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Smogon hate. How come?
Topic Started: Aug 21 2014, 08:50 PM (5,804 Views)
TM93
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I don't see that as a PROBLEM when that's the rules they've set aside beforehand and everyone who enters is aware of this. CAP's Ladder is the same as the OU Ladder with some more Pokemon in it. Therefore, a Pokemon who is entered into CAP should probably be up-to-snuff for OU, otherwise there just isn't much chance of it being used in the CAP tier, and therefore entirely pointless to declare as a winner.

What if the PTU Devs decided out of the blue to allow a "create a new high powered Legendary that we'll make an official part of the game" contest, meaning something akin to Mewtwo, Rayquaza, or Reshiram, etc. Realistically you cannot expect them to, in this context, pick something that no one would choose over one of the Pokemon mentioned above due to a lack of power and utility in their BST/BSR and Abilities, Skills, and Movepools, so due to people realizing this, most people are going to enter things which are close to if not match the above criteria perfectly. Yes there's more room for variance in PTU but I feel this gets my point across well enough.

I would 100% support a CAP Project for lower Tiers (UU, RU, and even NU could use some CAP love) but as it is, the CAP Project only has a small following and really doesn't have the popularity to make that seem reasonable.

Please don't cherrypick parts of my post, the whole post was important there.

To reiterate: I feel it less elitist and more logical when CAP uses OU as a baseline set of rules for it's tier and ladder, to have the winners (and most of the entries considered to be options FOR the winner) be something people will want to use in the OU tier, meaning it should realistically be up to par with other OU Pokemon.
Edited by TM93, Feb 26 2015, 12:05 AM.
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Robot
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Honestly I see the meta as a challenge. I spend a fair bit of time doing online battles, or playing at Pokemon Showdown. To date I've beaten a 4 legendary pokemon team with a Huge Power Ability Agility/Swords Dance/Quick Attack/Earthquake Diggersby. I dropped a Latios with a Vaporeon, and have been using Weezing in OU tiers forever.

In short, I doesn't afraid of anything. I use what I want and I have fun with it. I can say though, that some of Smogon's bans do make sense. Specifically Moody. I made a boltbeam Octillery with perfect coverage, it dropped a legendary and a Greninja (with some good prediction) thanks to huge surges in evasion stages.

Funny thing about the meta, is when everyone is running identical builds, and you see that pokemon, you instantly know. Greninja almost always run Grass Knot and Protean. Most of the competitive game is about prediction, stats and ability combos only take you so far.
Edited by Robot, Feb 28 2015, 11:59 AM.
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TM93
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Bit late but, yeah, of course Greninja runs Protean. Just like the vast majority of Talonflames run Gale Wings. Because your other Ability choice is 100% subpar to the point of making the Pokemon worthless when you try and use it competitively. You don't see people run Charizard without a Mega Stone, ever, and for good reason. Even Greninja has a fair chance of running a Spikes, U-turn, or Gunk Shot set with Mixed, heck, even the Special sets have the odds of running Extrasensory over Grass Knot, as it's potentially more reliable.

Now, I'm not saying that every Pokemon of a specific species isn't running SIMILAR sets, in fact if you see a Talonflame without Gale Wings and at LEAST Acrobatics (Brave Bird master race, unless Flying Gem comes out again, Brave Bird will be a superior choice in almost every way), something's wrong.

But on the other hand, Talonflame also has a lot of still USABLE subsets over the common Choice Band Gale Wings with Brave Bird Flare Blitz U-Turn and Steel Wing/Will-o-Wisp setup. Like the Bulk Up WoW set, the Swords Dance set, or the Natural Gift set. They're marginally less common, but they can be better for covering up your team's weaknesses than the standard setup (for example, the Natural Gift+Salac Berry Talonflame setup can continue to sweep even if something like Tyranitar or Heatran comes in to try and Wall it).

Heck, the more viable sets a Pokemon has, the more likely it's up in RU or higher, as that means it's versatile enough to have variant sets and not be outplayed by everything.
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Picknchew
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My main problem with Smogon is how they ban certain moves in favour of others and how when they ban something they have to continue to ban more crap because certain things run wild after awhile.

