Baganha

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.

In-game name:Baganha Server:Gold Pokemon ID and/or screenshot: 26169324 Is it possible to devolve this?

Im sorry for my ignorance regarding your first post, it wasnt clear to me that your comment was a troll since i tend to take every comment here with the upmost of seriousness, unless it were talking about extremelt excepcional ones that are clearly not to be taken seriously. Could you possibly discuss this a little bit more detail? I would like to see your pov regarding this comment you made. Assuming you also have read my response to mamathieu and pages 3 to 5 form this thread. Where did you get these stats from? I definitely agree with you that the three playstyles you mentioned have the better MU, but where do those exact numbers come from? Also my b on the comment spam lol, shouldve probably just made this into a single post.

Ive already explained the rain issue before so if you havent read this thread i recommend checking out pages 3 to 5 to get a full comprehension as to why rain isnt the problem here, a tl;dr version is simply that rain just doesnt have the requirements to be effective at every matchup, not without manaphy, its usage is quite abundant that is true however, that doesnt signify its viability, i reckon most of its usage simply comes to the easy learning of playing rain, fast games and even the accessibility of these pokemon being quite good such as pelipper and kingdra. Banning manaphy however would mean that rain's main wallbreaking/stallbreaking power would be gone, making it an easier matchup for bulkier archtypes like stall or fat balances, evening out the playing field a bit. It would also be much less of a mess than banning an entire playstyle. That is completely nonsensical, youre basically just hindering any pokemon that takes advantage of those moves even outside of rain, which are a lot mind you, tentacruel, starmie, quagsire, mantine, slowbro/king and so on. Even on the hypothetical scenario where rain could be considered broken and ban-worthy, banning the entire playstyle would leave the meta much less limiting than getting rid of those specific moves. Also i would appreciate if there were no bump posts in this thread, i understand you want to keep this discussion relevant or catch the eyes of other people, but please do it in a meaningfull way where more can be talked about and not just a filler post, thank you.

The problem here is that the request is not to ban prankster but prankster + defog combo which is much more specific and a bit arbitrary as explained in the post i made before.

It is true that this whole issue is not properly coded as even status (toxic, thunder wave, swagger etc) arent blocked by dark types, this happen to me before and ive had a conversation in the battle chat from the game and long story short something as specific as this is very hard to "ban" as there no way it can really be done, its pretty much impossible to stop it from happening, asking for a ban on this is pretty much asking to not use any status from a prankster pokemon if your opponent has a dark type on a team which sounds more conflicting then what this current bug is doing. I know you mentioned that you only wanted defog + prankster to be banned here but why should defog be considered getting a ban above any other status like twave, toxic or swagger? i feel like you're appealing a bit to your own personal experience and giving yourself some bias, which is perfectly normal and you could even try to argue that defog is the more broken thing to abuse over all the other ones, but in such a specific scenario like this, unless you bring evidence that shows this is consistenly being abused, i dont see it getting resolved. Like youve mentioned, the new battle UI is getting a rework and most likely this issue will be fixed, so for the time being, i guess the best thing to do at the moment is being patient with these guys, this isnt the perfect scenario but they're at least trying to make it as best as possible. Cheers.

Oh, so a previous report has already been done prior to mine regarding this subject. My bad then, i didnt knew that, anyways i appreciate the intel given and wish the best for everyone working on the new pvp rework and hope you have a good one as well.

