-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
np: BW Ubers Suspect Round 3 - Dazed and Confused
- Thread starter bojangles
- Start date
- Status
Lavos
Banned deucer.
obtained ladder reqs with a final record of 61-15 at #5. can't say i'm too disappointed with that. as far as moody goes, i never really saw much of an impact that it had on the metagame. i never lost to a moody team in my entire ladder run, partially because my team had 4 priority users which helped snipe smeargle even after it got boosts and slept one of my pokes. i don't think moody in general is a huge threat to the ubers metagame. that said, it's a broken ability and doesn't belong in any competitive scene. i almost got swept once by a protect/sub/bp/ingrain smeargle who simply sat there and racked up evasion boosts so i couldn't hit it at all. finally i managed to kill it off with ekiller arceus, but if it had passed to a teammate instead of being the only pokemon left, i would have been simply finished - not because of the way i played smeargle, but because it got lucky with its boosts and i was unable to hit it for a long time. all moody really does is serve as a tool for noobs to beat those better than they are, which just serves to promote luck over skill. definitely voting ban.
oh and sorry if i raged at anyone last night, i was not in the best of moods after user virus14 froze me twice.
I'm new to Ubers, and just to try my luck I built a crappy team using standard movesets, including SmashPass Smeargle. As many users have said, it's not easy to get in, but once it does (usually U-Turning with Genesect), it's almost automatic:
-The turn you get in, assuming you used U-Turn, you get a boost.
-Spore the turn after, another boost.
-Shell Smash/Quiver Dance while they switch (boost), and repeat (boost) if you still have your Sash intact (this happens quite often, as a max Speed Smeargle outruns many bulky spreads in Ubers).
-Baton Pass to your sweeper of choice.
-Kill stuff.
I'm not saying it's a foolproof algorithm, but if it works for me, I can't imagine what a decent player could do. I'm not saying Moody is a broken strategy per-se, but it's extremely easy to abuse, and though extremely predictable, it's also annoying and/or boring --as I said, almost auto pilot.
Probably Lavos' strategy (priority, and hazards as well) is the best, assuming no accuracy mess-ups.
-The turn you get in, assuming you used U-Turn, you get a boost.
-Spore the turn after, another boost.
-Shell Smash/Quiver Dance while they switch (boost), and repeat (boost) if you still have your Sash intact (this happens quite often, as a max Speed Smeargle outruns many bulky spreads in Ubers).
-Baton Pass to your sweeper of choice.
-Kill stuff.
I'm not saying it's a foolproof algorithm, but if it works for me, I can't imagine what a decent player could do. I'm not saying Moody is a broken strategy per-se, but it's extremely easy to abuse, and though extremely predictable, it's also annoying and/or boring --as I said, almost auto pilot.
Probably Lavos' strategy (priority, and hazards as well) is the best, assuming no accuracy mess-ups.
Please don't unban it. Smashpass smeargle is hard to deal with as it is. With moody, the game turns into a luck fest. If you get to +2 in evasion or speed, it's basically gg. This ability makes bibaral viable in ubers. If bibaral gets to +2 in speed, it can just spam protect and substitute then sweep. This ability is uncompetitive and should be banned.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
don't get me started on lag, i was finishing up my reqs earlier and there were 2100 people online so every single move i made took like 45 seconds b/c of that. almost ran out of time when one dude decided to put the timer on turn 1 and then my comp started lagging exceptionally hard. if we could *cough* turn animations off, laddering would be a lot more efficient. and moody spam blows but it's still annoying
he has reqs too
what are you talking about
k so got reqs. i primarily used smashpass with moody and an offensive team with dual spikes moody smeargle to take advantage of the people switching in slow phazers to get rid of it and i got up spikes easily (plus if i got an evasion boost it could self spinblock). moody smeargle in smashpass can kinda suck if you get a -accuracy boost and miss spore, but other times it saved me (few, though) with the evasion or speed boost. to be honest, moody isn't that terrible. i was not once swept by missing a move on a bibarel or glalie, and it's not that terrible.. still unsure on what i'm going to vote, but i'm leaning towards unban.
