Ladder ORAS Monotype Discussion

[Alexis Breeze]

I don't think anyone said Bug was an auto-win against any other types (except for Mega Pinsir vs Grass). It's simply dominating the metagame in a way that we don't think is healthy.

I'm willing to wait one more month until we see August's statistics before we decide on a Bug nerf (it's ultimately the Council's decision anyway), but if Bug's usage keeps going up or if it even stays at its current level, we need to do something about it.

Why again? You should let players figure out meta trends on their own rather than banning stuff every 2-3 months. Flying dominated the ladder for almost half a year until the Zapdos ban and it was pretty clear that core was almost untouchable (Greninja said hi but banned lol). You should understand that "promoting diversity" =/= "equal usage distribution". People are gonna use whatever they feel it's easier/more fun/cheaper to ladder.

(I feel like Ghost is pretty underrated for example. It has a nice balance/stall team that deals with a lot of mid tier/upper tier types)

 

[Dece1t]

Why again? You should let players figure out meta trends on their own rather than banning stuff every 2-3 months. Flying dominated the ladder for almost half a year until the Zapdos ban and it was pretty clear that core was almost untouchable (Greninja said hi but banned lol). You should understand that "promoting diversity" =/= "equal usage distribution". People are gonna use whatever they feel it's easier/more fun/cheaper to ladder.

(I feel like Ghost is pretty underrated for example. It has a nice balance/stall team that deals with a lot of mid tier/upper tier types)

As someone mentioned more popular types are becoming more popular, and underused types are becoming rarer. With the example of bug dominating the meta rn, I think that should be a reason to look at this problem. Especially seeing Bug in like every 3 matches, its getting pretty annoying, and this isn't out of chance, it's pretty consistent.

 

[Acast]

Why again? You should let players figure out meta trends on their own rather than banning stuff every 2-3 months. Flying dominated the ladder for almost half a year until the Zapdos ban and it was pretty clear that core was almost untouchable (Greninja said hi but banned lol). You should understand that "promoting diversity" =/= "equal usage distribution". People are gonna use whatever they feel it's easier/more fun/cheaper to ladder.

(I feel like Ghost is pretty underrated for example. It has a nice balance/stall team that deals with a lot of mid tier/upper tier types)

Flying dominated the ladder for so long because we had a flawed system of managing the metagame back then. Nani Man was a good leader and I'm not saying anything to insult him, but one person wasn't enough to properly manage this metagame. Now we have the Council and a proper system in place for managing the overpowering/overcentralizing threats. Real progress can be accomplished in a relatively short amount of time and I think we would be foolish to put the new system to waste by waiting just because that's what we did in the past. If we had this new system in place back then, I am positive it wouldn't have taken so long to nerf Flying.

 

[Alexis Breeze]

Flying dominated the ladder for so long because we had a flawed system of managing the metagame back then. Nani Man was a good leader and I'm not saying anything to insult him, but one person wasn't enough to properly manage this metagame. Now we have the Council and a proper system in place for managing the overpowering/overcentralizing threats. Real progress can be accomplished in a relatively short amount of time and I think we would be foolish to put the new system to waste by waiting just because that's what we did in the past. If we had this new system in place back then, I am positive it wouldn't have taken so long to nerf Flying.

I said on my post that Flying did need a nerf (we might be looking into a new one after MAlt) but what I'm saying is

As someone mentioned more popular types are becoming more popular, and underused types are becoming rarer.

So? You are trying to make bans based on usage alone. People using a type more than another one is for several reasons I've mentioned before. If you make bans to nerf Flying, Ice and Psychic right now, Rock, Electric and Ice are still gonna be rare. OmniaX has a great Poison knowledge and I've seen a couple of good battlers with Ghost. It's just easier to run Fighting or Bug HO. If you remove Genesect or Pinsir the usage will be only slightly decreased. What will probably change is the win rate only. Don't get me wrong, there are great monobattlers out there but when talking about the majority, most ppl just wanna spam (read copy/paste) user friendly teams and get "easy" wins. Council shouldn't make this a priority and I hope next time we suspect something reqs are harder so that only people with some common sense have the power to alter things rather than being ban friendly every 2-3 months (this is reminding me of OU all of a sudden).

