OU Suspect Testing Proposals

[Alfalfa]

Here is my two cents:

I just really think we need to suppress some of the power creep. We really need a stepping stone for defensive teams to come back to life, because we know how biased towards offense Game Freak is. Life Orb Technician Breloom with Swords Dance and Choice Specs Keldeo in rain are just examples of how much raw power can be packed into one team.

I mean, even in the stall-laden GSC, offensive teams still were able to succeed with threats like Misdreavus and Snorlax able to combat stall. Yet, in BW2 OU, not many defensive teams are able to survive in the hyper offensive metagames. Semi-stall is viable, but I really do not want to run something like Choice Scarf Kyurem-B on a defensive team just to break down offensive teams. If we need to ban Life Orb, Choice Band, and Choice Specs, then so be it. If we need to ban Drizzle and Drought, so be it. If we need to suspect more mons, so be it. If we need to ban abilities like Technician, then so be it. Even if we do not get to everything by October, we still tried to cut down on the raw power.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

Here is my two cents:

I just really think we need to suppress some of the power creep. We really need a stepping stone for defensive teams to come back to life, because we know how biased towards offense Game Freak is. Life Orb Technician Breloom with Swords Dance and Choice Specs Keldeo in rain are just examples of how much raw power can be packed into one team.

I mean, even in the stall-laden GSC, offensive teams still were able to succeed with threats like Misdreavus and Snorlax able to combat stall. Yet, in BW2 OU, not many defensive teams are able to survive in the hyper offensive metagames. Semi-stall is viable, but I really do not want to run something like Choice Scarf Kyurem-B on a defensive team just to break down offensive teams. If we need to ban Life Orb, Choice Band, and Choice Specs, then so be it. If we need to ban Drizzle and Drought, so be it. If we need to suspect more mons, so be it. If we need to ban abilities like Technician, then so be it. Even if we do not get to everything by October, we still tried to cut down on the raw power.

No offense, but the whole "if we need to ban Life Orb/CB/Specs then do it" mentality is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my life. There is nothing inherently broken and/or uncompetitive about these items. They all have some kind of negative drawback; Life Orb cuts 10% of your health each time you attack, while Choice items lock you into one move - Something that can very, VERY easily be taken advantage of. If an item makes a Pokemon broken for whatever reason, ban the Pokemon, not the item.

Defensive teams can do just fine - they just need to adapt by at least running SOME offensive presence (i.e. a Choice Scarf user.) Let's face it, ever since DPP (if not earlier, I don't have enough experience with ADV to be 100% sure) it's been impossible to have a defensive answer to everything in OU, and this is just something we'll have to deal with since there are so many more threats to consider. I'm not saying don't ban Pokemon if they are deemed to make defensive teams borderline unviable - defensive teams definitely should be viable, and it is okay to make suspect testing decisions to do so. However, it gets really ridiculous when you talk about banning competitive, non-broken items like Life Orb, just to make defensive teams a bit better. Like, what the fuck?

 

[blitzlefan]

Here is my two cents:

I just really think we need to suppress some of the power creep. We really need a stepping stone for defensive teams to come back to life, because we know how biased towards offense Game Freak is. Life Orb Technician Breloom with Swords Dance and Choice Specs Keldeo in rain are just examples of how much raw power can be packed into one team.

I mean, even in the stall-laden GSC, offensive teams still were able to succeed with threats like Misdreavus and Snorlax able to combat stall. Yet, in BW2 OU, not many defensive teams are able to survive in the hyper offensive metagames. Semi-stall is viable, but I really do not want to run something like Choice Scarf Kyurem-B on a defensive team just to break down offensive teams. If we need to ban Life Orb, Choice Band, and Choice Specs, then so be it. If we need to ban Drizzle and Drought, so be it. If we need to suspect more mons, so be it. If we need to ban abilities like Technician, then so be it. Even if we do not get to everything by October, we still tried to cut down on the raw power.

To be honest, I really dislike this. This is essentially arbitrarily banning anything that threatens your preferred playstyle. Because something favors offense over defense, you want to ban it, whether it be Life Orb or Choice items, something we haven't had a problem with. I'd really prefer we ban only the things that are broken in their metagame (for example Genesect and Shaymin-S) and stick as closely to what GameFreak has given us as we can, because when you start banning things that give you trouble or threaten your team, it just seems overly biased. I really hate the ban ban ban mentality. So what if we end up with a slightly more offensive metagame? It just means you can't throw out SkarmBliss and expect to wall half the metagame like you could before. Adapt to the metagame, add a little bit of offense to your stall team, etc. rather than just banning everything that prevents you from running passive stall.

