te whole meta is based around hazards, in some cases it takes skill and prediction to keep them up, and ditto is surprisingly common.
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SwagPlay, evaluating potential bans (basic definition of "uncompetitive" in OP)
- Thread starter haunter
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But to act as if it takes a brain surgeon to lay down stealth rock and spikes, and then bring in a prankster abuser with sub/swag/t wave/foul play, do as much damage as possible, then switch into a ditto on the boost is just ridiculous. Pokemon isn't even a game that requires skill. Everyone throws the word around, but this game is pretty basic. Whether it takes more or less skill is irrelevant. You could say using a team of NU pokemon in OU takes skill, but "skill" is entirely irrelevant. The Swag Play strategy creates an unhealthy, non-competitive environment by removing player interaction. It should not be allowed.
Gen III shows why Prankster isn't the problem. People says that confusion that outspeeds every Pokemon is bad. This has existed in the past. This "unavoidable 50/50" situation existed in the past, and not a single person thought it was "uncompetitive". People keep saying "Prankster didn't exist" but neither did Choice Scarf, which is the argument as to why Prankster is so bad!. So what is the problem? It's Foul Play. Not Prankster. Not Swagger. It's Foul Play. None of the other "targets" make sense when you think about it for a moment. Parafusion does not, I repeat, does not have teeth without Foul Play. If you get rid of Foul Play, you remove pretty much all the offensive presence of the set. You increase the number of checks and counters dramatically. Swagger + Foul Play is the ban that makes the most sense if you want this in the dust.
This post shows another way to counter this "undefeatable" strategy. Switching constantly between two regenerators. You can add that to the long list of usable thing that also deal well with swaggplay such as taunt, strong priority, toxic spikes, sylveon, blissey, mandibuzz, unaware cleafable, defensive pokes, smartly switching a magic guard pokemon on a predicted t-wave, etc, etc)
But nevermind, I know you guys are going to ignore all this and keep saying that this strategy is OP because the only "real" counter is numel.
Sinning, want to see a game of prankster that requires skill, see this.
But nevermind, I know you guys are going to ignore all this and keep saying that this strategy is OP because the only "real" counter is numel.
Sinning, want to see a game of prankster that requires skill, see this.
Congratulations on missing the point entirely. The point is not that prankster swagger has not been banned before. The point is that a gimmicky, annoying but not overpowered strategy has never been banned before. If smogon bans this, it basically means that they will ban anything as long as a big amount of people complain about it, regardless of whether the srategy is OP or not.
Dragonite and Volcarona in the past, and Talonflame currently disprove that.
so if this game lacks skill, this whole thread is pointless, this thread is to discuss swagplay because everyone is overeacting and saying its too luck based, yourself included. However your post states that pokemon has no skill involved, if there is no skill involved, why complain about luck!? Anywho, banning this makes smogon look rather ridiculous. Never has anything banned because of luck before, with this logic people should vote to ban priority crits because its "OP" this is what this thread is starting to look like
While switching between pokemon dodges the problem, that isn't a counter in my opinion. The ball is still very much in your opponent's court as this strategy has given them free momentum.
As for the replay, I disagree that any amount of incredible skill was shown. You used the strategy and it did what it's supposed to do. From the start, the opponent lost all control of the game. That is not skill being demonstrated, but rather a testament to how powerful this strategy can be. You took the opponent's ability to interact away from him. He got lucky by being allowed a defog, but it really didn't benefit him all that much. From turn one, RNG dictated what he was allowed and not allowed to do with his turn. That is not conductive to a fair environment, and should not be allowed.
Again, the strategy is not overpowered, and my problems with the strategy do not stem from how strong it is. I have a problem when one player can tamper with the other's ability to play the game at all.
Evasion clause.
Honestly banning "SwagPlay" would be utterly ridiculous in my mind.
Relying on luck isn't a very good strategy at all, firstly. Hitting yourself in confusion is just as likely as attacking the opponent and for the person using Klefki (or Liepard) it's a rather flawed strategy.
Secondly, it isn't even difficult to counter this. Switch out to get rid of the confusion to a bulky Pokemon with low attack (ferrothorn) and wait the Pokémon out.
Go into a Pokémon with own tempo
Even getting lucky and snapping out of confusion can be an easy way of avoiding this.
It isnt like SwagPlay is unbalancing the metagame or anything.
get over it, klefki should stay
Relying on luck isn't a very good strategy at all, firstly. Hitting yourself in confusion is just as likely as attacking the opponent and for the person using Klefki (or Liepard) it's a rather flawed strategy.
Secondly, it isn't even difficult to counter this. Switch out to get rid of the confusion to a bulky Pokemon with low attack (ferrothorn) and wait the Pokémon out.
Go into a Pokémon with own tempo
Even getting lucky and snapping out of confusion can be an easy way of avoiding this.
It isnt like SwagPlay is unbalancing the metagame or anything.
get over it, klefki should stay
Not at all. He had the advantage because regenerator ho-oh and ferrohron with lefties could switch countinuosly and stall swagger's PP. I quote mysef from earlier in the thread:
The point is there are smart ways to play both with and against the team. Is not as skill-less as people say.
And I never said that the game demostrated "an amount of incredible skill" (what kind of replay could even show that, really?). Like someone said earlier, people are using the word skill like pokemon was some kind of game reserved for the intellectual elite. Is a game that an eight year old kid can play dude. Is really not THAT difficult.
Nope. Evasion can actually be quite powerfull. Sand teams with Sand veil Garchomp were very powerfull the brief moment Sand veil chomp was in OU. Not to mention things like chansey setting up minimizes on a special attacker and then making the physical attackers unable to hit her most of the time, while recovering health with softboiled. Evasion would be powerfull in addition to being annoying and luck reliant.
