participating in my first sustest, wish me luck homies, because fuck kyurem i hate that thang
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Suspect]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
barraskewda managed to climb to A- in viability list, do you think that it may eventually climb to OU?
why is hawlucha so high?
is its ability to use defog on gholdengo THIS good?
what niche does alolan muk have?
what niche does zarude have?
why is hawlucha so high?
is its ability to use defog on gholdengo THIS good?
what niche does alolan muk have?
what niche does zarude have?
j0nathan
formerly trainer_j0nathan
I think Kyurems best teammate is probably G-Slowking with Chilly Reception (If you want to use the Specs Kyurem).
You also really need hazard removal to make Specs Kyurem work.
Cannot believe people unironically thought sleep was ok. We defanged it to hell and back with sleep clause and yet it still managed to be uncompetitive with alolatales, valiant, darkrai hypnosis and amoongus spore, some of those mons who are not even that good but the power of sleep is so big that they still managed to get cheesy niches just to try and wring that 60% chance to almost certainly take over a game.
I don't even like hypnorai or cared that much about these mons, but the fact is we were running a cartridge-incompatible clause that could only prevent sleep from being the most broken thing ever, but not much else. Literally What Is The Point other than tradition, and who gives a fuck about smogon traditions lol. Also yapping for yawn is silly, yall should do more productive things like go outside and draw something fun and put it on your fridge
I don't even like hypnorai or cared that much about these mons, but the fact is we were running a cartridge-incompatible clause that could only prevent sleep from being the most broken thing ever, but not much else. Literally What Is The Point other than tradition, and who gives a fuck about smogon traditions lol. Also yapping for yawn is silly, yall should do more productive things like go outside and draw something fun and put it on your fridge
I don't agree with the full sleep ban either. I would have liked for yawn to remain legal, but at the same time complex bans are really stupid and we should try to avoid them. However, let's not pretend that Sleep Clause Mod wasn't an issue well before Darkrai came to play. I remember in early gen 8 there was a discussion about it as well, as well as earlier in gen 9. Hypnosis Darkrai winning games was the straw that broke the camel's back in the eyes of many players. Not to mention the fact that SCM is inconsistent with modern tiering policy AND the sleep moves ban has precedent from Gen 5 OU. Calling Darkrai subpar is also just wrong, he's a very potent special attacker that can do incredibly well with correct positioning, but he's also extremely frail and can't really touch unaware mons without the correct coverage for both their base typing and their tera. In addition to that, base 125 is a good speed tier but it's also contested by most of the scarfers available. Iron Valiant is arguably banworthy (an argument for another time) but is undeniably very good. A9 was only ever good as a screens setter and almost never actually lived through the mid game. Amoongus is genuinely good even without sleep, as has been seen with assault vest sets in gen 7. Darkrai also never needed hypnosis, that set sucked ass and left you more vulnerable to the second special wall because you had one less coverage move. I think banning hypnosis would have been a good first step (with the second step being a full sleep move ban) but again, complex bans suck. There were completely reasonable fears that sleep would be handled the same way baton pass has been in past gens.
On your point about offense, most of the pokemon clicking sleep moves were on offensive teams themselves too. Like defense invalidates itself this generation and offense is always going to be dominant and the sleep ban didn't do anything to counteract this. Solution number 4 is also completely unreasonable and a strawman and you know it. There's a line between competitive RNG and bullshit RNG and that line has been determined to be sleep (even if some of us disagree with that assessment). There's also nothing stopping the council from deciding to unban yawn specifically, however unlikely that is, with enough community support for that move.
Dire Claw also was never the problem move on either of Sneasler's 2 main sets and it also doesn't need to be banned because Sneasler was banned on its own merits, as well as the thing where an offensive move will never be banned if only one pokemon learns it (i.e. Last Respects pre home). Relic Song ban would de facto ban Meloetta Pirouette forme. And while one could argue that it would be consistent, it's also consistent to not ban moves with the secondary effect of banning sleep as also seen in the gen 5 sleep ban.
