Free Sheer Cold! - Suspect Moves

DISCLAIMER: Like the trapper thread, this isn't a pretense to advocating for banning anything. It's supposed to be a thought-provoking discussion about the role of certain moves in our metagame. Banning may or may not be relevant. Anyway...

Several years ago, a Smogon user whose name I don't remember started a thread where he asserted that Stealth Rock was broken and should be banned. His reasoning was rather nebulous and led to a funny post from Obi where he (satirically) argued that Trick was broken using the same criteria as the OP did. The rather brash tone of the thread did make it all something of a joke though, as I recall.

Years later, it seems to me like there is an unspoken assumption that Stealth Rock is actually pretty broken, whether or not people use the word. Usually it's phrasing like "Stealth Rock is mandatory on every serious competitive team," which is something that applies to, well, GSC Snorlax. The question that this thread poses is simple: how do we assess or approach a potentially broken or overpowered move? Also, and not necessarily related: are certain moves healthy for the metagame? Moves in question might include:

Stealth Rock

The undisputed best move in OU, and probably every tier. For all of the "this takes no skill to use" talk around BP, there are a ton of reliable SR setters in OU that allow you to shave off a ton of health (cumulatively) throughout a match without really needing much skill to set or even to keep on the field. It's not like three Spikes layers or something.

The question about Stealth Rock probably has more to do with how it would impact the metagame if it was banned. This argument has already come up a bit with regard to Aegislash. Is that how we should decide bans? Maybe it is. I don't know, but I think it's something that should at least be discussed.

Knock Off

The advent of mega evolutions helps with this somewhat, but the power buff to Knock Off makes for an extremely spammable move that can disable entire teams. Besides its annoying effect and good power, it has a ton of very strong abusers: Bisharp, Landorus, Azumarill, Landorus-T, Thundurus, Mega-Mawile, Mega Scizor, Tornadus-T, Conkeldurr, and even Weavile all boast strong Knock Offs, while defensive Pokemon like Mega Venusaur, Mandibuzz, Ferrothorn, Mew, and Gliscor can also run it, but it is more of a nuisance than a legitimate weapon on them. And oh yeah, it's a Dark move, a top offensive type in OU. Is the combination of wide distribution, good base power and type, and item removal broken? Should Knock Off be nerfed (I have no idea how this would work) or banned?

U-turn and Volt Switch

Not to use the same comparison here, but oh well...people rightfully complained about BP being a no skill cop-out playstyle, but what about Volt-Turn? Like Knock Off, both have wide distribution as TMs, especially U-turn. Take a simple situation like CB Talonflame versus Ferrothorn, early game. Ferro can't really afford risking a Flare Blitz OHKO so early, and even Protect is risky if Talonflame has Swords Dance. So more free chip damage and a favorable match-up on what comes in. While dedicated U-turn spam is easy to play around, it's worth asking how healthy these moves are for the metagame, regardless of if they're broken. (I think it's a stretch to say they are, but that's just an opinion.)

Scald

Speaks for itself, far superior distribution to Lava Plume and a more devastating status condition to Discharge, Scald is an insanely spammable move that can penalize opponents for playing well. For example, let's say HP Flying Specs Keldeo double switches into DD Mega Gyarados, not yet mega evolved. The Keldeo user, perhaps desperate, has a 30% chance to stop Mega Gyarados in its tracks despite incorrectly predicting the double switch into a Pokemon that normally sets up on it. As a Keldeo zealot, I find that it's a great breaker mostly because so-called counters/checks like Mega Venusaur and Dragonite can be worn down by burns and turned into set-up fodder. I actually prefer using Scald to HP Flying when a decently healthy Mega Venusaur is coming in because a burn yields longer term payoff if I want to fodder Mega Venu later.

While probably not broken, like U-turn, I think a good question to ask is how healthy a move like Scald is for the metagame, especially when a solid substitute move in Surf is readily available.

Worry Seed

We can discuss it, but I think Council is going to quickban, so we're probably wasting our time.

Go crazy?

#MYMANLEBRON

I think that we get ruined by moves like Stealth Rock and Scald over and over and complain they are what's bad with a new generation, but what we don't realize is that they might only be ruining the tier we're often battling in. I think tiers have their own rules and play patterns because of the pokemon that are being used in them. This is unavoidable, but it's still bias to ban or limit a move across the entire metagame because of the effect it has on one or two tiers.

For example, I think that even though OU is a tier that a lot of pokemon are legal to use in, only a handful become really popular because of the effects Stealth Rock has on the tier's structure. Hazard setters and rapid spinners become more valuable to teams and fire/bug/flying/ice types don't get used as often unless the team also has a decent rapid spinner. But you don't really see that situation much in NU or LC. Maybe it's a problem with the tier, not with the move itself?

__
Also, change moves around and you change tiers like OU a lot more than you would if you were just banning pokemon. You can influence what pokemon are used more often to take the most advantage of those moves and also lower the need of checks or counters to those pokemon, if any exist.

