Retesting the Suspects

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Crobat: Please no retest; it was broken before, but with the addition of Super Fang, any "counter" automatically loses half its heatlh, bar Rotom. Its obvious ability to check half the metagame, as well as strip off half of a counter's health. What other Pokemon can strip off half of any Pokemon's health? I stoutly oppose testing Crobat. Crobat in UU would ruin UU. Anyone who says otherwise obviously hasn't used Super Fang Crobat!

Porygon-Z: Oh please god no. Specs Adaptability is like Yanmega, but without the SR weak. NP / Lum / Recover can single handedly defeat any offensive team once their pokemon with 90+ speed is defeated, and stall just gets destroyed. It's like Alakazam, but with 2x on STAB attacks, a better special movepool, Nasty Plot, far more bulk (only prioity that is killing it is Mach Punch! CB Aqua Jet does like 55% max.), and less speed. I vehemently oppose testing.

Raikou: Yeah the only thing that I even kind of support. But not really. CM LO just tears through everything; you really need Umbreon or Registeel or a fuckton of strong priority (same boat as PZ) to kill it. Sub CM was also insanely difficult, since it could set up a sub on pretty much every special attacker after a CM and then give a giant fuck you to priority. I do not support a retest, but if we had one then I would not be angry.
 

SJCrew

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@SJCrew -Not everyone wanted Froslass to be BL, but BL she still is. Not everyone wanted Raikou BL either, but BL it still is. Not everyone wanted Damp Rock UU, but UU it still is. I don't see your point. Maybe you don't agree with unbanning Crobat, or maybe you don't think there are solid reasons to retest Crobat, but if you are in the minority then you ought to abide by the majority's decisions, right?
The point is that you guys fail to see you're speaking for a larger group than the handful that's supporting this motion. The majority wanted those suspects banned and the majority still does.

And I've said multiple times that Crobat was the only thing that even remotely deserves testing. Even then, I still don't think it's entirely necessary.

A Pokemon voted UU impacts the UU metagame simply because the Pokemon stays there. What would UU have been like had Moltres been volted BL? Moltres's UU vote clearly impacted the metagame. Also of course the Pokemon chosen as suspects like Raikou and Honchkrow have a basis. The same should apply to Pokemon retested as suspects. I don't think anyone is suggesting retesting Yanmega or Staraptor, for instance, because by the looks of it they'll still walk all over UU. Nobody is suggesting we unban random suspects for no reason. That would be total stupidity.
Regardless of which suspect you want unbanned, it's still complete folly; they were all deemed too powerful for the UU tier because we voted for them to be banned. Even if you ignore some of the obvious statistical advantages, just playing games with those suspects should be enough to tell you that they do not belong in UU.

Even if it has to come down to the "majority" thinking that UU is boring and they want to shake things up a bit with overpowered Pokemon, I'm going to go against the grain and say you're all flat out wrong. We worked hard to balance this tier and we finally got what could be considered a stable metagame. There's really no reason to tread on dangerous waters by seeing if the broken Pokemon are still broken. This is one of the worst ideas I've seen come out of Smogon, and even the newbies that know absolutely nothing about this game have tame suggestions compared to this.

Right now, I'm just going to bank on Jabba and Reach sticking to their word that this isn't going to happen. As long as they're the only two sane ones in all of this, I'm not all that concerned with everyone else's viewpoints.
 
I support the retesting of Crobat and Hounchy.

Also, the people who have suggested that we need to retest Obama need to either read WhiteQueen's rmt or put down the crack pipe. Your choice.
 
The point is that you guys fail to see you're speaking for a larger group than the handful that's supporting this motion. The majority wanted those suspects banned and the majority still does.
No offense but what makes you think that you're speaking for a larger group than the handful that are not supporting this motion? Do you have any proof that the majority of players still want those suspects banned?

Also:

Regardless of which suspect you want unbanned, it's still complete folly; they were all deemed too powerful for the UU tier because we voted for them to be banned. Even if you ignore some of the obvious statistical advantages, just playing games with those suspects should be enough to tell you that they do not belong in UU.
Your blanket statements are too strong. Most of the suspects voted on had people voting for UU as well; unanimous votes for BL are pretty rare. You're basically approaching this from the standpoint that:

1. Voters voted so-and-so Pokemon once and they are incapable of changing their opinion.
2. BL Pokemon are 100% BL, will always be BL, will never be UU, and their tiering is so obvious that you can do "play games with those suspects and conclude that they do not belong in UU".