Overall, I believe this was a post made out of anger, not out of logic. In trying to decry the "pseudo-intellectual" arguments you see, you made many yourself.
how are you gonna keep this "monarchy" bit going in the age of greater community involvement within the history of smogon, stop larping man its just pocket monsters
If (mechanic) is uncompetitive in high level play and negatively affects tournament results, then a ban of (mechanic) is justified under the grounds of making the game more uncompetitive. That shouldn't be too controversial, but I have a feeling it will be.
Putting aside the fact that I haven't seen a Clodsire with yawn in months, the cartridge integrity argument is far from pointless. OHKO clause is enforceable on cartridge by disqualifying a player who brings OHKO, which also applies to evasion, Baton Pass, Last Respects, Shed Tail, Species Clause, and any of the Ubers banlist. Sleep Clause Mod is not enforceable on cart because the mod never prevented you from bringing any sleep inflicting move, it would just actively alter the gamestate to make it so that a sleep move fails when used more than once, and disqualifying in this case creates a disparity on cart with edge cases such as Relic Song, Dire Claw, Encore, and exhausted PP on other moves + no switches or trapping moves in effect.
Freeze is not a consistently inflictable status. Sleep moves that have a chance to inflict on attack, such as Relic Song and Dire Claw, are fully legal. The aim of the ban is not to remove 10% hax, but to tier moves that can somewhat consistently inflict a status deemed uncompetitive. Furthermore, Paralysis has utility outside of its RNG-inflicted inaction (which is shared with sleep) as a form of speed control for faster pokemon.
Okay, where the hell did ANYONE in favour of sleep claim that they wanted to remove RNG in general? I have not seen a single argument complaining about 10% burns or Iron Head flinch chance or whatever else it is that you think it is that people are trying to tier. This is uniquely about sleep and the way it functions being problematic.
ctrl-c ctrl-v first line of my post
mfw 135 spA 125 spe ice/dark/poison coverage with np and potential tera blast coverage is "subpar" now
This is the first thing I agree with you on and it's "iron valiant good". I'll take what I can get.
Offensive mons are stronger than they've ever been, but defensive mons still have access to toxic, paralysis, their own boosting options (curse/id/cm/etc.), phazing, hazards, or recovery if they're low. They're not starving for move options.
Aside from the fact that a9t still has av/encore and is probably going to be just fine running both stabs, most of these mons will be fine. Amoonguss can run Toxic and hex/tantrum, Torkoal has numerous slot 4 options and isn't going to be severely impacted with the strength of current sun abusers (some of which are also relying on sleep powder to set up, btw!), and Hippo still has rocks, recovery, stab, and rock coverage/stockpile/phazing/body press. Even if they weren't as strong, preserving viability of mons comes second to tiering uncompetitive mechanics.
Sweet Kiss is not banned. None of us are clamoring for action to be taken of a 75% accurate move that inflicts confusion.
The problem comes when these sets have a strong enough risk/reward with sash to be worth using by a large majority on ladder, taking agency out of any opposing player's range of options. Unfortunately, this ended up becoming the case with the Darkrai Hypnosis 3Atk set with sash.
For this to work, the people arguing for a Hypnosis ban would have to prove that the move itself, and not its users, are the problem, which isn't feasible when the move is less accurate and reliable than options like sleep powder or spore. Also, stop underestimating Darkrai without sleep.
Darkrai's non-Hypnosis sets, while annoying, have answers in faster mons that can threaten it with a good switch, such as Valiant or Boulder, or mons that can reliably ignore NP like Clodsire. Valiant can be properly scouted for and answered by Skarmory (SD /mixed set), Clodsire (CM or mixed without Psyshock, forces timer on physical with toxic), or Corviknight (basically any set that isn't bolt, which Valiant rarely runs nowadays.)
We are removing things we can tier. A major reason we removed Sleep Clause Mod is because it was just that - a mod, non-enforceable or replicable on cartridge. What you are suggesting would involve either removing the vast majority of moves in the game or modding them to not inflict their effects, which once again is not enforceable. Pokemon is a game with an inherent level of RNG and it is on the player to potentially account for that occurring. There will be games you lose to RNG, but having it be a common and uncompetitive presence in the tier is problematic.
