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

[Exxodus]

It just outclasses if you are facing a offensive mon. And that you can't control, when you send klefki, your opponent control to who he switch.

Ok. And what stops the SwagPlay team from running a Thundurus set like this?

name: Wallbreaker Swag
move 1: Swagger
move 2: Foul Play
move 3: Hidden Power Ice
move 4: SuperPower
ability: Prankster
item: Leftovers
nature: Naive
evs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe

This beats Gliscor and Blissey/Chansey trying to PP stall SwagPlay. And you don't even know what other crazy shit the SwagPlayer is running.

 

[Nix_Hex]

Since this discussion isn't necessarily organized and I'm on my phone, I want to address something I've seen in this thread too often and is just a misunderstanding of the real problem.

SwagPlay / Prankster - Swagger is not OP because it's luck based and can't get you to the top of the ladder.
This misses the point entirely. This strategy isn't on the (potential) chopping block because it's OP but because it's uncompetitive. It might not get the player to the top of the ladder but it can certainly disrupt another player who plays by "normal" strategies who IS trying to get to the top. Besides being uncompetitive at its heart, it's also a huge waste of time for that person. Who wants to sit there waiting for their Mandibuzz to stall out a (insert swagplay mon) and take squat from its own confusion and squat from Foul Play? Who wants to endlessly boost their Clefable just to waste Substitute PP and hope to catch a lucky break? It's a strange brew of boring and pull-your-hair-out frustrating that is a waste of a typical ladderer's precious time and, unlike other troll strategies, it can take an hour or even more to beat.

tl;dr if you're arguing for not banning a strategy because it can't get you to the top of the ladder doesn't mean you aren't disrupting other players. It's not all about you.

 

[GuilherWolfang]

Just because foul play was meant to be used on defensive sets does not make that balanced, it makes it synergetic. That's like saying choice specs was made for kyurem- w, so it's balanced. The problem definitely isn't swagger, nor is it thunder wave, substitute, prankster, or even foul play (by itself). But those things combine to create a perfect storm, and when the arguments to keep it around are "use a counter" then we're getting into centralization, which is just another reason to ban it.

I'm not here to cry about how I lose to this strategy. Everybody loses to this strategy - even the best players - unless they're playing a team tailored to beat this strategy (again, getting into centralization). This strategy is uncompetitive because it throws strategy out the window. No longer are we outplaying the opponent when we come against this strategy; rather, we are simply waiting for the RNG gods to smile upon us.

The only difference between this strategy and evasion is that evasion has reliable counters that would not otherwise be dead weight in the metagame. Numel, being pretty much the only 100% counter, is, bluntly, a piece of shit. Therefore, it's not a viable counter.

Keeping this strategy contributes nothing good to the metagame, and only serves to steal wins from more skilled players.

Disagree with some things, as you need turns to setup this, one turn to swagger, one to T-wave etc and with EVERY opponent pokemon, and we can agree that a strategy that creates hax in not unconpetitive.

But I agree with the first paragraph...the COMBINATION of confusion, foul play, paralisys, substitute and prankster in a defensive pokemon is too good. I'm agains ban, but IF we have to ban...we would have to ban the whole set! we would have to ban using klefki with these 4 moves together. Because without one of them this strategy is MUCH less powerfull. Without sub it can go down in one attack or gert statused too. without foul play it doenst have attack power and become a lot less powerfull than paraflinch, without swagger or or T-wave you lose parafusion and if parafusion itself is not worth a ban.

So the solution is NOT ban OR BAN THE ENTIRE SET.

 

[Sinning]

I'm honestly baffled that this is allowed, but the evasion clause exists. Why ban evasion if we can just use a counter, like so many people have argued here for keeping swag play? In fact, why ban anything? Use a counter, you bunch of fucking scrubs.

We either ban all uncompetitive things in order to create the most competitive form of pokemon, or we don't. We can't just ban evasion but allow something that is debatably worse, or at least just as unfair, to exist. We need uniformity in our standards.

