Assist in BW OU [now banned]

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Finchinator

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Thread approved by Excal

The BW OU tiering council has been discussing the move Assist ever since a long-time player formally brought it to our attention. We currently intend to vote on the move Assist in the near future, but wish to use this thread to gauge public perception and obtain valuable input on the topic.

Assist has been employed alongside Prankster Pokemon such as Liepard to enact a strategy that allows for hazard damage (or Hail damage on some occasions) to wrack up without many forms of skillful counterplay; giving phasing moves priority in conjunction with hazards being set creates an uncompetitive dynamic in the eyes of some players, especially in a metagame lacking Defog, Heavy-Duty Boots, or many forms of hazard removal in general. It is true these strategies are not unbeatable, oftentimes finding themselves at the mercy of match-up inconsistencies depending on what priority and hazard immune Pokemon one may encounter. Thankfully this las led to Assist teams being relatively uncommon in recent years, even if they still pop-up sporadically. However, having any supposedly competitive games boil down to this is less than ideal. Of course, there are plenty of people who have used and faced this strategy over the years and those who are invested deserve an opportunity to weigh in before anything is decided.

Please use this thread to voice your opinion on Assist in the BW OU metagame and if you have any objection to the BW OU council conducting a vote on it in the near future. Thank you!
 

Bughouse

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I would go one step further and say that the move Assist should be banned from all BW level 100* singles metas (even in NU, where it would replace the longstanding complex ban that was implemented even when a simple ban on the move alone would have sufficed.) It's not a coincidence that NU banned the strategy a decade ago and that there's an active thread on the matter for BW UU. But fine. OU is a place to start...

The strategy is the definition of uncompetitive. In my opinion, even more so than Baton Pass and Evasion, BW Prankster Assist teams just entirely remove all gameplay interaction if the opposing team lacks any of the numerous tools to check it. The same exact team that trolled NU back in the day can win in OU and even Ubers if it gets the right matchup (though versions with better supporting casts with higher stats can also be made for higher tiers), and there is literally nothing the opponent can do if it lacks the necessary tools. It's just an auto loss in the teambuilder. There are some other teams that while not technically an autoloss, may boil the game down to one single coinflip turn, or several similar coinflip turns repeatedly, all related to trying to keep the Assist team from getting up hazards but potentially giving a free turn to set up with Liepard. While the number of teams that are likely to truly lack meaningful counterplay varies widely tier to tier, and I personally think the risk reward in OU is way off the mark for me to ever bring it even if I were playing someone I have low odds to beat fairly that doesn't mean it's not a problem. Even though the odds to win against a better player with a legit team due to hax are much better than odds than to win by using this generally losing strategy but happening to get the rare favorable team matchup, the fact that it even can auto win like this without any gameplay interaction is really the key problem. That method of winning is something that should be considered unacceptable at any level of likelihood.

What do I mean when I say no gameplay interaction or interaction limited to a single coinflip turn?

An example of a matchup that just gets reduced to coinflips is certain versions of Smurf.
Most Smurf offenses will have Extreme Speed on Dragonite, which offers at least the minimum amount of counterplay, but not all do.
Here is one from Caetano that doesn't:
https://pokepast.es/29f7359f56b1932d

To summarize how this team matches up into Liepard shenaningans... it:
1) has a SR user that Ditto will be able to copy Rocks from and that is slower than Liepard, so Liepard will be switching out first and letting Ditto copy Garchomp
2) does not have Rapid Spin on the same set as the SR user (i.e. Excadrill, Forretress)
3) does not have phazing on the same set as the SR user to threaten to deny Ditto switching in (i.e. Hippowdon, Skarmory)
4) does not have Explosion on the same set as the SR user to do big damage, get off the field as Ditto comes in, and see if a priority mon can finish the job before Rocks go up or a Spinner can come on (i.e. SR Explosion Solrock can click Explosion as Ditto switches into it, followed up by Scizor's BP or Starmie spamming Rapid Spin - incredibly niche as pertains to OU but technically one way to prevent the strategy in general so I'm mentioning it)
5) does not have any Pokemon that can be used as a double switch (or even a regular switch in, if Garchomp could pivot with U-Turn for example) to deny a Ditto transformed as Scarf Garchomp from setting Rocks (i.e. no faster scarfer like a scarf latios and no strong enough priority to ohko, which would require ice shard in this case)
6) does not have magic bounce/coat
7) has literally zero moves that will go before and disrupt Liepard's Assist spamming or even just PP stall it i.e. ExtremeSpeed or Protect.
8) has all 6 Pokemon taking reasonable net damage from that single hazard, and some a lot even. Not a single Magic Guard or Regenerator Pokemon in sight.
9) has only one Pokemon even with Leftovers, so Rocks will rack up damage very quickly. The team has a combination of sets such that the total number of forced switch-ins by Assist phazing needed to fully kill the 4 non-resistant mons is less than Liepard's total Assist PP. If Liepard gets lucky and doesn't waste too many excess phazes bringing Garchomp and Breloom onto the field, Liepard will alone take down 4 Pokemon without ever attacking, once Stealth Rock goes up.

