Retesting the Suspects

Yuggles

hey that second guy isn't too bad
Agreeing with LR's statement about the game being fun. The metagame right now is quite stale and I'd rather have it shaken up a little bit than have it suck until gen 5 comes out. Venu and Milotic aren't leaving anytime soon.
 

FlareBlitz

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I want to clarify something right now.

Wanting to re-test suspects does not necessarily mean their initial tiering decision was a mistake.

A re-test is only viable now because of how balanced everything is and how little shifts there are. This gives us an ideal clean slate to test the brokenness of previously borderline Pokemon.

Many of us are advocating a re-test because it gives UU players something to do, could make the metagame more fun to play in, and could possibly introduce new, non-broken members to it. That is all.

I don't particularly understand the level of opposition to this. It's apparent that, at least for some of the older BL candidates, the metagame has changed substantially since they were banned. It is equal apparent that a number of prominent players would like for this to go through (and some other prominent players would not but hey, that's what discussion is for).

By Syrne's own admission, it's possible that, for example, Honchkrow will end up not being broken upon a retest. It follows then that quite literally the only reason to avoid a retest is on philosophical grounds, that once we set a Pokemon in a tier it belongs there forever. While it may be true that the UU tiering process does ensure that this is the case, I frankly don't give a damn. This is one of those times when we need to exercise our understanding behind the spirit of the law over the letter of it. The tiering process is there to ensure maximum diversity while minimizing broken elements and, given that metagames are by nature transient, an iterative testing process makes infinitely more sense than one where we say "well they were banned once, clearly nothing could have changed in half a year".

tldr I agree with LR it makes sense from both a competitive perspective and a "we play this game for fun" perspective to seriously explore the possibility of a retest.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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This is pretty selfish, but I would not like the efforts of a vote that I made so long ago to be overturned on a whim. I voted Abomasnow BL based on its merits alone and completely ignored its relationship with Froslass. When I voted Honchkrow BL, I didn't expect it would be temporarily - and I still feel it was broken and that the correct decision was made. On the flip-side, I feel the reasoning behind Crobat's ban was completely unjustified. There are so many differing opinions on what's broken and what's not that I think retesting a suspect just isn't worth it - it will satisfy few and upset many, especially if not all the suspects are catered to equally.

And for the record, I don't feel the metagame has shifted that drastically since any of the suspects were banned - at least, not drastically enough to justify a restest on the basis that all the decisions made on the suspects were completely correct and/or set in stone.
 

shrang

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Many of us are advocating a re-test because it gives UU players something to do, could make the metagame more fun to play in, and could possibly introduce new, non-broken members to it. That is all.
Yeah, I think this is the biggest drive going for it in my opinion. Why else would people be going "Come down to UU, Heracross"??
 

SJCrew

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Legacy, the main reason we don't test/vote for the sake of fun is that it's way too arbitrary and subjective. You might not believe there's anything wrong with pulling a 180 for the hell of it, but it's a really unstable mindset and we really don't have any good reason to support the motion. If we've tested Pokemon and decided they should be banned, they need to stay banned, or else there isn't much point to having a system at all. There needs to be order.
 
I'm too lazy to read the opinion sof others in the thread atm, so I apologize for that, but here's my two cents...

Crobat I feel is an iffy choice. While it may appear that it could "fit" better into this new metagame, I'm not quite sure if I can completely agree. The only things really stopping it are bulky rotom (rare), rock and steel types, and scarfers I guess. All of these are easy to wear down, and with the addition of super fang, it's main "checks" being rock/steel-types are more easily dispensed of.

PZ I won't give much explanation on, but I think it deserves a retest. It didn't have the chance to shine with spikes (I think...I can't quite remember) and cresselia's fat ass being everywhere.

Raikou....oh Raikou. One word: NO! I don't care what others say about spikes. They may have been a major deciding factor, but they defeinately were not the issue. In fact, I never used spikes in the froslass/raikou metagame and I still consistently swept with LOkou. It was just way too easy. And again I say, NO!
 
We allow reachzero and Jabba to decide which paragraphs are acceptable and which suspects to vote on ... if this isn't "way too arbitrary and subjective", why should the same two people deciding on which BL Pokemon to retest (backed by appropriate paragraphs, of course) be "way too arbitrary and subjective"?

