Announcement np: SM OU Suspect Process, Round 5 - I Can't Escape Myself (ARENA TRAP BANNED)

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Milkyway has spent an awfully long time to say something that has been in my mind for quite a while. It is to do with forms of argument more than mon's so heads up in advance. Also I know and respect that you didn't tl;dr but I think you can by a few ad absurdums.

I would like to elabourate on the comment:
"The ability 'arena trap' is uncompetetive"

To prove this:

a) You must either explain why it is traps too many things trapped in this case (percentage or raw number). Good previous posts on this idea.
b) You must explain why trapping abilities on a mon at x winrate or x effect size is a problem.
c) You must explain why there is neither a metagame that could come to exist, nor a mon that could have arena trap, that was not 'overpowered' (by whatever definition you use
d) You must beleive that trapping as an ability always is uncompetetive (probably by the old reduces skill rule)
e) You must beleive that trapping always is uncompetetive, even in the form of whirlpool and spider web.
f) You must beleive that trapping is not uncompetetive inherently, but any form of trapping with the counterplay avaliable atm in the game would always be a problem (though this is an odd argument given that the prominence of U-turn on the things trapped is a form of counterplay)
g) You must beleive that trapping is not uncompetetive inherently, but arena trap with the counterplay avaliable atm in the game would always be a problem

If there is a way to logically prove statement 1) apart from doing the above please explain it.

Now the test of how many arguments in this thread have done the above by single example:

PoisonousPen: doesn't argue against arena trap for the most part, only the compound, hence dugtrio is the problem for the most part. Where they do argue against arena trap;
"According to Smogon's rulebook, it removes player choice, and really should qualify for the textbook definition of uncompetitive." This fits the argument of Trapping always is uncompetetive, yet, I don't think that this user has issue with spiders web so it doesn't qualify for any of the above.
"-Magnet Pull and Arena Trap are not the same thing. Not only is MP much more more niche (Seriously, how many Magnet Pull users have you seen?), but it affect a much more smaller group of 'mons. (Steel-Types versus non Ghost grounded mons. The numerical difference is staggering.)". They are clearly not the same thing and this argument begins to look like argument a). However, no numbers are presented so it fails criteria a). In addition if the argument is only to be made with the number of things trapped then the user needs also to explain why trapping is only an issue at high numbers and when it is an ability; trapping moves trap more mons than both magnet pull and arena trap without being uncompetetive.

The above may seem pedantic as you would comment 'trapping moves give you a choice at least before the move is used' however I would note that pursuit does not give you a chocie, you have to take the damage if they click the move. You may comment 'trapping at the cost of a move is fine' in which case I would ask, if there were a move that could trap you before you switched for the duration that the user was in for [allowing for u-turn and shed shell as counterplay] would this move be balanced... probably not The point I am making is explaining why trapping as a move is balanced is not as simple as saying, none of the moves do what trapping abilities do, because if a move that did the above came out, you would need a new argument of why that was broken, and it would likely end up at it generates 50/50's or it traps too much for the cost of doing it. This of course begs the questions 1) would any mon with arena trap generate 50/50'? 2)is running a mon with an ability not a cost of the ability to trap? Again rendering the dugtrio arena trap compound the problem not the ability

To phrase the above in logical steps:
1)Trapping by virtue of trapping too many things cannot be the sole issue or trappping moves would be banned
2)Trapping moves are not worthy of ban because of something about them.
2)a) Because they don't remove choice on a mon of the users choice when used (as you can switch first)
2)a)i) Pursuit removes the choice of taking damage. Having to take damage is considered balanced, so the issue isn't removing player choice. If pursuit was an OHKO move, it would be banned, therefore, pursuit is balanced because it doesn't remove enough choice (losing a mon of your opponents choice).
2)b) Because they do remove choice but at too great a cost to the user to be broken. This could be the cost of them not trapping things they are good against because the opponent gets to switch out first or because using that move is too costly to the aim of winning the battle.
3a) if 2a) is the reason that trapping moves are not worthy of a ban then this applies to Arena trap. If Arena trap was on a mon that did negligble damage to things in OU it would still remove the choice to switch but the choice loss is not too great to render the ability broken. (To ad absurdum, if the only thing that had arena trap was a 1hp mon with only splash and no immunities this would clearly not be a problem)
3b) if 2b) is the reason that trapping moves are not worthy of a ban then shouldn't we consider the oppurtunity cost of running arena trap mons. Running Dugtrio has a cost, it is just too low to render it unusable. (again if the only thing that had arena trap was a 1hp mon with only splash and no immunities this would clearly not be a problem as the cost of being able to trap it has no benefits)
4) Arena trap is only a problem when it removes important and significant choice for a low cost
5) 4) is dependent on the combination of an ability and a mon
6) Therefore Arena trap cannot be broken because it traps too much

What I am trying to say here really, is that this is a suspect of the wrong thing. I think Dugtrio is broken not Arena trap and I have tried to prove that by logical argumentation. I haven't gone through every psot since coming up with this criteria, but I can't think of one that did pass the test of making a coherent form of arguments a through g. If you think you have argued using one of those forms succesfully I will happily look at your argument. Also I choose PoisionousPen because he was the last user to post an argument independent of others posts.

Also not to pick on you pen, but when you say this: '-Diglett/Trapinch. They have the ability, sure, but they're not nearly as powerful of a threat as the Dugmeister over here.' you prove that what you actually think is that dugtrio needs a ban not arena trap. That is at least one user who in the current vote will explicilty be voting against dugtrio, not arena trap... I am sure there are actually many more users doing this also and don't criticise them for doing what is in there best intrest. I will however criticise the decision to target arena trap not Dugtrio.

Edit: To respond to comments asking why it matters, I would say because it affects mons in the metagame right now. If you think that arena trap makes Diglett and Trapinch 'uncompetetive' wherever they are, then you could have a discussion about those mons in time. However as the game is now there is negligble pressure to investigate those two mons for being 'uncompetetive' nor are the metagame's they occupy regularly being bemoaned as unhealthy due to their presence. Yet both of them are seeing an ability they have disapear due to people wanting rid of Dugtrio. There may be a discussion of whether Arena Trap is healthy but as I and more prominently Milky are trying to show, an argument proving Arena trap is broken has yet to appear. Not only is it a bad precedent to set that dealing with OU metagame health ought be done without fear of collateral damage to other tiers but it also muddies exactly what the issue is with trapping in an inconsitent way. In a way which could be used in the future to argue in favor of dealing with other trapping methods (for instance if magnet pull saw a huge increase in targets it could trap in OU this suspect would likely be of consideration to most voters and the organisation which would decide to suspect it). The costs to you may be low, to me they are not. However, the cost of not doing suspects of abilities like this in the future is negligble. You have to organise the same suspect, taking the same time, with the benefit of only the mon generating the issue having action taken against it.
 
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I imagine most of you would answer that Diglett is an otherwise terrible pokemon with atrocious stats compared to other OU mons and that the only thing that would make such a terrible mon viable (lets assume Diglett would be viable in a Dugtrio-less meta for the sake of this discussion) is Arena Trap, thus Arena Trap, the ability, must be the problem.

My issue with this is that plenty of OU mons need their abilities to be viable, not just Diglett. Greninja would be nothing in OU without Protean or Battle Bond, same with Dragonite and Multiscale, Kingdra and Swift Swim, Pelipper and Drizzle,
Mega Mawile and Huge Power, Mimikyu and Disguise, the list goes on and on. We even saw what happened to Talonflame this gen with the nerf to Gale Wings. One of the most viable mons in ORAS barely receives any use now because of the nerf to its ability.
If I may, none of those are as centralizing around itself nor as allowing towards the Pokémon making use of that ability than Arena Trap. I'll pick a few examples, based on your abilities of choice:
  • While Protean is a great ability, it does not carry a Pokémon by itself. I could use Greninja's preevos to support this (after all, Fletchinder was RU last gen, perhaps a sign of just how good Gale Wings was last gen), but more so Kecleon shows what I mean--and, mind you, Kecleon has a good enough movepool and special bulk, yet even Protean fails to raise it in usage above PU;
  • Abilities that boost speed under certain weather such as Swift Swim are also not hypercarrying just about any Pokémon, as it has to meet at least some threat conditions. I think I'd be just mean to use Luvdisc as an example, so let's go with Beartic--a Pokémon with 130 base Attack, access to Swords Dance and good Ice STAB through Icicle Crash, acceptable 95/80/80 defenses and has not only one, but two speed-boosting abilities to choose from... still PU, I'd argue due to a sheer lack of movepool;
  • Even Huge Power, an ability that people often joke about "just slap it on anything and it'll become broken," is not actually capable of that much... at least not in just about any Pokémon. Regular Medicham, with access to such a strong STAB as HJK... is BL4. Bottom PU otherwise, I'd wager. Even Mega Mawile, with the equivalent of 260 base Attack on top of proudly bearing arguably one of the best typings in the game, uniting great offensiveness with unparalled resistances, access to Intimidate prior to Mega Evolving and 50/125/95 defenses afterwards, has fallen back to OU this gen.
  • And, since I touched the matter, guess what--even Gale Wings last gen wasn't enough to determine a Pokémon's usefulness in its entirety! Admittedly, I thought Talonflame would fall down to NU or something, but, much to my surprise, it is currently banned from RU, in BL2. Not only gen 6 Gale Wings did not, at the best of its abilities, suffice to justify a ban on Talonflame from OU, the fact that one might as well never use it nowadays also does not necessarily mean the Pokémon is bottom trash. Coupled together, this should be more than enough solid proof that even such an ability requires its user to be at least competent in base stats and movepool.
I believe these examples get to the point just fine: outstanding abilities that, in spite of their greatness and their capability of making certain Pokémon, under certain circumstances, leave their deadly marks on higher tiers, they cannot carry just about any Pokémon by their mere existance.
The issue is that Arena Trap applies that to a wider range. I believe there have been more than enough knowledgeable posts in this thread, denouncing the ability's potential, but I also believe the point I'm trying to get across isn't as considered, or at least not as understandably mentioned. Even something as frail as 10/25/45 defenses and as weak as 55/35/95 offenses, once Dugtrio was gone for the first suspect test, found some space for itself on laddering teams and, contrary to everyone's first impression, wasn't dumpstered back to LC as soon as their trainer realized "the hell am I doing, this is too gimmicky." It somehow worked, and its other Arena Trap buddy also delivered some work through its 100 base Attack, much like Dugtrio right now, though burdened with a crippling 10 base Speed.
Now, my point is not that, contrary to those aforementioned abilities, it can carry any Pokémon; at least I don't see an Arena Trap Sunkern or Wishiwashi working in my book. My point is that Arena Trap is so overpowered and uncompetitive that it has a far better potential of carrying a Pokémon on its back; banning merely one of its users won't cut in, not just because there are other (albeit not as potent) alternatives, but because GameFreak should continue to release new games, thus potential new Pokémon, the possibility of one of those being bestowed with Arena Trap is real, and something that should come with at least a little concern.
Ultimately, when you transform not just one but two LC Pokémon into potential threats in Overused, if those facts are not enough to conclude that this ability needs to go, then allow me to give the necessary surety by saying through this post that this ability needs to go.
EDIT: Adding a bonus point to be considered in the examples.
 
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Shurtugal

The Enterpriser.
is a Tiering Contributor
It's funny that TDK would believe that we would be divided this suspect, because I feel like there is a lot of community support in the Arena Trap ban.

A few things to clear up:
1.) Discussion about banning Dugtrio vs. Arena Trap is very redundant and unneccessary here in my humble opinion because in SM OU they will both accomplish roughly the same thing. Arena Trap makes more sense because a.) it removes any Pokemon that can fulfill Dugtrio's noncompetitive role and b.) there is precedence for this in Shadow Tag's suspect in ORAS where Wobbuffeut & Gothorita weren't broken but accomplished the same unhealthy mechanic. The main part of this suspect should be asking yourself this question: Is Arena Trap unhealthy & will the metagame thrive from its removal?

2.) Comparing Magnezone to Dugtrio is not plausible because Magnezone can trap maybe 1-2 targets consistently whereas Dugtrio can trap significantly more.

-.-.-

Where do I begin with explaining Dugtrio? On the surface this Pokemon looks like mediocre trash; no bulk, limited movepool, singular typing... it's really easy to believe that this Pokemon is bad. In fact, Dugtrio should be bad. Think about it: awful stat distribution and BST, awful movepool, not fast or strong enough to keep up with the metagame...

