Alright, since some of you have decided to respond, I'll respond in kind. Also, this took a fuckload of time...damn my impulses.
Can you elaborate on the first discussion point? From what I understand, you mean something like we shouldn't ban Keldeo now, because it's only broken in Rain, and therefore we shouldn't ban Keldeo now with the expectation of Rain being banned in the future? I don't agree with banning / not-banning with regard to the future, it just induces unnecessary arguments and theorymon. Ban what's broken now and only now, and just make sure the suspect process is flexible and fast enough to bring stuff back / ban it if future changes affect it's viability in the metagame.
What I mean is should I take theorymon about potential cause / effect in future metagames into account when deciding policy for the current one. For the most generic example, if something is potentially (but not definitely, let's say a 50/50 thing) broken right now, but banning it will very probably (theorymon obviously) break 2 or 3 things that are not currently broken now, should I take that future theorymon into account when deciding how to deal with the current suspect?
You example is a little different from what I meant, as it is more a should we decide current policy based on what future policy
will be. I meant should I decide current policy based on what
might happen in the future, not necessarily what will happen policy wise.
Curious George said:
As for your second point, it sounds basically like you feel the same way as me about this meta; that the metagame might be technically balanced (in terms of, no standard OU team or mon is broken, although Landorus arguably is), but it's still rubbish. Stealth Rock, Rain, and Sun basically combine to make our current meta the least fun to play and teambuild for I've experienced. I can't see an easier solution than en masse suspect tests; suspect Rain and Sun at once, for instance, so neither will be broken in the absence of the other and we can get a good picture of what the metagame would be like without them.
I don't actually think it is "rubbish." I'm mostly ok with it, I just wished I could somehow maximize the ability to prepare for most of the metagame with one set of 6 pokemon. I like team match up influencing the outcome of a battle, not determining it.
The first point is something that I've never had to consider, since I'm barely a junior member of the site, but I think unless the staff decided to ramp up their pace to make the suspect process ridiculously fast and efficient, you absolutely have to theorymon about the future. A common train of thought (not my own or the truth, just a trend I've noticed among users over a long period of time) is that the OU Council has been so hesitant to ban Drizzle (or Drought) despite their lo-risk/hi-reward strategies because of how fundamentally that would change the metagame.
That might be part of the thought process, but the main issue is that the council has never thought Drizzle was broken enough on its own to ban.
Lord of the Lake said:
The tiers themselves, just the usage stats, not even talking about strategy yet, would undergo a MASSIVE change in that first month alone, because so many Pokemon live and die by Drizzle. Darmanitan and Victini would absolutely rise to OU, free to abuse the most powerful non-Uber attacks in the game. Tornadus (who just rose to OU this month if I remember correctly), Gastrodon, and perhaps Toxicroak would all drop, possibly past UU.
I'm not personally worried about big change; if change happens, it happens. If we have to speed up the process to deal with it, I'm ok with that too.
Only going to comment on the first point.
It's good that you've looked into the future for judgement calls is a positive thing. There's no reason to make a decision if it looks like the decision would only make a negative progression in the end result metagame, even if it would resolve an issue in the current metagame. The converse of the previous statement would also be true. I honestly don't feel comfortable with the idea of people who don't look to the future and theorymon on the results of their decision to make a suspect vote. Nobody's theorymon is perfect, but at least everyone should make an attempt to theorymon what the result of the ban would be and make a judgement call whether the metagame would, in the end, get better or worse from the decision.
One example I can pull is the Genesect ban. At least I felt when he was put up for suspect test, it was painfully obvious his ban would result in a worse metagame immediately after from becoming a Tornadus-T spamfest... and that's exactly what happened. It's one of those things you have to look far in the future into, seeing what bans a ban could help cause, and if the end result of all those bans would end in a more balanced metagame. Basically theorymonning towards the current metagame at Genesect times to try and make decisions. The converse would be true for an unbanning suspect test, of course.
Sorry if 2AM me typed up something that didn't make sense btw
Ok, so then I'd like to propose George Elliot's example to you, since you seem ok with using theorymon about the future metagame to decide policy. What about "theorymon" about assumed future policy? If Keldeo is broken now, but, hint hint wink wink we believe we are banning Drizzle soon, should I bother suspecting Keldeo now?
Don't have much time, so I'll only respond to the first point.
Not so long ago, I believed that future theorymon was something we should ignore simply because we have no idea what a metagame would look like 2 months down the line post-suspect and for that reason alone, not decide the future of the game we play based on what some people thought would happen. Plus, and on an almost completely unrelated point, I thought we'd go back and retest things that we thought were once Uber in the new, different metagame anyway, which doesn't seem to be happening now.
Recently though, I've sorta started to lean the other way. Now, I will say that I find the big philosophical posts in the big suspect threads about what will happen to the metagame if X gets banned quite annoying, as they tend to be wrote by people just looking to boost their post count, but I have seen theories by well known players that have made me have a think. I think taking the future metagame into account is something we should be considering if we ban rain (and or sun/sand). Let's look at history here...a next to near weatherless game is going to absolutely dominated by dragons, not to mention your usual Gen 5 steroid pokemon. I don't think that's an unreasonable prediction to make, but I don't think we can realistically go any further than that. I don't see why we should lead ourselves into more work to clean up a metagame that has a good chance of being terrible.
more later
Yea, I'm starting to lean towards it is ok to use theorymon to decide current policy, particularly because I would prefer to minimize the suspect test count. Also, I tend to agree that a Drizzle-less / Drought-less meta will be Dragons / Gen 5 steroid mons dominated, leading to further suspect tests. My question to you d you think a metagame with Drizzle / Drought / Landorus-I / Latios / Kyurem-B / Terrakion (just an arbitrary combination of those mons) banned would still be terrible? I understand that it might terrible in the middle of the tests, but would it still be terrible after all that?