Another example for SR: if Stealth Rock is limited to 1 poke in a team or nerfed to be a turn-count thing like Rain Dance, will Talonflame/Moltres/regular Charizard rise in popularity and will they begin to dominate their tiers? Does that make the ban/nerf worth it in the end?

__
So before we even think about banning or nerfing certain moves, we need to focus on what tiers battlers are having trouble with the most when these moves are wrecking their teams. We also need to realize what those moves restrict in the tier and the metagame and what might surge too much in usage once their threats are removed. I think that's only fair.

but hopefully SR gets banned and my fire teams can actually be useful in OU

I'm not going to pretend that I'm as knowledgeable about the metagame and how things effect it as the rest of you, but I'm going to throw in my 2 cents anyway.

Stealth Rock: I'm pretty sure some of you have heard me voice my dislike of SR before. People often complain that something overcentralizes the metagame (like Aegislash currently), yet I rarely hear anyone say that about Stealth Rock. It has a great distribution within and across the tiers. Since typing factors into the damage, a lot of Pokemon are Stealth Rock weak; some Pokemon are even bumped down a tier simply because they weren't blessed with a Rock-resistant typing (note the large number of Fire types in the lower tiers, particularly UU). Just about every competitive team runs Stealth Rocks because it can rip off so much HP over the course of a battle, and teams are forced to run a Spinner/Defogger because of that (not to mention that there's also Spikes/Toxic Spikes). IDK about you, but that sounds like overcentralizing to me, which as far as I know is generally considered a bad thing in the meta.

However, I don't think that Stealth Rock needs to be banned. There's nothing wrong with having to prepare for entry hazards in battle, and admittedly, we need SR so stuff like Talonflame and Mega Pinsir doesn't get ridiculous. What I think needs to happen is one or both of these 2 things: 1) Stealth Rocks gets nerfed, via either doing less damage in general or by removing the whole damage being related to typing thing. 2) There's more good Spinners/Defoggers. There's not a lot of good hazard removers in each tier, so your options are rather limited, which makes things a little too predictable for you opponent, not to mention boring. I don't want to have to run Excadrill or Mandibuzz or Latias on all of my OU teams or Mega Blastoise and Crobat on all my UU teams. That's no fun.

Unfortunately, those things are up to Game Freak to do, and not Smogon. But I guess I can dream....

Knock Off: Knock Off is a strange case: useless last gen, now one of the most useful moves this gen. I agree that the good distribution, plus the power boost and the fact that its a Dark type attack (which isn't as bad as Ghost) makes it a bit much. Especially when there's little good to defend against it. Not gonna lie, I use it quite a bit myself, but who doesn't? I don't think that there's anything inherently wrong with a Pokemon being crippled by losing its item (after all, we cripple pokes through other methods too).

Unfortunately, I think that the solution lies with Game Freak again. I think that the best way to deal with Knock Off is to remove the 50% power boost it gets when slapping away a held item. At least it won't do absurd amounts of damage AND remove your item. There's not much you can do about its distribution.

Volt-Turn: Not gonna comment on this because I've never used Volt-Turn, nor have I had to deal with it much.

Scald: I never got why people complain about Scald and not burns in general. Because that seems to be people's main complaint with it: that it burns. Well, ♥♥♥♥, Will-o-Wisp has a good distribution and burns, let's ban that too. And tbh, I think that you're over exaggerating how often that 30% chance actually burns. All that needs to happen with Scald is that its power gets dropped from 80 to 55.

Worry Seed: People use Worry Seed?

In.

Im "SuckyTier" peaked at about 20000 CRE.

My nominations.

Defog.

Worry Seed.

Gothitelle.

Knock Off.

Aegislash.

Reuniclus.

Entry Hazards

Weather.

EDIT;

Tornadus

Thundurus

Excadrill

Mawile Mega

Charizard-X

SR-Not sure about this one, it definitely has pejorative qualities for the metagame, since it punishes players for an action as fundamental as switching, and using certain types of Pokemon [the ones who are 4x weak to SR]. I'm not sure this classifies it as broken though, plus SR actually keeps a few Pokemon in check [BW Volc, Dragonite, Charizard], Dragonite is the big one, but I could see no SR breaking the other two as well.

Knock Off-This one is broken. 97.5 Damage + Item removal coming off of a relatively decent attacking type thanks to the steel nerf is just an incredible advantage for free. We just banned Deoxys formes, which did the same thing, gave a big advantage without earning it or any thought.

U-Turn/Volt Switch-Another interesting one, I'm not sure about the brokenness of these moves, but they, like Knock Off, offer a big advantage to the player. It severely tones down the pressure on the player to consider a double switch, or a switch in general, because they can just U-Turn whatever comes in and go to the appropriate poke to beat it. These moves can preserve momentum and keep your opponent responding; Stathakis wrote once that "you are going to lose if you're doing the responding" or something along the lines of that in some offense guide of his, and I think he's definitely right. Obviously there are a few ways around Volt-Turn and you can regain momentum with clever switches and planning, but I still find this one suspect.

Scald: I don't really have an argument on this. I don't like it, but I wouldn't say its broken, however the meta would probably benefit if everyone had to use surf instead, since you're removing a luck factor.

