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What is uber?

Blaziken_57, how long have you been playing DP? Stop trying to tell me that Cresselia can counter Salamence. I gave you the numbers. Instead of spouting some bullshit, give me hard evidence (a Cresselia set, with evs, item and everything) that 100% counters every Salamence set.

Until then, I will go by my empirical evidence and the common knowledge of every decent battler that says Cresselia is NOT a counter to any of Lucario, Salamence and Garchomp.

And I have no idea what you're smoking for the last 2 sentences. What god damned assumption?
 
My thoughts exactly. Tyranitar has had no true counter besides Thick Fat Hariyama since people learned it could carry Ice Beam (Choice Band Earthquake 2HKO's most other Fighters, including Machamp and Hitmontop with Intimidate). Tyranitar also has the same ability that Kyogre does to change the metagame just by it existing in a team.

There are two ways we can go. Allow most things, excluding the ones that not even ubers can really counter, or we could ban everything that lacks at least 1 entirely solid counter. I believe Hipmonlee brought this up, banning all 600 BST pokemon and possibly the 580 BST pokemon. This still actually leaves a large part of the metagame intact. It just removes three of the four Pokemon you listed as being uncounterable (and Metagross, Heatran, Celebi, Jirachi, etc. who have been debated before, but we leaned towards the first option).

I think we should just ban: Dragonite, Salamence, Tyranitar, Metagross, and Garchomp. Seeing as these 5 have no counters, also Blaziken you are to be a bad battler with little experience =/
 
Blaziken_57, how long have you been playing DP?

Since around July.

Stop trying to tell me that Cresselia can counter Salamence. I gave you the numbers. Instead of spouting some bullshit, give me hard evidence (a Cresselia set, with evs, item and everything) that 100% counters every Salamence set.

There is no 1 Cresselia that beats every Salamence, likewise how their isn't 1 Salamence set. However, Cresselia can be EV'd to beat every single set, just not with a single EV spread.

Calm, 252 HP/252 SpD Cresselia vs. Specsmence Draco Meteor:

45.95% - 54.05%

Vs. MixMence Draco Meteor:

39.64% - 46.85%

Vs. MixMence Crunch:

41.67% - 49.10%

(Special Salamence doesn't do enough damage to Cresselia to eliminate it from the counter list)
Bold, 252 HP / 252 Def Cresselia

Vs. CB Mence Dragon Claw
31.98% - 37.84%

Vs. CB Mence Crunch

42.79% - 50.23%

Vs. DD Mence Dragon Claw (+1 Atk, Life Orb)

41.67% - 49.10%

Vs. DD Mence Crunch (+1 Atk, Life Orb)

55.63% - 65.54%

(As you can see, Physical Salamence does insufficient damage to Cresselia, barely able to muster a 2HKO with the situational Crunch, and does absolutely "LOL" with Dragon Claw)
Modest, 20 HP / 252 Def Cresselia

Vs. DD Mence Dragon Claw (+1 Atk, Life Orb)

52.59% - 61.92%

Vs. DD Mence Crunch (+1 Atk, Life Orb)

70.21% - 82.38%

(This is being generous, given that Cresselia does not need that much SpA to OHKO Salamence, and it only needs to do 90% to OHKO)


Until then, I will go by my empirical evidence and the common knowledge of every decent battler that says Cresselia is NOT a counter to any of Lucario, Salamence and Garchomp.

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that "*the* Garchomp counter" couldn't counter any kind of Garchomp. Your evidence wasn't empirical in the slightest, as your only reasoning as to how Garchomp could beat Cresselia was by giving it a Yache Berry, when clearly the Scarf variation is the most popular, and Life Orb or Leftovers (or Bright Powder) are better option for the Swords Dancer. I counter Garchomp with Cresselia, experienced battlers counter Garchomp with Cresselia, and the analysis recommends countering Garchomp with Cresselia ("Cresselia is an excellent counter for all sets..."). Empirical evidence right there.

Cresselia IS a Salamence and Garchomp counter, and it cripples Lucario while withstanding its attacks.


And I have no idea what you're smoking for the last 2 sentences. What god damned assumption?

You phrased it in a "Read this and GTFO" kind of manner. Almost like you had reached an assumption without hearing anyone else out in the thread.


I think we should just ban: Dragonite, Salamence, Tyranitar, Metagross, and Garchomp. Seeing as these 5 have no counters, also Blaziken you believe to be a bad battler with little experience =/
Wait, what do I believe? Awkward phrasing, you might want to fix that.
 
I get this for CB Chomp's Outrage:

46.62% - 54.73%

Meaning you can't call it a 2HKO, you say it can threaten a 2HKO.
 
