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Polar Spectrum said:

I withhold my rant; on the grounds that I don't want to invest the effort to debate this on an equal level to how strongly I disagree with everything Smogon stands for in the pokemon community as a whole (not this site, the whole Pokemon Community).

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I understand that you're not really someone who plays according to Smogon's rules. However, what I don't understand is why you keep trying to shoot them down on every single ban decision they come up with. I mean, have you even tried playing with Smogon tiers? Honestly, what I'm seeing from is just inconspicuous rage, not meaningful criticism.

Zeffy said:

I understand that you're not really someone who plays according to Smogon's rules. However, what I don't understand is why you keep trying to shoot them down on every single ban decision they come up with. I mean, have you even tried playing with Smogon tiers? Honestly, what I'm seeing from is just inconspicuous rage, not meaningful criticism.

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It's not so much rage, as just disappointment - that because of their role and popularity in the entire pokemon community, their specific way of playing pokemon competitively is embraced as the way 'everyone should play'. Even though the official tournaments involve much less repetitive gameplay, what most people would call more interesting battles, and arguably more balanced play - than Smogon's rulesets and ban lists allow for.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think 'everyone should play the way I play' either. But the fact that their word has become law in competitive battling communities, is just sad (to me.) It's completely homogenized the experienced, and driven innovation, originality, and any semblance of variety in gameplay below the floorboards.

Heh, don't mind me being all bitter and spiteful towards them either, I know I'm just cranky about it. By all means it's nice that they've provided some organization for competitive pokemon, but I just see them getting worse and worse with the issues I take up with them. Such as a failure to evolve at the speed the games have. They have their way, that's fine. I just have my way, and would be remiss to not voice the fact, that there's another besides theirs.


Okay enough ranting on that from me though lol

Professor_Jared said:

stuff

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Heatran loses to EQ, Suicune is set up fodder for it and Nite loses to +1 Tough Claws Dragon Claw.



Also good, keep the mega bans coming, all of them are retarded and broken anyway, that and the entire concept of megas reeks of "jumping the shark". I honestly think "the more megas banned" the better.

Its basically like uber pokemon except packaging them in normal pokemon's body to try and woefully disguise the fact you have given them bs typing, stats, movepool and ability. Might aswell just go the whole shebang and give them all a new names. I think "Uberzard, Heracrogre, Mediquaza, Khangaskhatwo, Mawiloudon, Gengarceus" would be more fitting than "mega".

Polar Spectrum said:

It's not so much rage, as just disappointment - that because of their role and popularity in the entire pokemon community, their specific way of playing pokemon competitively is embraced as the way 'everyone should play'. Even though the official tournaments involve much less repetitive gameplay, what most people would call more interesting battles, and arguably more balanced play - than Smogon's rulesets and ban lists allow for.

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Being embraced as the "way that everyone should play" isn't really Smogon's fault--blame the members. Smogon as a whole is the premier competitive Pokemon battling community because it was the first community that actually applied a competitive jive into the game. Sure, official tournaments are considered competitive in the strictest sense of the word. What Smogon did was take that up a notch and introduced a sensible way of tiering Pokemon by usage, along with suspect tests to determine a certain Pokemon's viability in the tier. In no way does Smogon force everyone to play it their way. There are other communities who basically branched off and created their own version of what basically is Smogon's tiering system.

Polar Spectrum said:

Don't get me wrong, I don't think 'everyone should play the way I play' either. But the fact that their word has become law in competitive battling communities, is just sad (to me.) It's completely homogenized the experienced, and driven innovation, originality, and any semblance of variety in gameplay below the floorboards.

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The fact that you assume that innovation and originality is unheard of in Smogon tiers makes me question if you actually know what those words mean in Pokemon battling. Creative sets are not unheard of, after all. In fact, the higher skill level you are, the lesser you rely on Smogon's sets (though probably not as much as you would like). Lack of variety in gameplay? Double switching, prediction, critical hits, random status, etc gives you plenty of crap to worry about already that going for a no-brainer move rather than taking a risk is much, much more important than trying to be different. If you do discover something different then by all means present it--just remember that they will dissect your discovery, they'll try to weigh out the pros and cons (which is essentially what a good team builder should do, most of the time).

