[20:02] <@Jumpman16> i just had an idea

[Jumpman16]

[20:02] <@Jumpman16> i just had an idea
[20:03] <@Jumpman16> we should allow ALL pokemon we're currently considering
[20:03] <+Steelicks> break dance?
[20:03] <+Steelicks> oh.
[20:03] <@Jumpman16> ho-oh, latios, latias, wobby
[20:03] <@Jumpman16> steelicks will you take the lead?
[20:03] <@Jumpman16> dont step on my feet >_<
[20:03] <+BlueKirby> lol
[20:03] * +Steelicks accidentally trips in Jumpman's long legs, causing him to stumble and fall
[20:03] <@Jumpman16> no!
[20:04] <+BlueKirby> steelicks ...... you're improving!

[20:04] <@Jumpman16> anyway Mr.E pointed out the most important point about testing "ubers"
[20:04] <@Jumpman16> it will be totally overspecialized
[20:04] <+Steelicks> woah
[20:04] <+Steelicks> you almost make it sound as if MrE was useful for somethibng
[20:05] <@Jumpman16> everyone using ice punch registeel for lati@s
[20:05] <@Jumpman16> he is!
[20:05] <+Steelicks> n't!
[20:05] <@Jumpman16> trust me i had a grudge against him for years earlier in the decade

[20:05] <+Steelicks> hahah yes
[20:05] <@Jumpman16> he is 100% right about this
[20:05] <@Jumpman16> lol
[20:06] <+Steelicks> the reason why you didnt come on IRC for soooooooooo long
[20:06] <@Jumpman16> everyone will be using pursuit pokemon and registeel like on every single team, ever
[20:07] <@Jumpman16> and on the flip side, virtually will be using latios or latias or both in a hypothetical tournament

[20:07] <@Jumpman16> it isn't really a good way to see if a pokemon overcentralizes the metagame.
[20:07] <+Steelicks> yeah
[20:07] <@Jumpman16> can you see why
[20:07] <+Steelicks> i dunno about latias and latios man
[20:07] <@Jumpman16> well
[20:07] <@Jumpman16> what about lati@s
[20:07] <@Jumpman16> when wobby is used
[20:07] <@Jumpman16> lol
[20:07] <@Jumpman16> if we test at the same time
[20:07] <+Steelicks> i guess it....... is balanced out.....
[20:08] <+Steelicks> at least to some extent

[20:08] <@Jumpman16> kind of
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> and
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> it's not like team of:
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> latios, latias, wobbuffet, ho-oh, blissey, skarmory
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> is balanced
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> i mean
[20:08] <+Steelicks> indeed
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> have fun with DD tyranitar
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> 6-0s that shit
[20:08] <@Jumpman16> if anyone really wants to try to use every "uber" we're allowing at once

[20:09] <+Steelicks> i am all for experimentation and trial and stuff like that
[20:09] <+Steelicks> although pokemon like wobbuffet were clearly stupid ideas on nintendos part
[20:09] <@Jumpman16> yeah lol
[20:10] <@Jumpman16> im posting this so everyone in IS can weigh in
[20:10] <@Jumpman16> fuck the opinion of Jan 08ers
[20:10] * +Teifu (~synre.tei@97-84-172-65.dhcp.bycy.mi.charter.com) Quit
[20:10] <+Steelicks> yeah i agree

this is the post i am referring to btw: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=855816#post855816

weigh in negros. the five "suspects", we can subsequently refer to them as, are: Wobbuffet, Latios, Latias, Ho-oh, Deoxys-E. as I stated above, I think it's funny and almost somewhat fitting that you can't exactly lump ALL of these suspects on one team and expect to dominate since four of the five are psychic types. That is one of the main ways anyone could, at first consideration, exploit us allowing all the suspects at once, if not the only way. i expect some objections here, and i welcome them as well, but please do us all a favor and clearly elucidate your points either way.

 

[Misty]

i stick to my position that Ho-oh is far from reasonable but the others are at last "tryable".

 

[Jumpman16]

just to be clear, i'm not even sure that i personally want all of these to be released into the standard metagame all at once, but i do think that the concern mre raised would be largely handled if people weren't just trying to prepare for exactly one suspect at once and/or using the same suspect almost across the board.

 

[Misty]

sure, i agree

 

[Phuquoph]

Deoxys-S is the only remotely acceptable one. I really don't understand how Latios, Latias and Ho-oh are even up for debate.

Latios can't be stopped by Blissey if it has Safeguard, so it would be forced into the overspecialized realm of Icy Wind and Toxic. Tyranitar and Weavile can both be taken care of with HP Fighting (as can many other Steels), and neither will enjoy switching into Specs Draco Meteor or Grass Knot. There's always the option of Reflect, or even a Colbur (or whatever the Dark resist berry is called) Berry. Granted, it can't do all this on one set, but if you don't have a counter for every possible Latios set, you are very likely to get swept by it. Or by Latias, since using both wouldn't violate Species Clause.

