OU Suspect Testing Proposals

[Schpoonman]

G-Von, what you fail to realize is that Kyurem-B is the exception to end all exceptions. I know that the decision to drop Kyurem was agonized over for a period of time because as has been shown base 170 Attack is fucking insane. However, his plethora of offensive checks (Latios, any faster Dragon, Breloom, Scizor, Terrakion, etc.) has kept him manageable, and any Kyurem lacking HP Fire (which you'll find is the case with 9/10 Kyurem-Bs) is walled by Ferrothorn entirely. Kyurem-W is banned, but he shares Kyurem-B's typing and movepool except for carrying Fusion Flare instead of Fusion Bolt, as well as being specially based instead of physically. BST means a metric fuckton unless you are crippled by a number of factors, such as poor coverage, unforgiving typing, or a crippling Ability.

 

[G-Von]

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.

People see the base stat total and instantly think ban without any other factors involved. If we do not let them in at the beginning no one will bring them up for suspect into OU later on in the generation. So many players are close-minded and should begin to think outside the box. I even remember bringing up how I thought Mew was very underwhelming back at the end of Gen IV because of its solid defensive stats were offset by its typing and had low offensive stats and my friends thought I was crazy for this way of thinking. Now he was UU for a big part of Gen V.

 

[Ulevo]

People see the base stat total and instantly think ban without any other factors involved. If we do not let them in at the beginning no one will bring them up for suspect into OU later on in the generation. So many players are close-minded and should begin to think outside the box. I even remember bringing up how I thought Mew was very underwhelming back at the end of Gen IV because of its solid defensive stats were offset by its typing and had low offensive stats and my friends thought I was crazy for this way of thinking. Now he was UU for a big part of Gen V.

Why wouldn't we test them later on in the generation? Kyurem-B was tested? And while some players might overemphasize the BST, not all players do.

There's too much personal bias and exaggeration exuding from your point of view. You're failing to give people the benefit of the doubt and are opting to go with the choice you feel the majority won't support without providing a logical basis on your own.

 

[RaXes]

People see the base stat total and instantly think ban without any other factors involved. If we do not let them in at the beginning no one will bring them up for suspect into OU later on in the generation. So many players are close-minded and should begin to think outside the box. I even remember bringing up how I thought Mew was very underwhelming back at the end of Gen IV because of its solid defensive stats were offset by its typing and had low offensive stats and my friends thought I was crazy for this way of thinking. Now he was UU for a big part of Gen V.

People aren't close minded, otherwise Kyurem(-B) would still be banned. Nobody is saying that all pokes on the initial banlist should stay in Ubers, but you need a stable environment to get a clear picture of them.
If there is enough evidence that OU can handle these threats, they most likely will get tested.

EDIT: Ninja'd

 

[G-Von]

I provided you previously with the fact that a lot of the bans that occurred in BW1 revolved around the pokemon being fast enough to get the job done (whether it was sleep-inducing moves, flinchhax, or straight up brute force), while the pokemon that are currently Ubers that I believe would be manageable are behind a speed tier from OU pokemon and SR weak. On the topic of Cube, he was a brand new pokemon that not everyone really knew how to use at the time since all they did was slap a choice band on him. He's also SR-weak but now people have started coming up with ways of how to use him to his full potential and the idea of him being tested again has come up. I feel like he's able to get by his checks one way or another and a lot of his negatives are outweighed by his positives, but I doubt he's broken.

G-Von, what you fail to realize is that Kyurem-B is the exception to end all exceptions. I know that the decision to drop Kyurem was agonized over for a period of time because as has been shown base 170 Attack is fucking insane. However, his plethora of offensive checks (Latios, any faster Dragon, Breloom, Scizor, Terrakion, etc.) has kept him manageable, and any Kyurem lacking HP Fire (which you'll find is the case with 9/10 Kyurem-Bs) is walled by Ferrothorn entirely. Kyurem-W is banned, but he shares Kyurem-B's typing and movepool except for carrying Fusion Flare instead of Fusion Bolt, as well as being specially based instead of physically. BST means a metric fuckton unless you are crippled by a number of factors, such as poor coverage, unforgiving typing, or a crippling Ability.