Polar Spectrum said:

Heh, don't mind me being all bitter and spiteful towards them either, I know I'm just cranky about it. By all means it's nice that they've provided some organization for competitive pokemon, but I just see them getting worse and worse with the issues I take up with them. Such as a failure to evolve at the speed the games have. They have their way, that's fine. I just have my way, and would be remiss to not voice the fact, that there's another besides theirs.

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Being bitter and spiteful towards something affects your overall judgement on said something. Centralization is a major problem in all Pokemon tiers, rulings, and what have you. It's much more noticeable in Smogon's tiers because the players notice it and try to do something about it (either bu abusing it or getting the council to suspect test it). I appreciate the way you voice your opinion however, the fact that you mentioned that you're bitter and spiteful towards them leaves me questioning whether or not I should acknowledge it. I'd like to point out that there are other ways to play, but people are apparently too ignorant to notice them. It's not Smogon's fault that their way of playing is very popular, it's the public's apparent ignorance.

I agree, and I apologize for what will undoubtedly be my continued repetition of this sentiment as long as I'm on PC haha. And you don't have to acknowledge, accept, or even sympathize with my viewpoint; I'm aware it's unpopular especially with large pokemon-based communities on the internet, and don't expect that to change anytime soon. It is what it is; and all I can do is fight the small battles person by person, so as to keep my complaining from being whining, by reason of doing nothing to help the situation I'm dissatisfied with.

A good friend once equated me to a grumpy old man sitting on a porch with a shotgun yelling at passersby; "Keep yer' Scizor-Garchomp-Greninja-Talonflame-Wash Rotom-Aegislash team off my lawnnnyeehhhh"

But anyways

Mega Mawile Ban

I'm not really against that, so there's some common ground whoop

Cyclone said:

What's next to go? Mega Venusaur? Mega Blastoise? Heck, let's ban Mega Tyranitar and everything else while we're at it! It's at the point that Pokémon are being PRE-BANNED (see Mega Salamence, and may also happen to Mega Altaria).

Banning Megas one by one leaves other Megas uncheckable and leads to the eventual banning of all Megas. The only solution: restore all Megas. Stick to banning legendaries.

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Wanted to single this post out because we see this fallacy-ridden argument every time something gets banned. (The fallacy is the slippery slope, if you're wondering.) No, Mega Blastoise won't get banned, because it sucks. Mega Blastoise doesn't have an effective base 259 attack, priority, amazing defensive typing, Intimidate, strong (if unreliable) priority, just enough coverage options to choose its counters, and one of the best boosting attacks in the game in Swords Dance. (It's funny how all of the Pokemon people list in these angry "and next thing you know they'll ban _____!" are never touched by the suspect process lol.) But yes, there will be other things to go and they're probably going to be broken. What's frustrating about posts like these is that they're using the suspect as a pretense to rant against Smogon instead of taking the tests at face value. How do I know you're not taking these suspects at face value?

"Restore all megas." Hmm, have you ever played against Mega Lucario? How about Mega Gengar? Oh, the same Mega Gengar that is the best Pokemon in the Uber tier? Luckily, OU tiering policy is controlled by people who want a playable metagame instead of people who want to "restore all megas" because, uhhh, some baseless platitudes about Smogon being ban-happy that aren't actually based in any experience playing OU except *maybe* the lower ladder.


