My Theories about Banning

[domeface]

Blissey is not the end-all wall. Stop exaggerating. There are tons of things (things which aren't even considered walls) that are 2HKOed by neutral attacks. And requiring 2 physical hits to KO it doesn't make it insurmountable. I would expect all Infernapes to carry Life Orb. If you rely on Knock Off to keep your Blissey alive, you shouldn't expect to have your Blissey around very long.

That's not my point; my point is, Blissey can take most physical hits that aren't STAB SE Close Combats at least once, and still do her job, be it crippling with status, curing her own team's status, passing wishes, or whatever, in the one free turn that gives her. I'm not claiming Blissey is incredibly physically bulky, or whatever, just that it isn't instantly taken down by any physical hit, as everyone seems to think.

And I'll admit, the Infernape scenario was rather ridiculous. But take another example - mixed Dragonite (112 Atk EVs) with his 134 base Attack, using SE Superpower while holding a Life Orb, does a maximum of 94.1 to Blissey - this means with one turn of leftovers (ie, on the switch-in), Blissey has a miniscule chance of being OHKO'd, even with SR, and with two turns of leftovers (thanks Protect), this chance drops to nothing. And the bulky DD set does even less, assuming Leftovers (even with 252 Atk EVs). And, to whoever said that bulky DD Gyarados turns Blissey into seyup fodder - T-wave says "hey, wassup??" Since, y'know, Bulky Gyara is barely 3HKOing with Waterfall before the DD, allowing Blissey to easily cripple it before switching out.

And to the guy who said that Blissey can't pose a threat, just take hits - T-wave and Toxic can together cripple the vast majority of the metagame, and since very few hits can OHKO Blissey, barring powerful physical Fighting and/or STAB moves from a high Attack stat, it's very easy for Blissey to cripple its would-be counters with these moves. And even if you do happen to be running Lucario or whatever, that doesn't stop Blissey passing Wishes while you switch in, or acting as a cleric, since these things require just one free turn, easily achieved by switching in on a special attacker.

 

[greg3064]

Bulky Gyara probably does set up on Blissey, as most Bulky Gyara have Taunt. Blissey would need Thunderbolt to win that one.

Blissey's physical bulkiness is above average, but personally KOing her has never really worried me. She can be unpredictable in a Salamence-eque way because she can carry Thunder Wave/Toxic and Ice Beam/Flamethrower/Thunderbolt/Seismic Toss, which can punish most switch-ins. Like Salamence nothing is really safe until you know her set, but she doesn't have the destructive power even with her ability to cripple.

Lucario and Infernape can both SD on the switch which can put any incoming teammate or physical wall in a bad position, as both of them at +2 can OHKO Skarmory with Close Combat or Fire Punch respectively. MixApe can of course hit physical walls like Skarmory and Hippowdon specially. And Dragonite's odds of OHKOing Blissey aren't bad, and she's still going down the next turn unless she carries Ice Beam.

 

[mtr]

Blissey's physical bulkiness is on the level of Spiritomb and Scizor, meaning average at best.

And also, not to minimod, but this is going off topic. Blissey never has, and never will be banned. It can't even successfully wall every special attacker, it merely forces them to use tools (Explosion, Close Combat, Rest, etc) that they wouldn't use against offensive teams. It's the tradeoff you make in all circumstances: you can specialize a Pokemon to beat stall, or to beat offense, but not both.

 

[Mattman324]

This arguing about Blissey is moot. What's that? A pokemon without STAB cannot beat a pokemon with the best HP ALLOWABLE BY THE GAME with a super effective move? And this pokemon is boosting their defense as much as possible? Well I wonder how that happened?

Sereously. I don't care if Blissey isn't OHKOd by, say, Dragonite's Superpower. It is automatically forced to either Softboiled or Wish, and that leaves it worthless for one turn. And in that turn, you could use a different attack and finish it off. And remember: Blissey using special attacks is like... GARCHOMP using special attacks, except weaker and it doesn't have a 140 BP STAB move. And we all know how shitty Garchomp is at special attacking anyway. IT FAILS TO ONE HIT KILL SALAMENCE WITH A FOUR TIMES WEAKNESS sometimes.

