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I've seen in quite a few places (CAP mainly) that people deemed our current metagame to be 'unstable' and that it has 'not settled down yet'. How would the council define a metagame that has 'settled down'? Would you say that settling down is the same thing as being stable? How would you tell whether a metagame has settled down or not? How long does it usually take for council members to get a clear feeling about whether or not new pokemon should stay?
My questio would be this: How often do the council convene to sit down and review everything to do with the metagame? This encompasses almost everything, such as balance, bans/unbans, usage stats and relegation to lower tiers etc? Or is it much more specific than that, and you review individual issues one by one?
I've exceeded the fair limit of how much one can complain on IRC about the metagame without leaving a concrete post so here it is. I believe that banning Politoed, Ninetails, and Deoxys-D will make the metagame better without any shade of doubt. I was miserable playing throughout the entire World Cup despite getting a 5-2 record because a good part was luck- all but 2 of my games were done before Turn 1, and guess who's to blame. I've been labeled one of the very rare "BW (BAN ME PLEASE)" early on and did dedicate myself to leave nothing on the field in both this wcop and last. In the process, I've had fantastic games that were mental battles for dozens of turns but more that were garbage.
What I'm going to show you is what went through my mind team building/playing and what I've concluded with some others (plenty of varying opinions) would be the pokemon to remove from BW2 to make it a healthy, fun, enjoyable metagame where the battles take place in the game, instead of a guessing game with teams beforehand. I'm going to admit here it was fun being able to get a huge advantage by picking the right teamstyle for battles and being able to build competitive weather teams with no more effort than assembling a sandwich but here's my rationale for my 3 suspects.
Politoed- I believe this is broken under the support factor (obviously). In fact let's compile a few broken pokemon that got where they are because of it, if the other team can't change the weather these are just a few examples of the cheap losses it will have to deal with.
Tentacruel- Let's look first at rain stall, against other rain or weatherless teams there are countless situations where you can send this guy in at near no cost at all. It just isn't prone to getting worn down by residual damage, stall should not have that option- the spinner should be cautious of getting worn down and used only in select situations. A Scizor U-Turn can be Protected right off and anything that doesn't take off more than 2/3s is just Spin/Protect bait. Back in the olden days Infernape using Close Combat on it would do lasting damage to it, Offensive Gengar throwing Shadow Balls at it would leave it near dead in its best outcome, even if it had Scald sending it in to counter Scizor would've been laughable. Now it has 100% accurate Hydro Pumps that burn with 24 PP in Scald and it can easily get comfortable against them with Protect if you want. Stealth Rock won't wear it down anymore either because you have Tentacruel in rain you can practically send in almost every game. Anyone miss Toxic Spike offense? Good luck keeping them up with Tenta on the other side. I won't get started on how stupid Tentacruel Scald stall wars are in rain.
Jirachi- Substitute + Calm Mind sets are simply cheap. Thunder + Water Pulse parafusion allow you to beat just about whatever you like, except for the hard counters like Quagsire and Gastrodon. It can take the momentum of the game away in an instant against the teams lacking the other weathers or hard counters. Granted Thundurus-T gives a good way for offensive teams to play around it now, but are we going to just leave broken things in OU because potentially broken things check them?
Tornadus-T- This pokemon seems generally accepted as broken without me talking about it. Easy to see why, Hurricane spam, bounce with U-Turn, regenerate. It's counters in permanent rain are Zapdos, Rotom-W, and Jirachi which are all a liability with a U-Turn to the also broken Thundurus. Not hard to U-Turn with the switches forced and not easy to trap either- in fact you need to forego Tyranitar for Weavile or Wobbuffett to even attempt to remove it this way and in doing so you just open yourself up to rain which you wanted to prevent.
Thundurus-T- This is a ridiculous cannon if it manages to get in. Electric/Ice/Fighting coverage leaves nothing to be desired, especially when you have 145 base SpA and rain boosted Thunders. Using an electric move at all can be a deadly mistake because on an incorrect prediction you will be forced to lose a pokemon barring misses.
Keldeo- If you want to switch into Keldeo under rain, you're options are more than limited. You can swap in a full specially defensive Celebi to wall Specs sets and U-Turn into a threatening pokemon against Calm Mind or get in defensive Dragonite and Latias on a non Icy Wind. Not that these pokemon are a big deal for Keldeo because all of them are spike bait for Ferrothorn to an extent. Note this special attacker doesn't fear Blissey or Chansey, not just because it has a physically damaging attack, it can nearly 2HKO them after Stealth Rock damage with a Specs-boosted Hydro Pump. If its a Blissey without a specially defensive Calm Spread it has no chance.
