As someone generally interested in meta development I think I can answer you a bit.This will be short, and potentially prone to be removed, but I would like to raise a point on language perhaps. Hopefully to set some better future precdents.
Robopoke (amongst others) I think has done this thread, but perhaps more broadly the discussion of trapping into the context it needs to be put into. Which is a player base general attitude wherein trapping is not inherently a problem, but is when a threshold is crossed. As one moderator in the OU chat on showdown put it, 'you have to read between the lines' to appreciate that people mean arena trap traps too much rather than that trapping is truly uncompetetive (In most cases, I am sure some may even take issue with spiderweb but assume them the minority). Regardless of how nuanced and pedantic arguments may seem, at some point there will be a formal outline of the reasoning behind the arena trap ban. At this point I would say for the sake of the future it is vital that words are chosen precisely. Is trapping at the percentage that dugtrio does an issue, or is any trapping of the sort that arena trap offers an issue? Gamefreak have already displayed there willingness to expand on both the quanitity of mons with a trapping element, and the methods of trapping (anchor shot and spirit shackle) so I think it more than appropritate that Robopokes words be heeded.
On another seperate issue; as an amateur to the suspect process as a voice rather than an observor I am always reticent to forward an opinion. Smogon often has esoteric terminology and threads often present an intimidating environment for one lacking (vast) competetive experience in the current metagame. Thus, treat this perhaps as a question rather than as a statement with the intent to enhance my understanding. In the showdown OU chat I entered a debate regarding an almost omnipresent statement in that lobby; 'Arena trap has no counterplay'. My position on this issue is that it is far more nuanced than such a simple statement suggests. I had read most posts in this thread, and noted there were inummerable example of counterplay on both the decision making level and the itemisation/move choices level. I made it explicitly clear that I did not think that most forms of counterplay were good or, perhaps to brave the greyest of all words, 'competetive' but I thought that there was reliable and ubtiquitous counterplay (at least on the individual mon level). Shed shell is a terrible item to run, and as counterplay represents a fairly poor indicator of balance to many including myself. However, shed shell can also be equipped to almost any mon without making it a completely redundant mon (meaning things like chansey and nothing less punished than it is by losing its item). This of course is only the most immeadiete form of counterplay to arena trap as many other posters have listed other methods (again, I don't wish to judge the quality of other methods just acknowledge their existence). To me this represented having nearly ubtiquitous counterplay, but counterplay with a huge, oppurtunity cost (comparable perhaps to things like colbur jellicent's use in UU the isolated case of running or not running x item on a mon). In otherwords the statement 'Arena trap has no counterplay' would be wrong and a more fitting statement would be 'Arena trap has no counterplay that is not an excessive and/or uncompetetive contortion of the teambuilding process'.
Given the above therefore, I am rather hoping for two things from this post. First, if someone thinks and is willing to tell me my argument/view of the operational definition of counterplay is either pedantic to an extreme or just bluntly incorrect I would love to hear it. Second, especially after reading robo's post, wondering if even though my definition is pedantic (and also perhaps not the best one), it would also be worth Smogon avoiding the wording 'no counterplay' because of what is missed in a very reductive comment and due to fears of what precedents imprecise language could lead to in future suspects.
(Final note because I don't wish for this to be read as part of my argument. In the OU lobby, I attempted to articulate why I thought using the statement 'Arena trap had no counterplay' or 'Arena trap is the definition of no counterplay' was reductive and incorrect and received a mute for it. I can see no foul language, nor did it seem like trolling from my perspective so the event has provoked me. Perhaps therefore I am posting out of chagrin, however, I do think that lobby discussions on showdown can have an effect on voting behaviour (if only through pressure effects of appearing to oppose a majority opinion, well known in psychology even on experts as those with req's parallel). For this reason, I would love if through this post the debate on that thread could be improved by people asking questions of the size of Arena traps effect and the investment required to counter it rather than just reductive one line arguments).
In the dugtrio suspect, attempts were made to analyse Dugtrio's effect size in high quality matches. I haven't seen this yet in this thread (perhaps because of time constraints) but if anyone is willing to do this data heavy work I think it would be an invaluable asset to this discussion. Pardon me if this is already avaliable elsewhere.