And yes, I appreciate the fact that we have a council now and that the process is very clear but I think you are taking the wrong approach (usage too high, let's ban something) when it comes to "balancing" the meta (I think the meta should balance itself, some players will adapt to current threats, some won't big deal)

 

[Acast]

Council shouldn't make this a priority and I hope next time we suspect something reqs are harder so that only people with some common sense have the power to alter things rather than being ban friendly every 2-3 months (this is reminding me of OU all of a sudden).

There's the little fact that battling ability =/= common sense. Some of the seriously good battlers in this metagame are incredibly selfish and biased and wouldn't really care if a pokemon is fair or not. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to be pointing fingers, but I would sooner trust the opinion of an unbiased, moderately skilled player over a top player who doesn't give two shits about fairness.

 

[Alexis Breeze]

There's the little fact that battling ability =/= common sense. Some of the seriously good battlers in this metagame are incredibly selfish and biased and wouldn't really care if a pokemon is fair or not. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to be pointing fingers, but I would sooner trust the opinion of an unbiased, moderately skilled player over a top player who doesn't give two shits about fairness.

While I agree with your post, how is the current system addressing this problem? Aren't you getting some people to vote favoring their type(s) only right now?

 

[truedrew]

The problem with the entire suspect test system is that there can never be a foolproof method of ensuring the integrity of votes. The 2600 coil req is the basis of most suspect tests and in addition to this most users are required to submit a paragraph explaining their vote as well. Seeing as monotype is not its own forum, we can only vote by PM'ing our votes to scp/or filling out some sort of web service which is p redundant. The paragraph while a decent option does not address the fact that there will always exist a bias towards ones type. The simple fact is that the mentality is ingrained into people at the very grass root level and is no one's fault as people are hardwired to be biased towards things that are beneficial to themselves and nothing can be done about this bias short from mind control. The entire concept of letting only top players vote completely promotes bias and should NOT be done ever otherwise certain types will always be dominant. To promote the use of types is not really feasible as we have seen that in keeping this philosophy the metagame just gets damaged as we reintroduce monsters like Kyu-W + Skymin and end up just banning them again. To progress as a community we have to realise that certain types will always be less viable than other types. For example, flying is an ever popular type due to the simple fact that it has access to such a wide variety of pokemon that can fulfill such a variety of roles that it will remain a very prominent type for the days to come. On the other hand rock has a very limited number of pokemon whom are actually viable thus rock is shunned per se because it is predictable and it really cannot cover its weaknesses that well. Thus to make the suspect test "fair" in any sense it would need a complete new system which takes into account skill and can be bias proof.

Not to leave this as a bash post, i have seen that on the ladder M-Alt is getting more and more popular since the induction of the suspect test, and would just like to say that it is becoming very obvious that the masses have also come to realise the ez sweep button that M-alt has become due to the fact that it just needs a little team support to become very op. M-alt also has amazing support options which allow it to aid its own team mates in sweeping aswell thus i feel the suspect for it is warreneted

 

[ReuzeSmurf]

To achieve the requirements to vote in this suspect test you will need to accumulate 2600 COIL on the regular Monotype ladder where Altarianite will be unbanned.

A good place to start may be to disqualify voters who have gotten their COIL reqs utilizing whatever is suspected at that moment (in this case Mega-Altaria). This essentially gets rid of all the voters that like to spam whatever is suspected and want to be able to do that in the future. Some people may not have a clear opinion on whether the suspect is broken or not and these people will still be able to use it on the ladder to test how it fares in the meta.

It would have been great if we were able to get our own suspect ladder, but I assume this wasn't possible since we're an Other Metagame. It may therefore be hard to control whether players aren't cheating, if this becomes a thing. Maybe the Core Challenge ladder bot can help out?

This was just a thought that was flowing through my mind, but maybe we can adjust the COIL reqs needed to the match-ups of the type the player uses. For example, the Flying type has better match-ups overall than the Grass type, so it wil be easier for the flying user to win battles, so shouldn't it have to score more points? This may encourage people to use lower tiered types to gets reqs, which gets them to look at the suspect from a new perspective and have more understanding to what the suspect does to other types than the user usually plays. In the current system there is basically no incentive to gets reqs with say Electric. Why would you start running into a wall, when you can grab a hammer and smash through it?

