Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]

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Gamefreak over the last few generations have changed the view on signature moves: instead of legendaries having these, newer pokemon also carry them as a way to make them stand out more. Sure, these two pokemon can use poison jab, but only this one can use dire claw. I think the old rule is starting to stand out more because of this design change by the developers. Because an entire new pokemon can be invalid due to the developers not thinking about balance for a new move. Currently tera is getting special treatment because "oh its a new mechanic and we don't want to repeat gen 8" but using this same mindset what if the new dlc or gen comes out and almost all the new toys have broken or uncompetitive signature moves, well too bad every new toy is in ubers and ou suffers.
 
I'm so sure it will happen because it's has already happened.

PU at the time was pretty loose on following Smogon Tiering Policy because it was in the same situation that ZU is right now. Chatter could confuse the opponent and was exclusive to Chatot, it was considered uncompetitve like Swagger so the move was banned instead. PU would try to do the same thing with Dynamic Punch instead of banning Machoke later on.

You can say it was a long time ago and now we are built different but people are trying to ban non-mons elements all the time, they wouldn't get more restrained if they could get away with more.
 
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Tera disclosure at preview can easily solve a large chunk of the problems associated with Tera.

it won’t solve mag, eleki, CP, CY or Palafin. But it’ll make a big impact on a lot of the other borderline threats.
 
Gamefreak over the last few generations have changed the view on signature moves: instead of legendaries having these, newer pokemon also carry them as a way to make them stand out more. Sure, these two pokemon can use poison jab, but only this one can use dire claw. I think the old rule is starting to stand out more because of this design change by the developers. Because an entire new pokemon can be invalid due to the developers not thinking about balance for a new move. Currently tera is getting special treatment because "oh its a new mechanic and we don't want to repeat gen 8" but using this same mindset what if the new dlc or gen comes out and almost all the new toys have broken or uncompetitive signature moves, well too bad every new toy is in ubers and ou suffers.
If every new toy needs to be ubers, than OU would suffer more if they weren't. Also, tera got the exact same treatment as max (Suspect). The only difference is that the community decided not to ban it.
 

This thing is pure class, double regen is well and truly back. No knock or defog barely matters if you're careful with your Tusk. Max HP Taunt+NP Bleakwind Storm with a defensive tera chips down teams really well. The more offensive Max SpA Tera flying absolutely mauls, big fan.
The fact nathanlikeschicken thougt this thing was gonna be ru is kinda funny and probably really aged poorly in hindsight, since it turns out its still a really good ou pokemon, since offensive pivot sets are still insanely good.


Tera disclosure at preview can easily solve a large chunk of the problems associated with Tera.

it won’t solve mag, eleki, CP, CY or Palafin. But it’ll make a big impact on a lot of the other borderline threats.
It doesn't solve things cheesing past stuff and the variables you have to account for making more pokemon broken. I will personally vote full ban as I don't want things to get banned just due to tera pushing things over the edge since I really don't want another black and white drizzle situation.
 
I’m of two minds about Dire Claw.

On the one hand, I think the concept of banning it isn’t comparable to the concept of banning a move like Rage Fist or Stored Power or what have you. Smogon does not ban moves to nerf individual Pokémon; this is a pretty established precedent, which makes total sense because a Pokémon is always a combination of the entirety of their kit as opposed to just the move they learn. However, banning Dire Claw hasn’t been pushed to nerf Sneasler really, certainly not in the same way as other move bans get proposed. Pretty much any set that runs Dire Claw could easily swap out to Poison Jab and operate essentially exactly the same and even still have a nasty 51% poison chance limiting switchin opportunities just like Sneasler always does. Instead, I think that the reason Dire Claw is being pushed so hard for a ban by most people is that the move itself is just fundamentally not competitively designed. It’s one of two moves in the entire competitive environment that has a partial sleep chance, (since Secret Power can’t do that in link battles), the other being Relic Song. Unlike Relic Song however, it also has a massive chance to paralyze or poison, and the combination of those three statuses lead to an incredibly high variance button that essentially nothing in the game that isn’t steel-type can feel comfortable switching in on. Your chosen sleep absorber may get poisoned instead and all of a sudden you can’t use it to enable sleep clause and prevent something else from being put to sleep, meanwhile something you feel confident can take a poison gets paralyzed and has its speed halved, or your Guts Ursaluna gets put to sleep instead of poisoned… you get the picture. Sneasler may have Poison Touch, but all of these traits I listed prior are just inherent qualities of the move itself in a vacuum that just make it not conducive to a competitive environment, and any Pokémon that would want to run Poison Jab would gladly swap for it and cause problems with it.

