won't.

Here's a bold sentence for you: All Choice Scarf users faster than Emolga can outspeed Deoxys-S, the fastest Pokemon in the game. People need to stop suggesting that if Prankster Swagger gets banned, people are going to win games with SwagPlay Deoxys-S and Electode.

 

[blazeVA]

Here's a bold sentence for you: All Choice Scarf users faster than Emolga can outspeed Deoxys-S, the fastest Pokemon in the game. People need to stop suggesting that if Prankster Swagger gets banned, people are going to win games with SwagPlay Deoxys-S and Electode.

You really need to stop assuming that's what other people are actually saying. I never once said that people will win with SwagPlay with Electrode. Terrakion and Latios do exist(though I haven't seen Scarf versions of them in a while.) The argument is that confusion's 50/50 chance is uncompetitive and that getting rid of Prankster will help. And it might, but only slightly. That's what that link is supposed to show. Even with Prankster gone, having to deal with Swagger coming from Deo-S or Ninjask is still going to be an issue. Which is why I don't say Prankster is the issue. Choice Scarf hasn't existed for two generations in which Swagger did. Confusion hasn't changed since then. Was Confusion bad then? No. It wasn't bad when a Pokemon with Swagger like Deo-S or Ninjask forced every single Pokemon in existence into a 50/50. So is Prankster bad? Nope. The problem lies elsewhere.

 

[Sinning]

The problem is that the people I am describing are calling for confusion's head on a silver platter rather than addressing the real problem at hand. The problem isn't confusion. The problem isn't Swagger. The problem isn't even Swagplay, uncompetitive though many may feel it to be. The problem is that Swagplay is easily copied and pasted and that, owing to the nature of how it works ...

• doesn't want the user to get hit (most users are fragile)
• always goes first (courtesy of Prankster) when setting up
• strikes behind the safety of a sub, confusion, paralysis, or any combination thereof

... these copied-pasted sets are effectively making the Pokémon functional clones of one another. In other words, Liepard = Murkrow = Klefki. There's no meaningful difference between them (because of the moveset + ability) and so we may as well be describing a team which has three, four, or six Liepards rather than one which has three, four, or six Pranksters of different species.

The problem isn't the moveset: the problem is the de facto evasion of Species Clause. Banning Swagplay is a temporary measure to nip this one annoying archetype in the bud, but there's a much greater problem facing Smogon as we move forward: Game Freak's willingness to create functional clones of Pokémon. Parafusion Prankster seems to be the first of this that we're seeing but it almost certainly won't be the last. Rather than dismantle the moveset, I think the staff should be focusing on dismantling the team itself. And you dismantle the team by restricting how many copies of this otherwise-legal creature can be run.

I don't even necessarily think that having multiple pokemon with similar movesets is the problem. Latias and Latios are pretty similar in terms of stats, movepool, ability, etc. yet are still fine on the same team. In fact, they're very redundant, and having both on the same team probably isn't a great idea. Having multiple swagplay mons on the same team wouldn't be an issue if the strategy wasn't inherently unfair.

To me, the entire problem is much too complex to pin it down to one aspect of the strategy. The problem with the strategy is that it allows a player to play highly aggressively, while also playing highly defensively. It creates a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for the opposing player. If you try to knock out the pokemon utilizing the strategy, you'll either just hurt yourself, or you won't do anything, which gives the using pokemon another turn of leftover recovery to make another substitute when you finally manage to break it, or it gives it the knock out through using foul play. Even if you do move, you'll only hit a substitute which you may or may not even break.

I believe Prankster, as an ability, is fine. It serves a purpose in that it can counter extremely fast pokemon. This has no negative effect on the game. Thunder wave, as a move, is fine. It counters fast pokemon, and by itself, is not incredibly luck-based or unfair. It has a reasonable counter in the form of Heal Bell/Aromatherapy. No negative effect on the game. Substitute is a fine move. It is very powerful when used at the right time, and it can counter other powerful things in the game - namely status. It can win games, but in that case, the move did not win the game - rather, smart play won the game. Swagger, as a move, is not fine. My reasoning behind this statement is that Swagger would not be used if Prankster, Substitute, and Foul Play, or any combination of these things were not allowed with it. It is used purely to create situations where the opponent's ability to play pokemon is tampered with, through the additional use of other moves like Thunder Wave to create hax. Players should not be able to create hax. This is different than allowing moves like Thunder Wave and Spore to exist, since those moves are easily counterable. Swagger + Thunder Wave sitting behind a substitute while you have the best defensive typing in the game is not acceptable. Swagger, on it's own, is not powerful enough to warrant a ban. However, it is never used on it's own in serious play, which is what we should care about. Other moves enable Swagger to be unfair, and this all stems from the fact that Confusion is not considered a status like Burn, Paralysis, or Sleep.

