Metagame LC Suspect - Diglett (not banned)

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macle

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Hello! People have complained enough that we are gonna suspect diglett again but this time, diglett will be banned from the ladder to add a new perspective on wether its broken or not.

Same system for reqs as last time. Anyone who gets reqs can vote on whether to ban or not. because you have more decision this time, vote is 1 tc point

Reqs are gonna be 2800 coil with a b value of 9.0.

this meant that N amount of battles was needed to get reqs with these gxes:
GXE N
100 18
90 25
85 32
80 46
78 58
75 91
72 222.

To find out how many matches it'll take for you specifically, take your GXE, and put it into this formula

N=9.0/log2(40*GXE/2800)


post screen shots in here to proof you got reqs. I'll be checking your alts to make sure.

Deadline or reqs is the 23rd
 

Merritt

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can you guys at least explain how you came to the conclusion that this is a good idea / how you'll ward out unwanted bias?
So I can explain my own reasoning for why I wanted a diglett-less ladder for the suspect, although I don't know the reasons for macle or Quote. A really big question is, does Diglett alone make Shellder, Fletchling, Drifloon, and the like overwhelming or is it just a helpful but non-necessary component? Does Diglett's presence alone result in fewer checks to these Pokemon appearing on teams, causing a centralized metagame around a few threats? What does the lack of Diglett cause to rise up as major players?

These are questions that can't really be answered well in theory. Theory's great and all, but it's also the realm where nothing has 4MSS, battle conditions are rarely taken into account, and Mienfoo cannot fail to check Pawniard. I'm personally interested in seeing what ends up happening in this meta, and what rises up, the "diversification" of this.

I'm actually going to go a little bit into one of my arguments, although it'll end up being proven whether it is strong or weak as time goes on. Now while I say diversification, and normally that's a good term, it's not always. There's two equally unhealthy metagames, the one that's seen more often where the metagame is overly centralized, that is everything revolves around a few very specific Pokemon. An extreme example would be OU with Mega Salamence where stuff like Porygon2 was very important, and a less extreme example would probably be Ubers, where most of the metagame revolves around the S/A+ rankers. The other side of the spectrum is an overly diverse metagame, where nothing serves as an anchoring point and the number of threats is absurdly high. This isn't seen as often, although it was argued quite a bit during OU's Metagrossite suspect test as a reason to ban, stating that there were "too many threats to cover" in OU. An overly diverse metagame should generally suffer from fairly extreme matchup issues, and what I personally see as a good indicator is that full stall becomes unviable, due to an inability to cover specific yet potent metagame threats.

The ideal metagame should fall somewhere in between the two, where there is enough room for innovation to cause a metagame from becoming stale but at the same time there's still not so many threats that games are almost decided from turn 1. What I've seen in LC since the Misdreavus ban has been pretty damn close to that, we get basically no mons but new things rise to the top and fall from favor, while many things have carved out their own niche but are still open to changes. At the same time, however, LC does fall more towards the diverse side already, despite Mienfoo being on over 50% of teams. Unexpected things like Deino and Rufflet end up being used to surprising effectiveness while the old guard remains almost as secure as ever. You may think you have a well built team, but then Sewaddle ends up being a problem you never would have anticipated. Obviously these are exaggerated, but only slightly. The sheer number of incredibly threatening setup sweepers present is only one aspect.

This is part of why general answers like Abra and yes, Diglett, are so common. They help alleviate some of this pressure that constrains you during teambuilding, being blanket answers to a significant portion of the metagame. Is this a good thing? No, but at the same time it's also not a bad thing. It just is. My personal belief, which will hopefully be proven true or false by the digless ladder, is that by removing Diglett from the metagame this allows for more things to be viable, but at the same time will not help teambuilding, as by the same token that caused you to not run things weak to it now you must account for all these new threats that suddenly are enjoying a spike in viability.

That to me is why the diglett-less ladder is important, and is worth the bias that will almost certainly come, although of course most of what I said still stands to be proven true or false by the ladder.
 