Besides, Raikou was voted UU before, and that vote was overturned by a subsequent one. If we believe that previous votes should never be overturned, then the original UU vote should be final, and Raikou never voted on again. Right?
 
Kind of expanding on Jabba here

A re-test is only viable now because of how balanced everything is and how little shifts there are. This gives us an ideal clean slate to test the brokenness of previously borderline Pokemon.

Many of us are advocating a re-test because it gives UU players something to do, could make the metagame more fun to play in, and could possibly introduce new, non-broken members to it. That is all.

I don't particularly understand the level of opposition to this. It's apparent that, at least for some of the older BL candidates, the metagame has changed substantially since they were banned. It is equal apparent that a number of prominent players would like for this to go through (and some other prominent players would not but hey, that's what discussion is for).

tldr I agree with LR it makes sense from both a competitive perspective and a "we play this game for fun" perspective to seriously explore the possibility of a retest.
I cut some stuff here to make it easier to see what I wanna refer to here, but the bold is most of what I want to comment on.

From a pure fun standpoint I would love to test some of the suspects again, but being around as long as I have has made me nothing if not cynical, so let me make one thing obvious if it isn't already: changing the UU tier banlist because it might be fun is not a good enough reason.* I don't want it to look like I'm just picking on your diction here, but LR mentioned "fun" an awful lot and I think a lot of why so many people want to do this is boredom due to the stagnation within the tier. Potentially fun or no, you have to look at this with some perspective - there are more people playing this metagame than just the people posting on this forum. Our UU banlist is pretty much the list for the internet as a whole these days, and is certainly the list for other parts of Smogon - like the other hundreds of people on the UU ladder other than us, and the various tournaments on the site that include UU. The point being that generally none of these parties are in favor of having to constantly adjust to a new metagame(UU was always intended to stabilize). It's not like a retest is itself is necessarily impossible, but I feel like a lot of why people want to do this is because they've become accustomed to an ever-changing metagame and want to be entertained, rather than because they honestly think the metagame would be improved by some changes. We have to make any changes we make in this metagame, be it votes on suspects or decisions on drop-downs for the good of the the metagame; the decisions effect a large amount of people.

The other part of doing any sort of suspect testing right now is the proximity to the official tournaments(and gen 5, on some level). I think the two official tournaments that use UU is probably the part of the Smogon machine most effected by what we do here(and thus the part we'd most need to be able to clear stuff with): the SPL and the Smogon Tours. SPL is in the finals presently, so it is a non-factor, but we're about exactly a month away from a new season of the Tour. I suspect Aeolus would not want us changing tiers in the middle of this season, since even if he kept the Tour rules as they were at the beginning of the season, players wold have nowhere to test. As such, we'd have like a month to do anything, which is probably not enough time to give a fair test. The end of the tour would bring us right up to like early November, and with Gen 5 already out at that point(though there won't be sims then), I'm not sure if we'd be able to get enough interest for a reasonable test.

Anyway, I guess my point is that unless there's an amazing system that takes under a month to execute and the reason for doing so is metagame improvement centric, nothing is going to happen. Suggestions really need to be in the vein of "X would fit into a balanced metagame now when it did not before because..." in regards to Pokemon(LR made a good case for Crobat in this vein), and a system of some sort to test needs to be implemented. Ignoring probable red tape with Banedon's idea due to the fact there's a waiting list longer than the Hot Girls thread to open a tournament these days I think he has an interesting thought there, since you could just do it Swiss so everyone is playing every round.

The other half of the fact this issue is that these Pokemon are all banned right now because they were voted to BL by people who played well in whichever period they were banned in, and by lowering them we're disregarding their opinion on some level. There's a certain sense of fairness, for lack of a more precise word, we then need to apply to the suspects and the people who voted for them. I'd wager a majority of the people who voted these pokemon BL have not changed their opinions, so you would need a reasonably compelling case to go against their votes and the voting process in general - it's not like we just did it to do it, we did it to get a balanced metagame, and that actually happened. It might not be the most desirable metagame possible in some of our eyes, but we did hit that goal, so a case would need to be made about why it is reasonably probable that by shaking things back up we'd end up with a better game than we have now.

