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Manaphy

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posting since Nayrz was complaining about how no-one is posting about Gen 4 finals rn lol

I'm not amazingly familiar with the gen 4 ubers meta but I did get to the finals so I think I can speak at least a little bit about the Arceus-Meta.
I basically only had 3 teams for the entire tour and so I didn't save replays publicly so as to not get counterteamed, now for transparency and metagame development I'll share all of them:

Arceus-Electric Offense:


I think Highlord is underrating how effective Arceus-Electric is in the current meta, I think it's one of the best Arceus forms. It works very well off the popularity of Arceus-Steel as in a head-to-head matchup Steelceus can't do shit to Eleceus. Groudon and Garchomp are supposed counters but Groudon does like 70% to Eleceus and gets 2HKO'd while Chomp can't OHKO but gets OHKO'd from Ice Beam. The strongest counter to Eleceus is Blissey, and this team tries to take advantage of that. The combo of Wobbuffett + Scizor is extremely effective for taking Blissey out; you can switch Wobb into Blissey and use Tickle a few times to lower her defense; then switch to Scizor and kill or significantly weaken Blissey with a Pursuit. Scizor can also pursuit Lati@s which can be annoying by going into a CM war with Eleceus. Scarfogre is there for rain + revenge killing + breaking with water spout, and Giratina is the designated spinblocker and Groudon check.
I think the match that best shows this team is when I beat Staxi with it, i don't know if there's a way to upload a downloaded showdown replay so I'll just post the raw into a pastebin for now, if someone knows a good way to upload them I'll fix it later:

But basically I do a lot of what I described above, staxi takes an affirmative lead in the early game so I had to catch up by making some strong double switch plays. I learnt that he has a Blissey, and so I bring out my Kyogre in order to get him to switch in Blissey and I double switch to Wobbuffett, Tickle him twice before dying, switch in Scizor to do a shitton of damage. After, I kill all of my other mons off, and reveal my last mon to be Eleceus; this is so that I can't be phased. After that, Eleceus just outright beats the rest of this team, including Groudon and Steelceus. Honestly, Eleceus has very few counters besides getting Toxic'd or Blissey.

Arceus-Ghost HO:


Nothing too much to say here, this is just a standard HO team I made while theorizing on what the Farceus meta would look like. SubCM Arceus-Ghost was chosen; this is because I wanted a spinblocker, but I also wanted a mon that was more offensive than Giratina-O is. Arceus-Ghost has perfect neutral coverage with just Judgement and Focus Blast, so I chose the SubCM set since it was the most offensive version and Sub helps ease prediction and stops status. SubCM Ghostceus is a fairly decent wallbreaker due to his perfect neutral coverage, of which Focus Blast nails Arceus-Steel, his ability to completely ignore Blissey, and not really being weak to much common of the STAB of the common mons in the meta. The rest of the team is fairly straightforward, Groudon was chosen as he's a strong physical sweeper and would work well in a Steelceus meta; Wobbuffett does wobb things, Darkrai is just super good, and Dialga because Scarf Dialga has good bulk while being a solid revenge killer.
Also to note, both of the teams above use Colbur Berry Deoxys-S, this was actually taken from the lead guide by Iris, which is ANCIENT but still has applicable advice even in the Farceus meta of today.
A lot of people were using Tyranitar leads, which were dealt with quite well by this mon, and the other most common lead I faced, Tentacruel, could be beaten solidly by Taunting and then switching to Wobb (shown in the replay above). It was also chosen since DPP lacks team preview, and so players might think I was using the same team twice when they play me again and see the same Deoxys-S set, and make some bold (and hopefully incorrect) plays on the assumption I was using the same team. The focus on Deoxys-S came back to haunt me when I played highlord as his leads did very well vs. Deoxys-S.
Battle vs. Mysterious M:

Nothing too much to say about this battle, I was put in a very favorable position in the beginning because my Deoxys-S lead completely beat his Mew lead, letting me get two hazards for free. From there, every mon did their part, usually taking down at least one mon with them. I got Wobb to take out Latios without too much damage, which worked out perfectly as it put me in Custap Berry range for a priority Destiny Bond to take out his Mewtwo. I actually wasn't sure if I would win because I had no idea what his last mon was; I knew it was an Arceus-form but that was it. It turned out to be CM Arceus-Ground, which had the potential to be very dangerous but thankfully my Groudon was still alive, so I could double dance and get significant damage on Groundceus before Dialga could go in for the kill.

Rain Balance:


This team is actually based off of some ancient RMT made back in like 2010 or something, except updated for the Farceus meta. Originally, the team had a SubCM Giratina as the spinblocker, so my idea for SubCM Arceus-Ghost came from simply replacing this Giratina set for Arceus-Ghost. The rest of the team is fairly similar or the same, with ScarfOgre as the revengekiller + breaker with spout, Frosslass for free spikes, Jirachi for it's resists, access to Stealth Rock, and to spread paralysis, Latias as the ogre and don switchin (with Grass Knot replaced for Thunder to smack Arceus-Steel better), and Manaphy (!!!) as the stallbreaker. The team worked fairly well in part because at least one of the 3 CM users would eventually get a chance to sweep, Latias and Ghostceus had more upfront power and defense, but a Manaphy in Rain with a CM up is extremely difficult to deal with. Overall though, this team was not as effective during this tour as the two above teams.
Not from this tour but I thought this (actual) replay was fun lol, vs terra:


Overall thoughts: IDK I don't think the Arceus meta is too ridiculous so far?? It honestly doesn't feel too too different from the previous gen 4 Ubers meta to me, so I really don't see the big deal with keeping arceus legal. There aren't really many mons that have, like, became completely unviable thanks to Arceus, at least not that I can think of. Take my opinion lightly though since I'm no pro at the tier and the decision should be made by the players.
 
Hi I went and linked everything in the g6 VR to its smogdex analysis. Idk, thought that might help, especially since this has already been done for g7. Let me know if there are any errors. Cbf doing the rest right now

Nayrz edit: this was just missed when the thread ownership changed and there are better ways to bring attention to it than inflammatory edits. the OP has added it, so don't do this again.
 
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CrashinBoomBang

außerirdisch, anunnaki
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Heya! Feels like no one talks about ADV Ubers these days, but it's pretty fun. I have a ton to say about the tier, but I probably want to save most of it until after CPL 2. Here's my current VRs, by the way. I did not look at current VRs at all, but I assume that they are at least somewhat inaccurate.

S Rank (almost no reason not to use this in like any circumstance)
Latios

A+ Rank (good as hell, hard to justify not using these)
Kyogre
Groudon
Latias
Snorlax
Mewtwo
Deoxys-Attack

A Rank (pretty good, very viable)
Metagross
Deoxys-Speed
Deoxys-Attack

A- Rank (not bad, approaching niche territory though)
Blissey
Lugia
Ho-Oh
Heracross
Skarmory
Forretress
Magneton

B+ (kinda niche shit, only fit on specific teams)
Dusclops
Gengar
Starmie
Zapdos
Weather Sweepers (Omastar, Kabutops, Exeggutor)
Tyranitar sometimes

B Rank (ass cheeks G)
Aerodactyl
Rayquaza
Wobbuffet
Deoxys-N
Dumb shit that only checks one or two specific mons and gets fucked by everything else, think Lanturn or Quagsire or Registeel/Regice

Excited to see what happens for the remainder of this CPL, but I think these are mostly accurate. Gonna post more thoughts once the tour is over if people are interested.
 