I'll try to make this as simple as possible, while pvping my opponent had a +4 atk scizor in front of me (not really important but i had knocked its life orb, this is just for more clarity of the situation) against my phys def unaware quagsire as he goes for a superpower, to note that i was at 100% hp so regardless of what happens i should be able to live the hit, superpower does about 35% to my quag or around 53% if he crits me, however the scizor was able to ohko my quagsire and i noticed that it was a critical hit, this makes me think critical hits were coded for unaware in the same way to behave as stat boosts, as we all know, a crit always ignores any defensive stat boosts the opposing pokemon has, however this isnt true for abilities. Showing calcs from showdown calculator to prove this point: +4 252+ Atk Scizor Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Unaware Quagsire: 115-136 (29.1 - 34.5%) -- 99.9% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery (no crit) +4 252+ Atk Scizor Superpower vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Unaware Quagsire on a critical hit: 173-204 (43.9 - 51.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery (with crit) I am aware that there is a big pvp update coming, with the objective of fixing these coding and mechanic issues that is presently has, im simply posting this in case that the people who are working on these issues dont know about this oversight in the hopes that it catches their attention since this is the first time ive found this out and seem to note that a lot of people were unaware of it as well (pun intended). Unfortunately i dont have any evidence regarding these claims so i guess it'll come down to testing if this is new to everyone. Hope i made everything clear on this post, if not any questions are more than welcome to be asked.

Very nice work, such a simple but effective and optimal idea, comes to surprise that no one actually mentioned this before as far as im aware, wish you the best of luck in getting this idea approved.

While its not known for certainty why burn has gotten nerfed the main theory is likely because of scald, it is one of the most low risk high reward moves thanks of its chance to burn, anything that could learn scald now has a chance to heavily nerf pokemon/straight up deal with pokemon it shouldnt have any business in doing so, starmies could 1v1 ferros/ttars/brelooms, toxapex beating landos etc; while the nerf in the turn per turn damage doesnt seem that much it at least makes mons who have leftovers not be automatically on a timer thanks to it, tho i cant say i agree with the nerf, obviously burn is still pretty usefull since it halves the opponents attack but it takes a lot out of the reasoning in running moves like wow, all of this because of a water type move of all things, the problem isnt burn, its scald imo.

Actually, i didnt even consider umbreon and the fact that +2 doesnt 2hko with flamethrower on spdef umbreon is kind of a problem, either way +2 buzz doesnt kill him so you're bound to get toxic'd, i'd say if youre having a lot of dificulties dealing with umbreon, maybe buzz will have to do, also knowing that a lot of umbreons are usually used on sun teams you can at least 2hko those with flamethrwer as long as sun is up and youre at +2.

I recomend removing bug buzz, specially if youre not swarm, bug buzz is a nice stab option but volc somewhat covers its stronguest suits naturally, dark types are usually consisted of bish and weavile which flamethrower deal with, the same goes for grass types, so unless youre using a team that its weak to something like reuniclus or any fat psychic id say bug buzz is your best option to replace, flamethrower is the most consistent and reliable stab and giga drain offers a much better matchup against bulky waters or just water types in general, hp ice adds even more coverage and can work as a nice lure for all the chomps, dnites etc.

Im am quite aware that manaphy doesnt excel in every existent playstyle, ive also mentioned before, that, in my opinion, a pokemon doesnt require to be absolutely godly at every MU for it to be considered broken, every mon clearly has its unfavorable MUs, even mons that got banned before, this might be a unfair comparison to some but since PRO seems to only take action to what smogon does i feel like its more than fair, zygarde all by itself doesnt seem to be a stellar mon by any means with maybe the exception of cb sets depending on the MU, stall could stop it with unaware clef + helmet tang, the most annoying set to stall was probably sub toxic however it was still checked by helmet hp ice tang, balance was the mu that struggled the most against him but with solid cores between hippo, ww skarm or bulu it wasnt a dictated 6-0 for zygarde on turn 1, from bulky offense to HO, all had the tools to actually break zygarde's natural bulk, whether it was ash gren, mega medicham, mega diancie, mega swampert, mega hera and even buzzwole. What really took zygarde to the edge was its versatility but more importantly its sinergy with the team, its MU against more offensive teams would easily be much better if it's behind screens for example, its stall MU would get better if it was paired up with something like lele to pressure the teams defensive backbone or abuse phys def tang switchins, with balance something like sd z-kart was very popular paired up with zygarde, as it was able to open holes for zygarde to just clean up and finish the game. The point im trying to make here is that i believe manaphy is being judged at a very superficial level, has if its on a vacuum, neglecting its influence just because its not the reason its winning every game. This is the mon who gives rain its stallbreaking power, rain whom of which is incredibly good against offensive teams, who are the archtype manaphy struggles the most, this pretty much gives rain prefect sinergy against every playstyle, on HO teams it does the same, easing up its MU against bulkier teams, giving them an opening for a potential sweep, on Balance/BO it also fits incredibly well, as these teams tend to do well against faster, more offensive MUs, this all is accomplishable because of manaphy. Its imperfections and faults are existent, however i dont think because a pokemon as them it should be considered not broken, thats pretty much my opinion.