Ban swag play, or unban evasion and OHKO moves. Can anybody even attempt to argue against this without looking like a joke?

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

Disagree with some things, as you need turns to setup this, one turn to swagger, one to T-wave etc and with EVERY opponent pokemon, and we can agree that a strategy that creates hax in not unconpetitive.

But I agree with the first paragraph...the COMBINATION of confusion, foul play, paralisys, substitute and prankster in a defensive pokemon is too good. I'm agains ban, but IF we have to ban...we would have to ban the whole set! we would have to ban using klefki with these 4 moves together. Because without one of them this strategy is MUCH less powerfull. Without sub it can go down in one attack or gert statused too. without foul play it doenst have attack power and become a lot less powerfull than paraflinch, without swagger or or T-wave you lose parafusion and if parafusion itself is not worth a ban.

So the solution is NOT ban OR BAN THE ENTIRE SET.

That's ridiculous. The problem is clearly Swagger. It's the only move that makes all the other strategies using it uncompetititve.

 

[Tomahawk]

Since this discussion isn't necessarily organized and I'm on my phone, I want to address something I've seen in this thread too often and is just a misunderstanding of the real problem.

SwagPlay / Prankster - Swagger is not OP because it's luck based and can't get you to the top of the ladder.
This misses the point entirely. This strategy isn't on the (potential) chopping block because it's OP but because it's uncompetitive. It might not get the player to the top of the ladder but it can certainly disrupt another player who plays by "normal" strategies who IS trying to get to the top. Besides being uncompetitive at its heart, if it's also a huge waste of time for that person. Who wants to sit there waiting for their Mandibuzz to stall out a (insert swagplay mon) and take squat from its own confusion and squat from Foul Play? Who wants to endlessly boost their Clefable just to waste Substitute PP and hope to catch a lucky break? It's a strange brew of boring and pull-your-hair-out frustrating that is a waste of a typical ladderer's precious time and, unlike other troll strategies, it can take an hour or even more to beat.

tl;dr if you're arguing fir not banning a strategy because it can't get you to the top of the ladder doesn't mean you aren't disrupting other players. It's not all about you.

Is that a legitimate argument though? The same goes for a solid stall team, for example if you have seen Lord Elyis vs Lady Bug's stall vs stall match, that took over 400 turns, but I don't think that's ever been brought up for banning stall.

 

[GuilherWolfang]

I'm honestly baffled that this is allowed, but the evasion clause exists. Why ban evasion if we can just use a counter, like so many people have argued here for keeping swag play? In fact, why ban anything? Use a counter, you bunch of fucking scrubs.

We either ban all uncompetitive things in order to create the most competitive form of pokemon, or we don't. We can't just ban evasion but allow something that is debatably worse, or at least just as unfair, to exist. We need uniformity in our standards.

Ban swag play, or unban evasion and OHKO moves. Can anybody even attempt to argue against this without looking like a joke?

I posted a reason in one of my posts as why evasion is worth a ban and this isn't. You use evasion on yourself...and the opponent can't react..you just got a evasion boost with one move and hax is in your side and he can't turn the tide. With confusion it's not in this way...you send a swagger pokemon and the opponent switches to who he let be confused(probably a defensive or a special mon) meaning that he can react to the hax, not just watch. As we know, creating a situation where we have hax on your side(usually by paraflinch) is not uncompetitive and you can fight against it by playing well...But to beat evasion you can't just play well because you don't control NOTHING, you will just be luck to hit OR use a move that always hits, and be forced to run something is not competitive. Same with 0HKO, you use, and if it works there's nothing the opponent can do to stop it.

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

Is that a legitimate argument though? The same goes for a solid stall team, for example if you have seen Lord Elyis vs Lady Bug's stall vs stall match, that took over 400 turns, but I don't think that's ever been brought up for banning stall.

Stall requires skill.

 

[Sinning]

Disagree with some things, as you need turns to setup this, one turn to swagger, one to T-wave etc and with EVERY opponent pokemon, and we can agree that a strategy that creates hax in not unconpetitive.