Oh, and there's another thing: BLISSEY IS PREDICTABLE. The second I see one, I know almost right off the bat that the set is almost guarunteed to be Ice Beam/Wish/Protect/Thunder Wave. It CAN use Softboiled and get another option (usually Seismic Toss), but when was the last time you saw anything else? And that set is set up bait for so many pokemon it isn't funny in the slightest. Tauntrados, and ground type really (Cursepurt is notable here for not being hurt much by Ice Beam)... and then Starmie can rapid spin, Skarmory (Who doesn't really care about the paralisis) gets his spikes, Forretriss gets whatever it wants, and more importantly, Scizor and other powerful pokemon get in fairly simply.

And this is another thing. Scizor is an offensive threat. It can 2HKO many pokemon easily. But is it Uber? NO. Scizor will always be CB with Bullet Punch/U-Turn/Pursuit/Superpower or SD over Pursuit or U-turn and possibly Bug Bite holding a Life Orb. There is NO WAY IN HELL Scizor breaks through a Gyarados without doing something absolutely nuts hax-wise and getting 5 crits in a row or something, it can't beat Rotom-H without using lolNightSlash, Zapdos is Rotom with less defense but with Roost and not being weak to even NS, and Heatran beats it if it doesn't SP on the switch. And Magnazone is the same there, except if it get's Scizor on BP or Pursuit, there is litterally NO OPTION for scizor but to die.

Salamence? Didn't have anything. Hippowdon? Good luck surviving Draco Meteors. Gliscor? The same. Steel Types? It has EQ, you know. Bronzong or Skarmory? It can run Fire Blast. Scizor? Fire Blast, notably if it gets in it wins, but... we just noted all of Scizor's problems. It CAN be beaten, but it usually requires perfect prediction, losing a pokemon, or both.


Now, before you say "lol this guy is stupid", I cannot STAND stalling, and dislike using any team that isn't offensive. In fact, I found RBY to be one of the most highly enjoyable things I tried in months! BUT, and this is a large "BUT", defensive pokemon have a very large place in the metagame. To use the ice cubes, when one pokemon goes to ubers, another (or multiple) can take it's place, and you said we removed the ice cubes just to see what would happen, and as long as the results were enjoyable, they were good. You fail to realise the hypocracy of this statement, as you are intending to remove... oh, let's say about a quarter or more of the ice cubes, not caring what the end results would be, because in your offensive metagame, you are happy.

 

[Spenstar]

I think I get what the OP's saying. Obviously Wobbufet deserves to be banned (as does any pokemon with shadow tag) but Mense and Chomp, IMO, shouldn't have been. OU loses some of its charm IMO when the most popular and best pokemon get banned. It's like banning the favorite ice cream flavor so the lesser ice cream flavors get a shot.

 

[Randy]

Although defensive walls can be countered, I think some should seriously be considered for Uber because they wall most attackers

The offensive pokemon in OU should just say the way they used to be

 

[Baldafor]

I think the point needs to be made again.

If a wall doesn't wall most of the metagame, doesn't it suck? Why use it if it doesn't wall most of the metagame?

A wall's job is to wall things. If it can't wall, it is useless. Sure, some pokemon can break the wall, but the idea is that most cannot, so you can freely heal yourself, stat up, remove status for your team, wish pass, etc.

An offensive pokemon should not be able to beat every wall in the game with the same moveset.

Two very key differences between an uber-quality pokemon and one that is not: if a pokemon destroys most of the metagame, that is OU, and if it destroys all of the metagame, it is uber. Blissey doesn't even wall all the special attackers such as Porygon-Z.

 

[Ice-eyes]

Blissey only doesn't wall PoryZ if it's LO + Nasty Plot + Adaptability + Hyper Beam, which is a horribly bad set.

Other than that, I agree.

 

[Lucindril]

I haven't read this whole thread, but what exactly are you suggesting? We either take out the biggest threats and just let more rise to the top, or we leave them in there as rulers of the metagame? Either way there will always be a few Pokemon dominating the meta.

I personally think the banning of certain Pokemon does allow people to see the true potential of what were previously underdogs, which makes the whole OU environment more interesting, because it's not the same old pokes you're seeing every time you battle. I'm sure others will agree that it gets pretty boring to see Scizor on a large percentage of teams, but it's not as bad as Garchomp used to be, where most people's teams were centred around utilizing and countering Garchomp. Overall I think banning makes the metagame more diverse and eventually more fun to play.

 

[Eubanks]

I don't get the point of trying to compare a wall like Blissey to a huge offensive threat like Salamence or Garchomp. You see a Blissey, you know its a wall. You aren't surprised by any moveset it has, because they're all incredibly standard and it has very little room for variation. If your running some strange offensive set on Blissey, then it basically won't do the only job its great at, and is a wasted spot after they realize that. And since while realizing it, it won't kill half your team like a Mence or a Chomp, its hard to call it imbalanced.

