Aldaron's proposal: Alternatives?

[Nanoswine]

I have to agree with Ulevo here, we shouldn't be messing with Aldaron's Proposal and throwing the meta back into chaos when we don't even have a stable metagame yet. Once we do, then we can waste all the time we want testing Swift Swimmers.

EDIT:

OU-Banned is not Uber, its simply not. And if its not Uber totally, I think it does have the right to be considered in OU. No one ever considered Mewtwo in OU, yet Blaziken was in OU for months. You can not compare them, they are very diferent.

Ubers is hard to use as a standpoint becuase, its used both as a banlist and a tier, so if you sugest to bring something out of Uber, many will compare it to bringing real Ubers, down to OU.

Instead look a few points lower, down to OU-BL-UU. If a pokemon is banned in UU, it goes to BL, which is not the same as OU. You can not compare OU pokemon to BL pokemon, yet your are comparing real Ubers, to ones just banned from OU. Its very similar, the only diference is Ubers is compacted, even though there are structural divides. Last gen wynaut was not Uber potential, but it was banned from OU. Its a very similar case, Mewtwo is nowhere in the realm as wynaut, as with Blaziken. You need to logically diference them, instead of blindingly blanketing them.

Every single thing you said in this post is completely wrong. If a Pokemon is voted to Ubers, it is Uber. Whether it was previously OU is completely irrelevant. Are you saying that Skymin, Darkrai, and Deoxys-A are "less uber" than Giratina because they used to be OU? Absolutely not.

Ubers is not a tier, it is a banlist. Playing Ubers is simply playing without any Pokemon banned.

OU and UU are 100% usage based. BL is in place because there are Pokemon that are broken in the UU metagame that do not see enough use in OU to be tiered there. Hence, BL was made to act as a banlist for UU.

You ask us to logically differentiate Blaziken from other Ubers, when you have a notable lack of logic yourself. Try to have a better understanding of what you are arguing about before making a fool of yourself.

I never stated it was a simple solution, in fact I believe the opposite. But this ban would fit Smogon's philosphy better than a plain ban on either Drizzle, cancelling an entire playstyle and opening to more and more bans, or Swift Swim, which has never been broken itself. This "complex" ban would not be that hard to program on PO and could be easily enforced on WiFi as well. The suspect process to decide the bans would definitely take some months, but it would not be impossible to do.

I think that the best option, once we get to it, is to ban the individual broken Swift Swimmers. Banning Drizzle or Swift Swim would not be a good idea, as you have said, and it also avoids the complexity. The only downside is that they can't be used on Rain Dance teams or in the lower tiers, but I think that is a small price to pay compared to the effects banning Drizzle would have or the precedent that banning SwSw would set.

 

[haunter]

So, are you stating that we need to make a combo ban of Pokemon+ability+ability? That would of course mean these three bans:
- Kingdra+SwSw+Drizzle
- Ludicolo+SwSw+Drizzle
- Kabutops+SwSw+Drizzle
- More?

Well i dont know about you, but if people are having trouble fathoming even an ability+ability ban, i doubt this even more complex ban would really solve anything other than creating more loopholes for us to exploit.

Although, i agree 100% that this would be the "best" and most "fair" option. However it is not something that can be accomplished very easily and without it's certain share of controversy. Not to mention the voting.

I never stated it was a simple solution, in fact I believe the opposite. But this ban would fit Smogon's philosphy better than a plain ban on either Drizzle, cancelling an entire playstyle and opening to more and more bans, or Swift Swim, which has never been broken itself. This "complex" ban would not be that hard to program on PO and could be easily enforced on WiFi as well. The suspect process to decide the bans would definitely take some months, but it would not be impossible to do.

 

[Cshadow]

OU-Banned is not Uber, its simply not. And if its not Uber totally, I think it does have the right to be considered in OU.

Except that OU is only determined by usage. Border Line and Ubers are banlists for their respective tiers. OU, UU, and NU have Pokemon ranked by usage and usage alone.