I'm also really not sure how to be reasonable about Pokemon that should or shouldn't be retested. Like Gon-z's Cress argument, for instance - I thought Gon-Z was a lot worse than Cress that period and I voted it BL, so the lack of it wouldn't have changed my vote any. I don't mean this as a IT'D HURT MY FEELINGS argument, but rather that these were all voted BL for a variety of reasons, that there were a variety of factors for each of them beyond what we might note here. It's not worth it to go against months of work by dropping them back down unless there's a realistic chance that they're actually going to fit into UU this time, and there's invariably going to be a lot of people who both agree and disagree with each suspect's probability of fitting in. I mean, hell, look at Raikou and Honchkrow in this topic, I bet we'd end up damn near 50/50 on whether or not it'd be worth it to test them in if everyone was being realistic, and in that split you've kinda gotta go with precedent, since we did have those votes for a reason. I'd personally enjoy seeing both retested, since I never thought either were BL to begin with(though I begrudgingly accepted Raikou, sort of), but there are a lot of you who never want to see them again, and with the votes you've earned the right to that.

I think the only one that will likely gain an obvious majority is Crobat, since he has a little less obvious power and was tested and banned before most of the people who post on this forum were playing UU. I don't really have anything to say about it beyond that at the moment.

I realize I'm not typing what you guys want to read in this post or in my last one but this is very much the truth of things. A certain level of pragmatism is going to be necessary here.





*I do want to clarify that I mean it's not good enough for it to be "fun to test," rather than "the metagame could be more fun if we had suspects permanently back in it," which would be a metagame improvement.
 
Synre said:
I don't want it to look like I'm just picking on your diction here, but LR mentioned "fun" an awful lot and I think a lot of why so many people want to do this is boredom due to the stagnation within the tier.
I agree that boredom is no reason to retest a suspect, but personally I don't argue for retesting because of boredom (in fact I never took that reason seriously). The main reason I'm in favour of retesting BL Pokemon is one of principle.

I view UU as a metagame consisting of every Pokemon not OU and Uber. Within this set of Pokemon, those that are too powerful get banlisted (goes to BL). Everyone else is permissible. Because the set of Pokemont not OU and Uber is constantly changing (that's how UU got Rhyperior and Donphan), the set of BL Pokemon should constantly change as well. Compare OU. If I'm not mistaken, OU is meant to include every Pokemon in the game, while the set of Pokemon too powerful to be OU are banlisted (Uber). But OU changes constantly - there are movepool changes and some tiering changes as well (Latias, Garchomp, Salamence). UU with Rhyperior and Donphan is going to be different from UU without it, just like OU without Salamence is going to be different from OU with it.

Therefore I believe that metagame changes should also change the tiering of BL Pokemon. This is an in-principle argument and makes no reference to any individual Pokemon or generation or similar. Since metagame changes has happened, then in principle some BL Pokemon may no longer be BL. The decision to retest will affect everyone who plays Pokemon online and not just the small subset that also reads Smogon forums, yes. But then so did the decision to ban Raikou affect everyone. I don't see how is a decision to retest (say) Crobat is different.

Here are responses to some other arguments against retesting:

[Insert Pokemon] was voted BL once. If we retest it, it means we're disregarding the opinions of people who played well in the past to vote them out. - The problem with this argument is that Raikou was voted UU before as well. Since it was voted UU by people who played well in the past to vote it in, then this logic implies that we shouldn't have voted on it again. But we don't have a rule saying "if so-and-so Pokemon is voted UU, it will never be a suspect again". I would even firmly oppose such a rule because of metagame changes (will a Raikou with Aura Sphere still be UU? More subtle but no less possible, will a Raikou without Froslass / Dugtrio still be UU?).

We wanted a balanced metagame and here we have it. Don't fix what ain't broken. - The problem with this argument is, if we believed it, then we ought also close the nomination thread now and declare that there are no more suspects, all further nominations are futile, etc. After all, adding a Pokemon affects the metagame as much as removing one. If this is the metagame we want, then we should also stop (all possibility of) removing Pokemon from it.

Any retesting of Pokemon is necessarily subjective. - So is any banning of Pokemon. Not every Pokemon nominated became a suspect. If we claim that choosing Pokemon to retest is necessarily subjective and therefore something to avoid, then we also claim that choosing Pokemon to test is subjective and therefore something to avoid - which means that we should bring all the currently BL Pokemon back on the grounds that they were subjectively banned. I don't think this is a good argument.