I understand what you're saying about Kyu-B, but the max special attack set, even without HP Fire, has a 46% to 2HKO standard Ferrothorn with Ice Beam. Aside from that I agree with almost the rest of everything you said about Cube. I also bolded your last sentence because I actually agree with it but I believe having a shitty speed tier has to be included in that statement.

Honestly I don't mind if any/everyone disagrees with me; I just want people to understand my way of thinking and why I have come to my conclusions.

 

[Pocket]

G-Von, what you proposed as an initial banlist is actually quite similar to what I had posted back in page 2, specifically:

Although it sounds very unlikely, if we were to make Ubers our new OU, I would probably prefer an initial banlist of overcentralizing Pokemon in Ubers than a no banlist that TFC pushed. I would prefer Kyogre, Groudon, Arceus, Rayquaza, Mewtwo, Soul Dew, and possibly Palkia to be banned. The remaining Ubers are either stuck in their 90-95 Speed tier or simply lack immediate destructive power (Lugia) to be overcentralizing.

You pretty much want Ubers as the new OU, except with an initial banlist, unlike TFC's no banlist proposal.

I'd probably add Xerneas and possibly Yveltal, depending on their stat spreads, etc. Xerneas looks especially problematic, since it's a Fairy Uber with very few exploitable weaknesses.

I think most of us support the 670+ BST banlist, though. Hell, I think there's even support for a more inclusive banlist that consists of additional BW Ubers. I in particular would not mind having Shaymin-S ban and Aldaron Proposal reinstated from the get-go (assuming Rain exists in XY OU).

 

[MikeDawg]

Speaking of Aldaron's proposal, I believe that as soon as the [weather] independent broken threats are banned, we need to come to a full consensus on what to do with weather: do away with it altogether and alleviate the issue or repeat BW and ban abuser after abuser and still have it be controversial. (Tbh the former sounds much more attractive and timely at this point, especially given that XY will likely have more weather abusers).

There is of course the chance that DW will not even carry over into XY (or maybe it isn't a chance anymore... Idk I don't really care about pokemon that much) and we will not have to worry about weather at all

 

[G-Von]

G-Von, what you proposed as an initial banlist is actually quite similar to what I had posted back in page 2, specifically:
You pretty much want Ubers as the new OU, except with an initial banlist, unlike TFC's no banlist proposal.

I'd probably add Xerneas and possibly Yveltal, depending on their stat spreads, etc. Xerneas looks especially problematic, since it's a Fairy Uber with very few exploitable weaknesses.

I think most of us support the 670+ BST banlist, though. Hell, I think there's even support for a more inclusive banlist that consists of additional BW Ubers. I in particular would not mind having Shaymin-S ban and Aldaron Proposal reinstated from the get-go.

I've been thinking about it and can't think of a reason why there would be something wrong with having Ubers be the new OU. Ubers apparently has a balanced metagame while OU is still having trouble finding that balanced point. Realistically speaking, there's going to be a standard banlist of 670+ BST pokemon though lol. If that's the course of action then I think not only should Shaymin-S be banned, than Darkrai and Deo-A should get hit with the ban hammer right away too. Aldaron's Proposal has been so controversial since it was instated that I think it should be tested after a short time. Who knows, maybe there will be a brand new weather condition wiping the floors clean in the new metagame for Gen VI!

On the topic of Xerneas and Yveltal, we need to wait till their movesets and stat distributions come out. Their abilities already give them an extra STAB on top of their STAB moves which is ridiculous.

 

[Ulevo]

I do not see a purpose for Aldaron's proposal at this point going in to Gen VI. Assuming Drizzle is legal from the get go (which it may not be), I don't see why we can't ban Drizzle if we experience the same problems we did in BW1. It wasn't controversial just because it was different; leaving Drizzle legal also arguably contributed to banning several other Pokemon.

 

[IcyMan28]

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.