In Gen 4 Smogon was alright but I felt they've become too restricted over time.

Right now I think the stupidest thing they've done was ban swagger right out, and I still don't agree on banning 1 hit KO moves. They're risky moves that leave you open but are well worth it if they get through.

The best thing I think they've done is have a clause on how many pokemon you can put to sleep, and banning evasion moves; I don't like how they outright ban pokemon instead of combinations of pokemon+moves like what they did with Funbro (that is a Slowbro @ Leppa Berry, with Recycle, Heal Pulse, block, Slack Off) which could lock opponents into an infinite battle.
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TM93
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Smogon tries to use Simple Clauses over Complex ones whenever possible, to keep the rules as simple to follow as possible, that's a part of why it was a flat Swagger ban.

I personally think the flat Swagger ban was too much, the real issue was Prankster+Swagger+Foul Play+Thunder Wave, the main culprit being Klefki, we all know this. The thing with Prankster T-wave Swagplay Pokemon was that a large amount of Pokemon could use them, and it requires little thought to put to use.

For example, in Gen 5, THIS happened: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-55233500

You might say "Yeah but look at all the Hax that happened". Exactly. That's what these sets bring about constantly, pure hax which turns the fight into a coinflip for both sides. If the opponent pulls through, you get destroyed by their +4 Attack Pokemon, but if they fail their Paralysis and Confusion checks repeatedly, they're going to kill themselves eventually without you lifting a finger. That's not healthy for a metagame. And NOTHING has flat-out immunity to both at the same time (Ground and Electric Types do not get Own Tempo, bar Numel. But who's bringing a Numel to OU? And even if they did, Own Tempo is generally one of those Abilities which are subpar overall, you'd be neutering your Pokemon's power for something situational.)

But at the same time, Swagger alone causing those 50/50's with Confusion is enough to warrant a look for a ban in my opinion. And it's not very easy to counter, literally the only Pokemon who'll take Own Tempo over something else is Lilligant at a glance. Asking everyone to run Lilligant to counter Confusion is as dumb as asking everyone to either run Sableye or Cofagrigus to counter Mega Mom, it doesn't make for a healthy meta.

1HKO Spam is indeed risky on the user, but it's also something potentially CHEAP. A person could, hypothetically, get to the top of the Ladder with pure dumb luck by just spamming 1HKO moves, and there's very little everyone could do about it bar pumping their teams full of Pokemon with Sturdy. Not all of which are viable. The odds are low but they're present.

The Funbro ban wasn't because of Slowbro specifically, it was the No Infinite Battles Clause, this would apply to multiple Pokemon. The logic of "Ban specific Move+Pokemon Combinations" falls a bit short, as eventually you'd have to cave and say stuff like "Okay Groudon can be used in OU but it can only use Earthquake and it can't be holding a Red Orb". This both adds more work and rules to the system, making it harder to follow, AND then brings the potential problem of people going "Ugh but I want to use the BEST version of my Pokemon" or the like. That's part of why Blaziken got a flat ban over just Speed Boost Blaziken, or why Mega Stones get banned instead of specific sets.

For example, yes, Smogon could have said "NO SPECIAL MEGA LUCARIOS IN OU" and that would have solved a bit of the issue with it (a high amount of unpredictability coupled with raw sweeping power). But that'd be too in-depth for people to reliably remember when teambuilding, so it was better to just ban Lucarionite to Ubers. Clauses, by their logic, are best left to be as simple as possible, generally meaning banning a specific combination of moves/abilities but not a Pokemon WITH said moves, or banning a specific Pokemon but not a combination of the Pokemon and Moves/Abilities which make it broken.

I'm not trying to rant here, but I probably am, I'm just trying to explain the logic of how bans and clauses work. I'm sure we're all familiar with how bans work in the Smogon community by now.
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DNA
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Can we let the topic die now? I think it's long since run its course.
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