Also, how is he not Uber totally? How can you define something as only partially broken?

 

[charizard24]

OU-Banned is not Uber, its simply not. And if its not Uber totally, I think it does have the right to be considered in OU. No one ever considered Mewtwo in OU, yet Blaziken was in OU for months. You can not compare them, they are very diferent.

Ubers is hard to use as a standpoint becuase, its used both as a banlist and a tier, so if you sugest to bring something out of Uber, many will compare it to bringing real Ubers, down to OU.

Instead look a few points lower, down to OU-BL-UU. If a pokemon is banned in UU, it goes to BL, which is not the same as OU. You can not compare OU pokemon to BL pokemon, yet your are comparing real Ubers, to ones just banned from OU. Its very similar, the only diference is Ubers is compacted, even though there are structural divides. Last gen wynaut was not Uber potential, but it was banned from OU. Its a very similar case, Mewtwo is nowhere in the realm as wynaut, as with Blaziken. You need to logically diference them, instead of blindingly blanketing them.

So are you trying to tell me that Garchomp was not Uber last gen even though we specifically banned it to Ubers. I mean according to your criteria, it was in OU for some time, it was freshly banned to OU. So why couldn't we have brought it back down. Because it IS AN UBER pokemon. If we ban something to Uber then it is Uber. You can't flaunt a fancy new term like "OU-banned" and expect people not to consider it as an Uber. I'll repeat that, If a pokemon is banned from OU it is Uber, not "OU-banned". There is no distinction between the two.

Furthermore, i dont see your point about the BL pokemon not being similar to OU. Of course BL pokemon are not the same as OU pokemon. But as far as i know, there is no tier above Ubers and there is not tier in-between Ubers and OU called "OU-banned" for pokemon that we're so called just banned. You seem to make it sound like these pokemon deserve to be brought back into OU just because well we just banned them, now let's bring them back. -.-

It is not acceptable to differentiate between Uber pokemon. You can't suddenly call them a new name and bring them down by any means necessary because they deserve it.

And i'm not completely sure why Wynaut was banned. Personally, it seemed very stupid but you simply cannot compare that to Blaziken. Blaziken actuallyt had potential in the metagame and did more than just sit there and well idk what Wynaut did...

Blaziken is broken you cannot deny that. The only way that it will ever be brought back down is if it is significantly nerfed. Just as all other Uber pokemon can be. But that idea was shot down multiple times for that premise alone. So now all you are trying to do is find justification to allow you to do so.

I never stated it was a simple solution, in fact I believe the opposite. But this ban would fit Smogon's philosphy better than a plain ban on either Drizzle, cancelling an entire playstyle and opening to more and more bans, or Swift Swim, which has never been broken itself. This "complex" ban would not be that hard to program on PO and could be easily enforced on WiFi as well. The suspect process to decide the bans would definitely take some months, but it would not be impossible to do.

I know it won't be very hard to implement. Hell i completely agree with you. A thousand percent. But, the problem is that well, we have a lot of people here that are against complex bans. And rightfully so. It seems to be causing a certain amount of unrest within the community especially with so many people now trying to ban Blaziken+Speed Boost and so on and so forth. So unless we have a policy in place that stops those ridiculous things from ever happening then i'm afraid that this will lead to a slippery slope.

Now enough of that mumbo-jumbo. I agree with you. It's not a simple solution. In fact it is a very complex one that many people are failing to understand the severity of these descisions on the overall metagame. I suppose we will just have to be patient and wait out the storm before implementing these bans. Unless we get enough support for it now that is. Then well, go right ahead.

 

[haunter]

The only downside is that they can't be used on Rain Dance teams or in the lower tiers, but I think that is a small price to pay compared to the effects banning Drizzle would have or the precedent that banning SwSw would set.

That's the main problem I have with this solution although, admittedly, banning individual SS users would be a less invasive measure than banning either Drizzle or SS completely. I mean, why would we ban Kabutops or Kingdra when it's so clear that they're not overpowered Pokemon themselves? IIRC Kingdra was barely OU before it got outrage and it was never too powerful on drizzle-less teams.

