OU The Ninjask Thread

[Siglut]

This was very funny the first time it was posted, but unfortunately those aren't my stats. If you want to see the ladder rank of my main showdown account (for whatever reason you might, I've probably played about 2 ladder games on it by accident in the past year), here you go.
Also, see your own stats for reference. Pardon the poor screenshots, it's difficult to get good ones from the phone. Obviously, the ladder rank of the account I started learning the tier on doesn't matter (in the same way it doesn't matter for anybody else) , but if you want to brag about your greater skill in Digimon please be my guest.
I have to say I find it a little rich that you, somebody who as far as I can tell has no notable results of any kind, are trying to come after anybody for their level of skill in this game. Anyway, you're entitled to your own opinions, but I hope you understand why "good players" in general are unconcerned with sand attack / ninjask, and also why tiering tends to be done by "good players" and for "good players".

Maybe I will write up my full thoughts on the situation later, but to summarize: any tiering action that is not a ban on speedpassing, statpassing, or baton pass overall is not going to solve the issues people have. Simultaneously, we are in a good place with the tier right now, and speedpass is part of some teams that I think are cool or fun/interesting to play. There are definitely some uncool things that speedpass can enable, but at this moment I do not think anything is overbearing.

Finally, a big thank you to whoever sent yubelvt that screenshot of eevee0's stats and my name edited on. That's gotta be the thing I've laughed the hardest at this year.

 

[Monai]

43000??? at 1300????

 

[H!kari]

Given the fact that certain posters in this thread have begun to make personal attacks against other posters. I think it is unlikely that any meaningful tiering action on Ninjask or Sand Attack will come from this thread, unless posters on the pro-ban side can organize and agree on an actionable plan to get a Ninjask or Sand Attack suspect test greenlight by the OU Council. We can continue arguing in this thread for many more pages, but unless members of the playerbase with either the power or influence to effect tiering policy are conceivenced to take action, nothing will change. Personally I am against bannjng Ninjask, as I don't believe it sees enough play across both ladder and tournaments to justify a ban at this time. But I do believe that a discussion about Sand Attack being anti-competitive in the same vein as swagger is worth having. Although I would be disappointed if that discussion died in this thread and is not put in front of the wider playerbase because certain people who would desperately like to see action taken on Ninjask continue to needlessly antagonize members of the old gen council as well as other poster who are arguing in good faith on in this thread.

 

[YubelVT]

This was very funny the first time it was posted, but unfortunately those aren't my stats. If you want to see the ladder rank of my main showdown account (for whatever reason you might, I've probably played about 2 ladder games on it by accident in the past year), here you go. View attachment 669874View attachment 669878View attachment 669877
Also, see your own stats for reference. Pardon the poor screenshots, it's difficult to get good ones from the phone. Obviously, the ladder rank of the account I started learning the tier on doesn't matter (in the same way it doesn't matter for anybody else) , but if you want to brag about your greater skill in Digimon please be my guest.
I have to say I find it a little rich that you, somebody who as far as I can tell has no notable results of any kind, are trying to come after anybody for their level of skill in this game. Anyway, you're entitled to your own opinions, but I hope you understand why "good players" in general are unconcerned with sand attack / ninjask, and also why tiering tends to be done by "good players" and for "good players".

Maybe I will write up my full thoughts on the situation later, but to summarize: any tiering action that is not a ban on speedpassing, statpassing, or baton pass overall is not going to solve the issues people have. Simultaneously, we are in a good place with the tier right now, and speedpass is part of some teams that I think are cool or fun/interesting to play. There are definitely some uncool things that speedpass can enable, but at this moment I do not think anything is overbearing.

Finally, a big thank you to whoever sent yubelvt that screenshot of eevee0's stats and my name edited on. That's gotta be the thing I've laughed the hardest at this year.

Sorry bout that, I am a very stupid man. I still think ur wrong about ninjask but that's besides the point

 

[Rambode]

While I do agree Sand Attack should be banned (maybe Ninjask too? It's cheesy, but it's not the worst thing to let free IMO), using ladder as proof for anything isn't the best strategy (assuming you actually use the correct screenshot lmao), despite being a factor, for a couple reasons:

1 - Many top players just don't bother with it much, if at all, reducing the overall "importance", for a lack of a better word, of something specific getting higher rankings (refer to Blues getting top 1 with Slaking despite Slaking being very clearly an UUBL pokémon which is on the more "unreliable" side)

2 - Ladder is highly volatile, especially since you don't know who you're facing until you actually queue up against them, favoring cheese and surprise factor (not that it can't happen on tournaments, I mean, the fact you have knowledge of who you're facing can empower certain types of surprises, but still less than ladder). This volatility also helps reach higher peaks

However, if I might add, I do think Quick Claw should also be banned, though it is a smaller issue than Sand Attack currently, something that also enters on what DeezCastforms has said previously:

Both ADV League and the JimCool tournaments, the biggest ADV OU tournaments not hosted on Smogon (including Invitational), have already banned not only Sand-Attack, but all forms of accuracy lowering tools such as Bright Powder. This has, against what has been claimed, effected these tournaments positively.