But I agree with the first paragraph...the COMBINATION of confusion, foul play, paralisys, substitute and prankster in a defensive pokemon is too good. I'm agains ban, but IF we have to ban...we would have to ban the whole set! we would have to ban using klefki with these 4 moves together. Because without one of them this strategy is MUCH less powerfull. Without sub it can go down in one attack or gert statused too. without foul play it doenst have attack power and become a lot less powerfull than paraflinch, without swagger or or T-wave you lose parafusion and if parafusion itself is not worth a ban.

So the solution is NOT ban OR BAN THE ENTIRE SET.

Nah dude, the solution doesn't have to be that harsh. Remember, paralysis + confusion on the same set has been fine for years. The problem comes from two things, and the big one is foul play. It allows defensive pokemon to KO things while also avoiding being KO'd themselves. I've swept with klefki many times due to this, which is just unacceptable. The other problem is substitute, because when the opponent is finally given a turn, the worst that can happen is that the player utilizing this strategy loses a substitute, which is of no real consequence due to leftovers.

Banning swagger + foul play on the same set is the only way to go here. It even allows the strategy to live, just in a more fair way by making the user switch to a pokemon with foul play, rather than having an all-in-one super tank that can also sweep.

 

[Exxodus]

Is that a legitimate argument though? The same goes for a solid stall team, for example if you have seen Lord Elyis vs Lady Bug's stall vs stall match, that took over 400 turns, but I don't think that's ever been brought up for banning stall.

Because some Pokemon can be dedicated wallbreakers or run mixed sets. If you want to have a reliable check/counter to SwagPlay, you have to run some obscure mons/moves.

 

[Poopfist]

You said "Burns freezes paras and crits off of attacking movies are nothing like Swagger. Swagger is literally just hax whereas an attacking move with another effect may induce hax." Well...T-Wave is just hax in this argument and should be banned....same coin flip...but reduces speed and is permanent(till healed) where confusion has a chance of attacking yourself...pretty even for me. And as proved: paralisys+confusion is not unconpetitive or worth a ban...if it was, paraflinch should be banned.

Swagger causes confusion and raises attack, we can conclude that confusion should not be banned, it never were unconpetitive even with paralisys so stop blaiming confusion ¬¬ And the "raises attack" problem...its high risk-high reward, and the player will use this to his advantage(in this case confusing special based mons), as with any other strategy.

Thunder wave isn't hax in the same sense because of the amount of counters it has ie any ground type and any electric type while Swagger's stop are either Own Tempo pokes (which previous posts have illustrated how hilariously bad those are) or magic bouncers, who still take a good load of damage from foul play anyway.

Again I'll ask people who use this strategy may think it's fun but what does it add to team building and playing to make the game more COMPETITIVE, it doesn't. That's what smogon is for at the end of the day competitive Pokemon. The same justifications for keeping Swagger could be used on Evasion moves

 

[GuilherWolfang]

That's ridiculous. The problem is clearly Swagger. It's the only move that makes all the other strategies using it uncompetititve.

Sorry, the problem is not swagger...CONFUSION is not unconpetitive, it's worse than paralisys, don't decrease speed and is not permanent. And raising attack is not a problem, it's just high-risk, high reward...the same high-risk as when we use focus blast for example...more power, but can miss....in this case is more power for your advantage(if you use foul play together) or more risk at being KO'ed if the opponent uses a physical or mixed mon. And if he uses a special one or a defensive one...swagplay is at a little disadvantage.

As I said...the whole thing together is fearsome...so if you want to ban, BAN the 4 moves that makes it WORK..without one of them it's much more fragile

 

[GuilherWolfang]

Thunder wave isn't hax in the same sense because of the amount of counters it has ie any ground type and any electric type while Swagger's stop are either Own Tempo pokes (which previous posts have illustrated how hilariously bad those are) or magic bouncers, who still take a good load of damage from foul play anyway.

