Aldaron's proposal: Satisfied?

[Thorhammer]

Two months ago, as I'm sure we all know, Aldaron's proposal was accepted, and Swift Swim + Drizzle was banned. In the meantime, little consideration has been given to revising the proposal to something more specific.

Are you satisfied with Aldaron's proposal? Do you believe it is an acceptable permanent solution to the issues with Drizzle?

Personally, I say no. Aldaron's proposal was good at the time, as it allowed for a quick solution to confirm that Drizzle was not broken, preventing it from being banned. However, as a permanent solution, it simply is not enough. We know that three Pokemon were broken when using Swift Swim combined with Drizzle: Kingdra, Ludicolo, and Kabutops. However, there are 19 fully-evolved Pokemon that can have the Swift Swim ability, and some are clearly not broken even combined with Drizzle, proving that Swift Swim + Drizzle is not inherently broken. However, because the combination of Swift Swim + Drizzle was banned, rather than the individual abusers being addressed directly, everything using the combination was banned, from Qwilfish + Swift Swim + Drizzle, which could potentially become a top-tier OU sweeper, to Floatzel + Swift Swim + Drizzle, an incredibly fast attacker which also has the potential to be OU-viable while certainly not being broken, to Luvdisc + Swift Swim + Drizzle, a clearly useless NU even with the benefits, and everything in between those three. This prevents a potentially large number of Pokemon from being OU-viable, because of this violation of Smogon's policy to not ban things which are not broken. For this reason, I am not satisfied with Aldaron's proposal as a permanent solution.

What are your thoughts? Are you satisfied? If not, what would make you satisfied? If so, what changes would you still be satisfied with?

 

[Blue_Tornado]

every option had it's flaws

i think they considered this the best option because it hurts the least amount of "usable pokemon". they could have banned swift swim kingdra and crew, but since those are way more essential and competitive than floatzel and huntail, they prohibited the use of these.. simply without their own drizzle. i see this too as the "best" solution, considering how each solution has it's problems.

if you're not satisfied, care to voice your own, better solution?

 

[Virizion]

I'm not satisfied. If just a few things are broken in a group, simply ban only those few.

 

[xMistyx]

SwSw Gorebyss - Shell Smash.

 

[Thorhammer]

if you're not satisfied, care to voice your own, better solution?

Personally, the solution I've been advocating for is to ban individual Pokemon in combination with Drizzle. So Kingdra + Drizzle, Ludicolo + Drizzle, and Kabutops + Drizzle, as they are known to be broken. Then we test the others and see if we need to ban anything else in combination with Drizzle, such as Omastar or Gorebyss.

Also, there isn't the slightest reason to assume that other Pokemon such as Huntail and Floatzel wouldn't become usable in the absence of Kingdra, Ludicolo, and Kabutops.

 

[Virizion]

every option had it's flaws

i think they considered this the best option because it hurts the least amount of "usable pokemon". they could have banned swift swim kingdra and crew, but since those are way more essential and competitive than floatzel and huntail, they prohibited the use of these.. simply without their own drizzle. i see this too as the "best" solution, considering how each solution has it's problems.

if you're not satisfied, care to voice your own, better solution?

Ban Drizzle + certain SwSw Pokemon, not the SwSw ability as a whole. Or, as I said before, they could allow you to use only one of Kingdra/Kabutops/Ludicolo, but not two/all three of them at once when using Drizzle.

EDIT: Ninja'd

 

[khz]

Ban Drizzle + certain SwSw Pokemon, not the SwSw ability as a whole. Or, as I said before, they could allow you to use only one of Kingdra/Kabutops/Ludicolo, but not two/all three of them at once when using Drizzle.

EDIT: Ninja'd

How complex a ban are we allowing? That really needs to be answered too.

 

[Thorhammer]

How complex a ban are we allowing? That really needs to be answered too.

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered regarding Aldaron's proposal, and haven't been. That's one of them.

However, as it's exactly as complex as Swift Swim + Drizzle, there shouldn't be any issues.

 

[Showsni]

Considering many of the Pokémon that ended up being banned (stuff like Poliwrath, Floatzel, Luvdisc) weren't tested by many people during the suspect test, I think we should definitely fine tune the ban and actually give them the test before banning. Don't forget, the only suspect test for the swift swimmers included Manaphy, so the results were definitely skewed from the fact that quite apart from swift swimmers Drizzle teams could all run him too.