So why is Dugtrio so good? Easy answer:

Arena Trap.

Trapping as a mechanic is a very controversial subject on Smogon. IMO any mechanic that punishes switching is usually healthy -- otherwise, we'd have a lot of Endless Battles (ha, there's actually a thread for that on PR, because Defog + Magic Bounce is so good at keeping the best switch punish aka hazards off the field that our games are endless now). However, trapping abilities have a way of pushing it over the edge. The reason why Arena Trap is broken in this metagame versus the other metagames it was present in is simple:

1.) SM has given Dugtrio more tools to use, and as such, is much more versatile than other generations. Its attack stat buff & Z moves allow Dugtrio to trap things like Mew & Ammonguss that it could never have trapped before ever in previous generations, to name a strong example. Scarf Dugtrio became relevant when SM increased the overall speed tiers & Sash has always been good.

2.) Because of these tools, Dugtrio can trap a much bigger portion of the metagame than it ever could before. The reason this is relevant is because this makes it very comparable to Shadow Tag. In previous generations Dugtrio/Arena Trap wasn't banned because it didn't trap as many threats & Dugtrio couldn't run nearly as many viable sets as it can now. Dugtrio's versatile is very unhealthy because one has to prepare for any one of its 3-4 sets; and Arena Trap will punish you if you do not know the correct Dugtrio set.

Arena Trap causes super dumb scenarios -- for example, a player can bring in Dugtrio on something like Tapu Fini, spam SR Screech EQ until it dies, then safely bring in Volcarona to sweep. Let's say that the other Pokemon up were like Tapu Koko at 50% with Brave Bird & Specs Greninja, and as such, Volcarona could only set up on Tapu Fini in order to win. The opponent's wincond is to not allow Volcarona any opportunities to set up. Dugtrio, purely through its Arena Trap ability, effectively removes any counterplay whatsoever from the opponent in stopping Volcarona from setting up from there and winning. I know this is a sort-of weak example, but there are many scenerios like this where the person facing against Dugtrio simply has 0 counterplay because of Arena Trap.

1.) Eject Button + Dugtrio has 0 counterplay, especially because Eject Button stops Volt Switch/U-Turn from working so : D
2.) Not being able to switch in general removes 90% of counterplay available, lots of games Dugtrio forces mindgame 50-50s: do I use Thunderbolt with Koko to OHKO Zard-Y, or do I U-turn predicting potential Scard Dugtrio. Careful -- if you U-Turn against Zard-Y, something is either dying or losing 50% of its HP : ' ).
3.) Predicting the wrong set. Dugtrio had Stone Edge when I brought QD Roost Volcarona under Misty Terrain, but then when you load up Coil Zygarde it suddenly has Toxic!! Even better is when they reveal Z move and suddenly the 50%+ Pokemon (Zyg/Mew/whatever) you kept to check it is gone!!! Remember, you predicted wrong and couldn't switch out to scout it because Arena Trap xDDDD


In scenarios where something has 0 counterplay, I think that's when we as a community should question how healthy it is or isn't. My argument is that Arena Trap is what allows Dugtrio, an otherwise very mediocre Pokemon, from doing a lot of the dumb things that it is capable of doing. While you can waggle your finger at me and tell me that Trapinch and Diglett are bad Pokemon (reminder: Dugtrio is also a bad Pokemon), I am going to tell you that Arena Trap can make Trapinch and Diglett from absolute garbage to something that can see adequete performence and viability, solely because of Arena Trap's presence on these Pokemon.

Dugtrio was originally suspected because of its presence on stall, and the community agreed that we could not ban Dugtrio solely based off its performence on one archetype (and by extension, one team). However, as the metagame has developed, Dugtrio has proven itself strong & broken on virtually any team that is put on because of the unparalleled amount of support it can bring to its team. Or I guess I should say "well-built" team as Dugtrio by itself is not broken, but the support it can provide to many of the offensive pokemon in our tier it's certainly debatabley broken.

With Hurricane Irma expected to hit me in a couple of hours, I do not know if i'll have internet in time to get my suspect requirements, but to everyone else who will, please ban Arena Trap. Thank you.
 
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In my humble opinion, upon a lot of thought, I have run the tests, and I have crunched the numbers. What I found might surprise you. After analyzing the data and considering the possibilities, the conclusion that I indeed have come up with is that its bad, and we should ban Arena Trap.
Please note that I don't mean any offense to you in particular teal6 before I say what I'm about to say. And I've noticed this happens a lot in all of the OU forums and I figured it would happen to me after I made that post which is why I'm bringing it up now.

I really hate it when a mod or any badgeholder in particular responds to a long, well-thought out post like mine with a cocky, sarcastic one liner. I put a lot of time into that post and it's rather annoying when someone who doesn't even read it says something cocky and stupid like this comment and doesn't even bother to address the post or the arguement itself and thus sort of undermines it.

Anyways, so this post actually adds to discussion I might as well take the time to respond to the other people who responded to me.

Your later statement directly contradicts your earlier ones. and But that can be overlooked I suppose to look at the overall message you were trying to prove. What I mainly wanted to hit on is your statement we have never experienced whether or not diglett/trapinch will be broken without arena trap. Because we have. Oh we have. Even looking earlier at your argument you mention multiple times of the prominence that diglett found itself being used during the suspect test. And it succeeded at its role of replacing dugtrio. Albeit a little more lacking, it nonetheless still found success. But its the fact that you acknowledged these statements that lead to my confusion. "Why can't we just ban Dugtrio and then decide if Arena Trap is broken on the other pokemon?" This is your exact quote. And you gave the answer to this quote in the exact same post. It has been tested and it has found success. Which is why we as the pro-ban side of the argument, would like to see trap banned, not only dugtrio.
I'm not even going to bother responding to the first part of your post since you attempted to take my post out of context and nitpick it before admitting that what you were nitpicking was pointless anyways. However, the second part of your post (which I bolded) raises a good point and is something I didn't have enough time to clarify on in my post so I'll attempt to elaborate more on now.

Yes I mentioned many times that a couple of people were able to climb high on the ladder and even get reqs during the first suspect test of Dugtrio using Diglett. However, just because a couple people managed to do well with Diglett doesn't mean "it succeeded at its role of replacing Dugtrio." And the assumption that just because a few people used Diglett and did well automatically makes it broken is completely idiotic and I wish people would stop making that assumption. Having like three people succeed with a certain pokemon or certain strategy is by no means evidence or even grounds for banning something. If you want to claim that Diglett/Trapinch with Arena Trap is broken, I would suggest actually playing with or against them in an actual battle and not just theorymonign based on the knowledge that someone got reqs using Diglett. I guarantee you that most of the people referring to that guy who got reqs using Diglett during the first Dugtrio suspect didn't even know about it until they saw someone post about it in this very forum and just mindlessly threw it into their own arguement because they thought it sounded good. So no, Diglett and Trapinch have not been tested (although I'm clearly in favor of actually testing them instead of banning them without a test like we are trying to do now) because I'm sure that very very few people actually played against them or with them in the past and just because a couple people did well with them doesn't mean you can generalize by saying they "found success" and go even further by using that generalization as a grounds for banning the said pokemon.



Why does it matter so much to ban Dugtrio in place of Arena Trap?

I mean, seriously. Whether to ban the mon or the ability, it shouldn't matter. Smogon tends to be a little inconsistent with banning mons (like the Greninja-in-lieu-of-Protean and the Shadow Tag-in-lieu-of-Gothitelle), but no consistency is required. As long as the meta becomes better at the end, who cares whether the mon or the ability should be banned.

And on a final note, we aren't supposed to be discussing potential suspects in this thread. IIRC this is for Arena Trap discussion ONLY.
It matters because if you ban Arena Trap you essentially ban Trapinch and Diglett along with Dugtrio, but if you just ban Dugtrio, Trapinch and Diglett can still be used in OU. I agree that the meta should become better in the end. That's why banning two pokemon who we know nothing about just because they share the same (unpopular) ability as Dugtrio bothers me. I think we should ban Dugtrio first and then see what happens with Diglett and Trapinch. Perhaps we would end up banning them to, perhaps they would become viable and healthy in OU, or perhaps no one would use them anyways and the banning ability vs. mon discussion wouldn't matter. I don't know the answer to this question and neither does anyone else which is why I don't think we should blindly ban these two mons.


If I may, none of those are as centralizing around itself nor as allowing towards the Pokémon making use of that ability than Arena Trap. I'll pick a few examples, based on your abilities of choice:
  • While Protean is a great ability, it does not carry a Pokémon by itself. I could use Greninja's preevos to support this (after all, Fletchinder was RU last gen, perhaps a sign of just how good Gale Wings was last gen), but more so Kecleon shows what I mean--and, mind you, Kecleon has a good enough movepool and special bulk, yet even Protean fails to raise it in usage above PU;
  • Abilities that boost speed under certain weather such as Swift Swim are also not hypercarrying just about any Pokémon, as it has to meet at least some threat conditions. I think I'd be just mean to use Luvdisc as an example, so let's go with Beartic--a Pokémon with 130 base Attack, access to Swords Dance and good Ice STAB through Icicle Crash, acceptable 95/80/80 defenses and has not only one, but two speed-boosting abilities to choose from... still PU, I'd argue due to a sheer lack of movepool;
  • Even Huge Power, an ability that people often joke about "just slap it on anything and it'll become broken," is not actually capable of that much... at least not in just about any Pokémon. Regular Medicham, with access to such a strong STAB as HJK... is BL4. Bottom PU otherwise, I'd wager. Even Mega Mawile, with the equivalent of 260 base Attack on top of proudly bearing arguably one of the best typings in the game, uniting great offensiveness with unparalled resistances, access to Intimidate prior to Mega Evolving and 50/125/95 defenses afterwards, has fallen back to OU this gen.
  • And, since I touched the matter, guess what--even Gale Wings last gen wasn't enough to determine a Pokémon's usefulness in its entirety! Admittedly, I thought Talonflame would fall down to NU or something, but, much to my surprise, it is currently banned from RU, in BL2. Not only gen 6 Gale Wings did not, at the best of its abilities, suffice to justify a ban on Talonflame from OU, the fact that one might as well never use it nowadays also does not necessarily mean the Pokémon is bottom trash. Coupled together, this should be more than enough solid proof that even such an ability requires its user to be at least competent in base stats and movepool.
I believe these examples get to the point just fine: outstanding abilities that, in spite of their greatness and their capability of making certain Pokémon, under certain circumstances, leave their deadly marks on higher tiers, they cannot carry just about any Pokémon by their mere existance.
The issue is that Arena Trap applies that to a wider range. I believe there have been more than enough knowledgeable posts in this thread, denouncing the ability's potential, but I also believe the point I'm trying to get across isn't as considered, or at least not as understandably mentioned. Even something as frail as 10/25/45 defenses and as weak as 55/35/95 offenses, once Dugtrio was gone for the first suspect test, found some space for itself on laddering teams and, contrary to everyone's first impression, wasn't dumpstered back to LC as soon as their trainer realized "the hell am I doing, this is too gimmicky." It somehow worked, and its other Arena Trap buddy also delivered some work through its 100 base Attack, much like Dugtrio right now, though burdened with a crippling 10 base Speed.
Now, my point is not that, contrary to those aforementioned abilities, it can carry any Pokémon; at least I don't see an Arena Trap Sunkern or Wishiwashi working in my book. My point is that Arena Trap is so overpowered and uncompetitive that it has a far better potential of carrying a Pokémon on its back; banning merely one of its users won't cut in, not just because there are other (albeit not as potent) alternatives, but because GameFreak should continue to release new games, thus potential new Pokémon, the possibility of one of those being bestowed with Arena Trap is real, and something that should come with at least a little concern.
Ultimately, when you transform not just one but two LC Pokémon into potential threats in Overused, if those facts are not enough to conclude that this ability needs to go, then allow me to give the necessary surety by saying through this post that this ability needs to go.
EDIT: Adding a bonus point to be considered in the examples.