Some major tournaments are too close for us to dabble with major metagame changes. - if Venusaur gets nominated, voted on and declared BL, that would be a major metagame change. If the major tournaments are too close, then we ought to also close down the nomination process that's going on right now so there's no chance of Venusaur getting voted out. I do not know what happened in the past, but another implication of this argument would be that during the Smogon tour last year, the UU tier was frozen (no Pokemon / move / item can be nominated or banned). If this were not the case then it would be another precedent against this argument.

In short, I can see no good argument against the idea of retesting Pokemon. There may be problems with any individual process to retest them; in fact a good process may not even exist, but I can't find fault with the idea.
 

FlareBlitz

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I'm making a lot of these quotes more concise, not because they're not important but because this would be a really long post if I didn't!

From a pure fun standpoint I would love to test some of the suspects again, but being around as long as I have has made me nothing if not cynical, so let me make one thing obvious if it isn't already: changing the UU tier banlist because it might be fun is not a good enough reason.* [...] It's not like a retest is itself is necessarily impossible, but I feel like a lot of why people want to do this is because they've become accustomed to an ever-changing metagame and want to be entertained, rather than because they honestly think the metagame would be improved by some changes.
If this was the impression I and others have given, that is unfortunate.

The idea behind the mentions of "fun" is not necessarily that we want to dick around with some new Pokemon, but that we want to see if a metagame with these BL candidates would be more fun than the current one is without anything being broken. For instance, I had great fun dealing with Honchkrow due to all the Sucker Punch/Roost mindgames and high risk/high reward playstyle. I didn't have much fun getting my ass handed to me by Raikou or having Crobat shut down momentum I spent the entire match building, but hey, take the good with the bad and all that.

Personally, I find the current metagame fun enough, but others think it's stagnant and boring, so I would suppose that's where they're coming from.

The other part of doing any sort of suspect testing right now is the proximity to the official tournaments(and gen 5, on some level). [...] but we're about exactly a month away from a new season of the Tour. I suspect Aeolus would not want us changing tiers in the middle of this season, since even if he kept the Tour rules as they were at the beginning of the season, players wold have nowhere to test.
Bandeon partially covered this in his reply, and I mentioned something similar back in my original post, but I don't see how this would be an issue. We'd just have to treat it like a new Pokemon dropped down from OU or like a popular Pokemon leaving UU. Sure it would cause a bit more headache than just leaving well enough alone, but I don't really see that as a strong enough reason to shut this initiative down.

Anyway, I guess my point is that unless there's an amazing system that takes under a month to execute and the reason for doing so is metagame improvement centric, nothing is going to happen. Suggestions really need to be in the vein of "X would fit into a balanced metagame now when it did not before because..." in regards to Pokemon(LR made a good case for Crobat in this vein), and a system of some sort to test needs to be implemented. Ignoring probable red tape with Banedon's idea due to the fact there's a waiting list longer than the Hot Girls thread to open a tournament these days I think he has an interesting thought there, since you could just do it Swiss so everyone is playing every round.
I agree that it does seem a bit difficult to get a practical system in place to implement this, and if that were the only concern people had with this I would be fine. We could just get together in this thread or on shoddy or wherever and toss ideas around until someone comes up with something acceptable. I mean it might just be the case that we end up actually using the Limbo tier for something, to where BL candidates are allowed in UU but would not be a part of the official tier (i.e. no analysis would be done for them and no other communities going by our tier lists would be affected).
I suppose people playing Tour won't be able to test their teams that well if BL candidates were allowed, but let's be honest, testing your team on the general ladder and getting swept by narutocharizard240's scope lens drapion doesn't exactly help with the teambuilding process. Most high level players are still going to consult with each other and set up private matches and such, so I'm not sure if it would have as much of an impact as stated. But I've never been a part of the tournament scene so I won't presume to comment further on that. I'll just say that, as I mentioned before, tournament considerations should just be treated the same as they would for Pokemon who are nominated/banned while the tour is already underway.