Camden

Hey, it's me!
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Could you elaborate on what you want us to post here results why? First suspect I want to contribute to
This is just a thread for discussion on the suspect, as well as your experiences on the ladder. There will be a thread up soon for submitting your reqs.

Sorry, but why are we testing Diglett again? This kind of seems unfair to everyone who voted it to stay in the last suspect test.
Diglett is being re-tested again because there are numerous people that feel Diglett has become more annoying and limiting than in the past because of the increased usage of certain combos of mons (FloonDig in particular, although ShellDig was also prominent). Also, the vote was close enough to where another vote would be acceptable after a decent amount of time. I originally said that 50% would have been required for that, but it was still more than say, 30%, so I was willing.
 
So I can explain my own reasoning for why I wanted a diglett-less ladder for the suspect, although I don't know the reasons for macle or Quote. A really big question is, does Diglett alone make Shellder, Fletchling, Drifloon, and the like overwhelming or is it just a helpful but non-necessary component? Does Diglett's presence alone result in fewer checks to these Pokemon appearing on teams, causing a centralized metagame around a few threats? What does the lack of Diglett cause to rise up as major players?

That to me is why the diglett-less ladder is important, and is worth the bias that will almost certainly come, although of course most of what I said still stands to be proven true or false by the ladder.
I get why and why it's worth some of the bias, frankly I think the "enjoying" metagame bias can be dispensed with. However, there is still the inherent tendency to vote for reasons like where you have a better team and such.

I mean I'll "enjoy" the suspectless metagame so I shouldn't complain, but this is a huge decision and this element thrown in is a bit of wildcard. I just wish we had some discussion first mostly.
 

Corporal Levi

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So before playing 90+ games on the LC suspect ladder I was pretty neutral towards a Diglett ban - leaning towards no ban but definitely open towards the suspect. Now I'm fully on board with a Diglett ban!

Pros:
+ Trubbish is now C+ material instead of C+
+ More 30% burn chances so we're more like other tiers
+ Diglett has way too many wins in SPL. Almost a 50% win rate

Cons:
- All of the above

Long story short, getting reqs left a very bad taste in my mouth.

In theory, Diglett is overcentralizing and limits teambuilding, but from what I have seen, this doesn't look to be the case. I think that a big reason for this would be that even though Diglett can limit a Pokemon from a defensive perspective, it often struggles to actually take out what it needs to due to how difficult it is to get in, at least if the Diglett-weak Pokemon is played well. As such, as long as the team isn't overly weak to Diglett the way you wouldn't want a team to be overly weak to Fighting-types or Snivy or even Fletchling, it isn't unbearably limiting. This is demonstrated in the Diglett-less metagame by the fact that pretty much every Pokemon that was good or bad in the current metagame remains that way without Diglett; I can't think of more than a few noteworthy Pokemon that might rise or drop more than a single sub-rank. Things that were badly crippled by Diglett, like Trubbish, are still very difficult to justify using. Pokemon like Ponyta and Chinchou already had the means to get around Diglett, so even though they've improved noticeably, it isn't an enormous jump. Specific Diglett-disliking Pokemon like Magnemite are held back by the increase in their other checks, such as Chinchou.

So with that out of the way, we get into more subjective things - perhaps we should ban Diglett because it's annoying, and perhaps we could say that a metagame without Diglett is more fun. If I was on the fence about this before, I cannot begin to express how strongly I disagree now. Although I mentioned that nothing has jumped entirely from obscurity to viability or vice versa, there have definitely been some metagame shifts. The main Pokemon that have gotten better are those that rely heavily on 30% burn effects - Flame Body Ponyta, Scald Skrelp, Scald Chinchou. The main Pokemon that have gotten worse - Shell Smash Shellder, offensive Vullaby, Foongus - happen to rely on guaranteed or close to guaranteed effects. Now don't get me wrong; Shellder, Vullaby, and Foongus are still fantastic Pokemon. For example, I would argue that Foongus has gone from the top of mid A to the bottom of mid A. Regardless, I found the metagame shifts, however slight, to be incredibly infuriating. The metagame feels more luck-based as a result of the emphasis on burn spam, and I am personally not fond of this at all.
The main Pokemon other than Ponyta/Skrelp/Chinchou that noticeably benefits from a lack of Diglett is Gothita. However, we're talking about whether a Pokemon is more or less fun, and I can't see how Gothita is more fun to play against than Diglett when they both mostly just revenge-kill things and then get forced out afterwards.

