As part of the decision to raise the cutoff for the stats used for determining the UU banlist from 1500 to 1760, I promised that in the future, decisions of this nature would be influenced by a set of metrics I called "candles of known brightness:"
Effective candles will be things that appear fairly frequently among newer/less competitive users but not at all at the upper echelons. So, like, Spoink isn't a good scandal, since no one at any level of play uses Spoink.
I listed some Little Cup examples above, but I'm not personally familiar enough with the OU metagame to know what to use as OU "candles." Here are my initial thoughts. I'd love some feedback.
Note that if one person says, "X has no competitive use" and another replies, "actually, X is useful in this particular niche," as long as that reply isn't out-and-out wrong, the discussion on that metric will be considered closed in favor of that metric not being a good candle.
So here's what I've got to start with:
The idea is basically to identify things in the usage stats that have absolutely no place in the metagame, that is, moves, abilities and possibly Pokemon that have zero competitive use, not even as gimmicks. Note that in order for a Pokemon to whole-hog classify as a candle, it must be out-classed in each and every way by another Pokemon. It can't just be "X is a better spinner than Y," it has to be "X runs every move that Y can run, has better typing and better stats all around."basically a series of indicators we can look at to objectively assess at which points gimmicks and non-competitive teams "fall away." In Little Cup, an example would be the use of Leftovers, Sitrus Berry and Assault Vest, which never have any competitive use in the metagame. These will be things that are completely unambiguous. Donphan being used when there are better options? Not a candle. Donphan carrying Giga Impact?** Yes.
Effective candles will be things that appear fairly frequently among newer/less competitive users but not at all at the upper echelons. So, like, Spoink isn't a good scandal, since no one at any level of play uses Spoink.
I listed some Little Cup examples above, but I'm not personally familiar enough with the OU metagame to know what to use as OU "candles." Here are my initial thoughts. I'd love some feedback.
Note that if one person says, "X has no competitive use" and another replies, "actually, X is useful in this particular niche," as long as that reply isn't out-and-out wrong, the discussion on that metric will be considered closed in favor of that metric not being a good candle.
So here's what I've got to start with:
- Hyper Beam on ANY Pokemon that's not Normal-type with access to Adaptability or that doesn't have access to Refrigerate or Pixilate (note that while I can count the number of Porygon-Z's with Adaptability and the number of Porygon-Z's with Hyper Beam, I can't easily actually count the number of Adaptability Porygon-Z's with Hyper Beam)
- Giga Impact on ANY Pokemon
- Item that's not a mega stone on Charizard
- Item that's not Ampharosite on Ampharos
- Item that's not Manetricite on Manetric
- Item that's not Pinsirite on Pinsir
- Item that's not Banettite on Banette
- Pikachu
- Blast Burn
- Frenzy Plant
- Flash Fire on Ninetales
- Neutral nature
- Quick Claw
- Focus Band
- Synchronize Espeon
- Spike Cannon Cloyster
- Confusing berries
- No item (excpet Pokemon that can run Acrobatics)
- Shell Bell (except Aron)
- Non-eviolite chansey
- Doubles-only moves and abilities (Healer, Telepathy, Heal Pulse, Helping Hand...)
- Detect
- Roar on Skarmory
- Eviolite Slowbro
- Dream Eater
- Limber Ditto
- Ditto with fewer than 248 HP EVs
- Quick Powder on Ditto
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