I noticed a missing gsc mechanic- Roar and Whirlwind will fail if they are used first. This is significant because it means that STalk Phazing is rarely seen, and more importantly, Curse sweepers can thwart phazing attempts if they have their own phazing move by using their phazing move on the same turn as the opponent, causing the opponent's move to fail while their move succeeds. This is especially relevant because Lugia commonly runs Curse+WW to abuse this
 
Hey relatively new to bw ubers. Has anybody experimented with Arceus Rock or used a team with one? Or any advice for the best team for it fit on
 
Hey relatively new to bw ubers. Has anybody experimented with Arceus Rock or used a team with one? Or any advice for the best team for it fit on
Arceus-Rock is mainly used on balance, specifically sand balance teams, as a reliable counter to problematic pokemon such as Ho-Oh and Rayquaza while also providing your team with a potenital late-game sweeper / win condition if you choose to use the calm mind set.

A good team that successfully utilizes Arceus-Rock would be Donkey's bw uber team, 6 Sandy Beasts, which is here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/6-sandy-beasts.3465711/

It's a very old team but the information here is still helpful and accurate in my opinion.

Overall through, Arceus-Rock is extremely limited in the current metagame, most of the time you'll be better of using Arceus-Normal, Arceus-Ghost, Arceus-Grass, Arceus-Water occasionally etc.
 
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S Rank

:kyogre: Kyogre
:dialga: Dialga

A Rank

A+


:Arceus-Steel: Arceus-Steel
:darkrai: Darkrai
:giratina-origin: Giratina-Origin
:arceus: Arceus-Fighting
:arceus: Arceus
:palkia: Palkia

A

:groudon: Groudon
:garchomp: Garchomp
:latias: Latias
:latios: Latios
:arceus-ghost: Arceus Ghost
:mewtwo: Mewtwo
:deoxys-speed: Deoxys-Speed

A-

:tyranitar: Tyranitar
:rayquaza: Rayquaza
:skarmory: Skarmory
:jirachi: Jirachi
:deoxys-attack: Deoxys-Attack
:tentacruel: Tentacruel

B Rank

B+


:arceus-ground: Arceus-Ground
:arceus: Arceus-Water
:blissey: Blissey
:bronzong: Bronzong
:forretress: Forretress
:giratina: Giratina-Altered
:heatran: Heatran
:ho-oh: Ho-Oh
:wobbuffet: Wobbuffet

B

:arceus: Arceus-Dragon
:arceus: Arceus-Electric:
:froslass: Froslass
:kingdra: Kingdra
:ludicolo: Ludicolo
:scizor: Scizor
:shaymin-sky: Shaymin-Sky

B-

:arceus-dark: Arceus-Dark
:arceus-grass: Arceus-Grass
:cloyster: Cloyster
:kabutops: Kabutops
:manaphy: Manaphy
:mew: Mew

C Rank

C+


:Arceus: Arceus-Rock
:Arceus: Arceus-Fire
:azelf: Azelf
:cresselia: Cresselia
:gliscor: Gliscor
:heracross: Heracross
:salamence: Salamence

C

:arceus-ice: Arceus-Ice
:arceus-Poison: Arceus-Poison
:celebi: Celebi
:deoxys-defense: Deoxys-Defense
:gyarados: Gyarados
:shiftry: Shiftry
:starmie: Starmie

C-

:arceus: Arceus-Bug
:arceus: Arceus-Flying
:deoxys: Deoxys
:omastar: Omastar
:qwilfish: Qwilfish

D Rank

:arceus-psychic: Arceus-Psychic
:wynaut: Wynaut[/hide]
The current DPP rankings seem to be missing Lugia, unless I'm blind?
 

shrang

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imo Farceus rankings (just the Arceus formes) - I'm surprised at the number of Farceus forms that are turning out to be mostly garbage actually. The speed drop from 120->101 is really massive. The different mechanics of DPP also hurts Farceus in a lot of ways as well (mostly Team Preview and mostly more difficult to keep hazards off the field - like I know BW was super hazard heavy too but there were better Spinners, Magic Bounce being an option and the ability to easily target an opposing spin-blocker since you can see what it is straight away). One common factor in a lot of these Arc forms is just their ability to get outclassed by something else and being an Arceus form and the team value it brings, means they become total opportunity costs. Something like Poisonceus is probably pretty damn good in its own right but if you consider the rest of the team and the fact that something like Steelceus does everything it does better except removing Tspikes means Poisonceus is unlikely to ever see the light of day on an efficient team.

A+:
Steelceus: Probably the best Farceus in the current metagame. This thing is very splashable/versatile. IMO CM is probably most versatile set - the filler move outside of CM/Judge/Recover can literally be anything. Roar is probably the most common set atm and actually requires quite some specialised sets to beat it since it's faster than most phazers and you can't Toxic or CM war with it. IMO Thunder is a better option since it takes out a bunch the those specialised mons that try to check Steelceus expecting the Roar set (Kyogre becomes a lot softer of a check, Skarm just dies, Ho-oh loses in rain, etc) - getting Roared out is not really that big a deal since Steelceus has plenty of opportunies to heal back up anyway. Other slots that are cool include Wisp as a soft Ekiller check, Rocks since Steelceus can afford that slot, Iron Defense for more trolly shenanigans and Perish Song to fuck over other CM Arcs. I know there are other sets running around at the moment but CM is the best balance of being really threatening while still being totally splashable at the moment

A:
Ekiller - rah rah shrang hates Ekiller lol. Yeah Ekiller is still overrated (I roll my eyes every time someone says it breaks DPP), but it's good. Team Preview is really kind to it because you can hide it before you've cleared out checks which you couldn't do in BW because they can see it. It's also easier to hide things that take out those checks like Mag (although Mag is actually hot garbage and is a huge waste of a slot). Giratinas not having Dragon Tail and Wisp being a toss up in a move-slot really helps Ekiller as well. Simple Jolly 100 Spe with Silk Scarf is probably the best mix of (snickers) power and durability.
Fightceus - Probably the best support Arceus currently. I'm personally not a fan of CM but I heard it's good. Judge/Ice Beam/support/Recover is all you need for this. Support move can be any status move (T-wave vs Toxic are probably your best bet), Perish Song or even Rocks. Best thing about Fightceus is that it checks a whole bunch of really threatening mons like Darkrai/Dialga/Ekiller all in one while still checking some stuff like Ray/RP Don and stuff.

