Baganha

Hello, I accidentally released a really good skarmory, was hoping to get it back. I don't have a screenshot but I do know the player id which is 32061367, this is from gold server, really hope you can find a way to get it back and thank you for your time.

Im actually not old enough to know how talon meta was prior to his nerf in here, but i can definitely assume that without things like rotom-wash, very little heatran being played and overall a more offensively centralising meta where it was an essential piece in the main archtype it was played back then, makes me understand the hostility towards buffing gw. I think what puts me on edge with this guy is really the lack of checks from a cb set this has, compared to smogon, as if this were to be on smogon i think my opinion would radically differ where checks like lando, mega manectric, mega diancie, and even thundurus exist. The meta is certainly more prepared to deal with talon than before with things like rotom-wash, zapdos and more defensive cores being used on bulkier teams with mons such as slowbro, hippo, tankchomp and gliscor. The problem i have is that i feel its main usage would still be for HO purposes as it was once before. A lot of arguments i saw in this thread defending talons position came from the fact that its reintroduction would give a breath of fresh air from the stagnant meta were currently on, the thing is if were gonna be spamming the same set it was using from back then, the novelty will be lost very quickly and were gonna be back on the same spot with the same meta, i can definitely guarantee if your expecting a new experience with talonflame being back, just know that itll last very little. There are things that talonflame would positively impact the meta in my opinion, becoming a good check to conk as well as being one as reliable as talonflame is definitely bound to turn down the pressure this mon puts on most teams, conk by nature is a hard pokemon to revenge kill, its even more dificult if your team doesnt rely as much on offensive power such are the case with more balanced/stall teams. Also being an excelent pokemon that shutdown mons like ferro with its taunt set would certainly be a good addition to the meta, ferro pretty much being able to spam hazards anytime it wants unless you have a xatu on your team (or magic bounce in general i guess) forces a lot of hazard removal and predictable behaviours from the players as it desperately tries to get rid of the hazards from defog/spin which gives the oportunity for mons like conk/weavile/ttar or anything that really hits hard to come in for free. Talon would be a good pioneer to deal with those hazard abusing teams. Also effective at stopping other walls such as hippo who lack stone edge, tankchomp who lacks stone edge as well (which im sure most of them do), skarms, heatrans, clefs, chanseys etc. inabilitate them with wow/toxic or try to punish them with immediate damage using sd+acrobatics sets. Its a shame a pokemon like this also has the reputation of being extremely one dimensional with its all-out attacker set, otherwise id agree with its come back in a heartbeat. The question is though do the good things outweight the bad ones? As much as i wanna say yes, i really cant say without having any experience with talonflame in this meta, same goes for the final verdict, which like ive said before were definitely more ready to deal with talonflame then we were back then however this wont stop its main utility being on HO teams. Do i think its broken? I dont think it is, is it unhealthy? Possibly, it certainly something i wouldnt rule out. I originally voted yes but thinking back i mightve had a change of heart, knowing what this mon can offer to the meta outside of just being a nuke is what made me decide to vote yes, however looking at a more macroscopic level this might not be the best idea. Ideally if talon were to come back, i feel like we should all be ready to make a second decision if its really worth reverting gw or not.