If it can threaten a 2HKO on a certain Pokemon, that Pokemon isn't a counter ._. I am simply using the definition of a counter here lol.

Regardless, my entire point in both these topics is that there are obviously Pokemon that have 0 counters. Your concession that you have to EV Cresselia specifically to counter a specific set just proves that.

Since we already allow Pokemon that are largely uncounterable, my point is that we our reasoning for not moving something down from Ubers is that it is "largely uncounterable."

If you can't understand that, well, have a nice day?
 
It's a 2HKO in Sandstorm, at the very least; then again, I don't see many CB Garchomps because they get eaten on the revenge kill by Weavile and Starmie. If, for some reason, someone's running a CB over CS and uses Outrage and you switch your (Smogon's Support) Cresselia in, yeah, your Cresselia won't be a grand counter. But as soon as you're doing 53.63% - 62.95% instead of 36.01% - 42.23%, people will know it's Choice Band'd, and let Metagross/Heatran (more so the former) come in.

The definition of a counter seems to be getting amplified a bit; while, certainly, being able to counter any set and item combo on any given Poke is a good thing for a wall to be able to do, it's not a realistic one. The important thing for a counter to be able to do is counter the set your opponent is using; at the very least, this is the impression I am given, since the Smogon analyses themselves list counters for specific sets.
 
You are saying that in a positive connotation. Let's try it in a negative connotation:

If a Pokemon's most powerful move (which is highly risky to use, and doesn't see much use) can only 2HKO a Pokemon when the RNG favors you heabily, you know it is a solid counter to said Pokemon.

I say there are counters to absolutely every set, but not every Pokemon. The fact that Cresselia can counter every form of Salamence, but not at once, proves this.

I think we need to see what the source of this discussion was before we continue.
 
As uncounterable as Garchomp and Salamence seem on paper, my OU teams handle them quite well. On the other hand, Kyogre just has to predict my water switchin first turn and thunder it, then he's free to sweep any of my 4 OU teams with water spout. And I do run into the occasional asshole Kyogre user over wifi so this is coming from experience.

People seem to forget that Garchomp, Salamence and Tyranitar all have crippling achilles heels in their 4x weaks to common moves, including the priority moves vacuum wave, mach punch and ice shard. So even if you lack a definitive counter, you can always use these as insurance. Kyogre, Darkrai, and all their uber friends don't even have that- Kyogre for example has 2 weaks which are going to hit his 140 base special defense and almost never 1hko.

Yeah, but here's the thing. At the present time, you don't HAVE to prepare for Kyogre, which would explain why your teams would get massacred by Kyogre. If something's in OU, you need to prepare for it no matter what, whether it be Tentacruel, Abomasnow, Garchomp or Salamence. If Kyogre is brought down, you have to prepare for it too, not change there.

About the 600 BST Dragon's achilles' heel, with 4x weakness to Ice, well so does Rayquaza. Don't forget that you're basically forced to have Ice moves on your team for them, or else you'll get trampled. They have many ways of getting around those weaknesses too. There's Yache Berry for lessening the Ice attack, Salac Berry for raising speed, Brightpowder for Garchomp to help Sand Veil, stuff like that.

Don't forget that Kyogre, while having 140 base special defense, can still be hurt adequately by strong neutral/physical grass or electric moves on his 90 base defense. Plus, if Blissey can't take super-strong special attack from monsters like Porygon-Z, Kyogre sure as hell can't either. Drizzle is a bitch though, giving him double STAB on everything. :(

Darkrai has trouble taking neutral hits too, regardless of having only two weaknesses, because investing a lot of defense in him means that he won't be able to hit as hard or fast, which will screw him in the end.

My question is this:

Garchomp has usurped Blissey in the top used list, and all of a sudden it is too powerful and must be banned, but Blissey shouldn't be despite being on top of the list for several months in a row (and has now descended into the lowly second place.)

Seriously, if people aren't accounting for Garchomp on their teams it says more about them than Garchomp.

I think it's more because Blissey can't sweep teams at a moment's notice. Remember, Blissey's ONLY good stats are HP/Special Defense, though it can take a physical hit. Garchomp has good stats everywhere, and rips through teams quite easily.
 
Although I have only read the first post (I’m not reading some 300 posts about pokemon, no thanks), I think this response is entirely justified.

Pokemon has been dying. Slowly, but it has been dying. With the release of DP, it received some brief treatment, which only masked the problem, like putting bandages over a lethal infection. This has only allowed the problem to fester and develop into something worse. Recently, with all these unbannings, or attempts at unbannings, it seems as if you're just trying to kill the game faster.