B (not going to bother delineating B+/B/B- but will try to go in order of viability):
Groundceus - Partially feels like a cheaper Fightceus since it still does well vs Dialga but not against Ekiller/Darkrai. Being super weak to Ogre is badness too. It works better on Ogre teams looking for Thunder immune like what Chomp used to have although you're not beating Palkia with this which is really important for rain teams. Special support/CM is probably the best it can do in the current meta, SD feels like a poor man's Garchomp at this point (Extreme Speed is nice and not dying to Ice Beam immediately is nice but ES is super weak and the stuff that kill you with Ice Beam tend to be able to beat you regardless eg Ogre, Lugia)
Eleceus - This thing looks really good on paper because it covers a lot of things all with just 2 moves but in practice you really need to set up the conditions for its sweep really well otherwise it's a waste. It's kind of like Ekiller in the regard that lategame Eleceus is an absolute nightmare to deal with esp if you've weakened their defensive Groudon/Dialga and they don't have Bliss and stuff. However, Eleceus has an even worse defensive typing than Ekiller and has next to no defensive utility (Ekiller can at least pick off frailer or weakened sweepers)
Waterceus - I only feel this is okay on sun teams that want a check to Kyogre and Ho-oh at the same time. I've been running Ice Beam/Grass Knot/Toxic/Recover and it's a decent Ogre pivot along with Groudon. Otherwsie it's kind of lackluster - I wouldn't bother with SD since sun is easy to get back up with this, you lose to Ogre and tbh if you want a physical water sweeper in rain it's better to go with Kingdra, Kabutops or even Gyarados. Speaking of Gyarados, it's a total boss vs a bunch of these Farceus formes :). CM mono attacker can potentially be defensive mono attacker on hail teams if you decide to use those
?Darkceus - I really haven't tried this yet but I'm not really sold on this. Darkceus has always been hyped at the start of every gen and it's always been B rank with the exception of USUM since it actually had defensive utilities vs Unecro and Lunala and Ygod. Mono attacker seems like a total waste of time since Steelceus does that job better already and it's not like Stall teams probably have at least 5 different ways of dealing with this. I can't see what this checks better than other Arc formes better if you want to run a support set. Tbh I'd probably put this in C or even D tier but I really haven't had enough experience with this and B is usually where Darkceus ends up sooooo

C (again not delineating):
Ghostceus - This thing I'm most surprised being this low down. In BW you could check weakened Lati@s (or full if you were physical) and now they just blow past you. Most entry hazard users totally laugh at this thing too which is just bad news for it. On top of that, Giratina-O is compresses so many roles that Ghostceus is kind of obselete in this meta. Kind of like how Ekiller was an opportunity cost in BW, Ghostceus is a massive opportunity cost in DPP. CM is weak and slow, SD is a bit stronger if you use Shadow Force but still slow, and SR Ghostceus lead is cool for beating Deo-S leads but not much else. SubCM Ghost is apparently decent but not fun when you have a Tspikes in every other game.
Ice - Kind of like Eleceus but worse in the fact that now you're screwed by big Steels. You don't lose as hard to Dialga, though.
Poison - Seems like a shitty Steel but at least you actually get rid of Tspikes, which is a pretty important feat. You have to be pretty stally to run Poisonceus imo. Ice Beam/Wisp/Recover/Rocks or Fire blast probably works best.
Grass - Is a good weather duo check but otherwise is pretty big liability against most teams. Dialga laughs at this thing and just Roars it like nobody's business and Spikers would actively want this thing alive for as long as possible,
Dragon - I don't see the appeal of this but I suppose SubSD mono can be threatening. Otherwise, you're better off running Lati@s for CM and Chomp for SD IMO

D - everything else
 
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Here’s a standard looking Farceus team because there are no samples: https://pokepast.es/e3ed0c67aef147b2

Colbur Deoxys-Speed is chosen as the lead to lay down spikes, which are critical for chipping bulky mons like Groudon/Quag so that Ekiller and Kabutops can clean late game.

Spdef Support Dialga checks Kyogre and racks up spikes damage with Roar. It’s also good for chipping steels like Bronzong and spreading para so that Ekiller can sweep later.

Mixed Gira-O checks Groudon, checks no recover Ekiller, and blocks rapid spin. Thunder is important so that Skarm cannot phase freely, and EQ keeps Heatran sun cores at bay.

Kabutops HOs usually prefers Scarf Kyogre to revenge kill fast threats like Mewtwo or Darkrai, but I found with Ekiller AND Kabutops on the team, Scarf is no longer mandatory. Moreover, it means Kyogre can afford to run bulky Twave CM to threaten otherwise problematic mons like Fightceus, Steelceus, and Latis.

Standard Ekiller provides speed control and cleans late game when everything is chipped while Lum nullifies Tspikes.

Band Kabutops is chosen over LO to maximize damage on Arceus forms while minimizing self damage to have a higher chance of picking off opposing Ekiller.
 

Inspirited

There is usually higher ground.
is a Contributor Alumnus
There are a couple mechanics missing from RBY as well:

- Body Slam cannot paralyze normal-types because of how freeze/burn/para side effects are accounted for.
- Paralysis and Burn have their stat multiplier reapplied if the opponent boosts or if their own stats are dropped in any way. This can happen until stat cap stops your Pokemon from boosting or +6/-6 is reached. These changes are not saved when the effected mon is switched out.
Ex1. You have a paralyzed, unboosted Slowbro against a paralyzed, unboosted Mewtwo and your Slowbro uses Amnesia while your opponent's Mewtwo uses Psychic and gets no SpC drop. Your Slowbro has quartered the opponents Mewtwo's Speed again on top of the initial paralysis modifier. After the turn, your Slowbro is at 39 Speed while their Mewtwo is at 22 Speed.
Ex2. You have a paralyzed, unboosted Slowbro is against a paralyzed, unboosted Mewtwo and Mewtwo gets fully paralyzed while Slowbro uses Psychic and gets the SpC drop. Slowbro has quartered the Mewtwo's Speed again on top of the initial paralysis modifier. After the turn, your Slowbro is at 39 Speed while their Mewtwo is at 22 Speed.

- Explosion and Self-Destruct do not cause the user to faint if they KO the target's Substitute
- Hyper Beam does not force a recharge if it KOs the target's Substitute
 
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I'm mirroring the discussion currently going in Policy Review for users without a badge to give their opinion here on the subject matter in BW Ubers. I would rather have done this first, but the cat is already out the bag. Spread the word to any BW players that may miss this post.

Here are my immediate issues with the topic at hand that I want to see posts about:

The BW playerbase should be near unanimous about this before it is given serious thought. I know a sizeable number of people are interested in something being done, but that doesn't always mean they want the same thing. I encourage anyone invested in the metagame to give their opinion formally in here or the PR thread or else I cannot confidently claim the BW playerbase wants x course of action.

Evasion and Baton Pass are two different things. If the argument is that Evasion further breaks Baton Pass, and Baton Pass is already broken, the topic should probably go around Baton Pass. Evasion may be low hanging fruit in competitive Pokemon, but my next point explains my problem with this...