I personally think defensive teams can still do fine, as long as we get some defensive Pokemon in Gen VI like we did this generation, like Ferrothorn, Jellicent, and defensive abilities (e.g. Regenerator and Multiscale) to balance out the offensive ones (e.g. Sheer Force).

 

[Lady Alex]

In regard to getting suspect requirements, I've always thought that requiring a set number of matches be played and maintaining a certain win percentage would be a decent way to determine voters. I dislike the way it works now mostly because whether or not you make requirements ultimately comes down to how lucky you get with how many points you get in your first 10 or so matches. I've seen people on the ladder with only barely over 50% wins have a high enough glicko2 to get voting requirements, while someone with about as many matches might have a better win rate, but a much lower glicko2.

 

[asbdsp]

In regard to getting suspect requirements, I've always thought that requiring a set number of matches be played and maintaining a certain win percentage would be a decent way to determine voters. I dislike the way it works now mostly because whether or not you make requirements ultimately comes down to how lucky you get with how many points you get in your first 10 or so matches. I've seen people on the ladder with only barely over 50% wins have a high enough glicko2 to get voting requirements, while someone with about as many matches might have a better win rate, but a much lower glicko2.

People would then just intentionally lose their first X number of matches to drop to a lower rating bracket where they could almost brainlessly win every match to meet the percentage requirement.

 

[Alfalfa]

My point is that we should do what we need to do to balance the metagame, regardless if it takes 200 hours of research just to find a balanced metagame. I never said that we should ban Life Orb, I was giving an example so you get the idea.

 

[Lady Alex]

People would then just intentionally lose their first X number of matches to drop to a lower rating bracket where they could almost brainlessly win every match to meet the percentage requirement.

No. If you throw x number of matches, you're already working against maintaining the necessary win percentage. You're not going to "almost brainlessly win every match to meet the percent requirement" because, if you start winning your matches, your going to be queued against people with higher rating. If you were already able to consistently win against people at that higher rating, it doesn't benefit you at all to have thrown your first several matches.

 

[Jukain]

I disagree with the sentiments against the current system. Generally, you can get the reqs if you're playing enough battles. We're getting upwards of 150 voters -- that says something about the system. I don't think we need easier reqs, because that's a pretty huge voting pool. In fact, easier reqs would just exacerbate the voter issues we have currently. The system favors those who will play a lot of battles and win a good percentage of them. For an extreme example, I played ~120 battles for Deoxys-D reqs instead of just sacking the alt. I didn't win an overwhelming percentage of those battles, but I was still able to get reqs. I probably would have played just as much if I kept getting rid of alts until I finally got a really good winning streak. It takes roughly 70-80 battles to get current reqs if you start out good, which I don't think is unreasonable. With a few rare exceptions, good players and even less good players can get reqs if they are willing to play the games. For every one good or even decent player you face, there are like 5 bad players. I think the current system works best for our purposes.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

My point is that we should do what we need to do to balance the metagame, regardless if it takes 200 hours of research just to find a balanced metagame. I never said that we should ban Life Orb, I was giving an example so you get the idea.

And I was saying there was no way to justify a ban on Life Orb, so your point in bringing that up was kinda dumb.

Note that I do not disagree with you in that we need to do what we need to do to balance the metagame; I doubt there's anyone who would not want a balanced metagame. I simply disagreed with some of the ideas you brought up. That's all.

 

[Lady Alex]

I think being able to reliably get requirements just by "playing enough" isn't a great system. I would rather weed out the "less good players" you refer to by forcing players to actually win a large majority of their matches, rather than allowing people to vote just because they're "willing to play the games" required, since they'll probably be able to get requirements as long as they "start out good."

 

[X5Dragon]

I'll just reiterate what I said earlier in that I'm fine with the current system, just don't require us to ladder twice on what is basically the same ladder (OU --> OU Current). Just require a low deviation for the current ladder to guarantee recent activity or at least a good number of games which show the player has deep knowledge of the current meta.

Don't discourage great players from participating in the suspect testing by disregarding all the laddering they have done on the OU ladder and require them to repeat it again on OU Current.

 

[ShootingStarmie]

I disagree with the sentiments against the current system. Generally, you can get the reqs if you're playing enough battles. We're getting upwards of 150 voters -- that says something about the system. I don't think we need easier reqs, because that's a pretty huge voting pool. In fact, easier reqs would just exacerbate the voter issues we have currently. The system favors those who will play a lot of battles and win a good percentage of them. For an extreme example, I played ~120 battles for Deoxys-D reqs instead of just sacking the alt. I didn't win an overwhelming percentage of those battles, but I was still able to get reqs. I probably would have played just as much if I kept getting rid of alts until I finally got a really good winning streak. It takes roughly 70-80 battles to get current reqs if you start out good, which I don't think is unreasonable. With a few rare exceptions, good players and even less good players can get reqs if they are willing to play the games. For every one good or even decent player you face, there are like 5 bad players. I think the current system works best for our purposes.