Near the end of adv, the game was definitely dying due to a lack of interest. This was of course expected. It was nearing the end of an era, and people had gotten bored with the current metagame, looking forward to the new one DP presented. Much new blood was brought into the picture with DP, and the game experienced a temporary rejuvenation.

In terms of player interest, the game is still going strong. But those same active players are killing the game. Gamefreak left us with a highly offensive game, something we haven't seen since the very start of the franchise in RBY. If we start allowing ubers into the standard game, all we're going to do is restrict our options further, rendering the game a shadow of its former self.

Even before all of this unbanning nonsense started it was almost impossible to cover all your weaks. Even the best stall teams couldn't stop everything, and often seemed to collapse to some big threat, regardless of what safeguards they included. Some of the most notable pokemon that caused this are ttar, chomp, and mence, none of which were ever even considered to be too powerful for the game, with the exception of before it was released, which doesn’t count. TTar and mence have the unpredictability factor going for them, while being able to cause massive damage even after your opponent knows their set, and if you guess wrong you could leave your team crippled to some other threat on their team. Chomp seems to have finally lived up to his hype, thanks to outrage abuse and the protection sand veil grants. And then we had mixape with only a couple true counters. Having a couple overpowered pokes is manageable - people can get around it. For example, ttar was arguably the best poke in adv, but wasn't banned; since there were only a couple pokes that posed a huge threat, people could stack counters against them and be prepared, but now that's not necessarily the case, as half of the pokes in OU are capable of destroying teams with minimal support. The problem is we carried over the adv mindset to DP, that most base 600 pokes were not too powerful for the game, and that non-legendary pokemon, however stupid it sounds, are not uber under any circumstances (unless we’re talking about wobbuffet, who we decided was still uber after finding it uber in adv… sound familiar?). As a result, we ended up with multiple beasts in the game, which people have just accepted as being there, a part of the game, even though they unbalance it.

In other words, the game was already breaking at the seams. A very thin thread was holding everything together, and that thread was getting continually worn down. Well, guess what? It's finally breaking. Ever since the shoddy test phase of deoxys-E, that thread has been stressing like it never has been. The physical inclusion of deoxys-E into the metagame was not what broke it, but just look at what is happening now. It has paved the way for the acceptance of many new pokemon, previously considered uber, into the OU metagame. This will not make the game somehow "better." It will only make finding balance in teams harder, and turn the game into something of the effect of rock-paper-scissors, matches getting determined before the game even starts, due to team choice. Either that, or we're essentially going to be playing ubers-lite. Neither of these two scenarios is particularly desirable.

Ladies and gentlemen, our mistake was not in banning these pokemon from the start. Our mistake was not banning enough. I think that the only way we are truly going to obtain a balanced game, one with the highest number of viable pokemon and strategies, is to take our old tier list… and start removing the biggest threats in the game from it. We would slowly remove threats, and when we finally found a balance of pokemon, we would use that. If a certain wall became too prominent (ie. cress), we would remove it. If it left a certain sweeper too prominent after that, what do we do? Remove it for a while, as well. Then compare the level of balance between the two games we had created – the one with both the wall and the sweeper, and the one without. We just keep repeating this process until a selection is made that seems balanced. You seem to want to balance the game by adding more to it. This is only going to make the game more and more offensive. I think we should strive to make both offensive and defensive play viable.
 
I don't see how you can make the argument that the game is dying when we have several times more people playing it than any other generation ever had.
 
^I mostly agree with you there, except for the fact that I preferred the more defensively orientated GSC and Advance.

And I think the inclusion of Deoxys-E was a good thing. I found it extremely stupid how they just shoved it into uber because it was an event Pokemon. If Metagross was an event Pokemon, I reckon it'd be fairly likely to be uber too.

Anyways, I'm hoping more Pokemon get tested in OU (perhaps all the base 600s) so we can see if they really are game-breaking or not.

EDIT: And about this whole popularity thing, DP is actually doing better than Advance in terms of sales, probably because of the whole Wi-fi hype.
 
Ladies and gentlemen, our mistake was not in banning these pokemon from the start. Our mistake was not banning enough. I think that the only way we are truly going to obtain a balanced game, one with the highest number of viable pokemon and strategies, is to take our old tier list… and start removing the biggest threats in the game from it. We would slowly remove threats, and when we finally found a balance of pokemon, we would use that. If a certain wall became too prominent (ie. cress), we would remove it. If it left a certain sweeper too prominent after that, what do we do? Remove it for a while, as well. Then compare the level of balance between the two games we had created – the one with both the wall and the sweeper, and the one without. We just keep repeating this process until a selection is made that seems balanced. You seem to want to balance the game by adding more to it. This is only going to make the game more and more offensive. I think we should strive to make both offensive and defensive play viable.