You wrote a lot more stuff but it's late and I'm tired so I'm just going to write some brief responses

- I don't think it's disrespectful to past voters to overturn their votes primarily because this isn't the same metagame it was however many months ago. We certainly wouldn't hold to the same tier lists we have now when Gen 5 rolls around, does that mean the voters are not being treated with due consideration? No, it just means that as the metagame changes certain pokemon might become more or less viable and, therefore, more or less broken. Granted, you did say that we'd need to present an argument to the extent that the metagame has changed sufficiently and I think many of us have done that

- I'm also not sure how we're going to say "let's test this suspect but not this one". We'll probably just need to have a big ol' orgy of a discussion and then put it to a poll. Or maybe do something like suspects nominations and let jabba/reach decide? Either way I'm good with discussion possible processes for this, I just resent that most of the objections seem to be on philosophical grounds, which just doesn't make much sense to me.
 

SJCrew

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We allow reachzero and Jabba to decide which paragraphs are acceptable and which suspects to vote on ... if this isn't "way too arbitrary and subjective", why should the same two people deciding on which BL Pokemon to retest (backed by appropriate paragraphs, of course) be "way too arbitrary and subjective"?
Every authority figure holds a certain degree of arbitration. Bottom line: they're in charge, we can't do anything about it, so we have to follow their rules. That really doesn't have anything to do with the fact that voting on the basis of "fun" isn't going to get us anywhere because it's not a stable nor efficient basis to hold to this kind of decision-making process.

The problem with this argument is that Raikou was voted UU before as well. Since it was voted UU by people who played well in the past to vote it in, then this logic implies that we shouldn't have voted on it again. But we don't have a rule saying "if so-and-so Pokemon is voted UU, it will never be a suspect again". I would even firmly oppose such a rule because of metagame changes (will a Raikou with Aura Sphere still be UU? More subtle but no less possible, will a Raikou without Froslass / Dugtrio still be UU?).
A Pokemon being voted UU has zero impact on the UU metagame. Important decisions like being banned have a basis for such, even for consistently retested suspects like Froslass and Raikou. Every single voting session they've participated in was a different metagame, and both Reach and Jabba stated that with each consecutive failure, it would be harder for them to be considered as suspects the next Round. Once more players began to focus on the two and use them effectively, an overwhelming majority voted for them to become suspect, and subsequently, banned. It's not a simple reciprocation of logic, it's the application of two entirely different ideas.

The problem with this argument is, if we believed it, then we ought also close the nomination thread now and declare that there are no more suspects, all further nominations are futile, etc. After all, adding a Pokemon affects the metagame as much as removing one. If this is the metagame we want, then we should also stop (all possibility of) removing Pokemon from it.
No, it doesn't work that way. We can still be on the lookout for Pokemon under the radar that could potentially become broken if used differently or completely reevaluated without having to unban random suspects for no reason.

So is any banning of Pokemon. Not every Pokemon nominated became a suspect. If we claim that choosing Pokemon to retest is necessarily subjective and therefore something to avoid, then we also claim that choosing Pokemon to test is subjective and therefore something to avoid - which means that we should bring all the currently BL Pokemon back on the grounds that they were subjectively banned. I don't think this is a good argument.
I'm not sure where you even got the idea that "banning Pokemon is subjective" is anywhere close to a relevant argument, much less one worth countering, but more importantly, not everyone even wants them back. Synre basically has this one in the bag:

I'd wager a majority of the people who voted these pokemon BL have not changed their opinions, so you would need a reasonably compelling case to go against their votes and the voting process in general - it's not like we just did it to do it, we did it to get a balanced metagame, and that actually happened. It might not be the most desirable metagame possible in some of our eyes, but we did hit that goal, so a case would need to be made about why it is reasonably probable that by shaking things back up we'd end up with a better game than we have now.
In short, I can see no good argument against the idea of retesting Pokemon.
Not the point at all. The crux of the argument is that none of the suspects we've banned so far have any solid basis for being retested, save for Crobat, who may have received the short end of the deal due to a policy change (I wasn't active at that time, so don't quote me on it). We don't need to start unbanning Pokemon just because we're bored, especially when not everyone shares that sentiment.
 
Porygon Z deserves a retest. (I wont get into the reasons again, see other thread)

And i think the metagame has changed sufficiently to warrant consideration for a crobat retest.

The rest should remain as the voters have deemed.
 
