Arena Trap / Dugtrio



Hey my fellow OverUsed players, ABR and I are coming again today in order to talk about something that has been really broken these past months (at least for us and some accomplished users), we are going to talk about Dugtrio and his incredible ability in Arena Trap which allows him to trap every single grounded (except ghost-type) pokemon. Dugtrio has been the success key of defensives archetypes these days and this because of how easily it can neutralize a large amount of threats for Stall, you all can notice the invasion of Dugtrio's stall nowadays because it has been really present on both the tournament scene and ladder.

Indeed it's true that unlike Gothitelle, Dugtrio can not trap any flying-type which means it's obviously not doing better but let's throw a look at this, Dugtrio can trap most of wallbreakers / Stallbreakers that can annoy stall (Kyurem-B / Heracross / Crawdaunt / Tyranitar / Lopunny / Metagross / Weavile / Heatran / Gardevoir / Medicham...)which means you can easily focus on specific threats that he can not trap (ie:Pinsir / Latios / Gliscor / Charizard / Gengar...) and so make a team that is really hard to break without a specific combination of sets or pokemon.

Dugtrio also has the ability to affect hazard metagame in a negative way supporting pokemon such as Espeon / Xatu / Sableye / Zapdos / Skarmory in their job, as you can see Espeon and Xatu are both beaten by Heatran / Tyranitar / Jirachi as Stealth Rock settler but at the end of the day they are all trapped by Dugtrio, however you will probably tell me that they aren't the only one pokemon that can settle Stealth Rock while still beating them (Landorus-T), but once again if you give it a look you can notice that with the help of Dugtrio you can easily find a pokemon that can fill the lack of solidity and create an overall solid hazard control core, per exemple Sableye paired with dugtrio means that Clefable and Landorus-T (Offensive variant) both can settle Stealth Rock easily but if you add Skarmory to fill the gate so what is happening ? Exactly, nothing is going trough this (unless you're using specific set such as Gravity / Smack Down Landorus-T which honestly just sucks because it's only going to work against these kind of teams) and once again we are losing a fantastic answer to Stall (Entry Hazard) mostly because of Arena Trap, i can also point out some similar strategies such as FlamingVictini's team or ABR's one which all are impossible to keep hazard against.

Once again Stall has proven to be one of the most prominent / annoying playstyle by using trap at its best and i guess it should be considered again (at least before SUMO), Dugtrio is making Stall way harder to break than it already is by using its trapping capacities which is uncompetitive, i obviously won't compare Gothitelle and Dugtrio as Gothitelle is clearly one step ahead due to some caracteristics that Dugtrio don't share but we gotta admit the fact that both Shadow Tag and Arena Trap are unhealthy for the metagame in some points in addition to restrict teambuilding at one point where we are forced to play at least 2 wallbreakers a team when there are only a few one.

Ban Arena Trap.
 
Firstly, please do not bring up the bp suspect to make it look like the ou playerbase is just randomly trying to get rid of annoying things on a whim. Even if you don't want bp gone, because it hasn't been long enough or whatever, Dugtrio has been used in OU for quite a while now, and it has seen a spike of usage since the start of this OLT season. Now I'd like to preface my post by proposing that Dugtrio, or Arena Trap rather, has all of the broken/unhealthy qualities of Gothitelle or Shadow Tag.

As for why Shadow Tag was indeed banned from ORAS OU, let us recall a few points. Gothitelle was extremely effective in trapping and negating potent threats (to stall in particular). Dugtrio, similarly, traps a whole lot of grounded threats. It effectively traps Tyranitar, Heatran, Gardevoir, Kyurem, Heracross, and a ton of other pokemon 1v1. In terms of Defensive pokemon it beats, there's Chansey, Jirachi, Heatran, and it doesn't kill many other walls but it can toxic them. Now, a trait that makes Dugtrio even better and less prediction based than Gothitelle is that you can't even pursuit trap it because Dugtrio in fact is the one trapping pursuiters. Additionally, it is virtually impossible to get hazards vs a combination of Dugtrio + 1 or 2 defoggers + maybe Sableye. Therefore, almost all games involving Dugtrio stall are entirely matchup based and playskill is almost entirely nullified. Here are my replays showing the stupid turn 1 wins but you can also find a ton of Tele's stall (sab dug clef zap skarm cune):

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-429463319
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-429763714

On the topic of matchup-based teams hurting the metagame, this is pretty much identical to what was argued about Gothitelle. The way stall currently functions in ORAS (at least for these Dugtrio stalls) is that you need to have a unique combination of pokemon to effectively break them. There is no outplaying. This means less teambuilding freedom because the game entirely depends on your team and if you aren't prepared in one of the few specific ways then you're simply going to lose 10/10 times. Gothitelle may have more noticeably forced building in a certain way like the then common usage of Shed Shell Manaphy/Togekiss, but the parallel is still there. Dugtrio may not force obscure sets but it certainly forces distinct pokemon to be used. This is something you really have to observe for yourself but if you paid any attention to the OLT ladder then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Really, what I'm trying to get at here, is that taking away a fundamental component of pokemon, switching, is going to lead to issues. The only reason people aren't going for a Magnet Pull ban is because the number of pokemon affected by it are way less than Arena Trap or Shadow Tag. Undeniably, in my eyes, Dugtrio shares the uncompetitive/unhealthy traits of STag. Now, the real question here is whether you think it's far enough from Magnet Pull and close enough to Shadow Tag in how it affects the metagame to be considered worthy of a suspect test.

e: If you think Dugtrio isn't used enough in OU (1825 stats): Dugtrio - #41 in OU | Usage: 4.32453%
 
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arena trap's cancer in RU too because it's a cancerous ability inherently. Taking away the ability to switch out is almost impossible to make competitive, even on a horrible pokemon like dugtrio

except dugtrio's like a top-tier pokemon in RU because it traps everything, and in OU it has a niche on specific teams where it doesn't seem to be an issue until you realize it selectively allows stall players to trap any grounded stallbreakers they can't defeat (which is pretty stupid)
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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I've come around on this issue with the realization that even though trapping in general wasn't broken in previous generations it still can be today. The reasoning is simple, and it's one that's been trumpeted for the entirety of the generation: matchups are key because there are so many threats to account for you must have all six of your Pokemon dedicated to covering something. In previous generations, less common strategies like trapping and BP could be managed because you could devote a moveslot to Roar, or could cover multiple threats with a centralized group of non-trappable mons. That's no longer the case, there's simply too many items and too many things to adequately cover threats with 5 mons, even 6 isn't a perfect answer. When you're able to lose the one defensive answer that stops you from being swept or the one thing that can break through the opponent's core for free, there becomes little reason not to run a trapper because it shifts the balance of power so strongly in your favour.