Frankly I feel your position is an insult to voters, especially #2 that indirectly claims that the people who voted Raikou / Froslass / Gallade etc UU haven't played games with those suspects.
 

SJCrew

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There are plenty of other average/good players that haven't spoken up on the matter and probably don't even really visit the forums. I'm just holding it to good faith that the very same people who voted some of these guys out of UU to begin with mere months ago won't have a sudden change of heart.
 
Then those other average / good players may very well prefer Raikou UU, or Froslass UU. How do you know?

Also, some of these Pokemon were voted out of UU far longer than a few months ago.
 

SJCrew

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Those average/good players (who I may add weren't part of the majority that voted them BL) don't have a clue what they're talking about then...lol. It's always "my team has no problems with X suspect because I'm running a very specific combination of Pokemon that allows it to beat it" OR "most of the people who used said suspect, including myself, are completely incompetent with it".

You have the best special sweeper in UU that basically sweeps the shit out of everything save for three Pokemon, and the best supporter in UU that makes it easy as hell for anything in UU to sweep...then takes down a Pokemon with it for free. Do you see anything else in UU doing this or did I miss something? You're fooling yourself if you think anything in BL coming back is going to promote anything resembling balance, especially since things are perfectly fine as is.
 
Are you claiming that all the people who voted Froslass / Raikou / Gallade / Crobat / etc UU in the past don't have a clue what they're talking about?

PS: Friendly reminder here to check which people voted these Pokemon UU -

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71161
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67907
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67906
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65593
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67908

... and so on and so forth.

PPS: I'll add as well that another indirect result from that claim would be that Jabba and reachzero are stupid because they let people who don't have a clue what they're talking about vote ...
 

SJCrew

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Not to take anything away from the people who played just as well as I did, if not better for the voting privileges, but I'm not sure what basis they could possibly have for Raikou or Froslass being voted UU. Remember all those Dugtrio and Moltres running around that suddenly disappeared when they were both banned? Yeah, let's not touch that one.

Anyway, I don't care much for an individual debate on each of the suspects. We've been through all of this before, and in the end, they got what they had coming to them. I just think it's absolutely retarded that so many people want to turn around and go for Round 2 just because they've run out of ideas for gimmicks. If you're bored with Pokemon, go find something else to do. No need to ruin the game for the rest of us.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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Those average/good players (who I may add weren't part of the majority that voted them BL) don't have a clue what they're talking about then...lol. It's always "my team has no problems with X suspect because I'm running a very specific combination of Pokemon that allows it to beat it" OR "most of the people who used said suspect, including myself, are completely incompetent with it".

You have the best special sweeper in UU that basically sweeps the shit out of everything save for three Pokemon, and the best supporter in UU that makes it easy as hell for anything in UU to sweep...then takes down a Pokemon with it for free. Do you see anything else in UU doing this or did I miss something? You're fooling yourself if you think anything in BL coming back is going to promote anything resembling balance, especially since things are perfectly fine as is.
I don't see how you have the right to fling such accusations around like that when you haven't even bothered to determine your opposition's argument. You're looking at the suspects from a purely one-dimensional view (your own), personal biases and all. Taking a Pokemon's attributes and throwing on a bit of hyperbole while completely disregarding the rest of the metagame does not make a suspect. I know I'm beating a dead horse, but I felt it was within my rights, since I apparently "don't have a clue what I'm talking about."

For the record:

Froslass

Raikou:

Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is BL if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.