Here is another question. Would you agree that battling and team building are both (nearly equally) important aspects of "online pokemon" and everything that entails? If you say yes and agree that both are very significant, would you not agree that both aspects should be included in a definition of broken? What I'm leaning towards is if something X is not broken in application but alters the overall metagame's team matchup factor component from "influencing outcome" to "determining outcome," should we not consider suspecting it?
I guess traditionally, we have always ignored the team matchup factor because in very general terms, it was always just on the influence level. Gen 1 - 4, even if you had a team disadvantage, if you had built a solid team, you could still pull out a decent probability win. Can we say that now? I'm not taking a stance here, just honestly asking. If the answer is yes, what is the point where team matchup factor goes from mere influence to determining?
I'd like to comment on these specifically. You are observing that dealing with sun "requires weird things" because of a very rain-centric meta since early BW. Its because of that that using Jellicent is "normal" ("Hey, it also checks Scizor and spin blocks..") but using a scarfed infernape is "weird" or "specific" ("hey, its useless against rain, what a hi-risk, specialized and weird set").
I agree with this 100%. I am defining "normal" and "weird" based on what we have observed in practice, not a generalized concept of each.
MuslimCats said:
So here we have an inherent bias to observing what constitutes normal teams and what constitutes weird teams because of rain.
I'm not sure I can agree with the usage of the word bias here. Or maybe inherent bias. It's more an "empirical" (quotes necessary lol) observation based on practice than an assumption based on bias.
FALAFEL said:
I'll also just casually make the observation that pokemon that can counter sun tend to perform poorly in or against rain. (I should also note that these pokemon do not perform well against sand staples, but that is much less of an issue) Some examples:
1. Houndoom can pursuit trap Darmanitan/Victini and could typically run a moderate mixed set if it could use its fully powered STAB's
2. Chandelure can counter Venusaur and Sawsbuck that fail to carry ground type coverage but can only do so much when it has an 80 power STAB against rain teams
3. Running your own fire types can actually give sun teams a massive headache, Infernape is difficult for sun staples to switch into!
4. Victini and Darm can do some serious work against sun teams but are quickly turned useless against rains army
Please note what I mention above does incorporate "theorymonning" (albeit I've used pokemon like mixed Houndoom before), but it is just to be used as a reference
So, we can argue that Infernape will be satisfactory against most sand teams, stall teams and weather-less teams, its a great hole puncher after all! The reality is however, that a pokemon that can completely be nullified by the sheer # of options rain teams have, can and will not do well in the current metagame. Perhaps, relating back to your first point, if we were to consider a rain-less and hence sun-centric metagame, we could theorise that sun would simply become the new rain, the difference between sun and rain however is very clear, it is a difference of homogeneity versus versatility. This in turn would mean that options to deal with sun are less to do with determining how many pokemon you will need that could switch into Thunder, Spikes, Hurricane, Leech Seed, Toxic, Scald, Focus Punch, Hydro Pump, Body Slam etc and more to do with how you can play around archetypes that are much more simple.
edit: You'd be surprised by how many "outside the box" strategies work against sun that will not work against rain and perform nicely against other teams. For example my tailwind + banded outrage strategy makes short work of sun teams (they carry few steels) and does very well against most non-rain teams, but can lose in clutch situations to rain teams due to the popularity of protect/dual-steels/fire weakened etc.
edit 2: I can't double post so I'll post this in an edit. I think the real reason banning rain would be a problem is not because of what we would traditionally consider a sun team but rather because of dragons being able to run rampant with no restrictions on their fire coverage. With the potential to even get a 1.5x boost against non sand/hail teams, these dragons could potentially abuse the sun far more than conventional threats like Venusaur and Darmanitan, Jirachi's standard set would probably become scarf, Ferro would need outrage bait support, etc. I'd hypothesise that we see pokemon like Cresellia and Slowbro gradually rise to eventually make the OU cut in a rain-less meta and heatran would probably be the #1 pokemon again.
I'll finish with proposing a question to you, for the sake of consideration: How many pokemon can make use of water as a coverage type? How does this compare to the usefulness of fire as a coverage type?
The issue you mentioned is exactly the issue in my second point; because of the state of the metagame, countering sun explicitly leaves big holes to other major types more than countering those major types leaves a hole sun. I should clarify that by state of the metagame I mean because Sand / Rain / Stall counter or check strategies are just inherently more mixable than Sun counter or check strategies, even if Sun is individually easier to prepare for, Sun is actually the harder one to prepare for generally speaking. My Latios is good against all of Rain, Sand, weatherless, Stall...but is often is deadweight against Sun (either sacrifice fodder or Volcarona set up bait after a specs Draco Meteor). That's only one example, but I feel like those examples are much more common than the opposite.
Before I respond to the rest I'll just leave these out there, as I'll probably start repeating myself.