Trapping has become broken in this generation not because of it's own specific power, but because the immense power everywhere else has made this niche ability capable of winning games on its own.
 

p2

Banned deucer.
on phone so gonna be a short post and i will elaborate on points when i get home

duggy is so good in ou on stall teams because of msab, and with sab restricting building as it is, duggy takes advantage of this further by removing or drastically weakening the mons that take on msab.

duggy is effective on offense with things like msciz/lati/torn but this isnt to the same degree as effectiveness as it on stall

to clarify my point, i think msab is the main issue because its simply too good with trapping to remove big threats and we should consider suspecting it again and finally hope to boot it out the tier
 
on phone so gonna be a short post and i will elaborate on points when i get home

duggy is so good in ou on stall teams because of msab, and with sab restricting building as it is, duggy takes advantage of this further by removing or drastically weakening the mons that take on msab.

duggy is effective on offense with things like msciz/lati/torn but this isnt to the same degree as effectiveness as it on stall

to clarify my point, i think msab is the main issue because its simply too good with trapping to remove big threats and we should consider suspecting it again and finally hope to boot it out the tier
Here is the issue, banning or suspecting sab isn't going to change anything in the fact that dugtrio is still going to make stall harder to beat, indeed there are plenty of alternatives to sableye in term of hazard control, as i showed previously there are some groups of pokemon that can fullfil the exact same role as sableye even though it's banned, ie: Dug + Skarmory + Xatu or Zapdos + Skarmory + Dugtrio, good luck finding something that can freely settle hazards against these cores unless you use some specific sets as stated before, and i'm pretty sure there are some unrevealed one, what i'm trying to explain is that banning sableye unless you want to ban Magic Bounce as a whole is not going to change anything plus it doesn't even affect the latter core, i mean why would we ban sab when there are some alternatives way (even though they are weaker)? It's like asking to ban bp + geomancy when you can use bp + quiver dance which is exactly the same but in a weaker version, nah let's be honest Sableye is definitly not the major issue of these archetypes and everyone who thinks that must definitly think ahead, because we are going to have the same issue as bp, we reduce again and again without taking the problem at its sources so it creates problems again. No one is complaning about Weavile stall or Honus's semi stall while they both have Sableye in this but once Dugtrio comes people are crying ? Seems pretty obvious to me, dugtrio is the problem and should be banned.
 
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M Dragon

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No, I dont think Dugtrio and Goth are even comparable (other than the fact that they both have trapping abilities).
The problem with Goth was basically that it could easily trap and remove from the game anything that could be a problem for the team.

Dugtrio is a frail pokemon with low attack that is very good at removing certain key mons such as Heatran and TTar from the game, as well as RKing weakened mons, in the same way Mag removes from the game certain key mons (MScizor, Skarm, Ferro...). And those mons have done that since the ADV days (remember BW sun for example, with Dug removing TTar and Heatran from the game).
What has changed in ORAS? MSab and Defog being 2 amazing anti hazard solutions, especially if Dugtrio removes Heatran (an annoying SRer because of Lava Plume's burn rate).
Honestly looking at those logs I dont see anything wrong with the double defog (Skarm and Zapdos) + Dug team. It is a team designed to prevent hazards from the opponent and uses 3 mons for that (and it will require some prediction with Dug vs Tran, or you risk a LPlume burn in the switch, and losing Dug because it OHKOes), and that means that the team has little offense (that team reminds me to GSC Stall, with a very solid defense but with little offensive options, which usually translates into long games).
I think that MSab is a problem though, since it restricts team building much more than Dug. Dug just adds to the problem by removing some of the few SRers that can threaten MSab.

Basically, analyzing Dugtrio:
a) It is very frail, so it needs its sash to be able to switch in. Even ScarfTTar Stone Edge (a resist) OHKOes it, so unlike Goth (who had a great special bulk), it cannot switch in into nearly anything unless its at 100%.
b) It is weak. Reversal will not kill Kyurem-B, EQ has a low chance of killing MDiancie, AA will only do a 60% vs MHera, and Chople TTar can survive a Reversal while killing Dug.
c) It is an amazing RKer. It can remove a frail sweeper such as MDiancie (or a weakened mon) after it has killed something (or if you catch him in a double switch, which is risky)
d) There are still a lot of powerful wall breakers that cannot be RKd by Dugtrio.

Dugtrio is a gimmicky mon in OU that can RK threats and remove certain threats (Heatran and TTar mainly), in the same way Mag removes MScizor, Ferro and Skarm. Both mons have its big flaws that prevent them from being nearly as broken as Goth.

The problem in this case is MSab, not Dug.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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You're looking at this far too narrowly. Dugtrio isn't a problem solely unique to OU, it's far more damaging in RU. The argument of whether it's MSab or Dug that's more suspect worthy is completely irrelevant in the face of trapping as a mechanic having become broken in ORAS.
 
We've seen that Dugtrio can make stall excessively difficult to beat, but I believe that Dugtrio's abilities can be abused to a similar extent on offense. The reason it hasn't been as prominent on offense/balance could be that it's simply not as effective, but I think the actual reason is that people have not experimented with Dugtrio on offensive builds nearly as extensively as they have on stall. Dugtrio started getting some real usage back in summer of 2015 with a small usage spike when fellow trapper Gothitelle was getting hyped up. After the ST ban, trapping strats other than Mag+Diancie/Altaria/etc were brushed aside as a non-issue with little impact on the metagame as a whole. Obviously this doesn't include Pursuit trapping which has been crazy good for a long time, quite possibly stealing attention from Dugtrio up until recently.