I honestly don't want Moody unbanned. I'm laddering right now, but honestly, the problem with Moody is not that it can be "dealt" with, it is more that Moody takes the game out of your own hands and really puts you into the hands of luck. This obvious removal of skill in the game makes it unhealthy for the game itself. Not that it is necessarily broken, but the fact that skill has just gone out of the window and it is up to luck what boosts the Moody user gets is really ridiculous. I am for keeping it banned, but I am not reqqed yet so whatever.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
that's my argument but articulated a lot better (thank you i suck at words) and i think such an argument definitely outweighs the argument bri is making about how moody really isn't that great. yes we get it, it's not a fantastic ability in ubers, but the way it takes the game out of the players' hands and puts it in the hands of lady luck is really uncompetitive and all it does it provide a way for less skilled players to overcome those more skilled than they are via hax. that's not something that belongs in a competitive environment.
also i was 2-0 vs bri so my argument ought to supersede his
Rhys DeAnno
Slacking Off
I don't think this is a good argument to ban Moody actually. We just unbanned evasion, and we have been playing with crits, misses, and parahax since the beginning of Pokemon. There are plenty of times I've lost to much less skilled players through a combination of unlucky haxes (or in some cases even just one really unfortunate crit). Of all the places to draw the line against uncompetitive hax, I'm not sure why we should draw the line exactly at Moody.
A different argument I might accept for banning it is if in the end, a properly constructed Moody team could win 50%+ of its games against any team not taking extreme measures to beat it (a centralization argument). Even this is on somewhat shaky ground as we've never banned anything cartridge legal from ubers for being "overpowered" except for Sleep Clause and Species Clause.
I beg to differ
I mean sure we have crits and all, but crits that happen at a critical moment do not happen very often. Evasion is not a very viable strategy, as it’s not so easy to set up evasion, you have to bet on a miss generally, plus you’re giving up a moveslot, and most pokemon prefer putting a more useful move in it. You could argue that we have to give up a teamslot for moody, but smeargle is not a bad pokemon (well it can bp boosts to a much better poke, good enough), and taunt support makes glalie and bibarel slightly better. They also need not do much to rack up boosts, getting an overall +1 for protecting and if u use a slow pokemon (such as forry, zekrom, etc) to volt switch / u-turn to it, it gets a free boost without taking any damage. If within these 2 turns it gets an evasion or speed boost, you’re in for a hard time, since now it can set up sub much more easily. As for inaccurate moves, they either have higher power than more accurate options, or they are all u can use, and in any case inaccuracy affects every user of the move, plus the inaccurate moves are generally better, such as WoW.
Also pretty sure trickroom has >50% win rate with a team consisting of bibarel and glalie, and OHKO clause remains banned despite low PP and bad accuracy
ugh moody stay banned your even worse than evade boosting at putting in too much luck into the game you might work amazingly and allow a mon to own everything after a few choice boosts to the right stats or don't give any good stat boosts and you die really fast with no middle it work amazingly or it gives you crap and it fails there is no middle ground.
this isn't fun to use or be against.
this isn't fun to use or be against.
TheSpecialOne
formerly Santuga
In my opinion, Moody needs to remain banned from the tier. There are four Pokemon that can utilize this ability: Smeargle, Octillery, Bibarel, and Glalie. To deal with Moody, you would probably need a ton of priority moves, Perish Song, Haze, or a Pokemon with Unaware. Otherwise, once it gets ONE evasion boost, you're done for. Seriously, that evasion boost is game changing, unless you're running Shock Wave and Aerial Ace -.-
Perish Song is viable and we have a good Pokemon to use it, Arceus. However, this means you have to eliminate Arceus and one possible offensive asset on your team, because you're running Perish Song.
Haze is probably not viable in Ubers since it doesn't have a good user, so I'm not going to explore it further.
Unaware follows the same line as Haze, the only somewhat usable Pokemon is Quagsire.
Priority moves are common in the tier, but they have low base power. Unless you get lucky and your opponent doesn't get any evasion or defense boosts within 3 turns, you're probably not going to get away with it. Arceus's and Deoxys's ExtremeSpeed, Giratina's Shadow Sneak, and Scizor's Bullet Punch cannot OHKO any Moody user with the exception of Bullet Punch taking out Glalie (as long as Smeargle runs a Focus Sash), so they have 3 guaranteed turns to activate Moody if they're packing Protect. After the first miss and they get up a Substitute, you'll have a very hard time breaking through it.
Another thing that Moody enables is that bad players can easily win a battle just by spamming Protect and Substitute, and this kind of pisses me off, not sure about everyone else.
Lastly, if Moody were to be unbanned, it would completely change the teambuilding process just because of a single ability. You would have to pack a primary and possibly a second check to Moody users (the ones I listed above) and that might end up costing TWO slots on your team. Since it is luck based, it lets you get easy wins and weights a lot in the teambuilding process, I think Moody is unhealthy for the metagame and should therefore remain banned
Perish Song is viable and we have a good Pokemon to use it, Arceus. However, this means you have to eliminate Arceus and one possible offensive asset on your team, because you're running Perish Song.
Haze is probably not viable in Ubers since it doesn't have a good user, so I'm not going to explore it further.