Blue: Alright, clearly my examples trying to compare other abilities to Arena Trap aren't the best comparisons in the sense that Swift Swim helps Kingdra in a completely different way than Arena Trap helps Dugtrio, but that was besides the point. My point is that just because good abilties can be the difference between making pokemon viable in OU and unviable doesn't mean that the ability in quedtion must be broken if the aforementioned pokemon is broken. Secondly, it doesn't matter if Arena Trap helps Dugtrio more than Protean helps Greninja in terms of deciding whether the ability or the mon should be banned. It also doesn't matter if the pokemon in question has a BST of 700 or 20. You're logic seems to be "Protean helps Greninja a little bit so if we think Greninja might be broken we ban Greninja. However, Arena Trap helps Dugtrio a lot so if we think Dugtrio might be broken we should ban Arena Trap." This logic fails to account for the collateral damage that ensues if we decide to ban the ability, which in this case is Arena Trap with Trapinch and Diglett. Just because Trapinch and Diglett are LC and have shitty stats doesn't necessarily mean they are unviable in OU and if they were viable in OU thanks to Arena Trap that doesn't automatically make Arena Trap a broken ability just because it can make shitty pokemon viable as many of you keep assuming. I'm not going to elaborate on this much further because I'll just be reiterating my first post but basically I believe that we should take abilties, stats, and movepool all into account when deciding if a pokemon is broken. Just because the ability plays a key role in making a pokemon broken (Dugtrio) doesn't mean the same ability will make a different pokemon broken (Trapinch and Diglett). We should evaluate pokemon on a case-by-case basis to minimize collateral damage insetad of making lazy blanket bans.

Red: This is absolutely irrelevant and of zero concern. We will address the issue when (and if) the time comes and not use guesses about what GameFreak might or might not do to impact our metagame.

Purple: I really wanted to just highlight something purple

Green: I addressed all of this in my first post, so you can read that agin but I will try to briefly sum it up here. Just because an ability makes a shitty pokemon viable doesn't mean it's broken, overpowered, or uncompetitive. This ability might be those things on better pokemon, but not necessarily bad pokemon like Diglett and Trapinch. Wonder Guard would be a completely overpowered ability on almost anything other than Shedinja. We can all agree that Shedinja isn't broken or a problem.

But, imagine for a second that something like Spiritomb got Wonder Guard. Without Wonder Guard, Spiritomb isn't viable in OU. But thanks to it's typing (only one weakness-Fairy) and decent stats, it could abuse the shit out of Wonder Guard and would definitely be broken. So would we ban Wonder Guard, or would we ban Spiritomb? After all, isn't Wonder Guard a completely overpowered ability that brought something shitty like Spiritomb from completely unviable to overpowered and broken? So, since Wonder Guard is the problem, why not just ban Wonder Guard? Who cares about Shedinja, Wonder Guard is an overpowered, uncompetitive, piece of shit ability!! Sad!

Now, doesn't this sound ridiculous? Why would we ban Wonder Guard and thus Shedinja when Spiritomb is the problem and Shedinja isn't? What is the point of this unnecessary collateral damage? Would all of you who want to ban Arena Trap actually want to ban Wonder Guard and not Spiritomb if this was the case? If not, how is this example any different from the Dugtrio-Diglett-Trapinch-Arena Trap situation? And if you think it's because Diglett and Trapinch are broken with Arena Trap, how can you justify such a claim when you've likely never played with or against them in OU? Do you really think one or two people getting reqs with a pokemon (during the Metagross/Phero meta nonetheless) is enough to justify banning the said pokemon??


Anyways, I'm done responding to others posts for now unless someone makes a highly intellectual arguement. And if one of y'all says any more dumb shit about a couple of people getting reqs using Diglett and use this to automatically conclude that Diglett and Trapinch must be broken, even though you have never played with or against these pokemon, I'm going to fucking lose it
EDIT: Someone please respond to my bolded paragraph
 
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But, imagine for a second that something like Spiritomb got Wonder Guard. Without Wonder Guard, Spiritomb isn't viable in OU. But thanks to it's typing (only one weakness-Fairy) and decent stats, it could abuse the shit out of Wonder Guard and would definitely be broken. So would we ban Wonder Guard, or would we ban Spiritomb? After all, isn't Wonder Guard a completely overpowered ability that brought something shitty like Spiritomb from completely unviable to overpowered and broken? So, since Wonder Guard is the problem, why not just ban Wonder Guard? Who cares about Shedinja, Wonder Guard is an overpowered, uncompetitive, piece of shit ability!! Sad!

Now, doesn't this sound ridiculous? Why would we ban Wonder Guard and thus Shedinja when Spiritomb is the problem and Shedinja isn't? What is the point of this unnecessary collateral damage? Would all of you who want to ban Arena Trap actually want to ban Wonder Guard and not Spiritomb if this was the case? If not, how is this example any different from the Dugtrio-Diglett-Trapinch-Arena Trap situation? And if you think it's because Diglett and Trapinch are broken with Arena Trap, how can you justify such a claim when you've likely never played with or against them in OU? Do you really think one or two people getting reqs with a pokemon (during the Metagross/Phero meta nonetheless) is enough to justify banning the said pokemon??

EDIT: Someone please respond to my bolded paragraph
Since Shedinja can only have Wonder Guard, banning it means banning Shedinja entirely. Banning Arena Trap doesn't mean banning Diglett/Trapinch since they have other abilities. That's a noticeable difference between your two situations no ?
 
Blue: Alright, clearly my examples trying to compare other abilities to Arena Trap aren't the best comparisons in the sense that Swift Swim helps Kingdra in a completely different way than Arena Trap helps Dugtrio, but that was besides the point. My point is that just because good abilties can be the difference between making pokemon viable in OU and unviable doesn't mean that the ability in quedtion must be broken if the aforementioned pokemon is broken. Secondly, it doesn't matter if Arena Trap helps Dugtrio more than Protean helps Greninja in terms of deciding whether the ability or the mon should be banned. It also doesn't matter if the pokemon in question has a BST of 700 or 20. You're logic seems to be "Protean helps Greninja a little bit so if we think Greninja might be broken we ban Greninja. However, Arena Trap helps Dugtrio a lot so if we think Dugtrio might be broken we should ban Arena Trap." This logic fails to account for the collateral damage that ensues if we decide to ban the ability, which in this case is Arena Trap with Trapinch and Diglett. Just because Trapinch and Diglett are LC and have shitty stats doesn't necessarily mean they are unviable in OU and if they were viable in OU thanks to Arena Trap that doesn't automatically make Arena Trap a broken ability just because it can make shitty pokemon viable as many of you keep assuming. I'm not going to elaborate on this much further because I'll just be reiterating my first post but basically I believe that we should take abilties, stats, and movepool all into account when deciding if a pokemon is broken. Just because the ability plays a key role in making a pokemon broken (Dugtrio) doesn't mean the same ability will make a different pokemon broken (Trapinch and Diglett). We should evaluate pokemon on a case-by-case basis to minimize collateral damage insetad of making lazy blanket bans.

And my point is to show you otherwise. Arena Trap as it is goes against one of the most important topics of a Pokémon battle, that is switching, from most currently existant Pokémon, is uncompetitive according to Smogon's own concept of uncompetitiveness, as I'm sure this point has been explained in multiple occasions throughout this thread. The question is: what happens when something that is considered uncompetitive is left to exist freely in the metagame? The answer, I believe almost blatantly obvious at this point, is that it gets abused to hell and back wherever possible.
I don't know why you insist on mentioning the term "broken" as a counterargument to my post by stating it is not broken; it gives the impression that, along the way, I said it was. I'd like you to pinpoint the exact point of my post where I even mentioned the word without it being me quoting someone else's opinion.
With that out of the question, no, my logic is not just that. As I stated in my previous post (and I'd like to invite you to reread it for clarification), it's not merely the fact that "x ability makes this Pokémon REALLY good," but also "x ability can make an absurd variety of Pokémon REALLY good," mostly due to its uncompetitive nature; this point has been lighted up by truth through cases like Digglet and Trapinch, two LC mons that found usage in OU due to the uncompetitive nature of their abilities. Do you remember the part I said:
I believe there have been more than enough knowledgeable posts in this thread, denouncing the ability's potential,
Guess what: by saying this, I, logical and automatically, include those points to mine just as well, including its uncompetitiveness nature. I say that because, seemingly (hopefully that's merely my exaggeration, and not something else), you took my post to be just a simple "dis 2 stronk ban it," and that's as wrong as wrong can be.
The bolded phrase amused me! Woe is me for not considering the collateral damage of losing such meta staples like Trapinch and Digglet! Fortunately, nobody really cares that much about those... losses?

Green: I addressed all of this in my first post, so you can read that agin but I will try to briefly sum it up here. Just because an ability makes a shitty pokemon viable doesn't mean it's broken, overpowered, or uncompetitive. This ability might be those things on better pokemon, but not necessarily bad pokemon like Diglett and Trapinch. Wonder Guard would be a completely overpowered ability on almost anything other than Shedinja. We can all agree that Shedinja isn't broken or a problem.


Red: This is absolutely irrelevant and of zero concern. We will address the issue when (and if) the time comes and not use guesses about what GameFreak might or might not do to impact our metagame.

Once again, I invite you to reread my post. I'm not talking about viability through merit, like Protean and such do; I'm talking about viability through uncompetitiveness. For the sake of being literal, Wonder Guard wouldn't be a completely overpowered ability on almost anything than Shedinja, as I gave a similar example in my previous post:

Now, my point is not that, contrary to those aforementioned abilities, it can carry any Pokémon; at least I don't see an Arena Trap Sunkern or Wishiwashi working in my book. My point is that Arena Trap is so overpowered and uncompetitive that it has a far better potential of carrying a Pokémon on its back;
Such a thing can also be said about Wonder Guard; it's just that its lone wielder is terrible at it. I'll get to that point soon.
As for the red thing, I stand corrected...


But, imagine for a second that something like Spiritomb got Wonder Guard. Without Wonder Guard, Spiritomb isn't viable in OU. But thanks to it's typing (only one weakness-Fairy) and decent stats, it could abuse the shit out of Wonder Guard and would definitely be broken. So would we ban Wonder Guard, or would we ban Spiritomb? After all, isn't Wonder Guard a completely overpowered ability that brought something shitty like Spiritomb from completely unviable to overpowered and broken? So, since Wonder Guard is the problem, why not just ban Wonder Guard? Who cares about Shedinja, Wonder Guard is an overpowered, uncompetitive, piece of shit ability!! Sad!

Now, doesn't this sound ridiculous? Why would we ban Wonder Guard and thus Shedinja when Spiritomb is the problem and Shedinja isn't? What is the point of this unnecessary collateral damage? Would all of you who want to ban Arena Trap actually want to ban Wonder Guard and not Spiritomb if this was the case? If not, how is this example any different from the Dugtrio-Diglett-Trapinch-Arena Trap situation? And if you think it's because Diglett and Trapinch are broken with Arena Trap, how can you justify such a claim when you've likely never played with or against them in OU? Do you really think one or two people getting reqs with a pokemon (during the Metagross/Phero meta nonetheless) is enough to justify banning the said pokemon??

... it's just rather contradictory that you bring that example when you just pointed out the irrelevancy and lack of concern of my own argument, as I'm sure you would've pointed that much as well had I said something as meaningless as "What if Landorus-T had Arena Trap?"
Also, you're bringing a different analysis to the table like it's the same thing when compared to the point in question. Wonder Guard is not an issue on Shedinja for multiple reasons, namely: 1 (one) base HP; it's slow and weak, now that it, if I remember correctly, cannot use Swords Dance anymore since it's a gen 3 event, so all it has now is Hone Claws; Stealth Rocks; Spikes; Toxic Spikes; the potential of switching into Will-O-Wisp or Toxic and, unlike other Pokémon who can be crippled for the rest of the match unless you carry a healer, Shedinja dies on spot; Sandstorm and Hail; Mold Breaker and Teravolt; has no momentum to back up the turn it was immune to something, now that Baton Pass is banned. Even old Stall teams, back when Baton Pass was still allowed, had to be flawless when using Shedinja, because one mistake means your wonderful bug is dead. I fail to see why they wouldn't give exception and ban Spiritomb instead; as far as I know, Bidoof in its entirety isn't restricted to AG just because it has Moody, and Scolipede or Ninjask aren't Ubers just because their friend Blaziken is too damn good with Speed Boost. I believe this kills the question just fine.
On the other side, we have Arena Trap on not just one but three known Pokémon (two of which I do not think are broken as a result; I'll invite you a second time to pinpoint where exactly I said that much); as for your statement that I made italic instead, since I don't want to have too many subquotes, the magic thing of wisdom is to acknowledge something has a specific value (in this case, to acknowledge Arena Trap is uncompetitive in the other two Pokémon other than Dugtrio) not merely through action (playing with or against them), but also through observation (seeing others do it and regard their value in the scheme of things) and imagination, but let's leave that last bit aside, for the sake of this argument; the point that people used those and it worked stands and should be considered, not tossed aside. Or are we going to wait and confirm whether that's truly the case and not everyone's exageration? To what end? So we can still have an uncompetitive ability running about and, if it is really proven (as if it already isn't) that it needs to go, then to suspect the ability--or worse, still fiercely believe it's Digglet and Trapinch's fault for existing and suspect those instead? No thanks, time and logic are precious to me.