Though it has been a long time coming, it's hard to determine what catalyzed the recent surge in Dugtrio usage and popularity. As far as I'm aware, no recent metagame shifts provoked this change other than possibly an increased focus on stallbreaking, which forced stall to further explore its options in blanket checks (Dugtrio being an excellent one). For well over a year, standard Dugtrio-weak OU pokes such as Heatran, TTar, Bisharp, Diancie, Kyurem-B, Excadrill, Zard X, Magnezone, Chansey and Gardevoir had roughly the same usage that they have currently with only minor shifts along the way. During this time, all of these pokes have been massively influential in the OU metagame which means Dugtrio has been about as good as it is now. That's not to say that everyone has been ignoring Dugtrio this whole time. Dugtrio started as either D or C- in the Viability Ranking thread, and has been getting nommed for raises for a long time before getting to the coveted and prestigious B- ranking where it sits today. It's quite possible that Dugtrio's rise in popularity is solely due to OLT, where a play-to-win mentality manifests in people who naturally gravitate towards the most consistent/mindless strategies. Specific uses include ABR's team, Tele's team and refurbished Shed stalls, all of which yielded impressive results. In other words, Dugtrio is just really good.

I think it's appropriate to compare Dugtrio's influence to that of Gothitelle and Shadow Tag. Both are used to eliminate a huge number of common threats by removing the opponent's option of switching. People including myself have explored options to support Dugtrio including the obvious Sableye for hazard control and more recently Eject Button which can be slapped on a teammate to essentially grant Dugtrio a 100% safe switch-in. Aside from Dugtrio's "uncompetitive" aspect, it has the flexibility to be tailored to a team's specific needs quite easily:

Dugtrio @ Focus Sash / Custap Bery
Ability: Arena Trap
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
IVs: 20 HP / 0 Def / 0 SpD
- Earthquake
- Reversal
- Aerial Ace / Stealth Rock / Stone Edge / Screech / Toxic / Endure


I'd argue that Dugtrio is even less match-up reliant than Gothitelle was, if you take into account that dugtrio-weak mons are on almost every team. Gothitelle was clearly a problem, but it was also a complete deadweight in some match-ups. The real difference between Gothitelle and Dugtrio lies in the number of specific pokemon that are beaten by each, not the obvious fact that Dugtrio can trap only grounded pokes. In regards to this number, Gothitelle > Dugtrio >>>>> Pursuit > Magnezone. My point is that the metagame as a whole would likely benefit from Dugtrio/Arena Trap being banned.


It's only a matter of time before Gravity + Dugtrio strats become a thing anyway.
 
I guess your point of view tends to be a bit too subjective M Dragon, you talked about how weak dugtrio was but you didn't mention the way you have to play it, first if you are playing dugtrio you have to identify your opponent's team in order to trap the most threatening pokemon (if there are even more than one) and be able to trap / kill it. Per exemple in case of Kyurem-B which is always played with either life orb or choice scarf you can notice that it's pretty simple as after Life orb recoil reversal OHKOes: 252 Atk Dugtrio Reversal (200 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 316-372 (80.8 - 95.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO, and in the case where you were not killing, it just means he's going to die to life orb, i won't even talk about choice scarf variant as it totally can not beat stall by itself so you don't need to trap it, for Heracross all you need is baiting Close Combat so you can revenge kill right after and even though it may not die it also means it's not going to pressure as much as it was supposed to do especially if there are stealth rock or spikes up.

Yes it's usually not trapping more than one pokemon but let's be honest, who even thinks about playing 2 pur wallbreakers in one team outside of xtrashine ? You also compared Dugtrio to Magnezone, but i totally disagree with you, you just can't compare Dugtrio and Magnezone when Magnezone can only trap ONE type of pokemon while dugtrio simply trap every grounded pokemon which means like 60/70% of the metagame. Dugtrio is indeed 100 lvl ahead Magnezone and everyone will agree with that here.

However as you said there are indeed some powerful wallbreakers that can not be trapped by dugtrio but as i said previously in my OP, taking the fact that Dugtrio can trap / kill an incredibly high amount of pokemon that threaten stall you can easily create a team in order to meticulously focus on these specific threats which also means that we are coming at one point where we need to use very specific combination of pokemon or sets which is simply ridiculous, ORAS OU doesn't need such a pathetic strategy and i won't even add the fact that Dugtrio can be played in stall as well as in offense so it's definitly not only affecting one playstyle. In top of that i'd like to point out branflakes's comment about the "gays" strats who might emerge around this pokemon (Gravity) even though it sounds gimmick i can see it coming just because of how uncompetitive it can be.
 

Bughouse

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...wasn't Dugtrio just as good if not better at its job in ADV and BW than it currently is in ORAS OU? (not gonna comment on RU cuz I don't know it at all)

I mean Dugtrio had such a large impact on ADV that a tooooon of the top mons were flying/levitating and Dugtrio was STILL A rank just because of how useful removing Blissey or Magneton or Celebi or TTar etc could be. And Dugtrio was one of the principal reasons why chlorosun was broken and banned in BW because of how Dugtrio ended weather wars. ADV didn't even have Choice Scarf mons, so base 120 was almost untouchable.

Why now? Seems like more of a problem with the metagame than with Dugtrio.
 
Personally I don't think Dugtrio is the problem. Ok, I'll aim to prove this by looking at what people see as a problem. We can all agree that Keldeo + pursuit trap offence is not a problem, and we can agree that Magnezone + Pinsir is fine, and also that Dugtrio + Sweeper that loses to Heatran/Ttar isn't a problem either. In fact, there's never been a problem with trapping offensively since we banned Shadow tag.

Therefore, it's a problem with something about full stall + trapping.

The issue with stall is that it makes your team very dependent on a few pokemon currently in order to win. So, for example, my success in a stall matchup could very well be based on how well I use Choice Band Ttar. Then something can go ahead and remove that, or limit it to 1 kill, which makes it very difficult or totally impossible for me to win short of extreme hax.
Now this feels pretty unfair, but let's go ahead and look at what causes me to rely on one specific member of my team in the first place.
I strongly believe that the reason why you're so dependent on one specific team member is very much to do with Sableye.

