In order to maintain game balance, powerful moves in pokemon were always designed in such a way that you have to accept some sort of trade-off in order to use them. Hyper Beam requires you to waste a turn to recharge, Eruption's power depends on your HP, Draco Meteor lowers your SpA, a lot of powerful moves have lower accuracy (Focus Blast, Thunder, Blizzard) and almost all of them have low PP. Dynamic Punch was designed to be a very powerful move that also induces confusion to the opponent, but it is only supposed to land 50% of the time. Anyone with some GSC experience should know the move is very lame even with 50% accuracy, let alone with 100% and I don't think we should have to deal with it. My preference would be to ban Dynamic Punch because I think the move is inherently uncompetitive, but I wouldn't be opposed to a Machamp ban either.
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OU Why we should suspect test No Guard, DynamicPunch, or Machamp
- Thread starter BKC
- Start date
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Machamp has not posed a significant issue for more than a decade. The prevalence of No Guard/DP is not as high in the meta as serene grace/iron head + para spam, Jirachee. Until the primary concerns are addressed, all of these side quest bans can be postponed. Jirachee is far more common on the ladder than Machamp, and the difference is substantial. If we have managed to cope with Jirachee for this long, we can certainly handle Machamp.
I think that we at least have enough of a playerbase that desires action to warrant a suspect test. Either machamp gets banned or we prove the community doesn't want that and move on to other things to talk about. Banning dynamic guard instead would be fantastic! But this is the smogon higher ups we're appealing to, that's not happening as a first step. if we don't get up some kind of suspect test for at least machamp then realistically all that this is is complaining about stuff. I'm also kind of curious as to how the test will be operated given that we want a higher standard than the B/W test
The distinction between suspecting Machamp or DynamicPunch is interesting. Normally, I think suspecting Machamp would be the clear choice: DynamicPunch isn't problematic on anything else, as it's really the combination of No Guard + STAB + high Attack that makes it so strong, i.e. characteristics unique to Machamp the Pokemon and not the move it's abusing. What makes this one feel weird, though, is that the proposal here is action against DynamicPunch as an unhealthy or uncompetitive RNG slot machine, not a broken game element, so it feels different than, say, banning Blaziken and not Speed Boost. Suspecting Machamp itself would potentially remove a Pokemon that is clearly not broken in the name of removing excessive RNG, and to me that feels like two different goals of tiering working against each other and not together.
As an aside: I think this distinction is important because of its very obvious parallel, already mentioned by multiple posters in this thread, to Jirachi, another Pokemon who very few players think is broken enough to even warrant a suspect, let alone a ban. It's Iron Head. You can even make a "multiple abusers" case if you broaden the scope of the "suspect" enough: is 60% flinch any less unhealthy on Togekiss? On Zen Headbutt Jirachi? That the flinching move itself is different does not matter -- 4 different OHKO moves are banned under a single umbrella. You could ban 60% flinch (this could be done/worded in a few ways in the clause, possibly involving an explicit invocation of Serene Grace) and DynamicPunch (Machoke is your second abuser lol, and Christos makes a fine argument for the move itself being inherently uncompetitive) and uphold the spirit of the tiering framework while preserving as much of a historic metagame as possible.
Anyway, I still think suspecting or banning DynamicPunch makes sense here. It's a high distribution move that increases the chances that a less skilled player will beat a more skilled one. You could probably say this about Zap Cannon or something, but "too much luck" has always been an arbitrary line and with this move specifically I think it's at least reasonable to consider if it crosses it.
As an aside: I think this distinction is important because of its very obvious parallel, already mentioned by multiple posters in this thread, to Jirachi, another Pokemon who very few players think is broken enough to even warrant a suspect, let alone a ban. It's Iron Head. You can even make a "multiple abusers" case if you broaden the scope of the "suspect" enough: is 60% flinch any less unhealthy on Togekiss? On Zen Headbutt Jirachi? That the flinching move itself is different does not matter -- 4 different OHKO moves are banned under a single umbrella. You could ban 60% flinch (this could be done/worded in a few ways in the clause, possibly involving an explicit invocation of Serene Grace) and DynamicPunch (Machoke is your second abuser lol, and Christos makes a fine argument for the move itself being inherently uncompetitive) and uphold the spirit of the tiering framework while preserving as much of a historic metagame as possible.