Anyways, I'm done responding to others posts for now unless someone makes a highly intellectual arguement. And if one of y'all says any more dumb shit about a couple of people getting reqs using Diglett and use this to automatically conclude that Diglett and Trapinch must be broken, even though you have never played with or against these pokemon, I'm going to fucking lose it
Showing such arrogance that you won't respond to anything you consider "highly intellectual" is not highly intellectual per se, you know; more so when you show that, if someone brings up a certain claim once again, you'll lose reason. Must I remind you this is a place for civilized discussion, not a pub fight? But let's leave that to that; I don't want to turn this into an ad hominem.
 
The issue is that Arena Trap applies that to a wider range.
a) You must either explain why it is traps too many things trapped in this case (percentage or raw number).

You begin to argue this, but fail to present a value or hard limit on arena trap. If in the future the OU metagame does not feature many mons who are grounded, or a new pivot move comes that takes the metagame by storm rendering most mons untrappable then your evaluation of trap changes. But given you have no actual value or stated mons that arena trap traps that you can also call too many how do you adjust the banning of this ability in future. If the argument is essentially arena trap as an ability traps too much at the moment then I ask why don't you have an issue with anchor shot, which traps more of the metagame than trap. See my previous post to explain why attempting to only use numbers trapped (even with ascribed thresholds of 'too much trapped' is a tricky argument).

Now, my point is not that, contrary to those aforementioned abilities, it can carry any Pokémon
c) You must explain why there is neither a metagame that could come to exist, nor a mon that could have arena trap, that was not 'overpowered' (by whatever definition you use
d) You must beleive that trapping as an ability always is uncompetetive (probably by the old reduces skill rule)

You are making either one of these arguments implicitly. Either you are saying that any mon you can see coming to exist or in existence with arena trap in any metagame (also including with new forms of counterplay) would be broken which seems to be patently false. Given that a metagame that could make diglett bad in OU could very well come to exist, or already exist (it has hardly been explored) and you have made no attempt to justify that diglett or trapinch (2/3's of the sample of mons we have to actually look at) are currently broken this seems a bad argument. If argument d) is being made you should have a problem with magnet pull, which I do not think you do, which brings us back to:

a) You must either explain why it is traps too many things trapped in this case (percentage or raw number).

which you do not do.

Ultimately, when you transform not just one but two LC Pokémon into potential threats in Overused, if those facts are not enough to conclude that this ability needs to go, then allow me to give the necessary surety by saying through this post that this ability needs to go.
Either you are arguing that trapping as an ability at the levels that trap does is always a problem regardless of what said mon does when it traps (by descriptive scenario or effect size of winrate) which means you think that diglett and trapinch are actually problems in OU or you do not think that these two pokemon are a problem in OU and therefore arena trap alone cannot be the problem.

If you are adding another argument of the form, GF will continue to release pokemon that could have arena trap, and would likely be broken in the future so we would have a better metagame faster if those abilities were just banned, I would respond with they could also release significant counterplay to arenatrap that is not a crippling option to run that would significantly neuter the ability (or make less mons trapped by arena trap etc.) or the metagame in OU could change so that arena trap was not a huge problem. But in fairness even if this is the claim it requires that diglett and trapinch be considered a problem now. It requires an argument which says regardless of what the mon can do trapping as an ability at this level of trapping is broken in OU. Which doesn't work because the amount of things trapped changes fairly constantly as grounded and U-turn likely mons change in OU frequently. It also requires an argument that actually puts a winrate/effect size metric or raw number on things trapped, or is an argument against magnet pull. Essentially if the argument is about the future, I think it is worse to set a precedent to ban something that could somehow be balanced in the future given we can imagine ways arena trap is balanced then to ban it for mons before they are tested or witnessed in play given we cannot imagine arena trap breaking every mon in existence (wishiwashi I beleive you mentioned).

shurtugal said:
1.) Discussion about banning Dugtrio vs. Arena Trap is very redundant and unneccessary here in my humble opinion because in SM OU they will both accomplish roughly the same thing. Arena Trap makes more sense because a.) it removes any Pokemon that can fulfill Dugtrio's noncompetitive role and b.) there is precedence for this in Shadow Tag's suspect in ORAS where Wobbuffeut & Gothorita weren't broken but accomplished the same unhealthy mechanic. The main part of this suspect should be asking yourself this question: Is Arena Trap unhealthy & will the metagame thrive from its removal?
The first line is an assumption of the future, but as far as most can tell is a safe predicition. If Dugtrio was banned we would unlikely see the emergence of diglett and trapinch in OU. However the question then becomes is it better to deal with a problem with more or less collateral. If it is less you seek, than dugtrio should be the focus of the ban. I think everyone wants less collateral which means you have to not consider diglett and trapinch collateral damage to make your argument above. So then you have to prove that arena trap is broken on these two mons at least to make this a utilitarian ban (ban arena trap because everything with it right now is broken in OU) or you have to explain why arena trap is always broken/uncompetetive. In which case see my post on the methods to prove this avaliabel to you.

shurtugal said:
2.) Comparing Magnezone to Dugtrio is not plausible because Magnezone can trap maybe 1-2 targets consistently whereas Dugtrio can trap significantly more.
a) You must either explain why it is traps too many things trapped in this case (percentage or raw number).

Once again argument a) begins without a number ascribed. In addition you should use this comment to justify banning anchor shot, you do not. Hence trapping either can have too big a cost or in the case of arena trap always inherently removes too much choice, even if it were on a useless mon with an abysmal effect size on wins.

shurtugal said:
However, trapping abilities have a way of pushing it over the edge
d) You must beleive that trapping as an ability always is uncompetetive (probably by the old reduces skill rule)

You directly contradict this by distinguishing magnet pull by virtue or amount of things trapped. (If by 'pushing it over the edge' you mean become banworthy. If the edge refers to anything other than immeadietly becoming banworthy it means, makes them more liekly to be banned, in which case on what criteria? percentage metagame trapped, effect size on win rate of mosn with the ability and so on.

Arguments 1 and 2 that you then make are both arguments against dugtrio not arena trap.

The dumb scenarios either work on Duggy or work on all of the mons with arena trap. Even if they work on all the mons which many of them do not, I doubt most of them work on all the mons in a way that would award the user good winrate with these mons. So are these scenarios just so 'dumb' that we should do absolutely everything to stop them occuring even if the things that lead to them occuring are terrible? If so I have some things to tell you about shedinja and skill swap... Otherwise you need to tell me why not only are the 'dumb' scenarios viable on everything that does have arena trap right now but also not things done with an oppurtunity cost.

shurtugal said:
1.) Eject Button + Dugtrio has 0 counterplay, especially because Eject Button stops Volt Switch/U-Turn from working so : D
In fairness this does have counterplay, not attacking and shed shell once in or u-turn in faster. This is terrible counterplay I agree, but I only make the point because it is more counterplay than pursuit has. Pursuit however isn't a problem, so then the argument you must make is, this not having counterplay, and being a benefitial thing to do massively is a problem (As in trapping generally gets more done towards a win than pursuits damage does). In which case on what basis are we measuring if arena trap leads to the benefital situation enough to be broken. Note you have to prove arena trap does this, not just Dugtrio. So far all you have shown is that Dugtrio benefits massively from this enough to be a problem, but you haven't described what benefiting enough means with numbers that would allow us to say that trapinch and/or diglett are also a problem.

shurtugal said:
In scenarios where something has 0 counterplay, I think that's when we as a community should question how healthy it is or isn't.
See my previous post on the phrase 'no counterplay' in addition, you implicitly mean no counterplay and acheives something good due to that lack of counterplay (otherwise pursuit). In which case what metric measures gets too much done... it is hard to imagine a metric which would lead to banning trapinch.

Everything else is a problem with Dugtrio.

metan said:
Arena Trap as it is goes against one of the most important topics of a Pokémon battle, that is switching, from most currently existant Pokémon, is uncompetitive according to Smogon's own concept of uncompetitiveness,
e) You must beleive that trapping always is uncompetetive, even in the form of whirlpool and spider web.

You do not beleive this, so the remark is penniless to make.


metan said:
The question is: what happens when something that is considered uncompetitive is left to exist freely in the metagame?
The metagame is fine and people have no qualm with it untill a mon called dugtrio arrives in OU and causes everyone to inappropriately label the ability of it in isolation the broken part :p. In all seriousness though you have an issue with some part of trapping but which line of reasoning below do you follow to prove this?

a) You must either explain why it is traps too many things trapped in this case (percentage or raw number). Good previous posts on this idea.
b) You must explain why trapping abilities on a mon at x winrate or x effect size is a problem.
d) You must beleive that trapping as an ability always is uncompetetive (probably by the old reduces skill rule)
e) You must beleive that trapping always is uncompetetive, even in the form of whirlpool and spider web.

Clearly you don't have issue with 'trapping' in any form so you must make an argument of one of the above forms to justify the claim that arena trap uncompetive. I won't comment on abused, as I don't know what you mean by the term with reference to arena trap, not just dugtrio.

metan said:
two of which I do not think are broken as a result;
If not broken, why are we removing choice from them when we could not do so at no significant cost? If you mean they are not broken, but are uncompetetive, I return to my claim you haven't coherently explained why the ability is 'uncompetetive' either by my own criteria, or the one that you volunteered in an earlier post.

On the plus side, I agree with your last remark, it is arrogant to state you are not going to respond and I wouldn't think should be done. I also think considering no one has actually had a developed argument about whether trapinch or diglett are broken/uncompeteive that fits an operational definition of uncompetetive both parties accept would be a daft argument to have. Unless you can agree the axiom of what uncompetetive is and if it can be applied to arena trap at all, it is a pointless endeavour to attempt to discuss it.

Also if someone can explain why I am calling you all 'fat' I would love to know XD
 
Alright, I'm not going to dissect the entire post above, but I will say one thing.

Obviously Diglett and Trapinch are not currently "broken" (stop using this Godforsaken word incorrectly), since Dugtrio exists. However, when Dugtio was removed but Arena Trap remained, it proved to be noncomptetitive on Diglett and Trapinch just as Dugtrio was, causing many people to ask for an Arena Trap suspect specifically.

You can do the mental gymnastics and argue semantics all day (which is absolutely what you've been doing with every reply you've posted), but it's getting this thread no where.

II.) Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.
Also, here's the definition that has been posted multiple times in this thread.

If you're going to defend a stance, defend it, stop arguing semantics.
 
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Shurtugal

The Enterpriser.
is a Tiering Contributor
Too cute to kill

Before I begin responding to you, let me sum up a few things:

1.) The OU Council has stated that they are pressed for time.
2.) You admit Arena Trap vs Dugtrio difference being minimal is a safe prediction.
3.) You are willingly cherry-picking something that you admit is minimal & thus are willing to waste more of our time to save Pokemon in Trapinch & Diglett for what ??? reasons ?? exactly ???

However, I'll take the time to go through each of your points. I'd like to say that I didn't elaborate on some of the things I've said because I've assumed that they didn't need explaining (they should be obvious IMO).

First of all, I'm pretty sure my post details why Arena Trap is uncompetitive/broken. I mentioned that Arena Trap makes any otherwise garbage Pokemon (Dugtrio, Diglett, Trapinch) into something much more viable than they currently would be without it. You are holding on to the argument that something has to be broken in order to receive a ban but that is not necessarily the truth anymore in our current Policies. Arena Trap is an unhealthy and uncompetitive mechanic that holds the metagame back from where it should be, and that is why it needs to go.