thread can be closed

Hello! Today im here to show you the team that i use to defeat bosses on the hard dificulty, the reason im making this post is that i hope to find more help for my team to get higher success as, even with a pretty good win ratio, there are still some imperfections in it that i believe some people, who have more experience than me in boss fights, can potentially help me out. Since i started fighting against bosses i realized that with all the buffs they give to them so the AI can someone even out the for the lack of cognition, i knew it couldnt be beaten in a fair fight, odds are if youre bringing your pvp HO team, youll get overwhelmed by the insane amount of bulk and power these pokemon can dish out. Even your tankiest walls from the fatter stalls will struggle taking hits from these freaks, making stall while more possible to beat bosses than any offense could, its still an unreliable way to beat them, not to mention its slow as well. While im sure most players have already realized this, the question now comes, how can we circunvent this? Well one thing the AI will never do that is definitely exploitable is the fact it never switches, no matter how bad the situation is for the pokemon in front of them, they just keep using moves with it, and thats why i believe memento with stat passing is the most efficient way to beat bosses. Knowing what i wanted to use, all i missed now was the pokemon themselves. Just a heads up, im a bit of a slacker when it comes to geting good pokemon, so mostly what you see here is by no means the optimal choice of either ability/nature or ev spreads, however ill be posting down whats i believe to be the best options for each member, in regards to my experience using this team. Starting with the memento users, its pretty obvious why they are so essencial to any boss team, as a big part of setting up against them is all possible due to the fact we incapacitate them, and no better move does that than memento, yes your pokemon dies but the trade off is way worth it. Duggy is used, as he is one of the few pokemon that provides rocks while learning memento as well, not to mention its really good speed stat allows it to outspeed most boss leads on hard dificulty, which means there is no need to use a focus sash, i cant exactly pinpoint the stat but what i can say is that its fast enough to outspeed neroli's celebi (100 speed) while being slower than pewdie's starmie (115 speed). You only want to use focus sash if you either get outsped or you want rocks, which should only come necessary to pokemon who get avoided of getting ohko'd like with link's sturdy donphan/skarmory and chuck's or koichi's (dont recall which one is it lol) sashed hitmons and other instances like sash zard with oak, tho it has defog on his lead rotom-w so it might not be worth there. Attacking isnt even gonna be a thing with this guy so you might as well slap as many hms you can so you can access some of the bosses. All you basically want is speed, and speed nature, which it shouldnt be hard to get by since diglett are one of the easiest mons to grind. Luckily for me i got the best possible amount where i was only going for 25+. Whimsicott is hands down the best memento user for this, as with prankster it pretty much guarantees it, you only need to give it memento and lvl him up to 100 so it can be used in bosses, no ev train or nature is required. Cottonee is used to for the third memento and drop the pokemon stats one final time, to its lowest, no reason to use cottonee over whimsicott, its just cooler over having 2 whimsicotts, plus who knows if they might implement a species clause for this boss fights. Baton pass chain With the bosses offensive stats reduce to its maximum, it comes to these three last slots to overtake and open the doors for one of the pokemon to sweep with all of the stats buffed. With that said there is one move i wanted to abuse in particular, stored power. With its recent addition (move didnt work properly before) this gives an insane buff to stat passing raising its viability against bosses even higher. The idea was to raise as many stats as possible with two of the members and give all the buffs to the pokemon dedicated to sweep, the one who carries stored power. With some thinking and looking at the resources at hand i came up with the core that i believe does this job pretty effectively, all limitations considered. Venomoth is without a doubt one of the best stat passers in the game, as not only it covers 3 stats buffs with just one move, it also gets reliable recovery making it much more consistent to setup against various pokemon and to cap it all off, its ability shield dust protects it from any secondary effect, so no freezes, no paras, no confusions, no flinches etc. unfortunately mine is tinted lens which is definitely not the ability that you want but i didnt want to grind for a shield dust venomoth so i just go with this one. That isn't say they are hard to get, because they certainly arent, having plenty of routes where its tier 1. QD, roost and bp are obivious for its moves, bug buzz isnt bad if you dont wanna put all the pressure to one pokemon to do the sweeping, tho sleep powder or stun spore might be smarter just so it guarantees a potential turn where the mon doesnt get an oportunity to hax you once you bp out. Evs are a bit up to you, max speed is certainly not the most optimal choice but it does mean you outspeed most pokemon just after one qd up, which might've not been the case if you didnt invest in speed and its always nice to be faster than your opponent and take control ASAP. Tho defense investment is wise, as it is the one stat venomoth doesnt coverwithh boosts, i dont really have an exact value or optimal spread for this so just try to go for what you think its better. Leftovers/black sludge is the best item, tho a super effective berry might be worth considering or a sitrus, tho lefties is just consistent hp so its the best item overall. Since there is only one usefull stat that venomoth cant buff, this leaves the job for vaporeon who is curiously, the only pokemon that learns the combination of acid armor and baton pass outside the accelgor line, which doesnt leave us with a lot of options and vaporeon is clearly the better one as its much bulkier and has a much better defensing typing on top of that. I usually like to bring this pokemon to start the stat buffs as it gives more bulk to venomoth if necessary. Moveset seems pretty self explanatory and evs just make it that much better at setting the stat it needs, lefties is used for the same reasons as venomoth however since that vaporeon isnt protected by shield dust another to take in consideration is lum berry, as it would suck really bad to potentially lose to a para/freeze/confusion. Clef seems to me like the best choice to abuse stored power as it covers whatever doesnt get affected by it pretty well with moonblast and further coverage with fire that hits steels who resist both typings, but as you might realize, with stored power being as strong as it is, its almost unnecessary to use it beside some very specific scenarios like metagross, bronzong, jirachi or shedinja. If you successfully setup all stats to max you've got in your hands a stored power with a grand total 500 base power, which means there is also no chance to get walled by things like unaware as for example neroli's unaware clef gets easily 2hko'd and toothless' quag simply gets ohko'd. Life orb further boosts the power of your attacks should give it a last push to pretty much one shot everything that comes in on you, links heatran for example gets one shotted by stored power. I would say nature wouldnt matter in this case but it actually does, dont be like me and use -speed on your clefs because it actually means your slower than pewdie's scarf jirachi even at +6 which is super annoying as you can probably guess. Exceptional scenarios: There are some bosses who like to make my life a bit more dificult with their leads, examples of these are misty and its mirror shot milotic, lorelei with its blizzard ninetales-a, letrix with togekiss, sage's glaceon with blizzard as well and terminator's phazing moltres. To which i have the following answers: Magnezone beats everything but terminator's moltres. Heatran is used to beat moltres. Obviously there are easier ways to deal with these things other than having the need to use pvp ready pokemon, its up to you on how you and what you have to deal with it. Threats: While the team has mostly a favourable position compared to other bosses, there are still ways that they can slip through the cracks, things like setupfrom the opponent, phazing or venomoth being at the mercy of a crit or simply getting overwhelmed like in some cases with saphirr's primal groudon. There might be some other flaws some of you may have caught on and if so i would appreciate a lot if you mentioned what those were. Conclusion: Thank you for taking the time to read this whole mess, i understand this isnt the most organized post (sorry about that lol) but i hope you enjoyed and could help me out pointing either things i could do to make my team better or things that threaten it in general and if you have learnt something from this threat, im glad i couldve been helpful in any way and wish you the best of luck for the bosses.

