Glogs

Kanto: Pewter Elite 4 Kanto: Johto: 1st gym 2nd gym 3rd gym 4th gym 5th gym 6th gym 7th gym 8th gym Elite 4 Hoenn: 1st gym 2nd gym 3rd gym 4th gym 5th gym 6th gym 7th gym 8th gym Elite 4 ------------------------------------------------------- Thoughts: Note that I do have before/after of each e4 member in all regions, but I feel like I'm posting enough as is <.< I cannot save the formatting at this point, so I hope the spoilers continue to come out in a chronological order that is followable. Thoughts on EXP in general: Early and midgame exp is fine, but you fall considerably far behind somewhere around the 6th gym compared to the gym leaders. It's playable to a certain extent for players with reasonable knowledge who like the challenge, but should never be set as the bar for newer players, especially without better places to earn EXP (and exp at better rates). The level differences in Johto are especially egregious when comparing the trainer levels in the routes to the wild Pokémon. Hoenn was a rather miserable experience for me because I committed to more than one Pokémon at the beginning (don't do that). It took me a considerable amount of time to get back on even footing with someone who was doing basically the same things as me but funnelling one Pokémon instead. For all the struggles I had at 6th gym and Deoxys, completing 7th and 8th gym was hilariously easy the second I learned to count to 5. I'm pretty sure I spent more time preparing for Deoxys than I did doing the entire Elite 4 and I certainly spent more time levelling for the 6th gym than I did levelling in the entire playthrough combined... actually that was the singular time in the playthrough I resorted to wild battles for EXP (barring the start of Kanto). Hoenn certainly could use some rework love when it comes to the storyline, it is very insufferable in its current state (especially when you commit to Mt. Pyre trainers). You move between cities to do a minor thing way too frequently and the majority of it has no purpose other than being convenient for the storytelling. More available EXP for story has to be available somehow and curve better into the mid-game without feeling like a chore and grinding 2 hours to prepare for a gym.. and I don't even really know what I did wrong, at the end of the day, the only thing that changed the battle wasn't the level of any of my mons (unless you consider access to Baton pass part of that), it was the change in strategy (thanks to the levels). I don't think the majority of new players will look towards the best combinations of rat Pokémon at the start of every region, so unless they spend an inordinate amount of time grinding, the game in this version is too difficult. The mid-late game exp needs a significant readjustment. I don't care much for the exp mechanics of getting exp when catching a Pokémon, but it's a pretty nifty feature if nothing else. EXP share was nice to have, helped keep some minor mons in the team up to the level they needed to be at to still be useful. I imagine an implementation on live server(s) would solve a lot of minor annoyances one might have to go through to level a Pokémon at times.

Player name: Glogs Showdown name: Glogs Server: Silver Timezone: GMT+1 Rank on ladder: 13

@stavd I see you quoting the whole of his post, including the part where he "+1's" the original post. The reason this is relevant, is because if you had actually read the original post, you'd know that you're pouring your energy in the wrong direction. I direct you to point 13 of the original post. Last time I checked, Conkeldurr would've been more of a problem if it reached close to 400 speed. Let me remind you that the base stat of Ash-Greninjas spatk is higher than Conkeldurrs attack base stat. I understand that we're not disagreeing on whether it should be banned or not, but you thinking the relatively small community of PRO that do play stall are the ones most afraid of this and trying to cover it up behind some other things... When I thought about what I wanted to climb with (if at all with Ash-Greninja on the loose) this month, the only reasonable thing to move towards was stall. I'd be putting myself unnecessarily much at a disadvantage by choosing any other archetype. Why is it you think stall players are distorting reality? Hazard teams would've been a problem prior to this, if they were built poorly. The truth is, the perfect stall team doesn't exist, just like the perfect team doesn't exist. There'll always be a weakness that can be exploited, but I disagree heavily with agenda you're trying to push.

I'm interested to know which of Jorogumos points made you come to this conclusion. My bet is none of them, cause I doubt you've even read it at all. Do feel free to take the wheel and explain how the players of the archetype that is damaged the least are the ones promoting this the most, though. I'm very interested in the line of thought, but I haven't been able to figure out where it originated. From where I stand, the fact that HO relies on momentum colliding with the fact that Ash-Gren exudes a ridiculous amount of it is a little odd, to put it mildly. I don't know how you play the game, but I'll go out on a limb and say stall players are less likely to have to sacrifice a Pokémon to Ash-Gren than any other playstyle.