As for Magnezone, I cannot believe you're actually disputing what I said / making me explain why I made this statement, but here we are. Skarmory commonly run Shed Shell, Celesteela can use Earthquake & usually live a TBolt because they're fat, Ferrothorn is still fat enough to get up hazards before dying so Zone doesn't stop it from doing its job half the time, and lol Heatran & Magearna can both do more damage to Zone than Zone can do to them. Keep in mind Magnezone runs the risk of being trapped by opposing Dugtrio, so it is usually less than optimal to even run Magnezone in the first place, and on top of that it very unreliably traps things in this metagame. There is no way you've played SM OU since start and can come to the conclusion that Magnezone is a good Pokemon that reliably traps steel types because lol let's be real here this thing's usage is ass for a reason.

I believe I explained why Arena Trap pushes itself over the edge in my other post but I'll highlight it for you. Basically: trapping abilities / mechanics aren't broken unless they can trap a huge portion of the metagame. E.g. Magnezone, Pursuit, Anchor Shot, etc. are all healthy mechanics that aren't broken because they cannot trap a super huge portion of our metagame. In ORAS, Gothitelle could trap mostly anything and that was why Shadow Tag was seemed ban-worthy. Your argument would be: why didnt we ban Gothitelle over Shadow Tag?? but Wobbuffeut & Gothorita, while not as good, still trapped most of what you would need it to and it's just messy. Even if you don't agree with ORAS's decision in this regard, it sets a precedence which means it justifies what we're doing with Arena Trap now.

In Smogon tiering we like to rely on things with precedence and this gives us support for Arena Trap suspect over a Dugtrio one. Smogon also doesn't like to re-suspect things without a sufficient timeframe, so likely suspecting Dugtrio again after it had been suspected earlier wouldn't make sense in the Smogon Tiering Policy world, but suspecting Arena Trap is like a loophole because it is a different suspect and allows us a valid and strong excuse to revisit Dugtrio without having our politics all messed up. As the council has stated earlier, we are pressed for time, so this was likely a favorable scenario for them.


The "Dumb Scenarios" thing was just the extent of Arena Trap's capabilities. I do not need to prove that Arena Trap does this for all Pokemon that get it, actually. It is just proof that Arena Trap possess this effect and should be banned because of it. Also consider that some of these strats actually would work with Diglett & Trapinch respectively.

Also I'd appreciate it if you'd stop cherry-picking things that do not matter. You mention that "to be fair" eject button + arena trap has counterplay, but then admit what you proposed is awful counterplay. Like why even bring it up? The point I was making that it has 0 practical/realistic counterplay, and you knew that even before you typed up that bullshit so I'd appreciate it if we could keep these arguments realistic and practical please.

"Pursuit has less counterplay that eject + arena trap" literally what. You can counterplay Pursuit by a.) not switching, b.) Pursuit is viable on like maybe 3 or 4 Pokemon and they can only trap maybe a couple of things reliably lol so what ??

Arena Trap might not make Trapinch or Diglett broken, but Arena Trap will make them viable instead of garbage. Example: Diglett can still beat Heatran/Chansey/Tyranitar and as such could still be good on stall; it might not be able to run Z move sets or Scarf/Band sets but its sash screech reversal set would accomplish roughly what sash dugtrio would accomplish and it is solely because of arena trap. I'm not saying Diglett/Trapinch are suitable replacements for Dugtrio but it is evident that Arena Trap is what would make them viable at all.

I don't see why you are going through all of this effort to save Trapinch and Diglett when the ability is rather uncompetitive and unhealthy in and of itself & we are pressed for time & the only alternative besides banning Arena Trap is to NOT ban Arena Trap aka not ban Dugtrio aka just to save Diglett and Trapinch. Like what ??? Is your argument ??? Do you not think Dugtrio should be banned, because you should really argue that then. Otherwise it seems like you're cherry-picking everyone's posts for the sole reason to nitpick and do things "proper" or whatever but Diglett and Trapinch are irrelevant and I couldn't give less of a shit about them & I am inclined to believe most of the community feels the same way.

Due to how we run things, consider these options:
1.) Ban Arena Trap, and thus Dugtrio.
2.) Don't ban Arena Trap, and save Diglett, Trapinch, and Dugtrio.
3.) There is no other option besides 1.) and 2.) -- you cannot save Diglett or Trapinch without also saving Dugtrio -- trying to do so will waste more of our time and is it really worth wasting our time and waiting some odd months JUST to save 2 shitty Pokemon??
4.) On top of this, if Arena Trap doesn't get banned and Dugtrio was recently voted No Ban, the suspect council likely couldnt revisit Dugtrio fora VERY LONG time because of how our tier system works.

I'm willing to ban Arena Trap, because if there is a chance Diglett / Trapinch can perform the same function or a similar function then fuck that -- everything about Dugtrio is uncompetitive; why would we save this aspect in a lesser degree on other Pokemon (and save Dugtrio in order to do so)?
 
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... it's just rather contradictory that you bring that example when you just pointed out the irrelevancy and lack of concern of my own argument, as I'm sure you would've pointed that much as well had I said something as meaningless as "What if Landorus-T had Arena Trap?"
Also, you're bringing a different analysis to the table like it's the same thing when compared to the point in question. Wonder Guard is not an issue on Shedinja for multiple reasons, namely: 1 (one) base HP; it's slow and weak, now that it, if I remember correctly, cannot use Swords Dance anymore since it's a gen 3 event, so all it has now is Hone Claws; Stealth Rocks; Spikes; Toxic Spikes; the potential of switching into Will-O-Wisp or Toxic and, unlike other Pokémon who can be crippled for the rest of the match unless you carry a healer, Shedinja dies on spot; Sandstorm and Hail; Mold Breaker and Teravolt; has no momentum to back up the turn it was immune to something, now that Baton Pass is banned. Even old Stall teams, back when Baton Pass was still allowed, had to be flawless when using Shedinja, because one mistake means your wonderful bug is dead. I fail to see why they wouldn't give exception and ban Spiritomb instead; as far as I know, Bidoof in its entirety isn't restricted to AG just because it has Moody, and Scolipede or Ninjask aren't Ubers just because their friend Blaziken is too damn good with Speed Boost. I believe this kills the question just fine.
On the other side, we have Arena Trap on not just one but three known Pokémon (two of which I do not think are broken as a result; I'll invite you a second time to pinpoint where exactly I said that much); as for your statement that I made italic instead, since I don't want to have too many subquotes, the magic thing of wisdom is to acknowledge something has a specific value (in this case, to acknowledge Arena Trap is uncompetitive in the other two Pokémon other than Dugtrio) not merely through action (playing with or against them), but also through observation (seeing others do it and regard their value in the scheme of things) and imagination, but let's leave that last bit aside, for the sake of this argument; the point that people used those and it worked stands and should be considered, not tossed aside. Or are we going to wait and confirm whether that's truly the case and not everyone's exageration? To what end? So we can still have an uncompetitive ability running about and, if it is really proven (as if it already isn't) that it needs to go, then to suspect the ability--or worse, still fiercely believe it's Digglet and Trapinch's fault for existing and suspect those instead? No thanks, time and logic are precious to me.
My Wonder Guard and Spirtomb example is by no means a perfect analogy, but it's not as far off as you think. Essentially, your answer boils down to the fact that we wouldn't ban Shedinja (by banning Wonder Guard instead of Spiritomb) because Shedinja sucks. You justified this by saying it has 1hp, is slow and weak, and has rather crappy moves. I agree with all of this. Wonder Guard in combination with Spiritomb is the problem, so if we must ban one it only makes sense to ban Spiritomb in order to minimize the collateral damage since Shedinja isn't broken. You agreed with all of this.

So I would say, isn't the Dugtrio/Diglett/Trapinch issue with Arena Trap the same thing? Dugtrio is broken with Arena Trap while Diglett and Trapinch aren't (or in this case no one really knows whether Arena Trap is broken on Trapinch/Diglett because not many of us have actually used or seen them in OU battles since there is no reason to use them while Dugtrio is an option). You agreed that Diglett/Trapinch aren't likely broken in your post too. So why would we ban Arena Trap and cause unnecessary collateral damage?

You would say that it's because Arena Trap is inherently "uncompetitive" while Wonder Guard is not. In my first post, I already proved why this idea that "Arena Trap is inherently 'uncompetitive' in all contexts" is wrong so I'm just going to copy and past it here in red italics to make it easy for all to discern. Also, just one brief aside, someone could certainly make the argument that Wonder Guard on Spiritomb is uncompetitive because you could mindlessly switch it into any attack that isn't Fairy which would take a lot of skill out of the game, thus making it uncompetitive. The same person could then say Wonder Guard is uncompetitive because of this (completely disregarding Spiritomb's ideal typing and other Wonder Guard users) and want to ban Wonder Guard as an ability. This is esssentially what you guys are doing with Arena Trap, Dugtrio, Trapinch, and Diglett. Anyways back to the main point.


And the real reason why Arena Trap is uncompetitive and not broken comes to light. It's not because it forces shit items and garbage sets to rule the day. It's not because it forces otherwise great mind with great potential and positive attributes to never see the light of day. Those are all major arguments to pile up for an Arena Trap ban, but at the end of the day it's all one reason - it throws skillful play right out of the balk park. Someone has a Toxapex out walking my shit, and I bring in a great Toxapex check - Mind Plate Tapu Lele. Now I go for the skillful play and click Psyshock since nothing can risk switching in on his team. Psyshock does around 70 to 80 percent, and in a normal situation, the opposing player basically has lost craploads of momentum that could cost them the entire match. But nope, Eject Button activates, and a now Healthy Dugtrio comes in, basically letting me lose my Tapu Lele - while the only thing the opponent does is take damage and cheese his way out of a skillfully played and fairly won matchup. That Toxapex can live to probably switch in once more, serving as either death fodder or even healing right back up, all because of Arena Trap.

Now, I agree with almost everything G-Luke has to say. The Dugtrio user certainly did cheese his way out of a skillfully played and fairly won matchup. This is a great example of uncompetitiveness. But let's return to the point I made about ORAS Protean Greninja earlier. Recall, Protean helped to enable a pokemon with decent stats and a good movepool to become broken in the sense that it was too unpredictable and overpowered. Protean did not make Greninja broken. The combination of Protean, stats, and movepool made Greninja broken. The same logic applies to Dugtrio. Arena Trap, along with Dugtrio's good speed, attack, and moves, make it broken, overpowered, and sometimes uncompetitive. Do not underestimate Dugtrio's typing either. STAB Earthquake is super effective against a whopping five types (fire, poison, electric, rock, and steel, all of which are rather common in OU; also no other offensive type is super effective against five other types) and has a rather high base power. This is crucial in allowing Dugtrio to win many 1 v 1s.

Let's return to G-Luke's example, but imagine instead of Dugtrio with Arena Trap it's Luvdisc with Arena Trap. The same scenario would insue but when the eject button allows Luvdisc to come in for free against Tapu Lele, it obviously would not be able to win the 1 v 1. Now, I know using Luvdisc in an example seems kinda silly, but what I'm getting at: Winning the 1 v 1 in this instance is what makes the Arena Trap user uncompetitive and broken. Dugtrio can often win the 1 v 1 thanks to its good stats, movepool, and typing. Therefore, Dugtrio makes Arena Trap uncompetitive and not the other way around. On Luvdisc, Arena Trap is not uncompetitive because Luvdisc is too crappy to make good use of it. The point is, Arena Trap is not inherently uncompetitive, it's the pokemon that make it broken and uncompetitive. Not the other way around.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this stuff in italics pretty much proves that Arena Trap isn't always uncompetitive. For something to be "uncompetitive", it has to take the skill out of the game and reduce it to luck. If something shitty such as Luvdisc has Arena Trap, it isn't going to be able to get the key kill when it comes in via eject button. Therefore, it doesn't take the skill out of the game because the Luvdisc user wasn't able to "cheese his way out of a skillfully played and fairly won matchup."

Unlike Luvdisc, Dugtrio actually can unfairly "cheese" his way out of that situation so Dugtrio is often uncompetitive with Arena Trap.

So the question we must ask ourselves is if this applies to Diglett and Trapinch. Are they uncompetitve with Arena Trap under this logic? I don't know. You don't know. Even the very select few people who have experienced these two pokemon in Ou probably don't know because they haven't been widely enough used in our metagame, ehich makes sense considering Dugtrio is objectively the superior Arena Trap user. This is why I believe we should ban Dugtrio and not Arena Trap.

Some of you seem to beleive "But switching isn't part of pokemon. Preventing it is uncompetitive." None of this is true. Arena Trap has been in the game for generations as have similar things such as Magnet Pull, Mean Look, Whirlpool, Magma Storm, and even Pursuit. Taking away the ability to switch is part of pokemon and just because you don't like this strategy doesn't make it "uncompetitive". If you don't understand why this doesn't make it uncompetitive read my above paragraphs again.