Yeah spdef ferro is definitely the boon that holds balance to not get completely destroyed by manaphy, i wouldnt even consider using it if it wasnt for ferro, but thats why i wanted to ask for the opinion of other people in regards to veil, as it does add more oportunity for setup, realistically manaphy is never really gonna be able to setup 2 tgs if you have a ferro at a good amount of hp, however wih screens if manaphy can force the switch to ferro and get a tg up, its possible ferro doesnt beat it, it should give it an oportunity to actually setup 2 tgs and kill it before mana dies. 0 Atk Ferrothorn Power Whip vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Manaphy through Reflect: 123-145 (36 - 42.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock It could even use something like sitrus to mitigate a bit of the damage ferro has done as well as hail if its up. Tho itll definitely be weakened enough to be revenge killed by something faster. PS: In regards to that guy's response, its clear that is arguing out of emotion and frustration, thankfully q8 responded very well to his post, showing there isnt a omnipresence with manaphy.

While im not sure who, or if youre talking about me, when i said manaphy is on every team, it is good to know about these usage stats, maybe veil + manaphy isnt getting much usage. Top 25 most used isnt much for sure, and the fact that everyone is not using the same strat means finding information about it is gonna be more scarce, maybe its still too soon to call out how manaphy under veil is, if no one has experience facing it or using it, thank you for briging up this information.