 

[mew420]

we've been arguing about it ever since fifth gen arrived... based on that alone, how can drizzle/drought not be banned by now??!

when you have to build your team based around one primary threat in the metagame, that's what i would consider to be the definition of "broken"...

even i can win with a drizzle team ffs...

 

[Arc Tech]

That's the main problem I have with this solution although, admittedly, banning individual SS users would be a less invasive measure than banning either Drizzle or SS completely. I mean, why would we ban Kabutops or Kingdra when it's so clear that they're not overpowered Pokemon themselves? IIRC Kingdra was barely OU before it got outrage and it was never too powerful on drizzle-less teams.

Yes, but many teams with it will have drizzle (pre-aldaron). What it was like in prior conditions, especially last gen, have no impact on what it is now or its tiering (Proof: Blaziken).

Imagine if you will, there was a kingdra-esque pokemon that got a 1.5 boost and one of it's stabs and it's speed boosted in sandstream last gen. It, like kingdra, was found broken. But would we have gone through all this Rockdra + sandstream ban nonsense? No. We would have just banned Rockdra outright.

The main thing that makes this situation seem different is that there are a variety of weathers. This means the kingdra user must fight for drizzle to be in place, rather than it pretty much always being in place if either person used a starter (like sandstream last gen), making the fact that kingdra was broken only if drizzle was up more obvious. However, since pretty much every team with kingdra runs drizzle, and it is not hard to set up (except when you get in a weather war), it can be considered a pretty common condition when kingdra is out. And when a pokemon is broken in common conditions we ban the pokemon, not the conditions.

But upon the topic of weather wars, often a weather team will beat a non weather team due to the large advantages that weather provides. This means less and less non-weather teams, while more and more weather teams. This leads to weather wars, and whichever team wins the weather wars usually winning, meaning kingdra's team, if they won the war for drizzle, would probably emerge the victor anyway without kingdra's "brokeness". Weather may just be the perpetrator, causing overcentralization and should be banned (other than hail which quite frankly sucks and therefore does not centralize).

Sorry, last paragraph got a little rushed, may elaborate or just fix later. g2g.

 

[Nanoswine]

That's the main problem I have with this solution although, admittedly, banning individual SS users would be a less invasive measure than banning either Drizzle or SS completely. I mean, why would we ban Kabutops or Kingdra when it's so clear that they're not overpowered Pokemon themselves? IIRC Kingdra was barely OU before it got outrage and it was never too powerful on drizzle-less teams.

I'd really like to have a Swimmer+Drizzle+SwSw ban in order to avoid banning them outright, because they are not even usable without Drizzle. However, we already have players complaining about nerfing the Swift Swimmers, and making the complex ban only target specific ones would just lead to more people screaming precedent. I think that we should just ban the broken Swimmers outright, because it accomplishes what Aldaron's proposal does now (balancing Drizzle), and also avoids all of the issues complex bans bring with them. Aldaron's proposal balanced Drizzle, not Swift Swim, and I think that once we have the metagame as it is now sorted out, we should go back and balance both while simultaneously taking complexity out of the picture.

 

[Ulevo]

That's the main problem I have with this solution although, admittedly, banning individual SS users would be a less invasive measure than banning either Drizzle or SS completely. I mean, why would we ban Kabutops or Kingdra when it's so clear that they're not overpowered Pokemon themselves? IIRC Kingdra was barely OU before it got outrage and it was never too powerful on drizzle-less teams.

Then how would you go about justifying banning Blaziken? Clearly it was UU at best until its Dream World ability was introduced. Are you suggesting we should have left Blaze Blaziken alone and allowed it in standard play while banning Speed Boost + Blaziken?

 

[haunter]

Blaziken's case is completely offtopic but yeah, for those of you who were asking: I'd prefer banning speed boost Blaziken while leaving blaze Ken UU\NU rather than banning Blaziken outright.