@SJCrew -

I agree that reach and Jabba are in charge and we follow their decisions, but (hopefully) their decisions aren't set in stone. That's why we have a forum like Policy Review.

A Pokemon voted UU impacts the UU metagame simply because the Pokemon stays there. What would UU have been like had Moltres been volted BL? Moltres's UU vote clearly impacted the metagame. Also of course the Pokemon chosen as suspects like Raikou and Honchkrow have a basis. The same should apply to Pokemon retested as suspects. I don't think anyone is suggesting retesting Yanmega or Staraptor, for instance, because by the looks of it they'll still walk all over UU. Nobody is suggesting we unban random suspects for no reason. That would be total stupidity.

SJCrew said:
I'm not sure where you even got the idea that "banning Pokemon is subjective" is anywhere close to a relevant argument, much less one worth countering, but more importantly, not everyone even wants them back.
Not everyone wanted Froslass to be BL, but BL she still is. Not everyone wanted Raikou BL either, but BL it still is. Not everyone wanted Damp Rock UU, but UU it still is. I don't see your point. Maybe you don't agree with unbanning Crobat, or maybe you don't think there are solid reasons to retest Crobat, but if you are in the minority then you ought to abide by the majority's decisions, right?

(Note that I've never used or played against Crobat and I haven't any idea what Crobat's impact on the metagame is going to be - I'm arguing here based on principles.)

I'll go ahead and suggest this method to select Pokemon to retest: in the UU nominations thread, make it possible to nominate [insert Pokemon] to be retested. It'll be Jabba's and reachzero's and task to choose which Pokemon merit a retest, based on those nominations. How those Pokemon should be retested is a completely different matter altogether, but this method chooses the suspects.
 

Meru

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I hope nobody in this thread is advocating a Raikou retest. Please. No.

Most people seem apt for a Crobat retest though. He'd probably be the first retried, if any.
 

Legacy Raider

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I can't find all the quotes that I want to address so I'm just going to make some quick points here.

Firstly, I want to clarify my "fun" argument. I was perhaps a bit ambiguous, but at no point did I mean that we should "retest for fun", rather I meant we should "retest to try and arrive at a more fun (better) metagame". I know some people get kicks out of testing a Pokemon's tiering status, but my only aim for retesting would be metagame improvement. The only reason I made such a big deal of "fun" is because I feel strongly that the aim of a tiering process should be constant metagame re-evaluation and improvement, and not be quite such a one-way street as people were hinting at.

Secondly, I don't think the idea of a retest should really upset any original voters. I'm going to go by my Crobat argument again, as that is the Pokemon I feel strongest about by far. People who voted Crobat BL originally got what they wanted, they proved that Crobat was broken in that metagame, and as a result got it removed from the UU tier for a year (a year today, ironically enough). I leaned towards Crobat being BL back then as well, but I also think that things have changed so dramatically since then that a retest is viable now.

Crobat was one of the 'original' suspects, alongside Staraptor, Abomasnow, Froslass, and Raikou. We can't forget this. However, despite its very controversial status, it was given a permanent BL boot when it was revoted on two months later. Unlike other controversial Pokemon such as Raikou and Froslass, neither of which had nearly as much UU support as Crobat did in their initial votes, Crobat never got a 'second chance' at UU once it was booted out. Froslass and Raikou were both allowed back in the tier to see whether they fit back in in a metagame which had hardly changed for them from the one they were initially banned from, but Crobat never was. From a purely objective standpoint, Crobat was not tested as thoroughly as Froslass or Raikou were.

I've already mentioned why Crobat wouldn't be as powerful as it originally was, but what is also quite a striking point is that Crobat could potentially be beneficial for the current metagame. We are very realistically looking at a Venusaur test and possible ban in the near future, and I don't think many people doubt Milotic will be very quick to follow if mr ugly gets kicked out. Crobat checks both of these Pokemon, while at the same time not stifling them to the extent that they'd be unviable. Crobat still gets incapacitated by Venusaur's Sleep Powder, and Crobat is forced to Roost if it switches into either of Milotic's attacks under SR. However, it provides that offensive, multi-dimensional Venusaur check that so many of us are craving for. In this way, I think Crobat has real potential as a way to improve the metagame by increasing the pool of available Pokemon by 1, rather than reducing it by 2.
 