I'm not even gonna bother entertaining the response above me as i feel thats what he wants, whoever that person is clearly has some negative bias towards me or this issue, im just writing this to say i have no ill intent ever since i made this thread, this was purely for discussion purposes, as i feel like if we want to promote a better environment for the community we need to talk and discuss, as in REALLY discuss, not take our experience from smogon, if you had any, and run with it, there is a clear diferent identity PRO compared to it. It saddens me that some people see me just looking for someone to argue and not taking anything form it, maybe its my fault not portraying the way i should, like ive mentioned in my previous post my objective was to discuss manaphy in the PRO meta and what the community thought about it, if defending my stance on it and trying to spark more conversation is a bad thing, than im sorry.

Firstly, I wanna thank you for going in much more detail on your thoughts regarding this over than just stating that clef counters it. I guess we have diferent views on what overpowered is, to me it takes less than one pokemon to deal with it for it be one, if a meta or more specifically one archtype has to go out of their way to counter this pokemon, id argue it might be a bit unhealthy, spdef clef's main reason its getting popular in stalls is because the way it deals with manaphy in addition to being able to wall np togekiss unless its super lucky with flinches. The problem that i have with the pokemon you show to me that stop manaphy is that they need to be a specific set, or more accurately lacking a move for it to happen. What you said is true chansey deals with manaphy if its not rain dance or in rain teams or gastrodon if its not packing energy ball, but the thing is its not really a counter to the pokemon, but the set its using, its the same thing with zygarde back in usum, quagsire could stop all dd + 3 attack variants but it lost against subtoxic sets, thats what gave zygarde the edge over a lot of team archtypes, some pokemon could stop some of its sets but not all of them and this was enough for smogon to ban it, wether you agree or not zygarde was broken is up to you, but the fact is that PRO takes a lot in consideration to what smogon does regarding their bans and tier management, so the way i see it, its a valid point to say that manaphy has very little counterplay taking all of its sets in mind. I really appreciate what you said on the second paragraph, it might be one of the few instances in this thread where people aknowledge the game outside of a vacuum, it is true there is the fact that the player understands or should understand the position they're in and will play accordingly but if were gonna give cognition to both players we also have to take note that your not just playing manaphy, its not a 6v1 and other variables in the game can happen, if a player needs to weaken tentacruel for manaphy's sake it'll try to force it in and take damage, maybe it will do it sucessfully maybe it wont, it depends on how the game goes, its just that when it comes to manaphy, not much is needed for it to punch a big hole on your team, a lot of balances for example are at the mercy of manaphy as soon as something like ferro is dead or in range of a +3 hit and their main check is dead or doesnt have enough power to beat manaphy. And sure like you said, if a team isnt ready to at least have a chance to deal with a threat as big as manaphy then it definitely needs some fixing but it doesnt mean that because it has certain measure to deal with it wont automatically be good for that MU, like you said you have to take into account a player's need to position themselves to victory and that could mean incapacitate whatever deals with manaphy and try to get an oportunity to setup with it. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7anythinggoes-886631889 Take this game for example, the opponent had a ferrothorn and av tentacruel against a rain team, however it doesnt mean manaphy is completely useless as it takes care of the other 4 mons after a tg, forcing the opponent switching tentacruel multiple times as well as tricking the av made it possible to setup at a point where manaphy could kill it and since after that the only switch to kingdra was ferro, weakening it as much as possible or in this case i kill it, gives a chance for manaphy to setup and beat ferro as well, now to notethere wasnt an oportunity to setup but it shows there are ways to circunvent these things and doesnt turn a pokemon useless if you can play around it. I think you got it all wrong what the objective of this thread is, the whole point of this thread was to discuss manaphy's influence on the metagame, i consider it broken, it doesnt mean others have to and its not my goal to make them think that way. If i see a point i dont agree with, i refute it, yeah im defending the fact why i think its broken but not to because i think im better than others or because my main goal is to get rid of manaphy from this meta but to understand why players think that way and ive learned so much from people on both sides and will never take any interaction i had here for granted. The staff already claimed they're not banning manaphy, if that was all i cared about i wouldnt look at this thread ever again. A pokemon doesnt need to be used all the time for it be overpowered or broken, dugtrio wasnt used by every team on ladder tour was it? Lando-I had less usage than lando t at the time despite being broken.