Idk why people just started putting their "votes" on this thread, this isnt a voting thread just a discussion one, unless thatr just a simple way you want to clarify your opinion then i guess its fine by me.

I definitely understand your take on this, and empathize a lot more your pov, i guess at this point both of us will just disagree with our views in the requirements for a pokemon to be considered broken, while it cant accomplish everything with just ONE single set and doesnt excel at every single playstyle/matchup, manaphy has all the tools to be devastating for the tier and personally that is enough for me to consider it broken, having great synergy with a mon like kingdra for example who deal fantastically against offensive MU, it just a core too potent to deal with, i truly think its overwhelming. While i still keep my doubts in people getting insane results with manaphy, since no evidence has been provided, i dont believe it's something it should be taken lightly (again as long as this claim is provided with sufficient evidence), a similar situation happened on smogon with baton pass and dugtrio (dugtrio stall to be exact) where a lot of the skill gap seemed to be missing and a lot people on the ladder got insane elos and gxe records, most of which werent even known, in tours dugtrio stall was spammed throughout its existence and held an insane record, even when people where expecting this matchup, they still lost and we're talking about tour players, being known to be the most competent in the game. I know its not fair comparing manaphy with bp/duggy but if it is truly affecting the rating the way its prtrayed to be, then i think it is a problem, as a competitive game should maintain a balanced skill gap.

I really cant see how manaphy is outright bad against offense in general, taking rain into account and most offense pokemon used dont have great speed tiers and having to rely on priority to damage it, which all of it can be recovered with rest, latios, raikou, serp and weather abusers seem to me the most reliable checks to this mon and potential scarfers like togekiss or breloom, (to which togekiss has to pray for it to flinch). Regarding having to use the clefable set so you deal with manaphy, that was a point i was trying to make as the poster only mentioned unaware cm clef as a means to "not lose" to manaphy, i simply pointed out that having 1 mon that can deal with x shouldnt be a reason for it to be kept in the tier, im aware there are more measures that can deal with it has aformentioned in earlier posts. The thing with manaphy is that it doesnt need much deviation from its sets to be good at any MU, togekiss like you mentioned is probably the best stallbreaker there is, your only hope is to rely on air slash not flinching your mantine or that clef set with hopes of pp stalling it, but if you want a togekiss that is reliable to deal with faster/frailer teams you need to run a completely diferent set. Manaphy just runs the same thing (regarding the tg set not cm), subbing one or two moves and maybe a slightly diferent ev spread, youre getting all of these roles of a wallbreaker, stallbreaker, sweeper, and even revenge killer, if the MU is too passive, in one package, just one set is capable of all of this, i dont think any other mon on pro can do this, or at least not to the extent as manaphy. I guess manaphy's presence isnt as much as i thought previously, as in this season ive yet to face one (much to my relief lol) i guess i just got a bit unlucky with the MU previously as they werent THAT uncommon before, and while slow balance might still have success ive also heard from someone that people were getting ridiculous results and win% who have no business in doing so thanks to manaphy, tho it wasnt backed up by any evidence so take that as you will. However, like ive said i dont think small usage equates in being a balanced mon. As a final note, most of you probably already know by now but PRO is reworking and updating PVP, making all moves, items, abilities and megas usable, with that said once that update comes, my opinion regarding manaphy will most likely change as with the addition of megas such as lopunny, manectric, zard y, alakazam, latis and even metagross which will definitely ease up the matchup for offensive teams and increasing its checks as well, these in particular being more reliable as well. Mega gardevoir and mawile will also outclass manaphy as a primary wallbreaker (not stallbreaker) due to its immediate firepower and no need of setup. This means that continuing this thread may be pointless from here on out, at least for me, that being said i wanna thank to all the people who have partaken and given their opinions on this thread, i've learned a lot and definitely improved as a player talking to all of you, if anyone still wants to participate in this discussion then by all means do so, ill still try to be as responsive as possible for the time being.