Unaware follows the same line as Haze, the only somewhat usable Pokemon is Quagsire.
Priority moves are common in the tier, but they have low base power. Unless you get lucky and your opponent doesn't get any evasion or defense boosts within 3 turns, you're probably not going to get away with it. Arceus's and Deoxys's ExtremeSpeed, Giratina's Shadow Sneak, and Scizor's Bullet Punch cannot OHKO any Moody user with the exception of Bullet Punch taking out Glalie (as long as Smeargle runs a Focus Sash), so they have 3 guaranteed turns to activate Moody if they're packing Protect. After the first miss and they get up a Substitute, you'll have a very hard time breaking through it.
Another thing that Moody enables is that bad players can easily win a battle just by spamming Protect and Substitute, and this kind of pisses me off, not sure about everyone else.
Lastly, if Moody were to be unbanned, it would completely change the teambuilding process just because of a single ability. You would have to pack a primary and possibly a second check to Moody users (the ones I listed above) and that might end up costing TWO slots on your team. Since it is luck based, it lets you get easy wins and weights a lot in the teambuilding process, I think Moody is unhealthy for the metagame and should therefore remain banned
actually im wondering how we're going to react when the first win in a big official tourney comes from moody being unbanned. i'm pretty sure that even if it gets unbanned now it will get rebanned again simply because, even if it's not broken, it's so annoying that it's easier, imo, to just ban it.
This is very similar to the evasion testing, the problem is it's evasion with legs. If moody didn't boost evasion, I'm sure a lot more people wouldn't mind unbanning it.
Haze isn't completely unviable. You could always slot it into the fourth moveslot of tenta. Without protect or ice beam, he still does a good job at spinning.
Clear smog can be used on kingdra since he really doesn't need 4 moveslots. You could also run it on gastro over earth power/ice beam. The only problem is the main receiver, dia, is immune to poison.
Thunder (in rain) and aura sphere have perfect accuracy and aren't uncommon on move sets
Perish song is a good move on support arceus and is a good win condition for stall teams.
Thundurus can taunt and hit with thunder.
The problem with most of these solutions is that smeargle has spore, which makes him much harder to deal with.
I've been running support manaphy recently with max hp and max def with rest/heal bell/heart swap/scald. It's pretty effective at nullifying moody in general and there's a chance you can counter sweep even with only scald. Outside of moody, it's still useful as a cleric and does quite well against ho oh/darkrai thanks to the extra base 10 def compared to kyogre.
ATM I am for banning moody. This is mostly because of smeargle and spore, but complex bans aren't gonna happen any time soon
Haze isn't completely unviable. You could always slot it into the fourth moveslot of tenta. Without protect or ice beam, he still does a good job at spinning.
Clear smog can be used on kingdra since he really doesn't need 4 moveslots. You could also run it on gastro over earth power/ice beam. The only problem is the main receiver, dia, is immune to poison.
Thunder (in rain) and aura sphere have perfect accuracy and aren't uncommon on move sets
Perish song is a good move on support arceus and is a good win condition for stall teams.
Thundurus can taunt and hit with thunder.
The problem with most of these solutions is that smeargle has spore, which makes him much harder to deal with.
I've been running support manaphy recently with max hp and max def with rest/heal bell/heart swap/scald. It's pretty effective at nullifying moody in general and there's a chance you can counter sweep even with only scald. Outside of moody, it's still useful as a cleric and does quite well against ho oh/darkrai thanks to the extra base 10 def compared to kyogre.
ATM I am for banning moody. This is mostly because of smeargle and spore, but complex bans aren't gonna happen any time soon
So by what can only be considered divine intervention I actually managed to make reqs.
GGs to anyone I battled. I'm relatively new to Ubers so take my inexperienced opinion for what it is.
I'm somewhat on the fence in regards to whether or not Moody should be unbanned. On the one hand, I think I only lost to Moody once and I was playing a bad game anyway. I prepared solid countermeasures with Perish Song, Aura Sphere, and a PHazer as a last resort. Maybe I was just lucky but I never lost a battle due to evasion boosts. On the other hand, evasion boosts in general annoy me to no end, and Moody is worse than Double Team in this regard since with double team you have to use up a move slot and a turn in order to get your boost. Moody you just have to survive any way you can.
I don't have the passionate hatred for it that a lot of people do, and I actually did enjoy battling against Moody for the most part since it's kind of fun and unpredictable, but I do think having to rely on things like Perish Song and Unaware will have a negative effect on the metagame.
So I'm probably leaning towards banning it.
GGs to anyone I battled. I'm relatively new to Ubers so take my inexperienced opinion for what it is.