That really doesn't sound like a reasonable thing to do y'know. If you just keep banning the things that are used a lot, then we're just going to be stuck with everything being allowed in the ubers metagame, simply, because everything will be uber if you just keep on removing everything that seems like it's even remotely on top.

If you just keep on removing stuff, that standard metagame will either become UU or Ubers, because they'll simply have the most pokemon allowed, and we'll be left without an OU metagame.

I do agree that some of things in the game unbalance it, but there are some that are like plugs in a humongous hole. For instance, if you ban Blissey, you'll have to ban the OU special sweepers too, because everyone will be loading their teams with special walls, and everything will fall through that hole that Blissey was plugging. If you ban Cresselia, the big mixed attackers will have to be banned too, because no one will be able to handle them.

Heh, sorry if I didn't really understand what you were trying to say though.
 
Yeah, but here's the thing. At the present time, you don't HAVE to prepare for Kyogre, which would explain why your teams would get massacred by Kyogre. If something's in OU, you need to prepare for it no matter what, whether it be Tentacruel, Abomasnow, Garchomp or Salamence. If Kyogre is brought down, you have to prepare for it too, not change there.
Actually, I'm using some of the Pokemon Obi touted as Kyogre counters, including Vaporeon and calm Milotic. They're not safe counters by a long shot.

About the 600 BST Dragon's achilles' heel, with 4x weakness to Ice, well so does Rayquaza. Don't forget that you're basically forced to have Ice moves on your team for them, or else you'll get trampled. They have many ways of getting around those weaknesses too. There's Yache Berry for lessening the Ice attack, Salac Berry for raising speed, Brightpowder for Garchomp to help Sand Veil, stuff like that.
Setting up Rayquaza is not that easy in ubers with all the ice beams flying around either, he's high risk/high reward. And ice isn't used just for Rayquaza, a lot of things are weak to ice and it's the best attacking type according to X-act's attack chart. Why not use ice if it compliments your set?

Don't forget that Kyogre, while having 140 base special defense, can still be hurt adequately by strong neutral/physical grass or electric moves on his 90 base defense. Plus, if Blissey can't take super-strong special attack from monsters like Porygon-Z, Kyogre sure as hell can't either. Drizzle is a bitch though, giving him double STAB on everything. :(
Name something with a stab physical grass or electric move that isn't 1hko by scarfogre. Sceptile resists water and still dies to water spout. Porygon also dies in 1 hit and to be able to do so much damage must run specs, meaning he's slower.
 
Actually, I'm using some of the Pokemon Obi touted as Kyogre counters, including Vaporeon and calm Milotic. They're not safe counters by a long shot.

Setting up Rayquaza is not that easy in ubers with all the ice beams flying around either, he's high risk/high reward. And ice isn't used just for Rayquaza, a lot of things are weak to ice and it's the best attacking type according to X-act's attack chart. Why not use ice if it compliments your set?

Name something with a stab physical grass or electric move that isn't 1hko by scarfogre. Sceptile resists water and still dies to water spout.

How can a Vaporeon or Calm Milotic be safe against a Calm Mind Kyogre? Plus, Kyogre basically limits your team to 5 members + at least 1 counter of Kyogre. And if that somehow dies, you're screwed. Especially if you have a Electivire... That thing + Kyogre can rip a team apart. Electivire takes care of most Kyogre counters while Kyogre can take down about 70% of current OU Pokemon with S3R (Stab Scarf Spout in Rain).
 
How can a Vaporeon or Calm Milotic be safe against a Calm Mind Kyogre? Plus, Kyogre basically limits your team to 5 members + at least 1 counter of Kyogre. And if that somehow dies, you're screwed. Especially if you have a Electivire... That thing + Kyogre can rip a team apart. Electivire takes care of most Kyogre counters while Kyogre can take down about 70% of current OU Pokemon with S3R (Stab Scarf Spout in Rain).[/quote]

So? You all pack Dragon and Gyarados counters, and once they're down we'll screwed, and Dragonite or Garchomp can take down 70% or more.
 
Actually, I'm using some of the Pokemon Obi touted as Kyogre counters, including Vaporeon and calm Milotic. They're not safe counters by a long shot.