I don't think Lady Alex (or anyone) is suggesting we make getting reqs easier, just more fair. I think this mainly comes down to PS!'s ladder system, which is pretty flawed for things like suspect tests. I think we should have at least 50 battles, and a solid win loss ratio, maybe 5 wins / 1 loss ratio? Obviously that's just a random ratio, but that's the general idea I'd like to see.

 

[Jukain]

I don't think Lady Alex (or annoying) is suggesting we make getting reqs easier, just more fair. I think this mainly comes down to PS!'s ladder system, which is pretty flawed for things like suspect tests. I think we should have at least 50 battles, and a solid win loss ratio, maybe 5 wins / 1 loss ratio? Obviously that's just a random ratio, but that's the general idea I'd like to see.

5-1 ratio is ridiculous. That's 45-5. (I know it's random, but just getting that sentiment across.) I'd prefer going like 75 battles if we're going this route, and requiring a ratio of 65-15 or 55-20. Those aren't ridiculous ratios.

 

[X5Dragon]

Well if there is a majority census on this I'd suggest 3-1 W/L ratio.

 

[Lady Alex]

The ratio is ultimately up to the council, so I'm not going to bother coming up with arbitrary figures, but like shootingstarmie said, I'm not advocating for easier suspect testing. I'm not sure how one would even reach the conclusion that I was. It would just be, imo, a much more reliable way of determining who has earned voting requirements.

 

[ShootingStarmie]

5-1 ratio is ridiculous. That's 45-5. (I know it's random, but just getting that sentiment across.) I'd prefer going like 75 battles if we're going this route, and requiring a ratio of 65-15 or 55-20. Those aren't ridiculous ratios.

Yeah I agree, like I said random numbers, but this is the general idea I'd like to see. Obviously someone would need to determine a fair win loss ratio and amount of battles needed. You're 55 - 20 seems pretty reasonable.

 

[X5Dragon]

Well if we are talking about "fairness" then we ultimately have to talk about reforming the PS ladder itself and the way points/decay are handled as well as match making. I'm just waiting for someone technically versed in how the system works to post a thread about it.

But to be very brief, we need to avoid a system where people either avoid certain times of the day to meet lesser ranked players and maintain a good ranking or aim for another timing where the higher ranked players usually be active in order to gain massive jumps with a new alt.

 

[Jukain]

Well if we are talking about "fairness" then we ultimately have to talk about reforming the PS ladder itself and the way points/decay are handled as well as match making. I'm just waiting for someone technically versed in how the system works to post a thread about it.

But to be very brief, we need to avoid a system where people either avoid certain times of the day to meet lesser ranked players and maintain a good ranking or aim for another timing where the higher ranked players usually be active in order to gain massive jumps with a new alt.

Honestly, I don't see an issue with avoiding certain times, but I can understand the issue with fairness and changing the rating system in general. The main issue is that Glicko2 is designed for chess, which lacks luck. When luck is introduced, the system will invariably have some flops because the more skilled player will not always beat the less skilled player -- just most of the time, thanks to the possibility of crits and other hax. If we had a different rating system, that would be easier, but it's difficult to account for hax in numbers.

 

[Curtains]

I think for a good system to work there needs to be a dedicated suspect ladder every test. Nothing sucks more than to have my first 20 opponents not even use the suspected pokemon. Then it sucks when I get luck boxed by a guy using 6 dragons or some other insane team. If the council wants to test a suspect by making two separate ladders they can just make two separate "suspect ou" ladders. Also we cannot disregard luck when it comes to pokemon. Some battles unfortunately are determined on luck than skill. This is why I think the w/l ratio thing is not viable in a game like this.

On the topic of determining a pokemon's brokenness I think it is impossible to set distinct "guidelines" for a pokemon's brokenness. In my opinion the example of a purely broken OU pokemon is genesect. Genesect is really good and it made building a team almost impossible. that being said with all the new threats and powerful abilities the community has decided to go for policy that cuts off bits of the tail instead of cutting off the head. We really haven't seen what this metagame holds for us because of this. So my suggestion for future metagames is to not be afraid to actually ban what is broken. if you have an ability that makes 15 pokemon broken maybe it is the best thing for the metagame to step in and ban that ability or pokemon that holds that ability. Users need to focus on creating a good game instead of trying to shape it into different play styles.