In this way, I feel the concept of banning Dire Claw is in some regards more comparable to the King’s Rock ban of last gen. We all know that there was one primary abuser of King’s Rock: Cloyster. (Beat Up + Triple Axel Weavile could use it too and that was mostly the extent of it). Anything could run that item, but a 10% flinch chance wasn’t statistically worth giving up the item slot in almost any case. Cloyster on the other hand gained a massive a 41% flinch chance on Icicle Spear and Rock Blast, which combined with Shell Smash meant that one lucky flinch could turn a 2HKO into a full sweep. However, we didn’t ban Cloyster, we banned King’s Rock. Why? King’s Rock wasn’t deemed to add anything of value to the game while simultaneously making Cloyster higher variance in an uncompetitive way. Again, Cloyster was essentially the only Pokémon abusing this item, so even though the burden of proof was sort of AGAINST King’s Rock and in favor of banning Cloyster based on how we usually do tiering, the overwhelming majority favored banning the item, and that’s how things played out. Dire Claw is to Sneasler as King’s Rock was to Cloyster in the sense that all it adds to the game is a way to take a Pokémon that (potentially) isn’t problematic and introduce a high amount of game-swinging variance to it, not something that is making it too powerful to deal with conventionally.

…On the other hand, this doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic to the argument that the burden of proof can’t technically be met to say this move is generally unhealthy if it’s a signature move. It’s also hard to draw a line between “nerfing” something in the sense of being unhealthily high-variance and “nerfing” something for being inherently too strong for a tier. For example, back in ORAS, Mega Pidgeot was banned from UU, and a major point of contention surrounding it was that its No Guard Hurricane could confuse 30% of the time, which back then still caused a 50% chance to hit oneself, leading to scenarios where you could be prepared to win against it and then just lose the game outright 15% of the time due to factors not in your control. Unhealthily high-variance Pokémon have been banned in the past, and what makes Sneasler unhealthily high variance is a move that is signature to it, making it even harder to establish the burden of proof that the move is the problem. It cannot be ignored that Sneasler is also just an inherently very strong Pokémon that is also perfectly situated to abusing the situations Dire Claw creates; while the move may be badly designed, there is merit to say that in theory not everything that actively uses Poison Jab would also be pushed over the edge by Dire Claw, and since there is no way to test this in a competitive environment, it does make it significantly easier to ban Sneasler as a whole rather than potentially challenge existing precedent.

TL;DR: Banning Dire Claw would be a lossless ban designed to curb unhealthy high variance in a single Pokémon, which has precedent in Sword and Sheild’s King’s Rock ban, but it also is a signature move of an already strong Pokémon, which inherently makes it hard to establish that the move is the problem and not the fact that Sneasler is perfectly designed to abuse it. I think that there is merit to both sides of the argument, and that a move ban should not be dismissed outright even if it does get rejected in the end in favor of precedent.
 
I haven't read everything recently yet, but I don't think King's Rock ban was inconsistent or sets a precedent or anything.
It allowed a mon (Cloyster) to be kept without a complex ban involved, and there weren't a bunch of other relevant things also using king's rock.
It's just a different kind of ban that can't be compared to with other kinds of bans.
 

