Aleva, please stop responding inside quotes. You have no idea how tedious it makes it for me to talk to you.
Aleva said:
Yes, fair enough. I didn't really care about that anyway.
Fair enough. Nothing else to say here.
I chose pokemon that are in OU, and therefore viable pokemon to choose that you might commonly see on a team. If they're poor examples, how does
Were you gonna finish that?
As for the first sentence, the reason your examples weren't the best is because you purposefully chose Pokemon that don't cover the examples I chose. The point was about Pokemon sharing checks.
Something comparable to your examples would be like if I said: "Adamant Scarf Haxorus checks DDNite, but not DDMence. Therefore, DDNite and DDMence don't share any checks."
And we both know that that would be absurd.
Your Pokemon choices were legit, just not in the context in which they were used.
Your point is that you don't necessarily need an answer to everything in the game if you can play around it with your team. I do agree with you, you can do that.
That wasn't the point of what you quoted. That was a point later down in my post. Wait, now I've confused myself...
Yes, I know that players can play around threats that they're not 100% prepared for. If you go back, my original point was that it's getting harder each generation to cover as many threats as possible, and that if it keeps going, eventually the game will be decided on team match-up, and whether or not you can check the threats that each opponent carries.
Yes, your idea is true. But if that does occur in the coming generations, we shouldn't let it matter for what we do in this generation.
And remember, we lose threats every generation. Roserade, Shaymin, Flygon, Dusknoir... where did they go since Gen4? They barely even cross my mind when teambuilding nowadays, yet they were significant Pokemon in Gen4 OU. Just as we gain new threats, we lose some too. For instance, if Gen6 brings another huge power creep, NP Celebi could hypothetically be pitifully weak in comparison to the rest of the metagame. Celebi's defenses could hypothetically be small in comparison to the rest of the metagame. In that case, Celebi wouldn't be used very much, and it wouldn't be a big threat in that Gen. See what I mean?
Team-matchup has always been significant,and although it doesn't decide matches, it can affect them. If a very skilled player with a mono-Grass team goes against a total noob with a mono-Fire team, the skilled guy will win, but it will be much harder than if he went against a not-mono-Fire team.
Now to nitpick your word choice (annoying, I know): It can't "get harder to cover as many threats as possible". The number of team members you have remains static; therefore the number of things you can cover may change due to available Pokemon, but it cannot become more or less difficult to do so.
Same typing? Since when was Dark/Dragon the same as Dragon?
1) It was obvious I was referring to the Dragon typing. Please don't play that game.
2) Would you care to get to my point? You said that things like BU Conkeldurr, BU Toxicroak, and BU Gallade all have different checks/counters. That's true. But it doesn't mean that no Pokemon don't share things. Those 3 don't represent all of Pokemon. And I showed that, with my Hax/Hydra analogy.
Now, I'd like to stop a minute and make sure I remember what we're even arguing about in the first place. It's still about "Can teams handle the threats they need to in order to succeed in this metagame without team match-up being the only important thing?" right? Just making sure (although, again, it seems un-important to our current Generation, but w/e).
Yes, my point is that they have different checks or counters, which means you need to cover them with more pokemon, not just cover them all with one answer. Eventually, th
Were you gonna finish this?
Anyway, I'll admit that your examples have different answers to them. But so do DD Gyarados and QD Volcarona. There's no "check-all", and that's why you have a team.
Give me some examples? From what i can see from 4th Gen UU, many of them were just outclassed by OU pokemon. e.g Feraligatr = UU Gyara, Chansey = UU Blissey, Milotic = UU Vaporeon, and so on. I'm pretty damn sure that Celebi is more viable in BW OU than Venusaur was in DP OU, and that Suicune in BW OU is better than Milotic in DP OU.
Well, first of all, Celebi is currently OU by usage if I'm not mistaken, even though the tiers haven't been re-done yet. Therefore, the Celebi-Venusaur analogy doesn't hold up.
Anyway, yes most of UU in Gen4 was out-classed by OU 'mons. But out-classed =/= unviable. Slowbro was, for example, the perfect Machamp counter, and a pretty good bulky Water. It's just that, if you didn't your bulky Water to counter Machamp at the same time, then another Pokemon would've probably done it better. Another example is Round 3 of our Gen5 Suspect Tests. SB Blaziken over-shadowed Infernape to hell and back, but Infernape was still good and viable. Most people simply preferred the broken-ness of Blaziken.
IMO, Suicune isn't that good in OU right now, so I would disagree on that, but it's just my opinion, so w/e.
Alright then, so there's a few mediocre pokemon in OU. The total number of big threats is a bit smaller, but still quite large.
Okay, so we agree that the Electivire-Weavile thing doesn't work? Ok, thanks for your amicability.
The number of threats is quite large, but not too large, which is, to recap, the disagreement here, I believe.
Notice the word 'about'. 0.1% was a bad number to choose though, my fault. Lets say, 0.5? And my point was that they're still viable anyway, despite missing the mark by a little bit.
