np: Doubles OU Stage 5 - Little Bunny Foo Foo | Gravity + Sleep Ban will Allow Spore!

what the fuck are you serious

with jirachi gone i'm worried that threats such as kangaskhan, faries, and cm cress are just going to ravage the tier. i feel like jirachi was one of the few really solid checks holding these threats back from utterly dominating. we also lose one of the best checks to amoonguss, which really worries me. imo if anything should've been banned, it should've been azumarill, but no matter the case, i feel that making this big a decision so close to gen 7 might've not been the best idea.
 
I too have prayed for the days with Togekiss as our best redirector. Free Mence

Also Diancie is stupid in this meta, losing its best check means that it is free to pretty much click moonblast or diamond storm without fear of steel-types, especially if it is paired with Amoonguss, since there is no spread steel move. Garde also has another lost check to worry about. Cress, Deo-A, Ferro, and Scizor can beat literally all redirectors now. Latios is probably the best Dragon over Hydre now since it doesn't have to worry about Rachi switching into its Draco Meteors. Mega Metagross loses its biggest hard check in Rachi besides Aegislash. Speaking of Aegislash, it no longer has competition for a steel slot with Jirachi, and will probably see more use as a result.

Personally, I disagree with a Jirachi ban, as Jirachi at least also kept good mons in check, while all Azumarill did was set up and win. We banned Mence when Rachi broke it (although it was still pretty borked without) so why ban Jirachi when Azumarill is the real broken mon. No one would be complaining about Rachi if Azumarill didn't exist. And Jirachi's ban just makes a more dramatic meta shift with less time to deal with it.

Free Rachi, Ban Azumarill
 

Fran

formerly Frania
is a Tiering Contributor
DPL Champion
what the fuck are you serious

with jirachi gone i'm worried that threats such as kangaskhan, faries, and cm cress are just going to ravage the tier. i feel like jirachi was one of the few really solid checks holding these threats back from utterly dominating. we also lose one of the best checks to amoonguss, which really worries me. imo if anything should've been banned, it should've been azumarill, but no matter the case, i feel that making this big a decision so close to gen 7 might've not been the best idea.
aegislash covers every single thread rachi did and even more so yea. also im really excited to see how 'broken' azumarill will be without the follow me support.
 

Beta.

Ruff Ruff amirite?
AzuRachi Phase 2 Voting (close)
1. kamikaze: Ban Azumarill
2. Memoric: Ban Jirachi
3. Dawg: Ban Jirachi
4. Level 51: Ban Jirachi
5. SamVGC: Ban Jirachi
6. shaian: Ban Azumarill[/hide]
Thus, Jirachi will be banned from Doubles OU and will no longer be legal in the ladder and future tournaments.
Can someone explain this to me? How Stage 4 can vote to keep Jirachi in what was I believe a 40% vote, and then 4 months later, the council decides to go against the suspect and ban jirachi? I am not trying to insult the council, I am genuinely curious as to why merely 4 months later, the suspect was simply moot, and didn't even matter what people voted for if the council would ban it at the end of the generation. What was the point of stage 4?
 

Funbot28

Banned deucer.
best news ever, I dont know why Rachi managed to remain unbanned after the first suspect, rlly glad the council took the initiative to correct this obvious nuisance to the meta. Guess we are gonna go back to AmooRill now just like in VGC 2015 lol.
 
aegislash covers every single thread rachi did and even more so yea. also im really excited to see how 'broken' azumarill will be without the follow me support.
does aegislash get speed control, redirection, and a better than garbage speed tier?



i seriously hope the council reconsiders their decision. it'd be better to do nothing and leave the meta as is than to shake it up right before sumo. it's a little ridiculous to me that 6 people get to decide the ultimate fate of the meta instead of the whole community.
 

Jisoo

two slow dancers last ones out
is a Pre-Contributoris a defending SPL Champion
I don't play DOU, so correct me if I'm wrong.

But are you serious lol. You basically just took a suspect in which Jirachi was not banned, and threw that shit out the window. Isn't the purpose of suspect testing to allow the community to get a feel for a pokemon to decide on its fate? I see absolutely no plausible scenario in which this makes any sense. RESUSPECTS EXIST. Not to mention that Doubles hasn't changed in the past few months. Literally nothing has changed from the time of the suspect to this sudden ban. If the general consensus among the community was that Jirachi was indeed deemed not broken, then why are you banning it without taking any public opinions? I kind of want an explanation, because looking at this mess turned me off from doubles.

tl;dr this was really dumb, resuspects exist, nothing has changed since the suspect, you basically just threw out a suspect which people worked for for absolutely no reason lol
 