Evasion Clause was disabled via suspect test back when BW was the active metagame, when it had a more active playerbase than it has now. This is different to the other actions we have taken in Ubers metas past their active cycle. Overturning a suspect result without its own suspect test is poor policy, yet no viable method currently exists to suspect test in an old gen non-OU tier. This rolls back into the need for a near-unanimous desire from its active playerbase for me to be comfortable dealing with it now. Some arguments I've seen so far that target the idea of the playerbase back then being clueless rub me the wrong way, hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Evasion itself is a rare factor in the metagame without BP and I can only envision something like Minimize Chansey standing out and that is just in theory, I won't pretend to be a BW main. If there is evidence of standalone Evasion being problematic to the metagame then it should be brought up. Remember we try to take the minimalist options where we can.

As an aside, there are interesting philosophy differences between the suspect test thread in 2012 and the arguments used today. I encourage folks to have a browse through the thread. Back then the question was framed from the other side of the coin - "are there significant enough reasons to ban Evasion" and they answered no. Today, it seems to be "what reason do we have to keep Evasion" and the answer is tbd. I think whichever is right is down to the majority decision, which is to say either can be. What do you think?
 

Cynara

Banned deucer.
Evasion is stupid and shouldnt be part of competitive pokemon. It has been part of the standard ruleset of ubers ever since, even when it was a /banlist/ so many purists preach about. Evasion being unbanned in bw is a sheer inconsistency with the other gens, every gen apart from bw has the evasion clause in its standard ruleset and thats always been the case.

I am the strong belief that the evasion and OHKO clause should never be touched in the tiering process ever, there is a very good reason why these clauses exist in competitive pokemon. Its very simple, to preserve competitiveness and player skill, this is literally the reason: simplified, it isn’t about good/broken evasion or OHKO moves are in the metagame, its because we want to preserve the aspect of player skill the best we can and is the objective of smogon philosophy, even when talking in the grounds of Ubers. Evasion clause being removed was literally overturned in 2015 in oras because people were fed up of facing evasion strats and an element that should have never been freed from the get-go.

Similar reasons as to why OHKO moves are banned in bw ubers can be applied to the argument of re-banning evasion. Scarf Sheer Cold Kyogre can effectively win games by itself as an example, even if the odds are low, even if OHKO moves are unreliable there is no longer player skill involved and that is not a competitive game. Infact builds such as guillotine gliscor + sheer cold kyogre theoretically invalidate all non offense builds in BW Ubers by themselves. Same can be applied to evasion, sinister sets such as Sub double team Darkrai or the mentioned minimise Chansey can theoretically win games by itself, with minimal effort, it becomes a game of hoping you hit the evasion user enough times in a row in order to defeat them, its a bad game for both players and spectators, you simply arent playing competitive pokemon anymore.

I think the focus should 100% be reinstating Evasion clause before we even consider Baton Pass as an element in BW Ubers. It has the largest impact on the metagame, the reasoning it gets tied up with BP is because BP benefits the most from the evasion element in Baton pass chains, a evasion boosted Espeon is virtually invincible if you cant hit it, and evasion increases the success a full pass team is more likely to succeed in its execution. Even though I feel both Baton Pass and Evasion should go, I do believe it is in our best interest to iron out evasion first and then focus on Baton Pass as an individual element.

(I will probably make a more reinforced and formal post in pr)
 
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Manaphy

Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am family guy
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I don’t think I have much to add to this subject that hasn’t already been said, but I agree with Cynara 100%. Evasion and Baton Pass need to go.

Regardless of their actual strength in the metagame, the fact that the strategy is entirely dependent on luck and will oftentimes result in a worse player winning because of that means the mechanic needs to be banned. And regardless of the previous tiering decisions in this tier, which have come from a much different Ubers mindset to now, I see no good reason for us today to maintain such a luck-driven and frankly uninteresting strategy today, especially since all of the tiers have done away with it. I believe Baton Pass needs to go as well, as I think the argument to ban it is the exact same as in other tiers, in that it’s a strategy which is extremely difficult to counter unless your team just happened to beat it in builder. BP makes the tier much more matchup-reliant which is never a good thing. Baton Passing strategies are very strong in BW as well, and I think they are only not as prominently seen because people have a personal distaste for it.
I don’t know how you will go about the process to determine if/how to ban these elements, but I think a vast amount of BW players would agree with what me and Cynara are saying.
 
Firmly in agreement that evasion needs to go, mixed on BP

Evasion is cancer to pretty much any competitive format imo, and doesn't belong anywhere outside AG. I honestly didn't even know it was unbanned because I'd never seen it used until I saw that PR thread. In any case, I think allowing it is ridiculous.

BP I think is a less black and white case- I never bought the argument that it's uncompetitive, I've always been more of the opinion that it's simply broken. Like, in OU it's required some sort of ban in literally every gen except GSC, and still people defend it and say that it's worth implementing complex bans for, which I think is ridiculous- how much evidence do we need that the move is cancer? Regarding BW2 Ubers specifically, I've only personally encountered SmashPass, which is insanely cheesy, but not unbeatable imo. I'd literally never seen fullpass prior to the current drama, so idk if they're relevant without evasion being a thing. Based on my experience, I'd say hold off on dealing with BP until evasion is sorted, but on the other hand I'll never be sad about BP being banned so idk
 
Within the past year, Evasion + Baton Pass (EBP) has seen two instances of usage in tour-level Ubers play.

64 squares vs. NRTS, CPL IV Day 8: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ubers-500711
Here, EBP lost to Dragon Tail and Ekiller.

FLCL vs Endill, UPL VIII Week 1: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ubers-509025
Here, EBP lost to Toxic Spikes.

edgar clicked Stealth Rock vs. a Ninjask threatening Substitute and Double Team. This is a case of edgar losing due to making a misplay rather than by virtue of Evasion itself being broken. Arguments citing this game as evidence of the latter rather than the former are simply wrong.

The spirit of Ubers is that things are banned only if they are broken. As it turns out, EBP is 0 for 2 in tour-level Ubers play in recent memory, and the seminal game sparking this debate was lost NOT due to EBP but due to a blatant misplay. Between the ubiquity of elements like Dtail, Espeed, and Tspikes being used extensively in BW2 Ubers, and the empirical lack of success or even viability of EBP as a strategy, I believe that neither Evasion nor Baton Pass merit a ban as there is no evidence pointing to either being broken by any definition of the word.
 
Funny how those who would rather be ban-happy on non-broken moves than face the reality that the metagame disallows it from being broken, are also the ones who would rather shy away from dealing with the substance of my argument and instead to drop a big brained “Haha” react.
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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UU Leader
not much of a bw ubers player, don't have a real stance here but I wanted to reply to the above post(s). i've messed w/ the tier a bit and i played it in cpl iv with a meh? record, idr exactly how i did i think it was 2-2 but that's unimportant. regardless, here are my thoughts regarding evasion pass/baton pass in general.