KamenOH

formerly DynamaxBestMeta
I haven't read everything recently yet, but I don't think King's Rock ban was inconsistent or sets a precedent or anything.
It allowed a mon (Cloyster) to be kept without a complex ban involved, and there weren't a bunch of other relevant things also using king's rock.
It's just a different kind of ban that can't be compared to with other kinds of bans.
And a Dire Claw ban would allow a mon (Sneasler) to be kept without a complex ban involved, and there aren't a bunch of other relevant things also using Dire Claw.
Besides, you aren't banning the move on the mon. You are just banning the move. Exactly like Last Respects.
 
And a Dire Claw ban would allow a mon (Sneasler) to be kept without a complex ban involved, and there aren't a bunch of other relevant things also using Dire Claw.
Besides, you aren't banning the move on the mon. You are just banning the move. Exactly like Last Respects.
True true. Just stating the obvious here, but Last Respects wasn't banned, Houndstone was. Unless this has been reversed since Basculegion arrived, I haven't been on top of everything in the Home drop.

EDIT: I think one of the key questions to be answered, is why can Monotype for instance ban just Last Respects, but it would be poor for OU to do that? Is just a scale thing mostly, because the precedent would cause too long a list, etc. ? I can totally understand the perspective: why don't we ban gorilla tactics, fishous rend, etc. It does open up a can of worms.
 
And a Dire Claw ban would allow a mon (Sneasler) to be kept without a complex ban involved, and there aren't a bunch of other relevant things also using Dire Claw.
Besides, you aren't banning the move on the mon. You are just banning the move. Exactly like Last Respects.
And Last Respects was not banned until Home because only Houndstone got it. There needs to be 2 Pokemon at least broken with the move and the move is what causes it to actually be broken. Unless Smogon changes Sleep Clause to ban sleep inducing moves, Sneasler would be the one banned and not Dire Claw itself.
 
I’m of two minds about Dire Claw.

On the one hand, I think the concept of banning it isn’t comparable to the concept of banning a move like Rage Fist or Stored Power or what have you. Smogon does not ban moves to nerf individual Pokémon; this is a pretty established precedent, which makes total sense because a Pokémon is always a combination of the entirety of their kit as opposed to just the move they learn. However, banning Dire Claw hasn’t been pushed to nerf Sneasler really, certainly not in the same way as other move bans get proposed. Pretty much any set that runs Dire Claw could easily swap out to Poison Jab and operate essentially exactly the same and even still have a nasty 51% poison chance limiting switchin opportunities just like Sneasler always does. Instead, I think that the reason Dire Claw is being pushed so hard for a ban by most people is that the move itself is just fundamentally not competitively designed. It’s one of two moves in the entire competitive environment that has a partial sleep chance, (since Secret Power can’t do that in link battles), the other being Relic Song. Unlike Relic Song however, it also has a massive chance to paralyze or poison, and the combination of those three statuses lead to an incredibly high variance button that essentially nothing in the game that isn’t steel-type can feel comfortable switching in on. Your chosen sleep absorber may get poisoned instead and all of a sudden you can’t use it to enable sleep clause and prevent something else from being put to sleep, meanwhile something you feel confident can take a poison gets paralyzed and has its speed halved, or your Guts Ursaluna gets put to sleep instead of poisoned… you get the picture. Sneasler may have Poison Touch, but all of these traits I listed prior are just inherent qualities of the move itself in a vacuum that just make it not conducive to a competitive environment, and any Pokémon that would want to run Poison Jab would gladly swap for it and cause problems with it.

In this way, I feel the concept of banning Dire Claw is in some regards more comparable to the King’s Rock ban of last gen. We all know that there was one primary abuser of King’s Rock: Cloyster. (Beat Up + Triple Axel Weavile could use it too and that was mostly the extent of it). Anything could run that item, but a 10% flinch chance wasn’t statistically worth giving up the item slot in almost any case. Cloyster on the other hand gained a massive a 41% flinch chance on Icicle Spear and Rock Blast, which combined with Shell Smash meant that one lucky flinch could turn a 2HKO into a full sweep. However, we didn’t ban Cloyster, we banned King’s Rock. Why? King’s Rock wasn’t deemed to add anything of value to the game while simultaneously making Cloyster higher variance in an uncompetitive way. Again, Cloyster was essentially the only Pokémon abusing this item, so even though the burden of proof was sort of AGAINST King’s Rock and in favor of banning Cloyster based on how we usually do tiering, the overwhelming majority favored banning the item, and that’s how things played out. Dire Claw is to Sneasler as King’s Rock was to Cloyster in the sense that all it adds to the game is a way to take a Pokémon that (potentially) isn’t problematic and introduce a high amount of game-swinging variance to it, not something that is making it too powerful to deal with conventionally.