 

[IcyMan28]

I'll probably comment on some of the other stuff later, but I think we shouldn't necessarily use the 670+ Stat total as an absolute cutoff for initial banlist. Lugia and Gira-O, for example, may end up manageable and beneficial in OU. We just don't know at this point. Personally, I suggest our initial banlist consist of Mewtwo, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Deoxys-A, Dialga, Palkia, Arceus, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem-W, and Soul Dew.

 

[RaXes]

I'll probably comment on some of the other stuff later, but I think we shouldn't necessarily use the 670+ Stat total as an absolute cutoff for initial banlist. Lugia and Gira-O, for example, may end up manageable and beneficial in OU. We just don't know at this point. Personally, I suggest our initial banlist consist of Mewtwo, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Deoxys-A, Dialga, Palkia, Arceus, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem-W, and Soul Dew.

I don't think it's fair to treat Giratina and Lugia differently just because some people think they would be manageable or even healthy in OU. We need to draw a line, which in this case is a strict 670+ cutoff, otherwise the tier will be a mess.
If the metagame becomes stable at some point, testing them is always an option, but until now we barely know anything what the next generation will bring us...

 

[Jukain]

I'll probably comment on some of the other stuff later, but I think we shouldn't necessarily use the 670+ Stat total as an absolute cutoff for initial banlist. Lugia and Gira-O, for example, may end up manageable and beneficial in OU. We just don't know at this point. Personally, I suggest our initial banlist consist of Mewtwo, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Deoxys-A, Dialga, Palkia, Arceus, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem-W, and Soul Dew.

I don't think Deoxys-A and possibly Ho-Oh aren't okay to test if we're going the route of Giratina/-O and Lugia unbanned. This is not my personal views -- I'll post them later.

 

[Goutland]

I don't know what to say about changing the reqs for suspect voting, but any way you cut it, it's still going to be extremely luck based. You could still just restart until you face X% of noobs over Y battles. Oh and btw 45-5 is actually a 9-1 ratio and not a 5-1 ratio... learn to math? :/

One thing about suspect testing though, and I don't know if this can currently be enforced on the ladder, but I think it should be required that each voter be required to use the suspect for half of their battles, while not using it for the other half. I don't know if that would suddenly make the metagame revolve around that one poke during suspect testing, but it would provide the user with a more balanced view of the metagame with and without the suspect rather than a biased one. It could also solve the problem of relatively low usage suspects not even being seen during laddering. I played roughly 200 matches last round to get reqs, and I didn't see many Landorus-I at all, nor did I ever use it. I personally never thought it was broken, but had I been forced to use it, maybe my views would have changed.

Ignore this suggestion if it would fuck up the metagame a lot during suspect test, as requiring something already at the top to be used even more would probably be dumb. Imagine Scizor at 40% usage... lol. Maybe it could just be a certain amount of matches requiring the use of said suspect instead, say, 20 or 30. I just think it would get rid of some really biased views of the metagame. (I.E. "I only use X playstyle so Y isn't broken at all")

 

[G-Von]

I don't think it's fair to treat Giratina and Lugia differently just because some people think they would be manageable or even healthy in OU. We need to draw a line, which in this case is a strict 670+ cutoff, otherwise the tier will be a mess.
If the metagame becomes stable at some point, testing them is always an option, but until now we barely know anything what the next generation will bring us...

BST does not mean shit. People really need to start realizing this instead of assuming every legendary cover pokemon needs to be banned. Kyurem is 10 base points away from that plateau and he doesn't even see enough usage to be in OU. His usage would not change if anything except speed was given an extra 10 base points.

And do I really need to bring up Kyurem-Black?

 

[Ulevo]

BST does not mean shit. People really need to start realizing this instead of assuming every legendary cover pokemon needs to be banned. Kyurem is 10 base points away from that plateau and he doesn't even see enough usage to be in OU. His usage would not change if anything except speed was given an extra 10 base points.

And do I really need to bring up Kyurem-Black?

You're claiming that players need to come to a realization that BST doesn't mean anything, using Kyurem and Kyurem-B as examples. And yet they're legal currently.

Anyway. I also think you need to realize that there is more than BST to consider as to why players are suggesting to keep these Pokemon Uber on the initial ban list. It's just that having the conservative mindset and testing these Pokemon later in a more stable environment (regardless whether or not you think they're fair or should be OU) would yield faster, better results for Gen VI, as opposed to releasing them all at the same time with the inclusion of everything else that Gen VI will bring.