Sable eye stall teams beat most types of teams, and I feek Gothitelle is healthy to check those teams as they're very difficult to handle and sometimes when I forgot about them I'll find myself auto forfeiting.
The only one of those three abilities that I think actually hugely impacts the metagame is Magnet Pull. Magnezone (and to a lesser extent Magneton) are staples on teams that would otherwise have no way to handle things like Skarm, Heatran and Ferro(thorn, if you are running Ferroseed I am appalled).
not timid scarf gothitelleI would not suggest using Magnezone try and trap Heatran, considering Heatran is a Fire-type and commonly runs the x4 effective Earth Power.
Indeed, Heatran wrecks most trappers. Especially if it runs Substitute.
Completely agree, a core that comes to my mind it's Mega Lopunny with Baton Pass paired with Gothitelle, mega Lopunny thanks to its speed and coverage troubles more offensive and frailers threats, however it has problems getting past bulkyer threats like say Slowbro, come in Gothitelle with Baton Pass, ready to disable the defensive threat and giving Lopunny a better time.I think something that needs to be considered when it comes to trapping is Voltturn, and to a lesser extent, baton pass. I think that the fact that these moves are fairly popular and allow one to play around trappers is something that keeps trappers in check. Even roar and whirlwind can be used to a lesser extent to force the trapper themselves out. I dont know whether or not trapping is broken, but i think discussion of trapping should keep this in mind.
You certainly aren't wrong, but one thing that bugs me about trapping in general is that while VoltTurn and Baton Pass do stop many trappers from doing their job, one must also remember that no one intends to use trappers for killing these threats (if you're using Gothitelle to trap Rotom-W for example, you're doing it wrong). It's hard to say that Roar and Whirlwind can keep them in check either because they aren't used with the intention of trapping those targets. The only exception might be Magnezone trapping Skarmory.I think something that needs to be considered when it comes to trapping is Voltturn, and to a lesser extent, baton pass. I think that the fact that these moves are fairly popular and allow one to play around trappers is something that keeps trappers in check. Even roar and whirlwind can be used to a lesser extent to force the trapper themselves out. I dont know whether or not trapping is broken, but i think discussion of trapping should keep this in mind.
Shadow Tag is uncompetitive as all hell. The only arguments that I've seen defending it relate to the weaknesses of the Pokemon that get the abilities, rather than any merits of the abilities themselves. The only reason it isn't blatantly clear to everybody around that these abilities are uncompetitive is that every Pokemon that gets them is absolutely terrible - I mean, Gothitelle and Wobbuffet are all god-awful Pokemon. Gothitelle is worse than Jynx. Wobbuffet isn't even a Pokemon! It's a GF in-joke like Farfetch'd and Castform! And yet they are viable choices in OU because of these abilities. The second we got a decent Pokemon with Shadow Tag (btw, MGar without STag is MZam with a worse speed tier and a better support movepool) it was the single most broken thing that OU has ever seen.A competitive game is played to win - this is what distinguishes what we do here from playing on your cartridge. A competitive game should have winners, but they should not be arbitrary or random - instead, we would like if the winner of a game was determined by the skill of the players involved. Now, skill in Pokemon is not like an athletic event...you can't get more damage out of your moves by working out or something. Every player has complete access to the exact same set of moves and information. So skill in Pokemon is about choices. Every time you build a team or choose a move you are making a series of choices, and a better player shows his skill by making the better choices. This is what it means to be "competitive" in terms of Pokemon.
So, my definition: A competitive game element increases the number of meaningful, balanced choices available to the player.
Meaningful: if a choice has little or no impact on the game, it isn't particularly relevant (i.e. you can choose the gender of your pokemon but that has nearly zero effect).
Balanced: if a single option is so powerful/good/useful as to be the "correct" choice most/all of the time, it isn't much of a choice at all.
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Applying this definition to Shadow Tag, it seems clear that the ability can only ever remove the number of choices available to you. Even possible countermeasures to STag (eg Shed Shell) require forfeiting a choice (your item). Most importantly, STag removes the single most important choice in competitive Pokemon. As I mentioned earlier, switching and picking matchups is the core functional game element of singles battling. Pokemon is not a series of 1v1 matchups, it is a 6v6 team game, but STag reduces it to the former.
I'm in favor of establishing that definition, and I disagree with some of the points you made in that thread, mainly that you connect the term I call "healthy" with the concept of diversity, and that's something I strongly disagree with, but you're right that this is not the place to discuss this. Neither is that thread though, as that has a lot of uber bias and philosophy behind it, and this is OU.I think shrang's definition is poor. Rather than have a whole discussion on that issue here, I've posted in that thread. For now I'd just like to say that we should not be presuming any particular definition of uncompetitiveness since the issue is nowhere near resolved.
I agree that we need a definition of competitiveness and some idea of what a healthy meta is. Does diversity mean healthy? It seems that a lot of actions Smogon takes (avoiding over-centralization, establishing multiple tiers, even making Ubers and official tier) indicate this. However, there are plenty of videogames where diversity isn't necessarily seen as necessary for a healthy meta. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, for example, one character (Sheik) is the sole reason why many low-tiered characters are not tournament-viable. They have an unwinnable matchup against her (meaning that she alone stops people from using these characters). However, Sheik has never been banned and never will because the Smash Bros. community doesn't see this as an extensive problem.I'm in favor of establishing that definition,
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In the case that we do not have a solid definition of uncompetitive to go by, the only way to adequately resolve this situation is to either have the council come out and make a statement about why trapping moves are not worthy of a suspect, or to have a suspect and let every person either use their own completely arbitrary definition/choose based on which meta they like better. Either way, something needs to be done as soon as the ORAS bans are over with.
Love how people can't seem to read.Please no one liner posts, and dont discuss banning trapping.
Well, for starters, this is Pokemon, a turn based RPG where you select 6 monsters to battle each other. Smash Brothers is a fighting game were each person selects just one character and dukes it out.However, there are plenty of videogames where diversity isn't necessarily seen as necessary for a healthy meta. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, for example, one character (Sheik) is the sole reason why many low-tiered characters are not tournament-viable. They have an unwinnable matchup against her (meaning that she alone stops people from using these characters). However, Sheik has never been banned and never will because the Smash Bros. community doesn't see this as an extensive problem.
Lol, I don't think it's possible to discuss trapping constructively without discussing banning it. It's a very hot button issue, especially in light of recent events (read: Mega Gengar in Ubers) and a lot of people have very strong beliefs on it.Love how people can't seem to read.
You monster! /sAlso I like having Gothitelle around because FUCK STALL.
That's true (and I didn't really make this clear), but I was referring to the idea that a pokemon/fighter can single-handedly kill others, without being the definitive best. Meta Knight and M-Rayquaza pushed out things simply because they were so good, there wasn't reason to run any other characters. Sheik pushes characters out, without being #1. Kinda how Magnezone might not be #1 in OU, but is one of the main reasons Skarmory isn't too popular.If diversity didn't matter to them, everyone would just of just used Metaknight. But instead, they ban him, so he wouldn't overpower the rest of the roster. This shows that the Smash Community does care about diversity to some degree.