... @the bit about Smogon being the origin of homogenized/generic play: Zeffers kinda covered this but I find it interesting that people who make this claim are the same people who are arguing for one of the most centralizing forces in OU to stay unbanned. People might have more room for creativity/innovation (which happens even in stale metagames, but whatever) if they didn't have to bend over backwards to over getting shredded by obviously broken mons...like Mega Mawile. :/

edit: also @zard-x i actually don't think he's broken on his own though i think that dual mega zards is definitely not so good (probs broken) and there's really no way to fix this except banning the better of the two of them which is definitely x. don't feel as great about this suspect though. kinda wish thund would get suspected next as i think that, besides being broken, it encourages lazy team-building (priority t-wave as a sweeper failsafe) that allows cookie cutter hyper offense a much easier time functioning (against stuff like char-x, as well as megatar, gyarados, really most sweepers except rush exca and like uhhh cm raikou lol) and its banning would do the most i think toward balancing the metagame. i think guess-zard needs a defanging and then we can talk about land though these cases are much more borderline than thund and esp. mega maw lol. mega pinsir is kinda br000ken tho lol

Heh forgive me but I've exhausted my emotional investment on explaining my discontent for Smogon for tonight. I'll just leave this for now saying, why not just stick with the Fifth gen meta game play, instead of banning 90% of what's new with 6th gen's to retro-fit it to what you're already used to? (referring to them, not you in particular Anti.)

The Gen V meta was terrible. I didn't participate much in that, aside from NU. If we're going back gens, I'd rather play Gen IV or older.

Zeffy said:

The Gen V meta was terrible. I didn't participate much in that, aside from NU. If we're going back gens, I'd rather play Gen IV or older.

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The Gen V meta wasn't absolutely awful, but it would've been loads better if Smogon did something about perma-weather. It was ****ing ridiculous last gen that almost every OU and Ubers team was a weather team, and at least half of those were rain teams. The thing I've always found strange about that (and SR) is that people often say that overcentralization is a bad thing (which it is), but then we had a weather-centric metagame that never had anything done to it. You don't really get more overcentralized than the weather meta of Gen V. I was so glad that Game Freak nerfed weather this generation.

Zekrom said:

The Gen V meta wasn't absolutely awful, but it would've been loads better if Smogon did something about perma-weather. It was ****ing ridiculous last gen that almost every OU and Ubers team was a weather team, and at least half of those were rain teams. The thing I've always found strange about that (and SR) is that people often say that overcentralization is a bad thing (which it is), but then we had a weather-centric metagame that never had anything done to it. You don't really get more overcentralized than the weather meta of Gen V. I was so glad that Game Freak nerfed weather this generation.

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They can't do anything about perma-weather because they can't (or rather, shouldn't) change actual game mechanics. They either had to ban it (which UU later did, iirc) or think of something else. One idea they came up with was banning the use of Drizzle and Swift Swim on the same team. I can't remember how much it affected the OU metagame though.

Zeffy said:

They can't do anything about perma-weather because they can't (or rather, shouldn't) change actual game mechanics. They either had to ban it (which UU later did, iirc) or think of something else. One idea they came up with was banning the use of Drizzle and Swift Swim on the same team. I can't remember how much it affected the OU metagame though.

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Yeah, I know that they can't change game mechanics, but it was still annoying as hell, especially because it seemed to me like so few people wanted to do anything about it at the time.

Anti said:

Wanted to single this post out because we see this fallacy-ridden argument every time something gets banned. (The fallacy is the slippery slope, if you're wondering.) No, Mega Blastoise won't get banned, because it sucks. Mega Blastoise doesn't have an effective base 259 attack, priority, amazing defensive typing, Intimidate, strong (if unreliable) priority, just enough coverage options to choose its counters, and one of the best boosting attacks in the game in Swords Dance. (It's funny how all of the Pokemon people list in these angry "and next thing you know they'll ban _____!" are never touched by the suspect process lol.) But yes, there will be other things to go and they're probably going to be broken. What's frustrating about posts like these is that they're using the suspect as a pretense to rant against Smogon instead of taking the tests at face value. How do I know you're not taking these suspects at face value?

"Restore all megas." Hmm, have you ever played against Mega Lucario? How about Mega Gengar? Oh, the same Mega Gengar that is the best Pokemon in the Uber tier? Luckily, OU tiering policy is controlled by people who want a playable metagame instead of people who want to "restore all megas" because, uhhh, some baseless platitudes about Smogon being ban-happy that aren't actually based in any experience playing OU except *maybe* the lower ladder.