Now we're even, for when you missed my 'probably'. :P
Only 5 Pokemon missed by .5%, but I'm done over-analyzing your number choices, because I know that the specific number we choose isn't what matters.
Yes, they're viable, but as I've been trying to tell you, they aren't absurd.
*sigh* No offense, but I hope you don't reply to me. Repetition of myself can wear on even my antagonistic soul.
Raikou was amazing in Adv, then ok in DPP. Ok =/= Unviable. Only a few pokemon became unviable in DP after RSE, and they were, for the most part, SR weak (Charizard, Regice).
Example. Raikou was an example. Surely, you couldn't have possibly not understood the actual message in there? Pokemon commonly lose viability between Gens.
You want another example? Rotom-H, Togekiss, Empoleon. All staples of Gen4 OU, who struggle in Gen5 OU.
Are my examples really what you want to focus on?
Yes, Heracross is rare, fair enough. It doesn't change the fact that it IS a threat though. It's more of a problem when you can cover most of OU, but you're weak to a few select pokemon in OU that can destroy you (which will eventually happen if OU keeps increasing in size).
Yes, it's still a threat. But in my scenario, it's ok, because I'd rather be weak to it than to something like Toxicroak (it's just a Fighting-type I used, Croak isn't important here), because Toxicroak is OU. Although NP Mismagius is a threat, it's not worth trying to cover that weakness by creating others to more common Pokemon.
It's not possible to cover everything, but you can cover the things you'll actually see more than once in your lifetime.
It is a problem when you have several weaknesses to OU things. Which would inevitably happen if OU kept growing. But...
1) OU is supposed to be the "best of the best". Logically, this wouldn't continue to grow forever.
2) There can only be so much usage. Mathematically, there are a limited number of Pokemon which can have 3.41% usage (although I'm quite rusty, and couldn't tell you a number atm). OU can't get infinitely big.
3) If power creeps continue, things will drop from viability faster and faster, making my point about that more true than ever. Of course, this is only an 'if', but it's still a point.
4) As I've said many times, it can be dealt with as it comes. No need to worry about it in advance.
Imo, it's starting to become an issue this gen, it'll be worse as we keep going. Teams are being forced to use many of the same pokemon this gen.
I disagree. I see tons of creativity on the ladder (that is, when I can finish a battle for Pete's sake. Damn I want my PO to work normally) with non-terrible results.
Lots of people use the same things, but that's OU. Ferrothorn currently has, like, 22% usage. Heatran had, like, 26% at the end of Gen4. Centralization happens. It's a force of nature, kinda like hax.
I told you guys we were going off track a page ago, but you answered me anyway.
Where? I didn't see that post.
I mean, you're entirely right that we are. I'll let it go if you will?
All I really said in the beginning was that the number of threats is getting higher and higher as GF introduces new games, and that eventually it'll become a matter of team match-up 'i.e, do you have answers for each pokemon your opponent has', when it'll be inevitable that you won't have an answer for some threats. When that happens, no matter how well you can adapt to the metagame, you'll always be poorly prepared against some big threat.
I've been telling you that might not, but if it does, it's nothing to think about in this Gen. It would suck if you're right (that metagame, I mean), but we've got a while before we find out, so we should do something productive in the meantime.
@Smogon being ban-happy:
I agree that we are, but up until now I've agreed with it. Round 1 had some serious shit in it, and it was obvious that none of those things belonged in OU. Round 2 was also good, because although I disagree with complex bans, we fixed the problem (IMO) and so I'm pleased. Round 3 was mostly fine. The BrightPowder/Lax Incense was a bandwagon-vote, and that sucked, but it wasn't relevant to OU, since no one used those anyway, so I didn't care too much. Blaziken was a broken little bitch. Round 4 was questionable for me, as I didn't really think Garchomp was broken. But, in the end, I went along with it, because that guy could bullshit his way through you even if you carry 3 or 4 checks (he almost certainly wouldn't, but he could). This Round, though, I'm getting a little discontented with it. Thundurus basically gets revenged by anything faster than him. He can switch out, but he's SR weak, meaning the longer he skirts around his checks, the worse off he gets. He can cripple them with Prankster T-Wave, but then he dies, so the check worked.
Blaziken had basically one check and one counter after a couple of Speed Boosts. By going MixKen, he couldn't sweep as well, but he had no more counters. By going MixKen in Sun, he had no counters and no checks.
Garchomp was a smug little fucker who could hax it all the way. He had plenty of checks, but they didn't work every time.
Thundurus, on the other hand, has more than one check/counter. He has numerous checks, and a few counters, and they won't just not work. Thundurus is, IMO, the point at which Smogon's ban-happiness becomes a bad thing. I think Round 5 is where we go from "ban-happy" to "ban-happy to a degree that it's a problem".
I don't think it's affected decision-making too much so far, but I feel that it's about to, and for the worse. Anyway, that's just two cents from a very opinionated individual.