 

[Freeroamer]

We don't have the ability to create a ladder with Altarianite banned just for the sake of a suspect, and I'm certainly not digging through every replay of everyone who laddered, assuming those are even saved. Also playing with and against Altaria gives people the experience to make a decision on whether to ban it or not, which is at the very heart of the reason to ladder for reqs at all.

Yes in a perfect world this would be a consideration but do you have any idea how crazily difficult this would be to try to implement? I don't even know how you'd define the matchup between two types, because are you accounting for the actual type matchup between the two types that are playing or simply how they fare in the actual metagame? How does that translate to GXE and COIL? Could a system like this ever be realistic without making it unviable to ladder with stronger types that probably contain the suspect?

 

[Dece1t]

While I agree with your post, how is the current system addressing this problem? Aren't you getting some people to vote favoring their type(s) only right now?

Acast has a good point, an unbiased council is definatley the way to go with making a more balanced meta. As for my point earlier, I'm not saying that "oh, we should unban shit to make these types have more usage." I think a lot of the more overused types play a huge effect in these type's usages. For example, I took on tying to learn ice because I liked the challenge it provided, like figuring out how to cover what, and make my team more balanced in matchups. That's only me though. Where I'm trying to go is, these types getting rarer on the ladder I don't think is super amazing (so the stats get skewed. Ex: ice core challenge: lapras skyrocketed to 50% and cloyster to 75%)

We don't have the ability to create a ladder with Altarianite banned just for the sake of a suspect, and I'm certainly not digging through every replay of everyone who laddered, assuming those are even saved. Also playing with and against Altaria gives people the experience to make a decision on whether to ban it or not, which is at the very heart of the reason to ladder for reqs at all.

Yes in a perfect world this would be a consideration but do you have any idea how crazily difficult this would be to try to implement? I don't even know how you'd define the matchup between two types, because are you accounting for the actual type matchup between the two types that are playing or simply how they fare in the actual metagame? How does that translate to GXE and COIL? Could a system like this ever be realistic without making it unviable to ladder with stronger types that probably contain the suspect?

If that were to become a reality, that would be awesome, but I can imagine it would be a pain in the ass to code lol

 

[RZL]

The only problem is that no such thing as an unbiased council can exist. It would be lovely, but each council member would be biased in some way. The CC challenge as fun as they are skew the statistics greatly, and this should be taken into consideration when making a statement on statistics, was this Pokemon recently in a core challenge? if so check its usage in the previous month and see if it is around the same.

A good place to start may be to disqualify voters who have gotten their COIL reqs utilizing whatever is suspected at that moment (in this case Mega-Altaria). This essentially gets rid of all the voters that like to spam whatever is suspected and want to be able to do that in the future. Some people may not have a clear opinion on whether the suspect is broken or not and these people will still be able to use it on the ladder to test how it fares in the meta.

It would have been great if we were able to get our own suspect ladder, but I assume this wasn't possible since we're an Other Metagame. It may therefore be hard to control whether players aren't cheating, if this becomes a thing. Maybe the Core Challenge ladder bot can help out?

This was just a thought that was flowing through my mind, but maybe we can adjust the COIL reqs needed to the match-ups of the type the player uses. For example, the Flying type has better match-ups overall than the Grass type, so it wil be easier for the flying user to win battles, so shouldn't it have to score more points? This may encourage people to use lower tiered types to gets reqs, which gets them to look at the suspect from a new perspective and have more understanding to what the suspect does to other types than the user usually plays. In the current system there is basically no incentive to gets reqs with say Electric. Why would you start running into a wall, when you can grab a hammer and smash through it?

People just want to kiss their broken mons good bye before they have to get rid of them. Eh, what Freeroamer said contains my thoughts on the different coil per usage thing. The only incentive is to get reqs with a type you like rather than a type which is broken.

 

[Arash]

you might also try having only one voter for each type, so that each suspect test has 18 voters with a perspective on each type regarding the broken mon. make sure that the type with the suspected mon uses it extensively so that all types are exposed properly

for example, dragon and flying ladderers would use mega-altaria in their teams, and the voting pool would include these suspect abusers as well as the best battlers for each type (say, electric) giving their input on electric's matchup vs mega-altaria, etc.