I've skimmed through this thread, and one thing I can extract from this is that Magic Bounce + Trapping is what is recognised as a problem. In particular, Mega Sableye + any degree of general trapping appears to be what has been troubling OU since the start of ORAS. Sableye blocks off general support and hazards for the opponent, a defogger (in this case two) takes what hazard users it can't handle, then the rest of the defensive core handles as many threats as it can. Finally the trapper takes out what it likes from the list of pokemon that the stall team is weak to. If you don't have one of the pokemon from the remaining breakers, you're in trouble.

You really do have to compare other tiers, both past and present to this one. For Shadow Tag, I'm pretty sure it was banned in every lower tier long before it was banned in OU. It was a broken ability, but it kinda flew under the radar for a long time, the problems it caused the tier were distinct but confined. Then Sableye came along in ORAS, and Shadow Tag completely blew away OU. Now Shadow Tag deserved to go because it caused problems outside of Sableye too, but can't you guys recognise that while Shadow Tag was a problem without Sableye, it became a major problem with it? And now that people have figured out how to use Dugtrio, literally an RU pokemon, this Sableye + Dugtrio team causes problems for OU.

And that's just the thing I'm getting at, because Sableye appears to act as a catalyst any form of trapping and then make it broken (or significantly more broken) when put together with it. The Weavile pursuit trap team, in my eyes anyway, was a problem. People would routinely pick up the team, and top the ladder with it, it had a tour presence, and it was generally pretty dumb to use. To link this back to what I was saying earlier in tier comparison, Dugtrio has never been regarded as a threat to the tier before. It's also not a problem in UU, from what I can tell. Xatu, another magic bounce user, has been out for way longer than Sableye. However, we didn't have a Xatu + Dugtrio problem in OU before Sableye. This may be down to the metagame just not being developed enough. However, as this is near the end of gen 6, lower tiers are just as developed as this one. Despite that Xatu + Dugtrio combo being available to UU, for instance, it's not a problem there either.

I can't comment on Omfuga's post about Dugtrio being a problem in RU, because to be honest I don't know anything about the tier. But if we are to ban Arena Trap, it's banning Dugtrio from RU, UU, and OU, shooting it up 3 tiers. That would be banning a pokemon that's only arguably broken in RU from a tier that has much, much greater threats in it. OU should certainly be able to handle what RU falls just short of being able to.

In summary, the key points of my argument hinge on the following:

1) A Dugtrio + Xatu combo does not cause problems for UU, because neither pokemon is broken there.
2) Dugtrio was not regarded as broken before Mega Sableye entered the tier.
3) Dugtrio is not broken on offensive teams in OU.
4) Therefore, it's an interaction between Dugtrio and Sableye that makes Dugtrio seem broken.
5) We have evidence that Dugtrio can be part of a balanced OU metagame in which Mega Sableye is not present.
6) Therefore, it is Mega Sableye that is the broken part of the duo.
7) The correct tiering policy decision is to ban Mega Sableye.

To mention the Sab + Shadow Tag suspect in OU we had a while ago, only banning Shadow Tag felt like a bad half measure, which didn't address the whole problem of Sableye causing matching issues too. If you didn't vote ban, and knew back then that Dugtrio trapping with Sableye would cause a problem in OU 10 months later, would you really still have decided to keep Sableye in the tier?
If, in time, Arena Trap is banned, and I've been totally wrong for over a year and Sableye isn't actually an issue, so the matchup problems go away, then that would be great. However, it seems really unlikely to me that banning Arena Trap will wholly solve the issue. Yeah, there are a few replays around in which people successfully replace Sableye with something else and win, but those teams haven't gained nearly the success or traction that Sab + trapper has, both now and in the past.
What I really don't want is another half measure, Sableye to stay in the tier, and for it to still cause problems.
 
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Why is Arena Trap being lumped in with Dugtrio for banning? Arena Trap Trapinch and Arena Trap Diglett aren't even close to 'uncompetitive' or broken. It does not make sense to take away a somewhat viable Pokemon from PU (Trapinch - just going by viability rankings) when Dugtrio is the what is stated as the problem in OU.

Also not sure why RU is being brought up as support for banning Dugtrio in OU. That is RU's problem. If you want Dugtrio banned from OU, then its brokenness in OU is the only relevant argument. Dugtrio also isn't inherently broken in RU if that's the argument that is trying to be made; the metagame just developed in a way where it traps many of the top wallbreakers and walls and many players are seriously evaluating whether it's worth keeping it (fuck ru duggy IMO).
 
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(I only did read Leftiez and ABR's post, so sorry in advance if I'm repeating stuff that has already been said).

What bugs me a lot with this thread is the fact that you guys are clearly over-exaggerating everything to make your arguments valid while they make you going the wrong way. A few examples :

ABR said:
Here are my replays showing the stupid turn 1 wins but you can also find a ton of Tele's stall (sab dug clef zap skarm cune):

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-429463319
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-429763714
In these two replays, Dugtrio did nothing but trapping Tyranitar which is indeed annoying for your team because your rock resist... is Dugtrio. Replacing Dug by a bulky ground-type Pokemon would have not change the outcome of the game. Both games were won turn 1 just because it was a standard game of stall vs. bulky offensive teams that both rely on a pseudo-wallbreaker in CB Tyranitar to win. It's actually scary to see how both replays do not illustrate anything.

ABR said:
Additionally, it is virtually impossible to get hazards vs a combination of Dugtrio + 1 or 2 defoggers + maybe Sableye. Therefore, almost all games involving Dugtrio stall are entirely matchup based and playskill is almost entirely nullified.
How does an anti-hazards combination of Dugtrio + Mega-Sableye + 1/2 Defog users leads to "Dugtrio is the problem" ? If the goal of your team is to make sure your opponent can't get any form of hazards by using 3 or 4 mons (50-66% of the team) for the job, I do not the see the issue, especially if you need Defog (which removes hazards on both sides) instead of Rapid Spin. Not getting hazards up against an anti-hazards team =/= losing the game.

To illustrate what I am trying to explain with Dugtrio not being the main member of these anti-hazards core, I made a list of every hazards setter with the mon(s) preventing them from doing their job :

-
->
+
+

-
(Offensive) ->

-
(Defensive) ->
+
+
+

-
->
+
(1)
-
->
+

-
->
+

-
->
+
+

-
(Offensive) ->
+

-
(Defensive) ->
+
+
+

-
->
+
+
+
+
(2)
-
->
+
(3) +
(3) +
(3)
-
->
+
+
(3) +
+
(3)
-
->
+
+

-
->
(4)

(1) It has 30% chance of dying if it switches on a Lava Plume.
(2) It loses to Jirachi if it takes an Iron Head on the switch and has 60% chance of losing the 1v1 if Jirachi has Body Slam.
(3) Considering it does not run Toxic.
(4) It prevents Azelf (with Skill Swap) from getting Stealth Rock up only if it has Foul Play.

As you can see, the simple combination of Mega-Sableye + Skarmory stops almost every hazards users. Only Heatran and Clefable (depending on the last move) are most likely getting their hazards. Dugtrio traps Mold Breaker Excadrill / Toxic-less Chansey easily and does the same for Heatran / Jirachi but it's risky. It doesn't trap Clefable while being probably the most annoying Stealth Rock setter.

The real interest of using Dugtrio on a stall team is in its ability to both revenge kill and trap some of the main ORAS wallbreakers : Mega-Gardevoir, Mega-Heracross, Mega-Medicham, Adamant Mega-Lopunny (unless its Quick Attack, you're fucked), Breloom, Diggersby, Victini, etc. All you have to do is to target the wallbreaker you consider as the more dangerous during the team preview sequence and trap it afterwards. Nothing really new here. I think Gengar (Life Orb - Shadow Ball | Sludge Wave | Taunt | Pain Split) is probably the best Pokemon to use against the three good Dugtrio stall teams I saw, since it always has been a massive threat against Pursuit-less teams.

And while Dugtrio stops a lot of wallbreakers, Mega-Sableye makes a lot of stallbreakers unviable or way less effective (while offering a spectacular control of the hazards game). Mainly Mew, Gliscor (Taunt+Toxic) and Talonflame (Taunt + WoW). They used to be extremely effective against stall teams in XY OU but they completely disappeared after ORAS came out.

I'm not especially saying that I would like to see Mega-Sableye gone, but I'm just trying to make people understand that Mega-Sableye has way more impact than Dugtrio has at all levels. Dugtrio is only a good Pokemon which fits perfectly to Mega-Sableye's qualities.

I would even say I like having Dugtrio in a metagame where ridiculously strong mons that all have a poor number of viable checks/counters exist (Charizard-X, Diancie, Gardevoir, Heracross, Lopunny, Medicham, Metagross, Weavile) but because of how weak and frail it is, I think it is nothing more than an interesting Pokemon with unique merits.

Leftiez said:
No one is complaning about Weavile stall or Honus's semi stall while they both have Sableye in this but once Dugtrio comes people are crying ? Seems pretty obvious to me, dugtrio is the problem and should be banned.
 
M Dragon, boudouche

The primary reason Leftiez and I proposed this suspect is because we were under the impression that Sableye was off the table, as it's been brought up and shot down recently on numerous occasions. Now, there absolutely is an issue with the current metagame, and some combination of Sableye + Dugtrio is at the heart of this issue. I totally agree with you that Sableye is more problematic, it's just that if Sableye isn't considered then the only other sensible ban is Dugtrio. From the two of your posts (boud mdrag), it seems that you also believe Sableye to be the heart of this issue. I think I can speak on behalf of myself, Leftiez, and many other people when I say that we all agree Sableye is the culprit. The reason we're seeing so many suspect proposals pop up is because of the more logical ones (Sableye) being dismissed, when something absolutely has to be changed. I know ORAS is coming to a close but it's still going to be played in SPL, ST, Classic, and WCoP so we might as well fix it while we can.
 
MSableye wasn't banned since it got suspected together with Gothitelle and people didn't have the time to properly see its effectiveness since Shadow Tag power was way far better than Sab's one, even that MSab seemed just "a mon that took support by Gothi trapping of Heatran/Clefable/wallbreakers" and for this reason its excessive impact on metagame was overshadowed by Shadow Tag (no pun intended).
MSableye has some little flaws that can be covered with the right support, and I would put Dugtrio in this, rather than taking it as the culprit. However, Dugtrio isn't the only one that makes MSab stalls really sick; as boudouche posted, that full list of members capable of handling hazards all together are the core that makes this playstyle really effective and problematic. So I'd just revalue a suspect of Mega Sableye rather than a Dugtrio one, which is just a niche mon that is effective almost only in this playstyle and which was way far more relevant in other gens (weather killer in BW2, premier trapper in ADV) without making players calling a suspect on it.
 
yes but you didn't mention the fact that, without dug these alternatives archetypes are all fucked by wallbreakers such as cb ttar / gardevoir n cie, the real issue is Dug + sableye, without one the other is not going to be anything, per exemple if you ban arena trap then you can easily beat these archetypes by playing good wallbreakers, while banning sableye would open teambuildings choice implying we can easily adapt to dug stall as pokemon such as alakazam / medicham / reuni etc would become 100% viable again.

I wouldn't mind suspecting sab instead of dug and as abr said, i was the one begging for that suspect every days in olt chat last year but i guess you guys need to stick up to your mind a little bit because if that was the case, sableye would have been banned from now on.
 
yes but you didn't mention the fact that, without dug these alternatives archetypes are all fucked by wallbreakers such as cb ttar / gardevoir n cie, the real issue is Dug + sableye, without one the other is not going to be anything, per exemple if you ban arena trap then you can easily beat these archetypes by playing good wallbreakers, while banning sableye would open teambuildings choice implying we can easily adapt to dug stall as pokemon such as alakazam / medicham / reuni etc would become 100% viable again.

I wouldn't mind suspecting sab instead of dug and as abr said, i was the one begging for that suspect every days in olt chat last year but i guess you guys need to stick up to your mind a little bit because if that was the case, sableye would have been banned from now on.
You answered by yourself. Since banning one of the two mons will fix the issue, what should we ban, Mega Sableye that's an issue since the time it got suspected or Dugtrio which appeared recently and only as a nichemon with its plenty of flaws?
I'd also say that Dugtrio without Sableye has no field on OU, while MSableye yes, otherwise it wouldn't had been suspected that time. CB Tar and MGardevoir although aren't a 100% answer since stall adapted to find a way to beat them which is currently Dugtrio (as many other things were for other issues, for example Talonflame for Charizard Y and no-tb Clefable) so metagame could just adapt to Dugtrio running flying-levitating wallbreakers (CM Latios could be one) or just solve the issue with banning MegaSableye.
 