EDIT: Leo Thanks for the heads up and you make a fair enough point. Like I said before, I realize it isn't a perfect analogy but I still maintain that it's worth thinking about. Anyways, care to address my point that was in red (now in italics)?
 
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Leo

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My Wonder Guard and Spirtomb example is by no means a perfect analogy, but it's not as far off as you think. Essentially, your answer boils down to the fact that we wouldn't ban Shedinja (by banning Wonder Guard instead of Spiritomb) because Shedinja sucks. You justified this by saying it has 1hp, is slow and weak, and has rather crappy moves. I agree with all of this. Wonder Guard in combination with Spiritomb is the problem, so if we must ban one it only makes sense to ban Spiritomb in order to minimize the collateral damage since Shedinja isn't broken. You agreed with all of this.

So I would say, isn't the Dugtrio/Diglett/Trapinch issue with Arena Trap the same thing? Dugtrio is broken with Arena Trap while Diglett and Trapinch aren't (or in this case no one really knows whether Arena Trap is broken on Trapinch/Diglett because not many of us have actually used or seen them in OU battles since there is no reason to use them while Dugtrio is an option). You agreed that Diglett/Trapinch aren't likely broken in your post too. So why would we ban Arena Trap and cause unnecessary collateral damage?

You would say that it's because Arena Trap is inherently "uncompetitive" while Wonder Guard is not. In my first post, I already proved why this idea that "Arena Trap is inherently 'uncompetitive' in all contexts" is wrong so I'm just going to copy and past it here in red to make it easy for all to discern. Also, just one brief aside, someone could certainly make the argument that Wonder Guard on Spiritomb is uncompetitive because you could mindlessly switch it into any attack that isn't Fairy which would take a lot of skill out of the game, thus making it uncompetitive. The same person could then say Wonder Guard is uncompetitive because of this (completely disregarding Spiritomb's ideal typing and other Wonder Guard users) and want to ban Wonder Guard as an ability. This is esssentially what you guys are doing with Arena Trap, Dugtrio, Trapinch, and Diglett. Anyways back to the main point.


Now, I agree with almost everything G-Luke has to say. The Dugtrio user certainly did cheese his way out of a skillfully played and fairly won matchup. This is a great example of uncompetitiveness. But let's return to the point I made about ORAS Protean Greninja earlier. Recall, Protean helped to enable a pokemon with decent stats and a good movepool to become broken in the sense that it was too unpredictable and overpowered. Protean did not make Greninja broken. The combination of Protean, stats, and movepool made Greninja broken. The same logic applies to Dugtrio. Arena Trap, along with Dugtrio's good speed, attack, and moves, make it broken, overpowered, and sometimes uncompetitive. Do not underestimate Dugtrio's typing either. STAB Earthquake is super effective against a whopping five types (fire, poison, electric, rock, and steel, all of which are rather common in OU; also no other offensive type is super effective against five other types) and has a rather high base power. This is crucial in allowing Dugtrio to win many 1 v 1s.

Let's return to G-Luke's example, but imagine instead of Dugtrio with Arena Trap it's Luvdisc with Arena Trap. The same scenario would insue but when the eject button allows Luvdisc to come in for free against Tapu Lele, it obviously would not be able to win the 1 v 1. Now, I know using Luvdisc in an example seems kinda silly, but what I'm getting at: Winning the 1 v 1 in this instance is what makes the Arena Trap user uncompetitive and broken. Dugtrio can often win the 1 v 1 thanks to its good stats, movepool, and typing. Therefore, Dugtrio makes Arena Trap uncompetitive and not the other way around. On Luvdisc, Arena Trap is not uncompetitive because Luvdisc is too crappy to make good use of it. The point is, Arena Trap is not inherently uncompetitive, it's the pokemon that make it broken and uncompetitive. Not the other way around.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this stuff in red pretty much proves that Arena Trap isn't always uncompetitive. For something to be "uncompetitive", it has to take the skill out of the game and reduce it to luck. If something shitty such as Luvdisc has Arena Trap, it isn't going to be able to get the key kill when it comes in via eject button. Therefore, it doesn't take the skill out of the game because the Luvdisc user wasn't able to "cheese his way out of a skillfully played and fairly won matchup."

Unlike Luvdisc, Dugtrio actually can unfairly "cheese" his way out of that situation so Dugtrio is often uncompetitive with Arena Trap.

So the question we must ask ourselves is if this applies to Diglett and Trapinch. Are they uncompetitve with Arena Trap under this logic? I don't know. You don't know. Even the very select few people who have experienced these two pokemon in Ou probably don't know because they haven't been widely enough used in our metagame, ehich makes sense considering Dugtrio is objectively the superior Arena Trap user. This is why I believe we should ban Dugtrio and not Arena Trap.

Some of you seem to beleive "But switching isn't part of pokemon. Preventing it is uncompetitive." None of this is true. Arena Trap has been in the game for generations as have similar things such as Magnet Pull, Mean Look, Whirlpool, Magma Storm, and even Pursuit. Taking away the ability to switch is part of pokemon and just because you don't like this strategy doesn't make it "uncompetitive". If you don't understand why this doesn't make it uncompetitive read my above paragraphs again.
Yo just a heads up, you don't need to bold/color code/both your posts to make your point clear, it just makes them more annoying to read and isn't productive for the most part. I posted here as opposed to PM'ing you because I've seen a couple of people do the same and it's just really annoying because the unnecessary formating makes them harder to read.

Anyways, just so this isn't a bad one-liner, I think your Wonder Guard analogy isn't as comparable to Arena Trap as you think. Wonder Guard was dessigned as an unbalanced ability, hence Shedinja being hard locked to 1HP and the exclusivity of it. The game developers knew that this ability would be broken on nearly any mon bar Shedinja, that's why it can't be Skill Swapped etc. The question here is wether Arena Trap is unbalanced or not and how we should proceed about it. I encourage you to avoid these types of analogies because it's hard to figure out a context that fits this situation and if you fail to do so you only derail the thread with pretty much irrelevant arguments, or at least irrelevant to this matter.
 
I have one big problem with this suspect.

Logically, if Arena Trap is broken, Dugtrio with AT is broken.
But the reverse ISN'T an obligation.

In this suspect, everyone talks about AT through Dugtrio.

In the beginning of 5G, Speed Boost Blaziken were Broken. But neither Speed Boost and Blaze Blaziken (Blaze Infernape>Blaze Blaziken) were broken.
Smogon were cruel and courageous: they chose to ban something who weren't broken for the benefit of the metagame OU, they banned Blaziken.

Now almost everyone (more than 60%) is agree with the fact that AT Dugtrio is broken. But now you need to prove that AT or Sand Force Dugtrio are broken to ban AT Dugtrio. Of course, Sand Force Dugtrio isn't broken. So Smogon created a AT suspect.

This is a wrong reasoning.In OU, AT and Dugtrio can't be separate. We need to make a suspect on AT Dugtrio, then more than 60% say that he's broken and after, Smogon choose to ban AT or Dugtrio.

It's not a anti-Smogon comment. Not at all. I just want to purify the metagame of Dugtrio. And even if AT isn't broken, Dugtrio needs to be ban.
 
I have one big problem with this suspect.

Logically, if Arena Trap is broken, Dugtrio with AT is broken.
But the reverse ISN'T an obligation.

In this suspect, everyone talks about AT through Dugtrio.

In the beginning of 5G, Speed Boost Blaziken were Broken. But neither Speed Boost and Blaze Blaziken (Blaze Infernape>Blaze Blaziken) were broken.
Smogon were cruel and courageous: they chose to ban something who weren't broken for the benefit of the metagame OU, they banned Blaziken.

Now almost everyone (more than 60%) is agree with the fact that AT Dugtrio is broken. But now you need to prove that AT or Sand Force Dugtrio are broken to ban AT Dugtrio. Of course, Sand Force Dugtrio isn't broken. So Smogon created a AT suspect.

This is a wrong reasoning.In OU, AT and Dugtrio can't be separate. We need to make a suspect on AT Dugtrio, then more than 60% say that he's broken and after, Smogon choose to ban AT or Dugtrio.

It's not a anti-Smogon comment. Not at all. I just want to purify the metagame of Dugtrio. And even if AT isn't broken, Dugtrio needs to be ban.
i can't tell if you're asking for a complex ban or not but if you are, smogon don't do those and almost certainly never will
 
Some of you seem to beleive "But switching isn't part of pokemon. Preventing it is uncompetitive." None of this is true. Arena Trap has been in the game for generations as have similar things such as Magnet Pull, Mean Look, Whirlpool, Magma Storm, and even Pursuit. Taking away the ability to switch is part of pokemon and just because you don't like this strategy doesn't make it "uncompetitive". If you don't understand why this doesn't make it uncompetitive read my above paragraphs again.

You know, just because something's part of Pokémon doesn't mean it can't be unbroken under Smogon's ruleset. Smogon is, despite being based on Pokémon, a different environment, and as such, changes may have to be made to the mechanics. Smogon has a higher focus on teambuilding, and as such, when large amounts of teams ability to work together are based on switching out, well then we have a problem when just being on the field literally prevents you from switching out, that disrupts everyone's rhythm. I don't know the exact numbers, but Arena Trap hits a huge part of the metagame, and as such cannot be compared to most other trapping abilities. (It's Shadow Tag on a smaller scale.) If you want to play this game according to GF's rules, then go play Anything Goes.

I do not believe that trapping is inherently uncompetitive. (Probably gonna get flak for that.) I do, however believe that the ability to trap almost everything in the tier without sacrificing a moveslot is, and that's why I have no problem with things like Spider Web or Anchor Shot.
 
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Trapping is not broken is my point. Isolating what element of trapping in this case being broken is the issue.

@of moose and men

Dismissive and yet in your very statement of the definition stated it says

"Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice/ interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant. "

and then you fail to attempt to explain how trapinch removes choice to the end that a worse outcome is generated so much of the time that a 'more skillful play' is almost always rendered irrelevant. The thing I agree meets the above criteria is Dugtrio, the things that at least do not definetly do the above, are diglett and trapinch. If you accept that diglett and trapinch reduce the effect of player choice less than you accept that arena trap exclusively doesn't cause the problem. To get even more in detail, if your team has no response to mon x then more skillful plays get you nowhere so then the question is how often does trapinch lead to more skillful plays being rendered ineffective (you have no effective or reliable counterplay)... again, at most we can say 'we don't know'... hardly a good precedent to then remove its ability.

I am defending a stance, that the wrong thing was suspected. I am showing this by showing the formulation required for an argument to ban Arena trap is not only, yet to be made, but also in many cases posts don't even attempt to. This requires the semantics of proof arguments.

Shurtugal

On point 2) I admitted that with specific regards to OU. I then also noted that if you could make OU better without hitting other mons without evidence of a problem, this would be better.
point 3) because trying to ban the wrong thing has consequences and more importantly, leads to discussion that goes in circles as people contest around statements like 'trapping is uncompetetive' which is not an easy discussion and more importantly wouldn't even matter if this was a dugtrio suspect. If this was Dugtrio you say, the Dugtrio traps too much and does too much on to that stuff. You give examples, you have stats, you have winrate, and a debate with sensible evidence and logical proofs ends in a bad mon going. Here we have mostly discussion about Dugtrio, even though the remit of the ban isn't dugtrio and where it is about Arena trap it is neccesarilly a semantic and messy argument involving statements hard to falisfy and even harder to prove. Long and short, trying to ban the ability is uneccessarilly complicated, with little upside and some downside.

"Arena Trap is an unhealthy and uncompetitive mechanic that holds the metagame back from where it should be, and that is why it needs to go."

My main qualm is that I don't think Arena trap can be (and more accurately has been) logically proven to be this. I don't think things have to be broken to go, I do think that things have to be *insert negative term here* in a logically provable way that doesn't mean that other abilities and moves not considered *same negative term here* can be defined as such using the same lines of argument.

The magnezone point misses my comments entierly. The point you are making is either that magnezone is a less good mon (so ability plus abuser is a neccessary consideration) or that magnet pull traps far less (in which case how much is too much trapping numerically, and why when anchor shot traps more numerically isn't this a problem). The rest of it is saying magnezone is less good than dugtrio, which I don't care about nor deny as it has no bearing to the argument I am making.