NOnononononononononono NO!

With Black and White just around the corner, who would HONESTLY want to retest ANYTHING right now instead of waiting a few months? Just because you're bored and can't abuse broken shit anymore? I don't get it.
 

Legacy Raider

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DPP UU is always going to be a playable metagame no matter what Gen V gives us, and so we should still be looking to improve it, not throw it aside because we're getting a new game soon. Also, I doubt we'll be getting Gen V on a simulator for another half a year at least, which is something people need to understand before they start saying BW is 'just around the corner'.
 
I do see getting Crobat back as a improvement to the metagame since the meta is completely different of when Crobat was tested before (like stated numerous times).

Also, Crobat "made it's name" because it was ironically the best check/counter to most if not all suspects of the time (try to get past Crobat with Yanmega, Shaymin or Gallade. Yeah). It was a very good poke already, but that fact is what basically gave Crobat the "checks everything" recognition.
I would like to see how Crobat would react on those new times without those suspects for him to "easily" check and a whole lot of different kinds of strategies or movesets (not to count all those hard counters that showed up while Crobat was sitting on it's BL throne).




About Raikou: LO and Sub sets were still wreaking havoc regardless of Spikes (people were using Dugtrio just to deal with it. Or Chansey) And that's the only thing different from back when Raikou was UU (last time, of course).
 
Crobat never got a 'second chance' at UU once it was booted out. Froslass and Raikou were both allowed back in the tier to see whether they fit back in in a metagame which had hardly changed for them from the one they were initially banned from, but Crobat never was. From a purely objective standpoint, Crobat was not tested as thoroughly as Froslass or Raikou were.
Froslass was retested because it's original vote had less than 66% voting it BL. That is the only reason it was retested.
 

Legacy Raider

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Froslass was retested because it's original vote had less than 66% voting it BL. That is the only reason it was retested.
But with that logic, Crobat had less than 0% voting it BL in its original vote, and arguably the only reason it was voted BL in its subsequent one was because of its ability to check the top threats of the time: namely Yanmega, Shaymin, Gallade, and Roserade.
 
If a pokemon gets over 66% of a vote BL, then it will go BL automatically. If it gets between 50% and 66%, it needs to be voted BL one more time in order to be voted BL. Any times voted UU previous dot no effect it at all.
 

reachzero

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Let me make this much clear: no matter what happens, if a balanced metagame bores you, deal with it. The only reason any Pokemon would be unbanned is if the metagame is just as balanced (boring?) with it present as it is with it absent.

For what it's worth, I have a hard time seeing how Raikou would be significantly less BL now than it was when it was last tested; almost the only changes in the metagame were the subtractions of Froslass and Umbreon. I could easily point out that the Suspect voters did account for the "Spikes factor" when evaluating the Suspects: Moltres was spared specifically because it was far more effective with Spikes support than without. The loss of Umbreon also hurts the side arguing for the re-testing of Raikou.
 
If we do decide to drop a suspect, it seems to me like the obvious time to do it is right after the tiering change at the beginning of September. That way, we don't have to reevaluate our decision based on something like Uxie leaving.

Also, to those talking about BW being just around the corner, in addition to the fact that it will take a while for a simulator to be made for BW, there's also the time it will take for BW OU to settle down enough to have a meaningful BW UU. We still have quite a bit of time to perfect DPP UU. We probably even have a decent amount of time to work on NU, too, if they ever get around to it.

Lastly, I do support retesting Crobat. I was one of the voters in that test, and Crobat's brokenness was very dependent on the state of the metagame at the time. Things have changed quite a bit since then, and I think Crobat does deserve a retest. The others I'm less sure of. Maybe Honch, though I don't think its wallbreaking ability is really any less than it was when it got banned. Not to mention Raikou, a decent check for it, is now gone.
 
The problem with Raikou wasn't Spikes support. It was it's SpAtk stat that could make use of whatever Hidden Power it needed to plow through its "counters". Wanna counter with Venusaur? Too bad, this one's carrying Extrasensory! Alright I'll use Donphan! Haha, this one's got HP Ice! Ok, I'll just use. . . Camerupt! Oh come on, this one has HP Water? Maybe. . . Quagsire! etc, etc.

Nothing could consistently counter, and a lot of things were consistently fucked.
 

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