…On the other hand, this doesn’t mean I’m not sympathetic to the argument that the burden of proof can’t technically be met to say this move is generally unhealthy if it’s a signature move. It’s also hard to draw a line between “nerfing” something in the sense of being unhealthily high-variance and “nerfing” something for being inherently too strong for a tier. For example, back in ORAS, Mega Pidgeot was banned from UU, and a major point of contention surrounding it was that its No Guard Hurricane could confuse 30% of the time, which back then still caused a 50% chance to hit oneself, leading to scenarios where you could be prepared to win against it and then just lose the game outright 15% of the time due to factors not in your control. Unhealthily high-variance Pokémon have been banned in the past, and what makes Sneasler unhealthily high variance is a move that is signature to it, making it even harder to establish the burden of proof that the move is the problem. It cannot be ignored that Sneasler is also just an inherently very strong Pokémon that is also perfectly situated to abusing the situations Dire Claw creates; while the move may be badly designed, there is merit to say that in theory not everything that actively uses Poison Jab would also be pushed over the edge by Dire Claw, and since there is no way to test this in a competitive environment, it does make it significantly easier to ban Sneasler as a whole rather than potentially challenge existing precedent.

TL;DR: Banning Dire Claw would be a lossless ban designed to curb unhealthy high variance in a single Pokémon, which has precedent in Sword and Sheild’s King’s Rock ban, but it also is a signature move of an already strong Pokémon, which inherently makes it hard to establish that the move is the problem and not the fact that Sneasler is perfectly designed to abuse it. I think that there is merit to both sides of the argument, and that a move ban should not be dismissed outright even if it does get rejected in the end in favor of precedent.
Ok why not ban Salt Cure while we're at it
 
And a Dire Claw ban would allow a mon (Sneasler) to be kept without a complex ban involved, and there aren't a bunch of other relevant things also using Dire Claw.
Besides, you aren't banning the move on the mon. You are just banning the move. Exactly like Last Respects.
On one hand, I agree with what you say about dire claw being relatable to kings rock, but the fact is that theres a good reason smogon always goes for consistency, and banning the Mon is the consistent thing to do.
 

KamenOH

formerly DynamaxBestMeta
True true. Just stating the obvious here, but Last Respects wasn't banned, Houndstone was. Unless this has been reversed since Basculegion arrived, I haven't been on top of everything in the Home drop.

EDIT: I think one of the key questions to be answered, is why can Monotype for instance ban just Last Respects, but it would be poor for OU to do that? Is just a scale thing mostly, because the precedent would cause too long a list, etc. ? I can totally understand the perspective: why don't we ban gorilla tactics, fishous rend, etc. It does open up a can of worms.
It was with Basculegion's arrival, and I assume Monotype tiers slightly differently, with its different council.

And Last Respects was not banned until Home because only Houndstone got it. There needs to be 2 Pokemon at least broken with the move and the move is what causes it to actually be broken. Unless Smogon changes Sleep Clause to ban sleep inducing moves, Sneasler would be the one banned and not Dire Claw itself.
The same logic that banned Kings Rock can apply to moves, since you arent banning x on y, youre just banning x.
Furthermore, Last Respects was the only broken aspect of Houndstone, as evidenced by its usage after Basculegion's arrival and the LR ban.
There is room to argue that Sneasler is OU good and not Ubers Good, since its a strong poison/fighting fast attacker, but not much else.

On one hand, I agree with what you say about dire claw being relatable to kings rock, but the fact is that theres a good reason smogon always goes for consistency, and banning the Mon is the consistent thing to do.
Not trying to beef, but whats the good reason? I don't doubt there is one.
 