Anyways, as stated before, if we can't really afford the complexity of the Drizzle+SS+Pokemon X combo ban, then banning individual SS sweepers is still better than banning Drizzle or SS itself.

 

[mew420]

Are you suggesting we should have left Blaze Blaziken alone and allowed it in standard play while banning Speed Boost + Blaziken?

absolutely... why should blaze blaziken be banned just because sb blaziken is so brutal? they're basically two different pokemon.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

This is coming down to opinion completely, becuase I have to disagree and say that there is a basic diference between Ubers such are Mewtwo, Ho-oh and, Groundon, compared to Ubers like Blaziken, Garchomp, and the Doexys forms. Some are straight out Uber in the whole sense of the definition, while others are just banned becuase they where broken in OU. I see that are a huge diference, while you don't, thats where our problem comes.

 

[Ulevo]

absolutely... why should blaze blaziken be banned just because sb blaziken is so brutal? they're basically two different pokemon.

Don't misunderstand me. As much as I'd like for Blaziken to be allowed in OU/UU without its Dream World Ability, it makes little sense with regards to how we conduct our rules and clauses. I was simply clarifying Haunter's intentions.

That said, its all about preference.

Also, Haunter. You mentioned that banning Swift Swim would be a more invasive approach. What exactly did you mean by that?

 

[mew420]

if groudon and kyogre didn't exist, politoed and ninetales would totally be viable in the uber metagame. they're just simply outclassed up there.

as for blaziken: we didn't ban octillery - just inconsistent. now it seems a little inconsistent to ban blaziken outright.

 

[Benlisted]

I'm glad people seem to be coming to some sort of consensus in the discussion of this thread if not the poll.

Reviving something else Ulevo said last page in his epic post, but was relatively drowned out - do people agree with the suggestion that at present we should leave Aldaron's Proposal be, and later revise it in whatever way we deem best? Or do we think action is necessary now?

 

[Nanoswine]

This is coming down to opinion completely, becuase I have to disagree and say that there is a basic diference between Ubers such are Mewtwo, Ho-oh and, Groundon, compared to Ubers like Blaziken, Garchomp, and the Doexys forms. Some are straight out Uber in the whole sense of the definition, while others are just banned becuase they where broken in OU. I see that are a huge diference, while you don't, thats where our problem comes.

The definition of Uber is "banned from OU." A Pokemon's performance in Ubers and whether it was previously OU makes no impact on it's tiering whatsoever.

Your posts don't make any sense.

I'm glad people seem to be coming to some sort of consensus in the discussion of this thread if not the poll.

Reviving something else Ulevo said last page in his epic post, but was relatively drowned out - do people agree with the suggestion that at present we should leave Aldaron's Proposal be, and later revise it in whatever way we deem best? Or do we think action is necessary now?

I definitely think we should revise it later on. Aldaron's proposal is doing its job just fine right now, and since the only objection to it is people bitching about Magikarp and Luvdisc, we can revise those problems once we have all the other suspects sorted out.

 

[Arc Tech]

if groudon and kyogre didn't exist, politoed and ninetales would totally be viable in the uber metagame. they're just simply outclassed up there.

as for blaziken: we didn't ban octillery - just inconsistent. now it seems a little inconsistent to ban blaziken outright.

We blanket banned inconsistent. It was broken in and of itself, irregardless of everything else about a pokemon (other than sub+protect, which are nearly universal and as such can be assumed to be on the normal pokemon).

Speed Boost is not broken in and of itself, and as such does not warrant a blanket ban. It is only broken when combined with blaziken's excellent offensive stats, typing, and movepool. The link tying that together is blaziken himself.

Also, SR/EQ/Dragon claw/fire blast bulky chomp is no less different a pokemon from SD yache chomp than blaze blaziken is from speed boost blaziken. It was banned anyway, because chomp's best set was broken. It is entirely consistent with Smogon's policy and past actions to ban blaziken as a whole.

The only thing so far this gen which has been abnormal is Aldaron's proposal, which went so far as to recognize itself for that and declare itself a temporary measure.