As for Ho-oh, I've used him a lot on my uber teams in DP. He is hard enough to beat in a tier that has Giratina, Kyogre and Palkia, let alone in OU where those three are absent. I can't think of anything in OU that is safe to switch into the Choice Band set. Even without Groudon support it does masses of damage and Sacred Fire can cripple any prospective counter. His movepool is nothing special by uber standards, but in OU he is practically impossible to counter.

 

[Carl]

Well Jump, you already know I'm game for testing anything since I really don't see the harm in trying new things. I can really only see three scenarios occurring if we do this. First scenario: everything turns out to be too powerful and we conclude we were right all along so everything goes back to the way it was before. Second scenario: everything turns out to be more counterable than we assumed and we extend the trial period or something to see if they really do work in the metagame. Third scenario: some of the pokemon prove to be too tough to handle while others end up being fairly counterable. In this third situation we obviously should just remove those that seem to be too powerful and retest with those that sucked. Odds are some of the ubers we allowed played a part in the others being counterable so we'd need to test other scenarios to make sure they'd still be fair.

Adding a bunch of questionables at once seems to be a good approach to doing this as it gives people more than one focus when creating new teams. We could even go about this as only allowing the one uber that seemed the least threatening after the testing is through and keep the bans on everything else. This doesn't alter the metagame TOO much and then gives us the option to release others for OU play at a later point if the metagame gets too stale or what have you.

Personally, I'm predicting scenario three will end up happening. If we do go through with this, even with Stealth Rock, I'm willing to bet Ho-oh is going to be a beast and too versatile to counter. I'm really curious to see how Wobbuffet will turn out, though, so I do hope we include him with whatever we decide.

 

[obi]

When AA and I were using this exact logic (a lot of them could balance each other out) before English DP was released, everyone was like "Oh no we'll have time to test them out later!" and now it's a lot harder, or they said "Come on Deoxys-S is obviously broken brb training Garchomp". So yes, I agree with this.

 

[X-Act]

If this suggestion shows beyond any doubt that each of those Pokemon is uber/non-uber, then I'm all for it.

 

[Hipmonlee]

I still think no Garchomp/TTar would be a better solution, but I dont play enough to start a tournament to test it..

Just posting this so you dont think I have changed my mind or anything.

Have a nice day.

 

[Mekkah]

Before I get yelled at: I am all for this idea. However, there is two problems:

1. People can all play the same game, and see different things. This is why opinions on moveset effectivity and other personal preferences exist, this is why we could use Celebi for ages and people would still call it uber and this is why the tier debates are 10 pages long with hardly any progress made. So unless something becomes really clear in every member's eyes all of a sudden (which I doubt since this would be a very revolutionair game ot play), even testing it for ages will still leave disagreements between "I found Ho-oh fairly easy to counter and with Stealth Rock it couldn't really do anything" and "man you need Milotic to counter that Ho-oh and with Recover it can restore half its health anyway and it only needs to come in once to hurt stuff". I hope you understand what I mean: testing does not guarantee that the elite battlers, or the Smogon Staff, or everyone including January '08 suddendly agrees that a Pokemon is uber or not.

2. Whether these Pokemon are very counterable or not, fact remains that they also add somewhere between one and four threats to counter (let's face it, Latios and Latias may have small differences, but it's very unlikely that one will get unbanned and the other won't). Just look at the DP offensive threat list right now and tell me it's possible to counter all that stuff. Some people have managed to come very close (and by some people I mean Obi's infamous stall team), but then you sacrifice a buttload of offense and you probably don't have everything covered (Obi's team does, to an extent, struggle against Choice Band Weavile and Chainchomp).

The only reasonable point against this argument (besides "you can't counter everything anyway so what more could 4 extra threats hurt", which I don't really like) is, in my opinion, that some of the Pokemon added could help you counter others. This is mostly the Lati twins though. Wobbuffet counters about everything, but only does it once and is essentially a wasted teamslot unless you manage to Wish it. Ho-oh is very average defensively even without Stealth Rock due to its typing. If Stealth Rock is in play, Ho-oh takes neutral hits about as well as 0/0 Magnezone if I recall Dragontamer correctly (hey, if we're going to reference MrE I'm going to reference Dragontamer!). Deoxys-S can be tuned to counter a lot of stuff, kinda like Bronzong except it actually does something and it can outrun snails. However, these Pokemon, too, require a team slot, so the overall possible defense of a theoretical DP team will only increase if they counter more Pokemon than others. And I don't think that's the case, at least they don't increase the possible overall defense more than the different kinds of offense.

 

[Aeolus]

I agree with Misty and Phuq that Ho-oh is unreasonable. The others deserve a shot though.

 

[Jumpman16]

i closed the 11-page thread about lati@s in stark because stuff just kept getting repeated over and over, but i also "promised" that we'd do something about their inclusion in standard shortly.

maniaclyrisist has a tourney going on currently but as Mr.E said one tourney really can't do that much. the problem with not having smogon's own battling simulator now means that efforts to coordinate the inclusion of lati@s in standard play may have to go through Colin i guess? what are your thoughts on coordinating a lati@s test?