"I believe I explained why Arena Trap pushes itself over the edge in my other post but I'll highlight it for you. Basically: trapping abilities / mechanics aren't broken unless they can trap a huge portion of the metagame. E.g. Magnezone, Pursuit, Anchor Shot, etc. are all healthy mechanics that aren't broken because they cannot trap a super huge portion of our metagame."

I understand this perfectly, which is why I asked you for a number first and foremost that operationalises 'a huge portion of the metagame'. Second, both Anchor shot and pursuit (though this is a special case) trap more numerically, they just do far less effective things or are on mons that do less effective things. This point directly contradicts a purely numerical reasoning behind arena traps being broken.

Past precedence is a sound argument. Though I don't think it makes up for the consequences in this case. However, if you do it is a sound argument. The important distinction however might be in the consequences, in the sense that I seriously doubt trapinch and diglett would have high winrates or effect sizes in OU unlike the trio of Tag users. Again though, if you do this is sound reasoning to vote ban.

"I do not need to prove that Arena Trap does this for all Pokemon that get it, actually. It is just proof that Arena Trap possess this effect and should be banned because of it"

These two statement are directly contradictory. You cannot say 'Arena trap has this effect' (where this means facilitates these scenarios) whilst stating that you have not proved everything with Arena trap can do it. If something has Arena trap and cannot do the stated things, Arena trap cannot possess that effect.

The pursuit + eject button shows that the issue is not a loss of control for the opponent but loss of control combined with the power to do something beneficial with that loss. Pursuit removes the choice of whether to take damage far more reliably than eject button arena trap does, but the thing the loss of choice leads to is far less damaging (in this case being forced to take some damage).

'Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.'

You kill a mon and they have a pursuit mon on there team, there is no shed shell, there is no typing immune, there is no u-turn you have to take the damage. The choice is gone far more, the result of the lack of choice though, is balanced for some reason in most peoples minds here. Therfore it has to be more than, it removes a lot of choice, because the move that removes choice more than this does is considered balanced. The point being it is not logically sound to say that lack of counterplay alone makes this broken when the move with less counterplay (with regards to whether you take damage) is perfectly fine. It is broken because of what it choices ir removes and the consequences of that lack of choice, which is neccessarilly dependent on characteristics of the user of the ability and its relationship to the metagame.

"I'm not saying Diglett/Trapinch are suitable replacements for Dugtrio but it is evident that Arena Trap is what would make them viable at all." this suggests that they should not be viable at all. Yet the only reason they shouldn't be viable at all is if there ability is uncompetetive... which brings us back round to defining how Arena trap is uncompetitive which I would say you still haven't shown. Either something traps enough that it can kill to be viable or not, it doesn't matter how bad the mon would be if it was sans arena trap. They have it, the question is are they still broken.

On the utilitarian point, the point is, this is the wrong suspect. It is going to be voted on, and is likely going to hit all these mons so consider me doing option 5) saying what is wrong with this in a logically sound way so that it (hopefully) doesn't happen again. In addition highlighting potential issues that will come up in the future (for instance if a very good trapping move with a wide user pool is released) because of the messy logic of votes like these. At some point there will almost definetly be a trapping form that comes out that makes people draw the line more precisely on whether trapping is uncompetetive. It would be good if you had past precedent to rely on to more precisely point out where that line is.

@posionouspen this post is brilliant. It basically says trapping abilities, that trap as much as arena trap does are a problem. This is exactly what we need. It would be better with numbers but what it allows us to do is use this decision to make future decisions. You address the issue of why it is better than other trapping abilities, and why it is an unfair cost when compared to the omni trapping moves. You don't talk about what the mons can do who get to trap for free, but you don't need to. What you have done is stated something that has to quantifiable tests that can be used in the future.

"I do not believe that trapping is inherently uncompetitive. (Probably gonna get flak for that.) I do, however believe that the ability to trap almost everything in the tier without sacrificing a moveslot is." This is the first justification I have seen for a ban of Arena trap sans the abusers that doesn't allow me to indite another form of balanced trapping on the same argumentation.

I don't agree with the above statement, but it is the question you should be asking. Do you beleive the above or do you think if a mon can trap lots of things but cannot do something advantaegous on most of the things it traps it is not uncompetetive?
 

Shurtugal

The Enterpriser.
is a Tiering Contributor
For those of you still concerned about Trapinch & Diglett, I'm going to use establish precedence from tier decisions from other generations to explain why it is OK to ban Arena Trap even though some users of Arene Trap themselves are not broken:

The best tier to look at for this thing is BW OU -- a lot of Pokemon / Abilities caused so much controversy that years after the tier's lifecycle we are still making changes in the tier (all of which can be seen in the PR Threads). A brief summary: Garchomp was banned in BW1 for its abusive Sand Veil ability in a tier with perma sand. However in BW2 it got Rough Skin, so the OU Council at the time decided to suspect Sand Veil as a whole and bring Garchomp back into OU. Now Sand Veil was commonly used on Gliscor as well, but it had equally RNG capabilities and it had Poison Heal to fall back on anyway. People in this suspect discussion tried to bring up users like Cacturn to demonstrate that Sand Veil wasn't broken on everything that got it, but eventually it was decided that Sand Veil was broken and it was banned, and we got a brand new shiny toy in response.

And then there is the whole Escadril fiasco, but I'm not sure how insightful this would be to bring up because it is still a hot controversal topic. Basically: we banned Sand Rush + Sandstream (and thus Stoutland) in order to bring Excadrill back into the tier.

Excadrill was banned in BW 1 because Sand Rush Exadrill had virtually no counters at all (think: no Landorus-Therian in the tier, and Skarmory/Gliscor were the only counters, which got cheesed by +2 Rock Slide flinches). However, after the conclusion of BW2, it was observed that in an Hazard-based metagame that a Rapid Spin Pokemon with access to SR with solid defensive typing could be heathly for that metagame, so they banned Sand Rush + Sandstream, making Sandslash + Stoutland from viable to useless, in order to gain Excadrill into the tier because it was seen as a healthier and more useful component to the metagame.


The reason both of these things are important is because of this: in each of these scenarios we sacrificed bad Pokemon for the betterment of good Pokemon for our tier. We allowed Cacturn to lose viability in order to receive Garchomp; we sacrificed Stoutland to receive a much-needed Rapid Spinner in Excadrill (BW OU is infested with hazards - also, keep in mind that Sand Rush Exadrill on Rain is aids and they'll probably blanket ban Sand Rush at somepoint).

Listen, if Diglett or Trapinch provided anything useful or healthy to our metagame, than a lot of us would be protesting an Arena Trap ban if this ban would prevent us from using them. However, these Pokemon contribute nothing to our metagame and are not worth saving; as such, precedence tells us that it is OK to sacrifice the viability of mediocre Pokemon for the betterment of our metagame.

Basically: if Arena Trap has broken qualities, it does not necessarily need to have broken qualities on every Pokemon that has it so long as it exhibits these qualities in most of the relevant individual(s) (see: Gliscor & Garchomp sand veil in BW OU). Keep in mind that Arena Trap is only distributed to three Pokemon -- so Dugtrio already makes up 33% of relevant individuals that have broken qualities, and Dugtrio is the only relevant Pokemon out of the 3 in the OU tier, so I would argue that it is actually 100% out of relevant candidates with AT

We are left with two options: ban Arena Trap and thus Dugtrio; or do not ban Arena Trap and keep Dugtrio. There is no other option presented to us, so debating anything else is a moot point and we should only focus on these two options.

The real question you should ask yourself is this: is Arena Trap broken (on anything that gets it)?

If you still say No / No Ban after asking yourself that question, than I can respect that, but you must not exclude AT Dugtrio's presence solely because of Trapinch & Diglett.

EDIT: Too cute to kill

I'm sorry but I can't hold your hand through these arguments.

You ask me for a number of how things Dugtrio can trap that would define "huge portion" but it should be self-evident to anyone who plays SM OU. With Z Move it can break through weakened targets like Venusaur, Mew, Amo, etc. -- with Scarf it can remove problematic fast threats in Koko, Lopunny, Manectric, Alakazam -- Sash can remove Tyranitar, Mawile, Heatran, and more -- basically, the difference between prev and this gen is that Dugtrio has more sets it can run to trap whatever you need it to, and this means it can virtually trap most Pokemon that are on the ground. You do the math -- count how many Pokemon are on the ground, and that's the potential of Pokemon Dugtrio can trap (virtually).

Another way I look at it: if anything else decent was given Arena Trap, it would posses those qualities. I could give Trapinch Shadow Tag / Moody and Baton pass and it wouldn't be broken, would you propose to not ban them then if Trapinch had these as well? The only decent thing with Arena Trap actually is broken.

I don't really want to derail this thread any further because you cherrypick a lot of my points with nonsense. I'm just going to end this with saying that: is Trapinch & Diglett really worth fighting for?

Let me explain why suspecting Dugtrio would actually be worse. You see, Dugtrio was suspected and voted No Ban on very recently. If the Council suspected Dugtrio again in such a short timespan, then it would set precedence that the council can suspect things in small timeframes. This is not good because this would give the Council the ability to, in theory, suspect something continually until it was eventually voted Ban or No Ban on.

I am more than willing to sacrifice two shit Pokemon in exchange for not giving precedence for overturning suspect results in a quick manner.
 
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Diglett and Trapinch were used and actually saw some success on the ladder when Dugtrio alone was being suspected, in order to fulfill the trapping role Dugtrio fulfilled except to a more restrained extent.

If garbage like Diglett and Trapinch is actually being used when Dugtrio cannot and is actually achieving something, would it not stand to reason that the ability itself is inherently unhealthy (and arguably broken) because of the fact that two mons with absolutely horrendous stats across the board are utilizing it to the same extent.

Also, the people confused about this suspect need to realize that the suspect itself is a loophole. Dugtrio itself and only Dugtrio itself was suspected a few months ago and the council prefers not to retest something so quickly, while Arena Trap isn't exclusively a Dugtrio suspect and encompasses two mons that were used to some success when Dugtrio alone was being suspected but is ultimately targeting Dugtrio in particular. Think of the suspect test as a Dugtrio suspect except it also includes the cheese that falls under it that has a more limited niche.
 
Promised myself not to Reply anymore after my initial post, but I guess the... let's call it questionable Knowledge and SLIGHT bias amongst People here kinda Forces me to, so, one more Point:

I've seen lots of People compare Arena Trap to Shadow Tag, aka Dugtrio to Gothitelle, implying they're the same concept, etc.; and that alone should make everyone halfway sentient stop and think twice. Let's ignore the most obvious, yet notable difference, that STag traps everything, and Arena Trap only grounded Mons, because People will just Reply "but Duggy traps what it has to" anyways, and go on:

The first Thing that Comes to mind is that Gothitelle was actually running bulk. It was bulky enough by itself already, and most ran hp + SPD Investment, so it could actually hardswitch into Things it was supposed to remove. On the other Hand, Dugtrio Needs either a double Switch, a once-per-game cheese that can easily fail/be lured out (Eject Button, see my first post), or a mon of your Team dying to even GET IT ON THE FIELD. Additionally, Gothitelle was able to run semi-reliable recovery, making it less of a one-trick than Dugtrio, and giving it the ability to trap and beat multiple Mons per battle, while Dugtrio, unless you are extremely lucky/your Opponent is extremely unprepared, will only ever get one kill per match.

Given, the one kill is often enough, if it's on a core member of the enemy Team, or the core threat to your own Team, but here we come back to my first post again, where I showed that Dugtrio doesn't even RELIABLY beat all the threats it's supposed to.

Another massive difference between the two is that Gothitelle was also actually able to run multiple Support moves and SETUP moves in Addition to the original role of trapping + removing threats. That means an impressive amount of role compression for many Teams, something that we all know is one of the most important Things in Pokemon. Being able to cripple Mons you can't directly threaten, set up to be a win condition, give Speed Control to your Team, etc.pp. was invaluable and if you think just because Duggy can run Stealth Rock that it gets up once per game it's on a similar Level, then you're better off playing cartridge games.

---

This rant isn't an anti-Arena trap-ban Argument in itself, but it's to Show you just how easily the bias towards Dugtrio and Stall, the archetype it's most commonly used on, can Cloud people's judgement, and to maybe do some Research on your own before believing everything you read here, just because someone has a trophy etc.
 
Trapping is not broken is my point. Isolating what element of trapping in this case being broken is the issue.