I don't think it's inherently broken. The tier's naturally quite prepared for it; Pokemon like Roar/Dragon Tail Kyogre/Groudon/Latios are all common, priority is used fairly often on the likes of Genesect and Arceus which keeps it in check, and overall it's not really a consistent way to farm wins outside of noobtrapping or hoping for a good matchup. As evidenced by the replay of watashi vs Endill, the archetype can also be broken down in other ways (Toxic Spikes in this case, though Toxic Spikes are definitely not particularly reliable since getting them up against that type of team can be difficult). I'm not particularly active in the Ubers community so I don't actually know what the ongoing discussions have been about, but I think that calling the strategy broken is foolish/exaggerated. The main issue is that it's not competitive.

At its core, Smogon's tiering aim is to create balanced metagames that involve the lowest amount of bans possible while maintaining competitive integrity. In short, this means that luck is part of the game, but Smogon's goal will always be to ban forms of play that limit or entirely remove player skill. Ubers may be different here because obviously the objective is to only ban things when it's really necessary/wanted, but what doesn't change is he primary goal of the tiering policy, outlined as:

"I.) To create a metagame that is conducive to the more "skilled" player winning over the less "skilled" player a majority of the time."

Evasion passing takes this goal and throws it out the window. There is no skill involved, it's purely dependent on getting the right matchup and hoping you win from there, or hoping your opponent chokes when playing against it. This is why it's not consistently seen or used and also why it doesn't win very often; players aren't willing to use it outside of meme tours (CPL) because when the stakes are high, it's better to use something that gives you outplay room and doesn't involve praying your opponent doesn't have a Dragon Tail Lugia. As such, evidence based on the idea that "it doesn't win often so it's not broken" doesn't rlly work - yeah, it doesn't win often, but that doesn't mean it's not inherently uncompetitive, unenjoyable, and as said before it pretty much takes player skill entirely out of the equation and lets RNG take the wheel.

In short, the issue with evasion passing isn't really that it's broken, too much for the tier to handle, or even good. It's just widely disliked because there is no talent involved and the game essentially becomes a waste of the time for those playing and spectating, and a game that involves Ninjask praying it doesn't get hit isn't really something that can be considered competitive. This is an issue in other tiers too and other subforum PLs will often ban uncompetitive strategies like Baton Pass and Copycat Riolu themselves bc the tier lock doesn't allow for it, it's not just BW Ubers and as far as I'm aware that tier is unlocked? So something can be done about it. Anyway, sorry if this came off as repetitive, kinda tired, feel free to disregard this bc idk too much about the meta. just felt that the above reasoning was kinda flawed.
 

steelskitty

you deserve so much more than this
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Within the past year, Evasion + Baton Pass (EBP) has seen two instances of usage in tour-level Ubers play.

64 squares vs. NRTS, CPL IV Day 8: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ubers-500711
Here, EBP lost to Dragon Tail and Ekiller.

FLCL vs Endill, UPL VIII Week 1: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5ubers-509025
Here, EBP lost to Toxic Spikes.

edgar clicked Stealth Rock vs. a Ninjask threatening Substitute and Double Team. This is a case of edgar losing due to making a misplay rather than by virtue of Evasion itself being broken. Arguments citing this game as evidence of the latter rather than the former are simply wrong.

The spirit of Ubers is that things are banned only if they are broken. As it turns out, EBP is 0 for 2 in tour-level Ubers play in recent memory, and the seminal game sparking this debate was lost NOT due to EBP but due to a blatant misplay. Between the ubiquity of elements like Dtail, Espeed, and Tspikes being used extensively in BW2 Ubers, and the empirical lack of success or even viability of EBP as a strategy, I believe that neither Evasion nor Baton Pass merit a ban as there is no evidence pointing to either being broken by any definition of the word.
I wasn't going to respond to this because I feel it's both misleading and in bad faith, but since it's gaining a surprising amount of traction I feel obligated to. Lilburr's response does a good job addressing the central problem with your argument — it's a strawman — but I don't feel it adequately addresses everything else. I invite you to ctrl+f "broken" in my OP — you'll find zero results. Ubers has not, does not, and presumably never will ban things based on brokenness. Brokenness is not the point of my argument at all. It should not be the point of any pro- or anti-ban argument. If Ubers banned based on brokenness, we'd have banned Kyogre from ADV. We would ban Dialga from DPP. Mega Salamence would be gone from ORAS tomorrow. It is a precedent that has existed since the dawn of competitive Ubers discussion that Ubers does not ban based on brokenness. Your claim that "[t]he spirit of Ubers is that things are banned only if they are broken" is so unfounded in evidence that I'm amazed more people haven't called you out on it. Your argument, additionally, fails to respond to any of the points I make in my OP, aside from how you make the case in your last sentence that more counterplay exists to Evasionpass than I initially claim.

I'm going to explain why your counterplay argument is wrong before I address your point about empirical evidence. You mention "the ubiquity of elements like Dtail, Espeed, and Tspikes being used extensively in Ubers" as reason not to ban Evasionpass. I first take issue with you claim that these elements are ubiquitous. If you look at my teambuilding compendium in this same thread, you'll see everything that viably runs these moves. There are 14 phazers listed, seven of which learn Dragon Tail (Giratina-O, Giratina-A, Groudon, Palkia, Lugia, Rayquaza, and Dialga). The only Pokemon that commonly run it are the Giratinas and Groudon — everything else prefers Roar (Lugia, Dialga) or only uses Dragon Tail sporadically (Rayquaza, Palkia). I will grant that most Ubers teams have a phazer, but there's no evidence to suggest that Dragon Tail is prevalent enough to be "ubiquitous." If you scroll up a bit, you'll find "Toxic Spiker." This is a list of eight Pokemon, none of which crack A- rank on the updated BW viability rankings that I haven't edited into the OP yet. The only Pokemon of these eight who fit on a comfortable array of teams are Tentacruel and Forretress, the latter of which doesn't even always run Toxic Spikes. If you scroll down you'll see "Priority User." A total of four of these Pokemon learn Extreme Speed: Rayquaza, Arceus, Deoxys-A, and Genesect, and Genesect almost never uses it. None of these Pokemon or sets reach the point of ubiquity, although I will concede that some (Giratina-O, Extreme Killer Arceus) are more common than others.