A closing note: I was pro-sleep clause mod when I came onto here weeks ago. Seeing some of the arguments from the ban side did sway my opinion a bit, but it's highly illogical arguments like this that ended up changing my mind. I voted 3, and didn't care which way the banhammer happened to land, but the blowback to this tiering decision is some of the most overblown I've witnessed since the Volc QB.
There's so much wrong, yet all you could manage to respond with was an insult, and nitpicking about details concerning cartridge mechanics. Showdown is a violation of cartridge by design, because you can pick and choose and manipulate your pokemon in ways that aren't possible in cartridge.
As for who was abusing sleep, that also has nothing to do with my argument. I didn't say defense was abusing it. I said defensive/support mons have lot a strong tool just because offensive mons, who will be fine without sleep moves, were "abusing" it.
I already provided options for how the bans could have gone, and none of them are terribly "complex". Either ban the two strongest abusers or ban the singular move that causes the most issue, and to be honest, I'm against a ban in general.
Your points about the mons are not really necessary. Everything you said is mostly in agreement with the point that passive mons lost a strong tool and offensive mons will be okay without it. I didn't say otherwise.
I still never said anything about the viability of playstyles. I simply stated offensive will be fine and defense has lost a strong tool. As for solution number 4, that's not a strawman. I already acknowledged it's a ridiculous idea. It exists to highlight that the reasoning for banning sleep moves, namely that they are "uncompetitive" and swing momentum wildly without player agency, is not the true motive for the ban, because if it was then that would be the next moves, presumably. The fact that they aren't says otherwise.
You're still missing the point. The goal of my argument was to prove that there isn't consistency in the argument for sleep bans. Read it again, carefully.
You should take a logic class if you think so. I'm merely assessing their argument. While I dislike the decision, I've long since removed any emotional stock in smogon. I like the tool and being able to play but I don't believe the metagames, at least OU which is where I used to frequent, is managed properly at all. There is a fundamentally incorrect belief that fuels Smogon which is that Pokemon, a game with baked in RNG, competitively built around double battles, should be forced to work for 6 v 6 singles no matter what the cost, and that cost ends up being an largely inconsistent banning system that revolves around what a minority of the playerbase happens to think at the moment.
dude just go play VGC if you hate smogon decision making so much. go play BSS which is, I've heard before at least, the actual thing game freak balances around. Like if you're getting this heated about a decision that had most good players and many midlevel players agreeing with it, like just step away.
I think the exceptions in past gens shouldn't be changed because they make the tiers playable. Freeze Clause in gen 1 for example
although i rarely post, im very glad to know that kyurem after a long month is finally getting the suspect and perhaps even the ban
For a while now i've had very strong thoughts about
, and more or less its choice sets(both 
& 
), although OU has had plenty of heavy hitters on the special side(most comparably 
in this metagame), the common thing with these is that they usually fall under have the archetype of glass canons, were they wont live more than 3 moves at MOST unless the matchup is incredibly in their favor, in regards to the comparision too, existing in a metagame were 
is 1/3 of the most prevalent pokemon(the other 2 being 
& 
) makes it more barable. But kyurem isnt like that, to me it falls into exactly what a broken pokemon is, were you're never strong enough to take it out before it takes you out, but youre also not tanky enough to live its moves.Just off the basis of its typing, ice dragon is already amazing offensively, and considering the fact you get freeze dry too which makes potential walls such as toxapex get completely halted because of freeze dry. A very early counter(or at least check) at the start of dlc 2 i thought would be prevalent was
, most famously used on LandorusTBeatsGreatTusk's miku gang team, yet it barely it gets 3HKO'd by freeze dry and in return has to spam moonblast which results in a 3HKO on kyurem in return. Basically requiring you to switch out into your ice resist and start the cycle all over again once kyurems back in.Another one of the tiers most prevalent walls even after both DLC 1 & 2 has been
, having a naturally amazing ability is already something keen eye will take notice of to be able to check it with tera, but even with it the most you can do is a great 50% with ruination, then chip it with earthquake or whirlwindall of this isn't EVEN mentioning earth power, being able to have perfect coverage where NOTHING resist your coverage no matter what, was exactly what many had issues with
, although that pokemon had much more than just amazing coverage, its already a basic issue, and with the fact that has more bulk and can choose between being physical with AND special with & instead of just 