Even if the person using Garchomp or Mence messes up, its still not hard to get a kill with them. Using them isn't very hard, because unless you swap in and use Outrage instantly or something, its very likely to kill something. They both have movesets they can run that kill their "counters", and the best you can generally hope for against either of them is a huge amount of user error on the part of the person using them, or a revenge kill. And with either of them, the things commonly run to revenge kill them can often only try to speed tie, or your forced to use something like Weavile or Mamoswine for priority against Garchomp.

They both were too large of offensive threats that were basically impossible to keep in check, and in OU, do their jobs far better than anything else.

 

[Damix91]

Dont post here but this argument is ridiculous. Banning occurs in lots of games and for very good reasons. You guys are not focusing on why banning occurs. Forget your analogies, banning occurs to diversify the metagame, not specifically because something (pokemon in this instance) is deemed powerful.

In this case Salamence has been banned because it was so useful that the metagame was centralized around him. Like some pokemon before him (garchomp), many teams had him and ALL teams needed specific ways of countering him alone. With him gone it may seem like another pokemon will just fill his niche but the closest you get to that happening is the rise of Dragonite and Flygon. Two pokemon, therefore diversifying the metagame and allowing for more creativity in team building, which most people would agree is more fun.

The recentralisation theory orignally mentioned is also wrong because a if once a pokemon is banned, its counters are not likely to be banned next. Once again with Salamence, its counters are not strong enough to take on the ENTIRE METAGAME just Salamence and so have no grounds to be banned. Furthermore if a pokemon tries to rise to take Salamence's particular niche those same counters will still therefore be around.

You only need to look at any card game (Yugioh, Magic) to see the effectiveness of banning. We need it to keep the metagame expansive and yet fair.

 

[badabing]

excuse me for being a noob but those are some hella long posts!

Anyways, Imma give it to you straight. This banning process is too complicated. Some big cheese like my boy down there should just set up the tiers and that'll be the end of it. Just give one smart guy control of the whole thing.

btw that ice cube metaphor socrates shit didn't really speak to me.

 

[Shizzle]

The metagame is ever changing, tiers are always going to have to meet the metagame too.

 

[familyguyman]

The whole metaphor hinges on a normal distribution of Pokemon "power". If you assume a limited few are very powerful and OU and some are very weak, with the bulk in the middle, then yes, removing the top 10% or so will open a lot of room for a lot of Pokemon.

However, "power" and skill, in many facets, is distributed in a more exponential, or possibly lognormal fashion (or probably even more complex). You can look at Home Run distributions, goal scoring distributions, etc. Most hinge on a large majority near the bottom and a every declining amount closer to the top. In such cases, you could remove the top 50% of OU and it'd still function the same way only now, Roserade would be the special sweeper of choice over Heatran (purely for example). Therefore, the ice cube metaphor does not hold.

Even if you slice it among roles, there is no elite set of physical walls, a few shitty physical walls and a bulge in between. There's an elite set, a few very good ones, more average ones, even more mediocre ones and ton of useless physical walls (like Wormadam). Removing Skarmory and Hippowdon just lets Swampert and Gliscor move in.

 

[khz]

Yes but with walls it gets to the point where the Pokemon moving up are not of a high enough quality to wall properly.

 

[AbSoL!]

I don't want to sound mean but this theory is bullshit.

You said to not ban offensive threats but that we should ban Walls. How does that make ANY sense to me at all. A walls job is too wall over half the metagame, if it can't do that then it is a bad wall. Also walls don't require as much prediction to counter as a Salamence. A salamence almost ensures a +1 advantage for your team. Even a noob like me could play Salamence and still kill one or two pokemon(s). A wall can grant you a +1 or +2 advantage but it requires team support and good prediction. That's why walls aren't getting banned as often as offensive threats. The only way in my opinion a wall should get banned is if it walls EVERY pokemon in that tier. That's why Wobbufet is banned because nothing can switch into it. The OP obviously wasn't exactly thinking when he posted this.

I used to play Yugioh and if they never banned or limited cards the game would be VERY boring.

 

[Donny Mae.]

If you ask me, it'll get to a point where the only OU pokemon are Luvdisc and Spinda if the banning keeps happening.