This exact scenario has already been mentioned but if this is all you need to show, then youd think its healthy to have manaphy in the tier because clef counters it? Then i guess you would agree that something like kyogre shoud be allowed since shedinja and chansey can counter it yes? Also dont run 0 spdef if you really wanna stop manaphy, under the rain its a 2hko after rocks.

First of all thank you for the response. Now going through your comment i can definitely understand you have some hostility towards this subject and the people who support it. This holds no weight if youre not presenting anything of value from your own, saying "just learn how teambulding works" is not how you solve a problem, present an argument to solidify that position. "Old-gen showdown clips" is not a good way to judge how someone should learn how to deal with manaphy as Smogon oras OU is much diferent than what PRO has right now (gen7 mechanics, no megas, items missing, moves not working properly etc). This is either a really dishonest argument or you simply dont understand viability. Yes a lot of pokemon are good in the PRO meta but why should they be treated the same? PRO banned genesect (a clearly broken pokemon) but back then talonflame, rotom-w and garchomp were really good too, so does that mean the ban wasnt justified? No, you losing to dusclops, to which you stated caught you by surprise already proves the fact it doesnt have anything to make it broken, this is not a fair comparison, a pokemon that surprises you once isnt the same as one who has great capability of sweeping in a lot of team archtypes. Another argument that could only work in an utopian world, saying these things like "learn how to build" and "understand your weaknesses" means nothing if, again, no evidence is provided. Also not to mention that some people in this thread who agree with my position seem to be somewhat recognizable players, who have proven themselves in the competitive scene for PRO, not saying they're worth more than your opinion or that they're better than you because the fact that you just throw out empty arguments doesnt really tell me how good you are but it means there is certainly more than just "be better at the game" that needs to be taken here. "It takes 2/3 consecutive turns to set-up properly". No, it only needs 2 tgs to get max spa and only 1 to beat and pretty much ohko everything regarding to offensive teams if the coverage is right. The fact that manaphy was has hard as it was to punish without any support already shows how much harder it is to do it with screens. I dont need you to tell me how to get better at the game when you only provide with "just get better" and circunvent the whole point we should be discussing about which is manaphy.

its been a while since ive been here and now with the inclusion of aurora veil, i wanna ask everyone who has experience either using or playing against manaphy + veil, is it too good? is it managable? explain why please. Thank you in advance to anyone who might consider participating, havent played pro for a whike and would want to know how does it currently stand

Player name: Baganha Showdown name: Baganha Server: Gold Rank on ladder: 14

thank you, thread can be closed

kinda dumb that i have to resort to here to get an answer but basically im following a tutorial on the legendary birds and whem im about to go face articuno the game stops me Thank you, Cheers

I believe for the current UI a shorter amount for timer is better, there arent a lot of optimisations it has compared to ps for example, so that time is probably not used for things such as calcs since we dont know the exact percentage the pokemon is at, taking into account the amount of turns weather or screens have been wasted etc. (speaking from personal experience= However if the UI were to get an improvement an become something similar as PS, i believe 90 secs is a good amount of time, more importantly i think implementing a forfeit button is a way to somewhat get rid of this "timer stalling" issue, i cant see why it hasnt been done to this point honestly, it cant be that hard to do right?

Starting price/point: 2M Ending point: no end point (Insta Price if you want to announce one, else you can do it during auction): no insta Available payments: only money Minimum raise: 100k

Just wanna say that speed boost blaziken being banned has nothing to do with bp, that pokemon has a whole diferent reason has to why it got banned and sohuldnt be put in the same pot as scolipede.

Pls dont force other discussions that have nothing to do with the main theme of this thread, i encourage a community to be more engaging in promoting a better pvp scene, but if you want that to happen then make your own thread, dont use a thread talking about manaphy for it. Thank you.

Really good job on this, tho there are some things missing iirc unless they fixed it without my knowledge, one of them being unaware being able to be bypassed if you crit them and you have boosts on your attack/sp attack and a big one is text not being shown in order. example: both pokemon have leftovers and it says mine recovered from lefties before my opponents, even though my opponents pokemon is faster than mine, which should never happen.