If I were responsible for a solution, I would ban Swagger. I believe this move would be the least damaging and most easily-made ban.

 

[Slayer95]

The problem isn't the moveset: the problem is the de facto evasion of Species Clause. Banning Swagplay is a temporary measure to nip this one annoying archetype in the bud, but there's a much greater problem facing Smogon as we move forward: Game Freak's willingness to create functional clones of Pokémon. Parafusion Prankster seems to be the first of this that we're seeing but it almost certainly won't be the last. Rather than dismantle the moveset, I think the staff should be focusing on dismantling the team itself. And you dismantle the team by restricting how many copies of this otherwise-legal creature can be run.

This and totally this! I would have written that myself, but unfortunatelly it can't be really addressed in this thread. Also, updating Species Clause to agree with its original spirit is not very viable now. Or is it?

Ability Clause: no team can have 2 or more pokemon with the same ability.

However, this fails to disable the strategies of Double Dragon and Double Bird, where mons just team to defeat their counters dafuq...

 

[Ajwf]

That's an absolutely awful idea, Slayer. Rengerator cores exist, as do intimidate cores. What about levitate? Gengar and Latias would be forced not to be able to be on the same team.

 

[Sergeant Spooky]

This and totally this! I would have written that myself, but unfortunatelly it can't be really addressed in this thread. Also, updating Species Clause to agree with its original spirit is not very viable now. Or is it?

An ability clause would catch not-broken stuff like Regenerator cores and that one team with 5 pressure stallers+Ditto (which is really fun to use.) It's pretty over kill if they only thing that is a problem is Prankser+Swagger.

 

[Slayer95]

Oh Levitate... well then the answer to "Or is it?" is "NO".

 

[Alejandro36]

A competitive game is one in which the better player with the better team wins as close to 100% of the time as possible. Whilst it is clear that there will always be luck associated with the game, whether that be critical hits or the necessity of a miss chance when running a physical Rock STAB, for example, this does not mean it is acceptable to keep playing with further luck elements that we have the potential to remove.

Then you are playing the wrong game, really. A competitive game, according to your definition, would be something like chess. A bad player can beat a good player in pokemon if his team coincidentially happens to have the perfect counters to the better player's team, or if the bad player has some obscure pokemon that the better player. As far as luck elements that we have "potential to remove", that applies to stuff like ice beam too. I have lost more than one game because my oponent got a lucky freeze on an ice beam. We have the potential to remove something like the 10% freeze chance from the game. Should we do it?

What I asked before and I would very much like to know is this: How many Prankster teams can you actually find in the top 20 of the OU ladder? or the top 50? Because I think people are overestimating how powerfull those teams actually are. Everybody is focusing on the times the prankster player wins because of pure luck but not taking into account that around half of the time he is losing because of pure luck as well.

And as I said before, what people are also not taking into account is that one of the reason why those teams get to a high rating is because there is some percentage of people who rage quit on them and forfeit games that they could have won. Is not because they are so powerfull.

 

[Chaosreaver]

See, Swagger w/o Prankster isn't broken per say, but Swagger with Prankster is, in that your Swagger almost always moves first, leading to the confusion being able to work almost all the time.

I agree it's not broken, BUT the problem isn't that it's broken or not, it's that it's simply too good of a tactic presently. Even without Prankster, throwing it on anything with viable enough speed can still nearly demolish opponents.

I would say this applies to confusion as well, but the problem comes in when Swagger give the +2 attack. Its synergy with Foul Play is perfect, not to mention it allows an Imposter Ditto to come in and grab the opponent's buffs in the worst case scenario.