Raikou is generally used as a Calm Mind sweeper, as it needs at least a boost to be capable of sweeping most teams. Thunderbolt is a given on about all its sets, leaving it with two remaining moveslots for additional coverage or utility. Raikou cannot, however, fully cover the rest of the whole UU metagame thanks to its barren movepool. Raikou can only have one type of Hidden Power, and no single type of Hidden Power can cover all of Grass-types, Rhyperior, Gastrodon, Quagsire, Steelix, Nidoking, and Nidoqueen - to name a few. To qualify for the Offensive Characteristic, a Pokemon must be able to sweep through a significant portion of teams, and when taking only the type of Hidden Power a Raikou uses into account, Raikou already finds itself walled by several counters. Despite the fact that the variance of Hidden Power might make it difficult for a single team to defend against every single kind of Raikou, the Offensive Characteristic addresses the Pokemon in question in terms of how easily it can sweep, not how difficult it is to wall. The rest of Raikou's movepool - Extrasensory, Shadow Ball, and Signal Beam - cannot completely cover every gap, either, even if combined with Hidden Power, and choosing to use them over Substitute leaves Raikou much more vulnerable to faster threats and priority moves, most notably Dugtrio. Even if counters that rely on the type of Hidden Power Raikou carries are ignored, Raikou can still finds itself countered and checked by various Pokemon, including Chansey, Registeel, and even some Pokemon hit super effectively by some Hidden Powers, such as Venusaur.

In conclusion, I believe Raikou is UU because it needs more than just a small of support to sweep "with little effort", thanks to its lackluster, low-powered coverage moves. One Raikou cannot beat all of its potential checks; it requires a decent amount of support in order to do so.
 
Those average/good players (who I may add weren't part of the majority that voted them BL) don't have a clue what they're talking about then...lol.
It's pretty unlikely--indeed borderline impossible--that a frequent poster such as yourself loses all credibility in my eyes with the making of a single statement, but this damn near did the trick.

I don't have much else to say in this post that's not covered by this:

Your blanket statements are too strong. Most of the suspects voted on had people voting for UU as well; unanimous votes for BL are pretty rare. You're basically approaching this from the standpoint that:

1. Voters voted so-and-so Pokemon once and they are incapable of changing their opinion.
2. BL Pokemon are 100% BL, will always be BL, will never be UU, and their tiering is so obvious that you can do "play games with those suspects and conclude that they do not belong in UU".

Frankly I feel your position is an insult to voters, especially #2 that indirectly claims that the people who voted Raikou / Froslass / Gallade etc UU haven't played games with those suspects.



As to the topic at hand...I'm not sure how I feel about a retest of Crobat or any other Suspect, because if we're willing to test BL Pokemon, we should be able to test OUs in UU as well (but that violates the method used to determine OU status in the first place . . .).
 

shrang

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I've already mentioned why Crobat wouldn't be as powerful as it originally was, but what is also quite a striking point is that Crobat could potentially be beneficial for the current metagame. We are very realistically looking at a Venusaur test and possible ban in the near future, and I don't think many people doubt Milotic will be very quick to follow if mr ugly gets kicked out. Crobat checks both of these Pokemon, while at the same time not stifling them to the extent that they'd be unviable. Crobat still gets incapacitated by Venusaur's Sleep Powder, and Crobat is forced to Roost if it switches into either of Milotic's attacks under SR. However, it provides that offensive, multi-dimensional Venusaur check that so many of us are craving for. In this way, I think Crobat has real potential as a way to improve the metagame by increasing the pool of available Pokemon by 1, rather than reducing it by 2.
I am quoting this for truth. We shouldn't forget that if Milotic gets banned after Venusaur, we can also realistically see a few powerful Fire-types (Moltres, Arcanine, Houndoom, etc) quickly get out of hand as well, as well as shit like RP Rhyperior, Aggron, etc. I've always compared Milotic in UU to be like the p53 gene in cancer control, since if you knock it out, cancers are very likely to spread, just like how if you ban Milotic, Suspects are very likely going to pop out very quickly. If this happens, it will indeed be like a "slippery slope" because there can very well be Suspects popping up and be very difficult to check. So when LR said we could add 1 Pokemon to save 2 without TOO much damage, it could very well be adding 1 Pokemon to save 5-10 potential Suspects, which we would then have to spend time voting and banning until we get another stable metagame like this one.
 
Porygon Z deserves a retest. (I wont get into the reasons again, see other thread)

And i think the metagame has changed sufficiently to warrant consideration for a crobat retest.