Huh? Ok, well I didn't know that they were listed as possible counters, because that's definitely incorrect. A Water type against Kyogre is only going to even possibly counter it if they're immune to Thunder. Maybe Lanturn and the Water/Grounds stand a chance, and possibly Ludicolo, but they're like the only ones.

Setting up Rayquaza is not that easy in ubers with all the ice beams flying around either, he's high risk/high reward. And ice isn't used just for Rayquaza, a lot of things are weak to ice and it's the best attacking type according to X-act's attack chart. Why not use ice if it compliments your set?

Ok, but HP Ice is garbage, and it's pretty much only used for the Dragons. Pretty much every time you see Hidden Power used, it's almost always Ice typed...

Name something with a stab physical grass or electric move that isn't 1hko by scarfogre. Sceptile resists water and still dies to water spout. Porygon also dies in 1 hit and to be able to do so much damage must run specs, meaning he's slower.

Abomasnow resists everything that Kyogre can throw at it besides Ice Beam, which still does little damage. Plus, it shuts off Rain when it comes in, so Water Spout/Aqua Tail won't be able to OHKO.

With 252 HP EVs, Abomasnow can come in on a max special attack w/+Nature Kyogre and suffer at most a 3HKO from Water Spout thanks to no rain.

If it's a CB Abomasnow, it can OHKO with Seed Bomb. However, even with no Atk EVs and no CB, it's still a guaranteed 2HKO.

I'm sure that if Kyogre is running Aqua Tail on the Scarf set, that it won't be running that much special attack anyway, so there's your counter for that Choice Scarf set.
 
Just to remind everyone that legit Darkrai's speed (with available natures of Bold, Docile, Quirky or Modest) caps at 349, so anything with base 110 Speed and a Speed Beneficial nature can cap at 350, outspeeding Darkrai.

ScarfRai makes its Dark Void and the good ability quite obsolete while with no Scarf it can easily be outrun with things like Alakazam and Weavile and Gengar... Focus Blast and Brick Break isn't really a good thing for Darkrais.

Do note that things like Crobat, Persian, Yanmega, Gengar, etc. can put Darkrai to sleep before it puts you to sleep.

Of course, this applies only if Darkrai's legit. Up till now, I do agree to test Darkrai for OU, only if the Darkrai used is legit. TIMID Darkrai (and any nature that ups speed), or just all non Docile/Modest/Quirky/Bold Darkrais, ought still be banned.
 
Vaporeon stops Choice Scarf or Choice Specs Kyogre, which is the set most people seem to be complaining about. You obviously don't switch it into Thunder, just like Skarmory + Houndoom stop Choice Garchomp.
 
You can't really say "obviously don't switch it into Thunder," because clearly the opponent could outpredict your Vaporeon switch and OHKO with Thunder (I think).

Also, Movie Darkrais can be any nature too.
 
You can't really say "obviously don't switch it into Thunder," because clearly the opponent could outpredict your Vaporeon switch and OHKO with Thunder (I think).


I beileve that was implied. and what about things like CM ogre, in the ou tier?
vaporeon comes in on calm mind, what now bitch =p

Kyogre has huge advantages.

1. it has monstrous special attack.
2. it has really good defeses
3. it has a 150 base power STAB move, or 95 base power STAB move which in the rain is about 450 and 290
4. its water type.
5. It has a movepool of some of the best special attacks in the game, thunder-beam, waterspout, CALM MIND, hydro pump, surf.
6. Calm mind can nerf a lot of the opponents chances of koing with grass knot or thunder, because after 1 or 2 cms those things do like 30-40%
7. It isnt exactly what you would call slow, at 90 base speed it outpaces any wall.

I really dont see how kyogre could be used in ou! I can see things like non-sould dew lati, and deoxys-e in the ou metagame but come on! FUCKING KYOGRE!?!
 
I beileve that was implied. and what about things like CM ogre, in the ou tier?
vaporeon comes in on calm mind, what now bitch =p

Kyogre has huge advantages.

1. it has monstrous special attack.
2. it has really good defeses
3. it has a 150 base power STAB move, or 95 base power STAB move which in the rain is about 450 and 290
4. its water type.
5. It has a movepool of some of the best special attacks in the game, thunder-beam, waterspout, CALM MIND, hydro pump, surf.
6. Calm mind can nerf a lot of the opponents chances of koing with grass knot or thunder, because after 1 or 2 cms those things do like 30-40%
7. It isnt exactly what you would call slow, at 90 base speed it outpaces any wall.

I really dont see how kyogre could be used in ou! I can see things like non-sould dew lati, and deoxys-e in the ou metagame but come on! FUCKING KYOGRE!?!

water spout is only 333.5 power in rain. surf is 210.
 
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