 

[Enygma]

If you ask me, it'll get to a point where the only OU pokemon are Luvdisc and Spinda if the banning keeps happening.

Nah. They're Uber too. More like Weedle and Feebas. Caterpie and Magikarp are too strongth.

I agree. Sometimes I think bans are a bit unjust, but I also understand that it's for the health of the metagame.

 

[Obsessed]

If you ask me, it'll get to a point where the only OU pokemon are Luvdisc and Spinda if the banning keeps happening.

Nah. They're Uber too. More like Weedle and Feebas. Caterpie and Magikarp are too strongth.

I agree. Sometimes I think bans are a bit unjust, but I also understand that it's for the health of the metagame.

To make the slippery slope argument means you have totally misunderstood why something is banned in the first place. They are not banned because they are the best pokemon in the metagame. That logic is imbecilic, since there would always be one or more 'best' pokemon. Pokemon are banned because they are more powerful than the rest of the metagame by too large a margin.

In fact, if you raise the slippery slope argument, your position must be that there can be NO banned pokemon, i.e. that OU should have the Ubers in it. In which case, why don't you just play Ubers? It's like complaining that UU doesn't have enough powerful pokemon in it, and so the OU pokemon should be allowed in it.

 

[NeoSeth]

I have to say I never thought Mence was overpowered. Mamoswine Ice Shard OHKOs it 100% of the time. Weavile can do the same. Heck, I bet Dewgong could. A +Speed CSgar with HP Ice, or CSrachi with Ice Punch, or CSgon with Outrage, etc. all counter Mence pretty well, though I'll admit the last two are a speed tie with +Speed DDmence. Revenge killing it is simply the way to counter it.

I think the point that's trying hard to be made is that we ban the ice cubes that are large and irregularly shaped and thus take up a large amount of space in an attempt to create more variety and a more fun metagame. But after it all re-stabilizes, there's another large ice cube.

For example:

Mence is banned for being overpowered. The metagame shuffles again and wider variety emerges, since everyone isn't worried about Mence sweeping their team. Everyone high-fives and says mission accomplished. Then after a month or two, the metagame has stabilized. Tyrannitar is now top-dog, and is the dominant threat for it's vicious dual-stab and ability to tear through teams with ease. The metagame has now been re-stabilized around this new dominant Pokemon. People freak and talk about how powerful Tyrannitar is, when really it isn't any better, it's just got less competition for the top sweeping spot. Tyrannitar is then banned. After Tyrannitar is banned, Infernape moves up for the most powerful sweeping spot, etc.

Now, I'm not saying DD Tyrannitar is going to be the next big thing (Though it should be, since it rocks), but that was just an example. In the ice cube metaphor, the cup isn't getting bigger. It's just getting emptier, and proportionally (in regards to the rest of the ice), Tyrannitar is just as big as Salamence before the ban.

I hope I made myself clear.

EDIT: All the Yu-Gi-Oh! analogies are getting to me. I DO believe that some things should be banned when they're broken and absolutely EVERYTHING revolves around them. I.E, probably the worst period in YGO history: Chaos. The two Chaos monsters where so overwhelmingly powerful that you basically ran a deck around them, ran a deck designed to BEAT them, or lost. I never felt that Salamence was that way. Now, I played with Garchomp and Latias, and I have to say only Latias really felt truly broken. Garchomp I'll allow, since you could run Yache Berry and then BAM, victory. But I never really felt Salamence was broken, since it's countered by a lot. It's weak to Stealth Rock, dies to almost all users of Ice Shard, or anything that out-speeds and packs either a STAB or reasonably powerful Dragon, Ice or Rock attack. I just felt like if I encountered it, it wasn't more of a threat than anything else, or my team was built badly. Yes, the metagame is currently a lot more fun without Salamence, but how long until we centralize around something new?

Finally, don't freak out over this too much. Gen 5 could introduce that Ice-version of SR, and then Garchomp and Salamence are all FAR less frightening. That's not the main thing, but the point is that Gen 5 could change things to make Garchomp and Mence OU again, make Heracross and Electrivire AMAZING, and render Swampert UU. Things will change.

 

[Baldafor]

Revenging a pokemon isn't countering it. There is absolutely nothing stopping Salamence from switching out of the completely obvious Ice Shard to any pokemon that can take the hit and OHKO back.

The argument has been used again and again. No one seriously believe that works, and the usage numbers also debunk that theory. If Weaville and Mamoswine countered Salamence, they wouldn't be rocking the bottom of the usage charts.