I'm somewhat on the fence in regards to whether or not Moody should be unbanned. On the one hand, I think I only lost to Moody once and I was playing a bad game anyway. I prepared solid countermeasures with Perish Song, Aura Sphere, and a PHazer as a last resort. Maybe I was just lucky but I never lost a battle due to evasion boosts. On the other hand, evasion boosts in general annoy me to no end, and Moody is worse than Double Team in this regard since with double team you have to use up a move slot and a turn in order to get your boost. Moody you just have to survive any way you can.
I don't have the passionate hatred for it that a lot of people do, and I actually did enjoy battling against Moody for the most part since it's kind of fun and unpredictable, but I do think having to rely on things like Perish Song and Unaware will have a negative effect on the metagame.
So I'm probably leaning towards banning it.
Focus
Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
While everyone's posting screenshots of their voting requirements, might as well do that too. Moody... eh. The big argument for keeping Moody banned is that it turns the average game into a huge luckfest. For those serious Pokémon players who want to use this tier as the ultimate test of pure skill, unbanning Moody would bring an unfavorably large element of luck into the game. By the way, the argument that Moody would overcentralize the metagame is bogus in Ubers. This is the metagame where every Pokémon is allowed, and is much more centralized than any tier proper.
There are some generic ways to check Moody to an extent such as keeping entry hazards up and having an Extremespeed user (priority and PHazing screw up the Sub-Protect chain). This worked for me more often than not, but one unfortunate Moody boost is all that is needed to screw you over royally. And that isn't even all that uncommon. I'm sure that doing more obscure stuff to check Moody is possible (Perish Song, Taunt, multi-hit moves), but I'd personaly rather not lose to a decent non-Moody team using a sub-par Pokemon or using up a valuable moveslot. The way the ladder is right now, Moody abuse isn't a dominant strategy, but is seen often enough to make the ladderer sweat bullets when faced against such a team. For a high-stakes tournament match, Moody is unfortunately viable. The big problem with this is that if either player has Moody, don't expect to see a match determined mostly by skill. Moody is relatively unreliable, but has enough presence to significantly hurt competitive play, unlike Double Team or Minimize.
I am for now leaning toward keeping Moody banned.
You can miss if he gets an evasion boost, taunt prevents whirlwind and roar, sub sets up on dtail. perish song isn't a bad move
While everyone's posting screenshots of their voting requirements, might as well do that too. Moody... eh. The big argument for keeping Moody banned is that it turns the average game into a huge luckfest. For those serious Pokémon players who want to use this tier as the ultimate test of pure skill, unbanning Moody would bring an unfavorably large element of luck into the game. By the way, the argument that Moody would overcentralize the metagame is bogus in Ubers. This is the metagame where every Pokémon is allowed, and is much more centralized than any tier proper.
There are some generic ways to check Moody to an extent such as keeping entry hazards up and having an Extremespeed user (priority and PHazing screw up the Sub-Protect chain). This worked for me more often than not, but one unfortunate Moody boost is all that is needed to screw you over royally. And that isn't even all that uncommon. I'm sure that doing more obscure stuff to check Moody is possible (Perish Song, Taunt, multi-hit moves), but I'd personaly rather not lose to a decent non-Moody team using a sub-par Pokemon or using up a valuable moveslot. The way the ladder is right now, Moody abuse isn't a dominant strategy, but is seen often enough to make the ladderer sweat bullets when faced against such a team. For a high-stakes tournament match, Moody is unfortunately viable. The big problem with this is that if either player has Moody, don't expect to see a match determined mostly by skill. Moody is relatively unreliable, but has enough presence to significantly hurt competitive play, unlike Double Team or Minimize.
I am for now leaning toward keeping Moody banned.
it was right to clause it the first time it'll be appropriate for a healthy skill filled metagame to keep it banned there is nothing good that can come out of freeing moody.
not one of my wins using moody involved any real skill just moody getting the lucky appropriate boosts when i needed them a meta where one can bank on a retarded ability like moody to win is just not a proper metagame.
not one of my wins using moody involved any real skill just moody getting the lucky appropriate boosts when i needed them a meta where one can bank on a retarded ability like moody to win is just not a proper metagame.
ElectivireRocks
Banned deucer.
Has anyone tried using Terrakion's Sacred Sword to deal with moody users?
It should be able to OHKO Smeargle, Bibarel and Glalie with no problems.
Octillery can probably take a hit and OHKO back, but then again it's arguably the worst and least used of the quartet.
It should be able to OHKO Smeargle, Bibarel and Glalie with no problems.
Octillery can probably take a hit and OHKO back, but then again it's arguably the worst and least used of the quartet.
- Status