Isa

I've never felt better in my life
is a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
this seems like the biggest flaw in methodology ive ever seen on smogon

the council identified azumarill + jirachi as a troublesome core
the council suspected jirachi, no ban
the council suspected azumarill, no ban
the council decides that the masses were so split on jirachi / azumarill and couldnt decide which was more broken, that they decided to privately, without announcing it beforehand, ban one part of the combination (and forced a council member opposed to banning either to vote for something to ban?!)

there's a lot of questions here
if it was always coming down to jirachi + azumarill being too troublesome rather than the individual mons, why was a run-off vote not held - why bother with the individual suspects?
when was the idea floated internally of a vote formatted in a way that differed from the way the public votes were held?
why was a public vote not held?
why was this change in tiering policy not announced beforehand?
does the council believe that the public was uninformed (didn't realize the strength of the jirachi+azumarill combo), unorganized (couldn't come together to ban either jirachi or azumarill because "the vote was split"), both or neither?

going forward, how does the council plan to address the issues of trust that have arosen in the community - how will the community know that you're listening to their voices? how will the community be able to tell that you're not going to disregard the results of future votes (should they be held) due to them not falling to your liking? will you act more transparently?

i have no opinion whatsoever on whether jirachi deserves to be banned or not but the way this was held is appalling
 

Pocket

be the upgraded version of me
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnus
What really bothers me is that this is such a controversial topic, yet the council failed to publicly inform us of this important decision taking place until it has already been made. There was no room for community feedback or involvement; even if the decision was ultimately made by the council, the community would have appreciated to at least voice their thoughts on this matter and know that their views were heard.

I have no idea why we never considered a runoff vote as Jabba & Isa suggested. It's such a no-brainer.

Personally I would have liked additional players to participate in this voting process alongside the existing council players. These players can be vetted by the council or the community; regardless I definitely think some influential DOU players were absent in this decision-making process.

Seeing this apparent negative outcry about this process, I suggest revising and re-doing this process to save face.
 
Last edited:

Fran

formerly Frania
is a Tiering Contributor
DPL Champion
i hope council defends themselfs since they did the right thing, clearly on more controversial issues as azu rachi better players should decice not everyone who gets past the shitty suspect ladder.
also resuspect of rachi has been a topic in the past so thats what they did. first time it was the regular suspect, then the second option
 

Sylveon.

Penny saved is still a fucking penny
Personally I am pretty happy with the banning of the nuisance called jirachi, but now that I think about it, it's not cool that the council has basically no regards about all the laddering people have to go through to get reqs during suspect tests.
Atleast re-suspecting or even announcing the process before-hand would have gone a long way.
 

FlamingVictini

FV - msg on discord FlamingVictini#3784
is a Top Tiering Contributorwon the 16th Official Smogon Tournamentis a Three-Time Past WCoP Champion
Not to distract from ppl being upset about this council vote, but as a non doubles player, i am quite curious as what exactly "gravspore" was, would appreciate it if someone wouldn't mind explaining it to me.
 

Jisoo

two slow dancers last ones out
is a Pre-Contributoris a defending SPL Champion
Not to distract from ppl being upset about this council vote, but as a non doubles player, i am quite curious as what exactly "gravspore" was, would appreciate it if someone wouldn't mind explaining it to me.
[17:24:04] Watchog: matame
[17:24:05] Watchog: what was
[17:24:07] Watchog: gravsleep
[17:24:17] Matame: gravity + inac sleep moves

matame this better be right or ur fucked
 

Demantoid

APMS Founder
is a Top Tiering Contributor
Not to distract from ppl being upset about this council vote, but as a non doubles player, i am quite curious as what exactly "gravspore" was, would appreciate it if someone wouldn't mind explaining it to me.
The combination of Gravity+Sleep Moves on the same team was banned. However, Spore has 100% accuracy which means it's not usually affected by Gravity.
 
Not to distract from ppl being upset about this council vote, but as a non doubles player, i am quite curious as what exactly "gravspore" was, would appreciate it if someone wouldn't mind explaining it to me.
Gravity makes accuracies 100%, so moves like Grasswhistle, Hypnosis won't miss. However, Spore has 100% accuracy already, so it was unbanned in the complex ban of sleep + gravity.
 

Funbot28

Banned deucer.
I also feel that the council could have possibly announced the talk of banning a component of the AzuRachi core before they held a vote, however I feel people are misconstruing the difference in influence that the council has a whole has over the general public. They had tried to publicly suspect both Azu and Rachi before resulting in a no ban in both cases. This would have been fine, but still many compotent players had felt that the combination of AzuRachi had still held a negative impact on the meta. Why are they being critized for progressing the meta? If they do not uphold the right to veto a ban, why have a council in the first place? Please think of these two things before leaving ur salt on Thet hread because ur sad u can't use a clearly busted build to get easy wins smh.
 