 

[Salemance]

Sorry if this comes out a bit odd, but its just me thinking now.

Why try fix something with how the suspect is atm? Trying to get regs varies from person to person (some got it at 50, others 90...) and I understand wanting people who know what they are taking bout in the voting....but a lot of the people in it are knowledgeable about the meta as it is. This isn't some big fancy suspect like OU where you can get credit for Tier Contributing badge, so its not like we are getting lot of people who are just here to get regs. Most of the people i ran into on the ladder I knew actually wanted to have their voice heard on the matter. Heck, even on the ladder itself, I often got into debate with opponents who weren't getting regs to get see their thoughts and where they came from. There is a lot of interest in this, and even if voting can be considered not perfect, that could be said bout many things. I think this has been a great first test, and something I'm genuinely happy I got to participate in even if I took bit longer to get regs.

Also, I don't like the idea much of just having 18 voters, as it seems a fancier version of a council quickban. And for something like a quickban, a voting pool that large just seems weird, and would have the potential to be met at 50-50. A suspect test is fine, and if there is something the guys on our council would like to change for next time they can (Coil requirements or etc.) then they can, but something like 18 votes for each type just seems odd.

Anyway sorry if I got liitle preachy there. I wanted to say and said it

 

[ed wins]

A good place to start may be to disqualify voters who have gotten their COIL reqs utilizing whatever is suspected at that moment (in this case Mega-Altaria). This essentially gets rid of all the voters that like to spam whatever is suspected and want to be able to do that in the future. Some people may not have a clear opinion on whether the suspect is broken or not and these people will still be able to use it on the ladder to test how it fares in the meta.

It would have been great if we were able to get our own suspect ladder, but I assume this wasn't possible since we're an Other Metagame. It may therefore be hard to control whether players aren't cheating, if this becomes a thing. Maybe the Core Challenge ladder bot can help out?

This was just a thought that was flowing through my mind, but maybe we can adjust the COIL reqs needed to the match-ups of the type the player uses. For example, the Flying type has better match-ups overall than the Grass type, so it wil be easier for the flying user to win battles, so shouldn't it have to score more points? This may encourage people to use lower tiered types to gets reqs, which gets them to look at the suspect from a new perspective and have more understanding to what the suspect does to other types than the user usually plays. In the current system there is basically no incentive to gets reqs with say Electric. Why would you start running into a wall, when you can grab a hammer and smash through it?

No. This should be the opposite. In such a matchup based tier, players can go 20+ games without even encountering Malaria. I know that I have. In my 40ish games played for my reqs, I only encountered it four times, and it was against users aiming for reqs. In my opinion, the use of the suspect threat should be ENCOURAGED to use while laddering. I came into the suspect test with my opinions on the votes, and, while the test is not over, my opinions have not changed. Granted, I was a player NOT using Malaria during the suspect, which means that my four battles literally showed me nothing of its brokenness.

--

As far as "eliteism" works in the suspect voting, I have mixed feelings about it. While I do agree that top players may be biased and easily ladder only to ban/ not ban whatever benefits them and their main types/teams, I think that it is also unfair to let some one not too competent in the tier vote, mainly due to lack of knowledge. 2600 COIL is incredibly easy to achieve, and I saw one of the people that met that requirement with a GXE in the 60s, IF i remember correctly. While I agree not the voting shouldn't be done solely by the best players, I do not think that it is completely fair to allow the lesser skilled players to vote as well. Maybe in the future, we can have a game limit just like OU did with the Landorus-I suspect test?

 

[Tyke]

Sorry if this comes out a bit odd, but its just me thinking now.

Why try fix something with how the suspect is atm? Trying to get regs varies from person to person (some got it at 50, others 90...) and I understand wanting people who know what they are taking bout in the voting....but a lot of the people in it are knowledgeable about the meta as it is. This isn't some big fancy suspect like OU where you can get credit for Tier Contributing badge, so its not like we are getting lot of people who are just here to get regs. Most of the people i ran into on the ladder I knew actually wanted to have their voice heard on the matter. Heck, even on the ladder itself, I often got into debate with opponents who weren't getting regs to get see their thoughts and where they came from. There is a lot of interest in this, and even if voting can be considered not perfect, that could be said bout many things. I think this has been a great first test, and something I'm genuinely happy I got to participate in even if I took bit longer to get regs.