 

[Jumpman16]

really need some input here guys. this is without a doubt the MOST serious issue our community is dealing with right now. we can't just do away with our "no talking about status in ubers" rule and then not do anything about it—the theorymon threads in stark have been about 95% utter garbage that will not solve anything without concrete action.

it is largely up to us to do something about testing the current suspects, lest AA and his disappointment in the "current process" be ultimately valid.

post in this thread. if you have already, post again.

 

[X-Act]

I'll post, since I'm sick of these kind of threads. There's another one now too.

As I said before, I'm all for trying them out, extensively, so that they prove their status.

I am for trying them out one by one, though, not all of them together at once. Latios and Latias can be paired together I suppose, but all the others (Ho-oh, Deoxys-e, Wobbuffet) should be tested individually in my opinion. Or are these latter three gonna be tested in the first place?

 

[Mekkah]

I believed the whole point of the OP was to show that testing one Pokemon at once makes everyone prepare for it and therefore doesn't show desirable testing results?

Anyway, go ahead and add these ubers/OUs in question to a special tier where they are "in test". And from there just play with them like you play with or without any clause: make sure beforehand your opponent agrees what "mode" you're playing in. Until Shoddy implements something to make that better automated we'll have to do with that.

I also say we add some more rules (or more emphasis) on theorymon threads like this that allows us to weed out stupid replies. If you really want to organize things maybe make official discussion threads for each of them under strict moderation. I can help with that if people think it's a good idea.

 

[X-Act]

Okay, we test them out all at the same time, then.

So which Pokemon would be tested if everyone agrees? I'm asking this question since it looks inevitable that an idiot in Stark Mountain will now post "hey shouldn't <insert uber Pokemon that hasn't been discussed yet> be OU?". After all, first it was Deoxys-S, then Latia/os, then Ho-oh, and this week somebody came up with Deoxys-D. (This is why I'm getting fed up with these posts.) We need to provide a reason for the people to know why we chose to test so-and-so Pokemon and not so-and-so.

 

[Mekkah]

Let's try them all! Oh wait. (I seriously think this is a problem - from these guys to things like Lugia and Mewtwo is becoming a smaller and smaller step to make)

I'd test Mew sooner than I'd test Deoxys-D to be honest, I have no idea what the Deoxys-D guy was thinking. So Lati's, Wobbuffet, Deoxys-S, Ho-oh and Mew...

 

[Phuquoph]

I like the idea of having a parallel OU tier with Lati@s. That seems like the best way to test them.

This is why I wanted to keep they "Status in ubers" threads banned from Stark, they always attract the worst posts. I would really like to have that rule put back, as the "I think X isn't an uber" threads are really fucking awful. Moderating a thread where people report and debate their experiences with Lati@s in OU will be bad enough, without any others to deal with at the same time.

 

[Mekkah]

We don't really have an excuse to put the rule back now that we can test them. Do you really want someone like Amazing Ampharos to be right about this and constantly rub it in on everyone?

 

[obi]

lol I don't understand the AA hate (and I don't like it in this case particularly because I was saying the same thing!).

 

[X-Act]

I still don't agree with testing Ho-oh to be honest.

The only reason it is being debated is because of the existence of Stealth Rock. There are three flaws with using Stealth Rock as an argument to allow Ho-oh in OU:

1) The Ho-oh player can first Rapid Spin and then bring Ho-oh out.
2) The Ho-oh player can actually use Stealth Rock to its advantage, using it to activate things like Salac Berry easier.
3) Even if the two above points end up not being valid and Ho-oh is allowed in OU, it would mean that every team would need to pack Stealth Rock to counter Ho-oh. Forcing people to use a move just to counter one Pokemon is overcentralisation.

 

[Phuquoph]

Just to clarify, will the Latis be allowed to carry Soul Dew or not? I think they should both be allowed to use it, as it seems to go against the whole idea of "banning as little as possible" if we refuse to allow either of them to carry it.

 

[Mekkah]

The whole discussion thread was about Soul Dewless Lati's...I believe everyone can agree that Soul Dew Lati's are nowhere near debatable.

@X-Act: These 3 points you made can, will and have always been countered endlessly before. In the end, testing is really our best bet (though I still don't think it's an end-all solution). Fact remains that whenever Stealth Rock is on the field, Ho-oh has less HP than Shuckle, and since Stealth Rock is on nearly every damn team and since Ghosts do exist to block Rapid Spin, it is debatable at the very least.

 

[Jumpman16]

Actually, Soul Dew on Lati@s was debated in either the latest Lati@s thread or one of the ones before that. The gist is that Lati@s is usually stopped by physical attacks like Outrage, Megahorn, Ice Punch, Pursuit, Crunch, and Night Slash, not by Special attacks like Ice Beam or Blizzard or Dark Pulse or Shadow Ball. On paper I can see Scarftran being annoyed by Soul Dew Lati@s but pretty much no special attack is 2HKOing Lati@s besides Draco Meteor, a Specs Dragon Pulse, or Gengar's Shadow Ball anyway, so yeah. Then there's the fact that Latias herself definitely loves Leftovers, and DD Latios certainly isn't using Soul Dew 99% of the time.

So...not the best argument, of course, but that is kind of why I made this topic—it needs to be tested.

 

[Misty]

then why not test Mewtwo and stuff like that :/