I know that "complicated bans" are something the PR team are trying to avoid, and on the face of it "Drizzle + Swift Swim" seems a lot simpler than "Drizzle + Swift Swim Kingdra, Ludicolo, Kabutops, Qwilfish and Omastar" or whatever the suspect test ends up deciding on, but I really feel its better to have a slightly complex ban than to ban clearly unbroken stuff (Magikarp, Luvdisc) for no real reason. And besides, remembering "Drizzle + Swift Swim Kingdra, Ludicolo, Kabutops, Qwilfish and Omastar" is hardly more complicated than "Deoxys in S, A and N formes, Shaymin in S forme, Latios with Soul Dew, Giratina, Darkrai and Ho-oh (etc)."

 

[khz]

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered regarding Aldaron's proposal, and haven't been. That's one of them.

However, as it's exactly as complex as Swift Swim + Drizzle, there shouldn't be any issues.

The way I view "Aldaron's Proposal" is not as a plan per se, but really just a ban that was agreed upon that happened to include "Drizzle + SS." As well as this, I don't think the voting pool is philosophically consistent, meaning that if there was a voting pool with users A, B and C on whether to ban Kingdra/Ludicolo/Kabutops with Drizzle, A may vote ban on the basis he feels the Pokemon is broken with drizzle, B may vote no ban because he doesn't feel it is broken anyway and C may vote no ban because he doesn't think you should make bans like this. Therefore the only way to get this fixed is either set defined (and admittedly arbitrary to an extent) boundaries for what kinds of bans we will accept or include each separate proposal in each voting round and leave it up to Phillip and co. to decide which ones will be eventually voted on.

 

[Quixim]

No. I don't think there's enough information, there's too many questions to be asked, and your proposal should be tested.

Question one: Is using rain dance on a team consisting of these broken swift swimmers better than a drizzle team with the unbroken swift swimmers? (This is under the assumption we can agree which ones are broken - I feel omastar most certainly is, but others not so much).

Question two: Is drizzle prominent enough that rain-dance swimteams can reap its benefeits without needing to use a politoed?

I think that without knowing the answers to these, it's too early to reserve judgement. If a swift swim team with the otherwise less-used pokemon is far superior to a rain dance team with the otherwise banned swift-swimmers, then we'll know that banning that specific combination isn't harsh enough. We can, I suppose, continue the testing, knocking the borderline pokemon back and forth until they're about as viable, but I don't know if that's the community's priority.

For the second question, if the ability to use the unbroken pokemon with drizzle, combined with the other powerful effects of rain causes drizzle to become extremely popular, then that means that the powerful swift-swimmers have a chance of a match where drizzle is already in play. Since a drizzle team can focus more on pokemon that can use the rain well because they have no time limit, trying to keep politoad (And therefore rain) out of the battle because of its huge benefit to the opponent will also hurt them, as their general strategy will be less viable, and pokemon that need the rain to become useful (Such as, I don't know, Beartic?) will suddenly drop to being rather useless. This will mean that tossing a kingdra or kabutops onto a team that has rain dance in there means that you are automatically at an advantage against any team with a politoed.

If this causes drizzle to become much less used out of fear of opening a door to SwSw powerhouses (Much as a team can have a weakness to an element such as stealth rock), then Drizzle will become a sparsely used strategy (Just as pokemon who are 2x or 4x weak to rocks are much less viable because of that).

If this scenario is correct, then banning drizzle + Powerhouses will end up hurting the less powerful swift-swimmers, not helping them.


My personal solution? One of two choices, and that's based on a split: Should a pokemon's different abilities allow it to be both banned and unbanned? Please not I am not referring to tiers of abilities, because nobody ever uses an illuminate Starmie, but nobody would ever suggest that means that Illuminate Starmie can be used in the NU tier.

As of yet, only Blaziken and Wobbuffet, in my knowledge, are banned pokemon that have a choice in abilities.

If the ability to ban an ability + Pokemon combination exists, then I would suggest banning the swift-swim versions of the offending pokemon (Ludicolo, Omastar, Kabutops, and Kingdra).

All the other swift-swimmers could use drizzle to their hearts content, becoming viable and powerful, but not breaking and centralizing the game, and without fearing another team having those four banned pokemon waiting in the wings to sweep their team the second their Politoed comes out. It's unfortunate that three of the banned pokemon (Ludicolo's rain dish is probably going to keep it in OU) will be largely dropped out of the metagame, but it's the lesser of two evils (More pokemon would remain in the metagame)

I suppose that after reasoning this out: No, I am not happy with the ban.


(Also, sorry Thorhammer if I've been a bit aggressive to you in previous topics, I've been figuring my way through this issue myself trying to come up with a stance, and my own frustration at its complexity probably bled through in my text)

 

[Thorhammer]

Considering many of the Pokémon that ended up being banned (stuff like Poliwrath, Floatzel, Luvdisc) weren't tested by many people during the suspect test, I think we should definitely fine tune the ban and actually give them the test before banning. Don't forget, the only suspect test for the swift swimmers included Manaphy, so the results were definitely skewed from the fact that quite apart from swift swimmers Drizzle teams could all run him too.

I know that "complicated bans" are something the PR team are trying to avoid, and on the face of it "Drizzle + Swift Swim" seems a lot simpler than "Drizzle + Swift Swim Kingdra, Ludicolo, Kabutops, Qwilfish and Omastar" or whatever the suspect test ends up deciding on, but I really feel its better to have a slightly complex ban than to ban clearly unbroken stuff (Magikarp, Luvdisc) for no real reason. And besides, remembering "Drizzle + Swift Swim Kingdra, Ludicolo, Kabutops, Qwilfish and Omastar" is hardly more complicated than "Deoxys in S, A and N formes, Shaymin in S forme, Latios with Soul Dew, Giratina, Darkrai and Ho-oh (etc)."

I don't think it's necessary to include Swift Swim in that. We banned Blaziken entirely, rather than Blaziken + Speed Boost, even though Blaziken + Blaze wasn't broken. By the same token, we can ban Kingdra + Drizzle, rather than Kingdra + Swift Swim + Drizzle, even though Kingdra + Sniper + Drizzle is not broken.

(Also, sorry Thorhammer if I've been a bit aggressive to you in previous topics, I've been figuring my way through this issue myself trying to come up with a stance, and my own frustration at its complexity probably bled through in my text)

Not a problem.

Has everyone who's posted here also voted in the poll?

 

[Blue_Tornado]

well ok, i guess you can go with this solution to one of the higher-ups, but they'd need to find a way to do this without it being too complicated. it may be a bit hard to implement, and testing every single usable swift swim poke is a bit.. yeah..

 

[Thorhammer]

well ok, i guess you can go with this solution to one of the higher-ups, but they'd need to find a way to do this without it being too complicated. it may be a bit hard to implement, and testing every single usable swift swim poke is a bit.. yeah..

We'll see.

Either way, getting an idea of how many people are satisfied with the current ban is the first step of that.

 

[xMistyx]

For the second question, if the ability to use the unbroken pokemon with drizzle, combined with the other powerful effects of rain causes drizzle to become extremely popular, then that means that the powerful swift-swimmers have a chance of a match where drizzle is already in play. Since a drizzle team can focus more on pokemon that can use the rain well because they have no time limit, trying to keep politoad (And therefore rain) out of the battle because of its huge benefit to the opponent will also hurt them, as their general strategy will be less viable, and pokemon that need the rain to become useful (Such as, I don't know, Beartic?) will suddenly drop to being rather useless. This will mean that tossing a kingdra or kabutops onto a team that has rain dance in there means that you are automatically at an advantage against any team with a politoed.

At the moment I have a normal raindance team that I use and this scenario happens a fair bit. Team preview will show their Politoed lead. I can automatically switch out to one of my sweepers and right there is a huge advantage.

 

[Virizion]

I've voted. (Will edit this later to make it a useful post)

 

[Quixim]

At the moment I have a normal raindance team that I use and this scenario happens a fair bit. Team preview will show their Politoed lead. I can automatically switch out to one of my sweepers and right there is a huge advantage.

Exactly. And if allowing drizzle and weaker swift-swimmers makes politoed a more and more popular lead, you'll have that advantage in more and more matches, and if more people catch on... well, you read my argument.