... @the bit about Smogon being the origin of homogenized/generic play: Zeffers kinda covered this but I find it interesting that people who make this claim are the same people who are arguing for one of the most centralizing forces in OU to stay unbanned. People might have more room for creativity/innovation (which happens even in stale metagames, but whatever) if they didn't have to bend over backwards to over getting shredded by obviously broken mons...like Mega Mawile. :/

edit: also @zard-x i actually don't think he's broken on his own though i think that dual mega zards is definitely not so good (probs broken) and there's really no way to fix this except banning the better of the two of them which is definitely x. don't feel as great about this suspect though. kinda wish thund would get suspected next as i think that, besides being broken, it encourages lazy team-building (priority t-wave as a sweeper failsafe) that allows cookie cutter hyper offense a much easier time functioning (against stuff like char-x, as well as megatar, gyarados, really most sweepers except rush exca and like uhhh cm raikou lol) and its banning would do the most i think toward balancing the metagame. i think guess-zard needs a defanging and then we can talk about land though these cases are much more borderline than thund and esp. mega maw lol. mega pinsir is kinda br000ken tho lol

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I'm not going to put in the emotional time and energy to respond to this point by point, but I'll point out some facts:

- There are 26 Mega Stones in X/Y (including Blazikenite).
- There are 7 Mega Stones that are banned at Smogon (including Blazikenite, but Blaziken itself is already banned).
- That is over 1/4 of the Mega Stones in the game.

The next time Mega something is suspect-tested for possible banning, consider what among the seven banned Megas might be able to beat it if it were not banned. Also consider with OR/AS and new Megas coming that they need to consider unbanning and retesting all Megas as the new ones may balance them out. Yes, the best way to test everything new is by unbanning everything already banned and retesting. But that's in three months from now.

And there's my opinion on that.

Cyclone said:

I'm not going to put in the emotional time and energy to respond to this point by point, but I'll point out some facts:

- There are 26 Mega Stones in X/Y (including Blazikenite).
- There are 7 Mega Stones that are banned at Smogon (including Blazikenite, but Blaziken itself is already banned).
- That is over 1/4 of the Mega Stones in the game.

The next time Mega something is suspect-tested for possible banning, consider what among the seven banned Megas might be able to beat it if it were not banned. Also consider with OR/AS and new Megas coming that they need to consider unbanning and retesting all Megas as the new ones may balance them out. Yes, the best way to test everything new is by unbanning everything already banned and retesting. But that's in three months from now.

And there's my opinion on that.

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No one wants a metagame where broken mons kinda-sorta balance out other broken mons. Even if we did, just look at what megas are banned:

Kangaskhan, Gengar, Lucario, Blaziken, Mewtwo X, Mewtwo Y, Mawile

Mewtwo's base form is Uber so its mega evolutions obviously are. Mega Gengar was quickbanned it was so broken and is/was getting tested in Ubers. None of the other megas (even Mewtwo's) stop it from doing its job since it's a trapper. And since it was the first of these except Blaziken to go, I think we can safety assume that Lucario, Mawile, etc. did NOT balance it out. Mega Blaziken destroys all of those mons too: its STABs are all it needs to rip up Lucario (whose priority moves aren't coming close to KOing Blaziken), Mawile, and Kanga. Which might have been why it was quickbanned. Kanga was also quickbanned because it's pretty much impossible to stop with running a few specialized counters. Mawile and Lucario evidently weren't even enough to get it a suspect test though both actually pose it some problems in theory. Lucario was not at all kept in check by these other mons since it blew past Maw and even Kanga if it was running NP Vacuum Wave or whatever, but yeah, its suspect vote wasn't really close for a reason. As for Mawile, I'll just ask you this: given the extreme brokenness of the aforementioned mons, would you rather have them around to keep Mawile in check, or ban them all so the meta isn't unplayable? You can say "well they can just balance each other out" but I've just demonstrated that they do nothing of the sort. Certainly not without Mega Gengar who is somehow more broken than other Uber mons.