Hopefully I can get some clarity out of this post, to at the very least, improve how informed my position is.
Before anything, while Smogon is about as serious a meta discussion forum as you can find on the Internet, it is still far from perfect. Unreasonable compaints that commonly occurs in stuffs like Reddit also happens here albeit at a less extend. And honestly, even the council members, who are by all mean some of the best players of the game, could, at least imo, still make mistakes, because lessons from other games showed even the best players don't have to be the best game designer(and in some cases they often aren't).
Luckily, trapping isn't one of those truly problematic topics.
Firstly, "uncounterable" is simply a false statement. It takes some seriously screwed up game designing for things to be uncounterable. Smogon actually recognizes that as well, as I have seen somewhere in this forum stating "uncounterable" does not really mean impossible to counter, it just means it requires a cost that is not reasonable.
Unfortunately, people commonly fails to think through the concept enough, and either does not make their meaning clear in their expression, or simply have them confused completely. If you want serious theorycrafting please just ignore the latter type, even though there are plenty of them, and they could actually reach the right conclusion from time to time.
Back to the topic, arena trap, or, just trapping in general.
It is common knowledge at this point that GameFreak does not cares about 6v6 single at all. Luckily, since trapping is also a thing in other game mode as well, it does receive some attention. Shed shell and U-turn is one thing, trap immunity of Ghost type is another, and there are also new trapping moves introduced this gen.
Problem is none of these measures are sufficient for trapping to be properly balanced in 6v6 singles just yet. In pokemon many single matchups are simply unwinnable, and it becomes worse that if you are able to knock-out your opponent pokemon before it moves, you effectively denied their move.
Countering trapping with ghost is impractical, so the effective ways to counter trapping are shed shell/voltturn/ability. Shed shell essentially removes you item, an insane opportunity cost in singles consider how many sets requires an item to function at all. voltturn has limited distribution and is not always consistent(and dugtrio happens to counter volt switch....) so it does not work either. For escaping abilities.....well let's just not talk about it at all.....
So yeah, trapping abilities are just one of those "polarizing aspect" of the game that could only be counter by niche stuffs. Whenever a polarizing aspect of the game does rise to the top of the meta and requires a counter measure, the counter measure simply is not there. It divides the meta into two parts with any level of relevancy, hence, "polarizing" the meta.
Shadow Tag mons all abused their ability really well, from M-Gengar killing everything to Golithea having Trick, so people eventually had enough and just ban.
Arena trap first escaped the ban because there are no good user to properly abuse the ability. IMO the difference between AT and ST actually isn't that signficant as grounded mon is still the absolute majority of the meta. (only 9/37 of mons from S to A- is not grounded)
Dugtrio has always been a thing but not really because it is still frail and weak, this seem to be quite far from true now that it got an attack buff and Z-move, and efforts on countering the mon becomes a necessity. May be in a Ghost-type dominant meta it is less problematic by the virtual of it having less power but the SM OU meta just isn't one.
This does leave us the question of banning Arena Trap vs banning Dugtrio. From the perspective of balancing the meta, the two options are indifferent because I don't think Diglet would ever make a splash in OU. If anything I generally prefers better meta diversity with more options to toy with, though I can't really say I would really miss it. Since we are a bit on the arena-trap-hate-train now I guess people would just remove it.
Oh if you are taking note, the history of banning traps actually has zero consistency aside from banning the Overpowers. This happens when you employ democracy in game design. It is easy to reach consensus on OP vs not-OP but anything more than that are basically a mess. Heck even the council members are constantly changing. Another note is that there are indeed some consensus that Dugtrio and Golithea without trapping is a piece of hot trash, which is why the ability is banned over the pokemon, though even this is not that firm a thing because the council decided to suspect test the mon rather than the ability last time........
Anyway since I have full authority on personal opinion I will just follow my own principle, and you should follow yours.
For other trapping. IMO Magnetic pull is kinda different from ST and AT, using more Ghost (or non-grounded pokemon) makes no sense as a counter measure, but using less Steels is mostly reasonable. It also helps that Magnezone is a niche pokemon to begin with so it never stirs up a discussion as Dugtrio does.
As for the trapping move, you got to switch at least once before you get trapped, good players are able to counter it by proper piloting so the issue is simply not there.
Last edited: