100% Confusion Chance

Lord Death Man

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Grasswhistle is also affected by sleep clause, which means that if the person who gets slept doesn't want to risk dealing with the move after it's generated the first "free" turn, they can choose not to. There are also functional sleep absorbers, no such mechanic exists for confuse. In addition. I have actually seen Hypnosis Sigilyph used a few times in RU tours, which is barely a higher chance to connect but is seen as worth using (55 vs 60).
 

Bughouse

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atomicllamas

Attract is of course a completely different class because you can see the gender of the Pokemon using it and once you know it, you can render the strategy entirely ineffective with approximately half of your team, just by sharing the same gender as the user. Not to mention there is a large class of Genderless Pokemon that are completely immune to the tactic regardless of the user, including a large number of OU viable mons like Magnezone, Starmie, Celebi, Keldeo, Raikou, Rotom, Mew, Metagross, Volcanion, Kyurem-B, Jirachi, Hoopa-U aka pretty much anything that's legendary + some other mons. No one in this thread is suggesting we need to ban Attract, so this is a straw man anyway.

Baton Passing Speed + Other boosts is also apparently not uncompetitive. I thought it was as well, but when I've made this argument before, I've been repeatedly told it was banned because it was broken, not uncompetitive.
 

atomicllamas

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My point was that in spite of being mechanically the same as swagger, attract is not uncompetitive. Simply creating free turns via luck is not indicative that something is uncompetitive (t wave, attract). Therefore the argument, swagger is uncompetitive thus any confusion element is uncompetitive, is not a particularly convincing one.

As for bp:


II.) Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant
A.) This can be match up related; think the determination that BP took the battling skill aspect out of the player's hands and made it overwhelmingly a team match up issue, where even with the best moves made each time by a standard team often were not enough.

Idk who said it was about being broken, but every argument I saw was uncompetitive, and it's specifically mentioned as such in the tiering framework.

Additionally:

III.) Providing justification is the onus of the side changing the status quo.
B.) If a proposal is made to ban a Pokemon, Ability, Item, or Move, the side suggesting this ban must demonstrate all of why this is necessary, how it affects the ladder and the tournament scene, and provide evidence for both.

Pro ban has done little to address why this is necessary, and nothing to address its affect on ladder or tournament play (most likely because it doesn't).

Why is baton pass + speed banned when it's not broken on every mon? do you see torchic being a problem with it?
Idk if this is directed at me, considering it's completely unrelated to my post other than mentioning bp (btw speed boosting + bp isn't banned, you should know this, you play NU). But thanks for pointing out that we shouldn't ban no guard + dynamic punch, or dynamic punch itself because they aren't issues on any mon barring PU machoke.
 

Aberforth

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He posted that because I posted not long ago in the NU thread about baton pass cause its being considered for yet another suspect, he's mostly just memeing.
 
I guess it isn't broken but we argued for it being uncompetitive if anything
And like swagger and unlike attract it has no counterplay or extremely limited counterplay since own tempo has terrible distribution
 

atomicllamas

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That doesn't address anything I said in my last post, I didn't even use the word broken. Yes you've "argued" it's uncompetitive (if just stating an opinion repeatedly is arguing), but that's all you've done, state confusion is uncompetitive, "because swagger!". You haven't demonstrated its necessity nor its impact on the meta game.

Also I shouldn't have to say this, but don't "meme" in this forum. If you can't take posting in this forum seriously you shouldn't be posting in here at all.
 

Bughouse

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Why is baton pass + speed banned when it's not broken on every mon? do you see torchic being a problem with it?
Because there was no alternative? How else do you plan on banning something that is a strategy, rather than a single Pokemon?
 

Josh

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llamas: its uncompetitive because it has a 50% chance to generate completely free turns. it removes the element of skill and turns the game into pure rng. yes, confusion isnt a particularly good strat, but it its an uncompetitive one and has ZERO competitive applications (unless regigigas is relevant which its not imo). all it does is reduce the game to luck.
 

atomicllamas

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its uncompetitive because it has a 50% chance to generate completely free turns. it removes the element of skill and turns the game into pure rng. yes, attract isnt a particularly good strat, but it its an uncompetitive one and has ZERO competitive applications. all it does is reduce the game to luck.

its uncompetitive because it has a 25% chance to generate completely free turns. it removes the element of skill and turns the game into pure rng. yes, Thunder Wave is a particularly good strat with plenty of competitive applications. all it does is reduce the game to luck.