Reymedy

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Okay, so I'm sorry in advance if that sounds rude, but the council has been showing either a clear lack of interest or competence lately.

Take the end of BW, Tornadus-T was broken as heck, the metagame was dominated by Rain in a way I've yet to experience again.
Obviously, what happened, is that a suspect with Tornadus-T and Keldeo took place. It was probably questionable to throw Keldeo into the mix, but most people did not really mind, and jumped on the occasion to give Tornadus-T the boot.

Where am I getting at ?
Few months later, after this suspect, the council decided to run another suspect, about Keldeo only. Why ? Because obviously the results of the previous suspect, as far as Keldeo was concerned, got probably skewed by the presence of the main offender at the time (Tornadus-T).
Still, the council wanted to get the job done, and done well, that's why they resuspected Keldeo, to close the Gen and move on to the next one on solid bases.
They did what anybody with half a brain would do, by isolating the things they wanted to examine.

Now, what I am wondering is :
How in the blue hell, did Sableye-M get away so freaking easily when all it ever went through was a suspect test shared by the most cancerous Pokémon I've ever seen in ORAS (Gothitelle) ?
We're talking about a Pokémon that is not only most likely broken thanks to its combination of Magic Bounce, typing, and solid bulk, but also at the epicenter of most of the cheaper strategies out there. But nah, for god knows which reason, it seems like it got thrown under the carpet right before a new generation comes out. Do you realise how tedious this will be to ever make a call in the future, once this generation won't be the main anymore ? Do you realise how much we're already screwed given that the next Official Tournaments won't even be using ORAS anymore ? The next to come being OST and SPL, which will be most surely featuring the new games.

You guys did poorly there, period. Why would you even hold back, personally I'm not even sure Sableye-M would be banned, but at least I'd like to see a suspect in order to freaking move on and let the policy follow its natural flow. I want the job to get done well, and you're really not helping so far I'd say.

I won't even talk about Dugtrio because honestly I doubt anybody will give a crap about this thing if we finally manage to balance Stall as a playstyle, and make it more fair (which the removal of Gothitelle helped already a ton, no doubt).
Just like no one gives a crap about it now that Sun is gone in BW, it's an interesting gimmick, that's all.

Anyway, how comes we're 2 games into a generation, and Baton Pass is still being so damn lame after going through what ? 2 or 3 suspects ?
How comes everybody half knowledgeable about this generation would agree that the sheer abundance of very solid threats is pressuring way too much the limited amount of team slots one could have, but we've almost not been suspecting anything to balance the metagame so far ? Instead, we're stuck on getting rid of the uncompetitive elements like Baton Pass or Shadow Tag CS trick garbage like we're 2 weeks into a new generation.

I mean, I wish we could have suspected.. I don't know Manaphy (you know, that thing that you can't virtually cover, that'd have been a start) for instance. I don't even know if I would want to have it banned, but hell I want for sure to see how it goes, I want to discuss the possiblity, I want the community to work towards a better metagame for the tournaments I play.
This generation just felt like a wasted potential, and there was no reason for it to happen because XY wasn't even bad at the end (just Greninja was dumb as crap, unless you want to accept having Clefable in every single team basically).

So I don't know if you guys are half dead half inactive, or if you're thinking "yup, perfecto, this is the dream generation", but either way, I'm starting to become disillusioned instead of cynical. It feels like you're trying to make the choices in everybody's place. Don't get it twisted, it's your role to choose the topic of the discussion, but you shouldn't be deciding the outcome on your own. You don't decide if Sableye-M gets banned or not, you decide if it gets suspected or not, and that's not nearly the same.

Now I don't know if you want to see the next thread being about a Chansey suspect, but I sure don't, so get this damn magic bouncing piece of crap suspected as soon as possible, in order to let everybody move on to a new generation that'll be hopefully better, and let us put behind what hopefully will become a half decent metagame after that suspect.

Cheers.
 
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two questions:

1) if you decide to suspect mega sab and it gets banned, are you open to bringing back goth in a non-sab meta? jw

2) and more importantly, if you guys ban dugtrio can you also ban diglett for kicks and then force little cup to follow that ban?

thanks
 
two questions:
1) if you decide to suspect mega sab and it gets banned, are you open to bringing back goth in a non-sab meta? jw
Not sure if serious; btw I believe no. Shadow Tag showed to be "uncompetitive" not only with MSableye support. Reasons behind that ban went far beyond MSableye itself; the nature of the ability combined with Gothi tasks (bulkyness, trick + rest, etc.) were too much by themselves. MSableye just emphatized its (cancer) power to the maximum.
 

PDC

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boudouche settled the dugtrio issue; we will not be suspecting arena trap.

but it seems that there has been another disruption and area of grief: the belief that the council has not been doing enough.

on baton pass:
baton pass has been a recurring issue throughout this generation. all cheap strategies could technically be destroyed if we ultimately just banned the move. so why are we not doing this?

because as heist said, baton pass also represents viable strategies spanning across multiple pokemon. and the current use of baton pass is not nearly as problematic as past incarnations. while surely annoying, it is certainly not broken and there are extreme team limitations that come from employing that strategy. in short, baton pass teams as i see them now are unreliable, easy to predict, and for the most part have a surefire way to be stopped. there is no longer an epidemic of bpass in tournaments either, and if i know anything about the smogon community, it is that if something is becoming a problem outside of ladder, it will surely make multiple showings in tournaments (of course being in tours does not make something broken, but it is a good indicator of an apparent problem such as gothstall or early bpass). a strategy can be 'cheap' but not broken, similar to focus energy kingdra or trap teams.

additionally, unlike the gothstall teams of yesteryear, baton pass teams do not even require countermeasures specifically to beat.

which leads into the second point, why has the council not suspected sableye?

for starters we could very well do it. in fact this has renewed discussion about the mon itself and the past few days we have been talking about a possible suspect on sable exclusively.

why we have not made a formal post or insider discussion on sableye yet though is due to it not really being...that big of an issue. we all know stall is a pain to deal with, but abr stall and other iterations of chansey - sab stall really have just not been that overwhelming recently. i find that you don't even need to specifically build a team with heavy anti-stall measures to be successful in defeating it. take it from somebody who spammed stall on the ladder for basically 3 months and remained in the top 10: stall is not unbeatable. i have lost many games that at the start i thought were surefire wins just because of 1 unorthodox set, 1 item knocked off, or 1 predicted u-turn screws up my whole plan. sab cannot hold off every sr user consistently, and while surely annoying, it is not unbreakable and can turn into a liability for many pokemon (especially if it is used on balance > hard stall). without sableye, hard stall would probably become obsolete simply due the lack of ability to consistently keep hazards off without extreme loss in momentum.

the differences with stall in oras and stall in other generations is that:

1.) stall in oras is VERY matchup reliant. the reason stall is so good on the ladder is that good players recognize that most people don't play aggressively and can get walked all over, even if they do have the tools to fight against stall. it is a very good tool against no win-con fat balance and frailer offenses which kill themselves off. however, just 1 pokemon can make a huge difference in how the game plays out. torn-t, u-turn lando-t, strong choiced users, bisharp + second physical attacker, etc.....

2.) you have no idea how much each pokemon relies on one another in stall. it usually only takes 1-2 to go down for the whole thing to fall apart. this is probably due to the massive amounts of threats in oras, and that losing one check leads to the sacrifice of another, and another until you lose a defensive base.

so stall itself is a flawed playstyle which relies heavily, if not supremely, on the ability of one pokemon to preform all game, which may not even be able to succeed in its task consistently. we have to consider if we want this variety in the metagame in the first place as well. sab opens up the doors to not just hard stall, but other gimmicky / hard balance teams as well. in a metagame where hazard removal & prevention is hard to come by (and one where many people have said spikes is broken), i think sableye plays an important role.

the council really just doesn't see sableye as that much of an issue. it may commandeer an entire playstyle, but it does not itself make it broken, just viable.

however it is worthy to note that the subject of this thread, dugtrio, is really more about sableye's ability to make these stall based teams viable in the first place. boudouche made a good post about how dugtrio itself was not broken, which i agree with myself.


and now onto reymedy's post.

Okay, so I'm sorry in advance if that sounds rude, but the council has been showing either a clear lack of interest or competence lately.

Take the end of BW, Tornadus-T was broken as heck, the metagame was dominated by Rain in a way I've yet to experience again.
Obviously, what happened, is that a suspect with Tornadus-T and Keldeo took place. It was probably questionable to throw Keldeo into the mix, but most people did not really mind, and jumped on the occasion to give Tornadus-T the boot.

Where am I getting at ?
Few months later, after this suspect, the council decided to run another suspect, about Keldeo only. Why ? Because obviously the results of the previous suspect, as far as Keldeo was concerned, got probably skewed by the presence of the main offender at the time (Tornadus-T).
Still, the council wanted to get the job done, and done well, that's why they resuspected Keldeo, to close the Gen and move on to the next one on solid bases.
They did what anybody with half a brain would do, by isolating the things they wanted to examine.

Now, what I am wondering is :
How in the blue hell, did Sableye-M get away so freaking easily when all it ever went through was a suspect test shared by the most cancerous Pokémon I've ever seen in ORAS (Gothitelle) ?
We're talking about a Pokémon that is not only most likely broken thanks to its combination of Magic Bounce, typing, and solid bulk, but also at the epicenter of most of the cheaper strategies out there. But nah, for god knows which reason, it seems like it got thrown under the carpet right before a new generation comes out. Do you realise how tedious this will be to ever make a call in the future, once this generation won't be the main anymore ? Do you realise how much we're already screwed given that the next Official Tournaments won't even be using ORAS anymore ? The next to come being OST and SPL, which will be most surely featuring the new games.
i feel like i shouldn't have to make the distinction that this isn't bw, but i guess i will have to anyway.

bw rain with tornadus-t was absolutely ridiculous and instantly sparked discussion about it being broken. there was hardly any wait time because it was just so ridiculous. to compare our rate of action on sab w/ torn-t, one of the most ridiculous offensive threats ever, is hardly credible. we don't feel the need to suspect sab, which is why we have not done it. don't mistake opinion for ignorance.


msab got away so easily because we (and the immediate response of the community afterward) did not feel it was broken. while it isn't ideal to suspect near the end of a generation due to limited time, keep in mind the keldeo suspect test began in august, while the games came out in october. we have time (sm comes out in late nov?). also, like i said above, cheap does not equate to broken.

Anyway, how comes we're 2 games into a generation, and Baton Pass is still being so damn lame after going through what ? 2 or 3 suspects ?
How comes everybody half knowledgeable about this generation would agree that the sheer abundance of very solid threats is pressuring way too much the limited amount of team slots one could have, but we've almost not been suspecting anything to balance the metagame so far ? Instead, we're stuck on getting rid of the uncompetitive elements like Baton Pass or Shadow Tag CS trick garbage like we're 2 weeks into a new generation.

I mean, I wish we could have suspected.. I don't know Manaphy (you know, that thing that you can't virtually cover, that'd have been a start) for instance. I don't even know if I would want to have it banned, but hell I want for sure to see how it goes, I want to discuss the possiblity, I want the community to work towards a better metagame for the tournaments I play.
This generation just felt like a wasted potential, and there was no reason for it to happen because XY wasn't even bad at the end (just Greninja was dumb as crap, unless you want to accept having Clefable in every single team basically).
baton pass tweaking has certainly been annoying to deal with, but we have as a community tailored it to a point where it is in my opinion (and many others, including bp god dennis) an annoying, but non-issue. i don't see the problem with taking time and perfecting an issue over impulsively banning it and getting rid of viable use of the strategy otherwise.

manaphy was never on the table for a serious ban. it was ridiculously strong for a few months due to it being anti-metagame at the time, but it is nowhere near the threat it once was. if you're going to bring up a pokemon that we "could have suspected", at least bring up something more controversial like torn-t (which itself has died down a bit in the past months). the thing with oras is there is really nothing that pops out to any of us as clearly broken as hoopa had, or as greninja had, or as aegislash had. i would be willing to argue that because oras is so matchup reliant it suffers from perpetual metagame shifts where pokemon appear to be far more problematic than they actually are in the long-run (which is another reason the council and i don't like to rush to decisions on a suspect).