Last edited:

emma

is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Past SPL Championis a Past SCL Champion
DPL Champion
I also feel that the council could have possibly announced the talk of banning a complement of the AzuRachi core before they held a vote, however I feel people are misconstruing the difference in influence that the council has a whole has over the general public. They had tried to publicly suspect both Azu and Rachi before resulting in a no ban in both cases. This would have been fine, but still many compotent players had felt that the combination of AzuRachi had still held a negative impact on the meta. Why are they being critiques for progressing the meta? If hey do not uphold the right to veto a ban, why have a council in the first place? Please think of these two things before leaving ur salt on Thai thread because ur sad u can't use a clearly busted build to get easy wins smh.
People aren't mad about Jirachi being banned, they're mad about how the council did it. We had a Jirachi suspect where it was voted that it would stay, and then 4 months later, without any notice, they ban Jirachi. Look at Isa 's post to why people are upset. Please rethink why people are mad before insulting the entire community smh.
 

ryo yamada2001

ryo yamada2001
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnus
I also feel that the council could have possibly announced the talk of banning a complement of the AzuRachi core before they held a vote, however I feel people are misconstruing the difference in influence that the council has a whole has over the general public. They had tried to publicly suspect both Azu and Rachi before resulting in a no ban in both cases. This would have been fine, but still many compotent players had felt that the combination of AzuRachi had still held a negative impact on the meta. Why are they being critized for progressing the meta? If hey do not uphold the right to veto a ban, why have a council in the first place? Please think of these two things before leaving ur salt on Thai thread because ur sad u can't use a clearly busted build to get easy wins smh.
I think many people will agree that the point isn't the outcome of this vote, but much more how this vote was handled at all.
1) No reasonings from any player why they voted ban or no ban.
2) No run-down vote (there's was no option for ban both or ban neither, just ban Azumarill or ban Jirachi)
3) There was no notice made beforehand, so the community would not be able to give any criticism or feedback.

Councils aren't supposed to veto bans. It is totally unfair to just ignore two community votes because it did not align with their views. The council exists to watch over the tier and decide on suspects, and not so much to decide whether something should be banned or not regardless of what the community voted. And as GGogoattt said, people rethink why people are mad.

---
Also I have heard certain people say "why not just have a council vote on everything permanently" which I don't entirely agree with. I think this could be a good idea, only if the community would be given the chance to vote on who gets on the council. Otherwise, the community could have nothing to do against certain groups of circlejerks that are set up, or any other problems that might occur if the community doesn't get this choice.

Having this community-voted council vote on certain things could be interesting and I would like to hear everyone's opinions on this.
 
Hi My name is Dawg, and I'm a member of the DOU council. I was just going to make a personal response - that reflects my personal view and not necessarily that of the DOU council.

I've read several times that this issue is not within precedent or words to that effect, and that dou council is abusing power / ignoring suspect tests. This is not true.

Regarding Precedent
t
he issue Arising in this circumstance is that council should not go against the result of a suspect test. This is possibly a fair evaluation. It has precedent allegedly in other smogon matters and I can understand the concern in this one. However It is important to note that DOU is not alike any other council monitored tier on this site. DOU is doubles and not singles. The reason action was taken (IN MY VIEW) was there were two suspect tests that occured, one of Azumarill and one of Jirachi, and it is my conjecture that the reason that one of these was not banned by the community was due to a split vote that occured for a number of reasons. I dont think that this matter is befitting of any existing smogon precedent because split votes in this manner of "combo" pokemon cannot sufficiently exist in singles tiers. This is not an addressable problem in other tiers, and as such the precedent is inapplicable - given the current situation.
A) That in the both tests people were split onto which of the "Azurachi" combo was the more problematic, and wanted to ban just one - Fair enough.
B) That there was a failure, in part by the general community to consider the combo of "AzuRachi" more so than they already had.

Process

In order to address the split, and whether there was still an issue the council utilised Phase 1:
A. Restrict Azumarill + Jirachi
B. Leave Azumarill + Jirachi

THE COUNCIL VOTED 5-1 That something had to be done about Azumarill Jirachi. This was not a close vote. If we added another 3 Community members, the vote would still have passed *NO MATTER HOW THEY VOTED*.

The only issue for reform that might be suggested here is that MAYBE a community vote (at least a wider one) could have been conducted to determine whether the wider community reflects the council's OVERWHELMING view that something needed to have been done by Azumarill.

Addressing the Split
Finally, (As I need to literally run to work now because I wrote this) The council used Phase 2: to determine the problem, in another Majority verdict the council voted that Jirachi was the issue 4-2.
In this way the council used a manner to address the vote split by experienced players voting what the real issue was.