You're saying you would want Deoxys-A and Ho-Oh off the initial banlist if we go ahead and do so with Giratina/Lugia? If so, I disagree. Lugia's offensive presence is unimpressive even by OU standards, so the main thing would be to question whether Lugia's defenses are too high for the nascent Gen 6 metagame. Giratina-O's offenses are standard for OU, I'm just curious if its bulk is still overwhelming. Same goes for Gira-A, except it has lower defenses and higher bulk. As a side note, OU is considerably faster than Ubers. Where 90 is acceptable where they currently reside, it's on the lower end for OU and so that could become a problem. Not so much for Lugia, just something to consider for the Platinum mascot.

Deoxys-A I fear is WAY too strong for OU. That was the case with Deoxys-N, I think, so imagine attack form. The lessened bulk isn't really a drawback because Deo-N also fell to a light breeze; Deo-A is essentially much stronger and equally as frail for all intents and purposes. I don't foresee that it would be allowed.

As for Ho-Oh, I don't want to see it in OU. It is capable of walling Palkia in the sun and still maintain a gross offensive presence. I guess if people want to we could give it a shot, but something with that combination of bulk and power is probably too much.

EDIT: I don't want to see Shaymin-S and Darkrai banned from the start for a reason. Neither of them have particularly intimidating offenses, its just their speed combined with flinch / sleep that makes them problematic. We don't know what new pokemon or methods arise in Gen 6 to combat this (and if alot of them get these supposed Mega Forms...it could be alot). Personally I disagreed with Darkrai's ban mainly because you should just deal with its sleep like you would any other, but the community felt differently. Let's give them another shot.

 

[Jukain]

@IcyMan28: We'd be giving Darkrai a chance too, which is arguably even harder to deal with. Deoxys-N was never really fairly tested, considering it was completely overshadowed by its Attack forme during its short stay in OU. There is no harm -- we can ban it quickly if it's broken. It could easily be balanced due to its frailty, but if not, it can quickly be banned. If it's not, we've avoided banning a not broken threat. Net positive either way.

 

[IcyMan28]

@Jukain I like the idea of the quick-ban. That's probably the best way to go about alot of the more controversial pokemon, as long as its not so fast that a knee-jerk reaction becomes a real possibility.

 

[Jukain]

I mean stacking multiple suspects after the dust has settled and getting rid of the bad stuff. Not impulse banning a Pokemon.

 

[Ada]

library ahead (sorry!) on complex bans

I want to talk a bit more about Drizzle + Swift Swim, otherwise known as Aldaron's proposal. Following on from the previous discussion on Excadrill: if neither Drizzle or Swift Swim are broken, then it stands to reason that the pokemon themselves are broken, and that not all of them are broken (worst case being that only one is found not to be broken - though one might conclude that it is just an anomaly and hence decide to ban Swift Swim) or maybe even non-Water-types - Armaldo, Beartic (this might make more sense since it is the same logic used to keep Chlorophyll). If all the abusers were broken then it would imply that SS is broken and it would be better to ban SS rather than all the pokemon with SS. Assuming that this is true, and that Aldaron's proposal is simply a means of saving time (rather than finding the exact list from the 35 - 16 (LC) = 19 SS pokemon), then everything would be fine...

However, this means that Drizzle should not have an effect on pokemon to be suspected. Put another way, Drizzle should not result in any more bans as otherwise it would imply that Drizzle is the problem and not the pokemon. It's simply wrong to say: if Drizzle + X and Drizzle + Y are broken, then ban X + Y (when neither of them are broken without it). If we can find at least one case where this isn't true, then it would mean that Drizzle is indeed broken. Otherwise, we're good : )

Let's go over some Drizzle related bans shall we?

Manaphy - well Manaphy was broken in DP even without Drizzle and Tail Glow being +3 so it's not that much of a stretch to say that it would be broken without rain in BW.
Thundurus - probably broken regardless of rain, right?
Tornadus-T - hmmm, if torn-t isn't broken with drizzle (i.e. is broken regardless), then it would imply that it's a weather independent sweeper (i.e. it would work equally well on both rain and sun teams >_-) - I think Valentine might have used a Hail team with physical torn-t, but even then, without Hurricane...