or 
, it tells me everything i need to know, although both of these pokemon fill different roles(with being able to fill MUCH more than just a physical setup sweeper), i feel as if both are heavily problematic as they limit what you're able to do, it feels as if you HAVE to run a check for kyurem alone instead of having an all around great special wall such as 
while yes
has always been a great special wall and is a common way to check it, it feels limiting to ONLY have blissey as your special wall, pokemon like 
and 
could work just as well as walls if was not around all feels too similar to 
's control of the tieroverall, i am hoping that kyurem will be banned after a long month of it being around and causing issues
It's hard to read this post since someone spilled a whole bottle of emojis on italthough i rarely post, im very glad to know that kyurem after a long month is finally getting the suspect and perhaps even the ban
For a while now i've had very strong thoughts about
Just off the basis of its typing, ice dragon is already amazing offensively, and considering the fact you get freeze dry too which makes potential walls such as toxapex get completely halted because of freeze dry. A very early counter(or at least check) at the start of dlc 2 i thought would be prevalent was
Another one of the tiers most prevalent walls even after both DLC 1 & 2 has been
all of this isn't EVEN mentioning earth power, being able to have perfect coverage where NOTHING resist your coverage no matter what, was exactly what many had issues with
while yes
overall, i am hoping that kyurem will be banned after a long month of it being around and causing issues
Jokes aside, it's really hard to follow when there's a picture at least twice a sentence. I'm not sure where this trend came from, but I think it does more to hinder readability than help it.
Aside from the pictures thing, your writeup is good and I agree with the majority of it
honestly i just started doing it cuz i saw others doing
honestly i just started doing it cuz others did too, i didnt even realize they had emojis but i'll keep this in mind
How exactly is this a fundamentally incorrect belief, and what is your preferred alternative?
"if something is X then it's ban is justified because it is X". Nice circular logic. Care to explain what "uncompetitive" means? Competition is two (or more) parties with roughly the same capabilities attempting to obtain victory by rendering their opposition incapable of acting against them and (usually) taking some prize. The whole aim in any competition is to take a dominant position and maintain it until your opponent is forced to concede. Something being "uncompetitive" means either:
1. neither party willfully initiated the action that resulted in the victory (environmental accident/miracle, a third party not agreed to be a part of the competition acting upon it, or an unintended side effect of an action taken by either competitor that results in victory)
2. One party has access to a tool or ability that completely acts outside the rules of engagement (the classic "bringing a knife to gun fight").
3. Cheating (a party knowingly breaks the rules of engagement to obtain an advantage, an example in gaming being taking the life lead and then exploiting a bug to freeze the game making it impossible to continue the competition).
In what way is sleep uncompetitive? Is it something that is completely outside of your control? Is it something only one play can bring or account for? Is it a tool that, once used, completely negates your opponents ability to win? Is it breaking the rules of pokemon to use a sleep move?
Also lol at "negatively affects tournament decisions". Not gonna go into what that even means, but regardless, what bothers tournament players should not affect the entire site and the regular players. If it bothers tournament players so much, ban it in tournaments.
What you've seen Clodsire run doesn't matter because the point is it can never run it if it wants to. Whether it's a meta strategy or not has no relevance, and I did mention that that was EARLY on in the meta.
You defeat yourself with your own argument. Sleep Clause IS enforceable on cartridge: if a player sleeps more than one pokemon, they are forced to forfeit the match/disqualified/whatever the case may be.
Besides, Smogon is a simulator that ignores a bunch of things on cartridge, and the teambuilder is the obvious example, so I still don't understand why cartridge integrity is something people pretend to be worried about. Remember, the official competitive format of Pokemon, and the baseline around which it is balanced, is doubles. You talk about edge case scenarios is exactly why 6v6 is not the base format. The game is not designed to be played this way, so stop pretending it is and that there's just a few silly "uncompetitive" things to remove like sleep moves... but only for this gen... not the other gens... except maybe one other gen... maybe because it can all get reversed anyway.
You seem to lack reading comprehension, or you read with bias. The goal of my post was to point out that the arguments given for banning sleep are logically inconsistent. I didn't make the points you are responding to because I actually want it. I made those points to prove that the reasons given are insincere and don't stack up to the very words used to justify them.