Also, I don't like the idea much of just having 18 voters, as it seems a fancier version of a council quickban. And for something like a quickban, a voting pool that large just seems weird, and would have the potential to be met at 50-50. A suspect test is fine, and if there is something the guys on our council would like to change for next time they can (Coil requirements or etc.) then they can, but something like 18 votes for each type just seems odd.

Anyway sorry if I got liitle preachy there. I wanted to say and said it

I mean the idea of a reqs/suspect test over a council decision is to afford everyone who has sufficient skill to vote, regardless of whether they're active on ladder or in chat or on smogon or if auth knows they exist. Perhaps some mythical monotype sensei whose very mouth dribbles with pearls of wisdom has lurked amongst us all this time but has never seen fit to get involved before.

But I agree that for the next test ya'll should re-examine the suspect requirements so that they can sift out the people who don't know what they're talking about WHILE not being so daunting as to discourage knowledgable players who may be lazy, unmotivated regarding the subject of suspicion, or simply indisposed towards laddering for any reason.

Again, like Salemance said, it's been great so far, but everything and everyone is a work in progress amiright :D

A good place to start may be to disqualify voters who have gotten their COIL reqs utilizing whatever is suspected at that moment (in this case Mega-Altaria). This essentially gets rid of all the voters that like to spam whatever is suspected and want to be able to do that in the future. Some people may not have a clear opinion on whether the suspect is broken or not and these people will still be able to use it on the ladder to test how it fares in the meta.

It would have been great if we were able to get our own suspect ladder, but I assume this wasn't possible since we're an Other Metagame. It may therefore be hard to control whether players aren't cheating, if this becomes a thing. Maybe the Core Challenge ladder bot can help out?

This was just a thought that was flowing through my mind, but maybe we can adjust the COIL reqs needed to the match-ups of the type the player uses. For example, the Flying type has better match-ups overall than the Grass type, so it wil be easier for the flying user to win battles, so shouldn't it have to score more points? This may encourage people to use lower tiered types to gets reqs, which gets them to look at the suspect from a new perspective and have more understanding to what the suspect does to other types than the user usually plays. In the current system there is basically no incentive to gets reqs with say Electric. Why would you start running into a wall, when you can grab a hammer and smash through it?

I disagree.

Firstly, You make a lot of assumptions about the people who used Mega-Altaria when getting reqs. A lot of people are just trying to educate themselves on the fluffy sheep dragon's effect on the meta, and regardless of their intent I'd prefer that the people voting on the suspect have experience using mega-altaria before voting on it's fate.

Secondly, suspects are typically the worst time to use the suspected pokemon, as their increased publicity means teambuilders are pressed to better prepare for them. While this is more pronounced on suspect ladders, it's still a factor in suspects like these.

While I appreciate your ideas on encouraging players to use lower-tier types during a suspect to get a more rounded perspective, that should never be made a requirement for players to vote. You can't guarantee the player will even encounter the suspected pokemon as they ladder. Similarly, you shouldn't punish players because they use a certain type either; monotype isn't so unbalanced that a complete moron who understands nothing about the meta could escape lower ladder and get reqs using a top-tier type.

 

[Freeroamer]

Reqs were purposely made difficult so as to discourage attempts at cheating through the forms of making multiple alts and other such cases we want to avoid, as well as ensuring the voting population are skilled and knowledgeable enough to vote. From what I've seen so far, and talking to people in the community, noone who I would class as reasonably skilled has expressed a true difficulty in obtaining reqs but it is true that the current voter count is a little low. The reqs for this test won't change so close to the end, but if it's something that is more restrictive than beneficial, it will definitely be looked at.

 

[Salemance]

I mean the idea of a reqs/suspect test over a council decision is to afford everyone who has sufficient skill to vote, regardless of whether they're active on ladder or in chat or on smogon or if auth knows they exist. Perhaps some mythical monotype sensei whose very mouth dribbles with pearls of wisdom has lurked amongst us all this time but has never seen fit to get involved before.

But I agree that for the next test ya'll should re-examine the suspect requirements so that they can sift out the people who don't know what they're talking about WHILE not being so daunting as to discourage knowledgable players who may be lazy, unmotivated regarding the subject of suspicion, or simply indisposed towards laddering for any reason.