The rest should remain as the voters have deemed.
No, Crobat and Porygon-Z were both banned from the UU ladde.r They do not deserve a retest. When you're banned from a tier, you can never go bakc in that tier. You are banned from it. All of these suspects were banned, for that matter, and do NOT deserve retests. I don't care how "balanced" UU is at the moment. They were all banned.

Crobat meta was almost as broken as Staraptor meta, which was the most frightening meta of UU.
 

SJCrew

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2. BL Pokemon are 100% BL, will always be BL, will never be UU, and their tiering is so obvious that you can do "play games with those suspects and conclude that they do not belong in UU".
The first part of that is completely and entirely true. BL Pokemon are permanently banned and should stay that way unless we undergo a complete tier overhaul, or an entirely new metagame is being established (Gen 5). Basically, I agree with Adam.

The second....

"my team has no problems with X suspect because I'm running a very specific combination of Pokemon that allows me to beat it" OR "most of the people who used said suspect, including myself, are completely incompetent with it".
I'm pretty sure that a lot of the good players that considered Raikou or Froslass UU fell under these categories. You can't "ignore" Spikes and Froslass can even set them up on Venusaur, the most used Pokemon in UU using her bulky set (which Eo's post entirely omitted). Most conventional offensive/balance teams fell prey to Raikou and if you opt to employ one of his three "solid" counters, one of four things is likely to happen:

1) Dugtrio comes in on the revenge or a predicted Tbolt and Raikou is removed from the game.

2) Raikou is the Sub CM variant and Dugtrio comes in on the Sub, dying to either HP Grass or switching to another Pokemon, risking the chance of allowing Raikou to set up.

3) Raikou is holding a Shuca Berry and Dugtrio dies to his HP of choice.

4) Registeel and Chansey attempt to wall him, but are met with your own Dugtrio and are removed from the game.

That's really just about all there was to it. Raikou was undoubtedly the best special sweeper in UU at the time and a counter for him depended on his HP of choice, which you have no way of knowing. If you're wrong about his variant, you'd better have counter #2 and Shed Shell, or you're not going to stop it short of getting lucky.

Finally, if you guys are so offended by my use of broad generalizations, counter them with your own points and call it a day. Let's keep the personal stuff out of this discussion.
 
You're claiming that if Snorlax and Blissey both drop down to UU from OU, Raikou should still be banned because it was voted BL in the past.

True / false?
 

SJCrew

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Bad examples. Snorlax and Blissey are very obvious BL candidates and would get the quick boot without any second thoughts. Plus, Blissey and Chansey are from the same evolutionary line and function exactly the same, so Blissey dropping down to UU means that your "Chansey" not only counters Raikou, but everything else along with it. Raikou would be the least of your worries then.

If a bunch of OUs that countered Raikou suddenly became part of the metagame, then Raikou would be considered fair game. But that's entirely unfeasible through any means other than a complete tier or metagame overhaul, which I had already mentioned earlier. Needless to say, it's not going to happen until Gen 5.
 
SJCrew said:
If a bunch of OUs that countered Raikou suddenly became part of the metagame, then Raikou would be considered fair game. But that's entirely unfeasible through any means other than a complete tier or metagame overhaul, which I had already mentioned earlier. Needless to say, it's not going to happen until Gen 5.
You argued earlier that Raikou is BL and should remain BL, yet now you say Raikou "would be considered fair game". Why?

Also, a bunch of OUs have dropped down to UU - Alakazam, Donphan, Rhyperior, Dugtrio, etc etc etc. Yet you don't consider their dropping down a "complete tier or metagame overhaul" and therefore insufficient reason to retest currently BL Pokemon, while you for some reason consider Blissey and Snorlax dropping to UU sufficient reason to make Raikou fair game. Why?
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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SJCrew said:
Finally if you guys are so offended by my use of broad generalizations, counter them and call it a day. This isn't the place for any personal discussion.
Here are your arguments:

The point is that you guys fail to see you're speaking for a larger group than the handful that's supporting this motion. The majority wanted those suspects banned and the majority still does.
First point is accurate, and second point is baseless. How do you know what the majority wants now?