I see no reason to protect the concept of mega evolutions. If they're warping the metagame, they need to go. If not, they won't. Again, this is why I'm glad actual players are deciding these things instead of these principled arguments (which always seem to come without any actual justification besides "it's just my opinion" -_-)...

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And yeah the bit from the other post about "why not just play BW?" is sort of what I mean, as that point is simply failing to understand the goal of suspect testing. It's not to try to emulate old metagames. (The new weather mechanics make that impossible anyway.) Rather, its goal is to create a balanced metagame from the hand Gamefreak gives us, which is unique every generation because of new mons and mechanic changes. If the hand we're given is unbalanced, we're not just going to be like "oh hey, we could play this steaming pile of crap, or just go play BW." We're going to try to make the meta work by banning obviously broken thing and suspecting more borderline cases. (It would be a travesty if something like Aeg or Zard-X got a quickban instead of a test, for example.) And if that logic had been used in BW ("just go play gen4 if you want a playable meta"), Drizzle/Swift Swim would dominate the entire tier and upon the release of XY, people would have to go back two gens to play a meta that isn't garbage. So it's not about "failure to adapt" or wanting what we're used to, it's very much about making the best of the hand we're dealt. No one wants BW again. Or DPP or Advance. What we want is this unique generation to be fun in its own way. That can't happen if we're stubbornly refusing to ban Mega freaking Gengar because, well, I don't know. I still haven't heard a justification for that idea. (Usually it's just decrying the people banning things. Which might sound okay if the alternative wasn't totally indefensible.)

Anti said:

No one wants a metagame where broken mons kinda-sorta balance out other broken mons. Even if we did, just look at what megas are banned:

Kangaskhan, Gengar, Lucario, Blaziken, Mewtwo X, Mewtwo Y, Mawile

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Without reading your analysis (I did, but it's irrelevant to my opinion), I can say that Mewtwo is already banned, so yes, that is gone. Blaziken I always questioned; sure, it's strong, but it's the same type of Pokémon as Infernape and Emboar; why exactly is it banned? Lucario: please, just give it some Psychic and it doesn't have a chance; plus I have been outsped with Mega Lucario numerous times. Gengar: yes, it had to go, that was a bad ability selection on Nintendo's part that broke it. Kangaskhan; I will consent that I have not really used this one yet, but have a 6IV one to try using in the maingame in places like the Battle Maison and Battle Test, so I will see (maybe with a Pachirisu *snicker*). And I have yet to have one strong battle with Mawile; I've actually swapped it out for other Megas in my party. Maybe it doesn't fit my style.

So based on my own experience, I cannot see bans for Mega Mawile and Mega Lucario, and though I've seen a video, don't have enough experience with Kangaskhan to call that one. But if you want to discuss banning something, let's just bring up Slurpuff. No, seriously. I was linked this video. Maybe it's hacked and not able to be replicated, but it IS a sweep. Which seems to be the criteria for banning something these days. TE5W-WWWW-WWW9-7GFP

I see no reason to protect the concept of mega evolutions. If they're warping the metagame, they need to go. If not, they won't. Again, this is why I'm glad actual players are deciding these things instead of these principled arguments (which always seem to come without any actual justification besides "it's just my opinion" -_-)...

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Sorry, but they are also the opinions of actual players, which literally does make it just their opinion based on the Smogon-approved movesets. Someone using a different set clearly doesn't have as easy a time, and GOOD players can innovate a strategy that is NOT approved by Smogon and take the Mega by surprise. As I said, those two bans I mentioned should not be there. The other five, maybe. Tornadus and Thundurus meanwhile should already be in ubers; I argue all legendaries should be. (Even you, Shaymin.)

But "that's just my opinion".