Player name: Baganha Showdown name: Baganha Server: Gold Rank on ladder:8

preferably h.a chespin/chestnaught but overgrow works fine as well you can contact on my discord: Baganha#2183, in this thread or ingame if possible, no limit budget.

Honestly i dont even know what to expect of this meta with aurora veil in the game, manaphy becomes an even bigger threat and once megas come, mons like mega gyarados, zard x and mega ttar for exmaple will make the meta crumble, with no safety pivots such as lando t or reliable haze users like pex and fini, it seems to me the meta is gonna have a big time dealing with this unless you play either one of the extreme sides of the spectrum, offensive or defensive. alolan wak is a cool addition, tr might actually become a thing and without some reliable pivots such as lando-t i can see it being a big threat, then again no cress means its hard to pull it off, since audino is the next best thing. Also gengar lv100, imagine setting up to +6 with you blissey and then they reveal the heart swap manaphy lmao, not even sure if thats coded but that wouldve been hilarious.

Reading these last two comments is scaring me a bit, are there really not an handful of players who are willing to take the format for what it is and not personal gain? While i definitely believe such people would candidate for the position, i am sceptical that everyone would be trying to harm the pvp meta. Anyways if that is the case then i support even more the idea of nominating someone who has contributed and participated in pvp discussions in the past, those are the type of people who truly want to see the format flourish to its best, not get a bigger bonus from it.

1. How are council members picked? How long can they stay on the council? As much as they want to, so as long as no toxic behaviour or signs of procrastination are shown from these people, if someone wants to give up their position as a council member they should have every right to, as well as making an annoucement on the forums/discord etc. and wait out until the end of the season to give up his place for someone else, who should replace its spot, i believe a voting should also determine the new replacement. What are the requirements? Obviously owning a lot of knowledge regarding anything pvp is a must, so if they consistently put out good results, that's a great start, however i dont believe rating scores should be the only measure to judge someone worthy of this position. If a player who has consistently put out amazing results but hasnt kept in touch with the community, isnt very active and never participated in discussions regarding pvp, in my eyes, is not a good option for the council, i would rather have someone who isnt as good as the example mentioned above but has a presence within the community and has participated and if possible influenced the meta in the past, this shows that they do have knowledge about the game even if they arent the best in at it and always achieve number 1 on the ladder, they should be more comfortable and equipped in discussing a competitive meta than people who just play on the ladder, this isnt to say that any mediocre player who just happened to talk a lot in previous discussion should have a right to become a member of course, only those who actually have shown results in the past or currently and bring good and articulated arguments to any discussion, in general i dont advocate anything along the lines of "top 10 or 25 form each server should candidate for the council" as it doesnt truly portray the person's skill and knowledge of the game, especially when you have some people making in with really bad win% (no offense). Should they be able to participate in ranked PvP while being on the council? Absolutely, this will make them more informed and qualified to discuss a meta, makes no sense if they are getting their information from other peoples prespectives and not theirs, there wouldnt really be a point in making a council if they are being absent on something they should be supervising. How would the split between Silver and Gold members look like? There shouldnt be a split at all, the resources in silver and gold are the same, the only diference is the amount of players, the meta should be the same for both servers, if something is broken in one server, its the same for the other, same thing goes for something not being broken. If a council has 5 members and they are all from silver or gold so be it, if they are more qualified for the place than the other server i dont see why they arent more deserving of getting that spot. 2. How are suspect tests decided? How does the council decide what Pokemon to sent into a suspect testing phase? The council should have a discussion regarding whatever they think is suspect test worthy or has been brought to their attention from their community (an actual legit argument, not someone crying because they cant beat stall of course). In that discussion, if the members of the council reach a conclusion and put out their opinions, there should be a supermajority that agrees something should be suspect tested for it to go through, exact percentage would probably differ depending on the amount of members there are in the council. How would a suspect test look like (a special suspect ladder is out of question)? I believe a regular season is pretty good to take place for the suspect, this meaning that a suspect should only happen in the beginning of each season or maybe delay the season if it seems more convenient for players. Who gets to vote after the suspect test is over? Those who achieve the reqs i guess, im not sure what being asked here, seems like a pretty obvious answer. What are the requirements to vote? Something like achieving between 75 or 80 win% with a game range of 40 to 60 or 80 games sounds good to me, its a bit arbitrary on judgding what reqs should someone have to vote on a suspect but i think the reqs ive mentioned should cover mostly people with enough qualification to know what they are doing, and if possible maybe have the possibility of resetting your rating and record, to give a better chance for anyone who might've not been able to do it in their first "run", tho thats a bit hopefull of me. What would council members need from staff in particular to make it successful? How much influence does staff have over the council? I believe staff should report anything the council may not know that could be of use, community's opinion on the competitive environment, usage stats (if possible) all that sort of stuff, not sure how much info staff has on pvp so this might be a dumb answer. When can staffs interfere in the decision making process? Only when the members seem dubious or corrupt, which lets hope this will never happen, in case that is a thing, the staff should have the right to report the incident and ban the player or players responsible for this.