So let's hypothetically give you your best-case scenario and say that almost all teams have at least one Pokemon that has Dragon Tail, Toxic Spikes, or Extreme Speed. None of these things are consistent enough to put a full stop to Evasionpass, because Evasionpass only needs a single free turn to start getting Evasion boosts and therefore become uncompetitive. Let me first explain some ways Evasionpass gets free turns against Dragon Tail users. It runs into the problem of only having 16 PP, meaning that Giratina-O Dragon Tail gets Substitute+Protect stalled by Gliscor. Next, Dragon Tail from Groudon, the strongest non-STAB user of it, doesn't actually break Gliscor's Substitute: 252+ Atk Groudon Dragon Tail vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 67-79 (18.9 - 22.3%) -- possible 9HKO after Poison Heal. Furthermore, Dragon Tail is negated by Ingrain, and it has a miss chance. You can't just slap a Dragon Tail Pokemon on your team and pretend you've got Baton Pass covered. Your mention of Toxic Spikes is also insanely weird to me, given that you cite Edgar clicking Stealth Rock versus Evasionpass as "a blatant misplay" just a sentence earlier in your post. It might be, but so is clicking Toxic Spikes. Clicking any hazard at all means giving their Evasion users a free turn to boost up, and you actually need to click Toxic Spikes twice to effectively neutralize their Espeon, therefore giving them two free turns. Clicking it just once doesn't work, because Ingrain + Leftovers recovery neutralizes regular Poison damage. Your claim that Toxic Spikes solves Evasionpass despite it giving the Evasionpass user two free turns to set up (never mind the fact that the opponent can Baton Pass Espeon in and Bounce back Toxic Spikes if they so choose) is insane to me. Your point about Extreme Speed is bad for a related reason: Extreme Speed, too, requires a turn of setup to threaten Baton Pass teams, and they can use that free turn to boost their Evasion. Extreme Speed Genesect is never doing it, first off — clicking anything except Flamethrower with Genesect is unviable, because it enables Shedinja to come in and Double Team. Deoxys-Attack can't do it on its own, because Ninjask can viably EV to avoid the 2hko (4 Atk Deoxys-Attack Extreme Speed vs. 28 HP / 248 Def Ninjask: 121-143 (44.8 - 52.9%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery) and because you can get PP stalled by Gliscor's Substitute+Protect. Extreme Killer Arceus is stronger than Rayquaza, and it needs a Swords Dance boost to outdamage Gliscor's Substitute + Protect recovery before it runs out of PP (252+ Atk Silk Scarf Arceus Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 135-159 (38.1 - 44.9%) -- 40.6% chance to 3HKO after Poison Heal). You can try to play mindgames here by attempting to waste their PP with a coverage move, but guessing wrong with that once out of thirty-two tries lets them Double Team. The tl;dr of this big paragraph is that Evasionpass has an out versus everything you insinuated checks it, and that out is taking advantage of an easily-generated free turn then waiting for them to miss.

I include a list of truly consistent counters to Evasionpass in my OP, which I'm quoting here for convenience. I neglected to mention Rain Hurricane (only run by Tornadus-T) as another 100% accurate move, but the prognosis here is still pretty dire:
You have to account for Evasionpass in the builder, and the ways to do this are so limited that it's completely unfeasible to run them on every team. There are six viable Pokemon in BW Ubers that learn Haze (Darkrai, Zekrom, Tentacruel, Xatu, Omastar, and Qwilfish), and none can viably run it. The only viable Pokemon that learns Perish Song is Arceus, and Perish Song is on the very fringe of viability — of the many dozens of BW Ubers teams I've built, I've found space for Perish Song Arceus on exactly one and am not even convinced it's optimal there. Heart Swap Manaphy is theoretically an option, but Manaphy itself is barely viable and has no space for the move if it wants to do anything besides check Evasionpass. There are a handful of 100% accurate attacks in Aura Sphere, Aerial Ace, and Thunder in Rain, but the most optimized Evasionpass team runs immunities to Thunder and Aura Sphere and simply doesn't care about Aerial Ace because nothing in BW Ubers viably runs it. What this means is that you need to go very, very far out of your way to achieve any sort of consistency against Evasionpass in the builder. You have high odds of immediately losing to it if you don't.
Now, does this mean that Evasionpass is totally unbeatable if you only half-check it (with i.e. a Skill Swap Deoxys-S, or a Dual Phazing Giratina-O)? No! I played fifty ladder games using exclusively Evasionpass today and went 39-11. The amount of variance involved with it is absolutely insane — you can beat a player close to the top of the ladder by winning a single 50/50, then lose the next game to a 1000-rated player who's running Rock Blast Cloyster. I couldn't pass 1360 with it, which is over 100 points under the #1 spot. The players who bemoan Evasionpass's inconsistency certainly aren't wrong. Though I still think it does have a lot of autowin matchups in the hands of a capable player, it's not unfair to assess it as a strategy that a better player shouldn't be using versus a worse one. It's also certainly not common in high-level play; I can think of more replays than the two you posted (both of which were lost by blatant misplay on the Evasionpassers' parts), but there's no denying that only a small number of Evasion-oriented teams have cropped up recently in Ubers tournaments. Evasionpass has actually overtaken the BW Ubers ladder (I'd estimate about 20% of the games I played were Evasionpass mirrors), but, sure, it's not common in tournaments, and it probably won't be.

Does any of this mean that Evasion is a healthy, competitive element of BW Ubers, or any other metagame? No! A single Double Team can instantly lead to victory in a game you should have no business winning. There's an inarguable removal of the skill element from the game here — you can do everything right and still get destroyed by chance. There is no fundamental difference between Evasion clause and all the others BW Ubers has in place. Do you think Moody and 1HKO moves would overtake the metagame if they were unbanned? No, they'd be fringe, stigmatized strategies that people would occasionally use to try to beat better players, as Evasionpass is now. Does anyone want to campaign to free Moody and 1HKO moves? I haven't seen it happen yet within the past seven years, and I don't think it's going to anytime soon. So what, in your view, makes it such that Evasion should stick around? Your burden of proof is to demonstrate that BW Ubers as a tier is qualified to handle Evasionpass, that there's something unique about it that makes Evasion competitive here when it's banned from every single other Ubers generation. This does not mean citing the frequency of Evasionpass's use as the crux of your argument, nor does it mean mischaracterizing Ubers as a tier that "bans things because they're broken" or throwing out some half-assed theorymon that maybe there are things that sometimes beat it. I "haha" reacted your initial post because there really was nothing of value to engage with, which makes your callout post after it particularly ironic.
 
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I wasn't going to respond to this because I feel it's both misleading and in bad faith, but since it's gaining a surprising amount of traction I feel obligated to. Lilburr's response does a good job addressing the central problem with your argument — it's a strawman — but I don't feel it adequately addresses everything else. I invite you to ctrl+f "broken" in my OP — you'll find zero results. Ubers has not, does not, and presumably never will ban things based on brokenness. Brokenness is not the point of my argument at all. It should not be the point of any pro- or anti-ban argument. If Ubers banned based on brokenness, we'd have banned Kyogre from ADV. We would ban Dialga from DPP. Mega Salamence would be gone from ORAS tomorrow. It is a precedent that has existed since the dawn of competitive Ubers discussion that Ubers does not ban based on brokenness. Your claim that "[t]he spirit of Ubers is that things are banned only if they are broken" is so unfounded in evidence that I'm amazed more people haven't called you out on it. Your argument, additionally, fails to respond to any of the points I make in my OP, aside from how you make the case in your last sentence that more counterplay exists to Evasionpass than I initially claim.