Not trying to beef, but whats the good reason? I don't doubt there is one.
When doing things that will have a huge effect on the meta like this, its always best to do something that has proven effective elsewhere when possible, rather than risk doing something that could have a negative effect on the meta. Also, I'd like to repeat that I think banning dire claw would most likely be better overall for the.meat, but is unrealistic because consistency is key.
 
As multiple others have pointed out, GF has been far more liberal with giving broken signature moves/abilities to non Ubers. Before, most mons that weren't box legends were banned because of a variety of factors (Garchomp had a great typing and high stats including a perfect speed tier, Lando and Blaziken got abilities that were broken in tandem with their typing/stats/movepool). The only exception I can really think of was Aegislash but it was kind of designed to be a gimmick mon. That being said, I don't think that's cause to change how things have generally been done. I started using Smogon at the end of BW2 but wasn't around for a lot of SM/SS, so maybe there's been a culture shift among the userbase, but I still remember the "why can't we allow Blaze Blaziken" wars and doing tiering action like this just opens the door to that. Having a move or ability that makes them broken is part of a mon; tiering action should only be applied to a move/ability when it's clear that it makes all but the weakest, most unviable mons broken (Moody, BP, Swagger, Double Team, ect).
 
Not trying to beef, but whats the good reason? I don't doubt there is one.
Smogon's adherence to only banning mons unless absolutely necessary mostly started in Gen 6, as a response to the absolute shitshow of Gen 5 (infamously including actual complex bans like no Swift Swim + Drizzle).

For the record, I think a lot of Gen 5's problems could have been avoided by giving up on it being "the weather generation" and just banning Drought, Drizzle, and Sand Stream (probably not Snow Warning because Slush Rush didn't exist yet) so to me at least, the lesson to take away from Gen 5 isn't "banning non-mons is bad and will lead to endless headaches" but rather "if you're gonna ban something, ban the root cause and don't dance around trying to preserve it".
 
Did you read the first bolded statement alongside the entire paragraph I included with it?
I did, and I disagree. There are plenty of people who would say the same about Salt Cure. "there's a special reason we banned the move this time so it's ok" opens the door for "Well Dire Claw was banned, why not Salt Cure?" It would have to be a conversation entertained anytime something with a signature move is considered for ban or suspect

another way to think about it inspired by the comment below mine: Look at all the overhashed back and forth discussion generated by the requests to break tiering policy for Dire Claw. Now imagine there's a precedent for banning signature moves.
 
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I think the Blaziken example really illustrates that criticisms saying that the council's approach to banning is predicated on a slippery slope fallacy are unfounded, because people have illustrated that they will actively ask for said slippery slope to be put into effect. There's no fallacy if we've seen the beginnings of the slippery slope being formed with our own eyes. Opening the floodgates to endless debates of "Well why can't we just nerf XYZmon to allow them into OU/UU/whateverU" is just inviting endless headaches and forum wars. And, as said before, the tiering system becomes meaningless if we allow that precedent to establish itself outside of extreme examples.
 
Smogon's adherence to only banning mons unless absolutely necessary mostly started in Gen 6, as a response to the absolute shitshow of Gen 5 (infamously including actual complex bans like no Swift Swim + Drizzle).

For the record, I think a lot of Gen 5's problems could have been avoided by giving up on it being "the weather generation" and just banning Drought, Drizzle, and Sand Stream (probably not Snow Warning because Slush Rush didn't exist yet) so to me at least, the lesson to take away from Gen 5 isn't "banning non-mons is bad and will lead to endless headaches" but rather "if you're gonna ban something, ban the root cause and don't dance around trying to preserve it".
How exactly did they do it before? Afaik if anything the idea of banning things other than the mon itself started with BW, by banning Sand Veil under evasion clause because it applied and Chomp was healthy for the meta when it wasn't doing evasion shenanigans.
 