As I asked in my first post, why is the line being proposed a one time 50% chance of a free turn = uncompetitive, there is obviously more too it than just pure numbers (attract), and the numbers being thrown out aren't very well thought out (p sure thunder wave has a higher chance of free turns long term due to not being volatile, and is also not dong). Probably not gonna reply any more to this thread considering its getting pretty circular and when I ask a question to generate a real policy discussion I'm just getting non-answers in reply. Its pretty clearly laid out in the smogon tiering philosophy that we don't ban non-issues (as in things not affecting Tournament or Ladder Play), every form of confusion falls into this category barring No Guard D Punch in PU, which there is a separate thread for.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
for what it's worth dude im totally the fuck on board with an attract ban if we want to do that, theres no reason to keep it and the only reason its not banned is cuz its not worth lengthening our banlist...

same with confusion. its pure rng bs. im fine with getting rid of both.
 

Lord Death Man

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25% is considerably less than 50%. It takes about 2.5 turns (which is impossible obviously, so its 3 turns) for thunder wave to have the same level of "hax" as a single turn of confuse. Using Thunder Wave with the goal of generating free turns is inherently stacked against you. Despite this, I've seen plenty of people do just that.

I'm with Stratos on an attract ban, and I would even be fine with banning thunder wave if people are truly convinced these moves are somehow equivalents, even though they're really not.

upload_2016-6-2_21-20-48.png


here's a chart i made in like 1 minute to visualize the difference. i dont actually know what the odds of confusion wearing off are or i would have factored that into this. While they do sort of eventually get closer over time, that's because thats how math works and confusion is already rapidly approaching 100% chance of 1 free turn if its given 4 full turns to do what it does.
 

Lemonade

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I think the actual % matters, like as far as I know there aren't legit strats reliant of TWave causing a para because (for simplicity) you would only "win" 25% of the time. Instead, I'd say TWave is usually used for lowering speed; the opponent losing a turn is just a big bonus. But one backup strat might be if you're facing a bulky team, you may need to fish for a para to win. But here, over many turns, the chance the opponent will be fully para'd at least once is high.

I would use a strat 80% effective because I can reliably "win" 80% of the time. Examples include ParaFlinching (60% is kinda low so you want to up that %), ParaFusion (is this even a thing? I just remember set names), Gravity + Sleep basically making certain sleep reliable, in a sense.

But confusion doesn't have that reliability because it's 50%, so it's not really strategic. Of course, reliability is more targeted toward the ladder since you will probably be playing many games with the same 80% strat.

Also yes if all I wanted was positive WR I would use a 51% hax move.

note: with Scald, I would probably consider "probability you get 1 burn out of y times you use Scald". Since you are probably going to use Scald a fair amount, this chance is actually high ie reliable strat


this is mostly assuming you only need, for example, to get most ParaFlinches, not ALL, because then the chance goes down and isn't something I would rely on
 

Nails

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25% is considerably less than 50%. It takes about 2.5 turns (which is impossible obviously, so its 3 turns) for thunder wave to have the same level of "hax" as a single turn of confuse. Using Thunder Wave with the goal of generating free turns is inherently stacked against you. Despite this, I've seen plenty of people do just that.

I'm with Stratos on an attract ban, and I would even be fine with banning thunder wave if people are truly convinced these moves are somehow equivalents, even though they're really not.

View attachment 63035

here's a chart i made in like 1 minute to visualize the difference. i dont actually know what the odds of confusion wearing off are or i would have factored that into this. While they do sort of eventually get closer over time, that's because thats how math works and confusion is already rapidly approaching 100% chance of 1 free turn if its given 4 full turns to do what it does.
Um. Twave is used because it drops speed and lasts for the rest of the game, as well as the free turns. You can't switch out of a twave, you're stuck with it. Confusion has a uniform chance of lasting 1-4 turns (25%/25%/25%/25%). The moves aren't at all comparable in terms of strength in as switch-heavy a format as singles. I'm actually shocked I have to make this post in a policy discussion forum.
 