Anyway, I still think suspecting or banning DynamicPunch makes sense here. It's a high distribution move that increases the chances that a less skilled player will beat a more skilled one. You could probably say this about Zap Cannon or something, but "too much luck" has always been an arbitrary line and with this move specifically I think it's at least reasonable to consider if it crosses it.
It's crucial to consider the long-term consequences of making changes to the game. Once a right (Pokemon / Move + ability) is relinquished, it's extremely challenging to reverse that decision. Therefore, unless Machamp becomes overwhelmingly prevalent and distorts the competitive landscape, it's best to maintain the status quo. Let's allow "skill" to naturally prevail. There are strategies to counter every style of play, and the argument that less skilled players are at an advantage is unconvincing. Personally, I've encountered setbacks due to unexpected critical hits (see at least one crit every game) or flinch-inducing moves, but I've never let it deter me. Instead, I've adjusted my team composition to address these challenges. This approach reflects my belief in progress through adaptation and resilience, rather than simply complaining and removing elements from the game.
I love that you brought this up because it allows me to talk about why crits are ok but machamp isnt
when someone gets a critical hit, or a freeze, the gamestate changes suddenly from what it was. It challenges people who had one plan, and these teams with one plan are usually themselves cheesy strategies and matchup fishes.
the chance of an ice beam freeze is 10%
the chance of a critical hit is 6.25%
the chance of hurting self in confusion is 50%.
rng is a competitive aspect in moderation thanks to its nature that forces flexibility on teams. It can be a smart play to know that your best play is going for a speed tie, or barraging a suicune setting up multiple calm mins with ice beam if the situation is really dire. The two distinguishing factors here are that;1. This is something the player decided was their best odds to victory in that situation and 2. The odds are somewhat low, and can be played around, such as the suicune only boosting to 2X boosted, or switching out the speed tied pokemon. When you load machamp, from the beginning, youre intending to play dice. When you get hit with a crit, that sucks, but its different from facing machamp and getting unlucky. They decided in the beginning that their best hope of beating you wasnt to outskill you. On top
Of that, the odds are 50/50, so a team that performs well into machamp one day fumbles the next. Ive sometimes forfeitied turn 3 after my opponent got some stupid machamp turns, because the feeling of i just dont want to really deal with that overwhelms the part of me that wants to turn it around and see if i can make a comeback win. Also dont have the whole “dont ban parts of the game and just deal with it” in our year of the lord 2024. Shit has been banned for 15 years and isnt stopping. Please leave this mentality in the past
This is closely aligned with how I view machamp and other RNG elements in the game. You just start to plan for them in game or in the builder, and are rewarded for doing so. However, I understand that some people don't want to play the game this way, and would prefer to ban elements they consider to emphasise rng too much.
I believe action should be taken onto Dynamic Punch. Dynamic Punch is able to force coin flip scenarios, even without No Guard, which further takes the aspect of RNG into play, eliminating the factor of skill. I think that without Dynamic Punch, Machamp would still be powerful, but not really broken. Removing No Guard would just still prove to have the same problem of too much RNG. While removing Machamp would further decrease the number of viable Fighting-types in DPP OU.
With the Machamp stuff out of the way, I’d like to address Jirachi. I do not think Jirachi or Iron Head need to get banned from the tier. Banning Jirachi would just be bad, as it keeps many threats such as Latias and Roserade in check. And banning Iron Head doesn’t really make too much sense, as there is certainly counter play. If I were to ban one, Iron Head would probably be the best option here.
I’m no professional, but those are my takes.
With the Machamp stuff out of the way, I’d like to address Jirachi. I do not think Jirachi or Iron Head need to get banned from the tier. Banning Jirachi would just be bad, as it keeps many threats such as Latias and Roserade in check. And banning Iron Head doesn’t really make too much sense, as there is certainly counter play. If I were to ban one, Iron Head would probably be the best option here.
I’m no professional, but those are my takes.
The whole thesis of the OP is that both Iron Head and Dpunch/Noguard are problematic, but given that those with power would rather not ban individual moves, and because the majority of people want to keep Jirachi rather than ban it, this whole thing was proposed. Just because both are concerns doesnt mean that one has to take presedence over the other, especially when last I checked, when Sandforce on Excadrill was brought up by Peng (and by direct mention Jirachi) it was shut down. This coincides with how more people are fine/in favor of Machamp being banned for Dpunch's sins than Jirachi for Iron Heads even if a move can't get banned, so this proposal is more likely to see action than any alternatives that have allready been tried wrt Jirachi.
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