And following up on point 9, Assist teams CAN even run both Liepard and Purrloin to extend the PP available and thus the hazard damage racked up, even though Purrloin is notably less viable in isolation since it won't be moving before certain priority moves like Jolly Breloom Mach Punch and it is never a set-up/sweeping threat in the same way Liepard can be with Sub and Nasty Plot when it happens to run into something that can't break a sub like a Toxic+Psychic Cresselia. But against this particular Caetano version of Smurf, since it's an Adamant Breloom and Liepard was never winning by setting up Subs and Nasty Plots anyway... it's just factual to say that Purrloin and Liepard perform literally identically against this team once rocks are up, meaning there are 64 total assists available, and so roughly that many turns on which they will phaze and do rocks damage, depending how many turns it takes to get Garchomp onto the field and successfully get Rocks up to begin with.

So based on all that summary above, in this matchup, the Liepard user can just lead turn 1 and start using assist.
Once it phazes the rocker Garchomp onto the field, the Garchomp user has a few options.
1) Because Liepard is faster than Garchomp, just switching out of Garchomp to try to avoid the rocks user ever being on the field to get copied is not a reliable option. Liepard will switch first, so Ditto will come onto the field and transform before Garchomp can leave. The team lacks a Pokemon that Garchomp can double into that will then outrun and OHKO transformed Garchomp, i.e. a scarfer w/ >102 speed or an Ice Shard mon. Neither exist on this team, so switching Garchomp out of Liepard as Ditto switches in is not a reliable option. If the Liepard user calls it correctly and just hard switches in, they will get rocks and then win.
2) Knowing that switching out is not necessarily a helpful option, the Garchomp user could also Outrage predicting the Ditto switchin->transform into Garchomp, which would deny rocks if right, and win the game on the spot, but if the Prankster user instead goes into something that dies to the Outrage / eats the Outrage and has an eject button, the Ditto then gets in cleanly and can click Stealth Rock next turn, while Garchomp is locked and thus you can't hard into Starmie to try to get a spin off immediately (not this likely would not even work, since Assist teams run a Ghost, so it's not really any different if Garchomp runs Dragon Claw or Dual Chop instead, since as mentioned in part 1, the team can't benefit from trying to double switch into the Ditto anyway.)
3) Knowing that the Liepard user might switch into a pivot that is intended to take the Outrage and then get Ditto in freely, the Garchomp user could switch out as in option 1, but they could also use the opportunity to use SR of their own if they're being really daring. This is risky however, since the pivot switch in might also be a fast user of Copycat, such as Lopunny, which serves as a backup method for getting Stealth Rock up.

Because the matchup is so bad for this team, Liepard will essentially pick ~4 mons off once Rocks go up and then leave clean up to the remaining Pokemon, or if the team is running both Liepard and Purrloin, it is already over once Rocks go up. And this is even just assuming the Liepard user STARTS by using assist and not even trying to annoy other Pokemon first with things like hail or trick/switcheroo black sludge/flame orb etc to accelerate the chip and make shuffling work even faster. This is the naive way to approach things and it still might just win.

This essentially means that the entire game has already been reduced to just this one coinflip of whether Garchomp should Outrage and lose if the Liepard user sacs/uses eject button to get Ditto in or whether Garchomp should predict that the Liepard user will try to more sneakily get Ditto in via a pivot and instead just hard switch out as that pivot comes in. And even if you don't lead Garchomp, it still might get phazed in on Turn 1 meaning this could be a coinflip for the match on Turn 2.

If the rest of the team were kept constant but Garchomp were instead something weird like a Lefties-less Metagross that meets all the same criteria as Garchomp currently does that makes the matchup so poor, while ALSO not threatening an OHKO on itself, then there's not even a 50/50 anymore. It's just an auto loss, since Liepard will always be able to switch into Ditto safely, and Liepard and Purrloin clean from there.

*Carving out LC, as I do not believe it is possible for an Assist strategy to work in BW effectively without a Ditto on the team.

I think the move should be banned from all generations in general, as I don't see why it should be viewed as a healthy thing to give DPP Weavile a chance to Flare Blitz a Scizor one turn and then Thunder Punch a Gyarados the next, however unlikely that may be. We're even starting to see teams in ADV where people are trying to use Assist to circumvent the current Baton Pass rules. There just isn't a single viable non-luck based, competitive use for the move, so I don't understand a need to allow it to exist.
 
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Finchinator

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The BW council conducted a vote on Assist in BW OU; the result was to unanimously ban Assist from BW OU.
Finchinator: ban
McMeghan: ban
dice: ban
M Dragon: ban

Reasoning provided in the OP and the last post largely sum up why this ban is taking place, but it also worth noting that there was no opposition whatsoever and this is all approved by Excal. If you have questions, please PM me anytime.
 
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