Cherrypicking points and proving nothing at the same time is pretty impressive.
Having a condescending tone without actually refuting anything I say just shows me you are self-assured but you can't explain why. You believe you are right but you can't put it to words. When I agree, I'm still an idiot (der iron valiant good) and when I disagree, you don't actually respond to what I said but respond with outraged points that clearly show you didn't understand what I wrote to begin with. Go back and read my post again.
Toxic and paralysis are not going to stop a mon that has switched in or has boosted and is ready to take you out next turn. Sorry, paralysis might, but we don't like relying on RNG around here, do we?
Saying offense are stronger than they've ever been means nothing. I said they just got stronger, and explained the scenario in which they are that they weren't prior. You have to prove that losing access to Yawn and other sleep moves in fact does NOT prevent defensive mons from forcing switches. As long as you don't do that, nothing you say is a meaningful response.
I was waiting for a genius to come along and attempt to use this as an argument. You know I meant Lovely Kiss. It's irrelevance alone should show you how foolish it was they went after it, but I'm confident that point will completely fly over your head. Just like how Grasswhistle was listed as a banned move when no one this gen learns it.
Already addressed this. If Darkrai was a problem, ban Darkrai.
It is provable. This ban only resulted because of Darkrai and Valiant abusing Hypnosis. I literally already stated sleep moves were used just fine with no clamor before those two showed up. No one had an issue before. Without realizing it, you are already proving my point for me.
You told me to stop underestimating Darkrai then proceed to list a bunch of mons that can ignore him or deal with him should he lack hypnosis. Thanks again for doing a lot of the legwork for me.
Same for Valiant. You list a bunch of checks at best, and then proceed to list how Valiant can be built to deal with them with ease.
> "We"
Unless you're a council member, I have a funny feeling you had no say in this decision in reality.
Also, reading comprehension fail yet again. I literally said at the end of option 4 that that idea is absurd and needed no explanation as to why, yet you're not the first person to attack that point as if I made it seriously. You then go on, yet again, to agree with me.
"Pokemon is a game with an inherent level of RNG and it is on the player to potentially account for that occurring. "
Your final point that it is common is wrong (sleep moves have notoriously low distribution) and that fact that it is uncompetitive is what should have been up for discussion via a suspect or a public vote, neither of which occurred which is my main issue. Your entire message had an incredibly derisive tone but you only ended up agreeing with me often, or failing to see my points. That's disappointing.
So you agree Showdown modifies the game in a way that cannot be replicated in cartridge, right?
So because you can't respond to my arguments, you cry that I should leave? No, I won't. I'll continue to play and enjoy singles as much as I can within reason. I'm too old to dedicate time to prepping for VGC or BSS. I actually did that when I was younger besides playing smogon. I'm not heated about the decision, I just have always disagreed and disapproved of how management works on smogon. I'm not losing sleep over it, but every now and then a decision will really rub me the wrong way and I want to voice my opinion.
Also you didn't poll anybody. You're relying on confirmation bias and a small pool of users (forum users that happen to agree with you) to imagine a majority that agrees with this decision.
I appreciate Finchinator's post in the Sleep Clause thread lining out the reasoning behind many lingering questions. Here are a few points I want to bring up.
Is there still some missing issue with this solution?
One point being, why do we NOT tier with collateral in mind? What Gen 9 OU decides actively has an impact on every metagame below this (UU, RU..). Others have brought up confusion as to why it is tiered like this, and I have to agree with that. Regardless since thats the way it works, what makes it so tiering shouldn't keep in mind collateral damage? I understand every metagame has its own specific environment where some strategies thrive and others aren't as impactful, but given that there was an opportunity to solve this in another way that doesn't involve banning sleep entirely (see point 2), why are we not thinking about collateral? This could very easily be used as precedent to retroactively ban sleep in previous gens as well where it isn't as bad or as precedent to keep sleep banned going into the next generation. I know the topic of how this will affect oldgens was discussed in the thread, but given how much of Smogon's decisions seem to be precedent-based, its not absurd to think of this as a possible outcome. Focusing this entirely as an SV OU related discussion is being blind to the overall scope of a decision like this.