Player name: Glogs Showdown Name: Glogs Server: Silver Timezone: GMT+2 Rank on ladder: 4

It seems to be a fairly commong misconception that this damages the guild rating, when it, in all scenarios I can find, doesn't. Sure, it can harm the individual players rating, but that's another topic. Your rating is 400, and your opponent rating is 400. If you Win, your rating will be 416, and your opponent rating will be 384. Please see if you can find any two ratings (one for you and one for you opponent) where the guild loses points instead of the two most plausible scenarios where the guild rating isn't effected at all, and the other where the guild gains a few points from the battle. We have the ability to not ready up against opponents and cancel the match, which seems like a more wholesome solution than what is suggested. I don't think forcing guilds into a way of playing PvP is the way to go. Currently we have the option to handle it internally, and I'd much rather it stay that way.

-1 Darkrais bulk, speed tier, spatk stat and movepool makes it a menace to the metagame. With megas around, it still has a stupidly good speed tier to go along with potential Dark Void or Hypnosis sets (or perhaps just straight up Nasty Plot). Weavile, who has the same speed tier, has 65/85/70 defensive base stats (BST). That servers are a reference to Darkrais 90/90/70 defensive BST. I think the movepool in combination with its base stats, it's ability and some sets being heavily reliant on RNG (looking at you Dark Void/Hypnosis) makes for an inherently uncompetitive Pokémon. It's essentially a Gengar on steroids, as it's better in EVERY stat, has a much more oppressive ability (in spite of being able to argue that Cursed Body is fairly uncompetitive, especially given how it works in PRO) and top notch move-pool to go along with it. Gengar is already one of the most used mons in the game, and even if Darkrai has a worse typing and slightly less spamable STAB move(s), it would not benefit the metagame to see it unbanned. Do note that Pursuit trapping Darkrai is not an efficient way of getting rid of it (like it would be Gengar).

Username: GlogS Server: Silver Country/Timezone: Denmark/GMT+2

Player name: Glogs Showdown name: Glogs Server: Silver Timezone: GMT +2 Rank on ladder: 1