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How does one "outplay" chance? Your logic is terrible here, and I'd recommend letting more logical people with your position make the arguments.
lol go outplay the lottery
there's a post above about how evasion was banned for other reasons
I'm going to assume that it's the argument about over centralization, but that's honestly a weak argument because centralizing =/= unfair or overpowered. Rather, unfair and overpowering things because centralizing because they are unfair and overpowered.
The evasion clause may not only be in existence due to the luck based nature of evasion, but we both know it's a major part of why evasion raising moves are not allowed.
Use a Trapper, TrickGhoti can counter chansey and regenerator.
In BW, Landorus-I wasn't banned the first month of Sheer Force.
Filp a coin every turn sound skilled for me.
I was testing SwagPlay in the Uber ladder, i won 37 time thanks to hax (only like two or three forfeits), Only 17 lost battles (swag miss or confusion doesn't work).
No skill involved.
Swagger is both, annoying and luck reliant.
And OHKO Clause?
Well, after that whole Mega Kanga discussion, I had decided to stay away from these posts due to their tendency to degenerate into being hour upon hour of angry, pointless babbling, often involving the physical abuse of multiple deceased equines. After a brief run-through of the discussion, though, I was honestly surprised to see just how many people were in favor of banning Swagger altogether. So, just out of curiosity, could the proponents of that option please give me a run-down of why it's not simply the combination of Prankster + Swagger that's broken? After all, we're not exactly seeing people trembling in terror before Swagplay Umbreon or Electrode.
But not overpowered. And thats the entire point. Smogon (until now) bans things because they are OP, not just because they are luck reliant, much less because a bunch of people find them annoying.
ok ohko clause fair enough
I use SwagPlay, and i fucking kill an Arceus-N and a Groudon using Murkrow. Other user kill a Rotom-W using Purloin in OU.
Evassion is overpowered thanks to luck.
I would have to test this, but I imagine a team of bulky scarfers with moves like sheer cold and a pokemon to handle sturdy users would be actually quite OP in addition to being luck reliant. It would nearly always defeat stall, for example.
And it can also lose against a rattata if the swagger user is unlucky enough. Single cases is not how you prove something is OP. If five out of ten teams in the top 10 OU ladder were prankster teams, then yes, I would agree prankster is OP, but on average it doesnt do much better than a decently build team. The problem is that it allows terrible players to get ratings that they usually would not get, and I can undertand people not liking that, but a prankster team wont get you to number 1 in the ladder. Is too unreliable for that.
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Only 30% of kill vs 50% of hit yourself +Sub+Para all of them with priority.
In both cases you can win only thanks to luck, but you need less luck on the last.
I posted a heap of information in that other thread dealing with Swagplay, so I'll skip the reasons for my decisions because it took an hour to write.
Firstly, option three is not viable IMO. Other people have already explained much better (and quicker) than I why this isn't good, so I'll leave it at that.
While I do not like complex bans, I have to agree that option two sounds the best by far. Banning confusion based moves on Pranksters would solve every single problem I (and many others) have with this strategy. Or maybe even just Swagger + Prankster? It could work but I don't have data on that yet so I don't know if the other confusion moves would be just as bad on this strategy. I do know that at least Ditto on these teams could be kept in check.
Option one, while disheartening, would be my second pick if nobody else likes option 2. The way I see it, confusion has been around since gen 1 and it hasn't really been game breaking. The difference between now and then is that now we have a way to induce confusion while bypassing speed restrictions, and unlike T-wave, Will-o-wisp or the like, nothing but Own Tempo pokemon are immune to it. Of which maybe... two Pokemon(?) viable in OU have this ability. And one of them is Slowbro, which loses out on Regenerator... eh back on track: While banning swagger might be good, I think the second option is far more reliable and settles the problem without much intereference in the rest of the meta.
Ban Swagger and/or confusion moves + Prankster on the same Poke.
Firstly, option three is not viable IMO. Other people have already explained much better (and quicker) than I why this isn't good, so I'll leave it at that.
While I do not like complex bans, I have to agree that option two sounds the best by far. Banning confusion based moves on Pranksters would solve every single problem I (and many others) have with this strategy. Or maybe even just Swagger + Prankster? It could work but I don't have data on that yet so I don't know if the other confusion moves would be just as bad on this strategy. I do know that at least Ditto on these teams could be kept in check.
Option one, while disheartening, would be my second pick if nobody else likes option 2. The way I see it, confusion has been around since gen 1 and it hasn't really been game breaking. The difference between now and then is that now we have a way to induce confusion while bypassing speed restrictions, and unlike T-wave, Will-o-wisp or the like, nothing but Own Tempo pokemon are immune to it. Of which maybe... two Pokemon(?) viable in OU have this ability. And one of them is Slowbro, which loses out on Regenerator... eh back on track: While banning swagger might be good, I think the second option is far more reliable and settles the problem without much intereference in the rest of the meta.
Ban Swagger and/or confusion moves + Prankster on the same Poke.
And you just win if the oponent hits himself once?
You have no idea what you are talking about. Asuming your pokemon doesn't get OHKOed and it is able to fire the OHKO move first thanks to the scarf, a bulky scarfer has a 60% chance of outright killing the other pokemon. It will win more than half of the time. Something like gillotine gliscor could win most of the time against physical attackers very easily, and something super bulky like snorlax would also get several shots at killing special attacker with fissure. And almost every pokemon you would switch in would have a 30% chance of dying. Are you seriously saying that a team based around abusing OHKOs would be less OP than a prankster team?
The things you guys come up with, really.
If they hit themselves, you can Paralize or simple Substitute, if him switch you get a free turn, you doesn't need many luck if you enemy only has less than a 40% chance to break you sub during two or three turns.
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