This seems to be saying things about this proposed solution that are not entirely true. Many of these things were accounted for, the idea was seemingly not entertained despite no glaring invalidity. Situations in which the opponent is encored or tricked into sleep moves but do not have the option to switch are quite rare and only seem to happen when the opponent is forcing the sleep-inducing pokemon to break the clause. MeepBard did have this situation accounted for in saying that, since the opponent is trying to force the player to break sleep clause, they should be punished by allowing a second sleep to go through (something that seems entirely reasonable). With PP Stalling, the clause could also gray out sleeping moves until it is the only move available. If a pokemon's only move is a sleep move and they cannot switch, the pokemon is dead in the water regardless and won't be able to benefit from multiple slept targets anyways. The other criticisms of MeepBard's solution are all criticisms that break gentleman's agreement. Predicting wake up turns and for sure misclicking are moves that would be entirely illegal in cartridge play. In the same way, it's illegal for a player on cartridge to accidentally select a team with a banned pokemon or ability on it when starting a battle. For our simulator, we automatically block illegal teams as a convenience feature and ergo we would automatically block sleep moves from being pressed. This is something that can always be replicated on cartridge. The obvious issue with it would be that Future Sleep abusers could still stir up trouble under the clause, but the solution that was proposed alongside that is to then simply ban those pokemon that abuse it. This gives us an avenue to keep sleep and maintain the flexibility to decide whether a pokemon with sleep is too much for the tier or not.
Is there still some missing issue with this solution?
This point still does not make much sense to me. To my knowledge, suspects can prove if the player is well-versed enough in a metagame to make informed decisions on it. This should apply to pokemon and mechanics. For what reason do players need to know tiering policy or historical precedent or anything else listed? Why does council get full power in this situation? Under this logic, council would have the power to ban a mechanic 99% of even the informed community wants to include in the metagame. I don't understand why in-depth knowledge of tiering policy is required to decide on what the community wants in a community-based pokemon format.
If I understand, gliscor was not in the 2 last survey but his biggest threat is suspect test? do the council want to harm me ?
to be clear, the sleep ban got so much support was because sleep mod didn’t make sense, the discussion started with the belief that focus sash darkrai made the game based on luck, which isn’t exactly correct then it was realised that sleep mod was just odd
perhaps the reason it has added over a sleep ban was because of relic song, but that could have been an exception
sleep with sleep mod was rarely broken
but modifying the game to balance the unbalanced instead of banning the unbalanced doesn’t fit with current smogon,
perhaps the reason it has added over a sleep ban was because of relic song, but that could have been an exception
sleep with sleep mod was rarely broken
but modifying the game to balance the unbalanced instead of banning the unbalanced doesn’t fit with current smogon,
No, it makes the process of making a team easier, idk why you've made that up
To keep it simple: separate tournament and community wide banlists. Because this is an unofficial simulator based on community engagement, then the only consistent rule is community rule. If the community wants to ban something, there can be surveys and suspects, and if tournament players and organizers want rules for tournaments based on tournament player opinion, then let them do that within tournament.
Tournament players taking away mons and tools from general players because of tournaments is silly.
No, the contention is that Sleep Clause Mod as implemented could not be replicated mechanically on cartridge. All of the other Clauses result in game states that can be achieved in Cartridge play, but would take more time to reach the exact same mechanical result rather than being automated by the simulator and scripting. Sleep Mod actively changed the way the simulator behaved in a scenario compared to the same actions being taken in a game played the exact same way on Cartridge. It cannot be replicated without altering either the code or having to change the player decisions made on 1 or more turns to reach the same result.
Showdown on every other metric either achieves the same result more conveniently, or has its bans based on nothing further than "the players agree not to bring this in this ruleset" and simply prevents the selection because the premise is a battle in said rule set when you select an OU battle on it, rather than opting into it on cartridge PvP. Even in Gens where sleep is much less of a factor such as 7 and 8 being over-run by Tapu Terrains, I would still agree that the Modded version should not have been retained.
Sleep Mod was an objectively incompatible way to address sleep comparing to all of the other clauses Smogon uses and its tiering policy for the format, so it has been a topic to be removed for a few gens, and without it Sleep has to be addressed another way for competitive reasons.