Regardless of which suspect you want unbanned, it's still complete folly; they were all deemed too powerful for the UU tier because we voted for them to be banned. Even if you ignore some of the obvious statistical advantages, just playing games with those suspects should be enough to tell you that they do not belong in UU.
Subjective argument that doesn't prove anything; if they're obviously broken, then there would be no argument at all.

Even if it has to come down to the "majority" thinking that UU is boring and they want to shake things up a bit with overpowered Pokemon, I'm going to go against the grain and say you're all flat out wrong.
First you say:

The majority wanted those suspects banned and the majority still does.


Now you're "going against the grain". At the very least, you don't seem to be as certain as before in regards to your assumptions about the majority. Pretty inconsistent argument.

We worked hard to balance this tier and we finally got what could be considered a stable metagame. There's really no reason to tread on dangerous waters by seeing if the broken Pokemon are still broken. This is one of the worst ideas I've seen come out of Smogon, and even the newbies that know absolutely nothing about this game have tame suggestions compared to this.
Completely subjective.

Right now, I'm just going to bank on Jabba and Reach sticking to their word that this isn't going to happen. As long as they're the only two sane ones in all of this, I'm not all that concerned with everyone else's viewpoints.
Ignoring everyone else...

Those average/good players (who I may add weren't part of the majority that voted them BL) don't have a clue what they're talking about then...lol. It's always "my team has no problems with X suspect because I'm running a very specific combination of Pokemon that allows it to beat it" OR "most of the people who used said suspect, including myself, are completely incompetent with it".
Inaccurate perception of / complete ignorance of opposition's arguments.

You have the best special sweeper in UU that basically sweeps the shit out of everything save for three Pokemon,
Description + hyperbole.

and the best supporter in UU that makes it easy as hell for anything in UU to sweep...then takes down a Pokemon with it for free.
Description + hyperbole. Ignoring the fact that there are ways to circumvent this, plus the fact that half of this description reference Spikes.

Do you see anything else in UU doing this or did I miss something? You're fooling yourself if you think anything in BL coming back is going to promote anything resembling balance, especially since things are perfectly fine as is.
Again your own personal view.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of good players fall under this category.
Another baseless assumption.

You can't "ignore" Spikes and Froslass even sets them up on Venusaur, the most used Pokemon in UU.
If Froslass is so threatening, then why was Venusaur used so much? This point is irrelevant; the metagame would've shifted in another direction if Froslass setting up on Venusaur was that problematic.

Most conventional offensive teams had absolutely no way to stop Raikou and if you opt to employ one of his three "solid" counters, one of four things is likely to happen:
"Conventional" is not an argument; if they're dismantled by Raikou, they shouldn't be the norm. As for "solid counters", there are more than three of them.

1) Dugtrio comes in on the revenge or a predicted Tbolt and Raikou is removed from the game.

2) Raikou is the Sub CM variant and Dugtrio comes in on the Sub, dying to either HP Grass or switching to another Pokemon, risking the chance of allowing Raikou to set up.

3) Raikou is holding a Shuca Berry and Dugtrio dies to his HP of choice.

4) Registeel and Chansey attempt to wall him, but are met with your own Dugtrio and are removed from the game.

There is no fifth option, that's it. Raikou was undoubtedly the best special sweeper in UU at the time and a counter for him depended on his HP of choice, which you have no way of knowing. If you're wrong about his variant, you'd better have counter #2 and Shed Shell, or you're not going to stop it short of getting lucky.
Venusaur, Steelix, Torterra, Rhyperior, Umbreon, Raikou, and Claydol are further checks, just to name a few. No, you're not going to know its Hidden Power, but there are several combinations of just two Pokemon whom Raikou will not be able to circumvent due to the restriction of one Hidden Power.

tl;dr - all your arguments are baseless save for the last one, and how can you argue against baseless arguments?
 
Uhh... Umbreon isn't a suspect, so...

Anyway, about Raikou: again, Spikes had nothing to do with how effectively it could sweep (like Moltres) because Raikou still was a fast, hard hitting poke with reasonably good bulk and without any glaring weakness (maybe a Duggie weakness). Also, what changed since when Raikou get BL status?
I can't remember what changed since then. What makes Raikou worth retesting now?
 