How often do you see that Politoed lead?

 

[Thorhammer]

At the moment I have a normal raindance team that I use and this scenario happens a fair bit. Team preview will show their Politoed lead. I can automatically switch out to one of my sweepers and right there is a huge advantage.

That is a concern that all Drizzle teams need to be aware of and ready for.

Of course, in the fact that they need to be prepared for that, it means that Drizzle is less viable, and therefore any other Pokemon being used in combination with Drizzle are less broken. If certain Swift Swim users are allowed in combination with Drizzle, and that becomes even more true, it will only help to ensure that they are not broken.

 

[xMistyx]

Exactly. And if allowing drizzle and weaker swift-swimmers makes politoed a more and more popular lead, you'll have that advantage in more and more matches, and if more people catch on... well, you read my argument.

How often do you see that Politoed lead?

Not that often. Because I guess people don't want to run Drizzle teams without Swift Swim.

However I am trying out a DrizzleToed lead without any Swift Swim pokemon and instead utilising things like Hydration Vaporeon and pokemon with access to hurricane/thunder etc. It has been working well and proves (to me) that Drizzle is still viable without have any swift swimmers on your team and knowing this has been made it a lot easier to deal with this "Blanket Ban" strategy they've used to deal with the swift swim ability in drizzle.

 

[TM13IceBeam]

Actually, this solution is as long term as until Grey comes out, after all, there could be move tutors with moves that troll the entire meta(read: Platinum Outrage move tutor). Ludicolo and Kingdra have other abilities that are good enough to use anyway.

Also, I dunno if anyone mentioned this, but Shell Break Omastar. A beast in or without rain.

 

[Quixim]

That is a concern that all Drizzle teams need to be aware of and ready for.

Of course, in the fact that they need to be prepared for that, it means that Drizzle is less viable, and therefore any other Pokemon being used in combination with Drizzle are less broken. If certain Swift Swim users are allowed in combination with Drizzle, and that becomes even more true, it will only help to ensure that they are not broken.

I'll start by pointing out that this is decidedly not a concern that all drizzle teams need to be aware of and ready for. A drizzle team that plans on using hydration stalling, water absorb, Hurricaine, and Thunder can, without too much issue, quite easily deal with a rogue Swift Swimmer on the other team (Thundurus' T-wave will kill them, and he has STAB 100% Thunders to throw around too, whereas setting up a rain dance for him might not be so viable, especially if he ends up getting expected, but I digress). However, a Drizzle team that employs Swift Swim does so knowing that they are at an immediate and terrible disadvantage to SwimDancers (Swift Swim and Rain dance? I'm tired of typing).

You're right in saying it makes drizzle and swift swim less viable. It makes it an outright poor strategy.

 

[Nubbins]

However I am trying out a DrizzleToed lead without any Swift Swim pokemon and instead utilising things like Hydration Vaporeon and pokemon with access to hurricane/thunder etc. It has been working well and proves (to me) that Drizzle is still viable without have any swift swimmers on your team and knowing this has been made it a lot easier to deal with this "Blanket Ban" strategy they've used to deal with the swift swim ability in drizzle.

This. Before Aldaron's proposal, going against Drizzle teams meant abusing my focus sash Thunderus's T-waves to the max, judicious use of CS Abomasnow, and just hanging on for dear life. I'm assuming using Drizzle teams was like "lolololololol Kabutops lololololololol Kingdra lolololol Ludicolo lolololol" Not fun at all.

But after the SS+Drizzle combo ban, I can do crazy stuff like reverse sweep with Starmie and use Thunder/Hydro Pump Rotom-W on my Drizzle team. While Drizzle teams are still strong, playing against them now feels more like a challenge than a chore.

While individually testing Drizzle abusers would probably give the best end result, I feel like it might be to complicated, long, and raise questions on how far we'll go with these complex bans. I'll laugh so hard if we do test abusers individually and don't finish before Gray is released.

While Aldaron's proposal is the not the best, it's GOOD ENOUGH and I'm satisfied. But maybe as a compromise, couldn't we start with Aldaron's proposal and test upwards like SS Luvdisc, SS Armaldo, and work our way up the ladder of overpoweredness?