I did, and I disagree. There are plenty of people who would say the same about Salt Cure. "there's a special reason we banned the move this time so it's ok" opens the door for "Well Dire Claw was banned, why not Salt Cure?" It would have to be a conversation entertained anytime something with a signature move is considered for ban or suspect

another way to think about it inspired by the comment below mine: Look at all the overhashed back and forth discussion generated by the requests to break tiering policy for Dire Claw. Now imagine there's a precedent for banning signature moves.
Keep in mind I wasn’t arguing to say Dire Claw should be banned; my entire point was to say that there is a difference between a theoretical Dire Claw ban and a ban of, say, Salt Cure or Fishious Rend or Wicked Blow or blah blah blah. Of course there’s still plenty of overlap as I concluded at the end and I can totally understand regardless why it may just be infinitely easier to ban Sneasler instead, but it just feels disingenuous to bring up Salt Cure when the literal entire point of my post was to point out how Dire Claw can’t be compared 100% directly to a move like that, and how it does also share overlap with the ban of King’s Rock, which means it has some factors going for it AND against it in terms of precedent. It’s just not a black-and-white issue is all.
 
Smogon's adherence to only banning mons unless absolutely necessary mostly started in Gen 6, as a response to the absolute shitshow of Gen 5 (infamously including actual complex bans like no Swift Swim + Drizzle).

For the record, I think a lot of Gen 5's problems could have been avoided by giving up on it being "the weather generation" and just banning Drought, Drizzle, and Sand Stream (probably not Snow Warning because Slush Rush didn't exist yet) so to me at least, the lesson to take away from Gen 5 isn't "banning non-mons is bad and will lead to endless headaches" but rather "if you're gonna ban something, ban the root cause and don't dance around trying to preserve it".
Gen 5 was the best generation precisely because it allowed for everything under the kitchen sink to be used. There were multiple, highly viable playstyles one could use to great success on the ladder when the gen was current, from Drag mag, to various types of weather stall, to a boatload of different offensive structures. Furthermore, Gems added an additional layer of creativeness to various sets that I wish was explored more when that gen was current. Some of my favorites were SD Acro Scizor, SD Acro Zard (in NU), and Acro Driftblim (in NU). It is very dissappointing to see that many of my favorite strategies during that gen (i.e. Sand Rush Sandslash) are no longer usable & that the tier has completely changed.
 
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I think the Blaziken example really illustrates that criticisms saying that the council's approach to banning is predicated on a slippery slope fallacy are unfounded, because people have illustrated that they will actively ask for said slippery slope to be put into effect. There's no fallacy if we've seen the beginnings of the slippery slope being formed with our own eyes. Opening the floodgates to endless debates of "Well why can't we just nerf XYZmon to allow them into OU/UU/whateverU" is just inviting endless headaches and forum wars. And, as said before, the tiering system becomes meaningless if we allow that precedent to establish itself outside of extreme examples.
Examples like gust ho oh or water gun kyogre are using the arguments that a newcomer would make, though. There's other speedy fighting types but I want to use sneaseler, too bad because they have a busted move. Banning a whole mon because you don't want to deal with meme set suggestions from newcomers.
 
On the topic of Light Clay, I think the Pokémon should be in question, rather than the item itself. I still don’t understand people’s thought process of banning Light Clay. Even with the banned, it still doesn't stop a Pokémon from getting the "one free turn" it needs to setup and get the ball rollin' with the limited amount of turns. Prior to HOME, we never really had a problem with Light Clay. Maybe it wasn't explored enough, I don't know. Maybe a suspect test. :blobshrug:

Some of y'all need to stop justifying Magearna in this tier. Yes the SP set is broken, even seen the SP Iron Defense set 1v1 Zamazenta-C, like huh? :blobastonished: Magearna has a plethora of sets that can bypass it's C&C. In conclusion, Magearna is busted on it's own and has no reason to be in this tier.

Thoughts ATM:

QB: :Magearna: :Chien-Pao:
On the Fence: :Zamazenta:
Suspect: :Zamazenta-crowned: :Sneasler: :Light Clay:
Fine: :Volcarona: :Urshifu-Rapid Strike: :Ursaluna:
 
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