Lord Death Man

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Um. Twave is used because it drops speed and lasts for the rest of the game, as well as the free turns. You can't switch out of a twave, you're stuck with it. Confusion has a uniform chance of lasting 1-4 turns (25%/25%/25%/25%). The moves aren't at all comparable in terms of strength in as switch-heavy a format as singles. I'm actually shocked I have to make this post in a policy discussion forum.
I was specifically discussing the chance to disable (generate a free turn), which referred to the post above Stratos's. And people definately do, and have (I have), clicked T-Wave specifically because they needed free turns to win, not because the speed reduction was relevant. It has more than one use, like you said, and I was specifically referring to someone else comparing the uses; the statement above the graph clearly states that I don't see them as equivalents.

I also can't actually find any proof that it's 25% chance each time - can you link me your source? I had previously assumed it might work like Bullet Seed/Tail Slap and other % chance of things happening moves, where there's seperate values for specific rolls. That would set the average (I think?) of a single use of confuse granting a single free turn (which is worth very slightly more than the opponent doing nothing, since it has damage attached), at just under 80%.
 
This thread makes me wanna puke. Confusion has counterplay, just like all the other status conditions. It also likely has the easiest counterplay in general. I could argue Paralysis, Sleep, Infatuation etc... can all create "uncompetitive" situations so why is confusion being singled out now? Just because one Pokemon is getting more mileage from it than others?

Guys just accept you can't remove the rng factor completely from the game , deal with what it presents and move on. Until confusion has proven itself to be completely overpowered and/or tier defining then there is no real objective case for banning it.
 

Sam

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25% is considerably less than 50%. It takes about 2.5 turns (which is impossible obviously, so its 3 turns) for thunder wave to have the same level of "hax" as a single turn of confuse. Using Thunder Wave with the goal of generating free turns is inherently stacked against you. Despite this, I've seen plenty of people do just that.

I'm with Stratos on an attract ban, and I would even be fine with banning thunder wave if people are truly convinced these moves are somehow equivalents, even though they're really not.

View attachment 63035

here's a chart i made in like 1 minute to visualize the difference. i dont actually know what the odds of confusion wearing off are or i would have factored that into this. While they do sort of eventually get closer over time, that's because thats how math works and confusion is already rapidly approaching 100% chance of 1 free turn if its given 4 full turns to do what it does.
I don't know what values you used here but it's not right at all. Nothing is even labelled so I don't really know what I'm looking at here. If you want to compare them directly I think a better way to do that is to compare the expected number of "free turns" generated over 4 turns for confusion and paralysis.

According to Azure Heights there is a 23.4% chance for 0 turns of a confused mon hitting itself, 40.6% chance for 1, 25% chance for 2, 9.4% chance for 3, and 1.6% chance for 4. This gives the following:

1(.406) + 2(.25) + 3(.094) + 4(.016) = 1.252

For paralysis it's just 4(.25) = 1

This is all for staying in for all 4 turns as well. The numbers do not account for the option to switch but obviously the expected number would go down the less turns the confused mon stays in. Also of note is the fact that the expected values are essentially equal after one more turn of paralysis.
 

Lemonade

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P(at least 1 full para in X turns) = 0.5

for X = 2 turns, 0.4375 chance, for X = 3 turns, 0.5781 chance, for X = 2.5 it's around 0.5, but because binomial this doesn't make too much sense.

sum (X choose n)(0.25^n)(0.75^(X-n)) from 1 to X, or 0.5 instead of 0.25 / 0.75 for confusion.



P(at least 1 confuse and confuse lasts 1 turn) + .. + P(at least 1 confuse and confuse lasts 4 turns) = 0.765625
 
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Lord Death Man

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I don't know what values you used here but it's not right at all. Nothing is even labelled so I don't really know what I'm looking at here. If you want to compare them directly I think a better way to do that is to compare the expected number of "free turns" generated over 4 turns for confusion and paralysis.