Yeah so no one decides tiers by "all legendaries should be banned" because half of them suck. Just because the term "legendary" captures the imagination of younger fans doesn't make Tornadus, Articuno, etc. suck any less. And that's sort of the thing. If the goal is a balanced and competitive metagame, then that is an indefensible proposition. If it's not (or is not the primary goal), then why do you care about what Smogon bans? I ask because Smogon isn't trying to cater to players like that, and none of their decisions are binding. You're free not to play by their rules. So what exactly is the motivation, after seemingly every ban, to come back and decry their latest decision? Bans like Mega Lucario and Blaziken are NOT controversial. And that's because they're so obvious. Give me reasoning that isn't "grrr Smogon/insert slippery slope argument here" (fallacious, irrelevant) or "I've never had any problems with it" (anecdotal, irrelevant) or "that's just my opinion and I'm entitled to my opinion!!!" (irrelevant, people who think Mega Gengar should be RU are as well, doesn't make their arguments any less terrible) and I can talk with you about these bans.

relevant

edit: for the sake of discussing something that isn't so cut and dry:

Zekrom said:

The thing I've always found strange about that (and SR) is that people often say that overcentralization is a bad thing (which it is), but then we had a weather-centric metagame that never had anything done to it. You don't really get more overcentralized than the weather meta of Gen V. I was so glad that Game Freak nerfed weather this generation.

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this is a really interesting point on both weather and sr and am curious if anyone has any takes on this

Anti said:

Yeah so no one decides tiers by "all legendaries should be banned" because half of them suck. Just because the term "legendary" captures the imagination of younger fans doesn't make Tornadus, Articuno, etc. suck any less. And that's sort of the thing. If the goal is a balanced and competitive metagame, then that is an indefensible proposition. If it's not (or is not the primary goal), then why do you care about what Smogon bans? I ask because Smogon isn't trying to cater to players like that, and none of their decisions are binding. You're free not to play by their rules. So what exactly is the motivation, after seemingly every ban, to come back and decry their latest decision? Bans like Mega Lucario and Blaziken are NOT controversial. And that's because they're so obvious. Give me reasoning that isn't "grrr Smogon/insert slippery slope argument here" (fallacious, irrelevant) or "I've never had any problems with it" (anecdotal, irrelevant) or "that's just my opinion and I'm entitled to my opinion!!!" (irrelevant, people who think Mega Gengar should be RU are as well, doesn't make their arguments any less terrible) and I can talk with you about these bans.

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Call me naive...

"You're naive!"

...:|...but Smogon acting like the authority on competitive battling is just silly. That's why myself and others like to poke fun at Smogon for trying to "fix" the metagame. Smogon isn't going to be able to ban Blaziken from online battling in general, and Smogon isn't going to be able to allow me to use the Unova Battle Subway with a party of Tornadus, Articuno, and let's say Shaymin. So, in reality, Smogon is just a place for people to complain and say "Hey, I can't beat this, we need to ban it!"

Maybe Nintendo/Gamefreak takes the input and uses it to make adjustments for the next generation. Maybe not. I have no idea. But if not, then Smogon is just a useless corner of the Internet. If people always try to copy pre-approved strategies, players will always know how to handle them; the problem is they have not created a strategy to deal with the things they ban. And that's where elitism is implied. They are no more elite than I am the King of England. That's why I laugh at Smogon entirely and say no, if I want to use Blaziken, I'm going to use it.

The down side is our League, even on the 3DS, is respecting Smogon's bans in it. So yeah, no Mega Mawile for me. It's no problem; I have better.

I think you should read the post I linked to, if you haven't already.

Anyway, it *would* be a "Smogon suxx!!!1!!" argument that would derail a discussion about Mega Mawile. So, let me spell this out for you:

Give me reasoning that isn't "grrr Smogon/insert slippery slope argument here" (fallacious, irrelevant) or "I've never had any problems with it" (anecdotal, irrelevant) or "that's just my opinion and I'm entitled to my opinion!!!" (irrelevant, people who think Mega Gengar should be RU are as well, doesn't make their arguments any less terrible) and I can talk with you about these bans.

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Your opinion on Smogon is not relevant to Mega Mawile's tiering status. In fact, it is a fallacy to bring up Smogon in an attempt to discredit the Mega Mawile ban. So stop doing it.

You know what else is fallacious? Baseless generalizations like:

So, in reality, Smogon is just a place for people to complain and say "Hey, I can't beat this, we need to ban it!"