Torn-t had a ban rate of 71.05%, uber no matter how you cut it. The question is: is it uber without drizzle? If you don't think drizzle is broken, then it shouldn't be possible to say things like 'torn-t is only broken in rain'. If it's broken, then it's because torn-t was broken and not drizzle. If torn-t isn't broken without drizzle, then it would mean that drizzle really is broken after all.

There's really no way to test it, given that drizzle is legal, but it's not really that hard to imagine that torn-t would be ou without drizzle; in fact, some people think it's ou even with drizzle (notable people include Aldaron and Pocket):

http://smogon.com/forums/threads/ou-round-9-suspect-voting.3477463/
http://smogon.com/forums/threads/ou-round-9-suspect-voting.3477463/page-2 (though I think they might have changed their opinion based on a recent ct)

hmmm

 

[Afti]

What? That's ridiculous. Support factors change the game around them; something can be a net positive (let's leave aside the issue of whether or not Drizzle is a net positive) and still push one particular threat over the line.

Tornadus-T probably wouldn't be anywhere near broken without Drizzle. ...So?

Excadrill wouldn't be broken without Sand Stream. G5 Manaphy - regardless of the G4 metagame, which focused on a much lower power level - wouldn't be broken without Drizzle.

Any sufficiently game-shaping factor, like weather, is going to shift the balance of power between Pokémon in a dramatic fashion. Toxicroak is OU in this generation. Some of these Pokémon will be made stronger, potentially to the point of breaking the metagame; some will be made weaker. If you were to ban Drizzle and Sand Stream because they've been responsible for making threats broken - well, all of a sudden Venusaur is looking a lot better. So you ban Drought, and you have a completely different metagame, with its own balance - and, almost certainly, with things that wouldn't be broken without the weathers being banned.

It's completely possible for a support factor to be broken! But you can't just say that "Tornadus-T is broken, Tornadus-T would not be broken without Drizzle, ergo Drizzle is broken".

 

[Pocket]

@Ulevo , I would not consider Manaphy, Thundurus, and Tornadus-T as "several" Pokemon being banned due to Rain, especially when you consider all the numerous non-broken OU Pokemon that benefits from Drizzle. Some even believe that Thundurus would be broken independent of Rain, due to its 111 Speed tier / Prankster / Nasty Plot. What was really problematic was the synergy between the two abilities Drizzle + Swift Swim, and the community made the right decision to clause the interaction of these two separate abilities. Aldaron's Proposal and Excadrill ban were two major bans that solved most of the power imbalance among weather and between weather vs weatherless teams.

Basically, weather (Rain) isn't inherently broken; but the interaction between two abilities created a broken combination, which was quickly removed from BW (and should probably be removed from XY if Rain exists). Outside of some irregular Pokemon like Manaphy and Tornadus-T, Rain did not break any Pokemon and only served as an additional viable playstyle that people can elect to play.

 

[Ulevo]

@Ulevo , I would not consider Manaphy, Thundurus, and Tornadus-T as "several" Pokemon being banned due to Rain, especially when you consider all the numerous non-broken OU Pokemon that benefits from Drizzle. Some even believe that Thundurus would be broken independent of Rain, due to its 111 Speed tier / Prankster / Nasty Plot. What was really problematic was the synergy between the two abilities Drizzle + Swift Swim, and the community made the right decision to clause the interaction of these two separate abilities. Aldaron's Proposal and Excadrill ban were two major bans that solved most of the power imbalance among weather and between weather vs weatherless teams.

Basically, weather (Rain) isn't inherently broken; but the interaction between two abilities created a broken combination, which was quickly removed from BW (and should probably be removed from XY if Rain exists). Outside of some irregular Pokemon like Manaphy and Tornadus-T, Rain did not break any Pokemon and only served as an additional viable playstyle that people can elect to play.

"Several" fits my definition; its more than two. On top of this, we're now discussing whether or not Keldeo, another Pokemon that benefits from Drizzle, should be tested. Not that I am going to make this about semantics, but progress on these dicussions are lost due to miscommunication more than anything, so its important that we're on the same page.

1) I am not sure what Pokemon being banned due to rain and Pokemon benefiting from Drizzle have to do with one another.