Again I'll ask people who use this strategy may think it's fun but what does it add to team building and playing to make the game more COMPETITIVE, it doesn't. That's what smogon is for at the end of the day competitive Pokemon. The same justifications for keeping Swagger could be used on Evasion moves

COMPETITIVE is when the 2 players can react to each other...and so the one with the best strategy can win...created hax is still a strategy(and paralysis can be used by a serene grace body slam, or glare as i use in my zygarde in my secondary team that i'm testing, so groung types are not immune).

Your opponent CAN'T react to 0HKO moves or evasion without using something JUST for this.
0HKO moves when you use and it works you kill a pokemon...it could have 1% chance of working, it's still uncompetitive because you can't react.
Evasion you use on yourself and after you use it, the game turns into hax WITHOUT the ooponent having a chance to react(in fact he CAN, be is forced to run some moves...and if you are FORCED to use something when building a team, then it's uncompetitive)

So, swagger is NOT uncompetitive. you use on the opponent and he can switch and bring someone who can bring klefki down in few moves or bring a defensive mon. it's much less powerfull or uncompetivive than paraflinch. But as i said before, the combination of the 4 moves is amazing..BUT THE 4 TOGETHER...not just swagger

 

[PenguinKnight]

Sorry, the problem is not swagger...CONFUSION is not unconpetitive, it's worse than paralisys, don't decrease speed and is not permanent. And raising attack is not a problem, it's just high-risk, high reward...the same high-risk as when we use focus blast for example...more power, but can miss....in this case is more power for your advantage(if you use foul play together) or more risk at being KO'ed if the opponent uses a physical or mixed mon. And if he uses a special one or a defensive one...swagplay is at a little disadvantage.

As I said...the whole thing together is fearsome...so if you want to ban, BAN the 4 moves that makes it WORK..without one of them it's much more fragile

1. Thunder wave has hard counters in any ground type.
2. Paralysis will cause the afflicted to not move- however the chance is 25%, and does not cause the afflicted to attack himself. Problem further expedited by the +2 from swagger....
3. ... so raising attack is a problem.
4. High-risk, high-reward for one turn. That one turn which can determine the outcome of a match for many HO teams. After that it becomes an endless loop of praying for the RNG gods for the non-swag player.
5. Focus blast is used because not everyone has high attack stats or aura sphere- get your facts straight.
6. This risk is exactly what makes it uncompetitive.

Do you anti-ban people not see the problem here?

COMPETITIVE is when the 2 players can react to each other...and so the one with the best strategy can win...created hax is still a strategy(and paralysis can be used by a serene grace body slam, or glare as i use in my zygarde in my secondary team that i'm testing, so groung types are not immune).

Your opponent CAN'T react to 0HKO moves or evasion without using something JUST for this.
0HKO moves when you use and it works you kill a pokemon...it could have 1% chance of working, it's still uncompetitive because you can't react.
Evasion you use on yourself and after you use it, the game turns into hax WITHOUT the ooponent having a chance to react(in fact he CAN, be is forced to run some moves...and if you are FORCED to use something when building a team, then it's uncompetitive)

So, swagger is NOT uncompetitive. you use on the opponent and he can switch and bring someone who can bring klefki down in few moves or bring a defensive mon. it's much less powerfull or uncompetivive than paraflinch. But as i said before, the combination of the 4 moves is amazing..BUT THE 4 TOGETHER...not just swagger

Please tell me how to react with skill when I'm swaggered. No, switching does not count, because smart Swag players know how to handle this kind of shit. All that's going to happen is that you swaggered more.

 

[Sinning]

COMPETITIVE is when the 2 players can react to each other...and so the one with the best strategy can win...created hax is still a strategy(and paralysis can be used by a serene grace body slam, or glare as i use in my zygarde in my secondary team that i'm testing, so groung types are not immune).