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strawman
among others

So based on my own experience, I cannot see bans for Mega Mawile and Mega Lucario

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personal incredulity
anecdotal

but it IS a sweep. Which seems to be the criteria for banning something these days.

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strawman
and an implied slippery slope for good measure
and it's anecdotal anyway

the problem is they have not created a strategy to deal with the things they ban.

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This isn't a fallacy as much as it's just not true. Do you really think that people who really want to win didn't think "Hey, Mawile/Aegislash/Deoxys-S/etc. are really common and really good, but hey, I'll just be lazy instead of thinking of ways to deal with them!" It just couldn't be that maybe those mons were just broken!!!

So you're free to hate Smogon. But no one wants a Mega Mawile discussions derailed by logically fallacious and irrelevant arguments that aren't even connected to the suspect. So please stop. Thank you.

(If you must, make a Smogon hating thread. I'm sure that will be productive!)

Cyclone said:

Blaziken I always questioned; sure, it's strong, but it's the same type of Pokémon as Infernape and Emboar; why exactly is it banned? Lucario: please, just give it some Psychic and it doesn't have a chance; plus I have been outsped with Mega Lucario numerous times.

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Mega Lucario's ban was one I found a little iffy, but what separates Blaziken from it's Fire/Fighting brethren is Speed Boost. It's basically guaranteed to be faster than any un-Scarfed Pokemon while not being locked into one move, which is something Infernape and Emboar wish they could do. Combine that with good STAB coverage and Swords Dance, and you've something that's nearly impossible to revenge kill and that very few things wanna switch in to.

Kangaskhan; I will consent that I have not really used this one yet, but have a 6IV one to try using in the maingame in places like the Battle Maison and Battle Test, so I will see (maybe with a Pachirisu *snicker*).

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I can tell you that Mega Kangaskhan is indeed broken to some extent, mainly because of Parental Bond. That's like giving it a Choice Band without locking it into a move while also giving it the ability to cut through Substitutes, Sturdy, and Focus Sashes. It also let's it have an un-Tauntable Swords Dance that does damage (Power Up Punch). it even gets priority and has decent bulk. Mega Kanga is seriously the only reason why I got to an 81 win streak in the Super Singles of the Battle Maison; it takes something broken to beat something else broken.

Sorry, but they are also the opinions of actual players, which literally does make it just their opinion based on the Smogon-approved movesets.

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It's generally assumed that the people voting in the suspect test are some of the better battlers and have a deep understanding of the metagame. And it's not like they all agree on it either; they often argue about the thing being suspected.

Someone using a different set clearly doesn't have as easy a time, and GOOD players can innovate a strategy that is NOT approved by Smogon and take the Mega by surprise. As I said, those two bans I mentioned should not be there. The other five, maybe. Tornadus and Thundurus meanwhile should already be in ubers; I argue all legendaries should be. (Even you, Shaymin.)

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This is the thing that a lot of people don't seem to understand about competitive battling. Most people who battle competitively battle solely to win. Not to get the jollies outta using clever sets or underrated sets (which they do seem to encourage people to use non-standard sets to some extent btw). Furthermore, most people simply are not creative, and are not skilled strategists. Since they want to win and are generally unable to come up with clever strategies and sets, they rely on Smogon's standard sets for Pokemon which are tried and true sets, hence why they're "standard". The limitation is more the battlers, not Smogon itself. Yeah, it'd be nice if this wasn't the case, but you really shouldn't expect too much outta people.

Cyclone said:

...:|...but Smogon acting like the authority on competitive battling is just silly. That's why myself and others like to poke fun at Smogon for trying to "fix" the metagame. Smogon isn't going to be able to ban Blaziken from online battling in general, and Smogon isn't going to be able to allow me to use the Unova Battle Subway with a party of Tornadus, Articuno, and let's say Shaymin. So, in reality, Smogon is just a place for people to complain and say "Hey, I can't beat this, we need to ban it!"