Again, like Salemance said, it's been great so far, but everything and everyone is a work in progress amiright :D

Course thats what a suspect test is. Didnt think I was arguing gainst it there, just getting annoyed at all the complaining bout it. And pearl dribbling sensei is lot to ask. Just rather us do what we are doing and actually attempt to fix it, unlike in monos past (talking gen 5 mono and early gen 6 mono). Still we could hunt down a person making pearls with their mouth. Wouldn't mind getting rich but thats unrelated to this (also offtopic as its metaphorically stated while i mean literal).

 

[RZL]

Trying to fix something that has never happened before is quite stupid. Also Freeroamer, it is also a possibility that people such as I, are going to get reqs closer to the deadline. Honestly, I am laddering all day tomorrow, so I am assuming that I am not the only one. 2600 is standard...I don't think anyone uses less (bar LC because LC...), so it should be moderately easy for anyone with decent skill to achieve reqs within a day.

 

[Freeroamer]

Which is why I said it would be looked at after this suspect has ended and we have a complete list of voters. Currently the low number is a little concerning, but as you say, more people could get reqs between now and the deadline so it's not something to stress over yet. It's not too comparable to other suspects as they have the attraction of counting towards the TC badge and also they get a lot more publicity.

 

[truedrew]

Regarding the voter count i feel that a low number may be a problem as making such a pivotal decision such as banning an entire pokemon is a tier wide impact as it juggles so many things like type match up, pokemon viability, and even usage. Thus i guess to augment the number of users, we follow something along the lines of the OU mentality and hold at least 2-3 suspect tours in which from the semi finalist up people get to vote as well. To insure integrity they must have a smogon account which is at least a week old and has posts in monotype forums

 

[scpinion]

I've been away all weekend so I didn't get a chance to respond as this discussion arose.
A comment on the usage stats that speaks toward the rare becoming rarer point: The stats are weighted.

The types you encounter on the high ladder contribute more, which means types like Ice, Rock and Electric show lower usage and types like Bug, Flying and Psychic show more usage vs. their their unweighted values .

I thought for quite a while on whether I should publish those numbers as weighted or unweighted. Ultimately I went w/ weighted b/c I wanted the stats to reflect what one would encounter when facing stronger battlers with polished teams, not random people using their favorite type. I'll let you guys discuss what this means opposed to just posting my opinions.

unweighted type usage

If you'd like to view the unweighted stats for other months Antar publishes them on Smogon.

monobug....................... 8.24793%
monowater..................... 7.81983%
monoflying.................... 7.48663%
mononormal.................... 7.15438%
monopsychic................... 7.12094%
monofighting.................. 7.08120%
monodark...................... 6.81394%
monodragon.................... 5.91416%
monosteel..................... 5.62957%
monofire...................... 5.57474%
monoghost..................... 4.96996%
monoground.................... 4.30951%
monopoison.................... 4.29644%
monograss..................... 4.29428%
monofairy..................... 3.92782%
monoelectric.................. 3.41582%
monoice....................... 3.23558%
monorock...................... 2.84157%

Also, I'd like to echo Freeroamer's sentiment that the number of qualified voters is lower than we were expecting. As I write this it is sitting at ~30 people. I'm certain we have more than 30 competent people in the Monotype community that are capable of getting reqs.

Those of you planning to do last minute reqs (myself included x_x) the deadline is Wednesday at 11:59pm EST.

 

[darkrai147]

I'll just chime in quickly. I've seen a lot of the discussion for altaria has been based on the types flying and dragon. If Monotype wants to become closer to an official metagame, then the focus needs to be on Altaria. This suspect test is meant to determine if Altaria is broken. And if a pokemon is determined to be broken in an offensive sense, then the support it has is irrelevant. This is similar to the 'Broken mons checking broken mons' issue in OU, meaning that, for example from the recent OU suspect test, just because Aegislash being banned means fairies like Mega Gardevoir and such have a much easier time spamming their stab moves, and thus arguably making the metagame less healthy, does not mean that Aegislash is not broken. This is why I find posts like "It's not broken on dragon" or "Dragon needs it or else it will be a bad type" meaningless and irrelevant.
Anyway, in regards to my thoughts on Altaria itself, it's all been said by now and I agree with the ban from both types.