Firstly i would like to thank q8 and everyone who was included in that discussion for taking the time to talk about this, ive heard a lot of things regarding staff not taking consideration anything that the members of the community have to say but after this and the response to the prankster + defog combo thread i believe staff is definitely taking a step to the right direction and be more attentive to the community's voice. That said, there are still some things i want to write about after reading this response, not so much as to getting into a discussion about it, more so just to put out my thoughts on it as i believe its the least i could do since you've all went out of your way to discuss about this. Im not sure what the first argument was trying to prove, but if the intention was to say something will take manaphy's place and should be considered worthy of a ban as much as manaphy than that is completely false, a ban isnt a cause of a slippery slope where everything after it deserves to get kicked out of the tier as well, some pokemon will take the place manaphy had, but most likely not as optimally as it, if this wasnt the point you were making then completely ignore this paragraph. The second point, probably the most important one here, is the one which i find the most scarce of information, now we all know this game isnt some exact science so most things taken into consideration are done so in a bit of a arbitrary fashion, when you say manaphy is only competitive and not broken, what do you mean by that? what counterplay was considered that made you (by you i mean everyone in this discussion of course) think manaphy wasnt worthy of a ban? How little counterplay does a pokemon need to be considered a ban on him? 2 pokemon, 1 pokemon, nothing at all? This is where i see a lot of discrepancy between people's opinions in this forum, however i believe a lot of it is made in a very straight foward and one dimensional way, "offense beats it", disregarding the fact that manaphy's most usage is in a team that has incredible MU to offense to begin with, "incredibly unorthodox pokemon beats it", so pretty much almost every MU that you arent facing a manaphy, you will be at a disadvantage because you're unaware clef or av goodra dont do anything for that game, "faster pokemon kill it", i shouldnt even say what is wrong with this comment, there are things that surely check it, jolteon, raikou, serp, specs latis, but saying that ANYTHING that outspeed it, takes care of manaphy is an incredibly dishonest argument, random anecdote talking how they have beaten manaphy before and its never a been a problem to them, LMAO dont even get me started on that one. Point is, im not sure what exact criteria is being taken to say that x is broken or not, and honestly i dont feel like most people here do, specially when most if not all actions that have been taken into this meta were from another format, i know it isnt easy since "broken" is a very subjective definition and even what a pokemon needs for it to be considered broken is differs a lot, anything that its been banned here or in smogon have all had very diferent impacts on the meta, from threats to anything that was offense like pheromosa to wall and balance breakers like hoopa unbound. Agree with the third point, anyone who wants to consider banning something just because its annoying to play against should probably reconsider playing something else or drastically change their mentality towards competitive mons, not much to add up here, pretty obvious point. That last point kinda upsets me honestly, there being change to the meta in the "near future" shouldnt make for an excuse to not try to improve the current one, this just comes off as lazyness to me, i mean i understand youre not going to ban it, but would you really not consider it if you thought it was broken? Even if the pvp update is comming out in a month or so, thats an entire season we could be playing without a "broken" element in the meta. I know ive basically said the same thing to heroofthestreet but this isn't the same as the prankster + defog scenario as it is a much more specific thing, not as impactfull and would probably take much more work to resolve than just banning a pokemon/move.