Maybe Nintendo/Gamefreak takes the input and uses it to make adjustments for the next generation. Maybe not. I have no idea. But if not, then Smogon is just a useless corner of the Internet. If people always try to copy pre-approved strategies, players will always know how to handle them; the problem is they have not created a strategy to deal with the things they ban. And that's where elitism is implied. They are no more elite than I am the King of England. That's why I laugh at Smogon entirely and say no, if I want to use Blaziken, I'm going to use it.

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I think this has been said before, but.....it's not like you have to follow Smogon's rules at all. There's plenty of other places to battle in. And everyone who follows Smogon's rules does so willingly. So I don't see why anyone feels the need to complain about something they aren't forced to deal with. And really, it could be a lot worse.

Well I actually think that Game freak did the right thing by nerfing weather in Gen 6, otherwise we'd probably would still have tons of Sand rush Excadrills or Swift Swim teams running around. Oh and don't get me started on how many solar beams Charizard Y or Ninetales could spam in the sun without the weather nerf.

Anti said:

this is a really interesting point on both weather and sr and am curious if anyone has any takes on this

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Yeah, I'm there. Not really keen on touching the Cyclone-Anti part of the current conversation lol so I'll comment on this -

Zekrom said:

Yeah, I know that they can't change game mechanics, but it was still annoying as hell, especially because it seemed to me like so few people wanted to do anything about it at the time.

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Zeffy said:

The Gen V meta was terrible. I didn't participate much in that, aside from NU. If we're going back gens, I'd rather play Gen IV or older.

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This is where the "Smogon knows best" mindset falls apart. A lot of proponents to their cause like to throw around phrases like "broken" and "centralization", and "spamming", but those are curiously only applied to things that the majority of their community doesn't like. We all know and have confirmed in this very thread weather in Gen 5 was 'broken' since it lasted permanently, could be set instantly by ability, gave crazy boosts to things and dominated entire tiers. Like Anti / Zekrom said, some massive majority of all teams in OU in fifth gen, were weather teams. And nobody cared. At least not enough to do anything about it. And no; 'doing something' is not the same as 'doing a little bit to sate a few complaining people, but not doing enough to change the fact that it was the overwhelming majority of all teams in OU". For the past 3 gens now, Stealth Rocks, has been an undeniably deciding factor, in probably even more teams than weather. If you run teams with stealth rocks weaknesses, and no ways of dealing with it, your team will unabashedly be shot down by any smogon critic as a failure, due to stealth rocks effectiveness against it. And yet, no action has been, or is being taken, to change this.

Why? Because Smogon doesn't actually care if something is 'broken' or 'centralizing' gameplay, they care if the simple majority of their community doesn't like it. There's an argument here about counters to what gets banned, and how easily it can be dealt with. But when you compare the amount of moves, that ignore evasion boosts, hit for double damage on evasive targets, and the abilities that ignore evasion, and on and on about evasion - and compare THAT to how many ways you have to deal with stealth rock? It's a stark and harrowing contrast. Smogon LIKES rocks; but they don't LIKE evasion. Despite how many means there are to dealing with both. (Don't get me wrong I don't like evasion either; but this argument stands.)

This applies directly to their mega bans too; most of those banned megas share a lot of common common weaknesses. Lucario, Kangaskhan, Mawile, NONE of them like a simple burn. Kangaskhan usually can't even hit ghosts with Power-Up Punch, Sucker Punch, Return and Fake out! (yes, I know sucker punch, but since that's its only option, and it relies on you attacking, in singles you can literally just sit there and use will o wisp repeatedly and it can't touch you.) Lucario, and Mawile, BOTH weak to ground, and fire. Very common offensive attack types.

Smogon just doesn't' want to change, they want their meta played their way on their terms. And unfortunately, what that all is, is being decided by the same people, over and over again.


By the waaaay - totally open to another topic haha. Just continuing this tangent because I have a lot to say on it. I DO - have a nice thing to say about them though - the names they give their suspect test threads for things, are kinda awesome lol. I cracked up when I saw the Mega Kangaskan suspect test thread name...

"Momma said knock you out or Hit me Baby One More Time"

{D:} That is my favorite thing I have ever seen from them.