2) Even if Pokemon do benefit from Drizzle, there are arguably more Pokemon that are made obsolete due to the necessity of using a weather like Drizzle to remain competitive in BW2 OU. Though, this is entirely irrelevant. We shouldn't be talking about what is "good" for a specific group of Pokemon when talking about what is and isn't appropriate to remain in the tier when it is suspected to be broken.

3) The reality of the matter is that the community, at Aldaron's proposition, bent the rules and traditions to satisfy a preference under false pretences and limited information. I'm not arguing that Drizzle when combined with Swift Swim wasn't a problem. Blaziken when combined with Speed Boost was also a problem. We didn't make a complex ban of no Blaziken + Speed Boost to preserve Blaziken. We had to make a decision to ban either Speed Boost, or Blaziken, and a decision was made.
The only reason people humored Aldaron's idea was because it was assumed that Drizzle by itself wouldn't become a problem, and that the complex ban would increase variety in OU. I am arguing that there is evidence to support the contrary.

4) Rain is not a playstyle, it's a battlefield condition that benefits a select group of Pokemon out of an otherwise potentially larger group. I don't particularly care for this argument because suspect testing properly is about making decisive actions against what is broken versus what is not, not what players prefer to play with. I'm just pointing out that I don't buy the supposed net benefits of this pretense.

Essentially I see this as a game of playing favourites. I do agree there was a time when a decision about Drizzle and Swift Swim needed to be made, but I do not believe the decision was correct. We lacked the proper analysis of what the metagame shifts would be based on our decisions, and even on principle it lacked justification. I especially disagree with the notion of implementing it immediately come Gen VI. We don't even know if Drizzle will be legal, whether or not the new OU is cope to handle with Drizzle as a weather, or even if mechanic changes will be implemented that change rain as a weather condition. There could be many other factors to consider as well. We won't gain any relevant information about whether or not Drizzle is manageable in Gen VI by assuming guilty until proven innocent and banning it from the get go.

 

[asbdsp]

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.

I feel like this isn't the case with how the Glicko rating system works. Can't prove it empirically, but in my experience, when matched against players with a very high number of battles, the glicko rating ends up being a much better indicator of player skill than win percentage. So basically this implies that for a player who "improves" at an unnatural rate the glicko would lag behind the winning percentage, meaning that the system could be gamed in such a way.

 

[Pocket]

tbh if Keldeo is proven broken, it's probably broken on its own merit (without Rain), much like Thundurus. Keldeo will probably be broken even if we ban Rain; TTar provides enough support to let Keldeo continue its exceptional performance. Keldeo doesn't need Rain to be extremely viable in OU, much unlike Tornadus-T and Manaphy.

I know that we dont choose bans based on what is "good" for a particular group of Pokemon or based on preference (although Rain benefits A LOT of Pokemon). We only ban what's broken. However, when there are more than one solution in removing the broken component (ie Aldaron's Proposal vs Drizzle ban) then I support the option that preserves more of the original metagame and the option that is least likely to worsen the imbalance of power and instability of the metagame.

The only reason people humored Aldaron's idea was because it was assumed that Drizzle by itself wouldn't become a problem, and that the complex ban would increase variety in OU.

Yea, that's right. I also do believe that saving Drizzle this metagame did more good than harm, providing much unprecedented variety in our OU metagames without overly stifling our teambuilding options. I guess we can agree to disagree on the last point.

 

[kd24]

ah fuck me, i need to read this whole thread, some of you know but ive been recovering from surgery so im now back but i just want to address the op personally atm

1) The OU council should set clear guidelines on how to judge a pokemon for brokenness, a clear stance on what defines a pokemon, complex bans, and so on.

this is dumb on so many levels. first lemme ask the question what the heck is a clear stance on what defines a pokemon, pretty sure its if its created by gamefreak its a pokemon be more clear on what you're saying

to actually address the point, every pokemon is different, trying to fit them all into a "clear guideline" is literally useless. some mons will be 4x weak to sr and sweep an entire team while another mon is going to be resistant and guarantee a kill on something while another mon is going to be a great sd sweeper that cant be stopped if sd is up while etc etc you just literally can't feasibly address this. with complex bans, hell we need to see what the meta looks like first. id even argue aldarons proposal actually sucked cuz it kept rain around >_> lets just see what the meta looks like. what is so on? i hate when people are so vague