Perhaps Diglett isn't overcentralizing or unfun, but just outright broken. After all, cores like floondig and shelldig are very strong on paper. I can't argue against these cores being top notch, but I do not think that they are broken. There are other good cores, but the most popular offensive cores in LC tend to involve strong offensive Pokemon + something to trap a handful of specific Pokemon. Although Diglett is usually considered an overall better Pokemon than, say, Gothita or the various Pursuit trappers, this tends to be a moot point as a member of these cores, when its main use is just to trap what it needs to and let the scary offensive mon handle the rest. In fact, if we're talking purely based on the number of Pokemon a core can break through, OmaGoth and OmaCarv are arguably more threatening. Of course, Diglett being the overall stronger Pokemon is helpful in match-ups where the core isn't likely to do very much, but each specific Diglett core has a number of issues that, in my opinion, prevents the core from being broken. I do not plan to detail them in this post, however.

Please keep in mind that I do not mean to speak badly of people who pushed for a Diglett suspect test, considering how I was in some ways one of them. If anything, this suspect was what really convinced me that Diglett is anything but unhealthy for the metagame.
 
Corporal Levi at the risk of just sounding contentious by arguing against both sides, I think that to make a conclusion after, what, 2 days is jumping the gun a bit.

Yes, you've played 90 games, but the metagame hasn't had a chance to fully adapt. In a week or two we could be seeing an entirely different meta. Or we won't. But really, we do need to give it time.

This is why I kind of wish it took longer to make req's or we waited a few weeks to start the req's latter.
 
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I know its too soon but i've reached my verdict, Diglett should not be banned.

Diglett alone is not broken and the cores that form around Diglett despite being very effective and annoying and even at times seemingly unbeatable(Digfloon) are not broken, imo.

I do agree that Diglett limits teambuilding but thats expected since its one of the most threatening mons in the meta. Abra and Fletchling checks are basics to be covered during teambuilding and Diglett should be considered as another name along with them and not to mention its frail af.

But its just my personal opinion and feelings towards it, i started playing with a FletchDig team and learnt what little i know about playing with this particular core. Diglett is annoying but not threatening to the entire meta.

#SaveDiglett
 
I dislike counter argumenting opinions and haven't done any proper laddering yet on the suspect ladder thanks to school being irritating however...
Diglett has been a poke you are seposed to prepair for since the fletchling suspect. I am not even just saying this for making people vote ban it's just how I see it's pressence.
One of the easiest forms of pressure diglett generally has in a closed envirment is being able to remove Trubbish, Stunky or about any poke in this group from being viable. I haven't seen a trubbish/stunky been used in sutch a long time I barely remember the standert trubbish set without looking it up. Yet the pokes have striking pottentials that about no other poke could perform. A nice example in fortunaty type and ability combo for Trubbish, good utility with Stunky to block Ghost and Psychic while still being a decent Defoger or memebto user (not losing to Pawniard too mutch, still most Rock setters can continue as if nothing happened).