Your opponent CAN'T react to 0HKO moves or evasion without using something JUST for this.
0HKO moves when you use and it works you kill a pokemon...it could have 1% chance of working, it's still uncompetitive because you can't react.
Evasion you use on yourself and after you use it, the game turns into hax WITHOUT the ooponent having a chance to react(in fact he CAN, be is forced to run some moves...and if you are FORCED to use something when building a team, then it's uncompetitive)

So, swagger is NOT uncompetitive. you use on the opponent and he can switch and bring someone who can bring klefki down in few moves or bring a defensive mon. it's much less powerfull or uncompetivive than paraflinch. But as i said before, the combination of the 4 moves is amazing..BUT THE 4 TOGETHER...not just swagger

Your opponent can easily react to evasion through the use of it's counters. This does not make the strategy one bit less unfair and uncompetitive than it is. Swag Play is less fair than evasion, given that the same arguments for, and against, both cases can be argued through literally the same points, yet evasion has more easily accessible, viable counters than Swag Play.

I don't particularly care if it's banned or not. I just have a problem when rules are not uniform. If we ban evasion, we ban this. Unless you can prove that Swag Play is somehow different, while also being more fair than evasion, there is no argument for keeping it around.

The difference between evasion and Swag Play is this. Evasion has easily accessible counters in the form of perfect accuracy moves (on pokemon who are viable, ie are decent enough to not be dead weight against other teams) and phazing. These things do not counter swag play, due to swag play always moving first, which immediately adds an element of chance to each of your opponent's turns before your opponent is allowed to respond, and Swag Play also being an offensive strategy. Minimize and Double Team are only defensive, and do not remove the possibility of the opponent interacting, or countering, the strategy. Swag Play is basically evasion, that can 1HKO or 2HKO any pokemon threatening to KO the user, while also removing the opponent's ability to play the game.

This is clearly worse than evasion, and if we feel the need to keep the evasion clause, we must additionally ban this strategy.

 

[Maskun]

The reason why people are using swagplay is because to cripple the other opponents Pokemon. Also for facts hax is hax people deal with it. The top players use this to cripple as well lower rank guys to give them edge. Banning swagplay will give the metagame more ideas to create more annoying sets than this. In result banning it will not do the metagame any good.

 

[PenguinKnight]

The reason why people are using swagplay is because to cripple the other opponents Pokemon. Also for facts hax is hax people deal with it. The top players use this to cripple as well lower rank guys to give them edge. Banning swagplay will give the metagame more ideas to create more annoying sets than this. In result banning it will not do the metagame any good.

Rest assured, banning strategies that take away the ability to even play the game from a player, such as swagplay, will certainly be done. Also, yes the reason is to cripple Pokemon, based on the assumption that the RNG gods are kind and allow the confused pokemon to hit himself. And the problem here is that this edge is based on THE ROLL OF THE DIE. How do you people not get it? It's driving me nuts....

Robert Alfons http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dice
Die is singular for....

 

[Sinning]

The reason why people are using swagplay is because to cripple the other opponents Pokemon. Also for facts hax is hax people deal with it. The top players use this to cripple as well lower rank guys to give them edge. Banning swagplay will give the metagame more ideas to create more annoying sets than this. In result banning it will not do the metagame any good.

It feels like you guys are hardly trying at this point.

 

[termi]

Rest assured, banning strategies that take away the ability to even play the game from a player, such as swagplay, will certainly be done. Also, yes the reason is to cripple Pokemon, based on the assumption that the RNG gods are kind and allow the confused pokemon to hit himself. And the problem here is that this edge is based on THE ROLL OF THE DIE. How do you people not get it? It's driving me nuts....

the roll of the die

 

[Exxodus]

The reason why people are using swagplay is because to cripple the other opponents Pokemon. Also for facts hax is hax people deal with it. The top players use this to cripple as well lower rank guys to give them edge. Banning swagplay will give the metagame more ideas to create more annoying sets than this. In result banning it will not do the metagame any good.

You're crippling a Pokemon to the point where they not only can't move, but you in turn can OHKO them and proceed to do the same thing with the next mon on their team. In most cases, they literally cannot do anything.

 

[GuilherWolfang]

Your opponent can easily react to evasion through the use of it's counters. This does not make the strategy one bit less unfair and uncompetitive than it is. Swag Play is less fair than evasion, given that the same arguments for, and against, both cases can be argued through literally the same points, yet evasion has more easily accessible, viable counters than Swag Play.