I'm going to explain why your counterplay argument is wrong before I address your point about empirical evidence. You mention "the ubiquity of elements like Dtail, Espeed, and Tspikes being used extensively in Ubers" as reason not to ban Evasionpass. I first take issue with you claim that these elements are ubiquitous. If you look at my teambuilding compendium in this same thread, you'll see everything that viably runs these moves. There are 14 phazers listed, seven of which learn Dragon Tail (Giratina-O, Giratina-A, Groudon, Palkia, Lugia, Rayquaza, and Dialga). The only Pokemon that commonly run it are the Giratinas and Groudon — everything else prefers Roar (Lugia, Dialga) or only uses Dragon Tail sporadically (Rayquaza, Palkia). I will grant that most Ubers teams have a phazer, but there's no evidence to suggest that Dragon Tail is prevalent enough to be "ubiquitous." If you scroll up a bit, you'll find "Toxic Spiker." This is a list of eight Pokemon, none of which crack A- rank on the updated BW viability rankings that I haven't edited into the OP yet. The only Pokemon of these eight who fit on a comfortable array of teams are Tentacruel and Forretress, the latter of which doesn't even always run Toxic Spikes. If you scroll down you'll see "Priority User." A total of four of these Pokemon learn Extreme Speed: Rayquaza, Arceus, Deoxys-A, and Genesect, and Genesect almost never uses it. None of these Pokemon or sets reach the point of ubiquity, although I will concede that some (Giratina-O, Extreme Killer Arceus) are more common than others.

So let's hypothetically give you your best-case scenario and say that almost all teams have at least one Pokemon that has Dragon Tail, Toxic Spikes, or Extreme Speed. None of these things are consistent enough to put a full stop to Evasionpass, because Evasionpass only needs a single free turn to start getting Evasion boosts and therefore become uncompetitive. Let me first explain some ways Evasionpass gets free turns against Dragon Tail users. It runs into the problem of only having 16 PP, meaning that Giratina-O Dragon Tail gets Substitute+Protect stalled by Gliscor. Next, Dragon Tail from Groudon, the strongest non-STAB user of it, doesn't actually break Gliscor's Substitute: 252+ Atk Groudon Dragon Tail vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 67-79 (18.9 - 22.3%) -- possible 9HKO after Poison Heal. Furthermore, Dragon Tail is negated by Ingrain, and it has a miss chance. You can't just slap a Dragon Tail Pokemon on your team and pretend you've got Baton Pass covered. Your mention of Toxic Spikes is also insanely weird to me, given that you cite Edgar clicking Stealth Rock versus Evasionpass as "a blatant misplay" just a sentence earlier in your post. It might be, but so is clicking Toxic Spikes. Clicking any hazard at all means giving their Evasion users a free turn to boost up, and you actually need to click Toxic Spikes twice to effectively neutralize their Espeon, therefore giving them two free turns. Clicking it just once doesn't work, because Ingrain + Leftovers recovery neutralizes regular Poison damage. Your claim that Toxic Spikes solves Evasionpass despite it giving the Evasionpass user two free turns to set up (never mind the fact that the opponent can Baton Pass Espeon in and Bounce back Toxic Spikes if they so choose) is insane to me. Your point about Extreme Speed is bad for a related reason: Extreme Speed, too, requires a turn of setup to threaten Baton Pass teams, and they can use that free turn to boost their Evasion. Extreme Speed Genesect is never doing it, first off — clicking anything except Flamethrower with Genesect is unviable, because it enables Shedinja to come in and Double Team. Deoxys-Attack can't do it on its own, because Ninjask can viably EV to avoid the 2hko (4 Atk Deoxys-Attack Extreme Speed vs. 28 HP / 248 Def Ninjask: 121-143 (44.8 - 52.9%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery) and because you can get PP stalled by Gliscor's Substitute+Protect. Extreme Killer Arceus is stronger than Rayquaza, and it needs a Swords Dance boost to outdamage Gliscor's Substitute + Protect recovery before it runs out of PP (252+ Atk Silk Scarf Arceus Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 135-159 (38.1 - 44.9%) -- 40.6% chance to 3HKO after Poison Heal). You can try to play mindgames here by attempting to waste their PP with a coverage move, but guessing wrong with that once out of thirty-two tries lets them Double Team. The tl;dr of this big paragraph is that Evasionpass has an out versus everything you insinuated checks it, and that out is taking advantage of an easily-generated free turn then waiting for them to miss.

I include a list of truly consistent counters to Evasionpass in my OP, which I'm quoting here for convenience. I neglected to mention Rain Hurricane (only run by Tornadus-T) as another 100% accurate move, but the prognosis here is still pretty dire:


Now, does this mean that Evasionpass is totally unbeatable if you only half-check it (with i.e. a Skill Swap Deoxys-S, or a Dual Phazing Giratina-O)? No! I played fifty ladder games using exclusively Evasionpass today and went 39-11. The amount of variance involved with it is absolutely insane — you can beat a player close to the top of the ladder by winning a single 50/50, then lose the next game to a 1000-rated player who's running Rock Blast Cloyster. I couldn't pass 1360 with it, which is over 100 points under the #1 spot. The players who bemoan Evasionpass's inconsistency certainly aren't wrong. Though I still think it does have a lot of autowin matchups in the hands of a capable player, it's not unfair to assess it as a strategy that a better player shouldn't be using versus a worse one. It's also certainly not common in high-level play; I can think of more replays than the two you posted (both of which were lost by blatant misplay on the Evasionpassers' parts), but there's no denying that only a small number of Evasion-oriented teams have cropped up recently in Ubers tournaments. Evasionpass has actually overtaken the BW Ubers ladder (I'd estimate about 20% of the games I played were Evasionpass mirrors), but, sure, it's not common in tournaments, and it probably won't be.

Does any of this mean that Evasion is a healthy, competitive element of BW Ubers, or any other metagame? No! A single Double Team can instantly lead to victory in a game you should have no business winning. There's an inarguable removal of the skill element from the game here — you can do everything right and still get destroyed by chance. There is no fundamental difference between Evasion clause and all the others BW Ubers has in place. Do you think Moody and 1HKO moves would overtake the metagame if they were unbanned? No, they'd be fringe, stigmatized strategies that people would occasionally use to try to beat better players, as Evasionpass is now. Does anyone want to campaign to free Moody and 1HKO moves? I haven't seen it happen yet within the past seven years, and I don't think it's going to anytime soon. So what, in your view, makes it such that Evasion should stick around? Your burden of proof is to demonstrate that BW Ubers as a tier is qualified to handle Evasionpass, that there's something unique about it that makes Evasion competitive here when it's banned from every single other Ubers generation. This does not mean citing the frequency of Evasionpass's use as the crux of your argument, nor does it mean mischaracterizing Ubers as a tier that "bans things because they're broken" or throwing out some half-assed theorymon that maybe there are things that sometimes beat it. I "haha" reacted your initial post because there really was nothing of value to engage with, which makes your callout post after it particularly ironic.
I’m going to preface my response by clarifying a difference in faith between your stance and mine.

You begin your follow-up post with the accusation that my stance is "in bad faith,” yet immediately afterwards you conclude your post with “I ‘haha’ reacted your initial post because there really was nothing of value to engage with.”