Ever since the beginning of me making this thread i never overlook manaphy's matchup against more offensive teams, i even mentioned in my original post that they had an easier job to deal with manaphy since they can chip it more effectively and are able to revenge kill it, unlike stall teams; but it doesnt take the fact that at +3, its killing a mon and while it might be hard for manaphy to setup it isnt impossible specially if it has access to rain and rest since surf + ice beam is all the coverage it needs for offense teams, options for its team like rain sweepers are really good paired up with manaphy as they excel in dealing with more offensive teams. While i think manaphy is still pretty good at every MU, knowing that it has checks which are viable in the meta makes me understand the position youre in (assuming you dont believe manaphy is broken), although i cant say i agree, i dont believe a pokemon should be put on a vaccum and be judged by how good he is solely for its own attributes, if that was the case a ban like dugtrio's would make no sense. I cant actually think of many pokemon in pro's and smogon's history that got banned that exceeded at every single playstyle, maybe lando-i and potentially phero i guess. I would never use calm unaware clef as i think its only place is in stall teams which are really bad in this current meta imo, teams are very easily pressured by conk and if youre not running that particular clef set, manaphy just 6-0s you unless you have haze mantine or something, it really lacks the presence of mega sableye.

Yeah it has to run calm for it to be considered a counter, if you run 44 spdef evs (calcing with 31 ivs so you'll for sure need a bit more) it doesnt get 2hko by surf on rain after rocks, and have the rest ev spread left for defense which can still make you deal with mons like dd dnite, non lo chomp, breloom as long as you cant go to sleep and some other stuff. Obviously its up to you how much investment you want to put on clef.

Im not sure why you keep bringing up "we are in gen 6, not gen 5" argument? what did exactly gen 6 bring to the table that made manaphy more easily dealt with? i think you're trying to make a direct comparison to smogon, knowing that manaphy got unbanned from OU in gen 6, though im not sure why both of these things should be compared as they are very diferent from one another.

I've specified in my post for you to mention counters to which you've only mentioned 2, giving the edge over ferro against a +3 manaphy for the sake of the argument here, gengar cannot revenge kill manaphy at full and certainly can take a +3 hit, making him only a check, dnite is the same as +3 ice beam ohko's it through multiscale, priority is not a counter but a means of weakening it/ revengekill it, obviously this could never be considered a counter knowing that conk bish and all the priority users die to +3 manaphy. I dont think you see the problem here, why should i be forced to run a pokemon with almost the sole purpose of beating manaphy, do you not see how centrlising this is? I've given this example already but imagine a scenario where you could use kyogre in pvp, appling your logic would also mean kyogre shouldnt be banned as counters exist for him as well, such as shedinja or chansey, its pretty clear a pokemon like this shouldnt be allowed in the meta and no one should be forced to run one of those two pokemon to beat it.

If thats the attitude everyone had for pvp then what would even be the point of playing it? Why should i "give up" something i believe it can be corrected and would mean a better future for the meta knowing that other people agree with me as well? If they've never took action before why does it mean they'll never do it?

May i ask some examples of COUNTERS you know on the top of your head?

Really? i couldve sworn it was fixed but eventually banned anyways, thank you for the clarification.

Unaware clef works as a solid counter but it goes without saying just because that particular set exist doesnt make manaphy balanced. Revenge killing it isnt an impossible job but again it is pretty limited the amount of things that effectively check it, it shouldnt take a pokemon to be "unbeatable" for it to be considered broken, mons like unburden hawlucha are an example of this as they have their fair share of counterplay but its setup just allows it to bypass most of ther meta with ease cleaning 2-3 mons if not entire teams, thats the main diference from manaphy and any other regular setup mon in the current meta.