2) The percentage of votes needed to ban a pokemon should be 66% (two thirds) or above, a decisive majority instead of the current simple majority (50%) in place now.

honestly im indifferent, i do think if a mon gets simple majority 2 in a row it should be banned though

3) Speeding up the testing process which we feel is too slow. We also believe discussions and subsequently suspect testing should have a fixed interval, every month or so, to decide on whether or not there is something that merits testing.

don't really think it's slow, we're going to be testing metas every time might as well have some stability instead of resetting the meta every few weeks. people love to say it's slow but its only been really slow these last couple of months because there wasn't a chance to discuss and people weren't sure on where we wanted to head with the meta, as its mostly been figured out. gen 5 left a sour taste in my mouth but it wasnt from testing speed...maybe indecisiveness is a valid point but i wasnt even present on discussions as an ou mod so i dont think you can really claim it.

4) If the metagame has been found stable, retesting OU pokemon that have been voted uber based on metagame changes, new releases and new pokemon.

again we need to see what gen 6 looks like. dream world was always giving us new releases and metagame changes, hell the meta changes regardless every 2 weeks because people are adapting to the new best strategy, constantly retesting is dumb and should only be used in severe cases where its clear we fucked up or its clear it deserves a chance, otherwise we need to look at gen 6 logically, gen 3 -> 4 -> 5 there was more bans/testing in every gen so it stands to reason we're going to have our hands full with gen 6. but again wait for the meta

 

[X5Dragon]

I would argue the Rain is a playstyle simply because it revolves around inducing rain and winning against any attempts to change weather to benefit from it's qualities, whether the team takes an offensive or defensive form. Weatherless teams are seeing an increase in usage and the bans we have enacted against certain rain abusers have managed to keep it a strong but not overwhelming play style as mentioned.

As for Aldaron's proposal it was unnecessary panic reaction and with the release of many abilities and new pokemon in BW2 and upcoming Gen6 we should start fresh without this proposal. As long as the public opinion about complex banning remains the same, any broken swift swimmer should be uber without enacting a wider swift swim + drizzle ban.

 

[blitzlefan]

As for Aldaron's proposal it was unnecessary panic reaction and with the release of many abilities and new pokemon in BW2 and upcoming Gen6 we should start fresh without this proposal. As long as the public opinion about complex banning remains the same, any broken swift swimmer should be uber without enacting a wider swift swim + drizzle ban.

Umm... but weathers aren't present in the lower tiers. So what do we do about broken Swift Swimmers that aren't broken without rain? Let's pretend Kabutops is broken (it's just the first Swift Swim user on the top of my head). It's broken in OU because rain is permitted, but obviously not in the lower tiers without rain. So what do we do? Ban it everywhere but OU?

 

[ksp11]

Why did Landorus become uber? I don't see a reason except Sheer & Sand Force, which to me, is the same excuse Excadrill became uber (it's not all about Speed).

 

[X5Dragon]

Excadrill isn't broken without Sand, is he? Is he allowed in lower tiers? Kaputops wasn't broken because rain was permitted, it as broken because the combination of its ability and stats and movepool made it broken, just like Excadrill vs other Sand Rushers like Stoutland and Sandslash.

Edited to fit the example of Kaputops.

 

[MikeDawg]

Umm... but weathers aren't present in the lower tiers. So what do we do about broken Swift Swimmers that aren't broken without rain? Let's pretend Kabutops is broken (it's just the first Swift Swim user on the top of my head). It's broken in OU because rain is permitted, but obviously not in the lower tiers without rain. So what do we do? Ban it everywhere but OU?

Technically ou was established as the standard tier which will have its interests taken foremost into account

But that^ is also BS in a lot of cases, especially when the pokes in question (blaziken, kabutops, torn-t, etc.) would be valuable threats in the lower tiers.