SJCrew

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You argued earlier that Raikou is BL and should remain BL, yet now you say Raikou "would be considered fair game". Why?

Also, a bunch of OUs have dropped down to UU - Alakazam, Donphan, Rhyperior, Dugtrio, etc etc etc. Yet you don't consider their dropping down a "complete tier or metagame overhaul" and therefore insufficient reason to retest currently BL Pokemon, while you for some reason consider Blissey and Snorlax dropping to UU sufficient reason to make Raikou fair game. Why?
Those OUs didn't drop overnight and we banned Raikou even with them included. Even OUs have a certain degree of trouble countering it (for example, one of my best OU teams is completely and utterly Raikou weak). We don't know what OUs are going to drop, and furthermore, whether or not any of them will have any significant impact on Raikou itself. At this point, nothing short of a new game is going to produce a radical enough change for it to be considered UU.

"Conventional" is not an argument; if they're dismantled by Raikou, they shouldn't be the norm.
Teams with bulky Water Pokemon shouldn't be the norm because they are forced out easily and allow Raikou to set up for free. Teams that employ the use of -2 Sp. Att moves shouldn't be the norm because they are easily forced out and allow Raikou to set up for free. Teams that use slower Sp. Att users shouldn't be the norm because Raikou can easily set up on and kill them.

Raikou at +1/+1 threatens all of UU. Shuca Berry Raikou at +1 can only be countered by Registeel and Chansey.

I'm talking about decent, well-balanced teams that handle a variety of situations, rather than being tailored almost entirely to countering Raikou. Raikou is far too strong and threatening for an entire metagame of UU Pokemon to effectively counter.

Venusaur, Steelix, Torterra, Rhyperior, Umbreon, Raikou, and Claydol are further checks, just to name a few. No, you're not going to know its Hidden Power, but there are several combinations of just two Pokemon whom Raikou will not be able to circumvent due to the restriction of one Hidden Power.
LO Raikou with CM/Tbolt/Extrasensory/and HP Water beats all but two of those Pokemon. Shuca Berry Raikou really doesn't give a shit about any of them.

First you say:

The majority wanted those suspects banned and the majority still does.

Now you're "going against the grain". At the very least, you don't seem to be as certain as before in regards to your assumptions about the majority. Pretty inconsistent argument.
Majority vote isn't getting those suspects unbanned, I'll tell you that much. If nothing really changed since the suspects were banned, why should they be unbanned? That's the idea I've been promoting since I entered the discussion and if you could at least address that much, you'd be saving us a lot of time.
 
You argued earlier that Raikou is BL and should remain BL, yet now you say Raikou "would be considered fair game". Why?

Also, a bunch of OUs have dropped down to UU - Alakazam, Donphan, Rhyperior, Dugtrio, etc etc etc. Yet you don't consider their dropping down a "complete tier or metagame overhaul" and therefore insufficient reason to retest currently BL Pokemon, while you for some reason consider Blissey and Snorlax dropping to UU sufficient reason to make Raikou fair game. Why?
because they counter raikou and raikou wouldnt be that big of a threat...pretty much a set up bait snorlax...and blissey has better defense than chansey
 
Majority vote isn't getting those suspects unbanned, I'll tell you that much. If nothing really changed since the suspects were banned, why should they be unbanned? That's the idea I've been promoting since I entered the discussion and if you could at least address that much, you'd be saving us a lot of time.
See the bolded part? It isn't true. The metagame is very, very different from when some of the suspects were banned.

The only reason anyone has suggested a retest is because of there is the very real possibility that some of the BL pokemon would not be BL nowadays. Somehow you have failed to grasp this in 3 pages of discussion.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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Teams with bulky Water Pokemon shouldn't be the norm because they are forced out easily and allow Raikou to set up for free. Teams that employ the use of -2 Sp. Att moves shouldn't be the norm because they are easily forced out and allow Raikou to set up for free. Teams that use slower Sp. Att users shouldn't be the norm because Raikou can easily set up on and kill them.
Letting Raikou set up on something does not mean it dismantles a team.

Raikou at +1/+1 threatens all of UU. Shuca Berry Raikou at +1 can only be countered by Registeel and Chansey.