I don't particularly care if it's banned or not. I just have a problem when rules are not uniform. If we ban evasion, we ban this. Unless you can prove that Swag Play is somehow different, while also being more fair than evasion, there is no argument for keeping it around.

The difference between evasion and Swag Play is this. Evasion has easily accessible counters in the form of perfect accuracy moves (on pokemon who are viable, ie are decent enough to not be dead weight against other teams) and phazing. These things do not counter swag play, due to swag play always moving first, which immediately adds an element of chance to each of your opponent's turns before your opponent is allowed to respond, and Swag Play also being an offensive strategy. Minimize and Double Team are only defensive, and do not remove the possibility of the opponent interacting, or countering, the strategy. Swag Play is basically evasion, that can 1HKO or 2HKO any pokemon threatening to KO the user, while also removing the opponent's ability to play the game.

This is clearly worse than evasion, and if we feel the need to keep the evasion clause, we must additionally ban this strategy.

In a way I agree with you, that's why i'm saying that confusion(or swagger) is not the problem...the whole set together is the problem...I still don't think it's worth a ban...but i will for sure respect the opinion of anyone wanting to ban the whole set(prankster+confusion+t-wave+foulplay+sub)

 

[Maskun]

Swagplay can be used as methods not to cripple or hax a person, BUT it can also be used as a way to give a chance to the person who is losing a comeback to come out. In reality swagplay can be used as a nice comeback tool if you are lucky enough.

 

[Sinning]

In a way I agree with you, that's why i'm saying that confusion(or swagger) is not the problem...the whole set together is the problem...I still don't think it's worth a ban...but i will for sure respect the opinion of anyone wanting to ban the whole set(prankster+confusion+t-wave+foulplay+sub)

It really doesn't require that. Like I said earlier, the problem is Foul Play + Swagger, but the real issue is that this strategy is more degenerate than another strategy we have banned - Evasion - yet we allow this strategy. All I'm saying is that Smogon can't be allowed to be hypocritical when making policies, and if strategies that are identical to Swag Play are banned, then there is not a reason under the sun to allow Swag Play to be used.

Ban it, or remove Evasion and OHKO clauses. That is my entire point.

 

[Lazybeef]

Ok I'm just gonna say what I think here. I'm pro-ban.

SwagPlay adds no competitive value to the metagame and is an inherently luck based strategy which ultimately has the goal to "outluck" your opponent. It is alot like evasion in that regard. It is a textbook definition of an uncompetitive strategy.

Own tempo mons are unviable in OU (except smeargle, but that won't do much anyways) and to be forced to use unviable gimmicks to counter something is often a sign that the thing in question is ban-worthy. Even bulky mons with low attack may very well lose to this.

Now I know what people are gonna say. "Paraflinch is the same thing" It is true that paraflinch also stacks odds against the opponent, but it is only restricted to two pokemon and both of those have problems with many of the common threats in OU, so their effect is fairly unnoticable.

Then of course you can go much further. You could even say that pretty much EVERYTHING is luck based. You could bring up crits, secondary effects, speed ties, paralysis, damage ranges and pretty much everything else an active battler encounters every battle.

While it is true that many aspects of competitive pokemon is indeed luck based, you still cannot escape the practical implications of such an argument. Banning things like tbolt and flamethrower will obviously hurt way too many things it is not an option while banning swagger+prankster will only hurt this uncompetitive strategy we call swagplay. If you thought for an extra 5 seconds you wouldn't be making this argument.

We have seen this strategy many times and even being used successfully on the 1900+ ladder. It consistently provides a game changing chance for a lesser skilled player against a more skilled player. I even remember a tournament on PO where this strategy was used in the final and won.

SwagPlay is double team sub baton pass drifblim and sheer cold dewgong. Ban.

 

[Articanus]

That is literally the most retarded thing I've read here so far. Why would we endorse a comeback tool that only works "if you are lucky enough" ?

Edit: Quoting two posts up.