Swift Swimmers- This I will not keep in a hide tag. Everytime you use a Rain team, you're risking a loss at the hands of Kingdra, Kabutops, Ludicolo etc. that can get themselves in threatening positions with help of a pivot like Rotom-W. One on their own is enough to crumble the game plan of your team- you have to face pokemon that were decided to be "Uber".
Ninetails- This has always destroyed non weather teams as badly as rain does now and doesn't need a complicated breakdown. I will provide one anyway. Here at some pokemon that show you at a nearly insurmountable disadvantage when you bring a weather lacking team (even if it has Deoxys-D)-
Darmanitan- The face of power under sun, slap on a Scarf and Flare Blitz will kill max HP Latias half of the time after Stealth Rock damage. Uninvested Kingdra is 2HKOed by a Scarf Fire-Type attack.
Venusaur- Mostly responsible for the hopelessness of non weather teams. It didn't even reach it's full potential in BW1, now that Giga Drain is out, you can beat Flamethrower Blissey in sun. Well with a proper spread it wins but to put it in perspective with a bulky Venusaur you can beat out the 252/252 defense Bold Blissey. Giga Drain / HP Fire / Sludge Bomb will take of everything else but Heatran at +2.
Deoxys-D- In the land of DPP, it was established that getting Stealth Rock in the beginning of the game and preventing your opponent from doing so was an acceptable trade for your lead pokemon. Now we have one that can get up multiple layers while preventing your opponents consistently. The best part is once you've found a way to prevent it, it gets around it by running Psycho Boost / HP Fire or Choice Scarf + Trick, when it's hard to wisely try to set up in the first place with the equal risk of Taunt + Thunder Wave. It causes games to be won or lost by prediction, and not the good kind where you have game plans that are not lost when you're wrong or hints at what move could put you in a good position, it's the 50/50 guess kind that makes you win or lose. Here's a couple of logs showing examples-
Wilson46 vs. McMeghan- With Starmie being the one thing able to put pressure on Deo-D and Gengar, getting rid of it with Scizor early puts the game right in Wilson's hands. He predicts correctly against Tar and gets two layers of hazards for it, more than enough to hog momentum for the rest of the match.
Bad Ass vs. TFC Wcop finals- This game is cringeworthy- a load of 50/50 predictions puts TFC at a hopeless disadvantage because of Deoxys-D.
As my conclusion, I see the weathers and I realize if I'm not using one or Heavy Offense myself in some form I can't compete with Rain and Sun. Those pokemon and others like Gyarados can get past their normal counters every time if they're given the weather so you have to the join the exclusive 4 man party (I've seen one whole viable Hail team in my entire time with BW) or use Deo-D to have an effective team. It is proven in my eyes that the 3 suspects I am bringing up hurt the metagame by doing this- I can see a new metagame without them where I can discover individual sets to build around instead of using "Deo-D + rain / Deo-D + Sun / Terrakion + sand" and play real games instead of relying on a couple turns of coinflips or a team advantage to get W's.
I believe there will still be broken pokemon after we take out these 3- Terrakion has a great chance to stand out because it was responsible for plenty of coinflip-based games on its own in BW1. It can progress from here however and once a balanced metagame is achieved we will have done our job as Smogon- make OU the balanced competitive tier.
My question to the council, what do you think of these suspects?
Does the suspect testing of Garchomp and Sand Veil mean that there will not be any testing for some of the, somewhat recent, BW2 additions such as Keldeo, Genesect, Tornadus-T, etc?
I'd like to ask a question, any of the senate can answer and more than one, in your opinion is the OU B/W2 metagame balanced? No need to name any suspects, if at all, just your opinions as to whether it is balanced and why.
Have you considering running a suspect ladder erasing a certain number of possible "problematic" pokemon to see the effect their banning would have in the metagame? Because if combinations were to be the most problematic issues in a determined meta, evaluating a single pokemon in the void, either for dropping or banning pokemon could be a waste of time and energy.
I'm not 100% sure if this is still happening seeing as it has been inactive for nearly 2 months, but it doesn't hurt to post some questions I guess. Seeing as all of the OU council members are veterans from DPP, I'm gonna ask some questions comparing the approach to suspect in the 2 generations.
Has the presence of powerhouses like Latios and Terrakion throughout BW made you question any of the bans made in DPP? Mainly referring to Salamence / Latias here as they were 2 of the more controversial suspect decisions made in DPP. However this question can be extended to the stage 3 suspects like Manaphy.