So I don't know if you guys are half dead half inactive, or if you're thinking "yup, perfecto, this is the dream generation", but either way, I'm starting to become disillusioned instead of cynical. It feels like you're trying to make the choices in everybody's place. Don't get it twisted, it's your role to choose the topic of the discussion, but you shouldn't be deciding the outcome on your own. You don't decide if Sableye-M gets banned or not, you decide if it gets suspected or not, and that's not nearly the same.
now this is the part which bothers me. you're acting like the council has been completely obstinate and refuses to hear what the community believes is an issue. this is just not true. personally, i enjoy lots and frequent suspects which act as a quick 'check' to see how the community feels about a strong issue (similar, but more restricted than the uu program). but that doesn't mean back to back tests just for the hell of it.

it is our job to listen to you guys, but ultimately to choose the correct direction and road to pursue. never have we manipulated the suspect process to our own benefit, so i'm not really sure what you're trying to insinuate there. ask any member of the present or recently past council and they will give you a reason why these tests have not been realized, and i can tell you the answer is not to manipulate the metagame.

i do see however how your post has a decent community backing, which is something we will listen to. so on that note, i am on board with a suspect test for sablenite. i am not however interested in this nonsense about a dugtrio suspect.

- kek council overlord pdc out
 
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Andy Snype

Mr. Music
get this damn magic bouncing piece of crap suspected as soon as possible, in order to let everybody move on to a new generation that'll be hopefully better, and let us put behind what hopefully will become a half decent metagame after that suspect.
msab got away so easily because we (and the immediate response of the community afterward) did not feel it was broken. while it isn't ideal to suspect near the end of a generation due to limited time, keep in mind the keldeo suspect test began in august, while the games came out in october. we have time (sm comes out in late nov?).
Since this has been brought up in this thread, why do people care about the end of a generation being the point where we stop suspecting this generation? I think it's absolutely stupid for people to think that just because something stops becoming the most recent generation that we've achieved all we could. Mons introduces new threats each generation and each time, it's becoming more complex to analyze matchups that I don't think it's legitimately possible to reach a balanced meta between the period of a generation's final game release (where something is likely banned or unbanned) and the next generation because the meta hasn't settled and organization costs time. I've brought the sentiment up with people years ago, but the general answer I received was that people felt it's a waste of resources (around beginning of BW). Since then though, I don't believe that we're low on resources. Our userbase has grown a LOT since then and we still have a purpose towards discussing older generations (remaining competitive enough for Official Smogon Tournament representation). I understand activity for not-new-gen dips because everyone will want to play the new gen immediately, but we will still have a solid playerbase that cares about ORAS and past generations. If we need another system to discuss about prior gens so that OU has one to focus on the most current generation, we definitely have a playerbase competent enough that we can find people to fit leadership roles, and I highly doubt we're close to hitting the max # of suspect test ladders that we are possible of running concurrently (both technically and organizationally). We've still revisited past gens well after the succeeding generations to balance issues with what players feel are undesirable, so why are we pretending like the age of a generation decides whether or not efforts are still spent to balance it?
 
ORAS has shown us that there are two distinct strategies for success when it comes to teambuilding. Either:
  • Build a team which has counterplay against as much as possible, and rely on outplaying your opponent, OR
  • Build a team which tries to eliminate play / counterplay as a factor altogether, and rely on winning at team preview.
This latter category includes Magic Bounce stalls, particularly when paired with Dugtrio, and even the current spate of Scolipede + M-Heracross + Espeon builds. These teams frankly need to be systematically wiped out, for two main reasons:
  • They make the metagame less enjoyable for the majority
  • They drastically restrict teambuilding for players that don't want to take the auto-loss against them
Match-up, aka too many threats, has been the defining problem of this generation and I think with SuMo on the horizon it's important that we set some kind of precedent for actively addressing it.

We can all agree that Mega Sableye isn't too strong for this metagame, which is why it was right to reserve judgement on it until Gothitelle was gone. But we can see now that "win at team preview" archetypes are still too effective, and that Mega Sableye is the primary enabler of these archetypes.

Let's suspect it and ban it.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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ORAS has shown us that there are two distinct strategies for success when it comes to teambuilding. Either:
  • Build a team which has counterplay against as much as possible, and rely on outplaying your opponent, OR
  • Build a team which tries to eliminate play / counterplay as a factor altogether, and rely on winning at team preview.
This latter category includes Magic Bounce stalls, particularly when paired with Dugtrio, and even the current spate of Scolipede + M-Heracross + Espeon builds. These teams frankly need to be systematically wiped out, for two main reasons:
  • They make the metagame less enjoyable for the majority
  • They drastically restrict teambuilding for players that don't want to take the auto-loss against them
Match-up, aka too many threats, has been the defining problem of this generation and I think with SuMo on the horizon it's important that we set some kind of precedent for actively addressing it.

We can all agree that Mega Sableye isn't too strong for this metagame, which is why it was right to reserve judgement on it until Gothitelle was gone. But we can see now that "win at team preview" archetypes are still too effective, and that Mega Sableye is the primary enabler of these archetypes.

Let's suspect it and ban it.
This logic could be applied to a whole host of team archetypes not being mentioned here or anywhere else. DragSpam is an archetype that relies on heavily redundant offensive coverage to overload a standard team's typical response to Dragon-types. "BirdSpam" too. You can't claim that overloading on offensive, same-type options somehow appeals to your first principle of "as much counterplay as possible". The archetypes I mentioned are formulaic in the same way Baton Pass and whatnot are; the only difference is that they are, to a degree, incidentally countered when teams look to counter the rest of the metagame.

I agree that there are too many threats in the current meta, and inevitably, some must be be banned in order to balance the metagame. I do not agree that there is anything inherently unhealthy about Baton Pass / MSab stall / these other archetypes. They are only getting the short end of the stick because they are out-of-meta. Ban them, fine, but there is little basis to "systematically wipe them out" without first acknowledging other currently unaddressed match-up reliant team archetypes.
 

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