But perhaps you do bring up a point in that a non-prankster user can still be reliably taunted from a FoulPlay combo, leaving it set-up fodder for a special attacker.

I'm still really on the fence as to whether this tactic is 'noobish' or just plain broken in terms of effectiveness.

 

[Toljik]

You really need to stop assuming that's what other people are actually saying. I never once said that people will win with SwagPlay with Electrode. Terrakion and Latios do exist(though I haven't seen Scarf versions of them in a while.) The argument is that confusion's 50/50 chance is uncompetitive and that getting rid of Prankster will help. And it might, but only slightly. That's what that link is supposed to show. Even with Prankster gone, having to deal with Swagger coming from Deo-S or Ninjask is still going to be an issue. Which is why I don't say Prankster is the issue. Choice Scarf hasn't existed for two generations in which Swagger did. Confusion hasn't changed since then. Was Confusion bad then? No. It wasn't bad when a Pokemon with Swagger like Deo-S or Ninjask forced every single Pokemon in existence into a 50/50. So is Prankster bad? Nope. The problem lies elsewhere.

It's not a 50/50 (more more 45/55 thanks to Swagger's accuracy) chance if a Swagger user can be outsped and KO'd before it even gets a chance to use it. That was the point of mentioning Choice Scarf users. You don't even need a Scarf - OU is full of powerful priority users.

Notice that nobody is complaining about Swagger Umbreon here. It's Klefki, Thundurus and Liepard that are driving people to ban the move.

Then you are playing the wrong game, really. A competitive game, according to your definition, would be something like chess. A bad player can beat a good player in pokemon if his team coincidentially happens to have the perfect counters to the better player's team, or if the bad player has some obscure pokemon that the better player. As far as luck elements that we have "potential to remove", that applies to stuff like ice beam too. I have lost more than one game because my oponent got a lucky freeze on an ice beam. We have the potential to remove something like the 10% freeze chance from the game. Should we do it?

What I asked before and I would very much like to know is this: How many Prankster teams can you actually find in the top 20 of the OU ladder? or the top 50? Because I think people are overestimating how powerfull those teams actually are. Everybody is focusing on the times the prankster player wins because of pure luck but not taking into account that around half of the time he is losing because of pure luck as well.

And as I said before, what people are also not taking into account is that one of the reason why those teams get to a high rating is because there is some percentage of people who rage quit on them and forfeit games that they could have won. Is not because they are so powerfull.

The response to this type of post is usually "Name one good reason we should keep Swagger". But to use your Ice Beam example: name one good reason we shouldn't remove the Freeze status effect. Name one good reason we shouldn't remove flinching from all moves not named Fake Out. Name one good reason not to remove "full paralysis", and make paralysis solely a Speed-reducing effect.

 

[Agent Gibbs]

The response to this type of post is usually "Name one good reason we should keep Swagger". But to use your Ice Beam example: name one good reason we shouldn't remove the Freeze status effect. Name one good reason we shouldn't remove flinching from all moves not named Fake Out. Name one good reason not to remove "full paralysis", and make paralysis solely a Speed-reducing effect.

Because that would be altering game mechanics, which cannot be done without extreme hacking and tampering of the game's code. Banning Swagger is something that can be easily implemented in cartridge play, while removing secondary effects is not.

 

[Alejandro36]

The response to this type of post is usually "Name one good reason we should keep Swagger". But to use your Ice Beam example: name one good reason we shouldn't remove the Freeze status effect. Name one good reason we shouldn't remove flinching from all moves not named Fake Out. Name one good reason not to remove "full paralysis", and make paralysis solely a Speed-reducing effect.

Because at some point you are not playing pokemon anymore. You made it so different that is no longer the game that got people hooked up in the first place.

And thank you for proving that what "against-ban" people are saying in this thread. It is not an imaginary slippery slope. The slippery slope is very real. Remove swagger from the game, and soon there will be people like you asking to remove other luck elements as well. There will always be some luck elements that have potentiall for abuse. The moment nintendo actually makes a good fast pokemon that can abuse skill link + kings rock (41% chance of flinching, which is actually quite close to the 45% of swagger) you will see people wanting to abuse it and people wanting to remove it as well.