According to Azure Heights there is a 23.4% chance for 0 turns of a confused mon hitting itself, 40.6% chance for 1, 25% chance for 2, 9.4% chance for 3, and 1.6% chance for 4. This gives the following:

1(.406) + 2(.25) + 3(.094) + 4(.016) = 1.252

For paralysis it's just 4(.25) = 1

This is all for staying in for all 4 turns as well. The numbers do not account for the option to switch but obviously the expected number would go down the less turns the confused mon stays in. Also of note is the fact that the expected values are essentially equal after one more turn of paralysis.
It's unlabeled so it being confusing is understandable, but it's visibly the chance of generating a single free turn, which I felt was obvious because it approached 1 (which is 100%) and I said "that's because thats how math works and confusion is already rapidly approaching 100% chance of 1 free turn if its given 4 full turns to do what it does." which I felt made it clear that the chart was about a single chance.

Though I do take responsibility for not labeling what I meant; I thought it was visually clear by the numbers but it clearly wasn't so that's on me.
 
I don't agree with 100% Confusion being broken in any way. It's a volatile status that can be counterplayed by switching, as Infatuation (this even works 33% of the times lol). You can also playing around Confusion using low-atk stat mons with recovery, or if you insist, Lum Berry.
100% Confusion moves are:
Confuse Ray (which is a wasted slot most of the times)
Flatter (which raises Special Attack + see CRay)
Chatter (which is only learnt by Chatot)
Dynamic Punch (which has 50% accuracy if not run by No Guard mons, plus just 8 PP)
Supersonic (55% accuracy + see CRay)
Sweet Kiss (75% accuracy + see CRay + mediocre distribution)
Teeter Dance (see CRay + bad distribution)

So, you waste a moveslot to inflict a 1-4 turns volatile status to get "free turns" for doing something else: what will you exactly do? I mean, your moveslot now is reduced by 3 moves, which means your coverage is reduced, and it could be even more restricted using statup moves or recoveries or whatever else; all this things to inflict a status that will do nothing for 50% of the times and can be healed by switching? Ok, definitely broken or rather unhealthy lol.
Swagger was different since it was used with Prankster and Foul Play and it doubled Attack stat so selfhit damage from user (and there even was Ditto abusing of this thing!)

@Chatter/DynamicPunch: are they broken in every case they're being used? Chatter is only learnt by Chatot (like King's Shield was almost only learnt by Aegislash) so it would had been better taking off just Chatot but w/e. DynamicPunch works perfectly just with No Guard (it's just something), plus, not every viable No Guard+DynamicPunch mon is broken in its viable tier (see: Machamp for its gen 4~6 tiers, Golurk/Golett Machop etc, tl;dr everything bar PU Machoke) so no it's not broken in any situation its being used.

Trying to get rid of those "not too much gamebreaking" status conditions means not accepting the way this game is made, somehow. And if we really goin into this, then there are more important status/moves that can be discussed. See: Scald, Thunder Wave (which I disagree for potential ban), Serene Grace.
 
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Swagger was only an issue because of Foul Play + Impostor Ditto shenanigans

Take those two points out of the equation and nobody bothers using Swagger

Every other form of 100% confusion chance that aren't attacks are utterly gimmicky at best

You might get results with them, but such results are highly inconsistent and cannot taken as a serious issue to be banned, because the luck involved is nothing as serious as Evasion luck

Dynamicpunch, on the other hand, is constantly a fluctuating issue; at times, the strategy will be nothing but a niche that keeps a mon from being utterly useless, and at other times, people will claim that it makes a mon utterly broken. I honestly cannot speak for those that claim such, but we have to stop and consider what precedents we are setting by trying to distinguish Dynamicpunch Machoke from Speed Boost Blaziken;

Banning Pokemon other than banning individual aspects of them is a consistent policy in terms of precedent. I honestly cannot take a stance on the PU Machoke, never having played a game of PU before, but I would like to understand why we are willing to go this far in terms of banning a move that is only a problem on a single mon. I have strong feelings against a Dynamicpunch ban, but I would like to understand: why are PU leaders willing to take the risk with Dynamicpunch Machoke when we never bothered with the remote possibility of banning Hurricane on Torn-T (BW2), U-turn on Genesect, and Gunk Shot on Greninja?
 