Takeaways:
- the Council does care about your tier.
- the votes were not close and would have passed with new member/s.
- this issue is not analogous to other smogon issues due to the nature of the tier.

and like real talk, i really need to run for work now. RIP ME.
 

Checkmater

It’s just us kittens left, and the rain is coming
is a Tiering Contributor
Posting for the third fucking time bless the system

-------------------

I've already expressed my views in a IS post (tl;couldn't-read: "Personally find it ridiculous that council decided that since the vote didn't go the way they wanted they were going to decide the meta for the community.") but I'll add onto that here

First I'll point out several flaws with council voting. I think it's ok to have council votes on stuff like gravspore or on swagger, or on something new, but for something established in the meta for a solid ~2 years, this isn't necessary. I take issues with council voting because I do NOT think that council reflects our playerbase (see players such as stax not being on council, inactive players currently on council). Hell, look at how long every single viability ranking vote takes if you want a demonstration that council is insufficiently active/connected with the community. I will defend this point to the grave so if you think I'm wrong please engage in that discussion.

I don't think you can legitimately push that the pool of people who wanted either Azu or Jirachi banned was >20%. Anyone who held that view could have been easily facilitated with a run-off vote, which would be formatted literally the exact same way that the council vote was.

I also don't think you've addressed at all how bullshit it was that we HAD 2 suspect votes and neither succeeded, and then council just decided for the community. Spinning it as a "suspect voting can't handle the fact that it was a PAIR that was problematic" is flawed (as pointed out, run-off vote solves this, and I doubt you can say that players who voted ban on one but no-ban on the other is enough to be 20% of the voters). Nothing can change the fact that ~60% of players are unsatisfied that Jirachi got banned by council, according to voting data.

Regardless if you think "oh this one was mishandled, but it'll be okay in the future if we communicate more in the future" the very fact that council did this reflects their inability to have an open-door discussion. As a doubles player and mother of 3 brushies, the way council has handled this vote reflects poorly on their ability to both connect with the community and to be open to player input. I doubt that if we let this kind of thing fly that future hypothetical council suspect votes will be handled in a good manner, given what we've seen.

Yeah, if we added 3 community members it'd still be 5-4, but we have ~100+ players depending on your metric.

correction on some technicality: by run-off I meant the 2-part system that council used whatever the fuck that's called
 
Last edited:
While I agree with something being done about AzuRachi, I think the council handled this horribly. AzuRachi is an incredibly powerful core with little counterplay, but a sudden quick-ban out of nowhere is not the answer. If the council wants this core gone, they should initiate another suspect test. The meta-game has been developing for nearly two years with the current available pokemon and move-sets. Quick bands and council votes should only be done when new things get added to the meta (like a new game or event pokemon), and even then, only after the community expresses its general dislike for a strong "OP" threat.

I think that we should do a suspect test. Three ladders, one without Azu, one without Rachi, and one with a complex ban eliminating them from being on the same team. The player-base has shown that it does not think that either pokemon is broken individually; the problem only arises when they are on the same team.

I get that a suspect test will happen at a horrible time with Sun and Moon coming out so soon, but the issue should be resolved for any future XY/ORAS tournament run on these forums. This sets a bad precedent for tiering decisions, and I hope that this does not carry into Sun and Moon.
 

Platinum God n1n1

the real n1n1
is a Tiering Contributor
The reason action was taken (IN MY VIEW) was there were two suspect tests that occured, one of Azumarill and one of Jirachi, and it is my conjecture that the reason that one of these was not banned by the community was due to a split vote that occured for a number of reasons. I dont think that this matter is befitting of any existing smogon precedent because split votes in this manner of "combo" pokemon cannot sufficiently exist in singles tiers. This is not an addressable problem in other tiers, and as such the precedent is inapplicable - given the current situation.
This is a terrible excuse and its caused you and the rest of the council to lose trust and credibility among the doubles community and the rest of smogon

I am calling for Smogon senior staff to investigate the doubles council with out outside influence and consider replacing the TL and council at start of the new generation.

They need to consider that after Arcticblast stepped down the Illuminati/clique culture in doubles has worsened significantly
with less than 1 year experience of playing DOU dawg and samvgc were placed on council due to their friendship with insiders. They were chosen over long time contributes such as Talkingtree and Checkmater, to name a couple, there are many more I could name. There is many other examples I could provide but you'd call me a conspiracy theorist, so just take this vote to ban jirachi as evidence that we need serious change for the better.
The revolution has started

We should have a rules based framework for determining who gets placed to council (ie: number of ssnls participated in, measurable activity on forum, no misuse/abuse of power, contributions to the forum) this will eliminate the problems with having people on council who should not be.

and then have a rules based frame work for all decisions so this doesnt happen again
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top