 

[SPFunkM]

While I do agree Sand Attack should be banned (maybe Ninjask too? It's cheesy, but it's not the worst thing to let free IMO), using ladder as proof for anything isn't the best strategy (assuming you actually use the correct screenshot lmao), despite being a factor, for a couple reasons:

1 - Many top players just don't bother with it much, if at all, reducing the overall "importance", for a lack of a better word, of something specific getting higher rankings (refer to Blues getting top 1 with Slaking despite Slaking being very clearly an UUBL pokémon which is on the more "unreliable" side)

2 - Ladder is highly volatile, especially since you don't know who you're facing until you actually queue up against them, favoring cheese and surprise factor (not that it can't happen on tournaments, I mean, the fact you have knowledge of who you're facing can empower certain types of surprises, but still less than ladder). This volatility also helps reach higher peaks

However, if I might add, I do think Quick Claw should also be banned, though it is a smaller issue than Sand Attack currently, something that also enters on what DeezCastforms has said previously:

I think the fact every important tournament not run on smogon have sand attack and quick claw banned with nothing but positives on the meta says alot about the community not wanting it and the impact (or non impact) they have on the tier. This is a tested concept that has worked.

Not commenting on speedpass or jask directly, just acc drop and items like quick claw bright powder etc.

 

[lonely robot beetle]

Why don't we ban freeze as a whole? The random 10% chance (Or 20% with Serene Grace) to potentially take a 'mon out permanently is intrinsically unfair, yet we resort to a complex alteration of the game's code to limit it. What about critical hits? Or flinch chances? Attack rolls? I don't see any clauses about those, despite seeing it affect tournament play numerous times. The most I hear is "The game giveth and the game taketh."

All of you 'jask haters keep trying to remove luck from a game that wouldn't exist without it. In an effort to make things more "fair" and "competitive", you paradoxically makes things uncompetitive by erecting laws that oppress those who are only using the tools laid before them to gain high ELO, despite obvious, common countermeasures existing in the meta right this second. You spurn God's design with venom, only to become the Tyrant yourself when given the chance. Rejecting the chaos and absurdity of this universe does nothing but leave you mad and broken inside. A wise man once told me that if I wished to play a game without elements of luck, I should go play chess instead. From that moment on, I learned to stop worrying and love the sand.

introducing luck is bad

 

[H!kari]

I think the fact every important tournament not run on smogon have sand attack and quick claw banned with nothing but positives on the meta says alot about the community not wanting it and the impact (or non impact) they have on the tier. This is a tested concept that has worked.

Not commenting on speedpass or jask directly, just acc drop and items like quick claw bright powder etc.

Personally I don't think banning Sand Attack should be as controversial as it's become. Thinking about it's counter play, I can only think of 3 ways to handle it and none of them are particularly consistent. You can switch out to reset the stat drop, but your opponent can just use Sand Attack twice in a row to effect the switch in or drop the accuracy of your Pokemon an additional time if you don't switch out. So in my eyes switchimg out is more of a mind game than real counter play and fwiw being able to switch out wasn't enough to save swagger from being deemed uncompetitve. The other 2 ways to counter Sand Attack are Keen Eye Skarmory and Clear Body Metagross. But Sand Attack teams typically account for this and run Magneton making Skarmory an inconsistent counter. While Metagross is a pretty bad Pokemon to counter the most common Sand Attack user, Ninjask. As Metagross doesnt always run Rock Slide and if sand isn't up Ninjask can pp stall Metagross out of Meteor Mashs. There are other Keen Eye and Clear Body users in ADV besides Skarmoy or Metagross but they are all UUBL or lower, so I don't think they can be called consistent counterplay as they are all sub-optimal choices in general besides for countering Sand Attack.

Although I don't think that the arguments that apply to Sand Attack being uncompetitve apply to Quick Claw. As an item Quick Claw has an inherent opportunity cost of not being able to run Leftovers, where as Sand Attack only costs a move slot. Additionally while Sand Attack has an automatic RNG chance to negate an opposing Pokemon's current turn and all future turns until they switch out. A Quick Claw activation only effect the current turn and does nothing unless the holder is slower than the opposing Pokemon.

 

[Monai]

Given the fact that certain posters in this thread have begun to make personal attacks against other posters.

I could be more gracious but the fact is that a certain level of proficiency should be attained before suggesting policy changes. Suspect reqs exist for a reason and if one hasn't made them before, they probably should take a backseat in tiering discussions. Obviously I encourage people to improve and make them, but until then, some level of elitism is apt.

 

[Hiro']

First, let's be clear that this thread was never approved by the moderation team and the only reason we decided to leave it up was to not see this discussion reappear in and clutter the metagame discussion thread. Now that a few weeks have passed, we can see the same group of people arguing about the same things over and over again and personal attacks coming up again. Therefore, I think the discussion as a whole has run its course and I'm gonna shut this thread down.

This is a reminder you need approval to make a thread up here. Should there be any further discussion around this topic later on, I think it would be more suited for an ADV council member to make a new thread to discuss a potential tiering action.

 

[KarateKoala]

Why the hell can't we just ban jask already. I dont give a shit if it's "not totally broken". Nobody can say with a straight face that when they see a ninjask come out they don't groan knowing that win or lose it's gonna suck to play against. Whether or not ninjask is broken doesn't change the fact that it's uncompetitive af and stupid to play against. And banning ninjask has literally 0 collateral damage to the rest of the tier. Don't try to say that agilizap will do the same thing, because anyone who has played an ounce of adv knows that playing against agilizap is a million times easier than playing against ninjask. It's something that I don't understand why people are trying to preserve it when if you had a blind vote 99% of people would say that the tier / ladder / tournaments would be more enjoyable to play without having to account for stupid ninjask cheese.