@posionouspen this post is brilliant. It basically says trapping abilities, that trap as much as arena trap does are a problem. This is exactly what we need. It would be better with numbers but what it allows us to do is use this decision to make future decisions. You address the issue of why it is better than other trapping abilities, and why it is an unfair cost when compared to the omni trapping moves. You don't talk about what the mons can do who get to trap for free, but you don't need to. What you have done is stated something that has to quantifiable tests that can be used in the future.

"I do not believe that trapping is inherently uncompetitive. (Probably gonna get flak for that.) I do, however believe that the ability to trap almost everything in the tier without sacrificing a moveslot is." This is the first justification I have seen for a ban of Arena trap sans the abusers that doesn't allow me to indite another form of balanced trapping on the same argumentation.

I don't agree with the above statement, but it is the question you should be asking. Do you beleive the above or do you think if a mon can trap lots of things but cannot do something advantaegous on most of the things it traps it is not uncompetetive?
To answer your question, yes, it would still be uncompetitive, however, it wouldn't be as much of a problem, since it's use wouldn't be so widespread. The meta is not a vacuum, and so usage and the users cannot be taken out of consideration. Would Arena Trap ever have gotten a suspect if it was only on total crapmons? I don't know, but I doubt it because the number of people using them would be lower than that of those who use Duggy. I'm not going to try to argue the Duggy vs AT argument, and the whole which one is the real problem thing, because I feel that point's already been made.

Diglett and Trapinch were used and actually saw some success on the ladder when Dugtrio alone was being suspected, in order to fulfill the trapping role Dugtrio fulfilled except to a more restrained extent.

If garbage like Diglett and Trapinch is actually being used when Dugtrio cannot and is actually achieving something, would it not stand to reason that the ability itself is inherently unhealthy (and arguably broken) because of the fact that two mons with absolutely horrendous stats across the board are utilizing it to the same extent.
Yes, the role was not as fulfilled as it was when it was Duggy doing the trapping, but it was still done, and people were having actual success. I don't know the numbers, due to playing OU rarely and not watching the ladder, however the fact that two 'mons whose stats and movepool would get them pushed down to a much lower tier if not for this ability really makes me wonder if Duggy's the real problem here.
 
Given, the one kill is often enough, if it's on a core member of the enemy Team, or the core threat to your own Team, but here we come back to my first post again, where I showed that Dugtrio doesn't even RELIABLY beat all the threats it's supposed to.
This is your core argument, no (aside from trying to compare XY goth with SM dug)? All are in agreement that the one kill is often enough, now more so than ever because there are just so many threats to prepare for that often you only have 1 real answer to any given threat before the team crumbles (a stallbreaker, sure, but think also of your spdef sponge against a char-y team. hitting eject button pex with magma storm is just as shitty as taking chansey down only to be eliminated).

But I have to wholeheartedly disagree with your argument for why arena trap could be a balanced ability. Reliability of an uncompetitive strategy has never been a factor in determining if that strategy is banworthy.

OHKO moves.
Baton pass.
Double team.
Moody.
Sand veil.

The fact that a strategy is hit or miss is only a further indication of the uncompetitiveness of that strategy. you are relying on a risky strategy to cheese past your opponent's team.

And using dugtrio is a lot less risky than Sheer Cold.
 
How is it possible to draw the conclusion that my main Arguments are duggy's unreliability and comparing dug to goth

when i literally stated that this is not a pro-duggy Argument and how idiotic it is to compare dug to goth
 
Promised myself not to Reply anymore after my initial post, but I guess the... let's call it questionable Knowledge and SLIGHT bias amongst People here kinda Forces me to, so, one more Point:

I've seen lots of People compare Arena Trap to Shadow Tag, aka Dugtrio to Gothitelle, implying they're the same concept, etc.; and that alone should make everyone halfway sentient stop and think twice. Let's ignore the most obvious, yet notable difference, that STag traps everything, and Arena Trap only grounded Mons, because People will just Reply "but Duggy traps what it has to" anyways, and go on:

The first Thing that Comes to mind is that Gothitelle was actually running bulk. It was bulky enough by itself already, and most ran hp + SPD Investment, so it could actually hardswitch into Things it was supposed to remove. On the other Hand, Dugtrio Needs either a double Switch, a once-per-game cheese that can easily fail/be lured out (Eject Button, see my first post), or a mon of your Team dying to even GET IT ON THE FIELD. Additionally, Gothitelle was able to run semi-reliable recovery, making it less of a one-trick than Dugtrio, and giving it the ability to trap and beat multiple Mons per battle, while Dugtrio, unless you are extremely lucky/your Opponent is extremely unprepared, will only ever get one kill per match.

Given, the one kill is often enough, if it's on a core member of the enemy Team, or the core threat to your own Team, but here we come back to my first post again, where I showed that Dugtrio doesn't even RELIABLY beat all the threats it's supposed to.

Another massive difference between the two is that Gothitelle was also actually able to run multiple Support moves and SETUP moves in Addition to the original role of trapping + removing threats. That means an impressive amount of role compression for many Teams, something that we all know is one of the most important Things in Pokemon. Being able to cripple Mons you can't directly threaten, set up to be a win condition, give Speed Control to your Team, etc.pp. was invaluable and if you think just because Duggy can run Stealth Rock that it gets up once per game it's on a similar Level, then you're better off playing cartridge games.

---

This rant isn't an anti-Arena trap-ban Argument in itself, but it's to Show you just how easily the bias towards Dugtrio and Stall, the archetype it's most commonly used on, can Cloud people's judgement, and to maybe do some Research on your own before believing everything you read here, just because someone has a trophy etc.
One thing you cite is the importance of role compression, which goes back to why Dugtrio's ability to trap and eliminate particular threats with near total consistency is a massive constraint for the meta game. It's not even a Stall bias, as the main use I saw cited before this suspect was announced was supporting Zard-Y by eliminating things like Heatran and Tyranitar. the more threats that are dded to the metagame, the more important the role of each individual team slot becomes. No one is arguing that Dugtrio is on the level of Gothitelle, but they run on the same concept. Gothitelle is better, but Dugtrio is still "good" at the role to such an extent that it has the same unhealthy effect. Gothitelle could do things like set up or trick, true, but its Ultimate goal still amounted to "remove this Pokemon as an obstacle to the win condition", it just had a more varied kit to do so. Even then, Dugtrio has a myriad of things over Gothitelle, even if it's not the superior trapper: a competent speed tier for offensive revenging, Better Z-move access, a sprinkling of coverage with Reversal and Aerial Ace to give it that little extra targeting list, and its typing is simply better for using similar power moves.

And while Dugtrio does rely on things like double switches and sacs to come in most games... so? Consider that this means the opponent often has to play conservatively with their important mons to make sure they don't cause that sac or they're not on the field when a double switch happens, because once Dugtrio traps them, they're screwed. It becomes sub-optimal to have Lele KO something unless it has a Shed Shell, because then Dugtrio eats it and you probably can't break anything that's left. And frankly it's not an anti-Stall bias, but Stall is the team type that best exploits this mentality: the longer the game drags, the better for the stall player, but if you take the risky play to try and break them before things drag, you risk giving Dugtrio the one good move it needs to break your offensive core, which is why it's the playstyle where it performs with the most consistency: it pushes conservative play just by being in the back, and a conservative/passive opponent is just what Stall teams thrive on. Gothitelle could trap and kill/cripple multiple mons, Dugtrio cripples one, maybe two. This just means ST Gothitelle is even less healthy than AT Dugtrio, as evidenced by the former not even being considered to come back. Just because Gothitelle was better doesn't make the Dugtrio comparison unfounded: Dugtrio might be Gothitelle 0.7 at best, but if that's still a negative influence on the metagame, citing the shared traits is relevant to give perspective and show why Dugtrio should go.
 
One thing you cite is the importance of role compression, which goes back to why Dugtrio's ability to trap and eliminate particular threats with near total consistency is a massive constraint for the meta game. It's not even a Stall bias, as the main use I saw cited before this suspect was announced was supporting Zard-Y by eliminating things like Heatran and Tyranitar. the more threats that are dded to the metagame, the more important the role of each individual team slot becomes. No one is arguing that Dugtrio is on the level of Gothitelle, but they run on the same concept. Gothitelle is better, but Dugtrio is still "good" at the role to such an extent that it has the same unhealthy effect. Gothitelle could do things like set up or trick, true, but its Ultimate goal still amounted to "remove this Pokemon as an obstacle to the win condition", it just had a more varied kit to do so. Even then, Dugtrio has a myriad of things over Gothitelle, even if it's not the superior trapper: a competent speed tier for offensive revenging, Better Z-move access, a sprinkling of coverage with Reversal and Aerial Ace to give it that little extra targeting list, and its typing is simply better for using similar power moves.

And while Dugtrio does rely on things like double switches and sacs to come in most games... so? Consider that this means the opponent often has to play conservatively with their important mons to make sure they don't cause that sac or they're not on the field when a double switch happens, because once Dugtrio traps them, they're screwed. It becomes sub-optimal to have Lele KO something unless it has a Shed Shell, because then Dugtrio eats it and you probably can't break anything that's left. And frankly it's not an anti-Stall bias, but Stall is the team type that best exploits this mentality: the longer the game drags, the better for the stall player, but if you take the risky play to try and break them before things drag, you risk giving Dugtrio the one good move it needs to break your offensive core, which is why it's the playstyle where it performs with the most consistency: it pushes conservative play just by being in the back, and a conservative/passive opponent is just what Stall teams thrive on. Gothitelle could trap and kill/cripple multiple mons, Dugtrio cripples one, maybe two. This just means ST Gothitelle is even less healthy than AT Dugtrio, as evidenced by the former not even being considered to come back. Just because Gothitelle was better doesn't make the Dugtrio comparison unfounded: Dugtrio might be Gothitelle 0.7 at best, but if that's still a negative influence on the metagame, citing the shared traits is relevant to give perspective and show why Dugtrio should go.
For reasons why Dugtrio is, or rather is NOT unhealthy for the metagame, refer to my first post. The one you quoted is quite literally only about the comparison of Gothitelle and Dugtrio. And no, "citing the shared traits to give perspective and Show why dugtrio should go" is in fact NOT relevant, especially since it doesn't actually Show Dugtrio should go, and instead Shows why the comparison of the two is borderline idiotic and frantically looking for additional Arguments when there are None, and, if at all, Shows that the threat Dugtrio provides is completely blown out of Proportion by making false conclusions based off of the past.

Plus you won't compare Koko to Tang either, just because both are Pivots.
 
Dude, the mental gymnastics are insane.

Trapinch itself is not "uncompetitive". Sheer Force / Hyper Cutter Trapinch is useless as all hell. Until Arena Trap is thrown into the mix, making it viable if Dugtrio is gone. You know why? Because the God damned ability is the issue.

You CONSTANTLY cherry pick and avoid the otherwise blatantly obvious. I, as well as most others, am not saying Diglett nor Trapinch the Pokemon are the issue. I have constantly stated this. What is the issue, is Arena Trap. Regardless of who the ability is attached to, it removes, not reduces, player choice, which is inherently "uncompetitive", which has already been addressed.

You keep gish galloping and avoiding the blatantly obvious. There's no discussion to be had if you constantly refuse to acknowledge what people are saying and instead cherry pick in a feeble attempt to try to get the precious "gotcha".
 
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Can everyone who is bringing up the Diglett and Trapinch argument please read this from the Policy in OP

2.) One important thing to note with this is that distribution both matters (in the case of large distributions) and doesn't matter (in the case of low distributions).
a.) If Stealth Rock or Scald weren't so common, they probably would not be as controversial issues as they are.
b.) However, just because something isn't highly distributed, like Shadow Tag, doesn't mean it isn't unhealthy. Some tried to state that Shadow Tag wouldn't be broken on a 10/10/10/10/10/10 BST mon, but this is the wrong way to look at it.
c.) Things aren't broken (or unhealthy or uncompetitive) only in vacuums; they can contribute to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Instead, consider how potentially broken elements would be with average distribution on average BST Pokemon. If Shadow Tag was on, let's say 4-5 OU potential Pokemon as opposed to 1-2 and the average BSTs were something like 80/80/80/80/80/80, would it be broken?The take away from this is to not ignore distribution, but if lowly distributed, to assume how the element would take away from team building or battling skill if it was distributed to average pokemon in an average quantity.(Yes, we will provide average statistics)
 
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