I would like to chime in and say Defog is extremely broken in my opinion, it wastes 7 turns of potential hazard laying in a single turn and this severely hampers many stall teams. Not many people find the evasion stat reduce a big thing but if situation makes us to stay in, then many moves like stone miss/focus miss even Draco miss tbh (my luck sucks) is most probable to hit which is a big plus for the user, although rare I have seen people abuse it too (fails 9 out of 10 times tho).

I want to post about Stealth Rock in depth.

As I more or less stated in the OP, Stealth Rock is very obviously broken. You are at a disadvantage if you don't use it. If you wish to dispute this point, I would say that a common argument against a Stealth Rock ban--keeping certain threats in check--is one point that makes it evident that Stealth Rock is necessary on any serious competitive team. Talonflame, Charizard, Mega Pinsir, Dragonite, and even Thundurus become a lot better with Stealth Rock gone. More broadly, offense teams get a ton of extra KOs from residual Stealth Rock damage that can easily swing games, while stall absolutely needs it to rack up damage or else it becomes even more of a sitting duck playstyle. Both archetypes become objectively worse without running Stealth Rock, and other teams on the defense-offense spectrum (like balance, Rain offense, or whatever) also benefit so greatly from Stealth Rock that it's essentially a requirement. Think about it this way: if you took two random teams of equal viability and stripped Stealth Rock from one, the latter team would instantly be at a huge disadvantage because the act of switching would incur a far greater cost over the course of the match.

And I think that's a crucial point about the metagame balance argument: while I think the concern is valid, Pokemon become easier to handle when they don't get to rack up damage with Stealth Rock on top of their attacks. Seriously, how often do you see "*offensive threat* will 2HKO *defensive threat* with Stealth Rock down" on a Smogon analysis? Walls will be better at walling when they aren't getting free damage racked up on them. And that's not even posing the obvious "is countering broken things with other broken things really ideal?" but that's outside the scope of what I hope to address in this post.

If Stealth Rock is in fact a necessity, isn't that a very obvious limitation on metagame variety? If you have to run a Pokemon with Stealth Rock, you're forced to run a Pokemon with Stealth Rock and then run it on that Pokemon, which is a moderate limitation on Pokemon selection and on 1 of your 24 available moveslots. This might seem so minuscule as to be irrelevant, and I don't really think that's wrong, but ideally we wouldn't have to be required to run Stealth Rock. And really, most good teams need hazard control too, which means running the momentum killing Defog (go find me a Defog user that isn't a total momentum killer besides Lati@s) or Excadrill. That's now two team slots (one if you cram hazards AND hazard control on the same mon) and two moveslots you're running because you have to. It's to your advantage…but you have to. I don't believe this is ideal for the metagame. I don't want to pretend like this is some huge burden, because Stealth Rock has an extremely wide distribution. (I do find hazard control to be much more cumbersome, however.) That doesn't mean that it's health for the metagame, whether it's ideal or not.

More obviously, it limits variety in hampering the viability of certain Pokemon and biasing the game toward or against certain types. Yeah, it helps with Charizard and Talonflame, but Charizard is broken anyway and I sometimes wonder what makes a 120 base power priority attack much less broken than Prankster Thunder Wave. In other words, I think it skews the balance of the metagame as much as it enforces it. Of course, this is difficult to quantify or prove, but this is true of any claim about metagame balance. (This is also true in the case of Aegislash, where a similar discourse is taking place.) The speculation is factually based, but it is still speculation. Wouldn't it be healthier for the "invisible hand" of the metagame to determine what is and isn't good or broken without the external intrusion of Stealth Rock?

And as Karpman said, it punishes switching. I realize that setting and keeping your Rocks on the field and prevent your opponent from doing the same adds an extra layer of skill and intrigue to the game. But so do trappers, do they not? Both trappers and Stealth Rock can diversity or enhance the actual gameplay experience while limiting team building and increasing the match-up based nature of OU. And that's really the last point I want to touch on. I believe that variety is especially important to the metagame in the team building phase. While trapping and hazards mind games are intriguing, I'd rather have a more variable and competitive metagame. And we'll always have Spikes, which aren't nearly as restrictive as Stealth Rock. In any case, if we accept that Pokemon has become a checks game instead of a counters game and it will only get more and more difficult to cover every relevant threat as more threats are introduced (OR/AS aren't even out yet…), then isn't free damage something that exacerbates this issue? Pokemon is won by damaging opponents, and free damage for throwing up SR early game at little cost is an easy cost/benefit call. If removing Stealth Rock makes offensive threats on average easier to cover, maybe its ban would be beneficial. Maybe. Yay speculation! But I wanted to throw it out there.

And just as a fun little postscript, Didn't Deoxys-D get banned because it was too good at setting hazards? Isn't this sort of a tacit admission that hazards are at the very least really really good? And Maybe Deoxys-D doesn't get banned if it set two Spikes layers instead of one layer plus Stealth Rock.

So many jumbled thoughts because super tired, but going to throw out these ideas now for people to chew on. I can always clarify later.