TL;DR Stop saying it's only broken on flying that makes 0 sense; ban the fluffball.

 

[Whydon]

I'll just chime in quickly. I've seen a lot of the discussion for altaria has been based on the types flying and dragon. If Monotype wants to become closer to an official metagame, then the focus needs to be on Altaria. This suspect test is meant to determine if Altaria is broken. And if a pokemon is determined to be broken in an offensive sense, then the support it has is irrelevant.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. Support should play a large part in determining whether or not a Pokemon is broken. An example of this is Mega-Gallade. In terms of the power it offers, it does a pretty good job at being a good offensive force on Fighting monos, but in no way is it broken (it's not even OU). So why would this BL Pokemon be banned from Psychic only? The reason for that is because Psychic was able to provide Gallade with so much offensive and defensive support that it allowed Mega-Gallade to completely plow through teams. Psychic has always been known to be able to set up and get rid of hazards, has many defensive and offensive threats, as well as Heal Bell and Wish support. All of this combined with Mega-Gallade's 165 Attack stat, good STABs and setup moves proved that Mega-Gallade was too powerful on Psychic teams. But on Fighting teams, it's still a pretty good Pokemon, however it is not as overwhelming as it was on Psychic due to the fact that Fighting is unable to provide the same amount of support that made Mega-Gallade so good on Psychic teams.

This is exactly why people say 'ban it on Flying' or 'ban it on Dragon only'. I honestly believe that Mega-Altaria is much more powerful on Flying type teams than it is on Dragon teams. Flying can provide amazing offensive and defensive support, can provide Wish and Heal Bell support, and Altaria's typing gives Flying a large advantage against types such as Electric, Dark, Dragon (if it can setup), and some other types that people have mentioned. However, it is also quite amazing on Dragon as well. Dragon has always been known as an Offensive/Bulky Offensive type, so the offensive support that Dragon provides for MAlt is also quite good. So I do agree with the fact that I think it should be banned from both, but of course it will come down to what the community thinks.

 

[darkrai147]

I'm going to have to disagree with you. Support should play a large part in determining whether or not a Pokemon is broken. An example of this is Mega-Gallade. In terms of the power it offers, it does a pretty good job at being a good offensive force on Fighting monos, but in no way is it broken (it's not even OU). So why would this BL Pokemon be banned from Psychic only? The reason for that is because Psychic was able to provide Gallade with so much offensive and defensive support that it allowed Mega-Gallade to completely plow through teams.

I realize it's been done on the past, I was sorta trying to change that philosophy for the future. If you think about what makes an offensive pokemon overpowered, you should be thinking of it's coverage, it's attacking and speed stats, how many counters/switch-ins it has, and in the specific case of monotype, if it can auto-win against certain types. All of these things have nothing to do with the pokemon that are on the team with it. That's how it's done in the official tiers, and since Monotype has been progressing towards official more than any other OM, it makes sense that we would start using more of those policies.

 

[Whydon]

I realize it's been done on the past, I was sorta trying to change that philosophy for the future. If you think about what makes an offensive pokemon overpowered, you should be thinking of it's coverage, it's attacking and speed stats, how many counters/switch-ins it has, and in the specific case of monotype, if it can auto-win against certain types. All of these things have nothing to do with the pokemon that are on the team with it. That's how it's done in the official tiers, and since Monotype has been progressing towards official more than any other OM, it makes sense that we would start using more of those policies.

I think if we changed the philosophy then stuff like Mega-Gallade would still be useable on Psychic. Again, Mega-Gallade is great, but it's a BL Pokemon. It had counters and checks just like any other Pokemon had. The thing is, Psychic was able to coverup Mega-Gallade's weaknesses exceptionally well, and Mega-Gallade was able to destroy Dark teams. Of course they take a look at the stats, coverage, counters and auto-wins. But they can't just isolate the Pokemon. Monotype does stuff differently because when they suspect a Pokemon, they have to take a look at the type it's allowed on and what it can do. In tiers such as OU, this is different because you can have a team of any Pokemon you'd like. But in Monotype you have to take a lot at the entire picture: the type.