I'm talking about decent, well-balanced teams that handle a variety of situations, rather than being tailored almost entirely to countering Raikou. Raikou is far too strong and threatening for an entire metagame of UU Pokemon to effectively counter.

LO Raikou with CM/Tbolt/Extrasensory/and HP Water beats all but two of those Pokemon. Shuca Berry Raikou really doesn't give a shit about any of them.
Raikou loses to RestTalk Raikou, Torterra, and Steelix (SR + EQ + LO recoil KOes on average, and if it doesn't, Raikou dies the next turn to LO recoil anyway). The following will be KOed by Raikou; however, it will be KOed as well: Umbreon (Raikou dies from two Paybacks + three round LO recoil + SR) and Claydol (if Earthquake rolls average damage, Raikou will die from that and two rounds LO recoil + SR). And Venusaur will end up putting you to sleep.

As for Shuca Berry, RestTalk Raikou is unaffected; Torterra still walls you; Steelix still 2HKOes you, while you fail to 2HKO it; you now lose to Umbreon; and Claydol still 2HKOes you with SR up while you fail to 2HKO it. And Venusaur still puts you to sleep.

Majority vote isn't getting those suspects unbanned, I'll tell you that much. If nothing really changed since the suspects were banned, why should they be unbanned? That's the idea I've been promoting since I entered the discussion and if you could at least address that much, you'd be saving us a lot of time.
I don't think they should be unbanned at all - whether to unban them or not is a decision of policy, and said decision has been made (and if policy did not exist, I would argue that the metagame hasn't changed sufficiently enough to accommodate the unbanning of the suspects).

That aside, my initial point was that your arguments were invalid because you were assuming what a party's argument was for them, a party of which I happen to be a member. I didn't intend for this thread to go off on a tangent about the suspects (although I don't see what else there is to discuss) but I probably should have foreseen it occurring.
 
SJCrew said:
Those OUs didn't drop overnight and we banned Raikou even with them included. Even OUs have a certain degree of trouble countering it (for example, one of my best OU teams is completely and utterly Raikou weak). We don't know what OUs are going to drop, and furthermore, whether or not any of them will have any significant impact on Raikou itself. At this point, nothing short of a new game is going to produce a radical enough change for it to be considered UU.
What do you mean by "didn't drop overnight"? If you mean that you went to bed one day when they were OU and when you woke up the other they were UU, then they certainly dropped overnight. If you mean that they were gradually losing use in OU and were going to drop to UU sooner or later (e.g. Heracross) then any potential BL Pokemon that drops down will have to be retested first, which would mean it didn't drop down overnight either.

You claim that nothing short of a new game is going to produce a radical enough change for Raikou to be considered UU, yet one post ago you also claimed that if Blissey and Snorlax dropped down Raikou would be "fair game" (i.e. be considered UU). Is that not contradictory?

SJCrew said:
Majority vote isn't getting those suspects unbanned, I'll tell you that much. If nothing really changed since the suspects were banned, why should they be unbanned? That's the idea I've been promoting since I entered the discussion and if you could at least address that much, you'd be saving us a lot of time.
What makes you think nothing has really changed? How much has the metagame changed when Crobat was voted out? What about Staraptor, Yanmega, Abomasnow? Can you really claim that the inclusion of Rhyperior, Donphan, Alakazam and co didn't really change the metagame?

It doesn't have to be Froslass or Raikou that's retested. In fact it'll be pretty hard for them to be retested because the metagame hasn't changed all that much since then (agree with Eo's post there). But there are 11 BL Pokemon, some of which were banned long, long ago. If the metagame has changed since their banning, why shouldn't they deserve a retest? Kalec put it well. The only reason anyone has suggested a retest is because there is the very real possibility that some of the BL pokemon would not be BL nowadays because of metagame changes.

jamashawalker said:
because they counter raikou and raikou wouldnt be that big of a threat...pretty much a set up bait snorlax...and blissey has better defense than chansey
Yes - in other words, the argument that a BL Pokemon is 100% BL, will always be BL, will never be UU is untenable because metagame changes will affect a Pokemon's tier. That's the point.
 

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