MZ

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why are PU leaders willing to take the risk with Dynamicpunch Machoke when we never bothered with the remote possibility of banning Hurricane on Torn-T (BW2), U-turn on Genesect, and Gunk Shot on Greninja?
Because Dpunch is actually uncompetitive on Machoke, while the other moves don't remove skill they just help make a broken/overcentralizing mon broken/overcentralizing
e: also nobody could even respond to Magnemite's points really, so the working assumption is still that banning Dpunch or something would be the better option because nobody's bothered to tell us why not other than it being different than OU's ideal banning policies
 
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erisia

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I think No Guard + Dynamic Punch and Chatter are the only cases where the confusion could be seen as overpowered, as you don't just spend a whole turn setting up a 50/50 scenario; you actually get to spend that turn inflicting some guaranteed damage on par with a standard STAV attack as well. While I think confusion is a bit of a silly mechanic to begin with, all other cases of the phenomenon are either a secondary effect that isn't the primary reason for using the move (see Hurricane) or stacked in the opponent's favour (Dynamic Punch on its own, Sweet Kiss, even Confuse Ray because you have to spend a turn to set it up in the first place and it's not guaranteed you'll get that turn back). Why should a concept be banned when it's giving your opponent the edge over the course of dozens of battles? This discussion stemmed from Machoke and by the looks of it that's the specific case where this confusion becomes unbalanced (Machamp is fine in UU, Golurk is fine in NU) because Machoke is already a top-tier mon in its own right even without the move. The whole Chatot vs Chatter situation is a little messy but it's already covered for now.

So overall I think confusion is a poor strategy that doesn't need to be banned because while it can win games with RNG, it's more likely to lose them outside of specific cases that should be dealt with in their own right.
 

termi

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Since when does it matter for uncompetitive and easily removable aspects of the metagame how good they are in practice? Even if just one important SPL battle or something alike would be decided by confusion hax, that's one too many. We can't ban all hax, we can't ban crits, we can't ban Ice Beam freezing, we can't ban Focus Blast from missing, but we most certainly can ban confusion-inducing moves because their sole purpose is to decide the game by RNG. Confuse Ray's only purpose is to let the user take a backseat and let the game be decided by hax. In this case it doesn't matter whether it actually works or not, the simple fact that it is used with the intent to hax and nothing else is enough to ban it. DynamicPunch is tricker because it does more than just confuse, but still, the only reason one ever uses it on anything is for the hax. All Pokemon that get it either have better, more reliable STAB moves to use otherwise, or it's simply not worth using DPunch on them anyway.

imo it's just retarded to keep things that are designed solely to amplify the role of the RNG in the metagame, when we lose literally nothing from banning them. Ask yourself what metagame is more fun and more competitive: our current metagame, or the exact same metagame minus confusion.
 

Ununhexium

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I'm okay with banning Confuse Ray on like the same grounds as Swagger, but Dynamic Punch should stay. Yes, it is a 100% confusion move, but I would say that the confusion isn't the only reason you would use it over another move. It's still a rather strong and 100% reliable STAB move on Pokemon like Machoke and Machamp. Though the confusion is nice, it's also used over Close Combat because it doesn't drop your defenses and can allow you to stay in for another turn and attack again without the decreased bulk. The argument can be made that Cross Chop is roughly the same, but the only reason to use No Guard Cross Chop over Dynamic Punch is the higher critical hit ratio. Yeah Dynamic Punch can help you cheese through some otherwise decent checks, but like so can hax from anything, it's just that Dynamic Punch has a higher chance of it. The increased critical hit ratio can just as easily help bogus your way through a counter as the actually kind of unreliable confusion.

Also I wouldn't really say the metagame without confusion would be more fun because nobody but low ladder people really uses it because it's kind of a garbage strategy :/
 

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