Almost a reverse of the above question. Do you think that any of the bans in very early BW were a result of suspect voters still being in a DPP mindset? Are there any of these early bans that you disagree with now that you have more experience in BW and are more familiar with the BW power creep? Looking mainly at Shaymin-S (eww), Darkrai and Manaphy here.
If you are an active ADV / DPP player: Many players who started battling in BW and learned earlier gens more recently go into them with a very BW-esque mindset. Do you feel your experiences in BW have altered your teambuilding approach or playstyle in DPP or ADV?
From contributing to and reading through the Kyurem-B suspect thread and the general meta discussion, there's a pretty clear consensus right now that the correct approach is to unban Kyurem (on the basis that it isn't broken in the current metagame) and then look at banning the more clearly broken mons (DrizzleToed, Deoxys-D, Tornadus-T, Genesect, maybe Ninetales).
The obvious problem is that we can't run a mass suspect test for all of these threats, therefore, we need to test most of them individually (and of course Torn-T has to be tested before Rain etc etc). This process takes a massive amount of time even if you assume no gaps between our Suspect tests; we could be potentially waiting up to a year to achieve the desirable metagame that most experienced players are currently envisaging.
So, my question is, are there any ways you're considering which could help to speed up this process?
As an avid ex-DW player, I am particularly interested in the pokemon that were unbanned in DW but are banned in OU and how the metagame is different. Taylor asked something similar to this, but my question is specifically:
Are there any plans to retest pokemon such as excadrill, deoxys-s, and the like? In Aldaron's reply to Taylor, he noted that the metagame is very offensively inclined. However, the metagame is probably more rain-centralized than it has been since the drizzle + SS ban. In addition, even though the most prominent threats from DW were offensive, the DW metagame before its collapse was very balanced--if I recall correctly, the top 5 pokemon included skarmory and latias as well as tyranitar and excadrill with gliscor not far behind (almost completely defensive scor), a nice balance of offense and defense. What this implies is that, instead of making the metagame an offense-fest, the offensive threats were able to be checked enough by defensive pokes that a more blanced meta evolved. IMO, this would be an ideal change. What are the Council's thoughts on this?
After some lurking in the Policy Review Forums,I came across a thread that contained something interesting.The thread is "Banning in Gen 5".
This thread shows that many players become ban-happy when a new metagame is introduced because they prefer a metagame closer to the previous one where they felt more comfortable and was used to it,rather than accepting and adapting to a new metagame.
Each generation,bigger and bigger threats were introduced .From reading through that thread I found out that when introducing 4th gen this tendency to ban new mons who are likely to be a top threat also occured.In the beginning of BW1 suspect tests many players accused most new threats to be a problem which are currently way out of the broken radar such as Latios,MS Dragonite,Reuniclus etc.One explanation is that their long time of existence in the metagame forced ban-happy players to adapt and as they did,they were not a problem any more.
My main concern is about the BW2 suspects list which can be guessed based on public opinions.The fact that most of the newly found threats and strategies of BW2 are considered to be main suspects atm seems like too much of a coincidence.
My question is that,Do you think this tendency of prefering a metagame similar to the previous one affects suspect selection?particularly for BW2, and is it taken into consideration by the council when deciding matters related to suspect testing?
I'm sorry if this is too similar to Kidogo's question, but what are the council's thoughts on doing/testing multiple unbannings at the same time? For instance, DW OU was my favorite 5th Generation metagame that we have had so far, and very little was banned: Manaphy, Thundurus-I, Excadrill, Deoxys-S, Chandelure, and Lati@s with Soul Dew. are all good examples of Pokemon that were legal in DW play.
The problem is that the interaction between many of these Pokemon is what made the metagame fun and playable. Manaphy may have been broken without Excadrill, and Soul Dew Latios had a much harder time sweeping with paralysis from Thundurus around every corner. No one really ever complained about Genesect in DW either.
So my question is this: Will the council consider unbanning multiple "broken" Pokemon at once in order to test their status as suspects in the wake of all the BW2 changes?
Similar to White Symphoni, I have the question of what makes something broken in BW? In the past, things have been banned for pure hax (shaymin-S and Sand Veil Garchomp), a total lack of counters (Thundurus and 4th Gen Salamence), or just being terrible for the game (Moody). So, now that we are in a BW2 metagame, with bigger, badder, more powerful threats on the way, what does something need to be considered "broken"? As many people in the current suspect test will testify, clearly Kyurem-B is not broken by their standards, and yet will also say that it has no counters--but that the current definition of counter doesn't exist anymore. What, then, makes something uber?