One of the most notable changes thanks to Diglett's pressence is people not being able to have defencive pressure against pivoting as mutch as it used to, even having to play agressively just against Pivots while you have a perfect answere in form of Ponyta or Larvesta in the back that could punish U-turn in some reguard.
I don't compain about that as that's how a metagame can shift. I do care about how some pokemon like Larvesta are seposed to be amazing in this metagame being able to deal with so mutch yet it's hindered by just Diglett as the moment you lose momentum with that poke, it's trapped.
Yea I get the fact this is a close enviorment however it's unfortunaty that this is how it ends up functioning in most situations even pokemon like Ponyta/magnemite/chinchou are forced to run an other option for it's movepool like Flame Charge over Wild Charge/Toxic even when the move did suit the team better, it could just mean Ponyta is going to be less effective agaisnt Diglett. Magnemite to run endure or scarf even when the move/item are good reguardless of Diglett it's just generally limiting some of it's important potential in the metagame as Thunderbolt/HP Grass now can't be used or having no durable recovery on a team that might need it more then it's offence.
Allot of these changes are into the offencive perspective untill drif turned up and forced it into defence thanks to the stalling utility. Even now with pokemon like the above lised being used somewhat more then before, they still are forced to run lesser options to deal with Diglett.

It's just not right to say people haven't been prepairing for Diglett as we have some earlier then other. Even I didn't see mutch problem with diglett untill even in the Goth/Dig suspect, in that however I started to realise what impact it had to the metagame, even if I did need a bit of help being reminded on some like Trubbish. I love stall, but banning dig doesn't mean Trubbish is going to be B+ material just because of other pokemon dealing with it very efficiently. Not oriented to Levi. This was just something I remembered while reading your post and thought was worth posting.
 
(This is what happens when I get too interested in typing about something with no direction.) When I say what I will, I accept that my opinion won't amount to much since relatively speaking I'm still not very experienced in the ways of Little Cup. If you have a problem with anything I say here, please speak your mind. Disclaimer ended, here we go.

I think this discussion is pretty interesting because we have a lot of different issues to juggle, like whether what will happen if Diglett is banned will be better for the meta as a whole, whether it's only broken in a core, or if it's even broken at all. I don't feel qualified to answer these questions, but I will talk about what my personal opinions on the matter are. Nonetheless, I'll keep reading what the rest of you have to say for my own curiosity.

What makes Diglett so strong (to me) is its supporting power; it can trap and outspeed specific threats and clear the way for its win condition; this is, of course, assuming the trapped Pokémon was the only threat remaining to the win condition. The main complaint, as I understand, is that combining Diglett with a bird will make it unbearable, in particular Drifloon. This actually doesn't make much sense to me, given that Drifloon itself can also be a support Pokémon, and supports don't usually sweep; but I digress. I would agree that the combination is pretty hard to fight on paper, but there's more to it than that...

Since we have had Diglett in the metagame for a good while now (since forever I think, I don't think it's been banned), the necessity to adapt to it has been obvious, and most people did their best. Diglett does have some easily exploited flaws like anything else, which is why it depends on having a team that can take advantage of its support. At the same time, being able to handle a broken threat doesn't mean it's not broken.

Is Diglett a tough Pokémon to fight? Yes, at times it can be. At the very least, it proves an annoyance in a lot of scenarios. Can you get around it? Of course. What will always trump a problem is the ability of a person to address those problems given the proper tools. We have ways to fight Diglett, so why should we act like it's so powerful that we can't do so at all? We'd be suspending our creativity in the hopes that deus ex machina will make the metagame a better place, when in all reality I don't think anyone can predict the potential results of a Diglett ban.

We could always ban Diglett in a team with any Flying-type, which would neutralize the recent issue people are complaining about while allowing it to continue to be in the metagame.

We can't blame Diglett for what it is, but we will have to handle it one way or another.

(Again, feel free to disagree with me, I barely know what I'm talking about.)
 

Merritt

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We could always ban Diglett in a team with any Flying-type, which would neutralize the recent issue people are complaining about while allowing it to continue to be in the metagame.
So I do want to address this, if at all possible we avoid complex bans like this largely because it's very difficult to try and find the exact line where something becomes broken and needs to be banned (see the many Baton Pass clause iterations).

On a sightly different note, there's no need to discredit yourself so heavily in your posts, it's all well and good to admit that other people might have more metagame knowledge than you do but when you claim you barely know what you're talking about it just weakens your argument.
 
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