 

[Quixim]

This. Before Aldaron's proposal, going against Drizzle teams meant abusing my focus sash Thunderus's T-waves to the max, judicious use of CS Abomasnow, and just hanging on for dear life. I'm assuming using Drizzle teams was like "lolololololol Kabutops lololololololol Kingdra lolololol Ludicolo lolololol" Not fun at all.

But after the SS+Drizzle combo ban, I can do crazy stuff like reverse sweep with Starmie and use Thunder/Hydro Pump Rotom-W on my Drizzle team. While Drizzle teams are still strong, playing against them now feels more like a challenge than a chore.

While individually testing Drizzle abusers would probably give the best end result, I feel like it might be to complicated, long, and raise questions on how far we'll go with these complex bans. I'll laugh so hard if we do test abusers individually and don't finish before Gray is released.

While Aldaron's proposal is the not the best, it's GOOD ENOUGH and I'm satisfied. But maybe as a compromise, couldn't we start with Aldaron's proposal and test upwards like SS Luvdisc, SS Armaldo, and work our way up the ladder of overpoweredness?

I'm basically agreeing with this in the meantime (Although my vote is still to ban swift swim on the offenders outright).

Also, I'm wondering what you mean by "Reverse Sweep"?

 

[Thorhammer]

I'll start by pointing out that this is decidedly not a concern that all drizzle teams need to be aware of and ready for. A drizzle team that plans on using hydration stalling, water absorb, Hurricaine, and Thunder can, without too much issue, quite easily deal with a rogue Swift Swimmer on the other team (Thundurus' T-wave will kill them, and he has STAB 100% Thunders to throw around too, whereas setting up a rain dance for him might not be so viable, especially if he ends up getting expected, but I digress). However, a Drizzle team that employs Swift Swim does so knowing that they are at an immediate and terrible disadvantage to SwimDancers (Swift Swim and Rain dance? I'm tired of typing).

You're right in saying it makes drizzle and swift swim less viable. It makes it an outright poor strategy.

That doesn't mean that Drizzle teams don't all need to be ready for it. What it means is that some of them already are ready for it.

However, that doesn't mean that Drizzle + Swift Swim would become a poor strategy. It just means that teams with Drizzle + Swift Swim also need a means of dealing with opposing Rain Dance teams. This on its own fills up more teamslots, and makes it more difficult to make a team loaded with Swift Swim Pokemon. So it's possible that teams with 3+ Swift Swim Pokemon won't even be an issue if this happens.

This. Before Aldaron's proposal, going against Drizzle teams meant abusing my focus sash Thunderus's T-waves to the max, judicious use of CS Abomasnow, and just hanging on for dear life. I'm assuming using Drizzle teams was like "lolololololol Kabutops lololololololol Kingdra lolololol Ludicolo lolololol" Not fun at all.

But after the SS+Drizzle combo ban, I can do crazy stuff like reverse sweep with Starmie and use Thunder/Hydro Pump Rotom-W on my Drizzle team. While Drizzle teams are still strong, playing against them now feels more like a challenge than a chore.

While individually testing Drizzle abusers would probably give the best end result, I feel like it might be to complicated, long, and raise questions on how far we'll go with these complex bans. I'll laugh so hard if we do test abusers individually and don't finish before Gray is released.

While Aldaron's proposal is the not the best, it's GOOD ENOUGH and I'm satisfied. But maybe as a compromise, couldn't we start with Aldaron's proposal and test upwards like SS Luvdisc, SS Armaldo, and work our way up the ladder of overpoweredness?

Say we start with Kingdra, Ludicolo, and Kabutops already banned/restricted. Each round of suspect testing, as long as broken Swift Swim Pokemon remain, it should be possible to ban two or three of them. Given that not too many Swift Swim Pokemon even really have the potential to be broken, especially with the additional restrictions of using Drizzle, it should only take a round or two to get everything under control. As we already have a pretty much stable metagame otherwise, that shouldn't be an unreasonable amount of trouble, especially if we use the Suspect ladder for that purpose.

 

[xMistyx]

SS Armaldo,

I remember the Joy of getting a rock polish Armaldo sweep last generation.. What do we do now that drizzle is around.. I'm certainly not saying he is broken but he has definitely become a lot more viable thanks to swift swim.

Considering his access to swords dance/being used over rock polish.