I'll try to go over a few misconceptions I've seen in this thread and try to give my take on them. I also feel like this is the place to share my disappointment with how the ban was handled. First of all, we can agree that the Speed Boost bug empowers Baton Pass. However, wanting Baton Pass banned because of a bugged ability seems like the wrong way to go about it. I would elaborate more here, but I'd essentially end up repeating myself, so I'll save it for the conclusion instead. There's a lot of "Showdown this" and "Showdown that" which, given the circumstances, isn't completely unreasonable. I see people mentioning the thread that got Baton Pass banned in Gen 7 OU and when reading it, I wonder if they did. I wonder if they watched the replays linked. If you did, I assume you would've noticed a few common factors, namely Dugtrio with Arena Trap and Scolipede having access to Substitute + a properly working Baton Pass. All that just means, that we're comparing a "complete" metagame with that of PRO's. We're comparing working mechanics to those of PRO. We're comparing Pokémon like Necrozma and Magearna with the likes of Togekiss and Manaphy. We're not accurately taking into consideration the lack of Substitute and the presence of Arena Trap Dugtrio. Maybe this is a good time to mention that the Dugtrio run on those teams was run with Memento in order to cripple the opponent and give Scolipede a more or less free Substitute. Adding a little onto the previous paragraph, I feel it's important to stress that PRO should not strive to become the Smogon/Showdown metagame. If that's the direction we're heading in, there's no reason to not just play on Showdown to begin with. Shoutout to Qeight for mentioning that and finally adding some stats to the discussion, but more about that later. As a final note to that, the quote beneath hits right in the feels. Yes, Manaphy is a controversial Pokémon and so is Togekiss (with scarf too). It removes a lot of skill expression when you're continously flinched down without being able to do much. Togekiss is inherently uncompetitive, I think we can all agree. Is it so different from other sweepers though? Bisharp restricts teambuilding as well. Lucario too? Volcarona? You need answers for a lot of different setup Pokémon in order not to lose in Team Preview. When I'm teambuilding, I'm much more scared of getting swept by Bisharp and Lucario than I am scared of Manaphy. Regardless of my own preference, you need checks or counters for certain offensive mons. If you don't have a counter or hard check for these threats, you must be able to generate enough offensive pressure to prevent them from setting up in the first place, regardless of Baton Pass. I actually quite like that one of my questions was used for the post. Shoutout to the guy who passed it on, you know who you are. For those unfamiliar with it, here we are: "What does the opponent do while Scolipede passes Speed?". I think it's a great question, cause the same can be asked about a bunch of different set up mons. Bisharp SD? Lucario SD? Volcarona QD? Togekiss NP? Manaphy TG? The argument: "Just press protect and get 1 free turn on something Scolipede is good into" (as I'm reading it) really doesn't make sense. Protect is not coded correctly, so while we're on a thread of a bugged move, it may interest you to know that the move Protect is a lot stronger on Showdown than it is on PRO. If you Protect and the opponent switches out, it fails every time (I've never seen it work anyways, and I've played a lot of stall in my time on PRO). This bug inherently makes it a lot weaker to press Protect on the initial turn you come in, as Protect does not limit the switches the opponent can make in any way shape or form, which means it should never be "free". To clarify how it's different than it is on Showdown: On Showdown Protect works 100% of the time the second time it is used if the opponent switched out on the initial turn. Yes, there's several "abusers" that can receive speed boosts and do well with them. Is that so different from how hyper-offensive teams have more than one threat? In the end, both are about momentum. If you lose momentum with either, you're likely out of the game unless your opponent just wants you to win. The most commonly used Baton Pass team could in many ways be interpreted as another variation of the hyper-offense archetype. Baton Pass aims to capitalize on the opponents mistakes and will do so aggresively (if played correctly). For the sake of the post, I'll say that players of equal skill will not make mistakes for the Baton Pass player to capitalize on, which is where the teams are much weaker and unable to do much on their own initiative. The only reason Baton Pass has seen any form of success on the ranked ladder thus far, seems to have been because the team was built to not require speed boosts to function in the first place. Anything I've seen apart from that have been "meme-ish" teams in the ladder tournament that the opponents were just ill-prepared for. While there's a point in saying: "the real problem with this move is that it opens to tens or even hundreds of different vulnerabilities.", it sort of seems beside the main point. You don't quick ban something that has already been explored in the meta-game because of its potential. There's a few things that got banned because of their potentials, namely legends such as Shaymin-Sky and Darkrai. Baton Pass is not in a similar situation, it has already been in the meta for a year and we've seen the meta adapt accordingly. We're seeing more priority moves and better answers to the common Baton Pass threats. We're seeing players being able to play against it better, now that they understand how the teams go about punishing mistakes. If it isn't apparent as of yet, I don't believe Baton Pass should be banned. If the comparison is made with the Smogon metagame, the move is just so much weaker than it is on Showdown. There's no Substitute, Protect doesn't work correctly and there's a lack of stronger abusers. If we had data from last year around this time, I'm sure we'd see a quite significant change in some of the most used Pokémon, without having seen many new Pokémon being added to the game and ending up there (bar alolan-muk?). Point is, the meta shifts and players adapt to new threats accordingly. I don't think there has been a game-breaking Baton Pass team yet. The closest we've come is probably a player reaching rank 1 with it on Silver in 2019 (which would be me). Having to revisit this topic in a few months if a player builds something that is gamebreaking is not a bad thing and it is definitely not a reason to ban it now. There's no doubt in my mind that this move should be banned later, but I'll refer to the "it is definitely not a reason to ban it now". That's about it for my thoughts on Baton Pass, so if that's all you were here for, feel free not to read any further. I'd like to focus on the "how the ban was handled part" for the next segment. ------------------------------------ As Qeight already pointed out, the decision was made within the staff "PvP council". Logan said he'd take all responsibility for the ban, so I assume it's not toxic to mention him directly. I feel as if the decision was heavily influenced by one group of players and not so much by players who takes an opposite stand to it. I had the pleasure of being consulted the day after the ban took place, which ended up meaning nothing for the outcome of this initially. The way this temporary rule change was made is not a sustainable way of conducting rule changes and it has to change going forward. While conferring with Logan the day after the ban, it was made clear that there was no protocol to be followed (which I was aware of, given the circumstances). For me, it just begs the question: "Why not make a protocol first?". Baton Pass has been around for a long time now and it doesn't seem like an issue that can't be dealt with more appropriately than this. Even if Baton Pass is deemed to be ban-worthy at this given time, I think the least we could do is create a proper protocol and run it through it before any final decision is made. About a year ago, a few players and myself made a draft of how a PvP council could function. View that here. It also answers a few common questions for those who are unfamiliar with how things are usually banned on Smogon. Obviously, we don't have to follow their procedures, just as we don't have to follow their metagame. We never ended up pushing the idea out there and I doubt many staff members ended up seeing the post, as it was also around this time Qeight announced the official post with questions. I never got around to posting on that one, I don't think. TLDR of this section; If we have at least a modicum of respect for protocol and the playerbase as a whole, I think we enforce a do-over to avoid what I would call bad decisions becoming bad habits. Best of regards,

Player name. Glogs Showdown name: Glogs Server: Silver Timezone: GMT+2 Rank on ladder: 2

Player name: Glogs Showdown name: Glogs Server: Silver rank on ladder: 1

Player name: Glogs Showdown name: Glogs Server: Silver Rank on Ladder: 11

Player name: Glogs Showdown Name: Glogs Server: Silver Rank on ladder: 9

Player name: Glogs Showdown name: Glogs Server: Silver Rank on ladder: 3