 

[Thorhammer]

It depends. Do we define the Standard metagame as everything that's not broken out of a metagame starting with nothing? Or do we define it as everything that's not broken out of a metagame starting with everything except for Pokemon designated as Ubers by their BST? By the former definition, it's possible for anything to be OU. The latter definition, however, would make it never a possibility.

Worth noting that it wasn't just those six that were tested. It was everything with a BST below 670, which is why Manaphy was retested, and why Latios, Latias, and Mew remain OU.

 

[Eco]

Voted "Ban permanent weather entirely" and "Don't ban anything".

Also, how are "Continue banning Swift Swim + Drizzle permanent" and "Ban Drizzle entirel" any different? You duplicated the same choice for OU play.

 

[RaRaRabbit]

Wow... I know not to take the poll seriously considering that any joe schmoe can vote for what he wants, but how the heck did vote to ban drizzle entirely go from 3rd place to first?

I like what Benlisted/Ulevo said. Wait until the metagame stabilizes. We have time.

I still cant see the logic behind wanting SwSw back at all when there is still a good chunk of players who just want drizzle banned entirely.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

That's the main problem I have with this solution although, admittedly, banning individual SS users would be a less invasive measure than banning either Drizzle or SS completely. I mean, why would we ban Kabutops or Kingdra when it's so clear that they're not overpowered Pokemon themselves? IIRC Kingdra was barely OU before it got outrage and it was never too powerful on drizzle-less teams.

While I can see where you're coming from, do you think we would have banned Sandstream+Excadrill+Sand Rush if we have found it broken? I can see the reason for a complex ban when it involves a lot of pokémon (both broken and non-broken), or even teams, but not for only one pokémon which "isn't broken outside of X condition", specially when this condition is a "common" one.


EDIT -- Ehh, soundly outsped.

Voted "Ban permanent weather entirely" and "Don't ban anything".

Also, how are "Continue banning Swift Swim + Drizzle permanent" and "Ban Drizzle entirel" any different? You duplicated the same choice for OU play.

Huh. "Ban Drizzle" is one thing, "Ban Drizzle+SwSw" is another. I find it weirder you voted to "ban permanent weather" and to "not ban anything"...

 

[haunter]

While I can see where you're coming from, do you think we would have banned Sandstream+Excadrill+Sand Rush if we have found it broken? I can see the reason for a complex ban when it involves a lot of pokémon (both broken and non-broken), or even teams, but not for only one pokémon which "isn't broken outside of X condition", specially when this condition is a "common" one.

Excadrill has already been voted OU 3 times in a row, I don't even think it's comparable to Kingdra\Kabutops in rain. Anyway I don't really see any problem with complex bans. As long as a given Pokemon has a 2nd ability it wouldn't be that hard to ban any Weather+Ability+Pokemon combination. Then again, I'm not saying that I like the complexity involved into these kind of combo bans, but it's still the best solution when compared to the others suggested here.

 

[Banryu]

Why the eff is 'ban Drizzle' the most popular option here? >:\ That's stupid.
EDIT: I'd elaborate but my brain isn't... exactly.... functioning at full capacity right now, so I will definitely elaborate later.

 

[Nanoswine]

I wish this was a public poll so I could see who has been voting "Ban Drizzle" against "Continue with Drizzle+SwSw" or "Ban individual broken sweepers"

I have to say that at least in the thread where people are actively participating, the general consensus is that we should continue with Drizzle+SwSw for now, and go back and test the Swift Swimmers once the metagame is more stable. Aldaron's Proposal is doing its job right now in taking the broken Swimmers out of the picture, so we can deal with other suspects and not have to spend 3 or 4 months testing the swimmers "the right way."

 

[Benlisted]

No need to get worried about the highest amount of people voting for ban Drizzle - it's still only 4 votes more than keep AP as is, which is barely anything. In any case, no option has anywhere near a majority, so I think it's clear nothing is going to be achieved in terms of altering this right now.