I, on the other hand, am open to changing my mind on this if evidence of Evasion-pass meriting a ban is presented. As it turns out, none of what you said amounts to such evidence, and working backwards from your conclusion in which you want to see Evasion-pass banned will not ameliorate your cause in this end.

To illustrate my point, I quote this remark: “The only viable Pokemon that learns Perish Song is Arceus, and Perish Song is on the very fringe of viability — of the many dozens of BW Ubers teams I've built, I've found space for Perish Song Arceus on exactly one and am not even convinced it's optimal there.”

This line of reasoning precisely is the foundation from which your countless other instances of logical fallacies branch out. Let’s not get sidetracked by semantics, you knew exactly what I meant by “broken”; if I ctrl+F “broken” I see Nayrz and Cynara using the term and unfortunately my post wasn’t uniquely addressed to just you.

The fact is, if an element warrants a strategy to counterplay it, the correct response is not to adhere to one’s idealized view of the metagame and get ban-happy on things that disturb it, but rather, to adapt to the game state accordingly to nullify the threat that said element poses.

Therefore, in this particular example, the correct conclusion to the observation that Perish Song is effective in counterplaying Evasion-pass is not “Perish Song Arceus only fits on one team and I don’t think it’s optimal,” but rather, “the rise of Evasion-pass as a metagame trend increases the viability of Perish Song Arceus so it is good sense to increase my own usage of it so as to adapt to metagame trends accordingly.”

Examples of you working backwards from your conclusion are rampant elsewhere across your several posts. To address a few: (1) Fc04 would have won easily had he Fire Punched instead of ESpeed (2) an entire paragraph of your post is dedicated to analyzing a ladder which has been up for less than 24 hours and (3) yet another paragraph is dedicated to computing the odds of the outs that Evasion-pass affords its user but the crux of it is that this out is not much better than a myriad of other game elements. Palkia fails to check to Kyogre if Thunder paralyzes or crits, a 34.375% chance; should we ban Thunder? Espeon complicates getting TSpikes up, yes, but this is just as true for the Magic Sun teams; perhaps that should be suspected as well by your logic?

The point I want to hone in on the most, though, is with regards to the following remark: “Your burden of proof is to demonstrate that BW Ubers as a tier is qualified to handle Evasionpass, that there's something unique about it that makes Evasion competitive here when it's banned from every single other Ubers generation.”

No. The allowance of Evasion has been the status quo since its Suspect Test in 2012 (in line with the spirit of Ubers, as it should be); the onus, therefore, is on the pro-ban individuals to articulate a coherent reasoning for their agenda, and backwards logic derived from a fanatical obsession with seeing it banned do not cut it. Let’s not talk about “ironic” when your own player literally failed to win with it this past UPL. Instead, I suggest you carefully reconsider from first principles why Evasion-pass has seen essentially 0 usage in tours, why it has a poor win-rate when it does see usage, or why the true greats of BW2 like Hack and 2x BW cup finalist + Classic winner Sitonaii agree with my stance.

mod edit: removed flame, don't do this again
 
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Fc

Waiting for something to happen?
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Ubers Leader
I'm speaking mostly on the impact of evasion here, because I don't believe that baton pass by itself in BW Ubers can be deemed uncompetitive without the help of evasion. That being said, personally I'm under the belief that evasion has no place being in any metagame where the goal is to create a competitive environment. It is actively basing the strategy of one or more Pokemon on dodging attacks and taking the control of the game out of both players hands. The reason moody isn't allowed largely follows the same idea, it gives a chance to base a strategy around making a game intentionally luck based instead of skill based. Obviously Pokemon will always have luck, that's part of the game, but having teams dedicated to relying on luck to win games doesn't do anything beneficial for the tier. In games involving evasion, sometimes outplaying the opponent won't lead to a victory because you can simply miss a 100% accuracy move you put yourself into the position to win with.

In this game between me and Steelskitty which they referenced in a post above, I made almost every correct play to get myself in a winning position. I clicked surf on a gliscor, and it dodged with 1 double team up and I proceeded to lose from more evasion and boosts stacking up. Just to address Goat Heart saying I won if I clicked dark pulse over espeed on Ninjask, that wouldn't have done much more assuming I clicked dpulse on a sub then espeed on a bp the next turn, since the outcome is still Ninjask passing to gliscor with 1 espeed and 1 sub worth of damage on it and no sub given to gliscor. It could have baited another sub which 2 espeeds could have dealt with if it was out of range of a sub, but that's a hypothetical misplay so that method while a bit better in theory, wouldn't have done much more.

This game was me using evasion pass in Ubers live, and actual tournament where winning games with this could effect playoff points for the tour. I got outplayed for a majority of the game, but still won. Turn 14, my ninjask which 100% of the time dies to scald dodged it with 1 double team, letting me pass it to Espeon and bounce back a roar. Turn 17, I click spore on an Arceus Ghost, and they predict that and magic coat instead of expecting me to ingrain or boost evasion more, but even with this I dodge the spore bounced back, ingrain, then double team again to dodge another kyogre scald. From there, I just fish for misses with Arceus Ghost to win while clicking calm mind, in a game I got very outplayed in. The skill they had over me in BW was just removed because I based a whole game around trying to get lucky, which should not be a way competitive games are aimed to be played.

A few more replays here and here are me just winning games completely based on luck. Spacial rendevous avoided clicking taunt since it was forced 50/50's on protect and then the miss chance of a 100% accurate move on top of it, and the threat of passing to Espeon to bounce it back and get smeargle going was pretty large. Dr.Jeckyl outplayed me early game, getting roar and hazard calls right, but he missed a roar on shedinja, which is supposed to be one of the better ways to stop passing and evasion since it phases. I just went smeargle and set up spore, ingrain, and more boosts to win after only getting to that position with intentional luck fishing. I talked with them both a bit after and we share similar opinions on this since they agree the game we try to play competitively shouldn't be determined purely by luck in almost every match up with evasion teams.

One could argue that evasion is only as good as it is because of baton pass and vise versa, but while the team of evasion pass is better than one mon with evasion, it still doesn't change how uncompetitive it is. Viable Pokemon could use double team and still dodge moves that shouldn't miss, and if moody was allowed the same idea of evasion being uncompetitive would be put in again. It's better to remove the chance of games being ruined by evasion by itself before it happens more, because if we aim for a skill based competitive tier leaving in one of the most luck based elements in all of Pokemon would not let all games be decided by skill, rather mu fishing in the builder or more likely, luck in hitting moves.

I think that even though the decision was made strictly to unban evasion from it's previously banned state, it isn't something that should be set in stone, but rather something to be reviewed due to it's controversy. Looking back at some old threads on the topic shows how the metagame and evasion pass teams have changed. Look at this replay of an evasion game from 2012 for example, where the only mons still seen on standard evasion pass teams are espeon and ninjask. Things have changed a lot since then like with all metas, so I really think re-opening this discussion is a good thing, and removing a main element of luck from the tier seems like it can add nothing but positives.
 
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